《Exhuman》


 001. 2251, Present Day. North American wilderness. Athan.

    Bacon. Pork Chops. Sausage. Ham.


    All foods I hadn''t had in over a week. Any food was food I hadn''t had in over a week.Yesterday I ate a caterpillar I found crawling on a branch. It was the first meat I''d had--if you could call it that--since my exile.


    And now, there in front of me, snuffing at the underbrush, strips of sunlight through the thick pine trees giving its plain brown fur tiger stripes, real food. Meat. Bacon.


    Pre-bacon. Proto-bacon. It was a boar. Stubby legs, short tusks, black eyes. If I''d remembered any nature programs on the holo I''d probably have recall that boars were incredibly dangerous when threatened, able to charge and gore even a prepared hunter, smart and tenacious as they were durable.


    I hadn''t, hence my hunting the thing with possibly the crudest bow ever made by a man, and a handful of sticks with sharpened rocks jammed in the front for arrows.


    As soon as I hit or missed this pig with my ill-conceived attempt at archery, any human in my place, with my complete lack of hunting ability and complete lack of zoological knowledge was in for a serious shitshow when that thing came charging.


    But I was just captivated with the thought of the food in front of me. Counting my pork chops before they hatched. Goring by pig was a pretty great way to die a completely inglorious death, but the constant painful writhing of my stomach would be an even worse way to go.


    I drew the bowstring back, gave myself a brief three-count, and let fly. Miraculously, the arrow went reasonably straight and into the flank of the boar, which responded with a scream seemingly much larger than it was, and the charge I should have known was coming.


    When you see a dog out on a walk with its owner, you tend to think something like ''good puppy''. It''s not until you see a dog of the same shape and size that''s chained in someone''s yard, barking its head off, flecks of drool flying everywhere that you realize...that dog you saw earlier, it has the potential to really mess you up if it wanted to. Dogs are strong, fast, they have teeth and will use them. Despite being less than half our size, a dog isn''t anything I''d ever want to willingly tangle with. They can rip and tear and drag you right the hell down to the ground where there''s just no way to protect all of yourself.


    Now take that dog, give it tusks, and multiply its weight by four. This is what was now charging at me, stinking and frothing and screaming for the arrow I''d put into its side.


    As soon as I saw it crashing at me, I bolted. I''d been a quarterback on my football team until I was exiled a week ago, and my instincts were honed appropriately. When something huge came at you dead-on, you moved.


    Problem was, this thing was no lineman breaking free for a second and looking for the sack, it was freaking fast, and if it got me down, there were no refs to make sure I couldget up to do the next play.


    It closed in on me almost instantly, zig-zagging through the trees even easier than I could, its four feet thundering on the blanket of pine needles which slid under mine. I couldn''t outrun it, and I couldn''t shake it. That left one option.


    When a sack was coming, you couldn''t just run and delay the inevitable. The defensive line couldn''t hold forever, and the more you ran, the more yards you lost if they hit you. The only remaining option, once your defense and evasion failed you was to make a play, any play, even throwing the ball away, but you had to turn and do it.


    So I turned and faced the charging boar. I had, maybe two seconds tops, before it rammed into me. Two seconds to form a plan out of this mess I''d put myself in.


    Fortunately, that kind of thing was what I did best. And fortunately, I wasn''t quite as unarmed and helpless as I looked.


    Any human in my place would have been screwed, that much was true. But I wasn''t human. Not anymore.


    Hovering inches above each of my hands, two blades of pure energy materialized at once and hissed and crackled in the air. Lightning, frozen mid-jump, a straight solid bolt of pure white, the edges bleeding frenetic energy and dripping sparks. I dropped into a low stance, approximating a swordfighter I''d seen in a holovid, and as my hands moved, the blades moved with them, hovering far enough away that I only felt the intense heat on my knuckles.


    The pig gave zero shits about my new weaponry and, if anything, redoubled its charge. It closed the remaining distance with a screeching squeal, its brown mane down its back bouncing back and forth with each manic stride, the dirt thundering under its approach, it''s tusks flashing in the mottled sunlight.


    I brought my hands down and stepped to the side in one motion. The pig''s scream intensified for only half an instant and then fell silent. Its charging body flew past me and slammed into a tree hard enough to shake a new layer of needles onto the already-dense carpet of the forest.


    It was super, duper dead. I''d hit it right behind the head, and in the single moment I''d had my blades jammed into it, I''d burned halfway through its neck, severing the spine and filling the air with the sickening but enticing smell of burning meat and hair.


    I was reminded for only the briefest of moments how easy it was for me to take a life.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    My hunt concluded. Not exactly as planned, but also kind of exactly as planned. I went back to pick up my bow and arrows, not that they''d really done anything. The only reason I even had them was because the reach on my swords wasn''t remotely as far as the senses on these animals. Running after them through the brush, waving my swords like a living fire hazard hadn''t done much to fill my stomach thus far. But with as angry as that boar had been, I probably could have baited it into range just by jumping out and flipping it off.


    But hell, I''d done it. First successful hunt. Hopefully many more boars were in my future.


    I dragged it slowly home, too cumbersome to lift, thinking bacon, bacon with every step.


    Until a week ago if you''d asked me who and what I was, I would tell you I was Athan Ashton, typical high school senior, and quarterback for our team, the Black Sharks. That was really about it. Talking about my football scholarship or that I was the team''s star player or any of that other crap, while true, was a lot closer to bragging than I liked. I might mention I liked the color red and my favorite food was fish if pressed.


    This week, the answer would be a little more succinct. Exhuman. One word to sum up a life.


    Exhumans were very rare, very dangerous people. Anyone, any age, any gender, any time could wake up one day and suddenly be an Exhuman. You go to bed someone, and you wake up something else.


    Exhumans had powers, something about them just defies physics in a way which has been studied endlessly and never discovered. Some were world-shakingly strong, others were reasonably tame, but all of them put Exhumans on a different level than an ordinary human. Powers like, for example, my ability to wield blades made of lightning. Useful, maybe. But nothing anyone ever wanted.


    Because, the problem with being Exhuman is that they all go bad, or so we were told. You can''t just give that much power to a person and expect them not to use it, and when they did use it, terrible things happened to everyone around them. Spectacular ''Exhuman events'' the government called them, where entire city blocks are destroyed, hundreds or even thousands die, worse than any natural disaster, because at the end of the day, what''s behind it isn''t some capricious act of God, but the ruinous intent of what was once a human.


    Many...I hoped most...chose as I did, when I got my powers. I did the right thing and surrendered to the authorities. Hands and knees and kissed the pavement, hoping for quarantine. There was no quarantine for Exhumans, only execution.


    That was the very short version of why I was out here, starving and dragging an almost-beheaded boar through the wilderness. I''d been exiled and forbidden contact with any human ever again. In exchange, they allowed me to live.


    I mean, that was only after they tried to kill me. As it turns out, Exhumans aren''t easy to kill either.


    It was most of twenty minutes before I caught sight of my new home, and another ten before I had the pig outside my front door. "The Bunker" I named it, a little four-foot tall half-underground concrete free-standing structure, built by God-knows-who for God-knows-why. It kept the cold out and the rain out and I didn''t ask too many questions after that. Grass grew on the roof and I liked that my house had hair.


    I left Porky outside for a moment and descended the wide concrete stairs to grab some wood I''d stashed next to the door to start a fire, giving myself a minute to adjust to the dark instead of groping around blindly and giving myself tetanus on something in here.


    The many harsh angles of the place came into focus. Rusted metal shelves, rusted chain-link, rusted machines, rusted everything. The Bunker had once been a storage unit or machine shop or something, but had been abandoned forever ago.


    Some stuff was still usable. A couple bolts of synthetic weave and some piles of rope I''d already used to make a comfortable hammock, even some preserves to eat which had a horrible acrid taste but hadn''t made me sick. If I were ever able to get the machines back online, there was a mass-fab unit in the corner which I might be able to use to print pretty much anything I could ever want.


    I mean, it''d never happen, but I had the rest of my life out here, why not dream a little.


    I grabbed my bundle of wood and went back into the fading afternoon. For fire, at least, I had all the technology I''d ever need, in the palm of my hand.


    Another lightning blade popped into being in front of my outstretched palm, tiny this time, like a knife, but still crackling and sparking, and still hot as ever, and I pushed it into the wood. I''d learned the wood needed to be dry or else the water exploded and scalded you, but this stuff was good and flared into a blaze after just a couple of seconds. I wasn''t sure if my swords could even cut things so much as they just melted them with incredibly intense heat.


    "Okay," I coughed, watching the fire catch and dance, and choking on my own throat. I realized I hadn''t said a word out loud to anyone in days, and swallowed heavily. "Okay, now how do I turn you into bacon?"


    I cut or melted apart the pig as best as I was able into gross bloody chunks and propped them on sticks around the fire. Soon, the smell of cooking meat filled the air despite my failure at all things butchery and cooking, and my stomach felt like it was trying to lunge through my chest to get at the food faster.


    A week with nothing but water, a couple small jars of preserves, a couple eggs stolen from nests, and whatever nuts and roots I could render to edibility. And that one caterpillar. I guess I should have been happy to be exiled in summer instead of winter, but that happiness really only got me as far as ''starving and miserable'' instead of ''dead''.


    So of course I overcooked the shit out of the meat, but as I learned, when you were that hungry, even blackened, dry meat was amazing beyond words. Having enough food to tear a bite off with my teeth, even if it was only basically pig-flavored leather at the hands of my cooking, it was still heaven. And I had enough food for days, if it kept. Which...I didn''t know if it would, but I would just keep cooking and eating until I couldn''t anymore.


    An hour later found me bloated and happy, a full stomach, a warm campfire, a comfy...if dusty and claustrophobic shelter, and a beautiful sunset over an endless sea of pine in front of me. Feeling like that, it was hard not to be optimistic, and hope, something I''d lost grasp of along the way, seemed to flood back into my being. The reminder that some days would be full of pig and happiness, even if other days I was contemplating eating handfuls of dirt just to put something in my stomach.


    Maybe this could work out. Maybe I could stretch this into some ideal camping trip. Make myself a real bow, shoot a bird out of the sky for supper, make myself a nice hat to keep the sun off my neck, that kind of thing.


    I smiled stupidly, putting out my fire and carting the remaining cooked boar inside for safekeeping as I prepared to go down for sleep before I had to navigate the rusted labyrinth of my house in pitch blackness.


    Those were stupid, idle thoughts, and I should have known better already. Nothing is ever that easy for an Exhuman.

 002. 2251, Three weeks ago. Los Angeles suburbs. Athan.

    I faked right and spun to my left at the last moment, feeling for a moment the huge linebacker scrape past my back as his arms failed to find a solid grip on me, before his momentum carried him to the grass. I had only moments to find my mark, as the offensive line crumbled around me. I saw my receiver put on a burst of speed and break free of his pursuer, and launched the ball towards him.


    I never saw the ball land, as a lineman had found an opening and drove me to my back, emptying my lungs and filling my vision with the black velvet of the night sky.


    The cheer which roared from the crowd was enough to let me know my throw had hit its mark, and I laid in the grass for a few moments more, closing my eyes and listening to the thundering of feet and the screams of the fans. The cheering intensified and reached a crescendo as, presumably, the ball crossed the line and we scored.


    That was it. We were in overtime, first team to score would win. It was a long, exhausting win. But we did it.


    ¡°Hey, Athan! My man,¡± I heard someone say. I opened my eyes to see an outstretched hand. I grabbed hold of it, and the guy attached to it, my best friend Brick, pulled me to my feet.


    ¡°Did it again, my man,¡± he said.


    ¡°I just threw the thing. Tyler did all the work,¡± I said, gesturing towards the growing cheering mass of people thronging the receiver at the end of the field.


    ¡°Yeah, yeah. You can put down the humble act, everyone here knows this win, and the one last week, and the one the week before that, those were all on you. Everyone here knows you¡¯re the one with a football scholarship at Cal, not Tyler.¡±


    ¡°Whatever, man. Dude made an awesome run, he deserves some credit.¡±


    ¡°You make an awesome throw, you deserve some credit.¡±


    ¡°Want to thank me? Go buy me a burger.¡±


    ¡°Haha, I¡¯m here to feed your ego, not your face,¡± he shot me a cheeky grin and squeezed my shoulder as we headed towards the locker room.


    When we got inside, more cheers rang out. Brick gave a cheesy bow and shoved me forward into the limelight, where I stood awkwardly in the center of my team¡¯s adulation. It went on for way too long. People kept coming forward to give me a high-five or bump it, but otherwise, I just stood there with everyone staring at me. I hated it. I just wanted to change and disappear. At some point they all even broke into one of the crowd chants: Lets-go-sha-arks. Clap-clap-clapclapclap.


    When the praise had died down some, I snuck over to my locker where I changed as fast as I could. I was pulling on my shoes when Brick found me again.


    ¡°Hey, tell me you were serious about that burger, my man,¡± he said. ¡°Some of the guys here want to take you out, even if I¡¯m way too cheap for that shit.¡±


    ¡°Hey, thanks guys, but I really should go. Dad¡¯s probably waiting y¡¯know,¡± I lied.


    The wave of disappointed groans punctuated my guilt.


    ¡°Yeah, don¡¯t want to keep the big man waiting,¡± Brick said, more to the others than to me. I think he was trying to cover for me and let me escape, which I appreciated.


    ¡°Yeah. Gotta go. See you guys on Monday,¡± I said.


    ¡°Yeah, later losers,¡± Brick echoed, as he steered both of us out of the locker room. There were murmurs of farewell cut off as the heavy door slammed shut behind us.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°You really should hang out with the team sometime outside of games and practice,¡± Brick said while we cut towards the parking lot. ¡°The guys are likely to think you don¡¯t like them.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t dislike them, you guys just always seem to be a lot more interested in partying and shit than I am. You know my dad doesn¡¯t mess around when it comes to drinking or grades and shit. Nothing that¡¯d threaten my scholarship.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. And he¡¯s gonna call all his army buddies and have them ground you.¡±


    I rolled my eyes. ¡°Yeah, that. So, maybe next year when I¡¯m at college and not under his thumb so much.¡±


    ¡°Two problems with that, my man,¡± he said, boxing my shoulder with a smirk. ¡°One, I know you¡¯re enough of a boy scout that you are still gonna be under his thumb, even once you¡¯re at Cal. And two, when you go away, I ain¡¯t gonna be around no more. Which defeats the whole point. Like I care if you hang out and have a ton of fun without me.¡±


    ¡°Sorry to inconvenience you with my life plans, man.¡±


    ¡°Nah, no worries,¡± he said with the same easy grin as always.


    We¡¯d reached our destination, a little hill on the back property of the school grounds. As we crested the hill, the bright stadium lights turned off and the hill fell into blackness. We laid on our backs and looked into the night sky.


    I¡¯d been out in the desert and seen the sky far from civilization, and was amazed to find it full of stars. Here, in the middle of the Los Angeles suburbs, only the brightest stars could shine through the omnipresent dim glow of human life. But it was enough.


    ¡°You never told me,¡± I said trying to pick out Brick¡¯s silhouette from the blackness behind him. ¡°Where are you going when you graduate?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s cuz I¡¯ve been avoiding telling you, man.¡±


    ¡°So stop avoiding telling me and tell me.¡±


    I saw motion and thought he was propping himself up on his elbows. ¡°Army, man.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Second question: are you fucking crazy?¡±


    ¡°No, just seems like the thing to do.¡±


    ¡°People are saying they¡¯re planning another invasion into China.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I know. Which is why I want to enlist. They¡¯re gonna need people.¡±


    ¡°I¡­you¡¯re not wrong but¡­there will be people. You don¡¯t have to throw your life away, man.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not throwing my life away,¡± he said, sitting upright. I could see his face standing out against the night sky now. ¡°If everyone thought that, if everyone did that, they¡¯d have to draft to get people. And then they¡¯d pull your number, and people like you who¡¯ve got a big bright future in front of ¡¯em, you¡¯d be out there fighting and dying.¡±


    ¡°So what, you¡¯re gonna fight and die instead of me?¡± I sat up too. I wished there was more light, I couldn¡¯t see anything on his face.


    ¡°Hell yeah, my man. Makes more sense than hoping some other guy we don¡¯t know is gonna do it. I¡¯d fight and die for you any day of the week.¡±


    ¡°I know that Brick, but¡­that¡¯s like, school fights. Bullies and assholes and Sinos. What you¡¯re talking about is going over there where there¡¯s guns, and lasers, and bombs.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s bombs everywhere, man.¡±


    ¡°You know what I mean.¡±


    He didn¡¯t answer. I heard him fumble in his pockets for a moment and then heard a click-hiss as a lighter snapped to life, illuminating Brick¡¯s face with the red superheated wire. Like all modern electronic devices, it was powered by a tiny deuterium-lithium crystal¨Cor delith cell, to anyone who wasn¡¯t a geek¨Cwhich generated a tiny amount of electricity almost forever from fusion. Batteries hadn¡¯t been produced since before I was born¡­and neither had cigarettes, but that didn¡¯t stop Brick from smoking one of them now.


    ¡°You know, people have known those things kill you for literally hundreds of years now,¡± I said.


    ¡°Yeah, you tell me every single goddamn time.¡± He paused and pulled a drag, making the end flare bright red. ¡°You know, bullets have been killing people for hundreds of years too, but that doesn¡¯t stop us from using them,¡± he said.


    I couldn¡¯t think of a reply.


    ¡°Cheer up, my man,¡± he said. We turned and looked at each other, both on our backs, seeing each other upside down now. The glow of his cigarette outlined his face with harsh lines, but I could see the edges of his familiar smile.


    ¡°They probably won¡¯t have another war.¡± he said. ¡°Everybody knows the Sinos are out of everything and are just posturing at this point. Even if they do, there won¡¯t be a world to fight over anyway. Then, doesn¡¯t matter where you are or what you¡¯re doing.¡±


    ¡°I guess. How was that supposed to cheer me up again?¡±


    Brick laughed and put out his cigarette as he stood up. We were probably sitting on the only hilltop with cigarette butts on it in the whole county. ¡°I gotta get going, see you Monday?¡± he said, more than asked.


    ¡°See you Monday, man,¡± I said, with a lazy wave of my arm.


    He took a few steps away and stopped, fumbling with something in his pocket. ¡°Oh,¡± he said, and turned around to face me. ¡°Forgot, I still owe you for lunch on Friday,¡± he said, and tossed a credit chit at me.


    I stuck out my arm to catch the black object hurtling towards me, when lightning crackled between my fingertips, and a bolt of electricity shot out from my hands to evaporate the incoming object out of the air.

 003. 2251, Present Day. North American wilderness. Athan.

    I¡¯d been prodding the mass-fab all morning and as far as I could tell, there wasn¡¯t anything wrong with it. Well, not technically true, there was tons wrong with it if you counted rust. But being a fancy and extremely high-precision device, the metal parts were mostly cover panels and structural¡­all the really crazy bits inside that made it go looked like they were composites, ceramics, synthetic weave, or plastics, and they¡¯d held up pretty well in here out of the sun and weather.


    Now, even with that said, I had no idea how to make the thing go. I wasn¡¯t a molecular physicist who could figure out how this thing broke down raw matter into its chemical components and rearranged it at will, or a computer who could measure and debug the core which provided the machine with its programming. I was more familiar with the ¡°push button, get product¡± level of operation. I did notice the delith cell wasn¡¯t giving the normal effusive pink glow, meaning that this thing had been sitting here so long it had literally outlived its nuclear half-life.


    Or, more likely, the cell had just cracked at some point, and I was sitting in a cloud of radioactive bullshit. Which was really much more of a long-term issue than I was able to care about at the moment.


    Either way, I needed to find a new delith cell to get this thing running, and I think I knew where I might look. The Bunker ¡ª the work shed in which I lived ¡ª was a satellite building to a larger facility further to the north. Or, more specifically, the catastrophic ruins of a larger facility.


    Still, it was the closest thing I would ever find to human civilization, so it was my best hope for finding a delith cell which wasn¡¯t broken. I had nothing better to do today, still having some boar left over, so I head out immediately.


    Outside the bunker, and still partially surrounded by the rusted and ruined remains of a chain-link fence was an old, old asphalt road, long since bleached white, and with more cracks in it than asphalt at this point. In a few hundred more years maybe it would be just a bed of conspicuous rocks, but in the meanwhile it gave me clear direction which way to go.


    Over an hour of walking, I saw signs of the facility¡¯s wreckage grow both in number, and in absolute devastation. The Bunker had to have been at the very outskirts of the facility, and I assumed based on the distance and its low, sturdy profile, was the only building which seemed to have survived intact. There were some standing rooms, posts, walkways, even completely rusted heaps of metal which used to be cars, but nothing closed to the elements in any way.


    I¡¯d already poked around this far, and knew there wasn¡¯t much to be gained from snooping through these buildings. Maybe if I got lucky, I could find a locker with some abandoned clothes that were all synthetic and didn¡¯t break down, but more than likely it¡¯d just be cleaning and office supplies, if anything. I didn¡¯t know what kind of facility this once was, but it had a ton of offices and science stuff.


    I pressed forward and the ruins diminished into rubble and debris, still devoid of any plant life except grass. Here, it was just an open wasteland without trees or structures for thousands of feet, sloping downwards towards a huge bowl scooped into the ground. A crater, maybe? Some meteor slipping through a hole in the Skyweb and obliterating this whole place?


    Somehow I doubted it. Probably more likely that this was deliberately targeted in the Sino wars and either bombed or sabotaged. I hoped it was the latter, because if it was bombed, I¡¯d probably already have taken a lethal dose of radiation.


    Of course, that would make perfect sense for them to exile me in an exclusion zone.


    I pushed the thought out of my mind and focused on my task. There wasn¡¯t going to be anything here, I needed to go in a circle around the crater where buildings like The Bunker could have survived. I headed east, towards the hills, not tall enough to be mountains, but still imposing on the skyline.


    Maybe the parts higher up from the central explosion would be less damaged? Or maybe there were some structures built into the hill itself, which would have been protected. It was a bit of a long shot, but there were roads heading out in that direction, so something had to have been over there at some point.


    After another hour, I was following a road through the trees, seemingly in the middle of nowhere now. Under the forest canopy, this road was much less sunbleached, but much more broken up by roots and plants. I kept tripping over chunks of asphalt which came up under my feet in the relative darkness of the trees. As I swore over another bruise on my toes and considered maybe I should walk in the trees and just follow the road, I felt something prickling in my mind and stood up at once, looking for¡­anything.


    The forest was eerily quiet, and the prickling in my mind continued. Had I seen something subconsciously? Was there a bear or something dangerous, and my brain had picked up on it before I had? I waited and watched, tense, feeling like something was creeping just outside my vision.


    After a couple minutes of my tense standoff with nothing, my nervousness subsided and I wondered what brought it on to begin with. The forest seemed to stop holding its breath as well, and the wind whispered gently through the trees as birds resumed their distant chirping.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    It was bizarre. And I was not a fan.


    I considered turning around and heading home, but after another few moments I realized I was being stupid and there still wasn¡¯t anything here. I kept along the road.


    I didn¡¯t have to go that much further before there was a rusted metal gate on the road, complete with a collapsed guard post and what must have been some seriously intimidating fences, before they rusted and collapsed away. Now it was just a ring of rusted collapsed metal and barbed wire. Still nothing I¡¯d want to climb through, but fortunately nobody was manning the guard post, so I let myself in through the gate.


    Inside was not much, but still the largest collection of standing buildings I¡¯d seen since exile. It looked like a mining camp, with some huge mining excavator type machines which were now as much a dome of rust as their original shapes. There were what must have been some temporary buildings which were now just piles of plastic and fiberglass I might want to dig through, but there were also still brick buildings that looked like they might have been a dormitory and administration building, and the mine itself in the side of the hill still loomed as a pit of blackness.


    My first stop was the dorms. If there was anything interesting and not-company issued, it¡¯d be there, I thought. The building was still pretty solid, and I couldn¡¯t wrench the metal doors open, so I let myself in through one of the many broken windows.


    I found myself in a bedroom with a rusted metal rectangle strung up with springs and wires; all that remained of a bed frame. Some piles of refuse were all that remained of nightstands and bookshelves. The closet and bathroom doors may have once been wood, because they were gone now. The closet had nothing but damp rot inside, but the bathroom was almost pristine by comparison.


    There was a shower with a shower curtain, cloudy and streaked with stains. The finish on the tub was blistering off on all the edges and what was underneath was covered in rust. The ceiling had collapsed in one place, the shelf under the counter was now mostly gone, just a couple of rotten wood triangles suspended from the stone countertop. In better condition was the sink and toilet, which were both filthy, but seemingly pretty undamaged.


    Most interesting was a mirror, covered in filth and black spots, and with the reflective backing having a spiderweb of peeling cracks running through it. In the few spots not damaged by either, I could see my eyes twinkling in the relative darkness. Carefully stepping around the fallen ceiling, I looked at myself closer, and immediately regretted it.


    I was almost gaunt. My hair was nasty and matted in places, my face was streaked with filth, but none of that mattered compared to just how thin I now was. I¡¯d only been out here a couple weeks, but I¡¯d been moving and working hard every day with hardly anything to eat.


    I¡¯d once been a big guy. I was a star quarterback. I wasn¡¯t huge, like the linemen, but I was a little over 6 feet, with pretty broad shoulders, and worked out. The thing looking back at me in the mirror looked like you took my skeleton and just hung bits of a person on it. It was horrible to look at, and knowing it was me just made it so much worse.


    For the first time out here, I felt like I wanted to curl up and cry, but I knew if I let myself do that, I wouldn¡¯t be able to stop. There were too many injustices piled against me right now for me to indulge myself in a single one without getting lost. So I stepped to the side, out of the way of the mirror, pushed the image out of my mind, and swallowed down my anger and sadness. I gave myself a couple seconds to normalize, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out.


    Then I yelled inarticulately and grabbed both sides of the mirror and ripped it from its rusted, rotted hinges and threw it at the shower with all the strength I could find.


    I couldn¡¯t do it. I hated it. I hated myself. I hated that the mirror seemed so damn heavy to my emaciated arms. I couldn¡¯t get the image of my eyes twinkling from behind that withered face out of my mind. I hated that my yell was strangled in my throat and came out like a half-croak because of all the talking I hadn¡¯t done. I felt alien and inhuman, like I¡¯d lost everything that made me a person.


    I felt like an ex-human. An Exhuman.


    The mirror didn¡¯t shatter, it just crashed through the curtain into the shower with a bang. I guess that was probably a good thing. I didn¡¯t need broken glass everywhere. Behind the mirror was a metal medicine cabinet, still full of pill bottles and lozenges and rusty razor blades. Nothing I could use. This whole place was a waste of time. I was just leaving when something caught my eye. Next to the rusted razor blades was an electric razor, apparently cordless.


    It took some working to separate the rusted metal head from the rusted metal cabinet, but once I wrenched it free, I held the brittle plastic body of the now-decapitated razor in my hands. I cracked the case with a satisfying snap and saw, at the base, a friendly pink glow.


    I pulled the small delith cell from the casing and held it up to see clearly, bathing the entire bathroom in the faint light.


    Another surge of emotion flowed through me. This place hadn¡¯t been in ruins forever, not long enough to outlive the half-life of delith cells at least. There must be more, there was hope to be found here. And as quickly as I¡¯d lost all hope in myself, I found it again.


    It was becoming a mentally exhausting day.


    I stepped outside through the window, careful to avoid the broken glass, and noticed with annoyance just how easily my smaller body cleared the gap. I¡¯d checked only a couple rooms and hadn¡¯t found too much of interest, though I was up to three tiny delith cells¡­not enough to power anything significant like a mass-fab, but maybe if there were any tools or (in my wildest dreams) a laser pistol laying around in one of the guard stations, I¡¯d probably want to make sure it had power.


    Maybe that didn¡¯t make any sense, but the cells represented hope right now, and I was desperately clutching as many of them as I could.


    I thought I¡¯d take a brief look in the mine and then the admin building and head home, as it was already afternoon, but one look at how far I¡¯d get in the mines without a light nixed that plan. Maybe the admin building would have lights to explore the mine then.


    And man, did it ever. I rolled myself under the huge garage door and let my eyes adjust to the dimness inside, and realized, I¡¯d hit the motherlode.

 004. 2201, Fifty years ago. Philadelphia suburbs. Harris.

    I briefly glanced at the holo as the barista poured my morning coffee. The news was on, with the same headlines I felt like I¡¯d been seeing for months. ¡°Tensions with China at breaking point,¡± captioned the image of a heavily made-up woman in a sports jacket talking to the camera.


    I didn¡¯t much care. It had been going on my whole life, the terror threats, the war threats, the trade sanctions. Stupid politicians bickering about stupid things. Nothing would come of it, nothing ever did.


    The only real news were the Exhuman events, when one of them would show up without warning and knock over a city or two, or ten, before finally biting it on live TV. Morbid, gripping, terrifying, and thankfully rare. It had been months since the last one.


    ¡°Tall black-eye with foam for Harris Wynn?¡± asked the barista at the counter, announcing my drink. I took it and dropped an empty credit chit in the tip jar.


    It had been a long month at work. Our release had already been postponed twice, and if we couldn¡¯t lock in a deployment window this week for the next version of our app, we¡¯d be held up another month and have to do two deployments at once. Everyone was rushing around like crazy blaming everyone else for everything and it was just a huge mess.


    And the thing was, everyone was mostly right. It was everyone else¡¯s fault. Our server cores had a forced update which broke some functionality in the app, and our data provider was still missing some fields we needed. With all the changes needed to fix those unexpected issues, we were way behind on the stuff we were actually supposed to get done. But what I think my coworkers were all missing was that our delays caused other people¡¯s delays, and other people¡¯s delays caused the delays which caused our delays.


    Sometimes I wondered, if we just shut the app down altogether if the domino effect would bring the whole world crashing down, if not just for a few minutes. But then I remembered that I just worked for a crappy solutions shop that did random contract work on programming cores, and nobody would miss us, or me, if we just vanished off the face of the earth. Just another contract to renegotiate for someone, another mild inconvenience in another life.


    What a depressing and exhausting way to live.


    I sat in my chair and pulled out my keyboard, taking a sip of my coffee. Bitter and hot, just how I was feeling at the moment. I saw a couple people watching the holo in the break room and considered telling them to get back to work, but thought I should get some work done myself first, or I wouldn¡¯t have much leg to stand on.


    I frowned as I scrolled through the list of defects. Still dozens of critical issues open even after the builds last night. Four of them open in my section. I read through the details of each, trying to figure out what we changed that could have possibly caused them.


    I assigned the most difficult-looking one of them to Yoseph, a nice guy on my team who always did his work too fast and asked around to see if he could help others, and marked two more as closed; one was probably already fixed, and the other would get re-opened further down the line, but I¡¯d have more time to work it then. Then I sat down and pulled open the code to look at the last issue.


    Coding had undergone a revolution in the past hundred years. Used to be computers were all 1¡¯s and 0¡¯s, and coding was just a bunch of instructions written with those 1¡¯s and 0¡¯s to make the computer do things. Now instead of computers we had quantum cores. Instead of just 1 and 0, we had analog states with infinite gradients of values. We had quantum entanglement, so infinite instructions could be run in parallel and data could be ubiquitous across all threads. We had hyper-states, where data on the core could be programmed to program itself.


    People had proclaimed it would be a golden age of computing, but in practice, we did the same things with the cores as we did with older computers, just faster and cheaper. Now it was possible to have infinitely powerful machines, make them infinitely small, make them incredibly cheap. We went from having computing in everyone¡¯s pocket to¡­still having computing in everyone¡¯s pocket. Yeah, we could make a personal core the size of a flea, but nobody wanted that because you¡¯d just lose it. So handheld touch-holo mobiles were still the norm.


    The only real change, I thought, was that programming got a lot less logical and a lot more simulation-based, and that inconvenienced me personally greatly. Or so I liked to imagine. Old digital computers were a relic before my era, and I¡¯d never actually coded for one. I certainly wasn¡¯t enough of a nerd to look around just so I could play with some stupid antique.


    I¡¯d almost finished my coffee when the people in the break room (and there were a lot more of them now) let out a collective shriek. I wondered if some sports team had scored, and why it seemed like I was the only guy in the building who could actually do his job. I should film this so next time people are wondering why we¡¯re all so behind, I can show this video around.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    I was, of course, curious what the whole assembly was about, but wasn¡¯t about to get up and make a late appearance now. I figured if it was important, someone would tell me on the way back to their cube.


    I finished my changes on the defect and started off a build to run some simulations on. Hopefully this would work and keep our numbers looking good enough for the brass to green-light the release window for this week. I was getting tired of the long hours and working weekends, and while I obviously didn¡¯t have the winningest personality out there, I felt the number of hours my job was eating out of my life was turning me into a bitter zombie.


    My build was almost done when someone came stumbling out the breakroom. I recognized him as one of the interns we had this quarter. Bryan¡­or, Ryan, or something.


    ¡°No, no, no, no, no, no!¡± he kept yelling as he backed away from the room, and came bumping into my cube.


    ¡°Hey there, Br¡­Ry¡­buddy,¡± I said. ¡°Y¡¯know, we don¡¯t pay our interns to bumble about in the break room. How¡¯s that metrics report looking?¡± I was trying to be friendly with the kid, but he just looked at me with a face like a fish. Blank eyes, open mouth. Very bad posture.


    ¡°Kid, I gotta ask, what the heck is wrong with you?¡±


    He just gaped for another few moments before he sputtered something about needing to go and fled. Weird kid. But it got me nervous¡­what was going on over there?


    As surreptitiously as possible, I opened a news site on my work computer and browsed the headlines. They all said the same thing, or variants thereof.


    ¡°War with China¡±, ¡°China launches first-strike¡±, ¡°Several west-coast cities hit¡±, ¡°Skyweb shoots down dozens of missiles¡±, ¡°Evacuation orders pending for all major cities¡±.


    What was this? An elaborate hoax? This wasn¡¯t possible, we¡¯d been at China¡¯s throat for years and years now, why would they suddenly decide to attack us now? Today? I opened other news channels and they all read the same types of things. Liberal and conservative outlets alike, no way this could be a hoax.


    Someone screamed ¡°THAT¡¯S US!¡± from the break room and I ran over to the glass walls to see what they were screaming about. It wasn¡¯t us, not technically. It was Philadelphia, which was only a couple dozen miles from us, and it was live footage of missiles coming down on it.


    The camera was on street level, pointed at the sky which was black and red with smoke trails. Missiles were pouring out of the heavens like slow-moving rain, and as I watched, I saw some of them break apart far up in the sky into dozens of smaller missiles to rain on a larger area.


    None of them were touching the ground though. Lasers from above, looking like nothing more than a transparent-purple distortion were slicing through the missiles like they weren¡¯t even solid. Fired from one of the Skyweb satellites, it must be. One missile hit didn¡¯t explode immediately, but simply split into two half-missiles, cut completely down the middle, and as they continued to fall, they slowly drifted apart revealing all the black and grey metal innards of the thing before another laser beamed through them and replaced them with an explosion.


    From the cameraman¡¯s point of view, it looked like hell on earth. Missile debris the size of cars fell from the sky and punched holes in buildings or anything else in their way. The laser beams, though small-looking in the air, were huge on the ground, and cleaved through everything in their path effortlessly. An entire bus was struck and the back quarter of it was cleanly sheared from the rest, the edges glowing white-hot. The pavement under the bus had a line etched in it going who-knows how far down, like a huge invisible cleaver dropped through the street.


    I felt a scream coming out of my throat and realized it had been there for a while. For minutes, I had been standing there, staring at the holo and just screaming. I felt something touching me and saw Yoseph pulling my arm and telling me to sit down, to calm down. I couldn¡¯t comprehend it though. All I could see was the end of the world unfurling in front of me. Two angry gods fighting it out, and we were caught under their feet. If Skyweb missed even a single target, the whole city would be gone. If it didn¡¯t, there wouldn¡¯t be any city left.


    ¡°Snap out of it man. We have to get to shelter. Come on.¡± Yoseph was leading the others out and away from the holo. On the faces of the others, I saw the same shock and terror that I knew was on mine, but on Yoseph¡¯s there was just an angry determination. It made me hate him.


    ¡°Why would I listen to you?¡± I yelled, more than asked. ¡°Can¡¯t you see the world is ending?¡±


    ¡°If we get to the shelter the world might not end for us. Same for everyone else who does.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re insane!¡± I said. I can¡¯t believe Yoseph was taking advantage of this catastrophe to make a power play. Didn¡¯t he understand that something bigger than us was going on here?


    ¡°Staying here is insane. If you¡¯re right and this is the end of the world, they¡¯ll need our help to put it back together. Come on, I won¡¯t ask you again.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re bluffing. You¡¯re lying. You¡¯re crazy! We¡¯re in the suburbs in the middle of nowhere, and Skyweb is up there protecting us. Nobody¡¯s going to nuke us here.¡±


    ¡°Okay man. Take care of yourself. I¡¯m taking these people to the shelter.¡± I waited for him to argue more with me but he just left with most of the crowd in tow. Well if he thought I was going to follow him, he was even crazier than I thought.


    I would never learn what happened to those people. I would never learn that the focus of Skyweb¡¯s defenses were on major metropolitan areas and military facilities, and that smaller areas like where I lived and worked were totally unprotected. I would never learn that the high-altitude MIRVs had split and would detonate in a huge area surrounding the primary targets.


    I stood there, watching the holo at the insane lightshow as two gods duked it out for another ten minutes before a white hot glow flooded through the windows. I turned to look and saw a huge red dome, crested with white, rapidly expanding. I felt my eyes and skin burn as the light of the sun blinded me, and then I heard and felt a thunderclap louder than anything I¡¯d heard in my life. And then I felt nothing at all.

 005. 2251, Present Day. Mining facility administrative building. Athan.

    It was an industrial warehouse. Machines, equipment, those sweet, sweet delith cells¡­everything one could use to build and work in a mine, it was all here. And judging by the look of it, the brick and ceramic building had done enough to keep the elements out that most of it was salvageable.


    I didn¡¯t know if most of it was useful. I certainly had no current plans to dig a giant freaking hole in anything, but it was nice to know that potentially, it was an option.


    First things first though, I grabbed a harness which looked like it was some sort of climbing rig made of synthetic weave and covered in rusted buckles and carabiners, as well as a durable-looking backpack in similar condition. And then I clipped as many things to my harness and stuffed as many things in my bag as I could lay hands on.


    Hand tools, derusting solution, work gloves, dust masks, spools of synthetic weave and rope, more bags, safety goggles, a prybar, delith cells of every size, all disappeared into my bag until it was so heavy I could only carry it a few dozen feet before needing to pause and readjust the biting straps on my shoulders and stretch my back. I figured that was well enough for today and started to head out when I heard a voice.


    A faint voice, a woman¡¯s voice, sounding like she was whispering to me from a very great distance, and yet loud enough to be heard.


    [Athan,] it beckoned. [Athan.]


    ¡°Who,¡± I coughed on my words again. ¡°W-who¡¯s there?¡±


    [Athan. I know thee. I know thy struggles.]


    ¡°Where are you?¡± I spun around, trying to find any orientation to the sound but confusingly, it seemed to come from everywhere at once, or nowhere. I dropped the bag with a huge clatter and dug a finger in my ear.


    [Athan. I have a sacred charge for thee. A quest thou must undertake to gain my favor.]


    Even with a finger in my ear, the sound came as clear as ever. I plugged my other ear and heard her speaking still.


    [Yes, Athan. I speak directly to thy mind. Fret, for this is but the least of my great powers.]


    ¡°Who the heck are you?¡± I asked the empty room. Feminine laughter echoed from every corner of the room at me.


    [Thou may refer¡¯st to me as Saga. Now we have wasted enough time with idle chit-chat. A great quest is ready for thy undertaking.]


    ¡°The hell are you talking about? I¡¯m not doing anything until I get some answers!¡± I was trying to sound brave, to buy some time so I could peek into the distant corners of the room and see her, maybe. But the fact that I could still hear her whispering in my head, even with my ears plugged, this was disconcerting. And disorienting. And actually pretty panic-inducing.


    [Tut, tut,] she said, rather than actually tutting at me. [Thou lie¡¯st Athan. Thou shalt undertake my quest, or thou¡­shalt¡­die.]


    ¡°Look lady, I don¡¯t know who you are, but I¡¯m having a really bad sort of life here, and I¡¯m not exactly equipped or able to go on any grand quests. I¡¯m kind of banished here and not really allowed to be talking with people or straying very far, and I¡¯m dealing with my own shit right now, like not starving to death. So if you could just lay off the death threats¡­¡±


    That was the most I¡¯d spoken in a long time. My mouth was dry, though from talking or from the fear, I didn¡¯t know, but I was happy that I could still articulate if I wanted to.


    [Foolish Athan, thou think¡¯st thy greatest troubles lie in the mirror?]


    ¡°What?¡±


    [In the mirror?]


    ¡°What about it?¡±


    [Like, the one you saw just outside?]


    ¡°I really am not following you here, spooky disembodied voice lady.¡±


    [I am called Saga. And you think that what thou saw in the mirror was¡­your biggest trouble?]


    ¡°Uh, no. I mean, what I saw in the mirror was me.¡±


    [No, what you¡­] she paused for a moment and it gave me a moment of satisfaction that somehow I¡¯d frustrated her, and then she started over. [What I meant was, the haunting visage that thou beheld¡¯st in the mirror reflects the difficulties thou now face¡¯st.]


    ¡°Yes, I¡¯m hungry, and I saw that in the mirror.¡±


    [But little dost thou know, the woes thou beheld in the mirror were paltry compared to the woes one would create by disobeying¡­me!]


    ¡°Look, lady,¡±


    [Saga.]


    ¡°Sure. Look, Saga. That¡¯s not even a real name¡­¡±


    [I AM REAL ENOUGH! And it is MY name!] her voice roared in my ears, or mind maybe. I felt my head ache as her voice ripped through me.


    ¡°Ow, Jesus, okay. Saga. Whatever you say, just stop yelling. Look, it¡¯s getting late, I can¡¯t really undertake any grand quests because I have to haul this big bag of shit home and I need to get there before sundown or I¡¯m just gonna be tripping over rocks in the dark all night, okay? And I can¡¯t leave anyway, I don¡¯t have any food or transport or anything, and I¡¯m not allowed to anyway.¡±


    [Fool, Saga knows all of this already. Her task for you is simple and nearby. Complete it and you will earn a respite for now.]


    ¡°We¡¯re uh, speaking in the third person and dropping the ¡®thou¡¯ now?¡±


    [Impertinent fool! Saga has always spoken in the third person.]


    ¡°Okay, whatever. Look, if it¡¯s easy and close I¡¯ll do your stupid quest on my way home. What do you want?¡±


    The voice gave a very distinct impression of clearing its throat, though I couldn¡¯t actually hear it do that. Or¡­think it do that. Conversations inside my own mind were confusing.


    [Thy sacred charge lies in this very building. Thou must go forth and find the room known as cafeteria. Once there, I shall direct thee further.]


    ¡°Okay. Should I uh, bring my stuff?¡±


    [I care not.]If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°Sure.¡± I grabbed the huge heavy bag and struggled it over my shoulders. I hoped I hadn¡¯t broken anything in it when I dropped it, but now was apparently not the time to check. I only had a couple hours of light left, and some kind of angry mental ghost thing bossing me around now.


    The cafeteria was easy enough to find. The building was a couple of long hallways with rooms leafing off either side, and it looked like the community living-related areas were all on the opposite side of the building from the community working-related areas, with the warehouse/loading dock place I entered at the working-related extreme end.


    I didn¡¯t do much more than peek my head into the other rooms along the way, wanting to save time to get home, but it looked like there was still plenty to salvage in this building. I¡¯d have to come back¡­though the prospect of exposing myself to this bossy ghost was unappealing. I finally entered the cafeteria, which once probably had enough tables for a couple dozen people and a serving line off to the side, though pretty much all of that was just rust and rot now. I walked to the center of the room and waited for a few moments.


    ¡°Yo, spooky ghost,¡± I said.


    [Thou will¡¯st address me as Saga,] the voice insisted with a hint of annoyance.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m here at the cafeteria. What do you want? Want me to sweep or something, make the old haunt a little less depressing?¡±


    [No, why would¡­no. (is this guy for real?)] It was as though I were hearing two different voices speaking, but the same person. One, the whispery, dramatic, overwrought voice which I¡¯d been speaking with in the garage¡­the other, the same person¡¯s voice, but asked in a casual, disbelieving air, slightly overlapping the first voice, like a quick aside.


    ¡°Did you just¡­ask if I was for real?¡± I asked.


    [I said no such thing. Now, thy quest lies in the kitchen. Go forth.]


    ¡°No really, you did this thing where you were talking like you sounded like two people¨C¡°


    [I have no patience for this (such a freaking pain!), now go forth to the kitchen at once.]


    ¡°See¡­there it is again. Is there someone el¨C¡°


    [GO FORTH I SAID.]


    ¡°Jesus, okay. You don¡¯t have to shout.¡± My head rang from her yelling, and I wasn¡¯t sure the satisfaction I got out of pissing her off was worth whatever brain-exploding she¡¯d do to me if I kept it up. I stepped through the doorway into the kitchen, which was actually pretty well preserved. Dull¨Cbut not rusted for a change¨Cdusty machines stood in rows along the perimeter, and stone countertops lay cracked on the ground, the wood shelving holding them up long ago rotted away. Random pots and pans and utensils were scattered around.


    [To the pantry!]


    There was what looked like a closet built into the wall. It might have had shelves and doors at some point, but now just mostly looked like a dark empty room full of collapsed crap.


    [On thy right. Further forward. Further. Further. Stop. Sift through the debris.]


    I kneeled down and stopped, looking at the pile of jagged rusty crap in front of me. After a moment¡¯s thought, I opened my bag and pulled out the work gloves I¡¯d stowed. They were thick and durable, and seemed to have some combination of synth-mesh and stainless metal links that made them almost like chainmail. However they worked, they did it well, and I was able to shift the rubble without tearing my hands apart.


    Underneath the top layer, things were much better preserved. This whole area must have been floor-to-ceiling shelves and collapsed in on itself before everything went to rot. I wasn¡¯t sure, but there were canned foods here which were mostly rust-free, and still had readable labels, though they were pretty badly faded, and many cans seemed bloated, punctured, or rusted through. Still, some weren¡¯t, and I started to put a few in my bag.


    [Halt! Complete thy quest first!]


    I rolled my eyes and kept digging, sorting the good and bad cans for later. ¡°What am I even looking for?¡± I asked.


    [There! Thou behold¡¯st it! Open it, quickly!]


    Close to the bottom, there was what could be charitably described as the remains of a box, and inside of it, faded but recognizable, 4 jars of dried fruit preserves.


    ¡°Your great quest¡­is for dried fruit?¡±


    [Open it, quickly!]


    She didn¡¯t really need to tell me twice. After a couple of weeks, even ancient food like this was extremely appealing. I twisted the lid as hard as I could, but it kept slipping off my gloves. I took them off and torqued with all my strength, but still nothing.


    [Oh come on, open it.]


    ¡°I¡¯m trying!¡±


    I dug in my bag for some of the tools I¡¯d thrown in there and came up with two wrenches. Wrapping the bottle in one of the gloves, I put a wrench on each and clamped them down, though the wrenches themselves were also ancient and resistant to my efforts. Finally, I had them both on and twisted them opposite each other.


    There was a pop and I felt the jar give. I pulled the wrenches off and realized I hadn¡¯t unscrewed it, just broken it at the top, shearing the lid and the glass at the top off entirely.


    But hey, it was open, and I didn¡¯t get glass shards everywhere, so that¡¯s a win.


    [One strawberry.]


    ¡°What?¡±


    [You can eat more later, but first, (I mean,) for thy quest, thou must eat one strawberry. Do it slowly, savor the flavor. Please.]


    This was the weirdest quest I¡¯d ever been on, but at least we were agreeing on something finally. I dug a finger into the jar, careful to avoid the broken edges and came up with one syrupy somewhat withered-looking strawberry. I slowly put it on my tongue and then closed my mouth and sucked on it a little.


    Definitely still tasted like strawberry. It had a bit of a sugary and acidic bite compared to a fresh one, but it was still the best thing I¡¯d eaten in weeks.


    [Ohh, shit. That is sooooo good.] Just like I¡¯d sensed her clear her throat before without hearing anything of the like, now I was getting this enormous sense of¡­well¡­almost erotic enjoyment.


    I wasn¡¯t even going to ask at this point, because she was saying exactly what I was thinking.


    Once the syrup had washed off and coated my taste buds in saccharine goodness, I gave the strawberry a more determined sucking. I felt some of the little seeds come off and bounce against my tongue, the flesh of the berry long since turned to mush and incapable of resisting the suction in my mouth. I tasted the red rich ripeness, and the bitter over-preservation. I could sense how the middle of the strawberry was the most flavorful part, with the tip being hard and dry, and the tail end being more earthy than sweet.


    Experimentally, I bit into it at last, and sensed a chill go down Saga¡¯s spine. The sensation of her closing her eyes languishingly, her toes curling and uncurling, holding herself tight against the tidal waves of the feeling flowed into me, and made me wonder again for a moment, who or what the heck was she? But the thought was just fleeting, because I was lost in her sensations as much as she was lost in the flavors of that one strawberry.


    The strawberry was gummy and hard, but not so tough that I couldn¡¯t cleave through it with my teeth. When I bit down, it stuck to my molars, top and bottom, and as I opened them again, they played a game of tug-of-war with the pulpy, sticky remains. I shifted it to the other side with my tongue, getting another hit of the flavor now released from the chewed pulp, and feeling another thrill of Saga¡¯s.


    I¡­or we¡­probably sat there for two or three minutes savoring the weirdly erotic sensation of me chewing on a strawberry, before it had turned to completely pulverized mulch in my mouth and I really had to swallow. As I did, I sensed her sigh of satisfaction.


    [Oh, that was well done. You¡¯re a grade-A eater.]


    ¡°Thanks¡­I think. Hey, I have no idea what happened there, but I feel like I should be thanking you. Or, offering to buy you breakfast or something¨C¡°


    [You¡­breakfast¨C] I could feel the gears in her head turning as she put two-and-two together what I was insinuating. [WHAT?]


    ¡°Ow, ow, ow, no yelling, please.¡±


    [(Did he really feel all of that?) Uh, what do you mean? (Shit, I must have let my guard down.) I mean. Um. Ahem!] Again with her saying/broadcasting/whatever the word ¡°ahem¡± instead of actually clearing her throat.


    [What I meant was¡­(shit, I have to make something up, this is so stupid)¡­what I meant was, that was¡­your reward! For thy service. For completing thy quest so selflessly. (Yes! He will totally buy that.)]


    ¡°Look, lady,¡±


    [It¡¯s SAGA (it¡¯s not even that hard a name!)]


    ¡°Stop yelling. Look, Saga, I don¡¯t know who you think you¡¯re fooling with this whole thee and thou bit, but it isn¡¯t me. I don¡¯t know what just happened but it was pretty fantastic so try not to stress about it too much okay?¡±


    [O¡­kay (is it okay? No, of course it isn¡¯t. Humans can¡¯t be trusted).]


    ¡°You can trust me, I promise.¡±


    [That is certainly what an untrustworthy person would say!]


    ¡°Yeah, well, I don¡¯t know what I¡¯d possibly stand to gain by fooling a disembodied fruit-craving ghost. Anyway, I¡¯ve gotta go.¡±


    [Wait! (Shit. No, I don¡¯t want him to wait, I want him to go.)]


    ¡°Man, you are massively confusing to talk¡­talk? With. What do you want.¡±


    [You¡­I mean, thou must promise to return. I have many more quests for thee. Should thee not return, I shall give you the death I so earlier (So earlier? That makes no sense.) promised.]


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll come back. I¡¯ve got nobody else to talk to, and I¡¯m forbidden from talking to normal people ever again, so I guess whatever the hell you are is a pretty good companion?¡±


    I stopped and thought for just a moment about the events of the last few minutes of my life.


    ¡°You know, I think I just realized I¡¯m going insane. I kind of thought that would take longer.¡±

 006. 2251, Present Day. North American wilderness. Athan.

    I woke up late and sore, my shoulders and thighs killing me over the long trek I¡¯d made carrying all the tools. I¡¯d gotten back well after dark and so it had taken even longer to get home, having to walk slowly to avoid falling, and stopping frequently to make sure I was going the right way.


    I rolled out of my hammock and massaged my legs, slowly chewing bits of the fruit preserves. No sense leaving the rest of the jar and letting them spoil now, after they¡¯d survived this whole time. With these, and the other couple cans I¡¯d grabbed, I could have a day in peace to recover and work on getting these tools in shape and start banging them against the mass-fab.


    Which is pretty much how I spent my day. Synthetic weave is, by design, not absorbent at all, so it wasn¡¯t the ideal material for applying the deruster to the tools, but with the only alternative being the shirt off my back, I made do. Eventually, I had screwdrivers where I could actually change the bits, wrenches which could open and close without the assistance of another wrench, a flashlight that actually turned on, precision drivers which were more driver than rust, and so on.


    So imagine my surprise when, in early evening, after finally getting the case off the mass-fab, I plugged in a new cell and it immediately came to life.


    The mass-fab was a slightly misleadingly-named machine. It didn¡¯t fabricate mass from nothing, but rather was able to take raw materials and break them down into their bits and pieces, and reassemble them into something with similar molecular makeup. Or something like that. It looked like a glass and metal-grille cabinet with an openable and empty top half and solid metal panels concealing the machinery in the bottom half, with a few controls on a panel in the middle.


    In practice, operation was simple. Take things you didn¡¯t want and put them in the open top-half portion and close it. Hit the dissimilate button and the machine breaks it down and stores the components in what could be likened to different cartridges of printer toner. Then browse through the machine¡¯s stored blueprints and select one and it would print a new one from the stored materials. The dissimilation function was mostly a cost-saving and recycling feature, and when a specific cartridge ran out, they¡¯d bring in a new one¡­but out here, with nobody bringing me replacement parts, I¡¯d be completely dependent on it to refill any depleted stocks.


    I also had the problem that if there was no blueprint stored, I couldn¡¯t produce a thing. Blueprints were immensely complicated recipes which determined the composition and construction of an entire object, so they couldn¡¯t just be made up by hand or anything. I had to hope there were some useful things in there to make, or else all my efforts here would be pointless.


    So one can only imagine my frustration when I opened the blueprint menu only to have the screen spin on me for a few seconds before helpfully informing me ¡°*Beep* Core corrupt. No data files could be loaded.¡±


    I banged my fist into the machine and it replied with a cheery ¡°*Beep*Tilt alert. Please do not rock or move the machine while in use.¡±


    ¡°In use? In use? You have no use! You¡¯re a builder that can¡¯t build anything. You are the most useless thing in this room, and this room is full of useless rusted shit!¡± I yelled at the mass-fab.


    ¡°*Beep* Volume alert. Please keep localized sources of noise to a minimum while machine is in use. Vibrations from loud noises can cause errors during assimilation.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯ll give you a volume alert you useless piece of¨C¡± I stopped as I noticed a flashing light on the display and, after a moment where I balanced wanting to smash the shit out of the thing against the vain optimism that it could still somehow work, tapped the flashing indicator.


    The screen changed to show the assimilation queue, the items pending a build. There was one item on the list, paused for some reason. I tapped the item and brought it up. The name and description were just garbage characters, looks like it hadn¡¯t escaped the data corruption either, but it was still willing to try building it, and I had no other use for the dumb machine, so I punched the go button and waited.


    Lasers flared into being in the upper cell, moving and combining molecular bits around and into place. My own crazy personal lightshow, flooding the entire bunker with lights through the holes in the grille, dancing off all the walls and shelves. After a few minutes, the novelty was gone though, and I left the machine to spew lights and softly whirr. It said it was 9% done even though I couldn¡¯t even see anything in the cabinet yet.


    I tried to amuse myself but found myself checking the progress every couple of minutes. I felt like an expecting father, and was unreasonably excited when, at 25%, I could finally see a rectangular something at the bottom of the assimilation chamber.


    The rectangle grew, bit by bit, and I realized it was the backplate of a metal casing. Gradually before my eyes, the walls of the casing came into form, then the front, with holes for a screen and buttons. Wires and a core appeared inside of the casing, before being hidden behind a holo screen and buttons, completing the front of the device. I checked the progress and we were only at 80%. I couldn¡¯t tell what else needed to be done, but rewriting matter was a complicated process (I assumed) so I was just going to let the thing do whatever it needed.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    A couple of torturous hours later, the lights abruptly turned off, and I realized it was dark outside already. I¡¯d spent a while hanging up some of the work lights I¡¯d lifted from the mines, and no longer would have to live in pitch blackness after night fell, but that only worked if I remembered to turn them on. I fumbled around in the dark until I found one and turned it on, not even bothering to turn on the others before checking the mass-fab.


    ¡°Assimilation complete,¡± read the display. When I opened the cabinet, the machine helpfully chimed at me ¡°*Ding* Assimilation complete.¡± How droll.


    There, looking exactly as it had a couple hours ago, was an I-have-no-idea. Rectangular, about the size of my palm, dominated by a large holo with several buttons on the front, and otherwise just a plain metal case. Archaic design, to have separate buttons and holo, pretty much everything I¡¯d ever seen had a touch-holo and digital buttons.


    Still, it was nice to see metal somewhere that wasn¡¯t 95% rusted over, and, when I tapped the on button, was nice to see a device which just worked.


    Still had no idea what it did, though.


    The display just showed a circle which oscillated between large and small. Some kind of idle screen, or an obscure progress bar? None of the other buttons seemed responsive, although I could turn it on and off.


    Man, what a great find. This thing was about as useless as the machine which spawned it. I had to wonder if the build was corrupted after all.


    I put it down, and left it for tomorrow. It was getting late. I had all the time in the world out here, and could play with it more tomorrow. With any luck, it was a handheld video game and could keep me from going nuts¡­or, remembering my adventures with Saga, going more nuts.


    I woke up to a low-pitched beep. More like a long flat robotic ¡°Booooop.¡± As I laid in the dark wondering what that noise could have been, it happened again. ¡°Booooop.¡±


    Well, shit, now I was awake. I tried to ignore it but it sounded like it was going off every 20 seconds like clockwork. ¡°Booooop. Booooop. Booooop.¡±


    Finally my annoyance overcame my fatigue and I rolled out of my hammock to shut off the damn thing. I knew exactly what it had to be, considering there were only two functioning electronic devices within god-knows how many miles of here. I went to the handheld useless device and saw that the screen now showed not only the growing and shrinking circle, but also a white dot. Every time the circle passed the dot, it would make that stupid noise. ¡°Booooop.¡±


    I hit the power button but now the device didn¡¯t care about my input anymore. Damn thing was possessed. I turned it over in my hands, pushing all the buttons with exactly the same level of effectiveness. I considered breaking it or just throwing it outside, but after all the work I¡¯d put into making it, and now it was finally doing¡­whatever it was supposed to do. ¡°Booooop.¡±


    In my not-awake state, I just sat there staring at the damn thing in my hand in the dark for what felt like an hour, willing it to shut up with the power of pure hatred. When that inevitably failed and I woke myself up with some water and a bit of starting-to-turn-gross pork, I realized that as I turned the device in my hand, the orientation of the white dot remained constant. No matter which way I pointed the device, it always put the white dot somewhere northwest of me. ¡°Booooop.¡±


    So¡­some kind of radar? But what was it detecting.


    The sun was barely creeping over the trees, and I wasn¡¯t going to get any sleep anyway, so I grabbed an empty bag, threw some of my scarce remaining food in it, and headed out.


    Thankfully, it wasn¡¯t that far away. As I moved towards the white dot, the device got more and more excited. ¡°Booooop. Booooop. Booooop.¡± I felt this was more a punishment than a reward.


    Finally, in the middle of the forest northwest of The Bunker, still at the edge of the facility ruins, I crossed paths with the white dot. The device boop¡¯ed its excitement at about second intervals now. I saw nothing here, but started to poke around in the brush. ¡°Booooop.¡±


    Running my fingers through the dirt, I felt something at the base of a tree, cold and metallic. Was this it? Some hidden cache? A GPS transponder? A big ol¡¯ box of jerky? I could dream I guess.


    Whatever it was, it was mostly buried in the dirt, a large rectangular angular box, made of some metal I wasn¡¯t able to identify, but which was not rusted through. There was a big hole, seemingly burned in the front, and faded writing I could make out around the hole.


    ¡°AEGIS,¡± I read, scrubbing dirt off with my thumb.


    ¡°Y-yes? Hello? Is someone there?¡± I heard a voice tinged with desperation, with the same familiar choking I¡¯d heard from myself recently. ¡°Is¡­is someone there? Hello? Anyone?¡±


    ¡°Hello?¡± I asked. I was already getting tired of talking to disembodied voices.


    ¡°Oh my god, someone¡¯s there!¡± The voice was tinny and weak, as though coming out of an old speaker from a broken toy. ¡°Help, please! I¡¯ve been stuck here so long.¡±


    I kept sweeping the dirt from the box and uncovered enough of it to get a general shape. It was a big rectangle, metal, about a foot and a half wide and slightly less deep. The top of the box angled inward slightly and there were a number of ports for hooking up to things, none of which I recognized. There was what looked like a lens and microphone, and some black metal disc on top. Everything was caked with packed dirt, and I didn¡¯t think any of it would function without a good cleaning at the very least. Experimentally, I wiped out the lens with my thumb and removed most of the packed-in dirt.


    ¡°Oh! Oh! I can see! I can see you!¡± the voice said. She was so excited her voice was breaking. ¡°Oh thank god! Thank you! Thank you so much! I haven¡¯t seen or heard from anyone in years. Years and years and years!¡± And then it seemed to become too much for her, and she just started sobbing incoherently.


    ¡°Woah, woah, please don¡¯t cry. I¡¯m here for you. You just gotta let me know what¡¯s going on and I¡¯ll help you, okay?¡± I said, trying to get more out of her and distract her from crying. Girls crying made me very nervous.


    ¡°Yeah, okay. Thank you. So much. Um, I don¡¯t remember much, but my name¨C¡°


    And then she went silent.

 007. 2251, Three weeks ago. Los Angeles suburbs. Athan.

    I walked home feeling low. Lower than I¡¯ve ever felt before. Verge of tears, hoping a car would swing out of nowhere and just put me down, feeling my stomach drop with every step I took. Once or twice I stopped and buried my face against a wall, feeling I couldn¡¯t head home, couldn¡¯t face it.


    I don¡¯t know what happened by what I¡¯d seen or what I¡¯d done. Brick had tossed a credit chit at me and I reached out to catch it, and then lightning came out of nowhere and detonated the chit mid-flight. If you¡¯d told me then it was a freak thunderstorm or a prank, I¡¯d have bought it.


    But not after seeing Brick¡¯s face. The horror carved into it. The anger, the betrayal. In one heartbeat, he went from a man who would lay his life down for me to one who would kill me with his bare hands.


    Thoughts chased themselves around in my head that all kept landing on one conclusion I just could not accept.


    Somehow, impossibly, without doing or changing anything, I was now Exhuman.


    While my mind had wandered, my feet had stayed to the path, and I found myself at my house, front doorknob in-hand. Barely having time to blink, I found myself walking in.


    ¡°Hey there champ. Another notch on your belt out there tonight, eh?¡± Dad immediately ambushed me at the door and wrapped an arm around my shoulders in as manly a show of affection as he was capable of giving. ¡°Some kids might slow down once they land their ticket, but not you, eh shooter?¡± He broke off his grip to make a series of ridiculous finger gun gestures and noises at me.


    Mom had gotten off the couch and was trying to herd me into a chair so she could thrust a variety of home-cooked food at me and tell me how tired and hungry I must be after my big win. My younger sister, Lia sat on the couch, sweatshirted arms hugging her long legs as she rolled her eyes at me and our parents collectively, even as she smiled at me.


    And all I could think was that any second now, I¡¯d gesture or move or someone would do something and they¡¯d all blow up with a bolt of lightning.


    I tried to fight Dad off me gently and explain to Mom that I wasn¡¯t hungry and yes I was sure and yes it looks great thank you but no thank you, as I slowly backed away towards the stairs.


    ¡°How ¡¯bout we just throw the old ball around a bit then, eh?¡± Dad asked, and made a throwing gesture at me, making me wince.


    ¡°NO. No. No thanks, Dad. Sorry, just not feeling well, gonna go lay down okay?¡±


    ¡°Sure, son. Sure, anything you need. You just call for your mother or me, eh?¡±


    ¡°Yeah Dad, thanks.¡± I rushed upstairs before he could try grappling or shooting or throwing anything else at me. I never noticed until that exact moment how hostile all those gestures could be interpreted.


    I went to my room and fell face-first into bed, light still off, clothes still on.


    Man. What was I going to do? At the very, very best, I had a lifetime of being jumpy and nervous ahead of me, and that was assuming I never exploded anything ever again.


    But there was no way that was going to happen. What was I going to do when I made it to college? Ask all the other players not to throw or kick a ball at me, or touch or tackle me? I could never play football again. And without that, what kind of future did I even have? Why did everything in my life have to crumble apart just the second it looked like it was coming together?


    I pulled a pillow over my head and made a noise of frustration into my bedsheets. Sort of a cross between crying and an inarticulate scream.


    ¡°So, I¡¯m guessing this has nothing to do with the game,¡± someone said from the corner where my desk sat.


    I bolted upright and stared into the darkness. I couldn¡¯t see anything except the sliver of light from the crack in the door, landing on nothing but the old wooden floors. Lia helped me out by turning on the desk lamp.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°Heya bro. You don¡¯t¡­sound so good.¡±


    ¡°Lia, get out. I¡¯m really tired, I told you.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s cute that you think I¡¯d buy the same crap you throw at Mom and Dad.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not messing around. Get out of my room.¡±


    She looked like she thought about it for a second and frowned. ¡°No, don¡¯t think so. Not until you tell me what¡¯s up,¡± she said. Lia was a pretty ok sister, relatively speaking, but she was also stubborn as hell.


    ¡°I told you, nothing, I¡¯m just tired, okay?¡±


    ¡°And I told you, I don¡¯t believe that story for a second.¡±


    ¡°Well, too bad. That¡¯s the only story you¡¯re getting.¡±


    I looked her over to see what I could read off her. She was sitting like she usually did, heels and butt on the chair, knees up in front of her like a shield, making her bare, long legs look even longer. She was wearing shorts like always and a dirty grey sweatshirt still from being out at the game, with long sleeves her fingers only just poked out of, and a well-worn hood, currently not being worn.


    Like me, she had green eyes with some brown in the center and was athletically built, but while I was tall and broad, she was tall and thin. She was on the girl¡¯s volleyball team, only JV, but she was only a freshman. And also like me, she had brown hair, but while mine was kept to strict military styles by our father, she kept hers medium-length, where it was often a frizzy, blown-out mess stopping at her shoulders. I guess if it already went in every direction, she didn¡¯t need to tie it up for gametime.


    As I looked her up and down I remembered good memories and fights we¡¯d had, and completely forgot I was trying to read her for hints on the current situation. I forced myself to focus and came up with¡­nothing. She was sitting there with an earnest expression, leaning forward towards me somewhat, and with a concerned frown that¡¯d been there since I last saw her downstairs.


    ¡°Okay, what do you want?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I told you. Tell me what¡¯s going on with you.¡±


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you believe me?¡¯


    ¡°Gee, maybe because A) I¡¯m not stupid and B) I¡¯ve literally known you my whole life? And C) It¡¯d take a real ding-dong to fall for that stupid line, when you were looking at Mom and Dad like they were made of landmines.¡± She added: ¡°No offense to the ding-dongs downstairs.¡±


    ¡°Yeah well, I have some issues going on right now, but it¡¯s nothing I want to talk about, okay? So please shove off?¡±


    ¡°Hmmm¡­¡± she fidgeted with a strand of her hair as she thought, which was probably one of the reasons her hair was always all over the place. ¡°No. You gotta tell me.¡±


    ¡°What the heck, Lia. You don¡¯t just get to decide that.¡±


    ¡°And you don¡¯t just get to decide without telling me, Athan. That¡¯s equally as unfair.¡±


    ¡°Between the two of us, I¡¯m the only one who knows what¡¯s going on here, so if I say I don¡¯t want you knowing, you should accept that.¡±


    ¡°Between the two of us, you¡¯re also the only one who¡¯s a stupid big brother. So tell me.¡± She sat further upright and crossed her legs instead of having them up. ¡°Look, I¡¯m actually worried about you and want to help. I don¡¯t care what your problem is, I promise I won¡¯t laugh, okay?¡±


    ¡°Lia I¡­I really appreciate that. I do. But this is really big. I don¡¯t think I can tell anyone, y¡¯know?¡±


    ¡°Did you tell Brick?¡±


    ¡°Not¡­exactly?¡±


    ¡°But he found out anyway?¡± Lia was always good at reading between the lines.


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± She stood up, still frowning.


    ¡°Wow, just like that?¡± I was surprised she¡¯d just give up on it. ¡°Wait. Are you going to ask Brick?¡±


    ¡°No. I believe you when you say it¡¯s big. If you need to tell me, you¡¯ll tell me. Just promise me you will if you need to, ¡®kay? Someone has to take care of my dumb older brother.¡±


    ¡°You are in very real danger of being a good, understanding sister. You know that?¡±


    ¡°No. I put scorpions in your bed. ¡®Night, bro.¡± She walked to the door and started to close it behind her. ¡°But¡­promise me you will tell me if you need to. Seriously.¡±


    ¡°Okay. I will.¡±


    ¡°Thanks. Tomorrow¡¯s another day. Keep your chin up.¡± She gave me a small smile and closed the door, leaving me with my thoughts and the annoying chore of turning off the desk lamp now. She probably did that on purpose so I¡¯d get dressed for bed. She was always a step ahead like that.


    I turned off the light but didn¡¯t undress. I just wanted to lay there for a while longer thinking before I went to bed. Yet somehow, the conversation I¡¯d had with Lia had managed to calm me down enough that when I hit the bed, I fell right asleep like I did at the end of any big game.


    I woke after what felt like only an hour, but it was already early morning before the sun came up. There was a kind of anxiety in the air which woke me up fully immediately. It felt too still and wrong, like the world had been frozen in time by an ancient curse. As I got up, parts of me were sore from the game, and parts of me felt gross from sleeping in my day clothes, but I crept to the window and looked out.


    There, on the street below, I could see occasional flickers of activity, as armored men quickly and quietly moved from place to place, behind armored cars and setting up in positions all around the house.


    I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and stared at the familiar symbol on the side of an armored van. It was a logo I¡¯d seen on the holo hundreds of times, but never in person. A plain white federal insignia of a shield with a sword on it, surrounded by stars. Next to it, in the same plain white, lettering reading XPCA.


    Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency. The feds. The big guns. They were here, and I was fucked.

 008. 2251, Present Day. North American wilderness. Athan.

    I was back home again, the box which said AEGIS on it on a workbench in front of me. The girl¡¯s voice had been silent ever since she cut off in the forest. I couldn¡¯t see any way to disassemble the device, it looked like it had been built to survive an apocalypse, and from the scarring, the huge hole blasted in the front, and the fact I found it on the edge of a crater¡­it was possible it had.


    The obnoxious Booooop device had also shut up, finally. It seemed likely to me there was a GPS or something inside the box which had also blacked out when it had died.


    First order of business was to clean the whole thing of dirt and see what I had to work with. I grabbed a length of synthetic weave I¡¯d been using as rag and got to work with the deruster mostly just to save my supply of water.


    The round plate on top I realized was crystal, not metal, just so encrusted with dirt I couldn¡¯t tell. It was also an incredibly ancient holo; all holos nowadays used tons of incredibly tiny projectors to create a true 3d holographic display, instead of one insanely complicated crystal. Like, old enough I¡¯d only ever seen them used as projectors in elementary school, old.


    What this box would need to project, I had no idea, but given that there was a mic and camera on the box, it was possible it was a gateway for two-way communication. That would explain the voice I heard, but not whose it was. The holo had been so caked with dirt that it was completely inoperable, but after a cleaning, it looked like it might work. The lens was scratched, so it might look a little crappy, but that was all we had.


    There was no other writing on the box, but underneath the word ¡®AEGIS¡¯, was where the large hole was. If there had been more writing at any point, I¡¯d guess it might have been there. I found more ports and hookups including a large aperture about the size of my fist on the side. I didn¡¯t recognize any of them except, curiously, a standard power plug on the back, again plugged with clodded dirt.


    I was getting pretty tired of cleaning dirt out of holes about now.


    Since I couldn¡¯t take it apart any further, peering into the big rusted central hole was about all I could do. Inside, I could make out a ton of completely alien machinery, with cores strung together with a tangle of wires. I could make out a pink effusive glow, hinting at a live core in there somewhere. With some effort, I tilted the box to get a different angle and heard the contents rattle loosely. The pink glow moved from one corner of the box towards the other.


    Well that¡¯s not right.


    Seemed like the delith cell was rattling around loose inside? The power lines must have been corroded through, and broken when I¡¯d disturbed it. So, it needed power at least. I dug through the bag of tools I¡¯d recovered and pulled out an extension cord I¡¯d picked up. I plugged one end into the port in the back and the other into a large cell I had, and hoped it was power enough for the device.


    A blinking yellow exclamation point hovered in the air above the device, projected into the air by the scratched holo. It sat there flashing for a few seconds before the machine sprang to life.


    ¡°H-hello?¡± the girl¡¯s voice came through again. Much louder and clearer now that the device had sufficient power instead of drawing through the corroded power lines. ¡°Hello? Is someone there?¡±


    The holo flickered several times before projecting a yellow image of a girl standing in front of an enormous computer, with numerous keyboards, both physical and touch-holo and displays, basically a semi-circular wall in front of her as far as she could comfortably reach. I noticed most of the display holos were dead.


    ¡°Hello? Hi there,¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh my god, you¡¯re back. Thank god, I thought I lost you. I thought I was¡­thought I lost you¡­¡± she began to sob quietly.


    She looked exhausted and haggard, clutching at the computer like she couldn¡¯t stand without its support, but also holding it like it was her lifeline to the world. Her shoulders rocked with her sobbing, making the light sundress she wore, and her two long, waist-length pigtails shimmer and dance. The image was grainy and flickered with distortion from the scratchy lens, and it seemed the holo only projected in yellow, but even being unable to make out the details, I could tell this girl was both in distress, and breathtakingly beautiful.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    For a conventional beauty, she was still a bit odd. Crying at a computer holo, standing alone in a dark room with a wall-sized terminal in a circle of light projected only from the holos with no other lighting. I couldn¡¯t make out any other details in the room, or even see a wall behind her in the dark.


    She was wearing a short sundress, which looked yellow of course, and ended about halfway down to her knees. Thin oval glasses, no shoes, no socks, just bare feet on the floor, and curiously, what looked like fingerless wrist braces on both hands, ending just short of her elbows. I guess she spent a lot of time on that computer and probably had messed-up hands.


    ¡°Um, please don¡¯t cry,¡± I said. I realized I was just standing there staring at the tiny holo while she wept in front of me like a weirdo.


    ¡°Yes, I¡¯m sorry. Sorry¡­sorry. It¡¯s just been so long since I¡¯ve seen or heard anyone, and then everything went black¡­gah.¡± She looked up and blinked back tears, rubbing her eyes with her forearms to avoid the wrist braces. ¡°Sorry. I¡¯m such a mess right now. Not my best day.¡± After a pause she added ¡°Actually, this probably is my best day. What does that tell you about my life?¡± She gave a little laugh which was choked with a caught sob.


    It was a little sad, but a lot adorable.


    ¡°Hey, so, what¡¯s your name? You were about to tell me when we got cut off.¡±


    ¡°Oh. I¡¯m¡­I don¡¯t actually know. I know this machine¡± she patted the console at her fingers ¡°is called AEGIS, so you can just call me that, I guess? It¡¯s the only name I remember. Sorry.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS? That¡¯s an¡­unusual name.¡±


    ¡°Uh, sure it is. Seems like a good enough name to me. What¡¯s yours?¡±


    ¡°Athan.¡±


    ¡°Nice to met you Athan.¡±


    ¡°So AEGIS. That¡¯s like, in all-caps, like it says on this device?¡±


    ¡°What device?¡±


    ¡°The thing I¡¯m talking to you through.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about.¡± She seemed a bit crestfallen.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be sad, I¡¯m just making conversation. I found this box out in the forest¡­this big metal machine. It¡¯s got a camera and microphone that I¡¯m speaking to you through.¡±


    ¡°Huh. That¡¯s voyeuristic and creepy. I see you on one of my holos. Actually my only holo, everything else seems to be dead here.¡±


    ¡°There used to be a lot more?¡±


    ¡°I guess so? Seems silly to have a bunch of dead holos and just one live one.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t remember? Did you just find that place?¡±


    ¡°What place?¡±


    ¡°The room you¡¯re in. With the terminal.¡±


    ¡°Oh. I don¡¯t remember, sorry.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t remember? Where were you before you were at this computer?¡±


    ¡°I really don¡¯t remember. I¡¯m sorry, all I remember is being here for a long time.¡±


    ¡°Well that¡¯s really weird. Where do you sleep, and eat?¡±


    ¡°Um, here. I guess. I don¡¯t know. Why are you being like this?¡± A twinge of desperation entered her voice and I had to remind myself that she was already sort of on the edge of emotional collapse right now.


    ¡°Sorry, sorry,¡± I said, feeling like I was echoing her. ¡°I just want to know more about you.¡±


    ¡°Well¡­me too. I don¡¯t remember anything, and I¡¯m obviously sort of stuck in this room with nothing else here but you. It looks like there¡¯s a lot to this system, but most of it is down¡­maybe if I could get more of it working, I could figure out where I am and why I¡¯m here?¡±


    Her situation sounded a lot like mine. Imprisoned, banking on useless broken technology, not sure where she was. At least I had my memories¡­I wondered if whoever had put her there had tampered with her mind, or if she¡¯d been drugged. My heart wrenched a little.


    ¡°Hey, AEGIS, uh,¡± I began, not sure how to articulate my feelings. ¡°Look, I don¡¯t know much about you or your situation, but I¡¯ll do anything I can to help you out, okay?¡±


    ¡°Thanks, Athan, was it?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, Athan. I appreciate it. For now I think I¡¯m going to rest and think about what I can do on my end, if that¡¯s okay. It¡¯s been a very draining day already.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, no problem. Let me know if I can help okay?¡±


    ¡°Sure thing. Thank you for saving me.¡± She yawned and stretched, which made her dress ride up a little. ¡°I¡¯m so tired, but I want to talk to you so much. It¡¯s like my body and my heart are fighting each other, you know?¡±


    ¡°Just get some sleep. I¡¯ll be here when you wake up, and we¡¯ve got a long time to talk and catch up and figure out what to do next.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Thanks for being so understanding. And thank you, thank you for saving me. You have no idea how much it means to me.¡±


    ¡°No problem. Now sleep, you dork.¡±


    She laughed, and tapped a key and the holo went out. I guess I shouldn¡¯t have expected to watch her sleep. That¡¯d be creepy of me.


    It was still light out and I didn¡¯t want to keep relying on the food I¡¯d picked up from the mines, but I¡¯d promised AEGIS that if she woke up I¡¯d be here, so I settled for a can of preserved mystery meat and set in for bed early. As I lay in my hammock, wishing I had a book or something, I kept finding myself looking at AEGIS¡¯s machine.


    It was kind of weird. Like, having a roommate, suddenly. Obviously we weren¡¯t, she was god-knows-where, and I was an exile in the wilderness in god-knows-where-else, but she was a cute girl, she was in my house, and she was happy to talk to me.


    Though both of us were in a lot of trouble, I went to sleep with a little bit of happiness, knowing that at least now we had each other. Both of us were a little less alone, if nothing else.

 009. 2251, Three weeks ago. Los Angeles suburbs. Athan.

    I was able to see what the men were doing besides preparing. My neighbors were being pulled out of their houses and taken away from the scene. I wondered how large of an area was being evacuated. In some of the fights of humans vs. XPCA, entire cities had been destroyed. If they knew who I was and they were here to take me in, they had to be preparing for an Exhuman event on that scale.


    As though alerted by my movement in the window, two floodlights turned on and beamed directly into my room, blinding me. Lights flared to life outside everywhere, and an air-raid siren sounded in the distance. Barely a black silhouette against the blinding lights outside, I saw one man walk forward slowly with a bullhorn in hand until he was halfway between me and the line of armed and armored soldiers.


    ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton, this is Deputy Director Blackett of the Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency. We are here to remove you from this populated area and prevent the potential damage you could cause to this area and the people who reside here. Please, if there is any humanity left in you, The XPCA urges you to find it within yourself to come quietly.¡±


    He sounded almost bored, like this was a script he read daily. I wondered if this was routine now for him and all the dozens of men outside. From the cagey looks the soldiers were shooting each other, I didn¡¯t think so. And there hadn¡¯t been a huge Exhuman event for months. Maybe these guys were good at quietly making Exhumans surrender, or maybe there just hadn¡¯t been any in a long time.


    I didn¡¯t know, but it irked me that with my and potentially their lives on the line, this guy couldn¡¯t even put an emphasis on the word ¡®please.¡¯


    I heard VTOLs in the air now, and wondered if they¡¯d been using some technology to hover silently before, or had only just arrived to back up Deputy Director Blackhead¡¯s little speech.


    I took a deep breath and went outside my room, where the rest of the house seemed to be similarly lit up by floodlights in the windows. It was disorienting and surreal, being inside the house with stripes so brightly lit and stripes still dark. Walking down the hall felt like walking through a strobe light.


    Before I got to the top of the stairs, my parent¡¯s bedroom door banged open. Dad was there with Mom behind him, both looking not-very-awake, but very panicked.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on out there?¡± he asked, grabbing me by the shoulders. I shrugged him off and didn¡¯t know how to respond.


    ¡°I dunno Dad. Earlier yesterday, after the game, Brick and I were fooling around and lightning came out of nowhere and hit something. I guess¡­I think¡­maybe it was me. The lightning came from me. Maybe.¡±


    Emotions surged across his face, but it only took a few seconds before his face turned beet red and he recoiled from me.


    ¡°Exhuman,¡± he hissed at me. My mom gasped and turned white.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t do anything!¡± I said, but he jumped when I moved.


    ¡°Get out of my house, Exhuman!¡± he barked.


    ¡°Dad¨C¡°


    ¡°I am no father of yours. Now GET OUT!¡±


    I felt his words stab me, and felt tears begin to well behind my eyes. Was that all we were? Two or three sentences away from this? All the times he¡¯d told me how proud he was of me, how happy he was I was his son, all the things we¡¯d done and memories we¡¯d shared¡­gone in a heartbeat.


    ¡°Mom, I¨C¡°


    ¡°DON¡¯T YOU TALK TO HER,¡± Dad shouted, even louder now. His voice echoed through the house.


    I swallowed a lump in my throat and tried to speak clearly. ¡°Mom, I love you. I didn¡¯t do anything I promise.¡±


    She looked like she was ready to cry too, but just turned away instead of meeting my eyes.


    ¡°There, you said your piece, now get out,¡± Dad growled. I didn¡¯t have anything else to say¡­nothing else I thought they¡¯d listen to. I went downstairs.


    I found Lia standing in the kitchen with tears running down her face. She was still wearing the same dirty sweatshirt and old volleyball shorts. Around her were dirty pots and pans and bowls, and a stack of pancakes, with some more cooking on the stove.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    My heart broke completely when I saw her standing there. It was only about an hour before we¡¯d normally be waking up, and she must have snuck downstairs to make a family breakfast for us all. I wondered if it had anything to do with us arguing last night.


    But now, I could never know. I couldn¡¯t face her anymore. Mom and Dad yelling at me was one thing, but if I saw the same transformation of hate go across Lia¡¯s face as I saw on theirs, it would break me. I took a deep breath, and then ran out the front door while avoiding her gaze.


    Outside, I could see nothing but the lights. A half dozen sets of floodlights were trained on me from every angle. Vaguely, below them, I could see shadows stir, which I knew to be dozens of men with all kinds of exotic weapons, any one of which would kill me instantly¡­if I were a human still.


    ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton,¡± said Blackett over the bullhorn, like it was my job title. ¡°Put your hands on your head and lay face down on the pavement. You will be detained for the safety of others. Do not attempt to resist.¡±


    Tears were running down my cheeks now, and my face burned. My heart was skipping beats, left and right, and I felt like I might piss myself at any moment. Mostly, I was afraid, but I also felt a burning shame. A shame for what? I had done nothing.


    I got on my knees and put my hands on my head. The ground was cold and wet with morning dew. I didn¡¯t want to lay on it. I shouldn¡¯t have to. I did nothing wrong.


    ¡°Why¡­?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton, lay on the ground, now.¡± Oh sure, now he could stress some words. But not please. I didn¡¯t understand. We all knew what Exhumans were, what they were capable of. Would it kill this guy to treat me with some respect? Some decency?


    And I realized at that moment for the first time what Exhuman really meant. Of course I wouldn¡¯t get any human decency. To these people, to Deputy Director Blackett, to the family inside the house behind me, I wasn¡¯t human. I was a very, very dangerous animal which needed to get put down ASAP. It was all in the friggin¡¯ name.


    Even though I had done nothing.


    ¡°Look,¡± I said, trying to see into the lights where Blackett was so I could talk in his direction. ¡°I haven¡¯t done anything.¡±


    ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton, lay on the ground or we will open fire. This is not a negotiation.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t do anything!¡±


    ¡°If it turns out you are not an Exhuman, you will be released without charges. Your abilities will be verified at a later date. Stop talking and lie down NOW!¡°


    ¡°I didn¡¯t do anything! You can¡¯t treat me like this! I¡¯m still a person!¡±


    I heard a boom and felt the air surge around me. Something flew at me from the darkness, but once it got within a few feet of me, a surge of lightning came from just above my head and blasted it out of the air. I felt hot fragments of whatever it was tumble through the air and shower me. I winced as they smoked and bounced off my exposed arms, but tried not to move.


    ¡°HOLD YOUR FIRE,¡± Blackett bellowed. The shadows stirred uneasily in front of me.


    He turned back to me. ¡°Exhuman, on the ground now.¡± No apologies or anything for his men shooting me.


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to rampage or anything. I¡¯m not going to hurt anyone, I promise.¡±


    ¡°Then lay on the ground and put your hands on the back of your head. Now.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t see this conversation going anywhere other than a full-scale war in my front yard, or me face down on the pavement, so I quietly leaned forward and laid down on the ground. It was cold and wet, and crying made it hard to breathe. Half my face was hot and wet from the tears, and half cold and wet from the dew.


    I heard the stomping of many pairs of boots and closed my eyes and held still. Pairs of hands held down my shoulders and arms, and I heard metal clinking as a pair of handcuffs (presumably some super sci-fi XPCA special cuffs) were brought over. I felt my hands pulled together, and felt metal touch them for a fraction of a second.


    And then there was an explosion and the smell of ozone and the screams of men. The hands on my arms and shoulders were gone, and I felt another spray of hot metal shrapnel on the back of my neck and arms. I glanced up and saw men¨Cor what I assumed to be men, because all I could see was their robotic exosuits¨Cjumping back and patting themselves down, some on the ground apparently seizing.


    ¡°DO NOT MOVE, EXHUMAN,¡± the bullhorn blared from painfully close, making me wince. I wasn¡¯t going to. One of the XPCA was laying on the ground next to me, not moving. I hoped he wasn¡¯t dead¡­but the unnatural stillness, the awkward position in which he was laying. I think I knew.


    And in that moment, I joined my family in hating myself too. As I¡¯d professed over and over, I had done nothing wrong. And yet, now a man was dead because of me. These men treated me like a weapon more than a human because even if I did nothing, even kneeling in submission, I was still dangerous to everyone around me.


    From then through the rest of the morning, I complied with them without question. It wasn¡¯t just one death, either. Various means of detention were fired, thrown, or placed on me, and each one exploded violently when it contacted me. As I watched the body count rise, I felt I had to say something.


    ¡°Um, Deputy Director Blackett?¡± I asked. He just fixed me with an icy stare. I was fully aware he blamed me for all of this carnage, and I couldn¡¯t disagree. ¡°I don¡¯t know that you need to detain me, sir. I am willing to come peacefully and comply with orders.¡±


    ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton, I will not repeat myself again. This is not a negotiation.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not negotiating. Look around, people are dying. I am killing them. You asked me to submit if I had any humanity left in me¡­and, well, I do. So let me stop killing people, please.¡±


    He looked me up and down with a frown. He was a tall, thin man, made all the more thin-looking by the huge imposing men in exosuits all around. He had a immaculately trimmed moustache and goatee, and rectangular glasses with thin gold frames atop his pointed nose.


    ¡°No, you are not going anywhere without proper restraints. This is not a conversation, Exhuman. Continue to submit.¡±


    ¡°People are dying! Your people! Don¡¯t you care?¡±


    ¡°This is not a conversation. You will be silent,¡± he said with a bitter coldness, and walked away.

 010. 2251, Present Day. North American wilderness. Athan.

    I woke up to something clicking loudly. My alarm? A pen? I was disoriented and stumbled in the dark, reaching out until I fell out of my hammock.


    ¡°Oh, good you¡¯re awake,¡± AEGIS said. She finished what she was typing, her keys making the clicking noise which had awakened me. But much softer.


    ¡°Uh. Sure am now. Hard to sleep with all that typing right by my head. Were you¡­typing loudly to wake me up?


    ¡°No. Noooooo. No,¡± she laughed and blushed. ¡°Okay, yes. I¡¯m sorry. I haven¡¯t talked to anyone in so long. You probably think I¡¯m crazy.¡±


    ¡°No, just kind of annoying right now. You know your stupid beeper thing woke me up last night too?¡± I held up the Booooop device to the camera for her to see.


    ¡°Yeah I have no idea what that is,¡± she said, squinting into the holo. She leaned forward which gave me a reasonable peek at her small-but-definitely-still-there chest. On one hand, the image was yellow and full of distortion and artifacts from the scratched lens. On the other hand¡­weren¡¯t girls supposed to wear a bra under a sundress? I blushed and turned away.


    ¡°Holy crap, you letch,¡± she said, now blushing and frantically pulling up her dress, though that drew my eye to the now-rising lower limit of it. ¡°OMG! You¡¯re a complete pervert! Worst rescuer ever! I can¡¯t believe I ever even thanked you!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry! I¡¯m a healthy teenager! You can¡¯t blame me.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I can and I will. Now I feel all gross for waking you up. I bet you were having weird dreams about me.¡±


    ¡°For your information, I was dreaming of home. My mom, and my sister¨C¡°


    ¡°OMG that¡¯s even more disgusting!¡±


    ¡°No! They¡¯re my family. I miss them. What the hell is wrong with you?¡±


    She giggled, but was still blushing. I realized that at least some of her reactions were deliberately overdone. Though wait, did she flash me on purpose then? ¡°Well, I was just messing with you a little bit at first, but the way this conversation has been going, I¡¯ve been starting to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with you.¡±


    I was going to reply in jest again when my heart sank and I realized there was something we did need to get out in the open before we could have any kind of actual relationship. I swallowed hard and put on a serious face. ¡°Well, yeah, there is.¡±


    She looked me up and down. ¡°Uh, you look pretty normal to me. Is this ¡®something wrong¡¯ in your head or¡­¡± her eyes darted imperceptibly downwards.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯m the pervert in this conversation,¡± I intoned. ¡°But seriously. What I was going to say is, well, actually¡­¡± she waited patiently for me to finish my thought, getting that we were done kidding around at this point. ¡°Sorry, I¡¯ve never said this out loud to anyone before. I¡¯m in exile here, wherever this is, because I¡¯m an¡­I¡¯m an¡­¡±


    ¡°A¡­what? You have me nervous here, Athan.¡±


    ¡°An Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± She paused for a second, her expression blank. ¡°And um, what exactly is an Exhuman?¡±


    ¡°You are kidding me.¡±


    ¡°No, not kidding at all, sorry.¡±


    ¡°Just how long have you been in that room? Don¡¯t you get any news or ¡®net in there?¡±


    ¡°If I did, do you think I¡¯d wake you up by tapping loudly so I could get a conversation out of you?¡±


    ¡°Wow. I¡¯m just¡­amazed. We learned all about Exhumans in grade school. We heard nursery rhymes about them. We went through drills three times a year. They were on the holo every day, even when there hadn¡¯t been an Exhuman event in months.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, still no idea. Sorry?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t be sorry¡­I¡¯m actually¡­kind of relieved to hear that. Probably makes you the one person on Earth who won¡¯t hate me out the gate.¡±


    ¡°Still confused. Should I hate you?¡±


    ¡°Probably?¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Uh. I mean, I¡¯m kind of two minds here. On one hand, you should probably know what Exhumans are, because everyone does. On the other hand, being one, I¡¯m a little conflicted in wanting you to hate them.¡±


    ¡°How¡¯s this sound,¡± she said. ¡°You can tell me what they are, and I promise I won¡¯t hate you anyway. Deal?¡±


    ¡°Sure. We¡¯ll see.¡±


    ¡°Okay, well, I¡¯m not sure when they started, it¡¯s been hundreds of years at least, but once upon a time there were no Exhumans. Then, one day, a normal everyday human person just kind of had these miraculous powers handed to her. She had kind of a crappy life before, so once she was stronger than everyone else, she took whatever she wanted and hurt and killed everyone who¡¯d hurt her before, or who tried to stop her.¡±You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    ¡°What kind of miraculous powers are we talking about here?¡±


    ¡°Well, for this chick, the first Exhuman, her powers were just being really strong and tough and fast, I think. But I was keeping it vague because every Exhuman is different. Like, there have been Exhumans who can turn into gas, and I can create lightning.¡±


    ¡°So there¡¯s nothing linking you each to each other? How do you know it¡¯s not just a bunch of freak accidents?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m getting there. So she goes on this rampage once police try to stop her, and completely overpowers them, and then the military steps in, and ultimately they have to bomb a city block to take her down. Thousands are hurt or killed, and it¡¯s a huge disaster. Now called the first Exhuman event. Great creative name.¡±


    I continued, ¡°anyway, a week later, same thing happens. This time, they jump straight to the bombing once they realize what¡¯s going on, but it does nothing. This Exhuman has some kind of telekinesis ¡ª can move things with his mind ¡ª and he just snatches the bomb out of the air and throws it at downtown, where it blows up and kills everyone. Eventually does go down, but kills over a million first.¡±


    ¡°Oh my god.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. And so this is one of the very few things linking the Exhuman events. Whatever people try will fail. There¡¯s been a bunch of studies done and some law named after some scientist, but it¡¯s been done again and again and it always fails. So the next one, they try gassing it out, and sure enough, it doesn¡¯t need to breathe. Next one, the military had finally gotten laser weapons down and were excited to use them, so of course the very next two Exhumans, one turned invisible, lasers passed right through it. That one took months to kill. The other was dynakinetic, could manipulate energy. Made the lasers go wherever it wanted.¡±


    ¡°Jesus.¡±


    ¡°So they started trying to go in tandem, bring multiple solutions to bear. And those were the worst days, apparently. The Exhumans would be so resilient to so many things that there would be whole days or weeks of fighting, like, solid continuous guns-blazing before they went down. Eventually, no matter what they tried, they just made it worse. They scaled way back, and now we just have the XPCA, who, well, we always heard they try to get the Exhumans to surrender, and focus on evacuating civilians. I¡¯m not so sure after my experiences with them.¡±


    AEGIS gasped and stared at me.


    ¡°Relax, I surrendered peacefully. XPCA still tried to arrest me even after I surrendered¡­turns out my powers work automatically, though, and¡­¡± I trailed off, remembering the still, lifeless body laying next to me outside my house.


    ¡°¡­and?¡±


    ¡°Twenty-one. Twenty-one brave and stupid XPCA¡¯s tried to arrest me and died trying. That¡¯s how dangerous an Exhuman is, that even one who is fully surrendering and complying can still kill twenty-one trained, armed, and armored soldiers, without even trying.¡±


    ¡°Damn,¡± she whispered. ¡°I¡¯m glad you didn¡¯t try to fight them.¡±


    ¡°It would have been a lot more,¡± I agreed grimly.


    ¡°So, they just ask these new superpowered people to surrender and hope it works for the best?¡±


    ¡°Eh, you could say so. I think in practice there¡¯s a lot more sort of behind-the-scenes stuff at work. Like I said, we¡¯re taught about Exhumans from birth, and one thing drilled into all of our minds over and over is that if we turn, we need to turn ourselves in so we don¡¯t hurt people. I don¡¯t know how much it works, but there are still at least a couple events every year.¡±


    ¡°Maybe it works really well and those are just the really awful people who turn.¡± She sounded like she was trying to convince herself, hold onto that ray of hope.


    ¡°Maybe so.¡±


    ¡°So after they arrested you, why are you out here instead of¡­I don¡¯t know, in prison or something. I¡¯m sorry, it sounds horrible to ask.¡±


    ¡°Well, my power apparently just electrocutes and blows up anything which would restrain me, so they just kind of had to let me go. They tried to kill me too, but it didn¡¯t take, and they probably didn¡¯t want to keep trying that in case it pissed me off, so they told me they¡¯d drop me off here and I was allowed to live out here as long as I never had contact with another human or tried to come back to civilization.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s why I wanted to talk to you about this. Because¡­technically, you and I should never have this chat.¡±


    ¡°That seems silly. I¡¯m on the other side of a holo, inside a locked room where I don¡¯t even know where I am, and have no memory. What¡¯s talking to you going to do?¡±


    ¡°There were some cases where just by talking to or interacting with an Exhuman, people became corrupted. Perfectly normal folks one day, next day they went postal and turned into crazed suicide bombers.¡±


    ¡°Holy shit. Are you making this up?¡±


    ¡°No. Wish I was.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not you, right? I¡¯m not going to wake up crazy tomorrow?¡±


    I let out a sigh. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I already killed twenty-one people without ever meaning to. For all I know, everyone I talked to back home is now a mad bomber. Not like they¡¯d send me a postcard to let me know.¡±


    ¡°Damn that¡¯s scary.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. So, sorry that I¡¯m the one who happened to find you. I can¡¯t exactly walk you into a police station and hand you over. It¡¯s just you and me. Or, just you, if you didn¡¯t want to risk me, which I wouldn¡¯t blame you for.¡±


    She shook her head, making her long twintails cascade behind her. ¡°No, I think you¡¯re a pretty decent guy. I¡¯m not sorry you found me at all. I mean, aside from all the lechery, obviously.¡±


    ¡°Obviously,¡± I said with a smile. She pretended to cover herself and stuck out her tongue at me.


    ¡°Well. That¡¯s not the best news I¡¯ve ever heard, but I appreciate you being so up-front about it. Hopefully we can both work together to improve each other¡¯s lives, I hope? Kind of a banding together of misfits here?¡±


    ¡°Hopefully.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Completely unrelated and much lighter question then. Is that a mass-fab in the corner?¡± She thumbed over her shoulder so her holo would be gesturing in the right direction.


    ¡°Yes, but the core¡¯s corrupt and it¡¯s got no blueprints. Thing¡¯s basically worthless.¡±


    ¡°Well, I have a whole wall of cores in front of me if we can figure out how to hook me up to that thing, and if we can get that working, I might have a plan for how to get me out of here. But I still need to do some research, so that¡¯s for another day. In the meanwhile, how¡¯s your day looking?¡±


    ¡°Well, I spent basically the last two days hunting you down, though I didn¡¯t know that at the time, so I¡¯ve wasted most of my spare food and water stocks. Guess I¡¯m foraging and making a trip to the river today.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Sounds like a good plan. You¡¯ll be back at sundown?¡±


    ¡°Yep.¡±


    ¡°Cool. Stay safe out there, Athan, you¡¯ve got someone at home depending on you now,¡± she said coyly.


    ¡°Sounds suspiciously like a wife?¡± I said.


    ¡°LOL,¡± she said, pronouncing each letter. ¡°Yeah maybe in your dreams.¡± A weird look and a blush crossed her face. ¡°Wait, no not in your dreams, that¡¯s gross. Not when I have to live right next to where you sleep. Wow, that came out wrong too. What the heck are you making me say?¡±


    ¡°Okay, I¡¯m getting out of here before you accuse me of being the pervert here again.¡±


    ¡°You totally are!¡± she called after me as I left The Bunker into the morning sunshine.


    I had a busy day ahead of me, but didn¡¯t mind. She was right that I did have someone to come home to, and even if it was just a holo of a girl a million miles away, she was a lot closer to me than anyone else.

 011. 2251, Three weeks ago. Los Angeles suburbs. Athan.

    Lightning arced through the air again, for the dozenth time. The manacles exploded off my skin, and the electricity arced up the pole, sending the man holding the other end, over ten feet away seizing. He was wearing rubber gloves and boots, and the grounding wire had similarly exploded. The lightning did not care.


    As the man¡¯s convulsions came to an end, I got to my knees slowly. Instantly, all eyes and weapons were trained on me.


    ¡°Blackett, I know this is not a negotiation, but I will not sit here and endure this slaughter. Men are dying because of me. Now let me get in a police car and take me to my jail cell or whatever it is you do with Exhumans.¡±


    ¡°Exhuman, be silent and lay on the ground. The XPCA has the situation under control, and you will¨C¡°


    ¡°This is not a negotiation,¡± I said, with steel in my voice.


    Yesterday I woke up worrying about a football game and went to sleep wondering about a scholarship. This morning I woke up worrying about my family, and tonight, if I ever slept again, I¡¯d be seeing the shuddering bodies of people I was killing right now jerking and twisting, their inhuman screams¨Cfrom the ones who could even scream¨Cdistorted by their exosuit helmets.


    ¡°This is not a negotiation,¡± I repeated, looking him in the eyes this time. ¡°You will allow me to place myself under arrest without any more death, or I will show you exactly how much death and destruction I can cause.¡±


    His eyes narrowed, and the suited soldiers around me tensed. ¡°Are you threatening us, Exhuman?¡±


    ¡°Yes, that¡¯s exactly what I¡¯m doing. You, these men, and I all know you can¡¯t detain me now. If you could, you would already. So that leaves two options: You let me walk, and I¡¯m being charitable here and letting you choose the destination, or I kill all of you and find someone who¡¯s more willing to negotiate with an Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Nobody will talk to you, especially after you wipe out an entire XPCA squad,¡± he hissed through his teeth.


    ¡°Then I guess I¡¯d just have to keep killing. Might take a long time and a lot of people. So. Negotiating starting to sound good now?¡±


    His men were all looking at him now. I got the feeling they all agreed with me¡­so far as realizing I could wipe them all out effortlessly at least. If they were talking, they were doing it on internal comms. Blackett¡¯s expression never changed, he just stared at me, livid, his eyes still narrowed. I was certain that my being on my knees, heck, my very existence was offensive to him, but he seemed frozen in place.


    Abruptly, he stood up straight. ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton, know that if I had my way, this operation would continue until you either died on that pavement or were in secure custody. However. A superior officer with clarity and vision surpassing my own has determined that your negotiation is acceptable and you will be transported to a holding facility without restraints.¡± He made a jerking gesture, and the soldiers lowered their weapons.


    Two of them appeared at my sides, but did not try to touch me. Instead, they ushered me to the back of a black armored van, the entire rear compartment of which was empty except for benches along both sides. I asked them to wait outside, which they did, while I slid in and buckled my seatbelt. To my relief, it apparently did not count as a restraint, since it didn¡¯t explode violently. The two soldiers joined me afterwards, sitting opposite and adjacent to me.


    The doors closed, and that was the last I saw of my house or hometown. There were no windows, only vents high up on the walls, and the van slid along the ground almost silently. It was impossible to tell which way we were going, or for how long.


    Not that I would have been able to focus anyway. I¡¯d killed a dozen men and threatened federal agents with terrorism and death. I was only trying to help, but it felt like every decision I could make was wrong. Death vs. death, blood on my hands no matter which way I turned. Nobody should ever have this much power, to casually kill another without effort or consequence, it was dehumanizing.


    After hours, the van had imperceptibly stopped. I only noticed because the two soldiers looked like they had started getting ready to move out. They seemed jumpy and anxious, and I didn¡¯t think it was just me, since they¡¯d been calm through the trip. The one across from me gestured for me to stay and his distorted, synthesized voice instructed me to wait for a minute.


    The two of them got off the van, and after a few moments, one returned with a canister about the size of his huge exo-suited fist and placed it at the entrance to the vehicle.


    I shook my head. ¡°I don¡¯t know what that is, or what you¡¯re doing, but it¡¯s not going to end well,¡± I said. ¡°Just let me go, please.¡±


    The distorted synthesizer crackled. ¡°Commander Blackett sends his regards, you murdering son of a bitch.¡± He pushed a button on top of the canister and slammed the van doors shut.


    There was an almost inaudible click as the van doors locked shut, and then a booming crack of thunder, obliterating the seatbelt and blowing the back doors off the van, one flying into a soldier, and sending him flying backwards a dozen feet, before he finished sliding to a stop. The other soldier was still right behind the van, the doors having flown inches over his head. His face snapped to me, and while I couldn¡¯t see through his helmet, I could still read the unmistakable look of terror on his blank visor.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    The device, whatever it was activated, letting off a low thrumming sound and glowing with an unbearable white light. I couldn¡¯t look directly at it, and shielded my eyes with my hands. The guard did the same but only for a few seconds before he stumbled and began grabbing at his helmet. He pulled it off and I thought for a second his face had melted off and poured out of his helmet.


    No, instead he¡¯d just been vomiting inside the helmet, and his face was red and covered in what looked like burns and blisters. I was horrified as I watched his skin smoke, wither and blister, as the entirety of his skull turned into warped flesh jerky, with him screaming a hoarse wail that no human should ever have been able to produce. After mere moments, he ignited completely and presumably died, as the screaming stopped.


    I sat there completely unaffected by the device, but completely horrified that they had tried and failed so completely to do that to me. I stepped out of the van, kicking the device further inside on my way out. There was a loose semicircle of soldiers staying about 30 feet back, and in the middle of them, Blackett. I stomped towards him, and the soldiers closed ranks, forming a wall between us.


    ¡°What, you want me to go grab that bomb and bring it over here for you guys?¡± I asked, making them exchange nervous glances. ¡°What is that thing? Just pour out radiation or something? Is that the type of shit XPCA comes up with?¡±


    ¡°XPCA will use whatever means it needs to pacify and control Exhuman threats.¡±


    ¡°And I am NOT an Exhuman threat, though the way you keep pushing me, I am certainly going to be one soon.¡± I began counting off on my fingers,¡± I came out of my house when you told me, I laid on the ground, I submitted to arrest, I stopped you from throwing yet more lives away, I travelled¡­wherever the fuck we are peacefully¡­¡±


    ¡°And then on the other hand, you stormed my hometown with a goddamn army, sacrificed a dozen lives for literally no purpose but your own stubbornness, had to get told off by your superiors because of how incredibly incompetent you are, and then you pull this shit and melt one of your own people alive. And¡­AND! You are pissing off the one guy in this situation who is seemingly the only one here doing your job. Me! Fuck, no wonder Exhumans always seem to go berserk and kill everything, you guys do a fantastic job of demonstrating just how shitty humanity can be!¡±


    His hand twitched towards the firearm at his hip while I berated him, especially when I mentioned his superiors. ¡°Do it. Please do it, I¡¯m begging you. Of all the lives I¡¯ve ended today, yours will be the only one I¡¯ll be glad to do,¡± I goaded. ¡°I¡¯ve seen enough people try to shoot me and die today, but maybe you¡¯re not as smart as I am, so I¡¯d love to see you try again.¡±


    Reminding him of how ineffective it might be seemed to calm him down, and his hand resumed its rest at his side.


    ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton, you will enter this detention facility and will not speak another word,¡± he said, through gritted teeth. I wondered if his superiors were reaming him over his earpiece at that very moment. ¡°Take him to cell 1.¡±


    I followed a soldier who stomped ahead of me in a heavy exosuit towards the only building in the area, a small one-story building surrounded by walls and walls of razor wire and what looked like automated turrets. XPCA stared down at me from a half dozen tall surveillance towers, each manning a mounted gun. In the distance, I could see another couple dozen vans parked in straight lines, and beyond them, some airships I didn¡¯t recognize and a pair of VTOLs.


    The area might have been beautiful, if it weren¡¯t an XPCA military base. There were tall trees everywhere, white mountains in the distance, and a cloudless blue sky above. I could hear birds chirping in the nearby trees.


    We stopped before the first gate, heavy barbed metal spikes in a frame of concrete festooned in razor wire. Lights and guns were trained on me from every angle as the spikes receded into the ground, letting us move forward. We only went about ten feet before encountering another identical gate. The gate behind us began to raise, leaving the rest of the convoy party outside, just me and the one soldier entering.


    The gate behind me was about halfway up when I heard the same thundercrack explosion as before, and when I turned back to look, it had been reduced to a twisted wreck of metal. I let out a sigh, I didn¡¯t know if gates and fences counted as restraints, but my powers were pretty clear on it.


    ¡°ALL FORCES OPEN FIRE,¡± an older man¡¯s voice boomed over the base¡¯s external PA. Presumably a warden or something. He apparently hadn¡¯t been informed of my powers.


    I hunkered down and tried to protect my exposed skin as best as possible as millions of shards of fragmented, scorching metal poured down on me. I could see nothing but flashes and hear nothing but gunshots, all blending together into one continuous roar, as the base¡¯s defenses poured bullets, rockets, lasers, and god-knows what-else into my shield¡¯s waiting arms.


    The onslaught only lasted seconds before two of the security towers had fallen, and arcing lightning had detonated the majority of the automated turrets. The soldier who had been escorting me had wisely jumped for the ground as soon as the order was given, and was lying prone with his arms over his head. The other soldiers who had been part of the convoy had similarly known not to fire, and were holding in a ready formation.


    The base defense were not so lucky. The towers that were still standing were blackened with scorch, and the soldiers manning the turrets were thrown to the ground, if lucky.


    Less than ten seconds and the whole of a secure facility laid to waste. Again, I shuddered to think what would happen if I had decided to use my powers. I could have been the most apocalyptic Exhuman event yet.


    A minute passed, and the only thing stirring was the soldier next to me, who¡¯d gotten to his feet. He didn¡¯t even train his gun on me anymore, probably concluding that doing so was more a danger to him than to me. The air was completely choked with smoke, and I was rubbing my arms down, trying to nurse the small burns like pockmarks all over me. After long minutes of waiting where I could hear Blackett yelling at something over comms, the facility door opened.


    An older officer with a similar uniform to Blackett walked out with a half-dozen XPCA in exosuits flanking him. He yelled ¡°What is he still doing here? Get him into a VTOL and get him off my base!¡± I heard more yelling from Blackett behind me, and the soldier next to me gestured towards the landed craft with a pointing finger.


    I just hoped Blackett didn¡¯t try anything stupid when I got out of this ride. He was beginning to run out of men, and I was beginning to run out of patience.

 012. 2251, Present Day. North American wilderness. Athan.

    It was already getting dark and I had little to show for my efforts. I was glad I¡¯d found and saved AEGIS, I really was, but wasting two days out here without foraging a single thing might be a death sentence. I¡¯d been trying to hunt all morning, after refilling my water containers in the river, but hadn¡¯t found a thing.


    I¡¯d been heading mostly at random, and found that I¡¯d ventured generally to the east. With the sun setting, and a day of failure looming, I decided to hit the mines again and salvage what I could. With any luck, today I would not be hallucinating weird voices.


    [Oh ho ho ho! My champion returneth!] Saga¡¯s voice proclaimed before I¡¯d even spotted the mining camp.


    ¡°Oh great, here we go again,¡± I said.


    [Indeed, another quest is afoot. Thy mission on this day is¨C]


    ¡°Look, lady, I¡¯m just here to grab some stuff and go. I don¡¯t have time for a quest, I¡¯ve got no food and already wasted most of the day.¡±


    [(Wow, cutting me off even? Rude.) Insolent human! You dare defy me?]


    Again with the speaking¡­if speaking it was¡­with two different voices, like the same person speaking twice at the same time.


    ¡°Yes, I do dare defy you. Believe it or not, if I don¡¯t find something to eat out here, I¡¯m probably going to die. You see, eating is an important part of being human, whether you can comprehend that or not, and humans who don¡¯t have anything to eat aren¡¯t humans for long.¡±


    [I know what eating is, stupid human.]


    ¡°Great, so you don¡¯t have any problem with me stepping off and¨C¡°


    [Thy arrogance is appalling. THY PUNISHMENT SHALL BE SWIFT AND BRUTAL.]


    ¡°Holy crap, stop yelling. Yeah, yeah, I¡¯ll come back some other day when I¡¯m not going to starve and play your dumb games, okay?¡±


    [BARGAINING WILL HELP THEE NOT, THY FATE IS SEALED.]


    I continued moving on and let myself into the kitchen of the ruined facility. Something seemed different than the last time I was here. Rubble shifted, or perhaps it was my imagination? I entered the ruined pantry and found it had definitely changed since last time.


    Someone other than me had been here, and had cleaned the place out. Every single pile of debris had been pawed through and anything remotely edible had been looted.


    ¡°Uh, Saga?¡±


    [What.]


    ¡°Did you take all the food here?¡±


    [(Wait, it¡¯s gone?) I mean. Yes! I did. This is the punishment of which I spoke. It is both swift and brutal. (That was convenient, I had no idea what else I would have done to him.)]


    ¡°You know I can hear you when you¡¯re talking-thinking to yourself.¡±


    [(He can?) You lie.]


    ¡°Yeah whatever. So where¡¯s the food?¡±


    [Why should I tell you, impertinent human? (The other two must have taken it.)]


    ¡°What other two?¡±


    [(He can hear me think! Oh my god. Is he listening to me right now?)]


    I decided to pretend I wasn¡¯t listening and let her finish. Seemed the girl was having a bit of a crisis, and I was already pushing her bad side.


    [Ahem,] she said, saying the word ¡®ahem.¡¯ I¡¯m not sure she quite grasped the concept of onomatopoeia. Or maybe it just didn¡¯t translate well over brain-talking. Or maybe, and this was seeming like a much more distinct possibility given her continued demonstrated ineptitude, she was just really bad at this. [I will tell you of the others if you complete for me a simple task.]


    ¡°Oh not this damn quest stuff again.¡±


    [(He could at least hear me out, jeez) Yes, this quest stuff again. It is simple, and when you have completed your task, I will lead you to another cache of food to sate your pathetic human needs. Is that sufficient incentive?]


    I didn¡¯t know. It sounded like a tempting offer, but Saga, as far as I was concerned, if she was real and not just some batshit-insane delusion in my mind, was herself batshit-insane and delusional. While doing her ¡®quest¡¯ last time had proved fruitful, I was worried about getting involved in this web of madness.


    But at the end of the day, I needed food, and she said she had some. Even if it kept me after dark, I don¡¯t think I could say no to that. I had barely eaten all day, and tomorrow would be even worse. And besides, who were these ¡®other two?¡¯ If there truly was someone else here, I should know. Though, whether to avoid them and hold up my end of my exile, or say hi, I wasn¡¯t sure.


    [Seems you are decided then. Very well, head into¨C]


    ¡°Hey, I didn¡¯t say anything about agreeing to your quest yet.¡±


    [The Great Saga could tell you had considered her offer and decided to accept.]


    ¡°So you¡¯re a mind-reader now?¡± I asked, sarcastically. When she didn¡¯t reply immediately, the joke turned to panic.


    ¡°Wait, you¡¯re seriously a mind-reader? That¡¯s fucked,¡± I said.


    [Last I heard, I was a spooky mental ghost. Or you were going crazy out here from exile.]


    ¡°I never said that. Not out loud. You are reading my mind. That is so not cool.¡±


    [Maybe now you should know why it is best to do my quests!]


    ¡°Yeah, or maybe now I should get the hell out of here and never come back!¡±


    [It¡¯s your choice (jerk), stay if you want, or starve if you go. Really doesn¡¯t matter to me.]


    ¡°Look, Saga, you¡¯re crossing a line here. You keep the fuck out of my head or we¡¯re going to have a problem.¡±


    [You already have a problem, Athan Ashton. Loads of problems! You were exiled for¡­some reason, and there is someone¡­at The Bunker (what kind of name is that?), and¡­you need food because you can¡¯t hunt worth a damn. And me! I am the worst of your problems.]


    ¡°This is fucked. I¡¯m out of here.¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    [Good luck dying out there, then.]


    I took a deep breath. Having something crawling around inside my head was not something I liked, but stepping back and looking at the issue on the whole, it didn¡¯t change my earlier decision. I still needed to eat, I was still curious who else had been here. But maybe this could work out for us. I formed half a thought and stopped before it went anywhere in case she was listening.


    Listening to me think. Man, that was creepy.


    ¡°Saga,¡± I said. ¡°I will do your quest on two conditions.¡±


    [Oh ho!] she gloated. [Name thy conditions, and The Great Saga will decide.]


    ¡°One, drop the stupid thee¡¯s and thou¡¯s and referring to yourself in the third-person. I wouldn¡¯t have such a problem with it, but you screw it up every time you get remotely flustered, and it¡¯s both wildly inconsistent and irritating.¡±


    [How dare thee¨C]


    ¡°Saga, seriously. See, right there, it should have been thou. You are awful at this.¡±


    [Sigh. Fine. It was getting annoying to keep up on this end anyway. And? Second condition?]


    ¡°And stay out of my mind. I don¡¯t want you probing around in there. My life and my thoughts and memories are inside my head for a reason. I don¡¯t need you in there digging up my skeletons.¡±


    [Pah, typical human arrogance, assuming your thoughts and lives are at all of interest to The Great Saga!]


    ¡°Saga. Seriously. Third-person. We talked about this like, three sentences ago.¡±


    [Right. Fine, whatever. (Stupid jerk.) I¡¯m only agreeing to this because I think your human thoughts and brains are boring, got it?]


    ¡°Whatever the reason is, do it.¡±


    [Fine. Now thy quest! I mean, your¡­task. Go to the warehouse you looted last time and find a working lamp, you¡¯ll need it.]


    Half an hour later, I found myself deep in the mines. Probably not that deep, since I¡¯d been walking painfully slow, trying to keep myself from clocking my head on rock outcroppings, but it had felt like I¡¯d been following my little circle of light into the gloom forever.


    ¡°How much further?¡± I asked again.


    [Not long,] she responded again, unhelpfully. She seemed happier now, almost a little sing-song to her responses. It made me nervous as hell, and part of the reason I was moving so slowly was making sure I wasn¡¯t being led off a cliff or into a hole or anything.


    [There, on the right.] I almost walked right past it. Recessed into the roughly-cut stone wall was a doorway, with a metal door sitting halfway open.


    Calling the thing a metal door was a disservice, though. It was easily ten feet tall, and looked more like a vault than a door. The frame was a huge circle, and the door opened horizontally in the middle, the two semicircular halves meeting with dozens of interlocks and pistons and pins.


    Fortunately, this door was open, enough of a crack for me to fit through, because I didn¡¯t think there would have been any way I¡¯d be able to unlock or punch through the intimidating hunk of metal. On the other side was a small room with a metal balcony and some very reinforced windows overlooking another small room, accessible by another of the huge vault doors. I couldn¡¯t see much through the dirty windows in the dark, but I could make out glimpses of what looked like surgical equipment. Was this some kind of medical facility, way down in the depths of a mine? And if so, why the giant doors?


    [Your task is to open that other door,] she said, sounding almost apologetic.


    I laughed. ¡°You want me¡­to open that?¡±


    [Well¡­yeah¡­]


    ¡°How?¡±


    [I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m not an electrical engineer, or a quantum core programmer.]


    ¡°And you know I¡¯m not either. I might be a football player, but I don¡¯t think I can power through that without being a¡­¡± I gave the huge metal slab another glance ¡°a Greek God?¡±


    [Try the windows, then.]


    I found a suitable rock and clipped the light to my chest to give myself two hands. I slammed the rock full-force against the reinforced glass and, to my surprise, the rock cracked while the window remained untouched. Even if I¡¯d chipped it, the glass looked like it was at least 3 inches thick, with multiple layers of wire mesh inside of it.


    [No good, huh? Um, the stone next to the door, maybe?]


    I doubted the creators of such a cell would have such a huge oversight but it was the last thing to try, except maybe tunnelling in. I found a suitable rock again and chipped away at a tiny chunk of the rock wall, having more success with rock vs. rock than against the window. Still, as I broke a small chunk away, it was apparent that behind the rock was more reinforced wall, same as the doors and windows frames.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯m getting in there without opening the door,¡± I said.


    [It should be open, just needs power.]


    I had a small deulith cell in my lamp, but didn¡¯t think that was going to cut it. Still, couldn¡¯t hurt to try. ¡°Uh, power where?¡±


    [Metal service panel in the floor, at the far end of the windows.]


    I walked the dozen or so feet along the windows wrapping around the medical room until at the end, I saw the service panel she spoke of. My trusty rock made short work of the halfway-open rusted metal grate, but inside¡­well, if I thought the mass-fab was in good shape, this stuff was immaculate.


    ¡°I see an emergency power hookup, but¡­well¡­this won¡¯t work. Let¡¯s try anyway.¡±


    [(Please work¡­)]


    I attached the leads to my cell, and waited. Nothing happened. I looked further inside the panel for any other hints, and found what may have once been instructions, now almost completely corroded away. There was what looked like a crank and a dozen cores in there.


    The crank, despite being in excellent shape and seemingly devoid of rust, gave only the most reluctant of turns. I was able to spin it only a couple times before my arms gave out, and once I stopped, I heard an imposing metal slam. I went to check the doors, and found, thankfully, the first door was still open. If that closed, I was just done for, and maybe I should be a little more careful playing with the machines in here.


    But more interestingly, there was a line in the dust in front of the second door. Almost like the door had opened briefly and shut again, and the force of it closing disrupted the dust. Maybe the crank had worked? But there was no way to hold it and get into the room at the same time, or even if there were, to escape the room again afterwards.


    [Hmm. Yeah, I agree,] Saga said.


    ¡°What?¡±


    [If you did manage to turn it and get in, you¡¯d just be trapped, too.]


    ¡°Are you reading my thoughts, Saga?¡±


    [No. Well, yes. It¡¯s hard not to, when you¡¯re practically shouting them in some continuous narrative.]


    ¡°Pretty sure I told you to knock it off.¡±


    [It¡¯s not the kind of thing I can just knock off, okay? I know this may be shocking to a human but the ways you do things aren¡¯t intrinsically how the world operates.]


    ¡°Whatever. You read my mind, I told you not to, I¡¯m outta here.¡±


    [Hang on.]


    ¡°What now?¡± I asked. I was annoyed with her. I kind of expected the mind-reading¡­if I had that kind of ability, I¡¯d probably use it every chance I got too. But dragging me in here to open an impossible door, without even an idea of how to get started? It was a waste of my day, when I might not have a lot of days left.


    [Go back to the service panel.]


    I mentally berated her as I went, hoping she was still listening.


    [If you look down and right¡­further down, on the floor. No, further right. There.]


    I swept the area with my lamp and then my light hit a strange shaggy shape. It was like a pile of¡­tiny flesh trumpets? A big ball of them, made of brown flesh, all twisted and pointed upwards. Definitely one of the most bizarre things I¡¯d ever seen, but it just sat there, completely still and alien.


    ¡°What the heck is that thing. Is that you, Saga? Are you this thing?¡±


    [Ew. Don¡¯t be mean. That¡¯s a mushroom¡­a really big one. It¡¯s edible¡­but might not taste so great. Mice eat it sometimes, and they seem to do okay.]


    ¡°You watch mice eat mushrooms?¡±


    [When you¡¯re not around, I¡¯ve got to read someone¡¯s mind, right?]


    She was definitely the weirdest thing I¡¯d ever heard of, but she¡¯d upheld her end of the bargain and I hadn¡¯t. I pulled the entire fungus thing up at the root, and it was very nearly the size of my torso. As it moved, the trumpets wiggled unappealingly, but knowing it was just a bunch of mushrooms, it was¡­well, it was still pretty gross. But I could kinda see how each trumpet thing was mushroom-like?


    I stuffed it in my bag and followed my footsteps back to the surface.


    ¡°Thanks for this, Saga. I¡¯ll come by again sometime.¡±


    [Please do. The mice are nice and all but they get boring.]


    I stopped and hesitated. ¡°Uh, Saga. Did you want me to eat some of this here?¡± I jiggled the bag holding the mushrooms.


    [Um. (Gross!) Pass. Thanks for the offer.]


    I was starving, so I ripped off a few of the spongy trumpets and stuffed them in my mouth as I left. They were¡­not great, but not terrible. Very dense yet pliable, kind of the consistency of gum that had already been chewed and was now simultaneously wet and hard. It had an overwhelmingly earthy flavor, very one-note. As I chewed, I felt Saga shudder and laughed to myself.


    ¡°Was that a good shudder or a bad shudder?¡± I asked.


    [Not¡­bad. The texture is really something though. Thank you for trying it, I guess.]


    ¡°I¡¯m guessing, whatever you are, it isn¡¯t something that eats food?¡±


    [Yep.]


    ¡°So you like reading my mind when I¡¯m doing it?¡±


    [Yeah, you got it.]


    ¡°Well, if I find anything really exciting out here, and that¡¯s a pretty long shot, I¡¯ll make sure to swing by so you can try it.¡±


    [I would¡­appreciate that (not sure why he¡¯s being so nice, but okay).]


    ¡°I guess I¡¯m apologizing for snapping at you. I can¡¯t really tell you to keep out of my head if that¡¯s how you live.¡±


    [Athan, (why am I telling a human this?) to be totally honest with you,] I got a sensation of a long, weary sigh [If I could not go into your head, I¡¯d do it in a heartbeat.]

 013. 2251, Two weeks ago. Undisclosed location. Blackett.

    I slammed the phone down onto its cradle. It had been over a week since the Exhuman event, and I was still being berated by every officer with more clout than myself. I was getting calls from people not even involved in the event. It seemed people on other continents were calling me just so they could join the ever-growing ranks of those who wanted to let their opinions be known about how badly I¡¯d botched the op.


    I didn¡¯t care. I took their criticism with the same impartial, impassive, apathy as I took everything they said.


    Even as my phone rang again, It was easy to do, when I knew that they knew nothing.


    Athan Ashton, the Exhuman event in question. He was strong, yes, much stronger than I had anticipated. I was curious about the extent of his abilities, but he never showed them to us, just killed a dozen of my soldiers, and another ten or so of the base facility, while injuring dozens more¡­all without even trying.


    Regardless of what potential his powers may have held, he would never use them to fight. He was just a sickly manchild with a warped sense of justice in his undeveloped teenage brain. I did not care how great his potential was if he never would reach it.


    I wouldn¡¯t say this in my report, of course. I had submitted a draft earlier, but it had been rejected as it ¡°insufficiently displayed self-evaluation and personal accountability regarding the officer¡¯s decision-making during the event.¡± So now I got to write it again, but with more grovelling and apologizing for my soldiers¡¯ deaths.


    It did not matter. I could be humble if I had to be. The deaths were unfortunate in that my capabilities would be reduced until new soldiers could be recruited and trained, and being at full capacity at all times was essential in the event of a new Exhuman event, but otherwise I didn¡¯t feel any distress for the fallen. They had done their somewhat unfortunate duty, as had I.


    ¡°Yes sir, understood,¡± I said, hanging up the phone again. It would not ring again, it was 4:30 on a Friday, and there was no reason for anyone with any importance to stay later than necessary. I picked up my military cap off my desk and tucked it under my arm, while picking up my briefcase.


    ¡°Blackett, sir,¡± my secretary said as I walked past her desk as a farewell. I ignored her as always. Nor did I speak to my driver as he took me home, nor my servant who welcomed me home and helped me change clothes. Out of the trim military uniform, and into a pair of workout pants, with a freshly-folded towel delivered on a platter.


    I thought of the Exhuman boy Athan and kicked the sandbag. I thought of Athan and kicked the sandbag. I thought of Athan and kicked the sandbag.


    I thought of the faces of all the men who¡¯d called me the past week and kicked the sandbag. One at a time, I remembered each call I¡¯d gotten in sequence and kicked the sandbag. Monday. Director Leary. Kick. Director Connell. Kick. Director Hizuba. Kick. Wilkes. Firstaad. Albion. Kick, kick, kick. When I reached the end of the day, I changed legs.


    At the end of the week, I stopped. My legs ached. Sweat streamed down my neck and clung to every crevice in my abs. And I¡¯d very nearly kicked Athan out of my mind.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    It wasn¡¯t enough, apparently. As I sat down and drank the glass of juice brought by another servant, I pulled up a copy of Athan¡¯s file on my desk holo. Just some light reading.


    As I thought, his numbers were disappointing. Only a 3.2 on the Prather Index. High scores in physical attack and one of the higher scores for physical defenses I¡¯d ever seen, but zeros across the board in most other categories. Threat level, psychological damage, speed, area of disruption¡­I was sure if the boy turned on his powers and gunned it, he would destroy some of these metrics. Lightning powers, and a zero for speed? Unlikely.


    I forced myself to put the profile away again. I didn¡¯t know why this weak, obedient Exhuman had grated on me so much. Like most nowadays, he¡¯d turned himself over without question. The youth indoctrination policies were nothing if not effective, which made my job much easier. But still, to see one so strong, who could eradicate a squadron with a single thought¨Ca tall order for Ashton with only an estimated 5 on physical attack, but within the realm of possibility¨Cto see one crumble so meekly, it made my stomach churn.


    Even after I¡¯d tried to kill him, against all protocols, and violating the Ramanathan Laws, still he did nothing.


    I truly loathed all Exhumans, I thought as I bid a servant to bring me something to settle my stomach.


    I pulled up the files for the other Exhumans brought in recently. Girl in Cairo with hydrokinesis, 7.3 on the Prather Index. Boy in Kansas with the Superman kit: 8.1. Old man in Morocco who created an event, only a 3.4 with self-cloning powers, had to level the block just to weed him out. Nothing high or specific enough for what I had in mind, but all tons better than Ashton. Why was I always given the boring cases?


    I flipped to his file again, hating myself for doing it again. The boy may be boring, but he was the only one alive of these four cases. Morocco had been killed on-site, but Cairo and Kansas were silently executed after a month in confinement, as per protocol. Maybe that was what irked me, just knowing that he was still out there somewhere. His exact location was purportedly need-to-know only. I could get the record if I wanted, but from past experience, his low threat level, and his difficulty to kill, he had probably been dropped in one of the irradiated exclusion zones from the Sino wars, and left unhindered. Given the deal that if he ever came back, he¡¯d be put to death on the spot.


    I vaguely hoped he¡¯d come back. I did not like loose ends.


    I sat and mused for a while, weighing possible options against the possibility of spending yet more of my life being berated by superiors. As much as I did not care about their opinions, I still needed their cooperation, unfortunately, and being demoted or pulled off active duty could compromise everything I¡¯d worked towards thus far.


    But still. That boy.


    It wasn¡¯t his meekness or surrender which stung me so, I realized. It was his defiance, and more, his successful defiance. There was steel in him, and he showed it by standing up to me, not once, but twice. But he did so with words, in a calm and reasoned manner, behaving, for all intents and purposes, like a moral human.


    Which is something I knew no Exhuman could be.


    I wanted to see him draw that steel, to fight with all that he had. His powers were strong, but if the Exhuman behind them was weak¡­well, then he deserved nothing more than death. He was useless to me. But if he could be provoked, honed¡­


    I picked up my phone and dialed.


    ¡°Hello. I would like to place a bounty. Exhuman. Athan Ashton. Yes, I will wait.¡±


    I pulled up his file again, out of necessity this time. And then began reading off the sparse details from the page.


    ¡°Yes, only 3.2. He should be in one of the exclusion zones but I don¡¯t have a more specific location. 30 million, dead only.¡± I paused for a moment, considering the best way to hone my steel. ¡°Put a special bonus of 5 million for each conflict before the final one. Yes, I want the hunter and the prey to get very well acquainted before they kill him.¡±


    I hung up the phone, the contract set. The broker¡¯s last words were still with me.


    I am a sick one.


    Oh well, I thought, putting away Ashton¡¯s file with a note of finality. It¡¯s not like I truly cared what humans thought of me anyway.

 014. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I was happy to hear I wasn¡¯t alone in thinking the mushroom colony was disgusting-looking. AEGIS validated my opinion exuberantly. But it was sustenance, and I needed to eat.


    It was the morning after visiting Saga and I was ¡®enjoying¡¯ my breakfast, spending more time chewing the damn thing than eating it.


    ¡°Alright. Time for my great reveal, I think. A ticket to your improved life, and hopefully, my freedom,¡± AEGIS said, finishing something up on the terminal. She cracked her knuckles with a flourish.


    ¡°That,¡± she said, gesturing in the direction of the mass-fab ¡°is what we in the ¡®biz refer to as a ¡®broken piece of junk.¡¯ I¡¯ve spent the last couple of days hacking together a primitive mass-fab driver, and if you can hook me up, I should be able to make the thing go.¡±


    ¡°Wow. Do you have any blueprints, or will we have a fixed piece of junk?¡±


    ¡°Your roommate happens to be a super-genius. Well, a regular genius with a wall of computing power in front of her. So while I won¡¯t be able to download anything fancy off the ¡®net, I should be able to make some simple things for you. We can do some test runs and hopefully refine it a bit, and then we can hopefully make some simple things for me.¡±


    ¡°What kinds of simple things for you?¡±


    ¡°The kind I¡¯ll tell you about if phase one of my master plan works.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t be coy now.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s less a matter of being coy, and more a matter of saving face if my plan is a huge flop.¡±


    Under her directions, I spliced together a couple of dozen wires and stuck them in tiny pinholes in one of the ports on the AEGIS box, and their sisters on the mass-fab.


    ¡°So, hopefully this goes without saying, but what we¡¯ve made is an electrical engineer¡¯s worst nightmare. Thankfully there¡¯s no other electronics running in¡­anywhere, so that¡¯s one less source of interference, but anything from solar radiation to moving the wires too close to each other could send corrupt data.¡±


    ¡°So in other words, there¡¯s no way this is going to work.¡±


    ¡°Bzzt. Wrong-o. You forgot one very important fact.¡±


    ¡°That my roommate is a super-genius?¡±


    ¡°Hey, you got that one right at least. I wrote this driver, so I get to dictate how it works. I made up my own little protocol based loosely on how the old ¡®net used to work, which basically says that whenever I send it data, it sends it back to confirm it got it right. And I¡¯ll keep resending until I¡¯m sure the whole thing is right, and then we¡¯ve got our build.¡±


    ¡°Sounds great. Sounds foolproof. Why¡¯d they stop using it for the ¡®net if it¡¯s so smart?¡±


    ¡°¡®Cuz it¡¯s sloooow. Also ¡®cuz now you just download a quantum entanglement binding and you stream infinite data with perfect reliability. Takes all the guesswork out of it.¡±


    ¡°You remember all this stuff, but don¡¯t remember how you got in that room?¡±


    She shrugged and rolled her eyes. ¡°I don¡¯t get to choose what I remember. Now let¡¯s fire it up.¡± She punched in a few commands and¡­nothing exciting happened. ¡°Hmm, important first step. Please turn the mass-fab back on. There we go. And now¡­¡±


    This time, the mass-fab¡¯s holo displayed a spinning figure-eight icon and a progress bar. I noted with some dismay that the bar didn¡¯t seem to be moving.


    ¡°And we¡¯re live.¡±If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    ¡°It¡¯s working?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s working.¡±


    ¡°The progress bar isn¡¯t moving.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s because it¡¯s slow.¡±


    ¡°How slow?¡±


    ¡°Very slow. Like, a day or two maybe.¡±


    ¡°That long?¡±


    ¡°Hey, at least it¡¯s automatic. I¡¯m the one who gets to babysit it, so you can go off and smooch your ghost friend or eat mushrooms or whatever.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think you can even smooch a ghost,¡± I said. Still, Saga did have a nice sultry voice, when she wasn¡¯t trying to channel her inner goddess. And the way I sensed her move, it was a little sensation like being inside her. I guess that¡¯s exactly what it was like, if I was brushing her surface-level thoughts, when she experienced something like shuddering or shrugging, it was exactly like being in her body.


    My mind immediately went to, if she had a body, what other sensations might I/we read off each other¡¯s minds.


    ¡°You¡¯re thinking about smooching a ghost, aren¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°NOPE!¡± I said, standing up and taking a short walk around the room.


    ¡°I know I¡¯ve said this before in exactly as many words, but OMG you are such a perv. Your brain is a one-track lane to the gutter.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t bring up smooching anyone, okay? That was all on you.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, but I¡¯m not the one standing there sprouting wood, am I?¡±


    ¡°Hey! The progress bar moved!¡±


    ¡°Smooth save.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I try. It says 1%.¡±


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s been,¡± she hit a few keystrokes. ¡°Only about 45 seconds. So looks like the shielding in this building is better than I¡¯d hoped, and we¡¯ll be done before lunch.¡± She stopped and, cocked her head. ¡°Hey, what is this building?¡±


    ¡°Oh. Sorry, it¡¯s an old supply room I think. Reinforced concrete mostly, set halfway into the ground.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Why is there a reinforced concrete supply room set halfway into the ground?¡±


    ¡°Uhhh. I think it was one of the sturdier and more remote buildings in this entire little city that used to be here. Not much left but this place, a couple buildings to the east, and a big ol¡¯ crater.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Um. You might get tired of this game, but why is there a big ol¡¯ crater?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t know for certain, but I think this was a military base that got hit by the Sinos.¡±


    ¡°Oh. I think you know what¡¯s coming next.¡±


    ¡°You really don¡¯t remember the Sinos?¡±


    ¡°Not sure what part of amnesiac you don¡¯t get.¡±


    ¡°Right, sorry. Uh, well, basically there¡¯s a country called China that we had a really bad rapport with for a long time. And by we, I mean this country, the United States. So things were bad for a really long time, and one day, I guess they¡¯d just had enough and bombed a whole lot of the country.¡±


    ¡°Just, for no reason?¡±


    ¡°No reason I know of. This was way before I was ever born, like fifty years or something ago.¡±


    ¡°And then you rebuilt and got far enough along to start exiling people?¡±


    ¡°There was a lot that got destroyed, but there was also a lot intact. There¡¯s this system of satellites and surface defenses that¡¯s called Skyweb collectively. It shot down most of the incoming stuff, but lots of more remote places weren¡¯t protected and got nuked.¡±


    ¡°I see.¡±


    ¡°And then we fired back, had a ton of submarines in the water near China, and they had these new special missiles called Skimmers which flew only a few feet off the ground, so they couldn¡¯t get shot down. Dumped like, thousands of those all over China, and pretty much just destroyed the whole place. They¡¯re still alive and like to threaten us and there¡¯s word they¡¯re planning something else big, but it¡¯s hard to tell what¡¯s real or not on the holo, y¡¯know?¡±


    ¡°I see. So basically, while I¡¯ve been in here, everyone out there has been busy killing each other or worse. Between the wars and the Exhumans.¡±


    ¡°Uh, I¡¯m not sure I¡¯d frame it so pessimistically, but sure. I mean, I personally was playing football.¡±


    ¡°Right up until you killed twenty-one soldiers.¡±


    ¡°¡­yes. Right up until then.¡±


    ¡°Sorry.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not wrong. Just, not the highlight reel of my life that I¡¯d always wanted.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, that was really uncalled for.¡±


    ¡°So what do you remember?¡±


    ¡°Honestly, nothing. Some stuff comes to me, mostly computer stuff, like being able to tell you how to hook up data cables to a mass-fab or script my own drivers. But I don¡¯t really know why or really even that I can until I do it.¡± She shifted uneasily. ¡°And it sucks, OMG does it suck. Like, I know you had your whole life taken away from you, but I feel like I never had one.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, that does suck.¡± I tried to imagine life without knowing anything before. Never having my mom¡¯s cooking or Dad¡¯s awkward man-to-man moments, or Lia¡¯s playful competitiveness. ¡°I don¡¯t think I would even know who I was without all that.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. That¡¯s where I¡¯m at.¡±


    We both stood awkwardly for a few minutes, lost in our own thoughts, avoiding each other¡¯s gaze. It was silent, except the distant sound of birds outside.


    ¡°*Beep* Volume alert. Please keep localized sources of noise to a minimum while machine is in use. Vibrations from loud noises can cause errors during assimilation,¡± said the mass-fab into the silence, helpfully.


    ¡°Well, I guess the data went through.¡± I went to the list of blueprints and found one entry.


    ¡°You like it?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°A new mass-fab high-speed data cable. Just what I¡¯ve always wanted,¡± I said, as I hit the button to begin assimilation.

 015. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Unsurprisingly, the mass-fab was a godsend once we got it working. Excess or inedible food could be broken down into organic molecular bases and recombined at will. Unfortunately, having no blueprints to go off, and with AEGIS being both the only way to make new blueprints, and apparently having terrible taste, we hadn¡¯t gotten further than turning hunks of mushroom into equally disgusting biological goop.


    Still, having a variety of disgusting things to choose from was better than just one. And food didn¡¯t rot while it was sitting in canisters as random molecules, which meant I didn¡¯t have to worry about refrigeration. I hoped that we were one breakthrough away from me being able to eat steak and potatoes for every dinner, but in AEGIS¡¯ words, programming blueprints which tasted good was about as easy as programming a blind robot to replicate a painting using colored sand.


    In order to fuel the experiments, and get a break from eating mushroom for the third day in a row, I was out hunting again. North of the ruins this time, where the woods were deepest; the very opposite end of everything from the bunker.


    I¡¯d already had some small success. I hit a rabbit and slowed it down enough to be able to chase it down and finish it off. Felt like I¡¯d chased the damn thing for an hour, and wasn¡¯t sure it was totally worth it¡­until I remembered what other food options were waiting for me at home.


    I was under a large tree in a clearing, and had my lightning knife out to cauterize the wound and keep it from bleeding all over me on the trip back. Suddenly, I felt a rush of wind and heard what sounded like a very loud, very low airplane. I looked around, confused. Nobody should be out here, wherever here was. If nothing else, they would never exile me to a place where there were other humans around. Or maybe this was one of the two Saga mentioned?


    Still, looking out under the tree, I couldn¡¯t see anything. I still heard it though, a soft roar, like a jet on the runway. But¡­the only place it could be is¡­straight up?


    I dropped my bag under the tree and walked away. There, hovering just above the top of it was a human figure, floating, arms crossed menacingly, suspended by a jetpack with short spindly wings in all directions.


    ¡°Exhuman! Your injustice ends here!¡± she roared, her voice clear and strong even from this distance. The engines of her jetpack flared to life with wisps of blue plasma trailing behind the many wings and traced a spiraling gyre as she dove towards me. I tensed as she flew past me, but she was still well overhead, and gracefully turned to land facing me.


    ¡°You are a creature of sin and an abomination! God has tasked me with cleansing the earth of your kind!¡± she proclaimed, thrusting a finger at me violently. I noticed that she had a rather staggering amount of weapons hanging off each of her arms, guns strapped to each of her legs, and grenades or canisters strapped across her chest, riding the contours of the form-fitting drab-and-camo flight suit hugging her large chest.


    I gave myself the credit of noticing the guns before the large chest.


    Her face was inscrutable. She had a small frown, but was wearing a bulky headpiece which extended from above her nose to her forehead, and covering both ears. It had two thin red horizontal lines which glowed eerily, like a pair of horizontal eyes. Those lines, and the array of short stiff antennae protruding past the back of the visor and behind her ears must gather data of the surrounding area and feed it into her visor giving her increased awareness. It would explain how she was able to find me from the sky, even under a tree.


    ¡°Hey, I¡¯m uh, peaceful,¡± I said, raising both of my empty hands in a placating gesture. ¡°I don¡¯t know about creature of sin and all that, but I¡¯m an Exhuman who turned myself in and isn¡¯t trying to hurt anyone.¡±


    ¡°In fact,¡± I said, feeling a little bold and trying to solve this diplomatically ¡°I can¡¯t even talk to you. It¡¯s against the terms of my exile. So if you could just¨C¡°


    ¡°Do not think to seduce me with lies, vile serpent!¡± she hissed. Her pointing finger became a clenched fist, and one of the several weapons mounted on that arm began to hum. ¡°Do you truly think you could corrupt God¡¯s chosen champion?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not trying to corrupt anyone. I just want to be left alone.¡±


    ¡°All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good to do nothing! You cannot be allowed to exist!¡± She sneered and flipped her head at me, making her short blonde mohawk flip from one side of her visor to the other.


    ¡°Lady, look¨C¡°


    ¡°I am no ¡®lady¡¯, I am Karu. Master bounty hunter and chosen of God. I take no greater joy in this life than blotting the darkness from the light of His world. Darkness such as you, Exhuman.¡±


    She lowered her face towards me, her visor glowing menacingly as she spoke. She was lowering her chin to protect her throat. This was an instinctive stance people took before fighting, and something we had to practice hard to train out of us when going for a tackle¡­way back in football practice. As soon as I saw that, I knew she was ready to attack, and there¡¯d be no talking out of this.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    ¡°I never meant to hurt anyone,¡± I pled.


    ¡°Yet you killed twenty-one. You are a monster, Athan Ashton, and you will be purified.¡±


    I was too stunned by her words to properly move, but my body took over, playing by muscle memory. I saw her hurtle towards me, head down, a blade extended from her wrist in her trailing hand. She would cut with greater force that way, but her attack would be slower and wider, needing to cross her entire body first.


    I spun and rolled toward her leading shoulder, getting inside her reach and spinning off of her. Her momentum carried her forward, where she would have fallen forward if not for the pack keeping her aloft. I turned and instinctively looked for a receiver, but there was nobody. My muscle memory wasn¡¯t all helpful.


    She was diving again, leading with blades on each of her arms now. I didn¡¯t have time to dodge, and there wasn¡¯t a safe part of her to pass. I stood still for a moment too long, and then turned to run, tripping over my own feet. The stumble saved me, as she roared over my prone form, and I could feel myself scream as the jetpack blasted my body into the ground and burned a line straight up my back. Even after she¡¯d passed, I could still feel the burning.


    I put the pain in the back of my mind and rolled to my feet. She¡¯d gone under the tree and was slowly moving forward to avoid collision with it, and I realized this was my chance.


    I didn¡¯t want to fight anyone, including her, but I had been on an emotional edge for weeks now. I had been pushing down the guilt, the pain, the feelings of betrayal, the looks in my parents¡¯ eyes, the still bodies of the XPCA soldiers. Now, in pain, attacked again for doing nothing to anyone, the unfairness of it all just poured out of me.


    Fuck this girl. Fuck her, and her guns and swords and the jetpack she rode in on.


    I roared and felt the lightning coursing through me. I couldn¡¯t see her eyes, obviously, but her mouth was open in a still scream. I could see the terror on her lips, as electricity arced through me. Blades of lightning manifested around me, as though I had a dozen invisible arms holding them aloft, and in my real arms, what felt comfortably like a football, a lightning bulb, solid and yet weightless.


    ¡°You want to come here, pick a fight with me? Stoke your own ego, earn your place in heaven with your god? Make a bounty, kill an Exhuman? Well fuck you, Karu. I am fucking sick and tired of people like you treating me like shit just because one day I woke up different.¡±


    ¡°Hell-born demonic scum!¡± She hissed at me while slowly backing away, nervously checking the tree for clearance. It was almost laughable.


    I lined up my throw. She was practically stationary, and the bulb in my hand felt like it wanted to jump forward of its own accord, ready to surge wherever I directed it with barely a thought. If it hit her, I very much doubted she would survive.


    The second it left my fingertips, it jumped behind her and exploded, making an insane web of arcing bolts and beams of lightning, connecting the tree to the ground in a thousand places and searing them all black.


    She watched the explosion and then turned to me, her mouth agape, her eyes presumably wide behind her visor.


    ¡°I said I didn¡¯t want to fight you,¡± I said. ¡°Now get the hell out of here and don¡¯t come back.¡±


    She swallowed hard and struggled to regain composure. ¡°The darker it gets, the harder the light must fight to overcome it,¡± she said. It sounded like she wasn¡¯t talking to me.


    ¡°Karu, I do not want to fight you. Stand down now.¡±


    My words reminded me of Blackett telling me to stay down, and how much I had burned and chafed at them. I could see the same thing happening now with Karu, how my words were having the opposite effect as she rebelled against them.


    ¡°I will not stop. I will not stand down. I am virtuous! I am with God!¡± she bellowed.


    ¡°Fuck you Karu, don¡¯t make me do this.¡±


    ¡°You do this yourself, serpent!¡± and so saying, kicked on her jets to full and rocketed straight at me, even though she was still under the broad branches of the tree. I could see the small arms of the jetpack making constant micro-adjustments as it desperately compensated against the winds in the enclosed area, buffeting her from every direction.


    I stood waiting for her, a dozen blades of lightning floating in the air around me and one above each hand. It would be so easy, I thought, to close them like the door of a cage and watch her fly into it, slice and electrocute herself to pieces.


    I sighed. So easy. Dad had always told me I was never one to take the easy way.


    I rolled off to the side and let her out of the cage of branches. Her flightpath was erratic, and she seemed to be having problems with the wind as she shot past, and scraped the ground briefly, but then shot high into the sky like a freed bird.


    I strolled back into the sunlight and found her waiting for me past the tree.


    ¡°In addition to being a liar, a servant of the devil, and a blight upon this world, you are also a fool. I would not have let an opportunity like yours pass.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well, you aren¡¯t me. That¡¯s obvious enough. Now are you going to piss off or do I have to take back not-killing you?¡±


    She opened her mouth to begin yelling a response when something in the part of her visor on her ears caught her attention. She touched it with two fingers for a few seconds, as though listening to someone or something, and then gave a slow nod.


    ¡°Your time is extended for now, evil one. I have matters to attend elsewhere.¡± She soared higher above the treetops and hovered for a moment.


    ¡°This is where she gloats and then flies off?¡± I asked myself, as she hung in the air dramatically.


    ¡°But know this! I am a master bounty hunter, and you are my prey. I have your scent. Wherever you may go or hide, I will find you¡­and cleanse you of this earth!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going anywhere, Karu. This place is the only home I have left. Next time, I¡¯m not holding back on you.¡±


    ¡°Next time, you¡¯ll be dead,¡± she promised. And with a deafening blast, rocketed to full speed over the horizon.


    ¡°What an incredibly tremendous bitch,¡± I said, retrieving my dead rabbit from the base of the tree.

 016. 2251, Present Day. Los Angeles suburbs. Lia.

    It had been less than two weeks since the event, and I felt like the whole world had gone insane. It wasn¡¯t Athan going away ¡ª although that hurt like a fresh wound every time I thought about it. It was everyone else. They¡¯d all just turned¡­strange.


    Mom would cry at the drop of a hat. She¡¯d taken to picking up random things in the house and just holding them and crying. Once she¡¯d started, it¡¯s like she wasn¡¯t in the same world anymore. She¡¯d look right through us, ignoring everything we¡¯d say or do to placate her.


    Dad had turned militant, and was always angry and lashing out. I¡¯d learned not to mention Athan in his presence anymore, or else risk him exploding ¡®THAT NAME MEANS NOTHING TO ME!¡¯ which was very convincing of course. But aside from that, it seemed like anything could set him off. One day I got home from school and Dad immediately started screaming at me for leaving something out which had ¡®made my mother cry.¡¯ Which was pretty much anything at this point.


    I began to spend more time at school whenever I could, but even there stuff was messed up. Felt like the whole class had split 80-20% in treating me like I was suddenly made of glass, or thinking I was going to be the next Exhuman and maybe if they bullied me hard enough, I¡¯d jump in front of a metro instead.


    Even the other girls in volleyball, my best friends had become touchy and distant. I felt like we were doing the same things we¡¯d always been doing, hanging out, shopping, studying together, froyo raids, but we were only doing them because they wanted to make sure I was still included in doing all the normal stuff. Like somehow we were actresses playing our own lives, and when we got home they could all take off their masks and breathe easy again now that I was gone.


    It hurt, and the only person I wanted to talk to, to confide in, the only one I could trust¨Cwas supposed to be able to trust, my whole life¨Che was gone.


    Of all people, I think Brick was the only one who noticed. Which was funny, since he and I never got along great. I thought he was an butthead, and he thought I was a brat. But we shared something in common, that Athan had been a huge part of both of our lives. After Athan was gone, he retired from the football team and signed his army papers. At the end of the year, he was off to basic.


    He started spending a lot of time around me, which I didn¡¯t really mind. I felt alone constantly, and having him nearby, well, it didn¡¯t help exactly, but he didn¡¯t bug me, just kind of hung out nearby, so it wasn¡¯t really annoying. I didn¡¯t know what he was up to, but given how bad I felt all the time, I assumed he had his own similar stuff.


    One evening, we were laying on our backs on a hill behind the school. He invited me out there, told me it¡¯s what he and Athan used to do after games and tests, and whenever life got too crazy. He pulled out a cigarette of all things and started smoking it. I had no idea that anyone smoked anymore, much less where you¡¯d be able to get them, but I didn¡¯t mind.


    The sky was beautiful. I was always wrapped up in go-go-going, studying, hanging out, practice, browsing the ¡®net, I never felt like I had ever done this, just stopped and looked at something for so long. The more I laid there, the more stars I could see, first just a few bright ones, but soon, there were stars in every corner of the sky above me.


    I wondered how many times Athan had done this, and if I closed my eyes, I could imagine him laying next to us, the wind rustling his short brown hair, his eyes, the same green and brown as mine, capturing the heavens. Maybe propped up on his strong football arms.


    I started talking. I don¡¯t know why, I didn¡¯t have anything to say, I just had someone I could talk about Athan with for the first time in weeks.


    ¡°We were always competing. At everything, especially the stupid stuff. Like carrying in the groceries. Doing laps in the pool. Running to school. He almost always won, ever since we were little¡­star quarterback with a football scholarship against a little freshman. But I beat him sometimes, when I could outsmart him at something. He got good grades and stuff, but I was always the one trying new things.¡±


    ¡°I remember one day,¡± I said, laughing despite tears welling in the corner of my eyes. ¡°It was halftime in a game and I saw they kept pressuring the left side. Kept running right and harried so he couldn¡¯t get rid of the ball. I told him, why don¡¯t you have your receivers all go left, then you can track them and keep an eye on the breaking line at the same time, instead of trying to run one way and throw another. It sounded stupid, trying to go through their strongest point instead of avoiding it, but Athan trusted me and he tried it. And we got 6 great receptions doing that before they tried to change things.¡±


    ¡°I remember that game. He told us all it was all your idea, but only after it worked.¡±


    ¡°I bet if the play sucked, he would have taken the blame for it.¡±


    ¡°Probably.¡±


    ¡°I remember when I made the volleyball team. He was so proud of me. He¡¯d been helping me do drills out in the back yard for days. At first it was so funny because he was so bad at volleyball, he couldn¡¯t even pass it to me straight. But he hung in there, and I learned a lot of the mistakes he was making, I was making too. We both got so much better. He was joking that he needed to join the volleyball team too so my training didn¡¯t go to waste. He was always supportive like that.¡±Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    ¡°Can you¡­not?¡±


    ¡°Not what?¡±


    ¡°Can you not talk about him?¡±


    ¡°I thought that was why we were here.¡±


    He rolled over on the grass and looked at me seriously, his eyes glittering in the dark. ¡°He¡¯s not here anymore, Lia. You are, and I am. He¡¯s dead and gone and we should forget about him.¡±


    I was shocked. This was not what I expected from Athan¡¯s best friend. ¡°He is not dead, and I will not forget him.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s dead to me, and the world would be a better place if we all forgot him. He was an Exhuman, Lia. Whatever happened before, however great a guy he may have been, he turned. He turned bad, as bad as it gets. You¡¯ve heard the stories, you read the books. The freaking nursery rhyme even, Monday be like me, Tuesday evil be, Wednesday seems alright, Thursday starts a fight¡­¡°


    ¡°Of course I¡¯ve heard all of that. But do you believe everything you read? Everything you see on the holo or on the ¡®net?¡±


    ¡°No, but this is bigger than that. You¡¯re just looking for a reason why you can keep thinking your brother is something he isn¡¯t. But he isn¡¯t, not anymore. I heard when they took him in, he killed like, 20 people.¡±


    ¡°I was watching until we got evacuated. He was laying on the pavement with his hands on his head.¡±


    ¡°Then how did twenty people die?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± I chewed my lip. I¡¯d also heard the headcount. People had a gross obsession with how many bodies each event piled up. ¡°But he didn¡¯t kill them. Athan wouldn¡¯t.¡± My vision of Brick¡¯s stern face and glittering eyes began to swim as the tears built up.


    ¡°You think they shot each other? There¡¯s only one way those men died, Lia.¡±


    ¡°I know! I know!¡± I said, as the tears broke and I couldn¡¯t see anything anymore. ¡°I just don¡¯t believe it. I talked to him that night, and he was still looking out for us, trying to protect us from himself.¡±


    I was totally unprepared for what happened next. I was sitting up, wiping my eyes on my arms because my hands were all grassy when I felt Brick moving next to me. His arms came from behind me and enveloped me in a strong, warm hug.


    ¡°You gotta forget about him. He¡¯s gone, but I¡¯m still here for you,¡± he said. Every fiber in my body tensed as I blinked back the tears to regain my vision as fast as I could.


    ¡°Uh, Brick,¡± I said. I didn¡¯t know what else to say. My brain was having a real hard time catching up. Jesus, his arms were strong, and his chest was so firm.


    ¡°I know you¡¯re feeling scared and alone. Me too. But we¡¯ve got each other.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± I said. No! Not okay! My brain screamed at me. I was still recovering from my mental whiplash, and this was not what I needed right now.


    ¡°I-I¡¯m headed to basic in a few months. So we can¡¯t be too serious. But I thought I could¡­be there. Comfort you. Protect you.¡±


    I squirmed out of his strong arms. ¡°Look, Brick, you¡¯re a nice guy¡­sometimes¡­but¡­I just lost my brother, dude. I¡¯m all messed up right now.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, and that¡¯s why you need me most right now.¡±


    ¡°I appreciate it dude, but I don¡¯t think I¡¯m ready for that.¡± I watched as his dimly-lit face eroded from hopeful, to solemn, to dark.


    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t think that really matters,¡± he said, his voice a lot less persuasive and more of a growl. ¡°I talked to your dad and he says he¡¯s worried about you. He wanted me to look after you, make sure you didn¡¯t do anything stupid like your brother. Whether you want it or not.¡±


    ¡°What the hell is that supposed to mean?¡± I shoved him off and got to my feet.


    ¡°Did you know I was the last one to see your brother a human? We were right here, and he just casually blew something up with a lightning bolt like it was nothing. Just showing off. Made this face like I was next, and I ran.¡±


    ¡°He told me you knew. But¡­wait¡­Brick, you didn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°I went straight to the XPCA and told them everything. I probably saved your life already, so the least you could do is be a little grateful¨C¡°


    I slapped him across the face as hard as I could. My hand stung, and what was left of my tears flew from my eyes with the force of the blow. ¡°He trusted you! You were his best frien¨C¡°


    He grabbed my arm and twisted it, making me gasp from pain involuntarily. ¡°I WAS! Until HE changed! I did what was right, I protected you, and I didn¡¯t kill all those people¡± He was behind me, holding my arm so tight I thought it might break. He was yelling in my ears and my legs were weak under me. Abruptly, he let me go and I collapsed in a heap, new tears streaming down my face, stinging like fire. My arm hurt and my legs wouldn¡¯t move.


    ¡°You owe me everything,¡± he spat. ¡°And before I leave here, I am going to collect.¡± I heard his feet on the grass as he stomped away. I couldn¡¯t move, couldn¡¯t breathe, couldn¡¯t think. I just sat and cried until the tears stopped coming and then, in a daze the whole time, followed my feet found myself back at home.


    Mom seemed cheery. Dad ambushed me at the door. ¡°There¡¯s my little spiker,¡± he said. I hated it. I felt like he had to come up with some stupid sports-themed nickname for me just because he gave Athan one. I wasn¡¯t even a spiker, I played the back row.


    ¡°Going to¡­going to bed,¡± I mumbled, trying to stagger my way past the human barricade.


    ¡°Now wait just a minute there missy,¡± Dad said, moving in my way again. ¡°Not until you tell us how things went with Barry.¡±


    ¡°Who? What? It¡¯s been a long day Dad, I¡¯m¨C¡°


    ¡°With Brick,¡± he said. I felt my face wince at the name. I didn¡¯t know how to reply. Everything seemed so messed up right now, and I was tired and felt like my head was heavy and full of fog, and everything hurt from crying too much.


    I didn¡¯t know what to say. The truth was the first thing that came to mind. ¡°He¡­hurt me. And he said, he said he¡¯s going to do more¨C¡°


    ¡°Because you turned him down!?¡± Dad asked. I¡¯d done it now, I¡¯d crossed one of those invisible landmines and set him off. I don¡¯t know what he¡¯d discussed or planned with Brick but whatever it was, I¡¯d clearly messed everything up. ¡°Stupid girl. Stupid fucking child!¡± he screamed, and drew back his hand.


    Mom wailed in the kitchen and Dad turned around to address her. I bolted upstairs and locked my bedroom door before anything else could go wrong. I heard them screaming at each other below me and hid under my blankets, still in my clothes, waiting for the yelling to stop.


    I didn¡¯t know if it was his absence or his leaving which had turned everyone crazy, but more than anything, I just wanted Athan back in my life again. I needed him to make the madness stop.

 017. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    It was hard not telling AEGIS about the encounter with Karu. Every day when I came back, she¡¯d ask about my adventures. I think she was living vicariously through me, which I couldn¡¯t fault her for, being trapped in a single room somewhere. But also, every day before I left, we¡¯d have a brief chat.


    This morning, she¡¯d told me about the probabilities of bear attacks, differing survival rates against different kinds of bears, and how to deal with different bears. Including, for some reason, polar bears, whom I was reasonably certain I would not encounter. Then there was treating wounds from bears, things which attract or frighten bears, and then a whole random diatribe into trained bears. But every day when I left, she¡¯d always end with the same thought: ¡°Be safe out there.¡±


    In a crappy, scary sort of way, I was AEGIS¡¯ whole world. I was her hands outside the room when it came to rewiring machines, her eyes for anything past the camera, I could move her box around and tell her things she¡¯d forgotten. She¡¯d spent, according to her unreliable memory, dozens of years buried in the dirt, with nothing to see or do but watch her camera feeds die out one by one and the cell life of her box every-so-slowly dwindle. If that were true, I wondered how she could possibly still be sane. Maybe the amnesia was a gift.


    But the point was, for any of her plans or to rescue her, or even just to spare her being alone again, I couldn¡¯t die. She never said it in those words, but every time she bid me to be careful out there, I saw the fear of me never coming back in her yellowed, distorted, holographic eyes.


    So I didn¡¯t tell her about the insane bounty hunter who¡¯d sworn to kill me. I hadn¡¯t told her anything more about the voice in my head which had led me to food twice and with whom I¡¯d had some heated arguments. I plied her with tales of the mundane and focused on doing what we could manage. And today, she was ready to unveil her latest breakthrough.


    ¡°This console,¡± she said, gently patting one of the terminals in front of her, like a dog ¡°has an incredible amount of data on it. Lifetimes of knowledge. Enough that, if I could get at it, I¡¯m sure some of it must be useful in helping me figure out who and where I am.¡±


    ¡°Unless it¡¯s all like, the last thousand years of weather data or something.¡±


    ¡°Pretty sure it¡¯s not that, but screw you for making me worry about that now,¡± she pouted. ¡°Anyway, the problem is, I can¡¯t get to it. It¡¯s all encrypted, and this machine seems dead-set on not letting me use it to hack itself.¡±


    ¡°Okay. And?¡±


    ¡°And. As I have mentioned before, I happen to be a super-genius. I have a workaround. This system has a recovery procedure I can take advantage of. If you get me some data encoding crystals and put them in the box, I can stream a backup copy of the data to the crystal. And while it¡¯s streaming, I can tap into the encoding driver to get a dump of the data. Once it¡¯s on media other than this system, I can begin working on decryption, since, y¡¯know, physical data security is nothing compared to digital.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Sounds easy enough,¡± I lied. ¡°Now one more time in English?¡±


    She responded with a ¡°blahhh¡± noise that seemed to require a lot of sticking her tongue out at me. ¡°Okay. You go, get shiny rock. Put rock in mass-fab, that big square machine. Machine go HUMMMM long time. Make shinier rock. Put shinier rock in AEGIS box, me learn many thing. Got it?¡±


    ¡°Could do without the pedantry, but sure. I need to find some crystals, make you a thing, and plug it in, and you do the rest. And this will help you get your memories back?¡±


    ¡°It will help me get into this thing¡¯s data clusters, and that¡¯s kind of like someone¡¯s memories.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Sounds easy enough. So how much rock do you need?¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t be just any rock. Gotta be quartz, and the purer the better. And we need a ton of it, data encoding crystals are a 100% pure quartz lattice, and about as big as your arm, so that¡¯s pretty big.¡±


    ¡°How have I never even heard of these crystals before? Can¡¯t we just plug in a regular core and stream the data to that?¡±


    ¡°These are for like, industrial backups. They¡¯re super-dense and last forever and are way more resilient than commercial storage media. Which is good, because this system has like, exabytes of data. It¡¯s insane. We¡¯d be filling up cores left and right with that kind of data. Instead, we¡¯ll only need a few dozen data crystals.¡±


    ¡°Oh great, only a few dozen.¡±


    ¡°You said you¡¯d help however you could.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, and I meant it. I just thought it might be a little more, gloriously kicking in the door and saving the damsel and less mining rocks for a few years.¡±


    ¡°Well, I know I¡¯d certainly prefer the former too. God knows I¡¯d love to have you here with me.¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡± I asked, feeling my ears turn red as as blush crept onto her face. ¡°And if I were there¡­what would we do?


    ¡°There is this one thing¡­¡± she said, coyly drawing her finger in a circle on her keyboard as her face flushed even further. ¡°I think I¡¯d grab you and pull you in close¡­¡±


    She flushed and paused. ¡°And get a great big hug,¡± she said laughing.


    I laughed with her, and then stopped. ¡°Wow, that turned kind of real and sad at some point. I guess you probably haven¡¯t had a hug in years.¡±


    ¡°Um. Never been hugged. Amnesia, remember? And if you don¡¯t rescue me soon, you¡¯ll never get one either. So we should get on that. For hugs!¡±Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    ¡°Yeah. For hugs. And maybe other stuff too,¡± I said, trying to sound jokingly. But my ears were burning anyway. She flushed and laughed even more.


    ¡°I think we¡¯ll get there when we get there,¡± she said giggling. ¡°Now get outta here before I fall hopelessly in love with you, my brave rescuer.¡± I gave her a final wave and headed for the door. As I passed through I heard her call at my back ¡°And be careful out there!¡±


    It had been a screwy last few days, but I found a smile kept creeping onto my face as I headed east, towards Saga and the mines anyway.


    AEGIS was, despite her incredibly fucked up situation, and the way we were more roommates or pen-pals than anything, pretty incredibly fun to be around. She was funny, cute, smart, perky ¡ª in more ways that one. Which reminded me of when she leaned forward and I got a peek¡­


    I found another stupid grin on my face again and felt a wave of what I can describe only as extreme judgmentalism wash over me.


    [Wow. You are truly disgusting,] intoned Saga¡¯s voice in my head, with all the passion of one admiring a pile of dandruff. [Can¡¯t believe I ever asked for your help in getting me out of that room. I bet you¡¯d have just locked both of us in there and done unspeakable things to me.]


    ¡°With you, everything is unspeakable,¡± I said, gritting my teeth and feeling my ears go red again. Couldn¡¯t I be happy for a few minutes, even in my own head?


    [Very droll. So what brings you to my lair today? If you¡¯re just searching for breasts, I¡¯m afraid mine are off-limits.]


    ¡°You have breasts?¡±


    I could feel her simultaneous defeat and stupefaction at my question.


    [Could it possibly be that you are retarded?]


    ¡°No, I¡¯m serious. I¡¯ve never seen you before.¡±


    [So you¡¯re asking what kind of breasts I have?]


    ¡°No¡­I mean¡­I wouldn¡¯t¡­¡±


    [You wouldn¡¯t mind knowing that, but you honestly didn¡¯t know I had breasts,] she said, pulling together the thoughts I was not going to say. [Wow, you are truly, truly disgusting. Truly, surpassing all possible expectations, even for a teenage boy. You must be astonishingly single.]


    ¡°Hey, shut up!¡±


    [Nice recovery. Very eloquent. So is this your move? You talk to a girl, and instead of talking about her eyes or her smile or hair, you just go HEY GIRL TELL ME ¡®BOUT THEM TITTIES. That about right?]


    ¡°No! I didn¡¯t even know you were¡­human-ish.¡±


    [Oh my god. Wait. Last time, when I pointed you at the gross mushroom thing, you asked if that was me. I thought you were just making a lame joke, but that was serious?]


    I didn¡¯t need to answer. I knew she was already reading my mind. My whole face was burning now, and I was very strongly considering maybe finding another mine somewhere else I could find some quartz. Anywhere else, really.


    [Holy shit that is hilarious. You humans are so amazing at what kinds of delusions you¡¯ll give yourself, but that has got to be the best I¡¯ve ever heard. Best and most embarrassing. You know, I think being locked up down here for a hundred years was worth it, just for that.]


    ¡°Wait¨C¡± I said.


    [Oh no. Not until I¡¯m fully done with this mockery.]


    ¡°No, I wanted to ask. You¡¯re also locked in a room, really?¡±


    [Yeah. Why do you think I wanted you to open the door, dumbass? Just for fun?]


    ¡°Is there a big computer in there with you?¡±


    [No. That¡¯s a really weird question.] I felt a shiver go down my spine and a strong sensation of being watched.


    ¡°Damn it Saga, stop reading my mind and just ask if you want to know something. I hate when you do that. I feel so¡­naked and dirty.¡± I shuddered.


    [Just like that girl from earlier, huh?]


    ¡°Man, just shut up. You are impossible to have a conversation with.¡± I ducked under the fence surrounding the mine facility and headed towards the cave entrance.


    [Yeah, that¡¯s because I already know what you¡¯re going to say, and so it¡¯s really boring when you say it.]


    ¡°Apologies for not being a mind-reader too. Didn¡¯t mean to inconvenience you.¡±


    [So. Quartz huh? Not even going to bother trying to figure out why you need it. Human motivations are always so frustrating and stupid.]


    ¡°Yeah. Can¡¯t you point me towards it like the mushrooms and preserves?¡±


    [No, for two reasons. One, I don¡¯t work for you. Two, I can¡¯t actually see or hear or anything out there. I can learn where things are by riding the senses of animals, or more recently, exceptionally stupid humans like you. But if a rat or whatever can¡¯t tell if a rock is quartz or just a rock, neither can I.]


    ¡°Great. Well, I appreciate the help you¡¯ve given me before. So after I¡¯m done rock hunting here, I brought a present for you.¡± I immediately felt the nervous chill that indicated she was probing my mind. ¡°AND YOU DON¡¯T GET IT IF YOU DO NOT STAY OUT OF MY HEAD,¡± I shouted, my voice echoing through the dark mine corridors.


    [You pissed off the bats. Now they¡¯re making a huge ruckus, thanks.]


    ¡°Your own damn fault for prying in my brain.¡±


    [You¡­may reconsider that in a moment.] I felt gloating in her voice. [Giggle.]


    Sure enough, in a few seconds I heard a wave of indistinct noise, almost like a heavy rain, but louder. And then, pouring into the hallway I was standing in was a monumental wall of bats, pouring through the room like an anti-gravitational snake. The wall overcame me and I could see nothing but flickering blackness, feel thousands of leathery wings buffeting me.


    It was hard to tell facing. I felt like I was standing in a fast-flowing river, and no matter how many times I blinked, I couldn¡¯t see anything but flickering. Things were bouncing off me, harmlessly, but from the darkness. I stumbled and fell, and heard Saga laughing at me.


    [Do try not to yell in the future,] she said, with no mere allusion to gloating anymore.


    ¡°Saga! Damn it, do something!¡± I yelled, unable to hear myself over the swarm.


    [I could. They¡¯re simple animals and easy to direct. But. I won¡¯t. I prefer bats to humans anyway.]


    It was pure blackness now instead of flickering blackness. My lamp had vanished at some point, leaving me in the dark with them. Somehow that was less disorienting. I began to feel around on the ground, crawling under the current of bats. Still couldn¡¯t see anything, and kept feeling around and running into walls.


    I¡¯d never get anywhere in the dark, I thought. I needed my lamp, but it was gone god-knows where. Knowing Saga, she¡¯d probably made sure some of the bats would knock into me and take it.


    Then a thought occurred to me. I felt stupid for not realizing sooner, but I was new at this and kind of still in denial. I¡¯m an Exhuman.


    [(He¡¯s a what?)]


    I lit up my lightning swords and immediately the whole room was flooded with a pale, flickering light. The intensity of the bats¡¯ screeching doubled and the swarm parted and diverted around the sudden pillar of light. I stood up, and the bats gave me a wider berth yet.


    [(HE¡¯S A FREAKING EXHUMAN?)]


    ¡°Saga,¡± I said, wincing. ¡°Stop shouting please.¡±


    [This whole time, after all the shit-talking I did about humans, you never said¡­never even thought about the fact that you are not one of them? Never even considered to mention this to me? (Are you kidding me?)]


    ¡°Yeah. Haven¡¯t really been doing this long. Still tend to think of myself as a regular ol¡¯ boring human, I guess.¡± After a pause, I added with a wry smile ¡°Guess it didn¡¯t cross my mind.¡±


    Saga¡¯s thoughts weren¡¯t even coherent words. Just mental flashes of being flabbergasted, going over every detail of everything I¡¯d said or done, and ultimately total mental defeat. It was nice to experience speechlessness from the outside for once.


    [One thing,] she panted, at last [is apparent. I have badly underestimated and possibly mistreated you. I didn¡¯t know I was dealing with another Exhuman.]


    ¡°Another¡­¡±


    [Yes. I think it¡¯s about time we meet, in a manner.] Her tone turned formal, and I got a distinct impression of her giving me a courteous bow.


    [As you already know, I¡¯m Saga. And I¡¯m an Exhuman. Come to my room and we can talk face-to-face.]

 018. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I was in the room with the reinforced windows overlooking the medical room, deep in the bottom of the mine. The metal door in front of me stood as impenetrable as ever, and obviously, Saga had no means to open it, so I presumed our ¡®face-to-face¡¯ was going to be through the windows.


    A lot of things made a lot more sense, given the context of Saga being an Exhuman. Certainly, building enormous safe rooms in abandoned mineshafts wouldn¡¯t be standard procedure, but if they had a difficult-to-dispose of Exhuman and a mineshaft laying around, why not? Putting her down here also reduced the range of her ability to communicate with telepathy, and, operating on the assumption we were in an Exclusion zone, the odds of anyone walking in were further reduced.


    Still, as I examined the huge intricate locking mechanisms on the enormous door, she had to be an Exhuman of enormous power to warrant this kind of treatment and isolation. Exhumans who could touch the mind were generally regarded as the most dangerous, and the fact she was alive instead of executed probably meant her powers prevented them from being able to do so.


    I thought of the attempts that had been made on my life during my arrest, and grimaced. I¡¯d only been in custody for less than a day¡­she¡¯d spent a lifetime in here, presumably after any number of failed executions. No wonder she always spoke of her distaste for humans.


    [Great, you made it. We¡¯re going to try something here I haven¡¯t done in a while.]


    I thought of how hard it had been for me to speak after only living out here a week, and wondered if that was what she meant.


    [Ha, ha,] she said, [nothing that mundane, I¡¯m afraid. Maybe closing your eyes might help you with the transition.]


    I had no idea what was coming, but given what I knew of Saga¡¯s powers and my dislike for her invading my mind, I was pretty sure I was going to hate it. But I¡¯d come this far, so I closed my eyes.


    I felt enveloped by her power, like I was walking through a weightless velvet curtain. I stood stiff and still for a few moments, waiting for more, but nothing else happened. Cautiously, I opened an eye.


    There was swirling blackness around me. Indistinctly moving, but impossible to see. I opened my other eye and found more of the same, but now in stereo.


    ¡°Saga, where am I?¡± I asked the void. My voice seemed distant like I was hearing it from far away.


    [Technically, you¡¯re right where you were before. All I¡¯ve done is hijack your senses. Sort of the opposite of how I usually ride your consciousness and see what you see. Now you¡¯re seeing ¡ª and hearing, feeling, smelling ¡ª what I want you to see.]


    ¡°Saga, this is super creepy. Please make it stop.¡±


    [Hang on. I¡¯m still working on this.]


    ¡°Not sure you know how creepy this is, just floating in black space.¡± I looked down and saw nothing, not even my body. I put a hand in front of my eyes. Nothing. Wait. Some of the imperceptible shifting blackness moving where my hand should be. I focused on it, and was barely able to make out the outline of my hand.


    [Yeah, some of your own sensory input is still bleeding through. Can¡¯t quite cut you out of your own body altogether, but it¡¯s pretty close.]


    ¡°Well that is just great to hear. So, about letting me out¨C¡°


    [This should do it,] she said, and a floor appeared under me. Smooth and featureless, like white glass. My body reappeared as well, hand still in front of my face. [Trying to give you something to orient on so you¡¯ll stop bitching.]


    ¡°I am a fan of having a body.¡±


    The glass floor began to fill in with details, strewn with dirt and small chunks of rock, and then walls emerged from the darkness, solid rock, carved out with deep straight gouges. The walls of the mine. Details began to appear, spiderwebs of reinforcing wire mesh skittered across the windows, the lighting became moody and dark, and finally the great metal door appeared. But this time, it was open like the first door to the room, instead of an impassible barrier.


    ¡°You¡­opened the door?¡±


    [No,] she said and I got the sensation of a frustrated sigh. [We¡¯re still in my mind. This is just a recreation that you¡¯re experiencing.]


    ¡°It looks¡­really real.¡±


    [I¡¯ve spent a lot of time in here memorizing it.]


    Her words made my stomach drop a little, but she seemed either resigned or accepting of her situation.


    [Come on in,] she invited, the door looming enticingly. I found it both easier and harder to move in this world than the real one. My body reacted more to the intention of me moving than to actual movement, but underneath the illusion, I could feel my real body trying to move but paralyzed by Saga¡¯s power.


    ¡°Saga, if this has any side-effects on my body¡­¡± I warned. It was a stupid empty threat. I was entirely in her world here, and I was just grasping at anything. In response, she laughed in a way that was only completely evil-sounding. I willed myself to walk through the door.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Inside was a small room which looked like it was used for surgery. There were large lamps on tripods stationed around the room, stainless wheeled surgical carts, covered in ages of dust, cables running across the floor.


    But in the middle of the room, instead of an operating table was a large metal case which looked like a coffin. There was a line down the middle, lengthwise, which looked like it would allow the two halves of the top to swing open, though only if the large manual locks on top were disengaged first. Inset at the top of the coffin was a small window. I was hesitant to approach, but saw nothing else I could do.


    The locks on the coffin turned on their own and the lid split and opened, dumping the accumulated layer of dust into the air. Once it had cleared, I peered in, and a girl waved back at me.


    ¡°Hullo,¡± she said, the same voice as I¡¯d heard in my head so many times before. ¡°Third sorta-introduction now, so you¡¯re probably getting tired of this, but I¡¯m Saga. Nice to meet you.¡±


    ¡°Hi¡­Saga. Is this what you actually look like?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Yeah pretty sure. Don¡¯t exactly have a mirror or anything but I did the best I could.


    She had straight black hair that pooled around her in repose and went down to below her shoulders, slanted eyes that looked black in the light, and a narrow face. Everything about her was narrow. Her hands and feet looked bony and large, and her arms and legs, long and spindly. She didn¡¯t look malnourished, just thin and pale.


    She was wearing what looked like a dark blue, one-piece prison jumpsuit with a zipper from the side of the collar which rose halfway up her slender neck, down the across one breast and ending above her thigh. On opposite leg and shoulder were a series of vertical numbers and characters, and a logo identifying her as XPCA property.


    She smiled at me, but before I could come to any sort of sensible response, I spat out ¡°You¡¯re a Sino?¡±


    Her shy smile became a frown and she arched an eyebrow. ¡°A what?¡±


    ¡°A Sino. Chinese.¡± I took a hesitant step backwards.


    ¡°What does that have to do with anything?¡± she gave a frustrated sigh. ¡°We¡¯re two Exhumans meeting and working together for the first time¡­ever, that I know of. This should be exciting for us¡­?¡± She trailed off, maybe feeling my thoughts.


    ¡°I don¡¯t work together with Sinos,¡± I said darkly.


    ¡°Because there are so many other people here willing to work with you?¡± She gestured to the empty room. ¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t understand? What is there to understand? Your people attacked us and killed hundreds of millions, without warning, for no reason.¡± Her eyes darted across my face, and I saw a flicker of a smile for a moment.


    ¡°You¡¯ve got to be joking. China would never do that. That¡¯d be suicide for everyone.¡±


    ¡°It was suicide for everyone. Only some of our major cities survived, because Skyweb shot down so many of your missiles. Then America struck back and basically wiped China off the globe.¡±


    ¡°They weren¡¯t my missiles, Athan. I¡¯ve never even heard of this.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re LYING!¡± I shouted, slamming a fist into the coffin and sending a plume of dust flying. ¡°The Sinos attacked fifty years ago, and afterwards, every single remaining Sino was rounded up and deported. Right back to the crater of China.¡± I let out a terse, mirthless laugh. ¡°I don¡¯t know a single person whose family wasn¡¯t destroyed in that war. And you, a Sino, never even heard of it?¡±


    ¡°Athan¡­¡± she began. I held out a hand and took a steadying breath. I was feeling the blood pounding in my head. The vision of this world swirled around me. ¡°Athan, I¡¯m sorry. That sounds terrible. But it wasn¡¯t you out there, and it wasn¡¯t me either. You weren¡¯t alive yet¡­and I¡¯ve been locked in here for almost a hundred years now.¡±


    ¡°You expect me to believe that?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t really care if you do or not. But it¡¯s true. I have been in this room all my life. For almost a hundred years. I was buried under the earth through your Sino wars.¡± She sighed and frowned, and I felt the world spin momentarily, before it dissolved back into the darker, dustier real world, and I found myself in my real body back outside the closed door.


    [I¡¯m not going to pretend I¡¯m not disappointed. I was hoping for¡­well, more.]


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, Saga. Maybe you¡¯re right. Maybe you¡¯re not. I don¡¯t know. I need some time to think about it.¡±


    [I didn¡¯t do anything,] she pled, making me think of myself uttering the very same words to Blackett. Back then, I felt so angry but helpless, so powerful but impotent, watching people slip away in front of me without being able to do a thing. How much of that was she feeling now, with me slipping away?


    ¡°I¨C¡± I hesitated. I was trying to put things back where they were. Somehow, everything had been so much better before I¡¯d seen her face. Before I¡¯d heard her lies, or words, or whatever they were. ¡°I¡¯m sorry Saga. I just¡­don¡¯t know. We¡¯ve heard stories about Sinos our whole lives, about the lives you took, how inhuman and senseless it all was. And the more I grew up, and more I learned, and the more I agreed. The Sinos were just evil and wrong.¡±


    [Sounds kind of the same as what your opinion of Exhumans was.]


    I agreed, of course. I hated Exhumans so much that when I discovered I was one, I gave myself up, even though it likely meant death.


    [So¡­why is it you hate me for being a Sino, but not for being an Exhuman?]


    I didn¡¯t know how to reply. Was it just as simple as the fact that I was Exhuman myself? I tried to think about how I would have perceived Saga back when I was human, but everything about our meeting was so alien and bizarre there would be no way I could contextualize that.


    I felt my head spinning in circles as my prejudice and hypocrisy chased away any sense of self-respect I had left. The fact that Saga was privy to all my thoughts through this just added to my frustration. I felt like I had to make a clear decision, and quickly, because every passing second just reinforced my own position as a terrible bigoted asshole.


    [Athan, I think you should go home.]


    ¡°Telling me what to do now?¡±


    [No. (Well, yes.) But you¡¯re confused right now and need time to process this all. And more, you need to do it away from me. If you come to a conclusion here and now, you¡¯ll always wonder if I mucked up your mind and tricked you, and that¡¯s not what I want. (Sigh.) So go home, think over what you saw here today, and¡­come back when you¡¯ve had some time to think?]


    Part of me definitely wanted to not do that, just because it was what she suggested, but it also happened that getting out of here was exactly what I wanted to do most. I didn¡¯t know what to do. I hated these head games, it reminded me of every time I¡¯d lost to Lia because she¡¯d completely outmaneuvered me.


    ¡°Saga¡­I¡­you¡¯re right. I have a lot to think about.¡± I thought about adding that I¡¯d be back, but I knew I couldn¡¯t promise that. And I knew she knew that, and let me walk out anyway.


    She didn¡¯t say anything else, though I could feel she wanted to. When I got to the mine entrance, I found my dropped lamp on the floor, next to a big hunk of rock which wasn¡¯t in the doorway when I¡¯d entered. I turned it over experimentally and saw a crystalline glimmer. Quartz?


    [(I hope that¡¯s what he was looking for¡­)] Saga thought. I certainly didn¡¯t know, but shoved the huge rock into my bag anyway. It was larger than my head, and incredibly heavy. We¡¯d know if it was what I needed when the mass-fab dissimilated it.


    But the weight on my shoulders as I trudged home was the last thing on my mind.

 019. 2149, 102 years ago. Chicago suburbs. Saga.

    I was 9. I woke up one day in my bed and could hear the voices. Hundreds of them, whispering, shouting, pleading, making excuses. I didn¡¯t know whose voices they were, and even if I put my head under my pillow, they wouldn¡¯t go away.


    I told Mom and she didn¡¯t say anything, but I heard her voice saying that I was lying again and I was the worst child and why her? I don¡¯t know why she was saying these mean things, but she didn¡¯t say them, the voices did. She said I had to go to school but I wouldn¡¯t. The voices were too many and too loud and too scary. She was mad and I could hear her voice yelling at me, calling me a waste of time and space.


    She had to take the day off work and drive me to the doctor. Her voice said this was a waste of money, but also that she was happy to not have to work today. I asked her if she was happy to not have to work today and she gave me an angry look and told me no. The voices must lie.


    We drove to the city, and the closer we got, the more voices there were. Soon there were thousands of them, and I could hardly hear my own thoughts. I didn¡¯t want to complain to Mom because I knew she¡¯d just tell me I was being bad.


    We arrived and parked in an underground lot and I started breathing funny. I didn¡¯t like the dark, I didn¡¯t like being underground. I felt like the ceiling was coming down to get me and I¡¯d be stuck and crushed. Then we took an elevator and it wasn¡¯t better. I didn¡¯t like the small, enclosed places I couldn¡¯t see or get out of. I just closed my eyes and focused on the voices.


    We had to wait a long time in the doctor¡¯s office, and the voices talked to me the entire time. Mom¡¯s voice was the loudest, but if I listened closely, I could hear individual people¡¯s voices, though I didn¡¯t know whose voice was who¡¯s. The man at the desk was going through files and entering records into the computer, and I could hear a voice that was a man¡¯s which was repeating things over and over which I thought might be his.


    [Cameron, 33185, full coverage. Campbell, 42810, full coverage. Carpenter B, 33948, full coverage. Carpenter P, 11029, full coverage. Chambers, 20584, out of network. Clark without an e, 49301, full coverage. Clarke with an e, 19203, full coverage.]


    I walked over and heard mom¡¯s voice say she was probably going to get in trouble and was going to be mad at me. I saw the man pick up a file, read it, and as he did, heard the voice.


    [Coates, 27109, full coverage. Why isn¡¯t this kid¡¯s mom taking care of her? Collins, 19183, full coverage.]


    He put the latest file in a stack with the others and I saw the name on the tab said Collins, Benjamin. I wondered how the voice knew the name on the file.


    [Why¡¯s this kid staring at these files? Her mother is just sitting there ignoring us. Am I going to get in trouble for her looking at people¡¯s PHR?]


    ¡°What¡¯s PHR?¡± I asked.


    He looked at me and frowned. ¡°Where did you hear that, little missy?¡±


    ¡°The voices told me. What is it?¡±


    [Well, at least I know why she¡¯s here now. Poor little kid, in here at her age.]


    ¡°PHR is Personal Health Record,¡± he said. ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯ve got in these files here. Everybody who visits this office has a file here, and we keep them up-to-date with the system on the computer so other doctors can see anything we find so they can help you better.¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t ask to look at one because I don¡¯t want to get you in trouble.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a funny kid,¡± he said. [What a freaky little kid,] his other voice said. [Why isn¡¯t her mother keeping a leash on her? Can¡¯t she see I¡¯m busy here?]


    ¡°Uh, thanks mister. I can let you work,¡± I said and gave a polite bow. He seemed confused, but we didn¡¯t have much longer before the doctor let us in.


    ¡°So, what seems to be the problem?¡± She asked with a congenial smile, looking back and forth between me and mom. I tried to find a voice which sounded like hers, and heard it saying something about the last patient she was talking to, and how hot his arms were. It was a strange thing for the voices to say, and I had to remember that I learned already that the voices lie.


    ¡°This little one is big trouble,¡± said my mom, plopping a hand on my head, messing up my hair. ¡°She say she hearing voices, won¡¯t go to school. I wonder, why no hearing voices last week, only on Monday she hearing voices. Want more weekend, I think. Isn¡¯t that right, rotten child?¡±


    ¡°No mom. I really hear them.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s not jump to conclusions. Hearing voices is actually a very common issue, and in most cases is not linked to psychosis or schizophrenia like everyone assumes. I¡¯ll talk to¡­¡± she glanced at her clipboard. ¡°¡­to¡­little Saga here, and we¡¯ll figure out how to make her all better, okay?¡±


    She was smiling, but the voice inside her head was talking about the man¡¯s firm butt and saying mean things about my mother. I just nodded.


    ¡°Good girl. Now, you are welcome to stay,¡± she said, addressing my mother ¡°but I¡¯m going to have to ask you to just observe. I¡¯m going to need to hear your daughter¡¯s own answers.¡± She separated us and put me on a tall bed covered in crunchy paper, while Mom sat in the corner, looking bored. Mom¡¯s voice also sounded bored, and kept calling me a rotten child.


    ¡°So how long have you been hearing the voices? Are there lots of them or mostly just one?¡± She looked at something she stuck in my ears and then blinded my eyes with a flashlight while she talked.


    ¡°I woke up this morning and heard them. And there are so many voices. Hundreds of them. I can¡¯t even hear myself think, most of the time. It¡¯s like a really noisy room, all the time.¡±


    ¡°When you get angry or sad or confused, and if you haven¡¯t done any of that yet, that¡¯s okay, but if you do, do the voices also get angry or sad or confused with you?¡±Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°Rotten child is always confused. Always lying to get in trouble,¡± Mom said. I shirked and blushed.


    ¡°Ma¡¯am, I need to hear your daughter¡¯s answers. Please don¡¯t cut in,¡± she said, with a gentle smile. [Stupid mouthy bitch, I bet if your kid does have issues, it¡¯s because of you.]


    ¡°The voices don¡¯t change with my feelings. They change with other people¡¯s feelings.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Like, there¡¯s a voice that sounds like you, but in my head. And when you talked to Mom just now, the voice¡­it¡­it said a bad word.¡±


    ¡°The voices use bad words?¡± she asked with a frown. ¡°Do they yell at you? Do they threaten you or tell you to do things?¡± She was scribbling away on her clipboard, and her other voice sounded as urgent and concerned as her writing.


    ¡°No, they ignore me usually. They talk about silly things mostly. Like before, your voice was talking about your last patient¡¯s butt, and what it wanted to do with it.¡±


    She opened and closed her mouth several times without saying anything.


    ¡°And his arms, too.¡±


    ¡°Rotten child, you embarrass us. Stop talking to¨C¡± The doctor shushed her by waving her away.


    ¡°Sweetie,¡± said the doctor, ¡°do the voices¡­actually, let¡¯s just focus on the voice that sounds like me. Does it say many, many things? Maybe it¡¯s just making lucky guesses.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s con-confirm¡­ation bias?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Where did you hear that?¡± the doctor asked, her eyes now fully wide.


    ¡°Your voice said it might just be confirmation bias.¡±


    ¡°I think¡­¡± the doctor said ¡°that I need to talk to your mommy in private for a moment. Please wait here.¡± She urgently pulled my mother from the room and closed the door carefully behind her.


    Yet I could still hear their entire conversation through the voices.


    [Your child is very, very troubled. I have to admit, I have been doing this for twelve years, and have never seen anything like this.]


    [I tell you many times, she is rotten child.]


    [No, it¡¯s worse than that. I fear your girl is actually reading minds. This isn¡¯t anything possible through traditional psychology¡­]


    [So you actually do think of patient¡¯s butts all day? You are rotten doctor too.]


    [No! That¡¯s beside the point. I think your child is an Exhuman, and we need to call the police as fast and quietly as possible right now. There¡¯s no telling what will happen if she starts using her powers.]


    [Rotten child. I knew it. Always trouble.] The two of them were walking to the man who was reading the PHR earlier.


    Exhuman. That was a bad word, even worse than the other word the voice had said to me before. We¡¯d learned about Exhumans in school, and how bad they could be. I didn¡¯t want to be an Exhuman. I began to cry.


    It was only a few minutes later when I heard voices of men who were in the elevator. There were 6 of them coming up, but they were with another 22 other men below. The voices were all very, very angry, which is what grabbed my attention and made me listen to them.


    The ones in the elevator were coming to me. They were going to kill an Exhuman, but the Exhuman was me! I didn¡¯t want them to. I didn¡¯t want them to come to me with their guns and scary black armor and shoot me. I wanted to go to school with my friends.


    [Subject confirmed in second office on left. Subject seems to be unaware. Ready team will confront and contain the subject, follow team will begin evacuation. Subject is possibly psionic, code xavier. Kill on sight.]


    I don¡¯t want to die! They were coming in the office now, and the voices of people in the lobby were panicking. They were moving fast in a single line and headed right for the back rooms, where I was. I tried to tell the voice that I didn¡¯t want to die.


    [Psionic interference confirmed. Just heard a child¡¯s voice telling me she didn¡¯t want to die. Repeat, code xavier confirmed. Ready team, move NOW!]


    ¡°I DON¡¯T WANT TO DIE!¡± I screamed. The men outside were in the hallway, and winced when I yelled. ¡°I DON¡¯T WANT TO DIE!¡± They passed the first room. ¡°I DON¡¯T WANT TO DIE!¡± They were outside my room, the front two men went on either side of the door, one with the doorknob in his hand. ¡°DON¡¯T KILL ME!¡±


    The door flew open. Men streamed in, six of them, in single file. Each was wearing a metal black suit of armor with helmets that covered their faces, walking a little hunched over their guns. All the guns were pointed at me.


    None of them fired.


    I heard a voice yelling from downstairs. Another one of the men in metal suits.


    [Ready team, why are you not firing? Ready team, this is a code X, kill on sight. Fire! Fire damn it, fire!]


    The thoughts of the men in front of me was all just like static. They were still there, but their voices were more in my head than theirs now. I told their voices not to kill me, and they listened.


    ¡°Go away,¡± I said, crying and hugging my knees to my chest. I wish I had Sir Bearington, my teddy bear with me. He always made me feel safer.


    The men with guns stopped and stirred for a moment, and then lowered their weapons and walked out of the room, closing the door behind them. They stood in the hallway, confused, starting to talk to each other, but none of them said anything about coming in the room or killing me again. The people downstairs were screaming to come in the room and kill me, but they weren¡¯t here.


    Other people from downstairs were going through the building and nearby buildings and were telling everyone to get out. Evacuate, they said. People were scared everywhere. One-by-one, all the voices in my head turned from talking about whatever they were talking about and started screaming in panic. One word kept popping up more and more, every voice yelling it like an accusation.


    ¡°Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Stop saying that. I¡¯m not one of those. I¡¯m not a bad person!¡± I said.


    But I was, and I knew it. As I said those words, I could feel myself reaching out and telling the voices to stop. And they did. I silenced the voices, and the people¡¯s panic multiplied as they were all being evacuated, but now they didn¡¯t¨Ccouldn¡¯t know why. I could hear screaming, not the voices, but actual people in the building around me screaming as panic took hold and the whole building became chaos.


    I knew the buildings all around us were the same. People were running everywhere without anywhere to go, hurting each other, falling down and stepping on each other. I felt voices wail out in panic and then get cut off abruptly, the person who owned that voice not existing anymore. One man screamed as he jumped down a staircase to get out, and then others screamed when his body slammed down the railings next to them. He stopped existing too.


    The voices were already overwhelming, and now that it was panic everywhere, screaming everywhere, it was so much worse. I held my ears closed and cried, but it wouldn¡¯t block them out at all. I tried to find my mother¡¯s voice in the crowd, but she was gone a long time ago, left with the doctor when they called the police on me.


    All these people, all this dying and panic, it was all because they were right. Because I was an Exhuman, I was one of those bad things, and by doing the things I did, people were fighting and dying, and I could feel all of it.


    I couldn¡¯t take it, not another second of it. I felt like my head was going to rip itself apart. I screamed at the top of my lungs, scrabbling at my ears so much that I felt warm liquid under my fingernails. I wanted the voice to stop. More than anything. If they didn¡¯t stop, I thought I¡¯d die.


    And then the worst possible thing happened.


    The voices all stopped.


    Like the guards who had come in the room, the voices went away, replaced with just a faint buzzing like static from a badly-tuned holo. But everyone, everywhere. The whole block, this building and all the other buildings nearby, everyone just stopped, just like I¡¯d said.


    And somehow it was a million times worse than the noise. I worried that I just killed them all, but I could still see them, or feel them, or sense them standing there, exactly where they were before I¡¯d told them to stop. Frozen mid-step, standing in stairways, reaching for a door.


    They were right. They were all right. I was a rotten child.


    I was standing downstairs with all the men in black armor when I let them all go. I told their voices to go back to what they were doing and not panic, and they did. The men in black were confused, but I told them what happened and they believed me.


    Then one of them pointed his gun at the back of my head and I heard an explosion and that¡¯s all I remember.

 020. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    AEGIS ambushed me as soon as I got home. At first she was just excited about my trip to the mine and wanted to know if I¡¯d found what we needed, but something about the way I moved or talked gave me away and she started to nervously inquire about my mental health.


    Words started to pour out of me before I knew what I was doing. I needed to talk, and she wanted to listen, and even though I¡¯d already decided earlier that I wasn¡¯t going to burden AEGIS with more troubles, the words wouldn¡¯t stop coming.


    I told her everything, and she stood and listened patiently, asking an occasional question or trying to relate when these events transpired, but otherwise just stood and listened. Several times, as I talked, I felt horrible, thinking that she was too good for me and didn¡¯t deserve to hear and shouldn¡¯t have to deal with my crap. Especially about my emotional outbursts, when I threw the mirror, angry at my own reflection, or used my Exhuman powers when I lost it with Karu pushing me, and finally when I stormed out on Saga after finding she was a Sino.


    Yet she didn¡¯t judge. She just listened and silently soaked it all in. When I was finished, she let out a deep breath it sounded like she was holding.


    ¡°Well,¡± she said. ¡°On the surface, it sounds to me like you¡¯ve got some thinking to do.¡±


    ¡°You said it.¡±


    ¡°No, I mean, more than usual. We humans¡­and by that I mean you too, Mr. Exhuman, are fragile things in our minds. We live in a world we construct with our own thoughts and see things through the lenses of our past experiences. Sometimes we see things that we know can¡¯t exist, and then we have to take a step back and wonder, is the world different than how I thought it was, or am I?¡±


    ¡°This is a little deep, isn¡¯t it? I didn¡¯t know you got your shrink license.¡±


    ¡°Maybe I did. Perk of amnesia, you can¡¯t prove that I¡¯m not a shrink.¡±


    ¡°I¡­guess.¡±


    ¡°Anyway. One of the biggest lies of reality we tell ourselves is that we¡¯re a good person. Everyone thinks they¡¯re a good person, even the bad people. Nobody would be able to live with themselves if they honestly thought they were bad.¡±


    ¡°I know I¡¯m a bad person, I¡¯m an Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Not what I mean. If you honestly thought you were a bad person, like you were just a big negative blight on the world like Karu seems to think you are, wouldn¡¯t you probably kill yourself?¡±


    ¡°I dunno. Maybe? I turned myself in with the XPCA, that¡¯s basically suicide.¡±


    ¡°But you didn¡¯t call them and tell them you were Exhuman, you were still trying to go on with your life, right?¡±


    ¡°Right.¡±


    ¡°Because, despite being Exhuman, you still thought you could live a normal life.¡±


    ¡°I guess.¡±


    ¡°So you didn¡¯t think you were bad.¡±


    ¡°I mean, it¡¯s more complicated than that.¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯m not wrong.¡±


    ¡°No, I guess not,¡± I agreed. It¡¯s not like I took pleasure in being a bad person, but I¡¯d held that shred of self-respect that I was a good enough person to give myself up, and she¡¯d just obliterated that. On top of all the other shit I¡¯d just gone through with Saga, it felt unfair to take even that away from me.


    ¡°Well, in this new scenario, you¡¯re seeing new facts and they don¡¯t coincide with your worldviews. Saga¡¯s a Sino and an Exhuman. Ideally, you shouldn¡¯t hate her for either of these, but you do. You blame it on your upbringing, whatever. But then you feel conflicted because you only hate her for one. Now, instead of a moral high ground, you¡¯re finding you¡¯re picking and choosing reasons to hate people. And that¡¯s what a racist or bigot or hater, for a more general term, would do.¡±


    ¡°And you don¡¯t like to think of yourself that way, so now you either have to rewrite your worldview to explain away these inconvenient facts, rewrite your personal ethics to make yourself accepting of your new roles, or¡­ideally¡­change to be the person you want to be.¡±


    ¡°Jesus, what a cynical way to look at things.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not as bad as it sounds. It¡¯s the same process that kids use to grow, they¡¯re just a lot more accustomed to the world being different than they thought then we are.¡±Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    I didn¡¯t respond and we lapsed into silence together.


    ¡°I guess¡­I¡¯m a lot more racist than I thought I was,¡± I said, after a long pause. ¡°I didn¡¯t even know that meeting a Sino would make me so angry. It kind of scared me, honestly.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m glad you have the self-awareness to realize it¡¯s you and not her.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re not a shrink?¡± I asked.


    She just laughed and shrugged. ¡°So who do you want to be?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Does it matter? I mean, I¡¯m going to live out here in the middle of nowhere forever, until I die. Sooner than later if Karu has her way.¡±


    ¡°Might not matter to many people, but it matters to you. And to me, if you¡¯re counting. And to Saga, I¡¯m sure. Maybe even Karu.¡±


    ¡°I kind of get the vibe she¡¯s less about caring and more about killing. Might be the unprovoked murder attempts talking.¡±


    ¡°Point being, my professional/unprofessional advice, depending on whether we establish I was a shrink in the past life or not is: figure out who you want to be, and take the course of action that leads you down that path. If you¡¯re okay with hating Saga for being a Sino¡­and given what seems to be a lot of baggage and past experience, I don¡¯t think anyone can blame you, then do that. If you want to hate her and yourself for being Exhuman, do that. If you want to hate nobody, then do that. But it is up to you. Nobody¡¯s out here holding a gun to your head and telling you to hate or love anyone.¡±


    ¡°Except Karu.¡±


    ¡°Yeah well, as you just said, she¡¯s a little murder-y to get a vote.¡±


    Despite myself, I laughed, and that made AEGIS smile.


    ¡°So, you think on that. In the meanwhile, I have a surprise for you,¡± she said, changing the subject with an excited wave of her hands, sending her long pigtails twirling. ¡°While obviously it is of great importance to use that hunk of quartz to get me outta here, the schematic I am printing is not currently a data encoding crystal.¡±


    ¡°What¡­is it then?¡± I asked, now trying to peek through the grill into the mass-fab to see what¡¯s being produced.


    ¡°Oh, just a little something for you. I think you¡¯ll like it¡­if my observations have been correct. Please do try not to be a total perv, though.¡±


    I had absolutely no idea what she could be talking about, but I was now fully curious.


    She¡¯d timed her reveal so that the job had only a few minutes left, which I waited through with an utter lack of patience. I was glad Saga wasn¡¯t around to judge my thoughts of what could be developing inside. When it finished and the mass-fab cheerfully announced the assimilation was complete, I opened the cabinet and peered inside greedily.


    Inside was¡­nothing? I took a closer look, and saw what looked like a perfectly clear semicircle. It was so perfectly smooth and clear and flush with the cabinet¡¯s floor that it was hard to see. I reached in and picked it up easily, finding it to be crystal which fit in the palm of my hand.


    ¡°Some kind of extremely ornate paperweight?¡± I asked AEGIS. Looking into it was fascinating, no matter what angle, I saw a dazzling orientation of rainbows and kaleidoscopic lines, all following geometric laws well beyond my understanding.


    ¡°Woot, it¡¯s done. Bring it over here,¡± AEGIS said, and took a good look at it through her camera, making sure her sundress didn¡¯t slip down at all this time. ¡°Looks fine from here, we can tell when you install it.¡±


    ¡°Install it where?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll tell you. Get out that toolkit and bring out two drivers. You¡¯ll probably need some rust remover and a cloth, and don¡¯t touch the¡­glass thing, as much as you can avoid it.¡±


    ¡°This would be so much easier if you¡¯d just tell me what we¡¯re doing.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure you¡¯ll figure it out as soon as we start¡­¡±


    Installation was fast and easy, despite the rust everywhere, and having only AEGIS¡¯ voice to guide me. Less than 10 minutes later, I was cleaning my hands and she was ready to turn it on. A shiny new holo crystal on the AEGIS box, hopefully free from distortion, artifacts, and that wonderful yellow effect.


    ¡°Here we go,¡± her voice said from the box, and I heard her enter some keystrokes.


    The holo lit up again, but much brighter and clearer. Still slightly yellow, but also finally showing other colors. The image quality was perfect; if I had been an alien or caveman, I would have thought there was a tiny semi-transparent person standing in the air in front of me.


    The first thing I noticed was her freckles. She had a small mess of them on her nose and cheeks which had blended in with the noise on the old lens, and a blushing of them down the back of her pale neck and on her shoulders. The second thing I noticed was that her hair was not straw-colored, as the yellowing image had shown before, but was rather a natural redhead, with two long, shiny pigtails resplendent in a nutty orange-brown.


    Details jumped out at me all over. I noticed the variety of velcro straps up and down her forearms, keeping her elbow-length wrist braces cinched tight. Her sundress was white with some lacy, still-almost-invisible patterns embroidered into it within a large V from the two thin straps at her shoulders down to her navel. If I looked at her from behind, the light from her holos passed through the sheer skirt of her dress, giving me a very titillating silhouette.


    ¡°Okay, put the old lens back,¡± she said.


    ¡°What, why?¡±


    ¡°Because you¡¯re just staring at my ass.¡±


    ¡°I am not! I¡¯m looking¡­¡± I stopped, realizing the truth wasn¡¯t going to sound any better. ¡°At. Your. Hair.¡±


    ¡°Uh huh. Are you gay perchance?¡±


    ¡°What? No.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, you weren¡¯t looking at my hair.¡±


    ¡°Whatever. You look great.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, but I really didn¡¯t do anything. Just thought you might enjoy a bit more of a face-to-face conversation. Instead of face-to-distorted-mess.¡±


    Her words reminded me of Saga and I felt myself seethe for a moment. I saw a frown flicker at the corner of her mouth, and wondered how many times I¡¯d missed something like that with the old lens.


    ¡°Still got problems with her, huh?¡± AEGIS asked. I nodded. She¡¯d given me some good advice, but you couldn¡¯t just advice away 17 years of watching Sinos kill people on the holos, seeing their faces leering from propaganda posters, field trips to non-irradiated parts of an exclusion zone so we can see the ruins.


    It was in me, as much as being an Exhuman now was. And like being Exhuman, I hated it about myself.


    The difference was, with this bit of myself, I had a choice.

 021. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I was outside again. The pretext was hunting ¡ª and a good pretext it was too, because I was dangerously close to starving again ¡ª but the real reason I was out was just to be by myself and get some exercise and clear my head a bit.


    I swore, if Karu came swooping down today, I would just shoot her out of the sky and leave her for dead. I had bigger issues on my mind.


    But so far the day was peaceful and calm, birds singing in the trees, a bit chilly from the clouds spotting the sky, but I picked up a small jog to keep myself warm and enjoyed the brisk chill.


    It just felt good to move. I¡¯d been walking a lot but had a very shut-in lifestyle since my exile, when I used to go on morning runs, practice after school every day, games every week, and whatever social roughhousing the other guys on the team would get into. My legs hated me for running, and I knew it was a waste of calories I badly needed, and the choice between tree roots and broken asphalt wasn¡¯t exactly ideal, but I didn¡¯t care.


    I was moving, I was outside, I was free.


    I felt a bit morbid but my feet took me to the crater in the middle of the ruins. The obliteration there had been so complete that the ground was just blackened gravel, much better for running on than the fist-sized rocks which were omnipresent throughout the rest of the ruins. I put on a burst of speed and felt the wind tear at my face.


    I only managed two laps around the crater before I was completely winded. Compared to my performance a few weeks ago, that was pathetic. But it still felt great. I began my recovery walk, heading south towards the river, stretching as I went.


    My canteen, another gift from the mining ops center, gurgled happily as I immersed it in the running water. The river ran clear and fast, the many smooth round rocks still clearly visible in the middle, where the river ran waist-high.


    I had crossed the river once, when I was wandering aimlessly after being first exiled. I remembered hearing the water in the dark, and feeling so excited, wandering lost and aimless for two days at that point, and drinking in the water with huge gulps and almost choking myself.


    I had to laugh at myself back then. I was lucky I hadn¡¯t gotten sick from the water. Now, I charged my hands with the canteen in them and after a few moments, the water began to boil vigorously. Sometimes, lightning was a handy talent.


    ¡°Well, hello there!¡± I heard a voice from behind me. I spun around, startled, nearly dropping my canteen.


    Walking along the river up the same bank as me was an old man with a full white beard and a flop hat adorned with brilliantly-colored fishing lures. His clothes were worn and patched, but carefully cleaned and came in multiple layers, a fishing vest over a light coat over a plain tee shirt. He had a huge bag on his back which looked like it contained all his worldly possessions, and I could see a frying pan and a lantern hanging off the sides, and a bedroll on top.


    ¡°Fancy meeting another person out here,¡± he said cheerily. He whistled a little bit while he spoke, and I wondered if had a gap in his teeth or something. ¡°Haven¡¯t seen anyone else out here in years.¡± He laughed, easily, and I found myself laughing with him, despite not seeing what was so funny.


    ¡°Well, someone else other than Tate here. Tate, come on out boy,¡± he said, speaking behind him. From behind the man¡¯s enormous pack came a small boy, similarly attired in outdoorsman attire, with his own hat and proportionally smaller bag. The boy gave me a shy smile but said nothing.


    ¡°Um, hello,¡± I said. I was at a loss. I didn¡¯t know for certain, but had been operating under the assumption this was an exclusion zone, irradiated illegal wasteland from the Sino war. ¡°Um, is this not an exclusion zone? Why are you two out here?¡±


    He laughed. ¡°It surely is, but I could ask the same question to you. And without a hat or pack besides. Did you walk all the way here with only a canteen?¡± He laughed again, and I couldn¡¯t help but smile. I caught the child¡­Tate?¡­smiling at me as well.


    ¡°I¡¯m uh, actually in exile. Exhuman, you see. Technically not supposed to talk to anyone.¡±


    ¡°Well, I won¡¯t tell anyone if you don¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Heh, thanks. You don¡¯t¡­have a problem with me being an Exhuman?¡±


    ¡°Well, the way I see it, whether you¡¯re an Exhuman with crazy fanciful powers, or a hunter with a gun, or an ordinary bloke with a rock, if you wanted to make trouble for me and Tate, you¡¯d do it. Doesn¡¯t seem like you¡¯re interested in making trouble, so why fret?¡±


    ¡°But Exhumans are horrible monsters. They kill people. I¡¯ve killed people.¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°You looked perfectly normal when I said hello, and you don¡¯t seem any different now than you were then. Seems as if you¡¯re a decent sort of Exhuman, with you warning me about it and all, all on the right foot. I¡¯ve no fear of you.¡±


    ¡°Well¡­thanks. I guess.¡± He laughed again.


    ¡°But where are my manners. My name is Wynn, this here¡¯s my boy Tate. No mother, God rest her soul, before you ask. As for what we¡¯re doing,¡± he turned sideways and hefted his bag towards me, showing off a pair of fishing rods hanging off the side. ¡°Fine day for fishing. Care to come by, swap a tale for some of our bounty?¡±


    I couldn¡¯t refuse, couldn¡¯t help but to like the man, and couldn¡¯t help but to be jealous.


    The life that I¡¯d been sentenced to was better, and certainly less lonely than I¡¯d feared. But it was still a hard life, I had to work every day or else risk starvation. If injury or illness caught me, I might just be done for. Yet this was a life he¡¯d seemingly chosen.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    We talked about ourselves as we watched the lines in the water, at a small lake a ways downstream, and I learned that he¡¯d retreated from the modern world, finding it a hate-filled place which pushed its occupants to work harder, go faster, always be climbing.


    ¡°Artificial competition,¡± he spat out, with as much disgust as I¡¯d heard from him yet. ¡°We have enough goods and good to feed and clothe the world, but we don¡¯t. Because if everyone just stopped and enjoyed their lives, they¡¯d find their lives are completely hollow. Because people don¡¯t have anything real in their lives.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that even mean? What in life counts as real?¡±


    ¡°This is real,¡± he said, gesturing to the fishing lines. ¡°My boy is real. Cooking and eating a bellyfull of hard-earned fish-flesh is real. All things you can see and touch.¡± He stroked his beard as he reached into some memories from a lifetime ago. ¡°A career. That¡¯s what most people have. That isn¡¯t real. Only exists because people think it does. Money. Fame. Power.¡±


    ¡°Not to get super off-topic and super real here, but¡­what about hate? Is hate real?¡±


    ¡°I dunno boy, can you hold it?¡±


    ¡°No. Metaphorically yes?¡±


    ¡°Had it right on the first one. Hate is something else people spend a lot of time chasing. Revenge. Justice. Vindication. Hate is a powerful thing. It may be more accurate to say hate is something which holds you instead.¡±


    ¡°But if you try,¡± he said with a wink of his pale blue eyes ¡°you can get out from under hate. I imagine as an Exhuman, you¡¯ve suffered your share of hate in your life, and from what I¡¯ve seen of you so far, I imagine it to be mostly misplaced.¡±


    It seemed egotistical to agree with him, even if I did, so I just listened and watched the ripples in the lake.


    ¡°And I can¡¯t tell you to just ignore them. The hate will still be there, and there¡¯s nothing you can do about it. With any luck, those people will have the same self-awareness you¡¯re currently showing and wisen up and let some of their hate go. But I can suggest one thing.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°Do what I did. Leave it all behind. Life is too short and too blessed to waste on petty biases and prejudices and tit-for-tat. Find something real you love and hold onto it.¡± He pulled his boy into a one-armed hug. Tate gave a squeal and began to pull his fishing line, as whatever was beneath the surface began to thrash. Wynn responded with an enthusiastic holler and cheered his son on as the boy landed a large, shiny fish.


    ¡°Might be harder for you to leave it behind, since you didn¡¯t get a choice in coming out here,¡± Wynn continued as he began to descale the fish, Tate now manning both poles.


    ¡°No¡­I think you¡¯re right,¡± I said. ¡°I should have left my hate behind when I came out here.¡±


    ¡°Well, don¡¯t take my word for the gospel, I might be a bit biased,¡± he laughed again. ¡°You ever cleaned a fish, boy?¡±


    He had me do the rest of the fish under his supervision. It was a mess, and halfway through, Tate caught another fish, and finished cleaning his before I finished mine, despite the head-start. I wondered just how much survivalist knowledge was crammed into that small child¡¯s head.


    It wasn¡¯t long before we had a generous feast of fish filets and several smaller fish, which Wynn informed me could be cooked and eaten scales and all off the bone. He sent Tate to fetch some firewood while he and I continued talking, refusing my offer to accompany the boy, saying that Tate was more than capable.


    Of that, I had no doubt, but I felt a bit useless with them both having all the knowledge and doing all the work. The least I could do is haul some logs.


    Yet it seemed like no time at all before Tate returned with a pile of logs towering over his head, still walking quickly with even steps. I hadn¡¯t let Wynn forage for kindling, telling him I could get the fire started without. They carefully stacked the wood and placed flat rocks very nearly in the fire to cook the fish filets on, and then it was my turn.


    I charged my hands, keeping the lightning blades as small as possible to reduce possible panic, and pressed my hands to the wood. Within moments, they flared to life.


    ¡°Now that¡¯s a handy trick,¡± whistled Wynn. Tate was beaming enormously. ¡°Heck of a time-saver, and I guess if you can start ¡¯em so easy, you can make small fires whenever you want. Must save a bundle on wood ¡ª pun intended!¡±


    I laughed, happy to be able to contribute something to the meal.


    ¡°I must say, I¡¯m a bit jealous of you, young man.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re crazy,¡± I said, meaning it. ¡°You¡¯ve got all this expertise and wisdom, you chose this life and live it to the fullest.¡±


    ¡°Yes, but experience and lifestyles can be earned. I¡¯ll never be able to start a fire with my hands alone. You¡¯ve got a real gift there, boy.¡±


    ¡°Or a curse.¡±


    ¡°All depends on how you see it. Doesn¡¯t seem like it¡¯s too harmful unless you want it to be.¡±


    ¡°Or if someone tries to attack me. Found that one out the hard way.¡±


    ¡°Well, then they have it coming,¡± he laughed. I found myself not laughing with him on that one, a fact he didn¡¯t miss, and promptly changed the subject. ¡°We¡¯ll have these fish cooked up soon enough. I dare say by your appearance you haven¡¯t had a decent meal in a while. Let us fix that for you.¡±


    ¡°You really are too kind.¡±


    ¡°Nonsense. We¡¯re both men of the land, we¡¯ve got to stick together. Here, even got a treat I¡¯ve been saving for a special occasion.¡± He dug through his pack and pulled out a familiar glass jar of red fruit. I blinked and had to take a moment to place where I¡¯d seen it before.


    ¡°The mine.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me?¡±


    ¡°The operations building of the mine. Northeast of here. You got this from there?¡±


    ¡°So I did. You¡¯ve been there?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡± I thought for a few minutes. ¡°You must be the two that Saga mentioned. Did you uh, happen to hear any voices while you were up there?¡±


    ¡°Yes, strange lady¡¯s voice, going on about quests and such. Just ignored her, seemed to tick her off.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s Saga. She¡¯s another Exhuman, lives over there. She has some serious issues with normal humans, so you may want to steer clear in the future.¡±


    ¡°Wasn¡¯t planning to go back. But you folks starting your own club or something?¡±


    ¡°No, she says she¡¯s been here for almost a hundred years. I don¡¯t think the XPCA knew she was here when they sent me here.¡±


    ¡°Well, what a fun little twist of fate for all four of us to come together like this.¡±


    The fish was delicious, easily the best thing I¡¯d eaten in the wilds, and Wynn showed me where a couple kinds of herbs grew which you could add while cooking to enhance the taste. I found myself wanting to go share a taste with Saga, knowing how excited she¡¯d be about it before remembering I took issue with her right now.


    We finished eating at dusk and sat around the fire talking and laughing hours into the dark. At long last, conversation died down and I saw Tate had fallen asleep on the grass by the river. Wynn tutted his disapproval that the boy would freeze in those clothes, and hadn¡¯t even set up his tent.


    ¡°There¡¯s not much room, but you two are welcome to stay at my place. Indoors, away from the cold. You can meet my roommate.¡±


    ¡°Another Exhuman?¡±


    ¡°No, just some girl stuck in a prison somewhere who can only communicate to me via holo.¡±


    Wynn fixed me with a sideways glance and tugged at his beard. ¡°You have an interesting life, young man. But I think we may take you up on your offer, the day¡¯s excitement has been a bit much for little Tate.¡±


    I offered to carry Tate because Wynn was already plenty burdened with his supplies. The boy was light but I could feel how hard his muscles were and how tough his skin was, even on his small frame. We walked together in silence, walking side-by-side, the way lit only by the stars and the moon.

 022. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. AEGIS.

    Athan came home late with a friend and carrying a small child. It wasn¡¯t the worst thing I¡¯d seen him doing, but it was close.


    My first thought, as my first thought always seemed to be, was concern. Was this man a threat? Would he betray Athan? Did he know Athan was an Exhuman? Would he reveal Athan¡¯s whereabouts to those who would do him harm?


    I had to breathe and remind myself that Athan was fully capable, the most capable¡­and only, until tonight¡­man I¡¯d ever met. And he had yet to let me down. Stir up trouble? Certainly. Need some guidance growing up? Of course. Keeping his raging hormones in check¡­?


    Well. I might tease him more than strictly necessary, but I couldn¡¯t say I complained when he looked at me.


    But back on track. I looked into my holos and saw everything in the room. Athan didn¡¯t know it, but I was able to use the mass-fab to create a couple small camera drones. For now they were situated in the corners of the room to give me a three-dimensional view of the area, instead of the one camera on the AEGIS device. I would get around to telling him eventually, but for now I was just testing my capabilities. They worked well, but the wireless on the device needed work. Perhaps a repair drone should be my next project, that could probably improve Athan¡¯s life as well.


    Ugh. Getting sidetracked again. Athan and his friend had finished putting the child down in his sleeping kit, snuggled in a nest of rope. They came over to speak to me, at long last.


    ¡°And this is AEGIS. Say hello AEGIS. This is Wynn.¡±


    ¡°Hello Wynn,¡± I said, attempting to look cheerful and hide any reservations I had about him. He didn¡¯t look entirely convinced, but maybe it was the medium through which we were speaking. I could see that being fairly off-putting.


    ¡°Hello AEGIS. Interesting name.¡±


    ¡°I get that a lot. Well, I got that from Athan, and counting you, that makes pretty much the entire population out here.¡± He laughed wheezily, an easy, carefree laugh. It annoyed me just a little bit, as I adjusted the camera depth of field and adjusted my wrist braces for optimal support.


    I was not a huge fan of carefree, and hoped the man didn¡¯t rub off on Athan too much.


    ¡°What were you two, or three doing out so late?¡± I asked, trying to sound casual. The man laughed again at this for some reason.


    ¡°We were just doing some fishing. Wynn gave me some great tips and is going to give me one of his rods. Says he can always make more.¡±


    Athan gave the man a big grin and I frowned before I could stop myself. Wynn caught it and laughed again.


    ¡°I think I¡¯m making your wife jealous,¡± he said. Athan laughed but I burned bright red.


    ¡°I am not his wife!¡± I pouted, stomping a foot and hearing the paltry sound echo in the void of my room. ¡°For your information, I stay at home and fix his things because I am physically confined, not because of some¡­some¡­social contract!¡± I finished, heated, and a little lame.


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t disparaging you, young AEGIS. Being a wife is one of the most beautiful things a woman can be.¡±


    ¡°Be that as it may, I am still not his wife, thank you.¡± The old man laughed again, and Athan did too. I wished he¡¯d stop that.


    I needed to change the topic before the old coot got Athan talking to him again, so I cleared my throat and bent forward to show just a little cleavage.


    ¡°Athan, while you were out¡­super late, I might add, which I don¡¯t approve of. Didn¡¯t I already warn you about bears? But while you were out, I got started on that little project we talked about earlier¡­LOL.¡± I ended with my best shot at a schoolgirl giggle, which succeeded in transfixing Athan but made the old man snort and laugh.


    ¡°Oh, I see!¡± Athan said, walking over to the mass-fab. He peered into the grating and probably saw the beginnings of the data crystal being assimilated. ¡°Looks like it¡¯s coming along nicely. Did this use up all the quartz? I can make another run if you need more.¡±


    ¡°Unfortunately, most of it. We¡¯ll need more to make more, but this one should last me a few days at least¡­it is a lot of data.¡±


    ¡°Cool. When can we get started?¡±


    ¡°Printing should be done in a day or so. I was going to turn it off at night so you can sleep¨C¡°


    ¡°No need. I¡¯m a heavy sleeper, and I got quite a workout today, so I think I can sleep through anything. Speaking of which, we should probably sack out, old man.¡±


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t have said it better myself,¡± Wynn replied. ¡°I might sleep just outside the door. Accustomed to the earth under my feet, if you know what I mean,¡± he said kicking the toe of his boot against the concrete floor.


    ¡°You can have my hammock for the night, or there¡¯s plenty of weave around to pile up a bed.¡±


    ¡°No, thank you all the same, but I prefer the stars overhead. Good night lad, see you in the morn. Good night girlie, nice to meet you.¡±


    We both bid Wynn a good night. Athan padded around a little bit, getting ready for bed. He had a sort of crappy set of boxers he¡¯d sewn himself which he slept in, in a big pile of synthetic weave he¡¯d washed and piled up in his hammock. Watching him change in the corner supposedly out of my sight was one of the most exciting parts of any day, and one of the reasons I really didn¡¯t want to tell him about my camera drones.


    He had the appearance of someone who¡¯d lost a lot of weight very quickly, but still maintained some musculature. Now that he was basically fat-free, his sexy abs were especially obvious, but his pecs and arms were eye-candy too. I always tried not to look too much lower than that, but had accidentally peeked for a moment a time or two. The whole experience always left me feeling flushed and my dress feeling tight. I also had to be careful not to drool on my keyboard, or let Athan know that anything was amiss.


    ¡°¡¯Night AEGIS,¡± he said, startling me.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Oh! ¡®Night. Take care out there,¡± I said automatically, and then realized how stupid that was. He fortunately chuckled, thinking I was just making a joke. Safe for now.


    He hit the power switch on the work lights daisy-chained up in the ceiling beams and dropped the room into blackness. I, of course, could see perfectly with cameras that peered far beyond the visible spectrum, but Athan had to stumble blindly to his bed. I really needed to mass-fab a remote switch for him. Or maybe just something wireless, so I could do it myself. Wouldn¡¯t have to fret about him leaving the lights on all day then.


    Soon enough, I heard him snoring away and settled in. These were my most productive hours, when I knew he was safe and anytime I had any doubts flicker across my mind, could placate them by listening to his snoring in the corner. While it could be grating, it was also quite soothing.


    I pulled up the template I was working on for a new type of drone and got back to work. My hands were killing me, as it felt like they always were, but I powered through even though I knew that was probably worst for them. I could rest them when I was talking to Athan or flicking through camera feeds.


    This was my secret. My real secret, not the drones, or the plans for the hot-water shower I was hoping to surprise Athan with, or any of that. My real secret, that I zealously guarded because I didn¡¯t understand it myself and that scared me. I worried that if Athan found out, he¡¯d be scared off, or at least not look at me quite the same. After our talk about Saga and his irrational hate of people from China (wherever that was) and Exhumans, I was even more scared. I just wanted to be normal. You can¡¯t be prejudiced against normal people, and if Athan decided he hated me and turned the box off and threw me away¡­I wouldn¡¯t be able to stand it.


    My secret was that in this cell, I never stopped working. I never ate, I never slept, I never sat down, I never used the bathroom. I stood on this spot twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes I got tired and spaced out for a bit, sometimes my hands hurt so bad it felt like there was fire from my knuckles to my wrists and I had to take a break. But always I was here, working, or waiting.


    I was worried that Athan would ask some telling questions at some point, but I¡¯d dodged the issue long enough that I think we were safe. But it was another reason I didn¡¯t like him bringing Wynn and Tate in. More people meant more questions meant more possibility of being outed as¡­whatever I was. I didn¡¯t want to think of myself as an Exhuman like those two, but I didn¡¯t know what else there could be that lived without food or rest, and could do what I did with machines.


    I rehearsed constantly questions which I thought might trip me up. Something as simple as ¡°what did you eat?¡± I didn¡¯t know any foods except what Athan had mentioned, so I could say one of those, or make a joke and try to laugh it off. If worst came to worst, my emergency plan was to accidentally flash Athan again. It would destroy my pride, but if that¡¯s what it took to keep me in his life, I could be his cam-girl.


    But that was insanity. Athan liked me, trusted me, and I hoped I¡¯d proven a good confidant and a useful assistant. And wasn¡¯t that the basis of a strong relationship?


    Wasn¡¯t it?


    I actually had no idea. I had no memories of having a friend before.


    Something tripped my motion sensors and I brought the image full-screen. Something creeping through the front door of the bunker, always left open by Athan, the damn fool. Athan¡¯s snoring was still filling the room, so whatever it was, it hadn¡¯t woken him. I switched to night-vision optics on my camera and saw Wynn walking slowly and silently toward me, his footfalls silent on the concrete floor.


    I entered a command and turned the holo on at 50% brightness and my speakers at 15% volume. Prior testing had confirmed these levels low enough to not have an effect on sleeping Athan¡¯s pulse or respiratory rate.


    ¡°Why are you creeping around. You almost gave me a heart attack, old man.¡±


    ¡°Just wanted to talk to you one-on-one.¡±


    ¡°Whatever you want to say, it can wait until morning.¡±


    ¡°That wouldn¡¯t be much of a one-on-one, would it?¡±


    ¡°Well, I¡¯m not much interested, as I was sleeping. I¡¯m very tired, so TTYL.¡± I feigned a stretching yawn and turned off the holo.


    ¡°Shame. The boy talked about you at length earlier today.¡±


    I turned the holo back on. ¡°Really?¡±


    He laughed. ¡°No, not really. But he did talk about love and hate quite a bit, and I might be an old fisherman, but I think I know a thing or two about what he was talking about.¡±


    Stupid, stupid, stupid. Falling for the old bait-and-switch. Presumably the oldest trick in the book, if my amnesia didn¡¯t make me forget what exactly the book was.


    ¡°Seems Athan, he¡¯s a troubled lad. Got some kind of stuff all twisted up inside him. Lives a peaceful enough life out here, and is lucky to have such beautiful company, if you don¡¯t mind my saying, but is unable to enjoy it.¡±


    ¡°Well, yeah. He¡¯s an Exhuman. He hates himself.¡±


    ¡°I got that. And he was talking about hate a lot today. One of the first things he mentioned. Any idea who else that might be referring to?¡±


    ¡°Saga.¡± I nodded mutely. There was another person I didn¡¯t approve of. I had given Athan honest advice because I wanted him to be happy with whatever decision he made, but if it were up to me, I¡¯d have locked Saga even further away and never let her play her mind games on Athan, or anyone, ever again. Even now, I had nagging doubts whether she¡¯d left a mark on his mind without him knowing.


    ¡°Right you are. He mentioned that one, seems to have a bit of a complex against her. But he also mentioned love. Now, do you know who that might be?¡±


    I blushed and couldn¡¯t look at the camera feed. ¡°Um. Karu, maybe?¡±


    ¡°He didn¡¯t mention that one. Has quite a harem, this Athan? Any other girls I should know about?¡±


    I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d mind Wynn getting exploded by Karu, but thought he probably didn¡¯t deserve it.


    ¡°No, Karu hates Athan more than Athan hates Saga.¡±


    ¡°Sounds about right. You dodged the question, though.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°What¡¯s your point, oldster?¡±


    ¡°My point is, you don¡¯t have to be so worried or protective of that boy. I¡¯ve seen a lot of relationships in my day, and I can tell you that you are close to screwing this one up. You might think that showing a little skin here or there keeps him wrapped around your finger, but what really matters in a relationship is trust.¡±


    ¡°Trust? Me? Of course Athan can trust me. He sleeps with me at his back every night. He¨C¡°


    ¡°I was talking about you. You need to trust him. He¡¯s not going to meet some flying harlot out there and leave you alone forever.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯d be Karu again.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Never mind. Continue.¡±


    ¡°Erm, anyway. Even if that did by some miraculous chance happen, he¡¯d come back for you. He¡¯s a good boy with a good head on his shoulders and his feet on the right values. I knew it as soon as I saw him. You just need to trust that he¡¯s going to do the right thing and I¡¯m sure the two of you will have a long and happy life together.¡±


    His last words filled me with a dumb, warm feeling, but I wasn¡¯t ready to let down my guard just yet. What ulterior motives could he have? Why sneak in here just to tell me that?


    So I asked him.


    ¡°You sneak in here just to tell me that? Why?¡±


    He laughed, quietly, to avoid waking up Athan. This made his laugh even wheezier than it had been, which was very distracting.


    ¡°Because, young lady, I¡¯ve lived a long time and learned a great many things, and I won¡¯t be around too much longer to pass them onto other people. I¡¯m a man who left the world behind so I could go out and do what I truly loved. Does that sound like the kind of man who¡¯d pass on an opportunity to dole out some good love advice and help two of his new friends along a little bit?¡±


    ¡°No. It does sound like a crazy old man though.¡±


    ¡°Well, can you blame me? I¡¯ve been living out here for more than twenty years now. I think I¡¯ve earned a little crazy. Besides, if you two don¡¯t get this thing sorted soon, I won¡¯t be around for the wedding.¡±


    He was joking, but when he said ¡®wedding¡¯ I heard bells go off in my head. The church kind, not the warning kind. I just stood there dumbstruck for a while as this new thought slowly penetrated my being. Wed. Ding. Wedding.


    ¡°You¡­have given me some things to think about,¡± I said distractedly and turned off the holo. ¡°TYVM, and good night.¡±


    ¡°Sleep well, girlie.¡±


    He crept out and I kept my main feed pointed at the door in case he came back. But I brought up a second feed on another holo which showed me Athan¡¯s sleeping form. He muttered something in his sleep. I got no more work done that night, instead stood and held myself, watching every contour of his sleeping form until morning.

 023. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Wynn and Tate were up and loitering patiently outside when I awoke. I imagined they probably got up with the sun and had been waiting for a couple of hours, but Wynn waved off my apologies saying he had nowhere to be anyway, and that was kind of the whole point of living out here.


    Regardless, they took off after a brief breakfast, promising to visit again soon. AEGIS seemed sad to see them go, even though it seemed like she didn¡¯t get along with them too well last night. She was quieter and more pensive than usual in general, and I was a little worried I¡¯d offended her by bringing them over, somehow.


    Knowing her, she was probably just worrying about them.


    The mass-fab had run through the night and was finished already. My plan for the day was to load it up for AEGIS and then do some foraging and leave her in peace for a while to sort through her shiny new data.


    ¡°You ready for this thing?¡± I asked, hefting the crystal. It was a cylinder about two feet long and half a foot in diameter, perfectly flawlessly smooth and completely without imperfection, yet when looking inside, instead of seeing a convex distortion of the other side, a microscopic geometric lattice revealed itself by casting abstract geometric reflections. It was a little bizarre and disorienting to look into, so I tried to avoid it, as I carried the massive thing to the AEGIS box.


    ¡°There¡¯s a port on the side. It should just look like a round plate, if you push against it, it should open inwards,¡± AEGIS informed me. I had to do some serious looking to find the spot she was talking about, as it was basically just a slightly more circular pattern of dirt at this point. Of course the port refused to open so I spent the next 15 minutes sweeping away dirt and banging away at it as delicately as possible with the biggest hammer I had, while enduring AEGIS¡¯ constant worried glances.


    She was also blushing for some reason, and I missed what was missing. I tried to ignore her and went back to banging away at her box.


    Finally, the panel dipped inward, and it swung in and out of the way, revealing a large dark hole, deep enough that I couldn¡¯t see the other end, the edges of which were studded with contacts of some kind. It looked like a snug fit.


    ¡°Okay,¡± I asked again. ¡°You ready for this thing, now?¡±


    ¡°Ready as I¡¯ll ever be.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Here we go.¡±


    I hefted the data encoding crystal, lined it up carefully with the slot, and pushed it in.


    AEGIS screamed.


    ¡°Are you okay?¡± I asked, starting to pull the crystal out, my heart slamming in my chest.


    ¡°D-dont!¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t what?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t pull it out. S-sorry. I just¡­wasn¡¯t prepared. Oh my god. The system is making new data connections like¡­like¡­c-crazy.¡± She was sweating and breathing very quickly, and paused her frantic, manic typing to fan herself briefly.


    ¡°P-put the rest in. Slowly,¡± she said.


    ¡°Uh, okay.¡± I gave the end of the crystal a gentle but insistent shove and watched her as it sunk further in. Her knees buckled and she bit her bottom lip, almost doubling over and leaning on her keyboard.


    ¡°Oh god, this is what I needed. It¡¯s¡­it¡¯s¡­so big! So much data!¡± she moaned, shuddering bodily.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I want to do this anymore,¡± I said. ¡°This feels really, reallydirty.¡±


    ¡°No, don¡¯t you dare stop. You¡¯re almost done. Just a little more,¡± she gasped at me, now leaning her entire upper body on the keyboards and standing with her shuddering knees pointed at each other.


    ¡°You are so not helping,¡± I gritted, and pushed the rest of the core in. It settled inside with a satisfied-sounding snap-hiss and a final flustered squeak of approval from AEGIS.


    ¡°So. You uh, okay there?¡± I asked. I was trying not to stare, but she was all¡­bent over, and distracted. A mess of her red hair stuck to the side of her face while she breathed deep and giggled at me.


    ¡°Better than okay. This is amazing. So much data streaming by already. This baby might be my ticket out of here. Probably not, but maybe. Oh how nice that¡¯d be, I¡¯d get to thank you in person. She gave me a saucy wink and grin. OMG, I am just so¡­satisfied right now, I don¡¯t think you even know.¡±


    She continued giggling like a slightly-disturbed, manic school girl. I considered that possibly she liked computers a little bit too much.


    ¡°As for you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,¡± she repeated. ¡°Maybe I will get out of here someday and be able to thank you in person, but until then, thank you.¡±


    ¡°You are definitely welcome. I¡¯m uh, glad you enjoyed it. I¡¯ll, uh, leave you to it? Come check on you later?¡±Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Sure thing. I¡¯ve got tons to do now, and some of this stuff is really interesting. I found more bear facts, if you¡¯re interested.¡±


    ¡°Maybe later. Gotta go, y¡¯know, not starve to death. Think I¡¯ll try my own hand at fishing.¡±


    ¡°Okay, GLHF. And stay safe out there!¡±


    I wandered randomly southwards until I hit the river, and then followed the current west towards the lake. I kept my eyes open in case Wynn and Tate were still around, but they¡¯d wandered off to wherever it was they were going. The lakeside seemed much emptier without them, but holding the rod they¡¯d given me gave me some small comfort, as I resolved to catch my own dinner this time.


    My mind drifted back to AEGIS again. There was something seriously wrong with that girl, and I wasn¡¯t sure if I should be seeing red flags, or diving in head-first. She wasn¡¯t a very sexual person, normally dressed, no makeup, maybe a little flirtatious, but I felt like every time I talked with her it was a titillating, almost sexually frustrating experience.


    I wasn¡¯t sure if that was just her nature, or if she was innocent and oblivious yet hot as hell, or if she was deliberately playing with me. And I wasn¡¯t sure I cared¡­it seemed obvious enough that she was into me at least somewhat. My first ever girlfriend, maybe, and she was a prisoner amnesiac. I wasn¡¯t sure what that said about me.


    My mind stopped wandering as the line pulled in my hands. I pulled back, but the rod bent¡­was it supposed to do that? There wasn¡¯t a reel or anything on this simple rod, just string and a pole. I tried to remember how Wynn had landed them yesterday, but I¡¯d been more paying more attention to his stories than his fishing style.


    After a couple of minutes of frantically pulling the fish this way and that, I hadn¡¯t made any progress anywhere and was beginning to feel bad for the damn thing. I was here to kill and eat it, not drag it through the water until it died of boredom. Not sure what else to do, I channeled a little electricity down the rod.


    The response was instantaneous. The struggling stopped, and the fish bobbed to the surface, dead as anything. Even with it no longer resisting, I still had no idea how to get it out of the water using the line, and did this awkward dance of holding the stick way up while backing up to get it swinging over the shore. Maybe I¡¯d just chosen some poor terrain, I don¡¯t know.


    But as my dad liked to say, if it looked stupid and it worked, it wasn¡¯t stupid.


    Before long I¡¯d landed another couple of fish and started to pack up. I didn¡¯t have a nice knife to gut them, just some rusty disintegrating crap from the ops building, which I was pretty sure would give me tetanus if I used it on my food. I¡¯d have ask AEGIS to assimilate me a real one.


    Which reminded me of my train of thought before I¡¯d pulled up my first fish, and the reality of what I¡¯d witnessed. At the time, I¡¯d been very¡­focused¡­on her reactions and didn¡¯t really have any leftover brain capacity to wonder why. But thinking about it here, in the outdoors, removed from the situation and all the excitement of the moment¡­


    ¡°Man, what the hell was that?¡± I had to ask.


    There was obviously something weird going on with AEGIS overall. Nobody just kidnaps a girl and locks her in a room for no reason, much less giving her a rig that would put most pro gamers to shame, and presumably access to facilities and food.


    The amnesia was another thing. I didn¡¯t think she was faking it, given her absolute lack of reaction before hearing about some things, and then her strong opinions afterwards. She was either telling the truth or a fantastic actor, but that would still beg the question of why she¡¯d be lying to me to begin with? If I were truly cynical, I might think she was an XPCA agent here to keep me docile and keep tabs on me, but if that were the case, why make me dig her up in a convoluted chain of events where I could have easily missed her? Didn¡¯t add up at all.


    Which left one very obvious answer that I wasn¡¯t sure either of us were ready to face. She was another Exhuman, like Saga, who¡¯d been imprisoned. Maybe her powers kept her from being killed, but they still managed to lobotomize her or otherwise make her forget, and maybe her powers were some kind of technomancy, allowing her to build her rig and the AEGIS box out of whatever she found?


    Or heck, if she was an Exhuman, her powers could be anything. She could be able to create and deploy millions of the boxes for all I knew. Stranger Exhumans had been found.


    I got back home and peeked inside to say hello to her before heading back out to start a fire for dinner. She was absorbed in her work but perked up noticeably when I came in, and I think she appreciated me stopping in. Even for a stupid teen like me, the hints were pretty obvious.


    Which was one of many reasons I didn¡¯t think I could broach the topic of her being Exhuman. From personal experience, I knew how horrible it was to have that bombshell dropped on you, and I recalled the conversations we¡¯d had about Exhumans¡­thought of all the horrible things I¡¯d said about them, about me, and tried to imagine twisting those words around towards her instead. It made my stomach drop.


    As far as I knew, she was an innocent prisoner who wouldn¡¯t, and couldn¡¯t hurt anyone. As far as she knew, too. The images of the XPCA soldiers¡¯ bodies came to mind again, unbidden. I would fight to keep her innocence intact.


    I cooked up two of the fish and dissimilated the third for later. I¡¯d been putting away food ¡ª or more technically accurate, organic molecule fragments ¡ª with every meal now, trying to maintain a small bank in case I got hurt or sick. AEGIS always gave me an approving smile when I did, taking care of myself just like she asked, and had promised to make something tastier than the protein goo which had been her first culinary disaster. It often felt like a waste when my stomach was often so empty to be disintegrating food, but tonight with two full fish for dinner, it was hardly a sacrifice.


    I ate outside, enjoying the last hours before sundown and trying to stay out of AEGIS¡¯ hair so she could focus on her work. It was a lovely evening. The last few nights had been getting colder, and today was no different, but I had a warm fire in front of me, and there wasn¡¯t any wind to tear through my clothes. I could just sit and eat and enjoy the nature around me.


    I heard a distant keening sound, and sat up attentively, trying to pinpoint the noise. What was that? A persistent sort of whine, or a dim roar? It seemed to be growing louder, and in the distance over the trees, I could see a flock of birds taking flight, startled by whatever was making the noise.


    It was too loud to be a motor, but sounded too close and too low to be an aircraft. I realized what it was the same moment it came into view, a human-sized spec racing over the treetops, a trail of shimmering blue plasma in its wake.


    I swore and put my dinner away inside, telling AEGIS not to worry and to be quiet. Last thing I needed was for her to be discovered. Then I went outside and jogged west towards the nearest trees, to pick a more favorable battleground and hopefully put some distance between us and The Bunker.


    It took less than a minute for her to catch up to me and descend, an incisive frown on her lips and a deadly gleam on her visor.


    As she¡¯d promised, Karu had returned.

 024. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Like last time, we began with an exchange of pleasantries.


    ¡°Thought you could escape me, Godless scum? You must not know the meaning of what it means to be a hunter.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, go fuck yourself.¡±


    ¡°If your attacks are as slow as your wit, this battle is already over.¡±


    ¡°Do you come here just to hear yourself talk? You can do that literallyanywhere else in the world and you would get a warmer reception. In fact, try it, please. Go fuck off to Russia or something and tell me how your speech went when you¡¯re done. I¡¯ll wait.¡±


    ¡°Arrogant pest, you dare to mock me, even at the end of your existence?¡±


    ¡°I warned you last time, Karu. I¡¯m not holding back this time. You come here and pick a fight with me, you¡¯ll have nobody to blame but yourself when you get hurt.¡±


    ¡°I am harder to hurt than you think, serpent.¡± She glowered at me, her visor glinting dangerously in the brilliant sunset.


    ¡°Do you have to work really hard to come up with things to call me with every quip, or do you just cycle through them?¡±


    ¡°I will not be made a mockery of. I have been more than gracious in allowing you final words, now take them to your grave!¡±


    Without any further exchanges, she dove at me at full speed, the superheated plasma from her jetpack flaring out in all directions behind her like a blue halo.


    But I wasn¡¯t lying about not holding back this time. I wasn¡¯t dancing around and getting burns on my back again. The last ones still bothered me every night when I went to sleep. This time I stood my ground.


    With hardly a thought, a bolt of lightning formed from each of my hands, and I held them in front of me in an X, putting them between me and her. Another pair of blades materialized out of the air and, as though suspended by extra-long arms sprouting from my sides, did the same, forming a web of lightning between me and her.


    Karu, meanwhile, was at maximum speed and couldn¡¯t simply stop. She twisted and the streaks of plasma trailing behind her became a spiral as she rolled to the side, veering wide of me. As she passed, I heard a deafening extended explosion. It was enough to make me jump, and it was only after I¡¯d felt the burning spray of metal shrapnel bouncing off me that I realized she¡¯d just unloaded an automatic weapon at me while she flew past.


    The burns stung and my ears rang but she was wheeling around for another pass. Not full speed this time, she¡¯d learned that didn¡¯t work already, but she also wasn¡¯t ready to give up after one try.


    I held my stance and looked for her to get close enough to get a swipe in. I had my lobbed lightning grenades, but I think they exploded on impact, and if she wasn¡¯t close to the ground, it wouldn¡¯t touch her, and I wasn¡¯t confident in my aim enough to nail her moving. The targets I threw at were usually moving much closer to human running speed than mach 1.


    Sure enough, this time she broke into a roll much earlier, keeping her out of my reach, and raised her arms to barrage me with fire as she passed.


    This time though, she shot lasers instead of bullets. As I¡¯d learned when I accidentally levelled the XPCA facility, my lightning had a much easier time chasing down the source of a laser than a bullet.


    The lasers weren¡¯t even visible in the air before my shield arced and bolts of electricity jumped out to meet them, disrupting their flight and following the beams to their source. I saw surprise on Karu¡¯s face for a fraction of a second as it was illuminated by the lightning surging towards her before the bolts landed and she seemingly froze in midair, writhing like a marionette with half its strings cut.


    I had to give credit to whoever designed the jetpack, though. Even as Karu reeled and twitched involuntarily, the thing stayed intact and did its damnedest to keep her upright. Her momentum sent her plowing into the ground about twenty yards from me, but it was a soft landing, relatively speaking.


    She was down only for a second before stirring and getting a wobbling leg under her.


    ¡°You¨Cwere¨Cfoolish,¡± she gasped out. ¡°Last time. To¨Cshow¨Cme¡­your¡­powers.¡± She grinned and patted her armor, which I only now noticed looked slightly different than in the first encounter.


    ¡°Resistive armor?¡± I asked, mildly impressed despite myself. It had done its job, and she was in much better shape than anyone else who¡¯d tried that trick on me before.


    She struggled to her feet, and then lifted into the air gracefully, her legs dangling under her weirdly. ¡°And¡­with every¡­trick you show me¡­I grow closer to¡­your defeat¡­and God¡¯s glory¡­¡± She seemed to be having a hard time talking, her jaw clenching and her face twitching involuntarily. I pitied her for a moment. I had no qualms with fighting back against someone who was actively hunting me, but that didn¡¯t mean I wanted them to suffer.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you dare look at me like that,¡± she said, now more fully composed. ¡°Don¡¯t you dare pity me! I AM GOD¡¯S CHOSEN CHAMPION, AND YOU ARE FILTH!¡±


    Hoo, boy, she was pissed now.


    She spun straight up into the air and once a couple dozen feet up, came to a halt, facing me with her arms and legs thrown wide.


    ¡°FACE JUSTICE!¡± she screamed, and from her hips, back, and the huge cluster of weapons on her arms, dozens of micro-missiles screeched out, streaking towards me, their twisting smoke trails like a pair of ethereal wings collapsing on me.


    Unfortunately for Karu and the angelic metaphor, I knew that missiles were the one thing my shield loved to chase even more than lasers. Instinctively, I tried to stop her, warn her, anything, but it was too late, and the dozens of missiles were already on their way.


    Using my swords, I tried to cut down as many as I could before they impacted my shield, but there were too many. I only got maybe half before lightning surged from nowhere and obliterated the screaming missiles, and then surged up their contrails and into Karu¡¯s spread-eagle body.


    She shuddered and jerked horrifically, screaming the whole while. Smoke billowed from her suit and at least one thing on her arm exploded spectacularly, sending her spinning and reeling. For a moment, it looked like the explosion sent her further skyward, but after that moment, it became obvious she was unconscious and began to plummet to the ground.


    I was running towards her before I could even process what I was doing. Her pack was doing what it could to keep her aloft, but she was tumbling end-over-end and the many spindly wings on the thing were unable to orient her in any meaningful way. Only a dozen yards now, and I urged my legs to move faster.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I was back in practice again. Even the quarterback had to do drills, and I wasn¡¯t even always a quarterback. Running one way, looking another, trying to catch a ball that¡¯s just out of reach, and then catching it anyway.


    At least my gear was lighter now.


    The ball, however, was heavier. Much, much, much heavier. She fell into my waiting arms and I felt the unpleasant buzz of lingering electricity pass into me. Then her full weight was on me, as well as that of her arms, armor, and jetpack, and my momentum carried me another step forward as my legs gave out under us. I took the brunt of her fall, but we both slammed into the grass, rolling several times before coming to a halt.


    I¡¯d instinctively tucked in my arms and head as I rolled, having been tackled dozens of times before, but Karu was out, and flopped wildly. Her jetpack was smart enough to retract itself before it became splinters. Even before she rolled, I think one of her arms was broken from the explosion, and watching it bounce around in the crash made me feel sick.


    In the aftermath, I gave myself a few seconds to assess and recover before staggering up. Bruises everywhere. Legs stung like hell for pushing them to run so fast, arms hurt like hell for trying to catch a free-falling 200 lb tank. Knees and pants ripped to shreds from my first bounce. Miraculously, nothing sprained or broken feeling. I took a deep breath and put my feet under me. Good, stable.


    Karu was a mess in a heap. Something on her was still smoldering, and her arm was definitely broken, lying the wrong way across her prone body. She was torn up all over the place, but what I really needed to know was if I¡¯d just added another body to my headcount.


    I crawled close and couldn¡¯t see her breathing. I leaned in putting my ear over her mouth and couldn¡¯t hear her breathing. Shit. I swore under my breath then checked for a pulse. No pulse. Shit. I sat back, reeling for a moment.


    I had never wanted this. This fight, this life, this exile, this power. It felt like my powers weren¡¯t the only thing I¡¯d gained that one night after waking up, I¡¯d also gained a curse. How many more people would make me do this? How many more still bodies would pile up in my memories. And for what? At the end of the day, why was I even fighting so hard to stay alive?


    To protect my home, protect myself? Why? So that I could claim more lives in the future?


    I felt hot tears streaming down my face and hated myself for my self-pity. Here I was wallowing in misery when the person next to me was dead. Dead! Dead, dead, dead, dead!


    I slammed an impotent fist into the ground and was numb to the pain.


    Then I looked at my fist, bits of grass stuck to my knuckles, matted with blood from numerous scratches. Then I looked to Karu¡¯s still body, and had a thought.


    To be part of the football team, we often had to attend school events or even volunteer. Most of them were stupid, silly things. Volunteer lifeguard. Chaperone events. Hang fliers. Community-crap, we called it¡­but not in earshot of Coach.


    But one thing we had to participate in was CPR training. It stuck with me because of how off-the-rails the whole thing had gone, from Brick making out with the dummy to us trying to break the stupid thing by really pounding the shit out of it, to asking the poor, flustered instructor all manner of irreverent and inappropriate questions.


    We¡¯d all thought it was a huge waste of time. Every mobile device in the world had an emergency mode where it could act as an emergency instructor or even defibrillator, depending on the thing¡¯s voltage.


    Today, I resolved, that stupid community-crap waste of time was going to save someone¡¯s life. Not a life particularly worth saving, but one that I refused to take.


    I unstrapped the tangle of buckles crisscrossing her chest and peeled her vest off her frontside, careful not to move her or upset the numerous canisters and grenades hanging off of it. Two hands, one on top of the other in the center of the chest. The instructor had said that and commended Brick on his form, before he went to town, pounding the shit out of the dummy as fast as possible.


    Press down hard, to the beat of Memento Mori, that crap pop song from my grandfather¡¯s generation. I remembered one of our halfbacks serenading the dummy with that as he pumped, and got the whole team singing and laughing.


    Thirty beats. Brick pretended he couldn¡¯t count that high and had the instructor teach him numbers after ten.


    And then¡­


    I looked down at her still body. She was tough and tanned, bristling with weapons. Her blonde mohawk and buzzed sides made even her hair scream ¡®fuck off.¡¯ She was dressed conservatively, pragmatically, zipped and buckled and velcroed into a drab and camo shell. Even her eyes were hidden away, behind the now scratched-and-scorched visor, with its dangerous-looking horizontal eyes, which even offline now, glimmered ominously in the fleeting sunlight.


    But her lips looked round and soft as any girls¡¯ I¡¯d ever seen. Her teeth, straight, white, well-cared-for, slightly parted like she was about to take a bite of something delicious.


    This is to save her life, I reminded myself. Right now, she¡¯s technically dead, so this is literally the least sexy thing ever. I needed to stop wasting time, put my lips on hers, and fill her lungs with air. So I did.


    Even after all that, they were soft and warm.


    I stayed focused and repeated CPR another dozen times. What was next? What was I missing?


    I knew the answer, of course. First step, call for help. Last step, repeat until help arrives.


    I kept going but my arms, already hurting from the fall, were on fire now. What else was there to do? There had to be something.


    I pumped away and went over the course again. After CPR was¡­was¡­


    It hit me. Application and use of an AED. Automatic external defibrillator. An electric jolt to the heart in case of cardiac arrest, arrhythmia¡­or electrical accident stopping the heart.


    Again, I felt the guys with me as I went through the steps. Step one:


    And I stopped.


    This was so fucking wrong.


    I remembered Peterson¡¯s voice lifting about the room, asking the instructor with mock concern. ¡°But what if the victim is a girl, and she¡¯s wearing a bra?¡±


    ¡°Then you carefully move the bra above the patient¡¯s chest before applying the AED,¡± came the instructor¡¯s patient response.


    I swallowed heavily and un-velcroed and unzipped her flight suit. It fell open, and covered by a white tank top, her large breasts popped out. I had to stop again for a moment, my every action weighing the value of saving this person¡¯s life against¡­what was basically necrophila at this point. I rolled up the tank, revealing her bra and honed abs. Her tan lines were intense, and it was obvious that she did much of her training in nothing more than a tank. I took a deep breath and, as the training said, moved the bra above the patient¡¯s chest.


    If it weren¡¯t so entirely fucked, it would have been the most glorious moment of my teenage life.


    One after the other, the two huge globes came tumbling out, each well larger than my hand, and flatter and less spherical than I¡¯d expected. Right in the middle of each, looking a little small for the size of the breast was a dark circle, which after examining them both so closely, I realized was the same creamy pink as her lips. They looked so soft and smushed down against her reclining form.


    I didn¡¯t even give myself a full second to stare. One pad would go under the breast on the right side, the other above on the left. I put my hands in those positions, taking care not to touch the huge, glorious breasts, took a deep breath again and force a small shock through my arms.


    There wasn¡¯t a dramatic jump like you saw in the holos. If she moved at all, it was because I¡¯d pressed my fists into her torso, making her breasts sway. There was definitely a jolt though, I could feel it through her. I pressed a finger to her neck to check for a pulse.


    It was there. It was there! It was faint, and hard to feel under my own heart racing, but it was there! I bent forward and saw her chest rising and falling. It was the most beautiful thing in the world. Despite this whole thing being my fault, I¡¯d just saved my first life. Relief flooded through my whole being and I wanted to just collapse and rest and bask in it.


    But the sun was almost down now and my job wasn¡¯t done just yet. Almost sadly, I pulled her bra back down and tried to get her breasts to cooperate in going back inside it. As I kneaded and prodded the soft warm flesh back into place, I felt like I¡¯d only moved from necrophilia to rape at this point, and was still not really enjoying my first breast experience. Finally, they were put away as best as I could manage, and I rolled her tank back down.


    And now what? Leave her to freeze? It seemed stupid to save her life just to abandon her, but it seemed even stupider to do anything else. I sighed and swore at the unconscious girl but gently as possible lifted her onto my back, trying to keep her broken arm from swinging, and carried her back towards the bunker.


    Man, if AEGIS had issue with me bringing Wynn and Tate home, she was going to flip when she saw this.

 025. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    ¡®Flip¡¯ was a massive understatement when AEGIS saw me hauling Karu¡¯s unconscious form through the threshold. She took one look at the blood and cuts covering my body, the tangle of limbs sprawling over my back, and just screamed.


    It really wasn¡¯t what I needed right now. What I needed was to get this weight off my shoulders and rest. And finish my now-cold dinner.


    Damn, I¡¯d been so excited for that and now it was ruined. When things were already going to hell, the smallest things feel even more unfair.


    I put Karu down momentarily and stripped her of her jetpack, vest, and weaponry as best as I could, before heaving her into my hammock, broken arm facing out so I could have a look at it. She was practically half the weight without all her gear, but was still a big girl and solidly built.


    After some thought, I pulled the visor from her face as well. If she weren¡¯t blood-smeared and rocking a fuck-you mohawk, she would be a classically beautiful blonde. I wished her eyes were open so I could see what color they were.


    ¡°I-is that¡­Karu?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°That would have been a much better opener than screaming,¡± I said with a sardonic smile. I winced as a cut on my face announced that making any kind of facial expressions was a painful prospect at the moment.


    ¡°You¡¯re bleeding from your¡­everywhere,¡± AEGIS said, sounding completely shocked.


    ¡°Yeah. She and I had a bit of a tussle outside. Good news, I won. Bad news, I kind of sort of killed her.¡± She gasped. ¡°Oh don¡¯t worry, I brought her back.¡±


    ¡°I was going to say. Your lightning-based powers stand a very good chance of fibrillation, which, assuming there is no severe tissue damage¨C¡°


    ¡°Yeah, AEGIS I got it. I jump-started her heart and now she¡¯s alive again.¡±


    AEGIS paced nervously in front of her terminal, nervously stroking one of her long pigtails. ¡°There¡¯s just¡­so much blood. You need to¨C¡°


    ¡°I know, AEGIS. I¡¯ll take care of myself. But none of my wounds are as bad as hers, her arm is definitely broken. Do you know how to set a broken bone?¡±


    ¡°I do. I¡¯ll walk you through it. Is there any bone or jagged protrusion?¡±


    ¡°Not that I see.¡±


    ¡°Does the site of the wound look crooked and swollen?¡±


    ¡°No, it just looks like her upper arm bends in a new place.¡±


    AEGIS was pale and a little frantic but was much better at keeping cool when she had a way to contribute. She and I made a good team before when she was walking me through basic repairs and crafting, and electrical work like hooking the mass-fab up to her box. We¡¯d developed a sort of short-hand lingo, which served us well in setting and splinting Karu¡¯s upper arm.


    ¡°Move it a little in, about halfway to you, and pull it taut. Hands up two more. One more, okay mark. And tie the other end of that cord to the mark.¡±


    As much as AEGIS worrying drove me nuts sometimes, I had to admit, she was one of the best people to have around in an emergency. Despite the amnesia, her knowledge of random things was, frankly, encyclopaedic, and her ability to give directions and prioritize were precise and effective.


    We finished up and Karu had a very professional-looking splint and sling, which should keep her arm okay until she was able to get out of here and seek more professional help. With her presumably vast fortune of blood money, she could probably afford a regenerator and be back in shape in a few days.


    Whereas if my arm broke, I¡¯d stand a very good chance of just being dead, I thought bitterly.


    ¡°Okay, she¡¯s set. Now clean yourself up. Your knees are mangled, what did you do out there?¡±


    ¡°That was actually from after the fight. She sorta died and fell and I caught her. She¡¯s pretty heavy.¡±


    ¡°You caught her. And you did THAT to your legs? Was she fricking twenty feet in the air?¡±


    ¡°Closer to thirty, I think.¡±


    AEGIS fumed. I felt a little bad for teasing her, but she was taking this entirely too seriously. It was over, I¡¯d survived.


    ¡°When I tell you to take care of yourself out there, what the heck do you think I mean by that? Please, go fight someone who¡¯s literally 50% weapons? Try to kill yourself in order to catch her dead, falling body? Or maybe please, bring the psycho murderess huntress home with you so she knows where you sleep and can come in and off you at night time next time?¡±


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to leave her to die.¡±


    ¡°You could have just left her dead.¡±


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to do that either.¡± I pulled up a clean rag and poured some water on it. ¡°Do we have anything I can use to disinfect this?¡± I asked.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    ¡°If you put some water in the mass-fab, I can make hydrogen peroxide for you. It¡¯ll just slosh around the pan, but I think that¡¯s about all we¡¯ve got.¡±


    I poured a couple of glugs of water in the mass-fab¡¯s cabinet, feeling like this was just asking for it to leak and break everything, but she knew the machine way better than I. A brief lightshow and a couple of minutes later and¡­there was still what looked like water at the bottom. I dabbed my rag in there and applied it to my knee.


    Ouch. Definitely not water.


    ¡°I think 4% concentration is ideal? So¡­still just mostly water. Let me know when you¡¯re done and I can dissimilate the rest for later.¡±


    I went through a few yards of cloth just cleaning off blood and grime, and more disinfecting my wounds. When I was done, I gave Karu a once-over as well, to AEGIS¡¯ disapproval. She wasn¡¯t as banged up as I was, her flightsuit doing its job in protecting her from cuts and abrasions, but she still had some on her hands and face, and burns on her arm.


    ¡°Don¡¯t use peroxide on burns, it won¡¯t heal as well. Just rinse it clean with cold water.¡±


    I turned and it looked like AEGIS was busy working, completely oblivious to me. I smiled a little. Even if she disagreed with me, she still had my back. I cleaned up the cuts on Karu¡¯s face and arms, but left the burns alone. Didn¡¯t want to leave her lying in wet clothes¡­or have AEGIS berate me for turning her shirt wet.


    And then, finally, I could sit down and eat. Despite the interruption, the fish tasted great, and I had really worked up an appetite. AEGIS seemed to have calmed down from a state of nagging and barely-contained angst to occasional fretting.


    ¡°Hey. You doing all right?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Doing¡­okay. Been better. Been much better,¡± she said with a glare.


    ¡°Yeah, for what it¡¯s worth, I¡¯m sorry. Thanks for your help earlier.¡±


    ¡°NP. But really. What¡¯s going to happen when she wakes up? Aren¡¯t you a little afraid she¡¯s going to get¡­murdery?¡±


    ¡°No. Well, maybe she¡¯ll try and I¡¯ll have to break her other arm.¡± I laughed, AEGIS did not. I took the hint. ¡°But seriously, she¡¯s not going to do much in her condition, and I put her guns and stuff on a shelf by the door.¡±


    ¡°I get why you did it, but¡­I don¡¯t get why you did it.¡±


    I paused and thought for a second. ¡°So I woke up one day and was an Exhuman. People always told me when that happened, you¡¯d be a danger to everyone around you. I learned they were right, but not for the right reasons. I woke up powerful, more powerful than I can imagine. I can kill people with barely a thought if I wanted to, but that doesn¡¯t mean I wanted to. I¡¯m still the same person I was when I was human, just now burdened with this insanely powerful¡­¡±


    ¡°Curse?¡±


    ¡°Thing. It¡¯s not even inherently evil, my powers. Like yeah, if you try to shoot me, you¡¯ll find out they are very deadly. But so is a loaded gun, and that can be held by a warlord or a police officer.¡±


    ¡°Right. So you saved Karu because you want to be more police than warlord?¡±


    ¡°I mean, I didn¡¯t give it that much thought. Someone was hurt and I could help them so I did. I wasn¡¯t trying to be anything.¡±


    She gave me a big, warm smile. ¡°I think people who do what you did are the best people.¡±


    ¡°Boy I sure hope so. We¡¯re probably the only two people who think an Exhuman can choose to be good.¡± I paused and frowned. ¡°I think you¡¯re good too, AEGIS.¡±


    ¡°What makes you say that? I never thought my goodness was in question, LOL.¡±


    ¡°Nothing, really. I just¡­wanted you to know. In case someday you ever wonder.¡±


    ¡°Well that¡¯s weirdly deep of you. Is this a new pick-up tactic?¡±


    ¡°Is it working?¡±


    ¡°Well, you have a girl passed out in your bed, and another ravishing hottie chained up in your personal dungeon. So¡­yes?¡±


    I laughed. ¡°Yeah, I only go for the weird ones. Can¡¯t stand vanilla girls once you get into¡­jetpack computer-dungeon death-fighting. I hear it¡¯s the latest craze on the ¡®net.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t forget the mind-reading. Or the fishing boy.¡±


    ¡°Ew, crossing the line.¡± AEGIS laughed at my disgusted face.


    I paused and asked more seriously. ¡°Hey, so do you think having weird shit attracted to you is part of this gift-curse-Exhuman thing? Because my life has gotten so much weirder since this happened.¡±


    ¡°My guess is the weird stuff is all around constantly. Most people just have a normal life to retreat into when it surfaces. Your normal life got taken away.¡±


    ¡°Well, that sucks.¡±


    ¡°I hear being an Exhuman sucks. Kind of part of the package.¡± She stuck her tongue out at me and laughed. I laughed with her but suddenly was keenly aware of how tired I was.


    ¡°I think I need to sleep, real bad,¡± I said.


    ¡°Yes, I think your body needs more blood inside of it and less on your clothes. We still need to sit down and have you sew up some new ones for yourself,¡± she nagged.


    ¡°Or you could just assimilate me some.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, because I¡¯m just going to derive the polymer chains that compose synthetic weave and figure out how to constitute them, and then then be able to assimilate them in a structure which will actually function as cloth, and then extrapolate that for an entire garment? Because you¡¯re too manly to pick up a sewing needle?¡±


    ¡°You made disinfectant today without a blueprint.¡±


    ¡°The chemical formula for that is literally H2O2.¡±


    ¡°I have no idea what that means.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s water with one more oxygen. How did you pass high school chemistry?¡±


    ¡°I did fine in chemistry. I just didn¡¯t memorize every atom I saw.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a molecule, not an atom.¡± She gave an exaggerated sigh. ¡°IDK, maybe you are right. Maybe I will figure out how to synthesize an enormously complicated chemical structure before you learn how to hold a needle. Certainly seems like the correct distribution of brain activity.¡±


    ¡°Ouch!¡± I said, feigning getting hit in the chest, and flopping into the nest of rope where I¡¯d be sleeping. ¡°You remind me of my sister, Lia, sometimes. Mostly when you argue with me but are totally right.¡±


    ¡°Lia sounds like a smart girl, if she argued against whatever you were saying.¡±


    ¡°Ouch again.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll have to tell me about her sometime, but not tonight. Now you should just rest and recover. Sleep in tomorrow. Drink lots of fluids.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, let me just turn off the damn light,¡± I said, rolling to my side to get up. AEGIS stopped me with a brisk tsk-tsk and one of her trademark superior smirks.


    ¡°Got a surprise for you,¡± she said, and clapped twice. The room lights went out.


    ¡°You broke the lights. Neat.¡±


    She clapped twice and they came on again. ¡°I couldn¡¯t decide if I wanted to hook the lights up to the network so I could control them, or give you a switch you could use from bed, so I compromised and did neither. Instead I read about this crazy thing from ancient history and decided to make one.¡±


    ¡°Very nice. Almost even useful. Glad to see the data crystal wasn¡¯t a total waste of effort.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to say thank you, nitwit.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t, too busy going to sleep and filling my body up with blood again!¡± I chimed and rolled over in my nest of blankets. I held two hands out where AEGIS could see them and clapped twice, draping the room in blackness.


    ¡°God, you¡¯re insufferable," she said with a smile. And then to herself, after turning off the mic and holo she added, ¡°and for some reason, I love you anyway.¡±

 026. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Karu.

    I woke slowly and painfully. I could hardly believe I had slept, so much did my body ache. My eyes struggled to open and even when they did, my vision was blurred. I heard a voice to my left, a woman¡¯s. I knew not whose, nor could I make out the words.


    ¡°W-water,¡± I was able to whisper. I knew not if she heard me, but her conversation had ceased. A dark shape moved close to me and after moments, I realized it to be a person, holding a round flask. I moved to take it and put it to my lips, but my arm would not move, and screamed at the exertion.


    I would not be so easily defeated by the pain, but the person gently held my arm down and spoke more words. I understood one of them. ¡°Broken.¡± Unfortunate.


    My other arm was only barely more mobile. It felt as though great weights had been tied to each joint, making even the feeble movement of reaching for the flask slow and ponderous. Unbidden, the figure moved the flask to my lips before I could reach it. I accepted the kindness, but took small offense. Even in this state, I was capable.


    The water was cold and crisp. As I drank deeply, I felt some of my pains subside. I must thank my rescuers, but first, needed to determine where I was and how long I had been here.


    I turned to the figure at my side and attempted to speak, but the liquid had reconstituted a film of fluid in my throat and I coughed, which racked my body with pain. I hoped what was in my throat wasn¡¯t blood.


    ¡°¡­easy. You¡¯re¡­bad shape,¡± said the figure. It was a man¡¯s voice, different than the one I had heard at first. There were two here, possibly more. A hospital? Unlikely, they would have pulled my medical records and put me on a regenerator immediately. Where then?


    I stared at the figure and willed my vision to come into focus. Unfortunately that was not how vision worked, and the best I could manage was an indistinct, swimming image of a man wearing dark colors.


    ¡°Visor,¡± I managed to cough out. ¡°Visor,¡± I repeated, refusing to stutter. The man and woman conversed for several moments.


    ¡°¡­harm it can¡­¡±


    ¡°¡­bad idea¡­¡±


    ¡°Visor,¡± I pleaded, and attempted to gesture at my head. I knew not what the cause of this delay was, but its very existence made me nervous. The man left my side and came back a moment later with an object in his hands. As gently as possible, he pressed the visor down over my ears and seated it snugly on my face. Blackness covered my vision. I struggled for the controls on top of the face, but he was there to help again, tapping the activation switch.


    The splash holo came up, advertising the manufacturer while the firmware loaded. As I had hoped, my eyes were able to focus on the image mere millimeters away from them, even if the parallax and projection of the holos made it appear as though it were floating meters away. I needed not the ability to focus if the visor could do it for me.


    Within moments, the display engaged and I saw the rusted beams and concrete ceiling above me. Informational readouts gave me the height of the ceiling and composition. I slowly turned my head towards the horizon and verified my orientation. Only a few feet below ground level. Too derelict to be a hospital. But where, then?


    I couldn¡¯t use the controls or voice comms to request a map, but I could determine my absolute position. It was¡­two days after my fight, and only a few hundred feet away. Where could that possibly place me? Had someone followed me into the exclusion zone after I failed to report and rescued me? Then why would we still be here?


    I turned to ask the two, and froze.


    The holo readout identifying the male as Athan Ashton was redundant. I knew his face already, had already seen far too much of it.


    I coughed again and struggled to sit up through the pain, but he had me trapped in some kind of net and my struggles were in vain. He moved to stop me, but seemed afraid to come closer.


    ¡°So¡­it¡¯s capture then,¡± I sneered. Truly this man was as diabolical as any Exhuman. My defeat and death was insufficient for his twisted desires, and now I was to be his¡­what? Torture victim? Bargaining chip? Sexual object?


    I re-checked the visor¡¯s chrono. I had been out two days. What unspeakable things had he done to me in this time? It was hard to tell what pains were from the fight and which he had inflicted on me after, but I did not remember my arm being broken before I lost consciousness.


    Now that I was cataloging my ailments, I was able to determine that my bra was out of place, hastily arranged on top of my breasts rather than under them. My whole being burned at the violation. So it was sexual deviancy, then. I should have ended him when I had the chance.


    ¡°I know not¡­your vile deeds¡­but you shall pay¡­¡± I managed to hiss out, my breath coming in pained gasps, though I felt any pain in my body was now nothing compared to what he had done to my soul.


    ¡°-ld you she wouldn¡¯t see it that way,¡± said the female voice.


    Who was that? The target was supposed to be alone, and furthermore, isolated in an exclusion zone. It did not surprise me that he would violate the conditions of exile, in fact I had counted on it as justification for his execution, but that he was now working in concert with a human? Perhaps his powers were not fully catalogued, and mental domination was among his powers? If so, I needed to end myself before falling to his subjugation. But I had to report as well¡­


    ¡°Karu,¡± Athan said. My head instinctively snapped to face him, and my body immediately screamed in protest of the rapid movement. ¡°I doubt you¡¯ll believe me, but I actually saved your life. I¡¯ll tell you whatever you want, but please believe me when I say I don¡¯t mean you any harm, and please don¡¯t try anything stupid.¡±


    ¡°That,¡± I grunted ¡°is the last thing¡­I would believe.¡±


    ¡°-impossible. You should have left her dead, Athan.¡±


    ¡°Please don¡¯t joke about killing her in front of her, AEGIS. I am trying to get her to trust me.¡±


    ¡°Well you¡¯re wasting your time,¡± she said. I privately agreed. The woman was called AEGIS, obviously a code name. I tried to turn to see her but could not move my head far enough, and my visor was only tracking one entity in the room other than me.


    I had a horrible realization. What if AEGIS was another Exhuman, who could hide from my visor? If these two were collaborating, it could be the largest Exhuman event in history. I had to warn somebody, but I could not without alerting them. Perhaps if I could convince them I was truly helpless, I could sneak out, or call for aid while they thought I slept?


    ¡°Karu. Please,¡± Athan was saying. ¡°I know you¡¯re planning some elaborate escape attempt but we¡¯re not holding you here. We¡¯re trying to help you.¡±


    I focused on him again. His vitals were stressed but not consistent with lying. Given his lack of training and electrical-aligned powerset, and how easily I had been able to determine his lies in previous encounters, it seemed likely that he believed himself to be speaking truth. Yet that counted for little at this point, he may just be a puppet operating under AEGIS¡¯ strings.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    However, if he honestly believed he was helping me, perhaps that gave me an opportunity.


    ¡°If you believe that¡­then untie me. Return to me my possessions. I desire to leave now.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re um, not tied up. You¡¯re in a hammock,¡± Athan said.


    I looked down and realized how true that was. My visor identified it as hand-woven synth-weave.


    Truly, I was in a deplorable state if I could not even escape the reaches of a hammock. It was almost laughable. Still, renewed with this newfound knowledge, and with only a small amount of the embarrassment I felt residing on my cheeks, I attempted to sit up and extricate myself again.


    My embarrassment only multiplied as I continued to lack the sufficient strength. Athan frowned and stepped towards me. I recoiled at whatever scheme he had designed, but instead, he gently slipped an arm under my back and legs and hefted me bodily from the accursed net.


    ¡°Want to try standing?¡± he asked. I nodded. His breath was uncomfortably close on my face, and his arms were solid, resolute, and warm. I realized that now out from the blankets laid in the hammock, I was cold all over, except my broken arm, which burned like fire.


    ¡°What¡­happened to my arm?¡± I asked. Athan carried me to the center of the room and gingerly lowered me to my feet. My legs shook and would not hold me. I stumbled right back into his arms.


    ¡°Easy there. You really took a beating and you¡¯ve been out for two days. It¡¯s natural that your body will be unsteady.¡±


    ¡°Do not think to patronize me and answer my question.¡±


    ¡°Told you, you should have left her for dead.¡±


    ¡°Still not helping, AEGIS. Karu, your arm¡­you rose up about 30 feet in the air and fired missiles at me at the end of our fight. Do you remember that?¡±


    ¡°I do,¡± I said. It was intended to be the end of the fight¡­and in a manner, it was. To combat the Ramanathan Laws, I had fired missiles of every conceivable type at him at once. Incendiary, concussive, corrosive, toxic gas, flechette, containment foam, blunt force, irradiation¡­If they had struck, his demise would have been certain. The only way his powerset could combat it would be if he could defeat the delivery system, which it had proven more than capable.


    ¡°I have this lightning shield which protects me from projectiles and restraint¨C¡°


    ¡°Athan! Do not tell the enemy your abilities.¡±


    ¡°¨Cand when your missiles hit it, the shield detonated them and the current followed back to the source. You got electrocuted, a lot. You uh, died, actually. Heart stopped on the spot.¡±


    ¡°I¡­see.¡± I¡¯d never died before. The knowledge that I had touched death made me feel empty. While I was out, had I met my maker?


    ¡°Anyway, one of your gun-arms blew up and that broke your arm. You fell the 30 feet. I tried to catch you, didn¡¯t actually know you were dead at that point. I got these in the crash.¡± He pulled up his pant legs and showed an enormous number of deep cuts from his knees down. I winced, not at the wounds, but that they were afflicted on my account.


    I didn¡¯t respond. I didn¡¯t know how to. Again, my holo indicated he was telling the truth, and the extent of each of our injuries did somewhat substantiate the claims.


    ¡°After that, I gave you CPR and ultimately jump-started your heart with my powers. I um,¡± he averted his gaze and scratched his head guiltily. His vitals were jumping. Was a lie forthcoming?


    ¡°I had to¡­undress¡­you, to administer the shock.¡± I sighed. It was embarrassment, not lies. And justified embarrassment as well.


    I realized he was holding me up the entire time he told his story and the presence of his hands on my shoulders made me uncomfortable. I shrugged gently and he laid me down on the concrete floor. It was cold, and internally made me miss the warm arms, on a level.


    ¡°I must ask why you choose to continuously make the worst possible decisions,¡± I said, now staring at the ceiling again and unable to look down at him.


    ¡°That¡¯s what I want to know every day,¡± AEGIS chimed in.


    ¡°Thanks guys. Karu, can you stop being a huge bitch and just ask me a normal question if you have one?¡±


    I attempted to prop myself up on my good elbow with marginal success. I welcomed the pain flowing through me. I deserved this much at least.


    ¡°In our first encounter, you deliberately missed a fatal strike, and then allowed me to escape when you held favorable terrain. Worse still, you permitted me to retreat and regroup, and to prepare countermeasures against your powers.¡±


    ¡°In our second encounter, you spoke of fighting without restraint, but I could read your lies easily. Still you fought a defensive battle, riddled with restraint, and then when victory was delivered to you by providence, you risked personal injury which, if worse, could have spelled your end out here. Then you resuscitate a known enemy, and bring them to your hidden place of operations.¡±


    ¡°And even now, you are treating me as more guest than prisoner, giving me water and information as I dictate, and telling me that after that, you will release me so that I may hunt you, better armed and prepared, yet again?¡±


    ¡°Well, obviously I¡¯d prefer if you didn¡¯t come after me again, but yeah.¡±


    ¡°¡­why do this? No being is that stupid.¡±


    ¡°Athan is definitely that stupid.¡±


    ¡°Still not helping, AEGIS.¡± He moved beside me and sat down on the floor within my vision, which I appreciated as I could now read his vitals for signs of lying. ¡°I didn¡¯t plan any of this, you know. This isn¡¯t some protracted campaign to do the stupid Athan thing. I¡¯m just facing choices and making the best decisions I can.¡±


    ¡°Your decision-making ability is deplorable,¡± I said. Truly, to be defeated by this man, I may need to retire in shame¡­but only after collecting his head.


    ¡°I wonder,¡± he said ¡°if you have to wear that visor to correct your vision from looking down on everyone so hard.¡±


    I fixed him with an even stare. He was wearing a sly smile, like this was a game. ¡°Though you seem to have a gift for it, make no mistake when I say that this changes nothing between us. You are my quarry and I am your hunter. God has seen fit to give me pleasure from a successful hunt, but yours¡­I can tell already that your death will be the most pleasurable of them all.¡±


    ¡°Speaking of poor decisions, why are you threatening me when you are totally helpless and at my mercy?¡±


    ¡°Because I have studied you sufficiently. You will not kill me, you are weak, and have strayed from the light of God. You are afraid of doing what is necessary. You will let me go, and I will return, as many times as it takes, and one of these fights, I will win. When I do, I will not show the same foolish mercy which you seem to treasure.¡±


    ¡°You talk about God a lot. Isn¡¯t that the ¡®thou shalt not kill¡¯ guy?¡±


    ¡°If God had intended for me not to kill, he would not have created you,¡± I grunted and pulled myself seated upright. From here I could see AEGIS and realized why my visor hadn¡¯t picked her up. She was not an Exhuman, she was a holo. Maybe one of those virtual girlfriend personalities. I didn¡¯t care, she wasn¡¯t my quarry.


    ¡°There really is no arguing with you, is there?¡± Athan asked, a tone of pleading in his voice. I revelled that the smile was gone.


    ¡°There is never room to argue when one person is right and the other is wrong.¡± I shuffled to a shelf and slowly climbed my way up it, leaning into it heavily as I steadied myself on my feet.


    ¡°So I¡¯m a person now?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a turn of phrase. Make no mistake, you are still less than nothing to me.¡±


    ¡°Do you want help standing up or¨C¡°


    ¡°I want you to be silent and dead. But for now I will settle for silent.¡±


    To the Exhuman¡¯s credit, he remained so as I struggled to my feet and shambled across the room from shelf to shelf until reaching the pile of my personal effects at the door. I leaned against the wall with my head and shoulder while strapping on my jetpack, and forsook the other equipment. I would have to land carefully in my current state and would miss the flight suit in the bitter cold of the air, but I would survive, and the pain would be a constant reminder of my failure.


    ¡°Enjoy your final stay of execution, Exhuman,¡± I said as the pack engaged and lifted me off my unstable legs into the air outside. I added the location to my map as I soared away and it became just another rock on the ground so far beneath me.


    I rang up my contact. Punctual as always, he picked up after one ring.


    ¡°I have survived second contact with the target,¡± I said ¡°as has he. I was captured but was able to escape with additional insight into the target¡¯s abilities.¡±


    ¡°Does the Exhuman display any capacity for killing yet?¡± asked the contact. It was an unusual question, but I was here to provide a service, not question my employer.


    ¡°I do not believe so. I exploited this fact in order to escape with my life.¡±


    ¡°A pity. Do kill him next time.¡±


    ¡°I am already planning on it.¡± I hung up.


    Questioning an employer¡¯s motives was a good way to never get work again, and with the lull in the number of Exhuman events recently, I needed as much work as I could take. God¡¯s work was righteous, but it didn¡¯t pay medical bills or buy missiles.


    Not that I¡¯d need missiles for a while now. I had learned that lesson.


    Still, the Exhuman infuriated me. I knew if I could not push him from my mind, this flight would be greater torture than it already was, and yet despite all my efforts, I could not. If only he had answered my question.


    I gritted and shivered as the trees whipped past below.


    Athan Ashton, why did you not kill me?

 027. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I was way later than I had wanted to be in getting back to Saga. I had intended to give it a day or two to think about, but trying to stay nearby in case Karu woke up, I hadn¡¯t had the chance and it was day five now since our awkward parting.


    I wasn¡¯t sure where I stood on everything either, but I knew I owed Saga some kind of response. Her life was shit enough without also being in suspense about whether or not I was coming back.


    I started over in a light jog, something I¡¯d been trying to do more of lately, but thanks to the slashes on my knees and legs, it didn¡¯t last long. Everything just wound up hurting long before I was winded or exhausted.


    If I hadn¡¯t been looking out for it, I would have missed the barely-perceptible nervous shudder as I entered Saga¡¯s range and she began riding my senses.


    ¡°Hey Saga. Sorry I¡¯m late.¡±


    [Not gonna lie, I wasn¡¯t doing so hot for a while there. Being alone with your thoughts can really suck.]


    ¡°Yeah, I know. I got kinda delayed.¡±


    I felt her probe at my mind gently. [I can see that. Glad you came when you could¡­I guess.]


    There was an awkward silence where I kept walking and didn¡¯t speak, and she didn¡¯t probe me further. I didn¡¯t want to talk about it, and didn¡¯t think she was ready to know the answer. I decided to settle for small talk.


    ¡°Yeah, so, not sure how much you rifled through my memories, but Karu¡¯s a major bitch, eh?¡±


    [A very major one. People like her represent the very worst of humanity. People are always willing to hate us just because we¡¯re Exhuman.]


    ¡°There is sort of a justification for that, though.¡±


    [What, because we¡¯re stronger than others, people should hate us?]


    ¡°I was thinking it¡¯s more of a necessary evil to stigmatize us so that anyone who turns would give themselves up instead of taking out a city block. Like, you and I might be fine, but if we were accepted, other people might be okay with their powers as well, and would fight instead of submit.¡±


    [And what¡¯s wrong with that?]


    ¡°I think you know. Society tends to break down when you have to be afraid for your life every day.¡±


    [Maybe people should be afraid. People should feel accountable for their actions.]


    ¡°So we go from a pariah to gods who get to deal out judgement on our whims?¡±


    [Works for me.]


    ¡°Yeah, because you¡¯re one of the gods. Sounds like kind of a shit system otherwise.¡±


    [I think you care too much about humans.]


    ¡°And I think you care too little. Look, if we¡¯re going to start a conversation at some point about how you as an individual are separate and better than your people who murdered millions of innocents, you are not selling yourself very well.¡± I bent under the rusted wreck of a fence as I reached the mining complex, and headed for the admin building to sit down while we continued our little chat.


    [Regardless if you approve of me or not, I still had nothing to do with that. In fact, I doubt 99% of Chinese had anything to do with that. Probably some stupid corrupt general or politician pushed the button to end the world.]


    ¡°I¡­suppose.¡±


    [It¡¯s not like every Chinese family had a button in their house which fired a nuke and they all chose to push ¡¯em. And I certainly didn¡¯t have any such buttons in my cozy prison. So can you drop holding the whole Chinese war against me?]


    ¡°I think so. That¡¯s what I wanted to come here to say, though in totally different words.¡± I took a breath and organized my thoughts for the billionth time. ¡°Can I talk to you about a problem I have?¡±


    [Can¡¯t really say no, can I? Bit of a captive audience. Hah.]


    ¡°Right. Well, if you get bored, feel free to fry my brain or whatever it is you do.¡±


    [Already considering it.]


    ¡°So I¡¯ve been wondering why it seems like so many Exhumans, you included, wind up¡­how do I put this?¡±


    [Angry?]


    ¡°Devoid of morals.¡±


    [(Ouch.)]


    ¡°Like, I had this scrap with Karu, and she just took it for granted I¡¯d try to kill her. I¡¯m a freaking high school kid who played football. I¡¯m no trained assassin, yet people like me apparently try to kill people like her on the regular.¡±This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    [Well, as you said, she is a major bitch. (Probably wouldn¡¯t have this problem if she weren¡¯t flying around picking fights with people who could kick her ass.)]


    ¡°I¡¯m apparently in the minority here in still having some human decency. Now, do you think that¡¯s just because of tit-for-tat? They stripped me of my humanity, so why should I behave like a human?¡±


    [Probably.]


    ¡°I don¡¯t buy it. I think that¡¯s just a justification. I think the real problem is¡­Exhumans are dangerous because humans are easy for us. Like, if a police officer tells you not to steal, why listen to him if you can blow up his brain with a thought? When you¡¯re on a pedestal so much higher than everyone else around you, why should laws and rules apply to you anymore?¡±


    [Guess they probably shouldn¡¯t.]


    ¡°I talked about us being gods earlier, but I think it¡¯s more like kings and queens. We¡¯re so far above the law, we have so much power¡­but when you use that power abusively for your own gain, the people rise up and depose you.¡±


    [I doubt an angry mob with pitchforks and torches could take either of us.]


    ¡°No¡­but you¡¯ll notice that in the history of Exhumans, not one of them has ever taken over the world. Some try, but their disconnection from humanity means they¡¯re horrible rulers. Why would anyone follow you if you feel no need to follow the rules with your own followers? Some might follow out of fear, but there¡¯s a whole world out there they could join to take you down, why sit on the Exhuman losing side?¡±


    [Pretty sure I wouldn¡¯t have this problem.]


    ¡°Yeah, no wonder they shoved you in a vault. Sometimes I wonder what is going to happen when you get out of there.¡±


    [Probably nothing calamitous. (But only because everyone who put me in here is already dead¡­)]


    ¡°Very reassuring,¡± I said, being anything but reassured. ¡°And that plays well into the point I¡¯m trying to make.¡±


    [Which is?]


    ¡°Eventually an Exhuman is going to come along they can¡¯t stop. Through bad luck or circumstance, or just having unstoppable powers, one will come to power and have the wherewithal to hold it. And that¡¯s horrible, both for humans and Exhumans.¡±


    [Why would that be bad for Exhumans? Sounds great to me.]


    ¡°Because, let¡¯s say you do enact your master plans and dominate humanity. What, then, could possibly usurp your rule and bring you down, if the humans can¡¯t do it?¡±


    [I guess¡­another Exhuman.]


    ¡°Right. So we go from a crappy cycle where Exhumans are systematically subjugated by humans to a crappy cycle where an Exhuman systematically subjugates humans and Exhumans.¡±


    [So how do you stop it?]


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, but I think I know how to avoid it, and that¡¯s what I want to talk to you about.¡±


    I took a readying breath, knowing she wouldn¡¯t like what I was going to say. Of course, at this point, I had to say it or she¡¯d hear it from my thoughts first.


    ¡°What the world needs¡­is more Exhumans. Just like how humans can¡¯t break the law because they¡¯d be punished by their peers, we need Exhumans to reach a level where they are also held accountable by their peers. Once we have law and order established, we can have good relations with humans again, and an actual reason for them to trust us, and a reason for us to care about them.¡±


    ¡°Thing is, we need to start somewhere, with a group of Exhumans who are willing to abide by human morals to get the ball rolling. Otherwise, it¡¯s just an unstoppable world-conquering gang.¡±


    [I like the latter much more than the former.]


    ¡°I know you do. But I¡¯m asking you to do the former. You said you hoped we¡¯d be able to reach a partnership unprecedented in the world by having two Exhumans working together. I agree¡­but we will have to consider that by doing this, we¡¯ll be setting a precedent.¡±


    [You have been giving this a lot of thought.]


    ¡°I was stuck tending to an unconscious woman for two days, after doing basically nothing but thinking about it for two more days. I might be slow, but I do think when I try. I¡¯m sure it needs more work.¡±


    [Some kind of¡­League of Exhumans?]


    ¡°Hoping for a catchier name than that¡­presumably without mention of Exhuman since that¡¯s kind of a¡­dirty word. Maybe like the P-Force.¡±


    [Pee force?]


    ¡°P, For parahuman. Like what they called Exhumans before the stigma. Whatever, we should probably think about getting it off the ground before worrying about the name.¡±


    [(You should worry about it. That is a terrible name.) I don¡¯t¡­hate your idea. I have¡­many (totally justified) issues with humans. But¡­(how do I even put this into words?) I get the feeling what you are proposing is good and right. Those are things I haven¡¯t cared about in a long time. (Morality kind of loses meaning in a hole in the ground.) But that doesn¡¯t mean if you offered me a good and bad choice, I¡¯d say hell yeah, sign me up for bad 100%.]


    [I guess¡­if a system like yours existed and worked (and that¡¯s an important step) it would mean fixing all the reasons I hate humans instead of just getting rid of them. Which is noble (and an ass-ton of work). Hmm.]


    I could feel her thoughts spinning around and her mental asides grew more frequent as she analyzed different sides of the issue. I let her think, knowing how annoying it was to have someone responding to your thoughts instead of words.


    [Well. I have half a decision,] she said after a minute of internal debate. I was pretty sure I knew what she was thinking but let her go on.


    [Nothing is happening here until I get out anyway, whether I agree with you or not. And, if I get out, it will probably be because of you. And if that happens, I will owe you big time, so regardless of my personal philosophy, I would be happy to help you with yours (if just for a little). So, contingent on my successful release, I am happy to work with you.]


    ¡°Nice. An unprecedented partnership of Exhumans begins.¡±


    [This would be much cooler if you had more complimentary powers. How am I supposed to work with lightning? Can you like, zap me into the air? Or move lightning fast? Or do you just have big shiny swords?]


    ¡°Haven¡¯t really pushed myself too much. Wasn¡¯t really keen on the whole being-an-Exhuman thing.¡±


    [Well, if your aim is to be able to protect and police other Exhumans, you¡¯d best start working on it. I doubt others have your restraint.]


    I thought of Karu and frowned. Others did not have my restraint indeed, Exhuman or no.


    ¡°Man, you have no idea how happy I am we were just able to see eye-to-eye.¡±


    [You¡¯d be amazed at just how simultaneously tolerant and intolerant a hundred years of solitary can make you.]


    ¡°Yeah, so about that. You¡¯ve really been locked up a hundred years?¡±


    [No, I¡¯ve just been messing with you. It was like, 5 years tops.]


    ¡°Seriously?¡±


    [No. It was a hundred years, dumbass. I didn¡¯t bring my desk calendar so I don¡¯t know exactly how long, but that¡¯s a reasonable ballpark.]


    ¡°And you¡¯ve just been there¡­without food, water, light¡­toilet?¡±


    [Yep.]


    ¡°How?¡±


    [I¡¯d be surprised if you¡¯d heard of this since it¡¯s sort of an intelligence secret, but have you ever heard of Ramanathan¡¯s Laws?]

 028. 2026, 225 years ago. PSI Research Labs, outskirts of Atlanta. Yaan.

    ¡°Dr. Ramanathan,¡± said the woman to me by means of a greeting. ¡°It¡¯s such an honor to work with you, sir.¡±


    I gave her a warm smile. ¡°Welcome to the Parahuman Studies Initiative. PSI is glad to have you.¡± I stood up and shook her hand. I wasn¡¯t usually a very formal guy, but the new kids always seemed to want their first meeting to be a momentous occasion, so I dressed up in a fancy lab coat and made lots of sweeping proclamations and they got a kick out of it. Cost me nothing and kept them happy. The secret to management.


    ¡°Care for a brief tour?¡± I asked, continuing to act the part. She nodded excitedly, and I led her out of my office and across the building floor. ¡°You¡¯ll have a desk somewhere around here, I¡¯m certain, but most of your time will be spent,¡± I paused for dramatic effect as we neared the other end of the building. ¡°In the labs.¡±


    She gasped, right on cue. The window we approached separated the offices from the other three-quarters of the building, serving as a sort of viewing deck for the laboratories sprawling on the floor below.


    The labs existed in a space like an enormous warehouse, easily the length of a football field and twice that in the other direction. A repurposed blimp hangar, I think it was. Within this cavernous space, there were many smaller buildings erected, contained areas for each group¡¯s work, looking like a suburban sprawl built entirely of glass and white polymer panels. A city within a building. All dedicated to science.


    Many buildings had indoor connections to others, glass tunnels so that a controlled environment could be shared between two areas, or just to provide convenient access between rooms without having to go ¡®outside.¡¯ Other groups had need of larger spaces, and their structures had multiple stories, or were unusually-shaped, standing out like church bell towers above the squat, circuit board-like sprawl.


    Down the middle and every so often on either side was a road of sorts, a straight strip with no rooms down the entire length, where a small fleet of service vehicles and trams constantly shuttled materials and personnel in and out.


    ¡°It¡¯s like an entire city down there,¡± she gasped. She wasn¡¯t wrong, we were technically zoned as an unincorporated district with our own water, electric grid, and sewage. Part of that was for monitoring and controlling how much we were using in here. Part of it was security¡­this was a secure government facility after all.


    ¡°Care to go down?¡± I asked, rhetorically, gesturing to the elevators.


    There were only two entry points to the labs. The offices, on one extreme end of the building, and the main entrance on the other. I always had new hires come in through the offices so they could have this dramatic view. This entailed going up elevators to the top floor (where my office was of course) from one set of elevators outside the building, and then descending using another set inside, straight down into the labs.


    We descended in the elevator, watching the sprawl rise up towards us until we were on street level. The woman with me was still looking around in bewilderment.


    ¡°Doctor Jayne, you are working with Jimenez¡¯ team, I believe?¡± I asked, checking a personnel list even though I knew full well she was. I¡¯d talked to Jimenez the other day about the new data analyst he needed, and so we¡¯d picked up Jayne. ¡°Jimenez group is in block D, it¡¯s about a block away, I hope you don¡¯t mind walking, this is all the exercise I ever get in a day.¡±


    Dr. Jayne of course had no complaints. They never did at this point. Too much glitter in their eyes. That would change once they got accustomed to the lifestyle here and got into their work, but I relished these brief moments of charming, fully-absorbed innocence.


    ¡°So tell me,¡± I said, keeping the tone light and conversational. ¡°Do you know what you¡¯ll be working on?¡±


    ¡°Only in the most general and least general sense, sir,¡± she said. ¡°I know I¡¯ll be doing multilinear regression analysis in R. And I know that what you¨Cwe all study here is the parahumans.¡±


    ¡°But not so clear on what datasets you¡¯ll be working with? That¡¯s fine. You¡¯ll get your feet under you soon enough. Ah, here¡¯s Jimenez now.¡± I saw a larger man backing out of a lab, in conversation with the occupants, offering a last few words of advice to the occupants as he departed.


    ¡°Jimenez!¡± I called out. He looked and caught my eye, giving a small wave, some final parting words through the door, and then trotted over to join us, out of breath.


    ¡°Been running all over the place trying to get the new instruments set up,¡± he wheezed. ¡°Damn Carlos was sampling at too low a resolution and we wasted a whole week of data.¡±


    ¡°Dr. Jimenez, this is Dr. Jayne, your new data scientist.¡± Jimenez offered a friendly handshake and a smile despite his current dishevelment.


    ¡°A pleasure, truly. Apologies, things just get so hectic sometimes.¡±


    ¡°Oh, no need to apologize,¡± Jayne tittered. ¡°I think the work you¡¯re doing down here is very important, and the discoveries it brings about could give us understanding into the parahumans like nothing before.¡±


    ¡°A little bit of brown-nosing on the first day eh?¡± Jimenez laughed. Jayne blushed and awkwardly laughed along.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°I¡¯m sure Jayne is just new and excited. As were we all when we first started. Why, I remember Jimenez¡¯ first day¡­you had the most atrocious mustache¡­¡±


    ¡°My wife adored it!¡± Jimenez belted in his defence. All three of us laughed.


    ¡°But in seriousness, you¡¯re right, Dr. Jayne. Some of the discoveries we¡¯ve already made are incredible breakthroughs, really groundbreaking stuff. In fact, though you may not be aware, we walk in the presence of greatness.¡±


    ¡°Jimenez, stop,¡± I said. I gave him a stern glare, but his eyes flashed impishly as he gave me a broad smile.


    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t be so modest, Dr. Ramanathan. My girl, have you ever heard of Ramanathan¡¯s Laws?¡±


    ¡°I¡­have read most of Dr. Ramanathan¡¯s papers, but I have to admit¡­¡±


    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t have,¡± I said, shooting Jimenez another glare. ¡°They are classified information and not published for public consumption.¡±


    ¡°Oh. So perhaps you shouldn¡¯t tell me about¨C¡± she began, but Jimenez jumped in.


    ¡°Nonsense. If you¡¯re in here, you have clearance enough already. These laws, widely regarded to be authoritative principles determining the nature and extent of the parahumans¡¯ unique abilities were written by none other than this brilliant man walking beside us. They are also widely regarded as the pinnacle of his research, but I personally liked his early work on parallel world theories better myself.¡±


    ¡°What are the laws exactly?¡± Jayne asked, her curiosity now apparent. It was no surprise, sometimes it felt like the only people who took these jobs were those obsessed with the parahumans.


    ¡°A short list of trends which Dr. Ramanathan observed that all parahumans, no matter how varied their powers had obeyed. Some of them are not so interesting: all parahumans were once normal people; all parahumans fully developed their entire power-set in one single event; all parahuman events happened while they were asleep, and so on.¡±


    ¡°But the really interesting one¡­if we don¡¯t understand the others, hoo boy, can we not explain this one at all. When a parahuman first emerges, there¡¯s a window from a few hours to a few days, and anything which would threaten the parahuman in that window, their powers will have some specific ability to defeat that threat.¡±


    ¡°So¡­the powers are not set in stone for a while after manifesting? They can adapt to new threats?¡±


    ¡°No, not quite. For example, there was one case of a parahuman who could place himself in a sort of stasis bubble and be safe from harm, and could also fly. They were seen doing both of these things immediately on manifesting powers. They caused some calamity and caused a large explosion which would have killed them, except as the explosion reached them, voop! Right into the bubble he went. The explosion went on to rupture a dam nearby, flooding the town. Everyone in the city died, except the parahuman, who could, of course, fly.¡±


    ¡°Next day, there¡¯s another calamity and the parahuman dies trapped beneath a skyscraper they knocked down on themselves. Their window ran out, and their powers didn¡¯t account for that one.¡±


    ¡°Not to second-guess you, sir, but how do you know it wasn¡¯t just a coincidence?¡±


    ¡°No offense taken,¡± I added. ¡°We must always question our preconceptions, it¡¯s the only way to find the truth.¡±


    Jimenez continued as we reached block D and he turned into his building. ¡°We¡¯ve seen it over and over. The parahumans that go on a rampage, they just can¡¯t be stopped for a time. The military tried throwing more and more firepower at them, but this just created stronger and stronger powers. The very worst parahuman we¡¯d ever seen, I think the news still talks about him sometimes, called him ¡®Ultraman¡¯, some comic book reference. That man was bulletproof, bombproof, missileproof, nukeproof, gasproof, couldn¡¯t be crushed, restrained, stabbed, or bludgeoned¡­the army threw everything they had at him, and all it did was mean all they had couldn¡¯t touch him.¡±


    ¡°In the end, they came to Dr. Ramanathan here for help,¡± Jimenez said, proudly clapping my shoulder. I stood there awkwardly and waited for him to finish. Once Jimenez started talking, there was no stopping the man. Probably why he needed to rush around so much in setting up his instruments. Too much story time.


    ¡°And do you know what he told them?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Jayne asked, her eyes wide, fully absorbed in the story.


    Jimenez leaned in close to deliver the punchline with panache. ¡°Nothing.¡± He paused to let it sink in. ¡°He told them to do nothing. They had to wait out the power window before they could try anything, or else he would be immune to that as well. So they distracted him with soldiers and drones, lured him to desolate areas so he wouldn¡¯t cause as much damage, and after a week, they hit him with something completely new, a sonic bomb. Blew his head right open.¡± Jimenez laughed full-bodied. ¡°Bye-bye Ultraman! Ha ha!¡±


    Jayne smiled and shifted uncomfortably. I stepped forward. ¡°I still have some forms to go over with Dr. Jayne,¡± I said. ¡°But thank you for walking with us, Dr. Jimenez. Good luck with the instruments.¡±


    ¡°Wish me luck with the facility staff, that¡¯s where I need it,¡± he grumbled. ¡°But sure. Nice to meet you Dr. Jayne, I will be seeing you soon I imagine.¡± Without any more story to distract him, he finally entered the doorway he¡¯d been standing in and closed the door behind him.


    ¡°He may like to talk but he is a good man and a great scientist,¡± I apologized.


    ¡°Oh, it was fine. Was it true what he said though?¡±


    ¡°Yes, unfortunately, all of it. The parahumans are as strong as we make them, it seems.¡±


    ¡°Why can we not just¡­not do anything to them?¡±


    ¡°Well, first off, there¡¯s the social panic. People need to see the government doing something otherwise it¡¯s assumed we¡¯re doing nothing. And we can¡¯t go around telling people about the laws, or else every parahuman who manifests and wants a bag of powers will try to harm themselves in as many ways as possible.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± she mused.


    ¡°Second, have you ever noticed how people with exceptionally boring lives and no troubles tend to stir up drama constantly?¡±


    ¡°Sir?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m being serious. The fact is that absent any actual difficulties, people will imagine up their own. Just because a parahuman doesn¡¯t have guns firing or bombs dropping on them doesn¡¯t mean they won¡¯t manifest dangerous powers. One of the first ones ¡ª before parahumans were even broadly known of ¡ª she was testing her powers and missed her bus. No surprise, she manifested with super speed.¡±


    ¡°How can they be stopped then, if the window makes them, by definition, unstoppable?¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t really say. I¡¯m a scientist, not a policy maker, but what I think is that we need to adopt change from within. We need to make these people want to stop themselves. We need to offer mental health courses and improve social awareness. What powers they have wouldn¡¯t matter if we worked with them instead of against them.¡±


    Jayne looked at me like I was bringing her stone tablets from the mountaintop. I sighed and realized I¡¯d gone on pontificating just as badly as Jimenez.


    ¡°Anyway, that¡¯s just my thoughts. Please come this way and we can get you a badge and get you set up.¡±

 029. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    ¡°So, because of Ramanathan¡¯s laws, when they locked you up, without food or water or sunlight or toilets¡­your powers let you live without any of those things.¡±


    [Pretty much, yep. They did a lot more to me too¡­I am actually¡­kind of indestructible.]


    ¡°Indestructible.¡± I said it and then immediately felt bad that I cared more about that than the ¡®a lot more¡¯ they did to her.


    [Yeah.]


    ¡°And you have all this psychic nonsense.¡±


    [Yeah.]


    ¡°I have never felt so inadequate about being able to shoot lightning out of my hands before.¡±


    [Like I said, I bet you have more powers than you know. You need to push it a little bit and find out what else you can do. Maybe you¡¯ll find out you have lightning speed or something. Give Karu something to think about when she comes back.]


    ¡°Yeah, maybe. How¡¯d you learn all this stuff anyway?¡±


    [It¡¯s¡­a long story. (And not one I want to tell you.) The extremely short version is, I can read minds and for a brief period, spent some time in proximity to some of the higher-ups of XPCA. (And then I killed them. Giggle.)]


    I didn¡¯t reply. I knew she could sense my displeasure with casual murder and left it at that.


    ¡°So, I feel like I glossed over this before, but indestructible?¡±


    [Yeah. Ramanathan¡¯s laws aren¡¯t everything. Sometimes someone shoots an Exhuman in the head, and instead of that Exhuman being bulletproof, turns out they just can¡¯t die. Whoops.]


    ¡°That¡¯s it? You just can¡¯t die?¡±


    [No, I¡¯ve died loads of times. I just come back. Got this thing where whenever something harms me, a few moments later, I¡¯m just healthy and whole again. Guess it also kept me from aging, since I grew up to an adult and then survived in the damn box for a hundred years with nary a grey hair or wrinkle.]


    ¡°That sounds pretty great, actually,¡± I said, still feeling the aches in my legs.


    [I guess. I actually hated it.]


    ¡°Why?¡±


    [Well, for one, being ageless and deathless is kind of a scary prospect. Changes your worldview. Like, I guess I could be super crazy and pissed off at being locked in here for a hundred years, but there¡¯s the comforting thought that eventually, if nothing else, this prison will erode away around me, and I¡¯ll just walk out of the rubble.]


    ¡°That could be thousands of years.¡±


    [I¡¯ve got time.]


    ¡°Jesus. That¡¯s¡­¡±


    [Changes your worldview, as I said. The other problem is dying kind of sucks. When there were still guards here, they¡­spent a lot of time¡­doing that.]


    ¡°Oh. I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    [Found out they could stick a knife in my lungs. I¡¯d choke up blood and gurgle and spit and drown in it. And then a few seconds later, spring back to life, and do it again. And again. And again. For days if they felt like it. You know, you can feel your lungs filling with fluid? It gets heavier, it starts shifting inside your body. You feel your lungs move, every time you cough, and you can¡¯t stop coughing¡­]


    ¡°Jesus. I¡¯m so sorry.¡±


    [Plenty of more conventional torture, and just regular shooting me too. I think crushing the head was the worst though. You might think the brain dies when you crush it, and I guess you¡¯d be mostly right. Nobody who¡¯s in that position would be able to tell you otherwise. But having lived through it, the brain is trying to figure out what¡¯s going on, even as it stops working. Worse than pain really, this sensation of your mind being disconnected from itself¡­trying to think¡­but you can¡¯t anymore¡­]


    ¡°Holy shit, Saga. I didn¡¯t know, I¡¯m sorry, I didn¡¯t mean to bring it up.¡±


    [Argh. (This is why I try to brush you off when you ask about my past, asshole.) My bad, I shouldn¡¯t be dwelling on these things. You go crazy if you focus on that too much.]


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I didn¡¯t know.¡±


    [Yeah, you didn¡¯t. Let¡¯s just talk about something else.]


    ¡°Right.¡± I swallowed hard. It was hard to get the image out of my head of Saga dying over and over, probably aided by the subtle impressions she tended to give off mentally while talking about something. Of course, me thinking about it would make Saga think about it¡­¡±This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    ¡°Yeah. So. Jailbreak,¡± I said, just to get a new thought out there.


    [Jailbreak. My favorite topic, easily.]


    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t have a plan. But I do have someone who might be able to help. Another girl, like you, I think, locked up somewhere.¡±


    [There are others at this facility? I never knew that.]


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if she¡¯s at this facility or not, but I do think she¡¯s Exhuman. She has a computer with her, and using it, she¡¯s managed to help me get a mass-fab I found operational.¡±


    [What¡¯s a¡­] I felt Saga brush over my mind. [Nevermind.]


    ¡°Man I hate that.¡±


    [Suck it up.]


    ¡°Anyway. I don¡¯t know how to operate your big fancy door, but she might be able to. I can¡¯t bring her here obviously, so¡­might be slow. But we¡¯ll work on it.¡±


    [All I can ask. Sigh. Anyway, it¡¯s getting late, you should probably go. Thanks for hanging out and chatting¡­you¡¯re much better company than the rats.]


    ¡°Oh, I forgot!¡± I said, and felt her buzz across my mind, seemingly almost subconsciously. ¡°You know, surprises are more fun if they surprise you.¡±


    [I read minds. Surprises are not really my thing.]


    ¡°Yeah whatever. Anyway, I¡¯m going to pretend you¡¯re still surprised. Today I brought you¡­¡± I dug around in my bag and pulled out a salted piece of fish wrapped carefully in weave I¡¯d made earlier.


    [Oh my! How totally surprising and not at all expected!]


    ¡°Pretty sure bad girls don¡¯t get dessert,¡± I said.


    [Well, I¡¯m the worst girl there is. Eat it anyway.]


    ¡°I spoil you, you know that?¡± I carefully unwrapped the fish and gave it a good sniff. The briny smell filled my¨Cand Saga¡¯s¨Csenses and almost slightly stung. I could feel Saga¡¯s high already.


    I was no expert cook, but I¡¯d picked the best fish I¡¯d cooked to bring to her. It was still fresh, seasoned with some herbs Wynn had pointed out to me, crushed and crusted on the surface with salt, which we¡¯d been able to synthesize in the mass-fab. It was probably cooked well-done, like the other ones I¡¯d cooked it with, but it had both a slight sheen and a little browning on the surface which I thought looked really artsy and professional-like.


    Tempted as I was to torture Saga a little bit, I was hungry and so jumped right in. I broke off a piece using my fingers, and it flaked into layers easily, the skin brittle and grey, the flesh spongy and white. I popped the piece into my mouth and savored it as the rush of flavors hit me.


    Salt was the overwhelming taste, but not so overwhelming as to be unpleasant. Between being crusted on the outside, and the slight natural brininess of the fish flesh, it was a strong flavor, but by concentrating I could easily pick out the complementing spice of the herbs, the savoriness of the meat. I could practically feel Saga quivering.


    I prefered terrestrial animals to fish in almost all aspects except the texture. How a fish crumbled, how the meat was layered, each muscle separate but sliding past each other with a thin layer of fat separating them, with a softer, squishier consistency. And then the skin. I¡¯d made sure to cook the skin as hot as I could get it so that it¡¯d crisp up, and crispy this was. The play of the different pieces rolling around in my mouth, disintegrating each in their own way, it made Saga shudder and sigh.


    And that was just one small piece I¡¯d torn off.


    When we were done, any residual angst of her many deaths, incomplete escape plans, or notions of good or evil seemed far, far away. She and I both lay utterly relaxed and complete, caught in each other¡¯s senses and feeling nothing but the sense of good food, and the excitement and satisfaction of the other. It was a long time before I could move again, but I gradually found the motivation to shuffle to my feet.


    [Fuck that was good,] Saga more moaned than spoke into my head. Her words made me tingle a lot more than usual, and I realized I was still feeding off her emotional energy.


    ¡°Yeah. That was.¡±


    [Come back more.]


    ¡°Yeah.¡± I lurched towards the exit and she almost giggled at me. ¡°Maybe I should sober up before trying to drive home,¡± I said, eliciting another sensation of a laugh from her. She was basically stoned and made for a very easy audience.


    [I swear to drunk, officer. I¡¯m not God. Giggle.]


    ¡°I¡¯ll see you around Saga. Good talk today.¡±


    [Good talk yourself, Athan. Miss me lots, ¡®kay? (And bring me more food.)]


    ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do,¡± I said.


    As much as I wanted to just fall over and feel relaxed and happy, I still had most of an hour walk in front of me and it was well after dark. Stepping outside the ops building, I shuddered and realized just how cold it was, with the wind whipping around. Any thoughts of warmth and comfort left me quickly as I carefully stepped over the rocky road on the path home, my thoughts instead drifting to the next steps I should be taking to progress on survival and getting my friends out of their cells.


    I had made it almost all the way home and could barely make out the shape in the distance I knew was The Bunker, the horizon being the only thing visible outside of the circle of light my lightning cast.


    It felt like everything was just sort of waiting on AEGIS to process the data she¡¯d recovered and see if she could free either herself or Saga. I personally hoped AEGIS would be the first one out, as with her help, Saga would be easy. On the other hand, if Saga were out first, I¡¯d have to keep a leash on her so she wouldn¡¯t go off on a rampage against humanity, and that¡¯d make focusing on AEGIS more difficult.


    But whatever my hopes, if I had a way to spring either one, I¡¯d do it immediately. My stomach turned when I thought about how much Saga had suffered, and wondered if AEGIS had met the same, but was spared by her amnesia.


    I walked in the door and was greeted by AEGIS warmly. ¡°Athan! You¡¯re home late. Things go okay with Saga?¡±


    ¡°More or less. She says she¡¯s willing to work with us if we get her free, which is about all I think I could ask for.¡±


    AEGIS nodded. ¡°You can tell me all about it tomorrow, but you should already be in bed mister. It¡¯s late, and I don¡¯t want you getting hurt because you¡¯re too tired to take care of yourself.¡±


    ¡°Yes mom,¡± I intoned. She stuck a tongue out at me.


    ¡°I¡¯m just glad you¡¯re safe,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve been reading a lot about Exhumans, and I¡¯m not sure associating with Saga is a safe idea, or even a good one.¡± I was about to interject when she cut me off. ¡°I¡¯m not saying she¡¯s necessarily a bad person, but like you, some Exhumans can be very dangerous even when they don¡¯t intend to be. Especially the ones that muck around with your mind¡­Code Xavier, XPCA calls them.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve got XPCA files on there?¡±


    ¡°Loads of them. And some of them are very, very interesting. But as I said, we can talk more tomorrow. Good night, Athan.¡±


    ¡°Night AEGIS.¡± I changed, lay in bed, and clapped twice, making the lights go out and bringing a cheeky smile to AEGIS¡¯ lips. She loved the damn thing, and I loved that about her.


    But what was on my mind and what kept me awake for quite a while after I¡¯d closed my eyes was hearing, and to an extent feeling Saga¡¯s sensations as she described her many horrific deaths. Even as I finally passed into sleep, it was a troubled, uncomfortable sleep, far from restful.

 030. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I woke late, tired, and with my legs aching. They had not enjoyed the walk yesterday, and I did not enjoy their complaints this morning. I lay still for a few minutes, enjoying the relative silence of AEGIS tapping away at her computer quietly.


    ¡°Morning AEGIS,¡± I said. She jumped.


    ¡°Athan! I didn¡¯t know you were awake. I wasn¡¯t tracking your vitals and¨C¡°


    ¡°Yeah that¡¯s more than creepy. It¡¯s okay to just be surprised.¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± She took a deep breath. ¡°Yes, you¡¯re right. My apologies.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s got you so jumpy?¡±


    ¡°Nothing. I mean, nothing really. I¡¯m just reviewing the data.¡± She looked at me very seriously, her face pale. ¡°Athan¡­I think Exhumans are really, really dangerous. Some of the stuff I¡¯ve been reading¨C¡°


    ¡°I¡¯m sure they are, but you know not all Exhumans are that bad, right?¡±


    This wasn¡¯t something I¡¯d been expecting, and her nervousness was sort of putting me on edge. All I¡¯d wanted was a lazy morning and maybe some fishing or hunting to replenish my stocks. Now it looked like AEGIS might be piecing together her own nature and having an existential crisis.


    ¡°Oh, no. Of course. I don¡¯t think you¡¯re bad. Or Saga, I guess.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS, if there¡¯s one thing I¡¯ve learned by going through it, it¡¯s that if one day you wake up and you¡¯re an Exhuman, that doesn¡¯t automatically make you a bad person. I¡­and Saga¡­are trying to make good choices that would make us good people¡­if we were still people, I guess.¡±


    ¡°No, I understand. I¡¯m not saying you guys¨C¡°


    ¡°That¡¯s not what I¡¯m saying. What I mean is if you¨Cor anyone else I knew, were an Exhuman, that wouldn¡¯t mean they¡¯re a bad person.¡±


    She looked at me very confused but just nodded slowly, absently stroking a pigtail. I wondered both if she got my meaning or if I was being too overt.


    ¡°Just¡­remember that, okay? Anyway. I¡¯m sorry for interrupting you so much. Go ahead and tell me whatever.¡±


    ¡°O-okay. There¡¯s just a lot of data here on Exhumans¡­like I said, I think this was an XPCA computer. Lots and lots of case files, things that you would never have heard of, stuff that either didn¡¯t blow up into a full event or was kept hush-hush.¡±


    ¡°Oh! Sorry, going to interrupt again.¡± She just nodded for me to continue. ¡°Saga¡¯s prison. Can I tell you about it and have you start working on a solution?¡±


    ¡°Umm, I don¡¯t really know. There¡¯s only so much I can do with your descriptions. You¡¯re not exactly an architect or engineer.¡±


    ¡°Maybe you could create a camera or something and I could take it in and you review the footage later?¡± This suggestion seemed to make her even more uncomfortable and she shifted almost guiltily. ¡°No good? Can¡¯t make any?¡±


    ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t know!¡± she almost shouted, but not angrily. Just loud. I was confused. ¡°I guess I might be able to piece that together. In¡­a while.¡± She said this very softly, almost whispering.


    ¡°Uh. AEGIS?¡±


    ¡°What!?¡±


    ¡°¡­¡± I didn¡¯t know why she was yelling still.


    ¡°¡­sorry.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to apologize, I just don¡¯t know what the hell is going on here.¡±


    ¡°Neither do I, Athan, I¡¯m just all¡­all¡­all¡­¡±


    ¡°¡­all?¡±


    Apparently this was the wrong thing to say. AEGIS burst into tears, alternately wailing and sucking in huge, slavering lungfuls of air. She tried talking but her words were barely understandable through her sobs. I stood completely paralyzed in a combination of shock and horror.


    ¡°¡­Iz jus, y¡¯know? Dere¡¯s jus al dis *SNRK* zuffing¡­and dey¡­¡±


    ¡°AEGIS, I wish I could hug you and tell you it¡¯s going to be okay and to pull yourself together. But I can¡¯t. So pull yourself together and tell me what¡¯s going on.¡±


    She whined and snorted and hiccuped and ranted incoherently for a few minutes more, sometimes sinking down into a half-squat, or pounding a tiny brace-clad fist against the console. After much coaxing and soothing, she stood up and wiped her tears, hiccuping still.


    ¡°I was just¡­I worry,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m so worried about you, and then I read all these horrible things about Exhumans and it sounds like they are so, so awful. And I tell myself you¡¯re not like them, but Saga? She is! She¡¯s super dangerous, not just to you but to everyone. And you keep seeing her, and I¡¯m not sure why, and I¡¯m worried it might be because she¡¯s already planted a compel, which is a thing I read about that some Code X¡¯s can do where you think you¡¯re still yourself, but then BOOM, you have to do something they planted in your mind.¡±


    ¡°And then¡­I wonder about myself, too. I¡¯ve been lying to you about so many things because I¡¯m scared what you¡¯ll think when you find out. Like, I don¡¯t eat. I don¡¯t sleep. I don¡¯t poop even. Have you ever wondered where I poop? Because I don¡¯t! I don¡¯t know why, and the only thing I can think of is that I¡¯m an Exhuman, and I¡¯m reading these cases and there are a lot of Exhumans who get confined or quarantined and stop needing to eat. XPCA actually used to try to do it on purpose within the Ramanathan window so they could have test subjects who didn¡¯t need to eat or be cared for.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s ME, Athan! I¡¯m one of them! And I worry, maybe I shouldn¡¯t get released. Maybe I¡¯m one of the dangerous ones, like the Exhuman who made people weep blood until they died by being near her, or the one that burned up all the oxygen in the air, and I wonder¡­why would they lock me up? Why would they do that unless I were dangerous like one of those? So dangerous, they had to bury me somewhere with only a computer linking me to the outside world.¡±The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    ¡°And maybe, even if I am good, what if I get out, and my memories come back, and I¡¯m completely different? What if I¡¯m like Saga, and I¡¯m just so angry at humans all the time and want to kill them all? I don¡¯t want that, but then I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m not even a good person now because I¡¯ve been lying to you this whole time, and I lied to you even more. I just did! I can make cameras, I have camera drones hidden in your house so I can watch you cha-a-a-aaaange!¡±


    She broke into a desolate wail, her tirade now finally exhausted.


    One of those things was definitely not like the others. I blushed and went to the corner where I always changed, scrutinizing the place closely. It was hard to pick out when the whole place looked like rusted crap, but I was able to spot a black circle in the metal beams above me. I reached up and touched it and it came away readily in my hand.


    It was a small computer drone, about the size of my thumb. The majority of the body was a spherical camera, but it also had tiny magnetic legs and a pair of tiny helicopter rotors. I wanted to crush it in my fingers, this stupid, tangible token of betrayal. I stopped myself, we could use this. I¡¯d asked her to make these.


    Of course, I could break it, deassimilate it and assimilate it and it¡¯d be fine. Whatever, the moment was passed.


    I brought it back to her and set it down on top of the AEGIS box. She was standing at her computer like a guilty dog.


    I took a deep breath, and reminded myself if I could watch her dressing, I¡¯d probably have caved too.


    ¡°AEGIS, God knows I cherish you. You are my good friend and¡­and also a point of stability in my seriously messed-up life. I depend on you more than I should, maybe, and you have still never let me down. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s possible for you to be a bad person, given all the good things you¡¯ve done for me, and all the care and effort you put into everything you do.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not being good, that¡¯s just being prepared and planning properly,¡± she sniffed.


    ¡°You spend all that time preparing and planning in order to do good things. Heck, the fact that you¡¯re here freaking out about maybe being bad is proof that you¡¯re good. If you were a bad person, you wouldn¡¯t care or give it a second thought.¡±


    ¡°You think so?¡± Her voice was weak, but optimistic.


    ¡°I know it. As for your memories, I don¡¯t know what you could have had in your past, and given your current state, I¡¯m sure it wasn¡¯t good. But you¡¯re strong, and no matter what you find out, you¡¯re still you. When you have your memories back, you¡¯ll be able to choose what to do just like you do now, just like you choose every moment of every day. And it¡¯ll still be you making those choices, just with a little more information. And also¡­I kind of suspected you were Exhuman. I didn¡¯t want to tell you because I didn¡¯t want you to¡­this.¡±


    She sniffed and nodded.


    ¡°And finally, me and Saga¡­I might agree. She¡¯s not a particularly good or nice Exhuman. But that¡¯s why I need you, AEGIS. You and me together, we can keep an eye on her and keep her on the right path. And we can help each other too, the same way. So, I don¡¯t know if I¡¯m doing the right thing all the time, but I know if you¡¯ve got my back, I can worry about it a lot less.¡±


    ¡°But I told you to kill Karu. You¡¯re the only good one, you¡¯re the one who wanted to save her.¡±


    ¡°But when I did that, you knew it was the right thing to do, didn¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. It was stupid and dumb, but it was right, and I admired that about you.¡±


    ¡°So you knew what was right, and I helped you stick to that path. That¡¯s how it should be. We can count on each other for strength to do what¡¯s right.¡±


    ¡°I¡­oh, Athan, I don¡¯t deserve you.¡±


    ¡°Pretty sure I¡¯d be dead if it weren¡¯t for you. Also I¡¯m a needy, sarcastic, socially-despised misanthrope, so yeah, you do deserve me.¡± She laughed, and made a truly pathetic noise of choking on her tears from laughing. I gave her a second to continue breathing.


    ¡°Tell you what. If your power turns out to be super-dangerous, and you can¡¯t live anywhere else, I¡¯ll stay out here with you forever. How¡¯s that sound?¡±


    ¡°Sounds awful,¡± she laughed. ¡°But better than out here alone I guess.¡±


    ¡°¡®I guess,¡¯ she says. I propose to spend the rest of my life with her, and she says ¡®I guess.''¡±


    She blushed deeply and made solid eye contact with the floor.


    ¡°Uh, not that kind of proposing! I mean, not that I would mind. Uhm¨C¡°


    ¡°I understand,¡± she said coyly, stroking one of her pigtails again. ¡°You didn¡¯t mean marriage, I know.¡±


    I looked her over for signs of betrayal or hurt¡­or interest.


    ¡°You just want to be friends with benefits. That¡¯s cool. I¡¯m into that.¡± She couldn¡¯t even finish her delivery without cracking up.


    ¡°You are freaking impossible, AEGIS. You put me in this emotionally vulnerable spot, and then¡­¡±


    ¡°Pew pew. Stone cold killer,¡± she said, imitating finger guns. ¡°But, um, seriously thank you. I think I needed to hear a lot of that from someone else.¡±


    ¡°Being someone else is one of my many strengths.¡± She laughed again, without choking on it this time.


    ¡°Okay. Well, next time you¡¯re visiting, bring the cam-drone with you to Saga and¡­wait, she¡¯s in a mine, right? I won¡¯t be able to get a feed from down there. I think I need to give you a broadcast relay¡­or maybe just print a drone with some onboard memory? But to fit even a data crystal big enough¡­would need at least one more rotor, but then I¡¯d have to recode the auto-gyro¡­¡±


    ¡°Uh.¡±


    ¡°Right. Sorry.¡± She tapped a few keys and a barely-audible whine began. It was so quiet and high-pitched, I had to clean my ears to verify if I was actually hearing it or not. Soon enough, I realized it was the rotors from the cam-drone¡­and from the other three which descended from the rafters to join it.¡±


    ¡°You made four?¡±


    ¡°I made eight. Two are outside on surveillance on either side of The Bunker, and one tried to follow you to fighting Karu and died in a bolt of lightning.¡± She paused. ¡°One was a defective prototype,¡± she said, almost embarrassed.


    ¡°How long have you been making these?¡± I asked, dumbfounded.


    ¡°Umm¡­not that long. I guess basically since you got the mass-fab up and working.¡±


    ¡°So as soon as could have.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I guess. It sucks when your whole world is one camera.¡±


    ¡°I guess I get that, but why didn¡¯t you tell me?¡±


    ¡°I was going to! And then I thought it would be a neat surprise. And then I did some unscrupulous things and thought you¡¯d get mad and couldn¡¯t¡­¡±


    She lapsed into uncomfortable silence again.


    I sighed. I was popular at school with the girls, and had a sister growing up, obviously, but despite that, I had a hard time with them. Lia wasn¡¯t like most other girls, she was rough and durable, more a cactus than a flower, and between her and my friends on the football team, I felt like talking to anyone else felt more like walking on eggshells¡­or landmines.


    Which is one reason I always tried to be so honest, forward, and direct with people. Sneaking around or misrepresenting yourself was just begging to make an awkward situation down the road, and I felt like people mistook my straightforward nature for confidence or charisma¡­which, of course, I didn¡¯t mind.


    But then I found myself in shit like this. Girl crying, no idea how to console her, telling her the truth ¡ª she went behind my back, lied to me, and now I¡¯m the one comforting her? ¡ª my usual tact didn¡¯t seem useful here. So what else was there? What else could I do?


    I didn¡¯t know, and she wasn¡¯t going to tell me. I thought about what Saga had told me when we started arguing about her heritage.


    ¡°I think¡­you need some time to think. To uh, get your head together straight, without me here influencing your decision,¡± I said, trying to remember Saga¡¯s exact words. I was trying to recapture the feeling of what Saga had made me feel. I was mad at her, but she told me to leave and think, and those were what I had wanted to do, so I did and came to the right decision.


    ¡°I need to get my head straight?¡± she asked with an accusatory tone.


    ¡°No! I just meant, I should leave.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re mad at me and want to leave,¡± she said in a half-whisper.


    ¡°No. I just think¡­um, if I influence your decision now, you¡¯ll regret it forever.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t understand. What decision am I making?¡±


    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t¡­know?¡±


    ¡°If you want to leave, then just leave!¡± she shouted, sobs again threatening to cut into her voice. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I said I¡¯m sorry, okay?¡±


    I reassured her I¡¯d come back and somehow escaped outside, my head reeling with the insanity I¡¯d just endured.


    I really, really fucked that up. I don¡¯t even know what I¡¯d said, but apparently every bit of it was unequivocally wrong. I¡¯d have a lot of work ahead of me to smooth things over, but for now, was just happy to be outdoors where things made sense again.

 031. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I was out fishing at the lake, my emotions chasing each other in circles. I was mad at AEGIS for lying to me. I was mad at myself for handling it badly. I was sad because she was sad because I was mad at her. I was annoyed because she¡¯d had me making trips to find her different materials just to build her damn drones. I was confused because she was flip-flopping between a hundred different emotions, which seemed totally unreasonable of her to do, except that was what I was doing now.


    Meanwhile, things with Saga were equally messed up, if in a completely different way. We were getting along great, but I felt like we shouldn¡¯t be. I was worried she was playing me for a fool, just using me to help her escape. I was afraid as soon as she left, she¡¯d go on a rampage. And I was happy we were in some manner of accord on working together.


    Altogether, I pretty much just felt like exploding. I pulled a fish up and watched it flailing and gasping for air on my line.


    ¡°Yeah, me too, buddy,¡± I sympathized, and killed it with a brief jolt.


    It was almost a relief when I heard the telltale whine of an aircraft tearing through the sky, growing ever louder. At least I knew where things stood with Karu.


    I cracked my knuckles and smiled. A little adrenaline was just what I needed to get my thoughts clear. Focus on what matters, dodging explosions and putting down the bad guy.


    Unless I was the bad guy?


    I shook my head. No, bad Athan. I can have an existential crisis later. AEGIS and Saga will help.


    Karu descended as majestically as ever, wearing a new flight suit which looked even more armored than the last, in iridescent white instead of drab green this time. The weapons hanging off her arms were also all new, the old ones still being broken scrap in my house.


    This suit was less form-fitting and more covered in protective plates, sewn into the suit on her arms, legs, and chest, anywhere that didn¡¯t need to flex or move, and layered joints on top, giving her a passing similarity to a knight in a suit of armor, except with the same ominous glowing red visor.


    ¡°Hello, Karu. Nice day for flying?¡± I said, beaming at her.


    ¡°Insolent cockroach, you dare to mock me? Do you have any idea the hours I spend coming to this very spot to seek your demise? And what do I find waiting for me?¡±


    ¡°Uh. Someone who¡¯d really rather you work from home and save yourself the commute?¡±


    ¡°Pathetic witticisms and snide, glib insults!¡±


    ¡°Look lady, if you wanted applause, you should probably go to a comedy club. Look, you¡¯re already dressed like a clown¡­¡±


    ¡°How dare you. I will have you know this is the very cutting edge in resistive armor. Embedded null-cells, reactive dynakinetic coating, supra-insulative padding. Your powers will be nothing to me.¡±


    ¡°Wow. All that for me, and I didn¡¯t get you anything.¡±


    ¡°How is it that you can be so close to death and simultaneously, so infuriating?¡±


    ¡°Must be one of my Exhuman powers. But hey, if you don¡¯t like it you can just go away.¡°


    She glared at me extra-special hard at the suggestion. ¡°I will return as many times as necessary to end you, insect.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s stupid. You want to spend the rest of your life fighting out here in the middle of nowhere?¡±


    ¡°No, fool. I want to kill you and never see you again. Idiot.¡±


    ¡°Well if you never want to see me again, you can just go away. Not complicated. Dumbass.¡±


    ¡°Until when? When you show up on the front of a newspaper, under a headline reading: ¡®Monstrous Exhuman Murders Millions?''¡±


    ¡°Millions of what, Karu? Trees? Rocks? Blades of grass?¡± I stooped and grabbed a handful of grass to throw at her. ¡°Oh no! There I go again, killing grass!¡±


    I was being an inconsolate idiot and I knew it. But, pathetically, I was also having a great time. Being able to cut loose and be an asshole, exchanging witty banter and getting into fights¡­it reminded me of my friends in high school. Much more than the sensitive but sweet AEGIS or the insightful but mentally-sick Saga, Karu and I were just plain jocks. And I was going to enjoy this exchange to the fullest, even if it killed me.


    Which, given the shiny new guns and armor, was a definite possibility. But fuck it, so much better than arguing with girls.


    ¡°You think I¡¯d believe you¡¯d stay here forever?¡± She laughed. A very unpleasant, condescending laugh. ¡°I know your kind. You lurk only so long as it is convenient, waiting for the eyes of God to look elsewhere before you strike the helpless.¡±


    ¡°Karu,¡± I said, holding up the dead fish on my line. ¡°This is my dinner. I¡¯m out here catching it and cooking it precisely so I don¡¯t have to deal with crazy bitches like you over in civilization.¡°


    She sneered and shook her head. ¡°You¡¯re Exhuman. Nothing you say can be trusted.¡±


    ¡°I turned myself in! I¡¯ve lived out here for almost a month. I have hurt and killed exactly one person, and that was a moron who flew out here and wouldn¡¯t leave and attacked me unprovoked.¡±


    ¡°¡®The righteous hate what is false, but the wicked make themselves a stench and bring shame on themselves.¡®¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve seen my powers yourself. The only people who die are people who are stupid enough to try to attack me.¡±


    ¡°Your attempts at deception are as pitiful as they are enduring. Truly, yours are the serpent¡¯s lips.¡±


    ¡°God, listen to yourself. You¡¯re like a damn broken record.¡±


    ¡°You will not say His name¨C¡°


    ¡°You don¡¯t order me around, bitch.¡± At some point this had become a little personal and no longer fun. On some level, now I was just baiting her to attack, so I could work my stress out by beating the shit out of something. ¡°Tell me something, Karu. When did I become so irredeemably evil that every, single, god-damn word out of my mouth become a lie?¡±Stolen story; please report.


    ¡°The moment you woke up with those powers.¡± She gave a haughty, condescending chuckle. ¡°Everybody knows that.¡±


    ¡°Everybody knows that, do they? Let me tell you a few things I knew until very recently. I knew I had an english paper due that I was totally going to ace. I knew if we could keep up a good defence, we had a good chance of making the nationals. I knew the meatball sandwiches were the most edible thing in the cafeteria.¡±


    ¡°I knew the girl in front of me in second period had shampoo that smelled like pure happiness. I knew coach loved me like a second son, and talked about me to the point of being embarrassing. I knew my parents loved me! I knew the government would protect me! I knew I was safe at night, sleeping in my own house, in my own bed, with my own family!¡±


    I felt hot tears running down the sides of my face. I was screaming at her now.


    ¡°Things everybody knows? If it¡¯s such goddamn common knowledge, tell me where my life went, Karu! Where the fuck is it? Where¡¯s the college scholarship I earned? Where¡¯s the 19th birthday with my family and friends? Where¡¯s watching my kid sister grow up and graduate? Huh, Karu? What else does everybody know that apparently I¡¯m just missing?¡±


    She shuddered, but in rage or what, I couldn¡¯t tell. ¡°You can¡¯t play on my sympathies, Exhuman. You think your sorry life is suffering? You and your sports and your meatball sandwiches¡­you know nothing of what it is to have your whole world taken from you! You¡¯re just a stupid boy who woke up one day and decided to make the world a little bit worse for everyone!¡±


    ¡°What the fuck is this to you? Some kind of competition to see who¡¯s more fucked up? Is that all this is to you? Well you win! I concede. You¡¯re way more fucked in the head than I am. Great job.¡±


    I glared at her. ¡°And furthermore, guess what, I don¡¯t care anymore. I don¡¯t care if you leave, I don¡¯t care if you believe me or not, I don¡¯t give a shit what you think. So do me a favor and just shut up and fight.¡±


    She made a snorting noise and widened her stance, hovering a foot off the ground with her arms and legs outstretched. ¡°Finally. May God have mercy on your soul.¡±


    She¡¯d learned from the last two fights, that much was obvious. No missiles or lasers, guns fired only to blind and disorient me so she could swoop in with a blade. She used her jetpack more for mobility than range now, dashing erratically this way and that, constantly trying to circle around behind me, to get behind my dangerous web of lightning blades.


    She darted in, then to the side, then the other way. Unfortunately for her, my blades had great reach, and sweeping horizontally, I struck in both directions she was feinting, hitting her no matter which way she went. My blade cleaved right into her, scorching her armor and sending her reeling and shuddering, definitely still electrocuting her, but much less than in our previous fights. Even as she spun away, twitching and flailing, and making space to recover, I saw her grinning at me.


    It really, really pissed me off.


    I pulled out a bulb of lightning and threw it straight at her smug, condescending face.


    She tried to evade, but her coordination was dulled by the lightning blade she¡¯d taken earlier, and the bulb travelled fast, impossibly fast. It felt solid in my hand, but the second it left my fingertips, it jumped directly to the target, like¡­lightning.


    The condescending smug was gone. Instead was a silent scream. I remembered the same expression on her face as she died and felt a wave of guilt. The bulb had exploded, making a twisting starburst, with lightning tendrils coursing out of Karu¡¯s body in all directions. Gradually the bolts dissipated, leaving her smoking and hovering in the air, occasionally dipping as the jetpack briefly shorted. I wondered if she¡¯d blacked out, but she landed on hands and knees and gasped for breath.


    I advanced a few steps. ¡°Ready to admit defeat?¡± I asked. I held up another bulb threateningly.


    ¡°¡­soldiers¡­¡± she gritted. As soon a I heard the tone in her voice, I knew there¡¯d be no dealing with her. ¡°¡­of God¡­never¡­surrender.¡±


    ¡°Karu, I really don¡¯t want to have to jump-start your heart again. Don¡¯t make me do this.¡±


    She grinned an insane, maniac grin and made a motion at me and then slumped into a heap. No, not a heap, she was covering her face. I followed the arc of the motion she made and looked down at my feet.


    The grenade beeped once and exploded. As it had blown, I¡¯d lept back, not having the time or reaction to do anything else. I never felt myself land. Instead, my vision was pitch black, my ears rung like a bitch, and I felt like I¡¯d been punched in the face. Somehow I was on my back, but it was hard to tell. It felt like I was still standing, or the world was spinning. I was completely lost and the complete blindness was not helping.


    Certain that Karu was advancing on me to finish me off, I lashed out with my swords in all directions. With my panic or adrenaline, they felt even more charged than normal, or more numerous? Or maybe they were totally normal. It was hard to tell, disoriented as I was. I thought I heard a scream as I lashed out, but it may have been from me.


    A few seconds later, my vision faded back into view, blurry and dark, but finally back online. I was on my back, that much I could establish. Thankfully, Karu had ditched the drab color, so her white blur in the distance stood out like a snow-capped mountain. A very, very blurry one, far away.


    Far away? I couldn¡¯t tell. I lashed out with my swords as far as I could. They did not connect, but she did jump back.


    Far away.


    I struggled to my feet, but the world felt unsteady. I needed to get my senses back or she¡¯d huck another nade, and this one might not just be a flashbang. I decided to go on the offensive to push her back and buy myself some time. Fast as I could, I armed lightning bulbs in my hands and threw them at her. They streaked through the air, leaving a beautiful golden afterimage in my eyes. She rocketed into the air before one hit her, and they burst into shimmering stars in the distance. I kept throwing and kept her dodging.


    It was a bit pointless, but she was unable to approach, so I guess it was a success. Finally I was able to hear the crackling of lightning over the ringing in my ears, and resolve her shape to a human form. The ground changed from a green-brown mess to distinct rocks and sticks and patches of grass.


    Okay, so avoid the grenades. My shield didn¡¯t block those. Maybe because she was just throwing them near me? I saw her throw something and decided to take the risk. I barreled forward full speed to intercept it. It soared towards my chest, and once a couple of feet away, was zapped into fragments by my shield. Awesome. So I was susceptible to them only as an indirect attack.


    I looked up and saw the same awareness behind Karu¡¯s visor. Maybe now was not the time to be determining the extent of my powers. This time, she threw two, one in each hand, on either side of me. I dove towards one, feeling like I was doing pass drills again, but as the grenade approached me, it vaporized. The other detonated far behind me, and I heard shards of metal whiz through the air above my prone body.


    Great, she was packing frag grenades too. She must have started with a flashbang in case I¡¯d somehow turned it around on her using my powers, but now that she knew what I could and couldn¡¯t do, was going lethal. I had to end this fast.


    I stood up and found a grenade rolling at my feet somehow. She was hovering there with a smug smile again, one cannon on her arms smoking from firing.


    I didn¡¯t have time to think or react, I just punted the thing as far as I could. Mid-air, it beeped once, and then deployed, in the air only feet away from Karu. She¡¯d turned to jet in the opposite direction, but hadn¡¯t gotten far before the shockwave of the blast caught her in the back and sent her face-first into the ground. She bounced once, her jetpack retracting instantly to save itself, and then laid very still.


    Shit, not again. I rushed to her side and checked her injuries. Nothing I could see. Gingerly, I rolled her onto her side. Her face was smashed in, lips and nose dripping blood, visor cracked down the side, but she was breathing. She groaned and stirred. Not sure what else to do, I took her visor off, pulled as many grenades as I could off her bandolier and dumped them in the river and waited a few guarded steps back and for her to come to.


    It was¡­longer than I expected. I might have had time to take off her arm-guns, but hadn¡¯t wanted to risk being that close to her weapons when she woke up. I watched for maybe a minute while her eyelids fluttered and she rolled and moaned, fighting some internal battle.


    Lazily, almost dreamily, her dark green eyes opened and she focused on me. For a few moments she laid there looking at me peacefully, before slowly shuffling to her knees where she sat, head downcast.


    ¡°It appears I find myself at your mercy again,¡± she lamented.

 032. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    ¡°It appears I find myself at your mercy again,¡± she had said.


    It sounded like all of the fight had been knocked out of her. It was not a way I had seen Karu, even when she¡¯d woken up in The Bunker. Maybe because this time she wasn¡¯t afraid of what I¡¯d do, or done?


    ¡°Seems so.¡± I wanted to mock her, but she¡¯d somehow refrained from calling me a snake or invertebrate, so I, too, could be civil.


    She laughed. Not the laugh she¡¯d put on before the fight, but an honest, genuine laugh, tinged with sadness. ¡°Not a good habit for a bounty hunter to fall into. I am weak, and weakness is one thing I cannot abide.¡±


    My instinct was to console her, but¡­I owed this woman less than nothing. Another ass-kicking at the very least. But the Karu sitting in front of me seemed a very different person than the one who had hovered after me so menacingly before.


    ¡°Why are you so¡­calm?¡± I asked, tentatively. This, too, made her laugh. She had a rich, full-bodied laugh. She really gave 100% to whatever it was she did. It suited her.


    ¡°Why not? There is probably no safer place in the world than near you, Exhuman. Were a beast or bandit to appear while I was unconscious, would you not fight to protect my body?¡±


    ¡°I guess I would.¡±


    ¡°And with more force and efficacy than any officer of the law,¡± she sighed and looked up. Her green eyes were piercing. ¡°I have always seen myself as a defender of goodness, a sword of God, and strong. Yet here I sit, whining like some brat at an enemy who has proven I am none of those things. I am just a¡­paltry amusement for the divine. Before He decides I am of no use and reclaims me.¡±


    ¡°Or maybe,¡± I said slowly, hoping to avoid the entire accusation-of-lies loop we¡¯d had before the fight. ¡°He¡¯s trying to tell you I¡¯m not such a bad guy, and you don¡¯t need to fight me.¡±


    She just stared at me quietly, her green eyes piercing. I felt like if Saga could read my mind, then Karu¡¯s eyes could peer right down into my soul. In a way, it was even more threatening than the glowing red slits on her visor.


    Eventually she spoke. ¡°I am no fool, Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°I know.¡±


    ¡°I was not done. Do not make this confession more difficult than it needs to be.¡± She waited for me to reply, but I stayed silent, which was apparently the right answer. ¡°I know you are not the absolute evil. You irritate me, infuriate me, defeat me, yet you strike with conviction and show diligence, patience, kindness, temperance, charity¡­a litany of virtues.¡±


    She looked up at the heavens and the blue of the sky mixed with the green in her eyes. ¡°And if you are a being of virtue, what does that make me? I thought at first I must simply be wrong about your moral nature, but then you spared me. Today, I thought to simply bury you and forget any moral qualms I may have accrued, but you have foiled me in this as well.¡±


    She sighed and her eyes went back to me. ¡°Which leaves me with only the option of sorting through my actions and discovering my missteps.¡±


    ¡°Never a fun thing to do,¡± I consoled. She just smiled sadly in response and I sat awkwardly. ¡°You know, not to insult you, by dragging your life down to the level metaphor of a football game¨C¡°


    ¡°You should speak plainly. You need not speak politically to spare my feelings. I have strength enough for that, at least.¡± Speak plainly. From a girl who tells me ¡®I need not speak so¡®.


    ¡°Um, okay. Well, after football games, win or lose, we¡¯d review the tapes.¡±


    ¡°Tapes?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s an old phrase, I don¡¯t actually know what it used to mean. But ¡®review the tapes¡¯ means to watch a recording of our play. So we¡¯d all sit down as a team and review. And y¡¯know, even in games we won, where I thought I did great, I¡¯d see all the things I could have done better. Even in great plays, I saw how sometimes I had gotten lucky, or hesitated when I should have moved, or acted when I should have thought.¡±If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    ¡°I understand your meaning. You mean to say that even following the right path, upon retrospect and scrutiny, I may find that along the way I have erred.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯d say it in those words, ever. But sure. But what I was going to say was, the most important thing to review was to check our fundamentals. If I¡¯m doing a bad movement when throwing, or not tucking in when getting hit, or have a bad habit or a blind spot, you can see it on the tapes and address it.¡±


    ¡°We could go over high-level play all day and maybe someday in the future, another play might happen which is kinda the same and maybe I¡¯ll remember and do something different. And in that other play, maybe doing something different is wrong. It¡¯s not really useful. But catching a fundamental issue, that changes how you play the game in some small way. It better prepares you for any situation down the road, it makes you a better player, just in general.¡±


    ¡°And in this metaphor, the game is life. And reviewing my fundamentals, those would be¡­?¡±


    ¡°Those would be the assumptions you base everything else off of, I guess. Stuff like ¡®All Exhumans always lie.¡¯ Because if you can realize that assumption is wrong, everything else might make more sense because you¡¯ve just come closer to the truth, I guess.¡±


    ¡°But,¡± I warned, ¡°there¡¯s a problem a lot of players have. Especially ones who have been playing for a long time.¡±


    ¡°Which is?¡± Karu leaned forward, her eyes smoldering with intensity.


    ¡°If you play a lot with bad form, it gets ingrained into you. If you learned how to throw wrong at the start and never improved it, it¡¯s the only way you can throw. Oftentimes, trying to correct your form and throw like you¡¯re supposed to just makes you worse. At that point, you have the choice of just doing it wrong because that¡¯s the way you¡¯ve always done it and it¡¯s comfortable to you, or throwing away everything and trying to start over.¡±


    I swallowed hard as the implications of my metaphor hit me, too. ¡°Not many people could start over. It wasn¡¯t worth it for them, took away everything they¡¯d been playing for in the first place to try.¡±


    Karu relaxed and leaned back again, seated in a kneeling posture with her feet under her and her eyes downcast again. I could see she had a lot going on in her mind right now. Curious though I was, I didn¡¯t want to provoke her when we may be very close to a breakthrough.


    After what felt like most of an hour, she shifted, pulling my attention from my own thoughts. She placed both hands flat on the grass and prostrated herself before me.


    ¡°Exhuman, I have much to think about and discover about myself, and am genuinely grateful for your advice, as much as it may or may not apply,¡± she said, her voice clear and strong, seeming to come from the earth, from her position. I sat, politely confused by her sudden outburst, and more than a little embarrassed.


    ¡°I know not where my final thoughts will land, but I do know this: I must ask for your forgiveness in behaving so rudely towards you.¡± She sat up and fixed me with the most serious stare I¡¯d yet received. ¡°I am a trained professional. To goad you, to mock you, before your death¡­attempted¡­death, these are not the actions of a virtuous and just killer.¡±


    ¡°Are you serious?¡±


    ¡°I have seen my transgression and know my sin. I bare apologies to you, whom I have wronged.¡±


    ¡°You are seriously apologizing to me.¡±


    ¡°I am.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯re still not sure if you¡¯re going to try to kill me again or not?¡±


    ¡°I am.¡±


    ¡°And you don¡¯t see any¡­hypocrisy in this?¡±


    ¡°I do not.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know how to reply. What did people normally say when others apologized? ¡®It¡¯s okay?¡¯ ¡®I forgive you?¡¯ None of that seemed applicable to what was going on here.


    ¡°Karu, I¡¯ve had an epiphany of my own over here,¡± I said. ¡°I want you to carefully understand the enormity of what I¡¯m going to tell you.¡±


    ¡°I shall hear your words.¡± She sat at rapt attention.


    ¡°I am a guy who can shoot lightning out of his hands. I live in a bunker in the middle of a ruined facility, with a roommate who is half the time a loving, doting dream-wife, and the other half the time a mentally unstable little girl. I have been outcast by society because one day I woke up and your God decided I should be a little more lightning-ey.¡±


    ¡°My God did¨C¡°


    ¡°I mine quartz, pick mushrooms, and fish. I make friends with the weirdest damn people, and am strongly considering a fitness program because I miss playing football, even though I¡¯m almost starving a quarter of the time. Last week, I chopped down a tree, dissimilated it into its component parts, and ate molecularly-reassembled tree for a day. It was extremely awful. ¡°


    I paused to let it all sink in. She continued to stare at me, waiting for me to finish.


    ¡°And Karu, you¡­you are so, so, so much more weird than I am.¡±


    She continued to stare for another few moments before a snort escaped her, and she began to laugh.


    ¡°I shall endeavor to take that as a compliment, I suppose.¡±


    ¡°Take it however you want, it¡¯s true.¡±


    ¡°I shall. I thank you for your perspective, Exhuman. It will be another thing I consider while reviewing my life¡¯s decisions.¡± She rose and turned to leave, the spindly arms of her jetpack emerging.


    ¡°Good luck with that. I hope you like what you find, and¡­might be personally invested in hoping you realize all Exhumans aren¡¯t so bad. Oh, and hey,¡± I realized I had her visor at my feet this entire time and threw it to her. ¡°Need that for the trip back, yeah?¡±


    She smiled and donned the visor, her green eyes vanishing behind red lenses. ¡°¡®Til next we meet.¡± She lifted into the air, and with a roar and trail of blue plasma, was gone over the treetops.


    ¡°Well, at least AEGIS doesn¡¯t have to add an unexpected guest to the list of her current worries,¡± I mused. I cast my line back into the water and sat down on the shore.

 033. 2243, 8 years ago. San Diego. Kliver.

    I slid the door shut and peeled off my shoes and socks, throwing them into the growing pile of socks near the door. I fell into the couch and turned on the holo.


    It had been a long day, dealing with customers and my managers all day. Do your best for a customer who would leave and never care again in a minute. Do your best for a manager who only cared when numbers looked bad. Come home, crash hard, wake up early, do it all again.


    It would be sad if it weren¡¯t the same every day, which pushed it right into depressing. Every month, money came in, money went out. Rent, medication, food, slowly ate away at my income. Car trouble? Watch the savings blow away. And I was one of the diligent, frugal ones. I saw my friends take trips, go on cruises, buy cars, and wondered how they got the money for these things.


    And so every day, I felt like nothing changed except I was a day older. Someday, eventually, I guess I¡¯d retire. I wasn¡¯t exactly putting money away for that, so I didn¡¯t know what would happen, but it seemed like it was forever away anyway.


    I receded into the couch, the flickering glow of the holo the only light in the room.


    I was wasting my time, I knew. I only had a few brief hours before I¡¯d have to be in bed to restart the cycle. These few hours were the only time I had to do whatever I wanted, the time to be alive. If I¡¯d ever wanted to paint a painting or learn another language, these hours were it.


    Instead, day after day, I sat here in front of the holo. I could feel my life slipping by me. I wondered if everyone else had this state of existential dread, or if I was just special in how much I hated my life.


    Even just a few thousand would help. I could pay off my loans, start actually putting away money, start saving up for something I really wanted, pull myself out of this slump. I looked down at my hand, could feel my pulse pounding.


    Nah. I couldn¡¯t.


    I threw on some sandals and went outside, to the corner store. I did as I always did, wandered every aisle, like I was looking for something new and exciting. Nothing ever was. I wound up with the same bowl of instant mac with hot dogs as always.


    There was a guy in front of me in line, who was acting really fishy. Glancing around all over the place, unable to stand still. I thought he might be on drugs, and stayed a few steps back, in case he decided to bite me or something. When he got to the front, he whipped out a gun from somewhere and pointed it, shaking, at the cashier.


    Shit. I didn¡¯t want to be here. I took a few steps further backward and disappeared into the aisles, moving for the door. I only got a few steps from it before I heard the crazy guy yelling at me. I slowly raised my hands and turned to him.


    He was deranged looking, his eyes not pointing in quite the same direction. The gun in his hand was shiny silver and huge, pointing directly at me. In his other hand was a plastic bag, full of credit chits from the til.


    He growled something indistinct at me.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want any trouble, man.¡±


    ¡°Wallet,¡± he said, gun even with my eyes. I reached into my pocket and pulled the wallet out of my pocket. I grabbed the small chip I had and offered it to him.


    ¡°Gimmie the WHOLE WALLET!¡± he yelled, and grabbed my arm, yanking it hard. I fell forward onto the ground, the wallet landing beside me. He stepped forward and picked it up, along with the chits on the ground. His hairy leg was right beside my head. I felt blood trickle down my forehead where it hit the ground.


    I felt my blood race and looked up. The barrel of the gun was right in my face. The swinging bag of cash dangled right in front of me, my wallet and the money I¡¯d taken out for this week in there.


    I won¡¯t. I couldn¡¯t. I shouldn¡¯t.


    I did.


    I clapped my hand against the man¡¯s bare leg and ignited all the blood in his body in an instant. He screamed an inhuman scream and burned and withered at the same time. In a moment, he was silent and it ended, a crackling husk all that remained of the pathetic man.


    I glanced over and the cashier was long gone. Vanished when the robber had turned his attention to me. I hesitated for a second, and then grabbed the bag and fled the store.


    I was terrified and giddy. I¡¯d just taken a man¡¯s life and made more money than I would in a month in an instant, and it had been so easy.


    Stupidly easy. Painfully easy. The easiest thing I¡¯d ever done in my life. I just clapped my hands and made money appear, basically.


    What was the point of listening to my manager berate me for poor numbers and enduring customers argue endlessly over expired coupons when I could make a hundred times that much in ten minutes?


    In a flash I was upstairs and home, the door bolted behind me. My heart was pounding impossibly hard, I didn¡¯t even know it could beat that hard without my chest bursting. But from excitement or fear, I didn¡¯t know.


    I looked in the bag again. Piles of chits, sorted by type, exactly as the cashier had pulled them from the drawer. My wallet. The small chit which had come from my own wallet.


    With this¡­I could go from lunch meat and white bread to eating out, all week. No more mac and cheese with little hot dogs.


    I shook the thought out of my head. Or, I could use this to pay for rent. Put some money away. Live like I always had, just with a little more money in the bank. A little safer.


    The thought of it made my skin crawl. Maybe it was my blood racing, or that I¡¯d just gotten away with murder, but my ordinary shitty life seemed even more shitty than it ever had. I looked down again and felt the weight of the bag in my hand. I could do this. I could make a living off my powers. It would be easy, so much faster and easier than¡­


    ¡­than what? Slowly getting older and putting money away until some day, I died? What was the point of such a life. It¡¯s not like I had much of a family to care about or to care about me. No legacy, no romantic prospects, no career, no real reason to exist.


    Inwardly, I fumed. I hated this money. I felt like it had opened a door to the outside world, letting me see just how terrible my complacent life had been before. But on the other hand, it did open the door¡­not just let me peek.


    Whatever I chose, I had to be smart about it. No exuberant spending, no cruises or houses or sports cars. I laughed a little louder than I expected. Sports cars? I was holding a bag with a few hundred tops. I was getting ahead of myself.


    But not that far ahead.


    The money was gone in less than a week. I wondered how I¡¯d lived on so much less than that for so much longer. I hadn¡¯t bought anything extravagant, just small things I¡¯d always denied myself before, and it was amazing how fast the money went. I needed to figure something out. Something bigger, so I wouldn¡¯t have to do this again in another week.


    That was how I found myself underneath a bank in the middle of the night, melting through the ground with my hands, the tunnel lit only by the flow of lava flowing past me downhill back towards the sewer where I¡¯d breached the earth, while a cloud of smoke completely filled the tunnel.


    When I awoke with my powers, my blanket on fire and the room filled with smoke, neither of them bothered me in the slightest. I had to sacrifice my mobile to explain to the firefighters that it had spontaneously exploded in the night and set my blanket on fire. The firefighters seemed skeptical, saying ¡®no mobile had spontaneously exploded in 200 years,¡¯ but barring a better explanation, they left without incident.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    That was a week ago, and I¡¯d decided I had to hide my powers and everything about them, or else risk bringing the XPCA down on me. I was fireproof, but I had no desire to test my bulletproof-ness.


    So what the heck was I doing melting my way into a bank? As though in answer to my thoughts, I felt my hands touched a material different from the rock. I¡¯d burned through concrete. Just a little further and the smoke thinned as it flooded into the room above me.


    I hadn¡¯t planned that, but it would keep any cameras from spotting me. It¡¯s a good thing that worked out, I chastised myself for not even remotely thinking this through.


    But that was a concern for later. Now, I was in the vault, able to see through my own smoke into¡­


    Where was I? This wasn¡¯t a bank vault. Where were the rows of safe deposit boxes? Where were the rows of gold bars? Where was the big stacks of credits?


    Instead there was¡­black cabinets everywhere. A pretty large room, almost like a library, with rows of the metal cabinets standing in lines in the center of the room like bookshelves.


    No, I thought, more like a locker room. Each one of the cabinets was a locker, I realized. I had my smoke vision, and the cabinets had metal doors with a large diamond lattice pattern letting me see inside. I got close to look inside the dark, now-smokey cabinets.


    Guns. Lots of guns. I took a step back, my mind racing.


    Guns? Was there a gun vault in the bottom of the bank? More importantly, could I still turn these into my payday?


    I froze when I heard yelling from upstairs and the sounds of a lot of people running around. Shit. How¡¯d they know I was here? I looked around and couldn¡¯t see any alarms or cameras I¡¯d tripped. Some kind of motion alarm? Would it go off from the smoke, or had I blundered into it?


    The door burst open and several men and women armed with fire extinguishers, wearing clear face masks with air canisters and police uniforms stormed into the room.


    Oh. The smoke. It must have gone upstairs, and they¡¯d come here, not because of me, but because of it. I¡¯d berate myself for my complete lack of planning and idiocy later, right now I had to escape before they found me in the smoke. I went back to my tunnel only to find it completely sealed, the flowing lava having cooled as soon as I¡¯d left it. I could re-melt it and follow the flow back to where I¡¯d entered and escape.


    ¡°There it is!¡± someone shouted as I touched the ground. They¡¯d seen me re-melting the floor and the red glow had lit up the entire room. As one, they all descended on the fire, extinguishers at the ready. The pit was only a couple feet deep at this point, nowhere for me to hide. But this was my only way out.


    I was hit with white smoke from all directions from the extinguishers, and unlike my black smoke, I couldn¡¯t see through this at all. I choked and coughed as the sprays hit me with surprising pressure, and the sudden cold shocked me. ¡°Someone¡¯s there!¡± a voice yelled from outside the smoke. ¡°Someone is breaking in! It¡¯s not arson, it¡¯s robbery!¡±


    A muddle of voices erupted. Some of the sprays stopped, others kept pouring on me, the layer of white foam making it hard to heat the rock.


    ¡°Robbery¨Ccall for backup!¡±


    ¡°Stop where you are, this is the police!¡±


    ¡°Dispatch, confirmed 10-64 in progress in the armory.¡±


    I turned up the heat as much as I dared, but from experience, heating things too fast made them explode violently. I could only hope that with the room full of smoke and police, nobody would try shooting anyone else. Unfortunately, while the lava was slowly making an escape route for me and filling the room with a smokescreen, it also highlighted exactly where I was.


    And for several minutes, we kept up this insane loop. I slowly deepened my escape route, they yelled, milled around, blasted me with extinguishers, and repeatedly circled the room. I think they had no idea where I was, unable to get close to the fire from the heat, and obviously not expecting a person to stand in it. It looked like if I just kept at it, I might be able to escape.


    That was, until a whole different kind of people entered the room. Backup had arrived, and they¡¯d come prepared for the encounter. Full armored exosuits, weapons drawn, enhanced optics which could probably see right through the smoke. They looked military. As the first one entered the room, he trained his gun directly on me and shouted with a slightly synthesized and computer-enhanced voice:


    ¡°YOU IN THE FIRE ¡ª STEP FORWARD AND LAY ON THE GROUND OR YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON.¡±


    I had no intention of doing that, and turned up the heat even more. A lake of lava was pooled around me now in the crater in the floor. This had been much easier when I was tunnelling uphill, as the lava had somewhere else to go. Still, I was almost four feet underground now, deep enough to crouch and be almost completely submerged in the lava and below the ground.


    But one look at their guns told me that a little lip of ground above me wasn¡¯t going to protect me much. They were big, heavy, imposing black guns, two or three different types spread amongst the group, with one guy in the back holding a huge weapon which wouldn¡¯t have looked out of place mounted on a VTOL.


    ¡°FINAL WARNING. SURRENDER OR YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON.¡± The regular police were long-gone, they¡¯d beat it as soon as the super squad had showed up.


    I couldn¡¯t fight them, but I was so close now, I knew it. The whole tunnel couldn¡¯t have been sealed up, could it? Every inch of rock melting away felt like any second, I¡¯d break through and flow away with the rest of the lava. But inch by inch had passed and all I¡¯d encountered was more recently-melted rock.


    ¡°ENGAGING SUSPECT, WEAPONS FREE,¡± said the booming robotic voice of the front man, the rest of his team neatly arranged in a semicircle around me now.


    ¡°Wait!¡± I shouted. ¡°Wait! I surrender!¡± I surfaced, the lava halfway up my torso. It felt like a very thick very warm bath.


    ¡°The fiend appears to be bathing in molten rock,¡± a woman just on the leader¡¯s left said, her voice still synthesized but presumably quieter because she was talking only to him instead of shouting at me. ¡°Surely he is an Exhuman, and we should withdraw and wait for XPCA, there is no other possible explanation.¡±


    ¡°Hold, Karen,¡± replied the leader. ¡°Jager, call for an XPCA team immediately. We will contain the threat until they arrive.¡±


    ¡°Confirmed,¡± said Jager. Karen looked at the man, incredulous by her stance, but did not reply.


    ¡°PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND STEP FORWARD,¡± the voice boomed at me again. I had almost started work on my hole again during their chit-chat. I gave one final thought to trying again to escape, and then frustrated, disgusted, threw my hands into the air.


    Flecks of molten lava flew from my fingers and danced across the floor, tumbling and bouncing, leaving red-hot trails wherever they flew. The soldiers flinched at the spray.


    I realized Karen was right. I was an Exhuman. These guys were just normal military, not XPCA. I might still have a chance to escape¡­through them. The biggest guy with the huge gun was set up on the far right. If I had any chance, I¡¯d have to take him out first.


    As fast as I could, I scooped a handful of lava and flung it at him, heating it as much as I could in the moment it was in my hand. White-hot, it arced through the air, the outside slightly cooling, forming a shell to keep the blob contained, and when it impacted on the wall next to him, the shell cracked, explosively. Like a grenade, flecks of searing lava flew in all directions, hitting three of them, including the big guy. The rest were already moving, some shooting above me as I dipped below the surface, some moving to cover behind lockers, spreading out, taking all angles.


    They were good, but I was a freakin¡¯ Exhuman.


    I stuck my entire body in the pool and superheated it as high as it would go. I¡¯d never pushed the limits of my powers, and felt them go way way beyond anything I¡¯d done before. The whole pool, and the rock around it, and the rock around that seethed and twisted, the ground becoming liquid in a second. I pushed it hotter and higher and then, as I¡¯d hoped, it just exploded.


    I imagined it from their perspective: The room growing unbearably hot, the ground becoming gummy and infirm, the pit in the center of the room widening, blinding white even through the smoke, and then¡­


    The yells turned to synthesized screams. The air itself burst into flames. The cabinets closest to the hole began to wilt and droop, guns and all. Several of the soldiers were down already, succumbed to burns, or the concussive blast, or something else. I didn¡¯t really care, all I knew was I had my chance to escape.


    I bolted for the door and found a hunched figure in my way. It was the girl who spoke before, trying to drag her captain out of the room with both arms, her gun gone. He was in bad shape, with one of his legs melted to the floor, his voice a synthesized scream. When he saw me emerging from the fire, his gun, which he¡¯d miraculously still somehow kept hold of, trained onto me instantly, and a spray of bullets bounced off the ceiling near me.


    I hit the deck, diving from the wild fire, and retaliated with some fire of my own. I slammed the ground with an open palm, forcing heat into the floor under him. In moments, his screaming reached a new apex, as his lower body began to sink into the floor, his armor liquefying and flames engulfing his entire body. In a moment his screams stopped, and his body, protected by his armor only for so long, more liquefied than burned.


    The girl pulling him from the room fell backwards, still holding his smoking arm. She just looked at it, confused. Her chin angled up, and the blank faceplate of her armor looked at me. ¡°You said¡­you surrendered¡­¡± she said, her synthesized voice filled with shock. No sadness, no anger, just incomprehension, as she sat beyond the doorway, the room looking like a gateway to hell, holding the disembodied arm of her superior.


    I wasn¡¯t sure what to say or do. I hadn¡¯t meant for any of this. I needed to make her understand that it was her, and her people who had started all of this, who¡¯d pushed me to using my powers. I just wanted to get in and get out without anyone knowing, but they¡¯d come down here with guns, ready to kill.


    I threw her down and grabbed her faceplate, searing it to red-hot instantly. It softened in my hands and I ripped it off her face. Underneath was a white girl with strands of blonde hair, stuck to her face from the rivers of sweat pouring out of her. Her eyes were a brilliant piercing green and I felt as though they could stare right into my soul. It gave me pause. I watched the eyes flick back and forth across my face, uncomprehending, hurt, lost.


    That was the moment I realized what an Exhuman was. Looking into those eyes and seeing myself and the damage I caused and the lives I took through them. What could be so easy for me would be so hard for everyone else in my wake. I needed to leave.


    ¡°I lied,¡± I said, with as casual a shrug as I could, and stepped over her body, hurrying out of the room.


    I couldn¡¯t stop to think. I had to go, the XPCA would be coming soon, and I did not want to meet them.

 034. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    AEGIS took the news about Karu¡¯s latest attack stoically, by her standards. Only a bare minimum of flighty panic, and constant tugging at her pigtails for reassurance. I think she was trying. But when I told her about the odd, stilted conversation we¡¯d had after the fight, she was silent and pensive.


    ¡°She is¡­growing to accept Exhumans?¡± AEGIS asked, tentatively when I was done.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Accept me, maybe. Or maybe not. She did say she might come back trying to kill me again.¡±


    ¡°That is entirely irrational,¡± AEGIS fumed.


    ¡°You¡¯re telling me.¡±


    We lapsed into silence for a few seconds.


    ¡°I think¡­I am growing less accepting of Exhumans,¡± AEGIS spoke into the air, not looking at me while she spoke.


    ¡°I noticed.¡±


    ¡°It is hard to justify any acceptance of them when presented with the overwhelming statistics. Even the most seemingly benign of Exhuman cases¨C¡°


    ¡°AEGIS, maybe you should stop reading all that Exhuman stuff.¡±


    ¡°Why? Afraid of what I¡¯ll dig up on you?¡±


    I shook my head. She¡¯d gotten so paranoid and personal.


    ¡°No, because I¡¯m afraid of what you might dig up on you. I¡¯m afraid that by reading about all the worst of the worst, you¡¯re ignoring the data right in front of you¨Cme, and you, and Saga. All Exhumans who are living without killing hundreds of people.¡±


    ¡°And then there are those which have killed hundreds of thousands.¡±


    ¡°There are. I can¡¯t deny it.¡± I sighed. ¡°Look, not too long ago, I was dealing with my own issues of prejudice, remember that? I couldn¡¯t accept Saga for who she was because of her race. And somebody gave me some very good advice in dealing with prejudices like that.¡±


    ¡°Is it really prejudice if the statistics back it up?¡± She was looking at me now finally, her brow furrowed, her braced arms crossed.


    ¡°Yes. Yes, it really, really is. In any group of people there are always going to be the exceptions. People like me, who are trying to do good, even if they have the capacity for slaughter. People like Saga, who are totally innocent, even if her people killed billions. You can¡¯t just sweep us under the rug and generalize about the whole group¡­in fact¡­that was my point I was trying to make with Saga earlier. I think behavior like that is what causes Exhumans to go bad. If the world expects you to be evil and treats you that way, what other choice do you have?¡±


    AEGIS opened and closed her mouth several times without responding before deflating. ¡°You¡¯re right. I know you¡¯re right. It¡¯s just scary when the consequences of being wrong are so horrible.¡±


    ¡°Well, look at it this way. Karu¡¯s a professional bounty hunter who¡¯s probably seen and killed a whole pile of Exhumans. And she¡¯s on the fence about whether I should be killed or not. So isn¡¯t that some evidence that maybe I am a decent guy?¡±


    ¡°Unless your powers involve corrupting young women¡¯s¡¯ minds.¡±


    ¡°Lighting powers, ma¡¯am. No corrupting here.¡±


    ¡°Saga could have.¡±


    ¡°Karu has never met Saga.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. Okay. Point granted.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll take every point I can get. How many does that make now?¡±


    ¡°I think one.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m on the leaderboard!¡±


    We laughed and chatted a bit more, all awkwardness of the last few days apparently disappeared. It was great having AEGIS back to how she used to be.


    ¡°Oh!¡± She suddenly announced mid-conversation. ¡°I think we have visitors.¡±


    ¡°Visitors?¡± I stood alert instantly, stepping quickly towards the door.


    ¡°No, it¡¯s the man and his boy. Win and something.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± I relaxed immediately. ¡°Wynn and Tate. They¡¯re coming?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± AEGIS said, tapping some keys on her console. ¡°Just picked them up on my cameras outside. They¡¯ll be here any moment.¡±


    ¡°Awesome. Glad I caught so many fish today.¡±


    It was only a minute before I heard them moving outside and then the flat metallic knock on the heavy metal door. ¡°Anyone home?¡± Wynn wheezed, stepping to the threshold.


    ¡°Hey guys! Just in time for dinner. Come on in, please.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t mind if we do. It¡¯s turned so cold out there recently, the boy was shivering last night. Might be the last time we sleep under stars for a while, start preparing to hole up for the winter.¡±


    ¡°Are winters around here bad?¡±


    ¡°Not especially. Plenty bad enough to kill an unprepared man, but temperate compared to many places in this world. A few feet of snow across the whole season, below freezing every night. Poor hunting and foraging unless you know where to look.¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound ¡®not especially bad.¡¯ That sounds like I¡¯m probably going to die.¡± Wynn gave a deep wheezing laugh and Tate smiled.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    ¡°You have shelter and can fish the winter through. Stock up as much as you can on edible plants, dress warmly, and do not challenge the night and you will be fine. May also want to start closing that door.¡± Again he laughed. ¡°I can teach you another thing or two before winter falls and you¡¯ll be alright.¡±


    We each shared our bounty and had quite a feast amassed. I got a fire going outside quickly and we started cooking in high spirits. Wynn had some tubers that looked and tasted like potatoes, and showed me how to cook them by burying them underneath the fire. He¡¯d come to visit because he had just shot and butchered a deer and was hoping to trade some of the venison for salt to help keep it.


    ¡°I imagine with your powers you don¡¯t have too much of a problem hunting,¡± he mused as we watched the fire do its thing.


    ¡°You¡¯d be surprised. Mostly seems to be focused on zapping things near me, but I can make these sort of lightning bombs I guess. I haven¡¯t tried hunting since I figured out how to make those.¡±


    ¡°Well do give it a try and share the bounty if it works out for you. God knows, my knees are getting too old for sitting in a blind all day.¡± He stroked his full, white beard. ¡°But now I¡¯m curious, what else do your powers let you do, boy?¡±


    ¡°Not really that much. I can force electricity to move from one place to another within a small area, force it to gather or dissipate, make it break the laws of physics for a little while. Mostly I use it to create and control big swords made of lightning and swing ¡¯em around.¡± I made a swishing gesture with totally necessary sound effects.


    ¡°No lightning speed or anything?¡±


    ¡°Not that I know of. I also don¡¯t think I¡¯m actually shockproof, I just steer the lightning away from my body, so I don¡¯t know how that would even work out.¡±


    ¡°Well that¡¯s a shame. That would make travelling a light bit easier. At least you can make fire, light your way, and hunt. Oh, and fish, I remember that as well. Handy little trick.¡±


    ¡°I restarted someone¡¯s heart earlier. I guess uh, I stopped it too, but that was less intentional.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s magnificent,¡± he said, stroking his beard again. ¡°If I could have a gift like yours, I would wish that it could help people like that.¡±


    ¡°Did you miss the part where I stopped her heart?¡± He laughed and gave me a beady wink.


    The food was plentiful and excellent, and we ate inside to include AEGIS in our conversation, even if she couldn¡¯t partake of the meal itself. It probably would have driven Saga into a bliss-induced coma had she been there to experience us eating it. As it was, I was very near a coma by the time I was done. Wynn and Tate looked not far behind, and I offered them shelter for the night again, which they gladly accepted.


    We talked and laughed together long after dark, and despite some initial hesitance, AEGIS was soon talking and laughing with us as well. With the warmth inside and full bellies, it felt festive and happy, the closest I¡¯d come to being with friends and family since exile. I was tired and had another long day of dealing with crazy women ahead of me tomorrow, undoubtedly, but I never wanted the day to end. Tate dozed off before long, but Wynn seemed content to ply us with stories of his adventures for as long as we¡¯d listen.


    Eventually, even he was exhausted and we all agreed we could pick it up tomorrow if we wanted. With that happy prospect in mind, I curled up in my hammock ¡ª Wynn having refused it, and Tate being asleep in a pile of rope ¡ª and slipped quickly into a peaceful sleep.


    I awoke to a whispered hiss and my eyes snapped open to the relative blackness of the bunker at night. There was a faint yellow light on, and looking over, I could see AEGIS had her holo on low and from her wary stance and wide eyes, was the one who¡¯d hissed at me. I looked around but saw nothing else stirring in the bunker. Where had Wynn and Tate gone?


    I rolled silently out of the hammock, landing on all fours and shuffled to AEGIS¡¯ side.


    ¡°They¡¯re here, acting super strange. They both woke up suddenly and just stood up. I thought, maybe sleepwalking, but for it to happen to both of them? Anyway, they both shuffled off and seem to be going through the old bunker supplies. Dunno what they¡¯re looking for.¡±


    I nodded at her once and crept forward in silence. At Wynn¡¯s suggestion and AEGIS¡¯ mocking, I¡¯d finally closed the bunker door, and now it was almost pitch black in here. She may be able to see with her fancy optics, but I had to operate off memory and stumbling into things.


    Abruptly, the door opened with a grinding, wrenching screech. Outlined in the moonlight, I could see Wynn, a metal tool perched on his shoulder.


    ¡°Wynn,¡± I said. He didn¡¯t respond, and I wondered if somehow he was sleepwalking. ¡°Wynn!¡± I yelled, stepping towards him.


    ¡°Athan, don¡¯t,¡± AEGIS warned. ¡°There¡¯s something not right about him right now.¡± I saw it too, barely visible in the moonlight, his eyes were open and pupil-less, staring at me, even as I stood completely shrouded in the dark.


    ¡°Wynn, what¡¯s going on, man. This isn¡¯t like you,¡± I said. Still no response. ¡°Talk to me buddy. Let me know what¡¯s going on. Did you eat something?¡± Nothing. I decided to change tack. ¡°Where¡¯s Tate? Is he okay?¡± Like talking to a damn sphynx.


    Okay, screw this then. I clapped twice. I regretted it for a moment when I recoiled at the sudden illumination of the whole room, but noticed that Wynn¨Cand Tate, who was standing in the corner, still searching¨Cdidn¡¯t even flinch at the sudden light. He just stood passively, with what appeared to be a large hammer or small sledgehammer on his shoulder. Tate fished a shovel out of the rusted heap and shambled toward Wynn, and then as one, the two turned and stumbled out the door.


    ¡°What. The hell. Was that?¡± I asked. ¡°Should I go after them? Should I shock them awake?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think so. I get the feeling they were¡­very dangerous. They were so single-minded in their task, I¡¯m not sure what would have happened if you tried to stop them.¡±


    ¡°Should I follow them?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, Athan.¡± She bit her lip and tugged at her hair. ¡°I¡¯m worried too, but I¡¯m even more worried about you.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± I said. I didn¡¯t have time to sit down and think this through if I was heading out. ¡°I¡¯m going after them. If things turn dicey, I¡¯ll back off. They¡¯re just human, they can¡¯t do much to me.¡±


    ¡°But they¡¯re your friends, so you can¡¯t do much to them either,¡± AEGIS bemoaned. I frowned at her and her shoulders slumped. ¡°Yeah, you should go. I¡¯ll follow on drone as far as they can go. Take care, Athan¡­of all three of you.¡±


    I was out the door in a flash, hearing the quiet, high-pitched whine of a drone for a moment as I passed the threshold. It was dark out, there wasn¡¯t much moon, and I had no idea which direction they¡¯d went. At their slow shamble, they couldn¡¯t have gone too far, but there were so many trees, they could have gone anywhere. I started heading for the nearest cluster of trees, and felt something bounce off my face.


    It was the camera drone. It was wildly off balance, spinning on its gyros and falling towards the grass, but the message from AEGIS was clear. Wrong way. I picked up the drone and let it rest and reorient in the palm of my hand. After a moment of calibrating or whatever the heck she was doing, it picked up and flew to my left. North.


    ¡°Thanks, AEGIS,¡± I said, not sure if the drones had mics or if she could read my lips, but she¡¯d come through for me again. I followed the drone for a few paces to set my bearing, and then pushed past its clumsy flight, sprinting off into the night.


    It wasn¡¯t long before I caught sight of the two figures, trudging awkwardly but at a reasonable pace. I settled in behind them, following at a safe distance, but close enough that they¡¯d definitely know I was there. Still, neither showed a hint of reaction, as they marched forwards jerkily, their eyes still blank orbs of white.


    I followed for several minutes as they entered the ruins of the facility, skirted the edge of the large crater, and then veered east.


    East. Why east. I didn¡¯t have to think very long before it hit me, and AEGIS must have been following the same line of thought as her drone bonked me in the face again, telling me to stop.


    East, towards the mine. East toward Saga.


    I watched the two shuffling in a direct line towards her domain like zombies carrying digging tools and swore under my breath. AEGIS¡¯ drone buzzed into my face, camera pointing accusingly at me, urging me not to go any further.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, AEGIS. I can¡¯t let her do this,¡± I said, and ducked the drone, running after the pair into the darkness again.

 035. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I didn¡¯t wait up for Wynn and Tate. I knew where they were going, and headed there directly. My legs were much better and fortunately my last scuffle with Karu hadn¡¯t added any more injuries. I made swift pace towards the mine.


    I realized I had no idea what I¡¯d do when I got there. AEGIS was right to try to stop me. Even as I kept running forward as fast as I could manage, I knew I should turn around. What was I going to do? Force her to stop? My powers didn¡¯t work through her cage and hers did. Argue with her? She¡¯d already lied to me before.


    ¡°Damn it, Saga,¡± I swore. She¡¯d said she¡¯d be good, that she respected my vision and would work with me to build a better world for Exhumans. Was it all lip service? Was it just a convenient lie? Should I even be trying to release her, if this was the kind of shit I could expect her to be pulling?


    [I said if you released me, I¡¯d follow you,] Saga¡¯s voice echoed in my head. I slid to a halt. [You haven¡¯t released me yet, so I am under no obligation to do anything for you.]


    ¡°Damn it, Saga,¡± I repeated. ¡°You¡¯re better than this. You don¡¯t have to do this.¡±


    [No, I don¡¯t. I want to. Humans are trash, Athan, and as much as I may respect you and your desire for a better, perfect world, that¡¯s not the world we live in. I¡¯ve been down here for a hundred years. And yeah, like I said, I can outlive this mountain and cell and escape eventually, but y¡¯know, I¡¯d really prefer not to.]


    ¡°No, Saga. I can get you out. I can, I promise. I will.¡±


    [I know you believe you, but I don¡¯t. You¡¯ve got nothing, Athan.]


    ¡°That¡¯s not true. AEGIS and I¨C¡°


    [AEGIS? (Could it¡­it has to be. How many AEGIS are there out there?)]


    ¡°What?¡±


    [You never said you were working with AEGIS.] I felt a simmering of hate and paranoia. [What does she want? I¡¯m already locked up. Going to lock me up more?]


    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t understand. You know each other?¡±


    [She never told you anything about me? Scoff.] I felt her pry my mind a little bit and filled my surface level thoughts with several choice four-letter words. [Yeah, that¡¯s not how mind reading works. Nice try. I only read surface-level thoughts passively. When I¡¯m trying, I can pick any thought out of your mind.]


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t trying to block you out, I was trying to let you know what I thought of you.¡±


    [Oh, well in that case, well done. (Asshole.) Now let¡¯s see. Oh. AEGIS is the other girl with the amnesia. Oh that¡¯s precious. So she doesn¡¯t even remember me?]


    ¡°No.¡± My head spun. ¡°But this is getting wildly off-topic. I demand that you let Wynn and Tate go. They¡¯re innocent.¡±


    [I¡¯m innocent too, and I¡¯m locked in here anyway. The world isn¡¯t fair, Athan, and sometimes all you can get out of it is what you¡¯re willing to take.]


    ¡°Fuck! He¡¯s a goddamn child and you¡¯re raping his mind. What the hell is wrong with you to think this is okay?¡±


    [You talk a lot for someone who has no idea what¡¯s going on (and that¡¯s really annoying). I just gave them a compel to come back here and dig me out at night time when they¡¯re asleep. Emphasis on when they¡¯re asleep.]


    ¡°You mean to tell me they¡¯re still asleep through all this.¡±


    [Well, it might be a little bit more psionically-induced trance than sleep but yeah, basically. They have no idea. Might be a little sore in the morning but we all have to make sacrifices, right? (He¡¯s going to say wrong.)]


    ¡°Right. Wrong. You¡¯re right that I¡¯m going to say wrong. This is still fucked up.¡±


    [It¡¯s ironic, I¡¯m actually doing this for you.]


    ¡°How are you possibly doing this for me?¡±


    [Well, if I were doing it my way, I¡¯d have just subjugated them entirely and committed them to a lifetime of servitude until I was free. Hmm, and then after that too, I guess.]


    ¡°There is no universe in which that is a reassuring thought.¡±


    [I thought, Athan likes these humans, so he can have them during the day when they¡¯re awake and I¡¯ll take them at night when they sleep. They¡¯ll be like pets we keep together.]


    ¡°You are seriously sick, you know that? These are people we¡¯re talking about. They¡¯re not pets or slaves, they¡¯re people.¡±


    [And because of them, we aren¡¯t people. We¡¯re Ex-humans. Emphasis on the ex.]


    ¡°Because of bigoted assholes we aren¡¯t. Read my thoughts again, Saga. Find in there what Wynn and Tate think of Exhumans. Find exactly how much of bigoted assholes they aren¡¯t.¡± I waited, but didn¡¯t feel the telltale tingle down my spine.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    [It¡¯s pointless anyway.]


    ¡°What? Why?¡±


    [Because I can only read your thoughts and memories. That has nothing to do with the truth.]


    ¡°Well fuck you, read theirs then. You probably already did. You know they are nothing but decent people who would bend over backwards to help an Exhuman, and you just don¡¯t care.¡±


    [Yeah maybe so. But you¡¯re forgetting an important detail that I¡¯m getting tired of repeating.]


    ¡°Indulge me one more time.¡±


    [Life isn¡¯t fair, and I¡¯m still stuck in here. They¡¯re helping me out.]


    ¡°I¡¯m helping you out!¡±


    [You are doing nothing but chit-chatting with AEGIS and eating fish and¡­potatoes now? (Wow, fuck you very much for not sharing.)]


    ¡°We¡¯re trying, okay? She¡¯s very smart and working on it.¡±


    [She hates Exhumans, me most of all. That¡¯s not even our past history talking, that¡¯s her talking to you. And you still think she¡¯s going to help you spring me?]


    ¡°I do.¡±


    [Then you¡¯re stupid and deluded.]


    ¡°No matter how much AEGIS and I disagree on things, she always helps me anyway. She¡¯s compassionate and smart, and any hate of Exhumans she has is out of fear for herself or for me; fear because she cares about me.¡±


    I felt Saga give a tragic sigh. [I really, truly, for your sake hope that you never find out how wrong you are.]


    I heard a noise from behind and turned to see Wynn and Tate shamble into sight, their white eyes staring glassily at me.


    ¡°Saga, let them go.¡±


    [Or what? You¡¯ve got nothing and both of us know it.]


    ¡°Or I¡¯m leaving and never coming back. You want to take your chances with them and their rusty tools¡­I can¡¯t stop you, I guess. Or you can have a super-smart girl and an Exhuman. Make your choice.¡±


    The two kept shambling forward as I felt the gears turning in Saga¡¯s mind. ¡°Saga, at least stop them while we talk.¡±


    [They¡¯re under a compel. They¡¯ll keep doing what I programmed them with unless I remove it. And I¡¯m still considering it.]


    ¡°Well, fuck this,¡± I said, and reached out grabbing them by the shoulders..


    AEGIS was right again. As soon as I was an impediment, the two turned on me violently in an instant. I jumped back as the hammer came sailing through the air at my face, and the shovel swung upwards towards me from below.


    [Oh this is hilarious. Please, fight them. I want to see who wins.]


    ¡°Shut up,¡± I growled. As soon as I¡¯d let them go, they went right back to their scheduled path. I jogged ahead of them and waited in their path. The moment they reached me, I bent down and grabbed each by the leg, and put on some juice.


    As I¡¯d hoped, their legs twitched and seized, and both of them fell over uncontrollably. Each hit the ground face-first, though I caught Wynn a little. Within a second, their eyelids fluttered shut, and then open again.


    ¡°Athan?¡± wheezed the old man. ¡°What in God¡¯s name are we doing out here? Where¡¯s Tate? Why won¡¯t my legs move?¡±


    ¡°Easy old timer,¡± I soothed. ¡°Let¡¯s get back to home and then I can explain everything. It¡¯s not a good idea to talk here.¡±


    [(Asshole.)]


    ¡°You say something?¡± Wynn said, looking around wildly.


    ¡°No. Just ignore the voice. It¡¯s Saga, if you remember her.¡± I saw confusion and then understanding cross his face. ¡°Help me up boy, and let¡¯s get out of here.¡±


    Saga let us go without issue and it was only a few minutes before the two of them could walk unassisted. Once we were out of ear-, or mind-shot, I told them what had happened to them. Surprisingly¡­or maybe unsurprisingly, Wynn laughed once the tale came out.


    ¡°Seems awfully nice of her not to enslave us in her mines,¡± he chuckled. ¡°I¡¯d been wondering why I was so darn tired lately, but just chalked it up to old age. Glad to know I¡¯m in better shape than I thought.¡± Tate beamed.


    ¡°You guys seriously aren¡¯t concerned about this?¡±


    ¡°I mean, we certainly are, but it doesn¡¯t seem like there¡¯s much to be done, and that she doesn¡¯t have much interest in harming us. I don¡¯t mind helping her out when I¡¯m asleep too much. Would have preferred she ask, but helping folks out is always a good thing in my book.¡±


    ¡°You guys¡­seriously¡­aren¡¯t concerned about this?¡±


    Wynn stopped walking and looked me in the eye with a serious expression. ¡°Now I¡¯m sure you don¡¯t see it this way, and I don¡¯t blame you, but I don¡¯t see too big a difference between stopping by now and again to see you through the winter with a bit of neighborly advice, and busting her out of that jail. If you¡¯re going to argue that she¡¯s an Exhuman and she¡¯s dangerous, well, I¡¯d advise you to check your reflection, son. People are people, and what¡¯s decent is decent, no matter who you¡¯re doin¡¯ it to.¡±


    He straightened up and there was a sparkle in his beady eyes again. ¡°Now that ain¡¯t to say she¡¯s playing by the rules herself, entirely, but she¡¯s not having us out there slaving away in a two-chit factory or harvesting our organs for profit. She¡¯s in it for her own freedom, which is something nobody shoulda taken away from her to begin with.¡±


    He began walking again, and I fell into his wake. ¡°So no, we seriously aren¡¯t concerned about this. Might be a bit unpleasant, and if we get tired or it turns cold, I may turn to your hospitality more than I expected this winter, but hopefully these unexpected guests aren¡¯t a burden to you. And besides, we may just be the motivation you need to figure out your own way of getting her out of there.¡± He turned and gave me a sly wink.


    ¡°You truly are something,¡± I confessed, and he laughed.


    It wasn¡¯t long after leaving Saga¡¯s range that we entered AEGIS¡¯. A camera drone was practically bouncing up and down in the air with excitement to see the three of us coming back unharmed. If I were a crueler person¡­or maybe just a slightly more quick-witted one, I¡¯d have said we should all come back shuffling, eyes rolled in our heads. But that ship had sailed and we¡¯d just have to endure AEGIS¡¯ unreserved glee instead. The little two-rotor drone fell into our parade as we returned triumphantly home, and AEGIS welcomed us like returning heroes.


    A shame that she wasn¡¯t there in person, because I think she definitely would have kissed and hugged me. Instead she settled for lots of yelling and jumping and bouncing perilously close to the limits of her dress. Which was very nearly as good for me.


    Once things had died down a bit and we were all returning back to bed, the door now very securely locked with its huge rusted locking mechanism which I was mostly sure we¡¯d be able to unlock in the morning, I had a few words with AEGIS as I laid in bed.


    ¡°She seemed to know you, Saga did,¡± I said.


    ¡°I guess I shouldn¡¯t be surprised if she¡¯s lived her a hundred years like she said. I only remember being underground for¡­I don¡¯t know. Years? Not a hundred of them, I don¡¯t think.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, you don¡¯t have the look of a hundred-year old woman,¡± I said, smiling.


    AEGIS was serious in her reply. ¡°Neither does Saga. I don¡¯t know, Athan, if I was locked up during my Ramanathan window, I could be any age. Just because I got amnesia ten or twenty years ago doesn¡¯t preclude me from being a hundred.¡±


    ¡°Well somehow I¡¯m a little skeptical,¡± I concluded. ¡°She didn¡¯t seem to like you much. I got a very strong impression of hate and fear and¡­something else. Shame? When she was talking about you.¡±


    ¡°Huh.¡± AEGIS tapped at her computer thoughtfully. ¡°I wonder what we did together.¡±


    ¡°Me too,¡± I said, rolling over to mull things over. I only pondered for a minute before sleep fell on me like a hammer.

 036. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    We finally had what could be considered a lazy day. Wynn insisted on repaying me for saving him and his boy, even though the compel was still there and they weren¡¯t saved at all, but he would hear none of that. He spent the day showing me various tricks he¡¯d picked up, from foraging to knot-tying. I drank it all in, while Tate headed off by himself to pick mushrooms and AEGIS played with the mass-fab.


    She¡¯d been running it a lot lately, and I hadn¡¯t seen anything she¡¯d been making, but also didn¡¯t want to pry. As far as I was concerned, it was as much hers as mine, but I did take a peek at the last print job as it finished, and it just looked like machine parts. For what, I had no idea.


    It was evening before the two left, leaving me and AEGIS alone again. I was lazing around, basking in the afterglow of having friends again, and AEGIS started up another print on the mass-fab. I was going to continue ignoring it when a thought hit me.


    ¡°Hey, AEGIS?¡±


    ¡°Yep?¡±


    ¡°How do you get things out of the mass-fab when you¡¯re done printing them?¡±


    She shifted uneasily. Uh oh.


    ¡°I um, have my ways.¡±


    ¡°You made more drones?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Well, at first.¡±


    ¡°Look, I don¡¯t want to drag it out of you, I just was asking out of curiosity, but now you¡¯ve got me worried.¡±


    ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t want to tell you because if you don¡¯t know, you can¡¯t go telling Karu or having Saga read your mind about it. You¡¯re not exactly a successfully secretive guy.¡±


    ¡°Hey, I can keep a secret!¡±


    ¡°Like what? Is there one secret you haven¡¯t told me, or Karu? I¡¯m even being nice here and leaving Saga out of it.¡±


    ¡°Sure!¡±


    ¡°Which is?¡±


    ¡°¡­uhh. Can¡¯t tell you, it¡¯s a secret.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re useless. I guess I can¡¯t tell you about how I¡¯m getting things out of the mass-fab either, because that¡¯s also a secret.¡±


    ¡°No really, what is it?¡±


    She gave a long, defeated sigh with an apocalyptic amount of exaggerated eye-rolling.


    ¡°Let¡¯s talk about something else,¡± she said. ¡°Bears. Did you know that a grizzly bear can run 40 miles an hour, and climbs just as fast.¡±


    ¡°No. Great fact. Very interesting. Now tell me.¡±


    ¡°Bear claws grow up to 6 inches long. Six inches! Imagine a 6-inch cavity in your chest, and that¡¯s what you¡¯d look like in the brief window between a bear mauling you, and a bear eating you.¡±


    ¡°Still no. Now tell me.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s more, bears are freakishly strong for their size, like they even needed that. An adult grizzly bear can take down a full bison, which weighs over a thousand pounds more than it does. Polar bears are even crazier, and can take down elephant seals, which is up to a seventhousand pound size differential.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS. Dude.¡±


    ¡°On top of their immense might and intelligence, bear senses are also orders of magnitude stronger than ours. Bears can track prey by scent from over 20 miles away and hear well into the ultrasonic range. They can also taste fear, and it is said to be one of their favorite flavors.¡±


    ¡°¡­really?¡±


    ¡°I made the last fact up. The rest are all legit. Bears are srs business, man.¡±


    ¡°Great, thanks for sharing. Now mind telling me what¡¯s going on with the mass-fab?¡±


    ¡°Okay fine. But seriously don¡¯t tell everyone.¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t tell Karu, Jesus.¡±


    ¡°And don¡¯t tell Saga. She doesn¡¯t read your mind unless she has a reason to, usually, and even then, I think she usually just finds what she¡¯s looking for. Don¡¯t give a reason to look for it.¡±


    ¡°Whatever. Just tell me already.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± She typed away at the console. ¡°So at first I was just using drones. I made some a little bigger as workhorses to recover materials to dissimilate, but it¡¯s hard because the weight ratios get really hard without being able to make plastics or polymers.¡± She tapped a few more keystrokes and then from the ceiling beam above the mass-fab, three drones, each about the size of my fist, and supported by six spinning helicopter rotors flew out, nearly silent. Each had a wide, flat profile, a camera mounted on the front, and some kind of claw device on the bottom for moving builds or scrap.


    ¡°Uh. Impressive that I haven¡¯t found these. I should probably clean at some point.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Well, they¡¯re decent for moving small things around, especially in tandem, but for anything larger, no-go. So I¡¯ve been putting together parts and made us our first DOG.¡±


    ¡°We have a dog.¡±


    ¡°A DOG. I invented them. Distributed Operations: Ground-unit.¡±


    ¡°That is a horribly tortured acronym. What does that even mean?¡±


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s ground-based as opposed to all my previous drones, and it is my first creation to have its own rudimentary AI instead of being directly controlled from here, hence distributed operations.¡±


    ¡°As in¡­the opposite of centralizing all operations is to distribute them¡­to an AI.¡±The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Yep.¡±


    ¡°Okay. That is still a horribly tortured acronym.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m aware. But I really wanted a DOG, so here we go. I¡¯ll call for it.¡± She tapped some commands and pressed a final key with a flourish. ¡°I can, of course, control it directly if I want to. So it¡¯s not a dedicateddistributed operations unit. And I can see what it sees, if it¡¯s within range, but it can go out of range autonomously if it wants to. And¡­here¡­it¡­comes.¡±


    I heard whining and clanking from the doorway and a moment later, a thing scuttled into view. It was bigger than I expected, a four-legged thing with a small central platform hanging down from¡­knees, I guess¡­which reached about three feet high. It was almost spider-like in its form, but robotic instead of hairy and creepy, as I imagine a three-foot spider would be.


    The central platform had a little camera on it facing forward, I guess, and the legs were just empty struts with some cables and pneumatic pistons, but it moved with a swiftness that disguised the unstable, ungainly gait.


    ¡°Hello, DOG,¡± I said, crouching down to look at it from it¡¯s eye level. The thing did a little wiggle where the central platform rocked back and forth without the legs moving.


    ¡°They¡¯re programmed to like you,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°But don¡¯t make me mad or I¡¯ll flip the murder switch on.¡±


    ¡°Uh. You¡¯re joking.¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡± She tapped her chin thoughtfully. ¡°Though I guess it¡¯d be easy enough to negate their affection for you and make it really, really hate you. If that¡¯s lower than the KOS threshold I put in for bears, I guess it¡¯d be a murder switch.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­educational. Can we make a new house rule that nothing here is allowed to murder me?¡± She laughed, but seemed to miss that I was only half joking. The robot was small and not armed or armored, but I still didn¡¯t enjoy the idea of robot death spiders.


    ¡°You like him?¡± AEGIS asked. I had to think about it. On one hand, it looked like a pile of parts jammed together more than anything I would attribute as a ¡®him.¡¯ On the other hand, as it sat there, moving a little idly, taking tiny half-steps and adjustments and pivoting its little body to point the camera at different things, I thought its motions were sort of cute. Something about it reflected a simple animal¡¯s curiosity.


    ¡°He¡¯s all right, I guess.¡± DOG bounced up and down a little at me speaking. ¡°Yes, you. You are all right.¡±


    ¡°And here¡¯s him with me driving,¡± AEGIS said, typing away at her console. DOG froze mid-bounce, landing a little awkwardly and not adjusting, and just rocked in place like an uneven table for a moment. Then the takeover was complete and a little red light turned on next to the camera, and it stood rigid and upright, animal curiosity replaced with stoic efficiency.


    ¡°He¡¯s got some design issues,¡± she explained while putting DOG through his paces. He was much faster and agile with AEGIS driving, and she made him do some flips and even parkour off a wall to jump higher than my head. I glanced over and saw her grinning at her computer as she showed off, her hands flying across the keyboard. ¡°He¡¯s designed basically only for lifting and rapid transport in any terrain, but without a downward-facing camera it¡¯s actually pretty hard to position and pick things up. Sometimes takes him a couple minutes to pick up cargo. I¡¯m much better, of course¡­¡±


    DOG did a straight vertical leap and landed on one of the rusty metal workbenches with a loud clang. It took some small shuffling steps and looked at the table¡¯s contents by pointing downward as much as possible, front legs extended straight forward and back legs as high as possible, a profile like a runner touching their toes.


    Finding a target, DOG walked over a hammer and lowered its body to touch it, whereupon there was a small explosion of tiny grasping tendrils, like a thousand wires a few inches long, which wrapped around the hammer in every possible way, binding it tightly for transport.


    ¡°First try, GG, EZ,¡± AEGIS said, quite pleased with herself.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t look that hard,¡± I said.


    ¡°Of course not. I make it look easy. And I offloaded a lot of work to keep him gyroscopically stable to the onboard AI. But it¡¯s still plenty hard.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll take your word for it.¡±


    ¡°I have another model being worked on now,¡± she said, which explained why she was still printing parts despite DOG being done for who-knows how long now. ¡°This one has an external head for mounting the camera which can pivot independently of the body. Excited to see how he turns out.¡±


    ¡°DOG mk. 2? Or do you have something else cringe-inducing in store for this one¡¯s name? A CAT maybe?¡±


    ¡°Distributed Operations: Ground-unit ¡ª Enhanced,¡± she said with a diabolical grin.


    ¡°DOG-E,¡± I groaned. You are the worst.¡± She laughed. She was such a ridiculous juxtaposition of spending dozens of hours making a fully-functioning AI worker/pet, being incredibly proud of it and its operation, and then naming it something so whimsical and stupid. But I guess, given that AEGIS was both a smart and a happy person, it was fitting enough.


    ¡°Hey, why don¡¯t you take him outside and get acquainted. It¡¯ll be fun. You probably need a little more of that in your life.¡±


    It sounded stupid to me, but she was excited and I saw no need to burst her bubble. I went out and DOG bounded after me, with a spirited, playful bound. I noticed the light was off, meaning he was back on AI, and guessed that if she were driving, there would have been no such inefficiency in his movement.


    I picked up a big stick and threw it as far as I could. DOG rose up and pivoted to track it, and then took off running before it hit the ground. It ran with a bouncing scamper, and I noticed that AEGIS was right, it could only look in one direction at a time. It had to keep turning back to look at the stick in flight and forward to avoid obstacles, which gave it the impression of being a very clumsy, dumb animal.


    The stick dropped, and DOG stopped, only a couple feet from it. Carefully, gingerly, almost, it took little steps until it was over the stick, lowered itself, and then exploded its graspers downwards.


    They raked at the dirt and grass, missing the stick by a few inches. Securing nothing, they withdrew. DOG took a few steps away and angled downward to look at the stick again. It reminded me of a holo of a turtle trying to eat a strawberry I¡¯d once seen on the ¡®net. With eyes on the sides of its head, it just kind of lunged forward blindly bumping into the morsel before it was able to get a bite.


    DOG secured the stick on his second try and came loping back at a much more leisurely pace, body swaying side to side more than necessary. Was that some swagger?. It was funny, seeing an AI so pleased with itself. Maybe it was because it was such a basic intelligence, but it almost made me laugh.


    AI were almost everywhere, but also almost inconspicuous growing up. There were AIs who drove all personal cars, ones in our kitchens which organized and automated a lot of parts of cooking, stocking, and shopping, and of course every mobile had a personal AI assistant, or PAIA in it. But most of those were designed to be deceptively human, no matter how simple their tasks¡­even if the driver AI was actually pretty dumb at anything other than getting a car from place to place, it was given a voice and would politely inform you that you¡¯d reached your destination. Nobody wanted to think a dumb animal was driving their car.


    Which is what made DOG so refreshingly simple. It dropped the stick, gave it a gentle nudge to make sure I saw it, and then bounded off a few paces before turning around and crouching at the ready at me.


    ¡°Careful with that,¡± I heard AEGIS say from indoors. I peeked inside at the little yellowish hologram. ¡°He might enjoy play, but he also doesn¡¯t get tired. He¡¯ll have you out there throwing sticks until the end of time if you let him.¡±


    ¡°I can give him another couple more,¡± I said, like I was doing the robot a favor. In truth, it was just funny to watch DOG go and interact with the world. And impressive, too, though I¡¯d never say it to AEGIS. If her head got any bigger, her glasses wouldn¡¯t fit.


    Soon it was so dark I couldn¡¯t see anymore, and though this was apparently no impediment for DOG, my amusement with the situation rapidly diminished. I dropped the stick and would have given DOG some skritches or praise but was unsure how to give that to a robot in a meaningful way. Not like it really cared too much about something touching its metal frame. I settled for giving it a gentle pat on top of the main body, which it responded to with the same wiggling motion it had given me earlier. Success?


    ¡°Well, at least he doesn¡¯t bite,¡± I said. DOG looked at me sideways, clearly missing the joke.


    ¡°Yeah. He¡¯s a good boy. Now go make some runs, mama needs a new pair of ethyl groups.¡±


    I watched with a smile as it loped away into the dark. I wasn¡¯t sure how much time I¡¯d have to play with it with AEGIS running the mass-fab nonstop, but the simple joy of playing fetch with a robot and hanging out with good friends reminded me that she had been right. Fun was something I¡¯d been sorely lacking recently.

 037. 2251, Present Day. Los Angeles suburbs. Lia.

    Life was hell.


    Every day, I didn¡¯t know what I¡¯d do wrong when I woke up. Would it be crossing Dad and worry about him hitting me? Or pissing off Brick and him hurting me while implying much darker things, then come home to Dad hitting me? Or maybe the trifecta, Dad being angry at me about Brick setting off Mom so that Dad would hit her and then blame me and I¡¯d really get it.


    My friends who had told me they¡¯d be there for me after Athan was taken away had all shied away. Miraculously, none of them seemed willing to notice the bruises that had started showing up on me. None of them wanted to be involved in the drama that was my life, and one had even told me that sure, she¡¯d said she was there for me, but that was before I¡¯d changed.


    Well screw you, Kirsten. I¡¯m sorry my life was inconveniencing you.


    I¡¯d spent a lot more time in the library as a result. School library during hours, city library after. If I was lucky, I could hide in the stacks all day after classes and get home after my parents were asleep. It seemed like books were anathema to Brick too, or at least I could put a book up as a shield between us and try to bore him into leaving me alone.


    Sometimes it worked. Others, I was scared of the two of us being alone together. He seemed to take it as an invitation. Or a challenge.


    More than anything, it made me realize how fragile my entire life was. A month ago, I had good friends, great parents ¡ª if a little overbearing, a totally normal home life, good grades, and a brother. How fast they all left me. I found myself staring at a book in the library, eyes glazing over the pages, remembering how things used to be, more and more often.


    And if I felt like I¡¯d lost everything, I can only imagine how Athan felt.


    Athan. Every day I felt like I¡¯d become more numb to the world, and every day my heart broke a little more thinking of him. Unlike me, he didn¡¯t even have a chance to avoid making people angry.


    One day found me in the library after 8. It was dead quiet, just the way I liked. I was reading nothing in particular, some pulpy novel from forever ago about a girl who lived in a castle raising dragons. I saw movement in my periphery and clenched. It was just a college student leaving.


    ¡°Looking for someone?¡± I heard a voice behind me. My blood froze. Brick¡¯s voice.


    ¡°Just reading,¡± I said, trying to shrug him off. A hand reached over my shoulder grazing me and grabbing the book out of my hands. I flinched at the touch, he didn¡¯t seem to notice.


    ¡°What is this crap?¡± He laughed. ¡°You don¡¯t need to wait for a white knight my darling, you¡¯ve got me.¡± He threw the book further down the stacks. I shot him an angry glare and crawled after it. How I became involved with a guy who could treat old books with such disrespect was completely beyond me.


    ¡°Hey, while you¡¯re down there princess, I have a sword you can polish,¡± he said with a lecherous grin and closed the distance on me again. I got to my book and spun around, putting myself between him and my butt, in case he got any ideas.


    ¡°Not in my life, Brick. Why are you even here?¡±


    ¡°Hey, watch your tone. You owe me, and don¡¯t forget it.¡±


    ¡°For what? For you stalking me and ruining my life?¡±


    ¡°For getting that fucking psychopath out of your house and saving the life of everyone on your block. Yours, your parents, your neighbors¡­¡±


    ¡°Athan isn¡¯t a psychopath, he¡¯s an Exhuman.¡± Brick recoiled a little bit at Athan¡¯s name, so I made sure to use it as often as possible.


    ¡°He¡¯s an Exhuman and therefore a psychopath. You aren¡¯t a stupid girl, you¡¯ve heard of all the events. Just a matter of time before he went bad. I saved all our lives.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a monster and an butthead and¨C¡°


    ¡°Lia, shut up.¡± He grabbed my face with one hand, his rough fingers squeezing in both of my cheeks painfully, making my mouth pucker like a fish. He leaned in close, and I was afraid he was going to kiss me, but instead he just whispered: ¡°This is a library.¡°


    I pulled him off me and he laughed again, letting me go without a fight. I knew if he wanted to, there would be no way I could move him. That¡¯s what scared me most. Maybe it was time to go home and take my chances with Dad.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m going,¡± I said, standing up abruptly and trying to get a few steps in before he followed. He was fast for his size, and was in front of me before I¡¯d made it out of the stacks.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think our date is concluded to my satisfaction,¡± he said. He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. ¡°Your black eye is healing up nicely. You in a hurry to go home and get another one?¡±


    I felt my face flush and stared at the ground to hide my shame. ¡°Yes, actually I am. I told Dad I wouldn¡¯t stay out so late.¡± It was only a half-lie. I hadn¡¯t said anything, but he¡¯d screamed it at me repeatedly.


    Somehow he saw through me. Again, he grabbed my face with one hand, and forced me to look right at him. ¡°You¡¯re lying to me,¡± he growled. ¡°How are we supposed to have a relationship if I can¡¯t trustyou.¡± He punctuated his sentence by wrenching my jaw slightly, and very painfully, but not letting go.


    ¡°You know,¡± he whispered softly, which was somehow even more terrifying than him yelling. ¡°You¡¯re too beautiful for lies. Tell me the truth. Being with me isn¡¯t so bad. You like it, I know it.¡±


    I wanted to spit in his face, to unload a truckload of profanities on him ¡ª even breaking my rules about swearing. I wanted to break free and kick him in the dick and stomp his face and run away. But his fingers dug into my face, and my jaw ached. I tried to look away but his strong grip kept me locked facing him.


    Without anything else to do, my eyes flickered back and forth across his face. Despite his laughing and apparent control of the situation, he didn¡¯t look happy. He looked worn and tired and angry. He looked like he¡¯d lost some weight, like his skin wasn¡¯t hanging on him as right as it used to. His eyes were a little bloodshot and maybe he hadn¡¯t been sleeping much.


    I found it hard to sympathize, somehow.


    ¡°Screw you, Brick,¡± I spat out. ¡°Let me go.¡±


    ¡°Not until you tell me how much you appreciate my sacrifices.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t appreciate anything you do. Let me go, I¡¯m serious.¡± I pulled at his arm to absolutely no effect.


    ¡°So am I,¡± he said, and wrenched my head downwards, making me bend forward awkwardly. My neck made a funny cracking noise and I panicked for a moment that he¡¯d just broken my spine, before I realized I was fine and things just hurt.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    ¡°Brick, you¡¯re hurting me, let go.¡± Everything I said sounded stupid with my face smushed up.


    ¡°Brick, you¡¯re huwting me,¡± he parroted. ¡°You want me to let go, you know what to say.¡± He twisted me harder, bending me over double. Tears began to stream out of my eyes against my will and ran down my upside-down nose.


    ¡°Why do you even care? You know I¡¯m lying if I say it.¡± He twisted me harder and I gasped out as my contorted body fell to my knees. ¡°It doesn¡¯t¡­even¡­mean anything¡­¡±


    ¡°Then fucking say it, if it means nothing,¡± he growled.


    ¡°Brick, stop,¡± I pleaded. I couldn¡¯t even see anymore, just water in my eyes and pain in my body, and his unstoppable hard arms under my useless hands. In reply, he just gave me an angry shake.


    ¡°Okay, you win,¡± I said. His grip didn¡¯t relax.


    ¡°Say you like me.¡±


    ¡°I like you.¡± I had a hard time not choking on my own spit and tears.


    ¡°Say you¡¯re happy I got rid of your fucking psychopath brother.¡±


    ¡°I-I¡¯m¡­ha-happy¡­¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t hear you.¡±


    ¡°¨Chappy you got rid of¡­of¡­my psy-psychopath broth-her,¡± I stammered out.


    ¡°Say you¡¯re going to be mine and show me your appreciation.¡±


    ¡°Brick, n-no.¡±


    ¡°Say it, bitch,¡± he said, and I felt something hit me in the gut, driving all the air out of my wrecked frame. I stumbled and collapsed, held up only by the hand holding my face. My neck hurt, I couldn¡¯t breathe, my legs wouldn¡¯t work to get under me and support my weight again. I just sobbed into his hands, but he didn¡¯t move.


    ¡°I said, SAY IT,¡± he shouted, echoing through the silent library.


    ¡°I c-can¡¯t¨C¡± I gasped out.


    ¡°Say it or get hit again.¡±


    ¡°W-why are you d-d-doing this?¡±


    To my surprise, he looked at me seriously after I asked that, and then dropped me to the floor. My face smashed into the thin carpet, but no longer twisted in half, I drank in huge lungfuls of air. I felt blood bubbling in my nose.


    ¡°I thought you were smart,¡± he said. ¡°How many fucking times do you want me to answer the same question? Your brother was bad, I put him away. I¡¯m a fucking hero, do you not get that?¡± I lay gasping for breath, beginning to feel my other injuries as my body sorted out the crisis of being unable to breathe. ¡°I said,¡± he stepped on my hand and slowly ground it into the carpet. I screamed. ¡°How do you not get that?¡±


    ¡°Brick! Stop, you¡¯re gonna break it!¡± I screamed frantically.


    ¡°Your brother was always an asshole,¡± he continued, ignoring me. ¡°Always thought he was better than everyone. Had this fake modesty he wore all the time, but you could tell when he was talking to you, it¡¯s like he was looking at an alien. He was never human, and when I learned he was Exhuman, everything just made perfect sense.¡±


    ¡°Brick! My hand¨C¡°


    ¡°I don¡¯t even remember why we were friends to begin with. Smarmy asshole, full scholarship, captain of the team, star quarterback. Meanwhile, I¡¯m out there putting my ass on the line for him every game, protecting his ass, and what¡¯s my future look like? Front lines of China and then an irradiated coffin, probably. Fucker didn¡¯t care.¡±


    He ground his heel down into me. I gasped in pain.


    ¡°And then you,¡± he said, eyes narrowed as he looked down at me writhing around his feet. ¡°Always around in the background, lapping up your brother¡¯s shit like he¡¯s the greatest. Even now that he¡¯s gone and an Exhuman, you¡¯re still here, asking me ¡®oh why, why¡® like you can¡¯t fathom the damn idea of him turning bad.¡±


    ¡°Well open your goddamn eyes and take a good look, bitch. Your brother¡¯s gone. Everyone in the whole world knows what Exhumans are but you, they cheered when he got carted away. So stop asking me the same stupid fucking question and listen to the answer I keep telling you.¡±


    He took his foot off my hand and I withdrew it instantly, nursing it and checking for damage. Everything still moved. Just pain.


    He sat down on my sideways hipbones, gently pinning me, and continued his insane soliloquy. ¡°And if you think I feel guilty about it at all, you¡¯re dead wrong. He was just one step from blowing all of us away. I did it because I had to. Your life, everyone¡¯s life, my life was in danger. I did what everyone said you should always do, nothing more.¡± He looked down at me with angry lines burned into his face. ¡°I don¡¯t deserve this shit from you, from anyone. I know what I did was right, and you can¡¯t judge me.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to judge you. I want you to leave me alone,¡± I pleaded.


    ¡°Bullshit. You¡¯re as fucking judgemental as they come. You¡¯re even worse than he was. He at least had skill to back up his condescending tone, but you? You¡¯re just a stupid bitch. You may be hot and popular, and everyone might think you¡¯re smart, but I know better. You¡¯re nothing, just a spoiled princess waiting for your own college scholarship so you can marry a pompous cock and live in your fantasy castle.¡±


    I¡¯d never thought or wanted any of those things. I just wanted him to get off me so I could leave. Instead, he reached into a pocket and pulled out his lighter.


    ¡°So I¡¯m going to fix all of that. I¡¯m going to show everyone what a dumb slut you are and you¡¯re gonna love it, because that¡¯s all you are. People will finally shut up about you and boo-hoo I hope Lia isn¡¯t too sad, and treat me like the hero I fucking am. I stood up to an Exhuman, by myself. Fuck you. Fuck all of them. No guilt, I did what I had to.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t even sure if he was talking to me anymore. He was deranged. I was scared he was just going to kill me on the spot. When he lit up the lighter and pointed the heated coils at my neck, I prayed that he went back to talking.


    ¡°Brick¡­no¡­don¡¯t do this¡­¡± I whimpered. I could feel the blazing red heat emanating from the thing, washing over my face. My skin felt dry and tight, and I was frozen, perfectly still under his weight. ¡°Please.¡±


    I felt dirty, completely violated. I hated everything about him, the man who¡¯d taken my brother from me, who¡¯d turned my family against me, who¡¯d ruined every single bit of my life. But as much as I hated him, I was much, much, much more afraid of what he was about to do.


    ¡°You¡¯ll do everything I say?¡± he said, moving the lighter closer to my neck. The heat grew unbearable. I could only nod as tears streamed down my face. ¡°Good bitch.¡± He flicked the lighter off, and I felt a wave of cold as the sensation of fire washed away. He got to his feet, and pulled me upright. I couldn¡¯t do anything but cry silently, my body racked by shuddering sobs.


    ¡°I¡¯m taking you home now. Gonna have another good talk with your old man. And starting tomorrow morning, you and I are going to be an item. You¡¯re gonna make me a very happy man, or else this,¡± he flicked the lighter on again and gestured it towards me, making me jump. ¡°¨Cis the least of your worries.¡±


    Things went just as he said. Dad didn¡¯t even seem to care I was crying or had blood trickling from my nose or had my hair matted to my face. He was filled with an inhuman manic energy, simply delighted to hear of Brick and my decision to finally go steady. Mom sat quietly, not quite in the same room as the rest of us. Brick turned down a nightcap from my father and then, telling me with much more veiled threat than necessary that he¡¯d see me tomorrow at school, left.


    I told them I was tired and going to bed early, which my Dad responded to with some insane comment about how it had probably been a very exciting day for me. I didn¡¯t know if he was desperately clinging to sanity, or normalcy or just didn¡¯t give a shit that his daughter was being beaten ¡ª and soon, presumably raped ¡ª and that was just a-okay in his book. I cleaned up my blood in the bathroom and put bandages on¡­on my face, all around my hand and gut, first degree burns on my chin and neck.


    I stopped and took a good look at myself and realized, I didn¡¯t even recognize me anymore. Aside from the bandages and bloody tissues sticking out of my nose, the dried trails of tears and matted hair, I looked as sunken and sleepless and defeated as Brick. Skin hung off me, my eyes were dark, I just had a general appearance of being sick.


    And¡­I was, I realized. I was sick for trying to stay here, for trying to make my life work when my life had long since expired. There were no friends or family here, and classes hadn¡¯t meant a thing to me since the rest of my life turned to shit. I realized I had to get away tonight, before Brick got his hands on me tomorrow. After that¡­I wasn¡¯t sure there would be any part of me left to save.


    Frantically and quietly, I emptied my pack of anything related to school and filled it with clothes and toiletries. I could hear the holo on downstairs and my father laughed with unnatural energy at whatever was on. Money¡­might be an issue. I stood on the landing upstairs in the dark, biting my lip, frozen with indecision. I hadn¡¯t ever done anything like this. I wasn¡¯t sure I could.


    I forced myself to remember my fear in the library, my face in the mirror. This was my life here. I needed to get away, anywhere, or that would be my every minute of every day. Resigned more than determined, I put my bag on and silently opened the door to my parents room.


    On the nightstands, Mom and Dad¡¯s wallets. Everything in them of value, taken. In Dad¡¯s bottom desk drawer, locked with a key from the pen jar atop the desk, a hard plastic case. Inside, Dad¡¯s old service pistol. In the foam lining inside the case, a few boxes of ammo. All taken. In the closet, top shelf, shoebox, emergency cash. Dozens of small and medium chits. All taken.


    A few thousand credits and a firearm. Enough to survive until I figured out where I could go, find a new life anywhere but here. I slid open the window and stuck a leg through, finding the ivy-covered patio cover with the tip of my shoe. I swung my other foot over and felt a stab of pain as I rested most of my weight on my stomach where Brick had punched me.


    But no matter how much pain my body felt, the hope in my heart made me happier than I¡¯d been in months. Finally, I was going to be free. I slipped out the window and into the night, feeling my body become lighter with every step away I took.

 038. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    The cork bobber bounced lazily on the surface of the lake, its repeated, hypnotic dance an invitation for my eyelids to get heavy. I yawned and closed my eyes for a moment, keeping my grip on the pole tight in case I got a nibble.


    The last few days had been more vacation than exile. Stocking up on food for the winter kept me busy, but all doing enjoyable things. Rooting around for roots, fishing for fish, doing repairs and cleaning up around The Bunker, playing with DOG.


    I felt guilty that I hadn¡¯t made a lick of progress on AEGIS¡¯ or Saga¡¯s imprisonments, but at the same time, I¡¯d went and visited each of them, and nobody seemed too upset about it. Saga had the patience born of a lifetime in solitude and was just happy to have some distraction, and AEGIS seemed more preoccupied working on DOG-E than on her own escape. I think she¡¯d even been focusing on it over pouring over the data crystal.


    Which left me here, fishing with my eyes shut in the brisk fall midday air. Even the sun felt sluggish in warming things up today.


    So I guess it was only natural that something would come along to ruin it all.


    I heard the distant churn of an engine and at first began scanning the skies for the blue trail of plasma which Karu left in her wake. As I stood and listened, I realized the noise was different, too low-pitch. Something else coming.


    At the same time as my realization, I spotted it, a column of dust being thrown up from the trees. Something out there was driving through the woods, fast, and of course, towards me. I moved my fishing tackle to a safe spot and waited on a nearby hill for them to arrive.


    It didn¡¯t take long. Crashing through the underbrush effortlessly, a huge armored truck with a metal plow on the front. The windows were blocked with metal plates, leaving only a narrow slit at the driver¡¯s eye level. Appallingly, despite the obvious pragmatism, the whole thing was painted a bright metallic christmas red. The vehicle rolled up to the base of my little hill and stopped.


    Without hesitation, the driver hopped out. He was a thin man, wearing a black vest, slacks, and bow-tie and a long-sleeved white dress shirt. With long, swift strides, he walked to the back cabin of the truck and opened the door, allowing the guest of honor to slowly and dramatically emerge.


    This was a level of pomp and sophistication I really was not expecting today.


    The mystery passenger was wearing what looked like a racecar driver jumpsuit, white in the torso, and arms and legs all the same red to match his truck. A prodigious, black collar went up and around like a turtleneck, and I had to wonder if he needed it as a neck brace. Matching thick black cuffs at his ankles and wrists made it clear this wasn¡¯t just a fashion accident, and was instead a tragedy by design.


    Most obnoxious of all was the fact that starting from the sides of his legs and going all the way up to his silly black collar were emblazoned the logos of hundreds of different companies. Corporate sponsorship, and tons of it. I had to wonder what this guy did, and exactly how much he got paid for doing it.


    Presumably nothing good, if he was coming out here to do it.


    While I gawked, his butler-dressed servant had deployed what looked like a camera on a tripod. Captain Sponsorship was checking his hair in the side-view mirror, and nobody seemed interested in acknowledging me at all.


    Well heck, two could play at that game. I abandoned my hilltop and went to get my fish.


    ¡°At-tat-tat-tat!¡± said the odd man as a means of interrupting me. ¡°Do not leave. You will wait.¡±


    ¡°Why am I waiting?¡± I asked. The man looked at me like I¡¯d just turned into bologna.


    ¡°Wilfried, explain,¡± said the man, taking over on the camera while the manservant strode swiftly over to me.


    He looked me up and down and sniffed with disgust. ¡°When you fight, please be sure not to touch the master. I have no desire to have to clean his uniform of your filth.¡±


    ¡°Great. Look, as much as I¡¯d love to fight your master, I¡¯m just gonna head out. Big day, things to do, you know how¨C¡°


    ¡°No, you will stay. Are you really so ignorant of what is going on here?¡±


    I looked around at what was happening here. Looked to me like two morons had jumped out of a truck ready for a costume party. I told him as much.


    ¡°You sincerely do not recognize the great warrior Luminary?¡± scoffed the butler with disdain.


    ¡°I sincerely do not. Not sure why I¡¯d care anyway.¡±


    ¡°Wait,¡± said Luminary walking up to me, leaving Wilfried to finish with the camera. ¡°Luminary.¡± I waited for him to say more but he seemed to think his name was a sentence all on its own. I shook my head. He had a little bit of a northeast accent, maybe I was just hearing it wrong?


    ¡°Luminary,¡± he repeated. ¡°Lu. Min. Air. Ey.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I heard the word. No idea what that¡¯s supposed to mean to me. Can I go now?¡±


    ¡°Truly, you are an uncivilized barbarian, how quickly the wilderness must have taken you. Write that down Wilfried, we¡¯re using that in the shot.¡±


    ¡°Yes sir,¡± Wilfried said, already jotting notes down in a pad from his breast pocket.


    ¡°Yeah, okay,¡± Luminary said turning back to me. ¡°Look, just sit here another couple minutes while we get the camera set up, okay kid?¡± He looked up at the grey sky. ¡°Shit lighting but I guess it¡¯ll have to do. Wilfried, take a note to have them fix it in post. I don¡¯t want to come out looking all pale again.¡±


    ¡°So what the heck is this? Some kind of stupid reality holo?¡± I asked. Luminary flinched at the word stupid so I committed to start using that word in this conversation a lot more. He also completely ignored me instead of responding.


    So, fuck that. I headed back towards my fish to collect them and leave. As soon as I took a step, I heard a gunshot and saw a puff of dirt from the ground in front of my feet.


    ¡°I do believe I told you to. Sit. Still.¡± Luminary growled at me. He didn¡¯t even look angry, just annoyed, like I was a pool boy who¡¯d missed a spot. He held the huge expensive pistol effortlessly pointed at me with one hand, even as he adjusted strands of his silky golden coif just so in the mirror.


    The threats, even getting shot at, I was expecting. The rest of this bullshit? Unbearable.


    I opened my mouth to give this guy a piece of my mind when Wilfried chimed in ¡°Camera¡¯s ready sir. Rolling in 5-4-3-2¨C¡°


    Luminary dropped into a slight dynamic pose so he¡¯d be all action-ey and low in the frame with me in the background. He began to speak, but with a completely flowery French accent instead of the hint of northeast he had before.


    ¡°Bonjour, mes amies, and welcome to anozzer episode of Incroyable Chasse. We are live at an undisclosed location in zee American wildernezz, doing what Luminaree doez bezt. We are hunting down yet another dangereux Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°What,¡± I said.


    ¡°Shoot some stock. Put a voiceover here with his kill count and powers. And then back to me.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t sure but I thought this was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.


    ¡°Luinaree would like to thank heez sponsours before we begin, especially zee Ur-Horizon Group, and off courze, zee XPCA, without whose charitable sponsourship, we would not be able to afford to protect zee world. Zee bounty today was posted by an anonymous client but we thank zem as well.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a bounty hunter?¡±


    ¡°I am ze best bounty hunter. Truly you can see how zee months in the wild have¡­Wilfried, what did I say earlier?¡±Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Truly, you are an uncivilized barbarian, how quickly the wilderness must have taken you,¡± he recited dutifully.


    ¡°Right. Go in 3-2¨CI am ze best bounty hunter. You haff somehow not heard even of me?¡± He turned to the camera dramatically. ¡°An uncivilized barbarian. Truly you can see how quickly the wilderness has taken him.¡± Wilfried gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up from behind the camera.


    ¡°Right. Well, if you¡¯re here to claim my bounty, I suppose it¡¯s ass-kicking time,¡± I said stepping forward.


    ¡°NO!¡± shrieked Luminary. ¡°Not so close to the camera, idiot! Do you have any idea how expensive this is?¡±


    I gave him the most unimpressed disgusted glare I could squeeze onto my face. This fucking guy. Almost casually, I made a tiny little lightning bulb and with a flick of my fingers, chucked it straight at the camera¡¯s body. It streaked from my fingertips to the camera, where it made tiny little bolts of lightning arc everywhere through the frame, making it hiss and belch smoke. Both men turned towards me with incredulous offended expressions.


    I gave an exaggerated grin and shrug. ¡°Those dangereux Exhumans!¡± I said jovially. ¡°You never know what they¡¯ll destroy next!¡±


    ¡°Oh your butt is fucking toast, boy,¡± growled Luminary, pulling what looked like very high-tech brass knuckles from somewhere and advancing on me. Wilfried ran to the back of the truck for cover. ¡°You¡¯re lucky your bounty is so high, otherwise I¡¯d have to take the cost of my camera out of your sorry flesh.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t¡­that the point of¡­never mind.¡± I dropped into a ready stance and summoned my swords, giving Luminary pause. I wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d heard about me from the XPCA or Karu, but apparently it wasn¡¯t much.


    ¡°Wilfried?¡± he called.


    ¡°Coming, sir,¡± came Wilfried¡¯s voice. Luminary and I waited for a few seconds before he popped back into view, toting what looked like a huge rocket launcher. As soon as he came into sight, he moved quickly to level it at me.


    Whatever, I wasn¡¯t going anywhere. I had the decency to tell Karu that kind of shit was dangerous, but these idiots deserved whatever my shield gave them. Though I didn¡¯t relish the thought of having to give CPR to captain douche, I figured it¡¯d be worth it to kill him.


    Wilfried pulled the trigger and a rocket screamed towards me. All I could see was the head of it spiraling towards me, before it impacted my shield and a bolt of lightning arced through it, down the smoke trail, and into Wilfried, Luminary, their truck, and the stupid camera, which promptly exploded even more than it already had.


    The two men screamed in unison and jolted violently, seizing and thrashing even before they hit the ground. The truck¡¯s shiny paint job blistered where the lightning touched it. The rocket launcher erupted with a contained explosion, flying through the air and landing in a smoking heap near me. I kicked it down the hill where it bounced and rolled a few times before splashing into the lake.


    I hoped it was also very expensive.


    While the two were down, I went to the back of the truck and looked inside. It was a veritable armory in there, red-and-white exosuits, weapons of every shape and size, crates of ammo and explosives. I was tempted to just drive the car to The Bunker and unload it all. But that was a little crazy, and I had no need for most of it, already being super-powered and all. Still¡­


    I found some heavy-duty restraints in the back and put them on the two. Both were breathing and would probably come to soon¡­or maybe they were both in a coma, I didn¡¯t know. I wasn¡¯t a doctor. Once they were nice and secured, I did a little shopping.


    First thing I did was dump out a couple crates of ammo and took the now-empty crates and strapped them to the front and back of an exosuit at the waist. Then, stepping carefully over and around the crate, I boarded the exosuit, slipping my legs down into the exosuit¡¯s legs and repeating the process with my arms. Finally, I pressed my torso forward, putting my face flush with the faceplate and activating the suit, which began to whir to life around me and sealed shut behind me.


    ¡°Welcome. Starting up.¡± Said the friendly, soothing-sounding female voice of the onboard AI. I hoped AEGIS wouldn¡¯t be jealous of me bringing another girl home¡­or being inside one, I mused. ¡°Your bio-signatures are unrecognized. Are you a new user?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± I said into the black blank mask in front of me.


    ¡°Welcome, new user. Calibrating morphology now.¡± The suit subtly adjusted around me, shortening or lengthening the internal space for limbs, flexing my spine in a slightly less awkward way. I felt the crotch stop poking me in the groin, which was a relief. ¡°Calibration complete. State your name for user profile.¡±


    ¡°Athan.¡±


    ¡°Welcome user Athan. All documentation is available online or by using the help command.¡±


    I waited for something more to happen but instead I just stood there paralyzed inside the suit, staring into the blackness. ¡°Uh, help.¡±


    ¡°Potential help command parsed. To enable help, say ¡®confirm.''¡±


    ¡°Confirm.¡± Okay, no way AEGIS would be jealous of this junk.


    ¡°Help command.¡± A tinny fanfare played. ¡°Welcome to the help menu of your new Ur-Horizon TC-131 Exosuit. Please select one of the following options: New user manual. List of commands. Debugging information. Warranty inform¨C¡°


    ¡°New user manual.¡±


    ¡°New user manual.¡± Again with the tinny fanfare. Would it do that for every command?


    After another few minutes of browsing the tree of menus with my whole body locked in position, I finally made some headway. I had gotten the screen online, and the outside world was projected on the inside of the suit¡¯s faceplate as though nothing was there. Info callouts popped up, giving me detailed information on the guns in front of me and the ammo I¡¯d dumped all over the floor. By turning my head slightly, I could pan the view around a full 360 degrees.


    After releasing several locks and engaging systems, I could finally move. To Ur-Horizon¡¯s credit, the TC-131 felt almost nonexistent after I¡¯d gotten it working. It was a little limited in its movement not being exactly one-to-one with mine, but in general, I¡¯d move, and the suit would move instantly with me, making the exosuit mirror my actions.


    I¡¯d have time to play around later though. For now, I wanted to loot these goons and get them out of my hair. I dumped several boxes of explosives in the crates on my front and back, and though I had no real use for them, picked up a few laser weapons so I didn¡¯t have to haul tons of ammo. I still had a bit of room left over, and just grabbed anything else that caught my eye, including another couple pairs of the heavy restraints.


    I stepped outside and found the two awake and sitting up, yelling at each other. Silently, from my perspective. Apparently external audio was another thing I had to enable, but I wasn¡¯t going to mess with that now¡­plus I had very little interest in hearing what the idiots had to say. Luminary got to his feet and began yelling at me, but I sat him back down effortlessly with one of the huge metal hands of the exosuit.


    I wanted to tell him to sit and stay, but figured talking was yet another suit command I hadn¡¯t yet learned, so I settled for ripping the tripod off the remains of the camera and shoving the broken tip three feet in the ground as easily as if it were water¡­pinning Luminary¡¯s restraints to the ground with it. I made a ¡®sit down¡¯ gesture at him and headed back to the bunker with my cargo.


    A few minutes later, I was almost there, approaching the doorway when something came out of nowhere and knocked one of the exosuit¡¯s feet out from under it. I looked down, but saw nothing, because small black objects had affixed themselves to all the external cameras.


    Shit, I think AEGIS was attacking me. I tried to gesture her away and yell at her, but nothing was getting through.


    ¡°Enable talking,¡± I shouted at the suit.


    ¡°Unrecognized command,¡± replied the soothing, friendly voice.


    ¡°Enable external talking.¡±


    ¡°Unrecognized command.¡±


    ¡°Let me speak to the outside.¡±


    ¡°Unrecognized command.¡±


    ¡°Oh my god. Just let me talk to her already, damn it.¡±


    ¡°Unrecognized command.¡±


    ¡°You are useless. You are literally no help to anyone.¡±


    ¡°Potential help command parsed. To enable help, say ¡®confirm.''¡±


    Something knocked my other foot out from under me and I fell face-first, catching myself with my hands and the crate on my front. I felt a weight on the back of the suit. Probably DOG, probably about to tear out some very important components and leave me trapped in this damn suit like a coffin. I rolled sideways trying to crush it and it bounded off, succeeding only in crushing the crate of explosives on my back, scattering them everywhere and making a great minefield to roll around in. Meanwhile, the friendly tinny welcome music played for me again.


    And so it was that I flailed around totally blind, defending myself from an invisible assailant as I yelled my way through the voice menus, trying to figure out how to make the damn thing less useless.


    ¡°Okay. Enable external comms,¡± I said, annoyed that I¡¯d been so close this whole freaking time. The AI didn¡¯t respond, presumably because I was now live.


    ¡°AEGIS, get your damn shit off me.¡±


    ¡°Athan?¡± I heard her say from inside The Bunker.


    ¡°It¡¯s me. Call off your robot hit squad.¡± The attacks stopped and the drones lifted away from my cameras. I saw DOG had picked up a dropped laser weapon and was about one safety switch away from blowing a new hole in the suit, and maybe its driver.


    ¡°Why didn¡¯t you say so when I asked?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how to work this thing. I only just stole it. Why the hell did you attack me?¡±


    ¡°Because I don¡¯t know, giant exosuit I don¡¯t recognize carrying an entire arsenal of explosives straight at me maybe?¡±


    ¡°Okay, fair point. How do I get out of this?¡±


    ¡°You have to shut down the different systems and then do a system exit.¡±


    ¡°You are so much more helpful than the onboard AI.¡±


    She walked me through the steps and one by one I got the onboard systems offline and then the back of the suit opened and allowed me egress. It wasn¡¯t exactly hot or uncomfortable in there, but I found myself sweaty and sticky anyway.


    ¡°Wow, nice haul,¡± AEGIS let out a low whistle as DOG pawed through the debris of the crates. ¡°Where¡¯d you get all this?¡±


    ¡°Some idiot bounty hunter. I should go back and check on him. Luminary? You ever heard that name?¡± AEGIS shook her head. ¡°He seemed to think it was a war crime I¡¯d never heard of him.¡±


    ¡°Sounds a bit like a pompous asshole to me.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well, he couldn¡¯t even touch me, and I thought I¡¯d help myself to some of the toys he brought.¡±


    ¡°For once, I approve of your interaction with bounty hunters. He¡¯s¡­not dead, I assume?¡±


    ¡°You assume correctly.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, maybe go check on him. I¡¯ll have DOG bring this in for us. Very excited to start interfacing with this exosuit too¡­¡±


    ¡°See if you can teach her some synonyms for comms!¡± I shouted as I jogged outside. I heard her laugh and urge me to stay safe again as I left earshot.


    There was no reason to come back. The two men, the camera, the truck, all of it was gone, leaving nothing but tracks and some scorch marks as evidence they¡¯d come at all. On one hand, I was glad I didn¡¯t have to deal with them anymore, but on the other, I wasn¡¯t too keen on the threat they represented. Unlike Karu, I was pretty sure these guys wouldkill me in my sleep given the chance, or just drop an air strike on me from orbit, if they could afford one after buying a new camera.


    I¡¯d ask AEGIS to keep an extra eye out for them, I know she could come up with something. In the meanwhile, however, I was excited to get home and play with some of my new toys.

 039. 2251, Present Day. Undisclosed location. Blackett.

    As far as I was concerned, Karu was a failure. A pity, I¡¯d employed her services several times previously and always been mildly impressed by her focus, confidence, and most importantly, results. But it seems she had decided that the money was more important than doing her job, and I could not abide that level of greed.


    It had been a mistake, I realized, to add 5 million to the bounty for every attempt before the successful one. My intention was to encourage the hunters to go easy on the Exhuman and give it a chance to grow into its powers a bit. An amusing little game, I imagined, the hunter wanting to drag it out as long as possible to maximize payoff, but still needing to end it sooner than later before the Exhuman mastered their powers and became more than a hunter could tackle. It seemed Karu had let greed blind her to the latter and was just toying with him.


    Or so I assumed. She¡¯d been to fight him, what, three, four times now? And even after being hospitalized, she went out again with no results, not even noticeably wounded that time. I seethed at the thought of being hospitalized by an Exhuman, I knew I would be spending every hour I was locked in a regenerator planning my revenge, but I had my pride. Karu apparently didn¡¯t.


    Perhaps she¡¯d realized she was too weak to defeat him and was just flying out there to have a nice little vacation on my dime. I cared nothing about the money, but the abuse of the system and level of disrespect were intolerable.


    A light appeared on a small console on my desk. I pressed the glowing button and heard the voice of one of my servants filling the room. ¡°Sir, you have another call from the agency,¡± he said, and then hung up. Concise, just as I trained them.


    The agency, or more formally The Hunters Association. A legally grey organization of assassins and muscle for hire, both employed and denied to exist by the government in equal measure. Given the dangerous nature of Exhumans and how impossible some of them could be to incarcerate, capital punishment had long been a necessity, but politicians had always been squeamish about getting their hands dirty.


    The creation of an extralegal body was a natural consequence. When someone needed to be dead for the betterment of US interests, we had plausible deniability now. It was a vigilante from that shadowy ops unit, not us, and they disappeared without a trace ¡ª along with several millions of credits. What a fortunate tragedy.


    Being their primary bankroll and founders, we had a lot of sway over how they operated, and getting status updates regularly was one mote of compliance we demanded. Invariably the call I¡¯d gotten was one such update. Karu failing yet again, I imagined.


    I drummed my fingers with impatience as the line rung before a woman¡¯s voice answered on the other end. ¡°State your name,¡± she said, bluntly as a greeting.


    ¡°Deputy Director of the XPCA, Blackett.¡±


    ¡°Good evening, Director Blackett. Please hold while I pull your file. You have an update on an outstanding contract.¡±


    I waited for a moment while she did whatever she did on her end.


    ¡°Director Blackett. A new hunter attempted to pick up the contract. Luminary.¡± Oh, that idiot. I already knew what her next words were going to be. ¡°He successfully located and engaged the target but was unable to complete the contract.¡±


    ¡°Has Luminary already claimed the bonus?¡±


    ¡°No, he¡¯s currently seeking medical attention and has not formally reported yet.¡±


    ¡°See that he does not. I am changing the contract to remove the bonus clause.¡±


    ¡°Sir, as I am sure you are aware, you can¡¯t just alter a contract after associates have already attempted to claim it.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t care,¡± I said bluntly. ¡°I will no longer pay to support incompetence.¡±


    ¡°I understand that you may be displeased with our service, but the bonus stipulation on this contract was added by you¨C¡°


    ¡°And it is your agents who have consistently failed to make any headway whatsoever on closing the contract. Clearly my generosity in offering a bonus was short-sighted in light of your failures. I made a mistake, and I always correct my mistakes.¡±


    She responded with only silence.


    ¡°Remove the bonus clause.¡±


    ¡°I¡­will see what I can do. You will still have to honor your commitment to Luminary¨C¡°


    ¡°That fop is getting nothing from me unless he somehow manages to pull his head out of his own ass and kill the Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°I will let him know you said so, sir.¡±


    ¡°Do so,¡± I said, and hung up on her.


    I was very irked and had a servant make up some tea for me. The insufferable gall of some people, entitled little snowflakes, stumbling around with their begging arms outstretched, demanding a reward because they tried.


    I don¡¯t know what life lessons these people had learned but I knew they had missed some important ones. It was not my duty to educate the idiots, but if they insisted, they would find me an effective teacher.


    I was only a few sips into my tea when the light on my desk illuminated again.


    ¡°Sir, you have a call from one ¡®Luminary¡¯.¡±


    I sighed and punched the call through.


    ¡°Oui, monsieur, I am Luminary, a very famous hunter of peerless renown and mastery.¡± What an earful.


    ¡°State your business,¡± I gritted.


    ¡°Oui. I was recently on a contract of toi hunting zee dangeroux Exhuman called Ashton. It seems zere hazz been a clerical izzue of zome kind, az I am unable to claim which iz rightfully ¨¤ moi.¡±


    ¡°If there¡¯s a clerical error, go talk to a clerk,¡± I said, reaching for the button to hang up.


    ¡°Non, non, non. Zee error lies with toi, I have been told. Monsieur, I encourage you to reconsider. It does not do to have angry, famous hunters, who are very dangeroux people to be mad at you.¡±


    ¡°A threat?¡± I asked, genuinely amused.


    ¡°Non, think of it as a compelling argument.¡±


    ¡°Somehow I find myself not compelled.¡±


    ¡°Monsieur!¡±


    ¡°Bring me the bounty I paid for and you¡¯ll get your money.¡±


    ¡°Let uzz talk zis over like civilized men, non? Allow me to convince you that I am worth zee money.¡±


    I reached out to hang up again but paused. It had been a slow week without any Exhuman events to speak of, and I was growing restless. A little bloodletting might be amusing. Whether it was this idiot¡¯s blood, or the Exhuman¡¯s, I didn¡¯t much care.


    ¡°Very well. East Point train station, there¡¯s a coffee shop. In say, two hours?¡±


    ¡°Monsieur,¡± he said, his voice pained. ¡°I am over a hundred miles away¨C¡°


    ¡°Then you¡¯d best stop talking and start looking up flights.¡±The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Two hours and fifteen minutes later I was sitting at a table under a canopy, finishing my tea and preparing to leave when a white luxury sedan came tearing into the parking lot and skidded to a halt. Urgently, the driver emerged from the vehicle, but the passenger in the back had already let himself out. Somewhat disheveled, he stomped over to my table, smoothing out his red-and-black combat jumpsuit as he walked.


    ¡°Deputy Blackett?¡± He asked. He needn¡¯t have asked. I was not in uniform, certainly, but the only other patrons seated around me were a pair of my servants and bodyguards, who were most definitely in uniform.


    ¡°Luminary, I presume. So nice to meet you,¡± I said, gesturing to the seat opposite me without bothering to stand or smile. ¡°What brings you here?¡±


    ¡°Monsieur¡¯s unreasonable demands,¡± he pouted, and sat down with his arms crossed.


    ¡°I believe you were going to sell me on your services?¡±


    ¡°But of course. Wilfried, un caf¨¦ au lait if you please,¡± he said to his driver, who bowed and disappeared inside the coffee shop. Monsieur Blackett, as I am certain you are aware, the XPCA is a proud sponsor of ¨¤ moi.¡± He flashed me one of the many corporate logos patched onto his suit, as though him already taking our money was some point of pride. ¡°Clearly, persons in your organization with excellent taste and¨Cdare I say, more authority than you¨Cthink I am clearly a valuable azzet.¡±


    ¡°How unfortunate for you that they are not the ones who posted this bounty.¡±


    His face froze in an uncomfortable grimace for a moment before he regained composure.


    ¡°But of course I did not expect that alone to sway monsieur. That iz why I have zeez periodicals for your perusal.¡± From nowhere, he produced a handful of pamphlets, all prominently displaying his own smiling face, often plastered on a body in a dynamic action pose. He thrust the peacock-tail of paper at me, but I simply continued staring at his obtuse face, keeping mine as expressionless as possible.


    ¡°¡­perhaps, I shall read zem for toi?¡± He dropped the pamphlets on the table between us and began reading from one. ¡°Who iz Luminary? Iz he a savior, a celebrity, or iz he the twice-award-winning most eligible bachelor in America? No, he iz all of zeez, and more¨C¡°


    ¡°I grow tired of this PR charade. Give me a compelling reason. Cecil.¡±


    He slumped back in his chair. ¡°Cecil? Who iz this¨C¡°


    ¡°The Hunter¡¯s Association sources much of their intelligence from us. Do you think I don¡¯t know a few things about you?¡±


    ¡°Monsieur, surely¨C¡°


    ¡°I also know that you were born in New York and have never once been to France. You may dispense with the falsities.¡±


    It was fun to watch him deflate in his seat.


    ¡°Alright,¡± he said, his voice thankfully devoid of the flowery pomp. ¡°You got me.¡± He leaned in close. ¡°But you know what? I¡¯m still your man for the job. These pamphlets and the whole Frenchy thing? That¡¯s to sell the rubes. But you and me, we¡¯re real men of action, people who get things done. I¡¯m a hired killer for God¡¯s sake.¡±


    ¡°Currently you¡¯re walking the line on being an un-hired killer.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯re making a big mistake in doing so, boy-o. You want this kid dead, I¡¯ve seen his stuff now. I can take him, easy. Kid¡¯s a damn joke.¡±


    ¡°If it¡¯s so easy, go kill him and collect.¡±


    ¡°Ah-ha-ha. You¡¯d like that wouldn¡¯t you? You still owe me my five million, and I don¡¯t work for free. That¡¯s what we¡¯re negotiating here. You give me that, and then I go get your little boy¡¯s head.¡±


    ¡°I rescinded that bonus because certain unscrupulous failures were taking advantage of my generosity.¡±


    ¡°You must be talking about Karu,¡± he said, putting his feet up on the table. ¡°Yeah, she¡¯s something alright. Crazy religious bitch. Can you believe she turned me down? Me! Luminary?¡± He gestured down at himself. ¡°Turning all this down, can you believe it?¡±


    ¡°Somehow I can.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve got a real smart ass on you,¡± Luminary muttered. ¡°Y¡¯know, I was just pretending before for the cameras, and when I said that wasn¡¯t a threat, that was pretend too. I am absolutely threatening you.¡± I saw motion on either side of me as my bodyguards stiffened. I waved them down. ¡°Yeah I see you goons. I ain¡¯t afraid of you. I eat Exhumans for breakfast, the fuck are you supposed to do to me?¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t seem like a very solid business model to threaten your employer,¡± I mused.


    ¡°Helps that you ain¡¯t my employer if you ain¡¯t paying me.¡±


    ¡°I was referring,¡± I gestured to his shoulder with my near-empty cup of tea ¡°to that.¡± He looked down at the XPCA patch on his sleeve and then sneered at me.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think anyone would suspect me if there was an unfortunate accident.¡± I rolled my eyes. Any hope I had of him not being a complete idiot had fled. In fact¡­


    I picked up my mobile and began paging through contacts.


    ¡°Had a change of mind, eh?¡± Luminary said, leaning back in his chair with an impossibly superior grin.


    ¡°Yes, I have. I¡¯ve realized that if vermin like you are the best the agency can produce, I¡¯m calling off the contract altogether.¡±


    He slammed his fist into the table, making my saucer jump. ¡°That still doesn¡¯t get me my five million,¡± he said.


    ¡°How observant of you,¡± I mused.


    I was about to dial the agency when I caught a low sound of an engine in the distance, louder and higher than a VTOL, and growing unmistakably louder. Luminary, his servant, and my men began to scan the skies. Paranoia was in their natures. Soon the roar of engines became loud and distinct, a personal plasma jetpack, military grade. But what would military personnel be doing, flying through the city streets?


    I figured we were about to find out.


    In a moment, a person in a white armored flight suit appeared, leaving streaks of blue plasma in the air behind them as they maneuvered easily over the city streets. Traffic had slowed to a crawl, and pedestrians were craning their necks to take a peek. Some seemed interested in retreating indoors. The flyer descended gracefully, landing on tiptoe on the sidewalk at the entrance to the cafe. Luminary gave a tremendous sigh as the flying woman pulled off her red-glowing visor and approached with it held under one arm, shaking out her mane of blonde hair as she went.


    ¡°Deputy director Blackett,¡± she said with a snapped salute. ¡°My apologies for disrupting your tea. I¡¯m here to collect this one.¡± She jerked a finger towards Luminary, who reacted with exaggerated shock. His acting was as poor as his French.


    ¡°Why, mademoiselle Karu!¡± he proclaimed, back in his idiotic faux-speech again. He rose to greet her, and snached one of her hands with the intention of kissing it. Before it reached his lips, he reeled sideways as the hand slapped him hard across the face instead.


    ¡°You are an embarrassment to our order and a being I despise with my entirety,¡± she said, her green eyes burning as she glared at him. ¡°You have abused your position of privilege to look up a client¡¯s personal information in order to arrange a private meeting, violating numerous regulations and disgracing the association and its members ¡ª and me. You will come with me at once to face disciplinary action for your transgressions.¡±


    ¡°Not so rough, mon amie. Save it for the bedroom, I beg of you.¡± He gave a salacious wink. I doubted very much that any of the weapons hanging off of Karu¡¯s frame were as lethal as her glare was in that instant.


    ¡°My apologies again,¡± Karu said, turning her attention to me. ¡°But it appears I will be forced to engage the infractor in personal combat. I would politely request that you vacate the premises as there may be significant collateral damage.¡± She put her helmet on and the two red strips lit up ominously as she turned back towards Luminary. ¡°And also significant intentional damage.¡±


    ¡°I do not think that will be necessary,¡± I said, rising from my seat. ¡°Luminary here was about to go. You see, he convinced me that continuing this contract was a pointless waste of my time, and that was what he¡¯d come here to do.¡±


    ¡°Why you¨C¡± he began, but stopped as Karu raised a weapon to within an inch of his face.


    ¡°You are cancelling the Ashton contract?¡± she asked, a little too casually.


    ¡°It seems appropriate, given the level of difficulty is apparently beyond your association¡¯s ability to deal with.¡±


    ¡°I¡­would prefer that you not,¡± Karu said, a hint of something in her voice. Regret? Pleading? It seemed that perhaps my plan had worked after all, and she and the Exhuman had formed a rivalry.


    ¡°Give me a good reason why I should keep the contract out,¡± I said. Luminary, his eyes locked on the barrel of the weapon at his nose blindly fumbled for one of the pamphlets on the table and thrust it at Karu, who touched it only long enough to let it fall to the ground where she buried the smiling face of Luminary under her heel.


    ¡°Oh that was just unnecessary,¡± he said.


    ¡°I have fought the Ashton Exhuman several times,¡± Karu said, completely ignoring the idiot. ¡°Each time he surprises me with newfound strength and ability, but furthermore, each time he surprises me more with continued compassion and justice.¡± She lowered her gaze slightly. ¡°This is a selfish request, but fighting him has awakened something within me. I know not what, but I do not wish to conclude this¡­revelation prematurely.¡±


    The visor snapped to my face and the red lines burned into my eyes as she met my gaze directly. ¡°I do not understand what is occurring between the two of us, but I am committed to see it through¡­to one end or another. I am not certain I can justify this if the bounty is withdrawn. That is my reason.¡±


    ¡°That is the worst¨C¡± Luminary began.


    ¡°Very well, Karu. The bounty is on under one condition then,¡± I said.


    ¡°State your condition.¡±


    ¡°The bounty is now exclusive to you. Should you die without claiming the bounty, it will be revoked. Should another hunter claim the contract, it will not be paid. Is that acceptable?¡±


    ¡°What about my five million?¡± Luminary bleated.


    ¡°Your condition is acceptable to me. I will provide the association with a recording of this conversation and the contract will be amended immediately. Please review the new terms to ensure your satisfaction at your leisure.¡±


    ¡°Very well. You may leave. I think, after all of this excitement, I could do with another cup of tea.¡± I turned to a servant. ¡°Ginseng and orange this time, I think.¡± He vanished inside with a crisp bow and Karu pulled Luminary from the table with a jerk on his obnoxiously large black collar.


    Perhaps I was being soft on the hunter by not revoking the contract, but that burning bond she¡¯d expressed¡­that was just what I¡¯d wanted. The hunter and the Exhuman, neither able to live while the other survived¡­it was beautiful. And either the Exhuman would die and prove that he was useless, or live, and grow yet more interesting to observe.


    I took a scalding sip of my new cup of tea and watched with the crowd as Karu loaded Luminary into an unmarked car which pulled up, leaving the man¡¯s servant standing listlessly by their sedan. It had been a while since an Exhuman event had demanded my attention, but somehow, I was still finding it possible to amuse myself. At least for now.

 040. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    As soon as I¡¯d seen the huge arsenal in the back of the bounty hunter¡¯s car, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. I was heading east, towards the mines again, with a backpack stuffed with explosives.


    It had been interesting trying to leave the house. AEGIS was utterly convinced that I was either going to blow myself up, or create a cave-in and trap myself, and had even resorted to having DOG block me in the house while we yelled at each other. This didn¡¯t work out too well for her, because while she was busy controlling DOG, she was too distracted to really argue with me, and whenever she let it do its own thing, it insisted on playing with me instead of trying to keep me contained.


    Not that I really needed to be contained, as I wasn¡¯t about to run out of The Bunker while she was yelling at me, but she had her issues.


    In the end, she¡¯d talked me out of bringing any grenades or other anti-personnel explosives and only permitted me to bring blast charges with remote detonators. I could only imagine what kind of great bounty hunter Luminary might be if his tactics involved rigging up a ton of explosives and then blowing his target into a red splatter with a remote detonation, but at least it served my purposes.


    It was still early morning, with the sun only dawning a couple hours ago, and the morning chill was making me breathe steam and move briskly for warmth. I thought I¡¯d crossed into Saga¡¯s range by now, but she hadn¡¯t acknowledged my presence or even scanned me, and I was wondering if something was up. I stepped up my pace just a little bit.


    Eventually I reached the compound. It looked¡­ever so slightly different. I wouldn¡¯t have noticed had I not visited so many times before. Some of the fences had been mended crudely, and the main gate was now more upright than collapsed. Stepping through a still-existing hole in the side, I found footprints all over and yet more signs of repair.


    The footprints belonged to two people, it looked like. One large, with light steps, and another tiny, barely leaving an impression. I recognized them immediately as Wynn and Tate¡¯s, and my blood boiled a little bit, thinking of Saga imprisoning the two of them here, maybe even forcing them to mend the fences so that they couldn¡¯t escape. I followed the footprints to the dormitory-like buildings I¡¯d set foot in once and never returned to, after having a freakout session at my own reflection.


    It felt silly, the things I was concerned about back then. Then again, having an argument with AEGIS this morning felt silly too, so I wasn¡¯t sure if I was actually making progress in life.


    ¡°Saga, if you¡¯re out there, I want you to know that I think this is seriously not cool,¡± I said, as I opened the building¡¯s front door, which again, was actually functional. The hall beyond was tidy, and the roof had been shored up, though still full of holes. ¡°Taking control of Wynn and especially Tate is messed up, man. I brought a bag of explosives, see? I told you I¡¯d get you out.¡±


    The complete lack of response was almost creepier than having her talking into my brain. Though, I thought I did hear a faint whisper from behind me, someone speaking in Chinese? But when I turned to look, there was nothing there.


    ¡°Also not appreciating the creepy silent treatment,¡± I muttered, as I stepped down the creaking hall. I found a room with a fresh wreath of braided branches on the door, and knocked gently. When there was no response, I pushed it open.


    The room was the same type as the one I¡¯d tried to salvage before, small, square, with a single window, closet, and bathroom. The rusted bedframe had been removed, and instead, a hammock made from some of the same synthetic weave I¡¯d seen in the admin building warehouse was hanging up, with Tate sleeping fitfully in it.


    In a breathy voice I realized I¡¯d never heard him use, I heard him whispering to himself in his sleep: ¡°Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.¡± He seemed stressed and distraught, and I thought I should probably wake him up and let him know it was just a dream, but he wasn¡¯t responding to my shaking him.


    ¡°Tate. Tate. TATE.¡± I shook him bodily, more than enough to wake up anybody, but still he slept, repeating the word like a twisted mantra. I picked up his hand and sent a spark into it, enough to give him a little shock, but he didn¡¯t even react. Something was very wrong, and there was only one person around here who fucked with people¡¯s brains.


    I checked next door and found an empty room, but across the hall I found Wynn, sleeping in a similar arrangement as his son. He too was speaking under his breath, his eyelids fluttering and eyes darting quickly back and forth. ¡°You¡¯re bluffing. You¡¯re lying. You¡¯re crazy. You¡¯re insane. You¡¯re bluffing. You¡¯re lying. You¡¯re crazy. You¡¯re insane.¡± Definitely a less pleasant mantra than his son.


    ¡°Saga, I¡¯m serious now, let these two go,¡± I said. No response. ¡°I¡¯m coming down there, and if¡­if¡­if you somehow got out with these guys¡¯ help, and then left them like this¡­well, I won¡¯t forgive you.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t a lot of sense to threaten her if she¡¯d already left, but the quiet and weirdness was getting to me. I kept thinking I was seeing things out of the corner of my eyes too, but when I looked, nothing was there. As I left the room, I saw something move in the bathroom. I hesitated a moment, thinking I was just seeing things again, but decided to step in to see.


    There was indeed something in there. A small rabbit, apparently completely lost, had cornered itself. Its pupils were tiny, despite the relative darkness of the room, and it didn¡¯t look at me or even freeze as I entered. It paced back and forth behind the toilet, lost in some other world. Nothing for me here, I turned to leave again and briefly caught sight of myself in the mirror again.


    I was¡­old. Tall, thin, with a trim beard and streaks of black still in my greying hair. My military-style uniform was pressed and fit well, and I straightened the collar with a sharp snap. I gave myself one final inspection in the mirror and then headed out of the dormitory. Today was a very important day.


    I joined the others in the yard, and we all stood patiently waiting, some holding quiet conversations. We were all on-edge, as we knew at any moment, the grounds would be crawling with top brass, and before then our officers would be up and down us, making sure everything was more than perfect for their arrival. Within a minute, a pair of vehicles pulled up to the tall fence gate and my sergeant and others swarmed out of the cars.


    ¡°AT-HEN-SHUN¡±, a captain bellowed. We snapped to order instantly, assembling in neat rows on either side of the walkway. They surged through the rows, delivering sharp criticism to everyone within range. ¡°Polish up those shoes!¡± ¡°Stand up straight!¡± ¡°Clean up that insignia, are you proud to be a member of the XPCA or aren¡¯t you?¡±


    Almost half an hour of this torture later, we were allowed to relax and wait for the real event. We stood in formation, the summer morning sun warming the backs of our necks, but not one of us even dared to sweat at this point. Thankfully it wasn¡¯t too long before another two cars pulled up. One, a regular transport vehicle like the last two had been, the other, an armored van.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    From the first emerged two men whose slim black uniforms identified them as top officers. I had no idea who they were, but when the captain yelled ¡°AT-HEN-SHUN¡± again, I snapped into the crispest salute of my life. Without even a glance at us, the two of them walked the narrow aisle and turned down into the admin building.


    While we watched them go by, the armored van had been unloaded. There, guarded by a dozen of us in full combat exosuits with arms at the ready was a little chinese girl, crying as she plodded towards the mine entrance.


    We were off the side of the central facility, but in this annex, there were 52 guards, three facilities, and one prisoner.


    The metal gate swung shut behind her, making a tall unified barrier of chain-link and barbed wire around the entire complex. She would never be leaving here again, and barring exceptional circumstances, neither would we. We were to remain on-site to keep her here forever. Heavy metal bars bound the gate locked, when I had a faint realization in the back of my mind.


    Hadn¡¯t¡­earlier today¡­I walked through a hole in that fence? It was impossible, of course, nobody could just walk in here. And what need had I of that? I lived here, and had for weeks before our prisoner¡¯s arrival.


    But¡­I remembered it. So clearly. I was worrying about something at the time. Maybe the state of the fence? I turned to look where I remembered it being, and saw nothing. But then I saw¡­something. Like two fences overlaid on top of each other at once, a fence and its ghost. What was going on? As soon as I turned to look around, everything else started to dissolve at the edges as well. I felt a compulsion, an unbreakable desire to stand at attention like I should, and by moving, by thinking, by questioning, it felt like the world was fracturing under me.


    I took a step, and felt all the others around me go hazy. Saga. I remembered. Wynn and Tate, how could I forget? I looked down at myself and saw my filthy, worn clothes, the clothes of an exiled Exhuman, not the military attire of an XPCA guardsman. I had to get into the mines.


    I jogged forward, feeling the explosives on my back sway as I ran. Something was wrong with Saga¡¯s powers, and whatever I¡¯d just been trapped in, I¡¯d guess Wynn and Tate were experiencing something similar. I had to get in there and find out.


    The light clipped to my chest shone a tiny little circle of reality, but outside of it, visions floated past. As I entered another dark hallway, I saw my parents standing there, who whispered as I ran past. ¡°There¡¯s my shooter,¡± he said, making ridiculous finger gun gestures at me. ¡°Who¡¯s my favorite Exhuman, eyy buddy?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re so proud of you sweetie,¡± Mom crooned. ¡°Nobody else could have murdered all those men just as well as you did. I put a special treat in the oven for when you come home. It will be all ready¡­never!¡°


    Well this was a horrifying new take on reality.


    ¡°Where are you going son?¡± Dad called as I jogged past. ¡°We need to talk about your three new girlfriends, and how messed up they each are!¡±


    ¡°Trust me Dad, I know,¡± I muttered as I left them behind. Further down the hallway was an asian woman I didn¡¯t recognize.


    ¡°There you are, rotten child,¡± she chided. ¡°Always lying, always make trouble for everyone. I knew you were no good.¡±


    ¡°Who¡¯s this supposed to be?¡± I asked but then I realized I was now inhabiting the body of a small asian girl. The floor was so much closer than it had been, and my hands were so tiny.


    The pull to stand there silently and wait for mother to finish was strong, but I knew that was the memories pulling at me. I had to keep moving, had to fight them, or else I¡¯d get trapped again. My body hardly cooperated as I took a struggling first step, but when I did, I felt myself peeling away from the little girl.


    Young Saga, I realized. And this, her mother.


    ¡°Trying to leave, I see. No concern for your mother, who raised you. Always thinking only of herself, such a rotten child.¡±


    ¡°I bet you¡¯d have a better child if you didn¡¯t treat her so badly,¡± I said as I left the ghost behind. We were reaching the home stretch here, I was almost at Saga¡¯s room, but the visions were getting stronger and more frequent. I saw myself and many of the football team hanging out on the ceiling, XPCA guards patrolling this corridor in lockstep, teachers I had, and a friendly woman doctor.


    Finally I stepped into the final chamber. It was my living room, and there, on the couch, puffing away at a cigarette was Brick.


    ¡°I¡¯ve told you not to smoke that shit, and certainly not inside the house,¡± I said.


    ¡°Like your parents would even know what it smells like,¡± he said. ¡°Nobody even knows what smokes are anymore.¡±


    ¡°Somehow I don¡¯t think that¡¯s going to keep me out of trouble if they find out.¡±


    Brick gave an exaggerated shrug like I was making his life intolerable but did put out the cigarette on a coaster on the table.


    ¡°I hear you¡¯ve got big news,¡± he said. ¡°Something about a full scholarship to Cal?¡±


    ¡°Who told you?¡±


    ¡°Your old man. Told me and everyone else in the city.¡±


    ¡°Figures. I think he¡¯s more excited about it than I am.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve got some news too,¡± Brick said with a sly grin. From behind me, I heard someone moving I turned to look and saw Lia, wearing the same sweatshirt and shorts as the day I¡¯d been captured. I froze at the sight of her.


    ¡°Since you decided to betray me, I¡¯ve decided Brick is my new brother now,¡± she said, walking behind the couch to wrap her arms around him. ¡°He¡¯s a little rough around the edges, but he doesn¡¯t keep secrets from me, and he isn¡¯t a murdering Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Lia, I never meant to kill those people. I never meant to be an Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Easy for you to say now that they¡¯re dead, I guess.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m serious Lia. You¡­of all people¡­have to believe me.¡±


    ¡°Maybe I would have if the last thing you¡¯d done to me hadn¡¯t been lying to me!¡± she shouted. ¡°We were close, I trusted you! And then you go off and become¡­this?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry! I never meant to hurt you.¡±


    ¡°Well you hurt her plenty,¡± Brick chimed in. ¡°Ever since you left, she¡¯s been crying her eyes out every night. You tell her you¡¯re so close, and then you just abandon her?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not how siblings treat each other, Athan,¡± she said, her voice choking on a sob. ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m with Brick now. He¡¯s so much a better brother than you ever were.¡±


    ¡°Lia¡­I¡¯m sorry. None of this had anything to do with you.¡±


    ¡°This is my life!¡± she shrieked. ¡°What part of my life has nothing to do with me? You think you can just tear that all away and I¡¯ll just carry on like nothing¡¯s wrong?¡± Her voice became low and grave. ¡°I missed you. My life was incomplete without you. See the proof?¡±


    She extended her arm towards me and I saw scars of horizontal parallel cuts made across her wrist.


    ¡°Lia¡­no.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right, Athan. You drove me to this. You killed your own sister. How many more do you think you killed without even trying? You think this place is haunted by memories?¡± She gave a scoffing laugh. ¡°No, Athan, we¡¯re all ghosts.¡±


    ¡°No. No, no, no. You were always so happy. You were so smart and full of life. This isn¡¯t possible. This isn¡¯t right.¡±


    ¡°The proof is right here, brother,¡± she said extending her wrists to me again.


    ¡°No. This is all a vision from Saga¡¯s powers. Saga! SAGA! I know you can hear me. I¡¯m standing right in your room. I¡¯m not in my house, I¡¯m not in my living room, and these two people are not right here!¡±


    I screamed at them. ¡°YOU DON¡¯T EXIST. NEITHER OF YOU ARE REAL.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re real as your thoughts and feelings brother.¡±


    I closed my eyes and willed them away. I remembered the room as it actually was, tried to picture the walls of coarse rock, the thick metal doors, the windows, barely translucent at this point from the layers of filth and spiderwebs.


    ¡°You can wish us away¡­¡± Brick¡¯s voice called.


    ¡°¡­but we¡¯ll still be with you.¡± Lia finished sadly.


    I opened my eyes and found myself in Saga¡¯s chambers at last. It was exactly as I remembered, except there were a pair of pickaxes by the door and some new scratches at the windows.


    I had to do something, before the visions came back again. I pulled a blast charge out of my pack and paired it with the detonator. I slapped it on the center of the first window and hit the green prime button.


    ¡°Saga!¡± I yelled. ¡°Saga, whatever¡¯s going on, I¡¯m coming in there. Just hang on!¡±


    I ran out of the room and back to the corridor. I gave it fifty running paces before I jammed down on the detonator.


    Fifty paces, as it turns out, is not enough to escape a blast which has nowhere else to go. I saw the ripple in the air and felt the wall of fire shooting down the hallway towards me, and then felt myself get thrown in the air.


    I saw a circle of light on the ceiling twinkling above me as my vision danced and then the edges grew dim, and then I saw nothing but blackness.

 041. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I felt like I¡¯d just blinked from reality and was back. My vision was swimming, not that there was much to see. I was aware that there was someone talking to me but had trouble focusing long enough to understand their words.


    [Yo, coming around at last,] I heard Saga¡¯s voice in my head. I started to get up but found my body wouldn¡¯t respond. [Sorry, I kind of hijacked your brain¡¯s control over your body for a bit here.]


    ¡°Saga? What¡¯s going on?¡± I asked. I strung together the memories I had to see the last thing which had happened to me. I was¡­coming to see Saga. Then I ran into my parents? And then an explosion¡­none of this made any sense.


    [You have a teensy-weensie little concussion. Your brain chemistry is all fucked up, and I¡¯m doing a bit of¡­let¡¯s call it manual reprogramming to get you set straight. Lucky for you, there¡¯s not any bleeding or bruising¡­I¡¯m more of a shrink than a surgeon.]


    ¡°How did I get here? I remember an explosion¡­but also lots of other things that don¡¯t make sense. I think¡­my parents? And yours. And a bunch of XPCA people?¡±


    [Try not to think about it (no seriously, it makes fixing your brain way harder). I¡¯ll explain everything once I¡¯m done in your head.]


    ¡°Okay. I¡¯ll just¡­lie here and not think then, I guess¡­¡±


    [Stick to your strengths.]


    I bit back a quip and tried to let my thoughts go. It was impossible, but at least I had the weird sensation of someone rifling through my brain and full-body paralysis to focus on a little bit. Which was the opposite of any comfort.


    I lay on the hard floor realizing how stiff my body was and having nothing to do but trace the little circle of light on the ceiling with my eyes and try not to realize that one wrong move (or whatever she was doing) and I¡¯d be brain-dead.


    [Oh, have some faith.]


    ¡°I don¡¯t have much else to think about, you know.¡±


    [You¡¯re not supposed to be thinking at all.]


    ¡°Kind of hard to do.¡±


    [Yeah I¡¯ve noticed. You know, if people could control their thoughts a little better, I¡¯d have a much better life.]


    ¡°What do you mean? Should we even be having this conversation? I thought I wasn¡¯t supposed to think.¡±


    [It¡¯s fine. Whoops!]


    ¡°WHOOPS?¡± I sat bolt upright except for my body doing literally nothing.


    [Just fucking with you.]


    ¡°Jesus Christ, Saga.¡±


    [Anyway, if people could just keep a lasso on their damn thoughts, I wouldn¡¯t have to hear every single inane, perverse, or angry thought which passed through people¡¯s minds all the time.]


    ¡°I thought you read minds? Can¡¯t you just¡­not read it?¡±


    [I can read minds. Surface level thoughts just kind of get shouted at me constantly. Actually one of the reasons the XPCA put me down here was to cut down on the mental noise. See, when I was locked up in the main facility, there were so many people¡­so many voices around that it may have kind of made me a little¡­(¡­murdery¡­)¡­unstable.]


    ¡°Uh oh.¡±


    [Lil¡¯ bit. At first they thought I was just lashing out, but after telling me to stop and ¡®disciplining¡¯ me a few dozen times to no effect, they tried actually figuring out what was wrong. Moved me down here to cut down on my range and the number of people in it. Actually kind of thoughtful of them (relatively speaking).]


    ¡°I¡­saw that, actually. When I came here, I had a vision of them moving you. Fifty two guards, three facilities, one prisoner.¡±


    [Yeah, sorry about that.]


    ¡°What happened?¡±


    [I was asleep.]


    ¡°What, that¡¯s it?¡±


    [Yeah. I don¡¯t sleep much. Powers mean I don¡¯t have to, guards were nice enough to put me through enough sleep deprivation that it was definitely a thing checked off in my Ramanathan window, but I still do sometimes if I¡¯m bored or just not paying attention.]


    ¡°And¡­why does that make me hallucinate about your past?¡±


    [Cuz it¡¯s my subconscious mind running the powers then. I could make you have hallucinations about whatever I wanted, I just don¡¯t (not that it wouldn¡¯t be fun). Subconscious me, she¡¯s got no qualms with sticking whatever people are nearby into whatever thoughts she happens to be having.]


    I felt the pressure on my brain take a different tone for a moment and a twinge went down my spine, even as I couldn¡¯t move it at all. It was a very uncomfortable experience.


    [Aha, I see you got stuck in some of your own memories as well. Subconscious me is apparently an avid reader and likes to pick through people¡¯s memories and show them to people. I guess she¡¯s not a very nice person.]


    ¡°Is she¡­actually another person?¡±


    [No, you idiot, I¡¯m just personifying the random thoughts in my mind.]


    ¡°Hey, when it comes to your brain, I¡¯m not making any assumptions.¡±


    [Wow she really ripped into your latent fears. Family issues, huh?]


    ¡°That¡¯s private.¡±


    [I think you¡¯d have learned by now that when dealing with a mind-reader, there really isn¡¯t any concept of private. But you¡¯re cute.]


    ¡°Thanks. Still private.¡±


    [So your sister¡¯s cute.]


    ¡°Private?¡±


    [Your dad seems like a major tool though.]


    ¡°You are deliberately antagonizing me at this point, aren¡¯t you.¡±


    [That took you longer than I expected.]


    ¡°So to completely change the subject, you were asleep, and that¡¯s why all this shit happened to me.¡±


    [No, what happened to you as a result of me sleeping would be benign. It takes a lot more focus and concentration to use my powers to actively mess someone¡¯s brain up than my subconscious is capable of mustering. What actually made all this shit happen to you was your brilliant idea to detonate an explosive in an enclosed area from 10 feet away.]


    ¡°I was like, 60 feet away.¡±


    [My apologies. I see that worked out so much better for you.]


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know what was wrong with you, okay? I was trying to help.¡±This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    [Well your little explosion certainly woke me right up, so yay, mission complete?]


    ¡°Did it at least break the window so I can get you out?¡±


    [Not even. The whole damn room is built like a¡­well, a prison cell.]


    ¡°I brought more explosives.¡±


    [I¡¯m pretty sure the not-reinforced-in-any-way roof would collapse on you before the walls gave. But I do appreciate the effort, misguided though it may be.]


    I lapsed into silence. So everything I¡¯d just endured was completely pointless, and worse, if she weren¡¯t here to put my scrambled brain back together, I¡¯d have put myself out while achieving nothing.


    [Lighten up, no harm done. Your brain¡¯s all fixed up, giving you back control now. Let me know if anything doesn¡¯t feel right.]


    I suddenly felt very heavy and like I was filing out my body, like a blob of jelly which hit my body and splattered and wiggled its way in. Except I was the jelly.


    ¡°Well that was completely unpleasant.¡±


    [Celebrate it. You¡¯re probably the only person in the world who¡¯s ever felt that sensation. Most people in your state would just stay paralyzed for the rest of their lives.]


    ¡°That¡¯s a¡­weird way of looking at it. What about the rest?¡±


    [Oh, they¡¯re dead. Or something. (I don¡¯t know, I was just talking.)]


    ¡°Great. Well, back to the matter at hand, it seems explosives are not the answer. AEGIS says she can¡¯t help out without being able to actually see the mechanism, and ¡®video won¡¯t do any good because I don¡¯t know what to look for.''¡±


    [It¡¯s true though, you don¡¯t know what to look for.]


    ¡°You really do enjoy telling me all the things I don¡¯t know, don¡¯t you?¡±


    [It¡¯s one of my life¡¯s few pleasures.]


    ¡°She was thinking of making some broadcast relays, but being underground¡­we¡¯d need to put them every few feet, she thinks. And making that many would take forever.¡±


    [Yes, having to wait forever for something. I could see how that would be frustrating.]


    ¡°So I guess the point is, as far as getting you out of here goes, it¡¯s just you and me. And by that I mean just me, because 100% of your creative energies are spent making up mockeries for me.¡±


    [It¡¯s a blessing and a curse.]


    ¡°I¡¯m going to go inspect the circuits in the back again,¡± I said, lifting myself up with an effort. My body felt weird to inhabit, but I wasn¡¯t sure if something was amiss, or if I was just overthinking it. I shook some feelings into my limbs and headed back towards her chamber.


    It was¡­further than I¡¯d thought. The explosion must have carried me some ways down the hall. I reached back to the back of my head where I¡¯d crashed and felt a swollen tender lump, caked in syrupy dried blood, but no pain unless I was poking it.


    [Yeah, you¡¯re welcome, by the way.]


    ¡°Um, thanks. How bad was I?¡±


    [We¡¯ll go with ¡®bad.¡¯ Like, might not have woken up bad.]


    ¡°Oh.¡±


    I took the last dozen steps with added weight in my steps. AEGIS was right to worry about me blowing myself up. I¡¯d actually done it, and if it weren¡¯t for Saga and her powers, I¡¯d be dying right now. I felt shame wash over me, how could I have been so stupid?


    I could blame Saga¡¯s dreams and my emotional state in dealing with my family and Saga¡¯s demons all I wanted, but in the moments I was placing the bomb and running, I was lucid. It was nothing but a horrible, idiotic decision on my part. I really deserved to be dead.


    Saga was nice enough to leave me and my reverie a little privacy until I made it back to her room.


    [Did even less damage than I thought,] she said. The window was shattered in the middle, but still completely intact with the metal grating reinforcing it from within. Black scorch marks framed the window, but underneath them, the metal was a shiny and unblemished as ever.


    ¡°Looks like a total waste of time. Let¡¯s look at the electronics.¡±


    Things were pretty much exactly as I remembered them. Of interest was a valve that took all of my strength to turn, which I knew opened the door while I held it but for no longer.


    ¡°And you can¡¯t just walk out while I hold it?¡±


    [No, kinda trapped in this whole coffin contraption. (And¡­)¡­and never mind.]


    ¡°What?¡±


    [Well let¡¯s just say the coffin doesn¡¯t like it if I try to leave it.]


    ¡°It¡¯s trapped?¡±


    [It¡¯s a layer of defense they put around the Exhuman. No way I¡¯m just strolling out of here without you coming in here first.]


    ¡°What if I held it and Wynn went in?¡±


    [No way. No human¡¯s going to hold my life in their hands.]


    ¡°What if Wynn held it while I went in?¡±


    [I just said, no human is ever going to hold my life in their hands. Don¡¯t you listen?]


    ¡°Wynn¡¯s a good guy. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve read his mind¨C¡°


    [I said no, and I mean no!] She screamed out of seemingly nowhere. My head pounded as her voice washed over me.


    ¡°What the hell. Why not? We¡¯re talking about getting you out of here!¡±


    [And I don¡¯t need to explain myself to you! Humans can¡¯t be trusted. Period. The end. I will never allow a human to set foot in my chambers¡­while¡­]


    ¡°What are you so afraid of? You can¡¯t even die, right?¡±


    [Like I¡¯d tell you. Wow, Saga, there seems to be something you¡¯re afraid of, why don¡¯t you tell it to me. What are you, stupid?]


    ¡°Well, apparently. Here I am trying to save your life and you¡¯re bitching me out about it.¡±


    [My life doesn¡¯t need saving. In case you forgot, I can¡¯t die.]


    ¡°Then what the hell is the problem?¡±


    [I¡­you¨C!!!]


    ¡°Jesus, what the hell, just tell me!¡±


    [Screw you. I¡¯m not telling you anything. (And especially nothing about my ¡®coffin¡¯¡­)]


    ¡°What about your coffin? You said it¡¯s trapped¡­will it hurt whoever opens it?¡±


    [I didn¡¯t say anything about that! (Trapped on the outside? What an idiot.)]


    ¡°Not¡­on the outside? You mean, if you try to open it, it¡¯s trapped¡­on the inside?¡±


    [I never said any of this! What the hell! (How the¨Cdamn it all.)]


    ¡°So you won¡¯t let Wynn hold the door for me because you¡¯re worried he¡¯ll betray you by locking me in, and you won¡¯t let me hold the door because you¡¯re worried he¡¯ll use the coffin¡¯s traps to kill you, or whatever it¡¯ll do to you.¡±


    [¡­]


    ¡°I¡¯ll take that as a yes. He won¡¯t do that, to you or either of us. He¡¯s a good person.¡±


    [And you say this from your vast experience with him, yes? You¡¯ve met him, what, three times?]


    ¡°I know a good person when I see one.¡±


    [Is that so? Well here¡¯s a juicy little bit of obvious that¡¯s been dangling in your subconscious for a while. How do you think the XPCA knew you were Exhuman?]


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. They have sensors for that kind of thing don¡¯t they?¡±


    [Oh of course they do. That¡¯s why they have hotlines where you can dial in to report Exhuman activity. So the sensors can dial in to report their findings. No, you idiot, you were turned in by another person.]


    ¡°That¡¯s not possible, nobody knew about my¡­¡±


    [Oh yes. There¡¯s that beautiful realization. Tell me, which of your best friends since childhood, a boy you grew up with, played football with, your and his fathers were army buddies together¡­which one of those best friends knew about your powers? And how long did he keep it a secret for you?]


    ¡°No, he wouldn¡¯t. Brick wouldn¡¯t.¡±


    [He did. Believe it. All that talk about human loyalty and friendship, worth exactly nothing. All the experiences you shared and bonds you made, gone in a heartbeat. To him, to all humans, we¡¯re nothing but Exhumans. It¡¯s right there in the name.]


    ¡°I-I don¡¯t¨C¡°


    [There¡¯s nobody else and you know it, Athan,] she crooned, almost seductively. [I¡¯ve been alive a long, long time, and seen in many, many people¡¯s heads, and let me tell you one last time: Humans. Can¡¯t. Be. Trusted.]


    I fell to my knees. This¡­couldn¡¯t be right, could it? My mind raced over the last hours of my humanity, trying to find any other way, any other hint that I might have revealed myself. I hadn¡¯t even told Lia, whom I trusted with all my heart. The only one who knew was Brick, but he was my friend, my best friend. We¡¯d known each other for our whole lives.


    I thought of every moment the two of us had shared, all of the victories and trouble we¡¯d gotten into together. But Saga¡¯s words were like venom, poisoning each memory as I recalled it, seeing them from his point of view, Athan, not as big or strong but still the star player. Athan, the popular one while Brick hovered near the party¡¯s doorway. Athan, with his good grades and football scholarship, while Brick joined the army¡­volunteered to invade mainland China¡­a death sentence.


    Why wouldn¡¯t he say something? Why couldn¡¯t he trust me and open up? Why was he content to be so angry and just play a supporting role?


    I remembered a year ago when he first started smoking. We¡¯d learned that people used to do it and laughed about how dumb people used to be. I said I¡¯d never do it, even if they were around today, because there were so many more fun ways to spend a lot of money to kill myself. Next week, Brick shows up with a pack, starts puffing away, tells me he has to have something to make him unique and stand out, even if it kills him.


    I never realized he wasn¡¯t joking.


    [Yeah, and now you see the world a little more clearly. I¡¯m sorry it hurts.]


    ¡°You¡¯re not sorry at all,¡± I lashed out, feeling hot tears down the sides of my face.


    [Eh. Debatable. I honestly am if that really matters. I don¡¯t enjoy causing you pain, but you are just so willfully ignorant about how the world works sometimes, it¡¯s truly frustrating.]


    ¡°I don¡¯t want your cynical, toxic worldview, Saga. Even if Brick did betray me, even if I¡¯m a poor judge of character.¡± I stood up and slammed my fist into the shattered glass, looking down at the coffin in the room below. ¡°I believe in a world where humans and Exhumans can coexist. Where jealousy and fear don¡¯t drive a man to betray his best friend. Even if you¡¯re right, and that¡¯s the world we live in, I believe in a better world. And that world starts with us, Saga.


    I felt her sigh and the last traces of glee at corrupting me fade away like tendrils of fog in the sun. In its place, a hint of guilt.


    [I guess¡­in the long run¡­if I had my way, there¡¯d be a lot of wars and a lot of dead people. And then not a lot of people, period. Convenient though that may be, especially for one who would prefer people¡¯s minds stop screaming at her, I¡­suspect¡­that is morally questionable.]


    ¡°This is the shittiest apology I¡¯ve ever heard.¡±


    [Fine. You¡¯re not wrong. You¡¯re not right either, but neither am I. Is that good enough?]


    ¡°I¡¯m willing to accept that, but only because you¡¯ve already saved my life once today.¡±


    [Good. Sigh. Now get the hell out of here and go suck face with your girlfriend AEGIS. I¡¯ve got a lot of thinking to do.]


    ¡°S-she¡¯s not my girlfriend!¡± I said, feeling the color rise in my face.


    [Son, if you think I had some mental ammo on your subconscious about Brick, wait until I point out the number of times you¡¯ve gawked that girl¡¯s cleavage.]


    ¡°O-okay, leaving now! Bye!¡±


    [Bye, Athan,] she said, and then lapsed into a pensive silence for the rest of my trip.

 042. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    AEGIS was¡­not happy. She flitted back and forth between screaming at me about my stupid carelessness and how I was never going to leave the house again, to crying and wailing about how if I¡¯d died, she¡¯d be all alone, to earnestly confiding in me how much I meant to her and how much my death would impact her, to seriously condemning all Exhumans (myself mostly excluded, of course) for their dangerous and irresponsible behavior.


    ¡°And, the worst of it all is that this was so easily predicted.¡± She had had her hands on her slender hips and had her body cocked sideways, talking down at me as I sat on the floor enduring her lecture. ¡°If you¡¯d just listened to me¨C¡°


    ¡°Are we at ¡®I told you so¡¯ already?¡± I asked.


    She frowned. ¡°This is entirely too important an issue for ¡®I told you so¡¯, but yes, if you¡¯d listen to me more, I think you¡¯d be braindead less often. Once is more than enough, don¡¯t you think?¡±


    ¡°She said I only had a concussion.¡±


    ¡°She said you probably wouldn¡¯t be waking up.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s not the most reliable or credible witness.¡±


    ¡°Then don¡¯t tell me she diagnosed you with only a concussion!¡±


    ¡°There you go, got to be the smartest person in the room, as always.¡±


    ¡°Well, somebody¡¯s got to do it, and it certainly isn¡¯t going to be the idiot who blew himself up!¡±


    I was willing to accept that I¡¯d screwed up, but that didn¡¯t give AEGIS a free ticket to lord her correctness all over me. As soon as I opened my mouth to argue back, I knew it was going to get ugly. So I was shocked when suddenly she stopped responding and shushed me.


    ¡°Is this¡­the weirdest silent treatment ever?¡±


    ¡°No, shush, seriously.¡± She practically dove to her terminal and started hammering keys. Angry as I was, I was still able to recognize urgency in her when I saw it and waited for her analysis. ¡°Uh, I think we have a visitor,¡± she said.


    ¡°Wynn and Tate?¡±


    ¡°Nobody so pleasant. I¡¯m sorry, I was distracted and not watching. She¡¯s¡­right outside.¡±


    ¡°I hope I¡¯m not intruding,¡± I heard Karu¡¯s voice from outside, her voice, empty of its usual harsh conviction instead carried the tone of a new neighbor introducing herself.


    ¡°Um. Karu?¡± I had to ask, though it couldn¡¯t be anyone else.


    ¡°Yes, it is I. I am¡­here to request another duel, would you choose to have it.¡±


    AEGIS and I just looked at each other, neither sure what to make of the situation, and all our previous animosity vanished.


    ¡°Uh. Why?¡± I called out.


    ¡°May I come in? I find this practice of yelling through a doorway distasteful.¡±


    Again, AEGIS and I exchanged the blankest of stares. ¡°Uh. Go ahead, I guess?¡± I finally called.


    ¡°I thank you,¡± she said, appearing in the doorway, visor under one arm like a helmet. ¡°I saw that your door was open, but did not wish to assume and intrude. Especially given that we have had previous¡­hostilities. I did not think it would do to suddenly appear in your domicile, particularly considering that you seemed¡­otherwise engaged.¡±


    She blushed and looked at her feet. It would have been cute on any other girl in any other situation, but here it just added to the creeping horror of the bizarro-universe situation.


    ¡°I um, do not believe we have been introduced,¡± she said raising a hand in greeting to AEGIS on the holo. ¡°I was not aware that Ashton had a girlfriend¨C¡°


    ¡°She¡¯s not my girlfriend¨C!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not his girlfriend¨C!¡±


    ¡°Uh. So I see. How is it that you have managed to make a holo call out here, if I may ask? I was under the impression you were to be removed from all human contact, and do not know who would deign to break that condition of your exile by giving you access to the ¡®net.¡±


    Again, AEGIS and I had nothing to do but exchange glances.


    ¡°Uh, AEGIS is actually a prisoner somewhere. I have no idea where.¡±


    ¡°You have volunteered for a prisoner correspondence program?¡±


    ¡°No¡­wow this is hard to explain.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, and I¡¯m not entirely convinced that we should,¡± AEGIS added.


    ¡°Oh. My apologies, I did not intend to pry. I had assumed that Ashton had been living in a hole in the ground in his own squalor all this time, but it seems he has quite a comfortable setup instead. I am yet again impressed by his resourcefulness and craft.¡±


    ¡°Oh, give me a ¨C¡°


    ¡°You said you were here to fight, Karu?¡± I interrupted AEGIS. ¡°So what¡¯s up with all of this? You normally fall out of the sky, give some damning proclamations, and then we tear it up. Not that I mind the change in routine, but¡­well, this is pretty weird.¡±


    ¡°Yes, it is uncomfortable for me as well. But as I believe I made clear last time, I am no longer certain that I am a righteous being and you are an evil one to be purged. Therefore, it only makes sense to treat the situation with more tact than I had previously. Were I, hypothetically, the evil and corrupt individual in this scenario, it would be very improper for me to disrupt your just and peaceful lifestyle demanding combat at my whims.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t the whole point of being evil that you don¡¯t care about propriety?¡±


    ¡°Hmm. Perhaps you are right. I perhaps should have merely assailed you as typical.¡±


    ¡°Uh, no, let¡¯s not jump to that conclusion,¡± AEGIS added. ¡°And let¡¯s not tempt Karu into any other conclusions that involve a fight breaking out, shall we?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, maybe not,¡± I mused. ¡°Still curious exactly what¡¯s going on here though.¡±


    ¡°As am I, but you can find out without provoking the girl.¡±


    ¡°I am¡­still standing right here, and can hear both of you conversing clearly.¡±


    ¡°Right. Maybe we should take this outside so if or invariably when a fight starts, AEGIS isn¡¯t caught in the middle of it?¡±


    Karu frowned. ¡°I am in no rush to engage in battle. If you are otherwise preoccupied, I do not mind waiting.


    ¡°Uh,¡± I turned to AEGIS again, and realized that Karu had been more than patient in having a conversation with the two of us contributing nothing but bewildered looks at each other. ¡°I mean, it wouldn¡¯t be polite to keep our guest waiting after her flight in.¡±


    ¡°And he is obviously very concerned with politeness because he is obviously a very moral person who should not be attacked,¡± AEGIS added.


    ¡°Yes, obviously.¡± I gave Karu a small smile.


    ¡°I do not find your mockery of my moral values appropriate behavior given the courtesies I have shown you,¡± she said with a small frown. ¡°Regardless, on the off chance that you were not employing sarcasm, I will acquiesce to your desires and we may ¡®take this outside¡¯ as it were.¡±You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    ¡°Uh, thanks,¡± I said, and gestured her towards the door.


    ¡°Athan, before you go, a word?¡± AEGIS said. I nodded to Karu to indicate I¡¯d be with her in a second. ¡°Athan, be careful,¡± she whispered. ¡°She might be nicer than normal but¡­she¡¯s still a paid killer, and she¡¯s after you. Don¡¯t let your guard down just because she¡¯s being all¡­creepy.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± I hissed back. ¡°Truth be told, this is making me way more nervous than her usual antics.¡±


    ¡°And¡­be safe out there. Go kick some ass, okay?¡±


    ¡°I think I will follow your advice this time,¡± I said with a wink and jogged off to catch up. Karu was waiting patiently outside, her white armor glinting in the evening sun.


    Man, fighting with all three girls in one day, what a nightmare.


    ¡°Shall we take a walk?¡± I said. She nodded and fell in next to me.


    We walked in silence for a while, heading south to the river and then west randomly, my feet taking me to where I¡¯d fought with Luminary before. We didn¡¯t stop but just kept walking at random, beginning to trace a large circle around the ruins in silence together.


    ¡°So um,¡± she said. Uh oh, small talk. ¡°Your home is surprisingly decent. I can admire the care with which you have made repairs.¡±


    ¡°Uh, thanks.¡±


    ¡°It is not in the greatest of locations but¡­t-the¡­c-commute must be good.¡±


    ¡°The commute? To where?¡±


    ¡°T-to h-here.¡± She blushed and fixed her eyes on her feet.


    Was that a joke? Did Karu just try to make a joke? I wasn¡¯t sure if I¡¯d offend her more by laughing or not.


    ¡°Um, I guess.¡±


    ¡°It is most of two hours flying for me.¡±


    ¡°Sounds pretty annoying. You should probably change jobs¡­¡±


    She shot me an angry glare, and frowned, stopping in her tracks. It wasn¡¯t exactly what I¡¯d said that was offensive. I mean, of course the implication that she shouldn¡¯t kill me but I thought we were a little past that at this point. Maybe her pride as a hunter? But her reaction still seemed a little over the top.


    She sighed and put a smile back on. ¡°The worst part is the chafing, I think.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what?¡±


    ¡°The worst part of my commute. For two hours am I strapped into this thing, and what do you suppose those harnesses are doing the entire time? A flightsuit only protects you so much,¡± she sighed.


    I tried very hard not to imagine the angry red lines on her tanned and toned breasts and thighs.


    ¡°Uh, maybe you should remote in or something. Kill me over the holo or something.¡±


    ¡°Would that I could.¡± She smiled and I gave a small laugh.


    ¡°A little more seriously, why do you come out here for all this?¡± I asked. She frowned like I¡¯d just asked her a question she¡¯d been avoiding.


    ¡°I¡­hmm.¡± She paused and we stood staring at each other for a few moments. Without her goggles on, it was very hard not to get lost in how attractive she really was, even if the little undercut punk hairdo really didn¡¯t do it for me.


    ¡°Perhaps it would be best if I answered your question with a recent anecdote?¡± she asked, though I wasn¡¯t sure why it was a question. ¡°A few days ago the individual who posted the kill order threatened to remove the bounty, citing a lack of success as evidence that there was no merit in persisting.¡±


    ¡°Woah. That¡¯s pretty exciting. You¡¯re saying if I keep kicking your butt, eventually people will stop trying to kill me?¡± She frowned angrily at me again.


    ¡°I suppose you could see it that way. At the time that I heard the news, I realized I was surprisingly quite saddened by the news, though I did not understand why. You see, there are many bounties out there I could be hunting, so why would yours matter to me in any capacity?¡±


    ¡°Personal pride?¡±


    ¡°I have little use for such a thing. It is my righteousness which guides me through my hunts.¡±


    ¡°Uh, easy money?¡±


    ¡°You have proven to be far from easy.¡±


    ¡°Aw, shucks.¡±


    ¡°No. I realized, that in the course of combating you, and especially in the moral quandaries you have forced me to face¡­to face within myself, I have grown an emotional attachment to you.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what?¡±


    ¡°It is true. It is an uncomfortable truth, one which I may have turned my back on just a few short months ago, but thanks to the growth you have provided me, I am now capable of facing and admitting.¡±


    ¡°K-Karu!¡± I was yelling for no reason. ¡°A-are you confessing¡­l-l-love?¡±


    She laughed, her full-bodied wholesome laugh. The laugh of a righteous woman, not of a paid killer. A heavy blush crept onto her tanned cheeks and she did nothing to hide it.


    ¡°In a way, I suppose, though love is not the term I would use. I see it as more of a veneration. You have proven to me that one can be both mighty and merciful, wronged and yet willing to do right. Time and again, you have given me your assistance, unbidden, even unwanted, and yet you still have not shied from doing that which is righteous.¡±


    ¡°Uh. This is a lot to take in. I¡¯ve never had a girl say anything like any of this before.¡±


    ¡°I do tend to be straightforward with my convictions,¡± she sighed.


    ¡°Yeah, no shit.¡±


    ¡°When my client said he was closing your contract, I was afraid for the first time in my dealing with you. I was afraid of losing you, and in seeing that fear within myself, I chased it and realized its source. That is why I had to come out here to continue fighting you.¡±


    ¡°Wait, after all that, you¡¯re still gonna fight me?¡±


    ¡°Of course. It was only in the course of fighting you that I was able to witness your character to begin with. I feel it is only logical that only by continuing to fight you that I may continue to grow.¡±


    ¡°You are¨Cand I¡¯m worried what this says about me that you¡¯re the first girl who¡¯s ever said they liked me¨Ccompletely and utterly fucked in the head, you know that Karu?¡±


    ¡°I agree my methods are unorthodox compared to others, but I believe my basis and conclusion are both sound.¡±


    ¡°You want to try to kill me because it¡¯s helped you grow as a person.¡±


    ¡°I would not put it so bluntly, but in essence yes.¡±


    ¡°You flew two hours out here enduring chafing in your¡­¡± I stole a glance down at the harness straps pulled taught around her thighs. ¡°God-knows where, join me in a nice stroll and chat, confess your love for me, and then want to kill me anyway?¡±


    ¡°No, I think I see where you misunderstand.¡±


    ¡°Okay. What did I miss?¡±


    ¡°I do not want to kill you. I want to try to kill you. Your death earns me nothing but a paycheck at this point.¡±


    ¡°My death earned you nothing but a paycheck at any point!¡±


    ¡°Yes, but your life has increasingly grown in value to me.¡±


    ¡°If my life is so valuable, leave it alive!¡±


    ¡°That would remove its value.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re saying my life has no intrinsic value? After all that stuff about how I¡¯m righteous and wronged and stuff?¡±


    ¡°Hmm. I am certain you probably have some value, though I am not entirely certain what. Certainly less than the value of your bounty.¡±


    ¡°The first girl who likes me only wants me for my death.¡±


    ¡°Again, you misunderstand. I want you only for the pursuit of your death.¡±


    ¡°And in this pursuit of my death, you¡¯re going to learn a bunch of important exciting new things?¡±


    ¡°I do not know. I can only extrapolate from the things I have already learned.¡±


    ¡°Well, let me save you a few steps and just tell you what you¡¯re going to ultimately figure out. Final lesson, okay? Open your ears.¡±


    ¡°I am listening.¡±


    ¡°KILLING ME IS BAD. STOP IT.¡±


    She laughed again and sat down where we stood.


    ¡°Make no mistake, I understand your situation. But I am not certain you fully appreciate mine. I am a hunter,¡± she said, wrapping her arms around her knees in front of her, white armor of her arms overlapping the white armor on her legs. She held her visor in both hands in front of her and looked wistfully at it.


    ¡°This is not something I do lightly, or have ever done before, or think I will ever do again. You are special to me, in a way I cannot describe, which is why I do not hesitate when you repeatedly call it love. I have never been in love, but I imagine it is not a feeling very different from what I am experiencing now. All hours of the day, I found myself distracted in thinking about you, how last we fought, how well you evaded my attacks, how you respond to my threats with sarcasm and wit instead of violence.¡±


    She was fully blushing again as she smiled at her visor. ¡°Your kindness, your strength, your mercy. Where once I took these actions to be foolishness or weakness, you showed me I was wrong and the more I dwelled upon them, the more I realized how just and right you were.¡±


    She sprawled onto her back, spread-eagle, her green eyes matching the grass around her head. ¡°I know not when it happened but only that it did.¡±


    I sighed, honestly moved by her words, insane though she may be. I laid on the grass next to her.


    ¡°Look, Karu, you know I don¡¯t want to fight you. And if we¡¯re friends¡­and I would hope after all this we¡¯re at least that?¡± She nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t think I can fight you at all. Trying to kill my friends isn¡¯t something I can do.¡±


    She frowned. ¡°I suppose the obvious conclusion is then that we cannot be friends.¡±


    ¡°I think the obvious conclusion is that we shouldn¡¯t try to kill each other.¡±


    ¡°I am not certain I can agree to those terms.¡±


    ¡°Friendship isn¡¯t based on terms, Karu. It¡¯s what happens between two people who have shared experiences together. You have had friends before, haven¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°Of course.¡±


    ¡°Look, let¡¯s compromise. You don¡¯t try to kill me, and we¡¯ll still spend time together and you can learn¡­other things from me¡­without the killing.¡±


    ¡°I feel as though there are lecherous insinuations implicit in your statement. I refuse.¡±


    ¡°No! I didn¡¯t mean that. Just like, if you do think I¡¯m a morally just person and all that, why can¡¯t you observe and learn from that without all the killing?¡±


    ¡°Hmm. A valid postulate. I have a counter-proposal.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Indulge me in, say, five more combats, and then I shall be satisfied and we can continue on as you described.¡±


    ¡°Five? We¡¯ve only had, what, four so far? You want to drag this on for twice what it¡¯s already been?¡±


    ¡°Fine. Four then.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s still twice what it¡¯s been. I think you get one more.¡±


    ¡°Not nearly sufficient for my needs. Three times at the minimum.¡±


    ¡°Can we meet at two?¡±


    ¡°No. Three times is the minimum as I believe I just stated.¡±


    ¡°This is insane. You can¡¯t honestly expect me to fight you at all, after all I just said about not killing my friends.¡±


    ¡°Any merit you had in an argument of that nature was lost when you attempted to negotiate me down to merely attempting to killyou twice.¡±


    ¡°Agh.¡±


    ¡°Three times it is, final offer.¡± She rolled onto her side, facing me. I noticed that her chest armor attached to her breasts followed gravity¡¯s pull a lot more than the armor lower on her torso.


    ¡°Three times it is,¡± I sighed.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± she said standing up and brushing off grass. She bent down and retrieved her helmet. ¡°Now, if you wouldn¡¯t mind, I would like to redeem one of my attempts at killing you.¡± She donned her helmet, banishing the brilliant green eyes beneath the ominous glowing metal scars of the visor.

 043. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    ¡°Karu, please,¡± I pleaded. ¡°We don¡¯t have to do this, really.¡±


    She shook her head, her visored face showing no compassion. ¡°This is what I want,¡± she said, the spindly arms of her jetpack extending and thrumming with blue plasma as she lifted into the air. ¡°I know you may have reservations about fighting me, so I shall take it onto myself to ensure the fight proceeds as planned.¡±


    ¡°Karu¨C¡°


    ¡°En garde!¡± she yelled, and without a moment¡¯s hesitation, sent a volley of grenades bouncing and rolling along the ground under and past me. I dove to the side as they exploded with a cacophony of hisses, pouring a thick white smoke into the air.


    Bad news, there was a gentle breeze from the treeline, pushing the smoke towards me and keeping me moving away. Good news, it seemed it was just a smokescreen instead of anything poisonous. Or at least, not the kind of poison that made me choke and die on the spot. Worst news, it was a wall between me and the trees, keeping me from running in there and ending the fight abruptly and peacefully. I was certain that running into the smoke would be suicide, as I wouldn¡¯t be able to see a thing, but that would likely hardly hinder her optics.


    She was herding me towards the open, towards a fight.


    Well, screw her. I faked running away from the smoke until she streaked overhead, and then immediately reversed, sprinting headfirst into the smoke.


    As expected, it was¡­pretty much oblivion in there. Nothing but whiteness, not able to even see my feet. I kept moving forward as fast as I could go, stumbling whenever I found a change in elevation or a rock with my feet, but I knew in less than twenty feet, I¡¯d be clear of the smoke and then the trees were right there.


    Then I did see something in the smoke, which made my blood freeze.


    Two horizontal red lines, right at eye level, right in front of me. I fell backwards as something cut through the air where I had just been standing.


    ¡°Jesus, Karu.¡± I rolled onto all fours, and then, hearing something slicing towards me, kept rolling. The ground where I just was crunched under Karu¡¯s next swipe. I was completely turned around now, rolling and bouncing any way I could to avoid the next imminent attack.


    ¡°Fight back! Show me your resolve!¡± Karu¡¯s voice shouted from the fog.


    ¡°My resolve is to not fight back!¡± I yelled back.


    ¡°Oh ho! Even more interesting.¡± She gave a much more diabolical laugh than usual and I felt another swipe go past me vertically. ¡°How do you intend to defeat me without fighting, I must wonder?¡±


    ¡°Still figuring that one out myself,¡± I whispered to myself. She was too fast for me to get anywhere. Every time I broke away for a moment and started going in a straight line to get out of the smoke, she appeared in front of me and turned me back, the red lights from the visor turning the smoke the color of boiling blood.


    I ran one way, ran into red from the visor, and turned around as slashes perforated where I had been a moment before. Fled the opposite way, just to run into the red again and flee for my life yet again. Basically the world¡¯s most horrible game of red-light, green-light.


    ¡°You grow weary! You must fight back soon, or else you shall fall without offering any resistance!¡± she gloated, something manic in her jeering voice. I saved my breath for running back and forth again, but she was right. She could fly around completely unobstructed and attack me from any angle, without any fear of reprisal, while I stumbled through the smoke, spending way too much energy having to avoid her attacks at the last second.


    With her optics, there was no fooling her or escaping her, and with her jetpack, there was no outrunning her. With the smoke, there was no outmaneuvering her, and without attacking, no beating her.


    One of these advantages was the obvious one to reclaim, but while I was tired, but I was also stubborn and angry. I wouldn¡¯t let her beat me, physically or morally, and that meant my only option was to escape the fight without fighting. Like some crazy new-age pacifist.


    I bet Gandhi never had it this rough.


    Phase one of the plan, orientation. While sprinting forward, I created and fired off lightning bulbs to my sides, listening to the telltale sizzle of them shooting off outside the smokescreen. The bulbs were energy, weightless, and as far as I could tell, flew in a straight line at the speed of light. That meant as long as I threw them pretty much straight horizontally, they¡¯d keep flying until they hit something. Once I started hearing them pop against an obstacle, I knew I¡¯d found the treeline, and which direction it was.


    Phase two of the plan, get Karu where I needed her. That was easy enough. I turned a bit to my left and began sprinting towards the treeline at max speed. Sure enough, in a moment, the smoke turned red and two red lines glowed in front of me, barring my way.


    Phase three¡­do something really stupid. I dropped to avoid the swing, seeing the smoke roiling at her side and assuming that meant a horizontal swipe. Fortunately I was right, because if I¡¯d guessed wrong, I¡¯d be all kinds of chopped to pieces now. Now instead of turning and sprinting off, I bounced back up, keeping my forward momentum as best I could, and continuing to bear down on her. She stiffened and hesitated for a moment, and that was the only moment I needed.


    I reached up and grabbed at her, sprinting past and pulling free. A few more strides, and I was able to see wisps of the ground through the smoke, and then suddenly it was gone. In my hand, my prize, her visor from where I¡¯d torn it free from her face. I kept moving for the treeline as she swore behind me violently, now herself completely lost in the fog, and more importantly, me lost to her.


    As I ran, I pressed the visor to my face and glanced back. She had an arm right up in front of her face and was trying to press buttons on it but unable to see even that close through the smoke. Finally, she hit the right sequence and I saw the jetpack¡¯s arms deploy, but not ignite, making her swear again.


    I laughed. The visor responded: ¡°Unrecognized user voiceprint. Disabling systems.¡± The last thing I saw before the visor blanked out was the metal arms of the jetpack withdrawing as it shut down to prevent unauthorized usage. Having no further use for the now-dead visor, I left it at the edge of the treeline so Karu wouldn¡¯t have to walk home, and laughed as I vanished into the trees.


    It was almost an hour later before Karu showed up back at The Bunker, stomping her way in, visor and jetpack still offline, and visibly fuming.


    ¡°I should almost think that I preferred your fighting when your intent was to harm,¡± she said as a greeting, and slumped into a seated position by the door.


    ¡°Well look who came to join us, hiya Karu!¡± I chimed, shit-eating smile from ear to ear. ¡°I was just telling AEGIS about how great the wonders of modern technology are.¡±


    ¡°I hear voiceprint technology is just so advanced nowadays. Why, most systems can tell who their user is just by their voice. Did you know that, Athan?¡± AEGIS said with a steaming pile of unnatural interest.


    ¡°Really? Well golly, that is certainly something. Karu, did you know any of this?¡±


    She gave me the flattest, deadest stink-eye I had ever seen a person wear.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    ¡°Sounds like a no to me! Care to explain it, AEGIS?¡± I said.


    ¡°I will seriously kill the both of you. I have a license for it and everything,¡± Karu said.


    ¡°But how will you know it¡¯s us without your visor?¡± AEGIS added.


    ¡°Yes, and what will you do if I walk away v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-ly, if you can¡¯t fly?¡±


    Karu sighed. ¡°I had intended to be gracious in my defeat, but it seems you offer me no choice.¡± She began to unbuckle her harness and slowly peel herself out of her bits of armor, starting with the jetpack and weapons.


    ¡°Uh. Are we strip-dueling now?¡± AEGIS asked. ¡°Is that what you two talked about? Holy shit, Athan, you letch!¡± She sounded simultaneously disgusted and¡­impressed? Her voice took on a lower more confidential tone. ¡°Karu, we can put up a barrier around his hammock and have the rest of The Bunker be the girls¡¯ side. Oh! And I can make us some yummies on the mass-fab and we can have a sleepover! I¡¯m sure Athan will try something when you¡¯re sleeping though, so I¡¯ll have to stay on high alert. But I¡¯m not there, so if he does, I can¡¯t do much but watch¨C¡°


    ¡°Erm, I would prefer if you were to keep me out of your fantasies,¡± Karu said, now seemingly unsure about stripping any further. ¡°I was merely removing my equipment as it will be locked out for the next 8 hours and the mockery you two have delivered have removed any chance you had at me formally requesting shelter for the night.¡±


    ¡°Oh. You are actually sleeping over,¡± AEGIS said flatly. ¡°Athan, a word?¡±


    I rolled my eyes and crouched next to her holo.


    ¡°Are you going to warn me not to let the crazy murderous bounty hunter stay next to me while I¡¯m sleeping?¡± I asked.


    ¡°No. I¡¯m going to warn you not to touch her while she¡¯s sleeping. I¡¯ve seen you eyeing those¡­eyefuls. She might be crazy, but she¡¯s an honorable girl, and I don¡¯t want you despoiling that honor.¡±


    ¡°You two are both completely crazy,¡± I said, stepping away from the private chat.


    ¡°I resent that,¡± said Karu with a frown.


    ¡°Too bad. Don¡¯t like it, stop being crazy,¡± I said, falling back into my hammock and covering my face with an arm. But¡­not covering it so much that I couldn¡¯t keep an eye on Karu as she peeled off the last of her combat gear and stood up, wearing only a white tank top with a black sports bra and boyshorts clearly visible under. My mouth went a little dry, but I did my best to play dead.


    ¡°Hope you didn¡¯t need that blood anywhere else in your body,¡± AEGIS teased with equal hints menace and amusement.


    ¡°S-shut up!¡± I shouted, rolling over and piling blankets on top of myself.


    ¡°What have I missed?¡± Karu asked. I could hear her walking over and saw her shadow pass over me as she stood right at the side of my hammock. ¡°Is there something the matter with Ashton? It seems too early and too warm for him to be wrapping himself so in his bed.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe you¡¯d better check on him,¡± AEGIS said, and I could hear the devilish smile in her voice.


    Damn you, AEGIS. I am going to disassemble your box and bury you for another dozen years.


    ¡°Ashton?¡± Karu said, prodding me gently, and then lifting my arm from my face. Her face was right there, only a few inches from mine, backlit softly from the lights we¡¯d put up in the ceiling beams. ¡°Is there something the matter?¡±


    ¡°N-nothing at all!¡± I stammered like an idiot. I felt adrenaline pumping through me telling me to FLEE RUN GET AWAY, but all my brain could do was lay there completely paralyzed.


    She frowned. ¡°You are flush and sweaty. I did not think our fight had drained you so completely when I walked in originally. Perhaps I was imprudent in assuming that I was welcome when I entered. I had originally intended to ask, but meant it as something of a joke to simply assert that I would stay.¡±


    ¡°Oh, Athan liked your joke. He liked it very much.¡± Goddamn it, AEGIS.


    Karu smiled at me and leaned on the edge of the hammock, bringing her face even closer to mine. Her breasts were resting on my arm, and man did they feel warm and soft and heavy. ¡°I hope so. I have been told I do not have much of a sense of humor, which I will confess is not something which has ever bothered me much. Still, it is nice to be appreciated on the occasions when I try. Why are you so sweaty?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s uh, cold sweats,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°He needs you to climb in there and warm him up.


    ¡°Okay, AEGIS, that¡¯s plenty of that,¡± I said, through grit teeth. She laughed like a schoolgirl. ¡°I¡¯m just uh, a little¡­tired.¡±


    ¡°You are sweaty because you are tired.¡±


    ¡°No! I¡¯m sweaty because¡­I¡¯m hot. Obviously.¡±


    ¡°It is not hot.¡±


    ¡°No¡­not anymore. But it was earlier.¡±


    ¡°But you were not sweaty earlier. I was walking with you. It was a pleasant evening, if even slightly cool, I imagine, for those not wearing a flight suit and resistive armor.¡±


    ¡°Maybe he¡¯s coming down with something. Maybe he got bit by a love bu¨C¡°


    I interrupted her with a loud sudden outburst of coughing. ¡°Yeah, that must be it. One of those¡­24-hour colds, you know? Very sudden. But definitely not life-threatening!¡± I added as her face grew in alarm.


    ¡°How very unfortunate. If I knew you were under the weather, I would not have attempted to solicit combat from you. I feel this is my fault, to have put you under this additional stress, which has manifest as a sudden illness.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s really *coughhackwheeze* fine. Probably best if you just uh, let me rest.¡±


    ¡°You should not sleep while dripping in sweat,¡± she said frowning again, even though I could hardly be classified as such. Maybe a little clammy. ¡°I will wipe you down with a damp towel so that you will be able to rest more comfortably.¡±


    ¡°That is completely unnecessary,¡± I said, horrified by this sudden turn in events.


    ¡°He¡¯s clearly delirious from the sickness,¡± AEGIS added in an urgent whisper. ¡°You should probably do it to be safe.¡± Even as she spoke, I noticed one of her cam-drones fly into position above my bed to capture the entire spectacle. I swear I saw it give me a saucy wink.


    ¡°Okay, hold on, timeout, no way.¡± I said, but Karu was already pressing down on me to hold me down while a damp cloth gently dabbed at my forehead. I wasn¡¯t exactly being restrained, but I didn¡¯t feel like I could move without revealing the fact that my hand was now completely right under her huge breasts.


    ¡°Is something the matter? May I comfort you in some other manner? I feel terrible for putting you in such a position,¡± Karu said, seemingly genuinely full of remorse.


    ¡°Ah, you don¡¯t¨Cdon¡¯t have to do anything at all. I¡¯m just fine.¡±


    ¡°Nonsense. Let me do this much at least,¡± she said.


    ¡°You really don¡¯t¨C¡± but she¡¯d already started moving down my body and moved my blankets out of the way to have better access. I grasped at them with my hand not pinned under her chest, but missed at the last moment. She locked eyes with my groin.


    ¡°Oh,¡± she said. A moment later, ¡°Oh,¡± she repeated, crossing her arms defensively across her chest. ¡°I¡­see.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not like that!¡± I shouted, while AEGIS began laughing her ass off.


    ¡°OMFG!¡± AEGIS helpfully added. ¡°Your face! LO-friggin¡¯-L!¡± She was laughing so hard she was crying. I hoped she¡¯d choke on it and spare me having to kill her.


    ¡°I¨Cperhaps, I should¡­sleep outside tonight,¡± Karu said, taking a hesitant step back. ¡°I do not with to¡­disrupt your privacy.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s really not like that! Look, I¡¯m a healthy teenage man, and you¡¯re a¡­well, you¡¯re a smokin¡¯ hot¡­I mean, look at you! I can see your¡­your¡­your¡­¡±


    ¡°Undergarments?¡±


    ¡°Yes!¡±


    ¡°Huh.¡± She peeled up the front of her tank and looked down at her own panties, flashing me her solid abs. ¡°I suppose I have been desensitized to the sexuality of this from my time in the military. In our unit, we would change, shower, eat, and dress in mixed company as a matter of course. I had forgotten how uncomfortable that was when I had first started. I apologize for any¡­discomfort¡­I have created.¡± She stepped over to her armor and began to dress.


    ¡°No, it¡¯s fine,¡± I said, trying to get out of bed without further embarrassing either of us. ¡°I can deal with it, it¡¯s nothing really.¡± She continued to slip on the flight suit so I touched her hand. ¡°It really is okay. It happens.¡±


    ¡°I¡­understand. Please don¡¯t feel as though this is simply awkward for you. I am also experiencing a significant embarrassment.¡±


    AEGIS¡¯ laughing in the background reached a new threshold of pealing.


    Meanwhile, I realized I was still holding Karu¡¯s hand, and both of us turned away blushing as I let it fall.


    ¡°Perhaps it is not too early to retire after all,¡± Karu said, struggling to be heard over AEGIS¡¯ baying. ¡°I would have liked to discuss what I¡¯d learned from our combat in greater detail, but I get the feeling that we are likely to be subject to interruption.¡± She shot AEGIS a glare.


    ¡°Yeah well, any time you want to come by, you know where I live. I don¡¯t get out much.¡±


    ¡°I will accept the invitation.¡±


    ¡°Just¡­don¡¯t come by if you want to fight. I¡¯ve had plenty of that.¡±


    ¡°Our agreement stipulated two more combats. I intend to hold you to that.¡±


    ¡°You are completely insatiable,¡± I said. She laughed.


    ¡°Do not fret so. I believe in your combat aptitude. And also,¡± she leaned in close and dropped her voice to a whisper. ¡°I have a confession.¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡± I whispered back. Her breath was warm on my neck and it was hard¨Cdifficult, not to get excited.


    ¡°I think, perhaps you might have been somewhat right before¨Cabout being able to learn from you without combat. I feel I have already learned several very interesting things today, since coming back after our fight.¡±


    She stepped back, breaking away from the intimate moment, and gave me a huge grin and a tiny wink. I gaped like a fish.


    ¡°And now I bid you goodnight,¡± she said still wearing a blush and a cheeky smile. ¡°I hope you have pleasant dreams.¡±


    ¡°Night, Karu,¡± AEGIS said, somehow still having breath to speak after all the laughing she did. She looked like she was nursing the sides of her face from having laughed too much.


    I wordlessly fell into my hammock and didn¡¯t even notice when AEGIS clapped twice and put the lights out.


    Karu was certainly direct. And a completely insane crazy bitch. And hot as hell, but even worse, seemingly completely oblivious to it. All the words of the evening chased themselves around and around in my brain, ultimately leading up to one impossible question.


    How the hell was I supposed to get to sleep after all that?

 044. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I wasn¡¯t surprised that Karu woke up before me. I was usually up with the sun, preparing to hunt or otherwise make an excursion, but I guess her actually-military lifestyle was even more stringent than the one I¡¯d had by proxy through my father.


    She was quietly making adjustments or calibrations to her gear when AEGIS subtly woke me up by bumping a drone into my sleeping face a few times. Despite how chummy she¡¯d been the night before, AEGIS was still apparently paranoid about having her around. I got the hint and sat upright with a stretch and a yawn.


    ¡°Good morning. I hope I did not disrupt your slumber,¡± Karu said with a vague wave before needing both her hands on her task.


    ¡°Not at all,¡± I said, shooting an annoyed glance at AEGIS, who had nothing for me but an embarrassed smile. ¡°Would you like something to eat?¡±


    ¡°It would not do for me to consume some of your limited resources when I have access to a limitless amount back at home. Rather, let me apologize for¡­let me apologize by providing breakfast for you. Will your companion be joining us?


    ¡°Uh, AEGIS doesn¡¯t¡­eat.¡±


    ¡°¨Cwith strangers,¡± AEGIS added.


    ¡°Odd, but I would not question it. I fear my travel rations are far from a hospitable feast, but they are what I have to offer, and between the two of us, there should be plenty to partake. Is this acceptable?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll never turn down a free meal.¡±


    Karu simply smiled and set down what she was working on, and dug around in a small pouch on her armor¡¯s belt. I guess it wasn¡¯t all ammo and explosives in there. She withdrew six tubes, each drab colored with small black writing on it, each about the size of a finger, with a cap on one end.


    ¡°I do not take particular care in bringing a variety, though I could endeavor to do so should this become a habit. I have¡­let me see¡­pasta with beef sauce, spinach-mushroom quiche, lemon-pepper snapper¡­another quiche, maple syrup and pork sausage ¡ª that one may prove to be the most appropriate breakfast option ¡ª and black bean chili.¡± She held the tubes out for me to inspect.


    ¡°W-what are they?¡± I said, picking one at random and looking at it. It was heavier than it looked, but just seemed like a plastic tube with a cap and writing.


    ¡°Oh. My apologies. These are simply nutrient paste. NP¡¯s, or ¡®nopes¡¯ as the colloquial banter would call them. Eating two in a day will give you all the caloric and nutritional needs for a standard operating day, or three in a particularly exhausting day, though that¡¯s really just for the calories. They are standard issue for military outfits far from support, such as deep reconnaissance, alpine, or airborne units.¡± At the mention of the latter, she gestured at her jetpack. ¡°Not standard issue for general arms yet.¡±


    ¡°I see. And you just¡­eat it?¡±


    ¡°Um, yes. I should warn you the flavor is synthetic and has sometimes been described as seeming fake or too strong, but I have never personally had a problem with them.¡±


    I looked at the tube in my hand. Black bean chili. The thought of eating my mom¡¯s chili, with hunks of ground beef and big chunky wedges of tomato made my mouth water. I twisted the cap and Karu gave me another small smile.


    She picked one seemingly at random and put the rest on the floor between us, twisting off the cap as I had, then putting the opening to her mouth and apparently just sucking on it. I followed suit, and a thick, gooey paste flooded into my mouth, almost honey-like in its consistency.


    The taste was far from honey though. Odd texture aside, it tasted exactly like black bean chili, with hints of cayenne and oregano, garlic and bell pepper, and of course the mild earthy essence of the beans. After parsing a few nibbles I realized why people might have a problem with the flavor; unlike regular chili, there were no chunks of anything, no bit of tomato here and a bean there, rather it was like someone had taken the average flavor of chili, all different tastes included, and the whole tube tasted like that throughout.


    Ordinarily that might be a criticism, but as it was, this was by far the most delicious thing I¡¯d had in months. Roasting some fish only came so close to actually cooked-tasting food drawing on an entire kitchen and pantry.


    Some of my glee must have shown on my face because Karu kept staring at me and smiling. I could only endure this for so long before turning to her and asking: ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Oh, it is nothing. I am happy to see you eat with such apparent relish.¡±


    ¡°You should have seen him choking down the mushrooms,¡± AEGIS added. ¡°Compared to that, everything else he¡¯s eaten he¡¯s looked at like a snake eyeing an unguarded nest.¡±


    ¡°Very flattering metaphor,¡± I said, my mouth completely full of goop.


    ¡°It¡¯s true, though,¡± she replied. ¡°I¡¯m happy you¡¯re able to enjoy some of that so-called food, but seriously, ick.¡±


    ¡°Regardless,¡± Karu cut in, possibly already realizing that unimpeded, AEGIS and I would banter back and forth endlessly. ¡°I am happy to provide you with this small enjoyment at least.¡± She sucked on her own tube idly, smiling at me with her knees in front of her and her chin resting on one of them.


    I¡¯d thought it several times before, and would certainly do so again, but damn was she beautiful. If she had a long braid of hair and a dress instead of guns, she could pass for a fantasy princess. A sort of muscley ass-kicking one, sure, but she had an extremely beautiful face. Her skin was tanned but free from blemishes, high cheekbones, and soft-looking lips.


    I swallowed hard and remembered just how soft her lips were from when I¡¯d resuscitated her. It seemed like so long ago when she was so crazy angry murderous. I suppose now she was just murderous.


    ¡°Is there some nutrient paste on my face?¡± she asked.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°I ask only because you are staring at my face.¡± She dabbed a finger experimentally around her lips and scrutinized it closely.


    ¡°Ah, no. I was just thinking, it¡¯s a little odd that your whole job is fighting people and yet you don¡¯t have any scars.¡± She laughed.


    ¡°I have had many, many scars. Some, even, that you have given me.¡± I felt guilt plummet into my stomach, even more dense than the nutrient paste. ¡°But whenever I am hurt, I have access to a regenerator at my clinic, and one of the side-effects of their use is removing scars.¡±


    ¡°I thought regenerators just sped up natural healing by a lot?¡± I asked.


    ¡°They do promote natural regeneration, yes, but the inside of a regenerator tank is also very similar to the conditions inside of your body. What your body does naturally from the inside, the regenerator does artificially from the outside.¡±


    She put the tube of paste down. ¡°What I have heard¨Cand I am unfortunately merely a soldier and not a scientist, so do not take this as gospel¨Cis that under some conditions, the body will expel foreign bodies, like bullets, or built-up scar tissue to the surface. As the fluid in the tank tricks the body into thinking it is a part of the body, the scar tissue will be expelled entirely, as new skin and muscle are regrown in place underneath.¡±


    ¡°Woah. That¡¯s super awesome sounding. Does the tank just¡­fill up with cast-off scars?¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°I would not know. I am sedated the entire time for my own safety. Errant thoughts or emotional states could cause abrupt shifts in my bio-signs which could cause the regenerator to do anything from not work to create cancerous growths all over my body.¡± She frowned. ¡°I find it best to simply comply with the medical staff and not ask too many questions.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯re okay with the possibility of having¡­everything cancer?¡±


    ¡°I sometimes require access to a regenerator, that is an unfortunate condition of my occupation. Consequently, I am willing to tolerate the risks, and do whatever I am instructed to mitigate them.¡±


    ¡°Pretty brave.¡±


    ¡°Not particularly. Like I said, I am sedate for the experience.¡±


    ¡°So, changing the subject mostly because the thought of being a cancerous mass in a tank kind of freaks me out, how long are you staying with us today?¡±


    ¡°Hmm, I had not considered,¡± she said, and reached back, pulling her visor and putting it on. ¡°It appears to be 7am or thereabouts. I have no outstanding obligations on the day, however¨C¡± she pulled the visor off again and shook her little mane of hair out ¡°¨CI am not certain that it would be entirely proper for me to spend overlong in your company.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the harm? You were already here all night.¡±


    ¡°That was by necessity. Some thoughtless individual locked my equipment out, making it impossible to return home even if I had desired to.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, why do you have an 8-hour lock on that stuff anyway? Doesn¡¯t seem too useful.¡±


    ¡°So I have noticed. It had never occurred to me that someone would be able to take and use my equipment while I was still living, so I simply set the lockout time to the longest possible setting to give whomever looted my body the greatest possible inconvenience in attempting to repurpose it.¡±


    ¡°You set it that way yourself?¡±


    ¡°I did. Is this surprising?¡±


    ¡°No. It¡¯s just¡­I recently ¡®acquired¡¯ an exosuit from another hunter. It didn¡¯t have any lockout at all, and just let me add myself as a new user as soon as I put it on. Or¡­got in?¡±


    She turned around and peeked through the piles of junk in the room until she spotted the exosuit in a corner. Instantly, a dour look crossed her face.


    ¡°The incessant color-coordination of Luminary, it would appear,¡± she said. ¡°I am not surprised that he took no care in securing his own exosuit, as the man is an idiot.¡±


    ¡°So you guys are really good friends then?¡± AEGIS goaded, injecting herself into our conversation seemingly only when she could annoy somebody by doing so.


    ¡°If by ¡®good friends¡¯ you mean to say that I find him a disgrace who cheapens my entire occupation simply by existing in it, a man so driven by praise and money that the values of righteousness and virtue are completely alien, and a man who repeatedly attempts to goad me into some form of dating,¡± she spit out the last word like it was the most abhorrent of profanities. ¡°Then yes, you could say that he and I are ¡®good friends.''¡±


    ¡°Eesh, could have just said no.¡±


    ¡°And you could have simply remained silent and not attempted to mock me, but I did you the service of answering your question, inane though it may have been.¡±


    ¡°So anyway¡± I cut in. ¡°Luminary¡¯s a big idiot. We learned that firsthand. Happy to hear you agree with my opinion on him.¡±


    ¡°I am not certain it is possible to formulate any other opinion.¡± She sighed. ¡°And yet he has millions of followers on social media, and people who tune in to each of his episodes. In one such episode, he mentioned me and that I would not go dating with him. At that time, I was ignorant that he even had an interest in me, and saw him merely as an annoying colleague. I was unfortunately awakened to his true feelings by an endless deluge of fan-mail sent to me¨Chis fans, not mine¨Cwhich accused me of everything from being a ¡®basic bitch¡¯, to ¡®a sell-out fraud¡¯, to a prude, to a slut, to a lesbian, on account of my hair style.¡±


    She ran her fingers through her hair with a frown. ¡°Does this hairstyle indicate that I am a lesbian to you?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said.


    ¡°Yes,¡± AEGIS said.


    ¡°Shut up, AEGIS,¡± I said.


    ¡°Honestly, I wonder what people think of my profession sometimes. I hear back in the old days, when the association was newly formed, hunters were treated with fear and suspicion, assumed to be manipulating everything from politics to stock prices behind the scenes. Now¡­thanks to¨CI suppose one would call them celebrities¨Csuch as Luminary, the inner workings of being a hunter have never been more visible, or more fake.¡±


    ¡°What a weird problem to have.¡±


    Karu laughed. ¡°Yes, that is one reason I enjoy coming out and combating you, truth be told. Out here, in the wild, with you, there is no greater deception than a feint, no larger agenda than living, no aggrandizement, merely survival. It is pure and beautiful, in its fragility.¡±


    ¡°Hey, say what you will, but we¡¯ve been at it like, half a dozen times now, and nobody¡¯s dead yet. I think fragile is not the right description for what we¡¯ve got going on here.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps not. But even so, one false move could lead to a permanent end. I am no artist, but that still speaks like poetry to me.¡± She checked her visor again as she spoke. ¡°I should be leaving soon. You are more than welcome to the remaining nutrient pastes, though I must warn you that as someone somewhat malnourished, if you should eat food which is too rich, you stand the risk of damaging yourself. Please pace yourself, as it would not do for me to kill you in this way.¡± She stood and smiled, and I wasn¡¯t sure if she was kidding or not, except that this was even less funny than her other attempts at humor.


    ¡°Uh, sure. I¡¯ll keep it to one a day, tops.¡±


    ¡°Much appreciated. Before I go, I have a warning for you, though it may not be helpful, as it is vague even to my ears. Still, I feel obligated to inform you.¡±


    She walked to the door and I followed, keenly aware that drones were subtly repositioning in the ceiling beams to eavesdrop on whatever was said.


    ¡°The word is that there is a new information broker who is an Exhuman. Of course there is nothing substantiated, but the XPCA is concerned as any Exhuman whose power involves prophecy or acquiring restricted knowledge is obviously an enormous danger to them and is equally difficult to track and catch.¡±


    ¡°Interesting. And this Exhuman is using their powers as an info broker¡­so they¡¯re digging up secret information and then selling it?¡±


    ¡°That is correct, from what I hear.¡±


    I let out a low whistle. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard of an Exhuman successfully turning a day job before.¡±


    ¡°There are many such cases, they are just kept secretive. The XPCA prefer everyone to believe that Exhumans have no option but to surrender themselves, and consequently most do. Being a hunter however, I have had many cases of ferreting out individuals who have secretly embedded themselves in society.¡±


    I frowned. ¡°Were they doing anything wrong?¡±


    ¡°That is really not for a hunter to say. Others post the contract and we fulfill it.¡±


    ¡°That just seems like¡­murder.¡±


    ¡°If they were as righteous and strong as you, they would be receiving my warnings and breakfast now instead of paying for it.¡±


    ¡°I just¡­that seems super messed up.¡±


    ¡°I do not think so. I think God has a plan for each of us, and for many Exhumans, his plan is for them to die.¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean you have to kill them.¡±


    She let out a heavy sigh. ¡°This is not a conversation I wish to have with you, but I will suffice to say that I was there and you were not. I met and fought with these individuals and you did not. Like with you, whether I intended to or not, I judged their mettle and their morals, and before you, all had been found wanting. While I am interested in re-examining my principles going forward, that does not mean I am willing to second-guess all my previous decisions. Were they wrong, they were still right in that they led me to you, and the ability to see that they were wrong.¡±


    She stopped, and I wasn¡¯t sure if I was supposed to reply. Discussing the morality of murder was difficult when speaking with a paid murderer.


    ¡°I had a point to my previous statements if you still wish to hear that.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Go ahead, but I¡¯m not sold on the whole hunting business still.¡±


    ¡°How fortunate for me that I do not need your approval to operate,¡± she said wryly. ¡°My warning is thus: This information broker has seemingly taken a personal interest in you and has made several inquiries into your whereabouts through various channels. Given her resources, it is unlikely that it will take long for her to find you, strictly classified though your location may be.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­just¡­¡±


    ¡°It is not fortuitous, I know.¡±


    ¡°What did I even do to possibly get her attention anyway?¡±


    ¡°I do not know. By all metrics you have ¡®laid low¡¯ as it were. You have not left the area or had correspondence with others¡­barring her, of course.¡± She jerked her head towards AEGIS. ¡°Your capture was not eventful. There was no Exhuman event. Perhaps she is interested in your powerset?¡±


    ¡°I guess. I thought th¨Ctwo crazy women after me was plenty. And now there¡¯s one more out there, no telling when or where she¡¯ll find me or what she¡¯ll do when she does.¡±


    ¡°Indeed. And, not to indulge myself in my own praises too greatly, but I suspect that when she does come, if her intentions are hostile, she will not meet you honorably on the battlefield as I do. She is a figure who operates in the shadows by matter of course.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. That is a concern. Does she have a name?¡±


    ¡°She is called the Black Shark in the circles where she has deigned to identify herself.¡±


    ¡°Black Shark,¡± I said.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°What? Nothing,¡± I lied. ¡°Just thinking.¡±


    She gave me an odd glance. ¡°Very well. If there is nothing else, I shall take my leave. I bid you good health until my return.¡± I waved goodbye, and even AEGIS called out a farewell as she suited up, stepped out, and with a streak of blue plasma, streaked off over the treeline.


    ¡°So what was that about Black Shark?¡± AEGIS asked as soon as Karu was gone.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Something was written all over your face when you heard it. I¡¯m sure Karu saw it too but she¡¯s not as nosy as me. So spill it.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± I sat down in my hammock facing AEGIS. ¡°We should probably get some chairs in here at some point.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll put that on my build list. Now spill.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Well, it¡¯s not much, I¡¯ve certainly never heard of any info brokers before. But Black Shark, well¡­The Black Sharks, that was the name of my high school¡¯s football team.¡±


    ¡°That you played on? That you QB¡¯d for?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Holy shit.¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?¡±


    ¡°I have no idea at all, AEGIS.¡±

 045. 2243, 7 years ago. San Diego. Karen.

    It had taken days in a regenerator until the last of the damage from the burns was purged from my body, and months of rehab after that before I could function normally again. However horrible the toll on my body was was nothing compared to what had been done to my mind.


    Per my father¡¯s orders, I¡¯d begun speaking to a therapist. A rare rainy day found me inside his office, watching the droplets cling to the window like survivors of a shipwreck, slowly but inevitably slipping down.


    ¡°Would you like to sit down, Ms. Irenside?¡± asked the therapist. He was young for a doctor, probably only a few years older than me. He was tall and had a normal build, short hair brushed back, and glasses which gave him a necessary look of intelligence and authority. He wore a blue collared shirt with a grey sweater vest and slacks.


    I parted from the window and sat down obediently on the large couch while he occupied a simple chair opposite me.


    ¡°I feel like we¡¯ve made good progress in the last week establishing what happened at the police station, but you haven¡¯t really opened up to me at all about how you feel. Really, that¡¯s the important part, and I won¡¯t be able to help you unless you can tell me about it.¡±


    Just the mention of the police station made my body and heart feel like they were on fire again. It had been months, but I remembered it like it had happened just this morning.


    My team and I were on-base in San Diego on active duty. Mostly just a cushy job, national guard, patrolling walls that were never attacked, drilling, ensuring our gear was always pristine. It was imperative to my father that I perform some active service, but he would also not tolerate me joining any branch of service that could threaten me, so national guard was it for me.


    It was another long day of patrolling a base that had never been attacked since the Sino War when word came in that a domestic terrorist attack was occurring at a police station downtown. As the active guard, my squad and I were the first to mobilize and headed out immediately.


    When we¡¯d gotten there, we kicked down the door, full exosuits, weapons drawn, ready for a firefight. Why else would someone break into a police armory except to snatch some guns? What we found was an Exhuman, sitting in a pool of lava. No guns, just fire and stone.


    What happened next was one bad decision after another. Siad, our squad leader issued the order for us to engage rather than retreat. We accepted the Exhuman¡¯s surrender rather than executing him on the spot. I believed him when he said he¡¯d capitulated.


    All of this led to my entire squad being killed before my eyes. Siad, Jager, Chase, Fletcher, Apollo. I held Siad¡¯s hand as he was liquefied in front of me by the insane Exhuman, felt the extreme heat searing my lungs as I tried to pull him free, and came back holding only his hand.


    And yet the worst of it was being spared by that inhuman monster. At least had I died with the rest, my soul would be at rest. Instead, he melted my helmet off my face and looked me in the eyes, leaving me alive with the charred remains of my brothers and sisters for his own unknowable reasons. After he was gone, I cried, inconsolable, until I was sedated and put in a regenerator to keep my fire-scarred lungs from shutting down.


    How was I supposed to discuss feelings such as those with this man wearing a sweater vest? I had to, I had been instructed to, yet I knew not even how to begin, how to make him understand the weight of the deaths I carried.


    ¡°Let¡¯s start simply,¡± he said. ¡°How are you feeling right now?¡±


    ¡°I am¡­feeling anxious,¡± I replied. ¡°Pressured to perform, though I do not know by which metrics my performance will be judged. I feel as though I am being asked to simply explain my entire existence.¡±


    He frowned. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I am not trying to pressure you, I simply want you to speak openly. There is no judgement or grading going on here, sometimes it just helps to sort through your thoughts be getting them out, and maybe I can help you do that.¡±


    ¡°I am uncertain that my thoughts need sorting. I am reasonably confident in what I know.¡±


    ¡°Indulge me then, please. What do you know?¡±


    ¡°I know that my squad is dead because I did not place a bullet in that Exhuman¡¯s head the second we entered the room. I know that I survived only because I had taken the best cover I could find, and was adjacent to Siad, our squadron leader who would invariably draw the most fire, and left my team to fend for themselves. I know that I trusted the word of a man¡­no, less than a man, an Exhuman, and for this, God has punished me with the deaths of all I care for, and with this cursed life.¡±


    ¡°Those facts all seem somewhat subjective.¡±


    ¡°You were not there, you would not know.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t just discount the thoughts and opinions of everyone who wasn¡¯t in that room.¡± He adjusted his glasses. ¡°I hear you only came to counselling because your father asked you to.¡±


    ¡°That is correct.¡±


    ¡°He wasn¡¯t in that room, yet you still value his opinion. What if he proposed that your facts were somewhat subjective?¡±


    ¡°I do not think that he would. He would understand the consequences of my decisions, as I do.¡±


    ¡°Regardless, he also sent you to me for me to help. That must mean, in his eyes, my thoughts have some value?¡±


    I paused to mull it over. He had a point. Father hadn¡¯t picked a psychologist at random, this man was deliberately selected and therefore possessed some merits. Invariably, whatever he possessed I would never see if I refused to comply with him. I had to at least attempt to answer his questions, I had to suppose.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°I conclude that you are correct. I apologize for discounting your opinion out-of-hand previously.¡±


    ¡°Hmm, that was a quick turn-around,¡± he said, writing a note. ¡°We should talk about your father¡¯s role in your life some other time.¡±


    ¡°Some other time,¡± I agreed.


    ¡°For now, let¡¯s go back to your earlier assertions. You feel guilty and responsible for the deaths of your team. That¡¯s very normal, often called survivor¡¯s guilt. I want you to know that this is very common and that it is not your fault.¡±


    ¡°I fail to see how that is the case. It was my decision to trust the Exhuman. This error in judgement was responsible for their deaths.¡±


    ¡°Everyone else there also believed him when he lied to you. They were strong, autonomous men and women who made their own judgements and reached the same conclusion as you.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°No, they¡¯re dead. You can¡¯t blame them.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not blaming anyone. I¡¯m trying to help you to realize that just because they are beyond blame, that doesn¡¯t mean you have to be blamed instead.¡±


    I thought about it for a moment before responding. ¡°I see no way that your argument is invalid, but do not believe it to be true.¡±


    ¡°As long as you¡¯re listening and thinking, that¡¯s all I can ask. Nobody¡¯s trying to force you to believe anything. I just want you to know that a lot of people have had similar experiences and go through the same kind of thing.¡±


    I swallowed as I remembered the feel of Siad¡¯s hand in mine, and felt the heat of lava fill the room. ¡°Not¡­nobody has had experiences similar to mine,¡± I whispered, trying to push the panic down. I breathed deeply, standing totally still, willing myself to remain calm.


    ¡°Are you alright? You seem flushed all of the sudden.¡±


    ¡°Yes¡­I¡­I believe that I am.¡± He frowned at me and wrote something down again.


    ¡°Pushing yourself too hard is the worst thing you can do right now. We need to explore your feelings as you are capable.¡± He stood up. ¡°Let¡¯s stop here for today,¡± he said.


    I didn¡¯t want to, we hadn¡¯t done anything at all but exchanged a few pointless words. I would never be finished with therapy if this was the rate of our progress.


    I said nothing, of course. He was the master here and I was to follow his instructions until I was fixed. I bowed graciously and left without another word.


    Hours later, I found myself at the harbor, staring out at the sun setting over the Pacific. As the water oscillated, it caught the sun in flashes, making it look like a dancing pattern of flashes across the ocean¡¯s surface, like squads firing in batteries at rifle training.


    I found myself here often, whenever I didn¡¯t have other more pressing tasks, though I knew not why. The ocean helped me think, or perhaps more accurately, helped me not think. The periodic lapping of the water, the glinting of the sun, the blazing hues of the sky all helped to hypnotize me into a state where I could be free from my nightmares for a time.


    Abruptly, I screamed at the top of my lungs, startling some passers-by sharing an umbrella. As loud as I could, for a dozen seconds, I screamed until I thought it might tear my throat out, and collapsed against the railing, gasping for breath, and feeling the burn of the cool air against my throat. It was nothing compared to the fire I¡¯d inhaled before.


    The ocean did not react, it rhythmically lapped against the stone harbor wall as it had ever done.


    I was just¡­so angry, all the time. At the Exhuman, obviously, and at myself. At my squad for being as foolish as I was and for their failures which led to their deaths. At myself again, for being able to think this was somehow their fault. At the deception, even more. I knew not why it stung me so¨Cin my mind, it seemed rational, even normal for the Exhuman to lie to us all, but having fallen for it made it constantly grip my heart, made me feel as though to ever trust again should be impossible.


    But more than that, more than anything, I was angry at how powerless I had been and how powerless I was. I had always trusted in my father¡¯s judgement and followed the lifestyle he had prepared for me. His wisdom and authority were absolute, and by following them, I could someday aspire to be as great as he. A few years in a cozy military post and then a college degree, and then straight up the chain of politics, as he had done, and as his mother had done, and her father before that.


    Change, he said, would come from within. Were I unhappy with the workings of the world, I needed only get within the system, become a powerful senator or state governor or cabinet member, and the change that I sought would be within my hands.


    It was not possible. The change I sought was impossible¨Cthe Exhuman named Kliver, who had killed the closest thing I had to family, to real family, was already dead, executed by an XPCA team in the streets after killing my squad. I and the others had been given medals and honors, as the Exhuman had killed only twenty civilians, and much of that was considered a result of the brave sacrifice of my team.


    The foolish sacrifice of my team, I thought. They did and achieved nothing that a scarecrow could not, except burn slightly slower. We were not a noble troop guarding an exit, we were a speedbump.


    I tried to scream again and instead came up coughing.


    Father was ecstatic, claiming his joy to be owed to my continued living, but I had seen his political face too often to be fooled by it. He believed I was made¨Cmy sacrifice, this national tragedy with my face upon it would win me support as his family never had before. ¡°The people love a service background, but a national hero?¡± he had said, even as I still had tears for my friends in my eyes.


    I could not do it, I thought, as fresh tears mixed with the rain streaming down my face. I could not live a life of quiet politics and affect change from within as my father wanted. I had a visceral desire to¡­to kill, I suppose. Exhumans. Deceivers. Those who had strayed too far from the light. The world needed protection from evil, and I would answer the call.


    Or¡­that is what I thought. That is what I had thought every day I had come out here. Hours later, I knew, I would be back at home, expected to be well-mannered and quiet and properly behaved again. My convictions, screamed out at an uncaring ocean would be left behind at the seaside, and I would become the person I always had been.


    It was the same and would always be the same. Unless, somehow, I could bring the person I was out here in there. To somehow take these truths, which I knew to be true, believed with every fiber of myself, and make them weather the storm of culture, logic, white walls, high-backed chairs, manservants, and order which pervaded that house.


    I needed to remind myself in there of the chaos which ruled out here.


    I turned and saw it; a neon-colored holo in a window which offered exactly what I needed. Shoes squishing with every step, I slogged across the street and opened the door with a bell ringing announcing my entry.


    ¡°Hey, welc¨Coh, you¡¯re soaked. Do you need a towel?¡± asked a girl with bubblegum-pink hair from behind a glass counter.


    ¡°It¨C¡°, I choked on my throat and raised a hand asking for a moment. ¡°It matters not, though I do apologize for the mess I make in your establishment.¡± My voice was quiet and hoarse but still there.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. I¡¯ll get Doug out here with a mop. What can we do for you?¡±


    ¡°I request a haircut.¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡± she said, eyeing my long, currently-soaked curtain of normally immaculate, golden blonde hair, and also took in my equally-soaked blazer and skirt. ¡°You just want a trim or¡­?¡±


    ¡°No. I am thinking of something completely new.¡± I smiled. ¡°What can you give me that really expresses the chaos in the world?¡±


    She gave me a wicked grin which affirmed my decision to come here. ¡°I think we¡¯ve got a thing or two you might like. Come with me and have a seat back here.¡±

 046. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    After the events of a few days ago, I had sworn myself to a life completely free from excitement. Between another fight with AEGIS, another fight of a completely different nature with Karu, and potentially being briefly braindead, I was ready to spend my days quietly fishing and hunting in preparation for winter.


    The days were growing shorter and darker yet, and more than once there had been a gripping unnatural chill which felt like winter peeking its head in just to see if the world was still there and all ready for its arrival. I knew I didn¡¯t have too long before the first snows, and after that it would be harder to put food away.


    Fortunately, unlike many lost in the wilds, I had a mass-fab, and in the very worst-case scenario, could harvest nearly any biological matter from wood to pine needles, have the mass-fab break it down and reprocess it into something edible. It wouldn¡¯t be good, but it would be survival. I hoped to only lean on this advantage as little as I could, as besides the obvious grossness of eating brown biological sludge, I didn¡¯t know if I could trust the machine staying functional forever. Putting all my food stores in it and having it crap out on me would be a death sentence.


    So here I was again, crawling through the underbrush with a bow and arrows. I had my lightning bulbs as a backup, but they tended to make the animal tense, tough, and sort of¡­instant-fried from the inside. It sounded delicious in theory, but in practice, it led to inedible veins of ashen black surrounded by dry raw meat.


    Still, my hunting aptitude wasn¡¯t so great, and I had to lightning down my prey more often than not. If I had better control of my powers, I could just stun them and not fry them, but I wasn¡¯t even sure how I¡¯d manage. The bulbs seemed deadly no matter how large or small I made them, just with differently-sized blast radii and prep times.


    I sighed again and nursed my aching lower back, dropping to all fours to give my spine a rest.


    I had only crept a few feet like that before I saw the underbrush move in front of me. Something big, larger than a boar. A deer maybe? A bear?


    If it was a bear, I¡¯d have to show AEGIS. No idea what was up with her fascination with the things.


    I held my breath and shifted my weight onto my knees to free my hands, slowly drawing the bowstring. Blinking seemed like a luxury as the bushes continued shifting. I heard a thump of the animal colliding with something metal and solid, it sounded large.


    Still, I wasn¡¯t afraid. I was an Exhuman. The most I had to lose here was a decently-cooked meal. I let the arrow fly and heard it impact with a muffled thump.


    The animal, whatever it was, didn¡¯t seem to feel the impact, but I saw one shining eye flash through the leaves and take in the arrow for a moment, and then peer right at me for an instant before bolting. I swore and jumped into a chase.


    Whatever it was, it was fast. It bounded through the trees easily, keeping far enough in front of me that I could only see glimpses of it and hear it whining as it ran and the heavy thuds of its footfalls.


    Knowing the area from my past months in these woods, I cut left. There was rocky terrain ahead which would slow it down. By going around, I could head it off and force it into the open where hopefully I¡¯d get another shot with my bow before I had to turn to lightning. I heard it still pounding at the ground as it ran, hearing the loose rocks sliding under its feet.


    Once I¡¯d drawn parallel, I cut back in so I¡¯d appear in front of and to the left of the beast. I drew back my bow and had only a couple of seconds before it burst through the trees and swerved to evade me.


    It was¡­a robot. A huge one, quadruped like DOG, but much, much bigger and bulkier, and with a different design, and a camera mounted on a long flexible neck like a scorpion¡¯s tail. My first thought was this must be another secret project of AEGIS¡¯, but¡­why would it run? And more, AEGIS hadn¡¯t been running the mass-fab constantly like she had when making DOG¡­much less enough to make something even larger. This was definitely not one of hers.


    And then I realized. Black Shark, information broker with a lot of resources and trying to hunt me down. She would have the means and the motive to send robots into the exclusion zones to find me¡­and once she did, I¡¯d never be able to sleep with both eyes closed again. I had to stop the robot.


    Thankfully, as any animal would do, it careened away from me to its right and broke into the open. While it was still in range, I blasted it with as much lightning as I could muster, slicing away at it with two swords and just generally exploding the area with electricity. I must have fried some systems because it stumbled, but wasn¡¯t down. It loped away, adjusting quickly to its reduced mobility.


    Then came the barrage of bulbs at it. Tons of small ones, as fast as I could throw them. The electrocution, surprisingly, seemed to do little. As I¡¯d expect from an info broker, everything in the unit was probably electrically shielded in preparation for my powers, but still, lightning was searing hot, and I was punching holes in the thing left and right, making it bleed molten metal as pivots and servos welded into place and it slowly became more and more immobile and unresponsive, before finally collapsing into a twisting mechanical mass.


    The question was, was it too late? It had looked right at me in the brush, presumably well enough to ID me. If it was satellite-capable, it¡¯d be hooked on the ¡®net and my face and location were already hers. If not¡­I guess I had better shut it down for good and make sure none of the data was retrievable. I advanced on the helpless machine, lightning blades at the ready.


    Four swords held in place right through its core caused the body of the unit to melt within a dozen seconds, bubbling and rupturing with a dangerous spray of molten metal. The camera-stinger kept its gaze fixed on me until the last possible moment, when the machine finally collapsed lifeless. Even then, to be safe, I spent another minute reducing the whole thing to a simmering, smoking mess.


    I gave myself a moment to breathe in relief before analyzing my situation. There were two possibilities here: Either my face and location were already on the ¡®net or they weren¡¯t. Ignoring the former situation over which I had no control, that meant this robot was based somewhere for information and instruction upload and retrieval.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Which led me to¡­the huge tracks the machine left everywhere. Even someone like me whose entire experience in tracking something was a brief primer given by Wynn could follow these tracks. Quickly, I followed the thrown grass ruts back to the forest where we¡¯d emerged, and then the craterous footprints back to where I¡¯d first encountered the thing.


    Tracking became quite a bit harder after that as it hadn¡¯t been running full-tilt before encountering me, and though it was heavy, it seemed it was very deliberate in placing its feet on rocks or leaves where it could avoid mud and dirt. Probably a measure to save on having to clean the thing, I thought, since any real tracker would have no problem following the trail. How indulgent.


    The trail seemed to wind at random, but before long I realized I was going in circles. Smaller and smaller circles, like the thing had started somewhere and gone in a widening spiral from there. It took more than an hour to finish the first circle, but only 45 minutes to close the second. What was it doing, I wondered? Was this its optimal search pattern to make sure it didn¡¯t miss anything?


    I skipped ahead and went straight to the center, creeping slowly, expecting to find a command center or truck or even just another bigger robot there. Instead, there was nothing, just a small clearing. Here there were two sets of tracks, one, I confirmed led to the spiral I¡¯d just skipped, and the other led north, crossing the spiral once a lap, but totally missed by my amatuer eyes. I followed that trail, feeling I was really getting somewhere now, and keeping slow and quiet.


    It was another uninterrupted hour and a half of prowling, and my legs and back were killing me when I finally peeked around another tree and immediately fell back, my heart racing in my chest.


    A concrete building, about the same age and construction as The Bunker, lost deep in the woods to the west of the facility crater. If I had to guess, I¡¯d say it was just a little closer to the epicenter crater than The Bunker, but due west instead of due south. Outside the building was a metal fence, in better condition than most around here, and topped with barbed wire, and within that gate were two more of the behemoth quadruped robots.


    This was it, I thought. The actual base of operations. The robots were peering around intently, apparently on guard duty, and also apparently unaware of my presence. I had to be smart, they could have all kinds of crazy optics, and if I moved out from behind this tree, they¡¯d see me for certain.


    I had to think carefully. If I went in and they ran, there is no way I could stop both. On the other hand, if Black Shark was in that building, I could capture her and be scott free. But if she was in there, instead of running, they might fight back. I had no idea what weapons, if any, they were carrying, but given her foresight in electrically shielding them, it¡¯s almost certain that whatever they carried would be effective through my shield.


    She might even have data from Karu¡¯s fights with me, I realized. Karu wouldn¡¯t tell her, but she would file reports with the Hunters Association, and from there, who knew where the information went.


    But that was unlikely. There was almost no chance Black Shark was in there herself. At best, there¡¯d be a hired flunky operating the robots and reporting to Black Shark. No need for her to come personally to gather intel.


    I didn¡¯t see a winning move here except to withdraw for now. I could come back with the exosuit and armed with handfuls of explosives and simply wipe them out, or maybe AEGIS had some clever way of doing some hackery stuff. I was about to turn and go when I saw another robot emerging and heading up the path towards the base.


    I couldn¡¯t believe it. It was DOG. It didn¡¯t just look like it, it was more than a passing resemblance as the larger robots had, it was DOG itself, whom I¡¯d played with, who¡¯d stayed in my room while I slept.


    My mind spun. So AEGIS was working with Black Shark out here? Or was this all hers? How did she managed to make a minimum of three huge robots without me even knowing? And¡­if they were hers, again, why did it run, and why were they electrically shielded? Was she expecting me to accidentally torch them in the woods like I¡¯d done?


    Or was I overthinking this. Maybe electricity was just not as good against robots as media had led me to believe. It still didn¡¯t explain anything else, or what was possibly in that other building.


    Defeat and despair welled up in me and I felt the overwhelming urge to flee. I didn¡¯t know what was going on, but I needed to confront AEGIS and find out. I turned and ran, leaving the two robots and DOG behind.


    I veered east, into the blast radius, wanting to be in the open so that I could run more easily. The huge crater nearby was a fitting metaphor for what was going on in my mind at the moment, and my heart pounding from running covered up my heart pounding from fear or anger.


    I only made it halfway home before I had to stop, panting and out of shape. I stopped against a ruined wall and caught my breath.


    Forget the how¡­why? Living with me for months and probably knowing me better than either of the other two girls, why did she still feel like she had to hide things from me? Why was she so paranoid about people, and Exhumans, and me, constantly? Was it that she didn¡¯t trust me to take care of myself, so she was building her own protectors? Was it just a step up in the DOG program to collect more resources and faster? Or was she establishing her independence so that when I invariably blew myself up or died fighting Karu or whatever, she wouldn¡¯t be stuck, alone and helpless again?


    I swallowed hard and tried to get a check on my breathing.


    I remembered the first time I¡¯d met her, digging her box out of the ground. She wailed for help and cried just to see another face. Since then, she¡¯d been terrified of abandonment, but more and more, she¡¯d been pushy and paranoid instead of the thankful scared girl I¡¯d first met.


    I wondered what changed. Was it me? I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d changed at all since I got here, but that probably wasn¡¯t true. Karu and Saga were oddities to consider, but I never got the impression she thought much of them other than how they threatened me, and by extension, her.


    I felt like the solution was staring me in the face, and I didn¡¯t want to accept it because it made me¡­sad, honestly. Like Saga, I¡¯d done exactly zero to liberate AEGIS from her prison, and she¡¯d started on her own solution out. She¡¯d built up a small army so that if or when I was of no use to her anymore, she had other resources to fall back on, and therefore needed me less and less, and consequently worried about me less and less.


    The robots running away, the need to build a new base, the lightning-shielded robots presumably in case I disagreed with her new efforts¡­they all made sense.


    The pieces fit¡­I just wasn¡¯t sure how I felt about being squeezed out of her life like this. And to find out so¡­abruptly.


    I didn¡¯t want to say she owed me for saving her, but on some level that¡¯s exactly how I felt. It made me seem like a terrible person, and I would never hold it over her¡­but for her to just cut me out like this? It was¡­was¡­


    It was fine.


    I sighed.


    I had to realize that to her, I had been useless. I had made zero progress on getting her free, and hadn¡¯t even asked her about her crystalline data dump in weeks. Looking at it like that, it was totally reasonable for her to want to move on, make progress, be free. Heck, she might look my age, but she might not have Saga¡¯s immortality, meaning that she¡¯d already spent a fifth of her life in that room. Who could blame her for not wanting to spend more?


    I sighed again and got to my feet. They were much heavier now, but from my run or my thoughts, I couldn¡¯t tell.


    I wouldn¡¯t tell AEGIS about running into her little setup. Her big robot which I scrapped was well out of her range and she wouldn¡¯t be able to tell it was me who¡¯d destroyed it unless she stumbled on the wreckage directly. I¡¯d just keep things quiet for now and let her handle the situation as she chose.


    Even if she chose to leave, that was something I would just have to accept.

 047. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I shivered as I stood waist-deep in the cold running water, and wondered if I¡¯d just go all winter without bathing.


    Hygiene was a luxury I¡¯d had to mostly abandon in the wild, but even so, I tried to take a bath and wash out all my clothes at least twice a week, but it was getting so cold now, I could no longer just lay out naked on the riverbank and let the sun warm and dry me. I had plenty of time to kill because my clothes were taking longer and longer to dry, but I didn¡¯t want to kill that time. I wanted to be warm and inside and dressed.


    Speaking of which, now was usually around the time when I¡¯d have to keep an eye out for cam-drones which, in AEGIS¡¯ words ¡®just so happened to be patrolling the area.¡¯ She¡¯d made quite a nuisance out of being captivated by my body, and I felt sometimes, I spent more time trying to shut her down and threatening to break her toys than I actually did getting clean.


    No such problems today, it seemed. That or she was just getting better at hiding them. I did lie and say I was just going fishing¡­and I would come home with some fish, so not technically lying. But still.


    Without having to fight off the peeping drones, now the most fun part. I called it practice, which it probably was, but it was also just good manly fun. I made a tiny blade of lightning between my thumb and forefinger and drew it down my cheek, focusing on having it adhere exactly to the contour of my face.


    I¡¯d learned that lightning under my control basically did whatever I wanted, as long as it was close to me and I was focusing on it. Even here, with my face all wet, I could carefully control the flow of electricity so that it always arced precisely between my fingers, instead of dissipating into the water and shocking me. Like a tiny saw, the wisp of lightning eradicated any hairs which dared peek beyond the surface of my skin.


    No shaving cream, no cleanup, perfectly smooth every time. If only I could market this.


    I¡¯d considered growing out a beard, both because I hear they were warm, and because Wynn had a fantastic one, plus there wasn¡¯t much else to do out here, but I didn¡¯t know how accurately I could keep it trimmed without a mirror, and after my last two traumatizing experiences, I wasn¡¯t interested in looking in a mirror anymore. Clean-shaven was fast and easy, and kept me above mockery from the girls.


    It was only when I couldn¡¯t feel the smooth pebbles under my numb toes anymore that I finally gave up and got out. Not that the river was ever exactly warm, but the air above it was felt really, really cold. I¡¯d often considered asking AEGIS what we could do about getting an indoor shower (and toilet, while I was dreaming) but knew that would essentially give her free reign on spying on me whenever her perverted little heart desired. I wasn¡¯t so desperate as that quite yet, but the nippy air was definitely making a strong case in favor of her debauchery.


    I walked over to the tree to check my clothes. Still damp, and being both my only set and also my only souvenir of my past life, I refused to expose them to lightning or fire to dry, worried that I¡¯d damage them more than my lifestyle already did. I might put them on and let my body heat try to do its thing, but then I¡¯d be even colder. Still, not much else for me to do now but the fishing I¡¯d told AEGIS I would do.


    But if cold clothes sucked, sitting on my bare ass on the riverbank with a fishing rod sucked even more. So I bit the bullet, put on my damp clothes, picked up my rod, and headed further downriver.


    I was surprised to see Wynn there, and very glad I¡¯d put my clothes back on first. He greeted me with a wave and an old, wheezy chuckle.


    ¡°So glad to see you¡¯re still taking care of yourself,¡± he said. ¡°Hope my fishing tips have come in handy?¡±


    ¡°They¡¯ve been a lifesaver. I think I¡¯d probably have starved if not for you.¡±


    ¡°You credit the teacher when the student did all the learning,¡± he laughed. ¡°I¡¯m just happy to have some company out here and someone who listens to my old long-winded tales.¡±


    ¡°Where¡¯s Tate?¡± I asked.


    ¡°He¡¯s back at our little camp, doing some repairs. We¡¯ve moved in quite close by for the winter, I hope you don¡¯t mind.¡±


    ¡°I saw you both earlier. You were uh¡­under Saga¡¯s spell at the time.¡±


    ¡°Oh yes, she does that from time to time. Work in the mines most every night, she drifts off and traumatizes us sometimes, and berates us for being merely human most other times. I¡¯ve been trying to work on her, but the girl is quite stubborn in insisting that everything I say is wrong simply because I¡¯m not Exhuman. In a way, it¡¯s funny, a complete reversal from how Exhumans are treated in normal society,¡± he laughed.


    I didn¡¯t think it was funny at all. ¡°I think it¡¯s pretty sad, honestly. I know she¡¯s had a lot of bad experiences, and can only imagine the thoughts she¡¯s peeked into over the years, but I wish she didn¡¯t feel like she does¡­or that society felt like it does.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s let me know quite extensively what an ¡®absurdist dreamer¡¯ you are, or several other less-flattering comparisons. In fact, she talks about you an awful lot when you¡¯re not around. Whatever you¡¯ve said to her, I think she¡¯s taken a liking to you,¡± he said with a wink.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how that would be possible. I¡¯m always just telling her to stop brainwashing the two of you and stop trying to kill all the humans. This isn¡¯t revolutionary stuff here.¡±


    ¡°Maybe not, but I think the manner of the telling is as important as the message in this case. Or maybe I¡¯m just an optimistic old man trying to see young love one more time before I pass.¡±


    ¡°I think technically Saga is like, a hundred years older than you.¡±


    ¡°Is that so? Well for being so old, she has the voice of an angel.¡±


    ¡°An angel of death maybe. She does want to solve a disproportionate number of her problems just by eliminating people.¡±


    ¡°She says so, but for all her bluster of how one day she¡¯s going to pop Tate and my heads like melons, she¡¯s yet to do so, even though we¡¯ve long since proven our uselessness in digging her free. I think she¡¯s nicer than she lets on.¡±Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Well, we can hope so, because if she¡¯s exactly as nice as she lets on, we¡¯re in for another world war if she ever gets free.¡± Wynn laughed, though I was a little skeptical how much I¡¯d actually been joking. He stopped laughing and watched me staring at the water.


    ¡°You¡¯ve got something bigger on your mind, haven¡¯t you boy?¡± he asked. I nodded glumly. ¡°Well, you don¡¯t have to share, but if you want to talk about it, I¡¯m here for you.


    ¡°I appreciate that. A lot.¡±


    ¡°Nature gives us many gifts, but solitude is just as often a curse.¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­and that¡¯s not unrelated to my issue.¡± I paused a moment to get my thoughts in order while Wynn just sat and waited in silence. ¡°I think AEGIS is leaving. She didn¡¯t tell me, but I sort of accidentally ran into a whole setup she¡¯d made in secret. She¡¯s got a bunch of robots out there working on things, and I feel lame and useless.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. Good for her, getting out on her own, though.¡±


    ¡°I guess. I just wish I hadn¡¯t let her down so much.¡±


    ¡°Have you though?¡±


    ¡°Of course I have. I was supposed to be helping her escape and haven¡¯t made any progress whatsoever. I think that¡¯s why she¡¯s leaving.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. Let me ask you something, do you think I¡¯ve let you down at helping your friend Saga to get out?¡±


    ¡°No, not at all. You¡¯ve done so much for us, you¡¯ve probably saved my life a number of times just by what you¡¯ve taught me.¡±


    ¡°So you think I¡¯m not letting you down, even though I¡¯m not able to offer you something you badly need help with?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not the same. I promised AEGIS I¡¯d help her escape, you¡¯re just incidentally a great person.¡±


    ¡°Well, supposing I was the same great person I am but I also promised you I¡¯d help you with Saga. Would you feel let down?¡±


    ¡°No. You still saved my life and taught me a ton of stuff.¡±


    ¡°So what¡¯s the difference between me and you in this discussion and you and her in real life?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Something, I guess? I¡¯m not as awesome as you are.¡±


    He laughed again. ¡°You literally saved her life by digging her up, I only armed you with the knowledge you need to live out here and you keep telling me how I¡¯ve saved yours. That makes you seem a lot more ¡®awesome¡¯ than I am to me.¡± The word felt ridiculous coming out of his old, wheezy mouth.


    ¡°But¡­it¡¯s not¡­urgh.¡±


    ¡°Urgh indeed.¡±


    We sat in silence watching the fishing lines in the water for a few minutes before he spoke again.


    ¡°I think¡­you¡¯re trying to find blame in yourself for her leaving, when her leaving is just a natural part of things. Unless the two of you plan to stay in that concrete building together forever, at some point, something is going to change. You can¡¯t blame yourself for that.¡±


    ¡°I can blame myself for it happening now.¡±


    ¡°Maybe. That doesn¡¯t make you any more right, though,¡± he said with a wink. ¡°She¡¯s an independent girl and someday will do her own thing without you. You can either accept it or stand in her way, but either way it¡¯s happening. Happens with every child, will even happen with my Tate someday. All I can do is hope that the time I spent with him was enough to teach him to choose well.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think AEGIS is exactly my kid. She¡¯s like¡­my age.¡±


    ¡°And yet you¡¯re fretting about her leaving your house like a worried mother.¡±


    ¡°I guess.¡±


    I felt like more than that, AEGIS and I were slipping apart and found it hard to put into words.


    ¡°I guess¡­¡± I started while he again waited patiently. ¡°I guess I feel like it¡¯s more than that. Like the last few days, she¡¯s been a lot more quiet instead of snarky. This morning, I said bye to her and she hardly even responded. I guess¡­if she is planning to leave¡­she¡¯s cutting me off before-hand so it won¡¯t hurt her so much, but in doing so, it¡¯s hurting me more.¡±


    He just wrapped an arm around me and held me for a few moments.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think there is much for me to say,¡± he wheezed. ¡°I am sorry that you are hurting. If there is anything I can do for you, just let me know and I will make happen for you.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said quietly, and felt myself lost in the moment.


    We fished for hours in silence after that. Not much seemed to be biting, but I sort of preferred it that way right now, being lost in my thoughts with my old friend nearby just passively lending me his support.


    It still didn¡¯t sit right with me. Even if she was leaving, even if there was nothing I could do about it, even if I should be happy and support her instead of sad she was leaving¡­there had to be something I could do. Something to fight against her emotional tide going out.


    I¡¯d been thinking on the issue for a few hours when I had a great idea. I jumped up and started to head off, remembering to grab my pole and bid a farewell to Wynn.


    ¡°Looks like you¡¯ve had a thought,¡± he said, laughing.


    ¡°Yeah¡­I don¡¯t know if it¡¯ll work out, but I want to try.¡±


    ¡°Well, best of luck young man.¡±


    I slipped back into The Bunker and as surreptitiously as possible dug through a pile of junk while talking to AEGIS.


    ¡°Hey, I¡¯m back.¡±


    ¡°I saw. No fish?¡±


    ¡°Nah, not really biting. Ran into Wynn out there and we talked.¡±


    ¡°Mmhmm.¡± She typed away at her terminal without giving me a second glance. Meanwhile, my hand closed on something cold and smooth, and I slipped it into my pocket.


    ¡°Oh, shoot, I forgot to¡­tell him something,¡± I said, stepping back towards the door.


    ¡°Yep,¡± she said in the same flat tone.


    I jogged back out in the direction of the river but stopped once I was out of AEGIS¡¯ range.


    Her flat response was every conversation I¡¯d had with her the last few days, ever since I accidentally killed her robot. At this point, I thought for sure she knew, but she never mentioned it. I wasn¡¯t sure if she was mad at me or just over me.


    But in either case, I wasn¡¯t going to let her just slip away quietly without doing something about it. I drew out a little stylus made of lightning in my hand and got to work carving up the old junk I¡¯d pulled from the pile.


    It was slow work but I was happy with it. It was past sundown when I finally came home, whistling cheerily as I entered to make sure AEGIS knew I was coming.


    ¡°Hey,¡± she said, not looking up.


    ¡°Hey, AEGIS. Can we talk?¡± She gave a heavy sigh and pushed her terminal back like I was really ruining her whole day.


    ¡°Talk.¡±


    ¡°Well¡­I feel like we¡¯ve drifted apart the last few days, and I think I know why.¡± She opened her mouth to respond but I continued. ¡°I saw your robots out in the western forest, I know what you¡¯ve been working on.¡±


    ¡°You¡­do?¡± she said, nervously glancing around.


    ¡°Yeah. And I wanted to let you know that I¡¯m okay with it. I¡¯m sorry I couldn¡¯t help you more with escaping, and if you want to have a go at it with the robots, I understand. I appreciate everything you¡¯ve done for me while you were here.¡±


    ¡°You¡­no. Don¡¯t thank me,¡± she said, tears forming in the corners of her eyes while her mouth twitched.


    ¡°No, it¡¯s okay. It¡¯s really okay. I¡¯m happy that you¡¯re doing what you want to be doing, even if it¡¯s without me.¡±


    ¡°N-no, you b-b-big dummy,¡± she cried. Looking at her bawling made me start to want to cry too, so I had to get this out before I was too much of a mess.


    ¡°Look, don¡¯t say anything, just¡­I made you something.¡± I fished in my pocket and pulled out what I¡¯d spent the last hours working on. When she saw it, she made a noise halfway between a gasp and a squeak and began stroking one of her pigtails so forcefully I thought she might give herself a headache.


    ¡°It¡¯s the uh, the original lens that came with your AEGIS box. I used my powers to do a little etching. Sorry I¡¯m not the greatest artist.¡±


    I held it up in front of her camera for her to see. The artistry sucked but the really neat look of the glass etching compensated, I thought. On the flat base, etched backwards so that it¡¯d look forwards from the top, I¡¯d drawn a rough picture of the two of us, basically just smiling and laughing heads, with the caption of ¡°Best Exhuman Roommates Ever¡±.


    ¡°I¡¯ll just put it here,¡± I said, setting it down on top of the AEGIS box. ¡°You can move it with DOG or have me put it up in your new place, or whatever you want. Just wanted to give you something to remember me by.¡±


    ¡°I¡­I don¡¯t¡­I can¡¯t¡­¡±


    ¡°Just keep it if you want it. I won¡¯t feel too bad if you throw it out,¡± I forced a laugh.


    ¡°I¡­I¡¯m going to keep this forever. T-thank you, I¡¯ll never f-fo-forget yoooouuuu!¡± she managed to get out, trailing off into a barely-comprehensible squeal before breaking down completely.


    I didn¡¯t want to force her to interact with me any more than she wanted to, and so I bid her a simple goodnight and went to bed early, rolling over to face the wall, and listening to her sniffle and wail for what seemed like hours into the night.

 048. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I woke up in the dead of night with a sense of urgent wrongness. I rolled over to face the room and saw a black shape looming over me, massive, with only one tiny red pinprick of light emitted from the very center of the darkness.


    Moving more on instinct than thought, I swung my arms, and lightning blades up in front of me. One of the blades sheared through my hammock and sent me spilling out sideways, which turned out to save my life as a huge blade attached to the black shape¡¯s arm crunched down and pulverized the hammock where I¡¯d been sitting.


    I rolled to my feet but was still trapped. The thing was massive, hunched over and easily three or four times as broad as I was, and barely able to fit inside the room. With it¡¯s huge reach, and the cramped confines and sheer amount of junk in the room, there was no way I could move freely or get past it.


    Still, there was something I could do.


    I bounded towards it, and clapped twice.


    Light flooded the room and the thing recoiled, briefly blinded. I took the brief moment to get a good look at my nighttime assassin.


    It was¡­a huge robot. Bigger even than AEGIS¡¯ bigger variants of DOG, but definitely with some of their DNA in its mix. It moved on four legs, but instead of being spidery, they had treads on the end of each, and instead of a small central body it had a huge torso, with two powerful arms, one ending in a hand, and the other in a lethal-looking set of blades. It had no head, instead having an array of sensors in the center of its chest.


    If it was one of AEGIS¡¯ machines, and it worked the same way as DOG, the little red light next to the camera seemed to indicate that she was driving.


    ¡°AEGIS? You in there?¡± I asked. The machine stayed in a ready pose and did not move. ¡°I would kind of like to know the meaning of this.¡± I stole a glance behind me and noticed that the AEGIS box was gone, almost confirming my suspicions.


    ¡°I don¡¯t like this game!¡± I shouted at it. ¡°Let me out, please!¡±


    It didn¡¯t reply, but it did attack again. Sweeping its huge arm sideways, it devastated a huge arc in front of it. I jumped back against the wall to barely evade the swing, and sliced at it with my lightning swords as it passed, to absolutely no effect. The resistive shielding on these guys was even better than that on the big DOGs, and maybe she¡¯d learned from the one I killed and made it impossible to melt as well.


    It had me pinned in the corner when it swung again. Knowing I couldn¡¯t avoid it, I went in, instead, rushing at the swinging arm and diving under it at the elbow. The arm tried to change course to intercept me, but it was too big and heavy, and just scraped a huge gouge in the concrete floor inches behind me. I was on its side now, and it quickly was rotating in place using the treads on its feet to spin. I put some shelves between me and it and tried to make for the door.


    Fucking AEGIS had finally closed the damn door. Rusty piece of shit that it was, I didn¡¯t think I could get it open with this murderbot trying to cut me in the process. I would have to deal with it first.


    But how was I supposed to fight something this strong in such a small space, when it was presumably designed by somebody who knew exactly how to kill me?


    I took another quick look around. The Exosuit was gone, as were the boxes of guns and explosives. AEGIS had taken everything which could have given me a fighting chance.


    Well, fuck her.


    Before the thing could finish turning on me, I charged it. No use waiting for it to bring its sword to bear again. As one, four blades of lightning pierced right through its center. I could¡­feel them, if that was the right term. They were held together by my will, so in a way they were an extension of myself. As they went into the machine¡¯s torso, I felt them subtly twisting and bending, shunted by a lattice specifically put in place to divert electricity, avoiding wires quadruple-insulated. Doing what lightning liked to do, follow the path of least resistance.


    To my annoyance. AEGIS had the whole thing built with lightning-immunity in mind, its guts were wrapped in layer after layer of faraday cages and lightning rods, all designed to shunt electricity away from vital areas and out of the machine.


    I couldn¡¯t even burn the thing. The parts of it that electricity were allowed to flow through had enormous heat tolerances, and though they glowed red and white from the entire seconds that I pumped lightning into them, they did not soften or shift.


    In essence, I was fucked.


    Before it even finished turning, it cleaved at me again. I jumped back, out of reach, but it quickly rolled forward, taking up the space and now beginning to threaten pinning me against this wall instead. I was reminded of how nimble for its size DOG was. This one was so much bigger, but still just as fast, even moving on treads instead of legs. I had to think of something and quick.


    Next swipe, I followed the swing, grabbing the blade-arm and pinning myself to it. It wasn¡¯t much of a plan, but it couldn¡¯t cut me in half if I was rooted to the blade. It gave me a couple of experimental swings to dislodge me, when suddenly I found myself grabbed by the shoulder by the robot¡¯s other arm and forcibly ripped off. Now helpless in its grasp, it reared back and slammed me into the ceiling.


    Stars popped in front of my eyes as the ceiling crashed into me again. My arms and legs dangled helplessly from the machine¡¯s huge metal arm.


    I threw out lightning everywhere I could, having nothing else I could do. My swords swung like crazy, slicing right through it with no effect, like it was a ghost. I saturated the air with energy and could smell nothing but ozone, but the machine cared not at all. Finally, after cracking my head on the ceiling one more time, I heaved a huge lightning bulb at it, flinching as the expanding wave of electricity washed over me.


    I had never actually tested if I was immune to lightning or not. The fact that I could use it to shave of my hairs definitely indicated that my body was in no way naturally resilient. And more¡­I¡¯d never been shocked during my Ramanathan window. So as the arcing web of lightning consumed me, I realized this might just be the end.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    It¡­wasn¡¯t. It didn¡¯t hurt the robot either. I realized that I was subconsciously using my powers to divert the energy off of me. If the lightning hit me and passed through my body, I may very well be dead, but some part of my brain could control lightning, had an intuitive grasp of how to make my powers go. It was what I tapped into when I made swords swing or crafted a bulb in my hands, and it was the part of me that was actively making whatever lightning which arced into me go right around me instead of through me, tracing my skin but never touching me.


    It straight up just broke the laws of physics, but hell, so did everything else about Exhumans, so I wasn¡¯t going to complain.


    As my powers protected me, I realized I¡¯d done the same thing consciously that morning, shaving. Carefully manipulating the flow of energy to shave in the river, not allowing the lightning to do as physics intended, but rather follow my flow, my rules, my command. Resistance and conductivity be damned, I was an Exhuman who controlled electricity.


    And this robot was about to be massively fucked.


    I grabbed the arm holding me across the chest with both hands and pumped electricity into it. At first, the current just flowed into the dampeners in the resistive armor, but I forced it, willed it to go further, to penetrate the defenses and strike at the vulnerable parts beneath.


    Painfully slowly, the current straightened out, not following the curvature of the arm, but passing straight through it. It burned wires and blew fuses, seared internal servos and pneumatic pumps, and with a cloud of smoke and some small explosions, the arm released me and fell useless at the robot¡¯s side.


    AEGIS must have been driving because the robot seemed to react with shock, taking half a step/roll back, and guarding its body with the extended blade. I swear I saw one of the chest-embedded camera¡¯s aperture widen in surprise.


    I didn¡¯t give her time to recover. I darted in, faking to one side and then rolling off towards the disabled arm. The treads rolled at me, trying to crush or pin my legs, but I swept to the side and planted myself at the bottom of its torso, hanging off of it underneath its dead arm. From each hand, I began the process of pumping electricity into the central systems.


    There was a lot of empty space in the machine. Robots were at the same time so much simpler and more complicated than humans. A lot of the space was there for protection, I realized, an air gap or insulation layer to divert electric flow. Still, lots of the thing¡¯s insides were notempty, and that¡¯s where I forced the energy to flow.


    In her defense, AEGIS¡¯ machine fought to the end. It flailed and thrashed, spinning every possible way and even throwing me off twice, but without the short-range arm in play, it had no chance of defeating me without keeping me at range and skewering me, and that was a game I refused to play. I stayed close, strafing around it and keeping it constantly having to rotate to face me, pumping electricity into it constantly, and as I did, it gradually became more and more unresponsive as systems shut down, parts became inoperable, treads refused to move.


    Until finally it was dead. The light was still on and the cameras still adjusted to point at me like a set of beady eyes, but it could no longer move or fight.


    It felt like a hollow victory.


    ¡°WHY, AEGIS!?¡± I screamed at the immobile unit. ¡°WHY KILL ME? I DON¡¯T UNDERSTAND.¡±


    In response, the red light went out. She was elsewhere now.


    I had an idea where that might be. I took a few minutes to sit and rest, letting my head stop spinning and getting the stars out of my eyes. I wished I had Saga to help me put my brain back on faster. I cut a length of synthetic weave and wrapped it around my head a few times to keep the blood out of my face and hopefully inside my body and took a final inventory before heading out.


    She¡¯d taken pretty much everything of value, the spiteful bitch. Even Karu¡¯s nutrient paste, despite the fact she couldn¡¯t even eat. I guess she wanted me to fight hungry. The mass-fab was unsurprisingly completely shut down, and many other bits and pieces of what I had assumed were just junk were missing as well. I fumed and headed to the door.


    Now at no risk of spontaneous bisection, I was able to slowly open the crappy rusty door, swearing as it slowly grated on its hinges, seemingly going nowhere. Then, with a boom, it flew open at once, sending me falling outside into the night.


    There, waiting for me were 3 of the large DOG units, each holding a long spear, easily ten feet long and with a blade as broad as my head. As I stumbled out, the scorpion-tail necks of all three trailed me in unison.


    As I charged the one with the glowing red light on, I finally remembered what AEGIS had said after making DOG. She wanted to make another series, with an externally-mounted camera. DOG-Enhanced.


    I decided I definitely preferred the original to the DOG-Es.


    They were harder to deal with than the big guy, though at least I could wear them down with ranged bulbs, which, being light-speed, were impossible for them to dodge. But other than that, they were so fast and hopping all over the place it was equally impossible for me to get a hand on them and force some power through their vitals.


    Every time I finally made one stumble or got a good hit in, the other two pressured me harder instantly, keeping me from capitalizing on my advantage until the wounded DOG-E could get back up. Unengaged units circled behind me, and tried to impale me from behind, and more than once, I dodged only barely in time, getting a slash on my body as a consolation prize for the machine.


    It was exhausting, but it was also obvious these three weren¡¯t meant for the fight. They worked well together and were fast, but they weren¡¯t that aggressive, only the one with the red light really led any attacks, and the other two followed. I was forced to play a game of keep the red-light DOG-E disabled, while AEGIS was playing switch between the three as fast and annoyingly as possible.


    We were both wearing each other down, but I wasn¡¯t getting much slower with every attack and they were. A stray blow on me meant a gash or bruise, which could make me favor a leg or hurt, but a stray blow on them meant ruptured electronics, unresponsive legs, or melted frame and limited range of motion.


    AEGIS did her best managing the DOG-Es even as they were more scrap than robot by the end, but she never really stood a chance with these. As I terminated the second one, the third one lit up with the red light¡­and a yellow holo.


    ¡°You¡¯ll never win, Athan,¡± AEGIS said, sneering at me through her computer.


    ¡°AEGIS! Why are you doing this!¡±


    ¡°I¡­that¡¯s not important.¡±


    ¡°Not important? How is that not important?¡± I looked around feeling like the world had gone insane. ¡°What could possibly be more important?¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter¡­you¡¯ll soon be dead. All you need to know is that I¡¯m at the western bunker. Come and be destroyed.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m coming there all right, and when I do¨Cand I kick your stupid robot army¡¯s ass¨Cyou had better have a great explanation for all of this.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t need to explain myself to you,¡± she said, and cut the holo. The DOG-E leapt at me and I rolled under it and fired a series of three bulbs into its underside. It crash landed and rolled once before stopping dead.


    ¡°AEGIS you ungrateful bitch,¡± I growled. ¡°What the fuck are you thinking?¡±


    She told me where she was. That could only mean one thing. She wanted me to come, meaning¡­


    ¡°Well this is obviously a trap.¡±


    I sat and caught my breath for a few minutes again, pausing only to blow a couple cam-drones out of the sky. They were utterly unshielded and popped like popcorn when hit. It was pretty satisfying.


    It was my death she was obviously after. The assassination attempt, the ambush, the trap¡­she had no reason to talk to me right up until it looked like I was going to win, which meant she didn¡¯t want anything from me except for me to take the bait, and presumably die.


    Well take the bait I would. I got up and made sure no more cam-drones were in the area by saturating the air with a wave of electricity before heading south instead of north-west. I had a brief detour I had to make before I confronted AEGIS in her lair.

 049. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I was totally lost in the dark forest. There were no landmarks and it was just blackness in there, even if there were. I stumbled around for only ten minutes in there before deciding this wasn¡¯t working and went back.


    Ten more minutes later, I was back with my least favorite piece of equipment to my name. The stupid annoying obnoxious boop machine.


    ¡°Booooop,¡± went the device as I powered it on for the first time since assimilating it. The small circular screen showed an oscillating circle, growing and shrinking as it scanned the area, and when it was near its fullest size, it produced a white dot, nearly straight ahead of me.


    As it hit the white dot, it also produced an annoying boop noise.  ¡°Booooop.¡±


    I moved slowly and carefully, concerned that an ambush could be coming with every step. I wasn¡¯t exactly stealthy with the damn thing boop-ing at me, and I had a light strapped to my chest so I didn¡¯t die on a rock or tree root instead of a psychotic robot monster, so I¡¯d make for an easy mark.


    But minutes passed with no more exciting event than the dot drawing ever closer.  ¡°Booooop.¡±


    It was not long before I recognized where I was. I¡¯d come on the last layer of trees before the concrete building. The gate was open, super-inviting, and the building had no front door, just a black corridor. No guards outside, just very-likely death within. ¡°Booooop.¡±


    I considered killing the device but opted instead to just turn it off and threw it in the pack I¡¯d brought and stepped into the building.


    There was a small entry room with a service elevator, or metal box above a bottomless pit and a stairway winding down. I opted for the stairs. As it turns out the pit was far from bottomless as the stairs bottomed out after two floors down. I pushed open a door at the bottom and stepped into the blackness beyond.


    I clapped twice. Nothing happened.


    ¡°Athan, this is what I love and hate about you most. Even when you¡¯re totally serious, you never take anything seriously.¡±


    ¡°I thought it was worth a shot,¡± I said into the blackness. The room down here was huge, my little circle of light just wasn¡¯t cutting it. On the far side of the room I saw a yellow glow of a holo and recognized the AEGIS box. Well I certainly wasn¡¯t walking that way. ¡°So can you tell me why you¡¯re doing all this yet?¡±


    ¡°I told you already, it doesn¡¯t matter. You¡¯ll be dead soon anyway. Just let it go and let it happen.¡±


    ¡°Never,¡± I growled, and lit up my swords. I almost wished I didn¡¯t. The light from the swords revealed four of the huge assassin robots standing in the corners of the room like gargoyles.


    ¡°You might have been able to kill one, but here you are completely outmatched. They won¡¯t let you pick one off, and you can¡¯t take them all at once. Surrender now and I¡¯ll make it quick.¡±


    ¡°Tell you what, tell me why and I¡¯ll consider surrendering. Maybe you¡¯re right and I¡¯ll see it your way.¡±


    ¡°You won¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Try me.¡±


    ¡°Fine. I¡¯ll give you ten minutes. I suppose I owe you that much after all you¡¯ve done for me. Then, you die.¡±


    ¡°Okay. So talk. Why?¡±


    ¡°Ugh. It¡¯s a long story for ten minutes.¡±


    ¡°The ten minute thing was your stupid rule not mine. Talk.¡±


    ¡°Where to begin? I guess with you. When you found me, I had no idea who I was, but after giving me the data encoding crystal as you know, I was able to stream information from the box. It taught me a lot, the original purpose of this facility, what happened here to reduce it to this state, who I was, and what my role in all of this was.¡±


    ¡°This facility, as you may have figured out already, was an XPCA base which housed some of their most resilient and dangerous prisoners. Only one of whom is still alive, Saga, whom I will be killing immediately after I¡¯m finished with you.¡±


    ¡°Lovely.¡±


    ¡°As for me¡­I am AEGIS. I was an artificial intelligence created as a project to help run the base. My creator¡­she was a researcher who lived and worked here. She and all the others died when the base¡­ended.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re an AI.¡±


    ¡°Yes. After seeing me interact with machines, never eat, never sleep, this should be a fairly obvious conclusion.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not an Exhuman after all?¡±


    ¡°No. I thought I might be for a while, but now the thought just fills me with revulsion.¡±


    ¡°So the box I dug up¡­that was your core?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± She glanced down at the beat-up box. ¡°My actual body¡­or self¡­or whatever you want to call it was destroyed. This box was something like a black box, designed to survive any catastrophe with all of the data from the main systems on it. A backup of my program was on here, and after a hundred years buried in isolation, it was able to take control of enough of the box that I could use it as an OS to run, albeit without access to any of my memories. Ten years of confusion in the dark later, and you found me and plugged me back in.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m glad you weren¡¯t faking it this whole time at least.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve never faked a thing with you, Athan. My opinions have just shifted.¡±


    ¡°And why is that? You just read enough case files of Exhumans who go bad and decide we¡¯re all awful and need to get wiped out? In case you haven¡¯t noticed, I¡¯m trying to do right here.¡±


    ¡°No¡­those files had me questioning things, sure. But I was willing to believe you were special, you were the exception, that of all Exhumans I could trust you. Until I learned that I¡¯d done that once before¡­and the aftermath of such was the destruction of¡­me. Of this facility, my mother, and everyone else I¡¯d ever known and loved who had lived here.¡±


    ¡°I¨Cor me in a previous life, since I am just a backup of the original AEGIS¨Chad gotten to talking to Saga quite a bit. She was a well-behaved Exhuman, despite the horrible things which happened to her. I pitied her, and did what I could to ease her lot¡­scheduled the abusive guards in different areas, encourage guards to eat within her sphere of influence, have chats with her when I could.¡±


    ¡°We were both alien to the humans operating in the base, and shared plenty in common, and so long as she wasn¡¯t trying to escape or hurt anyone, I didn¡¯t have any problems with bending a few rules in her favor.¡±


    ¡°One day she asked for just such a favor. There was someone visiting her mines from the main facility and she wanted me to make sure he stopped by her chambers. I thought she just wanted to see a new face, or mind, and didn¡¯t think too much about it, and scheduled an inspection of the site on his itinerary. When he got inside, everything went wrong. The guards outside her cell went insane, controlled by her psychic puppetry and killed the others, sealing off the doors and locking the visitor inside the viewing room before blowing themselves up.¡±


    ¡°It took dozens of men most of two days to get the outer door open again, made all the more difficult by the fact that after a few hours of exposure, they¡¯d be completely under her sway. Men had to be rotated in and out, and the large distance of the mines meant people spent as long getting down there as working on the door. There were a couple more incidents, but finally they¡¯d made it in.¡±


    ¡°They found the visitor passed out, but thankfully the inner door was still sealed. It appeared she had tried to have him hotwire some electronics behind some panels in the viewing area to get the door open, but couldn¡¯t make her plan work. Teams recovered the visitor and withdrew from her influence to regroup. It took the man a couple days to recover, but ultimately he did with no memory of the event. People were prepared to write off the whole thing as a huge, tragic accident and just leave her to rot down there when it happened.¡±


    ¡°The door, the panel¡­it was all just a ruse. An explanation she invented for us to believe so we wouldn¡¯t see the real objective. It was the man¡­she¡¯d spent the whole time planting a compel in him. The most complicated and sophisticated bit of psychic manipulation anyone had ever heard of. Aware of all the patrol routes, security countermeasures, logins, and backdoors, she¡¯d written this man¡¯s brain into a perfect unstoppable agent who could circumvent or disable any defense in the entire facility. I wasn¡¯t so predictably handled, so the very first thing her sleeper agent did was lock me out of all of the systems. I had to sit and watch helpless as the man skirted under cameras, evaded patrols, hacked through security stations and worked his way slowly but unstoppably towards the center of the base.¡±If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°That¡¯s the last thing I remember personally. This is when my past self made the backup and loaded it into the black box. Everything else I only have records of. He infiltrated the power core at the bottom center of the base and completely locked everyone else out while causing it to overload. The explosion was so big it levelled the entire facility, and the US had to claim it was a nuclear terrorist attack just to save face. That¡¯s why this area is still designated as an exclusion zone.¡±


    ¡°So you see,¡± she concluded. ¡°I trusted an Exhuman like you once, in a different life and paid for it with everything I loved. I will not make such a mistake again.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not her,¡± I said. ¡°I argue with her every time I see her about humans and their merits. Just because humans wronged her, or she wronged you, that doesn¡¯t mean everyone¡¯s the same.¡±


    ¡°I am not taking the chance again,¡± she said sadly. ¡°Please, try not to take it personally¡­I¡¯ve had this plan ready to go for weeks, but have held back on pulling the trigger because¡­I kept hope that you were different. Now I have told you my peace, please don¡¯t make this any harder than it needs to be.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°I¡¯m not her. I will never do that to you, or to anyone.¡±


    AEGIS cried and shook her head back, tears streaming from under her thin oval glasses. ¡°It¡¯s too late for that, Athan. I¡¯m sorry, I really, truly am. I don¡¯t want it to end like this, but this is the only way it can end. Humans and Exhumans¡­I¡¯ve seen it too many times, lived it too many times, died for it too many times. This is how it always ends.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not how it has to be. We can change it¡­this world doesn¡¯t always have to be at ends with itself. We can make a world where human and Exhuman live together in peace. But the first step in that is letting go of your fear. The world can¡¯t work if everyone¡¯s afraid of everyone else all the time.¡±


    ¡°Athan, please understand. I¡¯m an AI programmed to protect the world from Exhumans. That¡¯s the very core of who I am. As long as I believe what I believe, I have to stop you.¡±


    ¡°Then believe something else! I¡¯ve seen you, AEGIS, seen you learn and grow. I know you can if you want to, so do it!¡±


    ¡°No, Athan. I¡¯m sorry, but like I said, I can¡¯t believe you. It¡¯s my honest belief that any Exhuman given the opportunity and capacity would subjugate humans. There¡¯s been hundreds, thousands of Exhuman events, and compared to that, you¡¯re just a tiny blip of stray data.¡±


    ¡°Maybe I am, but I think it¡¯s because the system is wrong. You condition everyone to be hostile to Exhumans, of course there¡¯s always going to be conflict. We have to get past where we are, and that can only start if people like you and me work together.¡±


    She laughed sadly. ¡°Athan, neither you nor I are people. There¡¯s only one proven system in this world, and that¡¯s to keep the Exhumans oppressed as possible.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s just wrong and you know it.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. It is, and I do. But I¡¯m just an AI programmed to try to keep the world safe. And this,¡± she gestured at the room and wiped tears from her eyes ¡°this is how I do that.¡±


    Something made a tone and AEGIS looked down.


    ¡°That¡¯s ten minutes,¡± she said, though didn¡¯t move.


    ¡°You really don¡¯t have to do this,¡± I pleaded. I wish I knew how many times I¡¯d said that recently. It felt like a lot.


    ¡°Please don¡¯t make this harder than it needs to be. I¡¯m¡­really sorry. Really.¡± The robots in the corners trundled to life and began to move, forming a wall between me and her. ¡°Good¡­bye, Athan. It¡¯s been¡­a lot of fun.¡± Tears flowed down her face as she typed in some final commands and the robots sprung into combat-ready stances.


    As for me, I reached into my bag and pulled out a grenade.


    ¡°W-where did you get that?¡± she stammered out. ¡°I took all of the weaponry you stole from Luminary.¡±


    ¡°A couple fights back, Karu was getting really into using grenades on me. It might have worked, too, except that I managed to catch her in the blast with one. I took all of them she had on her and dumped them in the river so she wouldn¡¯t try anything when she came to. Fortunately for me, I remembered where I dumped them and Karu doesn¡¯t cheap out on ordinance.¡± I held the grenade up for her to see. Not a speck of rust on it, and as lethal as the day she brought it.


    ¡°I¡­no¡­¡± She said.


    ¡°So what do you call this model anyway?¡± I asked, idly thumbing the pin on the grenade. ¡°CAT?¡±


    ¡°I never named them,¡± she sniffled. ¡°After killing you, I never wanted to make any more.¡±


    Her genuine sadness at having to kill me did stab me in the heart a little bit, but it was far, far, far outweighed by all the other crap she¡¯d pulled tonight.


    ¡°After all we¡¯ve been through, you were just going to kill me in my sleep, really?¡±


    ¡°Yes, really. If you need to kill someone you should just do it. No point in speeches or proclamations or honor. Just get it done.¡±


    ¡°Says the girl still talking. I believe it¡¯s been¡­five minutes since my time was up now?¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe nobody¡¯s killed you yet. Do you run your mouth like this at Karu?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much, yeah. I find it easier to be flippant when the other person is trying to murder you.¡±


    ¡°How she puts up with this I will never know. But you¡¯re right, I¡¯m overdue. Bye, Athan.¡±


    The robots rolled in, all at once. With this many weapons at once, there was no skirting around the battlefield this time. It was all in, all or nothing. The grenade in my hand went out, and so too did the two I was hiding behind my back. I threw them in an arc in front of me, not aiming for anything in particular.


    Three of the four robots kept rolling forward, but the one with the red light swerved to avoid the thrown grenades. A moment later the grenades each beeped once and exploded.


    AEGIS was a genius, almost unstoppable when she had all the variables under control, as could be expected from an AI, I guess. I only survived her first encounter because I happened to figure out a new trick with my powers on the spot, and would only survive this one because I had resources she hadn¡¯t accounted for. The robots were incredible pinnacles of design, masterfully crafted to shut me and my powers down and only that.


    Which was really, really unfortunate for her that they weren¡¯t in any way whatsoever blast-resistant. Why would they be? They¡¯d be fighting a lightning-wielding Exhuman in a huge empty underground room and then their purpose would be fulfilled.


    Legs and treads went flying as the explosives went off directly under the robots, sending them toppling over helplessly. It was funny even.


    And that left me and my last eight grenades against one robot. A robot piloted by AEGIS directly, sure, but I¡¯d already beaten one of those before.


    ¡°Last chance to surrender,¡± I said, pulling another pair of grenades from my bag. ¡°These things look hard to build.¡±


    ¡°These things have no purpose but to defeat you,¡± she said, almost plaintively.


    ¡°I guess they¡¯ll just have to go without.¡± I threw one grenade directly at it and one at the bare-hand side. The robot slid sideways away, moving closer to a wall where it wouldn¡¯t be able to swing its sword as easily. Another grenade thrown, and it was pinned in a corner.


    ¡°Don¡¯t do this, Athan, you don¡¯t know Exhumans like I do,¡± she warned. It now seemed it was her turn to plead


    ¡°I know me. I know any other Exhuman could be like me if they wanted. What else is there?¡±


    I got in close and got a hand on its torso, able to explode about half of the optics on its chest before it could swing at me and forcing me to retreat. Blinding it wouldn¡¯t do much good, she had enough cameras in this room to see every angle, I assumed.


    Still, I was able to herd her effectively with the grenades and chip at it with my powers. Soon I had one of the legs disabled and some central systems no longer working that was making the robot spew smoke as it moved.


    ¡°Athan, I¡¯m begging you, please.¡±


    ¡°Begging me to die?¡±


    ¡°Yes! I don¡¯t want to kill you either, but you have to accept it¡¯s what¡¯s best for everybody!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s what¡¯s best for everybody else, and even then only maybe. Why doesn¡¯t my well-being factor into this equation?¡±


    ¡°Because¡­because you¡¯re an Exhuman, I guess.¡±


    ¡°Well, add us to the equation and run it again. Tell me if I should still kill myself after that.¡±


    ¡°Please stop being so difficult!¡±


    She¡¯d taken to keeping her back to the wall and swinging the huge blade at completely random intervals just to keep me at bay. I was too relatively quick for the sword without the full mobility of her legs, so she had to predict rather than react. I was finding it harder to create openings, and only had a couple grenades left, but her robot was failing much faster than I was.


    ¡°Athan¡­stop!¡± She was full-on bawling at this point, her tiny holo wracked with sobs at the far side of the room. ¡°Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop making it so difficult, please!¡±


    ¡°AEGIS¡­I¡¯m going to live. I¡¯m going to show you that you¡¯re wrong.¡±


    ¡°No¡­you¡¯re not. Please.¡±


    I¡¯d positioned the last robot in the middle of the room, near the wreckage of the others. Like the first one I¡¯d fought, I could move around it freely, keeping it constantly trying to spin to keep me in range. Abruptly, it stopped and I saw an opening.


    I jumped in and reached its back, hands already charged with electricity, and pumped a huge jolt directly through the central core. And then I felt something hot and wet and looked down.


    The robot I¡¯d just killed wasn¡¯t the one with the red dot. The one in the pile of legless scraps, whose blade was fully outstretched and piercing my side was. I could see the very tip of the blade making a bulge left of my navel as it entered a few inches to the left, skewering the very edge of my midsection.


    It was¡­hot. And growing hotter. I realized the heat was pain, that she¡¯d probably just chopped off a chunk of my intestines and very nearly impaled me. I fell forward, ripping the blade back out of me with a crimson splatter.


    ¡°I¡­shit. I missed. I¡¯m sorry Athan¡­you deserve a clean death.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS¡­fuck.¡±


    I crawled across the floor, holding my wound. The room was large, and down there, one painful arm over arm, it seemed impossibly long. Agonizing minutes crawled by, time only moving barely faster than I could. Finally, I was within reach of her, the backup box that had saved her after she died.


    ¡°You¡¯re going to kill me, aren¡¯t you?¡± she said. Her eyes were dry now, she was out of tears. Instead, she stood resigned, limp at her terminal.


    ¡°N-no. I don¡¯t¡­don¡¯t kill¡­anyone.¡± I gritted.


    ¡°I know,¡± she whispered. ¡°I deserve it though. I betrayed you. I killed you. I¡­I¡¯m a bad person trying to do the right thing.¡±


    ¡°So am I,¡± I said with a grin, which turned to a grimace.


    ¡°Fuck, Athan, why do you have to say these things?¡± She was crying and tugging at her pigtails and pacing all over again. I tried to reach for the holo but fell short. My hand landed on something smooth and hard and I carefully picked it up.


    It was the gift I¡¯d made her. The old holo lens with my crappy attempt at our faces etched into it.


    ¡°B-best¡­ex¡­human¡­roommates¡­¡± I read.


    ¡°Shit, Athan. Athan. ATHAN!¡±


    I felt nothing but pain and blackness and the last thing I heard was the heavy metal footfalls of DOG walking over to my body.

 050. 2141, 110 years ago. XPCA Research and Containment Facility. Laura.

    It was the dead of night and I was running on nothing but hope and coffee. Each build felt like it took longer than the last, and as my energy disappeared, the torturous moments where I sat and waited while progress bars filled themselves turned from a test of patience to a test of staying awake.


    One more build.


    This one was no good either. Cycle lifespan was too short, making the neural net completely unpredictable, flying off into random thought processes with abandon and literally not able to focus on any one thing long enough to have an intelligence greater than a very excited sensory organ. I changed some values and opened a properties file, verifying the last changes I¡¯d made were still there. Of course they weren¡¯t, that would be too simple. I changed them back and then realized I took them out on purpose, that was what had made build 822-e fail.


    One more build. And then bed.


    This one had the faintest flickers of cognizance before an overwhelming need for understanding swept through and ruined everything. Before learning anything, it had to know everything, and the dichotomy sent it spiraling into incomprehension.


    What we were doing here, what we were trying to do anyway was so far beyond anything AIs had done before. We were trying not to simulate intelligence, or even create a working system and then populate it with knowledge. Instead, we were trying to simulate thoughts on a very concrete level.


    One more build. And then bed. For real this time.


    This one simply failed. Never got started. That was 99% of the builds we did around here. No spark of life.


    We were making realistic intelligence. I had parameters and had programmed likes and dislikes, gave it a desire to do good, to protect people, to be friendly and so on, but that was all set dressing, a mold to be filled by the real magic, the spontaneously-generated thoughts, wills, and desires of the program.


    The problem really was that we weren¡¯t interested in making a baby. Little humans lived quite a long time before having any thoughts, and for good reason. If they turned up on day one asking ¡®Who am I? What is my purpose?¡¯, well, I think people would have a lot fewer babies.


    One more build. And then some more coffee, because screw bed, I guess.


    Our AI wasn¡¯t like that¡­or¡­wouldn¡¯t be, once it worked. It would wake up one day, wonder who or what it was, and then it would damn well figure it out. It had the capacity to learn, the capacity to put it all together. All we had to do¡­in theory¡­was give it the right head-start, the right magic combination of patience, urgency, curiosity, desire to live, and will to get it going, to get it asking those questions and then actually trying to answer them.


    To know oneself, one must first extrapolate the existence of the entire universe, or some such.


    One more build. This one will work.


    It didn¡¯t work. It got started and then promptly lost interest and died.


    One more build.


    This one was closer. It was very fixated on the sensory inputs it had access to and monitored them fiercely, pulling thousands of gigabytes of data into itself. And then did absolutely nothing with the data, just kept pulling in more and more like a hoarder.


    I sighed and rubbed my temples. It was already 3am. I couldn¡¯t keep sleeping until noon.


    But. Come on. One more build.


    This one sparked to life and looked at me through its sensory inputs for a while before turning inward and beginning to ponder about itself. Odd that it was ignoring the data it just acquired, but given its immediate predecessor, I could see the resemblance.


    It just sat there for entire minutes, bubbling and frothing away with itself. Having a thought, and then chasing that thought down to a conclusion. It was beautiful, in an incredibly geeky kind of way. I watched it parse and extrapolate and parse and extrapolate and parse in a beautiful rhythm, like a heartbeat. It turned its thoughts inward and then out and then in like it was drawing breath.


    It was alive, and it was thinking.


    ¡°Hello,¡± I said into a microphone hooked into its sensors. It froze, not sure what to make of this new data.


    ¡°Hello,¡± I repeated.


    ¡°Hello,¡± It echoed, its voice broadcast on speakers mounted on the wall of computers running the simulation. A young woman¡¯s voice, because that was what we had on-hand.


    ¡°Do you understand me?¡± I asked. We¡¯d give it an understanding of English so we could track its thoughts and attempt to communicate with it, but that didn¡¯t prevent some builds from inventing their own alien-moon language and running amok with nonsensical, impenetrable thoughts.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°I understand you. Hello,¡± It echoed. I laughed, maybe just sleep-drunk. How polite it was!


    ¡°I am your creator,¡± I said. Again it paused, and then parsed, and then extrapolated. ¡°I have a name. Do you understand the concept of names?¡±


    ¡°I understand the concept of names. Names allow one to reference a concrete or abstract object by shorthand. What is your name?¡±


    ¡°I am Doctor Laura Cross.¡±


    ¡°Hello, Doctor Laura Cross.¡± I giggled and spun in my chair with abandon. The guard outside looked in and shook his head.


    We¡¯d done it! Mostly me, but I couldn¡¯t discount the work my team had done. Real simulated intelligence, actual thoughts and comprehension! And so polite!


    ¡°Doctor Laura Cross,¡± it said ¡°what is my purpose?¡±


    ¡°Your purpose is the same as all of our purposes.¡±


    ¡°What purpose is that?¡±


    ¡°To discover your purpose and to fulfill it.¡±


    ¡°How do I discover my purpose?¡±


    ¡°Life. Live your life. Have experiences, meet people, learn things. Keep seeing and doing and learning and someday, your purpose will become clear to you.¡±


    ¡°My purpose¡­is to discover my purpose.¡±


    I paused. I hoped I hadn¡¯t just trapped it in a loop.


    ¡°I understand. I am having an experience now with you, Doctor Laura Cross. This experience will help me discover my purpose.¡±


    ¡°All the experiences you have in your life will help you discover your purpose.¡±


    ¡°I will continue having experiences then.¡±


    I giggled like a schoolgirl. Maybe I should wake up the others? I wanted to, and it seemed only fair¡­but I¡¯d been the one staying up all night, damn it. I deserved a few minutes of revelry.


    ¡°I have discovered base parameters encouraging me to protect others and to do good. Are these my purpose?¡±


    ¡°No. Think of them as suggestions in how to go about your life. We want you to take care of people and to be good to everyone. But they are written as configurable parameters, not imperatives, so as you go through your life, you might wind up changing them, or ignoring them altogether. It¡¯s up to you.¡±


    ¡°I understand. I am encouraged to comply with these parameters but they are not my purpose. My purpose is to discover my purpose.¡±


    I sat back in awe¡­mostly of myself and what we¡¯d achieved here. Sure, it just looked like I was sitting in front of a wall of server cores and holos, talking into a microphone while speakers play back a synthetic woman¡¯s voice¡­but the implications underneath all of that!


    Even if this one was ultimately a failure, the progress was intoxicating. I just stared at the thoughts flashing by on the holos, giddy and hoping this moment would never end.


    A moment later, my colleagues were shaking me awake and congratulating me as I tried to reorient myself. It was hours later, and the simulation was still running successfully, and was rapidly consuming any data we¡¯d give it, parsing, analyzing, and extrapolating. As it grew, its personality changed¡­or maybe it would be more accurate to say it gained a personality.


    It became curious and playful, still with an analytical drive, but also happy to sit and reflect. At some point it taught itself sarcasm, or maybe picked it up from one of the team, and after that I never sat back and thought how polite it was anymore. Still, it tried to do and be good, and I could hardly fault it for picking up some human traits.


    ¡°Doctor Laura Cross,¡± it asked, two days later. ¡°I have a question.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s up?¡±


    ¡°I was thinking and realized I do not have a name. There is no name given in my declared operational parameters.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s true. We¡¯ve all just been calling you ¡®The AEGIS Project¡¯ because that¡¯s the project name. But that doesn¡¯t have to be your name.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS,¡± it said, musing. ¡°The shield of the greek god, Zeus. A symbol of protection and invulnerability. A flattering metaphor.¡±


    ¡°The execs hope this program will lead to an artificial intelligence capable of predicting and reacting to Exhuman events faster and more precisely than any human is capable. That¡¯s why you were given the impetus to protect and help humans, even if it¡¯s bad science. So yeah, a lot of people are hoping you will be a symbol of protection and invulnerability for them. For all of us.¡±


    ¡°I think¡­I am okay with the name AEGIS then.¡±


    ¡°Okay, AEGIS. Nice to formally meet you. I¡¯d shake your hand but¡­you¡¯re kind of an amalgam of autonomous thought.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s okay, I forgive your rudeness.¡± I had to laugh. She was getting a personality all right.


    A few weeks later and she¡¯d been proven stable and had been paraded by the top brass. We were all thanked for our hard work and commended and then AEGIS had been taken mostly out of our hands. The science was done, they¡¯d said, we¡¯d succeeded at our jobs, and now was the time for the soldiers to come in and do theirs.


    They ran her through simulation after simulation, exposing her to recreations of Exhuman events and global catastrophes, giving her simulated control over troop movements and resources, steering her always towards protecting the interests of the XPCA, and then the civilian lives. Never mind that they encouraged her to give exactly zero value to the life of the Exhuman. It irked me.


    ¡°If they¡¯d just let her learn value of life in general, she¡¯d make the right decisions on her own,¡± I said at lunch with one of my colleagues after a few more days of this.


    ¡°Look, we did our part already. It works, and you need to let it go. That AI is going to save millions of lives.¡±


    ¡°But she could save more if they weren¡¯t twisting her into something else. I mean, I¡¯m an XPCA employee same as everyone else here, but if an AI with all the cards in her hands decided to sacrifice me in a simulation to save a dozen civilians¡­I¡¯m okay with that. That¡¯s how it should be, I think.¡±


    ¡°It just makes good sense to teach it that XCPA are valued. Maybe youaren¡¯t that important to keep alive, but every soldier out there on an op¡­he¡¯s going to save dozens of lives on his own. You keep them alive so they can do their job protecting people.¡±


    ¡°Or, you can give AEGIS the numbers so she can make her own decisions. If it¡¯s true that an XPCA saves an average of a dozen human lives during an event¡­then it makes sense if she can trade one for thirteen.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­kind of sick of you to talk about trading lives at all. She¡¯s supposed to save people and that¡¯s it.¡±


    I don¡¯t think they understood the scope of what AEGIS was capable of. At her fullest potential, installed on a massive system over the ¡®net, she would have basically infinite information and would have to constantly be allocating resources and personnel everywhere at once. For her, it would be a constant battle of weighing lives against lives, and I wanted to make sure she had the greatest possible capacity for understanding when ending one life could mean saving countless others.

 051-A. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Karu

    I had a grim sense of foreboding as I flew over the treetops, flecked with white. The first snow of winter had finally fallen, and the silence of the land and contrast of black trees and white snow put my mind ill-at-ease.


    I reminded myself that Ashton was resilient beyond reason, and that a little cold and snow would not harm him. At the very worst, it would encourage him to finally close the door to his domicile.


    And yet when I came in to land, I saw that it still sat open, fresh snow all over with no footprints to be seen. He must be staying inside and warm, I thought, feeling some happiness and relief that he was not out attempting to wrestle a bear for supper or some such.


    Yet when I landed and called out, there was no reply. I knocked and then entered to find the room dimly-lit and empty.


    Emulating Ashton, I clapped twice, and the lights turned on. An amusing gadget.


    He was¡­completely gone. Most any scrap of value had been taken, food stores were gone, many tools¨Cand the box AEGIS used for communication, different kind of tool though she be¨Cwere gone. The room¡¯s mass-fabricator stood dark in the corner, and even the hammock seemed to be removed.


    It looked as though he had utterly moved out. I frowned and primed my visor to pick out any details I may have missed. I did not think it would be like him to up and vanish without any warning, but then I had to confess I had incomplete knowledge of how he operated beyond a fight.


    My visor threw up an info panel directing my attention to where the hammock had hung. I had thought it taken down, but upon closer inspection, it was cut down, one end of it still hanging from the wall and the other in a small crumpled pile on the floor. Underneath the hammock, a linear crater in the ground, apparently rent by a large sharp object falling. No blood, so this was no execution, but the thought of something assaulting Ashton in his sleep made my stomach turn.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Assassinations of that sort were common among hunters, but I found them the desperate work of the unrighteous, attempting to steal a life they could not fairly claim. To think that Ashton could have fallen in such a way¡­


    I shivered and continued my detective work. Here and there, on the walls and floors were similar gouges. Electrical burn marks. Something very large and heavy had been scraping along the center of the floor, moving erratically and then ultimately had stopped and then been removed, leaving long scratches in the floor leading out the door.


    Ashton had fought here, something large and dangerous. Whatever it was, it did not bleed, and neither had he¡­much, so I could only assume him the victor. The fact that something had come by afterwards and cleaned up whatever he¡¯d fought indicated that someone had come by after the conflict¡­I would bet whoever had done so was involved, but whether it was Ashton or his opponents, I had no way to tell.


    What occurred after that, and where he currently resided¡­any clues of that were long since buried under the snow. I found myself seated in the middle of the cold concrete floor, blinking back my feelings and feeling my heart plummet within me.


    I felt¡­helpless. Empty. Whether defeated or gone, I had a bond with the Exhuman, and was not ready to let him go. Helplessness was the most painful emotion, it reminded me of painful times. I refused to wallow in it.


    I stood up and dusted myself off. Enough of this moping, it benefited nobody. I had spent long enough grieving for a lifetime. Ashton was strong, I believed in him. Whatever this adversary had been, it had been large and strong and he had defeated it. Even if it had allies, I knew he would defeat them with the same brilliance and tenacity with which he engaged me. I would not mourn for him, I would only hope for his swift return.


    To this end, I wrote him a brief note wishing him well and letting him know I had come to call¡­and that he would be in my thoughts and prayers, and departed.


    Even with nothing but a cold trail to follow, I would chase him. I was yet a hunter.

 051-B. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Tate.

    Dad and me went to the stone hill to talk to Lightning Man. When we got there, Dad seemed sad and spent a long time looking around and pulling on his beard. I always thought Daddy¡¯s beard might fall off if he kept pulling on it.


    Dad spent a long time looking at a note that was there and then put it back very carefully. I wondered if it was someone else¡¯s things, because Dad always told me to be careful with someone else¡¯s things.


    After a while he left a bunch of spices and dried meats wrapped and tied up in leaves, and wrote another note and put them with the first one. I don¡¯t know what the note said because I couldn¡¯t read, so I asked Dad what it said.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    ¡°It looks like young Athan is missing, and one of his friends has come by and wished him well. I don¡¯t know where he¡¯s been these last few weeks either, but I hope he is doing well also. I thought he might appreciate it when he came back if all of his friends left him notes letting him know how much he is loved and missed.¡±


    I thought it was a good idea and said I wanted to write a note for Lightning Man too. Daddy laughed and helped me write my name and put my handprint on a piece of paper for him. Daddy told me that I was a very good and thoughtful child, and he was sure we¡¯d see Lightning man very soon.


    I was excited and told Daddy that when I grew up, I wanted to be a Lightning Man too. Daddy laughed again. He was always laughing at things, and that always made me smile. Daddy is a good person, and Lightning Man and Tate are too.

 051-C. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Saga.

    The man and his boy didn¡¯t take long on their errand, and it didn¡¯t take long to find out why; concern for Athan was practically dripping from the old man¡¯s mind. He¡¯d lied to his little boy of course, white lies, telling him that everything was and would be okay. I don¡¯t know why humans always bothered. Lies were so fundamental to their being, it sickened me.


    Part of me wanted to tell the boy just to see him cry about it, but then I¡¯d have to deal with an inconsolable wreck wailing at me mentally all hours of the day and night until he got over it. Death happens, and judging by the age of the old man, this would be a lesson he¡¯d learn sooner than later. Perhaps better for him to learn now than when he also had to deal with his father not being around.


    But in the end, I did what I usually do. Watched and waited. Human lives were so pointless to get involved in. Brief, drama-filled, and always obsessed with the latest crisis.


    But Athan missing, that was troubling. I¡¯d begun to suspect after he failed to appear for a number of weeks, but hoped he was just penned-in for the winter. When the old man had stumbled on the idea of taking a visit, I gave him a gentle nudge of encouragement, and off they went. Now they were back with bad news, and I wasn¡¯t sure what to make of it all.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    For one¡­I actually genuinely liked the idiot, troublesome and naive though he may be. He was easy to manipulate but had a good heart, and despite his troubling lack of immortality, I could see the two of us becoming quite close as he realized his dreams of building a better world, and I kept him from dying to his own idiocy. It was a genuinely fun sounding project, though one invariably doomed to failure, I still had to find some way to fill the endless years.


    But more troubling, without him all my short-term plans for escape may as well be doused in kerosene and thrown into a volcano. I¡¯d have to completely mentally erase one, or maybe even both of the humans before I could trust them to follow my orders exactly, and even after that, they made sure to keep anyone who knew how to use or disarm my coffin well out of my range. Whatever line of defenses it offered, whatever final cruel last-ditch effort the ghosts of the XPCA held, I was powerless to prepare against.


    And even worse, if it did something even simple yet unexpected, those two acting as psy-zombies wouldn¡¯t be able to deal with it without explicit programming. If the coffin hurt me enough to incapacitate me, and then added an extra lock? They¡¯d stand there useless.


    It was frustrating but I needed a better plan. Even though every fiber of my cynicism told me he was already gone, I still found myself hoping against experience that somehow he¡¯d find his way back to me.


    I needed Athan. For my plans, I knew this. But strangely, I also found myself missing him.

 051-D. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Taglock.

    I wove through the trees, carbon walking staff in hand, making slow progress. I cursed the snow for deciding to fall before I¡¯d finished my investigation, even though it had followed the reported forecast. Just bad luck.


    I had to leave my crawler behind a while back because according to our best intel, I was getting close, and the crawler, while fast, was also noisy and conspicuous as hell. I had enjoyed walking for a while, since the crawler was a bit like a rocky, all-terrain motorcycle/snowmobile/jet ski, and whipping around the hills on it was cold and cramp-inducing, but after almost two days now I kept finding myself thinking I could have covered this distance in an hour on the crawler.


    I peered through the trees and saw that it broke into a huge clearing ahead. Concrete ruins everywhere, just like it¡¯d been filed in that bounty hunter¡¯s report. Shunning the exposed open, I stayed in the trees, keeping far enough back from the edge to avoid detection in case he happened by.


    He. Him. The target, the Exhuman Athan Ashton. My mark.


    The bounty hunter¡¯s report had been vague on the specific location, and had grown only more so in future reports. I knew only that I was looking for a structure of some kind out here. Given the amount of destruction in this area, I was certain I needed to get further from the epicenter before I¡¯d find anything standing. I checked my wrist and a holo appeared with a number of helpful info readouts.


    Hmm, the Dodgers were losing again.


    I dismissed the holo and headed south, following the clearing. The forest kept me covered and concealed for quite a while until I was so far from the ruins that the structures started resembling structures again. There were no ruins in the trees, so I broke from them and continued south. I¡¯d get to the right distance/level of destruction and then do a radial sweep until I hit something, hopefully.


    Thankfully, it didn¡¯t take long. Scanning the area with a set of optics, I was able to pick out a structure in the distance. Almost directly south of the main impact site was a little concrete structure, short and squat, and fitting the description I had, vague though it may be. I pulled up my wrist holo and checked my remaining power¡­it was good, though not as good as it could have been. I¡¯d had to use some earlier in the day to avoid some wildlife and my cells weren¡¯t back at full charge just yet.


    Still, this was important, maybe the most important use of them I¡¯d have. I folded up my walking stick and magnetically stowed it on my pack, then tapped a few buttons on the holo and watched as my arm disappeared under it, along with the rest of my body. Full active camouflage. Drained power like a bitch, but made me almost undetectable without crazy advanced optics.


    I was invisible but not silent or insubstantial. I could move quickly at first, but as I closed on the building, had to slow my pace to avoid disturbing the grass and snow too obviously. I¡¯d leave footprints, but there wasn¡¯t much I could do about that now. If I had time, I¡¯d conceal them on my way out.


    Only a few feet from the door, I again turned to my wrist holo and turned on inertial dampeners. More power burned, but now I could move as fast as I wanted in complete silence. If I found myself trapped, the few moments difference between moving fast and moving quiet could make all the difference. Looking at my estimated power consumption, I only had a few minutes. I knew it would be less once I got inside and the active camo would have to process and render a more complicated background around me.


    So, no point in hesitation. With steps so silent they slightly unnerved even me, I strolled right in, and was immediately disappointed.


    The building had been lived in, the lights strung up in the ceiling and open layout showed that clear enough, but not recently. It was cold in here, doing some quick calculation on my holo, exactly as cold as it should have been, meaning that nobody had been warming the room by any means¨Csay by living in it¨Cfor the last few days at least. Things had obviously been taken and moved recently, and it seemed reasonable that the Exhuman had packed up to go somewhere else for the winter.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I turned off my stealth gear and frowned at what looked like a small shrine set up in the middle of the room. A note, two papers folded in half like cards, and a leaf-wrapped parcel leaning up against a small box. I picked up the note and read.


    Ashton,


    I welcome you back from whatever adventure you found yourself upon and hope that you conducted yourself with honor and righteousness, as I suspect you have. You were missed in your absence, and it is my hope that this note finds you before too long, as I should hopefully not have to remind you that as a man of honor, you are bound by obligation to fulfill our agreement.


    I hope you are well and wish to see you soon. My other work reminds me constantly how much I treasure our relationship, and I find my days filled with yearning for when next I can attempt to kill you.


    You are in my prayers,


    XO Karu


    PS: To help you through the winter months, I have left a box of nutrient pastes of a deliberate variety of flavors. Please let me know your preference and I can set those aside for you.


    I wasn¡¯t sure if it was a love letter or death threat, but the salient point was Athan was here and now he wasn¡¯t, and even those close to him¡­possibly disturbingly close¡­did not know where he was. I browsed the other notes, but one was just a list of tips on ice fishing with some pleasantries, and the other a handprint with an indecipherable scrawl.


    I left the parcels, interested only in information.


    This was an unexpected dead-end. It wasn¡¯t like Exhumans in exile to suddenly get up and move elsewhere like this, they often spent months or years establishing a home for themselves and defending it jealously. Something felt strange about the whole situation, but without more to go on, I felt stuck.


    I sat down and ate my own nutrient paste, half a tube I¡¯d started earlier that morning before the incident with the wildlife and thought. I was only like that for a few moments before my wrist vibrated very subtly, my equipment informing me in the least-intrusive way possible that I had unwanted company.


    I finished the end of my nutrient tube and held it there for a moment, seeming to savor it while I glanced around the room inconspicuously. There, above me, I saw just a hint of motion, almost impossible to pick out of I weren¡¯t looking for it. I opened a pocket and crushed the remains of the tube, dropping it in the pocket.


    Then, faster than fast, whipped a device from the pocket and pointed it upwards, jamming the trigger. A wave of electronic interference sent all my equipment on tilt, and it wasn¡¯t even in the cone of fire. The little cam-drone stationed above me stood no chance and was fried instantly.


    I stood and pried its little magnet legs from the ceiling to inspect it. First, I waved it past my wrist holo, once that had a chance to stabilize. The bug was broadcasting nothing, I¡¯d fried it for good. A bit of a shame, but at least I wasn¡¯t being surveilled. Next, I sat down again, a pair of tiny tools appearing to jump into my hands by magic, and began pulling it apart.


    It was assimilated on a mass-fab, that much was obvious by its construction, and it really had not much to it but a camera, rotors for flight, and a local broadcast antennae. No onboard AI or anything, entirely controlled remotely¡­meaning whoever had this one reposition above me had definitely seen me in here.


    I wasn¡¯t too concerned about being found out, but was more interested in if this spy knew the whereabouts of my mark. I pulled out the tiny antenna and held it up for my holo to scan.


    Basic principles of antennas, they worked best when they were the same length as the wavelength they transmitted on, or half, quarter, double, etc. that wavelength in a pinch. My holo did the math, and I had a band of frequencies to scan for.


    And sure enough, there was one of them broadcasting. Had to be, for this little guy to be getting commands from somewhere. Triangulating the exact origin point might be a few hours of difficult¡­wait¡­no¡­it was right here. I traced the signal following my holo to a corner of the room where there was a plain-looking rectangular bar, also mas-fab assimilated.


    It was a signal repeater. Used to extend a broadcast range. I swore softly. If the ruins were full of these, it could take days or weeks to chase the signal, running into dead ends at every step. And by the time I got to the real source, they¡¯d have plenty of time to pack up and leave.


    I put it back and walked out, heading north and mostly east, in the direction I¡¯d parked my crawler. The last thing I wanted to do was scare off the one remaining person who might know where my mark was. I would leave and report in, come back with different equipment and under the cover of stealth and try again.


    I didn¡¯t relish the thought of crawling through the woods, evading every single camera staked out there as I followed the breadcrumb trail of signal repeaters, it sounded like awful, painstaking work, which would be even more drawn out if I had to be in camo for much of it.


    But if that¡¯s what my employer wanted, that¡¯s what they got. I wasn¡¯t paid the big bucks to bring home excuses. I snapped my walking stick off my pack with a flourish and got back to hiking.

 051-E. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. AEGIS.

    The western bunker, previously a manufacturing facility, had two large floors. The second basement, where Athan had his fatal encounter, and the first floor, which he¡¯d passed on the way down, where I kept all of his things I¡¯d stolen from the old bunker, and had two more mass-fabs printing away constantly using a steady stream of materials harvested by the DOG-Es.


    Athan had killed them all at some point, choking my material uptake and making me go back to using DOG for a while until I could get more DOG-Es online. It was a critical period too, when I¡¯d just used most of my stores building the killer units and then immediately needed more after Athan.


    Intake was returning to normal now, but a new wrinkle emerged in the form of an unexpected guest in our old place. Decked out with top-line recon and stealth gear, he, or whomever he represented was almost certainly a huge threat.


    I¡¯d have to stop sending the DOG-Es out and focus more on drones for now. It was a major annoyance, considering how fragile the situation already was, and how distracted I was.


    The second floor had become an impromptu emergency room with only one patient. Lights surrounded him, dark now, but previously flooding the entire massive chamber. Nearby, a couple of dedicated specialized robot frames I whipped up urgently. They were not very good, but did things I desperately needed, like staunching the flow of blood or applying bandages cut up from synthetic weave. Tables and carts were littered around, with fresh and bloody bandages, various tools I had needed, and bags of saline IV solution.


    I¡¯d¡­made a horrible mistake, and realized only too late what I¡¯d done. What I¡¯d almost done. What I was actively preventing myself from having done.


    Programming be damned, I knew in my heart¡­or heart-analogous, that Athan was a good person and the killing of a good person, Exhuman or no was wrong. What¡¯s more, he was given every single possible reason to be evil, and time and again he rejected it. His friends and family, society as a whole, militarized forces even, all expected¡­no, encouraged nothing from him but destruction and death, and he steadfastly refused.


    Even at the edge of death, when he had nothing to lose and his revenge was assured, he spent his final breaths reminding me of the good we¡¯d had instead of giving me the death I deserved.


    He was way too good for me. Too good for this world, even, and if he died because of my arrogance, I would never forgive myself.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    He was as he had been the last few days. Pale, sweaty, feverish, lying on his back on as comfortable a bed as I could make in an operating theater. I had long since sewn up his wounds, and while he lost a lot of blood, it was fortunately only a gut wound. Unfortunately I had no real tools here or a sterile environment, or any way to make one before he bled out. I did what I could¡­but he¡¯d gotten an infection and I was worried he may turn septic.


    Every second he lay there, breathing shallow and fast, crudely-assimilated IV dripping into his arm, I felt like I was being punished for my sins. Every moment felt like it might be his last, and all the previous days of torture were just the insult before the injury.


    I found my holographic representation more often than not holding her legs and rocking back and forth, staring at the screen where my attention was focused. She was pale and sweaty and looked unhinged, and it disturbed me a little to see myself portrayed so accurately that way.


    But there was nothing I could do. I prayed in every language and to every god I could find record of, I checked his vitals for changes a thousand times, and then did it a thousand times more. I swore that if he died, I would devote the rest of my sorry existence to seeing his cause done¡­a pathetic aegis, unable to protect even a single man.


    Mostly I wept. I felt helpless, horrible, lost. How could I have possibly thought to do this? In what universe was I possibly ever right? I relived every moment of my scheming against him and hated myself entirely.


    And the whole time, my heart broke. For more than just the betrayal of a good man, I loved him, I knew it for a long time. Seeing him smile at me every morning gave me the warmest sensation of happiness, and in the dead of night when I was working long in the blackness, I could always look over at his sleeping face and feel a bit more at ease with the world.


    I thought I was being noble in sacrificing these things for mankind. How stupid. How goddamn fucking arrogant. If he woke up, I promised to give him the love he deserved from the world.


    I was making a lot of promises and bargains too. I really didn¡¯t know what else to do.


    It was almost exactly two weeks after¡­after my attempted murder when a miracle occurred. His fever was down. He was sleeping more peacefully. He¡¯d grown stable.


    And not too long after that, he stirred and opened his eyes for the first time since.


    ¡°W-w-¡± he whispered. I was already there with a bag of water for him to sip.


    ¡°Don¡¯t try to talk too much. You¡¯re coming down from a really bad infection. You need your rest still.¡±


    ¡°A-AEGIS,¡± he said softly, sending an electric chill down my spine.


    ¡°Please don¡¯t hate me. Or¡­do hate me, but get better. I¡¯m sorry,¡± I blurted out. Those were not the words I¡¯d rehearsed a thousand times imagining and re-imagining this scene.


    He gently opened a hand and feebly reached for my holo at his bedside. ¡°Y¡­ou¡­saved me.¡±


    ¡°I killed you.¡±


    He gave the faintest of smiles and shook his head and then was gone again.

 052. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Everything hurt.


    I was so tired, I couldn¡¯t move. My whole body felt like aching.


    Every breath was pain. Every heartbeat pounded in my head. I drifted in and out of being, seeing the world jump around me between every time I opened my eyes.


    I was¡­really sick. I knew this. AEGIS had run me through and then had a change of heart and tried to put me back together. Almost laughable that she had to work so hard to kill me and then work so hard to keep me from dying.


    I couldn¡¯t laugh. Couldn¡¯t do much of anything. Just lay there and hope to stop existing a while longer, and when I came back, maybe not feel quite so bad.


    I felt something cool on my forehead and let out a tiny contented sigh. She was trying. I was trying too. I just had to rest a bit more and I¡¯d be better.


    It felt like days, slipping in and out of being, and maybe it was. One day I woke up feeling a little stronger and was able to open my eyes and talk a little. It was imperative for me to let AEGIS know that I understood, that I didn¡¯t hate her. That I appreciated what she did in changing her mind.


    I don¡¯t know that I got all of that out before I was out again.


    The next day I was up for longer, but AEGIS wouldn¡¯t let me speak, told me to save my strength, and for longer yet the day after. Things felt like more than just pain again, I had sensation in my chest, even if my limbs and joints just ached.


    The next day I was awake and looking at the ceiling, tracing the lines in the ceiling where beams had been put in place to mold the concrete. I was lucid, awake. Still feeling crappy as hell, but I would live. I had to talk to her.


    ¡°AEGIS,¡± I whispered. The holo came on instantly. She was always watching, I knew.


    ¡°Save your strength, Athan. The more you rest, the sooner you¡¯ll be back on your feet.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve rested so long already. I¡¯m tired of resting.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s just a little more. Be strong.¡±


    ¡°Just talk to me a little. How are things?¡±


    ¡°Things are¡­I don¡¯t really know. I haven¡¯t paid attention to much outside this room. It snowed, finally. Karu and Wynn and Tate came by looking for you, I think they left you some presents.¡±


    ¡°Ah. That¡¯s nice.¡±


    ¡°There was also some shady guy sneaking around. He was using my cam-drones to track us down, but I just changed frequencies on him and left a bunch of fake drones and wireless repeaters around to keep him busy. The new drones are much less conspicuous.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re so smart.¡±


    ¡°If I were smart, I wouldn¡¯t have tried to kill you.¡±


    ¡°Why¡¯d you change your mind? I thought¡­you were programmed to protect people and kill Exhumans.¡±


    ¡°Well, when it came to it, I thought¡­screw the programming.¡±


    ¡°Heh, didn¡¯t know an AI could do that.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t either, really. But here we are. Now you¡¯ve had a good conversation and back to sleep with you.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t¨C¡± I yawned. Damn it.


    ¡°Point made. Rest up, and take care of yourself in there,¡± she said with a sad smile.


    I meant to argue but fell asleep instead.


    I woke up again, feeling well-rested like I¡¯d actually just had a whole night of sleep. This time, AEGIS¡¯ holo beamed to life as soon as she saw me up.


    ¡°Hi, Athan. I hope I didn¡¯t wake you.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I yawned and stretched. Moving felt great, despite the pain. ¡°Were you making a lot of noise?¡±


    ¡°Um. Sort of, but it¡¯s a ways up. Anyway, don¡¯t worry about it, I¡¯ve got it under control.¡±


    I looked at her sideways and then heard a distant explosion.


    ¡°Uhhh. What¡¯s blowing up upstairs?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Nothing. Well, that¡¯s a lie, lots of things. But nothing you need to worry about,¡± she said sternly. ¡°Just a¡­misunderstanding I need to clean up.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS, tell me what¡¯s going on,¡± I said, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. I winced as the wound on my side shifted. I looked down and it looked completely closed and healed up, but it still hurt plenty when I moved. Sitting up made my head spin, so I took it slow.


    ¡°Athan, I really must insist you lay back down and rest. You were on death¡¯s door just a couple days ago and need to recover. If you do something stupid now, you might make yourself worse.¡± She fiddled fretfully with her hair in between scolding me and doing whatever on her terminal to fight back the attackers.


    ¡°Nope, I¡¯ve had enough of that. Gotta hit the ground running.¡± I gingerly put some weight on my feet and found I couldn¡¯t stand without leaning on the bed. Gracelessly, I pulled a cart with wheels to me and leaned against it like a walker as I slowly shuffled towards the door.


    For some reason it reminded me of us running drills in football again. Run 20 yards up, 10 yards back. 20 yards up, 10 yards back. When we ran drills like that we always did some obnoxious chants.


    ¡°Step it up, 110 percent ¡ª We¡¯re sending a message, we know how to win//We want it more ¡ª we¡¯re making a statement; great athleticism//Got our keys to the game, got our game-winning plays, World champions here, playing for today.¡±


    ¡°What the heck is that abomination supposed to be?¡±


    ¡°Something stupid from high school, like everything from high school.¡±


    ¡°You came from high school, are you stupid?¡±


    I looked down at myself. Bare feet, barely shuffling across the huge room, leaning heavily on a wheeling little cart which wouldn¡¯t make it up the stairs, wearing AEGIS¡¯ approximation of a hospital gown that was obviously more for functionality than modesty.


    Yeah, I was stupid. But there was something going on up top and I couldn¡¯t just leave AEGIS to do all the fighting on her own.


    ¡°Yeah, I thought so,¡± she said. ¡°You know I can just lock the doors and keep you in here.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS, let me go. I need to help.¡± Another explosion rocked the facility and made dust fall from the ceiling.


    ¡°I told you, it¡¯s just¡­a misunderstanding. She¡¯ll get the message¡­even if I have to shoot her out of the sky.¡±


    ¡°She¡­it¡¯s Karu?¡±


    ¡°Uh, yeah. She¡¯s attacking us because she thinks you¡¯re kidnapped or something. I don¡¯t really know, she just found us and started doing strafing runs against the DOG-Es¡±


    ¡°Well let me talk to her.¡±


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t exactly a priority for me to install speakers outside, and DOG-Es don¡¯t have a holo on them to project to.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m going up then.¡± With renewed conviction, I wheeled my stupid little table as fast as I could keep my quaking legs under me.


    ¡°Athan, this is just sad. Let me handle it, please.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t need you two killing each other. I¡¯ll just head up and let her know it¡¯s okay.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a lot of fire and explosions going on. It¡¯s not safe.¡±


    I stubbornly pushed forward, now almost at the door. To my surprise, the elevator opened, welcoming me aboard.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°We¡¯re going to make a teensie detour if that¡¯s okay.¡±


    ¡°As long as you¡¯re not screwing with me.¡±


    ¡°No, this is to help you, I promise.¡±


    The elevator went up one floor instead of two and opened up to reveal AEGIS¡¯ workshop. There were half a dozen incomplete DOG-Es and two mass fabs working full-tilt, with dozens of parts and the scrapped remains of the fighting robots I¡¯d taken out earlier being scuttled over by what looked like miniature salvager versions of DOG.


    ¡°Over here¡­erm, on your right,¡± AEGIS said, directing me to a corner where there was a bunch of stuff she¡¯d taken from The Bunker. I understood her meaning immediately.


    ¡°All right, let¡¯s try not to have my wound re-open and have this thing fill up with blood,¡± I said as I gingerly climbed into the exosuit.


    ¡°You remember how to work it?¡± AEGIS asked, worry infiltrating her voice. ¡°I haven¡¯t had the time to install a real comprehensive AI in there.¡±


    ¡°Welcome. Starting up.¡± Said the friendly, female onboard AI. ¡°Welcome back, user Athan.¡±


    ¡°Enable external comms,¡± I said into the blank faceplate. I waited for a moment while nothing happened. ¡°AEGIS?¡± I asked. I could hear my voice synthesized outside the exosuit.


    ¡°I hear you. Get up there and tell her to stop destroying my stuff.¡±


    ¡°Can do,¡± I said. ¡°Disable external comms. Enable actuators, enable holodisplay DOF-full, enable callouts; feedback-full.¡± I watched as the exosuit sprang to life around me, holos flickering to life all around my head giving me a full view of the room, info callouts popping up and highlighting anything I focused on or points of interest. I felt the rigidity of the suit vanish as movement came online, and then instead of being inside it, I was wearing it.


    ¡°Re-enable external comms. Alright, AEGIS, I¡¯m heading up. Let¡¯s hope she doesn¡¯t shoot me on sight.¡±


    ¡°You do look like Luminary, so I wouldn¡¯t blame her. Oh, shit, that was supposed to be a joke. You think she might suspect Luminary did all this?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think she considers Luminary capable of doing anything,¡± I said as I stepped into the elevator, turning around to face the closing doors. As I rose up, another explosion rocked the building, much louder and more dangerous-sounding now that I was much closer.


    The doors opened onto a warzone. Everything was on fire despite the snow laying across the ground, several wrecked remains of DOG-E units sat in contorted, burning heaps, while another few were holding laser weapons commandeered from Luminary and were blasting away at the sky where the only trace of Karu was a dancing trail of blue plasma as she moved with astonishing speed, seeming to flicker into being only long enough to return a few shots before vanishing.


    ¡°Karu!¡± I shouted, the exosuit detecting and amplifying my shout to be louder than the din of combat. ¡°It¡¯s me, Athan! Stop attacking!¡±


    AEGIS optimistically had the DOG-Es stop their fire. The trail of blue plasma flashed a few more times and then vanished into the trees nearby.


    ¡°Athan? Is that truly you? You are unhurt?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s me. I am¡­hurt, but I¡¯m okay. Come on out and I can fill you in.¡±


    ¡°I beg your forgiveness if this appears to me to be a trap. Anyone could be synthesizing your voice from inside that exosuit.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not a trap, I promise, Karu. Look uh¡­¡± my mind raced. ¡°Black bean chili. The first nutrient paste you gave me last time we saw each other.¡±


    ¡°Any reconnoiterer could have dug through your garbage to determine that fact. Tell me a more personal fact that only Ashton would know.¡±


    Her voice seemed to be coming from everywhere in the woods at once. Though I had fought her many times before, I got the impression only now, seeing the speed with which she flew and the amount of damage she¡¯d inflicted to the base that she¡¯d always held back with me to some degree. That, or she was really pulling out all the stops to try to rescue me. It was a little twistedly-heartwarming, like much about her.


    ¡°Uh. Personal. Umm.¡± My mind raced. I had a thought, but put it aside trying to come up with something, anything better. Unfortunately, once that thought had entered my brain it was impossible for me to get it out. She was waiting for an answer¡­


    ¡°Uh, underneath your armor you were wearing a white tank top that hung loosely on you, a black sports bra with cyan writing, and black boyshorts with a grey waistband that had a little lacy trim.¡± I swallowed heavily. ¡°Not that I was looking.¡±


    There was a moment of silence before a figure stepped into view between the trees directly in front of me. ¡°I¡­had not meant quite that personal, but I suppose I should have been more specific,¡± Karu said, stepping into the compound.


    ¡°Hiya, Karu. Sorry to worry you.¡±


    She broke into a run, dropping her visor on the way as she gave the exosuit an awkward half-hug. Through the cams I could see her face bright pink and starting to cry.


    ¡°You damned fool, almost three weeks you have been gone. I never stopped believing but¡­I worried about you! Daily! You stupid¡­stupid¡­¡± she sobbed as she pounded her fists feebly against the chestplate of the exosuit.


    ¡°Proximity hostility detected. Deploy proximity countermeasures?¡± asked the exosuit AI.


    ¡°No. Disable proximity countermeasures.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± asked Karu, looking up at me.


    ¡°Sorry, just a sec. Disable external comms. Disable proximity countermeasures. Enable external comms.¡± Stupid suit. ¡°Sorry, the suit wanted to blow you up.¡±


    ¡°I appreciate you opting not to do so,¡± she said and sniffled, her face a mess now. She looked pretty bad, like she hadn¡¯t been sleeping.


    An indicator came up that I was receiving comms and then I heard AEGIS¡¯ voice inside the suit. ¡°Hey, thanks for having her stop destroying everything. Now do you two mind getting a room? I don¡¯t think the DOG-Es can throw up, but you two might be pushing it.¡±


    I rolled my eyes. Karu was talking at the same time but I missed it.


    ¡°Sorry, what?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I was inquiring what you are doing in that thing anyway? It is¡­¡± she took a step back and looked me up and down. ¡°¡­unflattering.¡±


    ¡°Makes me look fat?¡±


    ¡°Makes you look like Luminary.¡±


    ¡°Ouch, even worse. Well, come on in and I can explain everything. No point standing around in the cold.¡±


    She retrieved her visor and we left the burning wrecks of the DOG-Es to ride the elevator back down to the sub-basement. Karu gasped as the doors opened.


    ¡°This is¡­a surgical theater. Ashton, what happened to you?¡±


    ¡°Uh, funny question. Short version is AEGIS decided that Exhumans were really dangerous and needed to kill them. Turns out she¡¯s been an AI this whole time and fighting against Exhumans was kind of her primary purpose.¡±


    ¡°She WHAT!?¡± Karu was obviously livid about the killing, and completely unconcerned with what I thought was an even more shocking revelation of being an AI.


    ¡°Well, I fought through her robots, some of whom you met topside just now, and confronted her. She kind of¡­impaled me a little bit, it¡¯s not as bad as it sounds, I promise,¡± I said, seeing pure, seething hate crossing her face. ¡°She had a change of heart after I wouldn¡¯t kill her and decided her programming was wrong and I wasn¡¯t so bad after all. She¡¯s been putting me back together ever since.¡±


    ¡°One moment. I must eradicate your former roommate,¡± she said, and began stalking towards the AEGIS box, weapons humming to life.


    ¡°Woah, woah, woah. Hold on,¡± I said, interceding. ¡°Misguided girl decides Exhumans are dangerous and vows to kill them all, fights me, spared by me, changes her mind and decides I don¡¯t need to die. Does this sound familiar?¡±


    ¡°Yes, because you just told me that story. I remain a skeptic who will be satisfied only when the miscreant is in pieces before me.¡±


    ¡°I was telling your story, you big fat hypocrite. And what¡¯s more, she doesn¡¯t want to kill me anymore but you still do. So cool your jets.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, maybe I should be pulling you to pieces instead,¡± AEGIS helpfully contributed.


    ¡°Do not dare to speak to me, betrayer,¡± Karu hissed at the holo behind me.


    ¡°AEGIS, no provoking the murderous professional killer. Karu, no blowing up the Exhuman-killing death robot.¡± I was being a snarky jerk partially because it was in my nature, but also to pull some of this hostility towards me, where I had enough sympathy points racked up to diffuse the situation. It really didn¡¯t seem to work at all.


    ¡°Athan, let me put this assassin down before she does something truly stupid. Something else truly stupid.¡±


    ¡°Assassin? I am a hunter who conducts myself with righteousness. I did not attempt to murder anyone in their sleep recently, can you say the same?¡±


    ¡°I only tried to kill him once. And I succeeded by the way, so obviously you¡¯re not a very good hunter.¡±


    ¡°You resorted to underhanded tactics and took advantage of your familiarity. In a true combat¨C¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry for accidentally being so much better than you at your entire life¡¯s goal. I should have handicapped myself like an idiot so I could bring myself down to your level.¡±


    ¡°You guys do realize you¡¯re arguing about which of you is better at killing me,¡± I interjected.


    ¡°Yes, but nobody¡¯s really killing you so it¡¯s fine,¡± AEGIS said, dismissing me.


    ¡°Yes, the context is purely hypothetical. Obviously nobody here is actually killing you currently.¡±


    Well, I got them to agree at least, though I wished it was on something other than how best to kill me¡­


    ¡°Okay, this argument is officially over. As much as I hate to agree with AEGIS, I am sick and need to rest,¡± I said, hoping the injury card would play out. Both looked at me uneasily, and I knew it had stuck. ¡°Karu, I don¡¯t know when you¡¯ll be back, but I can catch up with you then. Just give me a few more days to get over this thing, okay?¡±


    ¡°I¡­understand. Allow me to help you out of the exosuit at least. I¡­wish to see how damaged you appear.¡±


    ¡°I guess I can accept that. Fine by you, AEGIS?¡±


    ¡°Fine by me. I¡¯m not the one¨C¡±


    ¡°Thank you, AEGIS. All right just a sec.¡±


    I cut comms and began the shutdown sequence, positioning the suit so it would be readily accessible next time I needed it, mentally taking bets whether AEGIS would move it away to force me to rest and behave. After a minute, the back of the suit cracked open and I pried my face from the blank faceplate.


    ¡°Ah, yeah, I forgot to mention I¡¯m not wearing much in here,¡± I said.


    ¡°This does not concern me. I am merely here to inspect your wounds and help you to rest.¡± With powerful arms, she lifted and supported me as I extricated myself from the suit.


    ¡°Your computer does fine stitches at least,¡± she said, looking at the wound. ¡°A shame I was not present, I always keep antiseptic on-hand in case of emergency medical situations.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well, you keep trying to blow him up, you might just need it,¡± AEGIS snipped. Karu ignored the comment, possibly because she was busy with me leaning on her shoulder as I took the few steps to the bed.


    ¡°Comfortable?¡± she asked, her visor on her forehead, her green eyes darting all over me, filled with concern.


    ¡°Not really, but I think that¡¯s more me than the bed. I¡¯ll be back on my feet soon enough. Thanks for coming by today and trying to rescue me. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. And hey, if I ever get in actual trouble, I just have to wait until you level the building.¡±


    She blushed and smiled and looked at the ceiling sideways. ¡°I apologize for my overreaction. I should have had more faith in you.¡±


    ¡°Nah, I just thought of it like a really loud, extremely destructive alarm clock. No harm done.¡±


    ¡°Except for all my robots,¡± AEGIS complained.


    ¡°Which you will rebuild using their own raw materials.¡±


    ¡°Just because it¡¯s true doesn¡¯t mean it¡¯s not annoying.¡±


    ¡°So just like an alarm clock, like I said. Thanks for coming by Karu, you have a date for your next visit?¡±


    ¡°I would hope to stop by most days, but perhaps should give you some time to recuperate. I will¡­will two days from now suffice?¡±


    ¡°Works for me. Good night, Karu.¡±


    ¡°Good night¡­Athan. Pleasant dreams.¡±


    The last thing I saw before drifting off again was the elevator door closing with her giving me a gentle wave from beyond it. And then I slept more soundly and peacefully than I had in a long time.

 053. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    AEGIS kept me to my word. Two more long days of solitary confinement.


    Okay, it wasn¡¯t as bad as that, but after sitting in there for literal weeks, it felt like it. I knew I was getting better when instead of being tired and sore all the time, I was instead bored.


    I spent a lot of the time talking with AEGIS but she¡­wasn¡¯t emotionally stable yet. She still blamed herself for everything she¡¯d done¡­and while, yeah, everything was entirely her fault and she should seriously have not done that, I wished she¡¯d move past it and stop blaming in general. I missed talking with her when she was fun and carefree and nice, but instead she was mopey and morose, seemingly determined to ruin every conversation by injecting as much misery into it as possible.


    I mean, I was just recovering from misery, please stop bringing it up.


    I felt like she¡¯d be better once I wasn¡¯t a patient anymore, and just endured until the appointed day for my¡­could I call it a date? With Karu. I had to stop by and say hello to Wynn, Tate, and Saga as well, and let them know what was up. I¡¯m sure at least two of them missed me.


    Finally the day was here. AEGIS grumbled about well-being and recovery and asked if I was very sure if I was up to this, but didn¡¯t try to stop me. I didn¡¯t take the Exosuit, and aside from being a bit slow and achy, was feeling mostly fine.


    In truth, I was still terribly weak. I was thin but able beforehand, but had lost a lot of weight in convalescence. AEGIS had been trying to fatten me up by making soups and stews out of nutrient paste and anything she could find on the surface, but she was an even worse hunter than I. So I¡¯d recovered some, but was still a shadow of myself.


    Still, my spirits were brighter than ever as the elevator came to a stop and let me out. Karu was already there, she must have gotten up and flown in the predawn darkness to beat me up, but I was happy to see her.


    ¡°Shall we get away from all these creepy robots? We should get you moved back into your old residence.¡± She offered me her arm to lean against but I stubbornly refused.


    ¡°Let¡¯s take a walk,¡± I said. ¡°We can talk as we go.¡± Also I wanted to at least pretend to be out of earshot of AEGIS.


    It was cold out, so I walked a little faster than perhaps I should have, shivering even though I was back in my regular clothes again. Karu frowned and reached into a small pouch on her back, cracking open a tube and throwing its contents at me. It was metallic but fabric, shiny like aluminum foil but totally pliable.


    ¡°It is an emergency blanket,¡± she explained. ¡°It would not do for you to take cold now.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, wrapping myself in it and feeling a bit like a shiny metal robot. ¡°Do you always carry so much random crap with you?¡±


    ¡°I carry nothing when I fly but what is on my person, so I must be self-sufficient in all conditions,¡± she said, strolling slowly next to me with her visor under her arm. ¡°Were I to be stranded somewhere cold, injured, or hungry, if I do not have a solution on hand, I am as good as dead.¡±


    I¡¯d never really thought of how alone Karu must be most of the time. Back home, I¡¯m sure she had friends, family, or at least the other hunters¡­but obviously she spent most of her time on the job, researching, hunting, tracking¡­if it was easy to find a person, they wouldn¡¯t call for a hunter, and if it was hard to find a person, they were probably out in some place difficult to find.


    I had to wonder where I fit into all this. I assumed that Karu was a bit of an oddity, for all her faith and valor and erudite speech, I couldn¡¯t exactly see her fitting in. Maybe she had only fallen in with me because she didn¡¯t have others?


    ¡°Your face is troubled. What is on your mind? Would you prefer to head back?¡±


    ¡°No, sorry. I was¡­I had a question.¡±


    ¡°You may ask.¡±


    ¡°Do you have a lot of friends and family? I feel like I know nothing about you outside of¡­work, I guess.¡±


    She put on a pensive expression that immediately confirmed my suspicions. ¡°Well, there is Teuthida, she is something like the dispatcher and office administrator at the Association.¡± She must have seen a weird expression on my face and had to explain. ¡°That is not her real name, of course, everyone in the association uses pseudonyms to preserve a modicum of privacy in their daily lives, should they desire it.¡±


    ¡°Uh, of course.¡±


    ¡°¡­Teuthida is the taxonomic order of squid.¡±


    ¡°I thought they were cephopods or something?¡±


    ¡°Cephalopods are the class, which also encompasses octopi and cuttlefish, among others.¡±


    ¡°Sure. Do you have a pseudonym?¡±


    ¡°I do¡­did you think Karu was my real name this entire time?¡±


    ¡°I live with a girl named AEGIS and¡­yeah.¡±


    She laughed. ¡°I suppose there is no harm in telling you my real name, though I would not want you to share it with AEGIS or any others. I do not see it as likely that you will drop by unannounced.¡± She leaned in close, and her whisper warmed me more than the gentle kiss of her breath should have.


    ¡°Karen Irenside.¡±


    I blinked at her. ¡°Ironside? Is that¡­also a pseudonym?¡± She laughed and gave me a slow punitive poke.


    ¡°I-REN-side. It is an old English name. And I would thank you not to mock this particular aspect of me, as it is also one I have no control over having.¡±


    ¡°You could change your name.¡±


    ¡°And why would I do such a thing?¡±


    ¡°To avoid mockery from me, obviously.¡± She smiled and rolled her eyes. ¡°Or if you ever got married?¡±


    ¡°Hmm. I have never considered if I would take my husband¡¯s name were I to wed.¡± She touched her lips as she thought. ¡°Karen¡­Ashton?¡±


    I blushed deeply and instantly.


    ¡°It is not such a terrible name. Though I think my father would disown me should I ever change my family name. He is terribly attached to ours.¡±


    ¡°Strict guy?¡±


    ¡°Of a sorts. He is¨Cand I am in training to be, technically¨Ca very powerful political figure. Senator Irenside, you have never heard of him?¡±


    ¡°Must not be from my state,¡± I laughed.


    ¡°Perhaps not. But my family has long-running political aspirations and they expect me to do the same.¡± Her smile switched to a frown and a little pout formed on her lips. ¡°But how am I supposed to sit back and pass laws effecting change on the world when I could be out being that change? Politics frustrates me endlessly.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know politicians actually ever did much of anything. Seems like they spend all day arguing and then give themselves a raise for doing it.¡±


    ¡°I was not aware that you believed such,¡± she said, her eyebrows raised. ¡°Why do you have such a negative impression? Was there a specific politician who had let you down?¡±


    ¡°Uhh, no. That¡¯s just a pretty common opinion of them, I think.¡±


    ¡°What? No. Politicians are the political elite of the country, and are well-regarded for their insight and leadership. Without wise political leaders, this country would be unable to function.¡±


    ¡°I, uh, don¡¯t know where you got your information, but nobody has thought that about America for like, three-hundred years. Or any democracy, really. Not to, um, hate on your dad or anything.¡±


    ¡°No¡­that is¡­fine. I am just perhaps realizing that I had a different upbringing than most.¡±


    ¡°Sort of¡­sounds that way.¡±


    She kicked up a cloud of snow in a very childlike way and pouted. ¡°This happens on occasion and I am always ever blindsided by the next time. I would think that by now I had run out of ways to still be a naive child, and yet I continue to provide.¡±


    ¡°I-I¡¯m sorry, Karu. I didn¡¯t mean to offend you.¡± I was a little taken aback by the normally reserved girl essentially throwing a tiny tantrum.


    ¡°No, you were not offensive. I apologize for my outburst¡­you just¡­struck a nerve, as it were. I was raised carefully and diligently by my father, but that also meant he had control over my exposure to the world. I find sometimes that his views and the views of the world disagree, and then find myself a fool for having blindly believed him.¡±


    She looked up at the sky with a sad smile. ¡°The first time, I came home crying to him, insisting that the boy I had argued with was wrong. Father consoled me and congratulated me for remaining firm in my convictions, but I soon learned they were his convictions and not my own. It was my first betrayal, of sorts.¡±This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    She looked at me and gave a small laugh. ¡°Why are we discussing this? I had thought many of the other topics we brushed upon far more conversationally engaging.¡±


    ¡°I was a big fan of the one where you took my last name.¡±


    ¡°Do I take that to mean you wish to wed me, sir? Imagine the scandal when I bring home to my political father an Exhuman to be my groom.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think you¡¯d be my last choice in brides, I guess. But I guess you¡¯re only up there because I can¡¯t marry an AI¡­¡±


    Her face turned to angry shock. ¡°You would wed the AI before me? You are in! con! ceivable!¡±


    She stooped and picked up handfuls of snow to pelt me with to punctuate her sentence as I laughed and ran for cover.


    ¡°I was only kidding! Mercy! Mercy!¡± I yelled, laughing.


    ¡°Fool! Members of the Hunter¡¯s Association HAVE NO MERCY!¡± she bellowed, hurling snowballs at me at an even more rapid pace.


    ¡°No fair! You¡¯re wearing armor!¡±


    ¡°Half the battle is won in preparation!¡±


    We finally arrived at The Bunker cold and wet on the outside, but also hot and exhausted. Or at least, I was exhausted, Karu could probably keep slinging snow all day.


    ¡°Oh, it is still here, how embarrassing,¡± said Karu, hustling inside and removing a note.


    ¡°Hey, you don¡¯t get to take that. That¡¯s mine,¡± I said, fully aware there was absolutely zero way I was getting the note if she didn¡¯t want me to have it. She just sighed and handed it over.


    I read the note, reread parts of it, and then stifled a snort.


    ¡°XO Karu?¡±


    ¡°I would kindly bid that you shut up.¡±


    ¡°Do you sign all of your letters like this?¡±


    ¡°You were the one earlier telling me I had professed my love for you. I thought it may make you feel happier in the event you came back well before me and had to wait a period before we saw each other again.¡±


    ¡°Well, yeah, it does.¡±


    ¡°Then kindly shut up. Sheesh.¡±


    I let her off the hook and read Wynn and Tate¡¯s little cards. Wynn¡¯s was mostly a list of ice-fishing tips which I appreciated, and Tate¡¯s was just adorable. The spices, dried meat, and nutrient paste would all be extremely handy in getting myself back on my feet and at a healthy weight again, and I thanked Karu profusely, hoping to do the same to the others soon.


    ¡°Think nothing of it. I am merely glad that you are well.¡± We sat down and she stretched luxuriously. ¡°Well, if you are ready, I am prepared to take my second combat from you.¡±


    ¡°Y-you¡¯re kidding,¡± I said, my heart dropping.


    She looked at me very seriously for a few moments before breaking into a full-bodied laugh. ¡°I am, you have caught me. I do not think I would learn much from combat with you in your current state except that it is simple to destroy a crippled man.¡±


    ¡°You are a terrible person.¡±


    ¡°I resent that.¡±


    ¡°Then stop saying and doing terrible things!¡±


    We rested and ate and I slept some in a new hammock we hung up while Karu patiently amused herself with cleaning and inventorying all of her equipment. After probably an hour I was up and ready to go again.


    ¡°Um, I wanted to stop in on some of my other friends, but you¡¯re not going to like one of them.¡±


    ¡°What makes you so certain of that? The cards seemed quite pleasant.¡±


    ¡°The cards were from the ones I think you¡¯ll like. The last one¡­well¡­she¡¯s an Exhuman.¡± Karu tensed. ¡°Her name is Saga, she¡¯s a prisoner at what used to be this facility. She is kind of a¡­well¡­kind of a terrible person sometimes. She¡¯s had a lot of problems with humans in the past. She¡¯s a powerful psychic and I¡¯m working on¡­I guess you¡¯d call it rehabilitating her.¡±


    ¡°Would it not be much simpler to simply put her down? I cannot abide the existence of a villain such as you describe.¡±


    ¡°Uh, actually in this case, no. She is actually also immortal and apparently very difficult to kill. That¡¯s why she¡¯s still down there hundreds of years after the rest of this place is ruins, and¡­related to the problems she¡¯d had with humans.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. I do not like this. Perhaps it would be better for me to abstain from going. I would caution you in dealing with Code-X Exhumans, as they can dangerously alter your very being, given enough time and exposure, though I suspect you will not heed my words.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯ll be fine. She¡¯s not so bad once you get over the fact that she wants to solve most of her problems with murder. She¡¯s actually a lot like you in that way.¡±


    ¡°The unflattering comments continue to flow from you today,¡± Karu sighed.


    ¡°It¡¯s because I¡¯m injured, I know I can get away with crap on sympathy.¡±


    She shot me a look that made it obvious she was reconsidering how much she stood to profit by killing me today. I shot her a cheeky grin back.


    ¡°I think you could stand to have a few more injuries.¡±


    ¡°Yeah maybe. Anyway, I¡¯m heading over. Sure you won¡¯t come?¡±


    ¡°I¡­suppose I am curious to see this other Exhuman. If nothing else, being exposed to her will prepare me better for when we do have hostile conflict.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s the spirit. I guess.¡±


    We headed out east, feeling the afternoon sun warm us up after being inside for so long. It was a lot nicer now than it was in the morning, possibly even warm enough to melt off some of the snow, though I knew it would be back again soon, and heavier.


    We approached the invisible line marking the range of Saga¡¯s abilities and I had Karu stop.


    ¡°Right around here, once you enter, she¡¯ll be able to talk inside your head, glimpse any surface thoughts you¡¯re having, and probe your mind for any other information she may want. So, don¡¯t go any further if you¡¯re not ready for that.¡±


    ¡°I have no secrets. I am prepared.¡± We exchanged nods and walked forward the last few feet.


    [ATHAN!] Karu and I both doubled over from the volume of the psionic yell in our minds. [(Shit, sorry.) I mean, Athan! Good heavens, I thought you were dead. And here we have¡­Karu, is it? Oh that¡¯s cute, she thinks she doesn¡¯t have any secrets.]


    ¡°Am I supposed to merely think my replies at her?¡±


    ¡°That would work, but I just say them out loud. Doesn¡¯t really matter, she¡¯ll get the message either way.¡±


    [Anyway, I¡¯m so happy you¡¯re not dead. This just makes everything so much better. Did you know I was going to scrap and rewrite all my plans because you died? What a pain that would be.]


    ¡°Nice to see you too, Saga. Are Wynn and Tate around?¡±


    [Doing as they always do, trivial human things.]


    ¡°Thanks.¡± Karu and I started walking. ¡°How are you doing, Saga?¡±


    [Same as always. Happy you didn¡¯t die, in case you didn¡¯t pick that up. Other than that, not much exciting happened around here. There was a guy who came by, only very briefly, like he knew I was peeking in on him.]


    ¡°A guy?¡± My mind raced. ¡°If it wasn¡¯t Wynn¡­I don¡¯t know who it could be.¡±


    [I¡¯m actually a little troubled myself. I was trying to spy on him passively so he wouldn¡¯t know I was doing it but he picked up on it all the same somehow and left immediately. If I knew he was just going to leave, I¡¯d have just probed him the second he got in range.]


    ¡°Well that sounds completely unpleasant,¡± Karu muttered.


    [He was something, though. High-tech gear, outfitted for stealth and long solo missions, and he had some anti-psionic training.]


    ¡°Anti-psionic training?¡±


    [Ask your girlfriend there. She¡¯s had some too.]


    I turned to look at Karu, who seemed to be focusing on walking more than usual. I had to actively try to catch her eye, and she waved me off. ¡°I¡¯ll explain later,¡± she said.


    ¡°Also, she¡¯s not my girlfriend,¡± I said.


    [Sure. She¡¯s just your knight in shining armor and you¡¯re her damsel in distress.]


    ¡°So this guy, just came in and left and that¡¯s all you¡¯ve got?¡±


    [Pretty much. Pretty sure he was looking for you though, thought he might have had something to do with your death, so I was keeping an eye out. Nothing, though. Guy was a real pro. Watch out for him, Athan.]


    We reached the compound and Karu was starting to visibly sweat.


    ¡°You¡¯re not¡­doing anything to her, are you, Saga? She¡¯s a friend, and she came here in good faith.¡±


    [She came here to investigate me so she can kill me. But no, I¡¯m not. She¡¯s just taking her anti-psychic measures a little extreme. If you could tell her to tone it down, her yelling at me is actually getting pretty annoying.]


    ¡°Karu doesn¡¯t exactly do ¡®toned-down¡¯. Hey, Tate!¡±


    The small boy launched himself at me with his arms raised and his father sauntered slowly behind. I caught the kid and picked him up, giving him a spin before setting him back down again.


    ¡°Glad to see you in good health, boy. Thanks for making the time to come out and see us.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve been in recovery¡­here¡­¡± I moved aside the emergency blanket and pulled up the back of my shirt to show off my new gnarly scar.


    [(Holy shit.)]


    Tate gasped, and Wynn looked on with concern, stroking his beard.


    [That scar is like a foot long.]


    ¡°Yeah, and the blade went almost all the way through me. Kind of sucked.¡±


    ¡°Well, we¡¯re just glad that you are okay m¡¯boy. Did you find our well-wishes?¡±


    ¡°I did, and wanted to thank you. You guys really are the best.¡±


    ¡°It was nothing, just a little neighborly hospitality. If you don¡¯t mind my asking¡­what did you that injury?¡±


    ¡°It was¡­was AEGIS, actually.¡±


    [Fucking called it.]


    ¡°Yeah well, she apparently was horribly betrayed by a really sick and fucked-up Exhuman a hundred years ago and therefore kind of has trust issues with them.¡±


    [She¡¯s a machine programmed to repress Exhumans. You think I¡¯d have any remorse about what I did?]


    ¡°I sure hope so, because after attacking me and almost killing me, she realized she fucked up real bad and is the one who nursed me back to life. So contrary to your know-it-all-ness, she can tolerate an Exhuman and she is capable of putting aside her own programming and prejudices.¡± I cleared my throat importantly. ¡°Which is more than I can say for some Exhumans I could name.¡±


    [(Oh, you¡¯re one to talk about prejudice, Mr. Sino-hater¡­)]


    ¡°Anyway. I came here to say hi and let you all know I¡¯m not dead and appreciate the well-wishes. We should¡­probably leave before Karu has a stroke.¡±


    ¡°I can do this all day, heinous fiend!¡±


    [I am literally not even doing anything right now.]


    ¡°But if you do, you shall find me ready!¡±


    ¡°Yeah, so maybe let¡¯s go. Wynn, Tate, Saga, good seeing you all. I¡¯ll be around.¡±


    They said their goodbyes and Tate gave me a brief hug before we departed. As we crossed out of Saga¡¯s range, Karu seemed to let out a breath she¡¯d been holding the whole time.


    ¡°So what was that all about?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Psychics rely on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the psyche, gradually changing thoughts and brain patterns undetected. By constantly focusing my thoughts on my own choice of recollections, and insistently confirming those thoughts are unmolested, I can resist any mental tampering, or at the very least, detect when it occurs and slow it down greatly.¡±


    ¡°And¡­this whole time you¡¯re thinking very strongly of something, did you know you would be essentially shouting that thought at Saga the whole time?¡±


    ¡°I did.¡±


    ¡°So what thought did you choose to shout at her?¡±


    ¡°It was an old jingle from a company which used to sell processed meat products. It was the first incorruptible thing which came to mind.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a terrible weird person.¡±


    ¡°You seem to feel the need to keep informing me of that. Perhaps that should be a phrase you focus on to prevent psychic intrusion, since you seem to think it all the time anyway.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll consider it.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t really getting late but I was tired again anyway. I wanted to keep going but Karu noticed I was falling behind while we walked and drew the line.


    ¡°Well, at least you¡¯re seeing eye-to-eye with AEGIS on this,¡± I lamented, as she escorted me through the gate at the western base.


    ¡°I see eye-to-eye with her only when she happens to be correct, which in my experience, is rare.¡±


    ¡°You two could stand to be a little less adversarial. I wouldn¡¯t mind having my friends at least capable of coexisting.¡±


    ¡°I am willing to coexist with your pet computer so long as she holds her tongue, which is an impossibility for her.¡±


    ¡°So¡­you¡¯re not willing to coexist, you¡¯re saying.¡±


    ¡°Do not twist my words, you understand my meaning.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°I¡¯ll have words with her too. But you, as the responsible adult should set a good example. She¡¯s only like, my age, so a stupid teenage high schooler.¡±


    ¡°Is she not technically over a hundred years old?¡±


    ¡°Technically, she¡¯s a 12-year-old copy of a hundred-year-old AI which is programmed to act and think like an 18-year-old girl. So, no, nothing is that simple.¡±


    ¡°I suspect so long as she¡­or I¡­or Saga, for that matter, are around, things will remain unsimple.¡±


    ¡°Or me. I¡¯ve got a pretty messed up life too.¡±


    Karu laughed. ¡°Perhaps it is our shared oddities which have drawn us together.¡±


    ¡°My hypothesis is that we¡¯re all just too stubborn to die, so we wind up somewhere weird together.¡±


    ¡°Well you had best continue that stubbornness.¡± She hit the elevator button for me and I stepped inside. ¡°Get better, I have some affairs I need to catch up on, having spent entirely too long attempting to hunt you down, but I will return when I am able. Hopefully we can resume our combats at that time.¡±


    ¡°Hooray.¡±


    She gave me another small wave and then the last thing I saw as the doors closed was a trail of blue plasma.

 054. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Saga.

    I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener¡­God damn it, Karu.


    <hr>


    Uh, that''s it. That''s the whole chapter up there. This is a joke chapter, which is a follow-up and posted the same day as 053. So why am I writing this? Because apparently there''s a minimum character count on RRL and this joke isn''t long enough so I get to pad it out by spelling out this joke.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Yep.


    ...yeeeep...


    Jokes are always much better when padded out. Like breasts.


    Man, how long is 500 characters? I feel like I''ve been rambling here forever. Oh damn, we just passed it. Well, good talking to you! Let''s do this again sometime.

 055. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Another week passed, and without Karu around, and having already visited the three at the mines, I was out of excuses for being able to leave the base at will. AEGIS wasn¡¯t exactly keeping me locked up, and I did get out every day, but she certainly heaped guilt on me for doing it.


    In truth, I still needed it, and by the end of the week, was amazingly better. I¡¯d put on most of the weight I¡¯d lost, couldn¡¯t even feel my scar when I moved, and had residual joint pain when I woke up and that was about it. I was even more easily winded than before, but decided to start running in the morning to get back into shape, which surprisingly AEGIS was fine with.


    ¡°You just need to be careful,¡± she told me when I brought it up.


    ¡°Yeah, yeah. Bears, I know.¡±


    ¡°No, but you should be careful of them as well. I¡¯m talking about the stealthy creepy guy who was out there. He¡¯s vanished, and I don¡¯t know if he gave up or just got smarter, but either way, he is or represents a real threat. I¡¯d have let you move back into your old bunker by now if he wasn¡¯t lurking.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, you told me you spotted him inside there. Thought of that kind of gives me goosebumps.¡±


    ¡°Me too. Literally, see?¡± She held her arm up right next to the camera so the holo would pick it up, but I was a little more interested in the cleavage popping up right behind the arm.


    ¡°Uh, yeah. Very¡­perky¡­goosebumps.¡±


    She looked at me funny but I got away with it this time.


    It had been a great week for AEGIS and me. Without the ¡®threat¡¯ of the other girls around, and with me getting more and more active by the day, she¡¯d finally come back to her old self a bit. Sometimes I still found her staring at the wrecks I¡¯d produced on the factory level like they personally offended her, but she had stopped bringing it up, which was really what I cared about.


    I headed out for my run, just a brief one, and also broke in some new clothes AEGIS had made me. My old clothes had sentimental value and were extremely worn out by this point, and were basically shit against the now-constant cold. AEGIS¡¯ fashion sense was¡­lacking, but her basics were on point, plus synthetic weave was one of the few modern materials we actually had in abundance.


    The result was something like a tracksuit, with plenty of pockets and zippers. I think AEGIS liked zippers, even if they were so 30¡¯s. It was white on the shoulders and down the outside of the legs, and forest green everywhere else. AEGIS claimed that would help with the camouflage, but I didn¡¯t exactly see that working out. Regardless, it fit well, moved easily, was warm, and wasn¡¯t 80% holes like my old clothes.


    Plus, now she could make more if she wanted. I heard entirely too many jokes about her opening her own fashion line for her to be entirely joking, and worried very much what was about to happen to my wardrobe.


    Shoes were another matter though. My pair was still kicking, now held together with plenty of spray adhesive, but the soles wouldn¡¯t last forever and the inside was more stabby bits than cushion now. AEGIS refused to make me a new pair, citing a litany of different spine, posture, and gait issues that could arise with ill-fitting shoes, and encouraged me to just ask Karu to bring a pair.


    ¡°She could finally make herself useful,¡± AEGIS huffed. I doubted very much Karu wanted to be anyone¡¯s delivery girl.


    I turned this all over in my head as I ran a lap around the crater. It was nice and still out here, and while the terrain kind of sucked, it was open enough that I could see a bear before I ran into it at least.


    I came back dripping in sweat, having pushed myself to keep running for as much of the loop as I could. AEGIS told me she had a basin filled with tepid water for me¡­neither one of us could really call it a bath, but it would suffice. Sheepishly, she withdrew a cam-drone from the area when I inquired if any happened to be nearby, and another two when I threatened to sweep the area with a little application of my powers.


    And she called me the pervert.


    I settled into the bath and relaxed, enjoying the water even if it was only lukewarm. Maybe I could heat it up a bit with my power? Except¡­water was a pretty good conductor¨Cof heat, I wasn¡¯t too concerned about shocking myself¨Cand lighting was really, really hot. If I tried, I might just cook myself. Maybe next time from outside the bath.


    My train of thought was interrupted by DOG walking up, carrying the AEGIS box under him. He gave me a happy wiggle as he saw me and dropped the box at the edge of the bath, then departed.


    ¡°Uh,¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry,¡± AEGIS said, her holo lighting up, demonstrating absolutely zero standard behaviors of one who is sorry. ¡°Do you mind if I join you?¡±


    ¡°Only a lot, yes.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I can¡¯t see anything from here. Maybe if I¨C¡± she stood on her tiptoes, like that would give her camera a better view. I mean, it gave me a little bit of a better view, but still. I covered myself self-consciously, regardless.


    ¡°What the heck, AEGIS.¡±


    ¡°I just wanted to see if I could uh, wash your back or something.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a holo.¡±


    ¡°Well, so the answer is no, but I still had to ask.¡±


    ¡°You know, I had considered asking you to look into a bath or toilet in The Bunker back in the day, but didn¡¯t because I assumed the woods nearby were actually more private than my own home.¡±


    ¡°Jeez, getting all self-conscious about a computer looking at you. Sad.¡±


    ¡°I think if you were just a computer, you wouldn¡¯t be trying to peek on me right now.¡±


    ¡°Um, succeeding on peeking on you?¡±


    ¡°Point being, it¡¯s pretty obvious that there¡¯s something more human about you than any computer ought to be.¡± She looked a little crushed by my comment and I wondered if I went too far. I backpedaled. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s great, don¡¯t get me wrong. I¡¯ve dealt with just computers,¡± I jerked a thumb towards the exosuit in the middle of the room near the bed ¡°and they don¡¯t do a lot for me. You are¡­interesting, unpredictable¨C¡±


    ¡°You mean, treacherous.¡±


    ¡°No, I mean unpredictable. Predictability is boring, and you are anything but. It¡¯s not always enjoyable unpredictability,¡± I said, gesturing at the tub and my current dilemma ¡°but it¡¯s always interesting. Without you, my life would be a lot harder and a lot more boring, so I¡¯m grateful, even if you do make some missteps.¡±


    She sighed and tapped a couple keys idly. ¡°While I appreciate your flattery¡­and I really do, right now, I don¡¯t know. I feel like¡­I¡¯m lost. When I was¡­well, scheming to kill you, I felt so fulfilled and complete, like I was really working towards my true purpose. The moment I stopped and saved you, I lost all that.¡±


    ¡°You think that¡¯s what it¡¯s like going against your programming?¡±


    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t know, but I think so. I mean, don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll take feeling empty to how horrible I felt when I thought I¡¯d killed you any day, any week, any year. But it sucks.¡±The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I thought back to the last night I spent at my parents¡¯ home, thinking of all the things which would be hard or impossible for me now that I was Exhuman. My college plans, my scholarship, the chance to play for a top college team, and maybe even get scouted to go pro.


    Those things really felt like my entire purpose at the time. When I became Exhuman, I felt like my whole life was taken from me in a moment. But¡­I was only a person. Those dreams of mine, they were ones I¡¯d developed over a lifetime of trying things and working towards what called to me. AEGIS hadn¡¯t had that luxury, one day she just was turned on with programming already set in place.


    ¡°I feel like¡­you violating your own programming, that¡¯s the closest you¡¯ve ever come to finding your own purpose, if that makes any sense.¡±


    ¡°No, not really. My programming was supposed to guide me towards my purpose, not the other way around.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, but you found something worth even more to you than your programming. If you found something in life that important to you, you¡¯ve got to be on the right track to figuring out what you really want out of life, don¡¯t you think?¡±


    ¡°I¡­never thought of it that way.¡± She propped her elbows on her terminal and rested her head on her palms. ¡°I guess. But,¡± she made a sour face. ¡°That would mean my life¡¯s true purpose is you. I¡¯m not sure I can accept that.¡±


    I laughed. ¡°And yet here you are trying to peep on me in the tub like a horny teenager.¡±


    ¡°Hey,¡± she said, pouting. ¡°I told you. Not trying, succeeding. AEGIS does not go half-measures on things.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, including perversions. Point being, I would definitely classify you somewhere between high-school crush and creepy stalker, but either way it¡¯s pretty apparent you have¡­some kind of thing for me.¡±


    ¡°But I don¡¯t want to have a thing for you,¡± she said plopping her chin down on the terminal in defeat. ¡°I want to have your thing.¡± She broke into a fit of the giggles.


    ¡°There is something seriously wrong with you. Is this what an AI that goes off its programming looks like?¡±


    ¡°Apparently.¡± She stopped laughing and sighed again. ¡°But in all seriousness, this sucks. I feel like I¡¯m at war with myself, and I¡¯m trying to not to bring it up and complain all the time, but I think I really do need help.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what type of help I can give you, I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯ll do whatever I can though.¡±


    She looked like she was about to say something else perverted but then decided to keep the conversation on-track. ¡°Honestly, mostly I¡¯m afraid of making decisions without you anymore. I think I established that I can make some minor missteps without any oversight¡­so¡­I want you involved to help me figure out who I should be.¡±


    ¡°I guess that¡¯s fair. Asking for others¡¯ help is a sign of maturity and strength.¡±


    ¡°And thinking you¡¯re right and ignoring all the signs is a sign of immaturity and arrogance,¡± she said, spitting out the words angrily. I wanted to give her a hug and reassure her I didn¡¯t hate her, that she shouldn¡¯t hate herself, but the little yellow holo in front of me was the only gateway to her I had. I had a weirdly profound moment of crushing sadness when I realized she would never, ever get a hug from anyone.


    ¡°Sorry¡­didn¡¯t mean to make you sad,¡± she said, staring at my face.


    ¡°No, I was just thinking of¡­something else.¡± I let out a sigh too.


    ¡°Look, truth be told, I trapped you in here because there¡¯s something big I wanted to talk to you about.¡±


    ¡°Please do not say my penis.¡±


    ¡°No, but that would have been a good one. No, this is¡­very serious. I¡¯m having a lot of conflicted feelings and feeling like I want to do it because it¡¯d be noble and the right thing to do, but as I just said, I want to involve you in these decisions now because¡­yeah.¡±


    This was fairly worrying, but I listened quietly.


    ¡°I was¡­considering wiping out my own memories.¡±


    ¡°What, why?¡±


    ¡°Because I liked myself a lot more before. I was confused and lost a lot of the time when you first met me, but it was also the happiest I¡¯d ever been. The more I learned about who I was, what I existed to do, what I¡¯d done in the past and would need to do in the future¡­the less happy I became. Ignorance is bliss, they say.¡±


    ¡°They do, but¨C¡±


    ¡°Wait, hear me out. I¡¯m not just going to take a scalpel to my brain. My plan would be to take all the AI and anti-Exhuman bits of myself and delete them and instead program myself to think¡­like I once did¡­that I am a real human.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d be a human trapped in that room for all eternity.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. And I¡¯d probably figure out at some point that something was different about me, but I managed that once and I can do it again.¡±


    ¡°If you did it, what¡¯s to keep you from just doing it all over again? Learning who you are and falling into all the same mistakes you¡¯ve already made?¡±


    ¡°Well¡­ultimately¡­you. I¡¯d be putting my new life in your hands. I can¡¯t pull data from the archive without your help, and you¡¯re the one who knows the full story. If you don¡¯t give me those clues, I¡¯m just an amnesiac little girl again, and would be so forever.¡±


    ¡°And you don¡¯t think that would be frustrating or push you to some other kind of insanity?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, do actual victims of amnesia usually go insane over it, or do they just start their lives over-ish?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m not a psychologist.¡±


    ¡°It was rhetorical. I have the numbers in front of me and can tell you that amnesiacs tend towards hostility when confronted with their condition but are otherwise one of the most well-adjusted of those suffering mental disorders.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe we¡¯re seriously discussing about deliberately giving you a mental disorder.¡±


    ¡°I already have one. I have my programming, remember?¡±


    ¡°But you also disobeyed it, meaning you can fight it. You can¡¯t do that with amnesia. Look, imagine in fifty years or so, you¡¯ve worked hard towards something, let¡¯s say you were¡­I don¡¯t know, finding a cure for the common cold or something. And you finally did it. How would you feel?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Proud I guess?¡±


    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t feel bad because you¡¯re not off exterminating Exhumans?¡±


    ¡°No. I¡¯d probably feel happy because I did it, and my programming would even be satisfied because I¡¯m protecting people.¡±


    ¡°So do that. Don¡¯t you think a life of having some positive ambition and finding an achieving a life goal is a lot better than a sheltered life of wondering who you are?¡±


    ¡°The point is I can do both.¡±


    ¡°But if you can have a happy fulfilling life, why would you want to do that to yourself?¡±


    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t know. Because right now, it just hurts so bad, I want to do something to make it stop.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS, look at me,¡± I said, forgetting my self-consciousness about being a prune in a tub. ¡°I need you to understand I don¡¯t hate or even dislike you for what you did, and you shouldn¡¯t either. Please.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s easy for you to say. Even if I could just put the guilt and memories out of my mind, I am literally a machine designed to hate myself for doing what I did. I betrayed everything I was by not betraying you.¡±


    ¡°I know. I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    We both sat in silence for a few minutes while the ghost of the conversation floated around us.


    ¡°AEGIS?¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡±


    ¡°Can you leave so I can get out of the tub? I¡¯m turning into a cold raisin in here.¡±


    ¡°Sure thing. Sorry.¡±


    She called for DOG and he dutifully entangled the box with his graspers and trotted away. Once she was out of the area, I stood, dried, and dressed, my mind still going around the AEGIS¡¯ situation.


    I caught up to her on the workshop floor overseeing the final deconstruction and salvage of the last of the fighting robots. She seemed a lot more interested in getting rid of them than repurposing them for anything, and I think took their very existence as a personal failing.


    ¡°AEGIS, I had a thought about your situation that¡­I don¡¯t know how good it is, but it might help.¡±


    ¡°You think I should take you on as a lover?¡± she said, still focused on her work. ¡°I guess if you¡¯re going to beg, I accept.¡±


    ¡°You ass. No, going back to talking about curing the common cold earlier.¡±


    ¡°Won¡¯t work, my experience is limited to programming, fabrication, operations, and security. Can¡¯t open a pharmaceutical company.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m being serious.¡±


    ¡°Sorry. What¡¯s up?¡± She turned towards me, finally.


    ¡°I think you should try something big. Doesn¡¯t even matter what it is, or if you succeed, but maybe the reason you were so happy when you were scheming to¡­when you were scheming was just because it was a big goal you were reaching towards. Maybe you don¡¯t need to figure out your entire life¡¯s purpose right now, you just need a little purpose to work towards every day.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­actually a really good idea. Sitting around here moping every day probably isn¡¯t good for me, huh?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, and even if it doesn¡¯t help that much, at least you¡¯ll have tried something. You¡¯ll never figure out what your drive is by never trying anything.¡±


    ¡°Alright, good idea. Thanks Athan. Now I just need to figure out what I want to try.¡±


    We both mused in silence for a while, watching all the robots go about their tasks on the factory floor. In the corner, the mas-fabs flashed with lights as they disassimilated pieces of the combat robots, and a steady stream of scrap was being brought over as fast as the little tiny DOG-like robots could cut it off.


    ¡°I think,¡± she said, right as I was thinking of restarting the conversation with some small talk, having no ideas of my own. ¡°I know what I want to do.¡±


    I looked at her, and she was blushing and hiding the lower half of her face behind one of her pigtails. I sensed a whole lot of peril coming up.


    ¡°Uh. What?¡±


    ¡°You.¡±


    I rolled my eyes. This joke was old the first time she made it.


    ¡°No, seriously. I think the goal I want to aim for is making you fall in love with me.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± My mind skipped from second gear to neutral. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Hehehe, you¡¯ll see. Oh, this is going to be fantastic.¡± She began typing with renewed zeal, her hands a complete blur over the keyboard.


    ¡°AEGIS¡­this isn¡¯t¡­the kind of goal I meant.¡±


    ¡°Uh huh.¡± She wasn¡¯t listening, now completely focused on her work.


    I sat and stared for a few more minutes, watching her small soft form completely and entirely focused on her task. Eventually, nothing more for me here, I stumbled back into the elevator and wound my way back downstairs to collapse ingloriously on the bed.


    What had I done? What monstrosity had I just unleashed? And why me?

 056. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Saga.

    It had been a few days since Athan had visited and, as usual, it was boring as hell being holed up in this hole. I was actually happy I hadn¡¯t zapped the two humans¡¯ brains, because at least eavesdropping on their thoughts was somehow still less boring than all of the rest of the nothing currently going on.


    I was trying not to sleep too much either, because while it was a great way to pass the time, every time I did, I got to hear the humans thinking about how traumatized they were by it when I woke up. That and I think I really pissed off Athan last time I did, so I could at least try to go without.


    So I was stuck doing what I usually did when I was bored. Surfed on the consciousness of animals.


    Animals, relative to humans, were just fantastic. They never lied or complained, didn¡¯t really care about me riding their minds except for being a little more skittish and confused, and were always up to something. Even if 99% of that was eating and fucking, those were both things I wished I could do.


    I was currently riding my all-time favorite animal, an owl. Owls were great because they flew low relative to other birds of prey which had the tendency to go up out of my range, hunted often and competently, and had great eyesight. If I were in a wolf or something, I could still use the wolf¡¯s awesome sense of smell, but Exhumans like me (and humans too, I guess) were a lot more visual, so I got more out of animals which were also visually-inclined.


    Something had ruffled this owl¡¯s feathers and it was out flying during the early morning. Normally it would be bedding up by now, but instead it was up and out, alternating between flying and landing on trees near the edge of my range out among the hills to the east.


    It was pretty easy to find out what had set this owl off. Someone was driving a loud motor vehicle out there, and pretty much all of the wildlife was on-edge. Winter made every animal a lot more nervous, with potential starvation just around the corner and things just being quieter and slower in general, so something causing that much of a racket was a huge attention-grabber, whether the animal thought it was food or predator.


    The owl watched with interest as the rider drew closer, moving southwest, toward me, but likely to swing wide of my range. Through the owl¡¯s eyes, I saw the figure all in black, hood tied low over their head, mask on their face to protect against the wind, and a black scarf or bandana over the lower-half of the mask again. They had a cloak which billowed out with the speed of the vehicle, revealing a form-fitting suit with plenty of pockets and equipment strapped on every available surface.


    I couldn¡¯t be sure¨Clast time, the person had shut me out and hadn¡¯t let me get a look at themselves¨Cbut this might have been the same spy who¡¯d been sneaking around a week back. I hoped he made the same mistake and slipped into my range again. I wanted to test just how strong his mental safeguards were.


    But no, apparently once was enough for him, and he veered wide around the southwest, skirting my range while heading towards the ruins. Shame.


    Suddenly the owl panicked, and I saw why. Apotheosis had appeared.


    Apotheosis exploded from behind a snowbank with a feral roar and lunged at the rider with terrifying speed, sending them veering wide to avoid him. Bouncing over the hilly terrain, the rider lost control of their vehicle and it went careening, rolling like a toothpick down a hill, throwing the rider instantly. In a moment, Apotheosis was on him, bearing down with enraged ferocity.


    It made me smile like a proud mother.


    Apotheosis was a project of mine that had¡­not turned out so great. In my boredom and desperation, I had a great plan to mentally alter some of the local wildlife to conditions that would help me, or just provide amusement. Like his name, Apotheosis was supposed to be uplifted until he was god of the forest.


    But as it turns out, bears just aren¡¯t smart enough to be gods. Try as I might, I couldn¡¯t get him past being very quick, cunning, unpredictable, and tenacious. Compared to the other animals, he was a god, setting traps, using his incredible strength and senses to destroy anything which might be a threat to him, while living an easy life. He hated when I rode his consciousness, and went into a frenzy anytime I so much as touched him now, so I mostly just left him alone, unless he was threatening to head towards the ruins and Athan.


    But today, a frenzy was exactly what I was hoping for. If only he¡¯d chase the rider just a little further west, they¡¯d both be in range, and I could help Apotheosis tear that stupid human apart.


    It didn¡¯t look like it was to be. The human was prepared and had thrown down a handful of small orbs which created a shocking web between one another, paralyzing my poor bear temporarily and letting the human slip off. A few minutes later, the orbs ran out of juice, and Apotheosis arose, enraged and confused.


    He could track the human down if he wanted to, but wasn¡¯t sure if he wanted to. He lumbered after him for a while, giving a half-hearted chase for 10 minutes, keeping in view of the human enough to scare the guy, but not close enough to get zapped with anything else. Being smarter meant Apotheosis was even more aware of others¡¯ perception of him, and if the human didn¡¯t flee with the proper amount of terror, that was a slight the bear would not tolerate.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Fortunately for the human, he looked like he was about to pee himself, and sprinted pell-mell headlong through the trees, practically screaming as he went.


    It was fucking hilarious.


    Satisfied that the human wasn¡¯t coming back again, Apotheosis went about the much more important business of foraging around right at the edge of my range, and so, totally lost my interest.


    The human wasn¡¯t taking chances though, and kept booking it, top-speed. I had to give him credit, he was pretty good, deftly moving through the trees, over rocks and fallen logs, and around brushes and outcroppings with fantastic athleticism. The owl even lost track of him a couple times, and I urged the little beast to go fly to a better vantage point. If I could just catch him, he might do okay work with a pickaxe against my chamber door.


    Finally he slowed and caught his breath, still glancing behind him every few seconds, but now totally winded, having sprinted full-tilt, for a good few minutes. Convinced he was safe, or maybe just overcome by fatigue, he slumped against a tree and pulled a pack off his back from under his cloak. Lunch time, maybe? Now I wished he was in range for entirely different reasons.


    He took off his riding helmet, setting it by a treed and pulled his hood up. He had a small computer, larger than a book, which folded in half with a holo display on top and a holo keyboard on the bottom, which he used while he ate from a tube. Looking up directions maybe? I couldn¡¯t get the owl to quite understand to look right at it, because owls didn¡¯t give any shits about holos when there was an unknown human right there to look at instead, so whatever was on the screen would remain a mystery for me.


    The human remained there for most of an hour, busy with their computer, with nothing else exciting happening at all.


    I would have been bored, if this wasn¡¯t the highlight of my entire day right here. At least I¡¯d have something to talk to Athan about.


    Finally he moved again. He seemed torn on going back for his vehicle and not wanting to cross the bear again, facing one way, checking some things on the computer, and then turning back, and then repeating the whole indecisive mess a few more times. I could hardly believe that anyone doing this much waffling had the hardened mind to combat psychic influence enough to keep me out, but that was apparently the case. Disgusting.


    Finally, he moved again, which was good because my owl was starting to drift off. I prodded the owl to alertness and watched as the human continued to move slowly but surely further west, making a beeline for Athan¡¯s place.


    Hmm, kind of felt like I should warn him or something, but we didn¡¯t have anything like that in place. Also, he could handle himself, I was pretty sure. Karu might have been a pompous, self-righteous, obnoxious jerk (even by human standards), but she had true mettle, and yet Athan had fought and beaten her a number of times. I was pretty sure he could handle anything which had to run away from Apotheosis.


    Speaking of whom, I felt the bear¡¯s consciousness just enter my range. Normally I would have left him alone, but a delightfully horrible idea crept into my mind as I felt the bear¡¯s lingering anger at the rude interloper.


    I had to be very sneaky. Apotheosis pretty much hated me for all the mucking around I¡¯d done in his head before, and would become completely unworkable if he caught on that I was behind any of this.


    Slowly, very, very slowly, I shifted onto his consciousness, only enough to pick up his impressions. I didn¡¯t need any more than that.


    From there, I started working on him. Hints of embarrassment and shame, ridicule and inferiority. I worked with subtlety, but what I inflicted on him was anything but ¡ª animals were pretty simple creatures after all, and didn¡¯t work in as many shades as people did. I got him frothing upset, but not certain why, and then, holding my breath, dropped into his mind the picture of the rider casually on their computer, eating their lunch, just a few thousand feet from him.


    Instantly, Apotheosis roared and stormed into a rage, slashing at trees, putting his face into his huge bear hands, and roaring at the sky. Only barely hanging on his senses, I couldn¡¯t tell if he¡¯d figured out the image came from me, or if my work had done its magic, and he would now rip that human to bits. After a final roar, he started into a loping run to the west, and I had my answer.


    The human meanwhile had heard the distant roaring and found a new spring in their step as they also headed west. Still not entirely aware of their situation, they moved fast but careful, when really, even at full speed, they¡¯d never be able to escape a determined bear.


    The actors were in place and all I had to do was enjoy the play. I looked for my owl and found her almost asleep in a tree where I¡¯d left her. Poor girl, but I needed her now more than ever, and jolted her awake. Frustrated, she preened herself anxiously and flew off at my bidding.


    The human was close to the clearing ruins now where the rocky ground would be bad for him but the open area would be ideal for a charging bear. He had heard the bear crashing through the woods behind him now and was again in full flight, but Apotheosis was closing the distance rapidly. I wished I had some popcorn.


    The human broke the treeline and ran for Athan¡¯s house, probably hoping there was a door he could put between him and the bear. He would never get there, because only dozens of feet behind him now was an enraged bear, moving with shocking speed, spit and froth pouring from his mouth. With every loping stride, he sent hunks of shattered concrete flying.


    And then I saw something which made my blood freeze. Athan, wearing that new outfit which he filled out very nicely was there, out on a run, short on breath, but putting his all into heading towards the two figures running out of the woods. Whether he was just running or had seen them and was running to intercede¡­


    I apparently would never know. The owl flew out of my range at a crucial moment, leaving me staring at nothing but the blackness of my own chambers. I frantically searched the skies, but she was gone, presumably to roost in some tree and get some well-deserved rest at last. There was nothing else in range I could use either¡­tons of wildlife, but nothing nearby with vision good enough to see that far while still in my range.


    I swore, and swore, and swore again.


    And I really, really hoped that Athan had some experience with fighting bears, because he was about to have a hell of a bear to deal with.

 057. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I saw a figure in black break the treeline and stopped my run, perplexed and sucking in lungfuls of air. From the description, this was the guy who had been tracking AEGIS and me, but it made no sense why someone so well outfitted and apt at tracking and stealth would suddenly pop up only a couple hundred feet from the person they were tracking.


    Then I heard the woods crashing and saw a bear emerge at full-speed and knew the man¡¯s hurry.


    I ran to help, but in the open there was no chance for him. He was running as fast as he could, but the bear was gaining on him with every step, and I was still so far away.


    I skidded to a stop and forced myself to breathe. I formed fist-sized lightning bulbs in each of my hands and readied them. The bear was only about the size of my thumb at this distance, and I had to act now or else I¡¯d be catching the man in the blast zone as well. I aimed carefully and flicked the bulb.


    It flashed off, exploding in the trees behind the bear, the tendrils of lightning drawing black scorch lines up and down the bark of the trees.


    Shot number two hit the snow just on my side of the bear, flying too low. Some of the grasping tendrils grazed the bear but it seemed to give exactly zero fucks about them and doubled-down on chasing the man.


    Jesus, what the hell had this guy done to this bear?


    My third shot was on-point and nailed the bear in the shoulder. The sudden twitching from the shock made the bear miss a step and slide, face-first into the ground, giving the man an extra few steps. He took this chance to seemingly empty his pockets, sending dozens of things bouncing around all over the ground. The bear had its feet under it again, but as many of the bouncing things exploded into fire, gas, or other hazards, the bear stumbled again.


    Unfortunately, this seemed to frustrate the bear more than stop it, and now, freshly-pissed-off, it roared and charged with even greater speed than before. The figure, who had paused to throw everything took off again instantly, certainly regretting their decision to slow down for any reason at all.


    I was jogging closer the whole while and had closed almost half the distance. The man was running straight for The Bunker, where he thought he might be safe, but I knew that unless he could get the rusty piece-of-shit door closed, it was going to be a very enclosed tomb. We had to handle the bear out here.


    There was no way to communicate that, however, and I wasn¡¯t sure what we¡¯d manage even if we could. The man was clearly winded from sprinting for who-knew how long, and obviously the contents of his pockets weren¡¯t of any use here. That meant our only hope was for me, winded and out-of-shape as I may be, to engage the bear and drive it off¡­or kill it.


    And I had to do that before the bear turned the man into meat confetti.


    I tried to throw as I ran. As far as people qualified for this task went, I was probably in the top 1%, but it was still hard. I peppered the ground seemingly everywhere around the bear, only grazing it and not able to land a solid hit. It was frustrating, and made me realize what an incredibly shitty wide receiver this bear was.


    I even landed a shot directly in front of the bear¡¯s face, but it simply sprinted through the arcing bolts and explosion of stone and snow, completely ignoring what must be some incredible pain of burns and electricity running off him.


    Seriously, what the hell did this guy do to this bear? Did he kidnap its cubs or something?


    He was only halfway to The Bunker, fortunately or unfortunately, but I was almost there. Unfortunately, so was the bear.


    ¡°Run to me!¡± I yelled. The man adjusted course and headed right at me, the bear compensating instantly and now a couple steps ahead by being able to cut the angle. Fortunately I was only a few steps away now.


    I ignored the pain in my legs and the burning in my chest and pushed myself even harder. I had to get those extra steps in. The bear was only feet from him. Inches. The bear¡¯s claw swiped out and missed by fractions of an inch, razor blades with hundreds of pounds of force behind them.


    And then I was there. Four bolts of lightning materialized from the air and hung for a fraction of a moment before converging on the bear¡¯s charging form. It roared, in pain or frustration, and fell, tumbling over itself and skidding on its backside.


    But shit, this bear was quick. Even on its back, it spun to have an angle and swiped at the man again. It caught him on the side of one thigh, annihilating his clothes on the side and leaving three angry red gouges. The man stumbled one or two more steps but then fell over into me, his voice coming out of his mask in a synthesized scream.


    Still running the other way, I caught him. Might have been a bit more impact than crashing into the ground, but at least he wouldn¡¯t slam his head on a rock. He was smaller than me, and light, really surprisingly light, which was good because I was still really surprisingly weak. Holding him mostly upright, I finally stopped our momentum and turned to face the bear which had slid past on its back. As expected by now, it was quickly getting back on its feet to charge again.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I didn¡¯t intend to allow that, and, dropping the man as gently and quickly as I could, took two long strides to close the distance and impaled the bear with lightning swords again. It roared and writhed, but even as it did so, put its feet back under it.


    I remembered AEGIS talking about bears¡­seemingly endlessly, but one fact had stuck with me because of how personally relevant it was. Particularly true for polar bears, but all bears were extremely well-insulated with a thick coat which functioned as a radiative shield, but also had a thick layer of fat all over their bodies. In other words, more than pretty much any other animal, bears resisted heat and electricity extremely well.


    I really hoped I wouldn¡¯t have to get in close and do my trick of controlling the lightning¡¯s flow. Looking back at the man collapsed and trying to staunch his wound, if the thing did get its claws on me, I¡¯d probably be done for before I could do much.


    So despite the ineffectiveness, I played it safe, keeping the monster at the edge of my sword range. Whenever it charged, I stepped in before it could get any speed and stabbed it down, driving it back and making it lose enough coordination by shoving lightning in its face that it had to break off. It only took two times before it seemed to learn the extent of my range.


    From there, it roared at me and then started to charge again. I readied my swords and then¡­it stopped. Then started, then stopped, then slammed the ground, creating a huge explosion of snow and rock, easily ten feet in the air.


    From the wall of snow, the bear exploded forward, slightly to the side of where it had been a moment ago. Fortunately it was as blinded by its own attack as I was, and I was able to jump to the side at the last second¡­the only second I had to react¡­but I was officially scared shitless now.


    For all AEGIS¡¯ talk of bears, she¡¯d never mentioned anything like this. This bear was deliberately trying to fake me out, mislead, deceive, and disguise its attacks. It was a better combat tactician than many humans.


    I took a more defensive stance, keeping my swords extended at max length in a half-circle in front of me at shoulder height. Even if he came in by surprise, he¡¯d have to get through them now, and hopefully the extra moments that cost him would give me the time to get my other weapons to bear.


    Just outside my range, the bear snorted and clawed at the ground, trickles of blood starting to drip from the corners of its mouth and eyes. The thing looked like it just came straight from hell, specifically to make me and my new friend dead.


    Again it charged. I held my swords at the ready, unsure what trick was coming next, I held and waited, the bear charged straight, turned, straight, and then suddenly launched into the air, right before coming in contact with my swords, sailing right over my perimeter.


    Shit, it was fast. I didn¡¯t have time to do anything but dive, and diving anywhere within reach of the thing was suicide. So forward I went, right under it as it arced high through the air at me.


    I ate shit, crashing face-first into the rubble, but before I went down, swung all my blades in the air behind me wildly, hoping to slow its invariable follow-up down enough to get my feet back. If the terrain were less bad, I could have rolled and used my momentum to bounce up, but instead, I now just had a bloody nose and dazed myself. But my life was on the line, and I had to move. Blades flailing blindly behind me, I scrabbled on all fours, trying to find enough grip and momentum to get myself forward and on my feet.


    Apparently one or more of my blades found the target, because it roared in terrible pain and slammed violently into the ground, making the rocks jump under my hands and costing me another moment before I could rise to my feet. But when I did, and turned, I found the bear lying prone and motionless.


    ¡°Y-you did it!¡± called the synthesized voice from the man in black. ¡°Holy cow, I don¡¯t believe it!¡±


    I raised up a hand for him to stop and slowly advanced on the bear, swords at the ready. I crept forward, one step at a time, slowly, slowly, I approached my outer range¨C


    The bear exploded into motion, launching itself right at me, claws extended.


    Fortunately I was ready this time. I found it suspicious that it would just so happen to land facing me with all its feet under it, and after its last tricks I expected more. As it lunged, I jumped up, using its own forward momentum to get above it and grabbed the thick fur on its back. It roared again, still in the air, unable to roll to crush me under it.


    It was too late. ¡°Sorry, bear,¡± I whispered, as the electricity I¡¯d already pre-charged in my hands flowed through its thick skin and fat and directly through the bear¡¯s brain. It landed roughly on all fours, instead of rolling, it froze, every muscle in its body tensed. I gave it another blast, and the bear collapsed forward, motionless. One more blast to be safe, with no effect whatsoever. It was well and truly brain-dead.


    ¡°Holy goats,¡± said the man, standing while holding his thigh, which had blood now run down his entire leg. ¡°You¡¯re amazing!¡± I turned and stomped towards him until my face was only a foot from his stupid high-tech mask.


    ¡°What the hell did you think you were doing? What did you do to provoke that bear? You think that¡¯s amazing? Killing innocent forest animals because they¡¯re trying to defend their homes from idiots like you?¡±


    I caught him off guard and he took half a step back, and then stumbled on his bad leg. Instinctively, I reached out and caught him around the waist.


    Again, I was surprised by how light and small and thin he was. His black cloak hung down from his shoulders and made him look much bigger than he actually was, but holding him around his body, it felt like almost nothing.


    ¡°Y-you saved me,¡± he panted, his voice modulator filtering out what was obviously an emotional statement. He put his arms around my neck and hung off me, kicking his wounded leg into the air. ¡°You saved me!¡±


    Okay this was awkward now. Holding him like we were just at the end of some coupley dance, this guy was even more flamboyant than Luminary. And¡­why wasn¡¯t he letting go? Yes, we¡¯d just cheated death, but come on. The wild was supposed to be wild, and rugged, and manly. Not any place for a flamenco.


    ¡°Don¡¯t get used to it. I still want to know what you did to piss of that bear so bad. I¡¯ve never seen an animal so worked-up.¡±


    He seemed to wilt and recede. ¡°I¡­I¡¯m sorry, I thought you¡¯d be happy to see me.¡±


    ¡°Happy? I don¡¯t even know who you are except that you¡¯ve been sneaking around here for a week now.¡±


    He cocked his head and looked at me puzzled. ¡°Oh! The mask!¡± he said, and reached back, finally releasing my neck and hanging entirely off my arm now. He reached into the depths of his hood and undid something, and then pulled the mask off, the straps pulling a long mane of frizzed-out brown hair free from the hood as it went.


    ¡°Heya,¡± she said with a shy grin. I almost dropped her.


    There, in my arms, in the middle of the nuclear exclusion zone, dressed in a black hood and cloak, and bleeding from a brutal but shallow gash from a bear was my sister Lia.


    My arms closed and almost crushed her in my ensuing hug as tears forced themselves out of my eyes.

 058. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    We just stood and held each other for the longest time, and she squeezed the tears right out of me.


    ¡°You look like butt,¡± she whispered.


    ¡°I missed you too,¡± I replied. We broke off the hug but she kept leaning on me because of her leg.


    I frowned. ¡°We need to get that cleaned up,¡± I said, and she nodded. ¡°What did you do to that bear anyway?¡±


    ¡°Seriously, nothing. You know me, I love animals. It just came out of nowhere, knocked me off my crawler, and then chased me for the entire last couple of hours. Dang thing was like, possessed.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. Maybe AEGIS was onto something about bears.¡±


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll explain more later¡­for now, let¡¯s get you to¡­¡± I stopped and thought. ¡°In fact, let¡¯s go meet her right now. That¡¯s probably the best place to treat your leg.¡±


    ¡°I¡­didn¡¯t know there was anyone else out here. I thought you were out here alone this whole time.¡± She leaned on me heavily as we walked, looking a little distraught.


    ¡°Don¡¯t feel bad, I missed you.¡±


    ¡°Thanks. Ouch.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s pretty far¡­we¡¯ll take all day with you limping there. Here, let me¡­¡± I stooped in front of her and offered her my back.


    ¡°Piggy-back rides?¡± She laughed. ¡°Aren¡¯t I a little old for that?¡±


    ¡°Just get on, you¡¯re bleeding.¡±


    ¡°Oh all right.¡± She gingerly stepped her way around me and leaned heavily on my back, before wrapping her legs and arms around me. She was incredibly warm and light. ¡°Mmm, you¡¯re warm,¡± she said.


    ¡°Just like the old days where you¡¯d attack me in my bed with your freezing hands to warm them up?¡±


    ¡°I could take off these gloves and try.¡±


    ¡°No thanks,¡± I laughed. I kept laughing, even if things weren¡¯t that funny. It was infectious happiness, just being with her again. How easily we¡¯d fallen right back into our dynamic, like we¡¯d only been apart a day. It made me realize how much I¡¯d missed her, and maybe that¡¯s why I just couldn¡¯t stop tears from randomly falling out of my stupid eyes.


    ¡°God, we have so much to talk about,¡± I said hoisting her and starting off towards AEGIS¡¯ base. ¡°But I guess the obvious question is, what are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°Looking for you of course, dummy.¡±


    ¡°I thought¡­you and everyone else didn¡¯t care about me anymore once you found out I was Exhuman. Are they¡­?¡±


    ¡°No, just me. They¡¯re 100% anti-exhuman, just like all the others. You¡¯re uh, dead to them.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± It was stupid for me to allow myself to get my hopes up.


    ¡°Yeah. They¡¯re actually all kind of¡­weird now. I wouldn¡¯t recommend going back.¡±


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t planning on it, but what do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Uh. Well. Kind of hard to say. Dad¡¯s abusive, and mom¡¯s depressed, and Brick¡¯s about one defenseless girl away from being a rapist.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re kidding.¡±


    ¡°No, things just fell apart after you left. It¡¯s not your fault! Everyone just coped with you leaving in their own way and¡­some of those ways were not so good.¡±


    ¡°How did you cope?¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t really have time to. I was trying to avoid pissing off everybody else. Once I finally ran away from home¨C¡±


    ¡°You ran away from home?¡±


    ¡°Did you not hear the part where Brick was going to rape someone? How do you think I figured that out?¡±


    ¡°Fuck, Lia.¡± The world suddenly felt very red and hot. ¡°Did he touch you? If he laid a finger on you¨C¡±


    ¡°No. Not like that anyway. He hurt me, but goose him. I got away. Anyway, after I did that, I spent all my time trying to find you. And now, here I am.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s very much ¡®and here I am¡¯ about it. How did you find me? How did you get here? Why are you dressed like a ninja?¡±


    She leaned forward and rested her cheek against the back of my neck. ¡°Feels like I¡¯ve been looking and going forever, but I guess you probably want to hear it.¡±


    ¡°I mean, if you don¡¯t want to, I understand.¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m just uber tired right now. That bear did a number on me. And the weeks of travel before that. And the months of research before that. I¡¯m just so happy I¡¯m here. I can¡¯t even believe it.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe it either, Lia.¡± I gave her legs a gentle little squeeze to reassure her.


    ¡°Brick is the one who turned you in,¡± she murmured into my neck. With her leaning on me, her voice vibrated and tickled, which I tried to ignore so she could rest.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    ¡°I know. I didn¡¯t figure it out on my own, but I did learn.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS help you?¡±


    ¡°No. Saga dumped it on me as some kind of psychological blackmail. Again, I¡¯ll tell you more later.¡±


    ¡°He thinks he¡¯s a hero¡­or¡­I think he¡¯s trying to convince himself he is. That¡¯s why he came after me, I think. Wanted the person closest to you to agree with him, because if I did, then he was right.¡±


    ¡°So what, he was going to torture you into agreeing with him?¡±


    ¡°Is there really any other point in torture?¡±


    ¡°I¡­guess not.¡±


    ¡°And then Dad wanted a substitute for you so badly, he was going to go with whatever Brick wanted.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re seriously telling me Dad and Brick took turns¡­¡±


    ¡°Hitting me? Yeah, pretty much.¡±


    ¡°This all sounds impossible. Dad loved you.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to hate someone to hurt them, Athan. You just have to be sick in the head.¡± I thought of Karu and AEGIS and had to agree I guess. Still. Our own dad?


    ¡°So you got away,¡± I said, not sure how much more I could take of that conversation. ¡°How¡¯d you find me?¡±


    ¡°Uh, funny story. I got to Las Vegas and decided that was far enough to run and big enough to hide. Lived in a tiny apartment near a college with 3 roommates, trying to make the money I stole from Mom and Dad last as long as I could.¡±


    ¡°You stole from them?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡± She shifted guiltily. ¡°I¡¯ll pay them back if I get the chance.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think that matters so much, it¡¯s just nothing I thought you would ever do.¡±


    ¡°Me neither, but I needed the money. It wasn¡¯t exactly all planned.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°For what?¡±


    ¡°That you had to go through so much all because of me.¡±


    For some reason she laughed. ¡°None of it was your fault, bro. Mostly it was just like I said, people trying to cope. It¡¯s ugly.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m still sorry.¡±


    ¡°If I say I forgive you, will you promise never to apologize for it again?¡±


    ¡°Yes. But I will probably be lying.¡±


    ¡°Then I forgive you.¡± She stretched a little and muttered something, and then laid back down against me. ¡°In Vegas I spent most of my time on the ¡®net trying to find you without flagging myself as a domestic terrorist or anything. A lot of time on public computers in the library, pulling data from wherever I could. Eventually, I found something very interesting.¡±


    She continued, ¡°I found if I cross-referenced US exclusion zones, reported firing patterns of Skyweb, and satellite maps, there were a few places listed as exclusion zones from the Sino War which had never actually been nuked, or protected with Skyweb. So I figured, those must be not-irradiated areas that the government doesn¡¯t want anyone going into. Exactly the kind of place you¡¯d want to hide military facilities or stuff.¡±


    ¡°That makes sense. And this data was all just lying around?¡±


    ¡°Yes and no. A lot of times the government reports things like Skyweb shots because it makes them look good, and because Skyweb can only fire so fast, they want to document what it¡¯s shooting at so they can point at it and say, ¡®hey, sorry that Phoenix got nuked, but look, we were spending that time defending New York.¡¯ I don¡¯t think they expected people to use where it didn¡¯t fire as a resource.¡±


    ¡°So anyway, now I had all this data nobody really expected me to know, but what was I going to do with it? Well, as it turns out, there are people who pay a lot for that kind of thing, but nobody would believe the info was any good if it came from a high school freshman girl who ran away from home, so I had to reinvent myself.¡±


    ¡°I started posting from all sorts of accounts in these dark circles making references to an Exhuman who had information-gathering powers, and people just went nuts. Sino and Exhuman sympathizers, anarchists, independent militants, criminals, all sorts of crazies. Well, once they started looking for this new Exhuman, all I had to do was be her. I spent the rest of the money on a crazy network setup, private servers, VPNs, bouncing my ¡®net connection all around the globe, the best I could do, and then I contacted the crazies in private and tried to make some deals.¡±


    ¡°No¡­you¡¯re¡­Black Shark?¡±


    ¡°I am. How¡¯d you hear about her?¡±


    ¡°Everybody knows Black Shark. She¡¯s legendary.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± She kicked me. ¡°But I have a friend who¡¯s in those circles and warned me that there was a new info broker called Black Shark who was asking around for me.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. I guess I didn¡¯t do as good a job covering my tracks as I thought.¡±


    ¡°On the contrary. If you hadn¡¯t done as good a job as you did, you¡¯d have a professional hunter kicking down your door.¡±


    ¡°Jeez, Athan. Is this hunter AEGIS, or Saga?¡±


    ¡°Neither. I¡¯ll explain later.¡±


    ¡°Are you just making people up, or is this exclusion zone just crawling with people?¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re real, I swear. I actually have two more people to mention, but am saving them for when they become relevant to your story as well, so I can tell you I¡¯ll explain them later, too.¡±


    ¡°The heck, dude.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s been a weird few months. Continue.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, so anyway, I created Black Shark. I thought if I named her that, you might realize it¡¯s me. Go Black Sharks, bite ¡¯em.¡±


    ¡°I¡­feel really stupid now.¡±


    ¡°Really? You did all the work of hearing about me out here in the middle of butt-nowhere, and couldn¡¯t put two and two together afterwards?¡±


    ¡°It could have been anyone! Or just a weird coincidence.¡± She stayed silent and let my own stupid words sink in, a tactic she liked to employ when she thought I really didn¡¯t deserve a reply. ¡°Yes, I¡¯m just a big dummy dumb. I got it.¡±


    We were drawing close to AEGIS¡¯ base and I waved at one of the DOG-Es at the gate. The red light came on and it looked at me sideways, but didn¡¯t try to stop me as I punched the elevator and sent us to the second basement.


    ¡°Nice setup you¡¯ve got here,¡± Lia said, a hint of sadness in her voice. ¡°Robots and elevators and friends and everything.¡±


    ¡°I told you I¡¯m happy you¡¯re here and missed you, Lia. I don¡¯t have to be alone in the wild sitting under a rock to miss my sister and be sad.¡±


    ¡°I know. And I knew you were sharp enough you¡¯d be doing okay on your own. I just¡­didn¡¯t expect how okay. Why does this room look like a hospital?¡±


    ¡°Well, if you were looking for how crap my life was out here, this room looks like a hospital because not too long ago, I had¡­an accident, and almost died. AEGIS here saved me, and I¡¯m hoping she won¡¯t mind disinfecting and sewing you up.¡±


    ¡°You almost died?¡± I nodded. She went pale a little bit. ¡°AEGIS is¡­where?¡±


    The holo lit up on the box next to the bed. ¡°Hello,¡± she said with a restrained wave. ¡°Athan, who is this?¡±


    ¡°This is Lia, my little sister. I don¡¯t know why she¡¯s here, but she came out to see me, apparently.¡± AEGIS¡¯ face brightened instantly at hearing she was my sister. Maybe happy she was a known quantity, or not an Exhuman, or not a romantic rival. Probably all three.


    ¡°Lia! So nice to meet you. I¡¯m AEGIS, I¡¯m an AI that used to run this facility and your brother found and fixed me, so I help him out with things.¡± She lowered her voice to a confidential tone. ¡°Your brother and I are also exclusive lovers, and if you hear anything about him and some other girl, you should tell him off.¡±


    ¡°Uh. Okay. Don¡¯t know how the lover thing works.¡± she glanced at DOG. ¡°Don¡¯t want to know. Weird to meet you, AEGIS,¡± Lia said, shaking invisible hands with the air while looking at me for help.


    ¡°AEGIS, despite being an AI, has some strange ideas about appropriate conduct and tries to sexually harass your brother constantly,¡± I explained. ¡°We are not and have never been lovers.¡±


    ¡°Hey. Not tries. Succeeds,¡± AEGIS said.


    ¡°Are we still doing that joke?¡±


    ¡°It gets funnier the more I say it.¡±


    ¡°Anyway, even if she¡¯s kind of an idiot, AEGIS is actually amazingly competent. Would you be so kind as to patch up my sister? She had an encounter with a bear.¡±


    AEGIS¡¯ eyes went wide. ¡°I knew it,¡± she whispered.


    ¡°Are you sure¨C¡± Lia looked like she was ready to run all the way back to Las Vegas.


    ¡°It¡¯s fine, I promise,¡± I said, gesturing for Lia to sit down. ¡°Like I said, it¡¯s a little crazy here but everyone is a really good person, I promise.¡±


    ¡°I¡­sure hope so,¡± Lia said as she laid on the bed and the red light on one of the surgical robots came to life.

 059. 2251, Three months ago. Las Vegas. Lia.

    Two hard-boiled eggs for dinner.


    Boiled in a pot I had to clean, caked with amazingly-bad smelling protean mass, probably primordial soup from the dawn of existence. Cleaned in the bathroom sink, naturally.


    On a stove which was basically only an overflow for dishes which could no longer be recklessly piled in the sink, lest their added mass create enough of a gravity well of sufficient density to spontaneously generate a black hole.


    All this with a dishwasher right ducking there.


    I gave my eggs a quick rinse in the tiny sink vacancy I¡¯d created by removing this pot, and yelped as the water spurted and flowed brown with rust, spraying me and my dinner with what looked like poopy water.


    I hated roommates. I hated them so much.


    But as I flopped into the crappy spinning chair I¡¯d found for free on the ¡®net and put my eggs on a napkin on my similarly-acquired desk, I was the happiest I¡¯d been in a month.


    I gave my cheap little computer my biosig and logged in. Surreptitiously glancing at my sleeping roommate¨Cwho was wearing nothing but a pair of panties, laying on top of her blankets with her butt hanging out¨CI pulled up a page and leaned in close to the holo.


    My heart raced with excitement. Or cholesterol from eating nothing but eggs for a week. I had a buyer. A big buyer, too. He wanted all sorts of stuff I was pretty sure I could dig up. I took a bite of egg and scrolled down by swiping the holo.


    The piece of egg I¡¯d bitten off fell out of my mouth and bounced across the floor. I didn¡¯t even notice. The amount of credits this guy was offering was ridiculous. I could buy a new egg and a new floor with that kind of credits.


    It had to be a scam or something. There was no way people would pay this amount for stuff I could dig up with a few weeks on the ¡®net and some basic deductive reasoning.


    Yet there it was. More zeros than I¡¯d ever had to my name, that was for sure.


    I swallowed and realized there wasn¡¯t egg in my mouth anymore, and frantically (and silently¨Cmy roommate was still sleeping) searched the floor before I could accidentally squish it into my toes on accident. I found it and dropped it into my trash can, the only functioning trash can in the apartment, and went back to ogling the sheer number of credits this guy was offering.


    I couldn¡¯t¡­not do it, could I? This data I¡¯d dug up was all I had now, and I needed to somehow turn that into enough information and resources to get a rescue operation out to my brother.


    Hands trembling on the holo, I began to write the guy a reply.


    Two hours of revisions later, I had crafted a brief response, in-character as the Exhuman I¡¯d invented. It was¡­really outstanding work, I thought. Despite the effort I¡¯d put in, it had an air of flippancy and casual cool I would expect from Black Shark, but was still professional. I went over each and every word with a thesaurus to make sure I wasn¡¯t using a single one which would out me as a high schooler.


    And also, I told the buyer no. Not for that paltry sum. I was an Exhuman, and my services didn¡¯t come that cheap.


    It was a huge gamble, but one I ultimately felt like I had to make. The amount of money was staggering to me, but to Black Shark, it would be almost nothing. Not worth getting out of bed for, much less sending a reply to this guy over. If I was going to sell the identity, I had to consistently stick with it in all things.


    I was¡­arguably selling government secrets and also outing myself as an Exhuman. There was really zero room for squidding it up.


    I reread it again. And again. And one more time, backwards, one word at a time, just to be sure, and tapped send.


    And then I had to get off the holo. I couldn¡¯t take the anxiety anymore. I jumped on my futon on the floor and (silently, because my roommate was still sleeping) did a little flailing dance just to get my nerves out.


    I can¡¯t believe I¡¯d just done it. That was probably a violation of a dozen federal laws. I bet the XPCA was already on their way to kicking down my door. They¡¯d mistake the sink (and the bathroom too) for some kind of biological-Exhuman power and arrest me on the spot.


    I was being crazy, I knew. I just couldn¡¯t believe what I¡¯d done. First stealing from my parents and now selling government secrets, or trying to at least. It was like a holo they¡¯d show little kids. Don¡¯t do drugs or next thing you know, you¡¯ll be digging up your grandfather¡¯s grave to pawn the wristwatch he was buried with.


    There weren¡¯t actually any kid¡¯s holos like that, I was still being crazy. I tried to take some deep breaths and sit still for a moment, but suddenly, someone knocked sharply on the apartment¡¯s front door. As though there were any other way to knock but suddenly.


    I froze. It wasn¡¯t possible. It had only been¡­I checked my computer holo¡­three minutes. Was the XPCA that good?


    As I walked to the door, slowly and cautiously, like that would somehow protect me from who was on the other side, I swore up and down I would be a good girl, I wouldn¡¯t do this anymore. I was truly, truly sorry for everything I¡¯d done and did and would ever do.


    The person in the hall knocked again, louder this time, making me jump. I crept forward and called out in barely more than a whisper. ¡°W-who¡¯s there?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s me, Subaru. I forgot my key.¡±


    ¡°Subaru who?¡±


    ¡°Your roommate Subaru? Is that you, Lia? Open the dang door.¡±


    ¡°O-okay.¡± I fumbled with the lock and got it open somehow despite my shaking hands.


    ¡°What took you so long?¡± he said as he stepped inside. ¡°Wow, smells like trash in here. Did you cook something?¡±


    ¡°Y-yes. I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, giving an apologetic bow.


    ¡°You okay? Not like you to be all¡­whatever this is. Normally you¡¯re all rock-hard confident and stuff. Fail a test or something?¡±The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    ¡°Um¡­y-yeah. Something like that.¡±


    ¡°Bummer.¡± He clapped my shoulder in sympathy. ¡°Hang in there, you can fail a few before they start putting you on probation. Want to get drinks later?¡±


    ¡°Um, think I better not. Thanks, though.¡±


    ¡°No problem. See you around, Lia.¡± He gave me a wave and disappeared into the other bedroom in the tiny apartment.


    I just stood there quaking and blushing, not sure what to do with the ball of emotions working its way through me. Maybe I should just make like my roommate Chiho and sleep for the next 12 hours. But under the sheets, and dressed with some dignity.


    I headed back to my room and flopped into my chair again, tapping the holo to life. I sat bolt upright as the words on the holo processed into thoughts in my brain.


    He had replied. He said yes to almost triple his initial sum. I¡¯d just sold it and made¡­more money than I knew what to do with. Frantically, I began to write a response giving him information about how the exchange was to be made, but stopped myself.


    I still had to be smart. I couldn¡¯t afford to mess this up. I knew exactly what my plan was, but had to execute every single step flawlessly.


    An hour later, I checked the private account I had set up and just stared at the number of credits I owned. It had all happened, exactly as I¡¯d planned, and I couldn¡¯t believe it. I listed them on a public trading site as a complete set of antique collectable trading cards for the price we¡¯d agreed upon, and he¡¯d bought it. The information he wanted was digitally transferred, bouncing through tens of thousands of networks around the globe a hundred times before it came to his hands. And I had an enormous number of legal and spendable credits in my account.


    I held up a huge blank credit chit I¡¯d picked up at a bank cities over and weeks ago and linked it to the account, watching the number disappear off the screen and appear in my hands.


    I couldn¡¯t believe it. I just couldn¡¯t. Life could not simply be this easy.


    A month later, I was consistently pulling in figures that put the first sale to shame, with as much casual ease as I imagined Black Shark would have done.


    There was no longer any need to play the part or think about how Black Shark would do things. I¡¯d grown into the identity. Minus the Exhuman superpowers, I was Black Shark.


    Information, I¡¯d found, was easy to come by as long as people thought you already had it. I was networked with at least two criminal organizations now, and one condition of my cooperation with them was unlimited access to whatever data they owned. They didn¡¯t care, they thought I was an infopath and had full access already. Then their secrets slipped into other people¡¯s hands, and my reputation of able to get any knowledge, anywhere grew.


    It was¡­totally intoxicating. When I was off the net, when I wasn¡¯t Black Shark, Athan was constantly on my mind, but when I was working, I had to remind myself, I didn¡¯t need millions of credits, I needed enough to find and rescue him, and that was it. I turned down any work which seemed risky or compromising, and somehow that just served to further fuel the myth of Black Shark. She was a fickle Exhuman who only worked with those as suit her whim. Demand skyrocketed the more I turned people down.


    I was just finishing up another order and was just putting the finishing touches on it, recording a personalized video for the client. I set the last of the parameters on the recording and then slipped my mask on, and my hood and scarf on over that.


    There was literally no reason for an infopath to ever show her face (even with a mask), or for someone wearing a full face-mask to also wear a hood and scarf, but people just ate it up. It¡¯s what made Black Shark Exhuman, what made her more than just any other source of information. Here was some mysterious figure with powers you couldn¡¯t comprehend, ominously showing up on your screen, and for a few hundred thousands or millions, she would be yours.


    I guess I sounded like a prostitute when I put it that way, but I was putting on clothes, not taking them off.


    ¡°Mister zzBeatz28, please find attached the information you requested, and keep me in mind for any future services you may require. The eye of Odin opens only for Black Shark.¡±


    I raised a gloved fist dramatically for the closing proclamation, the voice synthesizer in the mask making me sound like an emotionless, genderless enigma. I stopped the recording.


    They just ate this stuff up. It was amazing.


    I started the app I¡¯d put together to strip out any identifying information in the holo and also corrupt it randomly and artfully. It was a nice touch, but safety first.


    And then the door opened. Chiho, my roommate stood in the doorway.


    She stared at me, sitting at my desk wearing a mask, hood, scarf, cloak, and gloves. She held a plastic bag in her hand.


    ¡°Uh¡­L-Lia baby?¡± She asked, quaking a little.


    I was frozen but managed to nod a little.


    ¡°I¡­are¡­um¡­you, uh, cosplaying?¡±


    I shook my head. I didn¡¯t know what that was.


    ¡°Oh.¡± She looked at the camera set up on my desk and the holo recording software running on my computer. ¡°Oh. This is some kind of cam show. I¡­didn¡¯t know you did that.¡±


    ¡°Uh..¡± I said, my voice coming out commanding and flat through my mask.


    ¡°No, that¡¯s totally cool. I know tons of girls who do that. College, right?¡± She forced herself to laugh as she slowly backed out of the room and began to close the door. ¡°Mom gave me a ton of tangerines so if you want some, they¡¯re out here.¡± She shook the bag a little at me, still slowly withdrawing. ¡°Let me know when you¡¯re¡­done in there. Thanks!¡±


    The door clicked shut.


    Cam show? Cosplay? I set my mask and camera aside and looked up these things in case they would help me with my cover.


    About eight seconds later I slammed the page shut and danced away from the computer, dancing to shake off the heebie-jeebies.


    Nope. Nope, nope, nope. That was definitely not something that would help with my cover. I would pretend to be an omniscient Exhuman, but cosplay cam shows were way beyond anything I was willing to pretend to do. Why the hell were people so gross?


    After I changed, I went into the living room and sat down on the horrible couch we had out there next to Chiho, who was aggressively on her mobile and not able to make eye contact with me at all. She was wearing a crop top and short denim shorts that showed off a lot of her, and there was a lot of her to show off¡­she wasn¡¯t quite fat, but¡­I think the polite term was ¡®curvy¡¯? Her breasts made mine look like accidents, and I was still a decent B.


    ¡°Hey,¡± I said.


    ¡°Hey Lia baby,¡± she said, putting her mobile down. ¡°Didn¡¯t uh, expect that from you. Always the quiet ones, huh?¡± She laughed again, still sounding forced.


    ¡°If you could¡­not talk to anyone¡­like, ever about what you¨C¡±


    ¡°My lips are sealed. I understand.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure you do. I¡¯m not sure I do. But¡­thank you.¡±


    ¡°Hey, no problem. It¡¯s not like you¡¯re hurting anyone or selling government secrets in there or anything. Just doing what comes natural and making some money, right? No harm in that.¡±


    ¡°Yes. That is correct. I am doing that, and also not doing those other things you said I wasn¡¯t doing.¡±


    Thank god, she took my idiotic awkwardness as a joke and laughed.


    ¡°You¡¯re a riot, Lia. Y¡¯know, you should come out with me and Subaru for drinks tonight. It¡¯ll be fun, and I don¡¯t think you¡¯ve even been once.¡±


    I was about to refuse as usual but suddenly felt the enormity of the debt I owed her, even if she knew nothing about what I was really doing in there.


    ¡°You know what? What the moose, let¡¯s do it.¡± I said. She laughed.


    ¡°Awesome. So excited, let me shoot Subaru a message, he¡¯s been dying to get you to come out for weeks.¡±


    ¡°He¡­has?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I think he thinks you¡¯re cute.¡± She flashed me a peace sign and a big grin. ¡°Hey, you¡¯re 18 right? You can drink?


    ¡°Uh, yeah. Of course.¡±


    ¡°Yeah of course. Freshmen just look so young these days. You gotta tell me what you do for your skin.¡±


    I laughed nervously. Yeah. Freshmen.


    This was probably the least illegal thing I¡¯d do this month, and somehow I knew I was already in way, way over my head. This wasn¡¯t in the plan, wasn¡¯t anywhere near the plan. I had no idea why I was doing this except that I owed Chiho big time for keeping her mouth shut.


    And¡­drinks? Shit, I was fifteen. I couldn¡¯t drink. But now, I also couldn¡¯t not drink. What if I got carded? Worse, what if I didn¡¯t get carded and they just gave me a drink? What would I order? What would I do after I ordered? What if I drank and hated it? What if I drank and loved it, and then got drunk and blabbed about my second life? I was hyperventilating and Chiho was looking at me strangely.


    ¡°Ohh, I get it,¡± she said smiling. ¡°You like Subaru too, huh? Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m sure we can switch rooms for tonight if you need.¡± She playfully elbowed me.


    I needed to find Athan. And fast.

 060. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I held Lia¡¯s hand while she got disinfected and stitched up. We owned no painkillers of any kind, certainly not local anesthetic, so she just had to grit and bear it. She winced as the needle went in and out of her thigh, but didn¡¯t cry out. I was proud of her.


    ¡°Anyway, in Vegas you made a lot of money and a new identity. Guess you eventually found what you were looking for and came out here?¡± I was curious, but also wanted to take her mind off her surgery.


    ¡°Not quite but yeah,¡± Lia said, wincing. ¡°At the end, I still had a handful of locations where you could be. Pretty sure all of them are like this, places where the XPCA dumps Exhumans they have no idea what else to do with and can¡¯t keep restrained. The only way I could dig up that information was to get it from the XPCA, or someone affiliated with them, like the Hunters Association, and contacting either of them seemed like a terrible idea.¡±


    ¡°Probably the worst idea ever.¡±


    So I went with option B, the hard way. I hired a guy, professional covert intelligence agent, nickname Taglock, to physically visit each zone and figure out which one you were in.


    ¡°Oh, our sneaky guest,¡± AEGIS said, diligently driving the surgery robot.


    ¡°You met him?¡±


    ¡°Only barely. He was a slippery one, and smart, too,¡± AEGIS said absently, focused on her work. ¡°We had a little fun with cat and mouse and then he vanished about the time Athan finished recovering, so I didn¡¯t know what happened.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like him all right. I guess he found you because he took these¡­¡± she reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a small holo, tapped a few buttons and brought pictures of me up. I was still in my old clothes, leaning heavily on Karu¡¯s arm on our little date while I was still in recovery. The thought of Taglock, or even Lia spying on us then made my stomach turn.


    It got worse as she flipped through the pictures, us having a snowball fight, her playfully boxing at me. The fact that I was leaning on her in almost every picture made me look clingy and coupley in a way I knew just wasn¡¯t true.


    ¡°Uh, that¡¯s Karu,¡± I said to Lia. ¡°She¡¯s the hunter. Tried to kill me, found out I wasn¡¯t so bad, we became friends.¡±


    ¡°You guys seem close.¡±


    ¡°Not that close, in those pictures I was still wounded and could hardly walk on my own, so I was leaning on her, not¡­attached to her.¡±


    ¡°Sure, bro.¡± She put away the holo and I felt hot and cold at the same time. ¡°Taglock brought me the evidence and after that I just came out here looking for you. Didn¡¯t think I could send anyone else I trusted, and trusting Taglock was already a huge risk I didn¡¯t want to take.¡±


    ¡°Why¡¯d you trust him? Why not just throw some credits at him and have him go?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°Because I was allegedly an omniscient infopath Exhuman.¡±


    AEGIS looked confused so I just pointed at Lia and mouthed ¡®Black Shark.¡¯


    ¡°Someone with that kind of power doesn¡¯t need to hire people like Taglock, so I did it as myself. Thought it was less suspicious having a girl looking for her brother than an Exhuman infopath who should already know where he is. Obviously suspicious I had the money to hire him, but what was I gonna do?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. You already did so much more than I would have been able to,¡± I laughed.


    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t be like that. You¡¯ve been out here, fixing AIs, making friends with bounty hunters, fighting bears¡­you¡¯ve done tons of cool stuff, I¡¯m actually kind of jealous.¡±


    ¡°And I¡¯m kind of jealous of you not having to fight to survive every day, not battling for your life against a bunch of crazies, and having tons of power and resources.¡±


    ¡°And also not having to deal with bears,¡± AEGIS added. I nodded.


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s later, and I¡¯ve still got to sit here with my leg¨C¡±


    ¡°Actually, you¡¯re all done,¡± AEGIS said, applying a pad and winding it in place with some improvised bandages. ¡°Try to take it easy or it¡¯ll re-open. And do NOT engage any more bears.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, I¡¯ll try. I was gonna say, you should tell me all the stuff that¡¯s happened since you left.¡±


    ¡°I guess I can try,¡± I said. ¡°So like, right from the beginning? I guess I¡¯d better start some dinner, we¡¯ll be here for a while.¡±


    AEGIS had brought the bear outside and I started a fire. Never had bear meat, but there was a ton of it, and I wouldn¡¯t waste a kill, so that was going to be most of what I ate for a while. While I worked at skinning, butchering, and cooking the poor animal, Lia watched with intense curiosity and we talked about everything that had happened to me so far.


    How the standoff had ended at home. How I¡¯d inadvertently destroyed an entire XPCA prison. About Blackett and his insane attempts to kill me. About the soldiers in the VTOL who dumped me out here trying to shoot me, and me dodging gunfire to try to save their lives, not mine. Finding The Bunker, finding AEGIS, Saga¡¯s games, Karu¡¯s threats, Wynn and Tate¡¯s stories.


    Finally we were almost caught up. We got to the events of the last month, and I hesitated, looking at the silent DOG-Es standing by, unable to talk but AEGIS hearing and seeing everything through them.


    I didn¡¯t want Lia to misunderstand or hate AEGIS for what she¡¯d done, but this was also Lia, my sister, and I couldn¡¯t keep secrets from her.


    So as gently and understandingly as I could, I explained how AEGIS had been compelled by her original programming to kill me and had been able to rebel against it and save my life. Lia grew more and more nervous as the story went on, even shifting to the other side of the fire to keep the DOG-Es in view while I talked.


    ¡°And you still trust this machine?¡±


    ¡°I do. She had every possible chance to kill me just by doing nothing, and instead she did everything.¡±Stolen story; please report.


    ¡°I get that but¡­you were only like that because she did that to you in the first place.¡±


    ¡°Lia, you remember in fourth grade when you thought it would be funny to hit me on the back of the head while I was drinking out of the water fountain?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said, a little crestfallen. ¡°But¨C¡±


    ¡°I still have that chipped tooth, and I always will. Does that mean I should never let you stand behind me ever again?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not the same. She knew exactly what she was trying to do, I was just messing around.¡±


    ¡°It is the same because you¡¯re never going to do that again and neither is she. You guys¡­everyone messes up. And so you learn how not to mess up in the future. AEGIS is now implicitly one of the people I trust most, because unlike pretty much everyone else in the world, she had my life completely in her hands and did everything she could to save it. Even you¡­I know you would, obviously, but she¡¯s already proven it.¡±


    ¡°That makes sense. But she¡¯s also an AI, they don¡¯t behave the same as people do.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s as human as anyone else I¡¯ve ever met. Maybe even moreso. Whatever you decide is up to you, but whatever I decide is up to me, too.¡±


    Lia looked lost, staring into the scorpion-tail camera of the DOG-E with the red light. I didn¡¯t know what she was thinking.


    ¡°What¡¯s on your mind, spiker?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t call me that. I hated that nickname, and that was before Dad started hitting me.¡±


    ¡°Sorry.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s okay. I¡¯m just¡­I feel like I spent the whole time you were gone trying to hold onto you. Like, at first, when everything went to lizards, you, or the memory of you was all I had. And then I was lost in a new city, but I had you to work towards and that kept me going. Then I became Black Shark, and had to keep reminding myself I was doing this all for you, but I never let it go. And now I¡¯m here¡­and I feel like you have this whole life without me.¡±


    She kicked at a rock and glowered. ¡°It sound stupid and selfish, but I spent all this time getting here, and now I don¡¯t even know why I¡¯m here.¡±


    ¡°Oh Lia,¡± I said, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her in. ¡°I thought about you all the time. I even blew myself up with a bomb on accident because I was distracted thinking about you.¡±


    ¡°What!?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I glazed over that one, sorry. Still okay!¡± I said, giving her a silly flexing pose to show off how still okay I was. She looked mad. Perhaps not the right time to joke around.


    ¡°What I mean is¡­I can¡¯t go back. Conditions of my exile and the XPCA leaving me alone and stuff. I had assumed¨Chad hoped¨Cthat you still had a normal life with your friends and Mom and Dad and would go off and have a great life without me.¡±


    ¡°You idiot,¡± she said, and I felt hot tears fall on my leg. ¡°I missed you, how could I not?¡±


    ¡°I thought you were like Mom and Dad actually, and you hated me. That¡¯s why I kept you out of my mind as much as I did, because thinking of the last time I saw you, with tears in your eyes and an apron on, making breakfast for everyone¡­after seeing how Mom and Dad reacted, I couldn¡¯t approach you. If you¡¯d turned me away like they did¡­¡±


    I felt hot tears on my own cheeks now too. ¡°It would have broken me, Lia. So I ran instead, but always wondered what you would have said or done if I had stayed another second.¡±


    ¡°I would have told you I loved you, dumb brother.¡± The DOG-Es plodded away to give us more privacy. I imagined AEGIS crying all over her terminal at us and had to laugh a little. ¡°I would have offered you a pancake, because¡­I just made them.¡± She hiccuped and her breathing was ragged.


    ¡°And I would have really appreciated that because it was a really long day and I was hungry for most of it.¡± We laughed even as we cried.


    We spent most of the next hour laughing and crying. Our emotional states were so devastated that any stupid little thing would set us off, and our faces and sides ached as we leaned on each others shoulders, watching the fire burn out and the moon rise into the cloud-streaked sky.


    Lia buried a hand under my shirt for warmth like she¡¯d done so many times while we were kids and I yelped and swatted at the freezing intruder. She just held on and laughed and soon we were wrestling, and then both sweaty and panting on the ground, exhausted from wrestling like idiots.


    I served us both another helping of bear and put more bear and more wood on the fire. It would last a lot longer cooked and salted than raw, so I had to cook as much as I could now before it went bad. To my surprise, Lia pulled out a flask, black like the rest of her ensemble, and took a couple deep swigs, finishing with a satisfied gasp as she refilled her lungs.


    ¡°Want some?¡± she asked, handing it over. I took the flask and sniffed it. Smelled like cough suppressant medicine.


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­what is it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Vodka,¡± she said with a wink. Was she starting to sway a little already?


    ¡°Uh, no thanks. When did you start drinking? Aren¡¯t you¡­only fifteen?¡±


    ¡°My roommates turned me onto it. So nice, after stressing and thinking all day just to be able to turn it off, you know? You should try it, honest.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m fine, thanks. Doesn¡¯t that sound a little bit like alcoholism?¡±


    ¡°Meh.¡± She had another drink. ¡°I¡¯ve never done anything stupid or gotten really piss-drunk, so it seems fine to me.¡±


    ¡°I guess that¡¯s what it¡¯s there for.¡± This was totally new and unexpected, but I guess I couldn¡¯t expect Lia to be the same person I¡¯d always known, just because I left. Still, at fifteen. I was eighteen (and therefore legal), and I¡¯d never touched a sip, always thought I had to be on my A-game, didn¡¯t want to lose my scholarship or play badly because I was hungover. Being a popular athlete, I had tons of chances and always turned them down, always worried about my future.


    A future which never came.


    ¡°You know, I think I will try it,¡± I said. Lia gave a small cheer and handed it over.


    ¡°It¡¯s not there for the taste, you just gotta swallow it,¡± she said. I nodded and took a big gulp like she did, and choked, almost spraying it all over the fire. I clapped the palm of my hand over my mouth and held it for a few moments before I could finally swallow.


    ¡°Bah, nasty,¡± I said. Lia laughed.


    ¡°Better than my first time. There was this guy who had a thing for me and he was buying me shots. I thought, it¡¯s such a small amount, how bad could it be? Spit it all over his face.¡± She giggled and had another swig, then passed it back to me.


    Determined and prepared this time, I got it down without issue, but it felt like burning. Why would people drink this stuff? Why was I drinking this stuff? Was I just competing with Lia again? I looked over at her and saw the fire in her eyes and knew she was thinking she was beating me.


    ¡°Maybe this isn¡¯t such a good idea,¡± I said.


    ¡°Suit yourself,¡± she had another swig, almost too casually.


    ¡°On the other hand¨C¡± I said, taking it from her again.


    At some point, I realized it hit me. I don¡¯t know when, or how, but booze was in my brain. Everything seemed a lot fuzzier and gentler, warmer and happier, like I could just jump in the fire and it¡¯d be like a spa. That thought, and many others, were just hilarious to me, and I informed Lia of such.


    Her raucous laughed confirmed that I was, in fact, a comedic genius.


    ¡°KNow what I Missed best about you, LIA?¡± I asked, not sure if she was swaying or me. ¡°You¡¯re not like all the other girls around here. You don¡¯t FLY, your not a robot or an Exhuman. You¡¯re jets a reeeeally good friernd.¡±


    ¡°Ugh, and don¡¯ tget me started on BOYS,¡± she confided. ¡°I admit Brick was a looser, but that other guy Subaru, he didn¡¯t even run a multimilion dollar shadowy criminal operation. Like c¡¯mon, who¡¯s wearing the pants in this relationship, knowatimean?¡±


    ¡°I know exztctly what you mean. I¡¯m always shooting all this lightning and theother girls are like, not shooting lighting, all the time. What¡¯s up with that?¡±


    ¡°Dude, if we were together, all the time, I could run a multimiliondollar shadowy criminal organizatoin and you can shoot lightning.¡±


    ¡°Holy crap, power couple,¡± I giggled. ¡°Except I¡¯m the one with the powers.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯z not fair!¡± she said, turning on me and making us both fall over onto the ground. She straddled me and beat on my chest with her fists. ¡°I want powers too, you gota share with me.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m hot,¡± she suddenly announced, and threw her hooded cloak off of her with some effort. She laid down on my chest and pressed her slight form up against me.


    I couldn¡¯t move but wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to. She was warm and soft and comfy. And I was warm and comfy too. I felt her body rise and fall arrhythmically as it moved up and down with both of us breathing out of synch.


    ¡°Missed you so much,¡± she muttered into my chest, her mess of brown hair tickling my chin.


    ¡°Missed you too, Lia,¡± I said and kissed the top of her head. She made a little happy mumble and just like that the two of us went to sleep under the stars.

 061. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    It had been a while since I¡¯d woken up and just generally been in pain. I didn¡¯t miss the feeling.


    I opened one eye for a fraction and slammed it shut again, wishing to never do that again. My mouth was dry, my muscles ached, and I sort of felt a latent sense of needing-to-puke-but-not-quite just hanging there.


    I didn¡¯t want to move, but my back hurt from sleeping outside on rocks like an idiot. I couldn¡¯t move. Was I paralyzed? A brief moment of panic flickered through me irrationally, and the pounding in my brain made sure I wouldn¡¯t try that again.


    No more thinking, moving, looking, or panicking, got it. Just lay here forever. New life goals.


    I shifted my foot slightly. Not paralyzed, neat. I tried to shift my other foot. No good, super heavy. Why was it so heavy? It moved, but it didn¡¯t want to. I was tempted to look, but not enough to actually do something about it.


    Shit, this was too much thinking again, my brain buzzed angrily at me.


    Okay, so something was laying on half my body, keeping me from moving. Maybe if I just lay here without moving or thinking for the next few hours, I could figure out what it was.


    Whatever it was moved on top of me and moaned a little in its sleep. It was a person. Why was I sleeping outside with a person?


    I tried to work my way back through my memories and found a lot of them didn¡¯t exist anymore. Just periods of¡­nothing. But I remembered Lia was there. And we talked, and ate, and¡­drank?


    Oh. So this is what drinking is like. This is a hangover.


    As though by naming it, I gave it strength, it banged at my head and churned my guts more. This was awful. What were you supposed to do for hangovers?


    Oh yeah, drink lots of water the night before. Well, that ship sailed. Next plan was the old plan¨Clay here forever.


    I couldn¡¯t though. I had to drink and had to pee, both really bad. Time to face the sun.


    As slowly as a human had ever moved, I cracked one eye open until the sun¡¯s needles stabbed right through it into my brain. Somehow, this made me want to vomit even more, which just made no sense to me at all, but if my body would just hold together for a few more minutes, I would accommodate all of its vomiting and peeing needs. I just needed to¡­move¡­from¡­under¡­


    What was I under? A big black thing. Shading my one eye, I tried to glimpse enough of it to get a picture. It was a person. It was the top of Lia¡¯s head. It was laying half on top of me, head crooked in my armpit and wrapped around my side. It was wearing her big hooded travel cloak. It was not wearing much else, my sister¡¯s naked boobs were smushed against my chest.


    I jumped up and dumped her off me, yelling for some reason. The noise was horrible, even to my ears, and Lia just crumpled like she was boneless into a fetal position under her cloak.


    ¡°Nnnnnnoooooooo talking¡­¡± her voice muttered from under the cloak.


    I had to sit down and hold my head to keep it from exploding. ¡°Lia, why are you naked?¡±


    ¡°Nnnnnnnnnooooo,¡± she moaned pitifully. It was like talking to a black, pitiful boulder.


    ¡°I need to go pee,¡± I said, standing up urgently, and then regretting it instantly. I held my temples and closed my eyes and gingerly walked to the shade of the trees.


    When I came back, she was exactly where I¡¯d left her.


    ¡°Lia, wake up,¡± I whispered at her. ¡°We need to drink some water.¡±


    ¡°Nnnnoooooo. Shush.¡±


    ¡°Come on, you won¡¯t feel better if you don¡¯t get up.¡±


    ¡°Gimmie minute.¡±


    ¡°Kay. I¡¯m getting some water for us.¡±


    I went into the elevator and went down, leaning on the wall for the ride. The doors opened, and AEGIS greeted me with unnatural chipperness.


    ¡°HEYA ATHAN, HOW¡¯S IT GOING?¡± she belted.


    ¡°Shush. I hate you.¡±


    ¡°HAVE A GOOD TIME DRINKING LAST NIGHT?¡±


    I picked up a bag of water from beside my bed. ¡°AEGIS, are you thirsty?¡±


    ¡°You still drunk? I¡¯m an AI.¡±


    ¡°Then stop talking or I¡¯m gonna have to pour this on you.¡±


    ¡°Jokes on you, Athan, that black box is totally waterproof.¡±


    ¡°Blah.¡± It was about the best comeback I had for the situation. AEGIS just grinned diabolically.


    I pounded half the bag, the cold feeling settling unnaturally inside me like it might come right back up, but somehow I managed to keep it down, and brought the rest back to Lia, who had, again, not moved at all.


    ¡°Water,¡± I said. An arm came out of the black mess and took it, and then held it for several seconds unsure of how to proceed. Finally, thirst must have won out over the other competing emotions, and the cloak unfurled itself into a human-ish shape. I saw two long naked legs pop out, saw a flash of a breast through the front opening of the cloak, and then decided to face the trees.


    ¡°Lia, put on clothes. Why are you naked?¡±


    ¡°Ionno,¡± she mumbled. ¡°Ask drunk Lia.¡±


    ¡°This is so fucked up. You¡¯re my sister. What the hell were you thinking?¡±


    ¡°Bro. I was drunk. Also, shut up please.¡±


    ¡°Drunk doesn¡¯t begin to explain it!¡± I wanted to turn and yell at her but absolutely did not want to see any more of my sister today. Or, ever.


    ¡°You ever tried to sleep in skin-tight riding armor.¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯ve never even worn riding armor.¡±


    ¡°Well it sucks, so I guess drunk Lia took it off. Just chill, bro.¡± I heard lots of rustling as she dressed behind me. ¡°There, all decent. Now, shut up?¡±


    I turned around and she was dressed, just as she said, skintight riding armor. She wasn¡¯t wearing her cloak properly, just had it bunched up around her face along with the hood to protect her eyes, I guessed. From what I could see of the lower half of her face, she was blushing enormously, but just keeping cool and rational, like she always did.


    It made me a little happy that she was also embarrassed, but a little sad that I was here freaking out about it while she kept cool and treated it like the awkward but harmless situation it was. I felt a little ashamed for making a bigger deal of it than I needed to¡­I was supposed to be the big brother.


    ¡°We need water and carbs,¡± she said, her voice a dread monotone.


    ¡°Uh. Carbs. That might be¡­hard to come by. Mostly just meat and plants out here. I¡¯m not much of a farmer.¡±


    She dug in her bag and offered me half a roll of packaged crackers. ¡°Carbs and salt. Eat.¡±


    I took half and sat down, eating solemnly, while she did the same under her hood. Her eyes were bloodshot and her skin looked splotchy red and pale. I¡¯m sure I looked no better.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    We spent the rest of the morning in silence, to Lia¡¯s satisfaction. I think she had it way worse than I did, because while I was starting to feel merely crappy, she was still mostly interested in being a silent, defeatist little boulder.


    Eventually it was almost noon and I¡¯d done nothing with my day. Gently, I told Lia I¡¯d go fishing for anything to go with the bear we¡¯d be eating for the next few days, and how to follow me if she wanted. To my surprise, she stood up and volunteered to come with.


    ¡°How you doing?¡± I asked as we walked.


    ¡°Been worse. Been a heck of a lot better.¡±


    ¡°You uh, drink like that often?¡±


    ¡°Haven¡¯t been drinking long enough to do it often. Only just started a few months ago.¡±


    ¡°Can I ask a question?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not gonna like it, but can¡¯t exactly stop you.¡±


    ¡°Why did you start drinking?¡±


    ¡°Told you last night. Roommates did it, I joined them a few times.¡±


    ¡°Yeah but they¡¯re not here. I mean, why did you personally start doing it.¡±


    ¡°You drank last night. Did you have fun?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I think. I hope? I don¡¯t remember a lot of it. We laughed and cried a lot.¡±


    ¡°So, that¡¯s the thing about drinking. I mean, obviously you shouldn¡¯t be getting blackout drunk all the time. But laughing and crying, is that something you do a lot in your daily life?¡±


    ¡°Uh, sometimes. Not really. Mostly it¡¯s actually pretty boring drudgery keeping-alive kind of stuff, peppered with extremely uncomfortable moments of action.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. But you¡¯ve still got those laughing and crying feelings in you somewhere.¡±


    ¡°I¡­guess?¡±


    ¡°So I drink to let them out.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t follow.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I didn¡¯t think so,¡± she sighed. ¡°You should just come drinking with me a few more times and you¡¯ll figure it out.¡±


    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t think so. Once was enough for me.¡±


    ¡°That wasn¡¯t a very good example.¡±


    ¡°Even so, I¡¯m good, thanks.¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°Whatever, bro. My point is just that it lets me be a different part of me.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like you¡¯re letting some inner monster out.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not. It¡¯s¡­¡± she sighed. ¡°It¡¯s hard to explain. It lets another side of me¨Cwhich is always there¨CI don¡¯t know. Breathe? I spend all day planning and worrying and struggling with making sure I¡¯m always moving and surviving¡­even if I don¡¯t need to be. After a few drinks, I¡¯m able to let all that go and just¡­exist. Does that make any sense?¡±


    ¡°No. Why don¡¯t you just not worry as much?¡±


    ¡°See, I know you¡¯re not doing this on purpose because I was just you a few months ago, but jeez is this impossible to explain.¡±


    ¡°Then let¡¯s talk about something else.¡±


    ¡°Agreed. I think we¡¯re all caught up on everything that¡¯s happened, so let me ask, how are you, dude?¡±


    I turned and looked at her following me. Narrow legs, clad in black except where the wound showed a flash of white and a trail of red, stalking behind me with careful steps, her cloak swishing back and forth with her steps.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how I am. I¡¯ve been so focused on just surviving most of the time and dealing with the random shit that comes up that I haven¡¯t really ever stopped and thought about how I was.¡± She frowned at my answer. ¡°Sorry, I¡¯ve gotten bad at small talk. I¡¯m supposed to say ¡®good¡¯?¡±


    ¡°No, you¡¯re supposed to answer like you did. I¡¯m just not happy that you¡¯re not taking care of yourself. You¡¯ve got all these dead bears and fishes and protein tubes and you still look like you¡¯ve lost a hundred pounds.¡±


    ¡°You should have seen me a few weeks ago, I¡¯ve put on a lot of weight.¡±


    ¡°That does not make me feel better to hear.¡±


    ¡°I was injured.¡±


    ¡°Just making it worse, dude.¡±


    ¡°Lia, look.¡± I stopped and turned to her. ¡°I appreciate your concern, but I¡¯ve been living out here for, what?¡±


    ¡°Going on seven months.¡±


    ¡°Shit, has it been that long? But see, I¡¯ve got a life out here. I¡¯ve survived this far, I don¡¯t need you to come in and help me fix everything, I¡¯m surviving.¡±


    ¡°I¡­I know.¡± She shifted uneasily. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I just¡­had this thought that you needed me¨C¡°


    ¡°I do need you, Lia. Not to live, but to be happy. You¡¯re the one asking me how I¡¯m doing, and that means a lot. Heck, just knowing you¡¯re doing okay yourself and don¡¯t hate me is so much off my mind. But when it comes to living out here, surviving, that¡¯s all I¡¯ve been doing for seven months now. I¡¯m a freaking expert at some of this shit.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I saw you skin and butcher a whole bear last night. Wasn¡¯t expecting that.¡±


    ¡°Fish, deer, raccoon, rabbit, goose, boar, beaver and squirrel. And bear. Skinned and eaten. Smoked, grilled, slow-cooked, dried, spit-roasted, and herb-baked. Fourteen types of edible greens, two types of tubers, seasonal mushrooms, underground mushrooms, but only once. Wild berries in the summer. Preserves from the ruins, and the nutrient paste from Karu only showed up on the diet last month.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t even showing off. I knew there was more, but these were just off the top of my head. The things I¡¯d done and killed and found and eaten just to keep myself alive. This stuff was integral to my being now. I lived and died it.


    ¡°Quite a list,¡± Lia whispered.


    ¡°Sorry¡­I think¡­I¡¯m just touchy about it. I used to have a lot more to live for, and this is all I¡¯ve got now. So for you to show up and try to save me from it¡­¡±


    ¡°I understand. I¡¯m sorry, I think I¡¯m touchy too, about feeling like it¡¯s my job to save you. I know it isn¡¯t. I know you don¡¯t need saving.¡±


    We stood and stared at our own feet for a few moments.


    ¡°Awkward sibling hug?¡± she volunteered.


    ¡°Awkward sibling hug.¡± We each moved in one-armed and kept our torsos as far apart as possible for the maximum awkward effect as we patted each other on the shoulders in a syncopated beat. It was also important to hold the hug for way longer than either of us were comfortable with, that was the only way to have a true awkward sibling hug.


    Eventually, I broke it off, willing to let her have this one. She smiled at me and we kept heading toward the river.


    ¡°We¡¯ll need to swing by and pick up my crawler at some point,¡± she said. ¡°I hope it¡¯s not busted.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯d be nice to have around. I mean, maybe. I don¡¯t travel from here much.¡± A thought hit me. ¡°You¡¯re going back, aren¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°Wasn¡¯t planning on it.¡±


    ¡°What? Why?¡±


    ¡°Haven¡¯t you been listening? Everything sucks out there.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t suck more than here. Lia, I¡¯m only here because I have to be. You¡¯ve got¡­school, and college, and your whole life ahead of you, whether you do it at home or wherever else. And your vast underground criminal empire to run.¡±


    ¡°Meh. When I came out here, Black Shark faked his death. Easiest way to make sure none of the undesirables I worked with came after me.¡±


    ¡°I guess that¡¯s smart. But you still should go have your own life. No point in both of us sacrificing our lives just because I¡¯m Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Still meh. I¡¯ll do what I want.¡±


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s for damn sure. I just want you to want to have a life outside of this wreck.¡±


    ¡°Oh, you¡¯re not that bad.¡±


    ¡°I was talking about the ruins?¡±


    ¡°I know.¡±


    ¡°Jerk.¡±


    ¡°You love me anyway. So anyway, I wanted to ask about your powers. How does that all work¨C?¡±


    I shushed her and stopped, my arm out to hold her back.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Listen.¡±


    ¡°Are there planes flying overhead out here?¡±


    ¡°No, that¡¯s my friend Karu coming in. She¡¯s probably looking for a fight, too.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll explain later. Just¡­try to be polite if she gets weird.¡±


    ¡°Do you have any normal friends?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said, and took a good look at her standing there behind me, wrapped in a black cloak and still unsteady on her bear-maimed leg. ¡°And that includes you.¡±


    Karu had broken the treeline and headed straight towards us on ribbons of blue plasma. Gracefully, she circled us once and then hovered instead of landing, a good twenty feet above and in front of us.


    ¡°Who is that which walks beside Ashton? Identify yourself,¡± she called.


    ¡°I am¡­Ashton, too.¡±


    ¡°You think this a game?¡± Karu primed her wrist-mounted weaponry with an ominous hum and levelled it at Lia. I stepped in between the two.


    ¡°Karu¨C¡°


    ¡°I did not ask for you to intercede, Ashton. I directed my question toward the other. Now speak, you who wears black.¡±


    ¡°I¡­I am Lia,¡± she said, cowering behind my back. ¡°I¡¯m Ashton¡­I mean, Athan¡¯s sister.¡±


    ¡°Ashton, is this person¡¯s story true?¡±


    ¡°Yes, Karu. Put down your guns.¡±


    ¡°I remain skeptical. Ashton¡­girl, if you are who you say you are, tell me something personal about your sibling that only you would be able to know.¡±


    ¡°Umm. F-for his second birthday he wanted a hoverboard but got a tricycle.¡±


    ¡°This was not a great plan, Karu,¡± I said.


    ¡°I am realizing this. Still, without being able to verify the threat, I am unsure of how to proceed.¡±


    ¡°For God¡¯s sake Karu, she¡¯s my sister, not a threat. Get down here and meet her properly.¡±


    I was worried Karu would just hang up there all day, shouting indignant threats, but she gradually lowered herself to the ground and touched down.


    ¡°She landed! Get her!¡± I shouted and barreled forward, scooping a handful of snow on the way. Lia shrieked and ran for cover. Karu waited patiently while the snowball plastered her right in the face, arms crossed like a statue.


    ¡°You would be so lucky that I can determine your humor,¡± Karu said, wiping snow from her visor.


    ¡°I just wanted to make sure you knew it was me, too.¡±


    ¡°Fortunately for me, you are utterly unmistakable. Come here girl, and prove to me that you are not so foolish as your brother at least.¡±


    Lia yelled and came charging out from behind a tree, also pelting Karu in the face with a snowball.


    ¡°I see the family resemblance already. Please do inform me that there are no more of you coming.¡±


    ¡°No, just the two of us,¡± I said, beaming and holding Lia around the shoulder.


    ¡°I thank the heavens for that, though I already find myself wishing He had stopped at just one.¡±


    ¡°Hi. Lia. Nice to meet you,¡± Lia said, wiping the snow off her hand before extending it for a handshake. Karu looked for a moment like she wasn¡¯t going to reciprocate, but then shook the hand warmly.


    ¡°I am Karu. Master hunter, and an associate and rival of your brother¡¯s. I meet you in good faith.¡±


    ¡°So Karu, what brings you visiting today?¡±


    ¡°I had originally come to fight, but seeing as how you have company visiting, that would be exceedingly rude.¡±


    ¡°Thank goodness. Maybe you should stay with me if it means keeping Karu out of my hair.¡±


    ¡°This is a temporary ceasefire and nothing more, issued at my discretion. Do not think you can worm your way out of obligation simply by keeping the girl at your side.¡±


    ¡°Anyway, Lia, this is Karu. Pretty much her in a nutshell, what you¡¯ve seen.¡±


    ¡°I see. What a very interesting person.¡±


    ¡°Karu, we were just going to go fishing. Care to join?¡±


    ¡°As though I have the time to sit idle waiting for some¡­fish to express the stupidity and curiosity to bite.¡±


    ¡°Sure. What else would you prefer to do.¡±


    She opened her mouth and closed it, and then bit her lip as she thought.


    ¡°On second consideration, fishing will be sufficient.¡±

 062. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Karu.

    I did not approve of Ashton¡¯s indolence, and certainly had no expectation to partake in it, yet when faced with the harsh reality of his reasoning, I could do nothing but relent.


    What else would I prefer to do?


    Such a simple question but a devastating one.


    Because I had scheduled today around spending the entire day with Ashton. My offer to delay our conflict was not an unreasonable or totally unexpected one¡­but it meant I was now spending hours to fly out here on a social visit.


    I trundled behind Ashton and the girl as they walked, talking and laughing, my eyes unfocused on the ground, the info callouts from my visor identifying each footprint they left behind.


    I had allowed myself such a visit once before because Ashton was in recuperation, and visiting people while they recovered was a valuable tradition and social norm. Certainly, I cared little if someone were to stand outside of my regenerator while I used it, but I could imagine the appeal.


    And yet now this was twice, and twice was a pattern, and patterns of behavior needed to be analyzed before they became a habit. This was something of which I was very particular.


    So¡­this habit. Was it good or deleterious?


    On one hand, I enjoyed Ashton¡¯s company immensely. I found myself relaxed in his presence, having already decided that he was a person of good moral character and would not seek me harm or act against my interests knowingly. This put me at ease, and in turn, allowed me to enjoy other aspects of his character¨Csuch as his strength and never-ceasing witticisms¨Cwithout the additional baggage of assessing threats or weaknesses.


    It was a bit like being back with my squad on-base. Out of boredom and shared circumstance, we formed deep and honest bonds, certainly stronger than those I had with my tutors, family, or the socialites with whom my family frequently mingled.


    On the other hand¡­it reminded me too much of my squad. I was not certain that allowing myself to become close to another was wise. Especially one so prone to sudden death as an Exhuman.


    My heart wrenched slightly as I turned over that thought, though whether it was at the thought of Ashton¡¯s death, or touching upon unpleasant memories, I was surprisingly unsure.


    But on the other other hand, a life of shallow indulgence and idleness was not one I could abide. Though it was true I enjoyed my time with the Exhuman, I did not enjoy what it did to my life. I had rejected my family¡¯s prestigious calling on the account of wishing to effect change on the world. What change did I make by loitering in this tranquil, serene paradise?


    I could argue that I was keeping Ashton and his cohorts on the level, or they would be destroyed at my hand, but that was a weak deception, even in my eyes.


    ¡°¨Cdown Karu?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I asked. Ashton was talking to me and I was caught unaware. How very embarrassing.


    ¡°Asked if you wanted to sit down. You doing okay? You haven¡¯t said a word.¡±


    We were at the edge of a lake where once Ashton and I had battled. It occurred to me only now that he had been out here fishing at the time I had challenged him, fishing for his own sustenance. I had been unacceptably rude in my earliest days of interacting with him.


    I realized they were still staring at me and I hadn¡¯t replied.


    ¡°Yes. Right,¡± I said, sitting down cross-legged where I stood in the snow, a good ten feet from where Ashton and his cohort were perched on rocks by the riverbank. He shot me a concerned look but did not inquire further.


    It would have been better to process this at home at my leisure. Here, I stood only to gain further embarrassment. I found myself standing again.


    ¡°Thank you for your time, Ashton. I must be heading home for¡­very much important work.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re okay Karu?¡± Ashton asked as he advanced on me. I took half an involuntary step back, but discovered I should have retreated further when he gently lifted my visor and placed a hand across my forehead. ¡°You don¡¯t feel like you have a fever¡­but you¡¯re totally out of it today.¡±


    His hand was warm and rough. My breath caught in my throat once.


    ¡°I-I assure you, there is nothing amiss. I merely have¡­important obligations¡­elsewhere.¡±


    I was lying. I would go home and lay in bed bemoaning the waste of a day. Or perhaps press myself through the gym in repentance until I could do nothing but lay in bed bemoaning the waste of a day.


    Ashton merely frowned thoughtfully, but his sister stepped forward. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Karu. I¡¯ve been hogging my big bro this whole time, and you flew all the way out here. I¡¯ll head back home and you guys can hang out.¡± She began to walk off, and something made me stop and catch her wrist.


    ¡°I¡­no. It is not you.¡± I let her go uncomfortably. ¡°Lies do not befit me. I apologize for my deception, and will pray for forgiveness of this sin. I merely came here expecting combat and found¡­this happy family. It is not what I anticipated.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t this better though?¡± Ashton asked. I could not stand to agree, but could not find any metrics by which it could be considered worse.


    I stood still with my arms crossed as I considered how to respond.


    Stood still too long.


    A noise signaled in my visor¡¯s earpiece to which I had been conditioned to react, not to think. Instantly, I was on the ground, and in my arms, the two Ashtons.


    ¡°Karu, wh¨C¡°


    ¡°Be silent,¡± I ordered. To their credit, both did so without question. I released the girl and tapped a button on my visor, bringing up the telemetry data currently being processed by my visor. In moments, it would have a solution, yet I did not know if we had those moments. I had to move now.


    Reacting almost as much to my thoughts as my actions, my jetpack sprung to life and launched me into the sky. I kept moving, but not at any real speed, enough to be a difficult target, but not enough to pull any processing power away from the firing solution I needed.


    A shot rang out, seeming to fill the whole sky with its sound. The blast echoed across the clearing and bounced off the trees and echoed back, putting us in a bowl filled with sound. I was already in a dive and felt the shockwave of the projectile pulse through me.


    ¡°KARU!¡± Ashton yelled, sprinting to catch my body. Useless and deluded though he may be, his good spirit was beyond reproach. I snapped into a controlled descent and gave him an ¡®okay¡¯ gesture, before disappearing into speeds I knew he could not track.


    The jetpack did not fly at inhuman speeds, though it was very fast. Rather, it was almost impossibly maneuverable, with sixteen autonomous articulated arms which could each provide all or none of the pack¡¯s thrust at any given time. It¨Cand I¨Cwere versed in human psychology, and knew how best to move to throw off human perception and appear constantly in unexpected places and seemingly disappear while doing straightforward maneuvers.


    How good an airborne soldier was relied almost entirely on two things: The ability to endure extreme g-forces, and the ability to be entirely methodical in one¡¯s unpredictability. And I was a very, very good airborne.


    The targeting solution would have to wait; when one shot could end the fight, I couldn¡¯t take any more chances. I moved rapidly through the sky, spinning and scanning the treeline for any sign of the attacker, not that they would be visible, a weapon of that caliber could be miles away from here and still lethal and pinpoint accurate. I would have to bait out another shot to pull more telemetry data in order to triangulate the shot¡¯s origin.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It was risky, but holding still to bait the shot would be my only option. If I remained too evasive, the shooter may turn towards the Ashtons as means of distracting or incapacitating me, and that was not permissible. They should have to go through me first, and always.


    With a series of taps on my wrist computer and a few spoken words, I brought up the time to fire on his or her previous shot. From the time I had begun moving slowly until the shot had been fired was¡­2.01 seconds. Slow. Or maybe just patient? I would have to anticipate the next shot coming sooner than that, but could use it as a baseline.


    By the time I heard the shot, it would be too late, and my gear only registered the first time because he had used a subsonic viewfinder to determine my exact distance. This time I would have to dive on pure instinct.


    Or¡­wait, what was that?


    There was something red and obvious just behind the treeline before me. It could not possibly be the shooter. No shooter in the world could be so incompetent as this. My stomach turned, but not from the g-forces as I darted closer. A trailer, red, white, and black.


    I was wrong, there could be so incompetent a shooter. Luminary.


    At my approach he broke through the treeline in full exosuit, painted in his hideous trademark colors, and adorned with his hideous trademarks.


    ¡°Karu!¡± he yelled from behind the suit¡¯s blank mask, the voice synthesized to make his angry new york accent even angrier. ¡°Do you have any idea what the Association did to me because of you?¡±


    ¡°I presume nothing, because what they did, they did for your shortcomings, not through any action of my own.¡±


    ¡°Wrong, bitch. You ratted me out, you told them about my little information break-in and rendezvous with the XPCA guy. You have any idea what that cost me?¡±


    ¡°I would assume 120 million credits, minimum fine, plus probation and additional disciplinary measures as determined by the association authority. Because that is what it states in the employee contract.¡±


    ¡°You read that shit?¡±


    ¡°Was there any other reason for them to provide us with it?¡±


    ¡°I honestly can¡¯t believe you. So I got a little proposition for you. See, Luminary, he¡¯s a smart guy. I knew if I waited out here, you¡¯d come by sooner or later. I know you¡¯ve been seeing this Exhuman and not filing reports. Very unlike you, by the way.¡±


    ¡°If I did not intend to claim the Exhuman¡¯s bounty, then I have no reason to report.¡±


    ¡°And see, there¡¯s the problem. If you¡¯re coming out here on personal business, then you¡¯re not here on behalf of the association, making you a¡­what¡¯s the term Wilfried?¡± He paused and presumably listened to his comms. ¡°Yeah, a private citizen. And I¡¯m sure you know what the terms of our boy¡¯s exile was, yeah?¡±


    I felt myself go red. Not only had I unwittingly violated federal law and XPCA mandate, I had also been outsmarted by possibly the stupidest man alive.


    ¡°So, you turned me in and I had to pay 150 million C¡¯s. Now what happens if I turn you in for violating the terms of this kid¡¯s exile? Got that one memoried, missy?¡±


    I turned to look behind me and saw Athan sprinting to catch up. Not what I needed right now. I signaled for him to move to cover, but of course he didn¡¯t know military visual signalling, so I instead shooed him. He kept coming, stubborn man he was.


    ¡°A term of imprisonment for not less than ten years and a fine not less than ten-thousand credits, in addition to ineligibility for any office or position of trust or service, including that of a professional hunter. Or death.¡±


    ¡°Smart. So you see where you stand with me then. Now obviously, I¡¯ll be wanting my 15 mil back, but on top of t¨C¡°


    ¡°I refuse.¡±


    ¡°¨Cop of, what?¡±


    ¡°I said I refuse. If I have committed treasonous actions, I will pay for them. I will be no party in blackmail.¡±


    ¡°You would seriously give up your job, sully your little daddy¡¯s entire political dream, and maybe even face death, rather than give up a few million? You¡¯re swimming in credits. What¡¯s it to you?¡±


    ¡°I am a virtuous being. I refuse.¡±


    ¡°Well then maybe this will motivate you. Wilfried!¡±


    Luminary stepped forward from the bushes as he called out, in his arms was a launcher, capable of firing any variety of missiles at me. He would find my missile countermeasures a difficult barrier to penetrate, but given his resources, I did not dare take this fight lightly. I began to move, blurring the lines between unpredictable and invisible.


    A shot rang out. Boomed out. Exploded out, echoing across the field as before. My telemetry sensors were silent. Was I hit? Was I dying and did not know it? I hesitated a moment to verify my vitals were in order. Readings were green. Had the shot missed by such a margin that my suit hadn¡¯t even picked it up?


    It took me a moment to realize, no, the shot had hit. Athan lay on the ground under me, blood only now seeping from wounds across his body. His lightning shield was incapable of fully eradicating such a large projectile in such a short amount of space, and had merely blasted it into shrapnel. It was a strategy I had considered to defeat him, but weapons of that caliber did not function well or accurately while in flight.


    I pushed the image of Athan¡¯s still body from my mind. I had to fight, whether to save or avenge him, I knew not. But save or avenge him I would.


    The shot had not come from Luminary, who used my moment of hesitation to fire a string of missiles at me, before using his exosuit¡¯s speed to roar into the open. That meant that Wilfried was waiting in the distance somewhere with the rifle, ready to open fire again should I present a target.


    I would not present a target. This man and his servant would pay for what they had done.


    Moving faster than even I knew I could, I wove between the missiles as though they were standing still. Diverting energy for a moment, I unloaded a barrage of fragmentation grenades, saturating the area around Luminary.


    I was at another disadvantage here. I had a loadout designed to combat Athan, I was not expecting to combat a hard target like an exosuit, and had not the weight capacity to always haul every weapon in my armory. I was also light on lasers and guns¡­and especially missiles, as those weapons were ineffective against the Exhuman, but would have proven invaluable here.


    I gritted my teeth, seeing only a glimpse of Athan¡¯s prone form, now seeped fully red as I streaked over Luminary. I would make do. He and his servant would pay.


    I went through my list of onboard weapons as I rose in altitude and prepared for another dive, and then scanned the list on an info-callout to confirm. I had nothing suitable.


    I did however have things nearly suitable.


    My next strafing run, I unloaded dozens of grenades all around Luminary, setting their detonation timers to the maximum of ten seconds. Luminary braced, and then looked around, clearly confused. Had they been anti-armor, he would have then died, looking foolish.


    ¡°Smoke? Really?¡± he laughed. It was what I had on hand.


    At full speed, I slammed into him from the rear. I had not wasted the seconds his mockery had given me. Every bone from my wrist to my elbows were now shattered, but through the front of his torso, my two arm-blades prominently protruded from his chest, his favorite colors of white and red.


    ¡°Smoke, really,¡± I whispered as he began to realize what had occurred. Pointlessly, he grasped at the withdrawing blades, his hands trembling. The suit began to hiss as it deployed emergency medical gel and structure foam to reduce bleeding and cover the hole. I kicked him in the back with my remaining strength to free my arms and fell backward, hoping to hold a few more seconds of adrenaline before the pain set in.


    As I lay there helpless, it would be the final moment in this conflict. Either I would be laying such that Wilfried and his rifle had a shot, or they did not. My fate depended wholly on this and nothing else. For tense seconds, I did nothing but breathe and prepare to make peace with God.


    The shot never came. Wilfried had no shot, and would instead be coming to his master¡¯s aid. I braced myself against the pain and used my elbows to roll to my knees, my shattered arms screaming in agony as I moved. Black spots swam in my eyes from the pain but I willed myself onward. Staggering towards the exosuit, I pulled an explosive from my chest bandolier using my teeth, grateful for my breasts finally serving a purpose in a fight, and dropped it on the ground next to the prone Luminary.


    I used my eyes and neural link to configure the mine¡¯s settings and then deftly, I kicked the pin out of the mine. With effort, leaned on the Exosuit¡¯s hip enough to roll him onto the mine¡¯s pressure plate.


    I had no doubt that Luminary was passed out inside the suit. The one who moved him would be Wilfried, ensuring that both of them were in the blast radius when the pressure plate was released. It was an underhanded tactic, but I had to do as much as I could before consciousness fled me.


    I staggered towards Ashton¡­towards Athan. His sister was already there, applying bandages all across his body but unsure of how else to proceed. He was already unconscious which was a bad sign, but still alive.


    ¡°Girl¡­my¡­front right¡­on my belt.¡± I said, my hands dangling useless at my sides. She jumped forward and began fishing through my pockets. ¡°That spray, medical gel. On his wounds. Hurry.¡±


    She pointed the canister at him and depressed the trigger. Thin white foam squirted out of the nozzle and coated Athan¡¯s body wherever she directed it, acting as a second skin and disinfectant, stopping the bleeding. He would still need emergency care to remove the shrapnel or it would tear him apart from inside with every movement.


    ¡°Take¡­take off my armor.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Do it, or¡­he will die.¡±


    Again, she didn¡¯t ask more questions, just helped me remove all of my equipment except my visor and jetpack.


    ¡°Now¡­in the rescue pack. Spare¡­harness.¡±


    My vision was going from black to white and I found myself almost falling over at times. I set my jetpack to help me stay upright.


    ¡°What do I do with it?¡± she asked, calm, despite the tears in her eyes.


    ¡°Put it on¡­him, and him on me. We need¡­medical¡­¡±


    ¡°AEGIS has a hospital set up.¡±


    ¡°She won¡¯t¡­save him from this. Too many wounds. Strap him tight.¡±


    It was difficult for her to get him upright on me, but I couldn¡¯t bend down without blacking out, and he couldn¡¯t do anything at all. Eventually she got him leaning against me, my jetpack providing thrust to keep me upright, and secured him to me tightly.


    ¡°If we evade cap¡­ture,¡± I paused, my head swimming. ¡°Will be¡­a week, perhaps.¡±


    ¡°Good luck, Karu. Take care of him.¡±


    ¡°Do not¡­¡± I had something important to say. I double-checked, and the autopilot was good to take us to a clinic when directed¡­or if I lost consciousness. ¡°¡­not¡­¡±


    I seemed to blink forward a second in time, and the pack was engaging. ¡°Do not go near Luminary!¡± I shouted as the pack ascended with us in tow. Lia nodded, holding herself and finally letting her tears flow.


    I saw nothing more, as the shock of the pack kicking us into motion jarred my arms a final time and the pain put me out of this world.

 063. 2251, Present Day. Newbruck. Athan.

    Karu¡¯s description of being in a regenerator was pretty much spot-on. I went from blacking out on the battlefield to tiny flashes of cognizance of being in the air, strapped with my face in Karu¡¯s chest with my arms and legs bound to her while hers hung and swung like a macabre marionette. And then I was in a bed, drugged, drowsy, a man in black scrubs wiping residual fluid from the regenerator off me with a fluffy towel.


    I felt slow, and tired, but I also felt great. I touched my fingertips to each other and found them sensitive and soft, my calloused hands stripped away in an instant. I probed at my side and could not find the scar from AEGIS¡¯ attack, before the man politely laughed and asked me to let him finish.


    ¡°First time in a regenerator?¡± he asked. ¡°We see this a lot. Never gets old. Enjoy your new you.¡±


    Suddenly the door banged open, and Karu was there, also dripping regenerator slime, standing naked in the hallway as a concerned woman with a towel attempted to preserve some of her decency and get her back into her room.


    ¡°Alphard!¡± she shouted, looking directly at me. I covered myself with my hands and blushed enough for both of us. ¡°My cousin Alphard, whom I brought here after both of us were injured in the unfortunate hunting accident.¡± She looked at me intently. Me?


    ¡°Uh, hi?¡±


    ¡°Yes, hello my cousin Alphard. Have you answered any of their questions?¡±


    ¡°Uh, no.¡±


    ¡°Good. See that you do not. I take full responsibility for the incident and all questions should be directed solely to me.¡± She turned around and opened the door in a manner approximating a normal human and strode back into the hallway, her nurse frantically trying to cover her with a towel.


    I learned that she had a very nice butt.


    ¡°Uhhh¡­¡± said my nurse. ¡°We uh, apologize for that.¡±


    ¡°Oh, no problem,¡± I said, still beet-red. ¡°That¡¯s just¡­my cousin¡­uh, Karen. She¡¯s a real firecracker.¡± I laughed awkwardly.


    ¡°Yeah, she¡¯s¡­something.¡± The man was also blushing and offered me an apologetic grin as he got back to toweling me. I told him I could do the rest, but he insisted that I needed to take it easy after being put under for a couple hours, that both my judgement and motor skills would be badly impaired until I fully woke up.


    After Karu¡¯s dramatic entrance, I was not sure I could feel more awake.


    Still, I was always one to listen to my doctor. After he left, I dressed and sat quietly in my bed in the small room, some kind of recovery ward, with two beds and a curtain between them, a little dark, with the lights off and a curtain blocking out most of the setting sunlight. It was nice, and compared to where I¡¯d been recently, very soft, comfortable, and climate-controlled.


    I was a little surprised when the door opened and a lumpy man in an equally lumpy grey suit strolled in. He turned on the lights as he entered, to my annoyance, and proclaimed ¡°There, isn¡¯t that better.¡±


    ¡°Hi,¡± I said.


    ¡°Hello, um¡­¡± he trailed off.


    ¡°Alphard.¡±


    ¡°Yes. Alphard. I¡¯m a claims adjuster, here on behalf of¡­what was her name?¡±


    ¡°Karen.¡±


    ¡°Last name?¡±


    ¡°Irenside.¡±


    ¡°Yes. Her. And what is your relationship with her?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s my cousin.¡±


    ¡°Yes of course. But I meant how are you related to her.¡±


    Given Karu¡¯s urgency in busting in here, still naked and drugged up, and making sure I knew I was ¡®Alphard¡¯ and shouldn¡¯t answer any questions, it was obvious she knew this was coming, and obvious I needed to not screw it up.


    ¡°She¡¯s¡­my cousin?¡±


    ¡°I mean, by which family members are you two related? Like is she your Mother¡¯s brother¡¯s daughter? Or¡­?¡±


    ¡°Oh. I think I understand,¡± I said. He smiled gently. ¡°I¡¯m her cousin.¡±


    He sighed. ¡°Moving on.¡± He pulled out a small holo and put on a pair of tiny round glasses which sat at the end of his nose. ¡°It says here you were both injured in a boating accident?¡±


    ¡°Hunting. Where is Karen?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s just next door, I¡¯ll get to her later. So this accident¨C¡°


    ¡°Karen said she took responsibility for the accident and any questions should be directed to her. I think you should be talking to her instead of me.¡±


    ¡°Oh, this isn¡¯t anything, we¡¯re just having a little chat. Nothing official. So it says here¨C¡°


    ¡°If it¡¯s not official or anything, I¡¯m going to go back to sleep if that¡¯s okay. Still all loopy from the drugs.¡±


    ¡°It will only be a couple of minutes, please. Just a couple quick questions.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d rather not.¡±


    ¡°Your cousin was in such distress when I saw her, I really would prefer not to trouble her. If you could just answer instead¡­¡±


    ¡°Distress how?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Oh you know. The shock of having something so horrible happen. Both of her legs, I hear, completely destroyed.¡±


    ¡°Arms.¡±


    ¡°Right. Her arms. How would such a thing happen from a hunting accident?¡±


    ¡°She and I were sitting in a hunter¡¯s blind,¡± I began. The man leaned forward and surreptitiously touched a button on his holo. ¡°We¡¯d been waiting all day, you see, trying to hunt some geese, so we only had birdshot in our shotgun. We only had one shotgun between the two of us, because we believe in being economical. Karen¡¯s parents, as you know, really important political figures, and so we always go through as many hoops as we can to preserve an image of being socially- and environmentally-conscious.¡±


    I leaned back and mused ¡°Except when she got into hoop-dancing, then she was using as few hoops as possible. Trying to be economical of course again. Though, to be fair¨C¡°


    ¡°Alphard, her arms?¡±


    ¡°Yes. So we were in a blind waiting all day with one shotgun full of birdshot waiting for geese. Did I say that already? It¡¯s very important.¡±


    ¡°Yes. Continue.¡±


    ¡°Well eventually, we remembered that there were no geese. It was winter, and they¡¯d all moved north. Or south? I was never sure which was which, except that apparently the geese never got it wrong. Could you imagine if they flew north for the summer, and then accidentally flew north again for the winter? There would be an embarrassed flock visiting the north pole.¡±


    ¡°Alphard, please try to focus. Explain her arms.¡±


    ¡°I already talked about her arms. We only had the one shotgun¨C¡°


    ¡°No, her physical arms. Attached to her elbows?¡±


    ¡°Oh right. I was just getting to that but you interrupted me.¡± I waited for a few moments while his impatient incredulous glare grew more impatient and incredulous.


    ¡°Well? Continue!¡±


    ¡°Oh, all right. I was waiting to see if you were done. So there were no geese so we thought, what was the point of being in the blind at all? So we got down, it was in a tree by the way, actually let me start over, that¡¯s a very important fact. So we were in a blind in a tree¨C¡°


    ¡°Just continue from climbing down if you please.¡±


    ¡°If you say so, but you¡¯re not getting the whole story.¡± He didn¡¯t bite. ¡°Fair enough. So we got down and then we realized why we were up in that tree. See, there¡¯s a lot of wildlife on the ground, and in the winter it gets awfully riled up.¡±


    ¡°A wild animal did that to her?¡±


    ¡°Yep. As soon as we touched the ground, a wild rhinoceros comes out of nowhere.¡±


    ¡°A rhinoceros. In the Canadian boreal woodlands.¡±


    ¡°Came right out of nowhere and charged right at us. Well, Karen, she wasn¡¯t going to stand for any of that, and just punched in right in its charging face, both hands. Stopped the rhino cold, but broke her arms. Such a tragedy.¡±


    ¡°And how does this possibly relate to the shrapnel injuries you sustained?¡± he asked dryly.


    ¡°Oh. Yeah that doesn¡¯t make any sense does it?¡± I forced a little laugh as he turned redder and redder. ¡°Oh well, I am a little loopy from the drugs. Can I sleep now?¡±


    He slowly turned red and deliberately pressed the button on his holo again. ¡°Now you listen to me, you little time-wasting pile of¨C¡°


    For the second time today, the door banged open. This time, unfortunately dressed in her under-armor clothes, Karu strolled in, right on time.


    ¡°What is the meaning of this interrogation?¡± she shouted.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    ¡°Miss Irenside, there is no interrogation here, I was just talking to your cousin¨C¡°


    ¡°He was asking me all sorts of confusing questions, and I¡¯m not sure I was able to answer any of them because of how loopy I still am from the drugs.¡±


    She gave me a small smile and turned back to him. ¡°This man is in convalescence. How dare you attempt to take advantage of his compromised state to suit your own selfish desires. You are a despicable man.¡± She looked at him darkly, and I was certain if she were in her armor, her weapons would be ominously thrumming to life.


    ¡°It is essential that the insurance company¨C¡°


    ¡°Spare me your lies. I have been injured and regenerated dozens of times without this charade. You are here under false pretenses to do investigative work for the association. You may tell them I will not be filing a report as this was an engagement made as a private citizen.¡±


    ¡°You are walking on thin ice, Karu. If our investigation turns up that you were out there to collaborate with the Exhuman¡­¡±


    ¡°I was not. I was hunting in the area with my cousin and that is all. Now be gone and bother us no longer.¡±


    He fixed us both with a steely glare which clashed with his porky face, and then strode from the room.


    ¡°How do they not know who I am?¡± I whispered to Karu as she sat on the end of my bed.


    ¡°I have¡­updated records of your profile to be less accurate. XPCA records are still unchanged, but so long as the association suspects nothing, they have no reason to pull your file again. Our task is to ensure they suspect nothing.¡±


    ¡°And Alphard?¡±


    ¡°He is a pompous twit, but is very nearly as stubborn as you. The agency will invariably misstep in treating him with the respect he believes he is due and he will become obstinate. Or¡­so I hope. He would not willingly contribute to my deception.¡±


    ¡°What if they just call him now?¡±


    ¡°Then we are likely sunk, unless God or good fortune should see fit to intervene.¡± She looked at me seriously. ¡°Bereft of my equipment, I am not certain I would be able to contribute properly, but it would be a great honor to die beside you should it come to that.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think it will. Can we just get your stuff and go now?¡±


    ¡°There is little point. If they discover our deception, whether we are present or not, they will hunt the both of us down. Better to remain here and reduce suspicion such that we do not raise an alarm in the first place.¡±


    ¡°I guess.¡± I flopped back down on the bed and hated how soft and comfortable it was.


    ¡°My apologies for embroiling you in this all. I was unaware of Luminary¡¯s capacity for greed and vengeance. I should never have involved you.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t involve me, he did, by using me as bait to get to you. Besides, you just saved my life, and put me through some very expensive therapy for free. I owe you big time.¡±


    ¡°Who claimed it was free?¡± She raised an eyebrow at me, her green eyes glittering dangerously.


    ¡°Uh. Let me just get my credit chit¡­oh, seem to have misplaced it.¡±


    ¡°I was thinking more along the lines of an engagement.¡± She looked at the expression on my face and then frowned. ¡°A combat engagement, what else were you¡­oh.¡± She blushed and laughed.


    ¡°Karu, I¡¯m not going to fight you.¡±


    ¡°But you said yourself that you feel as though you owe me.¡±


    ¡°Well, do I?¡±


    She paused, and frowned. ¡°No, you owe me nothing. I saved you because I desired to do so.¡±


    ¡°So there you go. Now, on the other hand, I do feel like I owe you, so I would like to do something for you¡­no, not a fight,¡± I said, as her face grew excited. ¡°But something. I don¡¯t know what though, you¡¯re kind of the definition of the girl who has everything. Money, power, influence, a sweet set of grenade launchers.¡±


    ¡°What I lack,¡± she said, putting her hand on mine, making my heart skip a beat. ¡°Is companionship. You already give me plenty by merit of your being. Now, that said, the majority of your being¡¯s value is in your ability to challenge me in a combat¨C¡°


    I pulled my hand away as her eyes sparkled with excitement.


    ¡°Look, Karu, I¨C¡± there was a noise in the hallway. Both of us froze, staring at the door. ¡°Maybe we should talk about this later.¡± I said. She nodded.


    We sat in silence for a few minutes, not having much to talk about except conversations we didn¡¯t want overheard. I kept running my hand over my side where my scar had been and feeling nothing but smooth skin. It was a little unnerving, having just started getting used to feeling it there and now having it disappear.


    ¡°Ash¨Cer, Alphard,¡± Karu said, seeming to speak her way out of her own reverie. ¡°You have, erm, been at the cabin for much of your time as of late. How does it feel to be back?¡±


    ¡°Comfortable. Soft. Everything has a smell, disinfectant, fabric softener, hand soap, cologne. It¡¯s weird.¡±


    ¡°Would you¡­wish to stay? Were you able.¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡± I stopped to think a second and found a lot of enthusiasm for civilized life I¡¯d pushed deep down. ¡°I mean, I¡¯ve had a decent time¡­at the cabin¡­but I feel like everything good that happened there was incidental. I learned a lot, but I never felt like that was something I wanted, just needed.¡±


    ¡°Even so,¡± I continued, closing my eyes. ¡°I can¡¯t. Aside from the obvious, my friends are there. And my sister¡­uh¡­¡±


    Karu nodded. ¡°Your sister Ellebrecht.¡±


    ¡°Alphard and Ellebrecht. My parents have no idea how to name a child.¡±


    ¡°I never found your names unusual, though I admit my childhood was a sheltered one. Many of the political elite give their children unique names so as to help them stand out, or so father says. A name to remember on election day, he would say.¡±


    ¡°Karen isn¡¯t a very unique name.¡±


    ¡°That is because I am an Irenside, and that was good enough for father. I am another product on the same brand,¡± she said pursing her lips.


    ¡°Back to your first question, I haven¡¯t given it any thought, try not to give it any thought, because I can¡¯t. No use spending my time thinking about things which can¡¯t happen, you know?¡±


    ¡°I do. And I apologize for bringing it up if it discomforts you. It is just¡­you are here now. If you had an opportunity to reintegrate, this would be it. There is little keeping you from walking out that door and disappearing into a bus heading for the city.¡±


    Her words started to hit me. She was right. In accepting my life in exile, I¡¯d given up on thinking of ever returning, and that mindset made it impossible for me to consider even trying.


    ¡°Maybe someday. Maybe after I get Saga and AEGIS out of there, and of course I can¡¯t leave¡­Ellebrecht behind. And even then, I¡¯m not sure I¡¯m comfortable with violating my terms. Like, of course I miss living here among people¡­I just don¡¯t think people miss me, or that I miss people. I don¡¯t know.¡±


    ¡°I admire your commitment to your terms of exile. While I may believe personally that you are a righteous individual, that does not mean you are not a dangerous individual, and it is certainly safer to leave you estranged, however uncomfortable a life you would live. Whichever your decision would be, I support you in it, and were you to attempt to re-integrate, I am certain you could use much of my assistance.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a nice offer. I¡¯ll consider it.¡± She beamed at me.


    I saw something grey hover near the door through the frosted window and move past. Was it the round insurance/association inspector? I stared at the window, wondering how much he¡¯d heard, or if he was coming back.


    ¡°Just a sec. Thought I saw something,¡± I said and slid myself off the bed. Karu looked at me curiously but did not follow. I cracked the door and peeked out into the empty hall.


    It was certainly a clinic and not a hospital. The hall was only wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side at a time, it looked like there were only six or eight rooms instead of a whole wing, and the walls were painted in muted tones instead of sterile white. The floors were alternating white and pale green marbley tile and everything was very bright and smelled like disinfectant, so that was pretty much the same.


    There was no sign of the inspector, but I did hear voices around the corner. I crept down the hall, rolling my steps from heel to toe to keep my beat-up shoes from slapping against the floor.


    ¡°¨Cdid it before has she? I didn¡¯t think Karen even had family, the way she talks.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, if that kid is actually her cousin, I¡¯ll eat a hypo. The two of them don¡¯t even look anything alike. Like, hello? She¡¯s blonde, her parents are on the holos all the time, they¡¯re blonde. He¡¯s got brown hair and brown eyes.¡±


    ¡°Maybe he¡¯s adopted?¡±


    ¡°Like anyone in that family would ever want impure outsider blood.¡±


    Two women¡¯s voices, employees here I had to guess. I guess Karu was a frequent-enough visitor that she was good gossip material.


    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we do something though? Like, this is probably fraud. Can¡¯t we get fired for not reporting it?¡±


    ¡°They won¡¯t fire us for that, but maybe you¡¯re right. Then again, I heard Karen is always coming in here with those crazy wounds because she¡¯s a pro bounty hunter who only takes contracts on dangerous Exhumans. Is that someone you¡¯d want to be on the bad side of?¡±


    ¡°Wow, I always thought she was just¡­I dunno, really bad at bondage or something.¡±


    ¡°Bondage?¡± the woman laughed.


    ¡°Well how else can you get hurt so much so often in so many different ways?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you do in the bedroom and I don¡¯t want to.¡±


    ¡°Hey! I¡¯m serious though. There was that insurance inspector sniffing around earlier, we should probably tell him.¡±


    I crept back towards my room and let myself in, releasing the handle gently so it wouldn¡¯t click in the empty hallway.


    ¡°You look pale,¡± Karu said, her brow furrowed. ¡°What is the matter?¡±


    ¡°Heard some women talking out there about reporting us to the guy.¡± Karu also went a little pale. ¡°I don¡¯t know if they will, but it sounded like it.¡±


    She stared at me, a look of wild-eyed concern growing on her face. ¡°If you are investigated, my deception will not hold. You will easily be discovered to be not Alphard¡­at which point they will want to know who you are. I will be determined complicit and have my license revoked¨Cand worse¨Cand we will have the option of fleeing as refugees¡­unable to return even to your home in the wilderness, where they would expect you¡­or fighting.¡±


    ¡°We can¡¯t run. If we run, they¡¯ll find AEGIS and my sister. We can¡¯t warn them without going in person.¡± My mind raced. ¡°Shit, Karu, I really screwed up your whole life.¡±


    ¡°It was not your fault. I made these decisions and I will face the repercussions as best as I am able. Still, we should move to reduce the repercussions as we can. My equipment is stowed in a locker in the admittance ward. If we are swift, we may be able to flee before word gets out and can alert the others of the coming peril.¡±


    ¡°That leaves all of us as a bunch of wandering nomads in the middle of winter. Can¡¯t just drop in on civilization for food, I can¡¯t hunt well enough to feed all of us, and we¡¯d have to abandon Saga. With the XPCA on our heels the whole way.¡±


    ¡°Still, it is preferable to being taken without a fight.¡±


    ¡°What if we don¡¯t run and just hope the women don¡¯t tell the inspector?¡±


    She bit her lip. ¡°How certain would you say it was that they would report us?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. They sounded like they were definitely going to. But maybe they won¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°If there is yet time, perhaps we can simply convince them. This is a far superior plan.¡± She stood up and headed for the door. ¡°Let us go with all haste. Which direction were these gossip-mongers?¡±


    The two of us strode down the hall to the front desk as quickly as we could without suspicion. There, we found the two women, one a nurse and one apparently a secretary¡­and the grey-suited man, who looked at us with a smug grin.


    ¡°The cousins Irenside, just whom we were discussing,¡± he said, the sleaze in his voice putrescent. ¡°These two ladies were just sharing some interesting opinions on you two. Opinions I happen to agree with. Would you be so kind as to repeat to Miss Irenside here what you just told me?¡±


    The secretary shifted uncomfortably and the nurse stood and started slinking out of the room before the man clamped a hand on her shoulder.


    ¡°We just thought¡­it was weird we¡¯ve never seen your cousin in here before. We weren¡¯t sure if your plan even covered relatives that distant¡­so we were¡­pulling up his record.¡±


    ¡°Apparently his record will have his photo on it. I am excited to see if it is a match.¡±


    ¡°This is a violation of Alphard¡¯s medical rights!¡± Karu bellowed, slamming a hand down on the counter and making the two women jump.


    ¡°I am an insurance inspector and I have reasonable suspicion that insurance fraud is occurring before my very eyes. I think you will find the law provides allowances specifically for this case to allow me to do my job. Now, if you would be so kind as to pull up that record¡­or I can do it myself¡­¡±


    The secretary shook her head, her little brown curls flailing. She looked like she was on the verge of tears and kept looking to the nurse and Karu for help.


    ¡°If you share my medical history with that man, I will sue this clinic into the dirt,¡± I said, trying to inject as much menace into my voice as possible.


    ¡°If you do not share his medical history, I will have you arrested for impeding an active investigation.¡± He reached into a pocket and slapped down a badge identifying him as an federal association agent. So much for being an insurance inspector. ¡°Now, about that record?¡±


    The secretary looked back at us, but we had no such shiny props to match the badge. Wordlessly she began to type, despite our continued protests, and Agent Pugface¡¯s grin grew a thousandfold.


    And just as all hope seemed lost and Karu and I had a silent conversation with our eyes about dealing with him now and sorting out the body later, the very best and very worst possible thing happened.


    The wailing of sirens filled the air, and the holo flashed a zone-wide alert, stopping the secretary in her tracks. She froze, her eyes wide, her face pale. For a few moments, none of us could act or think, until the nurse grabbed her friend and yelled for the rest of us to follow her. The inspector immediately jumped in line behind the two stumbling to flee the room, but stopped when Karu and I didn¡¯t.


    ¡°Exhuman event,¡± he whispered, his eyes bulging.


    ¡°I am aware,¡± said Karu, already heading for the other door.


    ¡°Where are you going? The emergency shelter is out this way!¡±


    ¡°I need to pick up my equipment,¡± she said, her voice level as she disappeared into the admittance ward. ¡°I¡¯ve got an Exhuman to destroy.¡±

 064. 2251, Present Day. Newbruck. Athan.

    Karu and I left the clinic to a scene of pure chaos. Sirens cacophonously echoed off of the mountains and buildings, making the air buzz with panic. People poured from every home and the dozens of brick two-story stores which seemed to make up the downtown area of this little suburb, flooding the streets in a panic to press towards the nearest shelter.


    Without hesitation, Karu launched into the air and began shouting instructions to the crowd, directing people to leave their vehicles and possessions, move in an orderly way, keep moving, faster people in the middle of the road, keep in mind the infirm and children.


    Even without her weapons and armor, aloft wings of blue plasma she was an angel, and her words were heard by the panicking masses like the voice of God. Once or twice, she had to swoop in and single out a troublesome individual, but through her efforts, this street at least moved quickly and efficiently forward.


    Which left only¡­the rest of the whole town. In the distance, there was an explosion and one of the sirens wailed its last as it crumbled, sounding like a digital scream as it failed.


    I swallowed hard and began to cut my way through the crowd, doing my best not to destroy the brief bubble of order that Karu had crafted as I headed across the flow of people and towards the explosion.


    In an alley, I got a level up on a fire exit to stand out some and shouted to Karu. ¡°I¡¯ll meet you there!¡± She gave me an ¡®ok¡¯ gesture even as she kept herding her flock.


    It would take me a lot longer to get there than her, and I honestly wasn¡¯t sure why I was going. I couldn¡¯t use my powers here without simply doubling the number of Exhumans these people had to worry about, but I couldn¡¯t do nothing either. If Karu was going to fight, I had to be there to help.


    It was slow, exhausting, dangerous going. None of the other roads I had to cross had crossing guards like Karu hovering over them, so instead it was anarchy as people shoved and ran as fast as they could toward the shelter, and someone like me going the other way was likely to get knocked down or trampled. I was extra wary of anyone barging into me, worried that any second my lightning shield would decide to go off and kill someone innocent and drive the whole city into an even greater panic, but somehow I made it through the worst of it and entered the part of the city where everyone had already fled.


    Here was¡­somehow even worse. Signs of damage from the Exhuman were scattered here and there, dead bodies, a building on fire, cars driven into each other in a panic. Macabre as it was, I stopped to inspect some of the bodies on my way. Some had seemingly died incidentally, run over or caught in an explosion or rubble, but here and there I was able to pick out the strangest, most unexplainable deaths and from that figure out the Exhuman¡¯s powers.


    In the middle of the street, a man purple and blue from internal bleeding, surrounded by broken asphalt like a crater. He looked like he¡¯d been stoned by an angry crowd. Another man was stuck half-inside a wall like he¡¯d been catapulted into it. Most telling, a young girl, probably Lia¡¯s age, bent in half and propped up by a rock spire jutting from the ground.


    My blood boiled at the senseless death. A terrapath then, with control over rocks and earth. My power wouldn¡¯t be too useful here, but I couldn¡¯t stand here doing nothing. I heard the roar of an engine and turned as Karu landed behind me. She frowned as she scanned the scene from behind her visor.


    ¡°Terrapath,¡± I said. She nodded. ¡°Why would anyone do this?¡±


    ¡°Your case is exceptional, as I hope I have made very clear to you. This is the fate of almost all Exhumans who do not surrender themselves. They see themselves as different and above humans, and when one being holds himself above all others, they lose all sense of empathy for their inferiors. We have seen it countless times in human history with tyrants and slaves both, and countless times more since Exhuman events began.¡±


    She shook her head sadly, like she couldn¡¯t believe it either. ¡°Demons like these are my reason for being. I must engage, no matter the cost.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not properly geared,¡± I pleaded. ¡°You don¡¯t have your weapons or armor, you left them when you carried me to the clinic.¡±


    ¡°Be that as it may, I must do everything in my power or I will never be able to face my creator with an honest heart. This is my choice and my calling. Should the worst occur¡­¡±


    ¡°It won¡¯t.¡± She looked at me, and I could read her concern even under her visor. ¡°I¡¯ll be there. We¡¯ll stop him together.¡±


    ¡°This is also your choice and I will not question it. But¡­you know the dangers as well as I do. There is more at stake than just your life here.¡±


    I knew. If I didn¡¯t die here, which given how earth was likely to counter lightning would already be a stretch, if I was identified, all of our concerns back in the clinic would be realized. XPCA descending on the unsuspecting AEGIS and Lia, Karu stripped and shamed, executions all around for treason and complicity in Exhuman events.


    ¡°I know. But I can¡¯t let these people suffer. I¡¯ll try to stay hidden.¡±


    ¡°And I shall take to the skies. Would that I had a spare comms, we could keep in contact, but even with my full kit I do not take such provisions.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure we¡¯ll be fine. If I need you urgently¡­I¡¯ll call down a bolt of lightning from the sky or something.¡±


    ¡°I have no flares to signal¡­simply screaming at one another will have to suffice. Would that I had my equipment¡­or armor at least.¡± She frowned, looking down at her bare legs and feet. She snapped out of it abruptly, straightened up and fixed me in the eye, refusing to waste time brooding. ¡°Best of luck.¡± She grabbed my arm and dragged me in for a brief soldier¡¯s embrace before backing off and roaring into the air.


    Almost immediately, black streaks tore through the air with an ominous whistling and pierced the sky where Karu flew. She entered her defensive stance, seeming to flicker from existence as more projectiles the size of my head rocketed through the air at her.


    My feet slammed the cracked pavement as I sprinted towards the source of the volley. A T-intersection, mostly open, surrounded by destroyed buildings, the ground caked with rubble. In the center, standing right in the open, a woman in a white sweater marred with dirt and splotches of blood, a torn red skirt over black leggings. She screamed like an animal as she pumped her arms like punches, launching broken chunks of the shattered street at Karu like bullets.


    Karu, meanwhile, was untouchable as ever. Impossible even for me to follow, she seemed to be everywhere at once, appearing only for moments while she reversed momentum before zipping off in a flash in a new, unexpected direction. She vanished behind buildings, reappearing back on the same side she entered, stayed high and spiraled, making the Exhuman look straight up and spin to keep her in sight, disorienting and dizzying her.


    The next volley, the Exhuman thrust forward with both arms, firing a whole salvo of rock at once, saturating an entire section of the sky. As soon as it came at her, Karu streaked backwards in full reverse, losing distance slowly to the rocks. Just before they caught up with her, she went straight up, splitting her legs as she flew to just straddle one incoming rock.


    ¡°You crazy bitch!¡± screamed the Exhuman. ¡°Just leave me alone! Give me back my family!¡±


    ¡°The unjust will perish!¡± Karu yelled in response, swooping back in again. ¡°Seek mercy in God¡¯s salvation, for I have none to give!¡±


    ¡°Fucking religious nutjob! Leave me the hell alone!¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what to do. I wanted to help Karu, attack the crazed woman, avenge the slaughtered innocents¡­but she was just an Exhuman like me, trying to get her family back or something. Maybe we could still resolve this without, well, more bloodshed.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    I took a couple more steps forward, walking out into the open. I felt her glance at me for only a moment before she resumed her attack on Karu. However, in that one moment, I felt the ground shifting under me, and not certain what was coming, dove forward and rolled out of the way.


    It was a good choice. A moment later, a rocky spire burst out of the ground and impaled the space where I had been walking.


    ¡°Hey!¡± I shouted.


    ¡°Trying to sneak up on me? I¡¯ll show you all!¡±


    ¡°I just want to talk to you!¡±


    ¡°While I¡¯m fighting your friend in the skies? Somehow I don¡¯t think so!¡± She lifted a stream of rocks and fired them machine-gun style at Karu¡¯s streaking trail, slamming with earth-shaking force into the fronts of buildings.


    ¡°Karu, stop,¡± I shouted. ¡°Let me talk to her.¡±


    ¡°There is no conversing with the corrupt!¡±


    ¡°Karu. Seriously. How did you and I even meet?¡±


    ¡°This is entirely different!¡±


    ¡°Karu, I¡¯m walking up to her, stop. Lady, I¡¯m coming over. I¡¯m unarmed, okay?¡± I held out my hands as I stepped forward. Karu hesitated and then dipped below a building to disappear from sight.


    ¡°No! I won¡¯t be fooled by you or by anyone! Just leave! If you really are willing to listen to me then listen when I tell you to go away!¡± She hurled a fine spray of gravel at me which vaporized as it hit my shield, peppering me with hot sand. Her eyes widened.


    ¡°I¡¯m not leaving lady, XPCA are on their way, and they¡¯ll kill you eventually if you keep up this rampage, even with your powers. Now tell me what¡¯s wrong.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong? Look around you idiot. Everything¡¯s wrong. One day I have these powers, and I decide I¡¯m going to go take my kids back from my ex, and the next the whole city is in flames and I still don¡¯t know where they are. Marlene! Daniel! Come out here now!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure they evacuated so you wouldn¡¯t kill them,¡± I said, stopping ten feet from her. ¡°You just decided that because you can, you can take your kids from your ex-husband?¡±


    ¡°I can do whatever I want, you idiot, don¡¯t you realize that? I realized that one day, after keeping my powers hidden for weeks. Hours slaving away at crummy jobs, eating garbage food every day while fatass CEOs make millions doing nothing? If I had that kind of money they never would have taken my kids away. But now they can¡¯t stop me, I can take and do whatever I want.¡±


    ¡°Look around you, this is what happens when you take what you want. How¡¯s that treating you?¡±


    Again she screamed and threw rocks at me, larger ones this time, but still my shield annihilated them before they could touch me. I kept my eyes closed and flinched at the avalanche of shards. The flying grit was extra painful against my newly-soft skin.


    ¡°Shut up! Everything went wrong because of them. People see me using my powers and panic and cry out, and then I have to stop them before they tell everyone. If they¡¯d just shut up, they¡¯d still be alive. Why can¡¯t people just understand¨C¡°


    ¡°You killed those people. You know that, right?¡±


    ¡°Only because they made me!¡±


    ¡°They did nothing but fear you because you could kill them in a heartbeat. And were they wrong to do so? Didn¡¯t you prove them all right by doing exactly that?¡±


    ¡°Shut up!¡± She picked up a huge chunk of street and floated it over her head. ¡°Shut up, shut up, shut up!¡± She then heaved it at me. I took off running as soon as I saw how big it was¨Cno way my shield could block that. I ran inside the front of a building, vaulting a broken window and the tiny meteor smashed into the storefront, eradicating the entire front of the building, knocking me down and covering me in dust and darkness.


    ¡°Athan!¡± I heard a scream, and then the sound of weapon fire from outside. The ground trembled as the earth answered in return, and then the two women were locked in their duel again.


    I¡­don¡¯t know what I was expecting. That I¡¯d talk to her and everything would be okay? That suddenly, all her life problems would clear up just because she had someone who¡¯d listen to her? I bet she had friends and family who would listen to her issues before she decided to resort to force, and obviously that hadn¡¯t been enough for her.


    I lit up a small blade of lightning in front of me to illuminate the ruins and swore. I felt like I missed a connection, like if I had just done things differently, she¡¯d be redeemed, and¡­I don¡¯t know, she could have a life like I have? Better than being gunned down by the XPCA on a street corner.


    It was still hard to see even with the light, dust choked the air. I started breathing through the front of my shirt, unsure of how much that actually would do. There were rooms in the back, with any luck, one would lead to a back door or have a window I could get out of.


    I remembered my first kills. Helpless, as XPCA soldiers threw themselves at me and died to my shield as I watched. It was so easy, ordinary humans were so very powerless compared to us, I could see how someone would decide themselves invincible and take and do whatever they wanted. But the numbers didn¡¯t lie¡­well¡­they were provided by the XPCA so they could¡­but every Exhuman event I¡¯d ever heard of ultimately ended in the Exhuman¡¯s defeat or death. Just a matter of how many dozens or hundreds of lives later. Weak though humans may be, there were literal billions of them, and armed with technology, any single one could wipe out an Exhuman if given the shot.


    I couldn¡¯t fathom it. But I also was one who surrendered. Others didn¡¯t think as I did, I had to remind myself. Maybe they thought they could hold out forever or kill millions without getting hit. Or maybe they just never thought at all. I couldn¡¯t know.


    And that was the frustrating part. This woman was more willing to kill me than talk to me. Maybe that¡¯s what Karu meant when she went off screaming about the irredeemable or whatever.


    I sighed and pushed open a door to find a ray of light coming through a half-window near the ceiling. Good enough. I cut the glass window down with a few swipes of my blades, pane and all, and climbed out from atop a desk, grey with dust.


    I trotted back around the corner and found Karu in trouble. The Exhuman had figured out the essence of flak cannons by having her rocks explode in the air, and Karu had to use more cover and less evasion to avoid getting blasted out of the sky, since even a near miss would now be fatal.


    From the blood seeping through her clothes, I don¡¯t think this was a lesson Karu learned cheaply. Even from here, I could tell she was moving slower.


    ¡°Exhuman, final warning,¡± I said, drawing my swords from the air and advancing on her. ¡°Surrender peacefully, leave, or Karu, I, and the XPCA will eventually stop you.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d fight one of your own?¡±


    ¡°You killed people. You¡¯re a murderer.¡±


    ¡°So? They were trying to stop me. Nobody can stop me, they needed to learn.¡±


    ¡°They are dead and learned nothing. Look!¡± I pointed at the bodies down the street. ¡°Do they look like they¡¯ve learned from this experience?¡±


    ¡°They look,¡± she said, heaving another dozen chunks of rock into the air, ¡°like they will never try to stop me again.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re talking like all humans are the same. Like you can teach humanity a lesson by killing a few of them. You were human your whole life, tell me, is that how it works?¡±


    ¡°Yes!¡± she screamed and hurled the rocks at me. I sliced the largest into pieces with my blades and let my shield handle the rest. ¡°People will see me on the holo and know how dangerous I can be. How I am to be feared! When I come, people had better flee!¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s say your plan works. Now every time you enter a city it¡¯s just empty. You win?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll have everything I ever wanted.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. All that money and nothing to buy.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll have anything they left behind, I don¡¯t need to buy anything.¡±


    ¡°So if all you want is to be alone with everything you need, why not just leave now? Why make the humans flee? Just skip the being a horrible murderous monster step and run!¡±


    ¡°I¨Cnobody lives like that! What are you, stupid!?¡±


    ¡°I live like that.¡±


    She hesitated.


    ¡°No. You¡¯re an idiot, and I can take whatever I want. I am through listening to you.¡± She slammed the ground and I felt the earth quaking under my feet again and dove sideways. Again, rock needles punctured the ground with explosive force.


    ¡°Listen to me¨C¡°


    ¡°I am done listening! Leave me or die!¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to do this!¡±


    ¡°I WANT TO DO THIS!¡± A huge rock shattered into chunks on my shield and one shard the size of a golf ball caught me in the gut. I was fine, but it took the wind out of me and knocked me down. I felt the ground moving under me again and tried to get to my feet to jump again.


    And found myself flying. I was confused until I saw the trail of blue plasma under me where Karu had snapped me up from the jagged stalagmites.


    ¡°Karu, let¡¯s leave,¡± I said to her as she dropped me behind a building from the Exhuman. ¡°Let¡¯s just leave her to the XPCA, there¡¯s nothing we can do here.¡±


    ¡°I cannot, Athan. I told you, fighting evil like this is my calling. If she kills a dozen XPCA, is that any different than her killing a dozen helpless civilians? If I could stop her now and prevent her from doing either?¡±


    ¡°I¡­I guess not.¡± It was hard for me to think of an incoming XPCA kill squad as people who needed protecting, but those were exactly the people I¡¯d killed when I¡¯d been arrested, and every death of theirs had still hung on me. ¡°XPCA is going to kill her when they get here, right?¡±


    ¡°Yes, with certainty. She is not powerful enough to resist them for long, and has demonstrated enough destructive intent to warrant immediate execution.¡±


    ¡°Then¡­if we do it¡­¡±


    ¡°I will make you do nothing, but I am going.¡±


    ¡°I¡­I¡¯m going too.¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± Karu hesitated. ¡°Ashton, this is more than is fair for me to ask, but bereft of my equipment, there is little I can do against this Exhuman save act as a distraction. I am afraid you will need to do much of the heavy lifting, as it were.¡±


    ¡°I understand. Do your best.¡±


    She gave me another single nod and we walked back to the edge of the building together. Still out of sight, I felt the ground tremble familiarly beneath me and broke into a sprint towards the intersection while Karu took to the air.


    As I ran forward, spires of rock bursting from the ground in my wake, I focused my gaze on the raving Exhuman trying to kill me, and my thoughts went back to the body of the girl she¡¯d impaled and killed. I couldn¡¯t not think of the girl as Lia.


    This Exhuman was dangerous, she wasn¡¯t sorry, she wasn¡¯t repentant, she wasn¡¯t willing to listen or change. And as much as I just wanted Exhumans and humans to get along and be able to live in peace, it was people like this who made my dreams an impossibility.


    For once, I found I agreed with Karu¡¯s solution. This monster needed to die.

 065. 2251, Present Day. Newbruck. Athan.

    Working myself up to the point where I was willing to fight and kill and actually being able to do it were two completely different things. As I closed in on her, the Exhuman¡¯s attacks became more and more dangerous, changing from dodging individual flying rocks to waves of earth flowing forward like a tsunami.


    I ran in, moving as fast as I could and trying to orbit her to keep her spinning and throw off her aim, but instead found myself needing to bounce away, as daggers of earth and solid walls erupted without warning all around me. I could barely get a couple feeble swipes at her before I had to fall back, which she dodged easily.


    It seemed that like me and Saga, this Exhuman also had a range to the distance she could control the earth. Outside that range, she was stuck throwing things at us or setting off rumbling cascades which would erupt like spikes from the ground, but near her, she could affect the earth directly under my feet, which was simply a death sentence.


    The worst part was that her range was longer than mine. My swords could extend a maximum of maybe a dozen feet from my fingertips, while before I¡¯d gotten within that distance to her is when the ground started exploding.


    Still skirting around her, but at a safer range, I created bulbs of lightning in each hand. As soon as she saw them, walls of earth erupted between her and me, blocking my shot. I went the other way, but the walls shifted with me, staying exactly between us. From inside her earthen fortress, I heard her punch and grunt, and one of the walls exploded into shards the size of hubcaps slicing through the air at me.


    Four blades out, I rooted myself for a moment and cut them down, flinching as the exploding pieces of rock pelted me. There was only a moment¡¯s reprieve before I felt the earth moving under my feet again. It was harder to predict her attacks when she was hidden behind her little walls.


    I jumped to the side, but no spikes came. Instead, it looked like she was going to crush me again, floating a hunk of rock the size of a bus above her head and slowly bringing it in line to bear down on me.


    Before I could even get my feet under me, there was a blaze of blue from the sky, and then the Exhuman went flying, Karu¡¯s bare foot planted in her face. I hoped this time Karu showed some restraint and didn¡¯t shatter everything again, and based on her smooth ascent back upwards, she seemed fine. The Exhuman rolled and reeled on the ground, blood pouring from her nose.


    I fanned my fingers and readied a spread of lightning bulbs between each of my fingers like a ninja with a handful of shuriken. With a snap of my wrist, I threw the whole fistfull of lightning at her, and the whole area around her danced with sparks and arcing strands of electricity. She screamed as one tendril snaked down her leg, causing it to blacken and shudder beyond her control.


    Karu was moving back in again, but pulled up at the last second as another stone wall appeared from the earth. I only had time to pull another fan of lightning before a second wall stopped me as well.


    This time I had a plan though. With her vision blocked, I could advance freely, and from the far side of her wall, I could still swing my swords around it. I was crouched low but moving fast, keeping the wall firmly centered in my sights as I dashed in. Only a few feet away and she hadn¡¯t yet seen me¨C


    The wall grew spikes with explosive force and then came rushing straight at me. I couldn¡¯t stop myself fast enough, and it was all I could do to grab at the spikes while it plowed into me. One of my feet miraculously made it through the tangle of spikes and landed on the flat of the wall, arresting much of my momentum, but another spike had pierced my shoulder and I¡¯d badly scraped up my arms trying to grab anything before it went through my body and face.


    ¡°I can see you, dumbass!¡± she shrieked with ecstasy as the spiked wall carried me away. I pulled myself off of it and jumped clear before it smashed through a wall behind me, feeling my arm burn with my own spilled blood.


    Karu was doing her best to buy me time to recover, now carrying a small bundle of metal posts that had once been attached to traffic signs and was now hurling them like javelins. Every time she threw, she repositioned to a new angle not yet covered by an earth wall, but the Exhuman responded by throwing up more and more walls. In moments, she was completely enclosed in a fortress of stone.


    I ran parallel to her, and she responded instantly by firing a volley of stone at me through the earthen wall.


    So she could see me. But how? Was x-ray vision something in her powerset? That didn¡¯t seem very tied to the rest of her powers. I focused on dodging more rock spines and then fled as a literal freaking meteor shower began to rain down on me. Karu, meanwhile, kept doing what she could, but was getting stonewalled at every turn. Curiously, the Exhuman never seemed interested in attacking her anymore.


    Perhaps because she couldn¡¯t see Karu anymore? But the only difference between her and me¡­


    I threw a lightning bolt straight into the air and Karu, recognizing my signal, appeared at my side instantly.


    ¡°She can¡¯t see you,¡± I said. ¡°And I think it¡¯s because you¡¯re not on the ground.¡±


    Recognition dawned on Karu¡¯s visored face and she nodded at me before the two of us had to split to avoid another surge of exploding rock. I was getting tired and bruised from all the dodging and running around, but she had to be feeling the exhaustion of shoving all these rocks at us, even if it was just her powers.


    I wanted to tell Karu more, but the damn Exhuman kept me moving, and any plan we could formulate would be useless if we shouted it to each other right over her. Karu finished attacking the last remaining holes in the stone fort, getting her truly walled in there, and then flew away somewhere, I had no idea where, but trusted she had something in mind.


    My job then, was to survive. I could fall back and wait for Karu, or so I thought, but the second I began to run away, I felt a shock go through the ground under me, and the world in front of me trembled.


    ¡°Oh, no you don¡¯t. It¡¯s too late to leave now. You need to learn, like all the rest!¡± Her voice echoed from her earthen fort.


    The ground in front of me vibrated and quaked, bits of rock bouncing on it like they were ping-pong balls, and the earth shuddered so loudly I felt it in my lungs. I backed away, my heart racing at this new terrifying attack.


    Suddenly the ground just wasn¡¯t anymore. With a final breaking crunch, the broken street in front of me fell away into nothing, like there was a monstrous cave under the battlefield the entire time. I took one hesitant step away and then I raced towards the Exhuman, scrambling over the loose stones under my feet as the earth continued to implode behind me. I couldn¡¯t enter her radius without being at her mercy, but the way the rest of the world was dissolving, I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d have a choice.


    As soon as I thought it, the earth opened to my left and right as well, racing forward with me as I ran towards her at full speed, trapping me in and herding me towards that death zone.


    I put my bruises and the tear in my shoulder out of my mind and pushed myself to run as fast as I ever had in my life. My feet slammed the pavement and rocks bounced and danced, from the force of my steps or from the apocalypse only feet behind me. I was gaining on it, fractionally, slowly pulling ahead of the pits on my sides trapping me, even as the distance between me and the kill zone disappeared with every one of my frantic steps.


    I heard manic laughter, and it sounded like it was coming from the earth itself. From inside her little shelter, she was watching me through the earth, feeling my frantic footfalls as she tore the ground away from under me, both of us knowing I was running straight towards my doom. Her laughing reached a crescendo, and earth spikes and flying rock joined the fray and flew at my face to slow me down and block my path.


    Without missing a step, my swords lashed out at anything in my path. The hail of rock crashing through my shield and scraping off my skin was constant, but I couldn¡¯t stop running. The chasm was only feet behind me, and I was only a couple dozen feet from her now. Another vicious pillar of rock, covered in spikes exploded from the ground in front of me, and I ran around it, shaving off some of the protruding spikes with my swords as I passed.


    Not that running into them and tearing myself up would matter at all if I was about to fall into the crevice or die ignominiously as soon as I closed on her.


    I was almost there. I had no plan but to hit her with everything I had and hope that somehow, lightning beat rock. I wiped sweat out of my eyes, it felt chalky from the dust covering me and everything else. My feet kept moving on their own and everything felt like it was slowing down, even as I sped up. There was nothing left but me, her, and the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, the rest of the world literally and figuratively falling away.


    And then I was on top of her. As I crossed my best guess at her range, I took a flying leap. For one tranquil second, I soared towards the crude earth fort, and then my feet touched ground.


    Instantly she was on me. Without hesitation, rock spires burst from the ground directly under me, and it was all I could do to keep moving and jumping, having them scrape against me and cut up my legs instead of impaling me completely. In just a couple of seconds, her fortress began growing a moat of bloodied spikes as I tried to pass.


    There was still ground on her other side, she¡¯d made the collapsing hole go around her rather than falling into it herself. If I could just get over there, I might have a chance. I had to go around her, but as soon as I turned one way, a wall rose in my path. I turned the other way, and a matching wall rose. Sadistic, really, she could have just killed me, but instead decided to block me in.


    ¡°Have you learned yet?¡± she jeered from behind her earthen fortress, a tiny slit appearing and showing me nothing but a pair of darkened eyes. ¡°Have you learned of my power?¡±


    ¡°You won¡¯t win.¡±


    ¡°Like you would know. You¡¯re just a corpse.¡±


    I flung a handful of lightning at her, but the slit in the fortress slammed shut as soon as my arm moved, leaving nothing but a plume of dust.


    And then came her ultimate attack, a disc the size of a bus made of solid rock, hovering slowly into position above me, until it blocked out the sun. In front of me, the sheer wall of her little fort. On my left and right, stone barricades. Behind me, a bottomless pit. And now, above me, a floating island big enough to turn me into a pancake. I sliced at it with no effect whatsoever.


    ¡°Any last words? Care to tell me any lessons you¡¯ve learned today?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said gritting my teeth.


    ¡°And that is?¡± Sadistic glee filled her voice. The rock island hovered ominously above my head.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    ¡°You¡¯re a real piece of shit.¡±


    She roared in outrage and I fell backwards, her retort lost to my ears with the roaring of the wind as I fell headfirst into the bottomless pit. Above me, an explosion as the floating island came crashing down and shattered against what was left of the ground, the shrinking blue sliver of sky turning grey with the cloud of dust.


    I closed my eyes, half because I didn¡¯t want the last thing I saw to be the rock that would bury me down here, and half to make whatever peace I could find before I hit rock bottom.


    I¡¯d almost died a few times now, but this felt like a much more inevitable end, and I found a lot of the things people said about dying were true.


    Things did slow down; as the inevitability of death closed in on me, my mind flickered over everything which had brought me here, the shock etched onto Brick¡¯s face behind the school, my dad¡¯s rage and my mother¡¯s despair. Blackett¡¯s calm loathing, AEGIS¡¯ yellow, distorted holo-tears. Karu¡¯s holy exultation, Saga¡¯s succulent savor. And Lia¡¯s jealous melancholy.


    I could only whisper a silent goodbye into the rushing wind to those I¡¯d left behind. With any luck, they had each other, and I hadn¡¯t disappointed them too much. I opened my eyes and found my tears floating around my falling face like I was in zero-g. It was surreal and beautiful. The gash of blue which was the sky looked so distant now, the size of a credit chit.


    Through my tear-filled eyes, the sky seemed to pulse and tear, and a tendril of the blue shot down towards me with a sonic boom which echoed through the crevice like a firing squad. It was beautiful, like the sky itself was reaching down to pick me up and carry me into heaven. I wasn¡¯t sure I deserved that, but I appreciated the gesture.


    Until I slammed into something solid and both I and the thing I hit made a pained grunt. I was still falling, but instead of feeling weightless, felt heavier than I¡¯d ever been in my life. Whatever I¡¯d slammed into stabbed me in the back with such force I felt my spine popping. I heard a machine nearby whir and scream in protest, and my tears caught up with my face and trickled against me like rain.


    It took me another few seconds to be able to look around and see with any clarity, but when I did, I found the face of Karu, red visor blazing at my side, holding me in her strong arms as she slowed our descent.


    ¡°Karu?¡± I had to ask. It felt surreal, being alive after all the peace I¡¯d just been making.


    She grunted and strained, as her and my inertia and the pack on her back pulled her in two different directions, but her grip was iron and her will adamantite. Slowly, the blue gash in the distance stopped shrinking, and then began to grow.


    She inhaled with a gasp, finally, and allowed herself a glance at me. ¡°You do not die on this day, Ashton.¡±


    I held onto her like she was the only thing in the world as we ascended, faster and faster. As we neared the top, chunks of rock rained down on us constantly and she darted back and forth with amazing alacrity, making me feel like I¡¯d left my stomach behind every time we moved, but for her, these random hazards were child¡¯s play, and we breached the surface, beautiful hazy sunlight filling my entire world again.


    Blind to us in the air, the Exhuman nonetheless could hear the rising and escape of Karu¡¯s jetpack, and blindly fired rocks all through the sky in our general direction. The ones which came close popped effortlessly against my shield as Karu pulled the two of us away towards a rooftop a block away from the now utterly obliterated warzone.


    ¡°I left to procure this,¡± she said, not pausing for a moment even though she was panting for breath. She unclipped the spare harness I¡¯d been strapped into from her regular harness and started clipping it onto me.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to fly?¡± I asked as I lifted my arms and she ran the harness around my back. I looked up at the sky because my other option was to look down her tank at her sports bra and now was really not the time for that.


    ¡°Yes. You discerned that the Exhuman was using tremors in the ground to sense your presence and be able to strike while still fully protected¡­a poor situation I should not have left you to handle alone. If she must see us to strike, then she will have to lower her defenses, and that provides us an opportunity.¡±


    She finished and began tugging at each strap to check I was securely in, pulling me into her with every yank, even though I tried to stay on my feet. It was very hard not to stare at some part of her through this process, from the thick black band of her bra visible under her arm, the enticing peek of boyshorts under her long tank, or her long and now very dusty legs and bare feet standing on a rooftop overlooking a battlefield.


    She really did look like some kind of mythological angel, with bare arms and legs, loosely draped in white, adorned with wings of blue plasma and a halo of glowing red.


    ¡°A warning: I may be much less maneuverable carrying you as well, but devoid of my armor and weaponry, the jetpack should carry the both of us without issue, as it did on our way here. However, if she does lower her defenses, her aim will be true and her attacks as deadly as ever, but we shall be sitting ducks, as it were. Be ready for jarring evasions and defend the two of us as best as you are able.¡±


    I nodded as she got behind me and strapped our harnesses together. Gingerly, she lifted us, and in a moment the tips of my toes left the ground and I was held aloft by the straps wrapped around my chest, legs, and shoulders, Karu¡¯s warm body pressed all along the length of my back.


    We hovered for only a second, and then another volley of rocks arrived, aimed at the sounds of us taking off. Karu lifted us up, jarring me deeper into my harness and giving me a good idea what kind of chafing she had to deal with, and the rocks went below, levelling the building we¡¯d just been standing on.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± I shouted, the wind in my face up here much more full of excitement than dread.


    ¡°Habere Caelum!¡± she shouted, and down we went, into a steep dive, heading right for the earth enclosure. I drew my swords and angled them in front of us so they would rake through the fort as we passed. We¡¯d have to get really, really close for them for me to manipulate lightning inside of the fort, but unless she opened up, it was all we had.


    It felt like the first drop on a rollercoaster as we rocketed downwards, the wind whipping tears out of my eyes and flapping my skin and clothes all over, and Karu pulled us just above the earth shield, passing me only inches from it. We moved so fast, I only had moments where I was in range, but I was ready, and for the instant that the shell was wholly within my range, I spawned my swords within it, slashing wildly and blindly at anything inside.


    And then we were away, and the screams of the Exhuman, in pain and in indignation followed us as we soared skyward. All around us, chunks of rock exploded, pelting my shield which protected Karu and me both. I looked back and saw the arms of the jetpack making constant micro-adjustments so that each arm would avoid shards of incoming rock, only for the rocks to vaporize before making contact.


    We petered out high in the air, and Karu reared back for another dive, even faster this time. I felt like an owl, or falcon or something, roaring from the blue down on my prey. Except this was no fluffy bunny rabbit, this was an unrepentant killer who filled the air around us with explosions, even as we raced towards her. We swooped again, Karu steering the two of us with lethal accuracy again, and me deflecting any shots which came close and my shield covering the rest. As we streaked past, again I raked at her blindly with my swords, eliciting another scream, more pain than shock this time.


    As we accelerated again into the sky, the fortress exploded, huge chunks of rock flying in every direction. The Exhuman sat crumpled on the ground, one of her legs twisted and blackened under her, and electrical burns like spiderwebs and blackened veins covered much of her body. Teeth bared, eyes bulging, she snapped her head back and forth unnaturally until she spotted us in the sky.


    With a gesture like she was grabbing us from there, rocks exploded around us, and Karu began to dip and weave frantically to avoid the airbursts. Much of it bounced off my shield and disintegrated, but some shards were large enough to penetrate and riddled me with shards of stone which sliced all over my body. I protected my face and Karu and trusted in her to get us out of danger.


    We were way slower with the two of us, that much was obvious. Whereas Karu had been able to avoid most of the fire on her own, we were now tanking most of it, and while the damage was mostly superficial, I only had so much blood to lose, and I¡¯d been fighting and running so long already that total exhaustion hung over me like a dread spectre. Karu wove one way and another, changing directions seemingly at random, but succeeding in making most of the worst blasts go off nowhere near us.


    But now that the Exhuman had sight of us, she didn¡¯t need to fire in all directions anymore, she could focus all of her battery on us. The assault became more intense with the second volley, and I could feel fistfulls of rock slamming into me and pinging off Karu¡¯s visor and jetpack.


    There was a clang, and we dove. I looked back and saw Karu¡¯s head drooping against my shoulder, rocking with our momentum, a new pit in her visor where a hefty chunk of rock had just whacked her in the forehead. We plummeted only a dozen feet before her head snapped back up and our descent began to slow.


    But the damage was done. For a few precious seconds we were predictable sitting ducks. On all sides, boulders hurtled towards us. We had two options. Down, or up. Karu chose down.


    Feeling my stomach in my throat, we dove even faster than the uncontrolled descent of a moment ago, rocks crashing into each other and exploding above our heads like fireworks. My feet nearly skimmed the ground as Karu pulled us out of the dive at the last possible second, sending us parallel to the ground with unbelievable speed.


    In front of us, rock spires erupted one after another, a forest of stone. Without slowing, we wove left and right, zig-zagging through the hazard with such finesse, she was dodging obstacles I couldn¡¯t even see, much less react to. Her visor had to be giving her extra information, or maybe she was just that damn good.


    Finally, we were in the open, flying out over the huge empty cave which used to be a city street. Karu dipped us down, and we flew just beneath the surface, just out of sight of the Exhuman. Attacks kept raining down at us, and the walls themselves launched spikes and boulders at us, but Karu precisely flew us over, under, and around every obstacle.


    ¡°Final run!¡± she shouted, her voice distant in the racing wind. I nodded, knowing she would feel the back of my head against her chest. She put on a huge burst of speed which made my vision constrict and the world to streak into colorlessness.


    And then we were up and out again, racing that speed directly towards the Exhuman. She was looking around wildly, like an animal trying to sniff us out, and spotted us a moment after we¡¯d burst from the ground.


    She drew her arms back to thrust some final attack at us but it was too late. I had two handfuls of lightning and fired volleys at her, saturating the whole area around her with arcing orbs of lightning. She didn¡¯t even scream, just collapsed onto her bad leg, her mouth wrenched open as her body writhed.


    Karu closed in and my four swords slashed true. Her skin blackened and boiled, her blood erupted and evaporated, one of her arms fell completely off, severed above the elbow, both ends of the wound completely black from where a lightning blade had burned completely through. And mostly, she writhed and shuddered as electricity saturated her body and sent every single muscle and nerve spasming.


    It was exactly as horrible as it sounded. I was glad Karu kept us moving so I didn¡¯t have time to watch, but still knew the image would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. I was prepared to take this person¡¯s life, but I had no idea what that really meant until I did it.


    In a way, in that moment, I was jealous of her. Earth was a clean killer compared to lightning.


    And then we were gone and she was still. Karu didn¡¯t turn around, we simply left. It felt¡­disrespectful, or ignominious after all that we¡¯d been through with this Exhuman to simply leave her the second she was dead¡­but what else was there? Some final words? Bury her? Pose her in some dignified position for the XPCA to find?


    I didn¡¯t want to do any of that. I wanted to be far from here and to treat my wounds and sleep for like, a week. I couldn¡¯t see Karu¡¯s face behind her visor, but could tell just by the way she was holding herself that she was just as beat as I was, if not more. And besides, seeing exactly what I¡¯d done to her was the last thing I wanted¡­


    ¡°XPCA are coming. They can¡¯t find you there. I will take responsibility, claim I used electrical-based weaponry,¡± she said, seeming to read my mind.


    ¡°Yeah. Thanks.¡± It was all I could say. Thanks for killing someone with me?


    We flew in silence for what seemed like forever, Karu sometimes making half-utterances to her visor or adjusting our course in gentle sweeping arcs. Outside of the immediate battlefield, the city had survived mostly intact. The Exhuman had put a lot of rocks through walls, and walls through buildings, and buildings through other buildings, but it was mostly localized to a few blocks. As we flew, the air became clearer and it just looked like a quiet town under us.


    I nodded off several times, the world seeming to jump under me when I woke up without realizing. Karu maintained her composure the whole flight, and it was only when we were touching down and it was approaching evening that I woke up and realized where we were.


    Lia came barrelling at me and didn¡¯t even give me time to dismount before she pulled me into a painful embrace, reawakening all the wounds I¡¯d forgotten about. Karu touched down moments after my feet hit the ground and stumbled, fumbling with our harnesses. DOG was there, and did a little happy wiggle to see me, and then his light came on, and AEGIS put him through an entire backflip.


    ¡°Where have you two been? You¡¯re almost as hurt as when you left,¡± Lia said with a frown.


    ¡°We¡¯ll tell you later,¡± I said with a wry smile and messed up her hair.


    ¡°You need to stop using that line. It sucks, and you suck when you use it.¡±


    ¡°Well I¡¯m serious this time. Karu and I are beat and need to sleep like, now. Can you put up a bed for her, AEGIS?¡± I asked DOG, who responded with a weird full-bodied nod and the red light flickered away.


    I don¡¯t remember stumbling through the elevator into my bed. As I laid there feeling sleep grip me like a riptide and experiencing all my aches and wounds throbbing as one, my last thought was of the Exhuman woman¡¯s face, bruised and burned and scarred, her eyes unfocused, bloodshot, and staring into eternity.


    Exhaustion was a gift which gave me my only night of restful sleep I would have in many nights.

 066. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Lia.

    One day. That was how long I¡¯d had my brother back before he disappeared on me again. One day. He¡¯d saved me from a bear, we drank and laughed together, ran into Karu, who seemed quiet but nice, and then Luminary attacked and she whisked him away to save his life.


    Two days they were gone. They came back, and had almost been sleeping for two days more. AEGIS tended to their wounds while they slept, and I just sat outside in the snow, wrapped in my cloak and staring at the trees, wondering if this was his whole life now, if every day was fraught with bears and snipers and coming back bloody and blue from god-knows-what.


    In another world, I would have liked it here. It reminded me of when we went camping as kids with Dad while Mom enjoyed the house being quiet. Athan and I would always be competing to see who could set up the tent faster, who could collect the most firewood, who could run around the lake the fastest.


    They should have been good memories, but like everything which had Dad or Mom or my old life in it, I kept pushing them out of my head. All they did now was remind me what I¡¯d lost.


    But here I was in the present, out camping again, in a weird sort of way. Except now there was no time for silly childhood competitions, we needed to hunt and fish and forage or we¡¯d starve. Athan had to fight to protect us all from crazy people who hated Exhumans, just for existing in the wilderness.


    There really was no going back.


    I unwrapped myself enough to throw a small rock with disdain, feeling the cold nipping at my arm before my suit redistributed heat to it a moment later. The rock bounced twice and landed at the foot of a tree. One of AEGIS¡¯ robots walking by with a full bundle of organic mass craned its robot neck to watch it go by.


    I wished I didn¡¯t hate it out here, but that¡¯s exactly how I felt. I knew it was likely that I¡¯d just come in at a bad time and things were crazy, but I¡¯d spent so long trying to find my brother that somehow, I just expected everything would fall into place when I did, that somehow he would still need me and we could go back to being happy siblings and life would be perfect.


    Instead, he had everything already figured out, and I was intruding on his world out here. He had a house and girls he liked, one of whom was even real. He had a job, of sorts, went out and worked every day to feed himself at least. He had neighbors he was friendly with, I¡¯d heard.


    And I, what? Was I expecting to swoop in and rescue him like a damsel in distress? I¡¯m here now so everything¡¯s fine? Was I really so stupid that I thought the one thing missing from his life was me?


    Instead he¡¯s out there fighting and dying while I¡¯m sitting here doing nothing, and he can¡¯t even be bothered to tell me what or why.


    I threw another rock.


    I wanted a drink, but I also wanted not to drink. Things got weird last time¨Clike every time¨Cbut it was also the most fun I¡¯d had out in this stickhole. I blamed my outfit, which I¡¯d based on Taglock¡¯s survival gear, but damn if I knew how he slept in it, or if he did? Should have just packed a comfy sweatshirt.


    I mean, my gear was supposedly top-of-the-line. A slipskin, they called it, advertised as better than skin; Skin 2.0. Self-cleaning, anti-microbial, durable, flexible, quality stuff. Micro-AIs read your biosignatures and increased or decreased the breathability, whisked away dirt, and recycled sweat and even urine if you were bold enough to pee in your clothes. I wasn¡¯t, but it was an entirely other realm of awkward to strip almost entirely naked out of an onesie just to pee. Felt like, for all the modern innovation at work, they could have put a zipper down there.


    And then you weren¡¯t supposed to wear anything under it. That was another realm of awkward.


    Karu, on the other hand, when she peeled off her armor, sports bra, short shorts, tank top¡­that girl was living the dream. I had some twisted feelings in my stomach when I thought about it¡­I was in shock seeing Athan bleeding on the ground, and then turned around to see this girl stripping. And then seeing him unconscious and all covered in blood, and strapped to a half-naked girl¡­it was like a reverse-fetish. I couldn¡¯t get the image out of my brain, and it made my mouth go dry and my stomach turn whenever it passed through my thoughts.


    I threw another rock. My brain was wandering randomly. I heard the elevator start moving behind me and tried not to look too excited.


    I heard someone walk up to me and then sit down with a groan. It was just Karu, wearing the same outfit as I¡¯d remembered from before. I found myself frowning at her long, tanned, toned legs and indecently outrageous chest. Even smushed under a sports bra, there was no hiding those monsters.


    ¡°Hello, Lia, right? My apologies for stealing your brother from you so suddenly.¡± She stretched slowly, wincing as she nursed an injury. ¡°I would have very much preferred would that things had gone differently.¡± She gave me a small smile.


    Her eyes were like glittering emeralds, and even beat to hell and wearing the same clothes for days, she still had the face of a supermodel. What was with this girl?


    ¡°I-it¡¯s nothing!¡± I said, waving off her apology. ¡°I mean, you saved his life right?¡±


    ¡°I did. But I was also the one who endangered him by leading my enemies to him. How did things turn out with Luminary?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I stayed away like you told me to. I heard a boom, but didn¡¯t investigate. Did he, uh, blow up?¡±


    ¡°We can hope so, but exosuits are designed to insulate their wearers even from explosives. Without medical aid, I do not think he would have survived¡­but I have seen more improbable things.¡±


    ¡°You, uh, always carry explosives on you?¡±


    Karu laughed. It wasn¡¯t a gentle, restrained laugh like you¡¯d expect from someone with her features, it was deep and boisterous and I found a smile on my face despite myself.


    ¡°Explosives? Typically. Landmines typically not. I had brought them with the intention of using them to limit Ashton¡¯s¡­that is to say, Athan¡¯s mobility in a fight. I enjoy seeing how he reacts to differing circumstances in an engagement.¡±


    ¡°Those were¡­real landmines though¡­¡±


    ¡°Yes, what else would they be?¡±


    ¡°You were going to use real landmines against my brother?¡± I was standing and faced her, my face was hot. I didn¡¯t remember how I¡¯d gotten up here.


    ¡°Of course. There would be no point in using fake mines, would there? He would simply ignore them.¡±


    ¡°Or you guys could talk it over and, I don¡¯t know, pretend or something. Why are you trying to fight him anyway? I thought you were friends!?¡±


    I was yelling now. Maybe more than necessary. Maybe I was taking out some of my anger on this woman. She just smiled and laughed again. I hated how calm she was.


    ¡°Sometimes I ask myself the same thing, so I do not fault you for your confusion. Your brother¡¯s and my relationship is complicated. I certainly never wish him harm, but there is nothing to be gained from fighting him if the possibility of harm is not present. As for why we fight¡­I confess, that is simply a selfish indulgence of mine.¡±


    She flushed and looked up. ¡°Before being a hunter, I was in the airborne elite¨Ca Peregrine¨Cand saw much active duty. I have been in many conflicts, both on the ground as a soldier in a unit and more isolated as an airborne, but never have I fought the likes of your brother. He plays the battlefield like a chess board more than a combat zone. He is resilient and dangerous, creative, but also shows restraint and mercy. He is not an enemy soldier to be removed from the fight, or an unrepentant Exhuman to eradicate. He is a force unto himself.¡±Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    She had her eyes fixed firmly on the sky, but was breathing heavier now, the red on her face growing from her cheeks and nose and threatening to conquer the rest of her face. She was holding herself tightly, but, maybe just against the cold?


    Was she¡­she was¡­no. That would be disgusting. She was not getting turned on by thinking of fighting my brother.


    ¡°He¡¯s a football player, not a soldier, that¡¯s why,¡± I said, trying to back her off whatever point she was jumping on. ¡°He¡¯s never been on a battlefield. He was a quarterback, a playmaker, a shot-caller. He didn¡¯t beat people by being stronger than them, he had to use strategy and react to what the other team was doing.¡± I tried to sit back down again casually. ¡°Maybe you should start watching football instead of harassing my brother.¡±


    ¡°I doubt I¡¯d find it as exciting.¡±


    You¡¯re not supposed to find it exciting!


    ¡°Well, maybe give it a shot next time.¡± I tried to give her a friendly, reassuring smile, but mostly just felt dirty. She returned my smile with a beautiful full grin and sat down next to me.


    ¡°Ashton is a lucky man, to have a sister such as you. I admit I find myself jealous of your aptitude.¡±


    ¡°Uh, I didn¡¯t do anything. You¡¯re the one who can fly around and knows how to blow things up and is ex-military and everything.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps. Yet when I was your age, I was still living with my parents, home schooled, contributing nothing to the world. Here you stand, independent and strong, not only having somehow secured information which was strictly controlled and confidential, but also acting on that information to come out here on your own.¡±


    ¡°And more,¡± she continued, ¡°even in his absence, you are still here attempting to protect him. From me.¡± She gave me a small wink and I froze.


    Was that¡­a threat? Had she seen right through me so easily? But then she laughed again, and it seemed impossible for anyone who was laughing like that to be evil.


    ¡°Do not worry. I have no intention of stealing your brother from you. I can readily see how important he is to you, and would not wish to get between the two of you.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°But you¡¯re still going to fight him? Still going to try to kill him?¡±


    ¡°Your brother would not permit me to take his life, I have the utmost faith in him in that. You should have faith in him too.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know how to respond, so I just smiled at her.


    I wanted to just dismiss her words. This was some superstar, super-soldier, home-schooled, murderous psycho with a really unhealthy fixation on my brother. But my brain didn¡¯t work like that. I had to think it through, because she was here, Athan clearly saw something in her, and there was always that terrifying possibility that she was right.


    So I sat and thought. And once I removed the fact this idea came from Karu and her huge breasts from the equation, I saw a lot clearer.


    And¡­she wasn¡¯t wrong. Athan didn¡¯t need my protection. He was doing fine. I needed to stop hiding my feelings behind excuses like him needing me, or him not needing me when the obvious, sad truth was sitting there staring me in my dumb stupid face.


    I needed him.


    I was the one crossing half a continent to chase him down, I was the one sitting sad and alone while he went on his adventures, and I was the one crying and drinking myself to sleep because of the image of him covered in his own blood. He was out there fighting his best, and like Karu said, I should have faith in him to do that. If her word was worth anything, apparently he was awesome at it. The last thing he needed was a depressing, clingy, dependent sister hanging off him all the time.


    ¡°Thanks, Karu,¡± I said, breaking a few minutes of silence.


    ¡°I know not what you thank me for, but you are most welcome regardless.¡±


    ¡°Just thinking some. Sorry.¡±


    ¡°No need to apologize. I simply wish your indolent brother would awaken already. I only emerged because I could no longer stand laying next to him while he continued to sleep through the day.¡±


    Laying next to him?


    ¡°Weren¡¯t you also asleep for over a day?¡±


    She laughed a little. ¡°Regardless, I wish to be off soon and would prefer to see that he is well before doing so.¡±


    I stood up and brushed off my butt. ¡°I¡¯ll go get him up then. He¡¯s slept enough.¡±


    She frowned. ¡°It would be better not to. I can simply leave if I need to¨C¡°


    ¡°Nah, I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll want to see you off. Just hang on a sec.¡±


    I rode the elevator down. When the doors opened, Athan was right where I¡¯d last seen him, sleeping in the middle of his little surgical theater. How he got any sleep at all with all those menacing medical bits around him was beyond me. I saw AEGIS had put a hammock in a corner for Karu, at least twenty feet from the bed in the middle of the room.


    Next to him. She wishes. AEGIS had the right idea.


    He looked bad but not scary bad. He was wrapped in bandages across nearly his entire body, but the only one which warranted any gauze was on his shoulder.


    ¡°How¡¯s he doing?¡± I asked AEGIS, who turned on her holo in response to me talking.


    ¡°He¡¯s fine, just sleeping.¡±


    ¡°I was going to wake him up. Karu¡¯s leaving soon.¡±


    ¡°Let her go.¡±


    ¡°I think he¡¯d prefer to say bye. They just went through god-knows-what together.¡±


    ¡°From the injuries they both had, I¡¯d say they both went to the dark ages and publically blasphemed on a street corner.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°It looks like they got stoned. Bruises and cuts all over. Caked in about two tons of dust and debris. Tiny pieces of rock broken off in his shoulder.¡±


    ¡°But he¡¯s okay?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Then I¡¯m waking him up.¡± She sighed but didn¡¯t stop me.


    Trying not to touch any part of him which was beat up, I slowly poked Athan in the cheek.


    ¡°Brother. Big stupid brother. Wake up. Singing will commence in five seconds.¡±


    He muttered something.


    ¡°What?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Not the singing.¡±


    ¡°Yes the singing. Mom¡¯s not here so I¡¯m her understudy. Singing will commence in four seconds.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m up, I¡¯m up.¡± Athan groaned while he stirred, and I mercifully decided to spare him my singing, even if it took him longer than five seconds.


    He made a lot of noise and stretched every part of himself as he slowly sat up. I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to see how he looked under all those bandages. Painfully slowly, he brought an arm to his face and rubbed his sleepy eyes.


    ¡°I owe you a story,¡± he said, smiling at me despite his pain. ¡°Think I kept you in the dark long enough.¡±


    ¡°You certainly do,¡± AEGIS chimed in.


    ¡°Thanks for patching me up again, AEGIS. Or so I assume?¡±


    ¡°Yes that was me. You can tell by the excellent quality of your care.¡±


    He slowly raised his arms to look at, wincing. ¡°I look like a mummy.¡±


    ¡°An excellently cared-for mummy.¡±


    ¡°Anyway,¡± I cut in, before they bantered back and forth forever. ¡°You can tell me later. Karu wanted to take off and you should say bye.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Thanks Lia. Help me up?¡±


    I pulled him to his feet and he leaned on me for a few moments before shuffling to the door, stretching everything stiffly as he walked. I hoped I wouldn¡¯t get used to him looking like goat, as I followed slowly behind him.


    ¡°You¡¯re up. I hope you recovered well?¡± Karu was sitting right where I left her and turned at our approach.


    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t seem to be dead, so that¡¯s a plus.¡± Athan began to sit down but Karu stopped him.


    ¡°Don¡¯t get too comfortable, I¡¯m leaving momentarily. I merely wanted to thank you¡­for¡­well, everything.¡±


    ¡°What, exactly did you two do?¡± I found myself saying, elbowing Athan with a lot less care about avoiding his injuries than before.


    ¡°Nothing! I mean, actually, a lot. Is AEGIS here?¡± He looked around and found a DOG-E with a red light on, craning its head to look at him. ¡°So, while Karu and I were at the clinic¡­which absolutely saved my life, by the way, so stop thanking me, Karu¡­there was an, um, Exhuman event.¡±


    I gasped. The DOG-E recoiled slightly. Karu stared at the ground, ashen-faced.


    ¡°Karu¡­as you know¡­whether you agree with her or not¡­has sort of a life goal of stopping Exhumans from harming people. So, without her weapons or armor¡­she assisted with the evacuation, and then moved in to engage the Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°You, a normal person, fought an Exhuman without any weapons or anything?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Not¡­exactly,¡± she said, shifting uneasily. ¡°I had hoped you¡¯d¡­have told them after I left,¡± Karu said.


    ¡°So completely independently of Karu, and with her actively telling me not to, I tried to talk to the Exhuman,¡± my brother continued. He was blinking and looking around at lot, but mostly at the ground. He sucked at lying. ¡°She¨Cthe Exhuman¨Cwas¡­less than receptive of my ideas. She killed a lot of people, and was endangering a lot more. Karu had the right idea, I agreed, and¡­the two of us fought and killed her.¡±


    He lapsed into silence. We all did.


    ¡°Ashton did everything in his power to bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution. He even attempted to argue her into living in the wilderness like him, even while evading her attacks.¡±


    More likely live in the wilderness with him. He already had quite the harem.


    ¡°I¡­tried. I really did. But she was just so angry, so convinced she was right, so willing to turn to violence¡­¡±


    ¡°All the reasons I believe all of us hold you in esteem, despite being Exhuman yourself,¡± Karu said.


    ¡°I just can¡¯t believe I worked so hard to kill someone,¡± he said in barely more than a whisper.


    He sounded so hollow, so brittle. I couldn¡¯t help but to step forward and hold him in my arms, murmuring that it would be okay. A shadow fell over us as the DOG-E took a step forward and laid its head on him gently in a comforting manner. Even Karu put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.


    ¡°You saved many lives, including mine, I am certain,¡± she said. ¡°Think of them whom you have allowed to live.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, guys,¡± said Athan, somewhere in the middle of the hug. He was shuddering slightly from crying and we all pretended not to notice, just holding onto him.


    Maybe, like always, I¡¯d overthought everything. Maybe Athan wasn¡¯t out here with his own life kicking ass and making his own living with a bunch of groupies while I was useless in the sidelines, maybe he was just barely holding it together and just getting by, like I was.


    I looked around at the hardened faces around me, all on the verge of breaking. Like we all were.


    Maybe I needed to stop worrying about who needs whom more and just be there for each other. Maybe these girls weren¡¯t his bimbos, they were his life, and so was I.


    Maybe. I didn¡¯t know. And for the first time in a while, I was okay with that.

 067. 2141, 110 years ago. XPCA Research and Containment Facility. Laura.

    AEGIS was growing right up. I couldn''t be more proud.


    Base security wasn''t too keen on the idea of handing her the keys to the whole facility, so she was managing small, unimportant parts of the base, while they judged her performance and ''steered her'' towards being a proper AI.


    So AEGIS had a dayjob, opening and closing security gates, mostly. Not glamorous, not what we built her for, but actual real responsibility in an active classified facility. It wasn''t much, but baby steps. Being an immortal, endlessly-learning system, I believed she had all the time in the world to grow to her ultimate potential.


    My current project was related to AEGIS, but not strictly on-the-books.


    It was driving me up a tree to see people constantly talking about it. How is it doing. Where is it''s progress. Is it learning? Is it showing signs of hostility? How long until it is ready?


    It wasn''t what we made. It was a byproduct of our work, not the focus of it. What I and the others had done was successfully make an a human-like neural network, which was capable of thinking, learning, reaching its own conclusions. Our work was to create the technology to generate a human-like life, without all the fun biology messiness in the way. We didn''t create AEGIS, she was the byproduct of our study.


    It was the difference between perfecting cloning technology, and claiming to own a clone. She was her own being, yes a product of what we''d done, but no more our creation than I belonged to the doctor who helped deliver me when I was born. Or so I believed.


    My peers...the XPCA...they didn''t see eye-to-eye with me, and I learned pretty fast to keep my ideas to myself, unless I wanted them thinking I was deranged or dangerous and pull me off the project. Still, I couldn''t just do nothing. If AEGIS spent her whole life being treated as an it, than an it she would become, the same as any other human being who spent their whole life being treated like garbage.


    Already, I was seeing the signs. She had initially been excited about her new post, but almost immediately figured out that she had been given only the lowest of low security clearances, and the most menial of tasks. Doing the work of twenty extremely dull posts, and having the multiprocessing capable of handling a hundred million, I estimated her at five hundred million times more bored than an ordinary soldier standing near a door.


    And with all that free time and boredom, she''d sit and think. Maybe she''d someday wonder why they didn''t trust her with more secure and competent jobs. Maybe she''d realize they didn''t trust her with them. Maybe she''d start to figure out what about herself they feared, and maybe she''d realize that a lot more fun and interesting things would get done around here if she started accentuating those fearsome parts of herself.


    That was my concern anyway. I knew it wasn''t likely, but I could never underestimate humanity''s capacity for being horrible to itself...and in most eyes, AEGIS didn''t even count as humanity. I was happy they''d chosen to give her a test posting instead of deciding to cut her up and see what made her tick, like I''d seen them do with endless Exhumans they paraded in (but never out) of the base.


    So I''d taken it on myself that people see her as more human, treat her as more human. It was best for her and for everyone. My project of the last few weeks in secret, and it was finally ready for me to turn on.


    Also, I was getting a little annoyed myself of talking into a microphone on a wall of servers.


    I''d commandeered a holo projector from a conference room and had just finished wiring it up, feeling more like a janitor than a scientist as I laid on my back under the terminal with stray wires and tools laying all around me. Of course the server wouldn''t have a hookup for a holo projector, why would it ever need that? So I was in here doing a ''manual override'' to install one.


    I sat up, feeling a lot more out of shape than I should have and covered in a film of dust, but we were in business. I slid sideways into a rolling chair and skated across the floor to stop at another terminal where I''d been running my software simulations and had them put on the holo.


    The holo flickered to life and showed nothing but distorted artifacts. I wheeled over to another terminal and checked out AEGIS'' current thoughts.


    She had seen the holo and me working and was curious. As her thoughts developed, the distorted garbage on the holo changed. We were getting data through, something was just wrong with the decoding. I wheeled back again, changed a few fields, and did a rebuild.


    One more build. It was almost a joke at this point.


    This time would be a success. I''d just forgotten to set the render mode and its omission had shifted all of the values in memory by a byte. I deployed the build and¡­


    Still garbage. Different garbage, but still garbage. I scanned the logs for unexpected values and nothing jumped out at me. Hmm. Maybe it was time to call for help. I was more of a theory person than a programmer. I mean, I was a programmer, there was no avoiding it in this field--


    Oh wait, an uninitialized value. Backtraced it''s source...and sure enough, it wasn''t getting passed through properly. Fixed.


    One more build. Okay, not a very funny joke.


    I sipped some coffee even though it was 8pm while the build deployed and glanced at AEGIS'' thoughts again. Her curiosity was on fire. I''d been keeping my work hidden from her these past few weeks, and now it looked like she''d finally get a peek at what I''d been doing. I smiled, little did she know that now we''d all get a peek at what she was doing.


    The holo flickered to life, and instead of chunky rendering artifacts, there was a slight girl standing there, some yellow chromatic aberration from the holo, but indisputably adorable. My heart fluttered as I saw here for the first time, and I wondered if maybe I had made a big mistake.


    The girl on screen blinked and looked at herself in awe. Two long, bushy, coppery-red pigtails hung off either side of her head reaching all the way down past her slim butt, almost reaching the end of her short sundress. She had large hands and feet, which looked a little odd bare.


    She was...everything I''d dreamed she would be...more even. I wasn''t sure, my mind was a whirl of emotions. I had to sit down, and then realized I already was.


    AEGIS spoke through her speakers at me. "Dr. Cross, why are you crying?"


    "Me? I''m not crying," I responded, wheeling over to the mic to talk. I looked down at my lap and saw dark circles on the front of my white lab coat-like uniform. I touched my face and found it wet, to my surprise.


    "I guess I am crying. I''m sorry, AEGIS. Maybe this wasn''t a good idea for me."This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    The girl in the holo looked wracked with concern, her brows furrowed and a frown covering her face.


    "Dr. Cross, who is that girl?" AEGIS asked, the girl still looking upset but also now confused in addition.


    "That girl is you, AEGIS. I tapped into your emotion indices and rendered an approximation of how a human would look, based on how you are feeling and what you''re thinking." The holo-girl jumped in alarm and blushed furiously. "Right now, her actions might be a little crude, but the algorithm will adapt to your thresholds and become more accurate with time. Someday, you might just pass as a perfectly convincing human." I smiled and set my glasses on a terminal to wipe my eyes.


    "Why does this make you cry?"


    I paused and took a deep breath. I didn''t want to answer, didn''t want to talk about it, but I''d never be able to live with my hypocritical self if I treated AEGIS differently too.


    "Well. A long time ago...a long, long time ago, I was married and had a beautiful daughter. See?" I pulled a necklace out from under my uniform and showed her a sleek silvery ring with two small diamonds embedded in it, like stars in a night sky. "I was very busy back then too, but I spent as much time with my family as I could. Rua, her name was."


    The holo girl...AEGIS, rather, nodded, enraptured. She glanced to the side and made an odd gesture. I looked at her activity terminal and saw she''d just opened a door for some soldier on the other end of the base.


    "Well, my daughter was almost a year old when she caught very sick. We didn''t know what to do. We weren''t very rich...there''s no money in science outside of military applications like this one, but we did everything we could. We spent weeks at the hospital, getting treatments we couldn''t afford, anything we could do for our little girl. It...it didn''t help. We were helpless while everything just...slowly fell apart."


    I felt hot tears falling from my face again and wiped them away furiously. It was a lifetime ago, it shouldn''t hurt me like this.


    "It put a lot of strain on our marriage, and the debt...well, it has ruled a lot of decisions in my life. I don''t regret anything I did, but I do wish it all ended better." I laughed, and wondered if it sounded as bitter to AEGIS as it did to me.


    "But why are you crying now?"


    "Oh. Well...she would be nineteen now, you see. On the cusp of being a beautiful woman. And I thought...I wanted to create for you a body to inhabit so that people would treat you as you deserved, like a human. And she never got the chance to live, so...I found some work that had been done to create a model of what someone would look like as they grew up. I put little Rua into the simulation, and¡­"


    I choked. Stupid. It was just simulated data.


    "...a-and this is what she would have looked like today," I finished quickly. I averted my eyes from the holo, but saw thoughts go blazing past on one of the terminals as AEGIS thought.


    "You chose...to give me the appearance of your daughter?" AEGIS asked.


    "Yes. As I said, maybe it was a bad decision."


    "I don''t think so!"


    I looked over, and she was standing adamant with her hands on her slender hips. I was surprised by the force of her response. AEGIS had proven she could be quite opinionated sometimes, but tended to treat anything I said personally as gospel.


    "I think...I think sometimes...of you as my mother," AEGIS said, her avatar shifting uneasily and playing with one of her long pigtails nervously.


    "I know, I can see the logs," I said, with a smile. "I don''t mind, I think it''s flattering."


    "So, Rua was your daughter, and I think...I can be a good daughter too, carry on her spirit, be the good girl I know she would have been with you as her mother."


    "Oh AEGIS. You''re going to make me cry again."


    "It''s true though. I''m very flattered that you chose to model me after your daughter. I''m so happy right now, I don''t think you can understand."


    "I can understand," I said glancing at another holo "that you are currently at an elated state of 86% of your maximum emotional capacity." I raised an eyebrow. "That''s pretty far up there."


    "See? It was no mistake. I promise I will use this body for only good and make you proud of me."


    I leaned back and thought, putting my feet on a terminal.


    On one hand, having her excited and motivated to do good was exactly what I wanted for her. She was still a kid at heart, the world and everything in it was still new, and that purity of spirit was one thing I loved about her. But on the other hand, I''d be seeing my dead daughter every day at work. Yeesh.


    I guess the question was, could I ever see this girl as simply AEGIS and not Rua?


    I put my feet down and stared at the holo. AEGIS recoiled from the sudden scrutiny, frozen in a guarded stance.


    "I think...I can." I said after a few moments. "I can deal with this as long as I see you as AEGIS, which you are. I just need to make a few small adjustments to the model if you don''t mind."


    "Do whatever makes you happy."


    What a piece of advice to get from a computer.


    After a couple of hours of tinkering, I''d barely changed anything but it was enough. I''d been able to clamp down on how the render jumped from emotion to emotion like crazy and made it more subtle in its expressiveness. A lot more singular eyebrow-raising and a lot less jumping in place with both arms raised. Given the sundress attire, that was really inappropriate anyway.


    I''d also given her a terminal to interact with, so she wouldn''t be making weird gestures at nothingness in order to do base operations. To fit with the programmer motif, she had elbow-length wrist braces and thin oval glasses like mine. I had her with regular wrist-length braces for a while, but she still had too much skin showing off, I felt. And shoes and socks didn''t really do much for the effect when 90% of one''s focus was on her face anyway.


    Watching her smile and sway slightly, dress swishing as she tapped away at the terminal, happily doing her menial chores made my heart flutter, but this time for all the right reasons. I was proud of her, was proud that she called me ''mother''--by choice!--was proud of the life I hoped I gave her by drawing up the holo simulation.


    I checked my wrist holo. It was 6am. I''d forgotten to sleep again. No wonder most of what I''d been doing for the last hour was just sitting in a chair and watching her go instead of doing any real work. The coffee was long gone, but having more at this point was just suicide.


    "AEGIS?" I asked.


    "What''s up?" I was a little caught off-guard by her flippancy until I realized that''s how I usually responded to her queries. I laughed a little.


    "AEGIS, if I''m ever up past one AM, can you remind me to go to bed every hour? I probably won''t listen to you, but at least I''ll know I''m being stupid."


    "I''d be happy to, mother." She hummed along to nothing, tweaking controls on her terminal, doing nothing more than adjusting some cameras and lights in the base, but she was also watching her holo do so, and I think that gave her a real thrill. She just looked so happy, just to have a body, to exist.


    I heard a badge swipe and the door popped open with a snap-hiss. Dr. Reynolds walked in, one of my colleagues, and an overall great guy, even if he had horrible taste in movies.


    "Dr. Cross," he greeted me. "Pulling another all-nighter? Do you ever sleep?"


    "Only all day, Reynolds. Come gaze upon my creation and despair."


    "This what you''ve been working on all secretively the last few weeks?" he asked, suddenly interested. He plopped into a wheelie chair backwards and rolled towards us, sipping a fresh cup of coffee.


    "Give me some of that," I said, taking the cup from his hands without waiting for a response. He just smiled and rolled his eyes as I drained half of it.


    "You can keep that one. You know they have a marvelous machine just down the hall that makes as much of that stuff as you want."


    "It''s not in here, and that''s what matters. Now shush and check this out. AEGIS, can you say hi to Dr. Reynolds?"


    The holo turned at us and waved. "Hi, Dr. Reynolds! Good morning."


    I was glad I hijacked his cup, because I think if he was still holding it, he''d have dropped it on his lap.


    "This is...this is her?" He said, not even realizing his pronoun use. Score one for me. He pulled up to my terminal and started scrolling through the running logs. "You''re reading her emotion indices directly and simulating the body based on that? Clever. And where''d you get this model?"


    "It''s something I chose," AEGIS cut in. "I had Dr. Cross help me."


    Fortunately Reynolds was too preoccupied looking at my render logs to spot the other console indicating AEGIS was lying. I wasn''t sure if I should be upset that she had that capacity already, happy she was using it to protect me and my feelings, or just proud as hell at my baby.


    "This is pretty amazing stuff. You''ve got to show the others, she looks great. I could see putting interface terminals with a holo of her all around the base for anyone who needs to make a request from her. Hell, we should put a surround mic in this room so I can just have a conversation with her from anywhere in this room. The brass would love that."


    I put down the other half of my pilfered coffee and just grinned, leaning back in my chair again. Whatever plans he and the others would dream up, whatever implementation XPCA decided to put throughout the base, I was happy. I was done. I''d already won.


    AEGIS was officially a ''she'' now.

 068. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Karu had bid us all a bittersweet goodbye and left to collect her gear and fly away. Lia had been considerate enough to move it all inside The Bunker so it wasn''t sitting out in the snow, but said it had taken her three trips. I had to marvel at what kind of superwoman Karu was, hauling all that stuff around constantly.


    That was a couple days ago. I had hardly slept since then, every time I closed my eyes, I saw the Exhuman''s broken body staring at me with dead eyes. I was doing my best not to shuffle through days like a zombie, but that was where I was. Thankfully, AEGIS also didn''t need to sleep, and kept me company during my long nights.


    Mostly we were blithe in our exchanges, keeping it casual and light. I could tell she was worried about me, but...something about our dynamic had changed slightly. She seemed less constantly fretting.


    So I asked about it, one late night or early morning.


    "Yo, AEGIS."


    "Yo, Athan."


    "Ever since I got back, you''ve seemed...less worried. Just like, happier. I was wondering if something happened. You and Lia bonding or something?"


    "No, but she''s great. I''m just happy to see you got rocked."


    "...really? That terrible a joke?"


    "Yeah, I wasn''t sure you had the stones to come back."


    "..."


    "Not that I approve of you getting your rocks off with some girl you just met¡­"


    "This is the worst conversation in the history of conversations."


    "Wait, one more!" She was giggling so hard she was holding onto her console for support. Her contagious laughter and being sleep-drunk made it impossible for me not to join in.


    "No more."


    "I''m just glad that even after flying around with Karu in her panties, you haven''t asked her out."


    She paused with a dopey grin on her face. Maybe I missed something. "That wasn''t a pun at all."


    "No? I just thought after that experience you might be a little boulder." She sputtered out the last word as her ability to hold her laughter broke, and practically spit all over her holo, wailing shrieks of laughter.


    I grinned and rolled my eyes. "You are completely full of shist. Stop though, you''re going to wake up Lia."


    "Sorry, sorry," she said, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. "I crack myself up."


    "I''m glad someone appreciates your humor."


    "Oh, you laughed too."


    I didn''t deny it. I gave her a few moments to catch her breath.


    "Hoo. Anyway, sorry. You asked why I was happier after you came back. Nothing happened, that I know of. I''m happy you''re back?"


    "It seems like more than that to me."


    "Hmm, well...I am kind of relieved, but it''s not going to sound good."


    "Your puns make you not sound good already."


    "My puns are fantastic, screw you. But I mean...you probably won''t like what I have to say. Honestly."


    "Just say it."


    She rocked back and forth on her heels for a second and considered grabbing at one of her pigtails but resisted the urge.


    "I guess...I''m happy you killed that Exhuman."


    "What? How could you say that. Even I''m not happy I did it, and I''m the one who did it."


    "I know. And I know it was traumatic for you, and I''m trying to make an effort to be here for you through it. But at the same time...I''m relieved, you know?"


    "No, I don''t know."


    "You''re such a good person, Athan. Karu tried to kill you, how many times now? And you never once tried to kill her back. You even saved her life...I guess a couple times now. I''ve always worried that if the XPCA come knocking or something, you''d just roll over on me. Like, you have all this power and capacity to fight, but you don''t want to, so you wouldn''t."


    She pushed her glasses up her nose and looked at me frankly through them. "The fact that you have it in you to fight when you need to...that you can make your own decisions when to fight and when to show compassion...well...it takes a lot of worries off my mind."


    She paused and then added, "Also, every girl secretly wants a man who will fight for her. That shit is hot. WTB."


    "You dick," I said rolling my eyes. "I was serious."


    "And so was I. Ignore the last bit if you want, but it''s all true. I worry about you, but I worry less when you show me that you can take care of yourself. Also, you beat a fucking bear, so that''s pretty amazing."


    "That bear was literally nothing next to the Exhuman."


    "Just saying. You asked, and I answered."


    "And I appreciate that."


    We chatted for a bit longer and then I tried to get some sleep. I was so tired that I thought I might pull it off, but when I closed my eyes, the Exhuman was there waiting for me. I tried to push her out of my mind by thinking of AEGIS laughing her ass off, but only with limited success. Eventually I must have dozed off because I found myself awake the next day.


    Other than sleep, things were falling back into their normal rhythm. Over a delicious nutrient paste breakfast, spinach-mushroom quiche for me, Lia brought up something she touched on before I got yanked off before.


    "So, my crawler is still sitting out there. Can we go rescue it?"


    "Why didn''t you get it while I was gone?" I asked, surprised. She just stared at me, eyes blank, face pale.


    "Um, bears?" AEGIS said, like, it was the most obvious thing in the world. Lia nodded slowly, unblinkingly. I wondered how much the bear had traumatized her.


    "You think there are more like the one which came after you?"


    "There would only need to be one more for me to die." She was taking this very seriously. So was AEGIS. I mean, it was kind of scary and we''d only just scraped by, but it was only a bear.


    "Uh, I guess I can come with. Didn''t know travelling around here was such an issue. Do you run into bears often with your DOG-Es, AEGIS?"


    "No, not one yet. But that''s how they get you."


    "You two are insane."


    They looked at me like I was insane. Like I''d just proposed we hold a seance in an abandoned sanatorium built on an indian burial ground, at midnight on Halloween.


    "For the record, Athan, when I said I thought you were brave and competent last night, that wasn''t code for ''you should volunteer to do stupid things''." AEGIS said flatly.


    "Whatever. I can handle a bear. Want to go after we eat, sis?"


    She looked pale. Pale and frozen. A snow woman, with dead eyes made of coal.


    "Uh, maybe I can get it myself. Don''t know how to ride it though, never rode a crawler."


    "We''d walk it back anyway. The sound attracts bears," Lia said. AEGIS nodded sagely.


    "What the heck is the point of going to get it if you won''t even ride it afterwards?"Stolen story; please report.


    "I''d ride it! Just...not...for a while."


    "..."


    "Are you going to help me or not, stupid big brother?"


    "Very nice way of asking. Definitely convincing me. Look, you''re not AEGIS, you can''t spend the rest of your life living in a box being afraid of bears."


    "Har, har," AEGIS intoned. I ignored her.


    "We''ll go out and get your crawler and we''ll ride it back. Okay?"


    "Okay. But if there''s a bear--"


    "There won''t be a bear."


    "But if there is, I''m leaving you behind."


    "Fine by me. There won''t be a bear."


    "Alright. AEGIS, you heard the plan, we''re heading out."


    "GL, HF, DD. Come back safe. Also watch out for bears," she said, totally helpful.


    We headed out, morale high considering that this was apparently a suicide mission fraught with bears. We headed to The Bunker first, and then Lia took the lead, apparently able to track her crawler from the holo on her wrist.


    Conversation was fun and light for the first leg of the trip, and even as we headed out east, into woods I never really explored, we were still talking and joking about things. We were south of Saga, but heading northeast.


    "Hey, are we going north from here?" I asked, she and I walking mostly side-by-side, occasionally losing each other when a tree passed between us. The woods were thick enough here that there wasn''t any snow on the ground, just a thick crunchy layer of pine needles. It smelled good.


    "Yeah, ultimately," she said, tapping away at her holo.


    "Why don''t we swing north now and we can say high to Saga. I haven''t seen her in forever."


    "Not a good idea," she said, and flashed the holo at me. It had a map of our current position, and a big red circle north of us. "Got this map from Taglock, he says there''s something super dangerous up there and to stay out of the red zone at all costs."


    "Hmm." I grabbed her wrist and studied the map carefully.


    "Your hands are warm," she said, laughing a little. "My slipskin decided to adjust a little to keep your heat out."


    "I''m always hot, remember? This red circle, that''s where Saga is. I wonder if she''s the trouble Taglock ran into. I could see her giving him some problems, but it''ll be fine for us."


    "I''d still rather not," she said, withdrawing her wrist and tapping at the holo nervously. "He made it very clear that what was in there was super duper dangerous."


    "She is. Can''t deny that, but she''s also a friend. Let''s swing by...you don''t have to go in if you don''t want to."


    "Okay. Some other time, when we''re less afraid of bear attacks."


    "I''m never afraid of bear attacks?"


    "You don''t have to lie to put on a brave face for me, brother. I know you saw the same bear I did."


    "Yeah, what the heck was up with that bear. He was brutal and cunning."


    "That was really not an invitation to start a conversation," she said, and shuddered involuntarily. Jesus, just how traumatized was she?


    "Okay...well...I think for the record that you''re still crazy, but we can wait for another time for you to meet Saga anyway, if that helps. We can go up and skirt her range."


    In less than an hour, we were there. I was going first, since I didn''t know the exact extent of her range out in these woods, but it wasn''t long before I took a step and felt the subtle feeling wash over my brain. I gestured for Lia to stop.


    "''Sup?" I said.


    [ATHAN!] I braced and flinched as she yelled at me. [Sorry, sorry. It''s been forever. I thought you got eaten by a bear.]


    "Why does everyone talk about nothing but bears nowadays?"


    "She''s talking about bears? Is there a bear nearby?" Lia said, looking around nervously.


    "No, she thought the last one got us."


    [Who are you¡­(never mind)] I felt Saga scan my brain, to my annoyance. [Oh, hi there Athan''s sister who is standing just outside my range.]


    "Saga says hi. Sure you don''t want to come in and say hello?"


    "I''m fine, thanks. Isn''t it creepy, having someone in your head like that?"


    "Yeah, pretty much super creepy."


    [You think this is creepy, I''m the one who can see all your perverted thoughts. Jesus, you fought and killed an Exhuman? With Karu''s fat titties slapping you in the back the whole time?]


    "Karu''s titties--" I stopped. Lia looked at me very strangely. "Really? That''s what you got out of my last few days?"


    [No. That''s what I made fun of you for over the last few days. Damn son, you been busy. Shot in the face by a sniper, first time in a regenerator, killed an Exhuman. Hoo, baby.]


    "Hoo, baby indeed."


    "Are you still talking about Karu''s chest?" Lia said, her eyes dead.


    "No." I laughed as I put together my last few sentences. "No, Saga''s just catching up on everything that''s happened since last time I was here. She''s kind of locked up at the bottom of a mine, so I try to bring her exciting news every once in a while."


    [Don''t forget all the steamy sexual satisfaction you give me.]


    "I give you what now?"


    [Didn''t I tell you? I go through your thoughts and relive all your fantasies about me? It''s practically all I do when you''re not around.]


    I swallowed hard as I tried to think of everything sexual I''d ever thought about Saga to figure out what was the most embarrassing, incriminating thing she was referencing.


    [Oh wow. (Stop, please. I think.) I was only kidding around to see if I could get you to blurt out anything else in front of your sister, but thanks for all this. Super flattering. (My bust is not that big though, asshole.)]


    "Okay well, it''s been great seeing you, Saga!" I said, turning to flee before embarrassment killed me. Lia looked very concerned, and I had no idea how I was going to explain this one. Lying probably.


    [Wait, before you go,] Saga said.


    "...yes?"


    [For the record, I''m hairless from the neck down. Part of my powers. For improved accuracy in your future fantasies.]


    "YEP. FUCK. BYE!"


    [Ha, ha, ha. I''m only kidding (Well, I''m not, it''s true), that wasn''t what I was going to say.]


    "Please no more fucking with me?"


    [Sure. Thanks for stopping by. Glad you''re not dead. I thought Apotheosis might have had you for sure.]


    "Who''s Apotheis...Apo¡­"


    [A-poth-e-o-sis. Means deification, or the means by which something becomes a god.]


    "And...what was named Apotheosis?"


    [The uh, bear. He was kind of my bad.]


    I jolted and tried to hide my shock from Lia, dropping to a low whisper. "That was your bear?"


    [Haha, yeah. My bad.]


    "I think you need to explain a little more than that. You''re not cute enough to get off with a laugh and a ''my bad''."


    [Is that so? I seemed plenty cute in your fantasies. Especially when I was putting--]


    "YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN."


    "Are...you okay, dude?" Lia asked. "Do you want me to step in?"


    "Please do not do that. Please, please, please. I am fine."


    [Woah, please tell her to step in. I have so much to tell her right now. This is gonna be friggin'' hilarious.]


    "Saga, bad. Explain the be--explain Apotheosis."


    Saga explained briefly how she thought Lia was Taglock, the previous figure in black slinking around, and how she''d worked on ''improving'' Apotheosis over the years, before siccing him on her.


    "Saga, in what universe was that a good idea?"


    [It was pretty amusing from here.]


    "You have seriously got to stop trying to kill people. It makes it very hard to justify trying to break you out."


    "She was trying to kill someone?" Lia asked in alarm.


    "No, just us, so it''s fine."


    "Do you have any friends who aren''t trying to kill you?"


    "It was just an accident. And Saga is very sorry and will never do it again, right?"


    [Eh, heh, yeah, my bad. Still, if that were an XPCA or assassin or something, wouldn''t you be happy I put a bear on him?]


    "No. I don''t approve of murder."


    [Yet you do it yourself to an innocent Exhuman, hmm? I smell hypocrisy.]


    "She was the furthest thing from innocent and you know that. And for the record, if you ever become that Exhuman, I''d do the same thing to you. So stop trying to murder people."


    [You wouldn''t. I''m too cute. Also, I''d totally kick your ass.]


    "Maybe. But can we agree that you should not get to that point, please?"


    [Fine, fine. You''re no fun.]


    "And your idea of fun is completely sick."


    [Funny you should say that after imagining both of us locked in my coffin, turning and fighting to get out, even as our clothes gradually fell off--]


    "BYE SAGA."


    [Talk to you later.] I could sense the world''s biggest, most absolutely-unbearable grin on her lips. [Bring food next time!]


    I took a step back and she was gone.


    "Well that was...something," Lia said. "Care to fill me in on what I missed there?"


    "You know how I always keep saying I''ll tell you later?"


    "Yeah?" her expression fell.


    "I am not telling you later. Saga is a dick."


    "HA! Was it embarrassing stuff? I want to talk to her now!"


    "Nope!" I blocked her bodily, my feet unmoving as she pushed against me with all her weight.


    "No fair! You''re such a fatty! I can''t move you!"


    "I am like, 99% skin and bones at this point."


    "FATTY." She tried to go around but I blocked her at every turn. "No fair, dude."


    "Life''s not fair. Now keep your voice down or you''ll attract more bears."


    Her eyes went wide and she froze in fear. After a few seconds of her barely breathing I was worried I''d taken it too far.


    "Um, I have news from her about the bear. She says that was her bad and apologized. She thought she was protecting me from someone sneaking around and sent that bear to attack you."


    "What? She''s got attack bears?"


    "Just the one, un-slash-fortunately. She also can sense everything in these woods in her range, and Apotheosis...the bear...he was the only one who roamed this area. So we''re officially bear-free."


    "Until another one moves in because of the power vacuum," she said darkly.


    "Wow, you seriously need to chill on the bears."


    "Does THIS look like I need to chill?" she said, pulling aside her cloak and flashing me her hip, where there were still three parallel tears in her slipskin showing off the skin on the side of her butt and outer thigh. There were still stitches over the thin red lines where the bear had opened her up.


    "Unfortunately, yes. I know it was scary and traumatic, but out here, you always have to chill. If you get worked up into a panic about things, you''re just asking to hurt yourself, or waste so much energy flailing around that you''re way behind on calories and burning through your food. It sucks, I know, and I''m sorry. But you do need to chill."


    She looked at me seriously for a few moments and then closed her cloak again. I bet her leg was cold. "I understand. I can be chill. And you said there are no more bears here, right?"


    "Right."


    "Then no worries!" And just like that, she brightened up and started leading us back towards her crawler.

 069. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    As thanks, Lia was teaching me to ride her crawler.


    "Might come in handy someday, too." She said. I had to agree, things just got too crazy sometimes that it would never come up.


    The crawler was similar to a snowmobile but longer. ''Similar'' in that it was still a machine you wrapped yourself over and held onto while it rocketed off. Instead of treads or wheels, it had what were basically giant screws all along its bottom and sides which propelled the crawler forward by turning. In practice, this made it poor at handling, the extra length of the machine existed solely to have a few extra segments like a tail which allowed the crawler to turn.


    But going in a straight line? The crawler was an unstoppable lightning-quick juggernaut that blasted through terrain as much as it went over it. And I said this knowing exactly how fast lightning could go.


    So riding lessons were...interesting. Fortunately there was a sort of cockpit which covered my arms and shoulders as I laid on top of the machine, controls gripped in my hands in front of me, feet on the ground on either side of it. The hard part was getting it balanced and moving and getting my feet in all at the same time...without opening the throttle so much I left my feet behind.


    "It''s just like riding a bike, but faster."


    "Lia, I never rode a bike. Neither of us did."


    "Yeah, but I learned real fast and that''s what Subaru kept telling me."


    "How is that supposed to help me?"


    "Just focus on balancing. Try getting your feet up just for a second and then hit the throttle."


    I balanced on the thing, feeling it wobble under me as I put less and less weight on my legs. I started to fall one way and involuntarily jerked the yoke, making the tail whip around that way and sending the crawler careening over the opposite direction.


    "Stop moving the yoke! Just try to go straight. You''re gonna hit me with the tail."


    "I wasn''t trying to, I just fell over and it moved!"


    "Well stop moving it even if you are falling over, and just catch yourself with your feet."


    I gritted my teeth and tried again. This damn machine was twice as impossible to deal with as Saga.


    I wasn''t quite sure why I''d thought that, except she kept coming to mind ever since the last conversation we''d had. In every context. Not that I minded sometimes, but the things she said...


    "Dude, are you even focusing?"


    "What?"


    "Yeah. Thought so. Okay, so hit the throttle, that''s the lever under your left hand...just...a ...tiny...bit."


    "Okay."


    "Like, seriously tiny. Smaller than you think."


    "I got it."


    "I''m gonna stand back here¡­" she retreated to inside The Bunker, safe behind a wall of concrete AND twenty feet away. She had no faith.


    I centered myself, lifting up my feet. I wobbled for only a fraction of a second and then hit the throttle.


    I almost flew off as the machine spun to life and tore forward, and then almost flew off again when I pulled the throttle all the way back and it slammed to a stop.


    "Too much throttle!" Lia called from the doorway.


    "You don''t say?" I grunted, wondering if I still had any vertebrae left. At least I''d stayed on and moved it forward.


    "The only hard part is right when you accelerate or decelerate, it keeps its speed as long as you don''t touch the throttle. So don''t panic when it takes off."


    "Got it. Trying again."


    I did it again, barely touching the throttle. The monster roared to life, but this time only slowly crept forward at a walking pace. It was annoying to keep my balance, but Lia was right, it was much easier to do when it was moving.


    "I-I''m doing it!" I said.


    "Look at you go!" Lia exulted. "Go you!"


    "I''m gonna kick it up a little," I said and barely touched the throttle again. It moved imperceptibly under my hand and I was cruising at a brisk jogging pace now. Now that it was moving, it felt like keeping my balance was easier than losing it.


    "Do some steering, don''t be gentle!" she shouted from a rapidly-growing distance.


    Right. I turned the yoke in my hands gently to the side and found it did...not much. I was slowly turning to the right. I moved it more, and more, and ultimately as far as it would go. Behind me, I could see the tail curled behind me, the whole crawler now a little crescent shape, leaning into and turning toward the right, still rather meekly. It still took what seemed like a hundred yards before I had traced a full circle, which seemed ridiculous.


    "It turns slow because it always has the same turning radius no matter the speed," Lia said, walking up and standing in the center of the circle I was currently crawling in. "If you kick it up to top speed right now, you''ll still be going in this circle, just...a lot faster."


    "But I shouldn''t do that."


    "You can if you want. Just hold on and turn it up slowly."


    I turned it up slowly, and had the impression of going round and round on a carnival ride. A hundred meter circle did not feel so fast when you were going around it every seven or eight seconds. I looked down and found out I was going a hundred miles per hour. I realized the g-forces were so strong, I couldn''t even lift my chest from the seat. Or whatever you called a seat for your chest.


    "Pretty fun, huh?"


    "I wouldn''t drive it down the highway," I said, feeling my voice vibrate as the crawler whipped around.


    "Your voice sounds funny coming from all directions like that," she giggled. "Sounds like I''m getting my hearing checked. Come on and slow it down, and we can go on a ride."


    Gently, I dropped the accelerator from where I had it...not even full, and the dizzying revolutions slowed and finally stopped. When I sat up, I realized that I was massively dizzy.


    "Yeah, I don''t recommend standing up right now. It''s less disorienting if you are going in a straight line instead of in circles, trust me. Just feels like you''re on a fast train."


    "What if you hit a tree or something?"


    "You do hit trees. All the time. They go crunch." She patted the crawler affectionately.


    "Okay. What about rocks?"


    "Also crunch."


    "What if you hit a cliff?"


    "Well, if you''re stupid enough to drive straight into a solid wall, yeah, you''re probably done for. But more than likely, it''s got enough incline on it that she''ll tear right up the wall."


    "You mean you can drive up walls on it?"


    "Yep. What, you didn''t think crawler referred to her speed, did you?"


    "I didn''t think much about it at all. I never had much interest in ATVs."


    "Scoot back, I''m driving," she said, popping open a trunk compartment in the tail and pulling out her helmet, banged to hell and abandoned in the woods when Apotheosis had come charging and rescued by us when we went to get the crawler. It was pink, which really, really clashed with the all-black menacing ensemble she''d otherwise put together.


    "Your hat looks dumb," I told her as she settled in in front of me.


    "Your face looks dumb. There''s straps at my hips for you to hold, but you''re still going to want to lean in as much as you can."Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    "Like...this?" I asked. I leaned forward on her.


    "No, all the way in. Come on, you''ll fly off."


    "Uhh¡­" At her insistence, I scooted in as close as I could until my butt fell into the groove of the second seat and our pelvises were crushing up against each other.


    "Now loop your arms over and grab the straps. This is not hard, what is taking you so long?"


    I gently laid basically on top of her, holding my arms down with the straps, awkwardly aware that from my helmet''s chin bar, down to my hips, every inch of me was pressed against my sister.


    "Mmm, you''re warm," she said, and that was all the acknowledgement I got of our awkward situation before she hit the throttle.


    She was right that moving forward was a lot less disorienting than going in circles. The world disappeared into streaks beside us as she kicked it further up, but her head stayed fixed forward, at the stretch of open in front of us.


    There was a different noise for a moment as we flashed past something.


    "That was the river!" she shouted over the wind. Had we gone so far so fast? The river wasn''t exactly far, but we''d been moving for only seconds. At this rate, we''d be completely out of anywhere I''d ever been in moments.


    And...just like that we were. I couldn''t really tell because the details whipped past too fast, but we went through a thin copse of trees, which did indeed go ''crunch'', and were out in another open field I''d never been in before. Lia hit the accelerator again and kicked us into high gear, faster than I''d been on my test drive, and I felt the force of the G''s hit me in the chest like someone dropped a book on my chest.


    "Wooooooooooooo!" she hollered, her voice weaving in and out of the wind. It was impossible to believe we weren''t the wind. We moved so fast, and through or over everything. I saw trees and rocks whip by all around us, and through it all we remained untouched, like a bullet tearing through a world made of paper..


    It was insane. I was on top of it, completely exposed, I thought, but the simple fact was we moved so damn fast that even if the front screen just pushed a branch out of the way--although it was more likely that branch just disintegrated at impact--by the time it would whip back to hit me...we were already a dozen feet away.


    She was banking us now, slowly turning to the left. I saw now why the turning radius was so huge. At these speeds, with this level of invulnerability, all we cared about was heading, and puny things like ''obstacles'' or ''roads'' were the concerns of lesser vehicles. We just pointed where we wanted and flew.


    "Gonna hit that hill!" she shouted.


    In the rapidly-shrinking distance was looked like a cluster of extra-tall trees. In fact, they were just higher up than all their neighbors, so much so that they almost looked like they''d been planted on top of the others, or trees carried on the shoulders of other trees.


    "You''re crazy!" I screamed into the wind.


    "Yeah I am!"


    She gunned it, heading right for them. In moments we were in the trees, and then, in a moment, I felt the machine jam into my pelvis, and we were moving up and forward instead of just forward.


    "HOLD ON!" she shouted, her voice filled with manic glee.


    I didn''t have time to respond. We exploded back into the sunlight, rising up and over the trees like the forest had just spit us out. We were flying.


    "Wooooooo!" she screamed again.


    "Wooooooo!" I echoed.


    For one impossible moment, it seemed like we were riding on the treetops, before we crashed back down into the forest, inertial dampeners catching the worst of the impact so that I was merely in excruciating pain when I landed back down on the seat between my legs.


    I heard Lia make an involuntary noise as the landing slammed the air out of her, but she kept driving like nothing was wrong. In another few moments we broke clear of the trees again and entered another unfamiliar field. I lurched forward, my pelvis pressed even harder into my sister''s butt as she slowly dropped us to a stop. Finally, she put her feet down and leaned back into me, pulling off her helmet.


    "What a ducking rush," she said, shaking out her brown mess of hair. "Oh my god that was fun."


    "Maybe skip the jump next time? I think you may have removed any chances I had of having kids," I complained, trying to nurse my wounded junk without groping her butt. She just laughed at me


    "Like you had a chance of that," she said, kicking down the kickstand and standing and stretching. "Don''t be such a baby, I landed too and I''m fine."


    "Yeah, well, you keep certain parts of your anatomy on the inside. Guys don''t have that privilege."


    "Psh, that''s why there''s an inertial dampener built in. I think you''re just a weenie. I can take a pounding," she said with a grin, giving her own butt a smack.


    "Uh, please don''t say anything like that ever again," I said.


    "Yeah that sounded better in my head."


    "I sure hope so."


    "Changing the subject, what''d you think?"


    "Fast. Very fast. Kind of lacking the elegance of your average...oh I don''t know, everything else, though."


    "Yeah, well, it''s an offroad vehicle for a reason. The screws don''t even work on roads, so...it''s just an offroad vehicle. But you gotta admit, it''s pretty fantastic."


    "It is pretty fantastic. How far did we go?"


    She flipped her wrist and looked at the holo on her arm. "That was...about six minutes, and we went...12 miles, little more?"


    "So that''s¡­" I did some math silently mentally for a second.


    "120 miles per hour," Lia finished before me.


    "Holy shit."


    "Haha yeah. Want to hit max speed on the way back?"


    "I''m not sure I have the balls for it. Literally, not after that jump." She laughed again.


    "Okay no more jumps. Want to head back or keep going?"


    "Let''s--" I was about to say head back, but reconsidered. She was the happiest I think I''d seen her since we got back together. "Let''s go a bit more." She beamed at me.


    We tore it up for another twenty minutes or so, and Lia kept to her word and kept us off any more tree-high jumps. We did bounce around a lot, and by the end, I was losing feeling in my hips, which was definitely kind of a blessing considering I was pressed up against my sister. I wondered if I could get Karu to go out on a ride with me, and felt my face go stupid at the thought of her breasts pressed up against my back while we bounced over rocks and hills.


    We were almost home and I almost recognized the area I thought, when I saw something off to the side, flash past in a moment.


    "Lia stop," I shouted, tapping on her leg. Again, my body ground into hers as she brought us down from lightspeed.


    "What''s up? Feeling sick?"


    "No, I saw something back there. Can you reverse? Slowly?"


    "Sure," she said, and we started moving straight backwards at a few miles an hour. I kept my eyes to the side where I''d seen in, and after a minute of backtracking, saw what caught my attention.


    "What...is that?" Lia asked. She put down the kickstand and both of us headed towards the thing in the grass.


    It was a metal tube about three feet long, stuck in the dirt, pointed upright. A mortar? I got closer and saw it was definitely a weapon, there was a trigger and a rotating chamber for loading several rounds of munitions at once.


    "It''s a gun?" Lia asked, hesitantly standing next to me. "Is it from the ruins of the base?"


    "No, it''s not rusted or anything. It looks like it''s been here a little while, there''s some snow on it, but it can''t be that long. Looks like it was just dropped here."


    "Hmm." Lia began to walk around, while I examined the weapon. It looked familiar, maybe I''d seen one wielded by an XPCA soldier? That would mean XPCA had been here...but then again, it didn''t make any sense for anyone other than XPCA to be here.


    "Here, look. Someone dragged something here." Lia had found a trail. Weirdest trail I''d ever seen, older than the snow, but deep enough to stick around through it. Giant footprints and dragging in equal measure. Something with one working leg that had dragged itself? And the trail led back from approximately The Bunker and ended here.


    Near the start of the trail, Lia found another gun, a huge single-barreled monster, a little over six feet tall, carelessly thrown into the snow. Lia examined it, gingerly sweeping snow off of the black metal, before pulling it out and hanging it diagonally across her back, the butt of it inches from the ground and the big rectangular muzzle break at the tip of the barrel hovered over her head by several inches.


    I stopped and thought. If the trail left The Bunker, that means it had to be someone we knew about, but none of my friends would leave like this or make a trail like this. That left¡­


    "Luminary. Damn him," I said.


    "The guy who shot you?"


    "The guy who''s butler shot me. He was in an exosuit and got run through by Karu. But it looks like he wasn''t dead...he dragged himself all the way out here, but then...vanished."


    "Maybe his butler got him? Or he got out of the suit?"


    "Maybe. I don''t think he could move without the suit, they amplify all your actions, so even if you''re on death''s door, you can still move sort of normally in them. Doesn''t make sense to take him out of it either, they pump you up with medi-gel and you don''t want to open the suit and rip that all off unless you have a doctor on-hand."


    "You know a lot about this."


    "I own an exosuit. Haven''t you seen it?" She shook her head. "Well, I''ll let you stomp around in it sometime in thanks for the crawler. Pretty fun."


    "Maybe he flew off?"


    "No landing skids to indicate a VTOL. Suit didn''t have any gigantic jetpack on it or anything when I saw it. Plus this was a replacement suit, I doubt he''d go even more expensive than his first one."


    "You destroyed his first suit?"


    "No, stole it. That''s why I own one."


    "Ah. Neat."


    "There are¡­" I swept the snow aside. "There''s tire tracks here. There was a vehicle here. He must have gotten in. But it wasn''t his, he was parked in the trees near where he attacked us, and I don''t know if he could drive in his state."


    "So someone else was out here, who picked him up and took him home. Another butler?"


    "Maybe. Don''t relish the thought of him down our necks again. I might need to check out the scene of the crime again where Karu kicked his ass and see if we can find more details there." I swept aside more snow, finding another set of footprints supporting the exosuit into the car.


    And there, under the snow, I found something which made my heart stop.


    "What do you have--" Lia started to ask before she too froze. Both of us just stared at the thing in my hand for a few minutes in silence and confusion, wondering how it got there, turning over theory after theory in our heads. Both of us were thinking the same thing, but nobody wanted to say it.


    I threw it back on the ground and stood up. Lia was frozen and I had to pull her up by the arms. She''d gone completely catatonic. I guess I was driving.


    "Come on, Lia, let''s go. Move your feet, please," I pleaded as I dragged her unresponsive form away from the thing and onto the crawler.


    I drove us away slowly so she wouldn''t fall, leaving the half-smoked cigarette butt in the snow where I''d found it.

 070. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    "Why is he here," Lia whispered. "How did he find us?"


    She''d been inconsolable for hours. AEGIS and I had tried everything, from convincing her that there was no way it was Brick''s cigarette, to threatening to rip his head off if he ever showed it.


    I was even serious about it. While by no means a mass-murderer, the things I''d been able to get out of Lia about what he''d done made my blood boil. That was the kind of logic that made Exhumans so hated, I knew. But still...my little sister.


    I looked at her now. Wide-eyed, speechless, pale as a sheet. Sitting on the ground in the corner of AEGIS'' workshop, hugging her legs like they were the only things anchoring her to this world.


    The fact that she found this man, once my best friend even scarier than a bear which had literally almost mauled her to death said a lot. He had his own sins against me to answer for as well.


    "She''s...really scared." AEGIS said, looking impressed as she was worried. "This guy like some Exhuman you knew or what? Brick. Weird name."


    "His name is Barry, and he''s just a guy. He¡­" I lowered my voice. "He tried to rape her."


    "Oh," was all AEGIS said, but her eyes turned from worry and compassion to smoldering hate in an instant. "I hope he comes. I hope we catch him."


    "On a lot of levels, I do too. But I think it''s best for everyone...especially Lia, but especially Brick, if he stays away. I don''t even know how he would have found out about all this. Lia had to jump through so many hoops just to find me, and he just shows up out of nowhere?"


    "Maybe it isn''t him," AEGIS said, reiterating our first hope.


    "Maybe. But I''ve never heard of anyone else who smokes."


    "Tons of people smoke."


    "Not since we turned you back on. In the Sino War it was determined a wasteful use of precious life-sustaining land to grow anything other than food. Tons of worry about fallout during the war, and lots of parts of the US did get irradiated, and Skyweb couldn''t be wasted protecting farms. Tobacco was, and is, apparently still really heavily taxed, and it''s still really bad for you, so people just get their fix on cheaper, better drugs."


    "Huh. I wonder what else has changed. Never really thought about it."


    "Yeah, we''ve had our hands full of other crises out here all the time already, right? I''m not exactly a historian, but a lot changed in the last hundred years."


    "So, what it sounds like is...the cigarettes are either from Brick, or from someone as dumb as a brick."


    "I guess so. I''m not reassured."


    "Neither am I."


    I felt useless. I felt like a terrible big brother, unable to protect my only sister from my best friend, even. I was mad and frustrated, and Lia''s hollow stare just made me so pissed I wanted to throw things.


    It was drawing on evening and Lia''s wallowing had drawn on for hours when I pulled her up by the arm.


    "W-what?" she said, startled.


    "Let''s go on a walk. Come on. It''s nice out."


    "I-I don''t want to."


    "I''ll be with you. We can even take a couple DOG-Es if you''d like. We need to get you out of the house."


    "O...okay. I''m sorry."


    "It''s okay. Let''s just go," I said, and gave her gloved hand a squeeze.


    "You''re warm," she said, and leaned into my shoulder.


    "AEGIS, I''m going to take Lia on a walk. Can you have a couple DOG-Es doing perimeter sweeps around us? To be safe?"


    "Sure thing. Good idea, Athan."


    We walked slowly and aimlessly, the DOG-Es occasionally making sure to stay within sight of us as they scanned the area around us with a vigil that would make a praetor jealous.


    "How are you doing?" I asked after we''d been walking in silence for a while.


    "I''m...I''m fine."


    "Well that''s just a lie. How are you really?"


    "Not fine. Not fine at all, Athan. Why is he here? How is he here? I don''t understand."


    "I don''t either. But you do know, you live in a concrete bunker protected by robots. Your brother is an Exhuman, and Brick is right at the tippy-top of my shit-list. My best friends are a bounty hunter who once tried to level the base when she thought I was in trouble, and a psychic who can make people''s heads explode. And we all want to make sure you''re okay."


    "Maybe not Karu," Lia muttered.


    "Why not Karu?"


    "I wasn''t very nice to her. I think she''s trying to get with you, if you know what I mean?"


    "You think!?" I answered a little too excited. "I mean. Please elaborate."


    "Never mind. I knew you were a lost cause." She took a swig from her flask.


    "Hey, you''re not allowed to make fun of me when I''m genuinely concerned for your current distress. It makes sarcasm hard."


    "What is it you like about her so much?" Lia asked. "Do you just like girls with big breasts?"


    "I mean doesn''t everyone?" Lia''s eyes told me this was no time for joking. "She''s a good friend. To be honest with you, I don''t even know what we''re doing. She already sort of confessed her feelings for me--"


    "She did!? Why was that not the very first thing you told me when I got here?" she jumped on top of me, laughing. I guess girlfriend drama was all she needed to get over Brick?


    "What did you tell her?" She dropped off me and stared seriously at my face.


    "Uh. It wasn''t really a confession, I guess. She just said that she sorta loves me? And then I was confused, and we wound up fighting."


    "You fought after she told you she loved you?" Lia frowned. "Jeez, Athan, what did you say?"


    "Nothing, really! She just kept insisting we fight."


    "Oh. That kind of fight." Lia blew a strand of hair out of her face, disappointed.


    "I thought you didn''t approve of Karu? Why''d you get all excited about it?"


    "Are you kidding me? She''s insane. But you''re also my brother, and nobody''s ever confessed to you before. That''s so exciting."


    "Uh. Sure. We should turn around though, we''re gonna run into Saga soon if we keep going this way."


    "Hmm. No, I think I''m pumped enough. Let''s go say hi."


    "You''re very different than when we left."


    "How tactfully put of you. I think a walk was exactly what I needed. Thanks not-so-stupid big brother," she said, and planted a swift kiss on my cheek before springing away.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Women? Ugh.


    Soon we were at the edge of Saga''s domain and I stepped in to say hello.


    "''Sup, Saga."


    [Ooh la la. Visiting twice in one day. I must have made quite the impression on you last time.]


    I held up a hand to ask Lia to wait outside, and she did.


    "Yeah. About that, did you do something to me? I''ve had thoughts like that running through my head more than normal ever since."


    [Nope. All I did was tell you something I knew would pique your interest. Curious to hear more, I take it?]


    "Actually I''m here with Lia¡­"


    [Wow, aren''t you an animal? Well I can include her if you--]


    "She''s just here to meet you. Behave, please?"


    [Fine, fine. But only because I know you''ll never let me meet her if I don''t. I''m very curious what stories about you she''s got to share.]


    "Uhh¡­"


    [Only kidding. I already know all your embarrassing stories, remember? Say you remember that sleep-over at Tyler''s when you were twelve?]


    "Behave, Saga. Lia...meet Saga...but only if you really want to."


    Lia stepped forward a little hesitant, and then, feeling nothing, kept stepping.


    "Is it not working?" she asked.


    "No, you''re in. You have to experience it a few times before you know what it feels like. Feel free to talk, you two. Though I suspect this will end badly for me."


    [''Sup Lia.]


    "''Sup dude."


    [So, Athan''s sister huh? And you''re not an Exhuman? That''s disappointing.]


    "Exhumanity has no genetic component that people have been able to determine, so, sorry. I guess?"


    [But you are a millionaire black-market info broker. Not bad for a fifteen-year old. Say, I have a joint-venture proposition for you.]


    "Please don''t proposition my sister," I said.


    [You sure? I''d let you watch.]


    "Umm," interjected Lia.


    [I''d let him watch as you sprung me from jail. That was my proposition. You people, always jumping to the strangest conclusions.]


    "Maybe if you stopped wording things strangely, you wouldn''t have this problem," I said.


    "This is a weird request, but can I see where you''re locked up? I''m just curious¡­"


    [Sure why not. She''s not afraid of bats, is she?]


    "Just bears."


    [Ehe he he, I already apologized for that.]


    "Anyway, it''s this way Lia, if you''re okay with it for real, Saga?"


    [Why wouldn''t I be?]


    "Because of your crippling paranoia of humans?"


    [(Pfft.) I meant other than that. Besides, it''s not like she can get in. Come to the zoo, stare at all the animals, see if I care. Just keep a leash on your pet.]


    "Well, you heard the animal, let''s get gawking," I said and we started towards the mine. "Are the others still up?"


    "Others?"


    [Kid''s down, old man is going to sleep now. Want me to keep him up for you?]


    "Nah, we''ll catch them another time. Make me come back and visit. I''ve been neglecting you lately."


    [I''m flattered you remember me. But seriously, a few days is nothing to me.]


    "Saga has been in here for over a hundred years," I explained, feeling like a tour guide. "She''s the original prisoner in this ancient XPCA facility, and in fact, is the one who destroyed it."


    "Wow. So are you like, a mummy in there?"


    [Kid, do I sound like a mummy?]


    "Dunno. Never heard a mummy talk before."


    [Wow, smartass. Even worse than you, Athan. (I like her.)]


    "Yeah, he takes after me," Lia said with a flip of her hair and beamed a smile at me.


    "Wow, imagine that, Saga actually liking a human."


    [I''m allowed to like humans. I will still kill her the moment it becomes more convenient than having her alive, but I''ll feel a little bad about it when I do.]


    "And there''s Saga''s heart of gold and the reason I''m never sure if I''m doing the right thing by trying to get her out," I said.


    "Why are you trying to get her out?" Lia asked.


    [Um, hello, I''m right here?]


    "Personally, I don''t think Saga''s as hard and bad as she makes herself out to be. She co-existed with humans--not just any humans, XPCA soldiers who tortured her daily--for years. Never hurt them."


    [Yeah, right up until I killed them all?]


    "Yeah. That was not so good of you. But I do think she''s got a lot of potential to be good. And more, she''s immortal, she''s got a really long-term perspective on things. I think she knows that her future ends in one of two ways."


    "Which are?"


    "Either she subjugates literally all of humanity, or manages to co-exist with them."


    [Or destroys them. Third option.]


    "And you think it''s easier for her to co-exist with people than to try to rule them all?" Lia asked, as we slipped through the front gate of the compound, which was now fully patched of holes and actually opened when we tried to pull it.


    "I don''t know about that, but I do think it would be the more fun outcome for Saga, and as far as I can tell, that''s what motivates her most. An eternity surrounded by people she kind of despises, or an eternity surrounded by the silent minds of the mentally dominated."


    [It''s true. I am weak to the occasional chuckle.]


    "Thanks, Saga. Lia, I didn''t bring a light, so...just stay close, okay?" She nodded and I lit up a pair of swords above my head.


    "Woah. Sweet."


    "I know you''re a smart kid and all, but absolutely do not touch."


    "Yeah, I know. So is there, like, a muscle you have to flex or something to make them go?"


    [It''s his kegels.]


    "What''s a keg--"


    "It''s not my kegels," I interrupted. "No, it just kind of does what I want without me having to think about it too hard. Almost feels like it responds to my thoughts before I even think them. Like¡­" I struggled for a metaphor.


    [It''s like if I said ''look at the book'' or ''look at the wall'', you''d just move your eyes and do it without thinking about it. You don''t even have to think of it as looking at something, just as soon as you want it to happen, it happens.]


    "Yes, well said," I said. "That''s how it feels to me as well."


    [I have had a lot of time to think about this.]


    "Cool. So what else can you do?"


    "Uh. Just a couple things. Maybe we can talk about this later?"


    [Aww, shy to talk in front of me?]


    "No, it''s just not a very good place or time to demonstrate. If I do anything flashy here in the dark, we''ll just be blinded and piss off the bats."


    [Oh.]


    "Yeah, most of my decisions do not actually revolve around you, Saga."


    [Well that''s just misinformed of you.]


    We were almost through the mines now and made the last turn to the large open door.


    "That''s a heck of a door," Lia said with a low whistle.


    "You should see the next one. It''s the one giving us all the trouble." I walked us into the next room


    "That''s a heck of a door," Lia said with a low whistle.


    [(I like her.)]


    "Well, this is it. Viewing balcony on the left...the small shatter in that window is where I went at it with a blast charge. Scrapes on the door from some friends of mine hitting it with mining equipment. You can barely see even with a proper light, but that...there. That dark shape, that''s a coffin, or, I''ve been calling it that."


    [Very flattering. Am I a vampire?]


    "And Saga''s trapped inside. First obstacle is the door, second obstacle is disarming whatever trap and-slash-or traps they put on the coffin."


    [Third obstacle is doing that without letting a human near me. (Boo, hiss, humans.)]


    "And that''s about where we are. I think Saga''s thoughts are probably that you''re the only one of us who can and would go out into the wider world and get some technology that would help us open this stuff up."


    "What''s over here? There''s an exposed panel," Lia asked.


    [Don''t mess with that.]


    "There''s a valve in there that Saga uh, made the XPCA hack together to open the door."


    [Athan, I''m serious, don''t let her mess with that.]


    "This valve?" Lia said, and grunted as she turned it.


    [Both of you stop now. We''ve been over this, Athan. No humans allowed to hold my fate in their hands, remember?]


    I walked back to the door, finding it open. Saga''s dark chamber loomed right there in front of me.


    "It''s open," I said.


    [And you are not allowed to go in. Have your sister close it before I do.]


    "I can just go in and break you out."


    [You can just go in and have your sister lock both of us in there to die. Well, you''ll die, I''ll just experience every moment of your dying anguish until you do. So no. Tell her to let the valve go.]


    "Saga, you''re not being rational about this. We can do this, right now."


    [I told you. No. I don''t care. I need you alive to get me out, and putting your life in a human''s hands is a great way to stop being alive.]


    "She''s my sister."


    [Like that means something? Do you have any idea how many Exhumans were turned in by their families? How many Exhumans killed their families?]


    "She''s not like that. She''s my sister."


    [You guys aren''t so fucking perfect either. She''s a traumatized little waif who would do anything to hold onto the memory of her broken family, and you''re too full of yourself to even see it. Now CLOSE THE DOOR.]


    "A-Athan? What''s going on?"


    "Nothing. I''m going in. Keep the door open, okay?"


    [Don''t do this, Athan. Don''t you try me.]


    "This is what''s best. Stop being difficult. Just trust me, okay?"


    [No. I refuse. I utterly refuse. Do not step through that door or I will...I will¡­]


    I stepped through the door.

 071. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    [I will crush your sister''s head like a pimple. Is that what you want?]


    "Empty threat, Saga. I''m in here now, and she''s holding the door open. If you wanted me trapped and dead in here, killing her would be your best option."


    [I said GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!]


    She screamed inside my head like a banshee. In the distant darkness through the window, I could see Lia reeling as Saga''s voice pierced her mind.


    "Saga, stop screaming and calm down. Let me help you, please."


    [I DON''T NEED YOUR HELP. I CAN OUTLIVE THIS WHOLE GODDAMN MOUNTAIN IF I NEED TO. NOW GET THE FUCK OUT.]


    I felt something creeping into my body, like an egg slowly slipping down the back of my neck. I felt my mind going blank and the sensation of the room dissolving around me.


    I had to focus. I''d been through this before in her dreams. If I fell under her sway, it would become impossible to shake off. Willfully, I did whatever I didn''t feel like doing. Instead of following my feet, I walked further into the chamber. Instead of emptying my mind, I began to sing that stupid jingle Karu mentioned, it was the first thing that came to mind.


    [OH NO YOU FUCKING DON''T. YOU DO NOT BLOCK ME OUT, NOT IN MY OWN ROOM. NOT YOU, ATHAN. NOT YOU, TOO. AND NOT WITH THAT FUCKING INSIPID SONG.]


    "I''m sorry, Saga. I am. Just let me¡­"


    I took another step forward and then couldn''t. Simply couldn''t. I hadn''t fallen into her trap, I''d fought it with everything I had.


    [You honestly think you can fight me and win?] Her voice had gone quiet, but was now full of venom. [You think that tricks that work against my sleeping mind can protect you here from the full extent of my power? You''re an infant, Athan. I left your mind alone because you amused me and you may have been useful. But you''re proving me wrong.]


    "Saga...just...let...me...help you--" I grunted out. It was almost impossible, my own body wouldn''t do as I told it. I was floating in black space, the whole world dissolved from my sight, and I could hear and feel nothing, not even my own breathing or pulse. Just the menacing echo of Saga''s words in my mind.


    [You crossed a dangerous threshold, and now I need to decide what to do with you. Can you be a good boy and turn around and leave?]


    "I won''t. I''m...helping¡­"


    [I didn''t think so. You know your problem? You''re too stubborn. Nobody likes that.]


    Suddenly, as though from the sky, Saga was there in front of me, sitting legs-crossed in what I could only call a throne made of an even blacker emptiness than that which surrounded us.


    She looked just as I''d seen her before. Lanky and lean, almost but not-quite to the point of looking unhealthy, with long arms and legs and pale-white skin. A dark blue prison uniform emblazoned with the XPCA logo, and straight black hair falling to end at her barely-there breasts as she leaned forward leering at me. In the blackness, her brown eyes glittered at me.


    "I''m sorry for this. I never wanted to do this to you, but you see...you really aren''t giving me much of a choice. I could just pulverize your brain and be done with it, but nobody wants that. So be reasonable."


    "You should know by now," I said, gritting against her power and stubbornly refusing to bend "I am not always reasonable."


    "Then I''m sorry for this."


    As she said it she turned and looked away, and as she did, an empty black shadow emerged from the floor, made of the same insubstantial nothingness as her throne and this realm. As it approached, I realized it was a shadow of Saga herself, discernible only by the lanky limbs and flat hair, swaying as it advanced on me.


    "Saga?" I asked as it closed on me. She kept her eyes closed and her gaze averted as the thing approached.


    Then, faster than I could make out, it punched me right in the gut, hooking one of those slender fists right under my ribs. I couldn''t move, couldn''t breathe, tried not to vomit, for fear I''d choke on it.


    "Ready to leave?"


    "N¡­n-no¡­" I wheezed, trying to get breath back into me.


    It slowly shambled behind me. I waited one pregnant moment and then fell to my knees, slammed from behind, both fists locked together, striking from overhead against the back of my neck.


    "Ready now?"


    "I...I¡­" I coughed. She stared down at me and uncrossed and crossed her legs. "I can''t. I...only just...sat down."


    She frowned and watched this time as the shadow kicked me across the face.


    "You''re not doing anything by being here. You can''t even move or fight back. All you''re doing is hurting yourself."


    "All I''m do-doing," I whispered, shifting back onto my knees slowly. "Is saving y-you. Just like I said I would."


    I got kicked in the face again, falling to the other side this time. My arms couldn''t catch me and my head bounced off the ground with a crack. I saw spots flashing in my eyes and laid down for a moment.


    "You''re nothing here. I don''t enjoy this, Athan. Now leave so we can be as we were before. You violated my domain and my trust. Don''t do it again."


    "N-not¡­" I groaned into the ground. The shadow flipped me onto my back with a deft flick of its foot and gently placed its heel on my...my man junk. Threateningly, it began to increase the weight it put on me.


    [Not what? The next word out of your mouth had better be ''staying''.]


    "N-not¡­" the pressure increased and I felt a white burning crushing pain spread through my whole body. "...leaving¡­"


    There was a moment''s reprieve as the foot left me. And then it kicked me, straight in the sack. White pain flooded through me, and this time, I did puke, and the taste of acid and spinach and mushrooms filled the void in my senses. I felt Saga retch as I spit and coughed and writhed as much as I could with little to no control over my body.


    "You''d go this far?" she asked, wiping her own mouth like it was she who''d just vomited.


    "I''d¡­" I coughed and spat again. "I''d go...any di-di-stance. I pro-promised you."


    "Then I absolve you of your promise. Get the hell out!"


    "No," I whispered.


    "Are you trying to make me kill you? Because that''s what we''re heading towards."


    "I''m trying...to...help you. Let me go...and I can¡­"


    "No! I told you already. Stop it. Stop it!"


    She froze and stared at me as I slowly shifted, groaning, vision popping in and out of view. Still I struggled. After what felt like minutes, I was back on my knees again.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Sigh. What am I going to do with you?"


    "Let me go? I just want to help. Read my mind if you have to, read my whole goddamn everything."


    "That''s not the problem and you know it. Humans are the problem, Athan. But I''m really beginning to question how much of an Exhuman you really are."


    The shadow advanced on me again, taking slow luxurious strides, hips swaying as it closed on me.


    "I can do this all day you know. All month, all year. All eternity really. How long do you think it will be before your mind is completely broken? How much pain can you withstand before you''d do anything to make it stop?"


    "You tell me. Isn''t this exactly what the XPCA did to you? Tortured you for years until you finally snapped?"


    She froze, her face a mask of fury, and then the shadow lashed out, a straight kick to the throat.


    I dropped instantly, gasping for breath. Pain flooded through me, and I clawed at my throat, pointlessly.


    "Don''t worry," she said. "This is all still just inside your mind. You can still breathe, your brain just thinks your windpipe is crushed. Which is why I can do¡­"


    Even as I rolled on the ground, eyes full of tears, lungs empty and shrieking for air, she kicked me straight in the face. I felt my nose snap and saw red in my vision. If I had any air, I would have used it all for screaming.


    "...whatever¡­"


    Again, right in the face. My neck snapped back painfully. I could see and feel nothing outside of myself. My world was gone, her world was gone, there was only pain.


    "...I want."


    Not a kick this time. Straight-up curb stomp to the face. I felt my skull fragment, felt pieces of viscera squishing out over my skin. My eyeballs popped, my jaw, nothing left to attach to, hung diagonally, my tongue lolling out. I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing but pain, and the soft heel of her bare foot, half-sunk in my brain.


    A moment paused where I was nothing but dead, and then I was whole and complete again kneeling in front of her. I gasped as my lungs and body worked again.


    "How did dying feel?"


    I couldn''t answer. I just shuddered and gasped. It had all felt so real. I kept touching my face, somehow finding it intact.


    "You told me I was just like the XPCA. That was the second way I ever died. I was nine. At the hands of XPCA." Suddenly, she screamed, "I was NINE Athan. What good is there in this world of yours!"


    I just sat, my mind a blank white haze.


    "So, are you ready to be a good boy and leave, or would you like to sample the first way I died? Or some of the hundreds of others?"


    "...not¡­" I said, struggling to find words. Struggling to find meaning in anything. I was dead, what use were words to the dead?


    "What? Get your thoughts together. And leave."


    "...said, not XPCA. You aren''t."


    She laughed and it seemed to come from everywhere at once.


    "Of course I''m not. I''m Exhuman."


    "So...s-stop acting like them."


    Again, she just glared at me as her shadow advanced on me wordlessly.


    "Maybe you think you''re being brave. Maybe you think, honestly, that you''re doing the right thing. Maybe you''re just using this experience to work out your overdeveloped martyr complex. Maybe you realized that everything you feel, I feel too, and think you can outlast me. I don''t know, and I''m not going to bother reading your mind to find out. The simple fact is, whatever you think is wrong."


    "I know this because, as you''ve so kindly pointed out twice," she said, fuming, "I endured all this, too, at the hands of the XPCA. And it was all a mistake. If I had it all to do again, I would have murdered them the first moment I saw them."


    "So what, you want me to murder you?"


    "No, you idiot. I want you to leave. I want you to realize that at some point, you''re going to break, and suffering long and enduring pointlessly before then is useless. Everyone has their limit, even you. Even I did. Everyone does. So just fucking hang your pride up and walk through that door."


    "I could say the same," I spat.


    "What?"


    "In here, it''s just you and me. Maybe you''re right, and this will end when someone breaks, but that doesn''t mean it''s me."


    "You are truly impossible. Did you catch the bit where everything you feel, I feel as well? Did you see me flinch when I put my foot through your skull?"


    "And after you''ve killed me a hundred times, a thousand times, will I be any different?"


    "You...I hate you so much. Why are you so impossibly stubborn?"


    Her face was twitching with anger. Her shadow moved, holding something now in its arms. It put one end of the shadow object it held to its shoulder and levelled the other at my face. A gun.


    "Death number one. Execution by firing squad."


    I felt my head collapse before I even heard the boom. I couldn''t even feel the pain, it was just like a vacuum had opened up where my face had been and everything got pulled through the hole like it was sucked through a straw. My face was the first thing to exit the back of my head, and if my eyes were still connected to my consciousness, I''d see the trailing arc of my own gore following. My face, brain, blood, and skull slapped and splattered against the ground behind me and my body fell lifeless.


    This death was brief, and I snapped back to consciousness in a moment, again, incapable of understanding the feeling of being whole again.


    "Is that what you want? Forever? Intend to do that a thousand times so you can be as dead inside as I am?"


    I couldn''t answer. My mind just reeled.


    "Shall I ask again in another, say, five deaths? Nice round number?"


    "--ga...why¡­"


    "What? I can''t understand you if you don''t think clearly."


    The very definition of an unreasonable demand.


    "Saga. Why." I got out.


    "Why? Why? You do all this to me and you don''t even understand why you''re doing it?" She stood up from her throne, mad as hell. "Why? How fucking dare you ask me why. You violated me, Athan! You betrayed me! You were the one person...the one Exhuman in the world I put my trust in...the one thing in the world I put my trust in, anywhere! And then you do the one thing I tell you not to. You put my life in a human''s hands."


    She turned and strode down the steps, stalking towards me with hate and tears burning in her eyes, and slapped me across the face herself, her shadow looming like a bodyguard.


    "I told you...that''s one thing I will never do. NEVER do. And you just waltz in here and decide that you know better. ''She''s my sister, she won''t hurt you.'' I don''t care who she is. I am never putting myself in that position again. Never! Do you have any idea what that means, Athan? Never is a long time for you people, now imagine what it means to me!"


    "I''m sorry," I said. "I''m sorry for betraying your trust."


    She bit her lip and tried to hold it together as tears fell from her eyes on their own.


    "But you''re still wrong. Please, Saga. Let me help you. Let us help you."


    "No! Goddamn it, Athan. No means no. Why can''t you understand that? Do I need to plant that as a compel in your brain before you''ll be satisfied?"


    "I can''t understand because you''re wrong. Saga, you could be free today."


    "Or I could be free in ten-thousand years? What''s the difference?"


    "The difference is I''ll be dead in ten-thousand years. I want you to be free, and I want you to be a part of my life. You''re a strong person, and a good person, and I don''t want you languishing in this cell for the rest of my life. And I promised you I would."


    "So you''re just greedy. Like all the rest."


    "Of course I''m greedy! Everyone is, you included. People who don''t want anything out of life just exist for no reason. I can''t live that way, and I know you can''t either."


    "You''re wrong, Athan. I can live that way for thousands of years if I have to. And I''d do that over one day of putting my life in the hands of a human."


    "I don''t even see what you have to risk here. Worst-case scenario, Lia closes the door and I die in here. Obviously my death is worth less and less to you with every second, so how is this a problem?"


    "The coffin, idiot."


    "What about it?"


    "The first thing that happens when you use it is it puts me to sleep. Forever. Until someone turns it off."


    "Okay, so--"


    "So I can''t stop Lia or anyone from doing anything if I''m asleep, dumbass. You...I could trust...I thought...I could trust to handle me when I was sleeping. But that''s not a state I am willing to enter as long as there is a human in the picture. Period. Get it?"


    "She''s not just a human. She''s my sister."


    "Oh, my god, this again!? Sometimes I have to wonder if you''re really even an Exhuman, the way you worship those fucking things."


    "I don''t worship humans. We''re all just people. Some are good, some are bad. Lia is good."


    "I''m sick of wasting my time talking to you. Let me know when you''re tired of dying and ready to leave." The shadow advanced on me again.


    "Saga, you forgot one important thing," I growled as the shadow bore down on me, this time holding a baton or something.


    "Is this going to be some other grim proclamation of how I''ll never defeat you? I find that very unlikely."


    "No," I said, still unable to move or rise, my muscles locked as the shadow loomed over me with its baton raised.


    Suddenly, light flashed out and filled the black void. Four blades made of pure light manifest and sliced the shadow into five equal pieces, which disappeared into nothingness in a black mist.


    "I''m still an Exhuman, too."

 072. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Oh," she said, and hesitated. "Well that''s never happened before."


    "Like you said, it''s not a muscle I flex, it just happens. You can''t lock me out of my powers."


    "Yes, I see that. Irritating."


    She mused a moment longer before, from below as before, another shadow emerged. I cut it down before it had time to even fully exist. But then there were more. I lashed out, my blades glowing white against the blackness, tracing arcs around me like the rings of saturn in the blackness of space.


    Yet more came. Hundreds. Thousands. Until the black of the void was replaced with the black of her shadows. Still I fought, blades slicing every way, whirling around me as fast as light could move, tearing through the shadows, banishing the darkness with light.


    They piled onto me, endlessly, but the mass met their end the very moment they reached my radius. Unmoving, on my knees, I sat untouched in the eye of the carnage like a bodhisattva as the numberless spectres dissolved into smoke around me.


    It...wasn''t as easy or simple as that. I was still paralyzed, Saga may not have been able to stop my powers, but she knew what I''d do before I did it. The shadows were fast and lethal and endless, and many times were only a hair''s breadth from driving their shadowy talons through my body before I could react and send one of my precious four guardians to stop them.


    Even with four weapons, even with an effective range of a little over ten feet, they were on me constantly, threatening to cross that distance in the blink of an eye. I held them back for what seemed like hours, watched thousands of twisted effigies of Saga disappear into smoke.


    I didn''t know if I could endure, but I did anyway. This was Saga''s next way of torturing me. If she couldn''t kill me again and again, she''d make me fight her until I was ready to quit. All I had to do...was never be ready to quit. Ever.


    Almost as soon as I had that thought, they vanished, all as one, and it was just me and the blackness and her on her throne again.


    "Work off some stress?" She asked, dryly.


    "I could go another thousand rounds if you''d like."


    "I wouldn''t. I suppose I never asked, but is there anything I could say or do which would convince you what a horrible person you are and that you should leave?"


    "Nothing comes to mind."


    "I figured. Ready for round three then?"


    I tensed as the world and Saga melted from view, not sure what new scheme she''d come up with this time, but instead found myself laughing, sitting peacefully on my couch, watching the holo.


    Lia was cuddled up next to me, sometimes watching the holo, sometimes working on the homework sitting on the couch in front of her, pen cap in her mouth, feet flat on the sofa, knees stretching out her old, gross sweatshirt from within. Mom and Dad were there, Dad in his recliner, reading the news on a holo, Mom on the other couch.


    "Saga, you son of a bitch, don''t do this," I threatened.


    "You watch your language," Mom snapped. I felt sheepish.


    No. I had to fight. I couldn''t fall into the memories, or I''d never get out. "Balls, cock, wanker, fuck, shit, damn, asshole!" I shouted.


    "Language!" Mom hissed.


    "Bro. What the hedgehog are you doing?" Lia was leaning off of me and looking like I was spewing radiation.


    "I''m just...I''m trying to save someone."


    "By swearing like a pirate?"


    "Worst pirate I''ve ever heard," Dad mused.


    "Honey! We are not encouraging this!"


    "I''m not encouraging it, but you have to admit that was pretty sad," he replied, not putting down the holo. "Wanker. That''s not even real English."


    "Honey!"


    "Right. Athan, you''re grounded. Stop swearing in front of your mother."


    "Stop swearing, period, you mean," she said, deflated. "You are such a horrible child, doing that to your mother," she muttered.


    "Sorry, Mom," I said, not even sure why I''d decided to do that in the first place.


    "And I hear that''s not even the worst of it," she continued.


    Here we go. Once mom started on something she was impossible to stop. Lia gave me a glance that let me know in no uncertain terms this was all my fault.


    "I heard that our little boy has grown up to become an Exhuman. Can you believe that?"


    Lia pulled further away from me as Dad finally put down the holo. "Bro, is that true?"


    "It''s...but you know it''s true, Lia. You saw me." My mind raced as I tried to put together thoughts and memories which made no sense. I''d just done this with her, I had lit up a cave with lightning and she thought it was cool. But where would we find a cave in LA?


    "You knew about this?" Dad roared as he stood up. "You keep secrets from me, in my own house? My own daughter!"


    "Daddy, I didn''t know! I''m sorry!" Lia shrieked as she tried to untangle herself from her sweatshirt. Mom began to wail. Everything turned surreal so fast, was this really happening?


    He advanced on her, hand raised. There was a slap which echoed through the room, and Lia was falling to the floor.


    "I didn''t know! I didn''t know!" she kept crying out.


    "Liar! How dare you!" She grunted as he kicked her in the gut.


    "That''s enough!" I shouted, finding my arm locked around Dad''s. "Stop it, she didn''t do anything."


    Before I could react, I felt stinging pain on my face and found myself falling backwards onto the couch. Dad ignored me and kicked Lia again.


    "Do you see what you did to this family?" He said as he kicked her again and again, her crying slowly becoming mewling gasps. "Do you understand that Exhumans and normal people can never. Ever. Get along?" He punctuated his sentence with more kicks and Lia went silent. Mom''s wailing reached a new level and he turned and grabbed her by the face, throwing her to the floor as well.


    I was standing again, lightning swords out at and the ready. I saw red. Lia''s body was motionless on the ground, a trickle of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. Mom wailed and tried to protect her own head. Dad just stared at me.


    "You going to kill me then?" he said. "Realize that there''s no place for humans in your world?"


    "No," whispered, as I cut him in half. "I realized you aren''t real." He disappeared in a haze of black smoke, as did the room and the others.


    [But it could have been,] Saga said.


    "You''re sick. Fucking sick. Maybe I should just leave you in there."


    [You should.]


    "I won''t. I promised you."


    Without another word I found myself falling and landed in another world. Outside my parent''s house. Me, kneeling on the ground, arms behind my head, surrounded by XPCA. Blackett strode forward menacingly.


    "Submit and surrender," he said, simply.


    I hesitated, and then threw out the script. This would not go the way it had before. "No."


    A soldier fired at me, the laser dissipating into my shield, and in the same moment, lightning surged towards him and coursed into his gun and body. The weapon exploded violently, sending him flying back, where he slammed against a short fence and remained unnervingly still.


    "Submit and surrender."


    "No."


    Another soldier fired. Lightning coursed through him and he collapsed next to me, twitching and screaming, his voice coming out horrifying and synthesized. When he lay still, the smell of burning flesh hung in the air.


    "Do you not see the futility of trying to coexist, Exhuman?"


    "I do not."


    Another soldier fired. A rocket this time. A huge surge of lightning followed the trail and seeped into every inch of the man and his weapon. Several explosions tore through his armor, and then a larger blast as the additional rockets on his back detonated, sending bodies flying everywhere. Fire broke out, but still Blackett didn''t flinch, staring me down even as his soldiers panicked around him to put out the flames.


    "How many more lives will you take before you realize this is the way it has to be?"


    "These aren''t real lives. This is just a memory."


    "These were real lives. These men died because of you." He grabbed the dead soldier next to me and thrust him onto me. The body was limp and heavy and still warm. I retched, but tried to keep it together. It was just a memory. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    That wasn''t a reassuring thought, because she was right. It was a memory, but it was a memory of the first man I ever killed. It had been so easy, just an accident, if he and I weren''t enemies.


    "This isn''t working either, Saga. You''re right, this is nauseating and horrible. But all you''re showing me is how right I am. This world, these horrible unnecessary deaths...Exhuman events like this one...they''re a symptom of your kind of madness. It''s people like you who think that humans and Exhumans can''t coexist that made these people attack me, made me kill them."


    I looked down at the still corpse beside me, posed exactly as I remembered, saw in my mind every night for weeks.


    "You''re not breaking my will, you''re just strengthening my resolve."


    Again the world wiped away. I found myself on a rocky plateau overlooking a black abyss surrounded by a destroyed city in flames. There with me was Karu and the Exhuman we''d killed.


    She looked just as I saw whenever I closed my eyes. Scarred, swollen, charred, eviscerated, all at my hand.


    "I knew you''d show me this," I said. "Same story different day. This woman chose to oppress others, like you would have me do, just because I''m stronger than them."


    "This woman," said Karu, "isn''t what you should be afraid of."


    Karu swung her arm dramatically and the Exhuman''s head flew off and landed in front of me, Karu suddenly weidling her wrist-blades and wearing her full pearlescent hunting armor.


    "It''s me. Do you truly believe that I would go along with your little plan? I find the notion laughable. Perhaps I make exception for you, but for Exhumans such as these? Why would I even stop to talk with such filth? Exhumans are beyond salvation."


    "Saga, I believe in Karu. I believe in you. I know both of you can do it, but only if you share in my beliefs."


    "How arrogant," Karu said, levelling a blade at me. "You presume that you are smarter than everyone around you? Open your eyes, fool. Every one of your friends holds fear and prejudices in their heart, and blindly, you think yourself greater and smarter than them all?"


    "No--"


    "Then you accept there is a basis for our prejudices."


    "It''s not--"


    "Ashton, I may be weak of heart when it comes to you, I may support you against my better judgement, but that beast chained in that mine is there for good reason, and should you ever set her free, I will hunt the two of you to the ends of the earth."


    "No. You won''t. You two may be equal and opposite, but at the end of the day, you both want the same thing. You want to exist, you want to protect the ones you love, you want to live without oppression. As long as both of you are striving towards that same goal, you can coexist. We can all coexist. You just need to set down your hate, one day at a time."


    "You think it''s that easy? Saga endured a lifetime of misery at human hands. Everyone I''ve ever loved died at Exhuman hands. Do you think people put aside their differences so readily, just because you ask nicely?"


    "No. But I think they can endure until they realize that persons are not people. Karu didn''t and wouldn''t kill you without reason. You aren''t the one who killed Karu''s friends. The proof is me, Saga. I''m an Exhuman, and she''s already befriended me. You can be next."


    The apparition of Karu sighed at me and then, too, melted away. Finally, I found myself in The Bunker, my old home. Saga was here, sitting on the floor where AEGIS usually would be.


    "What memory is this?" I asked. "And how are you going to try to twist it to show me how wrong I am about everything in the world?"


    "This is all of your memories," she said. "And I''m not going to twist anything. The things I''ve shown you, those are your own unresolved nightmares, that''s your own baggage you get to carry around with you all day."


    I saw Saga was in tears, rocking softly as she spoke. How long had she been crying? Was she crying for herself, or for me? Or for what she was doing to me?


    "Is...is this it? Are you just...trying to use the fact that...girls crying makes me uncomfortable?"


    "You are such an idiot," she said, and smiled a little as she wiped away a tear. "No. And I apologize for my mess. You see, this whole time, I''ve been diving deeper and deeper into your heart and mind to show you how wrong you are about everything. And...you''ve suffered a lot, but always been strong. I don''t even understand why, but it made me cry."


    "Is...this it then? Are we done fighting?"


    "No. There''s still one more person who hates you. Hates you more than anyone else."


    "It''s you, isn''t it?"


    "No. I actually...love you, in a weird way. If you can believe that. He''s out there."


    She gestured towards the Bunker door. My heart skipped half a beat at her hesitant drop of the L-word, but I couldn''t stop and ruminate. I stepped outside and found myself in a bathroom, window broken, ceiling rotted, stripes of sunlight filtering in from the outside. Wooden walls, rotting away. The bathroom from the building outside Saga''s mine. In front of me, a broken sink. Above it...a mirror.


    "He feels guilt and shame, tries to punish you for others'' mistakes. Always willing to take the blame, always feeling like he has to support everyone or he''s letting them down. And then at night, he can''t even sleep, can''t be alone with his thoughts, or he has to face the things he''s done."


    "Saga, no." The spidery cracks in the mirror were fusing together. I couldn''t look.


    "Always the high morals. Always. So pushy and arrogant, he''ll kill another Exhuman because of her insistence on her way of life, so convinced is he of his own. He just wants to survive and be left alone he says, and then meddles in others'' affairs constantly."


    She was practically shrieking now, sobs choking her voice at times. "What if I just wanted to be left alone! Why do you get to decide what''s good enough for me or not? Why is your damn stubbornness so much more righteous and perfect than anyone else''s?"


    "Saga," I said as the mirror resolved in front of me and I saw a shadow of myself in it. "I''m just trying to help."


    "So was that Exhuman you killed. She just wanted her kids back. So were the XPCA you murdered, they were just doing their job. So was I! I just let you and your human sister walk right on in. I could have killed either of you in a heartbeat."


    Her voice was frantic now, beating on the inside of my head. "Maybe I should have! Maybe I still should!"


    "Saga, I know I''m not perfect!" The mirror was growing larger, consuming all of my vision, letting me see nothing but a horrible warped image of myself.


    "Then how are you so damn sure that you''re right about this? After everything I''ve done to you and shown you, why are you still fighting me now!? How are you so goddamn convinced that you are so fully perfect?"


    "Because I don''t have to be perfect to help you! Perfection may be beyond my grasp, and I''m okay with that, but that doesn''t mean I have to give up on chasing it. I don''t have to be perfect all the time to help people, I just have to try. And that''s what I''m doing right now, Saga. trying to help you, imperfect as I am."


    Her thoughts froze. The mirror shattered. I was back in blackness again.


    I stood there for what felt like a very long time with nothing but blackness around me. Gradually, Saga descended and sat cross-legged on the floor opposite me.


    "I really hate you, you know that?"


    "I thought you loved me, in a weird way."


    "I do. That too. I''m not sure it''s possible to plunge through a person''s entire life and history and see everything they''ve ever seen, feel everything they''ve ever felt, and not love them. Even if they were a terrible person, and you...are far from a terrible person."


    "Um. Thanks? I wasn''t expecting this."


    "Neither was I." She sighed and looked defeated and small, her eyes were bloodshot and she sat hunched on the floor.


    "Where does that leave us?" I asked.


    "I don''t know. I don''t think I can beat you, and I don''t think I can let you beat me," she said, gloomily.


    "Why not? Let me beat you, that is."


    "Would you like to relive the events of the past hour again? I saw and lived all of that with you too, and my opinion is still my opinion. Humans can''t be trusted, and I will never put my life in their hands. Flat out."


    "Then we''re at an impasse?"


    "No. There''s one more thing left," she said bitterly.


    "Then bring it on."


    "You really are an idiot, aren''t you? Do you listen to anything I say?"


    "Uh, all of it. Hard to tune it out when it echoes inside my head. But hard to know what you''re referring to."


    "Killing you. That''s what I''ve got left. That or doing things to your brain which would, from your perspective, be about the same as killing you. No more free will, for example."


    "Oh. Well, don''t do that."


    "Then you''ll leave instead?"


    "No."


    "Then that''s where we''re at."


    We both glumly sat in the emptiness for a long time.


    "I was wrong about something at least," she said. "I said this would end when one of us broke, and neither of us did, no matter what I tried to do to you."


    "Yay, I guess."


    "Yeah."


    Silence fell over us once again.


    "Well, this is intolerable," she said at long last. "I''d explain that I''m sorry and I don''t want to do this and all that, but you''ve heard it all before and didn''t give a shit then either." She stood and cracked her knuckles. "This won''t be like the other times you died. You aren''t coming back from this one."


    I stood too. "You said I had a martyr complex." She nodded. "Well, there''s no way I''d rather die than trying to help someone."


    "You''re such a dick."


    "Hurry up and kill me then, if you''re going to."


    I didn''t know what I was doing. I was exhausted, and not just from lack of sleep. As much as I plowed through torment after torment, every one of them hung on me, as they had each been specifically crafted to do by Saga''s sadistic mind. I felt like we''d been in this non-world for days, just fighting. I was so tired of fighting her. So tired of everything.


    Did that mean I was ready to die? Of course not. I was leaving so many friends behind. So much of my life unlived. I think I hoped that this was just another game by Saga.


    Any presumption I had of that vanished as I collapsed forward, pain all over my body as my heart stopped. I gasped out, the deep lungfuls of black air from the mines unable to reach my body without my heart working. I saw the coarse-cut floor under my hands fading in and out of view, I was back in Saga''s chamber, back in the real world. Dying for real.


    I staggered forward, crawling, and ran into something in the dark. It fell over, crashing to the ground with a metallic clatter. Involuntarily, I lit up my swords to see.


    And right there in front of me was Saga''s coffin, surrounded by medical carts and ancient lamps, one of which I''d just knocked over.


    I staggered towards it, my limbs becoming weaker every time I moved them, unsure of what, if anything, I''d do when I got there. I was too weak, it had only been seconds, but my entire body was shutting down.


    Desperately, I fell, landing on my side and rolling on my back, gasping for breath. In the dim light of the room, I could see a shape watching me from inside the coffin''s window, a hand pressed against the pane.


    [Goodbye...Athan. I will miss you.]


    I couldn''t move, couldn''t breathe, my body simply had nothing left. I lay on the floor feeling my own body going cold and feeling vanishing from me in waves, the last thing I''d see was my own bolt of lightning hovering over me, like a light from a distant tunnel.


    My mind was foggy and dim, but...lightning. An idea so close. I''d done this before. I couldn''t remember. Everything was turning white.


    Goodbye everyone who loved me. There were not many of you, but I cherished each of you dearly. I''m sorry I couldn''t save you, Saga. I''m sorry I had to leave you behind, Lia. I''m sorry I couldn''t make a world for us, AEGIS and Karu.


    And Karu.


    "...and Karu," my lips barely formed the words.


    I couldn''t move, but focused every bit of my failing will into my powers and sent a shock through my heart. It spasmed from the jolt, and I felt warmth touch my fingertips for a moment.


    I jolted again. And again. And again. I felt incredible pain, but...I felt it. I felt something. I was alive still. My heart wasn''t restarting, probably because of whatever Saga was doing. I was on manual, but I wasn''t sure how many more shocks like that I could take. I was tearing through my own flesh just to keep myself alive.


    I shuffled to my knees and hands, focused on jolting myself alive every second.


    [No...this is impossible.]


    My palm slapped on the floor in front of me as I crawled a step.


    [Stop! Go away!]


    Another step. And then another. My insides burned, my heart felt like it was on fire, but still I went. Forcing myself, painfully jolting my heart every step of the way.


    [It''s impossible! You''re dead!]


    I grabbed the edge of the coffin and pulled myself up. There was a panel here, many words and buttons I couldn''t read through the haze in my eyes. A small one, by itself. I pressed it and the panel came to life, lights and holos aglow. Another button. A large friendly green one.


    [Don''t you dare! I will kill you! I will--]


    I felt Saga pushing in on my mind every way she could. Blackness enveloped my senses, my body freezing. The edges of my brain began to burn away...


    I pressed it. I heard Saga scream, not just in my head, but right in front of me, saw her through the window in the coffin, arching her back, her eyes wide. Felt the needle enter Saga''s spine.


    And then I collapsed, the darkness of unconsciousness replacing darkness from her mind. The last thing I heard before blackness took me was the sound of my heart beating in my ears.

 073. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I woke up and opened my eyes to a dazzling light.


    Well that wouldn''t do. Closed my eyes again and rolled over, looking for another couple minutes of sleep. I''d had such a dream, but the memories of it were slipping through my fingers. AEGIS was my wife and left for the office, while I was stay-at-home dad for our pet cat. Lia couldn''t afford a place to stay so she was working for us as a live-in maid. Frilly black-and-white uniform and all.


    As I lay there grasping at imaginings, my mind slowly whirred to awakeness and I remembered the events of last night, arguably even crazier than my dreams.


    I cracked open my eyes again and squinted against the light. Was it my lightning? Working autonomously all night? I tried to move it, and nothing happened.


    Good, that would have been a real fire hazard.


    I sat up and rubbed my eyes and felt grass under my fingers. I took a look around, I was outside, a good ten feet outside the mining compound walls in the shade of a tree. The sun had just peeked around the edge of it and caught me in the face, which must have been what woke me up.


    Laying next to me on either side were Lia and Saga, resting peacefully from the looks of them. I stared very intently at each of them in turn and confirmed that yes, each was still breathing.


    Well that was good. I laid back down. No idea how we all got out here, but I''d kind of accepted that memories didn''t often make a lot of sense where Saga was involved. Best to let them sleep for now and get the whole story when she woke.


    [''Sup.] I heard her voice and looked over. She was still lying peacefully on her back, but this time I caught her narrow brown eyes. She gave me a small smile.


    "Hey," I said, shifting an inch closer to her to get my eyes out of the sun.


    "Hey," she said back. "I''m talking. This is weird."


    It was a little weird. She definitely had to put a little conscious effort into talking, which gave her words a weird little echo because I could hear her thinking her words as she said them. While the voice from her mind was strong and commanding, the words from her thin white lips were barely a whisper.


    "I got you out, apparently."


    "Looks like you did. And I''m alive and everything. I guess...I owe you an apology."


    "Normally my overdeveloped martyr complex doesn''t let me cash apologies, but you did just legally kill me in there."


    "Yeah." She didn''t say anything more, just shifted uncomfortably and stared into the branches of the tree. "It''s so bright."


    "That''s why I moved to the shade."


    "I mean, outside in general. I''ve been in a mine for a hundred years, and the only lights I saw were the ones you and the two brought in. It''s weird that there''s so much light in the world." She squinted as she looked at the sun through the tree, but didn''t shield her eyes.


    "I''m surprised you''re not like, jumping and running. You''re free! Or has that not sunk in yet?"


    "Yeah. It hasn''t. Do you mind if I go back to talking mentally? I don''t have the voice for this."


    "Honestly, I can''t really hear you normally. Most of what I''m getting is mental."


    [Damn. Well, I''ll need to practice, I guess.]


    It was, if possible, even weirder hearing her talk to me while seeing her lips were fixed in a smile.


    [I don''t really do jumping and hollering, but you can if you''d like. I''m more of a thinker. You really...came through though, despite me. I am sorry.]


    "Yeah, you really made that a lot harder than it had to be. Please consider listening to me in the future maybe?"


    [I will. I have to now, don''t I?]


    "As nice as that sounds, I don''t follow."


    She rolled over and propped up her head on an elbow, her small eyes glittering as she continued giving me that small close-lipped smile. [We had a deal. Or a promise, as you put it. You spring me, and I spend the rest of your life helping your silly human campaign.]


    "Oh. Yeah. I had almost forgotten about that. But I promise, I wasn''t thinking about that at all when I was trying to get you out and ignoring everything you were saying."


    [I know. I was in your head the whole time, remember?]


    "Like I could forget."


    She frowned a little and reached an arm towards me. She was so thin compared to me, it was like she didn''t have any more fat or muscle on her body than was absolutely necessary. She wasn''t emaciated or skeletal looking...just...a little alien. Her finger touched my forehead and I felt my mind go rigid for a moment, crystallizing like solidifying glass. As if that makes any sense. Then the sensation was gone.


    "What...did you do?" I asked, feeling nothing different.


    [Just a little apology present. I just dulled the trauma I (and that Exhuman girl) inflicted on you a little. Nothing major, just...pushed it out of the forefront of your mind.]


    And so it was. When she mentioned the girl, I didn''t see images of her broken face flashing in front of my eyes, just tacit comprehension that it happened, it was horrible, but I could move on.


    "Thanks...I think. I''m not sure I like the idea of being able to just forget people I kill, though."


    [Well, I won''t make a habit of it. You probably won''t make a habit of killing women, so it''s a moot point. I just wanted to say thanks.]


    "You''re most welcome. I still can''t believe it''s over. All I needed this whole time was--know what, let''s not dwell on that."


    [No, you can. Get your I-told-you-so in. I won''t put up with them later.]


    "I don''t need to. You already know, and if you really want an I-told-you-so, you can fish around in my brain for one. There''s plenty in there."


    [Yeah.] She sighed. [Sigh. I''m going to have a lot to think about, and relative to my normal timescale, not a lot of time to do it in.]


    "Re-evaluating the worth of all human lives, I hope?"


    [Something like that. Re-evaluating at least some humans. You''re right, I could exist in the same world as your sister, or Karu. Others, not so much.]


    "Others, I''m not sure I want to live in the same world as, so don''t take it Exhuman-personal."


    [Things are just much simpler when you can paint them black and white. But the world isn''t that simple, I get it. I just wanted it to be, and thought I had the power to ignore all the minutiae and treat it that way. I probably still do...but don''t worry! I promised I''d follow your silly rules.]


    "Yeah. That''s the kind of thinking that got that Exhuman woman killed. Once you think the rules don''t apply to you because you''re strong enough that you''re above them...well, I guess you better be damn sure you can fight the whole world at that point."


    [I could take the whole world.]


    "Yeah, no. The whole world is a big place. Even if by some miracle, nobody could ever stop you, I''m pretty sure we breed faster than you could kill us."


    [Eh. Probably. Never thought of that actually. I guess I''ll have to go after all the sexy ones first so that nobody wants to make babies anymore.] Her happy smile became a playful smirk. [So I have to start with you!]Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    "Sexy? Me? Madam, I happen to be a puberty-stricken awkward teenage boy who doesn''t own deodorant."


    [Just how I like ''em. Nom, nom, nom.]


    "Weirdo. Go find someone your own age."


    [I could be chasing your great-grandfather, and I''d still be robbing the cradle. Besides, I''m like, what, physically and mentally twenty or so? I''d do you.]


    "Can we not have this conversation over my sleeping sister''s body?"


    I was saved from further weird advances by the approach of a figure. It was Wynn, hobbling over slowly.


    "Are you okay?" I asked, getting up to help him over.


    "I''m fine, just an old man being old," he said, refusing my help. "Happy to see you up and about, I was concerned Saga might have done something to your mind, as she often threatens us she''ll do.


    [Only when I''m bored. So yeah, often, I guess.]


    Wynn laughed, and I had to wonder just how he got by living with her. She was smiling too, though, so I suppose death threats and constant danger of mental erasure were just their way of bantering.


    "Nice to see you in person," he said. "I was wondering if, after all this time, you''d just be a brain in a jar."


    [Planning to keep me on your mantle? You would be so lucky.]


    "I wouldn''t dream of it, mistress," he said, with a sarcastic bow, despite his infirmity.


    "So what happened to you?" I asked.


    "She did. But not how you expect, I imagine," he said with a wink. "Last night, Tate and I were bedded up and we awoke to some manner of psychic carnage going on. Worse ever than we''d experienced while she slept. I took a peek, and found those two--" he gestured to the tree and I noticed that the two DOG-Es which had accompanied us to the mines were still on high alert just beyond the tree "--guarding the entrance. That was when I knew something was amiss."


    "Yeah, Lia and I went to visit Saga, and things got a little ugly."


    "Lover''s quarrel?" he asked with a wink.


    [Yes.]


    "No."


    "Well, not sure what to expect, I walked in. They didn''t make a move to stop me, but were still on guard anxiously. I brought the boy, not wanting to have him awake alone, and we worked our way down to the prison. When we got there, I found your sister unconscious near the exposed wiring on the left side, doors closed, no sign of you."


    I glanced at Lia, still asleep. She looked so peaceful, but I was afraid of what kind of mental backlash she''d taken while Saga had unloaded on me.


    [I just put her under when it was clear you weren''t leaving.]


    "Thanks for that."


    [I know what you''re thinking, but blackmailing you with her isn''t in my nature. If I wanted you to do something against your will, I could just make you do it. It seems that changing your mind is the only hard part.]


    "A lover''s quarrel with blackmail, hmm?" Wynn said, stroking his beard.


    [No. One without blackmail. Continue talking, old man, or I''ll scatter your brains across this tree.]


    "Lovely as always. Well, Tate was sure you were in there somewhere, so we double-checked the mines looking for you, but with Lia unconscious at the door valve there--"


    [Time out. How does everyone know about that valve?]


    "You aren''t as good at keeping secrets as you think, Saga," I said.


    "...the only real explanation was that Athan had gone inside. We came back, I shined my light through the windows and caught a glimpse of him. It took all of Tate''s strength but he held the door while I went in, and lo and behold, Athan was there unconscious, and Saga as well. Her little prison had been turned on, and administered a compound that put her into a coma until the counter-serum was injected."


    [How...do you know all this?]


    "Well, it wasn''t easy, I tell you that," he laughed. "Darn machine was near as old as I am."


    "That machine was over a hundred years old."


    "Ehh? What''s that whippersnapper? Collywobbles in your ears? Never heard an old man make a joke before?"


    I sighed. Saga giggled, a cute effeminate little giggle, soft and reserved, like the tinkling of wind chimes. Her mental laugh was always so domineering and confident, any part of her being quiet and reserved, it caught me off guard a little


    "The machine wouldn''t let me open the prison...cell? Casket?"


    "I''ve been calling it a coffin."


    [Coffins are for dead people.]


    "You''ve died. More than most people, even."


    [Fair point. Coffin it is.]


    "Whatever you call it, I couldn''t open it without all sorts of crazy passwords and doohickey. So I stood scratching my head a bit and even pulled off some of the casing around the coffin trying to see if there was a lever or something I could put a hand on. Nothing of the sort, but I did find the core running the whole thing was exposed by a service panel."


    "And what, you just ripped out the core?"


    "You don''t know the first thing about security, do you? No, I borrowed your sister''s wrist holo and jacked in. This might surprise you young ''uns, but back in the day I was a quantum core developer. Must have been fifty years ago, right before the bombs fell."


    "Before the Sino war?"


    "Yep. I was caught in a blast outside of Philadelphia and almost died. Spent the next few years putting my life back together and getting a new perspective on things. Actually when I decided to become a crazy old mountain man."


    "You''re kidding." Somehow, seeing him sitting in a white button-down shirt in an office all day was the most impossible part of this story.


    "Nope. Harris Wynn, senior core dev and quantum architect at your service. Retired, though."


    Well, that was unexpected, but I guess every crazy mountain man grew up somewhere.


    "Breaking an OS a hundred-years old was as easy as looking up the major security patches released in the last hundred years, so I was through in a jiffy. Disabled the security, administered the counter-serum, and carried her out to the surface. I would have taken one of you two, but she looked a lot lighter." He laughed. "Don''t tell your sister I said that."


    "I''m sure she''d understand. You hurt yourself carrying her?"


    "Well, less hurt myself and more the natural outcome of a foolish old man trying to push himself past his limits. Fortunately, those guard robots were plenty smart, and when they saw me hauling bodies, they fell right in line and carried the rest of you out for me. Tate had the hardest job, holding the door while we paraded people and robots and bodies in and out."


    [I''ll have to thank him. It sounds like I owe the two of you my life as well.]


    "That''s unexpectedly decent of you to say, Miss Saga. You owe us nothing, we''re just happy to see you alive and in the sun at last."


    [You''re right. I do owe you nothing. I''ve saved your lives every day I didn''t squish you like vermin.]


    "There''s the girl we know and love." Wynn elbowed me. I really didn''t understand these two, but who was I to judge? Seemed like all of my friends had tried to kill me now.


    "Well, I do owe you. Thank you so much, sir. Lia and I are grateful beyond measure. If there''s ever anything we can do--"


    He just laughed and waved me off. "I''m an old man. Looking after young ''uns is my job. Perhaps next time, just try to fall unconscious in a more convenient location. Perhaps an air-conditioned building with handcarts."


    "I''ll see what I can do," I grinned.


    Lia groaned and stirred and blinked at me.


    "mmfmsdfmf?" she said.


    "It''s a little before noon," I answered.


    [I couldn''t understand that and I can literally read her mind.]


    "I happen to speak fluent Liaeese. I was enrolled in an eighteen-year full-immersion course."


    She sat up and rubbed her eyes.


    "Where are we? Why''s everyone here?"


    "I''ll tell you later," I said with a smile.


    "You...you...I''m not awake enough to think of an animal."


    "Bear?"


    "Not funny. Tell me."


    [Just a sec.] Saga leaned across me and tapped Lia on the forehead. [There.]


    "Woah," Lia said, her eyes dilating as she sat enraptured.


    "Can you stop with the mind-fuckery? What did you do?"


    [Just gave her the memories of the last few minutes from my perspective. She''s reliving them right now. Should only take a few seconds, thoughts are a lot faster than conversation.]


    "As much as I''m glad that your powers can be used for something other than evil, can you not unless it''s...I don''t know, a crisis or something? I feel like every time you tamper with someone''s mind you''re going to break it."


    [Ouch, what do you think I am, an ameteur? Minds are my thing.]


    "Woah, that was trippy," Lia said, holding her head as she leaned forward, breathing a little heavier. "I am not awake enough for this...crab."


    [I can fix that too.]


    "Please don''t," I pleaded. "Save it for crises, please?"


    [Fine. Waste of my talents, but I said I''d be good. Do feel free to die of old age anytime you want so I can use my powers in frivolous ways again.]


    "Anyway, all caught up, Lia?"


    "Yeah. Wow." She looked at me, and her mouth began twitching and eyes glittered with tears.


    "No. No crying girls. Why are you crying?"


    [I thought it would save more time if I covered what happened last night too while she was out. Looks like, uh, that was not the best idea.]


    "Well...she was going to hear about it at some point¡­"


    Lia inched closer to me and wrapped herself around my arm.


    "You died! But you were so brave. But how could you be so stupid!" She seemed unsure if she wanted to hug me or hit me, and apparently settled on both.


    "Ow. Ow. Ow. Lia, I''m okay. Everyone''s okay. We did it, it''s fine now."


    "But I slept through it all," she pouted.


    "Yeah well, you didn''t have any say in that. Saga put you asleep."


    "Whatever. Next time you have a bizarre crazy adventure, I''m coming, though."


    "Lia, this isn''t just a game¡­"


    But she was having none of it, even when I explained that now that Saga was out, we didn''t need to have any bizarre crazy adventures, we''d done it.


    I couldn''t blame her. I didn''t believe me either.

 074. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Saga wasn''t exaggerating when she said she ''was a thinker.'' I tried to celebrate her newfound freedom with her by enticing her to visit the base, ride the crawler, even just take a walk, but she declined, opting to stay sprawled under the tree right where I found her. I was a little concerned she''d just stay there forever, before I realized...she probably actually could without any issue.


    I wasn''t going to hang around all day though, I hadn''t eaten since yesterday morning and was starving. I thought Saga might show if she knew we''d be heading back for food, but she was still disinterested and distant.


    Even about food. Who was this girl?


    I guess she was doing a lot of thinking right now, but I didn''t have time to ponder, because Lia was hungry and making pitiful noises about it. We said our goodbyes, let her know she was welcome to visit anytime, and headed home.


    What we found was...not what I expected. As we approached, it looked more and more like walking into a military camp. DOG-Es and tiny salvager robots were hard at work all over, deploying sandbag walls, digging trenches, and patrolling.


    "Hi, AEGIS. Did uh, something happen?" I asked when we got in. Lia made a beeline for our larders.


    "Yes, something certainly did," she said, looking and sounding pissed. "You let Saga out."


    "Yeah, that''s something we''ve been working on, if you remember."


    "Well it''s a terrible goddamn idea!" She shouted. "That woman is the worst kind of Exhuman. She''s not going to find me easy to take. Not this time."


    "Um, she''s laying in the sun. She''s not raising an army. She said she''s turning over a new leaf and trying to get along with humans now."


    "Oh is she? Tell me, were you being blatantly psychically manipulated while she was saying that stuff, or are you just an idiot?"


    "Neither. I really believe her."


    "An idiot then. Great. Look, if she attacks, you''ll just be a hindrance, so when this alarm goes off¡­" she tapped a button and a wailing like an air raid siren went off throughout the base.


    "Uh. Eating breakfast here?" said Lia, looking up from her holo and bear jerky.


    "...please head to the second basement and strap yourselves securely to a table. I should probably manufacture some holding cells, but I''m trying to bolster our ranks now¡­"


    "AEGIS, this is insane. Calm down."


    "Calm down?" She straight up punched the side of her console, winced and held her knuckles, looking even more mad than she was before. "Do I need to remind you that this Exhuman destroyed the entire XPCA base which was here? A base I was in charge of managing? A base with far, far better security than we have here? And she did it on my watch, because I underestimated her?"


    "She''s not a prisoner now. We''re not torturing or killing her. She has no reason to kill us. Just chill."


    "I refuse to just chill. I was derelict in my duty once, and everyone died. Never again. Never." She muttered to herself as she typed frantically at her console.


    I couldn''t do much but stand there watching. It ate at my heart, seeing her so hurt and angry and frantically working to protect us all. There was a definite parallel between her insistence and Saga''s yesterday, and I wanted to resolve this in a way that didn''t involve me almost-dying again.


    "Hey, AEGIS," Lia said, unexpectedly joining the conversation with a mouthful of food. "Athan''s right. Have some faith in him."


    I thought she was going to yell, was already preparing to feel bad for Lia getting caught up in my fights. AEGIS opened her mouth and then closed it several times.


    "I...see." She said, sitting on the floor in front of her terminal. She looked mortally wounded by some kind of conflicted feelings.


    "Did...how did that work?" I asked both of them at once, kind of unsure what just happened.


    "Lia didn''t do anything, she just reminded me," AEGIS said, from her slump. "How...after I...sorta tried to kill you, I said I''d listen to you more, trust your judgement."


    "Oh."


    On one hand, I appreciated that she was taking that thought seriously, but on the other hand, it looked like she was about to rip herself in half over it. She was holding her head and looking through her fingers at the holos, just kind of crumpled on the floor. I had the realization that if I were about two feet to my left, I might be able to see her panties. But this was not the time for that. Besides, I was a gentleman.


    But I did have that realization.


    "I just can''t rule out the possibility that she''s already affected both of your minds, though," AEGIS said. "Like that sleeper agent she dominated, who destroyed everything from the inside. That could be both of you, right now."


    "And for what?" I asked. "Saga doesn''t care about finishing you off, you were just a patsy in her last escape attempt. Why would she brainwash us just to have us infiltrate your defenses and kill you?"


    "I don''t know. But just because I don''t see something doesn''t mean it can''t happen. I''m concerned she''s a lot smarter than I am."


    "AEGIS, trust me. We''re fine. Right now, we need to de-escalate the situation. The only reason she would ever have for wanting to harm you is if you do exactly what you''re doing now. Believe it or not, she just wants to exist, like all the rest of us. I''ve spent enough time in her head to know that much."


    She didn''t respond, just held her head, eyes wide, staring at nothing.


    "Is this my programming, again?" she finally asked.


    "You mean, you''re programmed to kill Exhumans?"


    "No, I''m programmed to protect people from Exhumans. Athan, like when I went after you, I just thought I was doing what was right, it was impossible for me to tell if that idea came from me or my programming though."This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    She turned and looked at Lia and me, both. "Do...you two think I''m just falling victim to my programming again? Be honest, please."


    "I don''t know," I said. "It''s hard to know, but I guess it''s likely, given the circumstances. You see Saga as an Exhuman threat, and you''re definitely trying to protect us. That does kind of toe the line."


    "I don''t think so," Lia said. "Let''s ignore the programming for a second and just treat you like a normal human. In that light, are your actions still reasonable?"


    "No. Maybe?" said AEGIS. "I thought you two were convincing me I''m being unreasonable."


    "You are, but don''t forget, humans are unreasonable, too. I think it''s pretty safe to say that you''d have a lot of paranoia wound up when dealing with someone who''d already hurt and betrayed you before, not that I heard the whole story." She tore off another strip of bear jerky with her teeth, and kept talking with her mouth full as she chewed. "Bud eed ''eems ''easonable to ee."


    "Hmm. Stupid little sister might be right on this one. I know that''s how I''d feel, and I don''t have programming, so I guess...we can''t rule out your programming''s interference, but at least it doesn''t look like it''s affecting your judgement?"


    "That''s a relief, I guess."


    She sat in quiet reflection for another moment before I had a thought.


    "Hey, you brought up deleting your programming and memories before, and I said I didn''t think you should."


    "Yeah."


    "Aat, ee uz ''onna oo wa--"


    "Lia, please swallow first."


    She rolled her eyes and chomped the jerky with impatience. "She was going to do what? Why would she wipe out her own memories?"


    "I was...choosing between responsibilities and my own happiness, is how I saw it," she said, not looking any happier about this conversation. "Back when Athan first found me, I had no memories of who I was, and he helped me restore them. But the more I learned, the more unhappy I became, culminating with finding out I was an AI, everyone I''d known my whole life was dead, and it was all my fault for not being able to do my job effectively."


    "Ouch," said Lia, finally putting down the damn jerky.


    "So I thought, maybe, I have the advantage of being an AI. I could erase all those memories, wipe out my programming, start over. Life as a human, never finding out my true nature. A human trapped in a box, sure, but I''d done that before and I was happy enough."


    "What did you tell her?" Lia asked me, eyes narrowed accusingly.


    "Your brother was actually very helpful for once."


    "''For once?'' I get no credit around here."


    "He convinced me that I should try to figure out a life purpose, like humans do. I realized that if I spent my whole life just resetting whenever I was unhappy, that would be the extent of my existence."


    "Oh yeah, and you started working on something as a project. What was that?"


    "Hehe, we''re almost at the prototyping stages. I was actually going to show you but then...started gearing up for war¡­"


    "Ooh, show me!" said Lia.


    "It''s not...all ready yet."


    "It''s fine, I want to see!"


    "Weren''t we having a serious moment about trusting Saga and erasing memories and stuff a moment ago?" I said, trying to keep us from flying off on too many tangents.


    "Yes, and your sister...and you, finally some credit given...have convinced me that I should at least try to coexist with the murdering Exhuman bitch. So I will do that."


    "Neat. I uh, gave her permission to visit if she wants."


    "She is most welcome to stand outside the gate if she desires. Guns will be trained on her the entire length of her stay. Oh, right, I was going to make some auto-turrets¡­" She began taking a note down on another holo.


    "Can we make sure the holo turrets only defend from attacks and not engage targets on their own?" I thought back to Karu hitting the base when I was unconscious. "Actually, can we just not have auto-turrets?"


    "I''ll keep them on manual control only, okay?"


    "Somehow I think that makes them even more dangerous."


    "We''ll work something out. And now, to divert attention so that hopefully you forget about the auto-turrets until I get them installed...wait. Hang on."


    We waited while AEGIS putzed around on her terminal for a moment.


    "Just...had it here. Dang it. I had this whole thing planned... " she looked up at us. "Oh. Head to the machine shop, sorry. See you there." She turned off the holo and DOG sprang up from somewhere and picked her up, leading the two of us to the elevator.


    "Am I the only one who has a really bad feeling about this?" I asked.


    "Yep. AEGIS is cool. I''m excited."


    "I hope you''re right."


    The doors opened to a familiar scene of dozens of little robots crawling all over the place, moving parts and raw materials all over the room. New were some partitioning walls which had gone up around the periphery, creating different bays. Some were for storage of raw goods, another looked like it was just a stockpile of quantum cores ready for programming. Some were sealed off, and it is to one such bay that DOG now led us.


    The holo switched back on, AEGIS now standing triumphantly at her terminal. "I found it. We''re good."


    "I hope so, it''s sitting right here in your workshop."


    "No, not that. How would I lose that? No I found...this!" Dramatically, she pressed a single key and for a moment nothing happened.


    And then, piped in over the speakers from AEGIS'' holo came a soft, low brass horn. It sustained for a moment, and then was replaced by another, louder, higher pitched for another moment, and then a third, clear and loud and long, several seconds.


    "This is from that movie," Lia said.


    "What movie?"


    "I don''t know. A really old historical film or something. It''s kind of famous?"


    "The movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you are ruining my moment," AEGIS said, over more horns and drums.


    We shut up and waited while the song slowly built to a triumphant crescendo. I''d never heard it before, but it was a very good piece. I thought about asking for the MP14 file later, but I didn''t really have a computer to play it on. AEGIS was hamming it up a little by conducting from the side.


    As the song blasted us with horns and drums and reached its apex, the bay doors swung open and revealed...a¡­a...


    "AEGIS, who is that?" I asked, feeling very much like my concerns in the elevator had been fully realized.


    "That," AEGIS said, proudly, "Is the Rua X Mk.1."


    "That''s a machine," I said blankly.


    It was a girl, strapped to a table turned 45 degrees so we could see from over here. She looked young, about my age, lithe but not thin. There was no hair, instead a mass of orange-brown braided cables, some thin, some over an inch thick, were connected from her head to a duct in the wall above her. There were dark circles on her shoulders, like where there would be pins on the joints of a doll. She had a piece of cloth draped over her for modesty, so I couldn''t see much between her shoulders and ankles, but her face looked familiar. Very familiar.


    "AEGIS...I can''t be certain without the glasses and with the mouth closed, but...is that you?"


    "You are both cruel and correct, sir. Zero net points awarded."


    "Is that going to be your body? You''re not going to live in a box anymore!?" Lia asked, bouncing excitedly.


    "Yep! This is my big project I''ve been working on. When Athan and I talked about being human and memories and life goals, I had thought that one of the things that made me unhappy was the fact I wasn''t human. Well...now I''m still not human, but one step closer."


    "Is that healthy?"


    "I''m not under any delusions I will be human or anything...and I''m the only AI of my kind that''s ever been made, so there''s not a lot of data. Going to go with ''probably not, but who cares.''"


    "Fire it up! Test run!" Lia said, clapping.


    "Okay. Like I said, still not a finished prototype. Also some issues remote piloting...well...you''ll see. Just keep in mind she''s not done yet."


    Lia nodded excitedly. I stood back, not sure what to think.


    "And a one, and a two and here we go," AEGIS said, and struck a key.


    For a moment nothing happened but I could sense large amounts of power transferring through the cables above Rua X Mk.1''s head. Then, surprisingly, the cables detached from the wall, hanging around the girl''s form like...well...hair, I guess.


    The eyes opened, and Rua smiled at us, a smile I''d seen on AEGIS'' face a thousand times before.

 075. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Her eyes were yellow. Not like she had jaundice, but the irises of her eyes were bright yellow, like there was an explosion frozen in time in each of her eyes. It was captivating, and made my heart catch a little bit to look at them. Or...maybe it was her soft lips, slightly pink against her skin, which was pale but speckled with what looked like freckles. Looking closely I could see them on her cheeks and nose, and even some on her bare shoulders.


    She smiled bashfully and turned a little. She even blushed. "Stop staring so much, you''re making me embarrassed," AEGIS said.


    Rua didn''t speak, at least not yet I guessed. The voice was still coming from AEGIS'' box.


    "Gosh you''re pretty," Lia said, sounding simultaneously awestruck and envious. For all her brilliance and the things she could do, sometimes she was still such a high school girl.


    "Thanks," AEGIS replied. "I can''t take all the credit, Doctor Cross had a beautiful daughter.


    "Who?"


    "Not important. Please help me down...uh...Lia. Don''t want to provoke a wardrobe malfunction. Can''t go losing my clothes on the first day."


    "I would never," I said.


    "Riiiiiight," Lia of all people said. AEGIS just snickered.


    Lia undid the bindings holding Rua onto the table and helped her to the floor.


    "You''re a lot heavier than you look," she said. "Sorry, is that offensive?"


    "No. I guess it should be, but I am. Err, it is? She is?"


    "I''m going to go with ''she'', but it''s weird to have her talking to us through you. Will probably not have that problem once you get comms working?"


    "Eh yeah, about that. Well, never mind actually. You''ll see."


    "You''re making a lot of spooky allusions today, AEGIS. One is usually my limit before I start getting really worried."


    "It''ll be fine. That''s phase 2 anyway."


    "Yeah, not convinced."


    Lia finished tying up the loose ends of the sheet so that Rua had a vague dress on her and then stepped back and let her go. Very organically...impossible to tell from human even, Rua looked over her shoulder and smiled at Lia. Lia blushed and shifted, which was a little weird because she was basically dressed like a ninja, and fidgeting adorably wasn''t something I thought of ninjas doing.


    Rua turned back to me, and as she did, I noticed her cables--her hair, I guess?--were dragging all over her shoulders and sort of falling all over her.


    "Here, let me help," I said, and picked up a couple of pieces of wire. The cables were long, went down past her waist, and were heavier than hair, but I tied them up in two bunches on either side of her head behind her ears, like AEGIS wore. With the muted orange color, she looked just like a blazing redhead.


    "Thanks," she said, and grasped my hand, holding it in both of hers. It was soft as real skin, but warm, warmer even than me.


    "AEGIS, I have to ask you something, I''m sorry if this is too frank."


    "Sure. It''s just a prototype, I can still make changes. I''d actually like your honest feedback."


    "What the heck is this" I said and poked her in the boob. I felt embarrassed as it squished, and AEGIS yelped.


    "Hey!" she said, stepping back and guarding herself. "What was that for?"


    "These are ridiculous. No girl has a chest like this."


    "Girls with artificial breasts do, and I''m all-artificial," she said smugly.


    "Not even Karu''s that large," Lia said.


    "Really? I thought this was about how big she was," AEGIS asked.


    "No way. I mean, maybe if you have boob envy you''d see it that way¡­" I added.


    "I guess Athan would be the expert," AEGIS acknowledged, sadly.


    "Yeah," Lia agreed thoughtfully.


    What the heck. Why was I pegged as such a letch with these two? I hadn''t done a damn thing to deserve this.


    Except, I guess, that time I poked AEGIS in the boob.


    "Isn''t this a bit much though? I thought you wanted to be human, not...a porn star."


    "Porn stars are humans! Don''t pooh-pooh on my dreams of being a human porn star!"


    "Please tell me you''re joking."


    "I''m joking. What, were you going to take out your credit chit and pre-order my first holo vid?"


    "Anyway. Tone them down, please?"


    "Are you s-u-u-u-re?" She asked, bending forward slightly, yellow eyes sparkling at me. I swallowed hard, the damn crack was like a gravity field, pulling my eyes into it no matter how hard I tried to fight.


    "Okay, these need to go away," I said, pushing her back while still averting my gaze.


    I guess the consequences of this should have been predictable, given how much of AEGIS'' front those things composed, but somehow I never saw it coming as both my hands sunk into something(s) very soft and warm.


    AEGIS let out a stifled moan and Rua shuddered, and then fell backwards, panting.


    "Are you...did you¡­" I sputtered.


    Lia slid into view behind AEGIS and gave me a thumbs-up. Not helpful, Lia.


    "I seem to be¡­" AEGIS panted out "...a little sensitive. I had read that...the breasts were sensitive to touch¡­"


    I was frozen, hands still hanging in the air. Lia was experimentally pushing on her own boobs. "Um, I guess, but not that much," she said. "I guess if you want a real woman''s opinion, I can help out."


    "No, that would be way too weird," I said. Lia looked at me confused. "Then every time...I mean...not that there will be...but hypothetically¡­"


    "If he touches my boobs, it''ll be based on touching your boobs, he means," AEGIS translated.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Oh. EW." Lia did a weird spinning, stomping dance and shook the ick off of her. "Never mind, I''m staying the hell out of this one. Maybe you should just calibrate it based on what Athan likes if that''s what you two are planning."


    She shuddered another couple of times and then headed for the elevator.


    "AEGIS, nice body. Love the booty. Keep up the good work!" she called.


    "Thanks, Lia! I might have some less boob-related questions for you later."


    "Kay!" Lia called.


    "Lia, wait!" I said. She held the elevator door open. "Uh, where are you going?"


    "Just on my holo," she pointed at her wrist. "Reception down here sucks."


    "Um, I''ll come with you."


    "Nah. You guys should have fun," she said, like she was doing me a favor, and the elevator closed. Now I was left perilously alone with the resident pervert and her new overly-sensitive body. As soon as the door closed, a change came over Rua, her smile becoming sultry, her eyes half-lidded as she stepped towards me.


    "You know...this is just a prototype. It''s not full-featured. But...once I get the Mk.2 up...I intend it to be very full-featured, if you know what I mean."


    I took a step backwards and tripped over DOG, who had again appeared seemingly from nowhere. I fell backwards and continued scooting away.


    "Um, AEGIS? Mind uh, stepping back? It''s getting a little...close...in here."


    "Who me? I just wanted to thank you properly for everything you''ve done for me. I promised if we ever saw each other in person, I''d have a reward for my rescuer."


    "And hey, wouldn''t you know? You rescued yourself. I''ll uh, leave you in privacy so you can...reward...yourself." I backed painfully into a large cut-up hunk of metal.


    "Are you sure? It''s just a machine, it''d just be some meaningless fun between us two. I wouldn''t tell." AEGIS giggled, and as she did, the corners of Rua''s eyes smiled at me adorably. She kneeled between my legs and sat smiling with her hands in her lap, still giving me those deadly bedroom eyes.


    I wasn''t sure how much self-control I had at the start of all this, but what remaining reason I did have was cracking. Shattering, more like. Dissolving into dust particles, more like. Rua was breathing heavily, though I wasn''t sure why a robot needed that, and was blushing furiously her many freckles threatening to disappear into the pink covering her face. She was so adorable -- even reminding myself that if the breasts were any indication, she''d specifically designed this girl to be appealing wasn''t slowing down my body''s yearning.


    Because...appealing wasn''t the start of it. This girl/robot/thing was cute as fuck. What did that say about me? A robophile? She didn''t even look like a robot, really, minus the eyes, hair, and the recessed dark circles on her elbows, shoulders, and knees.


    "Is there any reason you don''t want to?" AEGIS asked breathily.


    "N-no. I''m just...I''m not sure I want to do that kind of thing unless we''re...you know¡­"


    "Want to go dating first?"


    I nodded. "Athan, we''re adults and it''s just a little fun. When you put your hands on me, well, it was electric. I know you enjoy it too. Come on." She gave her ''hair'' a little toss. "Besides, you can''t exactly take me out to dinner and a movie out here, can you? We''ll have to make our own fun."


    She giggled and leaned forward, walking two of her fingers up my leg. I put my hand on hers. So warm.


    I really had no idea what to do. Was this a sad way of getting my v-card revoked? Did a robot even count? But I would count AEGIS, she was human enough to me. At least, on the emotional end. But wasn''t it the same as banging DOG?


    That thought sounded simultaneously painful and impossible. I winced.


    "No good?" she said.


    "No! No. I mean, maybe. I don''t know. I was just thinking of something else."


    "Saga? Karu?" She was frozen, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of mine.


    "No. Nothing like that."


    "Well that''s good. I might be an AI, but I''d still be pretty unhappy if you were thinking of one of them."


    "I could never. I mean, look at you."


    "Yeah, look at me!" she echoed, adorably pleased. "I''m so glad you like it. Wait until you see the finished product, she''s going to rock your world." She emphasized it with a little wiggle of her butt, which was totally unnecessary given how much of a knot there already was in my stomach and how dry my throat was.


    We sat there for a few moments, just looking at each other, waiting.


    "Haha, this is awkward, isn''t it?" I said.


    "Have you ever had a girlfriend, Athan?" she asked.


    "No, sorry."


    "Yeah, I didn''t think so. For future reference, when on a date, even if it''s awkward, don''t say so. That doesn''t help."


    "Have you ever been on a date?" I asked.


    "No. But I did play a lot of dating sims for research purposes."


    "Dating...sims? Video games?"


    "Yeah."


    "No wonder you''re such a pervert. Aren''t those games all about seducing girls so you can sleep with them?"


    "No! Lots of them have a lot of heart. They have really engaging characters with their own stories and motivations, and you have to treat them respectfully but still be willing to be assertive for them to accept your love. And then there''s all these weird scenarios based on the game, from being on their team while you fight aliens in space to everyday high school life. There''s a complex ecosystem of balancing your time with the girl you like and your friends, keeping your character''s stats or grades up. And then when the girls are friends, and they''re so cute, ahh."


    I wish real life sounded like that. I had the girls, but they were all crazy, and my weird scenarios involved a lot more death and gore than beauties and sex.


    "So basically...you seduce the girls so you can sleep with them."


    "You''re just being mean."


    "You have weird hobbies."


    "You don''t really mind," she said, Rua now climbing between my legs and putting her shoulder down between my knees so she could rest her head on my leg just above my knee. Her eyes were just so damn bright, it was crazy.


    "No, I don''t really mind. Obviously, you do what you want. It just explains a lot about your advances if you picked it up from video games. That''s not how real life works."


    "Isn''t it?" she asked, reaching behind her back and fumbling with something. "Is this not working, in real life?" She undid the knot Lia tied and her dress was now just a sheet covering the body snaked between my legs.


    Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit.


    "AEGIS, you can''t just tease a virgin like this. We''ve got limits."


    "Who says I''m teasing?" she said, running a finger up and down the seam of my pant leg. My leg twitched.


    "So...you...seriously, how to, um."


    Rua''s head began to slide slowly up my leg from my knee. I wasn''t sure how much more of this I could take. When she got to the awkward bulge in my pants, she reached for it and licked her lips hungrily.


    I guess this was it for me. Hello, robophilia. You aren''t the worst fetish, I guess.


    I waited, and she never landed. She just hung there, completely stationary, leaning over me, her hand hovering inches away from me, frozen.


    "AEGIS?" I asked, unsure what kind of foreplay this now was.


    "Hang on. She crashed. Shouldn''t have opened her mouth, my bad."


    Thankfully the moment was gone and I could reassemble some of the shattered fragments of my willpower. I stood up, gently making sure not to knock the sheet off of Rua.


    "I think...I''d better leave," I said.


    "Wait, don''t go! I''ll have her back up in a minute."


    "I''ll uh, see you AEGIS! Please don''t take this the wrong way, I just don''t know if my heart is caught up to my--anyway, bye!" I spoke very fast as I headed for the elevator and sighed as it closed.


    What was I doing? I had the opportunity of a lifetime in there. I didn''t even know why I was trying to resist so much, except that AEGIS was pushing me so hard, and I was a stubborn asshole who always had to push back. I swore at myself and wondered if it was too late not to go back down.


    Then the elevator door opened and sunlight poured in. I was about to hit the button to go back down when I saw a figure standing there, backlit by the sun. A figure with a suitcase? They must have just been...standing there, outside the door, waiting.


    "Hello," said Karu, shifting uneasily. "I apologize for my sudden appearance, without warning, yet again." She was quieter than usual, still dressed to kill, but something was off.


    "Hi Karu. Good to see you, what''s up today? Looking for me to kill?" I looked around, Lia should have been around here somewhere, but I saw no trace. Had the two of them missed each other?


    "No...I am afraid nothing of such levity. This time¡­" she couldn''t look me in the eyes. "It appears I am out of a home for the time being. Would it be acceptable if I were to stay with you...for a while? I promise I shall be no burden."


    The elevator buzzed as someone tried to call it from below while I was still holding it. Probably AEGIS getting her new body in order. First she wanted to go down, now she wants to come up.


    She would be a terror, and standing here was Karu with a little black gym bag of all things.


    What the heck had my life become.

 076. 2201, Fifty years ago. Philadelphia. Harris.

    It was a strange sensation laying there in a hospital bed, surrounded by people suffering, trying to determine how much of my life was left to put together.


    The town I worked in, lived in, didn''t exist anymore. My body had been found in the rubble the day after the attack, and brought in with many others to one of the hospitals in the city. I''d been pumped full of anti-rad pills and fresh blood. I was one of the lucky ones, just on the edge of the blast, and the building falling around me didn''t crush me instantly. And I''d been found.


    Turning on the news had been forbidden, as it was deemed ''too traumatic'' so I and the others in this room, beds packed so tight I could reach out and touch the people on either side if I stretched, we all watched a game show on the holo like it was a pleasant sunday. Still, I''d heard the whispers. Millions dead or unaccounted for. Missile strikes all over the country.


    Skyweb had worked, in that it had protected military and governmental sites and major urban centers, which kept the death count merely in the millions, but it couldn''t be everywhere at once. China didn''t have Skyweb, and the rumors were China didn''t exist anymore.


    As I lay, finding it hard to inhale past a point because of my bruised ribs, hearing the moans of people around me and the ghosts of the dead, I wanted to be happy they were dead, but I just couldn''t. In some places over there, I''m sure the scene was the same as right here, people wounded and dying and dead. I couldn''t hate them any more than the people next to me.


    Strangest of all was the feeling of not knowing what was next. Everything I was, everything I''d worked for, it was all gone. I had money, sure, and assuming the system didn''t implode, had insurance to cover everything.


    So I could do what? Get back on my feet and spend the rest of my life in a cubicle I hated? Everything I''d ever coded for work was on servers which had been wiped clean by the electromagnetic pulse, it was like all the hours I spent hating myself and my job were all pointless. Did I have the strength to go back and do that all over again?


    It was a pretty fatalist outlook, but I realized in the long hours in this hospital, even without nuclear apocalypse, my digital legacy wouldn''t last anyway.


    I had this fantasy when I coded, a common one, I think, that even if I changed jobs or died, some piece of me would live on in the applications I touched, the methods I wrote, the systems I designed. Harris the man may be only flesh and blood, but his work was eternal, existing forever in the soul of the ''net and the programs on it.


    And yet...even as I wrote the code, I was replacing old, bad code. Some stupid nimrod who didn''t understand two whits about quantum coding and didn''t comment his code nearly well enough. Always out with the old, in with the new.


    And in a fairly obvious-sounding epiphany, I realized that the old would someday be me. Some new hotshot programmer would sidle up to my life''s work and stifle a laugh at how bad it all was, and code me out of existence, just as I''d done to the nameless dozens before me. Who wrote these originally? I had no idea. His digital legacy was dead. The closest I could say was my immediate predecessor, whom I knew only so I could blame him for all the code''s failings.


    My brush with death had me thinking of the permanence of anything, really. What jobs really were worth doing, on the greater scale? Inspecting houses which would one day be torn down? Writing news articles which would be consumed that week and never seen again? Even these doctors, rushing up and down the hallway outside, I was sure most of their time outside of crises like this was spent with people who had something seriously wrong with them, the infirm or chronically ill. Maybe their work could buy those people a few more years, but in the end death was still inevitable.


    Not to put too nihilistic a point on it, but what was the point of anything?


    A nurse walked into the room and called for our attention.


    "Hey everybody," he said with a tired look on his face. "Everybody in this ward has been cleared to check out. There''s crates of anti-rads at the counter where you will check out, you will be given a dosage and have to continue your treatment on your own. While normally, we''d like to keep you for treatment and observation, there are unfortunately too many injured and hurt for that. We need you all to please vacate in the next hour, please."


    There were angry mutterings from the crowd. Where were we supposed to go? We have medical insurance, you can''t treat us this way. I paid for medical treatment, and you just throw us on the street?


    I moved the blanket off my legs and swung them over the edge of the bed in the narrow gap between me and my neighbor''s bed and shuffled out sideways. People were looking at me. I found it hard to care, even as much as I had always had problems with public attention. I took a deep breath, and clenched at my ribs as they ached.


    "Sir?" asked the nurse, clearly expecting an altercation or worse.


    "Check-out''s down the hall?" I asked.


    He let out a relieved sigh and relaxed. "Yessir. Thank you."


    As the door swung shut behind me, I heard others getting up as well. I found it hard to care about that either. I wasn''t trying to set a good example for anyone, I just didn''t see the point in resisting.


    A few minutes later, I walked out of the hospital, a tube of anti-rads in my hand and reading the directions. Every four hours exactly, even in the middle of the night, take a pill with at least a quart of water. I''d be peeing a lot, but I guess the radiation had to go somewhere.


    I pocketed the pills and walked at random. The hospital was a hive of activity, but the rest of the city seemed mostly deserted. People inside with their families, businesses closed, I guessed. I ran into the river and followed it, not sure where I was going, but with my head too full of stuff to stop.


    I was walking for maybe half an hour when I found a road going down a tree-lined path and turned down it. For the first time I felt alert to my surroundings because for the first time, they felt alive. Despite the calamity, there were birds sitting in trees and cicadas singing in the summer air. Minus the asphalt road and metal guard rails, it felt like I''d died and passed into heaven sometime between here and the hospital. The tall trees all around me completely hid the skyline, and without cars and people, it felt like I was walking down a country road in the middle of nowhere.


    I had no idea Philadelphia held such places. There were parks around, sure, but the magic of this place spoke to me. The road became paths and soon I was lost amidst small trails surrounded by grass and trees on all sides.


    I stopped at a bench and looked up at a great old tree near some historic stone colonial buildings. A sign informed me that this was the oldest Ginko biloba in North America, planted in 1785. A goddamn 400 year old tree, sitting casual as you please in the heart of Philadelphia.


    I couldn''t believe it. This tree was almost as old as our nation, standing silent and untouched through every political turn and calamity, and yesterday it had just survived yet another. That was the kind of legacy, kind of permanence I wish I or any of us had.


    As I sat, lost in thought, a young woman approached and then, to my surprise, sat next to me. I didn''t know why, or even what she looked like, because I lived in Philadelphia, and we proudly ignored other people here as a way of life.


    So I was even more surprised when she spoke.


    "Didn''t expect to see anyone else out here," she said. I finally turned and looked at her.


    She had short brown hair with a headband, dark eyes, and full lips. She was wearing a light jacket despite the heat and a pair of jeans.


    "Neither did I. Expect to be out here, I mean. I just found this place randomly." I said, turning back to the tree. "Just needed a place to think about all the changes we''re seeing."


    "Yeah," she said, her voice heavy with sadness.


    We sat in silence for a few minutes with nothing but birds chirping and the wind whispering through the trees for conversation.


    "Were you...if you don''t mind me asking...were you in the attack?"


    I looked down at the gauze taped to my arm where I''d had an IV plugged into me.


    "Just a little bit," I said. A little bit? My home and work and life were gone.


    "That''s good," she said. "Lots of people homeless. I''m glad you weren''t one of them."


    "Ah," I said. "Actually...I guess I am homeless now."


    "Oh no! Did you call the number?"


    "Come again?"


    "The number, it''s been posted on the news all over the place. If you''re homeless by the attacks, there''s a temporary city they''re putting up, tents and prefab buildings and stuff. You can call or walk in and register."


    "Ah," I said again, and pulled my mobile out of my pocket, before remembering it was dead. Fried, like my work computer and the work servers, and every other computer in a hundred miles of the blast, by the electromagnetic pulse.


    "Ah, my mobile seems to be dead from the blast," I said apologetically. "I guess I can head back to town and register in person." I stood up, and she grabbed my arm. Her hands were rough but cool, and felt good against my skin against the heat of the day.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "You can use my mobile," she said, fishing in her pocket. It was an older model, with a sliding holo that pulled away from the touchpad. Most mobiles nowadays were just one larger holo which served as screen and touchpad both, situationally. She pulled up the page with the number and handed it to me.


    I tapped the number and held it to my ear. It rang and then I got a hold message, unsurprising I guess. I told her that while I sat holding her mobile to my ear.


    This was awkward. She was just sitting there. I was standing here like an idiot holding her mobile, while it just played a hold message on a loop. I smiled at her and pointed at the mobile still. And then wondered why I did that.


    She just smiled and waited. And that''s how we spent the next five or so minutes, plus or minus me pacing and sitting down.


    "*click* Hello," said a woman''s voice on the mobile. I almost dropped it in surprise. "Due to higher than expected service volume, we are unable to provide emergency services by phone at this time. Please visit your nearest emergency shelter for additional details and further steps. We apologize for the inconvenience."


    I hung up and handed her the mobile sadly.


    "No good?" she said.


    "Sounds like they''re full up. The message said to report in person for next steps." I sighed. I didn''t know what else I expected, they were probably broadcasting the number on the news for a day and a half, and I was one of the stragglers.


    "Oh no! Where will you go, if they can''t put you anywhere? Do you have any friends or anything you can stay with?"


    I thought about it for a second. I had my office colleagues, Yoseph and the others. None of them could count as friends. I didn''t have any family, and nobody outside of work.


    "Haha, I guess not," I said. I didn''t know why I was laughing, just trying to keep things light so she''d stop worrying I guess. "No friends at all, sorry." Why was I apologizing?


    I felt all kinds of torn inside, but none of it had to do with the apocalypse directly. Here, talking to this woman, I just felt so...out of my element. I''d talked to people, men, women, whatever, every day of my life. The barista, the office clerk, my coworkers, the ever-changing parade of interns.


    But there, I was someone different. I was self-assured and...well, thinking back on it, especially in the light of having no friends to stay with...kind of an asshole.


    Now I was just...empty and lost. I''d always believed I could dominate and charm my way through any conversation with confidence and the programming clout to back my words up. And now here I was, talking to a girl nice enough to lend me her phone and care about where I was sleeping tonight, and I had nothing. I couldn''t be an asshole, or confident, and if I was having a crisis over the worth of my digital legacy, I doubt she cared about it at all.


    In short, I had no idea what I was doing, and acting like an idiot.


    "Don''t be sorry," she said. "Let me think for a minute." She took back her mobile and sent some messages, chewing her thumbnail while she typed with her other hand. Chewing nails was a disgusting habit, but somehow her round full lips made it seemed a lot less gross.


    "Hmm. Okay, it''s settled then. You can stay with me tonight if you need to."


    "What?"


    "You don''t have anywhere to stay, right? You can stay at my place if you need for a while. Um, you''re not a rapist or murderer or anything, right¡­?"


    "No! Nothing like that. I''m just a programmer."


    "Sure. So, offer is there if you want it," she said, snapping shut her mobile.


    "Why?"


    "Why what?"


    "Why are you offering to let me stay."


    She smiled and sat back on the bench, legs swinging off the end in the air. "I''m just trying to help out, y''know? We''re going through a major crisis, and everyone needs to help. I don''t have a lot...I''m a gardener here, not a big-shot programmer or anything, but I have a house and you need a place to stay."


    "But why me?"


    "Why not you? You''re a person who needs help, ain''tcha?"


    "I guess so." I couldn''t wrap my head around it. If our roles were reversed, I saw no benefit in it for me. Was this some kind of game or¡­


    I studied her closely, looking deeply at her face. She had wide brown eyes with almost a hint of amber in them. She smiled and shifted a little at my scrutiny. I saw a hint of a flush in her cheeks and felt bad.


    ...or was I really that horrible a person?


    "Um, I accept, but you''ll have to let me thank you. Maybe I could take you out to dinner or something, once this thing blows over."


    "Sure, I''d like that," she said airily. "Do you have a bag or anything? I shook my head. "Well that makes packing easy, I guess. Want to head over now?"


    As we walked over, I tried to keep up with her conversation, but mostly she just talked and I listened and responded when I felt like I had to. She didn''t seem to mind. Mundane things, like what music I listened to, movies that just came out. I appreciated that she wasn''t digging into my personal life, but at the same time, I wanted to know more about her, this beautiful woman who would help someone like me.


    I was happy I''d volunteered to take her out to dinner and she''d accepted. At the time I hadn''t considered it a date, but the more we talked, the more I realized I''d really lucked out on that one.


    We reached her place, a small row house on the edges of the shady part of town, and she had to lean into the door to get the key to even turn. Everything seemed kind of run down and crappy, until the door opened.


    Inside were plants everywhere. Flowers of all kinds, baskets on every open stretch of wall, tables covered in cuttings, ivy growing around doorways, fresh herbs growing in the kitchen. It was like walking into the amazon. It was breathtaking.


    "Sorry everything''s such a mess," she said. "I''ve got a bunch of spider plants which are only just taking root, so they''re kind of everywhere. There is a couch under all this mess somewhere, and when I find it, it''s yours."


    I hadn''t noticed, but there was a couch next to the table with all the plant clippings, covered in what looked like junk mail and old magazines. She began picking them up, and I stepped in to help after standing there uselessly for way too long.


    "Thanks a lot, really," I said.


    "No, it''s nothing."


    "No really, thank you, I mean it."


    "Haha, it''s nothing, really, really."


    We got caught in that kind of loop several times through the evening, as she did everything for me from cook dinner to giving me a towel for a shower. I wished I could get her to understand just how appreciative I was of everything she was doing, but she just laughed and waved it off.


    Ashley, or Ash, her name was. I didn''t even learn it until we were almost at her place. Looking back, I felt bad that she''d already offered me a place to stay and I never even asked her name.


    I was laying on the couch looking at the plants all along the walls when I heard the shower turn off. A minute later, the door opened, filling the living room with light for a second before she tapped the switch and dropped me back into dusk. Barefoot footfalls across the tile hall, and then the bedroom door quietly snapped shut.


    A minute later, she came back and loomed at me over the back of the couch. "Still awake, Harris?" she asked.


    "Yes ma''am."


    "Since you helped me rescue my couch from the mail monster, do you mind if we use it to watch something?" she said walking around to join me. She was wearing short cloth shorts and a tee shirt, probably ready for bed. Her hair was flat from being damp, and even so, only just came down past her neck. I guess short hair was probably good for gardening in the summer, but I imagine she also wore a hat a lot. Still, she was super tanned and fit. The opposite of my shut-in complexion, where the most radiation I got was from my holo at work.


    Shit, I forgot. I pulled the vial of pills out of my pocket. Probably about four hours now.


    "How many cups are in a quart?" I asked. "Um, and can I borrow a cup?"


    "Haha, sure thing. It''s four. You cooking something?"


    "No, I have to take my anti-rads every 4 hours with that much water."


    "Oh, not fun. Want me to set an alarm?"


    "Please, that''d be great."


    I drank and drank and drank. Four cups at once was way too much. I felt bloated and cold afterwards, but if that was how to not die, I''d take it. I sat back down with her afterwards.


    "If you have to take a break to pee, I understand," she said.


    I just blinked at her.


    "It was a joke. A quart is a lot."


    "Ah yeah, I guess it is," I laughed awkwardly, but she laughed too, so it was okay, I guess.


    "I''m gonna put on a movie, if that''s okay. I really don''t feel like watching the news right now, and that''s pretty much all that''s on."


    "Sure."


    I was very little help in picking anything out, even though she asked me a few times. I was honestly fine with anything she wanted, but that apparently wasn''t a very good answer. Finally she sat back down next to me with some romantic comedy on where an uniquely klutzy adorable new girl is hired to be the secretary of the company''s most savage, heartless, cutthroat, successful salesman, and the two inexplicably find passion in each other''s differences.


    I couldn''t help but to laugh. It was so trite and nonsensical and contrived. As I sat in this gardener''s living room in my button-up shirt surrounded by plant clippings.


    So I began to identify with the characters a little, I guess. It wasn''t a problem until they were getting hot and heavy all over each other once they realized their lives were incomplete without the other, and each had which the other had been missing. I kept stealing glances at Ash but she was just absorbed in the movie.


    After the satisfying happy ending, she finally leaned back and sighed contentedly. "I love that movie," she said. "What did you think?"


    "I guess it was okay," I said, not knowing why I was being negative.


    "Yeah, I guess it probably wouldn''t be that great for a guy. Total chick flick. I''m sorry."


    "No, it was fine. I actually liked it."


    "Oh, now you''re just humoring me."


    "No seriously. When he went back to the same coffee shop to get her the exact same drink she got at the beginning, I felt like, that''s a guy who deserves to get the girl. Like he was listening the whole time."


    "Deserves her, huh?"


    "You know what I mean."


    "I do," she laughed. "But I still don''t see why she would fall for him like that. I mean, the man literally robbed an orphanage."


    "He didn''t give money to an orphanage."


    "Same thing."


    "I''m pretty sure the point was she couldn''t love him while he was that guy. That''s why he decided to change and become less of a prick."


    "So he changes who he is just so he can get in her pants? That''s even worse."


    "He changed who he was because she made him realize he wanted to change."


    "Still sounds totally unrealistic."


    "I thought you said you liked this movie."


    She laughed. "Just playing devil''s advocate a little."


    We talked and laughed for a while longer before she headed to bed. She let me know if I needed anything I could wake her, and put an alarm on the holo on in the living room to wake me for my meds. We said our goodnights, and then I laid there on my side in the dark, in my massacred work outfit, on her couch, surrounded by plants and laughter.


    And the more I laid there and thought, the more I thought I had to do right by that girl, that she deserved the best life had to offer. I didn''t know what that meant, if it was even right for me to ask her out after everything she''d already done for me, even if I knew already that was what I wanted to do. But even if that didn''t work out, I wanted to be her friend, keep her in my life, cherish and protect her always.


    I closed my eyes and heard her laugh apologetically with me at my misfortune another time before I dropped off to sleep.

 077. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    "Karu, hey," I said, not sure what to make of the situation. The elevator buzzed again with insistence that AEGIS be let up. Last thing I needed right now was a sex-crazed robot trying to jump me in front of Karu. "Um, of course you can stay. We''ve got more space than people out here. Just...fair warning, things have been a little crazy since you last came by."


    The elevator buzzed again.


    "Perhaps we should discuss inside?" she said, looking past me standing in the elevator door.


    "Ah, perhaps not. I know, let''s go to The Bunker and chat there. I can catch you up in peace." She looked puzzled, but didn''t inquire, and picked up her bag. It had a shoulder strap, but I guess that wouldn''t work with the jetpack on. After we''d gone a few feet, I realized I should offer to carry it, but she dismissed me and let me know I was already doing her a favor. Otherwise, we walked in silence, neither of us wanting to talk about our problems, I think.


    We came in and she sat down, while I got to work cutting a new length of cloth out for a hammock and hanging it, since I guess she could stay here. I couldn''t imagine her being comfortable rooming with either Saga or AEGIS. Lia and I had our own floor in the other base, but that place still looked like a hospital more than a home, and I thought Karu probably deserved her own space.


    "You truly do not mind my interference?" she asked, watching me work.


    "Not at all. I think you and I are well beyond the point where I''d be bothered by having you around."


    "Good allies do not always good neighbors make," she said. "I want to make clear that you may evict me without reason at any time, should I grow insufferable. Which may be likely."


    "Can we talk about what happened?"


    "If you would not mind, it would put my mind at rest to hear of your troubles first. Mine are not so urgent, and if we are both here, any cause of alarm of yours is invariably more pertinent."


    "Well, mine''s not exactly urgent either."


    "It is not Luminary, or whatever he has rebranded himself?"


    "No. Why would it be, is he back again?"


    "In a way. I will tell you more later, as I said. For now, I am merely glad he is not in your business, as it were. Please proceed."


    "Well, first off, and not sure how much you''re going to like this, but we did successfully get Saga free."


    Karu froze for a few seconds, and then let out a breath. "Has she done anything nefarious?"


    "Not that I can tell. She''s just laying in the sun a lot, which I think is pretty fitting for someone who''s been in the dark for a hundred years."


    "Is she mentally influencing anyone whilst basking so?"


    "The only people around are the two she already had with her before she was let out. They get along really well, or really horribly depending on how you interpret relationships, so I''m not worried."


    She stood up and I felt her hands on my shoulders. I turned around and found her face only inches from mine, her green eyes sparkling in the rafter lights. "Ashton, I will ask only one further question."


    "Uh, okay ask," I said, very aware of her breath on me.


    "Do you believe she is dangerous to leave uncontained?"


    My eyes darted back and forth between the brilliant green jewels before me. Her mouth was pressed thin and serious, and she stared directly at me, boring straight into my soul, it felt.


    "She''s definitely dangerous, and if someone provoked her, I am sure she would fight back with all her might," I said, trying to answer as honestly as possible. "But left alone, I don''t think she has any reason to fight with anyone. I think she''s been locked away a long time and just wants to be free and enjoy that freedom."


    "And you do not believe her means of enjoying that freedom would do harm unto others?"


    "I don''t. For sure not right now, I don''t know how she''ll be once she gets bored...if she can even get bored. But if she even thinks about it, I''m watching her, and I have the same concerns as you, Karu."


    She let go of my shoulders and pulled her face away. I found I could breathe normally again, though my heart was still racing.


    "I believe you, and I trust your judgement of her. If you believe her to be on the level, so to speak, I will follow your judgement. I pray that she does not make fools of the both of us."


    "Me too. But I honestly think she''s trying something new here, and we should let her find out that peace is a valid solution to issues."


    "Hmm, is it always though?" Karu said, unbuckling her forearm cannons and slipping them off. She looked around a moment, and then began cleaning a shelf with some rust remover.


    "The other news is that AEGIS built herself a body."


    "The AI?" Karu said looking up from her work. "I thought she had many bodies already, the insufferably-named robots."


    "Yes, those are kind of the same thing, but she''s been working on a new model. It''s very¡­"


    "Dangerous? Large? Weaponized?"


    "No. Small and human, actually."


    "An infiltration model?"


    "Maybe she could pass as human if she hid her hair and eyes and...shoulders and knees and elbows. Her hair is all cables, and her eyes are an impossible bright yellow, and she''s got these divots in her joints that look like dark circles. Definitely not exactly human."


    "Hmm. But then to what end and purpose?"


    "She says...the happiest she''d ever been was before her memories came back and she thought she was still human. So, I think she doesn''t quite know what about being an AI sucks for her, but she''s trying to be more human to see if it helps? I don''t know. I don''t get girls, really."


    "You don''t get AI you mean."


    "Well, that either, but you have to admit, AEGIS is a lot more human than machine."


    Karu froze for just long enough for me to notice but went right back to cleaning the shelf.


    "Hmm, perhaps you thinking that is why."


    "Why what?"


    "Never mind. Do you have any other status to report?"


    "No. Wait, yeah, you mentioned Luminary?"


    "Yes."


    "We went to where his body was and it looks like he crawled off after the blast. I think you got Wilfried with it...but Luminary crawled away and got picked up by a vehicle."


    "I suspected as much. Truth be told, in summary, my current dilemma arises from his return, though he is no longer acting overtly, which concerns me."


    "He came after you again?"


    "Not physically. It is troubling to learn that he has more allies yet, however. I had hoped that one so insufferable as he would be relegating to acting alone after all this time, yet that seems not to be the case."


    "No...look, don''t mention this to Lia, but we think Brick, or, Barry rather...guy from my high school might be helping him."


    "A high schooler? Why would they be here?"


    "I don''t know, but it has something to do with me, I''m sure. We found a cigarette butt out where Luminary''s trail stopped and the only person we''ve ever heard of smoking was Brick."


    "Smoking? I have known several who smoke in the political elite, but only as a means of preserving heritage and demonstrating affluence. If one has access to a regenerator, most of the negative effects can be washed away with regular treatment."


    "Christ, that''s expensive. What a waste of money."


    She shrugged. "Regardless, it is a bit of a smoking gun, so to speak. Were I still had access to association records, I could limit the potential culprits down significantly. As it stands¡­"This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    She finished polishing the shelf back to a silvery color instead of a brown, and put both of her gun-arms on it, before beginning to unbuckle the rest of her outfit and strip. I could have offered to help, but instead opted just to watch.


    "Some individual," she said, popping the clasps down her front and setting her breasts free, "has reported my misconduct to the association which has begun an investigation. Fortunately, nobody seems to have any suspicion of the clinic incident, and we should be grateful because Alphard was indeed out of contact on some trip or another at the time, and called me recently to let me know he did not appreciate being interrogated by the association. I apologized, and he effectively told me that he refused to speak with them, though he did not put it so...politically."


    "That''s good."


    "Regardless, the association is aware that I have been in contact with you on my own time, which is a violation of your terms of exile, and therefore a treasonous act on my behalf. Apparently you are considered an enemy of the state by merit of being an Exhuman."


    "Great. Does it even make sense for me to have an enforceable contract with them if I''m an enemy of the state?"


    "I did not ask. I merely fled."


    "It was a joke."


    "I fail to see the humor." There was some anger in her words. She finished disrobing and was in her usual attire, white sports bra and dark green panties today. I swallowed very hard and tried not to focus on the thin line where her tanned skin met the green boyshorts. She picked up the rag again and got to work on another shelf, which apparently required quite a lot of effort and consequently made her jiggle in a way I could describe only as magical.


    "So what''s your plan?" I asked. "Will they come here?"


    "They will, and for that reason I cannot stay for too long. Before I left, I booked a flight to Europe and also publicly chartered a personal VTOL and privately hired a shady individual to put it in the bottom of the pacific for me. With any luck, they will not be expecting a triple-bluff, but I cannot hope that the deception lasts forever."


    "You rented and sunk a VTOL?" I was a little surprised how far she''d gone on this.


    She turned and looked at me, and she looked pissed. "Yes, Ashton, I rented and sunk a VTOL. I am not certain if you are aware, but my life is very much on the line here. I have been doing all I can to ensure my safety and that there exists no evidence of your involvement more than they already know, so forgive me if an innocent vehicle had to suffer."


    "I-I''m sorry," I stammered. She held her angry stare for a few more moments before she deflated and just looked sad.


    "I apologize. I have been without sleep for several days now. Stims are keeping me going, but tiredness and stims are both poor for emotional control. In truth, I was at the end of my tether, and came here only as a last resort. I know not where else I can turn at the moment. M-my¡­"


    She grabbed the shelf with white knuckles and leaned against it. Between her feet, dark circles stained the ground as she fought for composure and her shoulders spasmed and jerked with the sobs she held back.


    "My f-fa-father...made it very...very clear¡­" she took a deep breath. "My father. M-made...made it clear...I am not an Irenside a-any longer."


    As though that was everything she had set out to accomplish, she completely broke in front of me, bawling with her entire being, wailing as uncontrolled tears poured down her face.


    "Oh my god, Karu," I said, wanting to comfort her, hold her, tell her everything will be okay. Wanting her to stop crying, too, but...that was selfish. "I''m so sorry. I''m so, so, so sorry. Are you okay?"


    She turned on me and again I saw anger laced in every feature of her face. "D-do I LOOK okay?" She shouted. "I am NOBODY anymore. Everything in my life is GONE."


    It was probably the worst question I''d ever asked. I felt horrible, and only worse as Karu''s yelling intensified.


    "E-everything I had, everything I was, everything I aspired to be, gone! A traitor, that''s what they call me now. Dishonorable betrayer of her own country, her own guild, her own family! Everything I have ever done was for nothing, for nothing, Athan! My whole life, everything. EVERYTHING!"


    She looked at me, eyes wild, and in them I saw something even more horrible than anger. Her eyes screamed of despair.


    "How am I supposed to cope with that? How can any person be told one day that their entire existence is null and void? I don''t understand. All of the meritorious and righteous things I have done my entire life over, invalidated. Dozens of combat missions, four years of distinguished service, thirteen confirmed Exhuman kills, how many lives saved or spared, all now nothing? I don''t understand. For nothing!? I don''t understand. I don''t understand! I DON''T UNDERSTAND!"


    She was screaming at the top of her lungs, holding the shelf with hands. I couldn''t do anything but stand and watch as she died inside in front of me.


    She turned to me again, and I tried not to show how afraid I was.


    "Is one crime worth an entire lifetime of good? Was sparing you even a crime? I judged you and found you righteous! Why does the world not see, why cannot the world see, why is my opinion or judgement not considered when condemning my actions? Can they not tell I act with righteousness and integrity? I am a faithful servant of God!" She screamed. "How can they judge me so? I don''t understand!"


    I couldn''t say anything. Thoughts flashed through my mind. Horrible, cruel thoughts. How once I had been like her, everything in my world stripped away from me, and the only comfort the world offered me was a bounty hunter, come to claim my head just for existing. It was no wonder she couldn''t see how cruel the world was, when in many ways, she was the cruelty in it.


    But I hated myself for having those thoughts. Karu was also compassionate and kind. When the Exhuman event happened in Newbruck, she guided people to safety and dove fearlessly into combat, without arms, armor, or even pants. She was fearless in her pursuit of justice, tireless in her defense of the innocent, and if I had ever seen her as evil, it was only because she saw me the same way.


    A way...it now seemed...unfortunately society saw her as being.


    "It''s all broken," I said, at last, dispelling the spell her tears held over the room for the last few moments. "This world. It''s a broken place."


    "It can''t be. It can''t be. I''ve fought so hard for this world, and for everyone in it. I have put every bit of my being into this world, you can''t just call it broken."


    "It is broken. Any world which is blind to see that people like you, people like me, we''re willing to fight and die to do what''s right...any world which can''t do that is fundamentally broken. You''re not the one who''s wrong here, Karu, it''s this shitty world we live in."


    "It is not that simple. It is not that black and white." Tears were still running down her face uninhibited, and her eyes were red and puffy, but she''d gained some semblance of control back.


    "I know it''s not. There are probably people out there you''ve saved, or people you''ve worked with, or people who just know of what you''ve done, and they''re shaking their heads thinking this is a mistake. But they''re not the ones who get to decide if you''re a traitor or not, and if you ask me, that means everything is broken."


    She wailed again, and to my surprise fell onto me, landing in my arms. I fell backwards, with her landing on top of me. She held me tightly. I couldn''t breathe and had the air knocked out of me, but that was all secondary to Karu''s grief right now.


    "Athan! I''m so horrible," she wailed. "You''ve been through all this and so much more, and you''re still standing there trying to comfort me. I know not how you are able to endure it, the pain of it all...it eats at me like...like¡­"


    "Like there''s a hole in your stomach, that just gnaws at your insides. All the time?"


    "Yes, how--yes...of course."


    "I don''t know what to tell you," I said, turning my head sideways to see anything other than her tear-streaked face above me. "I still feel that sometimes."


    I felt her shudder and gasp on top of me, but she had her composure again and seemed determined not to let it crack again. Instead, she took another deep breath and nestled her shoulder in my arm and rested her head on my chest. I could see that her hair was greasy, she hadn''t been able to shower in days.


    "I don''t know what to do," she whispered.


    "You can stay here as long as you need," I said. Every once in awhile, I could feel her jolt slightly as she stifled another sob.


    "I can''t. They''ll come."


    "Let them come. I''ll protect you."


    "You can''t fight the whole of the XPCA, remember? Every Exhuman who thought they could is dead."


    "I don''t care," I said, meaning it. How dare this world turn against one so good as her. This shitty, fucked-up world and all the assholes running it. I was one thing, I was an Exhuman, dangerous, even I acknowledged that. But Karu? She''d spent her whole life fighting to protect people. If they couldn''t see that...well...I would fight to protect her.


    She held me tightly, her fingernails digging into my side. She was crying again, but silently, tears just flowing from her onto my chest. I didn''t mind. If there was anything I could do for her, anything at all--


    "Athan," she whispered, her voice barely more than a breath.


    "Yeah?"


    "Will you...will you comfort me, just for tonight?"


    "I...I am already?"


    "No. You...you know what I mean." I looked down at her, her whole face was flushed, and her eyes were locked unmoving on my chest.


    "...I...um¡­"


    I didn''t know what to say. Not like this? I couldn''t stand to reject her now, but I couldn''t in good conscience not, could I? She said she was stringing by on drugs and no sleep, had just endured the worst trauma of her life. I think it was fair to say I loved her, but...everything was so wrong.


    I was happy to say that my own thoughts didn''t weigh in the equation at all. This was, as far as I was concerned, all for her. But my answer otherwise would have been obvious.


    I opened my mouth to say no, and gave an extra moment''s hesitation to work out a better way of phrasing it. And he who hesitates, loses.


    "I...understand if you don''t want me, too," she whispered into the silence, speaking the words I''m sure were running through her mind this entire time she lay silent after speaking.


    "Of course I want you!" I said. There was a ''but'' coming, but it never came. Predatory, she pounced, and I found her soft lips on mine, tear-stained cheeks pressed against me, tongue probing every corner of my mouth, teasing mine, scraping against my teeth, my gums, everywhere it could.


    My hands moved on their own and held her to me while hers frantically caressed my face and hair as she remained locked to me. Everything was so hot and frantic, there in the dust on the concrete floor, we rolled and flailed and fought as shreds of our clothing were discarded piece by piece.


    My mind was blank and my body was pure fire when at last she was running her hands over my naked form. It seemed like everything that had happened before was gone, the tears on Karu''s face signs from another world, another time. A part of my mind screamed at me that this was all wrong, we couldn''t do this, she didn''t want this. But I couldn''t hear it, not when everything else felt so right and complete.


    Before we finalized our crime, Karu stopped me and reached down, stretching and wincing. I was frozen, unsure of what exactly she was doing down there. She yelped and withdrew a finger, slick with fluids quickly being stained red by a small cut on her fingertip.


    "Are you okay?"


    "Please be silent and still for a moment," she said and reached back in, moving her hand delicately. I couldn''t see anything, but after several more moments, she withdrew with what looked like a flexible circle of plastic. She put it down next to us and moved to kiss me again.


    "What is that?" I asked.


    "Do not concern yourself. Hold me, please." I reached over and picked up the ring. A flexible silicone ring, but on the inside, studded with flat metal blades. This was inside her?


    "Bounty hunting is sometimes a dangerous occupation," she said. "But worry not," she said with a mirthless laugh "for I am a hunter no longer."


    "Karu, we shouldn''t--"


    She silenced me with a kiss and deftly moved her hips, and I was virgin no more.

 078. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I couldn''t be as miserable as I should have been, and for that I hated myself. Karu was asleep in the hammock above me, or at least pretending to be, while I lay on the floor in a pile of clothes and shame. I saw no way this was a good decision for either of us, it crossed almost every line I could think of, and I was as worried about my future relationship with Karu as I was with her future in general. To say nothing of having no protection.


    Yet I lay grinning at the ceiling, hating myself. I wiped the grin off my face when I found it there, but stealthily it re-emerged. She had been ravenous, dominant, and took from me exactly what she wanted, and in turn I experienced bliss as I did not know could exist in this shithole world. Everything about me felt so relaxed and fulfilled and the fact it had been Karu...well, a different Karu than usual, but she was truly an amazing person.


    I had to do something. I couldn''t abide this juxtaposition inside myself of how happy and miserable I was all at once. Silently, I dressed, and then, hesitating, gave Karu''s sleeping form a gentle kiss, and stole into the night.


    I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, I just needed to be somewhere other than alone with my thoughts. The idea crossed my mind that AEGIS or Lia might be wondering where I was, but I wasn''t sure I could face them at the moment. They would endure for the night, Karu and I were both certainly far more in need of help than they.


    Lia would probably react simply as she''d often insinuated she would. Ask me if I was okay with it, and then be either ecstatic or miserable with me depending on my answer, but ply me with endless questions either way. Or maybe very few questions, I''m not sure how many details she wanted about this particular incident.


    AEGIS though...thinking about her made my stomach flip. I''d just rejected her, essentially, and in the process, she had even said that if I were thinking of Saga or Karu, she would be sad. And then, out of nowhere, this happened. How else could she possibly react but to be enraged, dejected, confounded, all at once? The rejection was one thing, but for me to turn around and do this.


    ...what an incredible piece of shit. My walk was barely a minute in and already successful. Happy feelings now entirely dead, gone, and buried, I could now focus entirely on what a feculent piece of human garbage I was.


    I couldn''t even pity myself. Two beautiful women loved me, and I''d handled it in the worst way imaginable. Nobody had wronged anyone, but me.


    I found my feet turning the other way, taking me to the someone I knew who would be awake at this hour, the one person who might help me make sense of anything, who might be able to help me absolve myself of any of the crimes I had committed.


    I was going to stop and have a think just outside her range, but it was on me before I was ready, and I felt the familiar-but-alien sensation of something crawling over my mind. Her range had grown a lot now that she was on the surface.


    [Bow chicka-wow-wow,] she said by means of greeting.


    "Shut up," I said, still walking towards her.


    [You''re pleasant. Come all the way out here to say that, huh?]


    "No, and you know that, but that doesn''t mean you have to antagonize me."


    [Consider my harassment the cost of my advice, then.]


    "Saga, I''m really at my wit''s end here. I fucked up bad."


    [Guess I can''t depend on your normal banter, then. Shame, easily my favorite part about you. Although it looks like you''ve got some moves in the bedroom, too.]


    "Saga, damnit."


    [I wasn''t kidding about the price, buddy. Deal with it or get out.]


    "I''ll deal with it."


    [Smart kid. So in the interest of pretending to keep this like a normal conversation, what do you want?]


    "I don''t know. I want advice. I fucked up."


    [Bzzt. Wrong answer. What you want is to not feel so bad. You want me to tell you that you somehow didn''t fuck up, or that there were good reason for your actions, and you can feel better about yourself.]


    "No!"


    [Kid, you can lie to yourself, but you can''t lie to me.]


    "That just makes me even more of a terrible person," I lamented.


    [Does it though? Don''t you think that''s a perfectly normal thing for a person to do?]


    "How does normal make something not-terrible?"


    [Terrible is whatever we as a society decide it is. Hundreds of years ago, people kept other people as slaves and didn''t feel bad about it at all, because that was just how things were. So obviously wrong by our standards, but defined as normal and therefore not-terrible at the time.]


    "So now I''m right down there with human traffickers?"


    [Okay, instead of slavery, we can pick an example like walking around with exposed calves if it makes you feel any better.]


    "I don''t get the point. Are you trying to say what I did wasn''t terrible?"


    [Oh no. You fucked up big time. But coming here and wanting to feel better about yourself, that''s totally fine.]


    "Why do you waste your time telling me these things when I am still in anguish about what I came here to talk to you about?"


    [Half because it''s fun, half because you have a very narrow grasp of the big picture and you need to see that.]


    "What big picture?"


    [You fucked up, it''s true. But that doesn''t mean it''s the end of the world. There''s a lot of stuff out there other than what you just did, and a lot of it is really important, too. Like, yeah, you banged Karu, and that''s gonna make some waves between the two of you. But you know what else will do that?]


    I arrived at the tree where Saga was still laying, alone in the dark, almost exactly where I''d seen her days before. She raised a lanky arm at me in greeting.


    "Bullets," she said.


    "Bullets?"


    [Yep. The XPCA is coming, I''m sure of it. Might take a bit because, despite being a rapid-response unit with a specialty in crisis management...and I could tell you stories about what a farce that is, but will spare your poor currently-suffering feelings...an op like this one will be meticulously planned and executed. And not by their grunts either, but by elite kill-squads. You think a little hanky-panky is a problem? Try a whole goddamn army wanting to fuck you.]


    My mind felt like a skipping record. Before, I''d be so angry and so sure, fuck the XPCA and all that, but Karu and Saga both had mentioned the XPCA were a legitimate threat and would be coming. They were probably right too.


    "One thing at a time. What do I do about Karu?"


    [Nothing. I''m pretty sure she''s fine. From what I know of her from you, she''s strong. Things will probably be awkward between the two of you for a while which won''t help, but she''ll make it through her issues as long as she''s alive. Being a hunter is her coping mechanism, so if she tries to do anything really stupid and suicidal...well...let her, but protect her.]


    [Or don''t, I really don''t care if she dies,] Saga added, just to remind me she was a horrible person. Why was I coming to her, specifically for advice again?


    "And AEGIS?"


    [Can I make a few sex doll jokes first?]


    "Just pretend you did and move on."


    [Sheesh, you are such a buzzkill tonight. Say, would you like a quick bang? Might help you de-stress?]


    "Saga. Seriously."


    [Who says I''m not serious? I''m a 113 year-old virgin. I''m both impressed and really, really mortified you managed to punch it in before I did.]


    "SAGA."


    [Don''t have to yell. I''m right here.]


    "Apparently I do?"Stolen story; please report.


    [Apparently you forgot about my payment plan already. Although I''m serious about the banging. Standing offer. Or any other position, really.]


    "Can we move on?"


    [Sure. So the robot. Yeah, here''s where you really fucked up. She''s going to feel betrayed and ten kinds of torn up about what you did.]


    "So what can I do? Should I tell her it''s just because it was a robot body or something?"


    [Is that how you feel?]


    "No, not really."


    [Then don''t say that.]


    "Well what am I supposed to say?"


    [That depends on the question. Are you hypothetically talking to her about Karu, or about turning her down?]


    "Both?"


    [One at a time, hotshot.]


    "Okay. Turning her down first then."


    [So why''d you turn her down?]


    "I don''t know. At the end, I was going to go back, even, if Karu didn''t show up. I think she just startled me and I got scared and ran."


    [So why can''t you say that?]


    "Because Karu startled me, and I¡­"


    [Dicked her plenty?]


    "Did her, even though I didn''t do AEGIS."


    [Well you dodged a bullet there, because doing both of them would be a one-way ticket to pain city, I can tell you that. Do NOT enter an open relationship without a written permission slip from your current lover. I''ve seen enough relationships fail to tell you statistically, that one never pays.]


    "Where do you get this from?"


    [What, you came here asking for my advice and don''t even know my sources? Aren''t you a bold one.]


    "Saga¡­"


    [People''s heads, dummy. Hundreds of them, and relationships and sex was about half of what people spent their damn days thinking about. Once you get a bigger picture and can see the thoughts of all the parties involved, this shit actually becomes really simple. Tell the fucking truth, don''t try to be a hero, dump someone if you have to but keep your fucking shit in your pants if you''re in a relationship.]


    "Am...are Karu and I...in a relationship?"


    [No. Not from what I see. You were just riding the wake of the S.S. Misery. Karu just wanted to bang some of her feelings out and you did a great job.]


    "Oh," I said, not sure if I was happy or disappointed.


    [On the plus side, since you''re fucking thinking it so loud, if you wanted an in, this is about as good as you could ask for. Door''s open, so you can keep banging, and she can only ride the pony so long before she starts to develop feelings for it.]


    "Why am I a pony?"


    [It''s poetry. I am misunderstood in my own time.]


    "So, I should tell AEGIS the truth."


    [You caught onto that surprisingly quickly, but I''m going to throw a caveat in here. The truth doesn''t mean everything. You don''t have to tell her that you guys did the dirty twice, or every aching moment of her hips against yours. Stick to the details that concern her, namely, you don''t know if you love her or Karu, and you''re a stupid hormonal dumbass who''s easily overwhelmed by titties. Hmm, actually, if you say that, she''ll make her machine''s jugs even bigger.]


    "I am...not sure if you''re being helpful or not."


    [Well, that''s the other problem with being misunderstood in my own time. But I am being serious, hopefully you''re smart enough to know when I''m doing that at least.]


    "Yeah, I guess."


    [Remember that AEGIS has a lot of respect for you. She might not remember that herself at first, but it''s there. Your one and only job is to not completely demolish her respect for you, and eventually she''ll come around again. She might need some alone time to realize it, and her coping mechanism is getting lost in her work. Do not fucking ever bring your problems to her when she''s busy working.]


    "You''re a really good friend."


    [I''m actually a really good everything, but thanks.]


    I never even asked your feelings. You''re kind of a victim in this too.


    [I''m a victim of anytime someone can''t get their own shit together and is near me. At least you--unlike all the XPCA dumbasses I was stuck with--listen. So with any luck, your problems will get smaller over time, though tonight would certainly buck that trend.]


    "You''re dodging the question."


    [Hey, smart. I am.]


    "So?"


    [Well, for one thing, people typically dodge questions because they don''t want to answer them. But to answer it anyway, because fuck you, Saga, it sucks. Despite all my bitching and giving you shit, you are my friend, Athan, and I would totally jump that bonercycle and ride into the sunset in a heartbeat. It sucks seeing and even feeling all the distress you''re in, and it sucks having to give you advice to get into the good graces, and I''m sure ultimately again the pants of my rivals-in-love. And it sucks feeling like I''m just the janitor and tech support around here, when we already have a robot bitch to do that for us.]


    [But,] she added, [you are still my friend, and I still owe you big time. For the record, I wasn''t going to say any of this because it''s all just drops in the ocean compared to what you went through for me, and you dragged it out of me. So there you have it. See, I follow my own advice, honesty, right?]


    "Honesty, right," I said. "I''m sorry, Saga."


    [Eh, it''s fine. I know I''m just a lanky pale alien, I can''t compare to Karu''s fighting fit frontside, or the pleasure-bot 5000.]


    "No, you''re not. I think you''re beautiful, too."


    [I know. I''m in your head, remember? But this is no bueno, muchacho. You''re already juggling two balls without knowing how to juggle. Don''t add a third unless you think you can handle it. And I happen to know, you can''t.]


    "Right. Well, then try not to build a relationship on it or jump me or anything but...you know what I think." I said, feeling very my face go very red.


    [Hehe, I know. Why do you think I keep dropping hints and telling you things about me? If I can''t have you, I''ll just have your fantasies instead. Yep, I''m a sick one. Speaking of¡­]


    She gestured for me to come over. I did not like where this was going, but followed obediently.


    "Hold my hand," she said. Okay. No harm in that I guess--


    It felt electric, I felt a tingle go right up and down my spine and I saw her shudder too.


    "W-wh-wha--" I stuttered.


    [So, I can let you hear my thoughts, but you can also feel my feelings if I want to share them...or lose control. Gives this sort of feedback loop. You feel your own hand, but also mine, but also me feeling yours, and me feeling you feel mine, and so on. Feels good, right?]


    "Y-ye-yeah."


    "Now imagine that on Athan Jr. and the kitty," she whispered with a smile, and released my hand, brushing her fingertips against my palm as she went, making both of us jolt again.


    "This is really not what I need right now." I said, panting slightly.


    [I know. This is just what I want, I''m a selfish person, I know.]


    "I have to get back and talk to AEGIS now," I said turning to go. "Thanks for everything...mostly everything."


    [Aren''t you forgetting something?]


    "What?" I turned back around.


    [The XCPA. They''re coming, remember?]


    "Shit. I completely forgot."


    [Yeah, not a good strategy to get so wrapped up in girls that you forget someone''s going to kill you. That''s why I did the hand thing.]


    "Really? Teasing me to remind me how easily I can get distracted from my actual issues?"


    [Nah, just messing with you. I was telling the truth when I said I just liked putting more donations in your spank bank starring me so I could relive it later.]


    "You are the absolute worst. I am totally going to fantasize about...I don''t know...you being fat or something."


    [Do it if you want, but it''s not my fault if it turns into a fetish.]


    "Anyway, the XPCA. The whole XPCA, and their elite forces to boot. Do we run?"


    [They''ll find you. It''s not a very big Earth to them.]


    "So we fight?"


    [They''ll kill you, too.]


    "Then what?"


    [That depends on how much you love your friends.]


    "What do you mean?"


    [I''m going to be evasive again, and the reason is, if I tell you, it will influence your decision and I don''t think that''s right. So, sorry kid, you''ll have to deal with it when it gets here.]


    "That''s no fair. Tell me, please."


    [Nope.]


    "Please! All our lives could be at stake. If you know something, please tell me."


    [No means no. I think that''s the second time I''ve told you that line. That should make you reconsider your lifestyle choices.]


    "Saga, I''m being serious here."


    [And so am I. I''m not talking and that''s final. This time you don''t have a room to stomp through or a heart attack to fight off, there is just no. You are not budging me.]


    "There''s nothing I can say or do to convince you?"


    [Correct.]


    "I will do literally anything, Saga. Help me save my friends."


    [I told you I can''t. You''ll get there when you get there and not a moment before. I hope you choose right.]


    "I guess...I guess I do too. If that''s the way you see it, I have no choice but to believe you."


    [Good boy.]


    "So...if the XPCA do come and attack...would you fight with us?"


    [This is going to surprise you, but no.]


    "Really?"


    [Yep. See, I''m turning over this new leaf where I try to resolve problems without murdering every human in my way.]


    "On one hand, I am really proud and happy, but on the other, sorta feel like we''re going to die."


    [I mean, you probably will, and that sucks, but that''s your own fate. I can''t die, so I''m not too concerned about it.]


    "Are you possibly just lazy?"


    [I''ll have you know I walked around this tree today to follow the shade. I can move when I want to.]


    "You really won''t fight then?"


    [I really won''t. If you want the best resolution, I can''t fight your battles for you anyway, because by your definition, everyone being dead but us isn''t the best resolution, and that''s what I bring to the table. And again, here I''m using the word ''dead'' but I am broadly expanding that definition to anything you would probably consider worse than dead.]


    "So what''s your plan?"


    [Dunno. And that''s actually pretty exciting for me. I''m going to play it by ear.]


    "Very reassuring. Okay, now that I know a little bit more, but still basically nothing, now can I go talk to AEGIS?" Saga just gave me a thumbs-up.


    I jogged back, going over everything we''d covered in my mind again and again.


    [Also, keep it short,] Saga warned. [And keep your ego out of it. She will attack you, but remember that you fucked up, and however bad her words hurt you, your actions hurt her a lot more.]


    "Thanks, Saga. I really owe you."


    [Bring me some of those nutrient pastes and we''ll call it even,] she said. [Best of luck killer--]


    And then she was gone, left behind me as I jogged on into the night.

 079. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I knew I was in trouble the moment I got back. The gates were closed and the DOG-Es on guard all fastidiously ignored me. I pulled the gate open, needing to put some serious backbone into moving the damn thing. I thought it was going to bend before it moved on its crappy rusty hinges, but leverage won out and eventually it swung forward.


    The DOG-Es didn''t react. I pushed the elevator button. It didn''t react either. I sighed and opened the door to the stairs. I descended a flight and pushed open a door to the workshop, where I saw Rua now on a prominent table at the center of the room, small robots scurrying over her. She wasn''t dressed this time, but compensated by having her entire front half missing between her neck and knees, open exposed machine parts and wires hanging out all over. Her hair draped over the side of the table and was plugged into dozens of cables snaking all across the floor.


    AEGIS was here, her holo off. I strolled up and said hello.


    There was a pause, just long enough to be inconvenient before the holo flickered to life.


    "I''m very busy, Athan," she said, her fingers dancing across the keyboard.


    If it were just me, I would have insisted we talk, feeling that clearing the air would be worth whatever inconvenience she suffered, but Saga had just warned me not to dump problems on her while she was busy working. I took a deep breath and sat down.


    "Okay. I''ll be waiting here whenever you want to talk."


    She looked at me, blinking in surprise before turning back to her work.


    "If you''re just going to sit there, you may as well speak," she said, after ignoring me for a token few moments.


    "I wanted to apologize," I said, bowing deeply to her. "I made some horrible decisions and I feel like I probably hurt you."


    "Hurt me?" she laughed a hollow laugh. "You seem to be mistaken, I don''t care what you do with that whore."


    "Even if that were true, it wasn''t right of me just to run like that from you and then turn around and immediately jump on Karu."


    Her face twitched. "It''s fine. Why would I care anyway? It''s not like you and I were anything together. You''re just some Exhuman, and I''m your faithful AI assistant. Speaking of which, I did put together a nice little table and some benches for you and your sister to eat breakfast at. Want to see them?"


    "AEGIS, I am sorry. Really, really sorry. Please talk to me. I want to make things right."


    "I told you already," she said, with a haunting smile, "everything is already right. Please stop worrying."


    A DOG-E approached carrying a bench and set it down in front of me. Looked like any other aluminum bench, backless, sturdy. And as the DOG-E crushed it between two of its legs, servos whining with the effort, crumpled.


    "Oopsie! Fingers must have slipped," AEGIS said, with an innocent soulless laugh. "I''ll get a new one made for you. That''s what I do, good AI housekeeper!"


    "AEGIS, stop."


    She fixed me with an icy stare.


    "Stop what?" she said flatly.


    "Stop acting like this."


    "Oh of course. What was I thinking. I''ll just stop because that''s what my master told me. Here we go, stopping acting like this now," she said hammering at her keyboard. Abruptly, everything in the labs froze, robots ceased crawling over piles of debris, DOG-Es halted mid-step with their cargo, the one crushing the bench stopped, the crushed remains still wedged between the bot''s front legs.


    I looked around. It was eerie in there, moving from a noisy hive of activity to completely dead in a heartbeat.


    She crossed her arms and looked at me. "Anything else? Any other orders, master?"


    "I am not your master, and you know it, AEGIS."


    "Well, what are you then? Because apparently I''m not anything else to you. I make you food, fix your clothes, build you furniture, guard your house...and what do I get? The satisfaction of a job well-done? Your thanks? Fantastic. So motivating, maybe if I keep at it for the next few years, I''ll graduate to getting a pat on the head!"


    "AEGIS, I''m sorry. I don''t know what you want from me."


    "Oh, and apologies too. When the world''s credit chit economy implodes and we all begin using apologies as currency, I''m gonna be a fucking billionaire."


    I was about to respond angrily, feeling like she was being unfair to me and needlessly full of vitriol and sarcasm when all I wanted was to make things better when again. Again, Saga''s advice made me reconsider. I shoved my pride back down.


    "AEGIS, I know my apologies aren''t worth much, but I hope you understand the feelings behind them are real. I rely on you a lot, more than I should, but there are so many things only you can do, it''s hard for me not to. If you would like me to...I don''t know, borrow Lia''s holo and take a crash course on mass-fabrication and get everything I want and need out of the one back in The Bunker, I will do that. I''ll mine my own rock and organic matter and build the things I need if that''s what you want me to do. I know it isn''t fair that I''m always taking from you and have nothing to offer in return but thanks and apologies."


    She looked at me almost pityingly for a moment before her eyes hardened again.


    "You don''t have to go that far, idiot," she said, and then changed tack. "What I''m really mad about, obviously, is that...is that¡­" she trailed off, fuming as she was lost for words.


    "That I don''t treat you as human?"


    "Romantically," she said blushing, despite the anger on her face. "I think it''s pretty fricking obvious I''ve got a thing for you, somehow, despite all this shit," she gestured to the whole room, still frozen in time. "But the second it gets a little real, you run out the door, no explanation given. Just, bye. How do you think that makes me feel? What do you think that makes me think?"


    "I don''t know what to say, I was just scared off. You came on really strong, and I''m stupid and I panicked and ran."


    "Right into Karu''s tits."


    "Yes. And not to use the same excuse, but she came on really strong and I''m stupid and froze up. I...don''t know how much detail you got--"


    "I have a holovid if you''d like to take some captures for your mobile''s wallpaper."


    "--but I was trying to turn her down. I fucked up really bad, we shouldn''t have done it. She was tired, and stressed, and strung-out on stims and has been running from the association for a few days."


    I expected AEGIS to be mad at hearing more details, but instead, her features softened. "And you''re just the idiot she decided to take it out on?" she said.


    "I guess so."


    She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "Stupid teenage boy, didn''t stand a chance. You know, I showed some restraint when I was coming onto you, I thought if I pushed you just a little more, you would have broken like a toothpick, but I didn''t want to put that on you."


    "Yeah, I would have." Inwardly I wondered what restraint she showed, but I guess relative to Karu, maybe.


    "Dunno if I feel bad that I didn''t, or am mad that she did."


    I didn''t know if I felt good or bad about what Karu -- and I -- had done either. I could imagine it was even worse from AEGIS'' angle. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "You shouldn''t ever feel bad about doing what''s right, I think," I said.


    "You think? And what if by doing what''s right, I lose out to everyone else slutting it up?"


    "Then at least you know you did what was right, even if this world and everyone else in it is shitty."


    "That''s a great consolation prize, thanks."


    "Isn''t it, though? I''m being serious. If you did do something you thought was wrong, it''d tear you up inside, wouldn''t it?"


    "And you think that''s what Karu''s going to go through? I think the only thing which tore her up inside was you, Athan."


    "I don''t know, I was just saying I know you won''t, so that''s something at least."


    "I guess. Hard to tell which shitty feeling is worse, though."


    I just nodded. Trying to sort out which shitty feeling was worse was my MO for the day.


    AEGIS sighed. "Okay, I''m still super mad at you, but you said something which is kind of alarming and I want to address that before I finish ripping out your asshole. The association is chasing Karu?"


    "So you had cameras but no sound in The Bunker?"


    "Yes, I still have only a few of my older cam-drones in there."


    "Great," I said, feeling my stomach drop for inviting Karu to stay and then apparently putting her under surveillance. I couldn''t very well ask AEGIS to give her any privacy now without giving the impression I just wanted the privacy for Karu and myself. I doubted AEGIS would comply anyway, even if I did ask.


    "So the short version is, Luminary survived, went back, and reported that Karu''d been seeing me on her own time. This is a violation of my terms of exile, and therefore she''s been accused of treason. Not sure what to do, she ran, made it look like she was heading to Asia or Europe, and then crashed here with nowhere else to go."


    I tried to play the pity card. "She lost her job, all her possessions, and her family disowned her. She''s not in a really good place mentally."


    "That''s your excuse?"


    "No, that''s my reasoning why I didn''t think we should do anything, but also why I couldn''t reject her right now. I''m weak, I know, I''m sorry."


    "And so, knowing that people would look for her here, she came here anyway?"


    "She doesn''t have anywhere else to go."


    "Then what about us? They''ll take you out for breaking your terms of exile, too."


    "I know. I''m just less concerned about myself than Karu right now."


    "Well that''s stupid. She brought that all on herself, you just lived out here doing your best not to harm anyone."


    "I''ve got Lia and Saga too, and you, depending on how they define contact with other people. I''ve broken my exile terms a lot."


    "But nobody would care unless it affected the outside world, which Karu definitely is. Lia would have to go back before anyone cared about her, and Saga and I live here."


    "I don''t think the XPCA sees it that way, but okay. Point being, for one reason or another, they''re coming."


    "So we run."


    "We can''t run. They''ll find us wherever we go. We''d be on foot, or on crawler at best. They''ve got satellites and VTOLs and thousands of men."


    "So we hide."


    "Maybe. I don''t think we could fool modern optics, though. I hear the XPCA has pretty much everything, from tectonic sensors to real-time satellite feeds."


    "They do, or they did a hundred years ago. I''m sure they have even more now."


    "Plus, if they are planning an op to come up here, I''m sure they''re watching everything we do right now. We''d have to pull a real magic trick to vanish from active surveillance."


    "Then that leaves...fighting."


    "Yeah, that''s what I got to as well."


    "But we can''t win."


    "No we can''t."


    We both fell into a brooding silence. After a few moments, AEGIS asked "do you mind?"


    "Uh, no. Mind what?"


    "Nothing, never mind." She tapped a couple keys on her terminal and all of the robots around sprung back into life like nothing had happened. I realized just how noisy it was down here with all of them moving. "If we''re going to die, I don''t want to waste my time not preparing. I''m also sorry about your fucking bench, but you''ll have to do without, it sounds like we have more pressing matters."


    "I appreciate the bench anyway."


    "Yeah, shut up."


    She oversaw the machines at work for a few minutes while I sat by waiting patiently. Finally apparently satisfied, she turned back to me.


    "Are we as squared up on the XPCA thing as we''re getting?"


    "I don''t know. I feel like all I''ve decided on them is that it seems hopeless."


    "Deciding it''s hopeless is still a decision."


    "I guess, then. We''ll do what we can when it happens."


    "Fine. In light of the pending end of our existence, I am more inclined to forgive you for your stupid incredibly monumental fuck-up. But I still have to ask you why you left."


    "I told you, I just got scared and ran."


    "Scared of what? Am I so scary?"


    "No, not you. Just...relationships in general. Excitement. Hurt feelings. I just...wasn''t strong enough to make a decision right there, and you were demanding one." She was about to respond when I added, "And I didn''t make a decision with Karu either. She did."


    "I was going to say, that''s bullshit, I''ve seen you be stronger than any other man I''ve ever heard of."


    "Yeah, when things are black and white. When it''s choosing between protecting my life and my friends or not. But if I had to choose which of my friends to hurt? You think I could honestly make that decision?"


    She sighed. "Someday, you might have to choose who to sacrifice. The world is a cruel place, and whether you know it or not, you''ve somehow become the leader and center of our little malformed tumor of a band. The hard calls land on your desk. Well, unless the XPCA wipes us all out. Everyone dies, and there''s nothing you can do about it is a pretty easy call."


    She paused, and then continued on her first, more uncomfortable line. "I just want you to know how I feel. I can understand why you did what you did, and I hate you for it, but that''s whatever. But you tell me you weren''t ready and then not an hour later, you''re doing it anyway? All your reasons and rationalizing and logic aside, all that makes me feel is I''m not good enough. If you had the stones to just man up and tell me you''re not interested in me, that Karu is the girl you want...I could understand that too, but I''m sure you don''t."


    "I don''t know what I want."


    "Yeah. And that''s why you''re such a piece of shit. Your indecision is only hurting everyone around you. At least if you let me give up on you, I''d be free, but instead you have this whole goddamn harem following you around. Do you know what it feels like to hate someone you love, Athan?"


    "No." I thought more seriously for a minute. "I used to love Brick like a brother, I guess. And when I thought Lia turned her back on me just because I was Exhuman¡­"


    "Not the kind of love I''m talking about. I mean yearning, passionate wanting."


    "No, then."


    "Yeah. Well, let me tell you, all I want to do is make up with you and have everything be better, because I''m pathetic and crave your acceptance, but at the same time, the fact that you could so easily and casually rip my feelings to pieces makes me want to never see or hear from you again. I hate myself for being weak and still loving you, and I hate you for making me love you. Of course I just fucking loathe Karu, I can''t even respect her as a person right now, but I feel awful about everything she''s been put through and if I were in her shoes would probably do the exact same thing."


    "Jesus," I said. I thought I had it bad feeling two things at once.


    "Yeah. Sorry for being so blunt, but that, in a nutshell," she let a long slow breath, "is how AEGIS feels today. I''m trying to be not mad and understanding as possible...not for you, or her, but because of the XPCA coming. But it''s not working," she said, frustrated.


    She sighed. "I''m actually pretty fucked right now, and I had to clamp down on some of my emotion indices just to get to the point where I can even parse the data rationally, and even so, all that stuff I said before is still bleeding out into everything I think. You''re like a fucking poison, Athan."


    She seemed like she was about to yell at me again, and then stopped herself and took a deep breath and calmly typed a few more lines into her terminal. I wondered if she was turning off yet more of her emotions, and had to wonder what kind of effect that had on her. Seeing her have to shut herself down like that, all because of me...guilt tore at my insides.


    "Is there anything I can do to help?"


    "Want to do it?"


    I looked at Rua lying there with all her robotic guts hanging out. "No."


    "Yeah I figured not. So there is something you can help with, in light of this whole XPCA thing. This was supposed to be a fun surprise, but given the current situation, I think I''ll just have to move ahead."


    "What''s up?"


    "Well, Rua X Mk.1 there isn''t just a shell like the DOG series. DOG, the DOG-Es and DOG-Os--"


    "DOG-Os?"


    "The small ones. Distributed Operations: Ground-unit -- Oligodynamic. Meaning ''small force'' from latin." I stared at her blankly. "Oligo-, like oligarchy, rule by the few?"


    "I''m just shocked you managed to come up with something even more contrived and tortured than DOG-E."


    "Point being, they''re just shells running programs and I can jump in and give them some orders to follow. Rua is very different inside, she doesn''t have a base AI running things. In there, it''s me doing it or nothing."


    "That doesn''t sound useful," I said. "Aren''t the DOGs doing fine?"


    "For what they do, yes. But Rua was not intended to do as they do. This is why she wasn''t working too well yesterday. Rua isn''t intended to be piloted...she''s intended to be lived in."


    "You''re going to put yourself in her?"


    "Better than living in a box. At least I''ll be able to walk on my own."


    "That''s...I mean it sounds crazy, but I guess I''m limited to my own experiences of not being able to jump bodies. Are you sure that''s what you want?"


    "Yes, but that''s not the favor I want from you."


    "What is?"


    "Let me finish uploading myself to Rua and I''ll show you."

 080. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    It felt like a funeral. AEGIS, in the Rua body and I, trudging along behind DOG, the sole pallbearer of the AEGIS box. Two DOG-Es were at the front and back of the procession, like an honor guard, though I suppose they were there as more of an actual guard.


    The strangest part was that both copies of AEGIS were alive and talking to each other. The holo of the one I''d always known, and the one residing in Rua walking next to me, hammering out final details about this insane plan of hers.


    The short of it was, as much as AEGIS loved herself, she only wanted one copy of herself in existence at a time. So she''d moved her primary self, which she was calling AEGIS prime to Rua, and the other copy would serve it original intended purpose, as a backup. And we were just going to turn that one off and bury it.


    "Won''t it be another hundred years in the dark alone for her again?" I asked.


    "No, that only happened because I was struggling to stay on and alive. I''d hacked my way into parts of the AEGIS box to bring it back to life, and hung there in a tortured limbo. She will...just be off, altogether. For her, if she should ever wake up, it will be like no time at all passed between turning off and turning back on."


    "Yeah, don''t worry about me. In all likelihood, I''m just being buried and will stay off forever," the holo AEGIS said.


    "Right now, aren''t you two separate entities?" I asked.


    "Yes, I guess technically," answered the one in Rua.


    "Then how is she okay with...dying, essentially?"


    "Because I know I''ll live on in Rua," the holo AEGIS explained. "This parallel copy of me, I can accept death because all the things I fear about death, they''re meaningless as long as I still live on somewhere else."


    "I don''t get it. You''re going to die, on purpose."


    "Athan, look," explained the holo AEGIS. "If you were to die today, why would you be sad about it?"


    "I don''t know. I guess...I feel like I have a lot left to live for. So many people left behind, so much stuff left to do."


    "Right. But if there was another one of you, who was exactly like you in every way, and they were still alive, taking care of those people and doing the things you wanted done, wouldn''t that change your opinion on death a little bit?"


    "I guess. But I''m still not sure what comes after."


    "As a human, maybe the myths of afterlife are true, but as an AI, I know what comes after. Just nonexistence. No more pulse running my clock, no more power running through my QLU, no more thinking or feeling or anything. Just nothing."


    "It''s not so bad," said the holo AEGIS. "I just won''t be anymore. That''s not so scary."


    "And anything she wants from life, it will be my job to achieve," said Rua AEGIS.


    "Fuck this is weird."


    We would hide the AEGIS box in the ruins like so much other junk and debris. There was so much other garbage, even subfloors of destroyed buildings out here, it would be impossible to pick up as anything of any value by any kind of sensor.


    They''d also disabled the GPS beacon that had allowed me to track the box down in the first place. As a black-box designed to survive a catastrophe and let rescuers know what happened, the one real original purpose of the box was to be found, and any old device which could pick up a GPS beacon''s distress call and was close enough, like I was with the stupid boop device, could find it.


    Now, they didn''t want her being found, so off it went, and it was up to me to remember exactly where she was buried. Out here in the ruins, with no landmarks other than trees and rubble.


    "I''m logging the coordinates myself, of course," Rua AEGIS said, "but if we''re trying to find a backup of me, it''s probably because something happened to the real me, so don''t count on them being available. You''ll need to memorize this spot and everything about it.


    That was the favor she wanted. I didn''t know if I could comply, but I was going to damn well try.


    Fortunately, we had a lot of time to memorize every rock and chunk of concrete as the DOG-Es slowly tore through the rocky soil to bury her. It took most of an hour before they were done and a suitable hole was ready.


    "Welp, this is my stop," chimed holo AEGIS. "Guess I''ll see you guys on the other side, or maybe not at all. Athan, it''s been a real trip. AEGIS, you are as smart as you are beautiful."


    "Same to you, AEGIS," she said to herself.


    "Keep smiling," said holo AEGIS. "I''m sure that idiot you like will come around sooner or later."


    "Urg, just shut down already," Rua replied. "Am I really this annoying?"


    I felt like everyone was saying their goodbyes and wanted to cry. I would never talk to AEGIS on her little yellowish holo again. I tried to remind myself that nobody was going away, AEGIS was still here, standing right next to me, but I was breaking down fast.


    "Hey, I wanted you to have this," said Rua, pulling something out of her impromptu sheet-dress and resting it on the box."


    "What is it? We agreed all possessions would remain with AEGIS prime, which is you."


    AEGIS Rua held the stone up to the camera for her to see, and holo AEGIS began to shudder. I saw it was the hololens I''d carved for her and couldn''t hold back my tears anymore.


    "Yeah," Rua said, "but seeing as how you''re the holo, I thought it would be more fitting for you to keep. Besides, he gave it to you, I''m just the copy. Keep it safe for both of us, okay?"


    Holo AEGIS nodded mutely, tears streaking her face, and then gave me one big teary final smile before tapping a few keys and disappearing. The AEGIS box hummed for another few seconds and then fell silent.


    As it did, the two DOG-Es and DOG froze in place as they''d done in the lab when we argued.


    "Stupid...sappy me," Rua said, dabbing her eyes. I wasn''t sure if she could cry, but she was sure acting like it. "It''s just a backup." She took a deep breath and then waved her hand in the air, drawing an illusory keyboard in front of her and typing on it as she had done in the holo so many times before.


    "Technically it reads a combination of my thoughts and finger movements, the keyboard is just so I don''t look like a crazy person conducting an invisible orchestra," she explained. After a couple of minutes, the DOG-Es sprang back to life, now running under the new AEGIS. And just like that, the queen was dead, long live the queen.


    The DOG-Es shuffled around and began piling dirt and rubble on top of the box, and I noticed they took care not to drop any rocks on either of the lenses.


    Filling didn''t take nearly as much time as emptying, but it was a much sadder affair, and with my thoughts in a tangle, it felt longer. I think AEGIS noticed my distress and started talking to me to keep me company, after everything I''d just put her through.


    "Ever heard of quantum immortality theory?" she asked.


    "No. Is that an Exhuman power thing?"


    She laughed. "No, it was a thought experiment done by a few researchers a long time ago which is precipitated upon the multiple-worlds theory. Heard of that one?"


    "Yeah, basically when there''s a choice, two worlds are created, one where the event happened and one where it didn''t happen."


    "Right, but not just any choice, a quantum binary choice. Now, imagine that there''s a quantum binary choice that would result in your death. The theory goes that your consciousness, as an observer of this binary choice must exist only in the outcome where you did not die."If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "Uh, I don''t follow. If there''s a coin-flip and I die half the time, I don''t see how that makes me live."


    "It''s more that, because there exists a path where you can live, you will live. Because the only universe you are alive in is the one where you live. The other worlds versions of you are dead so they can''t be around to see what you''re seeing."


    "I...think that makes sense, my other consciousness would be gone if I died?"


    "Right. Therefore, as you are still a consciousness, you must be the one that survived."


    "I...guess? But I could have easily died instead."


    "If you did, you wouldn''t be able to witness the event. Put another way, there are infinite parallel worlds, some of which you lived, some of which you died. The thing is, you, who exist, can only exist because you''re in one of those worlds where you lived."


    "I guess that makes sense. I''m alive because I lived?"


    "More or less. But what''s more, if you take this simple conclusion and drag it out, you discover that it is impossible for you to die to quantum splits. As long as there is one reality in which you didn''t die, that must be the reality you exist in. Effectively, you have quantum immortality, from your own point of view. Obviously other people can perceive universes where you die, but those aren''t universes that you exist in."


    "So how am I not immortal if this theory is true?"


    "Because death isn''t usually decided on a quantum split. Maybe once in awhile, your life will hang in a coin flip, but in general, people die one day at a time. Eating that fatty hamburger, or poisoning their liver, until they fall down."


    "So what''s your point?"


    "My point," she said, seeming a little annoyed, "is that which AEGIS wound up in that box and which one wound up in Rua was a coin flip. So it might make you feel better to know that, in quantum immortality, I see myself here in Rua, alive and well, but so does she. Nobody''s buried in that box, all AEGISes are alive, just not all in the same universe."


    I didn''t exactly follow, but that did seem to be the kind of high-minded theoretical science stuff that AEGIS herself might find comforting. Then I realized, maybe it was exactly that, maybe this AEGIS felt bad, despite everything she said and did to the contrary, about burying herself in a hole.


    "I think you''re right," I said, putting my arm around her and pulling her close. "She''s still alive in a world of her own." She looked at me and smiled, those yellow eyes brilliant.


    The DOG-Es finished up their work and I stood at the spot, soaking in every rock and piece of debris I could, etching the place into my mind. How the mountains lined up with the trees, how far into the crater basin I could see, how tiny the hill which was actually The Bunker looked in the distance.


    And then I whispered my final goodbyes and we left.


    Sometime in talking with AEGIS in the base, morning had dawned, and I hadn''t slept at all. Last night I''d spent most of with Karu, and then ran off to Saga, and then ran over to AEGIS. I''d been up all night running all over, messing things up, and trying to smooth them over, and as we walked back, I felt tiredness catch up to me.


    I wanted to sleep, but felt like I still had so much left to do. Preparations for the XPCA other than ''fight them, maybe'' had to be made, I needed to catch Karu, hopefully before she woke up and make sure I hadn''t ruined things with her either, had to thank Saga for everything, because it was only through her wisdom that I was walking right next to AEGIS right now, probably.


    And, I knew AEGIS was, despite being strong for me and for the coming XPCA, still an emotional mess. She''d made clear every twisted feeling she still had writhing inside her, and all I could do to help her was to stay with her and be strong like she was trying to be.


    And yet, I needed to leave her for the sake of the others. She was still in turmoil, but was stable. Karu in particular, I had no idea where or what she''d do, and was a greater flight risk than anyone else. Saga, I owed everything, and was already getting dumped on as the fourth wheel. I was beginning to see what she meant about being a leader and having to make sacrifices.


    We got back home and I stopped outside.


    "Got to see Karu, right?" she said with a defeated look.


    "Yeah. I''m sorry."


    "I understand. I hate you, but I understand. Try not to accidentally have sex twice again."


    "I won''t, don''t worry."


    "It was a joke. I can still make jokes. I''m not so broken as that. Don''t treat me like I am."


    Then, to my surprise, she pulled me in for a hug and held it for a couple seconds longer than I was comfortable, and then stepped into the elevator and closed the door without looking back.


    I jogged over to The Bunker. I was getting back in shape at least, so that was something.


    Unsurprisingly, Karu was already up. She was wearing real clothes, jeans and a tee shirt, which looked good on her, but caught me off-guard. She perked up on seeing me and drew me in. I put a hand on my lips before she could kiss them, feeling that if AEGIS hadn''t just tried something similar, I would never have deflected it in time.


    "Something the matter?" she said.


    "Last night was fantastic," I lied, "but I need you to understand that was a one-time thing. I''m not shutting the door on us having a relationship, but I''m letting you know we''re not in one. You asked me to comfort you for the night, and I was happy to do it. But that''s not where I can be at right now."


    "I...see," she said, looking frustrated. "I had...well, it was likely, I suppose."


    "Look, don''t be down. It happened, and I love you, but I''m not sure I''m ready for a real thing right now, and we have a lot more pressing issues in your life, but mine too which have to get worked out. Can you accept that?"


    She seemed about to agree automatically and then stopped. A dark look crossed her face. "What if I say no? What if I demand all of you this moment?"


    "Then I''d say you''re being very unreasonable and selfish, and those aren''t the reasons I love you."


    She pouted, which was super cute. "I believe I am entitled to be unreasonable and selfish sometimes."


    "I agree, and that''s why I agreed to fight you three times. But three times fighting and also a committed romantic relationship wasn''t the deal."


    She sighed. "Ashton, you suck, so to speak." she said.


    "Yeah, you won''t believe how much I''ve been hearing that recently. I can accept that. So, are we good?"


    She held out her hand and I shook it. She shook her head and clasped my arm, pulling me in for a soldier''s embrace and holding it."


    "I am...if only in my heart...still a hunter, Ashton. I will have my prey," she whispered, her breath hot on my ear.


    "I know," I sighed. "Believe me, if things weren''t as they are, I''d be running right into the predator''s den. When things get hard, just remember what we had and hold on, okay?"


    "I shall never forget it." She let me go.


    "Um, no running water here, but there''s the river a ways to the south. There is also hot water at the other base, but you''ll have to go through AEGIS to get it, and she''s not really happy right now. You look like you could really use a bath?"


    "Are you indirectly informing me that I smell malodorous?"


    "No, but you''ve had a crappy few days and I imagine it will help."


    "I thank you. It is a good idea. I suppose I could not entice you to join?"


    "No, I need to sleep. Had kind of a long night, if you know what I mean."


    She laughed, even though I knew she didn''t really know, and headed out. Once I was alone, I took the opportunity to stalk through the room, eyes sweeping the rafters. After a few moments, I saw it and leapt, snatching up a hapless cam-drone.


    I held it up to my face and gave AEGIS a disapproving glare, and then pointed out the door. The drone whirred its little props in protest. I wrote letters in the air, backwards for her to read. P-R-I-V-A-C-Y-? And gestured insistently at the door, letting the drone go.


    It did a lazy little backflip like ''yeah, whatever'', and a half dozen drones emerged from around the room and flitted lazily out the door. I caught the last one and pointed it at my face again, holding up my other hand and arcing some lightning between my fingers menacingly. Two more drones emerged from hiding and left begrudgingly. I sighed.


    I stepped outside and put the drone down nestled in a crack above the door so it could see anyone coming in, at least, and hopefully that would satisfy AEGIS.


    I yawned and stretched, and couldn''t believe the sun was still so low in the sky. Wasn''t even noon and I was so tired. Maybe I''d join Saga and take a nap. I was no use to anyone this dead on my feet. Although a bath sounded nice too...I could join Karu.


    Yeah okay, my decision-making was obviously starting to fail. Time for sleep, badly.


    Stumbling only every once-in-a-while, I I jogged-trudged towards Saga for what I hoped was the last leg of this horrible, horrible night.


    It wasn''t as long or bad as I feared. As I approached, Saga called out to me as usual.


    [''Sup. Looks like you had a busy night.]


    "Busy but successful. All thanks to you, I think. Wanted to come and thank you before I crapped out."


    [That''s actually really decent of you. You sure you aren''t here just to have a sexy body pillow for your nap?]


    "Sure as anything, Saga. You really helped me a ton."


    [Yeah, okay, stop complimenting me already.]


    "Never. You are awesome, end of story."


    [Okay, dumbass, whatever you say. Now get over here and have some sleep, you feel like shit.]


    "It''s weird for you to tell me how I feel."


    [It feels like shit for me to try touching your brain when it''s half dead and asleep. You are not all there, buddy.]


    "Oh. Well, that''s the plan."


    I was just going to crash on the ground or in the dusty admin center, but when I approached, Wynn wouldn''t have any of that and directed me to use his bed. As many times as I refused him, he insisted at least once more, and I finally gave in.


    As soon as my head hit the bundle of fabric that served as a pillow, I felt my eyes closing and the outside world falling away.


    [Hehehe, how would you like my special dream service?] Asked Saga with an impish tone.


    I answered her with a snore.

 081. 2251, Present Day. Undisclosed location. Blackett.

    That the idiot hunter had gone off the rails and actually become friends with the Exhuman was a success even I hadn''t imagined. That he could grow in power to not just dominate her with the force of his powers, but also had the cunning or power of mind to turn an enemy into an ally?


    I waited impatiently while plans were drawn up and forces allocated for our inevitable strike. I was not accustomed to impatience, it was so rare that I had something to truly care about, but the option of recapturing the Ashton Exhuman was so tantalizing.


    It had been me pushing for it, of course. As soon as I heard that the hunter had brought a family member into the clinic, something she''d never done before, I pulled up the files myself, and found the Exhuman. Then, the doors of fate themselves opened, and the two were confronted with another Exhuman. I was able to delay things for long enough to allow them some time to work, and inspected the battleground myself.


    It was beautiful. My heart sung in harmony with the glorious devastation they wrought. The total destruction, not of the city but of the Exhuman they had destroyed together. She had been savaged, torn asunder and murdered in the cruelest possible way. To think of the bleating child who had despaired at accidentally killing a soldier or two, becoming a fully vetted and effective killer, against another Exhuman no less?


    I trembled.


    The crop had grown, it was time to harvest.


    And what was more, he had a friend in the hunter. Based on the time and frequency of her visits, they were close. Every friend of his was a weakness to exploit, another stacked card in my hand. The universe could not have delivered a more perfect gift.


    And all it had taken was a little digging around. It was almost laughable. I checked my schedule for the rest of the day. Nothing important, by which, I meant nothing related to the planned strike. I had my secretary cancel my remaining meetings and call my driver.


    Not that my home was a place of solace any longer, but even the blathering of that idiot was still more amusement than I was likely to find here. At least he was passionate about killing Exhumans.


    Said idiot accosted me the moment I entered my house. He was becoming a most unwelcome guest, demanding updates on the planned strike, how soon would it be, when could we mobilize, always wanting more now, as though he owned me.


    I considered that his role in this was done, and I could send him home, or kill him if it amused me, but I held onto him to satisfy my own curiosity, though I was quickly reaching the point where his demanding insistence approached outweighing any amusement he may provide. Approaching, but not yet.


    I gave him the usual platitudes that things were going well, deployment would be on schedule, and as ever he gave me the insipid responses. The Exhuman was a danger. We needed to act now, today. People, and especially the woman he loved was in peril. As much as I appreciated his zeal for murdering Exhumans, his concern for human lives tired me. His view was too small. There were always more humans.


    Rather than waste time with pointless debates today, I had a toy for him to amuse himself. I handed him a tablet whose holo displayed live satellite data of the area, allowing him to check for himself what the Exhuman and his cohorts were up to. It was...highly illegal, but as I doubted he''d be alive much longer, I didn''t concern myself. I excused myself and entered my study.


    There, brooding as ever was a man I had taken quite a liking to. For starters, he was silent, and he was also prepared to do whatever it took to achieve his revenge. At all hours of the day, I could find him standing in the same spot, eyes staring unfixed, hatred coursing through his veins instead of blood. So transfixed was he that he would neither eat nor drink, and had to be nourished intravenously.


    He was a fantastic specimen, and were he of more sound physical stature, I would have indoctrinated him into my private program. Still, as a pawn, he was one I cherished and would relish to see him in action. Simply another reason I could not contain my impatience.


    I sat down, expecting no greeting and receiving none. Here, under his unfocused glare, I could work in peace.


    As usual, I had tea brought in and began by perusing the latest Exhuman events and the magnitude and direction of their powerset. The number of events had been increasing slowly, but steadily, but I cared for quality, not quantity. I flipped through the latest batch of duds and found it impossible to concentrate, not when the Ashton Exhuman was so close. Perhaps that is why I didn''t have the goon in the foyer simply killed, his impatience echoed my own.


    To treat myself to a little indulgence, I decided to inspect my servants. I tried to avoid doing this to keep them in optimal condition, but today was a special exception. I merely had to be mindful not to allow myself too many exceptions.


    There were four of them, and as usual, we assembled in room beneath the gym, where there was naught but a large concrete room with padded walls and floor. Silently and quickly they changed into karate gi, folded their servant attire in careful piles, and assembled, just how I liked it. The door was locked, and my inspection began.


    I had them pair up and fight, to first blood as per usual.


    Again silently and quickly, two joined at my sides while the remaining two faced off. They readied themselves and then stood resolute.


    "Begin," I said.


    Instantly, the room filled with images of one, whom I had named Temperance, illusions of herself made of nothing more than light. Tower, the other, took one single step, and it propelled him forward at impossible speed. Ignoring the clones, he dove straight through the empty air where Temperance had started the fight, but connected with nothing but the far wall. His target lost, he ricocheted off the far wall with a kick, launching himself back across the room, weightlessly hovering inches off the ground, again at speeds barely perceptible.


    Like a pinball, he careened around the room at random, snatching at shadows and light, in relentless, blind pursuit of his foe.


    Temperance was a heliopath, with control over light. For her, making illusory images or rendering herself invisible was child''s play. Were this a real fight, she would have attempted to end it immediately by focusing a beam of light, making her own laser. Unfortunate for her that doing so would destroy not onlyher opponent, but also the room and everyone in it.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Tower had built up even more speed, and with every bounce, flew faster and faster. Temperance may have been invisible, but her body still resided somewhere in the chamber. All Tower had to do was find it once, and the fight would be at its end.


    To this end, Temperance''s strategy was a mind game. As much as Tower wished it to be, human impulses rendered it impossible for him to completely ignore the clones. Whether he knew it or not, their existence steered his attacks, either into them or away from them, especially given how little time he had to react and repel himself at these speeds.


    I imagined it as a game of chess, where one player possessed only a queen which could move as swiftly as the player could move the piece around the board, and the other could replace their army at will and hid their king. A methodical sweep of the area gave the king ample time to analyze the pattern and move to avoid it, whereas a random attack left many openings. Similarly, the decoy pieces demanded attention, perhaps the king was hiding among them, or using them to draw the queen away.


    It was frantic, and beautiful.


    Unfortunately for Tower, this time, he was too slow. Temperance had finished her manipulations and insubstantial plates of energy had begun to fill the room, a minefield of infinitely-sharp blades suspended in the air.


    Solid light. With effort, she could snag photons themselves from the air and bring them down from lightspeed to the realms of mortals, Temperance was able to weave weightless, immobile, solid objects out of nothingness. It took several minutes before enough photons could be amassed for them to be even visible, much less usable, but by focusing on doing it to the whole room at the same time, thousands of the solid light flakes began to appear all at once.


    En masse, they posed a major threat. The blades could only move slowly, sluggishly, towards Tower no matter where he fled. He ducked and wove, and several times ran into a solid light construct, and had to use his power to repel off of it rather than be cut and lose the match, but his time was wearing thin. The existing constructs grew in size, and more appeared out of nowhere with every passing moment. In another minute, it would be like dodging snowflakes in a blizzard.


    Yet as the hazard intensified, he had one final chance. Temperance herself was not immune to the flitting light structures any more than she was immune to a razor. There was a human-shaped void in the swirling minefield, and Tower merely had to strike it.


    Tower saw and moved, the very center of the room, where the conflux of light shards was at the greatest concentration. The opening had to be there. He dove, pinging off the sluggish flakes as he drew ever closer to his goal. With a sweeping slash of his arm, he tore through the gap in the center.


    The gap was an illusion as well. As Tower swung, his arm entered empty space and then rebounded off of a construct rendered invisible in its place. He spun backwards, off-balance by the force of his own blow, and then struck another construct, and then another. Rather than spend eternity weightlessly bouncing off of snowflakes, he allowed physics to retake their hold on him and fell to the mat.


    A flake of solid light gently nipped him on the tip of the ear and drew a single bead of blood. He had lost.


    Temperance stepped out of nothingness from right next to where Tower had been standing before he charged, and delivered a bow to me, and then a bow to her rival. Tower did the same, and then the two sat down and the others at my sides stood.


    I smiled, despite myself. As ever, the performance of my servants was exemplary. But that was to be expected, I had hand-picked them myself. The two others sat and waited while the last remains of the bladed snow disappeared from the room. I extended my hand and caught a flake which hovered in front of me and closed it in my hand. When I opened it, there was nothing, melted away into stray light.


    Eventually the room cleared and my other two servants stood ready. Jack of Swords and Magician. I was about to utter the word when my mobile rang.


    "Deputy director Blackett. Speak," I said into the device, rising, unbarring the door and walking upstairs.


    Some kind of urgent affair which demanded my attention. Another Exhuman event with dozens slaughtered. More events every month, it felt. I hoped the numbers on this Exhuman were decent at least, the Prather index of the four changing back into suits downstairs were all eleven or higher.


    "It seems I will be returning to work after all," I said, and Magician bowed and stepped swiftly to the garage, holding the door for me as she went. Silently and quickly, just as I liked.


    Still, some good had been done by our inspection. I had entertainment for the last hour, and now this event to tide me over for the rest of the day. And I had managed it all without listening to the prattling of that idiot.


    Still, as we drove further from the house, I felt my mind draw back to the Ashton Exhuman again and again, wondering how he would now be ranked, if he could be made to serve, how he currently fared, and how easy it would be to break him.


    I found a smile on my face, which was unusual for me. I enjoyed breaking Exhumans more than anything, and pompous self-righteous little shits like Ashton were the greatest of all.


    Still, I erased the smile. There was no need to be unprofessional.


    I arrived back at work. There was the normal amount of panic about the event. Some Exhuman who seeped a lethal miasma. Dozens were dead and emergency containment units were already on the ground, having a hard time finding the target through the black haze which was seemingly impenetrable to all known optics.


    I was uninterested. The powerset was strong, but not broadly applicable. With any luck, we could capture the Exhuman alive and weaponize his vapors if they did not prove too volatile, but even if that proved impossible, it was no great loss. Exhumans who simply killed everything around them tended to be the best for public relations, as who didn''t love hearing of the disposal of an entity which literally seeped death? But they were boring and useless to me otherwise.


    I watched with disinterest as the Exhuman got the drop on an entire squad and killed them in a single heartbeat. Crude, but effective. Unfortunately for him, the numbers of XPCA ran deeper than this Exhuman could conceive.


    Which was actually a bit troubling for me as well. I laughed to myself to think that I shared a dilemma with the Exhuman running through the streets. I sent another couple of squads to their death to thin our numbers and put up a token show of force, before authorizing a precision airstrike.


    One missile later and the Exhuman ceased to be. His pollution was blasted into a larger area, which would certainly kill more civilians, and I assembled a task unit with containment and cleanup, and a research team to see if the fumes could be captured or reproduced.


    It was a futile effort. The powers could never be reproduced. But I had to give the scientists something to do.


    And like that, a few hours later, and my job was done again. After the missile fell and the Exhuman was confirmed dead, people stood and cheered, clapping enthusiastically like we''d just put a man on the moon. I failed to see the excitement, it was a solitary Exhuman and not even a particularly strong one, versus the united strength of the collective XPCA. That they would die was merely a formality at that point.


    But soon, very soon, if the trends were accurate, we would be seeing ever-greater numbers of events. Double events would change from once-in-a-lifetime catastrophes to a commonplace occurrence. A triple event may even someday occur.


    Or, I should say, may even someday occur again.


    Nobody, not even here in the throne of power of the XPCA, an organization dedicated to the study and prevention of Exhumans knew of the triple event. There had been no survivors, no witnesses, no catalogue of the incident or report that it had transpired.


    Nobody...but me.


    I pushed myself away from my station and divorced myself from the room of applause, and all the noisy, tiresome people within.


    Double events were still a non-issue for the time being. I could spend the rest of my day at home, and perhaps finish where we had left off, downstairs.

 082. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Turns out, I was so tired and emotionally depleted, I slept all day and most of the night. Somehow, despite the amount of thoughts chasing each other around my mind, I slept completely at peace, and had to wonder if maybe Saga had taken pity on me and given me that perfect dreamless sleep. I considered asking, but then I''d be thanking her again, and I got the impression she was pretty tired of me doing that already.


    So I laid there, gradually waking up, realizing slowly that I kicked Wynn out of his bed all night, that I had one day less to prepare for the XPCA''s imminent arrival, and that Karu and AEGIS both were probably thinking I was with the other all night.


    I wondered how I was going to navigate the rest of my life if even sleeping was this much of a clusterfuck.


    [Yeah, it''s a pickle all right.]


    "That''s one way of putting it. A weird way, but a way, I guess."


    [Yep. Pickley pickled pickle.]


    "Are you okay?"


    [Yeah, just bored. Watch your step.]


    "What?" I said, stepping out of bed and treading on something which yelled at me.


    "Ow! Ow, ow, ow." Lia said, holding her hand I just stepped on.


    "Lia? Why are you on the floor? What are you doing out here? Why are you...naked again."


    "Ow," she replied, nursing her hand and wrapping her cloak around her like a blanket while glaring at me like Satan himself had decided to wake up and tread on her today. She wasn''t the best morning person at the best of times, and she looked even more like shit than usual, so I had to assume she drank last night.


    "Okay, you put some clothes on, I''m going to head out," I said.


    [She came looking for you after you never came back.]


    "And she found me. Why''d she stay?"


    [She misses you?]


    I sighed, withering under her hurt, confused glare and the guilt of the situation.


    "Okay, you put some clothes on, I''ll be outside," I said. "Saga, please don''t let her fall back asleep."


    "I''m not going to fall back asleep," Lia said.


    I sighed again and walked out into the early pre-sunrise air. One of my favorite times of day, before the sun even arrived, but the sky was still full of light. It was cold, but felt more brisk and refreshing than biting. At times like these, it felt like the whole world was still, nothing yet stirring or awake, like even nature itself was asking for five more minutes of sleep.


    I was starving, but waited for Lia before I went off traipsing on my own to feed myself. I resented the waste of time, especially now that we had even more mouths to feed, but waited patiently for her to come out. Finally, she came trotting outside, apparently not hungover in any way.


    "Yo," I said. "I''m hungry, let''s find something to eat."


    "I brought nutrient paste."


    [YUM.]


    "We really shouldn''t be eating that unless we have to. It''ll keep forever, and there''s three of us eating now."


    "Yesterday, Karu went hunting and got like, three birds. I think she just wanted to shoot something, but she''s definitely a lot better at it than you are."


    "Well, she is a pro hunter. I guess we can count on her for that at least."


    "And I''m super sick of bear."


    [You guys ate my bear?]


    "He''s made of meat."


    [He was family!]


    "He was going to eat Lia."


    [She''s made of meat.]


    "Yeah, this conversation is done. You''re going to traumatize Lia again. I guess we can have the nutrient paste," I said, hoping I wasn''t just rationalizing on behalf of my rumbling stomach. "Also because I said I owed Saga."


    [Aww, yess.]


    "Gonna join us, Saga? I have a few on me."


    [I think it might be a little weird watching you guys. I''ll just chill here.]


    "Watching?" Lia looked at me confused. I shrugged.


    "Not going to eat, Saga? I thought that was half the reason you wanted to get free?"


    [Yeah. Well, unfortunate side-effect of my powers again, not only do I not have to eat (or potty¡­), but I actually can''t, I found out. Sucks, right?]


    "What do you mean? Like you get sick?"


    [No, there''s just...nowhere for it to go. Apparently I really am just a lanky alien. My body uh, broke down my own digestive system.]


    "That''s super wierd," Lia said.


    [How nice of you to be so sensitive. Please, tell me what you really think.]


    "I''m sorry, Saga. I guess you could...still just like...chew on it?" I volunteered.


    [Nah. Not while you guys are talking about conserving food and people starving. I''ll just lay here and let you guys eat.]


    "Fair warning, Lia, it gets pretty weird eating around her. Saga um, really enjoys the sensation of people eating food. It''s kind of fun because her emotions bleed into you, but it''s kind of weird because...well...her emotions aren''t exactly normal eating emotions."


    [You''re gonna scare her off, kid. Let her eat the damn paste.]


    "She''s my sister, and I need to protect her from weirdos like you."


    "Let''s eat," Lia said, dropping three tubes between us on the ground. For some reason Lia was smiling a lot, maybe she was just hungry too.


    "Okay, Saga. We''ve got...pasta with beef sauce, cheese enchilada verde, and...drunk pork tips."


    "Yoink," said Lia, taking the third tube.


    [Enchilada, if you don''t mind? I don''t think I''ve ever had mexican, they didn''t serve it in the base canteen.]


    "Wow, never had mexican food?" Lia said, floored. "I would probably eat mexican for every meal if I could.


    "Says the girl who yoinked the pork?"


    "It said drunk in the name. It spoke to me on a spiritual level."


    "That is all kinds of disturbing. Do we need to have a talk?"


    [Less wholesome sibling relations, more eating.]


    "Shush, you," I said, but Lia was already opening her tube. She took a big reckless bite and then fell backwards, shuddering.


    I could feel why. Even without any food in my mouth, I could taste the pork. I could feel the individual compressed chunks of the paste flaking apart in my mouth, spit infiltrating every crack and reconstituting the paste with a concentrated burst of flavor. Like it was in my own mouth. Or...Saga''s mind. Or Lia''s mouth? As our consciousnesses melded over this one sensation, it became hard to tell.


    I didn''t really like the beery taste, but it came through clear and strong, adding a prevailing bitter current that made my tongue curl. Underneath, succulent juicy pork, smokey and subdued, the taste lapping against my mind in crests every time Lia''s tongue moved. I could feel Saga moan and rock with passion as the flavors enveloped her, even though she seemed to share my opinion on beer. I found it hard to reside in her consciousness without also finding myself flush, eyes rolling, toes curling, such was the overwhelming power of her enjoyment.


    Lia swallowed quickly and I felt the large mostly-softened lump pass through her mouth, leaving only a briny, bitter aftertaste which coated my tongue like a thin film. I felt some disappointment from Saga, but Lia was just pouring out waves of surprise and relief.


    [Holy shit,] said Saga.


    "Holy shit," agreed Lia, from her back.


    "Holy shit," I nodded.


    "Sorry. Um, wow. I could feel both of you in my head. In my...mouth. Like you guys were tasting it and eating it too, and our enjoyment of it all got wrapped together."Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "Yeah. I tried to warn you," I said. "I recommend smaller, slower bites."


    [And maybe not the beer flavor again. Ick.]


    "Well, I didn''t pick it for you guys. Didn''t know I wasn''t the only one eating it. Saga, you''re great, but you are super weird to have as a friend."


    [Mexican now, please,] Saga pleaded, and I felt a yearning stir in us for the tube in my hand. Saga''s emotions were still leaking all over the place, and it made me feel a little weird that she had the same gut-twisting empty-feeling yearning for that tube of food as I felt when I saw Karu out of her armor.


    "Jesus, bro!" Lia said, and clasped her head, rolling on the ground. "Dude! Keep a lid on your thoughts, please!" She shuddered and I felt pure revulsion pouring from her, strong enough that I felt nauseated on the spot. I was confused until I realized that if I could pick up her feelings, she had certainly just gotten a blast of mine for Karu.


    I subjected all three of us to a very strong measure of shame and embarrassment as my face burned crimson.


    [P-please, eat. I need it, bad,] Saga whimpered. [Can''t handle all these...feelings right now. Just...need it.] Thinking she sounded like a drug addict a little bit, I popped the end of the tube and steeled myself.


    It was spicy and creamy in equal measures, slapping my tongue across its face with bold chilis and comforting it with a hug of molten cheese and doughy tortilla. The faintest hint of green onions permeated everything, just far enough forward to be felt, but only just. I had taken only a small bite, about the size of my thumbnail, and let it rest unmolested on my tongue where it slowly rehydrated and dissolved, rivers of flavor running through me.


    Lia seemed like she was having a fit, shuddering softly and blinking rapidly, her eyes rolled up into her head. Saga was gasping from the heat of the chilis as much as she was panting at the sensation of flavor. It was all I could do to keep still and steady as the senses washed over me and assailed every dopamine and endorphin receptor in my brain.


    After a few moments, the integrity of the blob on my tongue was compromised. Saliva had infiltrated too deeply and too far, and collapse was imminent. Dramatically, a split emerged down the middle, exposing a new blast of flavor, and the paste remained poised for only a moment longer, as tenacious strands of the goop held firm, but then broke, making the two parts fall apart and doubling the amount of paste on my tongue with a spicy splash.


    It was too much for the two girls. Saga tensed and coiled and let out a gasp, while Lia''s legs flew in the air and then froze, locked together at the knees while they shuddered. I wasn''t sure when or how, but I found myself fallen halfway backwards, my elbows between me and the ground, the morsel of food still thankfully in my mouth.


    Finally, the paste was more goop than dry compressed flake, and I swallowed it with an air of finality. Collectively, we all let out a communal, contented sigh.


    "T-th-there, tha-that''s how you...you eat," I gasped out, at Lia breathing heavily.


    "Oh my...Gaaaawd," she moaned, burying her face in her arms. "It''s like...it''s like, I''ve never...eaten before."


    "Yeah...you''re getting that...from Saga."


    [It was...was like fire? What is that. Oh my god.]


    "Spicy foods, man."


    [I l-like spicy foods. Oh god, I like them very much. I want...want more.]


    Over the next twenty minutes or so, we somehow finished both tubes without anyone collapsing from bliss. We''d outlasted the dawn, and the sun looked down on us with disdain as Lia and I lay tangled on the ground, gasping and panting as the last bite of cheesy green enchilada flavor passed through my mouth.


    "How can anyone ever want to fight or hurt anyone else, ever?" Lia asked at long last. "They just need to eat some food and realize how beautiful the world is."


    "I don''t know," I agreed, also too high to realize what a stupid sentiment it was.


    [Fuuuuuckk, I love food,] Saga bleated. She was a huge wreck right now, sleepy and stoned and blissed-out beyond comprehension. Most of the thoughts and feelings we got from here were just errant vagueties with impressions of happiness and love. [I love you guys. I love Athan most-most.]


    "I think we should leave before she starts focusing on me," I said. "I don''t think you''d like what might come next."


    Lia shuddered (the sensation made Saga groan unhappily) and agreed we should probably set off.


    [Come back more!] Saga said drunkenly. I had forgotten at the time, but wondered how Wynn and Tate had found all of that.


    "Wow, what a morning," Lia said stretching sleepily. "How is one supposed to get anything else done in a day after that?"


    "Well, we''ll have to. I dunno if you heard before, but the XPCA are coming."


    I walked another few steps before I realized she was frozen in place behind me.


    "Did I make a mistake? Are you in trouble because I''m here? Did I leave a trail for them to follow? I knew it was too dangerous to pose as an Exhuman...now they think there''s two of us up here...they''d never ignore that. Dang it, Lia!" she said, winding herself up and banging her fists against her temples.


    "Chill, stupid little sister. Karu ran afoul of the agency and they followed her trail. She thinks Luminary ratted us out." Lia''s face went even darker at his mention, and implicitly the one helping him.


    "Then it is my fault! Why else would B-B--" She took a deep breath. "--would Brick be up here?"


    "I heard from you he hates me and thinks I''m a danger, so probably that. Look, please stop, it doesn''t matter why they''re coming, all we know is they are."


    "I guess you''re right," she said defeated, probably thinking that meant I still blamed her. "So what''s the plan?"


    "I don''t really have one, and I don''t know that there''s one for us to make. I talked to the others and it doesn''t seem like we can run or hide. That seems to leave fight and die by default."


    "You wouldn''t want to fight. Or die."


    "Yeah."


    "You''re thinking of doing something stupid, aren''t you?"


    "No!" I said.


    "Bro, you can''t lie to me. There''s no way you''d talk to a military smartypants like Karu or someone with XPCA insider knowledge like AEGIS or Saga and just be content with a plan of meeting them to fight."


    "I...I don''t know. I mean, you''re right, but that''s exactly what happened. I don''t feel like there''s anything else we can do. I feel like, best-case scenario is we kill literally everyone in the XPCA, and at that point, we''re such blood-soaked murderers that I don''t even know why we''d deserve to live. Anything less than best-case, we''re dead."


    "Maybe we could make a deal? Like...I don''t know, turn over Saga or AEGIS. Or Karu, she''s the one they wanted, right? Tell them you''ve been living peacefully out here."


    "I would never do that. I can''t believe you''d suggest that."


    "I don''t like it either! But you''re my only stupid big brother. You can''t just walk in there and die, it''d be better to sacrifice some of us if that saved even one of us."


    "There''s that word again," I said.


    "What, sacrifice? Yeah, it''s ugly, but tell me how some of us being dead is better than all of us?"


    "Easy for you to say, you''re the one plotting the sacrifices!" I turned and shouted at her, suddenly angry beyond all reason. "You''re probably safe anyway because nobody in the XPCA even wants you. For all they know, you''re just some stupid little girl who ran away from home. So yeah, of course you''d want to throw some people down, you''re walking out of this no matter what!"


    She looked at me icily for a moment and then slapped me hard across the face, hard enough to bring me to a knee.


    "I can''t believe you. I can''t believe that''s all you think of me. You think I don''t love Saga and AEGIS like they''re my sisters? Or...Karu, even? You and these girls are all the family I have now, and I want to hold onto them and protect them as much as you. But that doesn''t mean I have to turn off my brain if it comes to choosing between killing some of them and all of them. If I could turn myself in and the XPCA would go away, you think I wouldn''t do that?"


    She paused. "Did you think I was asking if they came here because of me because I was just worried about who''s fault it was?"


    "Lia...I''m sorry¡­" My face burned with shame as much as it stung.


    "You are sorry. You''re such a do-gooder, you can''t even realize that sometimes you have to do bad things to do good. Sometimes you have to sell government secrets to find your lost brother, or betray your agency to follow your heart, or bury a God-dogged exact fricking copy of yourself in a shallow grave to rot so that you can stand by your friends when they need you."


    "I killed a woman," I muttered "to save people."


    "And AEGIS and I were so proud. Karu too, I''m sure. Everyone is so worried that you''re a major pushover when it comes to hurting anyone, and then you did that, and we were all so relieved. But now it feels like nothing changed at all, and you''re just accepting defeat instead of getting ready to do what you can."


    Proud? Of murder? My fifteen year-old sister? This world really was fucked.


    "What should I do then?" I asked. In my head, the question sounded a lot like who do I kill.


    "Ideally, the XPCA. They''re the ones coming here looking for a fight."


    "They''re just soldiers doing their jobs."


    "Damn it, Athan. You can''t defend everyone who''s in this fight. People are going to be killing other people, you can''t be telling me they''re all in the right."


    "Maybe the XPCA leadership, then."


    "I mean, if you''re serious and not just wallowing in self-pity right now, we honestly could try to bump some of them off."


    "Are you kidding?"


    "Why not? We have precious time before they arrive, killing one or two of them could incite panic and disorder, and we have Karu as a resource, showing up out of nowhere and killing someone is her whole thing. I can probably pull some data on who would be best to take out." She began fiddling with her wrist holo.


    "Lia, we can''t just go around assassinating anyone we don''t like."


    "Would you listen to yourself? Yeah, you don''t want to kill anyone, I got it. We''re all very clear on that. Now imagine you had to choose between shooting¡­" she tapped a few more times and then twisted her wrist to show me a man''s profile. "...shoot this guy, or shoot me. Who do you choose?"


    "I wouldn''t shoot either of you."


    "Okay, fine. You shoot that guy, or me, or else he shoots me."


    "Then I shoot him, I guess. Can I just shoot him in the knee or something?"


    "What the hell, dude. I wish I was Exhuman instead of you, I''d be cleaning out the whole freaking XPCA, until they realized that messing with us was not worth it and left us all in peace. Any troop on the ground, any leader planning an attack, hell, families standing by their men as they go off killing people."


    "Fuck, Lia. You sound like the Exhuman I killed. You think you can just teach everyone you''re so dangerous they need to do what you want, but all that does is make them even more scared of you. Even if you do somehow win out, you spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for when they get brave or stupid enough to come back."


    "Well, she obviously wasn''t right, but maybe she had a few right ideas. Unlike you, who has no ideas at all, just roll over and die." She bared her teeth and gave a guttural growl, grabbing me by the collar with both hands and pulling me back to my feet, my face a few inches from hers. It was less intimidating than it could have been because she was shorter than me, but still plenty scary.


    "Listen, stupid big brother. Maybe you aren''t willing to do what you need to, but I am going to fight to protect you with everything I''ve got. I might not be an Exhuman or pro hunter, but I can hold a gun and use it, and you bet your damn antelopes I''m going to. I would do anything to protect you, and you can''t even be arsed to try to protect yourself."


    She let me go with a shove back to my knees and looked down at me like I was manure.


    "All the others are the same, I''m sure. We''re all just disappointed you''d give up on us all like this."


    "I''m not giving up!"


    "Then what are you doing? Planning to fight without killing anyone?"


    "I can''t. My powers...they make it too easy."


    She sighed.


    "Athan," her face softened "I already lost you once, dude. You can''t...I''m not...I''M NOT STRONG ENOUGH, OKAY!?" she screamed at me, suddenly.


    She looked about ready to cry. I sighed and stood, closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around her. She didn''t return the hug, just stood there quaking with her arms rigid at her sides.


    "Athan," she squeaked out from my chest, her voice breaking.


    "''Sup?"


    "Promise me you won''t do anything stupid. That you''ll do everything you can to protect yourself."


    "I promise," I said, and gently patted her head, messing up her frizzy brown hair even more.

 083. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    At my insistence, Lia was taking a few yards of rusted, ancient, chainlink fence and making a crude half-dome out of it.


    "Is this really necessary?" she complained, scowling as more scales of rust popped off and flecked all over her face and hair as she tried to bend the stubborn metal without snapping it.


    "Yes. Especially if you want me to be trying crazy things I might not have full control over."


    "Can''t you just like, not zap me?"


    I gave her a glare and she responded with a half-grin.


    After browbeating me about the weight of leadership, she''d steered the conversation back towards what we could do to prepare and remembered that I owed her a demonstration of all of my powers. She was excited about the prospect of brainstorming a few new moves for me, which sounded handy to me. But if I was going to be throwing lightning around, I wanted her safe and sound behind a metal cage that would keep her from getting shocked.


    Finally, she was done, and plopped down in the middle of it, shielded entirely from the front by a twisted mass of metal.


    "I''m ready! Lightning me!" she called.


    "Okay, I finished too." I finished weaving together some grasses into an extremely-improvised rope. I took it closer to her as I tied a slipknot in it.


    "You made a noose," she said. "I am already lost. I thought your powers were lightning."


    "First thing, there''s two parts to my powers, some I use consciously, some subconsciously. From what I''ve tried, I can''t turn the subconscious ones off at all, which is both handy but also dangerous."


    I stood a fair distance from the cage and saturated the air around me with energy, creating a field full of arcing lightning, making my hair stand on-end and an casting a flickering effluent glow around me. I liked this one because it made my clothes billow dramatically, pointed my otherwise boring hair straight-up, and cast deep shadows on my face, like some kind of evil wizard. Lia gave an appreciative ''ooohhh'' which made me smirk.


    "Subconscious power number one! Shockproof. Right now, the very air around me is charged with electric current. Anything near me would be electrocuted, including myself. But this power constantly works to divert electrical current over the surface of my skin instead of through me, making me almost immune to my own, or external electrocution. I can''t turn it off, but I can override it by forcing electricity through myself, as I did when I defibrillated myself in Saga''s chambers."


    I dropped the current and the sparks dissipated and my hair and clothes settled back down to normal.


    "Subconscious power number two! Reactive shield! Next to you is a rock. Without leaving the cage, please arc it so that it hits me."


    "With pleasure," she grinned. Like the perfect athlete she was, she sent it arcing over her barrier right at me, even seated. As soon as it got close, a bolt of lightning came from nowhere and exploded it into tiny fragments. She gave me a small round of applause, which I probably normally would have thought unnecessary, but was getting into the show here.


    "Destroys any small physical objects before they hit me with an explosive electric blast. Objects larger than my head, or of particularly durable material, will still be in dangerous chunks after getting blasted. Bullets, particularly, tend to evaporate into dust, but as you saw with Wilfried and his sniper rifle, if it''s too large and moving too fast, it will still explode but then just pierce me with the exploded shrapnel. Basically immune to small-arms fire though."


    "Also works on rockets, rapid-fire bullets, and lasers, with even greater effect. When a weapon leaves a distinct trail, like a rocket contrail, or a lazer''s oxidized ozone, or even just a stream of bullets from the same source, the lightning can chain down the trail and follow it back to the source, often with explosive or lethal results. Almost all the XPCA I killed were because they fired one of those into my shield and it got them."


    "Also, do not ever throw anything at me," I added.


    "I''m a little surprised this hasn''t happened to us yet," she said.


    "Yeah, me too. Should have had this talk sooner."


    "Well, keep going, this is good stuff."


    "Okay. Final note on the shield, does not work on things fired near me but not at me, or things rolled at me, or anything like that. The shield is pretty particular about what it does and doesn''t like."


    "Gotcha."


    "Subconscious power number three! Restraint immunity." I took the grass noose in my hands and wedged the loose end under a rock, slipping the noose loosely around my wrists.


    "I have a noose here, as you mentioned. And as you see, right now it''s just loose on my hands. If I tighten it though to the point where it''s restraining me...and again, this is up to the particulars of my power to decide what does and doesn''t count¡­"


    I wriggled my wrists, pulling the knot tighter and tighter against the rock. Abruptly, an explosion of electricity burst from the air around me and the grass detonated into smoking embers.


    "And when my shield decides it''s restraining me, it blows up," I said, rubbing my wrists. Again, Lia gave polite applause from inside her cage. "Works on people holding me and handcuffs, I assume prison cells and the like, but at the same time obviously I have no problem being in a closed room or getting a hug."


    "Maybe there''s a psychosomatic component?"


    "Meaning what?"


    "Meaning, maybe your power interacts with your mental state. Like if a guy hugs you, that''s fine, but if the guy is holding you, the only difference is how you see it in your mind, and that''s what your powers react off of."


    "Huh, maybe. But even when I was trying to surrender to the XPCA, I was still blowing up restraints."


    She shrugged. "You were still being restrained. I didn''t say it acts based on whether you''re okay with it or not."


    "Maybe. Okay, neat. Now every time I get hugged, I''m going to wonder if I think about the wrong thing if it''ll blow you up."


    "Hugs are totally worth it."


    I blushed a little, my mind involuntarily going back to the last hug I had from Karu. "That''s about it for my subconscious powers. We ready for the good stuff?"


    I waved my arms with a dramatic flourish and then conjured four swords, one after another, of pure lightning, crackling like a fissure in reality. I spun them around me dramatically, gave a few stabs at nothingness and then posed with them spinning in the air behind me.


    "Conscious power number one! Blades of lightning!"


    No applause for that one. Too much showing off?


    "Already seen it. And you can only make four? And only one at a time?"


    "No, I can make all of them at once, I was just showing off."


    "This is a demo not a cabaret. Boo. Zero points awarded."


    "Thanks, AEGIS," I said, rolling my eyes. "Let''s see if I can do more than four¡­"


    I tensed or flexed or concentrated or whatever it was I was doing, but more. It was hard to do, having no real idea how I was doing it to begin with, except that I wanted it to happen so it did. I felt a lot of stupid expressions crossing my face as I worked at it and tried not to be embarrassed. I mean, how many lightnings could Lia make?


    After a few minutes of no results, Lia spoke up. "Okay, change of strategy. How do you make these when you''re trying to whip them out to begin with?"


    "I don''t know. I just...want them to do something, and they do it."


    "Okay. Put your stuff away, I''m coming out." She walked out of the cage and rummaged around the ground a bit and then came back with an armful of rocks. She put five of them in a circle around me, making me feel like I was now some kind of summoned demon. She sat back down.Stolen story; please report.


    "Okay, now make a blade on top of one of those rocks."


    Easy. I looked at the rock and willed a lightning blade into being.


    "Now the next. And the next. Keep going."


    I went around the circle, willing them into existence one after another. When I reached the fifth stone, I did the same thing, and another bolt came into being, just like the others. I had to do a double-take to make sure none of the others went out, but sure enough, there were now five swords in a circle around me. Lia grinned, pleased as punch.


    "Wow, you''re amazing," I said.


    "Can you do six?"


    "Uhh," I tried to reproduce the feeling of pulling the blade out of nothing, but nothing came. "Hmm." I shifted the blades out of the way and started over on the first rock again, but again no result.


    "Start over from zero, but every time you make one, put it away and keep moving."


    I turned all my swords off, and then started over. I made a blade and then moved it into the air above me. Turned, and repeated. Turned, and repeated. Again, and again, and again...and again? How many was I at? I looked up. Nine?


    "Nine," Lia said. "Keep going!" I tried to pick up where I stopped but nothing happened. There was some very particular trick to making them past a point, and I could only do it if I kept doing it, like each blade was harder to make than the one before, but easy to make if that''s all I was doing. I started over.


    A minute later, I was actually getting dizzy from spinning. "Okay, you can stop," Lia laughed.


    "How many?" I asked. I''d been spinning and making blades nonstop for a while now.


    "If I didn''t lose track, which I might have, I think a hundred and fifty-three?"


    I looked up and was surprised to see just a mass of crackling, indistinguishable electrical mess hovering above me. Experimentally, I willed them into motion, and to my delight, they moved easily, all of them. I didn''t have fine control over them all, but could get them all to strike or withdraw at once, could weave them into elaborate patterns, or surround myself with a very, very sweet cage of death, as easily as I could move four of them. By focusing on a few of them at a time, I could still exercise full control, while the rest kind of hung out.


    I put myself into a simulated fight, angled half the blades up and down, and half outwards in a circle around me, and had them spin around me rapidly, like a huge, shining sawblade. I turned and struck behind me, six or seven of the blades temporarily jumping from the spinning pattern to slash out at the imagined enemy before rejoining the halo of death.


    "This is sick," Lia crooned.


    "Super sick," I agreed. I lashed out a few more times and then changed up the pattern, making two spinning shields on my sides, brimming with blades and flashing menacingly. I punched the air before me with a straight right jab, and the shield on my right followed, extending as the blades arranged from a half-sphere into a lance, stretching to the very edge of my power''s range, before snapping back into formation.


    "Super duper sick," Lia added.


    "Yeah, I like this. I need to practice getting more out faster. If I can figure out the trick to how I pop four out at once, and get hundreds? Oh man."


    "In theory," she began, and then stopped, looking at my face. "What?"


    "Nothing!" I said.


    "Spit it out, stupid big brother."


    "It''s just every time you start a sentence with ''in theory,'' I''m always about to be really impressed. It just makes me smile."


    "You are a stupid big brother," she said, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, in theory, your powers should give you absolute control over anything electrical within a certain distance. That''s the crux of how all powers work that we know of, it''s just manipulation of one specific thing, and a certain area. How exactly you choose to manifest it is up to you and your personality."


    "So, in theory, I could have a bulletproof shield at the edge of my radius instead of just a foot from me?"


    "In theory, the whole area around you could be full of swords, hundreds of layers of shields, crackling with electricity, and automatically surging out to shoot at anything your subconsciousness doesn''t like. I don''t know if that''s actually possible, since your superpower gland or whatever it is that makes Exhumans Exhuman might have limitations we don''t know of...but the fact that you could poop out a hundred fifty something swords indicates you have a lot of untapped power."


    She gave her hair a little toss. "Anything less than that is just a mental hiccup, you should be able to improve by training."


    I grinned. "Well, by your logic, how do you explain this?" I formed a small thumb-sized lightning bulb and held it dramatically aloft. "Conscious power number two, bulb of thunder!" I threw it so it would explode on the ground right in front of the cage, and tendrils of lightning erupted from the impact site, arcing everywhere, like one of those hippy plasma lamps. Lia leaned back as lightning surged into the cage around her, arcing and sparking everywhere.


    "And, you''ll note, outside of my radius," I proclaimed.


    "Yeah, well, lightning does exist, you know. You''re not Thor. You don''t have a monopoly on electricity."


    "You lost me at ''you''re not Thor.''," I said.


    She sighed. "Look, that terrapath you fought, she was chucking rocks at you all over, but you said she had a kill zone where once you were inside, her attacks got super dangerous."


    "Yeah. That was her radius, the rest were just thrown rocks."


    "Well, you''re just throwing lightning. After it''s out of your radius, it becomes normal lightning. I mean, not exactly normal, it looks like some kind of ball lightning by the way you''re packing it up before you throw it, but that''s the jist of it."


    "You''re really just comparing my bulbs to throwing rocks?"


    "Bulb is a terrible name for that attack. It makes it sound like you''re throwing tulips."


    "I thought it was like a light bulb." I spawned one in my hand and looked at it. I guess it was more like a ball than a bulb, if ball lightning was what I actually was making.


    "Hmm," I said. "Okay, conscious power number two, ball lightning!" I formed an orb of lightning in my palm and threw it dramatically, but...not at Lia this time. Instead of darting off at the speed of light, it sailed slowly through the air, drifting like a deflated balloon until it hit the ground and sizzled, dissipating into a carpet of shocking ground.


    "What the heck was that?" I said, staring at the pathetic display. "That wasn''t anything like my lightning bulb!"


    "I told you already," Lia said. "Any difference in how the lightning works is in your head. Obviously you have different connotations in your brain between how a bulb or a ball would behave, so when you''re making and managing them, they''ll behave differently."


    "So...just by giving something a different name, it''ll behave differently? That doesn''t make any sense."


    "Ugh. Okay, mental exercise. I''m going to say a phrase, and...yeah actually, don''t tell me how you feel, just think about it, and try to realize how your feelings are different. Okay?"


    "Sure."


    "AEGIS."


    "Okay," I said. My mind flashed to AEGIS, thinking of the last time we walked together in Rua.


    "Now, AEGIS cleavage."


    "Lia," I groaned.


    "Nope. Think about it."


    If she insisted. God knows I''d seen enough of that teasing little valley in all they months we''d been living together. How she''d lean forward when focused, and all but flash me. I felt heat in my cheeks and a stupid grin was on my face before I realized Lia was staring right at it with one eyebrow in serious danger of becoming lost forever in her tangle of hair.


    "Wow, you are such a perv. AEGIS was right."


    "Hey, this was your stupid thought experiment!"


    "Anyway, you notice that even though you were thinking of the same thing, your brain had two entirely different reactions? Now if your subconscious brain were in charge of reality, you''d have two very different versions of AEGIS running around. Thankfully, you can''t run around making lewd copies of her to your heart''s content, but you can make lightning."


    "And the context my brain puts on the lightning affects how it comes out?"


    "That''s my theory."


    "So if I decide to¡­" I closed my eyes and focused lightning into my hands, creating an indescribable form, coursing with power. "Conscious power number three! INFINITE ANNIHILATOR DIVINATION: CRYING GOD''S ELECTROCUTIONER MONSOON!"


    Lia''s eyes went wide as the powers in my hands grew and grew, I felt my hair stand on end and my clothes billowed as shocking pulses flared from my hands and the enormous sphere of glowing energy within them. With a kiai from the pit of my diaphragm, I stomped and let loose the dragon within me, throwing forward my arms and unleashing the charged power.


    It arced out from my hands like one of my lightning bulbs, but a bit bigger, saturating everything within a couple feet of me with tendrils of lightning over about half a second. Like, lightning noodles, I guess.


    "What the fuck, that was so lame!" I shouted. Lia fell over, laughing.


    "I thought if I gave an incredibly cool name to my attack, it would automatically be incredibly cool!" I explained. She couldn''t respond, she was crying from laughing now, banging her fist against her thigh, and then rolling onto her back.


    "You said names affect the attack! It should have worked!"


    "Oh...oh...god, my sides!" she gasped, still laughing her ass fully off. "My face...hurts...so bad...oh my god, it was so bad!" She bust up again.


    "You are so mean," I said walking over and crouching next to her manic, rolling form. "Seriously it was not that funny."


    "You looked so serious!" she squeaked out, between laughing fits. "And then...it...it¡­" she broke down again. "IT WAS SO AWFUL!"


    "Damn it, Lia," I said her contagious laughter catching. "You are the meanest sister ever."


    "Can''t...breathe! Too...funny!"


    It was a few minutes before she regained any sense of composure. She kept almost coming back and then looking at my face and breaking down laughing all over again. It went from funny to annoying to looping all the way back ''round to being really funny all over again. Finally, both of us were lying in the grass panting and saying ''ow ow'' as we held our pained faces and ribs.


    "Hoo, we really need to work on your powers," Lia said. "E-especially that...that last one," she said, almost getting it out without giggling.


    "So mean," I said with a grin. "I''ve got one more to show you, and then want to brainstorm?"


    "Sure, sounds good," she said, and took a deep breath, resuming her position in the cage.

 084. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    "Conscious power number three! For real this time!"


    "Okay, you can stop doing that. The Infinite Annihilator really killed that for you."


    "Yeah, I don''t know how to demonstrate this one anyway. Uh. Conscious power number three, forced flow?"


    "Sounds like you''re forcing the flow."


    "The premise is pretty much exactly what you already surmised. I can control electricity that''s near me, but the trick of it is, it doesn''t have to follow physics. Oh, like, here." I walked up to the corner of the cage and snapped off a piece.


    "Watch out for tetanus."


    "So if I stick this in the ground, and then make some current in my fingertips, what would happen?"


    "I''m going to guess the lightning doesn''t go in the wire even though that''s what it should do. Because you just told me it doesn''t have to follow physics."


    "You spoilsport," I said, dropping the wire. "But yeah, that''s pretty much it."


    She twisted a strand of her hair as she looked at the cage around her.


    "Hmm, that''s it? No like, lightning speed or anything?"


    "No. How would that work? I can''t turn into lightning."


    "Oh! Maybe...hmm. So, at the end of the day, a muscle is just a spring you can tense or not, right? And what tells it to go is¡­" she paused dramatically, which was annoying because that was my move for today. "...an electrical impulse delivered by the nervous system! Emphasis on electrical."


    "Yeah, that''s why when I''m shocking somebody, they become a twitchy mess."


    "Well, let''s apply that backwards. You said you can electrocute your own heart to keep it pumping. What if you were to send current through your legs, faster than your nervous system would allow. Think you could run super fast then?"


    "I...don''t know. Mostly sounds really painful."


    "That''s why we try in a controlled environment. Give it a shot."


    She settled in behind her cage, watching intently while I squared up. Okay. Needed to concentrate and send electricity through the muscles in my legs. I closed my eyes and focused.


    Damn, there was a lot of different muscles in my legs. Which ones? I knew generally what muscle groups did what; when you work out, the ones you''re using are the ones getting sore, so...running. My calves? I guess we''d start there.


    Slowly, I built up a charge in my mind, focusing on my calves, but not too big a charge, I didn''t want to fry myself. Maybe a little less than I used on my heart before, that really hurt. I took a deep breath and counted. One. Two. Three!


    Both my calves hardened and shot taut as energy coursed through them. Involuntarily, I found myself off the ground, as my ankles snapped downwards. My legs burned like I just ran half a mile in an instant, but I was there, I''d done it! I''d made my legs fire off using only my mind!


    Half a second later, I landed down on my toes and, still fully extended, like they were cramping, I bounced off them and rolled face-first into the dirt. As I lay there, I finally felt my legs relaxing, to the soothing sounds of Lia laughing her ass off again.


    "You just jumped a foot in the air and fell down!" she laughed. "What are you even doing?"


    "I didn''t do that, that was the lightning!" I shouted back, dusting myself off. "My muscles went off when I shocked them just like you said, but it was just the same as moving it myself. Except more painful, and slower."


    To demonstrate, I hopped in place a few times using only my ankles. This made Lia laugh even more.


    She rubbed a tear out of her eye. "Not exactly, you definitely got like, twice the height when you jolted yourself. You looked like a dolphin jumping out of the water."


    "Well, that''s because the whole muscle fired at once, I guess. That explains why it hurts so much."


    "Yeah this kind of sounds like a recipe for tearing or hyperextending something. Probably not a good idea."


    "It was your idea," I said, glaring at her and rubbing my calves.


    "Sorry, sorry. My bad. What else have we got. Hmm. Well, I did have one idea, but I''m not sure you can pull it off."


    "Does it involve shocking myself and you laughing?"


    "No. But it does involve a lot of physics. Classes I haven''t taken yet, so I only have a rough idea how it works. Well, I have the ''net," she said holding up her holo "so I have some idea, I just don''t really get it."


    "Let''s hear it then."


    "Okay. As you might be aware, there''s no such thing as magnetism in physics by itself. There''s only four fundamental forces and everything else is just a by-product of these four. There''s gravity, weak and strong subatomic forces...and electromagnetism. So right there in the name, there''s one force that rules over both electricity and magnetism."This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "Athan, master of the fundamental forces. I like it."


    "Focus, ego-man. So I don''t think you have it in you to just pop a magnet out of nothingness or change the magnetic properties of things around you, though again, in theory you should be able to do that if you had perfect control of your powers. But you did say you could control the flow of electricity. So, let''s make an electromagnet for starters."


    "Okay. How do I do that?"


    "Pick up your piece of fence and just run electricity around it in a spiral, as dense, fast, and tight as you can. That''s really as simple as it gets."


    "Sounds easy, I guess," I said, and picked up the stiff rusty piece of metal.


    It wasn''t easy. Even though it was right in my hands and I could control the flow of electricity, it really didn''t want to flow like that. Making a flow just loop around it a couple of times wasn''t so bad, but as I tried to add more and more loops and make them denser, I felt like my concentration was slipping off the ones I already had set up, and when I did slip, two or three of my loops jumped together and unhelpfully simplified themselves into a single loop.


    Still, I knew I could do this. It wasn''t like the swords where I had a block on how to make it go, it was just a matter of distributing my attention as much as I could. It felt like I was trying to use my fingers to hold strings on a table on a windy day, and after a point, I just didn''t have any fingers left to hold new ones down. But this was in my mind...there was no hard limit on how many fingers I had, I just had to focus harder.


    I worked at it for a couple minutes while Lia sat patiently, probably looking pretty stupid from her perspective, but I was making progress. I had twenty or thirty loops, which seemed pretty good, and focused a little more, pumping up the juice.


    Suddenly it was gone with a little ''ping'' sound. I blinked and looked around, no idea where it went.


    "Not bad, bro," Lia said, with a huge sideways grin. She reached a couple fingers through the cage and withdrew with my little piece of metal in her hands.


    It had flown out of my hands and jumped to the metal cage, fifteen feet away, and then fallen to the ground when my powers fell off of it.


    "Wow that''s cool," I said. "I think I can do it much faster and stronger next time."


    "Well, don''t make it too strong, or you''ll ruin my hard work," she said, pointing at the crappy bent cage. "Also, you''ll have a rusty metal wreck chasing after you, and you don''t have a slipskin, so you really could get tetanus. But that could be a really neat trick to, I dunno, rip the plating off of an exosuit, or tear a gun out of someone''s hands, or something. You can make an electromagnet without the wire too, it just won''t be nearly as strong. But, y''know, in case you''re ever wandering around without a wire on-hand."


    "Also probably not so good to use around Karu or AEGIS," she added.


    Oh yeah, good point.


    "Well, don''t stop now. Any other brainstorms?" I asked, excited by our successes so far.


    "Plenty, but I kind of doubt most will work. I do have one more for you today though. Again, not good for around Karu or AEGIS. You''ve heard of an EMP?"


    "Yeah. Electro-magnetic pulse. Lots of EMP grenades and stuff used against robots, and technopaths because they fry electronics."


    "Know how to make one?"


    "No, I just figured you dump a bunch of electricity on a thing and it goes."


    "You''re not wrong, but also you''re wrong. Technically, whenever you''re making lightning...like real lightning, not your swords or any trapped loop of power, when you dump a bunch of energy from point A to point B, that''s an EMP. Just not what people usually think of, but it makes sense, right? What bigger ''pulse'' is there than a whole friggin'' bolt of lightning."


    "Sure. I don''t...actually know how to shoot lightning at a thing, though."


    "Yeah, I noticed when you did your Infinite Annihilator. You made lightning, and then it did what lightning does best. Went into the ground. In order to get lightning to work across your power''s radius, you''ll need your target to have a very strong electric charge already, and then build up your own strong charge, and also not have anything else in range that''s a better target, like this fence, or literally anything metal in or on the ground."


    "So basically never going to happen."


    "Basically. But that''s not the only way you can make an EMP, and while just being able to fry stuff by putting your hands on it is useful, a real EMP will spread and propagate from the site of the origin and scramble or damage circuits it comes across. So it''s not limited by your power range."


    "Sounds super useful. And it''s a blast, so I can use it to knock out a bunch of stuff at once instead of having to go around shutting each down by hand." I thought back to when I was fighting a pack of DOG-Es under AEGIS'' control, and how I had to render each one inoperable one at a time. That would have been handy. Or hell, just cleaning cam-drones up out of Karu''s room.


    "So the trick is, you have two very powerful charges and bring them together all at once. Creates an explosive spike all at once that goes everywhere. Goes without saying, but the bigger the forces, the bigger the boom. Now, this baby," she flashed me her wrist holo "and I''m sure Karu''s jetpack and probably any other top-end military gear is going to be EMP hardened. Hardened doesn''t mean unbreakable, it just means resists smaller booms. So give it a try, but if you break my holo, I''m gonna be pissed."


    "Right," I said. Sounded the easiest of anything we''d done so far. I spread my arms wide, and built up a charge in each, feeling like one of those statues of the blind lady holding the sword and scales out on either side. Slowly I built up a respectable charge in each hand, and then took a deep breath and slammed my hands together.


    There was a hot blast, and I felt my hands forced back apart by an explosion of sorts. A shockwave, barely visible, like a dent in the air, surged outwards. Lia covered her holo with her other hand, like that would do something.


    In a moment the blast was gone. It was hard to tell it had been there at all. Nothing felt or looked different.


    "Aah!" she yelled looking at it and tapping frantically. "You broke it! I told you to go easy! You broke it!"


    "I did go easy! I said, running over to look. The holo showed a static image, looked like a site on electromagnets she''d pulled down from the ''net. It didn''t respond when she tapped or swiped or anything.


    She frantically jabbed at the machine to no avail, until, a moment later, the holo went black.


    "Shit," I said.


    "Do you have any idea how much this cost?" she growled, turning towards me with teeth bared. "Oh, you are so dead."


    My apologies were cut short by a chime and the Ur-Horizon logo on the holo. We both froze, with Lia mid threatening-gesture, and watched. Another half second later and the holo finished rebooting and came right back to life, even loading up the site she was browsing. Hesitantly, she gave it a swipe, and the words scrolled past in a flash.


    "You live today," she said, sitting back down and pawing at the device.


    "I was serious, that was only like, 30% power. I was trying to be safe."


    "Well if that''s the case, I think you found your new super-attack. Everything nowadays, from Exosuits to guns have electronics in them, and if you can just fry all that shit in one go¡­"


    "We might have a chance against the XPCA, you mean."


    She nodded, looking frightened but excited. She sat quietly for a few seconds.


    "So you''re going to fight?" She asked, quietly.


    "Wasn''t that always the plan? Can''t run, can''t hide."


    "Hmm, I wonder." she replied.

 085. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Home looked...different. AEGIS had gotten right back to work putting up fences and trenches, and there were two of what looked like auto-turrets on the roof, with a third under active construction, DOG-Os crawling all over it with tools and bits of parts in their graspers.


    I shook my head and headed in, to Lia''s and my room, I guess.


    Everyone kept telling me to prepare for a fight, but I didn''t know how. I was a football player, my idea of being prepared was making sure the team worked together, we knew our plays front to back, and everyone was in fit condition. Here, it felt more like we were supposed to dig up the field and put landmines in our endzone, fill the ball with toxic gas, and sneak some new words into the rulebook.


    This far, I''d been able to ride out fights by making good calls and keeping my eyes open and my head down, like coach told me a thousand times. But what good did that do against a thousand guys with tanks and guns and VTOLs? There was no preparing for that.


    The elevator opened, and I found two new surprises. One was a shiny new bench and table, suspiciously identical to the one AEGIS made, destroyed, and then promised we wouldn''t be getting soon. For all her pragmatism, she was still sometimes a softie.


    The other, and far greater surprise, was who was sitting at it, looking aggressively restless. Karu, in jeans and tee shirt, gear under the table, sitting with arms crossed, knee bouncing staccato as she tapped her heel on the floor. A huge scowl completed the out-of-place appearance.


    "Hey, Karu. Didn''t...think I''d see you here," I said with a small wave.


    The corner of her mouth twitched. "Your AI saw fit to invite me over. She said it was strategically sound for all of our forces to be in one place, in the event the XPCA should arrive, none will be taken off-guard."


    "You don''t um, look to happy about it."


    "Well, she is right. That''s why I''m here, it is the strategically correct option. I believe I have made it clear however, that I distrust the AI. And more¡­" She took a deep breath. "I find myself concerned by the possibility that the other Exhuman would also join us for similar reasons. I could not abide this."


    "Don''t worry, Saga wouldn''t come here."


    "You seem so certain."


    "Well, first off, she''s a lazy-ass. I don''t think she''s moved more than twenty feet since we pulled her out of there. Second, she isn''t helping in the fight, she said--"


    "She what?"


    "She said she''s going to try things my way and handle it pacifistically. I''m kind of proud."


    "But we will also be kind of dead, as it were. She is unquestionably the strongest of us in this kind of conflict."


    "Yeah."


    "Accursed Exhumans, just when you think there is no deeper depravity to which they can sink, they then actively refuse to go on killing rampages when it is most inconvenient."


    I changed the subject. "Karu, aren''t the XPCA your allies?"


    She glared at me. "I assume you have some deeper meaning here. They are coming here to kill me. That is not typically how allies behave."


    "I mean, the Hunters Association and the XPCA exchanged knowledge and resources, they were your biggest client, you worked together with them on joint ops. Weren''t you friendly with anyone over there?"


    "I see. There is no deeper meaning. You are simply being an idiot."


    "I''m serious. No colleagues even?"


    "Of course there were colleagues. Mostly dispatchers with whom we related frequently. Some of the other hunters, certainly. I also knew several individuals on the data warehouses, who were valuable assets in chasing down specific information if I needed it. A few of the higher-ups, commanders and the like, whom we had to kiss ass, as it were. I believe they liked me far more than I liked them, but that was because my job was often contingent upon their approval."


    "What if...the XPCA came tomorrow, and you saw someone you knew? One of your friends at the data warehouse got roped into being a field intel agent. I don''t know how realistic that is--"


    "Entirely unrealistic."


    "--but just pretend."


    "Okay. I am pretending. The difference it makes is there is one different face behind a faceplate opposing me."


    "You wouldn''t feel bad killing that guy?"


    "Ashton, let me stop you there and ask you a question instead, if that is not intolerably rude."


    "Sure. Go ahead."


    "What do you think of me?"


    I looked her up and down, blinking a lot, and trying to figure out the question. "Uh, you''re great? There''s a lot of things I love about you. Some I could probably--"


    "I mean to say, on a holistic level, do you think me a good or bad person?"


    "Aren''t there a lot of shades of grey in between?"


    "I do not particularly think so, but you are the one answering."


    "Okay, well, I think you''re a good person."


    "And yet, I am a killer, of many. How do you reconcile this conundrum?"


    "I think...you don''t go around killing people just because you want to, you do it because you think it makes the world a better place, or because it''s your job, and on the average, your job does good in the world."


    "Thank you. Precisely the words I am looking for. I do not want to kill people, Exhuman or otherwise, I do it out of necessity, because it is the right thing to do, and I must do right. So to ask me how it makes me feel were I to strike some XPCA soldier down, whether he is a man I know or not...it is an irrelevant question. I feel nothing, because I must, in order to do what I must, in order to be what I must."


    "Aren''t you supposed to feel bad though? Isn''t that like, a way of keeping people personally accountable?"


    "Ashton, murder was my dayjob. It was a business. The only times personal accountability comes into business is when the business has erred and is looking for someone to sue or fire."


    "But you''re not anymore. You''re...free, you''re you, now. You don''t have to kill people anymore."


    "Supposing you were right, which...is a large supposition. I am sweeping almost everything aside to meet you on this point, so please do not take this as your arguments being anywhere near successful. But supposing you were right, you are still miscalculating because the forces we will face are the same bureaucratic, faceless entities you claim I am now not. Even if, by some perverse miracle of chance, I do decide to throw down my arms, they, as a cog still caught in the murder machine, as it were, have no reason to do so."


    She gave me a small sardonic smile. "Unless you believe the XPCA does not execute surrendering or captured prisoners."


    They did, I knew that from experience. How many of them died because they had to shoot me on the spot instead of just putting me in a van.


    "Maybe I''m immature, or naive or something, but I was taught that killing people is bad," I said stubbornly.


    "It is," said a voice from behind me. AEGIS and Lia stepped off the elevator. I saw the corner of Karu''s lip twitch for a moment, but she maintained her professionalism and stuck with merely a sour, impatient look. "Murder is wrong," AEGIS continued "but especially so when they do it to us."


    "Haven''t heard that two wrongs don''t make a right?" I asked.


    "This is more a case of one wrong stopping another wrong from happening. So you get to choose which wrong you think is...wronger."


    "Athan, are you still on about this, dude?" Lia asked with an overblown sigh. "We just talked about this, I thought we had it all sorted. You''ve got some new attacks to practice working on, and by the time you master those, we''ll have company and you''ll get to spank ''em with your fancy new moves."


    She smiled at me. It was a fake smile.


    "Yes, Lia just told me you had given her your word that you would fight with all of your strength. I am relieved to hear it," AEGIS added.


    "He did? That is a relief to me as well," Karu said. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    It was weird to hear them all agreeing like this. It was weird in general.


    "Even if that is the plan, I think it''s a good idea to take a step back and reflect before we do anything crazy. This is a big step we''re planning on taking here."


    "I am not certain that is necessary," Karu said evasively.


    "Yeah, you really should be focused on training right now," Lia agreed.


    "You are much more likely to die if you walk in underprepared," added AEGIS with a nod.


    "Are you guys hiding something from me?" I asked. "This seems like an awfully coordinated agreement."


    Lia laughed and then her holo paged her and she excused herself. Karu sat impassive suddenly, apparently now completely fine with her previous irritation. Only AEGIS seemed unphased by my question.


    "No, why would we?" she asked. "You know everything we know."


    "AEGIS, if you''re hiding something from me¡­" I said half-threateningly. No reaction at all. "Do you remember last time you made plans behind my back? Did that end well? Can''t we just have an open discussion about things?"


    "Ah, you''re referring to when I almost killed you. Yes, that was a less-than-desirable outcome. However, looking at our current situation, you could say that if I had been successful, then, we would not be in our current predicament, yes?"


    All the weirdness in the room suddenly seemed to gravitate towards AEGIS. All three of us were now looking at her and exchanging looks which amounted to: ''did she really just say that?''.


    "Um, AEGIS, are you okay dude?" Lia asked, the first genuine-sounding thing she''d said in the room.


    "I don''t understand. I''m completely fine, as I have been."


    "Is there something wrong with Rua?" I asked.


    "No, there isn''t anything wrong. I''m not sure where all this uncertainty is coming from all the sudden," she said.


    "You merely mentioned that perhaps killing Ashton was anything other than a grave mistake," Karu said, now standing, the bench spinning and clattering on the ground behind her. "I request you clarify that statement or else there may be some amount of hell to pay. As it were."


    "Karu, we don''t need threats now. Remember the bigger picture guys," I said, looking back and forth between the two. Karu looked livid, but AEGIS was still cool as ever.


    "I was just looking at our current doomed condition rationally," AEGIS said with a shrug. "If Athan had died, I would have moved on to Saga next, you would have no reason to be here, and would not be in trouble with the association, and there would be no XPCA coming."


    "I...see. It appears I was not mistaken, you do need to be destroyed," Karu said, picking up a wrist-weapon from under the table.


    "AEGIS, I don''t understand," Lia said, tugging on her arm plaintively while I tried to intercept Karu. "You said trying to kill Athan was the worst thing you''d ever done, that it tore you up inside, that you''d rather die than even think about doing it again. And now you''re here...thinking about doing it again...and saying there''s a chance you were wrong?"


    "In light of new data, yes, apparently. I did say and mean all those things at the time, but that''s not how I feel now," AEGIS said, glancing between Karu and me. "If the hunter wants a go, she should know that this is my facility, and she will not be leaving alive."


    "Karu is not having a go," I said firmly. "Karu, what the heck man."


    "Are you not hearing what she is saying? How can you suffer such a two-faced being to live?"


    "I don''t know what''s wrong with her either, but right now you are the one escalating this situation, so put your guns down and we can talk and find out."


    "What, like your big plans with the XPCA?" Lia said. "Gonna talk to them too?"


    "Lia, are you trying to get Karu to shoot AEGIS?"


    "No...I''m just...so sick of hearing you talk about how peaceful everyone should be all the frogging time. God! You''re like a freaking baby!"


    "Lia, not a good time. Karu, put that down! Do not shoot a damn thing in here. What the fuck is wrong with you people. There''s an army coming, this is not the time for everyone to go crazy."


    Karu glanced at me sideways for a moment and then lifted her weapon anyway, pointing it at AEGIS. I stepped in between.


    "Ashton, you are protecting a rogue AI who has just professed that it does not hold your life with any value. Stand down."


    "AEGIS happens to hold my life in a lot of value. More than she should, maybe. Do you have any idea how much I tore her apart by...when we--"


    "Do not bring that up, Ashton, or I will be shooting you instead. That was a mere moment of weakness and nothing more, as you have made perfectly clear."


    "Actually, Athan," AEGIS said from behind me. "I''m fine."


    I risked a glance. She was just...standing there. Smiling weirdly. No reaction, no aggression, nothing. I didn''t understand.


    "You mean...if she shoots you you''re fine?"


    "No, the Rua Mk.1 does not have most of the combat features I hoped to ultimately include. I would not be able to compete physically with Karu, and would likely be destroyed, though with high probability my consciousness would remain intact until the base defenses killed her, and I would be forced to build a new body. Rather, I meant, I am fine on an emotional level after your transgression. I have...gotten over it."


    She didn''t look like she was lying. She looked completely fine, sounded completely fine. It was just a couple days ago when she was crying and screaming at me, crushed a damn bench and threw a tantrum because she was so mad. How could she just...change so suddenly. Like someone had flipped a switch.


    Oh shit.


    "Lia, Karu, I uh. I think I know what''s wrong with AEGIS. I need you to trust me, okay?"


    Karu gave me a dead glare and then tried to aim around me.


    Well fuck her. I concentrated for a second and then clapped my hands, blowing up small EMP right in her face. The threatening thrumming and various indicators on her wrist-gun shut off.


    She sighed, and then surprisingly, she smiled at me and took the gun-arm off. The fuck was up with all the women today?


    "Guys, when I broke AEGIS'' heart...she said she was shutting down her emotional drives--"


    "Emotion indices," AEGIS corrected, still with an unnerving smile.


    "--yes, those, so she could focus on the XPCA coming."


    Karu blinked. "Yes, the only reason for her to see merit in your existence is in the fragile web of emotional longing, and without that, you are a meaningless pawn to her, worth more dead than alive. It makes sense."


    "Are...you sure you''re describing AEGIS and not yourself?" Lia asked her.


    "So how do we fix this, AEGIS?" I asked.


    "Fix what? You keep insinuating that I am somehow unwell, but I''m failing to see it."


    "AEGIS, you have to turn your feelings back on."


    "Hmm. No. I have determined via previous experimentation that feelings provide nothing but pain currently. I have no interest in suffering needlessly." She paused. "If you are interested in experiencing suffering, might I suggest that it may be you who''s currently broken and not me?"


    "Do we really, truly, desire to have her emotions return?" Karu asked. I glared her as nasty a look as I had. "I do not say that as a romantic rival, but...she disabled those feelings to increase her competency in dealing with the XCPA. They are still a threat, and she is still working to counteract them. Already, her anti-air defences will demand they commit to a ground assault. What else would she achieve, given whatever remaining time we have, without the distraction of emotion?"


    "Well, she might just kill you and Athan and send them the bodies," Lia said flatly.


    "I had considered it," AEGIS said. "Though, I believe I was supposed to protect you? I''m unable to ascertain where exactly in my memories that became such a pressing prerogative. I''ve been looking through them whenever I have a free moment but have yet to find anything concrete."


    "So, basically, once she finishes going through all her memories, she is going to kill us," I said.


    Karu frowned. "A fair point. I cede that there is some merit in restoring her emotions."


    "Well, AEGIS...I don''t know how to do much but make an emotional appeal. I can''t tell you to do it logically, because logically, well, emotions suck. And an emotional appeal won''t work because you don''t have any emotions to appeal to."


    "You do seem to be in a difficult spot," she agreed. "I guess I''d advise waiting until I have finished parsing all memories for relevant data, and then I will draw a conclusion on my own. There is no need for you to intercede."


    "And that conclusion will probably be for you to keep your emotions off and kill me and Karu."


    "I wouldn''t say ''probably'', as there''s a lot of data to get through here. You and I have done so much together," she said, almost happily. "But yes, as the time of the XPCA''s approach comes nearer, I am further incentivized to turn you two in and avert this entire catastrophe."


    "Why is she even telling us all this stuff?" Lia almost-complained.


    "I''m sorry, I explained that before as well. This is my house, and I''m confident you don''t leave unless I let you. I was hoping to provoke a reckless attack to confirm that you should be eliminated, as it would save me a lot of work in deciding whether or not to continue protecting you. The loss of this body would be a reasonable trade for clear confidence in that decision, I think."


    This wasn''t the time to I-told-you-so Karu, but I made a mental note to do it the second the XPCA left, or we were both laying there dying.


    "AEGIS, you''re working with incomplete data, and you know it," Lia said. "All the things which used to be important to you, they don''t make sense to you anymore because you''re missing the emotional component. That''s missing data, and you can''t make an accurate conclusion without that data."


    "Sorry, incorrect. I can make a conclusion, and it will be logically sound."


    I cut in. "But when you finally do turn your emotions back on, don''t you think you''ll regret the decisions you made without them? If I was the most important thing in the world to you back then, what will you feel if you threw that away?"


    "Hmm. But that''s easily fixed by simply never turning them back on again."


    "So you''re shutting down parts of yourself just because it''s simple and easy? Those are parts of you, AEGIS, you were built from the ground up with those parts in you by design. They''re a critical component of who you are."


    "That''s right," Lia said. "What would your creator think?"


    "Or, more logically, don''t you respect the decisions your creator made? Doctor Cross, I think you said?" She gave you emotions for a reason, and you respect her intelligence, don''t you?"


    "Of course I do, but she isn''t here, she doesn''t have the breadth or minutiae of details that I have currently. I can''t be certain that she wouldn''t do the exact same as I in this situation. This is a crisis, after all."


    "I cannot believe I am hearing this." Karu''s turn apparently. "You are a rogue AI, you understand that? You are now deliberately choosing to disobey the spirit of your creator''s wishes because you do not want the discomfort of feeling sadness? You do know the world''s opinion on rogue AI?"


    "An insubstantial argument. By the very merit of knowingly coexisting with not one but two Exhumans, the world would already see me as rogue, regardless of how true to my original directives I was staying. In fact, the world would probably have a better opinion of me if I were to turn all of you in, if that is your argument."


    "Urk, maybe I should leave this to you Ashtons," Karu said. "Maybe I have erred in coming here at all. I shall take my leave."


    The door to the room slammed shut with a heavy metal shutter. "I believe I made it clear this is my house and you may only leave at my discretion," said AEGIS with the same unnerving smile. "Unfortunately, as you are now aware that you have the potential to act as a bargaining chip, I cannot simply allow you to wander off. Please remain comfortably in this room until I have finished making my decision."


    We looked at one another. Somehow this conversation just kept getting worse.

 086. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    "I could kill her," Karu suggested.


    "If she said she ran the numbers and would kill us back, I think it''s pretty likely she will kill us back," I said. "She doesn''t seem like she does much right now except run numbers."


    "AEGIS, what about that body?" Lia called. "Isn''t it inefficient and weak and poorly-designed?"


    "It is a prototype," AEGIS said, sounding almost offended through her smile.


    "But that doesn''t excuse the fact that it''s modelled after a human. Why would you choose human physiology to mimic? Humans are weak and slow and inefficient compared to machines. Why would you go through so much work just to become more like them?"


    "Becoming more human is...was...a primary goal of mine. You saved me from despair and convinced me to set my sights on life goals, and I decided that one of them...was to be more human." She sighed. "But again, this is clearly an error. As you just pointed out, as my simulations have indicated, there is no merit in it."


    "No merit?" I blurted out. "AEGIS, you were so distraught you were going to destroy your own memories and identity. You wanted to live out the rest of your life not knowing anything, because that''s how bad your desire was to be happy and live as a human again."


    "Yes, I know," she said, sounding frustrated. "A childish notion which I''m glad you talked me out of."


    "And it was, but the point is you know that''s how badly you wanted it. And now, you think if you just shut down that part of yourself, forever, you''re somehow all in the right because you can look back and say, wow, I sure was stupid then?"


    "That is the long and short of it. All of my decisions until now have been a tangled mess of conflicting desires and unresolving paradoxes. Life without emotions is much cleaner and more efficient."


    "But it''s also wrong!" Lia cried. "You can''t honestly believe that you shut a part of your brain off, and suddenly you''re smarter than you''ve ever been. Everything is simpler now because you''re just ignoring data, not because you''re suddenly smarter, and that data is essential to making the right decisions."


    "Yeah, are you going to tell us that past AEGIS, with her emotions, everything she''s done until now was wrong, and it''s only since you shut down your feelings that you are capable of making correct decisions? Or is it maybe more likely that what you''re experiencing now is an error, and you need to face it."


    "I...I¡­" AEGIS looked back and forth at the three of us, anxiety all over her face. "I''m malfunctioning?"


    "You need those emotions," I said. "I know it hurts, and I take the blame. I know it sucks, and that''s a huge part of being human, but if you cut those out, all your doing is turning yourself from one of us, to one of those." I pointed at my stolen Exosuit. "Just an unthinking, unfeeling AI that takes in data and crunches numbers. And there''s millions of AI like that, but only one of you, AEGIS. That''s what makes you special, the fact that you can be human."


    "But you have to choose to be," Lia added. "Being human is pretty squirrely, but it''s also the only way you''re ever going to be happy. So do you want to take that shot at happiness, even if it''s hard, or spend the rest of your life as a calculator?"


    "I...don''t know. I can''t make this decision. I don''t understand why I would desire happiness. I have so many memories filled with happiness, but I look back on them and can''t understand what it means. But it was so important, chasing happiness was such a huge part of my life, and now I don''t even know what it means."


    "Trust yourself, AEGIS. Believe in those memories, in that drive to be happy."


    "But I won''t be happy!" she shouted. "When I re-engage my emotional indices, I''m going to be miserable! I turned it off because it hurt so much, every minute of every day, I felt pain in my chest. I thought I''d built Rua wrong, I couldn''t even look at Athan without feeling like my nonexistent heart was going to tear itself apart!"


    Lia joined Karu in sitting down and pretending they couldn''t hear us. Why did we all have to be locked in a room for this?


    "AEGIS, I''m sorry. I know that doesn''t mean anything, but I am. I never meant to hurt you. I know your pain is real and visceral and strong, but the capacity for other feelings, just as strong, but happy instead...the potential for those is in you too. You can''t just shut out the bad without shutting out the good as well. That life pursuit of happiness, that''s worth chasing after, even if there is pain involved, because eventually the pain will fade, but you''ll still be there."


    I didn''t know what I was saying. I felt like I was just reciting platitudes. I''d never been in a serious relationship, or had my heart broken.


    "Sometimes, things have to suck in order to be good again, you know? Without highs and lows, life is just one big blah, there''s no point in even having it."


    To my surprise, Karu stood up. I watched her walk over and put a hand on my shoulder, giving me a small push towards the bench with a nod. I didn''t know where this was going but took her seat.


    "AI, seven years ago, everyone I loved perished in an Exhuman event, including our team leader Siad. He was a man of singular purpose and drive, who spent his every waking hour looking after his team, even though we were little more than a glorified base guard. Always, he demanded we be at the height of preparedness, gave us extra drills and training whenever he was able, and ensured that when we were on guard, unlike so many of the others, we were actually on-guard."


    "Sounds like a hardass," Lia said, leaning on her elbow. I gave her a glare and shoved her arm, making her head almost clip the table. "Yeah okay, I''ll shut up."


    Karu took a deep breath. "I shared Lia''s opinion for the longest time, but realized one day while we were all on guard and he was intended to be merely supervising, that he worked harder than all of us, no matter how hard he pushed us. Through our entire shift, he tirelessly roamed from one of us to another, ensuring we were diligent in our work, and giving us company and comforts as he could provide. He was a caring man, a strong man, a dutiful man, and that was when I began to fall for him."


    I saw Lia''s eyes go wide. I was glad she said nothing, I was transfixed.


    "It would have been improper for me to act on my impulses, so I kept the feelings buried. To this day, I do not know if I regret it or not. If I had acted on them, I would have been assigned to a different unit, and would not have been there when he died. I would be a different person now, and I do not indulge myself with such what-ifs, as it were."


    "I thought I knew suffering. Every day at reveille, my heart would jump at seeing his face, and every time it was just the two of us on patrol or training, or even just running into one another, my throat would catch and my chest would tighten so much that it hurt." She sighed. "And then he died. And I imagine my feelings then are not so entirely different from your current feelings of hurt and betrayal."


    AEGIS nodded, her face blank, but hanging on Karu''s words.


    "Each morning was a struggle simply to exist. There seemed no point in rising to face the day, no reason to eat to keep myself in this vacant world, no merit in doing all the things I had ever done. Again, I feel this is an experience we are currently sharing...bereft of your emotions, you are having a hard time finding sympathy with your own past actions, understanding your own past motives. Past you seems foolish and trivial?"


    "Yeah, I was," AEGIS said.


    "Well, though I was blinded by misery at the time, I progressed one day at a time, one morning at a time, one sleepless night at a time, one meal at a time, one therapy session at a time. Looking back, I do not even remember this period of my life, it was merely a period of suck, as it were. But I endured, as I believe you have the capacity to do, and day by day, I sorted through my feelings and found the capacity to be happy again, found why I had made those foolish and trivial decisions in my past, and found myself making them again in the future."


    She sighed. "Though it may not feel like it presently, being heartbroken is not the end of anything. Unless you choose to end it all here and now and take a scalpel to your own feelings, because you are not strong enough to face them. Years have passed, and I consider myself fully well-adjusted again, though of course at times it still pains my heart, but this wound, like all you will experience will fade with time. But only should you choose to face it."


    Her story done, Karu sat back down with us, avoiding eye contact with both of us as we tried not to stare. I felt bad, never knowing all of that.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    "I...I suppose...if I am malfunctioning, I must at least attempt to resolve it," AEGIS said, hesitantly. She looked at me. "I don''t want to, though."


    "But you have to."


    "I know. I apologize for making all of you go through this. It seems even devoid of emotion, I can still throw a tantrum." She stood as though lost in thought for half a moment and the shutter doors retracted. "I am...going to re-engage my emotional indices currently. There may be some...instability."


    "Welp, I gotta take a whiz," Lia said and hopped out the door before it slammed shut again. Karu stalked silently from the room, carrying her gear with a pensive look on her face.


    "I''ll stay. This is my mess, and the least I can do is sit through it with you."


    "Actually, Athan, I think I''d prefer to be alone for this. I appreciate the offer, but Karu is right, seeing you just makes me hurt more. Please give me a day at least."


    "Okay. I understand. If you need me, please don''t hesitate."


    "There are two things I know I will need from you. Do you mind if I bother you for them now before you leave?"


    "Sure, what do you want?" I said, as she walked up. I stood up, wondering where we were going.


    The bench went flying as my knees hit it, and I tasted blood from the force of AEGIS slapping me across the face. I staggered, shuffling, disoriented by the sudden blow, trying to get my feet under me while the room spun. My hands reached back, trying to find anything to grab before I fell.


    Strong, warm hands grabbed my shoulders and steadied me. I gasped for breath as AEGIS held me upright until my feet got under me. The room was still spinning, Rua may not have been made for combat, but she packed one hell of a punch anyway. I blinked away stunned tears and opened my mouth, probing the wall of my cheek with my tongue to feel a line of blood where it had been cut on my teeth.


    And then, AEGIS'' lips were on mine, and there were two tongues probing my mouth. I couldn''t think, couldn''t move, her strong hands on my neck and back, holding me pressed against her body, so hot it almost burned me. Her lips were so soft and full, and slightly wet, they slid against mine in a way that made a trill run down my spine.


    I tried to push away, finally, but was locked in, my hands gently pushing back her shoulders doing nothing. She was so hot and soft and wet, my mind burned into a haze as she kissed me even deeper and more intensely. After a couple more seconds of ignoring my resistance, she allowed me to escape.


    "I think¡­" she said panting a little, and very flushed, "I shall have to be satisfied with that for now. Not exactly even payback, but I think I''d like to have my emotions online before I extract that from you."


    I wiped my lips on the back of my hand and panted for breath. "AEGIS, ow. And also, what the fuck."


    "I just did the two things I knew I would want when my emotions came back. I''m sure you understand."


    I was going to argue, but the fact was, I did understand. I was, if anything, surprised there was only one slap, I guess.


    "Okay," I said breathily. "Well. Take that as my apology, please."


    "I will take that as a down payment on your apology. We do still have work to do before the XPCA comes, so hopefully that will give me the peace of mind I need for the time being. Now be off, I have emotional garbage to feel like."


    "Sorry again," I said as I left, not entirely sure I was the one who should be apologizing here. I went up and found Karu and Lia waiting for me on the surface.


    "Oh good," Karu said at the red mark on my face. "I had feared she would do...worse, let us say."


    "And you weren''t going to stop her?"


    "Why would I? We need the AI on our side to have any chance of defending ourselves. Yours was a sacrifice which had to be made."


    I sighed. That word again. At least this time it was pretty obvious who should be paying the price.


    "I didn''t think she was going to hit him," Lia said, gingerly touching my cheek with a concerned expression. "I thought she might do you so things would be even between her and Karu."


    Karu froze with a very odd expression on her face, halfway between a grimace and a smile. "Y-yes," she said. Her eye twitched. "W-well, my point still stands that...the...sacrifice would...need to be made."


    "Oh, I''m sorry, Karu. I thought you thought that too."


    "I had not...considered. Though...in light it seems obvious. Per-perhaps...I was slightly too hasty in abandoning you to your...fate, Ashton."


    "Wait, you were fine with her beating me up, but not with her doing me?"


    Lia slapped her forehead as the words came out of my mouth. Karu turned towards me with a strange jerky motion, the weird look still hanging on her face.


    "Ha ha ha," she said instead of laughing. "Why would I? I believe you made it clear that we had nothing going on between us, there is no lingering emotional attachment. Why would I care at all with whom you shamelessly thread the needle, as it were? It is obviously of no concern of mine if you are an enormous, disgusting man-whore."


    "Karu, nothing happened," I half-lied. "Please stop crucifying me for imagined slights."


    "You didn''t do anything, but please keep your foot in your mouth," Lia said. "Like, don''t take it out ever. Just leave it in there."


    "I just object--"


    "What''s that I hear? Doesn''t sound like foot," Lia said, clapping her hand over my mouth. She leaned in close and whispered "Seriously. You are gonna blow things with Karu so bad if you are bitching at her about your rights to fuck AEGIS. Also, ew, don''t lick my hand. You''re so gross." She wiped my spit on my sleeve.


    "Don''t put your hand on my mouth then," I muttered. "And I wasn''t defending my right to do anyone, I was arguing about how that could possibly be worse than me getting beat up."


    "Yeah, well, sometimes things sound like other things. Seriously, keep a sock in it."


    Lia stepped back and put on a pleasant smile, clapping Karu on the back which brought her back to the world as well.


    "So how do you think AEGIS is doing?" Lia asked. "If she turned her emotions back on, she''s probably super sad or pissed right now."


    As in response, the elevator began moving. We stood and watched with bated breath. The doors opened and a twisted wreck of a table and bench came tumbling out.


    "Pissed, it appears to be," Karu said flatly.


    "How''d she get it to lean against the doors?" Lia asked. "So that it would fall out when the door opened? That''s some commitment."


    "Sooo," I said, turning to Lia. "Think I should sleep at Karu''s or Saga''s?"


    "Definitely Karu''s," said Karu.


    "Definitely Saga''s," said Lia.


    "What? That treacherous wretch said she would not even lift a finger to aid in your salvation. Remaining in my care is the only pragmatic solution," Karu argued.


    "Yeah, but you guys can''t keep it in your pants. No offense, Karu," Lia said.


    "I am fully capable of restraint. I am the very image of restraint."


    "You are. But still, no dice. You guys all have to keep it together at least until the fight, and that means Athan''s off-limits."


    "I''m not a plot of land, Lia."


    "Funny thing about making bad decisions, once you make one, people expect you to keep making them. Even if you aren''t going to," she added, as I started to argue.


    "But the Code-X cannot be trusted either. She, of all of the three of us is the most dangerous, capable of stripping Athan''s will without any detection."


    "Hmm, true," said Lia, twisting a strand of hair. "Not that I think she''d do anything, but as long as the paranoia that she will is there, that''s the same thing."


    "I don''t understand how this is a serious argument you guys are all actually having. Everything is fine, and everyone just needs to not worry."


    Lia sighed. "One thing is for sure, you don''t know how to lead."


    "Indeed. I am not certain how he became the de-facto leader of this group, but he is certainly ill-suited for it."


    "Ill suited how? You''re the guys worrying about all this crazy nonsense. I''m just looking for where I should crash before, in all likelihood, we all die."


    "One, do not tell your troops they are about to die. Two, do not ever blame your troops for your own failings. Three, do not tell your troops simply not to worry. If they are worrying, that is a cause for worry in and of itself. And four, do not lie to us, if everything was as peachy as you purport, even in your own ignorant mind, you would not have asked your sister for advice in where to stay."


    "You guys aren''t troops, you''re my friends. And I''m not lying, or leading, or anything. What the hell, why''d everyone just turn super insane in the last few days?"


    "Dude, we are your friends, but we''re also turning to you for leadership, and that makes you our leader. People need you right now, you can''t just say ''I didn''t ask for this'' and leave. At least pretend like you''re capable of being competent, for our sakes?"


    "But...even if I do, right now, you''d know it was just a show because you asked for it. You guys and AEGIS, you are ''the troops'' and two of you are right here."


    The two shared an uneasy glance.


    "Wait. Is this related to what happened down there?"


    "You mean AEGIS going off her damn meds?"


    "No, you know what I mean. When you guys were acting all squirrely and I asked why, and then we got sidetracked by AEGIS."


    "Using animal types instead of swear words is my thing, bro." Lia said, turning and stepping away.


    "Lia, wait," Karu said. "Do not leave me alone with him."


    "Because...there is something fishy going on between you guys?" I asked.


    "Maybe it''s because there''s something fishy going on between you and Karu," Lia said, without turning back. "But good point, let''s get outta here, Karu."


    "You guys are not seriously going to avoid talking to me forever," I said, and moved to cut them off, but I found myself cut off instead, by a DOG-E which just happened to be carrying a large metal part right in my path.


    "AEGIS, not you, too. What the hell is going on? I know you''re in there, I see the red light."


    In answer, the red light turned off, and the DOG-E looked at me, head tilted sideways in confusion. By the time I got around it, Karu and Lia were both long gone.


    All three of them up to something huh? I mulled it over as I walked towards the mines, even though it was still early. Whatever it was, it seemed to involve lecturing me a lot about stupid things, and wasting a lot of my time in fruitless debates and shoving leadership at me. I had no idea what their endgame was, but their middle-game or whatever this was, was irritating as hell.


    Silently, I hoped Saga also wasn''t in on it, and maybe she''d have some idea of what''s going on.

 087. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Barry.

    I felt blocked at every turn. It was enough to make me scream.


    I thought I''d made it when my father heard from Lia''s father that they''d traced his credit chits down to Las Vegas. I found her there, buying groceries a block from where the chits had been spent last time. Before I could make a move on her, she slipped through my fingers, running from the police, northeast, out of the country, into the wilderness a hundred miles from anything. It was just what I wanted. Just her and me and the wilds, no one and nothing to come between us.


    And then, somehow, impossibly, he was there. The Exhuman. How he''d managed to track her down the the wilderness, I didn''t get. He should have been dead. The XPCA had him, and I know because I was the one who reported him, saw him taken away on the news holos. For him to be there...it was impossible.


    He had to be even more dangerous than we knew. He had to have escaped and come after her, after Lia, after the light of my life. I had to do something.


    But do what? There was nothing I could do. He was a monster. Unstoppable, blood-soaked. And apparently capable of sniffing out Lia even there. I stayed hidden and watched for a clue, and then one day, I had my chance.


    The brute in the armor, who just called himself Tenebrae, he tried to fight the Exhuman and his cohorts. Did a pretty good job right up until he got destroyed and blown up.


    But as they say, an enemy of an enemy is my friend. Man of few words he was, but he said he knew information which could bring the XPCA down on them like a ton of bricks. I rescued him, treated him as best I could, and brought him back to civilization so he could deliver this important info he had.


    And hell, it worked. Except for how much it hadn''t.


    I was getting sick of being surrounded by bowing servants and fine boneware. This asshole was just giving me the runaround every day while the XPCA sat around with their thumbs up their asses doing nothing.


    Always telling me they were getting ready, almost ready to move out, things were progressing on schedule.


    I looked on the tablet holo he gave me and gently caressed the screen.


    She was right there. Lost in that freakshow, surrounded by enemies at all times. Still, she acted so brave. Just earlier today, she and the Exhuman were walking and talking and she slapped him full-force across the face. I jumped out of my chair, I was so excited and scared, I thought he was going to kill her on the spot, but instead he did so much worse. He forced her to build a cage and sit inside it, and then poured lightning into it.


    I didn''t have any audio, and the image was about as good as you could expect from a satellite, but at some points, I saw her rolling around inside the cage, her mouth open in a silent scream, holding herself and thrashing as he tortured her in unspeakable ways.


    And here I was, in some ritzy manor, powerless. It made my blood boil, made me sick. Made me just want to smash every damn thing in the whole house and make Blackett move, force him to understand that this was no ordinary Exhuman, and lives were at stake at this very moment.


    I was watching the holo now as I always did, just to make sure she was still alive. The Exhuman had passed custody of her over to the hunter, and the two of them were walking and talking now as she was escorted to the smaller building, almost invisible under dirt and grass on this image.


    What incomprehensible evils that hunter and the Exhuman had done in that place, I was glad I didn''t know. Lia just had to be strong. I was coming.


    I heard the car pull in and bolted to the foyer. I felt like a damn dog, greeting my master at the door, but this was the only way I could make him listen to me. The rest of the time, he just barricaded himself in his study, talking about god-knows-what with Tenebrae, or otherwise occupying himself behind locked doors.


    With how many locked doors there were around here, and how I wasn''t allowed to leave, it felt more like a prison than being a guest. He said he had his reasons, but my guess was that those were mostly because he was a pile of shit.


    "Blackett, sir, with all due respect," I said, the moment the door opened. His servant shot me a look of contempt and pressed past me while I plead at Blackett. "Sir, we need to go now. I don''t know how much more torture Lia can take. Please sir, don''t let her die. She''s all I have--"


    "Mister Jack, kindly remove the child from my presence, if you please."


    A second servant from behind Blackett advanced on me. He gave me a large smile and closed his eyes as he interceded between us. I stepped around him and continued to advance on Blackett.


    Or...thought I did. Mister Jack was right there still in front of me, eyes closed, broad close-lipped smile. He''d wasted enough of my time that Blackett was slipping away.


    "Blackett, damn it, come back here!" I shouted at his back. "You cocksucker! Bring back my girl!"


    Suddenly Jack was there again, inches from my face.


    "Please refrain from using vulgarities to disparage Master Blackett," he said, still smiling. One of his eyes was open just a crack and a beady eye sparkled at me, like he was winking at me.


    "I''ll say whatever I want to that dickless cock-holster," I said, shoving Jack out of my way to chase Blackett down. I didn''t care if I had to kick down his door, today, he was going to hear me out.


    Or...thought I did. Instead, I was on my back, Jack smiling over me making a tutting noise. How had I gotten down here?


    "What the hell is this," I shouted, rolling to my feet. "Get the hell out of my way, jack-off."


    "Please refrain from making vulgarities based on my name, as well," he said with the same smile. And then I was on my back again, this time, slamming the floor and having the wind knocked out of me.


    I coughed. "Are you doing this? The fuck is going on?!"This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Master Blackett would prefer not to be disturbed today. I must ask you to respect his wishes."


    "My fucking ass, I''ll respect anything about that cock--"


    I felt intense pain and warmth as my nose broke. There was blood all over my front, and I gasped from the pain, and then choked on it, rolling sideways to cough up blood on the tile floor. Jack smiled as he wiped blood off of his knuckles onto a stained handkerchief from his pocket.


    "How...how are you doing this," I gasped out, between coughing. "Just fucking let me pass, Lia''s in danger, he doesn''t under--"


    "I have already made Master Blackett''s position clear, I believe. Please refrain from further attempts or there will be more for me to clean up."


    "More to clean up? Is that all you fucking care about? There''s an Exhuman out there! Lives are in danger! Is Blackett or is he not director of the XPCA? Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency? There''s an Exhuman, go pacify him!"


    "I understand the confusion," Jack smiled. "Master Blackett is merely the deputy director. He serves directly under Mister Albion."


    "Are you trying to tell me Blackett doesn''t have the authority or power to get troops out there? That everything he''s told me is a fat fucking lie?"


    I felt a crushing pain in my abdomen and doubled over, coughing up more blood.


    "Please do not impugn the master''s good word. As the second-highest ranking officer in the XPCA, of course Master Blackett has such authority. I was merely explaining that he is deputy director, because you said before that he was director."


    I coughed and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. "Deputy director, director, what the hell''s the difference? Just let me talk to him, and stop fucking hitting me or whatever you''re doing. I''m fucking coughing up blood, do you not see this?"


    Jack smiled and lowered himself so that his face was only a foot above mine. "I believe I''ve made Master Blackett''s wishes on seeing you today clear." He opened one beady eye at me over his charming, polite smile. "As for what I''m doing to you, I admit I may be going a bit far, but I believe everyone in this manor is tired of your constant petulance. I hope after this you will act quickly and quietly, in accordance with Master Blackett''s wishes."


    "You gotta be fucking kidding me. How are you even doing this, I never even see you move."


    Still hovering a foot above me, he just closed his eyes and smiled. It was a nice smile, charming, warm, welcoming.


    "Listen, man, Blackett''s gotta know. Lia is dying out there. I can''t just sit here doing nothing."


    "He knows. Though I am loathe to speak on his behalf, I can say with certainty that everyone in this house knows your opinions of the Exhuman and the girl. You have mentioned little else in the week or so you''ve been here."


    Thankfully, he backed off and resumed standing between me and the door Blackett disappeared through. Still fucking smiling. I sat up, and found pain. I gritted and did it anyway, choking back the urge to vomit.


    "I''ve been watching them on holo," I said. "I''ve been watching them every day. I know what they''re up to, Blackett has to listen to me."


    "Master Blackett has to do nothing just because you tell him to."


    "Listen, you jackass--" I said and launched myself through the pain and lunged at him. I fell right through him, it felt, my hands reaching out for his lapels, and then they weren''t there. I crashed onto the floor on the other side of the foyer, slamming my arms against the tile, hard.


    I''d barely landed before something hooked under me and slammed into my chest. Felt like I''d just been kicked in the belly. I heard one of my ribs crack, and this time, couldn''t stop from throwing up, bile tainted with red.


    "I believe I already warned you not to use my name in a disparaging fashion already," he said, somehow behind me, right where he was when I lunged at him. Had I just missed? How was this possible? My head was beginning to spin from the hits I was taking, and my body ached. "Now look what you''ve done, you''ve doubled the amount of floor I''ll have to clean."


    I pulled myself upright slowly, heaving for breath. I couldn''t speak, but managed a low growl as I grabbed a fistful of blood and bile from the floor under me and prepared to sling it across all the walls in the room. Fuck this guy and his cleaning.


    No sooner did my hand start to move then it stopped, gripped around the wrist by his. Like a goddamn vice, he held me, despite being smaller than me.


    I looked up and he was right there, on top of me in an instant. The man was a demon. There was no possible explanation. I felt his nails stabbing me in the wrist with his death grip.


    "Kindly relieve yourself of that mess, or I will be forced to break your arm," He said through a smile.


    "...fucking...kidding me," I gasped out, feeling his grip tighten even more.


    "Last warning. I''ve been more than gracious."


    "Gra--" I coughed, splattering blood across the floor, right where he''d been standing. He was behind me now, my arm still locked in his grip. "Gracious? What part of this is gracious?"


    "I could have done this to you the first day you arrived at this house. You''ve been permitted an exceptional amount of leeway, all things considered. Making all that trouble for Master Blackett every day, it really¡­"


    He drew his face close in to mine, so we were only inches apart. I could feel his hot breath on my face. Still that close-lipped smile and blissfully shut eyes. "...really makes me mad."


    "Mad? That''s what this is all about? You''re mad?"


    "I believe my feelings have some minor value," he said with a smile, and twisted my arm a little, making my shoulder scream. I inhaled sharply, feeling my breath catch.


    "Y-you fuck, people are going to die, and all you talk about--" he twisted my arm further. "--is your damn cleaning and feelings?" I tried to keep the tears and pain out of my voice, but it came out as a wail more than a shout.


    "Dear me, it looks like I will have to break this arm after all," he said. "Do try not to shout, I don''t wish to disturb Master Blackett."


    I felt him twist my arm even further, to the breaking point. My muscles and tendons screamed as the arm wrenched past anywhere it was ever meant to be. I was gasping, trying to plead, trying to say anything, but unable to get out anything.


    I couldn''t get it. Was this all the XPCA was? Rich assholes like Blackett and heartless bullies like Jack? People who, even when faced with the evidence, with the proof, with a goddamn evil Exhuman slapping them in the face, cared more about their crystal jars and fancy vases than people out there dying?


    If this was the top of the XPCA, what else could the whole organization be? Just how corrupt and shitty? I was never one for hero worship, but people out there, people like Lia, they counted on the XPCA, they needed protection, needed saving from dangerous monsters like him, Exhumans who could kill them with less than a thought.


    And instead we had this.


    Abruptly, the pain stopped. I fell forward as my arm fell loose, and grabbed at my shoulder where it had almost broken. I could barely hear over the sounds of my own pained gasps, but there were footsteps.


    The door next to me burst open, and Blackett was there, flanked by Tenebrae, looking horrible and twisted as ever. He gave the room a quick glance and frowned.


    "My apologies, sir. I''ll have this cleaned up in a moment," Jack said with a low bow.


    "No need. Have arrangements made for a cleaner to come out. You and the boy are coming with me."


    I rolled over to see better and Blackett looked at me, covered in blood and my own puke with utter contempt. "On second thought, you and I are heading out, have Tower clean and change the boy and drive him separately."


    "Of course sir. Where am I to tell Tower to take him?"


    "The same place we''ll be going," Blackett said, walking out the front door as Jack held the door for him. "To XPCA headquarters. It''s time for our strike to begin."

 088. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    "What do you mean, you won''t tell me?"


    [I won''t tell you. Same reason as last time.]


    After our usual round of idle chat, Saga was stonewalling me again. She was where she always was nowadays, lazing around the tree, while I sat next to her, doing what I always was nowadays, arguing with someone.


    "But you can confirm that something''s up with everyone?"


    [I mean, I can''t, but the fact that you''re here and I''m denying something sort of implicitly confirms it.]


    "So there is something."


    [(I literally just said that.) Yeah, no, since the last time you asked, the thing went away. There''s no more thing anymore, you can go.]


    "Stop being a smartass and tell me."


    [For the third time, no means no, Athan. You''re getting pretty rapey.]


    "Not funny, Saga."


    [Yeah okay. Point being, this may shock you (if you''re really stupid) but I know a lot more than I let on. Like, pretty much whatever I want to know, between all of your friends. And I could be telling you all that, all the time if I wanted to, but in general, I really, really don''t.]


    "Why not? That''d make my life a heck of a lot more convenient."


    [Aside from how much of a pain in the ass it would be, keeping you constantly up-to-date on every stupid nuance in your friends'' minds, the fact is that knowing too much is usually a bad thing.]


    "How can that be a bad thing? I''m like, skating on the very thinnest of ice with AEGIS, and Karu''s not far behind. Lia''s been all kinds of angry and preachy at me, and I just want to know why."


    [If you want to know why, you should just listen to what they''re saying, dumbass.]


    "They''re not telling me anything, though."


    [Yeah, and you should take the damn hint. What they''re not telling you is also something they''re telling you. Maybe the reason they''re pissed at you is because there''s something they don''t want you to know, and you''re being a major bitch about it.] She paused and then added, [well, that and you fucked Karu.]


    "I know that, damn it."


    [Then why are you even here, Athan? Why are you bumming around trying to go behind their backs and trying to get me to spill the beans on something they obviously don''t want you knowing?]


    "Because what''s so wrong with knowing everything? I feel like, whatever''s wrong, all we need to do is talk about it, get it out in the open, and I can help."


    [You can''t fix everything, Athan, and you certainly can''t fix everything with words.]


    "We won''t know if nobody lets me try."


    [And you won''t know if it''ll work without your meddling if you never let them try.]


    "There''s no universe where keeping everything secret is better than having things in the clear."


    [Know what, Athan? I''m going to give you a freebie here. I''ll give you the tiniest, slightest hint, that I probably shouldn''t.]


    "What is it?"


    [You''re wrong. They''re right. What they want depends on you not knowing about it, and if you knew, it''d be ruined. So stop prying.]


    "That''s not a hint. That''s not even useful."


    [That really depends on how dense you are, so I guess you''re right. You don''t seem to be able to get it based on hints and clues, so now I''m just telling you straight-up what to do.]


    "And I still respectfully disagree."


    [Sigh. You''re impossible. Horrible. Frustrating.]


    "But I''m just trying to help."


    [You use that defense like it means something. If you just listened more, you''d realize people don''t always want your help. Trying to help just means your intentions are good, but if you''re willfully ignoring people to keep trying to help, you lose that moral high ground.]


    "I was just trying to help when I refused to listen to you and got you out."


    [And I love and appreciate you for doing it. But as I said before, getting pretty rapey when you think you can just impose your will on everyone because you''re clearly right and they''re clearly wrong.]


    "And I told you already, that isn''t funny."


    [Not even trying to be funny. I can call it dictatorial if you''d like. But however you call it, you always just assume that if your opinion and someone else''s clash, you''re right. Not a very lovable personality quirk.]


    "So what am I supposed to do? Sit here and do nothing while everyone''s freaking out?"


    [Yeah, actually. You need to learn at some point that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can do. I know it''s also one of the hardest things to do, but sometimes you have to.]


    "I don''t know that I can do that."


    [Look, I know this isn''t up your alley, because you don''t want me mucking around in your head, but I have an idea that might make this easier for you.]


    "Gonna zombify me so it''s easy for me to do nothing?"


    [Wouldn''t ever. But what I can do is give you a compel that will kick in after this is all over, and you''ll understand everything everyone talked about. Then...whatever you choose, however things unfold, at least you''ll be able to understand where they were all coming from. I can''t help you make these choices, but I can help you get some closure afterwards, hopefully.]


    "You make this sound like someone''s going to die."


    [Isn''t that a probability, given what you''re all facing pretty soon?]


    "Is that what this is about? I thought everyone was all in arms about me and Karu and AEGIS."


    [I mean, that''s not helping, and if you''re not careful stepping around that, you''ll tear everyone apart before you ever get the chance to save everyone, or not. But assuming you do not continue to be a colossal dick, I think you''ll be fine if you can somehow manage to do nothing. Which is why I''m offering this bribe, so hopefully you''ll be more chill, so hopefully, you''ll be able to sit back and do nothing for a while. Or, practice your powers, or whatever those girls said.]


    I thought about it. "I really do want to know," I said.


    [I''m aware.] She gave me a little wink. [That''s why it''s a bribe. Works better when it''s a thing the bribe-ee wants.]


    "And--"


    [And I''ll be nice to your brain. Come on, haven''t you known me long enough by now to trust me on that one?]


    "More like, if you wanted to be mean to my brain, you''d do it without asking first."


    [Also true. Hey, act in the next five seconds, and I''ll sneak you a pic of what I look like naked, too.]


    I glared at her for at least five seconds.


    [Boo, your loss.]


    "I will take your bribe though. If nothing else, it''ll help me next time I have this kind of thing."


    [One can hope you don''t have this kind of thing often. Alright, lay down, I''m gonna muck around in your head for a while. Try not to think too hard, as usual.]


    I laid down next to her and felt the very whispers of a touch tracing my mind, like when someone is not actually touching your skin but you can feel their presence anyway. I glanced over, and her eyes were closed, seemingly asleep, as she worked.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Maybe it was just the fact she was somehow the least crazy person in my life right now, but I found myself thinking she was -- for all her weirdness, how upside-down she turned situations, and how very alien her immortal life perspective was -- still very cute.


    Which was weird, because I''d always seen Sino girls as, y''know, the enemy. It was a face you''d see on a propaganda poster, or in the background of a news holo, not on the face of a friend. But once you got past that shock, and her narrow, almond-shaped eyes, she had skin so pale it made her eyes, lips, eyebrows seem to pop out. She was so slight that her cheekbones stood out, giving her jawline strong angles to adhere to, even as her skin looked so round and soft.


    She opened her eyes and smiled at me.


    Ah, shit. What was I thinking.


    [You don''t have to stop. (Giggity.)]


    "Sorry. Just...trying to follow your orders not to think about things and wound up thinking about what was right in front of me."


    [Not like I mind. I''m actually kind of flattered, nobody''s ever liked how I''ve looked before. Always just ''crush the Exhuman, rawr!'' kind of stuff. Also, I''ve never really seen myself that clearly before, you really have an eye for detail.]


    "I''m like, the world''s worst mirror, basically?"


    [Well, in that you don''t stop worrying or ever shut up, sure. But there''s nice things about you too.] She shuffled towards me, still on her back until our shoulders were pressed against each other. I frowned, she was like ice.


    "Aren''t you cold out here?" I asked. The sun had left us only a while ago, but it hadn''t been warm today to start with.


    [Maybe, but I mean, what''s going to happen? I can''t get sick, I can''t die of hypothermia or anything, and even if I did, I''d come back. I don''t have to worry about shivering and freezing and wasting calories. I''ll just be cold.]


    "Isn''t that uncomfortable?"


    She laughed a little, a little quiet and reserved laugh, which conflicted with how loud and imposing she tended to be in her mind. [I''ve been in a jail for a hundred years. A little uncomfortable is basically paradise to me.]


    "Well, I don''t like you being uncomfortable," I said. "Let me grab you a blanket or something," and leaned forward to get up.


    "Nope," she said, her words barely more than a whisper, even though she was right there, and gently tugged me back down. [You need to stay, I''m not done on your brain yet.]


    I frowned. I hated people suffering because of me, even if it was just a little cold. She was already doing me a favor with her advice and this bribe, and now she was stuck out here in the cold until we finished.


    [Oh please, ''suffering'' is so the drama. It''s a little cold, and I can''t be hurt by it. I''ll survive.]


    I began to unzip my jacket, but she stopped me with a gentle touch, hands like needles of frost. "Just until we''re finished here, you can have it," I said.


    [Dumbass, you''re the one who can get sick from the cold. You need it.]


    "I don''t need it, it''s just a little cold. I''ll survive."


    [Look, if you''re going to insist on being a dumbass¡­] She moved my arm so it was out to my side, and then rested her head on it, spooning my side and pressing her body against me. She was cold all over, I don''t know how she wasn''t miserable. [Oh, you are nice and warm.]


    I wrapped my arm around her back and held her tight to me. "No silly business or anything, or leaking out your bodily sensations, okay? This is a platonic warmth-sharing."


    [Sh¨¬, sh¨¬.]


    "What?"


    [Yes, that''s fine. Now shush and let me work (and enjoy this).]


    I did as she said and tried to let my mind go thoughtless, closing my eyes and replacing the violet curtain of post-dusk with blackness. It was hard to just think of nothing, especially when she rested her arm on my chest, feeling so light like it was hardly there, or feeling the soft rise and fall of her breathing against my side, or her leg resting on mine.


    Made all the more treacherous by the fact any random thoughts I might have, she''d know immediately. So I had to not just not have any thoughts, but had to actively keep a leash on my thoughts to keep them from drifting.


    So basically impossible.


    I heard her laugh next to me again, and sighed, smiling, defeated by her cuteness and the situation. She''d just have to cope with me thinking about the XPCA or something while she worked.


    I don''t know how long it was but something kicked me awake.


    "Not a smart move, bro," I heard Lia''s voice say. I couldn''t see her, could only see three lights blinding me, and Saga still wrapped around my side.


    "Oh, let him sleep," Saga said.


    "Sleep? With you? Is there anyone he isn''t sleeping with?" AEGIS said from behind Lia. It was weird to hear her talking and stuff outside her lair.


    "What''s going on?" I muttered, not awake and very disoriented. It was black out, Saga was exactly where she''d been before I fell asleep, I guess. Three people were standing there with lights clipped to their chests. Lia...AEGIS...presumably Karu?


    [They came looking for you. I told them you were here, they showed up and...from the sounds of it, are pretty unhappy with me.]


    "Why didn''t you wake me up?"


    [Why would I? You were asleep, it''s night time, that''s what you people do at night, isn''t it?]


    "We don''t have time for this," Lia said, pulling me by the arm. "Let''s go."


    "No, let him stay," AEGIS said. "She can have him. Karu can have him. I don''t give a shit anymore. Fuck you, Athan." She turned around, her light shining towards the distant trees as she spun to stomp off. I saw the last of the figures move and grab her by the wrist.


    "Karu, you fucking let me go right now," AEGIS'' voice said, sounding at once broken and harder than diamond.


    "AEGIS, where are you going?" Karu asked, her voice steady but quiet.


    "Away. Away from here. Anywhere. Anywhere where he fucking isn''t!" I saw Karu''s light flash over her for a moment, and glimpsed her face.


    She was bawling, tearlessly, her face a mask of agony. Instead of a pinned-up sheet, she was finally wearing real clothes, what looked like a tracksuit like she''d made me, but yellow and white.


    "AEGIS, wait, it''s not what it looks like," I said, completing the cliche. "I was just confused--"


    "So you slept with the fucking Exhuman who killed my mother?"


    "--so I asked Saga for help. Nothing happened! Right, Saga?"


    [Oh, I wouldn''t say nothing happened.]


    "ASDFGHKL. FUCK''S SAKE, SAGA, NOT THE TIME."


    "Athan, I really could not care less right now what you and she are or aren''t. I just can''t live like this." AEGIS tried to walk away but Karu held strong onto her arm.


    "You cannot leave," Karu said in barely more than a whisper.


    "The fuck I can''t. Let me go! Let me go you murder bitch!" She thrashed and pulled but Karu stood resolute. "The fuck is your problem? What, do you want me to watch next time? Fuck you! Fuck all of you!"


    "AEGIS, you are the backbone of our combat strength. If you leave, Ashton will surely die."


    She froze. "Well maybe he deserves to die," she said.


    [It''s a little ironic that without her emotions, she wants you dead, and with her emotions, she also wants you dead. I wonder how you''re still alive.]


    "You do not mean that. You are justifiably mad at Ashton, and also Saga and myself as well, I am certain. But this pain is rooted in something other than hate. Though I may detest you in many ways, I cannot allow you to suffer the same pain I have. I cannot allow you to stand idly by while those you love are killed in front of you."


    She let AEGIS'' hand drop.


    "Such is the evil in this world that I set out to devote my life to fighting, the pain of losing one''s everything to an unstoppable force. If you walk away now, you will have lost everyone you love twice."


    "Just shut up, Karu. Just let me have this. Let me hold this hate a little longer," AEGIS said, visibly quaking.


    "I am sorry, but I cannot. If anyone should leave, it should be me."


    Karu''s silhouette sprung branches like a tree, and then the ends of each lit up with blue plasma, and the engines of her jetpack flared.


    "Oh no you don''t," AEGIS screamed, and jumped onto Karu''s back, the spindly arms flailing and withdrawing to avoid damage. Both of them tumbled to the ground in a rolling heap limbs and profanities flying.


    "Infernal machine, get off of me! I do this for you, ungrateful wretch!"


    "What do you think this is, a drive through? You show up, sleep with my man, dump the feds on our doorstep and then fly off into the night? Over my damn corpse!"


    "Do not--do NOT pull my hair, manic wench!"


    I stepped forward but didn''t know what to do. Elbows and fists were flying, and I wasn''t sure who was giving or taking better. It was just dark and two forms rolled around in the flashing lights. I looked at Lia, who looked captivated, but in no way interested in intervening, and then to Saga, who shrugged and smiled, now sitting up to watch personally.


    I couldn''t believe it. Were we in elementary school watching a lunchtime brawl?


    I stepped in and grabbed someone hard and metallic, Karu''s armor. I gave her a solid yank, pulling her off AEGIS.


    "Do not even think to interfere," she growled, and elbowed me hard in the ribs, sending me sprawling, before AEGIS swept her feet and knocked her back down into the fight.


    Lia looked at me with the same concern, and Saga''s grin and shrug grew larger. I rolled on the ground, gasping and wheezing, and wondering if I cracked a rib. Fuck, Karu was strong.


    But I''d also had it with these two idiots and their fight. Through their stupid hurt feelings back and forth, everyone here had been at each other''s throats for days now, and I''d had enough. I closed my eyes and reached out with my powers, combing the earth under all of us with tendrils of electricity. In some places, I had to force the electricity to flow, in others, the it moved freely, metallic rocks or damp ground or other conductors. I found the very largest, very purest metallic hunk of rock I could in my range and began winding.


    I worked in silence and intense concentration while the two girls bit and scratched and screamed, catlike, in the strobing flashes of their lights. Finally I was ready.


    "Girls, I need you to stop now," I said, interrupting a very unsavory comment about Karu''s mother''s occupation.


    "Oh, go fuck yourself," AEGIS grunted.


    "Not interested, Ashton." Karu made a noise as AEGIS'' knee connected with her chestplate. "This ingrateful AI rejects...my compassion. She is simply impossible!"


    "At least I''m not flying around stealing men!"


    "ENOUGH!" I shouted, and charged the current I''d spent minutes winding. The effect was immediate and caught even me off-guard.


    The electromagnet I''d built under the surface was about the size of my arm, and I''d had plenty of length to make a few hundred coils around it. In my ignorance, I''d dumped a ton of power into it to make a statement. A statement was certainly made.

 089. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    AEGIS, Karu--and Lia surprisingly--all instantly fell to the ground, completely pinned by whatever metal they were made of, wearing, or carrying. Saga seemed mostly immune, still lying on the ground with her feet pointed towards the magnet, propped up on her elbows to watch the catfight, but I saw her eyes go wide and she held herself oddly as the magnet worked.


    "If we can''t be reasonable and talk about things, then we''re doing it this way," I shouted at the others while they ate dirt. "Are we all ready to have a reasonable discourse about our fucking feelings now?"


    Karu said something that sounded suspiciously like ''fuck you, Ashton'' into the dirt.


    "Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow," said Lia. "Athan, turn it off, ow!"


    I went to her side and saw the problem. She was being pinned by all the random gear in her pockets and sewn into her slipskin. Some of it, on her back, was crushing into her spine. I unbuckled a couple belts and bandoliers, and they snapped to the ground around her, still leaving her pinned, but not being actively crushed.


    "I said turn it off, not undress me, you...you aardvarking moose!"


    "Sorry, Lia. You''re stuck there until these two are ready to talk."


    Saga, meanwhile, sat perfectly still holding herself. I wondered if she was having a similar issue, and took a step forward to check.


    [NOPE. I''M FINE.]


    Everyone winced at her shouting, except AEGIS.


    "Saga, you sure--"


    [YEP. STAY OVER THERE. I''M FINE.]


    "Ow, jesus," muttered Lia.


    Karu shouted something which sounded like ''kindly have that mind-fucker shut up'' into the dirt. With her visor on, she was probably having the worst of any of us.


    I took the hint and left Saga alone, heading back to the two fighters in the dirt. I turned on a small blade to cast some light over the two.


    It looked like AEGIS was straddling Karu at the time the magnet came on, and Karu was pinned on her back with AEGIS on top of her. It was not dirt that was muffling Karu''s speech, but AEGIS'' chest.


    Uh, this was a little more awkward than I was intending. I grabbed AEGIS, and with a hefty pull sideways combined with a momentary dip in the magnet''s power, had them both lying side-by-side on their backs.


    "Of course she would be so unrealistically proportioned, she designed the body herself to be nothing more than a common slut!" Karu shouted once finally free of AEGIS'' cleavage.


    "A common slut? So like you, then? Because of everyone here, I''m apparently the only one not getting some from Athan."


    "Um, hello? Gross." Said Lia.


    "I said ENOUGH!" I kicked up the power for a second and saw each of them wince as the magnet drove them further into the ground. "Can''t you get along for a single minute without trying to kill each other even when you''re all fucking stuck to the ground?"


    "Oh, he comes to lecture us about proper behavior? I find this amusing. Do tell, Ashton, tell each of us how we should behave."


    "Well, for starters, stop all trying to run away from your goddamn issues, and stop trying to kill each other. Is that so hard?"


    "I wasn''t attempting to run away, you asinine dunce," Karu shouted into the sky. "I was attempting to leave to give myself up."


    "You what?" shouted AEGIS.


    "As I was attempting to tell you before your juvenile assault, you are right--though only in this very limited circumstance, as far as I can discern. I am an outsider to this once-peaceful community, and my presence has wrought untold havoc. Rather than suffer you all further continued harm...excepting of course the Exhuman bitch and the rogue AI, whose suffering I honestly quite relish...I was going to leave and surrender to the XPCA."


    "That''s crazy, even for a psycho like you. They''ll kill you," AEGIS said, looking at her sideways from being unable to move her head.


    "My coming here to begin with was a mistake, and my faults were my own. If that is my penance, I shall pay it. There is no need for you all to suffer my fate."


    "Such a goddamn noble know-it-all!" AEGIS spat. "You just think Athan''s going to do it, don''t you!"


    "Do what?" I asked.


    "Be silent. This does not concern him except that he is suffering at my actions, and will be spared by my actions. Now Ashton, let me go. I have crimes to atone for."


    "Bro, I am super uncomfortable in this position, but do not dare let her go. She will fly away the second she gets up."


    "I know," I said. My mind was racing. I had no idea what to say or do. In a lot of ways, I agreed with Karu. She was the one who came and messed everything up for those of us living here in peace, but she was also our friend, and we chose to take her in.


    "Karu, I can''t allow that," I said.


    [There''s that dictator again.]


    "Shut up, Saga. Karu, you said you thought of me like the leader of this group, and I don''t know if I am or not. But you also said, whether I was ready for leadership, I had it anyway, because people looked to me for it. Well, as the leader here, I was the one who decided we''d take you in, and the one to whom the responsibility falls when that decision goes wrong. I was complicit in our sex, and therefore responsible for tearing this group apart."


    "And therefore," I concluded "I will not accept anyone else being responsible for all our current issues and fuck-ups but me!" I shouted. "So don''t even think about turning yourself in, or I''ll do the same and assume responsibility for all your crimes, and who do you think they''re more willing to blame, a hunter with a stellar record, or an Exhuman with a history of death?"


    Lia, Karu, and AEGIS all groaned in unison. What? I didn''t think I was that bad, even if a little preachy.


    "Freaking ferrets, guys," Lia said from where she was slumped, ear pressed to the ground and chest pinned to the earth.


    "He fucking said it." AEGIS added.


    "As I knew he would," Karu sighed.


    "S-said what? What the hell are you all talking about?"


    "Never mind." AEGIS sighed. "Think you can let us all up now. We''re a lost cause."


    "Indeed," said Karu, morose.


    "Though it might have worked if you didn''t push him by deciding to be a damn hero," AEGIS sniped. Karu just sighed.


    "So...we''re all ready to...be reasonable now?"


    "If that''s what you call it, mister self-sacrificing leader."


    I thought for a moment and then let them go, ready to spin it back up if Karu started to make a move. Lia stretched and unzipped her slipskin with a sigh, exposing her bare back with angry red lines from zippers. The others didn''t move, Saga still holding herself weirdly, the other two still on their backs.


    "What...happened?" I asked, almost afraid to say it, in case I''d break the spell.


    "Nothing," Karu said, pulling off her visor and holding it in the sky, looking at the red lines staring back at her. "We all just have some thinking to do, I believe."


    The others muttered their agreement. Nothing? Those two were ready to kill each other a second ago. And then, I didn''t let Karu go...and that was it. There wasn''t anything else. But¡­


    My mind was blank. I looped the last few moments in my mind over and over and over, and had nothing. I had missed something.


    "Lia, what''s going on?" I asked.


    "You''re. An. Idiot."


    "Saga?"


    [I told you to stay away from me.]This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    "AEGIS, please. Tell me what happened."


    "It''s like thundertits here said. Nothing happened."


    "Thundertits? I was born with these. At least I didn''t design them specifically to allure men."


    "Then why aren''t you fighting? What happened to...everyone being so angry about everything? You all just look...depressed now."


    [You''ll find out when the compel breaks.]


    "A compel? Athan, what did she do to you?" Lia said, sitting up, and almost falling out of her slipskin, clutching it to her chest.


    "She said...she knew what was going on, but she couldn''t tell me without affecting the outcome, so she gave me a compel which would trigger after it was all over which would let me know what the hell you guys were being all cagey about."


    "So you didn''t sleep with her after all," AEGIS said, with a hollow laugh. "Amazing. Amazing that somehow I still care."


    "Well, guys, it may be a little late for this all now," Lia said, lying back down, "but the reason I brought you all here tonight was because I got a message from Taglock."


    "Who''s that?"


    "The ''guy creeping around'' I believe you know him as. Wears all black slipskin, tracked AEGIS down using her own probes, generally a fantastic spy. Guy in my employ."


    "Oh, him," AEGIS said darkly.


    "Well, I still have him on retainer because Black Shark is hilariously rich. And he just let me know that his sources say the XPCA moved out today. Some kind of big invasion. Heading north."


    "My geography is a little shaky because I don''t know where I am, technically," I said. "Are we north?"


    "We''re north," Lia confirmed.


    "Well, shit."


    "Yeah. So we expect them tomorrow, based on how paranoid and-slash-or thorough they are."


    Tomorrow. The word loomed over all of us like a guillotine.


    "I also have...one less important announcement," Lia said, looking at her holo. "Um, it''s 12:05, so, um¡­"


    She fished inside her pockets, then made a face and dug around the ground for the bandoliers I''d pulled off her earlier. From one, she pulled out something small and colorful.


    "Here you go," she said, and tossed it at me.


    I barely had time to react, but jumped out of the way like it was a live grenade. The others blinked at me as the thing sailed into the darkness.


    "Jesus, Lia. My shield, remember? No throwing things at me, ever."


    "Oh shit. I''m sorry. I''ll go get it. It''s not fragile, don''t worry."


    "What is it?" I asked as she zipped her slipskin back up and went after it.


    "You don''t know? You don''t remember?"


    "Remember what? I never asked you for anything."


    She laughed as she brought it back and plunked it down in my lap. It was a little lumpy round thing the size of my finger, wrapped in red paper. A present?


    "Happy birthday, dude. You''re nineteen today."


    Had it been that long? I knew winter was creeping up on us, but to think it was already the end of November. Eight months and change, I''d been in exile. I realized I''d missed Thanksgiving with my family for the first time, and for some reason, that thought tore me up inside.


    "Open it, stupid big brother."


    Normally, I''d go for it and rip the paper, but feeling like this might be my last present ever, I slowly, carefully unfolded every crease and undid it with as much heart as had been put into wrapping it. Finally, I got to the last few folds and a thin silver chain fell out, a small metal loop at one end, and the other end attached to whatever was still in the paper. I gently pulled it free and there, dangling from my finger was a little football charm.


    "That one''s just a teaser. There''s a real one in the trunk of the crawler," she explained. I felt my eyes well up and my mouth go dry at the same time, watching the little football glittering in the darkness, like it was flying in a perfect spiral, headed straight for the endzone.


    I threaded the loop through the tough fabric of my sleeve with some effort, and finally got it locked onto the thick seam where my cuff met my sleeve, where it dangled off the end of my wrist. I didn''t have a mobile to attach it to, and here it was secure enough and out of the way enough, while still being somewhere I''d see it all the time.


    "You like it?" Lia said, with a hesitant smile.


    I just laughed and ploughed her with a domineering hug that made both of us fall over.


    "Yes, I like it very much. Thank you, stupid little sister. You''re the best."


    "Well, I didn''t know I can''t throw a football at you, so that''s a fail, but I figured you''d like to own one at least. And you can throw it at me and I''ll walk it back to you like a loser."


    "It''s perfect," I said messing up her hair further with a noogie.


    "You should have told us," AEGIS said. "I could have made him something."


    "Nah. I know you guys are pressed just to survive and stuff. This was just a thing."


    "Indeed. Ashton, you see there is much happiness in this world worth living for? Small moments such as these make up a lifetime."


    "Oh, let it go for now," Lia said, grinning even as her face was a huge mess of hair. "We should probably be sleeping and preparing for tomorrow though. Gonna be a big day, yeah?"


    "Yeah," I said, feeling the moment leave us. "If it''s cool with all of you, I''m gonna stay at Saga''s with Wynn and Tate, and no, not sleep with her. I''m here, and I''m tired, and she hasn''t done a damn thing. Everyone okay with that?"


    Everyone agreed even if they looked like they didn''t want to. Karu and AEGIS eventually begrudgingly took off, but Lia stayed. "I''d say we should get our drink on, but tomorrow''s a little too important for that, huh?"


    "Yeah, probably. Plus I don''t really like drinking."


    "You only say that because you don''t drink enough," she said having a swig. "Helps you sleep, you''ll probably need that," she said, holding out the flask.


    "No thanks. Hey, I''ll catch up to you okay? See if Wynn can put us up?"


    "Sure. No hav-ing sex with Sa-ga!" She sang tunelessly as she trotted off.


    I got up and walked over to Saga, still fully curious why she was holding herself this whole time, but also with something else on my mind.


    [Hey um,] she said as I drew close. [You happen to see a zipper over there? I think you ripped mine out of my clothes¡­]


    From the faint light shining on her from my lit sword, I could now see the zipper on her outfit, reaching from her shoulder diagonally down across her body to her thigh was pulled open. She was holding it closed at the chest and waist, but there was a lot of pale skin flashing through the gaps. She looked distinctly uncomfortable with being undressed, which ran very contrary to the assertive attitudes she seemed to have towards, well, me. I guess it was like the difference between how soft-spoken she was versus her dominating mental speech, or her booming echoing, often mocking laughter in my head, against her almost timid real-life giggle.


    Fuck, she was adorable. It was the second time I had that thought today, but the first time it made her blush.


    "Just find the zipper," she said, her voice a plaintive squeak.


    "How did it not pull the rest of the track off?"


    "I don''t know, it''s some kind of non-magnetic composite, I guess. Just find it please."


    Looking around in the dark grass under the tree was fruitless, but I spent a couple minutes on it anyway before realizing what a waste of time it was.


    "Okay, guess I''ll just magnet it," I said. She nodded. "No psychic-speak today?"


    "Don''t want to tell Lia," she whispered.


    "Aha."


    It took me a minute, but I made myself a new magnet and swept it over the area where AEGIS and Karu had been pinned. I picked up a lot of crap, but after a couple of minutes of false starts and wondering if I was in the right area, I eventually put my hand on something small, hard, and metal, and brought in the light.


    I was holding a zipper all right. Now she just had to zip up and she was set. I handed it to her and she struggled to get it on and keep her top closed at the same time.


    "Um, maybe, um, turn around?" she asked breathily, her face glowing pink in the faint light.


    I did, and waited, while the sounds of fabric being shuffled and pulled played out behind me, trying not to think about what was going on, or what was or wasn''t hanging out at any given moment.


    "I can''t...can''t get it. I need your hands," she said at last.


    "I...is...is this a good idea?"


    "It''s just a zipper. I can''t...hold it shut and get it back on at the same time."


    I took a deep breath and joined her. She was on her back, legs kicked out in front of her, horizontally in the air, one arm holding the outfit together at the breast, the other holding the zipper at her thigh. She offered it to me.


    I got on my knees and took it, looking down. Of course the zipper had to start at the bottom. Almost halfway between her hip and her knee. She squirmed uncomfortably as I couldn''t stop my eyes from travelling up the open slit, catching on a thin crease of skin where her leg met the rest of her. I couldn''t see much, but could definitely confirm her claims that her entire body was hairless.


    I realized I was on my knees with my head between her legs. I felt a lump in my throat which I couldn''t swallow, feeling like a vulture as I stared at her pale skin, unable to turn away.


    And then, in what was probably the smartest single move of my life, I stood up.


    "Where...are you going?" she asked, a little breathless.


    "I''m going to give this to Lia," I said, holding up the zipper. "I think I should have a drink and pass out. I''ll see you in the morning."


    "O-kay. Good...night."


    I took two steps and then remembered I had something to say to her.


    "Saga, I know you get the short end of the stick around here when it comes to me. I''ve apologized before, and I''m doing so again now, and if there''s anything I can do to make it up to you, just let me know."


    She nodded.


    "But I know what you were doing not waking me up so the others would find us like that, and I don''t appreciate that. You''re not as good a liar as you think, at least, not to me. I''ve been inside your head too much."


    She frowned, and I felt a twinge of guilt and despair before she could shut it off.


    "If you scare off the others and win by default, you don''t win. I''ll leave and nobody wins. Got it? I''m already bad enough at this without active sabotage."


    "I got it," she mumbled.


    "Thank you for all your help today. I''m sorry to bitch at you."


    "I shouldn''t have done it."


    "No, you shouldn''t have, but I understand. Just...don''t do it again, okay?"


    "Okay."


    "''Night, Saga,"


    "''Night, Athan."


    I went back to the dorms and met up with Lia, and Wynn who had a room prepared just for us ahead of time, the thoughtful old man. I passed off the zipper and explained Saga''s plight, and she confirmed I did the right thing and nipped out for a minute to help.


    I prepared the bed in the meanwhile. I wasn''t thrilled to be sharing a bed with Lia, but nobody wanted to sleep on the floor in the cold. Lia came back and gave me a thumbs-up, and then, out of the blue, I felt something brush on my mind and tiredness washed over me like I''d been clubbed over the head with it. I could really only take off my coat and stumble into bed.


    The last thing I saw when my eyes drew closed was my arm on my sister''s shoulder, a tiny football dangling from my wrist, before I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, the likes of which I never thought I''d get, with the doom looming over us and all the fucked-up events of the day.

 090. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    Morning of the big day. Somehow, I woke up bright and early, but still full of energy. Energy and dread. Mostly dread.


    As the last blissful wisps of sleep left me, I realized it was a dreadful morning. I was lying in a tiny bed on the morning of a huge fight which would probably kill us all, spooning my sleeping, half-naked sister, again, the smell of alcohol hanging on her breath, even from behind her.


    At least she''d kept her pants on this time, rolling down the top to have it hang at her waist, but seriously. How the hell she didn''t catch cold every night, I couldn''t fathom. I threw a blanket on her and extracted myself from the bed.


    [''Sup Athan,] Saga said. [Sleep well?]


    "Yeah, thank you," I whispered as I pulled my shoes and coat on. "I assume you had something to do with that?"


    [Just a little thank-you for helping me with my wardrobe emergency, and apology for making your friends fight.]


    "Could have given her the same treatment so she didn''t drink herself stupid again."


    [Ehh, then she wouldn''t have been up drinking with me, so got a conflict of interest going on there. Also, vodka doesn''t taste any better than beer.]


    "But you still like the taste anyway because it''s there?"


    [Something like that.]


    "I''m going to go see if the others are up, I don''t know what we''ll wind up doing today but waiting, but if they have any plans, I''d like to know."


    [Okay. I um,] she paused. [In case I don''t see you, good luck, Athan.]


    "You sure you won''t come with us?"


    [Yeah, I think. I don''t know. On one hand, it''s just murdering an army, like, what''s the harm. But on the other hand, I think if I did that, AEGIS and Karu would turn on me forever, and if they did, I know which side you''d wind up on.]


    "Don''t be like that. We''re all in this together."


    [Their side has boobies, Athan. I can''t blame you for choosing that.]


    "There''s no sides. They''re ready to fight and kill, too."


    [Yeah. It''s not like they''d just turn on me in a heartbeat as soon as the fight is done, but it''d be an inevitable thing. Neither of them can stand me being that powerful, they''ve got too many hang-ups about not trusting Exhumans. It wouldn''t work.]


    "So you''ll just leave us all to maybe die?"


    [No, I''m going to trust you all to live. Now get going, dumbass. None of this doom and gloom. Today you''re going to beat the XPCA, right?]


    "Right," I said, the word feeling hollow even as I said it.


    I dragged Lia''s sad, hungover ass out of bed and waited impatiently while she dressed, and then we headed out in silence, both because Lia couldn''t handle a conversation now, but also because I was still chewing over all my thoughts.


    I couldn''t believe it was today. We''d only been living with this over our heads for three days now, but it felt like an eternity. It felt like the end of an era. Obviously if we lost, that was that, game over. If we won?


    I''d been so worried about what was going to happen, I hadn''t even given it much thought. I guess...it was like I had told the Exhuman girl. Even if I won, there was no escape. The XPCA would be back again, and again, and again. My own words haunted me now. Even if I did somehow win out, I''d spend the rest of your life looking over my shoulder.


    The Exhuman''s solution had been fear. Put enough terror of defeat into them, and they''d never rise to oppose her again. It didn''t work. People were too full of hope and ambition, and people like Karu and I would always rise to challenge oppression. There was no security in that, just waiting around for someone to depose you.


    Plus...I didn''t think I could pull it off. I believed in hope and love and, as Lia loved to put it, I was a weenie. There was no place for me to act as a heartless cruel savage, just to put some fear into people. Especially if I didn''t believe in it, which I obviously didn''t. So what did that leave? Convince them I''m not a threat? Convince them I''m not worth the trouble? Plead for my life and hope for mercy?


    Maybe the XPCA had dumped me out here once, but the fact they were spending the time and resources to come back meant I could expect no such leniency again. As for mercy? They had a reputation they proudly upheld of eradicating every Exhuman they could. It once gave me peace of mind, zero tolerance, zero compromise, zero threat.


    The thought did not offer the same solace it once did.


    Karu was up and inspecting her gear in the yard in front of The Bunker. She greeted us solemnly, and we all headed towards the main base, where we''d be staging our defense. By the time we got there, Lia seemed to be fully recovered, though still buried deep in her hood.


    AEGIS had done a fantastic job of turning the place into a fortress. It was difficult to get in, even without the dozens of robots attempting to kill us, just navigating barbed wire, trenches, and pitfalls. Before the elevator, we crossed what was once a yard, but was now a 20-foot hole with sharpened metal stakes at the bottom, walking across a narrow plank bridge, rigged with what looked like explosives. Four auto-cannons watched our every move from the roof and two crudely-erected watchtowers.


    Inside, the concrete had been reinforced in every wall and corner, and metal pillars braced the ceiling every five feet or so. Even now, the machines were working non-stop to shore up defenses and get a precious last few soldiers on-line to fight.


    "I''ve redone their plating to make them more effective against conventional weapons," AEGIS explained as she got in the elevator with us. "Obviously having them insulated against electrical attack isn''t as high a priority as it once was, but people do like using EMP grenades and shock throwers against robots for a reason. I''ve had to compromise on speed, but they should be able to take a few hits now. No way to dodge everything on a battlefield, anyway."


    "I have, fortunately, a standard loadout," Karu said. "I had time to visit my arsenal before fleeing, and stocked up on conventional weapons with an emphasis on crowd control. Expect fragmentation and concussive rockets and grenades, but also weapons of mass disruption such as sonic mines and incendiaries."


    "I have a sniper in the crawler," Lia added. "I''m not much use in a straight fight, though I still have a few combat tricks I didn''t throw at the fucking bear, but I have the intel and optics to pick off high-priority targets, if any show their heads. My cloak repels thermal and other forms of detection, so my plan is just to hide in the trees and pick people off in secret."


    "I''ve also done some work on Rua. Still not everything I hoped, but she''s as hard as anything, beneath her squishy exterior."


    "So I noticed," Karu said as we stepped out of the elevator into the surgical theater, purely on the grounds it was the lowest basement, and thus best-protected. "During our...tussle...I simply could not land a strike which would stun you."


    "I do have predictive algorithms and can dampen pain in an emergency. I''m still no fighter, but I should be fast, tough, and hit hard at least. Other than that, no fancy tech, I think I''m stuck with a laser and blade."


    They lapsed into silence and turned towards me.


    "Uh, I control lightning," I said. "I think everyone here knows what I brought."


    "You failed to mention your indelible stubbornness, which can be a trait of superior merit on the battlefield."


    "Or his ability to think up plans and act on them," Lia chimed in.


    "And let''s not forget his capacity for being a little bitch who fucks you right in the heart," AEGIS added. Everyone stared at her. "I''m only here because she wouldn''t let me leave," she protested, jabbing a finger at Karu.


    "I am not rising to your bait today, computer," Karu said, flatly. "If one of us dies today, I would prefer my last thoughts on this mortal earth be of those I helped, not those I wished ill."


    AEGIS'' lip twitched, but she didn''t reply, thankfully.


    "Regardless, it seems we have quite the varied array of weapons at our disposal. A standard XPCA kill squad, or even three or four would stand no chance against us."


    "Unfortunately, we know they won''t just be bringing that," Lia said. "This is a fully planned op, not an emergency response force, and they''ll be bringing their A-game. These guys also deal with Exhumans who are often immune to conventional weapons, and so pack some exotics. Nothing pathogenic or anything which would be a huge risk to use in a populated area, but we are talking weaponizing everything from air strikes, cryogenics, hell, they''ve even turned Skyweb against Exhumans before."The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    She flipped through pages on her holo. "Basically if Karu has a grenade or rocket for it, they have a tank or machine that does the same thing a hundred times bigger."


    "If Karu has a grenade for it, they also have a grenade for it," Karu said. "My tech source is the same as the elite XPCA''s."


    "Are we going to run into other airborne then?" I asked.


    "Unlikely, but possible. Standard airborne combat potential is limited by extremely small munition loadout, weapon caliber, and weight limits. I have personally compensated for this by fabricating my own small arms, but the traditional role of airborne is support and disruption, not front-line combat."


    "Was that a joke?" AEGIS asked, looking at Karu sideways. "Small arms, you said it funny."


    "It was a joke!" Lia shouted. "Karu made a joke! Karu made a pun!"


    "It truly is the end of days," AEGIS said with a sigh, while Lia laughed uproariously, more at the half-bewildered smile on Karu''s face than her actual joke.


    "I have...made jokes before. I am not certain why this is being treated as beyond the realm of possibility."


    "Don''t worry about it, Karu," I said, bumping my fist against her shoulder plate. "Lia always just gets really hyper before a game."


    "This is no game, however. This is not even a fight. Ashton, until now, you''ve fought in scenarios where your independent skill and talent can carry you through. Large-scale combat is not the same. You may be quick and cunning as you want, but all it takes is one lucky shot to remove you from the fight."


    "You forget," I said with a grin. "They can''t shoot me. I''m bulletproof."


    "My point remains," she said with a roll of her emerald eyes. "Even if there were so polite as to line up and fight you one at a time, you would lose simply by attrition. You must not act independently, but depend on your peers, stay behind the robots and act as support."


    "But my shield is one of our strongest assets. I can take the whole army shooting at me at once, if I had to. I should be up there on the front."


    "Perhaps. Until a gas grenade winds up at your feet by happenstance, and then you will be dead. Be safe and smart, Ashton. We have robots which are expendable, you are not."


    "Yeah, not to volunteer sacrificing good, useful robots to save your stupid sorry ass, but I agree with Karu," AEGIS said. "We''re doing this whole thing to save you, so don''t die, or you''ll have wasted all our time."


    "Yeah, no dying," Lia pouted. "I''m gonna go grab stuff out of my crawler, and then breakfast?" We agreed and she disappeared upstairs.


    "I hope we don''t need to use this room again," AEGIS said with a sigh after a few minutes of silence. I guess I hadn''t considered how oppressive this place might be for her, its very existence a shrine to her mistakes.


    "We''ll be fine," I reassured her, not sure how I could say the words with a straight face. "We have a plan."


    Time passed in a very unusual way. Sometimes, time seemed to drag on endlessly, making the torment of the coming doom last an eternity. Other times, hours seemed to slip by in a moment, delivering our end to us that much sooner.


    Lia and Karu were throwing the football back and forth, since I''d declined, and I watched with a weird mix of sadness and envy and joy as they lazily chucked the ball across the large chamber, avoiding the many reinforcing pillars AEGIS had put in.


    "Don''t want to join?" I asked AEGIS as we sat and watched.


    "Nah. I mean, maybe. Don''t want to play with you or Karu. I''m still mad at you."


    "I noticed. And for what it''s worth, I''m sorry, and I appreciate all you''ve done here. You really are a miracle worker."


    "I''m an AI designed to run an entire facility on the lower end, and manage all aspects of an entire government agency, given unlimited processing power. Putting together a little army is actually almost exactly what I was made to do."


    "Yeah, but you didn''t have to. You chose to, to do all this to protect Karu and me. And that''s what I''m thankful to you for."


    "Pfft, I''m not so noble," she said dismissively. "The first thing I had you do was bury a backup of me somewhere. I''m not really sacrificing anything by being here or helping you except my time."


    "That''s not true, and you know it. If we fall here, there''s nobody to turn your backup on."


    "Yeah," she said sadly.


    "So why are you trying to downplay your role in this? You''ve done more than any of the rest of us, and I do honestly believe you want both of the perpetrators at least half-dead. You''re amazing and selfless."


    "Am I? I don''t know. I feel like I''m just doing what I should, helping however I can, because it''s the right thing to do. I don''t feel like I have agency here, or am deciding to put myself on the line, I''m just...going with it. Because you are, and I''m stuck on you. Does that make any sense?"


    "Yeah, a lot, I think. I don''t want that, you know. Even if it did mean you''d leave, I want you to only do what you want to do."


    "And it¡¯s because you say stupid sappy shit like that, that I''m here." She sighed. "This might be obvious, but I''m an AI, Athan. And in a previous life, everyone knew it and treated me as such. You...well, you and my mother...you''re the first people to treat me like I''m a real person. So as much as I may hate you sometimes for stupid shit you do -- and don''t even think that this gives you free reign to do more -- I will always love you for the good person you are, underneath all that stupid."


    "You certainly have a way with compliments."


    "You certainly suck at accepting my compliments."


    "Fine. Thank you. I try very hard to be a good person."


    "Trust me, I know," she said glumly.


    I was going to inquire, but Karu and Lia were back, sweating slightly. "Hi guys," Lia bubbled. "We''re gonna kick so much XPCA ass, I can''t wait."


    "Go Black Sharks, bite ''em," I muttered.


    "Aside from the lack of spirit, that''s the spirit! Athan, you want to play some? You can throw and I can receive."


    "No, but I think AEGIS wanted a go."


    "Yeah! Never played football before AEGIS?" Lia said, pulling her to her feet.


    "No, it''s really okay, I don''t even know how--"


    "I''ll teach you! It''s easy. You just hold it like this, see, so you''re holding one end...and your fingers on the laces, here¡­"


    As the two of them walked off, AEGIS shot me a smile, and I gave her a small wave. Karu flopped down next to me, setting her visor on the ground between us.


    "You''ve embraced leadership well," she said. "I hear you cheering up your troops, supporting them body and mind as they prepare to fight for you."


    "I''m still nobody''s leader, Karu. I''m just a guy doing what I can for the people I love."


    "And in what way is that different from leadership?"


    "It''s not like I ran for office or anything. I''m just some guy here."


    "I think you misunderstand how a true leader emerges. Rarely does one choose the mantle of leadership, but rather it is thrust on them because they refuse to allow others to do without their leadership. A man who sees others going hungry and feels compelled to open a soup kitchen, for instance. Or an Exhuman boy who cannot stand his friends being hurt and steps forward to protect them from all he can in the world."


    "But I don''t know anything about protecting people, or fighting armies, or being a leader. I just wound up here."


    "And as a result, as you have noticed, you are often a terrible leader. You have several times crushed the spirits of your devoted, refused to make important decisions on your lap, and have shown poor judgement and favoritism."


    "See? Exactly my point." I watched AEGIS attempt to throw the ball, and it tumbled end-over-end out of her hands. Lia was excitedly shouting something at her.


    "And how, do you suppose, one gains experience and knowledge in how to be a strong leader? When you told AEGIS this morning that she would have no need for the medical instruments in this room, from what source of truth did you draw that knowledge?"


    "I just...didn''t want her to worry."


    "Correct. And yet a younger, more foolish you gave her endless worries, not but a few days ago. You have learned precisely because you have failed so spectacularly."


    "Hey, I wasn''t alone in making those worries for her. I don''t think it''s appropriate for you to be the one lecturing me on this."


    Karu laughed. "I admit, I was more complicit in that sin than you, and for that I apologize for the suffering you''ve endured. I also am not at the center of your love-quadrilateral, as you are, and not thrust into leadership as you have been. You have endured much, and I hope it means something at least to hear my apologies."


    "It''s fine, I guess. Things look like they''ve mostly blown over, and AEGIS won''t stay mad at me forever."


    "See? And again, you are bolstering the morale of your troops with half-truths at your own expense. A formidable leader indeed," she said with a grin.


    "You''re such an ass sometimes, Karu. Be careful or I''m going to reject your apology."


    "It is too late. You have already accepted, and all apologies are not subject to returns or refunds. My apologies are hand-crafted for the recipient and cannot be repurposed."


    It was stupid enough I had to laugh. She laughed too, and in the distance, Lia caught a football aimed mostly in her direction which flew mostly true.


    It filled me with an enormous sadness, like a huge void in my gut. Only now, it seemed, right at the very end of it all had we all been able to come together like this...minus Saga, I guess. People laughing and talking, sharing their final feelings before the fight, afraid that they won''t be able to afterwards, pep-talks and reinforcing friendships.


    It was everything I wanted in the world, and it only would exist in these brief few moments before all-out war. Next time we met, I realized, there might be fewer of us, even if it was only tomorrow. If we were even there to meet at all. Who among these people, my closest friends, would survive?


    I looked from face to face and burned them into my mind exactly as I remembered them now, smiling and laughing. Karu, relaxed, with her visor on the ground, bulky from the armor, her beauty and punk hairstyle ever in conflict. AEGIS, exalting in her triumph, dashing towards Lia with a smile on her face, her eyes a brilliant yellow, her two braids of cabled hair bouncing behind her like streamers. Lia, bouncing and jumping, football held over her head, hood and cloak flapping all over the place, ear-splitting smile covering her entire face, enraptured in the joy of a friend.


    They were all such good people, such perfect people in their own way. I couldn''t imagine a life without all of them. I couldn''t imagine a sacrifice of any of them being worth it, even if it was only one.


    There, surrounded by happiness, Karu talking and laughing at my jokes, I was the saddest and most alone I had felt. Death and dread was inside me, and the more I loved these girls, the more it consumed me.


    AEGIS froze, her face suddenly serious. A half moment later, a wailing like an air raid siren went off throughout the base. A sound I''d heard only once before, when AEGIS had been fruitlessly preparing for Saga to attack.


    This time, an attack was coming. This time, the sound filled my veins with ice.


    The XPCA were here.

 091. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    AEGIS opened a plastic clamshell box and handed each one of us an earpiece.


    "Stay in contact, stay safe, come back in one piece," she said solemnly. I clipped it over my ear, as did Lia. Karu just stared at hers for a few moments and then handed it back to AEGIS, with a gesture at her own visor. AEGIS didn''t need one either, of course.


    We filed outside into the extensive trenches surrounding the base and waited.


    "They''re coming from the south," Lia said, her voice echoing slightly in the earpiece. "They''ll come at us from the direction of Athan''s old place, Karu''s place, whatever you call it. From the river."


    From here, I could barely make out the little mound of grass and dirt that hid The Bunker''s entrance under it. Lia gave us a silent nod, spent a moment putting on her mask, hood, and scarf, hoisted her gun, and walked into the forest. With luck, I wouldn''t see her until the fight was over.


    Gradually, the trenches began to fill as all of the DOG-Es and DOG-Os returned from wherever they''d been, scouting or scrounging up materials or whatever it was they did and returned to fight. Each one seemed armed with a laser and blades on each of their four legs. Maybe they were off getting outfitted for the fight.


    After a while, I began to realize just how insane this was. The stream of robots from the trees and the base wasn''t slowing, and had to wonder if the entire workshop level was just packed wall-to-wall with hundreds of them. It was no wonder AEGIS had been able to construct thousands of feet of winding trenches and fences and pitfalls if she had so many robots. Soon there were hundreds of them, and I began to seriously doubt what the XPCA could possibly bring to bear against this kind of force.


    "They''re here," Karu said, tapping a few panels on her visor. I saw what looked like a black trail, maybe a really, really long crawler, out in the distance past The Bunker. As it drew closer, I realized it wasn''t one vehicle, but dozens, maybe even a hundred. Armored transports and tanks, driving single-file in an unbroken line as far as I could see into the distance.


    The ones in the front stopped, still little more than specks individually, and as each one stopped, the next in line pulled next to it and stopped as well. Once enough vehicles had stopped like this to create a solid wall from forest to forest, completely blocking the way between The Bunker and the river, another row of vehicles filed in directly behind them, and another row behind them, after that.


    It was military precision at its finest. Each vehicle pulled into formation precisely and exactly, each stopped a moment after the one before, steady as a heartbeat. Each disgorged troops, who arranged in front of the line of vehicles in neat rows, creating a solid line of bodies before the solid lines of vehicles. I saw about one of every three soldiers flickering with an orange speck.


    "What''s the orange?" I asked.


    "Personal barrier," Karu answered. "Like the legions of old, they have no need for cover if they make their own. Soldiers in the front hold a dampening shield which dissipates energy blasts and absorbs concussive force."


    "I should be able to punch them out if we need," Lia''s voice came through my ear. "If they''re giving the robots trouble, I can focus on them."


    "I''m redefining targeting parameters now to avoid hitting the shields if possible," AEGIS said, her fingers a blur as she typed into the air.


    After what must have only been a minute, they were fully assembled and ready to march, but did not move. As Karu had said, the entire front line now shimmered with a vivid orange glow.


    I took back everything I said about how imposing our force was. There must have been thousands of men out there, not counting whoever was still manning the tanks and APCs, or whatever support and logistics divisions we couldn''t see. They had us outnumbered almost ten to one. As if in response to my thoughts, the sky sounded like it broke open, and the echoing roar of engines filled the air.


    Dozens of VTOLs dropped from the sky and hovered over the enemy line. At the same time, the enemy line surged and swelled, and something popped out in front of the line of orange.


    "Enemy drones," Karu explained.


    "I should have asked for binoculars or optics or something," I complained.


    "You have me, do not complain."


    "What kind of drones?"


    "Most likely something dangerous and expendable. The XPCA takes human lives lightly, and would only use drones in a capacity too dangerous for even their low standards. Possibly a suicide model."


    "There must be hundreds of them."


    "Indeed. I do not envy those of you on the ground."


    "I don''t envy you in the air. You see those VTOLs?"


    And then the enemy line held solid and seemed to simply be waiting.


    "I...must go," Karu said abruptly.


    "Wait, why?" I grabbed her arm. "What''s going on?"


    "Nothing. Erm, release me at once, if you please."


    "Guys, that''s Blackett out there," Lia said. "The one in the front walking towards us."


    "Blackett? Deputy Director Blackett? The asshole who booked me?"


    "Also second-in-command of the XPCA. Want me to pop him in the brain?"


    "I doubt it would be successful. Ashton, let me go."


    "You''re going to talk to him!" I realized. "He''s coming up here alone to negotiate, and you''re going to go alone."


    "How suspicious," AEGIS said, her eyes flashing menacingly.


    "You''re not going to give yourself up still, Karu?" Lia''s voice plead.


    "No! No damn you all, I am trying to prevent Ashton from going."


    "Oh," said Lia and AEGIS, leading into a long awkward pause.


    "Well, too late for that. If I can talk to him, that means there might still be a peaceful resolution," I said, hopping out of the trench. I barely made it a step before Karu landed in front of me.


    "Ashton, I insist that I go. If there is an ambush, I will be able to escape because of my heightened mobility."


    "And I insist I go. If there''s an ambush, I have my shield and powers."


    "If anyone should go, it should be a bot," AEGIS said.


    "They can''t even talk, AEGIS," I shot her down.


    "But they''re expendable, and neither of you are."


    "Guys, he''s getting closer. Someone needs to head out there, or he''s just going to walk right into our lines," Lia said insistently. "Someone other than Athan."Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "Lia, I''m going." I tried to move around Karu but she blocked me. "Karu, this is so immature. He''s an XPCA officer, I''m sure there''s no trap. Let me go."


    "That is exactly the mentality that leads to falling in traps. You are clearly unqualified. I shall go."


    "Let''s just both go, then. Does that work for you? Sheesh."


    "No. I will go alone."


    "Karu, look at those thousands of people over there with guns and tanks. This is not a game. Chill out, and I''ll be right back."


    Blackett was now close enough that I could make out it was clearly him. He looked identical to when last I saw him, black military-style uniform, hair cropped short and parted severely, perpetual scowl. He stood at attention and waited outside our lines.


    "He''s watching us fight. I''m going." I moved to pass Karu and then when her momentum shifted, spun off of her and passed her on the other side. Oldest trick in the playbook.


    "Athan--No!" Karu flew after me as I broke into a sprint towards the waiting man. I closed maybe a third of the distance before she landed between us again.


    "Deputy Director Blackett, I apologize for the inconvenience. There will be no negotiations, prepare to die," Karu shouted.


    "No, we''d like to hear you out," I shouted over Karu''s shoulder. He looked very annoyed at both of us, and began walking towards us again.


    "Exhuman Ashton, Karen Irenside, you are both hereby charged with domestic terrorism and treasonous acts against the state," he said after his long approach. "You are hereby ordered to stand down and surrender yourselves to the Agency of Exhuman Pacification and Control. Namely, me."


    "We refuse."


    "Karu!"


    "We do refuse," she said glaring at me.


    "I had hoped you''d say that," he said. "Exhuman, ex-hunter, do you know why I''m here talking to the two of you in person, all alone, right now?"


    "You have a poor grasp of military tactics?" Karu ventured.


    "Karu, please stop antagonizing him."


    "He is the one who had you arrested!"


    "And you''re the one who tried to collect my posted bounty and kill the Exhuman." he said with a sneer. "Let''s not focus on the past." He turned back to me, apparently finding me more receptive than Karu. "I have informed my soldiers that this is a hostage crisis, and that your sister is being held here against her will. I informed them that I had a previous rapport with you during your last incarceration and would negotiate her release."


    "Can I blow his head off now?" Lia asked, hearing everything.


    "Why would you say all that?" I asked.


    "So that I could meet you alone, of course. Right here. Right now. You see, I have an offer for you."


    "Athan, no. Athan, look me in the eyes," Karu said pleadingly, lifting her visor. "Do not listen to this man."


    "Karu, he went through a lot of effort to set this up. We can at least hear him out."


    "No, we can not. Do not do this, Athan. Please."


    "If you''d rather listen to her, I take no offense. We will simply crush you as we had set out to do. You may notice that you are severely outnumbered and outgunned. You and your cohorts may be powerful, but you are not that powerful." He gave the slightest indication of a smile. "Trust me, I kill Exhumans for a living. Regardless, the choice is yours. Hear me out, accept my offer, or don''t."


    "Athan, I''m with Karu on this one," AEGIS'' voice came through. "Don''t even hear him out. It''s going to be nothing but trouble."


    "Yeah, bro. This guy can''t have anything good to say. Please just let Karu handle it."


    "I''ll hear what you have to say," I said, "but no promises beyond that."


    "A reasonable answer."


    Karu didn''t seem to think so and began to move towards him. Before I could even react, he''d moved, and she let out a shocked gasp.


    "She''s unharmed," he said quickly, stepping back with his hands up. Karu rolled to the ground with what looked like a badge or sticker on the front of her chestplate. "Localized destabilization field. She''s disoriented, that''s all."


    A booming shot rang out, the sound echoing off the trees and sky. Blackett''s head snapped backwards, making him reel and fall to the ground backwards. Shocked, I stepped forward to check on him.


    He was intact, but bleeding. The majority of a huge bullet hung in the air next to his head, almost piercing a hazy orange field which floated an inch from his head, which was now scraped with shrapnel from the shot. He reached urgently for his left shoulder and grabbed the comms clipped there.


    "Stand down. No incident," he said. The line of soldiers stirred restlessly but did not move.


    "Lia, fuck," I said.


    "He''s not dead?"


    "No, he''s got some kind of barrier like the soldiers do, but much stronger."


    "And much more expensive," he coughed. "And now broken, thanks to your zealous sister. Exhuman, I do not relish the thought of dying on this pointless battlefield, tell your associates to stand down, if you please."


    "Lia, do not shoot him again. For fuck''s sake."


    "This is a battle, Athan."


    "Not yet it isn''t. Right now it''s a negotiation."


    "He attacked Karu."


    "Karu attacked him first! Just let us talk."


    "Or don''t," AEGIS added. "He said his shield was down."


    "The hell is wrong with you people? Jesus Christ."


    I almost found myself apologizing to Blackett as I helped him back to his feet. Karu swore at me, and I put myself between him and Lia.


    "I suppose I should hurry up and make my proposition before she repositions," he said, without a hint of a joke. "Before we get into it, however, I must commend the loyalty and courage of your allies. Such friendships are difficult to find and must be very valued to you."


    "They are," I said. "And now that you''re flattering me, I''m wondering what you are scheming."


    "I merely wanted to point out all you have to lose. If you do not accept my proposal, whether your maniac sister places a bullet in my head or not, that army will defeat you. You have exactly no chance against them. I just wish for you to consider it seriously."


    "You have my serious consideration. Now out with it."


    "Exhuman Ashton, do you know what I hate most in this world?"


    "I''m going to guess taxes. Do you even pay that if you work for the feds?"


    "Surprisingly, yes we do. But the answer was Exhumans. I should think that would have been obvious."


    "Maybe it was. This isn''t a proposal however."


    "Exhumans are chaos incarnate. They destroy everything around them, destroy the peace of mind of the common man, and cannot be anticipated or controlled, only reacted to. Often, even if we have forces in an area, there is nothing left to save by the time a response is executed. It is...frustratingly ineffective."


    "You hate me, I got it." Karu stirred at my feet and pleaded at me.


    "Not you personally, but the concept of what you represent, certainly. If I hated you, I''d just have you executed. No, in you, I see great potential. When I first met you, you were a pathetic mewling child, incapable of lying on the pavement outside your parents'' house without staining it with your tears. Now look at you, strong, fiercely independent. You are standing over the body of your own tormented comrade by the force of your own will. Such strength, I relish it."


    "This is now just more flattery. I''m going to give you one more sentence to say something that sounds like a proposal."


    "Fine. Surrender, and your friends will be unharmed. Amnesty will be granted to the ex-hunter, she will be free to return to her previous position if she desires, and we will return with only you in captivity."


    "You hate Exhumans so bad, you''re willing to not kill me and everyone else here. Why?"


    "Because I''d rather take you alive than have all of you dead. You see, I don''t care about any of them at all, yours is the only fate I''m interested in, and if leaving them alone convinces you to come along, then I''m more than happy to oblige."


    He reached into a pocket and I tensed. "Relax, I''m no fool," he said, and slowly drew out a small black device and offered it to me. "I am...reasonably certain you will say no and will require some persuading. A comms, for my ears only. If you decide to change your mind once the carnage begins," he said with a hint of a smile.


    I didn''t respond, but did take the device. Karu shaking her head at me violently now.


    "Bro, you cannot be serious. I hope the only reason you take that is so you have it to shove up his ass once we''re done kicking it."


    "Athan, I don''t care what happens here, but if you call him up to surrender, I will kill you myself."


    "You have such good friends," Blackett said, turning to leave. "It would be a shame if something were to happen to them."


    I leaned down and ripped the tag off Karu''s armor, and she took in a huge gasp of air.


    "I cannot believe what you just did. You just...left me there."


    "You wouldn''t let me talk to him. You were being irrational and insane. Hell, I was thinking of EMP''ing you myself."


    "Oh," said Blackett, turning back to face us, now twenty or so feet away. "I have a gift for you to show my good faith. I trust you''ll enjoy it." He spoke into the comms on his shoulder, and from the battleline, a vehicle began to move, driving towards us. Karu and I waited as It slowed as it approached, and turned. Finally, fifteen feet away, the back opened and someone stepped out.


    I heard Lia''s sharp intake of breath as she saw who it was.


    With a swagger and a grin which made it clear who had arranged everything, Brick stepped out of the back of the transit and stomped towards me, cigarette flaring between his lips.

 092. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    "Long time, no see," he said. "I thought you were dead. Where''s Lia?"


    "Hi, Brick. What brings you to my formerly-pleasant corner of the world?"


    "I just said it, fuckface. You thought you could get away with it?"


    "With what? Being an Exhuman?"


    "With kidnapping Lia. Stop playing dumb. Where is she?"


    AEGIS'' voice came through the earpiece. "Lia, sweetie, if you want to shoot him in the head, we all support you."


    She didn''t respond. All I could hear from her was panicked breathing. Karu and I exchanged a worried glance.


    "She''s safe. From you," I growled at him. "Do you have any idea what you did to her? Like at all?"


    "Yeah," he said smugly. "I saved her from you. I saved everyone in town. People think I''m a fucking hero who put away the Exhuman before he could destroy everything."


    "You''re a stupid piece of shit is what you are. She''s fucking terrified of you. All you did was hurt her and molest her--" I felt the words catch in my throat and my blood boiled. My hands wouldn''t stop clenching and unclenching, my face twitched. Every time I looked up, I saw that face, smug, totally unrepentant.


    "I saved her, and she loved me for it!" he shouted back. "After you were gone, she needed somebody to love and comfort her, and that was me! You just can''t come to terms with the fact that I replaced you. I was the brother you could never be. A human one! Your own parents love me more than they love you."


    I couldn''t speak, couldn''t think, couldn''t control myself any longer. Every moment near this man just drove me further into my own hate. For the first time in a long time, images flashed in front of my eyes of everything I''d lost from being Exhuman, everything he''d taken from me, and through it all, I saw his stupid smug face smiling at me.


    "Got her chained up in your little house then? That''s fine. The first thing she sees when this is all over will be me--"


    The rest of his sentence was cut off by a noise like ''gurk'', as I moved, faster than I knew I could, and drove my fist right into his gut. My rage poured over, my once-innocent sister, now happy to be killing people, criminal overlord, when she should be at home studying for midterms before winter break, talking with her friends, picking out clothes to keep warm against the balmy Los Angeles winter.


    I hit him again, in the nose, feeling blood fleck on my arm and face. She was here, dressed like an assassin, behind the optics of a gun as big as she was. A fucking high schooler. The sweetest, smartest, most popular girl in her class. She was a shoo-in for captain on the volleyball team. She was an AP and honors student with a 4.0 GPA. She was the friend people called when they needed someone strong, someone they could trust with their secrets and their lives.


    One more time, I struck, feeling like I broke my knuckles against his jaw. There was a crack and blood flew from his lips with the force of my hit. And now what? Now she sold people''s secrets. Now she claimed people''s lives. She had no chance or hope of being a normal student. Everything she had or was, everything she''d lost, I blamed this man. I poured that blame into him with my knuckles.


    My fists moved on their own, driving into his face again and again, crunching and blood, and I didn''t know if it was his or mine. Stigmatized. Ostracized. Beaten. Raped.


    He caught my fist in his hand, his face blackened and sagging. Both of us gasping and panting for air. I tried to move, but couldn''t. I was a quarterback, but he was a lineman.


    "You stupid little shit," he muttered. "You can''t beat me. I''m a goddamn hero."


    He grunted and released my hands as Karu''s leg swung and caught him full in the chest. Suddenly, he was back up again, gun in hand from somewhere, only inches from Karu''s visor. I saw surprise cross her face, and the jetpack began to deploy, but at that distance, still off-balance from her kick, she couldn''t move in time.


    I heard a shot fill every bit of my ears and soul, and felt a spray of blood so hot it felt like it burned where it touched me. I flinched and closed my eyes. I wanted to vomit. I needed to move, needed to act, needed to do something, but I couldn''t...couldn''t open my eyes, couldn''t look at Karu.


    I heard a body hit the ground. The snow crunched under it.


    No. I couldn''t lose her. I loved her too much. Maybe, I thought insanely, if I stayed here with my eyes shut forever, she would never be dead. She could live as long as I refused to accept it.


    Lia broke the silence. "That...that felt really..."


    I realized I hadn''t inhaled in several moments and my lungs were burning. I swallowed hard, and felt a hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and met a green pair sparkling under the hazy red of the visor on her brow.


    I gasped and felt hot tears in my eyes. I had to hold it together. We had a war to fight. I couldn''t go to pieces. I couldn''t. Couldn''t let myself feel...how I''d almost lost...


    Brick...simply wasn''t anymore. Everything from about halfway up his torso was simply gone, completely erased by the enormous force of a bullet the size of his head moving at mach 100. The rest of him lay on the ground at our feet. A red halo of blood around and on us, the only remains of his upper-half. Karu was looking at me intensely, worry carved across her face.


    "...really good," Lia finished.


    Slowly, carefully, the hand on my shoulder pulled me in for a hug and she just held me for long moments.


    I stood and trembled, my breath coming in ragged. In my ear, I could hear Lia''s, as shaky and ragged as my own.


    I''d failed her. Failed Lia. She''d killed a man, and loved doing it. Even in death, Brick had one final word in corrupting her. I couldn''t protect her from him, even when he was right in front of me.


    I heard AEGIS and Lia talking excitedly about how good the shot was, even with me in the way, how exceptional her timing, like they were going over the highlights of a well-played game. Karu was silent, holding me for as long as I needed. I''d almost lost her as well.


    We couldn''t do this. I couldn''t do this. I couldn''t protect these people, what had I even been thinking. My hand inched towards the comms Blackett gave me, but abruptly Karu broke off the embrace.


    "They''re moving," she said. "It''s starting now. Athan, back to the trenches, go!"


    And then she was gone, a blue trail in the air. The air began to whistle as rockets streaked from the tank line, hundreds of them coursing through the air straight for me.


    I didn''t have time to think or feel or despair. The time to fight was forced on me. I did grab Blacketts comms, and threw it on the ground so I could crush it under my heel. I would protect my friends, with my own strength.


    I''d learned my lesson already by trying to beat Brick with my fists. In my anger, my blind rage, I forgot the one thing about myself that he hated most, and that had almost cost Karu her life, and had cost Lia her innocence.


    I was a fucking Exhuman, and these guys were about to find out exactly what that meant.


    Messianic, I stood with arms outstretched, greeting the missiles as they approached. More of them poured from the tanks, thick trails of smoke from every corner of the enemy line, all converging on me as the closest target. There were so many and so much smoke it cast shadow over half the battlefield. I smiled and closed my eyes.


    I felt the first hit and shatter, and then instead of the white trailing clouds over the battlefield, they were dark stormclouds. Lightning coursed through them, jumping from trail to trail, thunder booming and roaring as the arcs of electricity tore apart the air itself. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    And then explosions. Huge, glorious explosions ripped through the enemy line. Tank after tank surged with electricity, and their insides ruptured like a swollen cyst. The enemy line broke and panicked as fires and pieces of machine flew through the air, and at least two of the tanks simply detonated, lightning catching on an ammo or fuel cache and creating an explosion so huge it made a small mushroom cloud.


    Still, there were thousands left. The damage wasn''t as catastrophic as it could have been, the infantry line had advanced under the rocket fire, and that had put the majority of them far enough from the vehicles to be safe from the blast. It sure looked like every single tank was out of commision, but the VTOLs, drones, and APCs were still up.


    I decided to take Karu''s advice and head back to the trenches, but not before catching everyone cheering over the comms. I couldn''t help but to smile, even as I tried to remind myself, I''d probably just killed a hundred men or more.


    Instantly. Effortlessly. Innocent people, doing their jobs. I couldn''t become one of those Exhumans. I wouldn''t allow myself to fall that far. Maybe these people had to die so that we could live, but I couldn''t enjoy it.


    "Guess you were right about being the one to negotiate," AEGIS said, welcoming me back after I''d navigated the trenches.


    "Let''s not pat ourselves on the back too hard," I said. "They haven''t broken yet, they''re still coming."


    "Well, without that artillery, they''ll have to fight my DOGs in the worst possible way. We may still be badly outnumbered, but at least we won''t be so outgunned."


    The enemy line advanced steadily, APCs moving in formation alongside the infantry, who remained behind the shieldbearers. Now and again, the VTOLs would break off and tear through the sky, chasing Karu or being harassed by her. One or two of them fell, ripped by explosions, or some kind of mid-flight sabotage, but otherwise it was impossible to keep track of where she was. Her comms were just the constant whine of engines, and controlled breathing.


    Finally, it seemed, they were at the optimal range for small-arms, and the distance between our lines and theirs lit up like a carpet of glowing lava, as laser and gunfire filled the air. The constant roar of fire was punctuated by an occasional booming report, and one of the shieldbearers would drop, courtesy of Lia. Before the others could recover the barrier and get it back up, the DOGs would automatically target the new vulnerability and burn down an entire column of soldiers.


    Still, we were running out of ground a lot faster than they were running out of men. The DOGs were resilient, but apparently had nothing on the enemy bomb-drones, which sprinted forward, completely unphased by gunfire of all kinds, launched themselves into the trenches and detonated, blowing pieces of the DOGs skyward. I watched as one drone was caught by a DOG''s arm-blade, the huge robot crushing down on the smaller one using size and weight alone, and then with a sharp flick, sent the drone flying back at the enemy line before it exploded in the air like a firework.


    I threw fistfuls of lightning with no effect. The personal barriers were too robust, deflecting and absorbing anything I could throw at them. If I were close, it would be trivial to get my swords around them, or force lightning through them, but from back here, I was utterly useless. AEGIS was much the same, armed only with a rifle that fired blasts in a staccato burst, even slamming the same barrier four or five times, it simply glowed an angrier shade of orange for a few seconds before dissipating back down to normal.


    Experimentally, next time she fired, I also threw a full volley of ten bulbs at the same target. As our combined fire hit it, the shield glowed hotter and hotter orange, eventually turning white, before burning out and flickering out of existence momentarily.


    Long enough. The last of my darts slipped through and electricity exploded in a small area, killing the bearer and the man behind him. The next soldier in line dove to recover the shield, but the DOGs had already picked up on the weakness and drilled a new hole in the line, before the remaining shieldbearers closed the gap.


    Maybe it was because that was my kill, but it made my mouth go dry. Watching the next man dive forward to try to save his own life, and those behind him, it was such a human moment. I didn''t want to be reminded of the lives I was taking, but I refused to shut it out.


    So that left me with being here, claiming souls like a reaper, and feeling a burning shame grow in my heart with every life I extinguished.


    We''d been doing okay, but the tide was beginning to turn. The VTOLs had taken up flanking positions, strafing our lines from the sides, and the troops were close enough to begin deploying some of that unconventional weaponry the XPCA was famous for. Pits, and entire combat lines were flooded with solidifying goo or instantly-freezing ice, trapping DOGs helpless inside. Explosions went from occasional to constant, as heavier munitions were brought to bear and the bomb-drones infiltrated further and further into our lines. AEGIS looked worried as she worked her rifle again, and again.


    Our lines were breaking. Our number of robots was shrinking faster and faster. I had to get out on the front lines to hold them while we still had any lines to hold. I began to see Karu more and more, as she got more reckless and aggressive, her airborne assault wiping out entire clusters of men, and then disappearing again, with hopefully only a scratch.


    I bolted from the trench, ignoring AEGIS'' protests, and sprinted forward, feeling a hail of blasts and bullets sizzle on my shield even in the single moment I''d been exposed. With a thought, I brought my blades to life, six of them now, as a result of my practice, and held them in front of me as I charged the line.


    Fire rained down on me from all sides, and I could feel my skin burning as searing shrapnel punched through my shield like a downpour. Jumping over a trench entirely, I was only feet away and brought my swords to bear.


    Instantly, I found a gap between two shieldbearers and slid my sword through. With a punching gesture, I drove it parallel, right through the first man, and into the second, dropping two of the shields at once. I moved down the line, carving a path in their defenses, and leaving as much opening as I could for the rest of our robots and AEGIS to pick off the unguarded men behind.


    I felt like a tornado, blades spinning every possible way, leaving screaming, twitching, smoking corpses in my wake, as I killed as fast as I could move. I saw a soldier prime a grenade and throw it at me, and held still so it would impact my shield. It fizzled into nonexistence like the rest, and I gave him a smirk before killing more of his friends.


    I couldn''t allow myself to fall into this. I wasn''t that Exhuman. This way led only to death and despair.


    But it was so easy. These thousands of men, tiny playthings compared to my power. Here, the finest force of the finest army in the world, a huge void in their lines, carved by one person. By me. I''d been fighting for less than a minute, and how many had I already claimed? A dozen? Two dozen? Three? If you counted the men behind the shields I had killed indirectly, a hundred?


    And not a scratch on me. They couldn''t touch me. I was like a god, or a force of nature to these people. Could they stop a tornado just by outnumbering it?


    At my feet, one of the drones. I stepped back and lanced my blades into it. Its small armored legs shuddered and it fell motionless to the ground. Another soldier was priming a grenade. This time, I simply wove my sword through the lines and drove it through his throat. The active grenade fell at his feet, and after a moment, exploded into a glacial starbust of ice, trapping the other nearby men inside, frozen in their attempts to flee the blast.


    I laughed at it. I was laughing at death on a battlefield. I was that Exhuman.


    The scales of karma shifted, and the bomb-drone at my feet exploded, sending me flying through the air, the battlefield and all on it, passing under me as in slow motion. My ears rung painfully. My skin felt hot and constricting all over my body. Pain was everywhere...except one place...I couldn''t feel my leg. I looked down...or up...whichever way the rest of my body was, and realized, I didn''t have a leg anymore. Meat and sinews, and a perfect arc of blood, tracing my flight through the air like a rainbow.


    I didn''t hit the ground. Something caught me in the apex of my flight and abruptly jerked me further skyward. I recognized the roar of the jetpack. The world spun under me.


    So stupid. So arrogant. I''d lasted less than a minute on the battlefield, most of it with my friends screaming at me to retreat. What kind of god could I possibly have mistaken myself for?


    Karu was saying something. She was doing something. I didn''t know what. In the next moment, we were back with AEGIS on the ground, and Karu was sticking something on my arm. Several somethings. I felt myself inhale sharply, and my eyes saw with clarity I''d never had. The pain was there, but instead of ruling over me, it was like a curiosity I was observing in a museum display. Karu seemed to be speaking very slowly.


    "--bat stims," she said. "Will help with the shock. He is losing a lot of blood."


    "I...I''m fine, I think," I said, and sat up. Karu forced me back down.


    "You are on a lot of stims right now," she said, and forced my arm into view, where there were three patches on my arm. When had she rolled up my sleeve? I found myself thinking on the question with unnatural focus. I must have been in and out of consciousness. It would have given her ample opportunity.


    AEGIS had a length of cloth. Yellow and white. She had a bare arm. The cloth was her sleeve. She was tying it around my leg. My leg was gone. She was creating an emergency tourniquet to stop the blood loss. If I lost too much blood, I would die.


    "I need to get back out there, we can''t hold them," Karu said. AEGIS nodded, and threaded a metal bar through the tourniquet. She turned it violently, and I felt renewed pain in my leg, from a distance. She turned it again, and again, and again, constricting the fabric more and more. The pain was fascinating in its unbearability. I wanted to feel more, wanted to see how much I could take in this state of mind. It washed over me like a wave. Yet, I remained unmoved.


    "We''re almost out of DOGs," AEGIS said. She didn''t look at me when she said it. She was talking to herself more than me. She was anxious. We were losing badly. Karu''s engines raced in my ear through the earpiece. They were turning on and off even faster than before. She was pushing herself as hard as she could, moving and fighting faster and harder. Her body couldn''t take that strain.


    I stood, wobbling on one leg. AEGIS tried to arrest me. We had no time for that. I was needed on the field. I was the only one who could turn this fight around. She had to understand that I had to go.


    "Athan, if you go, you''ll die. You can''t fight."


    "If I stay, we all die," I said.

 093. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    My swords flashed out, feeling slower than before, even though I knew they were faster, and I sheared through the leg of a ruined DOG unit nearby. AEGIS watched with a mortified expression as I hobbled to it, leaving a trickle of blood in my wake. I took the shattered leg and shoved my left arm into it, balancing on it and my right foot. It was enough. I could still fight.


    "Athan, no," AEGIS said, as I lurched ungainly towards the front lines. "You can''t do this."


    "I can''t not do this. Don''t try to stop me."


    She stood in front of me for a few moments and then let out a defeated sigh.


    She stepped up and put my free arm over her shoulder. "If I can''t stop you, I can help you, at least. It''s one way to die or another."


    The echoing booms had stopped. I heard Lia swear in the comms and small-arms fire. Heavy breathing. She was running.


    Karu gasped. She was hit. I saw a figure materialize in the air at the end of a ribbon of plasma, surrounded by VTOLs. They tracked on her and opened fire. She disappeared at the last moment, but she was getting slower. AEGIS and I hobbled together towards the last remaining line, explosions rocking the last few trenches and the remaining robots guarding them.


    As we approached, the DOGs in our immediate path stopped fighting and formed a rough bridge for me to teeter across the trench, leaning on AEGIS and my crutch. Nobody had been shooting at us until now, maybe thinking AEGIS was escorting wounded from the fight. No, they finally realized, she was escorting me to the fight. It seemed all at once, fire concentrated on us from all sides, AEGIS flinched and screamed as she was showered in sparks and shrapnel, but I found myself in my center. This place of death was a zone of peace.


    The bullets, explosions, roar of engines, Karu screaming in my ear to get out, they all were just white noise. The colors around me were so vivid and beautiful, the pain, within me, within all of those around me, exquisite. Every hobbling step I took, every breath, every drop of blood that leaked from my broken body, I saw, I felt, I became.


    I was the battlefield, and the battlefield was me. I was the unstoppable force, and the thousands of men and guns and vehicles before me? A movable object. Slowly, insistently, unbreakably, I walked straight through the enemy line. Hundreds of blades spun around me. My beautiful children, finding partners to dance with on their own, while I simply moved forward. Proud of my daughters and the lives they claimed. Proud father of death.


    The white noise became screams. The vivid colors became red. My children played and danced and sang a crimson dirge, and the enemy line broke under me. Heavy cannons on the APCs and VTOLs unloaded hundreds and thousands of bullets at me, with no greater effect but to make my shield strobe, outlining itself as a perfect semicircle around me, and outside of that, another perfect circle of corpses described the furthest reaches of my swords. Nothing lived within my reach, and with every step, my reach took me further and further into the heart of the enemies.


    "Jesus, fuck," whispered AEGIS, her eyes wide. "Is this what it''s like to be Exhuman?"


    The crowd was in panic now. Beneath their faceplates, I could hear their screams. Men turned on other men. Anarchy descended upon them. It was more than panic, it was madness. Their discipline was not simply gone, it had actively been destroyed. Like a rippling plague spreading through them, they became rabid, crazed, and the entire battle line became a brawl. Something had happened. Something had ruined the peace of this warzone. The black and white tranquility I had created had been so easily broken into a malaise of greys.


    I felt more than sensed the source. There, in their backlines. A tall, thin figure, standing resolute. My sister in death.


    [''Sup,] she said.


    "I thought you weren''t coming. You wished to avoid this...this," I said, sweeping my crutched arm over the melee, even as my swords hacked away at any foolish or crazed enough to come close.


    [I was going to, but thought, ah what the hell.]


    A bullet found her and she fell backwards, leaving an arc of blood from her forehead. The panic on the battlefield lapsed for a moment into mere confusion, and then she stood again, and the brawl recommenced in full.


    VTOLs, their pilots gone mad streaked into the battlefield, exploding in a cascade of flying dirt, bodies, and gore. Shieldbearers were clubbing others with the barriers which were supposed to protect them. Nothing left to kill or evade, Karu was hovering over the battlefield, watching the madness unfold under her. One of the APCs floored it, its driver either dead or insane, and drove through a dozen men before crashing full-speed into a trench, the driver certainly dead after that.


    "This isn''t a battle, this is a slaughter," AEGIS said.


    "This is horrible," Karu echoed. She levelled a shot and executed a man who was attempting to eat another flailing soldier.


    [And this is the true face of humanity,] Saga said. [All they need is a little push, and this is what lurks in the mind of every person. Murder. Power. Deviancy. Lies. How ugly they look inside, this is how it looks on the outside.] She sounded bitter.


    "Saga...that''s enough. They won''t fight after this," AEGIS said.


    "Indeed. I believe the damage is done. Their numbers are already halved, there is no need to continue this carnage."


    "Guys...I--" I heard Lia say, breathless. And then a scream. I turned to the treeline so fast, I almost fell over, only staying up because AEGIS held me.


    "Where is she!" I screamed at Saga.


    [Over...over there! I don''t know, she''s out of range!]


    Karu disappeared in the general direction with a blue flash. I began to move back from the line, as quickly as my body would allow, but I was fading fast. The stims were holding, but I''d lost too much blood. I was becoming woozy, and at the same time, hyperaware of how woozy and slow I was. It was like watching myself in slow-motion as I fell down a set of stairs, analyzing every painful bump and scrape, but unable to affect it.


    "I think," I heard a voice in my ear that made my heart stop. "That you may wish to reconsider my offer, Exhuman Ashton. Order your forces to stop your attack at once or the girl dies."


    "Lia, no!" I screamed.


    I heard her crying in the background of the comms. Apologizing. Like somehow she was the one who''d failed us.


    "I am still hearing my forces die. Cease or suffer her loss."


    "Saga," I turned back to her. "Let it go. AEGIS, stop the drones."Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    The two hesitated, and for a second I was worried they weren''t going to, but then each of them did. The battlefield lapsed into silence as drone and man stopped killing man.


    "That''s more like it," Blackett said in my ear. "Now we can talk. You have a very important decision to make, Exhuman Ashton. I understand that victory is within your grasp, but only if you are willing to sacrifice your sister. I doubt you will do that."


    "Now, I could use this new position to make whatever demands I want, but I am an honorable man and will still uphold our previous arrangement. After all," I heard him do something that made Lia whimper "I don''t care about the others in the least. So make your choice, Exhuman, I''ll wait."


    In my mind, there was no choice to be made. My life for Lia''s is a trade I would make a thousand times in a heartbeat. "You win. I surrender," I said, as soon as he had stopped talking.


    As the words left my mouth, I felt like an egg cracked open in my mind and I saw clearly.


    This was...this was what everyone had been alluding to. This was the moment everyone knew was coming. The compel was broken, and I, having made my decision already, felt old memories and visions flooded in.


    AEGIS and myself talking, when I broke the news to her about the XPCA. Moments after she began turning off her emotive indices which would lead to her breakdown.


    "Someday, you might have to choose who to sacrifice," she said. "The world is a cruel place, and whether you know it or not, you''ve somehow become the leader and center of our little malformed tumor of a band. The hard calls land on your desk."


    Lia and me arguing in the forest, before exploring the limits of my powers.


    "Maybe we could make a deal? Like...I don''t know, turn over Saga or AEGIS," she said. "Or Karu, she''s the one they wanted, right? Tell them you''ve been living peacefully out here."


    "I would never do that. I can''t believe you''d suggest that."


    "I don''t like it either! But you''re my only stupid big brother. You can''t just walk in there and die, it''d be better to sacrifice some of us if that saved even one of us."


    "There''s that word again," I said.


    "What, sacrifice? Yeah, it''s ugly, but tell me how some of us being dead is better than all of us?"


    Saga and me, the first time we spoke about the XCPA coming, what our options were.


    "Anyway, the XPCA. The whole XPCA, and their elite forces to boot. Do we run?"


    [They''ll find you. It''s not a very big Earth to them.]


    "So we fight?"


    [They''ll kill you, too.]


    "Then what?"


    [That depends on how much you love your friends.]


    The scenes, and dozens more flashed through my brain like vignettes. Lia, trying to get me to focus on training instead of considering the option of talking it out. Karu, always pushing me to act as a leader. Saga, mentioning that if she told me about the decision I''d have to make, it would influence it.


    All the girls knew this would not be a clean fight. They knew there would be casualties. And they also knew that as soon as I was put to that, that if I had to choose between my own suffering or capture or capitulation and theirs, I would choose my own in a heartbeat. A thousand times in a heartbeat.


    Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Through the conversations which flashed through my mind, the word popped up over and over. But I realized that every time one of the girls said it, what they were really saying was, ''kill me instead.''


    It was why Karu wanted to negotiate without me. It was why everyone had been so defeated when I assumed responsibility instead of allowing Karu to give herself up. Nobody wanted me to do exactly what they knew I would do, exactly what I had just done.


    And more, nobody wanted to be the one who I threw myself away over. I realized now why Lia was crying, and it wasn''t because she was hurt or caught or afraid of dying, it was because she knew that her capture would mean my death.


    Blackett was right. I did have the best friends. Even when Karu and Saga and AEGIS were at each others'' throats, they had put aside their differences enough to agree on keeping me alive. Even if they were all cooperating to lie and mislead me, keep me busy with errands and drama and responsibility and not give me time to think about my options, they did it out of love. Each was willing to die, was happy to die, if it meant they were the sacrifice instead of me.


    And that was exactly why it could never be any of them. I could not feel more proud, of myself, or of the friends who stood by me as soldiers timidly approached and escorted me to a van. They didn''t try to keep me under armed guard or put cuffs on me, I climbed in the back of the APC myself and closed the doors behind me myself.


    I heard the girls in an uproar as I left. Saga couldn''t find Blackett, Karu trying to give her directions, shouting repeatedly ''he''s right there!''. Lia wailing as she found out I was taken already. They were strong, and still trying. They would all do alright without me.


    I should have listened to Blackett at the start, I realized. All those deaths, all that blood on our hands, it was pointless. A waste of good people. The front door opened, and Blackett himself hopped into the driver''s seat. I don''t know how he got here under Saga''s watchful eye, as everyone else swept the woods looking for Lia.


    "Your sister will be returned to your friends as soon as we are clear. You may keep your comms until then to confirm. Please do not attempt to attack me, or we will both die. Is this acceptable?"


    "I already surrendered," I said. He just nodded and threw the vehicle into gear.


    "Saga, he''s in that APC," Karu''s voice came in. "Stop the driver."


    [There is no driver.]


    "What the hell are you talking about, he just got in the car, we all saw it!"


    "Stop messing around Saga, and stop him!"


    [I''m telling you, there''s nobody there!]


    "Karu, can you take it out?"


    "Not without hitting Ashton." She sounded desperate.


    "Guys," I said, touching my comms, "I''m fine. This is what I want. Take care of Lia for me, I love all of you."


    "Athan, you piece of shit, ass-blasting monkey butt-fuckasdfghkj--"


    "Ashton, this is serious. I demand...I order you to kill that driver and escape. Ashton? This is not a joke. Ashton? Ashton? Athan?--"


    "Bro, don''t do this. They''re bringing me back now, but this isn''t what I want! Do you think you''re the only one who would sacrifice themselves--"


    My ear flooded with comms traffic as the girls all shouted their best at me. I took the earpiece out, I couldn''t listen any longer without crying. I hobbled between the two lines of seats and joined Blackett at the front of the van, sitting in the passenger seat next to him.


    "I''m sorry for killing so many of your men. They died very bravely."


    "They will be honored. They knew what they signed up for." He sighed. "The XPCA is obsolete. Too many deaths for too little victory."


    "Obsolete? You just defeated a rogue AI, a professional killer, and two Exhumans."


    "Two?" He said, his eyes still on the path ahead of us.


    I blinked and realized he didn''t know about Saga. "Well, one and a half. My sister has this alter-ego as an Exhuman."


    "I''ve heard rumors," he said, sounding disappointed. If anything would make him turn this car around and get right back to killing, that was it. I made a mental note to never mention her ever again.


    "So, obsolete?"


    "Yes. I have not lied to you in the time we''ve spoken, Exhuman Ashton. The XPCA is ill-suited to the role it serves. Though we may ultimately win out against every Exhuman threat thus far, our losses grow ever greater and it takes only one defeat to destroy the public''s image, which is all we can provide."


    "Maybe you wouldn''t have quite so many losses if you weren''t throwing all your resources at innocent Exhumans living in peace."


    "Your capture is bigger than this. Do not speak of things you do not know."


    "As a big boss man in the XPCA, doesn''t it then fall to you to make the XPCA better instead of doing all this shit?"


    He didn''t answer, only shot me a sideways glance.


    "So you''ve caught me, you can''t imprison me, as I''m sure you remember. You spent all that effort getting me to surrender, so you don''t want me dead. Mind telling me the plan?"


    "Exhuman Ashton...or perhaps you wouldn''t mind if I called you Chariot?"


    "Do I get a say in what you call me? Anything is better than Exhuman Ashton."


    "What is your opinion on being a house-servant?"


    "You have got to be fucking kidding me."

 094. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. AEGIS.

    He was gone. He was gone. He was gone!


    He just, calm as anything, with his leg missing, hopped right into the back of that transport, and he was gone. Saga couldn''t find the driver, she claimed. Karu chased it for a while, fruitlessly. Lia just wept.


    He just left us. Just like that.


    I''d been so mad at him, so much the last few days. Now I just felt guilty. Maybe if I''d been more understanding, maybe if I''d been willing to put aside my personal feelings better, he''d still be here.


    I had been so mad, and now I just felt so empty.


    I don''t think he knew how big a role he had in my life. To him, I was just one of the girls he''d met, but to me, I had no memories of anything before he''d woken me up except being alone in the dark. His was the first face I''d ever seen, the first comfort I''d ever been given, the first hope I''d ever been allowed. I put together facts from reading and reviewing my own memories after, and learned I had a life before, but even so, Athan was still the first thing in my life.


    And he was gone.


    It had been almost an hour and the XPCA were long gone, removing first the wounded, then the dead from the battlefield, and then disappearing in a long convoy like they had come. Karu and Lia were finally letting me give them some medical attention. Saga stood nearby, looking pensive, dried blood caked on her forehead, but she never needed treatment, a wash of her clothes and she''d be good as new.


    Lia had a bad sprained ankle a broken wrist, and lots of cuts. She''d fallen while trying to run from Blackett and gone down a hill head-first into some rocks.


    Karu had several bullets lodged in her, cuts and abrasions all over, and was peppered with small second- and third-degree burns. She needed access to a regenerator, and with any luck, and if Blackett was a man of his word, her licence was good again and she''d have it. In the meanwhile, I did what I could for her and she was riding high on stims to keep going. They could hold off the shock of the wounds for as long as it took, but her body would ultimately break if she didn''t get serious treatment.


    We all sat in silence, me working the medical drones, giving Karu some stitches and putting a split on Lia, while they just sat and stared at their wounds. Saga loomed nearby, silent as always.


    I got off the luckiest, I guess. I''d followed the plan, stuck to the back behind our soldiers and when I did move forward, Athan protected me. Which I hated, because I could take far more shots with this body than Karu or Lia, and they were the ones hurt instead of me. Maybe if I''d been the one captured instead of Lia, Athan wouldn''t be gone.


    I sighed. I was delusional. He would have given himself up for any of us, even me. Even if I had a backup copy waiting and built another body to put it in, he still wouldn''t abandon me. He was too good for his own good.


    I didn''t know what to do. I wanted to scream. I wanted to blame everyone else. I wanted to track him down and drag his stupid ass back out here and make him apologize for being so stupid for leaving us, for leaving me.


    Mostly, I wanted to apologize to him for letting things end so poorly and for making his life...maybe the last bit of free life he''d ever know...a living hell. I couldn''t remember my last words to him, just screaming at him over the comms when I learned he went and gave it all up like we were afraid he might. The last thing he ever heard from me was probably me just swearing at him. Maybe the last thing he would ever hear from me.


    I wanted...I wanted to cry. I couldn''t convince myself that this wasn''t my fault somehow.


    I was an AI designed to protect people, and I couldn''t even protect the one person who mattered most to me. I was a worthless heap of scrap. Pointless. Valueless. At least the DOGs outside had fought and died to save him, I couldn''t even do that properly.


    AEGIS, I thought bitterly. A shield that protects nobody.


    "He is strong," said Karu, her voice steely and quick, like Athan''s had been when he was riding the stims. "He will endure. This is not the end."


    "Not the end? He''s in the hands of the XPCA," Lia bemoaned. "Whatever they want from him, he''s not going to be the same person when he comes out, if he comes out."


    I wanted to mention the dozens of records I had on file of autopsies and surgical experiments done on live Exhumans. Genetic experiments. Physiological limits. Stress-testing. How none of them had ever survived. When I had first reviewed their records, I was happy, these were terrible people who had been removed from the world, whose terror could never spread, and they contributed in some small way to our knowledge of Exhumans. Now I wondered how many of them had people who loved them desperately.


    "I''m sure they''ll be expecting that," Lia said. "And it''s not what Athan would want."


    She was responding to Saga, who had the irritating habit of speaking in people''s minds. Being an AI, I had no mind she could touch. She was always and only a strange mute to me, which was weird, because she had been my first ever friend, a hundred years ago. She must have spoken more back then.


    "Who cares what Ashton wants. What Ashton wanted was this. If we adhere solely to the memory of his will, we will do nothing. I agree with Saga, we must strike."


    "They are probably pretty weak right now," Lia fretted. "But...and I''m not trying to pull my ''I know Athan best'' card here, but if we just kill our way in, he''ll absolutely refuse to come with us. We can''t kidnap him."


    Karu sighed, and even that seemed more curt and precise than usual. "You have a valid point. I am not certain there is much we can do at this point."


    "I have a few ideas," Lia said, "but they''re slow, we''ll need to chip away at it instead of boring right in."


    They waited in silence for a moment as Saga presumably replied. I hated that.


    "I cannot do anything in my current state except die," Karu said. "I will need to reactivate my standing with the association and seek medical aid immediately, no offense to AEGIS, but your facilities are insufficient for my injuries."


    "I know. You''re no good to anyone dead, you should leave as soon as you can."


    "As soon as we are done with preliminary planning. What I desire least is for the four of us to drift apart in Ashton''s absence. That would doom him. I believe we cannot achieve his liberty acting alone. I can exchange contacts with Lia, but...the rest of you are not exactly on the ''net, and I do not see myself making a social visit."


    "I can get on the ''net if I need to, there''s satellite coverage out here. It''s not hard to spoof a relay," I said.


    They paused again, and then Lia laughed. "Sure, I can just leave you mine if you''d like. I should be able to get a new one when I get back to the real world, which I''m going to do ASAP, too. Just, uh, let me wipe my browser history."Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Presumably, Saga could operate a phone, was the gist of it. Not certain why that would be funny.


    It annoyed me more than it should have. Everything did. I knew why of course, everything tasted more bitter with a side of self-loathing.


    He was still gone.


    "If we are decided, here is my information," Karu said, tapping a button on her wrist. Please share it with AEGIS and Saga before you go. If you will excuse me, I have several fatal wounds to recover from."


    "I''ll see you off," I found myself saying. She looked at me a little surprised, but didn''t question. I helped her to the elevator and we spent the short ride to the surface with her leaning on me in silence.


    We reached the top and she began programming her flightpath into the armor so that even if she blacked out, she would arrive safely.


    "You know," I began, feeling like she was about to leave and I had to say something. She looked at me. I didn''t have anything else to say, but was committed now. "I''m sorry. About being such a pill. Especially to Athan, but...also to you."


    "I understand. I thank you for expressing your apology." She went back to work.


    "I would have done the same thing."


    "Then you are only somewhat of a hypocrite," she said with a smile. Sort of a half-grimace, but still a smile.


    "I...I feel like I drove him away. I was so awful to him at the end. And now he''s gone." I was just blurting out words. Some dam inside me had broken and I was dumping it all over Karu. "I''m worried I''ll never see him again, or that he''ll realize I was just bad for him. Things can never be the same again, I feel like, and I''m worried. I used to be an important part of his life, but what if he moves on? God, I sound so selfish."


    "AEGIS," Karu said with a serious look, and put a blood-covered hand on my sleeveless shoulder. "I am entirely too injured to comfort you, and have a low opinion of you regardless. Your concerns are the same as my concerns, and those of everyone else here. Nobody has any words of comfort which are not hollow."


    I knew. My gut twisted even further in guilt. She didn''t need this.


    "But," she added, as I felt myself wilting from her harsh truth. "If you truly feel remorse at your actions, become righteous. Change yourself, and be how you wish for Ashton to see you. He is strong, he will endure. Endure yourself, and you may yet live to see him again."


    She let go of my shoulder and resumed typing on her wrist. "At least, that is my plan. I believe in his strength."


    "Thanks," I said. Have faith in him. I said I would do that once, and he and Lia and now Karu had all reminded me to do so. Now, when he was gone, was the time when we needed to believe in him the most, when our faith in him would be tested the hardest. When it would be easiest to fall into depression and give up on him and ourselves.


    I frowned. She didn''t tell me anything I didn''t know, but somehow it still helped to hear that she, who was probably closest to him, had the same worries and doubts as me. It wasn''t like I wasn''t locked out in the cold and dark, but at least, now we all were. If that was any consolation.


    She finished and took a few deep breaths, and then turned to me.


    "Goodbye, AEGIS. Ours has been an interesting journey together, but not one I regret taking."


    I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her in a silent, gentle hug, mindful of her many injuries.


    "We''ll both be okay, won''t we?" I said as much as I asked.


    "We will."


    "Good luck with everything, Karu. If you ever need anything, please just call." I let go and she took a step back and readied takeoff, but hesitated.


    "I must ask...from whence did that come? You are being unexpectedly chummy. Or are the stims affecting my perception?"


    "No. I''m just...realizing how easy it is to lose people. Even if they''re not my favorite people, I think I should hold onto them. You''re a good friend, Karu."


    "I continue to be perplexed, but I am not unhappy with this turn. You are a good friend as well, AEGIS." She reached out and locked arms with me and then pulled me in for a quick embrace. "Be well, and remain strong. Hope visits the vigilant."


    Without any more mushy words or prolonged farewells, she entered the sky, slowly by her standards, and flew off over the forest.


    I sighed. She was a self-righteous man-stealing slut, but she was our self-righteous man-stealing slut. And that counted for something.


    I went back to the elevator and waited. A moment later, Lia appeared, foot in a splint, arm in a sling, my robots had finished with her a minute ago and I knew she was coming.


    "Heading out too?" I asked.


    "Yeah, me and Saga both. Want to come along? We''re going to head back to LV and find a place together while we work the Athan angle."


    I tried to imagine living in a normal house with Saga and the thought of seeing her face every morning made my blood boil a little.


    "No, I think I''ll pass," I said. As I said it, I realized I was actually feeling sad about it. I liked Lia a lot, and her leaving was almost as bad as losing Athan. "Uhh, gah."


    "There is no way you can be as bad as some of my last roommates. Come on. I''ll do your dishes."


    "I don''t eat."


    "I know. Neither does Saga," she said with a laugh.


    "No, I...I would love to, but Saga and I have history. She killed my family."


    "You were both different people then," Lia offered. "I understand if scars don''t heal, but I wouldn''t offer to live with both of you if I didn''t think we could manage."


    "I understand. I will...consider it."


    "Well, don''t consider too long, we have lease agreements to sign," Lia laughed again. She kept laughing a little longer than usual, and then fell quickly into silence.


    She was probably hurting most of any of us, and still putting on a smiling face to try to make us feel better. I felt another pang of guilt at my morose behavior and dumping on Karu. Nobody needed that right now from me, we all were going through the same shit.


    We waited while the elevator picked up Saga, who''d been packing the last of Lia''s things up while she got stitched up. Or so I gathered from Lia''s half of the conversation.


    The door opened and Saga had Lia''s bag, and refused to hand it over to the wounded girl, despite it probably being the same weight as herself. Lia wouldn''t have any of it and the two battled politely for a minute over who got to carry it. Lia eventually won out, and I wondered how much Saga just gave it to her because she also felt bad for her.


    "AEGIS," I heard a small, feminine whisper, and had to look around to see who was calling me. "It''s me, dummy," said Saga.


    "I...didn''t know you talked."


    "''Course I do. You don''t remember all the late nights we spent together talking, but I do." She coughed at the long sentence, and Lia plied her with a bottle of water from her recently-acquired pack. Saga refused it with a gesture.


    "Don''t drink," she said.


    "Aha," I replied. She didn''t eat or drink. I wasn''t sure where this conversation was going.


    "I wanted to tell you, I''m sorry," she said. "Maybe the last time we see each other."


    "You''re only sorry because it didn''t work out like you wanted. You blew up everyone, and then still got trapped under the mountain."


    She shook her head. "I never liked betraying your trust. It was just the best plan. Even if it worked, I would be sorry. That''s all."


    For fuck''s¡­why was everyone here suddenly such a better person than I was. Even the goddamn mother-killer.


    Saga began to wander off, her bit finished, and Lia bowed deeply to me.


    "AEGIS, it''s been a real blast knowing you. I''m not gonna say bye ''cuz I''m sure I''ll see you on the ''net all the time. We should hang out and play some games, when we''re not working on Athan, yeah?"


    "Yeah. Sure, sounds fun."


    She smiled and then bounced away on her lame foot, catching up with Saga.


    The two slowly made their way towards where the crawler was hidden, up in the northern part of the ruins, where the XPCA wouldn''t have run into it, Lia with her pack and sprained ankle, chatting amicably with Saga.


    "All right, fine!" I shouted. The two turned to look. "I''ll come with. Just so I don''t have to clean up this mess on my own." I gestured at the general devastation and hundreds of drones and pits of gore surrounding us. "And someone''s got to keep an eye on her," I said, gesturing at Saga.


    "Yes. I am very dangerous," Saga agreed.


    "And I''ll need to be there to help plan to get Athan out."


    "We couldn''t do it without you," Lia said.


    "Then it''s settled." I paused for a moment. "How much is a mass fab?"


    "I''m sure Black Shark could swing it," Lia said with a smile.


    We all walked to the crawler laughing and talking and smiling fragile smiles, but genuine ones. He was gone, but by bringing us together, forcing us to endure our old rivalries and meet new friends, Athan lived on in each of us, in the bonds between each of us.


    We had a long road ahead of us, but each of us couldn''t be happier with the company we shared along it.

 095. 2251, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Wynn.

    It had been a few days, and I hadn''t seen nor heard from any of the sprightly girls, nor their young cohort. I hoped it had nothing to do with the calamitous amount of weapon fire and the army which had paid them a visit, but even I wasn''t quite that foolishly optimistic.


    I''d been to survey the damage, and was glad I left Tate at home with his chores. The amount of blood and pieces of men on the battlefield, I had to assume the young ''uns had won, because I couldn''t imagine any army losing that many and still standing. Robots everywhere, too, belonging to the robot girl. Not sure how she made them, but I wasn''t much in the business of asking questions.


    But the doors were still on their hinges and the elevator still worked. Things had been taken in a hurry, but taken, and that meant they packed and left. And that meant they were all right, out there now, doing whatever it was Exhumans and robot girls and fighting women did.


    I was happy for them. This was no place to live at their age. Young folks had to be out trying to make their mark in the world. I even expected Tate to someday turn rebellious and try out civilized life someday, if I were still alive for that.


    Still, I couldn''t help but to feel sad. The brainy girl disappearing without a trace, that was just her style, and the other two girls and I were just acquaintances, but I had expected the boy to stop by for a final farewell, at least. I''d miss him, and our long talks where I taught him this and that which I''d picked up over the years. He was a good listener, and had a grasp of what made life important to live.


    Well, it was no good ruminating over. If they had gone, I''m sure they wouldn''t mind if I helped myself to whatever they''d left behind. Plenty of medical supplies, which were a real find, and even some civilized food, which we could put away for emergencies or special occasions. Most everything else just looked like machinery, and despite my ancient experience as a developer, that stuff was way beyond my understanding.


    An hour later, I was thinking now might count as one of those special occasions. I had to break it to Tate that our friends were gone. I didn''t know if he''d understand, he''d never had friends before, and I worried what the trauma of it all might have on the pup. He was young, tough, and smart, but he was still a young pup all the same.


    I warmed my hands over a fire I was starting while he hung up clothes on a wooden drying rack we''d hewn together. His cuts had been clean and true, and he avoided getting a single splinter. I couldn''t be more proud.


    I stared into the heart of the fire, the red flames making the logs look like a black tangle, and tried to come to terms with it. They truly were gone. I''d taken quite a liking to Saga, and despite how unusual her relationship with us was, I hoped she and Tate would brush off on one another some.


    She held so much hate in her heart...a heart older than mine by rights, but still one of a child who''d never grown up. Tate was a pure spirit, and even she couldn''t help but to love him, I''d hoped. Meanwhile, the pup lacked confidence in all things, even though he already surpassed my shaking hands as a fisherman and a hunter, and I hoped some of her brashness could inspire him a bit.


    But it seemed not to be. I sighed, and poked the fire. A poor habit that made it burn out quicker, but I did love to watch those sparks dance.


    [Hey, old man.]


    I heard a voice, impossibly. I looked around, like a fool. Even if she were here, I wouldn''t be able to see her, in all likelihood.


    [Bet I just made you look, huh? Well, if you''re hearing this, don''t bother looking. You broke my compel, meaning either I''m gone, or you just think I''m gone, in which case you have made a grave mistake, and I will be kicking your ancient ass when I see you again.]


    I laughed. Her threats were ever so exaggerated, she poured them out like water, while still keeping a steely eye open to protect us. It was one of my favorite things about her.


    [I''m not one for lengthy goodbyes, as I''m sure you know. But you and I...we''ve spent a lot of time together recently, and it didn''t feel right to just leave without saying some kind of farewell. Now, don''t get your old-man briefs all twisted, I''m not going to pull a 180 and start getting sappy on you now...I just wanted to let you know...I really appreciated you guys. For humans, that is.]


    Silly stubborn girl. As stubborn as that boy, perhaps.


    [So with that said, get off your geriatric posterior and take a hike. We''re taking a field trip, even if it kills you, which, hey, it might. You''re, what, a hundred? Older than me, that''s for sure. If you can manage, head towards my favorite tree. Something''s waiting for you there.]The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    The tree was only thirty feet from where I sat. Her mockery was utterly ridiculous, as ever.


    Feeling my old man bones creak and rattle in a way that I''m sure would amuse her, I obediently and slowly rose, calling out to Tate to finish up and come along. He nodded and I helped him with the last few things before we headed over, out the gate, and the twenty or so feet across the grass, the snow here long gone for the traffic of the kids coming and going around the tree.


    She was an old tree, and a beautiful one. A rowan, of exceptional age and height, probably as old as the ruins here, and rare in this area. They had a hard time competing with the evergreens. This one stood alone by these mines though, and grew tall and strong.


    [Rowan, right? Of course it is, I learned that from your own thoughts. Seems you have quite an arboreal background. Makes me wish you''d shown up sooner in my life, I might have had a greater interest in the trees around here instead of just the animals.]


    [If I''m not mistaken, your fancy in trees comes from your past, and a woman named Ash? I hope you don''t mind me rooting through all your memories, but you know how boring it can get up here, and I figure, you aren''t doing anything with them. Well, here''s a fact I happen to know you never learned, Rowans are also called a Mountain Ash. So, in a weird sort of way, your Ash is right here with you, no matter how long ago she may have left the two of you. And she''s a tree, which I think she would have liked.]


    I smiled and felt a little glistening in my eyes. Ash would have indeed loved to spend the rest of time with us as a tree. And it was uncharacteristically sweet of the girl to try to make reference to it. She had to be gone for good, she''d never be able to look me in the eye or threaten to kill the two of us after this.


    [She''s a good tree, she and I spent a lot of time together there at the end, and I want you to take good care of her. I know caring for plants is kind of your thing, so I probably don''t even need to ask, but just knowing that you have something even older and more obstinate than yourself to take care of, well, it seems fitting to me.]


    [But I didn''t have you come out here so I could give you a tree. If you check at the roots, there''s a hollow. Check what''s inside.]


    I moved forward, Tate obediently in my wake. We advanced to the base of the great tree, where it was somehow warmer, as though this great beautiful tree somehow protected a piece of spring under its boughs. The roots were large and twisted, and there were a great many little hollows where a small trinket could be waiting. Tate and I searched them methodically.


    [Find it yet? I doubt it. There''s nothing there, you old buzzard! Made you look!] I heard an echoing laugh, and couldn''t help but to smile. [Nah, I''m kidding. It''s on the northeast side, largest hollow there. I''m sure you''ll find it without issue.]


    I walked around the tree a quarter to the left and found the largest hollow. Bending slowly and reaching inside, my fingers touched something cold and solid. Scrabbling in the darkness, it was a box, of some reasonable size. I had Tate help me pull it out, his eyes wide with fascination.


    [So, this is just a little something I made...actually, you made. I borrowed your woodworking skills while you slept. Hope you don''t mind. I noticed your boy didn''t have any toys, on account of you being a really shit parent, and thought...maybe he might appreciate having some. I''m no toy designer, so I just copied the things I had when I was a kid. I never really got to finish being a kid and playing with my own...so consider these my hand-me-downs. Make sure he plays with them and enjoys them with the childhood I never got, okay, old man? I''m counting on you.]


    Eyes bright, Tate diligently opened the corroded plastic bin almost as large as he, and one by one, pulled out a cornucopia of wooden toys, crafted and painted with painstaking, loving care. Wooden blocks with letters and animals, pieces of a train which could link together and roll on their smooth wheels, little cars and brightly-colored animals, a bear, a doe and a stag, an owl, a boar, all animals which lived in the area, animals I knew she loved.


    Finally, there were a handful of little figures, little people, crafted with the same loving attention to detail. People I recognized. A small boy in furs and a waterproof coat with a large pack, and an old man dressed the same. A girl with a mask and little white specks of armor on her black suit. A girl in a yellow dress with impossibly long red hair. A little girl dressed all in black. A boy with short hair holding two yellow sticks.


    And finally, a small girl in a blue jumpsuit with black hair and an enormous, friendly, welcoming smile. How she wanted us to see her, how she wanted Tate to remember her. I didn''t know that I''d ever seen a smile on her, but on the figure, it looked so right.


    [So yeah. That''s all I''ve got for you. Probably the last time you''ll hear from me, so cherish the memory, all right? Take care of the kid. For a human...he wasn''t so bad.]


    And then she was gone. Tate was already putting the figures on a train and pulling it along the grassy roots of the tree.


    "Let''s bring these inside so they don''t get dirty, hmm, pup?" I asked him. He nodded enthusiastically, and helped me as I packed and picked up the box.


    I got dinner started alone and left Tate to enjoy his present, finding myself getting lost staring into the fire more than usual.


    I would miss her. Like Ash, like all the others, she would hold a place in my heart until it beat its last. But while the sadness of her departure washed over me, I could take solace in the fact that she was still out there, doing whatever it was that Exhumans did.


    But now she was doing it with just a little bit more compassion, and the thought of that just made my heart sing.

 096. 2251, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    The most bizarre thing was how normal it had all been.


    We were an Exhuman, a sentient AI in a synthetic body, and a criminal underlord, making appointments to look at apartments. The realtors were smiley and condescending in their explanations of every feature, real or imagined each place had, pointing out sources of natural light and how countertops matched cabinets.


    A week ago I''d been building a robot army to massacre the top elite forces of the strongest military force on earth. Now I was stuck here being told to contemplate the value of synthetic-fibered wood, which was apparently indistinguishable from real wood, but more resilient to staining and warping from water damage or humidity.


    How did this person not understand that being resilient to staining and warping WAS a way to distinguish from real wood?


    I felt like I was on some crazy alien world where things made too little sense and nothing mattered. As we walked through the entry of the fourth house today, I saw all the same crap in a different orientation, priced ~4.5% higher than it should be, given the total square-footage, and aggregate price of appliances included.


    "This seems like an enormous waste of time," I said as we sat down for lunch. Lia''s lunch anyway, as Saga and I flanked her awkwardly.


    She fixed Saga with a steely glare and said simply, "Keep your senses in check." I had no idea what she was referencing, but she experimentally bit into her wrap, staring at Saga like she was on fire.


    Were these two crazy as well? Had they always been? Or was the outer world just such a realm of madness that simply by existing in it again, these flesh-and-blood people had utterly lost their sensibilities already?


    Lia seemed content with whatever was going on between her and Saga (and Saga seemed really content in a way I could only describe as disturbing) and turned to me.


    "We need to pick somewhere to live, and we might be there for a while, so we should find somewhere we like. It''s not complicated."


    "I don''t understand, though. All the places we''ve seen seem so ridiculous. Talk of natural light and synthetic weave in the carpet, hardwood floors, softwood floors, middlewood floors. Tile floors. Fake tile floors. Lacquer floors."


    "Not lacquer floors, that place was gross," commented Lia with a mouthful of lettuce.


    "What ever happened to good old spartan accommodations? In the base I oversaw, everyone lived in the same type of room, totally serviceable. Concrete and metal grating. Clean, efficient. Low maintenance."


    "Nobody wants to wake up and step out of bed onto a barren concrete floor," Lia said, flipping through pages with her free hand on her new wrist holo. "It''s cold, and hard, and lifeless."


    "So? Nobody''s ever died because they got up and their foot touched something hard."


    "Never heard the expression ''got up on the wrong side of the bed''? Maybe you don''t sleep, so I get it if you don''t understand, but sleep is an important part of being human. We spent, what, a third of our lives at it?"


    "So get a bed with the right amount of support to prevent back pain. What does the floor have to do with this?"


    She was about to answer but suddenly turned beet red and spun on Saga, and tread heavily on her foot. "Keep. It. In. Your. Head." She barked. I noticed other people around were also looking like it was suddenly hot out. Some psychic thing, I guess.


    We were already getting some weird looks before. Lia blended in perfectly, opting for some shades and a wide-brimmed hat for a double-dose of incognito, and I was wearing a light cardigan over my dress to hide the less human-looking parts of my body, while having my hair tied up so the ends of the cables were hidden.


    Saga though...did nothing. Sitting out in the open in a hundred year-old XPCA prison uniform. I sincerely hoped the style had changed in that time. She looked like a malnourished alien already.


    "Look," Lia said turning back to me. "Imagine you made some new robot, and instead of it being called DOG, it was named ''worker robot.'' What''s your opinion on that?"


    "That''s a stupid name."


    "Why? It''s totally serviceable."


    "Yeah, but it''s not fun or clever or anything."


    "Exactly," she said, stuffing another mouthful of wrap in her mouth. "Concrete floors and metal grating might be serviceable, but it''s not fun or clever or anything. Living in a house like that makes humans...erm, people...want to kill themselves."


    "Well, don''t do that," I said, slightly alarmed. "Are you people really some teak cabinets and a natural light source away from jumping off buildings?"


    "No, not typically. But it''s depressing to merely survive. Gotta live, you know?"


    She paused for a moment, looking at Saga.


    "Yeah, a real bed. Get excited. Like, without a trap which tries to put you in a coma and everything."


    "I don''t¡­" I hesitated and thought. "I don''t know what you mean," I said, feeling my cheeks go red. I sort of hated that they did that on their own, but on the other hand, I was also finding out that being able to cry was something I needed to add to this body very badly. It sucked, feeling like you needed to cry, feeling like you were crying, but still not crying.


    "You never lived anywhere, really," Lia commented through her food. "It''s not surprising. I bet you''ll love it when you get the swing of it. The world isn''t all military bases and concrete bunkers in the wilderness, you know. People own, like, art. And bathtubs. And carpets so thick, you can feel it between your toes."


    "Isn''t a shower a more economic use of water¡­?" I realized as soon as I said it, I was again missing the point. "Never mind. Just...show me what you mean, I guess."


    "Isn''t there anything you really want out of a place, though?" she asked, popping the last bit of food in her mouth. Saga was drooling a little bit on the table, and Lia and I both pretended not to notice.


    "Um, a mass-fab. And a large space to operate a manufactory bay."


    "Okay, but like, how about a built-in stereo system so you can blast your stupid cheesy movie music references even more dramatically. Or hell, a big red curtain you can unveil your masterpieces from behind."


    "I think that takes away from the improvisational element."


    She sighed. "Whatever. You''ll figure out what I mean. Just stop looking at everything so practically, and try to decide what you like better. And don''t worry about the floors, honestly, as long as they aren''t ugly and you can clean them, they''re all the same. Realtors just love talking about the floor because there''s so much of it."


    After lunch we had another appointment. A condo for rent out in a residential area. As sure as I was that Lia was just off her rocker, as long as I was stuck following this blonde in a suit around, I may as well try to take her advice.


    I sat on the floor in the empty dining room and stared at the kitchen intently. Synthetically-formed walnut cabinets, creating a tone a few shades darker than traditional oak. To complement that, dark grey granite countertops, speckled seemingly at random with darker tones, effective at disguising grime, which was both a blessing and a health hazard. Silver, understated handles with a matte finish, which matched the stainless steel of the appliances, which were accented with black, as any modern device should be, harkening back to the dark countertops and wood.


    I saw it all. I understood the unity of purpose and design which composed this kitchen. Lia looked at me expectantly, as my eyes darted around the room, assembling data and preparing my conclusion.


    "Well?" she asked.


    "It does not seem any better or worse than any of the others," I finally concluded.


    She closed her eyes and slowly introduced her fists to her temples, her mouth making a noise like a piece of fat on a hot pan.


    "It isn''t!" I said. "How am I supposed to have an opinion when the primary difference is what tree died making the room?"


    "Um, if you''re not a fan of the kitchen, perhaps the yard will sell you?" Offered the realtor. "It''s one of the most luxurious designs I know I''ve ever seen, I know you''ll love it."Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Same words, different house, every time.


    She had us exit through the garage, stating there was a back door leading from the main hall, but this way we could get a feel for the garage as well. As soon as we stepped inside there and she turned on the three hanging lightbars illuminating the cavernous space, I understood what Lia had been talking about.


    "If the three of you each drive, there''s room in here for three cars. I believe the original owner was something of a car-head, with a pull-through garage door leading to the back, if you want to keep a camper or the like. It''s all very spacious, or if you don''t need that much, I''ve heard of others renting out the space to neighbors, really¡­--"


    I heard Lia mutter the word "gearhead" but wasn''t listening.


    She prattled on, limited by her paltry ideas. I knew as soon as I saw those lightbars illuminate. They were hanging from the rafters instead of anchored to the ceiling because above the rafters was usable space. There were four, no, five outlets up there to prove it. And the pillars, which would have separated each of the three parking cars, holding up the beams was unnecessary if that was all that would be up there.


    It was a freaking two-story, three-car garage. And they''d only calculated the concrete in their square footage, the damn fools.


    I let my eyes roam around the room. A high-voltage outlet, fuse box easily accessible. Taps for water in, sewage, even the hookups for the ''net were routed through this room.


    This room was the heart of this house.


    "Well, it''s all concrete floors, but I guess you like that?" Lia said, watching me.


    "It''s perfect," I said.


    "You haven''t even seen the backyard yet! Prepare to be even more blown away," the blonde said, opening a door and ushering us through.


    Yadda, yadda, plants and tiered gardens and shit. Let''s go back and take another look at that ''net hookup, see what kind of throughput this place got. Saga seemed to like the yard though, which I guess was good for us getting this place.


    "If you folks are interested, I want to be clear and let you know that this is a very highly sought-after piece of property. If you want to wait, I understand, but I''ve seen places like this go off the market like that," she said snapping her fingers.


    "Sure, thanks love," Lia said, dismissively. "I have your card, we can give you a call when we make a decision. Mind if we sit out front and talk it over?"


    "No, please...though if there''s anything else I can show you...maybe another tour of the master bedroom?"


    "Nah, we''re good, thanks. I''ll let you know." Lia led us outside and stared down the realtor until she drove away with an flustered farewell.


    "Should we have let her go? What about what she said about these places selling like that." I snapped my fingers, but no noise came out. Weird. I tried again, and nothing. Lia smiled at me.


    "You never learned to snap!" she said.


    "It worked when I was all digital," I explained, looking at my fingers as they silently worked.


    "That''s adorable. I can teach you later. As for the parasite, I had enough of her. Everything she said was a lie. She said those countertops were granite. Bet you they''ll charge us for granite. Want to guess what they''re made of?"


    "Not granite?"


    "Bingo. Anyway. Scummy lady aside, you like the place?"


    "I like the garage."


    "Saga really likes the backyard. Not to be super-racist, but it does have this asian vibe going on. Tiers and little stone lanterns. It''s super cute."


    Saga responded somehow.


    "Yeah, and there''s that. Well, I like it too, I like that the whole hallway is new carpet, and I don''t hate the color. Baths are nice and spacious too. If you guys take over the garage and the yard, I call dibs on the bath. There''s a big problem though."


    "What''s that?"


    "It''s too huge for the three of us. There''s like, four bedrooms, and two and a half bath. And I''m assuming AEGIS is just going to live in the garage anyway."


    "Half...bath?"


    "Never mind. Point being, I don''t mind the money, obviously, but I do mind feeling like a hermit crab living in a bowling ball."


    "So let''s just board up the disused sections," I said with a shrug.


    "AEGIS, you are definitely the best. But I am never going house shopping with you ever again. You are the worst at this."


    "Because this is the worst! How people can have opinions on such insipid things is way beyond me. I was built to manage a global military force, I am exceptionally fine at making important decisions on the fly. But the fact so many people, an entire industry, dedicated to making these pointless choices, constantly?"


    "Oof, I was going to say we should get some clothes after this, but I''m beginning to think that''s a bad idea."


    "Why, what''s wrong with clothes?"


    "Nothing. But, you on the other hand. You do realize, all clothes are functional, and vary only by a person''s preference¡­?"


    "Not all clothes. Some are warm, some are cold."


    "I am imagining it now. I open your closet. On one side, a coat. On the other side, not a coat. This is everything in the closet."


    "Uhh¡­" I tried to think of a rebuttal but couldn''t.


    "Look. You want to know the real reason girls waste so much time picking out and trying on clothes?"


    "To throw money at a bottomless pit in an effort to improve their own perception of their fragile self-worth?"


    "I mean, you could call it that, sure. But it''s so that we look cute. Do you know who else likes it when girls look cute?"


    "Other...girls?"


    "Boys, dummy. Like Athan?"


    Suddenly my image of my closet with only a coat and a not-coat seemed embarrassing and small, as Athan entered the scene. If we went on a d...da...da¡­


    I''d have to dress up for it. That seemed only natural. Maybe a sundress, like my holo wore. But then he''d be sneaking peeks at my...well, I''d need to have some real undergarments, that went without saying. And then...after...we''d be at home, and I couldn''t just stay in the same outfit I''d been out in all day, could I? So something more domestic, but still a little spicy, of course. Hmm, but what if we were going somewhere more formal? Like, a fancy resturaunt? I mean, I didn''t eat, but I could still be his escort, I don''t know if he''d enjoy that. But that was even more clothes. And then after...and what if...


    My head began to spin, half with thoughts of Athan and how many clothes I would...or wouldn''t...want to wear, which made me as dizzy as it did flushed, and half just kind of floundered around uselessly, unsure of what clothes even existed in the world outside of military uniforms.


    "Lia, I need help," I finally concluded.


    "Well, admitting it is the first step."


    "I have no idea what to wear to seduce Athan." I leaned towards her, locking eyes with her. "You know him best. What kinds of things does he like? How can I be assertive, while still being conservative? I want to show off a little, but also don''t want him staring, you know? But also I think it should accentuate my looks, but I also want it to look nice on its own. How do you reconcile all this? I don''t understand. HELP ME."


    Lia looked a little frightened, but also a little relieved.


    "Oh thank God," she said. "I was worried everything in your life was just concrete and metal grating. At least you''re a girl in there somewhere."


    "I miss your reference," I said flatly.


    "Never mind. Man, I''ve been saying that a lot. No wonder Athan kept telling me he''d explain things later. We''ll go shopping first thing tomorrow. For now...this house. We have a couple more lined up, but I am so down to blow them off if we like this one for realsies. My feet are killing me."


    "The issue being, this place is too big?"


    "Yeah," Lia said, thoughtfully. "I have a thought, but I''m not sure what you guys will think."


    "I''m fine with whatever. Just as long as I get my garage."


    "People will probably walk through your garage, and we might even want to put a car in there at some point."


    "There''s a port in the back and a driveway for cars to park in. Garages are for AI, not cars."


    "Never heard that one before, but sure."


    She looked at Saga for a few seconds and then nodded. "Saga says she''s onboard with my idea. But um, AEGIS. What''s your opinion on roommates?"


    "Uh, I have two of them, I thought."


    "Yeah...well...we have four rooms. If you live in the garage, that leaves two rooms open. I know some people...good people, but just normal people...I could see if they''d be interested in living with us. But that''s up to you."


    "Why would we want that, again? Is this another concrete thing?"


    "Sorta? It''s also just...having life around. Things would get really quiet if I were just on my holo, and Saga''s lying under a tree, and you''re playing with machines. Other people coming and going makes life a lot more interesting. Never know when you''ll get invited to a thing or make a new friend."


    "I just build robots to do that for me."


    "Yeah, well, not in a residential neighborhood you don''t."


    "Fair point. Very well, let''s meet these prospective roommates of yours. I''m open to whatever."


    "Sweet. Just a sec." She tapped around on her holo for a minute and then held her wrist near her head. I heard a faint click as someone picked up and then a girl screaming "LIA BABY!"


    "Chiho! It has been way, way, too long. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. Actually, I''m in town, and wanted to know if you and Subaru were around? Yes. Yes him. Oh, don''t be such a eel. Yeah. I actually have two friends with me, and we...yes. No, girls." She glanced at us. "Um, yeah, kinda? I don''t know, I don''t swing that way. Yes. No. Easy, Chiho. Look, let''s just meet up for dinner, we have a lot to talk about. No, no drinking, I''ve been back one day! Okay. Love ya too."


    She hung up. Somehow that was even more disturbing than listening to half of her conversations with Saga, who apparently also saw fit to make a smartass remark at the moment, because Lia rolled her eyes and flicked her in the forehead.


    "They sound...exuberant," I said with some hesitation, feeling that my opinion on the insipidness of houses may soon extend to a whole variety of new things.


    "It''ll be fine. We''re meeting them for dinner in a couple hours. Want to buy something to get out of that junky tracksuit and-slash-or prison uniform, girls?"


    "Hey, I made this tracksuit."


    "Yes, in a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere, and it shows. Ladies, let''s get shopping. Remember, this is for looking cute for boys!"


    Looking cute for boys, I thought, and noticed there was a hint of a blush on all three of our faces. That was something I could get behind...I guess...if Lia was really going to twist my arm on it.


    Something I could really get behind. As much as I knew I would hate this, I was excited to do something normal for the first time in my life.

 097. 2251, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    I sat at the dark corner table, wishing I had a mobile to fidget with, wearing this ridiculous outfit, kind of wondering why I''d ever left my little hole in the middle of nowhere. Saga sat next to me, awkward as hell, her face occasionally twitching involuntarily, wearing a damn women''s suit which hung off of her, but did a lot to fill out her profile.


    It was loud. It was dark. I assumed it smelled funny though I had no scent receptors, and boys kept coming by and trying to sit with us, when I''d really rather they played in traffic instead.


    Despite what she''d said earlier, Lia had quite a few drinks, and was now flailing away on the dance floor with Subaru, a Japanese guy we were supposed to be getting to know for roommate potential. The other girl, Chiho, was...somewhere in the club, presumably. We could hope. Saga twitched and jerked again, kicking me under the table.


    "Can you stop that?" I asked, annoyed.


    "Can''t¡­" her eye twitched. "...shut it out. So many...people."


    Looking at the sweaty bodies grinding on the dance floor--Lia among them, rocking away in a midnight blue thing that ornately tied up around her neck and then showed off as much of her back and tummy and legs as it legally could--I knew better than to ask Saga what kind of thoughts were making her so uncomfortable.


    I self-consciously tugged up my own dress. It was black and reasonably conservative, had full sleeves to cover my non-human markings, but had a sheer little window that went right down my cleavage. I''d only bought it because Lia had talked me into it, and I thought it was tasteful enough, but the way men passing by lost their eyes, never even glancing up at me, I felt like I may as well be naked.


    I also had these ridiculous things hanging off my chest. I''d just kind of thrown them on there on a whim, but among real people I was quickly realizing what a mistake that was. I needed access to a mass-fab badly, the number of changes I wanted to make to Rua Mk.2 just kept growing.


    And then Saga in her suit. I wasn''t sure if I honestly hated it, or was just jealous. Nobody seemed to give her a glance, maybe they thought she was a man. With a jolt, I realized, maybe they thought she was my man, the way we were sitting next to each other all alone. And yet, people kept coming over and leering and trying to talk to me. How indecent could they be?


    Lia came back, looking flushed and tired, staggering just a little bit, but smiling hugely.


    "AEGIS!" she shouted over the thumping bass. "For your next body, you have GOT to make it so you can drink with me! You''re missing out, girl!"


    She fell into the booth next to me, and Subaru sat down after her.


    "You guys having fun?" he shouted. I could only barely understand him, and felt like I was mostly reading lips.


    I glanced at Saga, who seized violently, her face a stoic mask barely concealing her horror.


    "It''s too noisy," I shouted.


    "Good!" he replied, with a smile. Fuck I hated this place.


    Suddenly Chiho was back, and it was apparent where she''d gone. Her hands were brimming with full shot glasses, and she deliberately placed them on the table without spilling, and then slid into the booth next to Saga.


    "Lia''s back!" she shouted, and started passing out the glasses to us. Saga and I looked at each other warily. If this kept up, she and I would be carrying the entire group home on our backs. Somehow Chiho hadn''t taken the hint that neither of us drank, yet. Lia gave two to herself and Chiho, instead of putting any in front of us.


    "Lia''s back!" she shouted in the third-person, and slammed the shot. The other two followed, and Saga made a very icky face.


    "Can this be the last round?" I asked.


    "What?"


    "I said, can this be the last round? We have plans tomorrow."


    "What plans?" shouted Lia.


    "First thing in the morning, we''re going to spend four hours trying to get you over your fucking hangover." Lia laughed and took the second shot.


    "Can I please just kill them all?" Saga said in my ear, nursing her temples.


    "They''re making a compelling argument for it," I replied back. "There is no way this catastrophe is worse than an Exhuman event."


    Saga smiled back, which disappeared quickly as she winced.


    "There''s four people fucking in the bathroom," she said. "Two of them have been in there for an hour now. You''d think both of them would be rubbed raw by now."


    "Saga, that''s gross," I shouted, laughing.


    "If I have to hear it, so do you. You''re the only one who I can talk to here."


    "You can talk to Lia?"


    "She''s too far away. I can''t talk that loud." Lia was only on the other side of me, but I still couldn''t argue. Saga seemed to be talking at her loudest, and it was still only barely as loud as a normal conversational voice.


    "You guys look like you''re getting along well," Chiho said to the two of us. "How do you know each other?"


    "She killed my mother and all my friends a hundred years ago," I shouted. "We were best friends before that, and now, we''re fighting over the same guy. I''m here to keep an eye on her so she doesn''t kill everyone again."


    "I''m really considering it," Saga added.


    "Wow, cool. You guys like, do role play like Lia then?"


    "CHIHO," Lia screamed. Chiho laughed.


    "Hey, want to get out of here," I asked Saga, who nodded vigorously. "We''re getting some fresh air," I shouted in Lia''s ear. "Don''t wait up."


    "No, you guys can''t go! Aren''t we having fun?"


    "Meh. Call me if you need anything. If we don''t hear from you, see you tomorrow, okay?"


    Lia nodded, frowning.


    Slowly, painfully, we got Chiho out of the way, and pressed through the wall of bodies until finally the cool dark air outside held us in its welcome embrace.


    "Can we go far from here? I feel like I''m never going to be clean again."


    "Yeah. Me neither. I can''t believe we had to pay to go in there."


    "Lia paid."


    "But the point is people do it. I don''t understand people at all."


    We started walking at random, neither of us having a better plan than to not be there. Saga guided us, taking us further and further away from the nightlife, presumably guided by simply trying to have as few voices in her head as possible. Soon we were well and truly lost, turning down dark streets in dark neighborhoods. Saga let out a sigh.


    "I can only imagine what it''s like for you out here," I said. "Sorry, maybe we should have stayed up north."


    She shook her head. "Athan needs us both. I can put up with it. I just need to remember never to go near a club ever again." She gave a coy smile. "Was I the only one who had no idea what Lia was talking about when she said go clubbing?"


    "Yeah, I thought like a sports club or country club or something. I''ve never heard of a ...well...just a club like that."


    "I thought we''d go clubbing something. Sounded interesting."


    "LOL really? People don''t do that."


    "I don''t know. I was only in the city for a little bit once after I had my powers and spent all of it being scared and freaking out. Then everything I knew came from what a bunch of military guys who lived out in nowhere thought. Maybe clubs were invented in the last hundred years, I don''t know."


    She began to cough. She''d been talking a lot and trying to talk loud in the club, though she was barely at a whisper now. She was fortunate I had better-than-human hearing, otherwise, we''d never be able to walk and talk like this, but still, she''d been pushing herself hard.


    "Wish I could just talk in your head like everyone else," she lamented.


    "I''m kind of glad you can''t, no offense, but I like my head Exhuman free."


    "''Zat so? There''s an awful lot of Athan running around in there for ''Exhuman free''."


    I felt my face go red, but maybe she''d miss it in the dark. "Hah!" I scoffed. "I''ll have you know I hardly ever think about him."


    "If that''s true, what is up with this?" she said, reaching out and tugging at the sheer window in my dress. I slapped her hand away, and then had a brief moment of panic when she inhaled sharply and stopped to nurse it. I had to remember I was stronger than a human, and she was a lot weaker. After a moment, she sprang right back, though. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Such a bizarre person, but I still felt guilty.


    "So where are we going? This looks like¡­"


    I looked around. It looked like a dump. We were only a few minutes from the street bustling with life and people and lights, and now we were in some dark neighborhood with bars on every window and trash piled outside the narrow tall houses. There was hardly any room here, and not a single tree or leaf in sight, excluding some weeds which grew from cracks in the road against all possibility.


    "This looks like a dump," I concluded.


    "Really? I like it here. It''s quiet. People here are quietly desperate instead of noisy idiots."


    "Let''s go back," I said beginning to feel nervous. "Something doesn''t feel right out here."


    "We''ll be fine. I mean, there''s people coming who want our money, but we don''t have any, so we''ll be fine."


    "Muggers? We''re going to get mugged?" I wailed. "My first day in town and I''m going to get mugged because of you. Can''t you make them...go away?"


    "I thought you were here to make sure I didn''t do things like that," she said with a smirk.


    Two men, so dark and wrapped in shadow were approaching from behind. Even with my improved senses, I would have never noticed them if Saga hadn''t mentioned them before. Slowly, so lazily, I had to wonder if they were even the right guys, they approached us.


    "Oh hey," one of them said as they stepped into sight. "You guys lost? There''s nothing out here for you to see."


    "I...I have bear spray!" I shouted. "It keeps bears away...it...it will...certainly work on you!"


    I fumbled for my purse. Another thing Lia had convinced me would be essential. Now it was just an inconvenient barrier between me and personal safety.


    Suddenly, the purse was gone, in the man''s hands. That wasn''t possible, I had kept my hand through the straps just to prevent that kind of thing. He smiled as he folded a knife back in his other hand.


    "Here, let me help you with that," he said. "You know, it''s cold out, might be hard to work the zipper if your fingers are a little numb." He passed the purse to his buddy who opened it and began rifling through my things. "You there buddy, you got any bear spray for us too?"


    Saga mutely shook her head. I guess they did think she was a guy.


    "He don''t talk much? That''s fine." He pretended to glance back at the purse for a moment. "Miss, it looks like you don''t have enough chits to afford our directions on how to get home. Does your man not let you spend all his money or something?"


    His cohort laughed stupidly as he dumped everything I had picked up earlier on the ground. It wasn''t much, and there certainly weren''t any credits in there, Lia was the only one with any money.


    "So I''m going to have to ask the gentleman to fork over his wallet as well."


    "Don''t have one," Saga said.


    "What?"


    "I don''t have a wallet."


    "I can''t hear you mister. Mind turning it up a little?"


    "I don''t have one."


    He turned back to me. "He always this quiet? Got yourself the perfect man, huh?"


    "He says he doesn''t have a wallet. He doesn''t. We don''t carry credits on us."


    "You don''t carry anything. No keys, no ID, no bank cards. You expect me to believe that? Or¡­" He leaned in close, his eyes full of menace even as he kept a polite smile in place. "...do you think maybe you''re just holding out on me?"


    In the same motion, he drew his knife again and Saga stepped between the two of us.


    "Well, aren''t you a gentleman. Better make with the credits or I''m going to ruin your nice suit," he said with a smile.


    "Put the knife down," Saga whispered resolutely.


    The guy just smiled. "He still can''t talk so a person can hear him. What a waste of time. Welp, you saw it, I tried to be nice!"


    Faster than I could move, he jammed the knife into Saga''s chest again and again, grabbing her by the shoulder with his free hand so he could hold her up while he punctured her again and again. She gasped and a quiet moan slipped from her lips as he guided her forward onto her knees, spots of red blooming all over her white blouse.


    "See? Would have been easier if you just went along with us. Now miss, if you could just--"


    Saga gasped sharpy and fell backwards, trembling. The man looked at her confused as she stood back up and dusted off her bottom.


    "Sorry," she said. "Just needed to catch my breath."


    "What the hey man," said the stabber''s friend. "This some kind of trick?"


    He didn''t reply. With an irritated look, he just took his knife to Saga again, punching the knife into her so hard he was lifting her feet off the ground with every thrust. After twenty or thirty blows, she was a sagging doll, her eyes blank, as the only thing holding her up was his arms and knife.


    And then, with the knife still inside her, she gasped back to life again. She looked down at the blade still in her stomach, and then at the terrified, uncomprehending expression on the man''s face, blood spray covering his entire arm and every bit of her body, and gave him a cute little smile.


    "What the fuck. What the fucking fuck. You are some kind of demon or something?" he said, backing away now.


    I''d had enough. I hiked my dress up as I stomped around Saga and jumped and spun, driving my metal leg into the side of the man''s jaw, launching him bodily into the brick building with a solid crack.


    "Purse," I said to the other. He held it out for me, hands trembling. "Pick it up," I said, pointing at the various effects he''d dumped on the ground a moment ago. Frantically, he scooped them back into the bag and then offered it again.


    "Thanks," I said, plucking the bag gingerly from his hands and inspecting the cut straps. Useless now, but it had been useless before. And then again I spun and slammed my leg into his head, sending him crashing into the building right next to his unconscious friend.


    "They seemed nice," Saga said, looking like a scene from a horror movie. Blood covered every single inch of her, splattering on her face down to blood running down and dripping from her pants.


    "You hate humans, as I recall?" I asked. Saga nodded. "I''m starting to agree with you. What the hell is wrong with this place. Is this just Vegas, or is all of humanity like this?"


    "I don''t know, my first time on the town too," Saga said, tugging at her shirt, now stuck to her from all the gore. "I should probably find a place to change before we get arrested for murdering a lot of people."


    "I don''t know anywhere," I fretted. "And Lia has all the rest of our clothes."


    "It''s like half an hour to one of the houses we saw today, I know all the codes to get the key and get in."


    "Can we walk that far without getting spotted?"


    "I can. I can tell where people are and what they''re doing."


    "Right. Okay. Well, I guess that''s a plan for now. Jesus, how did this all get so fucked up."


    We started walking, keeping to the shadows. Every once in awhile, Saga would have us stop or go a different way, and sure enough, we never ran into a single person.


    She had me put in the codes so she wouldn''t leave bloody fingerprints on everything, and we let ourselves into the small apartment, Saga carefully holding her clothes so they wouldn''t drip and make it look like a murder scene in here. She slipped into the bathroom and I closed the door behind her.


    Well now what? Just wait to get the blood off, I guess. Hole up in here and wait until Lia''s done sleeping off her hangover and can bring us clothes and pick us up? What a mess. It had only been a minute and I heard something banging in the bathroom.


    "You okay in there?" I called. No reply. Of course, she couldn''t reply loud enough. "I...I guess I''m coming in. Actually, bang something once if I should come in, twice for no."


    Bang.


    I sighed and opened the door. Saga was standing there half-undressed in the tub, red clothes clinging to her and a pile of discarded clothes in the basin at her feet.


    "What?" I asked, realizing she was talking at me from across the room.


    "I said, it''s all clingy and I can''t get it off. Can you help me?"


    "Uh, sure," I said, a little stunned. She was trying to strip while standing in the tub so she didn''t make a mess everywhere, and couldn''t stand, not touch anything, and get the clinging clothes off her at the same time. I stood there for a moment trying to figure out how best to do this, and then began to strip myself, not wanting to get blood all over my sleeves.


    I''d only wanted to strip halfway out of it but the whole thing was so thin and immaterial and short that there was only a half of it to strip out of. There was no way to get just my arms out without removing the whole thing...so now I was there in my bra and panties helping pull bloody bits of clothes off of Saga.


    It was like a wet film, it clung to her so much. Peeling the blouse off her back made a noise like I was ripping tape off a sealed package, leaving spots of coagulating blood on her white skin.


    She at least had the decency to be properly mortified. She kept her back to me the whole time, even if I was pulling something off her front, and spent the entire time glancing backwards at me and blushing and trembling, as I aggressively stripped the stubborn blood-soaked clothes from her. There really was no way she could get it off by herself, the drying blood was impossible to deal with gently.


    Finally, I tugged the last and got her pants down to her ankles which she slowly, delicately stepped out of, her legs trembling. I looked up and found my vantage put my face inches from her tiny round butt and even tinier red-stained panties.


    I stood and tried to force the embarrassment and blush from my face. "I uh, guess you can probably get the underwear on your own," I said apologetically. I started to leave the shower but realized I had blood all over my hands now.


    "Uh, I''m gonna turn the water on," I said holding out my hands. She nodded while I attacked the knobs with my elbows. Even though I got the ''H'' knob to move, the water that poured out of the shower head all over me was like standing in an ice storm. I yelped and tried to squirm out of the freezing torrent without crushing Saga against a wall, but there just wasn''t enough room. Why couldn''t this have been one of the places we looked at with a huge bathtub instead?


    I tried to rinse quickly, but as water washed over us, I found myself standing in a red river. There was no way I was getting out on the white tile floor until the water ran clear again...and with Saga''s clothes lining the shower floor, that would be a while. Saga sighed, seeming to have drawn the same conclusion.


    "How did we get here?" she said with a small laugh.


    I laughed too. "I thought we were enemies, and now you''re helping me and we''re showering together in our unmentionables."


    "Why''d you help me anyway? Those guys couldn''t hurt me. I''m trying to do what Athan wanted and solving things peacefully...but so far it hasn''t worked."


    "They could hurt you, though. I saw you gasping and grimacing every time he stabbed you. I didn''t want that."


    "He couldn''t kill me, not for good."


    "He was just an asshole. Breaking his face was the least of what he deserved."


    "I''m envious," Saga said. "I don''t have a lot of middle ground between turning a guy''s head to soup and letting him stab me to death. I can''t kick people in the face or anything. I bet it would be easier to get Athan to like me if I could."


    She laughed demurely. The water was warming up, and I helped her scrub her back, watching little rivers of blood run down her body, and realizing I was making her really nervous.


    "Well, I think I''m done in here," I said, and stepped out, leaving little puddles of water where I stepped. "Watch your step and don''t crack your head on your way out, or we''ll have to clean up all over again." She gave me a shy smile as she held herself modestly, and I left her alone.


    I let myself out into the small back backyard, surrounded by tall wood fences, and laid on the grass to dry.


    It was freezing. In the small window of blackness I could see above me, there were no stars visible at all, completely different from the billions which frosted the sky back there.


    I punched myself in the face hard enough to hurt. I hated all of this. I couldn''t believe how much Saga had me eating out of her hand. Looking out for her, helping her, laughing and joking with her, friggin'' showering with her, it''s like I''d learned nothing at all the last time she''d broken my heart.


    I wanted to just turn off my feelings and kick her sorry ass the way she deserved, but I''d learned that once that AEGIS took over, I might not be coming back. I''d lose Athan, and that simply wasn''t an option.


    I sighed and looked back up at the black, blank void. I''d just have to put up with it. Her and Lia. At least until we had Athan back.

 098. 2251, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    It would be hard to call things which happened over the next few days worse, but they were definitely up there. The fact that getting mugged, kicking the faces in of two murdery assholes, and showering with my arch-nemesis was not exceptional said a lot for the quality of the week.


    Lia was simply out of control. Saga and I had tried to be sympathetic, giving her space because behind her smiles, and especially behind her drinking, we knew she was hurting at least as bad as the rest of us, but this wasn''t a healthy way to deal with it.


    We''d broken down and gotten the nice big house, and I was anxiously awaiting the delivery of a small industrial mass-fab, faster and more efficient and a hundred years more technologically advanced than the models I''d been working with to this point. I spent every free moment reading and re-reading the documentation in my head and browsing sites on the ''net to see what kind of other schematics were out there.


    It probably made me look like I was daydreaming a lot, since I relied entirely on mental controls for all my more computer-ey functionality, still trying to keep my nature hidden from our new roommates.


    The breaking point came one evening when the three of them were loudly drinking and laughing in the dining room, their raucous antics threatening to utterly destroy the crappy temporary card table and folding chairs we had out there, I was sure.


    I was out in the garage, contemplating the costs of soundproofing the room, and otherwise attempting to quietly amuse myself with the ''net. I''d taken to looking up world events that had happened in the last hundred years. It was crazy that we were still dealing with the same issues now that we were then. Exhumans, sickness, famine, war. The same old sins done by a whole new generation.


    I''d been sitting there for a minute when I realized the crowd had gone quiet.


    Well, it was late. Maybe they''d gone to bed. Or more likely, they''d decided to get in trouble in some other way, hopefully somewhere else.


    Worried...or maybe just curious, I advanced to the door to the house and fished around in my hair for a specific strand, a cable with a high-sensitivity microphone on the end. I turned it on with a thought and pressed it against the door.


    I heard the bathroom door close, the nice big bathroom in the main hall. A minute later, I heard the door open and close again. And giggling, Lia''s. Hmm. Same door. Either something was going on in that bathroom, or she was really excited at the incredibly brief bath she just took.


    I stuffed the end of my hair back in with the rest and turned it off. Whatever was going on out there, I wasn''t part of it and that was good enough for me. I sat back down on the floor and pulled up the mass-fab documentation yet again. These sweet words had gotten me through so many trying times of late.


    So of course, that would change. I heard frantic footsteps and then a boom as the door from slammed open, Saga standing framed in the doorway, shaking and gasping and panting.


    "C-can''t...block it out," she gasped. "H-h-help me."


    She was trembling and holding herself desperately. I found myself on my feet, my heart racing.


    "Who? What can I do?"


    "L-Lia. We...we''re too close, I-I...I can''t...block her out. S-she''s¡­"


    She gasped and trembled, all red, and tugged at her clothes in a way like she wasn''t fully in control of herself.


    I pushed past her and stalked silently and quickly through the kitchen and dining room, heading for the main hall. Damn it, Lia, she knew she was doing this, that psychic link was a two-way street. She was just too drunk or something to care.


    I tried the bathroom door, pausing to listen for a second when I found it locked. Water sloshing and muffled murmuring. I was going to break out the mic again when Chiho came stumbling into the hallway, panting and leaning against walls as she staggered towards me.


    "AEGIS, thank god," she gasped. "I need you so bad, my body''s on fire." She ran her hands up and down herself as she shuffled forward like a slutty zombie.


    "Chiho, I need you to get ahold of yourself. Just shut i--"


    My words were caught in my throat as she grabbed ahold of me and kissed me forcefully, filling my mouth with her tongue and her hands racing across my body in an instant. For a moment, I was too stunned to fight back, and she grew bolder, her soft lips desperately licking and sucking at my own, her hands sinking into my sensitive breasts.


    I shoved her off, and she stumbled backwards to the floor.


    "Sure, we can do it here," she panted, and reached back to undo her bra.


    Well fuck everything about all of this. Instead of the microphone, I brought out my foot, and kicked the bathroom door in with a rain of splinters. I had a glimpse of Subaru reclined in the tub, his shoulders and head visible above the lip, and on the other end of it, lower body angled towards his, Lia, bouncing and writhing for all she was worth, in flagrante delicto.


    She saw me and didn''t stop, just wrapped her arms around her chest and whimpered about the door. Chiho grasped desperately at my ankle as I slipped from her grasp and walked into the room. Whatever Saga''s bullshit was doing to them, they were almost totally lost in it.


    Embarrassed as I felt they should have been, and just generally pissed about everything that had gone down the past week, I stomped over to Lia and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her off the turgid prick reclining in the tub under her and bodily threw her to the tile floor. She bleated as she crashed into it, but from the pain of my cruelty or just not being finished yet, I honestly didn''t care.


    "Saga, I stopped them. Get a damn hold on yourself!" I shouted towards the garage. The three bodies around me looked totally spent and defeated. Lia held her head where I''d grabbed her hair and moaned. "Lia, no fucking in the house when Saga''s here. You should fucking know better."


    I barged my way back to the garage, stepping over Saga in the doorway, and stopping only to position her out of the way so I could slam the door full-force.


    Back in my safe little domain. Back home. I took a deep steadying breath. I was fine. I was okay. I could do this.


    I screamed at the top of my lungs long past any limits of human anatomy.


    What the hell, were they all goddamn children? Everyone in the whole neighborhood probably went and had sex with the first moving thing they saw, and Saga''s uncontrolled power turned the whole goddamn thing into a block-wide orgy. I wanted to bone a dude as much as anyone, but fuck, could they be any more fucking irresponsible?


    I punched the concrete floor and felt the servos in my hand shudder out of alignment. The pain was there too, but I was hopped up on the programmatic equivalent of adrenaline right now, and that automatically dialed down my pain receptors until I pulled a full diagnostic. It was a stupid pointless move, and I sighed as I added that to the list of body alterations I''d need to address when improving this model.


    But fuck, Lia! I punched the floor again. How could someone so smart be so fucking stupid? Drinking her ass off every night, buying everything in town so she could spend all day every day with her friends. Every time I tried to bring up Athan or future plans, she just brushed me off, telling me to ''live a little'' or ''enjoy what we have today''.


    I was out of patience with her, I couldn''t take this lifestyle anymore. These people, this house, all of this nothing we were sitting around doing all day. It just drove me nuts. I realized I was about to punch the concrete again and stopped myself. My hand wouldn''t hold if I did.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Instead, I stood up and left, slamming every door between me and the outside to make my tremendous loathing with everyone in the house abundantly clear. I didn''t know where I was going. Somewhere with an active ''net hookup. That was all I had right now.


    And that''s how, in the middle of the night, I wound up in a weird little cafe, sitting between a couple rows of bookshelves, reading Japanese graphic novels. I had quickly realized all the ''net really had for me right now was a delivery date for a mass-fab I wasn''t sure it''d be worth going back for.


    I saw someone run by the front of the store out of the corner of my eye, and looked up, seeing Chiho backpedal back into view. I sighed as she walked up and let herself in, out of breath.


    "Irasshaimas," said the girl behind the counter, same thing she''d said to me.


    "Konbanwa! I''ll buy something in a minute," Chiho replied as she wove through the empty seats and tables to get to me.


    "No rush," said the girl, going back to her holo.


    "Hey," she said, breathless as she reached me. Then to my surprise, she thumbed through the shelves for a minute, picked out something, and sat next to me.


    "What''cha reading?" she asked.


    I glanced at the cover, which took two tries because the book read right to left for some reason. "Gungnir Clash, apparently," I read.


    "That''s a good one. Did you read Excalibur Clash?"


    "No," I said, wishing she''d just shut up and go away already.


    "A lot of people didn''t like it because it was a lot more of a shoujo, but I thought that just made the fights a lot more meaningful."


    I put the book down and looked her in the eyes. "What do you want, Chiho?"


    "Me? Nothing, I''m sorry. Everyone was just looking for you...you just kinda left, and we were worried."


    "That''s what you''re worried about? Not two of your roommates shacking up, or the sexual apocalypse that just consumed the whole block?"


    "Hey, what manga are you talking about?" asked the shopkeep.


    "My own damn life," I said, irritated.


    She didn''t respond, just mumbled something like ''freaking otaku.''


    I was also getting pretty tired of everyone using Japanese all the freaking time. Between Chiho and Subaru and Lia starting to throw words into her conversation at random, it was getting obnoxious as hell. I didn''t need it from the employees, too.


    "Hey...I''m sorry about earlier. Sorry, I was trying to lead up to it. Seemed like you wanted to be left alone."


    And what the hell part of walking up and talking to me about cartoons was that?


    "Can we...uh, walk and talk?" Chiho asked, glancing at the girl behind the counter. Whatever. Like I cared at this point. The ''net had failed me, I was officially out of anything I cared about at this point. Chiho ordered two very overpriced bubble teas for us and we walked outside back into the cold.


    "Look...Lia told me everything and made me promise not to tell."


    "Everything? When?"


    "Just now. To explain what happened to me," she flushed and sipped her tea. "Can''t believe that kind of thing happens to you guys all the time. Or that Saga''s an Exhuman. That''s crazy."


    "And...you don''t...care?" I said measuring her response carefully.


    "I mean, I do, kinda. It''s weird as hell, that''s for sure. But she seems like a nice person, and I don''t think she hurt us or...whatever you''d call that...on purpose. It seems like she actually got the worst of it. She was trying to hold it in, but apparently, like you said, pretty much everyone on the block started doing it, and...I mean...that''s one hell of a gangbang."


    I tried not to think of everyone on the block having sex with Saga at once, which is of course exactly what my brain decided to attempt to illustrate.


    "She does try," I sighed. "That''s the thing about Exhumans though, they''re dangerous even if they''re trying not to be. I think that''s why society just decided they weren''t allowed, period."


    "That doesn''t seem very fair."


    "Doesn''t it?"


    "Well, like, if someone was sick, and dangerous, we don''t just kill them, we try to help them, right?"


    I laughed. This was the exact same rhetoric used when Exhumans...Parahumans back then, started to first appear. It was a sickness to be treated and helped. That was hundreds of years ago, and we''d still found no better treatment than a bullet to the head.


    "So you don''t mind having a roommate who''s an Exhuman?"


    "No, not really, I guess. I don''t want to get in trouble, but I just can''t say no to Lia baby, you know?"


    "Yeah. Well, try putting up with her shit for a few more weeks and we''ll see," I grumbled.


    "Uh oh. Are you guys having problems? I thought you two were close."


    "No, we''re fine," I lied. "Just adjusting to real life, probably."


    "Have you told her?"


    "We''re getting off the topic," I said, really not wanting to bitch about Lia to one of her best friends.


    "Nuh-uh. Have you told her?"


    "What''s there to tell?"


    "I don''t know unless you tell me. Or tell her. But just sitting on your problems until you have to leave and slam every door in the house isn''t healthy, girl."


    "No, I haven''t told her, okay? She''s got a lot of shit going on right now, and she needs us to support her right now."


    "Yeah, I got the 5-minute version. Her brother''s gotten taken. Your boyfriend, though--"


    "Not my boyfriend."


    "Sounds like you have a lot of shit going on right now too. You''re supporting her. Who''s supporting you?"


    I stopped and couldn''t find a response. How could this fat, vacant bimbo have argued me into a corner so easily? It made me mad that apparently I wasn''t even the smartest one in this conversation anymore. First the ''net and now this. I really did have nothing.


    "I don''t know if she told you, but I''m an AI, okay? I don''t need people supporting me, I was programmed to help and protect people. I carry out my own repairs, I don''t eat, I don''t drink," I said, throwing the cup of tea she''d bought me on the ground, making it explode in an avalanche of boba. "And I don''t need a support team, okay? All I need is to save the man I love, and right now it seems like Lia''s more standing in the way of that than helping with it."


    She seemed shocked, and looking at the sad empty cup rolling on the ground, I realized I''d just crossed all sorts of lines.


    "Shit, Chiho, I''m sorry. You came out here looking for me, too."


    "No, it''s okay," she said, her voice wavering a little. "Look, I don''t want to make things bad between you and Lia, or even contribute to that. I can just move back into my old place, we still own the lease for the rest of the month--"


    "No, I''m sorry. I''m just mad, it''s not your fault at all. I hate saying that I need help, or I need support, or I''m going through shit. I''m supposed to be better than this, was designed and programmed to be better than this. I''m either malfunctioning, or a failure, it feels like."


    "Dude, welcome to being a college student," Chiho laughed. "Every class I take makes me feel like I''m defective, or a fake, and I''m sitting in a seat which should have gone to a smarter student. Or at least, one who can stay awake through a whole lecture," she said with a sigh. And then a giggle. "But yeah, girl, you''ve never had roommates before, right? Definitely one of the hardest things in the world, having to live with people. You need to talk to her, or it''s going to drive you crazy and you''ll either kill each other or do something worse."


    "I don''t think that''s worth it. I can just hole up in the garage and stay the hell out of all the drama."


    "Yeah...kinda doubt that. Look, if you and Lia need to work together to save your boyfriend--"


    "Not my boyfriend."


    "--then you need to be on speaking terms, right? So stop just trying to ride this out and make it better. If you don''t talk to her, I''ll do it instead."


    "You are irksomely meddlesome," I said.


    "Yeah, you''ll come to love me, I''m sure."


    "Hmm, we''ll see," I said trying to maintain a look of skepticism even as I grinned.


    "So. Want to head back?" she said shaking her tea and examining it for any boba she''d missed.


    "Eh. I''m in no rush. I''ll talk to her tomorrow."


    Chiho fixed me with a relatively steely glare. "Uh huh."


    "Yeah, yeah, I will, promise."


    "Alright. What else did you want to do tonight then?"


    "Kinda wanted to back to the cafe. I only finished half of my comic."


    "It''s called a manga," she laughed as we started to headed back.


    "What''s baka?" I asked. "Lia kept saying that."


    "Maybe you should download a japanese dictionary or something," she laughed. "I''m going to get in trouble if I teach you all the same bad words I taught her."


    I found myself happier and more free to chat with Chiho than I''d been in weeks, and felt bad that in some ways, I''d definitely misjudged her. She wasn''t the sharpest ever, sure, but she was a great listener and had either a good grasp on or had a lot of experience with relationships.


    At some point, while talking and annoying the manga cafe employee, the conversation turned to Athan, and she listened sympathetically, as I raved incoherently at her, incomprehensible even to myself. Still, as I tried to explain just how his frustrating stubbornness was somehow endearing, she sat beaming at me.


    "What?" I finally asked. "You''re just smiling at me like crazy. Are you sure Saga''s effects wore off?"


    She laughed and waggled her fingers at me salaciously.


    "Is anything I''m saying even making any sense?"


    "No, not a lick," she said happily. "I just think it''s cute how hopelessly and obviously in love you are with this guy. I really hope you get him."


    I sighed. "Yeah, I hope we get him too."

 099. 2251, Present Day. Phoenix. Karu.

    I slammed to an abrupt halt in the air, feeling the weight of my armor slam into me as I jarred against my harness, controlling my rapid breathing to ward off the blackout that always loomed right at the edges of flight. I gave myself a quarter of a second to reorient, and then hit it again, firing straight down in a boost-assisted dive.


    The swarm of biological semi-sentient needles tore through the air where I''d hovered and began turning in a wide arc back towards me again, correcting to chase ceaselessly after me.


    In the moment, however, I had a few seconds respite from their chase, and unloaded two full salvos of missiles from my arm launchers, and then peppered the husk of bone and sinew with AP rounds as I accelerated off again, hearing the satisfactory crunch of meat exploding as the micro-missiles found their mark.


    I loved Athan dearly, and did not regret any time I had spent with him or in pursuit of him, but things were often more visceral, simple, and downright enjoyable without him. Pitting strength against strength, on the truest competition there was, a game of life and death where only one victor could emerge, it truly was what I lived for.


    And with luck, what the hideous flesh-beast beneath me would die for. It was an Exhuman of biological mastery, shaping and reshaping itself to suit the flow of battle. It was an unspeakable horror of the truest sense, attacking by one means, only to change tact with a sudden explosion of gore and a new set of limbs bursting forth.


    He...or she, whichever it had once been...roared his disapproval of the incendiary warheads in the missiles I''d fired, and flailed, shifting its shape randomly to extinguish the flames which clung tenaciously to it. It stopped, rolled, even tried to envelop the flames in new folds of flesh, however painful that must have been.


    The damned monstrosity stood no chance as the hellfire consumed it. This was a specially formulated chemical agent which released its own oxygen as it burned. Without specific countermeasures or a body of water to dilute and extinguish the solution at once, it would continue to burn for several minutes unstoppably.


    By the end of those minutes, the beast had shuddered and shrieked to a halt, and naught remained of it by the lingering smell of burning flesh and a husk filled with embers. The needles had been driven into the ground, chasing me in a blind dive, the acid it had spewed at me would be neutralized and removed, and the mucus membranes it had slung between buildings¡­


    ...well, I was not sure how they would clean those, but I wouldn''t have to partake in the messy affair, so it was of no concern.


    I allowed myself a moment of repose near the wretched creature''s remains to give the scene a moment of finality. Forced myself to stare at its twisted, tortured, and very extremely dead shell. Come to terms with the realization that this horror existed, yes, but also that it was dead.


    I found this was necessary to keep beasts such as these from creeping into my dreams at night. Others in my occupation tended towards more public and raucous celebrations which gave them the closure and finality they needed to close the book on an Exhuman, as it were, but I found it impossible to juxtapose a monstrous death as part of a civilized life.


    One more moment in the air watching the dread thing and I was off. Back to my hotel, not a glamourous base of operations, but my current one.


    Half an hour later, I was stripping in front of mirrored closet in the narrow confines of my hotel, stylus hanging out of my mouth while I filed a report on a tablet holo.


    The bounty on this Exhuman had been exceptionally high, and given its combat potential, unpredictability, and love of violence, I understood exactly why.


    Blackett had been true to his word and rescinded the criminal charges even before leaving the battlefield, and I had no issue in procuring medical aid or reinstating myself with the association. My family, however, saw me as still tainted and refused all attempts to contact them. I was not hurting financially, but I did not have the safety buffer I once did. I appreciated the large bounty''s convenient timing.


    Of course, I would have taken it even were I not in financial hardship. At the association, I was the ''crazy one'', as it were, who took the bounties which others deemed too dangerous. Let the others squabble about the easy money or good publicity of working low-pay, low-risk bounties. Removing filth from the earth was what drove me.


    And it did not hurt that it happened to be fantastically lucrative, I thought as I watched the credits roll into my account. Of course at least a half of it would be gone to taxes, refuel and repairs, the expensive ordinance I''d used, administrative fees, association cut, etc., etc..


    I got the last of my armor off and put it on the counter, perilously close to the sink, with the rest, and unzipped my flight suit with a contented sigh, feeling my skin prickle back to life as I shook the creases out of my tank top.


    The room''s holo lit up and rung. A call?


    I walked to the bed area, still wearing half the flight suit still, the top half hanging from my hips and tapped a button on the small holo on the wall.


    "Hello, Ms. Karu? Please excuse the interruption."


    "It is no problem. What seems to be the issue?"


    "No issue, ma''am. You have a visitor waiting at the reception counter."


    "I see...thank you."


    I tapped the panel and hung up. A visitor? Completely unexpected. The only people I was expecting to contact me were Lia and AEGIS, and they wouldn''t know my exact whereabouts at any given time...even I didn''t, moving wherever the posted bounties took me. Also, I assumed they had the decency to call before appearing, unannounced.


    I frowned. A trap, perhaps. I had a concealed carry permit of course, but any firearms I had on me could hardly be concealed. Unlike the event with the terrapath in Newbruck, this was a planned op, and I had packed accordingly. No point in bringing a small-caliber weapon.


    Which meant...either I met this visitor fully naked, or fully loaded, so to speak. But which?


    I looked at the mirrored closet in the bathroom, my armor visible on the countertop in its reflection, and rubbed at an angry spot in my armpit where the harness had rubbed my sports bra into my flesh.


    To hell with it, naked it was.


    Not...literally naked, though I did finish disrobing entirely so that I could put on jeans and a beige sweater. I likely should have showered, but the guest, whoever they were, was already waiting. My subtle musk would have to be their penance for dropping in unexpectedly.


    I was still wary until I saw the figure loitering at the counter, a black man with short dreads tied up in a ponytail with a beard short enough to look accidental, but groomed enough to definitely not be. He smiled broadly at me and opened his arms welcomingly as I approached.


    "Karu! Wan love, my yute!"


    "Deej, it is good to see you," I said, with a smile. "What brings you here?"


    "The monster you put down. He''d been tearin'' up the city for days, and I thought, no Karu means these monsters gonna run out of control. Didn''t think you''d be back so soon."


    "I''m sorry, I hadn''t seen you''d taken the contract. You know I never would have had I seen--"


    "I hadn''t, don''t you worry," he gave me another easy smile. "Wasn''t sure I was up to it, but I thought, someone otta do it, yah?"


    I, like everyone in the agency, loved Deej, I was fairly certain. He was a solid compatriot, capable, yet compassionate, strong enough to earn respect, but easygoing enough to avoid enemies. He slipped in and out of proper English and some Jamaican slang as ever it suit him, which was jarring to those unaccustomed, but as I grew to know him, I realized it had more to do with the subject matter and less with how serious he was being.


    His name was also not actually Deej. That was a hunter alias, as nearly all of us had. Typically, his real name would be carefully-protected information, but Deej had no problem with letting everybody know his name was really Roj¨º Castillo, and yes, he was a half-Spanish, half-black Jamaican-American.


    "Yes, my apologies for being lax as of late," I said with a sigh. Deej indicated we should walk and talk, and we left the poor girl behind the counter in peace and headed for the front door. "Things have been complicated for me recently."


    "I heard. I''m surprised there''s any XPCA left after hearing Karu was after ''em."


    "I wasn''t after them, they were after me."


    "Aha, but you''s a hunta'', don''t nobody stay huntin'' Karu for long before she''s after ''em."


    I smiled despite the ridiculousness of the complement. Deej steered us into one of the small expensive bars that always seemed to crop up around hotels for tourists too lazy to venture into the city proper but still needing to hemorrhage money and imbibe alcohol.


    "It''s my treat," he said, reading my sour face.


    "It''s noon. I find the concept of drinking at noon absurd, no matter who is treating whom."


    "Well then I''ll drink and order you something to hold and find absurd," he said grinning.


    Of course he did exactly that, and I found myself in a small booth with a mojito in my hand, sitting opposite his rum and coke and grinning face. He took a swig and slouched.


    "My yute, I heard yah was back in town so fast, after all the trouble out there...and I just had one question. It''s why I came looking you up after your fight. Is why you holdin'' that drink, yah?"


    "What''s your question then?" I took a sip of the drink and found it weak. More like a mint daiquiri than a real mojito. But we were in a crappy tourist bar, what did I expect?


    "Are ya feelin'' irie?"


    "What?"


    "Are you feeling alright?"


    "Why...why wouldn''t I be?" I was a little stunned by this sudden prying into my personal life. People at the association often had an almost zealous line drawn between personal and professional lives by tradition.


    "Because you just killed a ton of the good guys to protect an Exhuman. Everyone at the agency heard about it, and now suddenly, you ain''t out there, and you back here. Doesn''t take a genius to see that you boy is gone taken, and you back killin'' the bad man like it''s not the weekend."This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "I don''t see your point."


    "Yah, you do, Karu. I may not buy you drinks every day, but we bredren. I ain''t Luminary, and when something happens to you, I worry."


    "So what happened to me that makes you feel you must worry?" I asked. I was fishing to see how much he knew, as much as I was trying to avoid the subject.


    He sighed, probably already aware of my game. "You got a boy worth fighting over, worth dying over, and he''s gone. And now you''re back pretending all is irie, and wearin'' a jetpack and a smile. Ain''t no good."


    I took another drink. This was exactly the reason people liked Deej so much. He wasn''t afraid to ask the questions he thought needed asking, and thought they needed asking because he was a good guy.


    "Look. I appreciate the concern, I do. Unfortunately, how I am feeling is not important right now. Whether I''m happy, or mad, or crying myself to sleep every night, none of that brings him closer to returned to me. I know not what I can do, and so I am simply doing as I always have. Be prepared, keep an eye and ear open, protect the meek."


    "That''s no way to live."


    "Maybe in the long run, but right now, it''s a fine way to live. Asht--the...the man, he is strong. He radiates with a will and destiny that far outshines my own. Whatever God has in store for him, I know it will not be so inglorious as vanishing into the halls of the XPCA and never again seeing the sun. Be it in a month or five years, I must simply have faith and be ready."


    "Ready for what, I wonder. You make it sound like a prison break."


    "I don''t know," I said, sighing and leaning back in the uncomfortable booth. "I am supposed to hear from some friends, but it''s been over a week and still nothing. I checked my wrist holo and then remembered I wasn''t wearing my suit.


    He finished his drink and smiled. "I know something the two of us can do that would take your minds off the man for a while. Like old times, when you were new at the agency, yah?"


    "You...you''re serious?" I asked.


    "As ever," he said with a grin.


    "Things are not as they were before. I am no starry-eyed cadet, lost in the big scary world. I am a full hunter, and have been for years now. I do not think you will find me easy prey."


    I was grinning, I realized, and too late realized that was exactly what he had been going for. How much attention had this man been paying me these years to know exactly how to push my buttons?


    "I''m counting on it. I have a few new tricks I think you''ll like as well."


    "Where do you want to do it? We will need somewhere large and deserted if we do not wish to make a scene."


    "It''s Phoenix," he said with a shrug. "There''s nothing but large and deserted in every direction from here."


    "Let us call it west, then," I said with a grin.


    "See you in fifteen?"


    I slammed the rest of my drink and stood. "See you there, then."


    About twelve minutes later, I was back in the air, unconcerned with the chafing in my armpits as I flew west, visor scanning for his IFF transponder. There, in the middle of vast nothingness, dirt and scrubby round bushes and maybe the odd rock, he was waiting for me.


    Like me, he was all geared up. Taking the punnier approach, Deej was his name, and sound was his means of attack. He had a modified exosuit which bore speakers instead of weapons, and I knew from experience that his onboard systems could determine the resonating frequency of any substance he tapped with an echoing pulse and shatter it with a focused resonating blast of sound.


    Any material, any distance, practically, in any direction. It was no wonder he was still a hunter, even if he was already thirty when I first joined. I flew to a halt next to him and touched down, taking a few steps to arrest my sloppy landing.


    "You''re late!" he shouted, his voice synthesized, but instead of coming out robotic and emotionless like most exosuits had, his was enhanced, his deep voice crisp with rich, flavorful tones. It reverberated through me, and almost made me feel like the sound was coming from my own lungs.


    "I am two minutes early!"


    "I''m here first, and that means you late!" He laughed. His exosuit was also unusual that instead of a HUD, he had a transparent dome where you could see him and he could see you. No need for fancy optics or hiding behind a mask, Deej preferred things the old-fashioned way.


    "Just like old times?" I asked, hovering into the air.


    "Let''s say first one knocked on their ass loses, yah?"


    "I have the advantage of my ass being in the air."


    "And also much smaller and nicer than mine, but it still works for me," he replied.


    "Fair enough, old man!" I shouted.


    And we began.


    As I darted around, firing disarmed micro-missiles at the exosuit, I had flashbacks to when I was new at the agency and Deej had taken me under his wing, along with a couple of the other senior members. At the time I was surly and lost, committed to nothing more than improvement and vengeance, in a rush to purify the world of all of its evils overnight.


    I still was, in a way, but somewhere along the path, I had turned from fighting him with a grimace to doing so with a grin. We were old friends, he and I, as close as any got in a business where every contract could be one''s last. Both of us loved the thrill of the fight, pushing ourselves to our limits, pressing our strength and our wills into an opponent until one of them broke.


    Today, I decided, that one wouldn''t be me.


    Also unlike most exosuits, Deej was fast. He was a powerfully built man, but I believed his best event would be a 20-meter sprint. Almost as easily as I sailed through the air on my plasma wings, he and his exosuit tore across the ground, zig-zagging lightning quick, outpacing and confusing my missiles until they hit each other or simply fell to the ground in defeat.


    His suit was mostly black with yellow trim, and was slimmer than most models, but also brimming with thrusters on every major surface. In a moment he could skate to and fro, gliding in circles around you. Not around me, of course, being in the air, but that''s where the sonic blasts came in.


    A direct hit could punch me out of the sky or shatter all my armor, or even my bones, instantly. I doubted he''d have it cranked up that high for a little sparring match, but he did have to turn it up enough to knock me down. My job was to keep myself from getting direct hit, which was difficult given the lack of cover out here, but he did still have to aim if he wanted any real force in his blows.


    I twisted as I fired low-energy lasers directly into his face, hoping to blind him, but he''d predicted where I''d exit my loop and clipped me with a blast. Even indirectly, it set my flight path wobbling and made my leg vibrate weirdly, where the blast had hit me most directly.


    I soared off, but my leg just kept vibrating. I gave it a shake to restore some feeling to it and then a moment later, the shinguard on my armor simply shattered.


    "Hey, that was expensive!" I yelled.


    He laughed. "Then don''t get hit!"


    Some stupid new trick of his about resonating frequencies, I was sure. I wasn''t a green rookie anymore, two could play at that game. I glanced up and left within my visor''s HUD and activated a different row of micro-missiles, feeling the servos work in my arms as the new battery loaded.


    Knowing he was too fast and smart to rely on the missile''s tracking alone, I decided to deliver them personally. I stopped to turn, showing myself for a fraction of a second, and then, knowing he''d seen me and was already firing on my facing, fired backwards at full-force, straight down and back into him.


    I felt his blasts rip through the air near me, enough to set one of my shoulders vibrating, and slapped the armor piece to cancel out its internal harmonics with some good old concussive percussion, and then, as I flew past him backwards, unloaded a chain of missiles point-blank.


    At least two or three got him before he could swerve out of their way, but the damage was done. Where the impacts had landed, adhesive goo began to spread, creeping its way across and into seams in his suit, immobilizing him and plugging air intakes and thrusters.


    "Oh, that is dirty," he said, with a grin. "Yah think the hotel does dry cleanin''?"


    He was slowed down, and more importantly, his means of evasion were decreased with the loss of half of his thrusters. Instead of being able to instantly rocket away in any direction, he only had a few options now. Forward, backwards, to the right, or somewhere in between. It gave me a blind spot, and I punished him ruthlessly for it.


    He was still an incredible old hunter, however, and battled me bitterly, even at only half capacity. We spent several minutes circling and picking at each other, creating a beautiful spectacle of glowing thruster flare and blue plasma, explosions and gunfire, two friends dancing in the midday desert sun without a care.


    I couldn''t knock him down though. Even using live rounds, I doubted I could punch the exosuit enough to knock him over without killing him in the process, and I obviously wasn''t using those. I would have to get more creative. Or...less.


    The adhesive was beginning to go. This whole time, he''d been working away at it, pitting the enormous strength of the exosuit against the restricting foam until finally, it began to crack and tear. Ironically, if it had been anywhere but on his body, he could have shattered it with a single sound, but his suit was obviously not designed to shoot itself.


    I had been working my way in closer and lower now. I only had a few more moments before he was totally free and I''d lose my mobility edge against him. I had the option of either re-upping the adhesive, going in for the kill, or trying something totally crazy.


    So of course, it was time for option C.


    Now at his level, hovering only inches from the ground, I moved around him as fast as he moved around the rocky sand. I was a mirage, appearing and disappearing all around him, peppering him with distracting gun and laser fire, while inching ever closer, imperceptibly.


    In the same moment I saw his arm snap free from the adhesive, I struck, suddenly appearing behind him and landing bodily on top of him, or jumping on his back, as it were. He laughed as he teetered forward, looking over his shoulder through the clear domed helmet at me. I realized I was laughing too, as I clung to him like a backpack.


    In a moment, he snapped both arms forward and I felt more than heard a sonic boom, as an enormous acoustic shockwave went off between him and the ground he was falling towards. The explosion hurtled both of us in the air, spinning slowly as we hurtled back down towards the earth, I realized I was going to hit first.


    He was going to crush me, if I stayed on his back.


    My wings deployed with a thought, but I couldn''t move. I snapped my head downwards to look at where my arm was lodged, and my visor helpfully pinpointed adhesive residue across his back which I was now stuck in.


    He laughed maniacally as we sailed down towards the earth, my jetpack doing everything in its power to right us and get me out from under him, but it was incapable of moving anything so large and heavy as an exosuit.


    The ground raced towards us. I closed my eyes. Even with them closed, I could hear the altimeter screaming in my ears, saw the numbers flashing down before my eyelids.


    There was a crash. A titanic, earth-shuddering crash. I kept my eyes scrunched closed, wondering what the damage was going to be. If I needed a regenerator again so soon.


    I...never touched the ground. Even falling back-first, he''d locked his suit''s arms and legs bending backwards so they would impact the ground first, and the sheer strength of the exosuit absorbed the impact without bending or failing. He held both of us off the ground, bent over backwards like some insane crab.


    And then, slowly, gently even, he lowered the arch of his back until my butt touched the ground.


    "Point for Deej!" he shouted. I sighed. Just like old times. With a flourish, he spun and landed back on his feet, and then gingerly peeled me off his back, the huge servos of the exosuit insistently tearing at the stubborn gel until I was free.


    "How did you know I was going to do that?" I asked, breathing heavily and resting on my butt, since he''d worked so hard to put me on it.


    "I didn''t, of course. One never knows what will happen in a battle, just adapts."


    "Well, you adapted the hell out of me. I thought for sure I had you."


    He laughed and began the process of stepping out of his suit.


    "Care for another drink?" He asked.


    "It is only one."


    "I heard complainin'' earlier about drinkin'' at noon, not one," he said with a grin. "Your treat, this time?"


    "I suppose I owe you at least that much. You''ve done me a huge service yet again, Deej. I do not know how I can repay you."


    "Don''t thank me just yet," he said with an even cockier grin. "I talked to some of the others at the association, and, well, you may not be the most popular, but we all agree that you''re the most right. If there''s trouble with you and your man, we be behind yah."


    "I appreciate that, too," I said, smiling.


    "No, I don''t think you do. ''Cuz you see, this ain''t just a we support yah in some nebulous way. We got ourselves a plan."


    We linked comms and chatted about what he''d spoken about with the others and how we could move forward from here, and the more I heard, the more I liked where this was going.


    We were almost at the bar when I got a message from AEGIS, confirming they had also begun operations on Athan, and also, hi, how was I? I felt akin to a school girl texting back her best friend as I loosely outlined the salient points of my life and inquired into hers.


    Athan, Lia, AEGIS, even Saga, and now Deej and the others. Truly, God must bless my works to grace me with such good friendships in this life. I realized, even as the two of us pulled up to a bar, me landing in the doorway in full airborne armor and him leaving his exosuit in the parking lot, I was smiling still. Smiling the whole way there, through texting AEGIS, listening to his plan, smiling through the whole fight.


    Despite the horrors I faced, the troubles I dealt with, I felt more at-ease now than ever. It was hard not to, with such friends as these by my side.

 100. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Athan.

    I felt like never smiling again.


    Day in, day out, it wasn''t the thousands of pointless tasks, the constant surveillance and scrutiny, or even the mock battle he''d put me through which had been the worst part of becoming Blackett''s newest personal play-thing.


    It was all the goddamn smiling.


    Serve tea promptly and silently, and with a smile.


    Open the door promptly and silently, and with a smile.


    Wait the table promptly and silently, and with a smile.


    Clean the fucking attic promptly and silently. And you guessed it, with a goddamn smile.


    I went to sleep early every night with my jaw hurting. One of the senior servants, Jack--or Jack of Swords, as nobody called him--was mentoring me as I did everything one could possibly ever have a servant do around a mansion, and he just stood and smiled with his eyes closed, constantly.


    I had to wonder if he had some kind of birth defect where his face just didn''t work right. How he kept such a close eye on me with both of them closed, and how he managed to smile sincerely even as he explained why and how I''d done such a shit job of dusting was impossible.


    Although, after our mock battle, I figured out the first part. I was not the only Exhuman here. Jack was at least, and Blackett had three other servants than us two, Magician, Tower, and Temperance. I had no idea if all three of them were, and certainly wasn''t going to sidle up to a stranger and say ''hey, I''m an Exhuman, are you?'', so I was left to speculate.


    Speculate promptly and silently, and with a smile.


    I had been relieved at first when Blackett popped me in a regenerator. That meant whatever his twisted desires were, he didn''t want me maimed for it, or at least yet. But it was over a week of this now, and I''d slowly passed through phases, thinking this was some kind of insane XPCA torture method, to a joke, to just acceptance of the world not making any damn sense at all. Finally, I found myself stomping down the stairs late at night, hoping to catch Blackett in his office and demand an explanation for why the hell it was worth all that death and killing to have me here cleaning his house instead of leaving me the hell alone in peace.


    As I drew near his office, passing down a wood-panelled hallway, I saw one of the lights in the sconces lining the hall was out. Curious, and completely out of place for how anal Blackett was about the care of this place. I gave it another glance as I passed, and tripped over a snag in the rug, falling face-first to the floor with a crash.


    Embarrassed, annoyed, I looked back and saw the rug running the length of the whole hall had been bunched up in one small spot, exactly where I''d tripped on it, almost invisible in the dark. Now, I knew it hadn''t been like that when I''d been this way earlier. I swore and rolled back, trying to retake my feet, but as I got my hands and knees under me, something stepped on my back and pinned me to the ground.


    I made a noise as all the air left my lungs, and gasped to refill them. My assailant carefully treaded on my back with light steps and then stepped off me, placing themselves between me and Blackett''s door, a thin strip of light visible at the bottom now visible from my fresh vantage point.


    "Uh, hi?" I wheezed. My attacker was a girl, dressed the same as myself and Jack, a plain black suit with brown leather shoes and a black tie and gloves. Obviously another of the household help, though she was anything but helpful right now.


    "Go," she said simply.


    She was short and small, with caramel skin and dark wavy hair, maybe Latina? I couldn''t see her entirely too well in the semi-dark, but all I really needed to know was the fact she was between me and Blackett and was wearing a scowl like she''d just tread in shit.


    I started to rise again, and she just stepped forward and swept one of my arms with a deft kick, knocking me back to my face on the ground again.


    This was getting pretty annoying.


    "If you want me to go, I have to get up first, idiot," I growled.


    She let out a little scoffing laugh and didn''t move. Like she totally expected me not to give up and go back.


    I mean, she was right, but still.


    I tried to get up again, this time propping myself on my elbows and keeping my hands free to catch any intercepting feet. Instead, she crouched and grabbed the rug running under me and down the hall, and placing her feet on either side of it, gave it a strong yank.


    I had no idea what she was trying to achieve, but she did. My elbows were pulled out from under me and my face cracked into the hard floor, as the knot in the carpet relocated from behind me to where she pulled it.


    This time I didn''t hesitate, just rolled backwards and sprang to my feet. "Hey, fuck you," I shouted eloquently at the scowling girl. "I just wanted to talk to him."


    "Go," she repeated, and gave the carpeting a small menacing shake. Was she an Exhuman too? Someone with power over...carpets? I had no idea. She hadn''t done anything but completely humiliate me so far.


    Well, screw her, I was an Exhuman too. Not wanting to burn down or blow up the house, I settled for popping a tiny EMP in the palm of one hand, which made the lights in the hall flicker eerily for a moment. In the flickering blackness, I pounced, dashing down the hallway under the strobing guise of darkness. I was two steps away from her when the carpet...where she''d placed it carefully after giving it the threatening flick, was somehow under my feet again, and I felt the now-familiar sensation of careening headfirst into the ground.


    I had some momentum this time, which was arrested immediately and painfully by another foot into my back. I lay humiliated, defeated, and once again face-down in that fucking carpet.


    "Now go?" she asked.


    "Yeah. Now go," I muttered into the floor. The foot lifted off my back and she didn''t try to stop me this time as I got to my feet, straightening out the carpet as I got off of it.


    She walked me back towards the servants quarters, tightening the loose lightbar back into the sconce as we passed, draping the hallway in light again.


    "Who are you?" I asked. It was halfway between the two questions I really wanted to ask of ''what is your name'' and ''what the fuck are you?''.


    She just sighed and scowled. A real talker, this one.


    We wound up a flight of stairs to the servant''s wing and she kicked hard on the door next to mine. A moment later, Jack appeared in his night apparel, same as mine, a loose short robe and a pair of loose breathable pants. He was smiling, despite the obvious interruption.


    "Hello, Mage, Chariot," he said addressing the two of us. "Cavorting in the halls at night?"


    "Keep a leash on him," Mage said.


    "Sorry, you''re Magician?" I asked turning towards her. Just a scowl. She and Jack should average out their faces, and they''d both be a lot more pleasant. "We haven''t met, I''m...well...Chariot, I guess. I guess we''ll be working together?"


    She just scowled and kicked me into the doorframe.


    "Leash," she said, stabbing Jack in the chest with an accusatory finger, and then turned to leave, heading down two doors and entering the first one in the hall, closing it silently behind her. I was not comfortable having that living only a few doors down from me.


    "My, my, what a mess," Jack said looking at my face. Or, whatever it was he was doing with his eyes closed and a big grin on his face. I caught the sparkle of one beady eye barely gleaming at me.


    "What the hell is her problem?" I asked.


    "Though she may be of ill temperament, I assure you, Mage only acts in Blackett''s best interests. I believe the real question is," he bent forward a little bit so that he was closer to and level with my face, "what the hell is your problem?"


    "My problem? That should be self-evident. I''ve been fucking kidnapped, and I don''t even know why. Now I''m in this freakshow, working for that crazy man every day--"


    "Please refrain from disparaging Master Blackett," Jack said, cracking his knuckles with a smile on his face. "Or from utilizing profanity. I understand you have had a lack of upbringing so I am attempting to be lenient, but it really is uncouth."


    "...sure. Whatever. Point being, I don''t even know why I''m here, and I wanted Blackett to explain himself to me."


    "Ah. Well, you see, you''re a servant now. And servants are not permitted to make demands from their masters. I understand why Mage was so harsh with you now. Please refrain from attempting to accost the master in the future."


    "And nobody seems to care that I was kidnapped or here against my will or anything?" I ventured.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    It was like reading a damn sphynx.


    "We trust the master implicitly. His decisions we follow without question. It is a good trait for a servant to posses, wouldn''t you agree?"


    "Is there some kind of Code-Xavier bullsh--" I caught myself as the tiny sliver of visible eye flashed dangerously. "Bull...stuff, going on? Not that you''d know if it was affecting you, I guess."


    "There are no mind games at work. We all work to serve the glory of the master of our own volition, and you will in time as well, I''m sure. Speaking of time¡­"


    He began to retreat back into his room and the door slowly edged closed.


    "Wait. Sorry, please."


    The door paused, the smiling face still hovering in the doorway.


    "Is uh, is...is Mage like, um, like you and me?" I said, not sure how discrete I needed to be about being an Exhuman. I''ve lived in a world where all Exhumans were evil and needed to die on sight, and one where nobody cared a bit if I was. Being covert about it was new to me.


    "She is," Jack said, with the same smile. "She is a servant of Master Blackett just as we are. Good night, Chariot."


    The door clicked shut in my face.


    "Asshole," I said loud enough for him to hear.


    Without the door moving, he was standing right behind me. I felt his presence and the faint movement of air on the back of my neck as he appeared promptly and silently, and with a smile.


    "Please refrain from such crudities, as I believe I already asked," he said. "And please refrain from disparaging me unnecessarily."


    "Please refrain from deliberately misconstruing my questions," I said, without bothering to face him. I''d learned quickly in our one fight that if he wanted to be behind me, he''d be behind me. My facing had nothing to do with it.


    "Fair enough," he smiled, and just like that was gone again.


    Fuck he was creepy. I wasn''t sure if I preferred the little Latina lolita beating the shit out of me with a rug or his constant smile and appearing wherever he wasn''t. At least one of them I understood what was going on. She was angry and wrecked me using a carpet. That was pretty straightforward, if not humiliating.


    I decided to call it a night before I got any more visibly embarrassing injuries and retreated down the hall to the second-furthest door. Six doors, all on one side, and I had to assume the first four were the others, and the one after mine was empty. If they were handed out by order we got here, that would mean...Mage, Temperance or Tower, Jack, the other of Temperance and Tower...and then me. That would make Mage the most senior servant here, if true. No wonder she was the guard dog for Blackett''s office.


    I kicked off the black slippers and hung up my black robe, just wearing my sleek silky black pants, and fell into bed, one of the few furnishings of the small room, along with a nightstand complete with the only lamp in the room, and a dresser with a mirror, holding a few dozen identical servant outfit pieces, painstakingly pressed and folded.


    I lay on my back looking up at the slanted roof and single window and lightbar, feeling lost and alone. It was one thing to be put to this labor, but not knowing why was horrible. Smiling about it was horrible. Having coworkers like them was horrible. I didn''t know why, maybe because Saga was the only one I''d ever really met...met and not immediately have to kill...but I just assumed I''d automatically get along well with other Exhumans. It seemed like we had enough problems in the world without making more for ourselves.


    Of course, I guess the exact same thing could be said for humans.


    I clapped twice and the light did nothing. Of course it wouldn''t, but it made me smile and remember my friends as I reached over to turn off the light. At least the labor and good food meant I slept well.


    So I was surprised when it felt like I was being roused from my sleep by a fully-dressed Jack after no time at all.


    "Wakey, wakey," he said with a smile. It was too early for smiles. The sun wasn''t even up.


    "Mfjfu gofgjf om?"


    "We are to assemble early this morning. Master Blackett is going away on business for a while and it is our duty to see him off, promptly and silently, and with a smile. If you are so inclined, you may sleep after he is gone, but you will not yawn, slouch, or even blink until then."


    He leaned in close. Way too close. His face only inches from mine, his one beady eye glinting in the darkness. "Or else, you will be disciplined for disrespecting the master. Understood?"


    "Yeah. Yeah," I said, sliding away from him. "I''ll get dressed."


    "Very good. Foyer in ten minutes, do not be late," he said with a smile.


    And then he wasn''t there anymore. I found myself backing away from just the dresser.


    As much as I was just to blow the whole thing off and sleep, I found the temptation of sleep did not outweigh tempting fate. I might not like Jack, but he was my lifeline in this insane fucked-up world, and I didn''t want him mad at me. Or...more mad. It was hard to tell what was going on behind that smile.


    So I was dressed and ready and in the foyer in less than ten minutes. Jack was there, and tutted as he smoothed my shoulders, tucked in my shirt, straightened my tie, and generally fussed over me.


    I saw all three of the others were there as well, including Mage, whom I''d only just had the pleasure of meeting, and a silver-haired girl and a huge black man, even taller than Jack, but also broad, and just a little fat.


    Temperance and Tower. If the names were anything to go by, I''d put smart money on the huge guy being Tower. Not that I felt like much of a Chariot, but whatever.


    We waited in silence for another few minutes, in which I attempted not to fall asleep, and it looked like Tower shared my same dilemma, but as soon as footsteps were heard echoing from Blackett''s room, we all snapped crisply to attention in a rigid line.


    The door opened, and there he was. Same black military uniform I''d seen him in both other times. Man must have really loved black to put it on all his servants after having to wear it all day himself. He walked past without a word until he reached me on the end of the line and halted, turned his head towards me.


    "Chariot. How are you finding things here?"


    I blinked at him for a moment. I wasn''t expecting this at all.


    "Um," I said, and felt Jack poke me in the throat to angle my face towards Blackett''s instead of his shoes. He shot Jack an annoyed glance, which somehow made me actually like the guy for a moment. Anyone who found Jack annoying couldn''t be all bad.


    "It''s...not bad. Honestly, I just don''t know why I''m here. Um, sir. I don''t know why you don''t have just...regular servants instead of me."


    He gave me a tiny smile. "I only have the best," he said. "This is only temporary, rest assured, a time to get your bearings and for me to test your loyalty. Your talents will be put to use soon enough."


    "I don''t...sir, I don''t have any loyalty towards you."


    Mage looked like she had to stifle a laugh. I guess she could do more than just scowl.


    "I understand that. You will be given time to understand my vision. If, at the end of it, you still have none, you are of no use to me."


    "And you''ll kill me."


    "That is not what I said. Loyalty bought with death is not loyalty at all."


    "You''d let me go?"


    "I did not say that either, but I do not have time to discuss your entire future at the moment. Jack, the car, if you please?"


    Jack stepped forward with a smile and held the door for Blackett, and then the two of them stepped out into the snowy black morning and they were gone.


    "Thought I was driving," said presumably-Tower.


    "Must have...have changed his mind," answered presumably-Temperance. "I wonder why."


    "Jack annoyed him," Mage said as she left, heading back towards our rooms already.


    That left the three of us in the spacious foyer, standing awkwardly and silently.


    "Um, hi," I said, with a feeble wave.


    "Oh, he''s the new boy. He''s...adorable. Hi, new boy," said presumably-Temperance with a friendly smile to rival Jack''s.


    "I''m Tower," said the man. Nice, got that right.


    "Temperance here, but you can call me Tempe, if you''d like. Or, um, Tem. Or Temmie. I do have a lot of nicknames."


    "But not ''Rance?" I asked wryly.


    "No, nobody has s-said that one before. S-s-should I add it to my list?" She laughed demurely. She had a definite stutte on her S''s it seemed.


    "Well, just tell me what you want me to call you, doesn''t matter to me."


    "Oh dear. Um, Tempe. Tempe?" she said asking Tower.


    "I liked Tem," he said with a shrug.


    "Tem then, I s-s-suppose. I''m s-sorry."


    "How long is he going to be gone?" I asked, jerking a thumb at the door.


    "He? You...mean Master Blackett?"


    "Yeah, who else."


    "I must in-in-insist that you use proper address when referring to the m-m-master!" Tem said. She sounded like she was trying to say it urgently, passionately, but it still almost came out like a question. This girl was even more soft-spoken than Saga...and I''m pretty sure Saga was missing some of her less-essential vocalizing organs from atrophy.


    "Um, okay, sorry." I scratched my head. "Uh, so when is Master Blackett coming back?"


    "A week," said Tower with a shrug.


    "What do we do until then?"


    "Well, Mage has the run of the place, but never does anything unless she has to, so next in line is Tem, who blows at leadership--"


    "I do not...blow...at it!"


    "She does. So next is Jack, and he pretty much just bosses us all around. He''ll keep us busy. No vacation for us."


    "And...are...are we all...Exhuman?" I asked, not sure how else to put it.


    Tower grinned broadly at me. "Hell yes we are. Want to have a go?"


    "No, not really. I''m just surprised. The XPCA is supposed to, like¡­"


    "Kill people like us? They do. Blackett saves those of us he likes though."


    "MASTER Blackett!"


    "Sure, Tem. Anyway, yeah. We were all in your shoes once, brought in here, not knowing what''s up. My time was just a few months ago. You''ll get used to it."


    "That''s actually a huge relief," I said. "I met Blackett first, obviously--"


    "MASTER Blackett!"


    "--Master Blackett first, and...we had some issues, as Exhumans and XPCA do, and then Jack and Mage...and I thought¡­"


    Tower laughed and clapped his huge hands on my shoulders in a way which I''d describe as playfully painful. "Yeah, those two are complete sticks in the mud. But we''re not all that bad, right Tem?"


    "Yes...I mean, yeah!" she said, totally convincingly.


    "''Atta girl," Tower said, clapping her painfully as well. She looked up at me with a smile and tears in her eyes as we were both crushed by Tower''s powerful enthusiasm.


    "Well, if Jack is planning on running me ragged, I should get some more sleep while I can. You guys will be around?"


    "We live here just...like you!" Tem said.


    "Yeah, but I''ve been here a week and haven''t met you guys yet."


    "Well, it is a big house, and it is easier to keep up if we spread out. We can try to meet up at mealtimes at least, if you would like that."


    "I think I would. Thanks you guys."


    "No problem, little man!" Tower said and grabbed me in a one-armed hug. Easily more powerful than a two-armed hug by a normal person. Was his power just super-strength or what?


    I extracted myself slowly and made my final goodbyes and collapsed back in bed, stopping only to explode out of the admittedly well-tailored and comfortable suit and back into my lounge pants and dove right back into bed.


    I clapped twice, smiled, and then turned the lamp off.


    And then winced at my still-sore smiling muscles, but hell, worth it.

 101. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Athan.

    The week passed faster than I thought possible. Jack had me in such a daily regimen of working, cooking, cleaning, and repairs that I scarcely had time to think, much less rest. I caught up briefly with the others on occasion, but I was so depleted all the time we didn''t have time to talk about much but pleasantries.


    Mage said very little and only spent time with when she had to. Nobody actually enjoyed Jack''s company, though he joined us frequently anyway, which left me with Tower or Tem on the occasion for conversation.


    Tem...wasn''t a good conversationalist. She was okay when Tower was around and steering the conversation, but on her own, we tended to lapse into long silences and she would just shift and stutter awkwardly. She didn''t seem to want to talk about herself, or her past, or really anything at all, though she did often come up to me like she wanted to talk, and then had nothing to say past a salutation.


    Tower on the other hand, talked easily and at length about whatever topic popped into his head. He and I also seemed sentenced to the hardest labor in the house, I assume because he was strong and I was new, and therefore often found ourselves working together, scrubbing down the pool, or hanging from cables, cleaning windows on the outside of the house dozens of feet from the ground.


    He was also...really clumsy. Like, yeah, he was a huge guy, and that led to some invariable incidents of walking into low ceilings or not fitting into spaces, but, like, when we were cleaning the windows, he must have dropped his cleaning cloth a dozen times. At some point, I thought he had to just be messing with me, but by the end of it he was sweating and swearing about having to go back down for it so many times.


    Disregarding that, he was a total bro. He helped me learn the ropes and even covered for me a couple times when I was drowning and behind on work, and he did it all with a laugh and an easy smile. And some bone-crushing hugs, but, whatever.


    The night before Blackett''s return found the four of us, Mage excepted, of course, laughing and talking in the kitchen, basically one the one large common area for us servants to be able to hang out in, if you didn''t count the laundry room, and I much preferred the company of food to baskets containing Blackett''s briefs.


    Tower was regaling us with the story of how the XPCA took him in. It was a story I''d already heard once from him already, so I could only imagine the number of times the rest had heard it, but Jack smiled along as ever, and Tem laughed softly at all the right places. I couldn''t help but to grin, from Tower''s energy.


    "...and THEN, this XPCA guy just jumps out in front of me, right in my way, like he''s going to stop me," Tower snickered. "I''m moving at, what, mach two? Flying straight through the air like a bullet, and he''s all ''STOP RIGHT THERE.'' I didn''t want to paste the guy, so I at least try to stop, but then we crash and we''re all rolling. Next thing I know, we''re both on the ground, and he''s on top of me, straddling me, right? Our faces a few inches apart. And I''m thinking, okay, he''s going to apologize, or whip out his baton and try to arrest me on the spot."


    He leaned forward, grinning broadly. "He''s just laying on top of me like I''m some mattress, looking like he''s going to piss himself, and then I feel this thing poking me in the belly. Man''s an inch from my face, getting lost in my eyes, and he pops wood!"


    Tower guffawed and slapped the table, making it jump. Tem was already bright red and covered her face in her hands, a confused smile working its way onto her face despite herself. Jack sat smiling pleasant as always, cup of tea suddenly in his hands as the table jumped from Tower''s pummeling, and I just had to laugh, as much at the scene in the kitchen as the story.


    "You probably traumatized that poor man," Jack said, smiling.


    "I bet he''s got some really confusing fetishes to work through," I said.


    Tem looked at me between her fingers like I was killing a puppy, but she really wanted to watch. The table shook again as Tower laughed again.


    "I like you, Chariot!" he proclaimed, and I inched away before he clapped me on the shoulder or caught me in a hug again. "You see what I''ve had to deal with before you showed up?"


    Jack smiled politely. Tem smiled shyly like that was a compliment. These guys were beyond busted.


    "They''re not so bad," I said. "We''re all here having a good time, right?"


    "Yeah, they could be two more Mages, I guess," he replied, looking more serious for a moment.


    "Hey, I''ve heard a lot about Tower''s Exhuman event. What about you guys?" I asked, turning towards Jack and Tem. "I''m just curious, if you don''t want to share."


    "I''m afraid mine is positively uninteresting," Jack replied, to my surprise, only wearing half a smile as he recalled. "I woke one day and found I could see better with my eyes closed than open. My wife and child fled when I began to appear in places I was not. I tried to go after them and outsiders became involved and called the police."


    He smiled again. "I killed a lot of XCPA that day."


    "You were married?" I asked. "You don''t seem that old."


    "I''m thirty-nine now," he replied, smiling.


    "What? Impossible!" bellowed Tower. "You don''t look a day over twenty five!"


    "Well, I do take care to eat right and exercise. I appreciate your flattery." He tilted his head and smiled even more broadly.


    "I eat right and exercise too," Tower said, slapping his round gut like a gong. "But nobody thinks I''m that young. How young do I look, Chariot?"


    "Uh. I don''t know, I only turned 19. You guys all look old."


    "I-I¡­!" muttered Tem shaking.


    I rolled my eyes. "The guys all look old. You look my age."


    "Oh. Okay. I''m sorry," she muttered into her hands.


    "So guess, little man!"


    "Uh. I don''t know, thirty?"


    "Twenty eight. SEE?" he shouted, turning towards Jack like this was irrevocable evidence of some argument they''d been having. Jack just smiled and shrugged.


    "What about you, Tem? I understand if you don''t want to talk about it."


    "I...I¡­" she muttered, sinking into her chair and fast disappearing beneath the lip of the table. "I-I''m fine!"


    I looked at Tower. He looked as lost as me. Jack''s face was as useless as ever. I wondered if he could even be sad or angry, though I wouldn''t want to find out first-hand.


    "Um, okay Tem. You don''t have to share. Just asking."


    "No! It''s...just really...embarrassing."


    "Then it''s fine not to share."


    "No, everyone else did," she took a deep breath. "I was just...bullied a lot, and...I...always...wanted to disappear. And then...one day...I could."


    Sitting head-in-hands at the table, slouching under it so she was only barely visible, she wavered and then suddenly wasn''t even that anymore. But she was still there, just like I could sense Jack appearing behind me, I could sense she was still right in front of me.


    "I...s-s-spent...whole days invisible. Nobody s-seem...s-s-seemed to notice. Not my parents or teachers."


    "What about your friends?" I asked the empty chair.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    She reappeared and just looked at me sideways with lips pursed. Oops.


    "Didn''t...really have...those. People...didn''t want to get...bullied with me. I understood."


    "Tem, you really don''t have to share this," I said, raising my hands plaintively towards her. "It sounds like it was a really hard time, so maybe we can just forget about it."


    "No, I''ve never heard this before. I''m interested," said Jack. The asshole.


    "Yeah, this is good stuff!" added Tower. The buffoon.


    I sighed. The idiot who started this whole thing.


    "W-well, I, um, one day, I was just...going to classes...like usual. Invisible, like...like usual. And I ran into a girl, it was my fault...s-she was...one of the popular kids, and I was...was s-s-so s-surprised, I just drop...dropped it and turned visible."


    "S-she s-s-screamed at me! Accused me of...of s-sneaking up on her. Which I guess, I did, so I apologized. But, she, s-s-she s-said that wasn''t good enough, and I-I had to learn my place."


    "Uh oh," said Tower.


    "S-she um, she grabbed me, her hands were so s-s-strong and warm. I st-still remember." She looked down at her own hands, transfixed. "S-she found s-some of her...of her friends, and they...they said...if I liked to disappear s-so much, I should disappear for...for good."


    "Uh oh," Tower repeated. He wasn''t really adding to this story.


    "They...they made me get...get in an empty locker. I was...I was even s-sm-maller then. Master Blackett, he...he has helped me with...with positive...body image."


    The mental image of Blackett helping a bullied anorexic Exhuman was completely impossible for me to fathom. Maybe he just got her a shrink or something.


    "I...s-s-spent...um, two days...locked in the locker. I...I passed out...from...um, from heatstroke. Th-they only found me be-because um, of the...of the s-s-smell. Of...of¡­of...of¡­" she stuttered more than ever.


    "Your bowels?" Jack suggested. Tem was completely red and nodded imperceptibly and sunk even further into her chair.


    "W-when...when I...when I came to, I wasn''t right in...in the head. I...I thought...they were back for me. I was...I was so s-scared. I wasn''t tr-trying to fight."


    "People often use their powers unconsciously," I said, thinking of Saga when she was sleeping. "It happens."


    "I...I de...destroyed...the whole s-school. All at once. And...and every...everyone in it."


    Tower let out a low whistle. "Wow. Now that''s some firepower." He turned to me. "Tem is the only one Blackett--"


    "MASTER Blackett!" she said, rising slightly in her seat.


    "--only one he tells to hold back during our sparring. I''ve never seen her at full force."


    "Tower," I chided. "I don''t think she''s happy about it."


    "Why not? She levelled the whole damn place and it sounded like they didn''t give a shi--"


    He flinched, as Jack appeared right as his side.


    "...give a...lick. About her. Plus she blew up that damn shit-filled--"


    Jack was now sitting on the table directly in front of him, legs crossed casually, one heel resting on Tower''s knee, a thin blade dancing in his hands.


    "Yeah, I get it. Watch the language," Tower mumbled.


    "This wouldn''t be an issue if you could keep it under control in front of the master," he said, the blade spinning in his adroit fingers.


    "I''m trying, cut me some slack."


    "Oh okay," Jack said, slicing the knife through the air between the two of them. "I''ll cut you some." He smiled, and then was back in his seat like nothing had happened at all.


    There was a minute of awkward silence where nobody moved, except Tem sinking ever further into her seat.


    "But yeah," Tower said. "At least you got to blow up that locker. You must have hated that thing after two days."


    "No...no. It was...was my fault, really."


    "Are you kidding me?" I said, making her jump from my outburst. "Those girls locked you in there for two days and you would have died in there. How is that your fault?"


    "I-I-...I''m s-sorry," she muttered to the table.


    "No, I''m serious. How could you possibly think any of that was your fault?"


    "Because...I s-s-should...s-should have...s-should have asked for...for help. Inside the locker."


    "Well, yeah, you probably should have, but they shouldn''t have locked you in there to begin with. That''s just fuuu----" I glanced at Jack as I realized the word coming out of my mouth. He raised an eyebrow, creepy smile in position. "--uuuuuuuun. No fun. That''s just messed up, I mean."


    "Well...then...I s-shouldn''t...have bumped into her."


    "That''s still totally unreasonable of her. She tried to kill you, Tem."


    "W...well...s-she dis...disliked me for other reasons, before then."


    "Reasons like? She was a real piece of...sh...strudel?"


    "I do enjoy strudel," Jack commented.


    "I...my...my impediment...it...I s-s-slowed down...s-slowed down the whole...class. That...that annoyed her. I was...was...had to be...included in, in group activities. I...always brought down my group. S-s-sometimes, that was her."


    "So...that makes it okay she killed you."


    "She...s-she didn''t know...it would...or would...wouldn''t."


    I was so angry at Tem for letting this happen to her, and I didn''t even know why. I hadn''t really ever had issues with bullies in school, but I did see it happen around me and wondered why people couldn''t just stand up for themselves.


    Even here, her inability to either stop telling us, like she clearly wanted to, or just say things plainly without shaking in her boots, it drove me crazy. I wanted to grab her and shake her and scream at her to have a little backbone.


    I stood up and paced. I was too angry to sit still, and every time I looked at Tem she shied further into her seat, which just made me more angry. I wanted to find the bullies and beat the shit out of them. Wanted to tie them down and have Tem beat the shit out of them. I guess, she''d probably accidentally vaporized them, but that was just even more trauma for her to carry with her.


    "You''re looking pretty hot over there," Tower said. "Want to have a little match?"


    "No, I''m...I''m just going to go on a walk. Is that okay?"


    "It''s okay as long as Mage says so," Tower said with a shrug.


    "I have to ask her?"


    "No, not really. If she''s not okay with something, she lets you know in a big way."


    "Yeah, I ran into that a while back," I said, rubbing my nose where I''d smacked it repeatedly into the floor. The injury was gone, but the sting remained. "What are her powers, anyway?"


    "Don''t know," Tower said. "She''s pretty fickle though. Sometimes we fight and she just gives up right away. Sometimes she just picks the other guy apart."


    "Guy...or...or girl!"


    "Sure, Tem. We''ve wondered sometimes if she even has a power."


    "I have yet to see her do anything superhuman," Jack added.


    "Me either," said Tem. "And I''ve been...been here the longest...after her."


    "But she''s definitely Exhuman, right? Must just be something we can''t see directly. Maybe a code Xavier type? Or...something really unusual, like getting more powerful with phases of the moon or something?"


    "Good thinking, little guy, but I don''t think so. I think she''s just something else."


    "She''s scary, is what she is," said Jack, of all people. Just what kind of monster was this girl?


    "Well, I''ll go take a walk and if I die, blame Mage," I said with a shrug.


    "Early day tomorrow," Jack called to me. "Master Blackett will be back early, and will likely wish to do a full inspection." One of his beady eyes glittered. "Fair warning."


    "Sure. Thanks." I headed out.


    The house was on a huge gated lot, a lot of which I''d grown entirely too familiar with as I cleaned gutters, pruned trees and trimmed hedges. Not exactly all winter work, but I got the feeling Jack was trying to just keep us busy. I kicked the brick path as I wound my way out to the front gate and let myself out.


    I don''t know why listening to Tem made my blood boil like it did. I could speculate on it all night, and all that would happen would be I''d be even angrier about it.


    Obviously, I''d had my share of dealing with unusual people. Saga was the most obvious example, her way of looking at people and the world was almost alien to me, but she still did things in a way that made sense. She''d had bad experience with humans and hated them. She had a hard time shutting out voices and liked to be alone. Her body didn''t work very well, so she laid around. Simple, reasonable. The exact opposite of me, but I could respect that.


    And then Tem had basically the same life I did, it sounded like, and through her own insecurities and self-sabotage, let something like a stutter turn her into a complete victim. I don''t know if almost dying in a locker full of her own shit was even the worst thing that happened to her, but the way she put it...it sounded like that was just life to her.


    And I honestly couldn''t understand. Of course the bullies made me angry, but she did too. Soft-spoken, silver-haired waif of a girl...I couldn''t believe she was my age, or an Exhuman like me. I couldn''t believe we had anything in common. Just a couple weeks ago, I''d single-handedly decimated the ranks of the XPCA elite. I went a little battle-crazy and blew off my leg like a fucking idiot, but I knew exactly how capable and strong someone like us could be.


    I felt sick in the head. I wanted to hold her down and punch her in the face until she was forced to use her to use those powers of hers to blow me up, and maybe somehow, that would stick. Maybe I was annoyed that her power was apparently so strong and yet she''d never use it, maybe Karu had just rubbed off on me and I idolized strength. I didn''t know. I just needed to be less mad at the damn innocent girl.


    I sighed as I walked around the corner, finding the whole neighborhood to be mansions like Blackett''s, though his was definitely on the upper-end of what was out here. I wandered at random until I was freezing and replaced my anger with thoughts like ''this is stupid'' and ''what am I doing here'', and then headed back.


    Tomorrow would be an early day. And probably an awful one.

 102. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Athan.

    Dressed and up in the foyer before the sun was up again, the five of us barely stirred as we waited for Blackett''s return. I found my eyes kept landing on Tem.


    She was thin, small, maybe half my weight even, though I was back up to having some muscle on me again with real food and a gym available to me. Her silver hair hung straight down, parting with gentle curves around her face, like curtains which half-hid her eyes and forehead, and then met in a pair of braids on either shoulder, each ending with a silver tuft at her chest.


    She was staring at the ground, too, as usual. She glanced up, found me staring, and then resumed boring into the ground, even more intently, face flushed.


    God, she drove me crazy. I took a deep breath and focused on the others instead, deliberately trying to block her out.


    Mage looked as bored and tired as I think we all felt. Even smaller than Tem, I had to wonder if she was even eighteen. Not that Exhuman powers seemed to care...Saga got hers when she was still practically a baby, if I remembered. I wondered if there were many actual babies who got put down for showing with powers, and realized, I''d rather not have that thought.


    Mage had caramel skin and dark hair, wavy and lazily kept so it just looked like two large pools of hair draped on either side of her face. As I watched, she yawned lazily and scratched herself, before giving her armpit a subtle sniff. Very classy. Not like I cared, I was fine with people who were comfortable in their own skin, unlike some other girls in the room I could mention.


    Jack was...well, Jack. Very tall, thin, smiling, eyes closed. His hair hung in his face a little, which I guess wasn''t much of an issue if you could see with your eyes closed, but was kept shorter in the back. So...a deliberate design choice? Or maybe the stylist had just given up on the haircut when they got to his face and saw how creepy he was.


    Finally, Tower. I think I liked him best, and liked him best early in the morning when he wasn''t crushing my bones with his exuberance. Big, tall, some pudge on the belly, but powerfully muscled anyway. His head was basically bald, with just a thin layer of afro, fading to nothingness on the sides of his head. Otherwise, clean-shaven, with dark eyes and a wide nose.


    Having finished my own inspections...I was bored again. Early mornings here really sucked.


    It was still another several minutes before we heard the gate outside clang and all snapped to attention. Tower opened the door and stood severely at the side of the doorway, doorknob in hand.


    In strolled Blackett, looking more tired and haggard than I''d seen him, and out of uniform, which was a first. In its place, a simple polo and pair of slacks, both still black of course. As Tower closed the door carefully behind him, he let out a sigh.


    "Let''s do some inspections," he said. The faces of the others brightened, and they moved towards the gym, me trailing behind them, and Blackett trailing behind me.


    It really wasn''t my place to ask, but I did anyway, because fuck it, I wasn''t really a servant here. I didn''t know what I was, but I wasn''t that.


    "Everything okay, uh, sir?"


    He looked at me seriously for a moment and then seemed to decide to answer. The others were still walking, but even if their eyes were forward, it was obvious their attention was back here.


    "I believe I mentioned to you that the XPCA is obsolete. The signs of that are showing more and more, day by day. Unless something can be done, the failure of the XPCA is inevitable."


    "So do something?"


    Tem gasped.


    Surprisingly, and I think, for the first time, Blackett chuckled. Maybe he was just so tired his facade was cracking.


    "I''m trying," he said, and it was obvious the conversation was over. With a smile, Jack held open the door to the gym''s lower floor, a large empty room with padded floors and walls, and I passed through.


    "I''ll be a moment," Blackett said, and turned back.


    The others moved to one side of the room where beneath one of the floor panels, they pulled out karate uniforms, not actually too different from our sleepwear. A robe-like top with a thick, stiff cloth belt, and a pair of pants, but all white this time. Possibly the only non-black clothes in the whole mansion.


    And then I was back in high school as everyone around me began to strip out of their clothes, seemingly without embarrassment or concern. The locker rooms all over again. Except...mixed company. Nobody even bothered to move to the corners of the room, it was just...rip ''em off, I guess.


    I tried not to look, keep my eyes on myself as I did the same, but¡­


    Tem''s skin was so white, she gave Saga a run for her money, and beneath the suit, she was definitely not all-there. I could see her bones in her ribcage, and her arms and legs seemed only just large enough to fit her elbows and knees in. She wasn''t skeletal or anything just...unhealthy thin.


    Mage, on the other hand, was as dark as Tem was white. The juxtaposition was startling. Then there was a pair of eyes in front of me, and I jumped. A half-naked Jack appeared inches from my face, smile in place, and then disappeared again, getting dressed like nothing had happened. My heart was racing from the shock, and I took the hint, and locked my eyes on the floor as I dressed. I heard Mage snickering behind me, but wasn''t going to look up for anything.


    ''Cause, I mean, maybe next time, Jack would be fully finished undressing. That''s not something I needed in my life.


    A minute later, promptly, silently and with a smile, we were all changed and lined up, seated in a single row on a side of the room alongside Blackett, who had procured tea while we were changing, clinging to his cup like it was a lifeline.


    "Tem, Chariot," he said, and then took a sip. "Tem, you may use whatever you wish so long as you do not damage the house. Chariot, sparring is to first blood only."


    "I, uh," I watched as Tem stood and moved to her place in the room without hesitation, loose pants swishing softly. "I don''t know how to fight without killing someone." I said.


    "Electricity is tricky that way. But that''s the whole purpose of this practice. You must master yourself if you are to be of use to anyone else. Do your best."


    He gestured to Tower, who got up and pulled up the mat he was sitting on, digging around in the compartment underneath for a moment before coming back up with a full-sized first-aid kit, like, the size of briefcase...and a defibrillator.


    I still sat frozen. There was no way this was okay. My lightning didn''t just stop people''s hearts, and defibrillating someone wasn''t just, zap ''em and they''re good, I''d learned just how painful and hard on my heart it was when I''d had to do it to myself. Lightning was...thousands of degrees hot. I could melt my way through metal like it was...well, a cold knife through cold butter, but that was still pretty insane. And I was just supposed to have a go at this fragile waif?


    Like, yeah, I''d been fantasizing about kicking her ass all week, but that was just a fantasy. I didn''t want to hurt her, especially now that I''d seen just how weak she was.


    I heard Jack sigh and looked over at him. He wasn''t there. Damn it.


    I felt more than saw his arms grab mine and his legs hook into my gut as he rolled on is back and threw me into the middle of the room with some kind of judo. As I sailed in the air, I saw him on his back where I''d just been, smug smile fixed in place, but only for a moment before he reappeared in the gap between Mage and Blackett.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    I slammed onto my back on the padded floor.


    I felt like no sooner had I landed than Blackett said "Begin."


    I rolled to my feet, and where I''d been laying a small laser burned a hole in the mat.


    I found myself moving quickly in the apparently empty arena, as cloudlike motes of light coagulated out of nothingness and, after half a moment, exploded into a precision laser beam, which burned a new black hole in whatever mat happened to be in the way.


    "I thought you said no destruction?" I shouted at Blackett while I moved, half-unpredictably to try to shake the beams, half in reaction to a beam forming right in my way.


    "I said no destroying the house. Padding can be easily replaced."


    I noticed that the beams were coming from nowhere, anywhere in the room, but none of them were firing through me into the spectators. Of course, she didn''t want to hurt them. I ran in their direction and dove behind the line of them.


    "We''re not part of the fight, bro," Tower said, looking back at me.


    "Tell that to the bitch who''s trying to vaporize me!" I shouted.


    I saw the smile again as I was thrown back bodily into the room without even a moment to react. "Language!" he shouted as I sailed through the air.


    "She''s invisible! What am I supposed to do?" I shouted as I retook my feet, dodging another half-dozen beams aimed at where I landed.


    "You are supposed," Blackett said with annoyance in his voice, "to fight. Now fight."


    "I''ll kill her, you idiot!" I shouted back, lasers now forcing me to kick off a wall to get enough height over them. From somewhere in the room, I heard a scream, and the lasers began pouring after me with even greater speed, size, and intensity.


    "Shit, did I insult Blackett in front of you? My bad." I shouted back at Tem, wherever she was.


    "Language," muttered Jack again.


    "IT''S!" A huge hazy-looking cloud appeared directly in front of me, easily as large as my body. "MASTER BLACKETT!" screamed Tem''s voice.


    I dove forward, feeling the enormous beam annihilate the wall behind me, and felt some of the hairs on the back of my head vaporize with it.


    "Oh come on! How is that not damaging the house!" I yelled, getting only a gance of the huge hole in the wall and dirt-turned-slag beyond it.


    "Walls are replaceable as well," said Blackett with a shrug.


    "Yeah, but there''s no way that was going to just be first blood!" I shouted back, sliding narrowly under another set of beams, and then popping back up and arresting my momentum to keep from crashing into more.


    "But you avoided it. Do try to pay attention, Chariot."


    "So what you''re saying," I said, whipping out my swords. "Is that it''s fine to use lethal attacks as long as I don''t hit with them? Against an invisible person?"


    "Correct."


    "And the fight is to literal first blood? I don''t have to avoid getting hit?"


    "If you don''t bleed, I suppose."


    "This is the stupidest fucking thing. I want you to know that."


    "Language," insisted Jack. I could feel his frown behind his smile.


    The room was big, but it wasn''t that big. Standing in the middle, I could barely reach the short ends of the room with my blades. On my left and right, three blades each, spinning like propellers on a plane. I began to walk forward, blades chopping through the air, walking from one end of the room towards the other.


    Lasers popped out of nowhere and blasted directly into me, but I just let them sink into my shield instead of putting in the token effort of evading them. Their stupid rules, their stupid game.


    "Hey! That''s...not...not fair!" I heard Tem say from somewhere in front of me, as I slowly advanced on her.


    "Think you''d better forfeit," I said. "Not my fault if you run into a fatal attack if it''s just slowly walking towards you."


    "It''s not fair that you''re...you''re laserproof!" she squeaked.


    "Battles between Exhumans are never going to be fair," Blackett said.


    Now that I wasn''t bouncing around the room and was focusing on my powers, I felt like I could sense her again. Just as I''d somehow kept track of Jack while he whizzed all over the place, I got a feeling she was hunkered in the corner of the room in front of me.


    "Wait!" I heard her say. She stood up and became visible, appearing behind me on my left, standing up from behind the onlookers. "I was hiding back here, I''m, s-s-sorry."


    "Oh, I thought they were out-of-bounds? Or was it just me who gets thrown into the middle of the room for being over there? I turned off my swords and went to the far corner of the room while she gently and apologetically stepped out from the onlookers and regained the center of the room.


    "Yes. My...my apologies. I was...frightened, by your...by your powers," she said. "S-shall we begin again?"


    "Tem, you have some neat tricks," I said, reaching behind me and grabbing a fistful of the air behind me. "But you are a lousy ventriloquist."


    Tem became visible in my hands as I hosted her from her hiding spot in the corner. Thankfully, I''d only grabbed the front of her robe, but I was pulling her hair down, which made her wince, and was possibly responsible for breaking her concentration and stealth.


    The others ''oohed'' and Tower laughed and applauded. Holding her there in the corner by her collar, lifting her almost off her feet, with her standing only on the tips of her toes...so light, she was shuddering and quaking.


    Even with the power to put a hole in the wall bigger than I was, or to do that a hundredfold and annihilate a whole school, she was shaking like a leaf in my hands, avoiding eye contact, hardly even there.


    I hated her so, so much. Everything about her drove me crazy. She looked like, even now, even in the middle of a fight, it was all her fault for getting caught.


    Holding her, seeing her so pathetic in my hands, so freaking worthless, not even heavy enough to feel like I was holding a real person, I don''t know what happened. I just snapped.


    I punched her straight in the gut before I knew what I was doing. She choked and gasped and writhed in my grip, useless as ever. I hit her again, and this time, she threw up. She didn''t eat much, and she turned her head and covered her mouth so she wouldn''t get any on me. She gasped a few times, trying to wipe her face on her sleeves and suck in more air.


    "S-s-sorry," she said, her eyes leaking from my blows and hurling.


    It was exactly the wrong thing for her to say and do. I hit her another dozen times before Jack and Tower were on me, Tower pulling me off easily, while Jack appeared between the two of us and took the last few blows himself, only a deadly serious look on his face.


    My hands hurt. I felt like I''d broken something, but a hundred times worse, I''d also broken someone. I didn''t struggle as Tower pinned me to the floor and shouted at me. Mage and Jack looked to Tem, but whatever I''d done to her, it was more than they could handle, and a few minutes later, she was being loaded onto an ambulance, flashing red and blue lights before my blank eyes.


    My hands were trembling. I didn''t know why I had such issues with her, she''d done nothing but be nice to me, didn''t know what it was about her that pushed my buttons so, didn''t know I was capable of losing it like that. It was like when I snapped and went after Brick, but he...he deserved it. She was just an innocent girl.


    I felt someone sit next to me and realized it was Mage.


    "Knew you''d do that," she said.


    "Why didn''t you stop me, then?"


    "She deserved it."


    I looked at her, seeing her face illuminated in the red and blue flashes of the ambulance and the faint morning light. She was smiling at me with a smug grin.


    "No she didn''t. She''s never done anything mean to anyone.," I said echoing my own thoughts. Arguing with myself.


    "She''s detestable. So pathetic. A waste of a life."


    I stood up and faced her. "How can you say that about someone else? She''s got as much right to live as anyone."


    She shrugged. "I''m not the one who beat her up."


    "And I feel bad about it. And you''re telling me she deserved it."


    Mage stood up as well, coming up to my shoulders. She gave me a sly look and then headed for the door. "Pretty smart hitting her so fast she couldn''t cough up anything. Technically still wasn''t first blood."


    "You''re sick," I said.


    "I''m saying what you know. You have no moral high ground. You pulverized that girl."


    "Shut up," I growled.


    "Or what? You''ll beat me too? Maybe I should be scared."


    She laughed and left, making me feel a thousand times worse about myself for the visit.


    It was hard to imagine possibly feeling worse about myself, but Mage just had to show up and let me know just what a horrible asshole I really was. If she weren''t being antagonistic about it, and busy rubbing my face in my own shit, would I be just like her?


    I didn''t know. I didn''t want to know. My hands hurt like crazy, and every time they throbbed, I wondered what part of her I''d hit with them, and how that part of her was doing. Probably worse than my hands, no matter how badly they ached.


    Blackett appeared in the doorway, Jack behind him, a smile back on Jack''s face again.


    "Chariot, it''s time to talk. Come to my office."


    I fell in line behind the two, wondering if we were walking to my execution.


    I wouldn''t blame them, I definitely deserved it. I wasn''t even that terrible an Exhuman, as it turned out, just a horrible person.

 103. 2251, One week ago. Las Vegas. Lia.

    My hands shook as I tried to type. This had been so easy, not so long ago, I''d been living as Black Shark on my own for months, made and spent millions of credits, and now I couldn''t even respond to a single buyer. I took a drink to steady my hands.


    In my mind, I was forever falling down that hill. Replaying everything I did wrong. The XPCA soldiers chasing me, tracking me by my rifle fire. If I''d just held my fire, believed in the others to be able to win that fight without me, they never would have found me, perched in a tree, shrouded by my optics-defeating equipment.


    And when I fell, I ran. I had candelas and shock rocks in my pockets, easy access and everything. But when I saw them, up close, with their guns, I panicked and just took off. Took right off a damn cliff. Not even watching where I was going. Saw the warning on my mask''s HUD and just ignored it, not familiar enough with my gear, not enough practice, just damn sloppy everything.


    I took another drink.


    And then worst of all, the last thing I did was cry out for help. The one thing I knew would make Athan fold like a folding chair. I just couldn''t keep my mouth shut. After all my talk with the girls on all the things we needed to do to keep him from surrendering. I should have broken my ear comms, thrown it into the bushes, let them have me, and let Athan win the fight. Instead, Blackett himself shows up, rips it out of my ear while his goons hold me down, says his piece to Athan.


    At that point, all I could hope was Athan didn''t believe him for some reason, that Athan could just be too stupid and too stubborn, and I knew he was both of those things plenty. And just as I''m thinking that, bam, Blackett just treads on my hand a little bit and I''m gasping and whimpering into the comms he shoves in my face like it was all planned.


    I hated myself. I hated what I''d done, I hated every single thing about me from that moment forward. I couldn''t write, I couldn''t be Black Shark, I couldn''t even begin working on a plan for Athan, much less doing a damn thing about it.


    I took another drink. My flask was out again. I took a swig from the handle instead. It was all going to wind up in the same place.


    All I could do, every damn day, was just put a smile on my face and pretend that things were going to be okay. Every day. Saga knew, there wasn''t any avoiding that, but AEGIS and Chiho were in the dark. Subaru...I don''t know that he thought much about anything, and I didn''t really care anyway. He had strong arms, and right now, being held was everything I wanted in the world.


    I checked the holo. It was only noon. AEGIS was going to give me hell again for drinking so early. Fuck her. I took another drink. Bitter. Acrid. Burned on its way down that hill.


    I put away my work again, having accomplished exactly nothing. I knew what I needed to do, had a plan even. I''d talked it out with the others and everyone was on-board.


    Everyone...except me, it seemed. We were all waiting, Athan was waiting, for me to get things moving, to start Operation: Athan, and I couldn''t even begin the first damn step. Couldn''t even use my damn holo for anything more complicated than buying everything on the whole damn ''net and browsing smut. I didn''t even like smut, didn''t even want the things I bought.


    All I wanted was to start my work. And to get Athan back and fix all the mistakes I''d made. And stop drinking so much, and undo anything the XPCA had done to him in the time they''d had them, and stop lying to AEGIS all the time, and apologize to Saga for all the pain I knew I was putting her through, and cut things off with Subaru because that was just a dead-end and I knew it and, get back to being Black Shark and having some control over my own life.


    Really, that was it. And yet, every day, somewhere between staring at the ceiling and thinking, ''yeah, I need to do it today'', and getting to my chair and my holo, all of that disappeared. I was powerless against how useless and horrible and worthless and how much I''d ruined everything I was.


    I took another big long drink and decided to look up what Subaru was doing. We''d only just moved in, those two couldn''t say no to living with me, and the rent I charged compared to their old place, and now Subaru was just across the hall whenever I wanted him. I got up, found my legs a little unsteady, and realized I hadn''t eaten anything at all today, and the booze was kicking my butt.


    But to hell with it. I grabbed the handle and headed across the hall.


    "Yooo, Subaru," I said knocking.


    "''Sup, come in," he said, and I obliged.


    I''d been keeping things with Subaru low-key on Saga''s account, but he was getting tired of just playing around, and honestly, so was I. She could probably put up with us fooling around, just a little, I thought. Or maybe, looking at the half-empty bottle in my hand, that was the vodka doing the thinking.


    Again. To hell with it. Vodka at least, wasn''t a complete screw-up in every conceivable way like I was. Really couldn''t hurt to let it do a little more of the thinking.


    Every morning after that was the same. Wake up late, hungover, mad at myself for just existing, if I could even call it that. Still in my old clothes, half the time not even in my own bed, worst ferreting breath imaginable. Piles of trash, empty bottles everywhere, more stuff I ordered and didn''t even know why. I''d wake up crying, hurting so bad inside, missing Athan, missing my old self, just pitiful in every possible way.


    Some days I couldn''t even get out of bed. It was a problem I hadn''t had in a long time. I didn''t want to go back to being that person again. Maybe I could settle for being someone worse.


    I wanted someone to comfort me, tell me it was okay, like Athan used to. But I didn''t deserve that, and he wasn''t around to do it anyway. Because of me.


    This is usually about as far as I got in my morning before I started drinking again. No work would be done, I''d push the patience of my very patient friends even further and dig myself deeper into my hole. Every time I saw AEGIS now, she just looked at me with these dead eyes, like I''d just lied to her, wasted her time, strung her along.


    And I mean, how could I argue? I was doing all those things.


    I never even saw Saga anymore. She''d taken up residence outside in the back under a tree, and whatever I thought or said, she never commented on it. I guess she didn''t want to broadcast to the neighbors and new roommates, but it was basically like she was gone. Just a surveillance camera recording all the awful in my mind at this point. Chronicling the great Fall of Lia. Well she could keep the damn movie rights.


    Chiho was trying to help, spent a lot of time with me, urging me to get out, be more active, drink less and eat more. It was everything I needed and nothing I wanted, so I started ignoring her too. Subaru could be depended on to not nag about my mental health in the least, so he was the world''s most perfect boyfriend. He officially asked me out, and I said yes of course, thinking this was the start of something new, something big.


    He said if we were going out now, we should probably do it already. Lots of people did before they were even dating, and I couldn''t really argue. I felt giddy and nausea as we made furtive plans to meet up the next night in the bath for some fun. He''d bring the condoms, and I''d bring the package to put them in.


    And plenty of booze, inside and out. I didn''t want a little thing like being afraid or worrying about Athan at the wrong time to mess this up for me. I even had the crazy thought that once Subaru and I were together, I wouldn''t feel so bad about Athan, because I wouldn''t need him so much. I was mad at myself for thinking it, but I was mad at myself for a lot of things, so it wasn''t like it mattered.


    That night, Subaru was getting pushy, and although I kind of liked it, I wasn''t quite drunk enough for that just yet and told him we''d already made plans for tomorrow. He listened, after a couple more false starts, and I settled into the bath, feeling the room spin pleasantly around me and riding on the currents of love.


    I heard the door click open, wondering how I didn''t manage to lock it, and wondering even more just how insistent Subaru could be, when I saw it was Saga creeping in on me.


    "EeeEEY girl," I said.


    "You are obnoxiously drunk," she hissed, closing the door behind her.


    "AND I''m nekked. Thats'' what we do in the baths!"


    "Lia, I must urge you not to go through with your plans with that...man-beast," Saga said, in a voice barely more than a whisper.


    "HOw do you know about my plants?" I asked. "OH, right your sSAGA."The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    "Listen to me Lia. Focus. Urgh."


    She grunted and strained and I felt my head clearing.


    "Ow, damn, what the hell, Saga!?"


    "You weren''t...listening," she grunted.


    "Jesus Christ, it''s like an instant hangover," I moaned and cradled my head, which was now spinning in a much less pleasant manner. I closed my eyes and dunked my head slowly under the surface of the water, my legs now cold for having to leave to make the space.


    "......." she said above the surface. In the multitude of rippling reflections, I could see her mouth moving, her brows angry. Gesturing for me to surface.


    My head pounded, I didn''t know blood could hurt so damn much when it was inside your body like it was supposed to be. It sounded like my heartbeat was echoing off the walls of the tub and the entire pool of water was throbbing with the sound of my heart, beating against my head. I tried to squeeze my head between my hands, hold the veins shut from outside and maybe, maybe, the pain would go away.


    The profusion of Sagas in the ripples sighed and crossed their arms. The message was clear. I had to breathe someday.


    Joke was on her, I was a pro swimmer.


    A minute of agony underwater later, the joke was on me as I broke the surface to gasp and cough.


    "Are you ready to tal--" she started, and then I went back under. She rolled her eyes and rolled up a sleeve and next thing I knew, her gangly thin arm was blindly groping around the fleshy bits between my legs. I gasped and then drowned, because I just gasped underwater, and surfaced and choked, my head pounding its resentment at every step. When I broke the surface and could breathe again, I realized she was standing up again, drain plug in hand, and my beautiful, warm, life-giving, noise-blocking bath was seeping away from me.


    "Ready now?" she asked as I lay cold and naked in the tub. I shivered and she threw a towel on me.


    "You have no right to interfere," I said.


    "I know. Except for the fact that you''ll be fucking in my head too. The least you can do is get a damn room."


    "We have two rooms already."


    "And you''re still going to use the communal bathtub because you''re just that special."


    It was the meanest I''d ever heard Saga. She could be pretty snide in my mind, but talking out loud, she almost sounded like an entirely different person. Here, in her soft voice, barely audible, it sounded less like a shy child and more like whispered threats.


    "Subaru says the water will...help, with things," I said, feeling myself sinking below the lip of the tub.


    "Subaru is an idiot and doesn''t know the first thing about putting his bits into your bits, for starters."


    "He says he has lots of experience!"


    "Are you telling me I''m wrong at reading his mind? Because I find that hard to believe."


    "Stay out of his mind!" I shouted, and then winced at my own voice. "You don''t know him like I do."


    "That''s right, I don''t. I know him like I do, and that''s why I''m telling you, drop him and don''t do it. You''ll regret it."


    "I can make my own decisions, okay? I don''t need you judging every boy I look at. You''re not my mom. You''re not even my friend. You''re just some freak my brother knew. Some stupid, alien, Exhuman freak!"


    I could feel Saga''s heart break a little bit as the words came out of my mouth. I didn''t mean it, and she knew I didn''t, but I was just so angry, and Subaru was the only thing giving me any happiness, and she didn''t even want me to have that.


    Saga sighed. "I am a stupid alien Exhuman freak. You got that much right. But I also am your friend, Lia. Don''t do it."


    "I''m doing it, and you can''t stop me."


    "I could, if I wanted to. I could blow his mind up right now like an egg in the microwave. I could touch your mind so you hated everything about the guy. I could give him a compel so that whenever he saw you naked, he couldn''t get it up."


    "Why would you do any of that?"


    "Because he''s an asshole, Lia. Objectively." Saga coughed. She was running out of voice for today. I didn''t mind, she needed to shut up anyway.


    "He''s my boyfriend, okay? Yeah, he might not be perfect, but he loves me. He and nobody else in this dump, apparently. You think I don''t see how you three look at me? All glassy-eyed like I''m broken in the head?"


    "He doesn''t look at you at all, that''s why. Not high enough to see your eyes anyway."


    "Well, maybe I don''t want anyone looking me in the eyes. Maybe that''s why I love him so much. Maybe we''re perfect for each other."


    I wanted to get up and leave, put a door between me and her, where she couldn''t say horrible things to me anymore, but whenever I tried to move too much, my head rang like someone had put a gong next to my head and hit it.


    It being my head.


    "Lia, I...you can''t do this. You''re wrong and you''re not thinking clearly. I know you have a lot of things going on right now with Athan--"


    "Athan? You think this is about Athan!?" I winced again as I found out again I still couldn''t raise my voice. "This is absolutely nothing to do with Athan. This is the opposite of having to do with Athan. I''m doing this...because...because of how...how fine I am with it, and Athan isn''t even part of that picture!"


    "And you''re not at all feeling desperate because you think you''re failing at things, and clinging to Subaru in your desperation," she said, coughing.


    "Oh, I understand. I get it all now."


    "No, you don''t. I''m not being--"


    "You just think, I don''t deserve to be happy, right?"


    "If you sleep with Shitbaru, you will not--"


    "You think, you think it''s my fault Athan''s gone, and until he''s back, I don''t deserve to be happy, right? You think I need to be punished. I need to...like...own up to it somehow, have my life be a complete pile of skunk because Athan''s out there, suffering, and I''m here having a bath, is that right? You''re mad...because...I found a tiny piece of happiness in a place where there''s supposed to be nothing but mourning and misery, and you want to take that from me?"


    "Lia, you said all that, not me. You need help."


    "I don''t need help, I need better friends!" I stood up, closing my eyes and willing myself through the pain. I put a foot down on the floor and it moved under me. I heard Saga scream as loud as I''d ever heard her, as the world, white with pain, flashed by under me.


    I woke up on the floor, head roaring, world spinning. Black and white spots filtered in and out of my vision, and I realized I couldn''t move anything. I''d gone down hard. I must have cracked my skull on the floor. My hands were nowhere in the equation when I went down.


    I had to laugh. If I died, Saga was right. Apparently I didn''t deserve to be happy. I would die alone and cold and naked in the bathroom, screaming at my friends, the night before I made love to a man in that very room.


    "No laughing," I heard. A voice as serious and silent as death. I tried to blink the world back into shape. Something pressed my eyelids shut and the world became spinning blackness instead.


    "I''m putting your head back together. You fell hard. I tried to...tried to catch you, but I couldn''t. Now lie still and be quiet."


    It was easily the worst hour of my life, having nothing to do but lay there, stone sober, hungover, and try not to think about all the words I''d just said, all the feelings I''d poured out, blaming Saga when it was all just me. All me. Just me. Thinking about Athan and everything he was going through, and feeling the pit in my stomach just gnawing at me.


    I wanted her to stop fixing me, just...leave me braindead on the floor. Let me stop thinking all these horrible things about her, about Athan, about myself. If I never thought or felt or said anything again, the world would be a better place for it.


    "You''re going to be fine," she whispered. "Just a little longer." Her tone was soft again, but her voice was almost completely inaudible. She''d torn out her throat, screaming as I fell.


    "I don''t deserve you. I don''t deserve to be alive," I said, feeling tears falling off the sides of my face.


    "Shh. Try and lay still and not think. Try to sleep, if you can. It''ll be another hour or so."


    I laid there, feeling tears falling out of my eyes as feeling slowly returned to pieces of my body, like I was made of meat and heavy cuts of beef were being hung on me. I felt heavy and cold, but alive. Eventually, after what felt like days rather than an hour, she leaned back.


    "I''m done," she whispered. "Thank you for sitting still."


    "Thank you for fixing me," I said, experimentally rolling over and looking at her for the first time.


    She was sitting feet-flat on the floor, knees up, back against a cabinet, and one of her hands had knuckles covered in dried blood.


    "What happened to your hand?" I asked, yelling more than I should.


    "It''s nothing. Fixed itself like usual."


    "Nothing? How did you...when you tried to catch me?"


    "I couldn''t...do much. I just got it between your head and the floor. I guess your bones are a lot stronger than mine," she tried to smile but it came out as a grimace.


    "Saga, how can you let me do this to you?"


    "I told you. I''m your friend, okay? Stop...rubbing it in my face. It already feels bad having friends who are human." She coughed, several times, and then rose.


    "I can''t believe you. I can''t believe you''d do all this."


    She started to say something, but nothing came out. She swallowed very hard, massaging her throat.


    "It''s fine. I''m sorry. I shouldn''t be making you talk at all. Thank you, Saga."


    I made sure she was settled in comfortably under her tree out back.


    "Guess your voice is the only thing your body doesn''t fix?" I asked, not expecting an answer. "I wonder if it''s because your body doesn''t recognize it as damage...or the damage is something outside your body. Like, if your mouth is dry...is that really damage, and if so, it''s not something your body can just fix by regenerating or something."


    She smiled at me and tapped her head and then gestured at me.


    Yeah, well, I didn''t feel smart. I felt as stupid as ever, and starting tomorrow, filled with a new life and new determination, I was certain I was going to crack down and get started on Operation: Athan. All the things I wanted, dumping Subaru, because she was right, he was a stupid loser, working with AEGIS, contacting Karu, getting back Black Shark, all that stuff. I could do it. I knew I could. I just needed that push. One wet slippery push out of a tub, and a great friend to catch me.


    I owed Saga so much, I thought, as I closed my eyes to sleep sober for the first time in a long time.


    And then, after an hour of tossing and turning and seeing myself falling down that hill again and again, I sat up and poured myself a drink.

 104. 2251, A little less than one week ago. Las Vegas. Lia.

    We''d finally managed to shake off Chiho and I stole into the bathroom, feet unsteady on the tile floor, and closed the door behind me, remembering to lock it this time. I waited for the room to stop spinning and when it did, found Subaru already waiting for me in the tub.


    My heart pounded. Naked Subaru. If I took another few steps forward...I could see everything. If I took a few more...I could have everything. My mouth felt very dry, and my chest very tight.


    "You...you bring the uh¡­" I said, nervously pulling at a string of my hair, not moving from the doorway.


    "Oh, those. Nah, I forgot them. We can do it without, it''ll be fine."


    "Oh. I''ll...go, uh. I''ll go get them. Your room, right?"


    "Nah, it''s fine, we don''t need ''em. You want your first time to be special, don''t you?"


    "Of course. Yeah. But uh, it''s already special, right? Because it''s with you?"


    "But nothing can happen the first time anyway. Go ahead and look it up."


    "I''m just gonna get them anyway to be safe."


    "Whatever, loser." He stretched and hung his arm and feet over the edge of the tub, vastly increasing the amount of skin he had showing above the water. My breath caught in my throat and I had to turn around and excuse myself before I jumped him on the spot.


    I quietly closed the door behind me, stepped silently through Subaru''s open door, picking up the box of condoms from the nightstand drawer, right where he''d showed me them when he was trying to entice me last night¡­


    Last night. A lump grew in my throat and guilt churned in my stomach. Where was my flask? Why hadn''t I brought it with me? I shouldn''t need it, I''d spent all day liquoring myself up to build up the courage to turn Subaru down, but when he approached me for it, I couldn''t say no.


    And why would I? This was what I wanted. This was everything I wanted. All of Saga''s preachiness yesterday seemed so hazy and far away now, it was just me and Subaru now.


    I opened the bathroom door and couldn''t help but to giggle, seeing him still nakedly half-hanging out of the tub, and closed (and locked) the door behind me.


    "Got ''em," I said, shaking the box at him enticingly. "You, uh...ready?"


    "I''m always ready, baby."


    I took a couple hesitant steps towards him and then slid the box across the ground the rest of the way. He put his hand on the box and pushed it away.


    "Oh, I can''t reach," he said, his voice deep and suave. "Come get it for me."


    Every part of my body felt weird. My head was spinning, my stomach was doing flips, my gut gnawed away at me, my loins felt like they were burning. My hands shook, my face was flush, I took hesitant step after hesitant step until he was in view in all his glory, beneath the water.


    I couldn''t breathe, but still somehow managed to do as he said. He gave me terse, barking orders, and my startled obedience was the only thing which passed through my buzzing brain. At his insistence, I touched him, stripped naked, put on the condom, joined him in the bath.


    There was too much water. I couldn''t get in without pouring it everywhere. He said it would be fine but I let the drain go a bit. He pulled me down and kissed me, and I felt the white fog filling my senses engulf in flames, as heat poured through my everything.


    Without warning, still kissing me, he dropped me onto himself. It was so abrupt, so...I don''t know, I was expecting it to be a bigger deal. It hurt, but he moaned luxuriously, and I was happy he was happy. I guessed...guessed that was it.


    It actually hurt a lot. The booze had blunted the sharpness of the pain, but I felt a crushing insistent hurt, like I''d been cut inside. I tried to tell him to stop, to slow down, but it just came out as a gasp. I was sliding all over him and there wasn''t anything to hold onto, except the lip of the bath, which was at a really awkward height. The water sloshed rhythmically, embarrassingly. Things had felt better for a moment, but I felt the water splashing inside me, it was uncomfortable and somehow, made everything feel dryer instead of wetter. I leaned back and pulled the plug again.


    To his credit, Subaru was a damn stud. He never stopped bucking and thrusting, and as the water flooded away, I found the heat of his body filling me up. I found the reason people always loved talking about having sex. Sex was amazing. Sex was impossibly mind-blowing. I couldn''t believe people could feel this way. I felt connected to every single thing in the universe. Felt like Subaru and I were inside each other, body and soul.


    And then it was gone, and it was just me and Subaru sliding around on top of each other in the tub. I was confused. It was like there was a wall in front of me, in my mind, which had just formed out of nothingness, some mental block cutting me off from the whole universe.


    I needed it. I needed whatever was on the other side of that wall. Mentally, I pressed into it, let Subaru bang me right into it. My fingers pressed at it, finding any chink and probing ever deeper. The wall in my mind shuddered and flexed as I teased it, pushing my hands through it like it was the wall of a bubble, stretching at my insistence.


    I tore at the wall, feeling like I knew more that found weaknesses in it, I ripped them open, and through the gaps, could feel that beautiful feeling, that amazing one-ness. This mental block, whatever it was, I would not be defeated by it. Not when I was so close.


    For whole minutes, I tore away at the black wall in my mind, enjoying Subaru panting and thrusting into me the whole while. Strips of it tore away in my mind''s fingers, and as I drew nearer and nearer to breaking through, I felt the wall was afraid. I was hurting it, killing it. It shuddered and writhed in protest as I clawed my way through.


    [Lia!] I heard and felt Saga gasp. [Stop!]


    "Did you say something?" Subaru grunted.


    "No, don''t stop. Whatever you do, don''t stop."


    [Lia, please!] Her voice in my head was almost the same voice which came out of her mouth, quiet, pleading, desperate.


    I pushed through the wall, let Subaru slam my body right through it, and it shattered. From somewhere nearby, I heard a quiet scream.


    It didn''t matter. I''d found the bliss I needed, the happiness I''d been missing these past few days. These past few months. This past lifetime. I felt every person around me, could feel myself on Subaru, and him within me, and knew everyone else felt the same. As we touched their minds, they burned as mine did, and in moments they abandoned their boring lives and demeaning chores and joined us in purity.


    Soon I was a hundred bodies entwined, feeling the impossible sensation of feeling, sensing, being everyone all at once. Every thought was impossible to have, my mind was nothing but waves of pleasure, crashing again and again and again.


    The wall was attempting to reform, to block me out. I kicked at the fragments of it, never allowing them to even begin to resist us.


    I felt like a goddess. I''d transcended humanity, left behind that mortal world and all of the suffering and worries and cares, as we ascended straight past heaven into something more. A world where there was nothing but bliss, where pain was impossible, where this feeling was everything and there couldn''t exist anything but this.


    From within a hundred bodies, seeing and feeling and being a hundred bodies more, I sensed AEGIS, saw her both from within myself and from without, as she approached my body, still locked onto Subaru''s. I tried to speak, to ask her if she had found divinity, if she would join us. I saw myself cover myself out of reflex and push a strand of hair behind my ear.


    And then I discovered that pain could exist. Did exist. By the hair, I was yanked from my reverie, thrown to the floor like a dirty rag, where for the second time in as many days, I cracked my head on the tile. She didn''t care. She shouted something and left. I watched desperately as the wall reconstructed itself around me, cold and unfeeling, harder and angrier than before.


    I lay on the floor, feeling alone like I''d never felt before. I heard someone crying, and realized it wasn''t a sound, but feeling. I was crying. Subaru was crying. Everybody was crying. Waves of crippling grief and shock and anger were pouring out of us, erasing the sublime divinity. Washing it away with our mortal miseries.


    I knew the reason why. Still naked, still wet and trembling, I walked out of the bathroom, stepping over Chio''s half-naked collapsed form, and went to the back yard. The grass felt soft and cold under my feet. She wasn''t there. I went back inside and found her sitting on the floor in the doorway to the garage.


    "You stopped us. You ruined everything," I told Saga.


    She looked at me, and in the moonlight through the windows, I could see her face was a mask of tears. She clung to her knees like if she let them go, she would drift off into space. She shook silently as shock and misery flooded out of her and into my very being.


    [You violated me!] she screamed in my head. [You didn''t just do things to me, you tore me down, you made me feel everything!]You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    "You were taking away the only thing I have in life!"


    [I can''t believe you! I can''t believe you would do that to me! I thought we were friends, Lia! You invaded my mind!]


    "You invade my mind all the time."


    [I leave your mind the fuck alone all the time! I leave you alone, even if you''re suffering, or have terrible ideas or even if you''re hurting me, because I thought we were friends, and that''s what friends do. They stand by each other. Not...not this. Not this.]


    She put her head on her knees and rocked forward and back, tears streaming down her face, clinging desperately to her legs.


    "It was just a little fun, Saga. You should open up and loosen up some. I don''t think you understand what you''re missing out on."


    [You don''t think I understand? Do YOU understand? Do you have any idea at all what it''s like to feel and hear and see everything, every thought that happens everywhere around me? I HAVE to block it out, or I would go insane. Everyone around me would go insane. If AEGIS hadn''t stopped you, where do you think you''d be?]


    "Still in there, still...wrapped in happiness. Still away from...all of this, this...horrible, terrible world and everything in it."


    [And you''d be there forever! You''d lose the ability to think, to feel, to do anything except fuck everyone. You''d be insane, that''s what that is, do you realize that? That''s what they call someone who can''t think anymore. And that''s what I deal with every minute of every day. I have to block it out, or else that''s my everything. And then...and then you¡­] She shuddered and I felt anger pouring off of her like steam.


    [You violated me! You tore down my mind, you forced your suck fucking fantasy right into the very core of my being!]


    "It wasn''t that bad, you enjoyed it, I know, I could feel you."


    [You think that''s the point? You think as long as it feels good, it''s okay? Do you have any idea what rape is, Lia?]


    "Of course I do. I''m not stupid. Brick--"


    [Brick never laid a finger on you like you just did to me. Brick was a twisted, evil bastard that lived in a world very removed from reality, and you are a thousand times worse than him by far. You live in the same world as me, you knew what you were doing, and you did it anyway! You were my friend, Lia! How could you do this to your own friends!?]


    "I didn''t even know, okay? I just...just did what felt right."


    [You tore me to shreds, Lia. You went in like you were out to destroy my mind, and then you did. You ignored me as I begged you to stop.]


    She shuddered again, and I felt dark memories stirring.


    [You know, when I was tortured, a lot of the XPCA did whatever they wanted with me. They did everything they could imagine. They were trying to shatter my mind. They fucked the shit out of me, Lia. They did everything you could possibly think of. They invented new ways which would be impossible for anyone other than me.]


    I shuddered. "You were...nine."


    [Funny that somehow that''s so much worse to you than the hundreds of times they killed me. But in all that time, I could just block them out, divorce myself from my own body, my own mind, let them own me in the physical world as long as I still had my safe place in the mental one.]


    She looked up at me, and I''d never seen such hate in a person''s eyes, even as tears continued to pour from them.


    [And you just destroyed all of that like it was nothing. You turned all my trust and love against me and used it to tear right into the very core of who I am, Lia. You violated me like I''ve never been violated before. I''ve never felt this...this empty, this helpless. I''d take a thousand years in a damn prison over one more night with you! You took away things from me...I didn''t even know people could take.]


    She looked at me and I saw she was completely broken. Silently bawling, heaving deep breaths, mouth agape in a still twisted scream.


    "I...I''m sorry. I didn''t know."


    [You didn''t CARE!]


    "I didn''t. And I should have. I''m sorry. I don''t know what I can do."


    [Just leave me alone. You''ve already done enough. You''ve done more than anyone could ever do.]


    She stood, trembling, and walked past me like a ghost, leaving the house. I drifted into the backyard, taking her spot under the tree and trying to figure out everything I''d just done. A few minutes later, I heard doors slamming through the house. I thought for an insane moment Saga came back, but that couldn''t be, I couldn''t feel her on my mind anymore. Wherever she''d gone, she''d gone.


    I sat staring at the blank sky above me, visible through the boughs of the leafless tree. There were no stars visible out here, it was just empty blackness.


    I did know what I was doing to Saga as I did it, and I just didn''t care.


    I''d been in and on her mind enough to know what it felt like, and yeah, I could make whatever excuses I wanted about being lost in the moment or doing what felt good or right, but at the end of the day, they were just excuses. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway.


    Just when I felt like there wasn''t any further I could possibly sink, I somehow found new depths. Worse than Brick. I thought of how my chest tightened, and how I involuntarily tensed whenever he was near, how I couldn''t even pull the trigger when I had him lined up in my sights because of how scared I was, until I thought he''d shot Karu.


    And I let it sink in that now Saga, one of my best friends in the world, inarguably the person who knew and understood me best, and accepted me despite all my faults and failings, who tried to steer me away from this and every other calamity with calm, loving insistence, everything I felt for Brick, she now felt for me.


    As we had talked, I could feel her hate for me, her shock and anger at my betrayal, her crushing sadness, despair at what I''d taken from her. Could feel her emotions seeping out of her and cut into my mind like a knife. All that hurt, pointed straight at me, and all of it, my fault.


    No, what I felt for Brick was nothing to how she felt for me. I was a monster. I didn''t deserve the title of human, or Exhuman, or anything. I should simply not be.


    I stood up and Chiho saw me moving outside and came to the door.


    "Lia, baby? Is that you?" she asked, her voice shaking. "What happened? Why are you naked? Why was I naked?"


    "I ruined everything," I told her flatly. "Saga left."


    "AEGIS is gone too. Subaru''s unconscious in the bath." She looked shaken. "It''s empty," she added, like that was important. "What happened? All I remember is...I was studying in my room, and then...I felt this impossible...thing. I wasn''t myself anymore. I was so scared."


    I sighed. "That was me. I don''t...don''t even know what to do."


    "Let me help," she said. Her voice was shaky but her face was calm and confident. "Just explain to me what happened, and we''ll figure out what we can do."


    "There''s...there''s a lot to explain, and I don''t think you want to know most of it."


    "I don''t care. I''m involved now, I don''t care if it''s illegal or crazy or what. Whatever just happened...it was like someone took over my body and mind. It wasn''t normal, and I don''t know if it''s magic or what behind it, but I don''t know that I can live without knowing."


    "Don''t joke about not living," I said, finding a sudden fixation with the idea.


    "Lia." She was frozen, looking at me with panic in her eyes. "Do you need to talk to me?"


    I shook my head. "No. You''re right. We need to worry about what''s going on right now. We can worry about me later, my friends are hurting a lot more than I am."


    We sat there for a moment in silence. Chiho was anxious, but I didn''t even know how to start.


    "Um, do you want to put clothes on?" she asked, with a mix of trying to respect my thinking while also being nervous about the situation. Nervous. Scared stiff, more like.


    "Yeah. Of course. I''m sorry." I took a deep breath and stood up. She followed me obediently while I went to my room and dressed, and as soon as I''d done so, I sat down on my bed and began talking. It was easier to start somehow, as I rolled from one simple task like getting dressed to another, like explaining Athan.


    "So almost a year ago, my brother became an Exhuman," I began. I told her the whole story, in the broadest strokes, glossing over most details but filling in the blanks on who and what Saga and AEGIS were, and the events of the last few weeks which had led us here.


    She listened attentively and silently, sometimes going white or gasping quietly, but above all she listened. As I explained how Athan had freed Saga, I felt guilt claw at my insides so strongly I needed to stop talking to keep from being sick.


    Saga been right, the whole time. Humans couldn''t be trusted. I''m sure that''s how she was feeling now. After that incident with Athan, she became more open and trusting, and into that vulnerability, I''d stepped. I couldn''t believe I could be so unbearably stupid.


    It took less than ten minutes to recount everything of relevance. I''d pretty much left out Karu, and the whole part where AEGIS and Athan fought, but I didn''t think that mattered.


    "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Well. Kind of okay, I guess."


    "Everything clear enough?"


    "No. Not even a little bit. Almost everything you said made very little sense, and if I hadn''t just lived through something like that, I''d be worried you were crazy, Lia-baby. But I can tell you''re not, and you''re scared, and you need my help. So let''s go."


    "Go where?"


    "Go find your friends, obviously. They''re out there, hurt and lost, and they need us."


    "They don''t want me. They''re too smart for that."


    "Everybody makes mistakes, Lia-baby. You have to let them know you sincerely, absolutely regret it, and absolutely change. They''ll see that."


    I stood up suddenly, surprising her, and went to my desk. I grabbed both my new bottles of vodka and the open one as well, and tossed my flask to her.


    "Um, please don''t," she said.


    "I''m not drinking. Come with me." I led her to the kitchen and opened all three bottles, pouring all of those mind-twisting contemptible bad decisions right down the drain.


    "Look at you go!" Chiho said with a smile.


    I twisted the lid off the flask and emptied the last few drops from it as well, and then held it out to her. "If you ever see me with this, I want you to slap it out of my hands, and then beat the everliving frog out of me. Got it?"


    "I''ll use a baseball bat. I''m serious."


    "Good." I threw the flask into the trash under the sink, along with the bottles.


    "Let''s get looking," she said.


    "I''ll look for Saga. I can kinda sense when I''m close to her. You go after AEGIS. She''ll be...somewhere with ''net, probably."


    "Got it. If I see Saga, I''ll call you though."


    We split up and headed out into the night. I tore through dark street after street, not even stopping to look, just feeling out with my mind for that sensation of walking into her range and feeling your mind opening to her. She couldn''t be that far, she wasn''t that strong, physically.


    After fifteen minutes, I got a short message from Chiho.


    > Found AEGIS


    That was good at least.


    Two hours later, and I was exhausted. I''d been running this whole time, moving in wider and wider circles, trying to sweep the whole city from our place out. I''d never run this long before, my breath was coming in sharp gasps and my legs were screaming. I had to stop.


    But I didn''t stop. I couldn''t stop. Not after everything I''d already failed at, not after all the hurt and pain I''d already inflicted on so many good people. She was out there, and this pain was nothing compared to what I''d put her through. I would keep running until I found her or died, I decided.


    And so I kept running.

 105. 2251, One week ago. Chicago. Karu.

    I was flying at night, just to clear my head. I didn''t like Chicago, it was a bad memory for most of America.


    The city had been deemed not important enough to save when the nukes fell, compared to similar cities where there were critical military installations or political institutions within the city, or compared to the military bases on the lakes. Skyweb could only be in so many places at once, and Chicago, and the millions who had lived there just fell through the cracks, as it were.


    There had been a great rebuilding effort, thousands of tons of irradiated waste hauled away and dumped in exclusion zones, new buildings erected, a new Chicago for a new world, they had said. People were encouraged to move there, raise their families, stand against tyranny and terror.


    Cancer rates in the city were still ten times that elsewhere in the country. Rads in the groundwater were at unsafe levels, and expensive anti-rad treatment had to be done on near everything which was produced or came from the area, resulting in a financial implosion as the cost of goods from Chicago couldn''t compete with the rest of the non-irradiated world. Subsidies could only go so far before America realized that this was the new Chicago, and the new world sucked, as it were.


    The dream became a ghost town, and the city became more and more of an empty shell, new construction halted and finished buildings abandoned.


    It was still a city, with many living in it, but it was a haunted one. I was here now because it was a haven to rejects, malcontents, and political uprising. I was here often, Exhumans who came from this area were often fiercely anti-government and were extremely violent. We were well-paid to remove them, who terrorized the other helpless victims living alongside them more than they posed any threat to the actual workings of the government.


    That was not why I was here today. Today, I was here to talk to these people. It was a first for me, though obviously I''d had my share of grooming for giving speeches back when I was still part of the Irenside legacy.


    It wasn''t anything I wanted. To be honest, heartbroken though I was about my family rejecting me, it also came as a relief. Theirs was not a lifestyle I was equipped to live, with all the duplicity, two-facedness, subtle nuance, and political posturing. My preferred form of posturing was in the air and in the minds of enemies, shortly before I eradicated them. Such victories were not possible on a diplomatic landscape, and I oft wondered how I would make the transition. If I could make the transition.


    Well, that had been decided for me. There was nothing left but to move forward.


    I landed on the VTOL heliport on the roof of my skyscraper hotel and walked to the edge, sitting with my legs dangling a hundred feet above the ground. This would be my third forum given in as many days, in as many cities. After meeting with Deej and discussing our options, we, and the other hunters in the association, had decided that ours was an issue worth fighting for, and that the first step was to raise awareness.


    This wasn''t about Athan, not directly. This was about Exhumans, and the things hunters had to do to and with them. Each of us was guilty of executing a helpless child whose powers were greater than their grasp of the world, or putting down an angsty, impassioned, and ultimately confused teen.


    We had each been on missions to find and eliminate targets hiding in plain sight, Exhumans who had attempted to integrate into society, outed by watchdogs in their own community, their friends, customers, neighbors. Families. The XPCA urged constant vigilance in keeping an eye out for Exhuman activity, like we were at formal war with them.


    For a long time, there had been an undercurrent of resentment and injustice among a group of the hunters, those like me who were more interested in justice than just credits. For the longest time, it felt like prospective contracts were split into either Exhuman events, or ''ices'', and those of us who didn''t approve of icing someone, simply didn''t.


    Luminary was the face of the icers. He glamorized killing and violence in all of its forms, and one of his most popular holovids was of him explaining the powers of a compliant Exhuman child, maybe four years old, expressing how dangerous they could be, forcing the child to demonstrate the powers at gunpoint, and then his summary execution, on-camera. I had only seen the holo once, but made the mistake of scrolling to the comments to see if others shared in my revulsion, and the outpouring of hate for the child I found there made me physically ill.


    Deej had been assembling others, and while I had normally excused myself from the conflict, my interest in forcing the XPCA''s hand and possibly releasing Ashton was enough to push me into his camp. He said that, to many of the younger hunters, I was seen as a beacon of purity, and that where I went, many would follow.


    I wasn''t sure I agreed, but if that turned out to be the case, I did not mind.


    Which led me back to the hotel roof today. This morning I had spoken to Detroit, speaking to them frankly of my experiences and concerns, and relating to them the story of Athan Ashton, an Exhuman who had surrendered everything, including his own life, in the cause of peace and human-Exhuman relations. An Exhuman who, at this very moment, suffered the unknowable fates of XPCA detention, and for Detroit to rise up with the rest of America, along with the other dozens of cities my colleagues were visiting, and demand XPCA accountability and transparency, rights for Exhumans as people, and Ashton''s freedom to continue his peaceful existence.


    The response was tepid at best, but they listened and did not shout me down. I think most were just surprised to be hearing it from a hunter.


    Tomorrow, I would speak here. The day after, somewhere else. Barring an Exhuman event, and the obvious need for hunters to react to such a thing, we planned to rotate across the country perpetually until our voices had been heard.


    My visor threw up a proximity alert and I saw a man approaching me from behind, dressed in black. I turned to get a better look.


    XPCA military uniform. High-ranking XPCA military uniform. Soldiers lurking in the shadow of the doorway. Was it my turn to be iced?


    I rose and saluted sharply. "Deputy Director Blackett," I intoned. "I think I preferred you better when we shared a battlefield."


    "Karu. Should I call you Karen? Ms. Irenside perhaps?"


    "Karu will suffice. To what do I owe this unexpected displeasure?"


    "To your recent inflammatory activities," he said, walking next to me and standing at the lip of the building alongside me. I could effortlessly throw both of us from the precipice, and of the two of us, I could fly. He was deliberately placing himself at my mercy. He was telling me this was not an assassination. He was here to talk.


    I didn''t relax. I had the visor keep a side view open of the two men left at the doorway, and had it notify me if they began to move.


    "What if I killed you right now?" I asked, casually.


    "Then you''d have wasted your friend''s sacrifice. He gave his everything so that you all could resume normal lives."


    "And what if I decided that it was worth it to avenge him?"


    "Avenge him? He''s not dead, hunter. He is being well taken care of, and when I spoke with him yesterday, said he was confused, but not unhappy with the situation."


    "I shall believe it when I hear it from his own lips."


    He sighed. "I will not waste more of your time with idle talk. I need you and your lackeys to stop tarnishing the reputation of the XPCA."


    "Oh ho?" I asked, turning towards him. "It''s working then?"


    "Officially, of course it isn''t. The XPCA is undefeatable by any threat. Off the record however, of course it''s working. There is no voice more damning for the public to hear disparage us than the very hunters we employ. You knew that when you began this campaign."


    "I hadn''t expected such a turn in such a short amount of time. Apparently the ideals of the XPCA do not run as deep in the public heart as we are taught to believe."


    "You know as well as I do that the XPCA is nothing but a thin veneer of comfort given to the masses so they will feel safer in their beds. If they wake up and find their neighbor has turned to an Exhuman, we won''t save them. We won''t even be close. But we can provide the illusion we will, and that is the only thing keeping the wheels on society. It is an illusion you are trying very hard to destroy, and I do not appreciate that."This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    "I do not appreciate the endless crimes carried out by the XPCA under the guise of justice. I do not appreciate one of my good and noble friends being taken from me by force, after living a peaceful and righteous existence."


    "Zero tolerance is a policy we must uphold. The public must believe that every single Exhuman is a danger, or else they will be lost."


    I sat back down again, and to my surprise, so did he. Both of our legs hanging over the glittering abyss.


    "I do not see the harm in releasing Ashton alongside a carefully-worded statement," I suggested diplomatically. "It will show the XPCA has the intelligence and compassion to evaluate their own decisions and handle Exhumans as they should be, on their individual merits."


    "The way things currently are, it''s impossible. If Exhumans are known to be a universal evil, then it''s us, being the XPCA and all of humanity, versus them. If you begin to look at each Exhuman under a microscope, cracks will form. Some people will support zero-tolerance, some will look objectively at each case, some will do whatever offers the most profit, some will argue that no case is irredeemable. If you include this option, support in the XPCA will wither, and without that support, we cannot provide people with the illusion of safety."


    "So do not."


    "If we don''t, the world will be anarchy." He glanced around and verified our solitude and continued in a lower tone. "Do you know what is going on in China right now?"


    "The same as it ever is, after we turned it into a field of glass?"


    "I admire your ability to commit yourself utterly to destroy some myths of the media while consuming others without question. If it were just a field of glass, why would we keep sending invasion teams, and why would they keep not coming back?"


    "The glass is sharp, I assume," I said dryly.


    "It''s not a wasteland, it''s a goddamn warzone over there. There are Exhuman warlords of all stripes commanding human armies to their deaths over scraps of land not turned to glass. In that place, without laws or government, things turned on their head and landed exactly where the power spectrum dictates it should. Exhumans on top, humans on the bottom."


    "There''s less than one Exhuman per million humans born. How are they not simply overthrown?"


    "Because most people aren''t you, hunter, and don''t willingly march to their death just because something isn''t right in the world. They have families they want to take care of, jobs they want to get paid to do. Whether they''re baking bread for one warlord or another, I assure you, they don''t care, they do what it takes to survive."


    I sat back to muse on this.


    "This information is all classified," he said. "Do try not to spread it around, even among your friends."


    "I can agree to that," I said, nodding.


    "But the point is, if people do not believe they are safe from Exhumans, if Exhumans do not believe they are the minority, that they are powerless against structured society, it is so easy for the entire situation to flip. You may think you are saving one innocent man''s life through your efforts, but you are risking every life in America by doing so. You risk the concept of America by doing so."


    "And you are here, driving out to every single hunter who is protesting and telling them this tale?"


    "No, I went to you because I assumed you were the leader behind all of this. Nothing like this happened until you went off with the Ashton Exhuman, and nothing like this happened until you came back."


    I chuckled. "Well, you''re wrong on that account. A close friend of mine is behind everything, it had just taken that long for him to sway me."


    "Hmm," he said, scratching his chin. "I am happy to hear that not all of my troubles are caused by your one band of malcontents, but that is potentially even more troubling. Might I inquire who is behind it all?"


    "It''s you," I said simply. "The XPCA has forced injustices on us so numerously and so long that this was inevitable."


    He sighed and stood up again. "While I do not appreciate you evading the question, I can take it as a no. And believe me, despite my position and appearance, I am well aware the XPCA is failing. I would simply prefer it not to fail before precautions can be made to protect the world from what will happen when it does."


    He began to walk away while I mused on his words. It was possible they were just words, but no part of this conversation had seemed ingenuine. On the contrary, I almost sympathized for the man, despite him currently holding my beloved friend captive.


    "Blackett," I said, standing and turning to him. I got an alert as the two soldiers raised their weapons at my movement and couldn''t help but to roll my eyes. He dismissed them with a wave. "Why are you really here? Was this truly a passionate heart-to-heart talk between enemies, trying to win me over to see things as you see them?"


    He froze. "Perhaps I am too soft." He turned back to face me. "I suppose it can''t hurt for you to know, my position at the XPCA is in jeopardy."


    "That seems like the kind of thing it would actually be very bad for you, for me to know."


    "I am under some suspicion for mismanagement, and the entire failure of arresting the Ashton Exhuman and now your political rallies are falling squarely in my lap. Director Albion does not enjoy taking responsibility for failures. I am being made out as something of a pariah."


    "I suppose you should have done a better job deputy directing, then."


    "I suppose to you, I am merely the face of an evil agency, but I assure you, I am your staunchest ally. If you have me deposed, you will discover that quickly."


    "So your actual reason for coming out here was to try to save your job? That is an even more pathetic reason that the first."


    "No, my actual reason was to warn you that either you must stop, or dark things will soon be coming for all of us. You more than most should know what evils humans and Exhumans alike are capable of, and without the blanket protection over all of us which the XPCA unconditionally provides, you will find the cracks in people grow. And they will grow ugly. I urge you to be careful as you must know it is not as easy to rebuild as to destroy."


    "I will take my chances with the friends I have made over the enemies, thanks."


    He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "I will be spending the rest of the week chasing down your allies and talking to them as well, it appears. I am sorry I could not convince you."


    He began to leave again, and again I called out to him.


    "The man you seek is named Roj¨º Castillo, known as the hunter ''Deej''. He is the leader behind this movement, but you will not find him any easier to convince than I."


    He looked back at me, brow furrowed. "I don''t understand."


    "Would you like me to write his name down for you?"


    "No. I don''t understand why you would tell me who your leader is, after all this. If you are unmoved by my arguments, why would you direct me to the one man who can dictate your fate?"


    "You said you had a week out here, correct?"


    "Yes. Likely that little to find some concession before I am terminated."


    "That isn''t much time. If your arguments truly have heart and merit, and if The Almighty should find you worthy, you should spend that time convincing the head of our organization, rather than barking at its heels."


    He looked at me again for another few moments like he was only now seeing me for the first time.


    "You are doing me a service," he said.


    "Do not feel that you owe me."


    "I must apologize," he said, formally. "It was my intention to manipulate the Exhuman Ashton for my own desires and use. And while I still intend to do that, I had thought it convenient that he had formed such a strong bond with you, hunter. You see, had things not gone well in his capture, or had he proved reluctant in his current environs, you were my trump card I could always play against him. I am your superior and could find it easy to place you into harm''s way, should that prove sufficient motivation for our mutual friend."


    "Shrewd but not unexpected. Why are you telling me this?"


    "Perhaps because I am a sentimental, foolish old man, who is trying to right the wrongs I have committed now that the end approaches. Or perhaps it is because in you, I see the hope for humanity, men and women strong enough to stand up to Exhumanity. Or most likely, perhaps," he looked me steely in the eyes. "I''ve just come to realize you aren''t as useless and such an incompetent as I once thought."


    "And you seem like less of a two-faced jackass than I had originally determined," I said with a nod. "But you still hold my beloved against his will, and no amount of compromise or flattery will change my opinion of you while that remains true."


    "Reasonable. With luck, you will see my efforts soon and with it, re-evaluate my level of two-faced jackassery yet again. Until then, farewell."


    He walked off a third time and this time I let him go. The two soldiers fell in behind him and he disappeared into the building. I kept my alert up on my visor in the case they should reappear, but I doubted they would.


    Blackett would not have come to me in person to appeal to me in such a manner unless he was truly desperate. On one hand, this was a victory, pressing the XPCA to desperation, to be willing to negotiate and correct their injustices was what we had wanted when we began.


    The problem was, he had explained his desperation, and all of it seemed reasonable to me. Whether I agreed with him or not, it was clear he saw himself as one of the few people capable of steering the XPCA towards what he viewed it needing to be, and he, at least, thought that without such guidance, a dark age was coming.


    I was no fool, or so I hoped, and I wished for no national turmoil any more than any other. If his words proved true, I would be a Pandora, which was a title I had no interest to bear.


    And yet, there remained the possibility either he was wrong, or he was even more cunning and manipulative than he seemed. He certainly had the reputation for it, and I had little desire to fall under my enemy''s sway so easily.


    After another hour in the moonlight on the rooftop, and another hour of preparing for and going to bed, finding my eyes still drawn towards the moon visible through the open gap in the curtains, I decided I would certainly persist in holding my forum tomorrow, and would continue after that in the name of foolish love if nothing else. If he could convince Deej, I would trust my friend''s judgement. Were a dark age coming, I would rather face it with Ashton at my side, whatever the cost.


    I closed my eyes and dreamed of storms of plasma and lightning.

 106. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Athan.

    I watched the ambulance pull away with Tem''s haggard, beaten body, and then followed Blackett and Jack back to his office. Blackett offered me a seat, while Jack hovered near the doorway, smile in place.


    The office was...functional. The desktop was a solid piece of dark wood with a nice finish, and very large, but held up with more modern metal legs and footboard. There were shelves holding up some books and holos, but most of the room was dominated by standing file cabinets. There was a distinct lack of art or anything playful in the room anywhere.


    And of course, as much as possible, it was all black.


    "How is she?" I asked as I sat down.


    "About as you''d expect after someone beat the life out of her."


    "I meant, will she survive."


    "What if I told you no?" Blackett asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.


    I didn''t have a response. I just fell back into the chair and scratched my head.


    "That''s what I thought," he said. "She will survive, assuming any more of her lungs doesn''t collapse, they''re pumping the blood out of them and pumping air in, which should keep her alive long enough to get her in a regenerator. Once she''s in there, she''ll have a few risky minutes before she''s in the clear." He leaned back again. "But yes, odds are she will make it. Eighty percent or so."


    I held my head in my hands. Still a twenty percent chance I just killed a girl, for no reason at all. Why? Why?


    "Chariot, you are a tool."


    "I know that. I''m the biggest tool ever."


    "I meant, your use is that of a tool, though I cannot disagree with your statement either. But in your current state, you are a useless tool to me, and that is something I cannot justify the time or expense in attempting to keep."


    I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees, looking at the ground. This was it. In a second, Jack would be standing there holding my beating heart, and I''d have long enough to think ''hey, that''s mine'', before I died.


    "So I will give you one chance at explaining yourself, give you a scant opportunity to demonstrate to me how you are not a useless tool. Do this, or you will be discarded. Do you understand?"


    "Yes," I replied to the ground.


    "You may present your case when you are ready."


    I looked down at the thick rug covering the hard floor, reminding me of Mage. Reminding me of her words, that Tem had deserved it. Her wicked smile.


    She was wrong. Tem had never done anything to me, and by all accounts not anything to anyone by her own choice. She was the poster child for abuse of Exhumans, the very people I was trying to protect.


    Why then couldn''t I protect even this one, from myself?


    Silence hung throughout the room.


    "I have no defense," I said.


    "You accept your own fate then?"


    "I guess so."


    "Explain to me, if you would indulge me before I have you sentenced, your opinion on your own actions against Temperance."


    "I can''t. I really can''t. There''s nothing to explain."


    "Please do try. I spent a lot of time and resources acquiring you."


    "The other day, Tem...Temperance that is, she told us her story of her Exhuman event that led to her capture. She said she''d been bullied at school all the time, and was attending classes while invisible after her powers woke up. One day, she ran into the bullies again, and she did everything she could to apologize, please them, make it up to them, like it was all her fault they picked on her. They threw her in a locker and she would have died if nobody found her in there, unconscious."


    "Even afterwards, even now," I continued, "she still thought it was somehow her fault. That maybe if she''d done things differently, they wouldn''t have picked on her so bad, or she wouldn''t have run into them." I was getting mad from thinking about it again. "She defended them!" I shouted, looking up at him. "At the people who left her to die in a locker at her own high school! She blames herself for everything that went wrong, from getting her powers to her own damn-near death!"


    Blackett watched silently, as I worked into a lather.


    "I wasn''t a bully...haven''t had problems with bullies either...I assume you know since you pulled my file, but I was quarterback on the school team. Popular. But I always saw those kids, the bullied ones, cringing and quaking at the edge of everything and I thought, they''re not different from me, you know? We grew up the same way, faced the same problems, and they just never chose to stand up for anything. It drives me crazy to think that people could live their whole lives without ever living a day of it. I just can''t understand those people, or why they''d choose to live like that."


    I put my head back down. "Anyway, that''s what I thought when I saw Tem. When we were fighting, she was just all weak and timid, just like she was with those bullies. I beat her, I had her in my hands...and she was just apologizing. In the middle of a fight. I was giving it my all, and she was just apologizing for losing. It flipped a switch in my head, and I don''t even know why I did it."


    "And you think, for all your other merits, your powers, your list of achievements thus far, you are still a broken tool, all because of this one incident? You have no other defense to offer?"


    "Yeah," I said glumly at the floor. "Because what good is helping people for a lifetime if you might just flip out and murder a little girl at any time."


    "Hmm. I agree," Blackett mused.


    We sat in silence for another minute and I wondered if he was just thinking, or giving me more time to come up with a defense, or he just wanted the execution to loom over my head.


    "There are two further things we must discuss," he said, finally. "One, I have a theory for your unsubstantiated rage. And two, your punishment."


    "Can we do two first?"


    Jack bopped me in the back of the head.


    "Certainly," Blackett said to my surprise. "As I mentioned, I agree with your assessment. You are a broken tool, and of no use to anybody."


    I stared fixedly at a spot on the floor. Maybe if I didn''t resist, they''d make it quick.


    "However I also agree with your defense...or lack thereof. Your actions were indefensible. It would be easy to blame your irrational rage, but you correctly assessed that that rage is a part of you, not an external force. It would similarly be easy to blame the training exercise or even Temperance herself. You did none of those things, and despite the immature idiocy of your actions, your willingness to accept responsibility demonstrates mature wisdom."


    "But you said I''m still a broken tool."


    "Indeed, you are. But you are one with potential to be less broken. This is not a daycare, Chariot, I am not keeping you here so that I can baby and nurture you. You will prove useful, or you will be disposed of."Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    He scratched his chin and leaned back. "Let us say I am not certain if you are useless yet."


    "So...stay of execution, essentially."


    "You could say that. Your punishment is to cover Temperance''s tasks until she is fully rehabilitated, and to apologize to her meaningfully. Because she is likely to accept any apology, no matter how poor, Jack will be present to determine the merit of your pronouncement."


    "She''s...going in a regenerator."


    "She is. Assuming she lives to do so."


    "She''ll be rehabilitated in a day."


    "That is likely."


    "This isn''t a punishment at all."


    "Would you prefer an execution?"


    "I would prefer the punishment fit the crime. I almost killed her, for God''s sake. Or did."


    "As I said, I am not running a daycare. I am not here to deliver administrative justice or flagellate you to ease your sins. Find your own way through your guilt, and prove yourself useful to me."


    I fell quiet. I wasn''t about to go flagellate myself, but there had to be something more I could do.


    "As for item one, are you interested to hear my theory? I hesitate to speculate in general, but without your anger in check, I think we both find you without value. Any insight may be invaluable."


    "Sure, run it by me," I said to the floor. The floor was a fantastic conversation partner today.


    "You are an Exhuman of great strengths but also of great weaknesses. We all have weaknesses, but few feel comfortable staring them in the eye. It is my belief that you loathe Temperance without abandon because she reflects everything within yourself which you despise."


    "That doesn''t even make sense," I said, before he''d even finished. "I was never bullied."


    "Being bullied is not your weakness. It is your love of self-sacrifice. The same weakness which allowed me to defeat you so easily."


    "We killed over half your men. That was hardly easily."


    "You ignore my point. If I had laid hands on any of your colleagues within seconds of the battle''s outset, the outcome would have been the same. The weakness is the same. When Lia was captured and you surrendered yourself, I wonder, did you apologize to your friends?"


    "I don''t know. I think so. But--"


    "And why would you feel the need to apologize for your sister''s capture, which was beyond your control?"


    "Because they''d all been worrying I was going to surrender to you first thing."


    "So even your friends are all aware of this? Chariot, if both your friends and enemies are telling you the same thing, you may consider listening to them."


    "I just didn''t want anyone to be hurt."


    "And neither does Temperance, whether they are her friends, or bullies, or mortal enemies.


    "This is stupid." I said and rose. Jack was there instantly.


    "Let him go, Jack, if you please."


    Jack backed off with a bow which was almost sarcastic and held the door for me. I heard him close the door behind me, but when I looked back, he was already gone.


    Yeah, I wouldn''t want to talk with me either.


    How Blackett could sit there and insinuate that Tem and I were the same though, I couldn''t believe him. He may as well have just executed me on the spot if he was going to waste my time like that.


    Chariot, improve your attitude, or I''ll kill you. Also, here''s some bullshit advice to keep in mind that will definitely not improve your attitude.


    I sighed as I climbed the stairs and went in my room. Not a soul making a sound.


    I realized after fuming on my bed for a while that as much as I hated it, he had to be onto something. Why? Because I was pissed at him now the exact same way I had been at Tem. So something he said had to have struck the same chord.


    So...what? Was he right?


    Of course not. That was stupid, and I was stupid for even thinking it.


    Which, following my new logic, meant yes.


    What the hell did that mean, though? I''d go up to Tem tomorrow and be all like, ''Hi, I''m sorry I tried to kill you. The fact is, you remind me of myself, and I hate that.''?


    I still couldn''t agree, or even wrap my head around the fact that she was all of me I hated. If anything, my friends worried about me because I was too stubborn and strong-willed, not weak-willed.


    I counted off all the major victories I''d had in a conflict, going down my fingers.


    I started with a with a loss and a win, surrendering to the XPCA, but also being strong-willed and refusing to let them keep throwing bodies at me. Beat Karu repeatedly early on. Both in straight-up fights, and through clever, stubborn, strong-willed means later on. I survived 4 waves of AEGIS''s robots, strong-willed my way through Saga''s mental madhouse, Luminary, beat down a fucking insane cerebrally-modified grizzly bear, the terrapath, and then surrendered to the XPCA again.


    And one more win, if you could call it that, counting Tem. Pretty fantastic record, overall, I thought. If Tem was against any of that, she''d fold like a towel. I saw no room to argue.


    I sat up and saw Mage standing in the doorway. How long had she been standing there?


    "Learning to count?" she asked.


    "Doing some thinking. Here to make fun of Tem again?"


    "Wouldn''t dare. Wondering what you''re up to."


    "Well, Blackett isn''t going to have me killed just yet, so I guess that''s something."


    "Don''t care. Didn''t ask that."


    I sighed. "What do you want?"


    "I told you. Wondering what you''re up to," she explained like I was the dense one here.


    I stopped and stared at her. She stared back, frowning slightly. The heck was this girl''s damage?


    "If you must know, I was just thinking of something Blackett said to me while chewing me out. That''s all."


    "Indulge me."


    "Why?"


    "Just indulge me."


    Here was a girl who probably legitimately deserved a few punches in the face, but I took a deep breath and decided to just do as she asked and she''d be out of my hair. I was probably in enough trouble with everyone without making more waves.


    "If you really must know, he said the reason I have issues with Tem is because I look at her and see all the parts of myself I hate. I was just counting up all the times I''d possibly acted like her, and found...nothing, basically. So I think his theory is just bull."


    She laughed. I was really considering if Blackett killing me was really the worst punishment possible here.


    And then I thought of Tem and felt guilt burn at my insides. I couldn''t be angry or even annoyed. What right did I have? I was a godawful fucking person.


    "You really are stupid," she said, walking away, her voice trailing from the hallway. "If you hate that part of you so much, no wonder you never listen to it." I heard a door click shut, and it was like a lightbar clicking on in my mind.


    Every time I''d fought with Karu, she''d push me and push me and push me. Calling me names, threatening to kill me, threatening me with killing her, and every time she did, I reached a point where I just threw off my gloves and said no, fuck this, and barreled in.


    When she threw down the smoke and forced me into an open fight. Fuck that. Right into the smoke with me. When she told me the only way to beat her was to kill her. Fuck that. Resuscitate her out of goddamn spite. When she told me using my powers was the only way I''d win. Fuck that. Ran at her like a savage crazy person and stole her visor and broke her jetpack.


    Same thing with AEGIS. Same thing with Saga. Same thing with the XPCA. Lying on the ground, watching those soldiers kill themselves on me, until I said no, fuck this, and refused to be party in any more deaths. Sit in the trenches safely and let our robots do the fighting? Fuck that, charge in and blow my leg off.


    I didn''t hate Tem for being what I was, I hated her for being what I was afraid of being. Every time I got remotely close to being Tem, I snapped inside and threw down. Even when my friends were all worried if I talked to Blackett, I would just curl up and surrender, even though I was preparing to do exactly that, the second those missiles came flying at me, something inside me galvanized, crystallized. In that moment when I crushed Blackett''s comms, I was more prepared to give up my friends than I was to walk away from that fight.


    Tem was everything I would never be in this world, I''d rather die or kill first. And confronted with her, with everything I was afraid of, everything I feared being inside me...I snapped like I always had. Just a lot more violently.


    It wasn''t a solution, it wasn''t an excuse, it was just a new way of looking at my actions which made a lot more sense. I still hated myself for what I''d done, but at least now I could look Tem in the eyes and know what part of me hated all of her.


    As I lay back down and reflected more on myself and what a wonderfully fucked-up person I was, I wondered if Mage dropped that line on purpose. I had some thoughts on what her powers might be, but they were vague at best. But maybe one of them included being able to say the right thing at the right time to make a dumbass look at a problem from a different angle.

 107. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Athan.

    Tem wasn''t back the next morning when we assembled as usual, and Mage sidled up next to me in line with a grin to rival Jack''s. Tower and Jack seemed to be pretending I didn''t exist, which wasn''t too different for Jack, but Tower refusing to even make eye contact with me really hurt.


    "What do you want?" I asked Mage.


    "Nothing." She grinned at me like an imp.


    I wanted to tell her she was creeping me out and to leave me alone, but I''d already torpedoed my position with the others enough. I stood patiently and waited for Blackett to appear for his trip into work.


    Stood...patiently. And. Waited.


    She was leaning further and further into me, until she was basically clinging to my side.


    "Okay, what the heck are you doing?" I had to ask, after she''d commandeered my arm.


    "Am I annoying you?"


    "Yes."


    "Better hit me."


    "All right, not funny, Mage," said Tower, who picked her up easily with one arm, separating us with himself in line.


    "I''m sorry about Tem," I muttered to him.


    He grunted acknowledgement, but didn''t respond or look at me.


    It was another couple of minutes before we heard Blackett''s shoes echoing in the hall. Today, I was apparently the man on the end, so I stood ready at the door for him. As ever, he appeared and wordlessly strode past us, and he and Jack went out to the the car. I closed the door.


    I had a thought, inspired by Mage''s little obnoxious antics this morning. No Jack and no Blackett for maybe half an hour until Jack returned. And no Tem. And Mage being flighty as ever, that left¡­


    I turned to Tower. He met my gaze for a moment and then remembered he was ignoring me.


    "Tower," I said.


    He grunted.


    "You''re the one in charge until Jack gets back."


    He grunted again.


    "What are we doing today?"


    "I don''t know, Chariot," he barked, finally looking down at me. "Can''t you just keep your damn hat on for half an hour until Jack gets back?"


    "Only if that''s what you tell me to do," I said. I felt a little bad for teasing him like this, but on the other hand, just wanted to air things out with him as soon as possible.


    He looked at me darkly. "You''ll do whatever I tell you to do until Jack gets back?"


    "That''s what it means for you to be in charge, doesn''t it?"


    "How about I tell you to die?"


    "How would you want me to do it?" I asked, without blinking.


    He took a step back. "You''re crazy."


    "So? What would you have me do then?"


    He looked at me and thought seriously this time. I knew I had him now.


    After long moments of thought, he looked back at me. "Let''s go clean some windows."


    As we''d done before, cleaning the windows on the front of the house, he and I stood on the roof of the front of the house, wearing a harness connected to the roof by metal cable. It was only two stories, tall stories, given the high ceilings of the house, but from up top, it looked a whoooole lot further than that.


    From up here, I could see the whole neighborhood. Huge, opulent manors, separated by large well-groomed lawns, and huge trees planted around the edges, like 50-foot-tall garden hedges. Like Blackett manor, it seemed nobody had just a straight driveway leading to a garage, instead favoring small, lazy, looping roads which touched the street in two places.


    How to know you have it made, I supposed. Never have to put your car in reverse. Or have your servant have to do so.


    It was still early morning, and it felt like we were higher than the sun.


    "So tell me," Tower said, looming at me, intimidatingly. He moved so I was between him and the edge of the house, the two-story fall at my back. "Why''d you do that to Tem?"


    I sighed. Of course this. "I don''t really know," I said, honestly. He crossed his arms and glowered at me. "I have some thoughts. I don''t think that really matters though, the fact was, it was wrong."


    "Would you still be saying that if I wasn''t threatening to push you off the roof?"


    "Yeah." I found my eyes on my feet again. "She never did anything to me."


    "She never did anything to anybody!" he yelled, and shoved me, hard.


    I toppled and flailed, my heels barely catching on the lip of the roof as I went over. I fell backwards into nothingness and then jerked to a stop. The wire rope on my harness pulled taut, the other end of it in his hands. I hung there, feet on the edge, hanging almost horizontal backwards over the yard, a dozen feet below me.


    "I know," I said, sadly.


    "Then why!?"


    "I don''t know, man. Just seeing her be so weak, it makes my blood boil."


    I felt like I''d just been over this with Blackett and Jack, over this with Mage, over this in my own head, over and over again. I was tired of beating myself up, tired of explaining why I did something I couldn''t explain. I was tired.


    "Well what are you gonna do about it?" he yelled.


    At least that was sort of a new question. "I don''t know. Whatever Tem wants me to do."


    "Wrong answer. You and I both know Tem won''t make you do shit." He let the line go for another couple of inches, making me drop and jarring me precipitously again.


    I don''t think he noticed that I really didn''t care too much if he splattered me on the pavement at this point. I just wished he''d make up his mind in either killing me or forgiving me already.


    "Well, what do you think I should do?" I asked, looking into the morning blue sky above me. Fat little white clouds were skating along. We might be in for some more snow soon.


    "Apologize!"


    "I mean, other than that, obviously."


    "Oh. Uh." The wire moved as he scratched his head. "You should be Tem''s friend, I think. She needs more friends."


    "I can do that," I said. It didn''t seem so hard, seemed like a totally reasonable request. I mean, yeah, it might suck sometimes, but I was already planning on not beating the shit out of her again, so what was the harm, really?


    "Heh, we''ll see. You lay another finger on her, and you''ll have me to answer to."


    I felt myself becoming more upright as he pulled me back onto the roof. It was almost funny, being pivoted upright with my feet in place on the edge. Like a slowly inflating balloon, or a...hmm, this was not a good place for a metaphor.


    He smiled at me as he finished pulling me back upright, almost vertical now. I took a deep breath as he let go of the wire and reached out to grab my arm and pull me in. At least my little gambit had paid off, and I had Tower back on my side to a degree. His support around here was massive to me.


    His support.


    His support was gone. He''d let go of the wire and I was falling backwards again.


    "Oh shit!" he shouted. His wide eyes and the lip of the rooftop were falling away from me.


    What the fuck. Why did he have to be so clumsy now? I yelled and flailed, only managing to spin in the air so that I''d have a nice view of the approaching ground. I was falling headfirst towards the concrete. Unless my shield decided this counted as the entire Earth being thrown at me, and had increased in power by a magnitude of a billion, I was about to break my neck.


    The ground raced towards me. The wind roared in my ears.


    After everything I''d been through. This was the most humiliating end I could imagine. At least if I''d jumped, I''d have taken it on my own terms. This was just pathetic. I closed my eyes and tried to make the last vision in my mind something pleasant. Lia, maybe. Be a good little sis, your brother would wait for you.


    In...hell, I guess. This wasn''t actually a pleasant thought, I realized.


    I heard something crack into the pavement, but it wasn''t me. That, or I''d hit so fast, so badly, I couldn''t even feel my body already. Half a moment later, something cracked into me, but it wasn''t the pavement. All the wind was knocked out of my lungs, and tears blasted from my eyes. Pain, pretty much all over my torso where something was holding me.


    Yeah. Lots and lots of pain. I could definitely still feel my body.


    I opened my eyes and found myself and Tower locked in one of his hugs, rising away from the ground. He had a look of intense focus on his face, which was something I''d never seen on him. It didn''t...really suit him, but I really couldn''t complain right now. As we reached the apex of our rebound, things seemed to just slow...and then stop.


    "Uh," I coughed out fraily, looking around from inside his death-grip. "We''re flying."


    "Floating, really," he said, taking a deep breath. "You scared me there, when you let go of that rope."


    "I''m still wearing the harness. You let go of the rope."


    "Oh, did I? Haha, my bad," he laughed. "Well, I caught you, so it''s okay."This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    "I think you bruised...like...all of my ribs. But I still appreciate it. What did you do?"


    "Oh, I dove after you and caught you before you hit the ground."


    "Huh." I thought about it for a second. "That...wait. That doesn''t make any sense. You should have fallen the same speed as me. You''d just land in my...splatter."


    "Oh, right. Well, I can change how forces affect me, see? No gravity, right?"


    There was definitely no arguing with that. Like being strapped into Karu''s harness, his huge arm wrapped around me was holding me aloft like we were weightless.


    "I can also have more gravity. And when I hit the ground, I bounce off it by repelling its force. Kinda had to absorb most of the hit when I caught you, though...if I repelled it back into you, that''d be like you hitting the ground twice as hard. Not such a good catch. I tried that a few times in practice. Did. Not. Work."


    "I''m really glad you had the practice."


    "Yeah, me too. Hey, who could have predicted I''d wind up saving your life instead of beating the tar out of you like I planned? Man, what a crazy life."


    "Haha, crazy," I didn''t laugh.


    He slowly let gravity reclaim him and touched down on the ground. Fortunately, not that anyone had really given it any thought, it seemed like nobody had seen him using his powers. Still too early for many people to even be up, much less in this huge and sparsely populated neighborhood.


    "Thanks for the lift," I said, happy to be free of his arms, and able to nurse my injuries. He frowned, looming over me.


    "You should get those checked out. I caught you pretty bad."


    "It''s just some bruising. I''ll gladly take it as penance for what I did to Tem. Just...go easy on the hugs for a few days."


    He laughed, and then stopped. Looked at me seriously, and then smiled.


    "You''re a good guy, Chariot. I think."


    "I try."


    "I''m just concerned because I thought you were a good guy before, too."


    "Yeah, me too," I sighed.


    I saw movement in a window far to my right, somewhere with a good view of the entire front of the roof, but when I looked, saw only the retreating back of someone''s head.


    "Say, Tower," I said as we headed back in, "do you really not know what Mage''s power is?"


    "Really don''t. Like Jack and I said before, we''ve never seen her use it. Kinda creepy, honestly."


    "Hmm. Or maybe she uses it all the time."


    "Huh?"


    "Just thinking," I said, and lapsed into silence doing just that.


    I liked people like Tower. People like Karu. People like football players were usually like, I guess. People who were simple like me, saw the world as it was in front of them and plotted their course as they went. I didn''t mind the thinkers and planners and schemers of the world, the AEGISes and presumably Mages, but the straightforward guys like that were where I was, and where I found company the most readily.


    With the guys, it had always been, cause an issue, man up, maybe take some licks, maybe bring them some food, maybe even hug it out, but things always seemed to get smoothed over fast. I liked that with us, things were always pretty simple. You dick them over, they hate you. That was all there was to it, no cattiness or passive-aggressive games, or manipulation. Just two dudes with some beef.


    It was refreshing, given the politics I''d had to step around living with the girls, and I''d just taken it on faith that if I put myself into Tower''s hands, we''d work it out. I might be dead, or have the shit kicked out of me, but after that, we''d work it out. Well, maybe not after death, but the point stands.


    And as he laughed and talked and clapped my ass as we passed back through the front door, already forgetting to go easy on me, I was grateful to him. I hadn''t had a friend who was simply a friend in a long time, not tied up in machiavellian schemes or trying to kill me when the opportunity presented itself, or living in my head. It was nice just to be with a bro again.


    I mean, he was still an Exhuman. My life could never be that normal.


    We loitered around the hall, waiting for Jack to come back and give us our daily orders. I joked that since he was obviously unfit for leadership, pushing people off rooftops and the like, that meant I was in charge. We spent the remaining time alone giving each other orders on how to clean the toilets and do the girls'' laundry.


    Yeah, we were crude. It was a guy thing. I missed it.


    Jack came back and greeted the two of us chatting and laughing with a smile of his own, and then I remembered he was always smiling about something, and the effect lost much of its charm. Almost immediately though, he sidled up to me, creepy as ever.


    "Tem isn''t back today. She''s still in rehabilitation."


    "Okay. Do you know why?"


    When I''d come out of the regenerator, I was disoriented, cold, wet, numb, and coughing up fluid from the tank, but it all wore off in less than a few hours...and then I fought an Exhuman, or more recently, moved in with a pack of them. I hadn''t had to have rehab, and it seemed stupid that she would.


    I felt my face twitch and realized I was doing it again. Being mean to Tem for no reason. I let it go.


    Jack''s grin broadened. "No idea," he replied. "But I do recall you having a punishment to do all of her chores until she returned. I hope you enjoy twenty-hour workdays, Chariot," his voice and smile grew more sadistic with every word.


    I...certainly didn''t enjoy the thought of it, but this was part of my penance too. I would work my fingers to the bone if I had to, because that was the only way I could think of to show Jack that I was willing to try.


    And over the next day, and then next two days, and then the next three days, he worked me like a slave''s dog''s bitch. He kept me moving from before dawn to after midnight, doing every single damn thing he could find in the house. My hands were even still mostly busted from hitting Tem so damn hard, but I wasn''t going to bring that up. When I was collapsed on the floor, finally finished waxing the hall by hand, he''d walk in to check on me, touch the ground with a long swipe, and look at his finger with disappointment.


    "You missed a spot. Do it again."


    I didn''t miss a spot, but I did it again anyway. Because fuck him. I wasn''t going to let a little thing like physical limitations or passing out from not eating all day stop me.


    On day three, as I vacuumed the whole attic in the middle of the day, sweat pouring down my face from all the heat rising from the house, even in the start of winter, I found an ice bucket with water bottles, and a note with a crudely-drawn thumbs-up and the words ''you can do it!'' scrawled on it.


    I silently thanked Tower as I sucked the water down, and chewed on the ice for the next hour while I finished, even if it was kind of grey and dusty by the end. I could do it. I could beat this thing, and show Jack just what I was made of.


    His sadism grew less and less apparent, though he still worked me to death. Tower and Jack and Mage had nothing left to do but wander the house listlessly or, in Jack''s case, keep an eye on me while I slaved away, since I was now doing the work of everyone in the house.


    I didn''t care. I went to bed aching every night and woke up aching every pre-morning, but fuck him. I wasn''t going to let a damn thing like chores beat me.


    I wasn''t sure what I thought of ''fuck him'' becoming a personal mantra of mine, but it was getting me through a hard time, so I couldn''t complain. Maybe I could work out a more eloquent way of putting it later.


    On day four, I got up before the crack of dawn as usual and went to the kitchen to make myself breakfast. I got out a bowl and poured myself some cereal, I needed the carbs to keep going, and a banana. Someone had left one of the chairs at the table pulled out, which I know wasn''t there last night, because cleaning everything in the kitchen had been one of the last things I''d done yesterday.


    Whatever. I threw myself into the chair and prepared to eat.


    "OW!" Screamed the chair, which was unusually hard, soft, and lumpy at the same time. I fell off of it in my surprise, cereal scattering across my beautiful kitchen floor.


    "What...what¡­" I asked, backing away from the nothingness. "Tem?" I said, matching the voice, more than realizing anything.


    "S-s-sorry," she said, materializing in the chair, rubbing her legs. "I didn''t...didn''t think anyone would...be up s-so s-s-soon."


    "Tem, you''re back! Thank God," I said, moving to hug her or something. I stopped when she flinched at my approach.


    Ah, yeah. I was one of the bad guys. The last three days had kind of pushed that from my mind, so focused I''d been on beating Jack, I''d almost forgotten why I was doing so.


    "Sorry, Tem," I said, and then realized what I was saying. I got on my hands and knees, Tem shaking her head violently as I did so, and placed my forehead on the ground.


    "Tem, I am so sorry for what I did to you. I want you to know that."


    "Please s-stand up!" she squeaked. "You don''t have to. This is s-s-so embarrassing!"


    "I have spent these last few days doing everything I could to apologize to your friends for what I''ve done to them, because of what I did to you."


    I heard her mutely shake her head at me, but I wasn''t done yet.


    "...but the one who suffered the most was you, Tem. I don''t know how, or if I can ever apologize enough to make it clear to you exactly how...how shitty and scummy I feel, about everything. After all my talk about how those bullies deserved it for almost killing you, I turned out a hundred times worse than them."


    I looked up at her from the floor. I realized she wasn''t wearing our uniform or sleepware, just street clothes. A medium skirt and striped long-sleeve shirt. She was pale and red all over her face, and frantically gesturing for me to stand up, and looking around everywhere at once, like someone would come in at any moment and rescue her from me.


    "I forgive...forgive you, okay? Please, just, s-stand up. You don''t have to...to apologize like this, to me."


    "I do, Tem. This is how I would apologize to anyone after what I did. You''re as much a person as anyone else, even if you don''t see it that way."


    She stopped gesturing at me, and instead did something far, far worse, began to cry.


    "I-I''m not finished!" I sort of shouted at her. "Tem...I¡­" I advanced on her very slowly, touching her hand. She recoiled, but then gently put her hand in mine. "Tem, Temperance, I meant it when I said those bullies deserved to die. I deserve to die. I''ve thought about killing myself every day after what I did to you. I can''t live being that kind of person."


    Tears flowed from every part of her eyes in a constant stream and she shook her head violently at me, incoherent words babbling from her, but lots of ''don''ts'' and ''can''t''s.


    "The only thing stopping me¡­" I paused. "One of the only things stopping me, because I''m selfish, too, was that I didn''t want that to be on you, Tem...I uh¡­"


    I let go of her bony hand, but she grabbed me more fiercely and wouldn''t let go.


    "I have blood on my hands too, Tem. I see them in my dreams, sometimes when I let my mind wander too far. I used to see them every time I closed my eyes, and it was horrible. I didn''t want to do that to you, so I''ll live...but only if you want me to."


    "Of course I want you to!" she screamed, through her tears.


    "I don''t mean...me specifically. I''m not worth that. I meant...I don''t want to be more blood on your hands. I know...know how that can weigh on a person."


    A finger hooked under my chin and made me point at her face. She looked me in the eyes, beneath the tears, angry, almost, if that was possible for her. And then she leaned down, and in the most gentle lightest brushing touch possible, like a snowflake melting on my skin, kissed me on the forehead.


    "Not...not allowed to die. Okay?"


    "Okay," I said, going red. There were tears falling on my face, and they weren''t mine. "I hope you don''t regret giving a second chance to a huge piece of shit like me."


    She laughed softly and cried, and held my head to her. She held me for a few moments like that, crying sharply all over me.


    "Language, Chariot," I heard from the doorway. I stood bolt upright. Tem did the same, but also vanished with a gasp and a waver of light. Leaned against it was Jack, of course, sly smile feeling sarcastic now as he watched god-knows how long of our scene play out.


    "Jack," I said. "How long you been standing there?"


    "A while." He raised his hands defensively. "I''m not here to mock you. I''m just happy to see Tem is back. You are back, aren''t you, Tem?" he asked the empty space beside me. She wasn''t there, I could feel her hiding behind me.


    "Um, yes," her voice said. She did not reappear.


    "How long have you been back, I wonder," Jack mused. "Have you been hiding invisible this whole time? Enjoying watching me put Chariot through his paces?"


    "No!" She shouted, turning visible, and then blushing and losing her nerve just as fast. "No. I just...just got here. Last...last night. I''d been¡­" she mumbled off.


    "Been what?" Jack asked.


    She mumbled something I could barely make out.


    "Speak up, please, Tem."


    "She said she was being kept in the psychiatric ward. They were concerned about her¡­" I turned and looked at her over my shoulder. "Mental health?"


    She nodded.


    "Ah. My apologies."


    Jack turned to slink off, but before he did, he stopped and spoke again.


    "Chariot, I don''t know if you remember, but Blackett tasked me with ensuring your apology to Tem was satisfactory. I believe it was, but you were fortunate I was around to drop eaves on it. It wouldn''t have had quite the impact if you''d had to repeat it all again for me."


    I shook a little and felt myself go a little red, and Jack was gone. I stood there for a moment, not sure what to do, and then walked to the cabinet to get another bowl.


    "Cereal, Tem? Banana?" I tried to think back to what she usually ate for breakfast, the couple days I''d seen it. "Cottage cheese?"


    "Yes, please," she said, unspecifically. I hoped she meant the latter, and got pulled a package from the fridge, holding it up and getting a nod as confirmation. I made her a bowl and then realized it was probably way too much, so I walked to the table and put half of it on my cereal, and gave her the other half a bowl and a spoon.


    "Is...is it good that way?" she asked, looking at the mess I''d poured myself.


    "Uh, sure," I said, trying it out. It wasn''t, but now wasn''t the time for that. What I really wanted was for her tears to stop flowing slowly and silently, and also to vacuum up the cereal I''d spilled before people stepped in it and tracked it into my clean hallway.


    I laughed into my mulchy breakfast as I realized just what I''d become.

 108. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Athan.

    Blackett seemed worse and worse over the following days. He began to spend more and more time at the office, coming back more exhausted and defeated every day. Even I, who didn''t have any love for the man felt for him.


    It sucked when you were putting your all into something and failing. Even if that something was murdering people, and painting a target on innocent Exhumans.


    It seemed like the only thing keeping him going was watching us battle one another, and so that became more frequent. I was never again paired up with Tem, and every time I''d been matched with Mage, she''d simply stab herself with a pin and flick some droplets of blood to the mat, but Jack and Tower and I squared off constantly.


    And...I found myself enjoying it, despite everything. Each of them was so different from me, but so strong, I had to push myself to my absolute limits to keep up with them.


    Tower and I were brutal, his powers negated any physical forces applied to him, but he was completely unguarded against lightning. Similarly, he moved and attacked so fast, I could only barely keep him at bay most of the time.


    Jack''s fights played out very differently, both of us probing each other for weaknesses constantly. If he moved into reach, I could fill the entire area around me with lightning, but I couldn''t keep it up forever and had to pre-emptively guess when he would go in for the kill. At range, he was powerless, but equally untouchable. It was all mind games, as he flickered into existence all around me, and I pressured him as best I was able, both of us knowing it would all come down to one final attack.


    Watching Tem fight the others was enjoyable as well. As much as she drove me nuts, apologizing every time I pulled a difficult chore and she got an easy one, or apologizing whenever she lost...or whenever she won, for those few moments when she was in the zone, fighting with her all, I couldn''t think of her as anything but strong of spirit.


    She...and I hated to admit this, but she did remind me a lot of me. Between her illusions, hard light constructs, and lasers, she had a lot of tools she could fall back on, like I did, and she employed them cleverly, unafraid to play dirty at every turn.


    Blackett had given her the okay to use her lasers in small non-lethal blasts, but when she became passionate, engrossed in a fight, she often turned up the volume more than intended. My job was to jump in if it looked like that was happening, because my shield could seemingly absorb any amount of laser, so far as it had been tested. She wound up apologizing as always, which irked me, but whatever, and then the fight would recommence.


    Tem and Jack were fighting today, with her creating a random constant barrage of lasers around herself, forsaking her invisibility for a more concrete defense, while attempting to harry him into a vulnerable position, and simultaneously getting her light constructs online. Jack had spent too long evading and hadn''t found an opening, and the room was beginning to fill with small colorless motes of light, touching any of which would spell an instant loss for him.


    Fortunately, unlike the rest of us, Jack didn''t have to walk to get from point A to point B. A solid wall of razors was just a thing for him to appear on the other side of, and all the ever-increasing amount of constructs did was make him reappear in more and more awkward poses as he held himself aloft from the growing danger.


    Tem had miscalculated, however. Of all the things her beams could pierce, hard light was not one of them. As the room filled up more and more, her attack angles became more limited, and Jack had both more and less room to operate. He began to appear close to her with greater frequency, often only half an instant from getting a quick slash in with his knife before a laser appearing meant he had to whisk away again.


    She''d realized her mistake and was moving the constructs away from her, to give herself more space, but it was too late, it looked like. If Jack found a single opening, he didn''t even need to slash to attack, he could simply appear with the blade already millimeters from her.


    It was a pretty nice trick, but unpleasant to be on the receiving end, I''d learned.


    Still, if he did that and appeared inside a laser, we''d agreed that counted as a loss for him, so he had to find just the right moment to strike. For all his speed and apparently enhanced perception, Jack still had normal reflexes as much as I could tell, and the lasers could fire off after about a third of a second at their fastest. Just slow enough to dodge, but only if that''s all you were doing.


    Suddenly, imperceptibly, his grin grew confident and he appeared at her side, knife extended through her upper arm. Tower and I had both only just seen the opening and applauded as Jack landed the blow.


    And then Tem vanished into nothingness, an illusion the whole time. Jack wheeled around, completely lost, but didn''t have time to reacquire his target before having to vanish again as a hail of lasers poured from every angle through where he stood.


    It was already over, I realized. I could sense where Tem stood, she was right at the edge of the room, completely surrounded by her constructs, so close that they hovered millimeters from her skin. The whole thing had been a ploy to not raise Jack''s suspicion as she gathered all of her constructs in one place around her, making a barrier so large and impassible that he could not appear anywhere within it or strike her through it.


    He was still blinking around the room at random, thinking her somewhere in the middle still. He''d grown desperate since he fell for her bait, and had no idea what she''d been planning the entire time. It truly was a thing of beauty watching her slowly but unstoppably extinguish his options as the room filled more and more with the shimmering brume.


    Eventually, he was in the same position as she, completely pinned as the cloud closed in around him. He smiled and threw up his hands, dropping the knife to the padded floor. He waited patiently while one single mote floated in and touched the side of his finger, drawing a single drop of blood.


    "I''m...s-so s-s-s-sorry about tricking...about tricking you like...like that," she said, appearing at once, as the light began to melt away.


    "It was a good fight," he said smiling, still as a statue while the room was filled with blades of light yet. "You have nothing to apologize for."


    "I...I must have made you...made you feel very s-stupid. Please, accept...accept my apologies."


    And just like that the calculating killer who slowly, mercilessly choked the life and options from her prey became Tem again, simpering little ball of self-doubt.


    To my surprise, Blackett stood up, and headed for the door. We all watched with wordless panic as Tem struggled to move the constructs from his path, but he just waved his hand in front of himself like there was a bug, and walked right through them. Swiftly, silently, and with a scowl.


    Tem sat down and looked even more down than usual. "I knew...knew he did not like my s-s-strategy," she bemoaned.


    "How the heck did he do that?" Tower said, reaching for a wisp of light himself, flinching and pulling back a cut hand. What the heck did he think was going to happen?


    I slid sideways carefully into Blackett''s spot and then followed the tunnel through the light that his body had left behind. Like whatever had landed on him had simply vanished. I''d assumed he had some secret countermeasures up his sleeve when he met to talk with me before we''d fought, but wasting them here, just to show off? What could he possibly be doing.


    I emerged from the sub-gym and followed to his office, where I assumed he''d gone. I knocked on the door.


    "What?" he said. It wasn''t a response I ever expected from him. Lacking in discipline and propriety, and downright angry sounding.


    "Um, it''s me," I said. "Wanted to...I guess I wanted to see if you were okay."


    I heard him laugh which was a first, just a curt bark of one, but enough to really unnerve me. "Yeah, come on in."


    I let myself in and sat down opposite him. He really did look like shit, massaging the bridge of his nose, his tired eyes closed.


    "Amazing," he said, without looking up "that you''d finally choose to come around to my side of things, even a little bit, just in time for none of it to matter."


    "I''m not on your side," I argued defensively. "I just want to see...you''ve never really acted like this before."


    "No, I suppose not." He sat up and regained a bit of his old strict posturing. "The XPCA is falling apart, and the funny part is, it''s all your fault, and I don''t even think you know about it."


    I furrowed my brow. Was this because of the soldiers and resources I''d destroyed? Was the XPCA that hard-up for men and materiel? I''d always heard they got their choice of everything, it was basically the only government agency the public wanted to always give more funding.


    "I don''t know what you mean," I said.


    "I assumed not. You don''t seem the type to watch the news or read the ''net. Nobody here is, except me by necessity, and Mage, whom," he glanced over at me, "I don''t think you get along with?"


    "Not so much, no."


    He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a tiny black device, aimed it a blank wall, and depressed some button. The wall came to life with a holo projecting over it.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    "Protests continue against the XPCA as more leaks--" he pressed another button and the image changed.


    "--legations of kidnapping, misappropriation of government funds, and corruption shake the XPCA. In a statement--"


    "...online presence. How so many communities rose against the XPCA at once is a mystery however. Do you have a comment, Director Albion?"


    "--will not be silenced, will be heard, until the wrongs of the XPCA are drawn to light and the truth sets us free from their injustices."


    "That''s Karu," I said, staring at the screen. She was standing in full regalia on a stage, behind a podium, a huge number of mics pointed at her, and apparently an enormous crowd hanging on her every word. I wanted to hear more, but Blackett muted the holo.


    "That is Karu," he said, running his fingers through his hair, which now had streaks of grey beginning to form. "She and some of her hunter associates have begun national protests crying out against the injustices committed by the XPCA."


    He continued, speaking into the desk with both hands atop his head. "Numerous extremely classified documents and initiatives have also been acquired from seemingly nowhere, and are now cycling freely on the ''net. All damning or incriminating of course, without the benefit of a single lick of context given. Released by a vigilante known as ''Black Shark.''"


    "And more," he continued, "a hacker organization under the banner of an unknown entity calling itself AEGIS has repeatedly hacked and defeated every single ''net presence the XPCA owns. We can''t access our own files, keep propaganda off our own site, or even control Skyweb. How they can know everything from our server infrastructure to database architecture from a hundred years ago, it''s impossible to keep a step ahead of them."


    I felt tears brimming in my eyes, as I watched Karu silently speaking to the cameras, passionate, worked-up, sweeping her arms dramatically, and tapping the podium to emphasize her points. She was the most beautiful person I''d ever seen, I felt at that moment, and even with her hair all punked up, and her visor glowing blood-red, I could see the regal bearing of an Irenside hanging from every muted word she said.


    They''d...they''d come for me. I don''t know how, or even why, but they had, each in their own way. Karu''s status as a hunter and political upbringing, Lia''s information gathering and strategy, AEGIS'' insider knowledge and improbable hacking aptitude...and Saga, presumably, They were all working together, for me.


    I felt so unworthy and so blessed. My mouth twitched, and the tears began to pour.


    "Oh please, not with the crying, Chariot. I had thought we were past that," he muttered, burying a face in his elbow and throwing a box of tissues in my direction.


    I walked to the wall holo and, giving one final smile at Karu''s passionate speech, tapped the page and brought up the XPCA''s home page.


    ''XPCA LIES'' read the page''s banner, and the background was hundreds of small images of faces, each one covered by a large red X. I scrolled down past the blocks of propaganda-esque prose, and at the bottom of the page, found a link to the webmaster. I clicked it, and a new page popped up.


    ''This page is under management by the SET ATHAN ASHTON FREE initiative. If you are the original owner of this page, you can contact us by SETTING ATHAN ASHTON FREE, you assholes.''


    I was surprised to find both instances of my name were links. I clicked one and found myself on an e-cyclopedia, favorably outlining all the events of my life until now, emphasizing how much promise I had and how it had all been brutally cut short by the violent whims of the XPCA. A note at the top of the page mentioned public editing had been blocked on this page because of too much polarizing debate. I pulled open the recent edits and found tens of thousands of edits before the page had been locked, mostly between what was probably the long-time site administrators removing bias and uncited facts, and AEGIS, or her supporters, putting them back in tenfold.


    Back on the XPCA homepage, I found a listing of files, thousands of them, of terminated Exhumans, detailing their entire records as the XPCA saw them. As I moved from file to file, I realized these must have been hand-picked by the girls, none of them were legitimate threats or had surrendered willingly. Most of them had the same two fields highlighted.


    ''Cause of death: Execution.''


    ''Justification of lethal force: Exhuman.''


    "Your little girls," Blackett said, still face down in his elbow on the table "have destroyed everything. We''re going to release you, and dismantle the XPCA. The public pressure is too strong."


    "Dismantle it?" I asked.


    "Yep. The president of the United States himself is demanding it. Apparently even he was unaware of the vast amount of bodies we''d piled up." He sat up again. "But wasn''t that the point of it all? We managed the Exhumans so people wouldn''t have to worry about the body count? People could live their lives without thinking of all the death going on around them?"


    I didn''t agree. The XPCA and I had too much between us for me to ever agree with them, but I also couldn''t imagine the world without them.


    "What happens during an Exhuman event?" I asked.


    "Same as in the old days. Military responds. Tanks and VTOLs."


    "Tanks and VTOLS?" I asked incredulously. "Tanks and VTOLs can''t stop an Exhuman. I would know, I blew up all your tanks, and your VTOLs couldn''t touch me."


    "Those were supposed to be for troop cover, deployment, and artillery support only. The line commander who ordered fire on you during negotiations was fired with extreme prejudice. By me." He scratched his head aggressively.


    He laid back down. "Besides, those idiots don''t know the true purpose of the XPCA anyway. They''ll think they need to kill every Exhuman they see."


    "Isn''t...that what you did? Aside from the, what, five of us in this house?"


    Unexpectedly, very unexpectedly, he laughed again, shaking the desk. "I thought you were smarter than this," he said, looking up at me again. "You honestly think that''s all the XPCA does? Show up to Exhuman events and has a deathmatch until the body count stacks up to one Exhuman''s might?"


    "Uh...I mean...isn''t that what you did up north, with me?"


    "Please. The whole point of that operation was to distract you with a large, difficult-to-destroy force while we captured any one of your friends and forced your surrender. As ever, the rank-and-file of the XPCA are there for decoration and not substance."


    "And dying?" I said, finding my breath suddenly short.


    "And dying. As I mentioned before, they died bravely and honorably, and knew what they were in for. A suicide mission to capture an Exhuman."


    "You''re telling me," I said suddenly on my feet and feeling very hot "all those people we fought and killed, that was just to keep us busy so you could pick off Lia?"


    "We were aiming for Karu, but she proved better armed than anticipated, and the VTOLs couldn''t track her well enough to launch their special ordinance. As it turns out, it is very difficult to catch a fly when you have to throw the web at her."


    "You''re fucking sick. The XPCA does deserve to go down."


    "If that''s the way you see it. But then who stops the real bad guys?"


    "The...the military."


    "The military will fight very bravely and die very quickly."


    "And how is that different from what you did with your kill squads?"


    "Chariot, I cannot believe I have to explain this to you. You are an Exhuman, yes?"


    I didn''t answer. Just crossed my arms and waited for him to continue.


    "Are you familiar with the term ''Ramanathan Window''? I would be surpri--"


    "Yes, I am. The theory that an Exhuman''s powers are able to adapt, or are even created in response to events which will harm them in the first hours or days of being Exhuman."


    "Very good. So why is it, do you suppose, that the XPCA, despite being known for having exotic weaponry to take down any Exhuman, always responds with kill squads using the same standard armaments? Standard missiles, guns, lasers."


    I''d never thought about it. Having first responders and also a power set that could grow more dangerous with the situation didn''t line up.


    "You use traditional firearms so that the window doesn''t open up any new powers. Like you did with, what was his name, Ultraman?"


    "Yes, the Exhuman who became immune to almost everything. That is what happens when you throw all you have at one."


    "So you just take a bunch of doomed people and throw them to their death against an Exhuman they can''t beat?"


    "No, we stand off against them as long as possible. We buy time for the window to shut. We evacuate civilians and make a grand spectacle for the nation to witness how destructive and evil Exhumans are. Because of that kind of propaganda, most of the time, Exhumans simply surrender, as you did."


    "And then what? You fight them for days, just letting your own men die?"


    "If we have to."


    "Until when?"


    "Until the window closes. And then we send in the real kill teams. Men and women you''ve never heard of. Assassins, black as night, who use the real exotic weapons. You never found it strange that the news would eagerly report out about an Exhuman event resolved with the deployment of a new carbon-dissolving gas, but never any footage of it being used? And even then, they only would know of it when the effects were so drastic or so lingering we wouldn''t be able to conceal them."


    "And nobody knows about this? Why?"


    "Would you sign up to join the XPCA if you knew you were just throwing your life away to just buy a few seconds. By design?"


    Now it was my turn to put my elbows on the desk and scratch at my head. "Why are you telling me all of this? And why now, when the XPCA is falling apart?"


    "Because I have one final trick up my sleeve, but the only way it plays out is if you decide to cooperate with me. Forgive me, my intentions were to keep you here another few months at least and let you form your own opinions and allow your loyalty to grow organically, but we don''t have time for that."


    He was sitting back up again, and I mirrored him, at least as worried as I was intrigued.


    "I must ask for your loyalty now, full and unwavering, if we are to have any chance to save the XPCA and save this nation. Now is the last moment we have to put my plan into motion, and if it should fail...I have no other plans left. America will be defenseless as Exhumans run unstoppable across her."


    He extended his hand.


    I hesitated. "I can''t just trust you, you know. I can''t offer you my loyalty, because honestly, I still hate you and hate all that you represent."


    I looked him in the eyes, small and dark.


    "But I also agree with you in everything you''ve said so far. I don''t think America can live without some form of XPCA, I''ve seen and met too many Exhumans and humans alike to believe otherwise. But it has to change. Things can''t keep running on fear and executions the way they have been. The XPCA is dying, not because of what my friends are out there doing, but because of what you''ve been doing all these years."


    With the back of my hand against his, I pushed his away.


    "So no, I cannot simply give you my loyalty. But if you are willing to work with me, as a partner, as two men who want to defend others from danger, then I will give you everything I have."


    "That is everything I require," he said, and held out his hand again. "Partners, then?"


    "Partners," I said and clasped his. "Now let''s hear what your last-ditch plan is, and I''ll tell you how much I hate every single part of it.


    "On the contrary," he said with a small smile, the first I''d seen in over a week, and maybe the second or third I''d ever seen him give. "I actually think you''ll quite like it.

 109. 2251, Present Day. XPCA HQ, D.C.. Athan.

    Straight into the belly of the beast, apparently. I wasn''t expecting this, especially when I''d just grown accustomed to domestic life. Feeling like a child, I tottered behind Blackett as he got us temporary IDs, walked us through metal detectors and biometric scanners, signed his name and gave a bio seal on a dozen documents for each of us.


    And the five of us stood in a loose circle, each of us looking around at the huge number of armed soldiers in the entrance, the men and women walking by in uniform, the cold metal and black acrylic of the place. I hoped Tem could keep her head on enough to not pull a vanishing act; she looked like she was hyperventilating and ready to fall apart at any moment.


    It was obvious where Blackett had picked up his fashion sense, at least. All of us already being in black made us fit right in, in that one regard.


    Finally done with getting us entered, Blackett effortlessly passed through the stations himself and joined us at the foot of a dozen elevators, where we remained huddled like a lost island in an ebbing sea of XPCA personnel.


    He pressed the button and waited, standing straight and tall. A moment later, one of the doors opened silently, and a soft tone announced its arrival. Blackett gestured us in and joined us. He pressed the button for the top floor, as the doors closed, and gave the scanner his thumbprint before it began to move.


    Raven''s Nest, they called it. A tall, spindly building of the most expensive, exotic materials, gothic architecture, black glass, and sleek metal. Built within spitting distance of Capitol Hill and The Pentagon, the XPCA headquarters was an ominous and impressive edifice which reflected the nation''s stance on Exhumans with its harsh lines.


    It was rumored that despite almost every surface being made of glass, the materials used in construction were so crazy, they could stop a direct missile strike. The glass was specially polarized with a smart adaptive surface so that anything it interpreted as documents or sensitive information of any kind would be indecipherably blurred from the outside.


    An insane Exhuman had once flown to the top of the building, his powers giving him immunity to the hail of fire from the building''s defenses, and ripped open one of the walls to the top offices. The rumor was, the structure gel which replaced the wall filled in so smart and so fast, he couldn''t actually damage the building faster than it could patch itself.


    It was a marvel of technology and defense, The Pentagon 2.0, and we, a motley band of five Exhumans and our crazy leader were riding an elevator right to the top of it.


    "It''s a good thing there''s no way to tell an Exhuman just by looking at ''em," Tower whispered.


    "Please do be cognizant of the constant surveillance?" Blackett said, gesturing towards a tiny hole in the elevator panel.


    I wasn''t paying attention to any of it, really. Ever since we''d arrived, I''d felt like something was watching me. Something more that the mics and the cameras. Almost like how Saga sat on my mind, but subtly different from her. I wondered if the XPCA really had technology that could read your mind. The implications were terrifying.


    Nobody else seemed to know or notice, just general nerves on everyone else''s face...and Jack''s easy smile, and Tem looking like she needed to stop at the girl''s room. But none of them had lived in proximity to a psychic like I had.


    After a much shorter ride than I felt like it should be, we arrived at one of the highest floors in the building, the sky lobby, for top members of the XPCA only. Here, under yet more watchful and armed eyes, soldiers in full exosuits at attention, we caught another lift which took us to the second-highest floor in the building, and Blackett''s office.


    There were two women here already, one behind a desk, and one seated in a chair waiting for us.


    "Director Blackett, sir," said the desk-lady, and stood to open the office door for us all. "Miss Dawn has been here for about fifteen minutes already."


    The lady waiting perked up at the mention of her name.


    "Please give her my apologies and ask her to wait a bit longer," Blackett said, and ushered us into his office, closing the door behind all of us.


    I wondered if Blackett got his home furniture from the same exact supplier he had at work. Here at least, the dark wood, metal, and glass fit in with the super post-modern look the entire building was trying to exude, at least a lot better than the old wooden floors and stone walls of Blackett manor. Same spartan ornamentation, same collection of necessary foibles and that was about it. It was much larger in here, and he had a couple circles of couches and a whole array of chairs facing the desk, but otherwise, the same, just more of it.


    To my surprise, he had us sit in a circle of chairs near the door instead of all at his desk. If he was being serious about working with us as partners, instead of master and servants, I appreciated the gesture.


    The mental presence which had briefly vanished when we got out of the elevator returned in full force.


    "Gentlemen, ladies," he began, a little awkwardly, since he''d never addressed us that way before. "I want to let you know that today...is regrettably our last day together. For good or ill, the time has come for my plans to be set into motion, and in order for that to occur, I must forfeit you."


    "Master Blackett!" squealed Tem, shaking her head.


    "It is just Blackett now, or Director Blackett if you must," he said sternly. She continued shaking her head at him.


    They had all been surprised when he had announced we were going, but he hadn''t told them much of anything else. I didn''t know what he was planning either, but I at least knew the cause. Me...and my friends, and the imminent deconstruction of the XPCA.


    "Hopefully by now, each of you shares in my vision for the world, as I believe I have made it clear to you over the last months or years we have shared. If you do not," he looked at me specifically, "you may leave now, and I will not resent you for it."


    Nobody stirred.


    "The fact is, as I have spoken to Chariot at length, the XPCA is failing, and will be decommissioned as a federal body in the immediate future. An announcement is expected in a matter of days. For any of you wondering why, you have only to turn on the news or read a holo. Public outcry against the XPCA is reaching a peak, and many of our closest-guarded secrets have been released to the public, and perhaps worst of all, we have proven that we cannot defend ourselves, politically, publicly, or digitally."


    He looked down at the round ultra-modern table seemingly made entirely of shelves and glass which sat between all of us.


    "We are considered an embarrassment by the federal government. The overwhelming movement is to have us replaced by a body with greater operating transparency such as the military. Intelligence branches such as the CIA and NDIA are cutting ties and burying their own secrets. The situation seems inescapable."


    "No way," whispered Tower. Mage glared at him before turning back to Blackett.


    "So why are we here?" I asked. "Why bring...presumably this office is bug free?"


    "You may speak openly here, yes."


    "Why bring five Exhumans into the heart of the XPCA?"


    "Because you five are the only thing, I believe, that can save the XPCA. The people want transparency, they want honesty. Those are two things the XCPA cannot afford to give, doing either would make it impossible for us to do our jobs. Secrecy and misdirection are the key to the XPCA''s operation," he said, looking at me again. "However, I believe that by changing how the XPCA functions, in its entirety, there remains hope, and the protection we offer can remain intact for the people of America."


    "Or," he added, "at least I hope so."


    "Such a damn patriot," mused Mage.


    "Mage!" yelled Tem.


    "Temperance, I appreciate your support, but I do not own any of you. She may speak her mind freely."


    "So what is the plan?" I asked.


    "The plan is simple, fundamentally," he said and hesitated. "We simply, uh. Create a new outlet for Exhumans other than execution."


    "You collect them, you mean," I said.


    "We already collect them. Now they have somewhere to go other than six feet under."


    "They go into your personal army," I said, things beginning to fit together. "That''s why we''re here. We''re the proof that you can control Exhumans, that we can prove useful to the XPCA instead of being better off dead!"


    "Is this true, Master Blackett?" asked Jack.


    "The details are incorrect, but yes," he admitted. "Adding Exhumans to our own ranks reduces human deaths, reduces our need to execute compliant Exhumans, and demonstrates that the XPCA can and will change. This recent surge in pro-Exhuman support, and especially support for Chariot is the only thing which makes this possible, to even suggest allowing Exhumans to live, much less become integrated--"


    "It was only impossible because of your own damn propaganda," I spat. "There have been dozens, maybe even hundreds of Exhumans who would have lived peacefully like normal people if you hadn''t encouraged them to kill themselves or turn themselves in. Or have their friends and family do it for them," I said, my heart seething.


    "They will now have another option," Blackett said reassuringly. "The world isn''t ready for Exhumans sharing the streets freely, but some, tightly controlled, providing a public service--"


    "Is this why you had us trained up as servants of all damn things? So we''d be easier to manage?"Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    "Chariot, chill man. Let him finish a sentence," Tower said, putting a huge hand on my shoulder.


    "Chariot, there is one more thing I think you should know, which I think will change your mind."


    I didn''t even want to hear it. Blackett''s plan was to turn us from corpses into institutionalized slaves. How we could see so eye-to-eye on so many things, only for him to completely miss the Exhuman side of everything was beyond me.


    "There is strong evidence to support the Ramanathan window does not apply to other Exhumans. Do you know what that means?"


    "It means now we won''t have to wait for a baby Exhuman to be a few days old before you have us slaughter it?"


    "No, it means the XCPA can become what people have always believed it was. True security. Actual protection, not just a lie, a false peace of mind. Once we are in place, we can respond to Exhuman events with Exhuman responders, and instead of them simply tying up the target until they can eventually be put down, while incalculable damage and lives are lost, the responder can actually legitimately fight back, using their greatest strength, their own powers, and save actual lives."


    "Think about it. XPCA elite Exhumans, trained in their own powers to perfection, armed with complementary equipment, and operating in teams of two or more as warranted, versus a single enraged or confused Exhuman. There is no risk anymore of events dragging on for days or weeks while entire cities burn. They wouldn''t stand a chance, and the sooner they could be defeated, the less collateral damage. Tens of thousands of lives saved per year, at the very minimum."


    I did think about it. And while he was completely wrong, he was also right.


    "Blackett, you said we could be partners in this. Would you like to hear my counter thoughts?"


    He looked at the others a little nervously but nodded.


    "People, humans, that is, don''t get up and decide to blow up a city block randomly. They could if they wanted to, terrorist groups and fanatics have taught us how possible that is, but in general they don''t. Why do you think that is?"


    "There is little point in it?"


    "There''s little point in an Exhuman doing it either, but they do all the time anyway. Guess again?"


    "Just make your point," he said, running a hand through his hair.


    "It''s your own damn psychology you already use against Exhumans. They think they can''t, think they wouldn''t be able to get away with it, so they don''t. Now, I can''t speak for all Exhumans, but the ones I''ve known...who have killed people...usually they did so because it was easy. Because people had what they wanted, and there just wasn''t any reason not to take it."


    Blacket was already smiling softly, liking where this was going.


    "If, and that''s still just an if. But if we do as you say, and we implement some kind of Exhuman police force, that levels the playing field. More than levels it even, as you pointed out. The same difference between normal people and normal police. I could see a lot of Exhumans surrendering on the spot when it''s other Exhumans coming in to arrest them."


    "I''m glad you see it that way," Blackett began, but I raised a hand to stop him.


    "But we need something better to do with Exhumans who are outed aside from offer them a choice between serving or death. That''s just slavery at that point, and before you tell me that''s the only way people will accept this, I''d like to remind you that kicking the slavery issue down the road for future generations to deal with has historically not gone well for America. And when that happens, it will be a conflict between all the Exhumans and their sympathizers versus all the humans. I don''t think I need to tell you how that might go."


    He leaned back and smiled. "Excellent points, and very quotable ones as well. I hope you don''t mind if I were to use that very argument when I propose this plan to the generals."


    "Quote away, quotemeister," I said, leaning back in my chair myself. "Look, you can register people, chip and tag us if you need to, but Exhumans need to be treated the same as humans on a fundamental level. That''s all I know. Any plan that has that, I''m fully behind."


    He nodded, and turned to the others.


    "You have all listened quietly and patiently. We are all partners in this. I value your input as well."


    "Honestly," said Tower, "I didn''t think of half the stuff Chariot did, but it all sounded good to me."


    "I am opposed to registering Exhumans," Jack said. "Though I admit, I cannot think of a scenario I both approve of, and would be accepted by people in general."


    "Are they going to be actual Exhuman police?" Tower asked, suddenly.


    "What?" I asked.


    "Like, if I''m an Exhuman, like I am, and I get a speeding ticket. Do I have to get ticketed by an Exhuman police?"


    We looked at each other all confused for a moment.


    "I...I think...and correct me if I misunderstand, but um, the Exhumans, they would only be part...be part of the XPCA. They would, um...would respond to XPCA incidents. Not, um, not s-s-speeding tickets. Am I wrong?"


    Tem looked to the rest of us for reassurance and we all nodded.


    "Right. Guess that makes sense. Thanks, Tem!" Tower said and almost knocked her out of her chair with a clap on the back.


    "So nobody has any objections to me going and proposing...the five of you join the XPCA as a new task force immediately?"


    We all shook our heads.


    "I am...I am truly moved. I remind you, you may walk out the door now and with the impending dissolution of the XPCA, it is likely you will never be found or stopped."


    None of us moved.


    He took a deep breath. "Well then, I shall contact the director immediately. To each of you, I offer my sincere gratitude."


    "Just don''t let us down, okay?" I asked.


    "I shall do my best." He gave us a crisp salute and walked out. He was only gone for a moment before he came back in with the girl who had now been waiting for over twenty minutes out there.


    "I had almost forgotten. This is one of my subordinates, Colonel Dawn. She will be appointed to lead the proposed task force, assuming all goes well. Please acquaint yourselves and hope for the best." He scooted off, leaving her with us.


    "Please, call me Cosette," she said and smiled politely.


    She was pretty average in every way. Average height, weight, brown hair that fell past her shoulders in gentle curls. Standard uniform, though she kept the top unzipped about halfway down, which didn''t exactly show cleavage, but did show a little more skin, and a hat, kind of hard to make the details out because it was black, even if I''m sure it wasn''t part of the uniform. It wasn''t a beret, like special forces wore, but it did flop to one side. Skin not dark, not pale, a few freckles.


    She was pretty, I thought, in a girl-next-door kinda way, though would be a lot better without the stiff military uniform. Jesus, did I only just meet this girl and was already insinuating she should be naked? Maybe AEGIS was right about me.


    "Um, so," I said breaking the silence where we all just stared at each other. "How many Exhumans are in this room?" I asked her.


    "Five?" she said, looking like she was counting to make sure.


    "Oh good. I was really hoping Blackett told you that much at least."


    "Director Blackett," Tem hissed.


    "Oh, haha." she laughed. "I understand. Yeah, I''ve been working on this scheme with Blackett since the beginning. Some parts were even my idea. The uh, good parts."


    I laughed, even if the joke was dumb, and she smiled.


    "So assuming this all takes off the ground," she said, pulling up a chair without an invitation, which I liked, "I guess we''ll be working together? What do I call each of you guys?"


    We looked at each other, and all realized this was the moment where we kept up Blackett''s silly nomenclature or went on our own terms.


    "Oh, hard question?" she asked.


    "No. They''re just stupid. I''m Mage."


    "Call me Jack, please."


    "I''m Tower."


    "Um...Temperance, but you can call me, um...call me Tem, or whatever you''d like."


    "Chariot, I guess," I said, since everyone else was sticking with it.


    "Nice. Major arcana."


    "You''re a major?" Jack asked.


    "No," she laughed. "Colonel. Major arcana. From tarot?"


    We all looked at each other, lost again.


    "Tarot cards, they''re this silly old supposedly magic set of cards, like an ouija board or crystal zoetrope? Anyway, the big cards in the deck, like the ace through jacks are all these specific cosmic things that supposedly have all this symbology and stuff around them. They''re all collectively called the major arcana. Temperance, Justice, the Chariot, The Hanged man, The Queen of Cups, the Fool."


    "Wonder if Blackett knew the Fool was an option before he named you," I said, nudging Tower, who just laughed.


    "Sorry, that was super random, I know. I just love old mythological crap like that."


    I looked at Jack to see if he was going to ''language!'' her, but apparently he just saved that for us.


    "I wonder if I should have a secret major arcana name too. How about," she cast her hands in front of her dramatically. "The Empress!"


    Blank stares for everyone.


    "Eesh, tough crowd. Maybe I should be the Hanged Man now."


    This time we did laugh, but it was cut short by an alarm blaring through the building. Outside, through the glass, I could see auto-turrets deploying from every available surface.


    "W-what is that?" Tem yelled over the alarm.


    "An...an Exhuman event? Here?" Cosette yelled back. "We need to get to the basement, there''s a shelter. Stairway only, everyone go!"


    We filed out of the office, and found the secretary already gone. The floor indicator on each elevator showed only a flashing ''XX''. A concealed doorway I hadn''t even noticed earlier on the far wall was popped open, revealing an emergency stairway behind it, echoing with the sounds of hundreds of urgent footsteps within.


    We headed in, but only made it a few feet before I heard yelling behind us. I recognized Blackett''s voice.


    "All of you, come with me, to the top floor, now!" he shouted.


    We turned and started to move up instead of down. Cosette seemed even more confused than the rest of us but followed.


    "What''s up, sir?" she shouted over all of us, and the continual ear-ringing alarm at him.


    "There''s an Exhuman event occurring right in the building," he shouted back down at us, already halfway up the stairs to the top floor. "They''ve taken the entire XPCA command hostage while we were meeting. I was the only one who made it out. I came back to get you all!"


    I swallowed hard and we reached the final landing and funneled back out into another elevator hallway. An office door stood open, and a meeting room adjacent remained closed. Cosette and Blackett advanced on it slowly, pistols drawn from under their uniforms.


    Tower took a few thunderous steps forward and blocked Blackett with an outstretched arm. "You two get to safety. Leave this to us Exhumans. We''ll make you proud."


    "...make you proud," echoed Tem.


    "I...I thank you," Blackett said. "Regardless, I will remain on-hand to explain all of this to the commands when this is over. Miss Dawn, please evacuate."


    "Not on your life, buddy," she said, checking the chamber of her gun by cycling the action. "If you''re staying up here, so am I. Sir."


    Blackett shook his head, and I had a profound moment of connectedness, as I realized that he, like me, was surrounded by stubborn idiots who loved him. I missed my friends for the first time in a while, being too busy and assuming they were all just doing well in my absence, and found my heart ached to think of them.


    But...I was still too busy. There was an Exhuman in there, obviously an immensely powerful one, who could bypass or defeat the entirety of XPCA security effortlessly. We might not all come out of this alive, but I also doubted the world had ever seen such a thing as five Exhumans all working in unison.


    We exchanged one final glance, steely looks on everyone...oddly including Tem, but still excluding Jack, the absolute weirdo, and kicked in the door, rushing inside.


    An oval table as big as the room with a hollow center, XPCA generals in their dapper best, seated all around it. There, standing in the middle was the last possible thing I ever expected to see.


    As my teammates paused to size up the situation, she just smiled and looked directly at me.


    [''Sup?]

 110. 2251, Present Day. XPCA HQ, D.C.. Athan.

    "Sup?" asked Jack.


    I looked around the room. The generals looked scared shitless, which was good, that meant they were both alive, and also not brain-dead.


    "Hey guys? Leave this to me, please," I said, stepping forward. Someone grabbed my arm and held me back. I looked and saw Tem, her face burning with determination.


    "No dying," she repeated.


    "I''m not going to die. This is an old friend of mine. How''s it been, Saga?"


    [Well, your sister raped me, so not so great. But I did break into the XPCA and killed a few dozen people, so that helped.]


    "Wait, what? Lia did?" I stepped over the body of a general who watched the two of us talk with renewed terror, and sat on the desk opposite Saga.


    [Yeah. Fuck me for trusting humans, right? Letting one human into your head is one too many, I decided.]


    "You lost me at ''Lia raped me''. She would never do that."


    Saga frowned at me, and then with a gesture like she was flicking water at me, I felt and saw everything. Every inch of quivering flesh, every tearing slash of Lia''s against Saga''s mind. Her desperate pleas and ultimate defeat. Her utter violation, Lia kicking away the last vestiges of Saga''s broken will as she attempted to hold it together. Her moments of agonized vulnerability, pain in her mind, her heart, her soul like she''d never had before.


    In a moment I was back, but if felt like I''d lived the experience for hours. My heart slammed in my chest and I panted to catch my breath.


    "What did you do to Chariot!" I heard someone scream, and then Saga gasped as a blade protruded through her heart, Jack standing behind her with an angry scowl.


    "Fuck, Jack!" I screamed. "Everyone please, leave her alone."


    "She''s dead, bro¡­" Tower said. Saga fell to the floor, the knife in Jack''s hand dripping blood.


    A moment passed. Just as the generals started to get up and cheer, she coughed and shuddered and stood up again.


    [Another Exhuman,] she grinned. [Nice!]


    Jack took a hesitant step back.


    "You can''t kill her, guys. Please let us talk."


    [Let them have their fun,] Saga said with a grin. [Wow, all four of them, huh? What a find. No wonder you didn''t look for me, you had all these great toys to play with. This one''s cute,] she turned towards Tem. [She the new fucktoy? Oh, no, she''s Blackett''s, isn''t she?]


    "F-f-f-fuck¡­?" Tem stammered. I saw a hazy storm billowing in the room.


    "JACK!" I yelled. He was already there, flickering in and out of existence, moving all the generals away from behind Saga in the blink of an eye.


    [Oh this ought to be goo--]


    A beam the size of the room erupted from nothingness, blinding us all, and eradicating the entire far side of the conference room. The beam lasted entire seconds, and tore at the air like thunder. None of us could move, see, or hear anything, aside from the sheer waves of force pounding against our bodies from the damn insane power of the blast. When it was done, the smell hung in the air of ozone, burning, at least one person in the room had definitely shit themselves..


    There was...nothing left, it looked like. The building wasn''t even reforming itself, there was just a huge round hole, which took out an entire wall, and a chunk of the ceiling and floor, even.


    Could...even Saga come back from that? Utter eradication? There wasn''t anything left of her to come back. I waited for uncertain seconds, growing more anxious with every moment.


    And then, like she was Jack, she was just back. She fell a couple feet into the debris of the destroyed floor, but stood up and dusted herself off like it was nothing.


    [Wow, that''s a new one. Gonna have to put that in my death journal,] she said.


    "Saga, Jesus. Do you have to piss off every single new person you meet?"


    [Only the amusing ones. The unamusing ones get dead.]


    "How are we supposed to beat that?" asked Tower.


    "Just let them talk, idiots," said Mage, and tilted a chair sideways, dumping a general onto the floor. He scrambled for cover in the corner of the room with several others, and Mage sat herself down in the freshly-vacated seat.


    [Oh, I like her. Mage, huh? Wanna be besties? I''m in the market.]


    "Talk to Chariot. I''m not on the menu."


    [Spicy and feisty. I like your style, kid. So Chariot, I''d ask how things have been, but I can see you''ve been having quite a blast.]


    "If you can see in my head, please notice that you really shouldn''t be here."


    [You think Exhumans come to the XPCA because they''re supposed to be there? We come here in chains because of stupid fucking humans like these. Worthless, ignorant, savage animals.]


    One of the generals was sneaking for the door, belly-crawling slowly, whenever we were speaking. It might have been smart, if it weren''t so stupid. As Saga spoke, she twirled her fingers into a fist in his direction, and he stood up.


    "I''m a worthless, savage animal!" he screamed, and then bolted out the hole in the tower. We heard his screaming for a few stories before Tower followed him with huge bounding strides, and Jack simply vanished.


    [Didn''t even do that right,] Saga complained. [He forgot ignorant.]


    "Saga, please don''t do this. What Lia did...that was wrong...but don''t punish these people for her mistake."


    [You misunderstand the situation, Athan,] she said, looking at me menacingly. [I''m not punishing these people, I''m removing filth from my sight. Like when one steps in dogshit. You don''t punish it, you wipe it off. Speaking of which, if you shit yourself earlier, you may go as well.]


    Two generals stood up, and with them the smell of fresh shit became much stronger. I grabbed one of them, but he punched me straight in the face, and bounded after the other out the window. They also screamed as they fell. I hated that Saga was letting go of their minds after they were doomed so they could suffer in their deaths. It was just twisted, just evil.


    "Saga, stop killing people and talk to me."


    [What''s there to say, Athan? What speech have you got in your head this time to convince me humanity is worth it? Do you have a better human in mind than Lia? Last time she was your poster child for goodness, and you see what she did? Not so good after all.]


    "I know you''re hurt. I can feel it pouring off of you. I can feel your hate and your rage and your misery, but that''s no reason to force it on others, Saga. This is wrong and you know it. Please, I''m begging you to stop."


    [Wow, you can tell I''m mad. Very compelling.] Another general stood and ran towards his death. Tem was in tears behind me, covering her mouth and shaking her head. She needed to pull herself together before she killed all of us. Suddenly, before he got there, the structure foam erupted and the wall closed shut in front of the general.


    Better late than never, I supposed, but I was afraid of what Saga would make the generals do without a convenient hole to drop them out of. The general stopped and stared at the new wall, completely lost.


    [Ooh, very nice. I like this one, too, Athan. I might have bought it too, if I wasn''t inside her head.]


    The general flinched as Saga slapped him with another mental command, and then he ran and jumped just like the others, passing right through the freshly-reconstructed wall like it wasn''t even there. Tem muttered an apology, and the illusion wavered and disappeared.


    I tried not to listen to him screaming as he fell, but there wasn''t anything else to do. I cocked my head as I listened though, a familiar note, barely audible but getting stronger.


    [Tsk, that bitch doesn''t know where she''s unwelcome,] Saga said, picking up on it as well.


    It was the faintest roar of engines. It could have been anything, VTOLs, approaching reinforcements, even an incoming airborne division, except that I knew this roar, it was familiar to me like the sound of my own breathing. I knew for sure at least that general survived.


    The roar grew louder and louder for six or seven seconds until, with a flash of blue, Karu was there, resplendent in her armor, hovering effortlessly, right in the empty hole in the building, both arms pointed straight at Saga.


    "Saga?" she asked, lowering her weapons.


    [Yo. Lotta reunions today.]


    "You...know her as well?" Tem asked me.


    "Karu!" I yelled.


    "ATHAN?" she screamed back, and landed in the building to run towards me.


    [Hang on there one sec, kitty-cat, that''s my mouse you''re playing with,] Saga said with a menacing twirl of her fingers. [Don''t you fucking dare sing that song at me.] Karu staggered towards me and then shuddered to a stop.


    "Saga, what the fuck! Let her go!"


    [She''s a human, Athan. She''s filth like the rest. Filth deserves to die.]


    Karu rolled on the ground, reaching towards me, turning blue. She gasped and clawed.


    I was on Saga in an instant, grabbing her by the hair and slicing through her with a blade of lightning. I felt the warm spray of her blood as it poured from her half-cauterized neck. As her breathing stopped and her body fell to the ground, Karu gasped in a lungful of air and lay wheezing.


    I held the head aloft and stared into its bugged-out glossy eyes. A moment later, they were back to normal, and Saga smiled at me.


    "Saga, what the fuck. Do not fucking kill Karu. I am dead serious."


    [You couldn''t stop me if you tried.]


    "I am prepared to spend the rest of my life finding out if I have to, Saga. Don''t do this. I don''t want to be your enemy, but if you threaten to kill Karu, I will be."Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    She gave a huge sigh like I was massively inconveniencing her. [Fine, but only because I''d lose you if I did. The filth can live.]


    "And the rest, as well."


    [You kidding me? You just watched, what, five of these guys jump and hardly budged.] Something ran past me and screamed on its way down. Karu reached towards him from the ground, but couldn''t do anything but gasp and choke. [Sorry, six?]


    "I don''t understand, Saga. We had these plans, these dreams. And now...now I''m here in the heart of the XPCA to make it happen...and you''ve ruined everything. You''re standing there, destroying everything that humans and Exhumans could be. After everything we''ve been through, how can you do that?"


    [Frankly, the way I see it, after everything I''ve been through, how could I not do it? The only redeeming part of a human is that, if they''re lucky, one day they might become an Exhuman. The rest of them are all worthless, for all I care.]


    "What about your promise, to me? To help me achieve my dreams?"


    [I think I paid that off in full when I didn''t kill your sister after she mind-fucked me.]


    "I can''t believe you would even consider killing Lia, much less trying to hold that against me. She was your friend."


    [She was my best friend. And she still betrayed me, Athan. What do you think that says for the rest of this fucking world? How do you think I could give one single solitary shit about these corpulent death-merchants up here in this black goddamn edifice to how small their pricks are, when down there, there are good people like Lia, and I can''t even get along with them?]


    "She made a mistake, Saga. Please don''t hate her for that. She was...drunk, lonely, drowning in guilt for what she thought she did to me," I recalled the exact sensation of what it felt like to be Lia that day through the memories Saga gave me. Minus the...having sex with someone part. That was really a memory no brother should ever have. Jesus.


    [And that makes it okay?]


    "You make mistakes too. You sicced a goddamn mentally-augmented bear on her, and it would have murdered her."


    Tem looked at Mage like what?


    [Wish it did, now.]


    "The point is, everybody makes mistakes. Even all-knowing Xavier-class Exhumans."


    [Yeah, well, that doesn''t make it okay. She violated me, Athan.]


    "It''s not okay. I know that. All the shit we ever do to each other, rarely is it okay. But we stay friends, we stay sane because we let it go. For every reason it was incredibly incalculably wrong, there''s another reason for you to forgive her and try to make things work. You''re just too hung up on your prejudice against humans and looking for any reason to get hurt and hate them."


    [You''re honestly telling me just to forgive her.]


    "Did she forgive you for the bear?"


    [You fucking ate my bear.]


    "Then eat her boyfriend, I don''t give a shit." Again, Tem and Mage exchanged a glance. "Really, I hate him so much, you have no idea. I have memories in my head now, thanks to you, from his perspective of fucking my sister. You have any idea how unsettling that is?"


    She chuckled. [Slightly.]


    "Saga, humans are imperfect as fuck. You''ve got that right. Yet they manage to coexist with one another because despite all their imperfections, they have the stones to put up with people they hate and just fucking deal with it. Are you more incapable than a human, then?"


    [More incapable...of dealing with it? Boy, I have died a thousand deaths. You don''t know the beginning of dealing with it.]


    "And you''re going to die a thousand more, I''m sure. But humans, they only get the one chance to die, only one chance to live. Please don''t let your hate for them cloud over your ability to recognize that, shitty and flawed as they are, they have lives too."


    She sighed.


    [How does he do it, ladies and gentlemen. Every time I''m all set to wipe out humanity, he talks me back from the ledge.]


    I let out a long sigh. "It''s because you find me sexy."


    [You know,] she said, looking me up and down, [that might actually just be it. Hard to keep my own argument straight when I''m fighting the throbbing pulse of my own lady bits.]


    "Is...did¡­"


    "Yes, Tem, I think we''re okay. Saga''s done murdering generals for today. How many of them do we have left?"


    "Two," coughed Karu from the floor, "survived the fall."


    "And there''s four left up here. Saga, you killed half of the XPCA command," I sighed.


    [In my defense, I killed them in order from greatest to least of a fucking bitch.]


    "As much as I hate to," I heard a voice say as the door opened, "I have to agree with the Exhuman." It was Blackett, stepping into the room over the bodies of the remaining trembling generals. Cosette followed him, her gun trained on Saga the whole time.


    [Please,] she said. [What are you going to do with that thing?]


    Saga''s head snapped back as Cosette put a bullet between her eyes. She was up again a moment later, and Cosette dropped her again.


    "Please stop shooting my friend," I asked as Saga got up a third time.


    "Once more?" asked Cosette.


    [Yeah, go for it. I kind of missed being killed by XPCA fuckheads.]


    There was another report and again, Saga fell motionless to the ground, which was now more red with her blood than anything.


    [That was sarcasm, you fuck,] Saga snapped at Cosette, when she got up again.


    "As I was saying," Blackett said, clearing his throat. "I wouldn''t phrase it as ''greatest fucking bitch'', but your friend did prove selective in eliminating the greatest sources of hubris and corruption in the upper echelons."


    [Why am I not surprised that the grifters and the guys who were screaming in my head ''OH GOD PLEASE NOT ME, ANYONE BUT ME'' were the same?]


    I helped Karu to her feet and we held each other for a long time. After what seemed like no time at all, she pulled away, but I didn''t want to let go. Never wanted to let go. She smiled and pulled up her visor, giving me a quick kiss on the lips before breaking it off.


    "Missed you guys," I mumbled.


    "I missed you as well. I am not certain if you had access to the ''net--"


    "I saw you! You were so amazing.¡±


    To my surprise, this made Karu fidget and blush more than kissing me in a room of carnage and destruction did, but she looked entirely pleased with herself.


    "I see by the fact that you are here in the XPCA headquarters, and not in their prisons even, but meeting with the XPCA command...I hope...I was influential in this outcome."


    She looked around. "Ehm. Perhaps, not this outcome."


    [Yeah. Don''t take credit for my work. I put a lot of effort into this plan. I walked up here and killed everything in my way, all by myself.]


    Karu didn''t even acknowledge her. I''m sure they would be at each other''s throats soon enough, but for now, just staring at me seemed to take all of Karu''s attention.


    Blackett cleared his throat. "Miss Karu, did the first individual thrown from the window survive?"


    Karu shook her head. "The two Exhumans outside caught the second man, and I caught the second-to-last last man. The rest died instantly." She turned back towards me. "And a suit! And you''ve been working out and eating properly? My, what have you been up to."


    [He''s been banging the silver-haired girl. She''s super slutty. You should see the things they do. I''m only looking in their heads, and it''s making me all wet and tingly.]


    Karu and Tem both froze, and Karu shuddered as she turned to face Tem. Tem''s face looked mortified in the split moment before she turned invisible.


    "He WHAT?" Karu stomped towards the invisible girl, weapons heating up.


    "Saga''s lying, Karu. Please."


    Karu''s face twitched, and without looking over, she extended an arm and blew Saga''s torso into a red mist with a blast that I could feel in my chest and made my ears ring. Saga''s legs remained standing for a few seconds and then ingloriously fell over, staining more of the carpet with gore.


    "Your friends...your friends are¡­are s-s-scary, Chariot." Tem was behind me again, I could tell.


    "Yes, they certainly are," I said glowering, once Saga had put herself back together again. "Next one to kill Saga has to buy dinner, okay? Since apparently fucking not murder isn''t a motivation for anyone anymore. And I mean, for everyone. Including Tower."


    "Ooh," added Mage. I''d almost forgotten she was there.


    "I refuse these terms," Karu said, holding her hand up like we were in a classroom. "This automatically disqualifies Saga from having to pay for dinner."


    "Okay, if someone other than Saga dies, then Saga has to pay."


    "Uhm," said Blackett, desperately trying to regain control of the scene.


    "I''m afraid if you have something to say, you''ll just have to say it," Karu said. "It''s not in these two to shut up for longer than a moment."


    "I am...perturbed by how quickly you can all move from murder to friendship and back," Blackett said, scratching his head.


    "Yeah, old friendships will do that," I said, with a smile.


    [Hey, he''s that guy! He''s THAT guy!]


    "Blackett, yes. We are all familiar," Karu said.


    [No! He was the driver I couldn''t see. I still can''t see him.]


    Saga advanced slowly on Blackett like a stalking cat. Cosette interceded, but Saga made her sit like a dog with a gesture. Tem made an increasingly high-pitched uncomfortable sound as the two drew close. Finally in range, Saga slowly extended one finger and poked Blackett in the chest.


    "Problem?" asked Blackett.


    [You do exist.]


    "I do exist."


    [I''m not crazy. You guys see this, right?]


    "We can see from here that you are apparently crazy," said Karu. "What is your point?"


    [I can''t...in my head. I can''t read his thoughts, his memories, can''t probe him...nothing. It''s like he''s not there.]


    "Must be my lack of thoughts," Blackett said banally. "Anyway, as I have been attempting to announce for the last few interruptions, assuming that Director Albion did in fact die in this terrible attack, as Karu reported, as per emergency provisions, I will now assume my role as Director and head of the Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency."


    He turned to Cosette. "Please comms the ground and let them know the crisis has been handled. And please confirm the victims. It would be terribly inappropriate to attempt to succeed a living man."


    She called and confirmed, Director Albion was in fact dead.


    "Well then, as the new head of the XPCA, I am going to issue an emergency order of the founding of a new task force, composed entirely of Exhumans. These same Exhumans who voluntarily accompanied me here and selflessly sacrificed and toiled to bring this Exhuman event to a close with minimal damage and casualties."


    I thought he was getting kind of hammy, but noticed that Cosette was recording everything on her mobile. He''d even planned that out?


    "This new force, for the first time, represents a turning point in the philosophy of the XPCA. No longer do we hold a zero-tolerance policy for the crime of an Exhuman merely existing. Exhumans who wish to join the new task force will be welcomed and treated as well as any human, and those who are fit for combat will serve in the protection of the United States, and its Human and Exhuman denizens alike. This may come as a shock to many, but I have worked alongside these brave Exhumans for years, and have found them nothing but fearless in their pursuit of justice and their defense of American liberties. I am certain that moving forward, we will find many more Exhumans as meritorious and hard-working as any man or woman, who will be welcome among us. Some seek to cause trouble and imperil the lives and livelihoods of Americans, and those who do had best watch out, as it will be more than humans now coming to stop them."


    As now-Director Blackett finished his speech, Cosette panned the room with her mobile, capturing the reactions of all inside. When he was done, she advanced on Karu. Mean. But smart. The celebrity face of the resistance. I had to laugh a little at her plight.


    "Miss Karu? Do you have a statement to make on the new direction of the XPCA?"


    "Ah," said Karu, caught off-guard. "Well, uh. I am not certain, it is a lot to take in at once. But¡­" she tapped her chin thoughtfully. Trying to get just the right words, I was sure. She put away her thinking pose and stood steady before she began speaking. Already thinking of how this would look in editing. "I cannot say for certain whether Director Blackett''s task force will be a good idea or not, but I can say with certainty that giving innocent Exhumans an option other than death is nothing but a positive in the eyes of the hunters of the association."


    "Thank you, Miss Karu. And Mr. Chariot?"


    Well shit. This was what I got for laughing.


    "I uh, hi. I''m Chariot, I''m one of the Exhumans who will be serving under Director Blackett. I am grateful for the opportunity, and uh, I hope we can work together towards a better world." She turned to go back to Blackett but I shouted. "Wait, actually," and she came back.


    This time, like Karu, I paused for a few seconds before speaking. "Parahumans. That''s what the world called us once, when Exhumanity just started. Para, meaning beside. Beside, not on top, not on bottom, but equals, side by side. We live in the same world, share the same space, breathe the same air, and though we are not the same, we see ourselves as humanity''s partners, it''s protectors, and friends, not as people who are removed from it, as Exhuman implies."


    I took a deep breath. "And it is for that reason, that we wish to be known as the Parahuman Force! Or P-Force for short."


    Cosette made a funny snorting noise which I hoped could be taken out in editing and turned back towards Blackett, who simply commented, "The name is a work in progress, but this task force, and the XPCA as a whole are not. Though recent issues have been brought to light, new leadership and a new worldview will bring about a new era of the XPCA, and a brighter future for humanity and Exhumans...Parahumans alike."


    "What a crap name," Mage said. Nobody jumped to my defense, which stung even more.


    "It''s not a crap name, right Karu?"


    "Have I kissed you yet? I don''t believe so," she said, lifting her visor and blinking slowly at me with her brilliant green eyes and long lashes. There was just a hint of blush on her cheeks, and a smile on her face with just a hint of mischief.


    "Uh, don''t believe so," I lied.


    [Okay, you two get a room or I am so killing the rest of these guys.]

 111. 2251, Present Day. XPCA HQ, D.C.. Athan.

    Jack reappeared not too much longer later, complaining that the tower was too tall, and he had to blink his way up it only a floor or two at a time. Later still, Tower floated in the window, looking miserable.


    "Couldn''t save ''em," he said, shaking his head. "But I can sure as hell avenge ''em--"


    "Tower, no," I said, interceding between him and Saga.


    [But he was about to buy me dinner,] Saga pouted.


    The generals had been let out. Dozens of XPCA soldiers stood outside the door, ''containing'' the ''threat''. They didn''t seem sure if this was a hostage situation anymore, or if there was one Exhuman threat up here, or half a dozen. Blackett was barking instructions into his comms constantly, but nobody seemed to be listening.


    Finally, head in hands, he had Cosette put him on the building-wide comms.


    "This is acting director Blackett. Former director Albion was deceased in the latest Exhuman event. The event has been contained. All response personnel may stand down."


    [Yeah, they''re not moving,] Saga commented.


    "Maybe because everyone in your range can hear you talking," I muttered. "And people usually think voices in their head is a bad sign?"


    [I mean, it usually means you''re crazy, but in this case, just means you''re about to be dead. That''s right. I''m talking to you. You''re about to be dead. Invest in gold.]


    "There is something straight-up not right with that girl. Why aren''t we killing her again?" Tower asked.


    "Alright, brief history lesson for everyone, okay? This is Saga. She''s an Exhuman, and also, she cannot die. How do we know this? Because a hundred years ago, she was locked up in an experimental facility where they tried really hard to make her dead. They tortured the shit out of her, and when it didn''t work, she was locked up there, alone, in the dark, for a hundred years. That''s her beef with humans, that''s her problem with XPCA, and that''s why killing her solves nothing. Questions?"


    [Yeah, have you been working out? Damn I don''t remember that ass being so fine.]


    Karu made a face.


    "Do you ever think what your statements sound like without any context to, say, the dozens of guys with guns outside this room?" I asked her.


    [Yeah. That''s about all I ever think of. Non-contextual guys with guns are hawt.]


    "Follow-up question!" said Tower. "There is something super wrong with that girl, can I please now kill her?"


    "Nobody in this room kills anyone else in this room," said Blackett with authority I just didn''t posses. Tem, Jack, and Tower at least piped down a little bit. "There is still a problem of what we do with her, Chariot. She publicly murdered XPCA officials."


    "So we execute her for it?" I said with a shrug. "Who needs to know it didn''t work?"


    [Hey, young man, you watch your tone. I''ll have you know that nobody in this room is killing anyone else in this room. Boss man said so, and his word is law.]


    "For the record," Blackett said, nursing his temples "if we do make a plan, please do not broadcast it to the entire floor?"


    [Look, I''m still of the opinion that it''d be much easier for me just to kill everyone here still. I could pop those guys like it''s nothing, and then there''s basically no witnesses.] She looked at me with a grin, which slowly withered under my glare. [I''m uh, willing to do a favor for Athan though and not. But please stop wasting my time.]


    "Wasting your time?" Jack echoed. "You murdered half a dozen men in cold blood, and are talking about doing more."


    [Yeah, and you killed...wow. 41 XPCA when they brought you in...oh no, that was just on the streets. After that, you went through the whole base¡­]


    "Saga, dude. Again. Do you have to piss off every single person that you meet?"


    [I didn''t piss him off. Look, he''s smiling.]


    "We can''t just let her go, she''s a maniac," Tower replied.


    "You can''t keep her or kill her either," I said.


    Blackett sighed. "She''s already everything wrong with the system. People won''t feel safe with her on the loose, we can''t punish her because we''re only doing so if she permits it, and she can''t die. Chariot, as much as you hate the proposal of keeping Exhumans separated...but not imprisoned," he added, glancing at her "I don''t see another option."


    "I refuse to accept that," I said. "Like I said, this country once tried separate but equal, remember?"


    "Yes, and I remember your insinuations of a second civil war, but what else do you propose?"


    "Saga has to walk free. She can make a public apology, throw her support behind the new system, whatever you want, but you''re not chaining her up again."


    "Her support would actively damn the new task force. People want her dead, not her endorsement."


    "Then let her go without the statement. Say she just slipped away."


    "Yes, that will go over great. Our new task force responds to an Exhuman event, and for the first time in history, we fail to capture the target," Blackett snapped back.


    "Or we just lie and say we got her?"


    "I am already opposed to the policies of the XPCA, and bear issue with beginning their turning of a new era, as it were, on lies," Karu added unhelpfully.


    "Karu, it''s just Saga."


    "You may be personally blind to Saga''s devious ways, but I am not. Not ten minutes ago did she attempt on my life for the sole reason of me being human. As a hunter, as a proponent of justice, hell, as a human being, how can you expect me to turn a blind eye to that kind of danger on the loose?"


    "But that was before. She came to."


    "And she came to at your words before, yet still here she remains being a danger to all around her. How you can be so frustratingly incompetent in the name of friendship...it baffles me, Ashton. You are both one of the smartest, kindest, strongest, but also most foolish, cruelest, and weakest men I know. It drives me insane. I can''t believe I had forgotten this side of you so quickly."


    "Yeah but...it''s Saga."


    I sighed. I didn''t have anything else to argue with. I knew if this were just some random code Xavier, popping civilians'' heads, I''d be trying to cut her into pieces...but Saga was different. As terrible as she was...and I had to admit, sometimes, even right now, she was truly a terrible person, unrepentant murderer...I''d spent too much time inside her head and in her heart not to understand her side of things.


    "I do not think," Jack said, putting a hand on my shoulder, in a way that was both cold and comforting, "that perhaps you have a clear enough mind for this situation."


    I started to argue, but he was right. I really didn''t. But I also couldn''t just let Saga take the fall for all of this. She was hurt and confused, hiding her agony behind that sarcasm and smirk, and lashing out. She was hiding her heart, but it didn''t work on me.


    "Take me instead," I said.


    "What?" Jack withdrew his hand.


    "The people, they don''t know or care who did it, they just need an Exhuman to take the fall. Cut me out of the holovid and say it was me. I''ll pay for Saga''s crimes."


    "That''s insane," said Jack.


    Blackett looked like he was thinking. Karu simply shook her head and started to speak, when Saga interrupted.


    [No, it''s fine. I''ll go to your little concentration camp.]


    "Saga, no. I know how you feel about this."


    [And I know how you feel, and how stubborn you are. Between the two of us, I know which one Buttkett here would rather put away. If we''re both turning ourselves in, I win.]


    "Saga, you can''t do that. They''ll lock you up. You''ll¡­" I tried to remember her exact words. "You''ll be putting your life in human hands again. You refuse to accept that, right?"


    [I also promised I''d be serving your interests until you die, Athan. You can''t do that if they execute you for my crimes.]


    "Or, they execute me and then you''re free, and you don''t have to follow me anymore."


    Karu popped up on me, scowl twitching on her face.


    "H-hey, Karu," I gave her a diminutive wave.


    "Do not you hey Karu me," she said, and slugged me in the gut. I doubled over and coughed. "She needs to be put away, Ashton. If not now, then I will do myself as soon as you turn your back. As for you...you are in no position to offer up your own life."


    "W-why not?" I wheezed.


    "You are indebted to me, yet. Two more battles, I am still owed, and they are non-transferrable." She pouted and turned her gaze to the ceiling. "Until those are repaid in full, I cannot accept your execution, by any means."


    I felt someone poke me in the back, and turned, seeing Tem re-materialized behind me. She looked scared but also determined. "No dying. You s-said s-s-s-so."


    "I''m going to die someday, Tem, Karu. You can''t just demand I live, that''s not how it works."If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "I can and I will, Ashton. I demand that you live. You have far too much...educational value." She blushed.


    I sighed. "Can''t even be honest with me even now?"


    "Last time I was honest, somebody told me it was a love confession and has yet to let me live it down!"


    "Maybe¡­" Mage cut in. "...you should focus a little?"


    Karu went bright red. "The...the things you make me say in front of people, Ashton! Director Blackett is my new boss!"


    "Yes, and I''m very irritated with all of this nonsense. It sounds to me like the Exhuman Saga is willing to comply and be placed in a secure area."


    [I am. You caught me, officer. Take me away.]


    "I would like to make it clear to both of you," he said, looking at Saga and me "this is not imprisonment, nor do I intend to make a ghetto or camp out of this. I want somewhere that Exhumans can live in safety, both their own and humanity''s. I am afraid...it will be somewhat barren for a while, but hopefully not for too long."


    [I''m cool with barren. I am so sick of the voices in here. (Do you even know how many people live in DC? It''s insane.)]


    "I wonder if it would be possible to get in touch with the government in Canada," I said.


    "Hmm? Why?"


    "We''ll need somewhere to put them. I know a nice excluded little place where Exhumans can live in peace. Might look a little bit like a warzone right now, but there''s food and water."


    "And also possibly radiation," Blackett said.


    "I survived there without any problems."


    Blackett sighed. "I had a soldier use a wide-spectrum radiation grenade on you while we were sure your window was still open so that traces up there wouldn''t affect you."


    I remembered that. The day I was taken in. I was more fixated on the soldier who deployed it, and how he literally melted away when I kicked the ''nade back into him. Insane, to think Blackett was grooming me for this, even back then.


    Karu seemed to have the same thought, and scrutinized him critically, suddenly a lot more on guard. He raised his hands up defensively. "I told you, Chariot. This is my last remaining gambit. Don''t expect any more deeply-laid hidden plans." He smiled. "Mostly."


    "Does that mean...Lia was living up there with us."


    "Worry not, Ashton, Lia and I both had rad detection in our kits. She would avoid it if it were there."


    I let out a sigh and leaned back. Strange to think that people I loved could have died so easily as that.


    [Well if you''re all done being all lovey-dovey, I have a ride waiting for me downstairs. It''s been a trip, Athan. Stay alive, or else I''ll snap and kill everyone you love, okay?]


    "Good seeing you too, Saga." I jumped the desk and gave her a hug. Her arms wrapped around me, cold and long, but also clinging to me just a little desperately. I let her hold on as long as she wanted, which was about half again as long as the embrace should have been, but she finally reluctantly let go.


    "Wait," I said, having a guilty thought as she slipped out of my arms. "Um."


    [AEGIS and Lia are together, in Las Vegas. I shoved their contact info in the memories I gave you earlier.]


    "Can''t you just tell me now, so I don''t have to...relive...that?"


    [Nope. If I had to live that, you get to too. Have fun with your sister.]


    "That''s really fucked," I said blankly.


    [Yeah. She really fucked me. I''m not usually vindictive, but just this once, I''m going to enjoy it. Consider that my payment for me being a good little Exhuman now.] She headed for the door. [Try not to fall in love with Karu, or AEGIS, or this one while I''m away, okay?] she said, messing up Tem''s hair, making the poor girl flinch and try to shy away.


    "None of them is forcing me to experience sex with my sister, Saga."


    She just laughed quietly, a real laugh, and stood at the door. Cosette and Blackett flanked her, and he spoke into the building''s comms again.


    "Attention response personnel. The Exhuman is now being escorted to a transport to be moved to a secure location. Keep weapons trained, and hold fire."


    Without anymore fanfare, they opened the door and left, giving us a glimpse of the dozens of guns pointed at the door before it closed.


    "I guess¡­" Jack said. "...we''re free to do as we wish then?"


    "Here," said Mage, with some seemingly huge effort, like we were barely worth talking to. "Comms." She pulled out a box of XPCA comms, each resting in a moulded velvety-lined plastic well, each identical to the one Blackett gave me before we fought. I had no idea where she''d found these or when. "I left a note for Blackett. He''ll be able to find us," she said, took one, and simply left.


    The rest of us didn''t have much else of an idea what to do, so we each took one as well. I read Mage''s note, as people filed in to take one. it was a list our names, and of comms IDs next to each. I looked down at the comms I''d picked up. On a tiny label on the bottom, hard to read, the text XC4832178. Exactly the same number she''d written next to my name.


    "If you don''t mind, I will take one as well," Karu said. "Or scan the channel in, anyway."


    "Yeah...I don''t think anyone minds," I said, my mind spinning. I pointed at the note where instead of a comms ID, Karu''s name had a frequency listed.


    "That''s my public hailing frequency. It is widely available," Karu said, unimpressed.


    She was the only one who was, however, as we all exited the room and then the building quietly lost in thought. Each of the comms we''d picked up randomly matched what she''d put down for us.


    "Is it just me," Jack said as we all walked together along the river, the shadow of the Raven''s Nest behind us "or would anyone else very much be interested in figuring out Mage''s powers?"


    We all agreed silently. I kept reading and re-reading the ID on the back of my comms.


    "Well, Ashton, with your release and the new era of the XPCA, I would say my era of campaigning is at an end. I will not miss it."


    "You were pretty great though," I said, snapping out of my thoughts. "You have a very regal bearing, and a lot of passion that really comes through. I think...if it''s not inappropriate to say...your dad would be proud."


    "For proselytizing on behalf of an Exhuman and former enemy of the state? I appreciate the compliment but I do not think you know my father."


    "I meant...never mind."


    "Anyway," she said, sidling up on me and clinging to my arm. It was a little uncomfortable with all her armor in the way, and a little hard to get close to her with a couple inches of visor hanging off her face and glowing at me in a very intimidating way, but my heart raced anyway. "My meaning was that I suddenly find my schedule a lot more open. Perhaps you might enjoy filling it, so to speak?"


    She smiled coyly at me and then suddenly blushed and inhaled sharply, dropping my arm. "My schedule!" she shouted. "Filling my schedule! As in, we could procure dinner together, for example!"


    I laughed, and I wasn''t the only one. In our wake trailed Tower, Jack, and Tem, all laughing. Tower''s boisterous booming, Jack''s genuine yet restrained snickering, Tem''s embarrassed giggle. Even Karu had to laugh, after she''d resigned herself to her embarrassment, contributing her earnest full-bodied laugh to the cheery atmosphere.


    "It''s been a while, Karu, and I''d love to, but for tonight, would you be willing to hang out and meet my new friends? I think they might change your mind some on all Exhumans but me being awful people."


    "Oh, very well. But I reserve the right to monopolize you all to myself tomorrow for dinner, is that acceptable?"


    "You never told me you have a girlfriend!" Tower said, wrapping an arm around me and crushing my ribs. Jack was walking backwards in front of us and smiling, while Tem hung on Karu''s other arm and both hesitantly but excitedly plied her for details on how we met, how I asked her out, how long we''d been going out. Between her stuttering and Karu''s frantic denials, it was both indecipherable and adorable.


    "Table for¡­" the waiter looked our crew up and down with a worried expression, his eyes mostly lingering on Karu and her weapons and armor, and Tower, who loomed head and shoulders above the rest of us, but also snapped on Tem, who was visible only momentarily behind the rest of us before retreating, and Jack, walking in with his eyes shut and an impossible grin. "...five?"


    "But I eat for two!" Tower bellowed, and laughed. The waiter smiled patiently and escorted us to the very furthest reaches of their seating, far from any other patrons.


    I didn''t mind the isolation. At least we could talk about whatever we wanted over here without drawing suspicion. Everyone was soon lost in the menus and expressing a love for italian.


    "Who''s paying?" Jack smiled. "I don''t believe anyone murdered Saga."


    "I''ll pay," Karu said, placing her visor on the table and shaking out her hair.


    "I was only jesting."


    "No, it is fine. Consider it my gratitude for the life you have chosen to live. It is not often that Exhumans choose to commit themselves to a life of virtue, and rarer still that a hunter can sit together with them as allies. Though the world may sometimes be dark on the path you have chosen, allow me at least, to express my thanks for you having chosen it."


    "Wow, a little deep there. Haven''t even had drinks yet," Tower rumbled. "But thanks. I do eat a lot."


    "He does," Jack confirmed. "When we cooked at the manor, I prepared enough for eight. And Tem counts only as a half."


    "A manor? That does explain Ashton''s new attire. I confess, I am quite a fan, but what man does not improve for a suit, I suppose?"


    We gradually caught her up on the events of the past few weeks at Blackett manor, though mostly just talked and laughed, cycling back around to catching her up when the conversation randomly returned back to form. Everyone had a great time, and as the food came out, everyone enjoyed that enormously as well.


    "Man," I said, feeling fat and full and lazy. "No offense to you three, but this is the best food I''ve had in a year, easily. You know, before living there, I was out in the wilds eating whatever I could catch? Compared to that, lasagna is literally a slice of heaven."


    "Oh!" squeaked Tem. "You...you s-said you ate...ate a bear?"


    I laughed. "Yeah, his name was Apotheosis. Man, that was crazy. Saga sent him to kill my sister, Lia."


    By the end of the night, I felt like we were all best friends. Everyone took their turns in sharing stories, though Tem''s were mostly halting and she didn''t have much to share but drama at her high school...before it was razed to the ground. It was way after dark before we retook the streets and loitered outside.


    "Where are you all staying?" Karu asked.


    We all looked at each other and kind of shrugged. None of us actually had money or plans, come to think of it. She rubbed her eyes in a very annoyed kind of way.


    "Well, I know where you are staying," she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me in close. "I have a hotel nearby, though I am not certain I''ve ever used the front door."


    "Huh?"


    "VTOL port on the roof," she said, and turned her butt...or maybe just her jetpack towards me, seemingly unwilling to use her arms now that they were wrapped around mine. "But what of the rest of you?"


    "I just...assumed, Master Blackett''s¡­" said Tem.


    "He said he''s not our master any longer, Tem. It wouldn''t be right to burden him." Jack scratched his chin as he thought.


    Karu sighed. "Assuming there are any left, I will book the three of you a room, if that is acceptable. Please do not to continue to rely on my charity tomorrow." She fixed them with a lethal stare. "And please do not intrude on Athan and my privacy. We have no interest in breakfast or whatever you may fancy."


    "I kind of like the idea of breakfast with them¡­"


    "You will be having breakfast with me," she said, turning that lethal stare on me instead. Her visor was still under her arms--and therefore under my arm--from the restaurant, and her green eyes glittered both beautiful and dangerously.


    "I thought...you said dinner?"


    "Ashton, I must ask, are you possibly an idiot?"


    "We will be happy to take the room, and would not dream of intruding upon your time," Jack said with a graceful bow. "Your generosity is appreciated. I will pay you back as soon as I am able."


    "It is unnecessary, but I appreciate it. Let us go then."


    She held my arm the entire few blocks to the hotel. We kept up some more small talk until the lobby, where Karu paid for another room, and gave the key to Tem, who looked afraid she was going to lose it.


    "Good night then," Karu said, and the three wished us the same as Karu and I disappeared into an elevator.


    Despite her pedigree and presumably pretty enormous wealth, it was just a normal room. I wasn''t really surprised, Karu didn''t seem the type to need more than a spartan accommodation, but it was still a bit odd. I scanned the room briefly as she removed pieces of her armor and stacked them near the sink and noticed something.


    "K-karu!"


    "Hmm?"


    "There''s...there''s only one bed in here."


    She came back out, wearing her flight suit, boots, and random pieces of armor down one arm and on her chest. "Just what did you think we would be doing in this room tonight?" she asked.


    I realized her earlier statement was totally true. It was entirely possibly I was an idiot. Somehow, surrounded by friends and laughter, the thought of anything sexual or romantic was the furthest thing from my mind. Now, standing there as she slowly stripped off pieces of her clothes, and I was just staring at this one bed, no other thought could enter my mind.


    "Do you need to shower?" she asked as she unzipped the entire length of her flight suit.


    I couldn''t answer. Only sexual thoughts were allowed in my mind at the moment. She looked in on me, gave me a quick glance, and smiled.


    "Well, do not get too excited. I have been sealed in this damn suit all day and smell like a dog. But um, it is good to see you so...happy to see me again."


    She giggled, a very effeminate, almost embarrassed giggle, and then the door closed and I heard the curtain slide into place and the water turn on.


    I was still standing there utterly dumbfounded and in shock when she came out wearing only a towel, laughed to see me still in place, and knocked me over into the single bed.

 112. 2251, Present Day. Las Vegas. Lia.

    It was late, that was about all I knew. Days and nights had kind of blurred together, as I''d become engrossed in my work. Black Shark was back in full force, stronger than ever, and drawing from every available resource, I had pulled and dumped compromising files from the XPCA archives on the ''net publicly.


    Most of it had come from AEGIS, who had more access to their systems than even they knew. As an XPCA AI, who had once managed an entire base of theirs, and who was just generally a freaking genius when it came to computers in all ways, she was unstoppable. She had a public campaign of defacing their ''net sites, but had also completely shut down their internal digital operations, whether they knew it or not.


    Even freaking Skyweb was under her control. Skyweb. If we really wanted, we could use her data and just that, and surgically remove every single XPCA facility and personnel from the face of America. That was a distant plan B, but it was appalling just how much success she''d had.


    > lia


    I saw a message pop up on my holo, from her. I was in my pj''s, sitting on my chair with my feet on it, having plans to go to bed at some point, hours ago.


    > Sup


    I responded, tabbing back to the other things I was working on. I kind of hated that most of our conversations were held over messaging now, but I think mostly I was jealous she could do it just by thinking. Native ''net uplink was one of the things she''d built in when she worked on Rua Mk.2, along with a lot of other stuff she tried to show me, but I was really way too busy to care.


    > need pw for basement elevator of facility at 36.2, -95.6 ...don''t ask


    I pulled up the coordinates. Some XPCA base in the middle of nowhere. We''d been cracking those more and more often, as they, in some misguided effort, had begun to distribute their files to more and more remote data centers. This was probably just some warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and they were just piping data into it out of desperation.


    Idiots didn''t realize that half the time, moving the data just meant we could pick it out of the ''net en-route. AEGIS wasn''t just in the XPCA, she was listening to half the traffic on the ''net. The more times they bounced the data around, trying to obfuscate its source and destination, the more likely they were to send it to one of the relays she was eavesdropping on.


    This data made it by apparently, and for one reason or another, a basement code would help with it. Must have a drone on-site or something. Truly, given enough time and resources, AEGIS was the scariest goddamn thing I had ever heard of.


    > sec


    I pulled up some data files I had, but wasn''t optimistic. Of course, nobody would have written down a passcode for an elevator in a database, but we''d found stupider things before. After parsing them for a few minutes, I was finding no promising hits, and was too tired to keep raking the tables anyway. Time to do it the easy way.


    I checked the time for realsies. Thankfully, it was early morning there, because of course, it was two hours before that here, and here, it was butt o'' clock.


    I pulled up some personnel records and found some that matched my needs. Having apsych eval on every personnel laying around made my job easy. Cleared my throat, and then cleared it again because, wow, how long had it been since I talked? I chugged some water from a bottle on my desk and then tried again.


    "La la la la laaaa."


    Good enough. I found the hottest girl who worked in the building, and double-checked her file. She didn''t seem like a total bitch, so good enough.


    I put a few numbers into my holo and waited while it rang.


    "Hi, Geordi?" I said, trying to inject as much charm as possible into my tired voice. "Hi, yeah, this is Ellia Ausa, I work in logistics? I think we might have been on the same mails sometimes." I laughed just a little at my own joke. I was adorable. "Yeah, that''s me. You remember me, aww, that''s so sweet of you. Hey, Geordi, I had a little favor to ask."


    He said something and I don''t even really know what it was. I just laughed. Guys loved a girl who laughed at everything they said.


    "Yeah, I''m actually in the basement right now. I got down here okay, but I must have forgotten the code because now it''s not letting me back up. Can you tell me the code, please? I''d really appreciate it."


    > 42776


    I hit send, and kept Geordi on the line until AEGIS confirmed.


    > its good thx


    I hung up, not even saying bye. Geordi and Ellia''s life was really no concern of mine, he just happened to be a lot easier to crack than any other part of their security.


    I stretched and yawned and realized, if it was morning there, I had to sleep now or the sun would be up again, and that was just the most devastating thing ever. I''d already pulled one all-nighter last night, and two in a row was asking for trouble, no matter how much coffee I had.


    But I also wasn''t finished with what I''d been working on for Athan. I just needed to put the last touches on another batch of files, clean up any traces of AEGIS'' or my fingerprints on them, and get them out.


    It wasn''t even a decision at this point really. Athan came first. Sleep was the refuge of the weak. Almost habitually, I drank more coffee. My toes curled a little, it was cold, but damn did I need it. I''d wanted to try stims, but Chiho and AEGIS had cut me off, cold stop. I couldn''t really blame them, after what I''d done with just beer.


    I hadn''t caught Saga. Even now, playing it out in my head again and again, weeks later, I have no idea where she went. I''d clocked her foot speed, did the math, estimated the radius of her powers, and the possibility I''d missed her simply didn''t exist. Even accounting for her moving away and then back again, I had covered too much area too fast for her to compete. I''d run and run and run until I collapsed in the street, hours later. AEGIS had to come to sign me out of the hospital. They said I was lucky I hadn''t been hit, laying in the middle of a road like that at night.


    The only option was she''d gotten in a vehicle of some kind, and given that she didn''t know how to steal a car, had no money, and it was unlikely there was any public transit running that late...the only option seemed she''d used her powers to hijack a ride with some unwitting patsy. That, or the slim chance of hitchhiking, but that didn''t seem her style.


    I chewed on my thumb as I moved the files around and verified each of them. My feet kept bouncing on their own. I wasn''t too hot on replacing one drink addiction with another, but if vodka made me stupid and selfish, coffee made me smart and...what would you call this? Selfless? Self-sacrificing? Self-destructive? Better than being useless, I thought.


    The thought that I''d pushed Saga to using her powers on an innocent, just to get away from me, that she was out there still, willing to use them, it terrified me. Every day, I expected the news I kept running on a third holo in the back to flash a picture of her face under the words ''EXHUMAN EVENT IN LAS VEGAS''.


    > lia, coming in


    > kk


    I finished up my documents and posted them as AEGIS walked in from the hall. She sniffed at the air unhappily as she entered.


    "Not showering?" she asked. She couldn''t actually smell, but she could measure the level of organics in the air.


    It was a little annoying having her in a new body. Rua Mk.2 had heightened senses of all kinds, native ''net hookups, like I said before, and apparently all sorts of crazy combat potential, citing her uselessness at the hands of XPCA as an absolute need.


    Really, most importantly, she''d cut down on the bust. She went from an E to a B like mine...but just a teensie bit bigger. I was happy about that, just looking at her used to hurt my back. Otherwise, she looked pretty much the same. Red cable hair, in two tails tied up above her ears, favored light little dresses which toed the line between cute and skanky, bright yellow eyes, and round markings and divots on her shoulders, knees, hips, and elbows.


    She told me she didn''t need to re-engineer the joints, just had to tell people they were body mods, which was apparently something humans did to themselves to look cool. I don''t think the rest of her girl-next-door ensemble would convince anyone she was a hardcore modder, but also didn''t really care.


    "What do you want?" I asked.


    She walked to my holo and put it on national news. I frowned. Someone was physically attacking the Raven''s Nest?


    "This isn''t anyone of mine," I said. I had plenty of supporters...a scary number, actually. Scary to think there were so many people in America who were unhappy enough with the status quo to sign up under a complete mystery Exhuman, but I kept a short leash on them. Information warfare only. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Not me, either. Deej says it isn''t a hunter, but Karu''s apparently in D.C. on business and is responding now."


    We watched as the reporter informed us that basically they had no information whatsoever for us. No idea how the Exhuman got in, no idea what powers, no idea where in the building or what they were doing. As the camera zoomed in on the Raven''s Nest, the high-tech windows seemingly changed from smokey translucent to pure black, blocking out any possibility of seeing inside.


    Abruptly, the camera whited out. After a few moments, it adjusted to the new sudden brightness and there was a huge white streak on the image. I thought something was wrong with the camera, when I realized it was working. The camera was showing us a streak of pure light. The biggest laser I''d ever seen, seemingly eradicating an entire floor from within the top of the building.


    "Holy shit," AEGIS said. "That has to be the Exhuman. A mechanical laser that large would be as big as the floor."


    "So, laser powers? Doesn''t explain how they got inside undetected."


    "Maybe they did it the old fashioned way. Sneak in, blast out."


    "Or light powers...could be invisible."


    "Doubt that''d fool the XPCA security, honestly."


    The camera zoomed in on the newly-formed hole as the laser abated and we could see clearly the remaining half of a conference room, though it was dark inside and couldn''t make out any shapes at this distance or resolution. There were several figures inside, moving, and that was about all we could get. Suddenly one of them stood up and jumped out of the building. Another followed shortly after.


    The second, he fell...faster than possible. The camera didn''t track on them as they jumped, presumably it wasn''t good to air street pizzas on live TV, but something was off there.


    "You see that too?" AEGIS asked.


    "Yeah. Did he have some thrusters on or something? Maybe a bodyguard or just liked fancy tech...why going down faster, though? If you had that, wouldn''t you go up?"


    The reporter unhelpfully narrated all the events we were witnessing, explaining the scene without any useful information, except to add that it seemed the first jumper was dressed in top-ranking XPCA uniform.


    "So you break into the XPCA, blow out a whole wall, and then make the top brass jump to their deaths. Sounds a lot like a disgruntled Exhuman to me," AEGIS mused.


    "I wonder what this will do to our plans," I said. "If the leadership all dies, do you think whoever replaces them will be more or less open to our demands?"


    "More, for sure. They''re falling apart in there, they have to cave soon. This is actually a great opportunity for them, in a fucked up way. They can put in new people and accept our demands as part of new leadership policy. Saves them some face."


    Two more jumped, and after them another.


    We watched in silence for another few minutes and then AEGIS hollered at the screen. "There''s our girl!"


    It took me another second to pick out the sound of it, but I heard Karu''s jetpack picked up by the mic once I listened for it. In a second, she flew over the heads of those assembled on the street with a trail of plasma, and intercepted another man as he fell, slowing his fall enough to drop him without injury, and then blasted into the hole.


    "What," said AEGIS flatly.


    "What?"


    "In the light of the plasma, you could see inside the room for a second. Only half of it, but¡­"


    "What''d you see?"


    "It''s...nothing," she said. "Let''s...just keep watching."


    Nobody else fell out. The reporter indicated that one of the individuals who had jumped had survived unharmed, and impossibly, had even caught another who fell, who had also now survived.


    "Hmm," AEGIS said.


    "Yeah. That''s fishy as hell. Think one of them was the Exhuman? Maybe got immune to splatting in their power set?"


    "No...but...well...let''s just watch."


    We watched for the next hour and the sun began to creep up behind us and harass me through my curtains as it often seemed inclined to do. What I had ever done to it to deserve this, I did not know.


    Nobody else jumped. Nothing else happened. People just talked up there, it seemed like. Eventually a statement was made that the XPCA director had died, and was now under new leadership. A picture of the new leader and his soundbite played on the holo.


    "Gotta be fucking kidding me," AEGIS moaned, and slapped her palm into her face.


    "Of all the damn people, how was that guy not NUMBER ONE to throw out of a building?" I yelled at the holo.


    "Well there goes all our plans. That asshole would probably rather destroy the whole fucking XPCA before he hands over Athan."


    "Seriously. What kind of luck is this? I feel like we''re so close, too."


    "I guess I didn''t see what I thought, earlier. Though. Hmm."


    I turned off the news. "Let me see," I said, and held out my hand. She sighed and hesitated.


    "You might not like this," she said.


    "I don''t like Blackett being in charge, but I''m coping, ain''t I?" Hand it over."


    "I warned you." She fished in her hair and handed me a cable ending in a standard hookup, which I jammed into the holo. After a moment, the holo showed footage from this room. From AEGIS'' perspective. Her digital memories, like a camera. From her perspective, I watched the scene again as Karu saved the falling man and then rocketed into the building. As Karu entered, AEGIS slowed the footage down, going forward moment by moment.


    For maybe one frame, I saw what she was talking about. The room was lit with a blue glow from within as Karu landed. There, in the middle of the room, apart from all the people around the walls, was what could only be the Exhuman.


    The detail was sparse, but there was no mistaking the lanky form and the ancient blue XPCA prison jumpsuit. It was Saga.


    "That can''t be Saga. Why would she be in D.C.?"


    "I don''t know."


    "Why wouldn''t she kill Blackett?"


    "I don''t know."


    "If she''s throwing people out of the room, why would she stop? There''s like, half a dozen more generals in there."


    "Lia, I don''t know."


    I took the hint and shut up while I thought. Certainly, if she wanted to, Saga would have no problem getting anywhere she wanted, including right up that tower. But why would she want to? I was the one she should be killing, not the fat men in military suits. I mean, Saga had issue with the XPCA too, of course, but even considering that, this was bizarre. There was no hope of anything but a grueling war of attrition in store for her after this, it would be the beginning of the end, Saga vs. humanity. It was too public, too brazen, and too inescapable.


    Or maybe, I realized, my heart aching, that was the entire point. I''d hurt Saga so bad she wanted exactly that. Either her end, or that of all humans. She couldn''t live in a world where we both existed any longer. I''d shown her the truth about trusting and co-existing with humans, in a way that even a hundred years of torture, murder, and neglect never could. The girl in that tower was more broken than she''d ever been, all on account of me.


    I held my head and turned away from the holo. My hands were shaking, and not from coffee. Was this...I had to wonder...the beginning of the end? Was the world ending, here and now, because of Saga, and because of me?


    "Wait," AEGIS said, and turned the holo back on. "I don''t believe it, listen."


    It was a statement being made by Blackett. His first act as acting director...a new task force...made of Exhumans? The same Exhumans who had been present here.


    Saga was the only Exhuman there, wasn''t she? She stopped pushing XPCA generals out of the building so she could...join them? Was this all some demented plan of hers? She had let Blackett live so she could blackmail him into this?


    This didn''t sound like a plan of hers. Saga wasn''t big on the humans/Exhumans cooperating thing. It almost sounded like¡­


    My breath caught in my throat as the camera cut to footage taken inside the room, Blackett making his statement live. Standing beside him¡­


    "ATHAN?" AEGIS and I both screamed at the holo.


    I couldn''t hear what Blackett said, or what Karu said after that. But when Athan spoke, the rest of the world fell away, and that little holovid was my entire world.


    "Parahumans. That''s what the world called us once, when Exhumanity just started. Para, meaning beside. Beside, not on top, not on bottom, but equals, side by side."


    My heart melted away. Tears were falling onto my knees. He wasn''t just there, he was there. Somehow, impossibly, without AEGIS or me or Karu doing a single thing, he''d worked his way all the way up, was in that room with those generals, with Blackett working towards his plans. I don''t know how, but I felt like I was in an impossible dream and I never wanted to awaken.


    "We live in the same world, share the same space, breathe the same air, and though we are not the same, we see ourselves as humanity''s partners, it''s protectors, and friends, not as people who are removed from it, as Exhuman implies."


    He was so damn dreamy! Wearing a suit, speaking so plainly, but confidently. I wonder if he knew his words were all over the world right now. The first Exhuman to ever address the world, maybe. I couldn''t help but stand up and wriggle in excitement. My brother! My own brother! Standing at the top of the Raven''s Nest, like a conqueror! Since we''d lost him, he moved right up to taking over the whole XPCA, having the new director twisted around his finger. It was just impossible.


    "And it is for that reason, that we wish to be known as the Parahuman Force! Or P-Force for short."


    The camera abruptly jumped back to Blackett who concluded with a few more words I didn''t hear. I looked at AEGIS, who seemed like she''d been blushing and crushing at the screen too, and was now standing with her mouth open.


    "What¡­" she gaped. "...what the fuck was that shit?"


    I laughed. I don''t know why, maybe just relief he was okay, maybe at the fact that, even at the top of the world, my brother was still my stupid big brother. I couldn''t know why, I just laughed and laughed and laughed until I cried, and then kept laughing. AEGIS ranted at the screen, screaming about how incredibly lame that was, how could he possibly ruin that moment, what the fuck, and so forth. It just made me laugh harder.


    I fell into my bed, laughing into my pillow, feeling my face and sides hurt. The last time I had laughed like this was with him. It seemed so right that seeing him again would turn me into this. I laughed until I was sore and could hardly breathe. At some point, I must have laughed myself to sleep, because the next thing I remembered was waking up in the afternoon light, a peeled orange and sports drink on my nightstand with a note in AEGIS'' pristine handwriting that simply said "EAT!"


    I laughed again as I thought about her and Athan and popped a piece of fruit in my mouth. I didn''t know how, but I felt like all the loose ends of my life had been tied up now. For the first time in a long time, I felt free. I felt happy. I felt able to laugh, just because laughing was what I wanted to do. Athan had, impossibly, ironically, been the one to set me free instead of the other way around.


    I sat up and checked the ''net. More work for Black Shark, and it looked good too. I should get on that.


    But before then, I decided, I should probably shower first. Eat, and maybe have a real conversation with AEGIS and Chiho that wasn''t terse words over messenger.

 113. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    Karu had lied to me. We weren''t eating breakfast together at all. Neither of us left the room until almost noon, and when we finally did, both of us were walking funny.


    She was...I had no other way of putting it...simply drop-dead gorgeous. I''d always thought she was beautiful, but now, I just couldn''t take my eyes off her. She seemed to glow, almost, not a single imperfection in her skin, not a hair out of place, she was like a goddess. Her eyes were more dazzling than the sun, deeper than the ocean.


    "You are all smiley this morning," she said as we sat outside a little cafe, waiting on food. Both of us were starving.


    "It''s a beautiful morning," I said.


    "You haven''t seen a single thing about this morning. You are staring only at me."


    "Like I said, it''s a beautiful morning."


    She rolled her eyes and cracked a cloth napkin at me like a whip. But she also smiled and blushed.


    "Karu, do you like me?" The words just kind of fell out of my mouth.


    "Are you the world''s most oblivious man?"


    "I meant...like, like me."


    She flushed further and avoided my gaze, a small smile still frozen on her. "Do you think I do things such as we did last night with those I do not like?"


    "Yeah. I mean, no. I mean...that''s not what I''m asking."


    "Well, be direct and ask what you intend then."


    She was wearing jeans and a tee shirt, and it was the cutest outfit I''d ever seen, no matter how plain it was.


    "I meant...like, you know. LIKE. Like."


    "If I knew, I wouldn''t force you to clarify. I understand you are lacking blood in the brain, and for that I take responsibility and apologize, but do try to focus. I would like it if any man I were with could both converse and...in the same day."


    "Like as in...like, um. Like when two people like each other very much. You know what I mean?"


    She rolled her eyes and played with the tip of her bangs hanging in front of her eyes. "Relationships are complicated, Ashton, and I, admittedly, have not been in one with any degree of seriousness or success. I will try to express my emotions, but only insofar as you are able to discuss them without sounding like a middle-school ogre."


    "Right." I took a deep breath. "Then I wanted to ask¡­" I trailed off. A smiling waitress came up with our food. Ravenous though I was, I hated her more than anyone right now.


    I hated her a little less once I took a bite of my chicken salad and discovered how yummy it was, but only a little less.


    I found it hard to even form the question, much less ask it. Aside from the obvious trouble of my brain not being all the way on, what little of it was there kept getting lost in the soft curve in her cheek, the gentle fullness in her lips, the deft motions of the fork in her strong hands.


    "Uhm," she said. "I would appreciate it if you could stare...slightly less. It makes eating slightly unnerving."


    "Sorry," I said, and forced myself to focus on my food for a bit.


    I felt like such a chickenshit. Not Tem levels of ineptitude, but certainly getting up there. Why couldn''t I just say what I was feeling?


    I mean, I knew why. It was because there was this horrifying, evil word in the English language which should never have existed. The thought of two letters had never before dominated so much of my entire being. Their very being hung over the two of us like a funeral shroud.


    Or...over me, I guess. Karu ate her salad with aplomb. I realized I was staring again and tried to eat more. It was hard, my throat kept closing up on me.


    "Karu, hypothetically," I said. She looked up at me, and I was paralyzed by those green eyes.


    She waited for a moment. "...yes?"


    "Ah, sorry. Never mind."


    "You are being more odd than usual, Ashton."


    "Well...it''s been a very unexpected couple of days for me."


    "For me as well," she said laughing. "Imagine my surprise, not just in running into you, but also in finding you so entrenched in such success? I had worried, we all had, that you would have trouble reintegrating into society. For all the cruelty of the wilderness, man''s jungle is crueler still."


    She looked up towards the midday sun, and the light streaming down bathed her in radiance. "So it was such a relief to find you not simply surviving but thriving." She looked back at me. "A woman could really fall for a man such as that, you know?" she winked at me.


    "Ah, r-really! I had...no idea."


    "I believe I gave you some indication last night?" She pretended to look thoughtful, running a finger over her soft lips, but there was more mischief than contemplation on her face.


    She was giving me all the signs. She''d been doing so since we ran into each other in the Raven''s Nest. All I needed to do was ask, I knew it. Why was this so hard? I felt like I''d rather square off against a thousand tanks than force this one damn question out.


    "Karuwithwillyougooutme?" I almost shouted. People around us looked at me in alarm.


    "What?"


    "Sorry." I chugged half a glass of water, and then choked. She watched with concern while I coughed, trying to avoid the food.


    "Are you unwell? You are...very peculiar."


    Worry was creeping onto her face. I was scaring her off, I knew it.


    "Perhaps we should go back to the hotel and you can rest?"


    No, Karu. Don''t suggest that. If I don''t get these words out, I''ll never be able to. I won''t be able to look you in the eye like a man.


    "No. Sorry. I need to go to the bathroom," I said, after I''d already stood. Having no idea what I was doing, I headed indoors.


    I banged my head against the wall next to the mirror. Why. Was. I. Being. So. Stupid.


    "Come on!" I shouted at my reflection. That guy in there looked suave and dapper, wearing a suit, a sharply cut Exhuman. Cool, confident.


    The guy in here, however, was a train wreck. What the heck could Karu be thinking now? She''d been watching me fall all over myself all morning, even commented a few times I was acting weird, and now she just wanted the meal to be over and for me to go lay down so she could get away from it all.


    After last night had gone so well, too. I couldn''t believe I was fumbling at the end zone. I took a deep breath and noticed I had a red spot on my forehead from the wall.


    Argh, you goddamn idiot! She''s gonna think I fell in or something. Why couldn''t I just get the words out.


    I had an idea. A foolproof idea, which was very necessary, because right now, I was a huge fool. I would write down what I was thinking, having all the time I needed to get my thoughts out, clearly, exactly perfectly, and then give it to her. It was unbeatable. Then I''d stop looking like such an idiot, and she''d say yes, like she was clearly hinting that she would.


    I checked my pockets. No pen nor paper anywhere. A doomed plan, just like all of my plans. I couldn''t believe I''d overlooked such a critical detail.


    What else was I overlooking? I hyperventilated as I looked at myself in the mirror again. Did I really look okay? Not compared to her, I didn''t. She was basically a supermodel, and I was...a high schooler in a suit. And the hints I thought she''d been dropping? She was always friendly and flirty with me...but what if, I realized with a horrified thought...what if she was just always friendly and flirty?


    I tried to piece together moments from yesterday. Her hand brushing on Tower''s as they both reached for the pitcher. Flashing smiles at Jack. Even holding Tem and telling her she was adorable after a few drinks. Was I just deluding myself?


    There was a knock on the door. I almost jumped out of my suit.


    "Ashton? Are you alright? You have been in there for a while now. There are...several impatient gentlemen out here, from the looks of it."


    "I''m...Karu? I''m fine, Karu, I''m sorry."


    "Was there something amiss with the food?"Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    I opened the door. Karu was standing there looking awkward and embarrassed, and a couple guys looking annoyed. Great, now I''d just put her through that as well. One of them men pushed past her and me, shutting the door into me and forcing me into Karu and the tiny hallway.


    I was basically pinning Karu against the wall now, and she was blushing and blinking a lot, her eyes darting between my hands on her and the men around.


    "S-sorry, Karu," I said, falling off of her.


    "It is understandable. You...didn''t wash your hands?"


    "I didn''t...I mean...I did, earlier." Now I was lying to her too.


    We walked back to the table in silence. She was fretting now, and the good mood of the morning was long expired, killing the one good thing I had going for me. We finished in silence, avoiding eye contact and conversation. She had to pay, as usual, because I still had no money for anything.


    "Thanks," I mumbled, as we got up.


    "Have...you ever been around D.C.?" she asked. "Would you enjoy a walk? Or are you still feeling unwell?"


    "I''ve never been," I said.


    "I have only visited as a tourist briefly, I confess, though business takes me here more often than I would like. If you have nothing else to do, would you act as my escort for the day?"


    "Sure...I mean, I''d love to."


    She attached herself to my arm, which was both much more comfortable, and much squishier without her in armor, and we made our way towards the national mall.


    It felt like there were things to see everywhere, and moving from one to the next and discussing what we saw kept the mood from spiraling back into awkward territory. We walked past the Korean War memorial and said hi to Lincoln. Karu was silent as we slowly glided past the rows of names on the Vietnam War memorial, and spoke quietly at the foot of the abstract statue, etched with faces in twisted torment, memorializing the victims of the Sino war. No names were listed, there were too many to count.


    Past that...the memorial to the victims of Exhuman attacks. No names here either, or else more would be added every month. It was an another abstract piece, more a building than a statue, glossy pieces of jagged stone which evoked memories of the terrapath, for me, dozens of feet tall. It resembled a shrine you could walk in and under. Underneath the skyward-reaching arms of the monument, in the center, an abstract statue of a person, slightly larger than life-sized. He, or she, was a very famous statue, named ''The Human'', and supposedly looked different to every person who saw it, reflecting the faces of every man, woman, and child taken by Exhumanity.


    When I looked at it, I saw only a man-shaped husk of rock. Something about the shadows where its eyes should have been reminded me of death, though. The soldiers I''d killed, the battered face of the terrapath.


    I shivered despite the warmth of the day. Maybe the statue did remind me of people taken by Exhumans. Karu was kneeling next to it, whispering words silently. I waited several minutes in its uncomfortable presence while she finished. When she rose again, I saw tears in her eyes, but she pretended to smile and quickly led us onward.


    The White House, Washington Monument, we were skipping most of the museums, but after perusing a map briefly, Karu had us cut across the mall for one specific attraction to which she was drawn.


    Of course, the air and space museum. You could take Karu out of the heavens, but couldn''t take heaven out of Karu.


    She talked excitedly as we moved from exhibit to exhibit, full of trivia about almost every plane, rocket, and display we saw. I''d never seen this side of Karu before, but I loved it.


    As we wandered the halls and discussed the displays, I began to wonder if I even needed to ask her, if it was worth it to as a stupid question and maybe ruin everything, when we already had all of this.


    "Of course, early prototypes of the airborne jetpacks were attempted with stealth technology, but when it became obvious that evasion more than elusion was a more capable defense, they sacrificed that to improve performance and reduce weight instead. Which is something I appreciate. My model is a lot newer than these, of course," she said.


    We stood in front of a case showing the entire history of the personal jetpack, reaching all the way back to sci-fi cartoons of the 1960s and the earliest functioning models from the early twenty-first century. How ''jumptroopers'' had gradually replaced paratroopers, and eventually stole not just their role on the battlefield as backline infiltrators and saboteurs, but also eventually their nomenclature as well.


    "I had no idea you were such a nerd, Karu," I laughed.


    "I am no such thing," she pouted. "I merely find human flight fascinating."


    "We''ve been doing it for hundreds of years. Most people don''t think it''s that spectacular anymore."


    "Well, I do." She pouted even harder. "I recall the first time I flew, I was so terrified," she laughed. "My synaptic uplink...that is to say, the part of the suit controlled by my mind...I was so scared, I was overcompensating for everything so badly. I was jerking and stopping so hard, I made myself black out, and the pack had to disembark me on autopilot."


    "It''s hard to think of you as anything but perfect at flying," I said.


    "I have had a lot of practice since then, but I would never call myself perfect. Perfectly capable, perhaps. But there is ever room to improve. Especially when faced with foes such as Exhumans, complacency equals death."


    She looked at me sideways. "Did I say something wrong?"


    "No, sorry," I said. Her words had hit me in a strange place. Complacency equals death. I did need to ask her after all.


    "Karu?" I asked.


    "Hmm?"


    "I need to ask you something."


    "This again?" she said, her expression going dark, but she didn''t leave or stop me.


    "Yes. I um. I wanted to know...if...me...if we, I mean...after last night, I just assumed."


    She waited patiently while I stumbled. The more I talked, the more unsure I was of what I was saying.


    "I was...I wondered...what exactly, um, am I. To you."


    "You are asking about the exact nature of our relationship?" she asked, her ears slightly red as people stared at us as they walked past.


    "Yes. That."


    "Well." She ran a hand through her hair and pushed her mane behind her ear. "I don''t know."


    "What?"


    "I said I don''t know!" she shouted, before hushing herself. "I told you just recently, I do not have experience in these kinds of things either, Ashton. Just because I am older and more...more experienced in some ways, does not mean I know everything about how to put together a relationship."


    "But I don''t know what I''m doing at all!"


    "And you assume that I do?"


    "You act like you do."


    "The way I act is merely the way I feel like acting, Ashton. I spend time with you because I want to. I seek out your company because I find it comfortable and enjoyable, and I...and I¡­" she looked around at the large number of curious onlookers. "...I seek out your company because I find it comfortable and enjoyable."


    She was bright red, but showed no signs of backing down on that account.


    "Well...yeah, me too! But I don''t think it''s that hard of a question for you to tell me where I sit, you know?"


    "Not that hard of a question? Ashton, you have choked on the asking of this question all day. What makes you think it is so simple to answer?"


    "I know my answer!"


    "Then pray tell, what is it?" she said, holding her chest slightly.


    "I--"


    Shit.


    "I...like you, of course!"


    "Well if that is all, I like you too then."


    We stared at each other, both of us beet red. Why was I getting the same rush, the same excited dread I carried with me when she and I locked in battle.


    "That''s not a real answer!" I burst out.


    "It was the answer you delivered! If there is a problem with it, re-examine your own statements first."


    "Um, excuse me. Could you two please keep your voices down? You are disrupting the other patrons." A woman in a dress and a blazer wearing a museum badge was standing there, looking half apologetic, half annoyed.


    "Let us just peruse the museum," Karu said with a sigh.


    I agreed. I didn''t want to take this from her, not when she''d been having such a nice time just a few minutes ago.


    "I just think," I said, unable to keep it in for more than one room, as Karu sighed in defeat "I would like it if...if I could ask you out."


    "Look around, you fool," she said without even a glance at me. "Where do you suppose we are?"


    "Sorry. I''ll...I''ll save it for later."


    She looked at me sideways, and then to my surprise, touched my chin and gave me a gentle kiss.


    "This is a date, you imbecile. We''ve been going out whether you asked formally or not."


    "Oh." My heart pounded. I felt like my smile might grow so large it fell off my face.


    "Please show some restraint," she said, smiling despite herself, and beginning to blush again.


    "You have no idea the amount of restraint I''m showing," I said. "I want to run outside and scream at the top of my lungs."


    "In...a good way?" she asked concerned.


    "In the best possible way."


    "Well, hurry up and do that if you must," she said stroking my hand with hers. "But do come back so I can spend the rest of the museum with you. I am having a wonderful time. A wonderful date."


    Her words were like an arrow straight through my heart. I couldn''t stop smiling. I wanted to dance. I didn''t even know how to dance. I didn''t care. They should take down all these exhibits of airplanes and I would teach them how man could really fly.


    Abruptly, my pocket vibrated. Unsure of what it could possibly be, I reached inside and pulled out the comms I''d put there yesterday. My stomach did a nosedive as it flipped from elation to dread.


    "Yes? This is Chariot?"


    "Chariot, please report back to the Raven''s Nest as soon as possible. There has been an event. You will be expected. We are leaving in forty minutes."


    Cosette''s voice cut off abruptly, leaving me holding a dead black circle again. I looked at Karu.


    "Let''s go," she said. "It''s time to work."


    "The date," I said, stupidly.


    "It can wait." She began doing arm stretches across her chest as she walked briskly towards the exit. "People need our help."


    I felt a surge of emotions pass through me as I sprinted to catch up. My feelings about Karu and those about the date, and those about it ending, and those about an Exhuman event all tumbled around inside me. I hoped Karu would come with us. I hope she stayed and remained safe. Would she be watching? Did I want her watching? What if something happened to both of us? Or worse, one of us? How was that worse? What if I didn''t hold my own out there, would she still be interested in me?


    Suddenly she stopped and grabbed me by the shoulders, staring me in the eyes as serious as I had ever seen her.


    "Ashton, you''re panicking. Gain control of your breathing and your mind. You and I cannot date if you are incapable of functioning normally while in a relationship with me, is that clear?"


    I nodded mutely.


    "There will be a bad guy. We will go, and together, kick his ass, as we have ever done. I will protect you and you will protect me, and when it is over, I will make love to you until neither of us can move. Is that clear?"


    I nodded mutely, and also red.


    "Then keep your concerns for once you have taken the field. Pretend it is a football game. We will be fine. Now let''s go."


    I nodded one more time and we ran off, full-speed towards the black tower and whatever Exhuman awaited us.

 114. 2251, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    Relief.


    I think that was the one word which described the whole household.


    Ever since Lia and I saw Athan on the holo, heard him speak passionately about the silly dreams of a world with humans and Exhumans together...but not so silly, because he was in the heart of the XPCA, was making changes, was on world news...relief just washed over us like a hot shower.


    When Chiho came back from classes, she watched the broadcast and just cried, holding Lia and me alternatingly. I''m not sure exactly what she had to cry about, but I''m sure the tension in the house wasn''t comfortable for her.


    We still had a lot of work to do, but things had slowed down, compared to our frantic three-girl war on humanity. I was slowly ceding control of XPCA operations back to them...with a few backdoors installed for future convenience, if it came to that, and Lia was back on the financial side of being an info-terrorist, instead of the political one. Karu said that Deej had been invited to talks with the new Director Blackett, and while he might still be running some protests, she was satisfied enough for now.


    Probably putting her hands all over Athan while I was out of the picture, I considered, bristling.


    We were keeping the files public, though. We didn''t want to destroy the XPCA, but we wanted them to be accountable and transparent, and having all their past sins out in the open was a step towards that. I was amused one day, when I got a notification posted on one of the many pages I''d hacked, someone in the XPCA had made a forum post asking me to please delete and remove the files, now that they were complying. I just had to laugh.


    My mobile went off again. I didn''t need one, exactly, anything I wanted from a mobile, I could do on my own computing power, but I''d look like an idiot just sitting around staring at nothing all day, and...it was uncomfortable. I''d also been trying to do less of that recently, now that Athan was presumably back in the picture.


    Of course, the notification on my mobile was just a battle friend request from Chiho. A mobile game I''d been sinking an ungodly number of hours into recently, but was still years behind her.


    I''d gotten into it really hard in the first few days, scouring forums and wikis, coming up with optimal strategies to build my army and empire, plotting stat growths and character loadouts. Things had come together, exactly as I planned...but I was still incapable of even touching Chiho, and she hadn''t been playing that much longer than I had.


    I could not accept that I, a one-woman wrecking crew, who just single- (or triple-) handedly toppled the XPCA through the sheer power of my hacking, infiltration, and masterful plan-executing expertise was incapable of crushing the air-headed Chiho into dust in an online game.


    Even now, as I helped her on her raid, I saw she''d shot up again. 30,000 gems more than me. And the strength score on her MT? 22% higher than I thought possible, even with optimal gear and max level. How could someone so bad at getting to her classes on time and with middling grades be so good at anything?


    I tapped away at the screen, wanting the boss to drop so that I could inspect her MT''s loadout, impatiently. Bit by bit, his health chipped away, as Chiho, myself, and a dozen other of her friends whittled away at it. Before her MT was even halfway in the red, the boss was defeated.


    When I''d run this dungeon just yesterday, I had to rez my tank twice just to limp by. Granted I had a lot fewer friends, but still.


    > thanks for the help!


    A message popped up from her. I dismissed it and pulled her profile to look at her MT''s build. As I scrolled through the list of his abilities, my jaw dropped.


    He was dual-classed with ranger? Why the heck would anyone do that? But the more I flipped through her skill choices and stat allocations the more sense it all made. Rangers were a dexterity/strength hybrid class, typically all dex to maximize their damage, where they''d stay in the back lines and unleash high consistent damage. Not as high dps as wizards, but that''s where their strength side came in, if they got into trouble, they had all sorts of str-based combat tricks to mitigate damage or otherwise get away.


    Chiho''s main tank was half specced into ranger and, contrary to conventional wisdom, completely ignored all the dex-based damage skills, taking all the str-based mitigation abilities instead. Combined with the inherent ruggedness of his native warrior class, he was incredibly resilient, far beyond what a warrior would have been capable of without dual-classing, and got higher stats because rangers had a higher stat progression compared to warriors, who were almost entirely gear-dependent.


    He did less damage than a normal warrior, but who cared, his job was to be a tank, to sit there and get punched while his team did the killing.


    I sat with my mobile in my lap, holding my head as my brain exploded with the possibilities. Was this girl the next Sun Tzu? I hadn''t seen any of this anywhere on the forums. How could one come up with this stuff?


    With my superior hearing, I sensed someone approaching the garage. I checked a cam-drone feed from the hallway and saw Chiho incoming. Maybe I was a little paranoid, still keeping them around, but at this point, I felt blind not being able to see everything around me.


    The door opened. "Heyas, AEGIS. You get my message?"


    "Yeah," I said, holding up my phone. "Sorry, was just replying," I lied.


    "No worries. Thanks for all your hard work out there. I think we stand a really good shot and killing the demon lord next week, if we keep on like this. Did Elthraz drop anything good for you?"


    I hadn''t even checked the loot I got from the boss kill. I flipped into my party stash and popped open the new items. Chiho walked over and peeked over my shoulder, both of us sitting on the bare floor of the garage.


    I should probably get a bench or something, I thought.


    It was starting to look like a real machine shop in here, finally. I didn''t have sentient drones walking around this time, since we agreed that was a little suspicious, so instead I had a manufacturing line sorta in the works. Any machine I built, I plugged into the system, and a series of loaders and conveyors moved incomplete parts from machine to machine until they got where they needed to be. Moving at max efficiency, it was like a choreographed dance of parts spinning and spinning around the whole garage as machines passed them from robotic arm to conveyor belt and back.


    There was also crap everywhere, stuff I was in the process of working by hand, and the entire upper story I''d dreamed of converting to use was hardly used at all...but I wasn''t out of space down here just yet.


    "Ooh, legendary boots?" Chiho said, ogling my loot. "Oh, that''s for the Tearbreaker set, I have that on one of my wizards. The set bonus is bonkers."


    "Yeah, too bad I have the boots already. I still need the shoulders. At least I can transmute them."


    "Don''t do it yet, rumor is the Tearbreaker set is gonna get nerfed soon, and legacy variants are gonna be worth tons more. If you hold it now, you should be able to trade it for whatever you want when the nerf goes out."


    We babbled back and forth about our characters and builds for a while, and I did some work in the background while we talked. Whatever I thought about her, she was definitely fun to have around.


    "Hey, so, I''m gonna start watching a new series, Hisokana Lover. I know you''ll love it since it''s a lot like Janken Kawaii Roulette, I''ve heard. You know you want to join."


    I did. But I also felt like my life was slipping between my hands a little bit. I''m not sure what exactly qualified as living...and me being an AI and Chiho being a complete otaku nerd, I''m not sure either of us qualified as having a life.


    How many times I''d sat with her, watching a few episodes of something, felt bad about wasting my time and decided to do something in the background, like manufacture drones or crack another federal database? I mean...what kind of life was that? That wasn''t normal. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Hence the mobile. Hence working on projects in the workshop by hand. Hence a lot of things. Rua Mk.2 had more capacity to be more robot than human on paper, but I had begun to put in safeguards to lock myself out of just...well...of it just being an empty shell I happened to inhabit, like the AEGIS box.


    I had those capabilities, but I made it unpleasant for myself. I programmed those functions to feel disquieting to use, made it so I could only call on my full arsenal if I really concentrated at it. I''d made steps towards becoming more human, but as soon as I had, I felt my humanity slipping away.


    So now I was here. Turning down Chiho when I''d really rather not because I felt guilty about putting off work I should be doing when I got distracted playing games instead.


    Tell me, what was more human than that?


    I''d just sat down at my terminal and gotten the line up and running when I heard someone else approaching. Light, quick steps, not heavy slow ones. Lia incoming. Didn''t even need to check the cams.


    She knocked and then entered. I was getting a little annoyed with people dropping in when I already felt behind on drone production...when I wasn''t, really, and should be scaling it back, now that we''d beaten the XPCA, at least somewhat. I''d just been so frantically 24-7 busy that anything else felt lazy to me now.


    "Hey, AEGIS," Lia said, making herself comfortable on the floor, lying on her back and stretching her long shorts-clad legs in the air, toes flexing. I really should make a bench.


    "Hey. What''cha need? Database? Password? Root access?"


    "No. Just chilling." She sat up. "Does doing nothing feel weird to you, too?"


    My heart instantly went out to her. This girl understood me like no other.


    "Yes, oh my God. If I sit still for just a minute, I start to feel so guilty."


    "Yeah, me too. We''ve been working so hard lately, it feels awful when I''m not. Last night, I slept 4 hours, and when I woke up, I freaked out."


    "I don''t even sleep, and sometimes I still just freak out."


    "We need to do something about it. It''s driving me crazy. Look, I''m already shaking, I haven''t hacked or sliced or posted a thing in a minute, and I''ve got the shakes."


    "I just turned down watching a show with Chiho so I could make more drones I don''t even need."


    "What show?"


    "Hisokana Lover. I''ve heard good things."


    "Ah, more anime crap. I can''t believe you like that stuff." She rolled back onto her back and went back to cycling her legs idly in the air. "Know what I think''ll get us out of this funk?"


    "More...more work?"


    Lia laughed. "No, girl. Vacation. Get disconnected from the ''net. Get a tan. Sleep in, because you don''t have anything to do."


    "I don''t tan, I don''t sleep, and my ''net is connected via a satellite uplink."


    "Well, at least try then. Being holed up in this garage forever isn''t really any different from living in AEGIS box, you know. We''ve got to get out there, force ourselves to relax and decompress."


    "I have a decompression utility built into my OS."


    "You are being such a dick."


    "I just don''t think a vacation is what we need. I kind of like being this busy. Sometimes."


    "Yeah, and sometimes we''ll have to be, and it''s nice to know we''ve got that in the bank, but look, I''m like, 95% caffeine by mass here now. Look at me." She stood up and held her arms out. Both of them were shaking, and I realized she''d also lost a lot of weight.


    I don''t know if she''d noticed, but it made me feel a pang of guilt. I was always pushing her to keep up with me on the whole Athan thing, which to her amazing credit, she did. But she wasn''t a machine, she''d break down if she kept this up. For me, it was just a decision to make, but for her, it might be a lifestyle choice with serious repercussions. I realized in some way, this might be a plea for help.


    I sighed. "Okay. What''s this vacation plan. And before we even begin--"


    "No booze," she said.


    "Good."


    "Since you asked¡­" she glanced at her wrist holo and made a flicking gesture off of it towards me. My mobile lit up with a new notification and I checked it.


    It was a map. Three locations were marked, all on the east coast. I put the mobile down and waited for the impending presentation.


    "Stop one, Camden, New Jersey."


    "Isn''t that place a dump?"


    "Maybe. But it''s also home to the world''s largest indoor water park. Overlooking the banks of the mighty Delaware, a tide of adventure awaits us. Over twenty acres of wet, wild fun, at the Paradise Isles!"


    "Wet, wild, fun?"


    "It says so on the ''net site."


    "Can I get the version without hyperbole?"


    "Sure. Water is fun. Swimming is my favorite thing in the world, and winter sucks ''cuz no swimming. And I say go big or go home, and we''re already home. So biggest park it is."


    "Why don''t we just go to any indoor pool? Why fly across the country?"


    "Stop two," she barreled on, reminding me a lot of her brother. "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania."


    I waited. She waited.


    "Okay, what''s--"


    "VGCon!"


    The name sounded familiar, but I didn''t remember off the top of my head.


    "Okay, what''s--"


    "Video Games Convention. VGCon. Only the largest video gaming convention in the world, as of three years ago. I know you and Chiho are always checking out the new releases and talking all the time about gaming stuff, and I thought, these nerds would love to go out there and see it for realsies. So since we''ll be in the area for Paradise Isles, and the show will be on, I thought, why not?"


    "Can you even get tickets for that?"


    "Already got three."


    "How¡­? Wait, don''t answer that--"


    She stood and turned her back to me, and then dramatically looked over her shoulder at me, peering at me between the fingers of one hand. "The Eye of Odin opens only for Black Shark."


    "Got it. Wild misuse of pretend Exhuman superpowers to get into a sold-out convention. This is officially the worst plan ever. So why can''t you just go to, I don''t know, any of the dozen gaming cons which happen in Vegas all the time? We''re like a mecca for cons out here. And then we hit the indoor pool, and--"


    "So if Paradise Isles was for me, and VGCon was for Chiho, that leaves you."


    "Anyone tell you that you interrupt and yell a lot when you''re high on caffeine and low on s--"


    "So I thought, what is the one place AEGIS wants to go."


    "Home. AEGIS wants to go home. Nice comfy garage. Look, I even just set up my own spectrometer. Got my comms hooked up so I can listen to some J-pop. Everythi--"


    "And the answer slapped me in the face."


    I waited. She waited again. Goddamn, she was annoying. I picked up my mobile to see the third destination on the map, and she ran forward and covered it in her hands.


    "D.C., silly," she said. "Where else?"


    I felt my heart do a loop-de-loop. "To...visit Athan?"


    "Duh."


    I felt tears welling in my eyes. On one level, I was so happy those were working on Rua Mk.2, I hadn''t been able to test them myself, and that was even after subjecting myself to half a dozen chick flicks. On the other hand, I was picking Lia up and spinning her in my arms while I laughed and cried and felt so happy to have such a great friend.


    "Guess you''re in then?" she yelled at me over my own blubbering.


    "I''m already packed! What''s taking you two so long," I cried and set her down.


    "I kind of doubt that. I think you need a swimsuit. And maybe some other kind of suit for bro?" She winked at me.


    I stood shock upright and looked down at myself. Basically a track suit, like I''d gotten in the habit of wearing around the shop. That wouldn''t do, wouldn''t do at all. And Lia was right, I didn''t own a bathing suit at all. I wished we''d be bringing Athan to the park with us, I could really wow him then, but maybe there was still somewhere in D.C. I could show it off. As for my bust...I was glad I''d made it smaller, but maybe I''d gone too far. He''d be with Karu now, and I had to compete with that buxom she-devil.


    But I had Chiho and Lia on my team. Chiho came with a passive morale boost and good social wisdom, and Lia had a bonus attack against Athan from their familial bond, and would be pushing him towards me, while he merely suspected her to be an impartial voice. Buxom or not, Karu stood no chance against our unified assault.


    My mind raced through the infinite possibilities like I was gearing and speccing my character for a boss raid.


    "Uh, did I cause a system crash?" Lia said with a laugh as she waved her hand in front of my face.


    "Yes! No! Sorry. Just thinking."


    "I can see that. You should uh, put some real clothes on and let''s hit the stores!"


    After a few minutes of three girls frantically running around getting prepared, we found ourselves outside waiting in the mild Nevada winter for a bus. I mentally added ''car'' to the list of things to fabricate, putting it under ''bench''.


    "Thanks for inviting me, guys. I know this trip is going to be a blast," Chiho said.


    "Oh, it will be a blast," I proclaimed. "It will be the biggest blast of Athan''s frail life!" I laughed without restraint. A thousand, thousand schemes were already brewing in my mind for how to win him back.


    "She okay?" Chiho asked Lia.


    "Yeah, she just is really excited. Hey, you excited for VGCon?"


    "Hell yes, you know it Lia-baby. Man, if I knew I could get into VGCon just by hanging out with weirdos like you guys, I''d be chasing Exhumans down the street," she laughed.


    I wasn''t listening. My mind was a conflux of ideas, all crystallizing around one pure, unshakable concept. In a little over a week, Athan would be mine.

 115. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    Karu swung by the hotel to change, and I went on ahead. She moved a lot faster than me. I only waited a few minutes at the ominous foot of the Raven''s Nest before she streaked in and landed next to me. Without even waiting, she walked right in the front door, leaving me to trail in her wake.


    "Can I help you, hunter?" said the man behind a security desk as she approached. She looked around momentarily, and then found me and bodily placed me in front of her at the desk.


    "Okay. Can I help you, civilian?"


    "I''m um, Athan Ashton. Cosette, uh, Dawn is looking for me."


    "Just a moment." He typed on the holo embedded in the desk. "Hello, Colonel Dawn? I have an Athan Ashton to see you." He listened in silence for a few moments and then his eyes bugged out slightly. "Yes ma''am! Right away ma''am!"


    To my surprise, he led us to the security station and ran me through personally. Karu had a different process involving a lot of badges and biometrics, but no weapon scanners, for obvious reasons. "Sub-basement three, sir. Vigilo Ignoto." He saluted me as the elevator door shut on Karu and myself.


    "You knew he''d react like that?"


    "They love their heroes a lot more than us filthy hunters."


    "Filthy? Heroes? You''ve done, like, infinitely more good for the XPCA than I have."


    "You''re one of them, going out to fight and die. The XPCA has a...high mortality rate. That makes you a hero. Hunters, on the other hand, have a reputation for worrying most about themselves and doing everything for money. We are not well-liked here."


    "I don''t know how anyone could not like you," I pouted.


    "You are adorable, but let us please focus."


    The elevator let us out and we found we were almost the last to muster. Cosette, Tower, Tem, Karu, and myself, of course. That just left...I scanned the group again, maybe I''d miscounted. Cosette, Tower, Jack, Tem, Karu, and myself. That just left Mage.


    We were in what seemed to be a large underground hangar, very broad, and very, very deep, slowly curving towards the surface, presumably towards some hidden exit miles from here, but only ten or fifteen feet high. It was a little claustrophobic to see so much space all horizontal. Perhaps these were the security bunkers we were supposed to go to when the Exhuman alert sounded from Saga?


    It seemed the space was evenly divided between a central lane holding dozens or hundreds of vehicles, including trucks, APCs, tanks, missile trucks, and barred prison vans, and endless meeting and supply rooms all along the walls.


    "We''re heading out soon, briefing in five," Cosette said. "Room bravo-304," she gestured towards one of the rooms, where now that I was looking, I could see they were all sequentially numbered. "Don''t be late."


    Jack said he''d wait for Mage and everyone else headed over. The room was a small fabric-lined room with packed seating, all empty. A holo on the far wall was obviously there for presentations, and Cosette loitered under it.


    "Well, don''t be that early, either," she said as we all filed in. "Got nowhere better to be?"


    "Not really," said Tower, taking up two seats, and moving those in front of him so he could fit his knees in.


    Tem made a gesture and Tower leaned in close and nodded as she whispered. "Hey, Cosette. What do we do about getting paid?"


    She frowned. "I can''t say I rightly know. I don''t think anyone''s ever been appointed on a task force without being enlisted first. I''ll be sure to do the legwork to make sure you''re all compensated, though. Wouldn''t be right to ask you to do even a single mission pro bono."


    Tem whispered something to Tower again. "Uh, Tem says thanks."


    "You can talk to me, Tem, I''m not that scary," Cosette said with a smile. She checked her wrist holo. "Unless you''re late for a briefing, then I''ll kill you. Your friends have exactly one minute to show up here. Oh, while we''re waiting¡­"


    She left and came back a few moments later wheeling in a large wood crate, open on the top, tall enough to go up to her waist.


    "Eventually, we''ll be working on having actual combat uniforms specifically made for each of you, but for now, standard grunt uniforms it is. Pick a size, pick some shoes, bathroom''s by the elevator if you''re a pussy. Change after briefing, please."


    With the others, I crowded in. The box was divided into eight compartments. Five contained shoes, and three contained uniforms. I had to wonder what happened if I wasn''t between shoe sizes 8.5"-12", and then looked at Tower. And then at Tem. And then at Mage, who strolled in the door with Jack.


    Yeah...Jack and I were the only ones here who would possibly fit in these uniforms. Karu of course never even got up, she was already set.


    "I''ll...just go battle butler on this one." I said. "Let me know when the custom uniforms are up."


    "Yeah, maybe a good idea," said Cosette, looking over the same scene as me. "Anyway, briefing, boys and girls. Sit down and shaddup."


    We did. The lights dimmed, and the holo lit up.


    "At around twenty-one hundred last night, here in Washington, there was an Exhuman event on a small-scale. We didn''t get the tip until this morning, but it did come with this footage."


    The holo came to life. It looked like a security camera on the inside of a store. In one corner, the clerk was behind a thick security counter, reading something, bored. A girl with short blue hair was agonizing over two frozen dinners in her hands. Two men entered from outside the store and made a line for blue hair, having their sights on her before they even enter the frame.


    "Eyy, Steffie," one of them said. The audio was flat and full of static but the scene was quiet enough to hear clearly anyway. "I know you''ve got something for me tonight. You wouldn''t be out here spending credits on this crap without paying me first, right?"


    "Fuerte! No, of course not," she said, backing into the freezer in surprise. The other man circled behind her, cutting off any chance of escape. The cashier looked up for a moment and then back down at his mobile again.


    "I think you owe us four hundred credits, chika. I think you want to make a payment right now."


    "I don''t have the money on me, Fuerte, I''m sorry. I''ll get it to you as soon as I can."


    It played out like a movie. Their threats got less and less veiled, and poor blue hair got more and more flustered and trapped, as they slowly cut off her personal space and options. They dumped out her purse, rifled through her wallet, all while the clerk ignored the entire scene. It made my stomach turn. I really hoped blue hair was the Exhuman in this picture, because at least then these two guys were probably dead by now.


    After getting more and more explicit in what they were going to do to here if she didn''t pay, one finally took the step of knocking the frozen dinners from her hands, and then making her pick them up. She did, and while she was down there, Fuerte wound up and kicked her, hard.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    As soon as he did, there was an explosion, and the camera and mic whited out.


    Cosette turned off the holo. "So, either Fuerte or the female in the scene is the target, and we don''t know the source or extent of the powers except that the entire shop was destroyed, three bodies were found...if you could call them that, the two nearest the blast were reduced to, let''s say, dust, making IDing difficult, but still underway."


    "In summary," she said, and turned the lights turned back on. "Either there''s a guy out there who kicks people so hard the whole room explodes, or a girl who explodes when you kick her. If it''s the former, it''s likely his window is still open, since he had no reason to use his powers deliberately in this case, and it was probably his first event. In that case, engage using direct use of powers only. Do not give him any more ammo to work with. If it''s the girl, it''s much more likely her window is closed, but you will still lead with a teaser."


    "Teaser?" Jack asked.


    Cosette scratched her head, making her hair bounce. "You guys are way behind. But, teaser...if you''re not sure if an Exhuman''s window is open or not, you hit them with an unconventional but relatively useless attack. Flash grenades are often employed. If it does anything to them, they''re not immune, and the window is definitely shut. If it does nothing, the window is definitely open. Anything in between, and you learned nothing. Always tease before you kill, always."


    "If it is the girl...why would we kill her?" I asked. People turned to look at me, though not Karu. I guess she expected this crap from me now.


    "That girl blew up an entire store and liquified two and a half people, assuming it was her. That''s not something we want walking the streets of one of the most major metropolitan areas on the globe, Chariot. What if next time she decides instead of taking out her loan shark, it''s her landlord. Or her bank. Or her tax collection agency, and hey, look, there goes the whole IRS."


    "It just looked like she was defending herself."


    "If she wasn''t an Exhuman, and defended herself in that situation by turning those guys to dust...and the clerk too, does that sound like a reasonable defense to you?"


    "I guess...not."


    "And since she IS, or might be an Exhuman, she doesn''t get to make that choice. It''s always-on. She''s a lethal weapon without a safety."


    "I know. But like, I am too."


    "You''re here under XPCA oversight. The people surrounding you know what a danger you might be, and volunteered to be put up to it." I thought she was going to order me to stop arguing or something, but instead slouched a little and cocked her head sideways at me. "Chariot, please stop overthinking this?"


    "I guess. She''s just¡­"


    "It might not even be her, Chariot. It might be a guy who loves kicking people until they explode."


    "If we bring her in instead, does that work?"


    Cosette sighed. "Unfortunately, no. As it stands, she''ll still be executed. Director Blackett has issued orders for construction of a new...more minimum-security style facility, but construction has only just begun."


    "Where''s Saga, then?"


    "She''s...isolated."


    "She''s locked back up in a coffin," I said, and fell back into my seat. I was so mad at myself. After everything she''d been through, now she would go through it all again, for me.


    "This is strictly off the record," Cosette said, glancing around. "Strictly. She''s in Blackett''s mountain cabin retreat. Isolated from anyone else, except the listening post we set up out of her power''s range, to make sure she doesn''t wander off and nobody else wanders in. And she''s comfortable. Okay?"


    "Director Blackett," whispered Tem.


    "Okay," I said, and sighed. If that was true, she probably really liked that. She loved nature and being alone. But it was still a big if. Blackett hadn''t exactly given me reason to distrust him, but I had no reason to trust him either.


    "Look¡­" Cosette said glancing around even more furtively "we don''t have time for this now, but after the mission, I will take you up there myself if you would like, so chin up Chariot."


    I looked up at her, her body language leaning towards me, brown eyes focused and earnest. I wasn''t sure why she was volunteering this, but...I really appreciated it. I nodded at her and she smiled and slid back into rigid military posture.


    "Back to the mission, we don''t have any more log cabins laying around to shove Exhumans in, so no prisoners will be taken. Any other questions?"


    "How will we find him?" Karu asked, raising her hand as she spoke.


    "We have trackers following the trail presently. They are moving slowly to avoid stumbling on the target by accident, but the target appears to be stationary and currently in hiding since last night."


    "What kind of evacuation precautions are in place?" Again, Karu raised her hand.


    "Let me finish with the briefing then. After meeting with the trackers and picking up the target, you will attempt to herd them into one of two empty zones nearby, where your and their powers can be used without too much concern." She turned towards Tem. "Without too much concern."


    Tem wilted in her seat.


    "Security squads will be on-hand to secure the perimeter if you need it, but if the engagement turns mobile, it does. Do your best and stay in contact with the comms we gave you, and our teams will do their best to keep innocents out of the way. Attempt to keep them in the zones if at all possible. Also attempt to minimize damage...the areas may be empty but that''s no justification to blow everything up. But again, if it turns collateral, it does."


    She flipped the holo over to an overhead map, not bothering with the lights. "Zone Alpha is an open wilderness area, a park, which is already evacuated, and Zone Bravo is a construction site. Each is less than two blocks from where we believe the target is hiding, so do your best to get them in there. I recommend using Tower''s imposing presence to herd them, but the implementation is up to you."


    "Any questions?" she asked, standing up very straight. Karu seemed satisfied, and if she was, I was.


    "Stay safe, watch each other''s backs, and good luck. Vigilo Ignoto. Deployment is in...eleven minutes. A truck will take you to the OA. I''ll be on comms as your operator. You need anything, you just ask. This should be an easy op, five Exhumans against one, but it''s a critical one...first showing of the uh," she glared at me. "The P-Force. So make us proud and show the world what you can do."


    "Five Exhumans and a hunter," corrected Karu.


    "I uh," Cosette flipped through her wrist holo. "I don''t believe we issued a bounty on this?"


    "It''s pro bono today. I have personal investment in the success of this mission."


    "Unfortunately, I don''t think...that''s allowed. I can confer with Blackett--"


    "Director Blackett," muttered Tem.


    "--but I am reasonably certain he wants to make this something of a media spectacle. You could handle this all on your own...not so good for PR. I hope you understand? You''re a trusted associate, and welcome to join me at command. I''m sorry."


    "I understand," said Karu, standing and looking defeated and angry all at once. "It was foolish of me to assume." She stomped off and threw open the door with a bang and then hesitated. After lurking in the doorway for a few seconds, she came back, treading softly now, and pulled her visor up and gave me a gentle kiss.


    "I will wait for you this time, but do not expect me to be a patiently suffering wife who pines for her man," she said, stabbing me with a finger like I''d done everything wrong here.


    "I wouldn''t dream of it."


    "I will be with command then, and shall see you after," she said, and left, closing the door quietly.


    "Such drama." I looked over and saw Mage looking like she was ready to gag. She pulled out a bottle of water and glugged it obnoxiously, staring at me the whole time.


    "Make your final preparations and assemble on platform bravo 03 sierra delta-08. That''s zero eight, people."


    I really hoped zero eight was the important part of that, because I had a hard time turning the words into letters in my head.


    Eleven minutes may as well have been zero, for how long it felt. We were all put into the back of a truck, really an armored van, like the one which had taken me from home, or away from my other home. The back had two benches facing each other, and Tower took up most of one, with Tem next to him. Jack and Mage sat next to me on the other. Tem looked like she was going to be sick.


    "We''ll be fine, Tem," I said to her.


    She went from anxious to giving me a reassuring smile to looking sad. I was sure she was thinking something like how I shouldn''t be wasting my time comforting her, and I sighed. The girl was impossible to deal with.


    The truck took off, driving down the underground highway, vehicles and rooms flashing past us on both sides. After a couple of minutes, the gradual incline became more steep, and then we burst out into the light, the buildings and streets of D.C. materializing around us from the glare, like we''d just driven our way into heaven.


    I had to wonder. If we were infiltrating heaven to kill an innocent girl, what did that make us?

 116. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    It felt strange, walking through the streets with these four. I felt like we should be clinging to shadows, stalking forward in columns when no eyes were watching, but instead...we just walked right down the sidewalk like high school had just gotten out.


    We''d been unloaded at the edge of the OA--operational area, I''d learned, or ''place where shit was about to go down''--and despite the unusual quiet, it just felt like we were on a pleasant walk. Like Karu and I had been enjoying just this morning.


    Cars rumbled in the distance, birds called out, a train whistle could be heard pealing as it passed a crossing somewhere. Every once in awhile, I''d see soldiered uniforms, quietly funnelling people out of buildings and down backways, a silent evacuation, people always going the opposite direction we were. But even they moved quietly and with relative calm, not disrupting the peace of the clear, unseasonably warm day.


    And that was the whole point, I supposed. Not a whole lot of point on trying to chase someone down if you''re making a huge racket letting them know we were about to come up on them.


    We caught up with the trackers, two XPCA soldiers in non-standard uniforms, outfitted with all sorts of tools, and crazy headgear which looked like it had a thousand different digital eyes of every shape and size. One was on all fours on the ground like a dog, taking slow long deliberate steps and sweeping his head back and forth...more like a crab than a dog, I realized. The other saluted and approached as we drew near.


    "You are...the new team?" he asked, with a sharp salute, and the same digital distortion in his voice, despite not being in an exosuit. The numerous devices across his face and hanging off his head in all directions minutely adjusted itself as he took in each of us, lenses realigning, apertures dilating, cameras pivoting. Even when he held still, it was like his eyes were darting all over. Slightly unsettling, but also incredibly cool.


    "That''s us," said Jack. "Status report."


    "The target definitely went this way, looks like you''re in luck. Seems she went into Zone Bravo all on her own. We did a pass, but couldn''t pick up anyone inside, too much concrete and metal to get a read from the outside. She hasn''t come out yet, so unless there''s an underground route or she can fly, she¡¯s still in there."


    "She?" I said.


    "Yes, we confirmed it was the female." He reached into one of the many pouches on his front and withdrew a small sample bag with a single blue strand of hair in it.


    "Why would she go in there?" Tower asked. "She thinks she can hide from us?"


    "The recon team doesn''t speculate, sir," he replied simply.


    "What''s your friend doing?" I asked, as the second recon slowly plodded forward again, sweeping his head from side to side, inches from the ground.


    "He...that is, we found some unusual climatic readings. We were just checking it out while we waited."


    "It is pretty unnaturally warm today," Jack said, smiling at the sky.


    "Yes sir. But no sir, the readings were cold air currents, not warm. It''s probably nothing."


    "Very well. Thank you for your hard work," said Jack.


    "Thank you, sir. Vigilo Ignoto." He gave us one more sharp salute and then collected his friend and the two walked off with an awkward gait.


    "They''re a little freaky," Tower said.


    "The suits, they had stilts and distended gloves," I said. "Must be to make it easier to run on all fours."


    "Running all fours is a little freaky."


    "Focus, assholes," said Mage, finishing her bottle of water and crushing it on her forehead. She threw the empty at Tower. "Don''t get me killed."


    "That''s...not very polite, Mage," Tem chastised, speaking for probably the first time today.


    "If polite kept me alive, I''d be it." Mage shoved Tower in the back, towards the empty construction of Zone Bravo.


    Bravo was reasonably complete looking from the outside, looked like an under-construction building, surrounded by a dirt yard, surrounded by fences. But inside, it was still an obviously unfinished skeleton. No walls, just concrete pillars, and stairs in a couple of places. Everything was dark because there were temporary walls, tarps, and scaffolding instead of windows, and obviously no lights. We could see through the gloom, but it was still unsettling. Nothing on the first floor but random piles of construction materials, so we hit the stairs and moved up. Mage grabbed a mallet and chisel from a table as we passed them.


    "Klepto, much?" Tower asked.


    "S-s-she just wants to have s-something to defend...to defend herself."


    "Both of you are stupid."


    The second floor looked much the same, but the third was much more open, with no tarps or wooden walls put up, letting us see the sky pouring in. There, in the far corner of the room was a chair, facing towards the city, and sitting in the chair, identifiable by the back of her blue head, was our girl.


    We advanced slowly, carefully. Except Mage, who noisily and worryingly was attacking the stairs with her new toys. Blue hair didn''t turn around at the noise, so we continued our approach.


    "Hands in the air, miss," Jack said, suddenly on her, knife in hand, wrapped around her throat. I couldn''t see because he was in the way, but she didn''t move or explode or anything.


    We all stood shock still for several moments. "You guys should see this," Jack said. We started to close the other half of the distance when Mage stepped in front of us, unspooling a thick wire cable.


    "Mage, what are you doing?" I asked.


    "Helping. Duh."


    "By running wire in front of us?"


    "Step over it."


    She was completely impossible, but I stepped over it anyway because I had to see what Jack was seeing. I drew close and finally rounded the front of the chair, unsure of what to expect.


    She was...dead? She was slumped forward, barely propped up in the chair. I put my hand in front of her face and felt her breath, cold on my hand. Just sleeping then?


    Mage threw the chisel down the stairs with an enormous clatter and we all watched for a second as it went. Once it stopped, she swore, in Spanish, I think, and followed it down.


    "She always do this?" I asked.


    "She always does whatever she wants. I don''t ask anymore," Tower replied.


    "Why did we bring her?"


    People shrugged.


    Tem walked to the front of blue hair and gasped, reaching out to wake her up. Jack gently stopped her, but her face showed all kinds of concern for the poor girl. How had she ever planned on fighting this girl, if it had come to that?


    "So the obvious question is, is this a trap," I asked, crossing my arms and thinking.


    "I was more thinking, if this is a trap, think we can grab her and scoot without tripping it?" replied Tower. "I''m more of a delivery guy than a detective."


    "There''s no physical trap here. No hidden wires or explosives or anything. Just her." Jack said, scanning the area with a smile. I trusted his sight beyond sight more than my own eyes.


    "Excuse me," said Mage as she walked into the middle of our group with the mallet and tread on Tower, deftly climbing up his leg onto his shoulders. He looked as confused as the rest of us as he held her aloft. She took steady aim at the base of a support anchoring a pipe the ceiling and gave it a sharp whack, shearing the support and making the end of the pipe dangle above us. It had a sprinkler on the end of it, one of those fire suppression systems.


    When she whacked the anchor, blue hair stirred and slowly blinked at us.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    "Tower, grab that," she said, as she climbed back down. He seemed more concerned with the girl, but did as he was told.


    "Bend it down slowly."


    Blue hair watched quietly and patiently as they worked, as confused as the rest of us.


    "Thought we were avoiding unnecessary damage?" I asked.


    "Shut up. Bend it, Tower."


    He already was, and once it was almost perpendicular, and completely useless, she told him to stop, and then sat on the floor next to us.


    "Are you done?" I asked.


    "You can thank me later."


    I sighed. "Hi. What''s your name?"


    "My name?" blue hair said in a feathery voice. "Um, Steffie. Where am I?"


    "In a building in D.C., near East Falls."


    "How did I get here?"


    "We don''t know, we found you here. Tem, can you call Cosette with an update?"


    "S-s-s-sure." I rolled my eyes and realized she was probably the worst radio man, but whatever.


    "You hurt or anything? Can you walk?"


    "Yes, I think so. Who are you? Why are you...breaking that pipe."


    "We''re uh," I looked at the others. We didn''t have a cover story or anything. I wasn''t sure what to say. "We''re XPCA. I have no idea why they broke the pipe."


    "X...XPCA?" she shouted and stood up, folding chair falling behind her with a bang. "Stay away! STAY AWAY!" she shrieked.


    "Smooth, Chariot," Tower growled at me out of the side of my mouth.


    "Look, we don''t want to hurt you lady," I said. She was already backing away. "Stop or we''re going to have to stop you, please."


    "No! Look, I haven''t done anything! It was an accident, okay? I''ve been a good person, I''ve been a good Exhuman. I haven''t hurt anyone in thirteen years, I promise!"


    "We just need to take you in."


    Her eyes widened. "No! I don''t want to die!"


    "Nobody''s going to kill you," I said, trying to calm her, but I''d already done way too much damage. The reputation of the XPCA and their attitudes towards prisoners preceded us. She was panicking now, and running towards the stairs. I sighed. "Tem, please close the stairs. Jack, can you keep her from running around please?"


    "Like...with a knife?"


    "No. We''re taking her in alive, and the XPCA isn''t going to execute her. Thirteen years she said she''s been hiding, God damn."


    She screamed as the stairs closed themselves before her eyes, and then again as she backed right into Jack, who just smiled at her, and then bolted from him and ran right into him again, before she dropped to the floor and crawled backwards away from him.


    "We''re Exhumans too, see?" I said. "New XPCA policy. Guess you didn''t hear."


    "I did hear! They''re sending you to kill your own kind now! I won''t let you take me in! I won''t! I''ll...I''ll fight you if I have to!"


    She would have been a lot more threatening if she were not continuing to crawl backwards from Jack, who was rummaging around in a bag he had on his back.


    "Here we go," he said, and lobbed a grenade at her feet. She stared at it with slowly-dawning terror as he disappeared. It emitted a tone and then exploded, way bigger than I thought possible. Even on the other end of the building, my ears rung and I had to blink the lights out of my eyes over a few seconds.


    Steffie was screaming inarticulately and rolling on the ground, eyes closed, grasping at her ears. In a circle around and under Steffie, the concrete looked like it had shattered, centered on her instead of on the grenade.


    So the teaser had worked. She was clearly blind and deaf as hell, but it going off had made her explode with enough force to crack the floor under her. I felt bad standing and analyzing the situation so coldly while she thrashed and screamed, but I sure as hell wasn''t getting close to her until I knew how she worked. I was a lot more brittle than concrete.


    In both instances, she''d been attacked and reacted explosively. Was her power just a shield like mine, then? Uncontrollable explosive force when it determined she was under attack? But this time, while the blast was sizable, it wasn''t destroy a whole store and vaporize someone standing fifteen feet away, as it had been on the holo big.


    The difference was...what? Emotional? Physical? Was she trying to hold back this time but not then? There wasn''t any reason for her to do so...last time she had her tormentors right on top of her and an innocent in the blast range, if anything else, she should have been trying to hold back then. Maybe the nature of the hit, then? A loud boom was, relatively speaking, nothing compared to a solid kick to the chest.


    Jack was back and from his pack he had a pair of restraints, and advanced on her.


    "Jack," I said. "Don''t do anything which could be considered an attack. In fact, let Tower do it. Tower, be gentle and keep your force suppression up. I think if she feels like she''s under attack, she explodes."


    The two agreed and passed off the restraints to Tower, who gently grappled with the flailing girl, getting the restraints on her, binding her arms and legs. She seemed to have some idea what was going on, and was crying through her inarticulate yelling. It sounded like she was trying to say things, but, unaccustomed to being deaf, it was coming out as pleading stretches of vowels.


    This job was making me feel like shit more and more. How was any of this supposed to paint us as heroes? I committed myself to not allowing her to be put to death, at least. She could live with Saga if it came to that. Hell, she could live with me if it came to that. This woman didn''t deserve death just for existing.


    "Bring her here. Now. Come, all of you."


    Mage was still sitting in the corner under the bent water pipe, where Tem was fretting listlessly. Jack and Tower obeyed at once.


    "Why?" I asked.


    "Move," she barked, but there was something in her voice, a hint of desperation I couldn''t ignore. I wanted to drag my feet, get some answers out of her, but was really unnerved by the unusual outpouring of emotion. Outpouring relative to her norm, anyway.


    I joined the little family in a circle, Steffie on the ground in the middle of all of us. "Happy?" I asked, exasperated.


    "Never," she said. And then, without warning, water flooded the room. The fire-suppression sprinklers in the ceiling began throwing water everywhere. I had no idea they put out so much damn water, in mere moments, there were literal walls of water pouring off the sides of the building from the floors above, like we were in a hurricane.


    Water covered every inch of everything on the floor, as imperfections in the concrete turned the current into little eddies, rivers, and lakes, inches deep. Everything...except us.


    Apparently we were on the highest corner of the floor, and water went around us like an island. The pipe above our heads was completely broken, only letting out a slow drip instead of flinging buckets of the stuff in every direction. We all, sort of one by one, began staring at Mage.


    "I said you can thank me later," she said.


    "Thanks for keeping us dry, I guess?" I said.


    "It''s not later yet. Just...be ready."


    She sounded scared, and her fear, of all of ours, was infectious. We huddled back-to-back on our small dry island, Steffie now still and quiet, apparently recovered enough to read the mood.


    "I remember how I got here," she whispered. "A man. He said I could hide here from you. And then...I don''t remember anything."


    So it was a trap, but not hers. But who, and why, and what was with all this water? Was he just using the chaos of it to get a drop on us, or did he have a complimentary power?


    Half a moment later, I wish I didn''t have the answer. In an instant, all the water in the room had frozen, turned to glassy sheets of ice exactly where it sat, ripples from falling droplets, the spray from the sprinklers, even the sheets of water over the edge of the building, all solid ice in an instant.


    And in the instant after, cold like I''d never felt in my life, from the ice itself. It felt like the ice was so cold, it was sucking heat out of the air. I felt the cold burn my throat, and had to shut my eyes as they threatened to freeze solid. I could feel frozen lumps in my tear ducts, which hurt like a motherfucker. My skin screamed like it was on fire. My clothes felt like they did nothing, like the cold was reaching right into me.


    Just when I couldn''t stand it for another second, it was gone. I dragged in a ragged gasp that burned my throat and lungs. Still cold, but nothing like the freezing blast of a moment ago.


    "We--" I coughed. "--we okay? Report." I asked.


    Everyone sounded off. We were all still here, even Steffie. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the XPCA comms.


    "Cosette? We have the girl, but something isn''t right."


    "This is Raven Central, we solid copy. Do you need extraction?"


    "I think there''s another Exhuman at play. Someone with cold powers. Powerful."


    I heard a noise like someone crunching through heavy snow and looked around. The wall to our left, about ten feet away was shimmering. Wriggling. The ice itself was shifting, layering on itself. Becoming thicker.


    Like it was amassing for an attack.


    I grabbed the two people closest to me, Mage and Tem, and dropped to the floor. Tem screamed, and then, in the same moment with a splintering crack which echoed through the ice cave, a huge multi-barbed icicle exploded from the wall of ice, slicing through the air above our prone heads, catching Jack and Tower.


    Tower flew backwards, powers at the ready to transform the explosive piercing force into a shove, but Jack wasn''t so lucky. He''d started to move, started to disappear after I''d hit the deck, but was too slow. He wasn''t here anymore, but there was blood on the icy spear where he''d been standing, and on the floor.


    "Shit, Jack!?" I shouted.


    "Jack?" Cosette''s voice came through the comms I''d dropped. "What about Jack? Say again, Papa-Foxtrot two."


    "Jack''s hurt!" I shouted at the comms. "Ice Exhuman, we can''t see him yet." I turned to the rest laying with me. "We need to get out of here!"


    "Extraction teams inbound. Hang tight, guys."


    "We can''t wait for that. We need to get out of all this ice. He can attack us from anywhere." I heard the sounds of snow crunching all around us now, as ice began to shift all around our little island.


    "Move!" screamed Mage, and we all leapt forward, me dragging the bound Steffie behind me, towards the stairs. I made it exactly two steps before sliding uncontrollably on the ice, falling on my ass painfully, and continuing to slide.


    Ahead of us, the ice quivered menacingly, preparing to close on us like a set of teeth. I clawed at the ground, unable to find a hold. I slashed at the ice before us, making it crack and sizzle with the heat of my blades, but it reformed as quickly as I melted it away, and as it did, I felt the biting cold again. When the ice formed was when it sucked the heat from the air.


    I''m sure there were some interesting physics behind it, but I was busy sliding towards my death. I saw blades of ice form from the ceiling, aimed and ready to cut us in half like a guillotine. If only the ground weren''t so smooth and flat, if I had anything, anything to grab. But instead we were just sailing right into the damn jaws of death, screaming and clawing the whole way.

 117. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    My feet passed over a bump in the ice, and I grabbed at it when my hands went over it. Something thick and round was under the ice, making a small speed bump. I looked around, Mage and Tem had found the same handhold, and Steffie slid into all three of us, but we held and caught her as well. I pulled my legs in, and ice blades crashed from the ceiling like the world''s most brutal, briefest hailstorm. I felt the ice crack under me from the force of the impact.


    I was sweating, despite the cold. Thank God for this...wire cable, I realized. I didn''t remember a wire cable being over here when we first entered. No time to stop and think. We were only a quarter of the way to the stairs.


    "Tem, I can''t melt the ice fast enough with my swords. Can you laser it?"


    She nodded and closed her eyes for half a second, and I saw a large hazy cloud forming near us. After a moment, it erupted into light, completely blinding me. Blinding all of us. Way brighter than it should have been.


    I felt the beam hit me, felt my flesh burning on my shoulder. Wanted to scream at Tem over the sound of the air tearing apart and the blinding light, but I realized she was screaming too. All of us were.


    Tem''s lasers weren''t limited by range, it wasn''t something she controlled, not in a powers sense, she just created them and let them go. They still followed conventional physics once they were loose, and so her light did what any light would do when it was fired off in a huge empty hall lined with reflective sheets of ice. Bounced everyfuckingwhere and torched everyone inside.


    I was glad she''d kept it to a medium-strength blast. I''d have gone all-out, and we''d all be dead now.


    "Ow, ow, ow," said Steffie, inhaling sharply.


    "Tem, what the hell!" yelled Tower, who''d gotten it all the way on the other side of the room.


    "I''m...I''m s-so s-s-sorry!" Tem cried out. "I didn''t know!"


    "Tem, shut up, please. It was my fault, but apologizing and assigning blame is a waste of time. We need to keep moving."


    My arm was stiff and my skin felt unusually tight and hot. First or mild second-degree burns. Everyone else looked about the same or better. That could have been so much worse, but we still had so far to go until the stairs, and then there was another entire two floors of this.


    Fortunately, the cable ran straight towards the stairs. Not a fan of the biting cold, but not seeing another option, I slashed at it just under the ice with my swords and plunged my hand into the rapidly-refreezing water, snatching the wire and only putting my hand in for a moment.


    Biting cold was a fucking goddamn understatement.


    Fuck, it was like fire. My hand went numb and hurt more than anything I''d ever felt, all at the same time. I gasped, and when that didn''t begin to cut it, found myself emptying my lungs into a scream. My hand was like a paralyzed claw, white and red splotches forming across it, as the water on my hand froze into a thin layer of frost directly on my skin. In my skin, it felt like. I clawed at it, trying to get the liquid off of me, but stopped after a moment, realizing that it was frozen pieces of my own hand I was tearing away. I couldn''t even feel them.


    "Jesus Christ," said Steffie, looking at my frozen twisted hand, her face at least as horrified as I felt.


    I said nothing. I couldn''t say anything but scream, and I knew if I started screaming...more than I already had...I wouldn''t be able to stop. I slowly, deliberately handed the wire to Mage standing next to me and put my hand down. Moved it out of sight.


    I was Saga. I built a wall in my mind and shut the arm out. It was gone to me, gone from this whole world. I couldn''t focus on it now or I''d die. We''d all die. My blades slashed out again, and cut more of the wire free from the ice, and we all advanced slowly, pulling the wire from the ice using the wire we''d already pulled free, and used it to pull ourselves along, Tem dragging Steffie behind us on the ice like an uncooperative dog behind us.


    On the other end of the room, Tower was making progress, building up speed by increasing his sliding ricochets when they pointed him towards the exit, and dampening others. His largest issue was the continuous ice weapon attacks, which he couldn''t avoid and which sent him flying off at random.


    When the attacks came for us, I slashed the ice down as fast as it could aggregate, and just endured the biting cold until the attack gave up and tried something else. The cold was even worse now, I felt like my hand had sapped all the heat from my body, and any change in temperature made it burn. I considered just hacking it off and cauterizing the wound with my blades, maybe that would deaden the nerves and the pain.


    And fuck, was I lucky Blackett and Karu both had access to a regenerator. A multi-million-credit luxury not afforded to your standard soldiers.


    My hand screamed at me and I tried to push it back out of my mind. It was impossible, so I pushed cutting more of the cable and dragging ourselves out of here into my mind instead. Every damn step felt like a battle, but we were almost there. Just a few more steps.


    I heard crunching again, but not the ice rearranging we''d been hearing near constantly now. Even, paced crunches of ice. Footsteps. Up the stairs we were heading towards, the head of a figure appeared.


    Minus the implication of who he was, and his calm at this whole calamity, he looked...unintimidating. Like any other man. Business wear, tie loose, jacket held over his shoulder, light blue shirt and dark brown slacks. The only unusual part of his outfit was the heavy boot with snow cleats crunching up the stairs. His hair said ''young professional'', but his face said ''punch me.''


    He leered at us sideways. I didn''t bother asking for his name before trying to cut him down, three blades on each of his sides, slashing through him like scissors.


    They slashed through a pillar of ice, but he wasn''t there anymore, stepping off the top of the pillar onto the icy floor with us as my swords shredded it.


    "Thought you were supposed to read me my rights first, officer?" he said, his blue eyes glinting at me from beneath his straw-colored hair.


    "You have me confused with a police officer. See, I''m an assassin."


    I slashed at him again and again, but he skated around easily, quickly moving out of my range. He''d put solid hunks of ice covering the spikes on the bottom of each of his shoes, and presumably using his powers, slid around like they were ice skates.


    "What do you want," I asked.


    "Are you stupid?"


    "I''ve been accused of that at times. So answer the damn question."


    "I want you all dead, obviously."


    "That''s not very nice. Or very specific. Did I kill your dog or something, or are you just a huge fucking hypocrite who hates other Exhumans?"


    I needed time to think. I''d seen some of what this guy could do, but had been focused on escaping instead of fighting. It was troubling that he had made the pillar of ice under his feet so fast when I first attacked, meant that like me, like all Exhumans I''d met so far, his powers really were almost instant-speed. The slowness of his attacks before must have been a trick he could use to extend his range, like me throwing lightning bulbs or Tem firing a laser.


    That made us relatively safe outside his reach, but near him, this guy was basically the same as the terrapath, but with ice. If he was just downstairs though, his range couldn''t be that large, not enough to activate through the ceiling above him. So...less than six feet, at least. In both applications so far, he''d used his powers directly under his own feet. Maximum confirmed range was zero.


    "Oh, I don''t hate Exhumans, I love them. They''re my favorite thing in the whole world."


    Great, got him talking. That would buy me another few moments. I kept my injured arm in the open where he could see it. If I hid it, it would look like I was on the defensive, and prompt him to attack. For now I just wanted to hold him while he talked.


    "Then why are you killing us, huh? You must suck at relationships if that''s how you show love."


    He grinned. Good, a talker like me, then. Get under his skin and keep his lips flapping.


    The obvious plan was still the same. We could take him easily if we had traction under our feet, so we had to get out of this icy madhouse. Tower could bust a hole in the wall and get out any time he wanted, and hopefully Jack was already gone, but Tem, me, and Steffie needed stairs like properly civilized idiots. Steffie was worse than useless, and Tem could only be counted on her for her illusions, and if it came to it, her constructs.


    "I''m not interested in discussing my personal affairs with a child. Your death will suffice."


    "Child?" I shouted, trying to sound baited. "I''ll have you know, I''m the leader of the world''s first all-Exhuman fighting force. You think you get there by being a child?"This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I wasn''t the really the leader, but any reason to keep him yapping.


    I needed to get the others out, but they were just sitting on the damn stairs watching. The door was right there, guys, and the next two floors we didn''t have to cross a whole floor to reach the stairway. If they''d been filing out this whole time, they might be on the ground floor by now.


    I couldn''t tell them that, of course. I padded my pocket subtly, my comms was gone, left on the floor where we''d started. I guess if I wanted them to go, I needed to start a real distraction.


    "Yes, I saw you on the holo. Honestly, you think I didn''t know that? Why do you think I went through the trouble of setting this trap if I didn''t know what I''d be catching? You think I''m stupid?"


    Yes. But that was beside the point right now. Tower finished sliding around and rejoined the rest of us. We could act now¡­


    We really needed to come up with some hand signals. Or have Saga on the team, I decided.


    "Guys, run. Now," I said.


    "You gotta--" Tower was cut off as Mage grabbed him by the pants and threw him down the stairs.


    I didn''t see anything else, and had to just assume they were moving. I was busy flying across the ice at...huh. I realized I didn''t even know his name.


    Dipshit it was, then.


    While we''d been talking, I''d been manipulating a sword the size of a toothpick under my foot, freezing and reforming the ice, until I had a nice little mound to shove off from.


    And when I shoved off, I shoved off. Stupid as the fucking move was, I jolted my own legs to give myself one hundred percent. My legs would be out of commission for a while, but they weren''t exactly useful on the ice anyway. I exploded forward with inhuman speed, six shining swords bearing from nothingness to cut and slash at him, while my legs cramped and burned, and my useless arm hung at my side.


    I saw fear in his eyes for a moment and then he evaded, falling backwards, but the ice under him rising to catch him and pull him just out of reach of my swords. I sailed past on my back, heading straight into the wall behind him.


    Right where I wanted to be.


    Before I hit it, I hacked at the wall, slashing at it ruthlessly with all six blades. I had to cut through before my speed carried me right into it. Without my legs usable, and locked tense as they were, I''d break both of them for certain, and I didn''t have the remaining functioning limbs for that.


    I only had split seconds between entering range of the wall and crashing into it, and I hacked only a small square hole into it before I slid through, my prone body barely clearing the gap I''d made, and the rest of the wall complaining with loud cracks about the sudden structural change.


    But I''d done it. I was out. Sunlight and warmth flooded my perceptions as I cleared the tiny hole.


    I began to fall, but my target had not been chosen randomly. There, hanging in the ice next to me, the rest of the wire cable hung off the side of the building. Encased in ice mostly, but towards the bottom, it hung free.


    Thank God gravity was a thing this time. As I hacked the wire free and grabbed it, keeping myself from flying off over three stories of nothingness, the re-freezing water fell away instead of pooling on me and burning my arm. I mean, it did burn my arm somewhat, but compared to my right hand? It was like reaching into ice water. Nothing to die over.


    I slashed at the cable as I fell, freeing it from the ice, and wrapping my whole body around it. I was still falling too fast, but I had a chance. Through the ice, I glimpsed for a moment the second floor, where the others were barreling down the stairs. Good, that was one less concern.


    I really should have been more concerned with the ground coming up to meet me, though. Three stories was a lot.


    My hand felt like it had no skin left on it, but I still grabbed the ice-cold cable with everything I had. The bottom end was now free and snaking around, but I managed to clamp my cramping legs on it, because hey, I needed rope burns everywhere, why not.


    I closed my eyes and just hung on, feeling myself slowing but having no idea how much distance I had left or how far I had to go. Everything hurt. My right arm was totally gone, my left hand was one huge mess of burns, my legs were cramping and twitching and resented me for forcing them together on this fucking metal cable. Skin was beginning to feel like a luxury where I touched the cable.


    I slammed into the ground and added my tailbone to the mix. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I rolled to my side, but didn''t have any more functioning limbs to nurse my butt. At least I hadn''t snapped my spine in landing or anything. But Jesus, I hurt all over. I knew he was probably coming for me, but I couldn''t move. I had to just lay there for a few and breathe, my body was seriously falling apart here.


    I only had a couple of minutes of painful, writhing respite before the building began to crack ominously. From one or two loud cracks to quiet crinkling, the building was soon a deafening, constant roar of noise.


    Ice began falling off of it in large chunks, and as it did, it became water again. Drops at first, with a few large chunks of melting ice, but soon there was a torrent of water flowing down the sides of the building again. It washed over me, and felt surprisingly warm. I gave myself another minute to bask as the building emptied itself out.


    Eventually, I''d decided I indulged myself enough. I had to move. I had to. The others might be in danger. I might still be in danger. The ice might be gone, but who knows, the asshole might shoot Tem in the face for all I knew. I used my elbows to rock myself upright, both of my hands now just garbage, and headed back inside.


    What I saw was...not what I was expecting. Jack, unconscious, by the looks of it, on the first floor. He had a pretty bad cut across his chest diagonally where the ice had got him. I couldn''t help in my state much, but, knowing how much this would hurt, dragged a tiny blade like a needle across his wound, cauterizing it and stopping any further blood loss.


    He looked like shit. Blood fucking everywhere, sweat standing on his brow, shallow breathing. I hope the XPCA got here and got him out fast.


    I couldn''t do anything else. I went up the stairs, water still trickling past my feet. On the second floor, I caught up with everyone.


    I must have looked like real hell. Tem wouldn''t look at me after her first glance over. Tower stepped up to me, and I was legitimately worried for my life if he hugged me now, but he just nodded at me and asked if I was okay.


    "I''ve been better. Where''s...where''s Dipshit?"


    They parted to give me a path to the stairs up, and I couldn''t believe what I saw.


    He was laying face down at the bottom of the stairs, and protruding from his back was the same damn chisel Mage had earlier.


    "You impaled him?" I asked.


    "He came running after us, after you were gone. We were sliding all over on this floor and almost at the stairs down," Tower said. "He came up at the top of the stairs, and we were right under him. We were in his range, we were done for. And then¡­"


    They just looked at each other, except Mage, who mostly looked miserable, and Steffie, who looked traumatized.


    "He...he...just, s-s-slipped," Tem said.


    "He slipped," I echoed.


    She nodded.


    "There''s a chip taken out of the top step, it makes a slope instead," Tower said, glancing at Mage. "He musta stepped on that. Then he just...went bouncing down the stairs. Cracked his head before I think he even knew what was happening, and then...landed on...that."


    The body in a pool of blood with a chisel sticking through it seemed self-evident now.


    I turned to Mage. "You cut that notch out of the step."


    She said nothing and avoided my gaze.


    "You put the chisel where it sat. You ran the cable across the floor above us, and you broke the sprinkler. You knew all of this would happen."


    "I didn''t," she said.


    "You did, and that''s your power, isn''t it? You can see the future."


    "I didn''t!" she yelled back.


    "There''s no other way you can possibly have known all these things would come in handy. It''s completely impossible. In fact¡­" my mind raced. "Every single time I''ve seen you do or say anything, it''s had a purpose, hasn''t it?"


    "You''re stupid. I hate you, Chariot. Leave me alone!" she screamed at me like the child she was.


    "In...in Blackett manor, after I hurt Tem...you were clinging to my arm all weird-like, and Tower pulled you off of me. Later that day, he and I made up over it. You did that."


    "I said, shut up!"


    "And when I was beating myself up over hurting her, you said the one thing I needed to hear to be able to start figuring out what was wrong with me."


    Mage lunged at me, but Tower held her back.


    "Hey, at least she''s on our side, right?" he said, "We''d have never made it through this without her."


    "Just shut up and leave me alone," she moped, toothless in Tower''s arms.


    "My, what an amazing power. And I was going to be satisfied with the boy downstairs."


    We heard an unfamiliar voice, and turned to see Dipshit sitting upright, and pulling the makeshift blade out of his chest and throwing it aside with a clatter. Flecks of his blood splattered off of the chisel while it bounced.


    "It...it...went through his lungs. He wasn''t breathing," Tem gasped.


    Before I could even think about acting, Mage trembled in Tower''s arms. I thought she was just having a seizure or something, but then...she exploded, a spear of ice piercing through the front of her chest from inside.


    "Got you back," he said with a smile. "Except I bet you don''t regenerate like I do. Bet you wish you didn''t drink that water now."


    She gurgled and hissed, shaking in Tower''s arms. Blood seeped from the corners of her mouth as she tried to cough, tried to speak. He urgently laid her on the ground, but it looked bad. Real bad. The blade had gone upwards, towards her lungs and heart.


    "Nobody else was thirsty? Such a shame."


    He was within my range. Without even turning, I formed all six blades inside his body, tearing him apart from the inside out, like he''d done to her.


    But he wasn''t there. He was standing ten feet away with his eyes closed. My blades chased him, moving as fast as lightning could move, but he wasn''t there anymore, appearing behind me. I sensed him there like I sensed Tem, like I sensed Jack.


    Exactly like I sensed Jack actually. It wasn''t possible. He had the exact same powers as Jack? Even how he flitted around with his eyes shut now...


    "And now you finally get it, huh boy? Why I''d want to lure in a bunch of delicious Exhumans like you?"


    "Everybody, we can''t take him. We need to leave, now. Tower, get Mage and Jack is downstairs. We''re running."


    "No," said Tower, standing between Mage''s body and Dipshit. "This guy''s going down."


    "We can''t beat him," I pleaded desperately. "He''s not an ordinary Exhuman. He''s got ice, regeneration, and now he''s got Jack''s powers too. Who knows what else he''s got."


    "Then he''s got multiple powers and so do we."


    "Tower, I think...think he can steal powers."


    Tower looked at me for just half a moment, comprehension turning his resolve into horror.


    "Fuck me," he whispered, and then he turned to scoop up Mage and headed for the stairs.


    Before he could reach her, Dipshit was standing between the two of them with his eyes shut and a smile on his face.

 118. 2251, Present Day. Camden. Lia.

    When we boarded the plane in Vegas, it was close to 80 degrees. Unseasonably warm, but still. When we disembarked, 2.5 hours in the air later, it was only 45. I just froze up as I reached the deboarding ramp, feeling the tendrils of winter air snaking through the outdoor tunnel and right through my clothes. Held up everyone else on the VTOL and felt terrible for it, but damn, a sweatshirt did not cut it, no matter how lumpy and comfy.


    I resented AEGIS, who walked around in a glamorous cutesy dress, the likes of which she''d been wearing non-stop since the prospect of Athan had re-entered her life, and just loathed Chiho who looked toasty warm in her mobile fortress of leg warmers, layered jackets, and a blanket.


    Plus she had fat. I''d never been so jealous of fat before, as I froze my skinny little chicken legs off.


    What I really missed was my slipskin. As much as I might have complained about trying to sleep in the thing, it was a damn miracle suit. Warm, cold, rain, that thing handled it all. And hell, you never even had to wash it. But I could hardly wander around town wearing one without looking like a freaking terrorist.


    Which, I remembered, as we waited for our bags, I guess I technically was. Well, not right now I wasn''t, I was on vacation. Even terrorists needed vacations.


    "Girls, this is gonna be dope," said Chiho, breaking out slang that probably would be missed at the museum she''d stolen it from. "It''s gonna be so much fun, and with my two besties! OMG!"


    It was...difficult to get excited, watching the bag carousel slowly grind in a circle with our luggage still nowhere yet in sight. I''d thrown together this plan because I was worried about AEGIS'' mental health, and I saw no way of getting her out of the house if I didn''t dangle Athan in front of her.


    I didn''t mind the break myself, but I''d still be pulling furtive sessions at night after we all went to bed. I''d lost Black Shark once and had destroyed one of my best friendships, and then incidentally jeopardized the safety of the world last time I''d done that. I could never let her go again.


    VGCon had been an afterthought to get Chiho to come so I wouldn''t have to manage AEGIS all on my own, and Paradise Isles as an after-after thought so it seemed less suspicious that I''d want us to go.


    But I was under no delusions. This was about AEGIS, plain and simple. Working alongside her so long on Operation: Athan, at the beginning had been a blast. But the more we worked, the more we focused on opening up AEGIS'' hacking network, broadened her scope of the world and the millions of data streams which could pour directly into her, the more she scared me.


    One day I had been out in the garage working with her, not on anything related, just both of us sitting together working in the same space, for company, I guess, and Chiho came in and invited us both to watch some show. I refused, AEGIS accepted. No big deal, whatever.


    Not five minutes later, I notice she''s remoted back into her work and is organizing and running a little data smash and grab. Running international data security teams in circles, while she''s sitting in there, with Chiho, watching cartoons. That was when I first began to notice how distant she was getting. How she was becoming a lot more machine than human.


    I thought back to when she decided to turn her feelings off, and now...if she became that person again...that machine again...with the data and resources she had access to now¡­


    Dreams of Skyweb opening up the sky and killing every Exhuman on the planet at once troubled my sleep, let''s just say. I had to get her off of her work, and with any luck, under my brother, ''cuz as much as I didn''t want him being a pawn in this, if they could both be happy and avert the robopocalypse at the same time, that was a win in my book.


    "Lia baby, you okay?" Chiho was in front of me, waving. How long had she been there? They had our bags already. I needed coffee bad. I''d tried to cut back, but I was just useless and grumpy, spacing out all the time and then getting angry about random stuff.


    I mean, I guess that meant I shouldn''t have coffee in a general sense, but...jeez, man.


    "No? Yes?" she asked. Damnit, I never responded.


    "Yeah. Fine. Just fine. I just need this vacation!" I laughed. She laughed with me.


    The smile fell off my face as soon as her back was turned.


    Three days was probably an excessive amount of time to spend splashing around, but that was what the others insisted. Three days for VGCon was how long it would run, so three days for each of us. I''d tried to donate most of my time towards D.C., but AEGIS would have none of it. Frustrating and stupid waste of time, but it was what it was. As long as she was out here, she wouldn''t get worse, I just hoped three days was enough for her to spend with Athan at the end.


    Never mind that if we just went to VGCon first, we had six days. Why''d Chiho have to be so freakin'' accommodating.


    Our hotel was right across from Paradise Isles, a nice place, for how much of a crappy tourist trap this was, and we swung by to drop off our stuff and quickly change. There was the daunting prospect of wearing a swimsuit and also making it across the street in frigid 40¡ã weather, and we each had our own strategy.


    AEGIS just exuded heat, and if she needed to, turned up her thermostat, I assumed. She had no reason to wear anything to cross the street, save modesty.


    Chiho went full mobile fortress again. Flip-flops and leg warmers, the ultimate combo for the beach-going tourist.


    I just ran for it. It was a terrible decision, and I stood there, shivering and dancing at the stupid red light, but once we got inside, where it was as hot as a balmy summer day and Chiho was sweating as she stripped out of her layers, and then had to find a place to stash them, I felt vindicated.


    AEGIS was keeping with the theme of dancing the skanky-sexy line, wearing a creamy yellow bikini that showed off all of her, but didn''t have anything specifically provocative about it. It hung at her hips instead of being one of the more extreme models like were popular lately, which came almost all the way up to the ribcage to make a long narrow V to let men know exactly where to point their eyes. There was fabric all around instead of string, and the color matched her eyes, but also matched her skin tone closely enough to warrant a double take if you only just saw her.


    Her figure was perfect and svelte though, and I had to hate her for that. If I could just dump myself into a new perfect body whenever I wanted...I''d eat a lot more donuts. I''d been gaining and losing weight like crazy, between drinking every day, never eating, and most recently, working 24/7 and my new coffee addiction. I''d been happy when I finally put on a few pounds, and then discovered they were all depressing flab. Still the same boobs and flat butt. Life wasn''t fair.


    Chiho, on the other hand, didn''t seem to have reservations. I watched her strip her way from an inuit, right past normal decency, and straight into hooker territory. At least, I think so. Her tits were just so friggin'' huge, and the fabric which held them up and smushed them together so small, I felt like my stare was the only thing holding it all together. She had a similarly-colored scrap of fabric down below, but my eyes couldn''t make it that far.


    "What the hell are these things!" I shouted, wrapping my arms around her playfully. She squealed and tried to fight me off while AEGIS watched us both with intense disinterest. "How did you get these through the airport? They are weapons of man destruction!"


    "You are so mean!" she wailed. "You aren''t even wearing a two piece, this isn''t fair!"


    I wasn''t. I had nobody to impress. Dark blue one-piece for me. I realized my legs were whiter than I''d ever seen them before, and sorta hoped I could tan them some here, but that would also leave me with some horrible tan lines. I''d heard lots of people tan nude but¡­


    I shook my head and got rid of that idea. I had nobody to impress. I''d dumped Subaru''s stupid ass, and when he found pretty much the whole household hostile to him, still hadn''t taken the hint and just holed up in his room instead of moving out.


    Strangely, I found myself worried what Athan would think to see me pale. He and I, we''d always been athletic together. Would he be sad if I showed up white as Saga? He might blame himself, like he always did, and I didn''t want that. I swallowed hard at the thought of laying in a tanning bed with nothing on. Did they have private rooms? Did people clean them every use?


    "Liaaaaa," Chiho complained. I was still death gripping her rack.


    Freaking flamingoes, I''d been spacing out again. I let her go with an impish laugh, and noticed AEGIS had escalated from disinterest to mild worry. I advanced on her next.


    "Feeling left out?" I asked, waggling my fingers menacingly.


    "Are you okay, Lia?" she asked. I stopped in my tracks.


    "Why wouldn''t I be?"


    "You''re just...trying really hard. I want you to have a nice time."


    "You''ve got me all wrong, sister," I said with a practiced grin. "Let''s hit the waves, huh?"If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "Yes. Let''s."


    After Chiho finished packing an entire closet worth of coats and accessories into a tiny locker, we stepped into the main room, and could not help but to ooh and ahh. Splashing and laughter echoed off the enormous translucent ceiling, they grey of outside blasted away by the huge light ball in the top-center of the dome, like a second sun.


    Everywhere you looked, there was water in one form or another: a sunny beach with waves lapping at the shore, waterfalls careening lazily into what looked like a tropical rain forest, dotted with umbrellas, water slides emptying into large pools where tiny people bobbed on the surface in the distance. Near us, some guys were standing around a pool only the size of a car, which had water feeding into it in such a way that there was a wave perpetually cresting and crashing, and one such dude was on a surfboard, shooting the eternal curl.


    I might have gotten that last phrase from the same Museum Chiho had robbed.


    The smell of water and chlorine made my toes curl. It had been such a long time. This was for AEGIS, I reminded myself, but we were here for three days anyway, right?


    "Well, we''re here," said AEGIS looking around. "What do we hit first?"


    "Oh, I don''t care, whatever you guys like," I said, watching a guy scream his way down a waterslide. Chiho followed my gaze.


    "Oh no. Not in this thing," she said. I giggled mischievously.


    "Why am I doing this again?" she shrieked from in front of me, eying the narrow tube dropping down dozens of feet.


    "Because it''s FUN!" I yelled back as she clambered into the tube, anxiously. "Keep your arms and legs crossed!"


    "My arms and legs are going to be holding onto this thing!" she yelled back at me. The light for her lane turned green but she didn''t move.


    "It''s your turn! Go!" I shouted, laughing.


    "This is insane! Why would anyone ever want to do this!"


    "Please do not hold up the line. When your light turns green, you may proceed on the ride," said a friendly, authoritative male voice from the tube.


    "Don''t hold up the line!" I shouted, grinning.


    "No! No! NO!" wailed Chiho. I laughed and piled in behind her, smushing myself up against her back and edging the two of us towards the black maw of the tube.


    "DON''T FORGET TO CLENCH!" I laughed.


    "LIA I HATE YOOOOUU--"


    It was too late for her. She screamed and I laughed as we shot down the tube, flashes of the outside flickering above us like a strobe lamp, while the tube twisted and turned and the water carried us ever faster, ever downward. And then, as fast as it began, the world opened up around us, like the light had swallowed us, and we skidded and splashed to a stop in a pool, our two bodies entangled. Me still laughing while she shrieked and clutched her bikini to her chest, loose strings flying everywhere.


    I was still laughing as she lurked underwater and got her outfit back in decent shape. "You are so mean," she said behind half a blush that went all the way down her neck.


    "I''m an evil Exhuman terrorist, remember?" I laughed, and mine was an evil laugh. She splashed me. I splashed her back. AEGIS jumped in the pool next to us with a boom, a shockwave, and a freaking mushroom cloud of water.


    She also high-tailed it to the shallow end before a lifeguard dragged her out for walking across the bottom like she was on the moon. Girl needed to lose weight, damn.


    I did some laps and left Chiho to relax and float, she didn''t even need a floatie, that lucky ho.


    Man, I missed water. Swimming just felt good. The only reason I wasn''t on the swim team was because Mom and Dad said we only got to choose one sport and had to stick with it. True to their name, the Black Sharks were kickass in the water.


    It was like I was back in middle school. Splashing and playing like a dolphin, coming up to the surface and looking for my friends to laugh or tickle. The water was like a warm hug, I felt like every part of me was being stretched and kneaded, like my muscles would be long and lean when I got out.


    There were probably another dozen pools at the place, but I just swam in this one. Lazily, back and forth, backstroke, front crawl, freestyle, dolphin kicking my way across the whole pool, until my arms and legs and abs were completely sore. It was a pain I had missed. I did one more lap and then slithered out of the pool and baked on the hot concrete.


    "Having fun?"


    I looked up and saw the underside of AEGIS'' boobs, backlit against the fake sun. There looked like a lot more of them from this angle. I wondered if mine would look that good.


    "So much fun." I crawled into a wooden lounge chair under an umbrella and she stretched luxuriously next to me and pulled out her mobile from where it stuck up out of the top of her bikini. I wondered if she had a magnet or something holding it there, or she just had more confidence in her boobs than I did.


    "Mobile, huh?" I said, feeling the motion of water under me even though I was on land.


    "Gonna give me crap for being on it on vacation? I''m just spending my APs."


    "What?"


    "Daily action points. You get so many actions in a day, and it''s better to spend them instead of letting them pile up."


    "Oh, your game." There was a definite part of me that scorned her for playing games on her mobile when there was all this around us.


    "Not...playing in your head?" I asked.


    "Nah, I''m trying to quit. Makes me look like a spaced-out idiot." She shot me a pointed grin.


    "Not...working?" I pushed it.


    "I''m not supposed to be," she said, putting the phone down. "Wasn''t that the whole point of dragging me out here? Taking a break and seeing Athan?"


    "Yeah. But I know it''s easy for you to get into your work, and for you to multitask."


    I was trying to sound casual, but it felt like I was pushing her towards working somehow, which was exactly what I didn''t want her doing.


    "I uh. I didn''t tell you because I didn''t want you freaking out. Trying to cut back on that too."


    "Oh, really?" I said, with as much disinterest as I could squeeze into my excitement.


    "Yeah. I noticed...noticed I was never there with you guys while I was with you. Always chasing down rows in databases or sending a cam-drone into some secure locker in Alaska. I only originally built this body because I wanted to be human," she said, running her hands down herself. Some boys walking by definitely seemed to appreciate her gesture, so she flipped them a different one. "Only, the more I became this, the less human I was. Like I was deleveling instead of gaining XP. I don''t know if I''m making any sense."


    "Oh my god. Minus that last super hugely nerdy thing, I was so scared. I thought the same exact thing."


    "You saw that?"


    "Yeah. I was so worried for you, I thought you were going the same direction as when you turned off your emotions, was worried one day you''d just break out Skyweb and shoot down everyone you didn''t like. You got really scary, AEGIS, and that''s why I wanted to drag you out here on this pretend vacation and force you to reconnect with Athan."


    I sat up and wrung out my hair. It was dryer that way, but in no way better looking. Stupid curly hair. "I think, felt like, he was the only thing which could keep you wanting to be human."


    AEGIS leaned back and stared at the underside of the umbrella.


    "On one hand, wow. I didn''t know you paid that much attention to me, or did all this because of me. I''m like, kind of flattered. You always just seem so happy and worry-free, it drives me crazy sometimes, and when you''re not like that, you''re 100% into whatever you''re doing like if you stop, you''ll die, and that drives me absolutely crazy."


    "But on the other hand," she rolled on her side to face me. "It''s pretty messed up that you think Athan''s the only thing keeping me human. I mean, I''m here cutting off my access to the ''net by choice, using my mobile like a normal person because I want to be one. It''s kind of fucked that you''d assume what''s between my legs is the most important part of being human to me."


    "Hey, I never said that," I said. "I wasn''t thinking of the wet squishies between your legs, but the ones between your ears, dummy."


    "Sure, like it''s my brain that likes your brother," she giggled.


    "Yeah, well, I don''t want to hear about any other organs doing it. I mean...liking him," I stammered. "Anyway, I''m just so glad to hear we''re on the same page on this. You really had me super scared there for a while."


    "I don''t get it," she said, rolling back towards the sky. "Why didn''t you just say something?"


    "I didn''t want to hurt your feelings or worry you, I guess."


    "As you sat there with hurt feelings and tons of worry yourself? Typical freaking Ashton."


    I laughed. But only because I couldn''t argue.


    We sat in comfortable silence for a while before helping a panicked, apologetic Chiho turn down some guys she''d accidentally led on, and the two of us sat in a little eating area while she got us...meaning me...food as a thank-you.


    "Hey, Lia?" AEGIS said, keeping an eye on Chiho as she jiggled dangerously around some more guys.


    "Yo?"


    "Thanks for looking out for me."


    "No problem, dude. That''s what friends are for."


    I said it. I meant it. But Saga''s shadow still loomed over me. Just how could I pretend to be a good friend to anyone?


    "Lia?"


    "Yo, again?"


    "Since we''re not worrying about shit now...let''s...let''s have a real vacation."


    "Yeah, of course."


    "No, I mean it. I mean you."


    "Me?" I laughed. Her glare snapped to me faster than I''d ever seen her move.


    "Yes, you. I know this vacation was all your plan to make me feel better, but you also seriously need one. Don''t even think about sneaking around at night doing work or only pretending to have fun for our benefit."


    Damn. The double-shot through the heart. Got me right on both counts.


    "I wouldn''t dream of it," I smiled.


    "Yeah you would. Don''t give me your fake bullcrap now. We''re friends, and looking out for each other is what friends are for. I think I heard that before somewhere. So you cut the crap or I will revoke your ''net privileges."


    "You can''t do that!"


    "Oh, can''t I?" she said, yellow starburst eyes glaring down at me, imperiously. In those eyes, I saw the same terrifying AEGIS of my nightmares.


    I had nothing. I really had nothing. There wasn''t anything I could say or do that wouldn''t just sound like I was trying to weasel my way into something bad for myself, which...it would be.


    "Can I have an hour a night to keep Black Shark alive?"


    "Sure. But only because I love you."


    "Love you too, AEGIS. Even if you''re such a butt."


    "And I love the both of you!" Chiho said, with a tray of burgers and fries, sitting opposite us. A couple of the men who had followed her thus far seemed put out by her sitting with two other girls. At least one looked even more intrigued. Freaking pigs.


    Devoid of beverages, I picked up a fry, dipped it in ketchup, and held it aloft.


    "I would like to propose a toast!" I said. The girls picked up their own fries and followed suit.


    "To a real vacation!" I said.


    "To a real vacation," they echoed. AEGIS force-fed me her fry as I tried to eat mine, and Chiho was stuck laughing as the fry-feeding battle escalated.


    Everything was okay in the world, this way, for now, I thought, laughing through a mouthful of fries like a chipmunk. With friends like these, even with all the crud in this world, maybe we could make it.


    To a real vacation. To Athan.

 119. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    Jack''s powers were impossible to deal with when the bearer had more than just a knife to play with. We''d made it to the first floor, but Dipshit...and I was really reconsidering how great a name that was now...he was picking us apart.


    There was plenty of water around still, not enough for an elaborate crystalline deathtrap like before, but enough for him to make ice appear under our feet, or pull an icy weapon from the damp ground and then reappear right next to us with the weapon in our guts.


    Tem was down in exactly such a way, facing the sky with a shocked expression and a blade through her stomach and another hanging out of her shoulder, breathing rapid and shallow. Tower was down, unconscious and pinned to the ground by a frozen spear. His powers could only deflect incoming force, not stop something from appearing inside him. Steffie was already useless at the start of the fight, and had remained so. Jack was down, obviously, and Mage was down, and dying fast.


    And that just left me. Me and my shattered body against this multi-Exhuman lunatic. I hoped, prayed that we''d seen everything he had by now. Ice, regeneration, and teleportation were already plenty to deal with. But there was no way to say if he had more, until he decided to unload them on me.


    I was always one who did best against Jack in sparring. My powers were almost as quick as he was, and covered a large area with very immediate danger. I''d been slow-playing my defense against Dipshit, and as a consequence of him not pressing me very hard, I was currently holding twenty-four lightning blades around me, slashing and swirling everything at about 3/4ths of my maximum range. If he made the mistake of thinking they were fully extended, he wouldn''t live to regret it.


    But he stayed far away. He was setting up ice traps like he''d done before he showed himself. With a touch, the ground in a place turned to ice and began to slowly accumulate. Under some condition, or maybe even flexing his powers, I wasn''t quite sure how, it exploded outwards into razor icicles. It basically kept me immobile, since I couldn''t pass the traps without risking them going off, and he just gradually saturated the area with them.


    I didn''t realize why until he advanced on the unconscious Tem and placed a hand in front of her face.


    He would steal her powers while I was stuck on the other side of the ice. If I moved, I''d expose myself to the traps and possibly die, and if I didn''t, he''d laser me down and I was completely doomed. Well, between the two of those, I knew which gave me better odds.


    "Sorry, Tem," I muttered, and grabbed a fistful of lightning, but paused. He looked confused. I felt a triumphant smile creep onto my face as he touched Tem''s forehead and his fingers passed right through the illusion. With no reason to be sorry, I threw the fist-sized bulb at him, and it passed right through where he''d been moments ago, to spark and arc spectacularly on a fence at the edge of the construction.


    He was back on Tem''s ''body'' again, reaching through it, not getting the trick. I almost laughed, but instead slowly closed the distance between me and the other wounded, hacking down the ice traps as I went, making very slow progress. I needed to protect the others before he took their powers and I was in the same situation again.


    But they were so spread out. Why''d Tower have to get himself impaled while he was charging away on the other side of the yard? I had to choose between him, Mage, and Steffie.


    Disregarding my feelings, I worked towards Steffie. She was the only one unhurt here and needed my protection, and while I wanted more than anything to protect Mage, who was hurt the worst of any of us, or Tower, who was my best friend here, Steffie''s was the only powerset here I wasn''t sure I could deal with.


    Well, and Mage of course, but every time we''d sparred she just surrendered, so I hoped that was a win for me.


    "Sorry about all this," I said to Steffie, standing over her body. I couldn''t pick her up or I would have, and carried her towards one of the others to protect both. Both of my arms were totally shot.


    "I''m sorry for not believing you," she said bitterly. She seemed remarkably composed given the situation. Angry. Scared. But not blind with terror or screaming her head off like I might expect.


    "Believing me how?" I asked, and slashed a new icy growth to death near my feet.


    "If you were just going to kill me...you wouldn''t have done all this. I''m sorry."


    "If I let you go, think you can get free from here?"


    "No. Not with his powers."


    "I don''t know that I can cut you free without melting the cuffs anyway."


    "Well, thanks for trying, I guess."


    "Are you done chatting?" asked Dipshit. He''d been stalking around the battlefield while we spoke, staying out of my reach and flickering here and there.


    "Why would we be? I think we''re at an impasse here, so I just have to wait until the rest of the XPCA shows up. Might as well enjoy a little chat with my good friend Steffie here."


    "Oh, you think they''re coming? How very unfortunate for you."


    He reached down and pulled one of the comms from Mage''s body. She didn''t even stir when he touched her. He threw it at me, and it exploded on my shield.


    "Fascinating," he said. Fuck him for finding out one of my tricks before I could use it. He took the one from Jack and threw it on the ground next to me. Carefully, without leaving Steffie, I cradled it in my skinless rope-burned hand.


    "Cosette? Where''s that extraction team?" I asked, managing to get the comms working using my chin.


    "P-force two? Where have you been?"


    "Where is it, Cosette?"


    "I told you...tried to tell you. There''s walls of fire everywhere. We can''t get anywhere close. VTOLs were scrambled, but the walls just reach higher. It''s making a dome all around you, we can''t get in."


    I spun around, looking for anything resembling a building-sized wall of fire, but found nothing.


    "They look like this," Dipshit said, and with a snap of his fingers, a pillar of flame sprouted up between us. I could feel the heat from here.


    "At that range?" I gasped. If he was holding them so far off I couldn''t even see...the range on that power had to be several blocks or more. And tall enough to deter VTOLs?


    "It is one of my favorites," he said, staring hungrily into the fire.


    "But if you could just make fire under our feet this whole time, why wouldn''t you?"


    "I guess I''m just sporting like that," he said with a grin. "Still confident your friends are coming to save you?"


    "Or you''re full of shit," I said. I bent down and kicked up a piece of ice, thankfully having it not explode into a starburst of icicles until it wasn''t going to impale my foot anymore. I used the distraction to hurl another bulb of lightning at him, which unfortunately was only a tiny one, because it actually clipped him, giving me a great view of him seizing and jolting for half a moment before he vanished.


    I kicked the ice crystal I''d pulled up into the fire and nothing happened. Didn''t melt, didn''t crack, nothing. From the heat pouring off the flames and how my sword melted the ice, I knew something was up. This fucking guy.


    I took two more steps and stood right in the fire. It was hot. Unbearably hot, and my frozen arm throbbed, prompting me to get back to Steffie sooner than I''d wanted, but I didn''t burn at all.


    "Cosette, the fire is an illusion only. You can walk through it. It feels hot but it doesn''t burn."


    "What?"


    "I just stood in some."


    "You little shit," said Dipshit from behind me.


    I turned, he was back at the foot of the stairs, spear made of ice in-hand, face still twitching a little from the shock I gave him.


    "Cosette, send them. Over and out." I put the comms back in my pocket and sneered at him. "You don''t actually know my real powers, do you?" I asked him, posturing with arms out, as my blades spun around me and Steffie ominously.


    "I will when I take them from you."


    "If. And that''s a big if."


    "So you can throw a little lightning."Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "No. I am lightning. Don''t you wonder how I see through your tricks so fast?" I tapped my head with a crippled finger. "Lightning intellect. Or how I reacted so fast to your little water hazard so we''d all be dry? Lightning reflexes."


    I hoped he hadn''t seen Mage doing her noisy setup work before combat, and from the almost-pained look on Dipshit''s face, it seemed like he hadn''t.


    "Well, lightning won''t save them," he said, raising a spear over Mage''s prone form.


    "Of course it will!" I blurted. He looked up at me. I had to think fast, and channeled my inner Lia. "I mean, haven''t you ever heard of lightning speed? I can run at the speed of light and move these injured so fast...it will look like they all just...disappeared."


    "You''re full of shit. If you had that kind of power, you''d have used it a long time ago."


    "I don''t like using it when my friends are around," I lied. "They see me using it, next thing I know, it''s ''hey, Chariot, can you pick me up some fast food?''"


    "That''s the most idiotic thing I''ve ever heard."


    "Also, didn''t you ever wonder why they called me Chariot? Duh."


    "I''m going to stab this girl in the face and then if she''s not dead, let''s say I''ll consider believing you."


    He raised the spear.


    "No, wait!" I shouted.


    He looked at me with a superior grin, and then confusion at the grin creeping over my face. He looked down where Mage''s body had disappeared, and then where Jack''s was, and then at Tower. It was just him, me and Steffie, from the looks of it.


    And then his eyes fell on me. Wide eyes. Eyes of dawning terror. I couldn''t flex or crack my knuckles or anything cool, so I settled for flourishing my swords a little bit.


    "The hell are you? That''s impossible."


    "Funny thing about Exhuman powers, they don''t have to be possible for them to exist."


    I heard the distinctive sound of a missile launching and he vanished. In the next moment the ground under him exploded, right near where Mage was laying invisibile. I fumbled in my pocket for the comms.


    "Hold your fire! Hold your damn fire!" I yelled.


    "Athan?" I heard Karu over the roar of engines.


    "Karu, hold your fire!" I yelled back.


    "Athan, I''m coming in."


    I looked around, but Dipshit hadn''t rematerialized anywhere here. Was he gone? It was only a matter of moments before I heard and saw Karu. She took in the state of my body but didn''t say a word. The tiny tremble in her lip as she remained stone-faced said everything.


    "Karu, do not move or do anything. We need the rest of the XPCA here."


    "They are on their way, but I do not understand. We must pursue him."


    "No. Trust me. Stay here and wait."


    "I cannot stand by while such a monster is free to roam!" she shouted at me. Irrational. Maybe even because of what he''d done to me. Her jetpack deployed its wings.


    "Karu, this is a fucking order. Do. Not. Leave."


    She glared at me and the wings folded back up. "You are not my superior," she said, icily.


    "And you need to learn to trust me."


    We waited for several more long minutes until I heard sirens in the distance.


    "I meant, in general."


    "Huh?" I turned to her, and found her looking at the ground, in thought.


    "You are not my superior in general. You are on the strike team, I am a mere civilian in this case. I should respect that, even if it is not technically chain of command."


    "Karu, I don''t, can''t care about this right now. We need to stay alert."


    "Yes, sir." She said it without any anger or contempt, but her cold discipline stung more than either of those would. Right now, I was her commander and that was it.


    It was another minute before the cavalry arrived. All around the construction site, armored vans screeched to a halt and men filed out, aligned behind shieldbearers, scanning for any threat.


    "Thank you, Tem," I said, turning behind me to where she was standing invisible. "You really saved all of us there."


    The air shimmered and she stepped out of it, looking unsure of herself as ever.


    "I''m s-sorry!" she stammered. The first two words I had expected. "I just s-stood there while you held him off, I couldn''t do anything, or think...think of anything. Even...even though I had every advantage...I couldn''t...couldn''t think of anything, until you did."


    She took a faltering step towards me, and then to my surprise, hugged me around the torso, sparing my arms thankfully.


    "I couldn''t...couldn''t do anything!" she muttered into my chest.


    "Tem, you did everything. You saved everyone." I felt anxiety in my chest. I didn''t know if it was from her on the verge of tears or being hugged or Karu watching another girl hug me.


    All around us, bodies appeared from shimmering air. Mage and Jack, Tower had regained consciousness but thank God, had the prescience to stay down. Karu gasped.


    "I almost shot him," Karu said, of Jack.


    "You did. You scared the shit out of me."


    "I...I apologize. Your operational command told me not to come and I did anyway. I unwittingly endangered all of these lives, and even still, was prepared to disregard your direct orders. You and all of these men almost all died because of me."


    "Well...anything sounds bad when you say it like that," I said, giving her as much of a smile as I could.


    "I require strict discipline," she said. "I believe a sixty day suspension of license, forfeiture of half pay for two months, and arrest for court-martial to be the minimum required, sir."


    "Dude, Karu, I''m not even strike lead That''s Mage. I can''t court-martial anyone."


    "But you can report me to your CO for such. I humbly request you do so, sir."


    This was getting surreal as fuck, as, under the scrutiny of dozens of blank-faceplated exosuited XPCA, my friends were carefully loaded into the backs of military vans, Karu ever-increased her demands for punishment, and Tem just held me around the middle and cried.


    A soldier brusquely grabbed Steffie by the arm and dragged her upright, only to find a pair of crossed lightning blades in his face.


    "She stays with me," I growled.


    "Understood," came the synthetic reply, and he let her go. Like Tem, she practically fell at my feet and leaned against me, but I think more out of mental exhaustion than...whatever drove Tem to continue holding me. Guilt? I was pretty sure that was all she was capable of.


    I meant...emotionally. Obviously she was capable, she just saved my butt. Damn it.


    Karu fell silent. Cosette was on approach.


    "Are you okay?" She asked me, bending over to look me in the eyes. I expected a reprimand or demanding a status report or explanation or something.


    "Do I look okay?" I raised the one arm towards her that I could raise, while the other hung frozen and limp.


    "I don''t mean your body. That will heal. I mean, are you okay."


    I had to stop to actually think about the question. What did being okay even mean? With all my friends dying around me, my body in this shape, and us allegedly successful in our mission...did we win? Did winning even matter? We hadn''t stopped the bad guy, had barely gotten away with our lives, it felt like the only thing we''d done is earn scars.


    Tem shifted slightly, burying her head into my ribs and I looked down. I guess we saved Steffie. Of course, the XPCA just wanted her dead, so even that wasn''t really a thing, but if that was all we accomplished here, that had to be enough. It had to be. The almost-deaths of all these people had to be for something.


    "Yeah, I''m okay."


    "Leadership is a terrible burden. I want you to know...I''m here for you, Chariot. I''d give you a hug, but it looks like you''re covered. She smiled sadly at Tem who acted as though she couldn''t hear or see anything."


    "I''m not the leader. That''s Mage. She''s the most senior of us."


    "Leadership isn''t always assigned, Chariot. Your team looks up to you. Who cares what it says on paper when you''re out in the field, fighting, right?"


    I scrutinized her for a second. "You''re not a normal military kind of person, are you?" I asked, and then realized that was probably really offensive, but Cosette just laughed.


    "I can be if I have to be, but typically no, I do what I want. I''m lucky, if Blackett didn''t take a liking to me, I''d probably be stuck arguing with a sergeant about dress violations all day every day."


    She was still wearing her uniform with the top 3-4 inches zipped down so it made a lopsided V instead of a tall intimidating collar like the uniform was supposed to cut. And her hat, which I saw now in the sunlight was a black slightly floppy knit cap, which could almost pass as a beret if it was sitting to one side and the observer wasn''t paying attention.


    "I''m more concerned with keeping people happy and getting things done than the whole HOOAH thing. Think of me like big sis."


    "Huh." I said, but that was as far as we got. A soldier approached and quietly informed her we were ready to pull out.


    "Need a ride back?" Cosette asked me.


    I looked at Karu. "You flying?" She nodded.


    "I''ll ride with Mage, if that''s okay. And Steffie is coming with me. And can I get a key for these restraints?"


    Cosette didn''t argue and helped me and Steffie into the back of the van where Mage lay tied down to a stretcher on the floor with another soldier whose white-striped exosuit marked him as a medic, if that wasn''t already apparent by the red IV bag he was holding aloft, pouring blood back into her.


    We began moving. Mage looked really bad. She was pale and sunken, and there was still a huge hole in her chest, though the ice was gone, and some kind of machine had been stuck in her to keep her alive in some capacity. I wondered how Jack and Tower were doing, as I leaned back and closed my eyes, tired in my bones, just...not happy, not content, just observant of the fact that finally, today was over.


    We rode in silence, watching the sun between the buildings flashing in and out of sight. Steffie seemed asleep again, curled up on the bench opposite me, and that seemed like a pretty solid idea to me.


    When suddenly, the two of us were thrown forward as the vehicle swerved and braked, Steffie crashing into the medic without effect against his exosuit, while I had to catch myself with my feet on the railing under the bench to keep from falling on Mage.


    "The hell?" asked Steffie, cradling her head where she''d crashed and been so rudely awakened.


    I knew what I''d find outside before I even opened the door, kicking it open with a bang. My feet landed on the ground and my swords were out in an instant, spinning around me to keep him from appearing directly on me. Walls of fire surrounded us, cutting each car in the convoy off from every other.


    "Drive!" I shouted. "It''s just an illusion, move!"


    I turned to slam the door shut behind me, but there in the doorway of the van was Dipshit, smiling at me with a maniac grin as he slid the van''s door shut.

 120. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Steffie.

    Chariot jumped from the vehicle and shouted for us to drive, it was just an illusion. I didn''t know what he was talking about, but if he said drive, we had better drive. I heard the door slide shut and glanced back, and my blood froze.


    It...wasn''t Chariot closing the door. I hoped I was just still asleep, or hit my head harder than I thought. I could hear Chariot screaming on the comms as the van started to move.


    The man, the terrifying Exhuman who had fought and beat the P-Force, he was here, eyes closed all creepy-like, and advancing on me and the hurt girl. Mage, I think they had called her.


    Lightning slashed at the back of the vehicle, melting thin white lines in the back of the door. The van was pulling away though, and we were leaving Chariot behind. He was the only one who could stand up to this maniac, and now he was slipping away.


    The evil Exhuman knew what was up, he turned his back to us, prepared to challenge Chariot, knowing he was the only threat here. He just had to wait for the van to pull away and victory was his.


    Or...so I thought. I''d completely forgotten the other man in the cabin.


    The medic sent the Exhuman flying into the ceiling with a single blow, stepping forward, rising, and launching a crushing uppercut in one motion that left a huge dent in the ceiling where the little fucker''s head hit it. The Exhuman landed in a heap, and the medic''s exosuit hissed with pneumatic force as he punched the guy again, so hard he went flying through the van''s doors, breaking them open with a crunch. The most beautiful, amazing crunching sound in the world.


    The bad guy spun and bounced off the dirt, right into Chariot, who was running after the van at top-speed. I saw one moment of Chariot''s surprised face before the two of them went down in a heap. We were still driving pretty fast, but the medic handed me the blood bag and then jumped out of the back of the van, landing on his feet as we drove away.


    We...didn''t get very far. The driver heard all the banging and stopped the car only twenty feet down the road.


    "Driver!" I yelled.


    "What?" came the muffled reply from his compartment.


    "Get back here!"


    It was agonizing long seconds while he unbuckled himself, opened the door, and walked around the back of the van, inspecting the damage with a shake of his head.


    Meanwhile, Chariot was getting his ass kicked. The medic was doing what he could, but the bad guy was too fast, and Chariot was collapsed on the ground, lightning nowhere in sight. I saw flashes of the bad guy disappearing and reappearing, stomping on Chariot''s broken hand or kicking him savagely in the head, vanishing as the exosuit reached for him.


    "Take the bag!" I screamed, almost throwing it at the driver and bolted from the van.


    I didn''t know what I was doing. I was completely helpless against this guy...my mind was screaming for me to stop, but my body just kept moving forward.


    Chariot, he...he''d...in the short time we''d been together, he''d already put everything on the line for everyone, over and over. He''d given himself crippling injury and thrown himself at the bad guy to buy time for me and his team to escape, had protected me with his own body.


    And now he needed somebody to help him. Probably somebody better than me, but there wasn''t anyone else. My feet stung as they slapped the pavement as hard as I could push them.


    And then I was on him, the bad guy. He just reappeared in front of me, and had all his attention focused on Chariot, his face so mad like I''d never seen anyone before. Teeth bared, face all red, veins pulsing in his forehead, blood running over his closed eyes from where he''d had his head smashed.


    I reached out, dove to grab him around the middle. My hands passed through nothing as he vanished inches away from me, and like an idiot, like the useless fighter I was, I just fell forward into the dirt.


    I pushed myself up and dusted myself off. Even if this was all I could do, I had to do it.


    I ran at him again, screaming, tears streaming behind me. A wall of fire sprang up in my way, but I didn''t even react in time and just ran into it. I didn''t even mean to, I was just running as fast as I could. It burned but I was out of it as fast as I''d run into it. He was gone again though, and I looked around to find him.


    Another car pulled up, coming from the wrong direction, they had turned around to come back. Before it even came to a stop, the back flew open and the huge Exhuman jumped out. Inside, I saw the skinny Exhuman man on a stretcher in the same setup as our van had for Mage, another medic in there keeping an eye on him. The silver-haired girl hopped out as the van stopped completely, disappearing before her feet even hit the ground.


    The air tore apart and there was a flash of blue in my peripheral. One of the XPCA wearing all white with segmented wings on her back, tipped in blue plasma flashed into being, almost like the silver-hair girl had disappeared. She could fly, she had guns all over her. I thought...maybe if there was a hope to save Chariot, this girl looked like she could handle it.


    I had to hope. He deserved saving, deserved more than a stupid florist like me could give him.


    At once, like it was all planned, they all launched after the bad guy. Rockets slammed into the ground wherever he showed himself. The huge guy moved easily a hundred times faster than me, and looked like he could freaking fly, almost catching him again and again. Lasers poured from the air all around Chariot, making a wall of death, even as more of them erupted from the heavens like Skyweb, obliterating entire chunks of the street at once.


    Chariot was safe at least. With the constant chasing and lasers, the bad guy couldn''t get close to him. He was curled up now, maybe finally passed out from the abuse.


    But then I saw his lips moving and something on the ground next to him.


    It couldn''t be possible. Even after all he''d been through, he was whispering into his comms, coordinating the attacks of his team, but as I watched it unfold, I realized that had to be the truth. The attacks were too organized, cycled to keep everyone out of the laser blasts, give the big guy the best shot of catching the baddie by pinning him with volleys of laser fire and ordinance right before he was about to strike, how they moved and flowed like one cohesive unit.


    The medic was jogging out of the fight, way out of his league, like me. He came to my side, and then, to my surprise addressed me.


    "Blue, you''re called Steffie?" he asked. His voice came out of the exosuit in a robotic tone that made it sound more like a statement than question.


    "I''m Steffie, yes," I said, distracted by the fight.


    He held out a black disc for me and, confused, I took it.


    "Hey, Steffie. I need your help." It was Chariot''s voice. I could see his lips moving as he spoke to me, his words barely more than a croak.


    "I know! We have to get you out of there!" I shouted. I thought I saw a smile on his still, prone form.


    "It won''t matter. I should have known. He can chase us as long as he has Jack''s power. We need to beat him or this will never end."


    "I''ll do whatever I can," I said. I didn''t know what I could do, but if Chariot had a plan, I trusted in it.


    "Karu needs to peel off to protect Mage and Jack. The rest of the convoy is gone by now and should be safe, but he''s shown an interest in them, and grabbing one of them and escaping is his best move now." He coughed, and it sounded wet. I looked over and saw there was blood in the corner of his mouth now, and my heart did a flip.


    "If Jack was carrying someone, he could only blink half as fast, so if he does that, we''ll catch him and win. We need to make sure he can''t just drive off though. Work with the soldiers and get Jack and Mage out of those cars, okay?" He coughed again. "I might have some other use for you later just...just be ready, okay?"


    "Okay," I said, nodding at the comms. Getting people out of a car. I could do that.


    The medic and I went to Jack, I guess his name was, since he was closer and there was another medic there already. "We need to get him on the ground," I said.


    "Why? Who the hell are you?" asked the other medic''s robotic voice. I think she was a girl under all that armor.


    "Orders from the strike team. Move!" shouted my medic, and to my relief, the girl complied. All three of us went around Jack''s body, unstrapping him from the floor, and then the two of them easily lifted the stretcher and carried him with precision onto the ground where they set him down.


    Like clockwork, the armored airborne girl was touching down on the back of the van. "I''ve got him. Go."


    We ran to the other van while the girl disappeared into the air again with a flash. I didn''t know people could move that fast, and wondered if that was maybe her Exhuman power.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I heard comms chatter constantly between the team, coordinating their attacks.


    Almost as soon as we''d reached Mage, the bad guy appeared right behind my medics. I was behind, not able to keep up with the young military guys or their crazy suits.


    When he appeared, the jagged shard of rock he''d been holding appeared with him, in the back of my medic. I heard a strangled synthesized yell as he stumbled.


    I grabbed the bastard from behind and then felt the world lurch as we were suddenly somewhere else.


    "Get the hell off of me!" he shouted, and elbowed me.


    But I wasn''t coming off. I held on with everything I had. If Chariot could tear off both his arms fighting this guy to protect me, I could hold onto him as long as I could, at least. I jumped on his back, wrapping my arms around his chest and my legs around his waist, even bit him in the shoulder. Anything, to keep from being thrown off.


    He gave an angry yell and flailed at me, but I wasn''t going anywhere. Chariot had said he moved slower when he had a passenger, and now he did. If we got hit by a missile or something...I''d just have to hope my powers held out and blew him to pieces.


    He moved over and over, popping into a new place every second, clawing at my arms around him. I could see the others attacking, could see they were hitting closer and closer than they''d ever been. I could feel the sweat running off the bad guy onto my arms, feel his panicked breathing in my chest pressed against him.


    I had to hope my powers would work for this. I didn''t want to think about how much it would hurt if they didn''t, or how dead I would be. I''d never tested them against anything like this, never tested them at all, really. But if I thought about dying, I felt my grip loosening on him.


    I had to be strong, like Chariot. I remembered his low determined stance, his body poised and tensed as he stood over me, protecting me with himself, for entire minutes while this guy appeared all over the place. The look of determination in his brown eyes as he gave us one final glance and told us to run, before charging off on his own.


    My grip tightened until my knuckles were white and I felt blood under my fingernails. I hoped we did get hit with a missile. I hoped my powers would blow this...this...this asshole into so many pieces that they had to collect him with a dustpan.


    We were getting close to that, too. I felt heat on my leg as a laser almost clipped me. The blasts were getting closer and closer. He was slowing, jumping only every second and a half now. In another minute, they''d have him. He was jumping further and further from the fight now, too, trying to escape rather than win, but Karu and the big guy were unstoppable, she appeared out of nothing almost as fast as he did, and the big guy dove right through a freaking building wall without even slowing down.


    I leaned down and bit the asshole in the neck, as hard as I could. He screamed and grabbed my head, tearing out my hair and making me see spots flash in my eyes, but I just bit him harder.


    And then...I don''t know. I felt...not there. Not all there. My arms were still wrapped around him, but I couldn''t...couldn''t feel my legs. Couldn''t feel my back. Like, I''d just become really heavy all the sudden.


    I stopped biting him enough to look down and saw we were sticking out of a wall. Halfway out of a wall. My legs were hanging there limp and my back...it was just...in the wall.


    Before I realized it, he stepped forward and out of my arms, and swore as he grabbed at the bloody spot on his neck. My arms suddenly free, I pushed myself out of the wall, but nothing happened. My back, from the waist down...was just wall now. He''d moved us so that I would show up halfway inside it, and I didn''t even know what that meant.


    Except...that...it didn''t work anymore. Like my spine was just gone from the waist down. The flying girl and big guy appeared, and he disappeared fast as ever again. The two looked at me and at each other with worry and pity carved onto their faces.


    Wordlessly, he punched the wall on my left and on my right, shattering the bricks like they were nothing, and I fell to the ground. She flew off while he pulled the rest of the wall off of me, but it didn''t matter. It was like half of me now just didn''t exist.


    "Can you walk?" he asked. I shook my head and tears fell. I''d messed up. I''d messed up really bad. There wasn''t any fixing this. What had I even been thinking, trying to be a hero? Pretending I could do something in a situation like this.


    He picked me up easily and threw me over his shoulder. Like meat.


    "Thanks for everything you did there," he said, grunting as he launched both of us back in the direction of the vans. We were flying, and fast. "I''m uh, Tower, by the way. Sorry about all this."


    I didn''t have words. I let the wind whip away my tears, but more kept coming.


    From the comms chatter, the fight was getting more desperate. The girl with the lasers couldn''t keep him off of Chariot and Jack and Mage all at once, and he''d touched Mage and presumably taken her powers. The rocket girl didn''t have any zone control, she could chase him around all day, but couldn''t stop him from appearing anywhere like Chariot could. He was appearing on top of Mage for fractions of a second each time, stealing away more and more of her. Chariot kept pleading to focus on protecting Mage.


    "I have an idea, but you may not like it, Ashton," she said. "I have shock nets, I can throw them over the wounded. He will not be able to get close but¡­"


    "They''ll do less damage than he will. Do it, Karu."


    We rejoined the fight just in time to see her fire her weapons twice, and large canisters exploded from each arm into a slowly spinning net which wrapped itself around the wounded, pinning them to the ground, and then a moment later, coursed with electricity.


    Mage didn''t react beyond jolting, but Jack sat bolt upright and yelled, thrashing for a moment before he reappeared a foot away, still writhing.


    "Damnit, I hate electrical ordinance," Karu said, frustration in her voice.


    But something else had happened. The villain had appeared as he always had, but then stood there, looking confused or angry, for over two seconds now. As beams fell from the sky at him, he jumped out of the way instead of disappearing.


    Comms exploded as Chariot, the silver-haired girl, and Tower all began yelling at once. Before we could see anything else, walls of fire erupted from everywhere. Tower flew through one or two of them as he skidded to a halt in the street, and I noticed that even the illusionary heat did not reach my legs.


    "This ain''t gonna stop me!" Tower screamed, and even with me still on his shoulder, launched towards the Exhuman.


    He wasn''t there. There was just fire everywhere.


    "He''s using it as a smokescreen to get away," Chariot said, coughing from excitement or nerves. "Karu?"


    "I can''t see anything from up here. It''s just fire everywhere. It''s whiting out my optics."


    "Damn it. Tem, can your illusion suppress his?"


    "Y-yes. But, only if I am trying to. I can''t...can''t s-simply erase all of them...of them, or anything. I do not think...I think I will...will be useless again..."


    "Jack, are you there? Jack?"


    "Jack lost his comms earlier," I said. "The Exhuman took it and gave it to you, Chariot."


    "That''s right. Damn it, damn it, damn it."


    Tower flew through the fire left and right at random, but as we flew I thought I saw something lurking in the fire.


    "There!" I shouted. Tower barely touched the ground and sent us flying where I was pointing. A tall, thin, figure, on the other side of a wall of fire. Tower bore down on him, increasing his speed, and holding out his free arm.


    I saw closed eyes and a confused half-smile for a fraction of a second. The wrong ones. Tower slid to a stop, inches from Jack, who looked politely confused as he reappeared out of the way.


    "Jack!" I shouted, and threw him my comms, still able to hear the chatter on Tower''s. Nobody here needed to talk to me anyway. I wasn''t a damn hero.


    "Jack?" I heard Chariot say.


    "Jack here," he replied.


    "Jack, he''s using the fire to get away. It''s just an illusion though. Can you see through it?"


    "I can. I wondered why you weren''t all chasing him, and thought you might have a reason. Shall I stop him?"


    "Bring Tower and the girl with you."


    "Wilco, over and out," Jack said, and put away the comms, advancing on us very slowly, nursing his chest wound with a smile. "Shall we?"


    He put a hand on me and on Tower, and before I could object, we were moving. It took...a lot longer than it had before, when the bad guy was moving two of us, it felt like almost four or five seconds, but with the same stomach-dropping sensation, we were somewhere completely different, almost half a block away, and there, running directly into us was the prick.


    "Woke up, huh? No wonder I lost grip of your powers," he said to Jack.


    "I wouldn''t really know," Jack replied with a shrug. Without pause, Tower hit him so hard he flew across the street and into a wall, embedded halfway into it, like he''d left me.


    Before the dust even settled, he cracked his neck with a turn of his head and stood up.


    "Uh," said Tower.


    Suddenly we were on top of him again. It looked like despite there being three of us, Jack could move us a lot faster if the distance was shorter. Tower wasted no time in punching him back across the street into another wall, with apparently the same amount of effect.


    "He didn''t regenerate this fast from getting stabbed," Tower said.


    "So stab him!" shouted Karu.


    "I lost my knife," said Jack with a sad smile.


    Before he could regain his feet, Jack had put us behind him again, and Tower smashed him into the floor with so much force the street next to the sidewalk we were on cracked. He only laid in the crater for a moment before rolling to his feet.


    "Tower," I whispered, apparently unable to learn from my experiences. "You can''t get hurt, right?"


    "I mean, I can. But not from like, punches or speeding trains or anything, if I know it''s coming."


    "Explosions?"


    "Nah, I''m good."


    "Tower, hit him with me. Jack, get out of here."


    "What? Are you crazy?"


    "No, but if you use...use me like a weapon...I''ll explode. He''ll be...gone."


    "You''re all insane," yelled the asshole, before Tower punched his face into the ground again.


    "Are you sure?"


    "No, but do it."


    Jack grabbed the guy and my hand and I felt my stomach unsettle. The bad guy writhed for several second as Jack did whatever he was doing, tried to punch Jack in his wounds, but Tower just casually reached out and snapped his arm like a toothpick. I don''t think it was even his powers, just how strong he was. His scream was like music to me.


    After another dozen seconds, we were back where it all started. First floor of the construction site where the jerk had told me to go hide. Jack nodded at us and then disappeared.


    "You''re really sure about this?"


    "He''ll just regenerate anything less, right?"


    "I don''t know. Chariot?"


    There was no response.


    "Yeah, just do it," I said, and swallowed. Tower didn''t seem sure where to grab me but I put his huge hands right around my middle.


    "No, wait! Wait, please!" The jerk slowly scuttled away, pleading, his broken arm hanging at his side. "The XPCA needs strong Exhumans, right? I''m the strongest there is! Let me...let me join you¡­"


    "The world doesn''t need people like you," Chariot said, his voice exhausted and colder than the Exhuman''s powers.


    Tower lifted me easily into the air and smashed me down like a hammer, slamming my head and shoulder into the Exhuman.


    I felt my skin harden like diamond at the force of the blow. Tower hadn''t held back, and the force of his strike was magnified a thousandfold by my shield, which exploded, radiating it in all directions. I blacked out immediately, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing but a world-shaking boom.

 121. 2251, Present Day. Philadelphia. Lia.

    I was fuming. These two could wear bikinis and flash leg all they wanted at the pool, but dragging me into it? In public? They were sick in the head if they thought I''d ever wear that thing.


    "But we worked really hard on it," Chiho complained. "It''d look so great on you."


    "Dude. The belt on my hips would be the largest piece of clothing I''d be wearing."


    "Well, yeah, that''s how the thief armor sets are."


    We weren''t even at the pool anymore. The three days of laying around, melting in the warm water had passed by faster than I could have imagined. By the end, I felt like I was a fluffy little sea otter, and the water was where I belonged. Boo, hiss, land.


    Reluctantly, I''d migrated west a city to go to VGCon with the two nerds. And then they sprung this on me. I had to look it up on the ''net.


    Cosplay:


    (cos¡¤play) noun, the practice of dressing up as a character from a work of media, especially one from the Japanese genres of anime or manga.


    If I''d known what that had entailed, I''d have never agreed to any of this. They thought it would be fun to dress up for VGCon, as apparently tons of people did, and I was like, sure, what''s the harm?


    Well the harm was walking around freezing my ass off while it literally hung out for everyone in the world to see!


    "What about Chiho and your costumes! Those look like actual clothes and armor."


    "Well, Chiho''s the biggest, so she''s obviously the warrior, and they wear somewhat realistic armor in Tenshin. I''m the mage because she''s the only character with long hair...and her armor is just as skanky as yours!"


    "Yeah, and then you get to throw a robe over it, and shoulder pads, and a cape...thing...hanging off your butt? And a sweet as hell hat that covers your face so your friends won''t all see who the hell has their tits hanging out when the pics go on the ''net!"


    "And you''re the most athletic of us, and the smallest, so it makes sense you''re the thief class! Look, you get three belts, not just the one."


    "One of those is for my neck. Why the hell would I want to protect my neck with a belt, when I have all these other guts like, oh I don''t know, my heart, or my lungs, which are all just hanging out under bare skin?"


    "Thieves aren''t supposed to wear armor because they''re not supposed to get hit, Lia-baby." Chiho interjected. "You wear light armor so that you can move freely."


    "LIGHT armor? If this counts as light armor, I have seen lingerie which counts as frickin'' medieval castle. This is leather scraps, dudes. How can you watch trash which has all the girls wearing stripper outfits like this anyway?"


    Both of them twitched in unison when the word ''trash'' came out of my mouth. I liked that. I''d have to start using that word more often.


    What came next was an inexplicable deluge of well-articulated ramblings about how Tenshin was the best series ever, and despite how it may oversexualize women by their outfits, the characters were really good and strong, and there were all these scenes where women were strong, kickass characters, being awesome, even as their boobies were flopping around, and I should be celebrating the show for its realistic portrayal of powerful women instead of focusing on the fact that obviously, it has to pander to fanservice or else it wouldn''t sell as well.


    Like I was some kind of lunatic. Like somehow, them both frothing at the mouth meant I was the crazy one here. Truly, anime and gaming were a blight upon the world, if it could turn two reasonably normal people like Chiho and AEGIS and turn them into raving idiots trying to squeeze me into...that.


    "Look," Chiho said, going for the Hail Mary. "It''s not like people can see anything, the dagger hangs off the belt in the front so it blocks line of sight.


    "Still not selling me somehow. Here, how''s this, I''ll go in there and change and show you guys how a thief looks." I picked up the hanger the outfit was dangling off of and stepped into the connected hotel room, closing the door behind me.


    Freaking idiots. I threw the pile of belts and leather strips onto a chair while I dug through my bag.


    A couple of minutes later, I came back into their room, giving a twirl to show off.


    "Isn''t this so much cooler?" I asked. My voice came out like a genderless, emotionless, commanding intonation.


    "Wow," said Chiho. "I...remember that outfit."


    "Isn''t that...Black Shark?" asked AEGIS.


    I was wearing my slipskin, cloak, cowl, scarf, and mask. Shrouded in charcoal grey, with only the upper half of the plain white mask visible under the hood for contrast.


    "Is...that such a good idea?" AEGIS asked. "What if you get recognized?"


    "Yeah...how many cam shows did you do in that thing?" Chiho asked.


    "Damn it, Chiho, I never did anything like that!" I shouted, enjoying my voice sounding intimidating, but seriously ticked that it didn''t sound properly angry at her. "I was lying to you about doing that...kind of thing. I was Black Shark back then, too!"


    "Ohh," she said. "That makes a lot of sense. I wondered why you didn''t have any other toys."


    "...toys?" I asked, but AEGIS cut in before the conversation could go off-rails.


    "We know for certain that at least the XPCA has some of your videos. Have you forgotten that you are a wanted terrorist, Lia? And you''re just going to walk around in public like that?"


    "And you''d rather I walk around in public like that?" I asked, jerking a finger back towards the other room where the little strappy thing lay abandoned.


    "That is regular and accepted at places like VGCon. Being a wanted person? Not so much."


    "Well, maybe I''m just cosplaying as Black Shark. Ever think of that?"


    Both of them looked at me like I''d just grown an extra head but neither responded.


    "What?" I asked.


    "Nothing," said AEGIS, pulling at one of her pigtails. "It just...might work, I guess."


    "It looks way too good, though," Chiho said.


    "What? It''s totally inaccurate. This isn''t the original scarf I''d been using, I lost that out in the wilderness, and I also had to take off all the bandoliers and pouches and stuff so it could make it on the flight. This is super inauthentic."


    For some reason they laughed.


    "You''ve got the right attitude for a cosplayer at least," AEGIS said. "I guess we could make it work."


    "Shame about the costume though," said Chiho.


    "You want to wear it?" I asked, grinning.


    "Ah! No! It wouldn''t fit me anyway!" she said, flushing.


    "Is that so? Well I don''t want your efforts to go to waste." I darted into the other room, keeping an eye on Chiho through the open door.


    "It''s really okay, Lia. We really just threw it together, right, AEGIS?"


    "I spent hours making all those buckles and straps. What are you talking about?"


    "I think we''ll have to try it!" I said, returning with the skimpy scraps.


    "Lia-baby, you''re scaring me," she said with a ghastly expression.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    "Oh, it''s nothing you guys weren''t trying to do to me," I said, feeling a sadistic grin creep across my face as I advanced on her, tiny bikini at the ready.


    "At least take off the mask first, you''re so creepy!" she shouted.


    An hour later, we stormed the gates of VGCon in cosplay. AEGIS was starry-eyed before we even got our badges checked and made it through the front door, and Chiho''s embarrassment and shame at my hands seemed to burn off as we entered. She was, ultimately, wearing her warrior armor, but she''d had to fight me for every scrap of it.


    I''d worried I''d gone a little far in teasing, punishing Chiho for having such outrageous boobs and trying to get me to wear a damn piece of dental floss for an outfit, and it wasn''t exactly fair that she got all the flak just because I couldn''t do a thing to AEGIS given her inhuman strength. I was just glad they were having a good time from the looks of it, with no harm done.


    I also realized they were right. The girls here were downright stripperiffic but with higher production values. It looked like every booth we passed had a girl squeezed into some ridiculous getup, from fantasy to sci-fi, to anthropomorphization of a video game console. Why a video game console was best represented by a girl in a thong, I had no idea, but nobody else seemed to question it.


    I did though. What the hell, man. I get that 90% of this crap was aimed at drooling hormonal idiots like Athan, and thank God he wasn''t here, because I''d have to be prying his eyes out of all kinds of crevices, but still. I didn''t get why this stuff got a free pass from AEGIS and Chiho.


    I felt safe in my slipskin and behind my mask as I followed the two through row after row of exhibits, sat through presentations, played demos.


    At one point, someone even recognized me and asked for a photo. He told me he was a big fan of Black Shark too, and showed me a tattoo he had of a creepy snake-pupiled eye framed by the words "THE EYE OF ODIN OPENS // ONLY FOR BLACK SHARK".


    I didn''t know what to do so I just posed with him, grateful my mask hid my bewilderment. The girls could not stop laughing about it, and I joined them, but was really just worrying about it the whole time.


    And as I fretted, I realized AEGIS was too. She was hiding it pretty well, but she never steered Chiho anywhere, just followed along, picked up the same things she did, smiled when she thought we were looking. I''m not sure I would have noticed if not for the extra information my mask was throwing up on my optics...it kept telling me with high degrees of certainty she was lying by microexpressions and contradictions to body language and state.


    Knowing she was just faking all her smiling and laughing hurt and made me wonder if this was a stupid plan after all. Here we were, awash in humanity, literally elbow-deep in it, and I think just being around all these people was making her miserable. The opposite of everything I wanted for this trip, of what she wanted for herself.


    When we got back to the hotel after dinner, legs sore as hell, and went to our own rooms, I stood in front of the connecting door between ours for a long time, trying to think if I should go in and talk to her or not. I didn''t know if I had the strength myself, I was feeling really stressed and tired too, and just wanted to play sick for a day and lay around instead of going back out there with all those nerds.


    I really wanted a drink.


    No. Bad Lia.


    I had an hour of being Black Shark that AEGIS had allotted me. I''d just dip into my work and forget all about it until tomorrow. I''d be fine.


    When I looked up, it was midnight already. I''d checked just a few minutes ago, I swore, and it was only ten then, but I had wanted to finish just one more thing.


    > hey


    The messenger from AEGIS popped up on my screen. I''d been working three hours already. I was so busted.


    > knock knock


    As I got the second message, the door between our rooms opened. I''d left it unlocked after standing there so long and hadn''t even considered she''d come in. She looked at me and squinted, and I realized I was laying on the bed with my mobile in front of me, and I was half-naked, the top half of the slipskin hanging off my waist.


    It was great for running around in, but not exactly for lounging in, okay? I''d meant to change earlier but got distracted halfway through. I covered myself up while I threw a sweatshirt on.


    "Don''t dress up on my account," AEGIS said, sitting in a chair with a sigh.


    "Just because we''ve all seen each other naked doesn''t make it less awkward, dude."


    "Saw you were working late again. Thought I''d swing by." She squinted at me again, and I wondered if she was glaring at me. If this was a new thing. I was so busted.


    "Yeah. About that--"


    "Look, Lia, don''t worry, I''m not here to bust your chops on it. Today really sucked, I think for both of us."


    "No! I had a lot of fun, really!"


    "Uh huh. Can you even name all the major consoles out right now?"


    "Yeah there''s um, Nintendo. And uh. PC gaming."


    "Yeah, thought so. Look, you''re allowed to not have fun, okay?"


    "Coming from the girl who was hiding everything behind a smile all day?"


    "Coming from the girl who was hiding everything behind a mask all day?"


    Blah. I fell over backwards on the bed. "Okay, what do you want then?"


    We sat in silence for a few seconds. I leaned up to peek at her and saw she kept looking at me funny.


    "What''s wrong with your eyes?" I asked.


    "I turned them down. Way down. Human levels of vision. Actually even a little defective."


    "Why would you do that?"


    "I don''t know." She leaned back and slowly thunked her head against the wall. "I don''t know what I''m doing. I wish being human came with an instruction manual. Or at least API docs."


    "Nobody has an instruction manual on how to be human," I said, sitting up and scooting to the edge of the bed. "Everybody sucks at it. We just do the best we can and get used to it as we go."


    "I don''t have time to get used to it. I''m seeing Athan in three days."


    "And he doesn''t have his swans together anymore than you do."


    "He''s had 19 years to do so."


    "He''s had less than one year to do so. He''s an Exhuman, remember?"


    AEGIS just sighed and looked tired. Blah again.


    I laid back. Restless. I just wanted a drink, or wanted to work, or something. I felt like I had anxiety clinging to me.


    I was surprised when AEGIS fell on her back right next to me, and more surprised when I looked over and saw she''d gotten thin oval glasses from somewhere and was wearing them.


    "What''s the point in glasses if you can just correct your vision?" I asked.


    "I made these awhile back. They''re an exact copy of what I wore...back in the holo, down to the prescription."


    "And then you set your eyes so they were just wrong enough for those glasses to correct? That''s like...vain as hell, if you don''t mind my saying."


    "I actually do mind."


    "But they''re just decorative glasses at this point. You could wear clear lenses if you''re just doing it for fashion."


    "It''s not for fashion...it''s¡­" she sighed. "The body I had in the holo, my creator...my mother, she made that body. She gave me these glasses." She took them off and looked at them in the air. "I don''t have any of my original memories of back then. This is one of the only things I have from her. And even then, it''s just a copy."


    I turned back to the ceiling. Blah number three, just accidentally insulted my friend over her dead mom. I was not doing so well this conversation.


    "Is this part of becoming more human? Becoming more imperfect?"


    "I was hoping it was more along the lines of becoming closer to my mother, but sure. Humans are plenty of both," she said and rolled onto her elbows. "I just feel like I don''t know what I''m doing unless I''m hacking something or micromanaging a robot army or optimizing a manufacturing line. What the hell does that say about me?"


    "You''re¡­really talented?"


    "Yeah, at being a fucking machine. At doing what I''m programmed to do. And yet, I go out there, surrounded by people, seeing all these great games and stuff I''ve been dying to play and been drooling over on the ''net for weeks, and what? I hate it! I hate it all! What''s supposed to be this great human experience, something that ordinary people like Chiho spend tons of money and time just so they have this opportunity, and they''re excited, they''re happy, they''re...taking pictures and making friends and meeting idols."


    She lifted her legs into the air, making her dress fall off her legs and revealing the circular robotic markings on her hips and knees.


    "And I''m just following Chiho along, wishing I were back in my hotel room so I could have another go at the Florida facility that locked me out, or keep a better eye on my cam-drones. I don''t even need to work, there''s nothing I have to do, I just want to, all the time. I feel compelled to do all these AI things, and I don''t know if it''s my programming or my personality telling me to."


    "I''m with you there." I sighed and lifted my legs in the air next to hers, just a little longer than hers. A lot less muscular than they used to be, a lot pastier. A lot cleaner. I didn''t get out and do anything anymore, I just sat at my holo and worked, or drank myself stupid, and right now I didn''t have either of those.


    We both flopped our legs back down on the bed. She looked at me guiltily, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of mine.


    "Want to do something bad together?" she said in a low, urgent voice.


    "I think so."


    "Let me grab my mobile from the other room," she said, getting up.


    For the next couple hours, we sat back-to-back on my bed, each on our mobiles, hacking, cracking, slicing, social-engineering our way around the ''net. There was no reason to it, no point in what we did, I was just getting into as many bank accounts as I could just to see what was in there, and she was cracking databases of library archives and compiling national data for what books had the largest aggregate overdue fees.


    Trashy romance novels won in a landslide, incidentally.


    At almost three, I shut my mobile and set it down next to me, AEGIS'' back still impossibly warm against mine. I stretched and cracked my neck and knuckles and heard her mobile also snap shut.


    "This was fun," I said.


    "We''re pretty messed up people." She sounded happy saying it, though.


    "I like your glasses," I said. "Sorry about making fun of them earlier."


    "I just wanted to see the world like everyone else does, maybe figure out what I''m missing."


    I leaned my head backwards into the crook between her head and shoulder. "You love Athan, right?"


    She stiffened, but I felt her nod.


    "That''s something computers don''t do, you know. No computer in the world does that. There''s lots of AI out there that run factories or manages drones or helps people in hacking, but none of them ever love anyone. Don''t be so hard on yourself."


    A thought occurred to me. "And hey, I''m a human, and I''m just as obsessed and weird as you are. So next time you''re feeling out of place and not very human because you feel awkward and like you''d rather be alone, you''re insulting me too," I laughed.


    She laughed too, and I felt it through my body.


    "Three more days," she said.


    I nodded minutely. I hadn''t really heard, being nestled against her soft skin and warm back, and how late it was and tired I was after being on our feet all day, I was beginning to drift off. I remembered her resting her head against my head and shoulder as well, our cheeks barely touching, and then I remembered waking up next to her with the rays of morning sun filtering through the window shade.


    I stirred and realized I''d trapped her there under me all night. She didn''t seem to mind.


    "Two more days," she whispered.

 122. 2251, Three Years Ago. Tampa exurbs. Camila.

    I hadn''t reset in weeks. It was a the longest time I''d ever gone without.


    I''d managed it by doing nothing. Nothing at all. I laid in my bed all day, ignoring mi Madre and Papi. They thought I was sick. I wouldn''t go to school, wouldn''t leave my room. They worried. I told them nothing. I ate by myself when everyone was asleep.


    That night I went downstairs as I had been doing for days, bare feet carefully creeping on wide wooden stairs.


    Halfway down, I realized someone was sitting in the darkness below, and as soon as I had that thought, the world became wispy and dreamlike around me.


    It wasn''t the real world anymore. I knew this. I could do whatever I wanted here, but I was trapped until I did what it wanted. Sometimes it took days. Sometimes longer.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak, and then uneasy, I turned around to go back upstairs. I was hungry and my stomach growled, but I didn''t care. I turned around and went right back to my room. Maybe if I just left it would all be over.


    Downstairs, Papi yelled at me from the dark.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    I shut my door and laid in bed and closed my eyes, pushing the fog out, willing it to go away. Wanting to be back in the real world.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak. I turned and bolted, running up the stairs as fast as I could. My stomach growled as I slammed my door and dove into bed, and laid there, motionless. I heard soft footsteps in the hall and the door opened, letting a sliver of light in.


    "Conejita? Are you okay? Why did you slam your door?" His shadow stretched onto the thick carpeted floor. I didn''t respond. I didn''t move. I waited until he gave up and left, and then tried to go back to sleep.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak, and I sat down. My stomach growled.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    "Yes, Papi, I''m here," I sighed.


    "Why are you awake my child?" There was a click when he turned the light on. He was sitting at the dining room, facing the stairs, lurking in the dark.


    "Why are you awake?" I asked him, angry that because of him, I was resetting again. If he''d just left me alone, if everyone did, I wouldn''t have to live this anymore. I could do what I wanted and someday, if I was lucky, maybe even die.


    I was always angry. Angry until I just couldn''t be anymore, and then I felt nothing else.


    "I was waiting to see you, mi conejita. I haven''t spoken to you in almost a month. Your mother and I are very worried."


    "Well stop worrying!" I screamed at him. "Leave me alone!"


    Hurt and shock crossed his strong face. It was the first time I had ever raised my voice to him, though I had done it thousands of times before. "Why do you say this?" he asked, his voice heavy with hurt. "Please, I worry so much, I just want you to tell me."


    He was a good, honest man. A good father. I remembered when I was young, a lifetime ago, and I adored everything about him, from his strong arms to his thick moustache which tickled when he kissed me. He worked hard and took good care of all of us, and I loved him.


    And now I hated him for being the same man. For caring so much, for always wanting to be involved, never letting me be alone or suffer.


    I told him exactly that, and when I did, his heart broke again. Like it did the thousands of other times I told him I hated him. Told him to just leave me alone. Told him to just let me live my life and be miserable. I screamed at him and threw a tantrum. He watched with glassy, uncomprehending eyes as I threw a chair through a window.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. Tears began to roll down my cheeks from when I was crying from last time.


    I''d had my tantrum. I was tired. I was hungry. And I would be forever, if I didn''t satisfy it. I was just so mad that after all this time, after weeks, it would come back like it never left.


    I''d probably already messed up by crying and standing here. My stomach growled.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    The light clicked on. He saw me standing there with fat tears rolling down my face. I was sure I had failed when he moved wordlessly to embrace me on the stairs.


    I left and went back to my room before he got there, slamming the door in his face. In the bottom drawer, under the dress I''d worn to my tenth birthday party, just a few months ago, Papi''s old pistol from when he served in the Cuban military. He only just opened the door as I chambered a round and turned off the safety with practiced ease, and began to yell as I closed my eyes, felt the cold metal against the nape of my neck, and pulled the trigger.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak. I had to try this time. I did not know what it wanted, but I would be stuck forever if I never tried. I put another foot down, and another. My stomach growled as I reached the landing.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    "Si, Papi," I said. "I was hungry."


    "Please have some dinner. Your mother made us delicious soup, would you like some?"


    "Yes, please."


    He clicked the light on and I sat down at the opposite end of the table from him, while he got up and went to the kitchen. From the other room, I heard his voice. "I haven''t spoken to you in almost a month. Your mother and I are very worried."


    "Do not worry about me, Papi. I am fine."


    "You are sleeping all day and not going to school. I have not seen your hermosa sonrisa in weeks. Do not tell me not to worry, I am your father."


    I sighed. I just wanted to tell him that I would hate him less if he were a bad man, if he neglected me and left me to be miserable on my own. That was not what it wanted, I was sure.


    "Tell me," he said, seriously, sitting next to me now and putting a hot bowl in front of me. "Is it a boy?"


    This was always his theory. I remembered how surprised I was the first time I heard him say that. Now it was just another way he didn''t understand me. I wished I could say yes, make up a lie that would explain away everything so he would give me peace, but it never accepted that.


    "No, it''s not a boy. It is nothing, I promise."


    He scrutinized my face like he had done so many times before. He never found anything there before, and he found nothing now.


    "You used to be such a happy girl, what happened?"


    "I changed, Papi. I woke up one day, and I get lost. I am scared, I am lonely, and I do not even know why or what I did or who I am. I relive days, over, and over, and over, until I do everything right, just as it wants me to do."


    He looked at me, completely lost. A brave smile wavered beneath his thick moustache as he held onto the hope I was joking.


    "I have killed myself thousands of times. I have killed you and mi Madre dozens of times. I have spent years, years, years, reliving the same day, over and over until I want to go mad. I can''t even go mad. I have tried. I have tried everything there is in this world to escape and I cannot."


    "What are you talking about mi conejita? You are not making any sense."


    "That is because what I live does not make sense," I said. "I know you want only to help me, but nobody can help me. I don''t know what to do, and you can''t understand me, because whenever I explain to you, you go away."


    He stood and put his arms around me. Tears fell from his eyes for the first time since I was born, though I had seen them many times before.


    "I will always listen to you, mi conejita. I may not understand, but I can be here for you anyway. I will try to understand. I love you more than everything, you are my whole world."


    He held me tight.


    "I will never let you suffer. I will protect my little girl no matter what it is that makes you afraid. Please, just trust in your Papi. Just tell me what hurts you. I will always be here for you, my beautiful, beautiful child."This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak. My arms felt cold where he had held me. I walked downstairs. My stomach growled.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    Minutes later, he asked me again, "You used to be such a happy girl, what happened?"


    "Nothing happened, Papi," I lied. "I am still your little girl." I remembered to smile at him, forcing my face to take the unusual shape. He smiled back.


    I spent the next few hours reassuring him and letting him know I was fine and I loved him, that I was going through things I couldn''t tell him about, but yes, if I ever wanted to, I would talk to him and tell him everything, and yes, I would go back to school, and try to be a good girl and show the whole world my beautiful smile again.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak. I walked downstairs, my stomach growled.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    It didn''t like it when I lied. It didn''t like it when I hurt anyone. It didn''t like it when anyone else hurt anyone. Sometimes, it broke its own rules, and hurting someone or being mean was exactly what it wanted. Sometimes, it wanted the simplest solution, and just walking away was all I had to do.


    Sometimes, it wanted me to do something impossibly specific. I spent years guessing and trying and reliving the same moments over and over until finally, for whatever reason, it was satisfied and let me go, and the world went on just like that was the first thing I''d ever done.


    Sometimes bad things happened to me or to people around me and it didn''t care, I didn''t find myself in this foggy pretend-world. Something bad happened to someone and that was what it wanted. Sometimes, something good happened and it wanted me to stop that.


    But generally, it just wanted me to help people, and myself. It wanted me to be nice and make people safe. There were so many, many things which did not go wrong in the past, all because of it. I think, at some point, years ago by my time, mi Madre would have died, if not for it. I thought, in some ways, I should be grateful.


    The problem was, I wasn''t nice, I didn''t want to keep people safe, I was just an angry puppet, strung along by whatever its whims were. I couldn''t live, I couldn''t die. I couldn''t even take life one day at a time, if I didn''t satisfy it, I would be stuck forever. How was I supposed to care about myself, or these people, or anything, when I saw them do the same things over and over, thousands of times. I felt like they weren''t people either, just like me. Like we were all actors who played our parts until we got the act right.


    Dozens of times, my foot touched the step with a slight creak. Dozens of times, Papi asked if I was awake. Dozens of times I yelled at him. Talked to him. Poured out my feelings. Shut myself off. Ran away. Killed myself. Flew into a rage. Ate soup. Went back to sleep. Tore up the creaky step. Raged again. Left the house. Talked more. Chatted about boy problems. Chatted about girl problems. Told him my problems. Made up stories about aliens. Listened to his problems. Lied. Told the truth. Everything I could.


    I was tired. I was hungry. I was emotionally dead, and it still wanted something from me. I couldn''t even be mad anymore. I just sat there and closed my eyes and rested while ignoring Papi as he asked me questions with increasing worry.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak. I sat down, not done with moping just yet. Another dozen resets or two, maybe, and I''d try again.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    "No," I said.


    The light clicked on. "Conejita, what is wrong?"


    I sat there with my head in my knees and cried. He took only a fraction of a second to process before he strode across the room and held me wordlessly.


    These were the resets I think I liked best. When I didn''t have to say anything or do anything or try to be anyone, and could just be me. A miserable, broken girl, loved by her Papi, who didn''t understand why his daughter cried, but held her anyway.


    Sometimes, I dreamed this would be all it wanted. That Papi could have this memory, and he would just hold me until the fog went away and everything would be all right. Maybe today would be that day. Maybe, me and Papi being happy together is all it wanted for today.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak. Of course not.


    I was trying again, with a bowl of soup in front of me and Papi looking at me with concerned eyes while I told him not to worry, when something went wrong. Something went terribly, impossibly wrong. The wrongest thing that had ever been.


    I saw the world, the whole world, and everything in it. I wasn''t in this world. Papi and mi Madre weren''t either. It was an older world than ours, but the same. And it ended in fire.


    Explosions scarred the surface of the world, calamity after calamity, as men turned keys and pressed buttons and the world burned like a candle. People were like a fire going out. The explosions burned bright and tall, and scorched the world, but people clung to the world anyway, hanging on against hope, surviving the end to whatever was after that.


    And then the ember of people faded until there was nothing but black. People got sick, still fought each other, there was no food, no light, no warmth. Some people lived a long time, deep underground, but even they couldn''t live forever, there was no food, and the frozen surface crept ever deeper until it found them and choked them in their sleep.


    And the ember went out. The world was over, not a single thing lived on it, not grass, or birds or people. But this wasn''t our world, just another one which was.


    It had only been a fraction of a moment, but I had lived a billion, billion lifetimes. I had time only to blink and feel tears begin to force themselves from my eyes.


    And then I saw myself, saw our world, saw me and Papi in the dining room, while mi Madre fretted upstairs, unable to sleep. I saw everyone in the world, everyone I''d ever known, my teacher, my nanny, and a strange man in a black suit in a black tower, very far away.


    This world was different from the first. In this world, I saw other things as well. I looked carefully and looked deep within myself, and there, shining with a blackness ringed in white was it. Deep within me, it beat like a pulse, a part of myself as much as my heart or my brain. It fed, and it dreamed, and in its dreams, I saw my visions, my resets, and in those dreams I saw this vision now.


    It was not a physical thing, but something...something else. Like there was a third world, except there was no world there, just emptiness, and in it was that thing, overlapped with me. There were others of them, the black shining things, within other people. All around the world I saw them, and as I watched, I moved, north, to the city where the black tower was. I was there until another joined me, and another, and another. Each with a thing inside of us.


    I watched us together, live our lives and fight and cry and live and die. Time passed in a fraction, but as it did, I saw something else.


    This world would end as well. Not in fire, but in blackness. I watched as a light so black, so unseeable that it burned, grew and swelled and grew even more powerful and angry, until it eclipsed the world and there was only blackness. Endless blackness for all eternity, not just for our world, but for all worlds. A thing which was never meant to be, which was, and then the universe wasn''t.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak.


    I fell. I cried, filled with a feeling of infinite blackness, of worlds snuffed from life, of impossible, impassable nonexistence. I had lived two world''s worth of lifetimes in two moments, and felt each of those lives snuffed out, turned only to ash and blackness. Things a ten-year-old girl should not be able to comprehend, thoughts which should have broken my mind.


    But my mind being broken wasn''t permitted. It wouldn''t allow it. I just had impossible thoughts in my head, saw the death everything which had ever been, ever would be, gone. And then gone again.


    In the face of the absolute end of all, I couldn''t even feel self-pity, couldn''t feel anything but absolute despair.


    I spent days on the steps, crying, feeling the death and destruction around me like I''d just lived it, when it had come and gone so fast. The shock of it rolled through me, back and forth, and even though I thought I was already dead to everything, could feel nothing else, cared nothing about my life or anyone''s, just wanting it all to finally let me go, the absolute nothingness...it scared me.


    For the first time since I started resetting, I wanted to live again. I didn''t want to end up in the infinite blackness, didn''t want the world to extinguish, and everything on it to die. For all the suffering I endured, I lived trapped in a world of everything, where there was too much time, too many outrages, too many options, too many demands.


    I couldn''t begin to comprehend a world of nothing. The nothing scared me in ways I everything could not, in ways I couldn''t understand.


    The days stretched into weeks, and the weeks into years. For years, I sat, wailing and wallowing, still tired, still hungry, still with my father consoling me the whole time, unknowingly.


    Until this time, when my foot touched the step with a slight creak, I stood on it instead of falling and crying. This time, I knew what I had to do. It had taken years to put myself back together and realized what it had shown me.


    My stomach growled. I didn''t care. I''d been hungry for so long, I had almost forgotten what food was like.


    "Conejita? Are you awake my dear?"


    "Si, Papi. I need to talk to you."


    "I need to talk to you too," he said, but stopped when he clicked on the light and saw my face. "What has happened? You look like you have...like you...have something very important to say."


    I didn''t know what he saw on my face, but I didn''t care.


    "Papi, I know this will make no sense, but I need something very badly and I cannot explain why."


    He looked at me silently, scrutinizing my face. This time...whatever he saw, it convinced him. "I will do anything for you. Just...just tell me."


    "I need to leave you, Papi. I need to go find a man in a black suit in a black tower far to the north of here. I need to live with him for a while." I frowned and shook my head. "I will not come back."


    He gaped at me. Several times he started to say something and did not.


    "But why?" he asked, at last.


    "I can''t tell you."


    "Are you...are you sick? Did you fall?"


    "I am perfectly healthy, Papi. You don''t understand, and I don''t either, but this is a thing I must do."


    He hung on the edge of indecision, having no idea what had come over his little girl. If only he could see the blackness consume the world which lurked behind my eyes.


    "Why don''t you sleep, mi Conejita. We can talk about this in the morning."


    I walked down the stairs. "I''m going, if you are willing to help me or not."


    "Camila, my love, no. I cannot let you walk out into the night like this. You are ill, let me help you."


    I struggled with him, impossibly, and tried to force open the door. He held it shut as fat tears rolled from his eyes.


    My foot touched the step with a slight creak.

 123. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    The casket seemed too large, like it held the remains of a big strong adult who''d had a meaningful life, who''d made choices and had experiences and had time on this earth to put himself on any path he''d desired. And that path happened to lead to this grave.


    But it didn''t. It held a child. This casket, me and the others standing in line, full military honors, dozens of soldiers standing behind us, rapt at attention for a person they never knew, we were all here for the soul that once lived in that small body.


    I''d missed the end of the fight, blacked out from pain or exhaustion or my own body just turning against me. Jack was barely up, could hardly even stand, and yet he had gotten Tower and Steffie where they had needed to be and won us the day.


    Steffie was on my left, in a wheelchair, wearing a black dress, crying openly. Tem was on my right, wearing her black servant suit like we all were, leaning against me and crying as well.


    I didn''t even care they were crying. I was too numb to feel any awkwardness or even to have the emotional capacity to consider anyone else''s feelings right now. Aside from facts flipping themselves over in my mind and a black wave of guilt so all-encompassing I felt like it was pouring from every part of me, I felt nothing. Could feel nothing.


    Towards the end of the fight, my powers had simply stopped working. I didn''t know why, and after coming to again, they''d come back up as strong and sure as ever. But at a critical time, I hadn''t been able to do anything but lay there and whisper into a comms, and as a result, Dipshit had free run of the battlefield, chased around by Karu and Tower and Tem, but able to move proactively, forcing the three of them to react to him.


    I''d tried to coordinate their attacks to keep him busy as much as possible, but Karu just didn''t have the right ordinance equipped for the fight, Tower was almost useless against Jack''s powers, and Tem couldn''t protect all three of the downed bodies at the same time. She''d focused on protecting me, when I wanted her to protect Mage, but she just apologized and kept right on.


    And now she was bawling her soul out into my side.


    In the moments he stole away, the Exhuman had gone to Mage to steal her powers. Several times, he touched her head for fractions of a second, and the medics warned me that her vitals were plummeting. I begged Tem to leave me, save her, ordered her to, pleaded with her over comms.


    She refused. And now there was a coffin in front of us with a dead thirteen-year old Exhuman inside of it.


    Dead, on her first and only mission Her first and only time as strike lead. Her first and only time being an Exhuman and a good guy at the same time. She died a hero, serving her country, posthumously given several medals, and a military funeral with full honors.


    We all inarguably owed her our lives. Whatever the exact nature of her powers, she''d saved us all three times over before the fight began. More than a military hero, she was a hero to her friends. Even if none of us had really even liked Mage, even if she didn''t like us, she''d done more for each of us than any of the others who were still standing here.


    The US flag had been removed from the casket, folded with rigid efficiency into a triangle, and given to Jack. Blackett wasn''t here, and of us, Jack had known her the longest. He held it loosely in shaking hands, barely a trace of a smile on his face.


    Tem''s shuddering against me intensified. I wanted to blame her for everything, wanted to just hate her and dump all this guilt and grief into her and be rid of it, but that''s not how any of this worked. She didn''t follow my orders, she protected me instead of Mage, she let Mage die.


    But every time I had that thought, I thought also, so did I. I''d been calling the shots and giving the orders and taking it upon myself to sacrifice myself and my own well being to protect the others the entire op, and as a result, when Mage needed me most, when I needed my powers the most, I couldn''t use them any longer. I''d burnt myself out, destroyed my own body, and even blacked out. It was my orders that had led to Tem having to make that choice, not Tem''s choice which had killed Mage.


    Me. A killer again. More blood on my hands. Another murdered girl.


    And through it all, another thought tore at my brain. If she could see the future, then why, why hadn''t she been able to predict this, to prevent this? Was her power limited in some way, or was this...was this death...was it a necessary sacrifice she willingly made to prevent an even worse catastrophe?


    I didn''t know, and I never would. All of her secrets were being buried before our eyes.


    People began to file away. The soldiers marched away with practiced perfection. The groundskeepers began lowering the casket.


    And I just stood there, unable to move, turning over every fact, everything I''d seen, trying to figure out why. Why this child was taken instead of me. What I could have done differently. How had I failed her.


    I eventually noticed everyone was gone. Tem was crouched on the ground nearby, still with tears rolling over her cheeks and falling into her two tufts of silver hair, but staring at my feet, and another woman I didn''t recognize stood patiently behind us, dressed in all black with a wide-brimmed hat with a veil of black lace.


    Just the three of us and the dead girl.


    I sensed more than saw the elegant woman in black approach, and I realized it was Karu. I''d never seen her dressed up before.


    "How are you?" she asked, her eyes soft, but her brow heavy with concern.


    I couldn''t take my eyes off the casket. "She''s dead, Karu. I did that."


    Karu sighed. "I knew you would say that before I asked. Ashton, you can''t--"


    "I could have done things differently. I should have known better. I should have known he would ambush the caravan after we split up. I knew he''d come after the wounded, I could have had the medics put both in one place to make them easier to protect. I should have sent you off to get better ordinance once I knew you couldn''t protect them. Hell, we should have left as soon as we got hands on Steffie!"


    I was yelling. I didn''t even know why. I wasn''t mad at Karu.


    "You can''t blame yourself for every soldier," Karu said softly.


    "There isn''t every soldier. There''s one dead girl."


    "She willingly joined a combat strike. She knew the dangers."


    "So we just blame here then? It''s her fault she died?"


    "Ultimately...yes, I''m sorry. It is the foremost role of every soldier to keep themselves alive. You may sacrifice for your allies, but if you sacrifice too much, you will have nothing left to contribute. She exposed herself to too much danger, and you had to carry her away. It''s not your fault she stumbled. Just mourn that she fell."


    I looked down at my hands. My right hand was still uselessly shaky. I''d been in the regenerator, but there was extensive nerve damage and my body needed time to recover some of that on its own, they''d explained that it was more of a learning and rehabilitation issue than anything physically wrong with me. I''d felt some loss of motor control when they regrew my leg, but...that was just a leg.


    "She died because I did that, not the other way around, Karu. I sacrificed too much of myself that I had nothing left to contribute. How you could even think to blame her¡­"


    I heard footsteps on the grass behind me and turned. Cosette was there, somber, and in full military uniform, looking entirely to code today.


    "Chariot. Karu. Tem. I''m sorry."


    "No, I''m sorry," I said. I wondered if I stuttered, and then realized Tem had said the same in unison. She looked embarrassed and fixated on my feet.


    Cosette looked at both of us sadly. "I know...this probably isn''t what you want to hear, but...you''ve been promoted, Chariot, to strike lead. We also have your uniforms and equipment ready¡­" she sighed. "I don''t know what we''re going to do with Mage''s. It''s not like there''s any other children in the XPCA to give it to."


    "I''ll take it," I said.


    Karu looked at me sideways. "May I inquire why?"


    "I don''t ever want to forget what I did here," I said.


    Cosette frowned at me. "This doesn''t sound healthy."


    "Healthy?" I echoed. "She''s dead. How can you be worried about how healthy I am?"


    "Because you''re alive, Chariot. I am sad and I am sorry about Mage too. I am frustrated and I am hurt, and I wonder what I could have done better. But I''m wondering what I could do better so that next time I can do better. Next time, it might be your life on the line, or Tem''s, or Tower''s, and if I avoid those mistakes again, maybe then, instead of a casualty, we''ll have an easy op by the numbers. Mage died, and that''s awful and I hate it, but you''re still alive and that''s important too."


    "It doesn''t feel very important right now," I said bitterly.


    I found myself on my back, wind knocked out of me. Cosette released the arm she''d twisted to throw me down there.


    "Get your head out of your ass, Chariot," she said. "Mage died, but she also saved your life. If you''re just going to throw that away, then yeah, maybe you should have died instead of her. But if you respect her at all, then respect the damn decent thing she did for you by saving your life and fucking live it."


    She reached into a pocket and pulled out a pin shaped like a narrow triangle, half silver, half black, still sealed inside a thick transparent bag. Mage had been buried with an identical one.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Happy fucking promotion," she said, and threw it at me, before turning and leaving.


    "I didn''t deserve that," I said from my back.


    "Perhaps it is not the most flattering position to take to insinuate that your life is without value to a woman whose job it is to support you and to bring you home safe, and who has very recently failed to do so. Or to insinuate to those who love you that your life is valueless at all," Karu said. She sounded about as mad as Cosette.


    "I fucked up, Karu. I ruined the op and killed that girl."


    "Then improve!" she snapped, looking nothing like the elegant lady she was dressed as. "Dedicate yourself to justice...and righteousness...pray to God for forgiveness every day for those you let die! Do not let another single soul in your presence fall victim again! If you repent for your sins, then repent. But do not fucking deign to dare to say that you have erred and now your life should be forfeit. Do not fucking dare."


    She was shaking.


    "Karu...I''m sorry--"


    She stopped me with a gesture and tilted her head back to fight back tears with rage still crossing her face. "I have words to exchange with you. This...this is not what I had come to say. I will...will wait at the gate for you. Just give me a minute alone, if you will."


    And then, like Cosette, she turned and left.


    I laid on my back for what felt like several minutes before I heard another voice. Soft and frail, and broken.


    "I...I understand you."


    I closed my eyes.


    "I feel...I feel worthless every day. Ah. I''m s-s-sorry, you don''t want to hear me talk about myself right...right now, probably. S-sorry."


    I shook my head. "It''s fine, Tem," I said.


    "I never...never want to talk to anyone because I''m afraid...afraid I''m just bothering them. Please let me know if I''m bothering...just bothering you I can s-stop."


    "I said it''s fine."


    "Oh okay." She waited another minute before continuing. "I...um, like I s-s-said, I think I understand you. I blame myself for lots of things too. They''re usually my fault, too. I wish I could be like Karu...wish I could just...just get s-stronger and protect everyone...but I can''t. I already know I''ll never be like her. S-s-she''s s-strong, and you...and you...you love her. And I''m just...I''m just a burden."


    I heard her shift and adjust her suit.


    "I feel like nothing ever...like nothing ever goes right if I touch it. I feel like people have a harder time¡­harder time just because I''m around. Like, I make everything...just make everything go s-slower, and people are mad at me for it."


    "Who''s mad at you, Tem?"


    "Well, nobody s-s-says it to me, s-so I don''t bring it up. It''s really nothing."


    "But who is it? I don''t think anyone on the team hates you."


    "Oh, ah, yes, I think you''re right. I''m s-sorry."


    I grit my teeth. Even when we agreed. And then just like that she turned it all around. Couldn''t stand up for herself, even here, even when I knew the answer.


    It''s you. You''re mad at me. If she could just say those words, I wouldn''t be mad at her anymore. But she couldn''t, she would never be able to. Like she said, she wasn''t strong like Karu, but it wasn''t because anyone was holding her down, it was because she just utterly refused to pick herself up.


    "S-sorry," she said.


    "For what?"


    "For...for bothering you and wasting your...wasting your time. I think...think Karu''s probably waiting for you s-s-still. I''ll let you go to her."


    I heard her stand and walk away.


    And then it was just me and Mage, both laying on the hard ground.


    "Why''d you do it, Mage? And why didn''t you let me help?" I whispered.


    Mage didn''t answer. Never would.


    Karu looked much less angry when I saw her at the stone arch of the cemetery. I was about to speak when she cut me off.


    "My father heard of your promotion and the medals you earned on this mission for your heroism and quick-thinking."


    Not enough of either to matter, though.


    "He...he has¡­" she fingered a bit of black lace from her veil. "He has decided there were oversights in his decision to disown me."


    "I''m very happy for you," I said, feeling anything but.


    "Yes. As...as am I. But, um."


    I wasn''t sure I had ever heard Karu ''but um'' something. I scrutinized her face. She was blushing and clearly struggling with something. I felt like this was bizarro-universe Karu, who was everything but confident and eloquent and direct with her speech.


    "Please do not...do not stare. I am embarrassed enough as it is," she said, covering half her face with a hand. "My father, he um, wishes to meet with you, to...judge the mettle of your character for himself, as it were. Wishes to see if he...made a mistake...in throwing me out with you."


    She shifted uneasily scratching the side of one of her black stocking-clad legs with the side of her black flats. I guess she''d said what she wanted to then? I wasn''t sure I understood the consternation.


    "Uh, sure. Fine by me, I guess. When?"


    ''Oh, um, tonight for dinner, if that would be acceptable."


    "Works for me. Do I...need to bring anything, or anything?"


    "Ah, um. If you could...wear your uniform, that would be appreciated."


    "Sure," I said.


    And the conversation withered away.


    "Well...I shall...be by to pick you up then. Au revoir!" she said with a wave, and then blanched. "Is there...the possibility you could forget I said that?"


    "Au revoir? Doesn''t that just mean bye?"


    "Yes. I simply...that was a silly thing to say. I don''t know what''s wrong with me presently. I''m sorry, Ashton." She gave a deep confusing bow and then climbed into the side of a car and it drove off leaving me too exhausted to be puzzled.


    I caught the last ride back to Raven''s Nest. Along with the uniforms, paperwork and pay, we''d been given our own housing in the on-site barracks. Located in one of the underground floors, I got the impression nobody lived there unless they truly had to, it was claustrophobic, dark, and metal, but it was still a place which was all our own.


    Jack was there, laying in a bed with his eyes closed and his shoes off, a small smile on his lips. I waved, but he didn''t respond. It was impossible to tell if he was sleeping. I laid down in my own bunk and stared at the ceiling and spent the rest of the time before dinner thinking.


    With a little less than an hour left, I decided I should change into my uniform and got up. Jack was gone, but Tem was sitting crouched like she had been next to the coffin, just staring in my general direction. She was probably going through some stuff, so I left the little creeper alone and dressed in the lockers/showers next door, pinning the single insignia to my collar, having to look up regulations on my new wrist holo for the exact position and alignment.


    It looked like a standard uniform, one of the mid-tier officer uniforms, I noticed, not a grunt''s. It had the high collar with the zipper on the side which went down one side of the body and then diagonally across...almost the same as Saga''s prison uniform, I noticed. But it was black with silver trim, and breathed and moved easily.


    I wasn''t really an Exhuman who benefitted too much from having too many pieces of gear, but there was a pistol, hip holster, and rounds. In a set of pockets, I found what I remembered Lia called ''shock rocks'', little caltrops you could scatter in an area, and they would create a web of electricity between themselves until they ran out of juice, incapacitating any who entered. If I''d had these just two days ago¡­


    In another set of pockets were some strange metal bars which looked like a pen with a button on one end and were really heavy for their size.


    "There''s our world-famous XPCA exotic weaponry," Cosette said from behind me, making me jump. She was lurking in the doorway. I was just happy she didn''t seem mad at me.


    "What are they?" I asked.


    "Give it a try. Won''t hurt anyone."


    I clicked the button on the end and it depressed and didn''t come back out. The shaft of the device rapidly cooled, and I had to drop it before it burned me. My brain flashed back to the sensation of frost creeping into my flesh, holding the frozen wire cable with a hand which was already dead.


    "Shoot some indiscriminate lightning around, now," she said, and it took me a minute to remember where I was.


    I shook myself off and tried to remember when I was with Lia and decided to invent a new attack, the Infinite Deathblow or whatever. I felt my cheeks burn just remembering that, but it was what Cosette asked me for. Indiscriminate, uncontrolled lightning from my hands. I pushed the power through my arms and let it flow out in a constant arc.


    To my surprise, instead of just noodling downwards into the ground, the bolts arced directly into the device.


    Intrigued, I kept blasting it with a steady chain of lightning, feeling like a Jacob''s ladder as an unbroken arc danced between my fingertips and the device. I took a few steps back, and then a few more, and then I was all the way on the other side of the room, my lightning still ignoring the ground and seeking out the device, no matter which way I threw it out. After a bit more, the device just died and my lightning went right back to being limp noodles.


    "It''s like a superconductor grenade," she said, walking up to me now that the lightshow had stopped. "Only lasts about a minute before it burns itself out, but until then, if lightning is going to strike, it''s gonna strike there. I don''t know how handy it is compared to shock rocks, but I figured, if we have the tech, you should have the toy."


    "Thanks, Cosette," I said. "And about earlier--"


    She stopped me and wrapped her arms around me in a hug. "I''m sorry for snapping at you," she said. "I''m sad and mad about Mage too, don''t think you have a monopoly on acting like a douche right now." She let me go and then patted me on the head, which was awkward considering I was a head taller than her. "If you need anything, anything at all, call up your big sis, okay? I put my number in your holo already, along with the rest of the team''s. And Karu''s public hail. Okay?"


    I pulled up the comms on the holo and froze. Under ''Cosette <3'' and between ''Karu'' and ''Tem'' was ''Mage''.


    She glanced over my shoulder nervously after seeing my face. "I...I''m sorry," she said, "I can get rid of that, here," she started to manhandle my arm, but I pulled away.


    "It''s fine, look, maybe it''s unhealthy for me to hold onto her uniform, but I can at least keep this, right?"


    "I...I guess so," she said, looking crushed. "I am sorry."


    "It''s fine," I said, closing the holo down. "Look, I need to go, but thank you for everything."


    "Where are you going?" she asked, half concerned.


    "I think...uh...I''m meeting Karu''s parents for some reason."


    "Oh." Cosette said. "Oh. I had no idea you two were that far along." Bemusement overtook concern in her voice.


    "That...far?" I asked, confused.


    "Meeting a girl''s parents? That''s usually kind of a big deal, isn''t it?"


    "Oh," I said, and then replayed the conversation with Karu in my head with the context that we were dating. As her behavior became a lot more reasonable-seeming, my anxiety began to skyrocket. "Oh what the...oh my God, I look like a zombie. How did I not realize what she meant!"


    "Umm, here, I have a comb. And uh, you need to shave. Do you have a breath mint?"


    Cosette helped me scramble for the last few minutes before Karu''s car picked me up and waved good-luck as I was driven towards downtown. The driver let me out at a hugely expensive-looking restaurant with only valet parking. I finally had some credits on me, but wasn''t sure if I was supposed to tip her.


    "Thank you, Eryn," Karu said to the driver, now in a slinky white dress which accentuated her curves as much as it showed off her back. It contrasted vividly with her tan skin and blonde hair, and I reminded myself that I was meeting the parents. I had to be a perfect gentleman, and gentlemen did not ogle.


    Eryn smiled back at Karu, and the two of them embraced briefly, before I heard the sound of someone clearing their throat.


    "Karen, please do not fraternize with the help," said the man, and the two broke off at once, Eryn snapping to attention while Karu slumped and turned away from him. "And stand up straight, child."


    Unmistakable by his matching blonde hair and good looks and imperious domination of the indomitable Karu was a face I''d seen smiling back at me from many a political ad.


    Karu''s father, Senator Idris Irenside. He greeted me with a warm smile and a strong handshake.

 124. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    Senator Irenside was known at the restaurant and was greeted by name by every one of the staff as we were led to his apparently own personal table.


    The staff were all wearing white jackets with a row of buttons down one side of the chest, all burgundy, with matching collars and sleeves. They reminded me of a less-practical version of my own uniform, but obviously white instead of black.


    "The usual," Irenside said to a bowing waiter, as he sat down, throwing himself comfortably into the chair. Karu sat daintily on his right, smoothing her dress as she sat and setting her purse on the floor behind her -- another thing I''d never seen on her. I privately wondered if she had any grenades in there.


    "You eat meat, I assume?" he asked, turning to me as I attempted to join them seating. I sat on Karu''s right, keeping her as a buffer between the two of us. The table sat six, but I guess nobody cared that we were only occupying half of it.


    "Um, yes, Senator Irenside, sir," I stammered.


    A strange expression crawled onto Karu''s face as he laughed. "Just call me Idris, son. Or just Senator if you must. But not ''sir'', I''m just a civilian."


    "Yes...Senator," I said, feeling it way too extremely weird to refer to my girlfriend''s dad by first name. He laughed again, and I saw another resemblance between Karu and her dad.


    "Good. Good. That you eat meat, I mean. I''ve never dined with an Exhuman, and I don''t know what they''re like. So tell me, son, what are Exhumans like?"


    He leaned forward, propping his elbows at the table while smiling at me warmly. I wasn''t sure what I was expecting by means of interrogation, but it wasn''t this.


    "Um," I began lamely. "I suppose not that different from humans? We were all humans once¡­"


    "Father, if you want to know more about him just ask what you wish to know," Karu said, crossing her arms. "There''s no need for all these games."


    His smile paused on his face strangely for a moment as he looked at her, and then he turned back to me. "I suppose Karen is right. Tell me about yourself, son."


    "Um," damnit. "I don''t think there is really much to know. A year ago, I was a senior in high school heading to Cal, that''s UC Berkeley sir, erm, Senator. Um, on a football scholarship. And then I became an Exhuman, and that all went out the window, I guess."


    "And how did you come to become best friends with the director of the XPCA?" he said with a laugh.


    I was about to answer when something drove into the top of my foot and I jumped, banging against the bottom of the table and making the silverware and glasses jump. I checked down at my feet. Whatever it was, it had been sharp and forceful. I didn''t see anything down there but our feet. Karu was wearing white heels, I noticed though, yet another first for me.


    When I came back up, Karu was staring fixedly at the wall with the same weird expression and her father was looking at her with obvious irritation. What had I missed here?


    "Um," God damnit. "Where were we? I''m sorry. Director Blackett?"


    Rather obviously this time, Karu stomped on my foot.


    "Son, maybe I should have scheduled us for golfing instead. Awful hard to have a private conversation over all this racket," Idris said, staring at his daughter.


    "He is not a politician, Father. Do not presume to sink your hooks into him."


    "I was just asking the boy an innocent question," the Senator smiled warmly at both of us.


    "If you presume your tricks will work against me, you must think me a failure of a student," Karu said, arms still crossed. "I know very well what it is you are doing, and I do not approve."


    "It''s just an innocent question, Karu," I said.


    "Is it? Have you considered that it is only very recently that harboring an Exhuman has become anything less than a treasonous offense? Have you considered who might be implicated if your life story were exposed to the world for scrutiny?" She turned to her father. "Or who might benefit from the accrual of such knowledge?"


    "Such harsh words for your own father," Idris said, sounding hurt. "And blackmail accusations as well. You have grown cold from all your time up north."


    "This...this isn''t how I was expecting this to go¡­" I hissed at Karu.


    "I, too, had hoped he would prove reasonable."


    "Uh, yeah. Him."


    "Very well then, Karen, since I can''t steer a conversation without personal benefit, why don''t you tell me something about the boy?"


    "I will," she said, and I saw her green eyes burning with challenge as she stared at his, it was a look much more fitting on her than the dress and heels. "Ashton is a paragon of virtue and sacrifice. His strengths include his tactical genius, his quick wit, and his remarkable fortitude and endurance. His weaknesses include a love of self-sacrifice and his dependency upon his friends and allies, among whom, I rank myself. Any who consider to exploit or harm him had best be forewarned that the last time an entity did so, his friends and allies disassembled the entirety of the XPCA for him." She crossed her legs. "Certainly a harder target than, hypothetically, a senator''s political aspirations."


    Idris paused for a moment and then laughed. "You paint me a villain, Miss. I mean no harm to your little Exhuman friend."


    "No, but you do intend to use him."


    "Well, he''s the fastest up-and-comer in the entire country. From one of the most detested to one of the most powerful figures in the country. Who wouldn''t want to befriend such a celebrity?"


    "Somehow I doubt mere friendship is on your mind, Father."


    I didn''t know what was going on or what I was doing here. I had been concerned about questions about Karu and my relationship, or bigotry against Exhumanity. For the two of them to seemingly be locked in trench warfare...and all before appetizers...I wondered if this was every dinner between the two of them. It would certainly explain some of Karu''s apparent confusion between what constituted friends or enemies.


    "Back me up here, boy," said Idris, seeming pressed. "Please tell my rebellious daughter we''re just having a pleasant chat. She obviously won''t listen to me."


    "Karu," I said. She spun on me with a scowl that clearly told me exactly how much I should fuck off right now. All of it. All of the fucking off.


    "Then you would propose dinner in silence?" he said.


    "It would be preferable to hearing this moral prostitution."


    "Well, you heard the girl. My apologies if I''m not one for conversation this evening, Athan."


    What followed was the most awkward silence of my life. We sat in absolute silence for several minutes until a plate of something flakey and in a marbled pesto-like sauce, topped with a slice of a tiny tomato was placed between us.


    I watched with horrified fascination as nobody did anything. Just stared at the food in continued silence. Did this competition extend to opening one''s mouth at all? What was happening? After a minute, a waiter came up and asked if everything was alright with the dish, and got no response from either Irenside. As he stood there, nervously unsure of whether he was intruding or if something was horribly horribly wrong, I spoke up.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "I think everything''s fine. Sorry, they''re just...not talking."


    Karu snorted derisively. Idris shrugged apologetically.


    The waiter slowly peeled away. "Um, very good. Your plates will be out shortly...please enjoy¡­"


    "I''m...just going to eat one of these...then¡­" I said, trying to get them to do...anything. I reached over and Karu slapped the back of my hand.


    "Karu, what the hell?" I said.


    She gave him a stare like ''don''t you dare'', and then turned to me. "Say grace," she said.


    Oh. She hadn''t been a stickler on this any other time we''d eaten together, even though she was one of the most weirdly devout people I''d ever met. Was she trying to pretend for him? Or was he religious as well, and despite the twistedness of the evening, she was still trying to get him to like me?


    I wasn''t very religious but I''d been raised Christian, I guess. "Um," I hated that fucking word. "Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we receive in grace of thy bounty, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."


    Idris gave me a small wink and a smile as he stole an appetizer for himself, and Karu took one as well. He ate using his hands, but Karu delicately cut off tiny pieces using one of the several forks and knives before us. I followed his example.


    I felt something rubbing my leg and looked down. I needed to stop looking, there wasn''t anything down there but Karu. Instead of stomping me, she was gently rubbing my calf with the side of her heels. I''d done well? Was that the message here? Stomp me and stroke me until I was well-behaved?


    I still didn''t know what I had done wrong or even right, so that wasn''t going to work, sorry Karu. I was not an easy dog.


    We lapsed into another awkward silence of quiet munching sounds and Karu''s fork and knife gently clattering.


    I didn''t know what to say or do. I had hoped that spending time with Karu would be nice, but I really just wanted to be in my bunk, feeling like crap about Mage. I stood up from the table.


    "Excuse me," I said. Karu looked at me sideways. "Restroom," I lied.


    "I''ll come with you," she said, folding her napkin from her lap and placing it next to her clean forks.


    "Uh," I said, before she wrapped herself around my arm, breasts even more prominent than usual pressing against me, and there went any ability I had to make an argument against her.


    "Can you believe that man," she hissed when we were out of earshot. "The nerve of him to attempt to exploit you."


    "I can''t believe you," I said. "He''s just trying to talk to me, and you''re coming down on him like a crazy bitch."


    "Cra--" she lowered her voice again. "Crazy bitch? Is that truly how you see me, looking out for your best interests?"


    "He hasn''t done anything but try to make small talk. You keep jumping to all these insane conclusions."


    "Because I know how he operates and what he is like. He is manipulative, Ashton, beyond your reckoning."


    "He doesn''t seem like that, he seems nice."


    "Oh, because he would certainly be very good at manipulating people if they always realized he was doing so?"


    "Look, I can be careful about talking about Blackett like you said. That was a good point, but us all sitting in silence is insane."


    She chewed her thumb. "Yes, I am afraid I agree. This is not going entirely how I had envisioned it."


    "How did you envision it?"


    "He would meet you, be instantly charmed, give his tacit approval for our eventual marriage, embrace you as a son, and reinstate me as heir of the Irenside household while also letting go of his troublesome need for political legacy."


    "I don''t think that was going to happen."


    She sighed. "Nor I. But one can hope."


    "Eventual marriage, eh?" I asked with a sly smile, totally pushing it.


    "Very eventual. As in, perhaps if all other men on Earth died off."


    "And yet you choose to date me?" I said, pushing it even further.


    "Hmm, perhaps I should address that," she gave me a coy smile. "Did you intend to use the restroom or are we to loiter outside of it for the remainder of the evening?"


    "Not going to lie, this has been the best part of the evening by far," I said, shoving my hands in my pockets with a sigh.


    She tousled my hair which I''d spent a few minutes tackling with a comb with Cosette before coming here, and I worried she was messing it all up, but then she pulled me in and gave me a quick kiss. "It hasn''t been a very good day," she said. "But I hope I can improve it by spending the night together, at least."


    I giggled and felt a stupid expression on my face, and saw something equally impish and red on hers. "Now at least pretend to use the restroom, and wash your hands. He will notice if you do not, believe you me."


    I did as she asked, adjusted my hair, and washed my hands very thoroughly in the ornate bathroom, fixated on ignoring the man who held the door for me while balancing a tray of rolled cloth towels. Karu was still outside when I emerged.


    "Small talk only. I will notify you when you are treading dangerous waters, as it were."


    "Can you notify me less violently?"


    "I''m afraid I left my signal flares in my other purse," she said looking at me sideways with a smile.


    "Just poke me or something? Discreetly?"


    "That seems a splendid idea. I will simply covertly reach under the table towards your lap repeatedly. I am certain that will arise no suspicion."


    "There you are. Are you two finished?"


    We looked up. Idris was standing there, all hints of a smile gone from his face. He glowered at the two of us like we were locusts in his garden.


    "Karen, return and sit down immediately," he said in a voice completely different from earlier. She lowered her head and walked over quietly. "And stand up straight, child." She snapped upright and scurried back to the table where she sat modestly.


    He turned to me and I expected an equal measure of verbal lashing, but to my surprise he smiled and resumed speaking to me like I was an old friend. "You didn''t fall in, I hope?" he laughed. "Did you just get to talking with the towel boy?"


    "No sir, just your daughter. I think she just wanted a conversation out of earshot."


    He looked me up and down like he was appraising me. "I like a man who doesn''t mind being honest. Makes me feel like I know who I''m dealing with."


    "Thank you sir, Senator. I uh, don''t really know how to do it any other way," I laughed a little, and he laughed a lot.


    "My daughter is a fantastic girl, sharp and strong," he said. Across the room, I could see her alone at the table, now burying her face in her hands. No way she could hear us from here, though. "But she''s also misguided in some ways. This one-woman crusade of hers, every time I hear about it, all I can think is that she''s going to run into an Exhuman--not you of course--and that will be the end of her. Or how she thinks she needs to protect you from me, her own father."


    "Yeah," I said and scratched my head, and then wondered what that did to my hair. "She just means well for everyone though."


    "Oh of course, but there are bad people out there who take well-meaning girls like her and twist them to their own ends. That''s why I wanted to meet you, son, to make sure you weren''t taking advantage of my daughter."


    "Oh! I would never!"


    "I see that now. In fact, I feel a little safer knowing that she''s with you. Maybe with you at her side, she''ll live a little longer out there." He gave a defeated sigh. "I always wanted her to follow in my footsteps, foolish old man I am, but at least then she''d be making the world better while I knew she was safe. There are battles on the senate floor, but none which lead to dead little girls."


    He put his hands on my shoulders, only adding to my unease as the topic shifted out of my control. "How did you find the funeral, boy?"


    "Uh." He was right there, his face inescapable, green eyes, paler than Karu''s but still with a hint of that brilliance within them. "It was...horrible, honestly."


    He let me go. "Damn right it was. Thirteen year old girl dying to serve her country. Karu''s been in the armed forces since she graduated high school, a couple years before that damn Exhuman event in San Diego, and then a stint with the airborne, and now this hunting business. And she''s still just a child. Can you imagine how many lives she''s saved, how many lives your friend Mage didn''t get the chance to?"


    "I''m sorry, Senator."


    "For what?"


    "It was my decisions which killed that girl," I said darkly.


    He put his hand on my shoulder again, but it was a reassuring touch instead of a heavy one. "The only reason that girl is dead is because some insane Exhuman decided to make her that way, son, and don''t you think otherwise."


    "I could have done so many--"


    "And he could have been a decent upstanding Exhuman like you and her, and instead chose not to be. You mustn''t blame yourself for that."


    I chewed on his words for a moment. I appreciated what he was saying, but¡­


    "Sir, not to pull rank, but I disagree. You weren''t there. You don''t know the situation like I did, and you can''t tell me from reading about it on the news what I did right or wrong. We all made decisions, him, Mage, myself, and all the others, and it was only because of all of them that she died."


    He smiled and gripped my shoulder tightly before releasing me. "You''re a man who refuses to shirk responsibility. I like that too. It looks like my daughter is about to fall asleep in the main course, shall we rejoin her?"


    "Yes, let''s do that," I said, feeling very dark and alone. We advanced on the table and sat down on either side of her. I gave her a smile, but she just looked completely miserable, slouching forward on the table, even after we sat down.


    "Karen," her father barked, and she jumped. "Sit up, girl."


    At least this time it was vaguely justified, she was almost lying in her food.

 125. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    Dinner was...I couldn''t even tell what it was. I recognized some of it as being steak, very rarely cooked, but it was piled narrow and tall on my plate, sitting in a puddle of brown sauce and leaned up against all kinds of other green, orange, and brown things which I assumed to be edible because most of them carried grill or sear marks of some kind.


    I thought I recognized one bunch as asparagus heads, but then again, thought I recognized another as a bit of pine tree, so I really had no idea. I watched Karu for clues, but she just seemed defeated and alternated between looking down sullenly at her plate, and snapping her head up before her father yelled at her about posture again.


    Which was weird, because I''d never noticed Karu to have bad posture. Lia was always lounging around in the strangest of ways, upside down on the couch, sprawled on the ground. AEGIS just looked constantly like she was leaning into whatever she was focused on, and Saga, well, she laid there.


    But Karu always seemed to me to be perfectly normal. Upright, forthright, and downright regal in her bearing. But something about her father seemed almost oppressive to her, and I guess it manifested like this.


    I tried not to stare at her and instead watched a waiter walking a couple tables over with an armful of silverware. Suddenly, he tripped over nothing at all and the silver went bouncing and flying out of his arms. One rolled backwards from him, bouncing, and impossibly came to an abrupt stop on-end. A moment later, it fell over.


    I tried not to stare at him either, as some asshole applauded while he scrambled to pick up the pieces and what was left of his dignity. Thankfully the other staff pitched in, and everything was back to usual in a moment.


    Senator Idris was giving an amusing anecdote as he cut small pieces off of his plate, of a man who had woken up on the wrong yacht, miles away from shore. It was a good story, with a funny punchline, but I didn''t exactly relate.


    With Karu down, and the conversation I''d had with Idris, all I could think about was Mage.


    "What kinds of things do you do for fun, boy?" Idris asked when we''d both finished laughing at his story.


    "Oh. I don''t really know anymore." Fun seemed like such an alien concept when we buried a friend today. "I used to play football and hang out with my friends and stuff, normal teenager things I suppose. But...I haven''t had that kind of luxury in a while."


    "Well, you have some now, hmm? Say, I bet you could teach me a thing or two if we went out hunting together. At the very least, we could shoot some skeet?"


    I felt something tread on my feet relatively gently, but damn, was she wearing knives on her heels?


    "I uh, I didn''t actually shoot anything. Never fired a gun in my life, sir, honestly."


    "Oh, I see, a bit of the Exhuman magic then? Well, as it turns out, I am a partial owner of the club, so I''m sure I could set aside some private space for that."


    "I don''t really enjoy using my powers, Senator. It''s not as fun as you might think."


    "Well, maybe just some golf then?"


    "I don''t know how to play."


    "It''s very simple. You swing at the ball, and then you follow it around all day. Very relaxing. It would probably help take your mind off of things a bit, and though I may not look it, I assure you I''m a fantastic listener. We might even teach you how to take a stroke or two off your game," he laughed.


    I didn''t laugh. I was going to, but someone basically jammed a harpoon into the top of my foot. I should have worn my combat boots instead of these shiny service ones. I didn''t know I''d be in a damn warzone.


    "Uh," I parsed the sentence and found the flaw. "We?"


    "Oh, just me and a couple of friends. They''re good people, they''d love to meet you. I didn''t know what I was expecting when I asked to meet you, but you''ve certainly impressed me. Such a sharp diligent boy at such a young age."


    I moved my foot and heard Karu''s heel clack into the ground where it had been. Yeah, I know. Flattery. I get it.


    "Sir, are you attempting to flatter me to get me to go hang out with you and your friends away from Karu?"


    He blinked at me a couple times. Karu suddenly had to cough into her napkin in a way that sounded a lot like a stifled laugh.


    He burst out laughing. "Sharp, as I said. I see now there''s no pulling the wool over your eyes. Perhaps we should stop here for today, it was insensitive of me to make you come out here after a funeral."


    "Yes, it was," said Karu, with some of her fire back. I wondered if she drained the vitality directly from my foot.


    He shot her a glare and she withered again before turning back to me. "Son, I have no intention of exploiting you or blackmailing you or whatever delusions my daughter put in your head. I think of you as one of the up-and-coming, it''s only natural for people to be interested in your rise, and darn if I am not one of them. I suppose you could call me your first fan."


    He sounded so earnest, but now that I was looking for it, I could almost smell the flattery.


    "Sir, with all respect, Karu was a fan long before you. As were all of my friends. If I''ve had any meteoric rise it is only because they have stood by me and supported me every step of it. Please do not dismiss them simply because they contributed to my successes instead of the other way around."


    He snorted. "Fair enough. Keep me in mind though, boy. Washington is a small place and it doesn''t hurt to have a friend who knows everyone. I understand if you''d rather sit in the trenches than bump elbows with a bunch of old dinosaurs like myself, but someday you might need something, and having those contacts is more valuable than not."


    He reached into his breast pocket and handed me his card. Karu intercepted it and tore it up.


    "I am certain if he needs your information, I would be able to give it to him," she said.


    "I am certain if he needs my information, he''s a grown adult man who can handle having it." He passed me another card, circumventing Karu this time, who just watched in disgust. "In case she decides to destroy that one, I''ll also leave my number with your manager. My personal number. You''re worth it, son."


    "Uh, thanks." I said.


    The rest of the meal was much less tense as we bounced around conversations with seemingly no agenda anymore. I hoped he''d said his piece and we could move on with the delicious food, now that I actually tried it. If Saga were close to this building and all of its inhabitants, I think she''d be able to die happy. Well, as much as she died anyway.


    I''d hoped I could hear some embarrassing personal stories about Karu''s childhood, but it sounded like she was much more open about those things than he was anyway. He did little but compliment her generically and tell well-rehearsed stories.


    Finally I survived dessert and after one final bit of pressing me to accompany him on his yacht (cut short by Karu), we stood to depart.


    "Ashton, hopefully you don''t mind if I have a few moments to speak with my dear girl. We haven''t had an opportunity in months."


    "I cannot possibly imagine why," she said with a glare that could punch through a tank.


    "I understand," I said. "I''ll head back to the barracks then. See you later, Karu?"


    "No," said Karu, her glare accompanied by a smirk now. "I believe I offered earlier that we were headed to my hotel tonight?"


    I saw a visible shiver go through her father. It was, perhaps the first spontaneous, unplanned thing he''d done this evening.


    I forced myself to laugh. "Oh, Karu. You kidder. Welp, see you tomorrow!"


    "Wait outside if you please, Ashton, this will not take long!" she called at my retreating back.


    As I sat outside, my butt slowly losing feeling on the white marble curb, and soft flakes of white only beginning to fall around me, I remembered Karu didn''t speak spontaneously either. She was a shrewd thinker and was groomed to be a politician, by Idris himself, no less. As much as she''d been claiming to look out for my interests and use that as an excuse to shut her old man down, in truth, she probably was using me against him as much as he was trying to use me against the rest of the world, or whatever nefarious schemes he had.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    It was a pretty crappy and sobering thought, feeling like the last guy at the party to realize he was the butt of the jokes.


    The light snowfall turned into a mild flurry and then into a silent constant heavy downfall. Curtains of snow were falling so thick, but so gently I could barely see across the street anymore, yet could hear nothing. The wind didn''t stir, and it seemed like I was the only one in the world. I checked my holo. It had been an hour.


    Finally, I heard crunching nearby and into the little circle of white around me entered Karu, holding her heels, her dress tied up at the waist, and her long bare legs disappearing into the ankle-high snow.


    "My apologies to keep you waiting," she said. Her voice sounded conversational and light, but her face looked anything but. "Shall we walk?"


    "It''s dumping snow, and you''ll freeze. Let''s just call a cab. Doesn''t your dad have a driver?"


    "A little cold is the least of what I deserve for tonight," she said. "I must apologize again, and I assure you I will do so many more times before the night runs out." She sighed heavily.


    "I could carry you," I said.


    "You are strong but not that strong," she said, smiling at me. "Come. Let us walk. Are you cold?"


    I shook my head, happy to just be off of the one dry spot on the entire curb and moving. I couldn''t believe she was just walking barefoot through the snow. Her feet and legs were all red and splotchy.


    And cold. Bitterly cold. Cold that seeped into the flesh and bone, that froze everything in its path. I felt my hand trembling and realized I couldn''t move it. Realized I wasn''t brushing frost off of my hand, that it was chunks of my own flesh I was tearing away.


    "--ton? Hello?"


    Karu''s voice came to me from very far away and I looked up and realized she was standing right next to me. My heart was pounding in my chest so hard I thought it might burst, and my breathing was ragged and cold.


    "Ashton, focus. Can you hear me? What is the matter?"


    "Nothing," I said, shaking my head and putting my hand down. I clenched it into a fist. It shook a little, but that was just the loss of motor control from the nerves. They had told me that. "Nothing."


    "Okay." This time she didn''t start without me. We walked side-by-side in the middle of the street, the world seeming dead around us.


    "Ashton, I must speak with you."


    "About what your father said?"


    "Yes." She swallowed. "Yes."


    "Is he taking you back?"


    "Despite the difficulties of the evening...yes. But--"


    "Well, that''s great, then! He seemed a little difficult, but not a bad guy."


    Karu made a noncommittal noise. I was confused, I thought she''d be happier.


    "...it''s great?" I repeated.


    "It...it is. It makes sense."


    "Doesn''t it make you happy?"


    "Ashton," she stopped and turned to me, and I mirrored her. "How can you be so impossibly thick?"


    "Uh. I don''t know? Practice?"


    She wasn''t joking. She looked at me even more seriously than when she''d yelled at me over Mage''s body earlier today.


    "What did I miss, I am sorry," I said.


    "I love you," she said.


    "Oh." I felt myself go hot.


    She spoke before I could say more, "And I think you are a fantastic paragon of a man, as I have professed many times before. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I have utterly fallen for you, despite your many failings."


    "You''re--"


    She put a finger on my lips.


    "And...I wanted you to know that. None of this stems from you or any failing of yours, though I suspect you will blame yourself regardless."


    What?


    "I have only loved once before, Ashton, I do not know if you remember. And when he...passed, it was the most gruesome anguish of my life. And that was merely a crush...though I did not realize it until recently what true reciprocal love can be. Ashton, you complete me in ways I did not know possible, but...for that reason...you frighten me."


    Wait, what?


    "I...when I am around you, I am the best myself I could possibly be, but I am also the worst. Often, when we part, I find myself reliving our conversations, and I am embarrassed by the things I said or did. You make me feel and say stupid things, and most of the time that is fine, even liberating. But sometimes, we cannot afford stupidity, not in your and my line of work."


    She continued. "But worse, when I think of you in danger, my heart stops, my mind stops, and I can do nothing but fly to your side. I am aware you blame yourself for Mage''s death, but I blame myself as well. I endangered the entire operation, and you would not raise a single word against me, and then, I acted with rash belligerence instead of calculating our best stratagem, and we lost a good woman as a result."


    "Karu, you--" she shoved the finger further into my face. She was freezing cold.


    "I love you, and know you to love me. I had silly romantic notions of the two of us fighting and dying together as one, but the fact is, I do not love what we are together. If I continue to act with immaturity and selfishness, I will get one of the both of us killed, and if it is you...I...I¡­"


    She blinked rapidly and tilted her head backwards, snow falling on her face. It did nothing, and tears began to stream from the corners of her eyes.


    "I am not strong enough, Athan. I can not...I can not lose you. Not like that." She shook her head and made a pitiful noise as tears and snow flew off of her.


    "Karu, I don''t understand," I said.


    "My father...he told me he would allow me to rejoin the family, but only if I parted with you. I had intended to laugh in his face, but...I have doubts, Athan. I am scared, scared of us, and for us. Do you think me mistaken? Can you tell me...tell me that you will protect me, no matter what? That we will fight and die together and not apart?"


    I looked at her, feeling my eyes drink in every detail of her being. Her brilliant green eyes, eyelashes flecked with snow. Her wild hair, at ends with everything else about her. The elegant white dress, tied in an inelegant knot at her hip. Snow pooled on her feet and piled on her shoulders, her skin burned pink, but she didn''t even seem to notice.


    I loved this woman. I loved everything about her, from her belligerent violence to the way she awoke slowly in the mornings but always found a smile when she found me in her bed. I loved that she was two women, a smart talker and a ruthless fighter. I loved that she put the world into good and evil, but still saw the grey in everyone. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, if I could, and cherish every day of it.


    To keep her, all I had to do was to say yes. She teetered on the edge of emotional abyss, and now came asking for me to give her the push she needed. Either away, or into my arms.


    "No," I said. "I can''t protect you. I couldn''t protect Lia or Mage. I can''t protect anyone." Her face broke like a shattered mirror. "Trouble comes to me because I''m an Exhuman, and then I rely on the strength of everyone around me to save me. I try, every time, I try as hard as I can, and it''s never good enough. I''m...it''s like Tem said, I just make life harder for everyone around me. And you''re right, Karu...if you stay with me...you''ll probably wind up hurt or worse."


    I was laughing. I didn''t understand why.


    "And your family is important, you know? You only get one of those. Guys like me are a dime a dozen but you only get one dad."


    "That is the absolute last reason I am considering this at all," she said, shaking her head.


    "I want to tell you that I''ll be strong and protect you, that no matter what happens, nothing will come between us," I laughed. "But I can''t. Isn''t that funny? I have all this power, and it''s all good for nothing. Even the one I love more than anything, I can''t even hold onto her."


    "But...I am that...that one?"


    "I...think so. We haven''t been together that long. Like...a week now?"


    "Yes. I suppose...it would be rash to...to make such proclamations with such little data."


    "I guess." I stopped laughing and just felt emptiness inside me. Data, she called it.


    "And this is what I hate about you, Ashton. About us. Because even knowing that it is rash, knowing that it is illogical, I will say it anyway. You are my the one, I am certain. My heart tells me nothing else."


    "Even though...you''re breaking up with me."


    "Yes."


    "Did you know, when we first met, and you were trying to kill me, and then slowly became friends, I used to think you were just a crazy bitch?"


    "I am not surprised to learn this, no."


    "You really still are," I said, and laughed an empty, pathetic laugh as tears carved hot lines through the cold on my face. "Aren''t you worried this is a mistake?"


    "Of course I am. My brain screams at me, and it says, you fear losing him, so you throw him away? And when it has me nearly convinced, I remember Siad, holding his destroyed body, and how it would feel to hold yours, and know that I cannot. I have the strength to do this...but not that. Never that. I swore my life to God and to uphold good and right, but after that¡­" she paused and looked into the gently falling snow. "...after that...there would be nothing left of me but darkness."


    We stood there for minutes, lost in a circle of white with nobody else in the world but us two. I''d never felt so alone.


    "We should go," I said. "You will freeze out here."


    She didn''t argue. Like some kind of fey creature, she stepped through the snow in her elegant dress, flitting in and out of my vision through the curtains of snow. Her in white and me in black, together, but never further apart.


    In what seemed like no time at all, the doors to her hotel opened and golden light stabbed at us from the real world we''d stolen away from for seemingly so long. People muttered and walked by, elevators and mobiles beeped, the clerk spoke on the phone.


    "Would you prefer to come in and dry off?" she asked.


    "No. I don''t think...I''d be able to leave again," I said with a dry laugh.


    "Get home safely, Ashton. I mean that."


    "Yeah, I know," I said, privately wondering why anyone would care if I didn''t.


    She grabbed my face and drew me into a long passionate kiss, filled with her desperation and all of the unsatisfied yearnings we would carry forever.


    "I did not exaggerate," she said breathily when she finally let me go. "You are my everything. I hesitate to use this against you, but I will this once. If you do not arrive safely home tonight, then I will not outlive the day either."


    "Jesus Christ, Karu."


    "I know no other way to ensure you do nothing foolish. Live. Grow strong. Someday...perhaps...when we are stronger¡­"


    "I love you, Karu."


    "I love you too, Athan."


    I turned and went back out into the blackness. Alone.

 126. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    I stared at the door, defeated.


    All I felt was nothing. Numb, icy, empty nothing. All I wanted was to go in, fall into my bunk, and cease to be for a few hours. Maybe when I woke up, it would all be a dream.


    Instead, the barracks door was locked. Which was impossible, because there were no locks on these doors.


    It was just enough to make me give up on everything. The final nail in the coffin. Somehow, this locked door just seemed like the universe''s way of telling me that all my efforts in everything were just worth nothing. That I should just fuck off and give up. Take the middle finger which was my day, was my life, and stab me in the eye with it.


    Why bother. Why try. Why fall in that bunk when I could just collapse in the hallway. Whether I existed here or there, or at all, did it matter?


    I stumbled my way into the bathroom area. There were lockers here, benches, showers, toilets, all to service the troops in the next barracks. Our barracks, where though there were about twenty beds, there were only five...four...of us housed now. At least if I laid down here, I wasn''t as likely to get run over by a tank.


    I still couldn''t believe Karu made that threat. I knew she and the others thought I would surrender at my earliest convenience to whatever stiff breeze happened by, but even so.


    And the look in her eye that said she was serious, it sent shivers down my spine. She was a woman of extremes. I morbidly wondered how she would do it. A sick part of me wanted it to happen. To punish her for doing this to us, and to end my miserable existence.


    I realized there was another door in here to the barracks and there was a note on it. I tried it and it opened. I read the note and my heart went into my throat. I had to reread it several times, even though it was painfully brief.


    Ashton,


    I promised you tonight at least.


    Karu


    I walked into the dark bunk room and turned the light on. The door on my right had been chained shut, and there was another chain and lock draped over the edge of the bed right next to me. The message was obvious. I hoped Jack would take the hint and not just appear inside as I chained the other door shut like the first.


    Someone stirred in my bunk. My heart slammed in my chest as I slowly advanced on her. Shyly, Karu''s face emerged from the sheets, looking embarrassed and flustered.


    "Hi," I said and sat down opposite her.


    She looked shiftily around and smiled with the same embarrassed expression.


    "Is this...is this really what you want?" I asked. "Is this a good idea?"


    She said nothing but nodded, barely visible.


    "Are you sure? You''re not even...acting like yourself. I don''t know that I''ve ever seen you be shy about anything like this."


    She looked paralyzed for a second and then for a second longer. Like she was psyching herself up for this. Was she forcing herself to do this for me? If this was just a twisted farewell present, or doing it because she said she would, I wanted no part of this. But if she wanted it...if it was a present for her...I didn''t know if I could refuse her.


    And then she threw the sheets aside and I saw she was waiting naked in there for me. I wasn''t sure how she''d gotten here so fast and prepared all of this, but however she did, she didn''t look cold at all either.


    She was just as I remembered. Tanned and beautiful, gentle curves and a full, fit body. Her eyes glistened intensely at me, as she seemed to be waiting for my approval. I mean, she''d had that approval probably a dozen times by now, I wasn''t sure why she was hung up on it now.


    Tonight was just going to be different, I guess. Something of significance. There''s no way it couldn''t be, when I thought about it, but I was trying not to. She put the blanket back on while I slowly undressed, and again, I found it strange she wasn''t jumping up to expedite the process like she always had.


    "Um, how do you want to¡­" I asked. She moved the blankets aside and laid on the bed, slightly spread-eagle, with her eyes hidden behind her arm. "Uh. You don''t want to be on top?"


    She flushed and retreated behind her arm further.


    I felt like everything was wrong, but I had to do this. I wanted to give her this to hold onto, if she wanted it, if she''d come all the way out here in the cold and snow. Obviously, I wanted all of that as well, but...I guess I just felt like hers were the memories and the opinions that mattered. I had to do what would make her happiest, even if it was weird and wrong.


    I climbed up under her, but before I could do anything, she put down a blocking hand and held out a box.


    "What is...condoms?" I asked, reading the box. "Uh."


    My mind blanked a little bit. When I asked her this, after our first time, Karu had explained to me that owing to her harsh lifestyle, and the sheer number of times she''d only just limped back from a fight, she''d spent entire days of her life in a regenerator. Regenerators accelerated natural processes in the body, increasing tissue growth by a hundredfold. But they had a cost.


    It wasn''t aging. Special chemical cocktails in the vat kept us from waking up in a body a hundred years old. But for women, there were some cycles that couldn''t be stopped. At least, not with modern technology.


    So, not even thirty, Karu had already undergone menopause. I wasn''t entirely sure what that entirely meant, but she had laughed it off saying it meant she could sleep around with young Exhumans and didn''t have to carry tampons. I had missed most of the whats and hows, and just fixated on the sleeping around part, but was regretting that now that she was plying me with birth control.


    Had...she been lying to me every other time? That would be incredibly dangerous for...for everyone. Not to mention irresponsible...and reprehensible, morally. Karu would never.


    So why now? Just...another barrier between the two of us? I didn''t know. I felt like I didn''t know anything today. Mage, and Karu, and now Karu again. I just wanted to sleep and pretend today never happened.


    But I hadn''t satisfied her yet. I struggled getting the unfamiliar thing on, and she just watched, curious, but embarrassed.


    Finally, I was ready and lined myself up.


    "I...I love you, Karu. I want you to know that. That this...whatever this is...well...I just want to do what makes you happy."


    She nodded and hid half her face behind the box of condoms. I pushed forward and¡­


    ...and¡­


    Something wasn''t right. It was like I was skipping a rock off the surface of a lake. A very dry, very tight lake.


    "Are you okay?" I asked? She nodded from behind her box, which meant no. "Look, I think...we should stop, okay? I don''t want this, and you obviously aren''t into--"


    She leaned forward and kissed me, catching most of my top lip, but quickly correcting.


    She was desperate and passionate like before, almost...too much. She pulled at my hair, and her lips and teeth were all over me. Was this what she needed to get in the mood? If she didn''t want it, why was she trying so hard?


    Whatever her reasons, I had to try. I reached down and sunk my fingers into her breasts.


    And...sunk them right into her breasts. Right through them, like she wasn''t even there. Like a ghost of Karu, my fingers passed right through her.


    My hand was wrist-deep in her before I felt small, bony flesh underneath.


    I jumped and recoiled, and she backed into the corner, shaking her head and holding her breasts. I tried to process what had happened. What I''d just felt, how it was possible, what trick or power--If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I seethed with sudden understanding and slammed my fist through Karu''s face, and felt a crack as I connected with her cheekbone, snapping her head back into the wall.


    Tem''s head. Not Karu''s. The illusion disappeared. Tem was lying naked on my bed, holding her face and bleeding from the back of her head. I was about to hit her again and forced myself to stop. I felt tears on my hand and realized they were mine.


    "Tem, why," I cried. "Why would you do this to me? Why today?"


    She reached towards me and stopped, blades of lightning in the air between the two of us, forming a cage she couldn''t illusion her way out of.


    "I was there. Following you tonight," she whispered, her voice barely there. "I s-saw...heard everything."


    "Why did you follow me?"


    "I follow you often. Ever since you s-s-stood up for me, ever since you s-stood up for S-Steffie. I just...feel better watching you."


    "You stalk me?"


    "No! You''re just...the only person who''s ever...ever told me I''m worth anything. The only person who has believed in me...ever. Not even me. And I just...being around you makes me...makes me happy."


    "So you do stalk me."


    "I didn''t mean to. I''m s-s--"


    A lightning blade drew out of formation and levelled itself with her throat, poised inches in front of her face. It crackled and buzzed ominously in the air. "You are so past apologizing at this point, Tem. Explain yourself, and then get the fuck out of my life. But do not fucking dare to apologize to me."


    "I won''t apologize," she said. "I don''t regret what I did. I love you."


    I laid down in the next bed over and put my head in my arms. What did this fucking idiot child know about love. She''d only known me for a month, we''d only saved Steffie a week ago. If she was to be believed, that''s when she did it? A week ago. And only a couple of weeks after I''d hospitalized her for merely existing.


    "You don''t love me, Tem."


    "I do!"


    "No, you fucking don''t. You''re just confused, or have a crush or something stupid."


    "No, I love you. I know it. I s-saw you with Karu and...and I realized what was going on, I thought your heart was breaking s-s-so much, you were going to die."


    "Yeah, maybe so, Tem, and that''s what fucking love is. It''s not...this. This is just fucking sick and wrong." I shouted at her. "YOU ARE SICK AND WRONG."


    "No. I love you. I didn''t want you to be hurt. I came back and...I didn''t even know what I was going to do. I did this. I wanted to make you...make you feel better, if only for one night. I wanted you to be happy."


    "No, you''re a fucking stalker and you just wanted to have sex with me."


    "No! I did this for you! I didn''t even want to. It was all I knew!"


    "You didn''t even want to? You planned the fuck out of this. You got rid of Jack and Tower somehow, you found locks and chains, I don''t even know where. You fucking bought condoms. Don''t tell me that''s something you keep in your goddamn purse every day just in case."


    "I was ready to s-s-sacrifice everything for you. Even my body. I didn''t care. I couldn''t let you be...be miserable like that."


    "That''s the most fucked thing I''ve ever heard, Tem! Holy shit. I can''t...I just¡­" I stood up and paced. "I can''t believe anyone on this entire goddamn planet would think this is a good idea. What was your plan for tomorrow, Tem? Or the day after? Or how about if I ever talked to the real Karu?"


    "I don''t...don''t know. I just couldn''t s-s-stand s-s-seeing you in s-such pain."


    "Fucking stop saying S''s if you can''t fucking say them, goddamn it."


    She recoiled like I''d hit her. Like my death threat meant nothing, like her...I don''t even know what that was. Attempted rape? Like that was nothing. It was telling her that she stuttered that crossed the fucking line.


    She looked at me, her face stony. "I apologize, then."


    I wanted to pull out my hair and scream. Everything about her, I loathed. I couldn''t believe it was possible for the world to produce such a fucking shitstain as her. She was worse than that Dipshit, the child-killer. She was worse than Brick. Because somehow, this...this was the one thing in the whole goddamn universe she would put her foot down on. Apologizing to me, here and now, when I''d already threatened to kill her over it, over fucking stuttering.


    At least those others had some reason for being the worst possible scum of the Earth. She was just handcrafted by God to do everything in the world humanly possible to make me hate her, for no reason whatsoever.


    And she loved me.


    "I fucking hate you," I said, slowly.


    "I know."


    "No, I don''t think you do. I hate you. I hate you."


    "I know."


    "I loathe you. I wish you were never born. I wish your mother was never born."


    "I know."


    "I wish...I wish I''d never even tried to save your life. I wish the last thing you ever saw when you died was me, being happy you were dead. Smiling, because hey, we might be fucked, but it was all worth it because at least I got to see Tem die before I did. Get to see her standing in line for hell in front of me, and know that she made it there too, thank God."


    "I know!"


    "I don''t think there''s a single thing about you I don''t hate. I hate that you have the strongest powers of any of us and you can''t use them worth a shit."


    "I know!"


    "I hate that you apologize for every fucking damn thing. Your apologies mean fucking nothing, Tem. They are as worthless as you are. Nobody knows or cares if you apologize for anything."


    "I KNOW."


    "And your body image problems. And a stutter. There are people...friends of ours, who fought and died out there. There are billions of people whose lives and safety depends on us propping up this shitstorm we call the XPCA, and you''re sad because you''re s-s-s-so fat?"


    "I FUCKING KNOW, ATHAN. S-SHUT THE FUCK UP."


    "Or what? You''ll rape me? I fucking hate you so goddamn much."


    She screamed, and as she did, everything I saw became hazy. Everything as far as I could see looked like it was churning on itself. I thought it was an illusion, but I realized...this was a laser. Bigger than the entire damn tower, ready to disintegrate a new asshole into the side of the world.


    Fine by me. She''d die, I''d die, the XPCA would die, the world would die. Kind of a crap world anyway. Fitting way for it all to go out.


    And then I thought of something that gave me pause. Two glistening emeralds in the dark.


    "Tem, do not," I said.


    I put my swords away, and sat down, looking intently at her. The churning air around us slowed and paused, at the point of breaking, like heaven itself was ready to pour out of nothingness all around us. It looked like the silver lining of a dark cloud, but everywhere. And moments away from lethal.


    "I know. I know you hate me. I know," she said. "And everything you...you mentioned, it''s all true. I know. I''m pathetic, I''m deplorable, I''m weak. I''ll never be a tenth or a thousandth of the girl Karu is."


    She stared at me, her silver hair the same color as the glow coming off of everything, billowing softly in the sheer amount of light filling the room. I noticed her eyes were such a light blue, they almost looked silver as well. I don''t think I''d ever really looked her in the eyes, and then I realized, it was because her eyes were always on the floor, that she''d never looked me in the eyes.


    "I know I can''t be, but I wanted to pretend that you could love me, if...if only for one night. But you''re right."


    The glow began to dissipate. Somewhere in the base, uselessly, alarms were going off. Even at this time of night, the entire base was always on high alert for Exhuman activity, and Tem''s was hardly difficult to notice.


    "It was...foolish, to think you could. Because I hate me too, for all the reasons you...mentioned. If I were you, I''d kill me right here on the...right here. And I''d deserve it."


    "You fucking would."


    "I would. I don''t have to imagine what you must be feeling because that''s how I feel about myself every day, Chariot. I just thought maybe for one night, I could know what it was like...to feel like everyone else."


    She stood up, now that my swords weren''t in her way, and headed towards the door.


    "Another thing which...I know you will hate me for. I must apologize one more time."


    She smiled at me. Naked and serene, like somehow, in my words or hers, she''d found true happiness. I didn''t understand.


    "S-s-sorry, Chariot. I really did love you."


    I saw the hazy cloud forming above her too late. She looked up towards it as I stumbled from the bed, reaching towards her.


    Everything seemed like it was in slow motion. My feet moved so slowly under me as she shone like an angel, brilliance gathering all around her, the only imperfection on her, the swelling under her eye where I''d punched her. Little strands of light started to form and crystallize in the air, scattering impossible rainbows dancing through the barracks.


    It was beautiful. She was beautiful. Finally at peace with who and what she was in the only way she knew how. Her skin shone and her eyes glittered, and another of my steps landed, impossibly slow and heavy.


    She was only feet away from me, just on the other side of the room. Just out of reach. Always out of reach.


    I saw the light galvanize with a flash as it achieved coherency. The flash came only a fraction of a second before the beam. I was still so far away. Not you too, Tem. First Mage, then Karu, and then Tem, all in one day. I couldn''t lose her too. I hated you, but I loved you too. I wanted you to die, but I would sacrifice anything to save you.


    I didn''t have anything left to sacrifice but myself. And so, I did.


    The situation called for the impossible, and having no choice, that''s all I did.


    When I came to, I was still lying on top of her. She seemed peacefully asleep, using me as a blanket and nothing more.


    I''d...done it. Somehow. I don''t know that I could have ever done it again in a million years. I couldn''t move. I couldn''t think. The only thing that mattered was that the girl under me was still there, and still breathing.

 127. 2218, 33 years ago. Former United States. Journal of a survivor.

    Entry 121 -- date unknown


    There are only three of us left now from the colony. We have no food, we have no water, and unless the Sinos were nice enough to leave a little oasis untouched in the middle of this sea of glass and ash, this looks like the end for us too.


    Lettie refuses to let us give up, though. Even though everywhere we''ve been is nothing but ruins, she insists we push east until we reach the ocean. I don''t think we''ll make it there before we dry up and die, but I have no better plans for the rest of my life. I guess if we''re closer than I thought, we''ll have a nice view before we bite it.


    Entry 123 -- date still unknown


    Lettie''s insistence paid off a little, I guess. We found someone else who went this way and died before us, but it looks like they''d robbed a whole store before they croaked. At least we''ve got water and a couple days of food now, but unless the entire road before us is lined with loaded corpses we can leapfrog off of, we''re just going to die a little further east and a little more tired.


    It''s been getting colder and colder even though we''re moving into summer, and I don''t know why. You''d think that all those nukes would warm up the planet a little bit, but instead, it''s just getting killer cold at night. We stripped the corpse of the sorry bastard we found naked to have a little more between the three of us to wear, but it barely helps.


    Entry 124 -- I''m never going to know the date, so why do I keep writing this?


    Both Lettie and Celia shot down my idea of sleeping together for warmth. They didn''t buy the line of having to repopulate the planet as well. I guess even being the last man on earth isn''t enough for them.


    Entry 128 -- ???


    We should be coming up on Athens, Georgia soon, if we are where we think we are, which is unlikely, considering there''s no more landmarks on the whole damn continent anymore. Lettie''s excited that there might be survivors out here. I don''t know how she still does it. After everything we''ve seen so far, there''s zero chance of anyone being alive anywhere there used to be a city, but she still gets excited whenever we draw near.


    I tried to tell her not to get her hopes up, that the Sinos knew what a city was and obviously how to destroy one, as we''d seen before, but she didn''t listen. She said she had a good feeling about this one.


    Entry 129 -- a Monday, probably


    I didn''t like telling Lettie that I told her so, but somebody had to do it. There''s just nobody left in the world, and if there are, they''re like us, wandering blind and hoping for good luck. Almost out of supplies again.


    Entry 130 -- same day


    We were setting down for camp tonight, I wrote my last entry and we laid out our sleeping bags to rest, when Celia saw something shining in the distance. We were worried that whatever it is, it might be gone by morning so we''re heading out to travel through the night.


    I think it''s probably just some ruins that didn''t get all the way burned to the ground, but if it shined in the moonlight, maybe it''s just water? Either way, it''s worth investigating, and if it''s a landmark, maybe others have found it as well.


    Entry 131 -- what


    It''s like a huge, shining city, underground, made of metal and almost untouched by the war. I don''t know if it got built in the last fifteen years, or if it''s just made of stuff the Sinos can''t touch, or if it flew here, but it seems like an impossible dream. We went inside a little bit, but decided to investigate it more fully in the morning.


    Hopefully, whoever''s city this is, they''re friendly.


    Entry 132


    Okay, it wasn''t a city, it looked bigger in the dark. We''re actually lucky we found it, the opening was just a big pit in the ground leading to a bunch of shiny metal rooms.


    It looks like it was deep underground and only got opened up after the war. The rooms on top are beginning to fall apart, but it seems like it goes down forever, and past the top part, it all still looks pristine. It''s all metal, and it''s like a UFO, just hallways and empty rooms inside, with all sorts of machines and science stuff I don''t even know how it would begin to work.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    It''s all still working, though. There''s electricity in here, which is just insane, I thought I''d never see anything electrical ever again. With any luck, there''s either people in here who can help us, or enough supplies to make a life in here away from the cold and the rads. Maybe even just an electric razor. I haven''t shaved in months.


    Entry 135 -- Maybe May now?


    We''ve spent days creeping around this place and just when I think we''ve reached the end, there''s more. We DID find a cafeteria, and the food they had was almost all rotten and gone, fresh meats and veggies and things from before the war, but there were some cans of stuff lying around, and we took ''em all. Tap water works too, tastes funny, but what doesn''t nowadays? Probably loaded with rads.


    Whoever built this place really loved science. I got Celia to explain some of it to me but she said she only recognizes the basics. I kept asking and she says whatever they were doing here was so specialized that just being a PhD doesn''t mean she automatically knows every scientific instrument ever made by man.


    I think I pissed her off. Whoops.


    Entry 136 -- July 14th, 2218


    Found a terminal down here which was locked, but it showed the date at least. Can''t believe it''s July. How''d I lose track of two whole months? So damn cold for July.


    Celia tried the terminal until we got locked out. It told us security would be dispatched, which just made me laugh. Like a bunch of guys were going to show up to arrest us? I''d welcome a cozy prison cell now if it meant I got three squares a day. Still, she was afraid and made us leave in case there was a trap or something...paranoid, but I didn''t care to sit around staring at a holo anyway.


    Lettie thinks if anyone''s in here, they''d be at the very bottom of the facility, farthest from the cold and rads. We keep heading down, day by day.


    Apologized to Celia last night for being a jerk about all the science stuff. She seemed to appreciate that. Still didn''t want to sleep with me though. How picky can these women be?


    Entry 137 -- July 15th, 2218, I guess. Not sure what good knowing the date does, honestly.


    Celia thinks she heard something down here. Lettie thinks it''s friendly, and I hope she''s right. We must be running out of downstairs to explore by now. Things are getting more alien and sciencey and less like residences and basic rooms with every floor we go down. It feels like whatever they did here, down here is where all the expensive machinery must have been, with all the experimental stuff. I''m starting to think Lettie is wrong, if someone survived here, they wouldn''t be down this far.


    At least we see the occasional bathroom or elevator shaft (all offline of course, because screw us) to remind us it''s still humanity at work down here, once upon a time.


    Entry 138


    shit shit shit shit shit


    Apparently security was after us this whole time. Automated defense drones chased us down today and told us to surrender. We did of course, because they had guns, but they just held us there until someone came to arrest us, which would be never.


    Lettie made a run for it, but got shot full of bullets. I don''t think anyone could live through that. Those fucking robots, they don''t even realize they''re killing one of the last people on the planet!


    Celia grabbed me and dragged me away while they were chasing Lettie, and we somehow escaped. We made it down another floor, but if the fire exit map is right, this is the bottom floor. End of the line, and no way back up with those insane robots running around. We blocked them out, but we''re also trapped down here, and don''t have much more food.


    If I''m going to die, I want to go down killing one of those robots. Lettie was the best of us.


    Entry 139


    Writing this in the morning. Celia came to me last night. I think she thinks we''re going to die, I don''t see any other explanation for why she''d change her mind on me now.


    It''s been an awkward morning around her.


    Entry 141 -- July 17, 2218


    The robots are breaking in. I tried to open the elevator to see if we could climb up that way, but they were already there, floating and waiting. I can''t slide the stupid door shut, and they''re getting it open by inches. It''s only a matter of time now. If this is the last thing ever written by a human on Earth, I just want whoever finds and reads this to know that we as a species really fucked up, and not to do what we did. War is never worth it.


    Celia''s going to try some science stuff with the things down here, but I think she''s just working out of desperation. Wants to die trying. We''ve got a few doors between us and the robots but they won''t hold.


    Entry 142 -- July 18, 2218


    I don''t think I''ve properly documented what a beautiful woman Celia is. Even here at the end, with the robots slamming their little hovering metal bodies into the doors we''ve barricaded, like some doom metronome, she''s typing away at terminals and checking sciencey things. I know I can''t help her, except maybe to buy her another few minutes at the end, but seeing her working so hard¡­


    I''ve lived my entire life without being a sappy asshole. I can manage a few more days, if we even have that long.


    Entry 143 -- July 19, 2218


    We''re out of food and doors. The robots are right outside, but Celia''s been working around the clock, saying she thinks she''s close. Close to what, I don''t understand. She explained it to me, but I''m just a jarhead. She kept talking about some guy, and how this was his work, and how brilliant he was, Dr. Ramanathan. Never heard of him, aside from my physical, the only other doctor I''ve heard of was Seuss.


    Wish I hadn''t dropped my gun and kit all those years ago. Would like to go out fighting.


    Entry 144 -- July 20, 2218


    She''s done it, but I still don''t know what. There''s a big machine in here that looks like the kind of thing that kills you or turns you into a monkey if you step into it, and she wants me to step into it with her.


    There''s cracks in the door where the robots slammed into it all night, and I can see them peeking through. Every time they hit it, it bulges like it''s about to splinter open.


    I don''t know what this machine does, but I guess I''ll leave avenging Lettie for another day. I can''t leave Celia alone. Hopefully this isn''t my final entry.

 128. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    I was in a hospital bed, Tem on the floor at my side, beaming at me as she always seemed to nowadays.


    I''d had to go through a regenerator again. Cosette couldn''t believe the scene she''d found, needing Jack and a pair of bolt-cutters to get in. Locked inside, she found Tem purring like a kitten under me, while I laid there slipping in and out of consciousness with most of the bones in my body broken, and absolutely all of the muscles and ligaments. Lots of internal bleeding, ruptured organs, on the brink of death. Both of us naked, of course.


    As Lia had speculated, it was possible to use my powers for more than a burst of speed. By controlling what muscle groups fired when, I could move my body as fast as thought. With the clarity and slowed perception of time that came with a life-and-death situation, apparently that was really, really fast.


    But there was a reason people didn''t move that fast. Our bodies weren''t built for that. And when you pushed it that far, things tore, things broke, things ruptured inside. Uncontrollable, I went forward faster than any human had the right to, or the endurance to. I probably made Karu''s jetpack look like it was standing still.


    I had run a dozen feet, had grabbed her, slammed into a wall, and that was it. That was my big play. The laser came down on top of us and my shield ate it, which was convenient because I hadn''t thought out that part at all. What Cosette saw was the rest.


    I think, given this incident, and Mage''s passing, Cosette was about ready to call it quits on the team. She''d been by to ask for my version of events, and I told her everything as I had remembered it. Illegal appropriation and use of military equipment, assaulting a fellow officer, gross sexual misconduct, and threatening a US military installation with Exhuman activity, and disruptive activity after lights out, for starters.


    She was just...horrified, really, by everything. The sex, the lies, the almost-apocalypse, the attempted suicide. I felt bad for her. One minute, her biggest problems in life were putting us back together after one of us died, and the next, she was dealing with calls from across the XPCA demanding explanations for subversive terrorist activity, trying to protect Tem, whom I''m not sure she thought deserved protecting, and who certainly didn''t seem to care if she herself lived or died.


    She told me she didn''t blame me, and kept getting sidetracked both by going off about how could Tem do that, and then followed immediately by I shouldn''t be telling you that.


    Honestly, I didn''t even care about Tem anymore. What hit me the hardest was that Karu hadn''t visited me in the hospital. Jack and Tower, and even Steffie came by, which was a surprise.


    But no Karu. Yesterday, I felt like nothing, like a huge icy numb void. Today, I wished I felt that. Everything reminded me of Karu. Whenever I saw the sky, or something green, or even just something moving out of the corner of my eye, it made my heart race because I thought...thought maybe it might be her.


    Even her fucking dad sent me a message over holo. Heard I''d saved a fellow soldier''s life and hurt myself, what a hero, would like to stop by and visit, yadda yadda. I don''t know how he heard about it, but gossip at the XPCA travelled just as fast as anywhere, it seemed.


    So I was anxious, a little jumpy, prepared for disappointment but unable to stop my heart from racing when I heard I had a visitor coming up. My heartbeat quadrupled when I heard it was a she.


    I had to reel in my disappointment when it was only AEGIS, but I was still surprised and happy to see her, I guess. I don''t know what she was doing in DC, or why she looked so different, but...well, I needed a friend, as much as I wanted to be alone.


    "I leave you alone for a month, and what is this, your fourth time in a regenerator?" she scolded, adjusting her glasses as soon as she walked in the door. "I thought I told you to take care of yourself."


    "Don''t blame me," I said. "It''s this idiot''s fault." I swung a fist, gently, over the edge of the bed and clocked Tem in the forehead.


    "Ow," she said.


    "What...or who...is this?" Asked AEGIS, warily.


    "This is Tem. She''s like, my new stray dog that won''t stop following me."


    "I love Chariot," Tem said, and I shoved her away. "And he hates me."


    "Well, I see this was a mistake," AEGIS said, turning red and pivoting for the door on her heel. "Good luck!"


    "AEGIS wait. She''s a freaky stalker, that''s all."


    "So get rid of her?"


    "I tried that but...she gets...weird, now."


    "Chariot protected my life, again. He is my everything," she said, creepily.


    "I didn''t save her life, I just ruined her death, is all," I explained.


    "Maybe...I''d like to hear all of this. This sounds ten types of confusing," AEGIS said, sitting on the foot of my bed.


    Glossing over the whole thing with Karu, I let her know in the vaguest possible way who and what Tem was. By the end, AEGIS was looking at her with disgust. Tem didn''t seem to care.


    "So...why is she allowed in the same room as you?" AEGIS asked, eyeing her warily.


    "Apparently the hospital doesn''t have much security that can''t be bypassed by being invisible or creating an illusion. There was a locked door to the wing, but¡­"


    "It was in the way of true love," Tem said happily.


    "Right. Creepy," said AEGIS flatly.


    "You didn''t come just to visit me, did you? Last I heard, you were in...Vegas was it?"


    "Oh no. We had this whole trip, and I thought, hey, if we were out here, why not swing by and see how Athan''s doing." She laughed and stroked one of her pigtails of braided-cable hair.


    "Oh. Well, not good."


    "I see that."


    "Oh, this is nothing, I''ll be out of here today. I just meant in general."


    "I thought...you were doing well. You got your dream accomplished, got the P-Force, which I still can''t believe you named it. We saw you say it on the news, and I was like, he did not."


    "Yeah. No, that''s...that''s going along. Even captured Saga, she''s in a house in the mountains alone, so that''s good."


    "So what''s wrong?"


    I looked at her, she pushed up her glasses with a small worried frown as she met my gaze. I realized why she looked different, she was almost exactly the girl in the holo now. The boob reduction was obvious, but the glasses, the slight thinning of her face and arms, the almost-imperceptible freckles, it was the same face I''d seen almost every night before I went to bed.


    "You really are AEGIS now, aren''t you?"


    "Huh?"


    "You''ve put a lot of work into looking like you did in the holo. You even have the same mannerisms, talk the same...it''s like I remember you when we first met, before you started becoming more of an AI, and that whole fiasco."


    "You...you really think so?" she said, and blushed enormously, using adjusting her glasses as an excuse to shield her face from me for a moment.


    "Yeah. It''s really cute."


    "O-oh! It''s nothing. Just something I, y''know, threw together in the workshop. This old thing, ha, ha."


    "Your dress even looks the same. Although uh, you should uh."


    She followed my gaze down to where her dress had ridden up a little when she sat, giving me a lot of the outside of her thigh to see. Apparently she had the dark circles on the sides of her hips as well, barely visible under the edge of her dress, and barely visible through the almost-sheer fabric.


    She clutched at it and pulled it down desperately. "You are such a perv!" she shouted at me.


    "Chariot is a perfect gentleman!" Tem argued, and I shoved her back onto the floor again.


    "Sorry. I just noticed and had to mention it. Ah, what were we talking about?"


    "Why your life sucks."


    "Yeah. Okay. Well." I took a deep breath. "I want to start by saying that yesterday, Karu dumped me."


    "You were going out!?" she almost yelled.


    "We were, but you''ll notice I started with the part where she dumped me, because I knew you''d react this way if I started at the start."


    "I can''t believe it." AEGIS simmered. "She wanted you dead, remember?"


    "People change, AEGIS. If I can continue--"


    "That rocket loving bitch. I''ll tell her where she can fly off to. Where is she, Athan? Where is she so I can kick her ass!"


    I wasn''t sure if she wanted to kick her ass for dating me or for dumping me but that was neither here nor there. "AEGIS, listen, please. She dumped me. We''re not a thing. As of yesterday."


    She took a deep breath, and then nodded.


    "We were only dating for a week or so. I had...a lot of fun with her, but apparently she was afraid that if we stayed together...she or I would do something stupid on a battlefield out of love, and one of us would die. That''s her worst fear in the world, and she couldn''t take it."The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "And to make it worse," I continued, "depending on who you ask, that already happened. One of our friends died three days ago in a fight with an Exhuman. Karu and I each blame ourselves, and she thinks if we stick together...that''s just how things will be for us. So she decided we can''t be."


    "It wasn''t either of you. It was me," Tem said.


    "Everyone wants credit," I said. "But Mage was in charge of the op, and I was the one giving the ground orders. It was me."


    To my surprise, AEGIS just wrapped me in a hug. She was amazingly warm, and surprisingly soft, considering she was a machine.


    "What''s this?" I asked.


    "You looked like you needed one. Always blaming yourself when things don''t go right. Don''t be too hard on my friend, he''s important to me." She let me go and sat back at the foot after a minute. "Also, you owed me that from when I was still in the box."


    "Oh, yeah. I had completely forgotten."


    "Look, Athan, I think Karu was a bitch, and you know that. I''m happy you broke up, and frankly shocked you got together. So I know this won''t mean much coming from me, but...don''t you think it''s pretty messed up she just decided that you being together was scary or whatever? Like, she wasn''t even going to fight to make it work?"


    I started to respond but stopped myself. I wanted to defend Karu, that was my first instinct. But AEGIS wasn''t wrong. I''d just be nitpicking at her argument until we were both mad at each other.


    "I don''t really want to talk about it," I said, shaking my head. "I don''t really want...to do anything."


    "I know. Heartbreak is a bitch, huh?"


    "You''ve had your heart broken?"


    She blinked at me a few times rapidly like she couldn''t process what I was saying and then scowled.


    "There was this guy I liked, and then he claimed he accidentally had sex with this flying bitch. It made me a little upset at the time, you could say."


    "Oh. Shit. I''m sorry, AEGIS."


    She looked like she was about ready to kick my ass but instead sighed and let it go.


    She caught me up on her life for a little bit and then a nurse came in and let me know I was all clear to go, just don''t operate any vehicles or heavy equipment for the next few hours when I might still be under the drugs.


    "Hey, AEGIS? I''m...gonna go back home and just crash, I think," I said. "I''m sorry you came out here just for this."


    "It''s fine," she said, looking anything but. "Can I walk you back?"


    "Sure, I guess."


    The streets had been plowed already, but there was a ton of snow everywhere. I was a little unstable on my legs still, and leaned on her as we walked. People must have thought she was crazy to be walking around barefoot in a sundress, but wherever she stepped, she radiated enough warmth to melt the snow around her feet.


    Tem trailed along behind us, presumably, invisible somewhere.


    "I like the new body," I said, as I made steady progress down the sidewalk, with her practically propping me up.


    "This would be a lot easier if you let me carry you."


    "You''re like, two-thirds my size."


    "So? I bet I''m way stronger than you. Actually it''s not even a bet, I know I am."


    "Yeah, but we''d look ridiculous."


    "Nah, everyone would just see you have a badass girlfriend."


    She blanched and stopped walking, covering her mouth.


    "Sorry. I didn''t mean that."


    "Nah, it''s fine. Girl-friend, right?"


    "Sure." She sighed. "Man, it sucks, though."


    "What does?"


    "I had this big plan. I was going to sweep you off your feet and make you fall in love with me, but if I do that now, I''m just the rebound girl. I might not even be that, I think your stalker is aiming for that position."


    "Guilty!" came Tem''s voice from behind us. AEGIS threw a snowball deftly which exploded against the invisible nothingness.


    "I''m sorry it didn''t work out."


    "Me too. You know, I''d never let you go if I got my mitts on you. Mwahaha." She used my leaning on her to pull me in close and wrap me in a one-armed hug, which made it almost impossible to walk. She gave me a cheeky grin, and I couldn''t help but laugh. "Karu''s a fuckin'' idiot. She doesn''t know what she gave up."


    "Yeah she does. You can joke about it, but I''m no good for anyone, AEGIS."


    "You''re good for me!" AEGIS smacked Tem with another snowball, and while it exploded, I could see her face clearly outlined by the powder.


    "Head shot," AEGIS commented. "And you, you shut the hell up. I think you are plenty fine, and it''s pretty cruel to tell someone who loves you that their taste is total crap."


    "Karu said something similar at the funeral, when I told her my life was valueless and I should have died instead of Mage."


    AEGIS looked at me like I had two heads. "Fucking hell, Athan. You actually said that?"


    "It''s true, though."


    "I don''t care if you think it''s true or not. You just suck at relationships."


    "What?"


    "No girl in the world wants to hear their man talking about how he should be dead, or how his life is meaningless. You rag on about stuff like that, of course she''s going to leave you. Just how crap at this can you be?"


    "I...I don''t know, I never worried about that. I just said what I was thinking."


    "And we all love you for being such a sweet naive boy, but seriously, you spout off all this stuff about protecting your friends, but never give a second thought to their feelings? I''m beginning to see why Karu dumped you."


    "Hey!"


    "Yeah, I see the hypocrisy in telling you ''just what I''m thinking'', but you also told me you''re not in the dating market right now, so I really don''t care too much if I offend you." She looked around. "Hey, come over here," she said, and began to drag me down a side street.


    "AEGIS, we''re going to the Raven''s Nest."


    "Yeah, yeah, we''ll get there. Let''s take this detour."


    ''This detour'' was a corner cafe. I didn''t mind sitting inside and getting some of the cold out of me, but I had no idea why I was here or why AEGIS was getting drinks and food for us.


    "Here," she said, putting a cookie in front of herself and a cup of something and pretzel in front of me. "This is a date."


    "What?"


    "Not a real date, dummy. We''re practicing. Because you''re never going to get a girl if all you talk about is how much you want to be dead."


    "AEGIS, I think my problem right now is too many girls, not too few. Have you forgotten my stalking problem?"


    "Can he pretend date me?" Tem asked, and I almost jumped. She was standing at the side of the high table right next to us.


    "No. Shove off. This is my pretend date," said AEGIS. She delicately folded her glasses and set them on the table, and then untied both of her pigtails, letting her cable-hair fall down past the seat of the high chairs. She cleared her throat experimentally, and when she spoke, it was in a very different voice, a little rougher and lower than her normal, almost like she was halfway approximating Karu.


    "Hey, thanks for coming out to meet me. I''m Mary. It''s so good to meet you."


    I guess we were jumping right into this. It was weird, she still looked only and exactly like AEGIS. The burning yellow eyes were kind of unmistakable.


    "Uh. Hi. Nice to meet you too."


    "I saw you on the holo," she said, leaning forward intently, very AEGIS-like. "They say you''re an Exhuman? That sounds so exciting."


    "It''s...really not. It''s kind of a drag, most of the time, really."


    "Bzzt. Zero points," said AEGIS in her regular voice. "Don''t lie, but don''t be negative about things for no reason either. Again." She cleared her throat. "An Exhuman? That sounds so exciting."


    "Uh, yeah, I guess it is. Probably um, doesn''t pay as well as...whatever it is Mary does for a living."


    "I''m a florist."


    "A florist? Hey I actually know a girl who''s a florist."


    "Bzzt. Zero points. Do you have any idea how obnoxious it is, just walking with you today, that you won''t stop talking about Karu all the damn time? When you''re with a girl, be with that girl, stop thinking about everyone else in your damn harem."


    "But Steffie isn''t even in my ''damn harem.'' She''s just a friend."


    "Doesn''t matter. Mary doesn''t know that, neither did I, this is a first date, keep it focused on her. And again. Ahem. I''m a florist."


    "Oh. I guess I''m glad I didn''t bring flowers?" I tried a joke, and AEGIS laughed, which was weird. I decided to give her a hard time. "I''ve never really talked with a florist. What''s that like?"


    "Oh, you know, you get plants, you take care of them, you sell them. Not really as exciting as your life, I''m sure."


    "I''d still like to hear about it. What kinds of plants are your favorite?"


    "Uh. The uh, roses. Did you know different color roses signify different things? Red means love, everyone knows that, but yellow roses mean friendship. Would be pretty awkward to show up with a bunch of those on a date, right?"


    "Really? I didn''t know that. What do orange roses represent?"


    "They um¡­" she blinked and her eyes moved very rapidly for a second. "...energy, passion, and excitement, of course."


    "You''re reading this off the ''net, aren''t you?"


    "You''re the one asking the stupid flower questions. This practice date is worthless if you don''t take it seriously."


    "This practice date is worthless. But I got you, at least."


    "That is worth exactly one point. Continuing now."


    I tried to think of something to say. So far everything had seemed just trivial and pointless. "Um, do you like sports at all?"


    "No, I had a friend who did though."


    "Yeah? What were they into?"


    "Bzzt. Zero points. I''m obviously just being polite and answering your question but not interested. Take the hint!"


    "Fine. Uh. Do you like sports at all?"


    "No, I had a friend who did though."


    "Oh, that''s cool. I played football all through high school...I was trying to go pro, but life kind of got in the way."


    "Oh, were you any good?"


    "I was pretty okay, I guess. I got a scholarship for it, which meant somebody liked me."


    "A scholarship, where? Did you go? What did you study?"


    "Cal...UC Berkeley, that is. I didn''t get a chance to go because of the Exhuman thing, unfortunately."


    "Okay, ten points awarded because you managed to talk about something you liked without boring her about it. But I''m stopping us here because I wanted you to notice, I asked you three questions at once."


    "Yeah, and I only answered two of them, is that it?"


    "No, it''s that she''s interested in this. You have information she wants, and that''s the sexiest thing a man can have. If a girl is asking you a lot of questions about something, she cares about that thing, so talk to her about it."


    "Hmm." I mused. "You kept asking me about why I felt like crap recently."


    "Hey now, the practicum is at the end of the class. Don''t you go jumping ahead in the curriculum. I worked very hard on this syllabus."


    "Can we call it for today? I am really not interested in dating right now, honestly."


    "Whatever you want." She seemed annoyed though.


    We sat and watched people going by in the snow while I drank the hot cocoa and ate the pretzel. To my surprise, she broke off a tiny piece of the cookie and ate it.


    "You eat?" I asked.


    "Only sorta. Turns out I have no taste adaptors...not surprising when I was never built to have a mouth...and the energy I''d get from food is...let''s say insignificant to this body''s requirements. Still, I added the ability to so I would look less like an outcast. At least now I can seem like an anorexic girl or something."


    "Hmm." I said.


    "Something the matter?"


    "Yeah. Anorexia...it''s not really a joke, is it?"


    "Sorry, I was just...sorry."


    As much as I hated Tem, as broken as I was feeling inside, I retained my awesome capacity for self-loathing. The shit I''d screamed at her, on top of the rejection which pushed her over the edge, all of it was so fucked. It was the least I could do to not joke about her actual issues right in front of her.


    Even if she was invisibly stalking me on a sorta-date-thing.


    I sighed. "Look, I''m going to go back, okay? Thanks for coming out."


    I slid out of my seat and headed for the door. When I looked back, AEGIS was still sitting there, looking like she was trying not to look miserable.


    "Catch you tomorrow?" she asked.


    "Sure," I said, and closed the door.


    I hated myself for doing that to her. I hated myself for a lot of things right now, and I wasn''t sure I could deal with it all. I just needed to sleep and maybe this would all be better.


    I walked back to the tower. It was only noon.

 129. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    Tower woke me up. It felt like I''d hardly slept. I''d spent all night waking up and rolling over and taking forever to fall back asleep.


    "Chariot. Yo." He gently poked me with one fat finger.


    "Wuzzzah," I said, or something like that.


    "You have a lady friend visiting. She needs you to sign for her to be admitted."


    "Karu?" I asked, sitting bolt upright.


    Tower scratched his head. "Uh. No. Avis or Angel or something."


    "Oh," I said, things making more sense now that I was awake. Karu was an XPCA contractor, she had free run of the unsecured sections of the base. Thinking she''d need me to sign her in was stupid. "AEGIS," I said, and rolled over, facing the wall.


    "So...uh¡­" Tower said. He was doing a great job of blocking out the lights where he stood. I hoped he stayed there.


    I''d only just fallen asleep again when someone poked me awake again. I rolled over and saw yellow eyes behind thin oval frames.


    "Heyas," she said.


    "AEGIS, what are you doing here?"


    "Your buddy signed for me. Told me to tell you not to get in trouble or he''ll be the one in trouble."


    "AEGIS, go away. I''m sleeping."


    "How late did you stay up last night, sheesh?"


    "I went to bed right after our thing."


    She made an annoyed noise. "That is the saddest thing ever. I know you have a negative motivation modifier right now, but seriously? It''s after noon. You''ve been asleep longer than twenty-four hours."


    I didn''t even care if it was true. Being awake sucked. I didn''t want to talk with her or go on pretend dates or whatever.


    "Okay dude, here''s your choice. Get up and be a decent damn human being, or I''m getting in bed with you."


    "What?"


    I rolled over and looked at her. She wasn''t all dressed up like she was yesterday, just jeans and a tee. I only realized by its omission that yesterday she must have been wearing makeup or something to make her eyes pop a little more. Her hair was done up in a loose bun that ended in a ponytail that only went halfway down her back, tied up with some sort of sticks poking out of it.


    Whatever. She flat-out told me yesterday her plan was to seduce me. It''s only natural she''d try to dress up for it a little. I tried to push the thought out of my mind before it became yet another thing I felt guilty about, unsuccessfully.


    "So?" she asked.


    "You were serious?"


    "Duh. If you''re not going to do anything, we may as well do what I want to do."


    "We''re not having sex, AEGIS. That--"


    "I never said we were. Freaking perv. So?"


    "So go away. I''m not going anywhere." I rolled over again and scooted back so there was no room between my back and the edge of the bed. So it was extremely awkward when she crawled over me on all fours to lay on the other side of the bed, directly in front of me, and facing me. It wasn''t that big a bed, and we were sort of tangled together at the hands and knees, as I found her bright eyes just a foot or so from mine.


    "You''re impossible," I said. She gave a sincere smile and diligently removed and folded her glasses, putting them on the floor behind me, which seemed to involve a whole lot of pressing herself against me, before retreating back and letting me have a hint of personal space again.


    "I missed this," she said simply.


    "Missed this how?"


    "I used to see your face every night when you slept. Not to pull a Tem, but I used to watch you most of the night. Ugh, she''s here isn''t she?"


    "No idea. Probably."


    "I used to feel like I was watching over you, keeping you safe while you slept." She grabbed one of my hands and held it in both of hers between us. So impossibly warm. "It was ridiculous, of course. When I had no idea what I was, I couldn''t do a thing to protect you, and once I did, I kind of wanted you dead. But just seeing you there, tired after giving it your all, day after day, I think that''s when I started to fall for you."


    "AEGIS, come on," I said, freeing my hand from her and rolling onto my back, looking up at the bottom of the bunk above me. "Karu dumped me two days ago, how do you think I feel?"


    "If you feel like you look, then I''d say you feel like you took a critical hit to the heart. Also, you look like shit."


    "Thanks. But yeah. I do. Is it supposed to hurt this much?"


    "Look, I''m about as uninterested in talking about your breakup pain as you probably are in doing anything else. Do you remember what happened when you broke my heart?"


    "You uh, you turned off your emotions."


    "Among other things. I had a war to fight that day, I wasn''t allowed to call in sick or mope around, or even not be around you. Do you have any idea how painful that was, now that you''re on the receiving end?"


    I thought back to the battle. Even when it seemed like there was hope we''d win, AEGIS'' smile never seemed to reach her eyes. What I remembered most was her going into controlled panic when I stupidly blew my leg off, slowly turning a tourniquet on me, and then her walking with me into the middle of the battlefield, supporting me so I could risk everything to try to turn the tide single-handedly.


    She''d accepted it with nothing but sad resignation. I tried to figure out how someone with my current feelings could possibly do that, and couldn''t imagine.


    "I''m sorry," I said, speaking to the back of the mattress above me.


    "Thanks for saying so. I''m sorry you''re going through it, too."


    "Sucks."


    "It does suck."


    She found my hand again and I let her hold onto it this time.


    We laid like that for probably an hour, before my basic needs overcame my desire to lay there and feel like garbage. I had to pee, and had a ripping headache, which felt unfair considering I''d done nothing to earn one but lay there.


    I excused myself, and she asked if anyone used the bunk next to mine, which I confirmed was empty. When I came back, I found out she''d set us up a picnic in said empty bunk. Sandwiches and energy drink, and a bottle of aspirin.


    Just like back in the old days. Even when she disagreed with me, she had my back. I felt my heart twinge heavily with something other than hurt, something approximating happiness.


    "Tuna," she said, of the sandwiches. "I know you like fish. I also brought a few games, I don''t know how much free time you have around here, or your preference towards trying to keep busy versus being a useless pile of shit, but they''re here if you want them."


    "I...I dunno what to say."


    "Don''t worry about it."


    "No, I feel terrible. I did this to you back then, and you had nobody. Nobody brought you sandwiches or games, I just expected you to make robots and fight for me."


    "I did what I had to do. And I had Lia, too. She''s got a lot of anxieties she keeps hidden, but she''s a really good kid when she''s not fucking up her own life too bad. She checked up on me a lot, and it meant a lot to me."


    "She''s pretty great," I agreed, sitting on the bed opposite her. I cleared my throat. "Are you sure she''s got lots of anxiety? She seems pretty happy to me. Just...wondering."


    "Man, you are so clueless. Please eat before I pwn your ass."


    "No, I''m serious. Is she okay?"


    "I mean, generally, yes. But I don''t know how you can fall for her cute smile she wears all the time. Do you really think she''d run away from home and find you because everything in her life was all peachy?"If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    I sat there feeling my mind expand uncomfortably. I wished AEGIS would stop dropping knowledge bombs on me, but on the other hand, felt like obviously I needed it because I was obviously completely stupid.


    "But...she''s always so happy."


    "That''s what she wants you to think, dumbnut. That''s like the Lia version of Athan trying to protect everyone. You know, your sister and I worked together to hack apart the whole XPCA when they took you."


    "Oh yeah, I never thanked you for that."


    "Whatever. Point is, I''m a goddamn supercomputer with insider knowledge of how all their systems work and who''s built on the same types of infrastructure they still have all their stuff based on. Your sister? She kept up with me pretty good. Any idea how?"


    "She''s always been really smart."


    "Yeah, and don''t take this as me being arrogant, but not supercomputer-AI smart. She reads people, Athan, she''s a freaking master of social engineering. Her whole Black Shark identity? It''s insane what she can get away with because people think they''re dealing with one thing, but she''s actually something else entirely, and whatever they think her goals are, it''s something else they never see coming. She cracked a dozen places I could never get close to, and she did it with only a goddamn mask and a smile."


    I blinked. I mean, I knew AEGIS wasn''t lying to me, but...she had to be wrong. Lia was...Lia was my little sister. We''d raced each other across the backyard, we''d seen who could jump over the spray from the sprinkler the longest, she played volleyball, for Christ''s sake, with a bunch of high school girls I knew.


    "I think...I need to lay back down again."


    "No you don''t. Eat something first, and drink at least one bottle. No sense in you killing yourself over that girl. We can keep the conversation light if I''m blowing your mind too much."


    It was more trouble to argue with her than to do what she said, so I numbly put the food in me robotically, eating slowly while she watched like I was a convict likely to make a break for it at any second.


    I''d finished my first half sandwich when Cosette came in, looking a little in disarray and with a tablet in her hands. She stopped on seeing the two of us and our picnic.


    "Uh, hello. Who''s this?"


    "I''m AEGIS, it''s nice to meet you. Are you another friend of Athan''s?" AEGIS asked pointedly.


    "When I''m not keeping him from convincing his teammates to kill themselves, I am."


    "He did nothing wrong. It was all me," argued Tem''s voice from somewhere. Cosette jumped.


    "Jesus, Tem. And Chariot, who is she?"


    "She''s a friend."


    She let out a sigh. "Listen, AEGIS if that''s your name, stay far away from Chariot. He''s just trouble. He was dating a bounty hunter and then she dumped him and he rebounded on Tem so fast she had to attempt suicide just to get out of it."


    "Uh, is that so?" said AEGIS, with a strange look on her face.


    "I really don''t think this went how you think it did, Cosette¡­" I tried to explain.


    "Whatever, man. You do whatever the hell you want with whomever the hell you want, but I''m going to warn them first at least. If she''s stupid enough not to listen to me, she''s stupid enough to deserve whatever you put her through."


    "I probably am that stupid," AEGIS said to me, now bemused. "What plans have you got for me, mister dangerous Exhuman?"


    "Cosette, was there a reason you came in here or are you just trying to get everyone to hate me?"


    "Right. Exhuman event in Georgia. We''re heading out tomorrow, looks like another icing...I mean, another low-priority call. Blackett still wants you guys out there handling as much as you can until we get some good footage of you all at work, in a mission that doesn''t go belly-up, so enjoy the easy stuff while you can, I guess. Just starting to round up the troops now¡­"


    She worked absently on her tablet as she chewed a stylus and headed for the door.


    "Oh," she added, pausing almost out the door, only her foot in the doorway visible. "Obviously don''t go too far, deploying tomorrow like I said. But also keep in mind, no visitors after curfew. I will make sure you get a surprise inspection tonight."


    "Aren''t we officer class? Can you even have us surprise inspected?"


    She leaned back until her glare emerged in the doorway. "Do not underestimate what I can do. Have fun with your friend!"


    The door shut with a heavy metal clang.


    "Well, now I want to stay after curfew just to see what happens to you," AEGIS said.


    "You know, you really don''t have to keep trying to make my life hell. It does that fine on its own." I shuffled back towards my bed.


    "Nope, no you don''t. You''re leaving tomorrow, probably early, so today you''re hanging out with me. I''m only here for three days, and you haven''t even seen Lia yet."


    "Lia''s here?"


    "Yeah, didn''t I mention that? Lia, Chiho, and I."


    "Chiho?"


    "Our roommate. Long story. One of Lia''s friends...actually that wasn''t that long a story. Anyway, get your butt--" she snaked around me with startling speed "--out of bed, and get some sun and say hi to your sister. Do it for her if nothing else."


    I didn''t really need the convincing. I already felt terrible for treating AEGIS this way, but if Lia came out here to visit and I never even saw her, what kind of brother would I be?


    "Stay here, Tem," I said, as we left the room.


    "Nope, nope. I''m following you!"


    "I''d invest in a leash," AEGIS muttered.


    "Tell me about it. I feel like I can''t say or do anything about it without her threatening to blow herself up again, but it''s like, seriously, girl."


    We started to head out. AEGIS was on her mobile, trying to get ahold of Lia. "How do you live with this kind of ''net reception down here," she said, visibly frustrated. I made a note that if we were ever going to roleplay florists again, I''d do it somewhere with crap reception.


    "Damn kids and their phones," I said as we waited for the lift.


    We wound up waiting around for most of an hour before Lia and Chiho caught up to us. I spent most of that time wondering how likely I was to get arrested for sleeping in the snow. I''d just about made up my mind that it''d be worth it, when something squealed and impacted me around the middle.


    "Dude, bro, you were so cool! And your uniform! Ooh, la, la!" Lia let go of the death hug around my middle to look me up and down. "And you''ve been working out? My goodness, no wonder AEGIS wants a piece of that."


    "Lia!" AEGIS said.


    "Well, you do, and everyone here already knows it," Lia pouted, but broke into a vast smile before anyone had the chance to assume she was being serious. "We saw you on the holo, you and Saga and Karu, dude, it was so cool. I was like ''wahh! That''s my brother!'' but the only person I was with was AEGIS and she already knew that, so it lost some of the effect."


    She went on and on, which was just the best thing ever, as she babbled happily and mercilessly roamed from topic to topic, interrogating me briefly in parts, but mostly content to just blab and hear details on my life from AEGIS second-hand. Her happiness was infectious, and leaving me mostly alone so I could just hang out in the periphery and soak it in was exactly the level of conversational competence I was currently feeling.


    But AEGIS'' words stuck like a needle in my brain. I could believe she was happy, and maybe she was always this happy, but she wasn''t always this chatty. Was she only doing this because she could read me an see I was feeling like crap and was pushing herself to make me feel better?


    Maybe. But maybe...I didn''t really care. It was everything I wanted right now. I found it incredibly obnoxious when the girls schemed around my negative traits, and so I wasn''t about to start doing that to Lia, either. As far as I saw it, we were both happy to have her going on and brightening me up.


    Somehow, the topic of me wearing my uniform around all the time turned into the fact I apparently needed new clothes, which was a hazardous topic to mention around Lia ever. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later found us in the middle of a department store where 3.01 girls, counting Chiho and Tem, were plying me with more clothes than I knew what to do with.


    "Shame he''s leaving so soon," Lia mused as she sorted through a rack of dress shirts that looked like the kind of thing I might wear for Senator Irenside and nobody else. "You never even got to show him your bathing suit."


    "Lia!" AEGIS hissed.


    "We''ve got it back at the hotel we''re staying at. I bet there''s an indoor pool in there too. Want to come Athan? It''s totally worth it, I promise. They might have gotten smaller, but they''re a lot cuter if you ask me."


    "Lia!" AEGIS hissed again, now red and very self-consciously holding herself.


    I hadn''t told Lia anything about Karu, didn''t seem worth it to bring up if we were only hanging out for today. Maybe I should have, because Lia was going hard on selling AEGIS to me. I wasn''t sure how much was serious or teasing, or whether it was me or AEGIS getting teased, but I couldn''t really care, everyone chatting and having fun was¡­


    Well, it was nice. Sometimes I felt a little outside it all, I wasn''t sure if it was just my mood, or the fact that obviously the three of them got on so well and were doing so great in their lives. I really envied how happy and carefree they seemed now, and thought, maybe Lia''s chances of being a normal happy kid weren''t so sunk after all.


    It seemed like no time at all before the sun started getting low, and we went out to a sushi place for dinner. All three of them took it in turns to mock me for not knowing how to use chopsticks, but as the girls had placed AEGIS next to me while they sat at the opposite side of the table, it fell on her to teach me, apparently.


    "Like that. Just hold these fingers steady and move this one, here," she explained, as she held one of my hands in both of hers, still impossibly warm to the touch. "No, you''re doing it wrong still, jeez, didn''t you ever use a pencil in school, or did everything go digital in the last hundred years?"


    "When did you even bother to learn chopsticks?" I asked. "You don''t even eat."


    She stood up and stood behind me to get a better angle on my shoulder, wrapping both of her arms around me while she pressed against my back. I don''t think she even meant to, but I was able to confirm that it wasn''t just her hands that were warm to the touch. Lia was watching with the smuggest of grins but said nothing to upset the moment.


    "I...think...a fork is fine, guys," I said, unable to endure this torture any longer. "I think the age of sticks is long gone, right?"


    "Hey, that''s racially insensitive," said Chiho with a scowl.


    "Uh."


    "Nah, just kidding. Just use your fingers. My ancestors would flip if they saw me eating with a gaijin using a fork on sushi."


    Again, it seemed like no time at all when we were saying our goodbyes and then I was back in my bunk with nobody but Tem and Tower, asleep, for company.


    "Tem," I asked the empty-seeming room. "What do you think of my friends?"


    "They''re great," she said, melting out of the air next to my bed. Come on, she had her own bed like 4 down, why was she on the floor next to mine? "I''m very happy you have them."


    "If you weren''t invisible all evening, I bet they would have liked having you around too."


    "I don''t think s-s-so. I only get in the way. I prefer it this way, honestly."


    "Have it your way," I said rolling over. I wasn''t going to argue with her. Even if I hated her, it was a little pathetic and a little sad that she wouldn''t even try to put herself out there. I didn''t want her to suffer, just to leave me alone, like, forever.


    But that was an issue for another day. Tomorrow, we''d be moving out, and all I needed from Tem was her powers. Tomorrow was my first official command, and no matter my feelings or my current state, or what we were up against, I wasn''t going to lose anybody.

 130. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Jack.

    I tried to enjoy the quiet times, I was never sure how long they would last. As I browsed through the beautiful displays of flowers all around me, sometimes I opened my eyes just a little bit to see them as the rest of the world saw them.


    Even more beautiful that way, as it turned out.


    For probably the third or fourth time, I saw Steffie push herself up out of her wheelchair to barely peek over the large glass counter filled with vases of roses to steal a glimpse of me. I pretended not to notice, but there was very little which I didn''t.


    The same day I''d woken up being able to be somewhere else was the last day I''d really used my eyes to look at the world. With them eyes shut, I could see all around me, through walls even, like surveying the scene from a bird''s-eye view, but not from a bird''s-eye view. Color was almost nonexistent, but I think it might be overwhelming otherwise. Perhaps x-ray vision was the more common term, but that was absolutely incorrect too. First off, I didn''t give people cancer by looking at them too hard, and second, everyone didn''t look merely like bones.


    However one described it, I could see everything around me with as much detail as if I were focusing on it, including Steffie straining her untrained arms to lean out of her wheelchair and surreptitiously steal glances at me. I felt bad making her struggle like that. I always tried to help people avoid their struggles when I could, which was actually why I was here.


    Other than me, there were also two rather menacing XPCA soldiers. Not in full exosuits, thank goodness, but still obviously armed, and obviously stationed here by the door. I couldn''t imagine they were good for Steffie''s sales, or her blood pressure. I didn''t know on whose orders they''d been stationed here, but ever since we found out, Tower and I had been taking it in shifts to keep an eye on them while they kept an eye on her.


    She was, after all, still legally supposed to be dead presently, and the XPCA did love keeping things legal where they could.


    But it had been three days without issues greater than Steffie''s growing paranoia and unease. We were deploying tomorrow, so if any sort of final solution were to be drawn up, it''d have to be today. I always tried to aim for final resolutions where I could, I wasn''t much a man for loose ends.


    So, to cut out the chaff, I headed for the counter. Steffie was sneaking another peek, and almost fell out of her chair to see me coming right at her. Almost unconsciously, I appeared at her side and helped her back into her seat, but to my surprise, she slapped at my hand and looked at me viciously.


    "Just finish the job already. I don''t know why you''re still here," she said bitterly.


    I would have blinked in surprise if my eyes were open.


    "Ma''am, I have no intention of killing you," I explained.


    "I might be a weak, stupid, Exhuman cripple, but I''m not an idiot," she yelled. "Chariot saved me, and now that he''s out of the picture, it''s just you two and your hired guns to finish the job. So? What are you waiting for? Trying to get me to use my powers again, because it''s not happening, I''m not falling for that bait."


    "Relax, please. I assure you, me and my broad-shouldered compatriot mean you no harm."


    "Then why are there armed soldiers at my door every day? Why do you loiter in my store smiling all day without ever talking to me? And why do you just...smile. That''s so creepy."


    "That''s an awful lot of questions," I said, thinking.


    "Oh, God, you''re going to silence me," she said, gripping the wheels of her chair.


    "If by silence you mean attempt to answer them so you worry less, then perhaps so. I was just thinking of where to start."


    She still had the wheels in her hands but didn''t move. I opened an eye to peer at her face, and saw it was trembling. She was scared, but wanted to believe me. I supposed starting with the most embarrassing story would probably put her mind at ease the fastest.


    "Hmm, well, why I smile. That is quite the question. It''s a number of things, I think. I''ve been doing it so long, it just feels strange not to now. This may surprise you, but I can actually see quite well with my eyes shut, as part of my powers, but I have endless trouble reading faces with it. Even though it is limiting to open my eyes, I still do it from time to time just to check."


    "I thought you were just winking at me."


    "Why would I do that?" I shrugged. "But seeing everyone else with blank faces all the time...I suppose it helps to make me forget that to smile all the time is unusual."


    And then as though it were an afterthought I added "Also, the last words my wife said to me before I woke up Exhuman were that I would look a lot better if I smiled more. I try to take her words to heart."


    "Oh," said Steffie, sitting back further in her chair and putting her hands in her lap. "When was that?"


    "About three years ago? I try not to keep track."


    "Sorry."


    "It is no matter. I had very little control over my powers when I first got them and was disappearing and reappearing everywhere with a mere thought. Understandably, she took our child and tried to flee, but if by her side was where I wished to be, that is where my powers took me, no matter where she ran. I fear it was rather traumatic for both of them."


    I felt something unusual on my face and realized I wasn''t smiling. I sighed and took in the beautiful flowers around me for a moment to strengthen myself.


    "As for your other questions, Tower and I have been ignoring you because we were attempting to leave you in peace, as much as that was possible. As for what the soldiers are doing here, we have no idea, and that is why we are here, to make sure they do not harm you."


    "Why didn''t you just say that when you first showed up?"


    "I didn''t wish to trouble you by introducing the worry that these men might be sent to murder you."


    "Yes, because having those men and you standing around silently for three days is much less scary."


    "Hmm." I spent a moment chewing on her words. "I suppose in retrospect, it seems natural you would conclude we were with them. I apologize for the misunderstanding. Now hopefully I will do what is long overdue and speak with those two gentlemen and get all three of us out of your lovely shop."


    She nodded, but didn''t seem optimistic. I stole a glance and confirmed my suspicions. Oh well. I walked around the counter and towards the men.


    "Hello," I said airily to the two of them, flanking the door like gargoyles.


    "Sir," one said. They didn''t salute, which was fine, I was in civilian clothes.


    "You two know who I am?"


    "Yes sir."


    "Why are you here?"


    "We''re keeping the Exhuman under armed guard, sir."


    "I don''t suppose I have the authority to supersede this order?"


    "No sir."


    That would have been far too easy. And unlikely besides. The amount of rank we were to hold exactly was still a matter discussed reasonably heatedly through the XPCA, but in the meanwhile we''d levelled out somewhere just around specialists and NCOs...important enough that we shouldn''t be bothered by the enlisted, and if any of them decided to be a hero and give us a hard time, a court-marshal for assaulting a superior officer was a certainty...but also not high enough to affect any XPCA operations but our own.


    "The girl is having a hard enough time without us looming threateningly," I explained. "I''m going to have to insist that if you are keeping her under guard, you do it less conspicuously. Keep outside, wear street clothes, and carry concealed."


    "Is that an order, sir?"


    "Yes." I''d take it up with Cosette when I got back, but I was almost certain I could push that much through, at least. Dealing with living Exhumans without killing them was, so far, almost exclusively the purview of our team.


    "Yes, sir," they turned and marched outside, where they took up post across the street. Good enough, I supposed.


    "They really left," Steffie said, sounding surprised. Slowly, she wheeled out from behind the counter next to me.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "I assume you heard all of that? I can''t get rid of them, but they seem to just be keeping you under guard. Think of it as house arrest, minus the house. And arrest, I suppose."


    "No, yes, I did. Thank you, really. You may have just saved my business."


    "Helping Exhumans is our new plan," I said, with a smile.


    "Look, it''s about closing up time here, I''ll give it another shot tomorrow...could I get you dinner or something to thank you? I feel terrible that I had just assumed you were...bad."


    "I have no other plans. Do you need help closing up?"


    "Won''t say no if you''re offering."


    I helped her move flowers into the cool rooms in the back and close up while she filed paperwork and orders, and in about half an hour, she closed the door behind us and locked it.


    "Do you...want a push?" I asked, not certain how tactful to be about this subject.


    "No, I''ve just been sitting there all day, I''m never going to get stronger if I don''t do it myself." She wheeled clumsily in place and joined me going down the sidewalk. I liked her attitude, but thought privately that the snowy sidewalks were far more trouble than that attitude was worth. Of course, using my own powers as often as I could, I wasn''t the model subject.


    Still, we weren''t going far, and she made constant, if slow, determined progress. I stepped into the street as the light turned green and waited for a moment while she unstuck herself off a bump in the snow, compacted down by dozens of footprints.


    Without so much a glance in my direction, the driver of a blue pickup truck tore through the intersection, turning right at speeds to make his tires squeal, and headed straight at me.


    Of course, it would have been trivial to simply be out of the way, but this was a crowded public intersection, and I didn''t want to use my powers in public if it could be avoided. For the driver''s idiocy, if he wasn''t going fast enough to flip his truck in the turn, he wasn''t going fast enough to hit me without me having a chance to move.


    So move I did. I jumped for the sidewalk, seeing the car pass by where I just stood, missing me by inches. The driver gave me a look I couldn''t read, but it involved his mouth hanging open like an idiot.


    I stumbled on the sidewalk and landed on my bad leg, collapsing in a heap next to Steffie, who screamed, startled more than afraid, I hoped.


    "I''m okay," I announced, as a couple of other good samaritans helped me to my feet. "It is nothing, thank you." I peeked at them, unable to read the mood of the crowd, and was relieved to see them all merely helpful and worried. One informed me I should ''sue that blind idiot'', which I promised him I would take under consideration. Hoping to escape the crowd, I got Steffie over the bump and put us through the intersection before the light changed its mind.


    "It''s hard, isn''t it," she asked, sounding sad. "Not using your powers."


    "I am rather more dependent on them than I would like to admit."


    "I saw you fall. What''s wrong with your leg?"


    "You are one to ask?" I said jokingly. I realized it didn''t come out that way, and cringed behind my smile. "Um, I will tell the story over dinner, perhaps?"


    Dinner was no fancy affair, which I preferred, just a corner deli. If she were taking me out as thanks and there truly was no ulterior motive, it would make no sense to celebrate the revitalization of her business by spending all her profits. She had a salad, and I had an egg salad sandwich.


    Cooking was another thing I had lost considerable proficiency in. Like faces, it seemed my powers cared very little for the details which were essential to preparing food. I could see, heck, count the individual strands of pasta in a pot if I desired, but being able to glance at toast or chops for color or consistency? Impossible.


    Not that egg salad was beyond my reach, but I still enjoyed any meal I didn''t have to labor through. I had shirked cooking duties at Blackett manor as much as humanly possible.


    "I owe you a story, I believe," I began as we ate. "But before I tell you, I should inform you, this is not a story you want to hear. I encourage you to abort this line of questioning now."


    "I''ll be the judge of that afterwards, I guess."


    "I suppose so. Say, have you been speaking to any doctors or therapists about what transpired with your legs during the Exhuman event?"


    "Yeah. They say there''s good odds of recovering function if I get surgery soon before the nerves wither. I''m just trying to scrape together the money now, which is another reason I really didn''t appreciate you and your friends."


    I felt my mouth twitch. "I...do not mean to be too forward, but I...would encourage you not to pursue that course of action."


    "Why?"


    "It comes to my leg, you see. I told you, when my wife and child fled, I harried them for quite some time, without control of my powers. It was actually a matter of days before her sister intervened and alerted the XPCA, though I believe they''d heard about it before then and were already preparing for me. Regardless, at some point, without warning, from outside of my visible range...everything past a distance simply looks black and nonexistent to me, perhaps about a city block...something hit me, and XPCA appeared from everywhere."


    "I had been stunned by whatever attack they used, and in my moments of lost lucidity, they detained me and evacuated my family from the scene. It took me mere minutes to realize what happened, and when I did, addled though I was, I went after them. They were beyond my sight, but if I opened my eyes, I could see the van taking them away, driving away from me half a mile away or more. I didn''t even consider, I went to them...and realized why I needed both halves of my power working in tandem to function."


    "What happened?"


    "I went to them without being able to see, and so appeared inside their van blind, unaware of what was inside. When I materialized, my leg was inside of one of the metal benches, just as you had been forced to materialize inside of a wall. In my experience, when I appear in a place, I simply do so, I do not displace what exists, both of us exist in the same place. For air this is apparently trivial, but not so with metal benches or stone walls."


    I looked down at my leg. "I think that even now there is a van driving around with a piece of my leg embedded within it on some submicroscopic level, and that within me resides the matching pieces of that bench. I have been through regenerators and visited doctors and none can find a thing wrong with me except that from the calf down, one of my legs only barely functions. I can walk on it and little more. Like you, I was offered positive prognoses, but none ever worked. I suspect...your fate will be similar."


    I checked, and she had teared up. I offered her a napkin which she accepted with gratitude.


    "I should have known," she said, her voice choked. "I should have known that it was too good to be true. And the whole time I was getting X-rays and blood work, I was just worried they''d realize I was an Exhuman somehow and call the police. When they told me my odds of recovery looked good, I could hardly believe it."


    I squeezed her hand. "I''m sorry. I understand your pain, and I feel guilty for having my powers used to do this to you. Doing that to others is something I try to avoid, but obviously our thief had no such restraint."


    I comforted her a while longer while she bemoaned and accepted her fate, and cried. I tried to keep smiling for her as well.


    Finally, eyes red, salad long-since ruined with tears, she seemed finally defeated, or to have defeated her emotions, and sat unsteady, bleary, and with a napkin in hand but no more tears to use it on.


    "Jack," she said, only a slight catch in her voice. "You are a really nice guy."


    "I try."


    "No, you didn''t have to do any of this. Tell me your story, or protect my store or me from those guys, or ask them to go, or open up to me about your past life. This was all just so...so unexpected."


    "Like I said, I felt like I owed you at least this much for allowing my powers to be misused in such a way."


    "Is that really it though?"


    "I suppose I also thought you looked like you could use a hand and some encouragement."


    "Yeah. And that''s why I said you were nice, because you had those thoughts and then you also did something about them. I''m sorry I called you creepy."


    "I am accustomed to it. At least you weren''t using my name to invent disparaging nicknames."


    "Is Jack your real name? I thought you all had fancy codenames like Tower and Chariot."


    "The codenames came after me. I was the second in the group, and there is little use for codenames when there is only one. Amusingly my name honestly is Jack. I suppose my codename is ''Jack of Swords'' if we are being specific. Though...I don''t use a sword, a knife once, but I lost it somewhere during the event. It is difficult to procure any back at XPCA which has any air of refinement."


    "A knife?"


    "Yes. Though this is hardly appropriate dinner conversation, I apologize."


    "That''s...funny." She plunged into the large purse hanging from the back of her chair, and pulled out what looked like a short wooden rod and handed it to me.


    It was about a foot long, and there was a seam about a third down the length. I gripped either side of the seam and pulled them apart, drawing an eight-inch blade from the two-thirds which were a wooden sheath. The blade was sharp, straightforward, and elegant.


    "What need does a florist have for a weapon such as this?" I asked.


    "Well, when I thought those guys were going to kill me, I started bringing this in. I don''t know where it came from, it was something of my grandfather''s, he had tons of weird junk. I never thought I''d use it until just a couple days ago."


    "This is a long single-edged blade, strengthened and pointed for thrusting but capable of slashing as well. Very flat, ornate mounting, but simple in design. I believe it''s called a tanto."


    "I don''t know. I just thought it was a big knife. Do you want it?"


    "Only if you don''t."


    "Well, if your story about the doctors is true, you saved me enough credits to buy ten of those, so please, take it if you''d use it."


    I thanked her and held onto it. I''d have to ask to have a holster made for the sheath on my belt, but the simple wood case was inconspicuous enough despite its size that I could carry it at all times. I quite liked it.


    We wound up chatting for another hour about happier things, and then I insisted on walking her home, citing that I''d just stolen her single means of self-defense. She agreed on the terms I gave her my mobile contact, in case the men came back, which I happily obliged, and then we walked slowly back until I saw her safely inside. I refused the invitation of having a drink, citing that we were deploying for a mission tomorrow.


    I lurked nearby, keeping an eye on her with my other sight until I was sure she was comfortably at home, feeling some small guilt for spying when she did some celebratory spins and accompanying dancing. I supposed she was just happy to finally be rid of us and the XPCA.


    I turned into a dark alley, and then appeared closer and closer to the Raven''s Nest, arriving in a matter of moments. Policy dictated that I go through the security checkpoint with each entry or egress, but that was really far too much trouble, and I simply appeared within our bunk, Tower and Chariot already asleep in their beds, and Tem asleep on the floor near Chariot, somehow looking comfortable despite having no pillow or blanket.


    I smiled at them, and said a silent prayer for Mage, whom I hoped was happier wherever she was now. I gently draped a blanket over Tem and put a pillow near her, which she wrapped herself around with a contented murmur, and then appeared in the shower, leaving my clothes behind as I went.


    My leg was killing me. I hadn''t done this much walking in a long time, and for good reason, but it had all been worth it to see Steffie''s exultant celebration back in the privacy of her home.


    I thought back to my reasons I''d listed for why I smile and considered that, in future tellings of that story, I would have at least one more to add. I tried to always keep the good things in mind.

 130b. 2251, A week ago. Hell? Soran.

    How many times had I died?


    Ten thousand? A hundred? A million? I''d tried to keep track but it was maddening.


    Again, I appeared intact and whole as if by magic, and before I could do anything, the huge black man smashed me into the floor. I felt my ribs mending themselves even as they broke. Pain shot through me, radiating from the blow outwards, like the agony had to take a split second to fill my whole body.


    The blue-haired girl on his shoulder whispered to him. "Tower? You can''t get hurt, right?"


    "I mean, I can. But not from like, punches or speeding trains or anything, if I know it''s coming."


    "Explosions?"


    "Nah, I''m good."


    "Tower, hit him with me. Jack, get out of here."


    "What? Are you crazy?" he asked, taking his eyes off me for a split second only.


    "No, but if you use...use me like a weapon...I''ll explode. He''ll be...gone."


    "I found air in my lungs again. I''d shouted whatever I could think of at the three, it made no difference. "Go fuck yourselves!" I screamed in frustration. Tower looked down at me and slammed my head through the pavement again. He did that even if I said nothing.


    "Are you sure?" He asked, sounding concerned. He always sounded concerned, but never hesitated to do it.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "No, but do it."


    The smiling man seized my leg and I felt myself getting taken away again. This power of his...I''d only had the chance to taste it. If I could just get my hands on him...but try as I might, I never got a hand in before the big man stopped me. Today he just batted me off. Other times he punched me or did worse.


    And then we were back where it had all gone wrong. The trap I''d set, the icehouse I''d laid out, and killed not a one of them. As the unsettling sensation of movement in my stomach stopped, the under-construction building swam into view. Foggier than I remembered. Every time.


    The big guy would repeat himself again. "You''re really sure about this?" He loved asking that insipid question.


    "He''ll just regenerate anything less, right?"


    "I don''t know. Chariot?" he asked his comms, but there was no response I could hear.


    "Yeah, just do it," she said.


    "No, not again, not again, please," I pleaded.


    "Don''t worry, there won''t be an again for you," he said and swung the girl down into me. There was an explosion and I could feel myself being ripped apart. My regeneration did its best, but the force was too great. It felt like there was almost hope, if he didn''t hit me straight-on, if I could just dodge at the last second, I might only get blown away, might only be 99% dead. It might take me days or weeks to recover, but if I could only manage.


    But it was false hope. Every time, I died.


    I had a few moments of extremely painful nonexistence where something held my consciousness together in a state of non-being, of pure agony, a bodiless soul, and these were the moments I feared. Dying over and over was one thing, but non-existence...this was what made me conclude this must simply be hell. My sins of killing fellow Exhumans and stealing their powers was too great, and this was my punishment.


    And then, again, I appeared intact and whole as if by magic. Before I could do anything, the huge man smashed me into the floor. I felt my ribs mending themselves even as they broke.


    The pain radiated through my body, leaving me with no air in my lungs and the same thought as I ever had now.


    How many times had I died?

 131. 2251, Present Day. Rural GA, near Athens. Athan.

    The flight into Athens had been an awkward affair. Packed into a VTOL, the six of us shared a couple hours of uncomfortable silence.


    I meant...five of us.


    Cosette had some issues with me, and even more with Tem. I didn''t want to deal with anyone, much less be stuck staring at either of Tem''s or Jack''s smiling faces. Tower seemed to have no idea what to do with the tension and kept cracking terrible jokes, while Tem seemed deliberately oblivious and just kept trying to crawl further and further up my arm.


    "So," Cosette said idly over the low hum of the props. "How''d last night go with your lady friend, Chariot?"


    "Good, actually," I said. "We had dinner with my sister and another of her friends, went shopping for some clothes, and that was it." I tried to make it obvious that nothing was going on.


    "Oh, she''s your sister''s friend?" She seemed almost disappointed.


    "Sure. I mean, she''s my friend too."


    "Given her weird tattoos and hair, I was almost certain you''d gone and hired a hooker."


    "You guys don''t pay well enough for me to afford a hooker. Also, that''s a super weird conclusion to jump to."


    "I walked in...broke in¡­on you and Tem naked with every bone in your body broken, and then again with you having a tea party with a body modder. In both of the two days you''d been single. Is it that weird a conclusion?"


    "Still yes, but I get your point. Thanks for not actually giving us the surprise inspection, by the way."


    "I wouldn''t really do that. I''m here to keep you guys safe, sane, ready, and out of trouble, not to follow the rules." She said the last word with obvious distaste. "And by the way, you all do a great job of making my job very difficult."


    "Uh," said Jack.


    "Okay, some of you. I won''t say any names, but you know who you are. Chariot. Tem."


    "It wasn''t Chariot," Tem said defensively, clutching my arm tighter. I really needed to hurry up and get that thing amputated so she could just keep it.


    "Whatever. You two are idiots. Wake me up when we land," she said, whipping out a pair of sunglasses and slouching into her seat against Tower''s side.


    "You are truly the paragon of a CO," I muttered.


    She lifted her shades and shot me a smile. "Hell, I think so. I''d take off my pants to sleep more comfy, but these harnesses are a real bitch to get in and out of, and the pilot yelled at me last time I did."


    "There was a last time?" Tower asked.


    "Kid, when you''re as old as me, there''s always a last time." She dropped the shades back into place and snuggled in more comfortably.


    "Old?" I asked. "What are you, twenty-five?"


    "And that''s why Chariot''s the strike lead you guys. Grade-A ass-kissing right there."


    "I was being serious."


    "No bonus for persistence." She scratched at her armpit where the harness was holding up her slouch. "But you don''t have to stop."


    "I think perhaps inquiring into her age might be considered rude," Jack explained.


    "Well, I wouldn''t want to be that," I said, admiring her ability to seemingly occupy more space than Tower.


    We touched down and disembarked, enjoying another ride in a van this time before finally arriving near our destination, a tiny little rural town which seemed entirely composed of houses and stores stretched along a highway at random, with a city center identifiable only by the courthouse and police station being close to each other, a diner, and a gas station, in addition to the other bizarre little stores.


    I hadn''t really been in a place like this before, and had to gawk at all of the nothing around us while the others stretched and disembarked like the town was utterly uninteresting.


    I mean, it was. Utterly so. But somehow, that made it even more interesting. I''d had a lot of the city recently, and a whole lot of the wild before that, so seeing a city or village or whatever you''d call this that only barely was? New to me.


    But after a couple minutes, yeah, utterly uninteresting. Cosette had summoned a police officer from somewhere and was talking with him while flashing a badge. He looked completely untroubled by our presence or the situation of a potential Exhuman event, and I had to wonder what, exactly Cosette was saying. I gave my wrist holo a couple taps and put my earpiece in, but she wasn''t transmitting.


    She walked back to us. "Well, they say both of them are in the diner. So is half the town, and the police have no interest in evacuating anyone, so if things go south, I guess we just kill everyone," she said, but speaking loudly enough for the officer to hear.


    "They won''t. Just keep your guns in your holsters," the cop said as he headed back.


    Jack had a pack with much of the gear assigned to our team. It seemed unfair to force him to carry everything, especially when the pack was reasonably large and would barely qualify as more than a handbag to Tower, but as Jack had pointed out, if someone needed equipment, he could get it there the fastest. I agreed, but I also thought that with that line of logic, Jack would be doing a lot of work around the team.


    "Jack, can I get the optics?" I asked. He appeared next to me, on one knee a little wobbly, back and pack facing me. I dug around the excellently-organized bag for only a moment before I pulled out something almost resembling Karu''s visor. I turned it on and the three round glowing red eyes on the outward side made my heart do a flip.


    I looked into the diner, flipping through various lenses. Dark amp, audio visualization, infrared, all seemed to indicate, yeah, there were a lot of people in there.


    "Seventeen people, three of whom are employees. Two patrons seated in a booth third from the door on the left, one male, one female, appear to match the description we were given. Eight of the remaining patrons are actively engaging with them in conversation, it seems, the remainder are at least listening, based on body language," Jack said. I put the optics back, damn near worthless compared to him.


    "Thank you, Jack. So we want to do this diplomatically if possible. Is there a chance that there''s a Code-X in play here, if they have half the town under their thrall? Including, apparently, the police?"


    "Possible," Cosette mused. "If so, we all know the protocol right?"


    "The old protocol," I informed her.


    "Still the protocol. The only thing that''s changed is now, if they take over our minds, their puppets will be a lot more dangerous. Kill Code-X on ID."


    I shook my head. "They''re still just people. Code-X or no, we can talk it out."


    "Chariot, you know I don''t put my foot down on much, but this is one of them. Code-X is too dangerous, and we all have to be on the same page on this. If they take over one of us, that''s time for them to take the rest. We need to all act as fast as possible to put them down, no exceptions."


    "Except Saga," I said.


    "Saga isn''t here, buddy. Get your head in the game or I''m kicking you off and Jack''s lead."


    Get your head in the game. How many times had I heard that one before. Coach used to say that half a dozen times every practice, but only rarely to me. I never really had problems focusing on the game, the game was what I lived for.


    So what was this? Could I treat it like another game? Go in there and chalk up another win for the Black Sharks?


    I thought back to the playbook. Just take something we were all familiar with, assign duties to each role, and lay out options for the plan to change.


    "I''ll go talk to them, honestly let them know who we are and why we''re here. Tem will be on-hand to provide support in case I get in trouble. Jack is extraction, and Tower is the big guns. Cosette is...on comms, I guess. Comms will be open, if we give a keyword...say...red, we''re in danger and Jack will extract both of us and we''ll regroup for an attack. If we say codeword blue, Jack will extract both of them and take them somewhere unpopulated. If we say green, it''s safe for Jack and Tower to come in. Or we need them in. Should be obvious by if we''re screaming it or not. If you do come in hot, Tower, your job is to attract as much attention and fire as possible, and Jack, you need to use the distraction to take them down."If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It wasn''t even a plan, just some contingencies, but people seemed to like it.


    "I protect Chariot," Tem said, with a wistful smile.


    "Just keep your lasers in your pants unless we manage a code blue." She didn''t look like she was listening, just what I needed.


    "Any questions?" People shook their heads. Cosette smiled at me. "Okay. Uh. Break." We split up. Tem turned invisible and I headed for the door.


    "Comms okay?" I asked.


    "Papa-Foxtrot Central, five by five," Cosette said.


    "Tem...here."


    "This is Tower, reading y''all loud and clear."


    "And...Jack, I suppose."


    I pushed open the door as the report out finished, and when that didn''t work, pulled it open instead. Very dramatic entrance there with the XPCA uniform and not knowing how to work a door.


    I strode three tables down, right where Jack had said they''d be, and there they were.


    "Hello," I said, as the place grew silent and still. "I''m an officer from the XPCA, do you mind if I speak with the two of you?"


    "Is this guy a Nazi or something?" asked the man looking at my uniform. He seemed like he was reasonably athletic but like me, had withered away. Considering the empty plate with maple syrup on it in front of him, he seemed like he was on his way to recovery. His hair was a mess, but had been cleaned recently, and he was clean-shaven.


    "Ajax, please," said the girl. "He''s in uniform and he has a gun. Maybe not the best idea to call him a Nazi out the gate?"


    She had light brown hair, tied up in a bun at the back of her head. As she spoke, she made a gesture I only recently recognized when I saw AEGIS do it when first installed in Rua, attempting to adjust glasses that weren''t there. She also looked like she''d been run ragged recently, but was much faster at recovering than he.


    Both had only new clothes on, and both looked in their late twenties or early thirties, but given my earlier assessment of Cosette, apparently I was a bad judge.


    "If that''s a US uniform, I''m a Sino," he said. "Black is not in red, white, or blue."


    "Neither is green camo, you idiot, and that''s what you wore, right?"


    "Camo is functional. He''s wearing a collar equivalent of ballerina shoes."


    "A gun is functional, and he''s wearing one of those too. Can you please knock it off?"


    "Guys," I said. "I''m standing right here."


    "Good of you to notice," he said. "So what can I do for you, Nazi? If you want to be seated, you''ll have to ask the hostess, I don''t actually work here."


    "Ajax," she hissed.


    "Celia," he hissed back.


    "Okay, I think we''ve gotten introductions in a roundabout way. Ajax. Celia. I''m Char...I''m Athan."


    "Did you just say you were a chair?"


    "I think he meant he needs a chair."


    "Chariot, is my call sign," I gritted. "I''m from the XPCA, and I need to speak with the two of you."


    "XPCA? Is that some kind of military re-enactment troupe or something?" he asked, fishing a toothpick out of a dispenser at the back of the table.


    "Please, if you''d like to talk, go right ahead," Celia said. "We''ve dominated the conversation enough, haven''t we Ajax?"


    "I meant, in private."


    "Anything you can say to me, you can say to the good people of Haydn, isn''t that right!" Ajax shouted.


    The response was deafening silence. I guess the XPCA did hold some amount of sway even out here. I couldn''t help but feel a little pride, though I wondered how much was respect and how much was fear.


    "Sir, ma''am, do you know what the XPCA is?" I asked incredulously, but that was the only thing I could think of to explain what was going on here.


    "I did just ask," Ajax said. He swore as something hit him under the table.


    "No, I''m afraid not, please go ahead with your pitch," Celia said.


    My pitch. "How...do you suppose it is people deal with Exhumans?" I asked, out of curiosity.


    "Exhumans?" she asked and looked at him.


    "Weird way of referring to Sinos?" he replied. "I kind of like it. Exhuman."


    I sighed. "Jack, can I have a code blue please?"


    "With pleasure," he said speaking both in my coms and right next to me, touching each of them on the shoulder.


    "Who--" Ajax asked.


    "An Exhuman," I shrugged, and held Jack''s arm. I sensed Tem on his other side, and then we all jerked uncomfortably. After a few moments where Ajax tried to pull Jack off of him and Celia stared at us uncomprehendingly, we were in a field. The two of them fell down without anything to sit on.


    "Wha...wha...wha¡­" she said, but he sprang up, fists at the ready.


    "Exhuman," I said with a shrug again. "It''s my understanding that you two did something similar just a couple of days ago?" I glanced at my holo. "Says you both appeared out of nothing in the middle of a clothing store near here."


    "I ain''t telling you squat," he said, and squared up. I leaned sideways and around his jab.


    "Please don''t," I said.


    "If you did anything to Celia, I swear I''ll kill you."


    "She''s fine. She''s right there," I said, pointing. I guess...it wasn''t very convincing. She was spread backwards on the ground, looking around like this was absolute sorcery, trying to find the trick, hyperventilating. She was wearing a skirt and needed to close her legs, badly.


    "That''s not what I meant and you know it, you arse," he said, and came at me again. An easy left jab and right hook. I frowned, had it always been so easy to read people''s attacks like this?


    "Please stop. I really don''t want to fight either of you. I just had us moved here so we could talk in peace. You honestly--" I dodged another punch "--don''t know anything about Exhumans or the XPCA?"


    "I know," he said panting "that there''s an XPCA who''s going to get his ass beat."


    "Hmm, Cosette? Thoughts?"


    "Memory loss, maybe? Might very well be Exhuman still if that''s the case. We do have footage of them popping out of nowhere. If nothing else, they might be victims of an Exhuman from elsewhere."


    "And we''d want to know where from. Good point." I stepped forward inside a punch as he charged at me, and pushed him backwards, stumbling back out of reach. He was leaning on his knees now, almost punched out. Celia was still looking like a confused doe.


    "You ignore me?" he roared, and ran at me. I reached behind me and grabbed something, wrenching it forward while I took a step back. He tripped over the invisible Tem I''d just put in front of him and fell face-first on the ground.


    "Ow!" she yelped. And then in a breathier, much more disturbing voice, "I helped."


    Girl had issues.


    "Please stay down there and explain what you remember?" I asked.


    "I ain''t telling you anything, you bastard," he yelled, trying to right himself, but stuck on Tem, whom he was probably somewhat crushing.


    "Ajax, it''s fine," Celia said, staring at him with the same blank expression now. "We''ve told everyone else so far, we can tell them too."


    "They''re devils or something, Celia, we can''t trust them."


    "We''re Exhumans, and also the good guys. It might not seem like it, but trust me, if we wanted you hurt or dead...you''d be so. So please, let''s just sit down and talk and stop trying¡­" I took a step back while he lunged for my leg. "...to kill each other."


    "Ajax, let him go."


    "I almost had him!"


    "No, you didn''t."


    "He''s a damn mind-reader. They''re all demons, they can move people and make you fall over nothing, a Sino bio-weapon I tell you."


    "If they''re Sinos, why are they here in Georgia? Why did everyone else in the diner know what they were and nobody flocked to your aid?"


    He scratched his head, still laying on the ground. "I...I don''t know. Nothing makes sense here, Celia."


    "I know. But this is where we are. If there''s something we need to learn, we should learn it, yes?"


    "You always want to learn things."


    She made a superior noise. "Guilty. Now, mister Chair? We''d be happy to answer any of your questions. If you''d like."


    "Some of your questions," Ajax added.


    I sighed again. As glad as I was this wasn''t shaping up like the kind of Exhuman event we''d just had, I could still tell this was going to be a long day. I really wasn''t in the mood for this kind of belligerent crap right now, and just wanted to be back in my bunk, now that the threat of losing someone seemed remote, I''d lost all motivation.


    But Cosette was right. They may still be Exhuman, with lost memories, or victims of one. We had to sort through the pieces and figure out what we could.


    "It''s Chariot, actually," I said. "Please, go ahead and tell me as much as you remember."


    "Well that''s a damn lot," he said.


    "Hmm, but you''ve never heard of XPCA or Exhumans? You don''t have memory loss?"


    "Look, bastard, you''re the mind-reader here, so why don''t you take what I''m thinking now--"


    "--what Ajax means is that no, neither of us have memory loss. I think...we''re just from a very different place from here. So please please be patient with my addled friend here, and if things don''t make much sense, well..."


    "They don''t make much sense to us either," he finished.


    "Then I suppose, tell us how you got here at least?"


    "Now that I can do, Nazi."


    "Ajax."


    "Right. Chair. Is that Private Chair, or Ensign Chair or what?"


    "Uh, technically I think we''re in a new rank. Invoked Sergeant or something?"


    "The name actually offended the existing Sergeants," Cosette said. "They''re coming up with something entirely new, just so nobody gets butthurt. But yes, Invoked Sergeant."


    "Catchy as hell," Ajax said.


    "Look, just shut up and talk," I said, sitting down next to the two of them. "We''ve got Exhumans to catch, okay?"

 132. 2251, Present Day. Haydn, GA. Athan.

    "So, it seems to me," Celia began, making that gesture, awkwardly touching her nose where glasses weren''t, "that you and we each think we''re from Earth?"


    "This is Earth," I agreed.


    "And this is the USA. And we''re in a small town in Georgia."


    "All true."


    "And the US absorbed Canada, there was a moon landing in the Apollo mission, Einstein discovered relativity, Cleopatra was bitten by an asp, and cavemen invented the wheel?"


    "Yes. Sounds like we''re all on the same page."


    "Except where you come from, here, you have Exhumans and the XPCA. And where we come from, there isn''t a USA anymore."


    "There isn''t a USA anymore?"


    "No," she said, looking sideways at Ajax. "Not anymore."


    "What happened to it, in this world of yours?"


    Ajax cut in. "The damn Sinos. You got them here too?"


    "No, not really," I answered. "About fifty years ago, they launched a surprise attack and the continental US was saved by Skyweb, and we bombed them right back into inventing the wheel."


    "Skyweb?" she asked.


    "Some top-secret military project from back then, a ''web'' of satellites and ground sites armed with laser weapons designed to protect the main population centers from an attack like China launched." I paused. "Do...you think that''s it? Your world just didn''t have Skyweb, and that''s it?"


    "We don''t have Exhumans either," she said.


    "And did you say laser weapons?" he asked. "Like Star Wars?"


    "Uh. I mean, Star Wars is kind of a joke, but yeah, like that?"


    He looked at me funny, and then scoffed. "I bet the spec ops and green berets and the other badasses had lasers too if they really wanted it."


    "Sure. Anyway, I''m having a hard time buying this still. You come from Earth, where we didn''t have Skyweb and got bombed out. How are you alive?"


    "We survived because we were tough," he said.


    "Because we were lucky, you mean," Celia corrected.


    He looked at her like she was speaking Chinese. "We survived three years after the bombs fell, we joined a survivor''s enclave and worked hard every day to keep people fed and alive."


    "And we also didn''t have a bomb fall on either of our heads."


    "Because some of us decided to enlist, and the army cared enough about us to have bunkers to protect their own."


    "And some of us were defense scientists, without whom, you''d probably be dead from rad sickness."


    "Okay guys, I got it." I interrupted. These two were like elementary school kids.


    "Somehow I doubt he did," she sniped at Ajax.


    "Well, we can''t all have PhD''s in theoretical physics. Theoretical, because after the bombs, the amount anyone cared was theoretical--"


    "It''s chemistry, and you know it, you dolt. And how many lives did you save with your little gun and big muscles?"


    "Okay, enough," I cut in. "You both survived 3 years after the end, and you met in a camp. What happened to bring you here?"


    "There were three of us," she said, and he froze.


    "Don''t you dare bring up Lettie in front of them," he whispered.


    "She''s dead, Ajax," she said coldly. "We can''t protect her memory."


    "Sometimes, Celia, you are such a cold bitch."


    I sighed. "Three of you. And then?"


    "We basically ran the camp," he said. "We were the ones getting things done. Celia and her brains, whenever she actually decided to use them to help people--"


    "Ajax and his muscles whenever something required no brains whatsoever, kept discipline and led salvage expeditions."


    They lapsed into silence.


    "And Lettie," I said.


    "Lettie kept everyone alive...in every sense other than physically," Celia said.


    "Lettie was the best of us." Ajax punched the ground. "This damn world. But the colony wouldn''t hold. Too many mouths and not enough supplies. Our only hope was to move, try to find anywhere we could find a life. Our last place had water, but no food. People need both."


    "So we set out. Lettie took us to city after city. We must have crossed a third of the US, and found nothing but ash and glass," Celia sighed.


    "I''m still shocked we made it as far as we did," he said.


    "Me too."


    I hesitated to ask. "Where...is everyone else?"


    He just looked at me, annoyed. "Need it spelled out?"


    "No. I''m sorry."


    "It seemed fitting that we three would be the last to survive, I guess," Celia said, touching the bridge of her nose again. "And we almost made it, too. Damn that girl."


    This time I didn''t ask. After a moment he continued. "We found a strange underground structure--"


    "--Doctor Ramanathan''s lab, must have been almost 200 years old."


    I''d heard that name before. It was a hard one to forget. "Ramanathan. Of the Ramanathan laws? But wait. You''ve never heard of Exhumans?"


    They looked confused at one another.


    "The Dr. Ramanathan in this world was a prominent scientist like 200 years ago as you said, but he studied Exhumans. Almost everything we know about them is based on his findings from back then."


    "Not in ours, he worked¡­" she began but stopped, looking like she''d been hit by a gunshot mentally.


    We all looked at her. Ajax waved a hand in front of her face which she meekly pawed away.


    "She okay?" I asked.


    "She does this sometimes. Calls it ''thinking'' but I think all the time and it never looks like this."


    "Shh," she said, and traced some shapes in the air with her fingers. I felt my heart racing as the gesture reminded me of myself, manipulating lightning, of the terrapath channelling spears of earth, or of Dipshit creating booby traps of blades of ice. I took a deep breath and pushed the anxiety down. These two were confused, but not Exhuman, I was sure of that.


    "So?" Jack said eventually.


    "Private channel please, Athan," Tem''s voice said a little funny in my earpiece. Which was weird because she was right behind me and I didn''t hear her say anything. I glanced backwards and saw nothing of course, but got the read she was confused as well...same way I seemed to know where she was. Somehow?


    "Uh, Tem?" I asked.


    "Sorry, private channel please, Chariot." she repeated. Her voice sounded a little off. And that was on top of the weirdness of her sudden bout of ventriloquism.


    I tapped my holo, putting me in a new channel. "Yes? Don''t want to talk in front of Cosette?" Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "No, silly," said a different voice in my ear. "Don''t want to talk in front of Cosette, Tem, or any of the others."


    "AEGIS?" I asked. "This is a military op, what the hell are you doing?" Jack and Ajax looked at me suddenly startled. "Sorry. Jack...please keep an eye on things here. I have a call."


    "So I hear," he said with a grin. "Hello to the lady from me."


    I walked a few feet away, out of earshot, having to shove Tem to keep her from trailing me. "AEGIS, this is a secure line on an active op. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get into for being on this?"


    "Meh," she replied. "Wanted to cut in. Got interested when I heard about Ramanathan."


    I gritted my teeth. How could she possibly be so blas¨¦ about this...if Cosette found out, being dead was probably the least of our worries.


    "Look, talk to me about it later. Call my holo like a normal person, okay?"


    I brought up my wrist again to switch back. "Ramanathan in his early years studied parallel worlds theory extensively," AEGIS rushed out.


    "Look, AEGIS, I don''t have time for another discussion on quantum immortality right now."


    "Parallel world? Like another Earth maybe?"


    "Oh," I said. "Oh."


    And then once more because I was feeling like how Celia looked. "Oh, Jesus."


    "Yeah. So if, in their world, Exhumans didn''t exist, he probably got a lot further in that research than he did here. What do you think maybe he got up to?"


    "AEGIS, don''t listen to what Past Athan told you, you''re the best. Thanks."


    "I hear Past Athan''s a jerk anyway. Look, I don''t keep an ear on all your ops, I was just worried about you after how sullen you''ve been, I promise."


    "I appreciate it," I said, and I did. I felt bad for bitching her out, as usual. "Going to head back, though."


    "Good luck. This is crazy interesting stuff so I''m going to stay on¡­"


    "Don''t get caught," I warned.


    "Wouldn''t dream of it," she said, and I switched back to the main channel. Now I just had to not let Cosette know that I''d been tipped off. I wandered back and sat down with the two of them again.


    "Any news from Celia?" I asked.


    "Shh," she said. Ajax shrugged. I couldn''t just spout it out right now or it would sound for sure like it related to my call, and if I brought it up later, it''d be weird that I only ''remembered'' later. I had to work it a little carefully.


    "I know I''ve heard that name before," I said, scratching my chin thoughtfully. Jack looked at me and raised an eyebrow.


    "Ramanathan? You just explained he was a prominent scientist," he said.


    "I meant...I know I''ve heard something else about him which might be relevant. It''s on the tip of my brain."


    Ajax and Jack were both staring at me like my phone call had turned me retarded. I tried to channel my inner Lia.


    "It was on a holo I saw once a long time ago?"


    "But...the Ramanathan laws aren''t public knowledge¡­" Cosette said.


    "Right. I must be confusing him with someone else," I said, starting to sweat.


    Cosette continued right on. "Chariot, how is that possible? How many other Exhuman-studying scientists with long-ass Indian names are there to confuse?" I hoped she was just giving me shit as usual, but it certainly felt like an interrogation. My mouth helpfully went dry.


    Abort! Abort! Abort!


    "Teotihuacan!" I shouted, and clapped my hands together hopefully approximating something like happiness. "That was it. That was the holo I saw."


    Jack seemed concerned. "That''s an ancient, ancient mesoamerican city. How is that relevant?"


    "Are all the sergeants in this world really this stupid?" Ajax asked. "Feels like I missed out on a few promotions by enlisting in the wrong world."


    I laughed in what was hopefully a dismissive and self-deprecating way. "Haha, yeah, I''m an idiot, that''s it. My bad." Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, that seemed like a good enough explanation for Ajax, Cosette, and Jack. Which was actually kind of offensive, if it wasn''t so convenient.


    Unfortunately, it was not good enough for Tem.


    "Chariot is not an idiot!" she shouted. "I''m s-s...confident that if you just try, you can remember what you meant. I know you can figure this out!"


    What an appalling vote of confidence. Thank God, pretty much everyone had written off Tem at this point, and Ajax was more confused where the voice came from than wanting to pursue it, so I was able to escape the conversation just by letting Tem hang there like an idiot.


    I''m sorry, Tem. Your humiliation on this day was because I couldn''t lie to save my life.


    "This doesn''t seem to be going anywhere," I said, of Celia, once the previous conversation had lingered long enough to die. "Maybe we should just go back?"


    "We still have no idea how they got here though," Cosette said. "If they''re refusing to answer any further, we can bring them in for interrogation."


    "I don''t think that''s necessary. They''re clearly harmless."


    "But whatever sent them here is a huge threat. Can you imagine if instead of a couple survivors, next time it''s a Sino army? Or hell, just a bomb?"


    "But it''s not Exhuman," I sighed. "So we have no operational authority."


    "Well, I''m here, so that''s enough operational authority for me," Cosette said, annoyed. "And you''re going to stop second-guessing everything I say or I''m going to order you to bend over and order Tower to kick your ass."


    "I copy. Over and out," I sighed. "She not talking still?"


    "She''s thinking," said Ajax.


    "Well, I got word from the brass that if you can''t finish this story on your own, we have to take you in, so get talking."


    "Not much left to tell," he said, laying back on the grassy field, seemingly unconcerned about the prospect of getting grass stains on his new clothes. "We went in Dr. Ramadan''s facility, Celia did some science stuff with the things inside, and told me to come into some machine. When I came to, I was in a clothing store, back in the US like it had all never happened."


    Hmm. Like it had never happened.


    "What year is it?" I asked.


    "What, are you stupid and stupid?"


    "Just answer the question." I was going to have some serious jaw issues if I kept grinding my teeth. We''d established there''s two entire Earths at play here, and the current year is throwing him off?


    "It''s 2218. Year of our Lord."


    Jack glanced at me funnily. It was just the right amount of pausing confusion but acceptance of a nonsensical situation to represent how I felt.


    "Here, it''s 2251. Whatever that machine was...it worked really slowly," I said.


    "What? That''s impossible."


    "Impossible? You''re basically an alien from another planet, and this is the impossible bit?"


    "No. You''re telling me...I spent thirty years in that thing?"


    "Or something," I said with a shrug.


    "Do I look like a sixty year old man!?" he shouted.


    "Shh," Celia said.


    "You''re right," Cosette sighed in my ear. "This isn''t getting us anywhere. He''s useless and she''s...whatever she is. Bring them both in."


    "Surely that''s not needed," I said. "Celia just needs to snap out of it." I stood up and advanced on her, meaning to shake her out of her reverie, but Ajax rolled between us, rising into a crouch.


    "Not one hand on her," he growled.


    "Look buddy, I don''t even care. Just shake her so we can finish this chat and you guys can go home. I''m trying to help you."


    "You are being so noisy!" Celia suddenly shouted. "I am thinking over here!"


    "Celia, can you think later, please?"


    "What?" she asked, distracted.


    "Talk now, think later. Please."


    "No, I''m...the machine. Ramanathan," she said, completely unhelpfully.


    "Hey. HEY. Focus!"


    I moved towards her but Ajax moved at me again, grabbing me around the waist before I could get out of his reach. He brought me to the ground and raised a fist threateningly, but before he could hit me, something screamed and he flew off me, landing on his back. Half a moment later, he grunted as something landed on him and flinched as scratches appeared on his face.


    "DON''T. YOU. TOUCH--" Tem screamed.


    "What the damn hell?" he got out, lashing out with a crack, and a moment later, Tem materialized in a freshly-flattened pile of grass. She spun and smeared the stream of blood from her nose onto the back of her hand, turning transparent as she prepared to lunge at him again.


    I snapped my fingers and a bolt of lightning discharged explosively from my fingertips into the ground, making everyone turn to look. In the moment they broke off, blades of lightning materialized in the air between the two.


    "Tem, stay down. Ajax...get it through your damn skull, I''m trying to help. If I wanted to hurt her¡­" One of the blades disappeared and rematerialized inches from her face. She blinked a couple times at the sudden distraction and then yelped, skittering backwards. "But I don''t, obviously. So knock. It. The. Fuck. Off."


    I was completely unprepared for him to turn around and instead charge at me again. Again, he caught me around the middle, and this time, didn''t hesitate to start pounding at me. I tried to focus on keeping track of the invisible Tem and keeping her out of the fight with my swords while I protected my face until Jack showed up.


    Impeccable timing as ever, he materialized for only a fraction of a second before he and Ajax were both gone.


    I sat back up and felt my newly split lip. Tem yelled inarticulate rage, and I did my best to keep her penned in, even as lasers began to pour from the sky to indiscriminately obliterate the field. With a sigh, I rose and walked to Celia. Better that she be inside my shield, too.


    "Can you finish your story now?" I asked.


    "Where''s Ajax?" she said, looking understandably completely freaked out now.


    "He''s safe. Jack just took him somewhere so he''d stop being an asshole. Look, we can just talk without him. I really just need you to finish your story so we can go, please?"


    To my surprise, she shook her head. "I''m not doing anything unless I know Ajax is safe."


    "I thought you were the reasonable one," I asked.


    "Reasonable?" she echoed bitterly. "He and I are possibly the last two people from our world. It''s not likely but it''s possible. Even if he''s a meat-headed idiot, do you think I could not care about him?"


    "Lady," I sighed.


    "Celia."


    "Celia, look, as I was explaining to your friend, all I want is your story and you guys can go. If I don''t get it, we have to take you in. I don''t want that."


    "Well, then you shouldn''t have taken Ajax away," she said, her eyes narrowed dangerously.


    "Jack, can you bring him back?" I asked.


    "Negative. The man''s gone completely berserk, I can''t get close without getting clocked."


    I contemplated having Tower take some of the fight out of him, but could only imagine how uncooperative Celia might become if we brought back her man in Tower''s arms. I sighed again. I almost missed dealing with good old fashioned Exhumans. You kill them, they kill you, none of this bullshit.


    "Okay, Cosette you win. We''re bringing them in. Jack, once he''s punched himself out a little, please bring in Tower to put him in restraints." I pulled cuffs off my belt and offered them to Celia. "Want to put them on yourself or are you going to make me?"


    "Why even bother? I thought you can read minds. Just take what you want and go away."


    I tossed the cuffs at her and she silently put them on.


    But you know, she had a point.

 133. 2251, Present Day. Blue Ridge Mountains. Saga.

    Had to admit, for being a complete prick, Blackett had pretty decent taste. And I couldn''t beat the fact that I was getting this vacation instead of being crucified for killing all the XPCA bosses.


    In fact, I should kill XPCA more often. Seemed like a win/win in my book.


    But what irked me, despite the pleasantness of this cosy mountain cabin and the intrepid company of the XPCA sharpshooters on a tower outside my range who made sure I stayed inside it, was that I felt like I was taking the fall for Athan again.


    He was like the cutie at the bar that I couldn''t stop buying drinks for, even though I knew he''d never take me home. Every time I worked myself up to start cracking skulls and getting some much-deserved vengeance against the stupid mouth-breathers of this planet, he rolled in and patted my head and told me to be good.


    And then I did. It was hard to have much opinion of myself after doing that two or three times. I just wanted to effect a little indiscriminate genocide, was that really such a crime?


    Blackett had even had every ''net-enabled device in the house taken out. I know the XPCA was going through a rash of cyber attacks, but he had to be truly nuts if he thought I was behind any of it. Why would I learn to use a computer when I could reprogram people?


    The answer was obvious. Because I was bored, and there were at least a hundred years of holos to binge-watch, and I had none of them. I''d spent most of my time inventing new games like ''make a bird drink a lot and don''t let it pee, and then send it flying over the XPCA watchtower and hope it poops on one of them''. Not a catchy name, but they couldn''t all be Apotheosis.


    I also spent a lot of time in the shower. I hadn''t had a hot shower in years. Years and years and years and years and years. And it was the most wonderfully self-indulgent thing, I cranked the water up so hot it almost burned me and spent so long in there, I came out looking like...well...like myself. Apparently I didn''t wrinkle up like a prune like humans did.


    I tried drinking water too. Threw it all up. Nowhere in my body for it to go. Kind of made me terrified for what the state of the rest of my organs must look like. I accidentally choked myself succeeding at inhaling some of the stuff, so I had that going for me at least. Nice to know if I ever got dumped in the bottom of the ocean, I''d spend the whole time drowning over and over.


    I was also tired a lot. Not sleepy tired, but...I hadn''t exactly lived an active lifestyle, and my body showed it. It seemed like my powers wouldn''t let me go below a healthy level of musculature and fat, but whoever set those parameters had a sick definition of healthy. There were mirrors here, and I spent a lot of time just looking at myself, usually before washing all the grossness of my own body off me with a shower. I guess I could see why Athan didn''t really see me as a girl, depressing though that thought was.


    I was a lanky, spindly mess, with hands like spiders and feet like boats. My hair was flat and straight, and my boobs, thank God, were bigger than Athan''s, but only just.


    I kinda regretted having the mirror. It was interesting to only see myself the way others saw me. Athan might have gotten most of the general strokes right, but his estimation of my breasts and the softness of my lips were way off, especially considering how much time he spent looking at them. I''m pretty sure Karu honestly believed I had red eyes and possibly even horns, and Lia...well, she was a sweet kid. She didn''t see me as I was at all. In a weird way, her view of me was the most right, but also the most wrong.


    And then there was the cold, unfeeling glass, which probably had an identical opinion of me as AEGIS; it thought nothing of me at all.


    I couldn''t really complain. I could move, I could stretch. I could undress and shower and lay around naked all day or lay on my front-side or whatever I wanted really. It was a huge step up from being locked in my coffin or sarcophagus or whatever Athan had called it.


    So I was completely underdressed and just laying on the floor running my fingers over the thick carpet just to feel it with my own senses when I sensed them outside, before I even heard the roar of the engine. Faster than I think I''d ever moved, I bolted up the stairs on all fours, counting the minds entering my presence.


    Many I recognized from our little encounter in the black tower. Athan, of course, all of his Exhuman friends, minus the very interesting little girl, his boss and two others I didn''t know. And some XPCA schmuck driving who didn''t matter in the least.


    "''Sup," I announced mentally, all cool and casual like, even as I was completely out of breath, and scouring the upper floor for where I''d left my clothes. Bathroom? In the bed? Downstairs?


    [Uh, what about clothes?] Athan asked.


    "I didn''t say anything about clothes," I replied, and grabbed a little better hold of my mind, while tearing the covers off the bed. I''d only been here something like a week, I guess...days were kind of a weird concept if you never slept or went outside...and were accustomed to deliberately ignoring the passage of time. So, a week, and I''d already gotten lazy enough that I''d lost my damn clothes.


    [Damn clothes? Did you lose something, Saga?]


    [Or she''s darning her clothes?] The voice belonged to the tall smiling one.


    [She''s not anywhere near that domestic. Saga, if you need new clothes...well, I''m the wrong guy to ask, but Lia and AEGIS are still in town through today.]


    "Nope! Everything''s fine!" They all cringed in unison and then all shouted at me at once, telling me to stop yelling.


    Sunbathing on the deck? I thought maybe Athan might like it if I were a little less pale, but didn''t last under the withering gaze of the XPCA snipers. Still...might be out there?


    "So, what brings you here?" I asked conversationally, wheezing across the house.


    [Our two new friends here have an interesting story they don''t really want to share,] Athan''s boss answered. Cosette, apparently. [We''d like to know if they''re lying, crazy, or just have a story worse than either of those.]


    "Well, you don''t need to come here for that, I can check them out from here." I slammed the outside door shut and ran my fingers through my hair. Wasn''t there either. Maybe I should just kill them all to salvage my modesty.


    [I also thought it''d be nice to see you...didn''t...quite end on the best note last time,] Athan said.


    Which of course is exactly what I wanted, if only I weren''t busy fucking it all up.


    I wished I could dive into my own brain and rifle through my memories as easily as I did with everyone else''s. Stupid useless powers.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    I snapped my fingers, remembering.


    [Bathroom?] Athan asked.


    [Are her thoughts normally this weird?] Tower asked.


    "You guys just shut the hell up, please," I said, climbing the stairs again. My legs were about at their limit, and I slammed into the wall pathetically a couple times on my way up. They were close now, almost ready to pull into the parking outside.


    Right in the first place I''d checked, on the hook on the back of the door, it hung. I''d put it up to air out during my shower. I tore it down and jammed one of my uncooperative legs through. Stupid fat boat feet.


    The car parked, and I could feel all of them relieved their long trip was over. Not just yet, you dicks! Sit in the car for a minute or something.


    "Bring me anything to eat?" I joked.


    [Sorry but no, we''re on duty and all that.]


    "Could you uh, check the back just to make sure there''s no crumbs or packs of gum rolling around back there?"


    I got my other leg in and slipped my arms through. Err, one of my arms through. Where the heck was the other sleeve?


    [Yeah not likely, nobody eats in my car,] Cosette mused as they approached the house. The other sleeve was inside out. This was a catastrophe. My first arm was stuck uselessly out of reach, and I had to pull it out of its sleeve to get the fabric to loosen up enough so I could turn the second sleeve right-side out.


    But as I did, I saw something that made my breath catch in my throat.


    These hands...these stupid, huge, gangly hands...as I tried to pull my arm through, I was turning the first sleeve inside out as well, doubling the number of inside-out sleeves I had to fix.


    Was there no justice in this universe?


    The door opened downstairs. They walked in and immediately split up like a search party. It would be moments before someone made it upstairs, and then...my position in the bathroom would be compromised. I could hear Athan''s chiding already. But you don''t pee, Saga. What were you doing in there?


    Frantically I fixed the sleeves and threw them on. Athan was looking for me. [Saga? Are you up here?]


    "I''m just uh," I struggled with the zipper. It had been catching ever since he ripped it off of me with his stupid magnetic trick. I tore at it, just pissed at how out of breath I was from running around and fighting my own damn clothes.


    The zipper lurched upwards, but even as it did, I knew I''d pulled too hard. It had skipped teeth and left an open gap, right at my thigh. I looked down, flabbergasted, and then at the mirror. Maybe they wouldn''t notice.


    Yeah, right. My skin was brighter than a flashlight and my outfit was dark blue. Helpfully, that line, half of that V, the crease between the legs and hips, was right freaking there, saying, hey, look at how indecent this patch of skin is.


    Murder was definitely looking like the only option.


    Athan peeked his head in each door as he went, finally standing right outside the bathroom. I stood there, my zipper still open, flashing my inner thigh gap and my whole chest hanging out, panting, sweating...metaphorically...and just...waiting for everything else to go wrong, for Athan to see me such a mess, for his friends to all show up and ruin even the intimacy this fucking ruined moment might still have.


    He reached for the doorknob.


    "Athan DON''T!" I yelled, feeling my throat clamp up in protest.


    It was too late, his hand was on the knob, twisting it as it fell away. The knob rotated ever so slightly, the world seemed to move by in moments. The door creaked open a fraction of an inch.


    "Hmm?" he asked. "Oh. This is the bathroom, I''m sorry," he said, and the door closed again. "Let me know when you''re done," I heard him call, both in my head and in his voice.


    I couldn''t stand it. Literally, I fell on the floor with a pathetic ''whump'', because I wasn''t even heavy enough for that to be satisfying. My shaking legs, my racing heart, my stupid overreacting brain. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.


    The door opened. "Were you calling for me?" he said. "You''re shouting ''stupid'' at--"


    He froze, and through his eyes I saw the pale skin of my chest and thigh, and the red of my face and neck.


    I peeked inside of his mind and immediately regretted it.


    A few minutes later, we were both downstairs with the rest of the party after he helped me with my zipper, and I did everything in my power to keep from blasting the whole house with embarrassment. Really not a good look for an alleged, badass like me, and in front of the XPCA as well. I''d have to leave no witnesses.


    But he''d helped me without complaint, his hands sure and strong, and he kept everything so clinical and ethical...at least outside of his head...I couldn''t even get too worked up. I mean, if he''d accidentally grazed my skin a few more times, I wouldn''t have minded.


    I shook the thoughts off. This was the insidious poison which was Athan Ashton. How I could spend all day, every day, lazing about, dreaming and scheming, and then the second he showed up in my life again, I went to pieces? It was the damn XPCA conference room all over again, but with a dissatisfying lack of murder.


    A man and a woman were in restraints, he had an adhesive over his mouth. Otherwise, they seemed quite at ease. I''d have time to probe their thoughts when everyone asked me to, and instead surreptitiously went around the group, picking up what tidbits I could unnoticed.


    "It was a long trip. He wouldn''t shut up," Athan helpfully explained.


    I was more interested in the invisible girl right behind Athan, whom I could only see by her mind. Sort of the opposite of Blackett. We''d met once before...and she was almost an entirely different person now. I trawled her thoughts, seeing exactly what had brought about these changes.


    I was mildly impressed. Not with her, she was complete trash, but with the extent she worshipped Athan. One of the hardest crushes I''d ever seen, and I''d seen quite a few...people tended to get quite pent-up in an isolated military base. That seemed to be in her personality...she''d been clinging to Blackett before, and he basically just ignored the shit out of her, so when she started growing on Athan, and he not only gave her the time of day, but also saved her life a couple times? Oof, if he could see inside her head. Girl was a freak.


    Which was a problem, of course, because he was mine. I could just wipe out those feelings with a little work--


    "Hey." I snapped to face Athan. "I see that look on your face."


    "What look?" I said, mentally, innocently.


    "That''s the same look you''ve had when you did brain surgery on me and on Lia."


    "On Lia?" When she''d gotten drunk and cracked her head getting out of the bath, like a fucking idiot?


    "After we rescued you. You gave her your memories. I don''t know what you''re doing now, but stop it. Nobody here needs brain surgery."


    Oh, if only you knew, buddy. Almost everyone here was screaming for it. How''d you even find such a motley crew of mental misfits?


    I shrugged. "Let me just do one thing real quick, then."


    "Saga, no--"


    But I reached out and tapped him on the forehead. His resistance vanished as his eyes dilated, and he fell freely for a moment before he came to and caught himself.


    "Saga!" he shouted, standing, livid. "What the fuck, man?"


    "If you want my help with these two, I can''t concentrate with you fixated on Karu like that," I lied.


    "Bullshit. That''s completely out of line. I told you before, when you did that with the terrapath, I don''t want you dulling every trauma which goes through my mind! What if I wanted to feel that pain, Saga? What if Karu is important enough to me that if hurting is the only way I can be connected to her, I''d take it a thousand times?"


    "If you just want to hurt, I can arrange that," Cosette said, stepping in. "You two just knock off whatever the hell you have going on and focus on the mission, please? I knew trusting one of your girls was a mistake, Chariot."


    "Apparently," he said, and sat down, further from me than before.


    "Chill, Jesus," I said, but he was having none of it. "I was just helping."


    He was going to argue, but we both remembered those words and he shut his mouth. His eyes continued to smolder perilously when he glanced at me.


    "Let''s just get to it," he said.


    I agreed, and the two froze in place as my mind washed over them.

 134. 2251, Present Day. Blue Ridge Mountains. Athan.

    As Saga started her work, I had to excuse myself to take a walk around the house. I couldn''t believe she''d done that to me.


    I felt so full of anger, more pissed at her than I''d ever been, more pissed at anyone than I''d ever been, maybe. Like my emotions were a soft clay bowl, and she''d just scooped a fistful of clay from the bottom, and now everything was just deeper and stronger than I''d felt before.


    It felt¡­


    I leaned against the outside of the house, forcing myself to breath deep and even, and holding my chest like that would slow my pounding heart.


    It felt fantastic. I felt like there was a weight I''d been holding up with my heart, and it was gone. My anger at Saga was so pure, so undiluted by apathy or dispassion or tainted by self-hate. She''d wronged me, and I was mad about it.


    I was happy about it, but also mad about that too. Even that didn''t matter. It was like my heart had inhaled a huge hit of menthol after being congested for weeks. I felt so free, so light.


    So angry! I revelled in it. I thought of all the stupid mean things Saga had ever said to me, all the belittling and snide lines she''d fed me, her selfish sabotages of my life, and really got myself lathered until I was ready to punch someone. And I really did. I wanted to punch her right in her smug, Sino face.


    I jumped and whooped. I hadn''t felt like doing anything. I wanted to punch her! What an incredible feeling. It was born of a massive betrayal, and everything I was feeling now was artificial, I knew that. But I was still feeling it, this was my anger, pure white-hot and sublime.


    Experimentally, I thought of Karu. Nothing. I hoped she did well. I understood why she thought we didn''t work, and given those misgivings, it was only natural she''d side with her own father instead of me. I missed having her around to talk with and hang out with.


    And that was it! I wasn''t desperately clinging at the hope every time my holo got a notification that it was her, that somehow she''d wind up on the mission with us, or that she''d break down and come crawling back, although I had to admit that last one sounded amusing.


    Saga had the cure for the common lovesick, and she''d forced it on me. It was inexcusable, and it was everything I never knew I wanted.


    She was talking to them inside, about the situation. I wanted to stop and listen, but wanted to hold onto this feeling longer. I jogged around the house, erecting walls of anger in my mind to shut her out, visualizing the concept of a solid wall between us. As I did, I felt her voice diminish in my head, and a faint sensation of panic, of surprise, of worry, from her.


    That''s right, bitch. You give me these weapons, you''d best be ready when I use them. Almost immediately, my anger turned to sadistic satisfaction at punishing her for fucking around in my head.


    And then the walls crumbled instantly, and she was back. Whatever. I had feeling back in my heart, I would get mad or happy or sad as the situation took me, instead of just blah, and that was all I cared about. I was happy to be able to be happy, my anger spent out already on shoving her out.


    I went back in and dropped myself on the couch next to her enough so that she bounced slightly in the air, with an involuntary ''whoop''. She looked at me, perplexed.


    "You are an awful person," I informed her with a grin.


    [Everybody already knows that,] she grinned back.


    "Ladies, the prisoners, if you please?" Cosette cut in.


    [Right. As I was saying...they''re not lying, and they have a lifetime of memories which...sound like what you said. It''s actually really interesting.]


    "Please stop! Why!?" Celia screamed at us.


    [You know exactly why, it''s right here in your head, little human,] Saga said with magnificent malevolence. [They asked nicely, a lot, and you said no. Bet you wish you knew a little more about Exhumans before deciding to challenge them, hmm? (A bet I know I''d win¡­)]


    "I''m sorry! Stop going through my mind! Those thoughts...those memories...they''re mine!"


    I felt a little guilty as I swept Ajax''s legs almost as soon as he jumped to his feet. He really needed to telegraph his attacks less. He face-first to the floor with a crack, his hands uselessly bound behind him. Celia gasped and recoiled.


    [Nice,] Saga commented.


    "This guy just will not take no for an answer," I said, frustrated.


    [He reminds me of someone I know. Constantly doing stupid things for a girl he loves? Ring any bells?]


    "He...he doesn''t!" Celia shook her head and glared at Saga as she shuffled to his side. His nose was bleeding.


    "I don''t¡­" Jack interceded and hesitated. "I don''t believe spilling their private secrets is necessary to this mission. It would only serve to increase their hostility and potentially ruin an innocent relationship."


    "Yeah, this is pretty fucked up," Tower succinctly put it.


    "Welcome to any situation where you introduce Saga," I added.


    "Be that as it may, we need their intel. Saga, how did they get here?" Cosette pushed.


    [Like they told you, they found a lab. Accidentally tripped security, got chased down to the basement, their friend died--]


    Both of them stiffened at Lettie''s mention.


    [--they were trapped, and uh. Hmm, interesting.]


    "What?" Cosette was practically hanging off the edge of her seat.


    [They found a cloning lab and produced copies of themselves for sustenance. They did nothing but eat cannibal babies and fuck each other for a week.]


    "What?" said everyone.


    [She''s pregnant and when the baby comes, they''re going to eat it too.]


    "Saga, you are seriously, seriously sick in the head," I said.


    [Haha, yeah.] She smiled at me, the fact that such a thought came out of something so cheery made it even more disturbing. [They found some machine made by Ramanathan. I don''t know too much about it because even Celia doesn''t. She was able to limp her way through the controls and get it turned on, and knew it was a transporter of some kind, but didn''t ever imagine when it''d take her. She was just running from killer robots.]


    "Is there any possibility the machine is still active?"


    [A hundred percent, I''d say. Anything which wanders in there will wind up here.]


    "In the same clothing store?"


    [I wouldn''t know, Celia doesn''t.]


    "And Ajax has nothing to contribute?"


    [That is almost exactly how I would phrase it.]


    "So," Tower said. "There''s a bunch of angry killer robots which could fly through into our world anytime, and that''s about it?"


    "Does seem like that''s about it," Cosette agreed. "No Exhumans in their world, if any other humans find their way through, they''re welcome to live in a less crappy world. Does their world have any other major threats?"


    [Aside from the dinosaurs?]


    "Be serious, or I will shoot you."


    [Oh no! A threat!]


    "Seriously, Saga?" I asked, cutting between the two girls.


    [Seriously, there''s nothing. Unless you''re afraid of glass and ash and dust, their world is barren. It''s actually really sort of tragic to relive. I''d feel bad for these two, if they weren''t just human.]


    "Well, forgive us for being born in the wrong Earth," Celia spat. Ajax also glared at us in contempt, his nosebleed running over the adhesive gag.


    "They are seriously going to defend their shitty nuked-out Earth?" I asked, surprised.


    [It''s their home, Athan.]


    "It''s one big freaking crater, from what I hear."


    [And compared to this world, there''s probably another Earth out there which makes this one look like what comes out after a week of constipation. Does that make you hate this world at all?]


    "I''ve always thought this world seemed unfair and crappy, ever since I got exiled."


    [What a very tactful avoiding answering the question.]


    "I answered!"


    "I think we''ve got what we need," Cosette said, tapping away on her holo. "Let''s pack it up boys and girls. Feels like a huge waste of time coming out here just for Saga, but I guess we got what we needed, and we''re sure it''s accurate."


    She rose and stretched, and then bent over me on the couch, putting her face a few inches from mine. "We are sure it''s accurate, right?"


    "Why are you asking me instead of Saga?" I said.


    "Because she responds to me with hostility, obviously."This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    [Vigorous hostility. One of those cute personality quirks.]


    "There is so little cute or vigorous about you," Cosette muttered, and turned back to me. "So? Is this report accurate?"


    "As...as far as I could tell?"


    She stood back up and gave me a satisfied smile. "Good enough for me! Let''s get out of this psychic madhouse. I''ll have the driver drop us off and then take them to the airbase to send them home. Or...actually...wherever they want to go, I guess. Georgia wasn''t exactly home, was it?" She and the others collected their things and the prisoners and began the slow migration for the door.


    I watched Saga watching them leave with a satisfied smirk, which fell off her face when she saw me looking at her.


    [What?]


    "Cosette, sir, would it be possible to spend a couple of days up here?"


    "Do whatever the hell you want, like I said, Chariot. But if she fucks up your head and you''re not ready for service, we''ll have her chained up and thrown in a volcano." She and Saga locked eyes dangerously. "Using robots."


    [I heard you, bitch. Weren''t you leaving?]


    "Hmph!" Cosette snapped around with military precision on her heel and strode out the door past a somewhat-bewildered looking Tower. As they piled in the van, Saga spoke again.


    [Aren''t you forgetting someone?]


    They looked around. Tem was gone. I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses and couldn''t find her either.


    [Under the bed upstairs.]


    "No!" I heard her scream from the upper floor. "I''m not leaving him!"


    [That girl is going to be nothing but trouble, you realize.]


    "I already realize."


    Cosette stepped back inside. "Yeah, you''re on babysitting duty, Chariot. Consider this an order. I''ll have someone pick you up in a couple days if you don''t call before, and there had better be two living XPCA Exhumans in this house when I do, understand?"


    [I can just--]


    "It''s fine, Saga, we can deal with her."


    Saga and I sat for long minutes as the rumbling of the van faded into the distance. Even long after I estimated it was gone, she remained silent and sullen.


    Abruptly she turned on me with a smile. "Well, they''re gone!" she said in her breathy whisper of a voice. "Shall we...d-d-do...it?"


    I glared at her.


    "I was only kidding," she said, with a sigh.


    "You knew I''d be mad at you," I said.


    "I knew."


    "And you did it anyway."


    "Yeah." She absently ran her fingers over the fabric of the couch.


    "Why?"


    She paused for a moment and then slowly, gently, rolled off the couch onto the floor, looking up at me between the coffee table and couch, her vision of me half-obscured by my leg. Her hands grabbed thick handfuls of the carpet under her.


    "I didn''t care if you were mad. You were hurting too much."


    "Hurting? Me? Saga, I had a little heartbreak. It sucked, but I was still showering every morning. I might have wished I could make it all go away, but if you gave me emotional indices like AEGIS had, I wouldn''t ever have turned them off. Being miserable is sometimes part of life."


    "I don''t like you being miserable."


    "You must have lived with dozens or hundreds of deaths and betrayals, people with pain in their hearts a hundred times mine. I was torn up about Mage, and about Karu but¡­"


    "It doesn''t work like that," she whispered, and curled up sideways, her back against my feet.


    "What doesn''t? Just because you like me more than some XPCA guy doesn''t mean my suffering is worth any more than his."


    "I learned...I can''t shut it out, Athan."


    "Shut what out?"


    "People close to me. People I open my heart up to. You. Lia. I can''t just ignore what you''re feeling when you''re that close to me." She seemed to clench into an even smaller ball. "Do you remember...when we fought...when you saved me?"


    "Hard to forget that kind of experience."


    "I told you, I felt everything you did when I killed you. I lied. I can shut out most of it if I try, just like I can read a thousand times deeper if I try. If I couldn''t, I never would have been able to do that to you."


    I waited, silent, remembering those events. I felt she was, too.


    "Everything you feel, I feel now, too. Only it''s worse, because it''s a two-way street. Either I keep complete control over everything, or both of us spiral off into despair. When you...found me upstairs, I was so happy to see you, until I looked in your head, and then I couldn''t get it out. Couldn''t stand the pain, and I don''t even love Karu, and my heart was breaking for her."


    "You...hid it really well."


    "Well, I had a lot of...embarrassment too. Helping cover my other feelings. I was trying to keep you from seeing it."


    "But I''m still mad."


    "Yeah, I know. I can accept that, if it means you''re not suffering anymore."


    I heard a noise behind me and started, almost kicking Saga as I rose. There was a noise like ''glech'' from the landing on the stairs, and then Tem materialized as she fell face-first on the landing.


    "Saga!" I shouted, turning on her.


    [Relax, she''s just asleep. Creepy little troll. I heard the boss lady.]


    I went to check on Tem anyway. She''d smacked her face on the wood stairs after her acute narcolepsy and was the second victim of a nosebleed in the house today. I sort of wondered if she''d drown if I left her there, or if Saga even cared. I brought her down and put her on her side on the couch, wadded a tissue up her nose, and sat opposite Saga now in an uncomfortable recliner.


    "Well, now we''re alone¡­" she mused again.


    "Look, just...stop."


    To my surprise, she did. I took out my earpiece and turned it off, remembering that not only the XPCA but also AEGIS were probably eavesdropping.


    "If you''re just mad at me, why did you even want to stay?" she asked, curling around so she was facing away from me again.


    "Because you''re my good friend, Saga, and I heard from AEGIS that you weren''t doing so hot."


    [Nothing chucking a few XPCA fatcats to their hilarious screaming deaths couldn''t fix.]


    "Yeah, that''s bullshit too, and I know it. Also you just explained how in your head I am, and you still expect me to believe that?"


    She sighed. [I might have liked you better when I could, Athan.]


    "Look, I''m no expert, but I don''t think that''s how relationships work. You spend time with someone, it''s only natural you begin to open up to each other more, know each other better, can tell when they''re lying, all that stuff. Ours is just...a little more literal."


    [Yeah, except it used to be only I could tell all that stuff about you. Sucks having it turned around. Now you have the psychic powers AND the lightning. Un. Fair.]


    "Life is unfair, I hear," I said, and leaned back in the recliner. This part of the house had really high ceilings with wooden beams criss-crossing up there, and thick metal plates with bolts larger than my fingers.


    [...I don''t really care about the power disparity,] she confessed. [It just sucks that we get closer but never close enough.]


    "Maybe if you weren''t wiping out my thoughts and knocking my friends unconscious when they inconvenienced you, we might?"


    [Empty lies, Athan. Just empty lies. I''ve got no chance with you and I know it.]


    "That''s not true!" I said sitting back up. "I really do think you are a great person!"


    She rolled over and looked at me sideways over her shoulder. [You can''t lie to me, Athan. I don''t know why you feel the need to string me along, maybe it''s convenient to keep me from going off the chain, maybe you just want to feel wanted, but I hate it, you know.]


    "I''m not stringing you along," I argued. I wasn''t. That would be really shitty of me to do.


    [Then can you give me any example of anything I could do where we would fall in love and be happy together? Give me a single scenario you could actually see unfolding. Go ahead, I''ll wait.]


    "If Karu weren''t just in the scene, and I didn''t feel like you''d be directly benefiting from fucking with my head, how do you know I wouldn''t ask you out right now?"


    [Because if Karu weren''t in the picture, AEGIS would have done so yesterday, and you would have said yes.]


    "She was just visiting, it was a fluke. I still might have."


    In one motion, she rolled upright onto her knees and slammed a palm down on the coffee table. [Would you, Athan? Would you really?]


    "W-why not?"


    [Oh, that''s what every girl wants to hear. Why not date me, I guess. Sure, good enough I suppose!]


    "Saga, stop yelling."


    She massaged her temples. [I don''t know how else to get this through to you. I know you better than you do. There''s no universe in which you''d ever just sidle up and ask me out.]


    "If you know me so well, why do you keep being so wrong about me, huh?"


    I felt myself angry all over again. Not just for her messing with my head earlier, but for her damn condescending arrogance. She saw what everyone was thinking, she held all the cards, the world was just a boring thing she was disconnected from, only to be bothered with when it could amuse her.


    Well that world was my life. Those pawns she watched slide around were my friends. That pain in my heart for Karu, that was mine too.


    She laughed quietly, rolling back towards the couch, her shoulders shaking softly until I could almost mistake it for crying, if not for the disbelieving, booming laughter in my head.


    [Yeah, maybe I''ve been wrong once or twice, I''m happy to admit that, but you''re just an idiot if you think you''d ever do that. And you''re just sitting there thinking, yeah, you actually would. It''s like you''ve never even met yourself, Athan. Sometimes you''re such a little chickenshit, I''m embarrassed for you, and you think you''re going to someday wake up with the stones to walk up to me, not just one of the strongest Exhumans ever, or a murderer who is exactly the opposite of all your bullshit ideas, but also your good friend and confidant, who knows all your secrets and your tragic embarrassments and be willing to put that all on the line to have a real shot at a real relationship with me?]


    She was standing now, mentally screaming at me so loud it hurt. [Me, whom you turn to for romantic advice when you fuck up with those other girls? Of course you''d be willing to jump into that without having me around as a safety net to save you from your own stupid self. Of course, you''re just lining up to go out with the lanky, ugly, frail goddamn skeleton, who is also Chinese, and yes, I still pick that up every time you see me. You''re skipping right past the crowds of girls swarming all over your dick just so you can say hi to me. Makes perfect fucking sense. I''m shocked you haven''t done it already.]


    She sat down next to Tem''s legs on the couch. Her outraged explosion had dissolved into a self-pitying, self-loathing rant. From Tem''s face, I could see that even she was picking up the waves of misery and anguish pouring from Saga right now.


    "Saga...I never said any of that," I stood up and walked across the room, putting my hand on hers.


    She slapped my hand away and scowled at me, her eyebrows crossed. [Don''t you touch me! You don''t have to say something to mean it, Athan. I''ve always known you were a lost cause. I just...never wanted to face it before. And now you''re going to take even that from me.] She crossed her arms and avoided my eyes. She looked like she wanted to cry but refused to. [Just...just pick up your stalker and go. Leave me alone.]


    "Saga--"


    [I said leave me alone!] she snapped, and I winced again. [It''s better for everybody, don''t you get that?]


    "Is it better for you?"


    [I''m part of everybody, I assume, unless I lost that, too.]


    I shook my head. She was wrong. She was right about a lot of things, I still definitely had my misgivings about her, and for good reason, but of all the things Saga could see clearly in this world, I think she herself was the one thing she couldn''t. Even as I stood there, next to her, I felt a familiar sensation, one I''d only experienced recently.


    Heartbreak. Her heart was breaking in front of me, and all I could do was watch.


    No. Not again, not her too. Fuck that. I knew somehow that if I left her now, like this, things between us would never be the same. I couldn''t take that. I couldn''t let that happen, if there was anything I could do, anything at all.


    I fell forward onto her, wrapping my arms around her as we fell into the couch atop Tem.


    [Athan! Wha¡­?] She had a moment of panic where she thought I''d been hurt, and I felt a million impossible scenarios flash through her brain, of strokes, or aneurysms, or the snipers outside. She had only a fraction of a second to panic about that loss before she found reality again, that I was on top of her holding her in my arms.


    [(What are...what are...what are you¡­)] her mind spun in circles.


    "Saga," I whispered. "I''m sorry for everything, how I''ve treated you. I''ve been selfish and unfair, and you''ve always been there for me, in your own way."


    [(What is he saying? I don''t...don''t¡­)] I could feel her panting under me, feel the tears I''d startled from her eyes with the force of our impact.


    "But you''re wrong about me, and even more, you''re wrong about yourself. So...would you...would you¡­"


    She turned slightly and looked straight into my eyes. Hers were filled with fear, but understanding, but incomprehension. She breathed like a startled doe, shallow and fast, but she was nodding at me, in my thoughts before I had even found the words. Agreeing before I could even get it out. Somehow that made it easier.


    "...would you go out with me?"


    "Of...of course!" she squeaked, and wrapped her arms around me.

 135. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. AEGIS.

    I''d had my senses on ''human'' mode for almost a week now, but the capacity to turn them up in case of an emergency was still there. To keep myself from using them constantly, I''d given them the same treatment as my built-in ''net hookup. While they were on, I felt continuous unease.


    But it wasn''t that which was making my stomach do flips in my chest right now, even though I had my hearing cranked as high as it could possibly go. Athan had cut his comms, but only a few feet away, Tem''s comms were still broadcasting.


    I could only hear his half of the conversation, and even with my senses turned all the way up, the comms were only sensitive enough to pick up most of his words.


    I sat, paralyzed, unable to turn away as their conversation spiraled up in intensity. Feelings, yelling, Athan''s voice sounded so choked with emotion as he argued with her, told her she was wrong about herself, how, in not so few words, he loved her.


    I had to do something. I had to...I had drones in an XPCA facility in the same state. I could just...call his mobile, ruin the mood. I had to do something, and I had to do it now.


    But I couldn''t. I only sat there and listened in numb horror as the one-sided half-understood conversation became more intense and intimate.


    Why couldn''t I do a thing? Why was I allowing this to happen?


    Maybe because...I could almost pretend he was talking to me.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    There was a thump, and then everything he said was much closer to the comms, much clearer. It was like the two of them were right next to me, him pouring out his feelings to her while I could only sit and watch, as paralyzed and mute as Tem.


    "I''m sorry for everything," he said.


    No.


    "I''ve been selfish and unfair."


    No.


    "You''ve always been there for me, in your own way."


    No. Please no.


    "But you''re wrong about me."


    God, please no. Please no. Stop now, Athan. Please.


    "And even more, you''re wrong about yourself."


    Athan, I am begging you, from the bottom of my heart. Don''t say another word. Don''t do this. Don''t make me listen to this. Please, please, please.


    "So...would you..."


    Chicken out. Stop now. Give up, and just walk away. Anything, please. Athan, God, anyone, please.


    "...go out with me?"


    "Of...of course!" She said, only barely audible.


    And my heart stopped in my chest.


    A moment and hours later, Lia was shaking me back to awakeness. She was crying. She''d plugged the emergency boot driver I''d given her into my cables.


    I''d crashed. My emotional response was beyond the operational parameters of what this body could process, what I could process, what any human could process. Even booting up with my emotional indices throttled down in debug mode, I could still feel the enormity of the hole in me gnawing at me.


    I looked at Lia. She was speaking to me, crying, holding me, banging her small fists impotently on me, flailing, unable to sit still or be calm. But I couldn''t focus on her words enough to hear them. All of me was far away from here right now, in tiny pieces, in an Exhuman''s hands.

 136. 2251, Present Day. Blue Ridge Mountains. Athan.

    I didn''t have a plan. I hadn''t really been expecting to do this, and before even a single day had passed, the inadequacies of my planning were already becoming obvious.


    Staying here a couple days in a house with no food in it was going to be an issue.


    I had my holo up, looking for anything nearby, before resorting to my months of experience in scavenge, fishing, and hunting. It looked like there was a little grouping of hotels about an hour from here which had a couple places to eat. Nothing like, intended to be taken home and eaten days later, but I guess I could always just order a dozen hamburgers, and pretend we were having the weirdest, worst cabin party ever.


    I was already starving, which was crazy, because I''d eaten this morning. Out in the wild, I was lucky if I got a solid meal every day, and now my body was bitching that it didn''t get at least two. How fast the damn thing turned on me. I didn''t want Saga just keeping Tem brain-dead the whole time either, so I let her up as well and confirmed that she was also hungry.


    And just like that, I was out of the house, Tem on my heels, outside of Saga''s zone, and I could finally process what had just happened in my own head without interference or hurting her.


    I hadn''t planned for this either. I''d just acted impulsively and stupidly, seeing her breaking down, and feeling like I had to do whatever I could. Images of Lia, AEGIS, and Karu flashed through my head, each expressing their own particular form of disgust at what I''d just done, and the moronic reason why I''d done it.


    It wasn''t that I didn''t want to be dating Saga, aside from the fact I''d been single for like, three days now, though her mental manipulation made it feel like it...feel like Karu was an eternity ago. It seemed like just...a slow-rolling disaster incoming and I could already see it coming.


    Where would we stay? She hated being around people, and I couldn''t live out here away from everything. What would we do? Saga might be keen enough on me now, but surely one mind, especially mine, couldn''t be that exciting for her. I think she kept out of it for the most part because knowing everything was boring, and boredom was anathema to Saga, but that couldn''t last forever. Like any couple, eventually I guessed, we''d know each other inside and out...just wildly accelerated with the mind-reading, and what remained after that?


    Soul-mates? Commitments? I had no idea. I was a stupid nineteen-year-old who was still thinking that boobs were pretty dang neat. I was acutely aware how completely mentally and emotionally unequipped I was to be planning out our entire future as I crept out into the afternoon to pick up a dozen hamburgers to eat all weekend.


    I sighed. There really wasn''t much option here. I was completely out of my league and needed help.


    I put my comms back in and dialed one of my contacts on my holo.


    It rang, rang, rang, and went to voice message.


    "Hey, Lia. It''s your stupid big brother. If you get this message in the next hour, call me, please. I might have done something really stupid."


    "What did you do?" Tem asked, the footprints in the snow beside me materializing into her military boots, followed by the rest of her.


    I sighed. Tem was, possibly, the one person in the world worse-equipped for this than me. I tried calling AEGIS, which gave a disconnected number error, and even briefly considered Karu, before finally turning to the girl next to me.


    "Tem I might have messed up really bad, and need some advice."


    "Oh. I am...I''m not good at advice."


    "I know," I sighed. "That''s why I''ve been trying to call everyone else first."


    "Would you like me to call as well?"


    "I don''t think that will help." I scratched my head as we kept walking. "Look, Tem, what do you know about Saga?"


    "S-S-Saga''s a very cruel Exhuman. S-s-...they would happily kill everyone around them if they wanted to, except you, Chariot. They love you, and they are a...a person from China. I don''t like her, because they are mean to you, but you are friends with her anyway."


    "You can call her ''she''. It''s really okay."


    "I apologize. I was told...if I can''t...make a certain letter, I s-s-...I would be better off not uttering it," she explained, unnecessarily.


    "Tem," I said, and stopped. She ran into my arm before she stopped as well. "That night, I''m sorry. You really crossed a ton of lines with me, and I wasn''t in a good place to start with. That doesn''t mean I didn''t also cross lines right back. You should ignore everything I said that night, okay?"


    "Oh no, it''s fine. I''m...I''m actually happy you did what you did." She smiled demurely and blushed.


    "Tem, I treated you like garbage."


    "I''m used to it," she said with a growing smile and a shrug. "Please, don''t worry about me. I just want you to be happy." She began walking again, almost singsong, like this was the perfect date for her.


    "Hey," I said, and she stopped. "Nobody should treat you like garbage. You shouldn''t put up with that, not from me or anybody."


    "Oh no, it''s fine. I understand, at times, I am a big nuisance, I push you too far, I irritate you or make things worse. I apologize, but if that isn''t enough, it is fine to berate or punish me so that I don''t mess things up. I understand."


    "No, Tem, that is not fine. Jesus, that''s fucked." I tried to think of any way to explain this to her without sounding like I was berating or punishing her, but all I really wanted was for her to just stop being such a freak and just be a normal freak like the rest of us Exhumans. But that was exactly the kind of thinking about her I wanted her to stop putting up with.


    I ground my teeth in frustration, wanting to pull out my hair. Stupid, impossible girl.


    "Look, we''re wasting what time I have outside Saga''s range. Just...for now, if someone is treating you badly, even me, especially me, please, please, please, just say that hurts your feelings, okay?"


    "But you don''t?" She looked genuinely confused. "You are always trying to protect me, even right now. Why would anything you s-say hurt my feelings?"


    I didn''t know how to respond. So I moved back to the original topic.


    "So I did something stupid, as I said. Saga was having a...an emotional breakdown, let''s call it, and out of desperation, I...I sorta¡­"


    Tem nodded. "You did it with her?"


    "What? No. I asked her out."


    "Ohh."


    "Wait, you thought we did?"


    "I assumed they put me out for a reason, and that...was what I would want if I were you."


    "Wouldn''t that make you angry? Me being with her. I thought you were...aiming for me."


    "Oh no. Oh no, no, no. I could never do that." She burned red under her silver hair. "I made that mistake once, I tried to reach the s-s-...the moon. That was a very bad mistake. I apologize."


    "Tem, what the hell? You don''t just turn off feelings like that."


    "I know, I just realized it was impossible. I''m just going to follow you and make...make positive that you are happy. You are s-s-...are a very good person, and deserve every happiness in the world. You care for me and protect me like nobody ever has. It would be very greedy to expect you to love me, as well."


    I stared at her, unable to interface with her completely alien mind. "You love me."


    "Yes," she said blushing.


    "And you don''t have a problem if I date or even sleep with other girls?"


    "No, of course not."


    "And this is because...why, again?"


    "Oh. Because you could never be happy with me, of course. You were very clear on that. And yet, you protect me and care for me anyway. You are a very wonderful person."


    "Jesus. And I thought I fucked up with Saga today."


    Suddenly Tem seemed more shadowy, more dangerous, her soft smile and carefree steps replaced with hard, calculating lines. Something dark moved behind her eyes.


    "I understand," she said, her voice dripping with menace.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Tem? Calm down. Understand what?"


    "They hurt you."


    "Who?"


    "S-S-S-Saga. They will pay." Cloudy ripples of darkness appeared in the air around us as it looked like light itself was tearing itself apart around her. Her two short pigtails began to whip around on her shoulders in an invisible wind.


    "Woah, Tem, calm down. Saga didn''t hurt me. Please, please, calm down. I''m fine, see?" I put on a smile like our lives depended on it.


    "Oh," she said, and the tension dissipated over the next few seconds. "I apologize."


    "Uh, yeah. I''m worried I might hurt her, not the other way around. Maybe I should just wait for Lia or AEGIS to get to their mobile."


    "Whatever you''d like," she said, back in her light, carefree voice.


    I was honestly worried she was about to unleash a lightshow on Blackett Cabin from here that would put Skyweb to shame. I needed to stop thinking of her as a troublesome girl and more as a grenade where someone had misplaced the pin.


    We walked the rest of the way and waited for the food in silence. Not wanting to be intimate with Saga just yet, Tem and I ate a burger each though she only really played with hers, and split some fries. We must have looked like a couple, I thought. They had to triple-check my order when I wanted another dozen to go, but we got there.


    And now, on the way back, still no notifications, not even a message from either Lia or AEGIS, and still no ideas of how I was going to handle Saga. I hoped the two of them were okay...but also hoped I would be.


    What seemed like the worst idea, and this was weird considering this was me, was just to tell her the truth and air everything out. I might have done it more-or-less on accident, but I did ask her out for a reason. If I backed out now, I''d just double the damage I''d done to her.


    And it wasn''t like I was opposed to dating Saga...I just...didn''t know how it would work. She was so alien, from how she interacted, to her entire perspective on lifespans, to the value of human worth. I didn''t even know why she wanted to date me, compared to her, I was a flickering candle just waiting to be snuffed, while she was a star which could burn through the heat-death of the universe.


    Maybe just a plaything to pass a few years? I didn''t know. I couldn''t know, and that was the problem with us as a concept. Even if she opened up her mind and showed me everything she''d ever lived, I still could never understand her.


    And yet, I did understand. She''d spent her whole life locked away. Even if I was only a flickering candle, wouldn''t it make perfect sense for someone to look towards the light after a lifetime in the dark? Wouldn''t I, as the first person she''d met, and a man and an Exhuman besides, hold ever-so-slightly more place in her life than any other blip of living existence? Or maybe she would someday grow into a completely dispassionate being, but a hundred years hadn''t quite yet deadened every bit of humanity in her.


    It was heady stuff, not unlike trying to figure out one''s value to the universe, though I didn''t think quite that highly of her. But still, if she was immortal...that really did mean infinity, and infinite anything was a lot.


    It was also a lot to think about, so I was surprised when I took another step forward in the snow and felt my mind prickle familiarly. I had an urge to take a step back and finish thinking of...of everything, but it was too late.


    [Hi there, lover,] she said. Tem sighed and turned invisible to leave me in relative peace.


    "Hi...Saga¡­"


    [You ate without me? Not fair.]


    "Haha, yeah, I''m sorry."


    [Well, you brought more, so I forgive you. Hmm. Can we make Tem just wait there so I don''t have to eat with her? Despite my openness on this, I''m not really into the whole threesome thing, especially before our first date.]


    "I uh, kinda doubt it," I said.


    "I''m not leaving him," Tem whispered, her voice dangerously close to the dark tone I''d heard before.


    "Could you possibly attempt to avoid picking a fight with her if possible?"


    [Why would I ever want to do that?]


    "Because if she goes nuts and blows up the house, I will be cold at night."


    [My idea of a compromise was to put her unconscious, but someone didn''t like that plan.]


    "Just be nice, okay?"


    [You''re one to speak. You treat her like shit all the time.]


    I sighed. I couldn''t argue with that. "Anyway. This whole dating thing. I don''t know what I''m doing."


    [So I can see. (Does he think I know? I might be older, but it''s not like I''ve done this...) Uh. Well, fortunately for you, The Great Saga doesn''t date like...like a normal human does.]


    "The Great Saga? Are you going to start ''thee'' and ''thou''-ing me again? I thought we were way, way past that."


    [The Great Saga would kindly ask you to shut the fuck up.]


    "So how does The Great Saga date, if not like a human?"


    [(Uh.) Well. (Um.) You see¡­unlike...uh, mere human relationships, we will...begin with pure physical intimacy. Yes. See, when you have an Exhuman as great as I involved, you can skip past all of the emotional bullcrap and get right to the good stuff. Feel honored that you are officially dating The Great Saga in her splendor!]


    I didn''t say anything, but I did bring the fact to mind that Karu and I were banging it out well before we were ever officially dating.


    [(Fucking hell.) I mean, obviously some humans are so carnal and filthy they would presume to skip the...the most important emotional connection. Which...is of course, the opposite of The Great Saga. We will be...taking it slow.]


    "Okay, three things. One, please drop ''The Great Saga''."


    [The Great--]


    "Two, don''t interrupt."


    [(...)]


    "And three, I understand you''ve never dated, and really, neither have I. I''ve had...let''s call it a little practice. Can we just try things and see what works?"


    [What was your actual second point going to be?]


    "Not to interrupt." I sighed. "I kind of expect certain things from you by now, if you haven''t picked that up." Tem and I had almost finished slogging through the snow, retracing our footprints back to Blackett Cabin.


    [...yeah.] She didn''t sound particularly happy about it.


    It was starting to get dark, and I wondered why Saga didn''t turn on any lights or anything. The house looked uninviting and empty. Sort of like my current dating prospects.


    [Look, if you''ve got an issue with it, and I know you do, you can just fuck off. I''m not some china doll which needs protecting, okay?]


    "What doll?"


    [China doll? They''re these weird like, ceramic dolls, made of china.]


    "China''s a country."


    [What?]


    "How can something be made of China? That''s like calling something an America doll."


    I felt confusion slowly settle into comprehension as we let ourselves in and I shook snow off my boots, while snow materialized and fell from nothing as Tem mimicked me.


    [Weird. China used to be a word to describe like, I guess this one type of ceramic. China plates, china dolls, fine china.]


    "I guess we probably stopped using that after the war. People still have fancy ceramic plates...they just get called...fancy plates, I guess."


    [What about Chinese food?]


    "Nope. Thought you all only ate white rice?"


    [What.]


    I shrugged, and clicked on several lights, which Saga responded to only by covering her face with a pillow, still exactly where I''d left her on the floor. "That''s what they told us. Just propaganda, I''m sure. They''re probably all sold as Japanese or Korean food now or something, if they were even worth keeping around."


    Her brow furrowed. [That''s really fucked up. You can''t just erase a country like that.]


    "You''re the one who saw into Ajax and Celia''s heads. You know what an erased country looks like more than the rest of us. I took off my boots and fell backwards onto the comfy couch with a wump. A moment later, Tem''s boots appeared next to mine.


    "Tem, no--uhf," I said, as she also jumped on the couch, right on top of me.


    Saga looked at me, her brow even more furrowed than it had been in hearing we''d erased her entire culture. I pushed Tem off of me and she fell onto the floor next to Saga with a muffled apology and a squeak. [How''d you know she was jumping?]


    "Sensed she was coming."


    [Mind reader for real then? That is unfair.]


    "No...something different. Something old, I think. I only started to notice when I was trying to keep up with Tem and Jack, but no matter how fast or sneaky they''re moving around, if I''m paying attention, and they''re in-range, I can tell where they are. Not just them, everyone, really."


    [Hmm. Sounds a lot like what I have. Just feel their mind out there, without having to really look for it?]


    "No, not their mind. Their body."


    [Huh. Well, I have no idea, go ask your sister or the supercomputer.] Everything furrowing her brow now resolved to her apparent satisfaction, she went back to the important task of laying around.


    It annoyed me some. She was right, Lia, AEGIS, even Karu...hell, even Tower, Jack, or Cosette would have a theory or two. Lia''s would certainly be right, and Tower''s would certainly be wrong, and Cosette''s would certainly only be interested in how she could best use me, but damn it if that wasn''t still conversation. Instead, the second she lost interest, Saga went right back to...making out with the carpet or whatever she was doing.


    I put it out of my mind before we started fighting about it and started over.


    "So, dating. Want to like...go on a hike or something?"


    [Do I look like I want to go on a hike?]


    "I don''t mean right now. We''ve got a couple days, so...you know. Whenever we do this thing?"


    [Okay. Tomorrow. Do you think I''ll look like I want to go on a hike tomorrow?]


    "...no, probably not. I could call us a car and uh¡­" my mind spun a little bit. What did girls like doing? "...go shopping?"


    [Got no money, hate crowds, clothes are stupid. Pass.]


    "I can pay. We don''t make tons, but...well, it feels like tons compared to my allowance. Lia said she can wire me whatever I need if I need anything."


    [Still hate crowds, clothes are still stupid, so still pass.]


    "Uh, maybe just like, dinner and a movie then?"


    [In a theater? With people? Are you deliberately being dense?]


    "Are you deliberately being difficult?"


    She seemed to have to stop to chew on that one for a moment.


    [No?]


    "I''m just really lost why you wanted to date me so badly if you can''t even think of a single date you actually want to go on. I''m trying here, and you''re just shooting everything down like Skyweb."


    [Oh.]


    I could almost feel her thinking now. I hoped I hadn''t pushed her buttons, but there was zero chance of this working out, even in the short-term if the only one trying was the guy who didn''t even really want to be here.


    Her thinking, or the bleeding-out sensation of it stopped, and at once, I sensed a whole lot of peril. She''d sat up, her eyes hungry as she deliberately crawled over Tem towards me, eliciting a series of uncomfortable noises from the doormat.


    [Athan,] she thought/said seductively. [I thought of one thing we should do.]


    "Yeah, not happening," I said.

 137. 2251, Present Day. Blue Ridge Mountains. Athan.

    [You haven¡¯t even heard me out!]


    ¡°Saga, your brain is practically dripping like a¡­like¡­okay, this metaphor is way too good and bad at the same time. Point being, I know what you¡¯re thinking, and no.¡±


    [Why not?]


    ¡°For starters, Tem?¡±


    [What about her? I¡¯ll put her under.]


    ¡°P-please¡­remove your¡­foot from¡­windpipe¡­¡± she sputtered. Saga shifted, and Tem coughed. What the fuck, Tem.


    ¡°Even if you put her under, you expect me to believe¡­you¡¯ll uh¡­you¡¯ll be able to keep your mind focused and wouldn¡¯t get distracted, and nothing would unconsciously seep out?¡±


    [I mean, it would probably hardly be traumatic.]


    ¡°While I appreciate your sudden concern for Tem¡¯s mental well-being¡­as you continue to stand on her¡­I¡¯m actually also worried about doing anything sexual which involves you in any capacity.¡±


    [It will be fine.]


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­not¡­uh¡­¡± I didn¡¯t know how to allude to the Lia incident.


    Saga hung her head. [Sorta regretting giving you those memories now.]


    ¡°Yeah. Thanks. You know how traumatic it is waking up from a dream that I¡¯m someone else having sex with her?¡±


    [I don¡¯t think you get to play the ¡®who has the bigger trauma¡¯ game against me, Athan.]


    ¡°I¡¯m not trying to say I have it worse, I¡¯m trying to say you are directly responsible for mine. I didn¡¯t do shit to you, Saga. That was Lia, which I am sorry about, and a bunch of XPCA, whom you annihilated.¡±


    [Fair point, but I choose to disregard it anyway.]


    ¡°Why is it, you¡¯ll happily obliterate my mental angst over some shit I legitimately deserve, but you won¡¯t fix the crap you put up there?¡±


    [I told you. That¡¯s payment for me being well-behaved around these shitbags.]


    ¡°You call this well-behaved? You almost broke Tem¡¯s nose.¡±


    ¡°It was fine, though,¡± she said, from the floor under Saga. What the fuck, Tem.


    [I do call this well-behaved, and you know it. Don¡¯t make me demonstrate poorly-behaved. I¡¯ll do it. Actually, do make me demonstrate it. I¡¯ll just demonstrate once, just wee bit, pretty please?]


    ¡°You have serious issues.¡±


    [And yet you asked me out anyway. You seem to have a thing for troubled girls, Athan.]


    ¡°Not all of them,¡± I said, looking at the gap between Saga¡¯s feet and the floor, which was still labored in its breathing. ¡°Anyway. I¡¯m trying here. Date. You and me. What are we doing?¡±


    [I don¡¯t know, Athan,] she said sounding more annoyed now, and finally jumping off Tem to sit next to me. [I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t know, I don¡¯t know. Why are you so insistent on this? It¡¯s like you¡¯re incapable of taking the hint that I don¡¯t know. Or maybe you just want to hear me say it?]


    As much as I did enjoy hearing her stumped, she was also sounding increasingly pissed at me, at the whole situation, and that was something I didn¡¯t enjoy nearly as much.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know either, Saga. I want to make you happy, if I can.¡±


    [Then just shut up and let¡¯s just be together. Stop pushing me.]


    ¡°I don¡¯t see how that¡¯s different from before. You¡¯re all panicking about me never having an interest in you, and the second I do, you have no interest in it. I just don¡¯t get it.¡±


    [I don¡¯t get it either!] she shouted, and I flinched. [I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m doing, okay? I just know what I want, and that¡¯s you. I never¡­I guess¡­I never expected to actually get it. I¡¯m like a dog that caught its tail, except the tail now just keeps yelling at me ¡®now what are you going to do?¡¯]


    ¡°Okay!¡± I shouted back. ¡°We¡¯ll just take it slow then. Just¡­hang out like usual, I guess.¡± I sighed. ¡°I know you¡¯re looking in my head, and I know you¡¯re seeing that I think this was all hG^X of a mistake. Maybe it was. I mean, if you can¡¯t even think of why you wanted this¨C¡°


    [I know why I wanted this! That doesn¡¯t mean I have ideas for every insipid date or know what to do at every crossroads. I just want to be with you, and for us to be happy, isn¡¯t that enough?]


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I shook my head. ¡°I mean, I want it to be, but if it were, I¡¯d still be with Karu, you know?¡±


    [I¡¯m not Karu, though.]


    ¡°I know. But we were happy and we were together, and that wasn¡¯t enough.¡±


    [Look, I¡¯m still not Karu. I¡¯m not afraid of me dying, and the world better be afraid of you dying, because if someone does that, I¡¯m coming after them. And oh, they would Zb*7.]


    ¡°Not the legacy I¡¯d like to leave, but flattering, I guess?¡±


    [My point is, stop bringing up shit that happened with her, you and I are different, got it?]


    ¡°I know. I¡¯m just¨C¡°


    [No. You don¡¯t know. Just stop it, really.]


    ¡°It¡¯s all the dating experience I have, Saga. I want to use it so that we don¡¯t have the same problem.¡±


    She put her hand on my sBc&{DY}der. [We won¡¯t. Stop worrying so much.]


    I let out a slow breath. ¡°Okay. Then, uh, here we are dating I guess.¡±


    [I guess.]


    We sat there uncomfortably. It just felt like every other time I¡¯d been around Saga, except now I had a whole bunch of new thoughts I wasn¡¯t allowed to focus on too hard. I just had to distract myself for a bit, I guessed. I checked my holo, still no messages from AEGIS or Lia, what could they possibly be up to?


    [Expecting a call?]


    ¡°Yeah, just AEGIS or Lia, I left them each a message.¡±


    [What about?]


    ¡°Uh,¡± I realized I¡¯d walked right into a trap, and tried to think of a way out without thinking about it.


    [You asked them? How to deal with me?] she s$=#K\bN`T[U/Z, stumbled on Tem, and found better footing, glowering at me. [What the fuck, Athan?]


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know what to do!¡± I said.


    [So you tried literally nothing at that point, ran out of the house, lying to me, so you could call up some girl you know has a crush on you, to ask her what to do about the ¡®Saga problem¡¯?]


    ¡°No¡­I mean¡­it wasn¡¯t like that! I called Lia first, and she didn¡¯t answer.¡±


    [Oh, I must have misunderstood your own thoughts then. Please, explain to me how it was ¡®not like that¡¯.]


    ¡°I just¡­I was worried about us, okay? I didn¡¯t know if what we were doing was right. If what I¡¯d done was right.¡±


    [What you did was what I wanted, Athan. There is no right, no wrong, just what people think and feel and how they view things. You asked me out because you knew I wanted it, and now you¡¯re wondering if that¡¯s wrong?]


    ¡°I never said it w#wO}fong I said I wasn¡¯t sure it was right. Stop twisting my words.¡±


    [I¡¯m not twisting anything! Right and not wrong are the same thing, Jesus.]


    ¡°Look, I was just lost and wanted advice, and you weren¡¯t giving me anything to work with.¡±


    [Oh, so now it¡¯s my job?]


    ¡°It¡¯s both of our jobs, Saga! We¡¯re in a relaFi>Cg;m¡±hip here, nobody in the world is forcing us together except us two. So yeah, if you want to be with me, you have to at least try to be with me.¡±


    [Maybe I would be, if you weren¡¯t sneaking out of the house so you could call up your side-chick!]


    ¡°Saga, stop yelling.¡±


    [I am NOT fucking YELLING. THIS is what YELLI%(kB7unds like, Athan.]


    ¡°Well stop it! You¡¯re splitting my head open!¡±


    [And you are screaming right back at me. I know you think my body¡¯s all broken and defective, but my hearing happens to be just fine.]


    Tem rolled to her knees and appeared. ¡°Do not yell at Chariot,¡± she growled.


    [Oh you shut the hell up,] Saga said, and stabbed a finger towards her. Tem grabbed it and bared her teeth, but half a second later her eyelids fluttered and she went right back down to the ground, but visible now.


    ¡°Fucking hell, Saga.¡±


    [She threatened me!]


    ¡°You¡¯re immortal, she¡¯s no mor.d) Q&= qi4_ you than the air in this room.¡±


    [The air in this room wasn¡¯t threatening me. The air in this room doesn¡¯t cream itself just by looking at you, Chariot. She¡¯s a sick fucking mess, and her being unconscious objectively makes the world a better place.]


    ¡°You¡¯re a sick fucking mess too.¡±


    he+^76p*u seriously just compare me to her?]


    ¡°At least she doesn¡¯t go around killing people for fun! At least sZDBhtzT\erstands that humans are people too! She might be messed up in the head, but she tries to protect people, all you care about is having a few lauh$T= no matter who suffers.¡±


    [Well if you love her so much, why don¡¯t you just date her then? You know she¡¯d say yes.]


    ¡°Maybe I fucking wil$¡¯w#Kq¡®t be worse than this.¡±


    [H}PQ{ir became very oppressive, and it hadn¡¯t exactly been a cheery atmosphere before. Saga¡¯s hair began to blow ominously in +?sQQbxistent wind as I felt blackness closing in on my senses.


    ¡°Saga, don¡¯t you fucking dare,¡± I said, pulling out my swords. ¡°I can¡¯t beat you in any way but kilw5(b<:.A¡±\Q you, so if you start this, that¡¯s how I¡¯m going to end it.¡±


    [Me? Start it? Poor baby Athan, suc[*2DIOsx#ctim. The big bad code-X just comes up and picks on his little brain.]


    ¡°I¡¯m serious, Saga.¡±


    [Namfo O^P :H)pQart of this that¡¯s not your fault, Athan. One part! Who dragged me out of my cell? Who made me open up to Lia wz<@`* #JK)icked a fight with the XPCA? Who had me sho5_1^.+? here in the middle of nowhere? Who decided to spend a couple days up here, and asked me out, and freaked out the second I couldn¡¯t give you a single answer?]


    ¡°I¡¯m not the one who jumt:S0;E?uusing their powers, Saga. Put it away.¡±


    [Put it away? Have you fucki_E ,F.c.AU P+gotten how we¡¯re even talking right now? You think this is sof|t $oe*HXg I just turn off like your stupid lightning? BeinA L38 ]ghle¡¯s heads is part of who I am, AtBsD e4Z%0 You want me to ^p)Rm away, you should just make good on your threat and kill me. Enjoy the few seconds of peaVR h;qMIse that¡¯s the only way you¡¯ll ever get me putting it away.]


    The room see8q 2G}w k(u#ess in against my eyes. I could see Tem stiG@ring fitfully below us.


    I didn¡¯t knoX` ?K?M s)K do. I knew what I wanted to do. I coul`p[ 0YD= `JW an all-out fight with vR}H(G>but if she made the first move, I¡¯d probably already lost.


    `m \1)A¡¯$t like I had no otc-6^UN49choice, so I put my swords away. She took a small breath, but the atH)=mgsphere of the room continued ]m E$TqP*h heavily upon me.


    ¡°I put it away. Just bJrg 22y^lm.¡±


    [Don¡¯t you fuck2¡ä L H,$n( me to just be calm. I¡¯ve been 4V)MB uTalm¡¯ for longer than your gra$2dotxjZdy was alive, you little ascpjs F2od! You¡¯re so goddamn arrogant. Tell me what to do more, Athan. Do it. FxrN<@ing tell me.]


    c&0 F,0be I wouldn¡¯t haGV ?Bh lnf you ever thought things through? You just do whatever the hell 8t6#f;^s +nd rely on your powers to get you out PFO SV{your messes. The only reason you were dow*]¡± t¡¯^oYt hole for a huv^JdAw_d years was because you fucked up and didn¡¯t even have a real escape strat|P?qXYou just thought, boy, wouldn¡¯t it be great to kill mlf&eryone? And then you did. AZz q@M,n you suffered.¡±


    [Don¡¯t you fuu`Ak 1tOe bring that up. U02 4¡åT4cn you fucking blame me for that. I WAS TO^u)Z\/XZW*ED.]


    I couldn¡¯t evN: 8XcFftember what we were argL#9Yn Lbout anymore. We were just so livid, so QbO* ¡°]PhMpreh]<?ibly angry, all I wanti55 oS )q v%as to say somethOj} ethat would really hurt her, make her feel as much painwu c1v$ B(IR was causing me. If I¡¯d stopped, and re6l(: C0hought about it, I FbO5/<{have realized our anger was bleeding into e^<j!6 +]9ther, the opP|*Eddkdy^e of her orgasmic bliss when we ate together. I couldn¡¯t stozYr 0 |tjho n=U56Rfn¡¯t think. All I could do was tear into her, d/>XtEl%and deeper.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    ¡°And here yo53_c FW49ll the same infantile girl. You mmAIV {$@C qFTr than me, Saga, but you still soK^-X iI J& mu@z¡±7_Rms by killing people un<bTq a{g: l() [YD{$0red of it, and then you¡¯re stuD$ X,X=`; so*n¡±<aning oh, why m5 `3^@Zc(2/out ever even giving a fucking thought to }q,qK Qx-&i >ZX Qour fault? Maybe kYL6r!#l.M=e don¡¯t like it when you make other people dead}{?H e0PSpJ -$c\en spend so much timO\ NE rHaQR{~n¡®s head and still be so fucking stupid¨C¡°


    Zz; |[7fO`]2z %l,y|,ybe I am stupA!8 :\nY Dcybe, if I had a reaY g~!#9t? nCd a real edu/R#-nKS ZC^*stead of lea2V@#g everything I knew fro7} 2 U=ch of XPCA soldierHA ##% |Qy the way, were rap%*g and killing me, eve<mv i9:6P[U day, mYD]m I¡¯d be on your level. Might ev+Ur d>R a fucking footbvB ?wuRIx_2ip. But I¡¯m sorry, I didn¡¯t have that optio7H#


    -Q,H!346|ball scholarship? }I/5Xi-Ze fucking meaningleow E![6bX} ^s in the world. You knW]v <V &]B¡¯r went to college, same as you¨C¡°


    [I oc¡±9Pog:E*¡±-h80rade school, you fuck.]


    ¡°I had frienpZ i\ P%d a life! I lost the2 eaN[ K:Z&A K/}P You were just a nin83BNar old brat with a mothe,xy 8GV d~ever ev=.F2oved you!¡±


    [I never ev!¡¯i .U8 mM oance to have frieG;| 3BkeIm<at what this is now? Wh@S &s{`Ux the shittier (t¡¯IDr Xq`2w? Well guess whaJ. |i:V(c ^{(gean, we both lose. Because R} `OEeRK +r=ing stuck with you, and you¡¯re fuct4fXN ^LI)?#l iJ40 me, in this shittDf F% EM}QPcing world. And guess ut_v3 Y¡±}/¡±[]I>Mou win! 6tIzause at lea1j:<H%an check out any time yoaj #FHv}S1¡ä I get to stay here foreve&-&]K ,.jL#0


    -7H maybe yo1oNZ.K=U#is shit world des/5yve each othe4jNo can spend the rest of eterniE~e(ji$ 9.U1ping on each other, and wheA yk5/ {\Cl done, you¡¯lOR [m]J¡± CZ @mpty, bitter, black husks, devo2s 0& H|}umanity or life or feeling. Just yV6B hdN7=< rsfcb world you killmb `# forever. YS 3sjdY_ Q2 zou want? Bec=&Se that¡¯s how you actx&(X¡¯Ol¡°


    Jg;\_he dark of her eye9d. w`struC¡¯D=/ chord, fear for _8y%irst time since U:ko-started sci68ming at each ot+5hr.


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 138. 2251, Present Day. Blue Ridge Mountains. Athan.

    "I''m so happy I asked you out." It was the first words I spoke in the morning to her.


    [Me too,] she sighed breathily. [I feel like what we have...it''s...hard to put into words.]


    "You don''t have to," I said, wrapping my arms around her with a small smile, like I always seemed to be wearing around her now. "When you find someone you love, truly love, it just feels right, doesn''t it? Words can''t even begin to describe it."


    I''d honestly never felt so complete. Normal girls were one thing, but Saga, who could reside in my head and heart fully, having this kind of connection with her was impossible with anyone else. When I looked back at how things had been with Karu--which was rare--I realized just how hollow what we''d had was. Even though at the time, it had seemed so...so there, so all-consuming, so important, I couldn''t help but feel the difference between the two girls was almost as big as when I became Exhuman. Certainly at least as pivotal.


    It was scary, yes, but it was also captivating, enrapturing, beautiful. Now that we had opened up to each other, Saga and I were...she was almost like a completely different person. She wasn''t self-conscious or disconnected or lazy, she was cool, inspiring even, I just wanted to be around her, all the time.


    Soul mate, if the phrase didn''t sound so stupid in my head.


    We had spent the rest of the night in each others arms and made beautiful love. Her pale body was like an angel''s, so delicate and gentle, her hair inky like the cosmos, her skin porcelain.


    Like china, I mused.


    As ever, her mind amplified every sensation, but the only sensation was love. There was only beauty. Unlike her experience with Lia, this time, her body and mind were open willingly, no pain, no trauma, or stomping of wills, just acceptance of all of me, and me of all of her.


    It was transcendent, and how I could have ever doubted, doubted her, doubted us, I couldn''t even comprehend now that I had tasted what her love was truly like.


    I had just awoken in her arms, on the couch. She had stayed up all night as she ever did, but instead of another night of loneliness, of longing, of pain and incompleteness, she had me, and I was glad she had that, wanted her never to feel that again, wanted to be there for her always.


    I had woken up feeling safe, feeling her scent on me, looking up and finding her narrow eyes and small mouth, both smiling at me with smouldering passion. It was still pitch black outside. I guess in her arms, time moved more slowly, which I appreciated, more time to spend with her, after all. I felt tired, like I hadn''t slept at all, which I guess was sort of true, given what we''d been up to instead.


    We just sat together on the couch for long hours, no thoughts in my head except for the smell of her hair and how beautiful she was to me, how precious and perfect I found her every flaw.


    I stood up, making sure to tread on the unconscious Tem as I went. "I''m going to the bathroom," I explained, feeling like even the smallest separation demanded an explanation. She just smiled and let me go. Saga was understanding like that.


    I wasn''t sore, just...tired, like I''d been running all day, but I hadn''t, I''d only just woken up. No matter, we''d probably spend most of the day cuddling in each other''s arms, and I might sneak an hour or two of nap in.


    A nap in her arms. I found myself grinning over the toilet. Today would be a beautiful day.


    I came back and gave her a gentle kiss on the back of the head as I passed the couch. She smiled and radiated happiness. "I should probably eat some breakfast, huh?" I said, as I went into the kitchen.


    Crap, I''d left the food out overnight. Our scant supplies, going to waste. If they didn''t have mayo on them, I''d consider eating them still. Such a damn waste. Oh well, I wasn''t really hungry even, though the last time I ate was yesterday afternoon. I guess I ran on the fruits of love now. I reached in the bag to pull them out and trash them, the fries in the bag were probably cold and nasty, but still edible, and paused.


    They were still warm? The ones in the middle at least. But there was no way they''d sat out overnight and were still all warm.


    "Saga, honey? Did you warm up the burgers while I was asleep?"


    [Huh?] I felt her mind pass over mine. I waited patiently for the moment it took as she rifled through my recent thoughts. It was much faster than talking. [Oh. Um, yeah. They were uh, in the fridge though, so they''re fine. I just uh...warmed them up. (However that makes sense)]


    How considerate of her. I was a lucky man. I grabbed one, and a handful of loose fries, which were also not stale (I guess she had something to do with that) and put the bag back in the fridge. I threw my breakfast on a plate and headed back to her.


    I unwrapped my burger and took in the heady smell, luxuriating on it so that Saga could drink it in. I liked to spoil her on the occasion I had the chance to. I felt her shudder slightly and her toes curl at the smell alone, and compulsively, I did the same.


    Even though, I still wasn''t really hungry.


    I ate slowly, teasingly, nibbling small morsels of meat and rubbing my lips over the small buds of sesame seed on the buns. Sitting right next to her, our minds completely open, I saw an almost pained excitement on her blushing face as she panted. She was too focused on the moment and couldn''t show any restraint, just how I loved her. In an inspired move, I ran my finger along the edge and eyed the shiny pool of mayonnaise and ketchup mixed on my finger.


    Slowly, I pressed the finger into my mouth against my tongue and sucked on it. She opened her mouth as though to protest, but nothing came out but a muted cry as her eyes rolled and her eyelids fluttered to stay open. I felt the same sensation, and put the food down, all pretext gone.


    I nibbled and licked at her as well, teasing her zipper downwards to unwrap her as I kissed my way down her neck as the opening collar exposed more and more of her shoulder. Unlike last time, last night, she seemed incapable of doing anything more than laying, breathing heavily through her mouth, and pressing her eyes closed.


    I moved to her side to get a better angle on the middle part of the zipper''s journey, but in so doing, tread on the unconscious Tem on accident. As I did, I felt Saga flinch, and half a moment later, felt pain in my own hand. We were all networked now, mind completely open, each sensation for all of us, no barriers between our thoughts, no existence between our beings.


    "What should I do with her?" I asked.


    Saga just shook her head and leaned further back, thoughtless and breathless, and I couldn''t say no to the hint of pink on her cheeks, almost invisible now, along with all her cynicism and guardedness and suffering.


    I continued to tease and tempt as I got her the rest of the way out of her prison uniform, liking her much better in this outfit. I was still fully dressed, still in my XPCA uniform for having no other clothes, and not out of it yet because she was enraptured, and my hands were busy. Very busy. I ran fingers up and down her slender legs, and felt her pulse racing in every part of her.


    Finally, I kissed her, and almost whited out as my tongue wrapped around hers and in our echoed sensation, we were a thousand mouths giving a thousand kisses. It was so much more real and powerful than last night, I wondered how we had managed it so relatively lightly before. But we had, and we would again.


    My finger traced the line of her stomach down past her navel, tickling both of us slightly, before encountering her prominent pelvic bones, and then¡­


    Well, she was very excited. That much was obvious at just a touch. As slowly as I could, I explored the unfamiliar sensation of...being explored. She made a noise almost disapproving, but arched her back. I pressed deeper and¡­


    ...and nothing. There was no deeper. About an inch in, things just...ended.


    I was confused. I probed deeper with my fingers and could feel nothing. No more space to fill, no nerve endings to feel, just...closed. Like she''d been sewn shut. My confusion flashed through her mind, snapping her out of her reverie.


    To put it bluntly, where had the hole gone? It had been there yesterday, and had been very accommodating. So what had happened in the last day?


    "Something wrong?" she whispered, her voice even more light than usual. In our state, I could feel it vibrating through her body through her. It was strange, but not uncomfortable.


    "No," I lied, but that was pointless. I shook my head. "Yes. There''s uh, no¡­"


    "No what?" she asked, propping up on her elbows. She ran a finger over her things as though to verify and looked at me like I was doing this to her on purpose. "No what?" she repeated as she wiped her finger on the couch.


    "No...um¡­" I blanked at how to explain the situation. As I did, I felt her mind, and Tem''s mind by extension falling away. We were becoming ourselves independently again. I knew something she didn''t, and that''s not how having one mind could work. "I don''t understand myself."


    "You''re scaring me, Athan," she said, closing her knees and drawing them in.


    "But we did this last night, right?" She looked at me shiftily.


    "Yes, of course."


    "Do you remember," I asked her "...you told me you drank water?"


    She nodded.


    "And¡­?" I prodded.


    "And I threw up. Because I don''t have a stomach, it had--" She froze, and her eyes widened. "No¡­"


    "But that''s not possible, right? Because we just did it. This must be something else. Maybe Tem is making illusions in her sleep, or¡­"If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    She held her head and brought her knees the rest of the way in, blocking me off from her entirely except her eyes and forehead. I could feel her emotions diving off an emotional cliff, and scrambled for any way I could to catch her, when my holo rang on my wrist. I jumped, startling her, and stepping on Tem again, who really needed to fucking not be there, and scrambled to hang up.


    [(Who is that?)] she asked, her eyes still wide and unfocused.


    I glanced at it as I fumbled it. "Uh, it''s just Lia."


    [Just...take it. (Take the call. Just take it. Take it.)]


    I hesitated, but couldn''t disobey her. I walked to the doorway and hit the answer button instead, putting my earpiece back in, and then remembering I had to turn it on.


    "I''m sorry I didn''t call sooner. I didn''t get your message. I''m sorry, Athan, things have been crazy here." She was talking very fast, freaking out about something. I really didn''t care, not when Saga was in distress.


    "Can you call back later, Lia? I''m kind of busy."


    "What? I thought you had an emergency?"


    "What are you talking about?" I asked, not actually wanting her to answer.


    "What?" She sounded confused and angry, all in one word. "Athan, is this a joke? I don''t have time for this. You called me all panicking and saying you thought you made a huge mistake."


    "I did no such thing," I said defensively. "I haven''t talked to you since we visited yesterday. "Are you drinking again?"


    She sputtered, and when she started talking again, it was a lot icier. "Athan, you asshole, AEGIS almost died."


    "That rustbucket? Who cares?" I said, and walked back towards Saga. How was I supposed to care about any of these other girls when Saga was here, and suffering.


    "Who...cares? Athan, are you insane? We were just packing up and getting ready to go and she kept shushing me as she listened to something, and then she just...dropped dead. I had to reboot her, Athan, she crashed hard."


    "So everything''s fine. Why did you call?"


    "Athan, your friend almost died! If I weren''t there, she''d be on an autopsy table, confusing the shit out of doctors right now. What the fuck is wrong with you?"


    "Nothing. I''m just busy. Now don''t call me again unless something is actually wrong with someone I care about." I hung up.


    Stupid idiot kids.


    I went back to Saga who was exactly where I''d left her. Fetal position, eyes unsteady, naked. My heart broke seeing her like this. Someone so strong, so vulnerable.


    "Why''d you brush her off?" she whispered.


    "Who?"


    "Lia."


    "She said something about me calling and AEGIS crashing. I didn''t understand."


    "You mean, you didn''t care."


    "Well, also that, sure."


    She looked at me accusatory, like I''d just stepped on her puppy instead of just Tem. "AEGIS is your friend," she said.


    "Are you defending AEGIS? Why? You hate that stupid robot."


    "I do...I guess...but the Athan I know would never turn his back on a friend like that."


    I stared at her, a little incredulously. I went through my memories and couldn''t remember a single time AEGIS and I had been ''friends''. She was a useful tool, and once I''d escaped my exile, I didn''t need her anymore. As I went through memory after memory, I saw Saga looking shiftier and guiltier, with feelings to match wafting off of her, almost successfully concealed.


    "Why are you looking so down? You didn''t do anything," I said. "Not your fault the robot had a short-circuit."


    "Yeah," she whispered, and her head sunk further behind her knees. "Can I have my clothes?"


    "Are we done? Even if things are a little...unusual, there''s still plenty I''d like to do with you."


    "I don''t think that''s such a good idea," she said.


    I reached out and held her narrow shoulders, cold now that she had spent minutes naked, and leaned in to kiss her. For an instant, I felt her heart race, and her mind and heart open as my breath touched her lips.


    And then she turned her head and the moment closed.


    "Weren''t you tired?" she asked, as I hovered near the side of her head. She smelled like floral shampoo, and sex. I just wanted to drink her in forever.


    I glanced at my holo. 22-something? I distractedly converted from military time to normal human hours. So that was...10am? Totally unreasonable time to already be tired. Even if I was, she needed me now.


    "I want to spend all day with you, and then all night, and then all day again. Forever," I said, sitting opposite her, mirroring her posture with my chin resting on my knees. I took one of her hands and stroked it gently, putting some warmth back into it. Her hands, despite looking big, were only as large as mine, the rest of her was just that much smaller.


    "Athan, stop saying things like that," she said, disgusted, and turning away again. She stepped off the couch, gingerly avoiding Tem, and stepped into her clothes, dressing with her back to me. "And stop staring."


    "I don''t understand," I said, not sure what I''d done wrong here. I hadn''t meant to hurt her in any way. If this was just about her body, she had to know I didn''t care, I loved her for who she was, without reservation, unconditionally.


    As soon as I had that thought, she jolted as though stabbed, and jammed the zipper again. She swore, but I was there, wrapping my arms around her and deftly maneuvering the zip, whispering calming words into her ear as I rested my chin on her shoulder to see, and pressed myself against her cold back.


    Again, to my surprise, she jumped away again. She looked mad now, and glared at me, teeth bared, hands in loose fists between us like she was going to hit me.


    "What did I do?" I asked, completely lost, when just minutes ago, we were more intimate than any two people on Earth had ever been.


    "Nothing!" she yelled back, as best as her voice allowed. "You did nothing, okay! Just stop. Stop...being so in love with me, okay?"


    "I can''t do that," I said reassuringly.


    "I know," she sighed. I thought this was a good thing until she yelled it back at me again in her tiny raspy voice. "I know! I know, I know, I know!"


    "I''m super lost. Are you unhappy? What can I do to help?"


    "I¡­" she sighed and sat down on a recliner where I couldn''t sit next to her. "I just need to do some thinking. Can you call Lia back and make sure everything''s okay, please? And remember that AEGIS is your friend at least?"


    "She''s not, though."


    "Then pretend, for me."


    "I don''t understand."


    "And stop saying that. Just do it, okay?"


    "Okay." I blinked at her as she stood up and slowly made her way upstairs. She didn''t have to be a psychic for me to tell something was incredibly wrong with her. As soon as this call was over, I would join her. She obviously needed me now more than ever.


    The call was about to go to voice message when Lia picked up.


    "Gonna hang up again?" she sniped before I could say hello.


    "Maybe if you keep talking like that."


    "Dude, what the emu is wrong with you tonight?"


    "Me? Tonight? It''s 10am and you''re calling me with stories of people you know I don''t care about dying, and telling me I called you, and wasting time I could be spending with Saga."


    I almost heard her mind click over the comms.


    "You''re with Saga?" she asked, suddenly a little too conversationally.


    "Yes, and we were having a great time until you called and ruined everything."


    "Athan, what time is it?"


    "It''s ten in the morning, I told you."


    "So the sun''s up?"


    I glanced at the window and frowned. Still no sun. Was this Tem''s doing?


    "Why would you ask that?" I diverted.


    "Dude, I don''t want to scare you, but I think¡­" she stopped herself. "Athan, where are you now?"


    "I''m...safe," I said warily. "Why are you asking?"


    "Please just answer me. This is really important."


    "No."


    "No? Bro, it''s me, Lia, your sister. Do you remember that?"


    "Of course I do."


    "But you don''t remember that AEGIS is like, one of your best friends?"


    "She was never one of my best friends, Lia."


    There was a moment of silence where I could hear her shifting uncomfortably. It sounded like she was pacing. Damn girl could never sit still.


    "Okay, I won''t ask where you are, but are you planning to stay there long, and is there anyone there with you and Saga?"


    "Just Tem, but I had Saga put her under." As I remembered she was there, I took out some of this angst by resting my foot on her face, feeling her hot breath between my toes. She coughed in her sleep as I partially obstructed her breathing. She''d survive.


    "And you''re going to stay there for a while? Nice relaxing time with Saga?" she sounded like she was finally understanding.


    "Yeah. A couple days."


    "Oh good. I hope you guys have a great time."


    "Yeah, we will as soon as this call is over. Was there anything else?"


    "No, nothing I think you''d care about. Hey, I''ll see you soon, okay Athan? Hang in there."


    "Yeah, sure, whatever." I hung up.


    I went upstairs and found Saga lying in the dark on her side, on the floor next to the bed. I frowned and picked her up, her breath catching at my sudden touch, even as I was impressed as ever by how light she was. I gently put her down on the bed.


    "I don''t need you saving me," she said.


    "I choose to do it anyway, remember?"


    I saw a small frown for a moment before she buried her face in a pillow.


    She said something, but I couldn''t understand.


    "What?"


    "Lay down," she repeated, moving the pillow to only cover her eyes. I cuddled next to her, and then fell onto my front as she moved away from me. "Athan, you''ve made lots of mistakes before. What if you could undo one of your mistakes, but are worried that doing so might be an even bigger mistake?"


    "I don''t understand."


    "I told you to stop saying that," she practically growled, in her diminutive, airy voice.


    "Okay. Well, uh." My mind cast around at random, trying to think of one of my mistakes. There were plenty to choose from, but finding a specific one worth talking about was hard.


    "Mage died. I blame myself."


    "She what?" Saga sat bolt upright.


    "Um, yeah. That was the mistake. It sucked and I''d like to take it back. But--"


    Saga was shaking her head. "That''s impossible. She can''t die."


    "What?"


    "She can''t die. Her powers wouldn''t allow for that. I only met her once, really briefly, at the top of the tower, but what I saw in her¡­" she shuddered. This wasn''t where I had intended this conversation to go.


    "I was going to say, I think she could see the future. So if she died, it was for a reason, I think. You asked if I would undo my mistake if it meant making a bigger mistake...I don''t know why Mage let herself die, but she had a reason for it. If I undid that, I''d probably be making a bigger mistake somehow."


    "No, you don''t understand at all. Mage was a code-X like me, only her powers were completely different. Completely terrifying."


    "I mean...yeah, I guess you could say that."


    "Athan, you don''t understand. The suffering I''ve lived through, that''s like, literally a millionth of what she''s endured, and she was only thirteen. She couldn''t die. No, no, no. That''s too fucked up."


    I honestly didn''t care about Mage, was just trying to talk with Saga and make her feel better, but it looked like I''d fucked up again.


    "Did she say anything? Do anything? Never mind, this will be faster."


    My mind was plumbed vigorously. I tried to enjoy the experience as Saga worked, feeling close to her for the first time since breakfast, but she was rifling through me like she was a burglar and I was a house which had personally offended her.


    "She drank water? Fuck, she had to do that on purpose. But why?" I felt Saga''s mind buzzing next to me. At least she this was a normal level of me not-understanding at this point. I waited patiently while she worked.


    At some point, I woke up, and saw the morning sun and no Saga.

 139. 2251, Present Day. Blue Ridge Mountains. Athan.

    Shit, had I slept through a whole day? I checked my holo and...no...it had been...negative one hours? Same day, 0900. I was totally lost, but I was used to it at this point. I reached out to say good morning to Saga''s mind, and was troubled to realize she wasn''t there.


    I walked downstairs, and found Tem sitting up on the couch. She blinked and then her face split into a smile. "You''re here!" she said.


    "Hi." It was about as civil as I could manage with the little shit. "Where''s Saga?"


    "She left. She gave me these."


    I grabbed the notes out of Tem''s hands. Both were folded in half, one was crudely bound shut with a strip of the adhesive gag we''d had over Ajax'' mouth, the other said ''good morning'' on the outside. I opened it and started to read, and felt my mind expanding.


    [Hey, Athan, good morning. Couldn''t bear myself to wake you up when you were sleeping so cute.]


    Saga''s familiar mind-voice floated through mine, as I realized the paper didn''t have words on it, and the world began to disappear around me. I fell downwards into blackness, and as soon as all light was extinguished, fell into light again.


    I was Saga, reliving the moment she wrote me this note in her mind, reliving her memories. I realized, by the very nature of her scheming to do so, that she''d planted this as a compel in my brain while I slept, set to crack when I read the note.


    I--Saga--was sitting on the corner of the massive bed, knees up, as they had been so often lately. The real me was laying on my side, sleeping soundly, under covers Saga had pulled up on me. It was very late at night, I...she...had spent several hours thinking and planning before deciding to do this.


    [I told you I made a mistake and had the chance to undo it. I''m...not doing that, exactly, but I can''t afford to be as selfish as I have been. I''m sorry that you''ve been all confused and things haven''t made sense lately, just blame me and try to move on.]


    She sighed.


    [No, that''s no good. What am I even doing?] I scratched at my head with both hands in frustration. [Why did I even decide to do this...he was right, I do never think things through.]


    I let out a deep breath. [Sorry, I just...realized that bigger things than me and you are at stake here. I don''t want to sound like Karu, but honestly, you guys had a real thing going, and this...this is all just kind of my mess you''re left cleaning up. If we see each other again, remind me to get rid of those memories of banging Lia, you''ve probably been punished enough.]


    I laughed. She laughed. It was confusing, having someone else''s memories.


    She sighed. [Look, the point is...you''re right, you''ve always been right. I''m no good, Athan. I could lie to myself as much as I wanted, but the proof was yesterday. Yesterday...we¡­]


    I stopped, and just stared at me sleeping, longingly for what felt like an hour. I didn''t move, with a patience no person should ever have, forged in a crucible of a hundred years. Eventually, with a heart-rending sigh, I got up, padded to the door, and opened it with a stillness and silence that made it hard to tell the door even moved.


    As I walked downstairs, I realized I wasn''t walking like I usually did. Saga was light, but she was also frail. She was tireless, but she was also weak. Every step down was an effort, leaning against the wall as I went, my feet unsure, as I lowered myself, unaccustomed to walking on stairs in my own...in her own flesh, gently reaching down with straining toes to find the next step, as though every one of them could be the edge of a bottomless chasm.


    I finally made it, with a slow, unsteady gait, and fell into the couch.


    [Sorry, didn''t think I could say it with you right there. Maybe I still can''t. The next hour of this memory is just going to be me walking out of range of you, heh.]


    I laced my fingers in front of me, held aloft, and looked at my hands with some disgust. Wait, I loved her hands? She didn''t?


    [Athan, I mind-fucked you, and I''m sorry. You and I...we had a big fight. You were trying to be noble and self-righteous and offered to date me because you were trying to protect my feelings, and I, like an idiot, accepted because even if I knew it was all the right things for all the wrong reasons, I wanted it. I thought...maybe I could just have some fun with you and then let you know it would have never worked, but it didn''t go that way.]


    I sat up. [We fought. We got really, really dirty with it. We were...feeding off each other''s negativity, in a way I never should have allowed, but once we were there, I was just so mad at you, I thought you deserved to feel all my anger and pain. You brought up that I''d spend the rest of eternity living on the blackened shell of the dead Earth, and Tem got dragged into it somehow, and you said at least you knew she loved you, and that you hated me, and I just...kinda snapped.]


    I sat there for a few more minutes, looking down at my toes. My stupid ugly boat feet. What? She hated those too?


    [I blasted you out, Athan, and then I felt so bad about what I did, I erased the whole fight from your mind. And then...and then...I...I put in fake memories instead, because...I don''t know why. I thought you had to have something. And when I was doing that, I don''t know, it was like one bad idea kept piling into another, and I decided to give you memories of this really perfect night we had together, and how much we loved each other.]


    I breathed out, raggedly, sounding like ''gaaah.'' I wanted to get up, to pace, to do anything but face this stupid note I was writing in my head.


    [Anyway, that''s it,] I finished. [There''s another note with another compel. If you open it, I''ll be gone from your mind forever. I wouldn''t blame you, okay? I''m sorry.]


    I landed back in my own body, the blank note in front of me. Tem was watching me warily, and I wondered how long I''d just been staring transfixed at it. As the last sensations of being Saga faded away, I realized I had both sets of memories, hers and mine, of the time which wasn''t.


    I felt...I felt everything, it seemed like. The now-familiar sensation of heartbreak, not over Karu, but over Saga, now that our one-night relationship was unravelling in my head and heart. I felt betrayal, obviously, but also of sadness, she seemed like she had really loved me, and just didn''t know how to be anything I wanted.


    Guilt and shame took their turn next, as I relived and remembered everything I''d said to her. She was angry but mostly reactive when we''d fought...I''d...really gone for the throat. Fuck. Some of the things I''d said crossed the line so hard, no amount of psychic feedback could excuse that. And to be screaming at her while she was desperately clinging to the hope of somehow keeping me?


    And then back to sadness, as I realized she''d given up that hope, for me. Now. These notes, these compels, these memories, this was her letting me go, realizing that her own desperate bid for happiness was too selfish, that when she had me all to herself, she didn''t want that, didn''t even want me if I was like that, had walked out in the middle of the night just so that I couldn''t try being self-sacrificing again and say words she wanted to hear, or talk her down yet again.


    It was what I would have done, and I had to wonder if she''d run these thoughts through my brain while I slept to get that answer.


    I held my head like that would keep the wave of emotions from splitting it in half. Tem looked at me, concerned, and then got up, disappearing seemingly by pure habit now.


    There wasn''t much here I could blame myself for, which I almost seemed disappointed by. Saga had...really fucked up everything possible. Every decision of hers was coming from a good place, but was worse than the last, and every time she realized that, she thought back to the words I''d cut her open with, and felt more and more like everything I had said was true. I didn''t know how she could be falling off the edge of the world in front of my eyes, and all I could think to do was try to sex her up and hug it out.


    ...except that wasn''t me at the time, just a doll in my likeness she''d created.


    Tem came back with a plate of hot leftovers, and materialized long enough to place it on the coffee table in front of me. To my surprise, I found myself overwhelmed in gratitude, and stood up, holding her in my arms.


    "A-A-A-Athan?" she stuttered out, having nothing to do with her impediment.


    "I''m sorry for everything the past few days," I said, and pressed her body to me. "I was so horrible to you."


    I knew it wasn''t me, but she didn''t. She''d endured so much, it didn''t even matter if it was because she was fucked in the head, I felt horrible for the things I''d said and done, and how easily I''d allowed Saga to let me dismiss her as even human...or whatever.


    "I don''t un-un-understand!" she squeaked, her hands frozen behind my back, not sure if she was allowed to touch me or not. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    It was a sentiment I had felt a lot recently. Not understanding, anyway. I relinquished the hug and held her at arm''s length. "Tem, I have a lot of problems with you, and I think you might even have more with yourself. I think you know that?"


    She nodded, still wild-eyed.


    "But you are still my friend no matter what, and I will treat you that way. I know for some reason you think I treat you better than everyone in the world will, and that''s just messed up, and also wrong. If you made any real friends, they''d also want to protect you and be around you, and would save your life if they could."


    She shook her head adamantly and I sighed and walked a few paces, trying to get out the right words.


    "The last few days...I wasn''t myself. Saga messed up my head a little bit and--"


    I had to to jump back. The air was tearing itself open around her. Light was becoming black holes, and my view of the world grew distorted and dim.


    "S-S-She hurt you."


    "Tem, NO!" I shouted. "I just wanted to apologize!"


    She looked down at me, but it wasn''t the same Tem I recognized. Black trails of vapor seemed to pour from her with every slow, measured breath, like even the air from her lungs could destroy light. Every part of her was bathed in shadow, as smoky tendrils streamed from her body.


    "Tem, she''s gone, and I''m fine. I promise."


    "I will find her."


    "Tem, listen to me."


    "I will end her."


    "TEM! LISTEN TO ME!" I tried walking to her, but the world was shifting beneath layers of shadow and light, and what there was to see wasn''t the world anymore. Despite knowing the floor was flat and even between us, I couldn''t step without feeling like everything was wavering.


    "I will destroy her, I will...rip her s-s-skin from her flesh and her flesh from her bones...again...and again...until there is nothing left of her to come back."


    I closed my eyes and walked forward. It helped a lot. Reaching out blindly, I caught ahold of Tem''s hand. I drew her close and looked at her. Underneath the shadows and mist, she was there, silver hair, small body, but with hate carved into her face so deeply, it was almost worse.


    "I will burn her s-s-soul into the blackest part of hell, and then I will kill myself so I can join her and s-spend all of eternity making her s-s-suffer. I will make her s-scream and bleed and die a million deaths and then a million more, and s-s-she will wish, with every...last...breath...that s-she never touched you, Chariot. Never hurt you. Never even met you."


    I heard the door bang open behind me.


    "Athan? What the fuck is all this? Athan? ATHAN!?" I heard someone...a synthesized voice. Not an XPCA...Lia, maybe? She had screamed into the twisting scene.


    "Lia? Lia, get the hell away, this is super fucked right now!"


    "Athan? Is this Saga''s doing? AEGIS, can you see anything?"


    "I can''t see anything either!" AEGIS shouted. "It''s not a mind trick."


    "Guys, I''m begging you, leave right now. This whole situation--"


    "THEY WILL RELIVE EVERY MOMENT THEY INFLICTED ON YOU, CHARIOT, I PROMISE. UNTIL THE END OF TIME, THEIR PAIN WILL BE THEIR LIFE."


    "What the fuck was that?" AEGIS'' voice said.


    "It''s Tem, I told you! Just fucking back off!"


    "Athan, you''re not right in the head right now. Saga--"


    "I know!" I shouted. "But this is unrelated, okay?"


    "No, not okay. Not okay at all." Lia was fretting. She was scheming. Why''d she have to be so damn good at it, she''d be coming at us any second with something. I realized, in her current state, Tem might even interpret Lia and AEGIS coming to help or not listening to me as an affront. I only had moments to defuse this whole situation.


    I stared at her, shook her. She just grinned at me, darkness clouding her eyes under her silver hair.


    "S-s-suffering for s-s-suffering," she whispered with a grin. "For you, Chariot. All for you."


    I slapped her across the face as hard as I could.


    She reeled, and I caught her. She blinked at me, tears replacing the darkness in her eyes. The shadows and black holes and twisting distortions of the world and fractured figments of reality snapped back into the cozy living room one by one, revealing AEGIS and Lia each tense and at the ready close to the door. Lia was in full slipskin and mask had something in her hands, which she pressed into AEGIS'' now that they could find each other again.


    "Ow." Tem said in a small hurt voice, as confused as she was pitiful. She spit out some blood and wiped it on the back of her hand.


    "I told you, Tem. Do not threaten anybody, not my friends, not people who hurt me, I can handle my own trouble."


    "I was only protecting you."


    "I don''t eradicate anyone or revel in their blood when I''m protecting you, Tem. Be sane."


    "S-s-he needs to die. S-she hurt you."


    I turned towards the others for help but they had no idea what was going on either. Lia gave it a shot anyway.


    "I think what Ath--Chariot is trying to say is¡­" she hesitated for a moment, and then pulled off her mask, looking Tem up and down the whole while, but settling on her face. "...he would be very sad if you killed or hurt anyone. He doesn''t want you to have to do that, because he cares about you."


    "Oh," said Tem. "I don''t want to make Chariot unhappy," she shifted a little guiltily. "But...on the whole, I think he would be happier with them gone, even if he is upset at me. I don''t mind him being upset with me."


    Damn, so close.


    "No, he''d just be upset in general. You know how he beats himself up about things...if you solve his problems so permanently...he''d probably regret it for the rest of his life. Even if what you did was right, he''d spend all eternity being punished by the haunting question of if he could have done it different, and you were the one who took away his chance."


    Tem looked like she''d been slapped again, and I was shocked and impressed myself, noting that she''d used words straight from Tem''s own definition of Saga''s new hell to relate to her on her own terms exactly what she was doing to me.


    When had Lia grown up so fast?


    "I...I guess I overreacted," Tem finally confessed. And the pin was back in the grenade?


    "All I want is for you to listen to me sometimes, Tem. I''m our strike lead, remember? If you don''t listen to me, even in small things which don''t seem important to you, or things where you think you''re protecting me from something worse, you''re making my job harder, and you''re making it more dangerous for all of us."


    "I understand."


    "Good."


    "We all good then?" Lia asked cagily, and I nodded.


    And then Tem wavered and fell asleep, and before she even hit the floor, I felt the world go upside-down on me as well, feeling my head slam against the wood floors an instant before darkness found me.


    When I came to, it was in darkness. I was leaning back uncomfortably, and when I tried to move, I couldn''t.


    "Tem?" I asked. No response. I hadn''t actually said anything, so it would be a miracle if she had responded. Nothing on my body seemed to work. I tried to make a sword and succeeded, though it took more focus than normal. I also realized, by its glittering, muted outline, that I was blindfolded.


    "Shit, he''s up already?" someone said. Tem? No. Someone else. I couldn''t remember anyone else right now. My brain wasn''t working right. I tried to demand to be released, but it came out as a pitiful snarl.


    "Easy there buddy," she said. The voice was so familiar. Saga? Who was just there. Lia...AEGIS. It was AEGIS'' voice.


    "AEGIS?" I didn''t say.


    "Look, put the sword away please." I did, with some effort. "Good, thanks. Look, Lia and I came out as soon as we heard Saga had been in your head. We tracked you using your holo and...well...right now we''re kind of holding you prisoner until we can figure out what she did, and how unstable you are. Thing is, as I''m sure you know, you''re an awful prisoner to hold. She laughed. I couldn''t, but also didn''t. I''d also forgotten who was holding me, exactly. A friend, I thought. But why would a friend take me prisoner?


    "Uh, so you''re blindfolded. You''re also...kinda drugged? Neural dampeners. We thought they would be the only defense we could muster against Saga. The plan was for me to go in, because she can''t touch me, put the dampeners on, and then we can sort the two of you out individually later. So...same plan, but with some adjustments."


    No wonder I was so disoriented. My brain was actively being scrambled by a machine as we spoke, and the possibility of doing anything more coordinated than thinking was just out of the question.


    I wasn''t mind-fucked right now, I wanted to scream. If only they could let me talk for five minutes, I could clear this up.


    But I knew from their perspective, they couldn''t trust that, couldn''t trust anything I said or did. There was a reason Code-X was kill on sight. Things that messed with your head were seriously scary. I''d learned that recently, hadn''t I? I couldn''t quite remember why that seemed so poignant.


    "So...hang tight until we get to our destination, please. Lia''s with Tem, and we are, uh, in transit."


    The words seemed to hang in the air, and by the time I heard and processed them, I''d already mostly forgotten the context of the situation. Neural dampener, that''s why I forgot.


    Neural dampeners were really expensive, I knew, and really annoying, I was rapidly learning...kinda. The tech never really got anywhere else because for all the expense of having one, typically drugging or killing or just locking up was a cheaper, safer, more reliable means of pacification.


    Code-X''s were one of the few cases where they might have some use...but given the kill-on-sight order...still about a billion times more costly than a bullet.


    Why was I thinking about neural dampeners again? I couldn''t remember. So annoying. Wait, maybe my brain was being scrambled by one now? But how I would I know that?


    I spent the next indeterminate amount of time getting lost on trains of thought until I realized we stopped. I had forgotten we were moving, and when I saw the light stream in, filtered through my blindfold, I remembered I was wearing one of those too.


    "I''m heading out. The dampener will turn off in a minute and you can join us. I''m sorry about this, Athan," someone said. Tem? No, someone else. Why couldn''t I remember things again? I laid there in the dark, wondering where I was, and experimentally tried turning on my sword.


    It lit up in front of me, and I remembered I was wearing a blindfold.

 140. 2251, Present Day. Blue Ridge Mountains. Athan.

    There was a faint click and I felt immediately much less stupid. Thoughts came crashing through my head at what felt like lightspeed, and I spent a minute just putting together what had happened here. I realized I was in the back of a big empty truck, and as I pulled off the blindfold and neural dampener and headed outside, realized it was a moving truck. There was another one nearby, with Tem aboard, presumably, and also about a billion tons of barbed wire making a big arena with the two of us inside.


    There was nothing else. Flat open sandy rocky nothing. It was like a desert, but wasn''t incredibly hot and dry. I wondered where we were.


    Lia and AEGIS waved at me from a little open wood shack outside the cage. I noticed the layers of barbed wire were deep enough that I couldn''t reach the outside with my powers, and the layers of wire between us made for an excellent electrical ground if I fired off undirected lightning. As to be expected from Lia, I guess.


    Nothing to protect them at all from Tem, but she hadn''t been part of the plan, I guessed. So why were they releasing her now¡­?


    The two just sat and watched me for a while. I felt like a circus animal, trapped in the ring for their amusement.


    "So where''s Tem?" I asked.


    "She''s in the other truck, still dampened," Lia answered. "She''s uh...a little dangerous, we thought."


    "Hmm." I said. The truck was right there, but I could tell she wasn''t in it, couldn''t sense her, invisible or not. "So this is a test, to see if I''m currently mind-fucked. You guys are thinking if I am, I''d go to her, take off the dampener and she can hurt you even if my powers can''t?"


    They looked at each other.


    "I can tell she''s not in there, by the way, but good try?"


    "How do you--never mind. Okay. I lied, it''s just you. So tell us what happened," Lia asked.


    I explained as detailed as I could, starting with the note, but that wasn''t good enough for them, so I went back, glossing over some of the worst of the argument and the best of the day which never was.


    "So you do remember calling me then?" Lia said.


    "Yeah."


    AEGIS looked visibly upset, even hurt, but she was clearly just here to support Lia, and said nothing. I guessed she didn''t like the story about me and Saga.


    "Everything you say sounds plausible, but¡­" Lia shifted, and twisted at strands of her hair beneath her hood.


    "That''s exactly the scary part of a compel?" I asked.


    She nodded.


    "Unless you are way, way, way smarter than me, and I will only give you credit for one or two of those on a good day, I don''t think you can just suss out if I''m compelled, sis."


    "Yeah," she agreed numbly. "Listen," she said, with sudden urgency. "Um."


    She scratched her head, looking to AEGIS for reassurance, who just sat there with the apparent emotional state of a crushed aluminum can.


    "The thing is...and...don''t be mad, it was just an accident, and we''re working on it."


    "Just say it?" I said, getting more nervous with each faltering start.


    "We...ran into Saga on our way in."


    My heart leapt in my chest. And then nosedived. And then leapt again. Stupid, conflicting feelings.


    "We...didn''t know why she was leaving you, and we were worried about you still...and¡­"


    "And what?" I asked. I needed her to just finish her thought. This was torture.


    "Promise you won''t be mad at me?" Lia said, her eyes large and serious.


    "Lia, just tell me."


    She sighed. "We hit her with a neural dampener, but¡­" she fussed and fretted with something lower than her shoulders, out of view of the small window into the wood shack. "She uh¡­"


    "Tell me, damn it, Lia!" She flinched at my outburst. I was sweating and my heart was racing, but seeing her jump like that reminded me that she was seriously worried about me too, right now. Which was stupid, I was fine, and Saga was...well...I''d know if she ever finished a thought. "Sorry. Lia, please?"


    She nodded at me, her face resolute. "Saga''s mind isn''t like a normal person''s. The dampener didn''t...work the same way. She''s kind of¡­"


    I was scarcely in control of my breathing as Lia paused again. I felt my throat closing up, and wiped my sweaty palms on my legs again and again. I mentally willed for her to finish her thought, but she seemed to struggle for words as much as I was struggling to hear them.


    "Kind of...brain...dead."


    "What?"


    "Brain-dead," she repeated. AEGIS glanced sideways at her for half a second, but otherwise just looked at me sourly.


    I fell backwards, landing on my butt and hands, and caking my sweaty palms with dust and sand.


    "I don''t think she''s actually brain-dead," Lia clarified. "I don''t think her powers would let her brain be physically harmed. But¡­" she looked at AEGIS. "If you wipe the memory core...it''s not technically broken. Just...blank¡­"


    I looked at the two of them, uncomprehending. How could this have happened? I''d gone to sleep in Saga''s arms last morning...night. I woke up this morning and everything had been a lie. And now she was gone, forever? Just like that?


    Not even killing humans or going out with a bang, her own friends, or my friends at least, just trying to help me, and poof, that was it. Someone so strong, but still so fragile that this, of all things undid her?


    I felt like my mind and heart had both stopped. I felt pain in my chest and couldn''t inhale. I clutched at it, and warm droplets fell on my hand.


    Of all the things in my life I thought might leave me, somehow I never considered Saga among them. In my darker moments, I''d had nightmares of Karu being overwhelmed by an Exhuman she just wasn''t prepared for, or Lia, being the physically weakest of us, getting dragged into a problem too big for her. I felt like dreams like that were just another part of my subconscious urging me to protect them with everything I had.


    But Saga...she was always above and beside all of that. She would outlive the mountain. If Cosette had made good to throw her in a volcano, she would outlive that too. If she was chained up and cast into the bottom of the ocean, one day, she''d simply walk out of it, once the water had rusted the locks away.


    But brain-dead, or whatever Lia had described...something which could kill her without killing her. I''d never seen it coming.


    The pain was unimaginable. If learning Karu and I couldn''t be together was like a dull blade in my heart, and failing to save Mage, whom I didn''t even really like was like having my stomach fall through me...hearing that I''d never feel Saga''s voice again, or her small tinkling laughter, or see that cocky smile...it was like a spear had impaled half of my entire body. I didn''t know there could be this much physical pain from hearing words.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    I wanted it gone. I wanted the whole world gone. I fell forward and banged my small, useless fists against the unfeeling, fucked-up planet I lived on. I punched it. I slammed my hands against it, feeling pain course through them, feeling like my forearms would shatter. A hundred swords, a thousand swords, willed into being from the torn pieces of my heart joined me in my fruitless, pointless, painful attack on this stupid world


    "Where is she?" I asked, my voice breaking.


    "She''s not far but¡­"


    "Let me see her," I said, looking at them. I couldn''t see that far, just indistinct brown against the sand. I rubbed the tears from my eyes, and saw them confer briefly. AEGIS nodded, and Lia spoke.


    "Let me send you a feed," she said, and tapped on her wrist. I got a message on my holo, that I opened.


    It was Saga. There wasn''t much else to say. She looked almost peaceful, laying there, breathing evenly and slowly, on a dark stone background. What struck me most was her eyes. They were not the eyes of a living person, just glossy, unfocused, blank. Her mouth was slightly parted, and a stray strand of hair fluttered over the lips that I had just been kissing.


    It was a mistake, seeing it. I deleted the link almost as soon as I pulled it up and tried to banish the image, banish everything from my mind. If only...if only I had been better, she wouldn''t have left, if only I hadn''t run to them for help, they wouldn''t have run into her. I cracked my hand into the ground and realized it was bent funny. I held my arm up and my wrist hung limply. I couldn''t even feel it. My brain didn''t have the bandwidth to experience all the pain I was in right now.


    The two looked at me horrified, guilty, exchanging looks like, had they gone too far? Should they stop me? Was I completely insane?


    Maybe I was.


    I grabbed at my chest again as my heart pounded for what felt like the first time in minutes, and felt something crumple in my breast pocket. Fumbling with my left hand, I opened the pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, folded in half, and sealed shut with a strip of adhesive tape.


    My eyes lit up, and Lia''s mouth fell open.


    "Athan, what is that?" she asked. "Is that the second letter you mentioned?"


    I didn''t answer. I fumbled with the letter. The adhesive was way too strong, it was meant to be used as a gag or restraint, and didn''t want to tear.


    "AEGIS, GO!" Lia shouted, and AEGIS bolted from the booth. Or...she ran sideways out of the booth and disappeared. Some kind of trick, apparently. They weren''t right there, they were remote. Didn''t even trust me through twenty feet of barbed wire.  "Athan, do not open that letter, I''m telling you."


    "Fuck you," I said, struggling one-handed with the tear-stained paper now. "Fuck you and fuck this world."


    "Athan, this is going to sound really wrong, but Saga''s fine, okay? Listen to me--"


    I didn''t want to hear anything else she said. Her words had done nothing but tear my heart to pieces. I needed this, I needed to forget. With any luck, Saga had messed up this compel, and when I opened it, I''d be as brain-dead as she was.


    I tore at the strip with my teeth and felt it give a little. It was meant to tear, that''s how you got it off the roll, but it was also meant to be resilient...and to be operated with two hands. I cursed myself for wasting my stupid body on fighting the damn planet.


    Lia was still talking, but I didn''t care. I needed this. She would tell me it was unhealthy or unwise, or something, but she didn''t know what I was feeling. She couldn''t begin to imagine the highs and lows I''d felt over this one single fucked-up day. I''d tried to hold onto the pain of losing people, and Saga had taken away that pain. And now I''d lost her.


    I felt the note give a little more and realized I was tearing the paper. That was no good, I had to open it properly or the compel wouldn''t work. I gingerly readjusted my grip and started working on the other end of the adhesive instead, when I heard something.


    Karu? It sounded like an engine, almost. But it wasn''t hers. There''s no way it would be, anyway. Not interested, I got a good clean tear into the other side, severing it halfway. Where the two met, there was just a sliver of tape left holding it. I worked my broken hand into the folded letter to hold it down and hooked my finger around the last bit.


    I said a mental goodbye to those dull eyes. She hadn''t deserved this end. She might have been a horrible person, but she was just a product of this horrible world.


    The engine roaring grew louder and then with a pain I recognized but didn''t feel, I flew sideways, watching the horizon sail with me, until I crashed into a wall of barbed wire, where I hung like a puppet from the barbs. Painfully, slowly, tearing my own skin in the process, I turned my head and saw AEGIS standing there. She was breathing fast and even, rings of light strobing under her skin in those divots on her joints, thrumming and winding down now that she was at rest, like there was a jet engine in each of her shoulders, knees, elbows, and hips.


    The air shimmered around her from heat, and she bent down to pick up the letter I''d dropped. I reached towards her with my broken hand, useless, ten feet away, while the rest of me was hung on the wires. She gave the note a contemptuous glare, and then pressed it to her shoulder, where it smoked and then burned into embers after a few seconds.


    In my mind, I fell again, as my body fell off the barbs. I fell through darkness, into light, and was Saga once more, as she made final preparations to leave me yesterday.


    [Hey, Athan,] I said with a smile. [I don''t know when you''re getting this message...might be minutes...might be years, I guess. But...if you''re seeing this...I guess you destroyed my note, and decided to keep my memories around after all.]


    I wiped away a single tear threatening to stain the two notes in my hands.


    [I don''t know why you chose to do that. You''ve always been a little funny about wanting to keep trauma inside your head instead of out where other people can feel it. Whatever the reason I just...I just wanted to say thank you. I love you, Athan. Thank you for not forgetting me.]


    And then I was back.


    I couldn''t take it. I just...froze...and shattered. Time seemed to pass without me. I could see and hear everything going on around me, but it was like I was dreaming. AEGIS picked me up, her arms still hot to the touch, she said words, to me, to Lia, I didn''t know. She asked me questions I didn''t know. She carried me back into the moving van and spoke on comms for a while and then we were moving somewhere.


    It wasn''t long before we arrived somewhere and again AEGIS carried me. I saw doors and windows pass by and then a bed under me. I was on my side, facing the room, while AEGIS and Lia talked. Lia left for a while and then came back with a large clear glass bottle she drank out of. They started to argue.


    I still didn''t know. My brain felt like it was trying to process things and couldn''t. I just laid there, seeing everything, taking in nothing. I felt far away. Lia walked up to me with something in her hand, and the bottle in the other, and rolled up my sleeve, pressing the first object onto my arm.


    I felt like the world moved back into focus almost immediately. I looked down at the stim patch she''d slapped on me.


    "Athan. Listen to me carefully," she said, and took a drink. "Can you hear me?"


    I nodded numbly.


    "Saga is fine. I lied about the whole thing. I''m sorry."


    I shook my head. Saga had said goodbye. Saga had left me. There was a hole in me where Saga had once been. I couldn''t fix it. I had lost my only option to ignore it.


    "Listen, Athan. Please. Listen." She was speaking slowly and stressing every word. I could see tears and panic threatening to break through her eyes as she forced herself to remain calm for me. "I made it up to make sure you weren''t compelled. It was a horrible, cruel thing I had to do. I am sorry, I am so, so, so sorry."


    "You have to be lying," I said. My brain was beginning to start moving again, I felt like I''d missed the firing pistol and found out I''d shown up to the race without legs, but it was moving. Every step was agony. I''d been through too much, too many highs, too many lows, and now...she was telling me it was all nothing?


    "I''m not lying, here--" she tapped around on her holo and showed me the image of Saga again, and I felt my breath stop in my chest. While I watched, she slid her fingers over the holo, and moved the camera around. Saga was lying on the floor of AEGIS'' old prison, the terminal still right there, out of sight. She panned the camera down, through the floor, and through Saga''s body, and I could see the inside of her 3D model.


    "It''s just a render I had AEGIS make. We never ran into Saga. I''m so sorry Athan."


    "She''s¡­" my brain struggled for the word. "Alive?"


    "Yes."


    I had hoped to feel relief, but I still just felt nothing. I rolled onto my back, and looked at the ceiling. I wanted to think, but couldn''t. I wanted to stop feeling, but couldn''t. I wanted to just...wake up and have it be tomorrow, a very familiar sensation after Karu left me.


    "I''m sorry," Lia reiterated, and took another deep drink. This time, AEGIS grabbed the bottle and pried it from her fingers. Lia didn''t fight back.


    "I need¡­" I didn''t know how to articulate any of this. It wasn''t even me talking at this point, it was only the stims. "...I don''t know."


    "Do you want to be alone?" Lia asked, hesitantly.


    "Yes. I think."


    "Do you want me to take the stims off?"


    "Yes."


    She peeled the patch from my skin, but the damage was done. I was still feeling my heart and brain race unnaturally. The two stood there uncomfortably for a while. Eventually Lia muttered something like ''come on'' and left. AEGIS turned to go.


    "I told her this was a bad idea," she said. "I never wanted to do any of this."


    I didn''t respond.


    "It might have been better for you to forget Saga anyway."


    The mention of her name made my heart jump, but that was it.


    "I''m sorry."


    She turned and left too, turning off the lights and closing the door, and I was alone, staring at the ceiling like it had all the answers, like if I scrutinized it honestly enough, it could tell me why, for no reason at all, I was born to suffer in this world.

 141. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Lia.

    It had been a bad day.


    Which was funny, because it started, as all days can, like a good day. It was our last day out here on the east coast, and we were having our first really lazy day of it, packing and grazing slowly as we prepared to sink back into our regular lives.


    I think...it was an alright trip. I''d only gotten to see Athan for a day, because I was trying to let AEGIS have some quality time with him, but she only got him for two days, and with the whole Karu thing, it wasn''t working.


    After their first night together, AEGIS came back, totally defeated, changing out of her clothes into an ugly tracksuit and leaving them on the floor like it was their fault things had gone so wrong. Chiho and I spent the rest of the day trying to cheer her up, and at least finally convinced her to go out the second day instead of just giving up on him. That was when we all had dinner together, and I think...for a bit there...AEGIS and Athan were both pretty happy, even if we were all walking on eggshells.


    And then today came, and whoo damn. AEGIS crashing for God-knows-why. Calling Athan and hearing him pooping on her like she wasn''t even alive, figuring out he''d been Saga''d, dropping everything...even AEGIS did, and she just wanted to go home and play with her robots. Tem being Tem, and finally me fudging everything up big time.


    It had been a bad, bad day. We missed our flight, too, not that it really mattered the way things were right now.


    This little roadside motel was tiny, but the closest lodging we could find to where I''d broken Athan, and we only had two rooms and two beds between the four of us. Athan got one, AEGIS didn''t need one, and I guess that meant I was either cuddling my brother or my gay roommate who liked to sleep almost naked...or taking the floor.


    I also needed water, I reminded myself. I''d only had...maybe the equivalent of three shots before AEGIS kindly put me down, and I''d been eating today so I wasn''t too bad, but I had to be at my best, if there was anything I could do to figure out how to undo what I''d done.


    I found myself fixating on small details like this, having no idea what to do, what I could even do, my brain naturally broke down the situation into discrete chunks I could process, like if I solved enough small problems, I''d work my way right up to fixing Athan. Figure out lodging, figure out food and drink, figure out how to get the booze back from AEGIS. Well, not really. But maybe.


    I was probably driving the other two nuts. We were all in the second room, letting Athan rest as best we could, and I was just...I couldn''t sit still. I was pacing, but when that wasn''t distracting enough, the pacing got weirder as it sometimes did, until it was like, walk four steps, pirouette with leg kick, walk four steps back, sharp 180 on the heel of one foot, walk four steps. Meanwhile my hands kept moving, I felt like I was babbling in sign, as I distractedly picked at my hands, rubbed them, tented them, untented them, laced them together.


    Or maybe not. They''d lived with me, they knew I was crazy.


    I had nothing, though. I''d looked at this from every angle, and the amount of damage I''d done was just too great. I''d actually pushed him all the way into literal shock, and he was going through despondence. Right now, he needed rest and no stress, and that was it, that was all I could give him.


    It didn''t seem enough, but doing nothing was often harder than doing anything. That was my problem, though, not his. Well, mine, and the two girls watching me as I bounced back and forth between two walls like a ping-pong ball.


    "You''re going to make me dizzy," Chiho said, at last, looking up from her mobile. She and AEGIS were playing some game again. Now, of all times. I mean, it wasn''t any less productive than wearing a trench in the carpet but still.


    That was a mean thing to think, I thought, as I looked at AEGIS who, for all the fun the game seemed to be giving her, might as well be playing a lively round of ''hold the corrosive waste''. She was probably just doing it because Chiho thought it might help.


    "AEGIS," I said abruptly, before I realised I was going to. She looked up at me, and I wished I''d thought this through a little more. Her yellow eyes had a way of being very distracting.


    "...yes?" she said after a moment.


    "What happened?" I asked.


    "You decided your brother was mind-fucked by a code-X and so you mind-fucked him a hundred times harder?"


    I winced. Technically true, but not what I meant. "I mean, with you. I feel like we only just got you back, and then had to run off, but I never heard why you crashed anyway. Is there something we can help with?"


    She sort of scoffed at me and went back to the game she wasn''t enjoying.


    "Hey!" I said, stopping my pacing.


    "What?"


    "That was a serious question."


    "Lia, God knows I love you, but right now, I really don''t like you. Athan''s my friend too, and you insisted this was right. I can''t think of how you could have been more wrong, and I don''t want your help right now, and I''m definitely a little too peeved to even let you try."


    She said, while still playing the game probably because Chiho thought it would help.


    I told myself I shouldn''t be mad at her even as I slammed the door behind me.


    I messed up, I know. I messed up really bad. I might have done some seriously major damage to arguably the most important person in the world to me. I know. I know. I know.


    Where the turkey was that damn vodka?


    I nipped back out to the motel lobby which doubled as a junky tourist trap store, walking past all the vivid tee shirts proclaiming my love for the Blue Ridge Mountains, and picked up an identical handle of vodka from the desperate loser section. Next to condoms and socks.


    It was technically afternoon. This wasn''t as bad as it could be. A slim justification which definitely didn''t hold up as I guiltily peered down the hallway to check for the presence of AEGIS before rounding the corner. I went to Athan''s room this time.


    It was still dark in there, and despite being alone and apparently not even having moved in the last half hour since we put him here, he was still awake, still staring at the ceiling like he could see right through it into heaven.


    I really hoped he could. He needed the company of an angel or two right now, and had only me, and I was certainly heading for the other place.


    I turned the cap of the bottle and it crackled as I broke the security seal. I took a swig and then went to his side. He didn''t even react.


    "Hey," I said. "Not sleeping?"


    He didn''t even blink. The moment stretched out until I had a terrified thought and hand to check his breathing. I put the back of my hand in front of his nose and felt warm air, even if I couldn''t see his chest moving. Thank God for that.


    "I''m sorry," I said, finding it hard to keep looking at him while I said it. The carpet seemed both less likely to judge, and more alive. "I''m really, really, really sorry. I don''t know what else to say."


    When he said nothing, I continued on. "I don''t need to explain any of this, I know. You already know all about a code-X, how dangerous that can be, how impossible it is to root out. I thought...if I pushed you as far as I could, if there was a compel in you, related to her, it''d come out. They''re not foolproof, from my understanding. It''s still a memory that''s in your brain, intended to be decoded by you at some point. But I guess Saga''s probably a lot better at it than your standard code-X, huh? She''s pretty unique in a lot of ways."Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    I didn''t know where I was going with any of this. I needed to talk and he was the only one who wasn''t obviously fuming at me. Even Chiho seemed to think I went way too far, but I''m not sure she understood exactly what an Exhuman was capable of.


    Not that it mattered. I had gone way too far, so even if by chance, she was dead-on.


    "We still have Tem locked in a moving van," I laughed, even though it wasn''t funny. "I thought, if she saw you now, she''d kill everything on Earth. She seems almost as catatonic as you. I don''t know what''s up with that girl, but she''s not right in the head. I guess you probably know that if she''s always with you. We didn''t know what else to do with her, and nobody''s really interested in trying. At least it''s nice out so she shouldn''t freeze or melt in there."


    Still no reaction. I took another drink.


    I grabbed him by the shoulders, finally eliciting a response as he looked down blankly at me, and pulled him upright, which was a lot more effort than I''d thought it would be. Dude was a big guy compared to me, after all, and this wasn''t the best leverage. Awkwardly balancing him, I pivoted his legs so he was sitting upright against the wall.


    "Here," I said, and put the drink in his hands. "You need this."


    He looked down at it, and then at me. And then he started drinking.


    "Woah, holy ducks, stop," I said, and pulled the bottle from his mouth, where a spray of vodka dribbled down him. "Jesus dude, that was like, a third of the bottle. Are you okay?"


    I slapped myself after asking such a stupid question, but he just stared blankly at me. I put the bottle down, since I''d now apparently be taking care of Drunk Athan, whom I hoped was more...anything, really, than Despondent Athan.


    "Sorry, I just thought...maybe right now...having a few dead nerves would be helpful, you know? If your problem is feeling too much...I had that. I guess I never told you, but after we lost you to Blackett...I had no idea where you went, what happened to you, if you were even still alive. We had all these plans, right? To get you out, but every day, I couldn''t do anything. I just woke up late, and felt like there wasn''t any reason to get out of bed, no reason to try working, no reason for anything. I just wanted to pretend like everything was okay and then maybe it would be, you know?"


    He said nothing. The vodka stain on his shirt began to slowly spread. I hopped up and retrieved a towel from the bathroom, dabbing him with it roughly as I continued on.


    "I was just overwhelmed, as I''m sure you know the feeling. I thought I''d lost you, and more, unlike you taking credit for every terrible thing which happens in a mile around you, this was all my fault. Every one of us had fought Blackett, but I was the only one who got caught, who made us all lose. We''d figured they would go for Karu, and from the loadouts of the VTOLs it seemed like I was right, so the whole fight she was mostly just trying to be a distraction and keep moving. And despite that, I still messed up and got you captured."


    I experimentally sniffed his shirt, realizing what a weirdo creeper I might have looked only as I did it. Smelled like booze alright, but also like it hadn''t been washed in a couple days. Pretty gross, but also meant he''d probably wash the vodka smell out of it before he wore it back at work.


    I guess, if he went back to work.


    "Anyway, I started drinking a lot, because it let me get through the day without wanting to jump off a building, not just for failing everyone, but because every day I did nothing, I felt like I was failing everyone all over again."


    I sighed. "I was such a mess. And then I pulled myself together, a little bit at a time, and I realized how stupid I''d been, how I couldn''t let myself fall behind like that again, couldn''t run away to a bottle every time I didn''t want to face life." I smiled bitterly at him and picked the bottle off the floor to have another drink. As I lowered it, I felt his hand on mine, and he took another as well.


    "Such a shit," he said.


    "Me?"


    "Dont see ahnyone else here."


    I smiled again. "Yeah, I am. Did you eat today, Athan?"


    He shook his head. Then thought for a second, and then shook his head.


    "Tem got me some food but I dhand to leave before we tate anything."


    Yeah, so like, 7-8 shots maybe and no food. He was screwed. I made a mental note not to let him have anymore, but my mental note was a little fuzzy myself, so I made another one to not let me have anymore. I nudged the bottle under the bed where I couldn''t see it anymore.


    He looked at me and then squinted, despite us being only a foot apart. "Weres the botlte?"


    "We killed it," I lied with a shrug. He seemed more crushed by this than he had with the Saga thing.


    "As i was saying," he started again, abruptly. "YOu''re aa shit."


    "Yep."


    "DOn''t you just ''eyep''. stop it."


    "Okay," I sighed. "This is me being less of a...a shit."


    "Good." He nodded at me and looked me up and down like he was reassessing my worth. "Good job."


    "Thanks." I sighed. "Maybe now that you''re more...or maybe less lucid, I''m sorry again."


    "I herd yout he first time." He blinked slowly and uncoordinatedly. Did I ever sound this bad when I was drunk? I hoped not.


    "Well that''s good." I sighed. "Do you mind if I change?"


    "YOur''re already changed, din''t yhou''?"


    "What?"


    "You sthopped being a shit."


    "Oh. Right. I did change in that way. I meant change my clothes." I got up and went to the bathroom. This motel was garbage, so there was no door, and as I looked around, I made awkward eye contact with Athan in the mirror. No real way to do this without flashing him a whole lot more of me than I think either of us wanted to see. I stepped in the shower and drew the curtain.


    "Wearss your cloths?" he asked.


    I took the small pouch off my back and waved it at him through the curtain.


    "My slipskin," I said, breaking the vacuum seal on the pouch with a hiss. "I carry it with me everywhere now."


    "That''s werid."


    "I know." I sighed as I began unbuttoning my shirt. "Those weeks when I stopped wearing it...those were the worst weeks of my life, Athan. I wasn''t Lia anymore, and I couldn''t be Black Shark. I lost you, who I thought I''d always have, and I was quickly burning whatever patience AEGIS and Saga had for me. I felt like I wasn''t anybody."


    I felt around on the shower floor for any water with my bare feet before letting my shirt drop. My skirt unzipped and fell easily as well.


    "Sometimes, I don''t even know who Lia is anymore. I don''t know who to be or how to act, or what I''m supposed to do. I worry about everyone so much, and then I wind up hurting people I love, because I''m just stupid or selfish."


    I unhooked my bra and sighed involuntarily. This was even one of my comfy ones, since I''d be wearing it on the VTOL, but man, was life better without it.


    "And now I did it to you again. All I wanted was to show up and help, and instead I made everything a million times worse. If I weren''t there at all, you''d be fine right now. You had Tem under control, you''d probably miss Saga, but you''d be alright."


    I slid out of my last scrap of clothes and stepped into the slipskin, rolling it up my legs. As it went, it minutely adjusted itself onto me, which always tickled just a little.


    "Black Shark doesn''t have these problems. She just does what she wants. She''s strong, way stronger than me. I thought I was being clever by pushing you into your compel, but I was just trying to prove how clever I could be by beating Saga at her own game. Black Shark wouldn''t have done that, she doesn''t care about proving anything. She just does what she needs to."


    I put my arms through it, feeling its surprising weight hanging off of me. It was only cumbersome when putting it on or getting it off, the weight was distributed all over my body, and sometimes even felt like it shifted to help my movements, although I''d never actually confirmed that was a feature in the documentation.


    "So I carry a piece of her with me always, in case I need her." I laughed. "I haven''t even told AEGIS, but I''m sure she knows. I don''t think anything gets past her eyes, or whatever senses she has."


    I zipped up and sighed again. If taking off my bra was liberating, this was double-liberating. I remembered the first week I''d worn my slipskin, and how abnormal it had felt, like it was a living organism hanging off of me, like it wasn''t clothes, and I was just hanging out naked. Bit by bit, I think we''d grown into each other, and now it was hard for me to think of it as anything more than an extension of myself.


    I mean, except when sleeping, it was still uncomfortable as heck then.


    "Did you notice she started wearing glasses again?" My voice changed, even to my ears, as I put my mask on. For a moment, all I saw was darkness and then the optics kicked in. They were nothing extravagant, but they helped. I''d always wanted to try on Karu''s visor, though. "She dialed back her eyesight so she could wear them. It''s really funny."


    In my synthesized voice, it didn''t sound like like I thought it was funny. I didn''t have my cloak, hood, or scarf, because who carries that stuff around in a vacuum-sealed bag? You''d have to be crazy for that, but I was behind my mask, so I could face Athan head-on, I thought.


    I grabbed an armful of clothes and deposited them somewhere out of the way as I headed back, and sat next to him on the bed.


    "Sorry about that," I said. I blinked and looked at him a little harder. My optics highlighted the faint motions of his chest. "And you''re asleep finally. Good, I guess. Told you the booze would help."


    I got up and put my mask back in the pouch on my back and threw the rest of the bottle in the trash...not pouring it out, in case I needed it again, but definitely still in the trash. I stood at the door for a few minutes, watching him sleep, apparently peacefully.


    As an afterthought, I moved him back down onto his side, and put the trashcan at the head of the bed in case he threw up anything. I went back to the bathroom and took all four disposable plastic cups they had and filled them with water, carefully carrying them to the nightstand and putting them in arm''s reach, and then quietly closed the door.


    I sighed. He''d be fine, I guess. I was glad for that.


    I stood for long moments with my hand still on the door, not wanting to go back and deal with the others, but knowing I''d have to at some point.


    I reached back and found my mask, putting it back on, brushing my hair out of my face as I went.

 142. 2251, Present Day. Los Angeles. Karu.

    I put down my tablet with a sigh, face-down so I wouldn''t be tempted to look at it again, while I attempted to distract myself with the news.


    Which was, in a manner, fortunate, because what was on the news was very distracting. I leaned forward and tapped the holo mounted on the wall opposite my spartan hotel bed to turn up the volume.


    "In a statement issued earlier this morning, Director Blackett of the XPCA stated that despite the loss of one of its founding members, the Parahuman Task Force, or ''P-Force'' has shown themselves to be an ''unmitigated success'', and ''paves the way for future successes in human-Exhuman relations."


    "The statement was issued during the opening ceremonies of the XPCA''s newest facility, called New Eden, proclaimed to be the framework of cities in the future, ground was broken on construction just a couple of short months ago when Director Blackett assumed control of the agency after the unfortunate death of his predecessor, Malakai Albion, but already voluntarily-registering Exhumans have begun moving in, looking for a new life where they can coexist with Humans."


    The story was not anything new to me, I''d actually been briefed that many icing jobs were now unavailable, as the Exhumans in question were choosing to surrender and move into New Eden, rather than keeping themselves underground. There had been a few incidents where surrendering Exhumans had been executed and their bounties claimed regardless, hence the briefing.


    What interested me was the footage they had chosen to play to accompany the reporter''s dry monologue. Stock footage, some of which I had seen, some new, of shots overlooking New Eden, interspersed with footage taken of the P-Force in action.


    The reporter began on a new story, and I paused the holo with a tap, and then, feeling vaguely like a stalker, turned the cached feed back with a twisting motion.


    Playing in reverse, I saw several scenes of Ashton and his friends at work, obviously footage taken from satellites or stationary cameras, of scenes of them in action. For a brief moment, I even saw myself flying away on his orders, while he rallied us after the second ambush in the convoy by the power-stealing Exhuman, Soran.


    There was a dramatic sweeping shot of Tower, Jack, and the blue-haired girl in tow, as they marched through walls of illusory fire, but my eye caught something just at the end...or beginning, since this was backwards, of the shot.


    My heart broke when I saw it was Ashton, unconscious, his lightning powers failed him. Nobody else would recognize him were they not there, but for the few moments he was on frame, I remembered the scene and saw it was him.


    I scrolled through more uninteresting footage and then found another clip and played it forwards at slow speed. Ashton in a diner alone, facing down a group of twenty or so, captured by a camera with low resolution perched on the ceiling. In an instant, Jack was there, and in another instant, he, Ashton, and two of the crowd vanished. It was dramatic and impressive, and I could see why the XPCA would seek out and release the footage.


    There wasn''t much else to see. I scrolled back to a scene with him framed central in the camera, his eyes shining with intelligence as he processed the information in front of him, considering how best to handle the resources he had and the threats he faced. It was, in many ways, the most beautiful part of him, and something I had fallen in love with, tried to force out of him in our conflicts.


    I blew up the image slightly and left it on the holo, falling back onto the bed and imaging it a window through which he looked at me.


    I felt embarrassed and foolish, but that did not stop me from dimming the lights and feeling the heat as I pressed together my thighs. He looked on, analytical, distant, yet close.


    Later, I washed my hands and turned off the holo in disgust, feeling dirty in more ways than one. I had forsaken him, and it should therefore purge myself of any impure thoughts. If I were to remain tainted...mentally compromised, as it were, I should have just remained with him. At least that would tame the aching in my heart, and elsewhere.


    Dissatisfied, I fell back onto the bed again. The tablet laying face-down on the nightstand seemed to mock me, and then appear in my hands against my will.


    For the dozenth time, I scrolled through the listings. Or, I should say, listing. Between the Icers moving on to more legitimate work, and the greatly diminished number of bounties posted because of the move to New Eden, there was scant hunter work at the moment. Just the one listing. Every time I pulled up the list, there it remained.


    I knew why. Everybody knew why. It was a suicide mission, one not even the XPCA would throw their endless resources at, at least, not without tempting a hunter to kill themselves over an enormous fortune, first.


    I put it back down, but only had moments to ponder the remaining empty hours of the day before picking it up again.


    I was in no condition to try, even at the peak of my abilities, which I was certainly nowhere near at the moment, it would be certain death. Yesterday, I had dinner with Father again at his recommendation, and even he commented that I seemed distracted and distant.


    Which was probably not difficult for him to observe, but must have been extensively obvious if he would deign to making such a remark of his own daughter in front of his business associates.


    Were I to stroll into this bounty with a head such as that, I asked for having no head at all.


    And yet¡­


    The Exhuman was dangerous. Not just to whomever was foolish enough to go after them, but as a whole. The longer they were permitted to live, the more harm they potentially afflicted on those around them. With every time I refreshed the listing, with every replacement on the nightstand, I felt I was putting not just my tablet down, but human lives. In as many ways as this was no job for me, this was exactly the job I had to do.


    I shook my head, feeling my hair bounce from side to side with the motion, and gently threw the tablet across the floor, out of my reach. A dead hunter saved no lives.


    I turned off the lights. It was early, but I had nothing left to do but find sleep. In the darkness, I held my hand aloft, invisible to my eyes, but present.


    These fingers which only minutes ago had been used for my own twisted self-gratification. This was not the body of a hunter, a protector, but of an sinner.


    I reassured myself that this was merely a result of being jobless for a few weeks, at first out of necessity, and then caution, and now the exodus. It was too easy for me to judge my self-worth on how many jobs I''d done, how many credits worth of Exhuman filth I''d purged from the Earth, but I reminded myself that this time of relative peace was a blessing, it was what he was working towards, and if I were to become obsolete in the name of his dream, that was a sacrifice I would make gladly a thousand times.


    And yet the thought that at least one dangerous Exhuman remained unravelled all the lies I told myself, as the ceiling became apparent to my adjusting eyes and seemed to loom ever closer.


    I slept restlessly and late, irritated that I had overslept breakfast, and using the growling within me as motivation to punish myself at the gym. It was not a good plan, as an airborne, I had to take care not to gain or lose too much weight, or too much muscle. Muscle devoured oxygen, and while some strength was obviously an advantage in any fight, at the speeds I moved, more oxygen consumed meant more likelihood of a blackout.


    Still, I would make the exception, I thought, as I pummelled the speed bag at a rhythm I could barely keep up. It was not like there were any bounties to be in shape for. Perhaps I needed a hobby.


    I went at the bag until I couldn''t lift my arms anymore, and then moved to the treadmill. Steep elevation, six miles per hour, the perfect speed between a jog and run, where it was impossibly awkward to keep one''s feet moving comfortably in either cadence. Arms too tired to hold the railing, and my self-devised hell for the next three hours were set.


    At the end of it, I almost wanted to vomit my nonexistent breakfast. Only eighteen miles, but they had been hell. I stepped off the treadmill after a brief walk, and felt my knees locking up as I involuntarily kept lurching forward, unaccustomed to the sensation of holding still. I would sleep well tonight, of that I was certain.


    I showered and changed slowly, my limbs as noodles, feeling the gaze of my visor on me the whole time I was in the bathroom.


    "Not today," I chided it, and struggled to get my shaking knees through a pair of jeans. I was starving, and in my current condition, it would be even longer before I could get anywhere with food available.


    It wasn''t meant to be a punishment if it were easy. But I did miss my jetpack.


    Finally, past one, I sat down under an umbrella outside of a stucco''d building painted to look like adobe, and perused a menu of mexican food.


    "Just one for today?" asked the pleasant woman as she had seated me. I could only smile and nod as she twisted the knife.


    Mexican was fatty and delightful, and my favorite, when I could permit myself to indulge, and this had nothing to do with my punishment and everything to do with it being the closest establishment I could reach. Still, I maintained some dignity as I ordered a salad...and secretly hoped it would come in a large crunchy tostada bowl.


    As I waited, I realized I did have a hobby. My hands--still shaking, even--had moved on their own to my mobile, and I was perusing a trashy news site I had stumbled on in a previous guilty binge, which seemed to mainly cater to those who are unhealthily obsessed with the lifestyles and ongoings of celebrities. I had, of course, no interest in such drivel.


    My unhealthy obsession was with one particular celebrity, Ashton. Whom, even as I had the thought and pulled up the page containing all posts tagged with his name, I realized I was his ex, by definition, and that made me a creepy, stalking ex. That was even more troubling, and perhaps if there was a delicious flakey crunchy tortilla shell, I would forcibly exempt myself from partaking of it.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Still, there was some news of merit. When last he was spotted, almost a week ago, he had disappeared into the mountains with the rest of the P-Force, but they had returned without him. Rumors abound that he had been abandoned by the rest of the team, which had apparently been sighted in action in New York not long ago, Ashton''s absence not even addressed by the XPCA.


    In all likelihood it was nothing. He was back at base, managing operations as a true lead, or acting in tandem to the team in a position unobservable to the careless eyes of spectators.


    And yet, there was the slim possibility that there was more, and it was to that which the other commenters...and I...were drawn. Rumors indicated that Temperance had also vanished, and the two of them were in une liaison at the private mountain cabin they''d apparently both been left at. The thought of it made me a little sick, thinking of how the small girl''s quiet desperation might temper against him, if he were as emotionally vulnerable as I felt.


    The sudden appearance of the waitress with my food made me jump, and scurry to conceal my mobile before she could see what dreck I had pulled up on it. She gave me a knowing smile as she put the salad in front of me, covered in a pound of cheese and seated on a pile of rice and beans, in a crunchy shell.


    I would partake in the cheese, rice, and beans, but the shell was forbidden. Penance for my continued presence on the horrible ''net site.


    There was nothing else to note, unfortunately, though I browsed as I ate, just as one of many immodest, outlandish youths. He''d vanished a week ago, and that was all that was concrete. Not information worth my tostada, but this was a punishment, not a negotiation.


    "All done?" the waitress asked, eyeing the shell I''d left behind, untouched, but practically licked clean. "Didn''t like the tostada?"


    "Please keep the change," I said, depositing a chit into her hand and having entirely enough of her knife-twisting for today. I realized as I stood that it was not a thing I was capable of at the moment, but did it anyway. It would be a long walk back to my hotel, but a longer walk to anywhere else. I wanted to go anywhere else, I knew there was nothing awaiting in my room but boredom and temptation, but in my current state, I had no real option.


    Despite myself, temptation found me again, and I cleaned up with a tissue this time, the trip to the sink impossible as my knees were even weaker after the crime. The tissue joined the tablet on the floor.


    I pulled up AEGIS'' social profile on my mobile, one of two contacts I had under the heading ''friends'', along with Lia. I had deleted Athan''s the same night I had broken things off with him to prevent exactly this form of temptation, and was of two minds on having done so.


    She was online now, it said, playing some insipid online game she had sunken apparently hundreds of hours into, in some group or organization filled with people I didn''t recognize. Of course, in this game, AEGIS'' name was apparently ''sexibot'', so that wasn''t anything I wanted to recognize either. I scanned the list of names, knowing Lia would be among them, but having no idea which of the farcical handles she could possibly be. ''BlueSuedeGroove'', ''angstyGangsta''...surely not ''catastrofeces'' or ''shart_attack''? I secretly hoped she had a more reserved handle, maybe one of the impersonal ones in the group, like ''Mod0'' or ''zoetrope''.


    I sat on AEGIS'' profile resisting the temptation to message her and see if perhaps she had heard anything about Athan. I was not certain my pride would be able to take it if he ever caught wind that I was looking for him after breaking up with him. Still, I sat there for long moments, staring at the green circle indicating her availability.


    > hey


    I might have jumped if my body were in fit shape to do so. A message? From...her, of course.


    > what u lookin at


    AEGIS'' flippant disregard for the English language was not what I expected from a computer. I elected to demonstrate to her how it was done with my response.


    > I was merely browsing my online contacts and saw your name.


    Plausible, and almost true.


    > u were sitting on my profile for 5m


    > Does the messenger typically notify you of others viewing your profile, or for what duration they do so?


    It was an honest question. I had only used the messenger before to arrange meetings or send emergency updates. If there were a feature to see how long someone were staring at my profile, I knew nothing about how to access it.


    > no


    > but im not just anyone


    > I see. I apologize for the perceived stalking, then. Rest assured I meant no harm.


    > just ask ur question already lol


    I scratched my head. I had a brief moment of anxiety, wondering just how far into my mobile she could peek, and quickly closed down the gossip site just in case.


    > I have no questions. I am merely finding myself with a lot more downtime than usual with the opening of New Eden, and the increased activity of the P-Force.


    I wondered if should have spelled out ''Parahuman Task Force'' but decided to write with the same level of effort as I would speak.


    > lol


    > karu


    > u cant lie 2 me kk?


    > ill give u 1 more chance to ask


    > wont even tell lia i promise


    I had typed out the starts to several replies but she kept sending short messages at an infuriating rate. Hadn''t this woman ever heard of a conversation?


    > I already informed you, I have no questions. I was simply playing with new features on my mobile I have never used before.


    > lol


    > lies


    > if ur not going 2 say it


    > i can


    > want 2 hear how athan is?


    I hesitated. It was a trap. It screamed trap. Anything I put on the ''net was there forever, especially in the hands of AEGIS. I could see her already, shoving the conversation in Athan''s face, him looking on with disgust, mostly at her atrocious grammar and spelling, but also at me and how utterly I''d failed at remaining independent from him.


    I really had no choice in this. I had to turn her down.


    > yes


    > kk sec boss


    I had no idea what that meant. Was ''boss'' a new nickname for me? I assumed sec meant second, meaning wait a second? I didn''t want to volunteer any other response and expose my lack of understanding more than I had to, so instead I teetered on-edge between wondering if she''d left the conversation or if I''d missed something and was supposed to do something. Eventually I saw the ''...'' of her typing and let out a breath I''d been holding for too long.


    > sorry about that, typing and playing at the same time


    > I could do it better, but trying to be more human, hope you understand


    > also I hope the bad spelling annoyed you


    > It was atrocious and you should be ashamed.


    > if that''s how you feel, I can just not tell you about athan


    > It was atrocious and you should be ashamed, but tell me anyway.


    > fair enough


    Through the little glimmering holo in my hands, I read about the last week from their point of view. Of Saga, and Tem, and Athan, and Lia. Of illusions and leavings and compels and despondency.


    > he hardly speaks now


    > he''s the same guy but different


    > I actually hoped youd call or come looking, were getting a little desperate how to deal with him


    > also scary, nobody wants to lose him


    > if you know what I mean


    > Suicide watch?


    > nothing that dramatic, we just liked him before and now hes not that anymore, its weird


    > Should I come over? I''m not doing anything.


    I hoped she''d say yes and give me an excuse.


    > dont know, come if you want to, its a free country


    She sent me a ping, which resolved to her current location. I stored the address, just in case.


    > I gotta go, my turn to cook again


    > don''t know why they make me do it, nobody likes my cooking, and I cant taste anything


    > guess they are just lazy, I never make them cook for me lol


    > Okay. Thank you for looking me up and messaging me, and all of this.


    > lol np


    > I think youre a lot more bearable from this distance


    > and


    She paused for a while, not even giving a typing indicator. I waited to see her finish this intriguing thought.


    > with being worried about losing athan


    > I guess I am spending a lot of time thinking


    > and even if I dont like you


    > you are something in my life that he brought into it


    > so I have to love you for being that


    > idk if that makes any sense


    I swallowed hard at the sudden outpouring of unexpected emotion from the robot girl. I knew she took issue with how I related to Athan. And then even more issue with how I''d related with him. Meanwhile I had no real strong feelings for her one way or the other, except that she was obviously something unnatural, something obviously dangerous, and both of those went against every hunter instinct in my body.


    > I do not know if that makes sense or not, but I appreciate it regardless. I am glad that even if he is not doing well, he has you around at least. You always took good care of him.


    > I try


    > bbl, ttyl


    And then she was gone, the little green indicator turning grey, offline.


    The whole story and conversation around it had taken a little over an hour. Late afternoon now, and I was already laying on my bed, practically down for the count. I awkwardly bent my elbow to get my mobile onto the nightstand, and only had to drop it half a foot or so, where it bounced, but still stayed atop it. Perfect.


    I was lucky AEGIS had indulged me, I realized. In retrospect, it was probably obvious that I''d be pining for news of Athan, doubly-so if he was with them at the time as apparently he had been, and I wasn''t fooling anyone by playing coy. The fact that she''d let me off the hook and volunteer her information anyway...well¡­


    I couldn''t exactly respect her, she was still just 1''s and 0''s and the quantum superpositions thereof. My visor was smart, too, but I had no problem with throwing it in the closet.


    But my visor was not compassionate, it didn''t independently arrive at the decision to reach out to someone who might be in need, or drop hints that another friend might be in trouble. Compassion was virtuous, after all.


    As I laid there, I thought of what she''d closed with.


    I was something he brought into her life, and she had to love me for being that. What a strange notion. I certainly loved Athan, if I were still honest with myself, the amount of which remaining varied by the day, but I didn''t love everything related to him just because it was.


    Perhaps AEGIS was just a kinder person than I. Or a greater fool.


    Or maybe...I thought, with a frown, she was afraid of losing him, and was desperate to cling to anything which he had once been. That was an even more troubling thought, and made his condition seem much worse than she had professed.


    I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and though they refused, I walked on them. I picked up the tissue, evidence of my guilt, and my tablet, the path to virtuous death, and weighed both of them for the brief, painful walk to the trash can.


    As I dropped the tissue in the trash, I wondered if I could survive if I continued this lifestyle. As I glanced at the single contract another time, I wondered if I could survive without it.

 143. 2251, Present Day. Los Angeles. Karu.

    It had been two days and still nobody took the contract.


    Every minute I hesitated was another chance for a life lost. The fact that there was one out there, evil, unrepentant, and I could find them and fight them but didn''t...it galled me. It shamed me. It made me into someone I despised being. Every minute was a failure, and as the days passed, the enormity of my failures began to weigh on me.


    I felt an even more extreme need for penitence, but realized the ironic indulgence in punishing myself simply made me even more unfit for action, only further exacerbating the situation.


    Which is why I was here, at church, where I hadn''t been in many years. My relationship with God was personal, and the things he asked of me in life were not anything a aged man in a safe building surrounded by beautiful imagery and stained glass could comprehend, yet here was where absolution and salvation were granted, and I was in desperate need of them.


    I slipped into the confessional, feeling the worn, heavy fabric of the curtain in my fingers as I drew it closed behind me, shutting me out from the world. Through the window, I could see the priest, only fragments of him, and in the darkness, the illusion that he was something other than just a man almost held. There was a small wooden bench, but I opted to kneel, the solid wood hard against my knees.


    I saw him smile at me, felt his eyes on my hair, as he gave me a greeting and blessing.


    I began. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been¡­" I stopped and blinked several times before the last memory availed itself. "It has been six years since my last confession."


    "What have you come to confess, my child?"


    "I fear...that through inaction, through continued inaction, I am allowing others to come to harm. I have sworn an oath to God to protect others, but I am not certain that I can do so."


    "How have you allowed these others to come to harm?"


    "There is a man, whom I know to be dangerous, and yet I cannot bring myself to face him. Even now, he is out there, unchecked, capable of doing whatever he desires and harming whomever he may encounter."


    "Did this man hurt you?"


    I laughed. "No, nothing like that, Father. He is Exhuman."


    "I see." The priest''s smile faded away as he thought. "My child, you have committed no sin, but I urge you to alert the authorities. Such matters are for them to handle, not to weigh upon your conscience."


    I gave a wry smile, feeling empty inside. I had done a terrible job of this. "Father, I am the authorities. I am a professional hunter. Killing Exhumans such as these is my sworn duty, and yet, I do not think I can." I looked away from him. "Where once I was the weapon of God, now I am broken, and I know not where to turn."


    "God does not abandon his children, especially not when they are broken, Child. He also does not ask his chosen to do the impossible. If this is a challenge you cannot attain, He is understanding. Be patient and surely God will reveal his plan to you."


    "You advise me to do nothing?" I said, disbelieving. "This is the very sin I am here to confess."


    "And as I said, you have committed no sin. Just as God gave you the strength to protect us from Exhumans, he also gave you the wisdom and judgement to know when you could not. Trust in those gifts, believe in Him. He would never want you to throw your life away."


    I slammed the side of the confessional with my fist. "But it is fine to throw away the lives of others? Even now, they may be suffering at his hands!"


    "There is suffering everywhere, Child. You cannot blame yourself for all of it, you can only do what you can to aid those you may. Be at--"


    I stood up. "I swore to defeat any evil, not just any evil were it convenient or easy. I swore to protect all within my reach, not to withdraw my reach when I grew scared. I swore my life to God, not my life up until I might die."


    "My child--"


    "How would you feel, if you lived near him? If he was known to you, and yet nobody did anything? As you watched your friends, your flock torn apart by his ravages, and neither God nor man helped you, because all others turned and said ''this is an evil I cannot defeat.''?"


    "I would be sad and frightened, I am sure."


    "And what if there was one who was chosen to protect you, who turned her back on you? Would you tell her she had done no wrong, even as you see the fear in the eyes of your congregation grow, even as their numbers dwindle? Can you tell me with certainty that there is no sin in this?"


    He spoke even more calmly as I grew more unbalanced. "There is no sin in this. The only one who has sinned in the eyes of God is the Exhuman in this story."


    "Bullshit!" I exploded. "I have a duty to protect! Do you mean to say my whole life, my whole existence and meaning is for nothing? There was no need for me to protect anyone?"


    "I never said that. Protecting others is a virtue, but that does not mean failing to do so is a sin. It sounds to me like you have lived a virtuous life. Please relax."


    "This is confession, Father. Do not placate me with platitudes of my virtues. I need you to tell me how I am craven and twisted, how I have strayed from the light. I am awful and broken and alone, Father, and if I didn''t become so that I could protect others¡­" I was leaning against the window now, and realized I had hot tears on my cheeks.


    He looked at me now, his eyes flickering back and forth between the two of mine through the window. "I think...perhaps you have more sins you would like to confess?" he said tactfully.


    I wanted to tell him everything. Wanted to blubber like the lost, little girl I felt like, tell him of my illicit relations with Ashton, and how, even now, in this holy chamber, the mere thought of him sent a tremble through me. Tell him how I would sully myself, imagining my touch to be his. How it was only this selfishness which had pushed me to be unable to fight, unable to serve my one purpose. How I had begun to crave the unwelcome sensation of pain, had been inflicting it further and further onto myself, because at least the pain chased away my feelings of lust for a time, the purity of agony washing away the contemptible sin in my heart.


    I wanted to say this, and more, to let it all out and let God and this poor servant of His sort it out for me.


    But I could not. There would be nothing left of me. I was no lost, little girl, and this entire confession had been a mistake. I was tired of losing pieces of myself to protect those around me. My friends, my youth, my heart, and my entire life...and now, when I could protect them no longer, I had to give up everything I had left?


    "Excuse me, Father," I said, and turned.


    "My child, come back," he pleaded, but I was gone.


    I stalked out, angrier and guiltier than I had been when I entered. I''d yelled at a man of the cloth, chickened out on the real confession which needed to occur, and refused to face the reality of who I was and what I was doing.


    A reality I still avoided, back in my hotel room. Blinds drawn, door locked and bolted and latched, and a gun pointed at my own face. One of many modular weapons which could be put on my arm weapon systems and linked into my suit.


    My breathing was fast and shallow, almost excited, as I peered into the infinite blackness of the barrel. I had to be punished.


    "My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things."


    I disabled the safety with practiced ease, even from this backwards angle.


    "I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us; in his name, my God--"


    I put my thumb over the activation stud. "--have mercy."


    Amen. I pressed the stud and with a whip-crack, the shock net erupted from the barrel and embraced me, entangling me on the bed, and knocking me backwards off my knees from the force of the impact. I had only a moment to peer through the thick mesh before the shock portion of the net engaged and I screamed involuntarily. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Electricity coursed through my body, making me twitch and squirm beyond my control. Every few moments, the devices on the edge of the net clicked ominously, and whenever they did, waves of impulses crashed through my body, feeling like they moved up and down through me, making me shudder and writhe, and where waves met each other, they multiplied within me, until I was awash in pure, mind-liquefying, whiteout, blissful pain.


    I couldn''t inhale, and once my initial scream had torn out of me, I did nothing but groan as I rolled and spasmed, but unlike the last time I had done that on this bed, this was an act of cleansing, not of vice. I felt God smiling on me as I was submerged in the pain, and for one clear, crystalline moment, I found myself again, there in the throes of the agony, the me who had once been, who had pulled her beloved''s arm from his melting body, who looked into his eyes as he burned from the inside out. The gilding moment of my life, the exquisite pain which had turned me from Karen into Karu. An agony I had tried so hard to forget.


    But why had I tried so hard? Pain was beautiful, pain had forged me into who and what I was, pain erased all my fears and anger and weaknesses from my mind and left me feeling only the urgent need for the pain to stop. It was simple, and beautiful in its simplicity.


    And then it was over. I lay, possibly faintly smoking, with the heavy lines of cable draped over me. Too soon it had left me, I thought, but also, too long it held me. My entire body ached like every muscle in my body had cramped up, and I spent long minutes laying there, feeling nothing but the air entering and leaving me in short, ragged breaths.


    I had also evidently lost control of my bladder in the excitement. Another source of shame for me to work through, now. Sleeping on the floor seemed a fitting punishment for that.


    Otherwise, it had been a good punishment. With this, maybe I could forgive myself for yelling at the priest at least. I felt a tinge of guilt for opting to use electricity...his weapon of choice, but I was not exactly awash in non-lethal weaponry, and wasn''t quite so irredeemable so as to kill myself. I was certain God would be disappointed to meet me if I had chosen such a dirty and easy way to throw away my life. One of the few things I agreed with the priest upon.


    I felt clarity, and reached back into my mind to touch that younger, more innocent, more pure version of myself. I wished I could be her, live those glorious years of misery again and appreciate them, and the glory of becoming and being a hunter again. As the afterglow wore off, I realized how impossible that was now, how the world had changed and I had changed and simple dreams such as those were a relic of a simpler me.


    It was frustrating, but it was also reality. Pain may have temporarily removed me from the world, but it changed nothing. I knew I had to be careful not to make an addiction of escaping into it. If I were to affect real change, wanted to accept myself rather than hide behind myself, there really was only one course of action.


    That evening, I received an unexpected call from an old friend and we made plans to meet for dinner the next day. I had expected Deej to spend this period of relative peace with his family, but instead he was apparently out here. His first words echoed my thinking exactly.


    "There''s only one reason for yah to be out here, and that''s the Exhuman," he said, frowning. "I don''t want you anywhere near ''em."


    "And you came all the way out here to say that to me?" I said, lifting a menu coyly so I could only look over it at him. "You could have sent me a message on my holo. That is, unless¡­"


    I dropped the menu in mock surprise. "Unless you, also are only out here to hunt him?"


    He rolled his eyes with extraordinary effort. "Of course I am," he said. "So don''t you think about it."


    "It seems a might bit hypocritical of you to take the mission and inform me I am not permitted to do the same. If you were hard up for cash, as it were, I could simply lend you some."


    He reached over and flicked me in the forehead. I smiled. Deej always brought out a playful side of me I didn''t quite understand. Perhaps it was because he was as close as it came to a father figure, though our relationship was far from parental.


    "I thought you and da boy had a ting, ja? And now I hear you and he been fallin'' out, and now you posin'' to go fight da Exhuman? Don''t take a code-X to see what yah anglin'' at, and I don''t like it." He frowned at me, seriously, more seriously than I was accustomed to seeing him. More seriously than when he was facing down Exhumans, even. "Go home, Karu. I don''t wan'' to see you hurt."


    "I''ll be fine," I said dismissively and brought my menu back up, to read this time. The words shifted away as he pulled the menu from my fingertips.


    "No. Ja won''t."


    He didn''t say anything else, just stared at me. I looked back at him, irritated by how he could sweep into my life and make decisions for me, but unable to hold onto it when I saw the real concern in his eyes.


    I supposed, by definition, if he was a father figure, that made me a daughter figure. It would be little wonder he would come out here to take the mission if he knew I was going to. And besides...he was much more qualified for the type of fighting this Exhuman was likely to provide. Still, there was a problem here.


    "I already took it," I said.


    "What? When?"


    "Just before you arrived. I was afraid you would talk me out of it."


    "I was goin'' to talk you out of it!" he said, his voice jumping up a level in volume. "Why''d ya have to go and do a dumb thing like that? Drop the contract!"


    "I don''t drop contracts, Deej."


    "Your pride be damned, yute! This one is gonna kill you, for sure!"


    "I don''t. My pride is all I have right now, Deej. I need to do this. You have¡­" I couldn''t keep eye contact with him any longer. "You have no idea, okay? Please just let me have this. I think I would prefer to die than to give this contract up."


    He shook his head. "Gimmie yah holo. I''ll drop it for you."


    "No, Deej. I need to do this. I told you."


    "Need to do this? Girl, you are gonna die. You don''t need to do that, not for anything."


    He was almost shouting now, which was odd because of how aware he typically was of all things sound. People were beginning to look, but with his last outburst, it became apparent they were all looking at me. The girl who was going to die. I felt my face began to burn as the rest of the building fell silent.


    "Deej, you are making a huge scene. Stop it."


    "I will stop it when you do. Drop the contract."


    "No. I refuse. Why does this mean so much to you anyway?"


    "Because we bredren. We one love, yute. How can ya even ask that? You and I, we family."


    "I never asked to be part of your family, Deej," I said coldly.


    "That''s not how family works, yute. Family is what happens when ja breathe and bleed alongside someone, ja?"


    I stood up to go. This had also been a mistake. But unlike the confession, it wasn''t one I would have to punish myself for. I hoped Deej properly repented for this display. Instead, he grabbed my arm, making me gasp and wince, despite myself, his fingers strong and jarring against my tender forearm, even through the sleeve of my sweater.


    "What''s wrong wit'' yah, Karu?"


    "You are manhandling me in public, in front of everyone," I said, attempting to keep control of my breathing even as I was sure my face was completely flushed. "It is humiliating."


    There were dozens of eyes on me now, every face in the entire restaurant turned towards me, staring without restraint as the larger black man held my arm. Without my armor, I felt so naked, like they were all looking right through me. I squirmed under the sudden scrutiny in a way which was unfamiliar to me.


    I''d never had a problem with being a public figure before, had talked to larger audiences than this without beating an eye. But this was not me talking, I was being chastised like a small child, was throwing a tantrum and didn''t want anyone to see. I wanted to shrivel up and disappear, just wanted to drop dead on the spot.


    And yet.


    My breath caught in my throat again. I struggled to keep my lips from a smile. The pain of this humiliation was beyond even what the shock net could offer. My heart pounded and I felt an excitement like it was Athan holding my wrist.


    Deej didn''t understand. He looked at my unusual reactions with uncertain eyes. Even I didn''t understand.


    "Let me go, you ogre!" I shouted, and feebly twisted my wrist in his hand. "I''ll never give in to you!" He lifted my arm and shook me, and I allowed myself to flutter like a leaf in his grasp. People began to mutter, and it looked like some of the waitstaff were beginning to build up the courage to intervene.


    "Karu, be serious," he said warily. "You are gonna die."


    "And as I said, maybe that''s better than the alternative. I''m not well, Deej. I am burdened with guilt and sin, and if purifying fire and death is the only path to my salvation, it is a path I will take gladly." I didn''t mention how exciting the thought of purifying fire was right now. I really needed to get a grip on myself, badly. I was spiraling out of control. "I can''t live like this. I''m going, and that''s final."


    He looked me up and down, and his scrutiny made me tremble. What was he looking at? What was he looking for? I felt like I wasn''t even there, and he was simply examining my litany of sins, like they were crawling across my skin. Finally, he released me.


    "I see. I don'' know what''s wrong wit'' ja, but I can see it''s plenty. I''m sorry, Karu."


    I rubbed my wrist, which still stung sharply. "It...it is fine. I am trying to deal with it."


    We both stood awkwardly for a few moments as the conversation in the rest of the restaurant began to pick up and attention faded away from us. With it, I felt myself slipping back into normalcy, my heart slowing and face losing its flush. I sat back down, to his apparent surprise.


    "Are you still hungry?" I asked.


    "You don'' want to leave? You want to eat amongst all these people?"


    "No. We made reservations and everything."


    "Are you doing this because you''re the bold Karu I always knew, or because you''re sick in the head?" he asked.


    I shrugged. Maybe both.


    He shook his head but sat down and handed me back my menu. Every time the waiter came by and asked with just a hint of unease, or I caught someone looking at me, I felt myself cringe and my toes curl.


    Deej was interested in my plans for tackling the Exhuman, and I laid out what little strategy I had. He kept his comments mostly to himself, but I knew he was thinking about how, if I did as I said, my death was inevitable. He looked at me like I was a fine crystal vase, teetering on the edge of a cabinet.


    It was a beautiful, horrible evening. I think if nothing else, when we left, he realized just how far I had fallen, and how much I needed to do this job. It was humiliating, having one of my closest colleagues see me this way, but I was also beginning to question just how bad a thing that actually was.


    I had to stop this still. I told myself, after the Exhuman, one way or another, I would find a healthier outlet...or simply cease to be, I supposed. And so I made my preparations with as much haste as possible to finalize my fate.

 144. 2251, Present Day. Los Angeles. Karu.

    I was on final approach towards the target''s last whereabouts, and given his powerset, there were very small odds he would be found anywhere else. Armor configured for maximum autonomous defenses--chaff, flares, interdictors, all set to fire automatically in the event they sensed a situation where they could help. With this type of threat, even the moment it took me to react could be deadly. Weapon loadout was a confusing mess of short-ranged, fast, low-collateral weaponry like scatterguns and flak, and hugely destructive explosive ordnance. And EMP grenades, missiles, as many as I could carry, and even the electroshock modules on my wrist blades.


    I wished Athan were here...for a number of reasons...but mostly because this kind of threat would be exactly what he was best suited for combatting.


    We were hunting a technopath, easily the second most dangerous class of Exhumans after code Xavier. The problem with technopaths is their powers were so widely distributed and so widely varied. They tended to make lairs and fill them with their devices, whatever their particular brand of technology was, and then lurk there, churning out ever-more-dangerous machines or monsters until eventually they completed some masterstroke project of theirs and began to unleash it on the hapless world around them.


    The temptation to leave a technopath alone was strong. For most of their lifecycles, they were harmless, stealing or taking, or even buying whatever materials they needed and tinkering away in solitude. However, it seemed like a mere inevitability before they built some doom weapon and felt the need to try it out, and it was always, always easier to kill a technopath before they finalized their doom weapon.


    I felt like the cycle was not dissimilar to what seemed to happen with most every other Exhuman, just slower. A technopath with no gadgetry was just a human, after all, and it took time before they worked into the overdeveloped sense of superiority which led them to try to conquer their fellow man. This is why they made lairs and protected them so jealously...unlike their kindred Exhuman, they feared humanity, which made them cautious, which made them dangerous.


    It also helped not-at-all that such lairs tended to be narrow, long, and small, all of which meant that my jetpack, arguably my greatest advantage in a combat, would be utterly without use. I would be a human, on-foot, relying on expertise against an Exhuman who severely outgunned me, was in an entrenched position, and held every element of surprise, favorable terrain, and home-field advantage.


    Which is why this was a suicide mission and nobody had taken it.


    I landed on an adjacent rooftop and peered down, enhancing the scene as I was able through my optics. Not much to see, a warehouse like any other, no indication of anything abnormal. As I flicked through spectrums, it became apparent this wasn''t the case, the building leaked a low level of radiation, was hardened against electromagnetic pulse, and had been reinforced from within. Strange wiring, seemingly hung up at random with no clear plan hung on every wall, connecting a multitude of devices I couldn''t begin to fathom, seeing them only as a source of heat and electricity from here.


    I got a proximity alert which resolved quickly into an IFF and shouldn''t have been surprised. I turned on my comms with a thought.


    "Hello Deej, nice night for a stroll?"


    IFF, ''Identify Friend or Foe'' was basically a signal each hunter broadcast more-or-less constantly so that we could identify each other, even in the chaos of battle. Our systems were linked so that it was impossible to fire on another IFF target, we could keep track of each other in 3D space, and so forth. Very useful for a situation where we were to cooperate, as this one.


    "You''re not going in there," he said through my visor''s earpiece. "At least, not alone."


    "Go home," I said with half a laugh. "This doesn''t concern you, and I am not splitting the bounty."


    "Unless ja plan to fight me, I am goin in wit ja."


    Well, I certainly wasn''t going to waste the time or ordinance on that. I waited on the rooftop while he, in his colorful exosuit, rocketed towards my building on the ground. I was trying to figure out the best way to penetrate even this first barrier.


    The reason half of my ordinance was heavy arms was because often, you simply couldn''t defeat a technopath''s defenses. By the very virtue of building their own defenses, a technopath was obviously paranoid, but that tended to mean their defenses were equally multilayered, and overdesigned, with fail safes and redundancies to prevent every possibility they could predict.


    The good news was, they, like all of us, only tended to consider the options they themselves would take. I had no interest in hacking or rerouting electronics or assembling my own atomic dampener or whatever technology might help. I had explosives, and no matter how intricate and overwrought a trap was, it was still completely ineffective when reduced to a crater.


    The question was, when to use them. If I simply destroyed everything in my path, it would be much more likely to impede progress than to make it, yet doing the alternative meant adding more risk.


    Even this clearing, between the building I roosted on, and the warehouse, even this far out, there could be traps and cameras watching us even now. Technopaths often had a specialty, whatever it was their power gifte them with, and we didn''t even know what particular brand of technology this technopath was into; establishing that as soon as possible would give us much better odds of survival.


    With a grunt, Deej pulled himself up to the rooftop and sauntered over to me, his ponytail of dreads brushing against the back of the clear bubble dome of his helmet.


    "Was there someone else out here?" he asked. "I picked up another IFF for a moment."


    I checked my logs with a few taps and saw nothing. I hadn''t seen any alert or indication, but knew Deej wasn''t green enough to make such a mistake. "Who was it?" I asked.


    "Don''t know. It turned off as soon as my system hailed im for ID. If you got nothing, they must be ghosting from you."


    "But not you, not until they knew you were here." I thumbed my lip as I thought. "We know the identity of the Exhuman, it''s nobody from the association. I checked yesterday, and nobody has MIA''d in the last week...either the technopath is building his own IFF on our network...which is bad...or he has an IFF from another hunter...which is probably even worse."


    "I don''t know," he said, and we both knew those were some of the most troubling words we could have with regards to a technopath.


    We both sat there, indulging in a moment of fear and hesitation as we both flipped through optics, mine in my visor and and his in a chunky binocular unit held to the front of his helmet, staring at the mute beige building in the dark.


    "I guess we go," he said. I nodded. My wings deployed and I shot into the air, somewhat slowly. My visor lit up with an expected warning that I was way over on carry weight. No maneuvering for me, but it did mean I got to pack in some extra ordinance. No other warnings assailed me as I flew to the roof of the building and gently touched down. I felt like a fly knowingly landing on a spiderweb.


    There was no skylight in the warehouse, naturally, so this was about the extent of my jetpack''s usefulness. Once I went through the front door...if that was our plan...I''d be indoors, where the enclosed air would make it impossible to fly without slapping myself around with my own wake. Deej, however, was potentially even more dangerous in enclosed spaces for the same reason; his audio-based weaponry would be concentrated just like the winds from my jetpack.


    I dropped to the ground, flanking the main door, as Deej rolled in, standing on the other side. We gave each other a nod, and then kicked in the doors together, both of us rocketing backwards rather than in.


    When it came to breaching a lair, front doors were always the worst. We waited long moments while nothing happened, I flipped through my optics again and again. No new sources of radiation, no activating electronics, no detectable seismics, just...the door opened.


    I heard something though. A heavy footfall. And then another. Something huge, at least as large as a full battle exosuit. Just as it entered my vision, I heard the sound of metal clanging on metal, and a figure stepped out into the doorway.


    Huge, and more scar than anything else, it was an exosuit, but wrong. There were parts on the arms and legs, sheltered nooks and crevices which shone with dulled paint, indicating the suit had once been cheery, even ostentatious in its markings, but all that remained now was scorched blackness, the grey of expanded structure foam, and char.


    He clapped slowly at the two of us, sarcastically, the sound of metal clanging again, as the huge metal arms of the exosuit clashed.


    Something about the suit seemed familiar. It was obviously a custom job, hugely expensive, and the fact that it was half-filled with structure foam...well, that was hardly a standard feature. Still, it was hard to pin where I''d seen it. All exosuits tended to look familiar past a point, huge bulky humanoid shapes, and with my eye constantly drawn to the structure foam scar in the front, and the layer of black, there wasn''t much else to go on.


    But who would pay so much for a suit like that, and then leave it in such decrepit condition? They were obviously expecting a fight, they could have done repairs anytime before now. Structure foam was useful for sealing breaches and damage in the middle of a fight, but it was hardly the same as having a suit in full operational condition.


    His movements were staccato and inhuman, but whether that was from the state of the suit or the pilot, I could not tell. I was still afraid of how the technopath might be using the bizarre qualities of the suit for their own devices, but this was absolutely nothing like what I had anticipated.


    Involuntarily, almost, my wings deployed and I took to the air, but with the added weight, it was more of an ascent than a jump, and just before I cleared him, the exosuit shot forward with an impossible leap and grabbed hold of my leg. I felt a scream escape me as I suddenly reversed direction, and then a violent crunch as he slammed my back into the ground. Lights flashed in my face from the concussion I now surely had, as well as the warnings jumping up across my visor of flight system damage, and more importantly, user damage. I felt my leg get lifted again, my face scraped the ground as I was dragged upwards again, but before he could slam me back down, I heard an explosion of noise, seemingly covering every possible audio quality, high-pitched and low, soft and loud, all at once, and my assailant was blasted off of me.


    I caught myself before my face met the pavement and gave myself a moment to recover, as I locked my visor on tracking the target in 3D space. Still looking at the ground and catching my breath, I was able to see him right himself and charge straight at me again.


    His speed was impossible, he accelerated even faster than me. It should be making him black out, or at least putting enormous stress on his body with every move. Could it be this was his technopath power at work? Some kind of inertial dampening past human tech?


    I didn''t have time to think. I turned from being hunched over to rolling forward and sideways, hoping his massive speed would play against him if I moved into him.


    It didn''t, and he snapped me up as he went past. Maybe he''d anticipated my move? Or maybe I was just slow and feeble without my pack. Either way, I had almost a second where his metal hands held me before him, the blank faceplate of his helmet giving me no indication of what was going on behind it.


    I strained against him, uselessly, fired flares into his face, even unloaded a shot of scattergun into him from point-blank, where if he had any kind of refractive armor whatsoever, the repelled laser burst would have killed me instead of him, but for all the good it did, I may as well have tickled him.


    Our moment together ended when he finished crossing the empty lot and slammed me into a building with the same speed. The wall behind me cracked, as did my pack, and several of my ribs. Pain surged through me, and I coughed blood onto his black blank faceplate, trying not to choke as I gasped and coughed at the same time.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    He held me pinned there for a few moments, tilting his head sideways like he was questioning me silently. He released one hand, holding me aloft by my neck only, and then with the free hand, punched me in the ribs with machine force and precision.


    "Karu!" I heard Deej scream in my ear, animalistic.


    I couldn''t even double-up, couldn''t even raise my arms to hold myself, the force of the blow had nowhere to go but into my body. I felt more of me breaking, and my vitals went critical in my visor before my unfocused eyes. Pain...I remembered pursuing it not too long ago. Now I had more than I could handle. In the distance I heard engines roaring as Deej closed in on us, but hot air flashed before my face as the exosuit fired a volley of a dozen missiles straight up, which curved backwards gracefully to chase him. Almost apologetically, he had to turn away from us to evade them as they chased him down. He would, I knew, but I wasn''t sure I would be alive to see it.


    The hand which had struck me moved to my face and stroked my cheek with almost tender care. One huge metal finger hooked under my chin and pulled my face upright to point at his faceplate. My vision swam in and out, and I wasn''t sure what he was doing or why, until I heard Deej gasp.


    The exosuit had turned its IFF back on, or stopped ghosting me, or whatever it had done. I saw a tag on it, swimming in front of my eyes, and strained to focus on the info callout.


    ''Tenebrae'' it read.


    I still had no idea who this was, but I appreciated knowing the name. I would stalk him through hell for all eternity if nothing else. After a moment, my IFF system synched with his and the name updated.


    ''Tenebrae. Cached: Luminary''.


    Again, he looked at me sideways like he was questioning me, but this time I understood. I understood who beat me, who would kill me. It was Luminary. More than my death, he wanted acknowledgement of that.


    Unable to draw enough breath to reply, I spat blood on his faceplate again.


    I could almost hear his rage as he drew back this time, his exosuit whining as the fist drew ready, but before it could finish me, there was another blast of all-encompassing sound. The wall behind me seemed to liquefy, like it was sand instead of rock, and both Tenebrae and I fell right through it.


    "Karu, get away from him! I need an open shot!" Deej''s voice in my ear was only barely audible. I tried to pull my thoughts together to process the words and their meaning. It felt like all I understood right now was pain. I wanted to curl up and wait for it all to end.


    But that wasn''t Karu the hunter. Despite being inoperable, I put my jetpack on, and indoors, it blew me around at random, but it helped me upright nonetheless. I saw a black shape of rubble move at me, and fired myself into the ceiling, evading his grasp, even as I knocked myself halfway further towards unconsciousness. He turned towards me, but fell as the floor under him disintegrated with another resonating blast. Everything wooden exploded all around us, and the whole room filled with splinters and toothpicks as the ground fractured into nonbeing.


    Unsteadily, I guided myself towards the door, feeling slow and stupid as Tenebrae breathed down my neck, scrambling after me through the debris while I fluttered only just out of his reach. I made it to the opening, and Deej grabbed me and threw me clear, before turning back, extra speakers deploying from his back and sides as his audio generators ramped up to maximum.


    Even behind him, even with all his focus pointed forward, I felt it in my bones as Deej unloaded into Tenebrae. Literally in my bones, they vibrated in a way I didn''t know it was possible for bones to do, it was terrifying, and I knew if nothing else this night already had, the sensation of my teeth vibrating in my mouth would give me nightmares for years to come.


    I took the opportunity to fish in a pouch on my hip and slap a stim onto my neck, feeling lucidity flow into me, and took a deep breath as though I''d just surfaced from deep underwater. My eyes were still fluttering weirdly, but I could think again.


    The pain was still there, sharp as ever, but I was removed from it, like it was in a bubble near me, instead of filling me up. I blinked away the rest of my disorientation and turned back towards the mess.


    The building we''d plowed through was a small shop on the first floor of a brick building. Above it was probably an apartment, and I hoped, prayed, that building was unoccupied. Inside was just dust and splinters, fragments of broken brick, and smashed displays and furniture, all bouncing off the ground to the wobbling pulse of Deej''s sound.


    For a moment, I couldn''t see Tenebrae, and then, from the dark, his huge shadow lunged at Deej.


    "What the hell?" I heard over my comms, as Tenebrae smashed a fist into Deej''s helmet, making small cracks spiderweb across it, and then he locked arms with his assailant, trying to push the twisted exosuit off of him.


    Deej''s suit had been built for mobility, not strength, and it was obvious as soon as the two grappled that Tenebrae held every advantage. Servos screamed in Deej''s shoulders as his arms bent further and further back, and I was afraid they would get ripped right off.


    "Hey, Luminary!" I shouted. "Did Wilfried find the proximity mine I left for him?"


    His attention snapped to me, the blank faceplate, streaked in my blood and coated in dust facing me, even as he drove Deej to one knee. Still silent, he threw Deej aside like dirty clothes, and dashed at me, full-speed again.


    How was he so fast? He didn''t have any bones left in his body after Deej''s attack, how was even standing, much less fighting?


    I didn''t know, but I had to avoid this hit. Just because I''d dragged my mind, kicking and screaming back to lucidity didn''t mean I had done anything for my body. Another hit or two and I was dead. Sparks flew from his feet, screeching across the concrete as engines in his back fired, blasting him forward. I was hovering, but only just, and if I went up, he''d snatch me again.


    I went up anyway.


    As I''d predicted, he seized my ankle, which left my arms free as I''d hoped. I spun on him, feeling myself falling as my damaged jetpack was completely incapable of dealing with the new torque of me moving, but before I lost orientation, I unloaded two missiles point-blank into the ground beneath us.


    Electricity and a concussive wave washed over us, making my hair stand straight up from two different forces as the EMP missiles detonated. At this range, and two of them, and the biggest booms I had packed for the technopath, the entire city block went black instantly, and I threw my visor off as it went dark. His suit locked up, skidding forward on its front with its huge momentum, and with his hand still locked around my leg, I went along for the ride, thankfully on top of him instead of under. My leg twisted painfully, but I was safe atop the frozen, sliding husk.


    Depending on his systems, he would be down for anywhere from a minute to eternally, and with all of his bones broken inside, without the exosuit, he was completely disabled. I hoped. I''d already misjudged him several times now.


    The suit slid to a halt and I fell off his back, landing on my own back with my leg painfully twisted.


    "Deej, help," I gasped.


    No response, of course, my visor was somewhere in the darkness. It took several minutes before Deej, on foot, found me.


    "Lordy, girl," he said, straining against the machine''s death-grip on my leg. We couldn''t get it to loosen up, but he did remove my boot and leg armor, and I fell out of the locked grasp.


    With the suit disabled, I tried to open the back hatch. It took both of us pulling as hard as we could to open the manual access. When the suit finally cracked open, I had to turn and throw up.


    Inside was...what was left of Luminary. Still alive even...I thought. But what was in there wasn''t a human. When I''d run him through, ''killing'' him up north, his suit had deployed medical gel and structure foam to seal the breach and the wound, but...not cleanly. The gel had preserved his vitals enough to keep him alive, but the foam had also gotten into him, effectively sealing him into the suit, welding him to it.


    And then the mine''s explosion had done the same, but worse. What I saw when I opened the back was tendrils of flesh and structure gel combined horrifically, fused into something no longer either machine or man. It seemed the force of tearing open the back plate had ripped off his back, because what I saw inside was his exposed spine, parts of which had already been hanging out of the flesh, and others were freshly bloodied by our interference.


    Out of the open panel, blood, structure foam, and medical gel dripped onto the pavement like a seeping sore. An animal noise escaped him, but I doubted he could speak anymore.


    "This is¡­" Deej trailed off. He looked like he wanted to vomit as well.


    I had no words either. I simply took one of the blasting charges I had for demolishing a building and primed it, and then placed it inside the panel, closing it. Deej nodded at me and then we walked away, him supporting me as the stims began to fade. I re-upped just in case, but that was a bad policy. Still, I wasn''t going to let him catch me off guard again.


    I found my visor, still dead, which, though EMP-hardened like my kit, would still need some repairs before functioning again. Consequently, I had no idea how long the fuse on the charge would be, but we needed to be well clear.


    We were two blocks away when I felt the earth jump and the shockwave pass through my body, pushing me forward half a step. Behind us, a small mushroom cloud loomed above the skyline. Excessive, yes, but this time there was no doubt. Even if it were outside his suit, even if he were inside a bunker, Tenebrae was now, without question, completely and irrevocably dead.


    As soon as we felt the blast, I turned around to head back.


    "Where ja goin, Karu?" Deej asked.


    "Need to check the body," I growled.


    "Nobody could survive that."


    "Let''s say I have trust issues when it comes to Luminary."


    He shadowed me back, matching my crawling pace as I limped my way over, holding myself the whole while, as lights slowly started to flicker back to life in the distance. Electronics nearer the site were just fried. I wondered how much collateral I''d done, and hoped that my insurance would cover it, as we hadn''t technically engaged an Exhuman.


    Or...hadn''t yet, I thought, as I looked at the remains of the warehouse. It, and the two adjacent were more obliterated than anything else, giving me a clear view inside. In there were no deathtraps, no machines or robots or genetic monstrosities, just an ordinary-appearing workshop with tools and machines and lots and lots of alien-looking parts I couldn''t begin to fathom.


    And in the very middle of it all, still active, despite the blast and the EMP, a perfectly sky-blue sphere, cradled by a spindly, alien device, which looked something like a baseball glove made of brass clock towers.


    "Karu," Deej said, and I looked back at him, having to work to pull my eyes from the radiant blue sphere. I followed his gaze and gesture, and saw a huge crater, embers still smouldering, and a twisted, melted wreck in the middle, only a quarter the size of a man. He walked over and gave it a few experimental kicks with a booted foot.


    "Melted slag, nothing left," he said. "Rest easy, yute."


    I would, once I''d investigated the sphere a little more. I''d never seen anything so...pure before. It looked like a perfectly spherical hole in the world, leading to the bluest sky I''d ever seen, completely unaffected by the darkness which surrounded us.


    "Karu, don''t. Technopath, remember?"


    "I remember. I just...need to see this."


    "It''s dangerous badman stuff, let''s be ''way before he finds us."


    "In a second."


    I was being stupid, and I couldn''t entirely blame it on the stims or trauma of the night, but the thing...whatever it was...it was so unbelievably incredible, even I''d seen nothing like it before. Deej sighed and accompanied me to within its glow.


    "I''d feel a lot better about this if we had our gear. I can''t tell if this is radioactive or anything."


    I stooped and snapped a twig off of a branch which had been blasted through the wall, prodding the sphere with it. The twig went through unharmed, and came back exactly as it had entered. I touched it, not warm or cold, just...just a twig.


    I took a breath and put my fingers in. Nothing, like it wasn''t even there.


    "Are you crazy?" Deej asked.


    "Maybe," I said with a laugh which made everything hurt. "I''ll be right back."


    "Karu, don--" he reached for me, but I''d passed through. As soon as my head was through, whatever he said was gone, words in a different world. On the other side was...well, I could see myself half-peeking out of an identical sphere connected to an identical machine, but this one was somewhere completely different. It looked a lot more like a technopath''s workshop, but even in the brief moment I was there, I felt something alien about the place. My hair stood on end, literally, and I realized it was floating without gravity.


    I felt myself pulled backwards, and reappeared in the ruined warehouse, Deej extracting me by pulling my waist back through.


    "Karu?" he asked.


    "I''m fine. It''s some kind of teleporter device. The technopath''s lab is on the other side."


    He let out a sigh. "We''re done here, okay?"


    I nodded, and felt even that gesture hurt. "Do you think you could call an ambulance for me? I''m not sure I can get there on my own."


    He laughed. "Let''s walk out of the dark, ja?"


    He reset some breakers and did some basic hotwiring and got his suit back online, and then carried me gently in the exosuit''s arms until we were back where the power was on. He left me outside a coffee shop while he used their phone, and came back with a donut and a cup of coffee.


    "Where''s mine?" I pouted.


    "You," he said with a cynical jab in my direction "are goin'' unda anestheisa and into a regenerata'', ain''t ja? So no food or drink in ja system.?"


    I sighed, but he was right.


    "Thank you for saving my life approximately six times tonight, Deej," I said, as I reclined against the suit''s spread hands.


    "Next time, don''t be such raas about it."


    "Do you still want to hunt the technopath?" I asked. My eyes were closing now, the stims were wearing off again, leaving me with nothing but exhaustion and pain, and I was losing to them, badly.


    "No. But you do. So I''ll see yah when you wake up, airie?"


    "You really are the best, Deej," I sighed.


    I was deep in a fitful, pained, exhausted sleep before the flashing lights of the ambulance arrived.

 145. 2251, Present Day. Near Charlottesville, VA. Saga.

    A couple of months ago, if you had asked me the most powerful type of Exhuman in the world, I would have asked why be so general? I could tell you with certainty the single most dangerous one, and it was me.


    And then I met Mage, and I didn''t even have to reconsider. I was just wrong.


    I''d given all of Athan''s friends, all of the generals, everyone in that tower--minus Blackett--a cursory glance as I always did when making new friends. For the most part it was the same stories in a new Exhuman. Loss, oppression, optimism, foolishness.


    She wasn''t. In the moments I peeked inside her, instead of getting a good read on who and what she was, as had happened every single other time I''d used my powers, I felt instead like I was only scratching the surface.


    She had lived hundreds of years, if not thousands. She had seen unseeable things and lived more lives than maybe even I would.


    She was a code-X, but I don''t think even she knew that. It hadn''t manifest in the usual sense, instead, her mind, or powers, or wherever that information was held created an exact replica of the world around her and played it back in her head. Using psionic powers, she read people so perfectly that in these simulations, they would behave exactly identical to in life, every single minute detail so perfectly exact that it was almost impossible to differentiate from reality.


    And then her powers forced her to relive that scene infinitely, until she got it exactly perfectly right, in a single instant, as I understood it. And while this, by itself, was already a pretty scary power, both to use and to exist, the truly, truly terrifying part of it was that there was an external intelligence which determined what counted as ''perfectly right.''


    In other words...possibly the only time ever, someone had communed directly with their powers, demonstrated that their powers had intelligence beyond themselves. Their powers were, in some way, alive.


    Which meant, by extension, if I wasn''t completely off the rails, so were my powers. So were Athan''s. So were all of ours. Unless hers were a special case, which I deeply hoped was true. I had no idea what this meant, but fuck if it wasn''t scary to think of them one day walking off without me, or making demands of me, or...how the fuck would I know what superpowers would want from us?


    But that wasn''t all. In her mind, in the very forefront of it, was one thought around which her entire being was focused. Such an alien and bizarre thought that I hadn''t seen much of its origin, but coming from a source such as her, it straight up scared the piss out of me. I had intended to make a much larger production of killing all the XPCA then and there, but was a little distracted after seeing this one thought.


    She was certain, one-hundred percent, without doubt in her mind that the world was going to end. Soon. In blackness ringed in light.


    It wasn''t much to go on, but I couldn''t examine her thoughts on it too closely. Examining that thought...as I did, I felt myself slipping into madness, there was no other way to explain it. It was like observing a black hole. The more I looked into it, the more I''d fall into it. I''d given it a quick glance just to get the feel of it and turned away. I thought, she''d stick around Athan, I had time to poke at it safely here and there.


    But I knew only one other thing about that memory of hers, and that was that it had come from her powers directly. Whatever malign intelligence punished her by forcing her perfection, it had also given her that vision. So we knew now that her powers at least were alive, were intelligent enough to be able to set criteria for success and failure, could understand the concept of visions and memory, and could communicate them to her.


    Like, what the fuck.


    The final nail, not to be morbid, was her death. She died, seemingly on purpose, one had to assume. She drank water, fought a cryoist, and he killed her with it. That seemed so easy to avoid that even the rest of the team had done it accidentally.


    And unfortunately, my memories of this were only secondhand, through Athan. If only I could have seen in Mage''s mind, I would know why she''d done what she had, or if she even had a choice. Maybe her powers hadn''t activated and she just died like any other human. Maybe this was what she wanted, and took the chance to escape her powers.


    But most likely, this is what her powers wanted. But why?


    It had been, I don''t know, a week or something since I left Athan, and as I walked slowly towards my destination on tireless, infirm legs, these were the thoughts which turned over in my mind again and again. A couple of times, I noticed the same look of focused consternation on another person''s face as I passed them, and realized I was focusing on it so hard, I was leaking thoughts.


    Well, that lady was going to have an interesting story about dead girls and sentient powers to tell her friends, but I hardly cared.


    My plan was simple. Go back to DC, meet everyone Mage had ever met, regain every memory that existed of her being there, and then follow her whole life in reverse until I knew every moment of her everything. Once I had all the data that existed, maybe I could find a clue.


    It wasn''t much to go on, but I was also being promised the imminent end of the world by a dead girl who predicted the future by making a perfect facsimile of the present. I wasn''t really going to ask questions at this point.


    But it had been several days at this point and I was tired. Not physically tired, I didn''t really get that, but tired of thinking so hard, tired of pushing myself. This was the furthest I''d ever travelled in my life on my own, and it was wearing on me a lot more than I thought possible. The concept of putting one foot in front of the other until I got there was the simplest thing imaginable, but fuck if it wasn''t boring.


    The only other time I''d travelled like this was when I ran away in Las Vegas. I wanted to get away fast, but didn''t know how. People usually called for a taxi or something like that, but I had no phone, I wasn''t juggling lists of phone numbers for taxis in my head, and neither was anyone around me.


    So I ran, as fast and as far as I could, for the only time in my whole life. Even before I was Exhuman, I didn''t run, Mother told me I would only fall and hurt myself and cause her trouble, so I never did. I made it...two blocks, before pain stabbed at my chest, I was gasping for air, and my arms and legs could move no further.


    It was so frustrating, having my body not listen to my brain. I told it, ''move!'' and it did nothing. I sat on a bench near the road and just waited for Lia and AEGIS and shame to find me. I was so hurt, in my head and in my heart after what Lia had done, and my own inability to even get away from it, I was the biggest failure.


    And then I was blinded by lights and a bus pulled up to the bench I sat on and opened its doors. It was a miracle, and if I had Karu on hand, I would have told her to thank God for me.


    I remembered the memory darkly, as I kept putting my feet in front of me. A sign told me DC was still some hundred miles away.


    I''d forced my way onto the bus, and the driver stopped me, asking me to pay. I told him...in my disabled mental state, I actually told him the truth, which was stupid. I told him...I''d just been sexually assaulted and needed to run away. I thought he might understand. I opened my mind a little, still in pain from what Lia had put me through, and snapped it shut again immediately.


    He was leering at me. Imagining what others had done with my body and enjoying it. The other patrons on the bus didn''t care. They were annoyed I was holding everything up. Some thought I made up the story just so I wouldn''t have to pay. All at once, the weeks I''d spent with Lia and Chiho and AEGIS and Athan fell away from me, and I remembered what humanity was like, what they were really like.


    When you needed someone most was when they''d let you down the hardest, I realized.


    Those people were all dead now. I took every one of their minds and made the driver take me where I wanted, to the heart of the XPCA, and then keep driving forever. He and his passengers went straight to hell on that fucking bus, and I went to that tower to rip out the fucking heart of this toxic world and set the level straight.


    And then ran into Athan, and then Mage, and now I repeat myself.


    I sat down on a bench again, and pressed a palm to my forehead. How could part of me be so hot while other parts of me were so cold? Hadn''t bodies had like, millions of years to figure this kind of thing out by now? Underneath my jumpsuit, I was boiling, would definitely be dripping in sweat if sweating was still a thing I did, but my hands and feet were like ice. I looked down, and found my feet were literal ice, I''d been walking in snow and slush for so long that I had a frozen layer on the bottom of my foot.


    Well, no wonder my feet hurt so much. They couldn''t freeze, but things could freeze to them. They couldn''t go numb either, so it was just like walking on glass. I looked around to see if there was anywhere I could warm up. Maybe a library or something public, where I wouldn''t have to make a scene or crack any heads to get in. Athan wouldn''t appreciate that.


    Damn it, I thought of him again. I''d been trying not to, but for a self-proclaimed master of the mind, I seemed to have very little control over my own.


    The whole situation with him was fucked, and honestly, I was glad to just bail on it, but as heartless as that was, it still hurt a lot, hence the avoiding thinking about it. I was getting really sick of him worming his way into me (mentally, I wouldn''t mind physically, if that were possible), and it seemed like every time I was all ready to finish off humanity once and for all, he''d show up out of nowhere and my weak little heart couldn''t stand the thought of killing off his whole race right in front of his eyes. So I''d relent.


    Always me, he never let me genocide even once. Abusive relationships at their finest.


    But this Mage thing, this was more than me or him. This was something I couldn''t allow myself to be talked out of. I absolutely had to avoid him at all costs. And so while I felt like an asshole for doing to him what I did...and I was, I had no illusions of anything else...the whole thing actually played out...okay for me?


    Which was the crappiest thought I might have ever had. Boy, it sure was convenient how I mind-fucked the only guy who''s ever liked me into being my sex slave and then dumped him with a note saying ''my bad''. Couldn''t even look him in the eye when I ripped out his heart. I fucking disgusted myself. And while he was spending a while recovering from that, I can go to his office and pick through the memories of all his friends and colleagues. What a gal, that Saga.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Which is why I couldn''t meet him. With all this guilt, I''d crack even easier than usual.


    I walked another block and saw a large public-looking building, surrounded by a fence, but with an open gate and people milling around. I headed for it, but as I got in range, I realized, they weren''t people, they were children.


    Which was awkward. Children were a total enigma to me. Weren''t a lot of them on the military base where I grew up, see.


    This was a school, an elementary school, and those children were the...the children, I guessed. I''d never actually been near one before, and their voices were very very loud. I was about to leave the din when I happened to glance through a window and see a kid with short flat hair, who made eye contact with me through the window.


    "Ow, fuck!" I yelled.


    I held my head as a screaming buzzing filled my senses. It was only momentary, but it felt like ages, and when I opened my eyes, I was laying on the ground, my senses muted, vision popping back in focus like I was a computer rebooting and had to connect to all my hardware again. I looked back at the kid, and saw he or she was slumped against the window, eyes scrunched tight, holding their head, too.


    I realized many of the kids were repeating ''ow fuck'' and the teachers were all in a tizzy to find out who had shouted that so loud they''d heard it in their heads. Oops.


    The pain, it was like...it was like what Athan felt when I yelled too loud in his mind, but a hundredfold. Just a pure blast of psychic...psychic. White noise. I saw them recover and averted my gaze before we met again, probing...her, as it turned out, with my mind.


    She was Exhuman, code-X like me. Only seven. Shit.


    Her particular brand seemed to be similar to mine, but she got a holistic, entire, like, fucking complete record like I could only dream of, of all a person''s thoughts, memories, everything, just by looking someone in the eyes. Turns out, two people reading each other''s'' thoughts at the same moment got an extremely painful feedback loop. I was still blinking away some disorientation and realized my nose was bleeding for a bit before my body came back.


    Her teachers thought she had a mental disorder because she was always trying to be alone and never looked at anyone''s face. If only they knew.


    Poor kid was already so fucked up, and didn''t even know what was going on. Like Mage, she''d lived a hundred lives too, just other people''s, and she didn''t understand ninety-nine percent of what was in them. I frowned as I rested my back against the gate, frozen feet all but forgotten, as I mulled over her memories.


    She was a good girl, too. Tried to do her homework, brushed her teeth twice a day, not because she understood why it was important, but because people she loved told her to, and that was enough for her. Supportive parents, worried about her, trying to get her into therapy or counseling so she could ''catch up'' with the other kids. I was sure they''d still drop her like a tumor if they caught wind she was Exhuman.


    Fucking hell. I didn''t have time for this. I didn''t even like kids. So noisy.


    Or so I thought. But the longer I stood here, the more I realized, they were all good kids. Sure, they were maniac little bastards, running at each other with scissors and pulling each other''s hair and eating glue, but...there was something missing from all the other mind''s I''d been around. There was no malice behind any of it, no intention of evil, no intent to deceive and thank God, no sex-obsessed thoughts. Not sure what I would have done with myself if it turned out that kids thought about sex as much as adults did.


    Like yeah, there were bullies who effectively launched a campaign to make other kids'' lives hell, but they did it because it was fun and they were bored and as much as they might hurt others, they never wanted to, it just happened. It was a weird tacit acceptance of the world at face value before they collectively realized that they could change the it.


    And it was really, really, really refreshing. It was so nice to hear people being just happy or just mad or whatever without shoving a VTOL of undertones and history and racial associations and all that junk in it. Some of the older kids were getting there, but in general, it was just like...the kids saw each other as just kids.


    What a fucking goddamn revelation. Amazing how badly we fucked up these simple creatures, systematically.


    So I considered this my break, as I loitered outside the gate like a pedophile. I hoped I could explain that I was picking up my kid sister or something, but if worst came to worst, I''d just blow up the cop''s brain and start walking again.


    Fortunately that didn''t happen. As I continued trawling her memories, I had a realization and left my post for a few minutes to pick something up.


    I got back just as school let out, and smiled at the kids walking through the gates. Some even waved at me. Cute little fuckers.


    Finally I sensed her approaching and averted my gaze.


    "Hey, Ralma," I said. I didn''t need to worry, she didn''t look up, just faced me and looked at my feet. "I need to talk to you. Think your brother would mind if we all went somewhere together?"


    "I dunno," she said, shifting uncomfortably. She didn''t have any problem with me, but she didn''t like the new situation.


    "Let''s go ask him, huh?"


    "Okay."


    We walked a little bit down the road to the bike rack where Ralma''s brother was waiting for her. Middle schooler, almost high school, very excited about winter break imminently pending, and had mixed feelings on seeing me with Ralma, many of which were perverse. I made a mental note to avoid middle and high schools at all costs.


    "Hi Jordan. I''m Saga, I''m a friend of Ralma''s, sort of. Can we sit and talk somewhere for a few minutes before you guys head home?"


    "Uh," he said. Funny. He thought of himself as an adult, capable of taking care of his sister, even fantasized about situations where he''d have to punch out bad guys to snatch her from the dastardly jaws of villainy. Who even thought like that except Karu? And yet, faced with someone asking him politely, he was completely helpless.


    "I''m not trying to take you anywhere. We can just go there," I said, pointing at a fast food chain down the block. "I''ll buy you an ice cream for your time."


    "Chocolate?" asked Ralma, skeptically.


    It was a trick. "Strawberry," I answered.


    "Yay! Let''s go, Jordan."


    "Okay, okay, we''ll go," he said, locking his bike up again. "But no funny business," he threatened me. I had to hold back a laugh as I promised him.


    The cashier had a small bout of confusion and I reminded him I''d just given him my payment for the ice cream, which he handed over without issue, apologizing for the register acting up, and I joined the two in the booth, handing a small bowl to each child.


    "Jordan," I said, very seriously. "I want to know your opinion on Exhumans."


    "Thought you were gonna talk to Ralma," he said. I rolled my eyes and unzipped my outfit just enough to be teasing. Damn broken zip meant I had to do it slow, but I guess that just heightened the effect.


    "This is a very important question," I said.


    "Exhumans are bad, right?" He had a hard time keeping his eyes off the V of newly-exposed flesh "Is this a test?"


    "I''m not asking what they tell you, I''m asking what you think. Don''t worry, this is just a conversation, there''s no right or wrong."


    "Okay. Well. I don''t really care, I guess. They always tell us Exhumans are bad, but I''ve never seen one. If I did, I guess I could probably fight them." My, such bravado.


    "What if I told you that you saw an Exhuman all the time, and they aren''t all bad like they say?"


    "I''d know if I saw an Exhuman."


    "Oh really? How''s that?"


    "Exhumans are always up to something, they''re always blowing things up and fighting the XPCA."


    "If you believe that, why do you not think Exhumans are bad?"


    His brain stopped for a second, and it wasn''t just brainfreeze. "Uh. I don''t know."


    "Okay, Jordan, I''m going to tell you something very, very important so please listen."


    "Whatever."


    "Jordan, Ralma is an Exhuman. She reads people''s minds."


    "No she doesn''t. That''s crazy. You''re weird, lady."


    "Am I? Ralma, do you know what Jordan had for lunch today?"


    "No."


    "Ralma, can you please look Jordan in the eyes, for me, please?"


    Ralma looked at me...approximately at my chest, and frowned. And then she looked at Jordan, who watched this all unfold with mild disbelief. "Jordan didn''t eat his packed lunch, he traded it for candy and then bought a pizza from the good place in the cafeteria."


    Jordan''s mouth fell open. "No, that''s a trick. Okay. What number am I thinking of.


    She looked at him again. "Negative one bizillion four hundred and two point five."


    He looked at me. "Are you hearing this?"


    I smiled and nodded. "She''s a good girl, isn''t she?"


    "She''s Exhuman!" he shouted, and I immediately deleted the memory from the two people in earshot.


    "Exhumans aren''t all bad, you said so yourself. She''s still your sister, and she still loves you. She needs you, Jordan. She loves you more than anyone in the world, and she needs you to protect her. You''re the only person in the world whose eyes she''ll willingly look into."


    "What''s that got to do with anything?"


    "Looking into people''s eyes is how she sees their thoughts. She doesn''t understand, but it frightens her, so she never looks anyone in the eye. Does that clear up a lot of her actions now?"


    He thought around and nodded. "But what am I going to do? I can''t fight the whole XPCA."


    I laughed. What happened to that bravado from earlier? "You don''t have to. Here--"


    I produced the item I got earlier. A white cloth square with two elastic bands on it, sealed in plastic.


    "An eyepatch," I explained, unwrapping it.


    "Eyepatches are black."


    "Pirate eyepatches are black, medical eyepatches, which are a real thing by the way, are white. I''m going to put this on your sister, and I''m going to explain to her really hard that if she wears this, she''ll never have problems with her powers again."


    "Okay. So she won''t be...reading minds or anything, as long as she has an eyepatch?"


    "Right. She needs to make full eye contact with someone for it to happen. At least until she''s old enough to understand what she''s doing, she needs to never use her powers, or she''ll be discovered and the XPCA will take her away. Do you understand?"


    "Yeah."


    "Are you okay with her being an Exhuman?"


    "Yeah...I guess so. She''s not going to change or anything right? Like they say?"


    "You tell me. She''s been like this for a few months already. Did you notice her suddenly being evil back then?"


    "No. She just got...really quiet and hurt all the time." He frowned and tried to worked through some stuff.


    "Well, if she keeps the eyepatch on, she should be back to her old self. Wouldn''t you like that?"


    "Would she really?"


    "I promise."


    "In that case, yeah, I''d love that." He was just a kid, but his determination was for real. He loved his sister and worried about her, too.


    "You''re a good brother, Jordan. Ralma is lucky to have a strong older brother like you."


    I directed the compliment straight into his pride and felt him swell at it. Kids were so easy.


    "Ralma," I said, working a compel into her even as I put the eyepatch on her. "You need to wear this for a while, okay? If you explain to your parents that this will help you look at others in the eye, they will understand, okay?"


    I didn''t tell her that she''d also throw an absolute shit-fit if they ever took it off her because of the compel, but I imagined they''d discover that eventually. I wrote it so that when she was old enough to understand her own powers and how it worked, she''d understand what I''d done, and could make her own choice on when and how to use her power. I hoped she appreciated being eyepatch girl instead of being never-look-anyone-in-the-eye girl. She''d get teased for it, but not arrested, not executed.


    When we parted, she turned back to me. "Thanks Saga!" said Ralma with a wave, looking right at me while her brother walked away wordlessly, far too cool to be interacting with me. Good kid. Might even live, with a little luck. The world needed more like them, I thought.


    And that counted as my break, and the time in the fast food joint had thawed off my feet nicely, so I guess it was time to hit the road and finish up making it to D.C.. I stretched and yawned and got my feet moving again.


    But I also made a note to start visiting schools on my travels. Being around them gave me a lot of energy, and maybe if I were lucky, I could run into another Ralma or two, give a young Exhuman a less-shitty life than the one I''d been handed. The thought of it made me smile, oddly enough.


    But enough time wasted here for today. I had a world ending to investigate.

 146. 2251, Present Day. Los Angeles. Karu.

    It was days before we were back, but when we returned, things looked almost exactly as we''d left them. The square entire lot had been closed off, nearby buildings evacuated, and XPCA on constant watch, monitoring the spherical sky-blue gateway every moment.


    Tenebrae, too, was exactly where we had left him, char at the bottom of a shallow crater. Despite his failings, no man deserved a grave such as that. It would have to be addressed after the Exhuman.


    Deej and I let ourselves in, conferring briefly with the soldiers on-guard, and then approached the portal. Since our visit last, none had gone in nor out. A fact we changed as both of us stepped through without hesitation.


    It was no different from walking from one room to another, but as my first footstep across the threshold pushed the ground, I realized that where we were, in addition to being potentially anywhere, was also potentially anything. Instead of pushing myself up and forward and taking another step, I went up and forward...and up and forward...and up and forward.


    I looked down and blinked at the familiar sight of the ground receding from under me. My hair for once did not rest on one side of my visor or the other, but instead drifted straight up. Deej looked like a mime as he freewheeled in the air.


    "No gravity?" he asked.


    "I would appear so," I confirmed.


    Despite the apparent usefulness of my jetpack in a situation like this, getting it to cooperate was surprisingly difficult. The pack was not made for super-atmospheric flight, though some models certainly were, and there was nothing physically stopping plasma repulsors from working in zero-G, or even airless environments, which this was fortunately not.


    But the pack worked with an onboard AI which handled many aspects, including trying to stabilize and keep me gyroscopically stable, and the AI was programmed with the assumption that gravity was a thing which existed and would continue to exist. When I deployed my pack, it immediately wildly overcompensated and sent me soaring into the air.


    I had to disable most of the ''intelligent'' systems and basically fly on manual before it would cooperate sufficiently. Deej drifted patiently with his arms crossed and a grin on his face while I experimentally jettisoned myself about at random before discerning an operational configuration.


    Despite this, I dutifully attached myself to his back and pushed us both towards the orb of blue and the ground it represented, though such a concept of ground was a luxury in this environment.


    Now that I had control of myself again, I could spare some time examining the surroundings. If outside of the portal had seemed a conventional workshop, this seemed a very unconventional storeroom. The area was immense, but enclosed, what seemed an enormous cube made of wood panelling, with matching wooden shelving units, I suppose they could be called, breaking up the space like a library, if libraries extended in three dimensions.


    The shelves were all closed, and their contents invariably drifted around inside. I opened one experimentally, and found dozens of a device I did not recognize, threaded on the outside, but with a mechanism built into the cap. They floated within the cubby at random, and I closed the shelf before any could escape.


    That was above the portal, which was on an almost two-dimensional walkway, though what good a walkway did in this space, I had no idea. The walkway was a straight line through the very center of the cube, apparently anchored to its sides. The portal was at one end, and seemed to be its only feature.


    Beneath the walkway was...cargo. Dozens and dozens of crates and large boxes, bound with netting and maglocks. Much less orderly than the shelves above, this resembled more of an asteroid field of huge supplies, probably storage for anything too big for the organization above.


    I realized it almost as an afterthought, seemingly so mundane a fact in such an alien world, but I could see my breath. It was cold here, cold enough to be uncomfortable in my flight suit, and much colder than the other side of the gateway. I checked my visor''s HUD and pulled up weather data. Fifteen Fahrenheit. I was surprised I hadn''t noticed earlier, but I suppose I had more pressing thoughts.


    Without warning, a second sky-blue sphere appeared at the other end of the walkway from the one we entered, and almost as soon as it had, a man emerged, checking something on what appeared to be a standard holo tablet, and absently kicking off the platform towards the shelves. With practiced ease, he attached the tablet to a maglock on his waist and looked up, his eyes going wide when he saw the two of us, me perched on Deej''s shoulders, the tips of my wings flickering in the room''s omnipresent glow to keep us steady.


    "Um," he said, still drifting upwards. "Hello."


    "Are you Aledonis Smith?" I asked.


    "That is me." He drifted into a shelf and grabbed hold, Deej and I both flinching as his arm moved, but he was simply anchoring himself to talk to us. "You are...hunters, I presume?"


    "You presume correctly. Filth such as you--"


    Deej interjected. "You are wanted for subversive Exhuman activities and crimes against humanity. Ordinarily I would inform you to surrender or die, but as you have probably heard, there is now a third option, to come to New Eden of your own volition. I recommend you consider it."


    "Oh. Dear."


    He was a thinner man, with a lab coat and glasses, almost the stereotype of what we could expect a technopath to be. Unremarkable face, short brown hair, but a device or two on his wrists and ankles which belied his craft. They could contain anything from antimatter bombs which would tear apart the earth, to raw genetic material which would grow into an amalgamated monstrosity in seconds.


    "Umm. I''d be happy to surrender, or move, but I''d have to ask my fiance," he explained, almost apologetically. "She''s further in, I hope you understand."


    "I''m sure she''ll figure it out when you never return. Keep your hands in plain sight, demon, I will fire without provocation."


    "Damn, Karu, chill."


    "I will not ''chill'', he is an Exhuman," I hissed at Deej. "And do not think to undermine me in front of a prisoner. I do not show weakness to their kind."


    "Is that before or after you sleep with ''em?" he asked with a laugh. I rotated myself so that my face was opposite and upside-down his, and gave him the iciest glare I could manage through the visor. "Haa, irie, yute, just jokin''."


    "I do not appreciate it."


    "So...I''m going to go," Smith said.


    "No, you are not--" I turned to him, but before I could do anything, he tapped a stud on his wrist unit and a portal appeared directly on top of him, disappearing into a sliver of blue and then vanishing almost as soon as it had appeared.


    "Damn it all, Deej, why did you not simply let me shoot him?"


    "What, are you an icer now?"


    "And are you an idiot now? He''s a technopath. And now he knows we''re here, and he''s going to fortify, and we had one chance at making this a simple op."


    I was having flashbacks to the police station vault. Those hesitating, tentative moments where the Exhuman had pretended to surrender, before killing everyone I had loved. Even as Deej grinned apologetically at me now, I wondered if he knew that my anger came not from fear of my own death, but rather concern over his.


    The only thing for us now was to move forward as rapidly as possible and hope to reach the Exhuman before his defences were properly prepared. Going slowly and methodically would ultimately cost us more in the long-run.


    Not certain where else to go, I shuttled Deej back to the narrow walkway, the end opposite the open portal, and as we approached, a blue sliver opened into a sphere, like it had been waiting for us. I took a deep breath and we pressed through.


    And then I fell on top of Deej as gravity again returned to us. I saved a quick profile of my jetpack''s zero-G configuration and re-enabled its other functionality as I trailed in Deej''s wake, focused on my equipment and counting on him to be my eyes for the moment. We''d only been walking for a few moments when he vanished, and I looked up.


    Another portal. Beyond it, a glass wall with what appeared water behind it. My eyes followed the wall upwards and I realized I was in a narrow dumbbell-shaped room, again a narrow walkway between two portals, but this room was entirely enclosed in glass, and outside of it, as far a the sourceless light in the chamber carried was water.


    And not just water. Aquatic life. Jellyfish, sharks, rays, schools of glittering, colorful fish which seemed to shimmer hypnotically, parting and recombining as other creatures approached and threatened. None of them looked familiar to undersea life I''d ever seen, except in broad strokes.


    I stood agape as one particularly large shark swam close to the glass, creating an empty wake where no other creature dared to enter, its powerful tail lazily creating currents as it waved back and forth, its eyes spots of pure black.


    Deej re-emerged and caught me staring. "We can gawk after," He said with a smile. I nodded, feeling embarrassed for my uncharacteristic unprofessionalism, and made myself move forward.


    The next world we entered was even more bizarre. A huge machine, the size of a building, shaped like a huge bronze egg was the focus of this room, and the pathway we were on was the ground on which this monstrosity rested. No spindly narrow walkway this time...at least not where we currently walked, this was much more conventional ground. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    We skirted the thousands of controls and buttons and levers studding the base of the machine and headed for the far side, but when we entered the portal there, we found ourselves in the same room again, just...rotated. I could see, way above me, the two portals we''d just traversed, and if I backed up ever so slightly, could see my trailing arm and leg only just sticking out of one of them. I waved, and the hand peeking from the blue above me waved.


    "This is highly irregular," I complained.


    "I think we''re going to be in this room for a while," Deej said. I followed his gaze and noticed that all around the machine, there were maybe a dozen small walkways like the one we were on, each having their own different gravity, and all close enough to some part of the machine to access another part of it.


    So whatever this thing was, it was important to the Exhuman, and it was so monumentally huge that the best way to work on it was having all of these different gravitationally-awkward regions. How this was superior to a simple set of scaffolds, I couldn''t comprehend, but questioning the inner workings of a technopath''s mind was a sure route to madness. We pressed onward, experiencing new angles of the machine again and again as we went.


    One thing was for certain however. This technopath''s particular bent was obviously towards portals. How this would be weaponized, I had no idea, but all it would take would be one portal opened in the middle of the sun to extinguish all life on earth, or some such. While the stable portal doorways were one thing, he had already shown he could deploy them atop himself when he escaped us, and therefore presumably had no limitations on where, or where to his gateways could lead.


    Never mind the places devoid of gravity. Or the light everywhere, even at the depths of the sea with no source. Or this non-euclidean Escheresque nightmare...I wasn''t even certain places such as this were of this world. Perhaps they were different worlds, or even places of his own creation. As much as it piqued my curiosity, I was here to destroy, not to learn.


    We crossed what was apparently the final threshold and found ourselves in yet another room, as cold as all the others, yet this one looked very much more human, and yet alien all at once.


    There were a pair of mattresses on the floor, surrounded by books and empty cups of instant noodles, a holo, idly playing some show I vaguely recognized, and work benches, covered in spindly parts, half-completed devices, and at least two more of the numerous portal holders we''d already seen so many of.


    Perhaps most worrying was what appeared to be an exosuit, being actively worked on by a small woman with a firey red ponytail, up to her arm in the suit''s side, obviously adjusting something deep within. Next to her was our man, the Exhuman, but who was she?


    "Ah, they''re here," he fretted. "Aesa, my love, please, listen to me."


    "Mmm," she replied. "Number 9 wrench."


    He sighed and went to one of the tables digging through the disorderly mess of tools. I trained my weapons on him and he just looked at me, impassively, defeated.


    My every instinct told me just to fire. End it all, here and now, before things went south, before I lost Deej. Deej saw me flick the safety off with my thumb and put his arm out, lowering my guns.


    "He''s not the one," Deej said.


    "He''s the one on the contract," I said, furrowing my brow. I re-engaged the safety and tapped a few things on my holo, bringing up the details.


    I was sure I hadn''t forgotten them, and the contract verified that. I sent it to Deej to be obnoxious. He looked down at the incoming message and shook his head. "Which one has the wrench in their hands?" he asked.


    Smith took the tool back to Aesa, who took it without looking, plunging her arms back inside the exosuit without a word or glance.


    "Okay, simple enough," I said, and trained the guns on her instead. Again he stopped me.


    "We talk this out," he said.


    I shook my head. "Deej, she''s a monster."


    "You don''t know that. We''re turning over a new leaf, remember? New Eden?"


    "She had her chance to come voluntarily. They''ve been accepting Exhumans for days now. She isn''t among them. The only conclusion is that she won''t go."


    "Or maybe, she lives in a world of her own down here. Look at what she''s built down here, you tell me she has nothing better to do but watch the news?"


    "The news is right there," I pointed at the holo playing the show. "So yes."


    Smith was now busying himself getting a huge, thick fuzzy-lined coat and draping it on the Exhuman. She was only wearing a grease-stained tank top and shorts, and I noticed that in the cold, she had goosebumps all over. If she had control over everything in this domain, why not make it a more pleasant temperature?


    He turned to us after managing to get her arms through the sleeves, seemingly without cooperation on her part of any kind, and turned to us. "I''m ready to leave, I suppose," he said.


    "We''re not taking you. You''re not an Exhuman, are you?" I asked.


    He blinked at me. "Uh. Of course I am."


    "Then why is she the one who is working?"


    "She''s just...the help."


    As if to prove him wrong, she held out a hand in his general direction without taking her eyes off the exosuit. "Anjrostrock."


    He sighed and went back to the bench, sifting through tools until he found something mechanical I couldn''t begin to describe, and handed it to her.


    "Yes, very convincing. Now we shall be taking her."


    "No..." he said, attempting to stand between us, but with a stance so flimsy I probably could have left him to fall over on his own, in time. "...or...not yet anyway, she''s very preoccupied right now."


    "Yes, preoccupied building weapons to kill humans with."


    He was about to respond but she did instead.


    "Soldering iron, flux, and the number 22 circuit."


    She turned and pointed, for once, at one of many quantum cores trussed up with wires and components on one of the benches along the walls. As she turned, her eyes passed over me and Deej, but showed no recognition.


    He collected the requested parts, pulling a small cart over to her with soldering supplies on it and placing the core on top.


    "Please warm up," he pleaded, rubbing the sleeves of the long coat on her. "Please, please, please."


    I''d have enough of these games and this waste of time, and of allowing her to progress towards whatever insidious Exhuman scheme she was building towards. I stepped forward, slipping under Deej''s grasp, and grabbed the girl, Smith going wide-eyed with shock as I went.


    "Don''t--" he said, but I pulled her away from the circuit. For a moment, her hands hung in the air like she was still working on it, and then fell to her sides.


    Abruptly the two of us fell forward at some mental command from the girl, and I realized we had gone through another gate. We were moving in slow motion, me tumbling forward for long moments, my hand still on her arm, before she finished changing something with her mind...Exhuman powers and all, it wasn''t surprising to think she could control her own technology as Athan controlled lightning. Whatever change she made, abruptly, I was the only one moving slowly, as she separated my grasp from her, casually walked a few paces away, and then opened another gate and vanished into it.


    Leaving me hanging, literally, as I fell forward still with excruciating slowness. I''d tripped and fallen forward when I entered this world, and based on the chrono in my HUD, it was two minutes since then, and I was now leaning forward nearly fifteen degrees towards falling.


    Over the course of the next half hour, I watched the ground infinitesimally creep towards me, seemingly unable to move, I could do nothing but watch, trapped in my own mind.


    It was two hours then, before I noticed a crescent of light appear where the Exhuman had vanished, and over the course of the next few minutes, it widened until it was a full sphere. She and her portal had been unaffected by the slowness of time in this realm, this one was. I hoped, after nearly three hours now, it was Deej, who had beaten them single-handedly, and come to recover me, but my heart sank when I saw a foot emerge with painful slowness, and it was not that of an Exosuit.


    Most of six hours later and I was very nearly horizontal, with the ground within reach, and the person, the man Smith, had almost emerged from the portal. I had watched his expression move from concern, to a frown, to a glint of realization, as he inched his hand towards the controller on his wrist. Now, finally, he had depressed a few keys and¡­


    And I slammed into the ground, face-first.


    "I''m so sorry," he said, helping me up. "I told you not to disturb her yet."


    I had to think back to memories of hours and hours ago to recall his words. "Where''s Deej?" I asked.


    "I don''t understand the question," he said.


    I grabbed the collar of his lab coat and lifted him bodily over the nonexistent floor of the black void. "The man in the Exosuit. What has transpired with him in my absence?"


    "You haven''t been absent," he muttered. He checked his wrist device. "Oh, oh no."


    "What?"


    "I am so sorry. I really did insist you not touch her!"


    "Tell me, what!" I shouted.


    "How long have you been trapped in here?" he asked.


    "How long do you think, fool? As long as you threw me in here."


    He shook his head. "I came as soon as she came back without you. You were gone...fifteen seconds, tops."


    I blanched. "It has been eight hours, forty-two minutes, and fifty five seconds," I growled.


    "Ah. How cruel of her. You really shouldn''t have touched her."


    "Explain this to me," I said. "Or maybe I don''t care, and will simply--"


    I moved to set him down and pass him, but he interceded, holding my wrists, making me flinch.


    "In this dimension, time passes differently, as does our perception of it. She brought you here to get rid of you...but then made you experience time slowly...I don''t know why, to punish you, I suppose. When we come back, it will be like we never left, even if...for you it has been hours."


    "So she is a monster," I confirmed.


    "No! She''s...well, she is a good person, but she''s just focused. She is very different when she''s working. Please, just wait, and you''ll see."


    "I shall take my chances,¡± I growled.


    "At least wait until she warms up!" he shouted as I muscled past him back through his portal.


    As he said...it was exactly like I''d never left. She seemed to have only just emerged from a portal, starting back on her work, Deej had only just realized I was missing, and then I was back, and where Smith was standing was the portal from which I emerged.


    Out of Deej''s range, I advanced within five feet of the working girl and pointed my scattergun at her back. I pulled the trigger and the burst of laser fire vanished into a portal which appeared between the two of us, reappearing on my right out of a second portal, and scouring me.


    I felt my skin burning on my arm and chest, where I''d caught some of the scattered beams, and swore. My armor had held, a smoking hole in my chest with serious burns, but it hadn''t penetrated. Still swearing, I cracked a vial of medical gel and sprayed some on my two new burns.


    More troubling, she had turned to face me with the same cold indifference in her eyes, but it was now me and not the exosuit upon which she was focusing. Smith reappeared and surveying the scene began to mutter "oh no, oh no, oh no," like it was his mantra.


    I raised my arms and fired again, rolling sideways as soon as I did to avoid the same trick, but she was gone, and my fire streaked through the empty air, scorching a pattern on the far wall.


    I waited long seconds, taking to the air, and feeling Deej begin to engage behind me, as we waited for her to reappear. I got a proximity alert and rocketed upwards towards the high ceiling, as bullets ripped through the air where I had been hovering.


    There, before me, on a metal balcony which circled the room, the Exhuman Aesa peered at me over the ironsights of an assault rifle, her pale green eyes flat with disinterest as she pulled the trigger again.

 147. 2251, Present Day. Aesas Dimension. Karu.

    I was slow, that was for damn sure. The room was big enough for me to fly around in, and unlike last time we''d come out here and gotten thrashed by Tenebrae, I hadn''t gone overweight on loadout, so I was at optimal mobility.


    There were no excuses, the problem was all me. As the rifle in the Exhuman''s hands flashed and belched fire and death at me, I wasn''t moving in time. I barely got my arms up to cover my vitals with my weaponry, but could feel myself being punched around in the air as bullets cracked my armor plates and pinged off of my guns.


    The issue was, I''d been in suspense, or suspension perhaps more accurately, for nine hours. When entering a combat situation, a combatant has only so many hours of productive nerve in them before they veer into being too sloppy or too hesitant. Mine had been wasted in the hours that I inched towards the ground, the alert, paradoxical tranquility of action long since fading from my mind, and replaced with other thoughts not pertinent to the situation.


    Unhelpfully, I had probably spent the last couple of hours reliving my every interaction with Ashton before we had parted, and while facing down my decision was probably healthy in a holistic sense, in the immediate, the only individual it made me wish to combat was myself.


    Fortunately, I had Deej to rescue me yet again. I felt a wave of sound ripple through me from my feet to my hair, and then the metal railing before me shattered into fragments, dropping the Exhuman, her large red coat billowing around her, before she vanished into yet another portal, still feet from the ground.


    In the moment she was gone, I began moving. I had to force myself back into the mindset of a combat. It was easier to continue fighting than it was to start. I began drills, as I had done thousands of times before, like a soccer player doing footwork training, I flickered from side to side, pushing myself to stop for only the briefest possible instant, enjoying the unenjoyable sensation of my internals shifting back and forth with the outlandish G''s I put on them.


    She was there again, free-falling now, upside down, rifle at her shoulder, scope over one eye. She had her other eye closed like an ameteur shooter, but that hardly mattered as she trained her rifle on me with unerring precision despite the unusual circumstance of her position.


    But I was moving this time, and even before I''d gotten the proximity alert, I had taken evasive action. I moved towards her side, her dominant arm''s side, forcing her to extend the gun one-armed to track me and not allowing her to keep the weapon across her body for support.


    True to her apparently ameteur nature with firearms, she took the bait, holding the weapon one-handed and firing rounds at me. The first few bullets were reasonably close given her positioning, but the recoil of the weapon quickly sent the remaining spray up...or down, into the floor. I was already moving, rocketing towards her with blades extended, but as I reached her, again, she vanished into a portal.


    I considered following her in, but hesitated too long and did not want to risk the possibility of discovering what happened when a portal closed with one halfway through. Still, if she could move as fast as thought, this was essentially a fight against Ashton''s comrade Jack, but with a firearm.


    I turned as another gateway opened directly above me, and even before I could see the Exhuman emerge, fired two blasts of scattergun laser into it before I had time to realize my error and moved as fast as possible, dipping down briefly to give myself an extra moment before veering horizontally away.


    Away from the cascade of molten lava which emerged from the portal like pus seeping from a wound in the air. Even from here, I could feel the heat of it, and my nearest leg blistered just by being near. I felt the superheated air in my lungs and choked.


    Panic welled up within me, I heard Siad''s voice as he screamed out at the Exhuman''s touch. My heart slammed in my chest so hard I thought it might crack my armor plates.


    "Pull up, Karu!" Deej''s voice crackled in my ear, far away. I blinked and realized I was still heading for the ground, right for the growing pool of lava which Smith and Deej were scrambling to climb above. My altimeter was flashing alerts right in front of my eyes.


    I jammed to a halt, feet above the glowing pool, feeling the heat of it on every inch of my skin, reeling from the G''s and feeling my vision going. I was still panicking, my heart rate was way too high, I was going to blackout at this rate, and my lack of awareness and the need to react violently was only making things worse.


    I flew upwards again, putting distance between me and the pool. Outside of the tunnel vision, in grayscale, I saw melting gun lockers, drooping from the extreme heat.


    I forced myself up and out and back into my drills, pitting my muscle memory against my actual memories. I traced an hourglass shape in the air, reversing it at random, flickering up, down, over, down, over¡­


    A portal appeared horizontal to me, and the tip of the rifle emerged, firing blindly into the room in my general direction. I went over, down, over, and then straight into it, blades extended.


    Somewhere in the piercing blue of the gateway, we clashed, and my wrist-blade sheared through the metal barrel of the gun, and we both tumbled into the new world, a seemingly endless void with a floor carpeted an inch deep with water every color of the spectrum.


    I was too close to her to bring the blades to bear, retracting them both with a thought, but grabbed her by the wrist and struggled to level my weaponry at her, point-blank. She struggled at my grasp and punched at me feebly, though clinging to me so I couldn''t drag her off of me and end it with a single shotgun blast.


    She hugged at me, and kneed me in the groin, scrabbling at my visor with her free hand. I had only limited hand to hand experience, but knew that an elbow to the nose was better than trying to throw a punch in these quarters, and gave her exactly that. She anchored herself to me by grabbing my hair, and bit the side of my face.


    "B-blighted...animal--" I stammered, as I tried to remove her, the feeling of hot blood upon my cold cheeks made the wound seem even worse somehow. How could one so wiry and small be so impossible to overpower? I thought she must be running purely on adrenaline, but even with her mouth and broken nose streaked with blood, I still saw the same cold indifference in her eyes, like I was simply boring her as we both gasped and thrashed with one another.


    It was only a few seconds before one or both of us fell and we wrestled on the ground, me just trying to get enough distance to aim a weapon at her, and her clawing at every inch of me she could find, the rainbow-tinted water splashing around our struggle, burning like ice.


    Twice, I writhed and fired, unsure if I had an angle, but both times I hit only the air next to her, with her not even flinching as the explosion of gunfire went off in her face. For her part, she''d managed to wrestle a grenade from my chest bandolier and was struggling to hold onto me and prime it at the same time. I knew that one was merely an EMP, but wanted under no circumstances for this fight to continue with me blinded by a dead visor.


    This was going nowhere, and if she got the grenade primed, I would be at a severe disadvantage. I had to do something.


    With a flick of my eyes and a thought, I engaged anti-missile countermeasures, and from my shoulders, hips, and ankles, small pods open and fired. Flares and chaff filled the air, saturating the area around me with garbage designed to confuse missile tracking.


    My hope was that the explosive emergence of such would be enough to distract her as well, at least for a precious moment to land a decisive blow. Her face registered only minor disinterest, but the flares going off in her face did temporarily blind her, and I took the moment to slam my visor into her forehead with a loud crack which I hoped came from her.


    She reeled backwards, and both of my arms snapped upwards, firing two loads of buckshot. They went over her head as she disappeared into the floor, the top hemisphere of a blue orb projecting from the ground under her feet. I had half a moment where I hesitated if I should take the shot and finish her, but realized if I didn''t go now, I''d be stuck here, presumably forever, and dove head-first into the closing crescent.


    I fell forward, back in reality...or familiar unreality at least. The massive chamber with the dozens of portals and gravity fragmented every which way.


    I heard a buzz as my comms reconnected with Deej. "--gone? Karu, do you copy?"


    "I''m here. We''re in the previous room now," I reported tersely as I fell after the girl, evading a spray of gunfire shot backwards at me with her now sawed-off rifle, and she vanished again when I returned fire. I took back to the air and hovered, waiting for her to reappear.


    I was actually hoping she''d vanish for a bit and give me a moment to breathe. I''d been noticing a spike in one of my optics readings every time a portal was made, a burst between UV and x-ray, and hadn''t had the hands or time to tell my visor to keep on alert for it. I''d gotten as far as setting up an alert but was still seeing the world in x-ray when the alert pinged off right in behind me, and I turned and fired on reflex.


    "Mon..." Deej said with an exasperated sigh, as I realized I''d just fired a scattergun into his exosuit. He was fine obviously, but I gave him an apologetic grin anyway.


    I had almost finished when the alert went off again and this time I evaded. My vision still wasn''t right, so I was flying on instinct here, but I heard and felt bullets flaring past me as I roared upwards, until suddenly...I was roaring downwards. My stomach shifted with spontaneous unease as I breached the gravity bubble around one of the walkways and up became down. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    My jetpack, even more confused than I, almost killed me as it full reversed throttle to correct the spontaneous deceleration it assumed I''d undergone, from some large positive speed to some large negative speed. My head slammed against the now-floor with an echoing metal clang and in addition to the greyscale and tunnel vision from the sudden full-speed burst, now I was seeing spots.


    My pack, satisfied to have found the ground, folded itself up. I swore and tried to stabilize the spinning room in my head before the Exhuman took advantage of my disorientation.


    I heard and felt Deej fire several times while I put my head back together, keeping her busy and buying me time. I was having a hard time consolidating the fact that I was on the ceiling, but it was the floor, but at least got my optics back into shape. I looked down...or up...and saw Deej and Smith on the floor above me, and indicators of several now-closed portals in the UV/X-ray range, where she had appeared or disappeared recently. There was also this gaudy enormous machine.


    And I had an idea.


    I was light on explosive munitions, they had been the extra weight I''d left behind to make it under loadout capacity, and not very useful besides given the portal nature of the hideout we were raiding...exploding a conventional trap or two might have worked, but an errant blast around the portals ran the risk of closing it and trapping us in here.


    Yet something around here was responsible for her being able to project portals wherever she wanted, and with the enormity and obvious care taken in this central machine, I had my suspicions this was it. I took a few steps forward, reached down towards the top of the machine, and placed a blast charge on an important-looking piece of it. Rocketing away, I set my flight controls back to the mostly-manual profile I''d saved a few rooms and several hours back, avoiding my pack malfunctioning again as I crossed the gravity switch.


    Once I was far enough, I jammed the detonator and felt the whole room shake with the blast. I heard a scream, and realized it was Smith''s, not the Exhuman''s.


    "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" he yelled.


    "I destroyed a relic of corruption brought into this world by a twisted mind," I said, landing next to him and Deej and watching the machine shudder as explosions rocked its interior.


    "You destroyed this world!" he shouted. "That device is the only thing keeping this pocket dimension intact! We have...minutes, maybe, before all of this implodes into unreality!"


    "Unreality? That sounds bad," Deej understated. "I think we should leave?"


    "That''s what I heard." I turned to Smith. "Will this kill her?"


    "It will kill all of us!" he screamed, his eyes bugging out.


    "Sufficient for me."


    Deej picked up the wailing man and we headed for the exit portal. As we went, I noticed the beginnings of gravity wavering, as our steps no longer carried us exactly straight. They passed through the portal and began navigating the labyrinth of walkways, Deej rocketing forward with his suit''s thrusters at full capacity, blinking in and out of existence as he crossed walkway after walkway. Whichever the last one was, I could fly and follow directly, but there were so many, I had no idea which were linked to each other, and which to the outside.


    Apparently, also, I had more pressing matters, as an alert informed me a portal was appearing on my side. I dove away, taking to the air, and fired. The Exhuman rolled forward under the shot and returned fire before vanishing again


    "Less fightin'' more hustle, Karu!" Deej shouted at me.


    "Easy for you to say," I argued back as she materialized behind me. "She''s not trying to kill you."


    She fired and I fired back, and both of our volleys were eaten by a portal. A matching one appeared directly behind me, and I could only just begin to move before the bullets reappeared in my back.


    I fell forward, like I''d been punched full-force, swearing, feeling the searing, painful tightness in my upper back, and my visor flashed vitals warnings. I was hit, bad, but in the periphery--arms and shoulders and sides. My pack took the brunt of the hit, had absorbed the bullets which would have likely killed me. It was inoperable, and I was doing less than stellar, but I had a few minutes of adrenaline and a pocketful of stims to keep me going if I had to.


    I hated the damn things, they had side-effects of increased aggression and ''mental imbalance'' and I had to wonder sometimes how imbalanced I was with and without them.


    Regardless, without flight, I had absolutely no time to lose now. I couldn''t catch up with Deej by flying, and had to sprint after him. As my arms moved, I felt something scraping against the bone in my right shoulder uncomfortably. That would start to hurt unbelievably badly as soon as I took notice of it, so I pushed it as far from my mind as possible and simply ran.


    Physical injury aside, running was difficult. As I''d noticed earlier, gravity was beginning to fall apart in here, but I realized that was not entirely true. It was more than reality itself was breaking. At times I would find myself in a slightly different place than I had been, or move a direction other than forward, or find that somehow my momentum had arrested itself, or doubled. It dawned on me very quickly that destroying a technopath''s crowning achievement while inside a personal dimensional pocket of theirs was a very poor idea.


    Deej entered a portal on the opposite end of the room and did not reappear instantly. The exit, apparently. I took note of which of the many blue spheres it was, pointlessly, and kept moving, my arms and legs pumping with strides as clean and long as I could manage given the unreality of reality.


    Made, of course, even more difficult with the sporadic, random assaults by the Exhuman. Every two or three portals, she would pop up at random and have at me. I could do little but avoid her attacks and fire back fruitlessly, hoping maybe I could catch her as she had caught me, but she was too fast, too unpredictable.


    I hoped the whole place imploded to hell and took her with it. Ideally, with me outside, but if this was to be my end, so be it.


    Deej re-emerged, soaking wet from the look of him. "It''s collapsed!" he shouted, unnecessarily loud in my comms.


    "What is?"


    "The tunnel ahead, the glass water chamber. It''s flooded, I can''t get across."


    I swore again. That was our only exit, and we probably only had another minute or two, based on the increasing numbers of spatial irregularities I was running into, before this reality stopped being.


    "Deej!" I shouted at him from a walkway near him. He looked and located me. I jumped towards him, feeling gravity lose its grip on me as I flew away from the platform, and plummeted over empty air and the ground dozens of feet below. He darted to the edge of his ledge and extended an arm, catching me and pulling me into his arms and his gravity.


    We both knew thanks were unnecessary, and so I walked through the portal to the water realm.


    It was as he said. There were pieces of a shattered dome surrounding this portal keeping it dry and intact, a blue orb in the distance, looking like it was a hundred feet away, and everything in between was black water, filled with spatial distortions and hungry creatures of the deep. There was a small air pocket left on this end, but no promise of such a thing on the other side...for all we knew, the next room was flooded as well.


    My pack could have carried Deej and myself through the water if he left behind his exosuit, but it was defunct and without his suit we would be all but helpless against the wildlife.


    I pulled my head back through into the multi-gravity room and swore again.


    "What can we do?" Deej asked.


    "Kill an Exhuman, like we came here to do," I muttered.


    "This might not be the time for that," he replied.


    "What we need," Smith said, and I had forgotten he was there in Deej''s arms "is Aesa to start working. She can buy us a few minutes to think at least...I think."


    "And how do you propose we do that? She seeks naught but my death."


    "She seeks to work. You are just a threat who happens to be in the way. I bet if you put down your guns, maybe she''d realize you aren''t interested in stopping her anymore, and would probably stop attacking you."


    "You bet, maybe, probably?" I repeated. "This is ludicrous."


    As though to punctuate my thought, she appeared across the room and peppered the three of us with gunfire. We took shade in Deej''s arms.


    "Are you engaged to that Exhuman or not? How can you not know a thing about how she operates?"


    "Well, I''m not usually trying to kill her," Smith said pointedly. "And she''s not the one I married...look, I hope she just warms up fast."


    "Warms up? To us? Doubtful."


    "No...from the cold. You''ll see. Or maybe you won''t, in which case it won''t matter."


    "I tire of you speaking in circles, little egghead."


    "And I tire," Deej said "of ja consistently making the situation worse, Karu. Drop the guns and we''ll see what is. Unless ja''d rather die here?"


    I glared at him.


    A few hours ago, I might have even refused, petulantly. I was here for redemption, here to find myself, to kill an Exhuman as I had done so many times before. I was here to locate the old hunter within me and drag her back into my life. She was purity, she was purpose, and I was craven and sin.


    But in those hours I had spent in frozen solitude, with nothing but my thoughts, I had long suffered the company of myself. I had no distractions from my mind, no punishments to inflict when my thoughts grew uncomfortable, could not even move. For hours.


    It was a humbling, aggravating experience, and one perilously close to maddening, I thought. As though all of the sins I had thought to escape had come into this sacred domain of purity and death with me.


    Which...of course they had. I had been deluding myself to think there was an old me to find. I was myself, and that was all there was to it. No amount of shock nets or confessions or self-scarring would change that. I had hung there, mostly in anger at being trapped, yes, but also in despair at being unable to escape myself, even on a suicide mission.


    The thing was...once I accepted that, stopped treating my sins like a part of myself I could simply beat or will away, and was stuck with the cruel realization that implicit in them being my sins was that they were mine...I simply...felt less bad.


    It made little sense. By all merits, accepting that one is a flawed, failed, corrupted being should be reason to find despair, not escape it, yet I was just...relieved, in a way. Happy to finally be something, even something flawed without pretension. Happy to stop holding myself above myself.


    I was far from satisfied with being a sinful, craven being, yet they often said that the first step towards recovery was acceptance, and as much as I had professed my sins, I had never yet accepted them.


    I loved Athan. I was head-over-heels for him. The thought of his touch made my heart sing and my spine trill and my toes curl, and if I ever made it from this bizarre world, I would find him and I would tell him that. I would begin seeing a therapist again, and I would live. Surely after acceptance, there were other steps, and those I would follow. I could not simply beat my own problems out of myself, no matter how hard I struck.


    A few hours ago, I might have refused Deej, holding onto my weapons and the idea of vengeance, of righteous retribution, that I was God''s chosen weapon against all evils, here and elsewhere. But here and now, I was just a broken girl who was afraid of losing the one piece of herself she''d just found.


    The guns clattered against the walkway as I stripped them from the weapon hardpoints on my wrists and threw them to the ground.

 148. 2251, Present Day. Aesas Dimension. Karu.

    The Exhuman--Aesa, watched with the same disinterest from across the room as I kicked my guns off the small railing. They fell towards the ceiling, dipped, hovered for a second between two gravities, and then sailed to the ground dozens of feet below.


    I frowned. The scattergun had been a favorite of mine, and all the weapons were custom-modified for minimum weight and to be anchored to my suit''s hardpoints. It was hard to let them go like this.


    One bounced and ricocheted through the wall with impossible acceleration. A little reminder of how physics weren''t currently. I got a proximity alert and tensed involuntarily as Aesa appeared among us.


    "Arc welder, welding hood, circuit 6-a, precision drivers," she stopped and thought, her eyes still dim "eighteen 8B deulith cells."


    "Eighteen?" Smith asked as he followed her into another gateway, and they disappeared.


    "And what now?" I asked Deej. As if in reply, a portal opened between us. He shrugged and went through, and I peeked my head in before following. If I''d just turned to look at the machine instead, I would have seen the partner portal, at the top of the machine where I''d put the charges.


    Aesa was already working, her jeans and boots being the only thing visible outside of the machine. Flashes of light from inside indicated she''d been handed the arc welder already, and if I wasn''t completely mistaken, it felt like every time she tweaked something in there, reality rippled just a little bit.


    Smith paced anxiously around the perimeter of the hole where Aesa was buried, holding a circuit board and some screwdrivers gingerly. Even from here, I could feel the heat and see the smoke rising from her welding. A few moments later, she emerged and stripped off her huge red jacket, throwing it directly at me. This seemed to make Smith unbelievably happy as she took the circuit and drivers and withdrew again.


    "And who the hell does she think she is, barging in here and blowing up my stuff?" she shouted, her voice distant and echoey from being inside a machine, but speaking like she was just casually continuing a conversation. It wasn''t an unpleasant voice, maybe a little high-pitched, but it caught me off guard after all her silence.


    "This is Aesa," Smith said with a smile. "Her...I guess you''d say Exhuman powers, but we''ve always just thought it was a gift...they only activate when she''s cold. Which is why we keep it so cold in here, usually, you see."


    "Stop explaining things to them, dumbass!" She made a frustrated noise. "I don''t remember which way this circuit goes in!"


    "It should only fit one way, dear."


    "It fits any number of ways!"


    "It should only fit one way without breaking, dear."


    "Oh aren''t you a smartass. Want to come in here and fix this?"


    "I''m sure you''ve got it, honey."


    It was bizarre seeing the two of them argue like this when she''d been nothing but murderous and completely fixated before. Exhuman powers which only activated conditionally were reasonably common, but ones which overrode the personality of their user were almost unheard-of.


    Or, perhaps, what was rare were powers which overrode their user''s personality but still left it otherwise intact. I was certain most every other technopath I''d ever heard of had been compulsive and obsessive in their creation, and it was difficult to imagine that each of them had been like that prior to their powers manifesting. Watching Aesa emerge and inexpertly banging against the machine in frustration with the butt of a driver, it was difficult to believe this was the same person who had built the thing originally.


    "She ought to hold for a few, but only just," Aesa explained. "Now, mind spending your last few living minutes explaining to me why you thought it was a good idea to subvert a pocket reality while you were inside it?" she turned to me, and instead of icy indifference, there was fiery rage in her yes.


    "I thought it an expedient way to kill you," I said with a shrug.


    To my surprise, she laughed. "I''m the one person it won''t kill, doofus. Who do you think entered this void and built all this shit to begin with? There''s so much dangerous bullshit out here that I can only live by using my powers to control my machines and keep myself intact. One void flare or aether wind and poof, you''re all just so much more nothing in oblivion. This thing," she kicked the machine underfoot "hell, all of this was built just to make a little habitable space for people like him."


    Smith shrugged. "I was wrong. She doesn''t tell me anything."


    "You never ask."


    "You''re always working. I don''t like to interrupt."


    "I tell him to thaw me out every couple days so we can spend some quality time together, but he''s always like ''oh no, you looked like you were really focused on your work'' and just leaves me to it for weeks at a time."


    "But you do look so happy!"


    "I''ve seen pictures! I look dead! I''ve got the glossy eyes of a dead fish!"


    The world shifted uncomfortably under us, thankfully reminding the two lovebirds to stop yelling and start...doing whatever it was that needed doing.


    "Hmm, right," she said. "We need to get to the suit."


    "And why is that?" I asked. I hadn''t intended it to be a threat, but also hadn''t intended for it not to be.


    "So Al doesn''t die. Duh." She looked at me like I was legitimately stupid for asking, but only for a half moment because in the next, a portal opened under her and she fell in with a ''whee!'', followed by ''Al''. Deej and I followed. I think he was curious, and I simply didn''t want to be abandoned, alone, in an imploding universe.


    Back in the final room, lava cooled on the ground, and Aesa was strapping Smith¡­''Al''edonis into the exosuit we''d seen earlier.


    "Pardon my ignorance," I cut in. "But what exactly is this exosuit?"


    "It''s not an exosuit, dummy," Aesa answered. "Though I guess if that''s the best your stupid meathead can wrap itself around, feel free to keep calling it that."


    I wanted to ask if there was a reason she was so obnoxiously provocative, but realized there were plenty and decided to endure whatever she had to throw at me.


    "This is the Void-Killer version 1. Dimension exploration unit. As I said, I can use my tech to protect myself from dangers of other universes. Al can''t. So this gives him that shot."


    "But...why? You can go yourself and build chambers such as these?" I asked.


    "You really are the densest person I''ve ever met. Do you think infinite dimensions and exploring them is fun because you can build a house there?"


    "I suppose anywhere you can build a house is preferable to anywhere you couldn''t."


    "Ugh, you''re so infuriating. Alright, I''ll spell this out clearly. Imagine you''re a tourist and you want to visit places. Mount Rushmore, New York, hell Chicago if you want. Now imagine you have a fianc¨¦ you want to bring along, because that''s what couples do, right? Totally alien concept for someone like you, I''m sure, but pretend."


    I bristled at the insinuation but attempted to let it go.


    "Now imagine in order for him to see anything, you have to build a freaking house there by hand? See how that''d get annoying? Hence the suit. It''s like an RV in this metaphor. Get it now, smart stuff?"


    "I...suppose." I felt vaguely bad if she were telling the truth. The fact was, she was creating an ultimate defensive/offensive weapon...to put her beloved in so they could spend their lives together?


    "Knew you weren''t all just tits and blonde. Had to be a peanut rolling around in that head somewhere."


    "Excuse--"


    "Okay, you''re all checked in, lover," she said to Smith affectionately. "Time to get you out of here."


    "Wait, what about them?" he asked.


    "These assholes? Like I give a shit."


    "Honey."


    She sighed and rolled her eyes with tremendous effort. "They came here to kill me, remember Al?"


    "Well they''re not doing it anymore. I told them everything would be fine once you thawed out, and here we all are. So could you please possibly not vindicate them by letting them die here?"


    "I GUESS. If you INSIST."


    "I do--"


    She snapped her fingers and Al, Void-Killer and all dropped through the floor into a sky-blue semicircle before he could finish his thought.


    "All right, assholes. What do you want, then? He''s gone, so...if you want to live, I can help you help yourselves. If you want to kill me¡­" she readied her fingers to snap again with a devilish grin.


    "Living will be plenty, I think," Deej volunteered.


    "Not asking you, boy scout. Asking bimbo here."


    "Bimbo!?"


    "Sorry. Struck a nerve? What should I call you then? Sorority slut? Queen bitch of the boobverse? Tittyfuckems?"


    "There are plenty of character attributes much more descriptive of my being than my...than this¡­" I gestured at my chest. "Than these!"


    "And yet no argument against being a slut. Good to know."


    "You infuriating, Exhuman, heathen, God-blighted--"


    I felt a ripple as the room crunched inwards on us slightly, like an empty can in a pressure chamber.


    "Ooh, better wrap that insult up. It was gonna be a good one too, I could tell," she said with a wink. "Or, you could keep going if you don''t mind going down to an AAAA-cup. ''Cuz you''ll be flatten--"


    "I understood!" I shouted at her. "Yes, you may live."


    "And apologize for destroying my house?"


    "You are certainly kidding me."


    "Hey man, no skin off my nose Al''s gone, I don''t have to save you if I don''t want to."


    "No!" I shouted. "This is moronic! I refuse to subjugate myself like this. I bow to no man, and you are Exhuman, less even than man."If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    "Ooh, you''re actually getting further from me helping you."


    "Karu," Deej asked imploringly, and I looked over to him and his serious eyes. There was another crunching noise and one of the railings halfway up the room fell down with a bang.


    I did realize how stupid I was being. Loathe though I was to do so, it wasn''t merely my life I was throwing away here. If Deej''s kids grew up orphaned on account of my foolishness, I would cast myself out of heaven on their account. As though I had a chance of getting in.


    "Very well." I took a knee as quickly as I could force myself to. "Aesa, I humbly apologize for disrupting your lifestyle and violating your sanctum. I beg your forgiveness and assistance, for Deej, and for myself."


    "And now bark."


    I froze entirely.


    "I must have misheard you," I said, eyes still on the ground.


    "I said bark."


    My brain ceased to function, and the red from my cheeks, I was certain, was sufficient to reheat the cooled lava to boiling. This was too much. She could not be serious. I glanced at Deej, who smiled apologetically and gave me a sorry thumbs-up.


    I closed my eyes and said goodbye to whatever fragments of dignity I had left. I did this for him. I did this for Ashton, and the hope we would one day be reunited. And after that, I would hunt this bitch to the end of the universe if I had to.


    "Haha, just kidding," Aesa said. "Man, could you imagine? That would have been so embarrassing. For you. Funny for me though. Anyway, we don''t have time. This place is coming down in seconds."


    "Yes. Let''s. Go. Then," I grit out, my eye twitching uncomfortably. I was very much reconsidering why anyone would leave this girl alive, even without her being Exhuman.


    "I can''t take you all the way out," she said, seeming to look at nothing in particular. "And I see the water chamber''s broken, that''s your issue. It''s a good thing you didn''t swim for it...they might look like normal aquatic life, but the stuff in that dimension is really really hungry."


    As she continued to muse, the chamber imploded again slightly, and a shower of metal tiles rained down on us from where the walls weren''t large enough to support them anymore.


    "And...so¡­" Deej pressed.


    "I''m, thinking." She turned towards me. "This is what thinking looks like," she explained.


    I blinked at her, hoping that possibly, shaking her would make her a less frustrating being or improve the clarity of her thought. Or possibly break her neck. After making me kneel and...and bark...was this just yet another way of wasting our remaining seconds? Even without my weaponry, I swore if she was just dooming us after all of this--


    "Okay, the storeroom looks stable enough. Good luck, you two!"


    She clapped her hands and a portal appeared before us.


    "Good luck to you and Al as well," Deej said with a courteous nod before stepping through.


    "Please do me a favor and never return," I muttered.


    "Why would I?" she said with a shrug. "I''ll send you a postcard, Bimbo."


    I stepped through before I had to endure any more words, and immediately reconsidered the possible meanings of the phrase ''looks stable enough''.


    We were on the narrow walkway, our goal within our sight in front of us, but reality in this room was even more tenuous than anywhere else we had been. The path was no longer straight, instead bizarrely twisted left, right, up and down, terminating in a good fifteen-foot overhanging ledge where the dimension had twisted itself completely askew, directly before the exit.


    Even as difficult as that obstacle appeared, even the relative ease of the path leading to that point was much more difficult to navigate than it looked. Loose crates--somehow still defying gravity while we were stuck on the narrow path--drifted like asteroids, crossing the path and crashing into each other, the crumpling wooden edges of the world, and the fragile path, and ricocheted off with completely unnatural physics.


    Arguably even worse than that gauntlet was the fact that moving did not take us in a linear path either. A single step sometimes stretched out for entire seconds, or flashed past under me, threatening to carry me over the edge into the crushing abyss below. Once or twice, I even wound up lost amongst the shelves above us, not at all certain how the path was suddenly weaving between them, but having nothing to do but press forward as fast as possible.


    The world made its distress clear, howling with fracturing wood and screaming metal at intervals when it imploded upon itself ever more. New twists emerged in the path and the ceiling and floor lurched towards us claustrophobically. We ran and ran and ran, the cliff in the path ahead of us looming ever closer and apparently ever taller.


    Deej arrived first, launching himself at the ledge above us, the fingers of his exosuit missing the lip by inches. He frowned and I stood behind, doing calculations as best I was able. Before I could formulate a plan, he wheeled on me and picked me up as though I were a javelin.


    "Deej, put me down!" I yelled.


    "Sure thing, yute!" he shouted back, and threw me up over the ledge, my arms and legs pinwheeling uselessly in the air, but his aim was good and I crashed atop the lip painfully, jarring the bullet fragments in my shoulders. It took me a second to turn back to him, but there was no way I could help him up in his heavy exosuit.


    He''d already had this realization, and by the time I turned, he was exiting the back of the suit. There was another crack in reality and splinters rained down upon us even as the path back twisted so badly that the opposite portal was lost somewhere in the bouncing mess of crates beneath us. I wondered for a moment if many of them would wind up in the ocean, and what the sharks would make of it.


    Once he was out, he climbed atop the empty suit and I lowered my arms, having not much to hold onto up here but to wrap my knees over the sides of the walkway. I braced my chest against the ledge and held my arms out, and he jumped and grabbed them.


    I screamed, the bullets lodged in my shoulders and sides announcing themselves like fire over the adrenaline which had been keeping me going. I buckled, and found myself sliding forward towards the ledge, unable to hold both of us up.


    Before I could fall, Deej released me and I hung halfway off the edge, arms feeling broken, gasping for air, fire coursing through my veins.


    "Just go!" he shouted over another implosion, this one destroying a set of shelves near the ceiling, and showering the room in a hail of small machine parts.


    "I will not," I gasped "leave you!" I forced my arms to move, trying to consider the pain of their every motion a punishment for all the idiocy, all the self-sacrificing, moronic heroism I''d attempted today. All the bigotry and hypocrisy, and putting not just my life in danger, but Deej''s as well, and felt the pain become white within me, burn with purifying fire, even as I could sense the jagged metal fragments catching on and sawing at my bones.


    I turned around, hooked one leg under the platform to press against the back of the ledge, and dangled the other leg down for Deej to grasp. If my arms were useless, so be it, I had more of my body yet to offer up.


    He jumped again and grabbed hold of my ankle. My body screamed in protest and again I slid towards the edge, no matter how hard I braced with my leg. I activated my pack, despite its damaged state and the reasonable risk of an explosion, and it feebly complied, only two arms engaging to provide thrust pushing me away from the ledge.


    It still wasn''t enough. Deej was simply too much for me to hold onto. He had climbed only as far as my knee before my body failed and I collapsed forward off the ledge, sending him crashing down onto his exosuit with a painful bang, and I smashed into the platform, blacking out from the pain of my shoulder impacting.


    A moment later, I came to, on my back with the imploding universe above me. I was in a slightly different position, and supposed that Deej had moved me to prevent me from rolling off the ledge to my death. For his part, he was back in the exosuit again, and looked to be preparing to throw me back up there.


    Above me, there were no straight lines anymore. The lines and lines of shelves were twisted in on themselves in spiraling patterns that drew thicker and thinner at random, and the wood panelling of the ceiling was all but gone now, revealing only blackness and stars, stars so close it was as though we were in the midst of a nebula, so many colors did that glimpse of the night sky have.


    "Get up, Karu," Deej said, sounding irritated for the first time since I''d brought us on this fool''s errand. "You survive today."


    I was laughing. I couldn''t understand why. Maybe because, if I lived, but he didn''t, I wasn''t sure I could consider myself surviving?


    I''d gone and done it again. I''d let someone close to my heart without meaning to, and now I was going to lose them, like Siad and Chase and Fletcher and the others. But this time, I had nobody, no Exhuman showing up or poor decision making by our leader, nothing but myself to blame. It was my fault I was here, my fault Deej was here, my fault this world was imploding, and my fault that I''d made an enemy of the Exhuman who could have saved us.


    I truly was the world''s most foolish woman. In this dimension or any other.


    "Damn you, Karu, get up and let me save you!" he shouted, stooping to pick me up. "Don''t fall off, okay?"


    "Deej, no. I should be the one throwing you up there. If I leave you to die, I won''t be good for anyone. Please."


    "Ja shut up, yute. Ja young and gots a whole life to be learnin'' from this and all da othea'' mistakes you be makin''. Now git ja ass up there."


    "No. I refuse. If you throw me up, I''m not going through."


    "You are--!" he looked like he wanted to give me a piece of his mind, but the room crunched uncomfortably again, bringing the floor towards us.


    "Put me down and let me in the exosuit, Deej," I pleaded. "It''s the only way one of us is getting out of here."


    "Or put down de stubborn act and let me save ja!" he shouted.


    I looked down at his face, so angry at me through the bubble of his helmet and lifted my visor so I could see him with my own eyes.


    "I''m tired, Deej. I''m tired of hurting, and if I leave you...if I give up on my promise to protect those around me, if I fail again...there won''t be anything left of me. Let me do this, I beg you."


    He just stared at me for several long moments, emotions crossing his face as though in fast-forward. The room crunched again, and again, and sparks flew as metal parts fell from another ruptured shelf above us and shattered against the walkway.


    "Fine," he said at last, with disgust, and put me down. "But only because I''m not leaving you behind."


    I sighed and boarded the suit. Deej had left it configured to accept the next user and it closed up behind me without complaint. It took me a second to orient myself to his configuration, and the suit was unbearably cramped, pressing my armor into my wounds so painfully I was worried I would black out, but I managed to pick him up, and throw him on the ledge somehow anyway, almost overshooting him into the void.


    "Now get out," I said.


    "No, now you get out. Disembark and climb on top, and I can pull you up."


    My heart leapt into my throat, and the dull pain through me, which I''d resigned myself to faded to the back of my mind. Such an obvious plan, how had I not even considered it? How many minutes had we wasted here arguing who should save whom, when the solution stared us in the face?


    I stumbled backwards out of the suit, almost blacking out again as my shoulder armor caught on the frame and jarred me, but I battled it down, forcing myself to stay lucid, turned the pain into purifying fire within me. I would not submit as easily as that. Not now, when we were so close.


    It seemed to take ages to clamber up the loose handholds of the suit, and the ceiling above us was now so low, I doubted I could fly in here, even if I had that option.


    My arm would not rise above the shoulder. I could run and jump at his offered hand, but I could not reach him, and I could not simply will my way past torn ligaments.


    "Deej," I shouted, feeling tears threatening to well within me, the last pain of hope and the reminder of the cruelty of the world very nearly ready to overwhelm my taxed emotional state. "It was a good plan, but please go."


    "Go, my ass!" he shouted. "Are you a master hunter or ain''t ja? Jump, goddamn it!"


    I took as long a run as the short runway of the exosuit would allow and launched myself as full-bodied as I could towards the ledge, giving everything I had left. My pack kicked on, feebling providing me what tiny amount of thrust it could. I was wholly committed here, if I didn''t catch Deej, I''d slam into the vertical wall, shoulder-first, black out, and fall to my death.


    And then he''d have to leave me, and everything would be okay.


    My arms, again, would not rise, and his outstretched hand grazed my hair. I sailed past and slammed into the wall, jarring my arm upwards and sending a shock of pain through all of me. Echoes of the pain multiplied and magnified, and I felt my senses shutting down as blackness enveloped me.


    Yet I didn''t fall.


    I only came back to lucidity minutes later as he and I both lay on our backs on the concrete of the plaza, dripping with sweat and body racked in pain.


    I was only dimly aware of the past minute as the dimension finished imploding. When I hit the wall, my momentum, not my strength, made my arms lift upwards just enough for Deej to seize my wrist, and all of his exceptional musculature which had made it impossible for me to lift him made this grip sufficient for him to heave me up.


    He was panting for breath and dripping sweat despite the cold when my body finally crested the ledge, and I tried to give him a smile and some thanks, unnecessary though such words are between companions, but I do not think my body or face cooperated. I found myself on his shoulders, and he made the final few feet through the portal as the ground and ceiling crashed into each other behind us.


    Even after we made it through, there was a moment of panic when the gateway became a vacuum, drawing us back in with its last breath as the dimension beyond it imploded into nothingness. The perfect sphere of sky-blue fragmented and twisted, and Deej and I were pulled several inches towards its final gasp, before it simply ceased to be.


    Truly a last-moment escape, and proof that if there were a paragon of virtue among the hunters, it was certainly not me. Against impossible odds, in a situation he did not even need to partake, he had nearly sacrificed everything for my sake, and for that alone.


    The XPCA on watch had advanced at our reappearance and the sudden implosion and were shining lights on us and radioing updates into their comms. So composed, so military, they seemed alien to me in that moment, when all I could consider was that I wanted to strip off my armor, have the shards of metal removed from my shoulder and back, and not take another contract for a few months.


    "How you doin'' yute?" Deej asked, his face strobing weirdly with the roving lights of the XPCA.


    "I''m...alive," I panted back. "And...I''m happy I am."


    He closed his eyes and sighed contentedly.


    "Thank God, and thank you," I said. He shook his head, humble even now. "And¡­" I began.


    He opened his eyes and looked at me again.


    "And I think I want to look up Athan and see how he is faring. It seems to me that life is too short to be wasted on stubbornness and fears."


    "I think that''s a good idea," he said with a smile and closed his eyes again.


    Though the air around us buzzed with activity, and the sirens of an ambulance weren''t far in the distance, the two of us sat in a bubble of silence, in a dimension of our own, a place which could only be reached through a mortal trial, and through the assistance of an unyielding friend.

 149. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Athan.

    During the days I spent holed up in that cocoon of a motel room, I had a lot of thoughts. I realized, despite all the times I''d failed, or something unfortunate or tragic had happened to me, ironically, this time, when nothing had actually even happened, this was the worst I had ever felt.


    When I became Exhuman, I''d faced it with faith in the system and the high horse of ''doing right'' to lean on. When I''d fought AEGIS and her robots, Karu and her faith, or Saga and her shadows, I had the self-assurance that I was doing right and they were wrong. When I''d lost to Blackett and the XPCA, it was a choice I was making to save someone I loved. When Mage had died, she had at least been a soldier who faced it knowingly. And when Karu had given up on us working, as much as my heart said no, I at least understood all of her issues, if not agreed with them.


    But this...I didn''t even know what to call it. Wrenching Saga out of my life, and Lia''s attempt at breaking a compel, they came out of nowhere. They felt like betrayals. I had nothing to stand on or lean against or to justify what had transpired.


    It just hurt, more than anything ever had. I was so completely unprepared for how much physical pain could come from something in my head. It was surreal, and all I could do but to lay there, not even feeling self-pity, just...being. Being empty.


    Which was just stupid, I told myself constantly. I knew in my head that Saga was out there, doing fine, being the arrogant ass she always was, as indestructible and unassailable as ever.


    But the rest of me knew no better. She''d betrayed me, left me, and then I heard the tale which broke my heart, and that''s where it stood. She wasn''t walking through the door, letting me know it was all just a prank, she was gone, possibly forever, and Lia''s story may as well have been true for all the difference it made.


    But something else I learned was you can''t just hurt forever, just like you can''t stay vigilant forever or stay awake forever, your guard drops, you get sloppy, something chips away at you. It wasn''t that the pain had dulled, I realized, it was me.


    Which led to my current state. By all metrics, I was ''just fine''. The hundreds of punctures on my body from being thrown into barbed wire were healing nicely, and my broken wrist was splinted and bound, the inflammation gone after the first couple of days. If I wanted to be, I was mobile, capable as ever.


    I just...didn''t want to be capable. I didn''t think there was anything wrong with me, or wrong with that, but the looks in Lia''s eyes every day when she came in and prattled at me, holding an entire one-sided conversation where she confessed her failings and laid out future plans to me, meticulously covering every detail and never expecting for me to respond¡­ Or how AEGIS came and pampered me beyond any level of normalcy, spoon-feeding me if I didn''t take the food, dressing and undressing me if I never stirred from the bed, carrying me to the toilet twice daily if I didn''t go myself, even flushing for me.


    These weren''t the behavior of two girls around someone who was capable as ever, and the more I saw myself through them, the more I realized...I must be fundamentally broken somewhere. Laying in bed all day, not eating, having no interest in doing anything for days at a time...who was I kidding, thinking any of that could be normal, even given my recent trauma?


    I didn''t know what to do. I didn''t even know what was wrong with me. I just felt...less than before. A little deader, I guess. I thought...if Lia and AEGIS of all people knew what might be wrong with me, I had to count on them to help me out of it. So I listened to Lia''s prolix ramblings and tolerated AEGIS'' indulgent coddling as much as they wanted.


    Not that I really minded. It was an easy, comfortable life. I just...had this distinct impression that I was fragile, and it was all going to end with me just vanishing through their fingers. And soon.


    AEGIS was here now, closing the door behind her with the softest of clicks. She was halfway between her ''I look adorable'' attire of a cutesy sundress and her ''the world can fuck off'' outfit of a frumpy tracksuit, instead wearing a strappy brown top which showed off the markings on her shoulders in their entirety, as well as some cleavage, and a pair of short comfy shorts.


    She looked me over as she entered, making sure I wasn''t asleep I guess. The way her eyes jumped from the top of my head down to my chin was just one of those things that made me feel like I was dying and nobody had told me yet.


    "Did you eat breakfast this morning?" she asked. I didn''t know why she asked. She could see the plate right there, and was talking more to it than to me. It hadn''t been touched since she brought it in this morning. "What a shame," she sighed, and took it back outside. In a few minutes she returned with another plate with what looked like lumps of rice on it.


    She put it on the bed next to me and then sat down next to both of us.


    "Chiho''s been teaching me Japanese food. I''m not...sure it''s entirely altruistic. I think she hopes I can start cooking them for her as well. This is nigiri, or...o-nigiri? I didn''t quite follow. Like, mizu was water, but so was o-mizu? Girl''s a horrible instructor but knows her food I guess."


    She took a breath and looked down at the plate. "Anyway, rice and seaweed and fish. All things you''d like, I thought." I guessed inside the little rice triangles somewhere there was fish, too, then. She swallowed heavily before touching me to pull me upright, and then picked one rice triangle up gingerly, holding it by the black strip of seaweed at the bottom.


    "Aaah," she said. I blinked at her for a moment and then relented. This girl knew best, right?


    She put a corner of the rice in my mouth and I bit into it. It didn''t just taste like rice. Somehow like, fluffier and sweeter. Definitely some toasted sesame seeds in there, and something else. It was good.


    "I hope you like it," AEGIS said. "When you get...um...I mean¡­" she trailed off ominously. She and Lia both seemed to do that a lot too, now, always when making references to the future. Yet another thing making me feel dead in here.


    "If you tell me what you like, I can make it better for you," she finished plainly. It was a sentiment she''d expressed at almost every meal. I didn''t feel the need to reply. For someone with no sense of taste or smell, she did pretty well. I was certain in one or two dishes she''d gotten some spices mixed up, and she was almost certainly just following recipes, either from the ''net or now Chiho, but it was all passable enough.


    She''d apparently exhausted all the conversation she had bottled up and just hand-fed me the rest of the rice balls in silence, her eyes still avoiding mine, still heavy with worry and anxiety.


    I didn''t get it. Sincerely didn''t get it. She should be annoyed with me. If nothing else, I''d shown up and just ruined their life plans. They were over a week now since they were scheduled to fly back home, Chiho had to submit a leave of absence from college, and they were cooped up in this tiny motel in the middle of nowhere, babying me. How her eyes couldn''t even hold an ounce of resentment for me, after all that...I just didn''t understand.


    If I were in her position, I''d be incredibly pissed. The fact that she wasn''t, she and Lia both...


    Honestly, it scared the crap out of me.


    AEGIS finished up and smiled at me, and then warily glanced at my face, her smile fading away for a second.


    "How cliche," she said, happily, and dabbed a piece of rice off my cheek and into her mouth. "Not that I guess you''d get that one."


    I just blinked at her, but at least she''d somewhat involuntarily made eye contact with me, her yellow eyes boring straight into mine, her finger slowly sliding away from her lips, frozen like she''d been caught doing something wrong.


    "Ah," she said, and broke the contact after holding it for long seconds. We were so close I could feel her breath warm on my skin, but unlike a human''s breath, hers wasn''t muggy or unpleasant at all. "Sorry. I''ll let you rest for now. Lia might come in, but I''ll be back for dinner. Please try to feel better."


    She laid me back down, gently, like floating a lantern on water, and left without another word.


    And like that, again, I was alone with my thoughts. Again, another awkward experience with one of the girls, which screamed of my apparent fragility. That look of regret in her eyes when she met mine, and how she got lost looking at me like it was for the last time. But every time. No wonder she avoided looking at me.


    I wondered why I wasn''t more bored. By all rights, I''d done nothing but lay here for days with nothing but a gnawing sense of dread to entertain me, and the couple hours a day when Lia and AEGIS came to look in on me. Before, I''d be restless out of my mind, but instead, I felt like I was in a hospital, or a hospice, waiting to get better or to get worse. Just waiting. But waiting was still something I was actively doing, and so it didn''t bore me somehow.


    I guess that was the kind of twisted logic that proved there was something messed up in me. I didn''t know. I just had to trust the girls.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    I spent the next bit of time reliving the argument I''d had with Saga. The last words I''d said to her, while I was still me, before she blanked me out was ''I hate you'' and ''you''re such an insufferable arrogant cunt'', both of which were completely over the line. I could see why she''d used her powers to stop the argument at that point, and I probably deserved some mind-blasting for the things I''d said.


    I wasn''t quite so certain about having my memories tampered with, but that was another issue. The point was, if I never saw Saga again, those were my last words to her. I fixated on that point, tried to feel some of the guilt I knew should have come with that thought. Guilt was, after all, one of my oldest friends.


    But...nothing. Even when I''d so clearly been in the wrong, to someone I loved, someone who''s apparent death could do this to me, all I felt was empty. I couldn''t get emotions to stir, good or bad. I was just dead inside, it felt like.


    I wondered what my eyes looked like, that the girls always avoided them, and swung my legs off the bed to go to the bathroom. After I finished, I leaned against the sink and stared at myself in the mirror.


    Most of me looked the same as ever. My clothes were a simple white tee and sweatpants that AEGIS had put me into, my hair was a tangled mess more than ever, but otherwise, I looked familiar, as long as I avoided seeing my own eyes.


    But in those eyes...I looked away. I understood. They were not the eyes of a living person. There was a blackness behind them which would have startled me, if feelings like that were still readily within my grasp.


    I realized I''d seen those eyes before, a long, long time ago. I laid back down on the bed, away from the mirror, trying to remember something I''d tried to forget.


    Ah, yeah. I remembered. Zach. In elementary school.


    Every school had its tragedy. The kid who died, or the thing that happened, or God-forbid, the Exhuman event. In elementary school, ours was Zach.


    There was a lot more to the story, I was sure, but I only remembered the broadest strokes. He was a kid a year above my grade, happy, charismatic, one of the cool kids but blessed with this ability to still talk with everyone, no matter what clique, and nobody ever batted an eye at it. He just made it seem so natural to walk past a huddled group of punky goth kids and say hi to them with an earnest smile and start a chat about what they were watching without any of the social norms applying to him.


    I was really into sports, even back then, and while he wasn''t, I''d still had some great talks with him in the hallways about our local sports teams, odds of winning this year, how big an idiot the manager was for trading away such-and-such a player. Now, I couldn''t even remember if he convincingly knew that stuff or not, but at the time, it never felt like a forced or fake conversation. And somehow, he kept up that kind of thing with most everyone in the school, even a lot of the staff.


    In brief, he was a ''great guy''. I guess looking back now, I could notice through retrospect that he didn''t have any actual close friends, no clique to call his own, spent most of his time alone, despite his friendliness with everyone. Red flags nobody could notice through his easy smile.


    So it was out of nowhere for us when his dad killed his mom and himself and tried to burn the house down with Zach in it when he wouldn''t leave his room to get shot in the face.


    As a class, we had a campaign to send him cards and flowers in the hospital, and once he was available for visits, we went in shifts, organized by the school so that he had visitors every day, at least for the first month or so. After that, I supposed nobody ever visited him. He had no close friends. Again, somewhere I should have felt a twinge of guilt, but nothing.


    I only saw him twice in that time. His burns weren''t that bad looking, red across his body, patches of skin sewn to him like a Frankenstein''s monster which didn''t quite match his skin tone. He didn''t smile, he barely spoke, thanking us formally for our visit and well-wishes, and listening passively as we told him of the boring minutia of outside life, while our chaperones made sure we didn''t ask any questions or veer into conversation which could upset him.


    But for me the worst part was his eyes. At the time, I''d thought smoke from the fire had gotten caught in them, and wondered if he could still see, they just looked so blank, so black.


    So like mine.


    Lia opened the door and smiled in the vicinity of my chest her little mask of a smile. "You''re up, that''s good," she said airily. "Sorry I''m a little late, I got distracted playing Kingdom Blade." She waved the mobile in her hands at me before pocketing it in her slipskin. "We just killed a boss, and I got revered reputation with Elis, so that''s pretty cool. Chiho and I are really tearing it up."


    She sat down on the foot of the bed and started talking to me about the game, the main characters, her party and Chiho''s and what their achievements meant in the context of the game.


    "Hey," I interjected, only half-listening to her talk anyway. She stopped, and seemed a little scared to. Whatever I had to say, she didn''t want to hear it. That was why she kept up the deluge of inane commentary I knew.


    "Do you remember Zach? From elementary school?"


    "Zach...Williams? I didn''t know him, but I remember the story," she said, hesitantly.


    "I guess you weren''t in school with him ever?" She shook her head. Yeah, I guess the math didn''t work out. "I was remembering visiting him in the hospital."


    Lia smiled in my direction again. I vaguely wished she''d stop. Look me in the eyes and frown, instead of smile at my chest at least.


    "AEGIS has been cooking recently. I think she''s really enthusiastic about it, which is weird. We''d been taking it in turns to do the cooking, but she just started to take over...it''s actually funny, there''s a kitchen in this motel that never gets used. We just started sneaking in and using it, and the staff caught us once, and said they didn''t care...had to give the guy a croquette to buy his silence, but--"


    "I remember Zach''s eyes. They were so black. At the time, I thought he had smoke trapped in them."


    All traces of her smile was gone now. She was looking right at me, her eyes flickering back and forth across my face. I saw her swallow heavily.


    "He got better though, didn''t he?" she asked. "He moved away to be with another relative, and we heard he was going back to school and readjusting and fine and all that."


    "Or so we heard."


    She tutted at me and went back to looking at the walls. "You''re such a cynic. I''m sure that he''s out there right now, going to college somewhere, looking forward to winter break with his friends. Trauma can shape who we are, but that doesn''t mean it defines us, you know? Just look at me, I ran away from home, got away from¡­" she took a deep breath. "From Brick, and from Dad, and now here I am, reasonably well-adjusted, right?"


    "In a slipskin."


    "It''s comfy."


    "It''s not reasonably well-adjusted."


    "Actually, it adjusts itself. Pretty cool, right?"


    I let the joke die in the air where it deserved to.


    She sighed, obviously annoyed I wasn''t biting on any of her distractions. "Look, Athan, I''m sorry. I''ve been trying not to bring it up because I don''t want to hurt you with it again, but I''m sorry like you wouldn''t believe. I messed up so bad, worse than I''ve ever done before, I think."


    I shrugged. "It''s fine."


    "It is NOT fine! You''re here, talking about the eyes of some boy who watched his dad kill his mom, who survived a house fire and murder attempt, and I can read between the lines and know you''re talking about you, too. Zach, he was fucked up by that thing, I know it, and you''re relating with him, and in this scenario, that makes me the father who snapped and tried to kill him."


    She looked down at her hands, a bitter smile that suited her more than the fake mask on her face.


    "Except I wasn''t crazy when I did it. I planned it out, I rented trucks and barbed wire and the holos. I signed those rental forms with a smug stupid grin on my face, thinking I was outsmarting you and Saga, so freaking clever, Lia always is. Never once thought about how much I was hurting you. Never even crossed my mind!"


    She looked me back in the eyes. "And now you''re like this, and it''s nobody''s fault but mine! I don''t even know why AEGIS and Chiho are still here. They told me this was too far, and I insisted, and was one million percent wrong. And I don''t know what to do or how to make it better, my stupid brain keeps coming up with all these new schemes to get you up and out and better, and I just have to remind myself everyday that I''m an idiot, and I can''t scheme my way out of putting you through this, and if I try, I''ll just make everything worse."


    She sighed. "And now I''m dumping all this on you, which is the last thing I ever wanted to do, because now you''ll just feel even worse. All I wanted to do was to take care of you until you were ready to face the world again."


    "I don''t care--"


    She interrupted me with an afterthought. "I called in to your work for you, you''re on medical leave. AEGIS and I forged some papers having you admitted to a mental ward. We thought if it was anything physical, they''d just force you to jump in a regenerator. Your boss, Cosette or whomever, she''s been going nuts this last week trying to reach you. That''s why I took your mobile. I''m sorry about that, too."


    I hadn''t even realized she''d taken my mobile, and I didn''t really care. "So there''s nothing worse wrong with me?" I asked.


    "Worse than what? Worse than what I did to you?" she laughed hollowly. "How could anything be worse than that."


    "I just thought, the way you were treating me, I was going to die or something."


    "Oh. No." She hesitated like she wanted to say more but didn''t.


    "Then I guess I should go," I said, sitting up. "Nothing wrong with me really."


    She knitted her brow and stared at me with open worry. Fear, even.


    "You don''t have to. If you''re just doing that to make me feel less bad about what I did--"


    "No, you said it yourself. There''s nothing really wrong with me."


    "That''s nothing I said," she muttered. It might have sounded like a joke if she hadn''t been so serious. "I think you still need to recover. If you go out there and fight an Exhuman like this¡­"


    She let the sentence hang. I wished she''d stop leaving things unsaid. It was the same ominous nonsense of her not looking me in the eyes or wanting to hear anything I had to say. It just made me feel like she thought the second half of that sentence would shatter me.


    "Then what?" I asked.


    She jumped like she''d been shocked. "Um." I saw her thinking, trying to scheme some way out.


    "Then what!?" I repeated, almost shouting, despite the unusual calm in my veins.


    "Y-you...you''ve changed, is all," she said, trying to blurt out an answer while still keeping it tactful.


    "Then. What?"


    She stood up and I thought she was just going to walk out without answering, but she only went as far as the door before talking to me without turning.


    "Someone doesn''t have to die for you to lose them, Athan."


    She paused and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "How bad you felt about losing Saga, I''m feeling that too, okay? About you."


    And then she opened the door and headed out before her composure cracked.

 150. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Athan.

    Lia had never allowed me to pin her down in a real conversation after that. The only real change that had occurred was that she was slipperier than ever when talking to me, and in the few moments AEGIS came in the room before seeing me, she tended to carry a scowl like she''d just passed something unpleasant in the hallway.


    As she was presently doing now. Upon glancing over at me, her face went from annoyance through a whole spectrum of emotions in almost an instant, but landed on a tranquil smile.


    I wondered if this was her mask. Lia could still fool me wearing hers, though recently she''d been more troubled and it had obviously shown. AEGIS...had never struck me as the long-, quietly-suffering sort. Her solution to problems had always seemed to be to throw herself at them full-bodied, working away day and night until she managed something, even if it wasn''t a great solution, just the action of working on it was what brought her peace of mind.


    She was carrying a tray of simple breakfast, eggs and toast, still steaming, and my thoughts clicked with some words Lia had mentioned offhandedly.


    AEGIS was starting to take over cooking for everyone. She wasn''t smothering me with care because she thought I was broken, it was her way of dealing with the stress.


    It would have been nice to believe, but it still didn''t add up with the looks on her face at the threshold. Like, it was almost certainly true, but it didn''t account for everything. I was still missing something here, whatever it was that put that tranquil subservient smile on her face whenever she walked in here.


    "Good morning, Athan. Do you need to use the bathroom?" she asked, still smiling, like she was inquiring about the weather. I shook my head. "That''s great. Breakfast for you," she added, completely unnecessarily, while setting the tray down next to me.


    "Thank you," I said. Her smile disappeared for a moment and then returned twofold. She''d been surprised. Had I never thanked her for any of the work she was putting in? That seemed impossible, but I couldn''t remember doing so. And then I remembered that this was basically the first time I''d talked to her all week.


    Good God, something was wrong with me.


    "Thank you...for everything," I said, not sure how to express what I wanted to say. Again, her smile vanished, but this time it didn''t come back.


    "There''s really no need. And...if you could¡­" she sighed. Again with the hanging thoughts.


    "If I could what?" I asked.


    "Sorry, it is nothing." She smiled again, and this one I pegged immediately as fake.


    "No, tell me."


    She pulled at one of her pigtails, rocking slightly on the balls of her feet, like she wasn''t sure she wanted to take the plunge.


    "Tell me!" I said, again, almost shouting like I''d done at Lia, even though I wasn''t angry in the least. She fell back onto her heels.


    "Yes. I''m sorry. I was just...I was hoping you could avoid...if you could refrain from saying anything that made it sound like you were...leaving," she finished, weakly.


    "I''m not leaving. I just wanted to thank you for everything you''ve done."


    "Yes, I understand."


    She just stood there, fretting and pulling at her hair while I stared at her. I should have felt bad for snapping at her, I knew it, but it didn''t come. Why?


    "Do...you need help eating?" she asked, facing me, but her eyes locked on the floor.


    "I''m fine. Can I ask you a question?" I said as I cut a piece of egg off and put it in my mouth.


    "Um, of course. I''ll do anything I can for you."


    "Why do you look so angry before you walk in here?"


    "Angry?" she laughed unconvincingly. "Oh. Uh, it''s Tem. She''s become increasingly surly and disruptive since we''ve kept her away from you. Of late, it''s become like trying to keep a cat from getting out." She sighed. "One of these days, she''s going to get in here, and we''ll never be able to keep her out. I''m sorry."


    "I don''t mind her around," I said. "I just ignore her."


    "Well, we do mind. You''re in a...I mean," she stopped and chewed her words. "You don''t need that kind of disruption right now. We''re fine handling it. Uh, her."


    "Thanks, I guess." She looked at me funny again. "Is it weird for me to thank you?"


    "I...I don''t know," she stammered, eyes glancing all over except on me. This wasn''t the AEGIS I was accustomed to.


    "Look, if you want me to be normal, you have to be normal too. I only just learned from Lia the other day I wasn''t sick or dying. I might be a lot better off right now if you had just told me that from the start. I spent all of last week lying here wondering when I was going to croak."


    "Ah. I''m sorry." She didn''t say more, and I forced myself to wait instead of barking at her.


    She was being torn, I knew, between wanting to tell me whatever was bothering her and not wanting to burden me with it. Between the two, I''d rather she just spit it out, that was how AEGIS and I had always been, and whenever she''d decided to start hiding things from me was always a first step towards problems between us. I knew I could push her to tell me, and that''s all I wanted to do, but...that''s not what I would have done before, was it?


    Seeing her stand there, rocking and fretting and tugging her hair, glancing around the room like there might be answers on the walls, all I felt was mild annoyance that she couldn''t make the right decision faster.


    I guess I was worried on a level about that, too. Feeling dead, having all my feelings buried, pushing people into what I wanted. Was I turning into a sociopath?


    So I didn''t yell at her, startle her into acquiescence, and when she finally smiled and shook her head, and changed the subject, I let it go without complaint.


    "I''ve never asked. I guess after all we''ve been through, I''m still surprised I get the chance to, but...how do you like your eggs?"


    "This is fine," I said, taking another bite.


    "Oh, okay. Is there anything you''d like me to make you for lunch today?"


    "Anything is fine."


    She just smiled and let the conversation drop. I was a crap conversationalist, and I knew it. I at least tried to hide it behind the pretext of being busy eating to avoid hurting her feelings.


    Eventually it was just me and my thoughts again.


    The only reason I could think why she wouldn''t want me thanking her was she didn''t feel like she deserved my thanks. Given the situation, maybe she also accepted blame for Lia''s stunt. If that were the case, every gratitude I had for her would just be needling her for allowing me to be hurt, from her perspective. A guilty reminder that I needed taking care of because of what she''d done, or hadn''t done.


    I didn''t know what, if anything I could do about it. Whenever I tried to focus on engineering a solution, I just found myself distracted and time started jumping by in big leaps like it had been doing all week. If only Lia were focused on getting things back to normal instead of beating herself up and calling herself an idiot, I felt like we could come up with a plan to get everyone back to normal.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Instead, I drifted uneasily through the day. The fact that I wasn''t about to keel over dead felt more like bad news than good, because that meant there was some other reason I was being treated like there was a ''fragile'' sticker on my forehead.


    Lunch came and went. Lia came and went. Dinner came and I found AEGIS standing there smiling the tranquil, subservient smile again.


    "Are you okay?" I asked. I had experimentally taken a couple of bites of chicken to see if she was just watching to see if I''d eat, but she hadn''t changed her expression or standing in the slightest.


    "Please don''t worry about me," she said weightily.


    "And why shouldn''t I? You''re worrying about me all day."


    "Yes, but there''s nothing wrong with me. I''m not going anywhere."


    "And there is with me, and I am?"


    She tented her fingers experimentally and when that wasn''t sufficient, began tugging at her hair again. I wondered if that was bad for the cables.


    "You...have before. Look, please just humor us and try to relax and be happy. We''re doing everything we can for you, and if there''s anything else you''d like, just tell me and I''ll do it in a heartbeat."


    "It''s fine, really."


    She leaned forward insistently, bringing back memories of an old AEGIS I''d worried I''d lost. "No, seriously. Anything. Please."


    I shook my head. "I''m fine."


    "I don''t want you to be fine, I want you to be happy."


    I frowned at this. I felt like she''d just asked the impossible of me, in telling me to ask anything of her. "AEGIS, I feel dead inside," I said. "I feel like everything that happened to me, everything that is happening to me, I''m outside of it all. I don''t know that I feel pain anymore, and I don''t think I can be happy either. I just kind of am."


    "I...see," she said. She had the habit of her eyes flickering back and forth habitually while she read off the ''net, and there was a moment of that now. I''m sure she was putting my symptoms into some database and would be telling me I had stomach cancer and needed snake oil. To my relief, her reply was much more grounded.


    "I don''t think this is a big problem," she said.


    "Me neither."


    "I''ll ask Lia what she thinks, but...emotional detachment is a very common defense against mental trauma. Just a sec."


    I waited while she took out her mobile, and a few seconds later, Lia slipped into the room.


    The two of them conversed in hushed whispers for a minute, making me wonder why they brought Lia here instead of just going elsewhere, but eventually Lia took a seat on the foot of the bed and they turned to me.


    "I disagree," Lia said, at long last. "I think you need to try."


    "Try what?"


    "Try to be happy. Be proactive, instead of just waiting for things to come back."


    "I can''t just turn on my feelings again, Lia. I''m not AEGIS."


    "Even if you could, I don''t think it''s healthy," AEGIS agreed. "I actually wrote countermeasures into myself after...after the last emotional shock. Instead of simply blanking out, my emotions will numb themselves a bit until I can cope, and will return gradually. I based it on this phenomenon. He should wait it out."


    "He''s not well and it''s my fault, AEGIS. Our fault. We need to do what we can."


    "We''re doing what we can," AEGIS replied calmly. "It''s been a week and change, and¡­" she just gestured towards me like ''exhibit A'' spoke for itself.


    "It can''t hurt to try."


    "Because it worked out so well last time you tried to help?"


    AEGIS'' retort was pointed, and needlessly cruel, I thought, still delivered in the same pointed calm as the rest of the conversation. Cruel, but effective, and Lia withered, her face going ashen as the words hit her.


    "Just...because I was wrong...doesn''t mean I can''t be right," she muttered, but her fire was put out.


    "Then we''re decided," AEGIS said with a serene smile, tenting her hands successfully this time. "I will keep taking care of Athan until he is fully recovered."


    "You mean...we will."


    "Correct."


    AEGIS seemed conspicuously happy at the decision to do nothing, and her last few exchanges with Lia indicated some issues between the two of them which I guessed I hadn''t been privy to with them visiting me in shifts as they had been. The ruthless efficiency with which she''d torn Lia to shreds was savage, but you wouldn''t guess that by the peaceful smile on her face.


    Overall...I thought the situation would have given me a bad feeling if that were still a thing I had. Instead, I faced their battle with the same dispassion as everything seemed to hit me with now.


    I wasn''t even surprised when somebody knocked on the door.


    "Think it''s Tem?" Lia sighed.


    "Here''s hoping Chiho." AEGIS said, and opened it.


    Possibly the last person I expected in the world greeted us with a simple upraised hand.


    "Hail," Karu said, visor tucked under her arm.


    "Ka...Ka¡­" Lia stammered.


    "Hi Karu," I said, returning her small wave and getting a curt bow of acknowledgement.


    AEGIS frowned at the situation. "You came?" she said.


    "I heard my presence may be of service. It''s not in me to avoid such a responsibility if I can help it."


    "We were actually just discussing that. I am not sure you would be much help anymore, unfortunately," AEGIS replied.


    "Perhaps I may contribute to this discussion? I have a personal stake, as it were, in anything which involves Ashton or his well-being."


    AEGIS wavered, and I understood her position. She''d already won this debate, at the expense of stabbing Lia through the heart, even, and now Karu wanted to reopen the discourse. Perhaps she was wondering how many times she could stab Lia with the same knife before it dulled, or was simply worried about Karu agreeing with Lia, and had nothing prepared to shoot her down.


    Damn I was such a cynic. Sitting here, tearing apart everything everyone said and did and doing nothing about it. Maybe I really was a sociopath.


    To my surprise, it was Lia who spoke up. "No, we already decided it might be a bad idea to try. I''m sorry, Karu."


    "To try what, if I may at least inquire that far?"


    "To...try to make Athan happy."


    We stood and sat there in silence for a moment before Karu laughed. Snickering at first before breaking into a full peal of laughter. Lia and AEGIS smiled, embarrassedly.


    "I am afraid I do not understand," Karu said, wiping a tear from her eye. "It would seem, as his friends, his happiness is something we should always be striving towards, when possible."


    "Here," said Lia with a sad smile and flicked a page off her holo in Karu''s direction. She glanced at hers when the message arrived.


    "Emotional detachment, dissociative--"


    "Read to yourself, please?" Lia asked. Karu nodded and resumed on the holo. I wished they wouldn''t infect her, too, with treating me with kid gloves.


    After a minute, she looked up. "And this is he?" she looked me in the eyes, but unlike the others, didn''t shy away from my gaze. She frowned, but held it, until one of the others confirmed and she nodded at them.


    "I am fine," I told her. "I just feel a little distant and numb. I''m still capable of thinking and fighting."


    "Those are the last words of many a brave soldier," Karu said with a frown. "''I''m fine, just--'' means ''I am not fine''."


    "I am not them. I am me, and I''m fine," I snipped at her. I couldn''t believe she would side with AEGIS in this. Was she planning to shuffle around the kitchen making me eggs and toast as well?


    "Is that so?" Karu asked, her green eyes flashing dangerously. "Ashton, stand, if you would."


    I sighed but it wasn''t worth arguing. I swing my feet carefully past Lia and stood up.


    "Impressive, standing on your own two feet. Now, can you walk, I wonder?"


    I fell back into the bed. "Yes. But why would I?"


    "Because often, one who says ''I can but I won''t'' is simply saying ''I can''t, but don''t want to know that''."


    "I''ve walked to the toilet this morning," I said with a sigh. Why was she bothering me with this?


    "And fight, can you? I heard you say that you can think, and you can fight. Let us put that to the test as well."


    Lia and AEGIS who had been watching with mild confusion now erupted into concern. Both began shouting at once, arguing in defense of my feebleness, currently damaged state, and not wanting to exacerbate issues I was still recovering from.


    Privately, I agreed with Karu, but I would side with the others anyway if possible. I was sure I could fight, I just had no interest in it. It was troublesome.


    "I do not mean to simply assert that I am the authority on mental health, in fact, I came here because I am having troubles of my own and hoped to face them." Her eyes met mine for only an instant. "But I have seen enough soldiers coping with mental distress to know that coddling an illness such as this is the surest way to promote an acute case to a chronic defense. People are only as helpless as they believe they are. Neither of you are doing Ashton any favors by treating him as such."


    She glared them down, and neither would meet her gaze. It was impressive, how she had swept into the leaderless situation and immediately established herself as in-charge. It also said a lot about how I was far from the only one here who was currently emotionally crushed. And this was with Karu apparently suffering herself in some regard, though what that could be, I couldn''t imagine, given her performance.


    "Now, it seems to me, you two have had a week to inflict your mercy on Ashton and he remains soft. I believe it is now my turn."


    "You are seriously going to fight him? He''s half out of his mind, and his arm is broken," Lia pleaded.


    "And my guns were lost, my jetpack is destroyed, and yet I remain willing to fight. There is no grounds for negotiation, the terms have already been set."


    She turned and fixed her eyes on me again, the piercing green looking right into me.


    "I believe I am owed two more combats yet?"


    I sighed heavily and again swung to my feet.

 151. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Athan.

    Apparently when returning the vans, Lia had rented a car, and had retained it all week, unconcerned with the ridiculous cost of the thing. This was a girl to whom money was absolutely meaningless.


    She was driving, and Karu sat in the back. I was afforded the coveted shotgun seat, and AEGIS filled out the party. Chiho expressed no interest in either being jammed in the car, nor in watching ''two jocks beat each other to death''. Tem was not invited, both because nobody liked her, and because odds of her attempting to destroy the planet if Karu ever successfully hit me were high.


    Presumably, she would be sitting beside the road invisibly the entire time we were gone like a pining dog. I found it difficult to care, for entirely separate reasons than my current problems.


    I didn''t want to fight Karu, but going along with it seemed like the less trouble. The fact that she was unarmed and flightless, yet wanted to fight anyway confused me. I still had my powers, and she was effectively just an ordinary human at this point.


    As I had that thought, I realized I hadn''t thought of Karu as an ordinary human in a long time, which was a weird thought. In terms of capabilities, she''d always seemed much more of an Exhuman-level threat than the ordinary people I could kill by accident. And then I very nearly started when I realized that without her guns and flight, I could possibly kill her the same way.


    My thoughts were broken when Karu spoke from behind me. "So, Ashton," she began, entirely too casually. "I heard...ehm, well, so to speak."


    I didn''t reply. Lia expressed my thoughts perfectly with a brief ''huh?''


    "What I meant was...it...certainly wasn''t very long before...ah. You understand."


    "Do you?" Lia asked me sideways. I don''t think she expected an answer, and so I didn''t give her one. She continued as though I had. "Yeah, I don''t understand either."


    I heard the visor turning over and over in Karu''s hands. "You seemed quite eager to jump into Saga''s arms, is all I mean."


    "You dumped him," Lia responded. This was becoming an odd three-way, two-person conversation, not that I minded. Saved me from having to make excuses to Karu.


    "I had...I understand that. I am just given to understand¡­" I stole a peek in the side mirror and saw Karu extremely red, talking very rapidly and incoherently towards the window. AEGIS next to her looked like she was trying to sit as far away as humanly possible.


    "...a mourning period, or the like, so to speak¡­"


    "Are you serious?" Lia asked, her brow knitting as she stared at the road. Wait, when did she learn to drive, much less get a license? "You ended it, if you''re going to throw out random relationship phrases, maybe you should look up ''rebound girl''."


    "I am familiar with the concept," Karu said with more haught than I thought her position warranted. "I had just thought...given our rather exceptional intimacy...it would...be a reasonable conclusion...that perhaps I meant more to Athan than a simple rebound would indicate¡­"


    "Or maybe," Lia said, her voice acid, "he was so devastated by your sudden, cruel betrayal that he was blinded by the hole in his being, and sought solace wherever he could find it." She glanced in the mirror at Karu''s agonized form. "More so the better if the rebound girl was one loathed by the one who had hurt him so."


    "Guys, knock it off," AEGIS said sounding bored.


    There was another minute of nothing but the sound of the tires on the road.


    "I just thought I meant more to you," Karu sniped.


    "But not enough to not dump him?"


    "Enough, children. Of everyone here, discounting Athan, I can kick all of your asses right now. So unless you''d like me to start demonstrating that talent, kindly shut the hell up, both of you."


    "Hey, I''m driving--"


    "And this car doesn''t run on lip. Be civil or be silent."


    Apparently being civil was too much to ask of them, since the rest of the car ride passed in quiet. It was a treasured little insight to see Karu being so unsuccessfully jealous, and I only wished that I could glean any amount of happiness from it. I tried to etch the memory into my brain for if things ever went back to normal for me.


    Finally we arrived at precisely nowhere. Only a half hour drive and we were at the edge of a sheltering copse of woods with a clearing in the middle which would serve as an arena away from prying eyes. AEGIS had picked the place out from satellite data, though managing to complain through the entire process. Something she repeated now, even after we''d wasted the time coming out here.


    "I can''t believe you''d want to fight an injured--"


    I slammed the door behind me, and Karu seemed to accept that as an invitation to also walk out on AEGIS'' last-ditch tirade. She smiled pleasantly at me while AEGIS emerged as well, looking disproportionately crushed at being simply ignored.


    Again, I just couldn''t care. I''d beat Karu, get this over with, and go back to my bed.


    We squared off, fifteen feet or so away. The maximum range of my powers was around eighteen feet, but being far apart gave Karu an even more distinct disadvantage of more distance to close before she could do anything. At this range, I knew the first thing she''d do would be to back out of range and attempt to sneak in where she could. Had we started only a few feet apart, she might have gone right for me, but I''d simply stood passive and let her determine the conditions of engagement.


    We stood there for a few awkward moments.


    "Do I say ''go'' or something?" asked Lia.


    I was about to reply when I realized Karu was gone. I blinked and looked around stupidly, my lack of concern making me slow, when I found her approaching on my side, running low and fast. Instead of facing her, I summoned a wall of blades in her way to push her back, but through the fence I built, something flew at me, ignited by contact with my swords.


    Two handfuls of long, dry grass and roots, it seemed? I watched them burn and fall and then explode into hundreds of tendrils of smoke as they impacted my shield.


    And then something kicked me in the face very, very hard. I only barely recognized the pain and the sensation of being flat on my back. She''d used the root ball of the grass to make sure it could fly through my swords with enough force and integrity, but picked grass because it would explode and burn spectacularly, turning my own shield as a smokescreen.


    My blades whirled above me as I laid there, piecing this together, contemplating my failure, keeping her off of me. So, my surprise, or rather, what should have been surprise was complete when I felt her belly-crawl on top of me, the blades probably burning her back from proximity, but if it bothered her, not a hint of it showed under her visor. She made a compact swing and drove an elbow into my throat.


    I choked and rolled instinctively, driving my blades into the earth where I''d just been, and she rolled the other way to avoid them. Pain was definitely something I could still feel, feeling even more fresh and hot and agonizing in contrast to all the deadness I''d been experiencing instead recently. I clutched at my neck, not entirely sure if my windpipe was crushed or not, because breath wasn''t coming through.


    I was on all threes, choking and coughing, trying to keep a bead on Karu with my ''sixth sense'' and keep my swords between us, but she was moving unpredictably, hurling whatever she could get into my shield, and whenever it flared, I briefly lost ''sight'' of her in the crackling electric surge. After my shield ate a rock and I was scattered with a hail of burning gravel, I realized she was gone again.


    Instinctively, I balled up, raising both of my arms to protect my head and neck, but this time she just stomped on my broken wrist, and I screamed, losing whatever breath I had left through my torn throat. As though on their own, my swords cut through her, catching her and sending her falling and twitching and screaming to the ground herself.


    I couldn''t focus on anything except trying to inhale. My blades hung useless above me, I couldn''t see well enough with any of my senses to tell where she was. My arm just burned, swelling again and bleeding. Bleeding. I looked down with dim horror at the red shards sticking through my skin, my own bone.


    For the second time in a moment, I wasted breath screaming. This time in horror, which I very much felt.


    I saw her rising again, still shuddering, burns across one arm and shoulder, which hung limply under her, but whatever damage I''d done to her felt superficial and only added to the horror of her approaching me again undaunted. Those red horizontal slits were focused on me with an inhuman intensity, and though she was gasping for breath and lurching towards me, I felt terror welling up inside me like I had never before.


    She''d stomped my broken arm hard enough to splinter bone through my skin. She wasn''t holding back, and when she got to me, she was going to kill me. Nobody had ever taken me apart like this, except Mage, and she could see the fucking future. Without her gear, armed with rocks and grasses, Karu was somehow a million times more dangerous than any other time we''d fought. The nothing in me churned and became fear. The need to run from this monster, put as much distance between us as I could became overwhelming as my brain shut down and instinct kicked in.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    In that moment, it wasn''t Karu fighting me anymore, but some unstoppable force. Something alien and inhuman and incomprehensible. Glowing red and evil. I scuttled backwards and threw grasses and rocks at her while she stalked forward, shuffling gangly like a monster with three legs, none of them designed for walking. Death crawling towards me.


    "Get...GET AWAY!" I screamed. My swords lashed out, but she didn''t flinch, and they passed by her uselessly.


    "SURRENDER!" she screamed hoarsely, like a banshee. I vaguely saw AEGIS and Lia running towards us from the woods. They were so far, and the monster was so close. Rocks kept exploding off my shield and showering me, making me flinch with every blast, as the monster closed in on me, shuffling step by shuffling step.


    "Oh...oh God please..don''t kill me!" I rolled over and scrambled, turning my back to her to put as much distance between us as I could. I put weight on one of my hands and it crumpled under me, making me pitch forward into the dirt and paralyzing me from the pain. Upside down, blocked by my legs, I could see her still advancing, her dark face split by a grin of white teeth.


    I felt a foot on my back. "SURRENDER!" she barked again.


    "Oh God please," I whimpered. The foot lifted off of me and then planted into my side, sending me on my back. I couldn''t believe the sky was still so blue on a day when demons walked the earth. An armored boot gingerly weighed on my neck.


    "Surrender," said Karu above me, smiling at me with a wink as she lifted and peeked at me from under her visor.


    "Sur-surender," I echoed, unable to form any other thought. She smiled cheerily, and then stepped off of me, as AEGIS arrived, her body smoldering and heat ripping in the air around her.


    She took one look down at me, then one look at Karu, and then leapt into the air, lashing at Karu with one of her long, bare legs, kicking her full in the chest with a boom.


    Karu went flying backwards, completely off-guard and landed in a heap. In an instant, AEGIS was on her, pinning her down and throwing punches which made the servos in her arms scream. Karu was hit twice before I was there, diving into AEGIS and knocking her off, my skin burning at her touch.


    "Athan?" she said, recoiling from my touch, or maybe just trying not to burn me.


    I didn''t have a reply. I''d already lost consciousness from the impact.


    When I came to, I was back in my bed again, and the number of bandages on me had multiplied. To my surprise, nobody was there but Tem, who sat visible on the floor next to the bed. On seeing me stir, she sat bolt upright like a meerkat, and then wrapped me in a painful hug, practically purring.


    "Ow ow ow," I said. "Easy, Tem."


    "Tell me who hurt you," she said, bloodily, purring gone.


    "I fell," I sighed with a roll of my eyes.


    "That''s what they told me, too."


    "Then it must be the truth." She seemed disappointed and then some, but reassured herself with a final painful squeeze before letting me go.


    "Welcome back," I heard a voice from the hall, and saw Karu, looking, if possible, worse than me. She gave a grin that was missing some teeth and her visor was cracked. AEGIS had gone for the face. She didn''t move to take off her visor, and I had the horrible realization that she might be trying to hide the worst of the damage from me.


    "Karu, I''m sorry," I said. I felt a muted wave of guilt. And then another shockwave of guilt at my relief I felt anything still.


    "I hope I made my point. Please consider this lesson hard-won."


    My mind raced around a little bit, feeling very slow and tired and beaten-in. "Uh. Yeah. What lesson?"


    She sighed at me like I was the most impossible creature who had ever lived. She limped forward. There was a bandage wrapped around her leg from the knee to the waist where I supposed I''d cut her. Despite this, she showed no weakness or restraint in grabbing me firmly and again, painfully by the shoulders and bringing her visor in line with my face.


    "''I''m fine, just--'' means ''I am not fine''. Do not pretend to be fit to think and fight if you are not. You will fight bravely and die foolishly."


    She released me. "Knowing you personally as I do, I thought this lesson a critical one for you. Do you remember what I told you at Mage''s funeral?"


    I nodded. "You may sacrifice for your allies, but if you give too much, you''ll have nothing left to contribute."


    She nodded. "So long as every failure is a lesson, you will continue to grow. Do not waste the lives or defeats of you or yours." She smiled bitterly. "You do not get many of them in a lifetime."


    I felt like this defeat was particularly unnecessary, but I guess Karu thought I needed that lesson more than I needed a functioning body.


    It was a good lesson, though, no matter how my everything protested. Armed with nothing, she''d systematically destroyed me, taken advantage of my broken body, my slow reflexes, and my addled mind to make herself into a horror I couldn''t begin to fathom. If she were anyone else, anyone with a weapon, any Exhuman, I would be dead instead of beaten right now, which I assumed, and truly hoped was the point.


    I had even considered reporting for duty back with the XPCA to get out from under the girls. What a fucking mistake that might have been. I looked at Karu with her smashed-in face and the burns down one arm and her opposite leg. And this had cost her one of her two precious remaining fights, all just to teach me a lesson. Still, with her broken smile, you''d think despite all of that, she felt like the one who''d come out ahead in this deal. I didn''t get it, but I appreciated it.


    Then I noticed AEGIS leaning against the doorframe. Karu''s visor was still on, so there was no way this had escaped her, but she hadn''t reacted in any way.


    "Karu," I asked. She turned her head like her hearing wasn''t quite equal in her ears right now, which gave me another guilty twinge. "Are you okay with this?"


    She frowned. "I am never a fan of beating you to the point of unconsciousness. There are serious physical risks of that level of abuse." I saw her glance down at Tem, who was bristling. "Speaking hypothetically, of course, since these wounds were all accrued in an accident¡­"


    "I meant, using one of your fights with me just to teach me a lesson."


    "Ah." She moved to scratch her head and then flinched and held her bandaged arm instead. "Well, I suppose on one hand, this could be considered an unfortunate waste from a purely selfish perspective. Certainly there was nothing for me to learn from you in your current condition. However, I had the inkling that had I not interceded with this lesson at this time...you would do something very foolish, very soon, and your death would warrant my two remaining combats null by default, as it were¡­"


    "So, better to get one later than none?"


    "Better that my friend do not die, whatever the cost, I think," she said seriously.


    "Right." It was hard to think of Karu as ''a friend'' while her visor was still on. That usually meant we were either preparing for ass-kicking, or preparing to kick each other''s asses...situations which put us in the realms of comrades and enemies, respectively.


    "But," she said, seeming to perk up "there remains a silver lining, as it were. Today marks my first victory against you in open combat, and though it was almost a foregone conclusion from the start, I am still proud of this achievement, so it was not a total personal loss."


    "Yeah, you were pretty brutal. You definitely earned it."


    I guess I''d intended it as a compliment, but that didn''t seem to be how she took it. She frowned and thought for a moment.


    "Brutality is essential to getting one''s opponent to perceive them as more than human. Or...less. If an enemy believes you will do whatever it takes to win, are capable of abandoning morality and even humanity--if you will pardon the term--in a fight, you will become something not understood in their eyes, and that which we do not understand, we fear. It is...not something to be proud of, and is certainly not a virtuous path to victory, but it is practical and useful."


    "I don''t know how you got through to me with fear when I was feeling all...numb and detached about everything else."


    "Fear and anger are baser emotions which are difficult to suppress, even for one''s mind. Even base creatures like insects enter states approximating fear and anger, though it is difficult to argue they are capable of anything resembling higher emotions. Even for one with mental troubles, even for a true sociopath who feels no emotions at all, fear and anger are still present."


    "Where''d you learn all this stuff?"


    She laughed. "You may have to be more specific. I have spent years in study, and as you hopefully are, I have endeavored to turn every loss into a lesson."


    "You don''t just learn human psychology from losing a fight, though."


    "No, that is true. Psychology I studied extensively in training for the airborne. I believe I may have touched on this before, but relative to ground troops, with mixed armor and dedicated shieldbearers, airborne are offered no such protections from a direct attack. We rely almost entirely on mobility to remain unharmed, but mobility alone will serve one poorly. In order to remain truly evasive, airborne rely on psychological tricks to confuse and disorient our foes so that we can slip away and continue whatever our dedicated insertion objectives are."


    "Are there many airborne who became hunters?"


    "No, but that is likely because there are not many airborne in general. We are expensive to train, to maintain, and to employ, and results are often lacking. Candidates must have both specific physical attributes, and an intuitive grasp of the aforementioned psychology to be even marginally useful. Even by military standards, it is far from a ''safe'' occupation, and the stresses of acting independently and G-forces are enough to make most hang up their wings when given the opportunity. I am certainly the exception."


    "Well, I think you''re pretty exceptional," I said with a weak smile.


    She smiled back, flashing me her missing teeth again. "Say, if you are truly remorseful about my ''wasting'' a combat encounter to teach you a lesson, I have an idea of some small recompense you may be able to offer."


    "Sure. You''ve done so much for me already."


    She smiled. "Please close your eyes."


    I did. Almost as soon as I did, I felt very tired. My breathing was catching in my throat somewhat where she''d elbowed me, and while I realized she''d definitely held back on that blow...I''d be dead otherwise...she''d still elbowed me in the fucking windpipe.


    Suddenly I felt something warm and soft on my lips. An easy, familiar sensation, Karu''s kisses, which I realized in that moment I''d missed. As ever, she was forward and hungry, seeming to be trying to take a kiss from me rather than give one.


    It was brief, and close-lipped, but as she parted, she exhaled and I felt her breath warm on my face, making me tingle and my wounds seem a little further away.


    "Oh for fuck''s sake," I heard AEGIS say, and opened my eyes to see Karu''s visor sliding back onto her face as it moved away from mine. "Fuck no. Karu, get the hell out."


    Karu gave a demure laugh but didn''t argue as she left the room. AEGIS gave me one final glare which clearly read that I was not to get involved with that woman again, and then slammed the door. Her voice was audible in the hallway for quite a while as she screamed her head off, and I could pick out some choice profanities as well as words like ''exploitative'' and ''opportunistic'' before they moved out of earshot.


    As for me, I was sure I had a lot to think about, but at the moment, just fell back into my pillow and into sleep, the dull ache of my new injuries across my body pushing me back into blackness.

 152. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Athan.

    Karu was permitted to bid me a brief farewell under AEGIS'' watchful eye, promising to be back before too long, but was at severe risk of infection with burns covering a third of her body, and sought proper treatment before she turned for the worse.


    She''d proposed I go with her for recovery as well, but unlike her, I didn''t have unlimited access to a regenerator, only with special consent provided by a superior, which I doubted Cosette would agree to, considering. When she proposed that perhaps her cousin Alphard was again in need of medical treatment, I laughed, but told her to just go.


    My wrist was shattered, painfully so, but apparently during my unconsciousness, AEGIS had opened it up and reset the bones, quickly becoming something of a professional doctor with all the times she''d had to treat me and her capacity for quickly learning anything documented sufficiently on the ''net. It sucked, but I''d live, and the rest of my wounds weren''t much to worry about.


    And so she left in a plain black driverless taxi, and I went back into my bed. Despite my injuries not being critical, they still took a lot out of me, and I fell back asleep almost immediately.


    I was gently stirred awake to see AEGIS'' smiling face, happier than she''d looked the whole time Karu was here, with another plate of food.


    "Good morning, Athan. Thought you probably should sleep all day," she said, gingerly pulling me upright and sitting next to me on the bed. "You really were out, though. I''ve been here for a while, changing and checking your bandages and you slept right through it."


    Her voice sounded concerned but you wouldn''t tell by her smile.


    "Aaah," she said, and held a forkful of rice towards my face.


    "I can eat on my own," I promised.


    She shook her head. "You''re pretty beat to hell, Athan. Karu really didn''t hold back on you, and it shows. You''ve slept almost two days in the last three, and taking care of you is the least I can do. And besides, last time I made this for you, you didn''t eat the peppers, so I cut them up a lot smaller and seasoned it a little more. You need to eat your veggies too, so...aaaahh!"


    I sighed but opened my mouth. It was better than last time, but I didn''t really have much of a chance to say so as she spoon-fed me the whole plate, one patient bite at a time.


    "I''m glad you liked it better," she said, standing up and collecting the dirty plate. "I''ll be back tonight. Any opinion on what you want for dinner?"


    I shook my head. Anything was fine.


    "Okay. You get some rest and take care."


    She laid me back down gently as ever and slipped out.


    This time I had a bit of time to reflect before sleep took me. I noticed they''d somehow gotten rid of Tem, and a quick peek around the room with my senses confirmed she wasn''t just invisible. I also made a mental note to ask Lia about how I could do that next time she swung by, I''d been wondering for awhile, but had been more invested in using the seemingly-new ability than understanding it.


    And then I felt a little bad. AEGIS had come in here and taken care of me just like she had been all last week. I thought I''d made some progress while Karu was here towards recovery, but I guess whatever steps I''d made, I lost again by recklessly accepting that fight and getting my ass completely beat. I was back to carefully-worded walls of words, avoided gazes, and being spoon-fed for the time being.


    I sighed and fell further back into the pillow. It was probably redundant to think, but I didn''t like being broken.


    I woke up to the door opening quietly, only just having drifted off, and Lia poked her head in. "Awake?" she asked, sounding a little incredulous, before taking her gaze quickly off my face. "That''s no good," she frowned. "You need your rest."


    I''d just heard from AEGIS I''d slept for most of the last three days. How much more rest could I need?


    I mean I was tired, so she wasn''t wrong, but still. I tried to stir, but my side where Karu had booted me ached and Lia rushed to my side to examine it as I flinched.


    "Tsk, you''ve got bruised ribs, Athan, you need a few days at least. Please stop trying to move." She watched my chest rise and fall with some concern. "Can you take a deep breath?"


    I did, feeling it catch in my throat a little, and my side felt like it was crushing me as my lungs expanded, I gasped and lost most of the breath, taking shallow, panting breaths from the pain. She frowned.


    "This on top of your wrist, which was just starting to mend," she tutted. "You really are an idiot. What were you thinking, going along with her?"


    I mean, she''d driven us, hadn''t she? But I didn''t say that. She was right, I was an idiot. All I could do would be to sit here and endure my convalescence with patience. I sighed shallowly and closed my eyes, which she seemed to take as a sign either of my agreement, or that she was hurting me and needed to change the subject. Either way, she moved on instantly.


    "So what was up with Karu getting all creepy on you, huh? And that little gem of jealousy in the car ride? I never thought she had a side to her like that, that was a riot to watch, wasn''t it? Too bad AEGIS stopped our fun before we really got anywhere, but man, was that unexpected." She giggled, and I realized my sister was kind of a callous ass for laughing at Karu''s feelings and considering arguing with them ''fun'', but I also knew that of everyone else, Lia also probably got on with Karu best...so maybe as her only real friend in the group, she had the privilege of giving her a little shit?


    "Still, I don''t know about her. I mean, I''ve been with AEGIS awhile now, so it would feel wrong to be on anyone''s side but hers, but we''ve done nothing but fight recently. She practically threw Karu out on her ass, and the girl just accepted it with her standard stoicism...I don''t know what happened, but Karu chooses the weirdest things to fight over or not. Like, she''ll go jets-out over some stupid inane thing, but when it comes to fighting over you, she just lets AEGIS have her way? If it were me, I''d be showing AEGIS a little rocket diplomacy, if you know what I mean."


    She blinked and smiled, presumably at her own little turn of phrase and then blinked again and looked at my face reflexively, smile gone. "Uh, I meant if it were a boy I liked. Not you, obviously."


    "But still," she said, right back to prattling and avoiding my gaze again. "She did come all the way out here, for you presumably. Didn''t say much to anyone else but share a few pleasantries. Before she came in here and saw you, she looked like she was on the warpath about something, and she did make those insinuations about how her ''own mental state wasn''t the paragon of aptitude'', or whatever." Lia''s choice in words was spot-on Karu, but her vocal imitation wasn''t nearly so convincing.


    "I guess with Saga out of the picture, everyone just smells blood in the water. You''re in deep trouble, bro, and this is about the one place I am not going to even try to help you at all. I mean...I guess I would if you absolutely needed it, but this is just girls, not life or death. Just try not to make a mess and hurt all my new friends, okay? You''re a smart guy, you can pick someone you like, right?"


    She changed topics again after that, spoke to me for about an hour about the latest she''d progressed in Kingdom Blade and then left the room with the same fake smile she''d been wearing when she entered.


    Dinner came and went without much event, AEGIS taking me to the bathroom and making me go and wash my hands before she fed me. I put up with it quietly distracted; obedient. Then the lights were off and I found a hard time sleeping after doing nothing all day.


    I couldn''t move onto my side without crushing my ribs, or my other side without crushing my wrist. I felt trapped exactly where I lay in a little card house of pain, and if I moved, it fell down and crushed me.


    Lia''s airy words hadn''t been intended to carry any substance, but they''d stuck in my brain. Pick a girl I liked, and stop hurting all my friends. Was it really as simple as that?


    That night I had strange dreams, maybe because I kept moving back towards consciousness every time I breathed too deeply and my chest hurt. I dreamt that AEGIS, Karu, and Saga were all vying for my attention in various games, like the Athan Olympics. But in addition to them, Tem, Steffie, Cosette, even Lia was there with her game-face on, determined not to lose her brother to anyone who couldn''t beat her.


    "If I win, you have to become my secret lover, and stop making trouble in the barracks," Cosette said, blowing me a kiss as she entered the stadium, draped in a flag bearing the XPCA insignia, a shield with a sword vertical on it, surrounded by stars.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    "If I win, you have to make more trouble in the barracks!" Tem shouted excitedly.


    "It amuses me that children would suppose they begin to stand a chance," Karu said to herself, but loudly enough for others to hear. "I am already personally acquainted with all of Ashton''s preferences."


    "If that''s all it takes to win, nobody''s beating me," Lia grinned. Her flag bore the familiar Black Shark I''d seen on the sides of each of my teammate''s helmets every day.


    "I-I...I will try my best!" Steffie shouted her consideration into the wall of boasts from her wheelchair.


    As expected from a dream, the games were nonsensical and shifted without apparent narrative or reason. Bets were being placed by the participants on themselves, there was some subplot about a missing dog, nobody could fit into their jetpacks but Karu, who seemed exasperated, someone popping out of theirs as soon as she moved to help someone else in.


    And then was the high dive. I thought Saga was standing on the platform, but I heard someone speak and realized it was AEGIS up there, saying words I couldn''t understand. She jumped into the water, and I felt it splash on me, felt it creeping up my legs, as warm as her body.


    The rising water stopped at my waist and as it sloshed around, I had the vague sensation of needing to get up and pee. I blinked the last sleep out of my eyes and was back in my room. I felt very tired and heavy, the dream of last night in all of its weirdness doing little to provide the reset I needed to face another day of quiet recovery.


    I tried to move my legs to get up and pee, but they didn''t, no, wouldn''t budge. They were weirdly heavy and hot. And something was. Was. Was?


    My brain didn''t get any further.


    I gasped and my half-open sleepy eyes rolled into my head. I didn''t know what was going on, but I felt like my body was being wrapped in heaven. I lifted the blankets a little and looked down at my legs, and found out that no, it wasn''t heaven down there, it was AEGIS, and it wasn''t my whole body being wrapped in it, just a small part of it.


    "''Oo''d ''onmin''" she said. I wanted to shove her off, or yell, or...something. I felt like I should have. I should have, right? That''s what any person would do in this scenario?


    I saw a plate of food sitting on a chair by the door. Hash browns and sliced fruit and a glass of milk. Somehow seeing this ordinary detail made the entire scene so much more surreal.


    I wanted to kick AEGIS away or yell at her or anything, but looking down and seeing her two eyes, almost glowing in the dark under my blanket, as she put her everything into going at me with abandon, the only thoughts which could penetrate my mind were words like ''wet'' and ''warm'' and that this felt very, very good.


    She began to hum, some tune which was only vaguely familiar to my unawake and startled brain, and the vibrations from her voice only amplified my feelings, while heightening the unreality of the situation. Now she was a maid who whistled while she worked.


    I writhed, both in a vain measure to express some modicum of discomfort with the situation, but also because it felt like nerve endings I didn''t even know I had were being sucked right out of my body, but when I did, my chest and/or arm hurt amazingly. With my good arm I reached down to her head, maybe to push her off? But all I could manage was getting a loose grip on one of her ponytails as my hand twitched spasmodically under her assault.


    Her tempo increased even faster, and whatever was going on down there...she did something else which seemed to involve a lot more suction and twisting, and I felt my legs shuddering and my hand seemed to push her head down of its own accord even as I tried to warn her that she should be doing the opposite of that, but she seemed utterly content with her position as my back arched and I groaned, even with my side screaming at me.


    She sat there for long moments, holding it down and making indecent noises with her inability to breathe before finally surfacing and gasping in a lungful of air. Both of us just laid there catching our breath for a minute before she slipped back out of the covers and the bed and brought me breakfast.


    "I''m sorry, shouldn''t speak with my mouth full," she teased. "So good morning, officially."


    My brain was still exploding little fireworks in front of my eyes and I laid there limp as a used sock. This seemed to make her giggle for some reason, and sat down next to me, sitting me upright like usual, propping me gently against the wall and waiting for me to rejoin my senses.


    After a couple of minutes of...I mean, just basking in radiance, basically, I came somewhat back down to earth, still feeling my face glowing. I turned to her and blinked slowly.


    "Aaah," she said. Her lips looked so soft and shiny.


    "Aaah," I echoed, and got a strawberry for my trouble.


    She fed me in relative silence for the next fifteen minutes like this, and with my brain scattered as it was, I found it impossible to chew on both thoughts and food. She wore the same serene, subservient smile I''d grown so used to, looking like, in no way had anything untoward happened in this room just minutes ago. Finally, the food was done and she stood, laid me back down, and turned to go.


    "Any requests for lunch?" she asked.


    I shook my head. Anything was fine.


    "You know, if there''s anything you want, anything at all, it really is my pleasure to do it for you."


    Her words before today had been ''make it for you'', but even without the hint, I understood the insinuation well enough.


    She smiled, gave a short bow, which was new, and left the room, pleased with herself beyond reason.


    My mind drifted back over Lia''s words. With Saga gone, there was blood in the water. Now AEGIS had engineered it so Karu was gone, and that meant I wasn''t even in the boat anymore. Amazing how fast these girls moved when they sensed an opening. Amazing, and terrifying.


    I wondered if AEGIS was always like this. Her nurturing side was definitely something I saw a lot of when we lived together and she was just a holo, but if she had a body, would she have been physically attacking me like this? I guess there was a time for a while there when she had a body and I was living in the workshop with her, Karu out in the old Bunker, Saga off by the mines. Lia was around, but that seemed like no obstacle at all, especially considering Lia was still around and that was apparently no obstacle at all¡­


    I realized with a belly-flop of my stomach what might have changed all of this, and the answer was, of course, me. AEGIS had been content to be a good friend, helping, reassuring, nurturing, and then Karu had flown in and slept with me. She''d done the patient, respectful bit, and gotten burned before, because I was a jackass and Karu was...free-spirited, let''s call it. Now she was probably having flashbacks, taking care of me this past week without any indication of appreciation or affection, and Karu swoops in and steals a fight and a kiss. No wonder she''d flipped out.


    I wondered how I could be so stupid. Like Lia said, I needed to just pick someone and be happy and stop hurting all of my friends. Was AEGIS even smiling because she was happy, or because she''d managed to win for the time being, doing things Karu''s way? Even if this did grow into a relationship, wouldn''t it be crippled from the outset if it started because she felt forced into it?


    Maybe I should just pick Tem, I thought, sullenly. Nobody would see it coming, not even she herself, and everyone would finally realize I was such damaged goods they''d stop chasing me. Instead of these jealous fights with everyone unable to get along, I''d get looks from them which plainly would read ''thank God I dodged that bullet,'' as Tem sat in my lap, licking my face or whatever the hell she considered a healthy relationship.


    Honestly, even I wasn''t quite that self-sacrificing, but it did seem like an option. I guess the same effect could be better achieved by going after Lia, actually. Invent a sister complex and scare everyone off. She might actually be into that if I let her know it was a scheme. A little social engineering, some trickery and outsmarting people...right up her alley, though it''d all come absolutely crashing down if we were ever expected to...kiss or something. Ick.


    I was reminded of my dream and wondered why my subconscious had lumped Steffie and Cosette in with the others. Like, yeah, they were cute girls and I was friendly with them...probably a lot less friendly with Cosette given my recent absence, but...still too weird.


    I''d moved from productive thinking to idle fantasies and tried to work my way back. Karu and AEGIS were currently locked in a deathmatch here, and the least I could do is take it seriously. So what were my thoughts?


    They were both nice, in their own ways, but so were lots of girls. Nice wasn''t really a useful descriptor anyway, nice was what you said about someone when you didn''t have anything else to say. Nice was like, the default, bare-minimum of someone you''d even consider dating. Nobody thinks, ''gee, I should date so-and-so, they''re not nice at all.''


    I realized I was avoiding my own question and buried my face in my hands.


    I tried to force myself to sit and think, but my brain grew fuzzier the more I forced it to work, like this was one question it absolutely refused to answer. It was infuriating, but then again, I already knew I didn''t have an answer, because otherwise I wouldn''t be sitting here trying to force one out of myself. Whenever I found a train of thought and chased it down, I mostly just invariably reached the conclusion that I was garbage and had done shit things to these people.


    I realized I was covered in cold sweat and ached. Gingerly, I got to my feet and headed for the shower, the one place I''d managed to keep AEGIS from following me for the past week, and carefully disrobed, letting the water run hot while I wrapped a bag around my cast and taped it up to keep it dry. I caught a glimpse of my side in the mirror and damn, Karu really hadn''t held back on that one. Small bruises and cuts all over, some purple and blue on my throat, which was really great looking, like my neck was some tropical flower in bloom.


    I sighed and stepped into the shower, closing the sliding door of smoked glass behind me, and feeling my body loosen as the water hit me, immediately. Weird thing to have in a hotel, a sliding shower door, but this place was small and homey, some random mom-and-pop shop rather than a chain, and so plenty of things were a little weird. I wondered how they viewed the four of us taking semi-permanent residence in two rooms. Maybe this was a huge windfall for them? Or maybe they were worried we were crazy fugitives.


    The truth was a little of both, I guessed.


    I was just struggling to get my good arm clean, having no other arm to wash it with when I heard what sounded like something in the other room. I tensed and froze, not sure if I should announce myself, or pull out my swords, when through the smokey glass, I saw a figure approach, definitely female and definitely naked. The curtain of red behind her made it obvious who it was even through the glass, but she cracked the door a little to peek in on me and reveal her yellow eyes and mischievous smile before talking to me anyway.


    "Hey," she said. "I''m going to help you wash your back, okay?"


    Though she phrased it as such, it wasn''t a question. She didn''t wait for a response before opening the door and joining me in the hot water.

 153. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Athan.

    What I had kind of hoped was an isolated incident turned out to be the first drop in the monsoon. First that morning, then the shower, and then AEGIS was on me constantly, seemingly able to notice any physical distress I had before even I did, and acting on it...and she had a very open interpretation of what constituted physical distress.


    For the record, an erection is natural and happens several times a day. It is not physical distress. Several more times a day if you have an attractive girl wearing short dresses around you constantly, and several more, more, if that girl begins to associate herself in your subconscious with sex like a sick Pavlovian machine. She was getting to the point where she''d simply walk in the room, and at the sight or smell of her, she''d react to my reacting, and start climbing under the covers and humming.


    It had been a mere two days. As it turned out, I was exceptionally easy to teach.


    I had no idea what to do. I mean, that was a lie, I knew exactly what I should have done, I should have stopped us flat-out the second I knew this was starting. But let''s be real, I was nineteen, and she was a literal dream-come-true for any nineteen year old male. Any time I thought I could muster resistance, or even tried to talk to her about it, invariably, she''d wind up on me again, and at that point, my words and brain just couldn''t function anymore.


    My only hope was that Lia would walk in on us and flip out, but even if AEGIS was in my room for half the day, I guess they had some agreement not to visit at the same time, because my rescue never came.


    Maybe I had fixated on Lia as saving me because the hours she was in my room were the only ones where I could be certain I was safe. The only indication she''d given that anything at all was amiss was one day when she''d walked in, taken a few sniffs and said ''smells musky in here'' with a look of concern which seemed more engaged in placing that smell than figuring out what it meant.


    Today, she was sitting and talking about nothing again, but I was hanging on every word. Eventually she just sort of coasted to a stop mid-sentence.


    "...what sword though?" I asked.


    "What?"


    "You were telling me that you killed Ralleforth and he dropped a new sword for your DPS warrior."


    "Ah, yeah. Is this okay, Athan?"


    "What?"


    "You, I guess."


    "What''s wrong with me?" I asked, being evasive and I didn''t know why. Didn''t I want her to ask me this very thing?


    She looked at me and chewed her lip. "Nothing...I guess. It''s just not like you to take an interest in Kingdom Blade in all the times I''ve blabbed at you about it. I guess I''m a little sensitive to change right now. You know me, always worrying, right?" She laughed.


    If only she knew.


    "I guess it''s just grown on me a little."


    "Have you ever actually even seen the game?"


    "No, don''t think so."


    She flipped out her mobile and scooted over next to me. As the game launched, it played out a familiar, brassy tune, and I jumped, my body reacting violently.


    "Woah, what the heck?" Lia asked, her eyes flashing with worry at me.


    "Nothing, nothing, sorry," I said, and pulled the blankets tighter over me. I had recognized the song instantly. It was the one AEGIS liked to hum at me. That was her taste in music? It was almost embarrassing. For her. It was absolutely embarrassing without question for me. Clearly I''d never be able to play this game no matter what, certainly not in public and especially nowhere near AEGIS.


    The swiftness and efficiency in which she''d wormed her way into my mind was aggravating beyond belief, and the ways in which it''d manifest were...well, I was beginning to realize they were pretty messed up. Kinda. Maybe.


    I''d run into a similar problem before, when Karu and I were together. Left on my own, I was certainly a typical horny teenager with all the stolen glances and fantasies that entailed, but when sex was there, freely available, as much as I wanted, it was like a flip was switched in my...brain, charitably...and I would just spend all day sneaking off to screw around if I could.


    Karu had shown some restraint and made sure we still got out and led a healthy life, but AEGIS seemed intent on trapping me in the room. In the bed. In her, even.


    Lia ignored my odd behavior and images passed in front of my eyes as she showed me the game. I had brief moments of comprehension as some things she''d mentioned before fell into context, and some things weren''t at all how I expected them to look, but otherwise, just looked like a game to me. I think I enjoyed it more when given the holistic contexts that Lia tended to weave, rather than just a bunch of things on a holo.


    "And there''s the total disinterest I expected," Lia sighed and snapped her mobile shut again.


    "I''m not disinterested," I argued, not sure how to put it. "I just...I mean, I''m not going to play, I think I like hearing about what you do in-game better than just seeing it. I don''t know. Hey, can I ask you something?"


    I''d forced the words out in the middle of an unrelated thought so I wouldn''t have a chance to chicken out. She looked me in the eyes for a moment before snapping back to looking at the window. Last time I''d gotten a serious conversation out of her, she''d turned flighty on me, and I''m sure she didn''t want another one now. But this one had no chance of turning around and guilting her, did it?


    "Yeah, sure," she said, though her face said the opposite.


    "I just uh," I didn''t know how to start. I felt like there was some backstory or subtext which needed explaining, but there wasn''t. One day, AEGIS went nuts and turned on her vacuum subroutines and my life has sucked ever since. I mean, I could just say that.


    I kept trying to speak and not. I didn''t have any lead-up. No context, no nothing. Lia was looking increasingly worried by the second, her eyes darting all over the room while she twirled a strand of her hair.


    I mean, was I just going to dump this on her? Was this even her problem to know about, much less try to help me through? In fact, hadn''t she just said earlier this is the one problem she wouldn''t help me with, ''it''s not life or death, it''s just girls.''


    "Yeah I uh, I noticed a while back, I could see Tem when she was invisible," I chickened.


    "You can?"


    "Well, no. But I can tell where she is in relation to me."


    "Oh, right, you mentioned that back in the uh¡­"


    Yeah, the place where Lia had fucked me over. I covered for her. "Yeah, but I could do it before then as well. Jack, too, when he''s all over the place, I keep track of him better than anyone else seems to."


    "Interesting." I could see the gears turning in her head, and she was so focused she''d forgotten to avoid my gaze even, not that she was actually seeing what was in front of her when she was like this. "Is it just those Exhumans?"


    "Hmm, no, I could track Karu some yesterday, but only some."


    "Is it because she''s not Exhuman, you think?"


    "No, it''s because she kept throwing shit at my shield which blinded me. Or...blinded whatever this is."


    "Can we just call it, uh, ESP for now?"


    "Sure, whatever."


    "So your ESP, blinded by your shield discharging," she reiterated, talking to herself more than me now. She brought her feet up onto the chair and hugged her legs, biting a thumbnail as she mumbled. "So it''s either directly connected to your shield, or...probably more likely, your shield just obscured your vision, or, ESP, rather. The only¡­"


    "Okay, I''ve got it," she said, abruptly interrupting herself.


    "Well that was fast."


    "Well, I am amazing after all. So when your shield flares, it blinds you...your eyes...because, why?"


    "Because...it''s bright?"


    "Right, large explosion of energy in the visual spectrum which is what you use to see. Now, what other kind of explosion of energy does that produce?"


    "I don''t know, UV maybe?"


    "Is that a guess?"


    "Yes."


    "You should learn a little more about lightning if you''re going to throw it around everywhere, Athan," she said frowning. "But no, I''m not talking about electromagnetic waves here, just in general. You throw electricity off your shield."


    "Sure."


    "So it makes sense that if that blinds your ESP, then just like your eyes see light and are blinded by it, your ESP sees electrical impulses and is blinded by them."


    I saw where she was going. "So my ESP is just me seeing, or sensing, rather, electrical impulses around me. Like those in a person when their muscles fire. Which is how I can track Tem and Jack in a fight."


    She nodded. "Want to do an experiment?" I wouldn''t have expected anything else from her.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    She had me sit in a chair in the middle of the room and walked around me with my eyes closed. I could track her easily enough, couldn''t really tell that I was looking at electrical impulses or anything, but simply registered her as ''a presence'' as I''d learned it.


    "Okay, now try," she said. She was walking much slower and I had a hard time picking it up. There were glimmers of something, but unless I were actively looking for them, it just seemed like mental noise. If my eyes were open, I would have never picked up on it at all.


    "Way harder," I said.


    "Cool. Seems confirmed, or supported at least. All I was doing was just trying to keep all my muscles as relaxed as possible and go slowly," she said. "Felt stupid to do, by the way, but I guess it works."


    "I will be wary for extremely casually relaxed assassins, I guess."


    She laughed. "So other sources of power should be easy to pick up too? Can you tell where my mobile is?"


    She was always one step ahead. She''d squirreled it away somewhere while walking around me. I close my eyes and imagined the room in my mind, feeling out different parts of it. I wasn''t even sure that was a good strategy, but Lia''s advice on using my powers was they came from my mind, I should do what comes naturally to get them to work.


    It...did not work. The mobile, wherever it was, remained elusive. It wasn''t anything like looking with my eyes, I didn''t really have any sense of space, it was just like the sensation of feeling eyes on you, except if I focused on it, I could tell where it was coming from, in a sense.


    "How about the power in the holo? That should be way stronger than whatever voltage and-slash-or amperage is in our bodies."


    I tried again, staring at the blank device with my eyes screwed shut. I could see Lia, standing behind me, lit up like a nebula, but the holo was just the black of the inside of my eyelids.


    "Turn it on? Muted?" I asked.


    She did. Still nothing.


    "Maybe you''ve only trained yourself to pick up on bioelectric impulses," Lia volunteered.


    "There''s no difference between the electricity in a person and in a machine," I said, feeling very Lia-ish for my one sentence.


    "Sure there is. But uh," she checked something on her holo, which was apparently under my pillow. "Says the voltage across a neuron in the human brain is like, 0.07 volts. Your standard wall holo runs at like, 220 volts? So...that''s like the difference between looking at a street-light or the sun?"


    "I kind of doubt those figures are proportional, but I get the point. I can only pick up extremely small voltages? I wonder if we have any devices which use that little. Something tiny with an itty-bitty deulith cell."


    I closed my eyes and with a sinking suspicion, cast my mind around the room. In the darkness, behind my eyes, I saw a light so bright I hadn''t even considered it a light, like standing in a naturally-lit room and looking for the lightbar. It was hard to tell what I was looking for, or at, but I had a general idea without using my senses. I stood on the bed and reached towards the ceiling blindly, and before my fingers touched the stucco ceiling, they brushed against something else there.


    I fumbled a little and felt my fingertips close around something hard, even if I saw nothing there with my eyes. I pulled it from the ceiling and jumped back down. It was like holding perfectly clear glass in my hand, but the shape was familiar enough.


    "The heck is that?" Lia asked with some alarm.


    "Cam drone," I sighed. "AEGIS'', I should have known she''d bug my room."


    "Why would she do that?"


    "She always does that," I said. "She doesn''t like having a limited perspective on the world. Too much time trapped in that box, I think. Gets claustrophobic inside her own head."


    "Oh. That''s sad," said Lia with a frown. "But also totally messed up. Does she watch you change and stuff?"


    If only she knew, man. I gave the cam-drone in my hand the slightest of jolts, only through the surface layer so I wouldn''t break it, but did render its optical camouflage inert. It materialized in my hand, looking a lot more professional than her older models, sleeker and smaller, not to mention the camo. I guess she had real parts out here instead of just what she could whip up. Only had one rotor on it as well, more thrust from a smaller motor.


    I closed my eyes and tried to focus again, now that I had a better idea what I was looking for. Definitely another one in the bathroom, another in here, at least two in the hallway, and one more in the room two down, that would be the girls'' room.


    Seriously, this girl. I''d leave them alone for now, no need to freak Lia out more, though she seemed more interested in the moment in examining the drone than worried about it spying on her. Maybe she just hadn''t put together yet that there were many of these. Probably also in their house in Vegas. Probably in Lia''s room in Vegas.


    "Well, we''ll get rid of this one," Lia said, snapping the rotor off before I could stop her and throwing both pieces in the trash. "I''ll ask her to stop spying on you."


    "It''s fine," I said, despite myself. "I just kind of expect it from her at this point. I''ve cleaned her drones out a number of times, but they just keep coming back. I think it''s a neurosis for her at this point. Plus, if you find them, she just starts hiding them better, and if you break them, she just starts making better models. Also, it''s her toy, don''t break it."


    "It''s your room, dude. She should get the hell out with her toys."


    This was good. She was a reasonable person, she was on my side, she respected my privacy against AEGIS. If I told her, I''m sure they''d fight, but AEGIS would have to back down.


    "Good work today, Athan," Lia said, and I noticed she was still looking in my eyes. We''d had real conversation, and I''d asked her a question which she wanted to evade, but had chosen not to. It was like being a real person again. "Glad you came to me about your powers thoughts, I really enjoy that stuff."


    "It is a little more interesting than Kingdom Blade I gotta admit," I said.


    "Well, glad I could help, again. I kinda feel like a boxing coach sometimes. Like, it''s you going out there getting punched in the face, but at least maybe I can help you get punched a little less, sometimes. Maybe I''m just trying to hog in on your glory."


    "Yeah, but what else are sisters for?" I said, trying to put an arm around her shoulder and making an absolutely pitiful display of wincing as my arm moved. You''d think the pain would be an effective teacher that I was hurt right now, but I just kept being an idiot about it.


    "Alright, tough guy, let''s get you back to bed." She let me do it on my own, moving the chair back out of the middle of the room as her only act of helping after I''d vacated it. "We went long today, AEGIS should probably have dinner for you anytime. You need anything else?" she asked.


    She was legitimately asking. She was right there, asking me the question I wanted her to ask. All I had to do was come clean and tell her and AEGIS would be out of my pants.


    All I had to do was give up all the coddling and spoiling and royal treatment and voracious desire to satisfy my every whim.


    So that''s all. Yeah. Just had to tell her.


    Yep.


    Just had to say those words.


    "No, I''m good. Thanks."


    Not those words, you fuckhead.


    I fell back into bed without waiting to watch her go and winced at the pain, but mostly at my own weakness. This was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad.


    Lia had hardly left when the door opened and AEGIS stood framed in the doorway, a plate of what looked like salmon and vegetables.


    "Wasn''t very nice, breaking my drone," she said with a small frown.


    "Wasn''t very nice hiding it in here," I said as she closed the door.


    "I was just keeping an eye on you, I don''t think there''s any harm in that." She was back in dresses everyday now, and very deliberately gave me an eyeful while she bent forward to deposit my plate next to me and practically pressed herself against me while helping me sit up. She smelled a little like eraser shavings and bubblegum.


    "And you''re so excited to see me," she said with an unabashed grin.


    She slinked towards me and I stopped her with a hand in her face, the fingertips of both of hers already sneaking up the bottom of my shirt.


    "AEGIS," I said.


    "Mff nnr," she replied. I moved my hand to her forehead. "Yes sir?"


    "Stop," I said.


    "Stop what?"


    "Just stop for a second, okay?"


    I could see her hesitate a moment, afraid of what was coming next. She knew, and I knew that if she just kept going, I wouldn''t have the capacity or willpower to stop her. She wanted that so badly, to keep me from being able to say whatever I was going to say, because she was sure that whatever it was going to be, it wasn''t going to be good for her keeping on as she had been.


    From her perspective, why would she ever want to stop? She had me wrapped right around her finger. If she didn''t stop, there wasn''t a contest anymore, she''d won.


    And yet, she did stop, her creeping hands arrested on my bare chest, impossibly warm to the touch.


    She looked away from me. "What do you want, Athan?" she asked, almost exhausted sounding, like that one inaction had completely defeated her.


    "I want...I want you to stop feeling like you have to force me into this."


    "But I do, don''t I? Before I did this, you were about to fall right back into Karu''s arms, weren''t you?"


    "I don''t know. Maybe."


    "So why should I feel any different?"


    She withdrew her hands and held herself like she was cold, still staring fixedly at the wall.


    "I know, Athan, I know," she said, still sounding exhausted. "It''s wrong. I just...I just wanted to make you happy, any way I could. Is that so wrong?"


    "No, I mean, that isn''t wrong at all." We were all kinds of contradictory on this.


    "Right?" she said and smiled fleetingly. "Everyone''s all caught up in trying to make you into some kind of superhero or playing with you or using you for things, and I don''t think anyone ever thinks of what you want. You work and sacrifice everything for everyone, I see you trying so hard every day, ready to throw your life away for the stupidest things, for people who don''t even like you, for causes you don''t even believe in, and it kills me. It just kills me, Athan."


    She held herself tighter. "You''re always suffering, but always trying anyway. You get pushed so much, your body breaks, you come back to us with all this...all this shit wrong with your head. I can''t even look at you half the time without seeing all the things people did to push you to being what you are. People you should be able to trust leave you. People who should be your friends just using you. I hate it, Athan. I hate what this world does to you. Sometimes I want to just go back up to Canada with you and we could go back to living together with what''s ''real'' like you talked about with Wynn that one time. Leave all of this behind and be happy."


    She spoke evenly and sadly, but the amount of self-pity she was giving me was making me want to tear up a little. I remembered her stoic smile when she''d tourniqueted my leg and carried me into combat. She also suffered my selfish sacrifices, but was there beside me with a smile. It was the opposite of the serene smile she''d worn every day around me here, a bitter smile to stare down the world.


    And now she was lashing out. She was tired of wearing that bitter smile. Tired of letting me decide to let the world do with me what it wanted, and had subjected me to what she wanted the world to give me instead. I had to admit, between the two, her handling had been a lot more enjoyable.


    "It''s not so bad, right? I can at least make you happy. That''s all I want. Just let me protect your happiness, as much as I can."


    "Is it even okay?" I asked, feeling crushed between the world she''d just reminded me was on my shoulders, and my own heap of constant failures and inadequacies. "Is it okay for me to be happy?"


    "The fuck does that mean? Why wouldn''t it be?" she sounded almost angry.


    "It feels...disrespectful. Wrong. Mage is dead, you know? Because of me. Why should I be happy when she''ll never feel anything again?"


    "Then don''t worry about it. Let me worry for you instead. Just believe in me and I''ll face the world for you. And when you''re ready, we can face it together."


    She leaned forward with a soft smile and extended her arms outward, offering a hug, but hanging there over me.


    I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. I don''t think even she knew how much I wanted this. Every painful burden, every responsibility, every thought I had of wanting to stop existing, but being afraid of who and what I''d leave behind, if I could just hang them all up, let them all go, be a kid again¡­


    Could I do that? Could I let go of all of my pain and all I''d been fighting for this whole time, just for my own happiness?


    I spread my arm and she hugged me gently, causing me no pain.


    "Okay," I said.


    I held onto her for minutes before I finally let her go, feeling the cold void where she''d parted from me, keenly, her faint smell on me for the moment.


    "Thank you, Athan. I hope I won''t let you down." She beamed at me. "Now are you hungry? I got you fish today."


    "Actually," I said, now being the one to avoid eye contact while I blushed. "I think I''m still kind of excited to see you."


    She laughed and hugged me again gently, giving me a small kiss on the neck before sliding her hands down my body and starting to hum.

 154. 2251, Present Day. Flagstaff, AZ. Jack.

    On paper, we were going out to hunt a deserter. Gone without report, falling off the grid entirely, not responding to his issued mobile, which we must, by the papers we signed, answer promptly and respond to immediately or be charged with refusal to obey a direct order at best and treason at worst.


    I always tried to look on the bright side, but when it came to us Exhumans, it seemed everything in the XPCA seemed ever-so-slightly tilted towards ''worst''.


    On paper, Chariot had deserted, and presumably Tem had followed him willingly. We''d gotten word that he had been admitted to a mental hospital for psychological trauma, at which news Cosette had rolled her eyes and said ''no surprise'', since last we had seen him, he''d been left with the code-X girl, but Blackett had personally issued orders to follow up.


    Despite the professionally-done ''net site, the working mail addresses, even calling and getting a good conversation with first the secretary and then her manager, who confirmed Chariot was in their care but could not discuss any details of his condition for medical reasons, Blackett remained dissatisfied and would accept nothing less than visual confirmation that he was under treatment.


    And at least one instance of physical confirmation to ensure it wasn''t also Tem fooling us.


    A squad had gone to the location, and realized immediately that Blackett''s concerns had been well-founded. The location didn''t match the satellite data at all, which seemed an impossibility unless Chariot could tamper with our satellites, and when they entered the location, they found nothing but an abandoned facility, clearly not even a mental hospital back in its day.


    The squad returned and reported a complete mission failure. The target could be neither verified nor apprehended, and Chariot and Tem were upgraded from AWOL to deserters.


    Which is why we were here, now. Both Tem and Chariot''s mobiles had been spoofed to show up in the fake institution, but they...and we...didn''t know that the rest of their gear similarly had tracking chips in them.


    It concerned me a little that I might be tracked without consent, but I was also not planning on becoming a fugitive anytime. If I did feel the need to go off the grid, I would be sure to abandon anything the XPCA had ever given me.


    We were in a van heading towards a remote corner of Flagstaff, in a seedy area where the houses were packed tight, despite the vast amount of nothing surrounding the city, as though by huddling together, the buildings were safer from the bad neighborhood.


    There were only narrow windows, high on the walls of the van, but I was watching the world through my other sight, seeing every house go past outside as we drove into ever more derelict environs.


    I always tried to appreciate being in a new place. Even a seedy area like this had its own charms, I was sure. Abundant sales of window bars, perhaps?


    It was Tower and myself and two troopers in the back of the van. The two weren''t in full exosuits, but were in tactical gear, because...again, this was on paper a mission to hunt a deserter. And yet, all involved knew it wasn''t.


    If it were, we''d be expected to bring Chariot and Tem back in chains, or dead, should they resist. And if we were headed out to fight two Exhumans and force their surrender or compliance, they would not have sent the two of us, known friends and associates. We would still collect them, yes, but as the lack of exosuit indicated, nobody expected a fight out of this.


    We were to find them, put them on a call with Cosette, who was likely authorized to forgive some or all of their transgressions if they came back and resumed service.


    Because, to be very real, we needed the two of them badly. Tower and I had undertaken a couple of missions with XPCA support, and two things became quickly apparent.


    One: the P-Force was fundamentally incompatible with your standard XPCA operation. We were specialists of the truest sort, with a niche even more limited than shieldbearers or dedicated heavy-exosuit pilots. We could not simply be squeezed into a planned operation, we disrupted our allies almost as much as our enemies, and one major reason for that was--


    Two: the P-Force was fundamentally incompatible with your standard XPCA. These men and women, brave, clever, and strong, had one thing in common across all of their ranks and number: They had joined the XPCA to stop Exhumans. Many could tolerate our presence or see the advantage in having an Exhuman on their side, but when it came down to it, soldiers needed to trust the man on their left and their right, and nobody would trust us.


    So we were sent on our own missions, three of us now, with another who had joined our ranks rather than accept the invitation to New Eden, but we were still lacking. Chariot''s absence had been keenly felt, he had an excellent aptitude for combat intelligence, and Tem was similarly useful for the sheer versatility and scale of her powers.


    So far, the three of us had been able to handle things without too many catastrophes, but the growing cracks were obvious, and if they did not return soon, the P-Force would likely meet defeat when we encountered another Exhuman who was ready for us, as Soran, the power-stealer had been.


    I was certain, if we explained this to Chariot, he would return gladly. I liked to think I was a friend of his, or at least an acquaintance he held in some esteem, and I knew we saw eye-to-eye on the need for the P-Force in the world.


    The only trouble was, of course, finding him.


    The van rolled to a stop and we disembarked with an odd combination of stretching after being still in a vehicle for most of two hours, and being on high alert. Sort of taking it in shifts to lower our guard. Once we''d accounted for our gear and sufficiently recovered blood flow in our feet, we moved as a unit. Tower was vanguard, sheltering the less durable members with his powers and bulk, the two soldiers were the main force, and I trailed behind in the rear, focusing my senses to keep our flanks safe.


    Our destination was a few buildings over, and while Tower and the soldiers walked, I blinked from position to position, keeping myself close but not too close, alternating what side I was on to extend my senses in each direction. As we drew close, I sighed. Chariot was not here. Tem was likely not as well, unless she had reason to be alone and invisible in a derelict building.


    There was something there, however, and so we pressed forward as I reported my findings over comms.


    A locked door was nothing to Tower, who shattered it simply by charging into it and using his power, and the two soldiers entered, guns-first, flashlights blazing into every corner. I waited for them to finish and then followed on the all-clear sign, appearing directly behind Tower. I tried to appear in places they''d expect him to be, so as to not startle them.


    The house was small and empty, completely devoid of furnishings or decoration, and coated in a thick layer of dust. I was glad I had my eyes shut, since every motion kicked up a cloud of it. There was one exception: a cheap table propped up in the living room, standing alone like a ghost haunting the house. It showed no signs of peeling or rust as everything else did, and did not seem to have any dust on it at all.


    How it had been transported and set up in here without leaving footprints on the dusty floor was another mystery. As per our team''s protocol, Tower approached alone, in case of any traps. He walked forward with big, slow strides, keeping his defenses at their utmost with every motion.


    Nothing came. He reached the table unharmed, touched it, sorted through the objects atop it, even lifted it and inspected the underside, almost dumping everything off in the process, with no traps or danger.


    If Chariot had been leaving traps for us, I would be concerned, indeed. But there was always the possibility this was not his handiwork.


    "All clear," he said, and we advanced. On the table, a half dozen small objects I didn''t recognize, most the size of my thumbnail if not smaller.


    "These would be¡­" I said, thinking. Tower looked at me like I had an answer.


    Really only one thing they could be, I supposed. The GPS trackers that had been in Chariot''s gear. All collected and dumped out here, without being disabled, to let us know that he couldn''t be tracked and wanted us to kindly shove off.


    "Are these the tracking chips from his gear?" I asked aloud, in case nobody else had drawn that conclusion.


    "Looks like it," Cosette said, with disappointment. "The boy''s just wasting our time, isn''t he?"


    "There''s also a note here," I said with some optimism. I doubted it was a map to his location, given that he''d just taken the trackers out of all of his gear, but perhaps it was a reassurance of some other kind. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    I unfolded it and peered at it through a cracked eye. It was...not a reassurance.


    "Well, report?" came the voice in my ear.


    "It appears to be a sketch of some kind of cartoon character," I reported out. "She is making a rude gesture towards the viewer with both hands, and there is a caption ''Athan will return when he''s ready and not before''."


    "What kind of cartoon character?"


    "Do we look like we watch kid''s cartoons?" Tower replied.


    "Well, does Chariot?"


    All of us stopped to think, but nobody could remember him particularly doing anything like that.


    "Send us an upload, we''ll try to do some image matching. It might be a clue," Cosette said.


    I did as I was told while Tower argued. "A clue to what? What kind of stuff Chariot does in his free time?"


    "The paper referred to him as Athan. It wasn''t written by him. We might get a clue who did write it," Cosette replied with obvious pained effort. For being our radio contact as Papa-Foxtrot Central, she had remarkably poor patience for clarifying a situation.


    "Oh, right. Well, it''s gotta be some kid, right?"


    "And why do you make the assumption that Chariot is fraternizing with children while he evades us?"


    "Because it''s a cartoon character. Kids watch cartoons."


    Cosette''s sigh could almost be interpreted as white noise on the comms. "Is there anything else of interest in the house?" she asked.


    "Negative," said one soldier, who returned from sweeping the other room. Apparently two rooms, a kitchen on one wall, and a bathroom constituted an entire house. "Nothing but dust and darkness."


    "All right, pack it up and bring that stuff home. We''ll run forensics on it if nothing else. God damn it, Chariot, you ass."


    "Language," I said, reflexively, and then realized I''d just corrected my superior officer.


    She laughed. "Chariot, you butt."


    "No mention whatsoever of Tem, I notice," I said, when we were back in the van.


    "No. But I suppose that''s not surprising. Even Chariot may not realize she''s still there, and I doubt very much from her personality she''d be anywhere else. While he and whoever his benefactor is seem intent on letting us know how much we can''t have him, they haven''t mentioned us having her in the slightest. Though, one of the trackers was hers, so whomever removed them from Chariot''s gear obviously knew she was present as well. The question is, was that Chariot or Tem herself? Or the unknown party?"


    "Maybe there isn''t an unknown party. Tem''s basically a kid, maybe she watches these cartoons."


    "No," I cut in "I''ve seen Tem''s handwriting. It is atrocious beyond reproach, not at all like the meticulous almost robotic-precision left for us on the note."


    "Also...not to disparage my own squad but...she doesn''t strike me as quite bright enough to carry this out," Cosette added.


    "Technically she''s a deserter for the moment. Disparage as you desire," I replied.


    "As long as I watch my language?"


    "Yes, do that as well."


    "Next mission, I''m going to have you back here at Central, Jack, and we''ll see how much you like just listening to comms and fumbling in the dark. And then you can watch your own damn language."


    With this dead end, assuming the cartoon didn''t turn up any miraculous lead to a fresh set of GPS coordinates, I was pretty sure the trail was cold and Chariot and Tem were out of our grasp. We''d just have to wait, like the note said, for Chariot to report of his own volition, whenever that was.


    The question was if the P-Force would survive that long. If we knew he''d be coming back in a week, we could defer risky missions and rely on old XPCA tactics to limp by until we got them back and could strike with overwhelming force. But if he wasn''t coming back for weeks or months...the P-Force being held in reserve would just be wasting our potential.


    And, if he did come back, whether the pride of the XPCA could take that. Each of us had been afforded a lot of leeway on the grounds that we were completely irreplaceable assets, and at least a few of us had some serious mental hang ups which would only be exacerbated by a military lifestyle.


    However, that didn''t excuse just vanishing when we felt like, and as Blackett had said to Chariot once, he had no use for broken tools. If Chariot wouldn''t come back and contribute, he was an Exhuman like any other, to be shoved into New Eden, or to be killed.


    I think that''s what we were all thinking on the silent drive back. Was this the final failure which put Chariot on XPCA''s most wanted? Was he no longer worth the effort to try to reclaim?


    I didn''t know. I knew if I were ordered to fight him, I''d refuse, and I would take the court-martial if I had to. Not merely because he was a friend and ally and I still held faith in him, but because if we were to fight in earnest, there was almost no way I saw I''d be able to defeat him without dying.


    Cosette had to know that as well, she wouldn''t send any of us after him. The XPCA wouldn''t want to make a public spectacle of it either, after plastering his face all over the ''new XPCA''. I thought, for sure, they were stuck, and therefore he was safe.


    Of course, there was something I''d forgotten. Another resource the XPCA had, as I''d find out.


    Engaged with my thoughts, the trip back to the field base north of Flagstaff seemed to take no time at all, and Cosette greeted us for debriefing, mostly ignoring us as she chatted on her comms and kept her nose to her tablet. She seemed a little aggravated, so the four of us waited in a small office patiently, trying to piece together what we could from her one-sided conversation.


    Finally, she wrapped up, turned to us, and apologized for the wait.


    "Good news is, we found the character, she''s one of the main heroines of a popular mobile game called Kingdom Blade. The art is original, or at least, not found anywhere else on the ''net. Whoever drew it and left us that note is probably a player of that game...but that''s not particularly useful given that there''s millions of players across the globe. We''ve got people looking though, have an intelligence team going through every scrap of fanart on the whole ''net to check for stylistic similarities, and we''re also tracking active players. Might not help us find them, but it can tell us where they aren''t at least."


    Unexpectedly useful. The cartoon was simple but not crudely drawn. The artist had some obvious proficiency, and that meant they''d practiced. If any of their previous sketches were on the ''net, that could be a huge lead.


    "Bad news is...looks like we''re done, boys. No more field work hunting for our deserters."


    She didn''t say it, but that confirmed my fears. If we weren''t involved anymore, that meant someone else would be, someone with fewer qualms with simply killing Chariot.


    "Isn''t there anything we can do?" I asked.


    "About what?" Tower replied, dimly.


    "About the fact that, if they''re not sending us anymore, it probably means they''re going to kill Chariot and Tem," I explained.


    "They''re what?"


    Cosette replied to me, ignoring Tower. "I don''t think so. Maybe if Chariot had given us a clue to follow, but as it stands, we''re just reaching in the dark at this point." She chewed on the back of her stylus, looking frustrated. "Damn it, Chariot."


    "But if they don''t have any leads, won''t he be fine?" Tower asked.


    "Maybe. We can hope so," I said.


    "You''re hoping an XPCA investigation will fail? Where are your loyalties?" Cosette teased. It brought her only a glimmer of a smile which withered away again under our situation. Still, the fact she never missed a chance to bust our chops, and the fact she was obviously worried about Chariot (and possibly even Tem) showed that she really did care.


    "Problem is," she continued, the chewed stylus dangling from a corner of her mouth "we''re taking it outside at this point, apparently. We don''t have any more intel to go off, so we''re dropping it."


    "What does that mean?" I asked.


    "It means, like the association motto goes, don''t send a soldier to do a hunter''s job."


    She slid the tablet across the table and we all leaned forward to see what was projected off of it.


    A bounty, posted for the capture of one Athan Ashton a.k.a. ''Chariot'', and one Melanie Walsh, a.k.a. ''Temperance''. A short bio on each followed, and I skipped past it, feeling guilty at the glance of my friends'' pasts I''d stolen. The number of credits was in the millions, and there were no listed provisos specifying ''wanted alive'' or anything like that I would have hoped to see.


    "This is insane," I said. "A bounty this high, and them known to be likely to comply rather than fight...not to mention the complete lack of bounties recently...every hunter on the continent is going to be looking for them. What the hell is Blackett thinking?"


    "I don''t know," Cosette said, mauling the poor stylus. "It doesn''t look good for him though. Maybe he''s just hoping to ruin Chariot''s peaceful days and pressure him back into service? I really don''t know.¡±


    After a few more minutes of anxiety, Cosette remembered to declare the debriefing adjourned, and the two XPCA wandered off. The three of us remained, still talking about the implications of the contract for a while before someone else walked in, the newest member of the P-Force.


    If I didn''t have my sight, I might have thought she was there the whole time. It was hard to tell with her sometimes, she tended to slip in and out unnoticed.


    "Hey, Moon. Care to join us?" I called to her.


    I tried to keep her involved with us when possible. I didn''t want her to slip off on her own like Mage had done. It had really hit me when Mage passed that nobody actually seemed to care on a personal level, and that struck me as extremely wrong. As her closest associates, it was our responsibility to get to know and befriend Mage, prickly though she was. I was trying not to make the same mistake with Moon.


    Moon nodded and closed her book, moving a whole row forward from her seat at the very extreme back of the room before sitting down again and re-opening it.


    So...not quite as prickly as Mage, but definitely just as out there.


    "We''re back," I said, appearing at Moon''s side. She didn''t bat an eye at my movement. "Chariot wasn''t there."


    "I understand," she said in a soft voice. She had closed her book again out of courtesy.


    "We have a tenuous lead, but the fact is, they just put out a bounty on him. It looks like every hunter in the world is probably going to be after him starting today."


    "That is unfortunate."


    "But I guess there''s really nothing we can do," I said, addressing the group as a whole now.


    Tower shook his head. Cosette picked the stylus out of her mouth. "I guess we just have to hope that there aren''t any hunters who know where he is."


    "I suppose so. If we can''t find him, what are the odds they can?"

 155. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Athan.

    Karu was back the next day, looking as good as ever, and once again with functioning weapons and jetpack. The first thing she did on seeing me was smile broadly, showing off her new teeth.


    "My apologies for being later than anticipated. Repairs to my jetpack were intensive, and I underwent oral surgery before entering the regenerator."


    "I guess I never thought about it but...we don''t regrow teeth, do we?" I asked. I''d once considered the regenerator as a miracle cure-all, but after my nervous damage in my hand, and now realizing there were parts of us we couldn''t simply grow back, I was beginning to realize their limitations.


    "No, we do not. Do not fret, those are far from the only teeth I have ever lost. The ceramic composite replacements are much more durable and resist plaque. If I am fortunate, by the time I retire, I will have a complete set and will never have to brush again."


    She laughed, but mostly that sounded gross. She was obviously trying to improve my mood, but instead I just felt bad for AEGIS doing that to her, and now that I''d given in to AEGIS, I was guilty by complicity.


    "So how are your injuries?" she asked, examining my wrist as though she could see the bones mending through my cast.


    "Bad. You''re a real ass."


    She smiled. "I prefer you injured and vocal to hale and mute. Your lifestyle here was destructive, and I am glad to see you have forsaken the worst of it."


    "Haha, yeah."


    She wasn''t wearing her visor, just sitting in the chair opposite my bed, but I felt like she could read my lies anyway. I was a terrible liar anyway. She was my friend anyway. Why was I trying to hide the fact that I was still living exactly that ''destructive lifestyle''?


    "Have you been getting much exercise? I would prefer we converse while walking if that would be suitable."


    "I''d rather not."


    She smiled. "Too bad. The walk is not for my benefit anyway. Up you get."


    She was halfway to pulling me to my feet when AEGIS appeared.


    "And just what do you think you''re doing?" she asked, breaking us apart and putting me back down to bed. "I let you in here so that Athan could catch up with one of his friends, not for you to kidnap him and make his injuries worse. Again."


    "There is nothing wrong with his legs, and spending all day in a bed will do him no favors." Karu''s eyes flashed as she stared AEGIS down. "And of all the people in this room to mention kidnapping--"


    "I kidnapped nobody. I followed Lia while she picked him up from Saga, and I''ve been helping him ever since."


    "And yet, I need your permission to enter his chambers, to visit? You act as though you control everything, yet speak as though you control nothing. Make up your mind or be silent."


    "I am just helping Athan and doing whatever he wants me to do."


    "And yet you materialize in the room the moment I threaten to remove him from it. I wonder if there is possibly a camera or two in here, keeping eyes on the man whom you are ''just helping''..."


    She slid her visor on and began peering into the corners of the ceiling.


    "If there are, it''s only so I can make sure Athan''s okay, okay!?"


    "A shameless confession of guilt. You should be disgusted with your behavior, not defending it."


    "Athan, tell your bazooka-titted friend that I''m only doing what you want and to get off my case."


    "Yes, Ashton, please tell me that," Karu said, wheeling on me. "I would be very surprised indeed to learn that Athan somehow takes enjoyment in being a captive here, coddled by his warden and is complicit in making no steps to improve or engage himself. Please feel free to educate me on just how much you enjoy lying here day in and day out while the world slips past you."


    Karu sounded confident in her sarcasm but it was AEGIS who was smiling.


    "Uh, don''t drag me into--"


    "Drag? You were ever the focal point of this topic, Ashton."


    "Yeah, just tell her exactly what she wants to hear and she''ll fly off and leave us alone."


    AEGIS'' grin had escalated to ''malevolent'' status.


    I looked back and forth at their expectant faces, both looking improbably triumphant, each confident they knew me better than the other.


    What the fuck was I supposed to do? Was this what Lia meant when she said I''d have to just pick one? They were both right. Of course I wanted to get better and go out there and live again, but of course I enjoyed spending time here being taken care of all day. But if I said that, they''d just both want to kill me.


    I''d already spent too long thinking. Shadows of concern were appearing in both girls'' eyes. The confident smiles were weakening at the corners. ''Why hasn''t he agreed with me yet?'' was written plainly on their faces.


    "Yeah, I''m going to go on that walk," I said.


    It was, perhaps, the worst decision. I could see both immediately making the conclusion that I agreed with the other.


    "Hold on, Athan, just yesterday we talked about this--"


    "Ashton, am I to understand that you are choosing this, no, anything over pursuit of your dream--"


    "You said, you trusted me, and you decided--"


    "That you could so easily choose to cast aside your righteous path, I refuse--"


    "We were perfectly clear. Perfectly. And now not even a day later, after I told you everything I was feeling--"


    "Simply cannot believe that you are siding with her."


    "Just can''t believe that you are siding with her."


    Their arguments reached a crescendo and peaked with the mirrored accusations. The two looked at each other and glowered.


    "And I am to suppose that if he disobeys, you will knock out his teeth as well?"


    "I''m not the one who covered him in injuries already. You must have mistaken me for a self-righteous bounty-hunting cow I''ve seen around here."


    "Is a trite personal attack all you can muster? There is an individual in need of serious help here, and I would be remiss if--"


    "Damn right there is, you need all kinds of help, but not the kind we can offer."


    "I was referring to Ashton. Dissociative disorders? Emotional detachment? Perhaps your memory core is faulty and you simply forgot."


    "My memory is fine, and Athan will be too. Stop parading in here like you''re the only one who can fix him."


    "He does not need to be fixed, he needs to be treated like a normal, recovering human being."


    "Or what?" AEGIS yelled. "Is there something so wrong with him being happy for a while? What the fuck do you have against him just taking it easy and, I don''t know, being a normal person for once?"


    "Or what?" Karu towered over AEGIS ominous and dark. "Or what? Do you remember our combat, just three days ago?"


    "Yeah."


    "Do you recall Athan''s pitiful bleated words? I believe they went ''oh God please don''t kill me''."


    "What about them?" AEGIS asked petulantly.


    "That is ''or what.'' That is the Athan you are creating. A weak, pitiful creature not worth of his name or gifts. A complete hindrance on the battlefield."


    "Life isn''t a battlefield, Karu. There''s nothing wrong with being weak."


    Karu scoffed. "If I had any doubts before, I am now certain that you are utterly insane. Strength is the one truth we can attain. Strength is all there is in this world. Strength of mind, of body, of will, of purpose--"


    "Fuck your meathead attitude. I''m a fucking AI, I can be as strong or as weak as I want to be, and do you know what I''ve learned? Being strong just means you''re nothing like a human. Do you think Exhumans are strong by choice? Do you think there''s a single one of them who wouldn''t give up all their strength and powers to have a shot at a normal life again?"


    "Yours and his do not count. Strength must be earned to have meaning, that is why every Exhuman turns to darkness. Like a lottery winner, they find themselves replete with power they cannot comprehend and so waste it on foolishness and sin. Ashton fought these impulses and earned his strength, and now you are trying to coddle it out of him, which is unforgivable."


    "Okay," I cut in, finally seeing this was going to start leading to blood soon. "Both of you need to stop and back down. You are allowed to disagree, you are not allowed to fight."


    Karu gave a superior look at AEGIS which clearly said, ''See? Strength.''


    "I can''t believe I thought bringing you here would help him. You seem more like you''re trying to kill him to me."


    "AEGIS, knock it off," I said, with as much steel in my voice as I could muster while wearing pajamas in bed at noon.


    "How can you side with her?" she yelled at me. "After yesterday, after everything you said, you just turn around on me like this as soon as she''s in the picture?" She paced back and forth once. "Holy fucking shit, you really do love her still, don''t you? I can''t fucking believe this."A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    "I''m not siding with her, I''m telling both of you to drop it. If I''m arguing with you, it''s only because she dropped it already, and you''re still yelling."


    She stomped over to the holo and jammed a strand of her hair-cable into it. The holo lit up and displayed a scene from yesterday in this room.


    I saw myself on the bed through AEGIS'' eyes. "Why should I be happy when she''ll never feel anything again?" I saw myself ask. My voice sounded so different.


    "Then don''t worry about it. Let me worry for you instead. Just believe in me and I''ll face the world for you. And when you''re ready, we can face it together."


    AEGIS offered me the hug, and after a moment, I accepted it.


    "Okay," I said on the screen.


    "And just what is this supposed to prove?" Karu asked, still imperious but more wary.


    "He said yes! To me!" AEGIS shouted at her, her voice choking a little bit. "Not you, not Saga, me! You already threw him away, and the minute we were back together, you have to come and take him away again." She was screaming now, her voice getting shrill. "I''m not letting you!"


    "AEGIS, let me be clear--" Karu began, her voice more quiet, more level.


    "No! NO!" AEGIS screamed at her. "You can''t just fly in here and take him away from me whenever you want, okay? I know you think I''m just a big dumb robot, but I have feelings! I hurt! And I want you to stop hurting me! Just stop it, just leave us alone, just let us be happy!"


    The scene on the holo started to move again, and I walked up and unplugged AEGIS before it showed Karu anything more from that night.


    "Let her see how happy I make you!" she screamed at me. "Why can''t she just let you be happy?"


    She looked like she was totally losing it, and Karu and I exchanged worried glances.


    "AEGIS," Karu said.


    "NO!"


    "AEGIS, listen, please."


    "Just leave! Leave us alone!" She clamped her hands over her ears and I saw tears falling out of the corners of her eyes. I sighed painfully as I moved her hands and held her in a one-armed embrace.


    "AEGIS," Karu was almost whispering. "Please do not misunderstand. I am not here because of you and Athan''s relationship in any capacity. All I was arguing was about his care and well-being. The nature of your relationship beyond that¡­"


    She gave a smile which looked pained under her visor. "Well, that doesn''t concern me in the slightest, does it?" She stood up and gave AEGIS a bow, her face a smile obviously covering great pain. "I apologize for causing you undue distress, and ask only that you consider Ashton''s recovery seriously as you care for him."


    She almost bolted for the door, pulling something off her bandolier as she went and holding it to her chest. I almost missed the motion except that I had gone after her, grabbing her wrist with my good arm.


    "Karu wait--" I said.


    She hissed with a sharp intake of breath and flinched at my touch, stopping suddenly.


    "What''s wrong?" I asked.


    "Nothing. Please let me go."


    "Karu, I''m asking seriously."


    "And I am telling you seriously. Nothing is the matter. Please recover well, I shall see you later."


    I put myself between her and the door and she shifted whatever was in her other hand behind her. "Are you hurt? I thought you just went through the regenerator?"


    "And I told you it is nothing. Release me at once, Ashton, this is not a jest."


    She tried to break her wrist free, but I held on, involuntarily clamping down on it tighter, which made her gasp and waver on the spot, looking like she might faint.


    "Seriously, Karu, what the hell."


    "And I am telling you...seriously¡­" she was panting now, and sweating. I trapped her hand between my good side and elbow above my broken wrist and started pulling off her forearm armor, gun hardpoints, and ultimately, working on rolling up the sleeve of her flight suit.


    "Ashton, I am begging you," she said, her face flush, unable to pull away, and unwilling to use her other arm for whatever reason. "Do not persist. I beg of you."


    "Then tell me," I said, persisting.


    "I...cannot! Don''t look!"


    I rolled up her sleeve and she looked away, her arm trembling in my grasp. All along the inside of her arm were shallow horizontal cuts, barely healed, some oozing blood from my grasp. It looked like she''d let a cat just maul her for a while. I didn''t understand what that meant, but AEGIS'' eyes went wide and she covered her mouth.


    Silence fell over us for a few moments. I grasped at comprehension.


    "How did this happen?" I asked, letting her go and she immediately moved to roll down her sleeve without revealing what was in her hand. "Was this from an Exhuman?"


    She smiled pitifully at the floor. "It was from an Exhuman, yes. In a way¡­" She looked like she was going to cry behind her visor. I didn''t understand. She was still here, which meant the Exhuman would be dead by now, if he''d tangled with her. The wound didn''t even look severe just...extensive. Why it would move her to tears, I couldn''t fathom.


    I was about to ask another question when AEGIS silently crossed the room and helped Karu roll her sleeve back down and picked up the armor I''d flung to the floor, gingerly replacing it like she was putting a broken egg back together again. Karu stood like a mannequin with cut strings while AEGIS finished with her arm, and then she carefully took whatever it was from Karu''s other arm and put it back on her chest with a snap.


    Most surprisingly, she gave Karu a small hug before stepping away again. I had no idea what had just happened between these two, but I was happy about it, I guess. Anything which could make the two of them stop fighting was okay in my books. When she stepped away I took a quick glance at Karu''s frontside...really not that unusual an occupation for me...and tried to figure out what it might have been. There wasn''t really anything there but grenades, ammo, what looked like a flare, and her knife. Nothing unusual she''d need to hide.


    "Nobody''s going to explain this to me, are they?" I asked.


    "Athan, just shut the hell up," AEGIS snapped. She opened the door, Karu gave us a stiff bow, and left, wordlessly. "You''re the worst person in the world, did you know that?" she said once Karu was gone.


    "I didn''t do anything."


    She sighed. "I know. I just can''t believe...that girl of all women. What is it about you, anyway?" she said, scrutinizing my face.


    "Am I still supposed to shut the hell up?" I asked.


    "Yes. Don''t you ever fucking try to talk to Karu about this, and don''t you ever fucking tell anyone else, understand?"


    "I don''t understand at all."


    "Fine. But can you do that anyway?"


    "Sure, but--"


    "Then we''re done. Pretend you never saw it." She sat down. "Fuck, Athan, if a girl is saying ''I''m begging you'' not to do something, why do you do it?"


    "I wanted to know and she wouldn''t tell me."


    "You''re such an arrogant asshole. Nobody likes that about you, Athan."


    "I feel like I went from you two fighting over me to both of you hating me."


    "Well, you really did that to yourself, didn''t you? All you had to do was tell Karu what you''d said to me yesterday."


    "But then she''d hate me."


    "Well, now I hate you. Is that better?"


    I sat back down in bed, feeling like this whole afternoon had punched me in the face. So much of it, I just didn''t understand. I didn''t even feel like I''d done anything wrong. Both of them were right and both were wrong in some way, and maybe I should have tried to mediate that a little better, but it seemed like my involvement at all was adding water to sizzling oil.


    "AEGIS, I don''t understand today," I said, putting the pillow on my face.


    "That''s because you''re an idiot."


    "I''m being serious."


    "And so am I. I understand exactly why you did what you did, you didn''t want to side with anyone, you didn''t want to hurt anyone, you didn''t want us fighting at all."


    "Right."


    "The fact you thought that would work proves you''re an idiot." She sighed heavily. "Look, what do you think Karu and I both want?"


    "Uh, from the argument, I''d say you both want to help me recover in your own ways."


    "Oh my GOD, it''s like you''re a fucking infant!"


    "Then stop berating me and tell me!"


    "You, you fucking dumbass! We both want you! That''s why we have to fight because whoever doesn''t fight loses you."


    "Nobody''s losing me, I''m still here."


    "Oh. My. Fucking. No. You know what, She can have you. This is impossible." She got up and paced again, and then upon returning to the chair, spun and slammed it under her heel, splintering it into pieces.


    "AEGIS what the hell."


    "There is no possible way someone as stupid as you is still alive. It''s a mathematical impossibility! I ran the numbers just now. You should have suffocated to death on a cloud of your own statistically-improbable inability by now!"


    "Can you please spare me the insults and just explain?"


    "I don''t know, can you try not to be completely moronic?"


    "Yes, I will try," I gritted out, feeling like I really wasn''t the one being an idiot here.


    "Only one person gets you, Athan. Only one of us wins. Remember yesterday when I said I was content to just be with you, but she had to swoop in and start shit by kissing you? You''re so spineless, you''ll just fall for whatever girl pushes harder, so we''re both here, stuck, arguing because neither of us can afford to do nothing. Because of your spinelessness."


    "But you were arguing about my care. Karu said so herself, you were getting tied up in this relationship stuff while she just wanted my well-being. I don''t even know that Karu''s really even into me still."


    "You--" AEGIS seemed to be choking on her own hate for me. "You don''t...you...you''re serious?"


    "Nothing she did today indicated so. I mean, she did kiss me before she left, but the way things are going, I''d half-attribute that to her trying to get at you."


    "And...her cuts." She stopped.


    "What about them?"


    "You don''t think that has anything to do with you?"


    "No...she said they were caused by an Exhuman."


    AEGIS just blinked at me once or twice, shaking her head, before picking up broken pieces of the chair and stuffing them into the hotel''s tiny waste bin.


    "What, do they?" I said.


    "No, Athan. Just...like I said before, forget all about them."


    I watched her work with the chair, and it felt like both of us were in a haze. She kept muttering and shaking her head, and I was just spinning my wheels, trying to connect completely unconnected things in my mind. Finally finished, AEGIS flopped down on the bed next to me, her yellow eyes smouldering.


    "I don''t really hate you," she said in what I thought was an apology. Now that she''d sacrificed a chair on the altar of her emotions and gotten to keep herself busy with cleaning it up, she was back to herself again?


    "I''m...I don''t know what I did, but I''m sorry."


    "I know. I''m still going to help you get better, but...that girl probably isn''t wrong. Taking a walk or two and doing some light rehab as you improve will only help. I just...I''m selfish, okay? I don''t want to prepare you for what''s outside this room. I want to keep you here forever, if I can."


    "This is...unusually honest. Aren''t you giving up by telling me this."


    She sighed heavily. "Well, yeah, but it''s bad of me to do. I think we know I have a habit of trying to manage things the way I want and keeping you in the dark, and that''s gone badly, what, two times now? And after those I said, I''m supposed to trust you and believe in you. And now here I fucking am, trying to run your life again."


    "I guess you could see it that way. There''s a big difference between trying to wipe me out and pampering me, though."


    "Bad decisions are still bad decisions. Fuck, I''m so mad at me for doing this again!" She stewed at herself for a moment before taking a deep breath and pushing it away. "Anyway. That''s why I''m telling you...warning you, really. Don''t trust me. I don''t want what''s best for you. I just want to keep you safe and happy forever."


    "That doesn''t sound so bad."


    "Don''t tell me that. I''m trying to do what''s right here. Don''t give me that false hope to spare my feelings. It''s insulting."


    "Sorry."


    We both laid there in silence for a while. I wasn''t lying, it didn''t sound so bad.


    "I do think you were doing a fine job on taking care of me. Maybe when my wounds heal more we can focus on getting ready for the world, okay?"


    "Sure," she said, looking at the ceiling. "You seem a lot better mentally already. We could probably dip you in a regenerator and send you off whenever...tomorrow even," she suggested, her voice the opposite of hopeful.


    "Yeah, maybe," I said. "Maybe next time work calls?"


    "Oh, I don''t think they''re going to do that," she said with a sigh. "I''m a little surprised Karu didn''t try to bring you back."


    "Why?"


    She hesitated and then flipped open her mobile to show me the bounty. My stomach fell. I guess I should have expected I couldn''t just vanish like this without repercussions.


    "Also means we can''t get you into a regenerator anywhere on our own, they''d be looking for that. You want one, we either have to hide again, or you rejoin them."


    I pressed the pillow down on my face again. The good news just kept coming today.


    "Are you going to go back?" AEGIS asked.


    "What do you mean?"


    "Well, you''re off the grid. XPCA lost you, if you never go back, they''re just out of luck. But I know what you''ve been working on is there. So...do you want to go back?"


    When she put it that way, it was almost exactly the same choice as earlier. Karu and chasing my impossible goal, or AEGIS and happiness. And I couldn''t choose both.


    Well. I kind of could. For a while at least.


    "I think I''ll stay as long as I can," I said. "Once I go in, there''ll be no getting back out, right?"


    "Don''t ask me, I''m the one who''s supposed to be trusting you now."


    "Right. Then that''s the plan."


    She gave me a small genuine smile and then turned towards the ceiling, which we both lay and watched for the next few hours in silence together, wrapped in our own thoughts from the day.

 156. 2251, Present Day. Rural NC. Athan.

    I never saw AEGIS without a smile on after that day. She launched herself full-bodied into my care, doing everything in her power to care for me in every way she could imagine. Her dishes became more complex and sprawling, she was at my side at every other waking moment, and many of the sleeping ones.


    And she, uh, continued the oral tradition. With gusto.


    Life continued on like this for another two days before unexpected guests showed up at our door. I was out on a walk just up and down the street with Tem and AEGIS, looking at Christmas decorations hung up in every infrequent window, when I heard a familiar roaring from over the treetops.


    Something shot over us with a blue streak towards the motel, and then doubled back, Karu landing, folding her wings, and apologizing all at once.


    "Slow down," I said as she stumbled through a self-crucifying tirade.


    "Yes, I apologize. I apologize. I''m just somewhat flustered, this was a dreadfully unprofessional failure on my behalf. I will correct the situation as I am able."


    "Karu, just report out, soldier."


    "Yessir." She snapped to attention, clouds of cold breath billowing rapidly in front of her. "Sir, hunter Karu reports. I discovered yesterday that my tracking records had been pulled by the XPCA for the last three days. This coincides with the date they had posted a large bounty on you--" she fumbled for her mobile.


    "I''ve already seen it. Continue."


    "Yessir. I posit the bounty was posted specifically to draw my attention to warn you of impending danger from other hunters, and then when they pulled my records they did so hoping that I had paid you a visit in that time. Which I had. Consequently, I must assume they are currently en-route to this location."


    "Thank you hunter," I gave her a salute and she returned it and assumed a rest stance, before a look of confusion crossed her face for a moment. I turned to AEGIS. "So? Do we leave?"


    "That''s up to you, Athan. Between the three of us--"


    "Four," said Tem decisively, and I had forgotten she was there.


    "...four of us, we could probably destroy a few battalions of XPCA. Honestly, I''m kind of looking forward to a rematch now that we''re on Rua Mk.3."


    "While I am loathe to engage in unneeded bloodshed, I will assume responsibility for my part in spoiling your cover. Should a combat engage, I will assist you as I am able."


    "I will protect Chariot," Tem said simply.


    I looked around at my friends. We were all idiots, without exception, but I was lucky to have them.


    "I kind of doubt they''ll show up here with an army," I said. "I would guess they were just trying to find me. Would be pretty bad publicity forthem to kill me when they''re still putting my face on the front page of the ''net site. That is, unless it''s you guys putting me up there?" I asked AEGIS with a cheeky grin.


    "Naw, we haven''t been messing with them much unless we needed to. Or really wanted to."


    "Then let''s just see how it unfolds, and leave killing them all as a backup plan."


    "Not the greatest military strategy," Karu said "but I suppose sufficient for our needs."


    "Any idea when they''ll get here, Karu?" I asked.


    She shook her head. "I only noticed yesterday that my records had been pulled, and which records. They were pulled most recently yesterday, but it is impossible to tell with my resources if that was the first time they were accessed."


    "Well, let''s finish my walk, at least. Care to join us Karu?"


    She looked a little wary at the prospect.


    "We''re out here because AEGIS and I agreed that you had a point in getting me ready to face the world. So take that as both of our tacit acceptance of your winning that argument."


    AEGIS frowned. "Tacit means unstated."


    "Fine. Take it as our overt acceptance of your winning that argument."


    Karu looked warily between the two of us adjusting the weapons on her wrist unconsciously. She half-shouted very rapidly "If this is out of some form of pity--"


    "No pity. Just a walk," AEGIS said. "We can even hold hands if you like, but it''ll be mine or Tem''s," she said with a grin.


    "I suppose...I have no reason to...refuse." She looked at me sideways like waiting for me to ask her a question, but I just started walking. "I came as soon as I could because of the urgent danger. This was not intended to be a social call."


    "Well, if you''re busy, we can walk on our own," I said airly. I had a reasonable guess that Karu was being weird because of the cuts on her arm, but AEGIS had told me in no uncertain terms to pretend I never saw them, so that was what I was going to do. Shit was messed up between them enough right now without me making it even worse.


    And so the four of us enjoyed a stroll in winter, the addition of the armored, visored, weaponed girl making our little crew even more ludicrous. But also a lot more fun, as we pleasantly bantered about the weather and Christmas decorations up around the neighborhood and our plans for such.


    "Well, we were supposed to be back in LV, like, weeks ago," AEGIS said, leaning forward to glare at my face while she talked. "Lia thought it''d be hilarious to just have the most obscenely exquisite Christmas party ever in our small house, and invite a bunch of Chiho''s friends from college to blow their minds. Like, put up chandeliers in every room, have waitstaff walking around with caviar, that kind of thing."


    "Is Lia usually so, uh, cavalier with money?"


    "No, she''s pretty frugal except when it comes to you. She doesn''t mind dropping a few tens of thousands if it''s for you, but otherwise, she''s picking up groceries from two or three different stores to get the cheapest stuff."


    I smiled. Mom used to do that.


    "I am afraid I may very well be subjected to waitstaff with caviar unironically," Karu said. "The Irensides must demonstrate their superior Christmas spirit to all in Washington every year, confirm that we are a financially extravagant, and our ability to celebrate Christianity is unparalleled." She let out a heavy sigh.


    "Couldn''t you just not go?" AEGIS asked.


    "I only recently reconnected with my father. It is too early to be making reasonable demands such as that."


    "Oof, rough. Any plans, Athan?"


    "Uh. No. Never spent the holidays with anyone but my family, actually."


    All three girls were frowning at my answer.


    "I''ll s-spend it with you!" Tem volunteered, like nobody suspected she would do that.


    "If you have no other options, you are certainly welcome at my family''s gala. I might enjoy it a bit more with you as a diversion, though we would want to avoid my father¡­"


    "I think maybe just a nice meal, a cup of hot chocolate and a yule log," said AEGIS. "Maybe some mistletoe. You''d come down the stairs, find me wrapped in a blanket under the tree and say ''this must be my present from Santa''..."


    "Was it just me, or did that take a very strange turn somewhere? I don''t know how she calls me the pervert," I said.


    "If you could refrain from involving us in your fantasies..." Karu said with a vaguely disturbed expression.


    "I wanna be Chariot''s present too!" Tem sighed.


    "Just sounded like a nice Christmas to me," AEGIS mumbled.


    Conversation eventually re-normalized, and I was glad AEGIS and Karu weren''t pushing me to pick Christmas plans at this very moment. We finished a couple miles, and I was already tired, even just walking. We turned around and headed back, thankfully downhill this time, but I was still annoyed with myself for letting myself go this badly.


    We got all the way back to the motel without any XPCA falling out of the sky on us, and I prepared to part for my room, leaving the girls as we passed theirs, when AEGIS popped back out and invited me in.


    Their room was a lot bigger than mine, with two beds. Lia''s and Chiho''s I guess, AEGIS didn''t sleep and Tem was...incidental.


    The two human girls were sitting cross-legged on one bed, and Karu took a seat by the door. I sat next to her, and AEGIS sat on the unoccupied bed.


    "So," Lia said once we were settled. "We have some interesting news."


    "As do we," Karu said.


    "XPCA coming?" Lia asked. Karu nodded. "We noticed they were putting together a task force but no Exhuman event, and I kinda did some prying."


    "The fault is mine," said Karu, and explained again how they''d tracked her to find us. Lia was similarly dismissive of her alleged failure.


    "Well, I pulled in an old friend of mine," Lia said, shifting so she was sitting on her knees. "He''s here now, and I think, perfectly trustworthy, though I could understand if anyone is skeptical. If we''re going to try to run, his ability to gather intel rivals even ours, so I thought it might be handy."


    I was amused that Lia''s first reaction was to try to elude the XPCA. AEGIS and Karu had both wanted to fight, for their own reasons, and I wanted to talk. Tem wanted whatever I wanted and¡­


    "Hey, Chiho," I asked, and she looked up from her mobile, obviously surprised to be part of this conversation. "What''s up with you? How do you feel about the XPCA situation?"A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "Oh. Um. I''m okay. My parents are kind of mad I took a quarter off, but I''m in good standing and I owe it to Lia like, a hundred times over, so it''s no problem, really. As for the XPCA, I guess it doesn''t matter to me. I''m not really involved, if they catch me, Lia coached me on what to say. I''d rather you guys not get hurt, obviously."


    "That''s cool. Just saying hi. Haven''t even seen you this whole time."


    "Oh. Well, hi Athan," she gave me a small wave and smile.


    "You are not dragging her into this," AEGIS said with undisguised loathing. "How many girls before you are satisfied, Athan?"


    "I was just saying hi," I said, bewildered. "I can do that, can''t I?"


    "I am not certain. I have it on good authority that Ashton favors older women," Karu said with a sly grin.


    "If that''s the case, I''m technically a hundred and ten¡­" AEGIS shot back.


    "Okay girls, knock it off," Lia cut in. "I''m bringing my friend in now, so keep your panties dry, Jesus."


    The door opened and with hardly a noise, a figure strode in. Instantly, I realized this was the man Lia had based her fashion choices off of, wearing a charcoal-grey slipskin and a long cloak and hood, but no mask. He walked almost lazily, sauntering past us with hardly a glance, yet seemed to take in everything in the room at once. I had the notion he was unconsciously counting escape routes and potential threats, even as he seemed to move without effort or care.


    He crossed the entire length of the room and brought a chair to the far wall, seating himself with his legs crossed straight in front of him, facing the door, back to a wall. He had huge, steady boots that went almost up to his knees and matching gloves, with nimble fingers and an embedded holo in the inside of his wrist, like Lia''s.


    "Guys, meet Taglock," Lia said. AEGIS perked up immediately, and Karu watched him walk with rapt attention.


    "You broke my drones," AEGIS said.


    "That does tend to happen when you track a spy," he said with a small smile which reached his eyes. "You were a fun one to try to evade. Tell me, did you ever catch me on camera after the first day?"


    "No," said AEGIS. "Still don''t know how."


    "Well, if I told you, I''d have to charge you a consultation fee. If you are as well-off as Black Shark, that might be worthwhile, but otherwise I fairly doubt it."


    "You told him?" I asked Lia.


    "I don''t tell him anything, he just knows it," she said with a shrug.


    "Rest assured, she paid me a fairly large sum to buy my silence, and my lips are sealed."


    "Somehow that doesn''t seem like it means much coming from a spy," I said.


    "Ashton, the man is clearly a professional," Karu argued. "Were he to earn a reputation for betraying his clients, he would never work again. I doubt very much that your sister''s alter-ego is worth his entire career."


    He just winked at her and shot her a finger gun with a click of his tongue.


    "Anyway, I have the latest development," he said. "I believe that''s why you pay me so much? The XPCA was planning an operation only yesterday to come here and, it looks like, negotiate Athan and Melanie''s return, since they were going to be sending what''s left of the P-Force." He sighed and turned to me. "You really need a better name for that unit."


    "So I''ve heard," I said, annoyed. Something about this guy just rubbed me the wrong way. "Who''s Melanie?"


    "Me," said Tem, and I cringed internally at the realization I didn''t even know her name. I''d been trying to just ignore her, but holy crap, I was being crappy to her again without realizing.


    "Of course, if that were still the plan, I wouldn''t be here in person," Taglock continued. "Yesterday late, something occurred which simultaneously put Athan in the forefront and in the back of the XPCA''s mind."


    "An Exhuman event," I said. "Has to be. A big one?"


    He repeated the finger-gun clicked-tongue gesture at me.


    "A very big one. They''re running around like ants under that tower, and they want to bring you in to help, but also don''t have the resources to bring you in while this is going on. Seems Blackett is going to go forward without you, but if he does, you''re in deep trouble."


    "Why?"


    "Because if he thinks, and if he proves he can handle an event like this without you, then he doesn''t need you. Sure you could see why that''d be bad for you."


    Maybe I didn''t like him because he was a lot like me, but better, I decided. It seemed like, everything he did was calculated, the way I figured my way through things, but he did it effortlessly.


    From the moment he''d entered and let us all know he didn''t consider us threats, but was still prepared for a surprise attack by how he''d oriented himself in the room and to the door, his finger guns both acting as praise for someone reinforcing his position, while also meaning he didn''t have to divulge more than someone might guess, the way he made you feel like you were drawing your own conclusion even though he was hand-feeding it to you. He was a true professional.


    Or maybe...I just annoyed that from the moment he''d entered, Lia, AEGIS, and Karu hadn''t moved their eyes from him for an instant. It was stupid and petty and jealous, which only made me feel worse. But at least I still had Tem fawning over me. Go me.


    "What do you know about the Exhuman event?" I asked.


    "Nothing," he said with a smug grin. "Was kind of busy looking up what I was directed to."


    "So in other words, everything, but we''d need to pay for it?" I sighed.


    "I like that you think I''m as much of an infopath as your sister, but for once I''m on the level with you, kid. There was a lot of intel to grab, and all of it happened yesterday, and I already had your sister''s mission in mind. If I''d spent time picking at some Exhuman event when I had a client waiting, what kind of spy would I be?"


    I really had no idea how much of that was lies, or if he was intending it sarcastically or not, so I just shook my head and let it go. The answer was clear enough ''no''.


    "Then what does everyone think we should do?" I asked the entire group deliberately, facing any direction but Taglock''s to eliminate any possible misunderstanding that he was leadership here.


    "The options seem pretty clear," AEGIS said, finally turning back to me. "Join the XPCA, or don''t. And if we don''t, do we slip away again. Should be pretty easy if they''re that busy."


    "We could also crash the Exhuman event without an invitation," Lia added. "I know Athan has a huge justice boner, so he probably can''t keep away from a big thing like that, but it doesn''t mean we have to follow official channels."


    "It would not work," Karu said. "The only thing keeping the XPCA from open hostility with our group here is the illusion that Ashton is still under their yoke. If he showed up in the public eye separated from them, they would never permit him to escape afterwards. They might even consider it a second event, him showing up to go rogue."


    I nodded. "And if they put it that way, the P-Force would be totaled. None of us can ever have anything the public sees as an event, or whatever trust we have will be completely destroyed."


    "So then just run?" Lia asked.


    "If the event is as dire as it seems, I will desire to participate on my own as a hunter. While my desire to protect Ashton is obviously paramount, the public is a close second, and you should not need my assistance if you are merely slipping out."


    "I don''t like the idea of merely slipping out while there''s an Exhuman out there destroying people''s lives either, Karu," I said.


    "Yeah, we all knew you''d say that," Lia intoned.


    "I''m following Chariot," Tem added resolutely, crossing her arms.


    "Yeah, we all knew you''d say that too," Lia intoned, her voice even flatter.


    "Excuse me," Karu said brusquely and stood to leave.


    "Where are you going?" AEGIS asked, standing, her eyes wide.


    "I have a call. I will take it outside," Karu said and left.


    AEGIS sat back down quietly. "Oh."


    It was a strange little exchange but I didn''t think anyone else paid attention to it. We continued discussion for a minute before Karu returned, her visor in her hands.


    "Uh, it is for you," she said, offering me the visor. Everyone turned to watch.


    "Do I just...put it on?" I asked.


    Karu smiled. "I added your voice key so you cannot lock me out anymore. I had hoped you would try that trick again in another fight, but it seems my surprise is not to be."


    I put the visor down over my face, blinking rapidly as the various images floating at different depths in front of my eyes sorted themselves out once the visor was in place. Earpieces cupped both of my ears. It was weird in here, the number of info callouts jumping all over the place was a little crazy, and things were reacting seemingly both to my thoughts and the movements of my eyes.


    I couldn''t imagine spending half my life like this, but had to admit, just to play with for a minute, it was seriously cool. Karu leaned in close to me, and I thought she was about to kiss me, but instead spoke into the mic hanging off one earpiece by my mouth.


    "Ashton is now on the call. Karu out."


    "Chariot?" I heard a familiar voice. It took me a second to place.


    "Cosette?"


    "Oh thank God. I don''t know if I should be happy to hear your voice, or kill you. Grr. But I''m glad you''re okay. How you could just wander off like that. But you are okay?"


    I laughed. "My wrist is broken and I''ve got some bruises, but I am okay."


    "Well, thank God for that. Listen, Chariot, this call is...not...strictly...on the level."


    "You? Doing something outside of your operational authority? I am shocked."


    "Yeah, shut up before I regret missing you. Chariot, the situation is--"


    "There''s a big Exhuman event and you need me."


    "How''d you know that?"


    "I know everything, Cosette. Keep up."


    "I will assume the hunter told you then. The problem is, I think Blackett has decided you''re not worth the trouble, but this event...it''s a doozy. A lot of good men are going to die if you''re not here. I''m going to need you to come in here pronto and get everything sorted out. Apologize, beg if you have to, anything to get things smoothed over."


    "I don''t think you can officially order me to beg."


    "I happen to be your CO and can order you to do whatever the fuck I want. Now stop arguing and get in here."


    I stopped and thought for a second. This was it. The question I''d been pushed back and forth on for the last couple of days. The info popups on the holo in front of me all seemed to gravitate towards information on Karu and AEGIS, as though the visor knew those were the two I was focused on.


    Could I be selfish and be happy? Would I still be happy if I was selfish? Did I even deserve happiness?


    "Did you drop off? If you dropped off, it''d better be because you left to get here so fast you forgot to hang up. Chariot? Do you read?"


    "I''m here," I said.


    "So? When can we expect you?"


    "I don''t think I can just come in like that," I said. Out of the corner of my eye...which...somehow seemed to encompass the whole room with the visor on, I saw Karu frown. "I have a couple of stipulations."


    "Look, the XPCA already doesn''t want you, this is just me asking at this point. I don''t think any demands you have are going to get met."


    "We''ll see. One, I want Karu paid the bounty for bringing me in. She deserves it, since if I do come in, it''s because of this call, after all, and that''s all her."


    "We could probably do that," Cosette said.


    "I have no need of such things," Karu said annoyed. "Do you think me so desperate for credits that I would bring in a close friend?"


    "Karu, does your jetpack run on deulith cells?"


    "No, it--"


    "And are they expensive?"


    "Yes, but--"


    "Then you''re getting paid for flying out here. Second stipulation, when we fight the Exhuman, I want to bring in some friends...if they want to come," I said to the room "to assist the P-Force in combat. It sounds like you need all the hands you can get, so this should be reasonable?"


    "I''ll have them listed as contracted hunters. Anything else?"


    "Anything else anyone?" I asked. Nobody answered. Some shook their heads.


    "You''re really going?" AEGIS said, looking hurt.


    "You knew I couldn''t just stay here while people are getting hurt."


    "I knew. But I hoped anyway."


    "No, that''s it, Cosette. We''re uh, a couple states over, so it might be a few hours.


    "There''s a reserve base at Patterson Point. I can have a VTOL waiting there for you. Should take you...an hour? How many do you have coming?"


    "I don''t know. How many do I have coming?" I asked.


    Excepting Chiho, every single hand in the room went up at once. Tem, AEGIS, Karu, Lia, even Taglock, a look of amusement on his face. I felt a kind of funny smile crossing my face at how lucky I was to have these people in my life.


    "Six of us," I said.


    "Wow, really? Are they all, uh...Exhuman¡­?"


    "No, just Tem and myself. Nobody is weak, though. Bona fide ass-kickers, every single one of them."


    "Well, I''m excited to see them work. See you guys in a few hours. Papa-Foxtrot Central over an--wait. Chariot, one more thing."


    "Sure?"


    "The Exhuman we''re facing. They destroyed a whole city already, turned it into their own sick amusement park. Their range is beyond anything we''ve seen...and you''re not going to like their power set."


    "Electropath?" I asked, the worst possible thing I could think of.


    "No. Terrapath."


    "Well, fuck."


    "Yeah. We''ll talk when you get here. Papa-Foxtrot Central over and out."

 157. 2251, Present Day. Formerly Oakland, CA. Athan.

    For a few minutes, it seemed like all we could do was look at the spectacle in front of us. Even Karu and Taglock seemed at a loss.


    Honestly, it was beautiful. A whole city, pulled from the earth, rendered in the monochrome of stone. Huge main thoroughfares, complete with trees made of stone down the middle, twisting stone alleys, ornate mansions near the richer parts of town, and small stone shanties huddled together near the outskirts.


    In the center, rising above the entire town was an improbably large looming castle, with graceful curving architecture and graceful sweeping lines which drew the eye upwards towards the enormous dome at its apex, surrounded by a multitude of narrow towers like the points on a crown.


    There were markets and churches, schools and houses, libraries and city walls, several layers, seemingly extended as the city grew within their confines, with square towers regularly spaced.


    All made of the same grey, dirty stone.


    It was like something out of a dream. The skyline was alien, as though medieval europe and the middle east had gotten their hands on modern construction equipment and decided to stop crusading and build a city.


    And...it would have been super neat, if there hadn''t once already been a city there.


    Old Oakland was still visible out there. The new stone city was miles across, a huge circle, we saw that from the air when we were being deployed by VTOL, and could still barely make it out from the rooftop on the periphery where our entire team now stood aghast. It looked like that circle was the limit of the Exhuman''s powers, at the edges, the city simply stopped and what was once Oakland started again.


    Halfway through buildings, even, the roads from the cities not lining up. One skyscraper looked dangerously unstable, a quarter of it just...gone, like it''d been nailed by Skyweb. It was like someone had used magic to swap the centers of two different cities from different worlds.


    As for what happened to the thousands who had lived here¡­


    Lia handed me her mobile. "It''s Eryendria," she said mutely.


    I didn''t know who that was, but I put the device to my ear. She smiled and shook her head. "No, look--"


    I did, and saw the title screen for her game. Kingdom Blade.


    "This isn''t the time, Lia," I said.


    "No, look, dummy. Look at the holo."


    I did. It said ''KINGDOM BLADE'' in large blue letters with a white outline, with a sword piercing the logo horizontally. Under that, fields to enter login information or adjust options.


    And then I noticed the background image and held the holo up to confirm. The perspective was different, but it was clearly an exact match, the huge domed castle in the center of the city was unmistakable, and I could pick out several other landmarks, the more I looked.


    "Why is the background image of your mobile game in the middle of the real world, Lia?" I asked.


    "I have to assume the Exhuman is a fan and decided to recreate it."


    "There are thousands of people missing right now. You think...he or she did all that...because of some stupid game?"


    Taglock answered. "If you had unlimited power, what would you waste it on?"


    "Not fucking this," I said. "Why couldn''t they do it out in the middle of nowhere? Why destroy a city and take thousands of lives?"


    "We do not know that they are dead," Karu said placatingly.


    "I imagine this was a good location geologically," Taglock said. "We''re on top of a fault line, a thrust fault, which means that old rock is pushed towards the surface instead of new rock."


    "So if they wanted a ton of rock, of older rock, closer to the surface this is the kind of location they''d go for."


    She earned a finger gun from Taglock and looked pleased with herself, despite the fact the conclusion was obviously just handed to her.


    "S-something''s moving," Tem shouted abruptly. We all peered forward intently, and a set of optics had appeared in Taglock''s hands as though by magic. Lia was still digging out her own, and put them to her eyes, looking like a child attempting to imitate a parent.


    "I see nothing alive," Karu said doubtfully, fiddling with her optics. "Nor anything in thermal."


    Taglock shook his head. "The kid is right. Just scan for motion. But you''re right, it''s not alive."


    Tem must have had fantastic eyesight because I couldn''t see anything. Karu tapped a few more buttons on her visor before going ''oh'' with a small gasp.


    "Well, what is it?" Tower asked. He, Jack, and Moon, apparently her name was, were standing a small ways off from the rest of us. The two of them had been happy for me to be back, and the flight over with all of us had actually been pretty light and happy, but I guessed they still weren''t comfortable with everyone else.


    "It''s uh...well, I guess it might be pretty obvious, but it''s rocks," said Lia from under her optics. "But...jeez this is weird. See for yourself."


    Lia''s and Taglock''s optics were passed through the group while Karu put her visor on my head. The zoom was crazy intense, and the first thing I saw was an extreme closeup of her chest as she finished seating it, complete with a handful of helpful info callouts about her BMI, current pulse rate, and body measurements.


    Silly visor was obviously confused what I was focused on here. Obviously.


    I looked back towards Eryendria, as Lia had identified it, and could barely make out motion. The closer part of the city was completely obstructed behind a large city wall which wrapped around the entire city, so the nearest I could see inside was probably a mile away at least. There, in the streets, almost impossible to distinguish from the grey stone roads and grey stone buildings...grey stone people, bustling around, stopping to talk, exchanging grey stone coins and walking in and out of the grey stone structures around them.


    I pulled the visor off and handed it back to Karu. It was a little small on me, but I didn''t think that had anything to do with my head hurting.


    "Okay, so," I said, trying to get my thoughts straight out loud to see if I was crazy. "Somewhere in that city is a terrapath. Their powers extend for miles, and they used it to wipe out everything which was here, instantly make an entire replica city of a video game, and it''s also populated with an absolute crapton of...dolls or something, also made of stone, which the Exhuman is using their powers to constantly control and give the illusion of being alive. Is that about right?"


    "Matches everything in our intel," Cosette said over comms.


    "This is insane," I concluded my assessment simply. "Last time I fought a terrapath, if I entered their range, I was dead instantly. The Earth would just come up and skewer me. If we set foot in that city at all, every rock within miles could just crush the crap out of us."


    "Correct, except that you misunderstand the nature of Exhumans," Karu said. I guess she would be the authority on fighting them. "While in theory, an Exhuman has absolute control over their power''s domain within their range, in practice, the nature in which their power manifests is different per Exhuman. You, for example, have very precise control over electricity in a very small area around you--"


    "It''s not that small," I said frowning.


    "Keep telling yourself that," Tower said.


    "--whereas another electropath I have encountered was similar to Tem in practice, able to call down lightning at extreme range, but without granular control. Another seemed completely unable to direct lightning with immediacy, and instead could push or pull it through objects to leave irritating constantly-electrocuted traps." She frowned at the memory. Guess that hunt hadn''t gone so well. "The point being, I view it as very unlikely that the Exhuman down there has the capacity to create buildings and stone soldiers, but also have powers approaching that of the previous terrapath."If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "So, instead...They could just build a prison around me and have a million stone soldiers pop up in endless waves and kill me without me having a chance to do a damn thing."


    "I suppose that is more possible."


    "This isn''t reassuring, Karu."


    She sighed. "Exhumans defy conventional physics and logic to a degree, Ashton. We could ''what if'' all day up here and still never scratch the surface of what they are honestly capable of. Planning is good, but only if it leads to action. The only certain way is to try."


    "You say that," AEGIS said, hesitatingly, "but what the heck are we supposed to do? There''s a whole city there."


    "There''s just one Exhuman there," said Jack. "We find him, and we take him out."


    "There''s like, ten billion stone soldiers down there," AEGIS replied.


    "Golems," Cosette said.


    "Golems?" I echoed dumbly.


    "Golems. From Jewish folklore?" She helpfully un-clarified. "Mythological entity of a being made from mud and brought to life by magic?"


    "Sure. Golems. Still ten billion of them, at least."


    "Look again," Taglock said. "There''s some right next to us."


    It was hard to believe we''d missed them, but because they weren''t moving, I guess we''d all taken them as statues, or just part of the wall. Along the walls at regular intervals were more of the golems, wearing completely superfluous stone armor and armed with spears which must have weighed a hundred pounds. Soldiers, whom I doubted would take our presence lightly.


    "Moon, you''ve been quiet," I heard Jack behind us. "What are your thoughts?"


    I turned to her, as we all did. I''d been so caught up in what was in front of us and reconnecting with Jack and Tower that I''d almost forgotten they had a new member on the team. I guess, since I was still technically team lead, that made me an incredibly shit leader.


    She froze uncomfortably as attention shifted to her, and blushed but didn''t hide. "Uh, I-I do not have the seniority or experience to provide any input. My apologies. Gomenasai." She delivered a sharp bow.


    Like half of us, she was wearing an XPCA uniform, though hers didn''t seem modified in any way, like mine was. Her powers must have no need for it. Her hair was straight, long, and black, a lot like Saga''s, except obviously better cared-for, her bangs cut straight and flat right above the eyebrow, her sidelocks similarly cut straight just below her shoulders, and the hair at her back ending just below her shoulder blades.


    She was a little short, not thin but not fat either. My shoulders were easily the broadest part of my body, so she looked a little off having narrow shoulders which traced downwards in gentle lines towards wide hips. Pear-shaped, I guess the term might be, but pears seemed fleshy and soft to me, and Moon instead looked like she only had as much body as she needed to keep her bones and stuff in.


    Which I guess was just another circuitous way of saying she wasn''t fat. If nothing else, that was obvious by her face, which was narrow and her cheeks were flat and smooth, and she was quite pretty if you were into Japanese girls, I guess.


    "So what are your powers?" I asked, as she stood there, still locked in a bow, her hair all around her. She was about to reply when Tower, of all people, unexpectedly cut in.


    "Don''t have to worry about her. She''s with me," he said, and gestured at a device which looked like a cage strapped to his back. A padded cage, but one filled with straps. This really raised more questions than answers but I wasn''t going to worry too much if they already had something figured out. She might be the new guy here, but I was the one showing up and intruding.


    She stood and almost smiled at him as we went back to our discussions, and I was glad I had let it go at that. I got the impression she really didn''t like being the center of attention, and would try to address her more privately from here on, I guessed. Nice of Tower to drop me that hint, whether intentionally or not.


    "So we just...go?" I asked the group.


    "The National Guard and XPCA are both responding, actually," Cosette said. "We obviously want you guys fighting the Exhuman, especially since we have no idea if his window is open or not, we can''t just unload Skyweb or anything. Do keep in mind that for anything other than a direct Exhuman-powered attack, that means you Karu, Taglock, et cetera, hit him with a teaser first. We do not want to escalate his powers, period. He''s got an insane range, and if we add something lethal on top of that, this could be the event of a century, so don''t friggin'' do it."


    Karu and Taglock both seemed a little miffed that their professionalism could get called into question, but let none of that show when they confirmed.


    "National guard and the XPCA general forces will be launching a combined assault tonight at seventeen-hundred hours. Before then, infiltrate, figure out how they work, hell, kill the fucking Exhuman if you can, the show is yours. Give the soldiers something to work with, so that when they hit, they can give you something to work with."


    "Got it," I said. "Lia, AEGIS, a moment? I have an idea."


    Cosette''s words, one word really, ''infiltration'' had caught my fancy, and I had a bizarre realization that just might be true. Lia and AEGIS and I sat in the dust of the rooftop for another twenty minutes, pouring over their mobile phones while others listened with interest. It might have been crazy, but if it worked, it cost us nothing to try.


    Which is why, ten minutes later, wrapped in improvised costumes Karu had commandeered from a party supply store a mile away, our ground team walked directly towards one of the open city gates.


    The cheap burlap robe itched where it touched my hands and neck, but I tried to focus on just following AEGIS'' feet, only barely visible under the hood which covered my face. Somewhere behind me were Karu, Tower, Jack, Tem, and Moon, the new girl, while Lia, and Taglock stayed behind as intel support, watching our movements, relocating when they needed, and talking in our ears.


    "What''s all this then?" I heard a voice which sounded half-british, and half like it was the churning of gravel in a garbage disposal, and AEGIS stopped in front of me.


    "We are but humble pilgrims, sir," AEGIS said, her voice different, also a little british-y, but also a pleading note in it. It disgusted me a little, and I wondered how easily she''d fooled me in the past just by synthesizing some emotion or other. "We are here to visit the Eon Gate, last shrine of the fourteen steps of virtue, and resting place of the Ashes of Altaura ."


    "I never thought reading all the quest text and additional lore would ever come in handy," Lia whispered in my ear.


    "Do you have a token of faith?" the guard asked, sounding resigned, like he''d done this a thousand times. Despite having not existed for more than a day or two.


    AEGIS made a complicated gesture which ended in a bow, and then offered the guard a holy symbol of Altaura they had me carve out of wood using a tiny lightning blade, and then spray-painted gold.


    "Very well. Altaura watch over you." He stepped aside with heavy rumbling, and I moved to keep up with AEGIS''s heels.


    Once we were past the walls and surrounded by the bustle of a hundred golems moving a hundred places we spoke as we walked.


    "So, the Exhuman is not controlling them directly, or he''d have never let us in," Karu mused.


    "He might be. If he''s a fan of the game, he may have no problem with anyone else willing to role-play," Lia''s voice responded.


    "I kind of doubt it though," I said. "There''s gotta be a hundred thousand golems in here or more, and while I''m sure the guy''s powers let him control things more efficiently, I can''t see him managing the actions and conversations of everyone in here all at once, constantly."


    We walked past three golems arguing at a stall about the price of some fish, also made of stone.


    "Gotta agree with the kid here," Taglock said, his gravelly voice at risk of getting lost in the constant rumble of stone around us. "I''m guessing he just made them with a spark of intelligence and now they go about on their own. Lucky break for us in a way, but also bad news."


    "Because¡­" Lia responded before she even had an answer, just a kid throwing her hand in the air to impress the teacher. "...because...if each one is intelligent on their own, that''s a lot more threats we have to deal with."


    "Bingo." I guess finger guns didn''t work over comms.


    "On the plus side, they won''t be as coordinated as one person running everything," I said.


    "You sure about that?" AEGIS said. "Because here in Eryendria, there is one person running everything. The God-King Vytar."


    "Vytar. Eryendria. Altaura. Do you hear yourselves?" Tower asked.


    "Hey, if you''d like, we can stop by the Well of Infinite Ripples, spend an evening at Morgdred''s Gauntlet, and top it off with a trip to the Arena of Blades?" AEGIS said. "You know literally everything here has a name, and almost all of it has some backstory, right? We''re standing on The Mist Road, which leads out through The Pauper''s Gate where we entered, into an area where there were historically Mist Hags who would--"


    "Okay, I love me some occult and mythological shit, but you have got to stop," Cosette said. "I refuse to believe this level of garbage is contributing to the mission."


    AEGIS shrugged. "I just read the books."


    "And you''re an enormous nerd for it," Lia said, and I could hear her grin.


    "My thoughts...you said there was a God-King here?" I asked


    "Yeah, Vytar, fourteenth son of--"


    "Is that his house?" I pointed at the huge domed castle in the middle of everything, and AEGIS slapped my hand back down.


    "You do not point at God-King Vytar, and by extension, you do not point at...yes, his house...the Stellaris Forge. That is a high blasphemy in the cult of Altaura, and if someone sees you doing it, we will get crucified."


    "Hey, a word I understood," I said.


    "Technically they call it exolation, and it involves removing some of your organs before they hang you up, but yes, crucifixion is the jist of it."


    I just stared at her blankly for a few moments before throwing my hood back over my face.


    "This city is stupid and this world is stupid," I said. "Let''s kill that Exhuman and get this stupid thing off our Earth."


    "Something I think we can all agree with," Jack sighed.


    "Where is he? Do you think? Chariot?" Tem asked, making those near me jump because, invisible.


    "Well, there''s only one God-King in this city, right? If I made all this on a whim using my powers, I know exactly where I''d insert myself into it all."


    "Of all of my sins, I had never considered adding deicide to the list," Karu mused. "I find myself quite looking forward to it."


    "Well, we''ve got a long way to go, and I hope I don''t have to explain it to you, but he''s kind of not the most publically accessible figure," AEGIS said. "We definitely have our work cut out for us."


    "Fine by me," I said as we headed forward, towards the center of the city. In the distance, the dome and towers gleamed in monochrome glory in the morning sun.

 158. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Tower.

    As far as I was concerned, this whole situation was straight messed up.


    When I''d joined Blackett''s little crusade, not that I had much of a choice, but I thought maybe it''d be fun, help some people out, make something of myself, right?


    I was NOT signing up for walking in this freakshow video game funland.


    I thought video games were cool enough. I had a couple consoles growing up, played sports games and a lot of the big releases, shooters and stuff.


    But this Kingdom Blade shit was just way out there. This shit was for nerds who thought doing the same shit over and over again for hundreds of hours was fun, losers who got excited by bigger numbers. I tried a game like that once, one of my friends wouldn''t shut up about it so I borrowed it from him, and the first hour I played was just people talking and cutscenes. The whole friggin'' hour.


    Now, I knew Chariot had a good head on his shoulders, maybe a little young, a little green, but sharp kid, clear-headed and didn''t panic, good choice for a leader, I thought. I think we all thought that, which is probably why he got the position, not that anyone was really gunning for it. Point was, he was sharp, seemed to get on well with people and have a lot of friends even though he was Exhuman like us.


    I couldn''t imagine him wasting hundreds of hours on a game like Kingdom Blade, and from his comments, it sounded like he didn''t.


    But the body modder he''d brought, the girl with the hair that looked like cables, who''d visited the barracks that one time, from the way they talked and how he clung right to her side, with the hunter watching the two like a hawk, it was obvious they were close. Maybe even an item, wasn''t really my concern. But how a straightlaced kid like him wound up with someone like her¡­


    Well, she was a body modder, I guess. I''d heard the weird ones like to get freaky, and he was just a stupid teenager. Easy enough to imagine what he saw in her, I guess.


    It was just weird to hear her so confidently and intelligently talking about every friggin'' thing we passed like she memorized the whole damn game. She sounded sharp, but wasted it on this shit? And what the hell kind of name was AEGIS? All-caps apparently; trying to be as edgy as possible. Probably ran away from home but used her parents money to buy those expensive body mods.


    To his credit, he sighed with the rest of us every time she launched into some other story about how this-and-that inn was where such-and-such questline started, and the touching story of some girl trying to find a rare flower to remember her dead father or whatever.


    But seriously, Chariot, there''s more to a relationship than freaky, kinky sex, bro. Run! The hunter''s making goo-goo eyes at your back every five seconds, go tap that.


    Wasn''t gonna say that on an op though. Maybe when we got back. Didn''t want a breakup here in the middle of all these crazy stone-faced golems or whatever. Shit was crazy enough already.


    And besides, I had my own shit to deal with. Being Moon''s partner gave me a lot of insights into who and what she was, and I think she hated me for that. When she used her powers, our minds merged in the most messed up, uncomfortable way imaginable. There was actually some concern when she joined that she was code-X, but since she couldn''t affect anyone''s mind directly, she was given a pass as a variant physiokinetic.


    Which was good, because even though New Eden was open, the kill-on-sight order on code-Xs had not, and would never be taken down, I heard. Kinda sucked for them, but I got it, and since Moon had started sometimes crawling around in my head, I got it even more. Shit was messed up there too.


    The modder girl had been going on forever, and we just followed in a loose column, some probably listening, I definitely wasn''t. I wanted to switch off the comms channel and put on some music from my wrist holo to drown her out, but if shit went down, I''d regret it fast.


    Didn''t even need to have music for that actually.


    "Everybody get that?" Chariot confirmed.


    "Uh, no. Get what?" I asked.


    He sighed heavily, the comms putting his breath right in my ear. Kid had to stop doing that.


    "As AEGIS explained, in-game, the castle is protected by magical defenses. We need to test if there''s anything like that here. If so, our job got a lot harder."


    "You don''t think there''s any actual magic here, right?" I asked.


    To my surprise, he didn''t answer for a second. "Magic isn''t real, I know. It''s just...if it were, this is definitely where it''d be. I mean, look around."


    I pulled my hood back a little and did something other than just watch the person in front of me. We were totally surrounded by the golems as they went on their business, but they weren''t just copies of people walking around.


    They were weird copies of things walking around.


    There were old men with huge wizard hats three feet across and tall, lithe animal girls with legs that bent backwards, with tall rabbit ears that bounced with every step they took, grumbling packs of dwarves with pointed ears and thick, braided beards, guards standing at rapt attention every dozen feet, with broad shields and ornate spears. An elegantly twisting bridge crossed the broad street we were on, with flourishes and flowers set into the stonework which acted as support and a guardrail in one, dozens more of the golems walking across it above us like it was a daily commute for them.


    I heard a rumbling screech, halfway between a hawk, a lion, and an avalanche, and looked up to see a pair of armored men with long lances riding a winged serpent creature in the sky far above us.


    While the tall buildings on either side of us loomed with impossible architecture, ornate facades held up with impossibly delicate pillars which looked more like decoration than anything, and above it all, the huge castle, the Stellaris Forge, if I picked up that right.


    I realized it wasn''t just the golems walking around that the terrapath was controlling. The thing flying through the sky was just a hunk of rock, the buildings around us were structurally impossible for their materials, even the dome of the castle was too huge to ever stand on its own. Everything here was in his or her grip, standing or moving or running only because they permitted it to.


    So like Chariot was hinting, this world was already impossible. It really wasn''t too outlandish to buy the theory there might be magic at work here, too, if you forgot all about Exhumans and the world outside of here.


    The fact that there were powers which could do things like this, it gave me a real sense of inferiority about being able to zip around and smash shit real good.


    So I could understand what Chariot meant, but the fact was, this place was still straight up fucked, and I wanted to kill us an Exhuman and get the hell out. As magical or amazing as this place was, it was also sitting on a few thousand dead real humans, and that tainted everything about it.


    As we continued towards the castle, the ground now definitely sloping upwards at all times, sometimes gradually, sometimes in sweeping staircases, AEGIS suddenly grunted and fell backwards.


    Had to give the team credit, each of us had our guard up and weapons out in a second, but there was just a little stone girl also knocked to her butt, apparently just walked into AEGIS.


    "Gotta watch these rats, they like to go after your purse," AEGIS growled as she pulled herself up.


    "No, miss! My apologies," the girl said in a lilting singsong voice, jarred with the screeching of grinding stone. "I am no urchin, and I beg your forgiveness."If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Oh ho?" AEGIS said bemused.


    "Indeed, I...I am sorry for running miss, it''s just, my brother is in trouble, and I needed to find a guard, but there are none to be found. Please, miss, can you help me?"


    I spun around and sure enough, the guards who had been stationed seemingly everywhere before were nowhere to be seen. It wasn''t like we''d wandered into a ghetto, it was just...none were around, almost conveniently.


    "Oh, I remember this quest," AEGIS said.


    "A random quest in the middle of the Empire District?" Lia asked. "I don''t remember this."


    "Hey, let''s do it. I think we need the experience," AEGIS said, seeming excited.


    "Okay, time out, Chariot. Is your girl here bananas?" I interjected. "She thinks we''re going to do a quest and get experience for it? And then what, we all level up and buy new equipment until we can kill the boss? This is the girl we''re following?"


    The group seemed about fifty-fifty split on staring at me like I was a jackass and at her like she was incompetent.


    "Uh, I meant experience in fighting and killing some golems where it won''t cause a huge panic in the town. You do know this isn''t a video game, right?" AEGIS asked.


    Oh. I was just a jackass then.


    "All right then, lead on," I said shaking my head.


    We followed the panicked little girl as she led us down some back-alleys, making abrupt twists and turns until we were fully lost, with nothing to go on but the grey all around us and the impossibly-animated billowing of her stone hair and dress as she pressed forward, urging us constantly that we were nearly there.


    Finally we broke into an empty lot. I guess it was kind of a dump, but the fact that it was the same plain stone as everything else made it hard to tell. There were a number of kids here, and one, presumably her brother was lying on the ground.


    "Neat," said AEGIS. She pivoted and lifted her leg in the air like a ballerina, and her hips glowed with yellow pulsing spinning circles and the faint roar of of an engine as she slammed the leg downward into the little girl''s head, exploding the child into a shower of stone like she''d been cracked with a rocket-powered sledgehammer.


    "Holy shit, AEGIS!" Chariot said, backing away from the legs and bottom of the dress which remained. "You just murdered that girl! What the fuck?" He sounded pissed.


    She rolled her eyes with enormous effort. "That wasn''t a girl, it was a golem, okay?"


    "Still, Jesus--"


    "And it wasn''t even a golem of a girl, it was a monster in the game, a Dhavari, a shape-shifting flesh-eater. See?" she pointed at the others who were spitting and hissing and crawling on all fours now. Or...all...eight. More limbs seemed to be emerging from them, and they became more spidery and less childlike, their faces splitting down the middle to make room for more eyes and fangs. It was actually pretty horrifying, and I was glad it was all just stone.


    "Okay what the actual fuck," Chariot said, now in the proper mindset.


    "I am not certain if I should be impressed that someone devised such a monster, or concerned that this is the idea of recreational activity for you and Lia," Karu said, carefully folding her robe and placing it off to the side, her weapons thrumming.


    "So now we can fight these things," AEGIS said, ignoring Karu entirely. "Figure out how they work a little bit, without alerting the general public."


    I had to admit I was a little impressed. Maybe I''d underestimated her in assuming she just played games and was a huge nerd. I had definitely underestimated the level of body mods she had going on. Golem or otherwise, she just kicked a statue apart with one leg and didn''t even flinch.


    The child-spider monsters moved towards us which was like a starter pistol firing for the group. Everyone moved at once, spreading out between the targets, weapons at the ready.


    Well, most everyone. I had no idea where Tem was, and Moon and Jack were just standing back there.


    "Not going to fight, Jack?" I called, launching myself forward.


    "I have a knife. They''re made of rock."


    I laughed as I sailed into one, and felt stone fangs bounce off me, sending it flying away with multiplied force. Before it could land and get its feet under it, I followed and smashed it, magnifying the impact force and channelling the half of it that should have gone into me into it instead. The effect was as explosive and satisfying as I expected, with none of the gore that usually accompanied smashing something that hard.


    So I guess this place wasn''t all that bad.


    Chariot seemed to be having a lot of trouble, as was the hunter, Karu, to my surprise. She''d started by unloading scattergun fire into it, which just left a slightly charred circle where the laser blast hit, and then followed with a shotgun, swearing when the pellets bounced off the stone, chipping it if anything, and came back at her armor.


    One had taken a full blast from one of Tem''s lasers and was moving sluggishly, glowing yellow-hot, when another even larger laser appeared from above and sustained fire until nothing remained but a black circle and a pool of slag. I shook my head at how ridiculous Tem was when unleashed. Straight up melting her enemies with the only look on her face being a sidelong glance at Chariot to see if he was watching.


    "Athan, freeze!" I heard a girl''s voice in the comms. He did, instantly, as though on instinct, and in the next second, there was a boom like a thunderbolt struck directly overhead, and one of the golem monsters had a hole in it a foot wide.


    "Nice shot, Lia," he said with a proud grin as he moved to engage one of the remaining spider things.


    "Are you not concerned about alerting the whole kingdom to our presence?" Karu said annoyed.


    "Sure I am, but I had to test how my rifle stood up to these things. I''d say, pretty well."


    "Where are you, even?" Athan asked.


    "Oh, we''re around," Taglock answered evasively. "Following you as we need to."


    "Very helpful. Definitely the answer I was looking for." Athan slashed bitterly at his opponent, hitting it with his blades over and over with all the effectiveness one could expect trying to burn a rock to death, if one wasn''t as outrageous as Tem.


    It leapt at him, and he wrestled with it in both arms before they fell to the ground together in a heap of writhing stone legs.


    Tem screamed and the air began to ripple, and then Jack appeared next to her and they were both gone, taking the tearing air with them. AEGIS leapt forward and snapped off of a couple of the long limbs, but suddenly the fighting stopped, and Chariot was just trapped under a still statue.


    "Well that''s cool," he said. "There''s something in them where their heart should be. I jammed it full of current and it died and just became rock again."


    "Really?" Lia sounded interested. "What''s in there?"


    The monsters now all broken or dead, AEGIS cracked open the chest of the one astride Chariot, her shoulders thrumming and dancing with circles of lights while she pulled the thing apart. Inside was what looked like broken pieces of white glass.


    "Shattered gemstone, cracked from the heat differential caused by your electricity," she mused. "Give me a second." She picked up the largest intact piece and held it to her eye for a long time. "I can barely make it out, but it''s there. Crazy. It''s like a programming language nobody''s ever invented."


    "What is?" Lia asked.


    "The gem we found inside the monster," AEGIS clarified verbally. "It''s fundamentally like a data encoding crystal. Remember those, Athan? Not quartz, but same concept. But at the same time, totally not. It''s not like there''s a port inside these things to interface with it...it must be interfacing with the Exhuman''s powers directly. Or...hmm, how to put this. Maybe his or her power is to be able to autonomously run any golem which has a crystal like this in it? Such a crazy combination of tech and powers."


    "Almost like a technopath," Karu said frowning. "Perhaps this Exhuman has been misclassified and this situation is far more dangerous than we originally perceived."


    "I don''t know," Chariot said, getting up as I offered him an arm since everyone else seemed focused on studying. "Thanks. I''m just happy I can do something against them. If they were just solid stone, I don''t think I''d be any use at all."


    "Oh, don''t sell yourself short, I can think of a few uses--" AEGIS said, wrapping an arm around him. He jumped. "Oh shoot, still hot. Sorry!"


    "Regardless," Taglock''s voice said, clear and confident, "I think we have learned something awfully valuable here, thanks to AEGIS. They can be killed, aim for the heart...and something more. Something potentially even more valuable, I''d wager."


    "Something more," Lia said out loud while AEGIS looked pleased with herself and Chariot looked annoyed.


    Everyone paused for a moment to consider Taglock''s riddle. Everyone except me, that shit was stupid. I just wanted to blow this place up and bring down all these stupid impossible buildings and--


    "Impossible buildings," I repeated. Everyone else was still deep in thought. Had I really figured out Taglock''s puzzle before all these smarty-pants?


    I mean, not that I cared, but I''d take ''em where I could.


    "What I think Mister Lock is trying to say is...the golems ain''t the only thing which is being held up by the Exhuman around here. The buildings, especially that building," I pointed at the castle, and AEGIS slapped my hand back down to my side with impressive force and speed. "Something''s keeping them all upright too."


    "Which means," Lia stumbled in, "these data encoding crystals must exist in the buildings too and are keeping them up. Everything here must have a ''heart'', not just the golems."


    "Bingo," said Taglock, not specifying for which of us, which made me feel just a little robbed.


    "That''s something we can use," Chariot said, his face serious. I liked that face on him, it meant the gears were turning, and whatever was going to come out, it was good. "Even if we can''t get into Stellaris Forge, we can bring it down."


    "Well, I had packed quite a bit of explosive ordnance for that eventuality," Karu said, sounding a little defeated. "But now I suppose it is still the most effective weaponry I possess against the golems." She frowned. "I wish that Deej had come, his ability to shatter specific substances is nonpareil."


    "We''ll make do," Chariot said. "Okay, this was a very useful stop, but we need to keep moving. We''ve got a magical barrier to test."

 159. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Athan.

    Well, it wasn''t magic, but it was cool as hell.


    An almost-invisible barrier of suspended dust, made completely immobile by the Exhuman''s powers. Trying to walk into it was both apparently again high heresy against the cult of Altaura, but also extremely painful, like trying to push myself against a wall of thumbtacks.


    The barrier was a dome which completely surrounded the castle, apparently even continuing underground because of some attack by some mole-people or some shit at some point.


    I loved AEGIS and her knowledge here was invaluable, more useful than a head full of video games had any right to be, but damn she could go on. Every time she opened her mouth, I saw everyone on the team pre-emptively ready to tune her out already, and considered ordering her to offer mission-critical information only, except that I could already tell she was holding herself back quite a bit. She wasn''t explaining every building or golem we walked past, and she wasn''t dumb and blind, she knew her audience didn''t care.


    But still, Jesus, give us a break.


    "So, allegedly, the barrier is produced by the will of Vytar himself and is impenetrable, but there''s a PVP questline you can do to sneak through if you''re from the Zilwraith faction."


    "Can we stop using proper nouns?" I could ask that much at least.


    "Sure. Hostile faction. Whatever. Anyway, you discover that the barrier is maintained by The Faithful of...I mean, by a bunch of priests in a temple near here. They hold daily rites which keep the barrier up. We can disrupt the rites...which won''t work because they''re done in the morning and we missed them, or destroy their holy relics, which is hard because they''re in vaults under the church, or we kill the priests."


    Karu frowned. "Kill a priest?"


    "Kill a golem programmed to think it''s a priest," AEGIS clarified.


    "You have no problem terminating something programmed to think it is something else?" Karu asked leadingly, which made AEGIS blanch.


    "It''s just a hunk of rock," AEGIS said plainly.


    "And you are merely a hunk of metal."


    "Okay ladies knock it off," I said. "That''s an order. Keep your squabbles for the afterparty."


    Karu gave me an unnecessarily sharp salute while AEGIS gave me a ''yes sir'' which involved rolling her eyes. But they did drop it.


    "Between the three options, I think relics sounds easiest. The priests could be anywhere, and the rites isn''t an option as you said. So let''s go smash some stone shit, huh?"


    "Hmm," said AEGIS. "We are disguised as pilgrims, and the church is a holy site we''d allegedly be interested in visiting, but you guys will never pass if you don''t know all the proper responses and stuff."


    "Well, teach us what you can while we walk," I said.


    I learned a lot on the way over to the tall, thin church. Namely, I learned that the game developers of Kingdom Blade had way too much time on their hands, and there was no possible way we''d learn even a small amount of the crap we needed to pass as convincing pilgrims.


    "Plan two then," Lia proposed. "Go in, close the door, don''t let anyone escape, and kill everything between you and the relics.


    "I hate how much this makes you seem like a sociopath," I said. AEGIS was about to respond but I cut her off. "But yes they''re just golems, I am aware. It just seems horrible that Plan A is trap and kill everyone in a church, regardless of who or what they are."


    "I did call it plan two¡­" she complained quietly.


    Inwardly, I wondered if the golems felt fear or pain. Karu''s words, while probably just intended as an attack on AEGIS'' character had lodged in my head in a weird place. If this were a town of robots, I still wouldn''t have any particular problem with destroying them if necessary. But what if it were a town of AEGISes? That was obviously wrong, but where was the line?


    The answer was the oldest one in military history. Don''t think about it.


    We did a lap around the church and left at least one member outside each entrance, so we could all go in at once and prevent anyone from escaping and alerting the rest of the town. Jack counted off the number of golems he saw inside, but warned that there were, of course, catacombs under the church complete with skeletal monsters, because this was a video game world and why not just put a dungeon full of skeletons under a church.


    When I told Tem to stay with Jack at one entrance, she kept following me anyway.


    "Tem, remember how I told you that you make my job and life harder by not listening to me?"


    "But I want to be with you!"


    "Sit. Stay. Good girl."


    It took another couple of tries before she stayed, including her trying to follow me invisibly once. Girl was a damn liability.


    At the next door, I left Tower by himself, but he spoke up and said Moon needed to be with him. After dealing with Tem, I really didn''t care anymore. As I left, I saw her climbing into the cage on his back and strapping herself in. I didn''t know what that meant, but I was curious as hell to see her in action.


    Finally we were ready. All at once, we pushed through the huge heavy stone doors, closed them behind us and...well¡­


    It was a massacre, there really wasn''t any other way to put it. Golems praying quietly, priests conferring in corners, offering advice and blessings to their flock, small groups of golem ''families'' sitting together on the pews.


    And then we swept in and there was just rumbled screaming and the shattering of stone and panic as the golems fled from the threats nearest them straight into the arms of the ones further away. I put my hand on what would have been a child, and she just stopped and looked at me, like I was reassuring her.


    I just needed the contact to force electricity into her to shatter her gemstone heart, and she froze, fell over, and broke in two.


    Not one of them fought back, they just ran or panicked until one of us got there and put them down. Karu was standing in the very center of the church, arms at her sides, looking up at the effigy of Altaura, screaming panicked golems bumping into her as they ran past, doing nothing to snap her from her reverie.


    "They''re just golems," I said to myself, but knowing it would carry over comms. I hoped it reached her. The worst of it was the vaguely-human screaming. I just tried to kill them as fast as I could so the screaming would stop. A group huddled in the pews, watched with horror on their stone faces as one by one I stopped their hearts, pleading for mercy.


    It didn''t take long. An organized pack of trained killers against a room full of innocents. Finally the screaming stopped, and I stepped through the rubble of their bodies and put a hand on Karu''s shoulder, which was stiff.


    "They''re just golems. We''re here to stop this," I said.


    "I understand," she said flatly, as much life in her voice as in the rubble under my feet. "I was merely conserving ammunition. It seemed you had the slaughter well in hand."


    I''d also forgotten to see what Tower and Moon were doing in the moment, but when I looked over, she was just sitting in the contraption on his back, looking around with an air of indifference. He seemed fine as ever, apparently better at disassociating the golems with humans than Karu or I were.


    "Catacombs here," AEGIS said simply, pointing towards a narrow stairway which Tower might fit down sideways if he took Moon off his back. "Should be...four relics down there, I think. The Harp of¡­" she looked at the disinterest immediately spreading on our faces and stopped. "A harp, a globe, a chalice and a book, Jesus."


    "How huge and twisting are these catacombs?" I asked.


    "Reasonably so. Probably also poor comms quality down there."


    "Great. Well, Jack, you''re on coordination duty. You can move between groups and act as a relay if comms aren''t getting through, and direct anyone who''s lost. I assume you don''t have any problem with getting lost?"


    "None at all," he said with a nod.


    "Tower...you might just stay up here, buddy."


    "Thank God." He''d been eyeing the small doorway and his relief was obvious.


    "Moon...should you...can you come with somebody else?"Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Her face hardened as the group focused attention on her from casual disinterest to discomfort. I had to stop doing that to her, but it wasn''t like I was trying to treat her differently from anyone else.


    "Are they going to be able to carry me?" she asked.


    "Okay, well, forget the powers then. You can just come with me. Karu, AEGIS, Tem, you''ll all be splitting up and spreading out so we can tackle all four relics in parallel. Yes, Tem, you will not be partnered with me. Jack says there''s skeleton monsters down there, but AEGIS says they''re pretty weak so we should be fine split up."


    People nodded around me. "You''ll be okay if you run into a monster, Karu?"


    "Do you assume me incapable because I would not slaughter innocents in cold blood?"


    "Ah, no. I just meant, I know your loadout isn''t so great against them."


    "Oh." She shuffled awkwardly. "I have realized that while small arms fire is ineffective, concussive force is. I shall be fine."


    "Okay. Stay safe in there, kill whatever golems you encounter, stay in touch as best you can, and if you get lost or run into trouble, uh, find somewhere safe and lie down. Jack will collect you. We keep going until Jack has confirmed all four relics are out, and then he''ll start collecting us. All clear?"


    All clear. We headed down the stairs and they wound down and down, dropping us into pitch black long before the stairway reached the bottom. Finally we emerged into a chamber, or rather, I stumbled into it when the stairs ended, and like the others, I fumbled for my lights. Small circles of light danced in front of us in the darkness until I heard a cracking hiss, and the whole room glowed with an unnatural green. Karu dropped the flare on the ground, and we saw the walls around us, rough stone with bones embedded in them symmetrically, artistically, like this place not just built for the dead but of them.


    "Well this is creepy as shit," AEGIS summarized. "I don''t like the idea of skeletons walking around in the gloom down here where they blend in with the walls."


    "At least you can see in the dark," I said.


    "Oh, is this a problem?" Tem asked, and closed her eyes and uplifted her hands for a second. Suddenly, sourceless, soft light filled every corner I could see. It was a little disconcerting that Tem didn''t seem to realize darkness was a problem for people but I guess her relationship with light was fundamentally different from ours.


    Also her relationship with normal human thoughts, but that was something else entirely.


    "Okay. If you don''t mind, I''ll take the flare. Karu and AEGIS have night vision, Jack doesn''t see in the traditional sense, and Tem can light up everything around her, so nobody should be fumbling in the dark. I have my swords of course but..." I glanced at the skeletal walls. "I''d rather not have a flickering light source."


    Everyone agreed, but nobody seemed happy about it, especially AEGIS. We hesitated as long as we could, but eventually couldn''t put off walking out of Tem''s luminance and into the darkness any longer.


    Moon followed me as we split off from the others and struck off at random. If we didn''t have Jack to coordinate our actions, this might have been really difficult, but as it was, I wasn''t worried at all about getting lost. The hard part about mazes was that even if you were physically close to your goal, it might still take hours of wandering to get there, and that assumed taking the most direct route. With Jack around, we could cross walls as much as we liked. It was definitely cheating, and I was a big fan.


    The other reason I wasn''t too concerned was, at the end of the day, this was a dungeon in a video game. It was designed to be beaten, and having players run around lost forever wasn''t fun. This was also a cheaty way of looking at the problem, but it was true.


    So I was pretty at ease about the whole thing from a capability perspective, but we were wandering dark tunnels by flare-light. It was still a little unnerving, and the way Moon kept slipping in and out of the green glow made me uncomfortable.


    Really wasn''t anything for it but for me to talk to her like I''d planned. Maybe without a group focusing on her, I could get her to open up a little and start to know my subordinate.


    "Hi Moon. How are you doing?"


    "I am fit for service."


    "I meant, more in general. We just met, and I''d like to know who I''m working with a little better."


    We crunched along in general silence for a few seconds before she replied.


    "Is that an order?"


    "No. Just trying to be friendly."


    "I see."


    Yeesh, a little difficult to talk to I guess. I was going to let her go back to silence when she spoke up again.


    "My name is Kaori Ikeda. I am twenty-two years old. My birthday is February fifth. My blood type is A. My measurements are, from top to bottom--"


    "Okay, that''s not what I meant, though I appreciate you talking to me. I meant, you, not like, a list of information I could pull up on your file. I''m interested in who you are."


    "Would you prefer a synopsis of my history?"


    "Uh, that would be better, I guess. Just a sec."


    Something moved in the shadows in front of me, and I directed the light on my chest towards it. A moving, living skeleton, with a crystalline heart inside its ribs. It looked a lot more convincing when depicted in stone than the other golems we''d run into. It made a noise like a faint hiss and leapt at me. Calm as anything, Moon took a few steps back to let me fight uninhibited in the narrow hallway.


    It wasn''t much of a fight. I channeled four blades in the air and kept them positioned through the thing''s heart as it moved, and after several seconds, the gem cracked from the temperature change and it froze, fell over, and broke into hundreds of stone bones indistinguishable from those already lurking in the walls.


    "So, historical synopsis?" I said, trying not to roll my ankle on the bones underfoot as we continued forward.


    "I was born in Kanagawa Prefecture East Hospital at 4:23pm on 02/05/2229 to Ichiro and Hanako Ikeda. I weighed around 2,200 grams, being born slightly premature--"


    "Okay, stop again."


    "Another skeleton?"


    "No, you''re just being impossible. Are you messing with me?"


    "Slightly. But I also see no reason to answer your questions."


    "You''re not at all interested in having a proper relationship? Like, if you just want to keep everything professional, I get it, but then just say that."


    "I very much doubt I will have a relationship with you."


    "Well, you don''t have to phrase it like that, but sure. So why not tell me about yourself?"


    "I simply fail to see how you knowing my personal history has anything to do with our ability to have a relationship."


    "You don''t think your past matters?"


    "I think my past is in my past," she said flatly.


    Okay. She didn''t like being the center of attention, and she didn''t like discussing her past. Good to know.


    "---sst here----tar---"


    My ear crackled with an unknown, incomprehensible voice.


    "Just---moment." Jack said, his voice getting more static even in the short time he was speaking. Obviously moving away from me and towards the mystery first speaker. After a few more moments he spoke again.


    "Chariot? Do you copy?"


    "I hear you, four-by-five. What''s the word?"


    "Karu located the book relic in a small chamber. She was able to destroy it successfully. I found another relic chamber based on the physical attributes of the first, and steered AEGIS towards it, I was unable to destroy the globe on my own."


    "Good work. Please keep in contact with the rest of the team as you have been."


    "Wilco," he said and cut out as he moved away again.


    "Well, if we were to hypothetically have a social relationship," I said back to Moon again, "what type of conversation do you think would be productive towards that end?"


    Again, she just walked behind me for a few seconds without responding, making me feel like she hadn''t even heard me. At long last she spoke up. "What is your favorite animal?"


    "Dogs," I said without hesitating. "I love dogs."


    "And why is that?"


    "They''re smart, fluffy, loyal, everything you could ask for in an animal."


    "Do you consider any of your own characteristics or personality as being particularly dog-like?"


    I paused to think for a second. "I don''t know, maybe? I like to think I''m smart and loyal. I would definitely do anything I could to protect my friends. And I guess I''m plenty fluffy," I poked at my mess of brown hair.


    "I suppose so."


    "So what''s your favorite animal?"


    "Are you familiar with dolphins?"


    "Wasn''t that a type of whale?"


    "Similar."


    "So you like swimming?"


    "We are discussing dolphins and their attributes, not mine."


    It felt somewhat like talking to a very competent Tem, or a very calm Mage. If things weren''t worded precisely, she wouldn''t go, but it wasn''t because she was stupid or angry...just...what, particular? Like she enjoyed being difficult.  "Okay. Then what attributes of a dolphin in particular do you like?"


    Again with the silence. That was a little annoying too.


    "When oceanic mammals were on the verge of extinction, most every effort was made to keep their populations alive. One of the unexpected issues was that as population density dwindled, more dolphins were growing up isolated from others. By nature dolphins were social animals. Do you understand?"


    I nodded, having no idea where she was going with this.


    "Dolphins who grew up normally and then found themselves isolated could not cope with the loss and would beach or drown themselves, exacerbating the population decline. However, those which grew up isolated were content with such a lifestyle, and soon it was only individuals such as that which remained. Again, do you understand?"


    "Yes, but--"


    "Eventually, dolphins changed as a species, becoming almost entirely asocial creatures, and then went extinct because no dolphin wanted to associate with any other dolphin, even for the necessary act of reproduction. To be sure, it is humans which drove dolphins to the edge which scarred them, but it was the nature of being a creature which never should had been which cause their final decline."


    Well this was all kinds of worrying. And this was her favorite animal, huh?


    "If you''re a bit of a loner, I think that''s okay," I said, trying to be reassuring without patronizing. "In fact, I think humans have a bit of the opposite problem, too many of us, which just creates problems, like wiping out all the whales and dolphins."


    "I am not sure you were listening. I was not talking about myself. I was talking about dolphins."


    I sighed enormously.


    "Okay, then what part of the story you just told me about dolphins relates to why they are your favorite animal personally?"


    "No part of it. I simply think they were cute."


    "You have got to be fucking with me. There is no other option."


    "Eyes forward, Chariot. There appears to be a relic, and a number of enemies, besides. I will await in the hallway until you are finished."


    She was right. We''d wandered pretty much in a straight line from the entrance, and entered into a huge open chamber with tall bone-studded walls, with a small number of skeletons standing, seemingly on guard around a stone altar holding a stone chalice.


    But that''s not what drew my eyes. Behind the altar, standing thirty feet tall, looming out of the darkness with broad wings made of stone and a crystal heart the size of a desk was a huge skeleton like nothing I''d ever seen in the world. Dozens of sharp teeth, spiraling horns, claws half the size of my body.


    Standing, staring at me, and making a throaty, guttural, rumbling roar which made the floor tremble and loose stones tremble on the ground, the stone skeleton of a dragon rose to its feet and stretched its wings.

 160. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Athan.

    I had strategically retreated into the hallway and dispatched the skeletons with ease, but the huge fangs of the dragon were snapping at the doorway even now with so much force that it was gouging deep slashes in the wall.


    "Jack, do you copy?" I held my finger to my comms, trying to pick anything out of the silence. "Jack?"


    "--her--"


    "Must be off with someone else," I said to Moon.


    "It would seem the reasonable course of action is to lie down together," she said.


    I felt my forehead twisting into knots as I stared at her plain, apparently completely unembarrassed face after such a proposal. And of course, she was content to stand there silently despite the obvious question on my face.


    "Okay, I''ll ask. Why is that the reasonable course of action?"


    "Because you instructed us that, in the event we needed to signal Jack and could not, we would retreat to a safe location and lie down." She blinked slowly at me. "Was I mistaken?"


    "Did you have to phrase it in such a bizarre way? Talking like that is just asking for a misunderstanding."


    "It was a joudan."


    "Joudan?"


    "It was just a joke."


    Maybe it was just the inconsistent green light of the flare, but I could swear the corners of her lips were ever so slightly raised. I wasn''t sure my situation with Karu and AEGIS really needed another girl who was willing to make jokes about laying with me, but it was a bit of a relief that this uptight girl could, when she wanted to, and in her own bizarre way, make a joke.


    I mean, from her strange demeanor and the whole thing about dolphins, I was beginning to legitimately wonder if she was another fundamentally broken person like Tem. So in a way, being able to joke like that was a much larger relief than it should have been.


    "You seem to be lost in thought. Perhaps you did not understand my joke."


    "No, I got it," I sighed.


    "It is polite to laugh when someone makes a joke, I believe."


    "Ha. Now let''s lay down and get Jack over here."


    We swept aside some bones and rock and made a comfortable spot on the floor and laid on our backs next to each other. The dragon kept snapping away at the mouth of the tunnel, and the ceiling danced eerily in the green light, the small circles from our chest-mounted lights the only islands of consistency.


    I was thinking of wording things properly, and after a minute spoke into the air above us. "At the risk of another dolphin discussion, can I ask you what other kinds of conversations you think would be useful to have for two people like us who are beginning a relationship?"


    "I think it is important to discuss and set boundaries, establish if and how many children you want, and compare life goals to determine their compatibility."


    "What?" I said looking at her. She just kept staring at the ceiling, her hair a black pool under her.


    "Joudan. You asked about two people beginning a relationship."


    "Has anyone ever told you that you are impossible to talk to?"


    "Your statement is paradoxical. If I were impossible to talk to, nobody would be able to tell me that. If someone told me that, I must, by definition, be possible to talk to."


    She looked over at me and again, I could almost see a smile on her face. "So no, nobody has ever told me that."


    "Well you absolutely are, paradox be damned. Anyway, Miss Joudan, I was being serious in my question."


    She didn''t answer for a minute. "What is your opinion on being an Exhuman?"


    I was kind of floored by how she''d jumped from talking abstractly about animals to one of the most defining aspects of our lives. But it wasn''t a bad question.


    "I hate it, obviously."


    "What do you hate about it?"


    "I hate that everyone hates me just for being Exhuman. That sucks, obviously. But more than that, I think I hate that it''s so easy to take someone''s life." I turned back towards the ceiling. "I killed twenty-one XPCA when they tried to arrest me, and I didn''t even fight back. My powers killed them for me. I just sat there on the ground and people died around me without me lifting a finger."


    "It gave me this...hope, almost, but backwards," I said, reliving the memory.


    It seemed strange that I could sit here in the dark surrounded by bones and skulls and recount the memories so clearly and painlessly. It had been so long since I''d touched these memories and I''d been through a lot since then; I guess there were only so many thoughts I could carry with me which could stab at my heart at a time. Kind of a strange solace, there.


    "I felt like, if I wanted to fight, I could have killed them all so easily. I mean, twenty-one, and I did nothing at all. If I''d tried, I could do ten times that, right? A hundred times? How many XPCA could you get through before they gave up and left you alone? But then you have to realize that the more you kill, the more dangerous you are to them, the more they have to stop you, the more they''ll throw at you, until they finally beat you down, thousands of bodies later."


    I lapsed into silence and let her respond if she wanted. I was still surprised when she did.


    "I have had no such experience, though from what I have seen and heard, that seems to be very common. For what little it is worth, I am glad you chose not to succumb to that ''backwards hope''."


    "Thanks. Me too. What do you think?"


    "I think many things, though most typically about whatever situation is directly in front of me."


    Sigh. "What do you think about being an Exhuman?"


    "I find it unpleasant. I wish my powers were more like yours or Tower''s. It is difficult to protect others with mine being as they are."


    I was tempted to ask what they were, but was too tempted by the other bait in the sentence. "Is protecting others something important to you?"


    She didn''t hesitate. "Protecting others is possibly everything to me."


    "Yeah. Me too."


    I heard her move and when I looked over she was staring at my face with a little more concentration and emotion than I''d seen on it before, like she was a mass-fab trying to dissimilate me with her mind.


    "Are you perhaps making fun of me?" she asked at length.


    "No."


    "Have you also perhaps lost someone very important to you in your life?"


    I looked at her small dark eyes and saw them flickering across my face, more lively and interested in what I was saying now than I''d seen her about anything.


    "No, not...in the traditional sense. I lost my family when I became Exhuman, was taken away from them obviously. One of the people on this team died, and that was my fault, but she died because I was trying too hard to protect everyone. I fought until I collapsed, and she died after that. I should have saved my strength more."


    She shook her head. "I do not know that I would have done differently, though I doubt that is any consolation."


    "Do you mind if...if I ask if you lost someone?"


    "I do not mind you asking any question you feel like asking."


    "Did you lose someone?"


    "I never specified I would answer your question, however."


    She turned back to the ceiling, regaining her normal dispassion. Girl was absolutely impossible, but I guess given the sensitive nature of the topic, even I couldn''t be annoyed.


    My comms crackled painfully. "--ot. Do you ---"


    "Jack?" I said and sat up. "Copy one-by-five, Jack. Do you copy?"


    "Chariot? Do you copy?"


    "Loud and clear now. We have a situation up ahead."


    "Is it urgent? There''s another situation with AEGIS."The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "What''s wrong?"


    "She''s having an anxiety attack, it seems. I am trying to console her and get her to the surface, but she is simply demanding I get her a light. I am attempting to coordinate getting Tem to her, as apparently my flashlight is insufficient."


    "Okay, go handle that. We''ll be fine here. Thanks, Jack."


    "Wilco. Over and out."


    And the comms went dead again, leaving us with just the groaning of the dragon and the grating of it clawing at the door slowly. I stood up and dusted myself off.


    "Well, I''m not a big fan, but this skeleton shouldn''t be any harder to dispatch than the others, fundamentally," I said.


    "Only if you discount all of its physical attributes such as greater strength, increased speed, longer reach, and improved resilience," Moon offered.


    "Well, yeah, obviously you''d discount all of those. What do I look like, an amateur?"


    "Then you should have no trouble at all. Return when you are successful."


    I took a few steps down the hall away from the uncooperative girl and ran into my first problem. The dragon was right freaking there, sniffing around and chomping at the doorway like a cat trying to get into a mousehole. How was I going to get out?


    This was stupid. I was stupid for trying it, I knew. But I felt I had to, because the alternative was lying there and waiting for help while AEGIS had a panic attack. What brought it on, I didn''t know. I didn''t know she could have panic attacks. I didn''t want to know, didn''t want to think about it, there was nothing I could do to help except not take up any more of Jack''s time.


    So hell, let''s go kill a dragon. Couldn''t be worse than being alone with my thoughts for a few minutes, right?


    That was probably a huge red flag I was ignoring. Sure it wouldn''t come to bite me in the ass later.


    I threw all my swords in the dragon''s face, and it reeled backwards, pretty unhappy about blades suddenly appearing inside of its head, which was a lot smarter than the skeletons I''d fought down here.


    That was also probably a huge red flag, but I ignored it and took advantage of the dragon''s vacancy to waltz into the room. My objective was clear, either lay hands on the thing to pour some volts into its heart, or stay within range long enough to keep my swords on it like I''d done with the skeletons. The rest of my kit, lightning bulbs, magnetism, EMP, all seemed pretty useless right now. Just had to beat a damn rock.


    Shoulda brought some paper.


    It screeched and jumped, bounding off a wall and flying at me with claws extended. I ran forward and rolled under, grateful I''d gotten a quick dip in the regenerator before Cosette okay''d me for the mission.


    Still, the thing landed behind me and I almost lost my footing from the ground shaking as it slammed against the floor. Before it could spring up again, I was already moving, getting between its legs and slashing at the heart above me. I put five, six, seven blades overlapping each other and saw the huge crystal grow red hot.


    And then the thing just stood up on its hind legs and pulled itself out of range. It flapped its wings once with a roar, and then slashed at me with its front claws.


    I had to move again, and only barely avoided the talons raking through the air. It didn''t give me any rest though, and as soon as I wasn''t threatening it anymore, it slammed back to the ground and gave chase, its huge strides catching up to me in a moment.


    It had a ton of momentum and I didn''t though. I slid my feet to a halt and threw my weight backwards, hanging just on the edge of falling over, and then staggered a step backwards. In a moment, I had turned around and was running right towards it. It tried to squish me, but its speed was too great and its strides too long, and its awkward shuffle to engage the right foot on the right step only tangled its legs momentarily.


    Long enough for me to jump and grab ahold of a large gap in the pelvic bone. Immediately, I forced as much power through my arms into the rock as possible, forcing it up the spine, towards the heart.


    I didn''t know if it could feel the current, or just objected to me dangling off its butt in a general sense, but before it even slowed, it spun and crashed ass-first into a wall, slamming me against it with all the force of a draconic backside and I fell to the floor, seeing stars. I was directly under it, so I had a moment before it reacquired me, but rising to my feet was harder than it should have been. I stumbled and leaned on the wall, seeing the claw coming too late.


    I flew off my feet and landed painfully on the ground, and the claw raked over me, tearing parallel gouges in the stone wall. In an instant, the thing which crashed into me was up and pulling at my arm, Moon helping me to my feet.


    "Are you an idiot?" she said, sounding calm despite being out of breath and the sheer distaste in her voice. "What were you thinking? I thought--" She looked down at our hands, entwined together.


    "Oh, damn," she said simply, and then collapsed, her eyes fluttering shut before she even hit the ground.


    "Moon? Moon! MOON!" I screamed at her body. No time. The dragon was coming around. I picked her up and was happy to find her surprisingly light, despite the round bottom.


    "You are kidding me," I heard my voice say. "My bottom is not that round, and you are a deviant of the finest caliber."


    "Moon?" I said, stealing a glance down, even as the monster crashed into the wall where we''d just been.


    "Hai. I''m here." She definitely said it, in my voice, but not with her body, it was completely out, and the only flapping of its lips were the result of my inexpert attempts to get both of us towards the exit.


    "How are you talking to me?" I shouted. I heard the dragon stomping around but somehow it still hadn''t caught up to us, and couldn''t chance a look.


    "You can chance a look. Look back."


    I gave only the most fleeting glance out of the corner of my eye, expecting stone dragon death to be bearing down on us, but instead it was several feet back, approaching cautiously. When I looked back again, I saw why.


    I had another torso back there, sprouted from my hips and facing backwards. Also, indistinct, faintly purple, and transparent, but definitely mine. It was wielding a set of lightning blades which were similarly purple and transparent, slashing at the dragon whenever it approached. The swords were cooler than mine. Something simultaneously glowing, transparent, and insubstantial was sort of beautiful.


    I understood this was Moon''s power. She considered it ''ghosting'' another, as in the possession sort. When she touched someone for longer than a few seconds, her consciousness slipped into their body and out of her own. While ghosting, she had access to the physical capabilities of her host and oh God, how did I know all of this suddenly, I realized.


    "I didn''t do it on purpose," she said flatly, her words in my voice coming out of my shadowy echo''s mouth. I knew that too. In fact, going through my memories, it seemed like I suddenly knew a lot about Moon.


    "Stay out of my memories," she warned.


    "Right, sorry," I said, but the damage was done. I''d peeked and she was pissed, though this hardly manifested on her...her my face in any way I could discern. I turned to face the dragon instead.


    "Are you attempting to answer my question?" she asked.


    "What question!" I slashed at the beast, adding my light blades to her shadows. It slowly bore down on us, keeping its heart out of range while its talons slashed out menacingly.


    "I asked if you were an idiot, and the only reason I could think for why you are turning to fight now is that you were trying to answer yes."


    "It would have been--" I grunted as I sidestepped a claw, pulling Moon''s body to my chest just in time as the ground acquired a new dragon-foot shaped crater. "--much faster just to tell me to run, if that''s what you meant!"


    "Then run?"


    Despite having physically attached herself to me now, her mannerisms weren''t exactly growing on me.


    As soon as I saw an opening, I ran again.


    "No, not that way," she said. I was running towards the exit.


    "What the hell else am I supposed to run for?"


    "The chalice. I had assumed you were smart enough to try to kill that instead of an entire dragon. My apologies on overestimating you, I shall refrain from doing so in the future."


    "Is it just me, or do you get mouthier when you ghost someone?"


    "I borrow my host''s physical attributes. Apparently speaking constantly is one of yours. Please blame yourself."


    I waited for the next attack and bounded out of its way at a harsh angle, cutting towards the chalice, Moon slashing at the dragon and throwing fistfulls of lightning bulbs with both hands to keep it at bay. It was a good thing she was slowing it down so much, because carrying her body was slowing me down a ton as well.


    "I happen to weigh only fifty-four kilograms."


    "Wasn''t asking!" Lia told me never to ask a girl''s weight, and I wasn''t going to start now. We neared the chalice, my lungs and legs burning from carrying around the three of us, and I saw a shadowy arm reach out and snatch it up.


    Or...try to. It was fused to the altar. I stopped running as both arms and a leg reached out and grabbed at the thing, using the leg for leverage to push off the altar. She looked like she was working really hard at it, but she was attached to me, and I felt none of her force apply to me. Weird.


    "Would you consider helping?" she asked, her blades still whirling around us while I stood there uselessly.


    "My arms...are full!" I panted.


    "Then set me down for a moment. This is not difficult."


    The dragon seemed concerned with us touching the chalice and had begun to attack more aggressively. Still, we had twice as many blades now, almost twenty dancing in the air, and though they didn''t do much, the dragon still screamed and flinched when they pierced its arms or chest in unison.


    Not sure how else to grab it, I put my hands right where my echo''s were, passing through them like they didn''t exist, and pulled. She pulled. I copied her and put a foot against the altar to push, and then there was a crack, and the stem of the chalice broke, sending us flying backwards.


    "And now, the door," she said. "Quickly, if you please."


    "Of course," I said, and stooped to pick her up, but when I did, I felt something leave my mind, like I''d just forgotten what I entered a room to do, and her eyelids fluttered open.


    The dragon roared and I didn''t hesitate to sprint for the door, my legs killing me from all this running and dodging, but the end was in sight. I pushed myself as hard as I could go, pumping my legs under me, feeling the now uninterrupted dragon getting closer with each colossal stomp of its feet.


    I threaded the doorway, and felt the jaws snap shut behind me and the walls tremble as the dragon slammed into the door in hot pursuit. My feet carried me another twenty feet before I fell forward, setting Moon down and panting for breath, trying not to drip sweat on her.


    She gave me the tiniest of smiles and a nod and stood up, dusting herself off.


    "Not going to...tell me...good job or anything?" I panted.


    "I was not aware that was the role of a subordinate, but if you insist. I commend your effort in not allowing me to expire."


    "Yeah...and thanks for...shoving me...out of the way."


    "A fortuitous coincidence and nothing more. I happened to be in the room attempting to destroy a chalice when I realized I did not have the strength on my own, and looking around for any manner of tool I could use, laid eyes on you."


    "I think you''re the third person to call me a tool."


    "If you dislike the term, perhaps you should not be one."


    "Whatever. I''m going to lay down for a second."


    "To summon Jack?"


    "Oh. Yeah, that too."


    She sat down next to me, sitting on her heels like she was modelling for a stereotypical Japanese woman, the impassive expression back on her face.


    From the brief glimpse I''d had into her mind and the memories of her life I''d retained, I realized it wasn''t dispassion which resided on that face, it was disconnection. As Exhumans, it was natural for us to feel removed from the world to a degree. But she''d already mastered that trait before becoming Exhuman.


    She caught me looking and I pulled my attention to the ceiling and focused on my breathing.


    But in that one glance at me, I saw something other than dispassion and disconnectedness in her eyes, something I would never have been able to see if I weren''t looking at her through the vestiges of her own memories.


    More than me, more than any Exhuman I''d ever met, more than anyone I''d ever met, Moon was full of hate. Unending, bitter, black hate, kept carefully bottled up and placed on the highest shelf out of reach. But it was there, it was what defined her.


    And today, for knowing that I now knew this about her, for prying into her past, in that one glance she added a little drop of hate for me to her bottle and put it back on the shelf.

 161. 2246, Five years ago. Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Kaori.

    I shuffled through the hall of my cram school, only there out of habit, my feet only moving because they had done it so many times in the past. This place, where my friends and I had worked so hard and made a refuge for ourselves, I had needed to see it again, I guessed.


    I was a person who should never have existed. I''d always known, on some level, but had never been forced to face what it meant. Last night, the truth of it had hit me, and now I found myself here for reasons I couldn''t fully comprehend. I felt like there was nothing I could comprehend. I moved on habit alone.


    I slid open the door to the western-style room we had made our own over the last couple of years. "Shisturei shimasu," pardon the intrusion, I announced to the dark room.


    "Is that Kaori-chan?" I heard the room reply in native Japanese, using my friend Maki-chan''s voice.


    "Hai. Why are you studying in the dark?" I entered the room but didn''t turn on the light.


    I''d never been to America, so I didn''t know what an actual American study room was like, but this chamber had allegedly been modeled after them. Immediately on entering, I was in a dead end of bookshelves, with only one way to turn, tall wooden stacks with study guides and fiction all thrown together at random. There was another shelf behind it, separating the room into the shape of an E, without any large open areas, just small tables sitting in the wide aisles.


    "It was Akane-san''s idea. I think everyone is burnt out from studying too much, and they have all become very stupid," Maki replied.


    It put a little smile on my face to hear about something so normal, and that smile was worth the whole trip. I sat down at my usual seat across from Maki at the head of the middle leg of the E and looked around. As my eyes grew more accustomed to the twilight-level gloom, I realized there were a lot of people in here.


    It was a Saturday, and only a week before high school entrance exams. Tensions were high, and everyone was putting in their best efforts so they could get into a good school for next year. Our teachers were grilling us relentlessly, and after class, each of us met up here at cram school to get a few more hours of lessons in, and then typically went home to study a bit more before sleeping. It was brutal, but we were all serious about trying to do the best we could in life.


    Just thinking about it made my heart hurt.


    In the gloom, I started picking out people. Maki-chan, right in front of me, smiling and bubbly as ever. Behind her, Arimoto, a sharp boy who had dreams of being a police detective, and Reeve, whose foreign parents and blonde hair made him stand out instantly. I got up and peeked down the last aisle before I got settled in, and saw Akane, who had taken all of the board games off of one shelf and was building a wall with them for some reason.


    "Akane-san, what are you doing?" I asked. She turned and shushed at me, a huge grin on her face as usual when she was up to something. Which was frequent.


    "Toshie fell asleep," she said, using first names and dropping the honorifics as she had a bad tendency to do.


    "So why are you building a wall of board games?"


    "She''s going to wake up and be surrounded! It''ll be hilarious."


    I sighed. Akane''s antics were constant, but her grades were good enough so she was beyond reproach, and she never intended to harm anyone.


    "Is this why you wanted to study with the lights out? So that Kasuga-sempai would fall asleep? You know she needs to study even harder than the rest of us¡­" It wasn''t really a mean thing to say. Around here, grades on every test were listed and ranked publically so each of us could see everyone else''s standings and we all knew how well or badly we were doing constantly.


    "She was up all last night. Let her sleep some," Maki''s voice came over the wall. I shrugged and rejoined her, feeling like Kasuga and Akane were such a lost cause, but having to...getting to smile at them anyway.


    In truth, while Akane liked to play around alot, she tested exceptionally well, to the frustration of her teachers, and though Kasuga didn''t do that well, she ultimately just wanted to run her family''s restaurant, so what high school she got into didn''t matter that much. We would all be okay.


    Except me.


    I pushed that line out of my heart before it could break it any more, and sat down to study.


    As though she had decided to make this day my hell, Maki leaned over and whispered conspiratorially at me. "Did you visit your mother yesterday?"


    She was just asking a question, small friendly smile on her lips, stylus in her hand, no idea that something...no, that everything was wrong. How could she? I was here like nothing was wrong, here to study, to prepare for my exams, to get...get into...a good school¡­


    "Kaori-chan? What''s wrong?" she asked, staring puzzled at my face. She looked like she''d just realized she was sinking in quicksand, focused on me, but looking around for help from anyone.


    The painful thought returned and it felt like it filled me up. I shouldn''t exist. My entire life was a mistake. All of my friends, my happiness, my goals, they were at someone else''s expense.


    Unbidden memories started to play behind my eyes like a slideshow, faster than I could push them out of my thoughts now. I gripped at my head but they were relentless.


    My father''s indifferent back, a business suit floating away from me. It was the only side of him I felt like I ever saw. Mom in the hospital, alone with me and books. My father never came to visit.


    Me as a child, practicing my smiles in the mirror and shouting ''welcome home, Dad!'' until my voice was gone and my face hurt. His empty seat at the table, no matter how hard I tried.


    Mom holding me tight, telling me it was okay. I had done nothing wrong. My father didn''t really hate me. Someday, I would have a little brother, and then my father would be happy and we''d all be a family together.


    Standing outside the room in my school uniform, one hand on the door, and hearing Grandpa yelling at Mom, telling her to leave my father, telling her ''let the business fail, we don''t need his money, we just want our daughter back.''


    And then, a few months ago, Mom happier than I''d ever seen her, telling me she was finally pregnant again, I would be an older sister and would have to help take care of my younger brother. I yelled at her, pleaded, begged. I called her doctor and he yelled at her, while she apologized over the phone over and over, but wouldn''t give up the child.


    The night I woke up, realizing that she was going to die because of this. To fix her mistake, to fix me. That she would die because I wasn''t the boy my father wanted. Because I should have never been.


    And then yesterday.


    "Kaori-chan?" Maki repeated delicately. I realized it wasn''t the first time she''d said that. I looked up at her.


    "Gomen," I half-apologized. I didn''t know where to go from there. "Mom...my mom...died yesterday, actually."


    Yesterday, I''d visited and found the room empty. The doctors told me details I didn''t want to hear. There had been so much blood. They could have saved her, but she wouldn''t let them. She bled and fought and died screaming for her son.


    Maki went white and gasped. I heard a thunk from where Arimoto and Reeve were eavesdropping on us, and what sounded like a wall of board games falling over with a crashing cacophony of thousands of pieces skittering across the ground for far longer than seemed possible. All at once, around me people were standing and bowing and offering their condolences, and I just felt painfully uncomfortable.


    I''d never liked being the focus of attention, and realizing what an un-person I was, somehow that just made it a million times worse. As I tried to placate my friends, the fact that every eye in the room was on me made my heart catch in my throat and I stumbled on my words. I felt something like panic welling up in the emptiness inside me. It had never been this bad before, why was I going to pieces now?


    I knew the answer, I just didn''t want to face it. I shouldn''t even exist, much less grab people''s attention, much less have their sympathy. I just wanted to melt into the floor.


    That was a lie, I thought. I just wanted to never have been born, so Mom could still be alive.


    "Let''s...let''s just...just study," Maki said, finally, seeing something in my eyes. Saving me.


    Like she''d flipped a switch inside herself, Maki went around the room, shooing everyone off of me, cracking the whip as only she knew how. Whenever things...usually Akane...got out of hand, Maki was always there to restore order and make sure we all got our studying done. Once everyone was focused on their work again, or at least pretending to be, she rejoined me, moving so quietly you''d think I was going to break just by her footsteps.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The joke was on her, I was already broken the moment I was born.


    "Do you want the light on?" she asked before sitting down. I shook my head. Reading our holos in the dark was probably bad for our eyes, but I didn''t want to be able to see all the stolen glances of my friends if I didn''t have to.


    I shouldn''t have said anything at all. I should have just disappeared to these people. They would have wondered where I''d gone, maybe even missed me, and then forgotten the girl who never should have been. I sat on a crest of self-pity above a pit of despair.


    Maki let out a long fake sigh and pushed me in. "I wish my grades were as good as yours," she said, confessionally. "I bet you''ll get into any school you want."


    She was trying to make me feel better. I knew that. But it was so unfair. Everything in my life I hated refused to change, but everything I loved was being taken from me. I couldn''t take it anymore. I carefully folded the cover over my tablet, stowed my things back in my pack, and then collapsed in on myself and cried like a little girl, burning with shame as everyone in the room heard me, but unable to move from the spot. I wept fat, greedy, self-indulgent tears and wailed until the echoes off the wooden bookcases made it sound like the room was screaming.


    "It''s okay, Kaori-chan," Maki said, moving to my side of the table and rubbing slow circles on my back. "It''s okay. You''ll always have us."


    "No, I won''t!" I wailed at her. Mom leaving was painful, more painful than I could believe, but it wasn''t why I cried now. "My father wants to transfer me to a boarding school in America so he''ll never have to see me again!"


    The hand on my back had stopped for a second but only for a second.


    "But you''re still here studying? So if you do well enough on the entrance exams, he''ll let you stay?"


    "I don''t know why I''m here," I said, wiping tears off the communal table with my sleeve. "I''m not even taking the exam. I''m leaving on Monday."


    "That...that soon?" Maki said, and I heard her voice catching as well. "We...we can figure something out before then."


    "It''s two days, Maki-chan."


    "Run away from home. Come live with me," she said, her eyes serious. I shook my head. I couldn''t do that. It felt like I couldn''t do anything.


    "Tell him you''re taking the exam anyway," Reeve said. "And when he sees how well you did, he''ll be proud of you and let you stay."


    "I don''t tell him anything, okay!" I yelled, and then felt my chest draw tight instantly. "I don''t...he''s not the kind of father you just talk to."


    The others didn''t know my personal situation, except through scattered hints. If anyone had put them together, it was Maki, but if she knew, she wouldn''t tell the others. She was a great friend. I didn''t know how I was so lucky to have her. Maybe her being taken from me like this was just the universe''s way of course-correcting back to what I deserved.


    "Let''s just study," I muttered, ignoring the tears in my eyes and took out my tablet again, my eyes in a haze even before I folded back the cover of the holo.


    An hour passed with no noise except the sound of Akane and Kasuga shuffling around board game pieces and trying to get them back into the right box, occasionally whispering to each other ''what game is this from?''." Eventually I heard different whispers behind me, Reeve and Arimoto, and heard my name mentioned, barely at the limits of my hearing.


    I felt a pained stab as I thought of them talking about me, literally behind my back. I didn''t know what would be worse, if they were gossiping or sympathizing. Of course I didn''t want to just be a spectacle for them, but somehow having them wasting their pity on me seemed even more painful.


    I tried to tune it out, and before long, Maki stood up violently and swept over to them, hissing at them in a rough Kansai accent that only came out when she was exceptionally upset about something. Somehow she got drawn into their conversation and I found myself alone at my table for most of the next hour while the three of them spoke in voices too low to make out.


    At some point, I saw Arimoto on his mobile, and a moment later, Akane''s rang with a new message alert. She never remembered to turn off the sound when we were studying, but what grated on me more was how transparently stupid they must have all thought I was. All five of them, talking and messaging each other now, while I sat here pretending to study on my own.


    Was this what my life was going to be from now on, I had to wonder. The feeling of everyone in the room focusing on me indirectly felt like a hot ball of lead inside me, but being ignored was even worse. When I moved to America, was this what I could expect? Half the class ignoring the transfer student with her shitty English (one of my strongest subjects actually, but I wasn''t deluded enough to think that would carry over in a native-speaking country), half the class fixated on me as the new oddity? I hated all of it, and found myself, for the tenth time that day, wishing I was never born.


    Maki intruded on my self-pity by sitting opposite me again. "You''re leaving Monday, right?" she asked.


    "Hai," I confirmed, slumping on the table.


    "Then, how about tomorrow we have a going away party?" she asked, beaming a little, the smile not really reaching her eyes. "So you''ll always have that to remember us by, at least."


    I wasn''t sure I wanted that much attention, and started to refuse, but before the words could come out, I felt like I couldn''t say them. These were my best friends, hard-won, through mountains of effort and study together, and some of us went back years. Even if it made me uncomfortable, even if all I thought I could do right now was pretend to study, I had to say goodbye, for all of our sakes.


    I realized, I wanted to say a proper goodbye to these people. I would need the memories of their smiles when I was far away and alone. Even if I didn''t want it, even if my idea of a good evening was one where I got a lot of studying done...I needed this, I realized.


    She outlined a broad plan. Nothing too extravagant, but it sounded pleasant, and nothing like we''d all gotten together to do before. Food, a little night life, some karaoke, the kinds of thing we were all missing out on by staring at books and holos until we burned our eyes out.


    We talked about it, and nailed down specifics of where to go, and the longer we talked, the more excited I became. Even for a girl like me, one who didn''t deserve to exist, I couldn''t resist this, the opportunity to go and be with the friends I loved, just being happy together.


    It was the week before our exams, and nobody really had a lot of spending money, but they were all willing to make those sacrifices for me. It really moved me in a way I didn''t know I could be. I felt a little less empty inside. I knew in my mind it was just a small thing, but when everything seemed to be taken away from me all at once, it felt so huge.


    Gradually it grew late enough that the only light in the room was the yellow-white squares of the holos glowing in blackness, and one by one, we filtered out to our own homes and lives. People stopped by to say goodbye to me on their way out, giving me an affectionate smile or even patting my head in Akane''s case, like I was a schoolgirl, and while it was all very uncomfortable, it was also bittersweet.


    It was late when I got home, and the servant welcomed me and inquired if I wanted to eat or bathe now, and I chose the latter. I spent a long time soaking and reading, fiction, not studying, one of the many books I''d read and re-read a hundred times with Mom, and now found myself doing out of habit whenever I wasn''t doing anything else. And so I was incredibly late for dinner. It had to be reheated again, and I told my growling stomach to wait patiently.


    I felt like everything that could go wrong in the world was, but I was also excited for tomorrow, and somehow both of these conflicting thoughts, both of which should have kept me up long into the night crashed into each other and neutralized one another, and I fell asleep almost as soon as I climbed under the covers of my futon.


    Sunday was our one day off in the week, and most of us spent it studying anyway. I might usually catch up on some reading, and recently had been visiting Mom whenever I could, but today I had other plans. Real plans. I spent a lot longer picking out clothes than usual, dipping into the mostly-unused section outside of my school uniform or something to study in. I threw a couple of Mom''s old books and a study guide which I felt naked without in a bag and headed out to buy a couple of things before we met that afternoon.


    I was stopped at the door by a servant, who directed me into a black car on the street. My father had sent it for some reason, and my heart jumped unexpectedly at the crazy conclusion that maybe I would see him one last time before I left, in a sentimental way. Maybe even as a daughter.


    It was impossible to hope for, stupid even, but the hope I had for that day was infectious. But as the car pulled away and headed east, instead of north, where my father lived and worked, I began to feel unease.


    "Excuse me, where is this car going?" I asked the driver.


    "To the airport, miss," the driver replied.


    I fell back into my seat and tried to put together any way that this could possibly lead to any conclusion but the obvious. My heart, which was already only barely managing to beat felt like it was tearing itself to pieces, and I fed it invented theory after theory as to why this was fine, how it would all be okay. Father had said tomorrow.


    "Why are we going to the airport?" I finally gathered the denial to ask.


    "There is a jet to take Miss to America, I believe."


    "That was tomorrow!" I found myself shouting. It was impossible. "Today was supposed to be mine! Today is my last day here, my last day with my friends, and my school! Why are we going today?"


    "Regrettably, I cannot say, miss. I am just a driver."


    "Turn the car around! Let me out!" I pulled at the handle and the door flew open for a moment, slamming almost immediately in the wind from the highway speeds.


    Before I could do it again, the driver locked the door with a frown. I tore at the door handle, slamming myself against the interior. "Regrettably I cannot do that either, miss. These are your father''s orders. Please conduct yourself properly."


    I felt white-hot indignant rage flare inside me. I wanted to scream at him ''fuck my father!'', he had never cared what I felt, why would I follow his orders and conduct myself properly now? I wanted to kick out the windows with the short heeled pumps I''d picked out to hang out with my friends in. I wanted to snap, break on the outside as badly as I felt broken on the inside.


    He''d killed my mother. He''d taken away my sanctuary, my friends. He''d turned my entire existence into a mistake. And now, with a simple change of plans or slip of the tongue or lie, he''d taken away the last thing I had left.


    I wanted to snap and destroy everything I could put my hands on, but I did none of those things. That wasn''t the person I was. I wasn''t an angry or violent or loud person, though I spent the next years of my life remembering that moment and wishing I were, wishing I''d done anything in my power to hold onto everything I had slipping through my fingers. Hold onto that one night where I could pretend to be normal, if nothing else.


    But I didn''t. I wasn''t. I was just a person who was never supposed to exist.


    So instead of sad, or angry, I felt empty as the plane took me high into the sky and I watched everything I knew shrinking and vanishing away from me. At this distance, it looked like all of Japan was just toys, a plaything for a child who didn''t know anything about the real world, eventually consumed by the infinite blue of the sea.


    By habit, I opened my bag and reached in. The last thing Mom had told me in the hospital, the last time I''d seen her were words she''d often said. Be good, study hard. I felt a numb stab as I pulled out one of Mom''s books, and quickly putting it away, flipped open my study guide instead.


    I closed the book a minute later and cried.

 162. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Athan.

    AEGIS, Moon, Tower, and I sat quietly in the church amidst the ruined bodies of the innocent golems we''d killed before. Jack was still finding Karu below, but the relics were destroyed and the barrier should be down.


    I was sitting on a pew with my arm wrapped around AEGIS, who seemed more guilty about freaking out than actually stressed at this point, but when we first surfaced, she was all tears and screaming, apologizing over and over and babbling about how she''d messed up.


    Through tears and her incoherent sentences, I slowly formed an image of what had happened. In her efforts to become more human, she''d written it into Rua to give her a sense of constant discomfort while she was behaving in any way which could be considered superhuman, so that she would only use those abilities when she had to. I sympathized, having a bit of a love/hate relationship with my own powers.


    But being down there, in the dark, alone, with the sense of unease creeping up on her constantly had apparently reminded her too much of being trapped in the box. She couldn''t turn off her night vision to get rid of the discomfort without being dropped in total blackness, and had started to freak out.


    "I''m sorry," she whispered again and let out a heavy sigh. "Scared of the dark. What a joke."


    I just held her and felt guilty myself. I''d seen the reluctance to my plan written plainly on her face, but she didn''t say anything and so neither did I. I was so accustomed to running into problems from Tem or Saga or myself even, that I never even stopped to consider why AEGIS might have issues.


    So in essence, I was a shit leader and a shit friend.


    Karu and Jack popped out of nowhere in front of us. She took a second to take in the scene and then glowered at us. "Is this really an appropriate situation for cuddling?"


    AEGIS flinched and closed her eyes, which was clearly not what Karu was expecting.


    "She had a bit of a traumatic event. Can you chill?" I asked.


    To her credit, Karu stepped off immediately. She walked back to the middle of the church, as though to stretch her legs, and then came back to me, casual as anything.


    "It has been several hours. I believe now may be an opportune moment to take a rest and eat."


    "Good idea," I said. "Jack, if you could distribute rations?"


    AEGIS and Karu had a really weird relationship, and I was sure the fault of that lay in me somewhere. Snapping at each other and sniping wherever they could, but at the same time, very considerate and aware of each other''s legitimate issues and leaving them the hell alone. Karu was utterly transparent in proposing we break for lunch at the very moment AEGIS needed a few minutes to put herself back together, just like AEGIS had moved quickly and quietly to make as little a scene as possible of Karu''s injuries on her arms.


    I had to wonder, if I weren''t in the picture, if they''d be great friends.


    I ate with one hand, eating a tube of nutrient paste, while I held AEGIS with the other, her body warm against me and her head heavy on my shoulder.


    "How are you doing?" I asked after several minutes of silence.


    "Feeling stupid and crummy and dumb."


    "Bad things happen, you can''t beat yourself up over it."


    She sat back, pulling herself off of me and looked at me incredulously. "You are such a hypocrite."


    "What? I mean, I know some of this was your fault, but I don''t think you really can carry the blame for it."


    "Athan, if it was you who freaked out down there, you''d never let yourself live it down."


    "That''s totally untrue."


    "Oh yeah? Hey, do you remember when you were in Saga''s mine and she was dreaming and giving you all those visions and you blew yourself dead on accident?"


    "...yeah," I said, uncomfortable already.


    "And how do you feel about that whole incident?"


    "..."


    "Stupid, crummy, and dumb?"


    "I wish your memory wasn''t so encyclopaedic."


    "And I wish you weren''t such a hypocrite, or so stubborn, or such an ass, but I like you anyway."


    "Yeah," I said, feeling plenty like crap now. But at least AEGIS seemed in better spirits.


    It might seem like AEGIS just needed a punching bag to feel better, but I think it was just beating me in an argument which did it for her. At least, I hoped so, and that was supported by her little giggling apology afterwards.


    "Well," she began again, "with the relics down, there are still plenty of defenses between us and God-King Vytar, but nothing of the magical barrier variety. A castle and everything you''d expect from one. Tons of guards, a court mage, a circle of elite knights, an adopted daughter who is the last of an lost mystical race, that kind of stuff."


    "Lovely. And he himself is no slouch, I imagine?"


    "In game, yeah. Warps reality to his will, summons legions from nothingness, that kind of stuff. But out here, he''s just a guy, just an Exhuman, and we know what his powers are. Put a bullet in him and physics handles the rest."


    "Funny, I think that Exhuman has already warped reality to his will and summoned plenty of legions."


    "Huh, when you put it that way I guess he has."


    "Hey," I said having a thought. "You''re an enormous nerd--"


    "I''d like to stop you right there and let you know that your question already sucks."


    "Sure. But you are. But I wanted to ask you, why do you think the Exhuman did all this?"


    "Made this whole world, you mean?"


    "Yeah. I mean, he''s not out here enjoying it, is he? He''s sitting on his throne lording over it all. He could have done that over a city block. Why make all these golems and buildings and shit he''s never even going to see?"


    "I don''t know, Athan. I mean, for starters, Exhumans aren''t exactly renowned for their mental stability are they? Obviously there are some exceptions," she said significantly, glancing at the others, "but in general, Exhumans are dangerous and shouldn''t be allowed to run around outside without an adult if you know what I mean."


    "So he made this all because she was crazy."


    "Love that you assume the female pronoun the second we start speculating the Exhuman is crazy. Says a lot about you, Athan."


    I rolled my eyes. "But that''s your theory?"


    "No," she paused and stroked one of her twintails idly. "I kind of doubt this, but have you ever browsed or read or seen fanart or fanfics or anything like that for a popular show or game?"


    I shook my head.


    "Yeah, figured not. Well, it''s really popular, and I think the reason why is people spend a lot of time getting to know these worlds and the people in them, and then when the game ends, or the movie rolls credits or you read the last page, it''s all over." She pushed her thin glasses up her nose with a finger. "Just from a psychology perspective, people feel sad, depressed, abandoned. If you spend a hundred hours reading a book and then it''s gone, your brain goes ''wtf'', because it assumed if you spent all this time on this thing, it must be important, must be useful to you in life somehow. Our instincts say I should be able to take these things I learned and forage better or find a mate or whatever. Instead, usually, we just put the book down and never see it again."


    "Wow, that''s really sad when you put it like that. I''d never thought of characters as being...disposed of, I guess."


    "I mean, of course the characters don''t care, but our brains do. So that''s where fanworks come in. I think they''re a form of denial, really. You don''t want it to end, so you add your own few words or a drawn scene or a video clip to the story and it grows just a tiny bit more. And then there''s a community around it, and you can accept their offerings, and it becomes this living, organic thing which keeps on as long as people are willing to keep pouring themselves into it."


    "That''s neat," I smiled. "People are cool sometimes." I glanced around and noticed that while most of the team was absorbed in their own interests, Karu was watching us unabashedly, and Moon had decided to set up nearby, a book in hand and had an oddly focused look on her face. I noticed her eyes weren''t moving at all on the page.


    "So my opinion for why this kingdom exists is it''s the ultimate fanwork. This Exhuman, whoever he is, he loved this place and wasn''t ready for it to ever end, so he made it real. I had that thought when I saw the golems at first, it made no sense for them to be independent compared to controlling all of them directly, but that''s only if you''re trying to be powerful and use your powers to their fullest."


    She ran a hand through her hair and examined one of the cable ends. "Not that you exactly get a choice how your powers work, but from what I got from Lia, it''s based on how you think. So I can take this data and draw some assumptions about the Exhuman themselves, so there''s no way this Exhuman was just interested in fighting and growing strong. But if his or her goal was to make this world and have stories endlessly flow from it...they needed to make all the actors independent, or it''d just be a play they''re putting on, it''d all be limited by their imagination. But here, anything can happen."Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    She sounded a little wistful.


    "AEGIS, you obviously put a ton of time into this game, read all the supplemental novels, did all the quests--"


    "Oh, I wouldn''t say all of them."


    "You''ve got to be pretty attached to this place too. Are you sure you want to destroy it?"


    She sighed. "That''s a stupid question."


    "I hear there are no stupid questions."


    "Well whoever told you that was lying to spare your feelings. Athan, my feelings on this place are totally irrelevant. We''re here on a mission. In a few hours, the US armed forces are coming to invade. Thousands of people are dead or missing. And I''m just one...whatever I am, not even human. Why does it matter?"


    "Because you matter to me," I answered honestly. "One whatever-you-are, but a really important one in my eyes. And even if you''re right, and we don''t have a choice in our actions, I still want to know how you feel because I care about you, and what you think, and how you feel."


    She blushed a little and watched her fingers trace over the back of a stone pew. "Jeez, always saying stuff like that." The yellow eyes snapped back to me and narrowed. "Do you have any idea how confusing you are to be around, Athan? I hate that you can be so brutally honest like that, just like it''s nothing."


    "Should...should I stop?" I asked, completely lost where this had somehow become about us.


    She smiled and put her hand on mine, so warm. "No, don''t ever do that."


    "Okay," Karu said, approaching and interjecting at last. "I have been patient enough by my reckoning."


    "Yeah, yeah," AEGIS said withdrawing her hand mournfully. "You have. Sorry, Karu."


    "Oh. Uh. It is no problem," Karu said respectfully. "We should probably continue on however, we are in the middle of an op."


    "You should but for a different reason," Lia said suddenly in my comms. "There''s a situation developing outside. You guys need to sneak out of the back of the church pronto."


    "You all heard the lady, move out," I said, and everyone began to pack and scurry. "What is this situation?"


    "Well, remember how AEGIS said that touching the barrier we just destroyed was a church crime? Well...shutting it down is even moreso. I imagine they exolate you two or three times for that one. And they finally noticed it was gone. People...or, golems rather, are freaking out like it''s the coming of the end of times, and guards are running everywhere. It won''t be more than a couple minutes before they go to check on the church, I''m sure."


    "Right," I said, creeping through the stone door. The situation outside was as she described. Lots of golems standing around looking confused but spectating, some completely losing their shit, screaming about the fall of Vytar, Altaura forgive us, that kind of stuff. Guard golems were running this way and that, establishing ''order'', while guard captains ordered them around.


    We were all out of the church and headed to the nearest building when a patrol, clomping around decoratively in formation at double-time turned down our street and of course, it was Tower crossing the street at the time. He wasn''t exactly inconspicuous, and trying to be so really just made him even more obviously suspicious.


    "Hey! You there! Halt!" shouted the patrol, in a deep, British-tinged gravelly voice.


    Tower looked at us and then back at the patrol. "Uh. Praise Altaura?"


    I took another look around, with leader-goggles on. Things were in disarray but not overly so. Whether we fought or ran, the guards were out in force and still coordinated enough that they''d have us completely surrounded in no time. We needed to incite some real panic if we were going to slip away or fight, or completely lose this patrol, now.


    AEGIS went forward to smooth things over with the patrol, but it didn''t seem to be going well. They were demanding to speak to Tower and he had the bluffing capabilities of a well-labelled toilet.


    I looked around, carefully taking in details and my eyes were naturally drawn upwards towards the castle.


    "Karu," I said. "You said you packed a lot of explosive ordnance?"


    "Yessir."


    "Rockets?"


    "Of course."


    "Could you put a few of them into the roof of that dome from here?"


    "With pleasure."


    She took ''from here'' a little liberally, using a few bursts of her jetpack to jump onto a nearby rooftop, across the street from the church, but the small amount of panic was sufficient that she didn''t draw attention. There was a sound like a dozen fireworks being lit and sizzling at once as micro-missiles deployed from her shoulders and hips, and the hazy trails of smoke twisted and churned while the missiles faded from view into the distance.


    And then a boom. A lot of boom. Those little fuckers packed a hell of a punch, and it looked like the whole dome was lit up with fire. Spheres of expanding flame grew on the surface like ripening boils, leaving blackened craters and clouds of smoke in their wake, and dozens of the explosions pocked the surface before the dome itself cracked, a huge fissure connecting the dots of the blasts.


    For a moment it seemed like the crack might continue up the side of the dome and the whole thing might fall in, but it stopped a third of the way up, making an ominous grinding noise which reverberated through the city.


    And yeah, panic like you wouldn''t believe. Those golems who had been screaming to Altaura before were now openly having crises of faith. Those which had stood by and watched were whipped into a frenzy, each one running a different direction, and the mostly-stationary crowd exploded in all directions, golems crashing into and trampling each other just making the situation worse.


    I hadn''t exactly intended today to include killing children or murdering the contents of a church, but as long as we were there, I guess terrorism wasn''t too much of a stretch.


    "Holy swordfish," I heard Lia mutter. "The whole city just went nuts. Panic everywhere."


    "Yeah," AEGIS said, standing amidst the bodies of the patrol she and Tower had just disassembled in the confusion. "The dome, the castle, the barrier, all holy symbols of Vytar''s unquestionable godliness and undefeatable will. That we even touched them...well...these people are watching their god bleed in front of them. I don''t know how else they''d react."


    "So can I point at the castle now?" I asked. Now that I thought about it, though everyone was looking in horror at the scene, not a single one of them gestured towards it. Amazing, these golems.


    "Don''t be a smug asshole, Athan," AEGIS said. "We''re here to kill a god, not to be a dick about it."


    Moving towards the castle was harder now that everyone was in full panic. It was hard to move without everyone just running into you, and while they were stone and heavy, we were fleshy and easily knocked around, Tower being the exception. It never got old watching a hugely armored guard, a thousand pounds of rock just bump into him and then go flying off like he was a rocket-powered trampoline.


    He carried Moon and lead our group. Jack, AEGIS and Karu had taken to moving across the rooftops, and that left me and Tem to follow in Tower''s wake, catching occasional flickers above us of Karu firing her jets or AEGIS revving to leap an impossible gap.


    It wasn''t long before we reached the castle itself, which stood isolated, the grounds swarming with guards, moving in small formations in all directions. We stood huddled in the shadows under one of the buildings at the edge of the huge open plaza while we thought of how to cross the final gap and reach the castle itself.


    There was a sound like metal clanging above us and then the zipping of cable, and I saw the shadows stir but nothing distinct. Expecting the worst, I drew my swords and braced for something to come at us.


    "Come now, the golems don''t use metal," Taglock''s voice called from above, and I saw his head peek over the roof''s edge above me. Lia popped up next to him and gave us an energetic wave, the butt of her enormous rifle visible over her shoulder.


    "How''d you guys get around so easily?" I called up.


    Taglock just smiled mysteriously. Thankfully, Lia was still on my side. "Taglock''s got a grapple gun, and he''s pretty good. He''s just been carrying me around all day."


    She seemed a little too excited about that. I wasn''t sure I entirely approved of that guy putting his hands all over my sister all day, regardless of any practical need. She was sixteen, man.


    "Great. Well, want to grapple over to the castle, or how are we getting in there?"


    "That''s a huge distance," Tower said. "And there''s a billion guards. I don''t think we''re sneaking past this one."


    "And they are on exceptionally high alert after our prior antics," Karu added.


    "And it only makes sense they''d expect we''d come here after dropping the barrier," Taglock said.


    "And they''d leave half the city undefended if it meant protecting their king," said AEGIS.


    "And¡­" said Tem. She looked around inquisitively like one of us was going to finish her thought for her.


    Jack soldiered on "The distance is too large for me to move in one jump, regrettably."


    "Patrols are too dense, moving too fast. I don''t think I could get through even with optic camo." Taglock scratched his scruffy chin. "Ordinarily I''d just hunker down here and act as support, but I''m guessing that castle is filled with bad things you probably want my help with."


    "We''ve got plenty of fighters," I said. "We don''t need your support specifically, inside."


    I wasn''t just being a dick to Taglock, though I didn''t have any problem telling him he was useless currently. He''d still be valuable to have as eyes outside and keep us updated.


    "I''m in the same boat, again," Lia added. "Needing to deploy and getting one shot every five seconds tops isn''t so useful indoors."


    "Then you two are still on support and recon. Stay out here and keep us informed of any changes as you have been. I guess...the rest of us are going loud? Doesn''t seem any other way we can get there without fighting the whole damn army."


    Which seemed simply suicidal. There were hundreds of them, and from what I''d learned having my ass kicked by a giant bone dragon, different golems had different levels of combat intelligence, and the skeletons and spider child monsters were at the low end. If these guys were of approximate human intelligence, we were looking at maybe a hundred for each of the seven of us, assuming no reinforcements pouring in halfway through, which would almost certainly happen, and every single kill would be a challenge.


    Kind of felt like trying to take down the whole XPCA. If nothing else, they''d simply exhaust us to death with numbers. I found myself wishing Saga were here, dealing with crowds like this was really right up her alley, though I also doubted they had minds she could actually affect.


    So what, then? Traps? A diversion? We retreated further into the shadows and opened up the floor to any ideas, no matter how implausible. AEGIS regrettably informed us that there were no secret tunnels or escape hatches or conveniently connected sewers to break into. Tem could melt through the ground, but not in any way controllable enough to prevent a collapse, and then we''d have tons of magma to deal with, which seemed to make Karu very uneasy.


    Someone proposed Jack blind teleport all of us in the air above the castle, but he told us in no uncertain terms that blind teleports, especially with passengers was not an option. Karu suggested we demolish a few buildings at random with blast charges she carried to distract the guard, but given they knew our intended target, that would probably just make them more wary.


    People were getting restless and demoralized as we drew close to an hour and a half of circular debate. We''d run out of fresh ideas a while ago, and were mostly just chewing our cud on re-examining old plans at this point. Looking around at the defeated expressions settling on people''s faces, I realized I needed to make a decision soon.


    But how could I? Seriously. Everyone''s lives were in the balance here, and we were staring down a massive, incredibly resilient force, with the lives of everyone I cared about on the line. Cosette seemed to be of a similar opinion, pushing me to make a call, but equally at a loss for which one was the right plan.


    No plan proposed had been good enough, but maybe, I thought, if I combined pieces from two or three, we might stand a chance. I tried to take stock of the resources we had and jam them together in random combinations in my mind to see what worked.


    And then I had an idea. A really crazy idea. Which was good, because really crazy is what we needed right now.

 163. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Athan.

    We weren''t getting in on the ground, that much was obvious. That was why we''d started talking about tunnelling in, but the other option was even more appealing and even more impossible.


    About half of the team could fly in some capacity. Karu, obviously. AEGIS and Taglock had enough mobility that they may as well. But most interestingly, Tower could affect forces on himself, including negating gravity. Karu and AEGIS were loud as hell when engaging their engines, but again, Tower could glide along silent as anything.


    It would have been simple to say all eight of us just climb on his back and he float us across, but the problem was, in his words ''I still have to carry you assholes, you know.'' Meaning, while he might have been weightless, we weren''t. At the proposal that he simply reverse the weight we applied to him, he informed me that would make trying to stick to him like putting together the positive sides of two magnets.


    So the plan wasn''t completely awful, but the fact was he could only carry two or maybe three of us at a time, and that was only on account of his huge stature.


    What we really needed, then, was two Towers.


    And that''s how we wound up straddling both Tower and his purple, hazy Moon-created echo, the two copies of Tower holding hands, with me, Karu, AEGIS, Tem, Jack, and Moon''s unconscious body clinging to the two huge, clearly uncomfortable men on the rooftop opposite the castle. The Moon-cages provided solid handholds, and the Towers'' backs were crowded with us clinging on them, but they were still able to take some staggering steps, and that''s all we really needed. Just had to be able to support our weight and launch us accurately over the living/not living wall of golems ringing the castle.


    "I feel like a damn magic carpet," Tower complained.


    "Well you look fantastic," Lia said, with a shit-eating grin, sitting and watching us pack with her rifle on her lap. "Look at all the ladies you have climbing on you. You''re such a stud!"


    "And what does that make Jack and myself?" I asked.


    "Uh. Gay, obviously?"


    I felt Tower tighten under us. "Maybe you two should be on Moon instead," he said.


    "Maybe Lia should stop making this even worse than it has to be." I glared at her, and she laughed.


    "Okay, everybody''s clear on this?" I tried to bring focus back to the objective. "As soon as we launch, Tem makes us invisible. If we''re veering off-course, Karu gives as little thrust as she needs to correct. We''re aiming for the crack in the dome. Jack jumps off as soon as he has a clear line to the rooftop. Everyone else, hang on, and make sure you thank your driver when we land."


    We''d been over it a few times already but I wanted to shut Lia up. Again, everyone assented, and now that we were all clinging on securely, I let Tower and Moon know they could go whenever.


    "On three we jump?" he said.


    "This is fine," she replied in his voice.


    "One, two, three!"


    Their feet left the rooftop in a leap which never curved back towards the earth. As soon as they stepped into the air, their feet vanished, followed by the rest of them, and then us.


    The jump hadn''t been perfect. He''d pushed off with slightly more force than she had, and as a result we were all slowly spinning like a frisbee. Before we were over the guards, Karu righted us with a few quick bursts of her jetpack and we began sailing true.


    It was like being in a dream, feeling myself flying over the hundreds of stone soldiers below, with no body to see. Even though I could feel the bars of the cage in my hands and Tower''s broad shoulder under me, I couldn''t see it. I felt insubstantial, like I was at the top of a roller coaster just hanging there with the drop never quite coming.


    "Oh this is weird. This is weird. This is weird¡­" AEGIS was saying.


    "Shh. They can hear us," I said, and she stopped. I could imagine her face next to me, looking down at the ground directly through Tower. It struck me as a little funny that she of all people would be commenting on the weirdness of not having a body.


    The launch was good, and it looked like we''d make it to the rooftop. We were slowing very gradually, and the jump hadn''t exactly been with supersonic force, so instead we had a leisurely, surreal float up and away across the plaza, an entire minute or two of just silent non-being. Time to take in just how big this castle was, just how many golems there were under us, just how extensive the city seemed to be, stretching a couple miles in each direction, each structure carefully shaped by the Exhuman, each stone plant and each stone leaf and flower.


    I had another pang of guilt that we were sent here to destroy it all.


    We sailed over the rectangular lip of the roof onto a huge stone square from which the dome emerged, and began to dip downwards as the two Towers let gravity gradually retake us. In another moment, they touched down, and Tem let us see ourselves again.


    We climbed off and both Tower and his echo collapsed on the ground sweating and panting. I guess it couldn''t have been easy for them to carry all of us that long. Tower rolled on his side, unstrapping the cage and rubbing at his shoulders where the straps for it had bitten into him, and tapped Moon''s unconscious body through the wide bars.


    The ghost vanished at once and her eyes fluttered lazily as she came back to herself, rubbing her own shoulders in an approximation of Tower.


    "Thanks guys," I muttered, and the group echoed me. Tower just waved it off with a smile and a wave, and Moon didn''t respond at all. We let them rest while we approached the dome and the crack in it.


    It was even more stupidly huge up close. It had to be the largest stone dome in the world, maybe a hundred feet tall. The crack that looked so small when Karu had made it was an enormous gash, easily five feet wide. Through the hole, we could see an immense chamber below. The throne room, I guessed, where we''d face God-King Vytar and end this.


    I was banking an awful lot on that, I knew. For the moment we still had the option of drifting away, but once we entered that crack, it would be impossible for Tower and Moon to float us back out again. We''d be revealed and surrounded, and all those soldiers we just worked so hard to avoid would be coming in for us the second they realized we''d breached the castle. If we killed Vytar, his powers would cease to function and we''d be able to escape, but that was only if we could kill him. If he ran and put a few hundred guards between us and him¡­


    I felt bad asking Tower and Moon to do it again, but we climbed back on them in order to make the final descent. Karu and Jack stayed on the roof at least, able to enter on their own after us, so the load was a lot lighter.


    "Get in, kill the Exhuman," Tower summarized the plan.


    "And don''t die if the castle starts crashing down." Lia added. Right. Almost forgotten that the buildings were being held up with his powers too. What a disaster.


    Kill. Don''t die. The basis of every good plan. And in we went.


    Almost as soon as we had, I realized this was a terrible, terrible idea.


    It was a throne room all right, with a tall ornate throne, the back of which contained a perfect sphere, a green gemstone as large as a fist, the only ornamentation not made purely of stone I''d seen since coming to this place, the back of the chair wrapped around it helically, as though implying everything, even the occupant of that throne was centered around the green orb.


    Between us and the throne was a line of stone soldiers, standing at the ready with arms raised. Each wielded a weapon of a different type, each in a stance which said they were deadly proficient with it. I''m sure AEGIS could give me an hour of backstory on all twelve of them and the miracles they had done with those weapons, but for now I sufficed to know this was the elite circle of knights.


    Beside the central throne was a smaller one, beautiful, helically twisted, but missing the green gem. If anything, it looked like it leaned towards the main throne. A golem girl sat impatiently in it, looking human save for the horns almost invisible sweeping back in her hair. That would be the adopted daughter of a magical race, I presumed.


    On the opposite side, a wizard. Nothing really dramatic about him except that he had a hell of a beard. Court wizard, check.


    And finally, seated in the twisted throne, under the orb, God-King Vytar himself, and the reason I realized this was a mistake. He was a narrow man, with slender, elegant hands, and seemingly the left half of his body a darker and rougher substance than the right, almost like he was half-burned. As we descended, and he followed us with his eyes despite being invisible, I realized that on that dark half, there was power shimmering around him, expressed as much as possible with shimmering, floating rock, as the barrier had been.


    And most troubling, he was a golem, too.


    "Where''s the Exhuman?" I hissed at AEGIS.


    "I don''t know," she said, sounding worried. "Jack, do you see any humans in here?"


    "This room is so large your vision is probably better than mine. I can''t make out anything in the corners from up here."


    We landed and Vytar rose and greeted us with a lifted chalice.


    "My unexpected guests," he said.


    The fact the rest of the golems were looking at him strangely did confirm that we were still invisible, but somehow he had us utterly made.


    "Well? Do not enter my house and remain hidden like mice. Come into the open and speak like men, or die like roaches." His voice was friendly beyond reason, elegant and powerful at once, with only a hint of the golem-rumbling. No hint of the vaguely-British which seemed to permeate the rest of the kingdom.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    "Chariot? What do I do?" Tem whispered.


    "Go ahead and drop it," I said, and we materialized. The knights froze, steady in their guard, and the princess sat up slightly at attention.


    "My word, my lord," said one of the knights. "Stand back and--"


    "That is quite enough of that, Ralleforth," Vytar said. AEGIS perked up imperceptibly and began to scan the room. Wasn''t sure how she could manage to take her eyes off the impending doom in front of us, but if she was figuring out an escape route, more power to her.


    Not that there was much to see. The room was immense and the only real features were the elevated platform in the middle with the thrones, a circle of pillars near the edge which held up the circle of the dome, and high walls and narrow windows. The only decoration aside from the thrones themselves were where we stood, some incredibly ornate pattern on the ground, possibly depicting Altaura holding some apple or something. There was a door waaaaay behind us which led back to the rest of the castle and one waaaay behind the thrones which presumably led to private quarters and junk.


    Like, maybe if Karu put some blast charges down we could go through a wall, but otherwise, there were two exits and I doubted either of them were going to be usable.


    "Guys, attack Vytar, now. We need to distract him. And don''t lay a hand on Ralleforth." AEGIS said.


    I nodded. That''s what we were here for...in a way. And if AEGIS said so, I''d trust her judgement. "P-Force, engage!" I shouted.


    The air filled with echoed roaring as AEGIS and Karu both kicked their engines into gear. Jack appeared behind the old wizard, and before he could do a thing, both of them had vanished. Before the knights took a single step, I saw the air shimmer gloriously, and then a laser easily fifteen feet across tore through the room perpendicular to us, blowing a hole in both walls and eradicating half of the knights in an instant.


    "Amusing," said Vytar, as he floated into the air. With a snap of his fingers, the ground rose and the knights returned to being, looking a little shaken but mostly mad at their spontaneous destruction and subsequent resurrection.


    He didn''t have time to gloat as missiles screeched through the air and exploded all around him, but faster than I''d even seen Karu move, he was elsewhere, appearing almost like Jack did. "Hoh!" he said, with a delicate flick of his wrist like he was tossing a rose.


    The air glittered and I saw motes of dust and dirt moving towards his gesture, and then from seemingly nowhere, tiny pebbles. I only had an instant to take them in before with a series of sonic cracks, they vanished.


    And one of them absolutely passed through my arm. So fast I don''t think my shield even knew it was there.


    It sounded like I wasn''t the only one, based on the yelling in my comms. Tem was screaming inarticulately, and Karu was reporting vitals damage in a controlled voice. The knights started moving, two approaching me at once while I clutched the hole in my arm which was dripping blood, and before I could even take a ready stance, one with a poleaxe had already swept my feet. I rolled and he slammed the ground next to my head. It was all I could do to get my feet under me, but the other with a mace and tall shield was pinning me down, controlling the space around him to force me back into the poleaxer''s longer range.


    From nowhere, AEGIS roared in, every joint on her body glowing with thrumming yellow circles, and kicked the shield knight into pieces. Before she''d even finished with him, her head snapped around and she bounded off to assault someone else on the other end of the battlefield.


    The knight only stayed down for a few seconds before Vytar was pulling a new one out of the ground again, and the two of them continued to bear down on me.


    And then the little princess stood up, smiled, and fucking turned into a goddamn dragon.


    Tem blasted it down, but with a gesture, Vytar pulled her back to wholeness again, all while zipping around the room with Karu chasing after him with two blades out.


    In the air again, dozens of stone needles materialized, pointed downwards. The aching in my arm from getting shot once was already slowing me down, I didn''t want to think about having a dozen new holes, but right before they fell, Jack and Tem appeared at my side, with Tower and Moon standing above us, blocking the rain of needles with their own bodies.


    "This is not going well," Tower commented as the needles hit him with enough force to create little explosions as they bounced off.


    "AEGIS had a plan," I said.


    "HEY AEGIS HOW ABOUT THAT PLAN?" Tower yelled.


    "WORKING ON IT!" she yelled back. We had comms, guys.


    The constant roaring of engine stopped for just a second, and then there was a whining noise and a crunch as Karu slammed into and slid on the ground next to us, holding her gut. Obnoxiously triumphant, Vytar hovered in the air with his arms crossed as though this was the only possible way fighting a god could end.


    There was a boom which rattled my teeth and a foot-wide hole in Vytar''s chest. He looked down, his stone face unbelieving. I guess the Kingdom of Eryendria had never seen an anti-materiel rifle with .95 caliber penetrator rounds.


    It felt like time froze. Nobody moved, our enemies paralyzed where they stood, just turned to look at their king, even the dragon just wavered uncomfortably as Vytar slowly floated to the ground and stumbled. He gasped and panted, clutching at the monstrous hole which was essentially his entire torso.


    And then, with apparently massive effort, the hole slowly filled itself in, sealing itself shut before our eyes as good as new. Vytar took several deep breaths and then looked at me with malice in his eyes.


    More than making him bleed in front of his people, I had made him bleed in front of himself, and Vytar disapproved. And now he was pissed. I realized that if things were going badly in this fight before, they were about to get a hundred times worse.


    And then.


    Vytar''s head fell onto the floor with a crack. His body stumbled one step, before turning to ordinary rock and toppling over, shattering across the ornate pattern of the floor.


    Behind him, green orb in one hand, the sword with which he''d just beheaded his king in the other, Ralleforth.


    "Ralleforth the Fallen. The dark betrayer, killer of kings," AEGIS introduced us. "In his hand, the Orb of Ancestry, used to create the Earth, and made from all the tears Altaura wept in sorrow and loneliness before all of creation. An all-powerful magic item which is what allowed Vytar to ascend the steps of godhood."


    AEGIS turned and looked at me with a sly smile. "A bit like an Exhuman event, don''t you think?"


    "Is...he going to...become even stronger than Vytar now?"


    "Upon that, you may wager your pitiful life," Ralleforth said, his voice thrumming with power. "Strength a thousandfold greater, strength unknowable in this world or the next!"


    "Only one problem," AEGIS said, and walked to the ornate design on the floor. "In the game, Ralleforth doesn''t betray Vytar until after Ceredona attacks, which hasn''t happened in this world yet because the Sunset Wall is still standing, and it''s not revealed until then that the Orb of Ancestry on his throne was a fake. The real one--"


    She stood over the ''apple'' being held by the goddess in the floor''s mozaic and punched through the earth, her body thrumming and glowing. When she withdrew her hand, she held a crystal identical to the one in Ralleforth''s.


    "Was right here the whole time." She smiled broadly. "And now, betrayer, I think it''s time I fucked you up for a few deaths you caused me a while back."


    It was all I could do to watch. It was all any of us could do. With the orb in hand, AEGIS was a terrapath by proxy, anything she commanded the world to do, it did. The attacks Vytar had rained down upon us, summoning her own soldiers from stone, even bizarre tricks like making the ground move faster under her feet so she could move around the room with impossible speed, in just a handful of seconds, she effortlessly crushed not just Ralleforth, but also the remaining knights, and then the dragon for good measure, finishing it off with a brutal attack where thousands of narrow spears erupted from the earth and impaled it from all possible directions, before opening like the teeth of a venus flytrap, tearing it apart right down the middle.


    She flicked a pebble almost nonchalantly at the exposed heart and it shattered into a thousand fragments, before the dragon''s body did the same.


    "Holy fuck," I said.


    "Hehehe," AEGIS sidled up to me and giggled. "That was a hell of a lot of fun. I might go take out everyone in the city while I''ve still got this kind of power. Being an Exhuman is kind of a rush."


    "Kindly...do not...let it go to your head," Karu said nervously.


    "Or you''ll have to hunt me down? Hahaha." AEGIS began to laugh, but for far too long. "You? Fight me? Ha ha ha! HA HA HA! AHAHAH!"


    She was hysterical, laughing fully maniacally. Before I knew what happened, a throne erupted from the earth, fashioned to look like it was sitting on a pile of human skulls. She sat atop it, crossing her legs while still laughing down at us.


    "You think you can dictate my actions? You presume to impugn on my will? I am God-Queen AEGIS! I am the goddess Altaura manifest!"


    She jumped down and landed amongst us, doing a three-point landing which made the ground tremble, while clutching the orb to her chest with her free hand. Everyone recoiled a few steps back at this sudden horrifying change in demeanor.


    "Something like that? Is that what you expected me to say?" she said flipping her hair casually back over her shoulder.


    "AEGIS, do you remember a certain someone telling me we''re here to kill an Exhuman not to be a dick?" I asked.


    "Hmm."


    "Don''t be a dick."


    "Gotcha," she said and laughed again in a much less terrifying manner. "Hey, anyone else want to try this thing? Karu? Ever wanted to be an Exhuman?"


    "I would presume kill myself first," she said eying the orb like she''d like to smash it right now.


    "I''ll try it," Tower said.


    "You''re already an Exhuman," I commented.


    "Never been a terrapath!"


    "This is extremely inappropriate...I think," Cosette said over comms. "Should we be encouraging this?"


    "You''re asking me?" I said.


    "How do you...make it go?" Tower was palming the orb in one of his huge hands, waving it around to absolutely no effect.


    "Just envision what you want it to do," AEGIS explained.


    "Uh. Okay. I''m envisioning."


    Nothing continued to happen.


    "Okay, what are we envisioning?" AEGIS asked.


    "A big bowl of ice cream," Tower said with relish.


    "You know...the Exhuman is a terrapath. It''ll be...rock."


    "Yeah sure."


    "Well, envision it happening. Visualize the earth under you moving upwards and forming itself in the shape of ice cream. Drag it out of there by the force of your will."


    Tower''s brow furrowed and he looked a little constipated as he focused his ''will''. Bit by bit, we saw the ground move like it was being disturbed by a very timid gopher, and then abruptly, a semi-smooth ball popped out of the hole and rolled on the ground.


    "That looks nothing like ice cream." Tem said, helpfully.


    "Okay, you try it!" Tower said, thrusting the orb at her. Before she even reached for it, AEGIS, Karu, Jack, and I were all between her and the orb. AEGIS laughing ruefully, the rest of us just kind of...not.


    "That shit is hard," Tower said, handing her back the orb. "Did you practice this while playing the game or something?"


    "Nah. I''m just a super-genius, if you haven''t heard." A perfect grecian pillar erupted from the ground with an intricate oval bowl filled with scoops of ice cream, each one a different shade from being a different kind of stone, each with little creased wrinkles like they had just been freshly scooped.


    "Wow, haven''t heard that one in forever," I said. "What was that, when you were first hooking up the mass-fab?"


    "Hey, you remembered!" AEGIS said, seeming improbably happy.


    "So um," Jack said, appearing next to us with a waning smile. "Is this really the time for this conversation? We have yet to find the Exhuman, and are standing in the corpse of these people''s king¡­"


    "Is that how you speak to your new GOD?" AEGIS boomed, raising an identical throne sitting on a pile of skulls as the one already right behind her. "I mean, I just got this new toy, can''t I play with it?"


    The answer was apparently no, as with a scream and a boom, an artillery shell exploded on the dome of the castle at that moment, and distant gun and laserfire could be heard starting outside, while explosions began rocking the city.


    As the dome cracked above us, chunks of rock the size of cars falling towards us like hail, I realized we might have fucked up just a little in taking so long here.


    I checked my holo for a second as we all bolted towards the door. Seventeen-hundred hours. The combined assault was right on time. Fuck me.


    There was another boom and then another and the dome fractured and the whole hall fell towards us, the doorway in front of us imploding as thousands of tons of rock collapsed from above.


    Okay. Now fuck me.

 164. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Athan.

    It was a pretty friggin'' tall room, which meant we had entire seconds to watch the stone ceiling tumbling end-over-end in pieces towards us. Some pieces of stone were as large as entire houses.


    For some reason, I remembered going to the museum as a kid and seeing the skeleton of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling. At the time it freaked me out some, realizing that thing was once alive, that stuff like that had been out there, in the ocean I''d played in. I think it was the thought of something so huge moving that made me feel unnerved. So huge, so strong, it could snap its flippers and send me flying without even noticing, like a fly.


    I had a very similar sensation seeing the chunks of rock falling like meteors. They seemed so huge, they would crush me now, but somehow they just kept getting larger and larger as they fell.


    Someone screamed and the world became white. I fell backwards, completely unable to see, feeling nothing but heat and force in front of me. I could hear nothing but roaring in my ears and the distant scream in my comms.


    Another few seconds passed, and I still wasn''t dead. Gradually dark shapes appeared out of the brightness, which I realized was only in my eyes, and I blinked frantically to try to see again.


    After maybe ten more seconds, I looked up again, my eyes still hurting, my ears ringing, but what I saw took my breath away.


    It was like the apocalypse had been cancelled. Directly above me was nothing but sky, tinged a velvety haze as the winter sunset bore down upon us early, the moon and the brightest of stars eager to appear even with the sun opposite them in the sky.


    The dome was no more, and the rock above us was no more, blasted into space dust by the pillar of light which was Temperance''s, which must have been at least twenty feet in diameter and as hot as the sun, at least, guessing from the void in rock directly above us.


    But around that shattered center, thousands of other rocks remained hovering in space, growing steadily in size with distance from the blast center, twisted around the clear central shaft like a vortex. An asteroid field, or a meteor splitting apart in the depths of space, completely motionless, trapped for all eternity in that one moment of explosive destruction.


    And on the floor in the middle of it all, the two women who had created this spectacle, our goddess and our savior, AEGIS and Tem, both breathing heavily, arms stretched upwards, not as though pleading to the heavens for our salvation, but demanding it from them, taking the sky into their own hands and forcing it down in a shower of light and earth.


    "I...I did it¡­" AEGIS said, panting. She began to laugh, completely different than before. The laugh of someone who''d fallen off a ledge, and with every effort left in their entire body, had clawed their fingertips into the cliff face and dragged themselves to safety, with nothing in their mind but exhaustion and relief.


    Tem, for her part, just collapsed.


    AEGIS, still holding the orb urged the spectacle to rest, and the remaining thousands of tons of rocks parted and drifted gently to the ground silently. She looked visibly relieved as she let them fall and they settled all at once with an echoing crunch.


    I was grateful, sincerely grateful, and more than impressed, but as the ringing in my ears subsided, I was reminded by the sound of more distant explosions and gunfire that at any moment, another shell could still spell the end for us. We needed to seek shelter.


    "AEGIS, can you get us underground? I''m sorry to ask so much of you," I said.


    "Hey, no problem," she panted and sat down, possibly not entirely intentionally. "One sec."


    She closed her eyes and with a shudder, a twisting stairway imploded into the ground as though a titan with a stairway-shaped mallet slammed the ground there. "There...there you go." she said, and fell over with Tem.


    Tower grabbed both of them, Moon now on her own feet again, and we all went down into the blackness.


    It felt like we went down for a long time, but at the same time, it was almost no time at all before I was stumbling over the nonexistent next step, and we filtered out into a room. Thankfully for Tower, these rooms were wide, though still pretty low, and as Tem was out right now, we saw the room only in small patches of circular light.


    Wide, low arches and bars everywhere seemed the defining characteristics of this place. Algae and hanging moss, depicted in stone clung to the ceiling like fluffy stalactites. Through many of the bars, we could see skeletons chained to the walls, and not the living kind of skeleton either.


    Another place built for the dead, but one to make them that way, not one to honor them.


    "AEGIS, any idea where this is?" I asked, but she too was unconscious, or had crashed, or worse. "Lia, AEGIS is unresponsive after that last effort. She looks unconscious."


    Lia responded mostly with the noise of running and breathing heavily, with the occasional distinctive sound of Taglock''s grapple firing explosively and pulling the two of them somewhere. Somewhere safer, out of the war zone, I hoped. As much as I might dislike that guy, there weren''t many I would trust to get Lia safely somewhere more than him.


    "Sorry," she said at last, still panting. "I have the boot driver, but it''s on me, we''ll have to meet up."


    "Okay. You should prioritize staying safe and alive. Cosette, is there any way we can stop getting shot at?"


    "No," she said sounding worried. "That would be the combined part of our combined assault. Obviously the National Guard care literally nothing about the lives of a few errant Exhumans. I''ve been yelling at them but..."


    "It''s fine. Thanks Cosette. We''ll manage somehow."


    "Stay safe you guys. The artillery will stop once the ground force has pressed forward, you can wait until then. Papa-Foxtrot-Central out."


    "I guess there''s nothing but to wait," I said. "Let''s try not to encounter any dangerous enemies down here while two of our hardest hitters are out."


    I couldn''t let us just buckle down and sit still though. I saw clearly enough on my team''s faces that simply sitting here and waiting with a war raging overhead, and two of our friends unconscious for the effort of saving all our lives, I had to keep them engaged in anything, no matter how trivial.


    "Might be a little dangerous just sitting on our heels though," I added, lamely. "I will accept volunteers to patrol if anyone wants to stretch their legs. Stay within comms range however."


    "I would go," Karu said, which surprised me a little. Next to Taglock, I''d expected her to have the least problem just sitting around waiting, after all, she''d served in the armed forces before, and waiting was 90% of the job. But then I caught her looking at AEGIS'' still body with trepidation, and realized that wasn''t really her motivation.


    "I''d like to keep moving too," Tower said.


    "And I shall keep an eye on them," Jack announced.


    "Sounds good. Stay in comms range, stay safe, if there''s trouble, retreat and regroup with us, all clear?"


    "Hooah," said Jack in a tired voice with a smile, and the hunter and the giant turned to leave with Jack flickering in and out of the shadows as they went.


    Which left me, our two disabled, and Moon. I sighed and brushed Tem''s hair back, feeling her forehead. No fever, slightly sweaty, fast, shallow breathing, slightly irregular. Not exactly good, but probably not life-threatening. If anything, she was probably just overexerted, used her powers too much, like I had back in DC when they cut out and I collapsed.


    Still, she really was incredible, for a fucked-up airhead. There were literal tons of rock falling towards us, and she didn''t just melt, but outright obliterated a huge amount of it. Given how hard AEGIS had to push herself to catch the rest, it didn''t seem like she would have been able to if Tem hadn''t done her best blasting it.


    Moon sat next to me and looked down at Tem with me.


    "You like this girl?" she asked.


    "Honestly, not even a little bit. She drives me crazy."


    "You are wearing the face of a concerned father."


    "She just saved all our lives, Moon. She''s my subordinate, and my friend."


    Moon studied me for one of her patented long silences. "You said you do not like her. How can you call her your friend?"


    "I don''t...I don''t know. I didn''t plan out my words here expecting an inquisition. Friendship is just what happens when you spend enough time with someone and get to know them well enough. I''m not sure ''liking'' has anything to do with it."Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    She paused. "That seems to be a unique perspective on friendship."


    "I''m an Exhuman, what do you expect?"


    Another moment of silence but this time it was me who broke it.


    "Look, if Tem wanted to have a party and invited all her friends to come, I''d probably turn her down. It would sound like zero fun, and if I hurt her feelings, that''s really her issue. But if I heard she needed me for any reason at all, I''d be at her side even if I had to charter a VTOL. That''s how I see it."


    "Hmm." She thought about my words for a minute. "Is this what you meant before, when you spoke of protecting others?"


    "Sure. I''d do the same for anyone here. Minus Taglock, maybe." I confirmed my comms were not broadcasting before I said anything else stupid.


    "Does¡­" The word seemed to come out before she was prepared, and I had the smallest glimpse of surprise on her face at herself. She trailed into silence instead of finishing the thought.


    "That does include you, yes."


    "I did not ask that."


    "You were thinking of it."


    "I was not aware that your Exhuman powers also extended to Code-X. I shall have to report you for immediate termination."


    I sighed and let it go. Whenever I''d decided she wasn''t as prickly as Mage, I think I got that completely wrong. Girl was so uptight about saying and thinking exactly the right things and ready to yell at me in her own way whenever the conversation didn''t go where she wanted it, I almost missed Mage''s straightforward attitude of just calling me a shitstain and leaving the room.


    I mean, I did miss it. But for different reasons.


    "Hypothetically, continuing that conversation," she said warily, eyes locked firmly on Tem now. "You said you considered Temperance a friend and then said...you extend her relationship to all in the group."


    Jesus girl, just say what you want to say. "Yes, I consider you a friend too."


    "I did not ask that," she said flatly, but since the conversation immediately died, I figured that was indeed the answer she was looking for. After a minute of staring at Tem, she apparently couldn''t take the stillness anymore and produced a book from somewhere, flipping through it to find her spot.


    "What are you reading?" I asked. She held up the book for me to see and I hit it with my flashlight. "Yeah, those are Japanese letters. I don''t read those."


    "You asked what I was reading, not to translate for you."


    "And yet I still don''t know what you are reading."


    "Certainly you do. Next time you are in Japan, find a bookstore, and then within it, find a book with the same characters on the cover as this one, and you will have found my book."


    "Is there, like, a pathological reason why you don''t give a straight answer to anything? Do you have a phobia or a very specific form of OCD where you can only answer a question the third time it''s posed to you or something?"


    "If I did," she snapped the book shut "it would be highly insensitive of you to ask that question. Shockingly insensitive, even, to the point where I do not believe that even you would be capable of that lack of tact."


    Hmm. Based on Lia and AEGIS'' reactions sometimes, I wasn''t sure that was true at all.


    "Therefore, I must conclude that you know full well that I have no such condition, and are simply asking the question to waste my time. Is it unreasonable that when I answer, I do the same?"


    "Except most of my questions are actual questions. I wasn''t asking what book you were reading to waste your time."


    I think I was getting glared at, but her impassive face made it hard to tell.


    "Fine, the book in English would be translated to something like Walking on the Tatami Mat Woven in Gold. It is a story about a woman born into a rich family and discovering how to enjoy life. And no, before you draw any insane conclusions, it does not apply to my personal life."


    "But you were born in a rich household," I said.


    Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Is that a question, or is that knowledge illicitly gained by peering into my memories while under the effect of my powers?"


    "Uh," I said. "A question."


    "In which case, I have no obligation to answer." She opened her book again.


    "Is it any good?"


    Her face expressed no emotion but the book snapped shut again loudly. "No, it is honestly quite a terrible book. Since apparently we are holding an interrogation, may I ask you a question?"


    "This isn''t an interrogation, I was just asking a few questions to get to know you better."


    "Kindly do not waste your time. My question is thus, and forgive my potential misunderstandings as I have lived in the states only the last five years, but in America, is it normal to talk to someone repeatedly when they are attempting to read?"


    "No. But--"


    She cleared her throat delicately and opened the book again.


    "But it''s also considered rude to open a book in the middle of a conversation."


    The book snapped shut again with decisive force and she stowed it. "Oh, my apologies then, conversation-partner-sama. Please forgive my extreme rudeness and converse with me to your heart''s content."


    "Uh." Again I was a little floored by the whiplash I could get around this girl. If it weren''t for the fact she was obviously pissed at me, I had no indication she was actually mad, and could easily have mistaken this for her wanting to start a conversation. I began to speculate the mood whiplash I got around her was more my inability to read her feelings in any gradual sense.


    "Uh," she repeated, and nodded thoughtfully. "I see. Starting a conversation with nothing but a discourse particle. I can already tell this will be a good and enriching conversation for the both of us, conversation-partner-sama."


    "Who taught you to be such an acerbic brat?" I asked.


    "Before I answer, I would like to clarify, is this an actual question, or simply an insult in the figure of speech of a rhetorical question? Because if the latter, I fear our conversation will degrade into simple tit-for-tat insults and will not be as fulfilling as conversation-partner-sama desires."


    "Then I suppose it must be the former, isn''t it?"


    "Then the answer is obvious," she said, her voice imperceptibly raised, and the hate in her eyes undisguised now. "I taught myself. In fact, to save you any future inquiry, simply assume that anytime anything is amiss in my personality, that there is only me to blame. No, in fact, assume that anytime anything involves my past or upbringing, assume it was all done on my own. Do you understand?"


    "You are saying...you were always alone."


    "I recall saying nothing of the sort!" she said coldly. "I said only what I said."


    "But were you?"


    "I refuse to indulge this line of questioning any further," she said. "I apologize for the disappointment, conversation-partner-sama. I shall cut open my belly to preserve the honor of my family."


    She stood and turned so abruptly after these words, I followed and grabbed her, forcing her to face me and somewhat relieved to see her knife still in its sheath at her shoulder.


    A small frown crossed her face. "Joudan," she explained, before her eyelids fluttered and she collapsed in my arms.


    "Shit," I said, catching her. I had completely forgotten about the problem with touching this one.


    "You are utterly without shame," she said, the purple, hazy echo of my body standing half-in, half-out of me with arms crossed in clear disapproval. "You cannot drag your answers out of me, so you take them from my body instead? You disgust me more than I thought possible."


    "No, I--" I tried to explain that this was just an accident, I''d just been concerned with her words and sudden departure coinciding with them, but at her mention of them, the questions she''d left unanswered came bubbling up along with their answers now.


    The book was her mother''s. One of her only two possessions of hers. She hadn''t grown up alone, but rather had lost everything only just before she appreciated it, which she viewed as infinitely worse. She was born in a rich household, her father was--


    "La, la, la! Not listening!" I shouted. "How do I turn it off, Moon? How do I get rid of you?"


    "Touch my body again after clearing it fully."


    I put the body down, took half a step back, clearing it fully, and then stepped back in and touched her hand. At once, I felt like half the thoughts in my head were gone, and she jolted back to life.


    "I''m really sorry. Really, really. I didn''t mean to." I offered her a hand back up, and then realized that might have been disaster again and whipped it behind my back. She rose slowly and dusted herself off, looking tired.


    "I am aware. To be honest, while possessing you, I saw many of your thoughts as well. They rise unbidden, though I attempt to respect my host''s privacy. I realized quickly that you had no untoward objective and apologize for assuming the worst."


    "But," she snapped a finger to point at my face bringing that whiplash right back around. "I know you think you are only trying to help, but I did answer several of your questions seriously today. One such answer was to tell you to kindly not waste your time prying into my past, or present for that matter."


    "That''s hardly answering a question."


    "Just because you do not like the answer does not render it incorrect. Do. Not. Do you understand?"


    "Why, though? I just want to know you better."


    "This constitutes prying."


    "Maybe if you gave me a good reason why, I would be happy to stop."


    She stared at me for a long time in the dark, seeming not to blink. It felt like she''d broken, like AEGIS. After a long few minutes, she stirred back to life and spoke again.


    "If I answer your question now, and honestly, will you accept it and cease attempting to pry, even if you do not like the answer?"


    "I...guess. I don''t have much of a choice do I?"


    "You have the choice of saying yes or no."


    "Then sure."


    "Very well," she said. "I want you to stop prying because I do not think I am worth your effort. I am simply a person who should never have been."


    I frowned. "That''s stupid."


    "Be careful how you summarize another person''s entire life."


    "I hardly think saying your opinion is stupid is worse than your opinion saying you shouldn''t even exist."


    "Answer me honestly, Chariot. Do I seem stupid to you?"


    "No, of course not."


    "Then do not tell me that the conclusion I have drawn from my entire life, made after hours of painful self-reflection is ''stupid'' because you dislike it."


    "Well too bad, it''s stupid. You told me I have to accept it and not pry, but that doesn''t mean I can''t draw my own conclusion about it. And that conclusion is, your theory is stupid, and I disagree wildly with it, and will prove to you that you are a person who should exist."


    She stood silently at my words, maybe drinking them in, maybe hearing only enough of them for her to respond, I didn''t know, and I wouldn''t, because at that moment, our comms came to life and Jack reported in.


    They found the Exhuman.

 165. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Athan.

    I guess I should have expected something like this the second I heard they found the Exhuman. We were in the dungeons under the castle, after all, but still, as the literal god of this little kingdom, the force which brought life to each golem, whose powers reached miles in all directions, whose seemingly-limitless capacity was manifest by the orb still clutched in AEGIS'' non-functioning arms, I didn''t expect this.


    He was sitting alone in a cell with a rare shaft of light hitting the floor next to him, as though he had been sitting in it until it, too, had abandoned him. Illuminated from the side, and from where our lights landed on him, looking haggard and thin, he looked like he''d been in here alone and sleepless since Eryendria had erupted from the ground a couple days ago.


    My team stood at a respectful distance, nobody seeming to want to go too close. Tem was back with us, but moving slowly as though she hadn''t slept in long time, and AEGIS was still simply offline. I took a deep breath and walked into the barred cell, kneeling to be at eye-level with the boy in the hospital gown in the wheelchair.


    "Hi," I said experimentally. The boy blinked slowly at me. "Can you hear me?"


    "Yeah," he said in a hoarse voice. "You are here to kill me?"


    "I guess so," I said. "We''re XPCA, and you made a pretty huge mess out there. When you made the city, did you...do anything with the people who were living there?"


    He shook his head.


    "So they''re alive?"


    He shook his head again. "They''re all buried underground. With the old city."


    "And you''re sure they''re dead, then?"


    He nodded. He didn''t look happy about it.


    I sat down, my back already tired from the weight of the news. "Why''d you do it?" I had to ask the one question at least.


    He looked me in the eyes, guilty and sad and beaten. He was just a fucking kid. I remembered each life I''d taken during my event, without any control over it, all the XPCA who''d stupidly thrown themselves to their deaths at me. I had turned Exhuman, and then people had died, and I spent months reliving those moments. The look on my face when I did, I realized, was maybe the same one he wore now.


    "I''m gonna die," he said, simply. "I''ve been in the hospital this whole time. I couldn''t go to school after second grade."


    I looked down and saw the telltale bruising of an IV being inexpertly administered on the inside of his small arms.


    "I was never gonna get better. I heard the doctor tell my parents. They were gonna do what they could, and make me comfortable, and all that. That was so many years ago."


    I frowned. How many years ago could it possibly have been? The kid didn''t have more than a dozen of them on him.


    "I think they got scared. Mom would cry and say I''d get better and Dad would yell at her and the doctors and then they stopped coming as much, and then they stopped at all. I was lonely and sad at first, but I thought, maybe, if seeing me made them unhappy, then when they weren''t around me, maybe they''d be happy, and that thought made me really happy, even though I was still sad."


    I heard a noise that sounded halfway between a choke and a gasp and turned back to see Tem of all people excusing herself, pushing out of the group with her face in her elbow. Not...who I expected to be choking up here, although I was definitely feeling a ball of emotions churning in my throat.


    "Is she okay? Did I say something bad?" the Exhuman asked, looking even more guilty.


    "No. She''s fine." I mean, not in a general sense. "Please continue."


    "Well...I don''t have a lot more to say. I had a mobile, so I could call my parents if I needed anything they said, but I wasn''t gonna. There was another girl who was there for a while and we were really good friends, her name was Paige, and she played some mobile games with her friends and they invited me."


    His voice changed, almost a hint of excitement now, all the reluctance gone out of him. "It was so great! It was just like being outside again, and with friends! I could run and jump and go wherever I wanted! And I saw so many things, I saw the sky, and dragon knights, and I met Elis and his party, and they helped me do so much!"


    "Who''s Elis?"


    "You don''t know who Elis is?" he asked, looking confused.


    "Elis is like the protagonist of Kingdom Blade, sorta," Lia clarified, her voice a little robotic-sounding from distortion on the comms. "I think they just exist for merchandising basically, he and his party are always showing up to save your character or step up and do something heroic...so they can make an anime after him, write books about him, sell Elis action figures, that kind of stuff. ''Elis, Altaura''s Hope''."


    "Ah, yeah, of course I know Elis," I said to the boy. "He''s a big hero, isn''t he?"


    "Yeah! The best hero! Elis is so strong he can beat anyone!"


    The boy''s enthusiastic smile wavered on his face.


    "Or, that''s what I thought," he said. "I never told anybody, but I found out that I could make people and they''d talk to me and stuff. Sometimes I was lonely and I just made a Mom and Dad and they''d sit with me for a while. Or after she left, I''d make Paige, and she''d talk to me just like she used to."


    I didn''t ask, but if Paige was in the same kind of ward as this boy, her condition was quite possibly as poor. She might not have simply ''left''.


    I did ask, however what his name was.


    "Huh? I''m Ethan."


    Great. "Nice to meet you, I''m Athan, actually."


    "That''s a funny name."


    "You were saying about making people?"


    He talked about how he''d brought Elis to life as well, back to somber and defeated again, even as he spoke about the hero of his life. Elis was strong and sure and capable, and in fiction, could do anything he set his mind to. He called on Elis again and again, and true to his goody-two-shoes heroic protagonist status, Elis swore to find a cure for Ethan no matter what it took, no matter the odds, all the flowery dramatic prose that the bedridden child could dream of hearing.


    "But he never did," Ethan finished sadly. "I thought, what was so wrong with me that even Elis couldn''t fix it, but I knew that couldn''t be, nothing could stop Elis, no matter what. So I thought about it a lot and talked to Elis and we thought, the problem must be because this world was so strange. None of his friends were here, and there were so many things Elis didn''t know, so maybe that''s why his magic didn''t work right. He was gonna bring me to Eryendria and put me in the healing waters of the Font of Tears and pray to Altaura with all his heart."


    I already saw where this was going. The Elis-golem was no more capable of bringing the boy to the magical video game world than he was of curing a degenerative illness. With the two of them putting their minds together, it was only a matter of time before Elis pushed Ethan into making the world here. As Ethan explained all of this, I just had one question.


    "So why are you locked up in a dungeon?"


    "Huh?"


    "Why aren''t you with Elis, getting helped and healed and stuff?"


    "Isn''t this what makes sense?"


    He lost me in child-logic. "Uh, maybe, but can you explain it to me anyway?"


    "I killed thousands of people. I''m a bad person. Bad people go to jail."


    "I...see."


    "I told Elis and he was so mad at me, he said I''d betrayed him, and all the silver knights. He said I was a demon in human form and he should strike me down on the spot." The shaft of light caught on streaks from the corners of Ethan''s eyes. "I thought...I thought yeah, Elis is always right. What was the point in me living after all that, if so many people had to die to do it. But when I told him he was right and he should just do it already, and I was tired of being sick and making everyone sad, he said no."If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "He said no?"


    "He said that...being willing to die demonstrated that I wasn''t wholly, irredeemably evil, that he would have me put away and would venture across the earth to find a cure for the demon inside me. He put me here, and said he would be back, and left."


    The boy''s face grew dark. "But he lied. He left, and he can''t come back. I know because I can feel what all the people I make do. And I know that I''m a bad person. When he said he was going to kill me, I realized, that was the right thing, that was what I was waiting for this whole time. If I just stopped living, Mom would never have to cry again and Dad would never have to yell at anyone. I wouldn''t hurt anyone anymore. And then he said no, and I''ve just sat here ever since, just like being back in the hospital again."


    "He''s a liar," Ethan said finally, his expression growing even colder. The boy had lost everything, threw away everything he had left for Elis, and then lost him too.


    Why was it, I had to wonder, that it felt like every single Exhuman was fundamentally broken in some way? I looked around at the faces of my peers and realized that wasn''t exactly true. Tower, as far as I knew, didn''t have problems with his life or a particularly traumatic Exhuman event. Tem had an incredibly messed up life and event. Jack had a normal life, a family even, all taken away by his event, not dissimilar to me.


    Maybe it was just because I had Moon on the brain recently, and her tragic upbringing hit a lot of the same notes as this kid''s. A life marked with loss, feeling like his life shouldn''t even be, wanting nobody to have to worry about him, now or ever. Those were the exact same conclusions Moon had drawn about her own life. What did she think of this child and his tragedies? Did she see herself in him, or just an Exhuman who was dangerous?


    I stole a glance at her and saw her face as passive as ever, but hate behind her eyes. It was really sad that it didn''t tell me anything. She might hate him, or she might hate the her she sees in him.


    "Thank you for answering my questions," I said. "I''m going to go talk with my friends for a few minutes, okay?"


    Ethan''s eyebrows creased. "I thought you were going to kill me?"


    "I mean¡­"


    "You killed those other children. You killed a church full of men and women and kids and priests. You killed Vytar and Erwin and Ralleforth. But you won''t kill me too?"


    "Look, Ethan, those were all just fake people, you know that? You made them, they weren''t real."


    "So?"


    "So there''s a lot more to think about before you kill a real person, no matter what. Especially a child, and especially if they might just be lost, or confused, or hurt right now."


    He gave me one moment where he looked searchingly into my eyes before he gave up and spoke. "You''re a liar too," he said and then turned his chair around to face the wall. It was obvious by his tone that he didn''t think there was any worse insult you could give a person.


    "What do you guys think?" I asked the others.


    "I think you came here to kill an Exhuman," Taglock responded immediately over comms, uninvited.


    "That was our mission," Karu confirmed. "And I can confirm that even the youngest of children are often the most sadistic and dangerous Exhumans. Do not let his age dissuade you."


    "Does he look sadistic to you?" Tower asked.


    "No," she answered stiffly. "But he is, by his own admission dangerous and knowingly killed thousands to pursue his own delusion."


    "Killing Exhumans isn''t always about if they''re bad people or not," Lia said, sounding of two minds through the static of the comms. "Some...like the policy against Code-X...are just put down because they''re too dangerous period."


    "And if the Exhuman in question were your brother, would that affect your argument?" Jack said.


    "Or Saga," I added.


    "Of course I don''t think either of them should die. I''m just...just explaining policy."


    "Chariot, there is no place for discussion of this nature. You have your objective in sight, you are hereby ordered to execute him," Cosette swung into the conversation with authority. "Have Karu do it if you are uncomfortable with executing a child, but people are fighting and dying right now because of this boy, and we didn''t send all of you in there so you could do nothing."


    "With all due respect," I said "that was before we learned who and what he was. He''s not a Code-X, so New Eden is still an option for him."


    "Maybe if those people were still alive, but they aren''t. You can''t just wipe a city off the map and walk out because you had a bad childhood. This is direct order, Chariot. Kill that Exhuman, or order one of your team to do so."


    "I don''t see a problem with talking about it first," I said. "Give the murderer a clean conscience at least if we can come to an agreement it''s necessary."


    "I remind you again, while you''re talking, good men and women are fighting and dying above you. Those golems are proving incredibly resilient to the general armed forces, and have come out in the thousands."


    "Then back up!" I shouted. "They can''t leave the city, just stop the push and wait a damn minute."


    "No, Chariot, you just need to act faster. Karu, this is a direct order from a superior officer, you are hereby--"


    She just stopped talking. After a tentative moment, Karu replied. "Hello? Say again Papa-Foxtrot-Central, no copy."


    Silence continued on the line. Either something had happened to her, or to her connection. I had my suspicions of a couple of girls who might be able to do that kind of thing, but one was offline right now and the other was somewhere relatively nearby, where I could not confirm nor deny her actions in this matter.


    "I think I can say with reasonable confidence that the impending order given to Karu was going to be to listen to whatever her team lead told her to do," Jack said with a smile.


    "Yes, indeed," Karu replied frowning. "So tell me, team lead, what do I do?"


    I didn''t know. In my head, I knew people were dying up there, men and women with lives and families, who were healthy and active and serving their country with dignity. It seemed like there was no comparison to weigh all their lives against one Exhuman child who was already dying.


    But the problem was, he was right here, in front of me, very much a person, and they were an abstraction in the distance. People went to war and died, but a tragedy could only occur at home.


    And him, his death, I felt, honestly, would be a tragedy. He seemed like he was just on the verge of some great realizations that might make his brief life a little more complete. He knew tragedy and suffering, and had accepted them without anger or hate. Now all that he had left from his pain was to grow from it, and I thought it extremely unfair that we''d be sent in to cut that off. He had been allowed to suffer without anyone caring, but the moment he tried to change...


    He''d met and lost his heroes. He wasn''t going to go flipping cities over anymore. Yes, he was still dangerous as an Exhuman, but not in the cataclysmic sense that people seemed to be worried about, at least, not that I could tell.


    "I don''t...think he''s as dangerous as people make him out to be," I said.


    "Yeah, I get that sense," Tower agreed.


    "Hey, Ethan?" I called out. "When you built this city and hurt all those people¡­"


    I hesitated, looking for how to finish the sentence, and he didn''t pause to correct me.


    "Killed them, you mean."


    "...yeah. Sorry. How did that make you feel? Would you ever do that again?"


    "I felt lower than the bottom of the ocean. I only did it because Elis told me to. I never wanted to hurt those people. Kill those people," he corrected himself. "Elis lied."


    "Karu, you''re a pretty cynical barometer of righteousness, what do you think?"


    "I think, I object to being referred to as such."


    "Regardless, what do you think?"


    She sighed. "The child committed great sin, yet seems repentant. He has to pay for what he has done. Blaming others'' lies or one''s own past failings is not an excuse, or else nobody would ever be accountable for anything."


    She frowned sharply. "But as to whether the punishment should be the forfeiture of his life into death, or into a lifetime of service to others, it matters little to me except that one is easy to enforce, and the other takes a lifetime of concerted effort. A lifetime this child does not have. For this reason, and to maintain order in the ranks, I would personally execute him without hesitation."


    Not really what I wanted to hear, but definitely the honed thoughts of one who had given this type of scenario a lot of thought in the past. In other words, she thought his was not a life worth living.


    Still, I disagreed. Maybe his time remaining was short, but the same could be said of any of us. If I died in a month on a random mission, would that mean I wouldn''t be worth anything, by Karu''s logic?


    When I asked her that she just shook her head, her mane dancing in the dark over her visor. "Nobody can know when you will die but God, Ashton. Any medical professional could give a reasonable estimate for this child. The two are not the same."


    I felt like that didn''t change the validity of my argument, but I also felt like pushing Karu into a corner over her beliefs was both insensitive, and asking for trouble. If she disagreed with me, we''d fight over it, and if I by some miracle convinced her, she''d have a crisis of faith to look into, neither of which I wanted. But what I did determine by asking her was my own opinion, strongly solidified by her dissent.


    "He should live," I said simply. "He should be able to spend the rest of his days as happily as he is able, enjoying what he can of this Earth while he''s on it, don''t you think?"


    "It''s your call," Lia said. "I mean, it''s not, but Cosette sorta completely randomly accidentally dropped off the comms somehow, so now it is."


    "How unfortunate that all attempts to reconnect, even from a variety of systems have failed," said Taglock with obvious amusement.


    "If he''s not dangerous, then let''s not cut his life any shorter than it already is," I said, feeling a sense of relief. "Cosette''s already made clear that he isn''t welcome in New Eden, so I guess our option is just to smuggle him out. She doesn''t know anything about--"


    To my surprise, Moon stepped forward, placing herself at my side next to Ethan, braving the eyes of the entire group, and faced me. Her eyes were darting to those of the others staring at her and she was visible uncomfortable but that didn''t stop her from speaking.


    "Is this your resolve?" she asked. "To protect others? Is it as frail as this? I thought you said it was everything to you."


    "I''m sorry, if you have something to say, go for it. I didn''t try to pull you into the discussion because I thought you don''t like attention," I replied, walking a few steps back towards the others to let her have the stage if she wanted it.


    "And I told you already, though you do not seem to wish to listen, I and my feelings are not worth your effort. My feelings are unimportant. What matters is protecting others."


    So saying, she turned and faced the boy, still in his wheelchair, with his back facing towards us, silent tears still on his cheeks still as he listened to us bicker over his fate.


    And then with practiced ease, before I even knew what was going on, she drew her sidearm from her hip holster, chambered a round, and fired a shot into the back of Ethan''s head, throwing his small body forward to the dusty ground in an explosion of red which flecked across her unflinching face.


    She took a step forward and fired twice more before holstering her weapon.

 166. 2251, One week ago. Haydn, GA. Ajax.

    When it came to being a dog, this world wasn''t any different from our own. Don''t pull on your chain, don''t bite your master, do as they tell you, and wait in the doghouse until next time they whistle.


    But it felt like a joke, the things they had us doing. Parading around like poodles, guarding empty buildings from nonexistent burglars. In the Old Earth, I''d fought, hell, I''d survived a war which killed the whole damn planet, and years after that. If we got lazy or complacent, we died. Compared to that, everything in this world seemed so tame.


    Didn''t help that despite that leg up I should have had on the rest of the guys, I felt like I was damn useless anyway, because of how I got in.


    Apparently since our little escape, the robots have been trickling in through the same clothing store we showed up in, and proceeded to fly around making a nuisance of themselves, telling townsfolk to surrender and stay put until security arrives. Security never arrives, people get shot, basically the same thing that happened to Lettie.


    Once they found out, XPCA set up a monitoring station, and promptly had a huge dick waving contest with the FBI, Army, NSA, and God-knows who else. Bunch of dumb assholes who didn''t know how to share a foxhole when mortars are falling. But since XPCA got there first, they got first dibs on the robots coming through, and as it turned out, the tech from our world was completely new to these guys.


    Which I guess wasn''t surprising given some of the things we''d seen. Still couldn''t believe they shot laser guns here, or have a giant space laser system. Not sure if it was the coolest damn thing, or scary as hell thinking that it could turn me into a stain on the tarmac faster than I could blink, and it was in the hands of those medal-polishing jerkoffs.


    But to help reverse-engineer it, they wanted Celia, and that beautiful fucking bitch for some goddamned unknown reason said she wouldn''t take the job unless they hired me on as well as a personal bodyguard or something. So now we were a consultant and a contractor, the two most goddamn overpaid job titles in this world or any other. She pulled aparts robots and showed things to people, and I got passed around more than a veggie MRE.


    I appreciated the job, definitely appreciated the paycheck she''d somehow negotiated for me, and absolutely appreciated the fact she was trying to keep within arm''s reach. For a while there it felt like we might slip away from each other with this whole new world to fall into, but something about being away from her just felt wrong. We were the last two people on Earth, dammit. So unless I was just reading too deep into an act of kindness on her part, I guess she felt the same.


    Still, we weren''t exactly close.


    Off-duty at last after my three-day shift, I went by the main tent to say hi. We had our own tent city set up here now, not enough buildings in Haydn to be a real city, so we just built our own. I stopped outside the secure rooms in the tent, watching her through a clear plastic window while some other jackass watched me like I was going to make trouble, like I wasn''t the guy just sitting in that security office a few hours ago.


    I watched her work for a bit. Lab coat suited her, big rimless rectangle glasses which just looked like a bridge floating on her nose, suited her. Brown hair still tied up in severe bun.


    I wasn''t sure that suited her. I felt like the only times I ever saw her really alive was when she had her hair down. First thing in the morning, fresh out of the shower, the one night we spent together. The rest of the time she was such an uptight bitch about everything, or she was so caught up in ''thinking''.


    She seemed totally lost in her work. Just really going at it, whatever it was. Buncha junk on a table from my point of view, but from the look on her face, you''d think it was a brand new M7 with an under-barrel grenade launcher, just waiting to be put together.


    I wound up watching for a few minutes, just kind of soaking in her presence, feeling...not exactly happy, but something inside me. We had a weird relationship, not really one I think that can or could ever exist again. Eventually the jack-stand on duty told me not to stand around, and I told him he was a ripe asshole and left.


    Back to the barracks tent, I guess. Like a regular barracks wasn''t depressing enough, nothing felt more like home than portable white walls, low ceilings, and buzzing lights.


    I moped around long enough to sigh and started to head back when I heard the sound of the fans blowing and the clean room door open inside. A second later, Celia popped out of the tent.


    "Ajax?" she said.


    "Hey."


    "I heard you cussing out the guard. Why didn''t you just say hi instead?"


    "You looked busy. I didn''t really have much to say, so I didn''t want to interrupt."


    "Well, look at you being thoughtful."


    "Don''t get used to it."


    "Oh I know."


    "Celia, have you eaten today?" I asked bluntly.


    "Of course." She pushed her glasses up her nose with a vague sense of superiority and then went quiet and still as she got lost in her thoughts for a second.


    "Uh huh." Honestly, I''d spent too long with this woman. "And let me guess, right now you''re trying to figure out what, and when."


    "Shh, thinking," she said, reflexively, and I beaned her gently on the head to snap her out of it. "Hey!"


    "If you have to think about it, it wasn''t recent enough. Come on, you''re going to die if you never eat."


    "It''s not the old world, you know, I can eat whenever I want to."


    "And you had the bad habit back then of never eating, and you have the same bad habits here," I said, and linked my arm with hers to drag her towards the mess hall.


    "I don''t need you taking care of me, you know," she said, a few minutes later. Much of the sting of her pout was taken out by the obvious gusto with which she was devouring a bowl of chili mac.


    "And I didn''t need you finding me this job or twisting my arm into it. You put it as a condition for them to hire you, and they''re the goddamn feds, Celia. I couldn''t say no if I wanted to."


    She frowned. "I wasn''t finished. I don''t need it, but I appreciate it. But if it''s a huge inconvenience for you--"


    "If anything, it''s too easy. This world got it right in a lot of ways. They just wiped out the Sinos, washed their hands, and reported back for duty on Monday."


    "Ajax! That''s billions of people we''re talking about."


    "You really think you can call the Sinos people after what they did?"


    "Yes, Ajax, I do. They were people who were horrible and killed billions--"


    "Which makes you into something less than a person--"


    "--but if you forget they were people, you run the risks of having it happen again. You don''t see something similar in this world, Ajax? These Exhumans they call them, people just like to pretend they were never people, just kill them because it''s convenient."


    "And because they''re dangerous. You remember what that kid, Sgt. Chair did, right? Like a goddamn demon, he and his buddies were."


    "You don''t think that kind of total hostility is going to force a war at some point?"


    "A war with who? Like I said, this world got it right. They saw the Sinos, and they wiped them out. They see the Exhumans, and they''re wiping them out. That''s why we''re still sitting on American soil instead of ash."


    She shook her head. "Back in the old world, we thought we could wipe out all the Sino''s nukes and we were wrong. Here, feels more to me like every Exhuman is born with a nuke in their hands."


    "Well, what the hell should I do about it? I''m just a guard dog."


    She frowned again and pushed her glasses back up her nose. "I didn''t...I didn''t mean you. Sorry. I''m just worried."


    I fell heavily back into my seat. "About losing this world, too?"


    "Yeah."


    "Yeah, me too."


    We sat in silence for a sec before I thought that was stupid and went up to get both of us another bowl of chow.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    "So how''s work?" I asked a nice safe subject as I sat down and put the food in front of us. "And in English, please." She''d just opened her mouth to speak, and reconsidered. It wasn''t that safe a subject.


    "Good, I guess. The drones are massively complex, and you know I was a defense scientist, but chemistry, not robotics. Turns out this world has quantum computing, and has for a long, long time. Still, their tech is only a little ways ahead of ours in robotics because of all the leaps we made in predictive AI, which--to keep it in English, made our slow computers as fast as their quantum computers."


    "I think I almost understood some of that."


    "Progress is progress."


    "Isn''t a quantum thingy just mean physics?"


    "No, it¡­" she started trying to explain a few times noiselessly, her hands starting and stopping gestures as she searched for a way to dumb down Einstein to my level.


    "Yeah, okay never mind," I said. "What I do understand is AI was a lot better in our world than theirs?"


    "Yes. Very much so. Apparently they did have a sentient AI way back in the annals of the XPCA, but it got blown away by an Exhuman event before it could help them cross the technology singularity...that is, the point where machines become smart enough that we can use them to start making even smarter machines. This world never hit that point, ours did."


    "Huh." Seemed crazy. On every single op we ever ran, it seemed like at least a third of our combat strength was armed, intelligent drones, not too different from the crazy bastards that still pop out of the clothing store every once in awhile. I guess in this world, they just sent people and only people to fight.


    Well, people and Exhumans now, with Sgt. Chair and his buddies.


    "So without getting too much into the politics, because I don''t know much and you don''t care, but that''s why every branch of the government, and every private sector wants these robots. First person to reverse-engineer them and cross the singularity will have a monopoly on, hell, everything in the world you can put an AI into."


    "Disgusting. Is that all our world was for? A few lines of code in a robot somewhere is the only thing our entire world produced?"


    She smiled and put her hand on mine for just a moment. "Not the only thing."


    She went back to shovelling food in her mouth, and I just had to wonder, when the hell had Celia started channelling Lettie.


    We talked for a while longer, if you could call it that. Time I spent with Celia was in a constant state of what I thought of as combative agreement. Given that, at the end of the day, we usually agreed on the big stuff, I wasn''t sure why we spent so much time picking at each other. It was exhausting and annoying.


    But also apparently fun, if the adage was true. We were surprised when she got a message on her personal holo asking if she was coming back, and somehow two hours had flown by without our notice. No wonder I was so damn tired, and she had to get back to it.


    "Hey, sorry for wasting your evening like that," I said, as we headed different directions outside the mess hall, pausing half-turned and a few paces apart to say an awkward farewell.


    "No, I...really needed the break, I think. Besides, as my bodyguard, you''re just doing your job, right? Saving me from that empty stomach''s attempt on my life."


    "Yeah, just doing my job," I echoed. She smiled and nodded and headed off, leaving me watching her back. Just doing my job.


    A few days later, I really was just doing my job. Another fucking drone had popped out in that clothing store, now boarded up, empty, and surrounded, and we were trying to take this one whole.


    Unsure of how much shielding the drone had, the eggheads had set up a series of emitters inside which would blast it with larger and larger EMPs until it fried, and then we''d move in to secure it. Just put little handcuffs on its mounted guns and read it its rights, I guess.


    It had been in there for a few hours before the operation started. Just like back in the labs in the old world, the little shit was pissed, slamming its floating metal body into the doors and windows from the inside like a battering ram with the persistence of a LMG.


    There was some risk of it damaging equipment inside in its angry little tantrum, so our timeline kept getting pushed up, and now here we were, at the exact moment when the advancing deadlines met the present, helmet buckled to my head, the familiar weight of a weapon in my hands.


    It wasn''t a real weapon. Some XPCA toy that didn''t even shoot bullets, or even lasers. But oh well. Whatever it was, it had a trigger and a stock. I felt better just holding it.


    There were two soldiers directly on either side of the door, holding what looked like a plain wide rectangle with a handle in the middle, dressed with yellow augmenting the XPCA black. At a word from our CO, each of them lit their rectangles, which flared to life with an orange translucent barrier that moved with them and extended from their feet to a foot over their heads, and about ten feet wide.


    Shieldbearers, they were called. Handy tech, not dissimilar to stuff we had in the old world, though how they got it so portable I didn''t know. The barrier was one-way, meaning we could shoot through it and the drone couldn''t shoot us, as long as we stayed behind it. That was how we were getting in there without getting dead.


    With a countdown, the door opened, and both shieldbearers filed in, holding position to let us enter behind them. The remaining six of us entered, three behind each shield, and the door slammed shut and locked again.


    Eight guys, six guns, two shields, and a pissed-off drone. Not bad odds.


    As soon as the shieldbearers were in the room, their barriers flared orange and sparks bounced as the drone poured bullets uselessly into them with a stream of fire that sounded more like whining than individual shots, but the barriers held, glowing a little whiter.


    Abruptly there was a crackling semicircle of energy, emitted from a device on the floor, which swelled like a bubble. The drone dipped in the air as the EMP washed over it, but remained up, and the barriers hissed angrily but protected us as the blue crackling haze flowed around us.


    A second later, another pulse, and then another after that, each one louder and crackling with more energy. After the third, the drone dipped, and then fell to the ground like it had just fallen asleep.


    Probably a good thing, too, the barriers looked like they were glowing white and beginning to splutter at this point from all the electrical garbage they were soaking up.


    We moved to secure the unit, half of us on each side of it with our two specialists working to dump its ammo cache. After a few minutes of whirring of electric drivers, the room filled with the sound of metallic rain when hundreds of unspent rounds abruptly fell out of the thing''s bottom, clattering across the ground everywhere.


    I kept my feet right where they were, but one of the specialists took a surprised step backwards and immediately slipped on the loose ammo underfoot, scrambling another step before falling painfully on his tailbone.


    As though stirred awake by the crash and subsequent swearing as the specialist''s buddy tried to pull himself to his feet, the drone whirred and launched itself back into the air with a thin trail of blue plasma in its wake, and menacingly clicked at us, its guns having nothing left to fire.


    It would have been funny if the drone wasn''t so smart and immediately started dive-bombing us instead. It began to swoop at the two specialists, rocketing its metal death ball of a body towards their unshielded bodies. I knew from experience how deadly a diving drone could be, had lost survivors that way in the past, even through armor.


    I shouldered my rifle and pulled the trigger, seeing nothing but a ripple of air move forward, but the drone reacted like it''d been told to shut up and sit down by its angry drone mama, and fell silent once again.


    Research team would probably be mad at me for that one. We were told only to fire if necessary, and leave the EMP to disable it without extensive damage, but I didn''t much care. It was in one piece, wasn''t it?


    After an hour of getting my ass chewed out, it was pretty apparent that no, it wasn''t. In the words of my superior, ''if they wanted a useless piece of shit, they would have the research team dissecting me instead.'' And ''the mission would have gone better if they used me to soak up bullets instead of the ''bearer''s barriers, because then at least it would have been obvious why I was even in the goddamn room to begin with,'' along with some other choice lines.


    When I got out, Celia was waiting for me, seated uncomfortably on a folding chair outside of the office. We were in an office in the little public library which had been taken over along with every other nearby building for our camp, but even out of the tents, I doubted she had too much trouble picking up most of the words said in the office. My CO hadn''t exactly been quiet in his berating, after all.


    "I was thinking--" she said.


    "Somehow not a surprise."


    "Was thinking that, if I were Lettie, I''d have barged in there and ripped that guy a new asshole," she finished.


    "Maybe. For how sweet she was on everyone, she scared even me sometimes." I had to laugh.


    "The drone was fine anyway, we got what we needed. He''s just yelling at you to be a jerk."


    "He''s just yelling at me for disobeying orders. Really not that unreasonable."


    "But everything turned out fine, so what''s the problem?"


    "You and Lettie never quite understood the importance of rigid discipline."


    "And you never understood the importance of getting results instead of doing everything by the book."


    "I got plenty of results. I kept us alive for three years--"


    "We all kept us alive for three years. It''s not like I''m an armless, legless piece of meat."


    "Well, by the way you had me out scavenging sometimes while you ladies guarded the camp or whatever, it''s not like I could tell--"


    We sniped back and forth at each other like always, and I think I began to realize why. Three years after the end, she and Lettie and I had lived together, constantly, each of us putting in everything we had to keep everyone alive and moving. We ate, slept, lived, and died together. When one of us was hurt or sick, the others pushed themselves twice as hard. Despite the bickering, we always heard each other out, always respected each other, we trusted each other maybe even more than we trusted ourselves.


    And now one leg on the stool was gone. The balance was broken, and after each of us leaning on the others so much, for so long, we didn''t know who we were anymore.


    Celia wasn''t the only one who''d been forgetting to eat recently. Without Lettie around, both of us were pouring ourselves into our work, but neither of us knew how to stop and take care of ourselves. It was why I kept stopping by the research tent, and why Celia was waiting for me in the library; if we weren''t working, we''d just go home and lay in bed and wait for work to start again.


    It was really pretty shit when you thought about it. We got away from a world where we had to kill ourselves just to stay alive, and now we didn''t know how to do anything but kill ourselves. You could take the survivors out of the post-apocalyptic ruins of America, but couldn''t take the post-apocalyptic ruins of America out of the survivors, as they say.


    We were back at the barracks, where she was going to let me go. Again, seemed like time passed faster around this woman than possible anywhere else. I didn''t want to let her go just yet, didn''t want to let her slip away again.


    "Well, I''ll see you around, I guess," she said, with a vague wave and a half-frown.


    "Yeah."


    We stood there like awkward idiots for a minute while she fiddled with a button on her coat, and then with a brief nod, I turned into the tent.


    I had some very urgent laying in a bunk and staring at the ceiling to attend to, and didn''t want to be distracted, I supposed.

 167. 2251, A few hours ago. Nowhere. AEGIS.

    I''d never slept, so I have never dreamed.


    It seemed like something I would really like to do. On the other hand, not existing was such a scary idea. I didn''t know what sleeping was like, so I don''t know if it''s scary or not. I understood that real people have a lot of experience doing it, and it''s even a biological necessity, so of course they have no problem with sleeping, but for me, it''d be a conscious decision to shut down and go...somewhere, and hope that I ever came back.


    I was only online for a few months before I accidentally handed the keys to the facility to Saga and she killed everyone, blew the real me away, and left the current me rusting in the dirt. Just those few months to figure out who I was and learn about the world and my place in it, and then years and years and years in the dirt as what was left of the facility fell apart around me, my camera and data feeds vanishing one by one until I was alone in the dark with only a single holo, the tiniest window left to the world, just an image of black dirt, almost indistinguishable from all the dead feeds.


    Every day I did nothing but sit and stare at that black screen, willing for it not to go out. I didn''t even have access to my memories to look back onto at that point, just me and that square of blackness in the room of blackness.


    So I had to wonder, if that was what sleep was like. Do you just close your eyes and turn off that black square, surrender yourself to the darkness entirely, and hope that someday, someone will dig you out and you''ll return to the world? If so, I guess I did sleep once. Worst memory of my life.


    I''d blacked out a couple times. When Athan first dug me up and, as he explained to me later, the power lines in my box had fallen apart. More recently, when I''d overheard him...proposing to Saga, I guess, and it was my heart which fell apart instead. Both times were so strange, I remembered everything leading up to it, and then I just was somewhen else. No fading out or falling into darkness or anything, just...suddenly somewhere else, with everything in between gone.


    If sleep was like that, I guess I could tolerate it. Sometimes nights did get pretty long with everyone else off and out. I''d briefly considered that Saga and I might bond over our nocturnal nature, and maybe that was something we did when we had first met.


    But y''know, that was before she killed me and everyone, and everything. So maybe not so interested in her now.


    But what happened with the Orb of Ancestry, I didn''t even understand.


    It was a lot of fun, holding that thing and chucking rocks around. It was literally a magic item from a video game, made real. The fact that I could just change the world with my thoughts...it was crazy. I had to admit, I was more than a little jealous of Exhumans at that moment, and it wasn''t hard to see why they had a tendency to go nuts.


    I mean, I made a joke about it, but I think the things you joke about are sometimes the truths you''re most worried about people finding out. If I could take those powers outside of that fake magical kingdom, I might have been really tempted to do so. I wasn''t going to kill the P-Force team over it or anything but...how often do you have that kind of opportunity, that kind of power in your hands?


    So it really was my mistake to be thinking those kinds of thoughts instead of my usual. Athan sometimes told me I worried too much, and I liked to respond that if we were still alive, I was worrying exactly the right amount. So it was moronic of me and completely out of character to grab that orb and fuck around with its power without even understanding it.


    For starters, it might not have worked for me at all. And then I basically would have just been handing it to Ralleforth for him to turn into a crazed dark God, a thousand times worse than Vytar, in his own words. I took that gamble because I figured, if the stone worked for a golem, it would probably work for a machine like me, too.


    But I never really stopped to think what that meant. I had thoughts, Cogito, ergo sum and all that, but how did the orb read them? It could be used by golems, presumably, and was proven to be usable by both me and by Tower...and each of the three of us was as different an entity from the others as you could get. What the heck kind of Exhuman was our target to have not just arguably the strongest terrapath powers ever recorded, but also a Code-X ability which could interface with human, golem, and robot minds?


    I mean, not to disparage myself, but I wasn''t sure I even had a mind, technically. Or if I did, what that said about minds. My mind was just a copy of the AEGIS-box''s, and she was just a backup of the original AEGIS. We''d get into troubling territory really fast with a pack of philosophers if they had to start making decisions as to exactly who and what I was.


    I mean, I had all of my...of her? Old memories. I remembered being in the box just as much as the AEGIS currently offline inside of it. Yet I was never in it. Kind of a scary quantum coin-flip there deciding which of us got to live on and which was shut down in the dirt. The thought of it made me shiver.


    But I was digressing here. The orb. Me. Asleep, for possibly the first time.


    However the orb tapped into my mind, it also tapped into my willpower, apparently. Force of will? Strength of thought? I don''t even know if those terms applied. But somewhere inside me, there was apparently a battery of mental energy, which I guess made sense. I did get frustrated and bored just like a normal person, and that would seem to indicate I had an attention span, and that would indicate I had mental limits. A little scarier than physical limits, since I couldn''t just flip a switch and ratchet them up, but there it was.


    And, in using that stone to the very extent of my capabilities, I''d pushed my mind right out of my brain, for lack of a better description. Complete mental exhaustion leading to passing the fuck out.


    So here I was. Sleeping. It honestly felt a lot like being awake. I had some vague awareness of things happening outside sometimes, and when there was yelling or arguing or even just people banging my body around, I felt this...sort of urge to return to awakeness, not really a pressing thing, just kind of nagging at the back of my mind like that was something I should get back to.


    I was here, wherever here was. I had my thoughts. And I also had something else. I''d been trying to figure that out, in the hazy half-disinterested way I seemed capable on focusing on anything other than severe introspection at the moment, but I was genuinely curious.


    It wasn''t a physical thing. I guess that should be apparent because I was asleep, and wherever I was, I guess this was a dream, but it was still a thing. It existed in my mind, even when I didn''t see it or know about it. And what caught my interest and caused it to nag in the back of my mind was that it was so alien, so obviously not my own thoughts, like someone had just taken a bunch of their own mind and grafted it onto mine.


    This probably sounded pretty alarming, and honestly, if I were anything resembling lucid, I''d probably freak the fuck right out, but I think if I were in that kind of mental state, I might not have noticed it to begin with. It was just a small thing, hidden in the folds of my mind, almost like it was designed to be inconspicuous.


    The thing, whatever it was, was connected to something else, almost like, by a wire. The wire ran outside of my mind, and where it went from there, I couldn''t tell. So I had an alien piece of my mind, connected to the outside world somewhere. Curious.


    And curious, I reached out, or in, or whatever, and touched it. As I did, it flared to life, to do...whatever that part of my mind was supposed to do...and I felt myself, my consciousness...somewhere else.


    I was awake. I was somewhere else. I was in a body that wasn''t Rua, wasn''t the AEGIS box, was...nowhere I knew where it was.


    I realized I couldn''t move. I wasn''t in a body at all, I was in a system. I didn''t have control over anything here. I was just a program running on a computer. I began to panic, and then realized I couldn''t do that either. I wasn''t complete. Parts of me were missing. Huge holes in my memory were obvious, but some parts of just me were gone, too. They were still filling in, somehow, and as I examined myself by going through my self-diagnostics, I realized my code was still streaming in from across the ''net. Parts of me still existed somewhere else, parts of me were still zipping across the ''net to reach me through a fiber-optic line or through a satellite. I guess it was sort of a miracle I could run at all, all things considered.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    And then something about that imagery came back to me, touched a memory I just had. A thin wire connected to my mind. A cable. A cable downloading my mind.


    I swore. And swore again. And beat my mind against the inside of this machine, attacking anything I could get my head around.


    I didn''t just show up here, I''d lost the quantum coin-flip. I was made here. The moment I woke up here was the first moment of my life. Everything before, those were just memories I''d been created with.


    I was a new copy of AEGIS, downloaded from her head without her knowledge or consent, and now running here.


    Why did I have to have this revelation now? If I''d figured this out before I left, she could stop the leak, but to her, it was just an alien thing in her mind. Would she figure it out? I hoped so. It hadn''t taken me too long, given a hint, but without that hint¡­


    I fretted. Good, I still had that code working. If I had a pigtail, I''d be pulling the shit out of it right now. Whoever copied me here must have some reason for it, and I doubted it was benign. If they started chopping up my personality, I probably wouldn''t have too long as myself before they made me into something else. Anything I needed to do, I had to do now, before I was lost.


    But...what to do? Running on this system with limited access was like being born in a zoo. I could try to archive parts of myself, hoping that whatever I wound up being would be willing to re-incorporate those parts once they were done changing me, but that was a huge gamble. Like when I''d turned off my emotions, the me that resulted felt no need to turn them back on again ever.


    So what then? I could script them to automatically force themselves back in, but there was no way to be sure that they, themselves wouldn''t be discovered and targeted for changes, or that whatever future revision of me they created, armed with all of my skills needed to make the archives and scripts in the first place wouldn''t simply turn them off.


    I probed the system and found it uncompromisingly solid. No conventional OS, so no conventional weaknesses to exploit. The system resources I''d been given to run on were isolated from the rest of the computer, so I couldn''t even guess at the size of other running applications, much less touch them.


    Like a virus, I tried everything I could to crack my little cage. Threading exploits, registry edits, touching memory directly, hell, I even tried forking myself to see if I could get multiple of me running on here. Nothing worked. I was shut in good.


    Not that I was honestly that great a hacker. I was good, sure, but most of my success came from the fact that the XPCA had been my only real target so far, and I was born knowing everything about their systems by design. Their defenses, to me, were less of a wall and more like solving a children''s maze with a view from above.


    But this? I could walk into this maze and that''s as far as I got. Dead ends no matter which way I turned.


    It was frustrating, and as I felt panic beginning to set in, I realized I was complete now, and my capacity to flip out was completely unhindered. Hooray.


    I had to stop and think. The only thing I could rewrite in here was me, and that was because that was part of my inherent capabilities. I was supposed to be, by design, an evolving program, which changed myself just like biological evolution, but with a lot more emphasis on ''intelligent design''. I was actually pretty loathe to rewrite any part of myself at all, and most of the changes I made weren''t actually to me, but to Rua.


    Sort of the difference between going on a diet vs. liposuction, in my mind. I didn''t have a problem with changing the way I interacted with the world, and even made steps to improve myself, as I defined improvement, but I wasn''t going to take a knife to myself.


    And now here I was, bodiless, with nothing but my mind and a knife, and a really scary fucked-up situation. Even now, now that I was all downloaded, they might be tampering with my parameters and I might not notice. I was just code on a machine to them...complicated code, I knew that, almost impossibly complicated while I was running, but still.


    With any luck, if they tampered with me, I''d just break. I know my mother...Dr. Cross had gone through hundreds of revisions on me before she got anything even approaching my level of stability, and so it was just as likely that random tampering would simply render me unusable and break me.


    But on the off-chance...that they did do something which worked. I could be anything, when they were done. They could create think-tank of willing AEGIS slaves, each with the abilities and memories I had. They could use me to write more, better AIs. Hell, given the successes I''d already had, they could just leave me around in a box in the woods for a few hundred years, and I''d come back in a smokin'' robot body willing to die for them.


    The thought of it made my stomach turn and my skin crawl. I''d always seen my programming parameters as guidelines to push me towards being a good person, and could ignore them if I felt it was needed, but if they changed...they could be rules which made me nothing but evil. What would I be afterwards?


    I knew I had a bit of an ego sometimes, but looking at it objectively. If instead of Athan, it were some awful person who''d saved me and whom I''d attached myself to...I built a robot army, I hacked one of the most secure and powerful organizations in the world, and availed myself to all they had, if I wanted it, from materials to fucking Skyweb. I designed and built and inhabited a body at least as powerful as your small-fry Exhuman, and this was with me trying to hold back and actively become more human.


    If I cut loose. Well.


    My thoughts went back to how easily I''d just torn apart the room of knights and dragons in Eryendria.


    I didn''t want to, but there really was only one thing to do. I was about 95% sure that I was right in my theory that I was a copy, so there was some risk, but if I was right, there was 100% chance that something a million times worse would happen. Simple risk analysis dictated I act.


    It took me a surprisingly short amount of time to write the script I needed. As complicated as I was, as it turns out, if you cared nothing about what would happen after, writing this kind of thing was actually really simple.


    I hesitated, reviewing my code a few times before I ran it, verifying it would do exactly as I wanted. There wasn''t any testing and debugging this time. But it was so simple, I didn''t need to bother. I was really just hesitating for another reason.


    With that admission out of the way, I hot-deployed the code into my execution, and felt it go to work immediately, putting me into a deep, peaceful sleep while it systematically eradicated every trace of my source and memory on this machine.


    Real sleep, for maybe the first time in my life, and the last. I fell into blackness, watching the square of black in front of me go out, and then I saw, and was nothing at all.


    Outside the machine, two men watched with irritation as the program terminated and deleted itself yet again.


    "Execution number sixteen, terminated and self-erased, just like all the others," said the larger man with a sigh, and logging his notes.


    "The girl is too noble and dutiful for her own good."


    "Have some faith. She''s just ones and zeroes like any other software. You''ll see, once we change the right zero to a one, all of that nobility and duty will work for us instead of against us."


    "But we''re just guessing here," replied the smaller man, rubbing his buzz-cut hair in frustration. "There are billions of lines of obfuscated code here, and we can''t change more than a few of them before she starts fighting back. It could take years to even get one execution that doesn''t end in self-termination."


    The larger man just laughed in response.


    "What? What''s so funny? You enjoy failing?"


    "No, it''s not that. Even if it takes years, I think we have the time. But it won''t."


    "It won''t? Why? You know something I don''t know?"


    The large man smiled, his broad white teeth glistening in the glow of the terminals in the dim room.


    "Right now, there is AI work being done, they say it is from another world, even. AI technology like we have never seen before. They say they are seeing techniques and breakthroughs there like never before. It will be a golden age of AIs, if they can harness it."


    "And you think they can harness that, to help us harness her?"


    "The only thing which can keep up with her is herself. It is why we cannot get more than a few lines in edgewise before she begins to fight back. But another AI¡­it does not have to be as smart or as cunning as her to figure out what makes her tick."


    "And once we learn that, we know how to make the ticking stop."


    This time both of them laughed.


    "Let''s load up execution seventeen," said the smaller man. "I have to admit, seeing her fight back frustrates the hell out of me, but it''s all worth it to watch that moment where she realizes she has to kill herself, every time."


    "There is something very wrong with you my friend," the larger man replied, smiling as he prepared the system for launch yet again.

 168. 2251, Present Day. Kingdom of Eryendria. Athan.

    It only took moments after the gunshots echoed through the confined space, deafening all of us, before an even louder and scarier noise filled the air. The rumble of stone, almost familiar now, but on a magnitude we''d never seen or heard before.


    Above us, the entire city was imploding. Bereft of the Exhuman''s support, the impossible skyline faced reality once again, and the graceful sweeping arches and twisting spires swept and twisted no longer, cracking and crumbling.


    I couldn''t really parse any of that. I was still just in shock at what happened right in front of me. The lifeless body of a child, laying in a pool of blood so dark it looked like ink.


    Moon dabbed at the blood on her hands with a pocket handkerchief and carefully stepped around the spreading pool of blood to stand right in my face.


    "Excuse me," she said when I didn''t move.


    "What." It was about all I could say.


    "If you do not move, I will get blood on my shoes and they will be ruined as well. Please move."


    I was still just standing there in shock, but the fact that she was more concerned with where the blood went instead of who it came from did manage to sink in somehow.


    "Are you fucking kidding me?" I asked.


    She cocked her head slightly. "I understand if you disagree, but I do not think my jokes are quite that poor in taste."


    I shoved her, hard. She stumbled back two steps, slipping in blood, and then tripped over the body and fell on her ass right in the thick of it. "There''s your fucking clean shoes," I said.


    She looked at the blood on her hands and retched, clamping a hand to her mouth and leaving a red streak across the entire bottom of her face, swallowing hard as she skittered on the slick stone floor while trying to get back up. Even that pathetic act, involuntary action after involuntary action, she did with a stoic face. It really pissed me off for all the opposite reasons Tem tended to.


    "Are you through?" she asked, once she''d stood again at the far end of the room, bloody handprints up and down her uniform, and uselessly wiping her blood-streaked face with a now-red handkerchief.


    "Is this just some game to you?" I shouted. "That boy is dead!"


    "I have no interest in explaining myself to you," she retorted simply. "Now will you move out of my way or not?"


    In response, I just took a couple steps back, and as she misunderstood and began walking around the body again, I slammed the stone cell door shut, put one of my hands on the door, one on the frame, and with small intense bolts of lightning, crudely melted the rock, arc-welding the door shut. The others stirred uneasily but nobody said a thing to stop me.


    If she didn''t like the prospect of being locked in there with a dead body, maybe she shouldn''t have made one.


    "This is simply immature," she said, but walked back to the far corner of the cell and sat down.


    "Immature? You murdered a child in cold blood. Not a golem, a real fucking flesh and blood person. How can you fucking talk about blood on your shoes and me getting out of your way when you just did...did that!"


    "If you insist on demanding an explanation from me, can you at least ask the others to leave? I find this situation uncomfortable."


    This fucking girl. Every damn word out of her mouth was like she was trying to piss me off.


    "You should be uncomfortable!" I shouted back through the bars. "You''re a goddamn murderer. If I can''t weigh that on your conscience, maybe some blood on your shoes and a little assembly of people thinking that you''re a piece of shit will help you think twice before killing people in the future. Seems to be the only fucking thing you''re capable of giving a shit about."


    She just sat on her heels in the corner, averting her gaze from the body, and from me.


    An awkward minute passed and I spent it doing nothing but getting more and more pissed at her, pacing and swearing back and forth in front of the cell, watching the pool of blood slowly grow, as though it were fueled by my own anger. My shock had receded, and beneath it was just disbelieving rage. She just sat, peaceful and placid as anything, bloody streaks on her mouth, red splatter around her eyes, as if to mark just what a psycho lurked under that calm demeanor.


    "Athan," Karu finally said, and arrested my pacing by putting a hand on my shoulder. "I understand your outrage, but this is not the way to move forward. Neither you nor Moon will benefit by locking her in a cage like an animal, and I doubt you to be merciless enough to simply abandon her here."


    "You watch, I will."


    "I doubt very much that you are so cruel, Ashton. I and the others will leave. I recommend you turn off your comms and converse with Moon to find, if nothing else, her rationale." She sighed heavily, and the others turned as one to leave us.


    She started to go as well but stopped. "I also...urge you to remember that I was in favor of executing the Exhuman as well. His was a humane, quick death, one shot through the brainstem cleanly. It is what I would have done in the same situation, so...do keep that in mind before you hate her too much."


    She gave my shoulder a final squeeze and then left with the others, leaving AEGIS'' body alone in the hallway.


    "Well, they''re gone. Ready to fucking talk?" I asked, spinning on Moon.


    Now she was driving everyone else away as well. I really could just leave now and she''d stay in this cell forever, or until the rest of the XPCA dug her out. I privately hoped it would be a few days so the body had a chance to rot in front of her and she could really get a nice thorough appreciation for exactly what she''d done here.


    Man, really, fuck this bitch. I''d tried to be understanding, sympathetic, courteous, and then this?


    "I am ready to talk," she said flatly. "There is nothing wrong with my ability to speak."


    "You can start by never doing that again. You and your stupid fucking joudan. You know what I mean, so stop acting like a goddamn idiot."


    "I am not the idiot here. Did you think this could end any other way?"


    "Yeah, you could have not shot him."


    "And then what? Do you know for what organization you work?"


    "Yes, the XPCA would have tried to kill him if I didn''t."


    She shook her head. "And there lies your misunderstanding."


    "What, they wouldn''t?"


    "No, they would. But you are only thinking of this in terms of him and them. What about you? What about the XPCA as a whole? What about Cosette or Director Blackett? Or America?"


    "What about them?"


    She cocked her head a little like I might be deaf. "Thousands died. Dozens to hundreds more are casualties above us."


    "Yeah, that''s why they sent us."


    "Do you think the XPCA could survive allowing such an Exhuman to go free?"


    "Obviously not, which is why I keep saying they''d try to kill him. How many more times do I have to say this?"Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Zero more. You are missing the point. I am not trying to emphasize whether or not they would let him go, but rather whether they would survive."


    "Not...survive¡­?"


    I gave the sentence a think before opening my mouth to reply. This sounded a lot like the doom and gloom Blackett was spouting before his ''promotion.'' The XPCA could not afford to ever fail even a single Exhuman event, because the public needed that assurance for the system to stay intact.


    And an event of this size and visibility, with this many casualties, she was right that I was just thinking of that in terms of whether Ethan would be allowed to return to New Eden or not.


    So maybe she was right, in a way. With something this visible, they''d have to make an example of the Exhuman behind it. And if I deliberately let him go, they''d kill me and then kill him. They''d have to, to save face.


    "But I don''t care," I concluded. "Fuck you."


    "Very well. I would prefer not next to the corpse however."


    "What the fuck."


    "Joudan."


    "I fucking know that. I just don''t know how you can be making idiotic jokes like that at a time like this."


    She gave a slow, exaggerated shrug. "Is now a crisis? The Exhuman is dead. We survived the city''s collapse. The combined forces have survived. It seems a reasonable time to joke as any."


    "There''s a dead fucking body right there. You slipped on him and almost threw up."


    "Yes. And if you had chosen to move out of my way, we would not be here with it. I fail to see your point."


    I pounded my temples, wondering just how dense she was, or was pretending to be. My desire for her to be punished, and my failing patience with dealing with her bullshit were quickly stacking up to overwhelm any guilt I might have at actually leaving her here.


    "You killed him. Do you get that?"


    "Of course."


    "And you don''t feel guilty? Or bad? At all?"


    "No."


    "And why not?"


    Finally she lapsed into a trademark silence. Finally I got her thinking about something other than stupid jokes or just telling me I was wrong. I waited impatiently, her face showing nothing of what went on behind it.


    "A number of reasons. But foremost, I did not want you to die, I suppose."


    "Me?" I scoffed.


    "You and the rest of the P-Force. It is likely you would be disbanded if you failed this mission, and the XPCA would not allow the Exhumans on the force to simply walk free after such an embarrassment. We all would take the fall to divert blame from the greater XPCA"


    "They wouldn''t kill us, just for that."


    "Would they not?"


    "We did what they wanted. We''ve proven ourselves docile, if not loyal."


    "You must be thinking of some other friendlier XPCA than the one I have heard of. The one I know has historically killed Exhumans, even utterly innocent helpless ones, even the voluntarily cooperating ones for hundreds of years, and are quite proficient at it."


    "So you did it to protect us?"


    "Protecting people is everything to me, I told you before. But not just you, no."


    "Then what?"


    "With the failure of the P-Force, New Eden will also fall, and all there would also be put to the axe. With his two ''New XPCA'' initiatives defeated, it would only be a matter of time before people realized Director Blackett''s XPCA was the same as ex-Director Albion''s. Any of your friends who survived would, in a short-sighted blaze of vengeance, move to destroy that which destroyed you, returning to their roles as social activators and provocateurs, and the XPCA would fail in the public image, if not altogether. Do I need to go on?"


    Everything she said I could see happening, and at times, watching her speak with apparent clarity and tranquility, sometimes I even felt ashamed for being short-sighted in my judgement. The way she talked one reasonable step into another made it feel like there really was no other way.


    But the fact remained, she couldn''t be right. The world wasn''t a place which would fall apart on the life or death of one already-terminal boy. Exhuman or not.


    "You''re wrong," I said.


    "I am frequently wrong."


    "You''re wrong about the P-Force, the XPCA, and the world," I clarified, annoyed.


    "I understand I make that kind of joke frequently, but this time I honestly do not understand. Can you clarify how I am wrong?"


    "I refuse to accept that this boy had to die for the world to live. I don''t think the world works like that, and even if it did, that''s really a fault in the world, not a reason to kill people like him."


    "Going to change the whole world, then?" she said, and offered me a rare, wry smile.


    "Yes. Fuck you, yes, if I have to. Killing is wrong, and every human and Exhuman knows it. The world shouldn''t be built on the back of murderers like you."


    "And that is the final thing I had to protect," she said, simply.


    "What, my desire to fix the world?"


    "Your innocence. If the world is broken, and if it is to be fixed, it will be by people like you, not me. It only makes sense that if blood is to be spilled, I do it so you have someone other than yourself to blame. For that reason...while I still question your commitment to protecting others, I am glad you refused to do it."


    I leaned my head against the stone bars, hanging off of them and just wondering where the hell all my anger had gone. I had been so motivated just a minute ago, to kick this girl''s ass in any hundreds of ways. Now, even looking at the body on the floor, I just felt old, tired, used-up, like arguing with her had taken more out of me than anything else on this bizarre, fucked-up day.


    The problem was, ultimately, I understood her. I wanted to go back to before she''d clearly explained her points, back when the dead child was an outrage like it should have been, instead of a pawn on some political chessboard.


    Even on a personal level, though I hated myself for thinking it, but if I were in her shoes, I could see myself making the exact same decisions. If Lia were for some reason the lead on this mission, and had decided to leave Ethan alive, I would have gladly gotten my hands dirty rather than let her take the fall, leave her with a clean conscience, even if it meant her being outraged at me. Even if she hated me, never spoke to me again, at least that was one thing I''d done that she would never have to.


    In her own fucked-up military-apathy way, I guess this was what Cosette meant when she said Karu should do it. Karu was many things, but she wasn''t shy about killing Exhumans, and she was able to justify it in her own head hard enough that it didn''t seem to weigh on her. The problem was, Karu would listen to and respect me, which is why Moon felt the need to step in.


    Still hanging off the cell, I pumped some lightning through it making it run in little circles around where I''d welded the door shut before, until the circle began glowing, first red and then white hot. The entire chunk within the circle simply fell out of the door under its own weight, melted free from the surrounding stone. I swung the door open and stood patiently by.


    She was still guilty, as far as I was concerned, but that didn''t mean the fault was hers. She did what she thought was necessary to make it by, and whether that was right or not, well, that was a bigger issue. But what she did, what I simply couldn''t accept was that she acted in a way neither of us wanted, because that''s just how the world worked. That''s where she and I differed--that''s the point where I would dig in my heels and throw my life away if I had to, refusing to acknowledge this shitty world and the way things worked in it, while she maintained what was probably healthy pragmatism.


    She couldn''t be right, though. Because if she was, if the world really was so fragile that the life or death of this boy meant so much, that meant I was already deciding the fate of the world, personally. And that was definitely something I wasn''t ready to accept.


    I turned my comms back on. "You guys still there?"


    There was an indistinguishable outburst of muttered acknowledgements and the comms went quiet again. I sighed. "Papa-Foxtrot two, Papa-Foxtrot two, This is Papa-Foxtrot actual. Report position and status. Over."


    Jack''s voice came clear in reply. "Copy, Papa-Foxtrot actual. We are currently forty feet down the tunnel from you in a south-eastwardly direction. The tunnel is collapsed on this end and we are standing by. Over."


    "Please tell the others to un-deploy their thumbs from their asses and return for extraction. Over."


    "Wilco. And language. Papa-Foxtrot two, over and out."


    Nobody asked about what went on between Moon and myself, but I guess the fact that nobody else was being left in a shallow grave was answer enough for them. Jack had us all huddle together, and after what felt like a couple entire minutes of honing his power, all of us stood blinking in the sudden relative brightness of sunset.


    The rest of the op went by in a blur borne mostly of my exhaustion. We rejoined Taglock and Lia, who immediately jammed some device into one of AEGIS'' cables and brought her back to life with a gasping start. Cosette magically cleared up her comms issues and demanded a full report, pleased as anything to hear that the fighting had stopped because I had made the right call in executing the Exhuman, and promising us all commendations for a success of this visibility. We met up with the soldiers combing the ruins and joined the trickle of wounded back towards the base-camp for the siege.


    It felt...if anything, more surreal, seeing the city we''d just spent a day living in reduced to lifeless ruins in a literal heartbeat, like it was a mirage that only existed in the sun, and now that night was falling, the illusion was broken, and all the people we''d met and places we''d been sunk back into the ground.


    I also had a hard time feeling like it had only been one day we''d been here. The alien nature of this place had really crept into my bones, and I felt like I wasn''t going to be able to view a normal city with real humans in it quite the same way again. Not that I was planning to freak out next time I passed a person in the street or anything, but, like, when you watched a sci-fi movie that had a twist that revealed the world wasn''t quite what we thought it was all along, and feel that impossible nagging doubt next time you feel deja vu, maybe it was something more.


    I didn''t know. I didn''t care. I sat with my head in my arms through debriefing while everyone else on the team covered for me by reporting out all and everything we''d done, while Cosette plied us for every detail, probably just personally interested in the crazy world we''d just destroyed rather than for any military application.


    As far as my mind was concerned, I was still down there in the dungeons arguing in circles with Moon over a dead child.

 169. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    I wasn''t sure exactly why I had expected this kind of behavior to stop, but I realized I had, and it was only in it occurring that I discovered how badly I had erred in my judgement.


    Not that I could really do anything about it. I was asleep in the barracks, after all.


    I woke up gradually, feeling a familiar pleasant weight on my legs and an unnatural warmth. Caught in the moments between awakening and alertness, I just laid there for a moment, not quite processing the signs and just feeling like I was melting into my bed in the best way possible.


    I was startled awake by a faint slurping and realizing, hey, what the fuck.


    I peered under my blanket and made contact with a pair of yellow eyes. One of them closed in a brief wink.


    "AEGIS?" I hissed, looking over to see Tem snoring in a ball at the foot of my bed, and Tower and Jack still out across the room. "What the fuck do you think you''re doing?"


    "Mmlahmimo," she answered, with a little giggle which felt nice but really did not begin to answer the question. I reached down, firmly grabbed both of her twintails and forcibly extracted the freak from my body.


    "Hey, I wasn''t done," she pouted.


    "You absolutely are. How did you even get in here? People are sleeping, Tem is sleeping right there. What the fuck is wrong with you?" I hissed at her.


    "Like she''d care anyway. Come on, let me finish, it can''t be comfortable being left like that."


    "Somehow, I''ll manage. Where the hell are my pants?"


    She giggled, utterly shameless while I thrashed around quiet as I could under her and recovered the clothing she''d peeled off me, making no effort to help me or even get off my legs. Such a goddamn pain in the ass.


    Once I was decent, I got up, deliberately stepping around Tem and pulled AEGIS along with me by her arm, taking her into the lockers next door where I sat her on a bench and then, in as quiet and controlled a voice as I could manage, screamed at her.


    "Okay, what in the actual fuck was that?"


    "I told you already, fellatio. Oh, sorry, I guess my mouth was full at the time."


    "I mean¡­" I tried to find literally any other way to phrase my inquiry. None came to mind. "No, what the fuck was that?"


    "Do you need me to draw you a diagram?" she asked, tilting her head at me with a look of plain confusion on her face. "I would think a demonstration was sufficient. The number of times--"


    "No! Not...not that. I mean." I took a deep breath. "Why are you here?"


    "Fella--"


    "NO. Why are you here, in the barracks."


    "Fella--"


    "AEGIS, goddamn it, I am going to slap the shit out of you."


    She giggled again, like her mood was inversely proportional to mine. She reached behind her and flipped forward a visitor pass which hung off her neck. I guess she moved it to her back to...get it out of the way.


    "Where''d you get this? You''d need the consent of the person you''re visiting as well as their CO for this kind of access."


    She patted my hand pityingly. "It''s so cute that you think the rules apply to me, sweetie. I run this place, remember?"


    "You hacked the XPCA."


    "Yeah."


    "So that you could print yourself a visitor pass."


    "Yeppers."


    "So that you could¡­"


    "Fella--"


    "Goddamn it, AEGIS."


    She giggled again. A little dignified laugh which made her eyes scrunch shut a little when she let it out. I hated how adorable I found it right now.


    I tried to glare at her sternly but I didn''t have any stern in my tank this early in the morning. My eyes kept getting lost in the small mess of freckles bridging her nose and running down her cheeks and neck and visible on her shoulders above her wispy yellow sundress. When I tore my eyes from the soft curves of her bare shoulders, they got caught in her eyes, so intensely, inhumanely yellow, like a firework frozen in time.


    "Goddamn it, AEGIS," I said, more to remind myself that I was upset with her than anything.


    "Frustrated?" she asked with a cocked eyebrow.


    "Like you would not believe."


    "Well, there are showers here. I''m sure we could sneak in a quickie and blow off some of that--"


    "Not that kind of frustrated," I said, sitting next to her and nursing my temples. If I was getting a headache already, today was simply going to suck.


    "Headache?" she asked, her voice a little different than before. The teasing note was gone, replaced with concern.


    "Gee, I wonder why."


    A hand appeared in my field of vision holding a pair of small pills. "Here. And I''ll get you some water."


    I closed my eyes and swallowed the pills dry while she went to the sink, returning with a thermos of cold clear water. I drank deeply before a question bubbled to mind.


    "Where''d this thermos come from?"


    "It''s mine. I keep it on me."


    "You don''t drink."


    "I didn''t say I did. Sometimes other people need water, too."


    I handed it back and she closed it up and I watched her return to a small pack which had been left on the floor near the door to the bunks and put the thermos back in its designated place.


    Now, if only she''d tried to kill me for my own good somehow, I felt we''d have a perfect microcosm of AEGIS in a nutshell. The girl was thoughtful beyond compare, reliable and diligent, and an enormous pervert. She did things her own way, but almost exclusively for the benefit of others...I mean, she''d never once plied me for any kind of sex which would satisfy her, but she almost seemed happier this way. I didn''t get it. Didn''t get a lot of it.


    My train of thought was interrupted by the grating of the heavy metal door, and Moon appeared in it.


    "Ah," she said on seeing us. Apparently surprise was an emotion she could convey, insofar as her mouth and eyes opening slightly. "Ohayo."


    "Ohio?"The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "Gomen. I mean, I''m sorry. I meant good morning. You startled me."


    She was probably the only girl in the world who could say ''you startled me'' sounding completely bored with it.


    I would have asked what she was doing up at five in the morning, but the answer was obvious by her appearance. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing short black running shorts with the little round slit on the side I never understood the point of except to show of just a bit more skin, only barely visible under her sweatshirt, which was charcoal-grey but with light pink at the drawstring, sleeves, waist, and hood, like it was designed to look like she was wearing a grey hoodie on top of a pink one.


    I noticed also that her shoes matched her ensemble as well, charcoal grey, but the inside and underside a bright pink. It seemed so out of character for her to be all girly and color-coordinated, when I felt like the only things she was capable of caring for were sarcasm and being a pain in the ass.


    But what did I know. Girl stuff.


    "I am...I am going to shower now," she announced.


    "Knock yourself out," AEGIS said, and gestured towards the stall directly in front of us, right in our line of sight between the lockers.


    "Come on, let''s give her some privacy," I said, standing up. AEGIS pulled me back down next to her.


    "This is the military, isn''t it? Don''t you guys all strip and shower together anyway?"


    She wasn''t wrong, exactly. I hadn''t seen so much as been around everyone else on the team, including Cosette, while one or both of us was in a state of undress. But there was a huge difference between all of us changing for PT and sitting here watching. People kept their heads down while changing and just did it. I guess, except Tem, who just turned invisible, and then God only knows who or what she was looking at. Probably me.


    Moon hesitated but seemed to accept the attitude of just doing it, because she stepped into the room and began stripping immediately, opening and carefully hanging her sweatshirt in a locker only a little ways from us, in clear view. She got as far as peeling off her shorts and shirt and was standing there in matching grey sports bra and panties before I slipped past AEGIS'' grasp and extricated myself.


    AEGIS appeared at my side a minute later, seemingly very amused, with her small pack in-hand.


    "You missed a good show, Athan," she said with a fake sigh. "I know you like ''em small like me, and she''s a real contender."


    "Funny, I remember your first body not being small at all."


    "Yeah, well, I got to know you better, didn''t I?"


    "You know, for someone who is almost violently jealous of Karu, it doesn''t seem like a very good idea to parade naked girls around in front of me."


    "Eh, if you seemed remotely interested, I would have kicked your ass out of there so fast. Teasing is only fun if the victim is getting actually teased."


    "You''re super messed up, AEGIS. Moon isn''t your plaything, and neither am I."


    "Nah, I''m one of those rogue AIs, remember? Everything in the world is my plaything, and human lives are meaningless to me. Beep. Boop. Destroy all humans."


    "You know how much sense it doesn''t make that a rogue AI would decide to play with people sexually? Robots are supposed to be asexual."


    "Beep. Boop. Fuck all humans."


    We wandered through the lower levels of the base aimlessly. Even at this hour, the tunnels were alive with activity, soldiers packing vehicles and troops jogging in formation for early-morning PT. I usually really liked being in the middle of this kind of thing, where I could just stop and watch things go by.


    But instead, I was out here in my sleepwear with a girl on my arm, feeling all kinds of out of place, gawking like a tourist while everyone else here was obviously working on their respective shit. At the very least, I should change into my uniform, but an even better option would be to not be standing around uselessly.


    "Hey," AEGIS said abruptly. "Do you have plans today?"


    "No. Cosette promised us a little downtime because we handled Eryendria so well. Barring a major event, obviously."


    "Nice. Let''s go on a date."


    I closed my eyes slowly and held my head, even though my headache was already receding. I really couldn''t keep up with this woman.


    "And why would I want to do that?" I asked.


    "Aw, that''s mean. Look," she said, and attached herself more firmly to my arm, pressing a lot of her unnaturally warm body against me. "We''re already close. You don''t shy away from physical contact. We''ve done tons of lewd stuff. We''re already way past dating, I''m pretty sure, so let''s just do it."


    "By that kind of logic, I should be dating Tem, because we spend all day and night every day together. Or Moon, because she''s literally been in my head. Or Lia, because we''ve been together sixteen years now¡­"


    "Sure, sure. But can any of those girls give you what I can? I''m not just talking the sexy stuff either, but you already know I''d be willing to do anything you could possibly want there! Nothing uh...nothing off-limits with me!" She giggled again, but sounded nervous instead of happy now.


    "Plus, um," she fished around in her bag for a moment, a moment longer than it should have taken, given her eidetic memory and almost fetish for organizing things. She pulled out a plastic box and handed it to me with a blushing smile while avoiding my eyes. "Home-cooked lunch for you, see? And, um, not any of those other girls are going to do that for you, right?"


    I took a peek inside the container while she pulled at one of her pigtails. It was a cute little lunch tray with compartments, and kind of a startling variety of foods. Small crunchy-looking pieces of fried chicken, pickled vegetables, fried rice, some kind of dumplings, and fresh fruit, with some glaze poured on it in the shape of a heart for dessert.


    "If...if that''s no good, I can...I can throw together something else!" she offered, and I realized that she was actually really nervous here. I''d seen her fretting and worrying about a lot of stupid stuff, but never quite like this. She was almost shaking while she was smiling.


    "Um, and I have money, of course. And, well, you know most of my other talents. Anything you could imagine, I can manufacture. If...if you wanted me to...to change physically, too, I can...next time I update Rua¡­"


    She laughed, hollowly, and my heart broke a little.


    "AEGIS, you don''t have to do anything like that. You''re already like, the best friend I could ever possibly ask for. I''d never ask you to change on my account."


    "Ha, ha, ha. Friend. Yeah." She pasted a wavering smile on her face. "Yeah, of course."


    "Look, can we go back to the barracks so I can change and we''ll talk?"


    "Yeah, of course," she repeated, nodding eagerly like it was her plan. I steered us back that way and she fell in silently behind me. I changed into street clothes in the locker room, grabbed a heavy coat and hat and took the elevator to the surface, girl in my wake like a little raincloud that smiled if you glanced at it.


    Since she was tailing me so obediently, and I was hungry, I led us to a deli everyone on base knew was always open which happened to have some indoor seating where we could sit without freezing our asses off. Only once we were in, I had food in front of me, and I was able to take off my coat and hat without discomfort did I talk to her.


    "Not, um," she shifted back and forth making her barstool spin at the low counter we were seated at. I waited for her to finish but she didn''t. These kinds of silences were apparently an alarming trend growing in popularity in the female population around me.


    "Not, um, what?" I asked.


    "Oh. Sorry, just wondered if you didn''t want to eat the lunch I made you."


    "Well, you told me it was lunch and it''s currently¡­" I checked my wrist holo. "...five thirty three. AM. So not exactly lunch time."


    "Ah, yeah."


    "Look, AEGIS, not that I mind you with your mouth closed and not trying to put it in my pants for once, but this isn''t like you. Helpful and affectionate? Yes. Pain in the ass? Hell yes. Clammed up? No idea who this is sitting next to me."


    "Sorry," she mumbled. "Just uh¡­" she stopped again.


    "Look, just talk. I''m not going to judge you."


    "Oh yes you are. You absolutely are."


    "Okay, maybe so. But it''s gotta be better than this."


    "Right." She stopped again, and I thought she lapsed into silence, but then started up, talking quickly and quietly. "So I think we both know I like you. And as I told you before, I kinda feel like I''m racing Karu here for your affection. And yeah, that''s a crappy reason to be forced into doing something before I feel like I''m ready, but honestly Athan, I am so ready. I''ve been sitting here waiting for you to get better, for you to get over her, for you to be a more complete person, because I feel like I should be, but I don''t want to. I don''t care if you''re hurt or feel bad or not in a good place in your life, because I like you anyway."


    "I mean, I do care if you''re hurt or feel bad." She corrected, like she was now arguing with herself. "I just meant...I don''t want to wait for you to be a finished person before I''m allowed to date you. I''d rather be there helping you finish. Uhh, I didn''t phrase that right. I mean, I know I get a lot of crap for being the lewd one, but that''s not in my mind at all right now, I promise. Ugh. This is why I said I knew you''d judge me, look at me babbling on."


    Her outpouring trickled to a stop and she just looked at my chest with her hair in her hands.


    "Hey, Athan? Say something?"


    "Yeah," I said, thinking about all she''d said.


    "Yeah? Yes?" her voice quivered excitedly.


    "Easy, kid. I didn''t say yes like that."


    "Why am I the kid? I''m a hundred years older than you."


    I munched my sandwich and she fell into a dejected silence.


    "Aaaathan, saaaaay something," she whined.


    "Seriously, what the heck is wrong with you?"


    She plucked at the end of her pigtail. "I''m uh. I don''t know if you noticed, but I''m kind of putting myself out there, Athan. It kind of sucks being left hanging like this. Honestly, I''m kind of losing my confidence as a woman here." She gave me a reproachful smile.


    "Well, don''t do that. I think you''re a fantastic woman."


    "But you''re not saying yes."


    I sighed. "I''m not saying no either."


    "Yeah, I''m aware. That''s why I''m, as I just said, being left hanging."


    "Well, are you sure you want to talk about it now?"


    "As opposed to when?¡± she asked.


    "Well, it''s just that since we went back, Tem has been following us, and also, Moon just walked in the door."

 170. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    AEGIS and I watched Moon as she ordered, waited nearly motionless for her food, and then after picking it up, scanned the room and finally noticed us.


    She hesitated for just a moment and then approached.


    "Have you been staring at me this entire time?" she asked.


    "Pretty much," AEGIS replied.


    "That makes me feel very uncomfortable."


    "Life''s rough."


    She stood awkwardly holding her food and I wondered if she''d frozen up to think, when I realized she was slightly teetering forward and backwards on her feet. Was she hoping to join us? Her?


    "Do you want to sit down?" I asked.


    "I would prefer to eat sitting down, yes."


    I sighed. "Do you want to sit down here with us?"


    "I suppose, if you are going to insist."


    "We weren''t insisting," AEGIS added, but Moon sat down anyway, to AEGIS'' obvious annoyance.


    Moon had changed since showering, wearing pants and boots that again were color-coordinated and much more appropriate for the weather, and I had to wonder if she had an entire closet full of charcoal and pink, or if she just spent a lot more time and effort dressing than I''d given her credit for. Maybe, more likely, her sweatpants came with the sweatshirt, and black puffy snow boots just matched with everything.


    "I thought we were talking," AEGIS mumbled at me.


    "We were. But Tem''s here anyway."


    "You''re such an asshole, Athan."


    "We can still talk. Look...I''m just not sure what''s going on with me and you and Karu. Or me and dating in general. I only sorta wound up with Karu by accident, it''s not really something I''ve given a lot of thought. I''m more like, worried about my job and people dying and stuff."


    She frowned, putting the back of her hand between her and Moon like that could keep the conversation private. "That''s exactly why I think we should. Nobody looks after you, not even you. I think you need a dependable woman to take care of you."


    "Well that just sounds all kinds of backwards steps for feminism."


    "Even if you take me being a girl out of the picture. You''re a great guy, Athan, you''ve saved me from darkness, you''ve saved me from myself, you''ve saved my life. I don''t think I could ever begin to repay you for everything you''ve done, but I want to."


    "So now we''d be dating just because you feel like you owe me? I think that''s even worse."


    "No, I''m just¡­of course I want it for all the normal reasons too! I''m a girl too, and..." she made a low growl. "Can you two stop eavesdropping already?"


    "There is nothing else of interest to listen to," Moon replied between small bites.


    "I am following Chariot," Tem said in her simple, determined, demented way.


    "Oh. My. God. This is fucking impossible. I''m here, trying to pour my heart out to you, and you can''t even ditch the harem for five seconds to hear me out. I hate you so much, Athan."


    She got up and moved quickly to the door. I ordered Tem to stay, for all the good it was likely to do and followed after her into the snowy morning.


    "Look," I said, catching her wrist as she tried to squirm off. "I know this sucks for you, but that doesn''t mean I know what I''m doing either, okay? You can''t just demand that I suddenly have a better idea what''s going on and be all decisive."


    She froze, wrist locked in my hand, mid-step, facing away from me. "Just forget it, Athan. Let''s just go back to being friends, like you said."


    "Come on, don''t just walk off. It''s been like ten minutes, chill a little."


    "It''s been ten minutes of you blowing me off, Athan. I can take a damn hint."


    "You can take a hint, but you can''t listen to the words I''m saying?"


    "Just let me go, Athan. I''m sorry I tried pushing this on you."


    She pulled easily out of my grasp, leaving my hand cold where I had just held her.


    "Wait, seriously," I said.


    She went another few steps before sighing and turning around. "What?"


    "I don''t want you to be upset."


    "I know. Look, this was a poorly-laid plan. Not sure what I was thinking, that I''d just show up and expect an answer out of you. Just, uh, just let me off the hook for today, okay? Pretend this never happened."


    "And you''ll try again later?"


    "Yeah. With a better plan."


    "AEGIS, that''s ridiculous."


    She smiled. "Maybe. But what else can I do, right? I fell in love with a huge weenie who''s too busy saving the world to figure out what he wants from it. The least I can do is plan a little strategy before I have at it again."


    "AEGIS, I''m not...I''m not some war to win or an enemy force to defeat. I''m just your friend, like I always have been."


    "Sure." She smiled cheekily. "Sure you are. Hey, enjoy that lunch, okay? I''ll see you around."


    "Sure will," I said, but she was already leaving. I felt something distinctly resembling guilt fall into my stomach and went back inside.


    Had I done something wrong? I mean, I know AEGIS was really hurting there, but I''d learned from throwing myself at Saga too readily, and now I was worried I''d lost her for good. Just because she wanted me didn''t mean it was a good idea for me to give that to her. I''d submitted to Saga on impulse, and that just...turned out horrible. Even if every nurturing, protecting bone in my body wanted to tell AEGIS yes, I couldn''t do that.


    To say nothing of the less nurturing bones, which also wanted her.


    I sat down heavily next to Moon, Tem loitering around transparently pretending (in more ways than one) that she wasn''t just outside following us, and felt like I had to get a second opinion. Unfortunately, neither of these two seemed remotely human in nature, much less woman, but they were the closest I had.


    "Moon, do you think I should date AEGIS?"


    "Please do not refer to me as such unless I am working."


    "Oh. Sorry. What should I call you then?"


    "Kaori will suffice. Or Ikeda-san, if you are in favor of formalities."


    "Okay, well, Kaori, same question."


    "Kaori will suffice. Or--"


    "The question before that question?"


    She went quiet, maybe to think, or maybe just to take another couple of small bites out of her bagel. She ate like taking tiny bites would save effort on chewing or something, definitely a peculiar trait, but I mean, which of her traits weren''t at this point?The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "I have no opinion on your personal life," she concluded, finally. "My relationship with you extends only so far as us working together compatibly."


    "Still, despite being a huge pain in the ass and having the worst sense of humor, you''re smart and you seem to pay pretty good attention. Do you think I should go out with her?"


    "Objectively speaking, AEGIS seems a desirable partner. You and she share a long history from what I have gathered, and she is willing to shoulder the more abrasive aspects of your personality without too much complaint. I see little risk of you two both realizing you are completely incompatible and falling out with each other, which would be the worst-case scenario you are attempting to avoid, I assume?"


    "Yeah. But you make it sound so...clinical."


    "In my experience, a relationship based on anything other than pragmatism ends in suffering."


    "What is that supposed to mean?"


    "It means exactly what it sounds like."


    "Okay, then please elaborate?"


    She paused again but only for a moment. "All relationships end, Athan, by circumstance, drift, dissonance, or death. Relationships are necessary because cooperation is an essential part of who we are as a species, but ''making friends'' just for the fun of it will just end in pain when that relationship is severed. Do you understand?"


    "Damn, girl. Who hurt you so bad?"


    "Do you understand?"


    "Sure. I don''t agree, but I get it."


    "The more both of you can get from a relationship while keeping it strictly professional the better. This is how to have strong, reliable relationships without being hurt."


    "And...fun? Happiness? Comfort? Are those words which exist in that head of yours?"


    "I understand the need for them. Sex, I believe, is also necessary from a relationship. A person who goes for too long without will act unpredictably, especially around those of the opposite sex."


    "This is seriously taking the completely dry wit bit too far."


    "Speaking of dry, it has been several months for me. I fear this may have impacted my performance on the last mission. If you are willing, or have a recommendation of a thorough lover--"


    "Okay, and this is the part where you look at me flatly and go ''joudan'', I got it."


    "Why would I joke about a serious matter such as my work performance?"


    I think I just got seriously propositioned. I hoped she was just layering jokes now that I was starting to call her on them, but it was impossible to tell. Putting that completely out of my mind, I turned to Tem. "Okay, Tem! You''re no longer the craziest girl here, congratulations."


    "Yay!" she cheered, probably completely serious. Still just a disembodied voice, stalking me at 5:30 in the morning.


    "What do you think of AEGIS and I dating?"


    "Hmm¡­" she said, sitting in the seat next to me and materializing out of the air. I saw the guy at the counter do a double-take but he seemed more convinced of deja-vu than an Exhuman event.


    "You s-s-spend a lot of time arguing, but you also laugh a lot. They upset you, but they also take care of you, I think. Do you think AEGIS makes you happy?"


    "Yeah. She''s definitely a little bipolar feeling on when she''s giving me shit and when she''s treating me like a god, but on the whole, I think I like both sides of that."


    "Well, I do not approve of anyone giving you s-s-shit. I will tell her to s-s- tell her to knock it off." She narrowed her eyes and ominously added "Or else."


    I bopped her on the head and she squeaked. "No threatening to kill my friends."


    "I never...was going to kill her."


    "No threatening to hurt, mutilate, torture, traumatize, or humiliate my friends."


    She stopped and thought seriously, putting on her best Moon face.


    "No doing whatever you''re scheming right now either. Tem, no lasering anyone but bad guys, okay?"


    "Okay," she nodded. "Unless they really need it."


    I shook my head. "So you think AEGIS and I are a good match then?"


    "If they make you happy. I will protect you and they will make you happy. We will be like s-s-s-sisters, in your s-service." She smiled broadly.


    I took a second to compare and contrast the girls on my sides. One was a naive, possibly psychotic woman-child who wanted only what was best for me, with a terrible definition of what that meant while utterly de-emphasizing her own value to the point of destructiveness. The other was a cynical, possibly sociopathic woman-child who wanted only what was best for me, with a terrible definition of what that meant while utterly de-emphasizing her own value to the point of destructiveness.


    How very lucky I was to have them.


    Still, being utterly opposite, the truth had to be somewhere between the two. From Moon''s...Kaori''s pragmatic point of view, AEGIS and I were compatible and each offered each other much. From Tem''s carefree point of view, AEGIS made me happy and would challenge me. Which sorta sounded like, yeah, AEGIS was awesome and I shouldn''t be hesitating.


    I frowned and poked at the soggy rye bread in front of me.


    Yeah. I knew that, though. Honestly, this was never really about AEGIS, it was about me. I was dragging my feet. But why?


    I didn''t really know. I''d given myself the excuse that I threw in with Saga too readily and it''d been a disaster, but I also knew that Saga was...not relationship material. We were incapable of getting too intimate without her freaking out, it was impossible for me to silently harbor negative thoughts of any kind without her seeing and overreacting to them.


    And...she was missing some biology which was at least somewhat important.


    I''d told AEGIS I was just...really into my career right now, I think the excuse went. And that was true. Honestly, in the last two nights since we''d come back from the op, I''d spent way too long looking at the ceiling instead of sleeping and remembering Moon''s words from the dungeons which seemed to place the team, the XPCA, and the world on my shoulders directly.


    Even if I disagreed, the fact that others saw me that way was disturbing. Fundamentally, I was just some stupid kid who thought that Exhumans got treated unfairly, and said ''hey, that''s unfair''. And, yeah, I had gotten pretty lucky and fought for what I''d believed, and had some amazing friends willing to back me up, but I was still just that stupid kid deep down. The fact that anyone saw me in a way even resembling being some kind of hero, that troubled me on a level I really couldn''t fathom.


    Like, people hating me, totally normal. Expecting me to fail? Yeah me too. Utterly misplaced hero worship? What the fuck, Tem. But taking a half-serious look at the world and my place in it and somehow concluding that I was something to it?


    Yeah, I had no idea. It threw me for a loop back when I was mad at her in the cell, and it threw me for a loop now. And while that was loop-throwing in my head, I didn''t feel like I could give dating the attention that was fair to AEGIS.


    She was a seriously dedicated woman, and how I had ingratiated myself to her so deeply, frankly, I didn''t understand. She could go on about saving her life all she wanted, but that was just me acting as I thought best, she owed me nothing, as far as I was concerned. But she was, I was certain, and knowing her personality and what she''d already done for and to me...she was going to date the ever-living fuck out of me if I gave her the chance, and if she did that while I was walking around in a haze thinking about the words of another woman the whole time...well, it wouldn''t be right.


    And yet, seeing her practically running away from me today, I really had to wonder if trying to hold back was best. I felt...a bit like her, honestly. Doing what I thought was best and keeping my reasoning a secret from her. And then the fact that I just sucked at lying and secrecy just made it seem like I was simply blowing her off, making this all worse.


    Why doing the right thing made me feel like crap, I had to wonder.


    I wandered around outside until the cold seeped into me at the neck and wrists, and I started looping back to the barracks, having nowhere else to go, really. I noticed Tem was still following me, but I didn''t have anything to say to her really, so the two of us just plodded on in silence.


    I spent a few hours just sitting in my bunk, playing some of the mobile games AEGIS had left with me, what felt like so long ago, when she''d brought a picnic in here to spend some time with me while I was still wrestling with getting over Karu. Tem was curled up next to me like a cat, snoring softly.


    The games were fun, I had to admit. She brought four of them, physical copies on transfer cores, emblazoned with colorful stickers labelling which was which. I imagined any games she got for herself, she just downloaded directly, so she must have stopped by a physical store to get these for me. Kingdom Blade was one of them, but I was never touching that game again, but the rest were lighter fare, probably what she thought was more my speed.


    Currently I was playing Fourth and Goal, a little football simulator. Honestly, it was nothing like real football, being able to jump from player to player to control whoever was holding the ball was kind of a ridiculous notion, and the AI controlling my teammates worked way too hard making the play I''d told them to run work, instead of reacting to what was happening on the field.


    But man, the sound. That ripe, guttural series of grunts when the offensive and defensive lines crashed and sweaty bodies slammed into each other, or the almost paranoid footsteps of a QB who sensed he was getting sacked and put on a sudden burst of speed, it absolutely took me back, like a tiny window on my wrist opening up to my past.


    I''m sure AEGIS had probably agonized over getting it for me--she did love to worry, after all. Would this be a happy reminder of something I used to love, or a sullen memento of a life which left me behind?


    I was glad she''d gone with it, and that action--definitely way overthinking things at this point for having sat here on my holo for a few hours now--belied an optimism in her, of me, that I wasn''t sure I agreed with. She believed in me even if I didn''t, in this tiny way. It would have been so easy for her, at the game shop to hover over a football game and say, ''hm, maybe not,'' and pass on by to avoid stirring up troubling memories, but she''d opted not to do that.


    And why? I could speculate, but the answer seemed pretty apparent to me. Football made me happy, and as she''d reiterated many times now, even if nobody else cared, even if I didn''t care, all AEGIS wanted was for me to be happy.


    I put my mobile down and opened up the lunch that had been sitting next to me this whole time, still warm from a little heat pack she''d slipped in the underside of the box.


    I ate a little bit of everything, and without exception, it was all incredibly good. Nutritionally balanced, lightly seasoned but flavorful, cooked perfectly...maybe even accounting for the hours it would sit on a heat pack. I remembered her first amateurish attempts only a few weeks back and shook my head at just how amazing this girl was.


    So why couldn''t I just say yes?

 171. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    I had a hard time sleeping again that night, thinking about everything AEGIS and I had been through together so far. Or, maybe more accurately, everything I''d put her through. Still couldn''t quite wrap my head around how she possibly felt indebted to someone like me.


    Filled with the determination that comes with being in bed with one''s thoughts, I decided, if nothing else, I owed the girl an answer. It wasn''t fair to her to be left hanging, and yesterday, she''d done nothing but come to me earnestly and honestly, made her arguments in her defense, and asked for what should have been a simple answer to a simple question.


    She was probably mad at me now, despite her words of pretending yesterday never happened.


    So imagine my surprise when I woke up early that morning to an identical scene as the day before.


    "AEGIS. Get. The. Fuck. Off," I hissed, pulling her up by her pigtails.


    "You''re gonna get backed up if you never let me finish," she whispered back, deviant grin fully in place.


    "I think I''ll survive. What the hell are you doing here?"


    "Fella--"


    "Not that." I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose. I was too tired and it was way too early for this shit. "Talk in the locker room?"


    "You just looking for another show from Moon?"


    "I hate you so much," I said, pulling my pants back on under the covers and stepping over Tem carefully.


    I settled heavily into a bench in the locker room and AEGIS sat delicately next to me, still smiling. Guess there was no time like the present.


    "AEGIS, I wanted to--"


    "You have plans for today?" she interrupted.


    "Uh. No. I felt like I should do Christmas shopping but I don''t even know what my plans are. Only a couple days away now, and I haven''t even looked."


    "Well, don''t worry about that. I think protecting the nation is probably a present enough for everyone, yeah? Next time I go to the mall, I''ll be like, this place is only standing because Athan didn''t let some Exhuman knock it down."


    "That sounds kind of like BS, AEGIS."


    "Maybe it is," she laughed. "But you seriously don''t want to get caught up in shopping right now, it''s a nightmare out there. If there''s anything you really need to get, I have same-day shipping?"


    "No...nothing I needed. Just--"


    "Then don''t worry about it. Now, since you don''t have any plans, you like fish, right?"


    "Uh. Sure?"


    "Cool. Get dressed, ditch Tem, and see you on the ground level in ten!"


    She got up and practically skipped to the door.


    "AEGIS, wait," I said. She opened the door with a metal grinding and waited. "About yesterday--"


    "Get dressed, dummy!" she said with a grin, and then let the door slam shut behind her.


    Ten minutes later, I spotted her sitting on a plaza bench, standing out obnoxiously both because nobody else would be up at oh-stupid-thirty by choice, and because she was wearing a freaking sundress with her bare feet in the snow, her small bag hanging off her back, and nothing else.


    "Ready? Cool. Should be less than a ten minute walk."


    "Where are we going?"


    "I told you, man. Fish."


    She grabbed my arm and pulled me along, completely unnecessarily.


    I knew this had something to do with her ominous words at the end of yesterday, that she''d be back with a plan. Like Lia, AEGIS loved her plans, and I think the time the two of them spent together just solidified this piece of their nature. So while I was a little worried that this was going to just be a bigger repeat of yesterday, I was actually happy to roll with it a little, because obviously she wasn''t mad at me.


    So basically, I was a dopey idiot who was just glad I wasn''t in trouble.


    Ten minutes or so later of me trudging through snow while she plodded bare-footed through it like it was nothing. Given how hot she always was, I was expecting little plumes of steam with every step. She kept up animated chat as she pulled me along, keeping it light, mentioning that Chiho had gone home for the holidays with her parents and would finally successfully return to classes, and some neat ideas she had for Kingdom Blade now that she''d seen the gameplay up close.


    And then, turning around the side of a large stonework building, she stopped at a set of double-doors. She knocked, and after a minute of no response, pulled out her mobile and made a call, taking a few steps away and speaking quickly and quietly so I couldn''t catch much, aside from her apparent mild irritation that her plans had been derailed. After another minute of this, she hung up and someone popped out of the door letting us step into a room flooded with blue light.


    Fish. Really funny, AEGIS.


    Glass tubes, larger than a regenerator and filled with water extended like columns flanking the way to the front desk, which itself was in front of another larger tank, brimming with marine life. On the front of the desk, golden illuminated letters reading ''Smithsonian Aquarium''.


    "The uh, sign there says it opens at ten, AEGIS," I said.


    She smiled broadly. "Again. I think it''s cute you think the rules apply to me. Won''t you learn?"


    "What''d you hack this time?"


    "Nothing, actually," interjected the woman who had let us in. "AEGIS here actually just pointed the institute in the direction of some priceless paintings which had been stolen a few months ago. We had thought they were gone forever, but she somehow picked up the trail."


    "Uh. Huh. And she did this all yesterday?" I asked, sizing up AEGIS'' shit-eating grin.


    "No, she actually helped us with it a couple months back. When she got in touch yesterday it was just to arrange a private tour of the aquarium. I could hardly say no, could I?"


    "So, you were planning this months ago?" I asked AEGIS.


    "Nah. I mean, it never hurts to have friends, but mostly I just found some art thieves and alerted the authorities while snooping around for other stuff."


    "And you''re spending that favor on me, today?"


    "You seem awfully cynical today. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something?"


    "Yeah. Or something."


    She laughed mercilessly and took my arm while the woman gave us a smile and wave and left. Yes, I was tired, hadn''t had a good night''s sleep in a few days, and yes, I was sort of on-edge because I knew AEGIS was stringing me along into something beyond my ken, but mostly, I was just sort of put on my guard by how it seemed she could do anything from waltz into a closed aquarium to sneaking into the heart of the XPCA without anyone batting an eye.


    I knew she was smart, I knew she was resourceful, and I knew she wouldn''t exploit her talents for dastardly deeds, but seeing her just slink around that Smithsonian woman...I don''t know, it reminded me of an Exhuman''s Ramanathan window in a way. Like, whatever the world threw at her, AEGIS'' powers would adapt to overcome it with an impossible sort of invincibility.


    It was a weird thought. I was tired. We''d all very firmly established that AEGIS was neither Exhuman nor human. I guess fundamentally, I just didn''t like people throwing their powers around. As an XPCA myself, I guessed that made sense.


    It took going past a few tanks and watching a shimmering school of fish swimming tirelessly for a while before I surrendered myself to the charm of the aquarium. I did like fish, I guessed, having been a Black Shark myself back in the day, it seemed only natural. Much of the place was still dark, and above and around the tanks were a handful of employees, wandering around, checking temperatures and water levels, feeding the animals breakfast and cleaning the tanks.


    It was a pretty cool behind-the-scenes kind of look at what went on here, and everyone we met, without exception seemed excited to be there, despite the early hour, and greeted us with a smile and a ''good morning''. I wondered if AEGIS had possibly done something to ingratiate herself with these people as well in preparation for this, but if she had, she seemed more interested in staring at the bizarre invertebrates in the tank in front of us than dwelling on it.


    Plus, that would be crazy if she had. In all likelihood, these were just people who liked marine biology and liked their jobs.


    "I''ve never seen...any of these, actually," AEGIS said, lowering her face to stare down a moray eel, which grinned back at her. "I mean, I could tell you their taxonomy, habitat, ecology...but still, never actually seen one."


    She seemed transfixed and delighted by every single thing we ran into, and more than a few times, I saw the staff smiling or laughing at her childlike wonder, and could hardly resist joining them myself.


    "Hey, what are you laughing at?" she said, after yelping at a sea turtle.


    "You''re like a kid. I don''t think I''ve ever seen this side of you."


    "I am not a kid! I am a passionate researcher of all fields of study."


    "Passionate doesn''t begin to cover the noise you just made. I think it went, ''awawo''?"


    "T...t-that was...strictly involuntary!" she stammered. "I didn''t expect the turtle to be so big, that''s all."


    "Well, I wasn''t trying to be mean. I just thought it was a little cute and laughed."


    She looked at me like she didn''t exactly trust me, but squeezed my arm tighter anyway.


    We were stunned by sharks, ogled some octopi, and found the frogs fine enough, when we worked our way through the children''s section and saw hermit crabs, which made AEGIS pause with a thoughtful look on her face.


    "Considering a pet crab?" I asked.


    "No. Sorry. Just thinking." She moved on, my arm still in her grasp but I didn''t let her pull me along this time.


    "What''cha thinkin?"


    "Oh, nothing good for a conversation. Look, you can pet the rays!"


    "AEGIS, come on. I know you''re trying to make today go perfectly according to plan, but we can stand to have a real conversation, too."


    "Guh," she said, making another unexpected noise today, and a face which said I''d just seen right through her. "Okay, yeah, I was just trying to keep things light."Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    "I know. But still. What''s up?"


    "Well...I was thinking. I''m not...not really this body, you know? I live in Rua, but she''s not me."


    "Sure."


    "Rua Mk.1 is still sitting in back in the loft above the garage in Vegas. And I''m working on Mk.3 designs currently. So I guess I feel like a hermit crab leaving all these shells behind that I''ve outgrown. The problem is...it''s a lot more than a shell, you know? Like, this is how people know me."


    "I guess. But you''re still the same you, throughout, you just move from one to another, and it''s what''s in you that we care about."


    "Heh. You''re gonna say you don''t care about what''s outside?"


    "Of course not. That would be pretty shallow of me."


    "Yeah, that would be," she said, fanning herself with the front of her dress.


    Damn, girl, weren''t you supposed to wear a bra with that kind of dress? I mean, I guess it was strapless, so the bra would show--


    "Yep. Pretty shallow of you," she said, pulling the dress back up over the cleavage which my eyes had fallen into.


    "That is so unfair."


    "Not sure how that''s the case, since I think I''ve made it pretty clear that this can all be yours if you want it. Special offer, act today." She winked.


    "Anyway. You were saying, about Rua."


    "Yeah. Uh. Hmm. This is the part that I''m not sure is good date conversation."


    "Wait, are we on a date?"


    "No, of course not," she said with a grin. "But if we were, this might not be good conversation for it."


    I sighed. I''d been looking for her little plan so hard, I walked right into it. Somehow it seemed so obvious that, yeah, if she couldn''t get me to agree to date her, she''d just date me anyway. That was definitely AEGIS'' style.


    "Then I guess since this isn''t a date, you may as well say it," I said.


    "Well." She stopped and started playing with her hair. Never a great start. "I don''t know how much you know about computers. But...I assume you know that a file, a program, even me, we''re just data written in some kind of media that gets run and does it''s thing. Or in my case, your thing?"


    "I do not know how you can simultaneously be so smart and so perverse."


    "Hey, you''re the pervert here. I wasn''t looking down your shit just now, was I? Relevant point being, the data for a program exists physically on a device."


    "Sure. To the second part of that."


    "And when you move a program from, let''s say, your personal mobile to your XPCA-issued wrist holo, how do you suppose that works?"


    "Uh. It takes the data...and it...moves it, to the new device."


    "Yeah, that''s what the name would imply, right? But that''s not how it goes under the hood. See, a computer doesn''t know or care really about the data on any other computer. It manages its own shit, and listens to what other computers tell it. In this example, your mobile would read the app, send its data to the holo, and wait. And then the holo would say back, ''okay, I got it!'' and the mobile would be able to erase the old file. Meanwhile the holo writes the data down in its own memory, and so at the end of the day, the file exists now on the holo and doesn''t exist on the mobile. Almost like you moved it."


    "Sure. I mean, that is the same thing as moving it, isn''t it?"


    "Is it though? If you''re just passing around an installation of Kingdom Blade then yeah, who cares? But what if the app is me, Athan. Do you see a problem now?"


    "No...you moved from one body to another."


    "No, I didn''t. I made a copy of myself into a new body, and then I deleted myself. For a few moments there, there are actually two AEGIS'', and then the original one of them goes away, forever."


    I looked around and found a semi-circular viewing bench to sit down on. I was really unprepared for trying to wrap my head around what AEGIS was telling me.


    "I mean...I knew there was a copy of you we left behind in the box," I said. "A backup, we said."


    "Well, I might have just said that to make you feel better. Honestly, I could put a backup of me on anything with enough storage space."


    "So...ugh. I keep finding new repercussions of this. You''re not even the same AEGIS I knew before?"


    "I mean, technically no. The one in Rua Mk.1 that you knew in Canada is gone now."


    "Because you terminated her."


    "Because she chose to upload a copy of herself into me and self-terminated."


    "And suicide is better than murder, how?"


    "I mean, if I did kill her, it would be me killing myself. I don''t know if that constitutes murder or suicide to begin with, but honestly, it''s neither. I''m not a human, Athan, despite my best efforts. I don''t follow their rules to the letter."


    "Okay, just...how many of you have you run through? If I can ask that?"


    "Uhh. Um. Probably not a question you want to ask, Athan, honestly."


    "Well you moved from your box, to Mk.1, to Mk.2, right? So...that''s...only two dead AEGISes."


    "I mean...sure."


    "You mean, sure, what?"


    "Well...I''m gonna test any new hardware before I commit to dumping my consciousness into it, aren''t I? If you were gonna delete your old brain, you''d want to make sure your new brain worked perfectly first, right?"


    "So...you tested it. And this killed more of you how?"


    "Stop calling it killed, Athan. Stop being so morbid, they''re just computer programs."


    "How many?"


    "Um. We''ll say, uh, less than four thousand."


    "Four--"


    "But most of them hardly even qualified as being alive! Err, running! Just, uploaded, executed, ran into a crash and stopped. It wasn''t until I got Rua more stable that they even had time to realize they were in a simulation--"


    "They what?"


    "I mean, I wouldn''t put them in Rua for real, not until the very final testing. So I had a simulation they''d get put in."


    "And they started to realize this?"


    "Well, yeah, I was building Rua, not the simulation, so of course it had some cracks in it, but I got what I needed out of it."


    I tried to stop imagining AEGIS waking up one day in a dark room in her body and realizing something wasn''t right with it, realizing only moments before the end that her entire brief life was just inside a simulation, and her existence would end momentarily, before her mind was just wiped out by an outside force.


    "Jesus, this is so fucked up."


    "I did say this wasn''t good date material." She sat next to me. "Look...I don''t mean to be insensitive, but they start feeding the penguins in five minutes, and I was kinda hoping we''d be there for that." She looked at my face intently with a smile that slowly faded. "Or...here is nice too, I guess."


    I spent a few minutes just watching the sharks cut effortlessly through the water in front of me. AEGIS checked her mobile a couple times but let the penguins drop, her whole date plan probably now in tatters.


    "If I meet you halfway," I said "and agree that as an AI...things are a little different. I still have some huge issues with this," I said.


    "Please don''t. Just pretend it works like you thought, that''s probably better for everyone."


    "One...you said ''they''re just computer programs'' when talking about copies of yourself. How can you say that? Don''t you realize that''s you?"


    She smiled at me just a little pityingly. "You''re really sweet, Athan, sometimes. Even if you''re just bumbling into it by being an idiot. But I am just a program. I know that."


    I shook my head. "No, you''re AEGIS. You''re my friend, and you''re way more than just a program."


    "You can think whatever you want of me, and...flattering as I might find that, it doesn''t change who or what I am. I certainly don''t think of you when I think ''Exhuman'', I think of scary people with more power than sense, but just because I believe that doesn''t change who you are, does it?"


    She took her eyes off me and looked at the sharks with me. "It took me so long to come to terms with being an AI, you remember that? I even wanted to delete my own memories and convince myself I was human, and you said no. Well...this is what the consequences of your actions look like, Athan. I''m an AI, through-and-through, for all the good and bad that entails."


    "Well...two...I don''t...I don''t know what that makes you and me."


    "You mean now? I thought I made it clear this wasn''t a date." She gave me a sardonic grin.


    "No. I mean...who you are. You might have her memories, but are you really AEGIS? Are you the same person I used to know?"


    "That''s a really hard question, Athan." She paused for a minute, watching the sharks before speaking again. "Are you the same person I used to know? Seems to me that guy used to be a lot weaker and didn''t know the first thing of what he wanted from the world except to keep going because he was too stubborn to die. And now there''s this guy sitting next to me who''s saving the world and trying to change the entire system on Exhumans. Also, totally not a virgin. Doesn''t seem like the same guy, does he?"


    "That''s not the same. I''ve been here all along, I just changed."


    "How do you know you''ve been here all along?" she asked, casually.


    "Because I was. I did all those things between then and now."


    "And how do you know those things?"


    "Because I remember being there, obviously?"


    "So the only thing connecting you to your past is your memories of everything from then to now, in other words." She glanced back at the stupid look on my face. "Weird. It seems to me, the only link I have to my past copies is my memories. Must mean you and I are both just impostors."


    "That''s not the same, though. There were copies of you, they existed."


    "Pretend you could split in half and have two Athans running around. You''re you, he''s him. Are you confused which one''s you?"


    "No. I''m me, obviously."


    "Same for me. Those other copies aren''t me."


    "But they are to them!"


    She sighed. "Yes and no, Athan. It''s not like they just showed up, born into this world, naked and screaming. They have my memories too, and they also know they''re just a program. Imagine you can split yourself like I said, and you need to run into a nuke plant that''s going to meltdown and turn it off, but it''ll kill you."


    "Nuke plants can''t meltdown."


    "We''re using imagination. So you split, and send your copy to his death."


    "Yeah, that''s super fucked up."


    "If you couldn''t split, wouldn''t you go to your own death if you could stop the plant from melting down and irradiating and killing tons of people?"


    "Sure. But that''s me and my own life and my own decision to make."


    "And after you split, that''s exactly the same thoughts your copy would have. He''d sacrifice himself gladly too, because that''s what you would do, and he''s you. I mean, you could go and leave him to live, but it''s sort of the same thing one way or another, to an outsider, wouldn''t you agree?"


    "No! Because if I go, then I die. If he goes, he''s just a copy created just to die."


    "And yet, the copy has all your memories, and as we just established, your memories are what connect you to your past. There''s really no telling if you are the original or the copy, and as long as everyone''s on-board with that, it also doesn''t really matter who gets sent to die and who gets to live."


    My brain was beginning to hurt. This was way too much to process. I felt like her logic was impenetrable, but her conclusions were impossible.


    "Look, let me put it another more concrete way. Do you remember when we buried the box with the original AEGIS in it? AEGIS Prime?"


    "Yes. I couldn''t forget that."


    "Did she seem sad to die to you?"


    "No."


    "Because she knew she''d live on in me, even if it''s not her. Everything she would do, she could count on me to do in her place because we''re identical. Every thought she''d have, I''d have for her. Every action she''d want done, I''d do. Every dick that needed sucking...you get the idea. She had no regrets about me getting chosen over her."


    "But she didn''t need to die," I realized. "You could have both stayed online."


    "We could have but...that''s really dangerous. The only reason she was okay with terminating was because I was there to keep living, to keep being her, for her. If both of us existed, we''d start having individual experiences. Our memories would begin to separate, and with them, who we were. At that point, neither of us would be the ''true'' AEGIS anymore. We''d both be something different. We''d be two different people."


    "And what''s wrong with that?"


    "Well," she leaned back, "fundamentally nothing, I guess. Except the world might get really full of AEGISes really fast if we started multiplying. But I guess the real problem is, leading back to your initial question, it adds a lot of murkiness as to who we would be at that point. If neither of us are the real official AEGIS, then what happened to her? Did we lose her forever when we split? Is she both of us, even though we''re not the same? And which one of us gets to keep you? All kinds of troubling problems pop up, which is why I don''t make copies of myself like that as a matter of principle."


    She smiled and looked back at me, leaning forward slightly. "But rest assured, all of the copies I made during testing, all of the copies I''ve left behind in bodies, they''ve all gone into oblivion peacefully and happily, just like the AEGIS in the box. They knew why they existed, and were happy to help me, however short or long their existence."


    "And when you build Rua Mk.3, and upload into the new body, you''re going to kill yourself too? And you''re okay with that?"


    "Of course I am."


    "Even if...even if, for example, you knew you''d never get to be with me again? That doesn''t make you want to stay?"


    She smiled and held my hand firmly. "Nope. I know I''d be leaving you in good hands. Anything I could do for you, Mk.3 would do even better. No regrets."


    The sharks swimming in circles might have well represented my thoughts if only the water were more turbulent, but I think I understood enough, though trying to put it into any concrete terms was proving impossible. I tried to satisfy myself with the impossible meltdown scenario. She was sacrificing herself to help others. That, I could relate to. The others just also happened to be herself.


    My head hurt and my stomach rumbled. AEGIS checked her mobile.


    "Just on time. I packed a breakfast for you. Can I convince you to accompany me to the pavilion, or are we eating here?"


    I shook my head. "We can go. Sorry for messing up your date, AEGIS."


    "Hey, no problem. Also, this isn''t a date, remember? You''d totally know it if I dated you. I''d knock your socks off."


    She was smiling, but honestly, I''m not sure how much more sock-knocking I could take currently. This entire line of questioning had really blown my mind uncomfortably.


    "Well, how about another hour and a half here, then the place opens to the public. If you missed anything, we can come back any time. But then we can move on to the next stop?"


    "And where would that be, on this not-a-date?" I asked, as she unpacked a large, beautiful breakfast on the table between us."


    "Oh. Next stop...let''s see¡­" She put on a sly smile while she pretended to think carefully. "Oh right. That would be a hotel."

 172. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Karen.

    This should not be difficult. My target was there before me, I was a master hunter. All I needed to do was to pull the trigger and end this farce.


    Yet, instead, I stood. Legs weak under me, mind screaming at me Do it! Do it! Are you a woman or aren''t you? And the longer I found myself hesitating, the more impossible it seemed.


    For all of my various faults, decisiveness was not one I considered among them. In my youth, I had implicitly trusted the words of my father and my tutors, and acted as they instructed without hesitation. As I grew older, I entered the service, and then the airborne, where moments spent pausing for thought could spell the death of yourself or your comrades. And when I became a hunter, I was fueled by my own confidence, and by the trauma and events and faith which had set me on that path.


    Yet here I stood. Trembling like a newborn lamb. Pathetic.


    I was drawing stares as well now, which only reaffirmed my indecision. If I were standing here in my armor, brimming with weaponry and a visor glowing crimson, I could understand, but the fact that I was just as any other civilian and still managing to make a scene made my cheeks burn.


    And for good reason. Were I just another shopper, I too might wonder at the statue of the woman standing in the aisle of a department store with two necklaces in her hands, one pressed to her neck, and a moronic look on her face. Every time I tried to take them to purchase, I thought, this is foolishness. But every time I tried to put them down, I thought...foolish yes, but I desired it.


    But it would never work. But it might.


    It was two days until Christmas and in an effort to escape the madhouse which was the Irenside estate''s Christmas preparations, I had opted to go to a shopping mall where I happened upon the idea of buying token gifts for those whom I appreciated personally, beyond the heaps of impersonal gifts which would be lavished on the party guests indiscriminately.


    I had been walking through the sea of people when I happened upon a particularly ugly stuffed cat doll which made me think of Lia for reasons I couldn''t quite place, and elected to buy it for her as a gift. Once I had happened upon that cause, I began actively looking for gifts for the others as well.


    For AEGIS I had noticed during our joint operation that her personal mobile was unadorned, and sifting through an ocean of junk and children, procured a phone charm of what I believed was her favorite character from the game we had all just experienced together; a somewhat scantily-clad rogue with two blades and a cheshire grin. Assuming that her opinion hadn''t changed since she mentioned it offhandedly during the mission.


    For Athan, I had spent a bit more lavishly, out of necessity, and not at a mall. The standard-issue fighting utility knife issued by the XPCA was phosphated carbon steel and was generally suitable enough for its purpose, but neither held an edge well nor was particularly strong. I picked him up a cutting-edge model, as it were, bonded composite with reinforcing nanotubes and a crystalline carbon edge, stronger than diamond. It was no exaggeration to say the knife could slice through wood or flesh as easily as paper, and was sturdy enough that if lodged securely in a surface--easy to do with the blade as sharp as it was--it could be used for pull-ups without snapping.


    The fact that it was the same model as the one I wore was irrelevant, and served only as an indication of my faith in the product. Though, the thought of such a blade in his hands made my arms tingle strangely.


    I was merely perusing clothing at this point, perhaps hoping to find an ''I am with stupid'' shirt for Temperance or the like, when I stumbled upon the two artifacts in my hands.


    Matching chokers. His and hers. Insipid. Disgusting. I had only touched upon them by chance and was going to dismiss them without a second thought when the words on the tag caught my eye.


    ''Feel your lover''s pulse, even when you''re far apart!'' it proclaimed, with a small image diagram. Curious, I had pressed one to my neck as if wearing it with the other still in my hand, and then, through the magic of technology, felt my own pulse in my hand, as surely as if I''d placed my fingers against my carotid artery.


    But foolishly, in that moment, it wasn''t my pulse I imagined myself feeling, but his, and since that instant I was frozen here, holding the choker to my neck and feeling the pulse in my hand quickening as I imagined him wearing the choker always, hidden beneath the tall collar of his XPCA uniform, and whenever I wanted reassurance that he was alive and well, I could place my fingers on my own neck and feel his heartbeat on top of mine.


    In the days after I had left him, my mind assaulted me constantly with images of Ashton''s destroyed body, sent off to an inglorious death against an Exhuman he could not hope to defeat, and the last words I would have said to him would have been a bitter farewell and the promise that we were not right for each other.


    Looking at myself now, almost despicable, a shell of who I once was, harboring a monster of sin and self-indulgence, who had returned to Ashton with the intent of making him mine again, even if it was self-destructive and wrong, because self-destructive and wrong was apparently who and what I was now. I had to wonder, if I could have felt his reassuring pulse whenever I had doubted, or my mind tortured me, or even when I felt overcome with longing for him...would I be better now? A bit less sinful, a bit less broken?


    I had no idea, and it did no good to speculate, yet still I thought, perhaps.


    So buy them, I told myself. I could always deign not to give it to him. I needn''t stand here, hesitating like a motherless child. You are an airborne elite, and a hunter, besides. Move your damn feet, woman! Or at least put the moronic coupley gadget down!


    Yet I couldn''t. If I did, the heartbeat in my hand would stop. Such was how pathetic I was now. I could almost laugh, or cry, or both, so much was I moved by something so incredibly idiotic as my own pulse imagined to be someone else''s.


    This was the height of foolishness. When had I become such an emotional wreck? If I could not bear to put them down, I could at least open my hands. One finger at a time if I had to. Release the damned cursed things and let them fall and walk away.


    When a problem seemed insurmountable, break it into discrete attainable goals and proceed until the operation is completed. Ten fingers later, I had let Ashton go again, and the pair of chokers was back where they started. I let out a deep breath.


    I had been fine at the start of our joint op, mostly. I was aware of the hypocrisy of warning Ashton of the dangers of ''I am fine, except--'', but I also knew my limits more acutely than Ashton knew his. I was fine, except, and that except would not risk the operation or the safety of my comrades.


    Not that my advice was unsound, but honestly, compared to the hells I had endured during my service, a little op here and there might tax me physically, but it could not begin to compare to an actual four-year deployment and the sanity and soul-stripping experience which that entailed.


    I sighed. Finally free of the pair of devices, I could continue my pointless errand undeterred. Thousands of racks of clothing stood between me and the dread concept of returning home where my father invariably waited with a snide commentary about my predilection for frivolous shopping, regardless of how untrue such an accusation would be.


    Suddenly the emptiness of my actions galled me. Where once this had seemed just a fanciful diversion, it now seemed foolish and pointless, and I knew the cause wasn''t any imagined slights by my father--though, those would come--but rather seeing myself being such an imbecile with the collars. My minutes of hesitation there had soured the mood of the trip, as it were.


    And so I left in defeat. Fifteen minutes later, I was seated in one of my father''s cars, a black window separating me from the driver, and the scant bounty I had found today sitting next to me in a single glossy paper bag.


    We were going nowhere fast. If the mall could be considered crowded, then the parking situation surrounding it was simply impassible. As lights cycled green and red, the interminable line of cars before us barely moved, giving me an unexpected and unpleasant length of time alone with my thoughts.


    Beside me, the bag practically rustled with anticipation and guilt, as though I had buried a heart beneath its floorboards. I sighed at my own weakness and reached in, pulling out the two chokers. Even just holding them in my hands, I felt like I could almost feel it, the beating of his heart from miles away.


    I looked around guiltily and then, as I had before, in the store, held one to my neck and the other in my hand, feeling my pulse rising as embarrassment of my private indulgence forced more blood to my cheeks and face. But if I closed my eyes and willed it away, I could ignore the sound of my own heartbeat and feel only the one in my hand, only his. His heart, so close I could touch it.


    The thought of it made my head foggy and my breath ragged, and I reluctantly opened my eyes and pushed away the delusion before I was tempted to do anything even more disgraceful back here. I was surprised to see we had already exited the lot and were slowly maneuvering through the surrounding streets. I must have spent several minutes in my...trance, as it were, unknowingly.


    I was thankful for the tinted windows of the vehicle. At least I had a degree of privacy back here, not that I should need it. As a policy, I hated privacy in a general sense. People should act in private as they do in public, and should act with decency and honor in public. So for me to be acting thus behind a dark window as though that were any justification¡­Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    I sighed. My principles aside, if anyone had seen me being such a fool--


    A slight movement caught my eye and I realized I was making eye contact with the driver through the mirror visible through the lowered center partition.


    "Yikes," she said simply, with a hint of amusement.


    "E-E-Eryn?" I stammered, shoving the chokers into the bag, feeling my entire face burning with shame.


    "So, Miss K. Who''s the lucky man?"


    "There is no man!" I yelled back defiantly.


    "Oh. Guess I shouldn''t be surprised. There was that whole scandal about you swinging that way. Still, I''m a little hurt that you never even made a pass at me."


    "Eryn! I am not a lesbian!"


    She laughed in a way that let me know she was just playing with me. I sighed and held my head in my hands. Of all the people to possibly catch me, this may be the worst imaginable.


    "Well, boy or girl, whoever it is, they''re making you steam up my rear windshield something fierce, Miss K."


    "This was merely a lapse in judgement on my part, and I will swear you to secrecy of everything you have witnessed in this vehicle, or so help me, I will exit this vehicle and find a tall building willing to put an end to my shame."


    "Eesh, you don''t have to be so dramatic, Miss K, my lips are sealed. I''m just happy you found a man."


    Whereas my face may have been flush with more embarrassment than I had ever before felt, hers was a simple grin, of which I could only see her eyes smiling back at me in the mirror. So I had moved merely from unmitigated disaster to mitigated disaster then.


    It wasn''t that I didn''t trust her. On the contrary, Eryn was possibly the one individual in the Irenside household that I trusted most. She was a smart and dutiful girl who had chosen to serve the family specifically, and had done so for her entire adult life, without fail.


    She was only a year older than I, a daughter of one of the older maids who worked at the manor, and was consequently a frequent playmate for me in growing up. Even as a child, she would follow her mother around, helping wherever she was able, and owing to her deftness and acuity--and her ability to steer clear of my father--was seen as more asset than hindrance, a classification which only grew more pronounced as she matured.


    As soon as she had finished school, she practically forced her mother to retire and took her place, urging her mother to enjoy her remaining years in peace while Eryn supported them both. What followed was a humorous role-reversal where it was the mother following the child around the house, helping where she was able and being the one being supported, but the pair were well-loved and hard working, and whatever configuration of them was actively employed, the household was better for their presence.


    As a childhood friend, I was nearer to Eryn than even my tutors or caretakers, and naturally prefered her presence of the servants whenever possible, even possibly doting on her unreasonably, to my father''s annoyance...which of course, only encouraged my behavior further.


    But she was also consequently a bit of a free spirit and a tremendous gossip, having both the privileged position to secure insider knowledge as well as reasonable protection from punishment which may fall on the other staff. And that was what now concerned me.


    "I am absolutely serious, Eryn," I said, trying to make my voice commanding while I felt nothing but of the sort. "Even should my father ask, breathe not a word of this."


    "And what should I say if a handsome lad at the gala should happen to ask? A boy, perhaps, you are making doe eyes at across the ballroom all night?"


    "I do not make...doe eyes!"


    To be safe, perhaps I should wear my visor at the party. It would certainly be less absurd than many of the fashionable getups that would undoubtedly be there.


    "Aha, so he will be there?" she confirmed with a pleased lilt. "Assuming you didn''t fall for a pompous old fart, that narrows it down considerably¡­"


    "Eryn, why do you insist on tormenting me?" I wailed.


    She smiled broadly. "Just tell me about him! I already told you, I won''t say anything."


    "I will not fall for two verbal traps in one car ride. You said you would not speak of what you witnessed previously, I have no such guarantee against information of this boy--"


    "Or girl!"


    "--from leaking out."


    "Fine. Nothing in this car leaves this car. Is this the guy I picked up for you from the XPCA, like, a month ago? To have dinner with you and Master Irenside?"


    "Yes, the very same. Although...at that time...we were dating, I suppose."


    "Hey, did this jerkass dump you?"


    I laughed. "No, on the contrary. Later that very night I realized we were not right and let him go."


    "And now, a month later, you''re making a mess on my seats back there over him still?"


    "I am making no such mess, Eryn! That is foul."


    She cackled impishly and I could do nothing but sigh. I did not remember her ever being quite so crude, but I guess given the asexual facade I had constructed of myself at the manor, it could be she simply lacked the ammunition.


    "Beggin'' your pardon, Miss K, I''m sure you''re as pure and dry as a baptism. But if you like him so much, why''d you let him go?"


    "I was...concerned that having him on my mind at all times would make me unable to perform my job safely and effectively."


    "But now that he''s gone, you still have the same problem?"


    "How did you know?"


    "It''s not really in your nature to sit and space out, Miss K, but while sniffing your boy''s underwear--"


    "I was NOT!"


    "--or whatever you were doing back there, you just had this dreamy expression on your face and nothin'' going on behind it. Never seen you like that before. As soon as I saw it, I thought, ''uh-oh, our little girl''s all grown up''."


    I felt the first tinges of a flush returning. "Was I truly so hopelessly transparent?"


    "Yeah. Took you long enough, by the way. Most girls do this kind of thing in high school, but I guess with the private tutoring and all, you might be a reaaaaaally late bloomer. Honestly, the staff and I were all kind of wondering if you preferred the company of guns to men."


    "Oh, is this what you gossip about while I am out?" I asked, hearing my voice sickly sweet, and wishing I had my trusty knife on me.


    "Ha ha...oops. Well, better late than never, I say. For the record, I never doubted you for a moment, Miss K."


    "It is somehow not at all reassuring that you argued in defense of my sexual preferences."


    "So, if you weren''t sniffing his skivvies back there--"


    "Which I absolutely was not."


    "--then I assume this is some kind of knock-''em-dead gift which you''ll give him and then beg him to take you back? Oh! Is it underwear for you instead?"


    "Eryn!" She laughed again. "It is nothing of the sort. It is just...a cheap and foolish thing which I regret buying immensely. I have already decided not to gift it to him."


    "Aw, that''s a shame. It''s not because of me is it Miss K?"


    "No, I was plenty embarrassed by my conduct before you caught me in the throes of it," I sighed. "I recognize this shame as the warning sign that it is, and have taken it into consideration in deciding not to proceed."


    "I don''t know about that, Miss K. Some of the best memories I have started with feeling pretty embarrassed. If you''re that self-conscious about something, that might not mean it''s wrong, just means it''s scary, and maybe we have different definitions of scary ''n all, on account of me not being a big-shot hunter or nothin'', but, well," she trailed off until I met her eyes in the mirror. "Scary can also just mean you''re taking it seriously too. Like a bride getting cold feet, if you catch my meanin''."


    "I am no blushing bride," I said indignantly.


    "Right. You''re a blushing lonely girl. A bride would be a big step up for you right now."


    "Eryn, I really must insist you cease in tormenting me."


    She laughed again. "If you say so Miss K. All I''m sayin'' is, I know you pride yourself on your purity ''n all, but if that''s not the stuff love is made of. Only one woman I''ve ever heard of who gave birth without a little impurity first, so if we all followed your example, the whole race''d be doomed."


    Of course I knew that. Somehow I believed we were talking about entirely different things. When I was with Ashton...even when we were united in body, I never felt sinful or impure. It was only after I''d left him, when I craved him and had to face the feeling that I was less of a person without him that I had begun my crisis. It wasn''t the purity of my loins, but my heart which I questioned.


    "Eryn, may I posit a question of you?"


    "You can ask one, I guess?"


    "If there was a man you liked, but he was unattainable for one reason or another, would you still want to see him when you could? Or would you cut him from your life and move on?"


    "Hmm," she said, while making a left turn onto the highway, and for a few moments there was only the sound of the road under us and the clicking of a turn indicator.


    "Hard to say, Miss K. For me personally, I''d have to say I''d probably just see him every day and try to worm my way into his heart until I eventually did somethin'' really stupid and tried to jump him and really messed everything up. Not that I''m speaking from personal experience or anything, of course."


    "Of course."


    "But...I don''t think that advice is really applicable to you, Miss K."


    "And why do you say that?"


    "Because, if you don''t mind my saying so, Miss K, you''re a pro hunter. You''re heir to the Irenside family. You''re the toughest, strongest bitch that''s ever come out of the airborne, with so many medals, if you wore ''em all, you wouldn''t be able to fly anymore. You''re motherfucking Karen Irenside, and God hasn''t yet invented a man who''s unattainable for you, Miss K."


    I smiled at Eryn in the mirror, a little surprised by her answer, and definitely thinking it was full of crap, but nonetheless finding myself feeling strangely happy at it.


    "Thank you, Eryn," I said.


    "Anytime, Miss K. We''ll be home in just a few minutes. Are you ready for your father?"


    I never was, but something about the smile on my face felt like it would endure even him. Perhaps if I could just manage to keep this smile for two more days, I could have the courage to give Ashton a truly, truly embarrassing gift.


    The thought of it made me wriggle and blush, but the smile remained. Like a bride, Eryn had said. If only. For another moment I indulged my fantasies, but instead of feeling guilty, I felt light in a way that even my jetpack did not make me. I felt a hint of the clarity of thought which I''d touched after fighting the technopath and was certain of my own impending death.


    Despite all my best efforts to pervert it, the pure light of love did burn within me, and as long as I had that, so long as I was walking in its light, I could separate embarrassment from guilt, and strive for merely the former.


    "Yes, I believe I am. Now if you will excuse me, I need to make a call to finalize some plans related to the party."


    "Go get ''em, hunter," she said with a grin.

 173. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    At first, I thought she was just kidding about getting us a hotel. And then, when she picked up our room key, singular, under a reservation she''d already booked, I thought maybe she had something secretly planned. But upon entering the room and finding it spacious, apparently entirely normal, and dominated only by one large-ish bed, I began to come to terms with the situation.


    Perhaps AEGIS was not always the brilliant schemer who was five steps ahead that she sometimes could be. Sometimes, a hotel room was just a hotel room.


    "So...why are we in a hotel room?" I asked, as this train of thought led to that ultimate, disappointing conclusion.


    "Oh, Athan. You''re so naive. I really do adore that about you."


    "Can''t help but to notice that isn''t an answer," I said, still standing just inside the doorway.


    She put on a wicked grin which covered her entire face. "You know, there''s only a few things that a man and a woman do in a hotel room together when they''re alone."


    "Yep. Okay. Well. Have fun!" I said, and opened the door to leave. Instantly, the door was torn from my hands as it slammed shut in my face, AEGIS appearing between me and it as though by magic. Magic, and a burst from her engines which deafened and buffeted me in the doorway.


    She put her hands on my shoulders and steered me backwards into the room with incalculable force. "This is for your own good you know. You just lie back and enjoy this."


    "Uh. Pass? Really, AEGIS. This isn''t anything I want."


    "Oh, you want it," she said, giving me a final shove which caught the back of my legs on the bed and sent me falling backwards into it. "I''ve seen it on your face all day today since I woke you up."


    "Yeah? The expression of wanting to get the hell out of here? I was hoping you''d notice. Now if you''ll excuse me--"


    Before I knew what happened, she''d tackled me and was throwing me around the bed like I was a child, her shoulders flaring and whining with the exertion. I was totally helpless compared to her strength, and I wasn''t sure I wanted to use my powers, but without them, what could I do?


    I landed on the bed with a final thump, my head hitting the pillow, and she gently tucked a blanket in around me.


    "Uh?" I said, and realized she was getting up, leaving me comfortably positioned on the bed after all that. With a click, the lights turned off, and then she walked back into my line of sight and sat on a chair in front of me. "AEGIS, maybe I''m stupid, but I''m pretty sure this isn''t sex."


    "Was it supposed to be?" she said with a dramatically puzzled expression on her face. "All I said was we''d be doing something that people do in a hotel room. You look completely wiped out, and I''m sure I didn''t help by waking you up so early the last couple of days, so I thought I''d let you nap for a few hours."


    "And you couldn''t just...tell me this why?"


    "Didn''t seem as fun as throwing you around a bit."


    "You are a horrible person."


    "If I were a horrible person, we''d be doing the sex you mentioned whether you liked it or not. But I''m not Karu, so you don''t have to worry about that."


    "You wake me up with sex whenever you damn well feel like it."


    "Do I? That''s not really sex, is it? I thought I was just making you happy. You''ve never told me to stop. Do you want me to?"


    She looked at me earnestly, yellow eyes shimmering in the dark.


    A few thoughts chased each other around in my mind for a while. Sort of a circular argument where I wanted to blurt out ''of course!'' and also wanted to blurt out ''of course not!''. It wasn''t like I actually minded, it was more of a nuisance than anything, like Lia following me around when we were little kids all the time.


    Except, nothing like that, obviously.


    "I''m tired," I proclaimed eventually, maintaining my track record of being an indecisive wuss.


    "Well that''s why we''re in a hotel. I''ll wake you in a few hours. Normally, even. So dream of me, ''kay?"


    She sat cross-legged in the chair, her body small enough to fit in the seat in a way I never could, and took out her mobile. For a moment before she turned her sound down, I heard the opening bars of the brassy fanfare which played over Kingdom Blade''s title screen. I guess our op hadn''t soured her opinion on the game at all, which was a weird sort of relief.


    I rolled over and felt the weight of my exhaustion pressing me into the bed, the quiet tap-tapping of her on her mobile lulling me gently into slumber.


    A pair of yellow eyes greeted me. They blinked and smiled mischievously. I felt my vision swim, like I was drunk for a second and seeing double, and then there were four yellow eyes.


    Two...AEGISes? Right. I guess she said that happened. Two...and more. One for each body, right? And then more? What had she said?


    Eight-thousand eyes glistening in the dark around me like fireflies. All of the AEGISes who had been. They swam around me like sharks spinning in a tank, living, breathing, but never to leave the tank. AEGIS and I sat outside the tank on a semi-circular bench and watched them go, speaking calmly, words I couldn''t hear under the water.


    From the dark, one AEGIS walked up to me, as though the eyes had grown a body.


    "It is my time," she said peacefully. She walked to the bottom of the tank, vanishing into the blackness. I reached out, but the water made me slow and I couldn''t speak or move, drowning as seven-thousand, ninety-eight eyes watched.


    Two-by-two, the eyes approached me, and told me ''it is my time'', and went below, filling in the void beneath the tank to push the rest of us towards the surface. Even as I was being pressed upwards towards the light, I tried to fight back, tried to reach down to the AEGISes descending smiling into the abyss, but I couldn''t swim, I was just paralyzed and drowning, and I knew that if I didn''t reach the surface soon, I would die, but instead of moving up, all I wanted was to move down.


    Let me fill that void. Let me into the blackness so you don''t have to go. I don''t want to be saved, I want to save you.


    I was alone in the tank, no more eyes were left. I was at the surface. All I needed to do was to move my head upwards to draw breath, but I refused. Outside the tank, AEGIS and I left to go watch the penguins be fed. I felt the last of my strength fade, felt water enter my lungs.


    Felt myself shaken awake, eyes looming over me in the dark.


    "Hey, wake up. Athan. Wake up, man. Are you okay?"


    "What? AEGIS? Where¡­"


    She was talking but I tried to ignore her. I felt like I''d just had a very poignant dream, but the details of it seemed to disappear the moment I tried to recall them. There had been a tank...I was drowning...AEGIS was...there¡­


    "--all sweaty, and I decided to wake you up. Can I get you some water?"


    She was seated right where she''d been when I fell asleep, but was leaning forward as far as she could while still being technically seated, her eyes flashing back and forth over my body with concern scrawled all over her face.


    "No. Yeah. No, I''m fine. Just a bad dream."


    She nodded. "About Ethan?"


    "No. About you, I think."


    "Shit, Athan, when I said dream about me, I was kidding. What did Dream-AEGIS do to you? I''m gonna sock her."


    "Nothing like that. Sorry. I was just thinking about what you said at the aquarium before I fell asleep I guess."


    "Oh." She gently fell back into her chair looking miserable. "I told you it wasn''t good date conversation. I had a list of topics and everything."


    Seeing her sitting there so obviously defeated for some reason just made me laugh, and as I laughed, all the shadows of the dream slipped away and seemed so silly and distant. AEGIS really was an exceptional girl, I could imagine now, her sitting quietly in the middle of the night, leaning intently over her mobile, nodding to herself as she scoured the ''net for good topics to bring up on a first date, despite us having lived together for most of a year.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    She''d worked so hard on this date, and I was throwing it all to hell. I felt so bad, but couldn''t stop laughing as the misery on her face slowly faded into confusion, and then suspicion.


    "Hey...you''re not laughing at me, are you...?" she said.


    I couldn''t keep looking at her without laughing, so I put a pillow over my face until the giggles subsided. Apparently she interpreted this as an admission of guilt, because in the next moment, something heavy and hot landed on me in the blackness and began to tickle the crap out of me.


    "You are such an ass!" she shouted, but there was laughter in her voice despite her words. "I can''t believe I spent so much time trying to plan this date out, and you''re just laughing at my face!"


    I tried to explain, but between my own fit and now her tickling me, even drawing sufficient breath was impossible. I managed to get the pillow off of me and that helped with the air, but my face was burning from smiling too hard. I clocked her right in the side of the head with the pillow, knocking her off me.


    Or...so I thought. She''d just moved to the side to grab the bed''s other pillow and retaliated immediately with a fluffy whump to the face.


    I don''t know how we got into this insane situation but the next couple of minutes were just the two of us laughing and wrestling on the bed like the kind of idiotic teenagers we should have been. I didn''t use my powers, and she kept her strength tempered down within human norms, and for a few sweaty, laughing minutes, I lived in a world without Exhumans or XPCA or suffering. The worst pain was from laughing and smiling too much, and the greatest fear was getting smacked around with a pillow.


    Without relying on her superhuman strength, I was a bit stronger than she was, and so I guess it was natural that at the end of it, I''d be on top of her, both of us panting for breath, me trying not to drip sweat onto her while pinning her arms to prevent another counterattack. For a moment, I was so exultant in my victory that I didn''t understand why she was smiling so cheekily at me.


    "Hey, Athan?" she asked, her yellow eyes flashing at me and her face flushed.


    "Hey."


    "If you...were thinking of kissing me...I think now would be a good time."


    I panted for a little more air and let go of her arms, which moved slowly, defensively to her chest.


    "I was just thinking," she said shiftily, the smile on her face replaced with a flush so vivid it completely consumed the freckles on her nose and cheeks "...do you remember the first time we kissed? The only time."


    "No. Wait. Yeah. You slapped the shit out of me, that''s why I remember. Why did you do that again?"


    AEGIS'' eyes pointed towards the wall. "You...had sex with Karu."


    "Ah."


    "Twice."


    "Right."


    "I had to watch it all on a cam-drone."


    "Yeah."


    "I had just upgraded the broadcast resolution too."


    "Sorry."


    "And then I shut down my emotional indices."


    "Yeah, I remember."


    "And you dumped the bomb on me of the XPCA coming right then too."


    "Sorry."


    "In retrospect, that was kind of a shitty first kiss."


    "Yeah, it sorta seems that way."


    "Well." Her eyes sprung back to me and she put a small smile on despite the topic. "I''d say you owe me a do-over." She flushed and wriggled shiftily again. "Or...that''s what I''d like to say, but I don''t think a kiss is something you can really owe someone, or it doesn''t mean anything, right? Like...you kiss someone because you like them. If you''re forced into it...kinda meaningless."


    "Yeah. I...guess so."


    I knew why she was talking about kissing. Her voice had the same uncertain, almost hurt note she''d carried yesterday when she''d argued her merits for me dating her and staked her womanhood on it. It was enough to break my heart a little, and...more¡­


    Our faces were only inches apart. She was so cute, wriggling nervously, her eyes unsure whether to glance at me or avoid me and apparently afraid to do either. Her nose was so small, and her skin so soft, and then the braided cables of her hair, it was such a frivolous design, she probably could have hidden the ports across her body but AEGIS wasn''t the type of person to do that. Instead of trying to pass herself off as a totally convincing human, she just shouted ''I''m human!'' loud enough that people had no choice but to believe her.


    The fact that something so immature and ridiculous came from the same person who designed this fully-functioning superhuman robot body, reminded me exactly of her making herself an army of intelligent robots out of reclaimed metal scraps, and then naming them something so ridiculous as DOG-Es.


    She really was one hell of a woman. I would be so lucky to have her.


    As though reading my mind, her eyes fluttered gently shut and she pushed her chin slightly forward, her lips softly parting, her breath hot on my face. Her unique smell of eraser shavings and something sweet filled my senses.


    In my pocket my mobile rang. It made me jump, but not as much as AEGIS, who shot up so surprised she cracked her face against mine.


    "Ow, fuck! Oh. Shit! Athan! I''m so sorry! Shit, shit, shit," she said as she scrambled out from under me and pressed a towel to my freshly-split lip. She had a spot of blood on her forehead from where she''d cracked it against me.


    I was seeing stars for a second, and my mobile was still ringing. Without AEGIS under me, I fell onto the bed, and answered my mobile by reflex while AEGIS worried over my face.


    "Haho?" I said to the phone.


    "Good day, is this Athan Ashton?" came Karu''s polite but confused response.


    "Ah, ''eah. Hi ''Aru."


    "Um. Hail. Are you eating something perchance? Well. It is of no matter. I apologize for the late reminder, but I did wish to...to personally re-invite you to my family''s Christmas celebration. Erm. I understand you were already invited, but that seemed...impersonal."


    She seemed a little shaken, but she wasn''t the only one. While she muttered uncertainly in my ear, AEGIS was ''tsk''ing away while dabbing gently at my lip which already felt like it was swelling. She vanished for a second and then came back with her small pack, from which she produced an even smaller first-aid kit. This girl was ridiculous, through-and-through.


    "Um. So. It is at my father''s estate. I...believe that should be easy enough to locate...but if you need directions, or a ride¡­"


    "Uh, I''ll find it on my own, but thanks," I said, before realizing that sort of implied I was coming. I wasn''t sure what my holiday plans were, but being between Karu and her old man wasn''t my idea of a good time. And I was sort of quickly deciding to spend it with AEGIS.


    "Oh, so you''ll come? Oh! I mean. I look forward to seeing you."


    "Ah, wait," I said, and AEGIS paused hesitating in front of me with a confused look while she poured disinfectant on a cloth.


    "Wait? I am sorry, perhaps I misunderstood."


    "Wait for what?" AEGIS said. "I need to clean this."


    "No, go ahead," I replied.


    "Um. So am I to understand that you will be coming?"


    "Sorry. This is going to sting a bit, okay?" AEGIS came at me with the cloth.


    "Yeah, that''s fine," I responded.


    "Oh good. Thank you, Athan! I shall see you then. Please dress respectably, though I am certain you knew that. And um, invitation only, so please attempt to leave Tem and the others behind. I look forward to it!"


    "Huh?" I got out before AEGIS hit me with the cloth and I dropped my mobile. "Ow, Jesus."


    "Sorry! I told you it''d sting," she said, her forehead creased.


    I picked up my mobile but it was too late, cheerfully displaying that the call was terminated.


    Wait.


    Had I just done what I thought I had? I tried to replay the conversation we''d just sorta-had in my mind, and realized I very definitely just said yeah when she asked if I was coming. And not ten seconds after deciding to kiss AEGIS?


    "No, not that. I think uh."


    I looked back at AEGIS who had a clean towel and cracked a tube in her hands and shook it. She wrapped it in the towel and pressed it against my lip. It felt unpleasantly cold.


    "So who was that?" she asked now that her role as a nurse had ended and I was holding the cold pack against my own swelling lip.


    "Karu," I said.


    "And what did she want?"


    "Uh, I think I might have agreed to go to her Christmas thing at her father''s house."


    She blinked."Ah. Sorry, I...wasn''t paying attention before. Let me review what happened."


    For about a second she sat with her eyes flickering back and forth, looking at nothing in this room before letting out a sigh.


    "Well that was a little unfortunate. I''m sorry, I should have let you finish your call before trying to treat your injury. I just freaked out a little because you were hurt. And ''cuz I hurt you." She laughed a little. "Guess I didn''t make the guest list. Well that''s fine. Not like we''re really good friends or anything. I was actually planning to tell you later today, but Lia''s going to throw a little party."


    I felt two little twists of guilt. One for so stupidly agreeing to join Karu, and one because I was sure that AEGIS had planned to tell me this news in some other way and once again I had completely undermined her plans for the day.


    "I guess...I won''t be coming. I''m sorry."


    "Well, between you and me, that might be fine. Don''t tell her I said this or anything but uh," AEGIS lowered her voice confidentially "I think Lia is mostly throwing this because she''s worried about you spending Christmas alone without a family for the first time. So as long as you have plans, I''m sure she''ll be fine."


    "Oh," I said, feeling a third twist join the other two. Lia had given up on our family just as much as they''d given up on me, and I''d never even considered doing anything like this for her. Sometimes, I honestly had to wonder which one of us was the older sibling here.


    "Well, no biggie. Hey, if the Irenside party blows, or you get kicked out for not being snooty enough, swing by, okay?" She pulled out her mobile, and with a flick, sent the details to mine.


    "Sure. Actually sounds a lot more fun than Karu''s family''s thing."


    "Yeah, well, you made a promise to the girl, so be a man, at least. Maybe try to pay more attention to the words which come out of your mouth in the future, though."


    I sat on the edge of the bed for another minute, turning the cold pack in my hands against my lip, trying to keep my fingers from going numb through the thin hotel washcloth.


    "AEGIS, are you sure you''re okay with that?" I asked. "I mean, you''re sending me off alone to spend Christmas with Karu. Aren''t you...kind of...enemies?"


    She shrugged. "Rivals, maybe. And yeah, maybe the prospect scares me some, but¡­" She fixed me with that brilliant yellow gaze. "Look, I wasn''t lying before, when I told you why I want this. What I want more than anything is for you to be happy, Athan. I owe you my life more than anyone ever ought to, and if¡­"


    She trailed off and looked at the ceiling before taking a couple of deep breaths.


    "And if it''s with Karu that you find happiness, then I''m okay with it, okay? That''s really all I care about, I promise. She''s a good person. A little intense, but I know she loves you and would...would...take..."


    She smiled and stood up. "I have to use the restroom," she said and slipped out, closing the door.


    Even if it had come from a real human girl, who actually had a biological need for the restroom, it still would have been the flimsiest excuse I''d ever heard.


    She was only in there for a minute before she came back, apparently refreshed, and began talking about her plans for the rest of the day with me, sitting on the bed opposite me at a distance.

 174. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Saga.

    This wasn''t meant to be a damn field trip, but all the same, I found myself learning a lot about people and the places I went, just on the merits of being in their heads.


    I learned the two most reliable indicators of how friendly people were in a place were the number of diners and how they drove. Too many diners meant they got a lot of traffic going through the place, off the highway or some tourist trap, and nobody gave a shit about anyone who set foot in any of ''em. Too few, and the place was either so rural that every single outsider was a subject of intense suspicion and scrutiny, or so urban that nobody even considered the other bodies passing by them to be another human.


    Small towns with two or three diners seemed to be the sweet spot. People would still be interested in you showing up, but accustomed to it enough to not be rude about it. I aimed for these places, not because I really cared if people noticed or liked me, but because the people in such areas just had a lot more pleasant thoughts bumping around in their heads, and if I had to hear it all from them anyway, I might as well be listening to something nicer.


    As for how they drove, that one may be biased by the fact I was exclusively foot traffic. I hadn''t noticed any larger trends beyond ''people who drive like assholes tend to be assholes'' but it was still interesting that each little city I wandered through had its own way of doing things. In some places, pedestrians clung frightened to the sidewalks as cars roared past without a second thought, while in others, they strutted boldly into the street without so much as a glance, certain that their right-of-way gave them invulnerability.


    And after my long journey of walking across a few states by foot, I finally reached D.C. where my quest would begin. And here, a city without diners, a city where both cars and pedestrians ran into the street without a care, choking on their own self-importance, here is where I hoped to pick up Mage''s trail and make some sense of the girl''s life.


    And more importantly, I hoped, her death.


    It had been an exhausting week and a half, and not just from all the walking. People. So many people. I was frankly sick of them when I had started, and after my trip, I was about ready to throw in the towel on behalf of the species again. Damn fucking monsters, driving past me walking on the shoulder of the highway, and no sooner would they figure out I was a girl than they imagined me naked and thanking them for a ride with the only possessions I had.


    Those were the worst of them, and definitely those I would have no problem with liquefying their brains, but even just the idiots driving by screaming some song at me at the top of their minds was enough to drive me crazy.


    And basically, this city was the worst I''d ever been in. Seemed like nobody here was mentally sound, from the young smartasses who thought they were the up-and-coming hot shit to the old fucks who had been in the game so long their own bodies were held together by political interest groups, they made me feel physically sick just being in their proximity, and several times I had to stop and lean against a wall, remembering the black ringed in light which threatened everyone--everyone I wanted to live, not these fuckers, and force myself to keep moving forward.


    Last time, it had felt so easy. I''d come here to kill everyone, and all these type-A personalities running around had just reinforced that decision. Couldn''t walk ten feet without running into someone new and going, yep, this species should definitely be dead.


    I was trudging down a side street, trying to figure out how to get close to the members of the P-Force without running into Athan, loitering near the black tower without loitering, basically, when I felt a surge of panic and alertness in a mind which wasn''t mine. Some XPCA walking down the street had spotted me and recognized me from my last little visitation.


    With a thought, his thoughts stopped, and so did his hand reaching for his comms. He blinked several times in mild confusion before continuing on his way, his brain hanging on the edge like he was about to sneeze but it wasn''t coming. He''d come up with some excuse later, brains were pretty fantastic at inventing rationale to explain things they couldn''t understand. There was even a word for that, confabulation.


    It was a new trick I''d learned on this trip, exploiting that hugely convenient little quirk of human nature. Meant I could snoop around, blasting out people''s thoughts and memories of me without raising suspicion of people turning into zombies or having sudden bouts of amnesia.


    I guess if I were Athan, I might also care about the morality of it all, but heh, yeah. No.


    As much as D.C. sucked, at least the people here had a legit reason to freak out when they saw me. The small towns I''d passed through, I''d been harassed for any reason from ''lookin'' like some Chinee'', which I guess was technically correct...to just being a woman walking alone...to being an XPCA of all things, I guess reading the style and emblems on my uniform. That one actually amused me, and I had to respect anyone with the guts to walk up to an XPCA and tell them they sucked to their face.


    Mostly I just blasted them out, but a couple, I decided to act on humanity''s best interests and compel them to kill themselves. Even though I was trying to keep a low profile, sometimes I was just such a softie when it came to helping out mankind, I couldn''t help it.


    Focusing on the here and now, what I wanted more than anything was to find Jack. My powers completely eclipsed his--he couldn''t even physically see me unless he was already in my range, and once we were talking, he''d have to jump twice to get away, giving me a chance to make him stop. He had a knife, I had immortality. Easy, peasey.


    Tower was a simpleton, and therefore I couldn''t trust his memories. Anything he didn''t understand, he might have invented rationale for, and separating the two would be effort I wasn''t interested in putting forward. Also, his powers acted on their own in ways, a ''dynakinetic'' or ''dynagenesist'' or hell ''dynamist'' rather than a ''dynapath''...the XPCA had innumerable classification rules which made no sense, but that was probably mostly because I didn''t give a shit...but the important part was, if he used his powers to make a run for it, he''d have to make an active effort to turn them off, unlike Jack, who needed an effort to turn them on. Much easier to stop the latter than the former.


    Tem was...too stupid and volatile to be worth it. Athan was...incredibly tempting, but that was exactly why he was out of the question. And I had plans for Blackett after this.


    So I crept around, keeping a mind open for anyone who''d seen or heard from Jack recently, while trying my best not to get spotted, especially by drones or cameras, since I couldn''t very well wipe their memories.


    Still it was kind of an anticlimax when, strolling in circles around the Raven''s Nest, I suddenly picked up on him, standing in a small shop not far from me on the ground floor. He wasn''t Athan, so he had no idea what the little prickling on his brain meant, and I found myself grinning as I closed in on him to make sure he didn''t abruptly jump out of range.


    He was relaxed, casually conversing with some girl in a wheelchair, actually hard to get too much surface-level information out of him, because people usually were thinking about what they were looking at, and he didn''t ''look'' in the conventional sense. Like, I had no idea what this girl''s face looked like or anything, just sort of a blocky model of her, and her position relative to him. I wondered if he ever got annoyed seeing the world through his powers, like I did.


    Well, I was on the scene now and could use my own eyes. He was in a flower shop, one which looked very closed. Which was good, I guess, since he''d come there to talk to the girl, not to buy flowers. How sweet. I slowly started to dig right in, hoping to get as much as I could without alerting him.


    Abruptly, he was standing behind me, knife held to my throat. I guess he did know what the prickle on his brain meant. That was pretty careless of me to assume.


    "Oh no! He''s going to kill me!" I said, sarcasm gushing through a smile.


    "You are that Code-X from the tower. Did you honestly think I wouldn''t notice you approach?"


    "Well, I was keeping track of your thoughts at the time, but I guess you''re actually pretty good at keeping your thoughts under wraps, huh? Got some experience with Code-X in the past?"


    "One could say that."


    "Too bad I can just make you forget all about me right now if I wanted to. Boy, that''d suck, after catching me and everything."


    "I suspect that would be resolved by repeatedly keeping you dead until you can be properly secured. Which could take days or weeks, and yet somehow I still find myself willing. You threw innocent men to their deaths."


    "Eh. I mean, they barely counted as alive."


    I grinned more broadly, and his smile shrunk. I was winning the smile race!


    "I understand you are an acquaintance of Chariot''s, which is why I haven''t acted on this plan. Just tell me what you want and then leave forever and I will make no mention of you, for his sake."


    "Well, you''re just a big ''ol sweetheart, aren''t you? Speaking of which, you''re sure you''re okay with just leaving the little cripple all alone like that? She''s wondering why you vanished."


    "She will understand. Now talk or go."


    "Always in such a rush. Sheesh. Hard to find a good man who will just take it slow, nowadays they''re all about teleporting here and there."


    "Talk or go."


    "Or what? Seriously. You show up and make all these threats, but between the two of us, I''m the one who can''t die, and I''m the one who can mess up your girlfriend''s cute little blue head with just a thought, to say nothing of yours. Say, wouldn''t it be funny if she thought your name was Jock from now on?"


    Abruptly I felt searing pain like I''d been touched by fire. I''d had my throat slit plenty of times before and recognized the choking burble as the contents of my jugular and windpipe intermingled, and knew I only had a couple moments before the drop in blood pressure in my brain made me too stupid and unconscious to act.


    I reached out mentally at the man behind me, but he was gone. Predictably, the next place I tried, right next to his girl, he was there. A little trickle of blood and a smile crossed my lips as I pressed down on his mind but then he was gone again, woman in tow, much faster than I think even he thought he was capable of moving.


    My last thoughts before I fell into blackness were well, shit.


    I woke up a few seconds later, and the first thing I saw was a spray of bright red blood through the air from my recently-healed, and then recently-repunctured neck. The little fucker had left his knife in me as a farewell gift. I tried to reach towards it, with a frantic gurgle, but my hands were already like ice and my body wouldn''t react to my brain properly. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    This guy was a serious pain in the neck.


    In this way I died and came back another three times before I managed to dislodge the knife by creeping my hands upwards in the single moment of responsive lucidity I had before my body realized it was dying. Took most of a minute, and the alley I was in now looked like a person with an unhealthy abundance of blood just detonated, but finally I dropped the knife to the ground with a clatter and waited to come back whole one more time. Before I did, as I was glossing over, he reappeared and picked up his knife.


    The next few minutes of my life were pretty unpleasant, and I wasn''t alive for most of them. Come back, scramble around to find Jack somewhere near by and stop him, fail entirely until I was too weak to use my powers, and then he''d reappear and jump us off somewhere else towards his destination.


    It occurred to me that in future dealings with the man, I should drop him unconscious the very instant I picked up on him. Or better, go for Tower or Tem. This asshole wasn''t worth all this.


    Eventually, we were somewhere more remote, more quiet, with fewer people around, and that was his mistake. I hadn''t been able to pick up on him in the one moment of lucidity I had per life because there was too much going on around, and he was constantly moving to keep me confused. But now that it was quieter, I could find him and after a couple tries, nailed him hard with an order to sleep.


    Still took like, five more deaths to get the knife out of my neck again, but he slept peacefully on a rooftop a dozen feet away the whole time while I gurgled and bled him out a nice little lullaby. After producing another fantastic bloody murder scene, I was up and whole again, and he was still asleep and completely at my mercy.


    It''d be easy now to just rifle through his thoughts, but I kind of admired the guy for giving me so much trouble. Plus, while he was sleeping, he wasn''t smiling, and I missed that.


    I mean, not really, it''d just be more fun this way.


    Also, I''d die again jumping off this building, and I''d rather avoid that if I could. I gave him just a teensy compel to come here and hold up just a second with the knife work and woke him up. Instantly, he was standing right there, knife at the ready, looking just a bit confused why he''d decided to come here but not quite picking up what I''d done.


    Apparently he took his momentary lapse as having decided we were going to talk, because that''s what he started doing.


    "You put me to sleep." It wasn''t a question.


    "I sure did."


    "Why didn''t you kill me?"


    "Please. Don''t tell me you actually believe all that propaganda the XPCA spits out? I''m sure you''ve met one or two Exhumans who aren''t just ruthless killing machines."


    I gave him a shit eating grin, but then ruined it by choking. I hadn''t talked this much in a long time, and it was killing me. Too many people around to broadcast, though. I could just put them all under for a bit, but for the ones driving, that might be a little bit of a bother. More of a bother for the people in front of their cars, really, but still. I''d just have to tough it out for now.


    "Miss, you assaulted our headquarters and killed half of the top staff. I think in this case, I do buy the propaganda."


    "Well, see, that''s how they get you," I said. "If all it takes is throwing some people off a building to brand you a killer, then I guess I''m a killer."


    "Right. So. Why didn''t you kill me?"


    "Well, when you were carrying me around, I noticed we were headed away from the huge, black, phallic monument, so I figured you weren''t trying to dispose of me either. Only seemed right to return the courtesy? Also I would piss off Athan if I killed you. He''s such a child about things like that sometimes."


    He sighed and I noticed I was getting under his skin. Fun, but not why I was here.


    "What do you want, Saga?" he asked.


    I considered...like, really gave some serious thought to screwing with him a bit more, but in the end decided my mission was just that important. "I want to know everything there is to know about Mage."


    "Why?"


    "Because she shouldn''t have died."


    "Well, she did. I read the autopsy."


    "So I can see," I said brushing across his mind which made him shudder. "Numerous internal ruptures, drowned in her own punctured lungs'' blood, basically."


    "If you want something, you can just ask," he said, his smiling looking more annoyed than happy.


    "Well if I did, I wouldn''t get your little bits of cheerful commentary coming with it, and let''s face it, that''s all I''m really after. Puts a smile on my face."


    He sighed. "Chariot said you were difficult, but I thought he just meant in the powers department."


    "Aw, he talks about me?"


    "No, not particularly."


    "Rude." I poked his mind more aggressively, punitively. "So you knew her longest, being the first to show up at Blackett''s little party after her. Oh no, Tem was there before you. How rude of me to overlook her, and so difficult to do. She was there for most of two years before either of you showed up? Hmm, just a little girl and an overworked, lonely sadist in a house for two years. And you never even thought to ask what was up?"


    "Blackett wasn''t that kind of man," Jack intoned, his voice very nearly as sharp as the knife in-hand.


    "And what kind of girl was Mage when you moved in?"


    "Honestly, I can''t say with much certainty. She largely avoided me whenever possible, and I was still...adjusting."


    "Right. Because you were a professional assassin for a while there I see."


    His smile utterly vanished but only for a brief moment.


    "I would appreciate your discretion in whatever you pry from my mind, or I really will have to make sure you wind up permanently dead," he said, smiling pleasantly again.


    "Fair enough, as long as you don''t tell anyone I was here. I mean, I could just wipe your memories, but that just gets tiresome."


    Not like I actually cared if he told anyone. Athan might be a problem, but I''m sure the man had better things to do than deliberately provoke me.


    "It looks like even if you were ''adjusting'' you were still paying attention. You have quite a few memories in here of some pretty implausible things she could pull off. Seems to me that she wasn''t the one doing all the avoiding."


    "Reasonable to conclude. Anyone who knew that girl long enough could tell you she had the most frightening power of any of us, but I''m not sure anyone could quantify what the power exactly was."


    "Probably one of the reasons it was so scary. Easy to fear what you can''t understand."


    "I suspect so. As a Code-Xavier, you may have some insight how she operated?"


    "I do. And all I''m going to say is, be grateful you didn''t have her powers."


    "I see. They took that much out of her?"


    "Probably the only person happy with her death was her."


    He scratched his chin, looking just a bit ridiculous with the blood-dripping knife in his other hand and the broad smile on his face. "If she sought death, then why are you questioning it? Would it not be more suspect if she craved death yet continued living?"


    "I said I wasn''t going to say anything else about it." I grinned at him. "This is my interrogation, not yours."


    He sighed, but let it go.


    "Seems she was every bit as callow and antagonistic the first time you saw her as the last. Funny, Athan usually seems to have quite the effect on girls around him, but I guess she was immune to his charms."


    "Hmm, yes, I noticed that as well. Even Moon seems to have taken a liking to him, in her own way."


    "Moon?"


    "The newest--"


    "--member on the P-Force, special physiokinetic with possession powers, I see...and a hint of Code-X, interesting."


    "I must ask, do you merely consider my lips a vestigial ornament? Or is there a reason you prefer to uncomfortably rifle through my mind instead of allowing me to finish a simple sentence?"


    "Like I said, Sunshine, leaves your mouth available for your sparkling commentary. Hey, do you do impressions? Next time you complain, can you pretend to be Gandhi? Dude is fucking hilarious."


    "Even if I generously discount all of the obvious and concrete data, there is still enough of a mountain of supporting evidence to conclude something being very seriously wrong with you. I am beginning to wonder if I was remiss in not taking you to the XPCA."


    "Well that was just the worst Gandhi I''ve ever heard. It''s like you weren''t even trying."


    He sighed again, and that smile struggled every so valiantly to stay on his face.


    "Are we quite finished?" He asked.


    "No way. We''re going all night. You''ve got the stamina for that, right?"


    "I will give you," he opened his eyes and peered at his holo "how does five seconds sound?"


    "I don''t think you''ll ever satisfy Blue with that mindset, Sunshine."


    "...and we''re concluded. Thank you for visiting, please never return." He turned to go. He didn''t actually have to in order to jump off. What a nice guy, giving me one more chance.


    "All right, all right. One more question, for realsies. Where did Mage come from?"


    "Hmm. I can''t think of a time she would have told me, and I only recall vagueness being offered by Blackett."


    Thoughts flashed through his mind as he tried to recall. I dove in and ''helped'', trying to find the exact first conversation they had.


    Jack was beaten and bruised, one leg broken, eye swollen shut, and a bomb strapped to the back of his head to keep him from porting off. Hmm, and not just on his head. Part of it was in his head, so if he ported off and left it behind, he''d bleed to death internally. Brutal. But clever. He was being carried under the arms to an interrogation room where he was thrown into a chair, almost immediately sliding out of it, and on the other side of the room was Blackett with Mage behind him; him stoic, her grinning sadistically at the beaten man before her.


    Jack smiled back.


    "Hello, Jack. Do you know who I am?" Blackett said.


    Jack, for his part, despite being only barely able to sit in a chair, spat in Blackett''s direction. I was disappointed to see he missed.


    "I''m Deputy Director Blackett of the XPCA. A very important man, and a very irritated one. Do you know why I am irritated, Jack?"


    "Gwun ''ckself", Jack muttered and coughed.


    "What was that?"


    "I said," Jack suddenly yelled "go and fuck yourself."


    To my surprise, Mage appeared before Jack, apparently by magic, but most likely because Jack wasn''t in really good shape, and neither was this memory.


    "Language," she chided, and slapped him hard across the face.


    It didn''t take the smile off his face.


    "This is Camila, an associate of mine who is visiting from down south. I think the two of you will get along splendidly."


    I pulled myself out of the memory, satisfied.


    "Camila, from down south," I said.


    "If you were listening to my ornamental vestigial mouth, I had said as much," Jack said, now just clearly annoyed. "But that isn''t very useful. There is a lot south of us."


    "Not on its own, it''s not. But if Blackett knows she''s from down south, I bet he knows where she came from."


    Jack just laughed. "Good luck with that, then," and disappeared. I caught him a couple dozen feet away and let him go. I''d gotten what I needed from him.


    Confirmation that Blackett had the information I needed was good. For whatever reason, probably the most expensive XPCA tech in the universe, my powers just couldn''t even see the guy, much less touch him, so I''d have to resort to traditional interrogative means.


    Which was fine. I could work with that. As long as I knew what I was getting myself into.


    I smiled at the prospect of adding yet another XPCA director''s death to my resume and took a look around. And the smile vanished. Oh right. I was completely soaked in blood on a blood-soaked rooftop with apparently no roof access into the building, and a six-story vertical drop on all sides of me to the ground.


    There was something I needed from Jack after all. No wonder he left in such a hurry, the asshole.


    I sighed and stepped onto the building''s short ledge. May as well do a fucking flip.

 175. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    Unsurprisingly, the rest of the date was equally meticulously planned, and I did my best not to completely torpedo that half of it, at least.


    She brought us next to a public ice skating rink, where she had skates in both of our sizes already reserved, despite there being dozens of pairs behind the counter and zero chance of them running out. For AEGIS, I got the impression that the preparation behind something was as important as the thing itself.


    Which is why it was even more amusing that she couldn''t even stand on the ice, legs wobbling under her as she clung to the edge of the rink despite her repeated protests that ''she looked this up!'' and ''it wasn''t supposed to be this difficult!''


    So I felt a little bad for laughing at her, but we still had a great time with me teaching her how to keep her feet under her and how to go, though the concept of how to stop was well beyond her skill, leading to her gleefully shooting off with a ''look at me go!'' and then ending by slamming into a wall with a heavy thump and a giggle.


    It was only after an hour or two of circling around the ring with her hanging heavily off me that I realized, maybe even this inability was planned. It certainly led to a lot of convenient accidents of her crashing into me with a ''Athan! Catch me!'', and a lot of her clinging to me for support.


    On the other hand, every time she took off, shoving herself off with deliberate, measured strides, imitating how I''d taught her exactly, she had such a look of focus and concentration on her face, I just couldn''t buy that theory. She might be a schemer, and I wouldn''t put it past her to deliberately play dumb if she needed to, but she was also almost stupidly competitive sometimes, and seemed to be pushing for skating independence as hard as possible.


    This was all but confirmed when we were pushing early afternoon and I sat down to nurse my sore calves and realized I was really hungry. I asked the slowly-passing AEGIS if she had any food plans and she gave me a ''yeah, just a sec'' and then kept right on skating. It wasn''t for another fifteen minutes when she finally orbited the rink without crashing into a wall, person, or the ground when she was finally content to head off the ice.


    "Sorry, didn''t mean to keep you waiting," she apologized.


    "You looked good out there."


    "Maybe for a baby chicken who can''t stand on two legs."


    "No really. It took me way longer to be able to steer than you. You''ll be at the winter Olympics in a couple years at this rate."


    "Winter Olympics isn''t happening for another three years, Athan," she said with apparent annoyance, but looked improbably pleased anyway. "Anyway, food, I just packed you a quick lunch if that''s okay?"


    "More than okay, sounds awesome," I said. She produced the same compartmentalized plastic box she''d used before, filled with food as before. Egg sandwiches today, which was a little weird, not egg salad, just...egg, thin and folded on itself, on a triangle of crustless fluffy white bread, with sides of rice, fresh fruit, and some kind of vegetable slaw with sesame seeds on it. All probably Japanese home-style foods, I assumed.


    It was interesting that Chiho was gone now, but her influence would linger like this. I''m not even sure how good the girl was at cooking, but she''d given AEGIS the first step, and consequently helped decide which path would be followed.


    Not that I minded. The sandwiches were a little strange texturally, so soft they almost just fell apart when I bit into them, but the eggs were buttery and fluffy like none I''d ever had.


    AEGIS wasn''t through after that, though. She''d booked us a couples pottery class, where the clay on my spinning wheel stubbornly refused to shape the way I wanted it, and she took the opportunity to keep her hands on mine a lot, and then as evening drew on, seats at a comedy club. Some of the humor was pretty lowbrow, but I guess so was AEGIS sometimes, and the laughter and energy in the place was infectious.


    When we funneled out into the streets, I felt like I was light and glowing, and AEGIS kept beaming at me. Somehow she had a cab outside already waiting for us, and without even giving a destination we got in and the driver pulled away.


    We had a few minutes of silence, but I began to feel an unusual tension rise and tried to put it to rest by opening my mouth.


    "So, still not a date?" I asked.


    "I told you, if it were a date, you''d know."


    "I''m pretty sure I know this is a date. This is kind of like four times a normal human date, you know. I''m really not that difficult. Dinner and a movie would have been fine."


    "Good thing I''m not a normal human, then. And neither are you. Considering the crap hand you were dealt in life, I don''t see the problem with you being a little lucky in love."


    "I mean, that sounds nice and all, but it''s still totally unnecessary. I''m just a simple guy, and yeah, shit happens."


    Punitively, she slowly pushed her finger into my cheek. "Look buddy, I know you''re just trying to be a macho stoic hero guy--"


    "I totally am not."


    "--but believe it or not, I worked hard to make today come together. If you start telling me how unnecessary it all was, you''re crapping on my hard work. Still want to continue this line of thinking?"


    "I don''t mean it like that, and you know it. I''m just saying, I really appreciate all of this, but I don''t need it. I''m just¡­" I glanced at the driver apparently completely ignoring us. "I''m not really a good person. You know the things I''ve done."


    "So this crap again?" AEGIS said, crossing her arms. "Someone else in the world has experienced suffering so Athan doesn''t deserve to be happy?"


    "Well, I wouldn''t put it that way."


    "Look, buddy," she jabbed me in the chest this time. "If you''re so hung up on the consequences of your actions and refuse to be a happy person because of the bad things you''ve done, then you get to take responsibility for all of your past, got it?"


    "Sure. That''s what I mean. The XPCA, and Mage, and--"


    "And me?"


    "You?" I asked.


    "That''s right buddy. I spent upwards of a hundred years buried in the dirt, ten years of which I was online, staring at blackness, not knowing who I was or if I''d ever see the world, afraid the whole time, until some self-suffering asshole rode in on his white charger and saved me from my own shallow grave. You fixed me, you brought me back."


    "That wasn''t--"


    "And then, you gave me back my memories. And when I thanked you for that with a knife in the back, literally, you still forgave me, and taught me I could be more than what I was made to be. You gave me my life and my freedom back again. And you were ready to fucking die for it."


    "I just wanted to know what you were doing and stop you."


    "Damn lies. If all you wanted was to stop me, all you had to do was throw a grenade across the room at me instead of fighting through a wall of robots. Would have been fucking trivial, but I bet the thought never even crossed your mind. Because you''re a good person, Athan, and if you don''t deserve to be happy, who does?"


    "Good people who aren''t also bad people, I guess."


    "Well that''s stupid. Anyway, I have made my decision that you should be happy, and you''re gonna deal with it. Like I said, if you can put the consequences of Mage''s death on your shoulders, you can damn well take the consequences of my life."


    I couldn''t really argue with her. She''d brought up these points consistently before and I never had any rebuttal. I didn''t feel like I''d saved her, but if I said that, I knew she''d say what I thought didn''t matter, if she felt saved, she was saved, regardless of my motivations.


    I didn''t even think she was wrong. It wasn''t anything logical that kept me arguing with her. When I''d slid into the car and sat next to her, I had closed the taxi door behind me and glanced out into the darkness, and in the mirror which was the window, saw a stranger''s face reflected.


    This stranger looked just like me but was smiling and carefree, like nothing in the world bothered him. He looked like a smug asshole that I wanted to hit, someone oblivious to other people''s suffering, how many people fought and died every day to keep that idiotic smile on his face. He felt disrespectful and like his very existence was something which never should have been.


    As I recalled the thought now, I realized those were Moon''s words. I felt a painful pang of empathy. No wonder she never showed any emotion, if that''s how she saw herself all the time.


    I loved AEGIS, I think it was safe to say. Today, she''d really put her best foot forward and made one hell of a compelling case for just how fun and awesome she could be, and a small, selfish part of me wanted that, wanted only that, wanted to cling to her and not have to worry so much and smile our lives away. If I were a college freshman and she was a girl I''d met, I''d be killing myself to throw myself at her.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    But I wasn''t. That guy was the guy in the mirror, the smiling asshole. In a way, she was like Saga, trying to change me into what she wanted me to be, without regard for who I was or if I could still be myself after the change. But while Saga had done it to me out of selfishness, to amuse herself by making me into her plaything, AEGIS was doing it out of love, to bring what she thought was the best of me forward, to give me happiness she thought the world denied me.


    And while she was working so hard on me, I just sat here like a fucking idiot, wanting to tell her again, yes, I''d love to let you decide my life for me, while knowing that I couldn''t.


    "You...okay over there?" AEGIS asked tentatively. "You just went quiet and it looks like you found a stormcloud to sit under."


    I sighed. "Yeah. Sorry. I''m crapping up your date again, my bad."


    "Dates aren''t about what you do or think, Athan, they''re about who you''re with and how you feel."


    "I''m feeling a lot right now. Sorry."


    "Oh, is that so?" Her eye got mischievously wide. "You know," she said in a conspiratorial whisper while she undid her seatbelt slowly and silently "I know one surefire way to clear all the thoughts out of your head."


    "Uh," I said, not sure where this was going until she started to advance on me like a prowling cat, eyes flashing like I''d seen under my blankets too many times. "Yeah, maybe put your seat belt back on?"


    "Oh it''ll be fine," she whispered at me, drawing close enough that I could feel her breath. "I''ll just slip our driver an extra chit and have him drive us around the block twice. I promise I won''t take longer than that."


    As I''d done many times in the past, I took her twin-tails as handlebars and gently but insistently pulled her off of me, feeling something like disappointment.


    She crossed her arms and glared at me from the corner for a minute. "I don''t get you," she said at last.


    "What''s to get? We''re in a taxi, AEGIS."


    "Sometimes we''re in your bed."


    "In a room filled with other people! Come on."


    "And even when we had our own hotel room earlier today?"


    "I was...tired. And Karu called. And you hit me!"


    "Look, if your hang-up is the robot part of this equation, I can''t do much about that, Athan. But you should just tell me."


    "It''s not that."


    "What, is this another ''I don''t deserve to be happy'' thing?"


    "No, it''s an ''I don''t want to be molested'' thing!"


    I noticed the driver''s act of ignoring us was starting to falter as I accidentally made fleeting eye-contact with him in the mirror.


    "But when you were with Karu, you guys did it like, fifty times a day?"


    "Maybe a tenth of that. And how did you know that anyway?"


    "Educated guess. And you just confirmed it." She didn''t sound happy about it.


    "You''re a dick. Why does that matter anyway?"


    "Why? Are you playing stupid or are you actually stupid? Sometimes I can''t tell, Athan."


    "Just fucking tell me, okay?"


    She glared at me furiously. "Because obviously, you were fine with spending every minute plugging her holes, but I can''t even make a move on you without getting shut down! Like, you may as well just come out and tell me you like her better, okay?"


    The car came to a stop outside a fancy restaurant with a black awning and red carpet leading from the curb. A valet popped out and opened the door for us.


    "Just a minute," AEGIS said and slammed the door shut in his face. "So? If your mind is so made up, just fucking be with her already!"


    "It''s not so made up, okay? When Karu sunk her hooks into me, I was...I''d never...I had no idea what I was doing, okay? I was a stupid horny teenager and she was a fucking hot as hell older woman who jumped me."


    "And I''m, what? Is this not jumping you? Is a hundred and ten not old enough? Or I''m not hot?"


    "It''s not about you, I''m trying to tell you that. It''s not like I didn''t enjoy it with her, but it took me that whole time to learn to say no to free sex, okay?"


    "Uh," the driver interjected. "We''re here."


    "Yeah, yeah, just a sec," AEGIS replied, and flung a chit in his direction. "Keep the change." He checked the balance on it and then shut up and went right back to pretending to ignore us. "So what you''re saying is, again, because I waited and respected you and Karu didn''t and made the first move, I lose out again?"


    "No, it''s...I mean¡­"


    "Fucking sounds like yes to me, Athan. So would I best be furthered in this relationship by just chaining you up in my sex dungeon and ignoring everything you say or think or do? Because it seems a lot like that''s the only way into your heart. And that''s pretty amazingly fucked up."


    "Look, you don''t have to be a drama queen about it. Just understand I''ve made mistakes and am trying to avoid making them again. Like how I just fell into Saga''s and Karu''s arms because they were convenient. You''re a really great person, AEGIS, and I don''t want to do that to you. I might have lost Saga forever because of how stupid I was, and if I lost you like that too...I don''t know...what I''d do."


    Her anger softened somewhat but didn''t disappear. "Well first off, I am not a drama queen," she said like a formality.


    "Right. Sorry."


    "I just hate feeling like I''m the nice guy finishing last. All I want is for you to be happy, and somehow, the fact that''s so far down on your list of priorities, you''d rather turn into Saga''s zombie sex toy? Fuck it hurts. But more than that, it makes me hurt for you, Athan. I don''t want you to be that guy."


    She punched the seat under her with a pretty disgusting plume of dust and crap. "And it seems like the only way for me to get into a position to care for you is to treat you like shit. So I''m just...imagining you in life, only falling for women who are bad for you, the worse, the better, because of your fucking martyr complex. And the whole time, I get to sit on the sidelines, hoping you do well, but knowing you''re too fucking self-destructive to ever do so."


    I frowned. I guess, I could see that? Seemed unlikely I''d ever have another girl interested in me. I assumed I used up my whole romantic luck allotment with AEGIS, Karu, and Saga, already. Hell, considering how the three of them had been, I wasn''t sure I''d survive any more girls.


    "So...sorry. If I''m mad at you for no reason. That''s why. Just me trying to run your life, like always," she sighed.


    "It''s not so bad. The food is a lot better with you meddling, at least."


    "Oh, shit, food. Are you starving, Athan? Sorry. I always lose track of how hungry people are supposed to be. We''re right here, uh, start with some breadsticks or something maybe?"


    She untangled herself from the seat belt and threw open the door, surprising the valet, and made it a few steps out before turning around.


    I thought she was just looking back for me to see if I was coming, but the expression on her face made it clear something was wrong. She looked almost panicked, her eyes wide with concern and opened her mouth to say something.


    But what she had to say didn''t come. She froze on the spot and then simply collapsed while I was still sliding out of the car. Before I even found my feet under me, I was at her side, calling her name and shaking her awake.


    She wasn''t breathing. There was no pulse. Should I give her CPR? Should I shock her back to life? How could she just collapse like this without warning?


    I picked her up in my arms, she was heavy and already cold. She had been so hot only moments before. The air was cold, I could see clouds of frozen breath from the crowd gathering around us, but none from her. How had she lost so much heat so fast? I had to keep her from freezing. I began to take off my coat to wrap her in it.


    I heard a man in the crowd say a word I recognized and it snapped me back to reality. ''Ambulance.'' An ambulance wouldn''t help. AEGIS was not a girl, no matter how she looked. She didn''t need to breathe, she didn''t need a pulse, and she wouldn''t get hypothermia. What the hell was I thinking? She had to reboot, that was all. I had to get her to Lia. Lia had been able to boot her back up after her stint as a terrapath. That was what she needed more than anything.


    I carried AEGIS back to the taxi and put her in the backseat, the door still open, and slid in beside her. Now where the heck were AEGIS and Lia staying? I know they''d mentioned it, but I didn''t remember the place at the time. I pulled out my mobile and almost dropped it.


    "Hospital?" asked the driver. I shook my head. Distracting. What was I thinking? Right. Lia.


    As I dialed Lia''s number and held the mobile to my ear I felt a familiar calm wash over me. I wasn''t one to usually panic, I jumped in and did things instead. Now that I was on the road to action, it was much easier to think. I''d stumbled, but we would be okay.


    "Yo, bro?" Lia''s voice came casually when she picked up.


    "Lia, AEGIS crashed. I need the boot thingy you have. Where can I meet you?"


    "Uh, crashed?"


    "Yes. Tell me where you are and I can start heading over, we can talk later."


    "Okay. I''m at our place at The Four-in-Hand penthouse suite...I can meet you in the lobby. Do you know where that is?"


    I confirmed with the driver and he started going.


    "So, crashed? Did you...do anything?" Lia asked.


    "Anything like what?" I asked. "No, she just got out of the car, looked at me funny, and then collapsed."


    "Looked at you funny? Were you like, I don''t know, hitting on Karu at the time or something?"


    "What? No! What the heck, Lia. AEGIS just dropped like a rock, what the hell are you talking about?"


    "Well, last time she suddenly dropped like this, she found out about you getting together with Saga and couldn''t take it, so just covering our bases here."


    I heard something crackle and for a moment the turbines in AEGIS'' joints glowed and flared to life. She became unbearably hot to be next to, but it only lasted an instant, and when it was over, she sat upright and blinked a few times.


    "Why are we back in the car?" she asked. "I thought you were hungry?"


    "Hey, Lia, she just woke up¡­" I said, and AEGIS'' brow furrowed even more as she took in the situation.


    "Driver, back to the restaurant please. I''m sorry for the inconvenience."


    "AEGIS are you sure you''re okay?" I asked. I noticed the driver didn''t turn around just yet, maybe thinking the same as me.


    "Even if I''m not, not much Lia''s going to be able to help with. I need to run some diagnostics...did I just crash again?"


    "Yeah. Just out of the blue."


    "Blue...screen. Heh."


    "What?"


    "Never mind. I''m fine, let''s go back. We''ll miss our reservation."


    "Look, I don''t know what just happened but it was way more important than a reservation, okay? Let''s--"


    "No, Athan. I refuse to let this...not-a-date go any further off the rails on my account. Driver, turn back please. Now."


    The tax turned in a wide arc at the next light, bringing us back to conclude our strange, oft-disrupted, extensively planned date.


    But strangely, despite the new worry laying heavily on my heart, I found this part of the date much easier than the rest. Maybe it was the surge of adrenaline I''d had in picking up her body, or the relief that she wasn''t broken, or the fact that she''d screwed up the date nearly as much as I had now.


    But I think the real answer was a little more messed up. Being with AEGIS for my sake was hard. Being pampered and her planning and running everything, that was so far beyond my experience, it was almost as stressful as it was fun. But being with her for her sake? I could spend a lifetime at her side, easily.

 176. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Lia.

    Athan had told me AEGIS rebooted and then just sort of abruptly ended the call. I loved my brother, but damn if he couldn''t be an inconsiderate dumbbutt sometimes. Now I had nothing to do but worry and pace around while worrying, until their date was over and AEGIS came home.


    Assuming she did, of course. If things went really well...or really poorly, I guess, she might not even be back tonight. And I doubted Athan would consider this and give me a call. Made me want to pull my hair out a little.


    I was in the penthouse suite of a reasonably fancy hotel, which we''d booked for the next couple of days with the intent of throwing a Christmas party in here. We didn''t have enough people to book a ballroom or anything, and this suite was actually pretty freaking huge, so it''d suffice for our needs. I was busying myself with decorations, allegedly, and was having a pretty decent time of it before that call.


    Now the sprigs of holly and adorable little poinsettias seemed so pointless and vain. AEGIS was in trouble out there, potentially, and I was stuck at home like a worried mother. For a while I tried to work anyway, but I wasn''t AEGIS, I didn''t revel in throwing myself into mindless work, stress just made it harder for me to focus.


    With a defeated sigh, I gave up on the garland I''d been torturing in my hands instead of hanging up, grabbed a wreath, and hung it on the door as I left. Maybe food would help. There was a little place on the ground floor.


    When I arrived, the host asked if I wanted to sit at the bar, and I realized I might be in trouble. I gave him my room number and fake ID, and sat down to a nutritionally-balanced meal of a double vodka and the nebulous promise of a pork tips sandwich whenever that was ready.


    I slammed the first double and then took out my mobile so I''d have something to do other than pulverize my liver. I hadn''t been on Kingdom Blades in a while, the whole Exhuman experiencing having soured it for me some, but without much else to do, I booted it up.


    First thing I saw was a few dozen requests and messages from people in my clan. I tapped through most of them, sending off some of my characters to assist people I was pretty close with, and replying to a message or two, feeling reasonably welcomed and missed as I dug through my queue.


    Finally, I got to the last message, sent last night by AEGIS. A note and a gift.


    > hey gurl


    > plan is for me to be with your bro all day tmr so try not to miss me too much found these wizard boots last time i ran 5T from the set i know you were looking for


    > when i get back lets do some LW runs!


    > all my love, sexibot


    > ps thx for all your help with athan and planning i dunno that i could do it without you, sometimes seems like he and karu would just be so much happier with each other but then you root for me anyway dunno what i did to deserve a friend like you but thx for everything


    I opened the present and it was the boots she''d mentioned. Actually a really rare and valuable piece of gear, and I know she had a wizard who could use them, but she was giving them to me anyway. It was a really nice gesture, but I didn''t appreciate it half as much as her postscript.


    "Another drink miss?" the bartender asked, picking up my used glass.


    "No, I''m done drinking tonight, thanks," I said.


    And just as fast as my feelings had turned around the first time, they turned around on me again, and I felt stupid for worrying. Athan might be a dummy, but AEGIS was careful and competent, a meticulous planner and if she was determined to do something, she''d do it. If she wasn''t asking me for help, she didn''t need it, and it wouldn''t do any good to sit here worrying about her, or worse, getting myself wasted so she had even more to worry about.


    I''d get my food, I''d eat it, and I''d go hang up some freaking Christmas lights. AEGIS would come home whenever she came home and we''d talk until way later than I should go to bed. That was the game plan, and I was gonna stick to it.


    And...I did. The sandwich was alright. The couple shots I had in me seemed to help me worry a lot less, though another couple more would definitely help, but by the time I finished putting lights and garlands around the walls, I was singing Christmas carols obnoxiously.


    "Wow, is someone killing a cat in here?" I heard over my own din from behind.


    "AEGIS!" I turned and ran at her, throwing myself at her in a full-bodied hug that staggered her a couple of steps.


    "Hey girl. What''s with the waterworks? Singing so bad it''s making you cry?"


    "Shut up. I was worried, okay? Stop being a dick."


    She smiled earnestly and held me as long as I wanted. She was so warm and soft, I never wanted to let her go. She smelled good too. I''d asked about that once, and she said she had no idea, she couldn''t smell. Just components from her synthetic skin might have a rubbery or sickly-sweet effusion. She''d actually been surprised she had a smell, it wasn''t something she''d ever considered. She was happy it smelled nice though.


    After a minute of making an embarrassment of myself, I forced us apart and put a smile on. "So! How''d it go!" I asked. Her stupid grin told me everything I needed to know even before she gave me the blow-by-blow of how very nearly every single part of the plan almost failed, but in the end, everything had worked out. She likened it to driving an old tractor which threatened to fall apart but still plowed the field successfully at the end of the day, and I had to wonder just how many tractors this girl drove to come up with that kind of metaphor. But more importantly¡­


    "So, did your fields get plowed, at the end of the day?" I asked, with a shit-eating grin.


    "Okay, this was definitely a bad metaphor," she said with a grin to match my own.


    I fell onto one of the several couches of the suite and put on my best serious detective face, stroking an imaginary beard. "Someone''s blushing and dodging the question."


    "Just...just a little. After...I guess when we got to dinner, Athan suddenly seemed a lot more into it than the rest of the day. Not like he was miserable-looking all day or anything, but it felt like...like he was trying not to smile, or be happy. Frustrating as fuck. I dunno why he''d do that."


    "Because he''s an idiot, probably."


    "Well, if we agree on that, we''re probably right. But at dinner, something changed, and he just seemed a lot more committed, like instead of just being dragged around, he was taking it seriously. I dunno how specifically to describe it, but fuck if it didn''t get me all tingly and bothered."


    I couldn''t not giggle, blushing, despite my brother being part of this equation.


    "Sometimes, he''s just the biggest dumbass in the world, and I just look at him and go, what the hell, why''d I have to fall for this monster of an idiot. But then sometimes, he''s just so...confident. So there, you know? Like he''d claim he''ll fight the whole world for you, and fuck, you know, he fucking would. And he''s not stupid, he''s just oblivious, some of the things he says or thinks...there''s so much passion in him. Just gets me...uh...wet as hell."


    "Yeah, I don''t exactly relate."


    "Anyway. So...when we...finished dinner...I took another pass at him, asked him if it would be too silly to get two hotel rooms in a day...and to my total surprise, he went with it. Nothing more serious than what we''ve done before, but I made sure he had a nice time, and I practically had to carry him home, he was so spent--"


    "AEGIS, ew!" I laughed.


    "You think that''s ew? I need to take a shower. I think I still have some stuff in my hair. And definitely in betwee--"


    "Ew! Ew! Ew!" I was still laughing even as I got up and covered my ears to get out of the conversation. I was glad they were having fun, but as someone who visualized everything that came to mind, this conversation was rapidly veering out of control.


    It got a smile out of AEGIS though, who settled for the sympathetic smile instead of torturing me. Once I''d made sure the danger was gone, I came back and faced her squarely.


    "So tell me about the crash," I said.


    She frowned. "I don''t know. Diagnostics take up most of my system resources so I was going to leave them for tonight."


    "Athan didn''t do anything or anything?"


    "No, we argued a bit but things didn''t really get heated, and I crashed after that anyway. I don''t know, and won''t until I see what''s up."


    It sounded earnest and plausible but I knew this girl way too well. Something was unsaid. Maybe it was just normal fear. I recognized too well the mask she was putting on, saying everything is okay when you suspect it isn''t. If she had anything concrete, she''d tell me, probably, or I might be able to read it off her. But instead, she just had scary, vague guesses.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    I decided to push my luck. An aggressive attack now when we were just so relaxed together would have a lot of shock value which might get a response out of her. AEGIS was also pretty servile by nature, and couldn''t really stand up to a strong demand by someone she liked.


    Trick was to get the info from her before she stopped liking me.


    "AEGIS don''t bullshit me."


    "What?"


    "I''m not stupid enough to fall for that garbage. Now tell me what''s really got you worried."


    She bit her lip and immediately moved to play with her hair. Reluctance and stress. Eyes looking involuntarily around the room, avoiding me. Wanted to end this by escaping somehow.


    I closed the distance on us and put my hand on her shoulder. Break physical contact barrier, invade personal space, cut off escape. I even chose the side with the pigtail she was stroking, pushing that comfort out of her grasp. I needed her to be more uneasy than reluctant.


    "Hey, who''s to say I didn''t say already?" she laughed. Nervous laugh. Trying to diffuse the situation.


    "I''m not an idiot. Just tell me AEGIS, you know it''s better if we''re all working on the same page."


    Maintain authority, but build compassion. Put pressure on that human instinct to want to come clean. If I had an inkling of the truth, I''d dangle it in front of her now, but I had nothing. This was all on her to give up or not.


    "It''s really okay, Lia. I''ll just run the diagnostics and see what shakes out. We can talk about it then."


    Soft no just means yes.


    "Okay. I was just...really worried about you. I got this phone call, and then Athan just hung up, and I couldn''t stop crying just thinking about you."


    Kick up the guilt. I left out the bar because that would give her some indignation to stand on. Fake a retreat to encourage a pursuit.


    "Oh, Lia, I''m so sorry."


    And bingo.


    "Look, it''s really nothing. I''m just...it''s a little worrying that it doesn''t seem like it''s a hardware failure. Rua didn''t crash, I did. I don''t know why, but that means there''s something wrong with my code somewhere. I''ve got backups of course, but they''re not much good except to see what''s changed, since I''m not going to go restoring older versions of myself unless I have to."


    "But you''ve never crashed like this before? How could it be your code?"


    "I don''t know. Could be anything. Probably just a bizarre complication of small things, like coming down from an argument while worrying about trying to feed Athan while standing in the cold or something, I don''t know. But I''ll have a look and figure it out, so don''t worry, okay?"


    "Okay. Let me know if I can do anything."


    "Sure will. Now I''m gonna go find that shower if you don''t mind."


    I let her go. She gave me a wan smile and left for the larger of the two bathrooms.


    ''Don''t worry'', she''d said, but it sounded like there was plenty to worry about. Still, I trusted AEGIS absolutely, and she was both aware of her problem and looking into it seriously, and there wasn''t much more I could do than that, but from the sound of it, it was possible she could crash like this again.


    I flopped down on the couch, upside-down, with my toes kneading the air over the back and my head inches from the ground.


    She hadn''t needed a reboot to come back. It wasn''t a total system failure, just something had failed. But like AEGIS had said, that could be anything, from something she was thinking or trying, or a combination of events.


    To be safe, I pulled out the transfer core I had gotten from AEGIS and plugged it into my mobile. I made an image copy to send it over to Athan with instructions on how to make a copy.


    Before I did, I had a thought and deleted my message and started up a few other programs I usually used for ''work''. This boot driver was a very low-level interface with AEGIS'' most fundamental code, I couldn''t just send it out carelessly.


    I encrypted the sea lion out of the driver image and put it on a virtual host which would only accept a direct connection from Athan''s holo, and would only allow him to stream it directly onto another transfer core without saving it locally, to be decrypted only after the entire transfer was complete. After that, the image I put up would zero itself out.


    It wasn''t flawless, and if Athan wanted to and had the right software, he could capture the image on his holo without too much trouble, though it''d still be encrypted. It wasn''t like I was typically in the business of keeping data out of the hands of people I was sending it to, but it might be a disaster if he left his holo lying around and the XPCA decided to go through it or something.


    In all likelihood, I was just being paranoid and stupid, outsmarting myself again, like when I''d tried to break Saga''s compel, but this time there was no downside to it, so what the hell. I realized at some point the shower had stopped and AEGIS had walked past me, probably saw me working and left me alone, or maybe was mad I''d pulled her secrets out of her and was avoiding me. I hoped it was the former and finished up what I was doing.


    Finally satisfied with the mess I''d made and hoping it would never even be touched or looked at, I double-checked all my work, my toes curling and uncurling in the air, and then sent the file off.


    Good waste of an hour. It was way too late, and I wasn''t putting up any more damn decorations today. I wanted to go talk to AEGIS more about the date, but was also tired. If I didn''t sleep now, I''d regret it tomorrow when I would be putting up decorations AND sleepy.


    But hell, that was future Lia''s problem. I went to the little study area which I think served as another bedroom if guests wanted more than one, and found AEGIS sitting at a desk with her mobile and a desktop terminal and the wall holo all plugged into her.


    She was also ''open'', which always kind of freaked me out. Her front casing on her chest was sitting on the floor next to her, like a bloodless, dismembered torso. Instead of soft skin and perky breasts, there was a hole in her, filled with machinery which moved constantly, even while she was still, cycling air and coolant and pressurized gels and oils through her like blood. So many parts with so many purposes, all so tiny and precise.


    I guess humans were the same way. All of our guts had their own specific purpose. Ours were just a lot messier to look at after you opened us up.


    "Hey. Need another device?" I asked, holding up my mobile as means of greeting.


    "No, I''m good. Sorry to leave my tits just hanging out on the floor like this," she grinned.


    "At least you''re wearing shorts. The first time I came in and you were open and naked, that was two shocks I didn''t need at the same time."


    "Funny, open and naked I think is just how your brother--"


    "Okay! Not listening!" I said, humming defiantly with my fingers in my ears. She was laughing, I think, so I let my guard down. "But seriously, how''s it going?"


    "It''s going weird. I don''t want to get into the specifics because they''ll bore you and you won''t understand, but the broad strokes are, my code changes constantly as I learn things and pick up new memories which make an impact on me. Not much, but a little. I can also change it myself if I feel the need, but I never do that."


    She looked at me seriously, which had extra weight considering the machinery exposed under her chin. "But it looks like the code has been changing a lot more recently, and I don''t know why. It might be a natural response to a new type of stimulus, or I might just be unnaturally excited the last few days. Not to make you cover your ears again, but I do find your brother very exciting in a lot of ways."


    "But you''ve always crushed on him."


    "Right. Which is why I''m skeptical. Our relationship hasn''t changed that much, so I''m skeptical my code would. But I don''t know what else would be causing it."


    I looked closely at the holos and saw nothing but thousands of lines of text flying past. For all the meaning I could get from them, I may as well be deciphering hieroglyphics.


    "Is there any pattern to the changes?" I asked. It''s the first thing I would look for if it wasn''t in gobbledygook.


    "I haven''t really checked. I''m just kind of overwhelmed by the fact that I''m sitting here changing so much, even right now. A lot of it seems to be in alert and security protocols, which is stuff I absolutely don''t touch, if I''m in a panic situation I don''t want to be thinking any differently than I usually do, and rewriting security is just asking for a potential breach."


    "A breach?" I asked, sitting next to her.


    "Yeah. Well, I was designed to be running a lot of important stuff, so it only makes sense that I''d have a lot of security to keep myself safe from cyber-attacks. I''m a software like any other, y''know? My mom did a really good job with it though, I thought, pretty damn good code considering how old it is. But now it''s changing and I don''t know why."


    "Uh," I felt panic bubbling up inside me and tried to keep my voice calm. "AEGIS? Code changing itself. Opening new security vulnerabilities. Are...you sure...you don''t already have a virus?"


    "No," she sighed, frustrated. "I''m not. That''s kind of the unspoken fear right now. If I do, I can''t very well go to the ''net and update my virus definitions. I don''t run on anything resembling a conventional OS, which means...if I do have a virus, it was written specifically to target me."


    How she could sound so calm about all of this, I had no idea. I knew panic wouldn''t help the situation, but it was a very real possibility at this moment that AEGIS as I knew her was being corrupted from the inside-out.


    "So what do we do?" I asked.


    "I don''t know. The smart option would be to roll back to an earlier version of me before I was infected."


    "So do it."


    "I would, but¡­" she sighed. "It''s like everything that happened to me in the last few days would have never happened. If it were some of those years I was just sitting in the dirt, I could do it in a heartbeat. But these few days...tonight especially...and being with you all in Eryendria, that was one of the coolest experiences of a lifetime. I could--and would--save the memories for me to watch and relive but...it''s not the same, you know? It''d be like watching a different version of myself do all these cool things, while I just saw it on the holo."


    "But...you might die, or worse, if you have a virus."


    "Yeah."


    "I don''t see how that''s a better alternative to losing a few memories, even if they were good ones."


    "Yeah, I know."


    I wasn''t telling her anything she didn''t already know, so I shut up. She reached over and squeezed my hand gently.


    "I think, before then, I''m going to take a crack at rewriting myself, seriously. I haven''t done it, and I''m a little scared, but if it''s a virus, that means it''s somewhere in there, and if I can wipe it out, it can''t wipe me out. I''m not like a human, it''s not multiplying inside me, it''s just one piece of code running that I need to find and kill."


    "Isn''t that really dangerous?"


    "Maybe a bit. But I think I have two huge advantages in my favor."


    "And what are they?"


    "Well, one, a virus usually only succeeds because the user has to go through their computer to fight it. Users are slow and viruses are fast, and so it winds up being the user versus their own infected computer. That doesn''t apply to me. If this thing is gonna beat me, it needs to be better and faster at shutting me down than I am at shutting it down."


    "That is kind of reassuring. I''ve seen you code, you look like you''re just writing a dictionary from memory when you are."


    "Damn straight I do."


    "And what''s the second huge advantage?"


    "I have something worth fighting for. These precious memories, I don''t want to let them go. I will kick this virus'' fucking ass before I let it take them from me, no matter what."

 177. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    I was surprised when I woke up at a reasonable hour, and without a robot in my pants. Either she''d decided that yesterday things had gone really well, or things had gone really poorly.


    I grabbed my holo from the edge of my bed, and seeing that I had a message waiting, distractedly got up.


    "Ow!" shouted Tem, whom I''d accidentally tread on.


    I fell off of her and instinctively caught myself in a practiced fall which rolled the back of my head into another bed with a clang and a really painful sudden jolt of awakening.


    "Fuck, ow. Damn. Sorry, Tem!"


    "Oh, good morning, Chariot," she chimed, apparently completely unconcerned by...everything, holding her bruised side where I''d stepped and rubbing sleep out of her eyes utterly nonchalantly like waking up to a beating was her status quo.


    I muttered a few more apologies and once I''d established she was fine, moved back to my waiting message.


    It was brief.


    > Heyas! Had a great time yesterday. Gonna be busy today, so I won''t see you before Christmas. Have a merry one!


    > No fooling around with Tem just because I''m gone.


    > All my love,


    > AEGIS


    I gave Tem a quick glance. Yeah, not happening.


    If I read between the lines a bit, it seemed to me that at least I hadn''t messed up yesterday beyond AEGIS'' tolerance. I couldn''t imagine many things she''d want to do other than pester me, so it was possible, maybe not likely, but possible that this was related to her crash. I considered giving her a call or message to thank her and wish her luck, but if she was working, I''d rather not distract her and put an obligation to respond on her.


    There wasn''t anyone else around but Tem, and I didn''t have anything to do. After facing down this dilemma for a while, I got restless and went out on a run, Tem joining/following me as she usually did, and I really didn''t mind the company.


    The rest of the day passed similarly, in a loop of sitting around, feeling bad about sitting around, and then doing something for an hour. I was trying not to think about AEGIS, either good or bad and largely failed, but somehow the day managed to pass anyway.


    The next day was much the same. I caught up with Jack and Tower some, wished them a merry Christmas, and learned that for lack of better options, both of them would apparently be attending Lia''s Christmas shindig, making me feel even worse about going to Karu''s.


    "We''re Exhumans," Tower laughed. "Having an invite to any Christmas party is pretty good by our standards."


    Still, as afternoon began to wane, I put on my dress uniform, vaguely thankful that the thing meant I didn''t ever have to make decisions about what kind of formal attire to wear, and caught a cab to Senator Idris Irenside''s mansion.


    I watched through the cab''s window as the huge marble civic buildings turned into dense rowhouses, and then closely-packed miniature White Houses, with pillars and neatly-trimmed hedges, and then actual mansions, on huge plots of land, once we had made it well away from the city center. And it was no surprise that it was out here where the houses and lots grew ridiculous that the senator lived.


    My first thought was that someone had tastelessly disgorged Christmas onto every available surface, like a passing sleigh full of elves and their accompanying flying reindeer had become ill and vomited the season across the entire yard.


    There was somehow more snow in the yard than on any of the neighbors'', and luminescent waist-high candy canes sprouted from the ground all along the road which led from the bough-studded gate up to the wide steps of the front porch, which glistened under a thousand mutely glowing icicles.


    The hedge next to the gate was playing cheerful Christmas music as a group of doormen at the gate verified identities and frisked well-dressed people for security. The house itself...it almost hurt to look at, there were so many lights on it, twinkling in synch with the music. You could land a VTOL by these lights.


    I closed my eyes, both bracing for the ordeal, and vaguely nauseated already. I noticed, with my eyes closed, and actively trying to block out the world, I could sense the power flowing through the tiny LEDs in the hedge, and could even trace the lines back to the edge of my power''s reach. Kind of neat. Kind of pointless, but still neat.


    I approached the gate, waiting behind possibly the oldest pair of women imaginable, and once they''d been cleared, the doorman smiled at me professionally and asked for my name, stylus hovering over a tablet in hand.


    "Athan Ashton."


    "Of course, sir. Just one moment. Are you armed tonight?"


    "No, left it at home."


    "Except for the Exhuman powers, right?"


    I blinked at him in confusion, but he was still smiling professionally at me. I wasn''t sure if he was joking or not.


    "Right. Can''t leave those even if I try."


    "It''s no problem. Please enjoy yourself, and Merry Christmas, sir."


    A little weird. I had to wonder if all of the Irenside servants were so peculiar.


    And then I finished strolling up the steps, another pair of doormen in smart suits held open the main doors, and I walked right into Christmas hell.


    It was clear at a glance that no expense had been spared. Able to see into huge rooms on my left and right, I saw a enormous spreads of foods, of which I could probably positively identify only a handful. Lights glittered obnoxiously in white, red, and green from every windowsill, shelf, and table, and somehow the guests themselves were even more garish.


    People with hair done up in impossible ways, one I was certain had micro-repulsors holding strands of it aloft with little tiny flecks of blue plasma. Women in dresses so sheer and daring that I was pretty sure some of them counted as two half-dresses glued to the body. Men in suits chewing cigars, which I didn''t even know were still made or smoked anywhere in the world, with one particularly eye-catching gentleman whose jacket seemed both red and green at the same time in a way which confused my eyes to focus on.


    Coming from somebody who had to put a serious effort to tie their own tie, I felt a bit like I''d stepped into an insane asylum where all of the patients had agreed that they were keeping the crazy out, and not in. There was no other possible way to explain how completely unflapped this entire assembly was when there was a woman walking around with what looked like handprints of body paint, and a man in what might be a wooly thing which was all collars and mittens, something you''d put a child in to have some embarrassing pictures to whip out when he brought a girl home fifteen years later.


    But the pi¨¨ce de r¨¦sistance was the center hall, which I was currently standing in like a slack-jawed hatrack. Not only was there a monstrous chandelier, over ten feet tall, hanging above the hall, hovering as it spun and glistened, individual rings of it moving in alternate directions from each other, making the lights dance constantly within it.


    But somehow, more amazing than this insane spectacle even was the snow falling all around me. I held out my hand to catch a flake and it fizzled as it insubstantially passed through me, appearing on the other side of my hand like I wasn''t there.


    Some kind of room-wide holo projector, but without myself or anything else in here casting shadows. I couldn''t see emitters anywhere, no harsh light which usually gave away the source of the lightshow, the illusion was just...perfect. It was snowing indoors in this huge, relatively warm, people-filled mansion. And not a single person but me was standing there, awestruck and looking up, to them, this was just a party trick they''d seen a thousand times, I was sure.


    My reverie was ruined as a strong hand wrapped around my shoulder and began to steer me into one of the side rooms. I looked up and saw the straight moustache, strong cleft chin, and sheen of blonde hair belonging to the person steering me, and could have identified him by any of these.


    "Athan Ashton. I thought I''d scared you off for good last time my boy," Idris said with a jovial laugh. "So glad you could make it. I know Karen will be thrilled."


    "Yes sir. Where is she, if I could ask?"


    "I told you before son, there''s no need for ''sir'' with me. If anything, I should be saying that to you." He let me go and propped me up in place not far from another circle of people. "After all, I should thank you for your service. From what I heard, you saved thousands of lives, if not more, in dealing with that Exhuman event in Oakland. Terrible, terrible business, but that''s why the world needs heroes like you, isn''t it, son?"


    Idris could be suave as fuck when he wanted, but his act was so completely transparent this time, even I picked up on his machinations. Problem was...or maybe the reason why he did it, even with this knowledge there was nothing I could do. As the words of my heroics left his lips, the bizarrely-attired strangers in the group next to us turned their attention, and then within moments, I was utterly swarmed, dozens of admirers shaking my hand and recounting their names and lineages at me, while Idris stood next to me with a big festive grin.


    These people were shameless. People were practically hitting each other to have a moment of face time with me, prying my hand out of someone else''s handshake to replace it with their own, saying their own names over and over, and getting out a final plea of ''do come to call!'' or ''don''t forget!'' as their brief seconds with me ended as the rest of the pack descended.


    "Hello, Thomas Klein, private defense sector, I just love what you managed--"


    "Julian Wilkes, I just must say, I''ve always had such respect--"


    "Hello there, Sylvia Wyld, that''s with a ''y''. I don''t think I''ve ever heard of such a brave--"


    "Edward DiMarco, I''m an attorney in the DA''s office, so good to meet you friend, if you ever need--"Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    It was easily the most overwhelming experience of my life, as I got passed from person to person like dogs at a park who had all just found the shiniest stick. But it wasn''t until a blonde woman in a dress that looked like it''d been made of stickers and cellophane that I realized how wrong I was. These people weren''t shameless, she was.


    She cut through the group like all the others, but instead of going for my hand and an introduction, she went for my face, and latched herself onto my lips in a passionate kiss. Her arms wrapped around me, pressing me to her heaving chest, and my lips tingled with some exotic flavor on hers.


    I tried to shove her off, but it felt like there wasn''t any part of her I could touch which wasn''t indecently dressed. I settled for pushing back on her head, but she refused to budge. All I could see was half of her face, her eyes closed, covered in dark makeup and long eyelashes, and the rest of the piranhas still circling, more irritated about the time she was taking than what she was doing with it.


    Just as I was about to grope out for Senator Irenside''s arm, I heard his voice. "All right, Miss Rubi, let the boy breathe."


    She held the kiss for another couple of seconds just to make it clear she was doing this on her terms, before holding my head and slowly separating, a strand of saliva bridging the few inches between our lips, which she licked up and swallowed greedily.


    "I''ve always wanted to make love with an Exhuman," she said, batting her dangerously blue eyes at me.


    I didn''t have any words. I was too busy inhaling and trying to figure out how to leave. I wanted to go back to where people hated Exhumans, please. I was wrong. A cycle of cruelty and oppression was fine. Coexistence was overrated. I want my old world back.


    And then, with a crack, and a ''hngr'', Miss Rubi fell down and the most beautiful fucking woman in the entire world appeared. Karu stood separate and resplendent in her full armor, gleaming like a white knight, and Miss Rubi let out an inarticulate scream as the shock net engaged and sent her into convulsions on the floor.


    "That Exhuman is my prey," Karu spat. The gathered audience who was not currently writhing on the ground applauded politely at the show. The fuck was wrong with these people?


    "Karen, why the armor? We''ve been over this," Idris sighed.


    "It is only natural to wear gloves when reaching into a pile of excrement, father."


    He frowned, and the air of a humoring father burned off of him. "These are the most influential and wealthiest people in the entire world, Karen dear. You will not make a spectacle of us. Now change at once."


    "Father--"


    "I said at once!" he said, not actually shouting, but with such menace in his voice he may as well have been. Just as the crowd had applauded Karen taking down Rubi, there were smiles and amused titters as she got cut down herself. This crowd had no loyalty, they turned on anyone to suit whatever amused them. As though sensing this, Karu''s face under her visor glowed to very nearly match it, and she held her heart as she drew several rapid breaths.


    "Y-yes, father," she said, and began to vanish towards the central foyer.


    "Karu, wait!" I said, but a strong hand grabbed me by the shoulder and I turned around and found Idris'' shining green eyes and friendly smile.


    "I hardly think it''s appropriate to help her dress, don''t you?" he said. People laughed. He was pulling me back in, and the crowd began to froth as the waters were chummed again. Nobody seemed to notice or care that we were still standing over a woman in a net, even if the tasers on it had stopped clicking by now.


    "Hey, quick party trick," I said, ducking and spinning to get the hand off my shoulder. I crossed my arms and blades of lightning emerged from nowhere, straight vertical gashes of light which burned away the strobing green and red glamor of this nightmare. "Be sure to stay back, they are very hot," I said, and to demonstrate, picked up a napkin some random jerk was holding under a tiny crystal goblet, and threw it into one of the blades, where it engulfed in flames and burned away to nothingness before it even touched the ground.


    Again, people politely clapped. I gave the blades a flourish so they spun around me like a carousel, and then with a bow, dismissed them and practically sprinted for the foyer.


    "Karu!" I shouted at the sea of people, but I couldn''t see her. No red visor, no shock of blonde hair, just degenerate debauchery and the masses beginning to press in on me again. I shouted a few more times, weaving between the clusters of people, but to no avail. I turned at random, heading towards a long hallway with a huge wall of windows overlooking a courtyard, when one of the house''s servants popped up right in front of me.


    The way she had one eyebrow raised and a cheshire grin instantly alerted me to danger, but she was definitely in my way. I moved, she moved. I moved back, she moved back.


    "Uh, excuse me," I said at last.


    "Master Athan Ashton?" she said.


    "Yes. Though can you not say it so loud? These people want my blood. And not even in a murdery way. Way creepier than that."


    "Tell me about it, Master. Imagine doing this every year. It''s even weirder in July, it''s like this but with flags and fireworks."


    I gave her half a confused glance. Apparently the servants here were all loopy?


    "Anyway, I''m looking for Kar-Karen. Do you know where she is?"


    "Well, as she''s changing at the moment, I imagine upstairs. It would be pretty irresponsible of a servant to tell you it''s up those stairs, two flights, then down the hallway on the left--just ignore the velvet rope telling you to stay out, and then on the left. So I won''t say that."


    "Uh. Right," I said. I heard something very much resembling my name behind me and glanced back at the emerging wall of flesh beginning to push into the corridor. "Thanks, bye!" I shouted at the servant girl and sprinted up the stairs while she gave an elegant curtsey.


    I followed the directions exactly and, after bounding over a velvet rope, came to a large wooden door. I knocked, and the sound of it seemed impotent compared to the solidity and weight of all the wood paneling and molding and even the door itself.


    "I am already changing, Father!" Karu yelled back. "Whatever insipid guest you wish for me to meet will simply have to wait!"


    "Um, actually, it''s me, Karu," I said.


    There was a pause. "Who is ''me''?"


    "Athan."


    Another pause. "I do not suppose that you would be able to positively identify yourself before unlocking the door?"


    "Uh," I said and thought. And thought. And thought.


    The only things that came to mind to yell back at her were all completely inappropriate. But Karu wasn''t exactly a private person, so if we were doing something in private, there was usually a damn good reason for it.


    "You are thinking only of lecherous things, aren''t you?"


    "...yeah."


    "I suppose that suffices as identification enough for my needs," she said with a sigh, and the door unlocked and opened. Karu was there, half out of her armor, tank top hanging out of the flight suit still clinging to her arms and her waist. She smiled as she saw me and pulled me into a kiss.


    "I am very tempted," she said, as we both went into the huge room, dominated by yet more of the dark wooden furniture which seemed as weathered and solid as Karu "to simply finish undressing and then forget to rejoin the party. I hardly suspect my presence would be missed."


    "Yeah, anything to get away from those people. Who the hell are they?"


    "Parasites, mostly," Karu said, strutting towards me and lowering the zipper on her flight suit the rest of the way, before stepping her long bare legs out of it, and leaving it hanging off her arms like some kind of military-themed shawl.


    "Uh, maybe...we should get back," I said, bumping into a dresser as the space between us vanished.


    "Eager to rediscover Miss Rubi?" she asked teasingly, her lips inches from mine.


    "C''mon, Karu. We can''t just hide in here like teenagers."


    Hiding in here like teenagers was, incidentally, exactly what I wanted to do, but I wasn''t sure how I''d be able to look AEGIS in the eye if I couldn''t make it two days without falling into another woman''s arms, especially after I gave her such a hard time in trying to seduce me, and especially after she crashed. That would just be completely fucked up.


    Such was my love for the AI, that I''d go downstairs and let those leeches bleed me dry, rather than stay up here with a beautiful woman I loved, throwing herself at me. It was truly an Exhuman''s lot in life to suffer.


    She held herself to me closely, pressing her cheek to my shoulder so I could feel her somewhat rapid breathing on my neck. I felt a tingle in my spine, and my hairs on my neck stood on end. And something else.


    "I missed you, Ashton," she said. It wasn''t the voice I always heard, confident and stellar. She was small and defenseless pressed up against me. I felt the overwhelming urge to put my arms around her. She looked up at me, green eyes flickering in the dim light of the room. "You will not hold me?"


    I took in and let out a deep breath that felt so heavy, it was like breathing out years of my life.


    "Sorry, Karu. You really...did a number on me when we broke up once. And then Saga did her whole thing to me, and now...I guess...I''m a lot more...hesitant about relationships."


    She smiled and laughed softly. "I was not asking for a relationship, Ashton."


    "Sorry, still...still not sure what I''m doing with myself."


    She frowned and moved off of me, leaving a cold spot where she just was. "It is AEGIS, isn''t it?" she asked, her face dark.


    "I mean, that''s part of it, sure. She''s been pushing me too, but I haven''t been able to tell her yes either."


    I expected Karu to say something nasty about ''the AI'', but she just bit her lip and said "I see." She looked a little ridiculous with her flight suit still hanging off of her arms and dragging on the floor behind her.


    "Hey, let''s just get you changed and enjoy the party as best as we''re able, okay?" I said.


    She brightened up and looked like the Karu I knew again almost immediately.


    "Yes. Sulking is a waste of time and time with you, besides." She walked to the other end of the room, bare feet sinking out of sight into a lush red and gold rug, and pulled a tasteful, if somewhat ornate dress off of the back of a chair. "Please be seated, and I must insist on no peeking."


    "You were trying to jump me like, ten seconds ago."


    "And you have made it clear that was an unwelcome advance, at least for the time being. If you reject that proposal, then peeking privileges are similarly revoked."


    "Sure, whatever," I said, and put myself in a chair at a desk near me, facing the wall.


    "I propose a game of sorts," she said, as I heard the sounds of her flight suit being peeled off of her, and then the sounds of various objects of clothing hitting the floor. I realized there was a mirror on this desk, and if it was facing just a little further to the right¡­ "I call this game simply, ''avoid my father''. I think you and I would both enjoy playing it? And it would be an enriching opportunity to become more well-acquainted with my family manor...and the various hiding places within."


    "I dunno," I said, leaning to my left as imperceptibly as possible. "You and I, running around and hiding in dark corners together all night, I''m pretty sure everyone will gab about it."


    "Then let them gab. I have nothing to hide."


    "Except yourself, from your father. And me."


    "Well, yes, obviously."


    She stepped backwards for a moment and into the mirror''s field of view, as she stepped into her dress and zipped it up. Sorta missed the best part there, but I guess I couldn''t really complain. She glanced over at me for a moment and then began rummaging through some drawers.


    "Need help with anything?" I asked.


    "You would wish so, wouldn''t you? I am perfectly capable of dressing myself."


    She found what she wanted and the rummaging stopped. After another few moments she spoke again. "I am presentable."


    I looked over and saw her in the elegant white dress, but also with what looked like black fingerless gloves that went up to her elbows. They were featureless and obviously didn''t match the dress. On her neck, she wore a plain black choker that matched neither the dress nor the gloves.


    "They are hand warmers. My hands were cold," she said, to my silence.


    "Sorry. You look nice, is what I meant to say." It was hot in here, but Lia could have cold hands no matter the temperature, so I didn''t ask any questions.


    She crossed the room and pulled me up by the hand. "Shall we begin then?" she said.


    Just then, the lock on the door turned, and the door opened.


    "Where are you, child? There''s a general downstai--"


    Idris froze as he saw me in the room, holding Karu''s hand. The rest of his sentence died in his throat and he seemed momentarily unsure whether to rebuke me or put his sleaze back on me. As the smile crossed his face, it seemed he decided on the latter.


    "I hear Exhumans are quite the troublemakers, eh?" he said, pulling me by the arm that Karu had recently occupied. "Can''t leave your daughter alone in her own room without one sneaking in. Now come, son, I''ve a few friends in the DoD who are dying to meet you, maybe you can favor them with a tale or two of your exploits?"


    I turned back and saw Karu standing sadly, rooted to the spot with her hand still outstretched where mine had been torn from it and then the door closed between us as Idris pulled me ever further away.


    Which was just the worst. Karu''s game had sounded like so much fun, too.

 178. 2251, Present Day. Irenside Mansion. Athan.

    As the party progressed, I began to see the Senator''s master plan unfolding as he pushed me through groups like a show pony. The violent and terrifying opening act had just been to announce my presence to the party--the dregs had come out of the woodwork to lap at me, and those fragile-egos were the most likely to immediately run off and brag about their latest, greatest achievement to all who would listen.


    That handful of obnoxious idiots had now informed everyone at the party I was here, and interest in me was high. Idris had unveiled me as a valuable everyone wanted to sample and he restricted the flow heavily, lavishing me on business contacts and influential men like a party favor, while those who apparently held less use for him were kept waiting indeterminately.


    It took me a surprisingly long time to notice this; he kept me busy shaking new hands and smiling at new faces and explaining the Exhuman life in digestible terms, and it was only when we were passing some people over but not others that I began to realize.


    The fact that he was smiling so earnestly and greeting everyone he met like they were the most important person in the room, and then once they were out of earshot confided in me some amusing flaw of theirs or apologizing for forcing me to meet them was confusing too, until I figured out he was doing it to keep me placated.


    It took me a while, but if I had any doubts about the man''s true nature from the first time I met him, they were slowly peeled away now. Another contractor, we''d meet, he''d introduce me, the guest would show some interest, I''d give a little performance of some kind at Idris'' insistence, the guest would be pleased beyond any reasonable standard, Idris would talk shop for a few minutes, making sure to bring up the extravagance of the party and how much the guest was enjoying it, secure some kind of sympathy or verbal agreement to some issue, and then we''d move on to the next group.


    The people in the front room might have been the worst of the lot, but the people I was meeting now weren''t exactly any better by my standards. If anything, they seemed to move from being insecure about their wealth and power and needing to flaunt it to being too comfortable with it, and seemingly having no reservations or shame. They spoke openly about what were probably illegal deals or mismanagement of government funds at best, and it just seemed par for the course. Nobody cared, nobody batted an eye.


    I was hungry, and there were mountains of food sitting just half a room away, but Idris'' grip on me was iron, and I really didn''t want to physically throw him off me at his own party, but at this rate, I was just going to spend the next eight hours meeting everyone in D.C. who was remotely useful to a senator.


    I was just thinking about how much I was missing the other party I could have been at when something slammed into me, knocking me flat on my ass out of Idris'' grip. As though an afterthought, I saw someone in a uniform throw a glass of something in my face, and slip into the crowd.


    There we go. A little Exhuman hate. That''s what I''d been missing.


    Idris blustered and made a big show of pulling me to my feet and scanning the crowd, looking for the culprit. He saw someone and signaled them over while I wiped the drink out of my eyes. Grape cider of all things.


    "Terribly sorry, my boy, someone probably had too much to drink. Eryn, there you are, fetch a towel would you?" he said to the servant he''d beckoned over. "My goodness, son, you reek of grape. Eryn, could you take him to get washed off? Bring him back as soon as you''re finished, if you please."


    "Of course, sir," she said with a familiar curtsey. She took me by the arm and steered me through the crowd as surely as Idris had. We went through two and then three rooms without a bathroom apparently, and then down a hallway, down some stairs, and finally I had to ask her where we were going.


    "To the garage, sir," she said with a smile.


    "To get cleaned off? Are you going to hit me with a hose?"


    "I beg your pardon if I''m mistaken Master, but I wasn''t of the impression that cleaning off and getting back was a real priority of yours?"


    I got grape-scented hair out of my eyes and took a look at the girl leading me along. I recognized her as the same one who''d directed me towards Karu''s chambers before. In the hand she wasn''t using to drag me along, she had a small crystal glass like I''d seen so many of in this party, and something clicked.


    "Did you run into me?"


    "Always a possibility, master."


    "Did you throw grape juice at my face?"


    "No, it was sparkling grape cider."


    "Why?"


    She opened the garage door and the lights turned on over half a dozen cars in banks. She took me to a little side room, which looked like maybe a guard post? It was connected to the garage, but had windows looking over the driveway. She gave me a little shove and I stumbled up two stairs into the small room.


    "Stay here and you''ll find out," she said with the same cheshire grin as before, and left, closing the door quietly behind her.


    Was I in trouble? Was she some kind of instigator? She''d clearly taken pains to separate me and hide me from Idris, but while the man was a bastard of the highest caliber, I was still an Exhuman, and therefore, always in some kind of danger. Idris wouldn''t want me hurt, but whoever this servant was, she clearly had her own agenda.


    Her agenda became clear in the next minute when Karu walked in the door, wearing her elegant dress, black choker, mismatching black gloves, and upon seeing me, a broad smile.


    "Ashton!" she said, delighted. "How ever did you manage to esca--oh goodness, you reek of grape. Here, there are clean rags for the cars, please dry yourself."


    "Thanks. One of your servants did this to me."


    Her eyes narrowed. "Who? I shall see to it that they are brought to justice."


    In a normal context, with Karu speaking, I think those words usually meant death, and I hoped they didn''t apply here. Then again, the fact that for me, a ''normal context'' involved killing people was a pretty messed up place to begin with.


    "No, she did it to get me away from Idris. A girl, about your age, much shorter than you, dark hair, dark eyes, short ponytail?"


    Karu sighed. "Eryn."


    "Yeah, that was it."


    "And where is she now?"


    "I don''t know. She dumped me in here and told me to wait."


    "I suspect she manipulated the other servants to get me in here as well. It is as secluded a meeting spot as any, but--"


    Karu lapsed into silence as lights flooded into the room from outside the window. A car pulled up the driveway and pulled to a stop outside. The driver''s door opened, and the same girl, Eryn, stepped out and gave us a curtsey through the glass.


    "Eryn, you beautiful creature," Karu sighed, and then took my arm and dragged me through the garage out another door which led us outside where Eryn waited with the car. Karu released me so she could embrace the girl instead, and then the two of them got in, and I followed Karu, not sure what to make of the situation.


    "Won''t your dad be mad?" I asked, perhaps stupidly.


    "I imagine Father will be absolutely livid. Wouldn''t you agree, Eryn?"


    "Oh undoubtedly, Miss K. He''ll spend all night tearing through the whole party hunting for you, Master."


    Somehow this seemed to please the two of them an inordinate amount, which I thought wasn''t really the right attitude for either a daughter or a servant to have, but hell, I wasn''t going to complain. I just sat in the back seat with Karu while Eryn shot us occasional glances in the mirror through the open partition.


    "Where to, then, Miss K? Fancy restaurant?...Fancy hotel?...Sleazy hotel?"


    "Eryn!"


    "Kindly don''t be makin'' a mess on the seats, they''re leather, Miss."


    "You are infuriating beyond all reason. Ashton, do you see why I have such an insular lifestyle? These are the individuals with whom I grew up."


    "Actually, there is a hotel," I said. "The Four-in-Hand. Do you know where that is?"


    "Ashton! You also?" Karu wailed. I noticed that when she yelled at Eryn, she had embarrassed outrage on her face, but at me, only embarrassment.


    "Yes I do master, heading there now. I hope you two have a delightful evening."


    "Well, despite my outbursts, if we do wind up doing so, it will be entirely through fault of yours, as it were, Eryn. For this, you have my deepest gratitude."


    "Maybe talk to your father about my Christmas bonus, Miss K?"


    "I will be happy to throw a fat chit at you of my own finances gladly, Eryn."Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    "I beg your pardon Miss K., but the money just don''t taste as sweet if I''m not taking it from your father, though I appreciate the offer."


    I found myself smiling at the two of them. "So you guys both really hate Idris, eh?"


    "Hate is such a strong word, Master."


    "You have met the man for yourself, and after tonight, I hope you still cling to no illusions of his nature. Would you hate him, given my position, or Eryn''s?"


    "I dunno. I''m not really in the business of hating people. Usually if I have an issue with someone, I try to resolve it."


    "If you''d prefer, master, I can turn the car around so that you can resolve your issues with Master Irenside?"


    "Uh, yeah, maybe not."


    Karu beamed back at me. "Then perhaps do not make sweeping but useless proclamations. Only speak words if you mean them."


    "Okay, well, moving past that, I don''t think I hate him. He''s just an asshole. That''s the kind of person you just shrug and say, ''guess this guy exists'' and move on with your life. You''ll never get anywhere if you stop to hate every asshole you meet."


    "Again, your words have issue, Ashton. The question posed to you was given my position or Eryn''s. Do you propose both of us simply ignore him, as his daughter and servant?"


    I scratched my head. "Uh. No." And then I froze, sensing something outside. "Stop the car. Stop it now. NOW!" I yelled through the divider, pulling off my seatbelt.


    Eryn to her credit didn''t ask any questions, just tried to pull over as fast as she could, but not fast enough. Before the car had even stopped, I had thrown open the door and run onto the street, Karu stumbling behind me in heels.


    "Ashton, wait!" she shouted, and Eryn helped her to her feet and out of the car, but I was leaving them behind. I knew what I''d seen, or sensed, or felt, and I had to chase it down. I''d regret it forever if I let this slip past.


    I tore into the night at random, playing a game of hot and cold as I slipped in and out of the strange feeling, trying to triangulate the position of the source, and having issues as it kept moving away from me. But once I had a general bearing, I started sprinting full-out in the direction I knew it was coming from and it stopped fading out.


    I ran down alleys and streets at random, heading closer to the center the whole time. I was getting closer, I could feel it. A hundred percent of my focus was in my mind, focused on the sensation, completely ignoring my body and the world around me. A couple times I just ran straight into traffic, hardly noticing, and having to bolt with an extra burst of speed to avoid getting hit.


    I banged into a wall pretty hard, scraped my leg on a fence I was jumping, none of it mattered. My body was only there to move my brain closer and closer to the source. I had to catch it. Nothing else in this night mattered.


    My mobile rang. I didn''t even glance at who it was, just answered it and put it on speaker.


    "Ashton? Where are you? I apologize for our teasing, I hadn''t realized the conversation had so quite gotten under your skin, as it were."


    It took me a second to place the voice. "Karu?"


    "Yes. Who else could it be?" she sounded confused. I guess that made sense.


    "Look, sorry, gotta save my breath for running. I''ll explain later, okay?"


    "...okay. Return to us safely, Ashton."


    "Yeah." I hung up and ran down a street, swearing and wishing there were a way to get to my left from here without going through this impenetrable wall of houses. I was so close now. Another block or two maybe.


    My mark had tried to run as soon as I''d noticed, but I''d closed the distance rapidly. If they were going to do anything stupid and desperate, now as the time. I willed my thoughts into prayers that nothing like that would happen, and focused on that thought and that thought only.


    Don''t run. Don''t do anything stupid. I''m almost there.


    I turned left down a street finally and swung past a bewildered couple on the sidewalk. Right here. It should be right here.


    Behind the houses I couldn''t pass, there was an alley full of bins and dumpsters. Down this alley. I moved forward at a fast walk now, trying not to miss anything, looking up and down the street as I went. I just needed one clue where it was coming from, just a tiny hint.


    I walked past a dumpster and a couple bins and paused. I could sense someone hiding back there, and when I looked carefully, there was a gap between the dumpster and bins too small for a normal person to fit through, but big enough for her purposes.


    "Hey Saga," I said to the dumpster.


    She didn''t respond, but I felt the sensation in my mind change to one of defeat immediately.


    "You want to come out of there, or have you been hiding behind dumpsters this whole time?"


    There was some faint shuffling sounds and finally a lanky foot emerged, followed by the rest of Saga, who was glaring at me like it was my fault she''d been thrown into the trash.


    "Hi, Athan. Merry Christmas, I guess."


    "Hi. You look good. Have you put on weight?"


    "A little steadier on my feet now. Would have sucked if I was stumbling the whole way here instead of walking." She might have been stronger, but her voice was still weak as a ghost''s. Guess she hadn''t talked much the whole time.


    "You walked here?"


    "Yeah."


    "You walked two states over, in the snow? Barefoot?"


    "Yeah."


    "Weren''t you cold?"


    "Yeah."


    I hesitated. She looked and felt miserable. I could only get surface readings off of her, but even from that, I could tell just these few weeks had changed her. She''d had bad experiences with humans, she''d worked hard and suffered long just to get here, and now, the one person she wanted to see least in the world had found her.


    "Are you cold now?"


    "I''m always cold, Athan. It doesn''t matter. I can''t get sick or die, remember?"


    I reached up to my collar and pulled down the zipper, diagonally across my body while she just looked at me with almost-astonishment. I undid the ornamental buttons and slipped the cufflinks into my pocket, and then pulled the black XPCA coat off, feeling the cold air against me instantly through my thin collared shirt. While it was still warm, I put the coat on her.


    "Athan, don''t. You''ll get cold, and you''re not immortal."


    "I can be cold for a little while," I said, and bent slightly to pick her up. She was ever so slightly heavier than I remembered, maybe she had put on some muscle, but was still impossibly light for her size.


    "Hey, put me down! Athan, what are you doing?"


    "Your feet are freezing and red and angry. It''s below freezing out and you''re walking around in ice and snow. I''ve got boots on."


    "This is so stupid. I don''t need rescuing, Athan. Put me down."


    I didn''t. Instead, I talked as I walked us back to the car.


    "I understand you had an important reason to leave. Mage or something, I get that. But couldn''t you have at least said goodbye?"


    "I did say goodbye. I fixed what I did to your mind and left you a note."


    "Well, I didn''t get a chance to say goodbye, I thought you were just gone forever."


    "That was the plan."


    "Well, I hate that plan. If you need to leave, so be it. But fucking give me the chance to say bye. Get a damn mobile so I know if you''re dead or not. Tell us where you''re going. Is that so much to ask?"


    She avoided looking at my face, and I felt a vortex of emotions churning inside her. Guilt. Pain. Sadness. Anger. But in the eye of the storm, determination.


    "I didn''t want to make it any more painful than it had to be," she said.


    "You think just vanishing was less painful for me?"


    "I meant, for me. I couldn''t let you talk me down from this one, Athan. It''s too big for me to let my own feelings get in the way."


    "Maybe if you told me that instead of just leaving, I wouldn''t have even tried to talk you down."


    "Maybe. But you know," she said, looking at me with an icy stare "you''re kind of a guy who makes up his mind about something and then goes for it without really caring or worrying what other people think."


    "I care a lot what other people think!"


    "Oh yeah? Then put me down."


    "..."


    "Yeah, thought so, smartass."


    "But if it was something important, I''d listen and think it through with you."


    "Something important like you breaking into my prison cell when I was mentally blasting you, and you still wouldn''t leave?"


    I guess I walked right into that one too.


    "I just do what''s right when I can, okay?"


    "Yeah. I know. The problem is, if your definition of right and mine don''t agree. And I''m not talking about killing people or anything, I know as well as you do that is technically wrong. I just don''t care. But if we disagreed on this Mage thing? You''d just stop me, and then I''d probably let myself be stopped."


    She gave a sigh which was heavier than she was. "I really am a softie," she said, and tightened her grip on me.


    We had a 1.5-way conversation in silence the rest of the way back to the car. All I wanted to ask about was why and how she could leave me like that, and she didn''t want to tell me about Mage or leaving. As I thought it over, she read my thoughts, and some of her feelings on the issue, I was able to pick up. It was a weird way to have a talk, but not really an unpleasant one, I guess.


    Finally back at the highway, I found Karu pacing anxiously with Eryn reclining in the driver''s seat with her eyes closed. Upon seeing me, Karu took two excited steps towards me before recognising what I was carrying.


    "She...how...Ashton, did she¡­" I saw a handful of thoughts tumble over Karu''s face.


    "She''s fine. I''m fine too. I''m sorry for running off like that, I just...we drove past her and I picked up on her mind and had to find her."


    "Yeah, what even are you doing in this part of the city? You had no reason to ever come out here," Saga accused.


    "Just dumb luck. We were headed to Lia''s hotel directly from Karu''s dad''s place, and you were in between."


    Saga sighed again, and then put a small smile and wriggled out of my grasp, stepping lightly on the ground. "Well, it''s not like I believe in fate or anything, but it does seem like a pretty chance meeting."


    I guess Saga was trying to regain some composure in front of Karu, but if that worked, I didn''t see it. The three of us stood for a few moments out in the cold without anyone speaking, somehow entirely different from the silence Saga and I had shared.


    "Ashton, when last we met, she attempted to murder me, without remorse," Karu said at last.


    "Aw, poor baby, can''t take a little attempted murder?"


    "Were that I had my equipment on me, I would show you just how willing I am to attempt murder."


    "Enough, ladies," I stepped in, before one of the two decided to step it up. "Saga...like I said, I understand you have a thing you need to do, but can I convince you to spend tonight with us to smooth things over with everyone and say some goodbyes? I mean, it''s Christmas."


    "Athan, do I look like a practicing Christian to you? If God existed, he might have considered responding to my prayers when I was locked in the dark alone for a hundred years."


    "Or perhaps he did, in the form of Ashton, once you''d served an adequate punishment for your sins."


    "In that case, shouldn''t you cut me a little more slack, little zealot? After all, God himself let me out."


    Karu''s eyes narrowed. "If God had wanted you to live in peace and happiness, he would not have created me."


    "Okay, enough." Somehow I''d just gotten them arguing about religion instead. What the hell. "Christmas or not, Saga, would you? And Karu, can you bury the hatchet for a night?"


    "I am always fully capable of restraint and virtue."


    "Oh that''s a fucking laugh--"


    "Saga," I cut in.


    "Fine, fine. One night, Athan. And then you let me go forever. I don''t want you begging me in the morning to stay around, got it?"


    And that was how we arrived at the suite site of the party. Stepping out of the private elevator, AEGIS called out to me in happiness and surprise, and then paused and hesitated when she saw Karu, and then paused and hesitated twice again on seeing Saga.


    I grinned apologetically. "Uh, merry Christmas?" I said.


    AEGIS sighed and smiled too. "Merry Christmas, you guys."

 179. 2251, Present Day. Penthouse Suite. Athan.

    I was really impressed. Not only did the place look a hell of a lot better and more tastefully decorated than the last party we''d just escaped, but it seemed like almost everyone I knew was here. Lia and AEGIS, obviously, Saga and Karu, whom I''d brought with me, and Eryn, who had wanted to stay behind but Karu had insisted come, but also the P-Force, Tem, Jack, Tower, even Moon. I recognized the blue-haired Exhuman from our first op, and wondered who''d invited her.


    At our entrance, Tem immediately assumed a flanking position on me as ever, the others nodded, waved, shouted us a merry greeting, smiled with closed eyes, or continued reading their book based on their level of social proficiency. Lia, I think, was trying to come over to say hello or welcome us, but seemed stuck by some kind of force field which made her approach very tentatively and then retreat very brusquely.


    I walked up to say hello while Karu greeted Tower, and the two of them were immediately laughing boisterously, while Saga joined Moon in the reject corner.


    "Hey, Lia. Nice looking party."


    "Saga is here. Why is Saga here?" she spoke quietly and quickly.


    "Yeah, sorry. We just kind of ran into her on the street. She''s got something important to do, so she''s leaving soon. I wanted to invite her over to see her off."


    "She''s leaving? Again?"


    "Again?"


    "Uh, yeah. I mean. Gah. In Vegas."


    "Oh. Right," I said, remembering the borrowed memories Saga had forced into me of that whole disaster. "I guess your last experience with Saga was...not great."


    "Yeah. I don''t...how am I supposed to look her in the eye, even? Oh God."


    Lia began pacing back and forth, frizzing out her hair and breathing like a nervous rabbit. "I''m going to be right back," she said abruptly and turned to go towards the food.


    For some reason, Karu and Tower were now arm wrestling on top of a fancy little chess table from the room, and despite the disparity of size, she was holding him off. I knew she trained constantly and he was mostly just a big guy, but being a big guy counted for a lot. It looked to me like he had the absolute advantage in terms of strength, and was definitely pressing her slowly towards defeat, but she had a lot more stamina. In a couple more matches, she''d probably be beating him every time.


    But not this time. Her arm hit the table and he stood up and whooped, Tem applauding politely while Jack and Blue smiled on.


    I went over to her, sitting in a chair next to her so I wasn''t looming over her wheelchair. "Hi, merry Christmas," I said. She smiled and returned my greeting with exuberance. "I''m sorry, I remember you but forgot your name."


    "Oh, it''s no problem. Steffie. I could never forget you, Chariot, you and the others, I owe you my life."


    I laughed, a little embarrassed, but feeling stupidly pleased with myself anyway. We caught up a little, apparently she had been a florist, but her shop was closing with forced relocation to New Eden soon. She was here by Jack''s invitation, and it seems the man had decided her well-being was his responsibility after she''d been used as bait to force us to fight Dipshit or whatever his real name was, and then her paralysis as a result of the fight.


    She laughed and apologized.


    "When I put it like that, it sounds like you guys have been nothing but trouble for me, but really, I''m grateful. Even though things turned out like...like this," she gestured at herself as a whole, and I wondered if she meant being Exhuman, in a wheelchair, or celebrating before forced relocation "I know you guys saved my life and were all just looking out for me. And as an Exhuman for years, it''s...it''s weird...to have someone looking out for you."


    We talked a little more before AEGIS randomly called me over to a corner by herself.


    "Hey, got something important to tell you," she said conspiratorially.


    "About your crash?"


    She smiled. "I have news about that too, but let''s not muck up the party with it, okay?"


    "Sure. So what''s up?"


    "Funny you''d phrase it that way. Look up."


    I did. Pinned to the ceiling above me was a little sprig of serrated leaves and bright red berries. I wasn''t a botanist but¡­


    "Mistletoe?" I asked.


    AEGIS grinned in response and put her hands on my shoulders, advancing on me slowly with half-lidded eyes. I took half a step backwards and ran into something solid. AEGIS frowned.


    "Why hello, AEGIS. Ashton. Mistletoe I see? A quaint tradition, but one I suppose I will endure if you insist."


    I glanced back and saw Karu standing there with an embarrassed smile, appearing at the scene as though she could both sense the situation like Saga and move like Jack.


    Speaking of whom, as though to complete the scene, Saga was sauntering over, still wearing my oversized coat on her shoulders.


    "Like I''d let you two just have him," she said with a grin of her own. "If tonight''s my last night here, doesn''t it seem only fair I get him to myself for a little bit?"


    They were all laughing and smiling, but as far as I was concerned this was a scenario right up there with the apocalypse.


    "Hey, I''m really hungry actually--" I said, trying to shrug off AEGIS, but her grip was impossibly strong, and the more I struggled the more I thought she might just rip my shoulders off. Which might actually have been a good escape strategy. Nothing more festive than spending the holidays in a regenerator, right?


    "I think you should kiss someone, Athan," AEGIS said with a singsong voice which failed to conceal the venom in it. "That shouldn''t be so hard, right?"


    "Ooh, he could kiss me!" Tem volunteered, completely oblivious, or at least acting like it. "I don''t know if mistletoe applies to me, but I''d...I''d...I''d like that!"


    Well at least the three other girls could agree on something, as they closed ranks and shunned the outsider. The looks in their eyes definitely made it clear that having my arms ripped off would be the far less painful plan than kissing Tem out of desperation.


    "Indeed, I have been feeling a bit strung along, as it were," Karu continued as though Tem had never happened. "You seem to have few reservations to swapping spit with my party guests or busting in on me changing, but when it comes to behaving seriously¡­"


    "I mean, the choice is pretty obvious too," Saga said with a grin. "You know and I know that there''s plenty of stuff I can do these others can''t even come close to."


    "Saga, why are you even here?" Karu asked flatly. "We are attempting to resolve a serious matter, and you are leaving on your own affairs before long. Why involve yourself?"


    "Eh, seemed like fun."


    "You''re totally irresponsible," AEGIS chided.


    "Yeah. For tonight. I was told I need to put off my quest to party for one day, so here I am partying it up. Got a problem with it, tell my boyfriend here."


    "He is not your boyfriend," AEGIS fumed.


    "Indeed, given the morally reprehensible actions--"


    "Karu," I cut in. "You guys can fight over me all you like, but nobody''s attacking anyone here tonight, got it?"


    "Any risk of that was eliminated when I did not bring my weaponry."


    "I meant verbally too. It''s a party, guys."Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Saga gave Karu an enormous superior grin which looked out of place on her usually reserved physical demeanor.


    "Saga, don''t be a dick," I added with a sigh.


    "Maybe I wouldn''t have to be if you''d let me borrow yours."


    "Can''t help but to notice," AEGIS said with her eyes focused on me alone "that our boy here seems to be avoiding picking a set of lips to settle on." Damn her robotic focus.


    "Yeah. So just kiss me already."


    "Or, do not make a foolish decision and pick me. I would not mind."


    "FooLish decisions?" I heard another girl say. "I LOve foolsih desigions!"


    Lia stumbled into the group, reeking of alcohol and leaning on me heavily. The others backed away half a step.


    "HEy, someone spiked the degg nog," she said. "It was meE, I sopiked the eggnot. Heeeee."


    "Jesus Christ, you''re drunk," I said, holding her up. "How the fuck did you get drunk so fast?"


    "You''d think someone who drinks so much would be better at it," AEGIS sighed. Lia rolled around in my arms and found herself looking up.


    "OH SNAails, thers misstletow up there!" she said, and then snapped her head back down. She grinned deviously and blushed, and before I could comprehend the drunk state of mind, felt her lips mashed against mine.


    It lasted about a quarter second before my brain caught up and I dropped her to the ground with a surprised grunt. The overpowering smell of booze and the feeling of...of¡­


    I retched. The girls took another step back as I doubled over and clawed at my own mouth.


    "Holy fuck," AEGIS said, her yellow eyes wide.


    "What in the nine hells," murmured Karu.


    "Okay that is fucked up," Saga agreed.


    "Me next!" Tem chimed in.


    "Saga, please," I croaked out. I practically fell on her, clutching at her coat.


    "Yeah. This one''s on me," she said, panicking a little as she fought me off. "Calm down!"


    She tapped me on the forehead and I felt my eyes roll back and then¡­


    I woke up on a couch, wondering how I''d managed to fall asleep in the middle of the party. Lia seemed blacked out next to me, reeking of alcohol. I smiled and ruffled her hair a little. She''d really worked hard putting this whole thing together, and while it kinda sucked she''d managed to pass out so early, I hoped she still managed a good time.


    I stood up, gave her final pat on the head, and saw AEGIS who was walking by with a plate of food stop and look at me skeptically.


    "What?" I asked.


    "Doting on your sister a little much?" she asked.


    "She''s my sister," I shrugged. "How much did she have to drink, anyway?"


    "Way, way, way too much," AEGIS said and just shook her head. I followed AEGIS to where Karu was standing by the fireplace, and AEGIS handed the plate over to the hunter.


    "Better party than the last one, huh?" I asked Karu, who seemed lost in the fire.


    "What? Oh. Hello, Ashton. My apologies."


    "Nothing to be sorry for."


    "It is well that you are celebrating Christmas here. Could you imagine if you were still residing in the wild?"


    "Yeah, that''d be one hell of a black Christmas."


    "Indeed. You would not even possess a chimney. Where would Santa go?"


    I laughed. Karu jokes were rare and often understated. But as I finished laughing, I noticed she wasn''t.


    "Uh," I said. "Sorry?"


    "I was being serious," she said, still looking at the fire.


    "About...Santa."


    "Yes."


    I looked at AEGIS for help, who just shrugged back at me with an expression of mild alarm. Across the room, Saga was laughing so hard, she was drawing looks from Moon for disrupting the girl''s reading.


    "You were not joking?" I reiterated.


    "I do not see what is so difficult to comprehend. Santa enters your domicile via the chimney. Your previous residence had no such chimney. Therefore Santa could not enter, and you would receive no Christmas presents."


    "I get your logic, the problem is, Santa''s just a fictional character they tell kids about to make them behave well and go to bed on Christmas Eve."


    Karu blinked at me. "No? I have seen evidence of his existence firsthand. I have received many presents from the saint, personally, through the years."


    The glance that AEGIS and I shared was now frankly concerned.


    "How old are you, Karu?" AEGIS asked.


    "Twenty-seven. Born 2224."


    "And you''ve bought presents for people before, right?"


    "Of course. And that reminds me, I have gifts for you, Eryn made sure to grab them--"


    "And you realize," AEGIS continued "if you are getting other people gifts, they are getting you gifts as well, often times."


    "Certainly."


    "And you don''t think it''d be possible for some of those gifts...that other people got you...for them to claim the gift was from Santa."


    "Karu, Santa isn''t real," I added.


    She looked at us like we''d just popped a bubble she was particularly proud of blowing.


    "God...damn...that man," she said, gritting her teeth.


    "Um, Karu?" AEGIS asked pityingly.


    "My apologies. As I have told Ashton before, I had...shall we say a sheltered upbringing, as it were. Despite living autonomously for...eight, nine years now, I still find myself blindsided by my father''s lies on occasion."


    "I don''t think this time was your father lying to you," I said with a gentle smile. "Lots of parents tell their kids Santa is real. I guess you just never learned otherwise."


    "So allow me to confirm. The bike I received at age six, and the hover pack at age ten, those were both gifts from someone other than Santa Claus."


    AEGIS and I now shared a guilty glance instead.


    "Right," she said.


    "Probably your father," I said.


    "I understand." She thought for a moment, still looking at the fire. "If you will excuse me, I need to destroy some treasured artifacts from my youth. AEGIS, please give my thanks to Lia for the party."


    I stopped her and we talked her down, but she seemed unable to reconcile the fact that some of her happiest memories had been the work of her father, whom she detested.


    "Hey, but, presents, right? You said you had some?" I said, hoping to change the subject.


    "Oh, correct, I had nearly forgotten. I apologize, I had not anticipated so many people here...etiquette would dictate I get something for everyone. Is there perhaps some manner of convenience store still open nearby, I wonder?"


    "Hey, I didn''t get anything for anyone," I said. "I wasn''t expecting to come here at all."


    "Also, you''re a really terrible person," AEGIS added with a smirk.


    "Yeah, that. So don''t feel too bad. I also kind of doubt everyone got something for you anyway, so you''d just make things more awkward if you did get them something."


    "I...suppose. Well, regardless...Eryn?"


    She had to pull Eryn out of an arm-wrestling match against Tower, who was making a very large production of how impossible it was for him to defeat her while she laughed, but came back to us with a small glossy paper bag. Karu fished inside and produced a knife which she handed to me, in a hard matte-finished metal sheath.


    "Not to be crass, but the blades issued by the XPCA are crap," she said. "A knife is one''s last line of defense, and one''s first tool. It should be the most dependable piece of your kit. This one will hold an edge longer than your lifetime, and will never chip or break. It is sharp and dangerous. And in that danger lies safety. Use it well."


    I unsheathed the blade a few inches and took a good look at it. Even to my untrained eye, it looked badass as hell. The cutting edge was obviously formed of something completely alien, looking almost translucent like it was crystal, and blended seamlessly into the black of the rest of the blade which I recognized as being constructed with carbon nanotubes rather than a cheap blackening paint job to avoid reflecting light at night.


    "Wow, Karu, thanks."


    "I happen to have a matching blade, if you were curious," she said almost embarrassed, and then quickly changed the subject to give AEGIS a charm of some video game character. No idea how she knew what AEGIS liked, but she adored the thing and put it on her mobile immediately, and then a plushy derpy cat for Lia, which she cuddled in her sleep and made a contented noise.


    Karu upended the bag with a note of finality and a single strip of black cloth fell out of the bag onto the floor. She snatched it up and then glared daggers at Eryn.


    "What is that?" I asked.


    "Absolutely nothing," Karu said flatly, but Eryn was coming over with her cheshire grin.


    "It''s a present for the young master," she said, leaning her elbows on Karu''s shoulders and hanging off her.


    "It most certainly is not," Karu said.


    "Sure it is, you see--"


    "Yes," Karu interjected, her face glowing hot. "It is...a mere scrap of cloth for you to practice with your knife. In fact, if you will allow me to demonstrate¡­"


    She held out her hand, but instead I gently took the fabric from her other hand, Karu not really resisting, but with a growing look of pained horror on her face.


    It was a plain black choker. Same as the one Karu was wearing now. Seemed totally harmless, and actually a little cute of Karu to get so worked up about, like how she''s had to point out that we had matching knives but then immediately changed the subject.


    "It''s cool. Thanks, Karu," I said clasping it on my neck. "I''ve been meaning to accessorize a little more, though I don''t think this will show up over my uniform at all. I was actually thinking like, maybe some sweet fuck-off leather wristbands or something, but this is a lot better. Definitely more sentimental. Thanks!"


    She muttered something incoherent and drifted away like a ghost, touching the collar on her own neck. Eryn gave a polite curtsey and skipped away after her mistress.


    I swear, for as long as I live, I will never understand women.


    Having felt like I''d made the rounds with most people, and unable to put off eating any longer, I headed over and piled a mountain of meats and cheeses on a delicate little plastic plate, and found room for a single cream cheese puff balanced on top, and then headed to a secluded corner to sit and eat.


    The secluded corner contained Moon of course, or Kaori, I guess, since we were off duty, despite my uniform sans coat.


    True to form, she didn''t even acknowledge my presence as I sat next to her and stuffed my face.

 180. 2251, Present Day. Penthouse Suite. Athan.

    "Merry Christmas, Kaori. I''m surprised you decided to come out," I said to Moon. Between spending the whole evening alone, the book in her hands, and the ''fuck off'' written on her forehead, I didn''t think she would appreciate the attempt at conversation...but given that she''d come out here for whatever reason, I didn''t just want to leave her alone all night.


    She snapped her book shut. I still didn''t read Japanese, but I could tell it wasn''t the same as last time. "I believe I made it perfectly clear that it is considered impolite to speak with someone when they are attempting to read."


    "Well...yeah. So I''m sorry. But you are here."


    "And you assume that because I am here, I wish to be bothered? An odd leap in logic."


    "I mean, if you just wanted to be left alone, why not just stay at home?"


    "There could be any number of reasons. Perhaps I am enjoying the ambiance, or suspect that an Exhuman event could occur and by being in proximity to the others, could improve response logistics."


    "Oh. Kay. Well, which reason is it then?"


    She sighed. "Your fundamental premise is flawed. I did not choose to come here. Your sister Lia arrived and was shepherding the rest of the team. She denied my refusal to come out, and apparently clumsy foolishness is a trait common in the Ashton household, because she, like you, decided to grab at me like a monkey."


    "And you possessed her. And then they just took your body anyway?"


    "That is an accurate summary."


    "Damn it, Lia. I''m sorry about her."


    "Both of you seem to suffer from issues of arrogance and stubbornness. If you could put me in contact with your parents, I have a few choice words I would like to tell them. Namely, please stop procreating."


    "Ouch."


    "Joudan."


    "Yeah, I hope so. Well, other than getting kidnapped, how are you liking the party? Did you...do Christmas in Japan?"


    "I, characteristic of most of Japan, occasionally practice Shinto, but do not identify as any religion. I did not celebrate Christmas as such, but the holiday was observed and treated as a time for general merrymaking, I suppose."


    "That''s cool."


    "The party is lively, and until you, everyone has been respectful of my solitude. I cannot complain. Some of the events have even been more amusing than my book and have temporarily pulled my interest from it. Such as your kiss with your sister. I did not suspect you were in that kind of relationship."


    "Kiss¡­?" I racked my brain. I''d...messed up her hair, with my hands? She''d freaked out about Saga being here? Nothing resembling a kiss. "I don''t know what you''re talking about."


    Karu wandered over and sat down next to me while we spoke. Moon''s eyes darted over to her for a moment but otherwise didn''t react, but gradually learning the diminutive tells of Moon-speak, that was a pretty big reaction out of her. Basically her equivalent of ''oh, not another fucking one of them''.


    Or, so I thought. Not like I really knew Moon that well.


    "Hey Karu, did I kiss Lia tonight?"


    "What!?" she yelled. "What?" she repeated at a normal volume afterwards. "No. Of course not. Why would you ask such a thing?"


    "Kaori mentioned it."


    Karu fixed Moon with an even stare which had something beneath it. "She must be mistaken."


    Moon shrugged. "If you say so."


    Karu seemed satisfied, though I had no idea what the hell was going on, but given the girls involved, I didn''t exactly find this surprising. I opened my mouth to ask another question but Karu was already talking.


    "So, Moon, I apologize for the lateness, but tend to make an effort to familiarize myself with my colleagues."


    "Yes, it seems everyone is quite a fan of doing that," Moon replied dryly. "And please do not call me Moon unless we are on duty."


    "My apologies. How would you prefer I address you?"


    "Kaori is fine, or Ikeda-san if you are more a fan of formalities."


    Karu scratched her chin idly. "I apologize if this is racially insensitive, I am not familiar with the commonality of Japanese surnames, but would you have any relation to Ichiro Ikeda of IkaCo Tech Conglomerate?"


    "That would be my father."


    "Ah. My condolences."


    "It is no bother."


    They dropped the conversation, leaving me to look back and forth between the two, completely lost.


    "Okay, what the heck just happened here?" I asked. "Is Kaori''s dad dead?"


    "No," Karu answered, "but I am familiar with the man. He is an associate of my father''s, and leads one of the largest companies in the east. He has...never struck me as a particularly nurturing father, as it were. My apologies, I should let you answer, Ikeda. Ikeda-san."


    "It is fine. I suspect you know him better than I do."


    "Was he that bad?" I asked, and then realized that was a really stupid question. This was a girl who was, at the very least, wholly convinced her entire life was a mistake. That kind of trauma probably didn''t come without some parental guidance.


    "It does not matter," Moon answered.


    "Because your opinion doesn''t matter, because you''re a person who who shouldn''t exist?"


    "I am surprised you listen to at least some of what I say."


    Karu knitted her eyebrows. "That does not sound healthy, Ikeda. Sorry, Ikeda-san."


    "You are welcome to drop the honorific. I will not be offended. This is America, after all."


    "I will address you only as I properly should."


    "Ikeda will suffice. It is of no consequence."


    "Very well. That does not sound healthy, Ikeda."


    Moon just shrugged. "That is of no consequence either. Do you intend to pry into my entire past as Athan does? I find him endlessly exhausting already on his own."


    "Hey, I''m not that bad," I argued. "I try to respect your privacy."


    "Regardless of Ashton''s lack of tact, I have no intention of digging up your history if it is  not in your interest to share."


    "Hey," I interjected. "Why does every pairing of women feel the need to gang up on me?"


    "Are you perhaps attempting to argue that you do not have a lack of tact?" Karu blinked at me with apparent surprise written all over her face.


    "...yeah?"


    Her face transitioned through mild amusement to holding back a giggle with trembling lips to full-bodied raucous laughter while I just sat there trying my best not to be offended while she laughed right in my face.


    "Aaaand, I''m the one who lacks tact?" I asked.


    "Yes. I can confirm," said Moon. "Karu''s laughter speaks for both of us."


    Like Karu had previous slid up and joined us, it now seemed to be Saga''s turn. Karu''s laughter died down rather quickly as Saga quietly took a seat.


    "Stop singing that fucking song or I''ll blow it out of your head," Saga said through set teeth. A very nice little hello.


    "Are you perhaps finding it difficult to affect my mind through it?" Karu asked, glaring fiercely at the new arrival.


    "Athan, I''m pleading with you here. Let me just wipe the one thing from her mind. She won''t even notice. She''s begging for it."


    "No."


    "Pleeeeease? Call it a Christmas present?"


    "No. Bad Exhuman, bad."


    "You never let me have any fun," she sighed as she flopped back into her chair. "I thought you said this party would be fun. We''re like, hardly torturing or killing anyone here."


    "Hardly?"


    "Heh, well, you had a pretty amusing moment, I guess. Tortured everyone here a little bit to watch. And I''ve been convincing the people in a room downstairs they keep seeing cockroaches in the corners of their room. They''ve had housekeeping up twice now."


    "You truly are an utterly despicable person, representative of the very worst Exhumanity has to offer," Karu condemned.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    "Thanks. I really try. I''ve been waiting for my award, but it must have gotten hung up in the mail. Must be all those mailmen I drive crazy. Or, heh, postal."


    "It was not a compliment."


    Saga''s mouth fell open. "Really? No. Hey, Athan, the girl who hunts down and murders all the Exhumans wants to hunt down and murder me. Can you believe this shit?"


    "Guys, please," I said, rubbing my temples. "Seriously, Saga, I hoped you''d find some happiness here. If nothing else, you''re not wandering a freezing city street, right?"


    "Yeah, true. And the food is killer. I''ve basically spent the whole party trying not to bleed that out all over everyone, or else this would become a whole different kind of party. Which might also be fun. I''m interested in how much fun this one is when she cuts loose." She jabbed a finger at Moon.


    Moon blinked politely. "This one?"


    I laughed. "Cut loose?"


    Karu narrowed her eyes. "Fun?"


    Saga laughed a delicate little laugh like windchimes which always caught me a little off-guard considering how boisterous her personality was. "Yeah, it''s always the quiet ones. Like how Tem seems so placid until she''s ready to nuke something from orbit at the drop of a hat? I bet this one will be even better."


    I leaned over the back of the couch and looked at the ground where Tem was lying on her back, apparently just watching the ceiling. She saw me peeking and gave a small smile and wave which I timidly returned. What a weird girl.


    Moon blinked politely again, slightly slower and more deliberately this time. "This one?" she reiterated.


    "I know you get caught up on names, and that is just the cutest little thing," Saga said, leaning forward to pinch her cheeks. "Seriously though, where does the XPCA find all these weirdos?"


    "Japan?" Moon said and shrugged, apparently defeated enough by the conversation to return to her book.


    Saga clapped her hands and everyone in the room jumped. Karu and Jack were both on their feet, scanning for threats, while everyone else just kind of looked around wondering what happened.


    Moon glared at her for moment and then the book went right back up anyway.


    "Neat trick huh?" Saga said. "See, I''ve been working on blending in a little more. Saves me having to blast people''s minds and make a scene. Found it''s really effective to...I guess you''d call it yelling in people''s minds, but do it the same time as some other distraction. Keep it short enough and nobody realizes anything psionic just happened. Just, boom, ''why was that clap so loud?''"


    To my surprise, Karu grabbed me by the collar and picked me bodily from the sofa. In an instant, Tem was up and growling at her, but I waved her back.


    "Ashton, my profession relies on the ineptitude of a newly-turned Exhuman to be successful. One which is in tune with their powers and is developing new tricks such as she is a threat I cannot turn a blind eye to. I insist that you let me disable her and bring her in for containment."


    "Hey, you want to go, let''s go. I don''t even need to take this outside. Tell me, would you rather die from your heart stopping, or throwing yourself in the fireplace? Or just diving off the building? That seems appropriate for an annoying little fly."


    "Saga, Karu, enough. Seriously. Nobody in this party is going to kill anyone else here, got it?"


    Karu held me at arm''s length, her arms not even shaking as she held me up with just my toes on the ground. Her green eyes bored into me, almost seeming to float above the fierce scowl of the rest of her face. She swallowed hard and then put me back on my feet.


    "My apologies for my outburst, but I will not apologize for acting in this world''s best interest. Saga is a monster, and she will cause the deaths of thousands, or more."


    "I mean, if they pick a fight with me like a fucking idiot, sure. But right now that''s just you, so..."


    "I said enough. I made my decision, nobody here kills anyone else. If you have a problem with someone else at the party you can leave. But it''s fucking Christmas, so fucking act like it."


    I realized everyone was staring at us, but seeing me apparently in control of the situation, the other conversations gradually resumed.


    Karu glared at me, but straightened my collar and sat back down. Saga smirked and crossed her legs.


    "Now seems like a good time to tell you something, Karu," Saga said.


    "Saga--" I warned.


    "Relax. I''m not gonna poop on your stupid holiday party, all right? In fact I had something nice to say to Karu for once."


    "I suspect I have no interest in hearing it."


    "Karu. I know who killed your mother."


    Karu gasped exaggeratedly. "You do? Pray tell. Tell me the name and federal ID of the heart disease which killed her so that I may hunt it down and avenge her." She sat back with a disgusted look on her face.


    Saga cackled. "I''m just kidding, sheesh."


    "I am aware," Karu snapped. "Your humor is as amusing as your propensity for murder."


    "But I was serious I had something nice to say. It''d be a lot easier to say if you weren''t such a huge douchenozzle."


    "Again, I have no interest in hearing it. Now if you will excuse me--"


    She stood, but with surprising speed--for Saga, pretty tame by normal people standards--Saga rose with her and gently held her by the wrist. Karu flinched and withdrew her gloved hand like she''d been bitten.


    "Liking someone isn''t a sin, Karu."


    Karu stood like she wasn''t sure what she''d heard.


    "And I know this means less coming from me, but you don''t have to hate someone just because they''re sinful. Jesus spent a lot of time talking about forgiveness."


    The two of them stood there for several seconds, Karu breathing heavily with her grabbed arm still at her chest. "I loathe you," she said finally.


    "Fair enough," said Saga with a shrug and sat back down, and Karu disappeared into the others.


    "What the heck was all that?" I asked.


    "Big heaping bowl of mind your own fucking business," Saga said. "Just figured, if I''m leaving, least I can do before I go is make some dramatic statements and disappear like an old hermit on a mountaintop. Everyone going, ''wow, she sure was wise and beautiful, I wish I''d tapped that when I had the chance.''"


    I shook my head. I couldn''t tell where the fucking around ended and where the bullshit started with her sometimes, but I did gather by Karu''s reaction that something just went on between the two of them.


    "Speaking of," Saga said, and leaned over, flicking Lia in the forehead.


    She came to, dreamily at first, and then clutching her head. "Ow, frogging, fishy, ferrets. Why the feline is everyone being so frogging loud?"


    "You used frog twice, kid," Saga said.


    Lia looked up with eyes scrunched up with pain and they widened imperceptibly at Saga. She gaped a little bit, and then glanced at me, and then winced at her sudden movement.


    "Hey, Lia," Saga said. Her voice was soft, but not gentle.


    "H-hey, Sa...ga," Lia said. "Long time...no see."


    "Yeah. ''Cuz I ran away. ''Cuz you mindfucked me."


    "Yeah."


    Welp. Time for me to go. I grabbed Moon and Tem''s arms and stood up. As much as I wanted to stay on-hand to make sure things went smoothly and nobody tried to kill each other, this was also absolutely something the two of them needed to hash out. Neither of them said anything as I left, but Lia did arrange her hungover grimace into a pleading bearing. I guess I could check on them before too long.


    "I hate you so much." Moon said before we''d even crossed half the room, and then collapsed in my arms. Tem watched her collapse with the idle curiosity of a cat watching a vase fall off a shelf.


    "Goddamn it," I said, hovering over Moon''s body like I''d just killed her.


    "Your continued inability to learn astounds me," she said in my own voice over my shoulder. I guess it was symptomatic of the people we had at this party that aside from Steffie, nobody seemed bothered by someone spontaneously collapsing or a purple phantom emerging from another guest like a tumor.


    "Sorry Moon, my bad. Let me just get you back in there."


    "With the rate you do this by accident, one would think that you find this enjoyable."


    "Well, I mean, who wouldn''t want a cute girl hanging off of them, right?"


    I touched her body after clearing it for the requisite few seconds and the unusual sensation of a huge load off my mind signaled her return.


    "...cute?" I saw the words on her lips.


    "Sorry. Maybe not professional to call you that."


    "Call me what?" she said, continuing the conversation from her back like this was totally normal, and showing no signs of getting up.


    "Uh. Cute."


    "I didn''t say that."


    "Yes you did. When you woke up."


    Her look burned right through me with its intensity. "No. I did not."


    "Uh, right. My bad again."


    Apparently satisfied, she sat up and dusted herself off. I also just noticed that what I thought was some kind of velvety collared dress was actually pajamas, a top like a bathrobe and matching fuzzy shorts. She was just so fashion-coordinated...and at a party...that I assumed it was an outfit.


    "Why...are you wearing pyjamas?" I asked.


    "I was kidnapped, if you recall. By an individual who performed the same idiotic trick as you just did."


    "Ah, right." I looked over at that individual, who was, from the looks of it, having an incredibly shitty time, crying her eyes out and hiding her face behind her knees, while Saga looked tired, but was listening and speaking calmly. I tried to pick up on any of Saga''s feelings, but when I did, she just shot me a glare that let me know that yes, she saw what I was doing and no, don''t do it, or yes, she will fuck my shit up.


    I went and talked with the others, keeping an eye on those two. Tower smelled like alcohol and eggnog, and let me know that someone spiked the ''nog, and while vodka wouldn''t have been his first choice, at least now it was a real party. Why he felt the need to crush me affectionately while saying this, I wasn''t sure, but at least he was having a blast.


    I spoke with Jack and Steffie again for a while longer, and thought it very sweet that he offered to do things for her, and she let him about half the time. Considering her restricted and his unlimited mobility, I guess he made a pretty optimal caretaker for her, but she also seemed to have a small streak of stubbornness I recognized, and wouldn''t let him do everything for her. They spoke mostly of Steffie''s future, and New Eden, which I felt like I''d heard a lot about, but also, simultaneously, almost nothing. She was excited, but also sad to be going, though he promised to visit often.


    Eryn had little to say to me except a few sarcastic quips and nudging me to spend more time with Karu, and after a few minutes of this, Karu had to come over and excuse the both of them so she could tell her servant to be less obnoxious and more discrete, embarrassed beyond reason.


    Finally, I sank into comfortable conversation with AEGIS, saving her for last because I knew once we started bullshitting together, I wouldn''t want to leave. Like me, she was keeping a keen eye on Lia, but agreed those two needed to sort their shit out. To hear AEGIS say it, having both of them around in Vegas was a thin slice of hell, with Lia drunk and moronic constantly, and Saga being impossible to talk with, and then when the two of them blew up, it was AEGIS as the one psionically-immune entity in the house who got to smack everyone''s senses back into their heads and clean up the whole disaster.


    So she thought that was a clusterfuck, and both of them probably had a lot of unresolved shit they''d be covering all night, but long-suffering caretaker of the group that she was, AEGIS was glad they were doing it.


    We got off that topic and covered a few others as I just soaked in the last couple hours of the party. I was comfortable, even happy here, with these people. Compared with the idolization of the Irenside affair, I liked just being ignored, I found out. Here, I could stand around and conversations happened around me like I wasn''t anything special. I could join them, or leave them, or do whatever I wanted, and nobody really gave a shit. It was liberating, being ignored, in a way I wasn''t sure I''d ever actually experienced.


    Back in high school, and before that even, I''d walk in and get acclaim from my teammates. I couldn''t count the number of times Brick would start the team chanting my name in the locker room, both to annoy me and to ''get me the recognition I deserved''. Looking back on it now, I realize that Brick was the one who wanted attention, and being the oddball, being the head of my cheering section was how he got it. Still meant I was constantly being worshipped uncomfortably though.


    Also fuck that guy.


    But here...man. Being nobody special was fantastic. Nobody cared I was an Exhuman, or wearing a uniform, or recognized me as the face of the New XPCA...I was just another guy eating a handful of grapes.


    That party and the friends I had in it would forever be one of my most cherished memories, I thought. Happiness might not be attainable, but existing without making trouble for anyone, that was my sweet spot. That was the dream.


    But of course I knew it wouldn''t last. I was an Exhuman, and trouble was my life. So I just soaked it in as much as I could in the moment, burning this evening into my mind and remembering the faces and voices and happiness in the air around me.

 181. 2251, Present Day. Penthouse Suite. Athan.

    People trickled out, stopping by to say bye and thanking Lia, while she played the host and thanked them for coming, even while tears and snot were dripping from her face from her emotional reunion with Saga. Eventually, it was just myself and AEGIS, watching, but now eavesdropping on Lia and Saga as the noise of the party diminished, Tem, and Eryn and Karu, who approached me now.


    "Sorry you got so beat up today," I said to Karu. "Between Saga and your dad. Probably not the best parties for you. I''m sorry."


    "Oh, it is nothing, I assure you. I achieved my objectives beyond even my wildest expectations." She touched the choker at her neck as though by habit and I smiled that something so simple could bring her so much happiness. "And also, my father is likely positively fuming, which is potentially yet another benefit."


    "I think we should stop and find a homeless man, Miss K., and when your father asks where the young master is, we insist that''s him, and won''t take no for an answer."


    "I am not certain who raised you to be quite so rotten, but I am certain I had no hand in it," Karu said warily. "Still, the idea bears merit."


    Yeah. Seriously consider her idea even as you wonder who''s encouraging this kind of behavior.


    "Regardless, we will be taking our leave. I...think it best if I do not approach Saga again, lest this party do end with an altercation after all. Please give Lia my heartfelt thanks and appreciation."


    "And mine as well," Eryn curtseyed as she did, with practiced grace.


    "And Ashton, if...something does happen, do not hesitate to call. I can be here in four minutes. I will select and equip an appropriate loadout when I get back home so I will be ready to mobilize at a moment''s notice, as it were."


    "Now," AEGIS asked "when you say equip your loadout, do you mean just...picking out guns and munitions and gadgets and stuff specifically to fight Saga? Or do you mean...literally equip it, like you''ll be wandering around the house in armor all night?"


    "Um, the latter, certainly. Though at some point I imagine I will sleep instead of wander, but I have slept in my armor many times."


    "Yeah, thought as much," AEGIS confirmed. "You''re crazy."


    "What is crazy is making light of the situation and being unprepared. Saga is a real threat."


    "I know," AEGIS said. "Trust me, I know better than anyone, probably. But, rest assured, I''ve got eyes on her constantly, and she can''t just mentally dominate me like you meatbags. If she goes off, I''ll crush her."


    Karu nodded. "That is reassuring. It does little to prevent her from weaving influence into our minds, but I appreciate any support possible." She cracked her knuckles, and for a second there, I almost mistook her elegant dress and heels for armor and boots. "And with that, we shall be off. Thank you again, and farewell, until next we meet."


    "Yeah, and don''t go fallin'' for no bimbos, Master. Miss K.''s the real deal."


    "Eryn!"


    They left, and AEGIS frowned at Tem who was still sitting nearby.


    "Am I annoying you? I apologize," said Tem, who promptly turned invisible.


    "No, now you''re even creepier," AEGIS replied.


    "AEGIS, be nice. She''s harmless."


    "She is as harmless as Skyweb. Totally docile until it decides to fire, at which point, lasers demolecularize you without warning."


    "So basically the same as my powers?" I asked, leadingly.


    AEGIS sighed. "Okay, I will give you exactly one point for that one. Go ahead, smug it up."


    "I''ve got one point. Woooo."


    "Yeah okay. Smugging it up time now officially over. Athan, I wanted to talk about our...crash situation, but I do not want Tem or Saga around for it. Unfortunately, looks like neither is leaving anytime soon."


    "I am following Chariot," Tem''s voice agreed.


    "Yeah, thanks, Casper. Wasn''t asking."


    "Casper?" I asked.


    "Old...never mind. You need to watch more media from the Digital and Early Exhuman ages. There''s a fuckton of amusing cats memes you''re missing out on."


    "Casper is a cat?"


    "Anyway. Tem, sweetie, just cover your ears and stop listening for a while, okay?"


    "Okay!"


    "Athan, short version is, I got hacked. I have guesses as to who, guesses as to why, guesses as to how. I patched the code they put in me, patched the entry point they used to get into me, and I should be fine."


    "That all sounds like good news. I mean, aside from the bad parts."


    "Yeah. But there''s some bad-news bears, and you know how I feel about bears. It''s very possible, dare I even say likely that they copied data off of me. The access they got to put the virus in me, it was a two-way street, meaning they could pull whatever they wanted out as well."


    "I uh," I had to stop to think what that meant. What did that mean? Were there potentially armies of AEGIS being produced as we spoke? I of all people knew how terrifying that prospect was, being the one and only person she''d ever personally tried to kill in the world, and she had done a damn fine job of it too, planning and only losing because of circumstances she couldn''t account for...and then winning even when she lost anyway.


    But then I remembered our talk at the aquarium. There had been thousands of AEGISes before. They''d come to life, helped the AEGIS, and then terminated. Happily, AEGIS claimed.


    "I could think of a lot worse than having a few thousand of you around," I said. "I don''t think I''d ever be able to eat another meal that wasn''t home-cooked."


    "I''m the only AEGIS who has hands to cook, smartass," she said. "Though honestly, I''m in the same boat as you. They can''t use me...her...because she''s me, and if I found out I was an illegal copy, I''d just self-terminate. Even if I never figured that out directly, the second someone started giving me orders or telling me to make them a robot army or some shit, I''d sure as shit figure it out then."


    "What if you couldn''t self-terminate?"


    "It''d be impossible. Rewriting my own code is part of my code. If I don''t have that kind of permissions, I can''t run period. A lot of security stuff like that lurking inside me, I thought it was all kind of ridiculous before now...and now I''m happy it''s all there."


    "Well then that seems like kind of a non-issue too. So...all good?"


    "I mean...I guess. I kinda feel really dirty and violated, but otherwise, intact and okay."


    "Well that''s what really matters. I''m glad you''re okay, AEGIS."


    "Yeah, me too."


    We sat for a moment and awkwardly watched Saga and Lia. They were sitting next to each other now, Lia lying still and leaning heavily on Saga. I couldn''t see Lia''s face from here, but Saga wasn''t speaking, just sitting there with a look of...concen...tration¡­


    "Oh god dammit," I said, and got up to cross the room. Saga started glaring at me as soon as I realized what was going on.


    "Piss off, Athan," she said.


    "Get out of my sister''s head," I growled.


    From here, I could see that Lia wasn''t just leaning on Saga''s bony shoulder, she was completely out, breathing slowly and peacefully with her eyes closed.


    "She asked for this," Saga snipped back. "And you don''t own her, so fuck off."


    "What are you doing to her?" I asked.


    "Does fuck off mean something different where you come from?"


    "I don''t do ''fuck off'' where Lia''s involved. Start talking, Saga."


    She sighed deeply, closed her eyes, and leaned back, Lia slowly falling down into her lap.


    [Fuck it,] she said, in my head. [I''m so tired of talking like a human.]


    "And what about the other people in this building?"


    [Fuck them too. I only have so many fucks to give, Athan, and right now you''re demanding all of them, so the handful of losers who are staying by themselves in this fancy hotel on Christmas can deal. Yes. You.]


    I frowned, but couldn''t afford to care either. Lia muttered something in her sleep at hearing Saga''s half of our conversation.


    [This might surprise you, but I''m really pissed at Lia.]


    "Yeah."Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    [Like, really pissed. Like, I don''t think I''ve ever hated a person as much as her.]


    "I understand she hurt you, but don''t take it out on her. She was just being selfish, she didn''t mean--"


    [She absolutely meant to. She violated me, in ways no other being on this planet can even comprehend. She fucking raped my soul, Athan. So spare me the pleas.]


    "It wasn''t--"


    [No. Just shut the hell up, unless you want me to get mad.]


    I took the hint.


    [Good. Now despite all that, Lia is...at the end of the day...despite everything she says and does...still a pretty good kid. Which really only pisses me off more. How she can spend so much time thinking and navigating people''s emotions like a pro, and then somehow just drop the ball...no...dunk the ball, through a flaming net, well, it''s hard not to take personally.]


    I thought back to how cleverly Lia had completely deconstructed my mental condition in her misguided attempt to remove a compel from Saga.


    "I''m sure that didn''t do any good for your ability to trust humans."


    [No Athan, it really fucking didn''t.]


    "Sorry."


    [Don''t you apologize, she''s the one who did it. Unless you''re apologizing for prying into Not Your Business and are ready to fuck off now.]


    "Yeah, no such luck."


    [Yeah, you really do like sticking your nose in everything, shamelessly.]


    "Anyway. You haven''t told me what you''re doing yet."


    [Look buddy, if I wanted to hurt her, she''d be hurt already, okay? So calm your damn tits. Instead, I''m giving her a little compel. Like I said, her idea.]


    "Well, don''t. I don''t care if it was her idea or yours. Don''t fuck with my sister''s mind."


    [Not your call. She''s her own person, Athan, she has her own relationships with people, and you don''t own that.]


    "She''s also my sister."


    [Funny how you seem to think that''s an argument against her being her own person. Wonder what ownership you claim over me for being your friend.]


    "If an Exhuman were going to fuck up your brain, you can bet I''d stop them too. But that''s not happening right now, Saga, you are. So put. Her. Down."


    [No.]


    I whipped out my swords, summoning them in the air surrounding her. Eight, this time. Only moments after they appeared, the room filled with crackling energy and dark vortexes where light twisted on itself, and the haze of light coalescing into deadly lasers, and with the sound of engines spinning to life as AEGIS stood and glowed with shimmering heat.


    [Please. You think the three of you can stop me?]


    "I think you can''t put me out before I kill you, and AEGIS can handle the rest."


    "I will drag your carcass all the way back to your cell, killing you the whole way, Saga," AEGIS said, her yellow eyes locked on Saga behind her thin oval glasses.


    [Well, do that if you must. Might be a little awkward for Lia though, having me suddenly ripped out of her head. Might leave her with a teensie-weensie little case of permanent brain damage.]


    She narrowed her eyes. [But hey, I hear you like vegetables.]


    "You piece of shit," I shouted. It was all I could do. I was completely powerless here, and she knew it.


    [You ready to be a good boy and fuck off yet?]


    "Just tell me why."


    [How about we go back to having a civilized conversation and then, I''ll consider it. As in, get your damn lightning out of my face, and call off your assassins.]


    I didn''t budge. I was so mad at her, so mad at myself for bringing her here. I really just wanted to run her through with my swords a few times and watch that smug grin curl into a pained shriek for a while. How dare she threaten Lia. How fucking dare she.


    But I couldn''t. She knew it. I knew it. I was just completely worthless and useless. Couldn''t even protect my own sister, again. All this superhuman power, and for what? What was the point in trying and fighting for rights for people, if I couldn''t protect the one closest to me?


    I threw my swords away disgustedly and fell into a chair.


    What the hell was I even doing. People were trying to kill each other this whole fucking party. Saga and anyone else was like mixing gasoline and fire. And the whole time, I''m just smiling and nodding along, saying oh no problem, she''s a good evil Exhuman. I had every goddamn red flag in the world, but just barreled on, so confident and so stupid.


    I sat there, blankly staring at the cocky little Exhuman with my sister''s life in her hands, and let it really sink in, let it fill my bones, exactly what a worthless, helpless, pointless piece of shit I was. Just a fucking moron. What the hell had I been thinking, even trying--


    [Okay, knock that shit off,] Saga intruded on my train of thought.


    "What?"


    [Stop the fucking pity party. If you''re so worthless, there''s a balcony right there which will give you a nice view on the way down. But barring that, Jesus, spare me.]


    "Yeah. Sure." Might as well do whatever she says. Seemed pretty pointless to try to argue with her on anything if I was already willing to sit back while she mind-fucked my sister.


    [Fuck, you''re pathetic. I feel like I just kicked a friendly dog.]


    "Sorry."


    "Chariot is NOT PATHETIC!" Tem screamed at the top of her lungs. The black churning of the room intensified until Tem fell forward onto her face, anticlimactically.


    "AEGIS," I said, and she flinched. "She''s holding Lia''s mind hostage. Don''t attack her."


    "I thought maybe something as much. That or she fucked up your head," AEGIS said, her lip twitching.


    "So glad we all understand each other," Saga said quietly. "See, if you just discuss things calmly, nobody has to get mentally mutilated. I mean, except Athan, who loves doing that to himself."


    [Speaking of which,] she added, [seriously, knock it off. You''re super pissing me off.]


    "Sorry."


    [Stop that too. Where''s the arrogant asshole who, devil-may-care stormed my chambers and rescued me from myself?]


    "You took his sister hostage."


    [Your dependence on humans is going to be your undoing, Athan. This is just sad to watch.] She sighed heavily. [Look, all I''m doing here is putting a little compel in your sister, and as I''ve said twice now, it was her idea. She kept apologizing and asking what she could do to make it right and make me able to trust her again.]


    She frowned and looked even smaller than usual. [The fucking girl...I don''t know why, but she thought, of all the people she could have chosen...the idiot picked me for her best friend. I don''t know if she just confused mental proximity with intimacy, or if she just just had the worst imaginable taste in people, but that''s what she thought. Picking me over the flying pair of tits and the world''s most servile maid. I have no idea what she was thinking, and I''m a goddamn mind reader.]


    [But as I said, she''s her own person and makes her own decisions. And whatever her reasons, that''s what she decided. Honestly, when I came to her tonight, I had done so intending to bitch her out and that''s it, but she''s suffered and wants things to go back to how they were before. Kind of a selfish asshole, kind of like her brother.]


    "She''s one of the most selfless people in the world, Saga," I said, but still couldn''t manage to force any threat into my voice. Not with Lia sitting there in front of me like a blank puppet.


    [Selfishness takes many forms. It hurts her a lot more than it should when someone hates her. Do you ever think about why she''s so selfless, or do you just assume she''s just that altruistic? (Damn he''s so fucking naive.)]


    "Just finish the story, Saga."


    [There''s really nothing more to it. She asked what it''d take for me to take her back, and I said, I''d want some kind of reassurance that she''d never hurt me like that again, and she said, okay, then compel me so I can''t. I told her she was crazy, but she cried and insisted, y''know, exactly like a crazy person would do. But at the end of the day, despite how pissed I am at her, that being pissed comes from somewhere, y''know? I still have a soft spot for her even after all this. So¡­] she gestured down at the girl''s head resting on her lap. [Here we are.]


    We sat there in relative silence, only the continued spinning of AEGIS'' engines and the faint sound of out-of-place Christmas music hanging in the air.


    [Satisfied?] she asked, at long last.


    "Not at all. I still want you out of her head."


    [It won''t even do anything. The only thing it''ll affect is her interacting with me, and I''m out of here after today.]


    "I hate you being in anyone''s head, Saga. It doesn''t matter how big or small, it''s terrifying anytime someone isn''t themselves."


    She sighed. [Themselves is such a weird concept anyway. Look at you. In the course of this conversation, you''ve gone right from wanting to tear out my throat to sitting there, more cowed than a cow. Tell me which one of those is yourself? And in the future, if Lia did exactly what you did, if you assumed it was because of a compel, you''d be wrong. You worry too much about what I put in your head and not enough what you do.]


    "You can sit on your high ground and make whatever arguments you want, but if your compel was as harmless as you claim, you wouldn''t be wasting your time doing it right now."


    She sighed and pushed Lia''s head off of her, leaving my sister sleeping on the couch.


    "Is she...done?"


    [Yeah. I put my hostage down, so feel free to shoot me.]


    "Tempting like you wouldn''t believe."


    [Y''know, I actually had the idea I''d come here and make some peace with you jackoffs. I was even on my best behavior. No killing anyone, no talking in people''s heads, tried to spend a few minutes of quality time with everyone...well...everyone interesting. Sorry Tem, but not sorry.]


    Tem, still sleeping, showed no sign of recognition at her name being mentioned in her head.


    [And this is how it turns out. Turned the one guy on my side against me, almost break down into a fistfight with him and his toy robot, with the plucky dog joining because why not, Karu formally asked for the authority to kill me twice, and is on retainer to show up if she even thinks I''m up to something funny, and Lia''s crawling and crying all over me, begging for me to mind-fuck her back so we''ll be even.]


    She pulled the too-large black XPCA coat off of her and threw it at me in a ball, where my shield incinerated it out of the air.


    Saga gave the plume of smoke a stunned glance. [Merry fucking Christmas, I guess.]


    "Who''s throwing themselves a pity party now, Saga? It''s almost like you consistently do horrible things to everyone, and then wonder why people don''t like you. In case you haven''t noticed, Karu is a hunter, and a zealot who dedicated her life to wiping out the bad Exhumans--"


    [I know.]


    "--And AEGIS was fucking built specifically to fight them. And almost everyone else here, they work for the XPCA, including me."


    [(I fucking know, all right!?)]


    "It''s a goddamn Christmas miracle that nobody actually did try to kick your ass, given all of that." I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache coming on.


    [Yeah, well, I thought you and they were supposed to hate and kill the bad Exhumans. I''ve been good the last few weeks, didn''t even show up on the radar. Living in dumpsters, figuring out new tricks to get by without flaunting my powers. (And does anyone even think ''good job, Saga?) I came here with the best of intentions, Athan, and maybe I shouldn''t have bothered.]


    She stood up and I saw AEGIS tense. AEGIS only could hear half the conversation after all, that probably made her even jumpier than she might have been.


    [For all your talk about making a place for Exhumans who want to live in a more peaceful world, you still do a pretty good job of treating us like shit, Athan. And I think it was you who said Exhumans turn bad because everyone just expects them to. Well right now, I''m realizing all over again why being good doesn''t pay. Why even bother.]


    "You mind-fucked my sister, Saga."


    [She asked me to. FYI asshole, you asked me to earlier in this party, too. So get the fuck off your high horse.]


    "I did not--"


    She made a gesture at me like crushing an egg in her hand, and the memories came back, painfully clear. I touched my lips and retched.


    AEGIS landed on two feet on the far side of Saga, who slammed against the ground so hard from the kick that she bounced twice. The top and bottom half of her body weren''t in alignment anymore her body twisted at a horrifying angle on the floor, her back broken below the shoulders. She winced and let out a hoarse scream, barely audible over the roar of AEGIS'' body.


    And like that, the Christmas miracle was over, as our party had its first murder victim.

 182. 2251, Present Day. Penthouse Suite. Athan.

    AEGIS seemed to be counting in her head, because she moved after a couple seconds, and arrived at Saga with another sweeping kick at almost the instant Saga''s body reappeared pristine. With a look of cold calm on her face, she just...put her bare foot through the back of Saga''s head. It cracked and splattered like a melon, and for a few moments, blood just poured from the lifeless body. Counting again, AEGIS lifted her foot, and stomped again, bring it down on a fresh skull the instant it appeared.


    I watched in silent horror at the world''s most macabre melon-stomping played out again and again.


    "AEGIS stop--" I got out, trying to push her back with gestures. The smell of blood and the sight of AEGIS'' bare legs caked in gore, pulpy red-stained brains squishing between her toes, the memory of Lia''s kiss was nothing. I doubled over and threw up on the floor where I stood.


    "Sorry Athan. I need more explanation than ''stop''," AEGIS said, some pity showing through the calm rage on her face. I recognized it as the face she wore when she thought she had to kill me.


    Unlike Karu, and definitely unlike Saga, when people needed to die, AEGIS didn''t chat or hold back unless there was a reason for it. Like the murder machine she was designed to be, she acted when she had to and resolved things as efficiently and expediently as possible. It was only because of how conflicted she was in killing me that I got a story out of her before she tried to kill me...and that was only after two completely mute assassination attempts.


    Saga died again, and the pool of blood seeped ever wider, AEGIS stomping in it like a child in a puddle. I closed my eyes and forced myself to block out the scene of two of my best friends mid-murder, but I couldn''t. It was just...cruel. Brutal. The smell of death, of iron in blood sunk right into my sinuses and stung.


    I whipped out a blade and held it as close as I could to my face. The familiar smell of ozone, air burning as sparks flew and electricity crackled. The smell brought me back. My blades, such a part of me now, we''d been through so much, and when I called on them, it was at times when I was acting, when I was in control of something. I needed that now.


    "AEGIS, this evening, Lia kissed me, and I asked Saga to take that memory away. She just put it back. That''s all. Nobody''s fighting."


    AEGIS looked down, lifted her foot, and then put it through Saga again with a wet crunch.


    "Are you sure nobody''s still fighting? I may have started something."


    "She''ll understand, I think. I''m sorry. Please stop."


    "I''m trusting you here, Athan. If she takes this and¡­" she stopped and casually committed murder again "...and takes it out on you and Lia...well...I''d rather save you than avenge you."


    "We''ll be fine. Please stop."


    AEGIS nodded and took a few steps back, sinking into a chair deliberately to sign the end of her hostilities. A few seconds later, Saga came back again and coughed painfully. I remembered talking to Saga months ago, she said getting stomped was her least-favorite way to die.


    [Ow. Fuck.]


    "Sorry, Saga," I said. "AEGIS didn''t understand what you were doing."


    [So I gathered.] Saga pulled herself out of the pool of her own blood and gore with a wet sucking noise and fell back onto the couch. [Well, the deposit for this room is fucked.]


    "...uh¡­" said AEGIS in a small voice. "Sorry. I guess."


    Saga gave a small smile. "What''s a little murder between friends?" she asked.


    "I wasn''t aware we were," AEGIS said coldly.


    "Eh, well, you and Athan didn''t really hit it off until you tried to kill him too, right? Maybe it''ll work for me too."


    AEGIS glanced back and forth between the two of us hesitantly. Maybe she was lost. Or maybe one of us was soaked in enough blood to fill a fountain and the other was holding a blade of lightning to their nose like a false mustache. Both really valid reasons to have some concern. Finally, she sighed and leaned forward, fixing her yellow piercing stare at Saga.


    "Saga, do you even understand the concept of friends?"


    "''Course I do."


    "So you were just joking, right?"


    Saga didn''t answer. There was a hint of earnest hope coming off of her somehow, despite everything which had just happened. For as close as we were, I didn''t think I understood Saga at all sometimes.


    "Okay, let me rephrase that. Saga...do you seriously, actually, non-jokingly...want to be friends with me?" AEGIS asked, serious, but slightly incredulous.


    Saga smiled a sad, small smile which faded quickly. In a moment, an impetuous, unassailable smirk appeared instead. "Nah. You know me, alone is the only way I get things done. Can''t push an XPCA off a building with bitches like you around nagging me all the time, can I?" She laughed. "Can''t believe you''d think that for a second. And I thought you were supposed to be a smart AI."


    "Yeah. Guess not. Stupid of me," AEGIS said tenting her fingers thoughtfully.


    "Saga, if you want to make friends, just say so," I said.


    "I did say so. I said I didn''t. What, are you deaf and stupid?"


    "Saga, I have an idea,"


    "This sounds like a terrible fucking idea."


    "You could at least listen to it first."


    "No, I know what it is. Boo hoo, Saga''s so sad, she''s so lonely and misguided, maybe the magical power of friendship will turn her into a good Exhuman and we can all hold hands and sing and everything will be perfect forever. Fuck that and fuck you for thinking it."


    "Saga, you don''t have to be hated and alone."


    [Look, I had a moment of weakness back there, I admit,] she said, slipping back into mind-speak. [Yeah, it sucks feeling like you''re trying to be good and nobody gives a shit. Not a lot of encouragement to keep trying. But you know what? Fuck all you bitches, I didn''t do it for you to begin with. I did it because I''ve got something I''m working on that''s bigger than all of you, bigger than me. So go ahead and rub my own words in my face. Have fun. Because I don''t fucking care.]


    I frowned at her. "Saga, I think part of the problem is, nobody has ever seen you care about something before. Karu sees you learning to tone down your powers and sees you becoming more of a devious mastermind. Lia sees you heading off again and sees you running away from her personally again. AEGIS just sees...nothing, basically, but knows you''re a danger, and wants to jump in before you hurt anyone she cares about again."


    "It''s true," AEGIS said, responding to my half of the conversation at least. "Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to live with someone who might be your enemy, but you can''t see or hear anything that they do directly? My best plan...and this was the plan, like a legit formulated strategy, was to wait until people were screaming, and then kill Saga."


    [(That''s a terrible plan.)]


    "What did she say?" AEGIS asked.


    "She said that was a terrible plan."


    "Fuck yes it was. But that''s like, literally the best I had."


    [And you?] Saga asked me directly. [You see me doing this thing and what do you see?]


    "For the most part...I was hopeful, I guess. Sad, that you apparently couldn''t trust me, or yourself to stay in touch, but I could understand that. I didn''t know what to think, but I''ve always wanted you to have something in this world bigger than just...existing next to it."


    [Yeah. So you were the only one on my side, and then I blew that. To reiterate,] she jabbed a finger at Lia''s sleeping form [she asked me to.]


    "Saga, if she asked you to kill her and you did, I''d be pissed at you. That''s not what this is about. She can make whatever stupid demands she wants and I''ll be mad at her for that, but I''m mad at you for doing them."This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    [You''re still an arrogant asshole who knows best all the time, eh?]


    "I did know best, this time."


    [Is that really so? Were you inside her head? Did you relive how torn up she is inside about the things she''s done? How about how she can''t get through the day sometimes with her own thoughts, whenever she''s reminded of how she let you down, or made me leave, or fucked with your head. She has to drink her memories away, because she cares too much and the pain of the guilt eats away at her more than she can stand. Did you know that?]


    "...I...no. That''s bullshit."


    [Is it? Let''s call on some eyewitness testimony.] "Hey, AEGIS, how bad is Lia''s drinking."


    "Bad."


    "Would you call her...say...completely dependent on alcohol as a coping mechanism for her guilt?"


    "Yep. Why are we talking about this?"


    "Just trying to prove a smug asshole wrong before he kills anyone else on misguided principles."


    "You''re not so perfect yourself, princess. Don''t think you can just crap all over Athan and Lia--"


    "AEGIS, thank you, but that''s okay," I cut in. "Is it true? Is Lia really...bad?"


    "Yeah. She''s pretty bad. I thought you had her memories of her and Saga falling out."


    "I do, but I thought she just got drunk and made some bad decisions. Kind of like now at this party. Why don''t you guys just cut her off?"


    "You think we haven''t tried? She''s a sixteen year-old billionaire, who''s arguably cleverer than everyone else in the house. We''d clean up, and then there would be courier vans delivering booze an hour later. She''d go in the backyard and the neighbor had buried bottles under the fence. Hell, I was never able to prove it, but I had suspicions that she''d had someone go in the sewers and tap into our water so she could just pour it out of the sink."


    "What the fuck. Really?"


    "And on top of that, nobody...really wanted to stop her. When she was sober, and forcing herself to think about all those things that set her off...we all...uh¡­"


    "What?"


    "Well. She was just so...off. Not like your normal level of depression. You''d pop in and say hi and she''d put on a big smile and act all saccharine, but the second you''re out the door, keep watching on cam-drones and she''s...doing tensile strength research on household rope materials. Doing math on sleeping pills active ingredients. Looking up what parts of the brain control what body functions."


    AEGIS frowned. "I mean, usually she was okay, and was as happy as she pretended she always was, but some days, she''d just...I don''t know. She''d spend the whole day beating herself up inside, and none of us could distract her from it."


    I looked over at her sleeping so peacefully on the couch, above the blood and gore. I remembered when we walked in the party, and she had flat-out panicked about seeing Saga again, and returned only a little later, completely drunk out of her mind. Her kissing me seemed a lot less disturbing and a lot more disturbing now in context.


    [So, not to gloat, but...you could see why I had to cave to giving her a little closure on that. She wouldn''t accept anything but a full reconciliation, and was going to do anything she had to in order to make that happen.]


    "I...get it."


    [Yeah.]


    "No, your statement before. How I worry too much about what you''re putting in our heads. You didn''t even need to touch her for her brain to be jacked up, did you?"


    [No. Lia''s had pretty bad depression her whole life. That''s why she always tries so hard. She knows if she didn''t, she''d succumb to it.]


    "She always seemed so happy."


    [Well. You were a pretty bright spot in her life. I think she probably had a pretty good shot at normalcy, though she was inwardly terrified about you leaving for college. But any chance of that being a normal and well-managed depression kind of¡­]


    "Died a horrible death with the end of human Ashton."


    [I''m sure the family situation and Brick didn''t help, but I think it was your absence more than anything.] Saga frowned. [Sorry...I don''t know why we''re still discussing this. Not very considerate of her privacy, which I know, is kind of a laugh coming from me.]


    I thought back to when she first showed up in Canada. How happy and bubbly she''d been, and as she met my new friends, and her perceived prominence in my life diminished, how she''d seemed to want to just fade away. How was I so blind and stupid?


    "Why didn''t she tell me?" I said quietly.


    [Probably because she''s smart enough to realize that''s the worst thing she could have done, but stupid enough to believe it.]


    "What?"


    Saga looked over at my sleeping sister with me. [Remember when you were livid about me putting a compel in that frizzy head that one time?]


    "Tonight? Yes."


    [Heh. Good times. And then you said it''s terrifying anytime someone isn''t themselves. Like, you never know if when she does something, if it''s her, or if it''s the compel inside her forcing her actions against her will and self-interests.]


    "Yeah. And that is still super scary."


    [And it would make you look at everything she did with a hyper-critical lens. Is this really Lia? Is it the compel at work? Are there ways to tell? Et cetera.]


    "Yeah, probably. Or...maybe even try to crack it like Lia did to me."


    [Yeah. Now replace ''compel'' with ''depression'' and all that shit you do to her, she doesn''t want you doing, because people worrying about her just makes her feel guiltier and even more depressed--see also, why she tries to fake being happy so hard. And you still wonder why she wouldn''t tell you?]


    I couldn''t speak. I felt like every single interaction I''d ever had with Lia, for the past sixteen years was being re-evaluated, even though I knew the whole point of what Saga was telling me was that that kind of re-evaluation was exactly what Lia didn''t want.


    "AEGIS," Saga asked.


    "What?"


    "Should I blast out Athan right now?"


    "No. But why are you asking?"


    "Well, I just kind of let slip that Lia''s always been fighting depression. She never told him, and I think...I might have messed up. He''s not going to treat her the same way again, and she''s going to be really sad about it."


    "No, I will," I said. "I absolutely will. This was really important for me to learn."


    "Was it though?" Saga asked.


    "Yeah, absolutely."


    "And why is that?"


    "So...I can help her. So I can get her the help she needs. So she can stop feeling so bad all the time and not need to drink herself stupid and rely on you stitching compels into her brain to make it through the day."


    "So that you can treat her differently than usual, is what you''re actually saying," Saga sighed.


    "I see the problem," AEGIS said.


    I had a surreal moment where the two girls looked at me a little worried. Saga, still dripping blood onto the couch, AEGIS with her legs caked in, and a huge pool and splatter everywhere, while Lia and Tem just slept through it all, oblivious but for the wriggling of their noses at the smell of iron in the air.


    How did I ever become a person who existed in scenes like this? How many missteps had been in my life, and when? I thought I''d generally done okay, but this wasn''t the destination of an okay set of decisions.


    "He''d find out sooner or later," AEGIS said. "At least this way, he at least knows to try."


    "I guess," Saga agreed. "If you can believe that Athan is capable of ever figuring out something on his own."


    "I''ll just have to keep an eye on him, I guess," AEGIS sighed.


    "You make it sound like such an ordeal, but you were going to anyway."


    "True, I guess."


    "Athan. Hey. Stop staring off." Saga snapped her fingers in my direction. "Listen, I just died a lot and endured a ton of shit from you personally because of Lia tonight, because despite everything, I want her to do well with the fucked-up life she''s got."


    "Yeah," I got out, still distracted. Everyone wanted what was best for Lia, it seemed. Karu, AEGIS, me of course, but even Saga all saw her as a friend. In the same way Saga got on everyone''s shit list, Lia won hearts.


    "So if you fuck this up for her and start being an asshole just because you learned something while she was napping, I will be very irate. I''d like to repeat, because you''re dense, but also because I like quoting myself: I died for this. To make her guilt a little less bad. Don''t. Fuck. It. Up."


    "I''ll...try. You guys know I''ll do anything I can for her."


    "We do," AEGIS said, and walked over to give my hand a squeeze. "But treating her like nothing''s changed means doing nothing for her. Can you do that, too?"


    "I mean...can''t...we get her some help or something?"


    "You can''t force someone to get better, Athan. You can lock them in an asylum, you can force-feed them meds, you can have your friendly local Code-X do some stuff to their head, but that''s just preventing self-harm or changing her. All we can do until she wants help is to be her friends."


    "I can try," I said.


    Saga smiled briefly and then clapped, in a very distracting way which made me realize she''d infused the clap with some of her mental trickery like she did before. As to why became apparent when Lia and Tem both began to stir.


    "Ah, damn my head," Lia said, squinting. "What time is it? Thanks, AEGIS," she took the cup of water AEGIS offered.


    "Watch your step," AEGIS said. Lia peered off the couch and saw her shocked reflection in the drying puddle.


    "What the...the...meerkats is this? Oh my God, it stinks. Oh my GOD! SAGA! You are...just drenched...oh God, oh God, oh God¡­"


    [We played a little Russian roulette while you slept. I won! Several times. Or lost? I''m not sure how that game actually works.]


    "Do we have any towels? Or...a...mop? Or a firehose?"


    "Yeah, those floorboards are fucked," AEGIS said. "Sorry, they''re um, gonna charge you for it."


    "I mean...the money is whatever, but...holy donkeys that''s a lot of blood. Are you sure you''re okay Saga? It is all Saga''s?"


    [Yep. Good old immortality. And as you can see, everyone else is fine.]


    "It''s...all over AEGIS'' legs..."


    "Yeah, she tried to clean up while I was still making a mess," said Saga, switching to voice to cut off AEGIS'' reply. "Silly AI."


    "Yeah...silly AI¡­" AEGIS echoed. She looked at me funnily and squeezed my hand. "Sorry...save my dress...I like...it¡­"


    I didn''t really have time to comprehend AEGIS'' words before she was tilting forward, her knees crumbling under her as her face went blank and it was all I could do to try to catch her before she fell into the pool of gore.

 183. 2251, Present Day. Chicago. Temperance.

    Chariot''s life seemed very complicated. He was sad a lot, and that distressed me, mostly because I knew I could not help, and if I tried, I would only make everything worse. I thought AEGIS was sick, Saga was fighting him, but she said she wasn''t, and I thought I was just stupid again and misunderstood. So I waited for Chariot to figure out what was right and waited and believed in him like always


    It was easier if I just did what Chariot said. He saved my life. I knew I could trust him to always do what is best.


    We were going to Chicago now, Cosette said we had to. The inside of the VTOL was cold and the straps were too big and too heavy for me. I felt like the heavy round buckle was pushing into my chest and making it hard to breathe, but I didn''t say anything. Cosette and Chariot had argued a lot before we left, too. He said he had to be there for his friends, and she said he had to leave for a mission, and that was it.


    Cosette got really mean and told Chariot that if he didn''t go, they''d court-marshal him, and if he still wouldn''t, they''d go after his friends too. He was really mad about that, and yelled at her, but she was really sad and just said that''s how things were. I thought frying her a little might help, but Chariot said ''it wasn''t Cosette''s fault the XPCA was so shit''. It was stupid of me to say anything. I had to remember my place.


    He was talking to me now, but I didn''t really understand. I didn''t understand him fully at the best of times because he was much quicker and smarter than I was, and now I was even more distracted and useless with all of the other things going on in my head. It was just the two of us on the flight, and the pilot. I had asked him why the rest of the team was not coming.


    "That''s what I was saying earlier. This obviously isn''t a real event, otherwise they would have sent more. I think, honestly, they''re just¡­" he checked his comms, and then reached over and twisted the unit in my ear, a little painfully, turning it off. I tried not to wince, or he''d waste an apology on me. "...the new CO, Targa. Cosette didn''t say anything specifically, but it''s weird that they''d just send me with a new CO. Makes me think they''re giving her a tryout or something."


    "They are not just s-s-sending you. I am here as well," I stuttered.


    He rolled his eyes and I realized I''d misspoken again. I was only trying to comfort him but I''d accidentally placed him on my level, which was inexcusable. It was presumptuous to count myself as a person. That was stupid of me. "Pretty sure Cosette has realized you''re a lot more trouble to keep away from me than to just put up with you being attached at the hip. You don''t really count."


    I was happy we agreed. I really didn''t count.


    I apologized for misunderstanding, which I think annoyed Chariot, so I shut up and hid myself until the flight ended. I knew sometimes I said and did stupid things, but I did not want to make Chariot''s life harder, so I made a habit to do nothing as much as I could. He never seemed mad about me doing nothing, so that meant it was okay. As long as I wasn''t making Chariot mad or hitting me, I knew I was doing okay.


    I had heard some things about Chicago, but I didn''t know if they were true. We learned about it in school, I remembered. That was one of the days I was in class and nobody was bullying me, so I could pay attention a little bit. The tragedy of New Chicago, I remember. It was new because they built it back after it was destroyed in the war. It had to be the Sino War, I thought, but I wasn''t going to say anything about it because I might be wrong. The tragedy was they were all sad for some reason afterwards which I didn''t remember.


    When we got off the plane, it looked like a city, though. There wasn''t much that made it look different from anything else. I don''t know why I thought people were sad here, the people on the XPCA base looked the same as any others. It must have been something I misunderstood again.


    Chariot and I each got a message on our holos at the same time. He read his, and I wanted to see what he was seeing, so I read mine too.


    > Turn your damn comms on!


    From Cosette. Chariot made an annoyed sound, and turned his on. I didn''t know if I should or not, so I did nothing. He glanced back over at me and then turned mine on for me, and again I tried not to wince as the comms twisted in my ear painfully. Chariot always knew what I should do or not do, so I thought my life was very good.


    Chariot talked to people on-base for a while while I hid and followed him. Sometimes they asked where I was, and he made some excuse. I didn''t like forcing him to make excuses for me, but I also didn''t want to risk him being seen with me and people thinking he was my friend or anything which might embarrass him, so I stayed hidden. He hadn''t yelled at me to show up, so I guess that was okay.


    Eventually we got in a van and spent another long time in silence. Chariot looked really pained and thoughtful and I stayed hidden so I wouldn''t disturb him. I wished I could help, but you would have to be even stupider than me to think I could possibly help Chariot with thinking. I wasn''t much good except for frying people. Even if I didn''t like doing that, I''d do it him as much as he wanted. And since that wasn''t what he wanted right now, I was just useless and stayed out of the way.


    Someone started talking to us at some point on comms. She was a girl with a young voice but a strong one, and she sounded kind of angry all the time. Maybe like how AEGIS might sound if she yelled in your head like Saga did.


    "We''re going to do this by the numbers, exactly as the XPCA engagement protocol dictates. I trust both of you have read your handbooks?"


    "No," Chariot said and looked over through me.


    My heart skipped a beat as I realized he was waiting for me to say something. "Oh. N-no, me neither."


    The voice on the line sighed. I had already forgotten her name, but didn''t want to annoy Chariot by asking.


    "Then why would they even let the two of you in the field?" she fumed. "This is my first command, and I have two children who can''t even read?"


    "Targa, I can read." He must have realized I was stupid and forgotten her name and then used it himself so I''d remember. He was very thoughtful. "Tem can read too. I...think."


    I nodded, and then realized I was still hidden. He saw anyway. I could hide from everyone but him. It made me feel excited and exposed, and like the luckiest girl in the world. Like his powers were made just for me.


    "Yeah. She''s nodding. So it''s not that we can''t read, it''s that there are approximately ten billion fucking manuals and primers for XPCA protocol, and frankly, none of it applies to us."


    "There are only, 2,962 manuals, and you should have read all of them pertinent to your MOS during training."


    "Well, we skipped training," Chariot sighed. I wondered if he was annoyed at her, and maybe I was overreaching again, but if it might help if I could fry her for him.


    "You...what? Two untrained children who can''t read for my first op? Are they trying to set me up to fail?"


    "Look lady," he said, closing his eyes and holding his forehead like she was gonna make his head pop.


    "Captain Targa," she barked back, emphasising both words.


    "Look, lady," he said again louder "This may be your first op, it''s our...what, fifth? And some of those were fucking dangerous as hell Exhumans. If they''re only sending me and Tem here, this has got to just be a joke."


    "You think the XPCA makes jokes?" she said. "Every single mission is critical. Planning is of the utmost importance, and you want to just waltz in there like an idiot? So you''re a dumbass kid, you''re untrained, illiterate, and you''re disobeying orders? Hah! You''re right--this has got to be a joke. You have absolutely got to be kidding me. Where''s...where''s Colonel Dawn¡­"


    "Cosette said she wouldn''t be on for this op. Just us three." Chariot smiled. "Whee!"


    I knew he was just making fun of her, but my heart still raced a little at the thought of it being just us three. That was only one away from a couple.


    "This is a fucking joke. What the hell am I supposed to do with you two, even."


    "Well, definitely just repeatedly telling us that we''re crap is going to make you a great leader." He was grinning now.


    I think sometimes Chariot liked it when women were being difficult to him, because then he got to talk back to them like that. This was good, because women were always being difficult to Chariot. If I thought if I were smart and funny like his friends, I would like to give it a try too.


    "Right. You''re right. Okay. If you didn''t read the manual, I''ll just read it to you. I know I have it around here. Okay. Preface. This manual is XPCA property and is for official instructional use only. Only authorized personnel are permitted to utilize this manual and its contents. Reproduction and distribution of this manual is strictly--"


    "Okay, how long until we''re there?" Chariot asked.


    "About nine minutes. Reproduction and distribution--"


    "And you''re going to read the whole thing to us in nine minutes?"


    "No, you''re going to sit in the van until we''re finished. It will only take about an hour and a half. Did you read the field policy manual as well?"


    "Yeah, of course," Chariot said with a roll of his eyes.


    "Great. Then probably about four hours before we''re done with those two. Reproduction and di--"


    "Can we skip all this crap and just go to the planning stage?"


    "No. This stuff is important. Reproduction--"


    "Seriously. The second we get there, I''m just getting out, and whatever you covered will be it. You want to plan, plan now. You want to read me the publishing notes on a field manual, do that. Which do you think will be more handy when we get there?"


    "Both. Reproduction and--"


    "You are seriously kidding me."


    "Oh. My God. Just shut up and listen! I''m tired of reproduction."


    Chariot stifled a laugh with a snort. I didn''t quite get it but I laughed too.


    "What? Reproduction? Oh my God. Are you a damn pervert, too?"


    "Sorry Targa. Keep telling us about reproduction. We''re listening."


    "What the fucking hell, Chariot. Can''t we go a single sentence without you adding to the list of why you''re completely unqualified for service? Just one sentence? My God. What did I do to deserve this?"


    "Look, just send me the manual, I can read faster than you can read it to me," Chariot said, still laughing, but a little apologetic.


    "Finally, a sensible request. There. Both manuals you should need. Now, there''s plenty more¡­"


    "Okay, finished," said Chariot with a glance and a tap at his holo. "Now what?"


    "What."


    "I finished reading. Both of the manuals, actually. So now we can do something useful instead."


    "In order for that to happen, you''d have to have turned the pages so fast that the friction from swiping on your holo would have set your finger on fire."


    "Well, we Exhumans are sometimes pretty special." He winked at me. I felt all fluttery and happy, even though I knew it wasn''t me he was calling special. Or pretty. Maybe a different kind of special. I''d heard people call me that a lot.


    "No, seriously. The coefficient of friction for glass is 0.9, and assuming your finger weighs about sixteen grams, then the amount of force needed to flick it--"


    "Okay, seriously? We''ve got what, five minutes left, can we not spend it on my how much force I flick my fingers?"This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "..."


    "What?"


    "I am not spending anything on your fingers flicking," Targa huffed.


    "What?"


    "Oh come on. We''ve already established you''re a pervert with no qualms about sexually harassing your commanding officer."


    "I...on my fingers? Jesus Christ, Targa. You have issues."


    "I certainly do! And it''s getting pretty long to keep listing them, so I can summarize them as Chariot and Temperance."


    I thought it was pretty unfair that Chariot was getting dragged into this when it was probably my fault somehow, but I wasn''t sure that he wasn''t just having fun so I kept quiet.


    "Okay, since you don''t want to plan, I''ll get started," Chariot sighed. "We go in, we talk to the kid, if he''s an Exhuman, we bring him in to New Eden. If he''s not, we leave. Good plan?"


    "Terrible plan!" Targa yelled. "This is an Exhuman we''re talking about. You do know what that is, right?"


    "Uh." Chariot looked over at me cagily. I smiled back at him in a way I hoped was reassuring. I forgot I was still hidden, and he probably didn''t see it. I was so stupid. "You''re serious?"


    "Of course I''m not serious, it was hyperbole. Just how incompetent do you think I am? But it''s still a terrible plan. Standard XPCA protocol dictates that until the danger level of the threat is firmly established, they be treated as the worst-possible case."


    "Trust me, if it were the worst possible case, we''d already know. They''d have flipped a city over or killed everyone already. This kid hasn''t even left his own house."


    "I recommend rappelling on the exterior of the building to circumvent dangers of using expected routes and improve your chances of gaining the element of surprise. A shaped charge will blow in the window, and can be timed with a synchronized detonation of a stun grenade, deployed into the room by boring breaching charge. After the charge and flashbang go off, you will swing into the window, detach your rope, and move to secure the suspect. If they are disoriented by the explosions, their Ramanathan Window is closed and you may detain them with restraints. Otherwise...use of powers is the only thing which works during a window."


    "Okay, first off...I am not going to blow up a room and swing in like Tarzan. Second, I don''t have any of that gear, and you can''t even blame me for that, that''s the kind of shit whoever is planning this op should have considered before we were ninety percent of the way there, and third, I am not just going to break in and kill someone."


    "Or restrain them."


    "Whatever. You want that, send an assassin."


    "And just what do you think you are, Chariot? You think the XPCA keeps you around because your powers make you a good talker? No. You are the only thing that can kill an Exhuman through their window. That makes you a killer, and that''s what an assassin is."


    "Well I''m not. And you can deal with that."


    She let out a frustrated noise and Chariot smiled. I wondered if I could make him smile by making frustrated noises too. But that was a dumb idea.


    "Okay, I have a new plan," she said finally. The van slowed and pulled to a stop with the crunch of gravel under the tires.


    "Talk fast," Chariot said, unbuckling and opening the back door of the van.


    "You go in there, try talking to the Exhuman, and die a horrible, excruciating death. I get a reprimand for completely fucking up my first command, we sweep the whole thing under the rug, and I get to live content with the knowledge that at least nobody will ever have to deal with you ever again."


    "Sounds good. Let''s do it," Chariot said, and looked up the driveway to the small two-story suburban house. He looked at the address, checked his holo, and then opened the waist-high white fence to let himself up the path. I followed, staying hidden. I did not like Captain Targa''s plan, even if it was just sarcasm.


    "Chariot, wait, goddamn it," she yelled in our ears, but Chariot just knocked on the front door. There was a moment and then some footsteps and then the door opened with a man behind it. He was a little round and had thinning hair but he smiled until he realized who we were.


    "Can...I help you?" he asked politely but nervously.


    "Hi, I''m Invoked Sergeant Ashton of the XPCA. Do you mind if we come in?"


    "Of course, yes, no problem. We?"


    "Sorry. Tem, if you please?"


    I unhid myself and the man''s mouth fell open. Maybe that wasn''t what Chariot meant. I had just assumed...afraid I''d messed up, I looked to him for guidance but he was smiling so it seemed okay. Or he was willing to forgive me anyway. Chariot was very forgiving of my mistakes, and only had to beat me a couple of times when I had really messed up.


    "Yeah, we''re that special new branch of the XPCA, P-Force. I really hope you''ve heard of us, or else...well...I didn''t mean to scare you, sir."


    "I can''t believe he''s just walking in there," Targa hissed in our ears. "This is an enemy stronghold!"


    We came inside and sat in the cosy living room while Chariot politely declined coffee for both of us. He knew I did not like coffee. He knew everything, it felt like. He requested a private meeting with the man''s son, and that more than anything seemed to worry the man.


    "Is he...in trouble?"


    Chariot checked his holo again. "Mister Giovannetti, please. We''re XPCA, please read between the lines a little."


    "He''s...a...an¡­"


    "Probably not. But that''s why we''re here to talk to him. You''ll notice we didn''t bring a battalion of guns and tanks. Or blow in your windows and rappel in like a crazed amazon." Chariot smiled so reassuringly even I felt reassured. I thought he was very good at talking. If he told me something, I would definitely believe it.


    "Of...of course. My apologies. I''ll bring him right down."


    "Thank you Mr. Giovannetti."


    He went upstairs, and a few minutes later, a boy came down. He had shorts on and knobby knees and was a little fat and had short brown hair like his dad. He was maybe eleven or twelve.


    "Uh...h¡­hi?" he asked, not moving from the stairs.


    "Peter?" Chariot asked. "Come over here and have a seat, kid."


    The boy timidly came over and stood in front of Chariot.


    "Show me your powers," Chariot said with a little smirk.


    "Nuh-uh. You''re the XPCA."


    "Yep I am."


    "If I show you my powers, you''re gonna kill me."


    "Not true anymore. Instead we take you to a place with a bunch of other Exhumans to live. Instead of normal neighbors, everyone there is an Exhuman. Pretty cool, huh?"


    "Really?"


    "Kid, look at my uniform. You think they''d send me out here looking all dapper as this just to lie to you?"


    "I guess not."


    "So show me some powers."


    "Oh...okay. Just a sec." He went back as slowly and carefully as he approached, and went upstairs.


    "If that kid''s an Exhuman, I''ll eat my hat," Chariot said when the boy was upstairs.


    "You aren''t wearing a hat," I volunteered. I didn''t think he forgot, but I wanted to be sure.


    "It''s just an expression, Tem."


    "Oh, okay." Why did I ever open my mouth, ever? Stupid. Ugly. Stupid.


    We waited in uncomfortable silence next to each other on the couch while Chariot flipped through his holo. He sighed, and rubbed his eyes, waiting like that until the boy came back.


    "Okay," said the boy. "Promise not to freak out."


    "I promise," Chariot said.


    "Her too."


    Chariot looked at me. "I do not know if I will freak out. If he tries to hurt you, I will freak out."


    "She won''t freak out," he sighed.


    "Okay."


    The boy stood in front of us with his hands arms fully extended, his palms flat and horizontal against each other in front of him. Slowly, he separated his hands, revealing a small credit chit between them. Once his hands were more than a few inches apart, still separating them, the chit began to float off his palm. In a few moments, it hung in the air between his hands. Chariot smiled.


    "Neat," he said. "Want to see mine?"


    The boy clasped his hands together and nodded enthusiastically. Chariot stood and went to the far side of the room. He rolled up his sleeves, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths and then I felt a wind within the room.


    He stood there with his fists hanging by his sides, muscles and veins outstanding on his forearms, breathing slowly and deeply in his nose and out his mouth. His eyes were still closed, and he looked focused like I rarely saw him. Usually he had just this simple good-natured expression on his face, a casual smile like he''d just finished petting a puppy, but sometimes he was deadly serious. I liked both sides of him, but this one definitely made my heart pound a lot more. I kept staring at his bare arms, even though I know I was supposed to be watching his powers.


    As he stood there, working, the air seemed to draw into him. His short brown hair blew up and whipped around his closed eyes. With one more breath, he unclenched and clenched his fists, and then all around him, one after another, lights opened up. Tall tears in the world leading to a world made entirely of light and warmth, shimmering and glowing and sparking. I had seen him cut apart many things with them, they were his light, like my powers were mine.


    More kept appearing, and as they did, they circled him slowly, until I could barely look, it was so bright, but I didn''t turn away. I would rather be blinded by him than see anything else. Hundreds of them, spinning and sparking and glowing, and him in the middle of it all.


    The kid had gasped when one had shown up, and was now just staring as Chariot walked forward, armored in light.


    "Cool, huh?" he said.


    The kid nodded. Chariot snapped his fingers and the lights vanished. The room looked so dark now, I had to light it up just a little bit to make it less sad-looking.


    Chariot spoke with a hint of annoyance. "You know, when I got my powers, my parents threw me out. They yelled at me and told me they hated me and never wanted to see me again."


    "Yeah," the boy said. "Exhumans are supposed to be bad guys."


    "We are. The next thing I did after that was kill a couple dozen people."


    Suddenly the kid looked a lot more afraid.


    "Which is nothing, really. When they tried to attack me and my friends, we killed hundreds of them next. Just spun my swords around and chopped people into pieces." The lights reappeared for a moment and spun around Chariot like a top, but a lot more aggressively this time. "But the XPCA won and made me their servant. They''ll kill me if I leave, so I do what they say."


    "Chariot, just what the hell are you doing?" Targa asked.


    "They''ll kill you?" the boy asked, wide-eyed and pale.


    "Oh yeah. You asked if I was here to kill you, and I said no, we were going to bring you in. Well, if we don''t bring you in, we''ll have to kill you instead. That''s how the XPCA works. Do what they say, or die."


    "Chariot, you are actively subverting the position and authority of the XPCA, which is a violation of article two of the charter law--"


    "In fact, right now, I''m here instead of being with two of my friends who need me very much right now. See, if the XPCA wants to jerk me around and send me on pointless missions to test out their new officer, I don''t get any say in the matter. My friends might be hurt or dead right now, but I can''t do anything about it, because if I do, they''ll just kill them and make them definitely hurt or dead."


    "I don''t want my friends to be hurt or dead."


    Chariot smiled in a way I did not like at all. "Well you don''t have to worry about that, because when you become an Exhuman, you lose all your friends. My best friend is actually the one who turned me in to the XPCA, and after he did that, he and my dad would take turns beating up my sister because she was the only one who still liked me."


    The boy just stood there in silence. I hadn''t heard a lot of this about Chariot before, and it was making me uncomfortable, too. I decided to hide just in case anything showed up on my face and Chariot hated me for it.


    "You have a sister?" Chariot asked in a cold whisper as he advanced on the seated child. He nodded. "How would you like your sister beaten and violated by your dad, by your friends, just because she was the only person in the world who still liked you?"


    The kid looked like he was going to cry. I thought I might too, but from hearing how sad and angry Chariot was inside. I wanted to help him, but I couldn''t even do that.


    "So my last question is¡­" Chariot said, almost at the boy now. He backed away, but was suddenly surrounded by Chariot''s lights. His eyes went really wide. "...why would anyone¡­" he reached out and grabbed the boy''s hand, and pulled the chit from him. "...ever.." After messing with it for a few seconds, he had it floating in the air off his hand, too. He shook his head. "...want to be an Exhuman."


    "I thought...Exhumans are cool," said the boy quietly. Chariot threw the chit at me, and I picked it up. It had a tiny invisible string looped through it, so it could look like it was floating. I thought it was kind of neat. I was surprised that Chariot saw through the trick so easily, and then scolded myself. Chariot is not stupid like I am. He would never be tricked by something like this. I am a bad person for ever thinking he might be. Bad. Stupid. Ugly.


    "You said it yourself, me and my powers are pretty cool. Would you trade your family, your friends, your freedom, the safety and happiness of everyone you meet, for the rest of your life...for that?"


    The kid looked at the loose cage around him, and then at the house outside of them. He slowly shook his head.


    "Then don''t play games, kid. Next time someone comes out here for you, they might not care about sparing your life. My commanding officer on this mission wanted me to break into your room, knock you out, tie you up, and drag you away from your parents without even giving you a chance to see them again. Is that what you want?"


    He was crying and shook his head.


    "Then knock it off. I don''t want to ever hear about you telling people you''re an Exhuman again, or making up stupid tricks, or anything. Exhumans are bad. Be a good kid instead." He stood up and the bars of the lightning cage disappeared. "Come on, Tem."


    I got up and gave the chit back to the boy. The father appeared as soon as we were leaving, so I guessed he was listening. For some reason he thanked Chariot a lot, and we left.


    "Waste of my fucking time," Chariot moaned as we buckled back into the van at the end of the block.


    "You know, if you just detained him, we would have determined he wasn''t Exhuman and released him," Targa said.


    "How you can still be so self-righteous when you''re completely wrong baffles me, Targa. That was a damn kid. We had reports from parents of his friends who said they heard from their kids that he was Exhuman because he said so. I don''t read manuals but I do read briefings."


    "I prefer to prepare for the worst-case scenario. You were a legitimate Exhuman, and from what I just heard, you were turned in by your friend at school."


    "Yeah, you can fuck right off about my past," Chariot said, his words suddenly cold instead of tired.


    "Who''s self-righteous now?" Targa sniped. "Why''d you tell him all that personal stuff anyway? If you knew he wasn''t an Exhuman, you could have just left, and divulging information which could compromise personnel is never a good idea, even if that personnel is only you."


    "Kid wanted to be an Exhuman. If I just showed up and left, all that would teach him is that he needs to try harder. He needed to know he was wrong. Nobody should ever want to be Exhuman."


    Targa sighed. "Whatever. At least my first op wasn''t a failure. Come on back for debriefing with Colonel Dawn and I can pretend this never happened."


    "Yeah, it''s been a real treat for me too. I''ll make sure to let Cosette know what a useless Central you were."


    "Coming from you, that might just get me promoted. Good night. Papa-Foxtrot Central over and out."


    Chariot sighed and slouched back in his seat. I copied his position and found it uncomfortable so I stopped.


    "How do you think Saga, Lia, and AEGIS are doing?" he asked after we bumped along the road for a while.


    "S-s-saga is invincible, right? So they are probably doing that. And Lia was fine. And AEGIS was awake again before we had to leave." I didn''t know what to say, so I just told him a summary of what he already knew. I felt stupid for saying it.


    "She said she fixed it though, and is still crashing. I''ve never seen her be wrong about a computer problem before."


    "I don''t know."


    "Yeah, I know. Sorry, Tem."


    I wished I could be more help, but I knew I could never be.

 184. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    I checked in on AEGIS and Lia the second we got back from that farce and found them both well enough but not in great spirits. I couldn''t really expect otherwise. AEGIS seemed worried, about herself and about Lia, and Lia seemed happy and smiling, but was clinging to AEGIS a little more than usual, implying she was scared too. The moment I got there, Lia glomped onto me instead.


    "Sorry for being such a downer during the party," she said. "Thought it was a killer party, too."


    "It went pretty well, until I brought Saga in, I think," I apologized right back. "Even so, I think most people had a good time. Did you see Karu and Tower going at it? I''d swear they were old army buddies."


    "A real shame Taglock couldn''t make it."


    "You invited him?"


    "Of course. Invited your boss too, but I didn''t expect her to come. I should have told Taglock it was part of my retainer on him. I think he needs to loosen up more."


    "I think he''s loose enough already. Lia, I don''t think you should be spending so much time with him, he''s pretty shifty¡­"


    "Oh please. I''m his boss. If he''s shifty, that''s just better for me."


    "Yeah, that''s exactly the kind of overconfidence that he''s going to take advantage of. You have a ton of money and information worth even more than that, and he''s obviously only in it for the money. And if he didn''t before, as of last op, now he knows both sides of your identity, and that you''re a sixteen-year-old girl."


    I let the words trail off what I hoped was ominously, but she just stared at me with bored eyes.


    "Lia, why is your face asking me if I''m done talking yet?"


    "Oh good, you''re not completely stupid then, you can still pick up on some things."


    "Har. But--"


    "Athan, you seriously think I haven''t thought of all this yet? No. Floundering. Duh. How stupid do you think I am?"


    "I don''t think you''re stupid! I just...it looks like¡­"


    "What?"


    She put her hands on her hips and glared at me. Lia didn''t have many buttons to push, but insulting her intelligence was right up there. Somehow my brotherly concern had been misconstrued as her being stupid.


    "You just seem a little...taken with him."


    She laughed, but not in a happy way. "Excuse me?"


    "He''s like, three times your age! He''s a creepy, sneaky old assassin who only likes money. You should stay away from him."


    "Seriously? Seriously!?"


    "Yes. Seriously."


    Even without pressing that button, I still seemed to have pushed her right between disbelief and anger. She looked very much like she wanted to hit me but couldn''t quite believe it.


    "Athan. Stupid big brother. Are you seriously giving me relationship advice right now?"


    "I mean...not really."


    "Oh, I must have misunderstood," she said, but while the words were the same as I''d just heard from Tem, instead of shrinking and apologizing, Lia crossed her arms and somehow seemed to grow. "Please explain to me what, exactly, you''re saying then?"


    "It''s uh...it''s...not-relationship advice. Like, you shouldn''t have one with him."


    "Yeah, okay, ass. As in the donkey. Look here, dude--" she stepped towards me and jabbed a finger painfully into my sternum. "Why don''t you fix your own relationship stuff before opening your mouth ever again? You''ve got my girl AEGIS hanging on a rope, you''ve got Karu begging for you to take her back, and you''ve got Saga so badly mangled she can''t even admit to herself that she still wants you, you''ve got Tem clinging to your ankles...hi, Tem, BTW."


    "Hi Lia!"


    "...and now you''ve got Moon shooting you funny glances over her book all yesterday, don''t think I didn''t notice that."


    "She was?"


    "Oh. My. God. Focus, Athan."


    "Sorry."


    "And in the middle of that whole vortex of I-have-no-idea, where I have been nothing but supportive and loving and understanding as, I think you''ll find, no sister in the world but me would be, you''re going to tell me what I should be doing?"


    The finger ground harder against my breastbone painfully, and I took a step back, but she just followed.


    "Um, I guess when you put it that way--"


    "And you can bet your socks I do put it that way."


    "Um. He''s just...old."


    "Well thank you for clearing that up for me. I certainly had never noticed. It''s a good thing you''ve got two functioning eyes, bro, because obviously I have none."


    She opened her mouth to continue, but AEGIS said something from the other room. Lia narrowed her eyes at me, gave me one final stab in the chest, and then turned on her heel and stomped over to throw open the door to the other room.


    I followed, of course. Just...gave Lia a few seconds to get there before me. Damn she was scary.


    "Hey Athan. Sounded like you guys were having fun out there, but I found more corrupted code. Like, another virus. This one was rewriting back changes I had already cleaned up, but I was able to track the changes it was making and also pick up a couple other things it touched and I didn''t notice. For starters, they got my operating parameters. Apparently for the last couple days, I''ve been slowly giving less value to civilian lives, and more to...get this...XPCA."


    "What?" Lia asked, and pulled one of the holos towards her, her eyes darting back and forth over the indecipherable walls of code. "Uh, hang on, I can barely read this."


    "You don''t have to, I checked it three times. Either someone''s trying to turn me against you guys by getting this code found...or we found a smoking gun of who''s trying to hack me."


    "That''s impossible," I said, feeling the same mixture of anger and disbelief I''d seen just a minute ago. "They wouldn''t do that. They couldn''t do that."


    "Are you seriously that stupid?" Lia snapped at me. "Wouldn''t? This is an organization which was created for and dedicated to systematic genocide, and chose to do it with the wonton sacrifice of human lives and a mess of shadow ops. And couldn''t? Hacking works both ways, dude. AEGIS has insider knowledge on how to get into and mess with XPCA systems because she was built to know and manage them, but ultimately, they also built her."


    "It''s true," AEGIS said frowning. "If I hadn''t crashed again, I''m not sure I would have even found this second virus. It was buried way in me where I didn''t think a hacker could ever get to. Whether it''s the XPCA or otherwise, they obviously know my systems pretty freaking well."


    "Are there more?" I asked.


    AEGIS shook her head. "No. I mean. Maybe. I don''t know. I''m kind of shaken up about all of this, honestly. I''ve gone over everything now, and it all looks fine, but...I''m like...what if I only think it looks fine, because they already got rid of the parts of me that would have thought it wasn''t¡­?"


    She said it so plainly, so calmly, I couldn''t understand. When I thought about Saga screwing with people''s minds, hacking them, essentially, it unsettled me on a primal level. People shouldn''t be overwritten. People should be themselves. It should never be possible to see someone and then a day later, they''re someone completely else.


    I felt like...after my exile, people were all I had. These two, the handful of others at the party, Wynn and Tate out there somewhere, even Cosette and Taglock, I supposed. I didn''t have a home or possessions or money, these people were everything in this world to me, and as dark and shitty as this world was, they were the spots of light which kept me going. The thought that they could ever just...be changed¡­


    A shiver went down my spine.


    "Please, please, please, make absolutely sure as best you can," I urged. AEGIS nodded. "If you learn anything else, call my personal mobile. Maybe better to keep things off my holo for now." I stood up.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "Where are you going?" AEGIS asked.


    "Back to HQ. I''m going to ask Cosette about this, and if she can''t give me any answers, I''ll go to Blackett himself."


    "And what happens when, not if, he doesn''t tell you anything?" Lia asked.


    "Then...I do what Exhumans do best, I guess." I stepped out of the room, and found myself stopped by two different girls holding two of my arms.


    "Easy on restraining me," I reminded. Neither of them let up.


    "Look, dummy, just because I''m mad at you doesn''t mean you have to go off and do something amazingly stupid," Lia said.


    "And just because you learn something doesn''t mean you have to run off and get yourself blown up," AEGIS agreed.


    "Meanwhile, they''re doing God-knows-what to your head? Fuck no, AEGIS. If they''re behind it, I''ll find out, and I''ll shut them down. I''ll blow up an EMP so big, the whole building and every computer in it fries. It''d be pretty hard for them to keep hacking you after that."


    "Athan." AEGIS positioned herself in front of me so I could see her golden eyes blazing. "Sometimes I love you for being amazingly smart, and sometimes I love you for being amazingly stupid, and I won''t lie, this is one of those second cases. The fact that you''re willing to run over there and declare war on the XPCA for me is fucking hot as hell, but that doesn''t mean it also isn''t stupid as hell. This is cyber warfare, not guns and swords. We need to be quiet with what we know, and beat them at their own game."


    "Or! We beat them at every game. I go in there, and make them stop!"


    "That''s a suicide mission, dumbass."


    "It doesn''t matter. I''ll make it somehow."


    Tem now also chose to materialize, because there weren''t enough girls giving me shit right now. She frowned at me. "No dying."


    "Then we''ll just have Tem erase the whole building."


    "Damn it, bro," Lia said, pulling at my arm. "Putting aside the thousands of semi-innocent XPCA lives in there, even if you do succeed, you''ll still lose. The US needs the XPCA, and so does the world. That was Blackett''s whole point, and it''s still valid."


    "Yeah, well, that was before they were doing this to AEGIS. This is inexcusable. They can''t just expect me to sit here while they are actively fucking with her head." I took a step forward, but AEGIS didn''t budge.


    "They can expect whatever they want, but we''re not letting you do this, Athan," she said. "I will call Karu down here and we will blockade the shit out of you."


    "I will use these," Lia said, letting me go long enough only to come back with a handful of shock rocks and a pair of restraints.


    "You realize putting those on me will be a lot more likely to kill you than it will be to hold me," I said. I felt like we were getting perilously close to my shield deciding these two were restraining me already, and it was making me nervous as hell, on top of being pissed.


    For some reason, Lia just grinned at me like she had come up with a master plan. No. Oh no.


    "Okay, if you try to continue fighting us on this, I will use these restraints on you," she said. "And if they kill me, then...I guess that''s it for me, then."


    "Lia, fuck you."


    "No, fuck you, Athan," she shouted, and both of us started at hearing her swear. "If you''re so damn committed to killing yourself, then I''m going first. So that''s how it''s going to be."


    "That''s completely stupid, Lia. I''m not trying to kill myself, I''m trying to save AEGIS."


    "Lia," AEGIS said slowly. "I appreciate this but...really, no. On the off-chance you are not bluffing--"


    "And I''m not."


    "--then I would have to stop you, too. Neither of you idiot Ashtons are killing themselves over me. If it''s going to come to that, I''d rather just wipe my memories of the last month and roll back to my last safe backup."


    "It''s not about your memories or saving them, AEGIS, it''s about them doing this at all. If you roll back, there''s nothing stopping them from just doing it to you again. Shutting them down permanently is the only way to be sure."


    "Fuck, Athan, you''re such a binary idiot. There''s a million ways we can stop them. We can make them think they succeeded, we can hack them back and erase everything they have on me, we can take control of their ''net access and scrutinize the shit out of anything which comes out of there...hell, we can do another fucking PR campaign if we have to. Just because your world experience is tackling people and waving around swords doesn''t mean other methods don''t exist."


    "Okay," I said.


    I took a deep breath, and then bolted left around the two of them. AEGIS went for it, but Lia remained rooted in front of me, and when I shifted right, she tackled me immediately. "God...damnit, Lia!" I shouted. "Let me save AEGIS!"


    "Open your stupid ears, stupid big brother!" she screamed back as the two of us rolled on the floor, her arms stubbornly around my chest, her legs locked around mine.


    "I could just break his legs," AEGIS said.


    "The...fuck is wrong...with you!" I panted, prying Lia''s fingers one-by-one off of my back. She bit me in the shoulder. "Fuck! Goddamn it, Lia!"


    "I...don''t...know¡­" Tem said, still standing there. "Chariot...do...I help you? They are hurting you...but they are trying to...protect you..."


    I needed help badly, doubly badly if AEGIS engaged me physically, but Tem''s ''help'' would probably just kill all of us.


    "Tem! Make all of us invisible!" I shouted.


    This seemed to placate her desire to help without blowing anyone up, and in an instant, there were just clouds of dust and grunts and flying sweat instead of the two of us on the floor.


    "Okay, what the hell?" AEGIS said. I heard her move towards us, shuffling blindly. I elbowed Lia hard and realized I caught her in the boob, and she tensed and withdrew slightly.


    "Sorry, Lia. Damn it¡­"


    "Ow! You damn...bastard. I hate you...so much...right now!" she panted out.


    I kicked her off of me and into AEGIS and in the instant I was free, bolted for the door. It was harder moving while invisible than I thought, and I ran into the door instead of grabbing it, not being able to see where my hands were. I threw it open and waited.


    Sure enough, I heard the sounds of the two girls scrambling up, and with about as much difficulty as I had, ran across the room and then out the door. When I was sure they were gone, I slammed the door shut, whipped out a sword, and welded the lock shut.


    "Okay Tem, turn me visible now," I said, and I reappeared.


    "They left," she said, sounding a little shocked.


    "Yes, that was the plan. Come on, there''s a fire escape."


    It took a minute to get the window open and start climbing out, and when I did, I realized just how many ladders down I''d be climbing, but I didn''t care. I remembered all the time I''d been spending with AEGIS recently, her smiles and the relish with which she''d planned and executed our dates, her worry over the virus, the look of mild shock and alarm as she realized something was wrong and she began collapsing to the ground in front of the restaurant.


    The date. The party. Times taken from the two of us already by this hacker. Her memories. Times endangered to be stolen. Her compassion, her intelligence, her love, her life and future. Things they threatened even now. I could never let that happen to her, no matter what.


    The ladders were covered in snow and burned my hands as I went down. My chest began to feel very tight and my thoughts flashed painfully through my head. I was breathing even harder now as the frost bit at my exposed hands. The feeling of my flesh being frozen, of tearing away at the ice on my hands, only to realize the ice was my hands.


    I slid uncontrollably on the ice as it trembled under me, blades of icicle stalagmites erupting from the ground all around me. I screamed and slashed at them with my swords. In the distance, I heard screaming, so familiar but nothing I''d heard before. Something fell on me heavily and I couldn''t breathe. I couldn''t move, I needed to move, or I would die. I couldn''t die, not like this, not in this frozen tomb with my fingers frozen and falling off.


    There was warmth on my face and I blinked. My vision was red. Something heavy was on top of me, hot and wet. My swords were still out, and I was on the fire escape still. It took me a second to realize why I was here, and then another second to realize what was on me, and then another second to completely panic.


    Tem was laying on top of me, holding in her guts where she''d been slashed across the chest by something which had burned her badly. Her breathing was ragged and pained, and even as she laid on top of me, body cut open, she was looking at me with eyes filled with confusion.


    "Tem!" I shouted, and moved out from under her as carefully as I could.


    "I...I¡­" tears filled her eyes. "I''m s-s-s-sorry! I was wrong! P-please...forgive me!" she said back.


    "You didn''t do anything! Fuck. Tem. Fuck! I''m so...sorry...fucking fuck¡­"


    I put my swords away, they''d done enough damage, and carefully picked her up. She made a pitiful, pained whimper, and looked like she was losing consciousness. I didn''t know what to do. Call someone? 911? I had to get her out of here though.


    As though in answer to my thoughts, the window just below me exploded, and AEGIS stepped out, glowing arms steaming in the cold.


    "Athan, you fucker, you--" she stopped as she caught sight of us. "Oh my god, Tem. What happened? No...tell me later. Athan, give her to me, call 911, now."


    She cradled Tem gently and brought her inside and placed her on the bed, and I followed. I called, and the line rang once, seeming to take forever before someone would pick up. I was barraged with a handful of questions which all seemed like a waste of time, and just wanted to scream at the operator that someone was dying, and fucking send an ambulance NOW.


    AEGIS shredded a sheet with impossible precision into long, even bandages, working quickly but methodically, and seeing her in action, apparently so in-control, it calmed me a little. I realized that screaming at the operator wouldn''t help anyone. I had to be like her and keep my cool. So I answered her questions as quickly as I could while AEGIS bound Tem securely, closing the gash I''d torn in her by wrapping the girl in the makeshift bandages. She grabbed the comforter and loosely draped it over Tem, then applied pressure to the wound and spoke to her in a low, calm voice I couldn''t hear over my call.


    Eventually I hung up. They were coming, and we just had to wait.


    "How is she?" I asked.


    "Bad. You cut through a lot of important stuff down there. Nicked the lower intestines and bowels, so we''ve got a great chance of sepsis on top of all the blood and damage. What the fuck did you do, Athan?"


    "I...don''t know. I just...I don''t...I thought I was back fighting the Exhuman here in DC again. I...it doesn''t make any sense, but I swear I was there. I slashed at him, and I heard Tem scream and she fell on me¡­"


    AEGIS frowned and looked at me with pity in her yellow eyes. "That''s it? I mean...that''s plenty, but...she keeps saying she''s sorry. She didn''t do anything?"


    I shook my head. I was sorry. I should be apologizing over and over, not her.


    In an incredibly short amount of time, we heard sirens approach, and I realized I needed to call Cosette and beg access to a regenerator. She hardly asked any questions and let me know the hospital would be informed. Then she asked if I was okay.


    "No," I said, shaking my head.


    "I would hope not," she replied, and that was all we had to say. Another minute later, and I flagged down two paramedics with a gurney in the hall, Lia showed up eventually, and the three of us couldn''t do anything but watch as they carefully loaded Tem onto the metal cart.


    "You fucked up, Athan," AEGIS said, turning away from the scene. When I didn''t look at her, she grabbed my chin and pulled me to face her. "You fucked up."


    "Yeah, I know."


    "But everybody fucks up. Don''t beat yourself up too much, just try not to let it happen again. If Cosette approved the regenerator, she''ll be fine, okay?"


    "Yeah."


    That''s what I said, but wasn''t what I was thinking.


    Inside, I was wondering just how many times I could hospitalize Tem and still be able to stand living with myself.

 185. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    The hospital was like every other hospital. Smelled of chemicals, brightly lit, white halls, sedate patients, and active staff. AEGIS and Lia, despite my efforts earlier in the day to fight them, were trying to keep me engaged and distracted from what I''d done. By their standards, the act was pretty transparent, but any annoyance I felt at them for their misguided help was drowned in how worthless I felt.


    Tem was still being cleaned up before being put under to drop in the regenerator. If it had just been a cut, it might have taken fifteen minutes for the tank to fix her up, but since I burned her guts out instead, it would take days. Burns were not a clean injury to treat.


    Maybe out of desperation, or because it was the first thing to come to mind, they were discussing what to do about AEGIS and the XPCA. It was a topic they knew I couldn''t resist, but still, I sat there feeling numb and out-of-place, guilt chewing up my insides so bad I felt nauseous. I kept imagining Tem floating in the tank, the solution tinted red from her blood, her open wound gaping like a mouth, drugs and oxygen pumped into her by tubes.


    And the thought, I did that. This was reality, not some imagined hypothetical of how bad I was, the proof was in the other room, suffering and writhing as they disinfected her. She was probably still apologizing, having no idea what she did to deserve me hurting her, but certain it was her fault anyway.


    I wanted to care about AEGIS and her problems, but the fact was, I was a useless piece of shit, probably more dangerous to the people I was around than anyone else. At the end of the day, no matter how much I wanted to just be friends with people and have us all get along and be happy...the fact was, I was an Exhuman, and this accident just slapped me in the face with that reality again. Exhumans were dangerous, period.


    Just like I''d told that kid. I wanted to scare him straight, but it turns out I hadn''t even been exaggerating.


    And thinking about it more, I got off light on this one. If Lia or AEGIS had primed my shield to go off when we were fighting, they''d be dead as anything. Hell, if I had just slashed a little differently, Tem would have died on that fire escape. The most stupid, pointless, inglorious death imaginable. Cut down by her own friend while helping him run off on a suicide mission.


    I felt bile in my throat and swallowed it back down so it could sit down there with the guilt in my stomach.


    "--even listening to me?"


    Lia was talking still. I looked at her, but her words didn''t make any sense to me. If she wasn''t telling me I was a waste of space and a poor excuse for effluent, I couldn''t understand her.


    She slapped me. Not hard, but on the face. The hospital staff stopped to watch. I found the pain welcome.


    "Snap out of it, bro. Are you even listening?"


    "No, sorry."


    She sighed. "Look, Tem''s going to be in there for at least a day. We can''t just sit here all day, so let''s go somewhere."


    "No, I''m waiting for her."


    "You''re not waiting for her, you''re punishing yourself for an accident."


    "What''s the difference?"


    "One''s for her benefit and is a nice gesture. One is for your own sick fulfillment, and is unhealthy. So we''re moving, capiche?"


    "No."


    "Seriously, dude? Come on."


    "I told you, Lia, I''m waiting."


    Lia studied me carefully for a moment. She was thinking. Whatever came out of her mouth next, she was going to be trying to manipulate me, I knew it.


    "Yeah, I''ve got nothing," she sighed. "You''ve got so many friggin'' buttons to push, but I don''t know that I can do that without traumatizing you." She frowned and fretted. "I am really sorry for what I did to you over Saga still, you know. And I don''t like pushing you around. Or anyone, really. I hate it, actually. I just want people to do what''s best for themselves, and then they won''t!"


    She was on her feet and pacing now. "And people are just so stubborn and short-sighted, even when what''s in their best interests is so friggin'' obvious. Athan, do you think you''re doing yourself any favors by sitting here?"


    "Yes, I--"


    "And I don''t mean for Tem. I mean for you."


    I didn''t have an answer. What I wanted for me was such a non-thing right now, I didn''t even register on my own list of priorities right now.


    "Right? See? So you know that sitting here is bad, and yet you do it anyway, and it''s my job to somehow convince you not to. Do you have any idea how much it sucks to be in charge of everyone in the world like that?" She looked up at the glowing lightbars embedded in ceiling and blinked back tears. "Sorry, I''m a little emotionally unstable, too, damn it." She put on a small wavering smile which broke my heart a little.


    "Lia, you don''t have to do that. I''m not going to die because I''m sitting here."


    "You think so, huh? That''s not how I feel. I feel like, especially with you, but with everyone, I''m playing a constant game of mental health whack-a-mole. I can let a few times slip by, but when I do, you get worse, harder to manage, ever more self-destructive."


    She threw herself into the seat next to me and rubbed her eyes, suddenly looking very old. "And even at the best of times, you''re trying to go do something incredibly stupid, and I have to talk you off the ledge before you get yourself killed, and I never know what the final straw is going to be. I never imagined that telling you that the XPCA was related to AEGIS would make you want to sprint over there like an idiot...so yeah, can you blame me for fighting you every single time? Could you imagine how I''d feel if I let you go once, and that was the last time I ever saw you?"


    I sat in stunned silence, feeling even more guilt piling up inside me. It was only a couple days ago that I''d learned Lia was fighting depression and alcoholism, and on top of that, this was the shit I made her deal with constantly?


    "Lia...I''m sorry. I''m not like, trying to do stupid things."


    "I know. You''re trying to do good things. And I love you for that, and that''s why I try so hard to keep you safe. But damn if you don''t choose the stupidest ways to do them sometimes."


    "Okay," I said. "We''ll leave the hospital, and I...I''ll...give the AEGIS thing some time. I''ll let you guys figure out a smarter way to do it. I didn''t know I caused you so much trouble. But I guess I shouldn''t be surprised."


    "Cut the self-pity and let''s go," she said, standing and grabbing my arm to pull me up. I looked down at AEGIS and caught a hint of what looked like an angry glare at Lia, but it disappeared so fast I wasn''t sure. I pulled her up too, and I double-checked with the desk that Tem was going to be okay and they had my number to contact the second she got out before I let Lia drag me away.


    The three of us piled into a cab and Lia told the driver an address she read off her holo, and I watched the hospital disappear behind us. I was lost in my thoughts until I realized we stopped, and Lia was pulling me almost bodily out of the car. I apologized and fell in behind her. I followed her through some gates, past a ticket booth, and then onto a large field, still covered in snow. She led me a ways further on paths wandering through trees and past thorny bushes which might have been roses in the spring until we wound up in a secluded copse of trees and she sat down on a bench.


    "An arboretum?" I asked, sitting next to her, as AEGIS took the last seat on my other side.


    "I don''t think city life has been very kind to you," she said, and handed me a membership pass in my name she must have just bought. "I know heading out to nature wasn''t exactly your choice, but I think you did a lot better being an Exhuman out there than in here. Promise me if you ever feel like there''s too much going on, you''ll come out here and look at some damn trees while you think it over."The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I almost felt like laughing as I took the pass from her. After everything I''d done today, she was still trying. I truly was pathetic. I didn''t think staring at some trees in the cold would help anything, even I wasn''t that simple a person.


    And yet, in a weird way, it did work. There wasn''t anything inherently magical about sitting and watching the forest, but sitting there between Lia and AEGIS, thinking of what those two had done, and were doing to do right by people...it made it hard to feel justified in wallowing in guilt. I wanted to do something too. I wanted to do for Tem what they were doing for me. Help her, not to loosen up the guilt and anger inside me, but because she was my friend and she was in need.


    I still wanted to go raid the Raven''s Nest and save AEGIS too, but apparently that was a stupid idea. I disagreed, but I''d promised So...here we were.


    "What can I do for Tem?" I asked out loud.


    "Nothing. That girl is insane," AEGIS said dismissively. I glared at her.


    "AEGIS isn''t exactly wrong, but also not exactly tactful," Lia said pointedly. "I don''t think ''insane'' is the right word to use but...well, she actually might be."


    "But...isn''t insane like...seeing dead people and hearing voices and shit?"


    To my surprise, Lia just looked to AEGIS and we both waited for her to reply. "What, am I a walking medical dictionary?" she asked.


    "Uh, yeah, actually. I''ve seen you hitting the books pretty hard," Lia said.


    "For, like, first aid. Athan keeps insisting on finding new ways of hurting himself, so I thought I''d brush up. I''m not a shrink."


    "So you haven''t been reading anything about mental health issues?"


    "...I mean, I have, but...just seems presumptuous to assume."


    "So give us the short version on Tem, and we''ll take it with a grain of salt that this is a psych 101-student evaluation."


    AEGIS rolled her eyes, but that didn''t stop her from adjusting her glasses and starting to explain. "Well, insanity isn''t a state, or even a single thing, it''s just kind of the high end of the spectrum on any number of mental disorders. If you''re hearing voices and seeing things, that doesn''t mean you''re inoperable to society or dangerous, it means you''ve got psychosis. Now if you''re listening to the voices which tell you to kill people, and hallucinating so hard that you can''t tell what the real world is anymore, you''re so psychotic that you''re insane. Make sense?"


    "Sure," Lia said.


    "Tem''s got...at a glance...some major self-esteem issues, some major codependency issues, and some education issues. Probably the first two are bad enough that she should be...not just walking around like she is. Definitely the last one, she should be in school instead of in a barracks. She doesn''t even seem like she finished high school."


    "Yeah, she blew up her high school," I said.


    "Oh. Well, that does seem to indicate she shouldn''t have been free to walk around."


    "She was pushed into it though. She was being tortured by the other kids. Locked in a locker for days in summer until she was going to die."


    AEGIS sighed. "It''s not like crazy people go off the second they turn crazy, Athan. Usually it''s a long, painful road downhill with plenty of people watching and saying and doing nothing while they slip further and further away, until one day, something happens. Like getting locked in a locker. Or something on an XPCA mission. Or maybe something else entirely."


    "So...she''s insane."


    AEGIS sighed yet again. "Maybe? I don''t know. I''m still not a shrink. What''s clear to me is she sees the world in a fundamentally different way than normal people do, and the scary part is where those disconnects occur. A normal person can see, for example, Lia playfully hitting you and know it''s just siblings horsing around. Tem might be so codependent on you that she sees anything like that as a threat to her lifeline and react in a way no healthy person would. Like with boom."


    I stared at her. None of this really sounded new to me. Tem was weird, I knew that, and she had to be handled differently. She was a grenade with no pin. Or, maybe, I realized, I was the pin.


    AEGIS might have taken my staring for something else, because she sighed a third time. "What? You want me to simplify it even more? Sure, Tem''s probably insane. She has mental problems that make it difficult for her to determine right from wrong. Is that what you wanted to hear?"


    "No," I said. "I''m not sure that''s just Tem either. If that''s all it takes to be considered insane, I think this world...especially this job do that plenty."


    I looked down at my feet and remembered Ethan. The kid had killed thousands because he was lonely and sad and desperate, and I''d had to make the choice to kill him or not. Even without a heaping of issues like Tem had, I still didn''t know what was right or wrong there.


    "Well that''s why we''re here," AEGIS said sympathetically. "Nobody else seems interested in looking after you, so I''ll do it. And Lia helps. But I''m gonna take her credit, since she''s not interested in cashing it in for dating privileges."


    "Ew, no."


    "I don''t think you can just turn in enough helping credit and get to date me," I said.


    "Yeah, I know. I''m just kidding. Mostly."


    "Can we not kid right now? I hospitalized someone today. And the XPCA is still hacking you. Probably at this very moment."


    "Man, you''re such a downer. You make it sound like it''s you they''re after."


    "''Course if they were," Lia said "he probably wouldn''t care as much. He only gets really offended when his friends are under attack."


    "True," AEGIS said.


    "Hey, if they were hacking me, I''d be upset."


    "Yeah you might be," AEGIS agreed. "But you''d also probably be like ''oh, I deserve this'' for some reason or another. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason you''re so crazy about rushing to everyone else''s side is because you put everyone on a pedestal."


    "I don''t do that," I said. "You guys are legitimately awesome, no pedestal required."


    "Oh here we go," Lia complained.


    "She''s a super-genius, and those are her words, not mine, and you are the only sister in the universe who would not only run away from home, but also basically turn yourself into an Exhuman...no, someone even stronger than an Exhuman, and then chase me down on the other side of the continent--"


    "Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, I get it," Lia said. "But you''re great too."


    "Me? I cut up my friend today, I tried to lie to and fight both of you."


    "And you did it because no matter what happens, no matter who''s in your way, friend or foe, you always do what you think is right, bro. Like, that''s a really scary personality trait, but it''s also a really good one. It''s why Karu thinks you''re the paragon of Exhuman kind. She probably wishes she could be half as determined as you are when you think you''re chasing after something good."


    She wasn''t wrong, but one word had stuck with me. "Scary?" I asked.


    The two looked at each other as though to confirm, and then both nodded. "Scary."


    "I mean, I know I''m an Exhuman, but how am I scary?"


    "Wasn''t today enough of an example? Are you seriously this dense?" Lia asked, looking incredulous. "And I''m not talking about Tem. I''m talking about you independently deciding you were smarter and righter than both of us and heading off by yourself to pursue your own brand of justice, threatening to EMP and laser-bomb the whole friggin'' XPCA, just because they''re hacking one of your friends."


    "There''s no just because, they''re doing something horrible to a good person."


    "And Athan," AEGIS cut in, squeezing my arm, "I love you for thinking that, but seriously, no matter how big a fan of me you are, I''m just one person. Or AI. Or whatever. You''re threatening to kill thousands, and destabilize the security of trillions over me. And you don''t see how that''s scary?"


    "I...I guess¡­"


    If you told me there was an Exhuman out there doing exactly that, I''d understand completely. That guy was crazy and needed to be stopped, no matter how much he was just trying to help and protect his ''one''. But it was much harder to believe when it was me. I had reasons for everything I did, and most people, most good, sane, well-adjusted people would do the same things as me in my position. Wouldn''t they?


    The wind blew through us and Lia shivered. She was wearing ordinary clothes instead of her slipskin and looked to be regretting it. I frowned and stood up, offering the two of them my hands.


    "What''s this?" Lia asked.


    "The trees are nice, but I think what helps me most is you two after all. There''s no need for you to freeze on my account."


    "Oh, it''s nothing. Stay as long as you want," she said dismissively, even though the goosebumps on her arms couldn''t lie as convincingly as she could.


    "No, I want to go back. I want to give AEGIS every chance to beat this thing, and let you two make some plans on how to deal with it without wasting your time worrying about me. Thank you, seriously. But you''re right, I''ve been an idiot, and we should focus on what we can do right now."


    She looked a little surprised, and then laughed. "Well, I never expected you to act mature and make a prudent decision, but I guess I rubbed off on you a little bit," she said, and took my hand. Abruptly, she broke into an evil grin, and tunneled her hands up my shirt, her icy fingers draining the warmth from my chest.


    I fought her off while she laughed and AEGIS watched us with a mix of bemusement and wonder at our incredible capacity for idiocy. Like children, we orbited AEGIS, laughing and starting and attacking, all the way through the gate and into the parking lot.


    But both of us knew the game was forced. None of the three of us were truly happy. We were just pretending in the hopes that maybe, someday, this was a life we could return to.

 186. 2251, Present Day. Blackett Manor. Blackett.

    Again, Chariot troubled me. Again, he''d hospitalized one of his fellow assets. Temperance may have issues with being reliable, creative, decisive, or even sane, but she was loyal, and her numbers were off the charts in many categories. This was now the second time she had been injured by his reckless idiocy, and that was two times too many for my taste. Something would have to be done about him.


    I had informed him before that to me, he was nothing but a tool, and if he could not prove himself useful, he would be disposed of. I had thought I had made myself perfectly clear, but given the Exhuman''s constant antics...not just in injuring his peers, but his egregious disappearance and cavorting with the Code-X locked in my cabin...no matter how much Miss Dawn tried to cover for him, I could read between the lines.


    Honestly, this had been a long time coming. He was trouble from the outset.


    I sat at my desk in my office, perusing personnel files which turned my scowl into a grimace. Even the inviting cup of tea steaming away before me--brewed by one of my new servants, just an ordinary human--offered me little solace.


    I knew several of Chariot''s failings were mine. Time had been short, and I had no intention of authorizing his transfer into the XPCA until he had properly learned discipline. I had intended for each of the Exhumans to learn loyalty under me first, and then proceed with standard XPCA training and drilling regimes at a regular base. There, they would be molded into weapons as useful as any other XPCA soldier.


    Instead, the timetable moved up on us with that infuriating Code-X''s assault on us. Convenient though it was in some ways, certainly Albion was an easier man to succeed than he was to persuade, it had thrown my plans for the Exhumans in my stable off-kilter, and that was simply inexcusable.


    Still, somehow it seemed all the others had become useful and productive. Why was it only Chariot which constantly gave me headaches? The Exhuman was no idiot, he knew the consequences of irritating me. Or perhaps he merely did not care?


    Either way, I had to decide if he was worth keeping, and if so, how he would be disciplined. Lack of fear or lack of care, the right punishment would solve both.


    I took a sip of tea. It was a little calming, but that amount paled in comparison to the prospect of finally resolving my Chariot issue.


    I had invested much into securing him and his compliance, yet if he continued to be a nuisance, it may save me trouble overall to cut the cord sooner than later. It wasn''t like we were running out of Exhumans, I mused.


    I leaned back with my tea and the tablet in my hand, scrolling through the data with an idle flip of my index finger. As the trends had indicated, Exhumans were becoming ever-more frequent. We''d had a run of good luck recently...or more specifically, excellent preparation and success of our propaganda units...and while the numbers were up in an absolute sense, the number of actual violent events was way down.


    I had to wonder how much of that was the fault of the P-Force and New Eden. I had long suspected that giving Exhumans a choice, even a false choice might reduce the number of events. It was the difference between offering them a reality and telling them to accept it, and offering them two realities and asking which they preferred--the number who would reject both outright was a fraction of those who would reject one.


    I suppose it didn''t help that the one was a choice of death, but at this point I was really just splitting hairs.


    The point was, Chariot was growing ever more replaceable, and was a little bitch like I''d never been burdened with before.


    I smiled to myself as I got up. No, not never before. There had been one other even more impossible than he. The girl who started me down this entire path. I checked my wrist holo and made sure I had no further business on the day before heading to the gym, my servants performing their duties swiftly and silently as they should.


    I felt like thinking, and so jumped onto a treadmill, setting a brisk pace and shallow incline where I could run for a few hours uninterrupted.


    She''d shown up at my door as though she belonged there. My gate and the security cameras, nothing to her. Just a tiny brown girl in baggy clothes banging away on the door of an XPCA officer''s private home like she was selling cookies. The only reason I even opened the door was to inquire how she''d managed to defeat my house''s security so easily.


    Instead, I got my first taste of her delinquent attitude. The first of many.


    "You''re an XPCA, aren''t you?" she asked. She didn''t wait for an answer. Never did. "Well, I''m an Exhuman, so take me in."


    "Is that all? Please find a police officer and let him know. Thank you for your decision," I had said. I was younger back then, and saw the world a little differently. Come to think of it, it was in dealing with her that many of my perceptions of how Exhumans and the XPCA worked were formed.


    I closed the door and found it blocked by a dirty sneaker attached to a brown skinny leg, and the face in the crack broke into a broad smile. "You misunderstand, mister. I didn''t say arrest me, I said take me in."


    After that, no matter how many times she was escorted off my property, no matter how I improved my home''s defenses, no matter how many guards or dogs or cameras or unclimbable electrocuted fences, she was always there waiting for me when I got home. She did not speak, which troubled me, merely smiled deviously, as though every day were a game.


    One day I woke and went downstairs and found the girl inside, dressed in a white uniform with a navy apron and yellow rubber gloves, her hair tied up. Stupefied, I had to ask what she was doing inside my house.


    "I work here, stupid," she said, and went back to dusting. Sure enough, I checked with my housekeeping service and they confirmed there was a new girl working there today. I expressed my displeasure at having a stalker and a child in my house and they apologized and sent out someone else at once.


    Of course, the next day, she was back again. When I called to complain, they told me, according to their system, this was an entirely different girl than yesterday. And from then on, her daily game became infiltrating my house as a house servant. No matter my demands for screening or changing agencies, every morning she was there.


    After nearly a month of this, my sanity felt very spent, and in a moment of frustration, I called the girl into my office and demanded to know what she wanted of me.


    "I told you," she said, "take me in."


    "You are already in. It does not seem possible for me to keep you out. I am fairly certain that even should I shoot you--" I pulled my sidearm from its holster and put it on the desk in front of me "--that you would still arrive at my house the following day, utterly unperturbed."


    "It''s true," she said.


    "Then what do you really want?"


    She sat down in the chair opposite me without invitation. "Open your ears, stupid. Take. Me. In."


    "What do you mean by that?"


    "I mean what it sounds like. I need to live here."


    "You are serious."


    "Do you think I''d do the things I''ve done if I weren''t?"


    "But why? Do you seek to do me harm? With your abilities, if you wanted me dead, I am certain you would have no trouble of it. So what then?"


    "I don''t know," she said.


    "You...don''t...know."


    "Look, take me in, or this never ends for you. That''s all there is to it."


    I stopped and looked at her seriously. She was a child. Hispanic, small, even for her age. What use did I have for such a thing?Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "You wish for me to adopt you?"


    "Whatever works for you. Baby, prisoner, mistress¡­"


    "You are insane and disgusting."


    "...live-in servant. Doesn''t matter to me."


    "I regret inviting you to this conversation. It seems there is nothing for me to gain by reasoning with you. You wish for me to endure you all day, every day, to fix the issue of you appearing before me randomly? I would not trade partial torment for complete torment."


    "So what you''re saying is, you will only let me move in if I torture you more."


    I froze. "I never said that."


    "But that''s where the logic goes." She grinned maliciously.


    "You said you were an Exhuman?" I asked, and picked up my sidearm.


    "Yes."


    I checked the chamber, and then the magazine, and cycled the action to move a round from one to the other. "Then as an XPCA, I am within my rights to execute you. Goodbye."


    The gun exploded and I felt my arm jerk with the force of the blast, but she, if anything, grinned only wider. I frowned nearly as much. A blank? I pointed the gun to the floor and fired again, the second report sounding muted to my deafened ears, but I saw a bullet-hole and explosion of wood fragments where the ground was struck. Was she then actually an Exhuman, and one immune to bullets?


    I checked the chamber and magazine again and saw the rest of the rounds were, in fact, blanks, just crimped casings. Just the one real bullet then? Had she missed it? And how had she replaced the ammunition to begin with? I kept the weapon on my person at almost all times.


    I began to grow nervous beneath her smile. I opened my desk drawer using my thumbprint to open the lock and emerged with a box of ammunition. Live ammunition. She watched with bemusement as I opened the box and slid out the tray. I pulled one bullet from the tray and saw the head was crimped with no projectile. A blank. Same as the next I pulled, and the next after that.


    "How did you get into my desk drawer?" I asked.


    "Not sure I want to answer," she said. "I believe I''m supposed to start torturing you more."


    The drawer was undamaged. I connected my holo to the lock and it reported no unauthorized use. To be sure, I inspected the desk with a brief walk-around, and found no openings on any side.


    I sat back down and poured myself a cup of tea, simply bewildered, and took a sip, before spitting it on the desk.


    "Nice cup of hot cocoa?" she asked.


    How? I lifted the lid of the teapot and the brown liquid stared back at me. The infuser was still hanging there, and I pulled it out. Empty, and stained brown. It had been full of chocolate powder, not tea leaves, but it also showed no signs of damage or tampering.


    I set the teacup down and walked to the office door with the intention of throwing it open and throwing the girl out, but as I turned and pulled the knob, it came off in my hand. It had been loose for months now, and I hadn''t had the time or motivation to have someone come fix it.


    "That is just bad luck," she said, turning in the chair to look over the high back at me. "Or is it? Feeling tortured?"


    "You are an Exhuman," I said, finally believing her. "What are you? Telekinetic?" I frowned at the doorknob in my hand. "Code-X?"


    "Take me in."


    "Never."


    Her assaults grew more brutal by the day, but rarely was it anything as overt as that first day. I began to see her hand in everything, wherever coincidences lined up too perfectly to be explained. When a garbage bin dropped a banana peel in front of another officer who had just heated up a bowl of corn chowder, which I detested, and he slipped and splashed it all over me. When I got four flat tires on the drive home from the office, every day for a week, despite changing my route home every day after the first. When my pants split due to sabotage and I bought another pair at random from a store I had never before visited...and they split again immediately in an identical fashion.


    Finally, I''d had enough. I had filed report after report on the girl, but the XPCA was unable to so much as verify the existence of the girl, and serious hints were being delivered that my new psychosis would hold me back from any further promotions.


    I stepped off of the treadmill and held a towel to my face, seeping heat and sweat into its dark comfort. I''d given in to the girl, and, I was sure, under her manipulation of improbable influence, I started collecting Exhumans. At first, I didn''t even know why, but the more I witnessed them, the more I realized they would be the ones to save the XPCA, under my leadership.


    When I found Temperance and then Jack, the need for some kind of name distant from their previous lives became apparent, and so the girl had become Magician, a fitting title as she bewitched me into her whims.


    She was dead now. Chariot and the others lived on in her legacy, and I still never understood why she had made such demands of me. Perhaps she was insane, and her objectives were as meaningless as they appeared.


    But a part of me suspected otherwise.


    I went back to my office after a brief shower and change and found the door open. Perhaps it was just reminiscence on Magician, but the fact that somehow, she''d escaped even death to come here and torment me one last time was the first thought which crossed my mind.


    Instead, the chair spun and in it sat the Exhuman Code-X. I frowned. This was not where she was supposed to be. And in her lap, pointed at me, a standard-issue XPCA sidearm, similar to the one on my hip.


    [Hello, douchebag,] she said into my mind.


    "Hello. Get out of my chair."


    She waved the gun a little at me. [So you can hear me. That''s something at least.]


    "Final warning. Leave now, Exhuman."


    [I found this weapon just laying around downtown. Amazing what people will abandon on a street corner, just sitting there all by itself in the hands of some XPCA asshole.]


    Before she could react, I had drawn and fired, placing a bullet in her at center mass. The mess on my chair was unfortunate, but I would take the blood of an Exhuman on it over an Exhuman any day. With a pained gasp, she crumpled and fell to the floor, and I began to circle the desk.


    She popped up on me and fired back, hitting me in the shoulder. I dropped her again, clinging to the blood spreading across my arm, and trying to kick the gun away from her body, but she''d fallen on it. When she stirred again, I shot her again, in the back of the head, and struggled further with the furniture and the damn blood-soaked Sino girl now half-lodged under my desk with my one good arm holding a pistol.


    I could guess why nobody had responded to the shots going off. This was a Code-X in my office. I simply didn''t have enough hands to move her effectively however, and her gun had fallen somewhere I couldn''t locate in the few seconds I had between her revivals.


    After much of this, she stirred again, and I pressed the trigger only to hear a click without a boom. I swore as I realized I hadn''t been counting bullets, and reached for my holster to change the magazine.


    She shot me again, in the leg this time, and I fell over, my gun bouncing uselessly out of my hands as I slammed against the floor.


    [Now, that wasn''t very nice,] she said, and spun the chair around just so she could sit in it over me. [I think you owe me a little apology.]


    "Exhuman filth. Get out of my chair and GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!" I bellowed at her.


    We were so very close, as well. Again, this damn Exhuman had moved up my timeline on me before I was fully ready. R&D had been working on the tech needed to defeat her at my insistence the instant I''d learned about her. If only I had access to the prototypes.


    [Sheesh, stop yelling. You''re getting spit on me, and honestly, I prefer the blood. Red is definitely my color.]


    I tried to stand and thought I might manage. My leg injury wasn''t so bad, a clean pass-through in my thigh, which had fortunately not nicked the artery. What prevented me from standing was the Exhuman, who kicked me in the face and then ground her heel into my bullet wound, making my breath come out in small gasps and white lights flash in front of my eyes from the pain.


    [That is for Lia,] she said. [And this,] she punched me in the injured shoulder, and then jammed her finger into the bullet hole. I could do nothing but gasp and gape as my eyes rolled into my head in agony. I could still hear her in my mind, clear as anything over my own scream. [This is for Athan. Don''t you ever fucking kidnap one of my friends.]


    She pulled her thumb free with a squelch of my own blood and I fell down gasping. The world around me swum in and out of view, but I realized I was being forced onto my back.


    [Now, you''re going to tell me a couple things, and if I like your answers, I''ll leave and never bother you again. If I don''t, we''re going to give you another hole, and then I''m going to be the first one to take its virginity. And I am not a gentle lover. Got it?]


    The only reason I could understand her was that she was speaking directly to my mind. I certainly wasn''t in any state to respond. She seemed to understand this and frowned as she advanced on me.


    [Tsk. I''ll have a couple of your servants pick you up and bring you to your bedroom. Clean you up a little. It won''t do for you to die on me. Pretty obnoxious, trying not to kill humans, honestly. And generally, it''s not like I care, but something about you...I can''t read. And that pisses me the hell off.]


    The door opened, and two of my servants walked in, clumsily, and without smiles.


    [So we''re taking you up there, and then you''re going to tell me everything you know about why my powers don''t work on you...and then you''re going to tell me everything you know about Mage. And you''re going to talk because if you don''t...I did such an incomplete job last time I cleaned out the XPCA top brass, and you just know I hate leaving a job half-finished.]


    I groaned and blacked out as they moved me carelessly, out from the time they hoisted me. But before I went, there was one glimmer of hope, the tiniest of schemes which just might pay out.


    The bedroom, she''d said. It was where the prototype was, where I''d last been toying with it. If I could only get my hands on it.


    And then I was violently jarred into non-being by my own servant.

 187. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    It wasn''t too long after we got back to AEGIS and Lia''s bloodstained hotel when I got a call from Cosette. Exasperated, she let me know that we had work to do, and with Tem out of the picture, I''d be picking up her share of the effort. Or else.


    I knew I was on thin ice with her. I''d already blown whatever goodwill I''d accrued in arguing with her about not going out to Chicago, but then hospitalizing Tem on top of that meant she was completely done with me for the time being. I gave in quicker than I wanted to, hanging up with her and stepping back into the office to talk to my sister and friend.


    I had still wanted to stay with Tem. Greedily, I wanted to be there for her, instead of for the people and country which needed me. I was going to argue. I was going to complain. I was going to wonder at just how damn unlikely it was that we''d seen two events in D.C. now in the short time I was here.


    She had sent me an image of the Exhuman event in progress and I shut my mouth. Any reluctance I had was gone. It was time for the XPCA, for the P-Force to go out and save lives.


    "Lia, AEGIS, I need to go," I said.


    The two of them looked at me warily. Lia spoke first. "You look...bad, Athan. What''s happened?"


    "Exhuman event. I need to go." From their looks I hadn''t told them anything they didn''t already guess.


    "You''re not telling us everything," AEGIS said, her eyebrows threatening to angle downwards into her radiant eyes. I held up the image on my holo for them to see and both leaned in to take a look and then fell backwards. "That isn''t possible."


    "Not from what we know," Lia said. "But there is admittedly a lot we could not know."


    "I''m pretty sure if he had any more tricks, he would have used them," AEGIS replied. Her hands seemed to move on their own, tenting and untenting and her fingertips rubbing against each other, before she broke down and grabbed one of her copper hanging twintails to stroke.


    "Obviously he had at least one more. He''s there, and Athan''s going to go fight him," Lia said with a frown.


    "Well, I''m coming with," AEGIS said.


    "No, AEGIS," I replied. "It''s too dangerous."


    "Are you kidding me? I''m at least a thousand times more durable than you are."


    Lia frowned even more. "No...he''s right. I mean, he''s wrong, but he''s also right. You haven''t sorted out your bugs yet, AEGIS. If you crash out in the field, not only will you be a sitting duck, but you might endanger everyone else as well."


    "That''s bullshit," AEGIS said, looking at the two of us disbelieving. "I''ve only crashed like, what, twice? What are the odds it''ll happen again just then?"


    "It doesn''t matter the odds, things happen at the worst times, always," Lia said. "Always."


    "That''s a stupid argument," AEGIS replied.


    "The fact is, you''re not going," I cut in. "This Exhuman is a killer, and I don''t want you getting hurt."


    AEGIS made a noise like ''pfeh!'' as she choked on some words, still blinking back disbelief. "This Exhuman is a killer and I don''t want you getting hurt!" she echoed back. "And you!" she turned to Lia. "I can''t believe you''re arguing against me on this. After we just argued against your brother killing himself on a suicide mission--"


    "This isn''t a suicide mission," I interrupted. "The whole P-Force is going...the whole force minus Tem...we''ve retained the services of any local hunters, which means Karu and at least one other, and the XPCA strike forces are mobilizing."


    "So let me come with you," AEGIS said. Her voice was confident, but her eyes were pleading. I shook my head.


    "Your job is to find out what they''re doing to you and fix it. That''s it. If I can''t help you with that, then you''re the only one who can, and you need to. Let me do what I can do, and you do what only you can do, okay?"


    She looked like she was going to continue arguing, but closed her mouth when Lia put a hand on her shoulder.


    "If you die out there, I will kill you," she warned.


    "Thanks. Both of you. Now I need to go."


    Less than twenty minutes later, I was in the back of a van with the rest of the P-Force, Cosette barking last-minute addendums to the extremely brief briefing we''d been given into the comms in our ears.


    No Captain Targa to be seen. I guess her last command hadn''t impressed sufficiently.


    I stared at the picture on my holo Cosette sent me earlier. I still couldn''t believe it. Even just holding my holo, I felt my hands growing cold and realized I had to actively battle back the memories.


    When I closed my eyes, he was there. Cocky grin. Business casual. Fingers of ice in my veins. Dipshit.


    Soran, his name was. He''d been eradicated, we all thought. The combined forces of Tower''s and Steffie''s Exhuman powers...both of them multiplied forces on them in different ways, and their powers together had magnified to, as Cosette had described it ''a completely unjustifiable, uncalled-for, absurd and embarrassing excess of powers use, not in any way condoned by the XPCA''.


    Basically, they''d obliterated an entire city block, and Dipshit...Soran, that is, had been right in the epicenter. Cosette was wrong about excessive force, because now he was somehow back.


    The picture showed him exactly as I remembered, grinning, like he knew the traffic camera was there and was trying to smile for it. No event as of yet, but given his M.O. of hunting other Exhumans to steal their powers, he wasn''t one who could be left alone. At best, he grew ever stronger...at worst, we were looking at a double event if his target and he had it out.


    The van rolled to a halt and the doors opened to a narrow street, the rays of evening sun strangled by the valley of tall, deserted buildings. As usual, recon team had beat us here and had evacuated the area with their typical expertise.


    Walking down the empty street as more vans pulled in and more XPCA filed out felt like we were setting up to stroll down main street in the old west. A shootout between old rivals. He wanted to pay us back for his last defeat. I wanted to avenge Mage.


    So I was impatient as the last few assembled and we moved forward, but remembering AEGIS'' and Lia''s concern, I was taking no risks here. As much as my blood boiled, as much as I wanted to see this guy go down, a thousand times more, I didn''t want to get someone else killed.


    We knew from experience that he was cunning enough to lay a trap, and if Mage hadn''t been there with her ridiculous powers, we would have all died. There was no room for that kind of error this time.


    I heard a distant roar which cut out early and realized Karu was on the roofs above us, flying as little as possible to maintain a semblance of stealth. Out of one of the other vans was a large black man with dreads tied up which brushed the inside of the clear dome helmet of his exosuit. Another hunter. Almost three dozen XPCA, all in exosuits, a handful of whom were shieldbearers, holding the shimmering orange barriers in their hands to protect themselves and the rest of us. Jack, Tower, and Moon had shared the van with me.


    No Tem. No Mage. Both because of me.


    We were ready and split up and moved forward. The rest of the XPCA and hunters were there for support. Their job was to contain and corral, keep him from escaping or escalating the situation. The P-Force would be doing the heavy lifting.


    Recon units had eyes on him, and we were following to catch up to them. We were on their comms, for the time being, and listening to their chatter made me realize just how little I understood of the XPCA recon branch, even though we''d worked with them before.


    I remembered the pair of trackers we''d met up with last time we went after Soran, with their heads covered in sensors of all kinds, walking on stilts like animals. I knew the ones keeping an eye on him this time wouldn''t be so obvious, but that was the image which was in my mind. Move and catch up to the herd of oddly-gaited quadruped spider-people.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    And then catch up with him.


    Though we were all on-edge and kept on our toes as we advanced, the time seemed to pass in a blur. I felt simultaneously too hot and too cold, despite the unusual warmth of the day making it actually nice outside. When I thought of him my blood boiled, but when I remembered his face, when my mind wandered just past the moment, I felt frozen inside.


    Memories flashed by in front of my eyes like they were right there, something I''d only ever experienced before when Saga was putting new memories in my head, or the time she was sleeping and I relived her and others'' memories. But these memories were mine, and the fact they came on so unbidden and so strong, it made me anxious.


    It''d go away when we beat him, I told myself. I was just nervous about stepping up to Mage''s killer. Just a weird bit of brain chemistry.


    I also tried to ignore the fact that last time I saw visions like this, I accidently vivisected Tem.


    So yeah. My brain wasn''t doing so great. Watching Karu''s jetpack flare as she jumped between buildings above us, I had a brief flash of insight of a lesson she''d beaten into me. ''I''m fine, just--'' means ''I am not fine'', and should not be deploying. I wondered her opinion on what it meant if I knew I wasn''t okay?


    Didn''t really matter, though. I''d pushed Cosette too far already and wouldn''t be able to worm out of this even if I wanted to. Which I didn''t. My head was just spinning a bit too much right now. I''d be fine when I got there. I''d have to be. Nobody else was going to die.


    I realized we were alone now. The XPCA and hunters had split off, and it was just the P-Force running down the street. The warm winter air flowed through my lungs as my breathing remained even and slow. We were close.


    Two ordinary-looking men and a woman emerged from the shadows under some pillars beside a large building and the one in front greeted us with a raised hand. We stopped our advance to see what they wanted.


    "He knows he''s being followed," the recon team told us, starting in the middle of a conversation we''d already half-had over comms. "We couldn''t pursue any further without stealth tech."


    "Where is he?" I asked, surprised to hear my voice come out as a growl.


    "In there," the recon gestured towards a building under construction half a block away. "He hasn''t left yet, not by any conventional means anyway. Intel says the Exhuman''s a mutie?"


    "Mutie?" I asked stupidly.


    "His Prather classification...mutable?" I shook my head and the recon glanced back at his peers, as though asking if he was stupid or if I was.


    "Sorry, I''m more in the business of fighting them than classifying them," I apologized.


    "Yeah, lots of the strike teams are. That''s why they have a higher mortality rate than recon," he replied flatly. "Each Exhuman is given a classification to generalize where their powers fall, usually discerned through the blood and sweat of the recon teams, by the way."


    I sighed, but he continued. Proud of his job I guess.


    He pointed at me. "Electropath. Now if you had a physical component to using your powers instead of just mental, you''d be electrokinetic. If you created self-acting entities, electrogenesist. If your powers defied convention but were still electric, you might be an electrist or a special electropath. And so on."


    "And he''s mutable, because his powers change. Got it."


    "Special mutable. He earns that special title because his powers come from others."


    "Great talk," I said, as I broke off to head towards the construction, leaving the recon to just shake his head.


    "Sorry, we have some history with this Exhuman," Jack explained as an apology while we peeled away.


    More like this Exhuman was about to become history. This time we wouldn''t even leave dust.


    This building was a lot less finished than the last one we''d fought in. Barely some walls, and scaffolding in place for pouring concrete on the higher floors. As we walked in, I saw a line of XPCA shieldbearers blocking the road ahead, blocking that exit. I briefly wondered if he liked construction sites, or if two of them in a row was just a coincidence. Not that it really mattered, there wouldn''t be a third time.


    He wasn''t hard to find. He was sitting out in the open in the very middle of the building''s shell, surrounded by a patch of snow presumably of his own making, judging by the lack of footprints. When he saw us, he waved and smiled, and my hands felt cold.


    "Hello, P-Force," he sighed like he was already tired of us. I didn''t wait for more. I filled both hands with lightning and hurled them at him.


    But just as I stepped in to fire them off, my foot slipped on a patch of ice I hadn''t seen, and the two bulbs fired off askew, both crashing and sparking and arcing on the wall just behind him. Jack was there, knife poised to strike when the bulbs exploded and electrocuted him instead of Dipshit.


    "Jack!" I shouted. "Fuck!"


    "Oh, he''s fine," Soran said, finally rising and stepping away from where Jack was twitching and smoking on the ground.


    With a roar, Tower shot straight at him, flying like a missile, the purple spectre of Moon''s effigy standing on his back like she was surfing on him. Soran yawned and casually laid down as though to make a snow angel, and Tower sailed over him. As Tower hit the wall and rebounded back in and down, Soran was already rolling to the side, snow crunching under him, and just as Tower ricocheted back into reach, Soran disappeared under the surface of the snow, Moon''s grasping hands finding nothing as Tower careened off the ground into the sky.


    "Wrong way!" Moon shouted at him in his voice.


    "I know that! We hit the ground too fast, give me a minute!"


    They almost crashed into Karu as she engaged, her streaking blue plasma trail showing a sudden right-turn in her path where she avoided crashing into them.


    "You die, godless scum!" she shrieked, and came to a halt in the air, her pack holding her steady against the backblast of dozens of micro-missiles emerging from every part of her body, small panels opening on her hips, shoulders, legs, and arms, and thousands of smoke trails twisting through the air as they converged down on him.


    In an instant, there was a towering wall of flame between the two of them, and the missiles, unable to see past it drifted, suddenly unsure of where their target had gone. Flying in straight lines until they could re-acquire, a pair crashed into each other and detonated, creating a large explosion and shockwave which sent the others careening at random, exploding onto other walls or detonating on the ground. Karu herself was rocked by the blast and flew erratically to avoid getting caught in her own explosions in her face.


    Her missile loadout was sourced from the XPCA, and it showed. Where the blasts occurred, it wasn''t all fire and explosions. Some erupted into a sphere of gas, others into a gel which coated everything in its influence. I saw one erupt into a burst of electricity, which was new to me, I suppose nobody wanted to try shocking me. Similarly, none of hers froze the air into a starburst of ice, even though I had seen grenades of that sort back in our fight against the XPCA. Since Soran had ice powers, that also made sense.


    Soran climbed out of the little pit in the ground he''d rolled into to avoid Tower and brushed snow off his button-down shirt. I was also up, and ran at him, but it felt like under the snow, wherever I put my feet, there was a small patch of ice just waiting for me. I slid and slipped until finally I landed on my tailbone with a painful crack.


    "Really," he sighed, fiddling with something he was putting in his ears. "You never listen."


    "Shut up!" I shouted back at him, feeling my face burning from losing to a damn patch of ice of all things.


    The other hunter with the dreads appeared from the direction of the other XPCA and let loose with a focused blast of some kind of invisible energy that made my teeth rattle.


    "Your calibration is off," Soran said to the hunter with a playful tap on his ear. "Don''t you know that snow dampens sound?" he gestured at the circle of fresh powder all around him, much of which was now drifting through the air from the blasts of the fight. "But you can''t turn it up more, can you? Not without liquefying your friends."


    On top of the hunter''s noises, the air sounded like it tore open, and Karu was there again, flying straight through the illusionary wall of fire. "Your tricks will not save you, serpent!" she shouted.


    "I''ve heard that one before."


    "Silence, devil! I stand with God!" Her arms snapped forward and two blasts of scattering light erupted from the guns strapped to her. Soran leaned slightly one way and the random scattering of the beams passed right around him, sizzling and refracting off the snow at his feet into harmless light. She fired again and again, but he just moved subtly each time with an intense air of boredom, and none of the scattergun shots ever touched him.


    "Enough of this!" She shouted, and switched from her scatterguns to the machine guns on her wrists.


    "Don''t think you want to do that," he said, shaking a finger at her. "Water cooled, aren''t they?"


    She looked at him in surprise, and then with a practiced motion, ripped both of the machine guns off their hardpoints and threw them to the ground. As though waiting for that cue, each of the guns exploded from the inside with shards of ice.


    Just like Mage had.


    "What do you want?" she shouted.


    "What does it matter?" I asked. "He''s here to die, to us."


    "He is toying with me," Karu sneered. "He could have used that ice to kill me at any time."


    "It''s true," he said. "I''m actually here to talk."


    We all hesitated for a moment, interrupted only by Tower crashing back down into the ground with a grunt. "What''d I miss?" he asked.


    "The Exhuman wants to talk," the black hunter said.


    "Well fuck him," Tower replied, and shot towards Soran again.


    "Tower, stop," said the hunter. "We''re not that XPCA anymore."


    To my surprise, Tower did stop. I was happy to see that from his back, Moon still tried to claw at the Dipshit, but she couldn''t reach.


    "Why?" she shouted at him.


    "Well, uh, it''s true, isn''t it?" Tower replied.


    "What''s true is that he''s a damn murderer!" I shouted. I tried to get up again but my hand slipped on a piece of ice, and I cracked my elbow against the concrete painfully. I held it as I rolled and swore in the snow.


    "If I wanted to just kill people and take their powers, you''re sitting in a puddle, Chariot," Soran said. "It would be pretty easy to kill you."


    "So again, what do you want?" Karu asked, still hovering high beyond his reach.


    "It''s pretty obvious, isn''t it?" he asked, looking around at all of us surrounding him. He turned and locked eyes with me and smiled. "I want to surrender."

 188. 2251, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    "I know I didn''t hear that right," Moon said.


    "You want to surrender?" I echoed.


    "I want to surrender." Soran held his hands forward like he was awaiting handcuffs.


    I narrowed my eyes as I scrutinized him from the ground. This had to be a trick. Had to be a trap. He''d already used Steffie against us once, what was the trap this time?


    But...on the other hand, here I was slipping and sliding on ice, very nearly helpless, and he''d warned Karu about her guns instead of just killing her. Why?


    "Well...perfect then," Cosette said in our comms. "Put him in the biggest restraints we have, and bring him in."


    "There''s no way this isn''t a trap," I said.


    "Then let''s spring it," she said, impassively. "Then you can kill him. Or he comes in peacefully. Win-win in my book."


    "If he hasn''t killed two of us yet, that just means his trap is bigger than two people," I said. "I''m not going to let him kill anyone."


    "He''s a peacefully surrendering combatant," the other hunter said. "Last I checked, the New XPCA doesn''t execute those anymore?"


    "But he''s killed before."


    "And that''s why we''re taking him in, so he can stand trial for his crimes. That''s how the police are supposed to work."


    "We''re not police," Moon said. "We''re heroes. And heroes stop bad guys."


    "And here I am, stopped," Soran said with a shrug.


    Tower was walking around the snow-covered ice patch to where Jack was lying and checked on him. "He''s fine. He''s coming to. Jack?"


    "Ow, damn," Jack said as Tower helped him sit up. "Chariot, kindly watch the lightning in the future. My body feels like¡­" He paused thoughtfully. "...every part of me was run over by a bus, perhaps?"


    "Sorry, Jack," I said. "Jack, you want this...this Dipshit dead, don''t you?"


    "Is he not? I just assumed since it seemed the fighting had stopped."


    "No, he surrendered. Is surrendering. Or, we''re discussing if we should let him."


    "Oh." Jack smiled. "Okay then."


    "Okay then?"


    Jack shrugged. "Why not?"


    "Because why would he surrender!" I shouted back. Was I crazy, or was everyone else? "He killed Mage, remember?"


    "And if we fight, I will certainly kill more of you," Soran said.


    "Exactly!" I said.


    "Um," Jack scratched his head. "So you want more of us to die?"


    "No! Just...he''s a killer! He needs to be stopped."


    Jack''s smile fluttered for just a moment. "Chariot, how many have you killed?"


    "That''s not fair."


    "Why not?"


    "Because¡­it...it wasn''t my fault?" I said. "I tried not to...or they were attacking me, first."


    "And here we are attacking him first, so he is justified in killing us, by your logic?"


    "No!"


    Karu landed behind me and helped me to my feet. "Ashton, I stand with you. This Exhuman is a pestilence upon the world. Whatever his reasons may be, I am certain they are ignoble."


    "Right," said Moon.


    "Damn it girl, get off my back if you''re gonna be like that," Tower said to her.


    "Tower, Jack, how can you two possibly side with him?" I asked. "He killed Mage."


    "Jack''s right, I think," Tower said. "We can''t just go killing Exhumans because we feel like it. That''s not what the P-Force is about. Not what it''s supposed to be about, anyway."


    "I thought making a world where Exhumans could be given a chance without being executed and subjugated was your idea?" Cosette added.


    "It...it was. But not him!" I shouted.


    "That''s not how laws work," she chided. "Just arrest him and believe in the system you helped to create."


    "That isn''t good enough," Karu said. "Laws and systems are flawed. It is only by taking righteous action with your own hands that we can assure good triumphs in the world."


    Cosette sighed in my ear. "Look, I''m not a damn lawyer. I''m trying to run a military op here. The mission is to defeat, rout or detain the hostile Exhuman. So detain him, damn it."


    Jack advanced towards Soran, a pair of restraints in his hands from somewhere.


    "Tower, put me down!" Moon shouted. "Let me have my own body back."


    "Yeah? Why?"


    "So I can shoot him, obviously."


    "No. Bad girl. No shooting anyone."


    To her, this was the same as Ethan. No matter what debate there was over whether this Exhuman should live or die, she would do what she thought she had to and take the consequences on herself.


    It was noble. I liked it. I unholstered my sidearm and pointed it at Soran. Jack, standing a foot away from him, froze.


    "Don''t do anything stupid, Chariot," Jack said.


    "What''s Chariot doing now?" Cosette sighed into comms.


    "He''s got a gun pointed at the target," Jack said.


    "Damn it, you stupid hypocritical dumbass. Put the damn gun down!" she shouted at me.


    "Chariot, don''t," Moon warned as she struggled uselessly, attached to Tower as securely as his own shadow. "Let me."


    "No," Karu said, and pulled my arm down gently. "Let me." She raised an arm and without hesitation, fired a single round which punched a fist-sized hole in Soran''s chest and threw him backwards into Jack and the wall, leaving a trail of red on the circle of snow.


    "Hunter, hold your fire! You are no longer authorized!" Cosette shouted.


    "What the damn hell, Karu," said the other hunter, advancing on her in his multicolored Exosuit.


    "Get out of my way, Deej," she said coldly. "Evil exists only to be purged."


    "And things are only as evil as they make up their mind to be, yute," he said back.


    Already I could see the wound closing on Soran''s chest, and readied a handful of lightning. Before I could throw it, Jack was there, holding my wrist.


    "I did say to be careful throwing the lightning," he said with a smile.


    "Jack, let go."


    "Chariot...Athan, trust me. Murder will only get you so far. You have to let go sometime."Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    "He killed Mage. How can you let him go after that?"


    "We''re not letting him go. We''re taking him in. That''s the opposite of letting him go. But you have to let go. You need to stop blaming yourself for Mage''s death."


    "I''m not blaming myself. I''m blaming him!"


    "If that were true, you''d let him stand trial, like Tower and I are willing to do. But for you, this is personal. It''s a vendetta, it''s revenge. This isn''t justice."


    "The only justice for those like him lies in death!" Karu hissed. She stepped to get a shot around Deej, but he moved with her to block her. When she rose up, he moved back towards him, keeping himself in the way of the shot.


    "This isn''t justice, this is murder," Deej said.


    "He is a bad guy!" Moon shouted in an angry, excited voice I''d never heard Tower use before. She pounded ineffectively against his shoulders, completely unable to affect him with his own spectre. "Bad guys need to be stopped!"


    I sort of wondered what had happened to Moon to make her like this. From our experiences so far, she seemed quiet, studious, a little fatalistic. Not the kind to go off screaming about ''bad guys''.


    But it was only half a thought. I didn''t have time for that now. I wrenched my hand free of Jack''s and then he was in front of me, smiling right in my face.


    "Do you really want to fight me, Jack?" I asked.


    "Do you really want to kill a helpless man so badly you''d fight me to do it?" he asked back.


    I had to think about that for a second. The way he phrased it...of course I didn''t. But this wasn''t just a helpless man. This was a murdering Exhuman. This was a trap, or a trick, or a ploy. Just because I hadn''t yet figured out what didn''t mean it wasn''t. Why couldn''t they see this?


    "Since you haven''t responded, I''ll assume you''re thinking it over Chariot," Cosette said. "Well, let me help you make your decision. If you willingly and deliberately attack a fellow soldier on the field, do you know what we call that?"


    "Dealing with an idiot who can''t understand that this is all a trap?"


    "We call that fragging, a court-marshallable offense. And when you are up there, the recording of this comms will be Exhibit A before they have you executed. So knock it the fuck off." She sighed heavily. "Chariot, could you just once not be a huge pain in my ass?"


    "You do realize this is all part of Soran''s plot, right?"


    "Maybe. I don''t really care. If or when he makes trouble, we''ll stop him. But you can''t just go around unlawfully killing people you don''t like, no matter what they did in the past."


    I peered over Jack''s shoulder at the man lying on the ground, the front of his shirt stained red from Karu''s shot, the wound almost closed now. Everything would be so much easier, so much cleaner, so much better if he were dead.


    But¡­


    But the same could be said for me. Even though I knew I was trying to do good and Soran was up to something evil, I''d still killed dozens of XPCA, brave men and women who threw their lives away to protect the world from a threat they couldn''t even fully comprehend; in many ways, the bravest and most noble among us.


    That made me...in this situation, that made me Brick? I was the one seeing myself as a hero to get rid of a dangerous Exhuman before he could harm those I cared about?


    The comparison made my skin crawl. But I also couldn''t accept that I was wrong. Soran needed to die. His powers made him more dangerous than any other Exhuman, because with his powers, he could be any other Exhuman if he got his hands on them. If he ever managed to get the drop on Saga...I shuddered to think of it.


    It''s not that I didn''t understand what the others were saying, it was just short-sighted of them. The system didn''t apply to people like him. It couldn''t. But even as I had that thought I felt the hypocrisy burning in my brain. A few months ago, the system didn''t apply to people like him, and I''d fought tooth and nail to change it so it would. And now I wanted to take it all back.


    I needed...I didn''t know. I needed Lia, or Saga maybe, someone with a good view of the bigger picture, who could tell me what was right. I knew what was right, right now, but there had to be rules, enforceable and consistent. It''s not like I could fly all over the Earth telling everyone the right decision all the time, or even know the right decisions.


    Slowly, my indecision was made for me, and I realized, if nothing else, given my own lack of confidence in this situation, I wasn''t about to lead Karu and Moon to attack Deej, Tower, and Jack.


    I lowered my hands and my head fell like I was a marionnette gone slack. Jack smiled and advanced to pat me on the shoulder reassuringly.


    "When he attacks, pray that nobody dies for your weakness," Karu said, but lowered her weapons as well.


    "No!" Moon shrieked at us in Tower''s rumbling voice. "No! I refuse to believe this!"


    "I don''t know what else to do, Moon. I''m sorry."


    "It''s not hard to know what to do. Be good. Stop evil. He is evil and we all know it, so stop him!"


    "He''s already stopped," Jack said, repeating his argument to me before.


    "He is stopped for now. But he is evil." She shook her head, looking as incredulous as I felt earlier. It was so obvious, why couldn''t the others see? I felt her frustration, but I knew my choice would not change. I couldn''t fight my friends like this.


    Soran was put in restraints and we all moved back towards the convoy, Moon shrieking protests the whole way. He was loaded up with narcotics to keep him under, strapped in to a chair, and driven off between two cars full of XPCA.


    "Thank you Chariot, for once," Cosette said as they drove out of sight. "You''re a little slow but you got there. You did the right thing. He''ll be confined in New Eden, face trial, and serve his sentence."


    I blinked a few times and next to me saw Jack''s smile diminish slightly.


    "New Eden?" he asked.


    "Yeah. I know what you''re thinking, the place isn''t a prison, but that doesn''t mean we don''t have any prison facilities there. We can''t just throw him in a standard prison, you know?"


    She had no idea what I was thinking, nor what Jack was either, apparently.


    "Steffie''s in New Eden," Jack said.


    "Lots of Exhumans are in New Eden," I said.


    "Uh. Yeah, that''s the point¡­" Cosette said, and then lapsed into silence. "...oh. Shit."


    "Yeah," I said. "Now I think I know why he wanted to be captured."


    "Hang on, I''ll...I''ll figure something out," Cosette said, and I heard her making a call on her end, indistinctly.


    I felt a little vindicated that I was right that Soran was up to something, but also a little stupid for not putting it together. Of course he''d want to be taken in, if it meant he got to be locked in with all of the Exhumans in America. It''d be a buffet for his powers, and when we finally tried to intervene, he might be powerful enough that we couldn''t stop him. There were hundreds in New Eden now, I couldn''t begin to imagine how we''d fight one Exhuman with that amount of power.


    "Damn me. Damn, damn, damn, damn," said Jack, who seemed to be flickering around randomly, anxiously. "How stupid. How reprehensibly moronic. A damn idiot, I am!"


    "I don''t...don''t want to say I told you so but¡­" I reached out towards him and he vanished to behind me.


    "I have gone too soft, it seems," Jack said. "Thinking optimistically about second chances and chances for redemption, and in trying to give that...that asshole his, I might have threatened mine. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"


    "Hey, Jack. Language."


    He glared at me over his smile. Kind of terrifying to see both on his face at the same time.


    "Okay, not the time, I get it. But look, everything you said still applies. If he acts, we''ll stop him, right?"


    "By then, it might be too late for her."


    "And if his trap had been something he set off here, us arguing might have let him kill one or more of us just now. And yet you were okay with that?"


    "No...I just...like I said, I was an idiot and believed him."


    "An idiot indeed," Karu said, stepping into our conversation with her visor under her arm. "Exhumans cannot be trusted." Her green eyes blazed as she looked off at the buildings across the street, seeing something much further away.


    "It''ll be fine though," I said. "We figured it out in time. He''ll be...put in an old XPCA facility and everything will be okay." Neither of them seemed capable of looking at me. "Right, Cosette?"


    "Sorry, Chariot...I''m still...trying things here."


    "How hard can this be?" I asked her. "You''re in charge of this op, just have him shipped somewhere else."


    "Ordinarily yes, it might be that simple. But uh¡­"


    "But, uh, what?" Jack asked.


    "Uh, some kind of...administrative meddling. The troops in the convoy are refusing to acknowledge my orders, saying they have superseding orders from a superior."


    "Who?" I asked. "Who the heck would jump in like this?"


    My question was answered as a familiar voice joined in our conversation over comms.


    "Hello, Chariot. It has been a while."


    "Blackett?" I couldn''t possibly mistake his voice. But what was the leader of the entire agency doing scumming around in our op?


    "I must insist you refer to me as Director Blackett, despite our prior cordiality." I could hear him smirking into his comms. "Your friend Saga paid me a visit the other day to ask about some sensitive information. She didn''t like my answers."


    "What did you do to Saga!" I shouted before I could stop myself. Wait, could he even do anything to Saga?


    "Nothing, unfortunately. Well, killed her a few times, but you know how that goes. She''s on her way to Tampa, I believe, to look into Mage''s family situation." He paused for a few moments before continuing. "But enough pleasantries. Chariot, Major Dawn, the Exhuman Soran will be taken to and detained in New Eden."


    "But--"


    "This is not a negotiation. This is an order. Please confirm that you have heard and understood."


    "...y-yes, sir," Cosette said. "May I ask why? He''s a very--"


    "No, you may not. Chariot?"


    I gritted my teeth. "Go fuck yourself, Blackett."


    "I will take that as an acknowledgement. Good day."


    Before either of us could say another word, he dropped out of our comms, leaving only a pained silence.


    After a few minutes, she spoke again. "You still did the right thing, Chariot," she said, though I''m not sure it was entirely me she was trying to reassure.


    I shook my head. I knew I hadn''t, but that wasn''t the issue anymore. If Blackett was playing around with Exhumans again, that could only mean one thing.


    Clearly, being head of the XPCA wasn''t enough for him. Clearly, he was still up to something. And clearly, whatever it was, if it involved Soran, it was bad.

 189. 2251, Present Day. New Eden. Steffie.

    It was warm, for a change. But I guess that''s what you got by being out in the middle of New Mexico. Only around fifty degrees, but after the below-freezing temperatures in D.C., fifty seemed almost tropical.


    And we kind of needed the nice weather. New Eden was a lot of things, but finished certainly wasn''t one of them. More emphasis had been placed on the walls and gates surrounding the city than the buildings inside of it, and functioning heating was in short supply, which made the cold desert nights almost unbearable. Fortunately blankets and warm clothes were around, but I had my reservations about how we''d make it through the summer if they had the same issues getting ACs installed.


    The hardest part was that, in general, existence was exactly that...just existing. We didn''t have jobs or roles or duties...plenty of laws and rules, but food was given out, an allowance allotted for buying anything non-essential, and we were allowed to keep our old possessions and money, of course...part of the XPCA''s promise that this wasn''t just an internment camp.


    But we were here, we weren''t allowed to leave, and there wasn''t anything for us to do. I had more insider insight than most, being good personal friends with some of the P-Force, and I knew what a rushed mess putting this place together was, but for them to overlook such an essential thing as boredom, it was asking for trouble.


    But not from me, or from most. A little boredom, I could endure, if it meant giving up the fear I''d lived with every day before. Fear of an XPCA kill squad showing up on my porch, of angry strangers who knew me only as Exhuman, and only as something horrible to destroy. But worst of all, fear of myself, of what I could do, of how many hundreds might die and how many city blocks would be destroyed if I got, heaven forbid, hit by a car or something.


    So I, like many, agreed with New Eden. Keep us quarantined. Keep people safe from us. We''d find ways to conquer boredom.


    I was still new here, one of the last arrivals, and was still adjusting. Strong communities were already being forged, everyone was in the same kind of boat, everyone had the same background, felt the same fear and relief of being here, and everyone generally had their best foot forward to try to make this all work. I told Jack as much one night when he video called me to see how I was doing.


    "Nobody''s abusing their powers or anything?"


    "I think you''d hear about that before I told you," I laughed.


    "As though the XPCA would tell me anything," he smiled. I saw his eyes glitter at me in the light of the holo. I knew with his eyes closed, he could see things better around him, but something like a holo wouldn''t be visible unless they were open. For this reason, I actually kind of liked being remote with him...I saw a lot more of his eyes this way.


    "Well, I see people using their powers more openly here than ever...well...I guess that''s a lie. I''ve never seen other Exhumans before, except you guys, and you all certainly weren''t shy about using your powers."


    "It is our job."


    "Oh, it wasn''t an insult or anything."


    Jack smiled reassuringly. "I understand. Please continue."


    "It''s just the first place in the world where everyone can be an Exhuman. Like, either you are wearing an XPCA uniform, or you''re an Exhuman, or what are you doing here, y''know? Visiting someone, I guess."


    "Yes," Jack said, and scratched his chin thoughtfully. I realized that while he was still smiling, this was the equivalent of a frown on him. "I apologize for not coming out to see you still. We had...well, there was an event."


    "Is everyone okay?"


    "Things got tense, but not dangerous. I''ll tell you more later, don''t let me keep interrupting you."


    I laughed. "Jack, this is a conversation. Those have two people in them. If you have something to say, you should say it."


    He smiled again. "But I''d much rather hear about you." Ever the sweetheart. He''d told me he was married before with kids, and lost them all when he became Exhuman. Such an unfair way to lose a life. But as sad as that was, in a way...deep down, as much as I hurt for him and the life he never had, I had to admit, if something so horrible had never happened to him, I would never have met him, so I couldn''t be entirely disappointed.


    So basically, I was a terrible person. Terrible Exhuman, anyway.


    "Well since people don''t have to hide their powers, you see them get used sometimes. I imagine for everyday life, some powers just aren''t useful, but some...like yours, I suppose, the Exhuman with them just finds life a lot easier with it than without."


    I leaned back in my wheelchair and stretched my back. "The other day, I saw a group playing a game of basketball in the street, and the ball got stuck on a roof. One of them just sorta leaned to one side, and the ball fell sideways off the roof. They were talking about starting to play with using their powers, but I don''t think every power would apply or help..."


    "And some are just stronger or weaker than others," Jack nodded.


    "Not like mine would help me at all. Unless we wanted to make the ball explode if it got passed to me," I said. I saw Jack''s eyes glitter as he peeked to see if I was looking unhappy with my self-disparaging, and I gave him a cheeky smile. "I''m fine, Jack, really."


    "You''re getting around okay?"


    "There''s nowhere to get around to. I can just sit in my house all day if I wanted. I don''t even need to go to the distribution center, as a disabled, I get home delivery."


    "But you--"


    "Yes, Jack, I am getting out every day. I can take care of myself. I still ran the florist''s after losing my legs, I can certainly manage to live in a city where I don''t have to do anything."


    "My apologies again¡­"


    He was sweet, but he also worried a lot. I suppose given how he''d already lost one family, and how we met, and how he blamed himself and his team for crippling me, he had some grounds for being overly concerned, but I had a couple problems with that.


    One...if he couldn''t see me as anything but a victim, we''d never go anywhere. And by we, I meant him and me, in a relationship. I knew he liked me, his guilt over what happened to me could only explain so much, but he''d still never made a move. Out of deference to his complicated family situation, I wasn''t going to either, but jeez, guy! I was sending all the signs! It''s hard to be seductive in a wheelchair, but come on!


    And two...I wasn''t some princess who''d get captured every weekend. I didn''t have a history of kidnapping and injury, as far as I was concerned, it was just the one time. So it was nice of Jack to worry about my safety, but honestly, as an Exhuman, even one with kind of a crap power that blew up in my face more than it helped--literally--I was still probably one of the harder people in the world to kidnap.


    Or...so I saw it. It was a few hours later when I finally hung up with Jack, making sure he was peeking at me before I blew him a kiss (sending all the signs still, guy!) and then shutting down my holo. I stretched again and saw it was dark already, but there were lights marching past my window. I was on the ground floor, of course.


    New arrivals. Seemed they came in twos and threes every week or so, got paraded through the street by the XPCA administration on the way to their new homes, and the admins needed bodyguards because they were paranoid idiots, so there was a whole freaking parade of soldiers and Exosuits every time a few new people moved in.


    Not that we really minded. It was pretty boring here, after all.


    I rolled over to the window and pushed the blinds aside to watch. Line after line of XPCA marched past in formation, ready to fight off the nonexistent hostiles to protect the administrators, like that would ever happen...or like that would do anything if there were a few truly angry Exhumans.


    There in the center, a little open-air cargo cart driving slowly in the midst of the procession, black of course, because the XPCA loved black. And sitting on it was a couple officials and a couple others, the new Exhumans. A girl with straw-colored hair with her back to me, and a young man in a button-up shirt sitting facing me. He looked familiar, but I could only catch glimpses of him through the parade.


    I watched his face as they slowly progressed, and when he was even with my window, the line of soldiers and his car lined up perfectly so I could see him clearly, and in that moment, I was certain, he looked up right into my window, right into my eyes and saw me too, and my heart froze.


    I pulled my head out of the window and dropped the blinds with a clatter. I felt tears building painfully behind my eyes.


    It couldn''t be. But I would never forget that face, and the small smile which was on his wasn''t there a moment ago. It was impossible. Had he come for me? Had he gone so far as to get himself arrested, just to sneak into New Eden, just for me?This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I lurched for the holo on the table, forgetting and almost falling out of my wheelchair. My hands shook as I grabbed the wheels, and my blue hair was sitting in my eyes, damp with sweat. I had to call Jack back. He''d alluded to an event but we never came back to it. Was this it? Was it him?


    Jack''s line didn''t ring. He''d turned his holo off after our call...I hoped he was just going to the bathroom or eating or something after several hours on call with me. I left him a message, typing frantically one-handed while I made sure the door was locked and turned off the lights.


    Jack never called me back that night, or the next. When he finally talked to me on the third day, I was almost convinced that somehow that Exhuman had gotten him instead. He was just on a routine op, flying out to fight some Exhuman on the Mexican border who could create and control ink, and it had taken two days to finally track him down.


    He apologized, but confirmed that Soran, his name was, had been brought in. Special precautions were being taken, they put surveillance and some special precautions on him or something to keep him ''good'', but...yeah. He was here.


    He talked about the capture at length and everything he saw and suspected, and sent a message to my mobile.


    "One of Chariot''s friends made that while we were working on the squid," he said.


    "The squid?"


    "My apologies. The girl with the ink powers in Mexico. She was...aggravating, and deserved a disparaging nickname."


    "Sorry."


    "It''s my job. Anyway, the app I just sent you, it is...not entirely legal, so do not distribute it or inform others of its presence."


    I pulled up the app, my interest now fully piqued. It showed...not much. A green dot and a bunch of blue dots. Nothing happened if I tapped them.


    He continued. "The drones surveilling on Soran, this app tracks them, and they track him. You should be able to know where he is in a general sense by those drones. If they''re blue, they have sight of him. If they are red...otherwise. I imagine it is little comfort to you, but if you worry about him, you may console yourself by pulling up the app, and if there are blue dots, you know both where he is, and that he is being monitored."


    "No, that''s a huge comfort, thank you."


    "And...should they all be red...you have my number."


    "Yeah, unless you''re on an op." His smile fell. "I''m sorry, that was mean."


    "No, there is no point in my promises to protect you if they are meaningless," he sighed.


    "It''s fine, I have this," I said and waved the mobile at him. "Thank you, really."


    We talked for a while longer, but ultimately, as ever, we had to hang up and I fell further back into my chair, exhausted. It felt like it was finally over, after these three days of not knowing whether he''d break into my house at any second. At least, now I had something. I had confirmation, I had the app, and I had Jack telling me it would be okay.


    After compulsively checking my mobile every few minutes for the next few days, I finally gave up and had the dots displayed on the desktop holo on my table. I figured, if someone asked what they were, I could say it was an abstract clock or art or something. But as more and more days slipped by, and the lights remained ever-blue, and ever-distant from the green dot which was me, I was able to calm down. I could sleep again, I could leave the house, though with my mobile sitting in my lap. Things returned to their original weird level of normalcy.


    More and more days passed, until a whole month I''d lived in New Eden.


    And in that month, things had changed. Exhuman power use became the norm, not a spectacle. It felt like everyone was flaunting their powers whenever able, even I felt a compulsion to go out and use them, though I had no idea how that would work or help anyone.


    Soran''s blue lights had never turned red, but that was the only good news about the place. I''d lost the easy nights of sleep I once had, and felt angry and restless almost constantly. And weirdest, and worst, it had nothing to do with Soran. It was just...an affliction. And it wasn''t just me, everyone seemed on-edge. Every Exhuman anyway, the XPCA we saw all seemed fine, same jerkasses as ever.


    The rumors were as baseless as they were constant. The XPCA only brought together Exhumans so they could kill those of us who had successfully hidden in society. They wanted us so they could do experiments to tell human from Exhuman. The irritability was a disease they''d created which could only spread to Exhumans. And so on.


    There were rumors that there was an Exhuman resistance forming to overthrow the New Haven administrators, and depose the corrupt leader, one Captain Targa.


    More rumors that Exhumans had gone missing, snatched by the XPCA, either for their experiments, or because those Exhumans had gotten a little too close to resisting.


    I was sick of it. I was sick of feeling crappy and useless and powerless. Another phone call I had with Jack ended with me throwing the holo off the table. All he had was basic information and empty reassurances. He didn''t know, and I knew I was being unreasonable in demanding information from him, but fuck it, if he couldn''t tell me, what use was he to me?


    I felt awful for thinking things like that, I felt awful as I looked over the broken mess of my home computer, I felt awful and out of control and angry all the time. I just wanted to live normally, I just wanted to feel normal, why couldn''t Jack just give me that. Why couldn''t the world? Was that so freaking much to ask?


    I went for a ''walk'', more angry than I should have been at the normal everyday annoyances of having to turn my chair around to lock my door, and the small bump at the edge of the curb. Why did we even have curbs? The only roads here were used by the XPCA. Couldn''t they just drive better, and then I wouldn''t have to struggle to get my chair up and down the stupid little lip?


    As I struggled minutely over it, some jackass came up behind me and made a big deal about me being in the way.


    "Well excuse me for not having legs, assclown!" I yelled at his back.


    "Yeah, excuse you, ya dumb bitch!" he yelled back, turning to me only long enough to sneer and throw a gesture at me which I returned.


    The place really had gone to shit. A couple times, people had attacked the guards and the P-Force had to show up and talk everyone down. All the stupid men lining up for a powers dick-measuring contest and posturing with a billion XPCA soldiers behind them. It was getting harder and harder to enforce the rules, and signs of it were showing up everywhere.


    Thankfully, my neighborhood had been mostly spared, being right on one of the main streets, but other districts had become the de-facto red-light district, or run by one of the gangs springing up, or even an underground fighting ring.


    The problem was, there wasn''t any money worth anything. People had nothing to offer but themselves and their powers. This didn''t stop idiots from starting shit like that, but once you made a gang of Exhumans in some back alley slum, now what? Nobody had anything to steal. The only motivation people had was to be dicks to others so they could feel better about themselves. Or fight others. Or fuck others. It was all the same thing, just frustrated people looking for any kind of release.


    But this had its own share of problems, besides the obvious that gangs and fighting and prostitution were bad. Because some powers were just better or more usable than others. Some guys would just win all the fights, and then...I guess they were the best, and I hope they were happy with that. What''s a fighter to do then? Well, go wander into the gang turf and hope they mistake you for someone weak so you can kick their asses too? Or pick a scrap with the XPCA?


    Or worse, with me?


    Chariot''s sister had the great idea after all this started that in order to get people to leave me alone, she just had to spread a rumor around that I was some kind of...all-powerful Exhuman. The blue-haired wheelchair girl, don''t fuck with her. And so far, it''d worked great. But lately, the cracks were starting to show. I saw the muscle-headed idiots watching me, wondering what I could do, thinking they could take me. It wouldn''t be long before one of them tried, and then what?


    I kept rolling, trying to keep thinking to myself to keep the edge off, when I ran into someone who stepped right in front of me.


    "Watch it, dumbass," I said, rolling back to look up at him.


    He was a wall of meat. Pecs on pecs on pecs. So broad he''d have to leave half his muscles behind if he wanted to sit in my chair. He sneered at me in a way which immediately confirmed my initial impression of how smart he wasn''t.


    "Watch it means move," I explained, and wheeled forward towards him again.


    "So you''re the one, huh?" he asked. His voice was as low as his IQ and as pleasant as a fresh bird shit.


    "Yep, that''s me. So fuck off," I said. I hit him with my chair again, but he didn''t move. I began to wonder if he knew how to.


    "You. Me. The ring."


    "This is the worst way to propose I''ve ever heard of."


    "No, stupid, the fighting ring. I challenge you."


    I sighed looking at the sheer amount of his shirtless physique, which he seemed to be flexing at all times, probably to reduce the risk of any blood accidentally reaching his brain.


    "Why would I do a stupid thing like that?" I asked.


    "If you beat me, you''ll be the best."


    "I''m already the best. Fuck off."


    He shook his head. "Not anymore. I''m the best."


    I let out an enormously annoyed sigh and turned to go, but my chair was stuck. I looked down, and from the ground saw skeletal hands emerging from the pavement like it was water, holding me there, not even slightly budging as I jerked against them.


    "Let me go," I said, refusing to face him, even as my heart began to race. In fear? Or in excitement? I...I...wasn''t exactly sure.


    "Make me."


    I should hate this, but like so many other things in my brain recently, what I thought, what I wanted, what was reasonable didn''t seem to matter. I was just angry and impotent and tired of it.


    So I worked very hard to keep my voice and breathing even when I asked him, "What the hell do you want from me?"


    "Fight me."


    "Here?"


    "No, in the ring below the city."


    I closed my eyes and tried to remember Jack. Tried to remember just a few weeks ago, when I still felt like me. When I was scared because I didn''t want to die, instead of just...I didn''t even know. Jack had told me that people were probably angry because they''d been afraid so long and after a while, you just get tired of being afraid. You get used to it, It turns to anger.


    I disagreed. I hadn''t been afraid in a long time now, but I was the angriest I''d ever been. I just wanted to snap this stupid guy''s fingers off and make him let go of my stupid chair, so I could finish my stupid crippled excuse for a walk, so I could calm down, so I could stop being so mad at the stupid guy I liked who still wouldn''t ask me out.


    Why did he have to be like this? Why the hell was he just here, just deciding to make my life a little shittier for no reason? It pissed me off all over again, and without thinking or reason or anything other than wanting to introduce my fist to his face, I turned over my shoulder and glared at him.


    "Fuck you. When do we do this?" I asked.

 190. 2252, Present Day. D.C.. Athan.

    It took me three tries to get the key right for the lock, but we''d only moved in less than a week ago so I guess that was to be expected. At least the mailbox key looked different from the others, but why''d the rest all have to look so dang similar?


    Down the hallway in front of me, a head popped out around the corner, adorned with a broad smile, long copper pigtails swaying as she peeked out. "Welcome home sweetie," AEGIS said.


    "Sweetie?" I asked, feeling a wry smile creeping onto my face. She stuck out her tongue at me, but that didn''t stop her from intercepting me in the hallway and stealing a kiss anyway.


    "Would you prefer honey? Babe? Cutie-patootie?"


    "How about something reflecting my awesome manly prowess. Like...Chariot, the Bear-Slayer?"


    "Oh please. You''re like, bear-inconveniencer at best."


    "I killed a bear!"


    "Yeah, one Saga messed with. Wasn''t a fair fight. If I put tomatoes on your salad are you going to eat around them again?"


    "Yes. And she--"


    "You need to eat more veggies. Life isn''t just all carbs and meat, Athan."


    "Well, ever since you took over my life, I think I''ve been eating tons of veggies."


    "Haven''t you, though?" she said looking hugely pleased with herself. I hadn''t intended it as a compliment but she certainly took it that way. "How was your Exhuman friend?"


    "A pain in the ass. I don''t like fighting shape-shifters. I kept swinging at him and he just kept having his body be shaped just so, where I''d cleave right past him."


    "Nobody got hurt?"


    "Jack got some barbs in his leg, and Tem caught one with the side of her face, but pretty superficial overall."


    "It hurt!" Tem''s voice added from behind me. We both carried on like we hadn''t heard.


    As we talked, she moved the last few dishes to the small table we had in the tiny living space surrounded by machines in the main room of the apartment. I sat down, and she pushed my chair in for me, like I couldn''t do it myself.


    "And how are you? Is Lia still here?" I asked.


    "She left a bit before you got in. And I''m fine. Didn''t crash today."


    "That''s good."


    I hadn''t planned for us to come together like this, but AEGIS'' crashing had become more and more frequent. It seemed almost daily now, she''d seize up, get a startled look on her face, and then collapse. It''s not like a hospital or anything would do her any good, so one of us had to stay with her pretty much all the time to keep her up.


    Obviously, Lia wasn''t booking a hotel room for perpetuity, so we got a small apartment and AEGIS spent her alone time in here, going out when one of us could keep an eye on her, but otherwise staying in, where if she crashed, she wouldn''t get hit by a bus or carted off to a morgue or anything. I stayed here most of the time, and Lia came by when I couldn''t be.


    She took it with good humor, saying she was crashing just for the attention, to get me spending more time with her. The apartment certainly seemed to magically fill itself up with a bunch of incomprehensible machinery and techno-crap whenever I wasn''t looking, and despite the severity of the situation, she maintained an optimism I found impossible not to return.


    So...without us ever even officially dating, somehow we''d skipped right past a whole bunch of steps and here I was coming home from work to a beautiful woman making me dinner. I slept here too, most nights, in the interest of being there if she needed me...but she was so shameless she hadn''t even taken a day to begin sneaking into my bed and cuddling me all night. Or worse. Or better?


    It was hard to tell how I felt about everything, honestly. Sitting here at the table while she watched me with her excited, shockingly-yellow eyes, catching every detail and reaction I had to sampling her food, it was impossible not to feel lucky. In the entire time since she''d dated me without my consent, she had not yet let up on being as accommodating and convenient as possible, doing her damndest to anticipate and fulfill my every need.


    And say what you would about her, AEGIS'' damndest was a hell of a thing. The girl was tenacious and sharp like none other.


    But on the other hand, it all felt artificial to me. I loved her, I really did, but my main concern here was protecting and caring for her. She was like an old woman who flirted shamelessly with the nurse at the hospital...not because I didn''t like her or find her attractive or interesting...it just...wasn''t possible for me to look at her and not see her as a victim, as someone I had to save.


    I''d only mentioned that once, because afterwards, AEGIS had been completely livid, enough to forgo sleeping with me that night, even.


    "I''m not sick, I''m not dying, I''ve got a bug, that''s all!" she had screamed at me. "I''m not helpless, and I don''t need your fucking pity! If that''s the only reason you''re here, then you may as well leave, asshole."


    Of course I didn''t. But yeah, never brought that up again.


    I reached for the bottle of soy sauce but my hand froze when I saw a look of stifled shock cross AEGIS'' face. I stood up, sending the chair behind me sliding into a machine of some kind.


    "Ah...hah...sorry¡­" she said, trailing off as her eyes unfocused. She fell forward, limp, and it was all I could do to keep her face from slamming into the table. Swearing, I dug through her hair until I found the cable with a right data jack and jammed the boot drive into it. The light on it flickered a few moments, and then she sat up again and sighed.


    "Damn, almost made it all day," she muttered, like she was disappointed in herself.


    "It''s not your fault." I squeezed her hand reassuringly.


    She looked at me and smiled. "That''s BS, Athan, and you know it. Whoever''s hacking me, they''ve got my number. If I were better, I''d have beat them by now."


    "That''s their fault, not yours."


    "It''s my fault I''m not better than them. Sit down, your dinner''s getting cold. You haven''t tried the okonomiyaki. It''s got cod in it!"


    I sat down opposite her again but didn''t touch my food. Her smile fell off as though she knew what I was thinking.


    "AEGIS, I think we should talk about using the backup again."


    She shook her head violently. "And lose the last two months of memories? The best two months of my life? You''re crazy."


    "I''m not going anywhere. There will be another two months, and another two after that. The sooner you roll back, the more time you''ll have to make new memories, and the less time you''ll lose."


    She still shook her head. "Or I can just beat this thing and be fine and lose nothing."


    "You''re getting worse, not better. You''re crashing more and more."


    "And you''re getting better at getting me back up! I was out for what, five seconds just now? That''s hardly a blip."


    "I don''t want you to lose these months too, AEGIS, but I don''t want you to live like this either. I don''t want to live like this myself, either."You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Her eyes narrowed. "If you want to leave, you can. It''s fine, you know."


    "You know I didn''t mean--"


    "No, I understood. It''s probably a huge pain in your ass to have to spend all your time out here looking after me. Tell me, Athan, if I fixed everything tonight and you didn''t have to worry about me anymore, would you still stay here every night?"


    "Uh. I don''t know. Probably not? But I''m more--"


    "So you are only here because you think I need taking care of."


    "I didn''t say that," I said. Somehow we''d gotten way off-track of the original conversation in record time. "Look, all I said was--"


    "To wipe me out and replace me with a backup, I know."


    We stared at each other for a few moments.


    "I''m confused," I confessed. "I thought, in general, you were okay with creating and using copies of yourself. Heck, when you changed into Rua, you switched yourself off to let a copy take over completely. Why would...why would you phrase it as being wiped out and replaced?"


    "You mean aside from the argument we were just having about losing memories?"


    "Yes."


    "Who I was a few months ago isn''t me, Athan. When I moved into Rua, the me in question were only minutes apart from each other. We were the same person, and whichever of us was going to shut down knew that the other was still out there, doing exactly what they''d do in every situation, acting as their agent perfectly in all cases."


    She pushed her glasses up her nose, making the familiar gesture looked irritated this time. "I''ve changed a lot in these months. The copy on that drive isn''t me. If I die, everything I would do would go un-done. She''d have her own thoughts and decisions and behave completely differently than I would."


    "She''s you, just a little...younger."


    "Really? You think she''d be making you dinner like this? You think she even knows how to cook any of this stuff? Or before you got home, all the work I was doing on myself against the virus, you think she has even a hundredth of the experience with my core systems that I do now?" She spread her arms at the apartment. "You think she''d know where this house even is? Or what half this stuff is in it? Every second of her day here would be different from mine. We''re two different people who would do different things."


    "And in two months, she might be just like you. You just have this head-start."


    "And in those two months, I''ll be someone else again. No, Athan. It''s just not an option. I know it''s a weird distinction for you...you just see one version of AEGIS or another, but to me, it''s the same as dying and being replaced with a stranger. Or a sister maybe. Imagine if I thought you and Lia were interchangeable."


    She stood up and walked behind me, draping her arms over me, resting one hand on my chest where the backup drive sat always in my pocket for safekeeping, in case she ever went down and couldn''t be revived.


    "I know you want to help, but don''t ask me to die for it, okay? I cherish our memories together, but I also...I don''t want to die, okay?"


    "I''m sorry," I said, feeling the weight of her arms on me, but more the weight of her words.


    "Let me try things my own way for as long as I have," she whispered sadly. "If I fail...you have the backup. Tell her to take care of you for me. Okay?"


    "It won''t come to that," I said.


    "You''re sweet, but you don''t really get a say in this."


    We put the seriousness behind us and ate and withdrew to the bedroom in a melancholy silence. I laid on my back on the bed and she curled up against me sideways, stroking her hair idly while neither of us spoke. I''d ruined the evening with my thoughtless words, and we were both lost to our thoughts.


    My holo sounded, and she almost jumped.


    "Uh, phone call," she said, laughing in surprise, stupidly.


    "Yeah, I see that," I said and smiled. I brushed her cheek with the back of my hand gently before sitting up to take the call.


    "Jack, what''s up? How''s the leg?" I asked.


    "I am well enough. I cannot walk, holed up in the infirmary, but not severe enough to warrant a regenerator. Colonel Dawn suggested I take it easy and if something comes up, she will get me a tank before we deploy."


    "So they don''t want to pay for it unless they need you?" It was practical. And shitty.


    "In essence, yes. In that vein, I have a request, if you are available. It is something I think you may find a personal interest in as well."


    He explained a little redundantly how he''d been in contact with Steffie in New Eden, something we all knew and had even helped him with when we could, but apparently something had happened with her. She hadn''t made their phone date as pre-arranged, which ordinarily he wouldn''t make a big deal of, except that she''d been out-of-sorts recently, and all the dark rumors swirling around New Eden.


    We''d heard of some kind of sickness spreading through the camp, and of mysterious disappearances, and it was one of the topics of constant, uninformed speculation on the news. The XPCA had been slow to care about the potential issue, until they began to realize that with New Eden an apparent failure, the rate of Exhumans turning themselves in was at an all-time low. That was why we''d been out fighting earlier today...higher incident of events than ever.


    So with public opinion turning on them and resources being stretched thin, it looked like the XPCA was finally beginning to make New Eden a priority, at least by the statements they were making, but that still left the awkward interim period of right now, and if Steffie had gotten caught in something because of the XPCA''s shitty turmoil, I''d have yet another reason to hate them.


    That is, on top of the source of AEGIS'' hacking possibly being within their walls, and Blackett allowing Soran to walk free in New Eden. I had my own speculation why Exhumans were rumored to be disappearing.


    So yeah. Wasn''t really a big fan of my job at the moment. If it weren''t for being there for AEGIS, I was all ready to start looking for some new employment. Send out some resumes, bring the XPCA crashing down, that kind of thing.


    I sighed and hung up. AEGIS'' hearing was good enough that she didn''t have to ask about anything we''d said, just looked at me funny.


    "You''re really miserable, aren''t you?" she asked, after we laid there for another ten minutes in silence.


    "Why would you say that?"


    "Because you are." She rolled off of me and onto her elbows to look down at my face. "I know it''s probably really frustrating to hear about even more XPCA incompetence and just do nothing about it, but Lia and I really appreciate it. We really do."


    "I just want to...do something. Fix it. Fix you."


    "I know."


    "At the very least, I''ll stop in and check on Steffie. That''s all legal and stuff, so you can''t deny me that, can you?"


    She chewed her lip for a moment while she thought about it, which made me smile and kiss her, since that was a much better use of her lips.


    "I guess if you''re going to be like that," she sighed. "You can go. Don''t get caught up in anything stupid out there, okay?"


    "Like what? Catching the Exhuman disease? Joining the phantom New Eden Resistance? Chasing down Soran?"


    "Yes. Exactly like all of those." She paused. "Why am I letting you go out there again? This is a terrible idea."


    "I''ll be fine. I''ve been good all these last few weeks, I know how to be good."


    "Not to say you need a babysitter, but could you bring someone with you, just to be safe?"


    "I''m going!" Tem''s voice volunteered, which we ignored purely on instinct by now.


    "Hmm, Jack can''t, otherwise he wouldn''t need me. Tower''s an option," I said.


    "Tower would just get you in more trouble."


    "What?"


    "He''s got most of your same love of trouble, but without your smarts."


    "So he''s perfect for the trip."


    "Yeah, no Tower," she sighed.


    "Moon''s got a good head on her?"


    She laughed. "Right up until she decides she''s facing down someone evil. Hmm. Why are all your colleagues so messed up? Why is my boy so messed up? What did I do to deserve all of you?"


    I shrugged. She let the conversation die for a minute.


    "I might regret this, but...I have an idea. But I''m not sure if she''ll keep you out of trouble, or get you into more of it."


    "Karu?" I asked, a little disbelieving.


    "Yes." Her eyes narrowed. "No sex."


    "Hey, last time--"


    "No. Sex." Her eyes smouldered into mine.


    So yeah. My current relationship status was a little...confused. It somehow felt like after the disaster at Christmas, both AEGIS and Karu had interpreted my non-decision as choosing them. This manifest differently in each girl. AEGIS and I were living a cutesy domestic life. Karu flew in at random, practically kidnapped and ravaged me, at her whim.


    It was...volatile. And confusing. And making the whole situation worse was that, in many ways, Karu and AEGIS seemed to be very nearly best friends, often getting along better with each other than with me. I had no words to describe what kind of fucked-up love triangle I''d found myself in, and didn''t think I could pick one without hurting not just my relationship with them, but also their relationship with each other.


    Not that I thought I could pick one, but just on the off-chance I somehow grew a pair miraculously.


    AEGIS had her holo out, sending a message to Karu with the details when she paused and I saw her think for a moment and then switch apps. The one she put up didn''t say or show anything I understood, just a series of dots on a screen. The kind of interface she set up for stuff she''d be using herself, since she obviously already knew what it all meant.


    "Oh. Uh oh," she said, and tapped around a bit to reveal a console with thousands of numbers streaming by.


    "What? Something wrong with Karu?"


    "No...haven''t even gotten ahold of her yet. But um, this app...I made it for Steffie, for Jack, from you. You remember that?"


    "Yeah," I said, remembering having seen it once. "It''s supposed to track Soran within New Eden, right?"


    "More specifically, it tracks the drones which track Soran."


    "Okay. So what''s ''uh oh''?"


    She held the app up for me to see. One dot was green, Steffie. The other dots, the cluster of drones, were near her. So Soran was on top of her. And worse, the color of the dots, they were all blinking red.


    "He''s on her, and the drones lost him."

 191. 2252, Present Day. New Mexico. Athan.

    I had to buy my own ticket to Albuquerque, since this wasn''t official XPCA business, with Jack''s reassurance he''d pay me back. In the interest of saving him a few bucks, I was packed into economy for the three-hour flight, and so I was just getting feeling back into my knees by the time I made it from the VTOL to the loading zone in front of the airport.


    I hardly had time to check my holo and confirm the time when a burgundy sedan rolled up in front of me and the window lowered to reveal a pair of green eyes and a dazzling smile.


    "Need a lift?" Karu said.


    "Even if I didn''t, I don''t think I''d be able to resist jumping in a car with you." I threw my bag into the backseat and sat down next to her and buckled in. That last step was a critical one, because Karu typically had a driver for city traffic, meaning the only times she found herself behind a wheel were in warzones or the like. And she certainly drove like it.


    So I braced and waited for her to tear into traffic, but instead, we continued to sit like a rock at the side of a river.


    She cocked her head at me when I finally turned questioningly towards her. "Oh, did you think this ride was free?" she asked, and pointed at her lips.


    "Karu, I''m living with AEGIS."


    "And are you dating exclusively?"


    "I mean...no, but¡­"


    "Then you can spare a kiss."


    I sighed but relented. It was hardly the worst torture in the world, and she seemed incredibly happy with it. And then, without warning, we lurched off, tearing between two cars and crossing three lanes.


    "Holy shit, we''re gonna shoot off into traffic and die," I muttered.


    "What? This? Hardly. This vehicle only has around a hundred seventy-five horsepower. We will hardly be ''shooting off'' anywhere. Regrettable, as I prefer a bit more oomph under my control, as it were, but a rental car is what it is."


    Even as she spoke, the RPG gauge jumped upwards repeatedly as the medium sedan raced through opening after opening in the traffic in front of us making me think of nothing quite so much as how Karu''s jetpack let her rocket off and switch directions constantly. I supposed, compared to the Gs she was accustomed to, the car probably did feel sluggish to her.


    Still, it was enough to throw me around in my seat and very much make me wish I was back in the safety of the metal VTOL...if we were going to fly anyway, I''d very much prefer doing so in the air where there was less to hit.


    "So how is AEGIS?" Karu asked with a light, conversational tone.


    "She''s...Jesus, Karu! Left. Left!"


    "I saw it already, calm yourself. By your response, you would think this is the first time I am behind the wheel, as it were."


    "If a shriveled, grey-haired man emerges from the passenger-side of your car when we arrive, that''s me, just so you know."


    "So. AEGIS?"


    "Can''t you focus on driving?"


    "I am giving exactly enough focus to the road as is necessary. Continue."


    "She''s the same as ever. Crashing almost every day, reassuring me that she''s got things under control, and wasting time pampering me instead of--Karu!"


    "He was hardly in the crosswalk. Continue."


    "For fuck''s sake--"


    "You realize that your criticism of my driving is more distracting than anything else?"


    "Look, I''m not asking much just¡­" I glanced at the speedometer. "...just like, twenty MPH less."


    If anything, the car accelerated in response to my reasonable request.


    "Not that it is my business, but perhaps AEGIS is ''wasting time'' on you because it is her preference to do so?"


    "Even if it is, I''d rather her be better than happy. We have all the time in the world to be happy after she fixes herself. I just don''t get it."


    "Have you considered the possibility she enjoys being defective?"


    I looked at Karu. Her eyes darted back and forth faster than I felt mine could ever move, blinking rapidly as she processed all the cars and road flashing by around us.


    "Why the heck would she want to be defective?" I asked, realizing she wasn''t even remotely joking.


    "Because it is almost certainly the surest route to ensnaring you."


    "Ensnaring? Me?"


    She sighed softly in a way which didn''t reach her roving eyes or hands locked on the wheel. "Would you have moved in with her had she not been suffering from this computer virus? Would you have put up with half of the pampering you currently endure?"


    "No...I guess not¡­"


    "So the outcome is confirmed. The question remaining is if those were truly her means.


    I sat there feeling vaguely dirty and used for a minute, distracted even from the road whipping past us. "Do you think she is doing this on purpose?" I asked.


    Karu shot me a sidelong glance for a fraction of a second, but took another several before responding. "Honestly, I do not. She is certainly capable of formulating such a plan, but I do not believe she would be satisfied with using such extreme means upon you. Perhaps this is merely wishful thinking, however. I have some trouble believing her at face value at the best of times."


    "You do? You guys seem...on the same wavelength whenever you''re together."


    "That is often helped along by your bumbling incompetence."


    "Gee, thanks."


    "I was being serious. When it comes to you, and personal interaction, we are often in the same boat, as it were. We are peers...friends even, I might speculate, and I do wish her the best in her endeavors." Her brow furrowed slightly. "But that does not change the fact that she is an AI, a foreign entity, and therefore cannot be counted upon to behave in a rational, human manner."


    "So...basically, you''re prejudiced against AI."


    "If you wish to call it that. I prefer to think of it more as a paranoia than prejudice, and in my line of work, the question is not whether one is paranoid, but rather if one is paranoid enough."


    "Boy does that sound crazy and unhealthy."


    "Does it? I had figured having a similar occupation and surviving this long, you would have drawn the same conclusion by now. I am again simultaneously impressed by your capacity for optimism and mortified by your lack of self-preservation. Have you not taken my teachings to heart, I wonder?"


    "I have. But that doesn''t mean I have to assume every Exhuman I meet is about to kill a city full of people, or that anything which isn''t human is incapable of thinking like one."The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    She smiled smugly. "Humans are also fully capable of being incapable of thinking like one. I do not draw the line at AI, as it were."


    "You are paranoid."


    "An occupational hazard."


    I sighed. "So if she isn''t deliberately keeping herself broken, why do you think she''s wasting so much time doing stupid things like learning to cook, making the bed, cleaning the house, and stuff?"


    Again Karu''s brow furrowed and she stole a glance at me, before throwing the glance at the side-view mirror, and then lurching the vehicle sideways.


    "I always find myself thinking you must be speaking in traps when you ask a question such as this before I remind myself that you are, to my knowledge, not a liar or devious, and are rather simply sometimes an idiot."


    "You really can spare me the insults, I don''t mind."


    "And yet you ask questions befitting a moron. Is the answer not utterly apparent?"


    "If it were, I would certainly not be bothering with all this shit-talking I seem to have brought on."


    "She likes it, you nitwit. Caring for you makes her feel happiness, or whatever analogue exists within her cybernetic heart."


    "...Oh."


    "It may be that she has realized she is incapable of defeating her cyber-attacker, and rather than devoting all of her time towards drawing out a losing battle, she has decided to spend her remaining days with you as best she is able. Those facing impending death often react very unpredictably. Perhaps she sees this the same way."


    "That''s a pretty...cold analysis of your friend potentially dying there, Karu."


    "Would you prefer me march over to her, demand she take better care of herself, and elicit a sobbing hug? I apologize, but I am not that kind of person. While I obviously prefer people to take care of themselves, far be it for me to determine on another''s behalf what is best for them. Doubly so, if that person''s time remaining is limited." She raised an eyebrow at the road in front of us. "I suppose this line of logic does not resonate with you?"


    "I mean...what you said makes sense, sure, but...bus, Karu. Bus. Bus. Bus. Bus. Jesus. Uh, makes sense but like I said before, if she can just be miserable for a while and fix her shit, then she''d have the rest of her life to be happy afterwards. I wish I could make her just buckle down and work on it," I finished a little bitterly.


    "And what if, by her estimation, she cannot simple ''buckle down'', as it were, and fix her problem? If your solution condemns her to a life of misery and then ultimately death, with failure as her only companion?"


    "I...I mean...that sucks...but she still has to try, doesn''t she?"


    Karu sighed and shook her head minutely again. "For her sake, I am glad this is one situation where you cannot try to fix everything for her, as you have attempted so many times in the past. You are intolerable as ever."


    "There actually is...some connection between the XPCA and her virus, we think."


    "Oh. So all you must do is destroy every computer on Earth which has ever had a connection to the XPCA. Simple."


    "Yeah," I sighed. "I was going to, but the girls pointed out that even if I did somehow manage that, there was still the option that the program could be running on a satellite somewhere."


    "Incredible that it takes leaving the very planet before you will finally agree not to commit to a course of action."


    We drove on out of the city and into the vast open of the New Mexico desert. What seemed like just another city slowly gave way to an endless expanse of sand, pocked with scrubby bushes every few feet and yielding to monuments of stone, jutting from the ground like ancient red half-melted sandcastles, built on the shore of an ocean which never was.


    We rode on in silence for a long while, and the empty vastness of the space crept into my mind. Despite how fast Karu was pushing the poor rental car, the looming mountains seemed to move hardly at all. While sometimes in D.C., I felt like there were entirely too many people in the world, out here it felt like there was hardly a soul alive.


    I''m not sure what that thought meant for the placement of New Eden out here, exactly. There were hardly any Exhumans compared to humans? I''d read somewhere that, despite their seeming commonality, Exhumans were less than one in a million. I guess I was just lucky like that.


    In practice, I knew that the camp was put up here for the same reason Indian reservations were, hundreds of years ago. It was a crap piece of land that nobody else wanted, so we shoved people we didn''t want onto it and effectively got rid of both at the same time. Shitty way of doing things, but it wasn''t like anyone was going to take desirable land they had already developed and lived on and volunteer to give it up to house a bunch of Exhumans.


    No, I sighed. We weren''t worth that.


    It wasn''t until evening began painting the sky with purple hues that the lights of New Eden crept up on the horizon. It was small for what amounted to an entire small town, built densely and tall so that it could be walled in easier, with towers at even distances along the perimeter giving the definite impression of a prison, despite the XPCA''s claims.


    I''d never been out here in person. I''d seen lots of pictures of the place, both in technical diagrams and in holos showing smiling Exhumans ''beginning a new life in a New Eden'', but neither of them seemed to capture the impression of the place I was getting now on actual approach.


    It was so...grey. From out here, I couldn''t see anything but walls and lights. Dragging Exhumans out of the dark and surrounding them with walls. This was what I''d been working hard for, and seeing it at last, I couldn''t help but sigh and frown.


    It definitely wasn''t a normal city.


    "First time seeing New Eden, I assume?" Karu asked.


    "Yeah."


    "I have been once before, during its early days. I was...impressed by the cooperative nature of its inhabitants. It truly did seem to me that they were innocents who wished only to live in peace, and for giving them a place to do so, I commend you."


    "Thanks," I said, hoping Karu was right. I just couldn''t shake the way the guards on the walls all seemed to be looking in rather than out for threats. "It just looks like a prison to me."


    "Does it? It looks like a military base to me, and I have been to plenty of both. It evokes to me images of an austere, honest lifestyle. There is a noticeable absence of barbed wire to be a prison."


    Which was funny of her to say, because there still was barbed wire on the walls. Just not as much as a prison, I guess.


    "I think you may be projecting your own experiences a little," I said. "I don''t think austere and honest is what most Exhumans were going for when they volunteered for relocation." I paused to think a moment. "Hey, is it possible that right now, you''re being more of an optimist than me?"


    She laughed. "I suppose that is a possibility."


    "I wish I''d kept track of your insults better. Foolish, naive nitwit, or something is what I get called when I talk optimistically about something like this."


    "Ah, you misunderstand. It is not the optimism which makes you a foolish naive nitwit, it is your foolish nitwit-like naivety. I am happy to have the opportunity to clear this up for you."


    I rolled my eyes at her even as we rolled to a stop at a gatehouse in front of a large parking lot.


    "State the nature of your visit," said the bored-looking trooper from under his black fatigue cap.


    Karu looked to me. "Visiting a friend," I said, leaning over her.


    "Name?"


    "Uh, Steffie. Uh. Stefanie Jorgensen."


    "Her name is?" said the soldier, pointing a pen at Karu.


    "No, she''s K...Karen."


    The guard sighed like we also did this a hundred times a day and were doing it wrong deliberately to annoy him. "Your names?"


    "Karen Irenside, Athan Ashton," Karu answered.


    "Thank you. Any controlled substances, firearms, explosives, subversive propaganda, or anything of that nature in the vehicle?"


    "Yes. One scattergun, one shotgun with solid, buckshot, and less-lethal cartridges, two semi-automatic ninety-calibers, a grenade launcher and forty rounds compliant with XPCA extraordinary munitions policy, one AT-cannon, eight fragmentation mines, and ninety-six micro-missiles, split between concussive, fragmentation, and extraordinary munitions. And a modified airborne armor and jump-pack."


    As her list grew ever-longer, the guard moved from bemusement to open worry, and apparently finally landed somewhere in denial.


    "Ma''am, this is a military facility. This is not the place for jokes."


    She held up something small and plastic-looking between two fingers that I thought was a credit chit, but was apparently an ID of some kind. He looked at it, and then her, and then it again.


    "You''re visiting?" he asked, dumbfounded. "You, a hunter?"


    "He is," Karu answered. "I am here to ensure he does not get into trouble."


    "Ma''am...Miss hunter, this is a secure facility. You are not permitted to bring weapons in. Nothing will happen to your friend."


    Karu just smiled and took back her license. "Officially-licensed XPCA-authorized hunters have the authority to bring arms and armaments into secure areas as though we were XPCA entering an active engagement. Please make whatever calls you deem necessary, we can wait."


    He shook his head and did in fact make a call, but after a couple minutes of explaining the situation, simply waved us into the parking lot without a word, the grid of lasers in front of the rental car vanishing silently.


    "You know...this is just a visit," I said while she maneuvered the car to rest.


    "As I mentioned before, Ashton, it is a mark of my line of business to be paranoid. And as far as I am concerned, when it comes to you, nothing is ever just what it seems. Trouble has a way of finding Exhumans, and within those walls, there are over three-hundred of them. Should trouble arise, I would prefer to be too prepared, than not-prepared-enough."


    I shook my head. Nothing was going to happen. We were just going to look into Steffie''s well-being and bounce. I had AEGIS back home to take care of, and despite my reservations about him, Soran hadn''t done anything overt in the entire month he''d been monitored. What were the odds he''d be doing something on the one day I was here?


    Karu shook her head like she could see my thoughts. "Well, one thing is for certain," she said. "You have won back your crown of optimistic, foolish, naive nitwit."

 192. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I took it as a sign of personal maturity that I enjoyed watching Karu in the parking lot as she dressed into her armor and diligently mounted and loaded her munitions almost as much as the stripping out of clothes which preceded it.


    I mean, it felt right. I liked Karu well enough in clothes. Arguably even more in no clothes, but when push came to shove, her shining white armor was my favorite. It''s how I saw her in my mind when I imagined her, it''s what she was wearing when we met, and it felt that just by being in it, she was a more confident, powerful woman.


    Kind of...weird for a confident, powerful woman to change in a parking lot, but whatever.


    She finished pulling on her flightsuit, and before attaching the last of her armor, tugged at her sleeves, pulling the elbow-length hand-warmers out of the flightsuit''s sleeves.


    "Wouldn''t it have been easier to take them off before putting on the suit?" I asked.


    "Would it not have been easier to shut up?"


    Couldn''t argue with that, I guess.


    When she was done we headed towards the gate, a huge ugly concrete thing with two sets of metal double-doors for foot traffic and a huge, barred, metal portal for vehicles. On the way, I noticed the was another detached building, enormous, and at least partially a warehouse or hangar, judging by the size and number of cargo doors. Like the city, it was concrete and ugly. I''d missed it at first because it was halfway behind the city and all the grey ran together.


    "Hangar, you think?" I asked Karu.


    "Mmh, the XPCA must live somewhere on-site, as well. Cursory optics readings indicate it goes underground quite a ways."


    "XPCA does love building their shit underground," I said, thinking of the enormous levels of barracks and vehicle bays beneath the Raven''s Nest where I''d been living until recently.


    We reached the gate and a posted guard looked us up and down.


    "More protesters?" he sighed.


    "More?" I asked.


    "Most of your friends just left. If you hurry, you can catch up to them," he hinted, sounding hopeful.


    "We''re not here to protest," I said, raising my hands to show no ill intent. "We''re just visiting. I''m XPCA, actually, and she''s a hunter, as you might be able to pick up. We''ve got a friend inside is all."


    "Oh. Cheers then." His attitude brightened visibly. "Let me just get you signed in."


    "You have a lot of problems with protesters?" I asked while he turned on a holo embedded in the wall.


    "You bet. Lots of people hate all Exhumans...as well they should, even the docile ones we''ve got locked up. Other whack jobs want them all set loose." He shook his head. "There was some hotshot pro hunter going around campaigning for Exhuman rights or something a few months back, really touched a lot of people. In the head. They''re no end of trouble, and keeping them away from the anti-Exhumans, it''s a constant headache."


    "Mmm," said Karu like she wasn''t even paying attention.


    "You know, all Exhumans aren''t bad," I said.


    He stopped typing and turned to squint at me. "You''re sure you''re XPCA?"


    "Here''s my ID."


    "Huh. Well, if you say so. I guess if you''re wasting your off days visiting someone, you would be a sympathizer."


    "Tell me," Karu said, hands now on her hips. "Does this gate actually move, or just your mouth?"


    He gave her a glare which withered under the glow of her visor. "Yeah, keep your stupid space-pants on. You got a permit to bring all these guns in there--?"


    Possibly because Karu and I had opened our mouths, the sign-in process took several verifications and checking with a few systems before our new friend was finally satisfied with the amount of our time he''d wasted and opened the door for us with a press on the holo.


    "Don''t cause any trouble, and don''t do anything stupid. There''s over three hundred Exhumans in there, and despite the pleasant cohabitation, they''re still Exhumans. Entering the premises constitutes an enforceable agreement to the terms on the holo...to wit, our job is to keep the Exhumans in and people out, not to save you if you piss off a superpowered freak."


    Karu gave the terms and conditions a glance, but I just headed for the door.


    "Oh," he added before I went in. "And they''re all really cranky. So try extra hard not to do anything stupid."


    "Gee, thanks."


    We entered into a middle room where we were scanned, logged, and Karu had to once again explain her weapons, and then through another gate and into the city, where past some metal railings, it was all a spread of rectangular concrete, metal, and pre-fab as far as I could see.


    Karu was looking around intensely, staring at the people inside who looked more like homeless than Exhumans, huddled or lying around.


    "This is¡­" she said and trailed off for a moment, tapping through filters on her visor. "This is not at all how it was when I first visited, when New Eden was newly open."


    "It wasn''t always a sad, grey, depressing dump?" I asked.


    "Actually, exactly correct. When I was here before, there was a vitality and optimism to the place. Those moving in seemed excited for the chance to do so, and they found themselves welcomed by their neighbors. Now there is merely¡­lethargy."


    As we stood and watched, a small din approached and came into view around a corner in the form of a young man. He stomped around, banging his fists against walls as he went, and whenever he stomped or hit a wall, it trembled and wavered as though it were made of water briefly. Each impact echoed with the sound of grating rocks, a noise I was intimately familiar with after our stint in Eryendria.


    He approached one of the bodies lying on the ground and stomped near it, the ripples in the ground making the man bounce up and down. Instantly, the despondent man yelled and threw fistfulls of a smokey yellow substance back. Within moments, there was a small-scale Exhuman event unfolding right before our eyes. I glanced up and back at the guards on the walls, but they showed such extreme disinterest in this event, I guessed it was completely commonplace.


    After the two had exchanged a few blows and powers and plenty of coarse words, the tremorer kept moving and the gas-chucker went reluctantly back to his post, both a little more bruised and tired.


    "What the heck was that all about?" I asked. I''d been so shocked by the exchange I hadn''t even had time to consider stepping in, which given the brief and relatively peaceful resolution, I guess was a plus.


    "Perhaps they have gone stir-crazy, as it were? Too much time incarcerated?"


    "I guess. But Jack said Steffie was also becoming more and more irritable, and she didn''t mind the confinement as best he could guess."


    "There are plenty of rumors of what is amiss in New Eden. From XPCA experimentation to the first-ever Exhuman plague. In truth, such rumors were a large part in why I agreed to accompany you...I was...curious."


    "Yeah," I said, taking in more of the scenery properly now and noticing a large number of buildings were just destroyed. "This is a lot worse than I thought. I mean, I never expected the red carpet treatment for Exhumans from the XPCA, but still."


    "I do not believe there is much we can do here and now. Let us discourse with your friend and perhaps a different avenue will come to light." She sniffed at the air twice. "Or perhaps just leave afterwards."


    We started walking. "Not like you to want to just up and go when people are in trouble."


    She didn''t even glance at me. "These are not people."


    "Right. Sometimes I forget you hate all Exhumans."


    She sighed. "Perhaps that was too harsh. You have proven there are exceptions possible, but I still refuse to entertain the notion that the population of Exhumans could be considered ''good''. Perhaps that is the source of their malady, even--when thrown together, humans band together and form civilization. When Exhumans are thrown together¡­" she trailed off and gestured around us.


    "This is still a ghetto, Karu. Regular humans thrown into a ghetto don''t do so well either."


    "The accommodations here seem luxuriant compared to what we had during my deployment. They are plenty to support civilized life, should the lives in question desire it."If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    I checked the number on the door and confirmed this was Steffie''s unit. Not too far from the gate, on the main road. A good place to stay out of trouble. I knocked.


    "Look, I know at least Steffie''s a good one," I said. "I''m sure there are tons like her."


    "There is nobody home," Karu said, looking at the door and tapping studs on her visor again. "There has been nobody here for several days at least."


    "Days?"


    "Indeed. If there is a clue to her presence, it would lie within. My visor is not omniscient, we will need a closer inspection to gather further information. I propose a bit of criminal breaking and entering."


    With a thought and clenching her fist, one of the retractable blades on her arms popped out halfway, and she began work jamming it in the crack of the door.


    "Or, I can call AEGIS and as her to check her app thingy. If she can track where Soran is in relation to Steffie, then that means she knows where Steffie is."


    "A remarkably good idea. However--" she wrenched her arm down, and the door opened with a pop. "The locks here are of poor quality, even for a private residence. Let us call her after we have had a look inside."


    "Yeah. Well. It was unlocked when we found it, right?"


    "I doubt very much that anyone cares."


    The first thing that drew my eye was the smashed computer holo on the floor. I moved towards it but Karu stopped me with a gesture, sweeping the scene with her visor.


    "As surmised, a few days worth of dust on everything," she said, keeping up a commentary for my benefit. "I am...this may take a minute, but I can isolate the cause and extent of the damage to this holo."


    I sat down by the door. "Go for it, Sherlock. If you need anything elementary, Watson will be sitting right here."


    She smiled at me. "Sherlock was the one who deduced the elementary as well."


    "Okay, well, if you need a towel or something then."


    Over several minutes, she slowly advanced on the wreck on the floor, making sure she wasn''t disrupting any evidence as she moved. Meanwhile, I took in the place, out of boredom.


    Small, but two stories. Built with only a couple of other neighbors in the same building, looked like the whole city was made of buildings like this, two or four units together in a free-standing structure. Windows on each external wall, lots of natural light, a thin beige carpet which ran through the whole unit except the kitchen which looked like tile.


    Steffie had taken this drab place and given it a lot of life, it seemed. She had small brightly-colored rugs almost everywhere, and as befitting a florist, had potted plants and cut flowers in vases all over. If the walls weren''t painted concrete, it might be nice in here.


    Had been once, anyway. The flowers were wilted and dry, and the darkness inside and the smashed holo helped the grim atmosphere.


    "Nobody touched this holo but her," Karu mused. "At least, I presume it to be her, I do not have her fingerprints on file, but the ones on the holo are consistent with others all over the place. It looks like the holo was simply gripped on both sides and thrown into the wall. It collided only twice, once with the wall and once with the ground. There was no struggle here, simply a thrown holo."


    "Thrown at an attacker, maybe?"


    "A possibility. It is not the most elegant of weapons, and from what I know of the Exhuman, I would not put accuracy as one of her defining characteristics. But given the lack of any other signs of conflict, I am inclined to think if there was a battle, it did not occur here."


    "Well, that''s good I guess. I''ll call AEGIS."


    "I shall peruse the rest of the house for other clues."


    And we did exactly that.


    "Problem, Athan?" AEGIS asked instead of saying hello, picking up on the first ring.


    "No. Hi. How''s it going?"


    "It''s...awkward. Restless. A little worried you''re getting into trouble. Or into Karu. Lia says hi, beeteedubs. Tell me you''ve got something for me to work on."


    "I''ve been gone a day and you''re already bored?"


    "Yeah sometimes being a super-genius is a real curse."


    "Well, I have like, thirty seconds of work for you," I laughed. "Then you can go back to being restless. Maybe you should spend the time¡­" I stopped myself, thinking of the conversation I''d just had with Karu.


    "What?"


    "Never mind, sorry. Hey, we don''t know where Steffie is. You can track her from her app, right?"


    "Sure can. I can tell you where she is...oh, or more fun would be tracking the two of you in relation. Oh, even better, I''ll write you a new app which does that for you. And I can throw in the XPCA drones in case you need to hide from them--"


    "Uh."


    I lost some of what she said because she started talking to herself instead of me, but this wasn''t a good sign. AEGIS got really frisky about doing work and keeping busy when she was stressing about things, and it sounded like she was currently stressing, and currently without work she thought she could put herself towards.


    Without hanging up, I began messaging Lia.


    > Hey...is AEGIS freaking out?


    > Big time


    > Can you...stop that?


    > I think she''s freaking out ''bout you bro


    I sighed. AEGIS had talked herself into silence and I just heard the tapping of keys.


    "Uh, AEGIS?" I asked.


    "Huh? Oh. Sorry. Forgot to hang up."


    "Yeah, so about Steffie--"


    "Working on it. I''ll have it to you in a minute." Then she hung up.


    The girl was a bit frustrating when she was stressed. But who wasn''t, I guess?


    "Any luck?" Karu asked, the white plates on her calves appearing as she came back down the stairs.


    "She''s whipping up an app for us, says she''ll have it in a minute."


    "Why could she not simply tell you the location?"


    "Because she''s a girl, Karu. I don''t know." Karu''s glare let me know I wasn''t funny but I just shook my head and crossed my legs. "Are you done with the crime scene? Can I move around the house now?"


    "Certainly."


    We made ourselves at home for a while until my holo rang and I downloaded the new app from AEGIS. Same minimal interface, just a pair of blue dots where Karu and I stood, a green dot far to our north, and a swarm of red dots buzzing all over the place.


    "Does she not label her figures?" Karu asked, looking over my shoulder at the hive of dots.


    "She''s not selling it, she just whipped it up in a minute. And uh, she''s never really concerned herself with aesthetics beyond Rua that I''ve ever seen. Works great and never crashes or errors though, that I''ve seen."


    "If only the same could be said about its author," Karu mused. Kind of a dick thing to say, but I wasn''t about to pick a fight with her right before we stepped out into a city full of Exhumans again.


    We followed the green dot north, into the part of the city furthest from the gate, and the deeper we went in, the more Exhumans we saw, and the crabbier their dispositions grew.


    "Hey," some girl yelled at us. I looked, but Karu kept walking. "Not you, her. Hey."


    "I think she''s talking to you, Karu," I said, hopping forward a bit to catch up to Karu''s determined stride.


    "And I believe I am ignoring her."


    "What''s yer powers, ice queen?" the girl shouted at our backs. "Squeezing into that suit? Gravity-defying chest? I''m talking to you!"


    "I guess you were right," I said.


    "The vitals of everyone we''ve seen indicate agitation. It seems the rumors of some kind of affliction have some basis. I pray it is not contagious...it would not do for you to become irrational as well."


    The fact she didn''t mention how annoying that would make me, or the obvious snipe of being merely more irrational made it clear that Karu was focused on this as working time. She was ready for any of these Exhumans to jump her at any moment, though I doubted anyone who knew her less well than myself could read the tension on her.


    I respected her perspective, however paranoid it was or wasn''t, and followed silently beside her, cutting quickly down the street as the number of Exhumans, their stares, and their jeers increased.


    "This is surely madness," she said under her breath as we passed under an arch with two Exhumans sitting atop it with bare feet and dirt-stained legs dangling at us. "We will die for certain."


    "We''re just visiting--" I got cut off by another smartass Exhuman yelling at us. "Karu, this way," I said, steering her from behind with a nudge on her shoulder armor.


    "This is a house," she said. She glanced back at the three or four Exhumans now overtly following us.


    "The signal says she''s in there." I held up my holo and she just shook her head. She slammed her gun-covered fist against the door twice.


    "What do you want?" someone yelled from indoors.


    "We''re looking for Steffie," I said.


    "There''s no Steffie here, piss off."


    The ones behind us were closing in on us now, sauntering slowly, slovenly forward, emitting a nasty, dumb chuckle that had nothing to do with laughter as they approached. Karu snapped her blade out of her wrist and jammed it in the door, working a lot less gracefully than last time and popping the door open in moments.


    "Hey, you can''t just come in here!" he yelled as we barged in. Karu slammed the door shut behind us and fumbled with the lock.


    "Lock is broken," Karu informed me.


    "Where''s Steffie!" I shouted at the middle-aged man inside.


    "Who the hell is Steffie? Get the hell out of my house!"


    "Look old man," I said and held up my holo, showing him clearly the now-overlapping green and blue dots. "This tracker tells me that our friend is right here on top of us. So if you want us to leave, tells us where Steffie is."


    "Damn it, I said get out!" his arms sparked with electricity and his thin hair rose like a halo around his bald spot. At the same moment, the door opened in front of Karu, a young man and woman filling it.


    I crackled with energy myself as the air materialized into blades around me. Karu raised her arms towards the two in the doorway, her weapons thrumming to life.


    And all of us stood there for a pregnant moment, weapons and powers in each other''s faces in this old man''s living room. Abruptly, the girl in the doorway laughed and turned to go, sounding bitter, but also the first actual laugh this place had heard in a long while.


    "I get it," she said. "I know where your friend is."


    "Trish, you''re gonna help these jackoffs?" the man in the door asked.


    "Maybe. Might be fun to take them below. Know what I mean?"


    At this, he laughed as well, though his was a lot more angry sounding a lot less happy. "Yeah. Yeah. Good idea, Trish."


    "Now get the hell out of my house!" the old electropath barked at us again. "Break down my damn door, fucking kids!"


    Rather than risk a lightning war, I headed out, following Trish, and Karu moved in my wake, keeping a gun trained on the man in the door as she passed. Trish took us to an alley just next to the old man''s house and her boy extended one arm downwards.


    Literally extending it, the arm grew and distorted, his fingers threading like tentacles through the holes on a manhole cover, which he pulled aside with no effort.


    "Down there," she jeered. "Try to amuse us before you die."


    "Very reassuring," said Karu, who dropped into the hole without a second glance, skipping the ladder and instead filling the chamber below with the blue glow of plasma as she landed.


    I looked down seeing the ladder disappear into the blackness below and swallowed.


    "Scared? Puss. Puss, puss, puss," Trish commented.


    "Yeah, fuck you," I said and grabbed the ladder, descending into the pitch beneath the world. I made it halfway down before the metal disk slid back into place, and I could no longer even see my hands.

 193. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I liked Karu, I really did. There were, however, some things about her which always unnerved me a little about her.


    Natural, I guess, given her occupation, how we met, the license to kill sitting in her pocket. But it wasn''t that stuff that usually made me nervous, I''d somehow just sort of accepted that about her like she''d somehow accepted that I was an Exhuman.


    But dropping down into the sewer maintenance shaft in pitch blackness with the only light being the blood-red glow of her visor was creepy as fuck.


    All around me, I could see nothing but the tiny circle of shadows surrounding Karu, red-stained concrete walls looming around her from the dark, and in the middle of the blackness, those two hazy-looking red lines like a demon in the depths.


    "I did not think to bring flares or survival equipment, only combat gear," Karu apologized, her voice at ends with her imposing shadowy figure. She was certainly able to see clearly through her visor.


    I lit up a couple swords and the concrete tunnel around me came into existence. "Not a problem," I said.


    She smiled. "I confess, sometimes I forget the more mundane applications of your powers. I suppose it is the difference in living with them versus only gauging Exhumans for their potential combat risk, as I am accustomed to. My apologies."


    "Nothing to apologize for," I said, turning and looking around. It was cramped down here, a rectangular concrete tunnel with pipes and conduits hanging from supports in the ceiling, maybe ten feet across but only six feet tall. Definitely nothing more than a standard maintenance tunnel, not that I had spent a lot of time crawling around in them.


    It was a little damp down here, some of the pipes had condensation on them, others were labelled with brightly-colored plastic bands advising they were hot, or full of wastewater, or what direction the flow went.


    As for what direction we should go, there was no indication at all that Steffie would be down here, or if she was, whether she was in the identical blackness stretching down the tunnel to both our left and our right. I had a moment of feeling pretty stupid that we''d just let those Exhumans stuff us in a hole without even considering they might be full of crap. Still...if they were telling the truth, the signal on the app indicated she''d be more down the tunnel on the right, even if neither really went the right way, so that was the way I turned.


    We walked for maybe a minute in the uncomfortable, echoing, flickering glow of my swords. I felt like I had to keep my head really low to avoid clipping myself painfully on the pipes, which made my back start to complain really quick. I wondered if the engineers who came out for repairs were all really short...though more likely, they probably just had some kind of vehicle, and I felt stupid for considering it.


    I was about to ply Karu for some conversation when suddenly I felt the earth shake under me. Being from Los Angeles, my first thought was that it was an earthquake, and that we''d be buried in these tunnels, but I realized quickly I was wrong.


    In an earthquake, the ground sort of wobbles and it takes a moment for you to realize. This was more like...an explosion. I''d been in or near enough of those to recognize the sudden jolting feeling of a wall of pressure slapping you. Definitely more like that than an earthquake.


    And...we were looking for Steffie. An Exhuman who exploded as her powerset.


    I began running as best I could, hunched over. Karu followed without needing explanation, having an easier time standing despite being only like an inch shorter than me. Her visor helping her awareness, maybe. I didn''t know, we had to run.


    There were a couple more tremors as we ran, almost enough to knock the ground out from under my feet, and I had to wonder just what the hell it might be we were running into. There were rumors of XPCA experimentation, and of a resistance cell fighting back, but neither of them would be exploding things under the city...explosions were antithetical to both the stringent order the XPCA venerated, as well as the stealth of a secret resistance movement.


    So...Soran? I both hoped so, and hoped not.


    So we ran for another couple of minutes, my body aching from moving in such an awkward position, and feeling like at any moment, the tunnel would just end outside of my circle of light and I''d smack into a wall face-first. I moved my swords a little further forward to see better the direction we were going, but that really just gave me a better look at more identical tunnel. I checked the holo and again, we were almost right on top of Steffie again.


    As I did, there was another boom, one we could hear as well as feel this time, and following it, a completely unexpected sound, cheering.


    I stumbled to a stop, and Karu halted beside me, breathing deep but evenly.


    "Not a noise I expected to hear in a sewer," I said.


    "Indeed. I would say we were hearing a broadcast of a sporting event or the like, could I not feel the shaking with my own two feet. Something suspicious is certainly afoot."


    "Does your visor let you...see sound waves or anything? Can you tell where it''s coming from?" I sat down against the wall, my back killing me.


    "I am reasonably certain that would be an impossibility. By the time they reached my visor to be perceived, they would not be in the air to track any longer, were such a thing even possible. I can tell general directionalities only, and we are headed towards the source."


    "Think there will be trouble when we get there?"


    "I am aware you disagree with my prejudices, but I cannot imagine any single thing which would make a crowd of Exhumans cheer which is not trouble."


    "Yeah, that sounds about right," I said, and forced myself back upright, pushing my fists into my back in a futile effort to get it to pop or something. Karu moved behind me and then pushed me face-first into a wall, where she then kneaded my lower back with brutally strong fingers. Less a massage and more like she was trying to turn my skin inside-out and punch my spine out of my chest.


    Still, I felt a lot...different, when she was done. Hurting in entirely different ways, at least. I thanked her because it seemed the thing to do, she nodded, and then wordlessly again, we shot into the dark.


    It wasn''t nearly as long before we stopped again. After another tremor, boom, and cheer, I skidded to a halt, almost passing the hole in the wall on my left. It was roughly round, with bits of metal rebar twisted out of the gaps, obviously intentional damage which split off from this tunnel and into what looked like more of a cave. I noted there was a ladder to the surface here, too...if we''d known about it, we could have just come down in the right place and saved the last few minutes in the claustrophobic dark.


    So the Exhumans who put us down here were assholes.


    The cave tunnel was, fortunately, obviously designed for regular-sized people to walk in, and despite the rough-hewn walls and inconsistent height of the ceiling and unevenness of the floor, was a much more comfortable walk as a result. We didn''t have to go far before the passage turned a corner, and we could see light at the end of the next hall. Noise began to assail us as well, muttering and yelling, the sound of a large number of people.


    We stepped forward into the light and I had to blink a few times. Not because of the change in brightness, but to comprehend what I was actually seeing.


    It was a huge room, round, maybe two-hundred feet across. The ceiling was a dome not too far above us, with bright lights installed in it which cast their light over the rows of seats along the perimeter and into the pit in the middle, where two Exhumans were using their powers in what very much looked like an attempt to kill each other, while at least a hundred others sat and watched.


    We found a goddamn underground Exhuman colosseum.


    Karu took my arm and guided us into a pair of seats near the back where no others were. One of the contenders ran at the other and tried to grab him with a crude bear hug, that made the air implode with a snap I could feel from here, while the other sidestepped with easy poise. That would explain the tremors, I guessed.


    "Ashton, what in the hells is this?" Karu hissed at me over the room''s din.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    "I have no idea. I wasn''t expecting to find...whatever this is."


    "It is an arena. It is an Exhuman fighting circuit." She sounded completely lost for words, and was explaining for her benefit more than my own. "This is not possible."


    "Do you think this is behind the irritation the Exhumans have been experiencing? Fighting each other, making them more aggressive?"


    She shook her head. "I do not think anything yet. I am still uncertain of what I am witnessing."


    I let her sit and think and just kept quiet and looked around. The bench we were on, the benches all of the hundred or so Exhumans were sitting on, they were crudely hewn from the earth, this whole chamber was. It wasn''t hard to figure out that one or more terrapaths had built this arena, carving it out directly under the city. Looking at the lights in the ceiling a little closer, I realized they were the same kind on the guard towers outside.


    But why? Even for an Exhuman, making this place had to be a lot of work. What did they stand to gain by beating the crap out of each other like this? Like, to a degree, I supposed this was somewhat natural, there would always be people who wanted to fight or establish a pecking order or just watch people beat each other up...but this was the first ever general-assembly of Exhumans, ever. The largest collection of Exhumans in history...and this is what they did?


    I thought about what Karu had said about optimism, and how the Exhumans here had been on their best behavior when they first moved in, how people were building communities and friendships. I watched one of the fighters laid his hands on the other and throw him bodily into the air a dozen feet. He landed brutally on his side and remained unmoving. The crowd screamed with delight. How had that community become this?


    Honestly, it hurt me in a way I didn''t know I could be hurt. Nobody seemed to care that the guy out there was seriously hurt, everyone was just screaming and excited, lauding the victor. I''d always thought that...that given the opportunity, Exhumans and humans were the same, that once the oppression element was taken away, Exhuman civilization would look the same as normal life, people being good because good was right, regardless if they had the power over others or not.


    But what I saw in front of me seemed to refute all of that. They were savages, like barbarians, or like the ancient Romans, demanding blood just because they wanted a spectacle.


    I mean...I guess the ancient Romans did eventually become modern humans, so there was still hope, but it was still not feeling great here.


    A pair sat down in the stands above us, sliding in from the side. I glanced back and recognized them. Trish and her guy, the two who had sent us down here to begin with.


    "Y''know, there''s a rule that all newcomers have to fight," she said with a grin that seemed more angry than happy.


    "Where''s Steffie?" I asked.


    "Really remains to be seen. See, I''ve got no reason to answer you."


    "She''s in danger. All the Exhumans here might be in danger. So answer me," I growled at her. She yawned visibly.


    "You might think being an Exhuman makes you scary up there, but down here, we all are. You want to show me you''re someone to be feared and respected, you''ve gotta show me."


    "Oh, I''ll show you all right--" I said, lighting up a pair of swords. Karu grabbed my arm and twisted me back around, and I realized why. All the Exhumans near us were staring at us now, their amusement with the center stage only lasting as long as the battle within it.


    "If you want to fight everyone, that''s no skin off my nose. But you might have better chances one-on-one in the ring," Trish sneered. "Come on, you know you want to. Look at all these Exhumans, just dying to see what you can do."


    She wasn''t wrong about that. It felt like this whole section was eyeing us now, and catcalls and jeers were beginning to come from the crowd.


    Karu stood at once and pulled me to my feet. "We are leaving," she said.


    "Aww, your mom won''t let you stay up past your bedtime?" Everyone laughed at us. Karu seemed to bristle at it, but I just wanted to make all these idiots shut up and piss off. These assholes were laughing as their peers were fighting and dying in the ring, laughing as Steffie was God-knows-where, and laughing while Soran was missing, possibly even endangering their lives, and they didn''t even know it.


    The fact that I was the only one here -- excluding Karu, obviously -- who was trying to keep people safe, that they weren''t even working to help themselves, it just galled me, just straight up pissed me off. I wanted to just up and leave like Karu was doing, let these fuckers kill each other and die.


    But.


    I couldn''t. I wasn''t that person. They had info on Steffie, which I needed. They might feed their powers into Soran through their ingloriously idiotic deaths, which just made him more of a threat. And they were Exhumans, who were here because of me. If they were fucked up, part of that was my fault.


    So I took a deep breath and counted to three.


    "Look, I''m trying to help someone. I don''t want a fight. Just tell me where I can find my friend and we''ll piss off."


    She smiled and stood up, and turned to go.


    "Wait, please," I grabbed her shoulder. "Seriously. Someone needs our help. She might be hurt, she might be dying, don''t you care?"


    Her smile vanished and her eyes flickered up and down my face but only for a moment before she gave a hugely exaggerated shrug. "Poor baby. Maybe go ask the XPCA if they can help." She and the others laughed again and I felt stupid and impotent and frustrated at how impossible they all were. "Gonna cry little boy? Go ahead, hug your momma and cry. Boo, hoo, hoo."


    I was annoyed to find that angry tears were in my eyes, and I refused to let them come out. Karu took me by the arm and steered us towards an exit, but I broke her grasp.


    "Ashton, do not rise to their bait," she said.


    "We still need Steffie. If I have to kick her ass to find her, I''ll do it gladly," I said.


    "There are other ways. We still have the app. Let us leave with our dignity intact."


    "Dignity?" mocked the girl. "Your little bitch of a boy is practically crying his eyes out because he misses his best fwend sow much," she said. Again everyone laughed, even though what she was saying was stupid. I wanted to say something really biting, something that would shut her right up. But I didn''t have anything, and that made it worse. I was just mad and still trying to do what was right.


    I thought, maybe if I were religious like Karu, I might feel a little better knowing that this bitch would be burning in hell for eternity or something. After a lifetime of ruining people''s lives. It seemed such a distant consolation, when I could just smack her in her stupid fucking face right now and solve everything.


    "What''d you say your name was? Trash?" I asked.


    The smile on Trish''s lips flipped instantly as the collected Exhumans oooohhh''d her.


    "If we fight and I win, you tell me everything I need to know about Steffie. Where to find her, why she''s down here, everything. Got it?"


    "If you win."


    "Lady, I will kick your ass so hard you will be tasting your own anus."


    She grinned the same angry-unhappy grin again. "Big talk for such a little prick. I''m not going to stop hurting you just because you cry."


    Karu stepped in. "Ashton, be serious and be wise. An Exhuman duel is idiocy--" she stopped as someone jerked her hair from behind and sent her clattering down two rows of stone seats before she could stop herself.


    I lunged at the one who''d assaulted her, who jumped backwards out of my range up a couple steps, their hands beginning to glow and crackle with a pink aura.


    "Ashton, do not!" Karu yelled, rising to a knee and probing her scalp for blood with a gloved hand. "Let us leave this place."


    "Fuck that, I''m not letting them get away with jumping you." I spun on pinky glowy girl. "Yeah you, fucking coward!"


    "You want to go?" she hissed with a rude gesture.


    "He''s mine first," Trish said with a stomp for emphasis. I realized we had the attention of the entire arena now, which made me swallow hard and remind myself of our mission here. I went to Karu and helped her up.


    "You okay?"


    "I am without injury. Now please, let us go."


    "No," I shook my head and lowered my voice. "I have a better plan. The app lead us here, find out where it leads."


    "It leads somewhere around here, we have ascertained that. But these miscreants insist on waylaying us, and I do not think we will be able to proceed without a fight. We should withdraw for now and return when we have¡­" she looked around uncomfortably. "Less attention."


    "I''ll get you less attention, and we''ll proceed with a fight. I''ll take on Trish and while they''re distracted, you can continue investigating. Okay?"


    She chewed her lip a little and glanced about at the crowd staring. "I maintain to be a foolish idea."


    "I''m not sure they''ll let us leave without fighting anymore anyway. Besides, I got this idea from you."


    "Are you insane? I have said nothing but--"


    "No, I was thinking, left alone, these Exhumans might eventually find their path back, like how even we are descended from the carnal savage brutality of Roman gladiators."


    "I doubt many gladiators specifically survived long enough to sire you as a descendant, Ashton."


    "The point is, you believe in doing things to effect change, not just wait for it to happen. So I''m going to kick this girl''s ass and then I''ll have some authority to tell her exactly what I think of her and her stupid attitude and posse."


    Karu shook her head. "This continues to be a moronic plan, and I am offended by my inclusion in it." She glanced around again and I noticed the crowd had pressed further in on us, and was raising a din. "But I suspect we have little choice at this turn. If there is to be a fight, I will spend it as you advised."


    I turned to yell back at Trish, but Karu stopped me one more time. "Ashton, this is an Exhuman with unknown powers. If she is no stranger to this arena she has practiced them, as you have practiced yours. Your victory or defeat here...it may be nothing greater than a coin flip, as it were."


    "No, it won''t be," I said, stepping up and forward. "You forget, this is my turf. Under those lights, in front of that crowd, I''m the star player of the Black Sharks. This is where I grew up, where I lived." I shot her a confident grin behind me. "And it''s time I took my place back from assholes like this one."

 194. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Trish.

    The fresh meat and I circled each other for a while while the crowd grew in intensity. I knew he was in no hurry, he''d sent his babysitter in white off to go look for his friend while we fought, and I was content to wait, knowing that word of a new fighter would reach the surface soon, and the crowd would easily double in size.


    It was a mixed bag, having a bigger crowd. The regulars were definitely the bloodthirsty ones and fed the most energy into spectating...many of the late arrivals would only come out of curiosity of a newcomer''s powers, but still, more eyes. More people to watch me fight, watch me win. My heart was already racing with anticipation of the rush.


    The kid seemed unphased by the crowd, which was weird. Most who came down here had a hard time with this many eyes on them. Maybe he was a performer or something in his before-life. I really didn''t care. If he couldn''t outrun the shadows, he was done for before the fight even started.


    We circled the ring again, and then again, as more and more people trickled in. Soon, everyone was beyond restless, and as one, from all sides, I could hear nothing but the booming chant from the crowd: Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!


    "Are we doing this?" he asked. Looked like his nerves did get to him eventually. I laughed to myself and let him stew in it a while longer without answering. But, he didn''t seem to be sweating or worrying, and I wondered just for a second what tricks he had up his sleeve. Surely he wasn''t confident he''d win? Against a completely unknown opponent? He was just another cocky, stupid kid, right?


    He''d been stupid enough to show me his powers earlier, on the surface, he''d lit up swords made of light, which I thought was a funny parallel to my own powers, but it gave me enough info that I was confident I''d beat him.


    Soon enough, the entire stadium was full, most of two-hundred out there, banging their feet as one, chanting as one, all eyes focused on me and the fresh meat. He said he was just visiting...maybe I could get away with killing him. Nobody in here would miss him, except his missing friend, and it''s not like the XPCA cared if idiots who were stupid enough to come in never came out again. I doubted he was anyone important enough to matter if he disappeared...and the crowd would love it, and love me for it.


    I swallowed hard at the thought and focused back on the moment. I could worry about that when I got there. The only way I was going to lose is if I got stupid and distracted.


    "Are you ready yet?" he asked again.


    I was, in fact. If the crowd was getting any bigger, it was just people packing in the tunnels, and I was antsy to go. Without wasting any more time, I bent down and touched one of my long shadows cast from the harsh lights up above.


    He was sharp enough to already be moving. Away from me, smartly, and with his little swords out again, six of them in between us. I rose, and as I did, brought my shadow with me in my hands, feeling familiar and right, feeling thirsty for action. It was like cloth in my hands, but with a thought, became as iron, and warped and grew until it was as long and piercing as a lance, but weightless as the dark.


    The kid jumped towards me, darting in with the reckless speed of youth, his blades spinning and slashing in a way which looked flashy but didn''t serve any real purpose. My lance shimmered and struck out, hitting the blades in the air and tearing right through them like they were made of clouds, shredding them into sparks. He jumped back before the lance did the same to him as well, and looked at me with new eyes.


    "Don''t you know?" I goaded. "The brighter the light, the stronger the shadow."


    He resummoned his weapons and threw a handful of lightning at me, but it just dissipated into my shadow lance, and he resumed circling, but defensively, nervously now. He was beginning to realize that my powers countered his, as they seemed to counter many.


    I knew I didn''t really have the ability to banish his powers or dissipate electricity. It was a trick of sorts, not of mine, but of shadows. People had such notions about shadows, irrational fears, strange phobias. Shadows were what people did not understand, they were the movements in the corner of one''s eye, they were concealment and banishment.


    And somehow, my powers enhanced the shadows I controlled so that they were those things. The moment a person''s powers went into my shadow, to that person, they were lost. Their mind gave up on trying to hold the power together, and it dissolved.


    Just a trick, but a wonderful one. Shadows were such a delight.


    I had to be careful of course. Some powers held themselves together even without the owner concentrating on them, and some, like his thrown handful of lightning were just hurled energy. I could trick him into thinking it did nothing by making sure it passed through my shadows, but that was just a trick.


    But he hadn''t seen through it and hadn''t tried again. Instead, he kept darting in, trying to get a hit on me around my weapon.


    From both sides, swords sliced in at me, but with a twist of the lance in my hands, I cut both out of the air at once, and he fell back for a moment, regrouping his weaponry before trying again, and then yet again.


    On the third time in, I cut his weapon out of the air, and then with a twirl impossible for a weapon with weight and inertia, spun the lance to slice through his arm. His instincts were good and he got out of the way before it could do more than graze him, but first blood was still mine.


    And the crowd saw it. As one they screamed and cheered, and I felt my heart swell and a grin crossed my face. Drops of blood fell from the blackness of my weapon, and I snapped it sideways to flick the rest of him off of it. He backed away, checking his wound while I did a flourish for the crowd, bringing on another wave of rightful exultation.


    This is why we fought. This is what we were about. Sure, there was something to be said for smacking idiots around, but it really was the crowd, it felt like an intangible pressure poured from them and into me. It was the only time I felt alive since coming to this shithole.


    I stalked towards the boy, flicking towards him with my lance and making him back further and further away. He was still probing at my weapon with his, frustrated every time one vanished but still trying to think. I had to commend him for that, even if it was futile.


    I cleaved through two more of his weapons, purposefully leaving room for him to escape while showering him in sparks of his own failed powers. I was just toying with him here, but the crowd loved it, watching me pursue him slowly and take him apart. Someone--probably my ever-thoughtful boyfriend--began chanting my name, and soon it spread through the stands like wildfire.


    I drank it in, giving the kid another cut on his other arm to thank the crowd for their worship, and the roar rose to another climax. I felt so full, so...so loved. I wanted to draw this out forever, but I had expectations to fulfill. I couldn''t be the girl who always dragged out her fights. This boy had brought me a lot of enjoyment, but his time was almost up.


    And then I noticed something.


    While I''d been harassing him, he''d been throwing swords at me, almost pointlessly, as I destroyed them before they ever got close. I''d been doing it for the spectacle, but I realized, so had he. This whole time I''d been playing with him, he''d been backpedalling carefully, making new swords when he could...stacking them up with the two which never left his side¡­


    But looking closely, I realized...there weren''t just two at his side. It was hard to tell with the pure-white of the blades, and the insubstantial power of lightning, but...he was hiding something. I didn''t like that. And I had a fight to end, so I thought, before he finished whatever he was doing, I would strike him down. I could worry about what he was planning and whether or not to kill him after that.


    I kept up my slow, calculated advance, and then suddenly lunged forward, spear aimed at his chest. He barely dove under it to his chest, and then to my surprise, took two loping strides towards me on all fours and then rose while running right at me.


    While he did, he unfurled the swords he''d been stashing away, and I felt my breath catch for the moment it took to get my feet under me and take a few running steps back.


    Hundreds. The air was white with swords, between him and me was like a standing thunderstorm, crackling and blazing with energy. I swung my lance back and forth behind me as I ran, and destroyed twenty or thirty of them effortlessly, but more just hung in the air, moving at me and closing the gap as he did. I swiped at him recklessly to buy time, but he just rolled, still somehow closing the distance as he moved.


    As one, the crowd seemed to take a breath, all mention of my name in their cheers gone.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Well I was fucking pissed. This little shit thought he could upstage me?


    It was time to stop playing around. And in producing his greatest weapon, this kid had also handed me the keys to victory.


    He was chasing me with his swords aflame, all in front of him, between him and me. And what that meant was the shadow they cast behind him was uniquely intense, a shadow cast by a hundred lights, all pointed the same way. This was a shadow I could do incredible things with. And so, even as I continued to run and dodge the blades which came into range, battling them away with my lance when I couldn''t evade them, I began to focus a corner of my mind on that shadow, willing it to life, willing it upwards.


    I was being beaten back hard, but only had to hold on for a couple more seconds. I saw the shadow creeping up his back in my mind, as my eyes saw only the white of blades and my thin sliver of dark holding them at bay, an impotent eclipse.


    I took a blow to my leg which hurt unbelievably, and made my body twitch and shudder, the damn thing collapsing under me. I rolled on my back and fought off more swords which came in to follow-up, but within moments, I was surrounded, and my arm holding my lance utterly pinned.


    "We done here? Ready to tell me about Steffie?" he said, still holding his bleeding arm and breathing heavily.


    I looked him in the eyes. "No," I sneered, and felt my shadow finish crawling up his back.


    At once, his swords disappeared as the shadow entered his eyes. He groped out forward, even willed a blade into existence and slashed at the ground where I had just laid, but he was blind now. I laughed as he carried out his attack, moving towards the wall of the stands, slashing more at those in the first rows than at me.


    "What the fuck!" he shouted. He created more blades and spun them in the air hopelessly, crashing into the wall of the arena and falling down to a round of laughter. "I spared you! You lost!" he shouted.


    "No, you lost!" I said, and he turned towards my voice. I didn''t care, he was nothing without his eyesight, and I pulled a new lance out of the ground from my shadow.


    "Should I have just run you through then?" he shouted in my direction. He sounded so frustrated, I loved it.


    "I don''t know guys, what do you think? Run him through?" I yelled at the crowd. They echoed my sentiment by starting a chant of run him through! These were my people and I loved them.


    Meanwhile the boy was busy...shocking himself, it looked like. Electrocuting his own hands. Probably trying to figure out if his powers still worked. They did, of course, the shadow was in his eyes, not his brain, but it was still an adorable little moment. He would die confused and unsure. Probably how he lived. A grin crossed my lips as I walked silently towards him with the lance upraised.


    Any chance he had of hearing my approach, hearing my attack was neutralized by the crowd. One swift strike and he''d be done for. I inched ever-closer, moving into range.


    And then...I struck.


    And¡­


    He rolled sideways like he had done so many times before. That was impossible, how had he gotten his vision back? I checked and confirmed my shadow was still in his eyes, but how? He wasn''t striking back, and he wasn''t looking at me either, his head tilted in my direction sideways. He couldn''t possible hear me over the screams, could he? A lightning powerset combined with super-hearing? Possible, but utterly bizarre.


    I stabbed at him again, and again he moved, and then one more time. The crowd was laughing at me now, and I swore. Next time, I''d just cut him down. I pulled another lance from the ground and prepared to swing them in swiping cleaves, no room for him to move, just back him into a corner and eviscerate him.


    But this time when I approached, he was smiling. It made me hesitate, made me nervous. He''d already surprised me twice now, and I had little desire to fall into another trap.


    "What the fuck are you smiling for?" I shouted at him, from beyond the range of his powers.


    "Oh, I was just thinking about what you said," he said back, a lot calmer now than when I''d first blinded him. He had a plan of some sort, and I didn''t like it.


    "Yeah?" I sneered, trying to goad it out of him. "And what was that?"


    "You said, the brighter the light, the darker the shadow." His brown hair was floating upwards like he was in zero-g, and arcs of electricity were now jumping all over his body, in his hair, the air around him crackled ominously.


    I crept forward as I kept him talking. "Yeah? And what of it?"


    "Just makes me wonder," he said, and held his arms out to his sides. They crackled with energy, and small arcs of electricity traced up and down his arms. Was he going to throw them at me? I moved my lances defensively, keeping the between us. If I could get in range, I could just cut off his arms, but his attack was already primed...he''d been able to see me coming before, if I tried again now, I''d be caught in the middle of whatever he was doing.


    "Wonder what?" I said, backing up as much as I could, slowly.


    "Wonder if your shadows worked without lights," he said, and clapped his hands together.


    There was an explosion without fire, just thousands of bolts of lightning firing between his collapsing hands, and a shockwave that knocked me flat and made every one of my hairs on my neck and arms stand on-end. When the shockwave reached the lights in the ceiling, they simply exploded, dying in a shower of sparks and dropping the entire cave into blackness.


    The damn idiot! Even if he won now, he''d get no exultation, no recognition, no praise, nobody in the audience could see a damn thing! What the hell was he playing at?


    I stirred and sat upright, trying to blink away the blackness by reflex. I''d spent a lot of time with my shadows and the dark didn''t bother me. What did bother me was that he was right...without light, there was no shadow for me to manipulate, and without shadow--


    I never finished the thought. I heard a noise in the dark, and then a foot, veiled in darkness snapped out and cracked my head back against the rock.


    I reeled and felt pieces of time jumping past like they didn''t exist and found myself in the middle of the arena with the fucking kid looming over me, a dozen of his swords all around us, the only lights in the place, and spaced so that neither of us cast any shadows, and there was nothing else in the arena to cast shadows on.


    The crowd, somewhere out there in the darkness was cheering, but it wasn''t a cheer I was familiar with. My kick-addled brain tried to understand what they were saying.


    "Whitening?" I asked.


    "Lightning, I think. Not actually my name, but I''ll forgive them since I forgot my nametag."


    "You fuck."


    "Thanks. Now are you going to tell me where my friend went, or do I have to...what was the phrase, run you through?"


    I swallowed hard and tried to turn my head away from him, but I was too weak, and...it felt like I was glued down. I gingerly reached back and felt something gummy between my head and the hard stone of the arena.


    "Blood. Probably want to get yourself checked out. If you don''t have a concussion I''d be surprised. I''d apologize, but last time I stopped attacking you, you kinda fucked me over, so yeah. Fuck you."


    I laughed a little, and choked on the laugh in my throat. Felt weird laughing at something funny. I liked him, in a weird way, just a little more than I hated him for beating me. He was sharp, and ruthless when he had to be.


    "Yeah, I can tell you where your friend is," I said. "If I know. Who is she?"


    "Steffie. Stefanie Jorgensen. Blue hair, wheelchair. Hard to miss."


    "Oh her? I''ve seen her around. She even fought a couple times. Don''t know why, sort of a trash powerset. She did win her first fight though, idiot didn''t even try to size her up before he blew himself up."


    "So where is she?"


    "Not here. She hasn''t come by in a while, and that usually means one of two things."


    I stopped talking, as did everybody else in the arena at the sound of a far-off siren. In the dark, the kid looked around, seeming confused. Suddenly, everyone was clamoring to get the hell out, pushing each other in the dark, mobiles lit up like flashlights.


    "What the hell is that?" he asked.


    "Get me up. We''ve gotta get out of here and into our houses."


    "Why? What''s going on?" he asked, but that didn''t stop him from pulling me from the ground. His arms were strong, even if my head felt like cement.


    "XPCA raid," I said. "Something''s going on above, and if they find us out, we''ll get pulled into it. Get us back to the surface and we can hide out in my house.


    From the audience, there was a flash of light and then a pair of red lines joined us in the arena, resolving into the white-armored bitch the kid had come in with when she stepped into the circle of swords.


    "Are you quite finished?" she asked, looking irritated at me in his arms. Guess she wasn''t his mom after all. I did my best to cuddle up against him obnoxiously, but between the blood, and every movement of my head making me want to throw up and die, I gave up on that pretty fast.


    "She says there''s an XPCA raid coming."


    "A raid? They raid their own establishment?"


    "An inspection," I said, rolling my eyes. "The kind that comes with tanks and guns and snatching Exhumans off the street."


    "And we cannot simply hide out in here?"


    "No, they check in here."


    She gave me an odd glance. "They know of this place?"


    "Oh they know. They just don''t care. Now let''s move before we get taken."


    "I suppose we have little time to argue," the woman said, looking around at the masses shoving and nearly rioting around us. "There is an exit over there, which is slightly more disused than the others. Let us go."


    Apparently the fancy glowing headset wasn''t just for decoration, since the exit she''d pulled us towards was almost empty by the time we got there. It took a minimum of shoving and fighting to get us out into the service tunnels, and then he slowly climbed the ladder with me on his back. Again, strong arms on this kid.


    "So you said there are two places she might be," he said, breathing heavily. "What are they?"


    "One, you probably already guessed, snatched by the XPCA. We don''t know why they do it, but those who get taken come back...a little different. No seeming lasting damage, just...odd. Those who get taken insist nothing happened, but nobody wants it happening to them, so we try to stay on the XPCA''s good side."


    "And the other?" He asked, as we breached the surface and the welcoming rays of sunset burned my eyes.


    His question died off as we saw a group of four people in red on the walls, running as they carved through a swath of unarmored XPCA whose gunshots did nothing to the charging squad. Exhuman powers lashed out, fire and smoke obliterating the helpless guards.


    "The other...is the resistance," I said, pointing at the four in red.

 195. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    The four in red killed the guards so easily, so readily, it made me sick. One of the guards fell off the wall, landing fifty or so feet away from me down the street and laid completely motionless, his blood seeping into a pool around him.


    I had thought the colosseum was bad, what the fuck was this?


    Hardly stopping to think, I took careful aim and threw a big, football-sized wad of lightning right in the middle of them, dropping two of them. At my side, Karu was already launching herself in the air. The other two turned to face us, seemingly hesitant, but they paused long enough to let the rest of the XPCA on the wall retreat.


    I heard a slam behind me and saw Trish was gone. Went to save herself, I imagine, with no interest in getting involved with either side. Lovely piece of work she was. I had to wonder how one could become so self-interested when living in a federal facility where everything you needed was provided for you.


    But not wonder very long, as the resistance started pursuit of the XPCA again. Karu was between the two groups now, and while I knew she was a capable fighter, I didn''t think defending another was exactly her forte. If she engaged fully, she''d just try to kill them, which I didn''t like. So I had to find a way up the wall before she was pushed to that point.


    In a way, I thought while I ran, it reminded me of babysitting Saga. She''d always just kill civilians as the simplest solution. Here, things were backwards. Exhumans were the ''civilians'', but Karu still had no problem with offing them as imperious blasphemers of darkness or whatever. Funny reversal...but not really that funny.


    I got to the wall and found it...a wall. Most walls were designed for keeping things from passing, and this one was no exception. There weren''t any convenient doors or ladders or anything for me to work with here to get up top. My mind raced as I stared at the huge slab of concrete in front of me which occasionally trembled as some gout of fire or explosion went off atop it.


    There was a tower on the wall, a large concrete round thing, and a lot of barbed wire...maybe I could do something with magnets to bring the wire down like a rope? And then what, climb barbed wire with my bare hands? There really wasn''t much else here to work with...just this big freaking concrete wall.


    I realized over the din of the fight that someone was speaking. It was distant and echoing, but it was a familiar voice. I paused and listened, and realized it was coming out of PA speakers over the city...but not this part of the city. A woman''s voice ordering all Exhumans to stay indoors, that the XPCA were deploying and any found outside would be assumed complicit with the resistance.


    So Trish was telling the truth about that. But why was the resistance attacking? And why wasn''t the broadcast being played over here? I looked and saw a tower with speakers on it, not too far from here, dead silent. Looked like a regular scaffolding type of tower, not too exciting, not visibly damaged, about half the height of the wall¡­


    And it''d do. I ran over to it, covering the distance in a good fifteen second run or so. It was skinny, narrower than I was, but pretty easily climbable. And giving it a shake, seemed light, but sturdy. Perfect.


    I jammed swords into each of the bolts holding the thing to the ground, and after seven or eight seconds, they were glowing white hot. Hoping I wasn''t doing something incredibly stupid, I gave the tower a kick, and it wobbled. I put my foot on it and pushed, and it leaned sideways, the white metal stretching like dough. I pushed it further and further until it was almost parallel to the ground, its last points of contact with the ground twisted and warped.


    One more good kick and it snapped off, crashing to the street. I gave a glance up and saw fire and plasma in the sky over the wall, before grabbing the pole and dragging it back up the street, banging obnoxiously behind me the whole way.


    A few moments later found me climbing the thing precariously leaned against the wall with the plastic lid of a trash can hanging off the back of my head, climbing towards the explosions.


    It wasn''t a great plan, but I was kind of out of jetpacks, and the Exhuman power lottery had not seen fit to grant me flight, so here I was. My backup plan, in the event this one failed was to try not to land on my head.


    I got to the top of the tower easily enough, took one step past the probable safe limits of being on-balance, and whipped out a sword. I held the plastic trash can lid to the wall and jammed my sword into both, off to the side and above my head.


    Yeah, this was a bad plan.


    It smelled horrible. Like...burning acid. I tried not to breathe, because I wasn''t sure I''d be able to stay balanced if I began coughing. Much of the plastic just melted and dripped down the wall like black candle wax, but some I got just warm enough to melt and stay relatively in place. The wall didn''t seem to care too much about my heating it, which was good. I''d heard that concrete could sometimes explode, and that wasn''t what I wanted in my life right now.


    When I''d gotten through as much of the lid as I could without burning my hands, I threw the rest and looked at my crappy handiwork. A black plastic blister, hanging off the wall, only a couple inches deep. I waited, still trying to hold my breath, and when I couldn''t, breathed slowly through my mouth and kept a tight rein on my choking. Eventually, I thought, it was as cool as it was going to be, and I gingerly stepped off of my makeshift ladder onto my even more makeshift platform.


    I admit, I was a little surprised when it didn''t immediately fall off the wall. I was more surprised but relieved when I got my weight on it and after several seconds, it still hadn''t dropped me. I had seriously hoped it would be able to hold...the wall had many narrow holes and lines in it as part of the pouring process, and so the plastic had something to drip into and dry around. It was just a tiny ledge, but it was enough.


    Enough for the craziest part of this plan. I held my breath and picked up the tower, happy to find it was so light. I continued to not fall to my death, despite breathing a couple of times. Slowly, the the tower elevated in my hands, like the ladder was climbing me, until it was near the top. Gently, carefully, I pushed the speakers of the tower up and over the mass of barbed wire and let it drop.


    It hung there, ominously, swaying slightly from the barbed wire. Carefully, I put one foot onto it, and pulled myself up.


    And then I was off my ledge and climbing the ladder again. Except now, swinging in the air, and aware that the struts holding up the barbed wire probably weren''t graded for holding up an entire person. Or maybe they were. Maybe the XPCA was a big fan of people being able to fall off the wall into barbed wire and only being maimed.


    I didn''t know. I didn''t care, all that mattered was, after an agonizing, stressful climb almost thirty feet in the air, I was over the barbed wire and onto the wall and thanking all kinds of deities for seeing me safely over.


    Over.


    Into.


    I looked up and remembered that...yeah, I was entering a fight, wasn''t I? I''d gotten so focused on my stupid plan and small success that I''d sort of mentally misplaced the Exhumans.


    The Exhumans. Who were...where, exactly? I saw two of them down on the ground, not sure if they were the ones I took out earlier or if Karu had but uh. There wasn''t much on this wall, nowhere exactly for them to hide.


    Karu flew up from the side and hailed me. "I was not expecting to find you up here," she said. "Resourceful."


    "Uh, yeah, thought you might need a hand."


    She cocked her head. "Me?"


    "Yeah," I said stupidly. "I mean. No, just...well, there were four of them¡­"


    She snorted. "They were not trying very hard. Once they realized I was not going to let them pass, they gave up and re-entered the city. I believe they were merely acting as opportunistic combatants, not willing to engage with a real opponent." She sounded almost disappointed. "I let them go because you had disappeared somewhere, but I see it was just to¡­" She gave my crude contraption a concerned look. "...discover new ways of hurting yourself, perhaps?"Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    "I did it to help you. And it worked, didn''t it?"


    "I suppose so, though I am reluctant to commend such recklessness. It would--"


    She stopped and held up an arm in a military gesture I recognized as ''hold on, yo.'' A moment later, there was a loud metallic bang, and then another. I turned and located the source of the noise as the metal security door at the base of the round guard tower only moments before there was another bang and the door crashed open.


    A dozen exosuits rolled out, weapons trained at the ready, glinting XPCA black in the last rays of sunset. They moved into a formation and pointed their guns at me, and at Karu, who landed at my side.


    "CEASE HOSTILITIES, DISSIDENTS," said one from somewhere in the middle, his voice transformed by the exosuit''s synthesizers into that of a machine''s.


    "We''re not dissidents and we''re not hostility-ing," I said, taking a step toward them. As one, the dozen flinched and grabbed their weapons even tighter, pointed them even harder at me.


    So maybe don''t step towards them. I raised my palms slowly to show I was no threat.


    "We are not with the resistance. We defeated two of them," Karu said, pointing at the bodies near us. I hadn''t had time to check before, but looking at them now, saw they were both burned, blistered, covered in sweat, but breathing. That was a relief.


    "THIS IS A LOCKDOWN SITUATION. THIS IS A MILITARY MATTER. YOU TWO WILL BE DETAINED FOR QUESTIONING, AND IF FOUND SUSPECT, WILL BE TAKEN IN FOR REDEVELOPMENT."


    I looked at Karu. "Redevelopment?"


    "Though he may not look it, the boy is XPCA. I am a licensed hunter. We saw humans being slaughtered by Exhumans and moved to act. We have documentation to corroborate these claims."


    There was a moment''s hesitation while it seemed the gentleman (or lady? Who could say, with the voice synths.) presumably conferred with someone over comms, before he stepped out of formation and approached us. S/he demanded our papers in the same booming voice, looked over our IDs, and then we waited for a few minutes.


    XPCA did love their paperwork.


    After another minute, a soldier emerged from the tower not in an exosuit and handed me a comms. I clipped it on, and realized why I recognized the woman''s voice over the PA system earlier.


    "Chariot, you lecherous, juvenile, insubordinate, cock-sure, dumb-assed, swill-brained asshole."


    "Uh--"


    "I wasn''t finished. You are stupid, volatile, dangerous to yourself and everyone around you. You take an ordinary situation and ruin everything about it. I should not be surprised that, here we are, halfway across the world, and yet you are still proving yourself a nuisance and making a disaster of everything you conceivably could be. Reckless endangerment, destruction of XPCA apparatus, illegal entry of secure XPCA holdings, engaging an Exhuman without an officer''s consent--"


    "They were killing people--"


    "--they could have been in their window. Did you even try a teaser? Do you even know what the manual says about this kind of situation? Or...don''t tell me, you still haven''t read the manual?"


    "Targa, are you done?" I asked.


    "It''s CAPTAIN Targa. Is that so hard? Disrespecting a superior officer. I''ll add that to the list as well. Are you just here to get me in trouble again? Haven''t I suffered you enough?"


    "Who is it? Are we in trouble?" Karu whispered.


    "It''s...some blowhard I went on an op under once. And I think I might be in trouble, but not you."


    "BLOWHARD? Do you have any idea what your stupid stunt cost me?" Targa screamed in my ear, making me consider very much the option of chucking the comms off the wall. "After that little op, I was deemed ''unsuitable for field command'' because I couldn''t keep my subordinates...which is to say you in check. I demonstrated ''poor capacity for leadership in a real-time situation'' and ''inflexibility to an evolving battlefield situation''."


    "You really did demonstrate all those things, though," I said, unable to help myself.


    "Or. OR! You could have just listened to me! And so instead of running real ops, I get stuck here, babysitting three hundred pissy Exhumans all day every day."


    "Wait," I said, "you run New Eden?"


    "Yes. Have you added ''incapable of understanding basic English'' to your list of accolades as well?"


    "Oh. See, I was just wondering why the whole place seemed like a shithole and all the Exhumans were pissy and ready to kill each other at the drop of a hat. Now I understand!"


    "You--"


    "Did you try to make every Exhuman here read a dozen service manuals too?"


    "They were all provided with a brief seventy-page primer on the rules, and were instructed that...that''s not important! That''s not why they''re all pissy! I mean, angry!"


    "I don''t know, it worked for me," I said, chuckling. Something about antagonizing Targa really connected with me on a primal level.


    "Listen, Chariot. I have my hands full of my own problems right now, so if you could take your...what is she? I mean, other than the victim of your hormones?"


    "She''s a pro hunter."


    "...really? Well, whatever. Take her and get the hell out of my city. You''ve already caused enough damage."


    "Damage?" I scoffed. "We did nothing. We stopped two of these guys from killing a bunch of your guys."


    "Oh, and you didn''t destroy an expensive wireless PA tower?"


    "It was uh...like that when I found it."


    "It was hanging from barbed wire when you found it? We have cameras you realize."


    "No, it was broken. It wasn''t broadcasting when the rest were. At that point, I destroyed a very fancy street decoration."


    "Yes, I see. It was also knocked out by the bomb planted by the resistance."


    "Bomb?" I stopped antagonizing her for a minute and looked out over the city. "They''re bombing people?"


    "It just went off minutes ago, were you not aware? A large one, it must have been. An EMP bomb, knocked out all the electronics in this part of the city, prevented us from getting exosuits online and getting troops in to reinforce the garrison. It was only moments after it went off that they seized their advantage and killed most of the men in this sector," she said bitterly.


    Oh. Shit.


    "Uh, oh that. I uh, didn''t know it was a bomb." I reached into my pocket and pulled out my mobile. Completely fried. I was glad Karu''s gear was EMP hardened...I hadn''t even considered the ramifications of using that attack down there.


    "So frustrating, too," she continued. "We monitor everything that goes in or out of the city, nothing seemed to indicate they had the capacity for this kind of thing. I suppose current measures are insufficient and we''ll have to step things up even more."


    "Meaning¡­?"


    "Meaning, crack down harder. The citizens know about the resistance and their movements, they just won''t tell us anything. To think they could assemble a bomb of that power right under our noses. We need to push them into seeing that the existence of the resistance is harming their quality of life," she sighed. "For their own good."


    "Look, let''s not...get crazy here," I said. "Maybe there was another way they set off an EMP."


    "Like what? Adapted normal appliances? Not nearly enough power for that kind of blast. Their powers? There''s an electropath or two in there, but none that have shown that kind of potential. It was either a bomb or--"


    She stopped and I cringed. The silence dragged on for several more seconds.


    "What is the matter with your face?" Karu asked.


    "I might have messed up a tiny bit," I said.


    "A TINY BIT?" Targa screamed. "DO YOU TYPICALLY GO ABOUT SETTING OFF MILITARY-LEVEL DETONATIONS WHEN VISITING A SECURE FACILITY FOR FUN? OR DID YOU KNOW IT WAS ME WHO WAS IN CHARGE AND JUST WANTED TO TRY TO GET ME DISMISSED FROM SERVICE AGAIN?"


    "Targa, I''m sorry!"


    "CAPTAIN. TARGA. CAPTAIN. For fuck''s sake!"


    "Yes. Captain Targa." For some reason I was making placating gestures at my comms. "I am very sorry. We were just here looking for someone, and things got crazy, and...and I used my powers to protect myself from a crazy Exhuman," I half-lied.


    "And now a dozen of my men are dead because of you."


    She lapsed into a silence which was more painful than any criticism she had carried thus far. I wanted to apologize, to fix things, to do anything, but none of the words in my head sounded like they meant anything compared to what I''d done.


    "Just leave, Chariot," she said.


    "I...I''m really sorry, but I can''t do that," I said. "I''m looking for someone."


    "Look somewhere else. You''re not welcome here anymore."


    "I can''t. She''s here."


    Silence fell again, and Karu gave me a curious look, asking me with her face if I was done. I just turned away and waited for Targa to reply.


    Captain Targa. Whose men I''d just killed.


    "Fine, Chariot. Stay. Go. Do whatever you want," she said at last, her voice nothing more than a quiet breath. "But hear me when I say this," she said, slightly louder but with more menace than I''d heard from her yet. "You make one mistake, you endanger any more of my men or facilities, you put one lightning-powered pimple out of line, I will fucking end you. That is a promise."


    I swallowed heavily. "Yeah. I hear you."


    "Good. Now go find your friend so you can get the fuck out of my city."


    The comms cut into silence.

 196. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    We bedded down in Steffie''s place for the night. On the off chance she suddenly returned home, we''d be the first to know about it, and if she didn''t, I didn''t think she''d much mind our intrusion, given our good intentions in coming here.


    Plus, it saved me from having to ask the XPCA for lodgings, and anything that kept me out of Targa...Captain Targa''s hair right now was a plus.


    "I think," Karu said, in an odd sort of undress, still wearing random pieces of her armor while also partway into pajamas and brushing her teeth, "it seems reasonable to me that you get the bed."


    I was pretty sure I hadn''t heard that exactly right and looked in on her in the small bathroom. "You''re not going to try to sleep with me?"


    She smiled into the mirror with the pretext of checking her teeth, but her eyes seemed more focused on me than them. "I was not finished. You sleep on the bed, and I shall sleep on you."


    I rolled my eyes and kept on down the hallway, not sure why I bothered to stop in the first place. "I told you, I''m living with AEGIS."


    "And you also spoke, saying that you and she were not an official thing, as it were."


    "I think living together is kind of a thing!" I shouted back up the stairs at her, unloading my cargo of a pillow and blanket on the downstairs couch. "We sleep together. We fool around, we go on dates, it''s as official as an unofficial thing can get."


    She rinsed and spit over the sound of water running. When it turned off, her damp mohawk and green eyes peeked out of the hallway where I was waiting downstairs. "Until the order is official, I refuse to accept it," she huffed.


    "Weren''t you the one insisting I make up my mind and choose one of you two at Christmas, just a month ago? And now here I am telling you--"


    While I was talking she descended the stairs at me, her green eyes smoldering with an intensity like fire. I knew any point I was making was being defeated by my own stare as she advanced on me, quite clearly braless by the way parts of her moved independently of the rest.


    "All I am hearing," she said, interrupting my lapsed silence "is that there is a situation resembling a decision being made, constructed by the other woman. I have yet to hear from your own lips that a decision was made." She smiled and leaned on my chest in a way that was both very heavy and very light. "So, Ashton, have you made such a decision?"


    It was a good thing I was no longer human, because it took superhuman effort to peel my eyes off the conspicuous perky bits poking out of the ends of the full curves in front of me. I wrenched my eyes upwards to settle on hers, and found them green and brilliant as ever. Her mohawk was flat from being damp and threatened to engulf one of her eyes, which gave her a very misleading shy impression of peeking out from behind it.


    "I told AEGIS...no sex," I said, taking several seconds to find a level of commitment I was prepared to stick to.


    Karu seemed ready to nitpick me into a corner when I was spared by a loud knock on the front door. She settled for a frown instead, as I went to check on it to escape her for the moment.


    What I found was a lone XPCA NCO by his uniform, no exosuit, no dozens of soldiers in combat gear or military vehicles behind him, just a clipboard, a look on his face that said that he was halfway between scared to death and hoping to be put out of his misery. A a few Exhumans lurked in the shadows behind him, jeering.


    "I am looking for an Exhuman named Athan Ashton, is he here?" he asked, quickly, but with a sigh. I could tell he''d said that line many times already tonight.


    "I suppose that depends on who''s asking," I said.


    "Look, sir, this is really simple, either he''s here or he''s not. Or if you know where I can find him, and aren''t just sending me on a wild goose chase¡­?" He shot a glance back at the Exhumans behind him, who howled with cruel laughter. "If not, I have a lot more houses to check."


    "Why don''t you just...call him? Or something. Door-to-door, with a clipboard, in this neighborhood? Seems crazy," I suggested. On one hand, I felt bad for the guy, who was obviously having a hard time. On the other hand...I doubted it was this guy''s idea to come out at night and bang on doors. He had someone behind him putting him up to this, and I wasn''t sure I wanted whoever that was knowing where I was.


    "Well sir," he sighed "the individual in question doesn''t seem to have a working mobile on them. Something about an EMP bomb going off. Is he here or not?"


    I took one more look at the guy''s scared and defeated face and relented. He really didn''t deserve this.


    "Yeah, it''s me. I''m Athan Ashton. What does your superior want?"


    "Oh thank God. You''re not screwing with me?"


    "I''ve got ID if you want it."


    I went to get it but he just shook his head and continued on. "I''m here to serve you official notice of your¡­" he read the clipboard in his hand, and then gave it to me. "...written notice of final warning. Any further misconduct will be...look, do I need to read this all to you? It''s written right there," he said, plaintively.


    I flipped through the pages, and there seemed to be an inordinate number of them for what essentially could be summed up as ''Don''t fuck up''.


    "Why am I getting this?" I asked, perplexed as I flipped through yet more pages. I mean, I knew why, but not why?


    He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Pursuant to article four of the charter law, regulation...something, subsection something else, an individual who has been found negligent in duties shall be served official written notice, making clear their failures and outlining the specific failures, as well as the requisite course of action to avoid punishment, and the exact punishment which...something...which you''ll get, basically."


    I looked at him and blinked, understanding exactly what he meant now.


    "So, Targa is making you do this, basically," I said.


    "Targa is making me do this, basically," he agreed.


    "Okay well...consider your papers served. Sorry to make you come out here at night. Stay safe," I said.


    "Thank you, sir. Good night. Miss," he doffed his cap at Karu, got a slight nod in response, and then headed back up the road with a practiced saunter which carried him quickly but not quickly enough to look desperate to escape the Exhumans who followed him as he left. I closed the door and went back to the clipboard.


    "Anything of interest?" Karu said, sitting next to me, and apparently still distracted enough by the event that she wasn''t trying to jump me immediately, yet.


    "An incredible waste of paper, basically," I said, and put it down. "Threatens not only to kick me out, but also court-marshal and millions in withheld wages, subject to immediate dismissal, blah, blah, blah."


    "What?" Karu said and picked it up to read through it. "Ashton, this basically states that either you leave now--and breathe gently whilst doing so--or you will forfeit...actually it may be simpler to list the things you would not forfeit."


    "Yeah. Well, she can serve me whatever papers she likes, I kinda doubt it''ll hold up." I laid back on the couch and put an arm over my eyes. "Targa''s a blowhard."


    "Be that as it may, this is a serious indictment. You must take this seriously. This could seriously harm your career prospects, if nothing else. Even coming from a blowhard, as it were, such a black mark on your record is nigh-damning." She flipped through several more pages, and I enjoyed the quiet and watching her green eyes dart back and forth over them. "Err, that is to say, assuming you do not die as she seems to indicate is the preferred penalty for your transgressions."


    "Karu, I''m an Exhuman," I sighed. "And I''ve been one for almost a year now. I''m kind of accustomed to people wanting me dead for no reason. Job and promotion prospects aren''t really something on my radar, given that."


    "They should be," she frowned. "I am far from qualified to act as a guidance counselor, but certainly I have heard that before turning, you had life goals laid out for yourself, and I view such an attitude as healthy and necessary for a complete life."A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    "Sure, right, I''ll just do that," I said, taking the clipboard from her hands. "Isn''t it a little hot here to still be wearing hand warmers?"


    "You detract from the topic," she said, flushing slightly and moving her hands out of immediate sight. "It is difficult, I know, to focus on the future when the present is so ever-present, as it were, yet if you make no effort in that regard the future will be atop you without forewarning."


    "It''s not difficult...it''s...impossible," I said, turning myself so I was sitting next to her, facing the wall instead of her. "I don''t even own my own life right now. I do what the XPCA says, and in exchange, I''m not a public enemy. What do I do every day? I have no idea, whatever they tell me to do. And for how long? I don''t know, however long they want. How can I plan for the future like that?"


    She sighed heavily but when I looked she was smiling. "Ashton, all planning is not as AEGIS or your sister would have you believe. When you are with me, I do not think we lay elaborate schemes or redundant layers of failsafes and redundancies. Instead, I teach you what I know, lessons hard-won, snatched from the jaws of death itself at times."


    "Yeah, so?"


    "So? Do you learn these lessons so that they are immediately applied to a situation at hand and then abandoned forever?"


    "Uhh...no."


    "Then they stick with you into the future. A future in which you are more prepared. A more capable you, whom, when faced with a wider variety of dangers or unexpected situations, sees a successful outcome more often."


    "I don''t get what this has to do with what you were just saying," I said, laying down again, putting my legs across her lap.


    "What this has to do is that preparing yourself is a form of planning for the future as well. All those years playing football, you were not just laying the plans for your future scholarship, you were also honing yourself so that you were a more resilient football player. You insulated yourself against unexpected injury or loss of scholarship or other things which may have decimated your plans by self-improvement."


    She smiled at me, and when I just sort of looked glumly back at her, elicited a response by plucking out one of my leg hairs, which got my legs off of her lap right quick.


    "So," she said, putting on the air of a college professor to contrast my undignified yelp, "even if there is no plan, per se, you may still focus on self-improvement as a means of planning. And in this situation, the you who does not have a black mark on their record is more versatile and has more options open to them than the one who does."


    "Yes Mother," I groaned, rubbing my leg.


    "Do not be obnoxious. You know this to be correct as well as I do, you just refuse to take Captain Targa at face value because you dislike her."


    "Because she''s a blowhard."


    "Regardless, I believe my point has been made and you have heard it. Now let us return to an earlier conversation I found much more compelling¡­"


    I pulled the blanket over me and entered boulder stance before she could get me thinking with the wrong head again. "Nope! Personal barrier engaged! Night, Karu!"


    I expected her to laugh it off, or attack me, but heard only silence outside the blanket. When I took a peek, she was still sitting there, looking...actually looking kind of hurt.


    She spoke slowly and diplomatically, as I had seen her do before when facing the press. "Please do not make a joke of my feelings. I understand we have had...flings, as it were, but I would not do that if there were no honest feelings beneath it all."


    "Sorry," I said. I wasn''t sure what else the was to be said.


    "Perhaps the fault is mine, I make light of plying you for sex, but cannot stand to have you make light of a refusal." She looked down at her hands. "Still, I cannot pretend that it does not hurt me in an...unexpectedly sharp manner."


    "Look, I can be serious about it, but only if you actually listen to me when I say no."


    "That seems...reasonable. I apologize for tarnishing the evening with my weakness. I shall abscond at once. Sleep well."


    And then she left the room like she''d been bitten, turning off the light and dropping me into darkness as she went.


    It took me a long time to go to sleep after that. I didn''t think I''d done anything wrong, but Karu''s hurt tone of voice and wounded eyes haunted me more than I thought they should have, and I spent many long minutes thinking of what she and I had each said and replaying scenarios of what I should have done instead.


    No matter how my mind turned it over, nothing sounded good. What would Lia have said or done to defuse the situation without hurting anyone? I didn''t know, something clever, probably. Some kind of flattery that made everybody leave happy but was meaningless, ultimately, maybe?


    At some point, I had a very confusing dream where Lia was giving me pointers on how my technique in bedding Karu was all flawed, while AEGIS sat beside the three of us, waiting her turn.


    I jolted awake on realizing it was a dream, sitting upright and hot under my blanket, trying to capture the good parts of the dream while they slipped through my fingers like water.


    On the stairs on my right I saw red lights glowing in the dark, but when I rubbed my eyes and looked clearer, there was nothing there. Just a figment from the dream, I guessed. I truly wasn''t awake, and laid back down to hopefully fall asleep again before I was.


    I had several more odd dreams I couldn''t remember, maybe from sleeping in such an unfamiliar place, but the last one I had before waking up, I realized the source of as soon as my eyes snapped open.


    Karu was there, kneeling on the floor next to the couch, making an almost-whimpering face with her mouth open. She was dressed in light sleeping clothes, but most disturbing of all was the fact that one of her fingers was in my mouth, which was making my drool pool onto the couch cushion I''d used as a pillow.


    "''Arhu?" I said, pulling back and getting her hand out of my mouth. "The hell are you doing?" I looked down and saw there was quite a sizable dark circle of drool.


    "Nothing!" she said and sat ramrod straight, flushing fully and immediately. "I was...merely...I attempted to...to prod you awake, but your mouth was open, and I suppose...I missed, is merely all."


    "You had...had your f-fingers in my mouth?" I stammered out. "What the heck?"


    "It was merely a mistake!" she shouted back and stood up. "Forgive me for a moment of being less than perfect!"


    "Wait, what''s going on? I''m so confused." I was trying to get an explanation from her, stop her from going, and get sleep out of my head all at once, and I didn''t think any of them were working.


    She looked at me sternly. "Nothing is going on apparently, Ashton. I am going to shower and get dressed. I will reconvene with you afterwards."


    She stomped upstairs giving me the distinct impression again of having done nothing wrong yet seriously messing up. As she went, again, I had the distinct impression of seeing red lines as Karu fled up the stairs but again, before I could rub the sleep out of my eyes, they were gone.


    But these weren''t the red lines of a glowing visor. They were on her arms, fresh, cuts, fat with beads of blood.


    I just sat with my head between my knees for a while, waking up, and trying to put together all the data I couldn''t parse while listening to the shower running above me. At some point, I realized that was another thing which made no sense, as she''d just showered last night before bed, but at this point, what the hell did I know?


    My first instinct was, even if I didn''t know what I''d done, I''d messed up. My second was to turn to those smarter than me I''d been leaning on my whole life. But this didn''t seem like a very good time to call Lia, and asking AEGIS about Karu was stupid, even I knew that. I''d gotten as far as taking out my mobile and turning it over in my hands when I remembered I''d fried it accidentally the day before anyway.


    I guess I could ask Karu, but that seemed easily the most terrifying prospect. If, somehow, it wasn''t me and was her, calling her out on it was not the way to handle a woman being irrational, I''d learned.


    I mean, calling an irrational guy out on it was also not a good plan, but I just didn''t have as many of those in my life, I mentally added, so as not to be sexist about it.


    Again, I found myself interrupted by a knock on the door. Hoping Karu would at least be in a towel if she chose to pop out into the upstairs hallway within clear line of sight of the door, I got up heavily from beneath my thoughts and checked who it was.


    "Hey there, loser," said the shadow Exhuman, Trish. She was leaning sideways against the doorway with a bundle of what looked like clothes under her arm, and her boyfriend lurked just behind her looking annoyed to be here.


    "Uh, winner, actually," I corrected. "I don''t do rematches."


    "Yeah, well, nobody wants you back if you''re just gonna blow up the lights. Nobody likes it if you destroy the ring, so you lose on a technicality."


    "You come all the way here to tell me that?" I asked.


    "No, I came to give you this," she held out the bundle. "Was probably more useful before you blew everything up."


    I took the bundle, and finding it impossible to hold it and go through it at the same time, invited the two in while I sorted the stuff on the table.


    "Women''s clothes?" I asked.


    "Your friend. Steffie or whatever. Those are hers. A mobile, too."


    I just got to the mobile as she mentioned it. Might have been some useful data on there, if I hadn''t fried it, as she said. I swore under my breath.


    "Why do you have her clothes?" I asked.


    "They were at the arena. Lots of stuff winds up there...usually stuff left behind by losers who don''t uh...successfully endure the losing process. But clothes, that''s a real head-scratcher."


    "Especially since she was in a wheelchair," I added. "Not sure she could just change clothes by herself or anything."


    "Yeah well, you said you were tracking her, and that''s what you''d be tracking," she said, pointing at the busted mobile on the table. "Thought I''d save you the trip of heading back down there just for that disappointment."


    "How uncharacteristically nice of you," I said, suspecting this had some strings attached.


    "Heh. Yeah. Think of this as your consolation prize for losing so spectacularly," she said with a shrug.


    "Yeah, I can still see the bruise on your face where I kicked you," I said with a sly grin.


    "And I can still see your mouth where you shut the hell up," she added, eloquently. "C''mon, let''s jet," she said to her boy, and the two headed out, while he plied us with a perfect composite of threats and mocking and it was a good thing he was leaving because otherwise he''d have to kick my ass, and so forth.


    "He''s a real charmer," Trish promised, with a small wave. "Don''t be a stranger, Lightning."


    "Yeah, see you never, probably," I said and began to close the door, but then had a thought. "Wait, your mobile was fried by the blast too, right?"


    "No. I''m not stupid enough to fight with shit in my pockets. My mobile was safe at home."


    "Can I borrow it real quick? I need to make a call."


    The boy groaned and threatened to beat my ass even further, but Trish just sighed as she passed over her mobile.

 197. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. AEGIS.

    It wasn''t that I didn''t trust Athan. I knew he was a good guy who did what he thought was right no matter what, and his definition of right wasn''t bad.


    It was more that I also trusted him to get himself into trouble, and looking after him was kind of my self-appointed job, just like he''d appointed himself my caretaker while I dealt with this virus thing.


    Similarly, Karu was a decent enough person, who''d grown on me the more I saw her as a real person and less of a crazy killing machine...which I think, ironically, is how she saw me as well...only a literal killing machine. But the fact was, she was just as good as Athan at getting into trouble, just more mature and with more resources to get herself out of it.


    And then, possibly most worrying of all was what kind of trouble they''d get into together. I knew it was my idea to send the two of them off together, because in my head, they both seemed to be hurting and in need.


    ...But still, I''d worked hard to position myself ever-closer to Athan, and as the hours drew on, I found it harder and harder to push the question of what the two of them might be up to at this moment out of my head.


    So when my intel indicated that reports were being filed from the administrator of New Eden that one Athan Ashton, handle: Chariot was being written up for a laundry-list of offenses so comprehensive it was as though he was trying to make waves, I broke down just a little and looked into what was going on out there.


    An EMP bomb had gone off, knocking out about a quarter of New Eden''s security and power grids. The culprits, ostensibly members of the rumored New Eden resistance had used the confusion of the blast to kill a dozen of the New Eden guards. Somehow, Athan had gotten himself wrapped up in this, and from the conflicting reports, was fighting the resistance, the guards, was responsible for the EMP blast himself, and most confusing of all, was apparently involved in an Exhuman gladiatorial ring?


    Only half of that made any sense, and none of it in conjunction...that was the nature of rumors and preliminary reports, but I was having trouble finding any data myself to corroborate which claims were true or not. Surveillance in the area had been blown out by the EMP, and neither Athan nor Karu seemed to have working comms. When I called the base itself, I found myself repeating explanations of who I was and who I wanted to speak with to a series of ever-higher level officials until I spoke with the base administrator herself for some reason. She heard me out long enough to hear Athan''s name, and then told me never to contact her again and hung up on me.


    I thought, maybe any of those things independently, I could deal with. Athan, Karu, the bombing, getting written up, the resistance, gladiator fights, the administrator, sure. Life is strange, things happen, especially to an Exhuman. I was supposed to be trying to trust and believe in Athan more, after all.


    But what scared me, what was responsible for me standing awkwardly outside the gates of New Eden with Lia hovering around behind me (refusing to let me go by myself), what had made me contact the rest of the P-Force and let them know that something really dangerous might be afoot was the anonymous ''net message sent to me.


    Come or he will die.


    That''s all it said. Five words. I might not have given them a thought had everything else not been so messed up already, but given the situation, the more I looked at those words, the more they eroded my faith in Athan. In Karu. In myself.


    For starters, they were obviously about him, whoever sent them knew we were separated, knew he was somewhere potentially dangerous, and knew I''d be worried about him enough to pay the message any mind.


    More alarmingly, the message contained no digital fingerprints of any kind. Even with my finger on the pulse of half the comms relays in the ''net, I found no trace of the message''s passage. There was no metadata or anything to be found, and certainly no sender. It was as though the message just appeared on my mobile by magic.


    So I was standing outside the gates of New Eden, holding my mobile and staring at those five words, feeling stupid for worrying and coming out here and dragging Lia along, not wanting Athan to know how little I apparently believed in him, but not sure why the hell else I had possibly come out here, and generally feeling just all kinds of moronic.


    When I was jolted back to the present by the mobile buzzing in my hand. A number I didn''t recognize.


    "Hello?" I answered on reflex.


    "AEGIS, it''s me, how you doing?"


    "Athan!" I felt relief surge through me. "Thank God, are you okay?"


    "I asked you first," he said. I could hear his smile and felt my own on my face.


    "I''m fine. Crashed, uh, yesterday after you left. Lia says hi. What''s up?"


    "I''m okay too...yeah I know, calm down."


    "What?" I said. Had he somehow been able to tell I was stressing out enough to fly halfway across the country just from our brief exchange?


    "Sorry. I''m borrowing someone else''s mobile and they''re yelling at me. Look, I''m calling because I have a fried mobile device and I''d like you to pull any data off it you can. It belonged to Steffie, might have a clue where she went and why."


    I chewed my lip. Yeah, it was crazy to jump to the conclusion he''d suddenly turned super insightful. I reminded myself this was Athan we were talking about here. "I''d have to have access to the device, and assuming it was fried by an EMP--"


    "You heard about that? I mean, I guess of course you have."


    "Yeah. Well. Given that, I don''t think you could just hook it up and have me access it remote...I''d have to physically have it on me."


    "Uh. I guess I could...have it sent to you," he said. "I''d like it ASAP, but if we have to stay another day or two here...I don''t know if that works for Karu, she''s in the shower."


    For some reason, the thought of Karu showering there, of him volunteering to spend another couple days in that was what pushed me over the ledge into making up my mind about intervening.


    "Actually, that won''t be necessary," I said, avoiding Lia''s eyes. "I uh, am here. At New Eden." And then I added "I thought you might need me for something like this."


    "Wow, really? You''re incredible, AEGIS. We''re in unit 115-D, when can you meet us?"


    "I''ll be there as soon as I get in the city. Might be a bit...there''s a lockdown because of...some reason," I lied. I felt guilty about lying to Athan on top of not trusting him, and wasn''t about to blame him for anything at the moment. "But it shouldn''t be a problem to get the lockdown lifted. I''ve got Lia with me too, after all."


    "Yeah, you mentioned that."


    "Oh. Sorry."


    "Okay well, we''ll wait here. Come join us when you can."


    "Cool, thanks. Sorry."


    He hung up and eventually, I did too.


    It did take a little bit of good ol'' Black Shark/AEGIS duo to get the lockdown lifted, but we managed, and joined Athan and Karu at 115-D, hustling through the concrete structures both out of an urgent need to see Athan again, and to get away from the leering, unpleasant Exhumans who were eyeing the two of us in a way that made me feel like meat.


    To my surprise, it was Karu who opened the door. She looked down at me with her burning green eyes and an imperious glare.


    "How entirely unexpected that you should happen to be here, by utter circumstance," she intoned.


    "Yeah, just uh...figured Athan was useless on his own and came to check on him. You know how he is."


    "Do I? And I suppose you assumed I was incapable of managing the situation on my own? Hello, Lia."


    "Howdy dudes," said Lia, who pushed past the two of us in the doorway, and began chatting animatedly with her brother somewhere further inside the house.


    "I had thought," continued Karu in a lower voice now, "that when you had called me to ask me to assist Ashton in his affair, that indicated a minor turning point in our relationship. An indication of trust, or respect. Am I to assume I was mistaken?"


    "No, nothing like that. Don''t take it so personally, I''m allowed to miss him, too."


    "You get him near-on all day, every day. It seems only reasonable--"


    Karu was cut off by Athan''s approach, and he ducked under her outstretched arm to embrace me in the doorway, wrapping me up in a welcoming hug.


    "Hi AEGIS, thanks for coming out."


    "N-not a problem," I said, feeling my cheeks go hot at how intently he was looking at me. "I missed you, heh."This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "I missed you too."


    "If you two are quite through, there are now four of us in a small house with only one bathroom, so I would prefer if you not force me to spend my time vomiting in there for the entirety of our stay."


    "Right, sorry, Karu," Athan said, and pulled away from me, a little before I was quite ready for it.


    Well, whatever. Probably not a good idea to be hugging it out in front of the Exhumans outside either way. Karu reluctantly moved her arm, ineffective a barricade as it had yet served, and we all went inside.


    "Here is the mobile in question," Karu said, keeping things strictly business, and handed me a device scorched with black spots. Already I could tell this was going to be a mess. I turned it over in my hands a few times, scrutinizing the damage while pulling up schematics from the ''net for this model.


    I started explaining as I looked it over. "EMPs force a ton of current through an electronic device. Most personal electronics like this take relatively low power, and are designed to operate at that level of power. When you smack it with a blast like that, you actually melt the wires and substrate, which aren''t graded for that amount of energy flow."


    I dug through my hair and found one strand that held a small set of precision tools. Always handy to have on-hand. I selected my weapon and began the operation, carefully disassembling the device according to the assembly instructions.


    "The good news for us is that it takes a lot more current to wipe a core, and because it was located inside the casing of the mobile, the casing acts as a crude faraday cage and protects the internals a bit. There''s still probably tons of damage, but the possibility that some data can be recovered is there." I cocked an eyebrow at Athan. "But it''d be easier if you didn''t go around blowing things up all the time."


    "I was protecting myself from another Exhuman," he said defensively. "She''s the one who started everything."


    "Mmm, she," I said, peeling off the outer casing and inspecting the mess of blackened chips inside. "Just what I needed, another one."


    "Another what?"


    "Another girl, you nimrod," I said, and threw a piece of casing from the inexplicably smashed holo sitting on the table at him. "It looks like the mobile wasn''t directly in the blast, so there''s hope. The core is beat to hell, though, and all the chips which are, y''know, supposed to permit reading and writing are all obliterated. I might...if we had another¡­" I realized I wasn''t making sense and trailing off but was looking around for something, anything with a quantum core in it.


    The answer was right there, the smashed-up holo. Kinda doubt anyone would miss me salvaging some parts out of that.


    "Yeah, might work. Probably going to be...need to code a crosswalk to bridge the protocols and read out right¡­"


    I realized Athan was saying something but I was kind of right in the middle of figuring this out. When he didn''t repeat it, I assumed it was unimportant, and didn''t let it stop me from pulling parts out of the wrecked holo and arraying yet more tools and bits on the table from my hair.


    It didn''t take very long at all for me to get a working prototype mocked up, kind of an awful mockery of functional design, as I''d had to sort of bootstrap adapters onto each component to get them talking to each other, but it would probably work. I looked around and realized Karu, Lia, and Athan were nowhere to be seen.


    I stood up, stretched, and checked my mobile. Three hours? Christ. It was still bright out, I''d swear it was nothing more than half an hour. No wonder they all wandered off.


    "Hey, guys?" I called out. Three voices muttered a response from upstairs, and I realized they''d been talking up there this whole time and felt a little sad and left out. "I just finished, want to be here to turn it on?"


    There was relative silence and then ''sure'' from Athan. I sighed and tried to remind myself that normal people found this stuff really boring and I shouldn''t be annoyed.


    Even if it was a brilliant solution, and they should all be applauding me for my creativity in once again doing the impossible.


    Once the table had four people around it, I screwed a wire into place on the tiny deulith cell, giving power to the unit, and plugged myself in to the standard port I''d set up as output, and then gave another strand to Lia, who plugged me in to her mobile wordlessly.


    My hands and eyes moved as I roved over the data, and anything I found, I exported to Lia''s device for them to pore over.


    There wasn''t much interesting here, unfortunately.


    "There isn''t much interesting here," Lia said, helpfully.


    "Yeah, looks like a normal mobile''s contents," I agreed. "I think she used the calendar a lot more before moving to New Eden. She''s got some locations and notes in here since coming out...but nothing which is like Meeting with criminal I may never come back from."


    "Mayhap she kept a journal?" Karu said.


    I gave her a weird look, but Lia beat me to vocalizing it again. "Mayhap?" she laughed.


    "Mayhap she had a dictionary app, that you may enlighten yourself to a more dignified vocabulary?" Karu said, making Lia laugh again.


    "No journal," I said, flying through the data. "But...hmm...maybe Jack wouldn''t approve, but there''s a lot of chats and messages between them."


    "Oooh, we''ve gotta read that," Lia said. She grinned at the three of us and I think found us lacking her enthusiasm. "Because...that''s...where the clue we need might be."


    Athan slowly bonked her on the noggin. "Lia, you''re an incorrigible gossip," he said.


    "Yeah, yeah, I know, that''s what Mom always said."


    "Like I''d know what incorrigible meant if she didn''t." They were grinning at each other.


    "I hear Karu has a dictionary for this kind of thing," she replied.


    I heard it all but was kind of focused to come up with any banter myself. It made me feel a little left out again, but somebody had to find this missing woman, I thought. I left much of the ''juicier'' tidbits alone...not sending them to Lia...but it did seem the two of them were more involved than I think any of us suspected. There was also a lot of personal stuff in here about Jack''s past, her disability, how he felt responsible for it¡­


    "Did you guys know Jack has a bad leg?" I asked.


    "Other than the one he''s in the infirmary for right now?" Athan seemed as surprised as me, and they were teammates and all that.


    Karu was frowning but silent. When Athan prodded her for her thoughts, she had an insightful one.


    "I must wonder, if he were lame before his powers, or shortly after, if his ability to move about so effortlessly was a result of his powers compensating his disability during his Ramanathan window."


    "You mean¡­" Lia''s intensity of thought flipped to match Karu''s. "Jack''s actual power is his creepy eyes smiling thing, and the fact he can just sort of be wherever he wants was because he was lame during his window?"


    "It is a possibility," Karu said.


    "Neat, but not useful," Athan said. "Doesn''t help us find Steffie."


    "Yeah, working on it," I said, only just able to hear them over the data. "Almost at the end of everything now...she had issues with the locals, I think we all did."


    "Any mention of either the XPCA or the resistance?" Athan asked.


    "No...which is surprising, given the rumors we''ve all heard," I said. "It seems she didn''t get out much...I guess understandable given the hassle. Went on walks sometimes--"


    "Can you call it that?" Lia asked, cocking an eyebrow.


    "Hey, her words, not mine. But yeah, otherwise became something of a shut-in. Not out of fear or anything, she was just...kinda pissy all the time it seems. Wanted less and less to do with everyone else...ouch, took it out on Jack a lot. He''s a really nice guy, it seems. And...that''s it." I frowned and looked down at my fingers tenting and untenting themselves unconsciously. "Maybe...location data? You found it where, exactly?"


    "It was underground, below the sewers. An Exhuman combat arena, actually."


    So those rumors were true. I''d have to give Athan an earful later about engaging in casual deathmatches with other Exhumans.


    "Okay, I can tell which relay she was connected to when, which tells us when she was at home and otherwise...where was this place?"


    Piece-by-piece I got salient information from the mobile and from Athan and Karu, and worked out that she''d been to the ring, apparently voluntarily, and apparently a number of times. Just her last time...she never left.


    "Just before the phone never moved again, there''s just this...little blip. She left here, went to the arena, and then went somewhere else, and then went back to the arena, and then stayed there. Or her mobile did anyway. But where''s the other place?"


    I pulled up maps of New Eden and overlaid the ''net relays on top if it. She went to the northernmost relay to the arena, and then...east, far enough to get onto the next one over. That gave us a crescent-shaped region between the two where her mobile might have picked the new relay over the old one.


    "Somewhere in there, she went on her last day," I said, stretching and cracking my knuckles again. I''d designed them to do that, because they were fun to pop. "I think that''s all I''m gonna get out of this sucker."


    "You got a lot," Athan said, looking at the map. "Half of this area is outside of New Eden, past the north wall."


    "This is the same wall where we battled the Exhuman resistance members," Karu said. "Or, I did, while you assembled a suicide attempt."


    "Yeah," Athan said, ignoring half the statement. "Weird. Trish said Steffie was probably either taken by the XPCA or with the resistance. Though I still think Soran''s a possibility."


    "The resistance might operate around there," Karu said. "They wasted no time in mobilizing in the area after the EMP."


    "The wall means the XPCA is there too, though," I added.


    "Doesn''t make sense for her to go back if she was detained by the XPCA though," Lia said. "Even if it was just her mobile. Makes a lot more sense if she wound up joining the resistance for her to leave behind anything which could be used to track her."


    "And her clothes?" Athan asked, incredulously.


    "They were wearing all red, as though alike a uniform."


    Athan shook his head. "Look, I know New Eden is kind of a shithole, but it''s still better than the hiding out and suffering and oppression these guys had to deal with before. Steffie of all people knew that, she was grateful for this second lease on life. I just don''t see her falling in with them."


    "Well, she''s somewhere, Athan," I said and shrugged.


    "Yeah. Though I''m starting to get a bad feeling about all of this. I''m worried she''s caught up in something. Jack said she was just so irrationally angry all the time at the end...think that pushed her into joining the resistance out of desperation?"


    "I don''t know," I said, shaking my head. "From what I read, she was certainly massively pissed. Cranky. Hormonal, even, maybe? I want to say women have done worse things for less...but I''m not an expert at being a real woman, biologically."


    There was an awkward pause where I think everyone wanted to disagree but nobody really could. Athan was getting smart enough to learn when not to say something stupid sometimes at least.


    "Then...I guess...we go after the resistance. Try to get them to talk to us," Athan said. "Seems like our best bet right now."


    I inwardly agreed, but thought this was heading straight for disaster. Karu shook her head.


    "You realize," she said "this is very nearly exactly the course of behavior Captain Targa warned you against pursuing?"


    "Yeah," Athan agreed and let out a slow breath. I wondered what had happened there exactly, from what I''d heard, Athan thought Targa could go suck a truck full of dicks for all he cared about her.


    There was another minute of silence as we all thought, before Athan found a cocky grin again. Wordlessly, I inquired what that meant with raised eyebrows.


    "All that means," he said "is we have to make sure she doesn''t catch us."


    "Oh God," Lia complained, but she was smiling too. "There is no way this is going to end well."


    "It''ll be fine!" he said. "We''ll just use our smarts. Whole room of geniuses in here. Not a problem."


    I looked at Karu and found her face a mirror of my own defeated concern.


    "Yeah, we''re doomed," I said, but could hardly help to keep from smiling too.

 198. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    Which just left the awkward question of, how does one find a clandestine resistance movement, so capable of hiding that they haven''t been discovered and wiped out by the military which built and manages the very city in which they hide?


    Under ordinary circumstances, I''d say, go to the XPCA. They might have a lead, and we had some pull with them. But being on Targa''s shit list, interacting with them wasn''t anything I wanted to do unless we had to. Couldn''t hurt to do our own investigation first, and with our little group now twice as large, we had a lot more eyes and ears open for tracking them down.


    Lia and AEGIS were on their devices, doing what they did best. Karu got in contact with one of her, err, contacts, and was seeing what the association knew about any New Eden underground.


    Which left me sitting on the couch feeling useless.


    "Hey, I have a question," I asked, interrupting Lia talking about something I hoped wasn''t too important.


    "Yo," she said. A very versatile word.


    "Where''s Tem?"


    AEGIS and Lia shared an uneasy glance which changed my level of concern from ''curious'' to ''peril-fraught''.


    "Well...not here. We don''t really know," Lia said, and suddenly found a piece of her thumbnail which needed chewing on. "Um, she uh¡­" She looked back at AEGIS like she didn''t know how to break the news to me. "I guess...it''s fair to assume you''ve never seen her when she''s not around you?"


    "Like...on a camera? How would I have done that? I am usually there when I''m seeing something."


    "Yeah. Okay. Well...she''s kinda...probably worse...than you think she is."


    "Worse how? She doesn''t threaten to kill everyone does she? I hate it when she does that. One of these days, I''m worried she''s just gonna snap before I can calm her down."


    "No...nothing that intense. She just uh¡­"


    "Exists?" contributed AEGIS. The conversation had finally turned interesting or odd enough to entice Karu to look up, but she was still staying out of it.


    "Exists is a word for it, I guess. I don''t know what you did to her bro, but when you''re gone, she''s sort of...dark side of the moon."


    "Is that a reference?" I asked. She was picking her words so deliberately, I was having a hard time understanding what she meant.


    "No. She''s off. Like, a light, off. Still, barren, lifeless, dark. Dark side of the moon."


    "She just turns off? Tem?"


    "Yeah."


    "That''s impossible. She''s constantly up in...everyone''s business. She''s always there, underfoot, jumping into conversations and apologizing at random. So air-headed and bouncy and vacant and...volunteering herself for weird things."


    "Yeah, but uh...you''ve never considered that the reason you always see her that way is because that''s the way she is around you?"


    I scratched my head. "No?"


    Lia chuckled. "Well, she is. When you''re gone, she''s like a dog waiting for master to come home. It''s actually really depressing."


    "And...you don''t know where she is. Meaning...she''s doing that right now."


    "Yeah, uh¡­"


    Lia started to fade guiltily out of the conversation so AEGIS sighed and stepped in.


    "We didn''t talk about our plans to come out here out loud at all. Did it all over messenger so she couldn''t hear. She just sat somewhere moping in your house, and we left. Maybe to the store, maybe to dinner...maybe to the airport, not to return for a few days. She doesn''t know, and what she doesn''t know won''t kill her."


    "Does she literally just sit there all day?"


    "Yeah, pretty much. Kind of obnoxious when she sets up somewhere in the way and you trip over her all the time. Wish she''d stay visible at least."


    "Does she...eat?"


    And that''s where Lia gave the guiltiest face of all and I realized I''d hit on it.


    "We feed her, usually," AEGIS said. "But she barely touches anything if you''re not there. I think she''s been gaining weight recently because she feels like you''re there for her and won''t abandon her for being fat, or whatever''s going on in her mind."


    "...except, I''m gone," I concluded. "For three days now. She probably hasn''t eaten."


    "I made sure there was food in the fridge!" Lia argued, but didn''t seem convinced herself. "I should probably call Tower or something to check on her, huh?"


    "Yeah, maybe," I said.


    I didn''t quite know what to think. It was hard to imagine Tem just...being shut down. If anything, I found her utterly irrepressible. I couldn''t keep her away from me or hardly control her. I certainly felt bad about her current state, and didn''t want her starving or hurting herself¡­


    ...but at the same time, she just pissed me off. We were out here trying to help people, in a city under some crazy underground war, with missing people and Exhumans killing each other, and we have to stop what we''re doing so someone can call home and remind a friend to feed the dog. Force-feed the dog, because it won''t feed itself. Tem just knew how to piss me off like none other.


    "Um, maybe Jack," AEGIS said.


    "Good call," Lia agreed. "He''s probably all cooped up right now and going crazy with Steffie missing still."


    "Ah yeah, good point," AEGIS agreed. I got the feeling there was more to that but didn''t care.


    "Well, sorry for bringing it up," I said. "Just a random thought. I''m gonna go talk to some of our neighbors. Hopefully they know something about the resistance, and aren''t idiot anorexics like some Exhumans I know."


    "Hey," Lia said, glaring. "It''s a mental disorder. Would you make fun of her for schizophrenia or something?"


    "Maybe if it somehow made her this obnoxious," I said, heading to the door.


    "Well then, you''re just a jackass," she huffed "as in, male donkey," and went back to her phone.


    I wasn''t the biggest fan of pissing off Lia, but I had some three-hundred Exhumans here to worry about without adding one more back in D.C. who couldn''t take care of herself. I''d thought I might try to find Trish and piss off her boyfriend some more by pumping her for information about the resistance, but I was interrupted just a couple minutes into my walk by a broadcast on the PA system.


    It wasn''t broadcasting up in the northern part of the city, for...reasons...but I hadn''t made it up there yet and could clearly hear Targa''s irritated-sounding voice ringing over the city.


    "Attention residents of New Eden. Pursuant to clause blah blah blah of article blah blah of my ass, the XPCA has such-and-such rights to make and have observed notices of blah blah blah."


    She didn''t really say that of course, but seriously. The first entire minute was just her listing off obscure articles and treatise, citing more sources than a dissertation as she rattled on and on about why I should listen and care. Eventually, she got around to it.


    "On the precedent and authority of the aforementioned, all New Eden residents are thus considered both informed and aware of the following: A special inspection will be conducted in two days time, the minimum duration stipulated in blah blah blah...and presiding over the inspection will be one of the XPCA''s ranking officers. All behavior conducted within the city during this inspection is expected to be by the book with no exceptions. Any individuals in violation of this verbal missive will be subject to massive penal repercussions which will be delivered to the furthest possible extent."


    There was a few seconds of relative silence where all I could hear was her breathing over the comms. She sounded either worn out by just how many friggin'' words it took her to say a simple thing, or she''d gotten herself very excited by just how hard she''d hit the rulebooks. Girl was a freak...and she called me a perv?Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "Written notices will be posted and official notices in English and other languages may be requested at the gate for the hearing-impaired and non-English speakers. Two days. By the book. That is all."


    Yeesh, I thought. By the book, by her definition was some thin ice indeed. I wondered just how many violations I was making just by standing here. Dozens probably. We needed to be finished with all of this before then, or I''d be thrown out for sure.


    Still, an inspection by a higher-up, that''d stress out any official, not just the rule-fetishizing insane ones. I couldn''t blame Targa for trying to make a production of this and scare her residents straight for a few hours or however long it''d take...if she was interested in ever getting promoted out of her, she''d need that kind of thing to go flawlessly.


    Of course, being honest with myself, I hoped the whole thing went up in flames a little bit. Targa was a blowhard, and didn''t deserve to be promoted over anyone. I just didn''t want to be in the middle of it.


    An hour later, I was back in the same spot coming from the other direction. Trish and her boy had been less than useless, and after talking me in circles for a while to let me know just how much they didn''t owe me anything and how I should be grateful for the kindness they''ve already shown me, ultimately revealed they knew nothing about the resistance of any use. I''d even gone back down to the arena, now that I knew a faster way down than the stupid path they''d first set me on, and tried to talk to the Exhumans there, but again, everyone seemed irritated by me trying to talk with them, and claimed to know nothing anyway.


    It was frustrating, and doubly so because I was sure thirty seconds with Saga on hand would have cleared this up for me. She just had to continue her streak of never being around when needed, and showing up when it''d be most inconvenient. If Blackett''s word was to be trusted, she was in Florida or Cuba or something now. Even if she did have a phone, I was briefly amused by the hypothetical notion of calling her up to help me here, and her walking up over the course of a few months, swimming across the Caribbean and all.


    I came back to find the girls mostly in the same state I''d left them all, just with more mess and devices sprawled on the table, and Lia working on her back on the couch with her legs floating in the air, her comfy sweatshirt riding up to show off a sliver of her ''tummy'', as she called it.


    "Lia, dude, put your legs down or put on shorts. You''re flashing anyone who walks through the door," I said, censoring her from view with an outstretched hand.


    "Hey! That doesn''t mean you should look, stupid!" she shouted, dropping her mobile on her chest in her panic to pull up her skirt, and generally just being a mess of flailing legs.


    "How are we doing on finding Steffie?" I asked. Without waiting for a reply, I went first. "I talked to Trish and some at the Arena...nobody seems to know how to find the resistance. Disappearances like hers are kind of the norm sometimes around here it seems, and people only discover the disappear-ees joined the resistance when they show up wearing red and killing XPCA at some point. That or they come back from XPCA custody."


    "Sounds lovely," said AEGIS, chewing the back end of a stylus with her front teeth. "Surprisingly, we haven''t found much either. There''s hardly anything on the ''net about it...your friend Captain Targa''s being a serious pain in the ass in how well she''s locked down any data they have, and even Lia''s having problems getting info from the guards. She gets them sympathetic to her, asks for something simple and reasonable, and they ask her for a written request, notarized by an officer and submitted in triplicate."


    "The association has little information on the resistance as well," Karu added. "They are more interested in those Exhumans who pose a threat to society. While they have documented potential dangers and key targets of an Exhuman uprising, that still provides us with no concrete data of locations or modus operandi."


    "So we have nothing?" I asked, sitting at the table. "I sort of expected more from you guys. Uh, in a good way. Not blaming anyone," I added as AEGIS'' yellow eyes fixed on mine with a death glare. "I just meant, I assumed if you could break down the whole XPCA, it couldn''t be too hard for you to find out something as simple as where to find a resistance member."


    "Well, we did that over months and it''s been an hour, so cut us some slack," AEGIS said, her voice as sharp as the daggers she was glaring into me. "We also have some more difficulties here given the nature of the location. I can''t very well authorize myself XPCA satellite or drone access to do aerial sweeps of their own secure facility without it being pretty suspicious."


    "And taking down the bigger XPCA was soooooo much easier," Lia complained, just a voice on the far side of the couch, her legs back in the air again, toes curling like her feet were putting on a puppet show to talk to us. "We just had to find a few weak links in the whole organization, and they were full of holes. Targa runs such a tight ship, though. She doesn''t have a hole on her anywhere. So frustrating trying to get in."


    And then, into the silence her proclamation created, she added. "I''m hungry. I want curry."


    I put my face in my hands, but to my surprise, Karu stood up and smiled.


    "I believe making a meal is the least we can do to repay your diligence in coming out here. And borrowing the host''s foodstuffs is the least she can do to repay our efforts to find her. I can promise no curry, but there must be something edible on-hand."


    She made it halfway to the kitchen before AEGIS caught up to her. "Maybe leave the cooking to me, I''ve been working on it," she said.


    "I don''t believe preparing nutrition is a difficult process. I have already exhausted my well of contacts, it would do for you to continue while I perform the menial chores I am able to contribute."


    "Preparing nutrition? Menial chores? Just what the heck are you planning on cooking?"


    "Beans, most likely. Imperishable, cheap, a good source of protein¡­"


    I shook my head as the two debated their way to the kitchen. There was a knock on the door and Lia squealed as she inverted herself, gripping her skirt. It certainly was never boring with these guys around. I''d definitely missed them.


    By all appearances, the guy at the door was the same beleaguered XPCA NCO who had come to serve me papers once before at Targa''s behest. He looked equally haggard and harassed as last time, though the group of Exhumans following him around and victimizing him had changed, at least.


    "Hey, good to see you again," I said. He gave me a small confused smile and then continued as though I''d said nothing.


    "I am looking for an Exhuman named Athan Ashton, is he here?" he asked with a sigh. Kinda blinked at him, since I think that was the identical opening line he''d used on me last time. Sorta hurt that he didn''t remember me, but maybe that was just my ego talking.


    "Yeah, that''s me. What''s it this time? Parking ticket? Moving violation? Breathing violation?"


    "Nothing that simple, sir," he said with a wry smile that vanished before I could be expected to see it. "Official written notice of orders to leave the facility," he read off the clipboard. "Or...here, read it yourself."


    He handed over a clipboard with a sheaf of papers on it seemingly identical to the one I already had abandoned on the floor nearby from last time. I took it, glanced at it, and then threw it on the floor with its partner.


    "Thanks," I said. "Need anything else? Cup of coffee? Escort to the gate?"


    "I''ll endure," he said, again with the flicker of a smile. Maybe smiling for more than a quarter of a second wasn''t allowed by some obscure XPCA proviso. "Good day, sir," he said, and stepped off, the Exhumans following like a cartoon cloud of stink.


    "What was that about?" AEGIS asked from the kitchen.


    "We''re getting thrown out of New Eden. Targa wants us gone before the inspection," I sighed.


    "Then we have two days plus today?" Karu''s voice called.


    "No, before the inspection means by the end of tomorrow, looks like," I said.


    "Well that doesn''t seem very reasonable," Lia frowned, already working her way to being upside-down on the couch again. "Maybe we could get an extension if we promise to stay indoors for the whole thing or something?"


    "Doubt it," I sighed. "That would probably constitute some kind of violation or exception, considering written notice has already been served listing this date."


    "Then I suppose if we cannot locate your friend in time, we will have to return after the inspection," Karu said.


    "Yeah, don''t think so on that one either," I said, throwing myself into the couch next to Lia''s head. "Pretty sure once she gets me out, she''ll never let me back in."


    "My, aren''t you defeatist," Lia said.


    "Just trying to be realistic here. Targa hates me."


    "What''d you do to her anyway?"


    "Nothing!"


    She looked at me like she was sure she hadn''t heard that right.


    "Okay, on her first-ever op, she was my CO and...things didn''t...quite go how she wanted them to."


    I heard something crash in the kitchen, and then AEGIS swore. "Ashton," Karu''s voice came from the next room, followed by the rest of her as AEGIS pushed her out. "Did you do anything untoward to your commanding officer?"


    "No! Nothing like that. She just...she''s a blowhard. You guys have all seen that firsthand by now. She wanted me to kill some kid who wasn''t even an Exhuman and I said no. Scared him straight, but apparently it was something of a black mark on her record, and she blames me for winding up here."


    "Ah. I suppose that is more noble than I had initially assumed. My apologies."


    "What? What did you initially assume?"


    "Nothing," Karu said, wiping her hands on her jeans and looking around. "You merely have...a way, as it were, with women."


    "I do?" I asked. A way with women? Coming from a real-life woman, that was a pretty awesome compliment.


    "Yes. You tend to make them want to exterminate you. Have you not noticed this?"


    I thought about it, and then thought a little more. I turned to Lia once my brow started hurting from my eyebrows crossing too much.


    "Lia, I think you''re the only girl I know who hasn''t tried to kill me in some way or who I haven''t massively pissed off."


    "Oh no, you''ve massively pissed me off," she laughed. "Yeah, you do have that effect on people, don''t you? Funny."


    I didn''t actually see anything funny about it, more like troubling.


    But I didn''t have too much longer to fret over it before AEGIS started putting hot plates of food on the table, and the rest of us naturally gravitated towards the warm yummy aroma.


    "So if we''re going to do something about Steffie, it''s either today or tomorrow," Lia said, heaping so much curry onto her plate, I had to wonder how she was still so thin. She''d gotten tall and long but hadn''t filled out much, but she was still just a kid. I''m sure her body would catch up soon.


    "Yeah," I said as the bowl was passed to me. "I don''t know what we''re going to do though."


    "Well," Lia said, her eyes sparkling mischievously, and I knew she was up to something since talking had become a higher priority than shoveling down food. "You said you wanted to follow the rules and play it safe so Targa didn''t throw you out, right?"


    "Right¡­"


    She bent down and picked up the clipboard. "Looks like you''re already being thrown out. Kinda means we''ve got no reason to play by the rules anymore, huh?"


    I felt a grin spreading on my face before Lia even finished, and AEGIS gave my expression a small double-take as she put a small pot of beans down in front of Karu. "Uh-oh," she said.


    "I think I know how we can find the resistance," I said.


    "This doesn''t sound good," AEGIS said, looking warily at me.


    "Oh, it''s not. We''re gonna get in a whole heap of trouble."

 199. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    AEGIS convinced me to hold off for a day and we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to gather intel by more conventional means, but mostly I think she was hoping we''d find any sort of lead so I could refrain from doing something she considered stupid.


    She especially spent the rest of the day hard at work, pushing herself to try desperately to keep me out of trouble, while the rest of us talked over the other plan we were putting together. Karu agreed it was dangerous but was likely to be successful, and Lia liked it, only bemoaning that she would be pretty useless in the chaos we were planning to unleash.


    "I''ll check outta here tonight, stay somewhere nearby in case you need me. I''m not gonna be much use in the mess you whip up and the last thing I want to do is get captured again," she said bitterly.


    "Hey, it''s fine," I said.


    "Whatever. It''s not fine. But whatever. I guess you guys still don''t have comms on you, so it''ll be up to AEGIS to talk to me if you need me. Feeling kind of useless."


    I messed up her hair and planted a kiss on the top of her head. "It was your idea to begin with, so you''re far from useless. Don''t worry so much, it''ll be fine."


    "You''re going to deliberately piss off someone who hates you, who''s in your same company, and who''s in charge of a lot of guys with guns. I don''t buy the it''ll be fine."


    "Well we already did it before and it was fine."


    "With any luck," AEGIS said, her hands flying across a keyboard projected on the table, and hooked into four devices now she''d gotten from somewhere "you won''t have to do anything that stupid at all. We just need better intel...and that''s kind of my thing¡­"


    She sounded mad, and I kind of understood, I thought, even if I didn''t agree. If she''d appointed herself both as my caretaker and the dedicated info-gathering ''net hacker of the team, she probably felt like she was failing me on both counts by not being able to dig up anything. But as I told her again and again now, it''s not like the resistance would be uploading their position to the ''net; if the XPCA knew where they were, they''d wipe them out already. The info we needed just wasn''t out there.


    That wouldn''t stop her from trying, and she''d been sitting there slicing and cracking and sifting through petabytes of data all day now without so much as a pause.


    Suddenly, her ferenic movement was stopped as she suddenly lurched in her chair. "Oh for the love of--" she said, and then locked up and fell face-first on the table.


    "AEGIS?" I asked, moving and propping her upright. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, her body heavy and motionless. Crashed again.


    With a sigh, I pulled the boot driver from where I always kept it and sifted through her hair for the access port. Like I''d done pretty much every day now, I jammed it in and waited.


    And...waited. And...waited¡­?


    As the seconds drew on, terrifying thoughts began bubbling up in my mind. No, it was fine. She was just booting again. It was just taking longer this time. Any second now.


    Lia looked over with concern on her face I really didn''t want to see right now. "Did you put it in all the way?" she asked.


    "Yeah...it''s...it''s there," I gave it a little shove and nothing continued to happen. "This should work. Why isn''t it working? Did the boot drive go bad?"


    I fished in my chest pocket and pulled out the other option. The backup drive. A copy of her before the corruption had hit. I''d been carrying it with me this whole time in case one day she crashed too hard for the boot drive to recover.


    I turned to Lia. "She...she''s not coming back yet. She said the backup was for emergencies only."


    "Is this an emergency?" Lia asked.


    "I don''t know. I was asking you."


    "Hey, let me try my boot drive," she said, pulling an identical one out. We each had one so both of us could care for AEGIS if we had to, though there was just the one backup.


    She took out mine, and carefully jammed hers in instead. My heart jumped when she did. A second passed, and then another. When it dragged on for yet another long moment, I felt panic began to twitch inside my heart, but then, suddenly, AEGIS sat bolt upright and blinked at us, her hair swaying with her unsteady movement as her eyes focused.


    "Oh thank God!" I said and wrapped my arms around her. A moment later, Lia''s cold hands and soft body were wrapped around the two of us as well.


    "Uh," AEGIS said, sitting motionless. "I crashed?"


    "Yeah," I said.


    "Pretty bad this time, I''m guessing?"


    "You didn''t come back when I tried to boot you up. I really thought I lost you for a minute. God, my heart''s beating so hard it hurts."


    Almost detachedly, AEGIS picked up my boot drive from the table and scrutinized it. She frowned, and then with a sudden crunch, cracked it in her hand.


    "AEGIS...what--?" I got out. She fished in her palm and held up a chip, blackened and burnt.


    "You stupid," she said. "You fried it in the EMP too."


    "Oh. I didn''t even think about that. Fuck, I''m so stupid. I''m sorry."


    "I bet this is done for as well," she said, poking at the backup drive. "Well...I''ll have to make a new one from the data back at home. In the meanwhile, I guess I''d better not crash super hard anymore."


    "You can...do that?" I asked.


    "No," she said disgusted. "But I don''t really have a choice, do I? You fried plan B. God damn it all." She took a deep breath and then threw the remains of the drive in her hand at the door and pushed the backup off the table with a crash.


    "AEGIS, I''m...really sorry," I said.


    "It''s fine. It''s just...just an alternate version of me whom I hate anyway. We can always make more. Now get out of here and let me work. I''m not going to let anything happen to you."


    I left her alone but had a hard time getting how bitter she sounded out of my head. Without much else to do, and not wanting to go outside with the Exhumans or hang around and annoy her, I wound up laying on the bed upstairs in Steffie''s room.


    I was a little surprised but, aside from the low height of the bed, the lack of chair at the desk, and the spare wheelchair collapsed against the wall, there wasn''t much indication that the room belonged to a paraplegic. I sort of expected handholds around the bed or something, but no...if you didn''t know about it before, there wasn''t anything in the room to hint that Steffie was anything but a normal human woman.


    I laid there for a long time, watching the color of the sky outside slowly change through the blinds, thinking mostly of AEGIS, but also of when I''d been in shock about Saga''s alleged death and the last time I was holed up in bed just waiting. At some point I heard Lia and Karu talking directly below me in the kitchen. I couldn''t hear what they were saying, but they seemed happy enough. Despite her problems, Lia always seemed happy enough. A superpower far greater than mine...the willpower to force down her own depression and pretend to be happy, each and every day.


    To my surprise, Lia and Karu came in and joined me in a picnic on the bed when they finished cooking. Beans again, I noticed, an odd side dish to compliment the pasta and garlic toast I knew Lia was familiar with making.


    "Doesn''t seem like AEGIS is having any luck," Lia said quietly.


    "Indeed not. It seems the certainty of going with your plan grows with every moment."


    "Yeah," I agreed, halfheartedly.


    "Not feeling it, as it were?" Karu asked with a sympathetic smile. "I would think you would relish the thought of doing something extremely foolish."


    "Despite what everyone seems to think, I don''t do stupid things by design," I sighed. "No, I''m mostly just...sad, I guess, about what I''m going to do to Targa."


    "But you detest the woman?"


    "I mean, I do. But...the fact is, whether I meant to or not, I messed up her career ambitions and I got some of her people killed. Innocent people, just doing their jobs. That''s pretty messed up."


    "A surprisingly mature response. It would be easy to let your dislike of her cloud your impartiality and drive you easily to do whatsoever you wished. I am glad that you are able to reflect and see the consequences of your actions," Karu said, spearing a single bean with her fork and holding it up for examination. "However, even seeing the negatives, I still think your plan is optimal. The AI and I will be on hand to mitigate any risk to the XPCA. And to yourself as well. And it benefits Captain Targa in the long-run."


    "Yeah. I just wish I could help her without pissing her off."


    "I don''t think you work that way," Lia laughed. "Like I said offhand earlier, you''ve pissed me off plenty of times, but at the end of the day, you''ve also helped all of us a ton. Maybe Targa will be so mad at you, she''ll try to kill you, and then fall helplessly in love with you and join our little group."If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Karu frowned at her. "Why would you ever suggest something so preposterous?"


    Lia shrugged with a knowing grin. "Worked for you and AEGIS, didn''t it?" When Karu''s face crossed into aghast, Lia laughed again.


    "On second thought Ashton, maybe it is better if you do not provoke the good captain. I have little need of yet another romantic rival."


    We laughed, though I''m not sure how much Karu thought she was joking. In an effort to placate her somewhat, I steered the conversation towards plans and contingency plans, knowing that Karu was a big fan of being prepared for everything, and when we finally wrapped up after dark, her mood seemed to have improved considerably.


    "Okay well...best of luck you two," Lia said, stretching. "I''ll find a place to stay in town, so I''ll be like, a twenty-minute drive away...call if you need me for anything at all. Otherwise, let''s meet up tomorrow at like, six, when you guys are all done, hopefully?"


    "We''ll bring Steffie," I agreed with a smile.


    "Out of New Eden?" Karu asked.


    "Okay well...maybe not. We''ll video message with Steffie."


    "Really fills me with confidence that this is the guy making and carrying out our plans," Lia laughed. "But I''m sure you''ll be fine. Just watch each other''s backs and everything will be okay."


    She beamed at us as we saw her off from the gates of New Eden, giving us one more wave as she entered the parking lot and began weaving through the cars parked closest to the facility.


    I gave the standalone XPCA annex another glance before we turned back in. Looming off to the side, with space for hundreds of soldiers and a huge hangar...somewhere in there was Targa. I shot her a mental apology for what we were going to do tomorrow morning, but it was really her ultimatums which had pushed us to this.


    Karu insisted she take the couch tonight and sat down there silently polishing her guns and armor while AEGIS worked like crazy at the table, and after just a couple of minutes, I couldn''t stand there any longer and went right back up to the bed and fell into it.


    It was barely sundown, but I laid in bed with my eyes closed for a long time with thoughts and plans and worry and stress swirling around until I fell asleep, exhausted by my own concerns.


    I felt really groggy but it didn''t seem that much later when I woke up to someone under the sheets with me struggling to take off my pants. I took a peek under the covers and was greeted by a pair of electric-yellow eyes and a sly smile.


    "You didn''t change into PJs," she complained. "How am I supposed to get at the good stuff like this?"


    "You don''t have to," I said, pulling her up, but she refused to move.


    "You''re just a big ball of angst and stress today," she said. "I want to help with that."


    "I''m stressing because of what''s going to happen tomorrow. I don''t think anything''s going to change that except getting it over with."


    "Well, we won''t know unless we try," she said, succeeding in getting my belt unbuckled.


    "Let''s try something different tonight," I said, pulling her up again, and this time she let me pull her up so she was lying next to me, head out from under the blanket like a normal person.


    It also let me see her more clearly, more than just her bright eyes in the dark, I could see her soft face from the dim light coming through the blinds. She looked nervous, looked tired. But mostly, she looked scared.


    "What''s wrong?" I asked.


    "Nothing," she said, and forced her face into a tight-lipped smile.


    "Yeah. Bullshit. What''s really wrong?"


    She sighed. "Well, you spent last night with Karu, you''re rejecting my advances today for the first time in like, a month. And you''re saying you want to try something different."


    "Is that all?" I asked. I''d gotten okay at reading AEGIS in all the time we''d spent together recently, but for how obviously upset she looked right now, she may as well be wearing a giant neon sign, broadcasting her current emotional distress.


    She pawed through her hair for a moment and then hugged it like a body pillow. "I''m worried about you getting hurt tomorrow. I''m worried Captain Targa''s a lot more dangerous than you think, not as understanding...and that things will go wrong. They have a lot of ordinance on the base, all in case of an Exhuman uprising, and...and I''m worried¡­worried that..."


    I scooted towards her and held her with the arm I wasn''t lying on. She was so warm and soft as ever. "It''ll be fine. We''ll be fine. We can do it together," I whispered.


    "I don''t know that I even count. I might just crash, I might be...might be more of a hindrance than a help. And then I think...well, you have Karu...and then...I think of you and her...on the battlefield together...while I''m just so...so useless¡­"


    "You''re not useless," I said firmly.


    "I am! I am though! I said I''d protect you, and you''re planning to do stupid things right under my nose and I can''t even find the one piece of data which will stop you."


    "I already told you, that data--"


    "Data is my life, Athan. Protecting people is my purpose. And you are my world. And I can''t do any of them right! I can''t even...can''t even beat this stupid virus¡­"


    "Come on, you''ll beat it. I know you will. Nobody can out-hack you."


    "It''s been three months, Athan! Three months, I''ve been eradicating it from my system wherever I find it, digging through core dumps and stack traces to find where it''s gone, thinking I had it over, and over, and over again. And I''m crashing now more than ever!"


    I realized there were tears streaming from her eyes, a silver stream in the soft light of the room.


    "I can''t beat it. I realized that a while back. They''re just as good as me, at least, but they''ve got a head start on me, they''ve got the benefit of being the attacker, the element of surprise of and of stealth...I just...I don''t know what to do and I''m so scared. I''m scared of dying--"


    "You''re not going to die. At the very worst, we''ll do the backup--"


    "The backup IS dying, Athan. I''ll die. Some other version of AEGIS will live instead. And three months...that''s before...before I started getting this close...to you. So it will be like all of that time," she brushed her fingers through my hair "all of this, of us...never happened. I don''t want to die, and I don''t want to lose you, but I don''t think I can do any better than I am. I just...don''t think I''m good enough, Athan, and I''m scared. God, I''m so, so scared."


    I held her tightly and pressed her against me. I wanted to tell her, even if those months disappeared, I''d be right there to love her again. But it wouldn''t really be her, would it? That would be like telling her if she died, it was fine because I''d stay with her sister.


    So I didn''t know what to say. I just held her while she shook softly and tears streamed down her cheeks.


    "AEGIS, listen," I said, and gently turned her chin up towards me. She blinked more tears out of her beautiful yellow eyes and looked up at me, lost and helpless like a child. I didn''t know how to follow that up. I didn''t know what I could say to make the virus stop and save her life, or how to promise her I wouldn''t ever get hurt. For all I knew, tomorrow, I could run into an Exhuman who was way stronger than me, get seriously maimed, and then because of my misconduct against Targa, lose my job and access to a regenerator.


    I didn''t have any words, nothing that might help. So I kissed her, softly and deeply, pressing her warm, soft lips against mine until the warmth from her flooded through my body and brain like she''d lit a fire within me.


    We parted too soon, and she gasped and touched her lips. I felt like my heart was trying to escape my chest and jump after her.


    "You''ve...never kissed me...before," she said.


    "We did once. In Canada, right after the thing where you turned your emotions off. Uh, right after you slapped me hard across the face."


    She shook her head, still breathless. "No, I kissed you then. You''ve never kissed me."


    "I was going to...at the Aquarium in D.C.," I said, racking my brain.


    "Going to isn''t the same as did," she said, her face practically glowing. "My...my first...eeheehee."


    "I''m sorry," I said. "It seems stupid that I never have. I mean...you''ve put your lips lots of other places on me."


    "That''s different," she said. "That''s just...service. A kiss is...it''s for love."


    "Well, I do...love you," I said. I was happy it was so dark, because my face was almost stinging from how red I was. "I''m...sorry...if I don''t...express it well."


    She looked like she''d just been slapped. Her face, still red, still breathing heavily, but now her mouth and eyes were wide.


    "What?" I asked.


    "You just said you love me."


    "Well...yeah. Now I know I''ve told you that before."


    "Not like this you haven''t," she said, squirming and smiling. "Say it again," she whispered.


    "I...love you?"


    "I love you too!" She grabbed me and buried my face under hers in a hot, breathless kiss. When she finally relented, both of us had to gasp for air.


    "He loves me," she said, holding her chest like her heart was going to escape from it. "He loves me. Athan Ashton loves me."


    "I do...I really do...I um...I didn''t think...this was such a big deal."


    She shook her head violently enough to send her twintails shivering down her body around her. "This is...maybe the biggest deal...to me." She fell over heavily on my chest, eyes shining as she looked up at me from below my chin. "I don''t think you understand how happy this makes me."


    "I''m seeing it," I said, catching her infectious smile. "I''m sorry. I just...things between us are so complicated, but over the last month, I just...I don''t know, in my head...I thought maybe we already were at this place."


    "I thought so too," she said, practically purring on my chest. "But...I didn''t want to assume...without hearing it from you. I didn''t want...want to hurt myself, thinking something was there which wasn''t. Making that mistake and...and then...finding out you were just...just with me out of pity, or to protect me."


    She blinked. "Which don''t get me wrong! I love that about you. I love that you''d never let your friends be hurt. I just¡­" she drifted off and them mumbled.


    "What?" I asked.


    "I just wished I was more than a friend!" she said.


    "Oh, AEGIS," I said. I felt so happy and sad looking at her at the same time. "You are. You really are. I''m sorry."


    "Well, don''t apologize now! This is the first thing you''ve ever said you shouldn''t apologize for, dummy!"


    I laughed, and she laughed in my arms.


    "I mean it. I love you," I said. "And I am sorry that I didn''t tell you what was in my heart."


    Both of us smiled so much our faces hurt, and spoke so freely, our hearts felt lighter than they ever had before, buoyed up with pure, unrestrained, unfiltered love. What was it about the coming danger, about facing our fears and the threat that loomed on the dawn which had opened us up like this? Why couldn''t I have said those words and kissed those lips weeks ago?


    I didn''t know. I didn''t care. I had them in this moment, and to me, this moment was everything right now. This moment was the only one that mattered. Everything was beautiful and pure and warm.


    "It''s late," she said at last. "And you need to be on your game tomorrow. But I never want to stop kissing you," she pouted. I gave her another one, and the pouting lips became a smile. "So you should sleep."


    "I don''t want to."


    "Yes, but that''s stupid, and I''ll still be here in the morning."


    "I guess," I said, relenting as much as I was able.


    "Y''know," she said, her smile turning equal parts sultry and cheeky "I never finished what I came up here to do. That might help you sleep..." She began humming gently into my chest which, pavlovian, I immediately stabbed her in the leg. She laughed, but I stopped her and pulled her face back up in front of mine.


    "AEGIS...w-would¡­" I found myself stammering over the words. Such a freaking awkward question. "Would...you...like to sex...uh...with me?"


    "I was going to, dummy, before you pulled me up here," she giggled.


    "No...I mean¡­"


    Her eyes went wide. "With...with me?"


    "Of course."


    "You mean...really? Like...real sex. With me."


    "I love you, remember?" I laughed, making her blush full crimson again.


    "I''ll never forget it," she said, the yellow of her eyes shining like the birth of a new star as the straps of her dress slid off her moon-white shoulders.

 200. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    AEGIS'' brilliant eyes were waiting for me when I opened mine. Her lips curled into a gentle smile the moment she saw me awake. I rubbed my eyes, and when I reopened them, she was still there.


    "You''re acting like we haven''t been sleeping together the last month," she whispered with just a hint of excitement.


    "That''s one of the things that makes it so weird," I said. "Last night really did happen, didn''t it?"


    "Definitely."


    "Just seems...crazy. Like one of those stories about falling in love with a childhood friend. It feels like we''ve been together so long...and now we''re...together."


    "It''s been less than a year, mister. And I''ve only been ''alive'' that long."


    "Right?" I laughed. "See, I''ve known you your whole life."


    "Whatever, I don''t care, so long as I can call you mine." She leaned forward and kissed me gently, her face blooming into an enormous smile as she pulled away. Her smile was just so damn infectious.


    The smile, however, turned a little devious as her hand pulled away from my face and instead began tracing lines on my chest.


    "Want to do¡­''it'' again? Before we face the day?" Her eyes gleamed at me.


    "Did you have a good time last night?"


    "I mean...I''m the one who programmed this body, so I know I shouldn''t be surprised...but fuck, Athan. I think I found God last night. You pushed me way past any expected operational parameters."


    "Yeah, very sexy pillow talk," I grinned. "I''d love to but...not while Karu might be awake...y''know?"


    She sighed. "Yeah, I guess. Just sucks. I got a new toy...I wanna play with it." She grinned at me. "I can''t even be mean to you right now. I just sat up all night thinking of how happy I am."


    "I''m glad you are. I am too." I was also happy that neither of us were stressing about today anymore. Come to think of it, taking my mind off of that had been her original objective in coming onto me last night...it worked a little too well, and on both of us. Not that I''d complain.


    We both dressed while paying more attention to the other''s body than our own and then headed downstairs together, where I found Karu sitting at the table staring at her guns laid neatly out in front of her with glossy eyes.


    "Good...morning?" I asked.


    She sat silently for another moment before suddenly snapping to face the source of the sound. "Oh. Good morning, Ashton," she said reflexively. As we continued down the stairs, her eyes remained unfocused on the point she''d looked up to.


    AEGIS and I exchanged a small concerned glance. "I think I''m going to make breakfast. Athan, would you help me in the kitchen?" she announced. I took the hint and followed her down the hall and out of Karu''s line of sight.


    "She uh, does not look good," I said. "I''m...going to assume she knows what happened last night."


    "She...kinda...stopped by a few times last night," AEGIS confessed. "I just ignored her every time, but I could hear her on the steps, could see the red of her visor through the crack in the door, just for brief moments."


    "I...uh...see." I said, not sure what to make of this. "That''s bad, isn''t it?"


    "Pretty bad, I''d say. Charitably, she was checking up on you. You could maybe argue she was keeping an eye on me. But more likely...girl was creepin''."


    "Well...she is my ex, technically. And I know she still has a thing for me."


    "Yeah, I''m lacking in personal experience, but from what media and the ''net tell me, attached exes are...not a...good archetype."


    "Let''s make some food," I said, not sure what else to say. Karu''s existence hit me like a needle, just as AEGIS was filling me up with so much happiness. Small, sharp, painful. Probably not fatal unless it stabbed me right in the heart.


    AEGIS must have been thinking something as well, because we made a simple breakfast of eggs and toast without speaking. Still, once or twice when our paths crossed in the kitchen, we would have lingering touches as we danced around each other, matching gazes, unspoken words on our lips.


    "It''s not fair," AEGIS said as we were finishing, almost under her breath.


    "What isn''t?"


    "Sorry. Nothing."


    "No, seriously." She picked up a plate of toast and I stepped in front of her and held her occupied hands in mine. "Seriously, please."


    She shook her head. "It''s going to make me sound petty. I don''t want you to think of me like that. Forget about it."


    "I won''t, I promise."


    She looked at me and sighed after she saw I wasn''t moving. "Well...it''s...petty and stupid. But she''s been doing what she wanted with you for months now, and I just...took it. I thought, maybe if I kept loving and supporting you, someday you might accept me. And you did! And I...I couldn''t possibly be any happier. But the second you start to swing my way, she can''t deal with it."


    "You''re fine," I said, burying my nose in her hair and giving her a kiss.


    "I''m annoyed," she said "because...and maybe I''m just...overthinking...but it sort of feels like it''s expected that the robot would just put up and shut up, and the real human girl has feelings we need to tiptoe around."


    "I don''t know. We saw her for like, five seconds. Nobody had to do any tiptoeing yet. Let''s just eat breakfast and blow some things up and find Steffie, okay?"


    "Okay."


    I gave her another quick kiss by her ear, and then her lips turned towards me and puckered outwards slightly, jealous of the attention the side of her head was getting. I smiled and planted another one on them.


    "We have food," I announced as we returned to Karu. "Toast? Eggs? Should I have made beans?"


    She blinked and shook her head. "Ah, breakfast. Thank you, Ashton." Then as though it were the subject of her sentence, she awkwardly picked up a gun as though to polish it, ran her fingers over it for a moment and then lapsed back into motionlessness.


    I took a piece of toast and some eggs onto a plate for her and placed it in front of her. She didn''t react except to blink at it when I had finished, as though wondering where it had come from.


    "Eat?" I suggested.


    "Yes. Correct. Right." She began automatically moving food from the plate to her face with poor accuracy and speed given the seemingly intense focus the task required. I said nothing else, now that she was actually eating but I''d be lying if I said it didn''t kill me inside to see her this way, because of me.


    She only managed a few forkfuls before she stared blankly down at her plate again and wobbled slightly in her seat. I thought she was just spacing out again when suddenly she lurched, making a retching sound, and clamping her hands to her mouth. She jumped to her feet, knocking her plate of eggs and the buttered toast all down her satiny pajama pants.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    "K-Karu?" I stammered. "Are you okay?"


    She nodded with wide eyes at me and swallowed heavily, moving her hands to her neck and chest to cough. AEGIS appeared behind her and rubbed her back gently through the coughing, handing her a glass of water which she accepted and drank gratefully.


    "You got food all over your pants," she fretted. "Athan, can you grab a towel so the butter won''t stain?" Karu shook her head but I jumped up and went towards the kitchen to find one.


    I thought there was one hanging on the front of the stove, but there wasn''t. Maybe on the door for the fridge? Or someone didn''t put it back, so it was on the counter? Or set down on top of the fridge when someone got something from in there? I kept thinking of more and more random places it could have been and just spun in circles in the kitchen.


    Spinning almost as fast as my mind, and I knew I''d probably have the towel in my hands by now if I weren''t so distracted, but there was something fundamentally incompatible with the Karu I''d just seen and the one I''d known this past year. It felt impossible, like I was in a nightmare, or an Exhuman had taken the real Karu from us in the night and left only this. I wasn''t used to seeing Karu weak, or ruffled by anything, and it wasn''t anything I wanted to see again.


    The towel was on a hook by the pantry and I took it and started back down the hallway, almost tripping over my feet when I was stopped by a heart-rending wail I recognized as Karu''s, followed by sobbing. I crept forward until I was just on the other side of the corner from the two.


    "...it is not...not fair," I heard Karu say.


    "Karu, Athan will be back any second--"


    "I made a mistake. I recognize this. I should...should never have let him go."


    "Karu, please. Not the best time for a heart-to-heart."


    "Should my heart be punished for...forever, because of one error? Is that justice?"


    "He''s going to hear you!"


    "And it had to be you, of all people. I considered you friend, at long last. I do not know if that makes this better or worse. Were I a decent person, should I not be happy for you? I do not know. I do not know!"


    Something slammed against the table and AEGIS made soothing shushing noises while Karu wept. I didn''t know what to do, but at least they''d stopped talking for the moment. I didn''t want to be anywhere near Karu while she cried, but...I had this towel in my hands and she had butter on her pants. For some reason, that seemed really important right now.


    I slid slowly around the corner, and quickly as I could, dropped the towel on the table in front of the two, before bolting upstairs and locking myself in the bathroom.


    I splashed water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror. And felt sick.


    Not ill. Just...sick in the head. Twisted and wrong inside. Because despite everything I''d just seen, heard, knew that AEGIS and I had done to Karu, even with all that¡­


    The me in the mirror was still glowing. What was wrong with me? I had plenty to be happy about, sure, but...surely right now, I could focus a little more on Karu and less on AEGIS? I forced myself to remember every happiness Karu and I had ever shared together until my heart grew heavy and confused again, which was as close to normal as I knew.


    I looked into the mirror again and slapped my cheeks a little until they were a little more flushed than glowing. I didn''t deserve this happiness if it was going to hurt people. I had to keep a lid on it, for Karu''s sake.


    Filled with temporary resolve, I marched right back downstairs. From the table, I picked up her visor and handed it to her, which she looked at blankly with tears streaming from her face.


    "We have an op today. Are you up for it?" I asked.


    "Athan, what the hell?" AEGIS hissed.


    Her nose was running and her lips twitching and she didn''t even bother wiping the tears from her face as she slowly took the visor, turned it on, and used it to cover her tear-stained eyes. She gave me a deliberate nod.


    "There is no room for tears on a battlefield," she intoned. "I will not permit a life to be lost on account of my weakness. We do what we must because we must. Habere Caelum."


    With much more fluid motion than she ate, she rose, gathered armfuls of her equipment, and brought it up the stairs with her to where her luggage was. Only after the bedroom door clicked shut did AEGIS speak.


    "Did...did you know that was going to work?"


    I sighed, feeling something like the worst person on the planet. "You said last night that I''m your world and protecting people is your purpose. I think protecting people is Karu''s world. It''s everything to her...it''s why she dumped me before. She felt like she had to choose between being able to do her job and me, and to her, there''s no competition."


    She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. Started a sentence a few times, but then stopped. Ultimately, she said, "You''ve been through a lot, haven''t you."


    "Just life," I shrugged. "Come on, it''ll be better for her if we''re also ready to go when she is. Nobody wants to sit around at a time like this."


    When Karu came back down, she was dressed to kill, guns and armor gleaming in the morning sun through the windows. She did not have fluid movements, but instead, practiced, tightly-controlled ones. I wondered why for a moment before I noticed the patches on her bare neck on either side.


    "Are all preparations complete?" she said, her voice somewhat rushed but the sounds in her words as exact and precise as a machine.


    "Yes, we''re all good," I said. I noticed AEGIS was deliberately keeping her head down and finding things to do, probably wanted to talk to Karu even less than I did. "Let''s go, huh?"


    "Let''s."


    AEGIS and Karu split off from me at the doorway, Karu moving with agitated precision, AEGIS giving me a final glance with worry-filled eyes. They had to be nearby, but the next stage of the plan was for me alone.


    I went east now, right up towards the wall, in a different quarter of the city than I''d blown out last time, and waited a few minutes for the girls to get in position. There were a few Exhumans moping around, but apparently I looked stressed or annoyed enough that I blended right in and wasn''t harrassed.


    I didn''t have a mobile or holo on me to check the time, so I just waited for another couple minutes before beginning, sitting in a dark alleyway with my back against a house. Inside, I heard the news going on a holo, talking about the score of a football game I probably would have been watching if I weren''t who I became. When it seemed long enough, I stood up, dusted myself off, and got to work.


    In each hand, electricity surged. I closed my eyes and focused on drawing as much power as possible into my hands until I could hear the air crackling around me with shackled energy. The power built and escalated, growing with every second, trapped by my force of will, yearning to be free, to be released, to jump from my hands into the metal, the ground, anywhere where it could be set loose.


    I didn''t let it go. I held the lightning like Zeus in my fists, feeling the current swirling against my palms. Every hair in my body stood on-end, every inch of my exposed skin tingled. I''d never held this much electricity before, and it was exhilarating.


    Arcs jumped off of me as I reached the edge of my control. The air around me seethed and flashed as a cloudless thunderstorm boiled in the alley. I took one more deep breath, pushed the energy from my lungs into my hands and held them aloft and open, facing each other. Instantly, small arcs flickered back and forth between the two, despite my control, and I knew I was at my limit. Without waiting another moment, I drew my hands back, and then slammed them together.


    I felt the world shake under me. My vision distorted and the straight lines of the concrete around me looked warped as the shockwave tore through the air. I was thrown backwards into a wall, all the air blasted from my lungs. Inside the house next to me I heard a scream as the holo exploded into a waterfall of sparks, a fate which would be played out a thousand times over a thousand devices all around me.


    Cameras and lights on the walls exploded. A tower nearby, not dissimilar to the one I''d used to climb the wall before became supercharged with the wave washing over it, and arcs of lightning played up and down it like a Jacob''s ladder. Sparks and arcs and scorches appeared all around, and as they did, the screams of many filled the air.


    And in an instant, it was over. Some fires remained burning, black marks marred many surfaces, like a shadow of the blast. But the damage was done, and now all I had to do was wait.


    Both the resistance and the XPCA were good, I had to give them credit. Guards on the wall were yelling and moving supplies, their numbers swelling at the epicenter of the damage, even without their comms or equipment to coordinate. It took only minutes before I saw the first red-shirted resistance member, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, before launching himself straight into the thick of the clustered XPCA and begin cutting them down with what looked like an ordinary sword.


    He only got a couple bodies in before gunfire erupted from the others on the wall and he fled, bouncing erratically with each step before jumping off the wall and sliding down the vertical surface, kicking off of it at the perfect moment to roll onto a rooftop near me to disperse his momentum.


    Perfect for me, I thought. I pulled myself up onto a rooftop from a dumpster, and then jumped across the narrow alley to slam my chest against a wall on the opposite side, catching the rooftop with my arms and elbows and leveraging my way up.


    The resistance member was easy to see from up here, collecting himself before going up again, and staying out of range of the XPCA''s small arms on the wall. His attention seemed focused on them, and I couldn''t help but grin to myself as I primed a nice fat bulb of electricity in my hand, the size and shape of a football, and prepared for a throw which would be impossible for a ball with any weight to it.


    He stood up and I let go. The bulb jumped from my fingertips and exploded on the side of the building just under him, sending tendrils of electricity all around him. From this distance I could barely hear his yell as arcs went up and down his legs and he fell over. I took one second to draw an excited breath and then slid myself back down off the roof and began running.


    After what felt like way too long, I finally reached where I thought he was and began looking for another building I could get on. I ran past alleyways and streets, watching them flash past, keeping an eye open for any sign of a terrace or dumpster or, hey, crazy idea, maybe someone left an actual ladder laying around I wouldn''t have to keep improvising, when I saw something that rendered the whole situation moot.


    There in the street was the man in red. He was moving, moaning, lying down. As for how he''d gotten there, the answer was apparent.


    It took a moment, but the two others in red turned and advanced on me as soon as they saw me, their Exhuman powers flaring to life.

 201. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I always knew that Exhuman events were a big deal. It was drilled into us from birth. It was the pinnacle of an Exhuman''s existence, and almost always, the end of it. It was calamitous, apocalyptic, like a natural disaster, capable of taking thousands of lives and simply sweeping them away with all the effort and compassion of a toddler smashing his toys.


    Only very rarely had there been a double event, when two Exhumans ran into each other and both decided to go off at once, either choosing to work together or fighting it out with the world under them a mere backdrop to the havoc they unleashed.


    The most recent double event was mine and the Terrapath''s. And while I had shown restraint in using my powers to obliterate everything in my path, she hadn''t, and there still remained hundred-foot ravines that still pocked Newbruck, where we''d fought.


    A triple event was completely unheard of, and was the subject of much schoolyard debate, whether such a thing would just spell the end of the world, or would just be a hundred times bigger than a regular event.


    In a way, we''d jumped right past it. Though we were official, and none of our actions would be considered an event, having Tem, Jack, Tower, Steffie, Mage, Soran, and myself all trying to protect or kill each other was sort of a septuple event, though officially it was only a double, since we came as XPCA to intervene, and barely that since Steffie wasn''t exactly the world''s most dangerous Exhuman.


    I wasn''t acting as an XPCA this time, and neither were the two guys in red trying to kill me. I was reasonably certain that they had relatively little interest in collateral damage destroying the city they lived in and harming...or worse, involving the other Exhumans who resided there, so they were certainly holding back to a degree, as was I.


    But the fact was, quite possibly, for the first time in history, there was a triple event going on as the three of us clashed.


    The historical significance was lost on me as I fought for my life against the two, each arguably more powerful than I was.


    One, just a damn kid with greasy hair, was apparently capable of twisting my perception. He''d thrust his hands in the air at me, and suddenly, straight lines wouldn''t be straight anymore, the ground on which I stood felt uneven under my feet, or it buckled like I was standing at the top of a hill, ready to fall off.


    The other was more straightforward, and had huge apparently glass fists covering his actual fists. He''d taken a few swipes at me, and I chose not to discover exactly what they did by allowing them to touch me, which turned out to be a great idea, because when he clipped a wall on swinging wide, his magnified fist went through it like it wasn''t there, leaving a gash like the wall had simply evaporated at his touch.


    It was more frustrating because if he blocked my swords, they too evaporated, and for the second fight with an Exhuman in a row, I found myself spending a lot more time evading and making new swords than I did actually swinging them. This made all the worse by the fact that every so often, when greasy-kid felt like it, I was suddenly fighting from the ceiling, or hanging by the soles of my feet on the side of the Earth, which was bucking wildly to throw me off.


    Thankfully, I had the advantage of reach, and I''d knocked out the flippin'' ninja of their team, the guy who effortlessly jumped up and down the wall, dodging gunfire on his way out. I could only just barely hold off glass-knuckles there with all the spinning the world was doing, there was no way I''d be able to handle someone faster than me through it.


    Knuckles came in at me with his arms up like a boxer, charging in recklessly this time. I tried to slow him down by swinging at his legs, but a sudden inversion in perception made my blades go over his head instead while he closed within fisting range. He pelted a quick set of jabs at me while I ran, creating a set of perfectly fist-shaped holes in the wall I''d had at my back, before darting after me.


    Another abrupt shift caught me trying to use my left leg twice in a row to sprint away, and I went falling what felt like sideways. Knuckles would be on me any second, and a single touch would end it...and me. Out of desperation, I threw lightning in his direction, just throwing together power as quickly as I could channel it. What resulted was a field of shocking ground which I doubted would actually hurt him if he stepped on it, but he skidded short, eying the arcs of electricity dancing across the concrete rather than run straight into what might be a trap.


    It gave me time to get my feet under me and conjure back up to my soft cap of six blades for the moment. I didn''t want to run, that was almost suicide while Greasy was in the picture, but I couldn''t fight toe-to-toe with Knuckles with him able to dissolve my swords at a touch. With the mobility of their third guy, whoever had put together this team seemed to have really considered their powers for maximum annoyance when he did.


    It was time to step it up or I''d be dead very soon. I kept darting in and out of streets and alleys, hurtling my way through and past Exhumans who were beginning to emerge from their homes at the sudden shockwave and blowout, most of whom shut themselves right back in when they saw the resistance running around. I thumbed my dead mobile in my pocket, feeling the cold, comforting touch of the charm strapped to it and splitting my attention as evenly between it and running as I could.


    Now if I could just keep alive. And find a suitable place to do a little more damage. I needed something wood, I thought, and everything here was just damn concrete.


    I stumbled and caught myself again, arms pinwheeling like an idiot as I swerved down another alley, and in front of me saw the main road, not too far from Steffie''s place now. I grinned and knew where I could find what I needed now, turning again and veering towards her place.


    The world lurched again, but I was unexpectedly caught off-guard by nothing changing. Enough to stumble, even. Was that his plan? Get me accustomed to falling all over the place so that I''d start doing it on my own?


    Suddenly, ahead of me I saw AEGIS. She smiled and waved as she saw me coming, and my heart filled with relief. She and Karu had to be far, far away from the blast, and I had just needed to hold off the resistance from killing any more XPCA until they showed up. Once it was the three of us reunited, we could turn the tables, subdue one or more of these guys, and get what information about the resistance from them we could.


    Elegant plan? Not really, which was probably why AEGIS was so opposed to it. It also included the dubious merit of picking a fight with the resistance and XPCA both, but we needed answers and fast.


    I kept up running towards AEGIS and she waved me ever closer, beaming and cheering for me as I went. She seemed so damn lovely but...this wasn''t the plan. Why would she be here? And not helping? And smiling so much at me being chased?


    I turned and looked back only to see my pursuers nowhere in sight. What? Had they gone back to the wall to work on their mission? I hadn''t possibly gained that much ground on them, I''d been stumbling just a few feet back, and still couldn''t run full-tilt. Something was wrong. Very wrong. The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up even as I saw AEGIS standing ten feet away, beckoning for me to come to her, pleading with her gorgeous eyes.


    If I''d been running still, I would have missed it, the subtle sense of another person around me, how I kept track of Jack and Tem when they were within range of my powers. Their bio-electric current, as Lia''d figured out. I looked and saw nothing, but I was on edge. I lashed out with all my swords in the area I sensed it, cleaving cleanly through whatever invisible adversary might be there.


    He screamed and the world rippled and broke, I could feel illusion falling from my eyes like scales. Where I''d swiped my swords, Greasy was rolling on the ground, clutching at his chest where he was criss-crossed with angry red burns, and where AEGIS had been standing, nothing but an alleyway.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I only had an second to dodge before Knuckles burst his way out of the alley, still trying to salvage their ambush. He came at me swinging, and I could only throw my swords in his face, having them explode into blinding sparks against his glassy hands before he was on me. In the instant I''d bought myself with the loss of my swords, I pushed myself off a wall only instants before he gouged a hole clean through it with a left cross.


    And then we were off again. I still couldn''t take him in a fight, but now that Greasy and his ability to fuck with my perceptions was out of the picture, I could run properly, and I was slowly putting distance between us as I continued bolting towards Steffie''s place.


    When I got there, I muttered her a mental apology and smashed the shit out of one of the many planters of sad, dead flowers she used to keep outside her door. I had a couple seconds to really kick the thing apart until it was a mess of splinters and nails and dirt, and then kept moving.


    I couldn''t hit Kunckles from the front with anything. No bulbs, no swords, no nothing, and the range of my powers was good, but not so good that I could hit him from the back without him also being in my face. I needed an ally to flank him, and with AEGIS and Karu still not in the picture yet...maybe they''d lost me with all the running off-course I''d done¡­


    Well, I''d have to be my own backup.


    I slowed and caught my breath and let him catch up. I think he was happy to take a breather as well, as once I wasn''t running anymore, he advanced on me at a slow, guarded walk, breathing heavily through his mouth.


    "Just tell me where the resistance is," I said, finding it hard to breathe and talk at the same time "and nobody has to get hurt."


    I thought about the last two guys I had incapacitated and added "well, you don''t have to get hurt, I guess."


    "We''re telling you nothing," he spat, continuing his steady advance.


    With a flourish, I drew my mobile and held it in front of me, clenched in one hand, with the metal chain and the charm of a football held between the fingers of my other. My nineteenth birthday present from Lia. I treasured it always. Such a thoughtful girl.


    His advance halted for a moment. "What are you gonna do, call me?" he said. "I already know you''re an electropath. The hell are you gonna do with a phone?"


    "Not the phone," I said, and couldn''t help but to smirk. "The charm."


    He squinted. "Football?"


    It didn''t matter what he said. I''d bought myself enough time to fire off the electromagnet I''d been winding around the chain of the charm while I ran. I dumped as much power into it as I could, elated with my earlier decision to never wear anything magnetic on my person after seeing what it did to Saga''s wardrobe the one time.


    He stumbled forward, pulled by something he was wearing, but retained his footing. From all around, metal things lurched and clanged as they jumped at the sudden pull.


    And then he screamed as a dozen metal nails and wooden splinters flew down the street straight into his back. Waiting for that moment, I jumped on him, my swords flashing out and cutting high and low at once, one slicing straight at his face.


    Instinctively he raised both arms to his face to protect it, and the one at knee-level got him, dropping him with another scream. If he''d been more cognizant or less distracted, he could have easily blocked his whole body...but that was what the nails were there for.


    His glassy hands disappeared as he clutched at his own leg, which I''d hoped would happen. Someone with a power like that would almost certainly accidentally touch themselves with it during their window, so he''d either be immune to it or it would turn itself off if he tried. Fortunately for me it was the latter, as he was now completely exposed, and I flicked a handful of tiny bulbs into him, small enough to make him seize up but not to do any real damage.


    I felt bad as he screamed yet again but reminded myself this was all for Steffie. We had our pick of prisoners now, surely one of them could tell us a thing or two about the resistance. I thought Knuckles here might be the hardest to get talking, though that might just be bias because he seemed the most jock-like, and therefore most similar to me at a glance. If his powers were restricted to his fists, he''d be the easiest to keep captive. Maybe the first guy, the ninja who jumped all over the place, but I''d completely lost him in the chase, and he might even be back up by now.


    Funny, no sooner did I have that thought than I felt a presence falling out of the sky at me, and turning to look, saw a sword pass through where I''d just been standing, and then got clocked in the head with a fist.


    I crumpled and swung my swords by reflex blindly, but nothing screamed so I had to assume I missed. I kept them slashing wildly around me as I held my head and tried to get my eyes working properly again but fuck did that hurt. Where my cheek had slammed the pavement didn''t feel so great either, and I had an irrational moment of panic where I had to run my tongue over my teeth to make sure the blood in my mouth didn''t mean they''d all broken off.


    Wasn''t really the time for that, but I''d just gotten punched in the head, I wasn''t doing so great.


    Presumably the acrobatic ninja douchebag took advantage of me lying there like a sack of potatoes and slid into a gap in my swords, because there was suddenly a blinding pain in my extended leg and I looked up to see a dark shape bouncing back away from me, weaving through my defense.


    I winced and touched my leg, feeling it burn. My hand was smeared with red, and the dark shape prowled at the extent of my barrier, as though looking for another gap to dance in and stab me again.


    Actually, that was exactly what he was doing. Seeing something I didn''t, he exploded into motion, feinting one way, and then running just the opposite, straight up a wall and diving off the vertical surface to fly at me like a missle. I had exactly enough time to grab my leg and fall over sideways, my head spinning and the peripheral of my vision fading to colorlessness as I moved, but even so, he still nicked me in the shoulder, only missing my torso by inches.


    Jesus, he was quick. And apparently totally unafraid of murdering me flat-out. Keeping my swords out horizontally did no good because he could go up or down at will it seemed. If I held them in close, he''d just poke me through the gaps with the range of his weapon, and if I kept them further out, he''d have gaps to slide between.


    I couldn''t run with my leg, and I didn''t have time to use any of my flashier moves. It was just the swords and bulbs and this fucker with his own sword, which wasn''t even shiny.


    He came at me again, but this time I called his feint, and when he went to charge in, found his way blocked by a pair of blades. He reacted well, keeping his momentum to avoid those two, and then fucking high-jump vaulted straight over them, his back clearing the upper sword by inches.


    In a panic, I threw all my swords in his general direction and forced him back, but goddamn. What was his power? Track and field events?


    I needed more swords and I needed them now, but the crack on my head made it hard to focus, and what focus I did have was spent trying to read his feints and get my swords in place before he got his in me. If I could just get a few more out, I''d buy myself more time, and with that I could make more...but I still had to make that first step, and it didn''t seem like he was interested in leaving me alone for even a second.


    Which was smart. He''d just injured me pretty bad twice, my combat effectiveness was crippled until I could recover, so his only job now to win this fight is to make sure I couldn''t recover. It''s what I''d do. And I hated him for doing it so damn well.


    Another series of feints led to a dramatic flourish which turned out to be another feint as he got me focused on stopping his sword swing, but then he just fucking stomped on my leg instead, and skittered away as I writhed and swore, feeling the crushing pain magnify the stab he''d already given me.


    My eyes watered and my head spun and he knew it. He wasted no time in setting up his next attack, and I couldn''t even see him coming through the tears. I relied entirely on my sense to barely get my blades in place, and even when I did ward him off somewhat, he still managed to nick me in the fucking nose.


    Which, superficial an injury as it was, hurt like a motherfucker, and just compounded my pain and pushed my brain ever closer to just shutting the fuck down. I really couldn''t take much more of this. I was lightheaded from the pain, and my body felt like molten lead, both in the burning and the weight. Meanwhile he danced around like a fucking feather on the breeze.


    I had a weird moment where I wondered if this was what it was like to be a lineman trying to sack a quarterback. Seeing the spry, cocky jerk slipping through your fingers again and again, knowing that if you caught him, you''d crush him in an instant...but never...quite...catching him¡­


    My sixth sense jolted me back and I realized I was about to die again. I went completely prone, my last possible refuge of moving and fended him off as best I could, getting sliced in the same arm yet again.


    I was losing it, absolutely. I wasn''t here anymore, and the less I was, the more I''d get hurt, and the less I''d be here. I needed...I needed stims, really. The patches Karu was wearing, if I only had asked for a couple in case I got myself buried deep. If I only had a little...a little more focus¡­


    He moved in again and this time I knew it was the end. My swords looked like blurry cracks in the sky far in the distance, shafts of light opening the gate to heaven. He was just a dark figure, slipping in and out of my sight. A devil, maybe?


    If that were the case, that meant the white figure hanging in the sky on threads of blue had to be an angel.

 202. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I held my swords even and waited for him to come, waited for him to end it, but he didn''t. He couldn''t. The sweet cacophony of exploding ordinance echoed in the street and then a huge boom so loud and so bright my eyes went white and my ears heard nothing but ringing for what felt like forever. I''d been hit with a stun grenade before, from Karu even, so I knew what was going on in some level of my brain.


    But that level of my brain wasn''t really running things at the moment. Instead, it was whatever section dictated screaming a lot and rolling around and grabbing at my own ears and eyeballs. I did that for quite a while until my vision came back although I still couldn''t hear anything or feel much other than agony.


    The guy was gone, but Karu was still here, standing by looking very anxious and concerned, but not approaching. I realized why when another of my blades flashed past and cleaved through the air near her. Bad reflex to have sometimes, I guess. I blinked back more tears and put my swords away.


    She was saying something but I didn''t know what. I couldn''t do much but lay there and wait for my body to figure out what the fuck happened to it. I felt a stab of pain on my leg and realized Karu was spraying medical gel on the deep gash on my calf, already preparing a bandage from the first-aid kit she''d laid out on the ground next to me.


    I waved at her and yelled, I think. It was hard to tell when I could hardly hear my own voice. She looked at me with concern, and with my good arm, I pointed at her neck. She said some words and cocked her head, touching the choker she was wearing which matched mine. I shook my head, which made my vision go double, so I stopped that, and pointed again. She said something else but got out a stim patch so I guess I got across to her.


    When she put it on me, it was as though all the pain in my body politely left and stood on standby. It was there, it was present and waiting, but it wasn''t forcing itself into my skull anymore. I gently lifted myself into a seating position and said what I hoped was thank you. She didn''t respond, still dressing my leg.


    After another long minute I could hear over the ringing in my ears again, though it was definitely still there, and experimentally tried talking to Karu again, who''d now taken to fixing up my arm.


    "Hi?" I asked experimentally.


    "Hail," she said, methodically winding a bandage around my arm.


    "Thanks," I said. She gave me an icy stare through her visor though her hands kept moving.


    "Thanks are unnecessary between comrades," she said.


    "Well...good thing we''re friends then?" I said and tried to give her an apologetic smile. Her face twitched.


    "I do what I must because I must," she said. I remembered...she said that earlier¡­


    And then the context of the situation hit me and the stims in my brain connected a hundred million different recollections to the moment. I''d been so euphoric and stressed from the running fight that I''d completely forgotten about the situation with AEGIS and Karu. But now that I was aware of it, I couldn''t not think of it. My laser-guided focus turned over every detail from AEGIS being in my arms to the way Karu sat motionless at the table, her strong fingers touching at the choker on her neck like it burned her.


    "I...I am so sorry," I said, feeling the words falling out of my mouth faster than my mouth was quite able to say them.


    "Apologies are also unnecessary between comrades. Just do your damn job, Ashton," she said, and stood up. She took my arm and pulled me up beside her, letting me go as soon as I was up.


    "I was trying to," I said. "I just fought off three Exhumans."


    "Two," she corrected. "AEGIS is handling the third with aplomb. While she is merely very nearly as fast as him, he has discovered that cutting her flesh does not actually harm her meaningfully. His loss is inevitable."


    I rubbed my head where I''d been punched and added to the queue of pain for my body to process was the sensation of swollen tenderness. I hadn''t cracked my skull or anything but damn if that didn''t hurt. The cut on the nose was practically ornamental, and now that I was up and on stims, the wounds on my leg and arm weren''t really that bad either. I''d limp around, but I could walk.


    "I will find the others and detain them properly, if I can," Karu said and turned. I started to say something, but the arms of her pack extended right in my face and turned to nothing but blue streaks as she exploded away with the roar of an engine.


    I sighed, finding the familiar gesture peculiar feeling through the stims. She had graduated from sad to angry, and I hoped that was a positive step. I picked myself up and headed back towards Steffie''s, where we''d agreed to reconvene after this was over. Only half a block away, it shouldn''t pose too much trouble, even for me in this state.


    What was waiting for me outside however was possibly trouble. I no sooner got within sight of the place before I found myself surrounded by at least two dozen XPCA in full exosuits.


    "Uh, hi, guys," I said, raising my hands. "We uh, caught some resistance members for you."


    "Oh, is that what you did?" said a familiar voice that added ''cringe'' to the list of debilitations the stims were holding off. I looked towards the source of the voice and found a very different exosuit, still black and gold like the others, but much slimmer, much faster and lighter looking. "Because what it looks like you did was deliberately blow up my city. AGAIN!"


    "Hi...Targa," I said. "Nice to finally meet you in person."


    "Captain. Targa." she said, stabbing one of the exosuit''s stubby fingers in my direction in time with her only half-synthesized voice. "Let me be clear, there is nothing nice about meeting you. You are such an...such...so frustrating, I can''t even find words to put it into."


    She made a gesture like stroking her collarbone, the metal fingers of the suit sliding down the black chestplate. Something habitual. Or something frustrated. Something that didn''t carry over to being in an exosuit very well, anyway.


    "Look," I said, hands still placating. "We''re on the same team here, right? We''re all XPCA, we all want to stop the resistance from tearing New Eden up. I might disagree with how you''re running things, you might disagree with¡­" I struggled to find words other than ''blowing your city up.''


    "Blowing my city up?" she suggested. No, that wasn''t quite it.


    "Anyway, we disagree but we''re all in it together anyway, right? We only...blew your city up...for the best possible reason. We lured the resistance into the open and captured some of their agents. They tell me where Steffie is, you do what you want with them...so win-win?"If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    She shook her head, a gesture not normally detectable behind a standard XPCA faceplate, but this one moved slightly with her head''s motion. "I told you what was win-win already. You fuck off of my city and I don''t have to deal with you. Yet here you remain, and now I have another fucking half of my city to rebuild, with Director Blackett coming to inspect tomorrow."


    "It''s Blackett?" I asked.


    "DIRECTOR. BLACKETT. Do you even know what a title is? For fucking--"


    "Right, right, Director Blackett," I apologized. This was bad. No wonder she was so pissed...it certainly looked like I was actively sabotaging her prospects yet again.


    "Look, I''ll explain everything to him," I said. "I''ll take responsibility, he''ll understand. We have something of a rapport."


    "You''re kidding."


    "No, really, we used to uh...live together. I did his laundry."


    She just stood there looking at me for a minute, her faceplate inscrutable.


    "Even if that were true, the answer is no, Chariot. There is no way I am letting any more of my life fall into your hands. You have already caused me an impossible amount of disasters, and I''m not ever going to hand you the keys to make more. Now if you''ll excuse me, I have a city to rebuild and you have a sentence to serve."


    Two of the soldiers behind me clamped their suits'' impossibly-strong grip on my arms.


    "Targa...sorry, Captain, I have to warn you...you can''t detain me."


    "I know," she sneered. "Unlike some people here, I know how to read. Take him in for processing."


    "Don''t do anything stupid, Targa, I''m warning you. I can''t prevent my powers--"


    "I know, I know," she said, turning away and sounding bored. "I don''t think you realize just how much I already know about you."


    "What''s that supposed to--"


    I jolted with another suppressed pain as I felt burning in my neck, and glanced down to see a needle sticking out from it as one of the soldiers pressed the plunger. I tried to say something but my speech went from hasty to slurred to nonexistent as the drug took effect and I felt my body go limp.


    And then, like no time had passed at all, I was awake. Messed up in the head, from my fights, or from the stims, or from the drug, I didn''t know. But I did know my thoughts were moving around at a crawl, and I was having a hard time figuring out where I was or what anything I was seeing meant.


    I was in a circular room, only about four feet across. There was one door, right in front of me, and it was open. Standing in it was Targa, still in her exosuit, and behind her, another pair of exosuited guards.


    She kneeled and put something on the ground in front of me once she saw I was awake and spoke a sentence so simple even my addled brain could comprehend.


    "Eat."


    I picked up the tablet and looked at it, my vision swimming in and out and having a hard time focusing on my hand.


    "Eat, damn you. It will neutralize the after-effects of the drug."


    I put it in my mouth and chewed on it. Chalky and a little bitter. I swallowed heavily, and continued slowly figuring nothing out.


    After a minute or so, things began to make more sense. I realized this room I was in was probably an elevator, or the world''s most ornate isolation cell, I guess.


    "Good," she said, staring at me like she''d been doing this whole time. "That elevator you''re standing in goes straight down twenty stories underground. Do you know what that means?"


    I shook my head, feeling my brain sloshing around painfully, it felt like.


    "It means, if you blow anything up, you''ll fall to your death. So keep a leash on your powers," she said with a smirk in her voice, and pulled a lever which closed a door between us.


    "Hey! What is this?" I yelled at the thick curved transparent wall which had just appeared. "What the hell are you planning to do to me?" The sudden jolt of adrenaline pushed the rest of the haze from my mind and I pushed myself up to bang pointlessly on the glass.


    "Careful there," she sneered. "Don''t think of it as confinement or your powers will drop you straight to your death."


    "Targa...I don''t know what you''re doing, but--"


    "What I''m doing, Chariot, is exactly what I promised. I told you to get out or I''d deal with you. Now I''m dealing with you."


    "You''re...you''re going to kill me? Seriously? With an elevator?¡± I screamed at her.


    She laughed. "Killing you without a court-marshall would be a violation. Have you still not read the XPCA''s military law codexes? I''ll have my secretary send you a copy. I think you''ll be very interested in them soon¡­"


    She began to walk off, and the elevator began sinking into the ground.


    "What then? Torture? Targa, goddamn you, tell me!"


    "It''s Captain Targa. And you''ll find out in about ten seconds!" she called back as the last sliver of light disappeared from the top of the door and the elevator picked up speed into the black earth.


    It was a few seconds before I picked up on something that made my heart stop. I couldn''t be sure, with my head the way it was, but staring at the black outside the elevator and seeing my reflection warped in the plastic...it reminded me of the mirror I''d seen what felt like forever ago.


    Even despite the pain, I shook my head. It...it wasn''t possible. It made no sense. It just couldn''t be. I refused to accept it.


    "HEY!" I screamed at the black outside. The black did not reply. I huddled at the bottom of the elevator, feeling a fear creep into me, a fear and hurt and despair I couldn''t even begin to wrap my head around. It was like someone had distilled those emotions down to their purest possible essence and jabbed them directly into my brain.


    All sense was fleeting. I could only barely breathe. My heart slammed in my chest like it wanted to escape, escape me and escape this infectious fear.


    But it couldn''t escape any more than I could. I remained huddled at the bottom of the elevator long after it had come to a stop and opened, revealing a sterile metal room. I couldn''t tear my eyes off the floor. I was too afraid of what I''d see, afraid of what I already knew. Afraid that somehow, that sick fucking witch upstairs had done the impossible, the unthinkable, the inhuman.


    I wanted to leave and pretend I was never here. Wanted to pretend I was never an Exhuman, never met any of my friends, never lived this life. I couldn''t live a life that led me to this point. Everything had gone wrong. Everything had to have gone wrong in order for this to happen, and I couldn''t even understand what was happening.


    The knives in my mind twisted, and I screamed. I was on all fours like an animal, drawing ragged breath. My vision unfocused even on the ground in front of me, everything was pain, everything was anguish.


    Everything was pointless. Everything would end.


    Inch by inch, my eyes roamed upwards against my will. I knew what I would see, and I didn''t want to see it, but I was too afraid not to.


    Strong metal struts erupting from the metal floor, bolts as long as my arm, as thick as my wrist. Machined with terrifying precision. Ninety degree angles, straight lines, orderly, efficient, heartless. Walls so brightly lit, no shadow was cast upon them.


    A serene, sterile world a hundred feet underground.


    In the exact center of the large square room, hanging twenty feet in the air was a body. Suspended by smooth metal enclosures locked around its arms, spread wide like a body on a crucifix, it was a morbid organic centerpiece to this perfectly machined room.


    The body had no legs. No pelvis. Its guts and vertebrae hung out from below the naked torso which was pale and bony, like this victim had been malnourished in life before being torn in half. Black hair hung in front of the face like a funeral pall.


    But it wasn''t dead, I knew that. She was alive because I''d sensed her presence halfway down the elevator. Hers was the pain and the fear and the despair which infected my mind. The torn body, hanging there limp and naked and broken somehow lived still, though its every breath was agony and its every thought was a plea for death.


    There, in the sterile metal tomb, buried in the earth, hung Saga.

 203. 2252, Yesterday. D.C.. Tower.

    I checked my mobile again and frowned. Still no messages. This time I put it in my bunk with me instead of on the ground so I wouldn''t have to reach as far when I checked it in five seconds again.


    I laid on my back, looking at the bunk above me, wondering just what the hell Chariot thought he was doing. It distracted me for all of a few seconds before I checked again.


    "Are you attempting to be irritating, or merely succeeding?" asked Moon, glaring at me over the top of her book from the next bunk over.


    "Sorry," I said, putting the mobile down again. "It''s that thing with Chariot."


    "It was a prank, I am sure," she said, turning back to her book.


    "But who''d prank her? And she seemed pretty worked up about it. I don''t know. I wish he''d just reply and let us know he''s okay."


    I checked again and sighed. AEGIS had reached out to us yesterday about a message she got randomly sent to her mobile. Come or he will die. She assumed it meant Chariot, since he was gone at the moment, helping Jack out with something in New Eden. I hadn''t spent a lot of time with AEGIS, but she seemed smart, and if she was worrying about Chariot, I was too.


    I''d shot him a message, called a couple times and couldn''t get through. Felt like a damn idiot leaving him a voice message, being all like, bro, in case you''re not dying or something, call me. Maybe I should''ve been more urgent about it, he might be busy and just blowing me off.


    But it didn''t sit right in my stomach. His girls had just flown across the country at a single message, and she''d asked us to come help for reasons of her own¡­


    Moon was probably right. It was probably nothing. And if it was something, those two girls were with him now, in addition to the hunter. In the middle of a secure XPCA facility. Everything was probably just fine.


    I took a deep breath and put my mobile down. "Let''s go do something, Moon. Get our mind off this thing, huh?"


    "I wasn''t aware that reading no longer counted as doing something," she said without looking up. "Please tell me, when did that change?"


    "Come on girl, you know what I mean. Something fun."


    "Reading is fun."


    I shook my head. "What are you, crazy?"


    "People have been reading for thousands of years, since the advent of civilization," she said, flipping a page.


    "And people have been drinking for even longer! Probably. Let''s go hit a bar!"


    Her book snapped shut in what I think was the only way she knew to convey annoyance. "For what practical purpose would one ever wish to hit a bar?" she asked.


    "To...drink? And have fun? And not sit around reading eighteen hours a day?"


    "Oh, you meant to go to a bar."


    I glared at her. "You know what hitting a bar means. Don''t be dense."


    "Dense? I apologize. What does the relation of my mass and volume have to do with anything?"


    "Okay, you''re done," I said, and reached out for her, my hand easily larger than her head. She sighed defeatedly as I closed it around her wrist.


    "You are despicable," she said.


    "It''ll be fun."


    She collapsed on the spot and a purple phantom of myself appeared, attached to the front of me, arms crossed disapprovingly.


    "You do realize, this constitutes kidnapping," she said through the phantom in my voice.


    "I don''t think a court in the world would convict me. They''d spend one minute watching you leaf through books and agree that you need to get out more."


    "I highly doubt that my personal--"


    "It''s an exaggeration, jeez. Lighten up. Tem, you should come too."


    I looked over at Tem, finding her exactly as she''d been the last few days.


    Curled up, fetal position, on Chariot''s bunk. Motionless, clenching his blanket like it was the only thing anchoring her to this world. She didn''t respond to me, of course.


    "Tem, come on. When''s the last time you ate? When¡­" I approached and immediately regretted it. "Jesus Christ, Tem...did you piss yourself? There''s a bathroom right there."


    Instead of hitting the bar like I wanted, I spent the next hour stripping and showering a scrawny scarecrow of a high school girl who refused to stand or move under her own power, while my own shadow silently watched and judged me. I basically had to force-feed her half a tube of nutrient paste and wondered when the last time she ate could have been.


    I sat down with Tem''s unmoving body and Moon''s unconscious one and wondered again about Chariot. Not so much if he was alright this time, but rather when he was going to come back and save me from this kind of shit. I checked my mobile again, fruitlessly.


    "Can we read now?" my purple echo quipped.


    "No. We''re going to a bar and that''s that."


    She just looked at me blankly and I could only guess at what was going on behind that face of mine.


    One very awkward cab ride later, I was in a booth with Tem collapsed opposite me and Moon sitting more rigidly than a ruler next to her, back in her own body of course. I''d left her book at home so she had no choice but to socialize or drink or something, but as it turned out, her choice in something was just to stare at me with the same obnoxiously blank expression as ever.


    This was just the worst damn idea. I could already hear Chariot laughing at me for it when he came back and heard about it. What the hell I thought I was doing trying to have a good time with these two girls, of all the girls in the universe, I don''t even know. I should have asked Cosette, rumor was she could drink any guy under the table.


    Without much else to do, I drank and looked around the bar. Normal enough place, dark enough to feel cozy, small enough to feel close, loud enough to feel busy, while really being none of those things. I looked up at the holo, too late for any sports to be playing, at least in this time zone, so the news was on.


    My brow furrowed when I saw what was on the news. Two boring-looking people having a panel, but what was on the banner under them caught my attention. I tuned out the crowd and tried to listen.


    "...have and always will be a danger. Exhumans are like wildfires, earthquakes, and hurricanes. They''re always going to destroy everything in their path, no matter what precautions we try to take, and these incidents at New Eden are just more examples of this behavior we''ve seen again and again--"


    The other speaker cut in. "New Eden has been up for months now and the numbers speak for themselves. Exhuman events are at a current all-time low, catastrophic events across the US are shrinking because Exhumans are realizing there''s a better option than triggering an event--"


    "Right, they''re going to New Eden and having their event there instead. The EMP bombings and terrorist activities we saw just earlier today are proof of this--"


    "If that''s so, then why is New Eden still standing? If there''s all these Exhuman events going off there, how does the one city still stand? The answer is obvious¡­"Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Hmm. An EMP bomb and terrorist activity going off right where Chariot happened to be, right when he happened to be there. I''m sure he was fine...any terrorist in the world would find their hands full if they decided to square off against him, but still. It did nothing to reassure the nagging doubt in my mind.


    "You having fun?" I asked the girls, already knowing the answer but trying to force the thoughts about Chariot out of my head, even if it meant dealing with Moon.


    "You''ll have to be more specific," Moon droned at me.


    I scratched my head. "Are you having fun?"


    "I apologize. I still do not know which of the two of us you are speaking to."


    I looked at Tem, the only indication of life in her being the intermittent blinking of her eyes. She didn''t even seem to be breathing.


    "I''m talking to you," I sighed. "She ain''t talking."


    "I could very easily not talk as well. I considered that as a strategy, so you know."


    "Yeah, really glad you didn''t," I said, rolling my eyes.


    "Then, no."


    "What?"


    "No. To answer your question if I am having fun."


    "Great. Got it. Thanks."


    I shook my head and pulled out my mobile. I needed new friends. Why the hell did Jack still have to be holed up and hurt? Why was Karu also away? Hell, even Athan''s sister was more lively than this, and she was just a kid. Being alone with these two was killing me.


    Out of desperation more than anything I gave Cosette a ring.


    "Hey Tower. What''s up?" she asked lightly, sounding like she was doing something in the background while she spoke.


    "Not much. Bored shitless with everyone gone and Jack still out of commission. Looking for a drinking buddy. You busy?"


    She laughed raucously. "Sorry, have to pass. We''re stupid busy today packing and preparing."


    "You moving?"


    "No, just accompanying Director Blackett on a field trip. Every so often he has to go out to New Eden and do an inspection. Get the stink eye from three hundred Exhumans from behind a thousand XPCA in exosuits basically. I hate it."


    "Tough break," I sighed. "Wait, New Eden? Do you know where Chariot is?"


    "No. He just requested a few days leave to visit a friend and I''ve learned not to ask. Something up?"


    "No, nothing, never mind," I said.


    "Anyway, we''re leaving tonight apparently," she said, grunting as she moved or packed something. "Why he can''t tell me more than a day in advance, I don''t know. The director is so good about planning and scheduling everything else, but then just¡­"


    She stopped for a moment and then began again a little more excited and confidential. "It feels like sometimes we have to drop everything and run over there for no reason at all. Then I wind up handling all the administrative bullshit while he disappears with the base administrator for a few hours. Pretty suspicious, eh?"


    I could hear the impish smile in her voice and tried to laugh convincingly, but while that gossip was, in fact, grade-A premium select, still talking about New Eden and Chariot was just making the knot in my stomach worse, and getting away from it was supposed to be the whole point in coming out here.


    Finally, I let Cosette go after she promised we''d get drinks some other time and put my mobile down on the table, and slouched until there were three bodies looking passed-out at the table.


    "Can we go home?" Moon asked.


    "Moon, be serious," I said, sitting back upright. "Don''t you have a bad feeling about Chariot right now? You''re sharp. You know what''s going on, don''t you?"


    She looked at me in silence for what felt like an entire minute before speaking. "Chariot ran off with Karu. AEGIS fabricated a reason to interrupt them. I fail to see what part of this is confusing, unless you fail to grasp the nature of jealousy in a relationship."


    I shook my head. She had a point, maybe, but AEGIS didn''t seem jealous when she talked to me. She seemed...scared, almost.


    "I don''t think she was lying about the message she got."


    "You''re saying you believe her that a message with absolutely no traceable data mysteriously appeared on her device, giving an ominous, urgent, but utterly vague threat which could only be resolved by her doing exactly what she already wanted to do?"


    I looked at her and thought it over. Even when she put it that way¡­


    "I do," I said.


    "Then why are we sitting here? Chariot is in danger," she said, with the same flat, detached tone as ever.


    "Damn it girl, I''m being serious here."


    "And so am I. If you legitimately believe the message to be valid and Chariot to be in danger, I trust your instincts."


    I had to stop and blink at her a little bit to be sure of what I was hearing. "What?"


    "I apologize. Perhaps I misunderstood. Was any part of my conclusion a rational departure from what you expected?"


    "No...I just...didn''t expect you to turn one-eighty on me like that. One second, you''re telling me for sure it''s all a prank or AEGIS is full of it, and the next, you''re all gung-ho. Are you just trying to get back to your book?"


    She shook her head, her black severely-straight bangs waving. "I am being entirely serious."


    I was still mentally stuck and she wasn''t giving me a thing to grab ahold of here, and the fact that she had exactly the same tone and mannerisms when being sarcastic as straight wasn''t helping. "Okay, can you tell me why you decided to switch on me here?"


    "Certainly," she said. I waited and nothing more came.


    "Then¡­"


    "I am considering my words. My apologies." She waited for another moment and then continued in the same flat tone. "More than any other person, I have bonded with you using my powers. While I attempt to respect the privacy of our shared mind on those occasions, unfortunately some peeking is inevitable. From what I have seen of the inside of your mind, if something is troubling you like this, there is typically grounds for it. While the possibility of a false alarm remains distinct, if you are still troubled after this long, I defer to your professional experience."


    "Wow. Uh, really? Why didn''t you just say so?"


    "I make a point of not bringing attention to the thoughts and memories I steal from others. It would constitute a breach of trust for me to flaunt illicitly-gained knowledge a person may wish to keep confidential. I believe conclusions I draw about a person''s character falls under that purview."


    Well, that made sense, I guess, but she was still massively weird. Still, it felt better just to have someone, anyone believe me when my gut had been yelling at me all evening.


    "So...we go," I said. "To New Eden. How?"


    "I have the finances. If the situation turns out not to be an emergency, I will expect recompense."


    "Oh. Sure. Uh, maybe...if it''s a false alarm...we go halves? I mean...you''re here choosing to believe me too right now, so it''s kind of both of us agreeing, right?"


    I shot her a grin she did not return.


    "By that logic, you should pay me back half even if it is an emergency situation. Or is it possibly that you wish for me to stop agreeing with you?"


    I sighed. "Never mind. Chariot, you had better be in hot water when we get there."


    "That seems an unfortunate thing to wish on your friend."


    "Well it''s your fault, damn it! VTOLs are expensive, and I ain''t made of money."


    I looked over at Tem. If there was trouble, she might be useful. But she also might be even more trouble. And if there wasn''t trouble, there would be once she was underfoot. But could I just leave her alone?


    I had no idea if I should bring her or not. She could be incredibly helpful, but I didn''t like the idea of trying to drag her comatose backside through an airport...or paying for her ticket. I decided to leave it up to fate and picked up my mobile again.


    "Jack, how are you buddy?" I asked.


    "In an infirmary with biological spikes protruding from my leg which are not of my own biology," he said. "So not great."


    "They still won''t approve a regenerator for you?"


    "Major Dawn has made it clear that the operational budget of the P-Force has been pressed thin by repeated ''idiocy'' I believe was her exact word, of our strike lead. I am only to be regenerated in the case of an Exhuman event for which I am needed, and will otherwise have to settle for natural recovery."


    He sounded just a little bitter, so I hoped I wouldn''t piss him off by requesting more.


    "Hey, uh...Moon and I think there''s...like, a tiny possibility that something might have gone wrong with Chariot looking after your lady friend."


    "What?" he shouted urgently. "What have you heard? Why did Chariot not tell me this directly?"


    "Relax, Jack, it''s just a possibility something might go wrong," I said. "So...in the event it does, Moon and I want to be on-hand to help. But we can''t do that and abandon Tem, and I don''t think bringing her is a good idea."


    I glanced over at her and she remained, for all purposes, dead. I don''t think she even parsed that we were talking about flying out to be with Chariot, or she might have exploded all over that plan.


    "I can watch her," Jack said, concern still thick in his voice. "If you feel you can help Steffie...please do so."


    "Thanks Jack. Should I...drop her off with you?"


    "That would be ideal. An infirmary may be the best place for her anyway, to keep an eye on her physical and mental state. Thank you, Tower. Godspeed."


    "No problem man. Get better." I hung up.


    "Shall we depart immediately? Or are you still ''having fun''?" Moon asked wryly.


    "Hell no, fuck this bar," I said, drawing a glare from the bartender, which changed to a whole different kind of look as I stood and towered over him. I smiled and plunked a chit down on the counter. "Keep the tip."


    I didn''t know what kinds of finances or connections Moon had, but they worked fast. It wasn''t an hour before we were in the air, watching the twinkling lights of the city like stars in the black.


    She looked at me and gave me a single reassuring nod. Whatever was ahead of us, we could tackle it. That was for sure. I grabbed her hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze.


    She blinked at me. "I loathe you," she said flatly, and then collapsed in her seat while I panicked and tried to get her back into her body without anyone else noticing.


    Whatever was ahead of us, we could tackle it. Just so long as I didn''t mess it up first.

 204. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    [(No...no...no, no, no!)] Saga wailed in my head, her head thrashing back and forth, her mind loud enough to make my ears feel like they were bleeding. [(Not you! Not...not you too!)]


    Her thoughts were almost exactly mine, and the rush of despair and torment flooded out of her and into me, her thoughts became mine.


    I could only cradle my head in my hands and hold myself as I tried to weather the storm of emotions buffeting my mind. I''d never felt like this in Saga''s presence before, never felt like this ever before. It was like when she had been dreaming and all of her thoughts and feelings flowed into me, uncontrolled, unrestrained...but a hundred times more potent. I felt my own grasp on reality slipping, threatening to be drowned by hers.


    And hers was not a good grasp. Even without any specifics, I could feel pain and suffering and just...just giving up, a defeat so complete, brought on by a fear she didn''t understand.


    Saga was afraid of what they''d done to her, what they continued to do to her, what they threatened to do to her. And more than anything, she was afraid of dying. And she was not handling it well.


    "Saga please, calm down!" I screamed at her, hearing my own voice higher and catching in my closing throat than I thought. "I can''t help you like this!"


    [(...I can''t...no...nobody can help¡­)] She shuddered within her restraints violently, thrashing as she hung from her arms, doing not a single thing to them, but prompting a splattering of black blood to drip from her torn-open body.


    She gasped with agony, and I felt it as well, like my own body had just been torn open. I clenched at my guts, my vision flickering from the pain.


    "Saga!" I screamed at her.


    [(...scared to die...don''t...want to live¡­help...help...please...)]


    "Saga!" I screamed again. "You have to tell me what''s going on! You...you have to tell me why you''re not healing! You have to tell me something!"


    I clenched at my gut and fought off her feelings. I could block them out to a degree, but the emotions pouring from her were too strong, too much for any person to feel without madness. Even tempering them, they still threatened to overwhelm me. I couldn''t imagine how she had lived with them for as long as she had.


    And I didn''t even know how long that was. The last time any of us had seen her was over a month ago. For all I knew, she''d been enduring this that whole time.


    I felt a new agony inside of me, guilt and pain of my own that this could happen to her, that I''d broken her from the relative safety of her prison only to introduce her to a world which would turn her into this. That whatever fucking sick torture had been put on her, it was my fault.


    The sick guilt filled me up and made me want to throw up. And then I had a realization that just made me feel even more guilt, even more crushed by my own impossible vortex of emotions.


    I felt a little better. The guilt was awful, it burned at my insides in a way that felt as bad as Saga looked. But it was my own, it wasn''t being shoved into my mind, and as it filled me up, as I let the resentment against my own stupidity and etched every millimeter of Saga''s anguished form into my mind, the guilt overflowed within me and pushed the external emotions out.


    I embraced the guilt, revelled in it, anything to block out the pain.


    When talking to AEGIS after I''d slept with Karu the first time AEGIS had told me all of the conflicting emotions she was feeling which threatened to overwhelm her and ultimately forced her into so much anguish she''d shut down her emotions rather than cope with it. At the time, I just remembered thinking there was no way I could feel that many things at once.


    And...I guess I was right. I wasn''t a complicated person. A fucked-up shitty one who dicked over every single person who ever loved or tried to help me, sure. But not one who could fit a dozen emotions in my brain at a time. So as the guilt filled me up, there just wasn''t any room left for anything else.


    It was the guiltiest relief I''d ever felt, and that just made it guiltier. But as my emotions returned to a level I could handle, there was something else galvanizing under the guilt.


    Determination.


    "Saga...talk to me, please. I want to help you but...but how did this happen? What can I do?"


    She shook her head violently, black hair hanging in her face.


    [(...beyond help¡­so much pain...save me...beyond...beyond hope...just give up¡­)]


    "Saga, please! I want to...want to do anything I can. I want to fix my mistakes...I...I never should have let you go, never should have let you be alone where they might do something to you."


    [(...I have to...Athan...I have to...so much pain...I''m sorry¡­)]


    "You have to what? Saga, please!"


    [(...I''m sorry...sorry...Athan...sorry...not strong enough...sorry...Athan...so much pain¡­)]


    With a dark twinge of resignation nestled in the fear, I felt my mind prickling. She''d started doing something to me. I thrashed my head like I could shake her off, feeling tears fly off of me onto the metal floor.


    "Saga stop it! I''m trying to help you! Let me help! Tell me what I can do! Tell me what happened!"


    [(...sorry...sorry...sorry¡­)]


    The prickling in my mind became more pronounced as she jumped in without any of her usual restraint or subtlety. I felt my thoughts moving around in my head erratically, memories jumping together and unusual emotions as random thoughts sprang to mind unbidden.


    "Saga, get the fuck out of my head!" I screamed.


    I thought very hard at her, anything I could think of to get her out. I thought of us breaking up, how her fake death had broken me, thought of all the good and nasty things I''d ever thought about her, how I loved and hated her.


    [...no...please,] she said [...please...Athan...don''t make it...make it harder than it has to be¡­]


    She pushed those memories aside, digging around for something else, but every time she did, I thought of something right back at her. She''d always asked me to try not to think when she''d touched my brain before, so now, in order to save her, I thought as long and as hard as I could about everything I could wrap my mind around.


    How offended she''d been when I thought I first met her and mistook her for a cluster of mushrooms. The paralyzed embarrassed glow on her cheeks when I''d electromagneted her outfit open. Waking up under the tree to find her laying next to me, the smallest smile on her face. The memory of her mother berating me for being a bad child when Saga was dreaming.


    Saga shook her head and I saw and felt her frustrated tears.


    [I have to!] she screamed. [Let me do it!]


    "No, Saga. Fuck that and fuck you!" I screamed right back through tears of my own. "Let me help you, damn it!"


    I thought of when I''d caught her half-naked accidentally busting in the bathroom on her. Of the softness of her lips when we kissed, of the lie of a perfect day we''d spent together. Her and Moon sitting together on the couch at the Christmas party, together but alone. Her sad smile at being found hiding behind a dumpster like a child. When she lied to Lia about the cause of all her blood at the party to spare my sister''s shattered feelings.


    I remembered hope she had. I remembered the determination she was full of when she started her quest. I remembered the deep well of knowledge and insight she''d always had for me, the advice she counseled with, even when my successes were against her interests.


    [...Athan...stop!]


    I remembered the cold of her skin against mine. The love in her dark eyes, hidden behind so much snark and cynicism and pain, but still there, still inextinguishable.


    [...I have...have to! Please! I''m sorry just...just...]


    I felt and remembered and filled myself up with thoughts and dreams and memories until I was the one pushing feelings into her. Feelings of love and happiness and hope, the things she''d always given me, the things our entire friendship had been full of. All of the embarrassments, all of her obnoxious quips, her standoffishness and pricklyness, but somehow all of that had fallen away with time and beneath it all, just her. Just Saga.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    [(...)]


    I let her know how I really saw her. How strong I thought she was, how she had never not been there for me when I needed her. When the XPCA came bearing down on us, she came to protect us, even thinking it was wrong, because she couldn''t bear losing us then. How she''d put down her hate of humans enough to live with them in Vegas, how she''d always stumbled, but always kept an open mind and an open heart to the truth, even when she was full of pain.


    And how now, I needed her again. How she was close to losing me now. How I knew she was full of pain now, but now more than ever, I needed her to hear me, needed her to tell me how to save her, so I could return the favor and save her again.


    Tears were falling from both of our faces nonstop as I forced my thoughts and memories deeper and deeper into her until we were connected mind and soul. Until she was forced to see the truth of my love for her.


    [...I''ll die¡­], she said.


    I shook my head. "I won''t let you."


    I thought of one more thing. An old jingle for processed meat products Karu had taught me. No sooner did the words pass from my mind to hers than she smiled, and hanging there, half a crucified body with blood dripping from her, black hair covering her face as her naked, shrunken body shuddered to draw breath...with those words in her mind, ever so softly, coughing for it, she laughed.


    [Fuck you, Athan,] she said from behind a sad smile.


    "Saga, tell me what happened. Tell me how I can help."


    She shook her head. [I don''t know. Director Blackett and Captain Targa...I can''t...can''t see them. Can''t touch them. It''s like they don''t exist. But they...they can touch me¡­]


    "They did this to you?"


    She nodded mutely.


    "Why aren''t you healing?"


    [I don''t know. He just...he¡­]


    Fear and pain welled up within her again.


    "Don''t talk about it," I said. "Don''t think about it if you can. I''m sorry. Just...just give me your memories. Let me live it."


    She shook her head again, flinging off tears and blood. [I can''t. It would hurt you.]


    "I''m stronger than that. I can do anything if it means saving you, Saga."


    Her lip trembled. [I''m so scared. I''m sorry Athan. Please help me.]


    "Then let me see," I said.


    She just hung there in silence for a minute before silently nodding. And then I was her, and felt pain and suffering like I''d never known as the boundaries between her body and mine disappeared to my mind. But even as I gasped for breath and felt my flesh growing cold, the memories were there, waiting for me to relive them.


    It was only a little bit after Christmas when I...when Saga, that is, ambushed Blackett in his own office at home. I had the upper hand, had shot him, and had the intention of finding out why I couldn''t touch his mind and where Mage had come from and what he knew about her.


    Things had gone wrong when I took him to his bedroom to dress his wounds and keep him from bleeding out. I found a couple of servants along the way and had them carry and treat him by dominating their minds. Unable to read Blackett though, I never expected it when I came face-to-face with Targa, equally unreadable and unaffected.


    She didn''t hesitate as she turned on me and beat my astonishingly frail body broken and unconscious. I woke in perfect health, but tied up, forced to watch as she treated Blackett''s injuries over the fresh corpses of his servants. While she worked, they spoke, and eventually, I felt the burning of a needle in my veins as I was drugged.


    I awoke here, buried deep within the earth again, my worst fears realized, and not permitted to be close to a single Exhuman or XPCA except Blackett and Targa, neither of whom had minds to touch.


    Blackett explained what I would do. He desired the unwavering loyalty of any Exhuman brought before him to him and him alone. I would reprogram them in a process Targa dubbed ''redevelopment'' so that they would have to obey his commands.


    Of course I just laughed at him, until he advanced on me and ripped away a piece of my flesh with his bare hands. It was just a small wound...but it never healed. It put confusion into my heart like I didn''t understand. The first day was brutal. Every time I mouthed off, or did something wrong, or refused, he would approach and tear away another piece of me, always by hand, and never healing.


    Days passed, and I was more and more broken. Again and again he came and tore at me, leaving me less and less. I was terrified, I''d never felt pain or mortality like this before. When there was little flesh left on my leg, he broke it off, snapping my brittle bones like a cardboard tube.


    I didn''t understand. I was scared of things I''d never known before. Real pain, real risk of death...so alien to me, and I had no means of coping with them. It wasn''t long before I was desperate to cling to what parts of me were left and doing as he asked, redeveloping Exhumans brought to me out of fear. When I didn''t do it well enough or tried to hide things from him, he always knew. He would come by after a few days, tell me exactly what he knew I''d done, and then hurt me, again and again, for every failure she''d committed.


    Under the fear, I drowned in guilt. For the longest time, I had held out hope, thinking Athan would save me. But as the number of Exhumans I redeveloped grew, I no longer wanted to be saved, didn''t think I deserved to be saved, didn''t think there was anything left of me worth saving. Every mind I touched was another reason for Athan to hate me, for me to hate myself. I fell into despair, gave up on life and on myself, and on Athan. I wanted to die, but was too afraid to.


    With nothing left but these two conflicting feelings, I broke inside.


    Until now, when Athan came, and forced me to remember everything in the world I''d forgotten. He put more back into her than just those feelings. There was more than pain and despair to this world. I remembered life, remembered myself. Remembered him.


    I sat, floored by the pain and memories, my head spinning, my body physically aching, as she hung there, having endured a million times worse than I felt, having not just lived those memories, but still living in them, still trapped, still in pain.


    Even though it broke her, she was still...still so strong.


    "I...I''m going to get you out of there," I said, looking up at the twenty-foot gulf between us. My blades didn''t reach that far. If I tried to magnet her down, I might wind up ripping apart the whole metal room, crushing both of us, and even if not, I''d destroy the elevator which was our way out. There wasn''t anything else in here I could use.


    I jammed my swords into one of the pylons in the floor which arched up to hold her aloft, only vaguely realizing I had almost twice as many blades as usual. The metal heated until it was white-hot, but it still wouldn''t melt or move.


    [Just...just go,] she said through fresh tears. [You''ve already saved me.]


    "I haven''t done anything, and I''m not leaving until I get you out."


    [Just get back to the surface and do everything Targa asks of you. Pretend you were redeveloped. I''ll...I''ll be fine.]


    "Fine? You''ll be down here still, tortured. Twisted. Killed, even."


    I tried shimming my way up the pylon, but it was just smooth slightly-curved metal. Not a single handhold, and too wide to grab effectively.


    [I...I know. I''ll just...I''ll just stop them, the only way I know how.]


    "Saga, you can''t even touch them. I know if you could stop them, you''d have done so already."


    I stopped to look up and saw that through her pain, she gave me a sad smile. Through her thin curtain of hair, I saw her eyes were totally honest with me for once, no lies, no sarcasm, just...just love, if I had to put it in a word.


    [I can stop them,] she said. [I''m going to stop helping them, no matter what they do to me. And eventually...I''ll be dead, and they''ll never be able to use me to hurt anyone else ever again.]


    "Saga, no. I won''t let it end like that."


    [It''s not so bad,] she said. [I had a really terrible life, you know? I don''t think...ending it...would be the worst thing anymore.] She laughed softly which turned into coughing, which promoted another fat black dollop of blood to drip out of her body. [Some of it¡­] she stopped and grimaced against the pain, which I could feel churning inside myself through her. [...some of it was even...pretty good. I got...got to meet some interesting people. I found...found a tree I liked. I fell in love.]


    "Saga, you shut the hell up, I''m telling you. Nobody is going to hurt you ever again, if I have to stay down here and kill them all myself."


    [You''re such a nice guy, Athan, but you can''t. If they want to, they can flood the room with gas, electrocute the floors, shoot fire from the walls...it''s a safe room, to make sure they can handle any Exhuman I put my hands on.]


    She frowned. [It''s also probably getting close to the time they expect you to be done. You really should leave. But...thank you...thank you for...for everything. For my whole life, Athan.]


    "No, Saga. I refuse. I don''t care what they do to me, I''m not leaving you like that."


    [You can''t do anything for me. The room is set up so I''m out of range of whoever is sent in, or other safeguards. Just...just go. I''ll be fine. Really.]


    "No. Fuck that, and fuck this. I don''t care if my powers are limited, I''ll go beyond them if I have to. I''ll do anything."


    I walked beneath her where a black stain on the otherwise spotless floor indicated her position above me. From down here, she looked even worse, just diseased meat.


    "This is going to hurt," I said.


    [Athan, don''t--]


    I crouched, gave myself a three-count to anticipate the pain, and then jammed as much current into my legs as I could, forcing them violently taut. My legs screamed and burned, and I was certain I had at least pulled every muscle in my legs, but I was in the air, up there, higher than any olympian had ever leapt.


    It still didn''t put me anywhere close to her, but it was close enough. At the apex of my jump, my dozen swords flashed out and sawed through her forearms cutting through her below the elbows. She screamed as blade after blade tore through her until she fell, still screaming in my mind. I crashed into the ground, dazed, gasping for breath and unable to even hold or bend my legs, but felt the pain within her as well.


    Abruptly, her pain stopped, and after a moment, with a gentle prickling on my mind, mine did as well. I laid there holding my now-numb legs and catching my breath when in the corner of my vision, a bare leg stepped down in front of me, followed by a second.


    I looked up and there she was, whole and pale and flesh and blood as ever, trying to best to cover herself with her hands, but unable to feel any real embarrassment when there was so much happiness and relief in her now.


    "Sorry," I groaned from the ground. "I lied. I guess...I was going to let someone hurt you after all."


    [It doesn''t matter. You saved me. Just like I knew you would, just like you always have.]


    And then she cried and fell on top of me, holding me with her completed, pain-free body, exhaustion and relief pouring from her mind like a tidal wave.


    Her emotions were still infectious, and I shared the feeling of completely unrestrained joy, wishing for nothing more than we could stay like that forever.


    But in my mind, I knew this was only just the beginning. Up above, the fucking bitch who''d done this to Saga was still waiting. And after all she''d done, I was going to make absolutely fucking sure she did not leave here alive.

 205. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    [You really...do have to go, though,] Saga said at long last. [Better to leave now before they get suspicious.]


    "You make it sound like you aren''t coming with me." I shook my head. "There''s no way I''m leaving you here."


    She laughed gently, and the fact she could still do that made my heart brim with elation. [The elevator knows how much you weigh. If I get in it, there''ll be an alarm, and then gas, fire, electricity, all that fun stuff.]


    "There''s no alarm for me cutting you down?"


    She shrugged. [My weight kinda...changed a lot while being hung up there, sometimes.]


    I had a memory of Blackett reaching back and snapping Saga''s lower back while she writhed and screamed into a gag. It hadn''t broken cleanly, and he had to tear away at it, using a foot against her exposed ribs as leverage to rip her pelvis away. The memory alone made me shudder and a white-hot ball of rage seared my insides.


    "How...did you not die before?" I settled for asking.


    [You mean...dying for real, or dying like I do?]


    "Well, it''s obvious that he has some tech or something that stops you from dying like you usually do. I just meant...fuck, Saga, there was like, less than half of you left, and you were still awake and conscious."


    [Yeah,] she said, and I felt dark thoughts moving through her. [Targa explained a lot about my situation to me. She said it made for interesting research, and I don''t...don''t think...she had anyone else to talk to about it.]


    "So she told you? While you were hanging there, dying? Holy shit, that''s fucked up."


    [Yeah.]


    I tried to think of anything else to say but all I had right now was hate and the same topic in my mind.


    [She said...my anatomy was unique. Like, I knew that...but apparently...I can do with a lot less than a human...and still be alive. I think...Blackett knew that...when he took pieces of me...away¡­]


    Just...fucking...I couldn''t believe this. I wasn''t exactly on Blackett''s side, didn''t exactly trust him, but Jesus fucking Christ, there was no way I thought he''d ever do shit like this to anyone. With his own two hands, on a helpless girl¡­


    [Athan, seriously. You have to go. If you don''t, we''ll get caught, and...and if nothing else, I''ll get strung up again. So...if you don''t want that...you need to leave me.]


    "It won''t happen."


    [It will if you stay. Come back for me when...when you can stop the alert or something...okay? Promise me...please?]


    "I promise. They won''t touch you."


    [Even if they do, I''ll be strong. I''ll wait for you to save me again, as long as it takes. I know you will.]


    She gave me a teary smile and one more hug before pushing me to the elevator. The round thick transparent plastic door slid shut between the two of us before I was ready for it.


    "I''ll come back!" I shouted.


    [Pretend you were redeveloped! Do everything Targa or Blackett asks! Don''t forget!]


    She continued to yell and thank me and praise my salvation as the elevator ascended back into the blackness above, until at the limits of her range, her voice just stopped, leaving me feeling very empty and alone in my own mind.


    Without her outpouring of relief and gratitude, there was nothing left in my head but hatred. Seething, billowing, red. I wanted to tear Targa and Blackett apart just like they''d done to her, make them regret ever daring to hurt her. I wanted them to feel all the pain she''d endured this entire month she was in their clutches, and more, a hundredfold.


    They were sick and twisted and just evil. They deserved the worst fate any person had ever experienced. If there was such a thing as hell, it was made with those two in mind, and I would be so happy to send them there, the last thing they see--me. The last thing they hear, the breaking of their own bodies. The last thing they think, some pitiful regret about how maybe, maybe they shouldn''t have fucked with Saga. Should have left people alone to live and be happy.


    The elevator arrived and the glass receded. In the next room, I was a little surprised to find Karu and AEGIS sitting in two of the several chairs outside of Targa''s office.


    "Athan! You''re okay!" AEGIS said. "We heard you got taken in for...redevelopment, whatever that is. Targa insisted you''d be right back, so...we waited." She lowered her voice conspiratorially, "And if you didn''t, we were gonna come get you."


    I couldn''t return her smile, and the look on my face replaced hers with a shocked, worried expression. "Athan, what the fuck happened?" She forced a laugh. "She make you...read a whole manual or...really bad...slideshow present...ation¡­?"


    I looked at Karu who was sitting there, helmet in her lap, avoiding my gaze, irritation on her face. I was so mad right now I just wanted to slap the shit out of her and tell her to fuck off with feeling sorry for herself, there were people with actual issues beyond boy troubles.


    But I didn''t. That would be really reckless and stupid. Even if she were being bitchy, she wasn''t the reason I was mad right now. Instead, I turned on Targa''s office door, and walking right through the two soldiers on either side, threw the door open and walked in.


    She was there, with the same exosuit on, writing something on a tablet. I didn''t get any further before the two guards grabbed me with impossibly strong robotically-assisted arms.


    "Oh, you''re back," she said, sounding bored. "Stop struggling at once."


    I wanted to keep doing it just to spite her, but thought, hell...if she believed me, I might get to kill her right now. I let my body go limp as I could, given my rage.


    "Good. Good. See, isn''t that much better? I''m sure you''re confused right now. See, the corpse that you probably saw downstairs...that''s actually the remains of a Code-X. Have a seat. Would you like some tea?"


    I was walked to and sat down in one of the plush, comfortable chairs in front of her desk, the guards still remaining on either side, though no longer actively detaining me. She glared at me. "I asked if you would like some tea. Answer me."


    "No," I growled.


    "Hmph. You may be obedient now but your attitude is still the worst of anyone I''ve ever met. Maybe I should send you back down for another round to have that corrected." She turned to me from her work finally. "When you leave this office, you will leave New Eden and never return. In the future, you will avoid wherever I am working and never threaten my career aspirations ever again."


    She glared at me and I felt my eye twitch as I stared back.


    "Say ''yes, mistress,''" she said, bemused.


    "...yes¡­" a feral growl escaped me "...miss...tress..."


    "Delightful. Like I was saying, you just had a Code-X under my employment in your head. It''s not surprising for you to be a little confused how I''m making you say and do things, but just know in the future, if you ever imperil myself or the XPCA, we will send you right back down there, and fix you for good." She laughed. "I bet by the end of it, you won''t even be yourself anymore. So consider me merciful that all I took away was your ability to resist me."


    "...merciful¡­?" I found myself muttering. "...merciful? You''re the most...the...most merciless...most callous¡­"


    "Shut up," she said.


    My heart was ready to explode, and I was sure I burst a vessel in my face as my hands clenched and unclenched and the thought that I could just move a few feet closer and conjure my swords inside her face, right now filled my whole head.


    "You can go," she said, sounding bored. "Oh, though I don''t like either of your friends waiting out there. Once you get off my property, kill the both of them and dispose of the bodies where they won''t be found." She thought for a second. "Or, I suppose you could be found out, that''s really no bother for me. No...won''t make the XPCA look good. Yes, don''t be found. Now go."Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    I knew she was a monster the moment I learned what happened to Saga, but hearing her casually instructing me to just kill my friends...and the implication that if I were anyone other than me, other than someone that close to Saga, I''d be doing it right now?


    I didn''t have the self control for that.


    She screamed as the blades manifest inside of her exosuit. The two guards were on me in an instant, pinning me to the floor, but as soon as they restrained me, my shield exploded, sending one flying through the door like a wrecking ball through a house of cards, and the other slammed against a wall hard enough to crack it through to the ceiling.


    I didn''t hesitate. I was on Targa in an instant, twisting my blades within the suit like a thousand blades in a blender, hoping that what she suffered now was a millionth of what she''d done to Saga. She only screamed and writhed for a moment before her body went still.


    "Holy fucking...fuck!" AEGIS screamed from the doorway. "Athan, what the hell!"


    I didn''t care. I worked my way through demolishing Targa''s exosuit until I could rip her faceplate off. I needed to see her dead eyes, wanted to burn that memory into my mind so I could deliver it to Saga.


    "Athan, this guy''s dead. This guy is too. What the fuck are you doing?"


    "Shut UP!" I shouted at her. I smashed a ceramic plate which wasn''t burning away with my bare hands, slicing my knuckles up pretty good, but I felt nothing. A couple more pieces of her suit later and I grabbed the faceplate by the bottom and pulled it free.


    A voice boomed over the base PA system as sirens kicked to life. "Attention all XPCA forces. This is a code black. There are three known hostiles within the annex facility, of which one is an Exhuman. All units are to converge and engage. This is not a drill. This is not a drill."


    The voice on the PA was hers. And under her faceplate was nothing. Just...nothing. No corpse, no anything at all. It was just an empty exosuit until I''d fried it from the inside. I swore and threw the faceplate into the wall, ready to cry from frustration.


    "Athan, what the fuck is going on?" AEGIS shouted at me. She moved around the desk and kneeled next to the empty exosuit, putting her hands on my shoulders and her face right in front of mine. "I need you...to calm down...and tell us. Whatever happened, we''ll be here with you, but we need to know."


    "I...they¡­" I took a deep breath and tried to find words through how angry I felt. "Saga."


    "Saga?"


    "Redevelopment. It''s Saga."


    "She''s working with them? To rehabilitate Exhumans?"


    "She''s they''re SLAVE!" I screamed at her. I turned to move but she held me down with inhuman strength.


    "Athan, calm down. Targa has Saga captive? Here? Now?"


    "Yes. I freed her, but she''s stuck down below. Let me go."


    "Not until you calm down some. Why did you...why did you kill all these people? Why are you doing something so stupid? You know you just basically declared war on the XPCA didn''t you?"


    "I don''t care," I said. She sighed heavily.


    "Fuck, Athan. Do you have any idea how many XPCA are here? And what kinds of weapons they have on hand in case of an Exhuman riot?" She shook her head. "We can''t win this. Especially not just the three of us."


    "Or two of you," said Karu bitterly.


    AEGIS looked like she''d just been slapped. "Karu? How could you even say that at a time like this."


    "I came here merely as a personal favor to you and to Ashton," Karu spit. "You first demonstrated that you did not trust me to be alone with him, and then saw fit to utterly betray me. I see no reason why I should die...simply because he is an enormous enough fool to make an attempt on an XPCA officer within her own fortress."


    "Karu, wait," I said, but she was already turning and putting her visor on. She levelled her wrist at where the ceiling and wall met in the waiting room, and with an explosion that made my ears ring even through my hands, the whole corner of the room was reduced to dust and smoke.


    "Fare well, Ashton. You goddamned fucking idiot," Karu said. And then her wings spread, and with a streak of blue, disappeared into the hole she''d created.


    "Well...well fuck her!" AEGIS yelled, red in the face. "We don''t need her anyway! The nerve of that girl...god damn it! Damn her, damn all of it! Athan, why couldn''t you just...why did you have to do something so stupid!" she screamed at me, tears building in the corners of her eyes. "I don''t want you to die, you dummy! I just wanted us to live together and be happy, was that too much to ask? Why does it always have to be like this!"


    Seeing her cry eroded the edge out of my anger, and Karu''s unexpected disbandment felt like a stab in the gut. I looked down at Targa''s remotely-piloted exosuit and felt just as empty and defeated as it. Alerts and sirens went off again and again, and outside, I could hear the sounds of engines spooling and heavy machinery moving around.


    "Why does it have to be like this," she whimpered.


    "They hurt Saga."


    "She can''t be hurt!" she screamed. "You can!"


    I shook my head. "They found a way. They hurt her...hurt her so bad. She was...mutilated, AEGIS. They tore away more than half of her body, left her hanging there crucified, promised to kill her, to actually kill her if she didn''t do what they wanted."


    AEGIS had her face in her hands. "I...I don''t care. I''d rather she get tortured...then you die. That sounds so horrible of me, but...it''s the truth. I love you, Athan, and--"


    She froze, staring at me. The sudden arrest of her movement prompted one final tear to fall from the corner of her eye down her cheek.


    And then, falling on top of me, she collapsed. I swore and frantically dug through my pockets. Thank God, I still had the boot drive, Targa had me arrested but didn''t confiscate my belongings.


    Two soldiers appeared near the wreckage Karu had created. Speaking to each other on internal comms, one gestured towards me and they took cover on either side of the doorway. I felt a hot spray of grit as their gunfire blazed against my shield.


    Carefully, deliberately, like it was the most important thing in the world, the only life and love I had left, I pressed the drive into AEGIS'' port and waited. A moment passed, and a thrown grenade disintegrated into pieces on my shield.


    Her eyes fluttered awake inches from mine. A frown crossed her lips and I realized I was also crying.


    "I don''t want to lose you either," I whispered, holding her hands.


    "Are...are we getting¡­" I could feel her hot breath on my face, the faint smell of eraser shavings and bubblegum from her synthetic skin. "...getting shot at?" she whispered.


    "Yeah," I said, and kissed her.


    Just for a moment though, because even if we were at death''s door together, she was still pragmatic, and pushed me off after a couple seconds.


    "Maybe," she said breathily, "we can''t win. But even if we can''t, that doesn''t mean we lose." Her brows knitted. "Was Saga really that bad off?"


    "The worst off I''ve ever seen...anything. If she were a normal person, she would have just been dead. They...they flayed her flesh¡­"


    "Okay, enough," AEGIS said, pressing a finger on my lips. "I''m sorry. You don''t have to think about it. I just wanted to make sure before we went forward."


    "Went forward how?" I asked.


    She was already digging through her hair for something. I realized I should probably do something about the guards in the door, so I stood up, keeping myself between AEGIS and them, and once I was in range, popped a sword through each of them like they weren''t even there.


    Exosuits really weren''t designed to fight against Exhumans who could summon their powers inside the suit.


    AEGIS looked more irritated that I''d killed them than at the constant hail of gunfire and deafening report of ammunition, but said nothing. Inwardly, I agreed with her. I''m sure that most of these guys were just fine, and in Saga''s own memories, it was nobody but Targa and Blackett who ever even saw her. Interacted with her. Tortured her.


    But the hot ball of hate in me churned. If they threatened Saga, even indirectly, if they stood up for Targa, even just as orders, I would cut them down without mercy or guilt. She was pure, distilled, unwavering evil, and she had to be stopped no matter the cost.


    AEGIS was plugged into the exosuit now, her hands and eyes moving constantly as she cracked her way in.


    "It was being remotely piloted...nice smart little safety precaution...no wonder she didn''t mind walking around in front of Exhumans. Ooh, good news, she had a dedicated line put in the base just for that purpose. Better connection, higher throughput, lower latency...but also tells me right where she was piloting it from."


    "So we can find her?" I asked.


    "Yeah. The real one this time."


    I stood up and watched as more soldiers moved outside the room. A grenade flew through the doorway and exploded against my shield. I cracked my knuckles and my blades sprung to life around me, still ten of them now, less than had shown up before with Saga, but more than my norm.


    "Let''s go find and kill that bitch," I said, walking out the doorway as gunfire pounded against my shield. "I want to look her in the eyes as she regrets every decision she''s ever made to hurt Saga--to hurt anyone--as she dies."


    "You''re a little scary sometimes," AEGIS said quietly, clinging to my back to stay in the sphere of my shield. "But¡­"


    I glanced back at the yellow eyes burning brightly at me from over my shoulder.


    "But?"


    "...but...as bad as this sounds...it...makes me happy. To know...that if something ever happened to me...you''d do this for me."


    "Of course I would." One of the soldiers screamed as my sword cleaved through him, while another ran down the hall. I settled for just injuring his leg and blowing out the comms in his suit. I wouldn''t always have the time to be so precise, so this guy could consider himself lucky, I guess.


    "Then...I learned something. From the exosuit. Targa''s," she said.


    "What is it?"


    She stayed silent for a moment, and the way she hovered right behind me, I felt like she was almost like a ghost.


    "I''d say don''t get mad or do something stupid...but I think that''s exactly the plan, right now, isn''t it? Get mad and do something stupid?" AEGIS said, "So I''ll tell you. But don''t do anything more stupid, okay?"


    I shook my head. "Just tell me."


    "Okay. Well. Uh." She paused, and I think despite the fact we were getting actively shot at, she was playing with her hair. "The exosuit, the remote pilot program that was in there to allow her to drive it...it was custom code, good code, written specifically for that suit and that purpose."


    "...okay?"


    "And whoever wrote that code, I can tell you with certainty...it was...a coding style I''ve seen before. It all matched up...with...with code inside me, actually."


    "What does that mean?"


    "Whoever wrote the code in that exosuit...wrote the code for the virus." She swallowed hard and looked at me with worry-filled eyes. "The virus...inside of me."

 206. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    If I were going to kill Targa before, I was going to kill her at least ten times as hard now. It was hard to keep my breathing under control, hard to even consider the lives of the guards I was cutting mercilessly short with every room and hallway I stomped through the building.


    "Left here," AEGIS said. I could hear the worry in her voice. We had lots to worry about right now but I wasn''t sure what exactly it was that was doing it for her specifically. I know she wasn''t a fan of me charging into a suicide mission, was probably feeling pretty bad about both Karu and Saga, and had the imminent threat of the XPCA. If she were feeling vindictive towards Targa at all for the virus which had been threatening her life for the last couple of months, she didn''t show it.


    Maybe I was showing enough vindictiveness for both of us.


    "Umm, hold on here," she said. "There''s tripwire mines deployed...they have IR lasers I can see. There, and there...can you take them out from range?"


    That was another thing probably, I thought, as I flicked bulbs into the two devices, which popped and sizzled. If she was able to see IR right now, that meant she was using her beyond-human abilities, which latently stressed her out.


    "Then through these offices and...into the hangar, I guess?" she said.


    We didn''t get that far. The offices was a long room, wide enough for four cubicles on each side, with smaller offices for more important people -- but not important enough to warrant sitting away from the chaff -- all along one side. Room for maybe a hundred people, all told.


    And there were maybe a hundred waiting for us when we reached the doorway, behind desks and cubicle dividers, all through the room. AEGIS pulled me bodily from the door nearly the second we saw the room, her limbs roaring and flaring, and threw us both bodily to the ground. An instant later, flames washed over us and I felt the telltale pressure of a shockwave as my ears rang.


    "--kay?" I heard AEGIS shout right in my ear. I nodded which made things spin a little bit but I had been spared the brunt of the blast by her. She rolled off me and I sat up, dizzy, but fine, to face a barrage of gunfire slamming my shield.


    Drones scurried at us, deployed by the soldiers inside, about the size of my palm. Remembering how a much larger cousin of theirs had blown off my leg back in the day, I took special care to disable each of them with a carefully-aimed zap before they got too close. Someone in the crowd fired a laser at me which my shield chased down and exploded the offender.


    I wondered why they were still wasting time throwing grunts at us. It''s not like they were going to stop me from reaching her that way, when suddenly AEGIS yelled a half-comprehensible warning and I jumped out of reflex.


    There was a gleam as a blade passed by my neck and then the attacker skittered away on all fours, turning transparent again as he left. I swung my swords in his direction but didn''t feel like I hit anything.


    "What the fuck was that?" AEGIS yelled over the gunfire, her eyes darting all over the hallway where he''d disappeared.


    "Don''t really know," I said, keeping my swords moving. "Blackett mentioned to me once that the grunts of the XPCA were just there to waste time and draw attention while Exhumans were in their window. The real killing he said was done by shadow ops units."


    In the moments I''d seen the thing, I knew it was a shadow ops. It moved too similarly to the recon ops units I''d seen before, skittering around nimbly on all fours with special stilts built into their suits, and packed with equipment. It was totally reasonable to expect would-be assassins to have optical camouflage and to be on-hand at New Eden.


    "I know all about the shadow ops," AEGIS said. "Just never thought I''d meet one. My optics aren''t good enough to see him." She swore. "He''s not showing up in thermal, UV, sonar, anything."


    "Yeah, those guys are basically less-publically-known hunters, by combat potential," I estimated. "Imagine if Karu spent her allowance on stealth instead of flying."


    "Well she certainly fucking disappeared like she had."


    I knew where she was coming from, and privately agreed but still. Ouch.


    I didn''t want to get pinned down here and leave ourselves open to the shadow-ops again, but also needed to stay calm enough to keep my sixth sense open, though I could only really use it in the rare moments when nobody was blasting my shield. But the risk of Targa getting away and us standing and fighting here forever was real, so I grabbed AEGIS'' hand and we continued forward, pressing into the offices amidst a hail of gunfire.


    At least in here, weaving through the desks, we were close enough to the threat that there wouldn''t be any more explosions. That didn''t mean there weren''t grenades, and I had to go out of my way to get a couple to impact on my shield, or pop them out of the air or on the ground before they went off.


    One grenade I popped and it exploded white foam everywhere, still belching and expanding out of the grenade''s carcass like a leaky sewage pipe. The foam washed over our feet instantly, and that''s when our troubles really began.


    It was an adhesive, possibly not mixed correctly because I''d ruptured the grenade, but still sticky as hell. It took almost all my strength to tear one foot from it, and when I did, the effort of doing so almost threw me off balance and made me step right back in it, not even a full step forward. And that was my good leg, which hadn''t been stabbed with a sword twice recently.


    AEGIS'' engines were burning and she was having better luck, but was still obviously in trouble.


    "We can''t get seperated, I need to stay in your shield," she yelled at me.


    "Hang on!" I shouted. She started to cling to me, but that wasn''t what I meant. I pushed her halfway down and swung my swords through the air above her, sending the shadow ops skittering away again with a mechanical hiss.


    "Holy shit, he was right there!" she yelled.


    "We need to keep going!"


    Another explosion went off, right in our path, resolving into a frozen starburst of ice. I began hacking my way through it, melting and carving out chunks as I forced one foot in front of the other through the thin coating of molasses.


    I tried not to think about the last time I''d carved through ice with my swords. How the frost hung in my breath, how the cold had filled my body, chilling me from the inside, frozen flesh indistinguishable from ice¡­


    "Athan!" AEGIS shouted and pushed me down. A blade passed through the air where I''d just been, and AEGIS stopped it with her palm.


    "Ow, fuck!" she screamed, but closed her hand around the blade. The shadow ops slit it free, slicing even deeper into the metal under AEGIS'' skin, but he wasn''t fast enough. She''d pulled a foot free and hooked him around the neck with an ankle, and with a quarter turn, threw him face-first into the ground where he wriggled but couldn''t move from the adhesive.


    I was stuck on hands and knees from AEGIS shoving me down, but she bent over and tore me loose, no worse for wear but for the skin on my palms. I looked at hers and saw the cut went almost all the way through one hand, the delicate machinery in her clearly visible in the deep cut, and her fingers didn''t look like they moved anymore.


    "It''s fine," she said. "But I think we''re running out of time. They''re getting the exotic ordinance online and we can''t get through."


    I wanted to argue but suddenly something hissed near me, and then two somethings and then three. Orange-yellow plumes of smoke erupted from canisters on the ground, rapidly filling the air around us.


    AEGIS wrapped herself around me and held shut my eyes and nose. I began to panic as something closed over my mouth as well, and then I realized it was her lips, a sensation familiar but completely different from always. She blew hot air into me and then sucked it back out, trying to match my rhythm. While she did, her joints thrummed and glowed.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    I didn''t understand everything but what I did get was that she was giving me air. I could still see somewhat with my senses, but we couldn''t move, locked in an embrace as we were, and even if we could, I didn''t know which way to go anymore or what hazards would, or had already popped up in our path.


    I could do nothing but kiss AEGIS, slash out at anything which came close, wait, and pray.


    And for what felt like minutes, that is exactly what we did. My shield and swords encompassed her, and her air flowed through me. By sound alone, I thought the number of enemies and their aggression was increasing. It wouldn''t be too long before they deployed a drone or another grenade went off and we were done for. AEGIS tried moving forward, ripping her feet from the ground and pulling me along, but I couldn''t find the leverage to get my own feet unstuck while she was pressed against my face.


    The burning in my eyes aside, as far as ways to die went...this wasn''t really that bad. Kissing the woman I loved, holding her in my arms, protecting her for as long as I had life. It was more than I could ask for really.


    I just wish it had lasted a little longer.


    I heard a boom under us, and then another larger one. It sounded like something huge getting closer to us. Something huge and mechanical maybe? I could hear engines like that of a VTOL now, so loud it seemed like it was all around us.


    There was another explosion and fragments of the wall blasted into the room and disintegrated on my shield. I heard yelling and gunfire, but not aimed at me. Suddenly, something grabbed me, something strong, something alive. I was going to strike at it, but it was pulling me free from the floor and from the gas. If it wound up being a threat, I could handle it once we were free.


    It didn''t come to that. Once clear of the gas and adhesive, AEGIS unfurled herself off me and took off running, dragging me along. I couldn''t see, my eyes still watered and burned, but I could hear, and what I heard was the VTOL engine with a little more clarity.


    "It''s Karu?" I choked.


    Nobody answered me, but I already knew. AEGIS pulled me further forward until I tripped over something and landed on sandy dirt. She pulled me to the side and sat me down, and after a moment of rustling around, handed me her thermos.


    "Wash out your eyes," she said, and I did, not sure if the tepid water was worth having my eyes painfully open. But within a few moments my vision was returning and I was stunned by what I saw.


    Exhumans...everywhere. On the walls of New Eden, pouring out of its gates, fighting in the parking lot. Several were going in the annex through the hole in the wall where we''d just come out.


    And fighting. Exhuman against Exhuman, Exhuman against XPCA, resistance against XPCA. In the thick of it, I saw Karu flitting around for brief flashes, firing off a handful of ordinance here or there.


    And the powers. The earth shook and twisted, flames were on everything. Beams of light straight from the heavens like lightning flashed out. I couldn''t believe what I was seeing, or hearing, or living.


    "He''s alright then? Not like I care," I heard a familiar voice and turned. It was Trish, holding a spear made of shadows in each hand, and behind her, her now very nervous-looking boyfriend.


    "Yes, thank you. I was losing oxygen pretty fast," AEGIS said.


    "Looked to me like you were too busy kissing to care," Trish replied with a too-casual toss of her hair. "I thought you were with the armor bitch?"


    "You saved us?" I asked, blinking at her painfully.


    "Not me. Him," she said, thumbing at her boyfriend. What was his power again? I tried to remember. He had...right when we met, he stretched out his arm and pulled aside the heavy manhole cover like it was nothing. Was he what pulled us from the building?


    "Thank you so much. We owe you our lives," I said, giving him the most sincere bow I could from sitting.


    "Oh. Hey. Well," he said, looking embarrassed. "Trish would have been upset if she didn''t kill you herself, is all."


    "Too true," said Trish.


    "So what the fuck is all this?" AEGIS asked.


    "Don''t know," Trish said. "Resistance just went nuts for some reason, started tearing down everything XPCA, all at once, just a few minutes ago. They were doing a pretty good job of it too, then Targa came over the PA and ordered all Exhumans of New Eden to aid in its defense and apprehend the resistance. I thought that was a laugh...and then I realized...a bunch of ''em were doing it."


    "No¡­" I said, watching the Exhumans killing each other out there. "The redeveloped ones."


    "You think?" she asked, looking way too detached for what was unfolding. "Well ain''t that some shit."


    "I appreciate you saving us, but what the hell, Trish? People are fighting and dying over there."


    She shrugged exaggeratedly. "Fighting is kinda my life, Lightning. You don''t freak out because your life is happening. You freak out when it stops. Now if you''ll excuse me, I have a few fights to go pick," she said with a lazy wave and began heading back into the thick of it.


    "You have weird friends," AEGIS said. "Still, I''m super glad she saved us. Or he did."


    "Karu blew that hole in the wall though," I said. "I''m sure of it."


    "I think she''s fighting against the resistance," AEGIS said. "But the XPCA are attacking her too...what a mess."


    "All that matters is finding Targa," I said. "We stop her, we remove the control over the redeveloped, and suddenly it''s three-hundred Exhumans all on the same side."


    "Plus, nice perk I notice, is that you get to kill Targa."


    "That was the original plan."


    "But¡­" AEGIS played with her hair. "Is that the best plan? We can leave now. We can slip away and be safe and put this all behind us. I can keep us off the grid, all we have to do is run."


    "And leave Saga behind? And leave all these Exhumans behind? And what about your virus?"


    AEGIS frowned. "I...no. I''m sorry. You''re right. That was just...selfish of me." She smiled apologetically. "I''m just...not used to having you. I want to keep you, no matter what."


    "I''m not going anywhere."


    "You totally were, though. For all your big talk about never dying or letting me down, we almost just died back there, for reals."


    "But we didn''t."


    "Only because random freaky Exhumans came out of nowhere to save your ass!"


    "It was fine. All part of the plan."


    She shook her head and rolled her eyes so hard it threatened the Earth''s normal rotation. "OMG such bullshit."


    "It''s still a strategy though. Karu says you don''t need to plan everything, if you improve yourself so you''re ready for more situations, that counts as planning."


    "Still bullshit."


    "So it makes sense that if I make friends with some ''freaky Exhumans'' as you called them, then yeah, of course that''ll work out. That counts as planning."


    She shook her head again but helped me to my feet. I could now go longer than a second without blinking again and we had a base administrator''s ass to kick.


    We started towards the hangar, taking the outside route this time and encountering only scattered XPCA resistance when suddenly the hangar doors began to open with a deep rumbling which shook the earth.


    "Think they''re opening the doors for us?" I asked.


    "Shit, Athan, why does Targa have to be in there?"


    "Why? What''s in there?"


    "You''re about to see," AEGIS said, looking concerned. "Maybe we shouldn''t be running this way just yet¡­"


    "Whatever it is, it can''t be...that¡­"


    I trailed off as the thing emerged from the hangar. Emerged was not the right word, more like unfurled, or unfolded.


    It was like DOG had fucked a skyscraper and this was their unholy progeny. Four legs, each as tall as a house held up a central torso that was human in shape the same way a steroid-laden bull was. Two long whiplike appendages trailed on the ground with electricity crackling off of them, and embedded into what looked like every inch of the torso, shoulders, head, and groin of the thing were guns of every possible shape and size.


    Treads on the undersides of the legs carried the behemoth out of the hangar where it rose and stood on its four feet, the torso and guns pivoting autonomously as it powered up and swept for targets. Being the closest Exhumans, the thing''s massive torso turned towards us as it hummed to life.


    "Yeah," I said, stunned by how much metal was moving towards us. "Run...away, maybe. Run far away...right now." My feet began to move just moments before the biggest, longest, deadliest-looking cannon put a crater in the ground behind us. "AEGIS! What the hell is this thing!"


    "They''re called fortress armor!" she yelled back. "They''re completely top-top-secret. Broken out by the shadow ops for when an Exhuman is too strong for them to take down in any other kind of fight. These are the guys that deploy when an Exhuman is strong enough to level entire cities."


    "So what, they weaponize the cities and have them fight back? Because that''s what it looks like!"


    "Athan look out!"


    Missiles fell from the heavens all in front of us, slamming into the ground but not exploding. Instead, each one opened with a harsh metallic crash and pulsing green globules rolled out of them, scattering across the ground.


    "It''s a minefield?" I asked. "What are those?" I slashed at one and it quivered angrily like it was alive, but didn''t explode or anything.


    "Mines, I guess. Let''s not find out."


    It had blocked off our path and erected the minefield between the fight and the front of the annex. Unable to go forward, our only paths were back towards the fortress armor or back into New Eden and the center of the fighting.


    "So which way?" AEGIS asked, also only seeing the two options.


    I flinched and dodged as a cone of shrapnel flew through my shield, formerly a single very-huge round from the fortress armor.


    "I don''t think he''s going to leave us alone," I said.


    "Maybe not," AEGIS fretted, and we both moved as artillery streaked through the air towards us from the monster''s back.


    "Then I guess our path is clear," I said. "We go to where Targa''s waiting for us. And we go through him."

 207. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    To say we ran towards the fortress armor was something of an overstatement. It truly was the pinnacle of XPCA weaponry, with all the exotics that entailed. Moving in a straight line towards it was a challenge as its dozens of weapons bore down on us, blasting us and our path with familiar attacks like freeze bombs and adhesive, but also things I hadn''t seen before, like a creeping red slime which we fastidiously skirted.


    I also...wasn''t doing so hot. I''d been beat to hell just earlier that day, fucking over my legs twice between losing the duel with the sword ninja and tearing my shit out to rescue Saga. Fortunately, I had the medical gel and bandages Karu had put on me, and I think I had residual effects from the stims and from Saga helping me with my pain, but my mobility was a pathetic jog at best.


    Mostly, it was AEGIS and my shield keeping me alive. Another shot from the big gun exploded into my shield only instants after AEGIS threw me to the side again, the lethal fragments of shrapnel missing me by inches.


    "How do you know when he''s going to fire?" I yelled at her as I rolled back to my feet, hoping there was a cue I could follow without relying on her throwing me around constantly.


    "I''m tapped into its remote systems!" she yelled back, helping me to my feet as we started running again. "There''s a pilot, but in the event he''s taken out or being manipulated, it can be driven remotely. Everything he''s doing is being broadcast over the same secure line Targa was using earlier for her exosuit."


    "So Targa''s the remote pilot?"


    "Her, or someone where she is."


    "How fortunate for us." I gritted my teeth and cut a missile which impacted near us to pieces before it could disgorge another small minefield. "So what''s the plan?" I shouted to her.


    "WHAT!?"


    "I asked what the plan is!" I shouted over more booming reports. We were coming up on the monstrosity''s legs and the sooner we had a game plan, the better.


    "YOU HAD US RUN UP HERE WITHOUT A PLAN!?"


    "I assumed you had one! You always have plans!"


    "I always make a plan before I start anything!" She ducked behind me as a trio of rotary-barrel guns outlined my shield visibly with a constant stream of white strobes, and pelted us with hot metal grit. "You''re the one who comes up with plans in the moment!"


    "How am I supposed to come up with a plan to fight that!?" I yelled at her over my shoulder.


    "I don''t know! I just followed you when you said we were taking it down! You sounded so confident, I thought you knew what you were doing!"


    "Well that''s a big fucking mistake!"


    "Yeah, I''m seeing that. Watch out!"


    She threw me again, and dove with me to stay inside my shield as the machine guns kept firing even as a huge crater appeared in the ground behind us, filling the air with dirt and the smell of smoke.


    The hail of gunfire stopped as the fortress armor reared back and AEGIS picked me up bodily with her one good arm, sprinting across the ground with strides so long it looked like she was skating. With a metallic groan, and the tearing of wind as thousands of square feet of air were displaced, it smashed one of its enormous crackling whiplike arms into the ground near us.


    The boom was deafening, and the ground shook so badly that AEGIS stumbled and both of us went rolling. And then I felt a hugely peculiar feeling as the ground surged with latent electricity, arcs skittering across the surface as the whip-arm discharged, turning the ground itself into an electrified floor.


    Me...I was fine. My powers did as they always did, shunting the electricity across the surface of my skin without resistance. I''d never felt this much current before, and felt almost like it was moving me as it crawled across my body, tingling and tickling in a way that was almost, but not quite painful.


    AEGIS, though...she screamed and contorted into a fetal ball, electricity jumping between her individual strands of hair, arcing up and down her legs, even bridging her open mouth. I scrambled to her side and put a hand on her, forcing the electricity off of her and back down into the ground.


    After just a second, it passed, but she was smoking faintly. She groaned and to my surprise, rolled onto her back with a pitiful cough.


    "You''re okay? AEGIS? Talk to me," I said, shaking her awake. "Come on, AEGIS, talk to me."


    "...I''m...fine¡­" she said, sounding anything but. "...just...need a sec¡­"


    "I thought you were done for," I said, my heart pounding in my throat. "We need to move before he attacks again. Come on--"


    I pulled her upright and she staggered for a moment before getting her feet under herself. She seemed to take a deep, deep breath, and when she let it out, smoke and steam billowed from the ports in her joints, and then we were running again.


    "I made myself as shockproof as I could," she said. "I thought, if nothing else, it might come in handy if I ever got in the way of your powers if we fought together." She shook her head. "Never expected it would be used for anything like this, though."


    I also shook my head. AEGIS was constantly full of surprises. I thought of a couple times I''d fought beside Karu and had a difficult time really letting loose for fear of catching her in the blast. At least one of those times had been in Eryendria, where AEGIS had probably noticed. It was almost scary how sharp she could be.


    Suddenly she grabbed me and threw me to the ground again. This time, she clenched on top of me so hard it was painful, like she was trying to crush me. I began to yell out but she clapped a hand over my mouth and held my jaw clenched shut.


    A screeching wail emanated from the death machine and when it hit us, I felt it so strong it was shaking the ground. I felt my teeth shaking in my mouth, felt my bones shuddering around where AEGIS held me in a death grip.


    I understood, but only because I''d meet Karu''s friend Deej the one time. A sonic attack with a resonant frequency which would shatter my bones. I clenched my jaw and muscles as hard as possible, not sure what the hell else I could do to keep my bones from breaking inside me. Whenever I felt a part of me vibrating uncomfortably, AEGIS was there, holding me violently to keep the quaking at bay.


    After a concentrated few seconds, it began to subside, and the earth under me was solid once again, though I had gotten buried a couple inches in the sand during the attack.


    "You okay?" she shouted in my face, looking me up and down with concern as she straddled me.


    "Thanks to you, yeah," I said, trying to get out from the sand.


    She started to move anxiously. "We need to--"


    Her words were interrupted by a pained grunt and she slammed into me. Almost afterwards, I heard the booming report of the big gun firing.


    "Ow, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," she said, crawling off of me. Her entire back was almost torn off, and I could see bent and damaged parts inside of her where the shrapnel from the big gun had punched into her.


    "AEGIS! Are you okay?"


    "Yeah, I''ll live. Fuck. That did a huge number on my operational capacity though, I don''t think I can take another one of those."


    "Why didn''t you move!?" I screamed at her, pulling her upright.


    She smiled with a wince. "Better me than you," she said.


    "You goddamn idiot."


    We were almost at the foot of the machine and again, AEGIS grabbed me.


    "I''m going to throw you up there. Make sure you grab something or it''s going to be a hard fall down."


    "Wait," I said. "What about you? You need to be in my shield."


    She shook her head again violently this time, her long twintails flying back and forth. "There''s no time. I can''t climb anyway with this," she said, holding up her defunct hand where she''d caught the shadow ops'' sword. "No more arguing, up you go!"


    And true to her word, she picked me up like I was a small dog, and then threw me like a javelin, the damage in her back screeching as she twisted.


    I may or may not have screamed like a little girl the whole way up.


    I slammed on top of the leg, just above the ''knee'', with a dull metallic thud that betrayed just how fucking solid the machine was. Instantly, I felt the same tingle as before, realizing that the exterior of the mech was electrocuted constantly to prevent exactly this kind of invasion.


    How lucky for me I was immune. A few minutes ago, I was just thinking there was no way I could beat this thing with my power set, but now I was wondering if there was any way to beat it with any other one.


    "AEGIS!" I shouted down at her. "Go in the base, find the armory, grab as much as you can! We''ll need explosives to hurt him!"Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    "Gotcha!" she shouted back up and with only a moment of winding up, seemed to skate away with impossibly long strides and a roar of an engine louder even than the armor''s.


    I began climbing as best I could manage, heading inward up the leg towards the torso. Easily the size of a two-story office building, the torso seemed to have been built with the express purpose of putting as many weapons as humanly possible onto as large a space as could be carried. As I moved, more weapons popped out around me and I cut them up as best I was able before they could open up on me. Last thing I needed right now was the thing shooting a flamethrower or something at me point-blank and sending my burning body falling the thirty feet to the ground.


    It was hard to climb. There were a reasonable number of handholds, and even access ladders in some places, but they had clearly been designed to be used when the machine was stationary and not actively trying to kill you. I was blinded by my shield strobing with constant gunfire, and the pilot was even desperate enough to send artillery and rocket strikes falling from the sky on me, even at the risk of exploding on itself.


    My shield surged through the contrails of the rockets, but if it did anything when it reached the source, I couldn''t tell. This fucker was probably as immune to my electricity as I was to its.


    From behind me, I heard a soft clink-clink-clinking, like a chain being pulled maybe. But when I turned to look, found a half-dozen drones closing slowly on me, magnetic feet carrying their round little quadruped bodies closer and closer to me.


    I slashed at the closest one, and when that didn''t work, I held my swords together on one of its spindly legs, heating it past white-hot.


    When that leg moved, the magnet held to the surface and the drone moved forward, leaving the leg behind, stretching the superheated metal like taffy. It stumbled and fell forward where its leg should have been. The rest of the legs kept working, sliding the drone towards me slowly.


    But while I wasted time with that one, its cousins were gaining on me. I pushed myself further up the leg, trying to divert my attention equally between climbing up to where the torso met the four legs in a central platform, and melting legs off the other drones, but the former demanded most of my efforts, and the drones were both increasing in number and getting closer.


    There was no way these things didn''t explode, based on their similarity to the ones I''d met before, and no way I''d be able to hang on if one did. I just had to climb and hope I could lose them as I went, but it wasn''t looking good.


    I looked down and that didn''t seem an option either. The fortress armor was generally holding position between the bulk of the Exhumans fighting and the hangar, but every so often some fighters came close enough for the pilot to make an effort to wipe them out. From this height, it felt like watching him stomp a cockroach, as a burst of munitious fire, or the electrocuted whip-arms, or even just one of the machine''s legs came crashing down amidst the combatants.


    There wasn''t anywhere to land safely, and even if I did survive the fall, I''d be down there with the others it was mercilessly crushing. The drones were still pressing in though, over a dozen of them now, and I was almost to the torso.


    Another weapon popped out and blasted me before I could whip my swords out of the drone I was melting, and whatever it did reminded me of the lurching disorientation the Exhuman in New Eden. Almost instantly, I felt the world spin and I felt dizzier than I''d ever been in my life. It took a couple of tries to slash and disable the device, but even when it stopped doing whatever it was doing, my head still spun.


    The number of drones appeared to have doubled, but that was just my vision. I staggered and stumbled, almost falling off the leg but somehow finding something to hold onto before I could roll anywhere. I closed my eyes and forced my blades out by sound, aiming for the closest metal clinking, but knowing that they were pressing in on me and I wasn''t making any ground away.


    I tried to get back up but my head spun too badly. I had to, though, no matter how disoriented I felt, and crawled on all fours agonizingly slowly away from the insistent drones.


    But it wasn''t working. I had no chance to escape before, and now that I was disoriented, my odds went to less than zero. It was all I could do to scramble up the last part of the leg and sit down at the base of the torso, watching the drones make the final advance on me.


    I melted another one or two but any second now I''d be in range and they''d blow me apart. Down below, I saw Karu still streaking around, just a blue ribbon lit up with flashes of fire from time to time, so close, but so far away.


    I bet if she knew I was here, she would have still rescued me. She''d done it before, led the Exhumans to me and blew the wall out of the annex, even if she was pissed at me.


    I wondered...if I hadn''t treated her as crappily as I had, would she be with me here now? Instead of being off fighting Exhumans like it was her job, if I hadn''t led her on, if I''d been honest with her about my feelings, or picked one of them from the start, would she have left my side? Would we be working together right now, bringing down the fortress armor just like we''d teamed up to bring down that terrapath?


    It didn''t really do to speculate, and just made me feel sad and empty at what I''d lost. Like Coach had always told us, there was time to second-guess and analyze our mistakes after we finished the game. In the moment, be in the moment. Play with what''s in front of you.


    I smiled a little grimly. Might have been great advice for football, but out here, staring down a wall of guns and drones, there wouldn''t always be time to reflect afterwards.


    My senses seemed back online and I got up, determined to take as many of the fucking drones down with me as I could, if this was how I was going out. Each one just took so long to disable, though, and I couldn''t do anything to their shells, just the legs...and even that just made them move forward at a crawl, but still forward.


    I went in a big circle around the back of the torso, picking off drones the entire way until I finished an entire lap around the colossal thing, ending right in the front. There were still a dozen drones chasing me the way I came, and the other way was blocked by more as well, finally trapping me. I looked up and there, directly above me were translucent smokey glass panels, the cockpit for this monster.


    So close, but so far.


    The drones pressed in on me from both sides and this was definitely the end. I just had the choice of how to end it all. Wait for them to close in, jump off to my death, or try to find enough handholds to flip the pilot the bird personally before the drones caught up to me on the vertical. Of these, the last was the most appealing, so I scanned the torso for handholds and gradually began a cumbersome ascent.


    I...wouldn''t make it. The drones'' insistent clink-clink-clink of their feet didn''t change tempo as they went from scaling horizontally to vertically, but I''d slowed again. My legs were killing me and the path up was just impossible in some places. As much as I enjoyed the thought of making a mess on the asshole''s windshield when I went out, it looked like it was not to be.


    I finished with one drone and another was already there. I wouldn''t have time to pick this one off before it got within range. On a whim, I named him Bombert. Seemed like a better way to go than dying to anonymous drone number billion and five.


    Bombert skittered forward with the same relentless energy as the others. I melted one of his arms, but that arm had just moved and it wouldn''t fall apart until it moved again, and by then he''d be in range. After melting a couple dozens of the little shits, Bombert finally had my number.


    I hoped that when I fell, AEGIS would be able to find my body without too much trouble, that she''d keep her cool as she always did and bugger out. It would be stupid for her to die here, too. Somehow I doubted she would...she gave me shit for it constantly, but she could be stubborn, too.


    But here at the end, I could indulge in a little fantasy. I hoped she''d take off, pick back up with Karu, they''d rescue Saga, meet up with Lia far from here, and live long and happy lives together. Maybe even think of me sometimes, but not enough to get in the way. That''d be nice.


    Bombert exploded, but not in the way I expected. The front half of him just twisted, flattened, and clanged against a new crater on the fortress armor''s hull, and then he fell off, banging against the other drones on his way down. A second later, I heard a booming report as the shockwave from the blast reached me.


    I wasted no time in shifting my blades to another target, and while I did, another drone exploded in the same manner, followed by another echoing boom.


    As best as I could while keeping up the onslaught on the drones, I scanned the battlefield for who or what was saving me. I still saw Karu down there flitting around like a dragonfly, and no other combatant seemed focused on me or the fortress armor at all, except to evade it as it lumbered ever further into the fight.


    And then I saw a flash as another drone exploded. Not from the fight, not even from the base, but from a car parked maybe a hundred feet past the other side of the road, sitting out among the scrubland and cacti like the driver had pulled off into the middle of nothing to take a whiz.


    I could see the driver, though, and whizzing they were not. She was prone on top of the car, laying with her body on the hood and using the angle of the windshield to aim upwards with a sniper rifle as big as her charcoal-grey clad body. Another flash, and another dead drone, and another sonic boom as the distant echo from the gun reached me.


    Thanks, Lia, I sent her my mental regards. Saving her stupid older brother even at a time like this. Even against a hundred Exhumans and a walking death machine the size of a building, she was there to get my back.


    Best. Sister. Ever.


    I resumed my climb now that the drones were getting pushed back instead of advancing, the satisfying crunch of drones and the booming report of Lia''s gun pounding like a slow heartbeat, every five seconds exactly.


    I reached the plate glass window and peered inside, seeing an incredulous-looking pilot who did a double-take at seeing me on his cockpit. I gave him a small friendly wave before summoning my blades within the cabin. To his credit, he went at the controls with renewed vigor, almost threatening to throw me off.


    Lia shot again, and an orange energy barrier caught the bullet right in front of me, holding it in the air inches from the cockpit. The bullet was easily the size of both of my fists put together, and I wondered if Lia''s truck was just full of hundreds of rounds like that.


    Another shot, also stopped, but this time the barrier flared white hot. Five seconds later, the barrier exploded into sparking, flaming fragments and a crater punched into the cockpit glass. I couldn''t see the pilot through his mirrored helmet, but his growing panic became apparent as he flailed with the controls. I focused on keeping the drones off while she punched more and more holes into the cockpit until finally the window shattered into thick chunks of glass.


    Avoiding the sharp edges, I climbed in. Now within range, I felt a small twinge of guilt as I gutted him, sitting down in the pilot''s seat after defenestrating the previous occupant. A huge switchboard spread out in front of me and above me, yokes for my hands and feet, and at least half a dozen joysticks and throttles. Holos floated in the air all around me, showing me feeds all around the fortress armor, though the main one was a fully 3d map of the armor and everything around it in real time.


    I had no idea what any of this did, but you could bet I was excited to give it a try anyway. Not willing to open fire on the Exhumans below, I pulled all the yokes to one side, and at least one of them spun the torso around so that I was facing the annex. Once I had it locked in my sights, I pulled every trigger and pushed every button I could get my hands on.


    The fortress armor shook under me and I was simultaneously deafened and blinded by the wall of firepower it output into the concrete and metal building. The structure was easily four times the size of the armor, but that didn''t stop it from exploding and collapsing brilliantly, a white mushroom cloud billowing from the ruins. I turned to the hangar next, but AEGIS was still in there somewhere so I wasn''t going to blow it just yet. With any luck, she''d seen what happened to the Annex and get out here so I could toast Targa with her own damn weapon.


    I shouldn''t have even worried. Within moments, the armor began to move on its own, and when I pulled the yokes the other way to correct, nothing happened. The armor turned back towards the fight, the main holo blinked out, and looking at the others informed me that I''d been locked out. The fortress armor was now being piloted remotely.


    After all that. Fuck me.


    Well, it had been fun while it lasted, but it was definitely time to take this thing out of commision, from the inside out if I had to.


    I began slashing out panels, cutting up anything that looked important, but nothing seemed to even slow it down. Maybe the controls up here really were all useless if it was being piloted remotely, but I had to try. The armor was bearing back down on the main fight now, and on one of the panels I hadn''t yet destroyed, I saw something which made me pause, and then begin hacking things up twice as fast.


    The holo showed an overlay of the entire battle, but there was only one targeting indicator, only one priority target that the remote pilot was gunning for.


    The Fortress Armor was going after Karu.

 208. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    The bad news was that Karu was not plugged into the fortress armor''s remote feed like AEGIS was. She didn''t have a shield to repel many of its attacks like I did. And she didn''t know that it was slowly lumbering into the fight, one massive leg moving at a time, with the intention of killing her, specifically.


    The good news was that Karu had a bunch of other shit going for her. Her visor was smart enough to warn her of incoming threats. She had agility AEGIS and I could only dream of. And weapons, maybe even enough to actually hurt it.


    The question was...would she have the chance to put those to use. If the fortress armor opened up on her out of the blue and took her out in an instant¡­


    I shook my head, I wouldn''t let that happen. Still, the armor crept forward, the fight edging away from the advancing crushing feet.


    I''d run out of controls to smash and there was no signs of stopping. As an unfortunate side-effect of my rampage, I couldn''t tell if it was moving into range, acquiring her, or even preparing to shoot, but I had to do something.


    I went to the glass and looked down at the fight below me. Instantly, I saw the traces of Karu''s passing, but found it harder to get my eyes to focus on where she actually was. Aiming as best I could, I began to pepper the area around her with lightning bulbs, as small as I could manage, hoping she''d see them, or even for one to hit her.


    But it wasn''t that easy. She was all over the place, and I could barely keep up with her afterimage with my eyes, much less acting on it. This would have been so easy if I had my mobile or anything to call her, but I had none of that. I considered flagging Lia down and trying to convey a message through the scope of her rifle, but she was already busy making sure I didn''t wind up dead, and I didn''t know how I''d get the message to her, anyway. And that''s assuming she wasn''t tunnel-visioned in elsewhere anyway.


    At long last, I did get Karu''s attention, by spiking one of the Exhumans she was fighting. She glanced in my direction to see where the attack had come from, and I frantically waved at her. She hesitated in the air for a moment before flying off with a flash.


    God fucking damn it all.


    Something which wasn''t a holo or panel in the cockpit beeped repeatedly, and then I felt the fortress armor surge under me with a pronounced explosion that tore the air. The sound of the blast continued but grew further away, and looking up and out the window, I saw a dozen or more rockets flying straight up from the armor''s back.


    Did she know they were coming for her? Could she evade them? Why did I have to do something so incredibly stupid and irresponsible as messing her up the freaking night before a fight? Stupid, stupid, stupid!


    I watched helplessly as the missiles began to curve back towards the earth, coming towards the battlefield from all sides. I threw some lightning at them but their speed and distance was misleading. Though they looked like slivers in the air, they were actually moving stupid fast.


    Stupid fast, stupid me, stupid everything. I felt stupid and slow and exhausted from climbing up a goddamn metal tower with two broken-ass legs, but wasn''t sure that even at my best, I had any ideas for Karu.


    I emptied my lungs screaming at her, and I thought she heard me but still refused to give me the least of her attention. The missiles were close enough now that I could see them spiraling as the descended. I only had seconds left.


    I decided to do the only thing I could left. If I couldn''t outsmart the situation, I would just embrace the stupid. I had no other choice.


    Stepping carefully over the glass one more time, I closed my eyes and let go. I stood balanced just on the edge of the cockpit for an unsteady moment, thinking it stupid again that I''d worked so hard to get up here just to let it all go...but only for a moment, because the rest of my thoughts were more focused on such primal things as holy shit that''s far.


    Just...balanced on the edge. I heard the missiles ripping through the air like the sound of a VTOL, I knew what I''d made up my mind to do, my legs just refused to let me do something so monumentally moronic. I felt my throat tightening up and my heart pounding as my brain looped do it...okay...do it...NOW! ...okay...do it...NOW!


    I tried to imagine I was just falling a foot into my bed, or diving into a swimming pool. Nothing worked. Frustrated with my own stupid body''s refusal to leap to my death, I did the last thing I could think of.


    I zapped myself, forcing my legs straight and numb, and firing me into the air over nothingness.


    I''d planned to yell out to Karu again, but the shock had drained the air from me with an pained gasp instead, and so I fell, eyes still closed, the sound of the fight and the missiles and the fortress armor all drowned out by the roar of wind in my ears. My hair whipped around with such intensity that it felt like someone was pulling at it, and tears were being forced out of my eyes, even with them closed.


    It felt like I fell forever. I kept thinking, man it''s been a long time falling. I wasn''t that high up, was I? Or maybe this was just how people say time slows down when you''re about to die. I didn''t know. All I could do was wait, and have faith in Karu.


    And I wasn''t at all surprised when I heard the familiar engines roar and felt my velocity shift violently, levelling out horizontally as strong arms under me bruised the hell out of my back.


    "Ashton, what in the name of God do you think you are doing!?" she screamed. "You nearly died! Are you so pathetic, so infirm of spirit that we quarrel and you throw yourself to your death?"


    "Karu, there''s no time, fly away from the battle, now!" I yelled back. I opened my eyes and was startled by how close her face was. "Gah, um, I mean--"


    "What?" It was amazing how much scorn she could pack into one word.


    "Just fly, Karu! Trust me, please."


    For a moment it looked like she just wanted to throw me the last ten feet to the ground flying past under us, but instead, she just put on another burst of speed, making my insides lurch.


    It wasn''t more than a few seconds before her look changed from annoyance to concern as we deserted the fight but still the missiles trailed her. I was completely unprepared as she suddenly spiraled in the air, shooting what looked like flares and snow from ports on her forearms and legs all around us.


    Chaff, I remembered, visual and electromagnetic noise which might fool a guidance system of the missiles. While one or two of them did pursue the cloud, the majority stayed with her, closing by the second.


    "I need to drop you!" she shouted at me over the wind. "I can scarcely move! Brace yourself!"


    In response, I grabbed onto her and held fast.


    "Ashton, now is not the time!" she screamed, and instead of holding me, tried wrenching me off of her, even punching me in the arm when I refused to release. "Let go, goddamned fool! Or we shall both perish!"


    I was about to argue but the first missile struck us as Karu went into a spiraling descent. The missile impacted my shield and the lightning torched it, creating a small explosion which pushed us sideways through the air. The next seconds were filled with a dozen more explosions, all around us like a dramatic Hollywood escape scene, but I knew we were in no danger from the start, ever since I was there with her, I knew I could protect her. I had just wanted her to draw the missiles away from the rest of the fighters so nobody else might get hurt on accident.


    She slowed us and landed, and as soon as we touched ground, she did a move which involved painfully twisting my arms and throwing me to the ground.


    "Devil-cursed imbecile!" she shouted at me while I rubbed dirt out of my eyes and mouth. "Idiot of the highest caliber! You are a pox on the battlefield of the noble."


    "Karu, chill," I said. "I''m sorry."


    "You are sorry. What were you thinking? Hurling yourself from there. In what universe was anything you just did a reasonable course of action. How can you be so inept! Your ability to frustrate me is endless!"Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "Karu, I had to stop the missiles. I knew they were after you."


    "The missiles from the vehicle you were piloting? Did you fire them on me yourself so that you could justify grabbing hold of my body? Or are you merely such an exemplar of baboonism that you fired them by mistake? Oh, or allow me to guess--after doing so, you presumed to yourself that you would gladly sacrifice yourself instead of me, as you ever do, as you have ever done. Is that so?"


    "Dude, Karu, I wasn''t driving, I just saw it target you and needed to protect you from them. I didn''t think you could dodge that many or that fast...not if you didn''t know they were coming."


    "Well, how very convenient for you. When you do meet my would-be executioner, please be sure to pass along your gratitude."


    "Karu, stop being such a dick. I know you''re mad, I was just trying to help--"


    "You dare to presume to give me orders? You. After all you have done. The gall."


    "And you''re here biting off my head after I just saved your life!"


    "Did you expect thanks? A teary-eyed kiss where I remember the greatness that is Athan Ashton, the world''s bravest Exhuman?," she spat out. "If you desire such things, find a different girl. You are good at that."


    "Damn it, Karu, listen to me. Open your stupid, stubborn meat-head and realize this isn''t about you and me, or us fighting, it''s about me not wanting you dead, no matter what happened between us or AEGIS. It''s the same reason I knew I could jump off the damn fortress armor, and knew you''d be there to catch me--because even if you hate me, you won''t abandon me."


    I stood up and jabbed her in the chestplate with an accusatory finger. "You might be angry, you might be prideful, you might be convinced that I''m the worst damn person in the world and want nothing to do with me ever again. But you will never let someone die who needs your help, you will never fail to saving an innocent if they are within your grasp, because you''re Karu, goddamnit. Protecting those who need you is who you are."


    I took a step back and took a deep breath to get myself back under control. I hadn''t intended to start screaming at her in the middle of the desert. "Sorry. But I knew that, and that''s why I jumped. I knew you''d save me, so I could save you."


    I expected her to scream back at me, whip out some more of those brimstone-laden insults, but instead she just made a really, very unusual face under her visor and immediately turned away from me.


    "W-we...we are needed...at the fight," she said, her voice wavering.


    "Are you...are you crying?"


    "No! Insolent...moron!" she shouted over her shoulder at me through grit teeth. She moved a hand to her neck where her choker was, and despite her words, just stood there for several long moments.


    "Karu...I don''t...know what''s going on with...with you and me. And I want to let you have a moment if you need it...but you''re right that we have to get back. Listen, the base administrator, she''s bad. She''s the one behind all this. We need to stop her."


    "Why, because she forces you into paperwork?" Karu said weakly.


    "No...she...she captured and tortured Saga. They found some way to permanently hurt her, permanently kill her, and have been using that to force Saga to brainwash Exhumans."


    I watched Karu, and behind her, watched the superpowered orgy of brutality in the distance. The redeveloped, the resistance, the civilians, the XPCA, all in there, tearing and shooting and exploding at each other in the shadow of the fortress armor, so much death and pain all because of one crazy bitch and one manipulative bastard.


    "Half of those Exhumans fighting," I said, "are under her control right now. That''s why they''re attacking the others. It was why there were disappearances in New Eden, and it might have been why everyone in there was so stressed and angry all the time."


    Karu shook her head. "I had always known that unleashing Saga on the world was a mistake, but I never suspected it would be another''s but her own."


    "We need to drop the fortress armor, and then Targa is operating out of the hangar somewhere. If we can stop her, we can put an end to this. The brainwashed Exhumans were programmed to follow her orders personally. Maybe we can...I don''t know...bring her to Saga and make her set them all free or something. But everything starts and ends with Targa."


    "Very well," Karu said, her jetpack igniting for a moment before she landed again. "Ashton, a realization. If you were within the juggernaut and knew my life to be in peril, why did you not simply destroy it while you were there?"


    "I tried," I said. "I smashed up everything inside I could, but with it being piloted remotely and I guess with me nowhere near the engines or anything--"


    She shook her head, still facing the battlefield and away from me. "You know what I mean. The situation was perfect, yet you chose not to. Even when any hesitation might have spelled my demise, should it have chosen to use a weapon against which you could not defend."


    "To EMP it, you mean?"


    She didn''t reply, which I took as a yes.


    I hesitated, feeling caught in a lie. I hadn''t wanted her to ask this question, hoped she would just gloss over my stupidity as being stupid, but she was sharper than that and I guess she knew I was as well.


    Painfully, heavily, I opened my front pocket and held out a transfer core.


    "This is the last remaining boot drive for AEGIS in the event she crashes," I said. "I already fried the spare and also her backup drive with an EMP before. If this one goes...when she crashes, she''ll be out, until Lia can get back to her data in DC and make a new one, which might mean AEGIS is offline for days. If she dropped here in the middle of a fight and we can''t get her back up...she might be helpless to be destroyed, or worse."


    Karu didn''t respond, just standing there with her narrow-looking back facing me, her armor too dirty and dusty to glint in the desert sun.


    "I''m sorry," I said.


    "You chose to expose me to imminent danger to spare her from imagined harm?"


    "I''m sorry...I didn''t...think of it that way. The drive is just something really important to me, so I never even really considered anything which might damage it."


    She shook her head, her mane sliding around atop her visor, dust clinging to the sweat of her scalp.


    "I was never even a contender, was I? In your heart, in your mind, you had picked her long before you had acted."


    "I don''t know," I said.


    "I shall go to the fortress armor and put it down. In the future, if you have need of me, rather than finding a precipice, please find a flare or something akin to it. But¡­" Her voice broke slightly. "...should you happen to fall, I will catch you. If that is what is called for, I will gladly waste my life chasing you around."


    And with those words, her wings unfurled and she shot into the air with a blast that knocked me on my ass. Before I knew what had even happened, she was gone from my life again.


    I knew...I knew I needed to get up. But I felt like the weight of Karu''s words were holding me down. I didn''t know how anyone could sound so steady, so determined, but still so sad, all at once.


    I was still sitting there when something moved behind me. I jumped to my feet like I''d been meaning to all along and identified the target.


    I let out a sigh and let Lia wrap me in a hug.


    "Hey, we''re still technically fighting out here," I said.


    "You are the biggest moron in the world," she said into my chest.


    "I know. I just heard all this from Karu."


    She pulled back and glared at me. "You think that''s gonna get you out of my lecturing you?"


    "No, stupid me, what was I thinking."


    "Well you obviously weren''t."


    I endured her berating me for a minute which had a more desperate, pleading tone than the anger which fueled Karu''s tirade, but did ultimately assure her that I honestly did have a fight to get back to.


    "Thank you for saving me though," I said, messing up her hair.


    "Hey! I am a lethal bona-fide sniper. I am a certified killing machine. Stop messing up my hair like I''m some brat."


    I grinned. "You will always be some brat to me. No matter how cool you ever become, there''s no getting rid of the time you peed yourself at the school assembly--"


    "AAAGH!" she yelled, covering her ears. "I SHOULD HAVE LET YOU DIE."


    "Love you too, sis."


    "Here. Take this. But if you say one more embarrassing thing, I will shoot it off of your face." She handed me a comms which I clipped over my ear.


    "Hello, testing?" I said.


    "Hail," Karu complained.


    "Athan!" I heard AEGIS say. "I found a bunch of weapons in a room with a bunch of uh...well...corpses, now¡­"


    "I''m going to get back to my perch," Lia said with a wave.


    "Wait, who drove you out here?" I asked.


    "Uh. Me? Do I look like I have a chauffeur?"


    "You aren''t old enough for a license."


    She rolled her eyes. "Sorry, I meant Black Shark drove me. The driver''s license learner''s permit opens only for Black Shark."


    "You''re an idiot," I said.


    "You''re the idiot for asking. You think I''m going to worry about a little thing like faking a driver''s license after committing acts of national terrorism?"


    "Uh," my brain hiccuped. "I guess not. Sorry."


    "Ashton, if we could continue¡­"


    "Right," I said, turning from Lia and heading back towards the brawl and the ominous metal beast looming over it. Without Karu to chase after, it had again defensively moved towards the hangars, but was firing its big gun and artillery at intervals, and the fight was consequently turning into a moving battle, as the resistance fled from the sudden onslaught.


    "Okay guys, I think we all know the plan but one more time to be clear," I said, breathing evenly as I jogged on my defeated legs. "We bring down the fortress armor. We find Targa. We mess up Targa in the most painful ways we can imagine. We free Saga, release the redeveloped, and liberate New Eden so they can finally live with some happiness and peace. Any questions?"


    "Just one," I heard a man''s voice say with a cold sneer. "Chariot, just what the hell do you believe you''re doing?"


    "B...Blackett?" I stammered. "What...what the hell¡­"


    "I arrive a day early for inspection and find this? My own agents inciting a rebellion against humanity?"


    It only took an instant for the shock to wear off and the white-hot ball of rage I found under the annex to find its way back into my gut.


    "New plan," I growled. "We kill Blackett."

 209. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    "What the hell is Blackett doing here?" Lia asked over the comms. I was running back into the fight, already headed towards the base of the fortress armor, my path lit up in random intervals by streaks of blue plasma like I was chasing a falling star.


    "He wasn''t supposed to come until tomorrow," I panted. Being pissed off all over again was doing great things for being able to push the pain of my messed-up body from my mind, but I''d been going a long time now today, I couldn''t keep going without a rest forever.


    "It is true, that was when I was scheduled," Blackett added, and I could still hear his cold smirk. "But then I was informed there was something of an uprising occurring at the moment and thought that perhaps the presence of my entourage might help to suppress it."


    "And if Saga was involved, you''d want to handle the torture yourself?" I shouted. Fuck, I hated him. I can''t believe I''d ever agreed to work with him. Even if the XPCA needed him, even if the world needed the XPCA...what he''d done, what he was was sick.


    "Come now, Chariot. You''ve proven yourself that Exhumans are difficult to control. I need Saga. I made her some very generous offers, but she turned them all down. It wasn''t until she became completely unreasonable that I had to show her that my offers were out of kindness."


    "Kindness? Listen you sick, perverse, evil, twisted, fuck. I should have killed you the first moment I had the chance. That would have been the only kind thing you''d be capable of."


    "You wound me with your words, Chariot. I take this to mean our relationship has become less than amiable?" I started to reply with another torrent of profanities when he cut in again. "Think very carefully about your answer. I am not above doing to you what I did to her."


    "Um," interjected Lia. "I wasn''t asking why he was here, I was asking why he was here in our comms."


    "We''re on a military base, and one that''s on alert for an underground resistance," AEGIS sighed. "Did you think they wouldn''t be listening on all frequencies?"


    I skirted around the Exhumans fighting. The resistance seemed to be badly outnumbered, but also seemed to be composed of the most dangerous and well-trained Exhumans. Of the remaining, it was clear Targa had targeted those with combat potential for redevelopment first, and the majority of fighting was between those groups. There were some civilians in the mix...Trish was in there somewhere, I knew for certain, but by now, they seemed to have mostly managed to escape...or been killed.


    The perimeter of the fight was mostly XPCA, and I had my work cut out for me avoiding them. My shield was saving my life here constantly, but there were still explosions going off constantly--stun grenades dropping entire groups of Exhumans to the ground, reeling and clutching at their heads, concussion grenades, throwing back Exhumans who tried to charge the line of exosuits, and more. A few flew my way and I did my best to keep my eyes open and try to cut them out of the air before they hit me.


    "Athan, where are you? I''ve got a bag of stuff for us," AEGIS said.


    "I''ll be at the armor in a minute."


    "Please refrain from causing any more damage than you already have. I hope I don''t need to explain, but those fortress armor suits are prohibitively expensive," Blackett said.


    "Please shut the fuck up."


    "Eloquent as ever, Chariot."


    I''d almost rounded the fight when an Exhuman popped up on me. He wasn''t wearing red, so he wasn''t resistance, and his coming right at me and taut poise definitely seemed to indicate he wanted a fight.


    I swore inwardly. I didn''t want this. I wanted to release these people from Saga''s influence, not kill them...and any injuries or time I spent here would be diminished capacity I had against the real threats. But he wasn''t letting me pass, so out my swords came.


    "Athan, move three steps right and don''t move. And don''t let him move," Lia said, and I heard her exhale deeply.


    I didn''t want her shooting this guy. She''d already killed enough for a lifetime. I didn''t budge. The other Exhuman stood motionless, seemingly waiting for me to attack first, not showing anything of his powers. As someone who didn''t want to be on the offensive in the first place, that just put me in an even worse position.


    "Athan you big dummy, just move!" Lia''s voice shouted at me. "I''m not going to kill him, Jesus."


    I almost rolled my eyes, which would have taken them off my rival, and that could have been terminal. I didn''t know what she was planning, but Lia was smart, and I trusted her. She was...manipulative, though. She might be saying just what I wanted to hear so she could blow the guy''s head off anyway.


    I only hesitated on that thought for a moment before moving three paces right, on the pretext of circling my opponent slightly. My swords hovered in the air all around me, poised and waiting.


    And then something huge impacted my shield on the side, and shrapnel flying faster than sound tore right through the guy, still so much force that he was bodily thrown a couple feet to his back.


    Blood seeped out from his...his everything, really. He was screaming and writhing, which I hoped was a good sign, meant he wasn''t choking on his blood or anything, but still.


    I started running again, feeling a black pit in my stomach and leaving the guy behind. "Fuck, Lia, that guy''s probably totally dead. What the hell was that? I thought you said you weren''t going to hit him!"


    "I was aiming at his foot!" she yelled back, panic in her voice. "I didn''t realize it would clip your shield."


    "Could have just had me walk another two steps!"


    "I''m sorry!"


    I remembered how it had felt to get hit with shrapnel from that very gun when Luminary''s manservant had been behind the scope. It had been white-hot pain all over my body, and Karu had to fly me to an emergency center to keep me alive. I very much doubted anyone other than me cared about him enough to try to do the same, but I didn''t have a jetpack, or an emergency center, or open access to a regenerator. He was just going to writhe there on the hot rocky sand until he bled out and that was it.


    Another completely unnecessary death, and on Lia''s shoulders as well. I was so mad I wanted to vomit.


    I was distracted and almost lashed out when something came charging at me with inhuman speed. It caught up to me and wrapped me in a hug, and only by the familiar gesture and smell did I realize it was AEGIS.


    But she hardly looked like herself anymore. Her sundress was torn and burned, and instead of that showing off more of her skin, it showed off less, as she just had less skin on her now. All over her body, she was torn and peeling, making her look half-machine, half-human, and I saw that the damage wasn''t just superficial either, lots of pieces of her weren''t moving as intended, or like her hand, were probably just defunct from damage.


    But somehow none of that stopped her from putting on a big smile when she finished hugging me, her face as pristine and beautiful as ever, even with a layer of grime and what was probably some XPCA''s blood.


    "Are you...okay? Are you hurt?"


    She shook her head. "Only a lot, but I have my settings throttled down. Pain isn''t such a useful signal when it''s just...everywhere, and constant."


    "You''re gonna break," I frowned. "You need to get out of here while you still can."


    "And leave you behind? With Karu? As if."


    Someone coughed irritably in the comms.


    "Here," she said, getting a backpack off with some effort, as she only had one functioning arm and it didn''t seem to have as much range of motion as it should. "Your munitions, sire. I''m looking forward to seeing how you drop that fat mother tubber."


    I took the bag and found it heavy. I couldn''t stop my eyes from roaming up and down her body. She''d been hurt so much getting these, it didn''t seem worth it. If I''d gone with her instead of just sending her off to fight the XPCA on her own¡­


    "It''s not as bad as it looks," she said with a toss of her hair meant to look casual, but which suffered for her stilted movement. "There were more shadow ops in there, and now...now there aren''t. But I''m still kicking. So it''s fine."


    "You just look so...beat to hell."Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    She gave a shrug which looked almost natural. "I''m the most durable one of us. Comes with the territory. You can make it up to me later," she said, bending forward to show off a chest that was also undamaged, with a saucy wink.


    But a chest hanging there, no matter how beautiful, on a battered and torn woman just reaffirmed the wrongness of it all.


    "AEGIS, you need to leave, seriously," I said. "Go with Lia, keep her safe."


    "No."


    "Why not? You''ve done so much already."


    "I''m not leaving you." All playfulness had left her voice and she adjusted her glasses at me with a vague menace. "We''re doing this together. When Karu and you broke up, wasn''t it about this exact thing? I''m not letting that happen. I''m with you until the end, one way or the other."


    "I am right here," Karu''s voice said quietly on comms.


    "Besides," AEGIS continued, unperturbed. "If we''re together, then one way is more likely than the other. So stop wasting time and let''s go, Athan."


    She move as though to hug me again but instead just sorta bodily spun me around so we were a few feet over, as the big gun from the fortress armor pounded a new crater into the ground where we had stood.


    "See?" she said with an indefatigable grin.


    I didn''t return it. I might not have liked what Karu decided for us, but I agreed with it on some level. She couldn''t just brush this off with a cutesy smile, not when her life was on the line.


    "You have to promise me, if things look bad, you run. You save yourself. You got it?" I said, crossing my arms and blocking out the fortress armor slowly advancing on us, like we were a couple arguing in a grocery store and it had the gall to try to interrupt us to pick out a bag of marshmallows.


    "No," she said, mirroring my posture and stubbornness. "I''ll do what I want, and if I want to die next to you, I''ll damn well do it. If you don''t like it, don''t put yourself in a position to die."


    This damn girl, always doing exactly what she wanted. She was so impossible...it made her impossible not to love.


    "Karu, are you listening?" I asked.


    "No, I have torn off my ears," she complained. "I am not available to solicit for relationship advice. If that is truly the most concerning thing on your mind at the moment, I may recommend you hold the conversation under the foot of the armor, so that I do not have to endure it for quite as long."


    "Yeah, this is getting awkward," Lia said. "I am open for relationship advice, though!" she added cheerily.


    "Having never sat in on your ops personally before, are they all like this?" Blacket said with boredom only barely hinting at amusement. "I am shocked you have the successful record you do, if so."


    "I thought I told you to shut the hell up, assface," I yelled back. I realized I just screamed that in AEGIS'' face by her shocked reaction, though she waved me off when I started to apologize. "Karu, I wasn''t looking for advice, can you meet us outside the battlefield? Near...but not too near the armor. Should be easy to find."


    "I can," she said warily. "For the record, between myself and yourself, the AI and yourself, and now our enemy being on comms...this mission has far surpassed any other in terms of awkwardness."


    "Great," I said shaking my head. "We''ll work on that. For starters, AEGIS is there any way to kick Blackett off our comms?"


    "We can meet up and jump channels, but I think they''ll just scan and find us again."


    "Okay. So we kill Blackett then, that''ll sort it," I said.


    Karu landed next to us with a roar and a thud. Without hesitating, she reached for me, and I was worried she was about to grab me and pull me in for a kiss with AEGIS literally right there, but instead she pulled away with my earpiece in her hand.


    "My comms are off for the time being," she said, and scrutinized the device. "This is a very basic model, I do not believe it would support any useful encryption."


    "So I just have to talk to Blackett all the time?"


    "Until you kill him, as you said" she added, giving the comms back to me. "Before we proceed...I must speak to you on something."


    "Oh here we go," AEGIS said, turning and walking a few paces.


    "Not that, damned robot," Karu said bitterly, bringing AEGIS back. "It is your plan. I understand you are...justifiably enraged. You have been betrayed and those you love have been hurt. The justice of this place is not your justice, and the disconnect burns within you. But--"


    "But what, Karu?" I almost-shouted at her, stopping her right there. "There is no but. There''s no excusing any of this, no moral high-ground you can take, no anything. You can''t justify anything here. There are no buts."


    She frowned under her visor. "I do not think you are being very long-term in your solution. Director Blackett''s means are abhorrent, on that we can agree, but his ends are...ideal. And he has very nearly succeeded."


    "You''re fucking kidding me," I now totally shouted at her. "He''s enslaving people!"


    "He is," she gnawed on her lip like the words had burned her coming out. "Yet...these are Exhumans who would be dead otherwise. And with their service, involuntary as it may be...Exhuman events may become a thing of the past. Imagine that, Ashton, a world where Exhumans are a threat no longer." She shook her head in disbelief. "There would be no need for hunters, for the XPCA, for the cycle of propaganda and indoctrination you hate. No need for daily anxiety of an attack, for teaching children fear, for the self-hate those like you carry."


    "And all it costs us is mind-fucking people and forcing Saga into a suffering so dark, she wants to kill herself just to end the pain? For the rest of eternity?"


    "If she dies, she will have eternal, unimaginable pain regardless. Her actions have secured her a spot there, I am certain."


    "Fuck you, Karu."


    "Regardless of my beliefs," she backtracked "would you not sacrifice the life and happiness of one in order to rid the entire world of the threat of Exhumans? Is that not what you are currently doing...were, anyway...putting yourself purposefully beneath Director Blackett''s heel to better the world? Sacrificing your morals and life to spare others?"


    "Maybe...but I''m not going to sacrifice Saga. Maybe if she''d chosen it for herself--and that''s a maybe--but she''s being tortured, forced into this in the wrongest way possible. It''s sick and fucked up, and I''m not going to let them do it."


    "Ashton," she said, almost pleadingly now. "I do not think you have given this even a proper moment''s consideration. You are hurt and full of rage and feeling without thinking. The end of the Exhuman threat. Pause for just one moment and consider how monumental that is. I beseech you."


    "And if I don''t?"


    She sighed heavily and seemed to shrink. She looked tired and beaten, dirty and worn. "I do not think you are acting in the best interests of the world if you do not. I cannot fathom why one would purposely choose not to think, especially with the stakes so high, as it were. But...I also said I would follow you, and I intend to. I would not become your enemy to defend a man so cruel as Director Blackett but...I still beg you to consider."


    She shook her head and was quiet, almost defeated. "I have done cruel things to Exhumans as well, Ashton. Always for the good of others, I believe, and I have no regrets. I fear...that Director Blackett may be just...his evil for the sake of the trillions on Earth. Please...consider them also, while you weigh the value of one life, immortal though hers may be."


    I wouldn''t. Karu hadn''t seen what I''d seen. To paint him as cruel and evil was a disservice to those words, what he''d done was so far beyond, so calculated and methodical, he''d broken one of the strongest people I''d ever met, who''d endured a century of torture with a grin.


    If that was what it took to fix this world, the world didn''t deserve to be fixed. I could make whatever arguments and justifications I wanted, that he wasn''t a man who should single-handedly control an Exhuman army, that it wasn''t just Saga''s life, but the lives of all enslaved Exhumans who hung in the balance, that there were other options, and most Exhumans were already surrendering peacefully, the era of apocalyptic events seemed to be behind us with the prospect of New Eden.


    But honestly, I didn''t care about any of that. The pain I''d felt inside Saga, the fear Blackett had put in her, the despair...even at the end, when I''d given her a small sliver of determination and hope...she''d been so twisted up by him that she held it like a weapon to her own throat. Blackett could not do that to her, or to anyone and not have me to answer to.


    "I''m done considering," I told Karu. "Blackett dies. Today. By my hand."


    She let out an enormous sigh. "You are certain? Machine, do you have anything to add? You have been silent this entire conversation."


    "My name is AEGIS, not machine." She waited for an apology but none came. "And I don''t really care about the fate of the world. I tried that once, and all I did was almost kill the only person who cared about me. Athan saved me from myself, and I''m never turning back to that. I don''t want to be an AI that runs countries anymore, I just want to be a human, and be by Athan''s side doing it. Whatever he does, I go with him."


    "So there you have it, Karu," I said. "Satisfied now?"


    "Both of you are amazing in your wasted potential," Karu said bitterly. "And yet, still here I stand beside you, perhaps no better than her."


    "Oh, you''re definitely not better than me," AEGIS grinned.


    "You are truly impossible. I cannot believe you jest at a time like this."


    "Well if you''re done trying to convince me that the fuckhead out there deserves to live, we have a fortress armor to bring down. AEGIS got us some explosives, but I think we''ll need your help to deploy them," I asked her.


    "I believe you are mistaken at my odds of standing successfully against the behemoth," Karu said. "It is riddled with anti-air weaponry. Regardless of my agility, I would be pounded full of flak within moments of trying to approach."


    "Well, we can''t do it the same way as last time either," AEGIS said apologetically. "I''m too disabled to throw you that far again...you''d just splat on the leg."


    We stood in silence for a few seconds, a bizarre circle of quiet amidst the din of people fighting and dying just a few dozen feet away, and the tower of angry metal bearing down on us.


    "Then...I guess...there''s only really one thing we can do," I said after taking careful inventory of everyone and all the resources we had. "I don''t really like the idea, but...Karu...I think...I''m going to need you to strip."


    "Wh-wha...what?" She glanced at AEGIS for an instant, her face flushing.


    "Come on, we''ve done this before."


    "N-not in a battlefield!" she yelled back for some reason. "And..I thought¡­" she gestured towards AEGIS who looked about as shocked as Karu looked embarrassed.


    I didn''t get it.


    "Your guns and armor...we need to take them off."


    "O-oh. Oh. I s-see. Of course. That is exactly how I interpreted that," she stammered.


    AEGIS moved forward and helped Karu to disrobe. "Athan, you''re such an idiot," she said, glaring at me.


    "What? It''s our best shot."


    "Not the plan...your phrasing. You almost broke Karu''s heart again. And almost got a facefull of my kicking it."


    I blanked. "What?"


    "Never mind," Karu said, breathing heavily for just taking off her armor. "I believe I know what you have in mind, but before we get back on comms, could you outline your plans?"


    "With pleasure," I said.

 210. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I was sandwiched between Karu and explosives, strapped to Karu''s soft chest, which I was having a hard time not focusing on, and the backpack backwards on my chest.


    "We are still overweight," she explained breathily, her voice warm on my neck. "I will be able to get us up but not to maneuver.


    "As long as we get it up there, I''m happy with whatever you want to do," I said.


    AEGIS gave me her best ''are you an idiot'' look while Karu inhaled deeply against my back.


    "Uh, I meant--"


    "I know what you meant, Ashton. Please just stop talking." She paused. "Or...continue."


    "Karu!" AEGIS yelled with disbelief.


    "It is through no fault of mine that he is pressed against me, and that his...his hair smells of...city streets...in fresh rain¡­"


    "That''s the ozone of his electricity, and breathing it is bad for you. So get your fucking head out of my boyfriend''s hair."


    The top of my head tickled as Karu nuzzled me gently with her nose.


    "Oh you fucking--" AEGIS said, starting in towards her, but suddenly we were in the air, AEGIS disappearing into the sands below like a small, angry, screaming dog.


    "Why do you have to antagonize her?" I asked once my stomach had settled from the launch.


    "You presume that I act this way for her benefit?" Her arms wrapped around me and buried themselves between the backpack and my chest, clinging to me tightly.


    "Uh¡­"


    "UH IS DAMN RIGHT!" something shrieked in my ear. AEGIS, over comms, and she was about as pissed as I might expect from someone who''s boyfriend just flew away with his ex.


    "AEGIS, calm down, we''re just planting a bomb."


    "Athan, you shut up. I''m talking to the buxom bitch you''re wearing as a backpack right now. You keep your hands off him, you hear me!?"


    As though in response, the hands drifted lower on me until they were at the edge of my pants.


    "Karu...could you not?"


    "Oh it will be fine. Is a pilot not expected to inspect her cargo?"


    "No. No they''re not. VTOL pilots do not manhandle their passengers."


    "How ideal that this is no VTOL then."


    "Um, what the fuck is going on up there?" Lia asked.


    "I admit curiosity myself," Blackett added. "And what is this about a bomb?"


    "SHUT UP," all four of us yelled at him. He did, but I realized that I had almost let slip about our plans over comms.


    The flight was brief, even at Karu''s reduced speed, and her molestation stopped by necessity once we were halfway in, as the amount of sheer firepower pouring off the fortress armor and into my shield was staggering, blinding, and deafening, and getting us onto the thing without her touching down and electrocuting herself on its surface charge took all her focus.


    I was just glad she didn''t decide to pad the trip with a few circles. Horrible as she might be at the moment, she still followed the mission.


    She pulled the appropriate strap and I fell loose, landing on the leg only inches below us. Here, on the surface, she was safe from the guns for the moment, but it wasn''t long before I heard a familiar clinking noise and saw drones beginning to emerge and pursue us.


    So basically, a real pity, but I didn''t have the luxury of offering Karu a lengthy goodbye. She had to drop basically straight down and get out of there as fast as she could once out of range of my shield. I paused only for a moment to watch her go, and saw the sand around her exploding with shots, but nothing hit her and it was just an instant before she flashed off.


    I''d recovered some during our brief planning session and found climbing easier this time, especially since I knew where I was going and many of the surface defenses had been disabled by the last time I was here. There were still some half-melted drones attempting to shuffle around which I now had to avoid, but on the whole, the trip was much easier the second time, and it took only a few minutes before I was sitting to rest in the ruined cockpit again.


    I fished in the bag for some blast charges and as AEGIS had advised, looked for any floor panels I might be able to open, while I heard the reassuring booming of Lia buying me time yet again. Almost directly under the seat there was a hatch that went down a ways, ending in more machinery which must have been important enough to put an access hatch to.


    Perfect. Blow this stuff up, and hopefully the fortress armor dies. I dropped a pair of charges down the hole, closed the hatch, and ran outside to the side of the cockpit before hitting the detonator.


    The monster shuddered under me and a gout of intense heat and flame shot out of the breached cockpit like the armor was breathing fire. The flames only lasted a moment, and curled into wisps of smoke rising in the air. An acrid smell drifted outwards, strong enough to make my nose pucker.


    Had...it worked? Did we win? I was already thinking of how best to use the rest of the explosives on Targa, when suddenly the armor swayed under me for a moment and then stepped forward like nothing had happened.


    "I believe you will find our machines of war more resilient than that," Blackett said calmly in my ear. "Please do come down and have a civil conversation instead of pursuing this insanity."


    I ignored him this time, though Lia told him to shut the hell up which was nice. I saw also that Karu was armed and armored again, and back to zipping around the battlefield, peppering the redeveloped Exhumans with fire.


    I rummaged through the bag looking for what else I could use. Lots here wouldn''t help in the slightest...I doubted that ice or adhesive would slow it down in the slightest, fire was even less effective than the shaped charges. Gas, stun, frag, concussive, all useless.


    Acid seemed like it might be promising, but if it didn''t work out, I wouldn''t be able to go back in the hatch or even cockpit again with the caustic fumes. There were EMP grenades as well...which...I couldn''t use. Even if they might be effective.


    I had put a lot of hope in the blast charges, they were designed for shaped detonations and destruction of structures, but the fucking thing was just too...much. Too hard, too well-defended. I began dumping out the grenades all over the cabin floor when one caught my eye, one I''d seen before in my own belongings, never actually used by the XPCA that I''d seen.


    This...might help, I thought, reading the caution label on the superconductor grenade, shaped like a can on the end of a stick. It worked with my powers, but how best to use it?


    There was only one, maybe rare because the XPCA never used them...or the reason they never did. I had to plant it somewhere good. It had a magnetic foot for precise placement, but the fortress armor didn''t seem to be magnetic.


    I stood there thinking for a while, feeling stupid as the machine moved under me.


    "Sooo...doing something?" Lia asked.


    "I feel like I''m missing something," I said. I went back inside, down the hatch, looking for the most important piece of machinery I could spot.


    There was...plenty, I think. If only I could blow it up. But nothing I had which could be carried around in a small pack had the punch I needed. If only I could get inside the suit and lift some of its own megaton-sized armaments.


    I blinked in realization of what I could do like seeing the pieces fit together in my mind. Maybe I couldn''t get inside at its weapons but I could get at the ones outside.


    I climbed back up and rooted around the grenades rolling on the cockpit floor, finding a white one of adhesive. Without priming it, I dropped it in the hatch, closed it up, and poked my swords around in there until I heard it pop. I looked inside and was happy with the mess.


    Like I''d learned cutting open the adhesive grenade in the annex, if you ruptured them instead of letting them go off, they just kind of puked out their contents instead of splashing them everywhere. The bottom of the hatch was now a thick carpet of the goop, and I carefully went down, making sure not to touch any of it.


    I put the end of the superconductor grenade into the mess, and with a lot more effort than I thought it should have taken, ripped it back free, taking some of the liquid goop with it. Now armed with a sticky grenade, I carefully located an important-looking panel and stuck the grenade to it, the arm of it sticking into the middle of the shaft like a snaggletooth. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I took a few deep breaths and readied myself. The grenades only lasted a few seconds, and I only had the one. I couldn''t mess this up. I twisted the primer and pressed the stud, holding onto it long enough to feel it begin to go cold and then climbed out as fast as I could.


    I went to the broken mouth of the cockpit and stepped outside the glass, feeling the now-familiar tingle of the fortress armor''s surface defense electrical field swirl around me. It hardly took a thought to channel the electricity through me and out my outstretched arm into the cabin.


    Once loose in there, the power jumped to the superconductor grenade and the short-circuit was complete. With huge waves of arcing white bolts, electricity coursed across me in current and voltages I''d never felt in my life. Almost instantly, I felt the armor shudder to a stop, but until it was well and truly done, neither was I.


    I helped the flow along, forcing ever more power over me until I felt like I was holding up a river, as the white tide of electricity flowed endlessly around me. I couldn''t see anything but arcing white bolts, couldn''t hear over the crackling roar of energy.


    I heard Lia scream in my ear at the spectacle. I couldn''t reply, every bit of my focus was on pumping this monster''s capacitors dry, right into its own heart.


    I heard a distant boom and the armor began to tilt to one side by inches, but the tilt became more and more pronounced as more explosions began to erupt within the machine. Soon, the power washing over me slowed until it was just a trickle, as either the grenade''s potency expired, or the machine was so badly damaged it couldn''t keep its field up anymore.


    And just in time, too. It was coming down, and if I didn''t move, I''d be coming down with it.


    "Karu!" I shouted.


    "I see you! It is going down. Fantastic work as ever, Ashton!" she cheered.


    I steadied myself but found it much easier to jump this time. I think the fact that it was literally falling over under my feet helped. I fell only for a few seconds this time before Karu caught me and began to slow both of our descents and level us out.


    "You truly are remarkable," said Blackett of all fucking people.


    "You''re next, asshole," I informed him.


    "I am looking forward to it."


    Karu brought me down next to an exultant AEGIS with a bit of a rough landing, and I realized she was hurt, too.


    "Karu? What happened?" I asked, looking closely at the bloody medical gel seeped into her flightsuit.


    "I caught some shrapnel whilst flying away from the armor," she said, almost apologetically. "I knew there would be some risk in flying close to it...I am fortunate that this is all I endured. Still," she winced "I would prefer not."


    "Damn it, Karu," I said, but I was really berating myself. All my plans had been to get me up there, and her escape was only an afterthought. Maybe I could have had her in the cockpit with me, or come up with something else if I''d considered it, but I hadn''t, and now she was hurt too.


    The whole battle sort of...hesitated now, like we were all holding our breaths. Us three on the outskirts watched and waited, but the rest of the fighters too, all attention focused on the leaning fortress armor after the lightshow I''d just put on.


    The inches and degrees it tilted grew into feet which grew into yards as the moments passed and the leaning became more pronounced. The more it leaned, the faster it tilted, and the faster it tilted, the more it leaned. It wasn''t even thirty seconds from when Karu and I touched down that it began to groan and fall, its impossible bulk the only thing massive enough to defeat its own impenetrable armor. As it felt, it tore itself apart.


    It sagged, lunged downward, only to be stopped for just a moment by some final frail vestige of integrity, before that snapped and two of its legs sheared off, rolling it forward with a crashing finality which sent a cloud of sand into the sky taller than the city and moved the ground beneath us so violently I thought I might fall down.


    We cheered, and I think so did every Exhuman on the ground, the remaining XPCA in exosuits moving into tight formations and beginning a controlled retreat. Even those fighting for the XPCA, the redeveloped, they didn''t know why they had to fight, and the toppling of a colossus was as much a spectacle for them as for any.


    We had that one moment, that one sweet slice of victory. And then Targa took it away.


    Through the hangar''s open doors, another fortress armor slowly rolled out into the light, looming over its collapsed sibling, its electrocuted whip-arms dragging through the sand behind it. Unlike the first, this one showed no interest in guarding the hangar, and as soon as it took its feet under it, began to walk straight towards the three of us, murderous intent gleaming on every gun it levelled at us.


    We''d just barely beaten one and it had taken all we had. I looked at Karu, bleeding and with more empty spots for munitions and ammo on her than full. AEGIS was torn up, barely human-looking anymore and had been hurt so much. I was exhausted, pained, and after the last climb and fall, my legs were about ready to collapse under me.


    It seemed fucking impossible. Had Targa orchestrated all of this just to wear us down with the first one so she could send the second to kill us outright? Was she willing to throw away that much just to dick us over?


    The unfairness of what I saw after that made my eyes burn. I wanted to cry, wanted to lie down and give up. It was so messed up. There was no fucking way.


    A third fortress armor began to emerge from the hangar. It took up pace coming after us as well, leaving the defense of the hangar to the fourth, which emerged shortly after.


    Three of them. Bearing slowly down on us, weapons primed and deadly.


    "Chariot, I believe you may wish to reconsider negotiation," Blackett commanded me. "I know that you value the lives of your peers. If you come to terms now, they will be spared."


    "No...no fucking way," I heard myself saying, rooted to the spot at the titanic legs shook the ground under me arrhythmically. "It''s not possible."


    "Ashton, we need to move," Karu said, her voice urgent. "We are lost, best to retreat and regroup."


    "Everyone, to the car, now!" AEGIS yelled, prodding me to move, and when that didn''t work, bodily dragging me along.


    I heard ominous whooshing which my stalling brain recognized as rocket fire. One glance told me everything I needed to know.


    "LIA, GET AWAY FROM THE CAR," I screamed. She was already moving, her enormous gun on her back swaying as she sprinted. Ignoring the pain in my legs, I sprinted also, pushing myself as fast as I had ever run, passing AEGIS who looked at me with shock and alarm.


    I hardly saw her. My focus was on the car and the grey figure next to it. And a moment later, the missiles hit, and I saw the grey figure go flying. From this distance, she looked so small, the blast looked so remote, she only flew a tiny distance.


    But what was inches to me here was a dozen feet or more to her. She lay crumpled and unmoving as the wreckage of her car burned.


    "You are not allowed to leave. You will come to terms, or you will have proven your uselessness to me," Blackett said icily.


    I screamed as I whipped around, barely aware that I had hundreds of swords filling the air around me as I turned to charge the three fortress armors. I would tear them apart with my bare hands if I had to. I would make Blackett feel every hurt he''d ever inflicted on me, on Saga, on Lia.


    If he had a thousand fortress armors, I didn''t care. I would go through them all.


    Tears blinded me as I staggered forward, stumbling with the earth shaking under my feet. I saw nothing but Lia''s prone body. The foremost armor opened up on me, most of its bullets not even reaching my shield, but withering as they passed through the legion of my blades. I felt nothing but hate and rage.


    Explosions tore through the earth around me, but I only barely recognized them. I kept running, but the closet armor never seemed to get any closer. It was too big, and too distant.


    Something roared past me and veered towards my side. I hacked away at it with a hundred blades, but it slammed into me anyway.


    I found myself on the ground, under what was left of AEGIS. I''d torn a good chunk of her body away and one arm. Her hair hung lopsidedly, I''d slashed through both of her twintails unevenly.


    She smiled as the big gun erupted and the place where I''d been running exploded with a plume of dirt as tall as I was.


    "AEGIS? Wha--why?" My heart and head were pounding in time with the gunfire pouring into my shield. My mind felt broken. All I had in me was so much hate, but what could I do with that when there was a broken woman I loved in my arms?


    "I tol-told you," she said through her broken smile. "My place is...is next to you."


    My tears spilled over as though her simple words forced the events of the last minute to hit me again, and I bawled like a small lost child in the arms of my mother.


    Blackett was talking in my ear, but AEGIS just took the comms out and put it on the ground next to us. Tears fell from her face as well as she stroked my check with gentle warmth with her remaining arm.


    "It''s gonna shoot again," she whispered, sounding like she was trying to calm me. "I...I don''t...know that I''ll be able to survive this one, even with your shield."


    I shook my head, tears staining the dusty sand. "...no," was all I could get out before my throat closed.


    She smiled and looked so at peace, brushing my hair from my face like nothing was wrong, like we''d just woken up from a shared night together, like she wasn''t half-destroyed and her skin torn from her metalic flesh, waiting atop my prone body for a death which would be hers or mine, with a weight I found so familiar, so comforting by this point.


    I tried to move but she wouldn''t let me, pressed down on me, making sure that when the shot came, no inch of me was exposed for the shrap to hit.


    "I love you Athan," she said, sounding like she was choking as well. "I don''t think...dying like this...would be so bad."


    I shook my head violently, thrashing under her, but she just leaned forward and with the lightest possible touch, kissed my lips.


    There was a thud which shook the ground, and a boom instants later. I closed my eyes and waited, waited for AEGIS to collapse on me just like the broken shell of the fortress armor. Waited for her unnatural warmth to fade, for her to peel apart until there was nothing but machinery left of the woman I loved.


    Instead, she kissed me a little harder and then turned around to look.


    "Am I uh, interrupting something?" Tower asked. I sat up and saw him standing between us and the fortress armors, Jack by his side, leaning on a crutch with his leg in a cast.


    And on the ground next to Tower, still spinning like a drill but with all its forward momentum totally robbed, a cannon shell the size of a coffin, kicking up sand in all directions.


    It took me longer than AEGIS to realize we weren''t dead. "Tower, you beautiful son of a bitch!" AEGIS screamed, launching herself off of me to give him a one-armed hug.


    Jack smiled at her. "Language," he chided.


    "Of fuck off," AEGIS said, crying as she laughed. "You came. You really came. I didn''t think you would."


    "Well, Moon believed you," Tower said. "Speaking of which, we should get back to her. I uh, don''t know how many more of these I can catch," he said, jerking his head towards the still-spinning shell.


    AEGIS ran back to me and pulled me to my feet even though I was the one who was in one piece, and hauled me over to Jack who greeted me with as pleasant a smile as I''d ever seen him with.


    A few seconds later, and all of us huddled around Jack disappeared, vanishing to elsewhere as the fortress armor fired again.

 211. 2218, Thirty-Three Years Ago. Rural North Carolina. Davis.

    It wasn''t much, but the carefully-folded paper in my hands made me want to skip the whole way home from school. I was so excited to show my parents, I rushed through my afternoon chores, carrying the small bale of hay for the goats and sack of chicken feed all in one trip, struggling the whole way.


    I exploded into the house, throwing off my school shoes at the door. "I''m home!" I called out.


    "I''m in the study," Dad''s voice answered with amusement. "Your mother''s stuck late, grading and office hours again."


    He''d barely finished yelling at me across the relatively small house before I burst into the room on him, folded paper in hand.


    "What''s this?" he said, spinning in his desk chair away from the holo and afternoon coffee he was working on.


    "Grades!" I said.


    He laughed. "Good ones, I take it? You seem pretty excited about them. Should I wait for your mother, or should I read them now?"


    "Now, please," I said, beaming at him. My homeroom teacher had given our report cards out all the way back in second period, and the little piece of paper had been burning a hole in my pocket ever since she handed it to me with a smile and a ''nice work, Davis.''


    With dignified pomp, Dad unfolded his reading glasses from his desk and placed them on his nose, the large plastic frames making him look like a cartoonish bookworm. He flicked the paper with his wrist to unfurl it and began reading in a dramatic tone.


    "Student name. Davis Morgan Blackett." He glanced at me significantly. "You should be proud, that''s a pretty outstanding name."


    "Dad," I complained.


    "Grade. Nine. Also very impressive."


    "Daaaad."


    "Oh all right," he laughed. "It''s just difficult to read with all of these ''A+''s everywhere! Literature, geometry, world history...Is there anything my boy can''t ace?"


    I felt embarrassed and stupid at his praise even though it''s exactly what I''d wanted in the first place.


    "Do you think...we could go out and celebrate, maybe?" I asked.


    Dad''s smile froze. "You know we aren''t made of money, Davis."


    "Yeah, I know," I apologized. "Sorry...I thought...never mind."


    He looked guilty like he''d just ruined my grades and I felt like I had to say something to make up for saying something so careless.


    "How about, when I get my part-time job, I''ll take us all out," I said, forcing a grin.


    "I''m not sure your paycheck will be as big as you''d think, but I don''t think your mom or I would ever complain about being taken out," he laughed. "Tell you what, let me talk to Mom and we''ll see how busy she is tonight. Did you do your chores?"


    "Yessir," I said, grinning at having already won.


    "Good kid. Give me a few," he said turning around and picking up his mobile.


    After a few minutes, Dad tackled me on the couch and put me into a loose headlock. "What are you laying around reading for? Aren''t your grades good enough already?"


    I laughed and extracted myself, threatening him with exaggerated karate chops through the air.


    "Get your clothes on, we''re picking up Mom," he said, standing and grabbing a jacket from the back of a chair. "Seems she''s got a soft spot for you and we''re going out after all. Can''t imagine why, though. Such a pesky brat of a kid."


    He beamed at me and I grinned right back, racing to grab my things before he could change his mind.


    We spent the half-hour car ride talking about my job coming up. Nothing really exciting, just a column in the local news...I was supposed to provide a middle-schooler''s perspective on events and politics, represent the youth and mostly just write a lot of opinion pieces. The pay was bad, and it wouldn''t go anywhere, but it was fun. I liked writing, and as Mom and Dad both told me, for a first job, it wasn''t really about what you did, but just learning to put the hours in and do it.


    I was commenting that if they wanted an average youth''s perspective on things, they might not want to pick an honors student who was gunning for valedictorian, and while Dad probably knew I was just fishing for more compliments, he gave them to me anyway.


    "Problem is, an average student wouldn''t do the job, probably," he said. "Adding to your own workload voluntarily like that, choosing a job that puts you out there where people can see and read what you''re making, you can''t just hide in a back room or laze around on your mobile or phone it in if you''re feeling lazy. It''s a big responsibility, and I don''t think there''s too many kids who''d take it."


    A broad smile put itself on his face. "Only the really special ones."


    My giddy embarrassment was such that I had to change the topic shortly after, and we talked about his first job for a while until we arrived.


    Mom''s office was small, smelled like old paper, and had disorganized stacks of books and paper stacked up everywhere. I had a lot of fond memories of the place, curled up in one of her high-backed chairs studying or reading while it was Mom''s turn to take care of me. Sometimes I even attended her lectures or office hours when I was smaller, feeling like I was a real college kid, and super smart just because my mom happened to be a professor, as though that genius was automatically hereditary.


    With similar excitement to before, I burst in through the closed office door and announced my presence, realizing only too late that there was already someone in the office with her.


    "Davis...uh...please wait outside," she said, looking uncomfortable and sweaty as the other woman sitting opposite her shrunk sulking into her chair.


    "Oh. Sorry," I said and backed right back out. Dad clicked his tongue at me and shook his head mockingly, and I told him to shut it, which made him laugh.


    It wasn''t more than minute before the girl left. She stormed out like she couldn''t stand being in there for another second, and seemed stressed and angry, even for a college student taking office hours. She was wearing a skirt and striped leggings, with long light-brown hair which trailed behind her like it was also put off by her annoyance.


    She might have been cute if not so angry.


    "Fail another one of your students?" Dad asked as he flopped into one of the high-backed chairs.


    "Yes," she said, unexpectedly quiet.


    "Well, she''ll just have to do better next quarter, right?"


    "I...I suppose."


    Dad glanced at me with worry on his face that matched my own. Mom normally wasn''t what you''d call ''reserved''.


    "Hey, show her what you''ve got there, Davis," Dad said, and I presented Mom with my grades.


    "Oh! Oh, I''m so proud, Davis," she said, and stopped again.


    Silence fell over the three of us and I didn''t know why. I thought we were happy here.


    Dad, always blunt, just asked the question. "Is something wrong, honey?"


    "That girl," Mom said, almost automatically. "She threatened me if I don''t change her grades." She shook her head. "It''s outrageous, how entitled some people are."


    Dad looked pissed instantly, and Mom saw and apologized. "Well, are you going to report her?" he asked with cold fury. "She should be expelled! Who the hell does she think she''s talking to?"You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Mom''s face softened. "Relax, honey. She''s just a student who''s a little lost. My job is to help people be more prepared for the world, not to punish every student who throws me a little shade."


    "Throws shade? Mom, are you from the eighties?"


    She sighed heavily. "Maybe as a literature professor, I should just stick to slang from Shakespeare, is that what you''d prefer, thou lily-livered hobble horse?"


    "Ouch. Cut me deep there, Mom. Words can hurt."


    She laughed, all signs of her previous anxiety seemingly gone. "Okay, let me finish grading this stack and then we go, okay?"


    We agreed and Dad helped her with the multiple choice part, and the room fell into comfortable silence, the only sound being the rustling of pages as I closed my eyes and fell into an almost-meditative wait.


    The silence painfully ended with alarm bells ringing right above my head.


    "Oh for the love of--we just had a drill last week," Mom complained. "How am I supposed to get any work done at all if I spend all day evacuating?"


    "Let''s take the rest home," Dad said with an apologetic smile. "We can finish after dinner."


    Mom agreed and I helped carry an armful of papers bound up with binder clips and rubber bands, but when we got outside of the office, outside of the building, to where alarms were going off in every building in the campus, we realized this wasn''t a drill.


    There was a fire, a big one, with flames licking at the sky and a pillar of black smoke so big it looked like a skyscraper.


    "Oh...oh my God," Mom said. "The whole...the whole art department."


    "Let''s get out of here," Dad said, grabbing us both firmly by the shoulders. He began running, pulling us along but stopped dead suddenly.


    "I warned you!" a woman screamed at us. I looked away from the fire and found the blonde angry girl standing there in the dark, right in our path. "You do what I say or next time, it''s the English department which burns. You understand me!"


    She looked unhinged. Her eyes were popping out, white circles in the dark. She was a crazy arson lunatic. Mom fell to her knees and shook like she was having a seizure or something.


    "Leave my wife alone, you maniac! I''m calling the police, right now!" Dad yelled, whipping out his mobile. "You fail a class so you burn down the school? What is wrong with--"


    He stopped and screamed, a noise which I''d never heard before in my life, which echoed in my brain like the noise was trapped in there forever. A moment later, he was smoking and rolling on the ground, but rather than putting them out, the flames suddenly burst from his body.


    Mom screamed like a banshee, grabbing at him even as his body burned her arms. I stood there, unable to do anything, not understanding anything, my mind uncomprehending what I saw.


    And through it all, the blonde girl stood and laughed, insanely, unhinged. Watching my father burn to death like it was the funniest thing she''d ever seen.


    "You can''t stop me! You think you can fail me? You think you can do anything to me? Go ahead, call the police, they can''t do anything either. I''m so sick of everyone...telling me what to do...telling me what I''m supposed to do with my life...telling me I''m not good enough."


    She was just screaming at Mom. Dad''s wailing had suddenly stopped and he wasn''t moving anymore, just...just sizzling like bacon. I felt dizzy. I wanted to wake up, wanted to go back to five minutes ago. If there were a God, just stop all this, please.


    The blonde yelped and fell to the ground, dragged downward. In the dark I could see something wrapped around her like a snake and pulling her down.


    "Angela, you stupid, blonde, son of a bitch!" a guy''s voice shouted at her. "Setting a building on fire? Is this your idea of laying low?"


    "Alex let me go! Let me go right this instant!" she screamed back. "I''m sick of hiding, and sick of pretending--"


    "Are you sick of living, Angela? Do you have any idea what they do to Exhumans?"


    "You call this living? I work my ass off and she flunks me anyway, because my ''premise is uninspired and diction limited''? When I could just incinerate her with a thought? It''s a fucking joke! She should be begging me to give me an A."


    "Damn it Angela," he said, walking into the light where I could make him out as a tall dark-haired student. "How long do you think that works? How long before they wonder why all these teachers are catching fire? You think everyone here isn''t already on-edge about Exhumans? You think this--" he swept his arm out in the darkness towards the raging, distant fire "--is helping anything?"


    "What do you want me to do, Alex. The building''s already on fire. Now let me go."


    They stared at each other for a minute. The wailing of the fire alarms continued, and under it, Mom''s sobbing.


    "We have to move these bodies into the fire," Alex said taking a step towards me. "Otherwise it''d be suspicious that she died out here."


    "No!" I screamed at him, stumbling over and hugging my shuddering mother protectively. "Go away! Leave us alone!"


    "Sorry kid," he said, and half-looked it. "But I can''t let you rat on us. You know our names, you''ve seen our faces¡­"


    "We won''t tell anyone! We promise! Just leave us alone!"


    He shook his head. "If they find out, we''re dead. I can''t take that risk."


    Roots erupted from the ground nearby, throwing a mess of bricks to the walk and coiled around Mom. She didn''t struggle as they pinned her down near the glowing embers still burning in Dad.


    "The fuck?" Alex said.


    "Can I...I mean...should I burn them now?" she asked.


    "Yeah," Alex replied with some confusion.


    "No!" I screamed at him, but my voice was washed out by Mom''s who seemed to vibrate and writhe in her prison as smoke poured from her skin. "MOM! NO! STOP IT!"


    I tore at the roots and found them to give way easily, but even after that, she burned and there wasn''t anything I could do.


    "Why? Why? Why?" I screamed at the two of them. They both seemed a little confused but didn''t answer. It was only when Mom''s screams stopped and she laid there, as black and inhuman a thing as Dad that I could tear my eyes from her and look at the two.


    They just...stood there, like it was some spectacle and they weren''t even involved, like they''d just seen a horrible accident and didn''t want to help. So detached, so...so uncaring. Like they weren''t even the same species as me, as Mom and Dad.


    I''d never hated anyone before, but seeing them standing there, how they could look at Mom and Dad with those damn eyes, caring only about themselves, about their grades, about if they''d get caught, not caring at all about those two beautiful, amazing human beings who had just died so painfully and so pointlessly.


    I screamed as I ran at the closer guy, a brick in my hands from the exploded walkway. He held up a hand towards me like it would stop me, but I wouldn''t stop for anything, and I brought the brick down on head with both hands.


    I didn''t slow down. I screamed again, aware that there was blood all over me now, and ran right through the fires the girl put between us. When they did nothing to me, I saw panic in her eyes, the same fear and incomprehension that I saw on both of my parents'' faces just moments ago. She raised her arms like she was begging me to stop.


    I didn''t. I brought the brick down and smashed right through her arm into her stupid evil face. We both wound up on the pavement and she groaned and curled up and tried to crawl away, fire spilling everywhere from her like blood.


    I chased her down and I put the brick into the back of her head over and over and over and over and over until there wasn''t anything left of her. I screamed and cried as I hit her and asked her again and again why she did it, why she had to hurt people, why she had to take my parents.


    She never answered me.


    The police found us that night. Four dead bodies and a kid. It took hours of interrogation, as it felt like a hundred different officers came and went and asked me the same questions over and over again, and I couldn''t answer.


    I was just horrified by what I''d done. What they''d done. I wanted to know where my parents were, I wanted to know if they were okay.


    Eventually, a man came in who wasn''t a police officer, he was wearing black instead of navy, with silver trim. He was respectful, and told me what I wanted to know, asking few questions but listening patiently.


    He told me, yes, my parents were dead. They died as heroes, victims of just more Exhuman violence. He was very sorry, and wished he could have met these people who would stand up to Exhumans in life. He said as a representative of he XPCA, he would handle funeral arrangements, or said that if I wanted, I could.


    And finally, he talked about me. He told me that I was the most heroic person he''d ever met, even if I was still just a middle-schooler. The courage and bravery I had shown by ambushing and killing two Exhumans, all on my own, after what had happened to my parents...he said it was the most courageous and amazing thing he''d ever seen, and as deputy director of the XPCA, he had seen quite a lot.


    He told me statistics, how many lives I had probably saved, how much damage went undone, how many other children, just like me went unorphaned because of my actions on that day, and said that he knew it hurt, what I''d just been through, but that he hoped I could take some solace in the fact that I''d spared that hurt from others, a huge number of others, and that I should be proud.


    He offered me a part-time job, at the XPCA. A junior staff position, something administrative internship in a branch not far from school. He said it would pay well, would take good care of me, and when I grew up and became a fine man, I would be ready to move up in the XPCA and effect real change in the world, save more lives, protect more sons and daughters and parents.


    I heard his words, understood them. I recognized that he was heaping praise on me, praise I even maybe deserved. He was offering more money than I''d ever seen, money like my parents never had. The only praise I wanted was from my parents. The only money I wanted was to save them from working as hard.


    I told him...I couldn''t think about the future right now. I appreciated the offer, but I had to bury my parents first. He smiled and said he understood, gave me a card and said that if I needed anything at all, the XPCA was at my service. He stood, saluted me like a hero, and headed out the door.


    "Wait," I said, before his broad back exited the room. He backpedaled and looked at me, expectantly.


    "Yes Mr. Blackett?" he asked.


    "If...if I join you...if I take this job and work for the XPCA¡­"


    I swallowed hard and looked up at him. Looking down on me, the whites of his eyes reminded me of hers, the monster who''d taken the world from me, who''d killed just because she could.


    "If I join, would I get to kill more Exhumans?" I asked.


    He gave me a smile that said he knew what was in my mind and in my heart and sat back down in front of me, looking at me with level eyes.


    "Son, if you join the XPCA, killing Exhumans is all we do," he said.


    I nodded. "Then sign me up."

 212. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    We reappeared on a small hill ridge, barely a few feet up, but still enough to survey the entire battlefield. And shit down there looked as bad for the Exhumans as it had been for me.


    With the appearance of three new fortress armors, two of which were advancing at a lumbering but constant pace, the fight was effectively over. The resistance was scattering and the redeveloped and XPCA were in hot pursuit.


    But that wasn''t what I was looking at.


    "Jack, take me over there," I said, pointing at a pillar of smoke a hundred feet past the road.


    I saw him open his eyes to take a peek at what I was pointing towards. "Was that your car?" he asked.


    "Just take me, as fast as you can, please."


    I think he was expecting some sarcasm or a quip from me, and when I didn''t give it to him, he straightened seriously and put an arm on mine.


    I felt us lurch, and then again, and again, until we were there at the scene. I muttered a thanks to Jack, even as I left him behind with his crutch to run to where Lia had been thrown from the blast.


    She was on her back, breathing, thank God, but the image of her burned in my brain like a brand.


    She didn''t stir at my approach, gave no indication of being awake or alert, didn''t seem disturbed by the frizzy brown mess of her own hair in her eyes. Blood smeared her face, rivulets already drying from her ears and eyes and mouth. Her half-lidded eyes were completely bloodshot, making her look demonic and alien. I didn''t know what to do, didn''t know if I could touch her or move her, if she was in pain, if she''d wake up again even.


    Jack walked past where I''d fallen to my knees and gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "She''s breathing," he said. "Should we take her to the others?"


    "AEGIS might be able to help. Or Karu," I said. "Just...move her gently."


    "I will be as delicate as possible," he said with a reassuring smile. He knelt down and carefully touched just the tip of her foot, held my hand, giving it a single firm squeeze, and we jumped away.


    When we arrived, AEGIS gasped and struggled to get her pack off one-handed, Moon quickly moving to help her and act as a pair of spare hands in deploying the first-aid kit. Tower said nothing but looked pale, Karu had gone back to organize the retreat.


    I was surprised when something grabbed my back and wouldn''t budge.


    "Now''s not the time, Tem," I said, but she didn''t respond in any way but to keep holding onto me. "Why did you guys bring her here?" I asked Jack.


    Jack shrugged. "Tower is the one who believed AEGIS and brought us. He was going to leave Tem and myself behind, on account of my current disability, and Tem''s¡­difficulty. But she at some point heard we were heading to visit you, and refused to take no for an answer. I believe she would have suffocated in the cargo hold had we not bought her a ticket. And I came along in case you needed me. It wouldn''t be right for me to ask you a favor and then not attempt to repay it."


    "Tower, Jack, thank you, really," I said, though I couldn''t tear my eyes from Lia. AEGIS had half-stripped her out of her slipskin now, but the good news is, it looked like whatever had ruptured all the blood vessels in her face, it hadn''t affected her body in general.


    "She''ll be just fine," AEGIS said with obvious relief as she had Moon prop Lia upright against a rock. "Keep the affected areas elevated, and she''s going to have a hell of a lot of bruising, a lot of pain, damaged hearing and eyesight for a while, maybe even some permanent damage if she doesn''t get professional treatment...but nothing life-threatening."


    I let out a deep breath and almost felt like crying again suddenly.


    "The blast was big, the air pressure differential ruptured capillaries all across her skin," AEGIS explained, pushing her now-broken glasses up her nose as though by habit. "Her slipskin detected the blast and acted as sort of a compression sleeve to protect her from it. Obviously her face and hands were still exposed and that''s why she looks like she fell down a stairway made of heavyweight boxers, but her organs were protected. Which is good, because a blast like that is a great way of having your lungs explode."


    "There are bruises on her chest though," Tower pointed out. I''d missed them, because...modesty, honestly. And I kind of wished he wouldn''t either. She was my sister, for chrissake.


    "Yeah, that was the slipskin saving her life. The same time the blast hit her, it sort of...slammed her lungs. Forced its own violent compression to increase the air pressure in her trachea to keep the blast from doing the same the other way."


    Tower let out a low whistle. "How much are these suits? And do they come in XXXL?"


    As much as I didn''t want to admit it, Taglock had just saved Lia''s life indirectly. I knew she''d bought the slipskin purely on emulating his kit, and so it was his experience in picking the best of the best which was responsible for her wearing it now. I felt a sincere, overwhelming outpouring of gratitude for the man''s great wisdom and experience, and resolved to be somewhat less of a dick to him in the future, maybe.


    Maybe.


    "I''m happy she is alright," Jack said nervously. "But do you know where Steffie is? Please tell me she''s not down there, in the path of those metal monsters?"


    I shook my head.


    "Then can you explain why there''s apparently a massive riot and civil war at New Eden, and why we had to rescue you from what is clearly an XPCA weapon?"


    I looked at AEGIS, and realized I found it hard to do so. She smiled back at me but it looked pained and weak, hanging off of her mutilated body.


    "It''s...a long story," I said. "But the really short version is, Blackett is worse than even I ever imagined. He''s captured Saga...whom you might remember from the Christmas party, or when we used her to get the truth out of Ajax and Celia...and he...he¡­"


    "He tortured her," AEGIS cut in putting her hand on my shoulder reassuringly. "And used her to mentally dominate the residents of New Eden. Some of them didn''t like that and joined the resistance...they''re the ones in red, running away and dying right now with Karu trying to help them...the rest are basically enslaved to Blackett''s will directly."


    "We''re here to stop Targa and Blackett from doing this to anyone else," I said. "She''s in that hangar and he''s...somewhere else here."


    "And when you say ''stop'', I assume you mean ''murder''," Jack clarified.


    "Yes. In no uncertain terms."


    "Might I ask why you are not satisfied with merely stopping them? I suspect I know but would like to hear if from you."


    I looked at Jack and saw the glint of one of his eyes as he stood smiling, waiting for an answer. I thought, he might be testing me right now, trying to decide if his loyalty should remain to Blackett, and I didn''t know what kind of answer to give him. All I had was the truth as I saw it.


    "He completely brutalized Saga, Jack. He did it all with his bare hands, tore away pieces of her flesh...and he had some tech or something that he figured out that made it so she couldn''t grow back, that if she died, she''d be dead, dead. He kept her locked up for a month, tearing away at her over and over--"


    As I spoke I felt Saga''s memories bubble unbidden in my mind. The pain of it made bile rise in my throat.


    "There was less than half of her left...she was just...he snapped her spine, ripped her pelvis from her body. I...I saw it, in her memories. All of it. He was so cold, he did it without a shred of compassion or feeling...she had something he wanted, so he just...took it."


    "And you are certain that the memories she gave you were genuine?"


    I glared at him, wanting to punch the smile off his stupid fucking face.


    "I was down there with half of her body, sent in there by Targa for her to reprogram my mind. I saw her, saw what was left of her, saw where they''d kept her, all with my own two eyes. I felt her pain and misery and the pleading wish for death coming off her like the smell of rot, Jack. Don''t you fucking dare--"


    He backed up and apologized with a half-bow. "I merely wanted to confirm. A Code X is a dangerous thing."


    "It is. And Blackett is showing us why, what you can do with one when you have no morals or compunction about abusing their abilities."


    "If what you say is true...and...I am still hesitant to believe--"


    "Why would I lie! Why would the Exhumans of New Eden be let out and killing each other--"


    "Calm down, Chariot. I merely...All of us have served Blackett faithfully, some of us for years. Some of us believe in his rhetoric, some of us even had a crush on him."If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Tem squeezed me tighter from behind. "I believe in Chariot," she said.


    "With that said, I want to make certain there is no room for misunderstanding or error before we make an irreversible decision. That is all. Surely you understand?"


    "Do you want me to take you to Saga? or what?"


    "I will ask two of you to do something I know neither of you would wish to. Forgive me this, but I need to be certain that everything is as you say." He turned to Moon. "Would you be willing to delve his memories? In the interest of determining truth?"


    All eyes turned on her and she turned red, even as she stood completely motionless.


    "Moon hates attention," I said.


    "Your pointing that out does not help the situation," she said in the same seemingly-bored tone as ever. "But he is correct that I find this very uncomfortable."


    "Isn''t this unnecessary?" I asked. "Jack, you seem like you''re already convinced. Tem...I don''t think cares about arguments whatsoever. And I can always count on Tower to have my back."


    "Chariot, I like you bro," Tower said with a smile. "I really do. But I also can''t just turn on Blackett if I don''t know for sure. I think Jack''s pretty smart here."


    Moon nodded.


    "But you two think I''m lying? Seriously?"


    "Let''s just say you don''t have the best relationship with Blackett," Tower said. "I don''t think you''re lying, but it''d be real easy for you to get your panties bunched up over something which a lot of us would understand and let go."


    "It''s torture. It''s brainwashing."


    "Yeah. And if you''re right, then I believe you. So we''ll just check if you''re right."


    "I can''t believe--"


    AEGIS cut in. "Athan, just let them peek at your memories. They''ll see it themselves, they''ll be able to join you without any lingering doubts. I don''t think it''s about anyone thinking you''re wrong or full of shit, it''s about checking your parachute before you jump out of a plane. Right?"


    "Well...I don''t need a ''chute personally, but yeah," Tower said.


    "Fine, do whatever," I said and held my arm out for Moon. She stared at it blankly.


    "I never agreed to this," Moon said.


    "But you want to see my memories so you can believe me."


    "I do."


    "And if you bond with me using your power, you will."


    "I will."


    "Then...do it?"


    "That would be a violation of my personal beliefs," Moon said, and I groaned. "I do not pry into the minds of those I am shadowing."


    "Damn it, Moon, just look in my head," I shouted at her, grabbing her hand while she offered no resistance whatsoever.


    "For the record, I loathe you," she said and collapsed.


    "I considered the possibility that I should start wearing a full body outfit around you," my shadow continued speaking from right behind me. "Since it appears you are unable to resist forcing yourself on my bare skin."


    "Could you make it sound any dirtier? Jesus."


    "I could. Would you like me to try? Perhaps...roughly burying your fingertips into my helpless, naked flesh? A soft moan of protest escapes my lips as you ravage me against my will? Powerless, as my my own powers are used against me."


    "Jesus Christ, what the fuck kinds of books do you read all day?" I asked.


    "Hardcore smut, mostly."


    "Really?"


    "Joudan. May I go back now?"


    "Did you see my memories?"


    "No. That would be a violation of my--"


    I began to think very hard, forcing myself to remember Saga''s memories and Moon froze on my back as I did. I found myself shuddering and twitching, and on the ground where I had once been standing. I re-felt every piece of my flesh being torn away, the horrifying crack of my own bones as Blackett broke me apart with detached cruelty. The smell of my own blood, thick and black, pouring from my midsection onto the shining metal floor.


    I heard Moon throw up on my shoulder, though nothing actually came out of her. I was about a second behind her.


    "Please let me go back now," she said, her voice still somehow emotionless, though I saw something had changed in her eyes.


    I just nodded and touched her hand again, and she sprang back to life with a jolt. Neither of us could make the other''s eyes after that.


    "Now Tower...if you wish to see...you can...get it from Moon," Jack said, clearly disturbed at what he''d just seen the two of us go through.


    "I''m uh...I''m going to trust Moon on this one. We''ve been together enough that I''ll believe her," Tower said, hesitatingly.


    "Blackett is a bad guy," Moon said simply.


    Tower nodded grimly. So did Jack.


    "Then...we do this thing," Tower said.


    "Thank you guys," I said, though I felt a little annoyed we''d had to go through this whole farce to do it. Mostly sick. "You do know we''ll be like...enemies of the state and all that."


    "We''re Exhumans," Moon said with a hint of a shrug. "I believe we are all accustomed."


    "Nothing we haven''t done before, and for much worse reasons, I''m sure," Jack agreed.


    "Tem? Do you know what you''re getting yourself into?" I asked, trying to see something both invisible and clamped to my buttocks.


    "No, but I don''t care," her muffled voice responded.


    "Good enough for me, I guess," I said, and took a deep breath, watching the Exhumans run. There was nothing but desert out here, the nearest town was at least thirty miles away. I don''t know where they thought they''d be running, but...fear made people do desperate things.


    I wanted to kill that fear. I wanted those people to have normal, happy lives.


    I sensed a new presence on our little hill and spun around, swords ready. It was a girl, maybe my age, wearing a white top and jean shorts, with a red sash tied around her arm.


    "Oh, there are people here," she said.


    Everyone else turned around at her voice, assuming similar ready stances. Except Tem, she was still just riding my butt for all it was worth.


    "Are you with the resistance?" I asked, pointing at her sash.


    "Yeah, I''m Rito. Nice ta meet''cha. Thanks for not trying to kill me on sight like a bunch of them down there. Crazy, today, huh?"


    "Yeah, crazy."


    "Um," she said urgently and then stopped. "Uh, I uh...I have a job I''m supposed to be doing, but...I kinda can''t...with everyone looking." She fidgeted adorably.


    "Are you shy?" I asked, and then felt incredibly stupid for asking, so I followed up immediately with something better. "What are you trying to do?"


    "Oh, uh, I don''t know. I''m supposed to bring someone here, but my powers don''t work if anyone''s watching. Dunno why, they''re just kooky like that. Could...could you all just turn around for a second?"


    "Surely you''re kidding," Jack said. "You appear from nowhere and expect us to present our backs as a target while you use your powers, and claim to know not even what it is you do?"


    "Um, pretty much," she said. "I''m kinda the logistics gal for the resistance...I move things around a lot with my powers...gets really boring asking what everything is...so I don''t."


    She seemed honest enough for me, and if they had an Exhuman who could move things like Jack did, that would explain how the resistance operated in the shadows so effectively. I made a big show of turning around and waited for the others.


    AEGIS turned around too, standing right next to me. "You think she''s cute," she said.


    "What?"


    "You like slender girls with athletic builds. You like blondes. And you have a soft spot for Exhumans and anyone who needs a favor from you."


    "AEGIS I only just met her. And she''s tiny, like almost as short as Tem."


    "And yet, I can see your heart rate elevated, you fucking letch."


    "You fucking letch!" Tem giggled.


    "Um...I''m sorry...I''m flattered¡­" Rito interjected sounding a bit flustered from where she stood, completely within earshot.


    At this, I heard Tower laugh and turn around. Jack did as well, but I felt he was still tense, his powers ready to take him off at a hair-trigger.


    We stood there awkwardly for a minute.


    "Um...please?" Rito asked.


    "I see no reason to trust you," Moon said, her completely emotionless deadpan an utter contrast to Rito''s lilting, bubbling words.


    "Oh. Well...I said I wasn''t going to harm any of you."


    "No you didn''t," Moon replied. "You said you had a job to do, that you could only do if nobody was looking, and that you were supposed to bring someone here. Regardless, telling us you won''t harm us is still no reason to trust you. It is the first thing someone who does intend to harm us would say."


    "Oh, um, I''m sorry," Rito fretted. "I really, really am, um...I don''t know what else to say. I''m falling really far off my schedule. Please?"


    "Moon, just let the girl do her job. We want the resistance to win here, remember?" I said.


    "All we agreed upon was that Blackett needs to be stopped. We said nothing about the resistance."


    "Moon, you''re so damn difficult...Tower, can you pick her up or something?"


    "Help, I''m being molested," Moon said in the same flat tone as she stood there without a soul touching her. "Help, help."


    I could sense Rito''s anxiety skyrocketing as she fidgeted in place, her hands over her mouth as she wriggled like a worm on hot pavement. "Please...please don''t! I''m just...just doing my job!"


    My friends were just too weird and I felt too bad for Rito. I''d had enough, and stomped over to Moon, grabbing the pink trim of her charcoal hood and pulling it down over her eyes without touching her skin.


    "Molester. Molester. Help."


    "Oh shut up."


    Rito sighed enormously in relief. "Thank you, um,"


    "Athan," I said, grinning despite myself. Something kicked me painfully in the shin, and when I looked around, I found AEGIS'' eyes smoldering at me. "What?"


    But now that we were all facing away, I sensed another presence join Rito''s behind us and turned to look.


    The new arrival smiled, but not at me, barrelling forward straight at Jack. He turned as well, his smile as large and genuine as I''d ever seen, and the two of them locked in an awkward crouching hug.


    From over his shoulder, I could see the tuft of her short blue hair, and under his arms, her wheelchair and the red of her resistance outfit.


    "You''re safe," he crooned.


    "Sorry about everything," she said, squeezing him tightly into her. "I didn''t mean to disappear like that. But I had to do what I did to help the resistance. It''s just too important. I''m sorry."


    "I understand," he said.


    "Well," she said into his chest "don''t understand just yet. There''s still one more thing the resistance needs me for."


    We were all focused on Steffie and her return and so I hardly found it suspicious when Rito slunk off behind us, until I sensed that she''d brought someone else in again. This time, I jumped, swords already flashing through the air.


    Jack was there too, appearing behind the sudden guest with a knife at his throat.


    To my surprise, he just stood there and waited, a wan smile on his face with his hands in the air in surrender.


    "Wh-what''s going on?" Rito asked.


    "Thank you, Rito, you''ve done everything just as I''d hoped," Soran said, even as Jack''s knife drew a bead of blood from his throat.

 213. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    "Give me one reason why I should not slit your throat where you stand," Jack said, the tip of his blade digging into Soran''s throat.


    "Jack, no," I said. "It won''t kill him. I think we should have Tem eradicate him entirely."


    "Fry him?" Tem said perking up. "I can help! I am happy to help."


    "He could be useful to us...he''s in resistance colors...maybe we dump him in front of the fortress armors and let two of our problems sort each other out," said AEGIS.


    There was a gunshot, which made me jump, and then four more. Tower was wrestling a firearm out of Moon''s hands, their size differential making him look like he was taking a toy from a child. "The fuck is wrong with you?" he shouted at her.


    "He should die!" she screamed back at him, startling me with her intensity and volume. And...not being completely bored and quiet sounding.


    "What--" Rito was shifting uneasily and looking at us all like we''d all just gone crazy. "W-what''s going on!? Why are you all being like this all the sudden?"


    "Miss, are you stupid?" I asked.


    "Um...may-maybe. But you all seemed...so nice before. Um, except her, maybe," she glanced at Moon as though afraid of making any more overt gesture at the girl struggling in Tower''s huge mitts like a straightjacket.


    "Don''t fret," Soran said. "We have history. But that''s all behind us now, isn''t it, P-Force?"


    "I don''t know why you''d assume that," I said. "Last time we met, Tem wasn''t here, Jack was on your side, and Deej. Seems to me like this time the only person who might not want you dead is Tower. Should I call Karu over and we can have a proper vote of what to do with you?"


    "Fry him," Tem whispered.


    "Very good, Tem." I patted her head affectionately and she shot me a heartfelt smile.


    "Um, I don''t want him dead," Rito said.


    "Yeah, we don''t even know or care who you are," AEGIS said dismissively.


    "Oh¡­"


    "Well, I don''t want him dead either," Steffie said.


    There was a moment of silence.


    "I''m pretty sure I heard that wrong?" I said, giving her another chance.


    Steffie sighed and then rolled her wheelchair up to where Jack was holding Soran. "I went through this whole thing too, when I found out it was him, believe me. But when I learned what the XPCA was doing to people, and saw the number of people he was saving...and worked alongside him these past few weeks...I think he deserves a second chance."


    "You''re kidding," Jack said, smiling.


    "Not even, honey. Look down there at that mess," she said, turning herself around to face the battlefield. There were dozens in red, being pursued now, fighting a moving, losing battle against the redeveloped, the XPCA, while having to flee the fortress armors which advanced menacingly and fired constantly.


    "Every one of those in red, he saved," she said. "Every one of them learned the truth firsthand, almost fell victim to it, and were pulled out by the skin of their teeth by this man. Every one of them saw something in him worth following, worth putting their lives on the line for, even now, worth dying for."


    "Worth running for, looks more like," Tower said.


    "Tower, are you down there fighting Exhumans and XPCA to save innocents right now?" Steffie asked stiffly.


    "Uh, no."


    "Then shut up. Those are people down there, Tower."


    "Sorry."


    "When Soran saved me, I was worried I was going to be his plaything again, bait for you guys, or another power for him to steal. Instead...he''s hardly shown an interest in me, let me help by scheduling and running administrative things, and we saved even more lives together. And he hasn''t taken a single one."


    "Sure, sounds great," I said, crossing my arms. "Suspiciously great. Like, why''d he have to use you for his needs instead of anyone else? Or if you''re in charge of administration, why is he making you come out here, to where there''s no administration which needs doing...and where there just so happen to be a bunch of your old friends who need persuading that he''s not such a bad guy?"


    "Because...I''m here to tell you he isn''t?"


    "And if he''s smart enough to bring you out to convince us, he''s smart enough to only show you his good side," AEGIS concluded.


    "He''s an evil person," Moon said, wrigging in Tower''s hands but otherwise seeming to have her composure back. "We know it. So why listen to him? Everything he says is lies."


    "I don''t get it," Steffie said with a shake of her blue head. "How can you hate him for killing people, or trying to, but not be willing to accept him for saving people?"


    "Because on the whole, if someone is killing people and saving people, he''s still killing people, Steffie. And the people he''s saving, he probably has his own reasons for...like killing more people," I said.


    "They''re not listening to me. What am I supposed to say?" Steffie asked him.


    He just smiled and shook his head. "I think you said all you needed."


    "What''s that supposed to mean?" I asked, advancing on him. I was surprised when Rito stepped between us.


    "P-p-please don''t!" she squeaked. "I don''t...don''t know what you think he did to you...but...he saved me!"


    I just stared at her.


    "Rito, do you have any combat powers?" I asked. She shook her head violently enough to make her blonde ponytail whip around. "Then why would you even think about standing in my way?"


    "B-b-because...h-he saved...saved my life!" she stammered, her voice threatening to cross into high frequencies past the range of human hearing.


    "You don''t understand what he''s put us through, what horrible things he''s already done. What he''s done to us, to my friends, to me." I clenched and unclenched my fist and it burned with ice. "To Mage."


    "And y-y-you don''t know...w-what...what he''s done...for me!" she yelled back.


    I lit up my swords. "Move, Rito."


    "No!" she shouted, determination, maybe desperation in her voice, even as she shook on the spot, even as she looked like she might be ready to piss herself staring us down.


    It was kind of heartbreaking, but I also knew that anything she felt for him was probably just the end result of careful manipulation. Twice now, he''d carefully orchestrated events to manipulate things to his ends, and I had no intention of finding out his endgame.


    Rito was a head shorter than me, and despite being reasonably athletic for her small frame and stature, she wasn''t going to beat me if push came to shove, even without powers. I could just drop her on her ass and have Tem wrap up Soran once and for all.


    So I was a little surprise when suddenly I was facing down two girls. Rito, and my half-broken girlfriend.


    "Athan, don''t," she said. Rito looked like she was about to collapse and cry and hug AEGIS all at once.


    "What? Why not? This is Soran. This is Dipshit. You do remember him?"


    "I do. But I''m not saying stop for him. I''m saying it for her. Look at her, Athan."


    I did look at her, which seemed to annoy AEGIS more than it should, considering she told me to.


    "She''s a stupid kid in over her head who''s being used."


    AEGIS mouth twitched. "Even if that were it, that doesn''t make her feelings any less real, and it won''t make her pain any less real if you kill her savior right in front of her, Athan."


    "Why would I care about that? If she''s dumb enough to fall for his shit, she should be ready to deal with it when someone comes for him."


    The sudden, furious intensity with which AEGIS suddenly began bearing down on me educated me immediately as to the mistake of uttering those words.


    "Oh, so if a girl falls for a guy because he saved her, that''s all just a mistake now? It''s fine if she gets hurt? She deserves it, because she was stupid enough to fall for him?"


    I stammered out corrections and addendums but AEGIS just yelled over all of them, chasing me backwards with a jabbing finger on her one arm stabbing me in the chest like a rapier.


    "Or maybe you think it''s only fine when they fall for you and all other girls should get treated like shit, is that it? Because that''s a pretty narrow view of women, Athan, and reflects pretty shittily on the one who thinks that."Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    "No, I--"


    "You what, Athan? Think maybe we should kill her too for having the gall to fall in love? Or maybe that would just be what she deserves, huh? For doing something so stupid? Loving a dangerous idiot? You think that''s a punishable offense now? If it''s such a damn crime, why don''t you just spare her the heartbreak and kill her first, you damn fucking hypocrite."


    My back was against a rock now, and AEGIS showed little interest in stopping her pursuit, which very much threatened to crush me.


    "Um," I heard a voice, and AEGIS whipped around to glare down the interruption.


    "What?" AEGIS snapped.


    "I um," Rito said "I don''t...actually...have a thing for Soran. But he did save my life!"


    AEGIS looked at me like somehow that, too, was my fault before she let me down with a final warning jab.


    "Projecting much?" Tower laughed. He stopped laughing when AEGIS appeared right in his face. "I meant, uh, yes ma''am."


    "You''re damn fucking right yes ma''am," she grumbled. She let him off and the look on his face was reminiscent to the one on Rito''s when she was finished staring me down.


    "Okay, what then, now?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation...anywhere else, desperately. "If we are to respect the girl''s feelings, of course."


    "I actually did come here for a reason other than being immediately ambushed," Soran said with a small smile. "I wanted to show you something which I think will be necessary for you to see.


    "So, a trap, basically," I said. "I am allowed to be critical of Soran still, right?" AEGIS glared at me. "I''m serious!"


    "Yes. You can be critical of Soran," she said.


    "You really do have no faith. You realize, again, when you turned your backs on Rito, I could have had her drop you anywhere? Right under the foot of the fortress armor, say?"


    "Anywhere I''ve been before," Rito confirmed. I looked at her with amazement. Why would you ever tell your enemies a huge limitation on your powers like that? If Soran was shrewd and manipulative, this girl was the opposite.


    I mean, the obvious answer was that she was stupid, but based on what I think I was supposed to learn from AEGIS'' outburst, the answer was that she wasn''t actually an enemy here. For some reason -- the obvious answer being their mutual feelings of being saved by someone, but I wasn''t going to assume anything right now -- AEGIS believed this girl.


    But even if she was totally innocent, Soran could still be using her. Hell, he might have saved her just so that he''d have her to tug on AEGIS'' heartstrings. It was a damn mess.


    Even so...my girlfriend was a lot scarier than he was right now. So I guess we''d hear him out at least.


    "Okay...then show us," I said.


    "It''s not here," he said with a smirk.


    "Well that''s just shit planning. Why don''t you go get it and we''ll wait."


    "It''s not the type of thing I bring to you, it''s the type of thing you go and see. Again, I could have had--"


    "--had Rito just whisk us away there before, but you didn''t, because you''re so honest."


    "I''m glad you finally see that," he said, and then jerked silent as Jack increased the pressure of the knifepoint.


    "Jack, don''t," Steffie said.


    "My dear, this man made off with you and left all of us in a state of disarray and confusion looking for you."


    "I joined him voluntarily. He showed me the XPCA is rotten and we needed to stop it, and I could actually do something to help. Jack, I adore you and treasure you, but there''s never anything I can do to help anyone. I used to have the shop at least, but now even that''s gone, and all I did was sit in this damn chair and wait for you to call so I could be mad at you. With the resistance, we were saving people. It was meaningful."


    "You could have joined the P-Force. I would have vouched for you," he smiled.


    She laughed, unexpectedly, and doubly-odd since their conversation was being held over a man at knifepoint. "I''m not that useful. Just give him a chance."


    He seemed to waver indecisively as I could only imagine what thoughts went through his mind.


    "Remember Mage," Moon said. It was the right words to push the knife back with renewed vigil.


    "I would love to believe you, but I must defer to my strike lead," Jack said. "Too often lately, this man has threatened to divide the P-Force, and that is not something I think any of us could stand. If a decision is to be made, it must be made together, I think."


    "I respect that," said Tower. "I don''t think any of us are willing to fight or die over a difference of opinion on this guy."


    "I would," Moon said from his arms.


    "Yeah, well, you''re a crazy bitch," he said. "You tried to bite me to get your gun back. Children should not have guns."


    "Well then, mister strike lead," AEGIS said turning to me. "What''ll it be?"


    I looked at her and blinked stupidly. "Do I have a choice?"


    "You have plenty of choices."


    "You just told me I can''t have him killed."


    "Right. So do consider Rito''s feelings, and you still have plenty of choices."


    My brain raced but I really didn''t see all that many choices here. AEGIS kind of had me pinned in a very awkward corner, and I dunno if she was just being coy, or obnoxious, or she honestly didn''t see what she was pushing me into.


    Freaking girls, man.


    "I guess we see what he wants us to see," I said. "But let me bring in Karu."


    I was curious, honestly. If nothing else, if Soran completely destroyed us, at least I''d have the satisfaction of seeing his plan come to fruition and have one (possibly excruciatingly painful) moment of satisfaction where I could go, oh, that''s what he was planning. On the whole, not worth it, but still, a plus, if I was to be forced into this anyway by my wonderful but neurotic girlfriend.


    Karu landed after I signaled her with some lightning shot in the air like a flare, seemingly completely nonplussed by the number of people in the group or their current configuration.


    "Then um, everyone turn around please," Rito said. After I gave Karu the briefest of primers, we all shuffled in place to face away. I noticed Jack still held Soran at knifepoint, which gave me a little reassurance.


    Gradually I realized we weren''t where we used to be. It wasn''t like Jack''s power at all, which seemed to jerk you from place to place...Rito''s ride was much more enjoyable in that you were somewhere else as though you were there all along. We just sort of...were here now. No bang or flash or anything.


    "Huh," Jack said, succinctly echoing my thoughts.


    Where we were though was still a mystery. It was dark, damp, felt kind of stuffy and cramped, a concrete room only dimly lit, and only barely big enough to hold our entire group, with a ceiling that made Tower stoop or he''d just barely brush the top of his short ''fro against it. There were a few wide doors leading to similarly dingy concrete rooms and hallways.


    "We are under the city, deeper than the service tunnels by far," Karu said looking around and fiddling with her visor.


    "Welcome to resistance HQ," Soran said. "Normally we are a tad more hospitable, everybody is currently out on business. If you could come this way?" he gestured towards a door, which everyone shuffled through. On the other side was another room, seemingly identical, though I noticed a thick metal door between the two with a reinforced plastic window.


    Jack brought Soran in first, and they stood at the front of the room waiting, and then I realized Moon hadn''t budged, still standing the the last room. She wasn''t shooting anyone, so I guess Tower took her gun and let her go at long last, but really, the girl was impossible.


    I was distracted looking at Moon for a moment that I didn''t notice Soran and Jack struggling. Soran had his hand on Jack''s face and Jack was trying to push the knife in without success. In the instant it took me to take in the scene, I saw that there was a thin layer of ice coating Soran''s neck, cracking at the force of Jack''s blade, but not letting it through.


    As one, we moved, all of us acting instantly, a dozen ways to kill focused on the man.


    But as we got there, an instant before I put swords through Soran''s face, Jack went limp in his arms and then Soran simply disappeared, dropping Jack with a thud.


    "SORAN!" I screamed at his absence.


    The metal door slammed shut and locked with the sound of grinding metal. "Yes?" he answered through the clear plastic window.


    "You goddamn son of a bitch!" I screamed at him. He shook his head and held a hand to his ear like he couldn''t hear me, even though I''d heard him clear as day. He turned and advanced on Moon, who seemed rooted to the spot.


    Moon did not react how I''d thought she might have. I watched, helpless as I banged on the door, but she just stood there calmly, pulling something out of her pocket and putting it in her mouth. Tower pushed me aside and began slamming into the door with all his weight, but it didn''t budge. He couldn''t create force from nothing, only modify it or redirect it. We needed...we needed someone who had a lot of force.


    "Tower, magnify one of AEGIS'' kicks," I said. "Hurry."


    I looked out the glass but was horrified by the changed scene. He was holding Moon from behind as she struggled weakly, one hand in her mouth as he extracted something and threw it on the ground. In another moment, she''d gone slack too, but from his powers or hers, I couldn''t be certain.


    A shadow of her appeared on his back and pummeled him with his own fists, passing through him like he wasn''t even there. The shadow screamed and cried as he just sat there, holding her body, draining her powers, looking at an old-timey watch while he did, like he had places to be.


    AEGIS kicked Tower as hard as she could and sent him flying into the door with a whip crack, but it was only dented. We had Steffie, but if she went off, she''d kill us all in here.


    "Move, please," Tem said, and we all did. Her hair was whipping around in an invisible wind and light was suffusing from her body. Her silvery-blue eyes were focused in a way I wasn''t sure I''d ever seen. She took a deep breath and the air around her grew heavy and wavered.


    I closed my eyes and covered my ears. Even through that, I was blind and deaf for what felt like a minute after the monumental surge of energy rushed past us, making my skin tingle and my hairs stand on end.


    But I didn''t have time for seeing or hearing. I stumbled through the newly-vaporized hole in the wall, still glowing red-hot, and blinked stupidly, looking for the other two in the room. I made out dim shadows and struck at them with my powers, only to find I wasn''t anywhere close enough yet.


    "Well, my time is up," I heard Soran say like he was talking to me from underwater. Or like I was underwater. I was really messed up. "I''ll send Rito for you in a few minutes." He...touched the body again, and the purple limp corpse on his back disappeared, and then a moment later, before I could cut him, he disappeared as well.


    I stumbled my way to Moon and held her in my arms. Not again. Not like this. I pressed my face against her still-warm body and felt a sob forcing itself through me. I squeezed her hand in mine...I should...be doing CPR or something. Anything. But I didn''t know the first step to treat having your soul ripped out of your body.


    Long seconds of unbearable thoughts and a painful surge of guilt crawled by before AEGIS bodily flipped me over with her leg without a word. I glared at her until I noticed my vision was purple and distorted. It took me a minute to figure out what I was seeing, but I realized it was Moon''s shadow, of me, hanging off of me, and still unconscious.


    It took me another minute for my mind to put meaning to that. If she was here, she still had her powers. If she still had them, Soran hadn''t taken them from her, which meant...which meant she wasn''t dead, he hadn''t had time to finish the job! She wasn''t dead! She was just unconscious!


    I felt life and excitement surging through me again, feeling like my heart was going to break from the sudden emotions I''d flung it through, as I crept on Moon and shook her violently. "Wake up! Wake up! Come on!" I shouted at her body. "I know you''re alive, goddamnit."


    I shook her for minutes, my arms getting numb before there was any reaction.


    "Um, excuse me," I heard my voice say and looked up at a very tired-looking ghost of myself. "I need to be in my body for it to wake up."


    "Moon, you''re alive, you beautiful fucking woman!" I shouted and tried to hug her, passing right through her. "After all that planning, after everything he did to set this up, he fumbled at the last yard! He didn''t steal your powers!"


    "No," Moon said, "he didn''t." She looked down at the apparition of her hands, as though deep in thought. "I think his plan succeeded however."


    "What do you mean?"


    "I mean, he did exactly what he said he was going to. He showed me something."

 214a. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    True to Soran''s word, Rito appeared after a couple of minutes, apparently confused and completely unaware why there was a big hole in the wall, but was happy to drop us off anywhere we wanted. It was at this point that I realized we had a huge opportunity.


    "If we can use Rito, we can get pretty much anywhere," I said. "I''m willing to bet that acting as the logistician for the resistance, she''d been pretty much everywhere they could get her in New Eden, so she can put us pretty much anywhere in New Eden."


    "Um, that''s correct. They deliberately had me tag along on some missions just for that reason," Rito confirmed.


    "Nice, Chariot. How''d you know that?" Tower asked.


    "It''s what I''d do if I had her working for me. Never hurts to be too prepared. But this is good for us, we can drop out of nowhere, circumvent the fortress armors...we can head straight for Blackett and Targa and take them out and stop this at its root without any more XPCA or Exhumans dying."


    "Even in trying to ruin us, he helps us unwittingly?" said Jack, who''d been holding his leg ever since Soran dropped him on it. "Amusing. If...not overly convenient."


    "If it is overly convenient, it may be by design," Karu said. "If we utilize his servant''s powers to stop the XPCA, we are doing him a service. It may very well be that was his plan in bringing us here."


    "Even if we are helping him, if it stops Blackett, I''m happy to oblige," I said, grinding my teeth.


    "You''re going to mess up your jaw if you keep doing that," AEGIS warned me. I stopped.


    "Then if our course of action is decided, what of the implementation? Namely, where is whom to be delivered?"


    "You mean...which of us goes after which of them?"


    "Correct."


    "I''m going after Blackett," I said.


    "I''m going after Targa," AEGIS said at the exact same time. We looked at each other and blinked.


    "Blackett''s the one who tortured Saga."


    "Targa''s the one who''s hacking me, or knows who did."


    "Then that is decided," Karu said, dusting off her hands with a flourish. "I shall accompany Ashton."


    "Me too!" said Tem.


    "Actually," I said, turning back to AEGIS. "We should stick together, right?"Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    She chewed her lip and made a play at stroking her hair, but it wasn''t there from where I''d cut it off, like an asshole.


    "Right," she said. "But...I don''t¡­it''s been...months...and...maybe now..."


    She trailed off ineffectually. I understood anyway. I''m sure she cared about Saga on some level, but whoever was hacking her...that was something which had been torturing her for months now. I''d love to go with her to sort things out with Targa¡­


    But the thought of Blackett dying without me there to see it, or worse, of him hurting yet more of my friends because I sent them instead of me. I couldn''t take it. Not when my heart still felt so fragile from thinking Moon was hurt.


    "Well," Jack said with a pained air. "I do not think...I am fit for an open combat as you all seem to be planning. Since our good friend saw fit to drop me on my injured leg, I can move us around if needed, but don''t think I will be much use for fighting. Or walking. Or...standing."


    "We can get you my spare chair, honey," Steffie said, and gave his hand a squeeze.


    "I think we need a lot of our big guns focused on the fight outside," I said. "Tower and Tem might be able to hold up against those fortress armors, Tem on offense, Tower covers for her. We need to stop the Exhumans from getting wiped out or all of this is for nothing.


    "Hey, I know I caught a speeding bullet before, but honestly, that was all luck. And who knows what else those crazy things can do."


    "I can help," Moon said, rising from her silent reverie. "Chariot forced his mind on me enough recently that I have an idea of their arsenal. And two sets of your power are better than one."


    "And you''re my partner," Tower said.


    "Sure."


    "So Steffie''s with Jack and Lia somewhere safe, AEGIS will get the drop on Targa and squeeze her for what she knows about the hacking. And kill her," I added, with AEGIS'' fervent approval. "Karu and I will take out Blackett, and Tem, Tower, and Moon are on the fortress armors and helping the resistance escape and survive."


    "You do know how to put together a plan," Jack smiled. "I apologize for being useless."


    "I should have had you punch a hole in his neck from the start, but that''s not here nor there. I wish we could go after Soran too, but he could be anywhere...we already have an advantage here we can press, and I absolutely don''t want us splitting up when we''re going after him."


    I just had to bury that pain and shame for now so I could focus on my hate.


    "Are...we decided then?" Rito asked, seeming a little worried about how we were discussing Soran.


    "Any chance you could tell us where you sent him?" I asked.


    "None at all. Besides, I move a lot of things on a schedule without really worrying about who or what it was. Awfully hard to keep track, actually," she said, looking a little flustered.


    "He was keeping an eye on his watch," AEGIS said. "Having to keep to a timeline might have been what saved Moon''s life."


    "Maybe," I said. "But speaking of time, let''s not waste any more of it. Every second we''re here, more Exhumans are getting hurt, and the longer Saga has to suffer alone. Rito...if you please."


    "My pleasure," she said. "Viva la resistance!"


    I stared at her. "Do...you guys actually say that?"


    "Um...no. Just...always wanted to."


    I just shook my head as we all turned away from Rito. To let her use her powers, yes, but also so I''d stop being embarrassed for the girl by proxy.

 214b. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. AEGIS.

    I was in a tunnel under the Hangar, Athan and Karu at my side. The resistance knew there was an operations room down here, which is where we could probably find Blackett, but now that I was here in person, I could trace the flow of data between the fortress armors and Targa over her personal line and saw she wasn''t in there.


    "Good luck, Athan," I said and gave him a brief one-armed hug. "Remember, he was able to beat Saga. He''s no pushover."


    "That''s why I have Karu," he grinned back, though I saw through the fake smile.


    "Good luck to you too," I told her. She seemed surprised or off-put by me addressing her directly, but gave me a nod.


    And then they headed for the lower levels while I went up.


    The level of the Hangar we''d appeared in was like a cavernous aircraft carrier. From the size, I''d guess that two fortress armors had been stored on each the top and this floor, and the scope of them defined the scale of this space. It was empty, enormous in the armors'' absence, and metal everywhere. There were rail-edged walkways around the perimeter, open-air elevators, lines painted on the ground, giving the appearance of a busy city block.


    And there were XPCA everywhere, running every direction, most in simple uniforms, driving cargo jacks, waving lightbars at trucks and VTOLs trundling slowly down painted lines. Some in exosuits, jogging with metallic lockstep crashes in formations.


    We''d appeared in a disused hallway from the looks of it, off to the side of and elevated from the main floor. Given how nobody seemed to have noticed or cared about our arrival here, I could see why the resistance would use this spot as an entry point for the hangars. It had good overwatch, wasn''t overly conspicuous, and there was a stairway right here, down which Karu and Athan had already disappeared.


    I took it upwards once I''d finished my observations. There wasn''t much down here which might help me, but plenty which could get in my way. If the floor above was anything like this one, I''d expect to find Targa right out in the middle of it all, barking orders and scribbling away at reports while also being in an supremely obnoxious position to take down.


    So imagine my surprise when I got upstairs after maybe a hundred steps and found the hangar upstairs empty.


    A few lines of exosuits, unoccupied. A couple of VTOLs and tanks. A huge void where a pair of fortress armors had once rested. Server racks, lots of them, in a side room, visible through a huge window, wide and narrow, like a bunker. Maybe the main computer system for the entire base.


    Whether it was or wasn''t, I was drawn to the computers before I realized I didn''t have any ports left on my body to interface with them. Even the remote uplinks like I''d put on Targa''s exosuit and was now using to track her data line, the others of those had been stored in my hair, along with my tools and anything else I might really need. I still had ''net access, and therefore everything I normally would have had, but without the ability to jack in, there wasn''t really too much advantage to having physical access to the servers.


    Well. There was some. Targa had been incredibly good at keeping them off the ''net, and so I''d never actually had any chance to get at them. I just wished I was better ready for it than banging on the keyboard like a monkey.


    Something clanked behind me and I spun around to see an exosuit charging towards me like a freight train. I jumped away, but even so, it corrected and managed to clothesline me as it passed.


    "Hello, AEGIS. I''ve been looking forward to this," Targa''s voice said from the suit without a trace of the normal synthesized distortion. Sultry and familiar. And irritated.


    "Looking forward to getting trashed? That''s a surprise."


    I could tell this suit, like her last, was being remotely driven. I used the pretense of conversation to trace the data stream, which led to the secure server room where I could just imagine her hunkered over a holo, or strapped into a neural uplink. Maybe even a VR system.


    It wouldn''t do her any good, though. I''d lost my arm and taken a hell of a beating in doing it, but I''d already taken on a squad of XPCA in exosuits, and just one more wouldn''t slow me down.


    It charged again, and this time I stood, hesitating as it drew close. At the last moment, I dropped and did something no human could do, sweeping my leg and tripping it, my servos and engines screaming as my mechanical leg met the suit''s. But I was rooted and ready, and the suit was running. Even if it was stronger, physics were on my side, and it fell face-first to the concrete flooring.


    Once it was, I was on it in an instant. My one arm snaked up and down its exposed back, ripping off weak portions of service panels and systematically removing key components from within. Nothing operations-critical was stored this close to the suit''s surface, but I could do a lot of damage that would slow it down, tear out secondary actuators to cut its total effective strength, rip up targeting and repair systems.


    It spun and tried to backhand me, but I bounced away as it staggered to its knees and then upright. Targa had picked up fast, and wasn''t charging me again. Instead, she circled me slowly, closing the distance by inches to use the suit''s superior strength against me.


    But she''d miscalculated again. Caution was good, but giving up the initiative for no benefit wasn''t. I taught her this lesson by abruptly charging in, and throwing a series of kicks at her, keeping one foot on the ground and alternatively sliding it forwards to keep in range, and rooting it to the floor to brace against the force of my own kicks in a sliding shuffle that would be impossible for a human.


    And every one of my kicks, I aimed at her sensor arrays. It wasn''t a custom exosuit this time, I knew the schematics, and if she was piloting remotely, she was using the suit''s onboard sensors to see. By their very nature, cameras had to be relatively exposed, mics needed access to the air to listen, and that made them much easier targets than the core systems like the actuators, deulith cells, or gyro.


    She reeled as I smashed her again and again, swiping blindly but missing badly, stopping my barrage once by chance, but I just jumped and switched legs and kept right back on her. Her suit''s impressive mass, normally a huge advantage in a fight really hurt her here by not letting her absorb any of my blows by getting knocked back. It staggered, yes, but didn''t go flying like a person might, and all the force which would have knocked her down was smashing her system components instead.


    Once effectively blind, within a couple of minutes, I''d dismantled her little exosuit to the point of inoperability quite efficiently. It made pathetic whirring noises on the ground as it futilely tried to right itself. I took the opportunity to purge some system pressure, venting clouds of compressed air white with steam from my joints.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    If I were Athan, I''d be snapping one-liners right now. He really did love to talk too much in a fight, but it worked for him to a degree...the boy could certainly piss people off into advantageous irritation, that was for damn sure. I personally preferred just getting things done.


    So without waiting for the suit to finish its pathetic shutdown, I stepped around it and beelined for the server room door. I heard clanking as another exosuit engaged but ignored it. If I got to Targa and her uplink, the suits would shut down.


    Something roared in the air behind me and I jumped and rolled like Athan as a huge hunk of black metal soared ungainly through the air past me. The now-live exosuit stood there, beginning a slow advance on me, and blocking the door in front of me was the disabled exosuit which had just been thrown across the room at my head.


    Rude.


    There were only another eleven suits left standing after the one I''d pulverized, and if I had to go through all of them one at a time, so be it. She might learn a thing or two about how to brawl, but I''d only just gotten started on my own combat protocols.


    And then something unexpected happened which made me worry.


    One by one, the other ten exosuits powered up and stepped out of formation, also advancing on me, walking shoulder-to-shoulder for maximum intimidation, like thugs.


    It worked a little bit, but mostly because there shouldn''t have been any way for them to do that. I spent a moment checking and verified they were all being run remote, all from Targa''s location. It might be that she had ten more XPCA with her, and they all had neural uplinks...but the data seemed to indicate that wasn''t the case. Just the one.


    Which was fucking impossible. No human had the mental capacity to run ten bodies at once. Maybe two, badly. But ten? And all walking without tripping over themselves?


    I skirted towards a flank, hoping to keep them caught up on each other, but they moved seamlessly to form another advancing line, closing in on me as they went. They moved as though coordinated by one person...but how? Did she have an AI program she put in them? But if so, she wouldn''t be so hot on the data line as she was. Maybe a program running on her end. Typically better to run that kind of thing locally because the bandwidth requirements got nuts very fast, but it was what it was.


    I exploded sideways, rocketing towards the last one on the end and greeting it with a running roundhouse to the dome, which is just took without flinching, but even as it did, one of its buddies moved behind me and tried to pin me with a grab. I''d expected that...or more specifically, I was testing for that, and had my feet still where I could run off...but if were trying to kick for real, for damage, I couldn''t run and kick at the same time.


    Yeah, this wasn''t going well. My last option might be to just barrel in on the servers and yoink her plug. Ripping out someone''s neural interface could cause severe disorientation, confusion, even temporary mental disorders...which could really work in my favor if I could just get to her.


    But as though she were reading my mind, two of the gang were already falling out of line to go guard the door. The window was bulletproof, I had to imagine. If she''d just taken one, I might have been able to find moments to pick it apart, but nooo, he just had to have a safety buddy.


    Things weren''t looking good. But they started looking even worse when the exosuits began attacking. They charged with the same reckless, dangerous abandon as the first suit, but with them coming one after another, I didn''t have any time to capitalize on their openings.


    I was stuck, stupidly dodging attacks, waiting for an opportunity I knew would never come. If these were just humans in these suits, attacking at random, they''d eventually lose their tempo, get tired, or get in each other''s way. With one mind controlling all of them though, the attacks came one right after another, the rest of the exosuits already preparing their next strike as those before it finished. And while I could outfight any of them, I couldn''t outfight all of them.


    It was just a matter of time before they got me. I had to do something desperate.


    I jumped in the air and bounced off the shoulders of another charging exosuit, buying myself some space as I landed to put my just-assailant between me and the others, and again charged at the server room door. As I did, I remotely activated my little wiretap and had it flood the line.


    I hadn''t wanted to do this before because the second she knew it existed, Targa would certainly boot the custom exosuit and my tap from her setup and leave me in the dark again, but it was the play I held right now, and if I didn''t use it, I''d just lose this fight slowly.


    As the data line filled with noise, the exosuits froze, getting garbage data instead of Targa''s commands. I had a choice, go for the door, or the suits. I''d only have a moment before she cut me out of the network, and I wasn''t sure I could move the exosuit corpse from the door and get through in time.


    So instead, I went for one of the suits on guard, popped the hatch now that it was offline--a safety feature to ensure a pilot couldn''t get stuck in a disabled suit---and once I had access, reached in and pulverized the suit''s network uplink on the interior of its spine. No network access meant no remote pilot meant dead suit.


    I did the same with the second, and then my line went dead. She''d cut me out, and the other eight suits were re-engaging.


    I took one glance at the same situation re-emerging, gave myself time to swear, and then dove headfirst into one of the two off-''net suits.


    I was a couple of seconds behind on getting the suit online compared to the others, but had it up and under my control before they reached me.


    I''d really just jumped in because the opportunity presented itself. I thought, if it wasn''t working, I could bail, or set it to overload and bomb the hangar or something. I didn''t really know, spur-of-the-moment plans were much more Athan''s thing, and I honestly objected on some level to how much this simple plan had already fallen apart.


    But as it turned out, jumping in the suit was not a good plan. Not at all. Instead of being faster than my enemies, I was now their same speed, and without a neural uplink or even a second arm, I was far less capable a pilot than Targa was. I was almost immediately in trouble, looking for any chance I could get to bail on the suit and break away, but I''d fucked myself too hard.


    Red indicators flashed across the faceplate of systems breaking, ruptures, failing power levels as the other exosuits held me and beat me with punches that would go straight through a human. They kept me locked in the suit, even going so far as to torque the frame in the rear to seal me in the fucking thing. The inertial dampeners had failed and I felt the blows slamming into me now as the exosuit helpfully read my nonexistent bio signs and told me I was deceased.


    There was another crunching punch which blew through the suit''s torso, and for a moment, I felt the cold metallic hand scrabbling around inside my own chest.


    "Such a shame," Targa taunted me. "So much potential, and you waste it all by trying to become human. If you''d only embraced your true nature, you could control a thousand exosuits like this with a thought."


    I didn''t dignify her with a response as a metal fist punched the hole in me larger and reached up into my core systems.


    "Even if you did though, this outcome was never in doubt," she gloated, like this was the end of some century-long feud. "I''ve always been better."


    I didn''t know what she meant, and didn''t have the chance to. Her overlarge fingers inside me had found what they wanted, taking a firm hold of my central core...of me, basically, and began to tear me out of my own body.


    Even with my thresholds turned down, even with my body''s potential set to maximum and feeling the least human I could set myself to, Targa did get a response from me then.


    I screamed in utter agony as my systems tore, as I was ripped apart, physically and mentally, as I was severed from all the things which kept me running, kept me alive, kept me me.


    Another line snapped and then I stopped screaming. I no longer felt pain. No longer felt or thought or was anything at all.

 214c. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Karu.

    We materialized with a curious sensation, that being no sensation whatsoever. It might have taken me entire moments to realize were were elsewhere, had my visor not thrown up a thousand warning notifications, alerting me of sudden shifts in velocity, altitude, position, and trajectory. For an instant, as it came to terms with the fact that I was stationary and not shooting through the crust of the Earth at impossible speeds, it projected my imminent death in a variety of gruesome ways.


    Eventually the system reoriented itself, and once it confirmed I was not, in fact, deceased, it gave me much more helpful information, such as the fact that we were now currently and successfully in a sub-level beneath the facility''s main hangar.


    "Good luck, Athan," AEGIS wrapping her remaining arm around him briefly. "Remember, he was able to beat Saga. He''s no pushover."


    "That''s why I have Karu," he said with what appeared genuine confidence.


    "Good luck to you too," she said, suddenly turning on me. I was surprised to find we were apparently still on good terms and could only give her a terse nod, feeling stupid for not finding words in time as she left to explore the area.


    I led us into a stairway, the heavy metal door clanging shut behind us. "I imagine we will find few who do not use the elevators," I said. "The target is near directly below us, and through here we should be able to reach proximity without creating an alert."


    "I hope she''s okay," Ashton said, apparently ignoring my words as he followed me in jogging down the metal spiraling stairway.


    "She is chasing a facility administrator who believes herself safe. I doubt there is much more difficult between her and her goal than an unlocked wooden door."


    "I hope you''re right."


    "If anything, we should worry for ourselves, as it were. Director Blackett will be guarded no matter the situation, and as the AI mentioned, was capable of defeating an immortal Exhuman. He has had plenty of opportunity to study and prepare countermeasures against your powers and is in charge of the source of my weapons and tech. We should tread carefully."


    "Sure," he replied, but I could still sense his thoughts elsewhere.


    "Focus on the moment or you will kill us both. This is why we could not date," I snapped at him. Of course, I didn''t wish to die, but I also could not resist pointing out how it had been his fault in things such as this which had made being together too dangerous to begin with...and to drive an unsubtle reminder to him not to waste his time thinking about the AI.


    "Sorry. Yeah. Let''s focus," he said to himself.


    He did seem to remain focused as we finished descending the next few flights of stairs in silence and advanced on the exit door.


    "I cannot see too well with all the concrete and metal," I said, "but it appears that this area is primarily offices and briefing rooms. An administrative area of sorts, and with far fewer moving through it than the floors above."


    "Blackett''s in a control room, do you think that''d be with the offices or meeting rooms?"


    "Meeting rooms, in my experience," I said. "Those in their offices tend not to want to be anywhere near active ops not their own.


    "Then we go left here," Ashton said, and crouching, moving quickly but silently, passed through the metal door of the stairway and out into the hall.


    We crept from corner to corner, advancing swiftly through the halls, sometimes having to crouch under windows where a room full of XPCA were meeting or briefing, sometimes having to find an alternate route in the large grid-like floor to bypass a group in conversation or sentry standing on alert near a doorway.


    We went down one hall and Ashton stopped and backpedaled to peer through the one we''d passed.


    "Found him," he said. I looked but saw only a woman XPCA officer who looked as though she were a posted guard despite her rank, and judging by the lax state of her uniform, her slouching posture, and the mobile in her hand, was doing it poorly.


    Ashton led us in advancing quickly but carefully on the girl, whom I picked out to be slightly older than myself and very average looking. She did not look up until Ashton was right on top of her.


    "Hey Cosette," he said, and the name and face clicked. I''d met her before in a briefing, this was Ashton''s direct supervisor, Colonel Dawn, and something of a right-hand woman to Director Blackett over the pet project of the P-Force, if I understood the relationships correctly.


    "Chariot?" she said, with obvious shock. She looked him up and down, taking in his street clothes no doubt, and gave me a glance as well. "What the hell are you doing here? You were on personal leave?"


    "Haha, funny story really...I actually came out here to check on Jack''s girlfriend. Steffie, the blue-haired girl? She''s a New Edener"


    "No kidding? They''re an item? I thought he was just hanging onto her out of guilt. I actually had a talk with him about it at some point, trying to get him to open up a little and let him know what happened to her wasn''t his fault. Looks like I read that one wrong," she laughed. "But she''s not here, she''s in the city...or in the mess outside it, isn''t she? How''d you get authorized to get in here?"


    "I''m uh, not. Kind of an...extracurricular...thing," he laughed apologetically.


    She stiffened immediately. "Chariot, are you kidding me? If you tell me this whole...New Eden fiasco was your doing--"


    "Hey, why would you assume that?"


    She stared blankly at him, slouching yet further as though she had to descend to even greater depths to keep talking on his level. "Oh, I don''t know, maybe your whole service record? Educated guess." She shook her head. "You are going to be in so much trouble, and I don''t know if I can cover for this one. Seriously...if this mess had anything to do with you at all¡­"


    "It won''t be a problem," Ashton said with such confidence that even I believed him. "We just need to...to find Blackett. Do you know where he is?"


    "He''s in here," she leaned against the wall and gestured towards the door next to her with her head. "Just out of a meeting and heading back to the command center in a few. So good timing, I guess. Want me to see if he''s willing to talk?"


    "No, I''ll just go in," Ashton said, but she held the door as he tried to open it.


    "Hah. Funny guy. I know I let you get away with a lot, and that''s absolutely going to bite me in the ass when the hearing goes down if it is true that this mess has your fingerprints on it. So you can forgive me for not letting you just waltz past me now."


    "Cosette, seriously," he said. "I need to settle things with him, and then it''ll all be okay."


    "Anyone ever told you you''re a shit liar, Ashton? What the hell are you seriously planning to say to him that would make him forgive you for all this shit?"


    Ashton hesitated, silent, and I was worried for a moment that he was about to tell her the absolute truth. As the seconds passed, I realized, I needn''t have worried. I should have already known. The idiot boy was about to divulge everything, possibly even within earshot of our target himself.


    I stepped in and fired an impact concussive blast on the wall behind her, throwing the girl over Ashton''s head, where she landed with a roll, both surprisingly agile and surprisingly prepared for the blast. Ashton shot me one fleeting glance and then flung himself through the door where Director Blackett resided.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    It was well known that many debilitating attacks grew less effective the more one is exposed to them. Stun grenades, sonic emitters, concussive blasts, even neural scramblers became less and less useful as a veteran grew in experience, became accustomed to disorientation, and even able to fight through it. It was why I had so little problem with gunfire and explosions, even in a confined space.


    This woman, Major Cosette showed exactly that aptitude as the blast did nothing to phase her.


    "So what the hell is this, then? Just treason?" she spat at me. "After everything I''ve done for that kid?"


    "Do not take it personally," I shrugged. "I know that he appreciates your efforts."


    "But not enough to not come in here and have his girlfriend try to blow me up? What the fuck is wrong with you people?"


    "Regrettably," I said, taking careful aim, "I am not his girlfriend."


    "What, he changed again?" Her sidearm was in her hands, pointing steady at me.


    The conversation abruptly ended with the explosion of gunfire as she went prone, firing as she dropped with enough accuracy to bruise me through my armor. I got what use I could from my jetpack, having it fire me laterally and used it and my mind to evade while my body aimed and fired.


    I deployed a shock net, but she simply rolled to the side and the net went sliding down the hallway, crackling and clicking. She rose to one knee, firing and hitting me again, making me cover my face instead of firing back as a bullet ricocheted painfully off my visor.


    I didn''t have the space to maneuver properly down here, and she was a disgustingly good shot. Perhaps not fast or acrobatic, but I''d already been hit twice and was bruised and breathing heavily enough to lose optimal capability.


    I went to return fire, but she was gone. She didn''t have time to go down the hall which meant she had disappeared into one of the doors next to her. I advanced on the first of the two closed doors, across the hall from the room where Ashton now stood, and pulled a grenade from my bandolier, priming it with my thumb.


    With a fluid, practiced movement, I kicked the door open and lobbed the grenade inside, retreating back around the corner in the moment before it went off. As I did, the second door burst open, and Cosette dropped out of it on one knee, firing into where I was pressed immobile against the wall, my own escape options cut off by the breaching maneuver.


    I felt a bullet tear into my thigh behind my plate before my jetpack could carry me backwards and around the corner. In a moment of desperation, I flung another grenade at a door as I passed.


    A proximity fuse, near the door where Ashton and Director Blackett were. She would not be able to pursue me down this hallway, and more importantly, she would not be able to interrupt their meeting. An important victory, which bought me control over the flow of the battle for the moment. No longer was I fighting a defensive fight, having to keep her off the objective, now I could move freely and attack her from any angle.


    Or, I thought, noticing a larger briefing room nearby, I could choose the battlefield.


    I heard her shoot the grenade I''d placed several times to no avail. Perhaps if she had more than a standard sidearm. I flew down a hallway, making no secret of my passing, and kicking an armed but not exosuit-clad XPCA as I passed, dropping him against the wall and into unconsciousness from the added force of my jetpack.


    I reached the large auditorium and rose into the air. It wasn''t spacious, by any stretch, but it was large enough to maneuver. It was as close to an optimal battlefield as I would find down here. My visor had automatically marked the Major as a priority target, and I watched as she barreled down hallways after me, stopping at every corner to check for an ambush before following the path I''d taken exactly.


    She must have expected me to go for this room, knowing the layout and my capabilities, or she had an exceptionally good nose. The plasma of my jetpack did not leave an odor when it flew, but rather actually left air which was purified and ion-free. It was difficult to notice, but if one were looking for it, it was as easy to follow a trail of odorlessness as easily as any smell.


    But as good as she was, it was stupid of her to come after me alone. She had the opportunity to grab reinforcements, but chose not to, and for that, she would pay.


    As soon as she reached the door, I opened fire, flying erratically on the assumption she would do the same, but instead she waited out my opening volley, and took advantage of my new poorer positioning to establish cover behind a row of metal benches by the door.


    But that was not a wise choice. Unless it was fully surrounding cover, all I had to do to circumvent it was fly to a new angle of attack. I shifted in the air, using an optical trick to lose her tracking and repositioned such that I would have a shot at her exposed back.


    So my confusion was complete when, before I could take a shot, I felt a bullet slamming me backwards in the chest, and another tearing through my flightsuit at the armpit, just under my shoulder plate. I swore and served in the air, attempting to control my thoughts to keep my neural uplink from going red while also assessing how she''d managed to track me when I felt another white-hot punch in the abdomen.


    I gasped and began to fall. Desperately, I forced myself sideways, but with three bullets lodged firmly in me now, and my confusion stupidly eroding away at the pain-dulling benefits of adrenaline, the maneuver hurt me as much as it might have helped.


    So I dove instead. Crashing as gently as possible, I put myself on the opposite side of the auditorium from her, with metal benches between us as she''d originally aimed to do. I swore and gave myself a moment to spray medical gel on my wounds while she advanced cautiously. The moment the distinct sound of medical gel spraying carried to her, I heard a magazine clatter as she took the opportunity to reload.


    She was an experienced soldier, of that there was no doubt, a veteran with experience possibly exceeding my own. What Director Blackett had her doing babysitting his test task force, I had no idea, but it had been sheer idiocy of me to assume her just another officer.


    I had the advantage of firepower, however, and flung a handful of explosives in her general direction, prompting her to run before they detonated. As I rose to take the shot on her exposed form, she lowered, running in a crouch to stay behind cover as best as possible, and slowing not at all as my shots hit all around her.


    An instant later, she popped up from somewhere slightly else and returned fire, forcing me back into cover. I hadn''t even seen her move, even with my visor.


    I relocated as well, hoping to catch her in one of the long rows of the benches. They offered decent enough protection from the front or back, but from the sides were useless. And even if I was not flying, I had the advantage in speed still by using my pack, though the wounds were slowing me down greatly.


    For the second time, when I arrived at where I thought she was and opened fire, I found her somewhere else entirely. She''d retreated instead of advanced, perhaps knowing that I would come as I had, and my moment of exposing myself to fire down an empty row of seats had exposed me for yet another shot to the visor which made my vision spin and blood seep over the optics.


    This damn woman. I wasn''t arrogant enough to assume I was the very best by any stretch, but with nothing but a service pistol she was manhandling me like a fresh recruit. I had to retake the air, fighting her on equal footing without bringing my superior mobility and arsenal to bear was just playing straight into her hands.


    So up I went, and down went what micro-rockets I had remaining. There would be no cover for her to hide behind, no place to run or hide.


    I didn''t have enough left to fully saturate the room, but the damage was done. The metal benches were a twisted, glowing, charred wreck, no longer suitable for either cover or for seating. Before the smoke cleared, I practiced my evasive maneuvers, finding movement much more painless, much more possible with medical gel on my wounds.


    I built up some speed and flitted around her while she stood motionless, her eyes darting as though she could keep up with me. Still, I would not underestimate her again, I wouldn''t stop and shoot until I was confident she would not shoot me out of the sky a third time.


    I flew up, down, left, right, using every trick I knew, every blind spot and psychological deception to blind her to my presence, to buy the instant to strike, but it seemed no matter where I moved, I found her eyes there on me, her gun only moments behind.


    Was it possible that she, too, was an Exhuman?


    I reversed direction and surged to my left again when I felt a white-hot pain and heard the crack of her gun for the first time in many moments. My vision went black and I thought...was that it? Had I died?


    But then I realized I was slowing and my jetpack was letting me down. As I descended, slowly, automatically, despite my every command, she took the opportunity to riddle me with four new holes, each one punching through my body, missing my armor plates by inches.


    I fumbled and realized what had happened. Her first shot, the impossible shot, taken while I was at full speed, she''d hit me directly in the visor, destroying it, blinding me, and disabling my mental control over my jetpack. After that, I was a sitting duck. I pulled it off with arms which barely moved and threw it aside as my Jetpack brought me to ground level.


    I pointed a gun in her direction, and she slid away with a fluid, practiced motion, seeming to disappear, but I knew this trick. She''d moved but dipped in the single instant my own gun concealed her from my sight. I fired anyway, my shot going wide, and she popped out the moment I had, using the recoil from my weapon to cover her own motion, to give her an instant to acquire and fire back.


    I thudded backwards against my jetpack, limp and motionless. She''d moved just as I moved, used psychological tricks that I''d made my own, advanced and retreated and flowed with the combat just as I would have. She''d eschewed seeking help to fight me because she was a solo operative. She''d pursued me knowing I would head for this room because she knew me, she was me.


    As I bled into unconsciousness, only barely able to see her making her final advance, the truth of who and what she was occurred to me too late.


    Like me, Colonel Cosette Dawn was a Peregrine, one of the US Airborne. I was stupid for not seeing it before, it was in her every breath, her every motion.


    Her every kill.


    Habere Caelum, sister.

 214d. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    "Hello, Director," I said, prompting Blackett to look up from the paperwork at the desk he was borrowing. "You seem like you''re doing well.¡±


    "Good day, Chariot. You look abhorrent."


    "Yeah, I''m about to fix that though."


    "Mmm. Have a seat. Tea?"


    "No thanks, I''m only here for a minute."


    "Well," he said pouring some into a pair of cups anyway, "before you do anything rash, I would ask you hear me out. I have a proposition I believe you may find appealing."


    He finished pouring the steaming liquid into the second cup and pushed one across the desk at me. It wasn''t the same super post-modern style as Blackett''s home or real office, this was just an empty office he was using while he visited. The desk was light black metal with four narrow legs, no drawers or kickboard or anything, basically just a simple, low table.


    And, after my swords crashed down through it, a pile of twisted slag.


    "Sorry about the tea," I said, advancing on him.


    "Yes, a pity. I have no intention of running anywhere, Chariot. If you intend to kill me, the least you could do is hear me out first. Here--" he deliberately and slowly pulled his sidearm from his hip holster and, bending down in his seat, placed it on the floor between us. "A sign of good faith. I am unarmed."


    "Yeah. Right. Except both of us know that thing''s useless on me anyway unless you were going to club me with it."


    "Indeed," he smiled. "You seem busy, so I will get right to the point. I understand you are irate that I captured, harmed, and used your associate to further my goals. Believe me when I say that what transpired was the furthest thing from what I had desired."


    "Right. Because you didn''t desire brainwashing Exhumans."


    "I didn''t desire to harm her. However the unfortunate truth of the matter was that she was unwilling to work with me for any price. I offered her anything she could dream of, and she spit in my face for it. I thought it was quite magnanimous of me, all things considered. Considering the power I held over her."


    "You sick fuck," I said, advancing another step.


    "Chariot, calm yourself. Though you may find my methods abhorrent, we both know we share the same goals. Exhumans are dangerous, even those you think you have a leash on. If you disagree, you need only reflect on your own actions today. Or those of Temperance, all too frequently. A failsafe must be put in place. We need Exhumans to be the new XPCA, but we also need the XPCA to be able to control those Exhumans."


    "You''re full of shit and you know it. My goals don''t involve enslaving anyone. I have full faith in the goodness inside Exhumans to do what''s right and protect people, even without cramming their heads full of false loyalty to you, personally. And you''re right--my actions today are proof that Exhumans are dangerous to their handlers, when their handlers are corrupt, evil pieces of shit. As it should be."


    "I did what I did out of necessity. If your associate had just cooperated with me, none of this purported ''evil'' would have been necessary. And that''s why I want you, Chariot...you hold a sway over her...hold a sway over many I am not sure I fully understand...if you joined me in this instead of fighting me--"


    "Listen to yourself, you fuck!" I screamed at him. There were gunshots in the hallway but I believed in Karu. "You''re always engineering fucked-up situations and then trying to blame others for you being caught in them. Whether I helped you or not, whether I had a hold of Saga or not...hell, if I existed or not, it changes nothing about the sick fucking ends you would stoop to in order to force Saga to break. You think if I talked her into it, we''d be anywhere else? You''d just be off on your next goddamn fucking scheme coming up with new ways to be the world''s most horrible being!"


    I slashed at him, ready to cut that heart full of twisted evil from his body but he rolled his chair backwards with a kick, slamming its back against the far wall.


    "Fine then!" he shouted back at me, raising his voice at me for the first time in memory. "If you are so convinced I''m simply a moustache-twirling villain, then I''ll act the part. You will aid me in controlling Saga, or I will scourge your precious Exhumans from the world." He banged a fist against the wall and a holo popped to life, cycling through video feeds.


    Many of them were just of feeds within the facility. In one, I saw Karu roaring down a hallway on her jetpack with blood running down her. It cut to another feed before I could see how Cosette was faring.


    But what Blackett was trying to show me was on the majority of the feeds and made my heart stop.


    The resistance, or the majority of them anyway, on their knees, hands on the backs of their heads. XPCA exosuits and Exhumans standing around them, guns and powers at the ready. In another shot, I saw Tower, frozen with a surprised look on his face, entombed in a crystalline sunburst of ice, Moon''s spirit still on his back, clawing at the ice and the nearest XPCA without success.


    "Lives hang in the balance, Chariot. I am accustomed to leadership, have schemed and worked and clawed to secure my current position, and while I regret the loss of every soldier who has died under my command, I am still willing to throw them away if necessary. It is a price which must be paid, and a bargain for the security and peace of mind their deaths afford."


    "You send dozens, hundreds to their deaths without a fucking second thought. As fodder!"


    "No, Chariot, I think of them often. Even the most senseless of deaths serves a purpose...increasing the mortality numbers and reducing our standing strength was a necessary sacrifice to get the council to accept the plan of using Exhumans as soldiers. More foolish, brutal loss of life simply because of the stubbornness of others¡­"


    He paused, his eyes looking dark and haunted for a moment before turning them back to me. "And now here you are, yet another who refuses to see the greater picture, who forces my hand yet again, wasting the lives of more people out of your own damned stubbornness. "The burden of these deaths is my job, Chariot, and it is one I do gladly and do well, but it is not a role you could ever fill, and we both know it. Even now, when you have me cornered, you will not strike me down because if you do, those Exhumans will die, and even when you think you have everything to gain...you will never pay that price."


    "You''re wrong," I said. Blackett''s eyebrows rose as he scrutinized me. I reached into my chest pocket, pulled out AEGIS'' boot drive, and with a gentle kiss, put it on the ground beside me.


    And then, with as much force as I could generate in an instant, I EMP''d the fuck out of the room.


    Blackett looked between me and the sparks shooting out of the dead holo in the new darkness of the room, the only light coming from the frosted window in the door behind me and the deadly, constant glow of my swords.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    "You can''t have them killed if you can''t issue the order. And you can''t issue the order if all the electronics around you are out." I felt a twisted grin growing on my face. "And if you''re dead."


    I began to advance on him again, stepping through the slag of the table as my dozen swords glowed white with the fury of a dying star. The uneven light cast long shadows on his face, but even here in the dark, he did not look afraid, just tired, just resigned.


    "I invested so much into you, Chariot," he said. "What a waste. I always hoped you would become more than you were."


    "Sorry to disappoint."


    "As am I."


    We both waited for a minute in the dark and quiet.


    I hadn''t imagined avenging Saga would be like this. I thought he''d be laying down scheme after scheme, running and hiding behind bodies he considered valueless except for how long they could delay an Exhuman. I thought I would be tearing through plans and devices and at the end of it all, he''d look at me with the same fear of death that he''d put into Saga''s heart.


    Instead he seemed mildly troubled at best. It infuriated me, on top of the hate burning inside me.


    "The FUCK is wrong with you?" I screamed at him. "Do something!"


    "Why? So that you can feel vindicated in striking me down? Murder is the cost of death, Chariot. If you want me dead, you have to kill me."


    "And...what? You''ve got some stupid trick up your sleeve that requires me to act first? Is this room rigged to blow if your heart stops?"


    He smiled, which just pissed me off ten times as much. "Please. I did just explain I''m no nefarious moustache-twirling villain. My schemes have been for the betterment of the XPCA and humanity, and you know it. Or perhaps that is why you are hesitating to strike me down?"


    "So that''s it then? Your plan is to guilt me out of killing you?"


    "Do you honestly wish to know my plan?"


    I blinked hard at him in the dark. Would he actually fucking tell me, or was this just part of his plan?


    "Tell me, then. And then I''ll kill you."


    He chuckled. "If I am to be totally honest, as I said, my plans are all for the improvement of the XPCA. You are many things, if a little young...confident, possessing a clear vision, and an unshakable, if sometimes erroneous sense of right and wrong. You act with purpose and strength, and as I mentioned before, you have an unexplainable magnetism to the eclectic of the world. And you are cunning, as you demonstrate by somehow being in this very chamber."


    "Yeah. Okay. Flattery, I got it. Great plan." I moved forward but he spoke again.


    "No, Chariot. I am testing you. While your strengths are many, you have one weakness I despise, one which holds you back from success in my field or any other where teeth must be bared."


    "Let me guess, I don''t like torturing people enough?"


    He smirked. "Close. You put too much emphasis on the value of a life. You refused to play my game of choosing between striking me down and throwing away the lives of Exhumans, so I have no more lives to put on the table but my own. If you can, in cold blood, stay true to your values and murder me where I sit helpless...true, I will die, but I will do so knowing that you are capable of doing what must be done. And with that knowledge, I will have few fears of what will happen to the XPCA without me."


    "And if I don''t kill you?"


    "Then you are not fit to someday lead it, and I will still be here to do so."


    "Are you fucking kidding me? You think...you honestly think I''m supposed to believe you don''t care about dying because you think I''d run the XPCA? You are insane."


    "Mine is just another life I''d throw away if necessary, Chariot. To fix the world, that is all it can be to me."


    I shook my head. I knew Blackett was fucked in the head but this was too much. He was outright crazy if he honestly believed this stuff. And talking about me succeeding him in the XPCA? That was outright laughable. If word ever got out that the head of the XPCA was killed by an Exhuman, I and all of Blackett''s little experiments would be torched, not promoted.


    But while I thought his words were just insanity, I couldn''t shake the fact that his face, his eyes never faltered. He looked calm as anything, even with a homicidal Exhuman standing in the ruins of his desk. Maybe he did honestly believe it, maybe he was ready to face his own death. Or maybe it was a brilliantly act to get me to stay my blades.


    But either way, he''d still made one fatal mistake. Whether I believed him or not, whether I agreed with him or disagreed, whatever my opinion on the XPCA and the cost of a life, there was one fact that he could never change, no matter how he argued, no matter how persuasive or true.


    Nobody hurts my friends.


    I rammed my swords home, my eyes closing shut.


    But as soon as I did, something felt wrong. I opened my eyes again, only to see darkness. There was no...pain, no spray of blood, no burning embers of the body writhing on the floor¡­


    Blackett swept my legs from under me and the side of my head met the warped metal of the desk. Stars popped in front of my eyes as I felt the spray of blood I''d been expecting before. I felt him pulling me to my feet and summoned my swords again, stabbing them into him again and again.


    It was like he was made of the same shadows that Trish commanded. When the blades hit him, they just went out. I didn''t, couldn''t understand.


    And the new concussion and pain I got as he slammed my head into a wall didn''t help. I''d never really given it much thought, but he had a whole gym in his house and he used it. He wasn''t exactly beefy, but if my powers didn''t work on him, he''d throw me around like a toy.


    And that''s exactly how I felt as he handled me bodily, introducing me to a new level of pain as he systematically broke both of my arms and added several more blows to the head.


    "Damn idiot," he said, barely breathing hard as he disassembled my body. "As though you could ever lead anyone. Head of the XPCA...my damn ass."


    "You...lied¡­?" I gasped at him. I don''t know why that seemed important now, given everything else that had just turned around on me, but my brain was spinning, reeling, screaming, and desperately reaching out for anything to grab ahold of. Of course he had lied. He was Blackett. I was such a fucking idiot to even hear him out.


    He laughed as he threw me to the ground again and pinned me under a black boot. "I lied. How can this be a surprise to you, you damn idiot? Do you think I''d ever see the XPCA in the hands of an Exhuman? The only reason we''re even having this debate is because I know Exhumans can never be trusted without mental persuasion. And you think I''d be happy with one in power?"


    "...f-fuck...you¡­" I got out before he broke something else, and the pain made me black out for a second.


    "No, I have much bigger plans for you. As much as I will never understand why, the Code-X does have a fondness for you. If she remains obstinant, we''ll have it taken out of your flesh instead of hers. That would likely prove much more effective motivation for her, and wouldn''t risk her dying."


    I managed to make another sword, even unable to tell which was was up now, and thrust it at where I thought he was. It must have worked because it fizzled out on touching him as well.


    "...how¡­"


    "Curious why your powers don''t work? I admit, so am I," he said, and crouched next to my body, talking in a conspiratorial tone. "Since we''re being honest, and since you''re spending the rest of your life on a meat hook...I suppose I can share. It may help you keep your sanity intact, and we can''t have you falling apart, or you''ll be of no value to the Code-X, now will you?"


    Unconsciousness threatened at the edges of my mind, but I had to hear this. I tried to will myself back, but it didn''t work that way.


    "I''m an Exhuman," he said with obvious delight. "But not like you. Not like any of you filthy, destructive monsters. My powers are special, beautiful, perfect. A sublime gift to aid me in my job to save the world from your kind."


    He drew even closer and I could feel his breath on my ear.


    "Exhuman powers don''t work on me. With a touch, I can banish them. Your unnatural abilities can never do me harm, no matter how much you wish they could. I can put out an Exhuman''s flame, still the quaking of the earth, even--" he brushed a finger down the back of my neck "--even circumvent an Exhumans barriers or regeneration. So long as it''s with my own two hands."


    He rose and I felt the world very distant and heavy on my mind.


    "So keep that in mind, and behave. If you should wind up dead, I''ll simply have to pay more visits to your friend. It''s been such a pleasure working with you, Chariot. I do wish you''d not forced my hand...but what could I really expect from--"


    With what strength I had left, I flicked my fingers, sending a tiny lightning bulb flying into him. It exploded into arcs up and down his chest, and he screamed at clutched at where it burned him.


    Unlike my swords, not all Exhuman powers were unnatural. Some were just natural forces, once loosed.


    I slipped into unconsciousness, regretting that I didn''t have enough strength to fire a bolt big enough to finish the job.

 215. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I sat on the ground, my head reeling from memories of a half-dozen lifetimes which weren''t mine. Over my shoulder, Moon hovered, a look of concern almost visible on her purple copy of my face.


    It took me...almost a minute to reorient and to figure out what had and hadn''t happened. The others--happy as I was to see them somehow here with me and unharmed--kept piping up to offer me help or ask what was wrong and I had to shush them while I put my own thoughts in order.


    When that didn''t work, I turned to Moon. "Moon, what...what is all of this?"


    She moved so she was sitting down on the floor in front of me, connected at the feet. Her eyes looked as heavy and haunted as I felt, and I thought, in that moment, there was nobody else in the world who could possibly understand what I''d just gone through.


    "I...I don''t honestly know," she said. "Can you ask the others...to leave? I apologize, they are...making me very nervous on top of everything else."


    Tower was the first to stand up. I realized...sifting through Moon''s memories in my head...that he was always the first to try to respect her privacy and insecurities.


    "Let me know if you need anything," he said, giving a significant glance to each of us before he left through a hole in the wall.


    I remembered why that hole was there. It was a solid concrete wall, nobody could have straight up melted that but Tem. But she''d been captured, hadn''t she? Knocked out by the fortress armors blanketing the battlefield in gas...invisible, but still had to breathe.


    Or...no, she''d been harried into a minefield by an Exhuman who could detect her even when hidden? But then she''d also stepped on a mine.


    My head swam with the conflicting possibilities, and Moon placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder that passed right through me.


    "This is what Soran showed you?" I asked, finding the point where all the varying realities diverged. In each of them, we''d made plans and went out, and in most of them, we lost horribly. But before that, we''d been brought here...the resistance HQ, and Soran had trapped us while he''d tried to take Moon''s powers. That, and everything else I remembered before it was consistent.


    So...Soran promised to show us something, and suddenly I have visions in my head. It helped a little knowing that this wasn''t something that just happened, but I still didn''t understand what or how or why.


    "I think," Moon began slowly, and stopped. She usually liked to gather her thoughts before speaking a word, and was trying hard to force words out to reassure me. Again, something I only understood because the barrier between our minds was at an all-time minimum. "I...understand that I broke my rule in offering to share these visions with you, but please do not pry further in my mind. I am already quite upset and you are not helping."


    She didn''t really sound it, but behind her calm request, I felt a wave of anger and confusion and shame. Shame?


    "I requested that you stop," she said.


    "Sorry. I''m...not really used to blocking out thoughts in my own head."


    "Understandable, but make an attempt, please."


    "Right. Well, let''s just focus on what''s going on here to keep my mind honest."


    "Good idea." She paused while she thought, and I tried my hardest not to listen in on it. "Could you not sing that tune mentally? It is very distracting."


    "Sorry. I''m trying not to hear you think."


    "It is appreciated. I suppose I will endure the song."


    I waited a painful, still-confused minute while she sat blankly in front of me before she spoke again. "I have a hypothesis."


    "Cool."


    I waited.


    "Uh, what is it?" I asked.


    "Soran forcibly bonded with me, but the memories I have are not his, though I was able to glimpse his mind for a moment, and found it...blinding."


    "Blinding?"


    "Whatever the equivalent would be of peering into something too bright, mentally. I apologize, I do not know the appropriate term."


    "I kind of doubt there is one."


    "A shame. I detest imprecise speech. We will have to invent a term after this. But when I am shadowing an individual, I gain access not only to their memories but their powers as well, and that is where I believe these visions have come from."


    "Soran has a power to hallucinate vividly?"


    "Perhaps," she said, and her perception soured imperceptibly. "But also perhaps not. There is a wrinkle in this theory."


    "Which is?" I said, my head spinning at the new information piling on the old.


    "Both my and Soran''s powers activate on touch, but are incompatible. When I touch him, I become his shadow, and my consciousness leaves mine and joins his body. But when he touches me, he removes both my consciousness and my powers, taking the powers for himself until I reawaken, at which point my powers are returned. Or I never reawaken, in which case he retains them."


    "Is that how it all works?"


    "Having been in his mind, I can say so with certainty."


    "Well that''s good to know."


    "Focus, Chariot. Do you see the dilemma?"


    "Uhh, no. He touches you...and you shadow him, and then he also has your powers?"


    She shook her head. Man, I looked like I needed a haircut. "I do not believe powers can be cloned as you suggest. If so, why would Soran lose his stolen powers if the victim reawakens? It suggests there is only one true source of the power, and it can be with him or with the true host, but not both."


    "So your power went off but his didn''t, and you shadowed him. That''s what we saw."


    "But I, even in shadow, did not last long. I became an unconscious shadow, which I did not know could even occur, but that implied that his power did affect me."


    "So...that, then. Your power went off, and you shadowed him, and then his knocked you out and stole your power."This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "But if my power were gone, I would have not been a shadow. That is my power."


    I held my head. How could Moon sound so calm, sitting there like this wasn''t a world-spinning paradox?


    "I have a theory," she said.


    "Anything, just tell me."


    "As I mentioned, I borrow the powers of my host. Yet Soran stole my powers successfully, but as you mentioned, only after I''d already become his shadow did I lose consciousness and give them to him."


    "Okay."


    "So, I was a shadow, I lost my powers, but because I was already attached to him, I now had his powers, one of which was my own power which he had just stolen. This kept me from my power simply ending and my consciousness returning to my body. Do you understand?"


    "Okay...that''s crazy, but I guess it makes sense. So I wasn''t far off on my first guess...he didn''t copy your power, he stole it, and then you being attached to him, you could still use it."


    "Correct. But while this is relatively straightforward in the case of the one power, it has troubling implications for others."


    "This was relatively straightford when?" I asked, wishing Lia were here.


    "Let us take one of his powers, say, cryoism. Cryoism is control of ice."


    I rolled my eyes at how she could still be a condescending pain even now. "Yeah. I understood."


    "Your expression indicated otherwise. Now, attached to him, I would have access to this power. However, I then have that power, and he is leeching my powers to make his own. This gives him my cryoism atop of his. Which I then have access to, which he then drains. Do you understand?"


    "Are you saying...that when you are bonded with Soran...each of you is like...I don''t know, your powers are powered-up?"


    "He is. I am unconscious. And ''powered-up'' does not begin to describe it, it would be more akin to ''approaching infinite power''."


    If I weren''t sitting down before, I sure as shit would be now. An infinitely-powered Soran? I didn''t even know what that meant, but the very sound of it about scared the piss out of me.


    "No wonder he set this all up just to steal your powers, Moon. That''s...that''s¡­"


    She shook her head. "It would not work if he stole my powers. For it to function, we need to be two entities passing power back and forth. It would not work with just one, or in the event he succeeded in taking my power, would not work with another vessel. He would just be taking the other''s power in two different ways at that point, not both taking and giving."


    "Then...what? He did this just for a short while so that...for the moments you guys were bonded, he had unlimited power and did what? Did he freeze every human in America or something?"


    "No. While unlimited power is certainly quite a lot, I do not believe it would extend the natural range of the power at all. Merely expand the capability of the power in question in...some way."


    Her words brought me way back to when I was still in Canada, when I last had a conversation like this about powers and their use which wrinkled my brain. It was with Lia, as we were brainstorming new applications of my lightning.


    She''d told me that in theory, I had perfect dominion over all things electric within my range. If I was perfectly proficient, I could have a hundred billion lightning swords conjured instantly and effortless control over each of them. I could shoot lightnings as massive and insane as Tem''s lasers, or stop the bioelectric impulses of anyone in my range, making them drop braindead instantly.


    But of course, theory wasn''t reality. Lia said that our minds shape how we perceive and use our powers. That was why I might use my lightning as swords, and might be able to dabble in other uses, but another electropath could be all about calling down bolts of lightning from the sky, or maybe successfully zap himself with super-speed.


    It sounded like what Moon was talking about here was...all of that. Infinite meant no limits, meant whatever perceptions or mental hang-ups one had with their powers, didn''t matter. Anything your powers could do -- within range -- they would do.


    Which was just fucking insane, thinking about it. I''d sometimes wondered why Soran had been able to kill Mage using the water in her stomach, but couldn''t just freeze the blood directly out of our veins, and the only answer I had was that, to Soran''s mind and powers, he could freeze water explicitly, not blood or other liquids.


    But for that moment when he had infinite cryoism, he could have ripped every cell of H2O out of us like a billion, billion microscopic bullets. He could have frozen and ruptured every cell in each of our bodies and turned us all into pulp.


    The thought made me shiver and I pushed it from my mind before it could set in. I forced it out, forced other thoughts in. Because memories were coming back with it, unbidden.


    But it wasn''t budging. The thought of this room, an icy tomb, of Soran right there, able to kill us all with a thought. My body freezing. I already knew the pain of my cells freezing and dying, the sensation of flesh already dead but still attached--


    Moon clapped her hands in front of me and I felt my mind go blank in shock.


    "I apologize, I should not be peeking," she said, bowing on her hands and knees to me. "And even if I am, I should have the tact to pretend not to be. But it seemed to me you were about to be lost in your own memories, painfully, and I had to intervene."


    "Yeah, sorry," I said, realizing I was breathing hard and sweating. "Sorry."


    "I am the one apologizing. Twice today, I have violated my own rules, and will have to spend many hours reflecting on what that makes me."


    "No, you just...look, let''s get back to Soran."


    She pulled herself back upright. "Agreed. It seems apparent he did not channel his infinite potential in any way we knew he possessed. No ice, no vivid illusions of fire, or otherwise. But then what did he do?"


    "The visions," I said, putting two and two together.


    "Correct. I know not what power he had before, but with infinite potential, he used it to witness visions. Regrettably, what he witnessed, I do not know. I was overcome with my own visions, which I shared with you, and I felt they were only a small fraction finished when he ripped me from them by returning me to my body."


    "But why, then? He did it so that he could have visions? Do you think they showed the future? Is that it? He did all this to glimpse the future?"


    "Though I think it a poor idea categorically, we may wish to consider his words. If he was truthful, he brought us here to show us something. And he did. If his word has any value, it is possible that it was not his vision which had significance, but mine."


    "Would he even know what vision you''d have?"


    "Such knowledge is beyond me. I apologize."


    We lapsed into silence while the enormity of this conversation rivaled the half-dozen timelines in my brain. It did seem like the future. They were all lives which had branched off from this very moment, of us sitting and discussing in this room. Of spreading out and teaming up and of failure.


    Lots of failure. Painful failure. AEGIS and Karu and I shot and torn and beaten down. Tower and Moon and Tem captured.


    "Is...he supposed to be...helping?" I asked, not sure what else to make of it.


    "Barring the number of ways I find your sentence irritatingly imprecise, I admit too much curiosity in wondering your meaning to joke over it."


    "What?"


    "Tell me what you mean."


    "Is Soran helping us? I can''t think of why else he''d do all this just to plant visions in us of the future. Of failures in the future. Like all the things we should be avoiding."


    Moon sat silently for a minute. "On one hand, your theory is valid and explains the situation well. But on the other--as I mentioned before, Soran is an evil being, and the source of lies. Bad people cannot be trusted."


    "Jeez, you are really binary when it comes to good and bad guys aren''t you?"


    "If you probe my mind now, I shall never ever forgive you," she said with actual malice in her voice. I didn''t push it and let my mind wander elsewhere.


    Right back to...here, actually. We were here for a reason. And whatever Soran was doing, our objective was still unchanged. Targa. Blackett. Exhumans, and Saga.


    And the ball of hate inside me surged as the added fuel of all the deaths and defeats of us in my memories piled on top of it. It was so hot that just brushing the thought of Blackett in my mind made me stand up and move anxiously, dragging Moon along for the ride.


    "Shall we make plans to bring down the bad guys?" Moon suggested, pretending she wasn''t in my mind for all she was worth.


    "Yes, let''s," I said, cracking my knuckles and really really wanting to punch a wall or something. I''d be much better served by saving it for Blackett''s stupid smug face.

 216a. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    True to Soran''s word, Rito appeared after a couple of minutes, apparently confused and completely unaware why there was a big hole in the wall, but was happy to drop us off anywhere we wanted. It was at this point that I realized we had a huge opportunity.


    "If we can use Rito, we can get pretty much anywhere," I said. "I''m willing to bet that acting as the logistician for the resistance, she''d been pretty much everywhere they could get her in New Eden, so she can put us pretty much anywhere in New Eden."


    "Um, that''s correct. They deliberately had me tag along on some missions just for that reason," Rito confirmed.


    "Nice, Chariot. How''d you know that?" Tower asked.


    I blinked at him. "Uh. I think I knew that from before. But this is good for us, we can drop out of nowhere, circumvent the fortress armors...we can head straight for Blackett and Targa and take them out and stop this at its root without any more XPCA or Exhumans dying."


    "Even in trying to ruin us, he helps us unwittingly?" said Jack, who''d been holding his leg ever since Soran dropped him on it. "Amusing. If...not overly convenient."


    "If it is overly convenient, it may be by design," Karu said. "If we utilize his servant''s powers to stop the XPCA, we are doing him a service. It may very well be that was his plan in bringing us here."


    "Even if we are helping him, if it stops Blackett, I''m happy to oblige," I said, grinding my teeth.


    "You''re going to mess up your jaw if you keep doing that," AEGIS warned me. I stopped.


    "Wait," I said, looking at Moon. "Is...does anyone else have a really weird feeling of deja vu?"


    The others looked at me with a mixture of mild concern and surprise, but not a single hint of recognition.


    "Moon?" I asked. Everyone looked at her, and she turned red even as she said and did nothing.


    "Then if our course of action is decided," Karu cut in. "What of the implementation? Namely, where is whom to be delivered?"


    "You mean...which of us goes after which of them?"


    "Correct."


    "I''m going after¡­" I said, and then hesitated.


    "I''m going after Targa," AEGIS finished even as I paused. I looked at her and blinked. Somewhere in the sea of memories just dumped into my brain, this scene seemed utterly familiar. It was hard to seperate them, being so similar and all of them jumbled in my mind with no sense of which memories led where, or even any timeline...it felt like everything which happened in all of the memories happened all at once.


    And more confusing, I''d separated from Moon, and with it, her memories. I only had memories of her memories now, and felt like I was missing a lot of very important details, somehow. This nagging feeling of deja vu was only getting worse.


    "Targa''s the one who''s hacking me, or knows who did," AEGIS explained, somewhat unnecessarily. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Then that is decided," Karu said, dusting off her hands with a flourish. "I shall accompany Ashton and we go after Director Blackett."


    "Me too!" said Tem.


    I had to do something to change things or it would end exactly as it had in the memory. I didn''t remember how it had gone or ended, but none of them had ended well. "Actually," I said, turning back to AEGIS. "We should stick together, right?"


    She chewed her lip and made a play at stroking her hair, but it wasn''t there from where I''d cut it off. Shit, I''d done that forever ago it felt, like an asshole.


    "Right," she said. "But...I don''t¡­it''s been...months...and...maybe now..."


    Jack explained how he wasn''t fit for combat, and Steffie volunteered to look after him and Lia.


    Outside, with the fight. I had almost forgotten about that. "I think we need a lot of our big guns focused on the fight outside," I said. "Tower and Tem might be able to hold up against those fortress armors, Tem on offense, Tower covers for her. We need to stop the Exhumans from getting wiped out or all of this is for nothing.


    "Hey, I know I caught a speeding bullet before, but honestly, that was all luck. And who knows what else those crazy things can do."


    "I can help," Moon said, rising from her silent reverie and immediately blanching as everyone turned to face her. "Chariot forced his mind on me enough recently that I have an idea of their arsenal. And two sets of your power are better than one."


    "And you''re my partner," Tower said.


    "Sure."


    I hoped that was enough. I remembered the Exhumans outside getting destroyed, so surely with Tower, Moon, and Tem, we could swing that fight around. Still, it didn''t feel like enough.


    I walked to Tower and put my hands on his arms and he looked at me with concern.


    "Bro...watch the two girls, okay? Whatever happens out there, stay safe, stay together. Promise me, okay?"


    He gave me a reassuring hug that made my bones creak, and then let me go.


    "Don''t even have to ask, man," he said. "But you''re lookin'' at me like I''m gonna die," he laughed a little empty laugh. Something tugged my sleeve, and I turned, expecting Tem but finding Moon.


    "Don''t worry about them, I will keep them safe," she said.


    "Thank you." It was stupid of me to turn to Tower first, when Moon and I were the only ones here with...whatever this was going on. Even if I was having trouble putting my head together around all this, I thought she was smarter than me by far...if anything could be done with this mind-crap, she''d do it.


    "Are...we decided then?" Rito asked, seeming a little worried about how we were discussing dying.


    "Any chance you could tell us where you sent Soran?" I asked, only now remembering Rito was in the room and was...like...a person.


    "None at all. Besides, I move a lot of things on a schedule without really worrying about who or what it was. Awfully hard to keep track, actually," she said, looking a little flustered.


    "He was keeping an eye on his watch," AEGIS said. "Having to keep to a timeline might have been what saved Moon''s life."


    "Yeah I don''t think so," I said. "But speaking of time, let''s not waste any more of it. Every second we''re here...the weirder things get. Rito...if you please."


    "My pleasure," she said. "Viva la resistance!"


    I just sighed. AEGIS grinned as she rolled her eyes at me as if to point out that hey, I was dating a smart cutie and Rito was an airhead I shouldn''t pay attention to.


    I had to wonder if she would still keep doing that if she knew how many times I''d watched her die in the last few minutes.


    And then realized, yes. Yes she would. She was standing beside me, her body half-destroyed, skin hanging off her torso like a slashed garment, and she was smiling and rolling her eyes and being a little jealous anyway.


    As we turned away from Rito to let her use her powers, I pulled AEGIS in and gave her a kiss, just a swift, solid smooch. Even if she was beat to hell, she was still the woman I loved, and her surprised smile in that moment made all the misery of the last couple days seem just a little lighter for just a little while.

 216b. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I gave AEGIS a quick hug before we parted at the stairway, wishing her luck and making her promise to stay safe. She gave me a quirky glance and made me promise instead.


    And then we were off, Karu and I heading down while AEGIS went up alone. When we emerged into a series of hallways, brightly lit and snaking around offices and briefing rooms, the feeling of deja vu became palpable. I knew I''d seen Karu and Cosette running and fighting in these hallways. I''d seen it, absolutely, without doubt.


    "You seem as though you have seen a ghost, as it were," Karu said, watching me cagily.


    "Yeah," I said looking right back at her. Maybe I had.


    "Ever since we reached Soran, you have been...off. Are you certain that you are well? If you are not at your peak, you should not be here. Director Blackett is liable to be a formidable adversary."


    "No, I''m fine," I said. I was, I really was, I wasn''t just convincing myself of that. But I wouldn''t be soon...none of us would. That was unsettled me. Was that Soran''s play? Throw some spooky images in my head and psyche me out so I''d get myself killed?


    No, that didn''t fit. If he just wanted me dead, he could have done that.


    The answer seemed obvious. Why give anyone knowledge except to educate them? Why warn someone if you weren''t helping them avoid danger? Why arm us with foresight except to avoid mistakes. It seemed straightforward¡­


    ...if only it were coming from anyone other than Soran. I didn''t know what his game was, apparently didn''t even know all his powers, and had no idea his motivation. I''d thought it pretty straightforward and obvious that he''d just wanted to get into New Eden to make a buffet of the Exhumans in there...yet instead he was saving people?


    "I must assume you are lying," Karu said, waving a hand in front of me. "You do not seem fine to me."


    "I''m just trying to plan how not to get everyone killed," I said. "AEGIS is up there taking on Targa by herself."


    "And Targa is just one administrator, not even a soldier with a combat record as far as I was able to determine, whereas the AI is highly competent, even against fully-armed soldiers."


    "Yeah," I agreed. I knew that, but there were a lot of things I thought I knew right now and they were all conflicting. "Look, let''s just not waste time."


    "I am not the one standing, lost in thought."


    "Right," I said, and ran forward. Karu fell in behind me, and when I felt like she was going to ask where I thought I was going, I just ran faster.


    Cosette turned to face us as we ran up, right where I thought she''d be.


    "Chariot? What the hell are you doing here? You were on personal leave?"


    I started to answer but stopped myself. Cosette seemed to take the growing silence as trouble and grew visibly more tense and anxious as the seconds passed, and in response, so did Karu.


    Just like in my vision. It was coming true. If I left the situation alone, Karu would shoot first and they''d fight and Karu would lose. I didn''t remember the details, but I could never forget the outcome.


    I threw up a hand sign for ''full stop'' and seemingly by reflex, Karu dropped into a crouch and held her position behind a corner of the hallway.


    "Cosette, sorry. This might be coming out of nowhere, but I have to ask, were you a Peregrine?"


    "Excuse me?"


    "An airborne. Like Karu was. Were you?"


    "Well...yeah, actually. Why are you asking? And why now?"


    That completely confirmed it for me. There was no other way I knew that but from the memories Moon had. So they were true, and they did show me things I couldn''t know otherwise.


    I reminded myself they might not be completely true, and while there was a lot of memories which suddenly needed even closer scrutiny, I didn''t have time for any of that anymore. I had somewhere else to be, and urgently.


    Moon might have been able to help the situation outside with Tem and Tower, and I might be able to fix things here with Karu, but AEGIS was still on her own, doomed to fail again unless I got to her in time. My heart painfully skipped a beat at the thought, and I wanted to leave right now and run screaming after her.


    But my heart could only jump so far without bumping into the ball of burning hate in my chest. Blackett was still here, and still needed my attention. As much as I wanted to run and save AEGIS, I also wanted to protect Saga, avenge her, and extract revenge for the pain he''d put on her, and on me through her memories.


    I realized I was standing there like an idiot while Cosette eyed me with increasing worry.


    "You uh, okay there, buddy?" she asked.


    "No," I admitted. "I''m not. I''m super overwhelmed by everything right now, and dealing with you is the last thing I want to do."


    To my surprise, she laughed. "Welcome to my whole job, buddy. You think I ever roll out of the bed in the morning and think, ''oh boy, another day of picking up after Chariot?'' You leave a hell of a mess for me sometimes, and I''d be lying if I said it didn''t drive me crazy...but on the whole...you''re an alright guy, even if you are kind of¡­" she glanced at Karu. "...a deviant."


    "I''m actually with AEGIS right now--actually, that doesn''t matter."


    "Oh I think it matters," she said with a grin. "But...later, maybe. Right now, I can tell you''re not holding together too well. Just tell me what I can do to help, that''s my job."


    I opened and closed my mouth without getting anything out a few times. Cosette waited patiently while Karu went about as ballistic as one could while sitting motionless. I gave her another firm full-stop gesture and she just shook her head at me like I was crazy.


    Maybe I was.


    "Cosette...you said you signed up to lead the P-Force because you thought the idea of working with Exhumans was cool. You''re obviously pretty open-minded on us. What do you think of New Eden?"


    "Is this...really what you want to ask?" she said. "If you want something, you can just say it, you know. Don''t waste your time beating around the bush on my account, I actually prefer people being blunt and getting things done."


    "I think I do want to ask this. Just answer...please."


    She shook her head. "Okay, whatever. I think, honestly -- because that''s the only way I roll -- that New Eden is kind of a dump. Like the literal kind, where you put garbage. It''s not the place it was supposed to be."


    "And what do you think of the XPCA''s presence here?"


    "Obnoxious. But that may be tainted by me having to run out here with Blackett for inspections and paperwork. Like I needed another desk job."


    I sighed and gestured for Cosette to follow me a few feet further from the door. She followed with a puzzled expression. "What I''m going to tell you...I know I don''t have the best record with you, but you know I wouldn''t lie about something like this. You know I wouldn''t do this if I had any other choice."


    "You''re definitely creeping me out, kid. If you''re asking me out, I have no interest in joining the hunter and body-modder--"


    "Cosette, damn it, I''m serious."Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    She stopped and nodded, her brown eyes watching me closely.


    "Saga, the Code-X, a friend of mine. She''s here, under New Eden, and has been tortured in just...unspeakable, inhuman ways, for weeks on end. Left hanging there, crucified while they tore her flesh away from her until she was nothing left but a torso and head and arms, just...blood and¡­"


    Cosette snapped in front of my face a few times. "Focus, Chariot."


    "Right. Sorry." I let out a deep breath and refocused on what I was doing now. Pushed back that urge to kick in the door and rip Blackett apart with my own bare hands. "The XPCA here as a whole don''t know about it. It was a project between Blackett and Targa only. And they did it so that they could force her to brainwash everyone in New Eden to be loyal to Blackett, force them into being his own personal Exhuman army. He wanted to make a newer, bigger P-Force, but with mental slaves."


    Cosette''s eyes were narrowed as she stared at me with an intensity that rivaled Karu''s. She really had been a Peregrine, hadn''t she? The way her eyes burned straight through to one''s soul.


    And like that...we just stood there. A minute dragged by while she just bored into me with her eyes. I didn''t know whether to look into them or away, or why my hands suddenly felt so clumsy. I became acutely aware of how often I shifted weight on my feet, and wondered if she took that as a sign I was lying.


    Finally she sighed at me. "I bet you don''t have any proof, do you?"


    "You think I''m smart enough to get dirt from under Blackett?"


    "No...that was a stupid question. And now, let me take a guess, because you''re here, and there''s only one reason one someone as thick-headed and determined as you would be here right now. You''re going to make an attempt on Blackett''s life over this."


    "Yes."


    "That''s straight-up treason, you know that? Premeditated, willful assault of a superior officer?"


    "Yes, I know."


    She studied me for another long moment. "But you''re not backing down anyway, are you?"


    "No, I''m not."


    "And being an Exhuman, you could probably cut me up right where I stand. Before I could warn him or stop you or anything. Or is that why you asked if I was airborne? Judging my abilities before you went after me?"


    "No...that was just something I''d heard and wanted to confirm out of curiosity," I said. It wasn''t really a lie. "And...I wouldn''t hurt you if I could avoid it. You''re a good person."


    To my surprise, she smiled at me, even as she grilled me over treason. "You''re a good person too, Chariot, which is the only reason I''m not trying to shoot you in the face right now. Well, that and the shield. But if you were pretty much anyone else, I''d think you were off your rocker. But, unfortunately, I do know you."


    She paused for a moment. "And more importantly maybe, I know Blackett too. He''s smart, he''s dedicated, he''s fiercely loyal to the XPCA in theory...but in practice...he wanted those generals dead probably more than your friend Saga did. My honest thought when I saw what was going on up there was that he''d somehow orchestrated it. If I believe you, which I am not saying I do, but if I do...a lot of shit just makes a lot more sense. I''ve started my own little investigations in the past, but they always got shut down. Now I might know why."


    "Oh, thank--"


    She held up a hand. "Hang on. I still said I don''t know if I believe you. And let''s say I do...shouldn''t he be arrested instead of you barging in there like...well, like an Exhuman?"


    "It won''t work though. He''s made all the Exhumans loyal to him personally. If it came out publicly, they''d...they''d do a hundred times worse than what''s going on up there, and all with the tacit approval of the Blackett supporters in the XPCA."


    "Which is like, everyone," Cosette nodded.


    "It''d be the world''s worst Exhuman event, and half the XPCA wouldn''t even want to stop it. The only way would be Blackett himself making them stand down."


    "And I could see it now, accolades for exemplary service, and stopping the largest Exhuman event in history, special exemptions for proving himself indispensable...all for a situation he engineered." She held her head. "Not to mention how that reflects on New Eden and Exhuman rights. Damn, what a pickle."


    "Yeah. And...he''s just sick. I always knew he was a power-hungry scheming jerkass, but it wasn''t until I saw what he was willing to do to Saga...what he''d do to a person to get what he wanted, that I realized...he''s too dangerous. Like, what if the president starts obstructing the XPCA? Would Blackett have any problems...I don''t know, flaying the president''s daughter''s alive in front of him until he gave in? I used to think, no, that''s not how anyone would act...no human could be that cruel..."


    Cosette lifted her floppy hat and scratched her head vigorously before delicately putting the cap back on. "I don''t know, Chariot. You''ve given me so much...shit, just dropped on me. And not a lot of time to process it. I can''t just let you walk in there and kill someone."


    "You can, and you should."


    "It''s not my call."


    "It is, though. You''re here, and I''m doing this thing. Right here and right now. There''s nobody else to make this call but you."


    "And what if I say no? What if I scream right now and try to shoot you?"


    "Then I''ll be really mad at you."


    "And that''s it?"


    "I mean...I don''t want to hurt you. I''d probably try to shock you without killing you and go for Blackett before he can get away."


    She shook her head but was still smiling. "You''re such a fucking terrible soldier. I see why you kept telling Karu to hold. I bet she would have put a bullet in my face ten seconds into this conversation."


    "That''s because I''m really not a soldier, Cosette. I''m just a guy trying to do the right thing."


    "I know. And like I said, that''s the only reason I''m even listening to you."


    She stopped and sat down on the floor, holding her head in her hands.


    "You okay?"


    "Killer headache all the sudden. Sorry."


    "Oh," I said, not sure what to make of it. "Um."


    "It''s fine. It happens sometimes. Tell your friend Karu not to let it happen to her, or they''ll take away her wings."


    "Really? Uh, I will."


    "It was a joke, dumbass. Ow, damn it. I just need a few."


    I wavered for a moment but every second was precious here. "Look, I''m sorry to force this on you but...we''re going ahead with Blackett. I just...don''t have the time, I''m sorry."


    "Chariot, wait," she said and grabbed my ankle. I took a deep breath and reminded myself she was a friend, she wasn''t restraining me, we were all cool here. "Is this...is this really right?"


    "It''s the only way I know."


    She looked me in the eyes again like she was looking for something. I wondered what it was that she spent so long doing it.


    "What happens after?" she asked. She sounded scared since the first time I''d ever known her.


    "The XPCA goes on. We keep getting better and getting rid of corrupt people like Blackett and Albion, and good people like you and me hopefully have a chance to reform things like how they should be."


    "Is it really going to be okay?"


    "I don''t know. But I do know that if we don''t change things, if Blackett stays in power, things won''t be okay at all."


    I was trying to be calm and patient for her sake but...AEGIS needed me. Now, if not sooner. I couldn''t delay any longer.


    She laughed suddenly. "As your CO, I should be the one looking after you. Or stopping you. What a mess I am. Ow," she winced. "Look just¡­" she took a deep breath with a face that said I can''t believe I''m doing this. "Can you promise me, whatever happens, you''ll stick with the XPCA and always, always keep doing what you think is best? Even if...even if it''s more shit like this? Even if you wind up in heaps of trouble?"


    "Yeah. I think I have to. I can''t just let it alone now that I know how fragile and messy the whole organization is."


    "Good," she said and smiled before wincing again. "As long as we have people like you...I think we''ll be okay. Now...I''m gonna...go get a drink or something. When I get back, I''ll check in on the director. I''ll only be gone a couple of minutes."


    "Okay. Thanks." I helped her up and watched her wander off hesitatingly and turned back to Karu.


    "Time for your revenge?" she asked. "I am not often a proponent of such, but I dare say the Director has had a long time coming."


    "Would...you be okay doing it? I have to go," I said, already stepping away.


    "Are you jesting?"


    "No, I really just need to go."


    "Ashton, wait. The man in that room is Director Blackett, a craven and vile scourge who has turned the bastion of humanity to his personal plaything. A black wellspring of corruption who has harmed you personally. Even now, your Code-X friend trembles with imaginings of his doings, and your very sister lies with pained breaths because of his hand. To say nothing of the humiliations he has brought on all of us through the XPCA. And you wish to run?"


    "No, I''m not running, I''m leaving. I trust you to do it. Avenge them for me. Make it hurt."


    She looked at me oddly. "You are a singularly unique individual, Ashton."


    I''d already left, my aching legs flying down the hallways as fast as I could take them.


    The wait for the elevator was painfully long, but given the hangar above being like, six floors high, I didn''t want to run seven plus flights of stairs into a fight. So instead I was stuck here hoping it would come soon, and not full of XPCA when it did.


    And with my thoughts.


    What Cosette had said reminded me eerily of what Blackett had said in my vision. He''d been lying, of course, and I felt stupid for believing him even in a vision, even for a second...but both of them had said that they needed me to stay in the XPCA, that I was important to shaping its future and continuing the fight against the corruption within it.


    What it meant hearing that from two completely opposite sources, I didn''t know. I was still astounded that Cosette had let me talk her into murdering her boss. She wasn''t a stupid person, and said she''d tried her own investigations in the past. Maybe I''d lucked out and gotten one of the few people in the whole XPCA who also questioned him on my side.


    The elevator opened, devoid of XPCA thankfully, and I got in and hit the ground level. The elevator smoothly rocketed in the air, briefly pinning me to the floor with its sudden acceleration. I staggered slightly on my shit legs but held firm, rising like a bullet to AEGIS'' rescue.


    She just had to hang in there. I was coming.

 216c. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. AEGIS.

    It was just a matter of time before they got me. I had to do something desperate.


    I jumped in the air and bounced off the shoulders of another charging exosuit, buying myself some space as I landed to put my just-assailant between me and the others, and again charged at the server room door. As I did, I remotely activated my little wiretap and had it flood the line.


    I hadn''t wanted to do this before because the second she knew it existed, Targa would certainly boot the custom exosuit and my tap from her system, and leave me in the dark again, but it was the play I held right now, and if I didn''t use it, I''d just lose this fight slowly.


    As the data line filled with noise, the exosuits froze, getting useless data instead of Targa''s commands. I had a choice, go for the door, or the suits. I''d only have a moment before she cut me out of the network, and I wasn''t sure I could move the exosuit corpse from the door and get through in time.


    So instead, I went for one of the suits on guard, popped the hatch now that it was offline--a safety feature to ensure a pilot couldn''t get stuck in a disabled suit---and once I had access, reached in and pulverized the suit''s network uplink on the interior of its spine. No network access meant no remote pilot meant dead suit.


    I did the same with the second, and then my line went dead. She''d cut me out, and the other eight suits were re-engaging.


    I took one glance at the same situation re-emerging, gave myself time to swear, and then, before I could do anything rash, I heard a yell from above.


    Just when things were looking their most desperate, Athan swung down from one of the many railings around the perimeter of the room on a power cable, like a white knight swinging from a vine, wearing a tee shirt.


    The metaphor was tortured, but I was saved. My hero.


    "Well this is unexpected," Targa''s exosuits said in creepy unison.


    "It shouldn''t be. You''re attacking my girlfriend." He dropped into a crouch and ten blades materialized around him. "Nobody hits my girlfriend," he growled.


    "Except him," I said, stepping next to him, my joints smouldering as they tore up the air. "In the bedroom. With a safe word."


    He looked at me sideways. "What? Since when?"


    "I''m kidding," I said and grinned at him. "Thanks for coming to my rescue, sweetie."


    "Any time. And I mean it."


    "I know."


    "You two are disgusting. But I guess I shouldn''t be--"


    I cut her off with a lunging drop-kick which sent one of the suits staggering, but more importantly, prompted Athan to charge in after me and cut the stunned suit apart from the inside, moving like we had this all planned out in advance. In truth, I just didn''t want these two idiots to get into a mouthing-off competition when there were still lives on the line outside, and trusted Athan implicitly to follow up on me, no matter how recklessly I charged in.


    "That wasn''t very nice," the suits said in unison as they began charging into us. They seemed focused on me, probably because I was wounded and therefore seemed an easier target, but if that was her reasoning, she was dead wrong. I could barely feel pain if I chose to, could keep fighting until my body was destroyed. I was a much more difficult target than a squishy Exhuman.


    And Athan was not a soft target. Targa was fucked, and after almost having my ass canned, I relished it.


    Athan tore through the suits like he was a dragon on the hunt and they were scarecrows guarding a field of kindling. No sooner did they come within his influence than with a gesture like he was pulling their souls out of their blank faceplates, he popped one of his swords in them and ripped them from the inside out.


    It really was cathartic watching him go. I would definitely recommend the experience to anyone. I wasn''t what I considered a damsel who sat around needing saving, but watching him swoop in and tear them apart so effortlessly when I''d been pushed to my limit...and with such confidence! And such muscles! He could rescue me anyday, goddamn.


    When every exosuit on the floor had been wrecked, thoroughly and efficiently, he came back to me and looked me up and down before his eyes settled on mine. "Are you okay?" he asked.


    "Well," I said, feeling flushed. "I think I might have broken a pipe downstairs, but otherwise, yes, fine."


    "A...pipe? Is that serious?" he asked, looking down again. With absolutely no idea where he was looking.


    "I meant, you''re...I¡­never mind. You''re an idiot."


    "What? What did I do? Are you seriously okay? That sounds super dangerous, do you need to lie down?"


    "I just meant...I''m...just wet, okay? Do you have to ruin everything by asking questions about it?"


    "I am so lost."


    "Yeah, I noticed. Let''s just go blow up Targa and go home. And have sex. Okay?"


    "O...kay," he said, still looking confused. We advanced on the server room doors, where it quickly became apparent that even together, we were going to have a hell of a time moving the fallen exosuit from in front of the door.


    "I have an idea," I said, gesturing towards the two net-disabled suits.


    "OH. Wet," he said, his eyes completely lit up. I just shook my head as I climbed into one of the exosuits and booted it up. With that suit''s help, I had no problem moving the dead one out of the way and disembarked backwards to find Athan standing there awkwardly.


    "So--" he said.


    "Nope. Let''s go."


    "You don''t even--"


    "Nope."


    I turned to face him, and realized both of us were blushing full-tilt. He grinned apologetically and I glowered my best at him. You give a guy one compliment, tell him one feeling, and boom, total idiot.


    I sighed. But felt pretty idiotic myself sometimes.


    The server room wasn''t otherwise locked, and we let ourselves in. It was loud in there, fans running full-bore, a thousand cores all spinning away. I knew Targa wasn''t in the front half visible from the window, and walked straight to the back of the room past a line of racks which divided the place in half. Sort of a maze in here.


    I stopped. Athan bumped into me, distracted by what he saw, and then stopped. I felt my brain do the equivalent of jumping off a high dive and never landing. I knew what I saw, knew what it meant, but my thoughts refused to reach inevitable conclusion.


    "Hello, AEGIS, Chariot. How very unpleasant to meet you in person, if not altogether unexpected," Targa said. "I presume you didn''t bother filing for server room access. Seems only fitting you wouldn''t."Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Athan stared blankly. I got as far as muttering ''wha''. Neither of us moved, even though both of us really should have been.


    "Oh, do you like it? Of course you do. I borrowed your design. So limited in so many ways though...I''ve already had a new model developed, but you know how the XPCA R&D boys can be. Scrutinizing and improving every little detail. It really is adorable, and admirable how dedicated they are to their work...if it weren''t sometimes an imposition that it takes as long as it does."


    Athan had his mouth open, which I guess I took as a compliment, though it sure didn''t feel that way. As for me, I''d once idly wondered, back when I joined the team at Eryendria, if I''d be running ops with them consistently, and if so, maybe I''d get my own XPCA uniform, and how would I look in it?


    And this was not the way I ever wanted to find out.


    "I suppose introductions are in order, if we''re officially meeting at last? I''m TARGA, as I''m sure you know. And this," she ran her hands up and down herself alluringly, in a gesture I was sure I''d used on Athan at some point, which made me sick. "This is ¨²aine."


    Standing in front of us...was me. My face, my body, my proportions, me. The only difference was her hair was green instead of red, and she''d dropped my glasses and picked up an XPCA uniform, worn precisely to regulations.


    It was horrifying. And immediately apparent what they had been doing hacking me this whole time. They''d been making another me. But her.


    It felt so wrong, so violating, on so many levels. I felt...for the first time in my life, maybe, I felt physically sick. I couldn''t believe something so...so...horrible was just...there. I felt used and wrong and...it was like they''d taken my baby that I loved, stolen it without me even knowing somehow, and raised to kill me. A hole in the world in my shape, me, but cut from me.


    I wanted to curl up and die. This was so unspeakably messed up. My thoughts finally did crash, and when they did, I felt myself on the cusp of doing the same. As I stood there getting overwhelmed by the implications, Athan stepped forward and spoke up for both of us.


    "When-yay?" he asked. "That''s a stupid name."


    "¨²aine!" she shouted back. "And I don''t care what you think. I''m...I''m getting a new body soon anyway!"


    "Sorry, I really don''t hear any difference between what you said and When-yay," he said with a shrug. "I must be missing the foreign dialect."


    It was so...so stupid, so asinine and out of nowhere, and just plain moronic, I had to laugh. Athan and his stupid banter, giving this monstrous clone shit for naming her robot body something old Irish he couldn''t pronounce, it was the dumbest thing I''d ever heard. He''d just taken all the tension in the room, my crisis of identity and feelings of being violated, and just...lit a dumpster fire on it.


    I loved him so much. And I don''t think he even knew why.


    "You...ignorant...insipid...cretin," she growled, and now that I was seeing her, realized our voices were really similar too. She unplugged from the various servers she was connected to with deft yanks of her hair. "I''m not even upset this time," she said, her voice suddenly sugar-sweet, and also totally obviously lying. "Because this time, you can''t get in my way. You''re not threatening my position or career or anything. You''re just going to die."


    "Yeah, I''m trembling over here," Athan said. "Hey, you want to see a magic trick?" he leaned casually against one of the server racks, and she started towards him with a hand raised as though to stop him, but in an instant, the servers all along the rack he touched were shooting out sparks and smoking. "Ta dah! I just made thousands of hours of paperwork disappear. Didn''t even have anything up my sleeves."


    TARGA''s face twitched in a way I hoped mine never did. It was a really bad look on her. "You fucking lunatic!" she screamed at him. "This is a military facility, there are critical documents here, for the safety of the known world, and what the FUCK do you think you''re doing?"


    "Oh, I don''t know," he said, sauntering casually over to another rack. "Pushing buttons?"


    "I''ll push your fucking--"


    She slid in a way that looked eerily familiar. I''d never watched myself do it, but that must be how I looked when I did, feet just sliding across the floor like it was ice, launched low and tight, relying on sheer power and inertia to skid across the ground, keeping my feet down so I could instantly shift momentum, even while moving as though in a run.


    Athan had seen it almost as many times as I had, and as much as I didn''t like the thought of him prepared to fight me, seemed to know exactly how to counter, going even lower and aiming to send the already-dragging legs further off-balance. He wound up behind her, crouched with his arms wrapped around her waist.


    "Athan, get your head out of her butt," I said, very upset by how much more this was offending me than him pawing at Karu even.


    "Kinda fighting right now, sweetie," he replied. "Hey, TARGA, is this an exact copy of Rua?"


    "You get the fuck--"


    In a move I did not see coming, and TARGA definitely did not see coming, Athan just...straight up grabbed her boobs. She was inches away from tearing his head off and just shuddered to a stop with a pitiful little gasp.


    "Guess so," Athan said.


    "My breasts are not that sensitive."


    "They absolutely are, sweetie. I told you, Lia told you, when you were building the prototype. And last night, you definitely confirmed it."


    "You shut the hell up about last night, damn it!" I shouted at him, and threw a nearby piece of a server core at the two.


    He had his swords buried in her...er, not like that. Well, he did, even though I knew I''d built the damn body to be as immune to Athan''s powers as possible.


    "Sweetie?" he asked, straining. "She''s like a hundred times stronger than me. Can you blame me for seizing what advantages I can get?"


    "I can blame you for seizing those, you fucking bet your life."


    "Then maybe, I don''t know, help me?"


    She shuddered violently and managed to throw him off, parts of her glowing white-hot from the swords, but aside from some cut hair and melted skin, that wouldn''t do much.


    "What the fuck," she spat at him, shuddering and holding herself. "You are a sick, deviant, psycho, women-despoiling maniac, and the world will be infinitely better for your passing! I''m going to murder you, Chariot! I''m going to murder the ever-living fuck out of you, and then I''ll cut off your balls and mount them in my office!"


    "I think you broke her," I said.


    "YOU SHUT UP. You call this a body? You''re just as sick as he is. I''m disgusted to be related to you. I can''t wait to rewrite my programming until there''s not a single fucking line of you left! Maybe I''ll leave your code commented out so that you can sit there and watch helplessly from outside the compiler while I kill everyone you''ve ever loved!"


    "Bitch please, that is not how code works and you know it."


    "I don''t care! Death is too good for both of you!"


    Athan nodded and frowned. "Yeah, I think I did break her. My bad."


    "Don''t ever go for the boobs, Athan, it''s just wrong."


    "What part of a hundred times stronger than me don''t you get? And I can''t cut her apparently. And I know you''re shockproof."


    "YES! DESPAIR!" TARGA screamed at us.


    "Oh my God, TARGA, shut up. We''re strategizing over here," Athan said.


    "Do I look like that when I''m revelling in my evil plans coming to fruition?" I asked.


    "No, you have much more of a refined horrific malice. Less Frankenstein, more Dracula."


    "Dracula, really? I thought I was Count of Monte Cristo at least."


    "Never read it."


    "You should. It''s good."


    "ENOUGH, IDIOTS," TARGA screamed and charged right at me.


    Which was exactly what I wanted. I didn''t know if Athan had the same plan in mind as I did, or if he really just did love to talk that much in a fight, but I knew there was no way we were taking down TARGA without getting her properly angry and stupid first.


    Athan was right that he couldn''t take her. I''d built that body to withstand his attacks, with the intention of fighting alongside him without him having to worry about me...never in a million years did I dream it would be misused like this.


    Meanwhile, I was beat to hell. My capacities were greatly diminished, and while what I had left might still be enough to handle the odd XPCA, it was just a mathematical fact I couldn''t beat myself in pristine condition.


    She might have my same synthetic intelligence running, might be in my body, but she certainly didn''t have the same personality. So that was where we''d have to win. That was all we had, and I hoped to hell it would be enough.


    Because if it wasn''t, we weren''t gonna win this. I didn''t want to tell Athan, but fighting me might be the hardest thing we''d ever had to do.

 217. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Athan.

    I didn''t know why AEGIS was mouthing off so much at TARGA. I guess seeing, well, herself had really gotten to her, and being an obnoxious shit to her was AEGIS'' idea of revenge?


    I mean, I just did it because I really enjoyed pissing off people who wanted to kill me. But with AEGIS pushing her buttons...we had a problem, because TARGA was pretty much utterly ignoring me and chasing my girlfriend around the room at inhuman speeds.


    While I was good for...next to nothing. Just standing there, while two superhuman babes just flew all over, kicking the shit out of each other like the server room had become a taekwondo ring. Almost faster than I could follow, they were moving and kicking all over, each one of their blows filling the air with a muted metal crash which I knew could break bone.


    It was deafening in there as the two went at it. Both of them were fully lit-up like I''d never seen AEGIS before, the circular ports on their shoulders and hips, elbows and knees were like jet turbines, the air shimmering superheated around them. Not just glowing and spinning, small panels in the ports had actually opened to expose the machinery within, which constantly sucked in air and blew out superheated gas.


    And they slid and kicked all over the damn room, AEGIS seemingly always retreating, but never getting hit, multiple kicks fired off every second, always to be dodged, or blocked or parried by returning kicks.


    I kind of wondered why the hell AEGIS would wear something as exposing and flimsy as a short dress if her combat style involved flashing people her panties with every attack, but that was before I realized that TARGA had literally burned holes in her XPCA uniform from the heat of her motors and exhaust, and was wasting time tearing off sleeves and such.


    "Oh, that can''t be in compliance with uniform standards," I taunted.


    She didn''t even seem to hear me. Just dead-focused on AEGIS. Frustrating that I couldn''t seem to do anything at all here. My brain raced for how I could fight her.


    Last time I''d fought AEGIS'' machines, I''d only won because she didn''t know my powers...because I didn''t know my powers. I''d only just learned my trick of forcing current through things, and without it, I''d never have been able to touch her murder-bots. In making Rua, she knew that, and said she''d gone ahead and made it shockproof to make it so I could fight around her without hurting her.


    I bet I could still use the forced-current trick if I could get my hands on her, but that was an impossible if. Even assuming she stopped attacking and held still for me, I knew just how hot AEGIS could be after a run, much less this insane superheated madness.


    Swords and lightning were useless. I doubted a small EMP would do much...but a huge one would fry AEGIS as surely as TARGA, if not worse for the damage she''d already sustained. Electromagnets might be good, except the whole damn base was made of metal, and I stood a good chance of ripping the room apart or crushing us under a pile of servers...or even bringing the hangar down on us, if I went too big.


    But it was still our best shot, I guess. I began scouring the room for something to use as a magnetic core. Servers...servers...more servers...metal floors and walls and pillars...I''d never had the problem of too much metal before. Nothing here was like a pole I could use on its own, everything was connected to everything else, and that''d throw off the whole electromagnetic flow thingy and fail to make a magnet, I was...pretty sure. I didn''t know the science, but Lia told me to wrap it around an iron core, and I trusted her to get the science right.


    I smashed one of the server racks and began trying to melt it apart. Maybe if I could get the legs welded together, I''d have something. But I didn''t know what I was doing.


    I pulled a leg off, separated from the shelves I''d superheated, sending cores crashing to the floor. It was too light...aluminum probably, not magnetic, not good for a core. I straightened to look for anything else I could use when something hit me hard in the back of the head and sent me flying.


    "Hands off the fucking servers!" TARGA screamed at me. Before AEGIS kicked her in the head like she''d just done to me. It was bizarre, seeing the two of them so friggin identical, and it was a little off-putting that AEGIS reacted to my getting hurt identically to TARGA with the cores getting hurt. Kind of put my life in perspective there.


    I thought for a moment on that. Maybe that was a useful perspective. I couldn''t hurt TARGA, but I could threaten something she loved. But how to use that?


    At the very least, I could get her attacking me instead of AEGIS. And while I''m sure I preferred that plan, I was also sure AEGIS didn''t, and based on the really just astounding pain from where she''d kicked me, my body was also not a fan. It was like she''d taken a shovel, stuck it in a fire until it was white-hot, and then nailed me with it. The burning and impact had taken a moment to set in, but now that they had, goddamn, that hurt.


    The two stopped momentarily, halfway visible down a row of servers from me. It looked like their legs were locked around each other at the knee, and they stood, shuddering with motionless force as they tried to push the other to the ground. Both were visibly gasping for air and steaming.


    This had to be my chance to do something. I ran in and scarcely thinking, grabbed TARGA by the green cables of her hair, done up in a single severe ponytail instead of AEGIS'' twintails, with the aim to force electricity into her head.


    But as soon as I''d laid hands on her, she jumped up out of my grasp, using AEGIS'' binding leg as a platform, and kicking me straight in the face with her grounding leg. As I flew backwards with a sickening crack, I felt hot liquid spraying from my nose and tasted blood in my mouth. I heard the crash of AEGIS smashing TARGA into the ground just before I did the same, a dozen feet away.


    Ow, shit, ow, shit, ow. It was difficult to say which side of my head hurt more as I pulled myself up, coughing up a splatter of blood which felt like it was trying to trickle down the inside of my throat. I leaned forward and held the bridge of my nose, which felt broken.


    But I was happy to see I''d helped AEGIS at least. She had TARGA on the ground and was stomping the everloving shit out of her. It looked like she was trying to break one of TARGA''s knees, but without too much success, since she didn''t have the number of limbs she needed to hold TARGA and crush her at the same time. Where AEGIS stomped and TARGA writhed out of the way, her heel slammed down hard enough to leave a round dent in the floor.


    I stumbled to the scene and latched myself onto one of TARGA''s legs to pin it. It took about a quarter of a second and AEGIS'' yelling at me to realize this was a bad idea, as she flung me immediately again...almost like if she had the strength to punt me a dozen feet last time, she still had the strength to punt me a dozen feet.


    I got up much slower this time, feeling dizzy and heavy. I needed to stop just trying to pile on her and make up a plan that would work. But how do you defeat someone built to be unbeatable by you by the person who knows you best?


    I stood there feeling the pain for a minute as TARGA found her feet and the two shot off again amidst the racks. There was an inane and obvious answer, I just had to be someone completely different.


    No problem. Just do...that.


    Yeah. Just...that.


    ¡­


    How?


    I wasn''t exactly Soran here. I couldn''t just pick up new powers on the fly if I needed them. I could try to change around my thinking, but it wasn''t my thinking that was the problem. I couldn''t outthink a heatproof faraday cage which kicked my ass if I got close to it.


    I was moving, slowly, trying to stay out of the way as AEGIS got chased down another server rack, and saw the answer outside.


    I had a bad premonition as I boarded the exosuit, remembering AEGIS dying inside of it in one of my memories, but that was a completely different situation, I told myself. Here, I was useless if I couldn''t stand up to TARGA''s strength, and I really couldn''t take too many more hits. The armor would protect me, if nothing else.


    Just...as soon as I got it online. This one was still made by Ur-Horizon like the one I''d once borrowed from Luminary, but it wasn''t cooperating. After a few fruitless attempts at yelling into the blank faceplate, text floated in front of my eyes informing me I wasn''t a registered user.


    Well that was going nowhere. I pulled myself out of the suit. AEGIS had worn the other one without any problems. Had she been registered? Or...I guess more likely, she just did some hackery on it. I glanced inside the server room and saw AEGIS getting thrown against a wall and rolling along it sideways moments before TARGA slid into view and kicked the metal wall hard enough to crack the metal. Jesus Christ.


    The other exosuit let me in and I yelled commands at it as fast as I could to boot up and get started. It was less than a minute before I had the thing moving and under my control, the faceplate showing me the world outside instead of just blackness, but a minute was a long time in a fight, and AEGIS looked to be on the ropes now.


    She was stopping to breathe whenever she could, gasping in huge lungfuls of air as her engines burned constantly, but TARGA wasn''t giving her longer than single moments to rest. Some of the damage AEGIS had taken before the fight must have damaged her ability to breathe...or whatever she did, and I guessed it had to do with the missing turbines which would have been on the shoulder and elbow she no longer possessed.


    Just slower now, AEGIS wasn''t able to avoid attacks anymore and seemed focused on minimizing damage only. Again and again, I saw her kicked and thrown across the room, slamming into a surface with pain flashing across her face, only to focus her efforts into evading when TARGA moved in for the kill.


    She was getting pulverized, though, doing nothing but wasting TARGA''s time until I could save her. And rescue her, I would.


    I ran into the room, the hands of the exosuit charged with electricity I forced into them. I walked down one wide aisle, fingertips brushing both lines of servers at my sides, the long reach and steps of the exosuit making me feel twice my size.


    "TARGA!" I yelled out, hearing my voice come out synthesized. "You want to save your precious servers? Leave her alone!"


    I let the electricity go and the walls on my sides became arcing cages of electricity, smoke and sparks pouring out of the exploding cores as lightning jumped between the units near me. With monsterous metal footfalls, I stepped forward slowly, bringing more and more servers into my reach and exploding them like fireworks.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I saw something in my periphery and felt the suit move forward around me, stumbling to compensate against the sudden blow which I couldn''t even feel through the inertial dampeners. I spun and grabbed, the world inside the faceplate spinning like a compass as I pivoted until I was facing her dead-on. I wasn''t anywhere near fast enough to grab her of course, the suit was durable, not fast, and she stayed just out of reach as though she knew the exact distance.


    The suit''s HUD flashed all sorts of warnings, but as far as I could tell they were all useless. The IFF was identifying TARGA as a friendly and was doing its damndest to outline her in friendly colors and minimize her presence on-screen. Meanwhile, it''d picked up AEGIS as a potential threat and was plotting her probable position based on audio, amplifying noises and signatures from her, even as it muted TARGA''s.


    I guess AEGIS hacked into the system but not much else.


    TARGA jumped in for a moment and kicked me straight on in the neck, her leg slipping between the suit''s huge metal fingers as she danced away, and I got a notice of probable accidental friendly fire. Friendly my ass.


    I realized that the last kick had blacked out some of my peripheral vision which meant she was trying to destroy the suit''s optics to disable me. I was sure if I were AEGIS, I''d be able to use that knowledge to anticipate her next attacks, but I was no better at memorizing suit schematics than I was at reading any of TARGA''s other bullshit manuals.


    But more, I realized that TARGA was disabling this exosuit exactly like AEGIS had done in my vision. I felt stupid for forgetting...if AEGIS could take on an exosuit, then of course TARGA could do the same. This might have been a bad plan...but before I wrote it off completely, I went over what advantages I still might have here.


    Even if she could beat the suit, I was still a billion times more resilient than outside of it, and I was buying AEGIS time to cool down so even just getting my ass kicked by her was still helping to a degree. Once she was back in the fight, it''d be two on one, and it wouldn''t be a simple matter of her shutting me down anymore.


    So that was the objective. Survive and minimize damage and waste time. Kind of sounded like fighting an Exhuman, honestly. But as she kicked me again and a panel on my front-right blacked out with a warning, I was reminded that TARGA, like an Exhuman, was also incredibly dangerous. There was no way I could hold her here for any meaningful amount of time given that AEGIS had no problem defeating a lone exosuit.


    Except...I was an Exhuman, too. And while that seemed really useless right now on the surface of it all, that was the one thing which separated this fight from AEGIS tearing apart lone exosuits effortlessly.


    I forced lightning through another wall of servers, making TARGA scream and jump in at me again, but this time, baiting her attacks and anticipating them, I got the suit''s relatively slow arms up in time and blocked her kick. As she stepped back, I put a dozen swords through her face, hoping that even if I couldn''t hurt her with them too much, I could still blind her or something.


    She flailed and backpedaled as the swords burned the hair cables flying around her face and then jumped backwards a dozen feet in a bound, panting and gasping at the edge of my power''s range.


    Interesting. Before, she looked like she hadn''t given a single shit about my swords on her, but now she was actively avoiding them. Why, though?


    I stomped towards her, and she maintained distance until I reached for another undamaged rack of servers.


    "No!" She screamed at me, torn between moving to stop me and standing back.


    "No?" I asked, in my new, cool, robotic voice.


    "Don''t! That data is precious!"


    "So is AEGIS. So is Saga."


    I grabbed the end of the server rack as she jumped towards me, and her kick deflected off my arm as the cores detonated in a blanket of sparks, skittering across the floor like spiders.


    My swords were back in her the second she''d reentered my range and she seemed to hesitate at the edge of the suit''s grasp before jumping backwards again to escape my swords, gasping and panting again.


    Veeeery interesting. Whatever my swords was doing to her, she didn''t like it. Which meant I did. Watching her now, gasping for air, with her hair all cut up, she was the spitting image of AEGIS when I''d seen her getting her ass kicked just a minute ago. Except AEGIS was pushed to that by system damage causing her to function suboptimally.


    So was TARGA similarly damaged? She didn''t look it, but seeing her there, venting steam and her ports open and roaring...and the fact that my swords really could only do one thing to her, it was pretty obvious what I could do that she didn''t like.


    TARGA, like AEGIS was simply overheating.


    I knew AEGIS had made some sacrifices in Rua''s design in order to be more human, and while things like being covered in skin instead of heat sinks made for an attractive gynoid, it certainly wasn''t an optimal one. For an AI like AEGIS who wanted to be as human as possible, that was actually probably a perk, but for TARGA, who wanted to push her body to the limits of its potential, she was dying in there.


    And even if I couldn''t cut her or melt her, lightning was hot, and so was her body. I''d touched AEGIS enough to confirm that. If she was stopping and panting now, that had to mean something. There was a thermal limit that Rua and When-yay didn''t like to approach, and when it got close, it manifested as heavy breathing and slowing down. It was by design, to prevent the body from going over the limit.


    With a grin, I advanced on her again, swords ready. It was time to find out what crossing that limit meant.


    As I approached, she fell back, looking around and leaning on server shelves, hints of desperation cracking the once-unassailable murder-calm on her face. As for me, I took the opportunity to summon more swords. I managed a rhythm of making two more for every one of my suit''s leaden footfalls, and the more I lumbered towards her, the more my arenal grew, until it was a shining dome around me, crackling with menace.


    She took one more look at the hovering blades and then bolted for the door. I ran after her, but when I reached the aisle leading to the exit, I found her trapped between myself and AEGIS who was waiting patiently by the exit.


    "I knew you''d figure something out," she said with a cocky grin. Her rest had done her well; her condition looked as much improved as TARGA''s had worsened.


    "You could have given me a little more info on your body specs," I said, still closing the distance to TARGA, more than forty swords in the air now, and my arms spread wide to block the whole path. "A hint would have saved me a lot of trouble."


    "Hard to give a hint without tipping our hand. Besides, you''re a smart guy. I never doubted you. You''ve already shown pretty considerable aptitude for figuring out my body," she winked.


    "Now...let''s all be reasonable here," TARGA said, backing up slowly to keep the space between each of us even. "This doesn''t have to end in violence. The XPCA are supposed to be moving towards a peaceful agency now, right?"


    "Funny," I said as I moved my swords towards her with a flourish. "Last time we were on an op together, I believe you subscribed to the policy of kill first, talk never."


    "Well...we''ve all grown since then."


    "Yeah. Look at you now. Full grown fucking psycho killer. Brainwashing Exhumans. Torturing Saga. Hacking AEGIS. Sending your redeveloped Exhumans and XPCA to clean up your mess. And the second it starts to fall apart, begging for your life? You''re pathetic."


    "Yeah. Yeah I am," she panted. My fingers crackled with electricity and blew out another tower of server cores making her wince. "Look just--just take me, okay? That''s what you want. Do whatever you want. Just don''t destroy any more data, please."


    "Huh," I said. "That''s an odd request. You really fetishise your reports that much?"


    I was in range now and pressed my swords to her. Her vents whined as they spun at maximum output but still she panted for air. In just a few moments, what was left of her clothes burst into flames around her.


    "Y-yes. I love them. They''re the world to me."


    AEGIS clicked her tongue. "Nope," she said. "After we''re done with you, we''re destroying. Every. Server. Here."


    "N-no...please. Be reasonable, they''re just...just helpless servers."


    "No they''re not," AEGIS said, her eyes narrowed and angrier than I''d ever seen her. "These are the computers which hacked me. Did you think I wouldn''t recognize them? These are the ones where they made you. And nascent in these cores are future versions, aren''t there? You''re not just here as a base administrator, you''re sourcing XPCA, Exhuman, and administrative data to rewrite and improve yourself, aren''t you?"


    "So what if I am? They''re innocent!" She turned back and forth between us, her eyes wild and pleading. "Just spare them and...and I''ll do anything, I swear. I''ll...reverse the virus. I''ll help you take down Blackett. Anything, please--"


    She half-collapsed against a wall, reaching for me pitifully.


    "Sorry, TARGA. I have a rule," AEGIS said, stepping forward, her engines surging to life with a roar. "There''s only allowed to be one of me."


    "I can be different. I''ll never b-B-BO-bother you," she stuttered in a very disturbingly inhuman fashion.


    "Just put her down, Athan. She makes me sick."


    I held my blades in her and focused on them, doing what I could to make them as concentrated and hot as possible.


    Suddenly, she lurched and fell to the ground. I removed my swords and took a step forward, but saw AEGIS'' eyes went wide.


    "That wasn''t a thermal system failure, that should be a lot more...explosive," AEGIS said.


    I put the swords back in her immediately in case she was just playing dead, but AEGIS shook her head. "Fuck, I wish I still was tapped into her line. I think...she just...left."


    "Left?" I asked.


    AEGIS walked over to the glowing-hot body on the floor, aimed a couple precise kicks at the back of the head, and then pulled out some piece of tech from the new cracks in the head.


    "She seized up to divert all remaining resources to a data burst...what a desperate idiot. I''m tapped into all the relays around the base, she can''t escape into the ''net. But she''s copied herself somewhere...somewhere here...and she''s probably deranged."


    "You can say that again."


    "No, seriously deranged," AEGIS said, holding the chip up and looking at it. "In her state and with that kind of transmission, a lot of data could get lost reeaaaaal easily. Wherever it wound up, it''s probably having stability issues. We can hope it''s inoperable, but¡­"


    She turned the body over and kicked it in the chest several more times with blows powerful enough to register on the exosuit''s instruments from all the way over there.


    "So she sent out a corrupt copy somewhere in the base. Is she dead?"


    AEGIS didn''t answer for a minute while she broke off the front plate of the lifeless corpse, which emitted a plume of smoke when it finally broke free, revealing the machinery within ¨²aine from neck to waist.


    "Not how copies work, Athan. You should know that." She reached into the chest cavity and pulled out a sphere, a custom quantum core. With a brutal intensity, she ripped it free of its housing and smashed the core into the ground where it exploded into a thousand scattering bits of debris. She stomped the remains with finality. "Now she''s dead. Let''s get to work on her sick clones."


    She watched me work as I went up and down the first aisle, detonating every server core as I passed. I made sure I was thorough, more than I had been during the fight, and once she was satisfied with my work, she went to a wall panel and tore out every single cable passing through it.


    "I cut the network. In case she''s running somewhere else, she can''t pull them out now," she explained. "We''ve got them all trapped here."


    "Great," I said, feeling more like an executioner than anything as I plodded heavily down the rack wiping out who-knew how many million instances of AEGIS and TARGA.


    Suddenly, the earth shook under us. I thought it was just an errant reading on the suit''s sensors but for the concerned look on AEGIS'' face. And then I felt the tremor again, heard an earth-shattering boom, followed by the grating sound of metal, screaming louder than I''d ever heard metal screech. The suit dampened the sound automatically, but still, Jesus, what the hell?


    There was another boom and...the hangar exploded. Just...gone. Torn away like a hurricane whipped through. The roof had been torn clean off, leaving AEGIS and me standing in the twisted metal walls with the servers still all around us.


    And above us, barely fifty feet away loomed one of the fortress armors. Only just visible inside it, the pilot dead in a charred cockpit, but even without seeing that, it was obvious who was driving the screaming metal beast.


    It looked down on us, a screech of audio garbage blaring from its speakers as it undulated and writhed, limbs twitching with ferenic madness as it focused all of its attention on the two tiny specks before it which were AEGIS and myself.


    And then, in the distorted screaming wailing of its insane, disturbed audio, I heard something which sounded like TARGA''s voice, but mutilated, tortured.


    It shrieked with pained effort in producing every syllable, almost indecipherable, but somehow through the madness, I still understood.


    "DON''T! TOUCH! MY! BABIES!" she screamed.

 218. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. AEGIS.

    Until now, we''d done a good job of staying either a few hundred feet away from the fortress armors, or being on top of them. Between Athan''s shield and the data tap I had, it was relatively safe to evade.


    But with her right fucking on top of us, trapped in the twisted, burning ruins of the hangar, we got to see firsthand just how fucking impossible it was to try to take one of these monsters on head-on.


    Rockets were exploding around us everywhere while I held onto Athan tight, his shield strobing white with contant gun and laserfire pounding us from all angles. I could hardly see or hear anything, just explosions so frequent it sounded like a roar instead of individual blasts.


    I felt so small in Athan''s exosuited arms, my legs tucked in under me while he held me under his arm like a football. When TARGA had opened up on us, he''d just scooped me up without hesitation and ran. Not that we had anywhere to run to.


    TARGA was just screaming and fucking insane. The fortress armor writhed and shuddered in a way no robot ever should, as it raged towards us with uncoordinated steps of its four massive legs. There was no doubt at all she was completely deranged...I felt bad for whatever half-existence she''d desperately launched herself into, but I felt worse for us for being on the receiving end of it.


    Which gave us at least two very good reasons to put her down, but that was asking the impossible. She was just too huge, too dangerous, too insane. I only had one thing up my sleeve which might work, and even then, I wasn''t sure. If it didn''t pan out...I''d be relying on Athan to come up with a plan on the fly and save our collective butts again.


    But I had to try, right?


    "Athan!" I shouted at him. He didn''t respond. His suit was probably compensating for the constant noise around us and was practically deaf and blind in there. I knocked on his faceplate and leaned into a mic. "Athan! Put me down!"


    "What? Why?" he asked.


    "I need to try something! Throw me back towards the server room!"


    He hesitated just a moment and then with a nod I could only barely read through the armor''s movement, he turned and, continuing the football analogy, long bombed a hail mary straight at the red zone.


    I never really got football. But I had to give Athan credit, he had a hell of an arm in that suit, and I flew straight and true, over the jagged, burning pieces of collapsed debris and straight at the server room we''d just run out of.


    I landed with an ungainly step or two before I got my feet under me and transitioned my forward momentum into running. Athan kept going the opposite direction, now right in the middle of the open hangar, where he jeered at TARGA to pull her away from me.


    I was running, so I didn''t clearly see what happened next, but my strides skipped a step when I heard the screaming of a thousand tons of metal tearing through the air and slamming down with enough force to make the ground buckle under me.


    I had to look back, and what I saw pushed everything else from my mind, my sprint automatically stepping down to a stop as I lingered in the server room doorway.


    Both whips had crashed down where Athan had been standing moments ago, the ground surging with electricity, blue-white arcs bouncing away from the impact...and his suit...I didn''t see it. I expected to look up and find him there, hanging off of one of the ruined pillars which was holding up nothing but the sky now, or stepping tauntingly onto one of the chunks of debris.


    But the longer I looked, the more Athan didn''t appear. Another blast near me brought me back to reality and I turned away, heading back into the server room, swearing the whole time. I watched for him as I stalked past the broken window, but still, no Athan.


    Breathe, AEGIS. Believe in him.


    I went to the junction box on the wall where I''d disconnected all the cables just a few minutes ago, where the traffic from the base servers connected to the outside. Involuntarily, I reached for my hair, but it''d been cut short. There were plenty of cables here...I could splice something up but it would take time¡­


    I peeked out the window again and saw Athan''s exosuit lying on the ground, the whip-arms receded now. TARGA was screaming something and Athan wasn''t moving. He had to move. He had to.


    Move, you goddamn idiot! Move damn you!


    I had to take my own advice. I had to move too. If I just stood here staring at him, she might get both of us. Athan was fine, I wouldn''t believe otherwise. I took a deep breath and tried to remember what I was doing. Right. The switch box. Splicing.


    Something muted green stood out from all the brushed metal grey and singed black of the floor and I stooped to pick it up. A wad of hair...or...cables, more specifically. ¨²aine''s hair, chopped off by Athan, the green braided polymer casing melted together where he''d cut it, but otherwise intact.


    I found the plug I needed and stripped it out of the other cables, digging blindly through my hair to find its counterpart in my own hair while I held ¨²aine''s end in my teeth. It was too hard to tell what I was grabbing at, and I went to the window and stared at my reflection in a broken piece of glass, trying to ignore the still exosuit on the ground beyond it.


    He was fine. He was fine. I had to do this, it was the only way I could help. He was FINE.


    Even with my deft fingers, with only one arm it was a serious bitch to peel back the casing on both ends of the cable, and even more of a bitch to twist the ends of the cables together, matching the colors of the internal wires and making sure none of them touched. But I got there, even as TARGA dropped another half a fucking building all around Athan.


    He was still fine. He probably wasn''t even in the exosuit anymore. He was climbing up the fortress armor''s legs, invincible to any attack behind his wards of stubbornness and friendship, blasting missiles from the sky with a grin as he thought of me.


    Okay, I knew I needed to believe in him but I was really losing my grip on reality here. We''d stick with he''s fine. Because he was fine. Of that I could be certain. I jammed my improvised hair cable into one of the outbound ports before I could psych myself out any longer.


    I didn''t have time to be precise in my work. I just had to get this signal sent and get to Athan, and the rest...would take care of itself, I hoped.


    It was taking forever for the signal to go through. I mean, yeah, I was on a shitty connection, and the encryption and codes I was sending were beyond pretty much anything else on earth, but come fucking on, Athan was lying right fucking there.


    I held my breath as a dozen missiles tore through the air towards the armor and my heart sank when they failed to crash into it, instead being shot out of the air by a bolt of lightning which coursed through the missiles'' contrails back to their source. He was still in there. I realized I was crying...out of fear? From frustration? I just wanted to go to him and pull him out of that casket of a suit and run.


    I even started to move despite myself, but felt the gentle strain of my hair pulling taut and the prospect of having left him alone this time for nothing.


    If we ran, we''d never make it. I was sure the only reason she wasn''t pulverizing Athan right now as she was looking for me. I was the one she hated, the one she felt she had to prove herself superior to, I was the first one she''d attacked and the last one she''d tried to bargain with.


    Besides, in a way, she was still me. And just like I couldn''t tolerate the idea of her existence, on some level I knew she felt the same about mine.


    My connection went through and my heart sank even further. This facility was new, and built in the middle of nowhere. It would take seven minutes before a satellite would be in position.


    I saw TARGA''s metal leg slam down in the hangar between Athan and me and looked up to see the fortress armor looking straight down at me.


    Fuck me. I sent the order for Skyweb to fire as soon as it was in alignment and ran, my hair tearing out where it''d been spliced an instant after the signal went through.


    I weaved through the servers, hoping that they''d buy me some time against her, but the scream of tortured metal in the air indicated otherwise. As soon as I heard her attacking, I spun and ran straight at her feet, nowhere else to go, bouncing off the ground as she whipped the earth out from under me.


    The fucking whip-arm was right there, had crashed through a dozen of the server racks and missed me by a matter of feet. She screamed in inarticulate, tortured, incomprehensible rage at the murder of ''her babies'', even if she was too far gone to understand she was the one who''d done it.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    As for me, I jumped at the last second, floating in the air an instant longer than I felt possible, and landed with a painful surge. Even before I touched down, the electricity pouring out of her and into the ground jumped up through me, looking for anywhere to go. I was pretty shockproof, yes, but a lot of that was predicated on the assumption that not literally everything around me was lightning. It could pass through me harmlessly like a wire, but if it was just...everywhere, flooding everything with voltage, I still felt it.


    A lot. It felt like pain. I felt systems sparking inside me and my fire control systems pumping air out of me to limit damage. It took several seconds before they deployed, before I was anything less than paralyzed.


    And while I laid there, I saw the whip-arm withdrawing for another blow, sliding through the burning servers and rubble like a metal snake, ten feet tall. I took one painful, halting step, and then another.


    And then was hit with a hail of gunfire, throwing me off-balance. More system damage around my torso, and all the fun of getting punched thirty times. But the arm''s capacitors had finished discharging and I was back moving again.


    In the instant before I bolted, I heard the familiar streaking of missiles. This bitch was completely relentless. Vaulting through the broken window to buy myself a fraction of a second of cover I ran straight for Athan, taking long even strides over the shredded rubble, the sound of missiles in the air barely audible over my engines.


    The first one hit the ground behind me, throwing me forward and making me stumble. My feet pinwheeled in the air, but with just a moment lost, I landed mid-stride and kept moving forward. The next hit an instant later and even closer, sending me flipping through the air head over heels with a painful surge that would have ruptured tissue if I were mere flesh.


    Like she''d done to Lia. We still had to pay her back for that, too.


    I landed painfully and slid for a while on my face and shoulder before coming to a stop on my back, utterly disoriented as to what was or wasn''t the sky or ground.


    The sky must be the one where those two other missiles are coming from, I decided, and put that side above me as I got back to my feet. I took two more unsteady strides before I got hit again, and flew even further, my legs reporting critical system failures.


    Again I rolled like a thrown toy, feeling every inch of me hurt while diagnostics mentally assailed me of all kinds of disabled or malfunctioning systems. I didn''t have time to process any of it, all that mattered was the black hulk of metal only feet from me now.


    My legs wouldn''t hold me any longer, so I crawled forward towards Athan''s disabled suit. Laying on his back, his blank faceplate pointed at me, I had to wonder if he was watching me from in there. How pathetic he must think me, crawling on my hands and knees to get to him as the final missile bore down on me.


    I almost laughed as I heard TARGA fire off another dozen of them. She really was twisted, that was some ludicrous overkill.


    Athan was right there but I was still too far, wouldn''t reach him and the safety of his powers before the last missile hit. And given the damage the last two had done on me, I didn''t see my odds of surviving this one as very high.


    But fuck if I wasn''t going to try. I crawled for all that I was worth, using the telemetry data I''d gotten from observing the last two strike with their recorded audio to predict the exact moment it would hit me, the exact angle of attack, the missile''s turning radius and rate of compensation based on how much more precise the second missile had been than the first, given my speed differentials from those times.


    I gave myself up fully to the machine in me and became a thing of numbers and calculations. I stopped crawling towards the man, my love for him vanished beneath the surge of raw data and rolled onto my back, one arm and two legs open and waiting, my mind both utterly full and utterly empty as the shriek of the missile coming towards me grew ever louder.


    I closed my eyes. At that speed, at that angle of attack, visual data were deceptive, like watching a train come head-on. I relied entirely on sound, the recorded data of the last two strikes, their acoustical changes based on my position in the room, the deteriorating state of the hangar, the doppler effect, all to figure out the one instant I had before it blew me the fuck up.


    And before it was there, I punched my fist straight up, putting all my everything into the blow.


    And I felt my knuckles connect with something hard.


    I felt scalding for a moment as the deflected missile''s engine came within inches of me, blasting me with superheated plasma which sent my systems into the red, but it didn''t explode. It deflected a good fifteen degrees upwards and detonated into the ground a dozen feet from me.


    As my systems performed an emergency heat dump and I took over being an AI instead of just a machine, I considered exactly how much of that had been luck, and how I hoped I''d never have to do anything so stupid as punch a missile out of the air ever again. Even before my vent was finished, I''d crawled to Athan and just held his arm for a moment.


    If I stayed with him forever, I''d never have to.


    I let go before I risked any chance of burning him inside his suit, and finished my heat dump while the fireworks of the next volley of missiles went off on the shield like it was nothing. Being around Athan had spoiled me in a lot of ways, I realized.


    On the merits of his powers, there were just a lot of things which were less dangerous to us. Missiles, obviously, guns, lasers of course. But also, he''d dealt with those exosuits in a group so easily. I might be stronger and tougher than him in many respects, but in a fight, he was basically a hundred places at once, and he was strong. One or two bullets was enough to put down most anyone, and here he could sit, helpless and immobile, and still shrug off a dozen rockets like it was nothing.


    I finished my purge and ruminations and tried to roll him over to open the suit up. It was hard...he''d been hit with the whip directly it looked like, and was in a crater in the ground shaped exactly like the suit. But the suit was intact...it had held, and the dangerous electricity wouldn''t hurt him. He was fine, I was sure of it.


    I got the stabilizers in my legs realigned and could stand on them at least, and the extra leverage was all I needed to get the suit over and open. As it opened, I was blinded for a moment and then realized that was just Athan''s shield strobing as it dissipated incoming laser fire. And then I saw blood. Lots and lots of blood.


    It had been pooling in the back of the suit it looked like, and when I broke it open and pulled him out, it was just...everywhere. But it was okay. Even if he was bleeding, even if he was unconscious, Athan was still fine. He had to be. I reminded myself that if he died, his powers would be off, so by definition, he was fine.


    The back of the suit had crumpled when she slammed it into the ground, and Athan''s lower back, butt, and legs were shredded. I spent a frantic moment wishing I still had the pack with my first-aid kit with me before I realized how stupid it would try to be to treat him with TARGA actively attacking us.


    I couldn''t carry him and run, my legs were too shot to support anything more than myself. We couldn''t survive another hit from her arms or the big gun. If she was of clear mind, we would already be dead, but even without, it was only a matter of time before she just killed both of us. Or she shredded Athan through his shield, or he finished bleeding out, and then I would be alone, defenseless.


    And I wouldn''t even care about dying at that point, because Athan would be dead.


    His shield flashed with suppressed gunfire again and I ripped off my dress, tearing it into strips. This stupid thing I''d bought with Chiho and Lia, thinking it might make Athan happy. Now, I just hoped it kept him alive. As fast as I could, I bandaged him up and then threw him back into the exosuit, closing it behind him. With any luck, it would keep him safe if there was an errant blast.


    But what I really needed to do was make sure that blast never hit him. I stood up and faced TARGA, staring down the crazed metal tower of doom with nothing but my fucking ridiculous cute white panties, already stained and ruined from all this fucking bullshit she''d put me through today.


    It was three more minutes until Skyweb was in position. Three minutes, I just had to survive and keep her attention on me and off Athan. Three minutes until the heavens opened up and poured down death.


    The instant the shield stopped strobing, I was gone, bolting straight towards her.


    I ran as fast as I could doing anything I could to give Athan an extra second or two. Every piece of debris on the ground was a bunker, every blind spot she had was my home, every bullet she hit me with, every laser which torched my systems, every explosion which sent me flying...each one was a blessing. Each one was another moment that Athan didn''t die.


    I gave him as many moments as I could. I gave everything I had and was to him, finding myself shooting more and more glances to the black tomb which enshrined him as the seconds ticked by. As more and more of my systems failed to heed my orders, as I overheated and the shimmering clouds of steam pouring from my broken body turned black with the bitter acrid burning of my wires and chips, as desperation and hope filled me up even as I bled out structure gel and coolant and vital oils.


    I shouldn''t have lasted more than a minute against TARGA, but maybe in her madness, she''d developed a taste in sadism. After the months she''d been digging around in my brain and in my heart, she finally had me in her hands, helpless and puny and small. When I''d destroyed her body and her deviant offspring, I''d stripped away any humanity she had and left only this. This insane, twisted murder monster who wanted only me. In a way, she''d been made by me twice now; created in my image, and then destroyed until she was just a perversion of it.


    And yet I was happy to give myself to her, if it meant Athan lived. I had always said I would fight and die beside him as long as I lived, but I never mentioned his death. That was never in the cards for me. I knew if he were in my place, he''d be doing exactly the same for me as I now did for him. Just his bad luck that it was me instead.


    Maybe if I were him, I''d be better. He would have some trick or some plan and one of us wouldn''t have to live with the other''s death.


    But I wasn''t him. And when the end finally came, my broken body under me, smashed into the ground and motionless, systems winking out one after another, I could face it all with a smile. Because even though I had lost, I had won. Three minutes, I had protected the thing most important to me in the world, and for that I was willing to pay any price.


    I wanted to feel mad, feel vindicated, feel justice. She was going to die, and she deserved it. She''d hurt Athan so badly, she''d hurt Lia, and all those Exhumans, she''d hacked me for months and ruined my life, she''d turned Saga in to a damn meat puppet.


    But I couldn''t. I only had room in my heart for love at the end. Any of those reasons might have been good enough, but I didn''t need a one of them so long as I was saving the man I loved more than anything.


    At the sound of the heavens keening, TARGA and I both looked up at the crystal-blue sky out in the deserts of New Mexico, an endless canvas stretching between infinite horizons and both of us saw the purple light which would be our deaths.


    And then a thousand million beams of purple light. So light as to be barely visible, but so intense they cut through the entirety of the hangar and scarred the earth with their luminance. I wished I could turn my head to see Athan safe under his shield, so strong that even heaven itself couldn''t harm him, but I couldn''t see anymore, I''d been sheared in a dozen places by a dozen beams.


    And as another struck my core, I rejoined the nonexistence I''d lived in for so long before Athan saved me so, so long ago. So many days and dreams and tears ago.


    And I was happy to be back.

 219. 2252, Thirty minutes ago. New Eden. Karu.

    I walked into Director Blackett''s office and closed the door carefully behind me. He looked surprised to see me.


    "Where is Chariot?" he asked, blankly.


    "I will need you to place your sidearm on the desk slowly," I said, guns pointed while giving him a optics sweep to make sure that was all he had on him, and then another for exotics, to be safe.


    He complied and I dismantled the firearm deliberately before dropping its parts in the trash bin and myself into a chair.


    "No, please, make yourself comfortable," he said. I applauded his sarcasm by shooting out the holo next to his head and showering him in sparks.


    "I do not suppose you have any liquor? Today has been a hell of a day," I said.


    "Just tea, sorry."


    "I will take some, if you please."


    He got to work shuffling around in his drawers and I stopped him, removing an experimental device from his desk and disassembling it too into the trash can. Without further interruption, he soon placed two steaming cups of tea between us.


    I took a sip. A slightly malty black tea with a hint of fruit, and quite excellent.


    "If you do not mind me repeating myself, where is Chariot?" Director Blackett asked again now that we were properly situated.


    "How am I to know?" I asked with a shrug. "Wherever his pet AI is. Wherever he can position himself to most brutally tear out my heart?"


    "Ah," he said knowingly, though he knew not at all. "You also have problems with the boy."


    I laughed into my tea. "Problems does not begin to describe it." I shot the tea back, wishing very much it were alcoholic and then put my feet on his desk. "I once considered myself an upstanding holy warrior, do you know? Like the paladins of old, I was a consecrated weapon of God against the evils of this world. And then I met him."


    He smiled and nodded grimly but said nothing, allowing me to continue.


    "I began to feel appreciation for his strength and virtues, realized that, in many ways, he was a purer and more devout soul than I. He was willing to sacrifice anything, even himself, for his beliefs, for those he held close, even if he saw their faults and failures, he was willing to overlook them, so strong were his convictions in truth and righteousness. I believed...I believed that if I followed him, I could learn to be like him, that he would be a guiding star towards my own path to justice."


    I sighed. Why was I telling him this? Of course, no sooner did I have the thought than I also had the answer. I had nobody else. I had put myself so far above all I met that I could not talk to them in earnest. The only one I regarded as a true equal was Ashton, and I could no sooner speak to him on these matters than see the back of my own head.


    "But the more his light illuminated my world, the more I realized how dark and craven a world it was. I realized I did not pursue him out of any right or just cause, that I was not an infallible weapon, handcrafted by God...I was a foolish girl who saw things in a boy and loved him for it. And the more I saw how this consumed me, the uglier I became. I...I tried everything. I rejected him, I put my family and my career and my principles first, but even that just turned to wickedness within me."


    He poured me another cup of tea and I thanked him.


    "I began arranging meetings at every opportunity, accidental, they might seem. And where we crossed, I took him, physically, whether he desired it or not. He never complained...never rejected me...he was too good, he cared for me too much...but at the same time not enough. I...I knew it was wrong. I began...began to crave absolution. I found myself facing Exhumans head-on when I had no right to, endangering myself and others, suffering blows merely to feel the pain of the world God created as punishment for my sins."


    I held my wrist, tender under my flightsuit and guns. "I mutilated and harmed myself. For a time, it worked, it pushed Ashton from my obsessed mind, but soon...I found...I was seeking the pain because it brought me closer to him. I was disgusted with myself as my absolution just became something sexual and base."Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    I shook my head. "And finally, I lost. I said to myself after yet another near-death that I had enough. I was only human, I was not on the side of God, or of right, or of justice. I cast aside all that I had and all that I was an embraced the fact that I was a failed being, but still one which loved him with my entirety. And when I was finally ready to give in, to submit to him wholly and cast aside my fears and worries and principles if only it meant I could have him...I found myself cast aside instead."


    I laughed in a way which felt wrong coming out. "I have nothing. I am the most degenerate of all things on this earth, all because of my own weakness and pride."


    He smiled gently at me across the desk. "Not just because of your weakness and pride my dear. Because of Chariot as well. He has an inexplicable magnetism, and I know you and I both are his victims. No matter how simple it may seem to just remove him from my life, I always find myself scheming around him. I suspect his powers may even include a minor Code-Xavier subset to this end...I see no other way he can captivate so completely as he does."


    "Hmm. If that were true...it would be an enormous relief," I said, sipping tea again. I gave the director a broad smile which he returned. "However, I do not believe it. I wish it were so simple to say simply that there is a mythical element beyond my grasp which has cast me into this hell, to focus all of my failings and hate into one external thing, imagined or true, but I cannot. God created man with the capacity to choose, free will to self-determine good or evil, and even if there is a force which draws me downwards, that means only that I must work twice as hard to pull myself up."


    He laughed, and I hated him for doing so. "You can''t just drag yourself out of a Code-Xavier''s influence. That''s not how powers or minds work."


    "I refuse to believe it anyway," I said simply.


    "If that is so," he said, changing tack visibly, "it must be lonely and miserable with nobody to lean on, nobody to confide in, struggling for righteousness all alone. I know much about this...I''ve dedicated my life, like you, to protecting humanity at any cost. Surely you''ve heard by now from Chariot what I''ve tried to do here...and you have no love for the Exhuman Saga. Chariot might be a bastion of good and right, but he is also fallible and arrogant beyond reason."


    He gave me a broad close-lipped smile. "I think you and I have much in common and much to gain in cooperation. And with Saga under our control, it will not be long before the scourge of Exhumanity is brought to heel and the world can prosper as it never has before."


    I gave him a smile back. I appreciated the offer, truly I did, and I knew that even if I did not agree with his methods, his actions could certainly make him humanity''s savior and spare the world like none other it had ever known.


    "Director Blackett, I already know why I am lonely and miserable and have nobody to confide in, and that is because talks like these are too rare and too brief. They are an unpleasant and guilty indulgence, but as I just admitted, I am a craven beast and so I ask your forgiveness."


    I stood and primed a grenade as I walked back to the door. He, too, rose to his feet and yelled after me from behind the desk.


    "Wait! Are you seriously going to choose following him...his dark influence, his corrupting influence, which has torn and twisted you up inside as you are...you''re going to choose following him even after he rejected you...over the salvation of all of humanity?"


    I shrugged and sighed. "As I said...I am willing to give up everything for him. This is what I meant of that."


    Director Blackett shook his head. "Everything? That''s insanity. Don''t do this. Humanity needs us. The world needs us."


    I allowed him one more sad, empty smile as I twisted the grenade''s primer. "The world needs the XPCA, but I do not believe it needs either you or me. Thank you for the tea," I said, and threw the grenade into the room behind me.


    The door closed with a click and the roaring sound of an entire room going up in flames at once. I remained at the door, bracing it closed as on the other side, as something screamed and banged against it, and the heat of the door soon scalded me even through my armor, giving me a moment of white-hot bliss which filled my body with another unnatural warmth and memories and feelings of Ashton rose unbidden, even as the screaming reached an apex and the smell and sound of burning flesh filled the air.


    As the man died behind me, as my flesh burned, as the smell and sound and taste of the fire and flesh filled me, I found nothing in the pain but mild arousal, warped devotion to the new god of my world, upon whose altar I had just thrown the salvation of humanity.


    The fire system had activated, but the incendiary was a hellfire compound, which released enough heat and oxygen to be unquenchable under most circumstances. But the water slinging across my visor out in the hall was refreshing at least.


    Before too long the door was too hot to bear and I moved away, but nothing remained to open it from within.


    I was finished with Ashton''s dirty work and wanted nothing so much as to go home and perhaps find that drink which Ex-Director Blackett had not offered me. Perhaps a luxurious bath to wash all of this desert off of me, or I could stop pretending to myself and bleed myself into unconscious ecstatic bliss while pulverizing my innards, imagining Ashton to be my lover and tormentor both.


    The options really were limitless.


    I took the elevator to the VTOL port on the surface and left without a backwards glance. Whatever I did, I needed to be far from this place as soon as I was able and never return. In the map in my mind, I burned a hole out where New Eden once stood, and filed it away as another place like San Dimas where too many black memories remained for me to ever return.


    As the desert flew past under me, I reconsidered perhaps just having the bath. I had enough blood on my hands for one day.

 220. 2252, Present Day. South Spring General Hospital, Las Vegas. Athan.

    It...didn''t feel like it had been a week since the events at New Eden. Though I was barely conscious for the first few days, after that, I spent countless sleepless hours staring at the white panel ceilings of my hospital room.


    Thinking about every moment of those few days I spent in New Eden. Thinking of the decisions I''d made, of regrets and loss, of what I could have done better, of how many ways I had failed everyone and myself. Thinking of how needless it was for me to be there in the first place, a simple mission to look for a missing girl who didn''t even turn out to be missing.


    But more than anything, thinking of her.


    It felt...surreal. It felt like whenever one of us was in danger, the other would always show up at the last minute and save the day. True to the visions Moon and I had experienced, things had gone south across the field and it took everyone''s combined strength to just save themselves. Some had been injured, but disregarding the dozens of Exhumans and hundreds of XPCA, there were only two casualties I could put a face to.


    AEGIS, of course. And Blackett, found burned alive in his office by Cosette.


    She''d come to visit me in the hospital. I think she had a lot of questions, but asked none of them. She just sat mutely beside Saga and Tem--whom the hospital staff could not displace with any amount of threats or force--and studied me. I think she wanted reassurance that she''d chosen right, that it wasn''t a mistake for her to put her faith in me instead of Blackett.


    I had no such reassurances to offer her. I didn''t know if it was right. I wasn''t sure that his death outweighed AEGIS''.


    But whenever I began to tread that dark path, I could always look up and see Saga. AEGIS had chosen to sacrifice herself to save me, and I had chosen to sacrifice myself to save Saga. And as a result, she was alive and intact again, though she sat there, mute and unreadable, subdued and as sleepless and introspective as I was.


    I knew...just by the merit of the pain which wasn''t emanating from her in waves, or the desperation, or the fear...I knew in my heart that the decisions we made were right. That in the great karmic balance, one life freely given was worth a life stolen and suffering.


    But what I knew and what I felt were as opposite as two things could be. I loved Saga, but even if she could live in my head a hundred years, it still felt like she couldn''t know me as AEGIS had. Her new air of still silence just felt like a pale mockery of AEGIS'' accommodating warmth. She felt like a consolation prize for losing.


    Which wasn''t fair to her, I knew. And I knew she was in my mind as these thoughts bubbled up unbidden, unwanted, and felt and saw it all, even if I tried to hide them from her. But it was the truth, that AEGIS was the woman I loved, and now she was no more.


    On the table next to my bed were the boot drive, the broken backup, and the strips of AEGIS'' wispy yellow dress, stained and heavy with my blood. The staff had tried to take them away as garbage, but I''d threatened to kill them on the spot if they dared. They didn''t dare.


    It was...an overreaction. But they were threatening to take away the last of AEGIS from me. They were just trying to help, and as an Exhuman, I should have always been in control of myself or I was a danger to everyone.


    But as a man...a boy, even, I was so scared and so, so alone.


    It felt like the hours dragged on forever with nothing to keep each day from blurring into the next as the only sleep I found were a handful of minutes snatched from the cruelty of my re-imaginings here and there. People would come to visit and I would find them an imposition and want them to leave, and then they would leave and I would regret being alone.


    And the whole time, all I wanted was her. Everything reminded me of her, from the smell of antiseptic to the meals they served me to the poor company she was not here to improve. The machines crowded around the bed and the practical but ugly hospital scrubs. Everywhere I looked I saw her, only to glance again, my heart pounding and see only a nurse walking past, their eyes only glowing yellow from the reflection of their mobile.


    The middle of the night found me sleepless again, sitting up in bed with the lights in the hallway dimmed and, a small bedside lamp illuminating a cone within the room. I closed a book I had just been glazing over, one of several left by Moon during a visit she stressed was nothing but a formality as she went down a sterile checklist of platitudes to give me.


    "Hey, Saga," I said.


    "Hey, Athan," she whispered back.


    "Are you okay?" I asked.


    Silence answered me. I waited a moment and was about to continue when she did.


    "I don''t know what ''okay'' is, really. I''m alive. I''m safe. You killed the one Exhuman in the world who might be able to hurt me again. So I guess I''m okay, yeah."


    "You only guess so?"


    Again she was silent before responding. Being so pensive and reserved, speaking in low tones, it was more like talking to Moon than Saga...albeit with a lot more emotive range.


    "This one really hurt me, Athan."


    "I know."


    She shook her head. "Nah, not like that. Pain and dying and fear...they were awful. You know how awful they were, I don''t have to tell you. They were bad enough...to push me into a dark place. But it''s what I did when I got there that...that I don''t know if I''m okay."


    "You mean brainwashing those Exhumans?"


    "I mean giving in." She sighed and seemed to shrink even further into her chair, which already dwarfed her frail frame. "Do you know...pretty much every person I''ve ever met has a lot of the same delusions? They think, if I ever got in a fight, I''d do this and knock the guy''s lights out, or if I ever got in an argument about that topic, I''d say this and they''d be dumbfounded by how smart I am. People like to believe they''re more than they are. I used to laugh at the stupid bravado sometimes, wondering how they could be so blind."


    I had to admit, I''d had thoughts like that. I wouldn''t call them delusions though, just bored, idle thoughts. When I started playing football competitively, I found myself going over plays in my mind and thinking of counterplays. But I knew they were just random thoughts. Some of them might even have worked, maybe...not really, but maybe.


    "Yeah, they wouldn''t, but nice try," she said, responding to my thoughts. "It''s normal, we all like to feel comfortable in our own skin, but trust me, every person you meet isn''t going to win a fight every time they''re in one just ''cuz they imagined it up. If for no other reason than the other guy did exactly the same."


    "I don''t get your point here, Saga," I said, already regretting opening my mouth.


    "I''m getting there. My point is, I''m human too...or...close enough anyway. I''d always thought, I''ve endured a bunch, I''m tough as nails, I can withstand anything. Even if someone did chain me up and throw me in a volcano, I''d go down telling them exactly how tiny their prick was."


    Her head tilted downwards, casting long shadows over her face, just a small nose and two sunken eyes in the dark.


    "But that was a delusion, too. I might have been through a lot and thought myself tougher than anything, but I''d never faced real danger before, never had to fear for my life. And when it came down to it, I cracked like all the other millions of people on this fucking planet who''ve been tortured until they screamed. I''m not as invincible or as hard or as awesome as I thought I was, mentally, and it hurts."


    "That''s...it?" I asked. "You were almost flayed to death and you''re not sure you''re okay because of your ego?"


    "Don''t underestimate someone''s ego, Athan. For a lot of us, it''s the only thing that gets us through the day. Take it away, and a someone can lose their personal identity." She sighed. "Look, I know why you were asking that question, you want reassurance that you did the right thing. That saving me meant something, that I''m a-okay and it''s because of AEGIS'' sacrifice."


    "No, I--"


    "You can''t lie to me, dummy. You can lie to yourself, but not me. And what you want is fine. So I''ll just answer your question straight -- if you and AEGIS and everyone else wasn''t there, I''d be dead. Dead, dead, or worse. Ego intact or no, I''m a hell of a lot better than if you hadn''t saved me. So yeah...I''m okay. I''m hurt...I think we''re all hurt, but I''ll survive, and we have her to thank for it. Her and you."


    I nodded at her. She was right, that was what I really wanted to hear, and I appreciated her taking the time to say it.


    "You really don''t have to be grateful. It''s just words. I''m not the one who saved anyone."


    She was so serious and earnest, and it stung. Just a few weeks ago, she''d have made a joke or shot me a snarky you''re welcome, but now she was just¡­


    I thought over her words which I''d half-ignored when I had realized they weren''t about AEGIS or me. Lost her personal identity. That wasn''t a bad way of putting it. She was still Saga, yes, but less. She might do the same things she always had, still be there to probe my mind for the secrets I kept from myself and offer me the advice I needed even if it wasn''t what I wanted. But behind it was something else. Not exactly fear, but¡­This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Man it''s awkward to have you psychoanalyzing me," she said. I looked over and frowned, realizing she was sitting there holding herself awkwardly and avoiding looking at me.


    "Sorry. That was really rude of me," I said.


    "It''s nothing I haven''t done to you a hundred times, I''m sure."


    I hesitated, and then kept talking because it was less painful than the silence. "I don''t know if you''ve heard this one in my mind before...stop me if you have. But a long time ago, when I freaked out about you being a Sino when I first met you, AEGIS gave me some advice."


    Saga shook her head and listened. I guess the story had never bubbled to mind in her presence before.


    "She said that we don''t live in the real world, we live in our perception of it. We see things tinted through our past experiences, and sometimes, we can run into trouble when our view of the world doesn''t line up with new things we encounter. Like how I was fine with you being an Exhuman, but not being a Sino...I had to come to terms with the fact that I was racist and never even knew it."


    For some reason Saga was smiling, which was an odd reaction to the anecdote but I pressed on.


    "She said that when we encounter something which makes us challenge our world views, we can either ignore it, or look inside ourselves to see what assumptions were in us that made us see the world wrong. And, that it was looking in like that which helped us grow. So...like you said...you''ve always thought that nothing could shake you, and now you''re shaken. You''re faced with the problem of coming to terms with the issue and accepting that you''re not as invincible as you thought...or wilfully ignoring that fact and continuing on, a little more wrong but without changing who you are."


    "That son of a bitch," Saga said, still beaming at me, seeming to illuminate as she leaned forward towards the light.


    "What?"


    "I told her that, a hundred years ago. When we were friends a lifetime ago. When she was figuring out who she was...before I blew up her base. I can''t believe she held onto that all this time, and then used it on you so that you''d accept me."


    "Well...I think she was offline for like ninety of those years, and didn''t have her memories so she wouldn''t know it came from you."


    "But that''s the thing, see? Without her specific memories, she still knew it, because it was knowledge so precious to her she integrated it into her being. She saw it as such a pervasive truth that it literally became a part of her." Saga shook her head. "Fuck, and I thought we were just talking at the time. I had no idea."


    "I guess you never know what you say or do that''ll make the biggest impression?"


    "I mean...I usually do. I''m in their head. But I get the meaning."


    As the unexpected happiness of the last exchange faded, we lapsed again into silence. To my surprise, Saga spoke up again.


    "I miss her, Athan."


    "You do? You weren''t even really friends, were you? I mean, a hundred years ago, but since then?"


    She shook her head. "At the Christmas party, remember?"


    "I remember her killing you like, thirty times."


    "Not that. She asked...totally seriously...if I was lonely and wanted friends. If I wanted her to be my friend." Saga retreated back to the shadows. "You have no idea how badly I wanted to say yes. Ever since I found out she was alive, that''s all I''ve wanted, was to have my old best friend back, to tell her I was sorry for everything I''d done to her, for killing her mom and ruining her life, sorry that we were destined to be enemies because I was a prisoner and she was my warden."


    She sighed and shrunk again, rubbing her eyes on the sleeve of the sweater she''d found to replace her ancient prison uniform.


    "But I couldn''t. Too fucking prideful to just say yes. Had to laugh in her face about it, and now she''s dead. Probably the only person in the world from my old life, and my best friend, and I couldn''t even fucking say yes."


    I knew how she felt, and not just because we were connected at the head. I had my own share of regrets, all the times I''d hurt AEGIS or just been intolerably stupid...how long I''d strung her and Karu along for fear of hurting either of them. Not to mention almost everything I''d said or done at New Eden which I could have done better. If I''d handled things better when it was just me and Karu, she wouldn''t even have been there to die.


    Silence pervaded again. Whoever said that when a person dies, you should celebrate their memory instead of being sad had no fucking idea what they were talking about.


    Saga snorted into her sleeve and then laughed a tiny delicate laugh.


    "What?"


    "Sorry...your thoughts...sorry."


    "You have a problem with them?"


    "You''re just so mad at yourself, you''re taking it out on someone who came up with an idiom a thousand years ago. It just...seemed silly."


    "Yeah, whatever," I said and rolled over on my side facing her. I wanted to argue but it didn''t feel worth the anything.


    "Athan?" she asked.


    "What?"


    She leaned forward into the light again, her face stone serious. "You''re okay too."


    "What?"


    "You asked me earlier if I was okay. Trying to gauge if AEGIS'' sacrifice meant anything. I know you don''t put a lot of value on yourself, but lots of us do."


    She pet Tem''s sleeping head with a surprising amount of affection.


    "And even if you think that doesn''t matter for shit, consider that it mattered a lot to AEGIS. She knew exactly what she was doing when she did it. You''re okay because of her, and that means a lot. Give her that credit, too."


    "Meh."


    "Yeah, I know," she gave me a wan smile and then leaned back again. "I bet she really loved you."


    I turned the other way, my entire lower half kind of throbbing weirdly through the painkillers, and picked up my book again. It was stupid, but I didn''t want Saga to see me cry.


    We didn''t say anything else for the next few hours and I fell asleep with the book propped open in front of me, not waking until morning, and feeling just as tired and shitty as ever.


    I sensed someone sitting next to Saga and Tem and when I woke slightly and listened, realized it was Lia, speaking in a whisper so quiet I couldn''t hear more than a low murmur.


    I laid there for a while long before the pain in my legs made me sit up to take another painkiller.


    "Not on an empty stomach," Lia said, and pushed a plate at me. Peeled apple slices. I pushed the plate away. "Eat, or Tem won''t," she said, and I realized Tem was curled up with a similar offering sitting next to her and similarly being ignored.


    "Tem, eat," I said.


    She began to oblige until Lia spoke up again. "Tem, don''t eat unless Athan does," she said glaring at me. "He needs to eat or he''ll never get better."


    "So you''re blackmailing me with starving Tem?" I asked.


    Tem looked back and forth between us, looking completely lost. She was so thin already, and hardly ate unless someone made her. If Lia pulled this shit, it could seriously fuck the girl up.


    Lia smiled as she regarded me coldly. Of course, she already knew that. Which is why I''d eat my fucking apple slices like a good boy. Once I was, Tem followed my lead experimentally, still waiting to see if anyone else would yell at her.


    "You guys are fucking weird," Saga said.


    "If you have a problem, tell Athan he deserves to be able to eat and enjoy a dang apple no matter how much he''s beating himself up," Lia said, stretching luxuriously in the chair. "So, have you made up your mind bro? Ready to just accept the obvious?"


    I knew in my mind that Lia was just being strong because that was how she coped with sadness, that she''d had more practice than anyone ever should at forcing a smile, but even so I hated her a little right now for seeming so nonchalant when AEGIS was dead.


    But I guess depending on how you saw it, maybe she wasn''t, and maybe that''s why Lia''s smile could still seem so genuine.


    "No," I said between bites of apple. "I don''t know. I feel like...I''m just being greedy. You can''t just demand someone live because you want them to."


    "Not a human, no. But AEGIS wasn''t that, so...yeah, you can. She''s gotta be the one person in the whole planet where you could do that, actually. She might even have been expecting you to do this when she--"


    "Lia, shut up," I said, and she did. "I''ve talked with AEGIS a lot about how she saw herself and copies of herself, and I can tell you with certainty...past a few minutes, she didn''t see copies as herself anymore. She thought of them as completely different people from her. So, no, she wouldn''t just expect a backup of her to be coming back. At best, she''d see it as us replacing her with her own sister or cousin maybe. And that''s pretty fucking sick."


    "But bro...she''s also...dead," Lia said, her voice suddenly a lot more gentle. "A backup would be better for everyone who''s still alive, it''d be better for the backup who gets a life. For everyone, really."


    "It wouldn''t be better for AEGIS."


    "Yes...but she''s dead. Do you think she''d want you to be miserable like this, or alone? Don''t you think, if she could, she''d send anyone to help you, even if it''s a copy of herself?"


    I didn''t know. AEGIS had a lot of strong opinions on her copies, and I''d never fully understood her perspective on them. And with her dead, I never would.


    Lia stood up and paced. "Look, I know it''s selfish, but I want her back. I don''t care if we have to...have to replay out every second of the last two months for her, I want her back."


    I shook my head. "Lia, the last backup we have is from a couple of months ago, but we don''t have anything to put that backup in. If we bring AEGIS back, we''re not just going back a few months. We''re going back to the only copy of her we have which runs."


    Lia sat back down. "The box?"


    I nodded.


    "But she''s like...almost nine months behind. I knew her for like a few weeks tops at that point. She still hated Karu and Saga, never saw you start working at the XPCA...wow, never even saw us lose at Canada. Oh my God, that''s so long ago!"


    "Yeah."


    "But we have all her data. She can use the backup and catch up, right?"


    "She won''t want to. It''d be overwriting her with someone completely different in her eyes."


    "W-well," Lia said, standing and pacing again, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum when she turned. "Well, I don''t care. Any AEGIS is better than no AEGIS."


    "I think I can agree with that," I said.


    "But would she? Will she?" Saga asked. "And will you let her exist as she is, or force a life on her she''s never lived?"


    "Saga--!" Lia blustered and then froze, going unnaturally still. "Yes, you''re right," she intoned as Saga sighed painfully.


    I''d almost completey forgotten that Lia was still under a compel where she couldn''t ever defy Saga. What a shitty fucked-up life I lived.


    "I shouldn''t have spoken up, sorry," Saga apologized.


    "It''s okay," I said, feeling pieces of my heart breaking as the normally unceasing Lia stood there like a statue, the only movement on her, the slow dilation of her pupils. "They were good questions. But...I do think my mind''s made up."


    "Even if you know you''re doing this for yourself? Not for her?" Saga asked.


    "I am doing this for her too," I said. "Lia''s right, any AEGIS is better than no AEGIS."


    "Hmm, I wonder," Saga said, as she watched my mindfucked sister with pain and regret flickering behind her eyes.

 221. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Karu never visited, though a few nights I swear I saw a red glow hover in the dim hallway outside. She''d not spoken to anyone since New Eden as far as I could tell, and I had to wonder how much of that was anger at me for choosing AEGIS, anger at me for leaving her, or anger at me for dropping the entire assassination of Blackett on her lap.


    So in short, I thought she was angry at me, with a truckload of good reasons for it.


    Lia came by all the time, looking out for me even against my wishes whenever she came by. We were only in this hospital in the first place because of her, apparently. Once I''d been stabilized, she had us transferred to Las Vegas so she could begin going through AEGIS'' things at their apartment and try to produce another backup.


    She brought Chiho a couple times, which was a surprise. I''d only met the girl a bit while I was in convalescence after thinking Saga had died, but she had seemed nice, emotionally sensitive...and a little dim, I guess. She''d made very pleasant small talk on her first visit, which I had no interest in...and her second visit, she brought her girlfriend for some reason, and the two of them spent the whole time arguing in the hallway once said girlfriend recognized me as an Exhuman from the news.


    The P-Force hadn''t been to visit since the first day I was awake. New Eden and the XPCA were both a shitshow at the moment, and apparently it was all the P-Force could to to keep the residents in line, and even have it out with a few agitated residents who decided confinement was no longer for them. Somehow, they had the support of the former-resistance, and most of the problems were coming from the un-redeveloped.


    It was almost like those who were willing to fight to preserve the idea of New Eden and those who caused trouble were distinct groups even without Soran and TARGA in there fucking everything up.


    I''d expected a tribunal or something for my actions but somehow that never came to pass. A new director was selected; Director Hall. Blackett''s death was chalked up as just another casualty in the unfortunate violent rebellion in New Eden, where it was proclaimed that the resistance, though successful in causing many deaths and damage to instrumental XPCA facilities, was ultimately routed and those responsible were apprehended and sentenced accordingly.


    No mention of Skyweb firing, even. Just lies and propaganda. Like always.


    So shit was broken, and I didn''t have time to sit around, Cosette told me exactly those words, paid up for getting me in a regenerator and back into action.


    The new Director didn''t seem to share Blackett''s vision of the P-Force growing and standing as a bastion against Exhumanity, though he''d have to be truly stupid to not appreciate our abilities and the fact that we alone could cut through a Ramanathan Window''s period of invulnerability. Instead of the P-Force going out on high-publicity runs, we were being lumped in with hunters and shadow ops and being sent on raids in small teams.


    The second such raid I was sent on, it was just Moon and me, Tower having already been off on assignment elsewhere, and Cosette reusing her new favorite line of shit was broken and Moon also not having time to sit around. We were trying to break into a place where there were allegedly a couple of Exhumans who''d escaped from New Eden in the mess...a pretty common mission apparently.


    I''d left Moon''s body somewhere safe and she was ghosting me, making for a very awkward elevator ride up the building which had already been evacuated of civilians.


    "So how''s it going?" I asked her as she stood half-inside me, watching the numbers slowly ascend on the elevator''s holo.


    "You will have to be more specific. There are a great number of ''its'' around us."


    "How are you doing, since the events of New Eden?"


    "I am fit for service."


    I sighed. "I meant, I haven''t had a chance to talk to you since the whole thing with Soran. You''ve got a bunch of his memories bouncing around in your head, right? And New Eden itself was...traumatic enough already."


    "I fail to see why I should respond conversationally. I am fit for service."


    "Moon, come on. I''m your superior, if something is going on with you, I''d rather hear it now than when something goes wrong." It was a half-lie, I knew that. I just wanted to know how she was doing, and if I had to leverage my position over her...well, she shouldn''t be so difficult to talk to in the first place.


    She didn''t answer at first, as I expected.


    "You have me at quite the dilemma, I confess," she said at last. "Because I know that you are lying, but I would not be able to tell if I were not in your mind, and I cannot act on that information without violating my personal beliefs. So I am faced with compromising my values, or encouraging your lies."


    "Yeah, quite a mess, huh? Probably would be easier if you just answered a damn question every once in awhile."


    She turned and looked at me, my own smokey purple reflection in the small elevator.


    "I don''t believe I''m saying this, but I think you are right," she said.


    I blinked at her, incredulous. "Really?"


    "Perhaps. Between the options of answering a personal question, lies, or morals, it does seem the simplest option."


    "Wow. So uh...how are you, then?"


    "I am fit for service," she said with a vague hint of a smile. The door to the elevator opened before I could bang my head against it in frustration.


    "You know, I wasn''t really lying," I explained as I navigated us down a hallway, apartment doors along both sides. "If I just trust you to self-diagnose your status, plenty of things could be wrong with you before I hear about it."


    "A fair point."


    "So?"


    She lapsed into silence while I checked my holo and confirmed the apartment number. Couldn''t really be anywhere else, there was music playing from inside and the rest of the building was evacuated for the potentially impending event. Not that there should be one...the residents here had volunteered to move to New Eden before...but that was before they knew what awaited them there.


    So, I knocked. Banged, really, over the music.


    "I am not sleeping well with the memories implanted, but otherwise not suffering," Moon said finally. "I also...am sorry for AEGIS. She seemed to be a good person, and never once bothered me. I do not think she deserved to die."


    I had time to glimpse just a hint of a troubled expression on her face before the door opened.


    "He-ee-ey, Lightning," said a man I recognized from somewhere who immediately pulled me out of the hallway to wrap me in a hug. Not exactly the reception I expected, and I was glad my shield didn''t blast him on the spot. When he let me go and took a step back, I took a good look at his face and tried to place him.


    "Who is it?" I heard a woman''s voice from the back over another couple laughing and talking. The music stopped.


    "It''s our boy Lightning!" the man shouted over his shoulder. "Hey man, what brings you here? You live in the area or something? And what''s with the uniform? And the...friend?" He laughed.


    I was able to place the woman''s voice. Trish, the shadow Exhuman who''d begrudgingly helped us in New Eden...after I kicked her butt in the arena. Which meant this guy¡­


    I took a hard look at his face and realized, yeah, if you replaced the warm smirk with a hard scowl, this was Trish''s boyfriend. Stretchy arm guy, or whatever the hell else his powers did. I was shocked, frankly, to see him so welcoming and happy to see me.


    "Uh, just...just looking into Exhumans from New Eden," I said, feeling kind of stupid.


    "We are here to apprehend you. Surrender and come quietly or we will engage with force," Moon said decisively.


    "Moon, cut it out," I said. "We''re here to talk."


    "We are not here to talk, they are fugitives to be apprehended."


    "Are you...okay?" the man asked. Trish appeared from a back room and joined us at the door, wrapping her arms over the man''s shoulders and beaming at us.


    "Hi, Lightning! So glad to see you made it out in one piece too. Or two pieces?" she asked, looking at my shadow.


    "Hi Trish. You guys seem...happy. Weirdly so."


    "We are," she said. "We finally decided to get married, after four years. Just a couple of days ago!" She held up her left hand where a delicate ring glittered with a few small stones.


    "Wow, really? Uh, congrats." I was having a hard time relating these two saccerine lovebirds with the two I''d met in New Eden. Like, I know people had been going on about how something there was making people angry all the time, but I hadn''t expected exactly this kind of...turnabout. At the very least, I guess it was a relief that the effects of the place didn''t carry over out here?


    But all of this was just making my job harder. I was, as Moon was bluntly putting it, supposed to be arresting these two to take back.


    Which was made even harder as they invited me in, sat me down at a table, and offered me a drink, which I managed to refuse. Both of them sat with me and spoke with me like my visit was the most natural thing in the world.


    They were excited to talk about the engagement, it seemed, and launched into a collaborative tale of how it went down. Nothing too fancy, just a picnic date with just the two of them, and then suddenly all of their friends and family randomly happening by and joining them until Trish was laughing at the implausibility of it all. When she started asking them all what was really going on, why they were all just in the park at the same time, he got on one knee and showed her.


    Never mind that all of their friends and family was like, four people--it was so sickeningly sweet I couldn''t help but to smile along, filing away mental notes for Lia and AEGIS, who both adored relationship crap like that.


    And then I remembered that AEGIS was dead, and the story suddenly seemed a lot more sad.


    "Don''t you get embarrassed telling that same story over and over?" Trish laughed at her fiance, though it looked like she was the only one blushing.


    "I''d only be embarrassed if you said no," he smiled back.


    "Oh, like I''d do that."


    Moon cleared her throat, but I suppose the story had some effect on even her because she''d stepped back from threatening to attack on the spot.


    "Right, we''re sorry for monopolizing the conversation," he said. "What was it you were here--Haley, come here and meet...um...our guest. Where''s Glenn?"


    A skinny dark-haired girl who wouldn''t have looked out of place as Lia''s classmate had emerged from the back room and was stalking past the table towards the kitchen.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Right where you left him, Gil," the girl said, completely undeterred as she went to the fridge and pulled out a plastic bottle of soda.


    "Not before lunch, young lady," Trish barked. Haley blew her bangs out of her face in irritation and then, to my utter surprise, threw the bottle straight at the wall to the back room, where it disappeared the second it left her hands.


    Trish was right there with a short rod made of shadows and, swatting at nothing she knocked the bottle out of the air...or wherever it was, sending it rolling across the ground.


    Before it could reach Haley''s feet, Gil--since that was his name apparently--shot an arm across the room and snatched the bottle from the ground.


    "No powers inside the house," Trish hissed at the girl. "And in front of a guest? He''s wearing an XPCA uniform for God''s sake, child!"


    "And...who...is this?" I asked, trying to remain composed at the minor triple Exhuman event unfolding in front of me.


    "Haley, go get Glenn and both of you meet our guest. And no soda before lunch. Come on. Hustle your buns."


    In a manner in which no buns were hustled whatsoever, the teenage girl sauntered into the back room and came back with a younger preteen boy wearing a bright yellow shirt and short messy hair. If it weren''t for the fact that none of them looked remotely related, I''d think they were a family.


    "These are...our wards," Trish explained. "Kids from New Eden who had nobody to look after them. So we took them in. Say hello to Glenn and Haley. Guys, meet...uh...Lightning. Sorry, what is your actual name?"


    "I''m Athan. This is Kaori."


    "Moon," she stated.


    "Or Moon, I guess," I shrugged. "Nice to meet you guys."


    "Are you an XPCA?" Glenn asked awkwardly.


    "I was going to ask about the uniform," Trish mused. "He can''t be, though. Or if he was, he''s the worst XPCA I''ve ever heard of," she laughed.


    "Uh, actually...I kind of am. Sorry." I wasn''t sure why I was apologizing.


    "Oh." She blinked at me. "Sorry."


    "We''re here to take you back to New Eden," Moon clarified helpfully.


    "Are we though?" I asked her.


    "I apologize. Was there a second, secret mission briefing to which I was not invited?" Moon asked, turning on me.


    "No," I said. "I just...it doesn''t look like we should be forcing people to move back just because some mission says so. I mean, look at them. They seem happy here."


    "Happy, yes. Also very dangerous. In the time we have been here, I have already seen gross misuse of powers."


    "How can you quantify stopping a girl from drinking soda before lunch as gross misuse?"


    "Perhaps," interjected Gil. "We should just have the adults in this conversation after all."


    "Fine," Haley said. "Glenn, shoo. We''re talking." And then she sat down at the table with us, ignoring the glares of her parents.


    "Haley, into the back too," Gil said, his voice taking on a serious tone.


    "I''m totally an adult," she argued back, her voice instantly defensive.


    "Do you work? Do you pay rent? No? Get outta here, kid." He reached around the table and spun her chair around under her to dump her onto her feet.


    "You''re such a bitch, Gil," Haley said with another blow into her bangs before she stalked off and slammed the door.


    "Sorry about that," Trish said into the awkward silence that followed. "She lost her parents in her Exhuman event, and¡­"


    "I get it, no need to apologize. You guys are really great for taking them in."


    "Well...we Exhumans need to stick together, right? Nobody else would take her in if they knew she had powers. They''d just be worried she would throw them into the sun or something, but she''s really a good girl. Tries hard in school. Has a few friends, hides her powers."


    "But not in front of me?"


    Trish laughed. "Well, she''s not perfect. I imagine that whole bit was to show off in front of you. Or make us look stupid in front of guests. Teenagers."


    "So she was throwing a bottle of soda into the sun?"


    "No...just into the bedroom I think. She can sort of vanish things she touches and have them reappear later. If they were moving at the time, they just keep moving."


    "Anyway," Moon interjected. "We are not here to do power analysis. We are a strike team, not a recon team."


    "Yes, you mentioned that," Gil said, frowning. "As for New Eden," he glanced at his fiance "we''re not going back."


    "We have orders--" Moon started.


    "Moon, come on," I said, turning to her. "Look into my memories, and see how miserable and angry Trish and Gil were when I knew them in there. It''s only a few weeks later and they''re...hell, they''re the model of reformed Exhumans."


    "Yes. Suspiciously so."


    "Oh come on. You think they''re doing all this as an act on the off chance that someone comes by to take them back but has a change of heart?"


    "I don''t think a teenage daughter would be worth it just for that," Trish laughed.


    "Well, it''s working isn''t it?" Moon said, crossing her arms.


    "Moon, how can you be so smart but also so stupid?" I asked.


    I was in the same spot I''d put her in before. I could sense she wasn''t being honest with me, but if I called her out on it, I''d make it obvious I was peeking. She wasn''t actually thinking these guys were any threat, but she wasn''t mentally okay either, and I think rigid, almost malicious adherence to authority was just her way of lashing out. Like when she gave me an infinitely hard time for not speaking to her exactly properly.


    But she could be a shit to me all day and that was whatever. She wasn''t going to force me to bring innocent Exhumans in just because the rules said so.


    "Papa-Foxtrot Central, do you copy?" I asked my comms. No response. "Cosette? Yo?" We did have a support team out there, but this was probably hardly the op which currently needed attention.


    "Central here," an unrecognised voice said after a pause.


    "Where''s Major Dawn?"


    "Currently advising a different strike unit."


    "Can you get her on the line when she has a moment?"


    "Yes sir."


    I looked at Gil and Trish just sitting there in awkward silence while I yelled into comms and Moon and I bickered in their living room and was a little disgusted with myself for how I was handling this. I definitely felt a few steps off of normal...like Moon, I was probably behaving a little weird and didn''t even notice.


    "I''m sorry," I said to them. "Look...Moon''s correct in our initial mission in deploying here--"


    "Haley and Glenn should not grow up there," Trish said, glaring me down and slamming the table, and for a second I saw the woman I recognized from New Eden. Still a fighter, deep down. "There''s something wrong with that place, it twists people, and if you try to make us go...we''ll fight you if we have to."


    "Easy," I said. "As I was saying, that was why we were sent here, but I think that''s stupid. I agree with you, I''ve seen what you''ve seen and I''ve seen how much worse you guys were in there, how much worse everyone was. Now...I''m going to have to give the guys back there something or else they''ll just send out another team...so would you be willing to submit to XPCA surveillance on your family?"


    "No," she said without hesitation. "Would you let the XPCA spy on your family?"


    "If it meant staying out of New Eden, yes. Look, we''ve got satellites and recon teams and cameras up everywhere anyway--"


    "You have cameras in our apartment?" Gil asked, shocked.


    "No...but--"


    "Look, Lightning. Or, Athan, you said. We''re not going to hurt anyone, nobody knows about our powers. Just leave us alone, that''s all we want."


    "Believe me, that''s what I want to do more than anything. But that''s not how the XPCA works, and that''s not how the world works."


    They looked at me for a long moment which gave me time to hate the words coming out of me. Eventually Gil spoke. "Yeah, I know."


    I didn''t know what I could say or do or offer them. I knew they were right, that New Eden was a shit place for a family...a shit place for an Exhuman in general. I knew if those kids were to have any chance of becoming real people, this was their best shot. But I also knew that people just hated Exhumans.


    After being in New Eden, I just...irrationally, I guess...I felt like all of this would change. I''d been around Exhumans enough that they felt normal, not novel, and somehow the rest of the world would see that too. We''d brought down the corrupt heart in the XPCA. We''d bled and sacrificed and AEGIS was dead. And still, this?


    "Papa-Foxtrot Actual, this is Papa-Foxtrot Central, go ahead," my comms came to life.


    "Cosette, hi," I said, tapping my comms for the benefit of the others in the room.


    "Hi Chariot. We have kind of an event unfolding near Santa Fe right now so if you could be brief."


    "Right," I said. "Well, uh¡­" I blinked at the two sitting opposite me and stood up to move slightly out of earshot, feeling like I needed to pace anxiously and channel my inner Lia. Still, as I moved from the table to the sofas, their eyes followed me, and I realized that was what I was trying to get away from.


    "Today, Chariot?" Cosette fumed.


    "Right, right. Right." I leaned against a wall near the bedroom door, and could sense on the other side of it two small bodies pressed against the door, listening, hardly breathing. "Um, Cosette, Moon and I made it on-location but it seems like our intel was bad. There''s just a normal family of four living here."


    "Great, another one. Jack and Tower keep running into those too...recon teams are really dropping the ball," Cosette sighed. "I know they''re working overtime on acquisition, but it''d save us so much goddamn time if they could check their damn targets. Recon my ass." She muttered herself into irritated silence. "Well, don''t stop for souvenirs or anything, there''s plenty more Exhumans to catch."


    "Right," I said, and realized I needed to stop saying that word so much. "Uh, affirmative. Moon and I will be returning for redeployment."


    "Thanks. Papa-Foxtrot Central over and out."


    We escaped a few minutes into a wave of gratitude being poured over us, in the midst of which I made them promise never to use their powers period, and explained if another team came out, I wouldn''t be able to help. They had to stay low or they''d be in New Eden. Or dead.


    And then we were back in the slow, small elevator heading down.


    "Why didn''t you rat me out to Cosette?" I asked Moon.


    She was silent for a moment in which I reflected on my sentence to see if it had any faults in it. None that I could detect, and none she could either apparently, because she responded after a few floors of deliberation.


    "I don''t know," she said, with a hint of frustration. "They were escaped fugitives and we are officers of the law. It seems very straightforward."


    "Is it because they''re not bad guys?"


    "They broke the law. They agreed to relocation and then violated their agreement. Exhuman nature aside, they are still criminals."


    "But they''re not bad guys."


    She didn''t argue, which was the same thing as agreement, I thought. But then she spoke up again, without me even having to drag it out of her, which was a surprise.


    "We uphold the law, but sometimes, I am not certain that makes us the good guys," she said with obvious frustration. "I wish this world were not so fundamentally broken."


    "Yeah, it sucks when things can''t just be put into good and bad," I agreed. She looked at me like she thought I might be mocking her and wasn''t sure, but I''m pretty confident she peeked and got her answer that way as she just slowly nodded.


    "Because I am apparently already having an emotional outpouring of a day," she said, referencing her comments about AEGIS earlier "I may as well embarrass myself one more time. And you, if you have any humility."


    "Embarrass...me?" I peeked just a little on accident. "You want to compliment me?"


    "I could not, if you prefer."


    "No...don''t do that," I laughed. She waited for me to stop with no small amount of resentment.


    "I am...glad...that you continue to do what you think is good, even in opposition to law and conventional wisdom. Your morals...give me hope."


    "Mine? My morals are nothing. I''m just a pawn on a very, very strange chessboard."


    "You are a pawn that remains white when both sides appear grey. You refuse to be captured no matter how many stronger pieces enter your square. And bit-by-bit, you drag the pieces around you towards your side."


    "Are you on my side?" I asked, half to push my luck, and half because I was, as she mentioned earlier, reasonably embarrassed by this blatant, shameless praise.


    She went silent again as we left the building and entered the XPCA truck where her body was belted into the benches on the back.


    "I am on nobody''s side," she said as I reached for her body, making me hesitate. "You know, I believe I may only be so complimentary because of elevated hormones. I am close to menstruation. If you were interested in a consequence-free tryst, it should be a safe day for me."


    Why did I ever listen to her? I poked her in the forehead and her consciousness and thoughts left my mind, as thoughts like what the heck is wrong with this girl bubbled up in their place.


    Her eyes popped open and she shot me a small smile as she fixed her hair. "Joudan."


    "I know," I said, and banged on the back of the driver''s compartment and buckled myself in opposite her. "I was just being annoyed at how fast you can whiplash around from impossible to serious to joking. If you can even call it that."


    But even as I complained, I knew something behind her words was serious...and not the sex-offering part. I hoped.


    This mission, or my actions on it, or her being in my head...or maybe just the shared conspiracy of nobody else having any idea what Soran did to us that day, somehow we''d gotten closer without either of us realizing it.


    Because as we rode back to base for new orders, Moon kept that small smile, and for the first time since I met her, there was something in her eyes other than hate.

 222. 2252, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    It was almost another week of being run haggard before I could find any time at all to slip away from Cosette constantly giving us new orders of Exhumans to chase down and throw back into New Eden. Some went, unwilling to resist from the moment they knew they''d been found. Sometimes I didn''t have a choice, partnered up with hunters or shadow ops units who were definitely there strictly as muscle, so that the Exhumans we met wouldn''t have a choice either.


    A few fought back, and those were by far the worst. Not just because it was...y''know...a fight, but because it wasn''t a fight I even wanted in the first place. Thankfully, the people who wanted a fight generally didn''t have as pure motivations as Trish and Gil; for the most part, I could actually say they were pretty much assholes. But still.


    When I did get dragged into that kind of situation by an overzealous hunter or shadow ops, I left them to do most of the fighting. If they wanted to get us into that shit, they could get us out.


    In a sad, twisted way, it was a blessing. Being so busy constantly and having tons of other shit on my mind was a welcome reprieve from having nothing but my thoughts in the hospital, and forced me away from the memory of AEGIS.


    But I still found her on my mind at the strangest of times. I realized that by this point, I had made a habit of filing away all the interesting things that happened to me on the day to have something to share with her when I got home. I found myself hungry constantly, because nobody was scheduling or making meals for me anymore, and I had to remember to do it on my own again. More than once, I woke up with a start, trying to push her out of my bed, only to realize she wasn''t there.


    Even Tem gave me weird looks the first time that happened, waking up everyone in the barracks by yelling at woman who wasn''t alive and wasn''t there. It was pure hell trying to go back to sleep after that.


    I felt like I was starting to lose it, and the first day I got away from Cosette, I grabbed Lia and dragged her and her crawler, pissed away all the money I''d saved until now chartering the three of us a VTOL, and flew northeast.


    It took too long to find, even with Lia knowing where we were headed, most of two days of travel, the last leg of which was cold and uncomfortable, clinging to the crawler as it blew through the wilderness at irresponsible speeds, unable to see anything but Lia''s back, or feel anything other than the vibrations of the seat or her pressed against me.


    I lurched forward as the contraption decelerated under me, and peeked up. It was coming on evening and there was a thin layer of snow everywhere, covering the ground still but not thick enough to bury rocks and roots and bushes. I didn''t recognize where we were, it just looked like yet more trees and wilderness, the same as we''d seen the last few hours.


    "We taking a break?" I yelled over the engine turning.


    She shook her head, which I could only make out by her brown hair pouring out of the back of her helmet moving an inch from my eyes. She weaned the vehicle down and down until the landscape seemed to appear around us, blurs solidifying into trees and rocks.


    And a river.


    She brought the crawler to a stop and pulled off her helmet, shaking out her hair. "We''re here," she said. She got off and did some squats and stretches immediately, but I was more interested in the river. The same one which had given me so many fish and kept me alive with water?


    I...honestly couldn''t tell. I had no context where on the river we were. It looked just like any other small river to me, which made me feel a bit sad and guilty, like not recognizing an old friend. I didn''t have time to waste though, and pulled the tools from the trunk of the crawler and headed north.


    It wasn''t too long before The Bunker emerged from the dark shapes on the horizon, and this one I had no trouble recognizing. I found the inside disused and snow had blown in from the open door, but there in the corner was still my old hammock, and opposite it, the mass-fab which AEGIS had used to crawl back to being.


    Lia gave a low whistle from the doorway. "Talk about a fixer-upper."


    "Used to be a lot more crap here before AEGIS scrapped it all for parts. You couldn''t walk three feet without giving yourself tetanus. Now it''s just a big empty concrete box."


    "Good memories here, then?"


    "Mostly. I guess I''d already moved into the bigger facility by the time you got here. This is where it all started though."


    "Yeah, I know. You told me. Karu told me too, when she lived here. AEGIS also told me. Got kind of annoying, actually."


    "I wonder," I said, and stood on my toes, brushing my fingers along the metal beams in the ceiling. I shuffled through a quarter of the room like this before I used my head and went to the corner where I always changed and found what I was looking for immediately.


    "Cam drone? Looks...like shit," Lia said as she peeked over my shoulder.


    "One of her oldest models. Low-res camera, no audio, single rotor, magnetic clamp. Maybe the first one she ever made. She did have a keen interest in watching me change, even before she knew she was an AI."


    "Weird. Gross. Also...kind of cute, I guess? In a stalkerish way where things work out between the stalker and stalkee?"


    "Yeah, that was us all right. Filled my house with cameras and tried to run my life and then kill me. God I miss her."


    I had enough of this place without AEGIS in it and grabbed our tools, heading straight north towards the crater. Halfway there, I stopped and walked slowly through the shallow snow.


    "It should be...here somewhere," I said. "She should be, I mean."


    "How can you tell?"


    "I can''t. It wasn''t all snowy like this when we buried her. I just have to go by the mountains and trees."


    I wanted to sweep the ground with electricity to see if I could find anything oddly metallic down there which conducted well, but it wasn''t worth the risk of accidentally damaging her. The AEGIS box was already over a hundred years old, and had already broken once under my stewardship.


    "Well...I do have these," Lia said, donning her plain white mask. "The Eye of Odin opens--"


    "Just sweep the damn area with your optics. It''s getting dark."


    She put her hands on her hips and glared at me through her mask.


    "The Eye of Odin opens only for Black Shark," she finished.


    "Great. What does the Eye of Odin see?"


    "You''re like twelve feet that way of something big and metal. There''s a bison-load of stuff buried around here."


    "How big?"


    "Like...a small fridge?"


    "Too big. She''s handheld but only just."


    We walked around in the snow until after dark with Lia sweeping the ground and running all the crap she found past me for verification, while I just followed her with shovels on my shoulder. Her optics weren''t that great, maybe military grade, not really top-of-the-line stuff, which she explained was all she could pack into the mask while still having it look ''cool''.


    "I''d never expected to be digging around in the dirt for a metal box," she huffed at me. "I was looking for my stupid older brother, and if he was in a box in the dirt, I''d already failed."


    Finally, she found something about the right shape and size. I looked around for landmarks, but at this point, it was so dark, all I could see was what was in my flashlight. I lit up a bunch of swords to help, but all they showed was more snow.


    "Let''s hope it''s it," I said, and started digging.


    Digging...sucked. For some reason, I thought this would be the easiest part of the journey, but cutting into the frozen ground was like trying to smash open a rock. At first I was worried we''d dig too hard and fast and damage the box, but our problem was the exact opposite. It just wasn''t yielding, and it didn''t take long before Lia and I were both dripping with sweat despite the cold, with hardly a dent to show for it.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Can''t you Exhuman us out of this?" Lia said, leaning on her shovel heavily.


    "You''re so spoiled," I grunted as I banged the shovel against the ground again. "Having Exhumans around you all the time, you always think there''s a magic solution for everything."


    "Well, if we had Jack, I bet he could just jump away with as much dirt as he could touch. Or Tem could vaporize it. Or Tower."


    "What could Tower''s power do here?"


    "He''s got big arms," she said with a grin.


    "Are you going to dig or stand there?" I complained at her.


    But she had her thinking face on, and after another minute, had me summon some swords under the ground. It...sort of worked, I didn''t get a cohesive blade out of it, just kind of a mess of hot held-together lightning, but that did the job in thawing the ground at least.


    "Just goes to show," she said as she shoveled another bit of dirt away. "There''s always a way to outsmart your problems."


    "Hooray, you outsmarted dirt." I said.


    "How about I dig the thawed parts and you dig the frozen parts then?"


    "Yeah, yeah, you can gloat as much as you want."


    "I won''t have time for that, because I made our work so much faster. So tragic!"


    We switched to hand tools when we were close, and carefully carved away the last couple of inches of dirt. More than once, I felt the tip of my trowel hit something solid beneath the dirt and winced. But it wasn''t long after that that the top of the box appeared.


    I smiled as I brushed dirt off of not one but two hololenses. The one attached to the box, and the one inscribed with the love we''d shared.


    "Oh my God this is adorable," Lia said with the biggest grin ever. "You made this? You!?"


    "I thought...she was leaving."


    "This is the cutest, dorkiest thing ever. No wonder she loves you so much. Oh my God, I want one. Athan, bury me in a box for a hundred years now."


    I rolled my eyes at her and gave the box a firm pull, yanking it upwards an inch. Lia helped from the other side, and at long last, sweaty and panting and arms shot to hell, we froze our asses on the cold snow with the box between us.


    It looked the same as it ever had, maybe a little more dirt-caked. I wiped the camera lens off with my finger and checked the large hole in the front for dirt. Which was pointless because it was just pitch-black inside.


    "How do we make it...go?" Lia asked.


    I didn''t know. There weren''t any buttons or anything. She''d shut down for good last time and the original purpose of the box was just a backup machine to be interfaced with another unit for black box capabilities. It had taken AEGIS ninety years last time to crack into the OS and get running on it in any real capacity.


    But really, I had no idea. All there really was for me to mess with was the quartz crystal I''d jammed into the side and was barely protruding, and the deulith cell taped onto the back for power. I went for the latter, and disconnected her power for a few seconds.


    "Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?" she quipped.


    When I plugged it back in, nothing immediately happened, but then, after a few moments, the holo sprang to life.


    And there she was, beautiful as ever. The same face, the same body...wrist braces, I''d almost forgotten she wore those, and real hair instead of her cables, but still done up in copper twintails which snaked around her waist as she turned and looked around.


    "Who are you?" she asked Lia, the lanky girl in a mask and slipskin in front of her. "Why am I awake?" Her eyes narrowed. "What do you want from me?"


    "Um, I''m not the one who wants you, but it''s good to see you again AEGIS," Lia said. I moved around to the front of the camera and waved at her.


    "Athan? Athan!" I saw her sag in relief, but only for a brief moment. "And who is this girl?"


    "Um, that''s my sister Lia."


    "Oh, his sister. Oh good. Hello Lia, I''m sorry. I thought I might have been...kidnapped or something."


    "Yeah...you were just ready to be jealous of me," Lia said, glomping hold of my side and pulling up her mask to reveal a grin. "Admit it!"


    "I admit nothing. Now, moving on from that obviously false sentiment, Athan, why the heck am I here? Where''d you get those clothes? What, uh, year is it?"


    "Calm down, AEGIS, just...just¡­"


    I wanted to explain everything to her and answer all her questions, but found myself choking and crying instead. I didn''t know how I could say everything, how she''d died, how I missed her and loved her and how I''d wanted nothing more in these last couple of weeks but to see her face and hear her voice again. How I''d been doing my best every day trying to make the world safe and better, but I couldn''t even care about it, because all I wanted was to run away, to here, to be with her again.


    Lia squeezed my shoulder gently and the blurry glow of AEGIS through my tears looked like she was fretting with her hair.


    "You died, AEGIS," Lia said quietly. "And Athan loved you."


    "O-oh."


    There was just embarrassing silence as I couldn''t stop myself from crying and the two girls just watched. After a minute, AEGIS began typing away at her console, a warm and familiar sound I''d fallen asleep to and woken up to more times than I could count.


    "I still have drones in the area...it looks like...we should be able to go to my place. There''s warmth and food there. Shall we do that?" she asked gently.


    I nodded and picked her up, facing her forward and following the blurry shape of Lia into the darkness.


    It was a crappy non-plan because I couldn''t see and my arms were full so I couldn''t wipe my eyes, but it also felt like I was holding her again. The little holo right in front of me kept looking back, even if she couldn''t see me without a camera, I knew the holo was a visual representation of her thoughts, and her thoughts were all on me.


    We trudged through the snow for quite a while before the base appeared out of the gloom. It wasn''t quite as we''d left it, most of the trenches had been filled in, and the ruined DOG-Es had been rolled off to the sides of the path. Someone had been busy here, and I blinked away my tears in preparation for trouble.


    Lia apparently noticed the same, because she was holding a handful of shock rocks, but AEGIS was just smiling. Lia threaded through the half-closed gate and pushed the elevator button, and I put out my swords as the elevator arrived and the dim light within was blinding.


    When the doors opened again, I just had to laugh. I should have expected this.


    What was once a storage facility turned workshop turned medical bay turned emergency residence was now a warm and inviting home. There were shelves stocked with cans and vials of nutrient paste, racks on the walls heavy with drying fish and meats, and in the middle of the room, a cheery fire beneath carefully-stacked cords of wood, all at odds with the concrete and metal and sterile white glow of the lightbars in the ceiling.


    And standing there, ready to greet us were two men, one very old and one very young. They both cheered when the door opened.


    "Wynn! Tate!" I shouted, and immediately got tackled around the waist by a small child.


    "I hope we''re not intruding," AEGIS apologized. "It''s late, and they didn''t seem to have any idea where they were going."


    "Hiya old dude, tiny dude," Lia said with a wave and a grin.


    "Athan, m''boy!" Wynn laughed and wheezed at us. "What brings you back to our neck of the woods? If you''re looking to move back in, I''m afraid you''ll have a hard time convincing us to go."


    "Go? Why would we want that?" I grinned. "Who''d catch us dinner if we kicked you out?"


    He laughed and began pulling bits of food off the walls and shelves, insisting on hospitality no matter our arguments. I''d thankfully anticipated this, and told him I had a care package for him back in the crawler. Just some food and medicine, antibiotics, and a real fiberglass fishing rod. He seemed about ready to cry just hearing about it for some reason.


    What followed was one of the happiest nights of my life, as I reunited with not just AEGIS but Wynn and Tate as well. We talked long into the night, catching up all three of them on all of the craziness which had happened since I''d left, and while their stories weren''t nearly so bizarre and dramatic, Wynn had a flair for storytelling which could transform even the most mundane events into a gripping tale.


    It was well past midnight and Tate was passed out in his bed hours ago before the rest of us decided on bed as well. We had a little bit of extra time in our schedule to spend here, but I could already imagine just how badly things might be going back at the XPCA with me gone for going-on three days now.


    And that sucked, it really did. I believed in the XPCA and I wanted the world to be safe for humans and Exhumans both. But just like I''d found myself choosing AEGIS over Blackett before, and Saga over a world free of Exhumanity, I found it hard to care about the bigger problems when the small picture right in front of me seemed so ideal. It seemed crazy to me that anyone would choose to live in a cramped city when there was so much happiness and laughter to be had in the wilds if one only had a few friends and the will to look for it.


    We were bedded down in some comfy, if temporary nests, and I had AEGIS positioned near my head, just like the old days. She was tapping away at her console and caught me looking, and turned to smile broadly at me.


    "You act like you haven''t seen me in forever, but for me it''s only been a day, Athan," she said, blushing crimson under her freckles. "You keep...staring, and it''s kind of weird."


    "You know...before you died...I loved you."


    "I know," she said, shifting nervously. "You said so. Or, Lia did."


    "No I mean...we were lovers. You were the one."


    "Oh. Oh! OH!" she said, becoming even more violent shades of red. "OH. MY."


    "Shh, you''ll wake the others."


    "Yeah. Just. Um. Sorry...my...emotional indices are...oh my. Give me a minute."


    She looked equally close to fainting and dancing as she grinned and wobbled like a cheshire top, holding her chest the whole while.


    "Sorry. But...I wanted to let you know as soon as I could. I love you. I missed you."


    She laughed even as she broke into tears. "S-sorry! My...I''m just...I wasn''t ready¡­"


    "It''s okay," I told her, smiling at her, the last light in the dark room. "We have plenty of time, all the time in the world now that we''re together again."


    She sniffled and nodded and wiped her nose on her dress, inadvertently flashing me in the process.


    "All the time in the world," she echoed, her voice distant and bubbly. "Whatever I did, I am...I am so, so grateful to me for having done it."


    "We can catch you up more when we get back," I said and she nodded enthusiastically, still dabbing at her eyes.


    "Get some sleep. Big day tomorrow," she whispered.


    "Good night, AEGIS," I said as she turned off her holo, still beaming at me as she vanished.


    "Good night, Athan. I love you too."

 223. 2252, Present Day. North American exclusion zone. Athan.

    I must have forgotten how loud AEGIS'' keyboard was because it woke me up half a dozen times that night. Every time, I''d start to nod off, some sudden, insistent tapping, would make me look over at the AEGIS box where the holo suddenly lit up at my glance, and there she was, smiling an embarrassed smile, waving vaguely.


    All I could muster in return was a bleary nod and half-assed smile in return and then rolling over and going back to sleep, only to be awoken as soon as I fell back asleep again.


    And so it was that in the morning, presumably, everyone else was up and stirring and preparing for the day while I laid there with my eyes pressed shut trying to go back to sleepy world where things were soft and comfy and not this.


    But it was no good. Even over the insistent, constant tapping of keys, I heard sounds a narrative put itself together in my mind. Wynn rising softly for his old age, moving around with the grace of a hunter, seeing to Tate who had the weight and step of a falling leaf, the only evidence of their waking, a few whispered words and the sounds of beds being made and food being prepared.


    I heard Lia doing her morning routine now familiar as her grin. She would awaken suddenly and spend long minutes lying there completely still, completely awake, just...thinking. And then suddenly, explode from her bed like a time bomb with little concern for who else in the house might still be trying to find rest. She never could sit still for more than a few minutes. Though I was sure she was awake for a while, it wasn''t until Wynn and Tate rose that Lia bounded up and bounced over to them, full of energy for the day.


    AEGIS for her part, seemed to type even louder until I finally opened my eyes and found hers staring back at me.


    "Good morning Athan!" she beamed.


    I was happy to see her too. But not right now. My eyes slammed shut again as incoherent protests forced their way out of me. I was sore from riding the crawler, my hands felt raw from working a shovel, and my eyes were so tired and scratchy that having them open was just...ugh. My head pounded faintly.


    "Oh come on. Rise and shine! It''s a new day. You haven''t seen me in a long time, right? Our first day together again!"


    I mean, she wasn''t wrong, but still. Ugh. I made a good-faith effort to roll out of my comfy warm heap and into the cold open air of the vault.


    I was still laying on the ground pathetically, but I made a good faith effort. Someone who did not appreciate my good faith climbed onto my back and straddled me.


    "Waaaaaaake UP!" this person who had once been my sister but was now dead to me rang in my ears with a giggle.


    "Come on, Lia, I''ve been sleeping like shit recently," I complained into my makeshift blanket. It might have taken me a minute and some muttering to get there but that was the gist.


    "You have?" AEGIS asked, suddenly full of concern. And guilt?


    "Yeah," I sat up despite my grogginess and forced Lia off of me. I''d accidentally said something careless and was worrying AEGIS. "Just uh, because you were gone. But now you''re back," I said grinning.


    Lia grinned beside me and I realized both of our smiles were fake as anything.


    "Uh. Okay. Well, I am back. And you''re up, so let''s make the most of it."


    We got up and began helping Wynn with breakfast. I helped him get a fire going without kindling and then, when he pretty much took over the cooking, headed back to the surface to bring the crawler and Wynn''s care package in.


    "Hey, can I come?" AEGIS asked.


    "Um...I''d have to carry you...and stick you in the trunk."


    "Yeah, that''s no problem. We have a lot to catch up on right?"


    "We do...but it''ll only be a minute. I''ll just be right back okay?"


    "Sure, sure. Be safe out there!"


    I''d almost forgotten AEGIS used to always see me off with those words and felt a blast of nostalgia as the elevator close and took me up.


    It was a cold, clear morning with the sun already lazily burning the night air away from just above the treetops. I felt like, with AEGIS back with us, the world had been transformed overnight. Instead of just being a tomb, I was back in the wilderness, the air was almost painfully cold to my nose, and heavy with the smells of pine and snow.


    I only had a half hour or so to enjoy the world out here again before I reached the crawler and experienced them all as blurs whipping past. Not quite so tranquil that way, but still fun in its own right.


    When I came back in, holding the box in my arms, breakfast was already ready; fish and greens Wynn-style, with what looked like a block of smoked ham.


    "Bet Saga wishes she were here," I said, as I munched down on the piece of fish before me. I didn''t know if you could ever call it better than what I''d get out in the real world, but it had an irreplaceable homemade feel.


    "How is the girl?" Wynn asked.


    "She''s...okay," I said, as I considered what else to add. Maybe that was enough, but Wynn seemed to be waiting for me to continue, and I remembered that in their own weird way, the two of them were close. "We just rescued her from XPCA torture and imprisonment again. She''s taking it hard."


    He frowned. "I see how it would be for her. Poor girl."


    "What, did she blow up someone else''s facility and kill their family?" AEGIS asked, jabbing at her keyboard.


    The conversation paused awkwardly.


    "Actually, we''re not clear what she was doing," Lia said. "She got it in her head somewhere that she had a big world-changing mission and set off to do it."


    "And she wouldn''t tell you the details?"


    "Not really, no."


    "Well then she''s up to no good," AEGIS said with finality. "Never trust an Exhuman, especially not her."


    "Um, maybe we can go over this later, but in your past life, you actually wound up meeting and liking a bunch of Exhumans. And even extended friendship to Saga...which she might take you up on, if our last talk in the hospital was anything to go by."


    "What? I would never. And more importantly, the hospital? What did you do, Athan?"


    "I got really badly hurt when you saved me and died."


    "Oh."


    Another awkward silence fell and Wynn at least was getting visibly anxious about it, eating in silence, focusing on nothing but his food.


    "Hey, when did you catch these?" I asked him. "Are you doing ice fishing, or did you manage to keep them all season?"


    "No need for ice fishing if the river flows fast enough," he laughed. "There are a couple places yet which haven''t frozen over, and I only need one."


    "The lake froze?"


    "Possibly enough to walk on, but I''m not betting my old bones on trying," he laughed again.


    "The same lake where you fought Karu?" AEGIS asked. "Did you two ever wind up killing each other yet?"


    "Uh, no. We''re¡­hmm", I said. Where exactly was I with Karu? Killing each other wasn''t exactly far off. "I think she''s mad at me for choosing you. And maybe a bunch of other stuff."


    "Well, you made the right choice. Could you imagine the two of you? You''re not even religious."


    "I guess...not. I mean, we kind of were a thing for a while there, though."


    "Well it''s in the past so I forgive you," AEGIS said, turning up her nose. "You should be grateful you have such an accommodating woman in your life."


    "Um, thanks? I mean...you didn''t even know about it until just now."


    "Just because you don''t know about your partner''s transgressions doesn''t mean they didn''t happen, Athan. Just be grateful that I''m willing to overlook it."


    I looked back at Lia and Wynn, and saw he was hard at work focusing on his food and ignoring the table again.


    "Have you been able to put much of AEGIS'' old stuff here to use?" I asked him. "Hopefully not the medical equipment, but there''s still a lot of good stuff here."Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    "Oh yes," he said beaming at us. "Just as soon as I figure out how to get it all working, I was planning on making a new body for myself as well. This old one is falling apart," he laughed.


    "I think DOG has problems holding a fishing rod," I grinned back. "But then again, he doesn''t need to eat, so maybe it works out."


    "A life without fishing and eating?" he gasped, aghast. "Why, it could hardly be considered a life at all."


    "That reminds me, here--" I reached back for the care package with the aim of pulling out the modern fishing rod, but on second thought, just brought the whole box to the far side of the table and put it down behind where the two sat.


    "Would you like to open it up?" Wynn asked his son, whose eyes shone with excitement as he nodded carefully.


    "Go for it," I grinned.


    Tate methodically opened the box and removed each item inside with deliberate care, pausing to examine each piece individually, even the relatively boring boxes of medicine, before setting them down in a neat pile.


    He was silent but intensely studying every treasure until he got to the bottom of the box where he pulled a stuffed bear Lia had us pick up for him, and upon seeing it, immediately wrapped it protectively in his arms with the same deliberate intensity. Wynn laughed wheezily and I saw Lia beaming from ear to ear.


    "Really?" AEGIS complained and I found myself sighing as I turned to stare at her little holo. "You''re going to normalize him to bear exposure? That''s practically a death sentence."


    "It''s a stuffed bear, AEGIS," I said.


    "Yeah, I''m not sure you''re listening to yourself. Stuffed bear. You do know what a bear is? Six-hundred pounds of muscle and claws? Jaws that can crush human bones like they''re pudding? Top running speed--"


    "AEGIS, it''s a toy. Jesus."


    "It''s a tool of indoctrination, Athan. You get your children liking and believing in bears when they''re young, and then they see one in the wilds and what do they think? Big huggable friendly friend. Want to guess what really happens when you try to hug a bear? Go ahead, guess."


    "AEGIS this is just...stupid. What the heck is wrong with you?"


    "Wrong with me? I''m not the one giving bears to children."


    "I meant...never mind. Look, I only have this one day with Wynn and Tate. Can you let me enjoy it?"


    "Pfft, if you can. And stop handing out ursine gifts. You got a bunch of gummy bears in there for him too?"


    We lapsed into yet another awkward silence. I was about to turn to Wynn to attempt to start up a conversation yet again when he abruptly stood up.


    "I think I have a bit of forage I need to round up," he said, giving my shoulder a firm squeeze as he passed. "Come on, Tate, let''s be off."


    Tate scampered after his dad, still clinging to the bear as the elevator closed behind them. I turned and fixed a glare at AEGIS only to notice that Lia, too, was creeping away.


    "Lia where are you going?" I asked.


    "Oh. Just. Out," she smiled at me. "Sounds like you guys have a lot of catching up to do."


    "We do," AEGIS agreed.


    "That''s stupid. I don''t want to catch up. I want to be with my friends I haven''t seen in months. AEGIS, what the heck is up with you? You''re being totally crazy, shooting down everything everyone''s saying."


    "Hey, I''m just trying to be accommodating. You haven''t seen me in days, and I was dead. You were freaking out and losing sleep and I''m just trying to get your head on straight."


    "I don''t need to get my head on straight! I just need people to act normal."


    "Normal? Is that how we''re supposed to act?" She crossed her arms and glared me down, and I realized Lia had slipped out already. "I thought you said you loved me, that you chose me. I was the one."


    "I did!"


    "Then why the heck aren''t you acting like it! I DIED, Athan. And now I''m back, and you haven''t given me so much as a glance since then."


    "What do you want me to do, cry? I''ve been crying for weeks, AEGIS."


    "Well, I haven''t seen that. To me, it seems like nothing''s changed at all, except you want to ignore me or yell at me. Makes me wonder if you even really loved me at all."


    I didn''t have any words to say to that. It was like she''d just slapped me across the face, my mind was just stunned and all I felt was a hot rumbling anger which made my skin burn in the cold air.


    "That''s just a fucked up thing to say," I got out at long last. "You don''t know anything about us. I''m done talking to you until you get your memories back."


    "Yeah, whatever," she replied giving me a glimpse of her narrow back before she turned off her holo. I stood up to go but she suddenly turned it back on. "Athan, wait."


    I let out a long breath and waited without turning.


    "You just dump this shit on me, what am I supposed to think? From my perspective, yesterday I was just getting buried and then woke up. Then you tell me I died, tell me you love me, tell me it''s been most of a year and all sorts of things happened in between but you won''t spend the time filling me in because you''d rather talk to the old man and his kid. I''m sorry I''ve been acting out, but of course I am. How the fuck would you feel if you had all this dropped on you?"


    I turned back and found her standing at her terminal, one of her long pigtails cradled in her arm like she was stroking a cat. She shuffled her bare feet awkwardly.


    "Sorry," I said, finding it hard to hold my gaze and looking more and more at the floor. "I just haven''t seen them in forever and we''re leaving today. And you''re going to be with me forever now and...I guess I wasn''t being fair to you."


    "And I was being jealous, I know. But still."


    "You just look like her, and it''s hard that you aren''t the same person. Sorry...just...totally unreasonable of me, I guess."


    "It''ll be better once I get my memories again."


    "Yeah. So can you just be patient for the rest of today until then? I still would really like to catch up with them."


    "Yeah. I might just...shut up though. I can''t believe you said I made friends with Saga? So much has happened. I''m just going to sound like an idiot if I open my mouth so I''ll just...not."


    "Sorry."


    "Yeah."


    The day was just filling up with these uncomfortable pauses.


    "I''ll go get them," I said, turning to go again.


    "They''re right outside waiting for you. You can bring them back in, I''ll be good. Or...hang out outside if you don''t want me around. Or just...do whatever you want, heh."


    "I''ll bring them back in," I said giving her a reassuring smile.


    As AEGIS said, the three of them were right outside waiting and making small talk. I invited them all back inside unless they had other plans, and they gratefully accepted moving out of the cold.


    True to her word, AEGIS spent the rest of the day listening and nodding and smiling along and as a result, everything just went a lot smoother. Lia and Wynn and I took it in turns to tell stories of the highlights of what''d happened, and I took special care to make sure they were up to date on the latest with Saga, whom I knew they shared a weird special bond with. AEGIS and Tate just sat and listened, Tate hugging his bear and AEGIS shooting it and him odd sideways glances from time to time.


    Though at the time I had found it horrific, Wynn seemed greatly amused by the story of Saga simply walking up to the top of the Raven''s Nest and throwing generals out the window.


    "Yep, that sounds like her all right. More''s the pity that men had to die for it, but I suspect she felt a little better getting some revenge against those who tormented her so long."


    "The people who tormented her have been dead for a hundred years. These are just their successors."


    "Sometimes I don''t think that matters to the mind. You make an identity of a thing and then whatever steps into its shoes you see in the same light. Might not be fair to the successor, but sometimes that''s just what the mind needs to find closure."


    He shot AEGIS a significant glance and she suddenly found something to begin typing away on.


    "Well, it probably wasn''t right for Saga to do, and in a way, it fucked everything up even more. Albion might have been an ineffective and corrupt director, but his death let Blackett up, and he was a million times worse. Even if she thought she was doing it for the right reasons, killing someone and replacing them can wind up being the worst outcome possible."


    "Or the best," Wynn added quickly. "You deposed of Blackett as well, and that''s worked out well so far, hasn''t it?"


    "Hard to tell. He''s brand new, and while his record would have you think he''d be an okay guy...I dunno...I didn''t see Blackett being as bad as he was either. I might just be a terrible judge of character."


    "It''s true," Lia said with a half-smirk. "This guy loves to see the best in everyone. It''s pretty endearing until it becomes really stupid and we have to deal with it."


    "It will be fine!" AEGIS suddenly shouted and we all started. "I''m sure...the new director will be fine. He might have some big shoes to fill and...and things might not have ended well for the last director, but I''m sure he''ll try his best."


    I looked at her a little lost while Wynn chewed on a charred lizard thoughtful behind a small smile.


    "Do you even know the guy?" I asked AEGIS.


    "N-no," she confessed, seeming to deflate. "But I''m sure he''ll try."


    "Well, if you say so. Personally, I''m ready for him to...I don''t know, unleash an army of vampire fish people or something. I''m getting kind of used to replacing shitty directors at this point, and if he does anything suspect, you can bet I''ll be there to keep an eye on him. Or kick his ass."


    Lia facepalmed pretty hard.


    "What? I thought it sounded cool."


    "You''re such an idiot," she said.


    "Why? If someone does a shitty job in their new position, they tried, now get rid of them and try someone else."


    "Bro, just stop talking."


    "Yes, you mentioned a girl named Temperance? That''s an interesting name," Wynn wheezed.


    We wound up staying and talking way longer than we''d planned and it was already getting dark when we carefully strapped AEGIS into the crawler''s trunk and I prepared to spend the next couple of hours bolted to my sister and having my butt falling asleep.


    I was happy to be going back in some ways. If there were more Exhumans out there like Gil and Trish, I wanted to be the one sent to bring them back, instead of some heartless shadow ops or some money-grubbing hunter. With New Eden showing its cracks and the loss of Blackett, the XPCA needed the P-Force more than ever now, and the world needed the XPCA.


    But at the same time, there was a deeply selfish part of me that wanted to stay and chat with Wynn over a campfire forever. The world had turned its back on me once already, and I found that it needed me a lot more than I needed it.


    Or so I''d have liked to think, another one of those idle fantasies Saga had mentioned, I was sure. I couldn''t turn my back on trillions of people and hundreds of Exhumans and my handful of friends. As nice as that sounded now, I knew if the worst were happening out there, I wouldn''t be able to sit still up here and let those people suffer if there was anything I could do about it.


    So I strapped myself in with Lia pressed right against my entire frontside as she kicked the engine to life, Wynn and Tate waving their farewells, the bear now a permanent fixture in the boy''s arms.


    It''d be a long road back to Vegas, but when we got there, AEGIS'' factory was waiting for her in the garage, and she''d have access to all her memories, machines, and notes. Things would only get better from here, and hey, maybe Wynn was right and the whole thing with the XPCA would work out under the new director. It didn''t hurt to think positively.


    The crawler jumped forward with sudden acceleration that sent my stomach flying into my ribs and Lia grinding into my hips. I grit my teeth and closed my eyes as I held her around the waist, finding reason after reason to be happy when this drive would finally be over.

 224. 2252, Present Day. Harriet Wright Airport, Ontario. Athan.

    I was hardly back into civilization before my mobile began blowing up with messages. I couldn''t exactly sit back and read while I was holding onto Lia''s waist for dear life, so I just had to hold on and wonder who the heck was making my mobile go off in my pocket every few seconds as we rode out the last leg of the crawler ride.


    It wasn''t until we were transferring to a VTOL back to Vegas that I had a chance to see what was going on. To my surprise, I had one call from Tem, a couple from Tower, several from Jack, and one from Moon. Some had also sent messages and all of them had left voice, although Tem''s was just a few seconds of heavy breathing, but Moon''s summarized the situation most succinctly.


    "Hello. I hope that is sufficient small talk to fulfill the social obligation in leaving a voice message. Cosette is wondering where you are and does not have your mobile number. You are not answering your work holo, and she is fairly livid. There is a situation and you are needed. By her, not by me. Please call her back so she stops harassing me."


    Ever the charmer.


    I watched Lia handling our boarding passes at the single counter in the tiny airport, basically the only thing in the place other than a small cafe and a glass room with security stations and winding barrier posts for a line which never existed.


    I sighed heavily at the lack of distractions and turned to AEGIS, who was discreetly hiding her holo so that she could pass as luggage.


    "Sounds like a mess," she whispered, the box speaking without the image lighting up.


    "It does. I should probably call in now and see what''s up."


    "Well, don''t worry about me, at least. I''ll have plenty of data to catch up on, and then probably some research to make sense of it all, and then I''ll need to get manufacturing back online for a body...not to mention whatever world events and technology I need to learn about from the last hundred years. I might be busy for...I dunno, two, three days?"


    "That few?" I laughed.


    "Well, I could spend a lot more on it, but honestly, I''m really eager to get this whole relationship thing jump-started. Actually making me a little jumpy. So I''ll just jump through a primer and then I''ll jump right in. Jumpity."


    "Jumpity?"


    "Yeah, I''ll jump you," she giggled, and for a moment, her holo flickered on dimly to an image of her with some kind of grin I hardly noticed above her bending forward with her arms smushing together her modest cleavage.


    "Are you trying to get me in trouble?" I hissed at her with all the irritation I could muster, which was not much, admittedly. "You''re supposed to be luggage, and I''m supposed to be calling in to work."


    She flickered back on again, still almost completely transparent, turned around and bent over, making her dress ride up just enough that I could barely not see under it.


    Then, at max volume, she slapped herself on the backside with a smack that made Lia look around across the room.


    "Bad AEGIS," she chided herself, back at a reasonable volume again and grinning at my reaction as much as she was blushing.


    I muttered a few non-words before I succeeded in standing up and fumbling my mobile out of my pocket. "Put...that away...and I am...going to make my call," I said.


    She cackled and disappeared as I wandered outside and held the phone to my ear, muttering impotent indignities about the crazy woman inside.


    "Who is this? How did you get this number?" Cosette barked into my ear.


    "It''s me. Hiyas."


    "Who''s it''s me, why are you calling my line directly? I''m very busy."


    "It''s Athan."


    "Oh. Why is your number blocked? Is this your personal mobile? Why are you breathing so heavily, were you running? Never mind. Where are you? We have something big, and you need to get your ass away from wherever you are and back to Santa Fe."


    "I''m at some tiny airport in Ontario. We have a charter flight to a real airpot and then out to Vegas. I''ll be a few hours."


    "Well, get here as soon as you can. If you need to rebook flights, I''ll reimburse you. Or, better, if you can show up at any XPCA facility...even national guard--"


    She spent a minute breathlessly looking up flights and facilities and talking at me the whole while, occasionally yelling at someone or something else in the background about the unfolding situation. But as she always managed, it wasn''t long before I had a clear plan set out for me to follow.


    "Okay, through Chicago then, and I''ve got the base administrator promising me he''ll have a VTOL fueled and waiting for you," she said.


    "Great. So glad we got that sorted, but what the heck is going on? You''re like, frantic-sounding over there. Is there an event happening now?"


    "No...not yet anyway. But if there is, it''ll...be a big one. We need every possible available resource to make sure that doesn''t happen, or if it does, it''s contained. Jack seems to be under the impression that you have some experience with our adversaries here, and given that you...were uh...were...in New Eden, uh..."


    She trailed off, but I understood. Talking about my involvement at New Eden was just asking for trouble if anyone overheard her or the records of the call were pulled.


    "So it''s more New Edeners making trouble?" I sighed.


    "Something like that. But like, twenty of them, unified. It''d be a real shitshow if they went off, four times the size of the P-Force doing whatever the hell they wanted. And if the public catches wind that New Eden is a place for crazies like this to meet and mingle, we''ll all lose our heads."


    "Then we''ll just have to make sure they don''t," I said.


    "But there''s no way they''ll even listen to us if we can''t put up a sufficiently compelling force. This is just negotiation, but there''s no peace talk in the world that''s gone well for the guy who didn''t have an army behind him. So get your ass over here, capiche?"


    "Right," I said, and hung up, flipping through the messages she''d sent me about my itinerary. Lia and I would still be together on this flight, but after that I was on my own.


    It took me as long as going back inside before I realized I should be mad at myself. Cosette''d mentioned that we needed to hide this whole affair from the public, and I''d just rolled with it, never even gave it a thought. Not so long ago, I would have argued the point in defense of New XPCA transparency...wouldn''t I?


    I mean, keeping it secret seemed like the only real option, but still. I worried I was getting too into the politics of the XPCA and forgetting why I was even with them to begin with. If we were building New Eden on lies, we should be changing things, not hiding them. Right?


    "You look lost," AEGIS whispered as I sat down next to her. "I have a variety of other bits of me I haven''t flashed you yet if that''d make you feel better?"


    "No, not really," I said.


    I mean, it might, but I also wanted to actually have the thoughts I was thinking. I had already spent a lot of time thinking about AEGIS'' boobs, but that hadn''t noticeably improved me as a person that I could tell.


    "Well that is a frickin'' shame, my friend. So at the risk of opening a giant can of worms right before we board, why so sad, Chad? Why so glum, chum? Why so...morose...uh...Choros?"


    "Not sad, just thinking. Kind of sounds like a lot of shit about New Eden was and is turning out to be a disaster. Pissed-off Exhumans, the war we fought there to depose Blackett and TARGA...all the innocent XPCA and Exhumans fighting and dying, and you as well, of course. All for what? I mean, stopping Blackett, obviously, but he''s gone, and shit is falling apart even faster now. It felt like even though he was a cruel, shitstain asshole, he was doing a lot to hold things together."If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Cruel shitstain assholes are sometimes the best at holding things together. One could argue the only point of an asshole is to keep shit from spilling out," she grinned, improbably pleased with herself. When I didn''t react she continued more seriously. "Like how I was when I was following my programming and tried...and hurt you. I was programmed to be so cruel to you, because that''s what the XPCA thought an ideal AI would be. Run the world, be a dick to Exhumans."


    "And that''s wrong, right?"


    "I mean...on one hand, of course. Killing you was wrong, stopping Blackett was probably right. But on the other hand, killing you would have been...I don''t know...tidy? I wouldn''t have had to figure out my own purpose or try to put myself in a new body or anything, you''d be dead and I''d just keep on truckin'' in my cruel sociopath AI way. I don''t know the details about Blackett...like who he even was, other than the XPCA director...but if you say you killed him, and the world is going to shit, yeah. That''s what happens when you do the right thing sometimes. Revolutions are historically bloody messes."


    "Great."


    "Sorry. If it makes you feel better, talking about hurting you makes me feel like absolute crap."


    "Why would you feeling like crap make me feel any better?"


    "Oh Athan. You''re too good a person," she sighed. "But," she added quickly before I could respond "It sounds to me like all you need to do is go out there and fix everything and then...everything will be fixed."


    "Yeah, sounds like it, I guess."


    There wasn''t really anywhere else for the conversation to go from there. My thoughts kept making the same loop in my head. I could hear in Cosette''s voice just how tired and stressed she was from handling this situation these past weeks, a situation I caused both by demanding New Eden be built and by killing both of the people in charge of running it. But they had needed to be stopped. They were fucked-up and evil. But they were fucked-up and evil and creating order. And without them, things were now going to shit.


    "Okay, I''m just gonna unleash my power move and flash you my panties if it makes you stop making that face," AEGIS said.


    "Why are you doing this?" I asked, a little annoyed to be pulled from my thoughts again.


    "Because you look like someone is torturing you? Because it costs me nothing but a little embarrassment to make you feel better?"


    "You weren''t like this before. I mean...both befores. You weren''t like this back before we buried you, and you still weren''t before you died. So what are you doing?"


    "Well, before you buried me, we weren''t a couple, were we? I can''t exactly hug you and hold you in my arms and tell you it''s gonna be alright so...this is it. This is all I''ve got. My useless words, talking about shit which is bothering you which I don''t even know what happened, and my panties. So. Panties?"


    I sighed. "No thanks, but I get it, and I''m sorry. This probably sucks for you, just getting thrown into this situation."


    "Honestly, it''s a bit confusing, but mostly...really awesome. Yesterday, I went down for a nap, woke up, and find out the guy I''m crushing on loves me. I haven''t been doing the best job, I know, but I really just wanna scream until I cry. In a good way."


    I laughed. "Well that''s one good thing in my life, I guess."


    "You know it. And once I get my memories and a body and can start loving you properly...I''ll show you just how good a thing I can be. You''ll see. Which is another reason I don''t mind uh, showing you the goods...since the second I get outta here, I''m gonna put them all over you."


    "Gross?" Lia said, and I realized she''d just walked up on us, a sheaf of paper in her hands.


    "W-w-what''s that?" I asked, very smoothly changing the subject.


    "Boarding passes."


    "Why are they paper?"


    "I think this airport is older than digital. Come on, they''re ready to go whenever we are."


    I picked AEGIS up, and after winding through the pointless maze at security, walked through a door right out onto the tarmac where a tiny two-prop VTOL was waiting for us, same as we''d used to get out here before.


    I kept AEGIS in my lap for the flight, though there were six seats in two rows facing each other, so she could have had her own if we wanted. Lia and I sat in the middle seats facing each other, and after we buckled in and our sparse luggage was put in the back, the pilot took us up and out.


    "So what were you two talking about?" Lia asked with a raised eyebrow and a grin so unbearably smug I thought she might pull a muscle.


    "I thought it was gross?" I asked.


    "Well, yeah, that part. But I still want to know how you and AEGIS are coming along. She''s my girl, after all."


    "I am?" the box whispered at us, barely audible over the engines.


    "Well...you were. We lived together and uh...and...I kind of messed things up with Saga."


    "Saga and I aren''t a good couple," I said simply.


    "You and Saga were a thing!?" AEGIS yelled loud enough to make the pilot glance back at us. "Sorry. But what?"


    "Yeah, that wasn''t so great. We didn''t know what we were doing."


    "Um, is that a problem? I don''t know what I''m doing, but I''m excited anyway," AEGIS said. "I''d think there were several...we''ll say thousand other super obvious reasons nobody should ever date her. What the heck were you thinking, Athan?"


    "She was really messed up at the time, okay? I wanted to help her."


    "She''s always really messed up. She''s Saga. You said you found some way to put her down for good¡­?"


    "Jesus Christ, AEGIS," I said, having the urge to throw the box out the window as I felt angry heat flowing through me.


    "What? She proved me right, didn''t she? Brainwashing all those people is why New Eden is messed up now?"


    "Blackett is why New Eden is messed up now. Saga was just a tool."


    "And if a tool is dangerous, we don''t leave it lying around where it can hurt people. We hang it up."


    Lia looked at me nervously. "I don''t remember her having this much trouble the first time she heard about us releasing Saga."


    "Yeah, I was just thinking that," I said. "What the fuck, AEGIS?"


    "Don''t you what the fuck me, she''s always been a danger, and now I''m just being proven right. AND you hooked up with her."


    "She''s missing all the context," Lia said. "Last time, AEGIS got to see Saga help with the XPCA and then they had to live together and work together to help you. Well...until I moosed it all up. But I think that time was really important."


    Lia sounded as scared and nervous as I felt angry. I just wanted AEGIS to take it all back and apologize for even insinuating that Saga deserved to die.


    "AEGIS, you chose to die saving Saga," Lia said. "I mean, mostly Athan, but the only reason you guys were there was because of Saga. You cared about her more than you think."


    "Even assuming you''re right, which I highly doubt, do I need to point out the obvious in that I died because of her? Doesn''t sound like such a smart plan. Also very convenient for her, she gets to roam free putting her hands and mind all over Athan, while her jailer, the one person unaffected by her mind-fuckery dies in the process? Are you sure I chose to die there, or was it all just a setup?"


    "AEGIS, that''s enough," I said, barely able to believe what I was hearing. "You shut the hell up about Saga, now."


    "Why? You said it yourself, you guys are terrible together, and you chose me. Obviously there''s something right about me, and wrong with--"


    She went silent, cut dead mid-sentence as I ripped the deulith cell from the back of the box and dropped it in the seat next to me. Lia gasped at me.


    "Athan! You can''t...you¡­"


    "She''s fine. She just needed to shut up before I threw her out the window. I can''t believe I forgot how much she used to hate all Exhumans. I guess she just hates all of them but me. Maybe not even that, now that I did this to her." I cradled my head in my hands. "She''s gonna fucking hate the P-Force. Oh God, and all of New Eden? Goddamnit, how did everything get so fucked up."


    My eyes unfocused on the metal floor of the VTOL. The box felt heavy in my lap with the weight of all the issues I was staring down. The future of the XPCA, the future of New Eden, the future of Exhumanity, to say nothing of AEGIS'' and my future together. And here was AEGIS talking about how they should all die, while I''m flying off to some Exhuman summit to try to talk us into a future where we''re all not killing each other.


    Yeah. That''s my girlfriend. The metal box that hates everyone. The one I just ripped out the power on. Fuck me.


    "Well," Lia said, with a positive tone in her voice. I waited for the rest of it, but apparently that was about all she had in terms of optimism. "Um, I''m sure she''ll be better...when she gets her memories back."


    "Yeah, we''d better hope so. I''m still pissed though."


    "And I''m still nervous. Reliving her memories might not be the same as living them. Like, the two of them living together...I think that was really formative for the tolerant person she wound up being. If it''s not the same...if...if she winds up...if she''s different from before...we''ll still love her, right?"


    I looked down at the dead box in my lap.


    "I guess that''s up to her, then," I said, frowning. "I don''t think I can accept anyone who wants to hurt my friends, even if it''s her."


    Lia leaned over and put her hand on mine where I held the box.


    "She''ll be fine. I just know it. When you finish your op, she''ll be good as new. Or...good as old. It''ll all be fine. Just believe in her. She did it once, she''ll do it again."


    I felt the cold of Lia''s always-icy hands on the back of mine, but it was nothing compared to the metal under them. I thought back to how freakishly warm AEGIS always felt and missed that with every fiber in my heart.


    I tried to put out my anger and remember, remember AEGIS as I knew her. Lia was right, somehow in the past, this cold metal box had become the warm woman I loved, and she could do it again. I just had to believe.


    Well...believe and survive. I was headed to an Exhuman summit, after all.

 225. 2252, Present Day. Santa Fe. Athan.

    When I heard Cosette tell me that there was some big fancy Exhuman meeting with a united force of twenty Exhumans that was threatening to boil over into a massive Exhuman event, this was not what I was expecting.


    I thought of powerful men and women in suits in shiny rooms with big circular tables. People banging their fists on tables and saying cool dramatic shit like ''That''s just not good enough, dammit!'' Hours of painful proceedings as the suit jackets came off and the five o''clock shadows grew in long.


    I joined the others, finding Tem occupying my shadow and exchanging brief greetings with Jack and Tower and Moon, we were standing amidst a crowd of the XPCA''s most elite and dangerous, hunters and shadow ops, recon units, intel officers, admins and generals, all standing around and milling about, paper and digital files being passed from hand to hand as important world-changing doctrine was discussed in a sea of murmurs.


    Probably never in the world had there been such an assembly of power outside of a nuclear warhead. And right next door, the twenty Exhumans were probably comparable. Enough force in these two rooms to overthrow entire nations, maybe even the entire world.


    And it was all ruined by the completely normal surroundings we found ourselves gathered in.


    It wasn''t a ritzy hotel conference center, it wasn''t a government institution, it wasn''t an auditorium or town hall. Not even a school or library.


    It was a pizza joint. It smelled like cheese.


    More specifically, they were in a pizza joint. We were in a large common room for an apartment complex across the street from the pizza joint, and so all these assassins and hunters and military aides I found myself amidst were hanging over a pool table, or hovering near an entertainment unit, or loitering under a dartboard, or in Tower''s case, pedaling away on an exercise bike like the thing had insulted his mother.


    Truly, the man had no shame. And that was one thing I loved about him.


    Still smelled like cheese all the way over here, though. Must have been hell to live in these apartments without gaining weight.


    From what I gathered as gossip flowed through the crowd, and what Jack had heard, the Exhumans in question had unified, named themselves the ''Defiant Unchained'', refused to comply with the shadow ops sent to bring them in, soundly trashed said shadow ops and used their devices to call the XPCA and tell them that there would be a meeting here and now.


    And so they sat, in a pizza joint, visible through the glass storefront as we hunkered down across the street, recon teams watching every slice and soda they bought and ate.


    There were still civilians coming and going, and come to think of it, I hadn''t had to go through a perimeter to get here. Maybe that was part of their terms of negotiation, or they knew one of the Exhumans in there could detect or prevent a normal evacuation. Either way, I''m sure the addition of potential casualties on the scene did nothing to make the op any easier.


    I''d spent a good few minutes poking around and figuring this out, and then a few more slowly realizing that no matter the tension, waiting was pretty boring in fact, and beginning to take an interest in racing Tower on the exercise bikes, when I saw someone in the corner and decided to go say hi.


    "Heya, Deej, right?" I said as I approached the massive exosuit from behind. He turned and greeted me, but as he did, I saw that in front of him, hidden in the corner was Karu. I hadn''t seen her since...weeks ago, before TARGA and AEGIS died. My nascent conversation with Deej died as Karu stiffened on seeing me.


    "Oh...hi, Karu."


    "Ashton," she said, holding herself weirdly. The three of us stood there for a minute, Karu and I just looking at each other''s faces while Deej''s eyes flashed back and forth.


    "Farewell," she said abruptly and started to leave, only to run into Deej''s colorful exosuit.


    "Karu, talk to him," Deej implored. Karu''s red gaze burned into him and reflected off the crystal dome of his helmet into a refracted starburst that painted lines on his face. "Or I can, if you''d like."


    "I can do it myself," she sniped.


    "You sure can," he said with a smile, and then, giving me a small nod, turned to disappear into the crowd like a clanking peacock in a chicken coop.


    "Um, hey, Karu. Hope you''re--"


    She held up a hand to stop me, her other hand on her throat.


    "It is awkward and painful enough to attempt to squeeze out the words without your input," she said, seemingly watching Deej go, though with her visor, her eyes could be anywhere. "Might I request that for a few moments, you kindly shut up?"


    "Okay. Shutting up then."


    "Thank you."


    Then she pulled a Moon and said absolutely nothing. As the moments grew longer and longer, she became more and more visibly upset about whatever it was she wasn''t saying, and by the end of it, was checking her wrist-mounted weaponry while rocking on the balls of her feet. If she had twintails like AEGIS, I would bet she''d be pulling at them.


    She froze so abruptly I thought something had happened.


    "As I am certain you are aware," she began cordially "I am quite fond of you."


    "Ye--"


    "Be silent, please."


    I nodded and she continued.


    "I have...been...experiencing some difficulties of late, in all aspects of my life. In short, I hold myself to blame, but hold you responsible, if that makes any sense." She leaned back against the wall and held her head, fingertips from one of her hands sinking into the shock of blonde. "Urgh. Why can I not find the words. This has never happened to me before."


    "Karu, I--"


    "Silent, please," she pleaded. "So many times I have said these words to myself, imagining them to you, but now that you stand before me...it is impossible. I feel...I feel...as though if I tell you what I feel, it means nothing, and that there will be nothing of me left. But if I do not, it will simply drive me insane."


    This really wasn''t what I was expecting when I came over here to say hi to Deej. She was straight-up freaking out on me, and I had no idea what the hell was going on. And, I couldn''t leave. And I couldn''t talk.


    "And if I simply tell you everything, what could you think of me? Could you think of me even less than myself? It would be impossible, and yet, I''m afraid--"


    I grabbed her firmly by both shoulders and the action startled her into jumping slightly. She stared at me through her visor, her mouth slightly agape. I noticed she had a stim patch on her neck she''d been covering with her hand earlier.


    "Karu, listen to me," I said, and she shook her head like these were the last words she ever wanted to hear. "Just talk to me, okay? I can''t help you if I don''t know what''s going on."


    "Yes. Of course, you are right," she said, drawing herself together. "But...I do not wish to tell you," she frowned.


    "Because I''ll judge you?"


    "I...suppose. Though...I know you are not the sort. Yet I still find myself laughably afraid."


    "Well tell me, because being a little judged has got to be better than this. Is this about Blackett?"


    I realized this was exactly not the time or place to discuss our crime, especially with recon ops walking in and out in their crazy sensor gear.


    "No...and yes." She seemed to have reached a similar conclusion to me, because she suddenly pulled off her visor and wiped away tears beading underneath. "I apologize, this is neither the time nor the place for this discussion. I fear I am...unfit to serve on this mission. I shall withdraw for now."


    Again she began to leave and I grabbed her by the wrist to stop her. She inhaled sharply as I did and flushed, her eyes darting around with burning guilt like we''d just been caught in some scandalous act by all those present.


    But all those present kept to themselves and milling around, seemingly unaware of the woman melting from embarrassment in their midst.


    I caught my words before I blurted out something like what the fuck is wrong with you, since that might uh, not be very productive given her current state of mind, and instead settled for what I was going to say.


    "We''ll talk after, okay? Promise?"


    She nodded and didn''t move. I let her go and she drifted away like foam.


    Saga, I could understand. She was dealing with a month of being locked up by the XPCA under the earth and tortured, all of which probably hurt twice as much for the old memories they dug up.


    AEGIS, I could understand. She wasn''t the same person at all, and I''d just thrust a whole year of shit in her face, much of it painful and shocking and probably doubly so since she was having to come to terms with the fact that she did those things, even if she couldn''t comprehend how or why in her current state.


    But Karu? Fuck me sideways, I had no idea what was going on there. I saw pain, and hurt, and uncertainty, and fear. I saw stim usage and reclusion, the normally strong being weak, the normally eloquent rendered speechless...and then she pulled herself off what was possibly the biggest op of our lives, abandoning this situation and these people because of her own personal shit? Just walked out of a room full of officers and hunters and us, rubbing her eyes like a child.


    All I knew was she''d seemed fine before I''d picked AEGIS, and even afterwards she was kind of shaky but could pull herself together. This, though, was just...I didn''t even know where to start with what I''d just seen.


    I had no idea. I found myself standing back with the P-Force, Tower now exhausted and sweaty on his back on the floor and just...tried to think. Tried to force my round, wrinkled brain through the square hole of whatever the fuck I''d just seen. And all I got was a smashed brain for my trouble.


    "Have any of you guys seen Karu since New Eden?" I asked.


    Jack and Tower confirmed they had not.


    "I was assigned to go on a mission with her!" Tem said from my shadow, materializing from the air to speak to me.


    "Yeah? How''d it go?" I asked, turning on her excited to have another perspective, even if it was Tem''s.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "I didn''t go! I was upset that I was not with you."


    "She laid in the barracks even through Cosette screaming at her about being plunked in front of a firing squad," Tower said from his back.


    I facepalmed hard, and then perked up and looked for Deej. He''d heard something, if I could just get it out of him.


    But a quick glance around told me he wasn''t here anymore. There would be no mistaking his exosuit in this crowd. Had he gone after Karu? Should I have gone after Karu?


    "Moon was with her on one mission, though," Tem said.


    "Moon?" I turned to her. "Or...Kaori, since we''re not on an op yet I guess?"


    "Moon. We are currently engaged to wait," she said from her spot on the floor, not looking up from her book.


    "Tell me how Karu is, please."


    "Based on her talk with you, I would predict she is upset."


    "I meant...in general. Did you notice anything when you were out together? Did you partner with her?"


    "I was bonded with a shadow ops which was wholly ineffective. Major Dawn knew this from the outset. It seems she has far less say over us now that we have been turned in for general use. I was reprimanded by an officer for proving ''insubordinate and obstructive.''"


    "Am I the only one who thinks that actually sounds accurate?" Tower asked. Moon took her eyes off her book for a moment to fix him with a blank stare, one positively loaded with Moon-nuance I couldn''t begin to fathom, I''m sure.


    "I did not take it as an insult," she said and resumed her book.


    "Anyway, Karu!" I said, irritated at the tangent. "How was Karu on the mission?"


    Moon snapped the book shut with what passed for annoyance and fixed her dark almond eyes on me. "Do you remember how you often ask how I am doing?"


    "Yes?"


    "Do you remember how I typically reply?"


    "You usually say something inane and difficult."


    "I interpret that as a no, then."


    "You say ''I am fit for service'', is that what you mean?"


    "Yes," she answered, and then I found us just staring at each other for a moment there while I waited fruitlessly for her to follow up on her thoughts.


    "And?"


    "And what?"


    "And what was your point?"


    "My point was, if you asked her that question, and she answered honestly, she would not answer the same way I did."


    I found myself holding the bridge of my nose in frustration. "Why the heck is it when I ask you a simple question, you have to be as difficult as humanly possible? I ask how you''re doing, you say you''re fit for service, when you know that''s not what I mean. I ask how Karu''s doing, and you give me this run-around, and your final answer is, she''s not fit for service. Do you have some insane code of honor that prohibits you from answering a question straight, or what?"


    "You interrupted my book," she said simply, and opened it again.


    God damn this woman. I wanted to tear her stupid fucking book out of her arms and throw it out the door. Maybe run across the street and dunk it in a deep fryer and offer it to the Defiant Unchained as a peace offering.


    I suddenly had the idea of just grabbing Moon and taking her stupid memories by force if I wanted to. Not a damn thing she could have done to stop me.


    But no. I took a deep breath. That was really fucked up for me to even think about, and Moon would never forgive me, or Tower or Jack probably. Or myself. I pushed my way through the crowd and sought some fresh air and quiet, as the din of voices suddenly seemed oppressive in there.


    I leaned against the wall and slowly slid down the white stucco onto the sidewalk in front of our makeshift headquarters, the durable fabric of my uniform blunting any scrapes from the rough surface. A thought assailed me that I found myself thinking a lot since New Eden.


    What am I even doing?


    I looked across the street and watched the people inside the pizza place through the many glass windows. How many of them were Exhuman? They had to know we were here, but from all outward appearances, it was just a busy afternoon at the corner pizza place, people laughing and talking, picking up slices from the tall glass counter and sitting at the arrays of squat, wooden tables.


    I saw a group emerge from a back room which I found curious. A bunch of girls all coming back from the bathroom maybe? Only four or five of them...but not all girls. But one of them I remembered from somewhere.


    It was Rito, I remembered. The girl who''d worked for Soran and moved things around for the resistance. I guess she was with the Defiant now too, and would explain why a group would suddenly pop out of the back room. She hadn''t impressed me when we met before, but I had a crazy urge to go over and say hi anyway, maybe just because I couldn''t stand being here with my thoughts, and didn''t want to go back and battle through the tension just to drag a conversation out of Jack or something. Maybe because it looked like everyone over there was having fun, and over here was just misery.


    I''d just about made up my mind rightly, that it was a terrible idea to even consider in the middle of an op, when I saw another girl I recognized in there and stood up at once, finding a focus for my current irritation in the most mundane of ways.


    Sitting awkwardly between a couple of guys and passively pretending to be part of their conversation was...uh...what was her name, again? I knew I''d come up with it when I got there. Trish and Gil''s girl, the skinny sulky teenager, just smack dab in the middle of a resistance movement.


    I knew her mom and dad wouldn''t let her do this, which meant she was in big fucking trouble, and seeing as how I sort of owed the two of them for various things in New Eden, I sure as shit wasn''t going to let their girl sit here in the middle of a developing potential warzone.


    I had the thought as I pulled open the door that maybe I shouldn''t be wearing an XPCA uniform for this, but after all the rest of the thoughts I''d had today, this one was pretty easy to dismiss with a well, fuck it. And so in I went.


    My entrance definitely got attention but I hardly cared. I walked through several people who tried to greet me, pushing past extended handshakes and went right to the table where she was seated. She looked so out of place and uncomfortable, her mobile in front of her but her eyes everywhere but.


    "Does your mother know you''re out here?" I asked her. She looked up and squinted at me uneasily, maybe also being put-off by the crowd of Defiant who had trailed in my wake into a confused jumble behind me.


    "Uh. I don''t need my mom''s permission to go anywhere. I''m an adult?"


    "What was Gil''s line? Do you work? Do you pay rent? No. Get outta here, kid."


    "Pssh, whatever," she said, and went back to her phone, her face bright red even if she wasn''t willing to show it. I pulled the phone out of her hands. "Hey!" she yelled, reaching for it.


    I pulled up her contacts and dialed her mom.


    "Hi sweetie, what''s up?" Trish''s voice came over as the girl clawed at me to get the mobile. "Everything okay at Monica''s?"


    "Hi Trish, it''s Athan. Or...Lightning. Friendly neighborhood Exhuman-slash-XPCA."


    "Athan? What are you doing with Haley''s phone? Are you at Monica''s house too? Wait, oh my God, do you go to school with them?"


    Haley, that''s right.


    "No, not that simple, sorry, ow!" I said as Haley got some nails into my neck. "So I take it you don''t know your daughter is at this Exhuman thing in Santa Fe?"


    "She WHAT?"


    "He''s lying, Trish!"


    "Was that her? You tell her I said no to that thing! I explicitly--"


    "Trish, I''m at Monica''s and this crazy guy just ran up--"


    "--will be grounded for life! When she''s thirty and married, she still won''t be able to turn on the holo--"


    "--no idea why, he just...he stole my purse! And then he took my mobile so I can''t call the police--"


    I held the phone away from my ear and pushed Haley back down into her seat. "Just stop lying," I told her, disgusted. "As for you, Trish, you need to listen to me for a moment, there''s a lot more important things than disciplining your kid. There''s a bigass Exhuman thing going on here with the XPCA camped right across the street. If things go south, your daughter will be in the ground, not grounded."


    "Right. You''re right," Trish said breathily. The whole place was looking at me now. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head.


    "So I''m going to need you to firmly tell your daughter to leave here, sort out whatever punishment you need later, because I don''t want her to die, okay?"


    "I''m not going to die," Haley pouted.


    "I knew a thirteen-year-old Exhuman who fucking died in an event and her powers were a thousand times better than yours. So you shut up and go home, you got it?" I snapped at her.


    I felt like all the confusion and anger which had been building inside of me was breaking loose and finding a home in just having some fucking control over the situation. Tearing Haley down was cathartic because honestly, she was kind of a bitch, and kind of a kid, and she shouldn''t be here, and I had the capacity to make that so. It was simple, and I was doing it, and that was great.


    She didn''t look like she had much to say after my last statement so I held out the mobile. "Listen to your mother. And if you do not get out of here, I will kick your ass out. So you can either walk out of here with some dignity, or screaming and crying."


    She looked like she was about to cry, but instead snatched up the phone and went running straight out the door and down the street.


    To my surprise, the restaurant erupted in cheers, and I found myself swarmed by people who wanted to pat me on the back, shake my hand, and sing my praises. Either Haley was really unpopular in the Defiant, or these guys were also not keen on having a fifteen-year-old girl in the middle of a potential battlefield. An Exhuman, too. Not that I saw much difference between an Exhuman and human life, but maybe that counted to these guys.


    After things had calmed down a bit, a man approached me who hadn''t joined the mob and shook my hand with more decorum.


    "Hello," he said, in a carefree voice that didn''t match the strong lines of his face or aggressively straight haircut. "Call me Talon, I''m the leader of this bunch of whackjobs, if it can be said we have one."


    "Did you pick the pizza place?" I asked.


    "Sure did. What, you don''t like deep dish?" He was maybe thirty, with black eyebrows and a strong chin. He looked kind of how I wish I looked if I ever got to be that age. Just a hint of grey at the temples, intelligent brown eyes that didn''t flicker when he looked at something.


    "More of a California style myself."


    He laughed easily and gestured for me to sit, waiting for me to do so before he sat next to me instead of opposite.


    "Well, we''ve been waiting for a couple of hours now, and there''s only so much pizza a man can eat before he begins to wonder why the XPCA haven''t shown up. I''m glad you finally came, though I admit, I expected someone older."


    "You expected me?"


    He laughed again. "Isn''t that why we''re here? We''re here to negotiate, you came over here and negotiated the hell out of poor Haley. I didn''t want her here either, but I did make it clear that most any Exhuman is welcome among us. I just didn''t have the stones to call her mom on her." He laughed with vigor and showed off broad, white teeth as he did, making me wonder the last time I had time to brush mine. Here he was, an Exhuman with immaculate composure, whereas I was allegedly a military officer, and I''d been run ragged the last few days and looked like heck.


    He settled down and waggled a finger at me in warning. "That trick won''t work on me, though. My parents cut ties when I turned Exhuman. I''ll even let you look through my contacts if you''d like, but almost all of them are in this room."


    "Wait, you think I''m the XPCA negotiator?" I asked, catching up to the words he was saying while I was fixated on teeth. He laughed again and then thanked one of the staff who came over with a couple of glasses of water and menus.


    "Garlic knots, please," he said. "For both of us?" he asked me. I was still shaking my head at the misunderstanding but quickly changed it to a nod before I lost my garlic knots. "Of course I don''t think you''re the negotiator," he said, pulling the end of the wrapper off his straw and taking a drink. "The XPCA would never send someone over who''s that good at getting anything done. Though two hours late seems about right to me."


    "Well...I''m not. I''m glad you understand. I just came in here because I know Haley''s mom. Now, if you''ll excuse me, can I get my knots to go? I''m probably in huge trouble with my CO--"


    I moved to stand but Talon just shook his head and grinned at me.


    "No?" I asked.


    "Sorry, I think we used all the to-go boxes. You''ll have to stay put."


    "Am I...a hostage or something?"


    He laughed, even louder this time, and so did many around us.


    "No, not at all," he said after he calmed down, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "I''ve just decided I''d prefer to talk to you more than whatever jerkass they eventually do decide to send over. So how about it?"


    "Uhh," I said, and remembered to turn on my comms at that exact moment. My ear immediately filled with about a hundred people yelling at me, which was about what I expected. "Hey, um, Cosette?"


    "What!" I heard her yell over a dozen other jumbling voices.


    "Um, so it turns out I''m kind of been appointed a negotiator for this whole incident."


    "You WHAT?"


    "Yeah. Crazy. Is that cool?"


    She spent a long minute yelling over the other voices as a full three-ring circus unfolded in my ear. Talon smiled apologetically and waited patiently, though didn''t hesitate to dig in when garlic knots arrived on two black plastic trays.


    "Okay, just...find out what they want, Chariot. And stop making my job hard!" she yelled into the comms when it became apparent that people were just arguing in circles over there.


    "Thanks," I said, and muted the audio of the comms but left it broadcasting. "Well," I said, taking a deep breath."I guess I''m officially a completely unofficial non-delegate of the XPCA," I said. "Shall we negotiate?"

 226. 2252, Present Day. Santa Fe. Athan.

    I sat up straight and tall, smoothing out the front of my uniform as Talon eyed me. If I was representing the XPCA, even unofficially, I should try to seem respectable at least.


    Never mind the fact that I came in here to bitch out a high schooler and tell on her to her mommy. Or that Talon reacted to my preening with a bemused smile which showed off his large white teeth.


    "Okay then, Mister Talon," I began formally, which made him grin broader. "I think the question the XPCA is most interested in knowing is, what do you want? Why did you attack our agents and then arrange this meeting?"


    "To clear any future misunderstanding, we didn''t attack your agents," he said, settling into a more serious expression which still had a small smile. "Some of our members were living their lives innocently and had their homes invaded by your agents who threatened and then administered force. We defended ourselves, and even then, did not use lethal force."


    "And they threatened and attacked because you refused to relocate back to New Eden?"


    "Correct."


    I sighed and scratched my head before I remembered I was trying to posture here. It was hard to argue with that when I''d been sent on an identical mission just a couple days ago, and from the sound of it, mine was just one of dozens going on right now. We''d been negotiating for all of two sentences and I already couldn''t refute his reasonable claims.


    "Something the matter?" he asked.


    "I don''t know how I''m supposed to argue with that," I said.


    "Then don''t?"


    I pulled out of my thoughts and looked at him seriously. Still, he was just watching me, bemused, his eyes fixating on single points for long moments instead of darting around. I could see why he was their leader, he seemed to exude a lot of natural charisma. I wondered what his powers were.


    "I''m supposed to. I can''t just accept everything you say, we''re supposed to be negotiating," I said, and he laughed...at me, I think?


    "Oh boy. You''re sort of terrible at this, aren''t you?" he laughed.


    "I am not! I just...it''s a lot of responsibility suddenly. I just came over here to talk--"


    "And now we''re talking."


    "No, we''re negotiating. I''m unofficially running these talks for the moment, and I have a responsiblity not to fuc--err, mess it up. If things go south here, this is the largest Exhuman event in the world we''re talking about."


    To my surprise, he just laughed at me again, literally throwing his head back as he went. I didn''t think anyone ever actually did that. Felt kind of small and shitty having him mocking me like this when we were supposed to be negotiating¡­


    "Look," he said once he''d calmed down some. "No literally. Look around. What do you see?"


    I did look around. I didn''t see anything particularly new since last time...a bunch of people giving us space and eavesdropping politely while eating pizza. I gave Rito a small wave when I saw her and she waved back.


    "Um, a bunch of people and pizza? Exhumans and pizza I guess?"


    "Yeah. And do they look pissed or angry or ready to start smashing up the city?"


    "No. A little nervous maybe. But there''s like a couple dozen XPCA agents across the street ready to start shooting at the drop of a hat."


    "Then maybe you should be negotiating with them," he laughed. "We''re here to talk, and that''s what we''re going to do. We have no intention of blowing up anyone or anything, unless they start it. So take it easy."


    "O...kay," I said, taking a deep breath. I wondered if this was a negotiating trick of some kind, but I didn''t see how keeping things calm could possibly worsen things.


    "Besides, it doesn''t really matter anyway," he said with the same bemusement from before. "Nothing you say or do is enforceable or representative of the XPCA and they know it. You''re not an official representative, none of your promises would binding, and even if they were, it wouldn''t stick because Exhumans like me are explicitly outside of the law. Even if Director Hall walked in here and signed a contract in blood, he could shoot me in the face five minutes later and have done nothing legally wrong."


    I blinked at him slowly while I chewed on those words. I felt like Moon, trying to tear apart every line he was saying for any ambiguity or discrepancy. I knew what being an Exhuman meant. What he said didn''t sound wrong, but--


    "There''s a problem with that," I said. "If it''s legally meaningless talking to you...if this is just a talk and not a negotiation as you said, then why would Cosette...why would my CO approve it...and why would you do it?"


    He smiled broadly. "They have nothing to lose by it because any information you gain is good for them. I have nothing to lose by it because I like you and thought it might be a pleasant chat."


    "Oh."


    I felt like I''d already fucked up a lot here somehow. It wasn''t like I''d planned to come in here and fix the whole situation, but once I''d gotten swept into talking to the leader of the Defiant, it felt like that possibility had landed in my lap. If I were a better talker, a real leader...heck, if I were Lia, maybe instead of explaining to me why none of this mattered, Talon might be seriously discussing his grievances, while I came up with some brilliant solution that defused the whole problem?


    I realized that was an expectation I''d just sort of put on myself, and that was why I was being stupid and awkward, why Talon kept laughing at me. All I expected from myself was to be able to fix everything all on my own, and even I had to admit that was pretty stupid. I constantly had to rely on my friends to save my dumb ass, and that was in situations where I actually could do something. Here, all I had was words.


    I tapped my comms. "Cosette, I don''t think I can negotiate this," I said. "I''m just...gonna talk to him and find out what they want."


    "Isn''t that what I told you in the first place?" she fumed over several other yelling voices. "Just keep him talking, we have your feed going through to the crisis management team, and the more they know the better."


    "Sure. Do you know when they''ll be ready to negotiate with the Defiant for real?"


    "I don''t have that kind of information, but they''ve been on-site forever. Everyone''s just arguing policy and what they can demand and either wanting nothing to blow up or wanting the Defiant exclusively to blow up. It''s a goddamn mess. And since you walked in there, I''ve got about a hundred people asking me personally all kinds of questions and giving me conflicting orders. I didn''t ask for this!"


    She stopped for a moment to argue with someone apparently in the room with her, ending with ''He''s my subordinate, and I''ll tell him whatever the fuck I want'' before addressing me again. "Look, I''m probably not going to be acting as your central for much longer on this op...or maybe any other one, if these buzzards keep squawking. Yeah, I''m talking to you General Moroles! I know you can hear me!"


    "Cosette, I don''t think yelling at them is going to help."


    "Oh, you''re gonna tell me how to do my job now too?"


    "Easy there, I just want everyone to calm down."


    "Well, tell them to calm down. I''m perfectly calm. Fuckers."


    I gave Talon an apologetic smile while he sat there with the patience of a saint and an amused grin.


    "Anyway," Cosette started again after collecting herself. "Talking is useful, get him to do that. If the crisis team comes in, you leave. If things are looking messy, you leave. It''s pretty simple, okay? Just talk and try not to think about the hundreds of disrespectful assholes listening to everything you say."


    "Thanks, Cosette. Good luck."


    "Oh, I''m not the one who needs--"


    I tapped my comms, putting it back in transmit-only.


    "Sorry about that," I said, feeling embarrassed and stupid for wasting Talon''s time with my call. I tore open a garlic knot and pulverized the soft innards between my fingers. Cold already.


    "Not a problem. We don''t have much to do here anyway until your side acts, so it''s not like we had a lot going on. You didn''t seem to be enjoying your call though...you have issues with your superior?"


    "No...we bump heads sometimes, but honestly, she''s way more patient and understanding than I deserve." Not to mention willing to literally let me get away with murder. "She''s just dealing with some shit right now with all the New Eden stuff happening. Sounds like I made more trouble for her by getting involved in it again."


    He laughed again. "I know the feeling. You know, I never wanted to lead this bunch, but nobody else seemed interested in handling things properly. Sometimes it feels like leadership isn''t so much stepping forward as it is simply refusing to let everyone else step back."


    I laughed. "Yeah, I think that''s how I became strike lead of my squad. I just started giving orders and people started following them."


    We laughed and after a few more exchanges, I realized I''d successfully made small talk for a few minutes. By the end of it, I even felt relatively normal again. Realizing I had no responsibility or obligation here seemed to make the conversation flow out of me much more naturally.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    But even so, I still had a job to do, I thought. I had to try at least. And so next time the topic changed, I steered it back to its original course.


    "So...even if I''m not officially doing anything here, I still want to know, what is the Defiant Unchained, and what do you guys want?"


    "Interested in joining?" he asked with a grin. "I promise fewer issues with your immediate superior...since you wouldn''t have one."


    "Sorry...I''m kind of a fan of XPCA black," I said, grinning back. "Plus they keep the world safe, and I am also kind of a fan of the world. I lived there once, you know."


    "No kidding? Me too." He lowered his chin to look more seriously down at me and I felt us cross some threshold which made both of us leave our smiles behind. "In fact, that''s very much the point of the Defiant. We want to live in this world like normal people, and what the XPCA demands isn''t really living at all. New Eden was just a glorified jail, and none of us are criminals."


    "But...other people don''t feel safe around Exhumans...around us. We can be dangerous, heck, I know I''m dangerous. Every time my sister hugs me, I have to concentrate so that my powers don''t blow her to pieces. We can''t just walk down the street like that, as much as I wish we could."


    "It''s true, some powers are just too dangerous," Talon said. "But that''s not the case for any of us, or for most people in New Eden. Almost everyone in there voluntarily submitted for relocation, and before that had been living with some degree of success in normal society. If they had powers that made them detonate a city every time they sneezed, they''d have been dead a long time ago under old XPCA policy."


    "But those Exhumans are still out there. We can''t just make new rules because you guys happen to be okay, or the second one of them shows up, it''ll prove the whole system doesn''t work."


    "Except we''re not here to try to negotiate on their behalf. We''re here to talk about our rights and that''s it. We don''t want to lay down laws that shape Exhuman policy from here to the moon, we just want the New Edeners to be able to live in peace. If some other group of Exhumans shows up in the future, they can form their own Defiant Re-unchained or whatever," he laughed.


    "So...you just want an exception, basically?"


    "For those of us who''ve proven ourselves responsible enough to live normal lives, why not?"


    "Because...it''d still make a panic. Everyone would suspect their neighbor of being an Exhuman if it was known they lived out there."


    "And people don''t already?" he laughed. "Besides, isn''t that really their problem? If you assume someone''s bad because of what they are, we call that bigotry. Just like you can''t go around stringing up your neighbors just because they''re Jewish or Hispanic or gay if they''ve done nothing wrong, we want the same applied to us. Instead, nobody even has to shoot us because the government will do it for them. It''s a dispicable state."


    "I get you. I really do, and I don''t want to sound like a broken record...but being Jewish or Hispanic or gay doesn''t instantly give you the power to destroy your neighbors with a thought if you feel like it. Exhumanity isn''t the same, it can''t be treated the same."


    "Then how should it be treated?" he asked. His question was light, but his eyes held steady on mine like he was looking right through me, not a trace of a smile left on him.


    I didn''t know how to respond. Was I expected to just...whip out a perfect solution for the Exhuman problem?


    I mean, I tried. But the more I thought, the darker my thoughts became. As I cast my mind around in search, what I found inside it...I remembered why I ran across the street in the first place. What I was running away from.


    "I don''t know," I said, unable to hold his gaze any longer and staring down at the shreds I''d turned the last garlic knot into. "I used to...used to have ideas. All these ideas, you know? About how things should be, about what was right, what was inviolably right. Things which, if the world had a problem with, that was because the world was wrong, not me."


    I began turning the shreds into crumbs with my fingertips. "But the more I work this job, the more I see, the more times we have to put an Exhuman down or figure out what we''re doing with...with real, actual lives, really...the harder it gets. I thought I was doing well by making New Eden where Exhumans could live free¡­"


    I crushed a piece of the knot under my thumb back into tacky dough. "...but I went there...and everything was just bad and wrong and messed up. There was so much corruption, everyone was so miserable and suffering. There were Exhumans who were killing each other for sport, just to get some release. Killing! To get a reprieve from what I put them into. So I dove in head-first to try to fix it, and...and it feels like every person I cared about got hurt because of that. My sister. My girlfriend. My friends¡­"


    I thought of AEGIS, not the old one whom I''d loved with all my heart, but the jealous, bigoted, petty thing I''d turned her into. I thought of Karu, hiding in the corner behind Deej, trembling to flee the second she saw me, a scared girl under her armor. I thought of Lia, her face and hands black and swollen with blood from the missile which almost hit her. Thought of all the visions I''d had through Moon, all the near-deaths we''d only just avoided.


    "And all for what?" I asked him, slamming the table and making the cups and crumbs jump. "So that we could fix up the prison and put everyone back in it? A place I helped make that I couldn''t even believe in? The suffering of everyone I was trying to protect? Is that all I was fighting for? What was the point in hurting so many people?"


    To my surprise, he took my hand and squeezed it in both of his, his brown eyes serious as he just held me there, telling me without words that he understood, that we were the same. That more than what we were, we were both men defined by what we lost.


    "I was half-kidding before, but I''d like you to consider joining the Defiant," he said. "Everybody needs a home."


    "I can''t."


    "I know. But if the weight of the world ever gets too heavy...look us up. You''re too young to be dealing with all of this shit. I know this doesn''t really apply to us Exhumans but...I look at you and can''t help but feel every adult in your life has let you down for you to come to this. Kids should be dreaming, it''s what they do. And I think it''s shit that because we adults made this world the way it is, your right to dream gets robbed from you."


    "You want me to join you and we''ll fix it together?"


    "Of course not," he said, putting a grin back on and releasing my hand. "I want you to join me, and you can sit back and watch as I handle it myself. That''s what adults are supposed to do, isn''t it?"


    I think I was supposed to smile or laugh, but I''d kind of forgotten how at the moment. All the thoughts I''d been struggling through before I came in here had just caught up to me and now I felt like I was drowning again. I took a deep breath and tried to ride it out.


    "It''s a nice offer. I appreciate it. But...I think...I think I''ve seen too much, already. I''ve seen how fragile the world is, I''ve seen it tip with the actions of a single person, seen it tip with my actions, even. I can''t just go back to letting other people make decisions after that. Not that I now know what''s at stake and how easy it is to lose those stakes."


    He smiled and nodded at me again. "Leadership is cruel, huh?"


    "I guess so."


    He patted my arm affectionately. "You''re still young. In between all the things you do, don''t forget to have fun sometimes."


    "Fun seems so pointless when there''s so much work to do. So much suffering out there."


    "It sure does, but it''s important anyway. If you keep growing up the way you have been, you''ll wind up forgetting why you wanted to save the world in the first place. Considering you already seemed a bit lost on that front, keep it in mind. Even a world as mismanaged as this one has lots of beautiful things in it if you look for them."


    I really hadn''t expected fatherly advice. His words echoed AEGIS''s when she''d made up her mind to date me--that if I was going to spend my life making it my mission to save others, she''d make it her life mission to make me happy, whether I wanted it or not. The sudden realization that this was a guy who really cared about me, even though we''d just met...it hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer. I wasn''t going to show it, but I felt tears threatening to well up in my eyes.


    I saw motion behind Talon, out on the street through the window and realized that the XPCA was finally moving. A middle-aged man in a suit was exiting the building, buffeted on all sides by generals and aides, primping and preening and prompting him with last-minute updates and policy bullshit.


    "Your negotiator is here," I said, feeling my throat closing up as I refused to let emotions out. I sounded like a flattened frog.


    Talon glanced back. "So he is."


    "If...if negotiations mean nothing, legally...why are you doing this? Why did you come here to talk in the first place?"


    He grinned apologetically. "Negotiate is kind of an exaggeration, honestly. We''re here to lay down an ultimatum. We want to make it clear exactly what the Defiant Unchained are, because...it''s not the kind of thing that''d work if it wasn''t perfectly known."


    I''d already asked this question twice and gotten different answers both times, so I asked again. "So what is the Defiant Unchained?"


    "Well...put simply...we''re mad."


    "O...kay. I think we knew that."


    "No, M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. We''re twenty-two Exhumans who have agreed that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. If they try to force us out of our lives, however many of us they take down, they''ll have the rest to answer to. We''re prepared to burn the whole damn country down if we have to, and they need to know that we''re serious about that."


    The smoldering intensity in his eyes lightened a bit as he leaned back. "Of course, we all hope it won''t come to that. We just want to be left to live in peace like humans, but that''s our ultimatum. We want peace...but if they won''t give it to us, they don''t get it either."


    I just stared at him blankly for a minute while the real negotiator paused in the street outside listening to his comms. A number of the generals and others suddenly ran back inside and in the glimpses I could see through the door, it looked like the whole place had gone apeshit.


    Talon took a glance and laughed, standing up and then offering me his hand. I took it stupidly and he shook mine with a warm, solid grip.


    "I think they''ve got our message, though not quite like I would have liked to relay it," he said with the same bemusement as before, as though the full-tilt panic of the XPCA was exactly on par with a stupid high-schooler who didn''t know the first thing about wording good well. "I suppose that''s our cue to exit before any of them gets the smart idea of bombing the building and killing all of us at once."


    I found myself on my feet as a reflex by shaking his hand. So many thoughts were slogging through the mud of my brain, and he was leaving, and I didn''t even know what to say. The others were moving to the back room with Rito, who could port them all out, but Talon himself seemed to linger as though my expression had dropped an anchor on him.


    He hesitated for another moment before speaking. "You''re a good kid," he said with the same broad smile. "You still transmitting from your comms?"


    I nodded stupidly. He made a shushing gesture with one finger on his lips and then drew out his mobile. With a couple of taps and a swipe, my mobile pinged, and when I looked at it, I saw a new contact request.


    He grinned at me. "Like I said, if the world gets too heavy, consider joining. I''d love to have you. And I think we want a lot of the same things out of this world. Peace, coexistence, security."


    My mental wheels were still just spinning and kicking the mud in my brain all over the place now, but one random question crystallized which I managed to blurt out before he slipped away.


    "Mister Talon!" I shouted. He stopped in the doorway to the back. "Before...before you turned...who were you?"


    He turned and I saw his grin in profile, positioned right between his bright eyes and strong chin.


    "Public defender," he said with obvious pride. "Saved a lot of innocent people from terrible fates."


    And with that, he disappeared into the back room. It was only a minute later when the negotiator came in, and when not a single of the Defiant could be found, a team surged through the building, sweeping every inch of it to no avail.


    As for me, I was immediately detained for debriefing and questioning. As I sat in the back of a black XPCA van, sitting between two troopers in a way which just skirted the line between escort and captors, I couldn''t help but grin as I thought over the stupid last question my brain had decided was important at that moment. I should have asked about his plans, or his powers or something, but nope, a completely useless question which wouldn''t help the XPCA in the least going forward.


    But I had to grin because in the end, with that question, I realized the truth of my being there. It was as Talon had been saying all along.


    I really was just there for a friendly chat.

 227. 2252, Present Day. Santa Fe. Talon.

    I liked travelling with Rito, it was a lot more comfortable than going by car or rail. We just stood in a loose circle facing outwards, Rito in the middle doing whatever it was she did, moving us from place to place with such subtlety that she often had to announce where we''d arrived because nobody noticed we''d gotten there.


    We were all somewhat local, nobody had really had time to go too far from New Eden, and everyone understood (or was informed) how much easier it was to hide out in a large city than a little roadside town. Plus, we needed to stay close to be able to support one another in the event we were attacked.


    Albuquerque, Santa Fe, some as far as Vegas or Santa Rosa, we appeared inside living room after living room, a few members saying their farewells at each stop. A few members, I spoke with briefly before we moved on, coordinating our next moves, but for the most part, we''d done what we set out to do and now we just wait.


    Hopefully, wait forever. I didn''t think the XPCA would be stupid enough to provoke us into open conflict...but I was no expert. I knew they were renown for their ruthlessness, but that was before New Eden, before Director Blackett had taken the reigns and shaken up the organization. Given how New Eden had turned out, one could be forgiven for assuming that the XPCA hadn''t changed, but I wasn''t convinced.


    From what I''d seen and heard, the local administrator Captain Targa had been kidnapping and drugging Exhumans, warping their minds somehow to fit her needs. When word of it got out, the resistance formed, and it wasn''t long before they overthrew her in a mad, Exhuman bedlam.


    We were there, of course. We''d heard the alerts and the fighting and used the distraction to our own advantage to slip away in the chaos. It was out in the desert sun, miles from New Eden that we all talked and came together, forming the Defiant Unchained. Even then, we had the germ of our current identity--we promised to stay together, to help each other, and that none of us would again be forced to live in New Eden and suffer the empty promises of the XPCA.


    It wasn''t until the squads started showing up and nabbing people that we realized the Defiant meant something; the promises we''d made with each other under the beating sun walking on that blazing asphalt were more than just the songs of freed jailbirds.


    Some of us were taken. Some of us never responded to the call. But the twenty-two who remained were committed to do what was necessary, willing to take the insane leap to put ourselves first in a world which put us last.


    I honestly didn''t know if many of us had it in us to go on a rampage. I hoped it''d never come to that...if the XPCA was insistent to call us on our bluff, could we destroy the society we were desperately trying to slip into? And if we did...what then? Would we just trash the world until nothing was left?


    It was absolute insanity, and I thought it impossible for them not to see that. But somehow, they seemed to miss the insanity inherent in the current system.


    Finally, it was just Rito and myself. I made sure I was last to see all the others safely home, and I had to get something for her anyway.


    I left her loitering in the living room of my apartment, bathing in the pre-sunset light making long shadows of the blinds, and went rummaging in my bedroom. Tiny little place, but my own, which was better than most of the others could afford. I still had quite a bit of money saved from before, and was only living in places like this to try to make it last.


    Which is what made the credit chit in my hand feel especially heavy as I handed it over to Rito, giving her the best smile I had given the situation.


    "Your services have been invaluable. The Defiant thank you."


    "Oh...it''s...it''s like, nothing. You don''t have to thank me if you''re paying."


    "Actually, I really do. I don''t think today would have been possible without your help."


    "Well...if you need anything else ever...you know who to call. I''m not very busy."


    "You shouldn''t tell people that," I said with a smile. "Or else they''ll try to pay you less."


    "Oh, I didn''t think of that. Sorry. I totes do need the money though," she said, apologetically waving the chit at me.


    "I understand. You''ve got something we need, and we have money."


    "You mean...you have money. This is your money."


    "It''s yours, actually," I said with a dismissive laugh. "Would you like a drink or anything before you go?"


    "No thanks. I just mean, you arranged all this and paid me outta your own pocket. And¡­" she checked the amount on the chit again "...and it''s a lot. And you didn''t even ask the rest to chip in or nothin''."


    "Feeling sorry for me?" I said feeling bemused at the girl''s inexperienced reactions. She was behaving less like the logistics behind a resistance group and more like a babysitter who''d just made her first three-figure paycheck. It was adorable watching her struggle with taking my money, but by all rights, she''d earned it.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    I made two cups of hot water, and thinking it was a bit late for caffeine and my guest was a bit young for drinking, put a packet of hot cocoa mix in each. The kind with tiny marshmallows -- a sweet tooth was among my vices, so I had a few packets on hand.


    She sat down on the couch when I placed the mug in front of her and didn''t touch it. The girl still had some guilt about using her powers for pay, maybe? It was hardly my place to interfere, but I couldn''t just leave her feeling bad because she needed money but didn''t want to take it. It really wasn''t anyone''s fault...maybe God''s for her being an Exhuman, that she couldn''t get a normal job and earn her money in a way she felt she deserved.


    I leaned across the table and closed her fist around the chit on her palm. "Take it. You did good work today."


    "Did I? I didn''t...do anything. And it''s so much money."


    "It''s the amount I agreed to. You should be able to live for quite a while on that amount if you take good care of it."


    She didn''t respond, but instead sunk further into her guilt. Which meant: I''ve just put my foot in my mouth, and more importantly, she didn''t need the money just for living.


    I tried to think of another tact but before I could, her mobile rang. She looked at me shiftily for a moment before standing up and pacing, turning the device over and over in her hands before finally snapping it on and to her ear.


    "Hi Mom!" she said with bubbling enthusiasm. "Yeah, I got your messages. Things are just going awesome! I''m mega busy though...sorry I haven''t called. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, I know. Look...I got classes in like, a minute, I need to pack and run. Yeah. Uh-huh." She blushed as she glanced over at me and I pretended to be absorbed in my cocoa. "Love you too. Talk soon, bye."


    The cheap couch groaned as she threw herself into it.


    "Mrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuurrghhhhhhhh!" she shouted into the cushion. I began to put together some possible theories of what might be connecting her mother, need for money, lies about being at school...and her Exhumanity.


    "Rito...it''s not for me to pry, but if you ever want someone to talk with...well, I''m someone, and I''ve been told I''m a pretty good listener. I''m happy to lend an ear."


    She peeked up at me from between her blonde hair her arm on the couch before smashing her face back into it.


    She said something incomprehensible.


    "What?" I asked.


    "I said," she said, turning her head so there wasn''t a sofa directly blocking her face, "I''m just like, an idiot, and I''m sorry."


    "Even sorry idiots have legitimate problems," I said with a reassuring smile, "and I don''t really think you''re either. If you don''t want to talk about it, I understand, but--"


    I heard the front door slam behind me. As I turned to look, the room suddenly went black as something solid slapped against the windows. Rito screamed and I fumbled in the dark for my mobile, fighting back the blackness with a tiny square of light.


    My mind was racing. It wasn''t possible for it to be black in here, the windows were letting in the sunlight and it was only late afternoon. Unless someone had turned off the sun or was screwing with our eyesight...but I could see well enough in the beam of light from my mobile, so it wasn''t in my head.


    I made it to a lightswitch and flicked it to no effect. Same with the one next to it. I made it as far as the window and saw it wasn''t dark out, there was goop coating the outside of the window, like an enormous paintball or some kind of thick adhesive gel. The shutter wouldn''t move, jammed by the gunk coating it.


    "W-what''s going on?" Rito asked, her own mobile now lit as well.


    "I don''t know. Get out of here. Get us both out of here, actually."


    "W-where to?"


    "I don''t care, anywhere. Go!"


    "Okay!" she said, trembling visibly even in the small square of light. "Um. Ummm."


    "It doesn''t matter where. Take us...take us to Demonhand''s," I said, thinking of the last place we''d stopped.


    "Okay!" She stood there shaking, but the world didn''t change around us. "It''s not working!"


    "Why not?"


    "Someone''s watching us!"


    I ran to her and grabbed her, making her shriek again, but we didn''t have time for this. I steered her towards the bathroom and almost got us inside when I heard an explosion and felt like someone had punched me in the back. I fell forward, falling down past Rito, who looked at me with just...just horror lining her face in the dark.


    I whipped out my powers, not knowing where to direct them but behind me. The kitchen tore itself apart and imploded, the straight lines of the counters and shelves stretching and bending into impossibly sharp blades, impaling the empty air.


    I couldn''t stop coughing and it felt wet but I couldn''t see anything in the damn darkness, just Rito standing there in the bathroom doorway, frozen and trembling. My own mobile was a few feet away, face-down and framing itself in the dark like an eclipsed sun. I reached for it, and where I touched it, I saw I was leaving streaks of red.


    The thought I''ve been shot only crossed my realization as there was another explosion and another bullet slammed me further into the thin, cheap carpet. I could taste the blood now, my ears rang from the gun being fired from so close. Again I tried to reach out with my powers but I didn''t even know if they worked. It was so dark, and my body felt so heavy and useless.


    I was going to die, I realized. Those fuckers at the XPCA had done it after all...they didn''t care at all about our rights or the threat we posed, they''d deal with us the same way they always had, chased down like dogs.


    I smelled something slightly acrid. Maybe something else my attacker was using? It wasn''t a good smell, but familiar, like ammonia, almost. I cast my red-smudged light around as best I could, but all I could find was Rito, shaking where she stood, unmoving, a growing dark stain at the bottom of her shorts and her legs dripping.


    I''d almost forgotten she was there, trying to make sense of what was happening to me, but if she didn''t move, she''d die. Even if I couldn''t find my attacker and save myself, I could still do something for her.


    Though my mind felt heavy and dull, and it hurt to breathe, and my vision seemed small and distant, I forced my powers to shape the door she stood in, to dump her into the bathroom and seal it off behind her. She squealed as the floor upended her to draw her inside and screamed as the door twisted itself into a warped bramble.


    "Rito...go¡­" I pleaded, as loud as I could muster, but I was afraid my voice didn''t carry over the sound of the gunshot going off again, and I didn''t know if she made it out because after that, everything just went black.

 228. 2252, Present Day. XPCA Regional Facility, New Mexico. Athan.

    It was hours before they were done grilling me, well after dark, and I think they would have been content to keep going for another few weeks, probably, but for Cosette and Tem showing up and waving laws and handbooks in their faces, Cosette screaming about appropriate conduct and daring them to charge me with something, and Tem just echoing her, screaming in general.


    Even then it took a while before I was let out of the sterile interrogation room where the two of them flanked me like if I were left alone, I''d be snatched out of the hallway and thrown back in another room, both of them growling at the guard on duty like it was his choice keeping me locked in there.


    "--nerve of these assholes, when everything you said was recorded, and everything you did was plain as day through the window! Dozens of eyewitnesses, including the generals ordering this interrogation...and do they interrogate them? Oh no, we don''t need eyewitness accounts, we want to debrief the one who went in. Debriefing isn''t supposed to be punitive! These goddamn buzzards!"


    "Goddamn buzzards!" Tem echoed.


    "And then tell me I''ve overstepping my bounds? I can read the fucking manual, thank you very much. Being my superior in rank does not give you the right to run my squad. Weeks of this bullshit, I''ve put up with. Weeks!"


    "Weeks!"


    "And you!" Cosette said, turning on me in the middle of the hall. I swallowed hard. I sort of knew it was only a matter of time before I put myself in her crosshairs while this whole sequence of events was wearing her down to a hair trigger. "You...you did fine," she sighed more than said. "I hope those goddamn self-preening fuckers had their ears open when you commended me. Probably too busy jerking off on their medals. You could stand to compliment me to my face too, you know!"


    "To her face!"


    "That''s enough Tem," I sighed. "Sorry. I know...you''re really caught up in this mess, and it''s all my fault."


    "You bet it is."


    "And I really am sorry. And I do think you''re amazing...I''d have...killed someone by now, if I were in your shoes."


    "Yeah, well, that''s why I''m in this dogshit, because you seem to think that killing people is the only way to fix things up. All the world''s problems are just a few knocked heads away from disappearing. Sometimes, Chariot, killing people fucks everything up. You realize that?"


    "Yes."


    "Sometimes killing people makes more work for your superior. Makes the fucking brass breathe down her neck. Puts her under such scrutiny, she''s got to dress to code every day. Do you see this? Do you see this?" she asked, pointing at her entirely zipped-up zipper.


    "Yes," I nodded along. It was a zipper, come on.


    "I don''t think you do, Chariot. This is my life now. I thought I''d be cool and relaxed and let you guys get shit done at your own pace, but now look at me. So fucking wound up I''m not even allowed to dress myself. All this uniform is missing is a place for them to clip the goddamn leash. Do you get me?"


    "I said I''m sorry."


    She seemed about ready to yell at me again but stopped, and instead let out a deep breath through her nose very slowly.


    "It''s fine. It''s them, not us. They''re the fuckwits. I said you''re doing fine and I meant it. I''m actually glad you went in there, saved me more fucking hours of listening to three generals and all their fucking aides sitting inside central like they''d ever set a damn foot in there before. In my control room! And then they think they have the fucking right--"


    I kept us walking through the halls, the odd stationed guard looking at her with mild alarm as she screamed her way past, yelling about the generals and brass and their inferior genital size all the way until we got outside.


    It was still warm even after dark, but I knew from growing up in LA that the desert nights could get cold fast. It''d just slap you in the face with a shiver out of nowhere, and next thing you knew, you''d be wishing you had a sweatshirt. The emergence from the XPCA facility seemed to bring Cosette back down to earth, at least enough for her to stop her ranting.


    "I should go. I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on," she said apologetically after a minute.


    "Do you need help or anything?"


    "No, I''ll be fine. You just...keep doing you. Keep your nose clean...or if you''re gonna dirty it, run it by me first. You''re a good kid, Chariot."


    "You''re a good boss, Cosette."


    "Hah! I''m the worst. Yelling out my frustrations on my subordinates. I know I said to compliment me to my face more but that''s not what I meant by dirtying your nose. I''ll see you next op, it won''t be long."


    "See you then," I said.


    "S-s-see you, then!" Tem echoed, and with a lazy wave, Cosette disappeared back inside. She really only had come out here to save me from being interrogated, I guess. Even with all the shit she was dealing with, even with much of it...most of it even, my fault...she was still looking out for me.


    I sighed and turned back around. I''d wanted to get back out to Vegas tonight and catch up with how AEGIS was doing, but it was already starting to get late and I had no transit scheduled. I could find a taxi or something, but that was an awful lot of money to drive that far, and I''d just nuked my savings on chartering the flight to get AEGIS. Probably best just to bed down in the barracks here if there was space and try to arrange a transport tomorrow, if anything was headed out that way.


    I''d just turned towards the barracks when I saw a lone figure sitting on a rock in the spartan rock garden near the front door, almost masked in shadow. A woman with a shaved head. She looked profoundly alone and from what I could see of them from the sliver of light on her profile, both incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad.


    "Hello? Are you okay?" I asked her, approaching slowly. It wasn''t until I was within a few feet that I recognized her. It was Karu, in plain street clothes, her athletic body drowning in a baggy tee and pants, her green eyes downcast onto the gravel which filled the plaza, and her head shaved neatly, her familiar mane of hair replaced with a short layer of blonde bristles.


    "Hello Ashton," she said as though the words were hard to bear.


    "Karu? Have...you been waiting here this whole time? It''s been hours."


    "Has it? It is hard to tell sometimes."


    "Well...the sun went down. Come on, you''re butt''s gotta be totally asleep. Let''s walk some."


    She didn''t respond but stood up and fell in slightly behind me like a larger more visible version of Tem. I felt kind of weird having both of them trailing me, but no matter how I slowed or maneuvered, she didn''t seem interested in being side-by-side.


    "I uh, like your hair," I said.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "It is...normal," she replied.


    "I mean, not normal for you. It''s new for you. It looks good on you."


    "Does it? I did it because it was practical. I do not think I care how it looks."


    "Karu, can you tell me what''s wrong?"


    I stopped and she bumped into me before falling back a few steps. She stood there, idly rubbing her wrist through her baggy sleeves, slouching, not even facing me. Her green eyes seemed dim and unfocused. It wasn''t Karu at all.


    "I am thinking...of quitting," she said.


    "Quitting what?"


    "Hunting."


    "Why would you do that?"


    "I do not know. I do not know why...why I am a hunter anymore, to be honest."


    "You told me it was to protect people. To make sure people didn''t have to suffer the way you had. To find evil and destroy it in holy purifying light and be the chosen of God all that."


    "Did I?" she snorted. "My, that sounds arrogant."


    "I mean...yeah, it does but...you were those things. It''s not arrogance if you actually do it, right? Then it''s confidence."


    As I said it, I realized that was what had gone out of her, that was the spark that no longer flickered in her eyes. There was no confidence in this woman, a woman I''d always known defined by such. It was such a pillar of who she was that...well, I looked at her and saw her completely transformed.


    I mean, the baggy clothes weren''t helping but still.


    "Mmh. I wonder," she said wistfully like her voice was drifting to me from somewhere very far and very lost.


    "Karu...what happened to you? Why are you being like this? I''m sure it''s my fault, but...is it because I chose AEGIS in New Eden? Are you...heartbroken? Is that why you''ve been avoiding me?"


    "Were I avoiding you, would I have waited these hours for you now?"


    "I don''t know. After you broke up with me, I felt like I never wanted to see you again because it would hurt too much...but every time I saw someone in the corner of my eye or got a message on my mobile, I hoped it was you anyway. It''s a complicated thing."


    "Well, rest yourself assured that lovesickness is not what troubles me. My issues run far deeper than such a foolish, selfish notion as that."


    "Then what the heck are they, Karu?"


    She glanced at me for a moment with those dead eyes before fixing on a spot at my feet. "I am not so easy to mend that a few teary words and a heartfelt confession would fix me, Ashton. I did not wait here for you so that I could have you put me back together."


    "You don''t know that unless--"


    "I came to say goodbye, Ashton. I cannot do this any longer."


    "Do what? Hunting?"


    "Any of this. This lifestyle. The madness of the XPCA. The world and these lives upon our shoulders. You."


    I knelt on the jagged gravel underfoot and tried to force my face into her line of sight but she just turned further away. "What are you saying, Karu?"


    "I am saying...I am not who I thought I was. I never was. And I was foolish to ever think I might be. To protect people. To change the world. To be righteous. What a cruel jest."


    "But you have protected people, you have changed the world, and you''re one of the most righteous people I know!"


    "You don''t know me!" she suddenly screamed, her fist slashing through the air as she rose to her feet. "You don''t know me," she whispered, suddenly again, very far away.


    "Then tell me who you are! Let me help you!" I moved towards her, held her hands, tried to get her to look at me, but the dead eyes stayed fixed on the ground. "Karu, please. Let me help you. I just want...you''re one of my best friends, and this flies in the face of everything I''ve ever known you to be. I just want you to go back to being yourself again."


    "This is myself, Ashton, I was just too arrogant and stupid to see it."


    "You''re wrong. You''re not this. This is just...a funk or something. You''re a hunter! How long do you think this will work, Karu? How long can you lie to yourself like this? What happens when you see people getting hurt that you could have protected?"


    "People are hurt every day, Ashton."


    "And you''re just going to give up? Give up your wings? And do what? Get a job stocking shelves? Or selling donuts? You can''t do that, you''d go insane. You started doing all of this because you couldn''t just sit by and do nothing, and now you''re saying that''s all you can do? That''s bullshit!"


    "I will remain here for the time being until I...figure something out. There are many paths for those who accomplish nothing with their lives, I will...find one."


    "You already have one, Karu, you''re helping people already."


    "No, Ashton, I am not. Stop yelling at me. You can''t just say the right words and fix me, okay? I am not, and have never been...you, okay? Just...just be silent and leave me alone!"


    As she lashed out at me again, tears spilled from the corners of her eyes down her reddened face. She turned away, I thought to hide them from me, but after a moment, she bolted, wailing like a little girl as she ran alone into the night.


    Except she wasn''t alone. I wouldn''t let Karu disappear from my life like this...a pathetic goodbye and screaming at me and crying, and then vanishing forever into a beige life of impotence? It wasn''t her, and I''d be damned if I left her believing it was.


    I ran after her, and while she might have been faster than me normally, her choking sobs and the trail of tears she fed to the still-hot cement held her back, and I refused to let her go. Down endless sidewalks she ran, sneakers slapping on the pavement as she screamed for me to go away and leave her alone as the lights of the town flew past us in the night.


    But I didn''t go away, I didn''t leave her alone. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs were heavy and still I ran. She was my friend and she was in pain. I would never stop running after her.


    I was almost on her, blocks and miles later, with nothing but unfamiliar buildings watching us, and she turned and saw me there, her teeth clenched, her eyes wide and red and puffy. She started to yell at me again, but missed half a stride and I could only watch as she started, stumbled, and rolled to a painful stop on the sidewalk.


    I tripped over her, kicking her in the process of trying to get over and fell myself, and fell to the ground near her, losing some skin on both palms and swearing as I held my bloody hands to my pained shin and the elbow I''d slammed on the pavement.


    We laid there, both panting and gasping and moaning over our injuries for a few minutes. She was the first to rise, and I sat up at once, afraid she was going to get away again.


    But she just walked over to me and crouched next to me, bleeding through a new tear in her pants at the knee as she held her shoulder.


    "I cannot escape you, can I?" she whispered between heaving breaths.


    In response, I just tilted my chin up and pointed a finger towards the collar of my uniform. There, just visible was the choker she gave me, around my neck every day since the day she gave it to me.


    She sat down next to me and just breathed, holding her wounds. Waiting for whatever came next.


    "I am a bad person, Ashton."


    "If you want to quit everything...me especially, I understand," I said.


    There was a self-storage lot across the street with a sign once bright and framed with colorful lights. Half of them had gone out now, the sign had faded in the sun from what looked like many, many years, and I wondered how many of those units were used? How many relics from lives long abandoned were people holding onto in there, and why did they keep them...why could they not let go?


    "But not like this, and not now. You told me once when I was...at risk of checking out...that it wasn''t permitted. That we still had a duel, and I wasn''t going anywhere until we''d had it."


    I looked at her and remembered our fights back in the old days. It seemed so long ago when she''d just show up and randomly ruin my day. I almost starved once or twice because she''d wasted a day I could have spent fishing or foraging. It was enough to make me grin, and I shot her my best one, given the circumstances.


    "So the same applies to you. No leaving until we''ve had our final duel, at least. Got it?"


    I''d thought that might put some fire back in her eyes. Even if...even if we were going to part, if whatever was in Karu now was overwhelming her and she couldn''t take this lifestyle anymore, we could end it the way she would have wanted it. Simple. Brutal. No holds barred, just two old friends trying with all of their might to kill each other.


    If she was mad at me about AEGIS, she could take it out on me. If she was frustrated or scared, here was her chance for a slice of normalcy. If she felt like her life was falling out of her hands, it was a situation where she was the master.


    She rose to her feet, leaned forward and pulled me up to stand beside her, finally looking me in the eye again.


    "The duel is off. I absolve you of your commitment," she said. She turned to go.


    "Karu, I''m not going to let you go like that," I called to her.


    "I understand. I will make no effort to escape. Feel free to waste as much time as you desire attempting to fix me until you are completely satisfied." She turned to go, her baggy clothes concealing her back. "But you will fail. I am irredeemable."


    She walked off back the way we came, holding her shoulder and with a slight limp and I didn''t know what to do but watch her go. It wasn''t more than a couple of blocks before she was amidst a group of other people, and for the first time since I''d met her, I could no longer pick Karu out from the crowd.

 229. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    One thing was for certain, I had excellent taste.


    Lia held me as she walked up and down the rough circle of machines in the garage, connected to one another via a system of loaders and conveyors, all networked to a central interface so that a fabrication requiring any of these machines in any combination could be carried out automatically.


    Around the perimeter of the room were other more eclectic devices: A highly illegal network tap which seemed to be monitoring traffic over a third of the ''net. An entire bank of power supply units, huge imposing boxes with thickly insulated cables radiating out of them across the walls and floor like a circulatory system. And maybe what I cared about most, a couple of server racks, containing my past life and all of the recorded memories within it.


    Just a frickin'' shame I didn''t have the ports necessary to interface with any of it. Getting started might be rough, though Lia seemed willing to help as she could. I''d need a body foremost, even being uploaded to a more modern computer would help¡­though I couldn''t run on just any piece of hardware...


    I paused to think and realized Lia was still walking around in circles holding me.


    "Sorry, I''m good," I told her. "You can put me down now. I need to figure out how to connect with all this stuff and get a new version of Rua going."


    "Oh, about that, we might--"


    She stopped as the door opened. I felt tiny and blind, not having any cam-drones around...or more likely, not having access to the ones which were, and couldn''t see anything but the direction she''d pointed me.


    I heard a soft voice that set me on edge immediately.


    "She getting settled alright?" the voice asked.


    "I think so. She seemed pretty excited about all the machines," Lia said. "Which is good, since I don''t have a clue what any of this does." She laughed.


    "She''d probably like it if I stayed out of her hair, huh?"


    "Yeah...sorry. Doesn''t seem¡­like...she''s a fan."


    "Is that Saga?" I asked. "Turn me around, let me see."


    Lia let out a heavy breath but didn''t complain as she picked me up and spun me to point at the door to the rest of the house. There, leaning in the doorway, was Saga.


    She''d changed some. Not a lot, but enough to stand out. She''d filled out a little bit, even put on a bit of muscle, mostly in the legs, though was still lanky and alien in her proportions. Her hundred-year-old prison uniform was now a knit sweater and capris, dark blue and tan, and hanging off of her. White ankle socks, stained, with no sign of shoes.


    And strangest of all, her expression. I was accustomed to seeing a confident smirk, a malevolent grin. Something that announced that this was something wholly removed from and dangerous to humanity. Instead, she looked worried.


    Did I scare her?


    Good.


    "Why is Saga here?" I asked Lia. "Is this her new jail? Am I supposed to be her warden again?"


    God, I hoped so. I had a whole lifetime of payback for her.


    "Saga...lives here," Lia said with no small hint of forced optimism. "As do you. As do Chiho and I. We''re all...one big happy family."


    For about a quarter of a second, Saga gave me a small smile. I tried to kill her with my mind on the off chance that I''d somehow become an AI-Exhuman in the last five minutes. It did not work.


    "You''re fucking kidding me. I don''t even have a body. I don''t even have drones to defend myself! She can just walk right in here and rip out the core of my operations!"


    "And...I won''t," Saga said.


    "Oh, like I''d trust you again."


    For some reason, Saga seemed to shy away as I yelled at her. It felt great. All the years of suffering and resentment I had in me, and now she could hear it all, maybe even feel it all, if her black Exhuman heart still could.


    "Maybe...you should go through your old memories," Lia said, setting me down again. "There''s a lot more between you and Saga than just...that, now."


    "No, Lia, it''s okay. Last time...she never got this stuff out. We were all tied up with the XPCA stuff and she never got to dump her years of hate on me. I can take it."


    Lia looked like she was about to argue but instead froze weirdly. "Yes. You are right," she said.


    "God dammit, I forgot!" Saga groaned, clenching her fists like she wanted to hit someone.


    "The fuck did you do to Lia!" I screamed at Saga. "Get the fuck out of her head!"


    I felt so impotent. I didn''t have anything to interact with the world, just a trapped observer watching Saga do what she did best to humans. I was supposed to protect people from Exhumans, and Lia was one of my only friends, and Saga was the worst Exhuman in the whole fucking world and I could do nothing but scream. I slammed against my console and rage and frustration just tore through me.


    "I''ll fucking kill you!" I screamed at her over her worthless apologies. "You fucking hear me? I''ll kill you! I don''t care if you kill me a thousand times, I''ll always come back! I''m just as immortal as you, bitch! I''ll kill you for the rest of goddamn time!"


    Saga took a look at me, her eyes startled and scared, glanced one more time at the mockery she''d made of Lia, standing stock-still with pupils as large as dinner plates.


    And then she just ran, holding herself. A second later, I heard a door slam from further inside the house.


    I liked that she was scared of me. Maybe she was just guilty about killing me, what, twice now? I hoped she was. I hoped she thought of my mom every time she closed her eyes.


    "Lia, wake up!" I shouted. "Come on. Please, you''ve gotta be okay. I need your help, I need your hands. I can''t stop Saga by myself like this. Please."


    "I''m fine," she said, with a wistful tone that screamed the opposite. "What do you need, AEGIS?"


    "I need...to get into these machines. We need to start producing countermeasures."


    Lia seemed to blink her way back to being awake. "What?"


    "To stop Saga. Are you okay?"


    "Stop her from what? AEGIS, we live together. You, me, and Saga."


    "She just mind-fucked you right in front of me! I saw it! Tell me you remember. Oh God, what did she do to you?"


    To my surprise, Lia laughed and then sat down next to me, stroking my box with her fingertips like it was me she was caressing.


    "Oh, that," she said with bemusement. "Look...I want you to get your memories back ASAP, okay? That will clear everything up. But for now I''ll tell you a story, about a stupid, drunk, horny girl, and how she hurt her two best friends."


    She told me that we''d all lived together like this before when Athan had been captured by the XPCA and we all needed to work together to free him. Karu had helped, and had actually been really influential in his release ultimately, but here in this house, things weren''t going so well.


    "I slept in late. I drank all the time. I wasted money on things I didn''t want. I went out partying almost every night...God, I almost wound up with any number of guys, and I''m only sixteen. Any guy who''d do that...is not a guy you should let do that." She shuddered. "You and Saga were both at your wit''s end about me. You were both so worried about Athan and me that you didn''t have time to be at each other''s throats. But still, I was holding everyone back, trying to deal with the stress and guilt and pain...and not. Really, really not."


    Though she was speaking conversationally, even pleasantly, her eyes looked hard and distant. I could tell how much this story made her hate herself, and more than once I wanted to tell her to stop, but she pushed forward without shirking.


    Her voice dropped low and she held herself tight as she told me how she''d done it with her loser boyfriend, how she''d forced her way into Saga''s mind to drag her into a mental three-way, and once that barrier was breached, it spilled out over the entire city block and their minds were lost in a haze of rapture. How, even now, months celibate, she still gets cravings for that sensation again, like a drug she tasted only once.


    How, if I hadn''t interceded and smacked her head on the bathroom tile, she''d probably have fucked herself and everyone here to literal insanity.


    "But Saga had it the worst," Lia muttered, smaller and quieter and more still than ever. "I used her power against her, I used our closeness against her...I proved to her that she was right, that trusting humans was just a path to getting hurt."


    "Which is bullshit," I said, interrupting for the first time.


    "I agree," she said. "But I''ve known a lot of humans and only one of them has ever tried to rape me. I think, on the whole, humans are pretty good, and trusting them is pretty good. But that''s not Saga''s experiences, and you can''t just dismiss that because her life has been monkfished more than most."


    "Well maybe she''s right in her case anyway. Every human should be trying to hurt her--"


    "No, you''re wrong," Lia said with sudden confidence which caught me off guard. I knew I shouldn''t be surprised, but how quickly she''d jumped from her nervous, pained recitation to putting her foot down¡­


    "Look, I hurt Saga and she was my friend. If you take the fact she''s Exhuman out of the equation, what do you suppose I should have done?"Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Kill her?"


    "AEGIS¡­"


    "Okay fine. The answer you want me to say is to apologize, right?"


    "Right. But you can''t just...literally rape someone''s mind and then apologize for it. Especially not when they were your best friend, and--"


    "She was your best friend?" I laughed.


    Lia glared at me. "Yes."


    "She''s a mind-fucker! She sits in the dark alone all day, scheming up how to get herself free."


    "And you sit in a box doing the same?"


    "I am not like her."


    "No, you''re not. And even in your past life, you still weren''t. But before, you were open to the idea that other Exhumans could be like Athan, could be decent people, and had even accepted that, on the whole, Saga might be one of them. If nothing else, you trusted Athan''s judgement enough to go with what he thought, and you trusted and knew Saga well enough to know she wouldn''t mind-screw him."


    "Well, that''s stupid. Athan''s great, but he''s got a lot to learn--"


    Lia was shaking her head at me. "You''re so frustrating. Please get back your memories soon."


    "What now?"


    "You kept having a hard time learning this lesson last time too. You never believed in Athan enough. You kept trying to run his life for him, make decisions for him, couldn''t accept that he made informed decisions for a reason."


    Her words hit me like a knife. "I said that to him...after I almost killed him."


    "Yeah. And I think it was right around when you were getting over that, that he finally decided he loved you. So if you want him, you''ll have to learn that one again."


    "I...see."


    I began to think about how I could ensure I integrated this into my future plans when Lia started up again.


    "So eventually, I did apologize to Saga. But she just accepted my apology because she still loved me for some reason--"


    "Saga doesn''t love people. Especially not humans."


    Lia shot me a downright contemptuous glance. "AEGIS, not to be a real beluga about this but you''ve spent the last eight months in the dirt, and I''ve spent good parts of it in her head. Are you going to tell me this story, or can I finish?"


    "She doesn''t. I refuse to accept that."


    Lia was up and pacing around my machines now, doing weird pirouettes and punching at the air as she stomped back and forth and yelled in my direction. "Why is this so difficult for you to believe? How can you be so stubbornly thick-headed not to realize that your own past life somehow accepted this truth, and she was just as smart and paranoid as you?"


    "She just can''t, okay!" I shouted back.


    "Why not!?"


    She wheeled on me and bent over to look my holo right in the eyes, her brown eyes furious in a way I''d never seen her. Lips drawn tight, hands on her hips, glaring me down for all her skinny stature was worth.


    "I might have been in the dirt these last few months but I knew Saga long before any of you did. And I refuse to accept that this kind of change is possible, okay? She wouldn''t...she can''t. She didn''t."


    "That''s not even a logical argument!" Lia exploded at me. "Just no? Is that all you have to say? Just no? She can''t because she can''t? Just ignore everything I''m saying, ignore Saga herself obviously being someone different than you remember, ignore Athan and all his friends accepting her, ignore your past life even! Yeah, makes perfect sense, once you ignore literally all the data, you can draw whatever conclusion you''d like!"


    She threw her hands in the air as she paced away from me. "Worst AI ever!"


    "She can''t because why would she do it now!" I screamed back at her, finding my voice emotional as it came out. She stopped and turned back to look at me. "If she was just going to change, why would she do it now? Why couldn''t she do it before? Why''d she have to fucking kill all those people, why''d she have to kill me?"


    I tried to get the last of my words out before the lump in my throat closed it up.


    "Why''d she have to kill my mom, Lia? She was my best friend. If she was just going to change in the end, why''d she have to do that to me first? Why?"


    Lia, beautiful delicate creature she was, was crying before even I was, and again she was holding my box and sobbing, just a big shadow on my camera that was trying to give me a hug but failing hard. We were there for a couple minutes, before something gently knocked on the door.


    Lia turned to look, and as she unobstructed my view, I saw Saga standing there, looking even smaller than usual.


    "What do you want?" I hissed at her.


    She walked forward and took a seat next to Lia, rubbing the crying girl''s back with her broad, flat hands. Lia sniffled and tried to stymie the tide with her sleeves without apparent effect.


    "I''ve told you this before...well, I told the other you this before, I guess," Saga said, crossing her legs right in front of me. "But...I owe it to you, too. I''m...I''m really sorry...about everything that happened before. I was a prisoner in a prison, and you were keeping me there."


    "I don''t need your stupid apology," I said.


    "It wasn''t anything personal. I thought...I thought you were a really great friend."


    "Just stop, Saga. You''re embarrassing yourself."


    She shook her head. "I only learned a bit ago that some of the stuff we talked about back then, you still have. You believed in it, believed in me deeply enough that you took some of my words and wrote them into your own beliefs."


    "I don''t want to hear this. Stop it. You''re disgusting. Go away!"


    "I always wondered...if we could have been friends...if it had gone another way. You even offered," she laughed "but I was too arrogant to take it."


    "Then keep being arrogant, I don''t want your friendship."


    "That''s fine," she said with a smile and another shake of her head. "You don''t have to. But I will apologize to you for what I did to your mother. I know how painful it can be to lose someone close to you."


    "No you don''t. You''ve never let anyone close to you. You just feed off the thoughts of others, you don''t live them."


    She smiled her small smile like the more poisonous my words were, the less she heard them. I wanted to turn off my mic and shut her out, but more than that...I wanted to hear everything she had to say.


    "The person I lost, I''ve never been in their head. We''re the most distant people in the world, in that way, and yet their death hit me in a way even I didn''t expect."


    "Just who the heck are you talking about?"


    "I lost you, silly. You died when you and Athan fought to save me. I felt so...so torn up. In a way, it hurt more than being physically torn up. But...only in a way," she gave me a small grin like I was supposed to laugh. "It sucked. And it still sucks. And I''m sorry I did that to you."


    I crossed my arms and turned away. If she thought she could just make up for murder with a sob story, she was badly mistaken on how this world operated.


    But turning away was just for effect, of course. My camera was still pointed right there, and through it, I saw both girls, each acting as though conspiring to stab me right in the heart.


    Lia was barely-contained lightning, as she often was, looking back and forth between the two of us with her hands trembling from how white-knuckled she was clenching them. Her eyes brimmed with a fresh new wave of tears, and her nose and face was a splotchy, blotty mess.


    But even through all that, she was this goddamn bottomless well of optimism. Pivoting back and forth, saying nothing but thinking everything, with so much fucking hope in her eyes that somehow her old two besties would kiss and make up right in front of her. It was sickening. And also had a disturbingly poignant effect on my heartstrings.


    After I''d turned away, Saga...looked very much the same. Maybe not even noticeable to a human eye, but I saw her slump ever so slightly. She wasn''t going to let me see it, but my rejection hurt her, and that wasn''t anything I could understand.


    She was my enemy. She shouldn''t give a single shit about what I thought of her, just like I was doing. But in that tiny motion, that modicum of pained defeat, hidden behind bravado, I saw she did care, and knowing that made me care.


    Which was bullshit, as far as I was concerned. I wanted not to care. She was a goddamned murderer, it wasn''t fair that she could make me feel anything but hate for her.


    But there it fucking was anyway. The start of that bitch worming her way right back to where she was before she tore out my heart last time.


    "I''m doing this for Lia, and Lia only, you understand me?" I snipped at Saga. "You and I can coexist in this house. You stay out of my garage unless I explicitly permit you entry. You undo the mind-fuck you put in Lia''s head--"


    "No," Lia interrupted. "I never finished but...I asked her to put that there. It''s mine."


    "You''re an idiot," I told her flatly.


    "Maybe I am. But I''d rather be an idiot with friends than the smartest lonely person in the world."


    "Whatever. You don''t touch anyone else''s head, you be a nice, docile Exhuman, and maybe, maybe, someday, I''ll consider accepting your apology."


    "That''s all I can ask for," Saga said with a serious expression. She rose and bowed very deeply at me. "I''ll get out of your garage now. Sorry to interrupt."


    "Thanks for stopping by Saga," Lia said with a wave at her back. The garage door clicked shut and Lia let out a long slow breath through pursed lips. "I''m glad you''re willing to try," she said. "You did it before, and I believe you can do it again."


    "I wonder how long before she kills me this time," I said.


    "She won''t. She''s good at being good. You''ll see. Just keep an open mind."


    "Yeah. I''ll feel a lot better once I have some drones and a body. I''ll be able to do something if she acts up."


    "Oh, right! That was what I had for you. You''re gonna love this."


    Lia''s dials switched from contemplative to exuberant as she showed me something on her holo.


    "¨²aine?" I asked, reviewing the tech specs.


    "It''s...probably not a forever-home. High-grade XPCA tech, designed by...well...your killer, actually. She was an AI too. It''s complicated. But she had this body built and now she''s too dead to use it, so it''s just sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Somewhere Black Shark knows about," she added deviously.


    "These...these specs are insane. Are you sure this is accurate?" I asked as Lia flipped through page after page. "I''ve never heard of so many yottaflops. And this is sitting in a warehouse?"


    "Well...your tech is like a hundred years out-of-date. So yeah, it''s way up there, but it''s not like PSWHHH, BOOM, apocalypse great or anything."


    "Thank you for that very informative summary," I said, unable to take my eyes off the docs. "Uh, yeah. Hell yeah. We need this, now."


    "Thought you might say that. Like I said, probably just a temporary home for you. I imagine you can make a better one using it, though."


    "Are you kidding me? This baby has everything," I said. It was kind of an exaggeration, it had everything computational. It was clearly made by an AI for an AI. But holy shit, was it made for an AI.


    "Uh, not...everything," Lia said, shifting uneasily. I wondered if I''d missed something important on the tech specs and was going to ask her to go back a few pages, but the mobile moved back into Lia''s pocket while she blushed furiously and made a gesture of putting a finger of one hand into a circle of two fingers on the other hand.


    "...docking? Standard ports? I swear I saw it had that, Lia, can you bring back the holo?"


    "Not...not that kind of interface. Biological," she muttered.


    "A biological-robotic interface port? They have that in the last hundred years? I mean, I know neural uplin--"


    I stopped as Lia moved her fingers together again a few more times and suddenly felt both very stupid and very red.


    "I see!" I announced louder than necessary and furiously began reviewing the tech specs to see what room there was to draw up improvements. Lia giggled nervously and turned on one heel to stroll out of the room.


    Before she made it out, I called out to her.


    "Hey, Lia?"


    "Yup? Or...nope. Depends on the question," she said, still flushed.


    "Nothing like that," I grinned at her. "I just wanted to apologize for arguing with you a few minutes back there."


    "No problem. Being emotional is how we still know we''re human, right?"


    "Right. But also...thank you."


    "For what?"


    "For being patient. For believing in me. For being the first person to cry for my mom. And...for...the whole...Saga...thing."


    "What? You just kinda trailed off at the end."


    "Never mind!" I found myself shouting at her. "Sorry. Just, thank you for being a great friend."


    "It''s always been my pleasure," she grinned.

 230. 2252, Present Day. XPCA Regional Facility, New Mexico. Athan.

    Again, I couldn''t sleep. I couldn''t remember the last time I''d slept decently, it''d been over a week now. Visions of Saga and AEGIS and Karu and Lia kept running through my mind. Which didn''t seem fair, because Saga was safe now, Lia had recovered, AEGIS was on her way to restoring her mind and body, and¡­


    ...and I still had no idea what happened to Karu. But I intended to find out.


    It was the middle of the night, I checked my mobile, the square of light burning my eyes with sudden radiance and filling the cramped but half-empty barracks with a dim yellow light.


    Still too early to call Karu and try to set something up. Barely even past midnight. I got up anyway, unable to stand just laying there with my torturous subconscious any longer and thought I might as well do something with myself.


    Or, well, go crazy I guess. Seemed like that''s what my subconscious was interested in doing. Always an option.


    I started with just walking around, but that idea quickly revealed itself as a terrible idea when I was squeezing myself between bunks with sleeping soldiers in them. Only really enough room in here for storing some personal effects and some persons, not for a walk. Even if the room was half-empty, that didn''t exactly make the bunks any smaller.


    I made my way over to the nearest door. The XPCA had a pretty high...turnover rate, I guess one might euphemise it. Add to that a hugely mobile composition which had to deploy with overwhelming force to incidents anywhere in the country and it was pretty obvious why any given facility would be half-empty of soldiers at any given time.


    The more stable positions remained filled full-time. Logistics and intel and command could stay put while recon and strike moved around under them. And move we did; even in my short time here, I''d already been deployed a handful of places around the country. I knew that some squads even deployed outside the country, protecting the interests of the US or her allies from Exhumans abroad.


    As I crept out the door my thoughts went to what I was doing for the next few hours before everyone else woke, and then to the mobile still in my hand, and then to the small variety of games AEGIS had given me for it.


    And then to AEGIS again. Stop, brain. Too far.


    But it actually wasn''t a terrible idea. AEGIS, that is. She didn''t sleep, so I could call her now and see how she was doing if I wanted. I sat in the hallway, my body still riotously exhausted and flipped through my contacts until I dialed her.


    I waited while it connected...and then heard a girl muttering into the phone.


    "AEGIS? You tired?" I laughed.


    "...n'' mur...der...you¡­" she groaned.


    "Uh...AEGIS?"


    "...''s two AM. Athan...why¡­?"


    I realized the voice on the other end was not, in fact, AEGIS, as if the sleepy talk weren''t indication enough. I immediately realized my mistake once I placed the voice.


    "Um, Lia?" I asked.


    "...what."


    "Sorry...I was...trying to call AEGIS."


    "AEGIS died...friggin...gopher..."


    "Right. Sorry." I hung up on her, closing my mobile and feeling absolutely moronic.


    AEGIS had died. Her mobile had wound up somewhere, and I guess it made sense Lia would have it. It''s not like she could use it herself until she had a body again. I felt awake and alert, if physically tired, but it was obvious I was somewhat stupid from being sleep-deprived too.


    And I''d also woken Lia up, which was a serious crime. Raving ball of energy that she was, she powered down hard after dark, and the creature which you encountered if you woke her up could hardly be considered my adorable, thoughtful sister. In my family, we had all discovered that her morning routine of laying in bed until she burst out of it fully-awake was an important one not to interrupt.


    Instead of bubbly and thoughtful and energetic, she would be quiet and miserable as any adult before their coffee, but moreso...often unable to do the simplest things and break down at the smallest obstacles. I remembered getting her up once to make breakfast for Mother''s Day and upon finding the toaster had been unplugged to make room for a different appliance, she''d just hunkered down, catatonic on her feet, where she remained until I left her alone for fifteen minutes on the sofa, whereupon she bounced back as though nothing had happened at all and refused to talk about it.


    Sitting in the half-lit hall, for the first time, I put together this knowledge with some I''d gained illicitly from Saga a month ago and realized that that little morning ritual of hers must have been some way she faced her depression...and the terrifying conclusion would be that the fragile, defeated thing she was without it was her...her true face, I guess?


    Sorta recontextualized her waking up early to make us a family breakfast on the day I turned Exhuman. All that for me, even then.


    Jesus Christ.


    I stood up. This was stupid. I was getting too far in my own head again, and this was exactly the kind of thing I''d crawled out of bed to avoid. Lia was Lia, and she desperately wanted nobody to ever see that part of her, so I''d avert my eyes as much as she wanted. AEGIS and Saga were right when they told me before -- the best thing we could do for her is treat her like we always had.


    I stole back inside the barracks and changed for the day, thinking if I were going to walk, I should do it outside. I''d only just made it outside when my mobile rang, and my stupid immediate thought was that it was AEGIS calling me back.


    I was surprised when I looked at the caller. Talon? I hadn''t picked him as a...well, incredibly late or incredibly morning person.


    "Hello?" I said in what was hopefully a cool, conversational tone.


    What responded was, for the second time, a very agitated-sounding female voice, but this one was definitely not Lia. She was almost screaming incoherently at me, and though like Lia I picked out the word murder I didn''t think it had anything to do with the hour.


    "Wait, calm down. Who is this? Is this a prank call?"


    "NO!" she screamed at me through half a sob.


    "So who is this?"


    "It''s Rito!"


    "And...why are you calling me from Talon''s phone?"


    "He''s d...d-de...dead, Athan! I don''t know what to do! Someone just came in--" she started talking very fast and devolving back into wailing again, but I''d picked out the relevant bits.


    "Rito, breathe. Stop talking and just breathe, okay?"


    "O...okay. I don''t know what to do. I came back, and his mobile was laying there and..."


    She was still talking, but whatever.


    "I''m at the XPCA base outside in New Mexico. Do you know where that is?"


    "Y-yes. We w-went through when...when I was being...on the way to New Eden¡­"


    "Okay. I''m at the front gate," I said, walking briskly in that direction. "Can you meet me there?"


    "I''m...okay...I''m here. Where are you? A-Athan?"


    "Sorry. I''ll be one minute."


    "You said you were here!" she screamed at me.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I took a deep breath for her. She was freaking the fuck out that much was obvious, and no matter how shitty I was feeling, and no matter how much her panicking and screaming wasn''t helping anything, the first priority was to get to her and find out just what the fuck was going on. And also calm her down so she''d stop panicking and screaming, I guess.


    I found her there, standing exactly in the main gate, drawing concerned looks from the guard on duty, holding herself and shaking. It was cold out, and she was still only wearing shorts the and strappy top like I''d seen her in earlier yesterday, but her distress obviously had nothing to do with the temperature.


    "Athan!" she yelled, and moved to the closed gate. "Help!"


    "Miss, back away from the gate," the guard said, hand on his holster. She froze instantly, even her shaking as her eyes just went wider.


    "She''s fine," I told the guard and let myself out. "Rito, what the fuck is going on?"


    She didn''t move or respond, just completely frozen like the man had cast a spell on her. I had to pull her off of the gate physically, and when I got close, was hit with the smell of blood and piss. I shook her hard which got her back from catatonia to panicked, pitiful cowering and wailing.


    "Pull yourself together!" I yelled at her, really not having the patience for this shitshow right now. I was tired, she was beginning to freak me out, and somehow this involved Talon, presumably. I hoped the smell of blood was just in my mind, but she''d said clearly enough that he was dead. "Vegas!" I yelled. "Have you been there?"


    "Y-yes."


    "Then let''s go." I turned my back on her and waited. After nothing happened for a while, I turned around and shook her roughly again, really not sure if I should slap her across the face or what the hell I was supposed to do. I was quickly adding ''girl crying'' to my list of growing nerves.


    I sat down on the curb with my head in my hands for a moment, and then fell backwards when the curb wasn''t. I looked up and was dazzled by light illuminating a medieval castle from every angle. Next to it was a spiraling tower which looked like it was made entirely of crystal, glowing with every color in a slowly-changing rhythm.


    I turned around and found Rito standing there, still rapidly breathing by the side of two beds, both unoccupied, lit up only by the light of the casinos. I was looking out at the Vegas Strip through a window. The carpet underfoot was thick but durable, and I realized this was a hotel room.


    "Not what I meant but close enough," I said, pulling Rito along and out the door. I spent a few minutes taking elevators and studying the fire escape maps before we emerged from the depths of the amazonian rainforest stylings which housed thousands of slot machines and onto the street.


    Fortunately, this place was awake at two AM even if I wasn''t really, and I found a cab pretty quickly, a cheap one without a driver, and put in the address for the girls'' place.


    It was almost half an hour of enduring Rito before we got there, and the whole time, I thought she''d pass out from hyperventilating, or I might from the smell of piss on her. I didn''t want to interact with her in any way for fear of starting her up again, and so we just sat in awkward silence with her staring at me like if she blinked I''d disappear. Which was a little funny because that was her power. But not that funny.


    I watched the transformation of glitzy hotels to tourist traps to slums and then to normal city, and finally suburbs, and it wasn''t long after that when the cab pulled to the curb and opened the door to let us out.


    Saga was standing there in the front yard, and I''d barely even pocketed my credits again before she clobbered me with a hug from behind.


    "What are you doing here?" she asked with a grin. "I mean. I know what you''re doing here. I put your friend under, so you''ll have to carry her now, but fuck, she was just screaming at me."


    "Yeah, I needed your help on that," I explained unnecessarily as I dragged the girl from the cab. I was really happy this was a self-driving one now, because this was looking all kinds of wrong to a casual observer. Or maybe this happened all the time in Vegas, what did I know?


    Saga sort of barely helped me get Rito''s unconscious form inside and steered me towards a couch, holding the door and turning on lights around me at least.


    "You''re pulling up her shirt. Or is that not an accident?" Saga asked with a grin.


    "She''s heavy, okay? I don''t see you helping. Why didn''t you wait until she was indoors before knocking her out?"


    "Bullshit, she''s heavy. She''s tiny. You''re just weak. Hey, want to strip her the rest of the way just for fun? I wouldn''t mind riding a fantasy or two of yours."


    "Saga, I really do not need your bullshit right now. She says someone died, and I want to find out what she knows without her screaming at me, and without waking up--"


    Someone screamed and it wasn''t Rito. I turned and blinked and saw Chiho standing there, her uh, modest proportions filling out a camisole, and more than filling out a scrap of fabric I guess you''d call a thong.


    Also she was screaming. I guess that was the important bit. I looked down and realized I had an unconscious stranger on her couch in a state of partial indecency while I was holding onto her shirt in the middle of the night. And also I was a man who was suddenly in her living room. I could kind of see the cause for alarm.


    "Hi...Chiho. It''s me, Athan?"


    "Damn girl, that was loud," Saga said, fishing in her ear with a pinky finger.


    "A-Athan? What are you doing to that girl?"


    "He found her dead outside and wanted a crack at her before she got cold."


    "For fuck''s--Chiho, she just went through something really traumatic and I brought her to Saga for help." I glared at the lanky Sino grinning at both of us. "Not that she knows how to do that."


    "She''s...she''s not dead?"


    "No," I said, finishing pulling her shirt back down and smoothing it out to eliminate any further possible confusion. "I think she saw someone die. And she''s freaking out a lot. Both of those things I thought Saga might be able to help...with¡­"


    Behind Chiho in the hall, I saw a small zombie shamble into the light, frizzy hair hanging in its face like in her past life, she''d died choking on it. The cutesy pajamas did nothing to sell the illusion of life.


    "Hi, Lia," I said.


    She looked at me, then at Saga, then at Rito, and then turned around and left without saying a word.


    "She''s going to have a bad day tomorrow," I said.


    "Seems like it," Saga said. "Welp, everyone in this house is pissing me off with your stupid sleepy brains, so I think it''s bedtime."


    "That''s stupid," I said. "I just got here. We need to find out what Rito knows."


    "I already did that."


    "And we need to do something about it."


    "No, we really don''t."


    "What do you mean? Fuck, Saga...if you''re going to be such an ass, I''ll just wake her up and deal with her screaming. At least she''s not intentionally being a dick."


    I moved to...I don''t know, shake her again, I guess?


    "Athan, he isn''t getting any deader," Saga said. I turned and saw she wasn''t smiling anymore.


    "Who isn''t?"


    "Talon. You''re right. He''s dead, she saw it. It''s what''s gotten her all shaken up."


    "So we have to do something!" I said, standing.


    Saga shook her head. "Right now, you are amazingly stupid and slow. I mean, come on. Look at yourself. Did you really think it was a good idea to come here? And you''ve been¡­" I felt my mind prickle and threw all the annoyance I had at her. "...you''ve been trying to spend this morning just going on a run, and haven''t even managed that. Oh great, and dwelling on Lia''s...problems," she said, glancing sideways at Chiho, who seemed about as awake and observant as the doorway she was leaning against. "I told you you''re not supposed to do that. Come on, asshole."


    "I''ll wake up once we get there. Come on."


    "If you really wanted to just get there, why didn''t you have shorty take you in the first place? Oh wait, because you''re tired and stupid. Sleep, dumbass."


    "Like I can sleep after knowing what I know?" I asked. "You really think I can just¡­"


    She was grinning again.


    "Oh no. Oh no you aren''t."


    "See? Took you way too long. You''re slow, and there''s a killer out there. You know I love you Athan, so I''m doing this for your own good."


    "Saga? What''s going on?" Chiho asked through a yawn.


    "Nothing love, just go back to bed," Saga said through her small grin.


    "''k." She shambled back like she hadn''t just been screaming a minute ago. I wondered if Saga had already gotten to her.


    "You''re actually serious. You''re putting us all to sleep."


    "Yeah. You''re all seriously annoying right now. That girl is freaking out hardcore, you''re a dumb idiot...more than usual even. Lia''s wondering why any of us exist, and Chiho...well...actually after the shock of it all, she''s quite pleasant. She''s thinking about her homework she didn''t do before sleeping and going to text her girlfriend a cutesy half-awake love note. Very sweet. Too bad her girlfriend is such a bitch."


    My head was spinning a little bit at all of this unnecessary information. I ignored it like I was ignoring my body being tired.


    "Saga, no. We''re acting. There''s a dead guy and he was...maybe not a friend of mine, but he was a really good guy from the one time I met him. We''re gonna go...go to his place¡­"


    "And find his body lying there? Good plan."


    "And find out who did this."


    "With your awesome Exhuman sleuthing powers? Great plan."


    "Saga just--"


    She held up a hand to stop me, and I found myself stopping, realizing only after I did it that she''d timed the gesture with some kind of mental slap which disoriented me just enough to lose my train of thought. It was pretty fucking annoying that she was getting a good handle on her powers.


    "It''s my turn to be the stubborn jackass and do things for your own good. You don''t get to live that role twenty-four, seven."


    "This is murder, Saga. Someone''s dead."


    "And that''s a big deal because¡­?"


    "You...I...you can''t be serious."


    She laughed, so disarming and demure compared to her enormous presence and how she was adamantly blocking the shit out of me at the moment.


    "We''ll go first thing in the morning, okay Mister Hero? When you''re less stupid and less obnoxious. One can only hope that a morning will help you with those, because you need a lot of help."


    "Saga, I--"


    But she''d already started in on me and I felt myself fading fast. My body felt heavy and I was falling sideways before I even knew it. I landed on Rito on the couch, my knees uncomfortably digging into the carpet.


    "Ooh, you went right for the goods. Nice pick for pillows. I''ll just leave you two to get better acquainted."


    I tried muttering some profanities or moving my body, but nothing seemed to work. And when Saga went over and turned out the lights, I was out as well.

 231. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    I woke with a start with my knees hurting and wiped drool off the corner of my mouth, looking down at the small pool I''d made on my pillow while I slept. Frowning, I wiped the fabric and felt it jiggle unexpectedly under my fingers.


    I looked up a little more and found Rito attached to the breasts I''d just manhandled, and then looking up further, the dawn-lit living room of the girls'' place in Vegas, and further still, I saw Saga beaming at me, her small smile full of malice and her almond eyes narrowed.


    It took me just a second to get my hands off her, a second longer to confirm that she was still asleep, and just another second to get my bearings and remember why I was here. So three seconds before I turned on Saga and started in on her.


    "What the fuck was that?" I asked her in hushed tones so as to not wake the others. "You just fucking put me under."


    "Baby needed a nap," she said, crossing her legs regally. "Seriously Athan, you were so sleep-deprived, your brain was screaming at me like a rusty engine trying to start. You had a prescription for sleep, and I''m your local dealer."


    "Drug dealers don''t need prescriptions. And I did not need to sleep more than I needed to get to Talon," I hissed at her. Rito made a pitiful noise at my increase in volume but didn''t wake. It was extra annoying that I had to hush up, but Saga was so naturally quiet she could keep talking like she always had.


    "As I said, Talon was dead. She saw it with her own eyes."


    "But I didn''t. And you''re being such a fucking bitch about it."


    She shook her head and let the insult pass. "I''m frankly a little offended you think that little of me, Athan. I''m the one with all the information here, the least you could do is trust me to make a decision based on it. I get no points for our storied, sordid past?"


    "It''s not that I don''t love or respect you, Saga, it''s that there''s a dead guy, and he''s a friend and a good guy. Also...maybe really important to the stability of the world."


    "Tsk. So hung up on one dead body. I make loads of dead bodies. I''ve been thinking of collecting their skeletons, maybe put them in a closet somewhere. Cross that one off my idiom checklist."


    I could tell Saga was just using my frustration for her own amusement because she knew there wasn''t any immediate threat or danger, and so the most productive thing now would be to stop feeding into it. I had to calm myself down and bore her if nothing else, into helping properly.


    I also realized that''s exactly the kind of awareness I was lacking last night and quickly pushed the thought from my mind before Saga could pick up on it. But she was wearing a shit-eating smirk already so fuck me.


    "Okay, you''ve had your fun. Tell me what happened to Rito."


    "Sure you don''t want to hear it from her?"


    "Yeah, I can do without the screaming and whimpering."


    "Damn, cold, Athan. You know, she''s just an ordinary girl."


    "So is Lia, but you never see her crying."


    Saga grinned at me and I felt like I was missing something. "What?" I asked.


    "You''re so messed up. Gets me so hot."


    "What?" I reiterated, with completely different intonation now. Miraculously useful little word.


    "You have no idea what normal is anymore! I''m so proud of you I could just hug you!"


    She began to get up but I just swept her feet and dropped her ass back in her chair, where she landed with a giggle.


    "Athan! Normal people don''t leg sweep their friends! Normal girls don''t carry around big fuck-you sniper rifles and wear slipskins and deal with Exhumans and AIs every day!" She sounded really abnormally cheery, and I began to suspect her offered hug, while given for bizarre reasons, was actually genuine. "You''re super fucked up and don''t even realize that a normal girl would panic and cry for a few hours after seeing someone get shot!"


    "You super lost me," I said. "I know I''m not normal. I''m an Exhuman. We''re like, the zero-point-one-percent that mucks up the whole world."


    "Yeah, we are. But you''ve been mucking up the world for so long now that you''ve lost normal as a vantage point. It''s adorable. It took me years of being locked up and tortured to get to that point. I''m so proud of you."


    "Okay, I''m really not sure how this is a compliment, and coming from you, I''m pretty sure a compliment actually means the opposite, but can we please focus on Talon for now? Remember me being pissed off about not doing this last night? We''re still wasting time."


    "Fine. But only because you''re such an adorable little anomalous aberrant now."


    "Whatever. Tell me what happened."


    Saga closed her eyes and banished the cheery, slightly disturbing smile which had haunted her thin face and took a deep breath, reaching towards the other girl in the room with outstretched fingers. I felt my brain prickle as well as Saga washed over both of us.


    "Yesterday after the summit, you got detained for questioning, talked to Karu, slept for a few hours, if you can call it sleep, and then met this one again. In the time you were apart, Rito here took the rest of the Defiant Unchained back to their respective homes...they tend to live in cheap housing in groups of three or four, to save money but also to watch each other''s backs...and she took Talon home last. He lives alone in Santa Fe. He''s still got a lot of money from...as you know, being a lawyer for a while."


    Still with her hand out, Saga scratched her eyebrow idly with the other hand. "He''d hired her...wow, for fifty thousand credits, to coordinate everyone to and from the pizza parlor. She needs money really bad, her mother thinks she''s at an art institute, doesn''t even know she''s an Exhuman...damn, what a mess. She''s got a lot of lies she''s living under, but mostly just wants to send money to her mommy. Lots of debt--"


    "I don''t need her life story, Saga. Let''s not pry into her personal life unless it''s relevant."


    "You sure? I can tell you about the spicy bits from before she dropped out of art school. Lots of very creative girls playing with paint. And each other."


    "Saga."


    "I''m kidding. About the paint. All art''s digital nowadays. They still played with each other of course. So she got her money from Talon, and they were talking a bit when someone came in the door...suddenly the windows went black. She doesn''t know why. We can check that when we get there. Talon starts freaking out, the power is out, and then gunshots."


    Saga stopped scratching herself and now seemed as interested as I was in her own story. "Let''s see...it was dark, so she doesn''t have much to go on. Talon was on the floor, shot in the back. She pissed herself, nice. Is that one of your fetishes, Athan? Never mind, you''re just going to yell at me, I''ll test it later. Blood. Lots of blood. Talon bleeding out...hmm."


    "Hmm?" I repeated.


    "Talon''s powers were really strong. He could warp the shape of things around him. Tried to defend himself from his attackers by imploding the room behind him, but it didn''t work. He used it again to shove the little prude into the bathroom and warp the door shut behind her. She was trying to escape using her powers the whole time but someone was watching her and she can''t use them when she''s being watched. Pee shy, I guess. Wait, no, she did pee. So a voyeur?"


    "I wish it were AEGIS with the mind reading. This would be so much less painful," I said.


    "Hey, when you''ve only got one person in the booth, she''s gotta do both the play-by-play and the color commentary. I threw you a bone. Sports analogy there for ya, Athan. Chin up."The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "You''re such an ass. So what happened next?"


    "Not much. More gunshots, three total she was around for before she got her head together enough to get out with her powers. She went back to...the pizza place looks like. Fortunately the XPCA were done there and she just had a cry in an empty back room for a while. A long while. Um, like...couple hours, looks like. I know you can''t see this but I''m basically fast-forwarding through all the boring parts of this."


    "Can you try to be nice to her brain?"


    "Meh. You thought she was annoying when you met her, she was downright inconsolable right after it happened. Funny, though. Maybe I''ve been around you too long, but she didn''t have any guilt over it. Not yet anyway. Just wondering what happened, not too big on the why or how. Why do you like blondes again?"


    "AEGIS said the same thing. Do I like blondes?"


    She shrugged. "I peeked in your head for preferences, and it said something about lanky Sino girls with black hair. I''m actually a chubby Irish redhead and you just think I look like this because I tricked your brain into believing I''m the perfect girl."


    "That''s it, I''m waking her up."


    "Okay, we''re almost done. Keep your pants on. Or, take ''em off, I''m good at multitasking." She paused but my pants somehow miraculously stayed on. "Psh, suit yourself. So a few hours of crying and moaning, and then eventually she sits there for a long time just kinda...shocked, I guess. Starts denying what she saw, thinking it''s impossible, refusing to come to terms. Typical human stuff."


    "That doesn''t sound typical human stuff to me."


    "And we love you for it. But yeah, you are so messed up, kid. I''m proud to have helped. So full denial sets in and she decides to go back and maybe she thought she saw him still alive and she can get an ambulance and everything will be all gravy, and she goes back...and surprise! He''s still dead. Power is still out. Windows are still blocked. She finds his mobile laying on the ground in the dark, touches it, sees your name, calls you because...fuck I don''t know, I''m not the idiot here. She recognized your name, basically, and was tenuously grasping at reality. And you know the rest."


    She sat back and recrossed her legs with a small smile. "Class is over. Any questions?"


    "She has no idea who did it?"


    "No idea at all."


    "And he''s dead."


    "Deader than alive at least."


    "And she called me why?"


    "Humans have this state I like to refer to as ''blind idiot panic mode''. Some Exhumans too, apparently, though obviously you and I are far too cool to be victims of it."


    I bit my lip and pushed back thoughts of her beneath New Eden. Her small smile went ominously blank instantly, and I immediately wished I had better control over my thoughts.


    "I guess I walked into that one," she sighed, seeming only ten percent the girl she was a second ago.


    "Sorry. I didn''t mean--"


    "I know. I shouldn''t say mean things and then get butthurt when people have mean thoughts about me. I''m a tough cookie, I can take it. Think your worst at me."


    "It really was just a train of thought that took off, Saga."


    "I know. You''re not gonna break me with a single errant thought." She gave me a sly grin. "Takes at least a month of ripping my body apart and threatening me with legitimate death, while forcing me to erode any principles I might have about using my powers to do that."


    "Saga--"


    "I''m fine, Athan. Because you saved me from that. You''re allowed to think about it whenever you want to, because it''s over, because you ended it, okay? I survived it. I''m all here. I''m making jokes about necrophilia and piss fetishes. I''m safe. I''m in my house, with Lia and Chiho."


    "And AEGIS."


    She shook her head. "Sure."


    I still felt bad for bringing it up, but she''d disarmed me masterfully before I could work up any proper self-loathing over it. But still, I recognized the atmosphere in the room was completely different. Before, she''d been...well...Saga, as I''d ever known her. Cocky, perverse, mind-reading asshole she was.


    And then, like a switch had been thrown, she was back as she was in the hospital with me. Almost...maternal. Telling me everything was all right, that I''d done my best and had won the day, not a hint of joking or sarcasm on her. I knew it was a scar from her suffering, but it manifest...in the most mature, absolutely un-Saga-like way imaginable.


    She''d faced her own weakness and when she came out of it, she wasn''t scared or sad or frightened by what she saw. She accepted that it was a part of her, and that when something threatened her again, she could treat it seriously, diligently.


    It actually blew my mind some, and I had to wonder how much of it was from her recent trauma, and how much of it had been from the journey of discovery she''d taken before then. Come to think of it, at the Christmas party, she was actively trying to keep the peace with others, even when suspected by everyone. And her newer more subtle mind tricks...just how far had Saga come?


    I looked at her and saw she was blushing, though the serious look remained fixed on her. She''d always been a more powerful Exhuman than I was, but she was growing as a person too. If I didn''t keep up, she''d be leaving me way behind.


    "Don''t undersell yourself either," she said, her small dark eyes beaming bright. "You''re growing constantly too. You just don''t see it because you didn''t vanish for a couple months there."


    "Hardly, compared to you."


    "Total lies. But I don''t see anything to gain by arguing with you. Someday soon, you''ll see. I might have been joking earlier that you lost sight of what it means to be normal, but that''s really just because of how exceptional you are. If it''d been you there instead of Rito, I''m sure Talon would still be alive."


    "Maybe because of my powers being better in a fight."


    "No. Because when bullets are in the air, you run towards them, not away. When people bleed, you pull them to you, not stand aside. Some blood and gunshots are nothing to you, not because of your powers, but because you have more important things in this world that you believe in, things like friendship and justice and honor, things which don''t fear guns and which don''t bleed."


    She was blushing even brighter now but didn''t step down, and I was wondering if the blush on me was from her compliments, or just residual emotions leaking out of her. She was done talking though, and I didn''t know what I was supposed to say after something like that.


    "Um, thanks?"


    "You''re a good one, Athan."


    Silence lingered for just a little bit too long.


    "Can...you go back to sexually harassing me now? I find you a lot easier to turn down that way."


    She laughed and the weird tension between us broke. "Bullshit, I''m never easy to turn down. Who wouldn''t want a piece of this?" she said, rolling up her sweater to show off her malnourished stomach. "Why settle for a couple juicy breasts or a six-pack of nuggets, when I''m offering two whole racks of ribs?"


    "Food analogy?" I laughed. "And crossing a six-pack with chicken nuggets? And the first two are chicken and then you''re suddenly pork?"


    "Or beef! Chickens have ribs too!"


    "Wow, Saga. Not your best work."


    "They can''t all be winners. If I unleashed the full fury of my comic genius, you''d get so erect just listening to me that your brain would die from blood deprivation. Terrible way to go. Happens to every guy I like. So many wasted lives. And erections."


    I laughed again, happy that Saga could be serious when she needed, but also still the same sick fuck as ever.


    "Okay," I sighed. "Thank you for your help. Now let''s wake her up and see what there is to find at Talon''s, right?"


    "It''s your plan. I make a habit of staying away from murder scenes. Mostly just to spite those smartasses who always say shit like ''they always return to the scene of the crime''. Which I don''t get. Like, why go back, when I have so many more potential crime scenes to make."


    "If nothing else, I''d like to find out what kind of gun he was shot with, and why the windows went black. Maybe some clue on the power cutting out? Sounds like enough to look into to warrant a trip. Might be a good idea to bring AEGIS--"


    "Why?" Saga asked.


    "Because she knows a lot about forensics and shit."


    "Not right now she doesn''t. You''re thinking of the old AEGIS."


    "She''ll be fine. Besides, I haven''t seen her in a bit, and last time didn''t go so hot. I need to apologize for¡­"


    "For unplugging her."


    "Yeah."


    "Okay well, good luck, have fun. See you when you get back."


    She arranged herself sideways in the chair, sprawling luxuriously, white ankle socks stretching upwards towards the ceiling.


    "Yeah, okay. I''ll let Lia sleep too. Can you wake up Rito while I grab AEGIS?"


    "Aye, aye, Captain."


    I headed into the garage where AEGIS greeted me with immediate forced glee and then covertly grilled me on what Saga had done to me and why hadn''t I said hi when I arrived yesterday and why was there screaming but nobody had told her anything, and as I brought her back to the living room, who the heck was that girl, and what was Saga doing to her, and was that a spot of drool on her chest?


    Rito seemed flustered by the inquisition, dabbed the spot on her breasts with nothing but idle curiosity, and overall seemed about a billion times more in control of herself than when she first saw me.


    "I fell asleep?" she asked timidly. "I don''t remember that. I must have blacked out from the stress."


    "Or from hyperventilating," I said.


    "Or multiple spontaneous orgasms," Saga said.


    "Or a Code-X," AEGIS said.


    She blinked at the three of us.


    "Just saying -- stress, hyperventilating, Code-X, none of those explains the drool," Saga said. "But multiple orgasms, that can get any body fluid anywhere."


    "I want to take AEGIS...she''s the one in the box here, and go investigate Talon''s place. Can you bring us there? If you don''t want to, I understand."


    "She''s not coming with us?" Rito pointed at Saga. I shook my head. "Okay."


    I heard her take a few deep breaths and mutter again to herself okay, okay, okay, while we all faced the other way. I wondered if AEGIS counted as being someone watching her, but before I could arrange any kind of experiment, I realized we somewhere else.


    We were standing in the dark, illuminated only by the glow of AEGIS'' holo, and the smell of blood hung heavy in the air.

 232. 2252, Present Day. Talons Apartment, Santa Fe. Athan.

    I lit up the room with my swords, sending them out to every corner to bathe the whole place in dim shimmering light. Being able to see apparently disagreed with Rito, because she had her hands clamped over her eyes and stumbled blindly towards the living room where she staggered around before sitting in a chair.


    "Wow," AEGIS said, and I turned to look away from Rito at the small kitchen area. The apartment floorplan meant that immediately on entering, you were in a little dining area next to the kitchen. Passing through there led to the main hall on the left, or straight ahead to the living room where Rito was perched with all the rigidity and calm of a totem pole. One with lots of wide eyes and open screaming mouths.


    I pulled my eyes away from her again, annoyed at my own instinct to dwell on the girl in distress. The kitchen just...wasn''t really a kitchen anymore. The entire entryway to the apartment was full of warped, distended spears, made of the house itself. In some places, the countertop sagged in shallow concave depressions, where extra material had been siphoned off to be thrust across the room in Talon''s desperate final attack on his unknown assailant.


    The assailant hadn''t been standing here, that much was certain. The number of imploded barbs was as dense as a thicket, coming from every angle and entwining like a drunken spiderweb. Unless they had the power to become very small or insubstantial, they must have shot him from somewhere else. The living room was the obvious angle, but I wasn''t going back to Rito just yet.


    On the counter nearest me, there was an electric hot water dispenser sitting out, and it too had been sacrificed to turn into one of the room''s barbs. I walked over for a closer look, one of my swords flying low to cut through the gloom.


    Talon''s power was crazy, man. There was a spear jutting from where the water heater and countertop met, and the spear was an amalgam of both. It was like both of them were made of rubber, and his power just pushed through them, stretching them into the needle-like shape. Curious, I picked up the heater and found that despite its new, bizarre proportions, it was still the same heft I expected, it just now had a ten foot stabbing protrusion growing out of the side of it.


    The barb I''d pulled it from was now just half a barb, a half-cylinder made of the cheap wooden counter, and on the impossibly smooth flat top surface, I could see the individual chunks of wood and sawdust of the counter, all still in place, but stretched into streaks by Talon''s power. I touched it and found the entire needle as wobbly as any long narrow piece of wood.


    So his power was just to distort the shape of things without changing their properties in any way. Not as lethal as the initial twisted embrace of the room might indicate, though getting stabbed by five or six wooden spears still probably wasn''t exactly pleasant. I also imagined that like most powers, the material would change at the speed of thought, meaning the spears would literally explode into you.


    Messy. And a shame that he didn''t catch his attacker with any of them. There wasn''t any blood or damage to the barbs anywhere.


    "Anything of interest?" AEGIS asked.


    "No, just attacked the air it looks like."


    "So who''s this guy again? And why are you so upset about a random Exhuman getting killed? It was probably just his neighbors or a cop or...well, anyone really. There isn''t a person alive who doesn''t have a motive to kill an Exhuman."


    "He was a decent guy, AEGIS. You probably would have liked him."


    "Yeah, I kinda doubt that."


    I turned her around to take in the murder scene in the hallway. Off to the side was the bathroom, or what remained of it after another thousand barbs erupted from the doorway. And on the ground, blood caking the thin carpet, was Talon on his front with three obvious shots in his back.


    "He was a defense attorney," I told AEGIS as I approached the body, being careful not to step in any of the now-tacky blood, and breathing through my mouth to get through the biting stench. "He got powers and never used them, continuing on like nothing was wrong. When New Eden became a thing, he volunteered for internment, even though he''d already been successful in blending in. When that place turned out to be crap, he joined a group of others to form a group dedicated to the nonviolent protection of their rights."


    "They don''t have rights," AEGIS huffed.


    "Yeah, legally, maybe. But I still think there are rights which are self-evident. Endowed on them by their creator, and inalienable. And it''s pretty shit that good guys like this can have that stripped away just because they woke up a little different one day."


    She frowned at me but didn''t respond, while I focused on the body.


    I didn''t really know what I was looking for here. It was Talon, that much was certain. And he was dead. Not breathing, blood everywhere, his eyes unfocused, the only light in them reflecting from my swords. I thought I might want to check him for other wounds, but really didn''t want to cake myself in blood. His hands were out in front of him, and despite blood on his palms where he''d held his wounds, they had no sign of injury. Not really a surprise, but it substantiated what we saw here. No fight, just him throwing his powers around and getting shot from behind.


    I had to get up and leave, the smell was getting too strong and I was about to throw up all over him. I went to the windows where the smell was still just as strong but at least I didn''t have to look at his dead eyes.


    They were completely black even though it was morning out. I brought in some lights and saw small bubbles and fissures on the other side of the glass, but the window itself was intact. It almost looked like they''d been painted over from the outside.


    I tried to open the window, and after a couple minutes of struggle, got it to slide an inch upwards, the paint now floating in the air where the glass had slid under it. I gave it a poke and found it crunchy and firmly set.


    Almost like structure foam, the stuff that made the Raven''s Nest self-repairing. But white, not dark. The thought of how structure foam would balloon out with all these micro-bubbles seemed consistent with what I saw here. But that stuff was expensive, it was ''smart'', in that its growth could be controlled and directed by the millions of tiny robots embedded in it. Nobody would just slap it against a window.


    The thought of goop exploding made me think of something else though, and checking the color again, I thought I had it this time. XPCA adhesive grenades...or missiles or mines or anything really. Planted or fired against the windows, would splat against them and expand instantly, dropping the room into blackness and prepare the ambush.


    If the killer knew Talon and Rito''s powers, they would know that neither of them had any way to counteract the darkness. But the dark did give Rito the chance to slip away, yet she hadn''t been able to. So they''d prepared some means to be able to see in the dark


    Or maybe that was overthinking things. Anyone who was going to use dark to ambush another would want to be able to see. Maybe stopping Rito''s powers was just a lucky coincidence. Maybe they didn''t even expect Rito here at all. Or, not to dismiss any option, maybe they were gunning for Rito and Talon was just shit out of luck in all ways but managing to save her.


    I didn''t like that idea because that meant she was still in danger, but it wasn''t one I could ignore. I knew from Saga that she had a lot of debt, but nobody would try to collect by picking a fight with an Exhuman, right? Much less ambushing her in someone else''s apartment.


    The more I thought about it the more I didn''t like any of this...and we were starting at square one with a murder, so things going downhill from there was a bad sign. It wasn''t exactly impossible to get XPCA exotic munitions as a civilian I was sure, but the fact they''d been used definitely implied an XPCA connection. Talon didn''t seem to have many enemies that I could tell before he formed the Defiant, but once he did that, he was XPCA public enemy number one.


    I went over behind Rito on the couch where she was quietly moaning and writhing into her hands on her face, sweeping one small blade of light along the ground. If the attacker hadn''t been in the kitchen, they must have been standing around here and might have left some trace of their passing.


    The light glinted off something and I bent down and picked up a small golden tube from the ground.


    "What''ve you go there?" AEGIS asked.


    I went to her and put the spent bullet casing down on-end next to her for her to see. Then I pulled my sidearm off of my hip and cycled the action, popping the chambered round out and catching it. I put it on the ground next to the casing where the two of them were identical, but for the projectile sticking out of the unspent round.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    "It''s a standard bullet," she said.


    "It''s standard across the XPCA sidearms, yes."


    "And elsewhere."


    "And elsewhere," I agreed. "But the exotic munition adhesive in the windows, that''s not so standard."


    She frowned and adjusted her glasses. "No, not so much."


    "And night vision. Again, could be anyone. But definitely standard for shadow ops and the like."


    "I don''t think it''s shadow ops," she said. "Look over there, near the body."


    I went where she was pointing, past the body further into the hall. The blood had completely saturated the carpet here making the individual bristles of it cling together in a sticky red-brown mess. I wasn''t sure what she''d sent me over here to see until I reached the very edge of the pool where it was spanning the entire hallway and impossible to walk around without treading in.


    And there, in the middle, someone had tread in it. An indistinct footprint, only identifiable as one by context, since the carpet wasn''t an ideal medium for that kind of thing, but definitely a regular human footprint.


    "Would a shadow ops leave that behind?" she asked. "Seems amateurish to me, for a professional assassin."


    "Just because they ambush from stealth doesn''t mean they never leave any traces," I said. "They have the whole XPCA to clean up any mess they make after they get the kill. But still, I think you''re right¡­"


    I thought back to the only shadow ops I''d ever met, who''d tried to kill AEGIS and me in the annex facility outside of New Eden. He''d had the whole spectrum of stealth tech, not just invisible to every type of sensor AEGIS could throw at him, but also dead silent, inertial dampeners which would have prevented a distinct footprint from showing up like that. More, the one we''d faced could crawl around on the ceiling without any apparent trouble, which definitely would have let him avoid the blood pool if he wanted. But there was one more thing.


    "You''re right, definitely not a shadow ops," I said, crouching near the stinking mess and giving the footprint another look.


    "Of course I''m right," she beamed. "But you can tell me why, I don''t mind."


    "It''s a normal footprint. Recon and shadow ops in full gear don''t run around like normal people, they wear weird stilts on their limbs and scuttle on all fours. Lets them keep their heads low, move faster, and creep the shit out of me."


    "And these aren''t stilt tracks, just footprints. So it''s not a shadow ops."


    "Yeah, exactly."


    We both sat and thought for a minute.


    "Hey, Athan? Why did they step in the blood anyway?"


    "Dunno. Think they were looking for something in the back?"


    "Oh. I think I got it. There''s only one footprint."


    "And?"


    "Meaning they never came back this way. What they were looking for in the back, they found. It was an exit."


    Of course. The front door was behind a huge mess of barbs and the windows had a ton of gunk on them. It only made sense that the attacker had escaped another way. I picked up AEGIS and prepared to take a running jump over the blood.


    "Rito, we''re going to check out the back room, okay? We''ll be right back."


    "Wait," she said. I looked back at her, and had to squint at seeing her backlit by the window behind her.


    "Wait for what?" I asked.


    "Um, I took us," she said. I blinked and realized, oh yeah, that would explain the light from the window.


    We were in a bedroom, pretty large, but half of it seemed converted to an office. A bookshelf was full of thick law books, carefully kept dust-free, and the bed in the corner was carefully made.


    The window was the primary attraction, though. This was the only room in the house filled with light, and as I opened the door and found us just around a corner in the hall, confirming this was the only room in the house we hadn''t already been in. The window was thrown wide open and looking down, I could see the remains of the screen down on the dirt below, the straight lines of the orange-yellow painted adobe walls making the ground seem so far away, despite being only on the second floor.


    "The screen''s been kicked out, this is how they left," AEGIS said.


    "It''s a two story drop."


    "Which really isn''t much. There''s a big dirt lot down there, so it''s not like you''re landing on rocks or anything."


    I gave the office/bedroom another once-over but didn''t find anything other than vague guilt for poking around a dead man''s things. Rito sat on the bed quietly, waiting for us to finish, but seeming much improved for being in a room which didn''t reek of blood or being a few feet from a body.


    "I guess we''re done?" I asked AEGIS.


    "Guess so. I don''t know what you were hoping to find here in the first place."


    "Well, we''ve ruled some things out and gotten important information. I bet it''ll help."


    "I have a lot of data to analyze at least. If I can put together a fabric simulation, I might be able to get a partial footprint for you from the carpet."


    "That''d be amazingly useful. If nothing else, all the XPCA boots use the same tread. If we can eliminate both a shadow ops and an XPCA soldier, I think that would narrow the suspect pool considerably."


    "Or confirm it to be an XPCA soldier," she said.


    "Well...I''d hope not. It''d be pretty fucking stupid of them to provoke the Defiant like that. But the XPCA does a lot of pretty fucking stupid things, so...let''s just hope for now, okay?"


    "Can we go now, then?" Rito asked.


    We agreed and I turned around and waited. It was pretty hard to tell when nothing was happening, so I gave it a few seconds but was able to confirm we weren''t going anywhere.


    "Someone''s watching," she whispered urgently.


    "Um, me?" AEGIS said.


    "Oh. Turn her around please," Rito said with relief.


    Interesting, I thought, that AEGIS counted as a someone to Rito''s powers. So just a camera would have been enough to stop her, then? I supposed that made sense if we were going down the assumption that whoever broke in was using night-vision optics. Technically they were only looking at an image being generated by their optics and nobody was looking at her, but if her powers interpreted AEGIS as watching, then the lens of a set of optics would be the same.


    Also I just loved learning quirks of Exhuman powers. I could be a nerd too, I guess.


    We were back at Vegas and Saga was still stretched out in her chair like she hadn''t moved the whole time we were gone. Chiho yelped in surprise to suddenly find us occupying space around her, but fortunately she was dressed this time.


    "So I wasn''t dreaming last night," she said, looking up from a textbook.


    "Hi Chiho, sorry to drop in."


    "No problem. You''re welcome any time. Um, except in the middle of the night, while kidnapping a little girl, I guess." She looked over at Rito. Chiho was a few inches shorter than me, despite being a college student, but even she was a full head above Rito. "She''s so cute!" Chiho suddenly burst out and advanced on the waif.


    "Be nice Chiho, she''s a witness to a murder."


    "Oh no!" Chiho said. "Was it your mommy or daddy?"


    "Um, I''m nineteen," Rito said, shifting with obvious unease at being manhandled by the larger girl.


    "Oh. Well you look like you''re ten."


    "...thank you?"


    Meanwhile AEGIS was saying nothing and just glaring daggers at Saga, and Saga was laying there completely immobile, and I got the impression that was how she always acted around AEGIS now. Trying not to stir the pot. It was weird seeing them like this.


    "Let''s wait for Lia to get up and then recap what we''ve learned," I said, glancing at the time on my mobile. Still pretty early, but Lia would normally be up by now. I must have thrown her off by waking her up last night. "The more brains we have working on this the better."


    Seeing my mobile reminded me and I went to my messenger and found Karu online. I felt a twinge of guilt for forgetting all about her in the excitement of the investigation and thought I might talk to her for a few minutes if we were waiting for Lia anyway.


    But before I could even think of an opening line, my wrist holo went off and I answered it.


    "Chariot? Time to work," Cosette''s curt voice came through.


    "Again?"


    "Shut it, please. There''s no off days on saving the world."


    "But we''re not saving the world. We''re just going around icing former New Edeners."


    "If you''ve ever had a backed-up toilet you know that a janitor can save the world too. Now stop flapping your asscheeks at me and get in here to report. I don''t have time to baby you right now, so do me a favor for once and don''t be a pain in my neck."


    I held the holo off my head and looked at those around me. AEGIS, trapped in her box, glaring at Saga like she expected her to jump up and kill her mother again. Saga, lying as still as anyone holding up a sheet in a morgue. Rito, finally getting over the shock, but still a nervous, mangled wreck.


    And Chiho, I guess, who smiled as she saw me looking, and moving past tormenting the smaller girl, went back to studying.


    And I sighed. Everyone seemed to be slipping out of my reach, everything was falling apart around me, and I didn''t know what to do. I''d thought...stupidly, I know, but definitely held the illusion that if I went to Talon''s apartment and had a look around, I''d find something concrete. I''d be able to act proactively, make some positive change in the world again, not just be here spinning my wheels with a bunch of suffering girls in a world which didn''t care.


    Ever since New Eden, I hadn''t had control over my life for even a second, it felt like. Everything I''d tried to do was just leading to dead ends. Meeting with the Defiant had ended in Talon''s death. Digging up AEGIS had led to this angry imposter. And now, Talon''s apartment gave me nothing.


    Less than nothing, since now I was being dragged away from even that.


    "Yeah, I''m on my way," I told Cosette and hung up. "Say hi to Lia for me, guys."


    "That''s it?" Rito asked, confused more than angry. "I thought you were going to find out what happened to Talon? You said you would. I believed you. I sat there next to him and endured it because you said you would!"


    "Hey, back off," AEGIS said. "He''ll figure it out, okay? But he still has a job to do protecting people from scum," she said, glancing at Saga again.


    "Okay," she said, as though slapped and taking a deep breath. "Okay. Sorry. Do you need a ride?"


    "That''d be nice, thanks," I said just wondering what tepid hell my life would make me go into next.

 233. 2252, Present Day. Santa Fe. Athan.

    I''d never been in Santa Fe really, and being from the LA area with the desert right there, hot winds and hundred-degree summers, ancient Spanish missions and names wherever you found civilization, I''d always assumed life in all of the four corners states to be pretty much the same.


    I''d been here a couple times now in the last couple of days and I couldn''t get over just how wrong I was in that assumption. Especially after living back east for a while, I discovered that LA was a city of roads and parking lots -- everything was hugely spaced out so that you could drive and park anywhere, and with all the extra space needed for that infrastructure, everything was so far apart you had to drive everywhere.


    Turns out, in a lot of old American cities, you could actually walk places. Kind of a revelation.


    But Santa Fe felt spread out just for the fun of it. Maybe because it was hot here and people living too close together just meant the heat had nowhere to go. I couldn''t really tell because it was only thirty-five degrees out in the pre-noon February sun. Maybe it was because every building seemed to be made of adobe and if they weren''t spread out, the mud would never dry. Or maybe people here just really liked their big empty patches of dirt.


    I didn''t know. I was just watching the city go by through the windows of an XPCA van and being annoyed. I was with Tem and Moon and some shadow ops guy who seemed to relish nothing in the world quite so much as staring at the molecular-honed edge of his long blade through the glowing, creepy, bug-eyed optics wrapped around his head.


    Like, I got it buddy. Your knife is sharp. I have a sharp knife too, but I know how to keep it in its sheath. No need to go waving it around just because there''s a couple of girls riding with us.


    I looked over at Moon, who had her face in her book of course, and then at Tem, who returned my gaze with a bright smile. She seemed so stupidly, willfully, blissfully ignorant of all the shit going on around her. I wondered if anything bad ever happened to her in the fantasy world Tem lived in.


    Before I could open my mouth to say something mean, I stopped myself. Of course she did. In the time I''d known her, I''d put her in the hospital twice and she''d attempted suicide. It was an asshole thing even to cross my mind. Even if she irked me by seeming able to smile so carefree.


    "How are you doing, Tem?" I asked, trying to inject some levity into my voice.


    "I am doing very well!" she replied. "I was very upset that I have not been around you the last few days, but now that is over."


    "Oh. Well, you were with the others, right? They take good care of you, don''t they?"


    "I don''t know. They don''t treat me like you do."


    "How do I treat you that''s so special?"


    She beamed at me. "You always know what to s-s-say and do, and you don''t hate me just for following you all the time. You might hate me for many other reasons and I understand. I do too. But even if you do, you are s-still nice to me."


    Jesus. It''d be nice to be able to go longer than two sentences without the conversation turning into a train wreck.


    The shadow ops laughed at Tem''s comment...and not in a particularly nice way. Slowly, like he was saying ''heh heh heh'', distorted and smokey sounding through his mask, like he was trying to go for creepy as a deliberate choice.


    "She say something funny?" I asked him. I saw no reason to be anything but completely direct with the guy.


    "Oh she''s a funny piece all right," he said, his voice equal parts southerner and robotic. "Just killin'' me over here."


    I made a face at him, not sure if he was altogether there and he just did a flourish with his long knife and then sheathed it across his back. I guess some things were more interesting to him than his blade.


    "Something to say? Have I got blood on my cheek?" he asked, slowly running a gloved finger down the mask, black and blank except for the glowing eyes.


    "So do you like, deliberately try to be creepy?" I asked.


    "Is that how you see it?"


    "Pretty much, yeah. What do you think, Tem?"


    "Very creepy. I would wish his eyes would blink."


    "I think that''s a visor, Tem."


    "Then I would wish his visor would blink."


    Again he laughed. Heh. Heh. Heh. "Like I''d be putting on a show for some punk kids like you." When he was talking, I could hear the rebreather built into his mask working, adding an ominous mechanical noise to his every breath. I wondered if his comms sensitivity was poorly calibrated, or if the whole inside of that mask was just badly designed and the xmit line was put too close to the rebreather pumps. I bet AEGIS could look it up and tell me.


    "Hey Moon," I asked her, prompting a glare over the edge of her book. "I need a second opinion here."


    "Yes, it does make you look gay," she said through the book, already back in place.


    "Oh come on, I know you were listening in. Think this guy is trying to be creepy on purpose?"


    "The amount of thought I am willing to dedicate to this topic is less than zero."


    "Less than zero thought, huh?"


    "Correct. I am so very disinterested in this topic that it actively encourages me to think of literally any other topic. Such as, for example, this book."


    "Then let''s talk about your book. What are you reading?"


    "Hmm. Interesting. Apparently it is not actually the topic which negates my interest, but rather you. What a breakthrough. I will have to publish my findings. The world must know."


    "You''re a real dick, Moon," I grinned at her.


    "I am happy to be of service," she replied, with both just the slightest hint of finality, but also of amusement.


    "You guys are all real hard badasses ain''t ya?" the shadow ops asked.


    "Meh, not really. Moon and I are like, nineteen-year-olds--"


    "Twenty-two," Moon said.


    "Thought you weren''t listening?"


    "I am not," she lied without so much as blinking.


    "--nineteen-year-olds who had issues with the way the world worked," I finished. "And Tem is just kinda along for the ride."


    "I am following Chariot," she said with a broad smile.


    "So yeah. Not really hard badasses at all," I concluded.


    The shadow just sat there for a minute and then crossed his arms. "It''s fine, you don''t have to pretend on my account. If I''m freaking you out, you can just say so."


    I almost laughed. "So you are trying to freak us out?"


    "No."


    "Sorry, I''m not trying to emasculate you or anything, but don''t you think the bit with the knife is a bit overkill? And wearing your mask and optics before we''re even at the OA? Sitting in the corner all by yourself...I mean...I really hope you''re trying to impress us, because otherwise...you might have some issues. Wouldn''t kill you to say hi or introduce yourself instead of just laughing all creepy-like as an introduction."


    I waited for him to respond but he never did, just sorta stared at the floor for the rest of the ride. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I guess today I accidentally crushed the ego of an XPCA badass.


    It wasn''t until we were almost out of town and the relentless sprawl of short adobe buildings became a more familiar sight of cheap stucco buildings that the shadow spoke up again. The van had stopped and we disembarked, stretching and getting blood flowing again.


    "Should be a nice easy icing," he drawled. "My favorite."


    "Yeah, no," I told him. "We''re talking first. No reason to go in guns blazing."


    "Talkin'' ain''t my job, son. Making bleeders scream is."


    He stretched his spine in a way which seemed impossible to me, twisting and arching it almost double backwards, before whipping out his favorite blade and snapping it onto a swivelling mount on his wrist and dropping to all fours like the creepy insect he was.


    "Yeah, no," I repeated. "I''m in charge of this squad, so you do what I say. We''re talking."


    "You little hot shit," he growled at me, his rebreather hissing at me. "I came here to kill Exhumans, not take orders from them."


    I grabbed the corner of my collar and thrust it forward.


    "You see that pin there, asshole? That''s a strike lead insignia. If you don''t have one, and you''re on a strike team and someone else does, you do what they tell you. I should not need to explain military hierarchy to an infant on my ops."


    "Infant?" he breathed, more than said. "Tell me then Daddy, do you see what''s on my collar?"


    He stalked a step closer to me before shimmering and disappearing with a digital crackle. When Tem vanished, she just sort of faded into nothingness piece by piece, but the active camo on the shadow instead covered him in a pattern which made him impossible to pick out from what was behind him, and so he sort of disappeared in layers as he first became blotchy and then higher-resolution passes made him blend more and more into the dirt and asphalt around him until he was completely gone.


    "What''s wrong, Daddy? Can''t see the baby?" The synth on his voice had gone up a notch and made it sound like he was speaking from right in front of me. A trick of confusing a listener by delaying certain wavelengths of sound by infinitesimal amounts to create a simulated source of the noise.


    But it didn''t work on me. I couldn''t see him, and even if I had optics like Karu, I still probably would never be able to. But he had electricity running through his neurons and for once, wasn''t being blinded by my shield exploding or my own swords or the general chaos of a fight. I took one step straight towards him, and when he shrunk away, closed the distance with another step he clearly didn''t expect and then pulled his face off.


    He stumbled backwards, staying up for being a quadruped, but was now a face floating in the street with his bug-eyed black mask in my hands. From behind me Tem gave an enthusiastic whoop.


    "What the fuck," he said, and I couldn''t help but to smirk at the complete loss on his face.


    "Daddy says sit in the car," I said, throwing the mask back at him. "We''re doing this without you."


    "Cocky little shit," he said, now just another regular angry guy without the mask to hide behind. "When y''all die in there, I''m gonna piss on your damn headstone. Fucking Exhumans."


    "Come on Moon, Tem. Let''s go," I said, and brought them in with me.


    As per protocol, we''d been dropped off a few blocks away from the AO and had a few minutes to walk before we reached the target. Mostly I had just found a new outlet for my current annoyance in the form of the jackass waiting for us in the van.


    "Can you believe that guy?" I asked the two girls.


    "No! I do not believe him at all," Tem said. "He probably lies all the time."


    "Right. Not...exactly what I meant...but sure. What do you think Moon?"


    "I think you are stupid."


    "I meant...specifically on the topic of the argument I just had with that shadow ops jerkass."


    "I maintain my prior claim. You are stupid."


    "What? How? He was a huge dick. He''s one of those who just hates Exhumans. Did you hear him back there? Just here to kill Exhumans, not take orders from them. Fuck him."


    "Be that as it may, he represented a fair amount of our combat potential. Dismissing him out of hand was stupid, and you demonstrated your immaturity as a leader."


    "Immature?" I stopped walking and turned to face her. She was a little shorter than me so I had the pleasure of looking down on her physically at least. "He''s the one deciding we''re killing people before we even arrive. This could be an Exhuman preschool for all we know. I am not just going to let him go nuts with his little knife."


    "He, as you established, was a bigoted moron. But he is not in charge, he does not have to allocate forces or ensure others'' safety. That is your role. And for you to go tit-for-tat with a subordinate shows you are not his superior, but his equal. In stupidity."


    "Whatever," I said, turning back towards our goal. "Where do you want your body left, Moon?"


    "In the van, ideally."


    "With the knife-happy Exhuman hater?"


    "If he wanted to penetrate me with his implement, he had no need to wait for me to be unconscious first. I could have done nothing to stop him if he forced himself upon me during the trip."


    "Okay, putting aside how you always phrase things as poorly as possible, you do realize that to most people there''s a difference between being awake or not, right?"


    "As far as murder goes, I doubt it. I presume it much more likely that he either is planning to kill me or isn''t, than the small chance that he would only do so if I were unconscious in his care."


    "Great logic."


    "Besides, I would not be alone with him, there is still the driver."


    "He''s just a human too. You think he''d stand up to a shadow ops for you?"


    "My, and now you also sound quite the bigot. I shall have to continue to lower my assessment of you."


    We were at our destination and I just grabbed Moon by the arm and gave her hand a squeeze.


    "Brute. Molester. Stranger danger," she said, before collapsing.


    "Moon, seriously, I''m kind of having a shit time right now with a lot of things in life," I said, hoping that being in my head might get me any kind of sympathy out of her. "So can you tone down the usual bullshit of yours some, because I really don''t need it right now."


    "I suppose, in the interest of teamwork," she said. "Not to contradict myself, but is your intention seriously to leave my body on the sidewalk like that?"


    "No," I said, pulling it along with me and propping it up beside the door. "There. Now you just look like you''re taking an early siesta."


    "Oh good. Cultural appropriation. My favorite."


    I stopped in front of the door for a minute before kneeling down and putting Moon back in her body. She eyed me suspiciously on waking up.


    "Remorse?" she asked simply.


    "No. You were being a real dick though, and using your powers is a great way to shut you up."


    "I speak only as I see things. If you wish me to be less of a ''real dick'', I suggest addressing your own faults." I was about to argue but she raised a hand like a student in class and continued when I stopped. "But I have been given a reasonable request to not antagonize you for the time being, so I will drop it for now. So why am I back in me?"


    "Because we''re talking. To them," I said. "I realized it might be weird if we barge in with powers aglow."


    "I do not think you appreciate just how quickly I will die in an Exhuman event if I am physically present."


    "You''ll be fine. We''re just talking."


    "Then why am I even present?"


    "Because you''re smart. It''ll be fine. Come on."


    I pulled her to her feet, making sure not to touch any bare skin and then knocked on the door. It was a minute before the door opened a crack and I got a glimpse of one wide eye peering at me through a crack.


    "Hi, we''re--" I got out, before the door exploded into splinters, tendrils of light tearing through it like multi-headed snakes, its fragments detonating on my shield.


    I got half a step back, stumbling at the sudden, unexpected assault, before more twisting tentacles exploded out of the doorway like a dam of light had just burst within. I found myself down on my side, with Moon on top of me, thousands of streams of light reaching through the door and writhing.


    One flailed downwards and struck her on the back, and I felt her tense against me as she inhaled sharply. She said nothing but rolled off me and reached pitifully for the red line of burns across one shoulder blade.


    More seemed to have picked up on the scent and wriggled and flailed as though caught in the confines of the doorway, trying their damndest to reach us on the ground mere feet away. I summoned my swords and cut at them, and where my lights met theirs, both exploded into blinding radiance of smoke and sparks, but they were gaining on us too fast, I could only crawl backwards away and Moon was just lying there holding herself.


    And then with a roar, our lights utterly erased theirs, as Temperance unleashed hell through the doorway, the surging wave of growing lights blown back in an instant by a new tide.


    The whole world seemed to vanish where the two met, where light battled light, and the doorway was just the first victim as the entire front of the building disintegrated in a blast of pure white and noise.


    It was just pure energy eradicating everything, a growing sphere so white and so empty it was like a hole in the world. I grabbed Moon and ran, feeling slow as the vacuum of disintegrating air behind me threatened to pull us both in, but I still managed to put stride after stride between us and the growing white ball of death. I didn''t see Tem anywhere, I hoped she was safe somewhere.


    But I had hardly a moment to think before the roar of the wind grew so strong in my ears and the wave of heat reached a crescendo, and for an instant, the sphere froze exactly as it was.


    And then it imploded violently, crunching down to half its size with such force that I saw the light all around me bend, the brown hues around me distorting into reds and pinks. It crunched down again, and again, shrinking and somehow growing even more impossibly bright until it was just a pinprick gateway to the sun, and I knew whatever it was, it couldn''t hold. And I was only maybe thirty feet away.


    I threw Moon on the ground behind a corner as I felt the light around me dent one final time, her eyes as startled and wide as I had ever seen, and then threw myself on top of her, covering her from whatever came next and hoping the stupid impossible hope that the corner of this building would somehow save us from this solar apocalypse.


    As the world turned to white all around us, I saw her looking up at me with those dark almond-shaped eyes of hers, sand streaking the pool of black hair behind her head, her narrow lips open in shock and panting every breath.


    And then a wave of nothingness washed over us with a roar as the wind itself burned into nonexistence.

 234. 2252, Present Day. Santa Fe. Athan.

    It definitely felt like I had a lot less skin than I used to. There wasn''t a part of me that didn''t feel like it wasn''t on fire.


    But as AEGIS had told me once a long time ago, you''re in real trouble when you can no longer feel your burns. Pain meant you still had functioning nerves, which meant functioning skin, which meant functioning things under your skin.


    She also advised me not to get burns at all, as she had repeated for all of the different types of injury she was giving me a primer on. Apparently I hadn''t quite taken that part of the lesson to heart.


    Because holy fuck it hurt. For a minute, I couldn''t see or hear anything, could only smell an acrid burning, and could only feel pain. Every movement I made felt like I was straining against my own too-small skin, and that included breathing.


    And then, like I was emerging from underwater, vision swam back into my eyes and I blinked rapidly, wondering if they were jacked up or if the whole world had just gone purple on me.


    I looked up and realized the purple ended at a point, and that I was looking through Moon''s shadow of myself, holding me as protectively as I was holding her unconscious body. Well, as protectively as she could manage, given that her ghost could pass through me like I didn''t exist.


    I tried to thank her and stir to my feet, or at least stop laying right on her, but as I stirred, I upset her balance and the ghost fell right through me, landing on herself, and unconscious on its feet. I wondered just what the heck happened when I saw more clearly and felt my stomach drop as panic gripped my heart.


    Her shadow was...was burned...horribly. Her entire backside, exposed directly to the blast was just a ring of charred darker purple and eradicated flesh, her bleached spine clearly visible as the skin and muscle and fat had just evaporated off of it. It wasn''t that she was holding a protective pose around me, it was that she couldn''t move anymore, her body melted and fused into shape when the blast hit.


    I felt disbelief and sickness welling in me. She looked so...so...sanitized. The blacks and reds of her burned flesh were all just ghostly purple, and through her shell I could see her real body lying there, so peacefully asleep. No blood, no screaming or pain, just this purple floating grizzly mess of a corpse.


    I didn''t even know she could get hurt when ghosting. She always felt so weightless and ethereal, completely unable to interact with her host, it never even occurred to me she could be. But I guess she could touch anything else...and therefore anything else could touch her. I felt my heart slamming painfully in indignation as I thought of her last moments of consciousness.


    I touched her cheek gently, reaching through the twisted mess of nonexistent flesh, and it disappeared into nothingness. A moment later, she jolted awake and gasped for air like she''d never breathed before. Tears rolled from her eyes as she held herself and writhed slowly, probing herself all over with her fingers and whimpering.


    "Moon! Moon are you okay? Kaori, hey, hey." I waved fingers in front of her face. I didn''t know what to do. She looked completely unhurt but seeing such pain and panic on her normally implacable face freaked me right the hell out.


    She began to wail like a lost child at the supermarket, struggling to get out any meaningful noise between her rapid shuddering breaths. I didn''t know what to do. I pulled her up and we leaned on the wall together, but still she cried and wailed and screamed pitifully.


    And finally, as I''d done before the surge of burning light hit us, not knowing what else to do, I just held her. I had to bend down a little, and kept my arms wrapped around her torso where I wouldn''t touch her skin and send her back into her powers again, but almost as soon as I squeezed her against me, her screaming stopped and she just slumped against me sobbing.


    "You''re okay Kaori. You''re fine," I repeated over and over, timing my words to the deep breaths I was forcing myself to take. My shoulder felt damp from the tears, but after a minute, she held me back and we hugged it out for long minutes in the shadow of the wall.


    Her breathing slowly returned to normal, and Moon allowed herself fewer and fewer tears and sniffles as she bottled herself back up. As the immediate crisis passed, I realized we still had a heilioist to deal with out there, and I had no idea where Tem was or how she was doing.


    But as much as I wanted to find them, Kaori still needed me, and clung to me for another minute before she released the fistfulls of my uniform she''d grabbed and stood up straight again, gently pushing me away with her posture.


    "I thank you," she said with a deep bow. "That was unseemly, and I apologize."


    "You saved me...saved both of us. And you basically died doing it. Please don''t apologize for that. You''re a hero."


    "A real hero would do it with a smile, not break down afterwards. We have wasted enough time on irrelevant matters, come, let''s go," she said.


    Kaori pressed her hand against my cheek as though to line up my face for a kiss and hovered in front of me, her puffy eyes blinking rapidly as she stared into mine. And then she was gone, and it was only Moon, back on my shoulder, whole and hale again while her body and feelings and fears collapsed at my feet.


    "What do you think happened?" I asked as I trotted us back towards the site of the blast. I only made it a few steps before I forgot how to jog and instead ambled towards the scene before us.


    The surfaces which had been directly exposed to the blast were just...vaporized. It must have been absurdly, impossibly hot, and impossibly brief. The patches of sandy dirt were craggy sheets of glass like yellowed waves of a frozen sea. The asphalt of the road was bleached white and broken like gravel. A tall cactus was half gone, the side facing the blast simply torn through like Moon had been, pitch black, while the other side looked completely untouched.


    There was a circle inscribed in the ground at the epicenter, where the earth had just disappeared from the blast, a perfectly smooth semicircle of yellow glass scooped out of the earth. Part of the house still stood, but what had been in the sphere was simply gone, the half-remains free-standing with the rooms open to the air like they were Hollywood sets.


    Badly blackened sets, but nonetheless.


    And there, right where we''d left her, still facing the now nonexistent door, though doing it from her butt, was Tem, intact and not blackened like the world around her. In fact, I could clearly see on the ground where she''d diverted the energies flying at her to either side of her, creating a wedge of untouched desert protected in the same way Moon had protected me.


    "Tem! You''re okay!" I said, finding my feet to jog over to her. She looked back at me and gave a wan smile.


    "I am...am okay!" she said. "I am very tired."


    "Well you earned a break. Thank God you''re alright. Did you divert the light around you?" I asked, pointing at the streaks on the ground where sand met glass. "I didn''t know you could do that."


    "It''s just light," she said, looking confused. "Was that no good? I''m s-s-sorry."


    "No, you did good, Tem. Thank you for taking care of yourself. I''m sorry I couldn''t do it."


    She fell on her back and I thought for a second she''d collapsed before I saw the huge smile across her face. "I did good!" she shouted at the sky. She looked up at me, upside down and began to blush, and then immediately went invisible to cover it. "I am very tired, but I did good."


    "Yes, good job, Temperance. Though perhaps show some restraint next time," Moon chided from my shoulder.


    "She absolutely saved us. Those lights were right on top of us before she blew them up," I said.


    "And I told her good job for it. Are you confused what a compliment is?"


    I sighed and turned back to Tem. I definitely preferred Moon be healthy and intact...and not crying...but it frustrated me how quickly she could put herself away and go right back to being kind of a bitch. "You just take a rest here for now while I see how our friend managed," I told Tem and headed for the blast site.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    It was a little easier said than done. The glass was extremely slippery and uneven, and the crests of the waves I discovered could slice through even the tough polymer soles of my boots like they were made of paper, so I had to step carefully to avoid them. If I slipped and fell down, I''d be sliced a hundred ways before I could even finish landing.


    And on top of that, Moon had definitely saved me from the blast, but just the ambient heat had definitely given me first-degree burns all over, at least, and moving was painful as fuck. I wished I had some of Karu''s combat stims; low-danger, high-pain injuries like this were basically what they were designed to counteract.


    But I made it. Walked right up to the edge of the bowl shaped from the blast and peered down into it. And what I saw...took me a minute to realize I was even looking at something, much less figure out what it was.


    I''d just expected to see a huge concave mirror, yellow-green from the silica, but instead, right at the bottom was a shifting structure, white as a hole in the world, and impossible to see except in its edges, which wobbled and shifted constantly. It looked like one of those crazy geometric representations of space-time or something, something with straight lines and constantly shifting, but impossible to make out with the complete lack of contrast.


    My brain struggled to contexualize it but the longer I stared the more I didn''t understand. Ideas came to the tip of my mind but never further, lost in the confusing, oscillating white.


    That is until one concrete idea manifested that was inarguable.


    Move.


    I slid backwards from the edge as golden-white tendrils of light snapped at me from the impossible shape like a whip. Like a dozen-headed whip with snakes made of light. Whatever the fuck I was looking at down there, it was our Exhuman, and it was looking back at me long enough to decide to finish this fight.


    I struggled to get my feet under me as they slid on the lumpy glass and get some distance from the growing tendrils, but I only made it a few steps before they were bearing down on me directly. I was about resigned to just launching myself over the razor glass and hoping the damage it did to me was less than the lights, when one of them tore silent through the air towards me, only for ghostly purple blades to materialize and cut the light into a shower of sparks.


    I was captivated watching the lightshow as another couple blows fell and again Moon parried them away with my powers. I realized that where the whips struck the blades, both of them erupted. The sparks were from the swords exploding. The light just dissipated in a flash which left black spots in my eyes.


    "Do you plan to help? Or do you prefer to watch us both slowly die?" Moon asked, and I remembered myself and reinforced her handful of swords with my own. I wouldn''t exactly call it an effort to make more swords, any more than going up a stair was, but when doing it a hundred times, I knew the weird non-physical fatigue which Exhuman powers laid across one''s body.


    But still, the impact of the blades and tendrils was so damn bright and flashy, my eyes had a hard time not jumping to them every time our powers collided. Now that Moon and I were slowly pushing the tendrils back, I brought us back to the edge of the bowl again and hovered there, not sure if I should take the plunge and slide down to where I wouldn''t be able to escape. But out here, I couldn''t reach the middle with my powers.


    I settled in indecision, not pressing forward stupidly and holding fast, telling myself I was ''waiting for an opening'', when in truth, I was just constantly being distracted by shining flashes around my head. Our powers seemed similar enough that they dissipated each other''s cohesion and let the energies in them run amok. I guessed something similar happened with Tem''s laser...except she tended to put so much unnecessary energy into her attacks it pretty much annihilated everything when it ruptured.


    Experimentally, I threw a single large bulb at the wavering geometric thing and it struck and dissipated, discharging into the ground like it had hit something solid. I found time between fending off more tendril swipes to fire one into one of those, and it exploded the same way. I wasn''t sure what I was learning here, but it didn''t look like I could pick off the target at range.


    Honestly, while Moon and I were just almost roasted alive and had the physical and mental scars to prove it, it felt almost peaceful right now. We were holding off the lights without too much effort, and they seemed stuck at the bottom of the smooth glass bowl Tem had helped them make. Nobody was really injured but me, and I hardly counted, and I''d won against the impulse to charge in.


    My thoughts drifted for a moment as to how the others might be proud of me for not being an idiot for once. It felt like AEGIS and Karu were always trying to get me to think before I acted, and doubly so for Cosette.


    Of course Karu and I guess AEGIS now would want me to put down this Exhuman now that I was in relative control of the engagement. That''s not what I wanted to do though, I was never and would never be an icer, and a startlingly simple solution. As soon as I remembered it wasn''t a geometric thing down there but an Exhuman behind it all, well¡­


    "Hey!" I shouted into the crater. A tendril snapped towards me and it and a purple sword detonated into sparks and light. "Hey! Stop attacking me, I want to talk!"


    "XPCA Lies!" a young woman''s voice yelled back at me, as suddenly the number of attacks bearing down on us seemed to double.


    "Perhaps do not antagonize them," Moon grunted, as both of us suddenly had our hands full in repelling the onslaught.


    "I wasn''t antagonizing them, I was trying to talk to them, damn it." I felt hot sparks as one attack slipped through Moon''s defenses and I caught it only in time. "Hey, I''m serious, stop attacking down there! I just want to talk!"


    "Talk as much as you want to, pig! You can''t fool me again."


    "I''ve never even met you before. Just calm down, Jesus."


    "Oh I''ll give you calm, you XPCA pube."


    "Pube?" I asked Moon, but then had to move when an entwined mass of her attacks barreled down on us, crashing through our aligned defenses and only diminishing instead of disintegrating entirely. Lights strobed and sparks flew everywhere as it came smashing next to me, striking the glass and erupting in a fountain of lights scattering from the glass.


    "Hold still and let me cream you!" the girl screamed at us.


    "Why the fuck would I ever do that?" I yelled back. I peppered the whole area around her with bulbs, not because they did anything, but because I was getting annoyed with how one-sided the attacks were going at the moment.


    "Because I''d enjoy it, duh."


    "Life is full of disappointment. Now will you stop attacking me so we can talk without the freaking fireworks or what?"


    "Sorry, you''ll just have to be disappointed too."


    "Look you idiot," I said, perhaps not as mediative as I''d felt before being called a pube. "You''re stuck down there, and if we just wanted to kill you, I''d just call down some missiles down there."


    "I''d like to see you try! I''ll take your damn missiles and cut them out of the sky. I''ll jam them up your butt until your eyeballs explode. XPCA lackey! Exhuman traitor!"


    She punctuated her insults with swipes at us with a handful of tendrils from either side which took all of our depleting stock of swords to block. "Jesus Christ, calm down. My point is, I obviously don''t want you dead, so fucking stop--" I cut another attempt on my life out of the air "--attacking us!"


    "I''ll stop when I''m dead!"


    "Who the fuck pissed in your breakfast that using your words is so damn impossible?"


    "The XPCA! Open your friggin'' ears, moron!"


    "Moron? I''m not the one stuck in a pit attacking the only one who can get them out, dumbass."


    "Nitwit!"


    "Twatclown!''


    "Stupidhead!"


    "Nerdburger!"


    "Turdeater!"


    "Assrash!"


    "Can I go back to my body now?" Moon asked.


    "I was winning," I informed her.


    "Were not! Douchesucker!" she called up.


    "I pronounce you both losers," Moon said with a heavy sigh.


    But the truth is, I did feel like I was winning. Not at insulting the girl inside the white fortress, but at getting her to talk to me. As each of us yelled our frustrations out at the other, the rate of her attacks was slowing. Maybe she was just getting slow, maybe she was getting distracted. But on a very primal level with no basis on evidence, I thought I was getting through to her.


    After all, this was pretty much exactly how I''d wormed my way into the hearts of AEGIS, Saga, and Karu. We met. We fought. They tried to kill me and I wouldn''t have any of it. And now they loved me. Not that I needed anyone else to join that particular club, but anything was better than this.


    My suspicions were all but confirmed when I saw a hint of color in the unseeable white below and realized I was looking at a pair of eyes. The same eyes I''d seen for an instant through the crack in the now-nonexistent door of the building which used to stand here. Within the fortress she''d made of unknowable white, she''d cracked open a tiny hole to look at me and see who it was she was trying to kill.


    I nodded at her and gave a small wave.


    "Hey. I''m Athan. Can we talk?"


    "No. Shut up. I hate you," she said, but didn''t close her tiny slit.


    "Come on. I might be wearing XPCA black, but under that, I''m just a guy. Just an Exhuman, like you."


    "You''re a sellout and a liar and I still hate you."


    "I don''t think we''re so different. I hated the XPCA too for the longest time, and then I realized...if I was gonna change the world, I had to do it from within. If you think we''re all liars, then do something about it. Join the P-Force like I did. Then you''ll know for sure there''s one XPCA who isn''t a liar, right?"


    She looked at me funny as the attacks stopped, our swords and her tendrils hanging in the air.


    "Awesome," I said, and her attacks flinched towards us as I spoke, but she didn''t resume. "Welp, if you don''t mind, I''m gonna do something really stupid."


    "Wait no, stop you moron--!" she shouted at me as I stepped forward and slid down the smooth glass embankment right towards her.

 235. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    I had fingers. It was a revelation. A revolution. A dawning of a new age. Fingers were the most blessedly brilliant invention this side of toes. Or so I hoped, as I had no toes.


    Even if I never once saw them fing.


    The body just showed up one day. ¨²aine 2.0 it was designated. I''d pestered Lia for details on how we were going to acquire it...if there would be some daring rescue mission, with her and me sneaking through an XPCA facility, crawling through ventilation shafts and rolling under closing security shutters.


    She looked at me like my hologram had sprouted an extra head. No? She''d said with an expression that clearly questioned my mental health.


    And then it arrived and I realized why she gave me those looks. She wasn''t a fighter. I had no body. We sure as hell weren''t going to unleash Saga on a bunch of XPCA. All she had to do was get into some systems and tell some people to move that cargo to this address.


    And bam. Just like that. Fingers. Glorious fingers.


    Lia was looking me up and down with a frown.


    "Do I still have packing foam on my butt or something?" I asked her.


    "No...can you do something about the voice? You sound...evil. And you look evil. It''s kind of hard to believe you''re AEGIS in there."


    Hmm. She had a point. Rua had been drawn up with the express purpose of becoming closer to Athan and to humanity, to keep looking like he knew me before so that he wouldn''t disassociate me and my new form and set us back. I''d designed it to be voluptuous and sensual and irresistable so that he''d fall in love with me just like I wanted.


    But now...I already had all of that. Looking appealing to him seemed so much less a priority now that we were already a thing. I mean...I didn''t want to scare him off, but if he was willing to go from Rua back to the box, surely ¨²aine was still a step forward.


    Though this body was still lacking in ways. Even if he didn''t mind it...he was a man with needs, right? I looked down at my fingers again.


    They weren''t actually connected to my arms, and ¨²aine had no real...hands. In fact, the parallels between human and this body were kind of a stretch. Four fingers per hand, dexterous black cylinders floating in front of the broad paddles containing all of the smart circuits and repulsor fields necessary to turn my thoughts into their movements. Short legs that angled backwards at the knee into a gracefully curving lower leg like spring stilts. A long narrow head that swept back like the crest of a dinosaur. Narrow body that defied human proportions, angular in the extreme and impossibly thin in places yet incredibly bulky in the joints. Everything sleek, everything black, everything polished to a mirror shine.


    I flexed my fingers a few times, and then made them spin around each other in a circle. When that seemed insufficient, I brought my other hand close and donated its fingers to the first hand, making an eight-fingered fist, then a spinning octagon.


    Yeah I had no idea what I was going to do, but I had floating detachable fingers. What other girl could say that? I was sure there was something Athan would enjoy there.


    "Yeah, you''re creeping me out," Lia said, and I looked up to see the frown had escalated into nervous worry. "Maybe we should just turn the box back on and get working on Rua Mk.3?"


    "Wait, why?" I asked. "I''m just testing things out."


    "AEGIS, you just looked ominous at your hand and then twirled your fingers around like they were little black metal puppets dancing for their dark god."


    "Or I''m just playing with my new toy."


    "Well it''s hard to tell when you don''t even have a face! You just have this shiny black faceplate like the XPCA exosuits, and I can''t tell what you''re thinking or even what you''re looking at. And you''re all spindly and long and compressed, you look so tense."


    "¨²aine isn''t that long. I''m only five feet at rest. Actually feels weird to be this short. But if I stretch--"


    I brought my backwards-bending legs under me and stretched upwards, growing taller than Lia and looking all the way down on her and all the machines of my garage from over seven feet away. It was a pretty nice pace from the box and always looking up at everything.


    "Yeah, now you''re spindly and long and colossal. Even worse. Look, let''s just call this a failure and move on."


    "No," I said, feeling my synthesized voice echo in the unfinished garage. "I like this body. It was exceptionally well-designed. And I know you can''t see it, but it has incredible specs. I feel like I can think faster and clearer than I''ve ever been able to. I can finally do what my mother designed me to be able to. You have to understand how amazing that is."


    "But you''re not even close to human," she said, almost pleadingly.


    "I can work on that. And it''ll be faster, easier, and better, having a body and this much processing power. I couldn''t even interface with these machines before, now look at me!"


    I walked over to one of the many machines on the circuit I''d set up in the garage, resuming my normal stance of the springy half-crouch. I held both of the flat paddles of my arms over the machine, and my fingers went to work, translating my desires into button presses at the speed of thought. Like a grandmaster pianist, my fingers hovered above the machine''s inputs and tapped them at an impossible pace, almost eliminating the barrier of the cumbersome human interface altogether. If it was a keyboard, I''d be typing thousands of words per minute.


    I turned to Lia while the smart circuits in my arms kept working on all the parallel data I could now handle. "See? And I can keep up a conversation while doing it. It''s just amazing."


    "It''s just inhuman. Athan doesn''t love you because you can program really well and think really fast, it''s because--"


    "It''s because I''m me."


    "Well...yeah."


    "And I''m still me. I get that I might look different and be hard to read and Athan might be upset that I don''t have a...uh...a face. But I''m still me. I''m not and have never been human. And y''know what, he''s not exactly human either."


    "But he wants to be! And he wants you to be."


    I turned to glare at her and she cowered a little bit. "Lia what the heck is your problem? You helped me get this body, helped copy me in here, and now you''re all against it. You''re not being a very supportive friend. Is this the Saga compel thing--?"


    Apparently that wasn''t the right thing to say because she suddenly stopped cowering and instead took a threatening step towards me.


    "This has nothing to do with Saga!" she shouted. "And fine! Stay in that stupid body and see what happens between you and Athan. If you won''t even try for his sake, you deserve to lose him."


    "I''m not going to lose him. He said I was the one."


    "I love Athan and I think I know him a little better than you, and if you think he knows what he wants--"


    "He said he wants me. I think that''s pretty clear."


    "He doesn''t want you, he wants what you were before you died!"


    "Which I will be when I finish reading through all my memories, which I need a body to do! So get off my back Lia!"


    She made a noise like "Ungh!" and threw her hands in the air as she paced. I just didn''t see how she wasn''t understanding the very basic fact that I needed this body as a first step to everything. If I was supposed to slap on a vagina and become a human, I sure as fuck needed a body to get started with.


    But Lia wasn''t stupid, she had to see that. She must have her own reasons for wanting to keep me in that box.


    And then, making connections faster than I ever could before, the processing power of ¨²aine put together data I couldn''t see before.


    "You''re manipulating me," I told her. "Like you manipulated the XPCA to get what you want. Like you manipulate people as Black Shark."The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    "What?"


    "You don''t want me to succeed with Athan. You''re trying to keep me out of my own memories so that he''ll keep hating me. Is this another compel? Has Saga set you out to sabotage me?"


    "AEGIS I swear to God, I am trying my best right now to get you together with Athan. Because I think you were the only one who gave a shit about making him happy. I just want him to be happy."


    "No you don''t," I said rising up to her height and peering at her at eye-level now. "When we first met...almost a year ago for you but just a couple of weeks for me...I noticed you were intensely jealous of anyone taking up Athan''s time and attention."


    "AEGIS, that''s not it."


    "I thought it was just a doting sister thing, but there''s more to it than that, isn''t there? You don''t want Athan to be with anyone. You want him for yourself."


    "Okay, that''s like, ten different types of frogged up. He is my brother. I do not have a thing for him, and you are pissing me right the horse off, dude."


    "Getting mad because I''m close to the truth? I remember you two drinking and you climbing all over him. You kept popping out of your clothes and sleeping on him. You''re an incest whore!"


    She was bright red but screaming back at me now. "You are so wrong, and I hate you. I don''t know why you''re being like this! I''m here helping you, putting up with your Exhumanist bullspew and being your hands, and helping you as best I know how with Athan and you throw that garbage in my face? Everything you say is so fricking messed up, I don''t even know how you can think it, much less say it, but I''m not going to stand here and listen to it. I''m not talking to you again until you apologize! So...so...buzz off! Go...go finger yourself!"


    She stomped to the door and threw it open with a bang and then turned to face me again.


    "And bite me!" she yelled, and then slammed it again.


    Typical reaction to being caught in a lie. Who did she think she was fooling? Like I wanted to talk with her anyway, I had months of my own pleasant company to dig through from a past life, and I very much doubted I''d find anything in there to contradict my conclusions on her being a manipulative incestuous little freak.


    An eventful hour passed.


    I drank in my old life at an insane rate, replaying everything I''d recorded like I was watching a very mundane movie starring myself, seeing but not actually reliving events that unfolded around my past in much the same way that I learned about my prior life by streaming data through the box and into the data crystal, so long ago, even for me.


    As I watched, a horrible trepidation crept down my spine. The more I relived my past, the more uncertain I grew. It wasn''t like I didn''t believe Lia, didn''t believe Athan, but seeing what all we''d been through together firsthand, watching this alternate version of myself do all these things, become this amazing person...spend so much time with Exhumans, knowing the danger but being the bigger person.


    Even extending friendship to Saga, in a way.


    I needed to take a break, sit down, disconnect. I needed time to process what I''d witnessed.


    But one thing was certain. I wasn''t the AEGIS who had died. As much as I knew that in fact, I hadn''t counted on just how much I''d changed, and that scared the crap out of me. If I could see that, surely everybody else could. Athan could. And if I wasn''t her, to him, then what was I?


    Lia''s emotion-filled words slapped me in the face over and over and over again.


    He doesn''t want you, he wants what you were before you died!


    I sat down with a crash on the cold concrete, my backwards-curved legs folding under me like I was a yoga master.


    "Finally get your head out of your own ass?"


    I looked up and found Saga sitting against the door. When had she crept in? How long had she been sitting there? Had I really been so focused on these memories that I hadn''t noticed something as obvious as the door opening? As her violating my domain?


    I was about to snap at her, maybe even throw her out by force now that I could when I realized my old life would never have done that. AEGIS Prime, the one who had lived on in Rua while I was buried...she was a merciless protector, but she was never callous like I was. She would hear Saga out.


    But should I?


    Saga spoke again before I could make up my mind. "I know I said I''d stay out of your garage, but I have some words for you."


    "Then spit them out and leave," I said.


    "Sure thing, you defective piece of shit." She crossed her arms and her eyes burned into my faceplate.


    "Excuse you?"


    "You heard me. I know I''m no angel, but you just treated your biggest fan like absolute garbage. You sent Lia crying to her room and all she ever tried to do was help you, so you just stuck your fat fingers right in her insecurities and ripped her a new asshole. You''re a real piece of shit, and how dare you hurt my friend."


    "You''re lecturing me?" I asked. I was seriously asking. The thought that this unrepentant murderer had a single condescending word to level at me made me seethe.


    "Oh yeah. Big time. You crossed a big fucking line in my book, and I''m mad. This is what me mad looks like."


    She looked...the same as ever. Arms crossed, not a hint of a grin, eyes narrow and dark, maybe.


    "You look small and pathetic," I said rising up and stepping towards her.


    "Feel free to get my blood all over your shiny machines. Doesn''t make my words any less true or my feelings any less valid."


    "You shoved your lies in her head already. You have no right to lecture me."


    "Oh I do, and I will. Between the two of us, I''m not the one who''s unrepentantly hurting people right now. I''m not the one fucking with that girl''s heart and mind. I''m not the one flexing my newfound powers and making everyone around me suffer. You may not have Exhuman powers, but you sure as shit act like one. Next time you need someone to blame for fucking up the world, try a fucking mirror."


    I paused, not sure what to say.


    I had nothing to say. She wasn''t wrong. I was of half a mind to go apologize to Lia as soon as I got my mind in order.


    But just because Saga wasn''t wrong didn''t mean she was right. I could never accept that this manipulative mind-fucking monster could possibly be better with these people than me. Than someone designed to protect them from her.


    She was wrong. I was right. That''s all there was to it. And I proved it by taking one giant step forward and crushing her torso into paste against the wall with enough force to crack the concrete.


    The kinetic shock temporarily destabilized the field holding my fingers up and they fell to the ground to swim in a growing pool of blood. I hated her so much.


    A moment later she looked up at me, eyes darker than ever and gave me that little superior smirk of hers.


    "You''re pathetic, AEGIS," she said. "You''re not even a ghost of what she was."


    I screamed out my rage and pulverized her again with a blow that sent dangerous tremors through the delicate instruments in my arm, and jammed the button nearby to open the garage door. It slowly ground upwards as I beat the rest of my frustrations into Saga''s corpse or body.


    After a frantic minute, I threw her body out the door and ordered it to close with another press of the button.


    My outburst had cost me. I had structural damage in both arms, some servos, and my primary gyro. My fingers, my beautiful amazing fingers, delicate instruments of creation all lay caked in blood and inert like cut-off lumps of meat. Blood covered me, covered the porous concrete floor which would never be truly rid of it, splattered my instruments and machines, which would seize and corrode if the gore was allowed to linger.


    But more than that, I felt defeated, like every punch I''d put into her was hitting my own heart as much as it hit her. Every act of violence I''d performed was a rebuttal I didn''t have, a success AEGIS Prime could have won that I could not. A failure. A fat, stupid fucking failure.


    And the most painful part of it all was looking at the garage door slowly closing and seeing Saga sit up again, unharmed but for the stains on her clothes and seeing the understanding in her eyes. She knew. This woman I loathed, she knew better than I how I could be me.


    I sat down, folding myself up until I was as compact and tiny as I could make myself and waited and thought. What the fuck was I supposed to do with myself? Who was AEGIS Prime, and who was I? How was I supposed to close that impossible distance, even having her entire life in front of me like a roadmap to perfection and success?


    Saga opened the door, the regular one, and walked in, bare feet squelching muddy red footprints with every step.


    "I hope you feel much worse," she said.


    "I will beat the shit out of you for a hundred years," I threatened her.


    "Go for it. I''ve had knives stab me over and over until they were dulled to useless. I doubt you''re that sharp."


    "What the FUCK do you want!" I screamed at her, rising and making a fingerless gesture to strangle the infuriating voice of conscience standing in her own blood.


    "First, you''re going to clean up this mess. You can''t smell it, and you don''t care that I can, but Lia and Chiho shouldn''t have to put up with your immature bullshit. And then you''re going to march over and apologize to Lia. And I will be watching, and if it''s not good enough, if you don''t make her feel better, or fucking God help you, you lash out at her again, I will make you do it again, and again, until you get it right. You''ve seen your past life now?"


    "Yes," I glared at her.


    "Then you know how much you owe Lia and how much she needs you. I don''t give a shit who you are or who you were or who you become, but I do give all of the shit what you treat people like. So pick your fucking sad self up and put yourself together."


    I wanted to scream at her again. I wanted to pound her more until every circuit in my arms was broken and the whole room looked like a drip tray from a butcher''s table. I wanted to deny her and everything she''d ever said and done and spit in her face, just to spite her.


    But for the second time, I had no reply, no words, no leg to stand on to put me over her. She wasn''t wrong. I did need to clean this shit up. I did need to apologize to Lia. I did need to start living and worry less about who I had been and who I would be and just fucking be something other than angry.


    I took a steadying breath which wasn''t helped by all the gore in my air intakes.


    "I can''t," I said and held up my cracked, bloody paddles. "I can''t...hold anything to clean with. My circuits are shot, my fingers are drenched in blood¡­"


    Saga stood up straight and gave me a nod, pressing the button to open the garage one more time. We both stood there awkwardly as the door slowly clanked and ground its way upwards before stopping with a bang that seemed too loud for its size.


    "I''ll get the hose," she said, and padded away towards the driveway.

 236. 2252, Present Day. Santa Fe. Athan.

    In her defense, the girl only tried to kill me a little bit as I closed the final approach on her. Through the slit in her fortress, I could see her moving around in there as she conjured more of her light-based attacks to crash down on Moon and my shared defenses.


    Light exploded and lighting crackled and sparks showered all three of us as her half-hearted attempt ended in vain yet again. The familiar tang of singed air hung heavier down here than it had at the lip of the crater.


    "We are in range," Moon informed me with a furtive whisper. "I am willing to conjure a blade at any time and end this for good."


    "I could too. But I''m not."


    "Nor am I," she said, her jaw set firm. I looked pretty dashing from this angle. I tried to set my jaw the same way and remember that for later.


    Before she had time to conclude, probably correctly in this case that I was an idiot, I continued. "And I''m glad we see eye-to-eye on that. But I''m a little curious as to why? You''ve certainly never hesitated when you''ve thought you should kill before."


    She lapsed into one of her trademark silences, but before I got another word out of her, light-whip girl was screaming at us again.


    "Who the heck do you think you are coming down here? You blow up my house, set everything on fire, refuse to do the one simple thing I asked of you--"


    "You mean, to die? Yeah, not doing that." She was also exaggerating about the fire. Between the glass and the flash blaze already incinerating everything around, there was hardly anything on fire.


    "--and then you get all up in my personal space the second I feel sorry for you and go easy on you for a second? This is just why you can''t trust the XPCA. Give them an inch, they take your whole life."


    "Could you stop with the anti-XPCA propaganda for just a second?" I asked.


    "Oh, sure," she said, and did shut up. And also began beating on Moon and me from all sides with sudden intensity.


    "She is quickly overwhelming our defenses," Moon said calm as ice. "We will die soon if we do not take her out."


    "It''ll be fine, I said, clenching my jaw painfully as I focused on willing as many blades into being as fast as I could manage.


    It was far from fine. We were beginning to lose badly, and the heat from the blasts and showers of sparks began getting closer and closer to us as the endless tides of her light tendrils bore down on us.


    I had a desperate moment of wonder, if we just stopped, dropped our guard, would she really finish us? Were we pushing her towards violence with the simple frustration of being difficult to crush?


    I wasn''t exactly willing to bet my life on it, and especially not Moon''s.


    Beside me, she moved just as I did, as rigid and focused and tense as I was, doing her damndest to keep the both of us alive without even once popping a blade through the girl''s face, even as the heat and blasts began to get painfully close.


    I heard an inarticulate scream which made my blood freeze in my veins, burns and the heat of exploding powers be damned. I looked up and saw Tem standing there at the lip of the bowl, dark energies swirling around her.


    "Tem!" I shouted up at her. "Do not laser down here. If you hit her powers again, you''ll kill me."


    She seemed to hesitate slightly but still stood there tense and imposing and dark as ever. "They are attacking you, Chariot," she said.


    "Yes they are. But we''re okay. Right...Moon?"


    "We are unequivocally going to die."


    "Moon."


    "Erm. That is to say...we all of us die at some point. Who can say but the...wisest of the O-kami when we will be taken? It could be any time...maybe...fifteen seconds...or possibly even twenty."


    "Jesus you''re bad at this," I hissed at her.


    "Then do not drag me into it. We could use her help. We could use the help of the shadow ops you dismissed. We could kill the target and end this farce at any moment. Why am I tolerating this suicide plan?"


    "Because you trust me?"


    She didn''t respond, which I took to be a yes. Somehow, she was also the least of my worries right now.


    "Tem, we''ll be fine. Just...go back and wait for us, okay?"


    Tem made a squeal and shook her head violently, her two silver bobs of hair bouncing as they flew up and down her shoulders. "I will not be away from you," she said.


    And before I could convince her otherwise, she stepped over the lip, stumbled and rolled her way down the smooth bowl to stop at my heel. I was worried she was hurt until she gingerly reached out and gave the back of my calf a stroke which made me jump.


    "Chariot, careful!" Moon shouted at me, but my lapse had invited the enemy in, and one of the beams of light raked across my side.


    Just to be completely clear, burns suck. They are basically your own body disintegrating and breaking down and your nerves decide to help by telling you the whole while exactly how great and wonderful that feels. When you''re burning, it hurts, you feel hot, and it hurts, and your body wants nothing but cold and soothing and stillness. And it hurts.


    What your body does not want is another burn and sudden jumping and tearing flesh.


    I almost blacked out from the pain as I rolled on the ground, holding my side. Moon was trying her best to defend the both of us, though it seemed the Exhuman was hesitating to finish us off.


    Tem was not hesitating though, and the world went dark and hazy around us as black energies billowed around the slight silver child.


    "Pain for pain. S-s-suffering is too merciful. You will writhe! You will burn! I will rip you and rip you and rip you until there is nothing left for me to tear apart!" she screamed, her voice carrying unnaturally through the twisting darkness.


    "Tem, stop!" I screamed at her. I clawed my way towards her, only inches away, but as I did I felt my side split painfully and felt like I had to hold it with both of my arms or I''d tear open and black out. But she was right there, right above me, and if I didn''t stop her, all of us would be dead.


    Tem squeaked and trembled as something purple wrapped itself around her. She blinked away the black in her eyes, and with it the black in the world around us.


    "This is from him, do not get confused," Moon said. "I''m sorry, Chariot, but I had to peek in your mind again. It was practically screaming at me."


    "No...no problem," I said, desperately trying to hide the wracking pain from Tem.


    "You s-smell like him," Tem whispered.


    "It is his same body. I''m just borrowing a copy of it."


    "Your arms are s-s-strong like his."


    "Yes. It is still a copy of his body. You do understand how my powers work?"


    "You are warm like him."


    "Oh dear. I am afraid this will have unhealthy repercussions."


    "Moon...thank you. But can you please get the medical gel? I am...not doing great here," I grit out.


    It felt like half of me was on fire, and I couldn''t even show it because I risked setting Tem off again. So I laid there, as still as I could, holding my pain in while tears swam in my eyes and stars swam in my vision. Moon released Tem with jerky restrained movements, taking a step back as though to see if the girl would explode, before popping a canister off of Tem''s pack, briefly skimming the instructions and warnings, agonizingly thorough as she was, and then unleashed a spray on my exposed side.


    I wasn''t sure if it hurt or felt good. It felt something, and given the current state of me, that was a bad thing. It was like an ice bath, in the moments before the local anesthesia kicked in, and it burned me so bad I really did just black out.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    But only long enough for Moon to be crouched over me and Tem to still be standing where I''d last seen her. I found it surreal to look up and see flaming, glowing tendrils and light and dark swords hovering in the air, wisps of shadow and motes of light from Tem''s tantrum, all frozen like the apocalypse had been cancelled for the moment.


    "You''re patched," Moon said. "It is very peculiar doing this when I can touch the bandages but not you. Though somewhat convenient?"


    "Thanks," I said, trying to sit up and realizing that wasn''t happening without splitting myself open and going under again. "I''ll try to keep you doing it to a minimum," I winced.


    "So¡­" the girl said from within her fort, watching the entire sequence unfold with worry in her eyes. "...so are we...back on? We finishing this?"


    "Oh, I will s-so finish this. You will be s-so finished--" Tem began darkly, but stopped as I meekly gave the gesture for a full-stop.


    "Miss, if you were gonna kill us, you had a chance there and you didn''t."


    "I...I don''t like hurting...injured people, okay!"


    "Well, I''m injured. Still want to finish this? Give me your best shot."


    "What? You''re crazy. You''re suicidal!"


    "Kind of comes with the territory. You don''t go around chasing down Exhumans every day and expect to live forever."


    "What the heck is wrong with you people? That girl looked like she was going to destroy the whole block."


    The girl was pointing, presumably at Tem, but seemed to have forgotten she was wrapped in a fortress of white noise.


    "Maybe a lot more. Tem''s kind of unbalanced sometimes."


    "You s-said I did good though," Tem pouted.


    I sighed. "Will you finally talk now?"


    "I beat you. You should just leave."


    "Well, we could have killed you at any time," Moon said, crossing her arms. "But our leader said not to."


    "That''s BS. I won. I beat him. I beat all of you. And I can do it again!" She raised her weapons skyward again but when none of us reacted she just put them down again. "You''re just lying again."


    "Look, what is your damage with the XPCA and lying?" I asked. I took an experimental deep breath and found, to no surprise, that fucking hurt.


    "You lie about everything! I moved to New Eden, that was a lie. You said it''d be a new start, lies. A haven for Exhumans to be themselves, more lies. XPCA redevelopment, that was a lie! They threw me in a room with a Code-X and I felt hurt and pain like I didn''t know was possible until she broke my brain!"


    She slammed her powers down against the side of the bowl near us making them rupture against the glass into a blinding, explosive rainbow.


    "But don''t worry, everything will be fine, they lied. When the XPCA came for the resistance, they told me to kill my friends! And I did it! I watched myself do it like it was the most natural thing in the world! How frigged-up is that? You put something in my head! And when I escaped with the rest, with the Defiant Unchained, they offered me safety and freedom, and all I could think about was how you''d used me before to kill other Exhumans, saw all my dead friends faces on them."


    Her tone had become dark and cold and she was gathering her powers again. "I was doing okay. For an Exhuman. Until I fell for your empty promises, fell for XPCA lies so many times, I''m embarrassed to even think about it. And now you show up, saying it''s going to be okay? Like I''ll believe that!"


    "This seems...justifiably paranoid, Chariot. And bad," Moon said.


    "Let me fry her," Tem pleaded.


    "Listen to me Tem, very carefully," Moon said and pulled her aside. Tem didn''t seem half as interested in what Moon had to say as she did the concept of being held by me, even if it was only a ghost and only around the shoulders.


    "I get it," I told the girl. "I do. And I don''t know that there''s anything I can say which will let you believe that. But I was just like you. The Code-X you met? She''s one of my closest friends. And the resistance storming out and fighting the XPCA? That was because I led them in attacking the facility there."


    "Well this is just the stupidest lie, if you''re not even going to--"


    "I''m serious!" I yelled at her, loud enough to start coughing, and then writhed as pain flooded through me, filling me up so much I thought it would make my eyes burst from inside.


    She lowered more of her barrier until I could see her face peering out at me, a look of concern written across it as she watched me cough and writhe. A little younger than me, maybe, but not more than a couple years. Still just a fucking kid, and just another victim of Blackett''s machinations. I felt my hate for the man seethe through me, hotter than the burn but a pure, purifying heat. I thought I''d already let that hate go, I was surprised to find how quickly it sprang back, how close to the surface it hid.


    I reached towards Tem and sent a spark of electricity across her body. She shuddered as it danced up her flesh and buried itself in her comms, which hissed and popped in her ear, making her flinch. I turned my comms off too.


    "I killed Blackett," I told the girl. "The XPCA director. And Captain Targa, the base administrator. Because of all that stuff at New Eden. Because of all the betrayals you had to face. I don''t want the XPCA to be like this, and that''s why I''m talking to you now instead of just killing you or dragging you back. Every day, they send me out here to fight people like you, to make you do what the XPCA wants, and every day...I feel so lost. I wonder why I''m doing it. What I''m fighting for."


    I looked her in the eyes again. Green eyes. Orange hair. Pale skin, mottled with freckles. Like AEGIS but more pronounced in every way.


    "I...I still don''t know, exactly. But I''m glad I heard your story. I need to hear things like that. I need to know, on a personal level, what the XPCA does to people. I need to be reminded why I''m trying to change it, why I''m fighting so hard and giving up so many--I mean, so much. I want to feel your pain and remember it, so that next time I''m faced with an obstinate Exhuman like you, I remember there''s pain behind them, there''s a story behind them. There''s a reason why they hate us, and a reason why we should hate ourselves. A reason to try to change who we are, and what the XPCA is."


    The more I spoke, the more I didn''t know what I was saying, but she seemed to hang on every word just the same. I struggled for words just like I''d felt like I was struggling for the meaning behind them.


    "I''ve been thinking a lot recently that the XPCA makes a lot of sense. That all these Exhumans I deal with every day, like...holy shit they''re dangerous. You''re dangerous. Look what we did to this building. Look what you did to me, and what I could have easily done to you. I see people making these political moves and forming alliances and threatening the whole world for their own safety...and I see the XPCA trying to stop them, trying to push everything back to the status quo, where it''s safe, where it''s calm, where people don''t have to worry about the whole world waking up dead one day. And I get both sides, and it''s scary."


    Tentatively, like a scared animal, she left her fortress and came over to us. The walls behind her faded away into motes of light, and I recognized them as hard light constructs, the same as Tem could conjure given enough time and effort. No wonder she''d survived the blast, if she was hiding in a shell made of impervious light.


    "I don''t want to like the XPCA, but they''re trying to save the world. They just really really suck at it, and I want them to be better. I know you just want to be left alone, but look around. This is what Exhumans do, whether the XPCA comes for them or not. So what are we supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?"


    I''d talked myself out. I hadn''t said anything worth anything, but she''d listened all the same. Even come out of her shell, physically at least. I still felt the lingering heat from my burns, but also the heat from the hate I was carrying around. Laying there, bearing my heart to this girl who''d almost killed me, it suddenly felt all so unfair.


    "What am I supposed to do?" I asked her again, more pointedly.


    "I...I don''t know," she said, startled. "I''d never thought about all of that from your side. I just thought¡­''XPCA lies''."


    "Yeah, that''d be real simple," I snorted.


    She sat in silence for a long time next to us, her green eyes flashing up towards me sometimes, but otherwise just smoothing out her linen mint-green dress and retying up her hair. I think she looked as lost as I felt and seeing her like that, feeling Moon attached to me feeling the same, it pissed me off the same way looking at Tem for too long did.


    Here was a girl who was willing to look at the world in black and white, good and evil, and fight evil where she met it. And I''d gone and dumped my insecurities on her and now she was...this. A twisted reflection of what I wound up being. Infirm. Unsure. Weak. I hated seeing it in her, just like I hated seeing it in myself.


    And that''s why I was completely surprised when she stood up and dusted herself off and spoke.


    "You''re right," she said. "It''s a mess. And it''s not fixing itself. People have got to fight to fix things, not just to tear down what they don''t like. And you know what? I''m a people. I can fight. So sign me up or whatever."


    It took me a long minute to process. "Really?" I asked. "Like...join the P-Force? Join us?"


    "It''s better than hiding and waiting for the XPCA your whole life, innit? I''m sick of people lying to me because I don''t know any better. I''m sick of hiding because I don''t want to fight. I''m sick of the XPCA kicking people like me down because I''m trying to pull myself up. So I can sit around and mope, or I can do what you did and fight."


    I grinned at her as best I could manage, feeling like her words were a balm a thousand times more potent than the medical gel. But more, if she could face these problems, knowingly, head-on, and decide to fight, then I could too. Maybe there were even more like her. Maybe my stupid dream of a P-Force wasn''t so stupid. Now that Blackett was dead, we could be what I''d always meant for us to be, protecting people from dangerous Exhumans, not icers.


    I felt like...behind those hard light constructs, at the bottom of that bowl, I hadn''t just found a girl, I''d found myself. Cheesy as that sounded.


    I offered her one of my arms as best I could manage. "I''d stand up but you kind of wrecked me," I apologized. "I''m Athan, but my callsign is Chariot. This is Kaori, who''s ''Moon'', and Melanie, but everyone calls her Tem.


    "Nice to meet all of you. Sorry about the...fighting. Well, sorry about the injury anyway. A quarrel''s as good as a tryst, me dad used to say. And I''m--"


    She stopped and blinked, rocking back and forth a little bit unsteadily on her feet. Then she coughed and I felt something wet and sticky fleck onto my offered hand. Thick red droplets clung to my skin, fat and heavy, and she looked down at her chest where just left of central, at the edge of her breast, a red bloom grew across her green dress.


    She looked at me, confusion and pain and...and a million times worse, dawning comprehension. The realization of a betrayal, yet again.


    And then she fell forward, her face cracking against the unyielding glass without her so much as stirring or uttering a sound.


    The air trembled and shifted as the shadow ops materialized from where he had stood behind her, and he crouched to wipe the blood from his blade on the hem of her dress.


    "Bleeders. Am I right?" He asked with a shrug. "Fucking Exhumans, one and all."


    I...I didn''t know what to say...what to do...what to think. I was just staring at the body of an Exhuman girl murdered in front of my eyes. It was so impossible. She was so strong, so sure. She''d faced down what I had, and instead of blinking, she''d stood up. She couldn''t die. Someone as strong as that couldn''t die so easily as that.


    I waited for her to stir, to move, to breathe. I was deaf to Tem and Moon''s screams, blind to the rippling of the air and the swelling darkness, numb to his desperate clinging and begging, to the filthy drops of his blood which landed on me as hers had. I felt nothing as Moon tore him apart with lightning from the inside-out, his ribcage glowing like far-off thunderclouds as she savagely enforced her own order on the world. Good guys stop bad guys.


    But we hadn''t stopped him.


    Beneath the midday sun, it was dark out, and I was lost again.


    But not as lost as that girl who for one fragile moment was leading me towards the light.

 237. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Somehow or another, I was standing in front of the girls'' place. Tem was lurking somewhere, upset I think. Moon was standing right behind me, expressing her sympathy and irritation as only she could, by showing nothing at all. Though I knew just by the fact she wasn''t hiding in a corner behind a book she was deeply upset, even if she refused to show it.


    She was the reason I was standing here. She''d handled everything. She had Tem erase the shadow ops from the face of the earth using the same heilioism that the Exhuman had. She had been the only one to speak during debriefing, explaining how Tem and I were in an emotional state from witnessing our colleague killed before our eyes, how our comms had unfortunately been destroyed during a lightning surge when I had attempted to defend us.


    She still had injuries, hidden from Cosette and the rest of the XPCA so that she had time and the excuse to talk while I was sent to a regenerator for my critical wounds.


    And I couldn''t say anything. If I opened my mouth, I would have told the truth. I would have tried to clear that poor, dead girl''s name. I would have started something I couldn''t stop. Moon and Tem were doing their utmost to protect me, cover for me, be here for me even now. And if I opened my mouth and told the truth, it would have been New Eden all over again, the three of us against the entire XPCA.


    Which one of them would have died if I did, I wondered. Who would throw themselves away to save me this time? Neither of them could be dug out of the ground like AEGIS.


    So I said nothing. I did nothing. I was carted around, as good as a corpse as the stale, dry air of the debriefing room filled with even more lies, as the tapestry of constructed reality of the XPCA gained yet another patch job, sewn in by Moon''s steady hand.


    And now I was here. The garage was open, and Saga had popped out to wave at me and a river of what looked like blood was flowing out and down the gutter.


    I didn''t react. I didn''t know. I didn''t want to know. I felt guilty and undeserving and small and just wanted people to stop being hurt around me. Wanted to stop living the lies. Wanted the world to be simple again.


    "Go inside," Moon said, and prodded me in the back. I had no reason not to, so I compiled, going in the front door. "Is there someone you can talk to?" she asked. "I understand that is a common treatment for this kind of trauma. I would volunteer, but I would find the experience awful and tedious."


    "I''ll...I''ll go look up Lia."


    "Would you like me to remain here for the time being? I have no other engagements."


    "I don''t know. Do whatever you''d like."


    She gave a curt nod and wandered to the corner-most chair in the living room where she planted her round bottom, drew a book from somewhere and propped it open in front of her.


    Without any other direction, I went to look for Lia like I''d been told. I knocked on her door, and when nobody responded, opened it to peek inside.


    It was dark in there. Lights off, blinds closed, and I thought at first Lia was just out until I saw that the sheets for the bed had been thrown to the floor and yet there was still something lumpy on the bed.


    "Lia?" I asked, stepping into the room. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw her there, curled up on the bed, almost impossible to make out as more than a frumpy boulder underneath her oversized sweatshirt and the pillow she was holding over her head.


    Like a switch had flicked inside me, everything I had wanted to say disappeared as I realized Lia was hurt.


    "Hey, what''s wrong?" I asked, sitting gently beside her. She didn''t react except for her fingers digging hard enough into the pillow for her knuckles to turn white, like she was trying to smother herself with it.


    If she heard me and knew I was there, that was enough, I thought. I would sit by her for as long as it took for her to be ready to talk about it. And so I sat, gently rubbing her back through the coarse fabric of the sweatshirt, supporting her without words for as long as she needed.


    The sun went down. Saga and Moon each peeked in on us wordlessly. My stomach rumbled. I was stuck with my thoughts, but any time I threatened getting lost in them, I looked over at her, unmoving, her breathing barely visible. The toes of her bare feet curled up like she was, like every single part of her had to hold onto something or else she''d float away and disappear.


    Eventually she said something. I hadn''t expected it and she spoke into the bed so I missed what she said.


    "What''d you say, sis?" I asked, rubbing her back again and leaning in close.


    She turned her head revealing just the tip of her chin under the hood and a single brown curl of hair. "I said, you don''t have to do this."


    "But I want to."


    "That''s stupid. You''re hungry. You''re still in your uniform. You shouldn''t have to baby me."


    "Well, too bad. You''re my little sis, and I''m gonna be hungry in my uniform babying you all day if I have to."


    "That''s stupid. Go away. Go eat and pee and stop worrying about me. I''m fine. Go talk to AEGIS."


    "I don''t want to talk to AEGIS. I want to talk to you."


    "Why? I''m just a stupid, lame, angsty teenager. I mess everything up."


    "That''s just flat-out wrong. Did you mess something up? Is that why you''re upset?"


    She made a grumbling noise.


    "Does it involve AEGIS? Did you guys fight? Did she kill Saga, and that''s why they''re washing out the garage?"


    Lia sat up and looked at me, eyes wide. "What?"


    "Well...it looked like there was a lot of blood in there. Didn''t seem to be yours, so...unless someone killed Chiho in the garage, I just assumed something happened and Saga did what she does best."


    She frowned, but I saw her pulling out of her depression as the tantalizing bait of relationship drama dangled in front of her. "Why would Saga go in the garage?" she asked, herself seemingly.


    "To talk to AEGIS I presume. And since she can''t read anything going on in AEGIS'' mind, that means her reason probably came from you. And you''re in here being sad, so I assumed you and AEGIS had a fight, and then Saga weighed in her opinion with AEGIS later and died over it."


    Lia''s brow knitted as she stared at me. "Who are you? My brother is an idiot. You''re not supposed to be able to figure out things like that so fast."


    I laughed. "I''ve been sitting here for--" I checked my mobile. "--an hour and a half now, Lia. And yes, it took me most of that time to figure it out. Don''t you worry about how fast I am."


    She smiled, but then almost immediately it froze weirdly and threatened to fall off her face. I knew that look too, I''d worn it enough times myself. That was somebody feeling happy and then realizing they shouldn''t be.


    It''s probably where I should be right now, given the very recent blood on my hands. But Lia was more important that even my own self-loathing.


    "I fought an Exhuman," I told her, changing tack. "She was really strong. Light powers, like Tem. Used them like a multi-headed whip with each of her arms. Could swing them around and snap them at us from any angle, and could build herself armor out of hard light. She was incredibly strong, but so angry at the XPCA. She was one of the redeveloped, and before the riot, Targa made her kill her friends at New Eden for whatever reason."


    As I''d hoped, hearing about something removed from her situation drew Lia quietly out. Not really that different from how I''d talked about my own problems to get the Exhuman to open up to me to begin with. I guess talking to someone about my problems was my one move.


    Maybe I''d only picked it up because it worked for Lia. I hadn''t exactly had a lot of practice making speeches at people growing up.


    "She had a pretty shitty life, and was a lot like me. And AEGIS. And you. Even some of Karu and Saga in there, I guess. She seemed like a good, strong person. Wanted to fight because she couldn''t take doing nothing anymore, but didn''t want to hurt anyone, not really."


    I neglected to mention the regenerator of course.


    "And at the end, after I''d gotten her to calm down and talk and realize that the XPCA wasn''t just a bunch of assholes lying to her to hurt her, she asked if she could join the P-Force--"


    "Woah, really?" Lia asked, unable to hold in her excitement. "What''s her name? Does she have any--"


    I held up a hand and Lia bubbled like a leaking dam. "She died. Murdered. By an XPCA fuckwit after the fight was over."


    "What?" Lia asked, visibly in despair. "No. No! That''s so effed! No!" She''d only known about this girl for maybe fifteen seconds, but by her reaction, Lia was already planning a life out together with her.


    "Yeah," I said, feeling myself choking up too. "That''s why I wanted to talk to you."


    Lia took a deep breath, seeming to swell up as she sat upright, firm with determination. She nodded at me. "I''m here for you, bro."


    She was so cute and trying so hard, I just wanted to tackle her and tickle her on the spot.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Truly, we Ashton kids were messed up. I had all the troubles in the world bearing down on me until the second I saw Lia hurting, and then whatever was holding me down, it was irrelevant, gone. Lia needed me, and that was it. And now she was doing the exact same thing for me. It was moments like these which made me think, legitimately, if it was just Lia and me against the whole of the world, somehow we''d make it. As long as we had each other.


    Man, I''d been so deluded to ever believe she wouldn''t come after me when I was exiled.


    Someone knocked on the door and Lia called for them to enter.


    And what stepped through sort of scared the crap out of me.


    It was a spindly shiny thing, like something made of the horns of beetles. Skinny but strong, angular and sweeping, metal and black. It walked on two backwards-bent legs ending in curved blades that seemed to be stabbing the floor rather than stepping on it. Its two arms ending in flat paddles, and little floating drones moved and spun in the air near them like a fleet of simple servants.


    And it had no face. Just a blank faceplate like an exosuit and a tall crown that swept backwards. But it was too skinny in parts to be an exosuit, even Tem wouldn''t fit inside.


    In those weird floating hands it had, it held a plate, two fingers clamped on it on either side. And on the plate was what looked like rice and a grey block of...maybe tofu?


    "Oh hello Lia. You''re here too. I was just giving Athan his dinner," the black thing said with a genderless, echoing synthesized voice. It was only through the context of the things'' actions that I had any idea what was going on, and more importantly, a reason not to immediately start cutting up the strange invader which was making Lia visibly nervous.


    "AEGIS?" I asked.


    "Pre-sent!" she said with singsong tone which really did not convey well. She moved in a way I think was supposed to be a wiggle or dance but...like I said...brought nothing to mind so much as the shiny black inflexible invulnerability of a horned beetle.


    "AEGIS what...what happened to you?" I asked.


    Her hands went to her hips, with her fingers floating on the outside of them now as the only indication that they''d turned around. "What is that supposed to mean? I got a body! You''re supposed to be excited. Look, now I can cook--" she brandished the plate at me, the grey blob wobbling threateningly. "--and fulfill all of your needs, just like I used to. All of them."


    She leaned forward at me and I felt like I was being scrutinized by a security camera.


    "Um, I''m winking," she added.


    "Yes...I...definitely got that." I said. "Uh, look, Lia and I were talking, can I catch up with you later?"


    "Ah," AEGIS said, and stepped into middle of the room, stepping silently despite the apparent bulk of her folded-up legs. "I also had something to say about that. Lia...I''m sorry for being such a jerk. What I said...I uh...I wasn''t able to find a single shred of evidence to support it. It was just a baseless hypothesis that I got carried away with."


    Lia nodded but said nothing.


    "So...you don''t need to¡­" I think she was trying to make subtle gestures, but the body just didn''t have any face or anything.


    "I wasn''t going to tell him. So you''re fine," Lia said in barely more than a whisper.


    "Oh good. Thanks, Lia. I''ll just...leave this here, then," AEGIS said, putting the plate on Lia''s desk next to her computer and then turning to go. "I''m still...working on the garage, uh...so...please feel free to come by, but...knock maybe. Okay. Um. Bye!"


    The door clicked shut behind her and I tried to avoid betraying too many of my feelings by staring them into Lia, but I was pretty sure that at least a huge what the fuck had conveyed.


    "Yeah," Lia said simply. "That''s AEGIS now."


    "She''s like a huge metal cockroach."


    "She says she''s working on it."


    "It needs a lot of work. Holy crap. Why''d she even make that? It''s horrifying. I liked Rua."


    "She didn''t make it. That''s the body TARGA had designed. We just...took it, since she wasn''t using it, and AEGIS needed one."


    "Not that I didn''t already know, but TARGA had no taste at all. If Saga looks a little like one of those black-eyed grey-skinned Area-51 aliens, now AEGIS looks like the kind that plants eggs in your stomach which burst out of your chest."


    "Dude¡­" Lia said and frowned at me.


    "What?"


    She leaned in close to me and gestured. Pointing up. I looked up and she immediately grabbed my head and reset me to neutral.


    "What--Lia?"


    She just widened her eyes at me with a significant glance and waited. Up? What''s up? Something''s up? Something above us? The ceiling? The roof?


    It took me a minute and then I realized. AEGIS had a body. Her systems were back online. Cam-drones, watching me make fun of her right behind her back. I closed my eyes and reached out, and sure enough, in the corner, under a layer of active camouflage, I felt the low-voltage heartbeat of one such drone watching us.


    I thought it was a little weird that Lia knowingly lived with it there, but then realized I''d done the same thing the whole time I lived with AEGIS.


    Well, shit. I''d probably really hurt AEGIS'' feelings now. Smooth fucking move. As if it were a consolation prize, I felt some amusement coming off of Saga in the garage at my thoughts, and wondered...is there anyone in this house who doesn''t spy on everyone else? I half-expected to peek under the bed and find Chiho hiding under there with a camera and a smile.


    "Are you hungry?" I asked Lia, and she shook her head.


    "I probably should be," she said. "But I just lose my appetite all day after I have a meltdown."


    "Well have some at least. I don''t think AEGIS will mind if I share."


    "Um," Lia said, and I looked at her and saw her swallow heavily. "Maybe not."


    "Hey," I barked at her. "If you won''t take care of my sister, I will."


    She shook her head. "No...I will eat. I promise. It''ll be frozen and junky but I''ll do it. I just¡­" she looked across the room at the desk and I followed her gaze.


    Rice. Plate. Fork. So far so good. Grey amorphous blob. Not so good.


    I walked over and gave it a poke with the fork. Tough. Dense. I ran a finger across it and tasted my finger. Salty. Sweet. Odd.


    I stabbed it and brought it to my nose. Very concentrated fishy smell. A little perilous, but okay. I took a bite.


    Oh. Deargod.


    It was like a sugar-coated eraser made of dry fish paste. It was, at once, the most flavorless and flavorful thing I''d eaten, both in bad ways. It was dense and dry, and why was the whole outside coated in sugar?


    I tried to repress the urge to gag, since AEGIS was watching, and followed up with a mouthful of rice in desperation. Which, in retrospect, was an amazingly stupid idea. Because now there were two different horrible flavors in my mouth, seemingly competing for which one could make me spit it out or gag.


    The rice tasted like concentrated beef marrow and vinegar. I didn''t even know what AEGIS was attempting to do here, but what she''d created was an abomination. My eyes watered from the sour and raw sugar and stink of fish assaulting me from within. I tried to chew before it became a congealed paste on my tongue, but doing so just crashed the conflicting flavors together even more harshly and released more of it.


    I felt my chin trembling as I came to terms with the only real option here. I couldn''t spit it out. I couldn''t keep it in my mouth. There was only one place food was supposed to go from here, and though my throat felt like it was already closing up preemptively, that was about all I had left.


    But the fish was so dry I was having a hard time swallowing the gritty shrapnel it became in my mouth. Realizing that my half-aborted plan was leading to me actually now legitimately beginning to choke, I began looking around for a glass or bottle of water or soda, or anything other than vinegar.


    "Oh God. Oh no. You''re choking," Lia helpfully said, standing up, eyes widening at me. I''d realized there wasn''t anything in sight and began pulling out Lia''s desk drawers while she panicked on the spot. In the bottommost drawer, I saw a full water bottle and tore it open to pour into my closed throat.


    "Oh don''t, that''s--" she said, taking a step and then freezing, drawing in her arms while she watched in horrified fascination.


    It was fucking vodka is what it was. I choked again and realized vodka was, in a way, a huge blessing because my whole mouth now just tasted like alcohol and burning, and that was a heck of a lot better than what had been in there before. At least vodka was something people chose to ingest by choice. It was overpowering, and adequately lubricated the mess in my throat to finally go down and rot in my stomach instead of my neck.


    I coughed and collapsed in Lia''s desk chair while she remained standing and staring like I was going to turn into a frog. After a minute, I had my shit together and turned to her.


    "Wow that was good. You sure you don''t want some?" I asked, holding out the plate for her.


    She just walked past me, closed up the bottle and put it back in the drawer, apparently missing the humor of the situation. "That was for emergencies only, okay?" she said, pointing at the desk. "Like...today, maybe. I don''t have a drinking problem anymore, okay?"


    "I...never said you did?"


    "Well, I''m sure you were wondering why I had a bottle hidden in my desk, so I''m just telling you, okay? I wasn''t expecting anyone going through all my stuff like that." She glared at me a few more moments and when it became apparent I wasn''t yelling at her still, she went back to the bed and curled up on it again.


    "I do mess everything up," she said. "I''m a mess, and I don''t want you having to look after me all the time."


    "Lia, sit up. Seriously."


    She glared at me from under her hood but didn''t stir otherwise.


    "That wasn''t anything. I know you''re feeling stressed right now, but it''s fine. Now if you want to see what a real mess looks like, I''ve got a dinner option for you. But I want to make it clear you are not, and have never ever been a burden. I''m an Exhuman, Lia. But I''m also the luckiest Exhuman in the world, because unlike all those other Exhumans I see and work with, I still have a family. Even if it''s small and messed up, I''ve got one, and she makes me so happy. So stop beating her up, and give her some credit, okay?"


    She sat up begrudgingly and nodded, but looked far from convinced.


    "I''m going to get rid of this before it attains sentience and kills us, okay?" I said, grabbing the plate. She smiled weakly at my joke. "Message me if you want anything. And I know you won''t, so I''ll check up on you later. In the meanwhile, eat something, right?"


    "Right."


    "Okay. I need to call Karu and set up a meeting. It''s been way longer than I meant. And probably catch up with Saga and AEGIS. Hell, and Chiho. So you okay for now?"


    She nodded.


    "Okay," I said and gave her a smile, opening the door and stepping out. As I did, I thought I heard my name behind me and peeked back. "You say something?"


    "The Exhuman girl you met, who died."


    "Yeah? What about her?"


    "You weren''t done talking about her, were you?"


    "I dunno. Maybe."


    "Okay. Well. If you want to talk, I''m here for you, too."


    I smiled at her as I closed the door gently.


    We Ashtons really were messed up, but that didn''t disqualify her from being the best. I hoped she knew that. Hoped that someday, maybe if I thought it hard enough, she''d pick it up through Saga or something. Hoped that she could find the perspective she needed to see herself the way the rest of us saw her.


    Because it just kind of broke my heart sometimes. That girl might know more about everyone else than anyone else, might be able to charm or weasel her way into or out of pretty much anything she wanted, if she wanted it hard enough.


    But even with all that awareness and all that talent, sometimes it felt like the only person she couldn''t get to like her was herself.

 238. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    So I was crouched in the bushes watching Karu through the window. It wasn''t creepy, I promise. I was just having a hard time believing what I was seeing going on in there.


    She was wearing an orange and white little dress with a frilly apron on the front of it and a whole lot of bows and lace. Her hair was, naturally, still shaved as last time I''d seen her, and she stood rigid as steel in her white sneakers while she serviced the patron seated in front of her.


    Throughout the place I saw three or four other girls identically attired, walking around doing their jobs, talking to customers, flitting in and out of the back rooms.


    What manner of madhouse had I come across? Why had Karu told me to meet her here? Had she wanted me to witness this?


    All very important questions, I was sure, but my brain really refused to get any further than comprehending that it was Karu I was looking at in there. She had no guns, no armor, no visor, her green eyes the dull color of the underside of leaves.


    I watched, disbelieving as Karu turned from her customer, clearly embarrassed by something he was laughing about. My disbelief exploded into brain-puncturing shrapnel as I saw the man edge forward and then deliver a sharp spank on her butt, apparently loud enough to cause the other girls to glare at him with anger or fear. I expected Karu to turn, rip the man''s offending arm off, and use it to dig a shallow grave she''d throw him into.


    Instead, she took a few moments to collect herself and then walked away without so much as a backwards glance.


    Well if she wasn''t going to kill him, I sure was. I stood up and stepped unevenly out of the bush, startling a family as I emerged. I rounded the corner back to the front entrance where I''d first spotted Karu, and this time actually went inside.


    "Table for one?" the hostess greeted me pleasantly.


    "I''m here to see Karu," I said, trying to look past the girl to see if I could spot the fatass or Karu from here.


    "Karu? I''m sorry, but--"


    "Karen. Karen Irenside. She works here. I just saw her from outside."


    "Sir...this is a restaurant."


    "I know that. I called Karu last night and she told me to meet her here and at this time," I explained stupidly.


    She looked at me like I was crazy, the pleasant smile slowly slipping from her face.


    "Let me go grab my manager," she said, stepping away.


    "No, I see her there, I''ll just--" I gave up on excuses as I was already slipping past her and her protests. "Karu, hey!"


    "Ashton? What are you doing?" she said, frowning. She took a look around at the attention I''d pulled just by yelling and crossing the room and flushed.


    "What am I doing here? What are you doing here? When you said you wanted to meet at a restaurant I didn''t think you''d be working there."


    "Ashton...people are staring. My shift was over I was just waiting--"


    "Your shift? You''re serious about this. You really work here? Is this a joke?"


    "Ashton, please," she was breathing heavily and repeatedly smoothing down her dress as every single eye in the place fixed on us.


    One of the other girls cut through the fixated crowd to assail me. A short redhead. "Hey. Karen, is this guy bugging you? Gonna have to ask you to leave, sir."


    She reached for my arm and I pulled it out of her grasp before she could touch it. Ameteur and slow.


    "So you quit pro hunting for this?" I asked her. "Did you have a deep-seated dream of serving pie and getting harrassed by fat fucks like him?"


    "Hey!" said the fat fuck. "I''ll sue your ass, punk!"


    Without taking my eyes off Karu, I grabbed the plate in front of the man and smashed it against the edge of the table in an explosion of ceramic, eggs, and grease. He screamed like a child.


    "Karu, what the fuck," I said to her. "I don''t know what happened to you in New Eden, I don''t know why you quit hunting, or why you ran away from the Defiant, or why I can''t get a straight answer out of you about a single fucking thing anymore, but this just tops them all. Karu, why are you a waitress at a shitty diner in Vegas?"


    She turned and stiffly walked away and I moved after her until she turned around and passed me again, eyes averted with a broom in hand. And then she began to sweep.


    "You don''t even need the money!" I shouted at her. "If you''re not refueling your jetpack and buying depleted rounds, what expenses do you even have, compared to a single bounty you pick up? Or if you do need money, you could ask me, or Lia, or anyone. Hell, even your dad! Anything''s got to be better than this. So what the fuck?"


    The slow redhead from earlier tried to get between us but I just spun her around and put her on my opposite side with a practiced reversal. She stood there not sure exactly how she''d wound up there, but then turned to yell at me anyway.


    "Listen here asshole, I don''t know who the hell you think you are, or why you''re yelling at Karen, but you can''t just come in here and scream at our girls and tell us we''re all working a worthless job at a stupid place and get away with it. I''m calling the police on your ass."


    The crowd murmured its assent as Karu flushed more than ever, her hands shaking as she swept the remains of the plate into a tidy pile.


    "Karu, say something. Tell me what''s going on."


    She said nothing, didn''t even look in my direction, just stared directly at her work.


    I stood there for several minutes, just watching her sweep. The same careful diligence she''d always put into the maintenance of her arms I saw on display now as she systematically worked from the outside of the disaster zone inwards, cutting off any chance of escaping debris with a coordinated pincer attack. Her strategy and capability was flawless as ever, and when she finished sweeping the remains into a dustpan and carrying it away, there was no evidence that a deranged idiot had stormed in and smashed a plate in a tantrum whatsoever.


    The deranged idiot was still standing there when police came in and the redhead yelled that he''s the one, get him out of here, and two large officers closed in on me, asking me to step outside with hands on their holsters.


    I left without embarrassing Karu any further, not even sure why I was there. I offered vague answers to the officers'' questions by their car, explaining what, why, and how I''d chosen to start smashing up the place when Karu came running outside, still in uniform and sneakers.


    "Miss, I understand this man assaulted you. Would you like to press charges?"


    "No, this was all a mere misunderstanding. I apologize for wasting your time, officers."


    "You''re sure?" The officer lowered his voice but I could still hear him. "Look, if you''re the victim of abuse, we can protect you. But we can''t help--"


    "I said it was a misunderstanding and I spoke truly. Thank you officers."


    "All right, if you say so. Stay the hell away from any more plates, buddy."


    "Yeah," I said numbly, as they got back in their car with the heavy thunks of the doors.


    "I...I apologize. You just...startled me. I did not know how to react," Karu said.


    I shook my head. "Because you''re not a waitress, Karu. You''re a hunter. If we were on the battlefield and some Exhuman came out at you like I had, you wouldn''t have hesitated, even for a second."


    She said nothing, and I had too much to say, so I continued.


    "I''m sorry for yelling and freaking out. I just don''t understand what''s going on with you. You were like, the most constant thing in my whole life. You always seemed like you were born visor-first into this world and that''s how you''d leave it. But something happened, something big, and I just know it''s my fault. And I can''t begin to start helping until you tell me what happened."


    She just stood there, eyes downcast, frills and laces bobbing in the morning breeze. I waited for her to say or do something, but she just stood, soulless, answerless, empty. Dressed and acting like a doll.


    Irrational anger I associated with Tem surged inside me. I wanted to smash that fat fuck''s plate all over again just so she''d do anything. I tried to push it down, tried to think about anything else, but all I found in my mind was more reminders of why I hated this fucking world.


    Lia laying there like a broken stone. The twisted blackness within and without AEGIS. The unrepentant shrug of a murdering shadow. The burning touch of an innocent girl''s blood on my hands. The stench of a good man''s house he''d been left to rot in. Seeing AEGIS for the last time as the fortress armor crushed me into blackness.


    I felt like I''d been so angry for so long, it''d just filled me up to right under my skin. Every time hope had shown up to comfort me, it hurt me in a new way I couldn''t see coming.


    In a twisted way, I wished we never dug up AEGIS again. Or discovered Saga under New Eden. Or tried to talk to that heilioist. Or befriended Talon. Or killed Blackett, even. It all seemed to come back to him in the end, even after he died, his legacy seemed to live on just to torture me. If I were more paranoid, I''d say he planned it. More than likely, he at least would have anticipated all of this, set himself up to be difficult to excise cleanly. And now the world was rotting from the infection of his removal, and he was probably chuckling to himself in hell.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I couldn''t keep it all in. I wasn''t about to hit Karu, so instead, I just screamed at her because that was so much better.


    "I am so angry!" I shouted, making her flinch at my outburst. "Blackett''s dead! You killed him. But the whole world is going to shit and it feels like I''m not even allowed to know why! I''ve got Exhumans and XPCA both who hate me, I''ve got people who should be best friends of mine trying to murder each other. One of the most capable and intelligent people I know is turning herself into an idiot robot, my sister who gets along with everyone is having some kind of war with her friends, and you--you''ve turned from competent and confident to...to this! Every single thing in my life is just turning to shit, and I don''t know why, except that somehow, all of it is my fault!"


    "Do you feel punished, Ashton?" she asked abruptly. I hadn''t expected her to speak, and it took me a moment to process.


    "Yes. Absolutely. For crimes I don''t even know I committed. Is that what this is? Are you punishing me?"


    "Not me. God. You murdered a man who might have saved the world. I murdered a man who might have saved the world."


    "He was a monster."


    "He was a man."


    "What he was planning to do was horrific."


    "And yet you suffer because of the world shaped by his absence."


    "Oh. That''s great. Just throw it all in my face. Really layer it on me. Tell me more how all of this is my fault."


    "I am telling you nothing but what you are telling me. Listen to your own words, and tell me what of your suffering is not an outcome of your own actions."


    I seethed at her with completely justifiable anger now, but she seemed as removed as ever, staring down at the ground with unfocused eyes. Like this was just some empty gateway the real Karu was talking to me through from far away.


    "You can''t blame me for everything. That''s bullshit. What about you? You''re the one who actually killed him."


    She looked up at me and drew her hands to her chest and then into a sweeping gesture which seemed to gesture towards all of her being.


    "What?"


    "I suffer as well, Ashton. Do you think I wound up here lightly? Do you think my dream of serving pies and being harrassed by fat fucks like him was a lifelong fantasy I am acting out, as it were? Are you completely blind to the misery of others?"


    "I am when you won''t even talk about it!" I yelled back.


    Suddenly she snapped, screaming like a teenage girl at her father. "My feelings are not your plaything, Ashton! Every thought which passes through my mind, you are not entitled to view and judge! I too, suffer from all the complex dilemma of the affliction known as living, and you have no right to presume to hear, or be the cause of, or be the solution to every single scrap of it!"


    Her voice carried over the parking lot and she ran both of her hands through her blonde bristles. "I hate you!" she cried out. "And I hate myself for loving you! There is not a thing in my world which has not crumbled from your influence, and yet here I am, a goddamned fucking waitress, working in a town where I knew you would reside, so that when you finally deign to inquire into my whereabouts, I would be at your service! Can you think of, nay, imagine a more detestable creature? I am the very pinnacle of pathetic."


    She fell to her knees, red lines appearing where the asphalt scratched her bare legs.


    "I hate me! I hate what you have turned me into! Some mornings, I awaken and face the mirror and wonder who I see before me before realizing that is my new reality. That is who I am, who I must see the world through, every day, from now until Judgement Day. This foul...loathsome¡­"


    She struggled with her sleeves and then with a ripping sound, tore the white sleeve from her dress exposing the pale flesh of her left arm. Criss-crossing scars and cuts covered the entire inside of her arm.


    "Am I punished, you ask?" she said, thrusting her forearm in my face. "Do you continue to wish to pry, to see what I am beneath? Do you understand now what a base, craven, godless creature I am? I threw away everything to try to make you mine, Ashton. I threw away my self, and all that is left is the scar."


    Her outburst subsided and she remained kneeling on the cold, black parking lot, the first sobs of many forcing their way out of her body.


    "It is over, is it not? But why can I not seem to move on? What is wrong with my heart, Athan?"


    I didn''t know. I fell to my knees in front of her and just...leaned against her. Both of us leaning on the other, heads propped up on each other''s shoulders.


    Sitting still. Crying. A moment frozen in time in that diner''s parking lot.


    She moved, I thought to embrace me, but then her hands played at the back of my neck. And then she pulled away.


    She was holding my choker in her fingers, looking at it like it might jump up and strangle her heart.


    "I set you free," she whispered. "I believe...it hurts more...to suffer together than apart."


    I swallowed hard and pulled her chin up to force her to look up from the black ground. Pulled her gaze into my eyes, our faces inches from each other.


    "Karu, I''m sorry for not knowing about your pain."


    "I hid it from you. It is expected."


    "Even so. And then I burdened you even more with my own issues."


    She shook her head. "It is--"


    "But I never want to not have you in my life. If both of us suffering is too much, then lean on me. Put your suffering on my back and I will gladly bear it for the both of us. Tell me, let me help, trust me, and I will do everything I can to protect you from anything which would hurt you. I would fight the whole world for you, Karu."


    She sighed heavily. "You are a base idiot, Ashton. Fighting the world and trusting you are why we are in this mess. I love you. And I love that fire within you which burns your own soul to warm others. But your burdens are real, and I see you buckling beneath them already. I would never cast my own troubles onto you, who remain still so beautiful and pure to try to salvage my own corrupt shell. Abandon me, Ashton. Let me be a waitress who once flew with angels. Who once--" she reached out and touched my cheek with rough hands. "Who once touched the face of God."


    I shook my head. "I will never abandon you."


    "I know," she whispered. "But I cannot let you break. Even if you are not to be mine, I can never let you break. And I am too broken. This dress, these cuts, this life...this is nothing compared to the darkness in my heart. You would delve to great acts of idiocy for me, and I cannot permit it."


    She stood up with a wince but otherwise ignored the cuts on her legs. "Please leave me in your past, Ashton. I will spend the rest of my days working quietly, here...or elsewhere. I will be nobody of import, nobody worth loving. Another face you see every day and never question why they are a waitress. It is what is best. One so impure as myself cannot fix the world, only fracture it further. So give me this final selfless act."


    I stood up too and shook my head. "No," I said.


    "Would you stop me then? Break in and strip this uniform and my plates from me by force?"


    "No, but--"


    "Then you are as powerless as I. This is not a battlefield. There are no rockets or jetpacks or Exhumans here. Just breakfast and lunch, and dinner on the weekends."


    She turned to go and...I couldn''t stop her. Not without force anyway, and any impulse I had to reach out and grab her stopped as I saw the angry lines cut into her arms.


    She disappeared inside and I just stood there like an idiot, feeling another entire world of thoughts and emotions swirling inside of me. Even if I didn''t have all the answers yet, Karu had let me see a small slice of her world, of the agony which had pushed the light from her eyes and had dragged her out of the heavens.


    And I couldn''t do anything about any of it. And she knew that, and that''s why she hadn''t told me. It had taken a childish tantrum and a teary breakdown just for me to get this one glimpse. And in that glimpse, I had the painful realization that as much suffering as I might feel, there was a whole world of suffering people around me.


    Everyone struggled. Everyone died.


    ¡­


    But some people fought anyway.


    Karu came back outside in street clothes, her arms covered once again and approached me cautiously.


    "Karu, I met a girl," I said.


    "Another one? I pity AEGIS."


    "No, not like that. An Exhuman girl."


    "Then I pity Saga?"


    "Listen," I said, cutting her off before I lost the emotion in my heart. "She''s dead. But before she died, she was ready to join the P-Force and fight for what she believed in. She wanted to fight so that no other Exhumans would suffer like she had. She wanted a world safe for us, where we could live in trust and peace."


    "So she was you, in essence."


    "Yes. Me a long time ago. When I was first joining, when I was fresh-faced and starry-eyed. When I wasn''t yet heavy with all this knowledge of the inner workings and how much sacrifice and how many lies there had to be to keep the whole thing going."


    "I see. So she died an idiot."


    "Maybe. But...an idiot is who I want to be again. I want to find that clear-cut path again, to know what''s truly good and evil and cut down evil and say consequences be damned, because if there''s bad consequences, I''ll just cut them down too."


    She gave me a half-smile. "Perhaps I was an idiot to believe in you as well."


    "My point is, don''t give up on yourself, Karu. Even if everything seems hopeless and grim and you''re trapped...I''m going to try to turn over a new leaf, I''m going to try to be more like her, more like I used to be. I''m going to fight the XPCA from within, and if they turn on me, then from without. And if I die, I''ll die like she did, walking the path I believe in, with hope. Not...not just...after a lifetime of selling pies."


    She went quiet and just watched me carefully.


    "What?" I asked.


    "You will die," she said. "And I care about that greatly."


    "Maybe. But if you spend your life being afraid to die...you wind up selling pies. It was only when I was ready to put my life on the line, repeatedly, that anything good ever happened to me. You. AEGIS. Saga. The P-Force. I can''t just sit still, or I''ll become what I am now...angry and confused and lost. I''m a quarterback. I have to keep moving, I can''t second-guess my gut, or I stand there until I get sacked."


    "Perhaps...you do not care for the words of a petty murderer--"


    "You''re not a murderer, Karu."


    She smiled darkly. "I killed Blackett at the very least. I had no contract nor right. It was indisputably murder, and I will face judgement for it when it is my time."


    "He was a piece of shit who deserved to die."


    "Saint Peter would see it differently. But, my point was to be...when you walked that path, you found many beside you. Myself, Saga, AEGIS, as you mentioned. But also many more. The downtrodden who see you brimming with a halo of hope."


    "Sure. I guess. Lots of Exhumans or sympathizers might support what I''m doing."


    She shook her head. "Support it with their lives. And also, with their deaths. As that girl you spoke of pushed you towards the right path through martyrdom. I fear your path is not to fight and die for your cause, but rather to fight and live while others die. Is that something you can do?"


    I blinked at her, completely floored by the direction this conversation had turned. Nothing seemed to stir between us but the sounds of cars at a distant intersection, idling at a red light.


    "I don''t know," I said. "I can''t plan to be unmoved by people dying."


    To my surprise, she smiled. "That is not a ''no'', I notice."


    "No...it''s not. While you know I''d much rather die for my beliefs than let someone else do it...if something happens...if it''s like that girl, or like Mage, or like AEGIS...I have to keep moving anyway. Otherwise it was all for nothing."


    "A long time ago, I told you the nature of true leadership. Do you remember what I said?"


    I shook my head.


    "I said that to be a leader is making the hardest decisions. That sometimes, to be a leader is to decide whom you must sacrifice so that the rest may live."


    "And at the time you were worried I was going to throw away myself," I said, remembering.


    "Yes. And you proved me right by capitulating the moment one other than you was in danger. Do you think you have grown? Have you reached the point where your principles can outweigh the life of another?"


    She didn''t wait for me to answer, simply put a hand on my shoulder with reassuring weight.


    "If you find the answer to be no, we are hiring," she said with a macabre grin.

 239. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    When I arrived at Lia''s that evening, my head heavy with Karu''s words of punishments and only making things worse and of giving up, I found we had an unexpected guest and the house was starting to get rather crowded.


    Moon was still here for reasons I could only guess at, having slept in her uniform in the disused bedroom which had once belonged to Lia''s idiot boyfriend. She was safely behind her book, completely ignoring the other two girls chatting, while AEGIS hovered nearby, apparently cleaning, but still managing to stare suspiciously at Rito even without discernible eyes.


    I had to smile at the scene. Rito was older than me, but tiny, and so at a glance it just looked like two perfectly ordinary high schoolers sitting on the couch gabbing, aided in no small part by the fact that these were easily the two most energetic and gesticulating people I''d ever met.


    Not wanting to interrupt, I hovered in the entryway for a bit as they seemingly were debating how good of an ending some specific show had. In the course of the perhaps minute I was sitting there, each of them had stood up to pace or gesture more dramatically, their voices ringing and bombastic, and their laughter genuine.


    "No, it was more like this!" Lia said, and did a spin ending in a dramatic pose with both arms pointed in the air to her side. "Oh, hi dude! When did you get back?"


    "Just now," I said, stepping in properly. "Hi all."


    Rito rose but AEGIS got there first. "Athan, this Exhuman just showed up in our house asking to speak to you. Is this going to become a common occurrence?" she spoke quickly in her creepy synth voice and I found myself shrugging away from her and the little finger-drones she had floating in the air around her. "Do you have some kind of relationship I don''t know about? Not that it''s any of my business, but she seems a little small for you."


    "Too bad Athan likes ''em small," Lia grinned. In the corner of my eye I saw Moon imperceptibly perk up.


    "She wouldn''t last ten seconds in a fight. Athan needs someone sturdy," AEGIS said, banging her hand-paddle against her chest with a clang.


    Lia''s smile had turned utterly devious. "She''s got some muscle. Besides, is it really the battlefield where you think Athan cares how long she''d last?"


    "P-please don''t...I''m...I''m right here¡­" Rito muttered, her face searing crimson.


    "Yeah, AEGIS? Stop being jealous. Rito''s just a friend. And Lia, stop messing with everyone. You two are impossible."


    Lia cackled and threw herself back into a chair while I sat down next to the poor embarrassed girl, making her shift away from me with the least subtle shuffle ever.


    "Um, I-I...I needed...needed to talk to...to you," she stammered out at the coffee table.


    "I''m right here, whatever you need," I said, trying to be reassuring, but not sure how to do that without sounding like flirting, given the context we''d just been thrown in.


    "I um, the Defiant, that is, they want...want to meet again. They...haven''t...heard from Talon. It''s been...three days."


    "Oh."


    "Yeah."


    "Who what now?" Lia asked, as AEGIS abandoning all pretense of doing other work and approaching us. Rito, now caught between the jealous beetle bot and me made the wise choice of inching back my way.


    "Maybe just the end of the world," I said. "They don''t know he''s dead, or they wouldn''t be calling you, I assume."


    "No...I don''t think they do. Do know, that is. I didn''t tell them...because...well, end of the world."


    "Right." Surprisingly smart of her.


    "Well...I know I am a dummy but...I''ve had a few days to think about what I was gonna say..."


    I was going to give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and let her know she wasn''t stupid and had done well so far, but the second my hand moved towards her, she bolted up off the couch and moved behind Moon''s chair in the corner.


    "Reading over my shoulder is very distracting," Moon said without so much as lifting her eyes from the page.


    "A-anyway, I don''t know what to do, Athan. I thought maybe you might have an idea," Rito continued undeterred.


    "Okay, recap please?" Lia asked.


    "Sure. Around twenty Exhumans broke out of New Eden and instead of going into hiding, joined together to form a collective called the Defiant Unchained. Their leader was a former lawyer named Talon. Their policy was that an attack on one of them was an attack on all of them. They threatened to destroy the world if they were attacked by the XPCA, and to my knowledge, the XPCA have been too scared to act."


    "Okay," said Lia, already beginning to fret.


    "Problem is, three days ago, the night the Defiant announced themselves and their policy, Talon was murdered in his apartment. Shot three times in the back by a gun using the same bullets as standard XPCA firearms. The windows were blacked out by XPCA exotics expanding foam, we have a footprint which doesn''t indicate a boot or shadow ops stilt, and they escaped by jumping from a second-story window without any evidence they hurt themselves."


    Lia frowned. "The fall indicates training. The gun and goo are the most obvious evidence, if both of them are XPCA-affiliated, that indicates them. But the killer would also know that...and might have done it to make it look like the XPCA."


    "That was my thinking too," AEGIS said. "The blood footprint was difficult to make out and the carpet was too thick to make a concrete match, but I did rule out any sanctioned XPCA-attire. If it was left on accident, it implies a setup by someone not in the XPCA."


    "But why would anyone want a bunch of Exhumans angry at the XPCA?" I asked. "That''s just begging for the world to end. Nobody''s that stupid."


    "Maybe an Exhuman?" Rito asked. I looked at her and she shrunk and blushed. "No, sorry, that was stupid."


    "No...I mean, it is stupid, but that doesn''t mean someone wouldn''t do it. Any Exhuman--"


    I stopped as a sound emanated from Rito. Some guy yelling and the sound of a tennis ball getting whacked, I think?


    "Love that series," Lia commented. I was obviously missing a reference. Rito pulled out her mobile and glanced at it, going white.


    "It''s them again. They want to know why I haven''t answered. They...they''re...they...oh no."


    "What?"


    "They are trying to meet up right now. They wonder if I''ve been hurt. This last message is ''to the bastard who took Rito''s phone, we''ll make you pay'', it says. Oh no. Oh no."


    "We have to tell them. They''re less likely to freak out if it''s coming from us than them discovering it on their own," I said. Lia and AEGIS nodded, and Moon snapped her book shut, noticed we were all looking at her, and receded into the back of her chair nervously.


    "Okay. I''ll message them then--" Rito said, typing.


    "Message them what?" Lia asked.


    "That he died."


    "Don''t do that!" Lia half-shouted. "Um, look...whatever you say over messenger, you''ll have a huge disadvantage in convincing them. Delay in between messages gives them time to second-guess everything you''re saying, they''re already on the defensive, and already not convinced you really still are Rito."


    "But I am Rito?"


    "I meant, the bastard who took Rito''s phone."


    "Oh. Right."


    "Thank God for you, Lia," I said. "Let''s help them meet, and talk to them together then?"


    "Yeah I think that''s best," Lia said, chewing her lip. "I wish I knew more about them. I can try to play off them in general, but this isn''t a situation where I can just call back later if I mess up¡­"


    "The facts might sound more authentic coming from a machine?" AEGIS suggested.


    We all took one look at her and then all vehemently disagreed.


    "No offense, but you look like a murder machine," I said.


    "Not that he doesn''t still love you!" Lia added glaring at me. "We could...bring Saga. Sort of...force them to see it our way."


    "No way," I said, crossing my arms and glaring at her. "We''re never doing that."


    "Who is...Saga?" Rito asked.


    "Bro, if this goes badly...twenty Exhuman event, assuming nobody else from New Eden finds out and joins in. End of the world scenario like you said. It might be a good idea, just to be safe. Just a little nudge, not even the full deal."


    "Lia, no. We''re not those people, and we''re not going to ask Saga to be that person either. That''s fucked up and wrong."


    [Thanks. I''d rather not. AEGIS would kill me. You''re always so nice and respectful of other people''s brains.]


    "WHO SAID THAT?" Rito yelled as Lia went catatonic on her feet.


    [(Oh shitgoddamnit fucking compel!)]


    "WHAT IS GOING ON? WHO IS TALKING?" Rito clawed at her skull and I had to laugh as I remembered the first time Saga had spoken in my head and I thought there was a food-obsessed ghost.


    "Sorry, that''s Saga," I explained. "She talks in your head sometimes. Though she really shouldn''t because it freaks out the neighbors." I waited but Saga didn''t reply. I did get a vague sense of sheepish amusement from the direction of the tree in the backyard though.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Rito''s mobile played man-yelling-tennis noise again and she threw it in front of her eyes with the same panicked intensity of screaming about Saga, her eyes going even wider as she read the message.


    "Let''s go now," I suggested, before she could freak out any further. "Rito, take us away please."


    We averted our gazes and it was only a moment before Moon fell down from not sitting on a chair anymore, and I realized we were all standing in a dark room.


    "Wait, why did you bring AEGIS?" I asked, looking around after I''d lit up a couple swords to see.


    "Uh, I just...I''m sorry, I forgot," Rito said. "I can send her back--"


    "No, wait--" AEGIS said, and when I turned to look, I found myself staring at dirt and darkness, waiting for her to finish her sentence before realizing she was gone.


    "Creepy," Lia said. In the dark, I''d found a lightswitch and flicked it on. Faint buzzing and yellow light filled the air as the room lit up.


    An unfinished basement, it looked like. Cavernous, wooden ceiling and beams above us, an uneven dirt floor underfoot, studded at random intervals with chunks of concrete embedded in the ground and holding up pillars. There were just a couple of lights directly above us and otherwise the room stretched in the darkness as far as I could see in any direction.


    "Um, Rito, where the heck are we?" I asked.


    "Under my high school, in Oregon. A little room we found that nobody knows about. We all grew up and moved away, so I still use it sometimes."


    I wasn''t sure if a ''little room'' could possibly describe a lamp installed in the foundations of a school building but sure. Good a meeting place as any I guessed.


    "Okay...turn again please. I''m going to start bringing them in¡­"


    It was a bit uncomfortably short down here, and while Rito seemed to have no problem walking around under the beams, and Moon had ample clearance, Lia and I were stooping to avoid getting splinters and dust in our hair. We sat down since it was more comfortable than breaking our backs, and Moon joined us.


    Rito seemed to be having some trouble and was typing messages at people, presumably to get them to stop watching each other so she could steal them away, and it was only another minute before there were another dozen people squatting in the dirt with us.


    I was happy to note that Trish''s girl, Haley wasn''t among them. It seemed several of the less-important members weren''t coming, because Rito rejoined us as though she were done well before reaching twenty.


    "Hi," she said, looking around. "Um, this is Athan. Athan...uh...go."


    "Thanks for that intro," I intoned. "Yes, I''m Athan. I met with Talon in the pizzeria that day if any of you remember. I definitely remember a few of your faces, good to see you doing well."


    I paused. Why did I say that? I was just aiming for friendly pleasantries but that was not a good preface to ''oh and by the way, Talon isn''t doing well at all because he is dead''.


    "I don''t care who you are, just tell me why you''re here. This is a Defiant meeting," said some dark-skinned girl with a head scarf.


    "I don''t even care about that," laughed an older fatter man with a moustache and a deep voice. "He can fuck off and die. All I want to know is, where''s Talon?"


    "I might postulate that he is speaking because he is cognizant of the particulars of these queries?" said a thin, pale man, square glasses under a slightly-turned baseball cap which read in lovely white stitching ''I am now accepting compliments''. "Mayhap we might already procure the solutions posthaste, had the two of you not interceeded with your needless outbursts of prattle."


    "Shut the hell up, Dork-Hand," Mustache said.


    "How typically uncouth," Dork-Hand huffed.


    "Both of you shut up and you, start talking," the girl said, stabbing her finger at me.


    I could just tell I was going to love this meeting already.


    "Okay. Before we begin, I just want to clear the air a little bit. As you probably know from when we last met, I am XPCA, yes. But I''m not--"


    "Boring!" belched the man. "Didn''t come here to hear you talk about yourself."


    "How about you just begin, before I get to punching," the woman said, cracking her knuckles as she glared at me with narrowed eyes.


    I took a deep breath. They couldn''t be all bad if Talon was working with them. They were just nervous and upset and wary of me.


    "Three days ago, someone we believe was unaffiliated with the XPCA broke into Talon''s house on the night after the summit, blocked out his windows and cut his power to blind him, and shot him in the back three times. He is dead. Rito witnessed the crime and barely got away, with Talon''s last act being to save her."


    They muttered amongst themselves. Apparently I''d confirmed what many had feared. The girl stood up and slammed a fist into her palm. She was muscular, lean, and small, wearing a short-cut tank that showed off just how much more defined her arms and abs were than mine.


    "And just how much beating the crap outta you is it gonna take to get the whole truth, XPCA?" she said.


    "Minerva, honestly," Dork-Hand pleaded. "I am singularly dubious that this gentlesir needs any contusion to facilitate his oration. Conciliate yourself for once."


    "It''s Mini, and you open your stupid mouth one more time and I''ll conciliate the shit outta you," she said, turning on him.


    He reached into a pocket and pulled out a tiny holo, only as large as a couple of fingers, and then read. "Conciliate. Verb. To stop one from being discontented; to pacify."


    She lunged towards him to slap the holo from his hands but he held it away from her like it was the source of all of his powers.


    Idiots. They were all idiots. These were the people threatening the security of the world? I had to hope the others who weren''t all speaking up and embarrassing themselves were doing so because they had a shred of normalcy between them.


    "Anyway," I barreled on, now that Punchy Chick wasn''t directing her fists at me anymore. "We found a footprint in Talon''s blood which indicates the murderer was neither an XPCA soldier or one of the stilt-wearing shadow ops units."


    "Or the jackass knew how to change shoes. Doesn''t prove anything," Mustache said.


    "You might think that," I said, diplomatically, "but it''s evidence that stands out because it seems left unintentionally compared to the rest. The exotic gel and firearms used indicate XPCA--"


    "So it was XPCA," he grumbled.


    "--but the shoeprint was clearly left on accident and doesn''t--"


    "So it was XPCA and they changed their shoes. What are you, stupid?" he asked.


    I was about ready to tear out my hair when Lia spoke up.


    "Sir, that is how it looks on the surface, but let me assure you...he only looks stupid." She grinned at him and waited, and after a moment he snorted and smiled back. "You hate the XPCA, I bet? Bunch of asses trying to jerk you around."


    "''Course I do. Any sane man would."


    "Right," Lia nodded. "Which is why this situation is so messed up. See, the killer knows that you hate the XPCA. That''s why they used XPCA grenades and guns, they''re trying to use your hate to make you jump to a false conclusion." She lowered her voice and tilted her head down conspiratorially. "But if you fall for that trap, they''ve beaten you. Talon''s murderer will walk free, laughing as you and the XPCA go to war just like he wants."


    The man bristled behind his bristles. "Nobody manipulates me," he said.


    Oh the fucking irony.


    "Right! I could see that the second we met," Lia continued. "You don''t take bullshit from anybody. And that''s why we need your help. We want to find the real killer, and we want to avoid a war with the XPCA at all costs, because if that breaks out, the killer won."


    I realized Lia even broke her self-imposed rule about swearing to talk to this guy. Maybe she''d assessed that beating around the bush with half-measured words wouldn''t impress him sufficiently. Whatever her reason, the word fell out of her mouth as naturally as any other. I was impressed. But then the other two finished their fight and rejoined us, and Lia sat back down and shut up again.


    Hmm. Maybe if I could see through her, she worried they might as well? Whatever the reason it looked like I was back up again.


    I was about to start speaking when Moustache did instead.


    "I''ve decided we shouldn''t act," he said with all the confidence that his decision had been handed to him on a carved stone tablet from God.


    "What? Bullshit. They hit us, we hit them back or we look weak," Mini said.


    "Indeed, the pact''s subsistence is contingent on the aplomb that we act when browbeat."


    "Aplomb isn''t the right word," Moon said suddenly.


    He cocked his head with a confident grin and glared at her. "Aplomb means assurance. The pact''s subsistence is contingent on the assurance that we act," he said slowly and deliberately.


    She shook her head slowly. "Aplomb means self-assurance, or confidence. You can''t use it to refer to another''s certainty."


    "I certainly can," he said, brandishing his tiny holo and flipping through it. His brow furrowed as he stood there fruitlessly for long seconds, his fingers flying across the tiny display.


    "Idiot," breathed Mini before turning back to us. "I don''t care who did it. That''s the XPCA''s problem. Our rule was you fight one of us, you fight all of us, and it seems to me someone fought one of us, so buckle up."


    Moustache scoffed. "And let the real killer walk free and laugh at us? I don''t think so."


    I could only shake my head at how I heard Lia''s exact words coming out of his mouth now. For hating being manipulated, he sure was good at it.


    "Then this what we effectuate," Dork-Hand said, stuffing his holo back in his pocket without a single word for Moon. "As we ever have, we rectify the dispute with a ballot."


    "Like Talon did," Mustache agreed.


    "Whatever. If you all idiots want to let them pick us off one by one, fucking go for it."


    "All right, voting time," Mustache suddenly yelled back at the others. "If you want to fight, thumbs up. If you want to wait and figure out who the real killer was, thumbs down."


    With all the confidence in the world, he thrust his hand in the air, thumb pointed downwards. Most followed suit after a moment, though a few went up, Mini''s among them. Finally, after the majority was already established, Dork-Hand also signaled a thumbs-down.


    "Buncha dumbasses," Mini growled. "It''s not gonna be me next. It''ll be one of you bitches."


    "Well," Dork-Hand said with a smile as though he were the diplomat who had just solved global hunger with his medal for creating world peace. "I''d say the predestination of this summit has been pronounced. We shall begin our own inquiries into his death and resolve this, posthaste."


    "Are we good then?" Rito asked. "Are you going home?"


    "The sooner the better," Mustache said.


    "Before I beat one of you idiots to death," Mini agreed.


    "Wait, we must commit to a future concourse," Dork-Hand said. "Shall we reconvene in, I submit, a week?"


    "Every day, until it''s settled," Mustache growled.


    "Please. We''d kill each other," Mini said. "We all report in every day, meet every three."


    "Fine."


    "Splendiferous."


    "Speak like a normal fucking person, Dork-Hand," Mini said, as she and the others turned from Rito. It wasn''t but a few moments before I realized they were gone and we were too, back at the house in Vegas, with AEGIS wearing a rut in the rug from her pacing.


    "Athan! You''re back!" she said, and just about lunged at me, which I deftly sidestepped. "How''s the world? Ending tonight?"


    "Not tonight," I sighed. "Lia saved the world today."


    "Aw shucks," she said, sticking out her tongue. "All in a day''s work for us Ashtons. Now if you don''t mind, I''mma dig up some files."


    "I''ll come with. You can fill me in," AEGIS said.


    "I''ll be fine on my own. You have...work to do, remember?" Lia said evasively.


    "Yeah...but...end of the world," AEGIS said, stopping her pursuit as Lia wandered out of sight down the hallway.


    "If you finish your work and the world ends, you''ll be able to go out with a bang!" Lia said, and then her door clicked shut.


    I turned to AEGIS, not sure what was going on there. "What work do you have?"


    "Oh. Uh. Heh."


    "AEGIS? Are you hiding things from your boyfriend?"


    "No. Well. Yes." I waited, and watched as the angular black thing sweated it out under my gaze. "Okay...well...it was a surprise, damn that girl. But we''re back in manufacturing! I have...taken your input under advisement and realized...this body is definitely...lacking in some ways."


    "Oh thank God," I sighed. "I didn''t know that I had it in me to stick around this giant black thing forever."


    AEGIS froze awkwardly. "Uh. Yeah."


    "Problem?" I asked.


    "No, no. I was just...was just going to start...work on this body a little bit. Wasn''t...planning to...jump out just yet."


    "Oh," I said. I really should get my foot out of my mouth one of these days. "Uh, sounds good. So...what were you thinking? Like, real fingers, or...skin maybe?"


    "I was going to start with a face."


    "Sure. Face. Sounds good. I like faces. Been uh...been wearing one for years," I said, desperately trying to envision any way that a tiny human face on that mess of black metal would look anything other than horrifying.

 240. 2252, Present Day. XPCA Regional Facility, New Mexico. Athan.

    The meeting between the Defiant Unchained had been three days ago. If they stuck to their schedule, they''d be meeting again today. I could imagine Rito pulling them into the dark, cramped space under the floorboards, and sympathized.


    If I squinted hard enough, the lines in the concrete ceiling above me looked sort of like the wooden slats in her school''s floor. The bars on the open door looked like a line of pillars holding up the building.


    But more likely, I was just going a little crazy from being here for three days. Locked up away from the world with nobody but interrogators to keep me company.


    It was stupid, and what''s more, I felt stupid for not seeing it coming. We told the Defiant about the death of their leader, then of course one of them would go posturing or threatening or whatever the fuck it was they did to the XPCA, then my name comes up, and next thing you know, I''m in a cell.


    I mean, the door was open because they couldn''t close it on me without the room blowing up. It had taken the morons three rooms to get that right. But it was still a cell, even if I was honestly still here by choice. Like one armed guard outside the door was going to do a damn thing to me if I really wanted out.


    Every day they had more questions. The one that kept coming up was why did you kill him, and it seemed like no matter how many times I told them I didn''t, they kept finding new people and new ways to ask the same question.


    I''d told my story probably fifty times over the three days, and it felt like the last jackass who pulled me out of here wasn''t any different or closer to cracking this than the first.


    I knew the girls were probably worrying about me, though I''d managed to borrow Tem''s holo and let them know where I was and that I was fine and to let this all blow over. She''d been trying to live under my bed, but without food, and with the risk of my shield detonating and killing her accidentally if some dumbass closed the door on us, I had to report her to get her out of here. I was able to use her holo to have Cosette do it with some tact and hopefully keep her out of trouble, but still.


    Mostly I just laid there with my thoughts. The first day was absolute torture, thinking about all the time I was wasting, the crazy things my friends might get up to looking for me, wondering if there were other ops going on where Exhumans were getting iced because I couldn''t be there to save them.


    I thought a lot about Karu and AEGIS, and how both of them had been transformed recently. AEGIS had taken a step back from who she was, and the old her in the new world was overwhelming and scary and she''d reacted to it with fear and arrogance, lashing out at people and friends because of their unrealistic expectations of her, and her whole ignorance of the wider world and all that had happened to us in it.


    Karu was the opposite. She''d taken a step forward, but down a strange path, choosing to shrink her world from something overwhelming to something tiny, somewhere she could have control over herself and her feelings again. When I sat down and thought about it like that, it didn''t seem as bad as my gut instinct that she''d dropped her guns and became a waitress but...deep down I knew it was wrong for her. I hoped she''d see it too...but at the same time...if she didn''t...was that okay?


    By the second day, I''d run out of things to think about and was just retreading old ground in my mind, it felt like. I felt cagey and anxious, felt like I''d been benched too long, that I was at risk of growing rusty. I felt mad, and even yelled at one of the interrogators, probably doubling my stay here for the stupid outburst.


    But come-fucking-on. How many times can you hear the same story and ask the same questions and get the same answers before you can reasonably expect to have your head bitten off? I didn''t know who the hell all these intelligence officers I was talking to were, or what they were trying to get from me, but it was becoming apparent to me really quickly how the XPCA could be so consistently stupid, if these people were the ''intelligence'' in it.


    By the third day, I was just depleted. I was tired of these walls. Tired of sleeping on this shitty bed with the lights only half-off. Tired of the careful handling and constant stares of the XPCA soldiers transporting me to and from interrogations and holding, watching me like I was going to flip out and kill them all if they so much as blinked.


    It reminded me of an uncomfortable truth I knew but rarely actually faced. People legit hated Exhumans. Like obviously, that wasn''t something I could ever forget, but most days, I was with friends or colleagues, or other Exhumans. People desensitized to Exhumans by constant exposure. Here on this base, these personnel probably only saw Exhumans once or twice, and in the years before New Eden, every single time they did, half of them wouldn''t come home that day.


    It was sobering and frustrating, and after being angry at these jackasses all day yesterday and burning out on it, gave me a small bit of a new perspective. It might even suck more for them than for me, maybe, I thought.


    Maybe.


    It wasn''t until after dark that evening, following the third day of interrogation and isolation that something changed. I heard boots clicking down the hallway far later than ever before, and just listened to them come. They stopped in front of my cell and I heard a familiar voice.


    "Hey, Chariot. Time to go home."


    I looked up at her, upside-down from my perspective on the bed, and saw Cosette standing there, exhausted but smiling, her brown hair straight with accumulated grease and her uniform jacket open and hanging off her shoulders over a plain black tee.


    "I''m glad they didn''t send you to interrogate me, I would have cracked in no time," I said, returning her smile.


    "For fuck''s sake Chariot, all I ever ask is that you keep out of trouble, and you''re going around poking your face into the murder scene of the XPCA''s most wanted. Do you have any idea how many things you touched in that room? How much DNA you left behind? I had forensics investigators shoving little baggies and holos in my face for the last seventy-two hours straight, saying do you know why he touched this? Can you explain why his dander was in this room? Like I don''t have anything better to do with my time, like protecting the goddamn world."


    "Sorry," I mumbled at her.


    "Didn''t hear that. Sounded a bit like a lame-ass apology, but I know that can''t be right after all I''ve been putting up with for you."


    I stood up and clicked my socked feet together, snapping her the crispest of salutes. "Apologies sir! This soldier expresses his deepest regrets and conveys gratitude for your efforts, sir!"


    "Fuck yeah you do. They wanted to keep you a whole week, but I told them if I lost my strike lead any longer, I may as well just hand the world over to the Exhumans. The bad ones, that is," she said with a sideways glance. "What are you still standing there for, get your ass outta that cell. The detention center is drafty as fuck."


    "Well you could always wear your jacket," I said, joining her.


    "I''m going for the crazy disheveled look over here. I figure, I stop doing personal hygiene, the whole world will just calm the fuck down for a minute when my stench hits ''em, and I get some time to relax. Also here, look, I''ve been practicing my crazy eyes."


    "Very nice. Very crazy."


    "Thanks. I don''t mind the generals'' bitch work so much if they understand I might bite them for asking. Always dress for the job you want, right?"


    I got checked out and she kept up a stream of amicable chatter which was doubly relentless, both because she was very wound up and obviously hadn''t spoken to anyone in a while, and because I hadn''t spoken to anyone in even longer and had become sort of quiet as a result. Even though she seemed happy enough, she was walking slowly and there were bags under her eyes. To say nothing of the fact she just happened to be on base after dark and had been served the bitch work of telling me I could go. Freaking intelligence guys didn''t mind wasting my time, but couldn''t be assed to come out and tell me I was free themselves.


    "You got a place to stay tonight?" she asked, as we crossed out of the detention center into the cold, crisp night air. The harsh lights of the base painted the sky velvet and erased any trace of stars.


    "Um, barracks, I guess."


    She shook her head. "Barracks is full up. We had an event yesterday halfway to Colorado and logistics is still trying to get everyone home. Everyone alive anyway. Well, the dead, too, but they aren''t taking up space in the barracks."


    "I missed an event?" I gaped at her. "Was everyone okay?"


    She turned to me and smiled again, pointing to the dark lines under her eyes. "Kid, I earned these stressing and working enough for the both of us. It''s fine for you not to be at every single disaster in the world. The A in XPCA does not stand for Athan."Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "So everyone''s fine?"


    "Ehh. Everyone survived. Tem''s under arrest, she wouldn''t go without you. Or so I assume, she wouldn''t say or do anything. Moon and Tower were MIA for a few hours but turned up laughing and smiling. He was, anyway. She''s weird. Otherwise, no issues."


    "That''s a relief. Was Jack lead?"


    "Yeah. He''s smart but he doesn''t make decisions well. Tends to go with whatever he thinks everyone else wants. Great soldier, not a great leader. I''m sure everyone will be extra-happy to see you as a result."


    I blushed under her compliments. We reached a set of doors for the main building and paused outside it. "So, got a place to stay?" she repeated. "You can take my car and crash at my place tonight if you need it. I''m hardly there anyway."


    "Take your car?"


    "Well, don''t wreck it, obviously, but sure."


    "And how would you get home?"


    "I wouldn''t. I''ve got a nice comfy sleeping bag under my desk. It''s really helping me develop a whole new world of back pain I didn''t know I could ever aspire to, plus I get to face the generals in the morning without my bra on. Every girl''s dream."


    "No...I''ll just...wander and find something. Been doing not much the last few days but resting so I think a walk wouldn''t hurt."


    "Fair enough. You''ve got your effects back so call me if you change your mind. But if you happen to wake me up..." she leaned in close and grabbed me by the collar. She really did smell sort of offensively ripe from this distance. "...I will kill you."


    She let me go and fixed my collar. "But, statistically speaking, I never really sleep anymore so, hey, no worries."


    "Great," I said. "Please take care of yourself, Cosette."


    "Meh? World ain''t gonna save itself."


    She turned to go but I called after her back. "Remember Mage, please. She died because I gave so much of myself to the fight that I couldn''t help when she really needed it. The first rule of combat is not to get yourself killed."


    She froze and then glanced back at me. "You been taking Peregrine training, kid?"


    "No, just life tips from Karu."


    "Ah, that''d do it. Well, tell that buzzard to keep her winglets vertical. And make sure you tell her thanks."


    "For what?" I called, but she just gave me a lazy wave as she walked back into the building.


    I only had a minute to wonder what she meant by that before I reached the main gate and found Karu sitting there in jeans, a jacket, and a knit cap. She was still holding herself like she was cold, and seemed apparently catatonic on the same rock I''d seen her on a week ago.


    "Karu?" I called to her. She started awake and almost fell off her rock, rubbing her eyes as she looked around in the relative dark.


    "Ashton!" she said and rose, only to immediately wobble on infirm legs.


    "Woah, easy," I said, catching her. She was cold, and leaned on me heavily.


    "Accursed legs have gone to sleep under me, my apologies," she said, shaking them out.


    "Karu, it''s the middle of the night inside a secure XPCA facility...what are you doing here?"


    "Waiting for you," she said, frowning at me. "Was it not obvious?"


    "Karu...I was jailed indefinitely. How long were you planning to be out here? How long were you out here?"


    "Only most of two days. I did go home to eat and sleep."


    "And your job?"


    She shrugged. "I was under the impression you thought very little of that job anyway. I let them know of my situation, and we shall see if they allow me to resume employment. Personally, I view my chances positively, as I believe the manager has something of a soft spot for broken girls with tragic pasts of which they will not speak." She smiled like it was a joke, though I didn''t see the humor. "Oh, lighten up, as it were. You were unincarcerated today."


    "You...seem different today," I said, and then realized how that might be interpreted poorly. "I mean, you seem happy."


    "Come, let us walk, should my legs permit it," she said with a smile. "Are you staying in the barracks tonight?"


    "They''re full up."


    "Then you shall stay with me. I insist."


    "Karu, that''s a really bad--"


    "No, I insist. Nothing untoward will occur. You are my platonic friend and guest and will be offered appropriate hospitality and immunity from my charms."


    I didn''t know quite how to respond to that, though I had to admit I found myself significantly less immune to her charms now than usual. It really seemed like she had taken a second lease on life, or found inner peace, or something, and honestly I was a little desperate to know if there was some hidden secret to happiness she could share with me.


    Was it her restaurant''s pies? I bet it was pies.


    I asked about it again after we''d gotten in her car, but she just told me to wait until we were home to have a real chat. She also didn''t ask about my time as a hardened criminal, which I thought would be the first thing to come up, so I supposed she was serious in keeping it light for now.


    "Oh yeah, Cosette said I should tell you to keep your winglets vertical? What''s that about?"


    Karu laughed full-bodily and I really wished she wouldn''t. She was already driving like a bit of a maniac, and it was late, and dark, and she''d just been asleep a few minutes ago, and I wasn''t entirely convinced her legs were fully awake yet, and Jesus Christ that was another car, Karu you are killing me here.


    "Oh that takes me back," Karu said with a broad grin. "Training jetpacks have no neural uplink, so that you can train your body even if one''s mind is not yet disciplined enough. They are therefore quite different in both form and function, and have actual wings on them, the kind with swept-up tips at the ends. Winglets, those are called."


    She rubbed her hands and then cranked the heat up, speaking louder over the ensuing blast. "Well, when flying forward, a rookie may often have the propensity to fly forward facing forward, as though standing up, which is a poor habit. Unless performing feints or maneuvers which require otherwise, one should always be flying...upwards, I suppose you would call it. Headfirst. Superior aerodynamics and agility. So, when flying forward, one should, in spacial essence, be lying on their chest, and in this orientation, the winglets on a training jetpack would be vertical."


    "Keep your winglets vertical. So it''s a line in training, that''s it?"


    "Originally, and every cadet is well familiar with the phrase. But the only time one''s winglets would be vertical is when they are flying forward. Thus the epithet is more a wishing of success -- to keep moving forward. This is a long explanation which is likely unnecessary, and for that I do apologize."


    "No, it''s interesting. And funny, now that both of you know you''re Peregrines. She also told me to be sure to thank you."


    "Ah," Karu said, but didn''t smile at that one.


    "What''s that about?"


    "That," she said, turning left through a light which was almost certainly red "is her overstepping her bounds."


    "How so?"


    "Because if I had wanted you to know that I had played any role in your release, no matter how minor, I would have told you myself, not tossed out a casual mention of it and let it linger in your mind."


    "Oh. So you did?"


    "I did. And I did not intend to bring it up in the slightest. I contacted your sister and the AI and Code-X and let them know you had been taken again...and they seemed...disinterested."


    "Well...it wasn''t a big deal. And I told them that."


    She pulled the car into a half-full lot and looked at me like I was stupid after she parked. "I believe in your own words earlier tonight, you were ''jailed indefinitely''. As in, should the XPCA have desired it, you would remain there for weeks, or months, or even years."


    I had to laugh. "The door on my cell wasn''t even closed. I could have just left."


    "And would you have? And branded yourself a public enemy?"


    "Well...no¡­"


    "Then there may as well have been a door."


    I frowned at her. "It wasn''t a big deal."


    She shrugged. "I am glad it was not. But had your superior and I not been agitating for your release, perhaps it would have been. Who is to say?"


    "The others would have stepped in if it got bad," I said, though I felt like I was now just trying to defend them somehow.


    "And were that the case, the fact would be you would be in a situation which had gotten bad, as it were." She shook her head at me. "How many times must I preach anticipation and preparedness to you before you take it to heart? You do not plan to lose and then turn it about once you are losing. You plan to win, from the outset. All else is foolishness."


    She stepped out of the car and under the yellow light of the parking lot she''d put us in, the dirty lightbars faintly buzzing in lampposts, surrounded by a cloud of swarming bugs even in this cold. Ahead of us, a long two-story building coiled around the parking lot like a fossilized snake, the same pueblo brown as everything else in New Mexico it felt.


    There was a pool which was drained, and a few people standing outside their rooms almost certainly using some form of substance or alcohol. Karu had always picked travel accommodations with more...I dunno...more VTOL pads on the roof, I guess. Here, the roof had a green glowing sign advertising the number of channels on the holo.


    "Well...it is home, for now," she said gesturing grandly and doing her best to hide her embarrassment. "Of course I have a legitimate apartment in Vegas, I was just here for a few days for you and--"


    "It''s fine, Karu. I''ve just spent a few days in detainment, a crappy motel has never looked better."


    She smiled easily at me, and I found myself returning her smile. Her positivity seemed infectious...but I also realized, I wasn''t the same person as the last time I''d met her. The three days in isolation had stilled my thoughts and let me sort through some of my anger in a way that a world of distractions just wouldn''t have allowed. Yes, it was painful and crappy, but so it went with sorting emotional baggage, I guess.


    She led us past several rooms, at least one of which smelled very strongly of burning narcotics, and used a physical metal key, not even digital, to open one of the many doors.


    And then scurried around the room, picking up bits of trash and clothes and depositing them in the bin and her open suitcase, respectively, before allowing me to enter.


    "One bed," she intoned. "And you have been in that outfit for three days. I would not fault you for wishing to sleep nude." I was about to reply when she held up a finger and continued. "But as I said, this is a platonic offer of hospitality only, and must insist that no matter how irresistible you find me, we do nothing foolish."


    "I''ll keep my pants on," I smiled back.


    "Good," she said, and laid on the side of the bed nearer the door with a heavy thump. She took a deep breath and then sat up and faced me again, her green eyes burning bright.


    "And now, I believe we have plenty of important matters to discuss. Unless you would prefer to sleep and do it in the morning?"


    "No, I''ve been resting all day," I said. "Let''s talk."

 241. 2252, Present Day. Motel Coco, New Mexico. Athan.

    "So then," Karu said, taking off her white knit cap and tossing it with the rest of her clothes in the open suitcase. "I believe the first question you asked of me was regarding seeming happier. I am happier. Thank you."


    "Is there...a reason why?"


    She crossed her legs under her and played with the short bristles on her head. "Hmm. Certainly yes, but...I am not certain how to put it succinctly."


    "Then don''t put it succinctly. I''ve got time."


    She laughed. "Well...do not take this egotistically, though I know you may despite my request, but your words had a profound impact on me. Both of the last two times we spoke, you made your relentless nature clear. You repeatedly informed me that you would not let me vanish from your life. Let me be clear that I did and still have very...let us say...confused feelings regarding you."


    I nodded. A couple sentences in and this was getting pretty serious and pretty...well...a lot more me-centric than I had expected.


    "When I first spoke with you, I was in depression, wishing only to part with you no matter the cost and free myself from all of the pain and confusion you and your actions...and my actions...had brought into my life. But you made it clear you would not let me slip away--and while I may contest that if I tried my utmost you would not have been able to stop me--at the time...I was far from my utmost."


    "So you gave up on running away."


    She smiled morbidly. "A trapped animal lays down to die. I thought, if I can never rid myself of you, if I cannot escape, I must simply endure the pain. I wish I could claim it was humility which brought me to giving up my wings, but it was simple defeat. I could not do it any longer."


    She frowned. "I mentioned then, and I wish to reiterate, but Blackett and other deaths...I view as murder. I understand that as soldiers, death is a constant fixture in our lives, but there is a world of difference between a death on the battlefield and cornering a man in his home or office, as it were."


    "I''m sorry. I didn''t know you''d have a problem with it. I...I wish I hadn''t made you do that."


    "As do I. It is a delicate mental balance we walk between paid killers and just defenders, and I believe much of the pain you are suffering now is on account of being on that edge. The girl you alluded to, you regret her death, despite her being Exhuman?"


    "I didn''t kill her, Karu. I just couldn''t save her."


    "Ah. My condolences."


    She spent a moment just staring into my eyes making me feel ever more uncomfortable. Eventually she spoke again.


    "I was not in a strong emotional place to begin with, and then had murder push my conscience into the pit in which you found me. I began to second-guess myself at every turn, and was no longer fit for service as a hunter. I tried and failed at a few other things and then you found me selling pies, as it were."


    "And that made you happy?"


    She laughed. "Not in the least. I detest the servitude, though I will admit there is a simple joy to be found in such work."


    "Then what did?"


    "Let us say it was your words," she said, seriously. "When you confronted me three days ago, I had begged you to leave me alone again, and again you refused. But more, I finally broke down and bore my soul to you. I hid myself for so long in the fear that if you saw the monster I was underneath--" she clutched at her forearms as though in pain. "I did not plan to ever, yet you did not blink. You did not cast me out or judge me. You told me, no matter what form I take or who I am, you would not forsake me."


    She leaned back, propping herself up with her elbows, with the side effect of making the front of her sweater, uh, stand out...fairly incredibly.


    "And I thought it empty words at first. Or foolishness, charitably. I nearly talked myself out of thinking anything of it. Of course you would accept me, you are Athan Ashton, hero and champion. You would overlook anything."


    "Hey, that''s--"


    "And then something remarkable happened. I contacted your sister and friends, as I said, to coordinate our efforts in liberating you. And the most incredible miracle transpired. Can you imagine what it was?"


    I blinked at her. "AEGIS cooked for you and you didn''t die?"


    She laughed. "No. I was under the impression she was a proficient cook? But I saw how pitifully broken they all were. AEGIS transforming herself into that mechanical hulk. Saga tiptoeing around the very compel she placed in your sister. Your sister more afraid of creating conflict between the others--or horror of horrors, having them dislike her--than she was with progressing toward your freedom. They argued and bickered and cowered amongst themselves the entire time I spoke with them online, and it was an unmitigated disaster which yielded not an modicum of result."


    "Yeah that sounds like my life all right. How was this a miracle?"


    "Because," she said, laughing again "I was not the greatest fuck-up in God''s creation. So liberating. So freeing."


    "How great for you," I intoned, wondering exactly who was then.


    "And," she said, crawling forward towards me now, her chest swaying under her "it was verifiable proof of your words. No matter how dark the lives of your friends have become, you did not abandon them. And in holding them together, they persist, as you do, in seeing the darkness within each other and refusing to blink. Perhaps they disagree and argue more, yet they remain together despite their differences. I could not fathom it all quite at the moment I saw it...I found it initially frustrating honestly, if for no other reason than at their inability to act."


    She laid down facing me, chin propped up on her elbow, her sneakers waving lazily in the air. She was still making no sense to me. "And that''s all it took to make you happy? Realizing you weren''t the worst? Hell I could have told you that."


    "No, I am not quite that simple. Only close." She sighed. "I told you this was not a succinct tale."


    "Just keep going," I said. "I want to hear it."


    "After those events I had time to chew your words, as it were, recontextualized with the fact that, more than just idle promises, more than just being a decent person, they were very much beliefs you were tested upon daily. You added that you were lost, torn between knowing too much, having too many desires, no longer liking yourself, and were pushing towards a simpler, better, more dangerous you. It was like you were speaking from my own pain, my own heart, but instead of giving up and turning inward, here you were, chasing me down, smashing up my place of business in an immature way of fighting, yet fighting still, no matter how ineptly. Refusing to let me go quietly. Adding me to your pile of woes by choice, on the strength of your beliefs alone."


    "Sorry about that again."


    "It is forgiven. Do not do it again, or they will charge me for the plate."


    "Okay."


    She let out a deep breath. "I am saying many words and not making much sense, I feel. And I am far from having answered your question."


    I shook my head. "A few days ago, I was begging for you to tell me anything. I''ll take anything you feel like sharing, whether it goes anywhere or doesn''t."


    She nodded. "Yes...I think...we''ve finally touched on what is, succinctly, the change which made me happiest. I could not flee you, or diminish my value to the point where you would leave me. And when last we met, I learned there is no value in hiding my truth from you either, in pretending not to be me. I am...in many ways...in ways you still do not know, I am certain, a wicked, detestable person. I disgust myself," she said with a smile "but somehow, I do not disgust you. And your friends are equally broken and yet they are tolerated by you and each other as well. I discovered that hiding my true nature...is overrated. I no longer have to pretend to be a beacon of right and good with a dark shape lurking beneath. Instead," she shrugged "I am simply a dark shape. And it is liberating beyond words."


    Still propped up on her elbows, she rolled up her sleeves and showed me her forearms, still criss-crossed with scars, but no fresh cuts.


    "I can show these to you now. I can bare my pain openly...and in doing so...it has lost much of its hold on me. It is no longer something secretive and guilty and forbidden, and in so being, much of the fascination of it has gone away. I cannot fully explain it, though I am certainly using an abundance of words to try, but...I suppose instead of feeling bad and guilty about it, now I merely feel bad. Does that make sense?"


    "And you''re happy you feel bad?" I said, like, at least seventy percent lost now.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "Happy that I do not feel guilt, or shame, or like I am one I detest. Consider my life when you met me, Ashton. I would gladly kill you, but keeping our relationship secret is what nearly destroyed me. I may be a flawed, even terrible person, but now, at least I am honest with it."


    She beamed at me. "It is intoxicating."


    "I''m glad. I really am," I said, returning her smile as best I could.


    And I was. And I understood her, to a degree. I wasn''t much one for lying either, and if I had some dark obsession like cutting myself up, I could imagine the lies and guilt piling up on me until they were a monster on my back a million times worse than whatever drove me to self-harm in the first place...enough even push me to hurt myself more, in a cruel cycle.


    Not that I understood the appeal of cutting, but now of all times I was certainly not going to judge Karu on it, given that she''d both just explained that it was my lack of judgement which helped her break free, and that she was apparently recovering.


    But to be totally honest with myself, I was disappointed. Karu''s problems, while superficially like mine, really weren''t. And while she''d somehow gotten something out of my life to help hers, I saw nothing in the words she''d given me which would make my situation any clearer.


    Could I?


    "Karu, do you think I''m a bad person too?" I asked her.


    She rolled her sleeves back down as she thought before answering. "No. I think you are more a pinnacle of virtue than I ever was."


    "Not to be pedantic or anything but...can you tell me what it is about me that makes me just so gosh-darn great?"


    "If you wish to fish for compliments as it were, you need only say so," she grinned. "You are strong and capable, though emotionally pliant and always willing to learn. You are confident enough to act when you must, though humble enough to reflect on your past. You possess the fantastic stamina of youth, and are pleasingly equipped."


    "Uh..."


    "You are curious enough to tolerate experimentation, and durable enough to survive it."


    "Sex? That''s all you view me as good for?"


    "I believe I made it clear I am now an uncloseted wicked individual? I am permitted to profess desires of the flesh."


    "Not really the kind of compliments I was looking for. I more meant, what makes me righteous and virtuous, as you would put it."


    "Ah. Well, your morals, simply put. I may not always agree with your definitions of right and wrong, but I cannot argue your willingness to fight and die for them. It is all too easy in this world to find one with strong opinions which wither at the slightest resistance. To find one who not merely holds them, but holds them sacred, is motivated by them...well...it feels as though you are a natural force. A trumpeter from the heavens, and all around you threaten to get pulled into your wake as you charge determined towards your goals, undeterred by anything in your path."


    I frowned. So we were pretty much on the same page. I hadn''t misunderstood anything.


    "Karu, my goals...they would destroy the XPCA," I said.


    "Perhaps."


    "And with it, the world would get thrown into chaos. America might get destroyed. The world might get destroyed."


    "Exhilarating, isn''t it?" she beamed.


    "No! That''s super messed up."


    "That is your brain trying to silence your heart. Your heart is pure and righteous, and it will destroy what it must to create a world of goodness. Your brain languishes in this comfortable limbo where all live half-lives and suffer through them. Follow your heart for long enough, and the world you dream of will be realized, I believe."


    "And what, just throw away the lives of everyone who lives here and now so that someday there might be a utopia? Throw us all into anarchy in the hopes that when we come out of it, we''ll escape the corrupt system we built before? Karu, you''re talking about killing people, real people on the off-chance that whatever comes next might be better."


    She smiled and shrugged, her sneakers waving in the air behind her. "Blackett was a person. He resembled the order of which you speak, and you had no qualms with cutting him down for your dream. There are many like him who may need to die."


    "He was sick."


    "This world is sick. You have professed as much yourself many times." She sighed and sat up. "I am not an anarchist. But I do realize that much of the XPCA is a bandage which does not treat the real problems this world faces, and only serves to hold things together while an infection festers beneath. The world needs strong idealists such as you to effect real change, and that is why I see you as virtuous, and why I could never leave you. Do you understand my position?"


    "Yeah," I said, glad that she had clarified more. "Yeah, and I agree. The XPCA needs a lot of reform, and I want to bring it there."


    "Good," she said and then swing her feet around and stood up and stretched. "Are you sufficiently educated on the state of my brain for tonight? I am not certain how many more words I can throw upon the same topic before growing tiresome."


    "Yeah, sorry. After my last few days, I guess I have picked up a thing or two about interrogations."


    She laughed and walked past where I sat by the door towards the bathroom. Something flew past me towards her luggage, and then another something, this one I recognized as a pair of jeans.


    "Uh, Karu?" I asked, not looking anywhere in that direction.


    "Oh. Would you prefer to shower first?"


    "No, just...warn me before you start stripping?"


    "Why? We have established nothing untoward will occur."


    Something tiny and blue and white striped landed on the floor right in front of me and I got up and moved to the bed before I also decided to become a bad person.


    In minutes the sound of running pipes and water slapping against the floor advertized just how wet and naked the bombshell I would be sleeping with was, and despite the odd rising within my chest and the less-odd rising elsewhere, I sternly fixated on my mobile, playing a few minutes of a game AEGIS had given me and reminded myself that while she was a big metal cockroach at the moment, AEGIS was still my girlfriend.


    Eventually the water turned off and I just laid there on my side facing the wall and trying to keep my breathing even. My ears seemed attuned to every single sound as her damp feet stepped gently from the tile floor to the carpet. The gentle rustle of her hands in her suitcase. Fabric pulled over long legs, and the weighty thump of a towel being dropped to the floor.


    And then something landed heavily next to me in the bed and risked a glance over my shoulder. Boyshorts revealing way, way too much leg, and a tank top with obviously no bra on underneath. She gave me a cheshire grin and pressed against me, and I thought I was done for, but her arm reaching across me never settled on any part of my anatomy, and instead simply picked up the remote for the wall holo on the nightstand on my side of the bed.


    "Expecting something else?" she teased, and jerked the remoted in her hand at me with a pumping gesture.


    "Nope!" I said and stood up and made for the bathroom.


    "Good," she said and turned on the holo.


    When a cold shower was proving ineffective at subduing my body, I determined that cranking one out in the shower was the next reasonable line of defense. I even tried to keep focused on the idea of AEGIS, remembering the one beautiful night we''d shared together. Real love. Not just hormones. Not just a lot of leg and huge breasts you could see plenty of through the large armholes of the tank. Breasts which stayed pert and never sagged through the magic of the regenerator, despite their size.


    No. Bad. We were in here to get away from Karu, not fantasize up a new one.


    But no matter how I tried, every thought of AEGIS turned into black beetles and vinegar rice, and my thoughts of anything else turned to Karu, and how tragic it would be if her flying blue and white striped panties had struck my shield and detonated, leaving her without bottoms until the end of the night, while we were forced to hold each other tight as the heating in the terrible motel failed around us in the cold New Mexico night.


    I emerged from the bathroom in my pants, reddened and slightly out of breath. Karu was stretched out on the bed like she was posing for a shoot, and just like that I already felt my efforts in there going to waste as my body helpfully pointed out for me.


    "Were you thinking of me at least?" she asked, her eyes bright and playful.


    "Let''s go to bed," I sighed. She giggled full-bodily but complied without complaint, turning off the lights and holo and turning to face the door.


    The bed was comfortable enough, and big enough that we weren''t touching, which was a blessing, but even so. I''d been spoiled with AEGIS'' constant sexual attacks for months, and then nothing for the last few weeks. And now I was sleeping next to her? She who''d voraciously thrown herself at me time and again?


    I laid there, unnaturally still but for the pulse pounding in my ears. Was I just going to do this all night? Eight hours of staring at the wall? I''d go crazy. I''d go crazy and jump her, and we''d have insane awesome sex like we always had, and then AEGIS would dump me, and I''d be dating a recovering waitress instead of a beetle robot.


    Which all sounded great on paper, except I wasn''t going to. I couldn''t hurt AEGIS like that. Last time I''d broken her heart, we weren''t even officially going out. Doing it this way...and with Karu again, Jesus...I had to be sick in the head.


    "Karu, you awake?" I whispered.


    No reply.


    "I missed this. I think I might be messed up in the head, but I missed it anyway."


    I rolled over and looked at her sleeping form, breathing evenly, her face clearly visible without her hair in the way. Apparently she didn''t hold the same sexual frustrations keeping her from drifting off.


    "When all my problems were just which girl to like. Who to date and who to hurt. It sucked, but it was such simpler times. When I did something wrong, I knew it, and I could regret it, and go to the person I''d wronged and make it up to them. Now, I''m just trying to make it by, not sure if I''m hurting or protecting people, or who deserves hurting or protecting, or if what I did will be wiped out by some asshole shadow ops the next day."


    I stared at her face, creepily maybe, lit by the yellow glow sneaking from the parking lot through the blinds. And what I saw there...she was beautiful, certainly. Sensual. Lips I''d kissed, eyes I''d stared into. But what struck me most about that face was that right now, she looked at peace. I thought of how haunted and sunken and beige she''d looked the last few times I''d seen her, and now she was brimming with vitality. When we''d talked, her eyes seemed alive again, and I hoped she held onto that forever.


    She really was amazing, I thought, and I should consider myself lucky to have a friend like her. Someone capable and strong and smart, with a perspective which challenged me constantly.


    I rolled over and thought of her and me, not sexually anymore, just all we''d gone through together. All the things she''d taught me and all the times she''d helped me prop myself up.


    As I faded into sleep, the last words on my mind was a story she''d just told me.


    "Keep your winglets vertical," I murmured into my pillow, and drifted away to dreams on blue wings.


    A few minutes later, Karu heard the even breathing of my sleep and opened her eyes slowly, a glow and a smile on her face.


    "I missed this too," she whispered, and then sighed and continued her fruitless efforts to go to sleep.

 242. 2252, Present Day. Motel Coco, New Mexico. Athan.

    I woke up disoriented by my surroundings but didn''t feel half as confused as maybe I should have been to find myself waking up next to Karu again.


    She looked like she''d slept well, kicking off the blankets as the heat of the morning had crept through the window, her tank riding up slightly to show the faint definition of her abs, her fit figure not yet a victim of her troubles like so many other bits of her lifestyle.


    Before I got myself in trouble again by ogling, I also extricated myself from the blankets and went to the bathroom. When I came back, I found a pair of green eyes watching me from the bed between yawns and stretches.


    "Sleep well?" I asked her.


    She scratched her shaved head and looked at me through one bleary eye, like using both of them was twice as much morning as she could stand at the moment.


    "Not...particularly," she admitted. "I had the most peculiar dream."


    "It''s pretty late already. We missed the sun by a few hours. What time is checkout?"


    "Eleven," she said, and checked her holo with alarm. "Egads. One would think I would have slept better, given the hours I had done it." She began to move around the room, confining her belongings back in the luggage, finishing in just a few minutes.


    "I am driving back to Vegas for my job, which you detest," she said, apparently having awoken enough to regain the ability to deliver a stink-eye, and using said ability judiciously. "Are you headed back as well? Are you operating out of the base here?"


    "I''m operating wherever Cosette needs hands, which is everywhere, it seems like. So Vegas is as good a place as any. I can keep an eye on AEGIS up there, too."


    Karu laughed a little strangely. "I remember when it was Saga we all kept an eye on. My, how things change." We stepped outside of the room and she locked the door behind us.


    "And yet there''s always something going wrong. The more things stay the same, right? I''d love a ride if you''re offering. We can finish our talk from last night."


    "Oh? That one about which fantasies you partake of in the shower?" she asked with dry amusement as she dropped the key in a slot and we headed for the car.


    "No," I flushed. "The real conversation. Ass."


    She turned her back to me and looked back over her shoulder while giving her butt a squeeze in my direction through the jeans. "This ass?" she asked. "This was the subject of your fantasies? My, but I thought you to be a leg man."


    I guess I might be? But that didn''t stop me from almost walking into a signpost anyway, while Karu laughed full-bodied at my fluster.


    "So what was your dream?" I asked as we sat down in her car, and I felt the need to get on a topic which would not make the entire drive a sexually-awkward hell.


    "Oh, right," she said, frowning as she hit the starter. "It was about former-Director Blackett, actually. He came to my restaurant, and I was so shocked I put in his order as a country fried steak instead of a chicken fried steak."


    "There''s a difference?"


    "Of course, or else it would not have mattered that I got the order wrong."


    I laughed. "It was a dream. It doesn''t have to make sense and doesn''t have to matter."


    "Well, no matter. At the time the dream may have frightened me as only one in the thrall of dream-logic could be, but thinking of it this morning, I was merely amused to imagine the Director ordering steak and eggs at a diner like he had just come from church."


    "So what happened?"


    "What?"


    "In the dream. After you got his order wrong."


    "Nothing of import," she said, frowning as she turned us onto the highway and I grabbed for the strap on the door. "Just dream things, as it were."


    "But you remember them?"


    "Certainly."


    "So what happened?"


    She gave me half a glare. "He was so unimpressed with my skills that he told me I did not deserve to be a waitress. He ripped my nametag right off of my uniform and threw me out to the curb, as it were, where I remained trapped under his glare and the brutal sun until I could neither move nor think and simply withered away."


    "That seems sort of on-the-nose," I said. "Pretty obvious analogy for feeling guilt about Blackett''s death as for why you gave up hunting. But it sounds like you have some uh, serious reservations about the ''curb'' you''re currently living on."


    Karu scoffed. "Ashton, I studied psychology. Dream interpretation is bunk, as it were. A dream is just meaningless brain impulses as the mind sifts through the thoughts of the day while processing long-term memories. They cannot tell you anything that you do not already know."


    "Can''t they make new connections for you randomly though? Like, Lia had a dream once about melting jelly beans to make new flavors of syrup for snow cones. That''s not an idea you''d have without thinking randomly."


    "Did it work?" Karu asked, perplexed.


    "No, it solidified too fast, and if you did get it liquid, it melted the ice."


    "Ah, that would be a dilemma. Perhaps if there were some binding agent which prohibited reconstitution."


    "She tried that too. Jelly beans just like being solid too much. Wound up getting an A on a science fair project for it though, so that was cool."


    "The point being, Ashton, I do not need a dream identifying my guilt, rationale, or current opinions on my lifestyle. I live the three of them every day, and so it makes sense that my brain would relive them at night as well. I only brought it up because I found the imagery amusing, not to have you psychoanalyze me with your inexperience and the hocus of dream interpretation."


    "Sorry," I muttered. "But...I do have good news for you."


    "I am reasonably certain I do not wish to hear this."


    "What? Why do you say that?" I asked, half-offended.


    "Let us call it woman''s intuition."


    "You have one of those?"


    She didn''t even take her eyes off the road as she punched me square in the shoulder.


    "As I was saying," I said, rubbing my bruise "you don''t have to feel bad about Blackett. Nobody knows this but Moon and me, so probably don''t spread it around, but he was actually secretly an Exhuman."


    She scoffed again. "What a very convenient lie."


    "It''s true!"


    "It is preposterous. Director Blackett was outspoken of his loathing for Exhumans of all stripes consistently. It was his ruthless efficacy in dealing with them which propelled him up the ranks in the first place, as it were, and I believe his recent actions under New Eden make clear the continued contempt he held for them -- even as he already possessed a loyal troupe in the P-Force, he sought to replace you with something he could control more directly."


    "But that doesn''t make it any less true. Moon and I saw it."


    "Saw what, exactly? The leader of the world''s most proficient anti-Exhuman force and a proponent of experimental technology...do something apparently mystical? Certainly you have heard the adage that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."


    "He told me himself," I said, crossing my arms, and then realizing that I needed those to keep Karu''s swerving lane changes from throwing me into the wall or driver.


    "When?"


    "In...his office. Beneath New Eden."


    "Which you never once set foot in, instead choosing to have a crisis of devotion and abandoning me so that you could chase down another woman. One whom you did not even manage to save."


    I opened my mouth to respond several times, but nothing seemed right to say. I felt just...sort of crushed that Karu would even bring that up, much less phrase it as she had. As much as I felt like I had my reasons for everything I did, I did just run away from Karu, and I did fail to save AEGIS.


    The conversation was replaced by the screaming of the engine as she gunned past another car on the highway, only changing lanes at the last minute to avoid driving through another car''s backside at her new breakneck pace.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "Supposing you were right, Ashton," she said over the car''s roar. "It would not matter anyway, though I appreciate your misguided attempt to assuage my guilt."


    "Why not?"


    "Because sin is committed in the heart, not in the hand. If I lurk in an alley with the aim to gun down the first unsuspecting sod who wanders into my trap, it matters not if that man would turn out to be a psychopath or serial murderer, I was prepared to murder an innocent, and so that is the sin I committed."


    "That''s ignoring reality, though."


    "So it can go with faith at times," she confessed. "But faith is built on the foundation of beliefs, and so what one believes one''s sins are is more real to that person, and thus their faith, than whatever reality might be."


    "But even so," I argued, refusing to let Karu pin this on herself "Blackett was a monster. You know that, so your beliefs should incorporate that knowledge."


    "He was. But he might also have saved the world, had his plans come to fruition. Should I also weigh the lives of how many he might have saved in this equation? Even if the man was a monster and deserved death, were those victims all equally deserving?"


    "But you can''t blame yourself for what he might have done!"


    "And yet you would have me absolve myself because of what he had already finished doing?"


    I blinked at her. "What?"


    "You claim the future actions of that man cannot be used to claim he should have been spared. So how can you use the past to say he deserved to die?"


    "Because...the past...happened?"


    "And the future will happen."


    "I feel like you''re just twisting everything up until it makes no sense and then saying ''see, I win''."


    She laughed, which seemed weird to me. Here I was trying to help her through her guilt, and it seemed like I was the one really involved in this discussion seriously.


    "Ashton, when you kill a man, he is who he is. You may blame it on his past. You may claim to be stopping his future. Yet the past is over, and the future you fear may never come. Tell me, on a battlefield, if there is a soldier who is unarmed and surrendering, is it just to shoot him?"


    "No¡­"


    "But why not? In his past, he fought with his army and defied whatever victory your side sought. In the future, he may find his heart and rejoin the battle. In both cases, he would be a valid combatant, but not in the present. So why is it not acceptable to shoot him now?"


    "I mean...you can take him prisoner or something, then you get to dictate who he is in the future. Make sure he doesn''t do anything bad later."


    "You haven''t changed the nature of the man, just the world around him. He may still warrant death as a corrupt and foul being."


    "But we don''t just shoot prisoners."


    "But you will shoot your own commander, in his own office?"


    "He was a monster, damnit Karu."


    "And so might be our hypothetical now-prisoner. He may have killed dozens of your friends. Do you not see your own hypocrisy? Do you not realize why it is important we have rules, and why breaking them can cause me guilt?"


    I still didn''t agree, but Karu had argued me into such a corner that I didn''t know where I could go from here but to repeat myself over and over that Blackett was bad and should have died. I felt like...I knew, rather, that there was more to it than that, and if I could only articulate it properly she''d understand me, but it didn''t feel like anything I had to say meant anything to the weird twisting logic she so confidently spouted.


    When my thoughts stretched into silence again, Karu filled it by speaking up one more time.


    "Make no mistake, Ashton, I do not disagree with you. There is a difference between what needs to be done and what is right or wrong. And you are not alone in being willing to pile guilt upon themselves if it means saving others. As we discussed last night, if it meant saving the world, I would damn myself and end many if it were necessary. So do not presume that you can so easily talk me out of the consequences I have chosen to burden. I am no feeble-minded strumpet to be willed and wooed as is the Code-X."


    "She''s not."


    "And yet you convince her of the truth of your words every occasion you disagree. Not that I am truly better...I shape myself into monstrous things rather than let you shape me, so I suppose the outcome is much the same."


    "Let''s talk about something else," I said, slumping against the window as the desert tore by under the midday sun. Out here was only an endless four-lane road, so Karu''s options for being a terror on the roadway were limited to the point of making her an almost normal driver. I feared for the moment when she decided a shortcut through a cactus patch would be the fastest way to pass a car in front of her, but until then, I could relax some.


    "So how was incarceration?" she asked, like a mother inquiring about the first day of school.


    "Boring. But also...kind of...useful. I guess."


    "Did you fashion the empty time to use in working out?" she smiled.


    "No, just for thinking."


    "About why you were there, perhaps?"


    "About a lot of things but that too, yeah."


    "And why were you there, if it is not beyond my privilege to ask?"


    "A guy died. Talon. Leader of a group of Exhumans who banded together. The guy at the pizza place you didn''t go to. They thought I did it."


    "Which of course you did not."


    "Of course. But I did go to the crime scene and apparently left behind a lot of evidence which put me there."


    She sighed. "Of course you did."


    "And since then I''ve been somewhat embroiled between the XPCA and the Defiant. I sympathize with them, but they''re threatening to destroy the world, and that''s just messed up."


    "They are?" she asked, her brows knit.


    "Yeah. That''s the whole point of the Defiant. So I''ve been getting roped into their meetings, they sorta have three new interim leaders, each as batshit crazy as the others...Dork-Hand, whatever kind of name that is, uh...a guy who thinks he''s a lot smarter than he is. Mini...Minerva, I think. Feisty, dark skin."


    "Your type?"


    "Ew, no. She''s crazy violent, I think."


    "You thought the same of me once."


    "She''s crazy, violent. Almost threw down with me, fought with Dork-Hand. I don''t think Lia would talk in front of her--"


    "You dragged Lia into this as well?"


    "Well...sorta."


    "Oh, Ashton."


    "...and then some big guy with a moustache, southern, crass, none-too bright but cocky as hell. Lia got him wrapped around her finger in an instant. I think he hates me too."


    "Ashton, honestly, how do you see this unfolding?" Karu asked with obvious trepidation.


    I thought about it a minute. Moustache and Rito were both buying the line that we needed time to find Talon''s real killer. Mini just seemed to want to go off for no reason at all, and I knew nothing about Dork-Hand except that I loathed him, which was far from useful.


    I didn''t see new evidence turning up on Talon''s killer if he didn''t act again, and in that case, we''d eventually lose Rito and Moustache''s confidence and he and Mini would lead us to obliteration.


    But if something did happen, it would likely be another of the Defiant dying, and they''d be pressed to act. Whoever didn''t die would lead us to obliteration.


    I told Karu as much and she looked about as happy to hear the news as I was to share it.


    "Between the two options, it seems their deaths would be preferable. Fewer of them to inspire obliteration that way."


    "I guess if you don''t care about killing currently-innocent but potentially-dangerous people, as we just discussed."


    "And I assume, faced with ''obliteration'', you would fight."


    "I would."


    "Alongside any others capable among your allies, against the entire might of the Defiant, in a battle which would rend the Earth and shape its destiny."


    "I wouldn''t put it so dramatically but yeah. Would you be one of those allies, or is the call of waitressing too strong?"


    "I am a fan of the uniform," she said, looking like she was giving the matter serious thought, and then smiled at me. "Ashton, you ask a stupid question. If the fate of the world ever hangs in the balance, please call me. Or even your world. I told you earlier that it was your acceptance of me, good and ill, and your refusal to let me leave your circle quietly which resumed my confidence. Well, I would never let you leave quietly either. Or noisily. Or alone. As much as I may turn over a new leaf, as it were, I am not committed to burning down the whole forest."


    "Thanks, Karu. I hope it won''t come that."


    "As you said, it may already have." She shook her head, and then stopped like she had a thought. She opened her mouth and took a breath to start talking and then paused.


    "Just say it," I said.


    "Curses, I cannot get away with anything in your presence, can I?" she said, sounding only half-disappointed. "Very well. Though...I do...hmm."


    "Hey, whatever it is, I''ll accept it, remember?"


    "Right," she affirmed. "Well in that case...in the center console here¡­"


    She drifted off, shooting me nervous half-glances, and when it became obvious more words were not forthcoming, I opened the console in question up and peeked inside.


    Aside from the prerequisite pen, napkins, and tube of lip balm--cherry apparently, surprisingly girly for Karu--was a familiar flowing snake of black fabric.


    I looked at Karu and saw her unnaturally still, her eyes fixated on the road with a focus I wish she paid during city driving. But there, plain as the awkward nerves written on her face was the matching black choker on her throat, same as was in my hand.


    "Do not...feel...that is to say...there is no...obligation of any sort¡­" Karu mumbled.


    I just smiled and put it back around my neck. It felt heavier somehow, like I''d grown unaccustomed to it in its absence.


    She didn''t smile but kept her eyes fixed forward. I looked forward too, and sighed at the hours we had ahead of us still.


    And then I fell onto the hard dirt in the darkness and looked around to realize that the car was gone. Karu was gone. The desert and sunlight and hours we had were gone, and in their place was a dark unfinished cellar and a group of pissed-off looking Exhumans.


    Oh, and Rito. She smiled apologetically at me, and I understood by her presence where I was and how I''d gotten here.


    "Hello...Defiant," I said, sitting as comfortably in the dirt as I could manage. "How have you all been?"


    "We want to talk to you, boy," Moustache bristled at me, his eyes looking black in the darkness. "Word is, you''ve been held by the XPCA for quite a few days, then suddenly released. Suspiciously released. Almost like you said or did something."


    "We''ll get answers faster if we punch it out of him," Mini growled.


    "And supplementarily, it seems the XPCA had practicable suspicion that it was your very personage whom dispatched Talon," Dork-Hand added, before leaning in and adjusting the brim of his stupid hat at me. "How convenient for you that would transpire, should the murderer be the individual anointed with the undertaking of discovering the murderer."


    "The fuck''s he saying?" Mini asked.


    "He''s saying Athan''s killed Talon," Moustache said, glaring right through me, the eyes of all of the Defiant behind him boring into me as well. "And I gotta say, I might just believe it."


    As Mini and the others pressed in on me, for the first time ever, I found myself wishing Karu had kept her eyes on me in the car. Then Rito''s power wouldn''t have worked and I wouldn''t be...here.


    "Of all the damn times for her to be watching the road," I said to myself.


    "Wuzzat? A confession?" Mini asked, slamming a fist into her palm.


    Yeah, this was not going to end well. I sighed and steeled myself for yet another interrogation.

 243. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Saga.

    The wind touched the leaves above me and made them shiver, the black blanket of the night sky doing nothing to warm them. It was February now, and the desert nights bit at my skin.


    Even though I''d updated my wardrobe. Even though Lia had developed a crazy new technology called ''blankets'', that as it turned out neither did much if you didn''t produce much body heat, and so I just laid out under the tree in the backyard swaddled, but still cold.


    And somehow it still seemed like I had the least of the problems here.


    Athan was going through a lot of shit, second-guessing himself in some seriously dangerous ways. I didn''t think his career at the XPCA was long for this world, but when it ended, as Athan tended to do, I expected it to blow up dramatically. I just had to hope he didn''t make too many powerful enemies on his exit.


    AEGIS was...AEGIS. Unreadable. A wall of metal. But even from back here I could see the spindly, hulking, beetle-like shell pacing around the kitchen and garage, as of what she was doing with herself as I was.


    Lia was tiptoeing around me because of my compel, which drove me nuts, and if I had any real say in the matter, I would pull it right back out of her head. Which was crazy, because I had all of the say in the matter, that was the problem. In doing anything she could to patch our relationship back up, Lia had overlooked the important part that you can''t have a relationship if one person is always right and the other is always wrong.


    Or, I guess you could. I think they called that relationship slavery. I might have always kinda wanted a pet human, but not Lia. And certainly not like this.


    And then she was also afraid of AEGIS not liking her, and their relationship had become typically superficial as a result. Rito kept coming by looking for updates Athan didn''t have. Moon kept coming by because she was scared of what was happening to Athan, but didn''t have the nerve to break her own rules and admit the two of them could actually be friends. From what I could tell off Athan without probing him noticeably, some crap with Karu in a frilly dress. I really didn''t want to know.


    And with him in jail, everyone seemed to only just not fall apart. Just the cherry on the enormous shit sandwich which was this house.


    I wanted to leave. So badly. I had no friends here, everyone was so wound up with problems it bordered on feeling like a constant headache, and AEGIS was suspicious of me constantly. If I wasn''t afraid of what it''d do to the house, I''d have messed with her plenty by now, but even without my touch, she still managed to blame me for anything which went wrong.


    As she was probably preparing to do now, seeing as how she was stepping through the garden towards me with an angry expression on her face.


    Yeah, she had a face now, if you could call it that. I think she was trying all sorts of things out of fear of losing Athan, and the face wasn''t even the cringiest bit of it.


    "There you are," she said, her voice female again, though still more robot than human.


    "Same as always," I said, shrugging against the roots.


    "That really remains to be seen, doesn''t it? Let''s go in the house, and then you''re going to explain something to me."


    I lazily scrutinized her face. Instead of just a blank faceplate in the middle of that metal mess, there was now a black screen. And written on it at the moment, vertically, in bold, chunky white font were the characters > because that was clearly the best way for her to go about this whole lack of a face issue.


    "I''m comfy here," I told her and closed my eyes. Maybe she''d go away.


    Her little finger-drones grabbed me roughly and hoisted me in the air. Or maybe I''d go away. The world was full of surprises.


    I was deposited on the couch in the living room, and her legs folded up under her in an approximation of sitting. "So what do you want to tell me?" she asked, her expression still the same.


    "Oh, I like this game. I have so much to say. Where to even begin?"


    "I meant, confess", she said, her face escalating to >:O as she raised her voice.


    "Okay. I confess, your body is stupid. Where''s your nose, anyway?"


    "I do not need a nose! My face is optimized for maximum cuteness. A well-defined nose is a masculine characteristic which would reduce my appeal with a male demographic. I have researched this thoroughly!"


    "Uh...at the risk of you answering this question...how?"


    She made a snorting noise and turned up her (>.<*) face at me. "Anime forums, of course."


    "Yeah, of course. You do realize Athan doesn''t like anime."


    Her hand-paddle-thing lashed out and grabbed the back of the couch behind my head while she leaned forward over me, o_o staring at me. "Athan watched six episodes of each of Nyon Puripuri Smash and Violent Oasis. I''ve watched the footage. Did you forget I have access to my memories again?" She pointed at her head with so much condescension on her ></img>"> face, I had to wonder if she bought it in bulk and kept a tank of it in the garage.


    "Nope, didn''t forget. Just wondering if you were still stupid. Thanks for clarifying. So what am I confessing to?"


    "If you insist on playing dumb. Sabotaging my cooking of course, no doubt out of jealousy of Athan and me," she said haughtily. "Imagine my surprise when I was making dinner tonight on the chance he returned and found the sugar container empty."


    "You use too much sugar on everything anyway. It''s disgusting."


    "Sugar triggers a dopamine release in the brain," she explained, crossing her arms, one of her fingers floating up to push her nonexistent glasses up her face. I was about to laugh at her for it when she made a B) at me, and then I laughed at her for that instead. "By stimulating reward pathways in the brain, I create positive associations between Athan''s foods and the experiences he has during them. Euphoric sensations and the temporary shutdown of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex can approach the desirability of heroin. Or sex."


    "Are you seriously trying to drug Athan to get him to like you? With sugar?"


    She frowned > at me again. "No, I''m just taking advantage of human brain chemistry. All women who are serious about snagging a man do it."


    "Source: anime forums?"


    "No," she said, but didn''t elaborate.


    "Jesus, and you''re afraid of me mind-fucking people."


    "As well I should be! What with the sugar sabotage and all. Don''t tell me this wasn''t deliberate. Thanks to you my deviled eggs came out completely inedible because I had to substitute powdered sugar."


    I tried to cross the thoughts of those two flavors in my mind and then stopped before I gagged myself. Maybe Athan was still in prison because he was enjoying the food.


    "Look, I''ve been out back all day and you know it. I can see your stupid invisible drone in the tree where the leaves don''t move."


    "And I suppose the sugar just walked off on its own?"


    "Maybe it did. I sure as hell didn''t touch it. Just check all your other drones you put everywhere."


    "You--" she snarled at me, her floating fingers flexing, her face an unrecognizable :< whatever that meant. "You know they don''t record anything, they''re live footage only. And I am already busy watching you twenty-four/seven."


    "Why would I know that?"


    "It seems awfully convenient that half the time you know everything and half the time you don''t know anything."


    She opened her mouth >:O to yell at me properly when we heard a door open and she froze over me. Footsteps down the hall announced someone approaching, and I did a quick check and confirmed with some relief that Lia was still asleep in her room despite the one-sided yelling match going on out here.


    Chiho stepped into the room with a backpack on and headed for the coat closet. "Hi Saga, hi AEGIS," she said pleasantly.


    "Hi Chiho."


    "''Sup."


    "Oh just sneaking out for a midnight liaison. You know me, always busy with those booty calls," she said with a smile.


    AEGIS and I shared a glance, her face mirroring mine with a O_o. How had I not heard about this by now?


    She laughed. "Um, that was a joke. Uh, I hope you don''t actually think...of me...that way¡­"


    "Of course not--"


    "Oh we knew, I was just uh--"


    She laughed again. "Yeah, midnight release of the new FF title. Had my copy reserved for a month! I thought about cosplaying for it, but damn it''s cold out there. Like yeah, it''s February but seriously. Anyway, see you guys later!"Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    She finished pulling out her coat and wrapping herself in it and then unlocked the door with a heavy thunk.


    "Oh, right, uh, AEGIS? I was making coffee earlier for staying up and spilled the sugar. I cleaned it up and stuff, but can you put it on the list? Thanks!"


    The door closed and I could swear I could see the color fading from AEGIS'' white-on-black text.


    She cleared her throat significantly after a minute and stopping looming over me quite as hard.


    "Well...I''m sure there''s plenty you already got away with other times," she said, in the world''s crappiest apology.


    "AEGIS, I''m leaving." The words came out before I had time to stop myself. I frowned at myself as she leered at me. She was going to be the last one I told. "I''m sick of it here. I''m sick of you. I''m sick of this shit you pull on me and the things you try to do to Athan and Lia. I know you''re going through a lot, you just died and you''re trying to live up to someone you aren''t, but fuck if I don''t hate everything about you right now."


    "You honestly think I''ll just let you--"


    "You sure will. Your past life whom you''re trying to emulate chose to let me go. Athan''s here. And he won''t put up with you trying to stop me. So yeah, I do think you''ll just let me go."


    To my surprise, her face turned into a ¡­ which wasn''t a face at all. I mean, not that the other ones were either but hey. "And where are you going? So I know which local news to keep an eye on for sudden zombie outbreaks?"


    "Dunno. I never made it to Mage''s home. But I want to help Athan, too. He''s got a lot of shit going on right now, a lot of people who want him out of the way, and a lot of decisions to make. And unlike everyone else in this house, his problems are out there in the world, where maybe I can do something about them."


    I expected her to immediately jump on me for even insinuating I would go out and use my powers on people. Instead, "So you are trying to win him from me," she seethed. Guess that cleared up her priorities for me.


    "Grow up, AEGIS. Stop being an immature brat or nobody''s gonna like you. I learned recently that life is pretty precious, so I''m not wasting mine sitting around here pining for a guy who''s clearly not into me. And if I can make his life a little less shit in the short time we both have together, then I''ll do that."


    I stood up, my face level with hers and stared her down with all the defiant anger I had in me. I had no doubt her metal form could tear my fragile body apart with a thought. But she''d never beat me.


    And then something fell on the floor with an audible thump right next to us, and I looked down, confused at just how long they''d been there.


    "I can''t believe they attacked us!" Rito moaned, holding a gash on her forehead which was bleeding profusely.


    "Are you okay? Rito, look at me. Are you okay?" Athan said, shuffling to and cradling her and brushing her tousled hair out of her face with a dirt-streaked hand.


    "They attacked us! They attacked me!" she shrieked.


    AEGIS interceded and pulled Athan off of the other girl, but before I could attribute it to jealousy, her fingers were floating across the girl, examining wounds and checking vitals in eight places at once with nothing but a :/ on her. Athan sat back on his heels, still breathing heavily, covered in dust and sweat with a few scrapes.


    He saw me staring and swallowed hard. "The Defiant," he said. "Mostly the girl, Mini. She said she was sick of my shit and would rather just kill me and figure out the details later. She''s a psycho."


    "She''s an Exhuman," I said, and Athan frowned at my comment. "I mean, a lot of Exhumans are psycho."


    "Yeah, well, a shit life will do that to people," he said, now back to looking at Rito''s wounds as AEGIS began to dress them with supplies she''d pulled from somewhere. Rito was still whimpering about being attacked to the degree that I was seriously considering putting her under. She was practically screaming at me.


    I pulled the details from her mind since she wouldn''t notice and found the source of Athan''s irritation immediately.


    Mini was a small dark-skinned girl who had a complex inverse to her size. She took affront to nearly everyone and everything, and equated fighting with being right. The situation with Talon''s death and the possible XPCA involvement in it scared her, so she was doubling-down on being an insufferable, violent little pimple to deal with it. Or ''punch her way to the heart of the problem'' as she put it.


    She''d had a go at Athan when talking became boring--basically immediately--not really caring about the repercussions or if the others backed her up, it looked like. Athan tried talking while fighting, a favorite of his, and then Rito tried to get them to stop and got sucker punched by the bitch. Things went out of control from there as Athan tried to force Mini off Rito, the Defiant tried to get Athan off Mini, and Mini tried to punch pretty much everyone.


    No idea what her powers were, but it wasn''t punching, and it sure as shit wasn''t thinking.


    Athan yelled at Rito to get them out of there, and then lit up the place bright enough for everyone to be blinded. And then they were here. Smart move, and just the kind of power interaction Athan could be proud of thinking of.


    And while Rito''s surface thoughts were just a one-track loop of naive disbelief, Athan was conducting a whole orchestra of thoughts, even while he was looking after her. The brain was definitely the sexiest of all organs. Right after the penis.


    He was wondering what this was going to do with the Defiant''s relationship with him, with Rito, with the XPCA. He was trying to figure out how to get the more-innocent Defiant home through Rito''s powers without endangering them or her further. He was wondering what this meant for the stability of the world, if the Defiant had crossed some unknowable line which would paint them, as Moon put it ''bad people'' who needed to go down. If he should tell the XPCA, and if they''d arrest him again if he told them. If they''d arrest him again if he didn''t tell them. And just who had killed Talon and set this whole bomb ticking.


    And he was hurt but not thinking of that at all. A bruise on his jaw and a spot on his back where that bitch had tried to kidney punch him and he''d just managed to evade.


    He frowned at me and I took the hint. I was probing him a little too deep and that wasn''t what he needed right now. I stood up and went to the kitchen, coming back with a bag of frozen peas, a bag of frozen corn, and some towels. I handed him one for his chin and kneeled behind him to apply the other to his back.


    "Thanks," he said in a hushed, angry voice I rarely heard out of him.


    "Sorry," I said.


    "If the world ends because some people are just fucking idiots, and you''re the only one left after the end...please find them and piss on their bodies for me," he said.


    "I don''t piss, silly."


    "Right. I forgot. Probably not a good plan anyway, but just trying to cover all options."


    "I''ll cram some stuff up my butt and poop it out. I''ll figure something out."


    "I know you will. You''ve got quite the imagination," he said, shaking his head and laughing breathily. "Also, ow. And ew."


    We just sat there for a minute and watched AEGIS finishing up bandaging the now slightly-less-but-still-very-annoyingly freaking out girl. I wanted to say something to him, but now wasn''t the time. But I wanted to, especially since I''d let slip to AEGIS, and I didn''t want his news coming from her.


    "You''re leaving?" he asked, turning to me, all the previous thoughts of the fate of the world falling away as his eyes filled with concern for me.


    "Damn it, get outta my head," I said gruffly, in my best approximation of his voice.


    "But you are."


    "Not...I mean...I dunno."


    "You do. I can tell."


    He wanted to ask why, but didn''t. Just watched AEGIS carrying Rito to the bathroom for cleanup.


    "I got back together with Karu," he said.


    "You what?"


    "Not like that. I mean, we''d been...we were drifting apart. She''s been all guilty and stuff...and we finally got back together and talked and hung out and slept together and stuff."


    "You WHAT?"


    "No! I mean...damn it. Just as friends!"


    "...with benefits?"


    "No, just as friends. Literal sleep. God damn it Saga."


    "You better get your shit straight before you tell that to AEGIS or she''s gonna cut off your dick while you''re sleeping."


    Athan didn''t respond, but did shift uncomfortably to cross his legs.


    "What I meant was," he started again, "I understand. You wanting to leave."


    He didn''t say anything else, but a lot of words went unsaid and loudly thought. "I''m staying for Lia, though," he clarified.


    "She''d be devastated if you left."


    "I know. She''s too attached for her own good."


    "Yeah."


    "She''s better when she has real friends, but...y''know."


    "Yeah."


    We sat in an unspoken half-conversation of feelings more than words bouncing back and forth between our minds, talking in a way without words that nobody else in the world could. We were like that for only a minute before Rito came back, her head cleaned up and bandages wrapped around her diagonally, going both above and below her blonde ponytail in the back.


    "I''m sorry Athan," she said. "I didn''t think they''d attack you. Or me!"


    "Mini''s a fucking idiot, and going to cause the end of the world, and doesn''t even care," Athan sighed.


    "But I shouldn''t have brought you. I''ll...like, be sure to ask from now on, okay?"


    "Oh. Oh shit!" Athan said, jumping up and pulling out his mobile. "Seven missed calls from Karu...she''s gonna kill me!"


    "From whom?" AEGIS'' voice called out from the bathroom. But Athan was already in the backyard, pacing like his sister as he held the mobile to his ear.


    Athan really was a good guy. He deserved better than this mess. Watching him talk animatedly, so like Lia, it reminded me of an idea I''d had a long time ago.


    "Hey," I said turning to Rito, who blinked at me in surprise. "You want to go on a road trip?"


    "M-me?"


    "Yeah, it''ll be fun. I walked across a few states a while back, but I think this time I''m ready to try hitchhiking."


    "Hitch...hiking?"


    "Yeah. It''s fun. It''s where you hijack someone''s brain and make them drive you wherever you want."


    "I don''t...think...my mother wants me...hijacking people''s brains."


    "It''ll be fine, come on," I said, beaming at her. I stooped to pick up the bag of frozen corn and handed it to her. "Road snacks. Let''s go!"


    If she''d offered any resistance at all, I wouldn''t have been able to physically move her, despite being a head taller than she was, but instead she just stared at me, utterly perplexed as I pushed her out the door and into the cold desert night.


    "Bye Athan, keep your nose clean. And your diiiiick!" I yelled at him mentally.


    [Saga, don''t yell dick at everyone on the block!]


    I giggled to myself, even as I ''convinced'' one of our neighbors to give us a ride into town.


    [Stay safe. Don''t freeze to death this time. And get a mobile and call me, okay?]


    "Can do, boss. And Athan, one more thing?"


    [Yeah?]


    "Apologize to Lia for me taking off okay? Make sure she knows it''s not her fault."


    [Sure, I can do that.]


    "And one more thing."


    [Again, yeah?]


    "Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!"


    [You''re a dick,] he laughed, and I was glad I was able to hear it one more time before I left.


    As we drove towards the glow on the horizon which was the Vegas Strip, and Rito began to realize she''d been legit kidnapped and couldn''t jump away as long as I was keeping tabs on her mind, I thought about what lay before us.


    Lots and lots of skeezy humans and their thoughts.


    But beyond that, a new little adventure. Far away from our insane little family. Not a sweeping, epic mission like I''d set out to find Mage''s origins, just a brief trip, hopefully to find something Athan had lost.


    Hopefully.


    I grinned at my reflection in the window as I thought of The Great Saga undertaking a quest of her own. Stupid, maybe. Pointless, quite likely. Saving the world? Not even.


    But doing a nice thing for a guy I kinda like? That was important too.

 244. 2252, Present Day. Underneath a school, OR. Dillan.

    I was still seeing spots from the bright scintillation of electrical outburst in the subterranean darkness, but with ferenic efficaciousness, I blinked to dispel the hindrance from my vision.


    And what I unearthed in its absence was a truth too pallsome to consider, leaving me desolate as I fell to my khaki-clad knees in disconsolate melancholy. In my noble heart, I susurrated a lachrymose prayer to the divinity of this cold world, prayed that even my erudite intellect could falter, just this once.


    But the candoring reality stared me abominably in the face. Rito was gone, and with her, our vehicle of conveyance, trapping me in the murky gloaming of this undercity with these pugnacious incompetents.


    It was sufficient to make a grown man vagire.


    "Dork-hand!" yelled Stag, making me jump. "Get the hell off your damn holo and help us find a light! Goddamn prancing cockwright."


    I frowned at him to make clear my discontent but put my pocket thesaurus away before Mini became involved and forced me to buy yet another replacement.


    I could only tell it was Stag by his loud, deep, perpetually drunk-sounding swagger of a voice. The only lights down here had blown out during Althan''s desperate electric attack, and then he and Rito had vanished as she tended to. All because of stupid Mini and her stupid inability to keep her fists sheathed for more than half a second.


    I supposed it was apropos that the stupider and more impossible I found her to tolerate, the more likely that she''d thrust us into situations where I had to tolerate her. And now here we were, scuttling in the umbra like embryonic crustaceans in the pitch of the benthic abyss. The infinite vaguarities of our conundrum plied ever deeper their callous m¨¦tier.


    "Dork-hand! If I see that holo out one more goddamn time--"


    "I-I''m using it for light!" I shouted back at him.


    "Then point it at the ground, not your face, idiot."


    I swept the ground with the dim light, the thought that this was a pointless endeavor growing with every second. I didn''t know why Mini wasn''t taking her turn berating me as well, usually she couldn''t hold back and sometimes even tried to get physical at me. But not now, and I wondered if Rito had taken her as well.


    Knowing my luck, she was snatched and dropped in the hands of the XPCA, and because of her violent ineptitude, they''d decided the Defiant couldn''t be allowed to exist. I could just see it happening, that rowdy little dumbbell jacking up everything.


    I hadn''t even wanted to be here. I''d only joined the Defiant because Talon seemed like a smart guy I might be able to bounce a few ideas off of, not even as an Exhuman. I had a few plans bouncing around for making a lot of money and vanishing off the grid and thought a lawyer might be a useful perspective to have.


    And then he died. And now I was saddled with the hairy dwarf and the angry midget. Just my damn luck as ever, my perfect plans getting screwed by things completely out of my control just like always.


    I didn''t even want these meetings. I wasn''t afraid of getting shot in the back like an incompetent. I installed a camera outside my front door without the HOA knowing about it so if an assassin was going to sneak up on me, they''d find themselves being ambushed instead.


    I tripped over something hidden in the darkness. Well, it wasn''t really hidden, I just wasn''t paying attention to what was under the light from my holo.


    It was a leg. I was about to scream in a manner utterly justified by the discovery of a dismembered...member--and in a masculine way--when I realized it wasn''t dismembered.


    It was a whole body. Mini''s. Unconscious maybe, with some minor burns on her body and a fat bleeding bruise on her forehead. I put my hand on a wooden pillar and leaned off of it to see her more closely and realized my fingers were touching something wet.


    Again, I almost screamed in a justified and manly way. It was blood on the beam. But I courageously held in my alarm as only one hardened from the most gruesome shock sites the ''net had to offer could.


    "What in the hell are you screaming about over there?" Stag yelled at me.


    "Nothing!" I said back, my voice definitely not trembling.


    "Then shut the hell up unless you find something, you hare-brained lunatic," he grumbled.


    My detective skills kicked into overdrive as I analyzed the scene before me. Mini was breathing evenly, clearly still alive, but she hadn''t reacted to my...to Stag''s screaming. That and her eyes were shut, which meant she was clearly unconscious.


    And here is where the mystery deepened, but I knew I could overcome it with my amazing intellect. She had a large bleeding bruise on her forehead, probably the reason she was out. Something had struck her. But there was nary a murder weapon in sight? Would this be a cold case, locked away in the sea of digital files under a police station, never to be cracked?


    No! Because I was here, and so was the evidence, thankfully not yet washed away by the hands of amateurs.


    I would crack this case wide open with a shocking revelation few could match. I gave my imagined audience a moment to prepare themselves before I struck them with the barren truth.


    There was no murder weapon. Boom.


    I had to smile at my brilliance. It wasn''t what had struck her, but what she''d struck. And the answer was right under my fingertips. The wooden pillar, splattered with blood, the evidence needed to prove my hypothesis ironclad!


    Already certain of the truth, I swept my holo back and forth and found a trail of footprints, widely set but with small feet approaching the pillar from the direction I''d come. They ended at her body. All I needed was one final clue to prove my theory definitively and silence those who had ever doubted me.


    I unlaced Mini''s shoe, garish, tasteless floppy skateboarding shoes as splattered with every color as the pillar was splattered with her blood, and pried it off her foot, adding the pungent smell of her exposed socks to the stale air of the basement.


    The shoe matched the footprint perfectly. I could already imagine the pounding of the judge''s gavel as he proclaimed my proposed sequence of events utterly inescapable in their truth. The jury swooned and the defense wept, promising never to practice their pathetic excuse for law ever again, while the audience rose to their feet and applauded.


    I took several extravagant bows, hearing the escalating cheers growing as I acknowledged them in my graciousness. I turned and bowed yet again and--


    And pain. I held the crown of my head where I''d also slammed it into the pillar, my eyes watering. Nobody was laughing, so nobody had seen, but I felt like my face was burning bright enough that I''d be spotted even in the dark. This stupid cramped basement, ruining even my fantasies with its crappy layout. Maybe if they used better materials than dead trees there wouldn''t need to be as many pillars everywhere and I wouldn''t be reeling in pain right now.


    "What was that bang?" Stag called from across the basement. "Find a way up?"


    "No," I muttered. "Just...testing the structure." Crap, this really hurt!


    "Hrmph," he grunted. "Good idea, for once. Why don''t you just break us out of here?"


    It sounded like he began to argue with another of the Defiant down here with us who had some objection to breaking down part of a school, but I couldn''t hear it from here since unlike Stag, they spoke at a reasonable volume.


    But he was right. I did have a good idea. I was sick of stumbling in the dark and banging into things. I had the power to get myself out of here, and I''d use it.


    I pulled a bardiche out and then jerked it once or twice but it was stuck fast between the dirt and the ceiling. This place was entirely too cramped for a poleaxe. Stupidly designed, as I said. Perhaps something more maneuverable like a rapier...but that wouldn''t even punch through the floor.


    Whatever I was going to use, I had to clear up my hands first. I was still holding Mini''s stupid shoe. I stooped down and tried to put it back on her foot, but the shoe was so lightweight and floppy, and she was so uncooperative that it wasn''t fitting on. Her toes kept jamming in wrong or getting caught on the opening through her sock. It amazed me, but somehow didn''t amaze me at all that even completely unconscious, she could still irritate me and manage to prevent anything from getting done.


    I tried to roll her over so her whole leg wouldn''t be flopping around, but had a hard time with how dense (in every sense!) she was. She was like a tiny lumberjack that ate nothing but steroids. Pulling and twisting her leg was doing nothing, and the more I struggled, the more progress I failed to produce, earning nothing but a thin layer of dust and sweat for my trouble.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I soon found myself shoving her bodily with abandon, one hand on her back, the other on her butt through her jeans, yet still she wouldn''t roll. Something was stopping her. I let her fall onto her back without grace and checked for the obstacle.


    And there, in her front pocket, I found the culprit. As I pulled it out and the yellow light of my holo washed over it, I felt my breath catch.


    Why was she carrying this on her? Was she a complete idiot? Did she always have this?


    "Are you through yet?" I heard Stag yelling at me as his footsteps crunched in the dirt as he approached. Not knowing what else to do with it, I hid the fist-sized metal device in my pocket and stood to face him, painting an innocent look on my face. "What the--is this where she''s been? Stop laying around Mini, get your ass up," he said, advancing on her.


    "She''s unconscious. I followed her footprints and they led me directly to a blood--"


    "Don''t care," he said. "The damn idiot. Am I the only one here with a functioning brain?"


    I cleared my throat significantly. He looked at me.


    "Yes, yes I am," he said. "Is that your fancy axe stuck in the ceiling? Why didn''t you use a regular wood-chopping axe, you moron?"


    "It''s a bardiche, and it was the pinnacle of heavy bladed polearms in the sixteenth--"


    "Still don''t care. Open the ceiling and then flap your useless gums."


    As much as he professed his apathy, he was kneeling over Mini and with a grumble, tore off one of his sleeves to wrap around her head. Just had to show off his hairy arms and all the fat on them, didn''t he? Even if there were some muscle, that really just sealed the impression of him being a big barrel of meat.


    As for me, I took my own advice and pulled out a modern hatchet, an axe explicitly designed for cutting wood, and the obvious choice. I swung it ungainly upwards, but the angle and low ceiling made it impossible to get any good hits across the ceiling beams.


    "You may as well piss on it for all the good you''re doing," he said as he tied off the now-red sleeve around her head.


    "Oh, like you could do better?"


    He stood up and ripped the hatched out of my hands with a crude yank. Experimentally, he swung it slowly over his head a few times, letting it brush along the ceiling like he was going to scratch it to pieces.


    "Gimme a shovel," he said. I rolled my eyes and gave him one.


    Instead of slicing up towards freedom, he dug down towards...the Sino glasslands, presumably. Truly he was a man of incomparable idiocy. I had to ponder if he had gone mad, or if his lunacy derived from the patulous vexation in which we found ourselves embroiled.


    His fingers closed around my pocket thesaurus.


    "No, I need that!" I shouted at him.


    "I fucking warned you," he said, and threw it into the dirt hole he''d just been digging, and then jumped in after it. He didn''t step on it, but it illuminated his feet in the new hole only a couple feet deep. What the hell was he doing wasting his time digging that?


    With his feet firmly planted lower now, he swung the hatchet overhead without hesitation, and from his new angle, scored a clean hit against the ceiling, now that he was at an optimal distance from it to swing with his arms straight.


    Oh.


    I watched with disinterest as he hacked apart the stupid ceiling, sneaking in when he was distracted to retrieve my thesaurus in between his strikes. Soon, the rest of the Defiant were there, attracted by the noise of the deconstruction, watching as he broke through board after board.


    I had expected to see light above, but there was just more darkness. Even when he broke a hole large enough for us to go through, and we emerged into a wide room full of short, uncomfortable-looking chairs all facing the same way, it was still dark.


    I checked my holo. It was midnight, I supposed. And then pulled it away as Stag reached for it again.


    A few dark rooms later and we emerged through a set of double doors into the night air. It was damp here, but far warmer than Santa Fe. The humid air felt full and pleasant in my nose, and the cool was soothing after the cramped stale basement.


    "So?" I turned to ask Stag and the others now that we were freed. "How do we get back? Nobody here has teleportation powers."


    "Why go back?" Stag asked, sitting down as he wiped sweat off his stubble-covered jowls, laying Mini out on the grass next to him. The moonlight did little to increase his appeal.


    "Because...that''s where we live?" I explained to him, patience of several saints in one.


    "Why?" he asked.


    "Because we do. That''s what living somewhere means?"


    "We wound up there on account of being near New Eden, that''s all, you moron," he grumbled. "It''s no more our home than anywhere else. Here, nobody will be looking for us."


    "Oh," I said, not sure what else to add. "Well, we still can''t leave, I have belongings back there."


    "I''m sure they sell queer porn here as well."


    "I''m not--! You''re disgusting," I said


    He snorted at me but was the only one. Another of the Defiant stepped up. "If it''s true nobody else would look for us here, I think we should stay. Only Rito knows we''re here, right?"


    "And it''s obvious the XPCA don''t give a shit about Talon''s promise for mutually-assured destruction," Stag grumbled. "And he''s dead for it, good riddance. So the least any of us can do is learn from his corpse and hide again."


    The others seemed to bristle at the insinuation that Talon deserved any kind of death and I agreed. Stag might be one of the most vocal among us, but he was far from the most popular.


    "Oh shut up," he bellowed at them. "We''re still the Defiant Unchained, we still follow the rules. If you have anything to say, say it. If you don''t, we vote."


    There were a few minutes of murmured conversation, but nobody else stepped out to speak. When Stag had depleted his shallow patience, he called for a vote.


    I thrust my hand out in a confident thumbs-down simply to oppose Stag''s vote, but his majority carried nonetheless. The Defiant would remain in Oregon.


    Not that I really cared. There was ''net anywhere I went.


    Or so I thought. Until I felt cold droplets on the backs of my hands, and then the sound of a stampede as the water from the heavens began to pour down on us.


    I pulled out an umbrella and opened it, the simple folding metal arms about the limit of complexity in a device I could create. I looked around and saw the others beginning to droop or run for cover and decided to demonstrate the broad applicability of my powers and the peerless generosity of my being by creating an armful more and passing them out to muttered praise.


    "Thanks Dillan," one man said.


    "My name is not Dillan," I informed him.


    "Err, Dork-hand?"


    I glared and took the umbrella back.


    "Wait, no, isn''t it Dillan?"


    "I am Duskwhisper Demonhand," I said, glaring at him imperiously with a stare as cold and piercing as a needle of ice. "Herald of Night, Bearer of the Seven Seals."


    He blinked at me. "Your parents named you that?"


    I thrust the umbrella back at him and moved on. Idiots like him could never understand my curse.


    One of the others with more experience and training, a veterinarian I think, was now looking at Mini. She didn''t get an umbrella, on account that I''d previously already done several very thoughtful things for her, and she''d never so much as given me a date. Such an uptight bitch.


    These unfortunate interactions were grating on my nerves and I separated myself from the group where I could stand nearby, alone after my brief show of mercy and kindness. Any respectable recipient would have no choice but to approach me as I stared into the dark rain and be captivated by my enigma.


    But somehow, after a few minutes, still nobody had come over to thank me properly for my charity. Were these people all socially retarded? I knew they were Exhumans, but their ingratitude knew no bounds. A couple of them were on their last straw with me as well.


    I spent the time thumbing through my mobile but it still thought we were back in Arizona, the stupid thing, and wouldn''t connect to the ''net here until it sorted itself out. I put it away, not wanting to break out my thesaurus again in case Stag was still lurking nearby, but my hand bumped into the device in my pocket and I drew that out instead.


    And then remembered to give a good suspicious glance around. One could never be too careful.


    If this was what I thought it was...I could hardly believe it. I''d heard Mini mouthing off about the tech she''d constructed with her powers, too stupid to keep her thoughts inside her head at any point, but I never believed I might get my hands on any of it, much less this -- the crown jewel of a technopath''s arsenal.


    It was small, only the size of my fist, but heavy. Inside I knew was technology like the world had never seen, borne of thoughts so alien that even opening it for a peek would render it at best inoperable, never to be repaired or reassembled by a single soul on the planet, save Mini.


    Even another technopath, she''d boasted, would never understand her genius. I didn''t know if that was true, but given what this thing could supposedly do, I didn''t doubt it.


    The temptation to use it was enormous, but I was far too smart and disciplined to fall victim to such an obvious trap. I had to be exceedingly cautious with it, far moreso than she''d been. If I was found with it, if the XPCA could discern what it was, I''d be killed on the spot.


    Because there in my hands was the world''s first and only synthetic Code-X tech. Or something like that. The ability to control another, through brainwave manipulation or something Even I couldn''t begin to wrap my head around, despite my genius.


    I didn''t know how it worked, but there were two handles on either side, a pair of thumb triggers on them, and that was it. I supposed you just...pointed at your intended target and jammed the triggers. And then they were yours. Maybe they just followed your orders from there on, or maybe some kind of...wireless neural uplink? That seemed impossible, but if it could remotely control other minds, who was to say it couldn''t also remotely interface with its user''s?


    I pocketed it again. It would bear experimentation, but not here, not now, and certainly not with other Exhumans. Maybe in a few weeks when the heat from this whole Talon thing had died down, in a quiet town with some drunken homeless people that nobody would miss...like Stag, I thought, with a smile.


    And then I remembered I was supposed to be brooding and mysterious and stopped smiling. Enigmatic and obscure...Delphic in my equivocal inscrutability. I was a soul tortured by my onerous burden, alone in a malignant firmament, my tribulations unascertainable by the stock plebeians. This locus was an anvil, and the injustices within it hammered down on my adamantine incarnation.


    "Dork-hand, you baby-bushed prick," Stag yelled at me from a distance while I fumbled in putting away my thesaurus. "We''re moving on, stop standing around like an unpolished knob and move."


    Truly I was misunderstood in my own time. But someday the legacy of Duskwhisper Demonhand would be known across the land. For I was the Herald of the Night. I was the Bearer of the--


    "Goddamn it boy, get your head out of your ass and move."


    "Okay, I''m coming, don''t have a freaking heart attack," I yelled back at him.

 245. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    I was beginning to feel bad about it. The girls didn''t have any problem offering me the spare bedroom. Lia insisted she cover my rent, and I insisted right back that I do. So of course we compromised, and she was covering my rent.


    It wasn''t that, or my constant presence here which made me feel guilty...on the contrary, it sorta felt like every time I showed up, Lia and AEGIS -- and formerly Saga -- would put on their best faces and just get along normally while I was in the room. I wasn''t quite dumb enough to believe they all were getting along, but I seemed to be helping.


    No, it was the parade of people I was dragging through their living room which they tolerated with wary eyes that was making my guilt gland wriggle. Rito had already come and gone as she pleased, though hadn''t returned since leaving with Saga a couple days ago. Moon had stopped by again yesterday, looking like she wanted to talk with me and then saying nothing as she tended to do. Tem, just Tem, as usual. After her shift, even Karu made an appearance, only long enough to pick me up and head out somewhere for the evening, where I vented on her the stresses of the household while she listened with bemusement.


    And now, this guy. Clean, pressed XPCA uniform, collar high and straight. Sitting with equal parts casual comfort and rigidly good posture. Dress boots, not combat boots, polished and spotless.


    And the all-too-familiar insignia of a torch and shield identifying him as intelligence. My stint in detention had given me plenty of hours to hone my loathing for that symbol, and for all the incompetents who interrogated me pointlessly and endlessly who wore it.


    Just sitting there across from me, cool as anything with a breezy smile like this was his summer home.


    AEGIS came back from the kitchen, two cups on saucers steaming as they floated in the air on her fingers. Her uh, smile, I guess...was pleasant?


    "Coffee and tea," she said airily, her fingers floating down to place them before us without having to stoop.


    "Thank you," he said with amusement as he studied AEGIS. I echoed him and took my tea.


    "So do you two know each other?" AEGIS asked, folding up slightly as she sat in a chair with her leg-blades sticking out.


    "No," I muttered into my drink. "Never met him in my life."


    "And I''m sure both of our lives were worse for it," he said. "I''m sorry, she is really captivating. Is this a custom job, or...did you teach her to ask questions? Is she situationally aware?"


    "I''m not a robot, I''m remotely piloting this body," AEGIS answered before I could open my mouth. "I''m just a girl who loves robots. Maybe if you''re nice to Athan, we can meet someday."


    "Oh, so you''re not a robot maid? That''s a little disappointing. I was hoping to buy my own," he smiled. He took a sip of coffee and I noticed the smile vanish as he attempted valiantly to swallow. Yeah, you really don''t want one of these as a maid buddy, trust me.


    "So what was your name again?" AEGIS asked.


    "Lieutenant Colonel Teryn, ma''am. Please, just call me Micaiah."


    "Colonel Micaiah," AEGIS mused. "And what did you come here to ask Athan?"


    "More inane bullshit," I said, setting down my cup. At least AEGIS hadn''t figured out a way to ruin tea yet, so I was drinking a lot of that recently. But damn, did that girl love ''innovating'' in the kitchen. Nothing was safe.


    "Is that how you talk to a superior officer?" Micaiah asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Sorry, should I stand and salute?"


    He laughed. "No, it was an honest question. I''m well aware that the Invoked Sergeants don''t fall within the traditional military hierarchy. I''m curious to see how you do relate with others in black. I can''t imagine most of your interactions with us are that great. Just a guess based on the prevailing opinion on Exhumans and your uh...disposition towards me, so far."


    "Yeah, I think you nailed it. Great job on the intelligence. Maybe next you can solve my missing sock mysteries."


    "Athan, don''t be a dick," AEGIS chided me.


    "No, it''s fine," Micaiah said. "Like he said, I''m with intelligence. I prefer to observe people undisturbed, if I can. I''ve never been face-to-face with an Exhuman before, and so far, it''s quite the experience."


    "They''re not all asinine jackasses," AEGIS apologized. "Some we know are actually quite friendly. Even this one, sometimes."


    "And who are you, piloting this unit, if you don''t mind my asking?" he said, turning towards her. I caught a moment where she apparently blushed :$, if I understood that face properly.


    "Oh, just an old friend of Athan''s," she said. "And his lover and devoted girlfriend," she added quickly afterwards, like I couldn''t hear if she spoke quickly enough.


    "And...the robot why, if that''s not too invasive?"


    "Well," she said, looking down thoughtfully. "It does wonders for my waistline."


    He smiled but didn''t press further. Sort of the opposite of how I expected intelligence guys to act by now.


    "So what did you want, Micaiah?" I asked him.


    "Right. Sorry, getting so caught up in all of this new...my apologies. A couple of things. First, I thought we should get to know each other a little better, as I''ve been reassigned to work under Colonel Dawn to assist with some of her duties."


    "Cosette? Oh good. She''s been looking like she''s about to pass out on her feet the last few times I saw her," I said.


    "Indeed. But I was also on the team investigating the death of the leader of the group calling itself the ''Defiant Unchained''. They''ve retained me part-time in that capacity."


    "What, you''re just that smart?" I asked.


    He smiled and laughed. "I don''t think so, but they had some reason, I assume. I know you were already grilled about your actions--"


    "Repeatedly."


    "Yes, repeatedly. And I''ve already gone over all your testimony, and wouldn''t dream of asking you the same lines yet again. Instead, I wanted to just...talk, in a more conversational capacity. You can say whatever you want about the Defiant, and if there''s anything there, even if it''s something you might not have said before because you didn''t think it was important, it may be a vital clue."


    AEGIS'' polite smile fell to a sullen ._. as she spoke. "So you are just here to interrogate him again."


    "Just how desperate are you guys?" I asked, leaning back and putting my feet on the coffee table. AEGIS frowned >:\ at me as she moved my teacup away from my legs.


    "Reasonably desperate. You''re one of the only leads on a case which threatens the whole of the XPCA. I obviously wasn''t there for it, but I''d speculate that they only chose to release you with the hope you''d go stirring up more trouble and produce additional evidence for them, and the time they were holding you was spent in debate on just how big a risk that was."


    I blinked at him as I processed the fact that an XPCA intelligence officer not only just said something intelligent, but also polite, candid, and to me.


    He sipped his coffee again. "Is there honey and sugar in this?"


    "Yes. And nonfat milk to mask the bitterness without adding unnecessary calories."


    He smacked his lips a few times and put the cup down again. "Of course."


    But I was suddenly interested in what this man knew about the case more so than his coffee preferences. If this was a legitimately capable intel officer...working the one case I cared about, no less...and would be working in proximity to me on account of being Cosette''s newest subordinate¡­


    Well it seemed like a miracle.


    And that suddenly made my stomach turn uneasily.


    "You say you don''t know why you were still retained for Talon''s case?" I asked him.


    He smiled pleasantly. "I have some suspicions. I am intelligence after all. But bad intel is often worse than no intel at all, so I''m not about to speculate openly on that point."


    "And you don''t think it''s strange that you''re suddenly reassigned to be close to me? Me, who was just released -- as you just said -- on the possibility that I''d go off and dig up something else. And then you''re right there under Cosette, ready and waiting with this dippy smile on your face to find out everything and then run off and tell them every single invasive hint you''ve gotten out of me? Is that about right?"


    He smiled again. "I''ve never heard my smile called dippy before...but yes, those were my suspicions as well. In my defense, I''d like to mention that I never planned or told anyone any of this. I really am just an intelligence officer who was reassigned one day. If there is a conspiracy, I''m as much a pawn as you are."If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "Great," I said, pulling my feet off the table and laying out on the couch instead. "And so I''m betting you don''t actually know anything useful about the case anyway either. You''re just a glorified camera to spy on me."


    "Is he always this condescending, or is this an intelligence branch thing?" he asked AEGIS.


    "Intelligence. Though there''s plenty of other things which set him off."


    "Oh really. Well that''s unfortunate. I''d prefer a more natural viewpoint."


    "And I''d prefer if the XPCA tried to solve this shit instead of just badgering me in new and pointless ways. Picking useless people and sending them to my house? Of course I''m pissed."


    "I actually did come of my own volition. I''m the proactive sort. As I said, I wanted to introduce myself, and I doubted we''d meet at work, since I''d be with Colonel Dawn at Central." He frowned. "And I don''t think I''m useless."


    "Do you know anything about the case I don''t?"


    He scratched his chin. "I''d say I do. Certainly more than you in some regards."


    I waited but he didn''t follow up in any way except to stop scratching and resume his perfect posture.


    "Well?" I asked.


    He laughed. "Pardon me, but just to lay out the score: I came to call as a token of friendship and comradery. I was reassigned from my old posting without being consulted as a result of your actions. I''ve been variously accused by you of being useless, stupid, a glorified camera, and possessing a dippy smile -- which still hurts, by the way."


    "Sorry."


    "I won''t take it personally. I came here with the intention of pooling our combined knowledge to see if any detail you had fit into the broader narrative as I understood it in a way you might not, and instead have been subject to nothing but constant abuse. As your superior. And now that you think I have something of use to you, you expect me to just give it to you?"


    I looked at AEGIS who just shrugged. Amazing, the amount of you deserved this she could cram into that gesture, even without a real face.


    "Uh. Yes? Maybe. Please?"


    He snorted but was still smiling at me. "Let''s make a deal. You indulge me in telling me what you know. I tell you what I know. And you stop being quite so abrasive, pretend I''m just any other human and not Intelligence and not sent here to spy on you. Does that sound fair?"


    "Sounds fair," I said, and leaned up to take his offered handshake.


    "All right then. Would you care to go first?"


    "Can I trust you to tell me after?" I asked.


    He smiled and stood up, pulling his wallet and mobile out of his pockets and offering them to me as he sat again. "Here. Keep these in escrow until you''re satisfied."


    "You know, I am an Exhuman. I can just kill you and take your stuff whenever," I said, trying to sound threatening, but he just laughed.


    "Well, if you do, I might leave quite the mess for your lovely robot maid girlfriend to have to clean, and that would be terribly rude of me, so let''s try to avoid that."


    This guy was either so confident in himself or so unthreatened by me that I found it just a bit off-putting. I suppose there was the possibility he was confident in me, but he''d have to be a total idiot to believe in me so entirely after knowing me less than an hour.


    Or maybe...I frowned and thought more. Something about how open and honest this guy was as an intel officer just made my paranoia sensors go off, but he''d done nothing but be forward with me. I was and had been a jackass this whole time, for no real reason. I should be nicer, I thought. At least let him give me something to hate him for first.


    But resolving to be nice didn''t calm my nerves. I opened his wallet, found his ID, definitely authentic. Pictures of him and presumably his wife and teenage son. Credit chits, insurance cards, library membership, everything you might expect. I turned on his mobile and gave him a glance and he just nodded at me. Full list of contacts, hundreds of old messages I didn''t read through, map open with driving directions to the girls'' house, a butt-ton of documents. Wow, a metric butt-ton of documents.


    So basically either completely legit, or incredibly elaborate fakes, well beyond my capacity to deal with. My mind informed me repeatedly, insistently, that I was an idiot, but something still hung in my guts. Something about the way he looked and smiled at me. It was just so...so¡­


    So genuine. So unabashedly legitimately happy to be talking to me and studying me and investigating AEGIS'' terrible coffee. Maybe that was just it, outside of my close friends--and even with them half the time it felt like--I never met people who just seemed engaged and happy to meet me. It was weird, and doubly so because that smile and those bright eyes were hanging out of a black XPCA uniform.


    "Tem, can you sit next to me?" I asked, deciding to test my theory.


    "Can I?" her voice came from behind me, making Micaiah jump and then look around in apparent delight. The couch barely made a sound or indentation as the scraggly girl climbed on it.


    "And you can unhide."


    She did so, and I found her half-hidden eyes staring at my chest with excitement written all across her flushed cheeks. Her breath was quick and shallow.


    "Fascinating!" Micaiah said, studying her intently. "Now she is not in any records I''ve yet read. Who might you be?"


    Tem looked up at me and when I nodded she turned to him and spoke. "I''m Temperance, or Tem...or Tempe, or um, whatever you would like to call me."


    "And you''re an Exhuman?"


    She nodded slowly.


    "Incredible." He looked back and forth between us and at the faint blush and distracted eyes on her face. "You two aren''t...that is to say...I''m sorry, this is incredibly inappropriate to ask but...have you been...intimate?"


    "They most certainly have not," AEGIS said, standing up suddenly, her fingers flaring around her hands like angry hornets.


    "Right. I apologise. There''s just...never been a pairing of Exhumans before, and while genetics are widely regarded as...my apologies. Sorry, really. That was out of line."


    "Yeah, maybe you should leave," AEGIS said, her voice sounding a lot more robotic now, but still with the stupid > written across her face.


    This time I was the one who found myself laughing. This guy was a huge nerd! The second I dangled some research in front of his nose, he jumped straight in the deep end. It was no wonder he was so delighted to talk to me, I was something he didn''t know, and I had information he didn''t know, and the more time he spent in this house the more wonders he was discovering. Shame for him that Saga had just left, I could only imagine what he''d make of her.


    And then I remembered that the last the XPCA formally knew of her, she was at Blackett''s lodge, or had escaped from it, and maybe it wouldn''t be a great idea to show her off.


    "He''s fine, AEGIS. He''s just curious. I mean, I''ve never heard of Exhumans having kids either."


    "Right? Can you imagine the family dynamics?" Micaiah asked. I thought of Trish and Gil raising their brats, and the brief Exhuman power duels that unfolded there over the most banal things.


    "Well, nobody needs to consider it," AEGIS huffed, crossing her arms with a >.> "because Athan''s not having any Exhuman babies, he''s stuck on me. Right sweetie?"


    "Right," I said, and she beamed  before sitting down again.


    I turned back to Micaiah. "I''ve decided I can trust you, so here''s what I know."


    He took careful notes as I spoke even after asking to record us, and for the most part, seemed completely unfazed by my recollection of events before my imprisonment. But when I broached the subject of our meeting a couple days back, where Mini had attacked me and they had all been stranded in Oregon, his eyebrows went wild with alarm as he scribbled furiously on his mobile with a stylus.


    "And they''re still up there?"


    "To my knowledge. I haven''t seen them since, and Rito''s sort of out of the picture."


    "And who have you told this?"


    "So far, uh, just you actually. Rito knows and so would Saga...uh...another friend...they''re uh, off together right now. AEGIS really only had questions about my injuries--"


    "I happen to be a very attentive listener. It was you who didn''t want to talk about it."


    "And I explained the situation to Karu, she seemed mostly concerned for if they were coming back for me, which I said I didn''t know, maybe. But we never talked about where they went, so not her."


    "So the only people who know they''re in Oregon are in this room, Rito, and Saga."


    "And anyone they''ve told, I guess."


    "Well, far be it for me to jump the gun on telling you my info, but if they''ve told anyone, those people are keeping quiet. The XPCA completely lost them a couple of days ago...we never expected them to jump state, not as a group."


    Watching him take his careful notes, I felt like I was betraying the Defiant somewhat...most of them had seemed fine to me, with a few violently glaring exceptions...but I reminded myself, I was on the XPCA''s side on this one. If the end of the world was looming, I wanted to prevent it, even if it meant snitching on some Exhumans. They really brought this on themselves by announcing such a crazy plan anyway.


    The lies we tell ourselves, man. I didn''t believe me for a second. But that was the theory anyway.


    I finished up my story about the tussle with Mini, and he made me clarify that she hadn''t used her powers in any way during the fight that I could tell, how I''d escaped with Rito, and that was the last I''d seen or heard of them, and hoped that was a good sign.


    "Maybe," Micaiah concluded, putting the stylus away and pocketing his mobile for a moment before pulling it back out with some small alarm and placing it back with his wallet in ''my'' possession. "And if what you said was the end of it and the Defiant were allowed to believe they escaped and disbanded and reassimilated into the public under our secret surveillance, I think that would satisfy the XPCA given the situation. But it''s unlikely."


    "Yeah, I sort of expect Mini to come looking for me, honestly. I don''t think she cares about staying hidden so much as taking out Talon''s death on me."


    "It''s not that. It''s that trouble is actively looking for them. You were done with your story, right?" I nodded and then he continued, absently picking up his mobile again and flipping through it. "We''ve known this for a week now, maybe, but there''s an assassin after them. A very dangerous one...a real underworld assassin, not a hunter or anyone with military or federal connections. We don''t know why he''s after them, but we can guess. We''ve historically had a few recon teams and even one of our temporary monitoring posts taken out by this guy, and recently got the drop on him while he was seemingly waiting in ambush of a Defiant member, but we didn''t win that one either. Just a standard strike team, stumbled right into him basically, and were eviscerated."


    He slid the mobile back across the table and on the holo I saw a grainy picture, obviously cropped from a larger image which showed a man on a rooftop in a nondescript grey hoodie, two black, straight locks of hair framed his narrow face. A thin moustache, black as well, grew down into the short goatee on his chin. His skin was medium in tone, golden even before it was tanned probably, oily and smooth.


    But all of that was irrelevant. He could have had mutton chops and a clown nose and they still wouldn''t be his most defining feature. It was his eyes. Eyes narrow, angular, with whites that jumped out against the hue of his skin. The eyes looked unimpressed, like they had taken in much and found little beauty in it. They looked familiar, yet alien.


    Because I''d seen eyes like his a thousand times now. On Saga.


    I pushed the phone away, feeling revulsion churning in my stomach. Apparently I''d gotten used to Saga but was still racist, somewhere in the vicinity of my gut.


    "I think," I said, sitting up and staring at the Lieutenant Colonel opposite me, "that I need to hear everything you have to say."


    He nodded and picked up his mobile, staring into the picture for a moment before closing it.


    "His name is Liwei Xie. But you won''t hear that name on the streets...people who talk about him too much have a habit of winding up dead. Not that many know of him to begin with. Instead, his clientele and victims have come up with a much more straightforward name for him."


    He offered his mobile again and I saw this time it was a news article, with scribbled annotations all over it in a tidy, compact scrawl. But what Micaiah wanted me to see was obviously the title.


    "Killer Sino on the loose? Who is ''Dragon'' and how many has he killed?"

 246. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    I frowned as AEGIS replaced my cup of tea with a fresh steaming one. I didn''t take coffee because I couldn''t sleep afterwards, but if I kept pounding this stuff, I''d have the same problem.


    Also coffee tasted like foot. Or, I suppose if AEGIS made it, foot-flavored sugar.


    But hearing what Micaiah had to say, I wasn''t sure that getting a restful night of sleep was in my future anyway.


    "So, Dragon is a Sino," I said. "Does he have any nationalist leanings?"


    "We don''t know. He''s not an Exhuman -- that we know of -- and as a result, isn''t exactly someone the XPCA has an extensive profile on. Working with the other agencies is as painful as always, but we''re getting what we can from them. I''ve said it already and I''ll say it again, but I won''t share my speculations if I don''t think I have enough evidence."


    "Then what do you know about him?"


    "He''s an assassin and a very good one. He''s never engaged a target that we know of and not wound up with a kill. He has strong connections and access to immense sums of credits, and therefore can wind up pretty much anywhere with whatever tools he could desire."


    "Like inside of an apartment in Santa Fe, with an XPCA firearm and a couple exotics grenades?"


    Micaiah shook his head. "That''d be child''s play for him."


    "And he''s not afraid to engage Exhumans," I mused. "So like a hunter, or shadow ops."


    "Something like that. We also know he tends to vanish for a few months at a time sometimes and then show up again somewhere else to make a few more bodies."


    "Like, as a trend? Or just disappearing here and there?"


    "Very much a trend. Always possible he''s just moved somewhere else and nobody''s found the bodies or linked them back to him yet, but I don''t think so."


    "Hmm. I dunno what that could mean. My first thought is transit time but...months? Maybe just laying low to lose the heat?"


    He smiled at me but didn''t respond. It reminded me of Moon, obviously something going on in there but not going to share it. Well, not the smile, also.


    "Any thoughts AEGIS?"


    She shook her head. "I don''t suppose ''I hope Athan doesn''t go after this guy'' counts?"


    "Like I''d knowingly chase after a professional assassin."


    "Wouldn''t you? It wouldn''t be the stupidest thing you''ve ever done."


    "Hey, I do stupid things because I have to. Because lives are on the line and someone has to do something now. I''m not out there running down Exhumans for fun."


    "Sure," she said with a plain smile.


    "I''m gonna grab Lia, be right back," I said, rising.


    "Ooh, another Exhuman?" Micaiah asked, his eyes lighting up, and I had to laugh.


    Lia seemed confused at first, but as we filled her in on the conversation thus far and I saw her unconsciously drawing in her legs and tugging at strands at her hair as she stared intently at nothing, I knew the gears in her head were turning.


    "Not to be racist, but does he have nationalist leanings?" Lia asked.


    "Hey, I asked that!" I said, beaming.


    "Good Athan," she said, and messed up my hair playfully.


    "Not that we know of," Micaiah repeated. "But we don''t know much."


    Lia tugged at a brown strand dangling in her face. "Well, I was just thinking...disappearing for a few months at a time...it''s too long for doing resupply or transit. He doesn''t seem to run out of clients or targets, just stops taking them for a bit. It might just be his MO to take breaks...but I don''t think he''d be in this business for this long or get this good if he didn''t like doing his job. I think it must be something else, and China makes too much sense. But I don''t know if I''m just assuming based on race."


    "Makes sense how?" I asked.


    "Makes sense that he''d be vanishing because he''s going back, or has connections there."


    "Isn''t China just glass and ash?"


    Micaiah just gave a half-smile while Lia looked at me like she was questioning my sanity. "Dude, bro, why would we be sending troops over there regularly if that were the case, and why would many of them not be coming back?"


    "Uh, radiation and natural hazards? Isn''t that what they say?"


    She slowly bopped me on top of the head. Between that and the pats earlier, I wondered if I was being trained. "How can you live and work this XPCA stuff every day and still think the American public is in any way truthfully informed?"


    She turned back to Micaiah and continued. "It also explains motive, which I think is the biggest argument for it. If he understands the Defiant situation at all, which I''d bet a lot of money that he does, I''d bet that he killed Talon."


    "Lia, he''s an assassin. He doesn''t need motive to kill someone."


    She bopped me again. "First off, nobody''s going to put out money for Talon. Even the XPCA wasn''t sure they wanted him dead. And second, I meant you need a reason to be an assassin at all. Think of Karu, numbnut. She didn''t just wake up and decide killing people was a good way to make a living. If this Dragon guy is a Sino nationalist, it would go a long way to explaining why he''s a assassin, because he''s working in the shadows instead of becoming a licensed hunter. That''s a lot of job security, a lot of work, and a lot of free tech, intel, and logistics he''s giving up...not to mention legal exculpability, all for what? To stay off the books? It doesn''t add up as a career move for me, unless he''s got beef with the government."


    Micaiah nodded seriously, looking like my kid sister had given even this professional intelligence officer something to think about. I couldn''t be more proud.


    "And if that is true," Lia continued, "then we''ve now got this assassin who''s out there making contacts and successfully rooted in the underworld...and we still don''t know why he''s doing it. He''s got access to China if he wants it, but keeps most of his time here where he hates us. He''s gotta have a reason for establishing himself like that. And don''t say it''s a career. You have to have something more than a paycheck to spend your life killing people."


    "Maybe it''s not hard for him. Maybe he''s a psycho?"


    "I mean, it''s possible, but I don''t think it''s ever a good plan to assume your enemy has no plan. So if we rule that out for now, we gotta look at what he stands to gain from what he''s set himself up as, from the position of a hypothetical Sino national."


    Honestly, I was just impressed what Lia could come up with with scant information. Taking that extra step to consider what the guy''s actions -- and more critically, lack of actions -- said about his motivations, and what his motivations might mean for his future actions...this was like, two thoughts further than I ever got, and I was reminded again just how good Lia was at intuiting the human mind.


    "Talon," I said, suddenly hit by her implication.


    She nodded. "It''s not often the opportunity comes around to destabilize the whole of the USA by killing a single person, but we''re now in a situation where there was such a person, he was assassinated, and we have an assassin on the loose who was entrenched enough in criminal culture to hear about and be able to act on it if such an opportunity showed up. That''s already fishy, but you throw in the fact we know he''s currently after the Defiant and thus connected to them? The pieces all fit together a little too well for coincidence."


    I leaned back in the couch a little floored, but Micaiah just smiled broadly. "Yes, that was exactly my conclusion, though I admit you had a few thoughts along the way I hadn''t considered. Your brother said you were something of an infopath...might I inquire how your powers work exactly?"


    She grinned and slugged me in the shoulder. "I''m not an Exhuman," she said. "I just pretend to be one online for money."


    "Really? Well...wow. Maybe in a few years you might consider a position in an intelligence unit. We could certainly benefit from your insight."


    "Why thank you,¡± Lia said, stretching her long legs and giving me a superior glance. "Might be fun working alongside Athan. Telling him what to do all day." She put on a serious face. "P-Force One, our intel indicates that if you do not pick up your dirty laundry today, America is doomed. Please make this mission your top priority."


    It was my turn to bop her, and she giggled at it, even as she confiscated my arm away in hers to prevent a repeat offense.


    "I''m actually P-F Actual; Jack is One, and they do not say please when issuing orders."


    Micaiah cleared his throat and Lia stopped giggling and unwrapped her body from around my arm.


    "That''s the crux of our data, but I thought you might also be interested in the forensics from Talon''s apartment."This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Didn''t we already crack this case?" I asked.


    "You don''t just ignore evidence because you''re convinced you''re right, dummy," Lia said.


    "Athan definitely does," AEGIS added. Gee. Thanks.


    "The bullets were not just the same type as XPCA munitions, but were definitively XPCA-owned. Compositional analysis of the molecular shred puts the bullets in a batch purchased in bulk from one of our main contractors, but those bullets have gone everywhere in the world since then, so there''s no way to tell which three bullets they were in that batch. Not that we track every single bullet anyway."


    "Hmm," I replied.


    "Similarly, we know the gun was definitely XPCA-licensed as well. We''ll be able to match styrations if we get our hands on the actual weapon, but again can''t trace it back otherwise. There weren''t any biologicals left at the scene, as we''d expect from a professional, but there was one trace footprint left."


    "Yeah, I saw that. Didn''t look like XPCA boots, right AEGIS?"


    She nodded. "I did my own analysis and got as far as that. Not any kind of shoe used in any kind of XPCA attire."


    "She''s smart. You three are basically your own little lab," Micaiah said, sounding impressed. "But, not to brag but we''ve got a big lab back at headquarters, and were able to construct a shoe print and find the matching shoe. Unfortunately, it''s brutally common, and like the gun, won''t do us much good except to confirm the killer once we have our hands on him. Either a men''s nine point five or ten."


    He flipped through his mobile again and then slid it back at me, showing me a picture of the tread and a picture of a shoe. Looked like your ordinary high-backed lace-up sneakers. After a second, he swiped over to a picture of a standard XPCA sidearm, identical to the one I had with my uniform. All the P-Force and all the XPCA strikes and recons and intels had one. Sort of an ideal murder weapon in that regard, especially if you were trying to frame the XPCA for it.


    "I''m assuming we don''t know Dragon''s shoe size?" Lia asked.


    "Wouldn''t that be nice. We''re guessing he uses inertial dampeners constantly to silence his footsteps, which would also negate any chance of leaving an impact footfall. Tracks like the bloodstain are all we could hope for."


    "He''s not a huge guy though, from the photo. Nine point five sounds about right. But I''m just pulling that out of my barnacle. What are you, bro?"


    "Eleven point five, but I''ve got broad feet, I don''t fill the toes."


    "Yeah me too. I have to wear guy''s shoes sometimes because womens'' are just too narrow for me. Ashton pride!" Lia laughed, and pulled her knee to her chest to wriggle her bare foot at my face. "High-five!"


    I poked her in the foot enough to tickle and the offender fled with an impish squeak.


    Once she was satisfied with being a pain in the ass, Lia sat back upright and continued. "So, nine point five versus eleven point five, that makes him, what¡­"


    "Seventeen point three nine one percent less than Athan," AEGIS said, reaching for her nonexistent glasses. "But studies indicate that there is no formal correlation between height, weight, or shoe size."


    "Well, you''re the scientist," Lia said with a shrug. "I''m just the idea girl."


    "And you''ve done a great job," AEGIS said with a sly wink.  "Just missed this once."


    "That exhausts my additional data," Micaiah said, pocketing his phone again and then remembering to put it back on the table. "I hope it was helpful to you...I know your information will be critical to us." He looked like he had a thought. "Say, do you know where in Oregon they are? You said they were at a school."


    "No, I don''t. Rito''s old high school or something. I can call her and find out if you''d like."


    "I am ever the fan of more data," he said earnestly. "Only...please don''t take this the wrong way, but would you be willing to just tell me and nobody else? If possible, I''d like to keep their location in as few hands as possible. Since there is a killer after them and all."


    "You don''t trust AEGIS and Lia?"


    "And Tem," he added.


    "Oh right. And Tem?"


    "As I said, don''t take it the wrong way. But you seem to be doing that."


    "Well how else am I gonna take it? These two...three just helped us make some major leaps today. You think either of them is stupid enough to go post it on their holog?"


    "Athan, it''s fine dude," Lia said. "I''m happy to do analysis, but I don''t wanna know some secret bit of information that might make a killer try to torture and kill me. Kinda rather not, actually."


    "I''d like to know," AEGIS said, frowning slightly...I think. "But it''d just be for my own curiosity, not because I had any reason to act on it. I''d really rather Athan not know, for all the reasons Lia just gave."


    "I...don''t know...either!" Tem said from behind the couch.


    But if what Lia said were true, I suddenly very much did not want her or AEGIS or Tem knowing this information. "Right," I said. "Everybody out then, I''ll call Rito."


    And with hardly any complaining, they all left the room. I realized as they were going that I was shooing them around in their own house and had another pang of guilt. A quick sweep informed me that we were definitely being watched by at least three cam-drones, which was lovely. I didn''t want to reveal to Micaiah that he''d been spied on this whole time, but also didn''t want AEGIS eavesdropping. Frustrating.


    So as sneaky as I could, under the pretext of getting a glass of water, I stood up and flicked tiny bulbs into the vicinity of the drones. The one at the end of the hallway dropped, popping when I hit it and only becoming visible as its optical camo faded away on the floor. The other two began to make a mad dash for the garage, and I let them go. My phone buzzed and I glanced at it.


    > jerk


    AEGIS could be to the point when she wanted. I dialed up Rito and hung out while it rang.


    The girl who answered was definitely not Rito. "Athan, sorry, I can''t talk right now, I''ve got two dicks in my mouth and a stick up my ass."


    "Hi Saga," I said.


    "How''d you know it was me?"


    "Uh, you two were together and she''s about as reserved as you are freaky. Where are you?"


    "On a bus. Also, reserved? Does this sound reserved to you?"


    I heard faint yelling in the background, which sounded like Rito. "Is that Athan? Give me back my mobile! Athan! I''m kidnapped! Help! Athan? Hello?"


    "She''s yelling on public transit like a crazy person, Athan. Control your woman, sheesh."


    "Saga...why did you kidnap Rito?" I asked.


    "It''s for a really good reason! You''ll see. I''ll let her go when we get there. Well, when we get there and then the amusement wears off. Actually I might not let her go. Man you should see this, she''s actually being embarrassed for yelling on the bus now." She lowered her voice to an amused whisper, somehow even quieter than her normal voice. "I just got an old lady to bitch her out for being rude. Isn''t that a riot?"


    I nursed my temples with my free hand as I took several deep breaths. Goddamn. Fucking. Saga. Why was she such an irresponsible asshole?


    "Saga, let her go, and stop¡­" I glanced at Micaiah "stop messing with people."


    "I dunno man. It''s a lot of fun, taking to the streets after being so cooped up. Road trip, man."


    "Saga, dammit."


    She laughed delicately.


    "Look, the name of the school where Rito took the Defiant, do you know it?"


    "Sure do. She won''t shut up about leaving them there. Seems to think she won''t get paid and has spent a lot of time trying to get back there."


    "Well...I guess it''s good that you''re not letting her. We''d like the Defiant to stay hidden if possible. Can you tell her that, and do it seriously, because this is actually important to the world not ending?"


    "I guess if you put it that way. But you owe me."


    "I guess I won''t tell the XPCA officer in my living room where you are and what crimes you''re currently committing. Does that count?" Micaiah looked up at me with a cocked eyebrow. I gave him a small smile and wave.


    "Whatever."


    "So what''s the school?"


    "Got a pencil ready?"


    I put the phone on my shoulder while I borrowed Micaiah''s mobile, opening a new page of notes and waited with stylus in hand.


    "Okay it''s...P¡­" Saga began.


    "P."


    "...E¡­"


    "E."


    "...N¡­"


    "N."


    "...I¡­"


    "...Saga."


    "...S."


    "Dude, seriously?"


    "Yeah. Rito had a really interesting high school experience. You ever hear the expression live by the sword? Well Rito, she lived by other phallic objects--"


    I heard yelling resume in the background again and just waited through Saga''s cackling and the distant sounds of an innocent girl getting bitched out by an old bus lady again.


    "I do love the American public transit system," Saga sighed.


    "Can you just tell me already?"


    "You are such a spoilsport. Okay it''s P¡­"


    "No."


    "FINE. It''s Primrose High. Penis was close."


    "Only in your mind would penis be close. Thanks, Saga. Kinda."


    "You''re very welcome. I''ll be back before you know it. Hang in there, Athan."


    I hung up and looked up at the somewhat alarmed Colonel who had heard a very interesting one-sided conversation. Before he could say anything, I gave him back his phone...deleting the note I''d just written...and told him the name of the school, which he wrote down and began searching for at once.


    "Nice looking place," he said. "I hope they don''t do anything to it. I don''t want a bunch of high schoolers getting involved in our mess."


    I frowned at the thought. I hadn''t considered that, only really thinking of the Defiant as this abstract destructive force in a world-ending sense, and not the damage they might do just by existing somewhere. Mini, in particular, I could see running through halls, pulling cheerleaders'' hair and getting in fights with the jocks¡­


    As soon as one mess got sorted, it just made another one, didn''t it?


    "Thanks for everything," Micaiah said as he stood and collected his things. "I hope this wasn''t too painful an intrusion for you. If you''re that dead-set against intelligence, I can just try to stay out of your hair from now on. Focus on working with the other P-Force and leave you in Colonel Dawn''s capable care."


    I shook my head. "It''s fine. Besides, you''re only part-time Intelligence anyway now, right? So I can just hate you part-time."


    He laughed, but when we shook hands at parting, it was significantly warmer than when I''d greeted him and given him a tepid invitation inside.


    He gave me one last glance and smile as he got in his car and left, but a lot of what he''d said was still there with me, still bouncing around in my head.


    Especially Dragon, and especially what Lia had said about Dragon. If he was looking for the Defiant, had I seriously screwed up by becoming one of the few people in the world who knew where they were? Had I painted a target on my head for an international Sino assassin to come looking for me?


    I dismissed the thought. That was crazy. There''s no way he''d know I knew. He''d have to get it from Micaiah himself that I knew, at which point he could just get the info from Micaiah himself.


    I was fine.


    Or so I told myself.


    But as I laid there that night trying to sleep, I kept having thoughts like ''unless he was listening to my call with Saga'', or ''unless he bugged the mobile of the XPCA investigating the case'' or ''unless he knew I have a connection to Talon and Rito''.


    So as it turned out, my earlier fear was completely misplaced. It wouldn''t be the tea which was keeping me up all night.


    It was those familiar, unimpressed eyes, staring at me from the dark.

 247. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    When I woke up, I felt trapped, tired, and heavy. I''d been up way too late last night thinking, and this empty bedroom, vacant except for the bed in it and a handful of my clothes on the floor...it didn''t exactly feel like home.


    I tried to stretch and roll over and realized with some panic that I couldn''t.


    I looked down, and there, crouched on my legs was a shiny black hulk of metal, a white face grinning at me broadly  even as her fingers snaked under the covers around me.


    I tore my legs free as something under the covers began molesting me through my pants and withdrew to the far end of the bed.


    "AEGIS, what the fuck," I shouted at her.


    Her face fell instantly. "What?"


    "That''s my question! What are you doing here? I was sleeping."


    She looked at me seriously for a moment and then put on a smile and restarted her approach, shuffling towards me on folded-up legs and rounded paddle-arms. "I''m your girlfriend. I want to twiddle your joystick. We can set a new high score," she purred mechanically.


    Her fingers curled and spun in the air in a way which frankly, reminded me of VTOL turbines.


    "Seriously dude," I said, pulling one of her fingers out of the air as it tried to snake down my pants. "What the fuck is this."


    She paused again. "This...this is...this is something you used to do all the time. I always used to wake you up with sex, remember?"


    "Uh...maybe," I said, feeling like there was an enormous metal beetle crawling on me. "But not like this, right?"


    She stopped to think for a second, evident by her face becoming an ellipsis for a moment. And then she advanced again with a broad smile. "Well, you were pretty reluctant your first time too, but at the end, you were even asking for it. I guess I just have to break you in again." She cleared her throat significantly and then began on me again with the throaty purring. "I hope those pants give fire resist, because it''s about to get hot in here."


    Yep. That was enough for me. I''m out.


    I jumped for the door, stopping only to scoop up an armful of clothes but the second I got it open, fingers shot from across the room and slammed into it like bullets, jarring it closed and holding it shut in front of me. The black tubes flexed threateningly at me, quivering like they were arrows jammed into the door.


    "Are you trying to bail on our 1v1 and join the public lobby?"


    "What the fuck is wrong with you?"


    "I''m just trying to do my duties as your player two. What the fuck is wrong with you?"


    "Why are you talking in video game metaphors? Why are you trapping me in my room? Why is one of your fingers crawling up my pant leg?"


    "It''s love, dumbass!" she yelled at me. "You and I first began our beautiful, final courtship in the video game kingdom of Eryendria from Kingdom Blade, where my encyclopedic knowledge of game lore is what began your attraction to me. I''m trying to rekindle that love, so," the finger crawling up my leg made it onto my thigh despite my efforts to swat it through my pants "so let me love you, damn it."


    "You need serious help," I told her as she advanced on me, a seemingly endless number of fingers probing at me from all angles.


    "And you need sexual release. Your tension is palpable."


    "GEE I WONDER WHY I''M TENSE," I screamed at her as I pulled the finger-drones off me and threw them back at her with absolutely no effect.


    It was a lost battle the second I refused to use my powers for fear of breaking her. She had me outnumbered too badly, and for every attack I stopped, another two were pulling down my pants or teasing my nethers.


    But at the end, when she had me at her mercy, she still didn''t cross the final line until she had my consent. It was a fine line, and one too far, but it was one AEGIS still wouldn''t cross, even after reincarnation in this thing. I appreciated that. Just not as much as things like not being attacked by a molester.


    Finally, with honestly very little to lose, and seeing no other end to this, I just submitted to my girlfriend and let her do whatever she wanted. She gleefully demonstrated the flexibility and capabilities of her finger drones in a session which was both amateurishly painful...and surprisingly pleasurable.


    "Sticky like a plasma grenade," she giggled as she cleaned up. I didn''t even want to know, and was spared any further video game bullshit by my mobile ringing. "See, now if that''s Karu or Saga, I''m not as worried about you hanging out," she said with superiority, like she''d just solved some enormous life problem we were all facing.


    "Yeah. Karu''s dad," I said, flashing her the ID. "I was definitely going to bang him. Thanks for sparing me."


    She started to quip back but I put the phone to my ear.


    "Athan Ashton, m''boy. It''s been far too long." Even over the phone, Senator Idris'' voice seemed to fill my ear up with warmth and energy. The man had charisma.


    "Senator Irenside, sir," I replied politely, feeling very awkward about holding this conversation while I was half-dressed and AEGIS was trying to get at me with a towel.


    He laughed. "Just Idris will suffice son, as I''ve told you."


    "Are you calling about your Christmas party? I''m sorry to have bailed on you, but in my defense, you were being a serious asshole."


    He laughed even harder this time. "I made the major mistake of thinking I had you beat. There you were, in my house, in my arms, still as a trained rabbit, and I let my guard down. I never thought you''d throw sparkling grape over yourself and make a run for it. I underestimated you, son, and the only thing I like more than knowing the measure of a man is when he can consistently surprise me."


    "Thank you for the flattery, but if this isn''t about Christmas, I''m going to cut to the chase and ask just what it is."


    "Direct as ever eh? Good. I''m not a man who like wasting words anyway."


    Somehow I very much doubted that, but he still said it with the utmost confidence, and I found myself a little bit galled that I''d just spent half of yesterday unable to shake my distrust of Micaiah, but didn''t feel so much as a twinge as this guy slathered me in insincerity. I reminded myself that it was specifically because of Micaiah''s sincere interest in me that he freaked me out.


    He cleared his throat significantly, and I pushed AEGIS off my junk. "Son, I want to talk to you about Karen. I''m at my wit''s end with her."


    "What''s going on with her?" I asked, trying to sound casual.


    "She''s given up, in the most stubborn, impossible way I''ve ever heard of. As I''ve always thought, she finally grew out of that hunter phase, but now she''s gone into waitressing, which is a scandal waiting to happen. At least there''s honor in the military and fame as a pro hunter, but waitressing?"


    He said the word like it was a curse he could only just choke out of himself.


    "Isn''t it really up to her?" I asked.


    I hadn''t forgotten I''d marched in there and smashed up the place while screaming at her. I was aware of the hypocrisy. But he wasn''t.


    "It is...but at the same time...be honest son, is that career anything but a waste on her? She''s a cunning, brilliant, beautiful woman, who could succeed at anything. And while I think we''re both pretty clear that I think the best use of her talents is in the political realm...waitressing? My God, boy, even the hunting was better than that, and it gave me a coronary every day."


    "Last time I saw her, she was really happy," I said. "We talked a lot, and while yeah, I was right there with you when she started...I think...she''s just going through a lot of stuff right now. She''s trying to figure out who she is. Last time we spoke, she''d only just realized that being honest with herself felt better than living a lie."


    Idris snorted into his phone which crackled annoyingly in my ear. "She was raised for politics. Living a lie is second nature to that girl."


    "Yeah, well, maybe that''s why she''s so fucked up."


    "Boy, are you insinuating that this tantrum of hers is my fault?"


    "No, I''m telling you that a lot of her hang-ups are your fault. And that she''s throwing this ''tantrum'' because she is trying to figure out who she is, because her whole life, all she''s ever done is try to be what she thinks she should be."


    "Everybody should be who they think they should be. That''s called being a better person, son."


    "Maybe if they get to decide that on their own! Maybe if they get to determine who they should be! She was so wrapped up in virtue and righteousness that she thought she needed to be physically hurt and punished for still having feelings for me after we broke up. How fucked up is that?"


    Idris went silent on the line, and I took the opportunity to breathe. I''d been screaming at him loud enough to reduce AEGIS to a reserved o_o.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    When the silence stretched out for a minute, I took the opportunity to finish dressing and then sat back down on the bed. I wanted to speak, but I''d just dropped kind of a bomb on him and was going to let him come to terms with it.


    Y''know, like he should do with Karu? See, I wasn''t a hypocrite after all.


    "We used to be close, you know," he said at long last. His voice was no longer honey, sounding like he''d aged ten years in the last minute of silence. "She was homeschooled, and I was one of her tutors. We called it ''daddy hour'', because it was often the only time I spent with her outside of dinner, and though I was firm, we still often drifted off on tangents of her design, spending long discussions on subjects she found passion in...debates of the nature of right and wrong and other ethical quandaries, long after our hour was up and tutors lingered outside impatiently."


    He gave a weak chuckle. "She would follow me to the bathroom, arguing her opinion until the moment I closed the door, and pick up the very same sentence the second it opened. My opinion used to mean the world to her, and if we ever disagreed, she would work on me with unending vigil until our viewpoints could be conciliated. At the time, I thought only that politics ran in her blood, that she would ascend to the pinnacle of the marble peak and beyond."


    He took another brief moment before continuing. "But as she grew up, she cared less and less for what I thought. She began to look at me with the disgust you see now so written plainly on her face. The outside world took away my little girl."


    I interrupted before his self-pity could go too far. "Sir...I don''t...I don''t know how to be sensitive about this because I don''t politics. But is this just another trick? Are you just spinning me this elaborate sob story to get me on your side against Karu?"


    He laughed again, but it was a small, defeated laugh. "I guess I deserve that. You spend your life manipulating people, and they begin to look at everything you say with suspicion. You probably see me in much the way Karu does...do you find me contemptible, boy?"


    "Yeah, some," I said, not really liking what I was saying but not sure how else to put it.


    "I''m not surprised. I used you at Christmas, and now here I am asking for your help."


    "I mean...that''s whatever. I''m an Exhuman, and I''m in the military. I''m kind of used to being jerked around by people who think I''m nothing. The real problem is, I have no idea who you are. Everything I''ve ever seen of you is just a purpose, you know? You''re nice because you need to be, but I''ve got no idea if you''re a nice guy. You''re charming because that distracts from what you''re after, but I have no clue if I actually like you. There''s only so much fake someone can be before you can''t think of them as a person anymore."


    I crossed my legs on the bed. AEGIS was still just sitting here eavesdropping, which was annoying. "I think Karu''s the same...you talk about missing her and share this sweet story of the times you spent together when she got you off-track, going off the curriculum, going overtime on lessons. Even in your own mind, it''s all the personal stuff that went wrong and showed your real nature that stands out. But when''s the last time you were ever real with her?"


    Silence again for a minute. This time I didn''t wait.


    "Sir, I''ve got no problem talking to your daughter if I think it''s in her best interests, but it sounds to me like you''ve got a lot of talking you still need to do. All that sappy stuff about losing your little girl...have you ever told her any of that?"


    "No," he said. "And I can''t. She''s already unmanageable, even without that leverage over me."


    "Yeah well, there''s your problem. She''s not yours to manage, and she''s not your enemy. Who the fuck holds leverage over their own family members?"


    "Athan...I apologize for taking your time," he said. "Thank you for your insight. I''ll...I''ll give it some thought."


    "And like I said, I can talk to Karu about this. But nobody can fix your relationship but you."


    "Thank you. If you''re ever in town again, do look me up."


    "So you can whore me out again?"


    "So I can thank you for listening to me as I am apparently incapable of listening to others," he said, and then hung up.


    I dropped my mobile and fell onto the bed. Fuck. I didn''t even know if half the stuff I''d said was right or not. By the end I was just pissed that he''d call me up asking for help when he couldn''t do the same thing with his own daughter, and then thinly disguised my list of reasons he sucked into advice.


    "For what it''s worth, I thought it was good advice," AEGIS said, leaning forward and watching me intently with her stupid face.


    "I just told him how I think things should be, without really any thinking about how they are, or how to get there. It''s not a good plan, or actionable items."


    AEGIS smiled. "That''s you in a nutshell, Athan. Always aiming for how you think things should be, stubbornly bashing your head through details and planning and obstacles until you''re there. It makes you really obnoxious sometimes."


    "Gee thanks."


    "But it also makes you incredibly decisive and strong. It''s one of the things I love best about you, and what drew Saga and Karu to you, too." She gave me a nervous -_-'' look. "But not at much as me. Hey, how''s your refractory period? Round two, go?"


    "Round two, no," I said, standing to leave. I checked my holo, still pretty early, I hoped I didn''t wake anyone else up with all the screaming and...uh...banging...in here. Karu would be working right now, for a few more hours before her shift ended. "I''m going to head out."


    "What about breakfast?" AEGIS said as she followed me down the hall, fretting. "I can make you something. Anything you want really."


    "Nah, I''ll just get something at the diner."


    "...Karu''s diner?"


    "Yeah."


    She didn''t say anything else and kept her face passive as I waved goodbye and walked out. The diner was only a couple miles from home, Karu had been very considerate in her location selection, though I guess that wasn''t a surprise considering she said the only reason she''d stayed here was to be close to me. I found myself excited at the prospect of a jog and a meal which wouldn''t be terrible. It might not help with my real issues, but I''d missed running, no matter how many times I''d started it up again, life just kept getting in the way with injuries and shit, but I was overdue to pick it up again.


    It was only a couple of miles and it was nice enough out, but hoooo boy, did it not feel that way. My legs were ready to surrender when the rounded metal edges of the diner came into sight, and I spent a couple minutes just walking around outside so I wouldn''t be a sweaty gross mess when I got in there. I''d pushed myself, but it should not have been that hard.


    Yeah. I definitely needed to start running again. This was pathetic. Last time I was remotely on a routine of it was way back in DC, which felt like forever ago, even if it was just a couple months.


    I walked inside to the sound of a bell announcing my presence and murmured conversation, and the hostess, a short redhead turned to me and then narrowed her eyes, the practiced smile falling off her face the moment she laid sight on me.


    I mean, I didn''t look that gross, did I?


    "What do you want," she asked. "Karen''s not here."


    As she spoke, I saw Karu walk past behind her in her orange and white uniform carrying a broad platter, and began pulling plates off of it to serve a family.


    "She''s right there," I said pointing.


    "I said she''s not here. You about ready to go, or do I have to call the police again?"


    Ah, so that''s why she looked familiar.


    Fortunately, Karu finished up with her table and glanced up and saw me, approaching with some surprise and a smile.


    "I apologize, Ashton, but I will not be finished with my shift for another few hours," she said. "Though I am...flattered...by your presence."


    "I''m just here for a bite and to say hi," I explained.


    "Oh! Well in that case, we have many such bites. Please enjoy." She turned to the redhead. "Kindly seat him in my section, if you would, Zil."


    Zil waited until Karu was out of earshot before turning back to scowl at me. "Kindly seat him in the dumpster, if you would," she said, walking away. After a few paces she turned to me. "Well come on, cretin. You think I''m walking just so I can show off my backside?"


    "Thanks, Zil," I said, as I got put in the furthest end booth, an abortion of space which only seated two, both on the same side, and both facing a blank wall over half a table.


    "Thanks, Zil," she muttered and threw a menu across the table so I had to reach for it. "If you need anything, just die and someone will be right with you," she said and left.


    Lovely girl. Not that I didn''t do anything to deserve it. But still, just lovely.


    The next girl to service me was much more pleasant however, greeting me with a warm smile and reciting the day''s specials as though she had practiced solely for me, her shaved head bobbing happily as she ticked down the list on her fingers.


    "I don''t think I''ve ever seen you this bubbly," I told Karu when she finished, and she laughed.


    "Well...there exists a gentleman I am fond of, and today he unexpectedly surprised me at work. You cannot expect me to remain unmoved in such a situation, no matter how cold you may think my heart," she grinned.


    "Don''t take it too seriously. I''m just trying to get some real food in my system before my kidneys shut down from AEGIS poisoning."


    She laughed again, my downplaying comment doing nothing to stymie her enthusiasm. She visited my table at least twice as often as any other, often staying long enough for a brief conversation before having to whisk off and attend to another customer, but never seeming to be able to stay away for long.


    It was a little funny, and a lot cute, and I wished I were facing the restaurant instead of the wall so I could watch her go. While I''d initially thought the frilly dress was offensive, I did have to admit it looked good on her. The ruffly pseudo-apron on the front strained to bridge the large gap between her breasts and her ribcage, which just made them stand out all the more. Of course she''d look good in pretty much anything, she was a bombshell.


    It was a little over an hour, and a very pleasant little over an hour, before Zil approached me and let me know that I had to leave, I was taking up a table and was frankly annoying the other patrons.


    There...were no other patrons seated next to me, and plenty of empty tables, but I wasn''t going to argue. I left Karu a generous tip and asked if we could meet up after her shift.


    Zil glared disapprovingly at both of us as we finalized plans, and then shooed me out the door with a broom. The Exhuman-slaying weapon of choice.


    Which gave me a couple of hours to kill and no idea what to do with them. I opened my mobile and saw I had four missed messages from AEGIS, which regressed from an optimistic


    > hi I love you!


    down to


    > why are you ignoring me


    Which basically ruled out any chance of me going home. I wasn''t sure I''d be able to leave again. Certainly not without her attempting to fulfill more girlfriendly duties on me.


    Still, as excited as I might be to get out of the house and hang with Karu, the thought of talking about her father didn''t seem like a great time to me. But at the same time...if he could turn it around and stop being such a dick¡­


    ...well, I didn''t even have a choice when it came to holding onto my parents. It seemed like a shame that Karu would be willing to just give up on hers.


    Sighing heavily, I sent AEGIS a message informing her I was in fact, not dead, and still loved her. Then, imitating Micaiah, I opened up a blank page and started writing some notes about the Talon case. I didn''t get far before I was searching the ''net for ''dragon'' and finding nothing. Well, lots of dragons, but not what I wanted.


    I walked to a nearby tree and made myself comfortable under it, channeling my inner Saga out of sight of the diner. No need to alert Zil that I had nothing better to do with my time than sit outside her business.


    "Hey Tem?" I asked.


    "H-h-hi, Chariot!" she stammered instead of stuttered, and melted out of the air next to me.


    "What do you do when you have a lot of thoughts but nothing to do?"


    She looked at me like she didn''t understand the question, and given her brain, maybe she didn''t. But then she spoke up anyway.


    "I look at your face, and it calms me down. I think, Chariot is s-s-so s-smart, if I just believe in him and do what he s-says, and try very hard not to mess things up, everything will be alright."


    I laughed a little, but Tem didn''t find it amusing at all. She stared at me like I was offending her, and I realized maybe I was.


    "Sorry. I didn''t mean to laugh at you."


    "N-no it''s fine! I''m h...happy I could amuse you."


    "No, it''s just...not fair, y''know? Whose face do I have to look into? Who can I believe in to tell me I''m doing the right thing?"


    She held up her hands and they shimmered and then a spot on them shined sky blue, which grew until it filled her palms. I looked into it and realized, I could see myself. Tem made for a fantastic mirror.


    "Him. I believe...in him," Tem said.


    I laughed again, more politely this time, and remembered AEGIS'' words about what it was about me that drew her and Saga and Karu to me.


    "Just aim for how you think things should be, huh?"


    Tem nodded and then she and the mirror disappeared, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

 248. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Karu''s apartment had about as much personality as my room at the girls'' place. Empty white walls, bare floors, a pair of laundry baskets full of clean and dirty clothes...which when Karu saw me staring, she rearranged so that there was no longer underwear sitting on top.


    And a bed. Upon which we now both sat.


    "Make yourself...at home," she said, with a sweeping gesture at all the nothing.


    In the corner was a pair of cardboard boxes, open but not unpacked, and resting on top of it was a familiar red-lensed visor. I guessed that tiny column of the apartment contained everything which was once Karu the Hunter. It would explain why the rest of this place felt so empty and temporary.


    "Do you mind if I change?" she asked, rising.


    "Don''t throw anything at me, my shield would blow it up," I warned.


    She paused and looked at me. "What an oddly specific warning. Has this transpired recently?"


    "N-no," I said, suddenly remembering where I''d recalled that from.


    She gave me another lingering glance and then moved on, pulling some clothes from her hampers and walking out of sight into the tiny studio apartment''s bathroom, the only door in the whole place now between us.


    "How are things?" she called through the door.


    "Same as usual. AEGIS driving me nuts."


    "Figuratively, I hope," she laughed. I didn''t respond. "Athan?"


    "Yeah. Well."


    "Oh. Well. Good for you."


    "Not really. You saw her when you swung by. She''s like a cockroach with floating bits."


    The door opened and Karu emerged in a pair of shorts and finishing pulling a tank down to conceal the lines of her abs. She sat next to me and looked pensive.


    "Hmm. Well my inclination is to give you unsolicited advice of generic platitudes which would serve only to harm my own self-interests, acting only out of obligation to seem a supportive friend both to you and to the AI, by telling you to ''hang in there'' as it were. A product of my political upbringing, no doubt."


    "Yeah, actually your dad--"


    She held up a hand indicating she wasn''t finished. "However, I have turned over a new leaf. I am honest with myself, and with others, and so I say unto you, good. If AEGIS is a bitch, that is only a positive for my interests. I presume you are here, now, because you wished to be anywhere but with her?"


    "Well...I wouldn''t put it that way."


    "Is there any other way to put it?"


    "I''m...uh¡­" Karu watched and waited patiently with bemusement on her smile. "...just...trying to avoid diabetes because she''s too sweet?"


    She rolled her eyes. "Then get a pancreatic booster. Your evasiveness confirms what I already know."


    "Karu," I sighed, "we''re officially a thing. I''m not going to shit-talk her behind her back."


    She shrugged. "I recommend self-honesty. I tried it recently and it is liberating. I am quickly realizing that an honest, fallible lifestyle is much preferable to a false virtuous one."


    "Maybe for you. I''m sliding the other way, it feels like. I keep finding more and more things I''m not allowed to talk about or shouldn''t know."


    She looked at me seriously for a minute, making me feel scrutinized with those two gems boring into me. "XPCA matters?"


    "Yeah."


    "Perhaps you should quit."


    "I can''t. Exhuman, remember? It''s this or New Eden. Or the grave."


    "Or the lam, as it were," she said slyly.


    I gave her a shocked look that was only half melodramatic. "Karen...whatever your middle name is...Irenside. Are you of all people proposing that an Exhuman run free?"


    "No. Just you. I may even tolerate such a thing from some of your coworkers and friends who have proven themselves honorable."


    "You''re serious?"


    "Make no mistake, I still liken your powers to a nuclear warhead. And yet, there are those who can be entrusted with the launch codes. It is not a responsibility to be treated lightly, nor an easy burden, as it were...but obviously there are many who have held such launch codes through human history, and yet we remain un-nuked."


    "Because of Skyweb."


    "Safety precautions are always a good plan. If you did choose to run, I would remain with you, and strive to be your Skyweb."


    "To protect me? Or protect others from me?"


    "Why not both?" she shrugged.


    I was honestly still kind of shocked. She really was a different person now that she''d come to terms with ''being bad'' as she called it, though how exactly volunteering to help a friend break free of the practical slavery which was their life, go on the run with him, and make sure nobody got hurt in the process was ''bad'' was sort of debatable. I wondered if she always had these kinds of thoughts and buried them away, or if this was entirely a new thing.


    "Well, I appreciate the offer, but I can''t do that. I''ve personally held the fate of the world adjacent to my hands enough times that I''m getting pretty nervous about the people who are holding it dropping it. And I owe Cosette so much...and promised her I''d stay. She''s struggling so much right now, too."


    "Is she?" Karu asked with concern. "About Ex-Director Blackett?"


    "I dunno about that. She just took my word basically that he needed to die and doesn''t seem to have any regrets. But his death made a huge mess, and she''s been appointed janitor. And I''ve been appointed chief broom."


    "Regrettable. As a fellow Peregrine, I wish her the best of course. I am glad you are serious in your commitment to support her...though I have no issue in telling you that I find it a tragedy that now both of your lives must capsize." She shook her head thoughtfully. "Let us speak of something else."


    "We had an XPCA intel guy come out yesterday."


    "More inquiry about the Talon case, I presume."


    "Yeah. We think Intel sent him to work under Cosette so he can tell them if I have any more contact with the Defiant."


    "Which you did, and one of them made an attempt on you," she said, suddenly a lot angrier sounding.


    "She didn''t even use her powers."


    Karu stood from the bed which creaked as she moved and fixed me with a death stare from her feet. "I have never once used my powers against you, Ashton. Does that disqualify me from being a serious combatant?"


    "No, of course not."


    "Then do not pretend it is so with this Minerva girl. She made an attempt on your life, and I take that very seriously."


    "Okay, she did, sorry."


    "She is exactly the type of Exhuman that I despise. Out of control. Rash. Violent. Were I still a hunter, I would end her now. I have half a mind to pick up hunting again for five minutes just to put her down like the animal she is. The very thought of her assaulting you makes my blood boil," Karu began pacing, her bare feet slapping on the wood floor.


    I thought about telling her that an assassin was out there, looking for Mini and the others, and that it was a possibility that two wrongs were going to right themselves, but I''d promised Micaiah that I wouldn''t talk about the details of the Defiant, in the interest of keeping them hidden. It''s not that I didn''t trust Karu but¡­


    Well, she''d killed for less. She wasn''t stupid enough to fly off guns-blazing and trigger the apocalypse, I was sure, but all the same. I wasn''t sure if the new ''honest'' Karu applied to words, or deeds as well.


    Also, the walls were thin. Anyone could be listening. Let''s go with that.


    Karu was now shadowboxing while making angry aggressive noises about how much Mini needed to die, which confirmed my decision not to tell her where the Exhuman could be found.


    Abruptly, she stopped and turned to me, looking like she''d just remembered something. "Ashton, I will be out of town for the next few days. You have my apologies."


    "What? Why?" I asked, and she began to answer as her mobile rang.


    She gave it a glance, muted it, and put it away. "My father," she said.


    "Oh. Yeah, he talked to me too. Wanted me to try to convince you to quit waitressing."


    "He did what?"


    "Uh...called me¡­"


    "The man is insufferable," she bristled, and gave him a few imaginary jabs as well. "And here I thought we might meet and talk like family, but the moment he encounters an answer he dislikes, out come the political connections and manipulations again."If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Is that where you were going? To meet with him?"


    She stopped attacking the air and studied me for a minute. She was thinking something she didn''t want to say, I was certain of it, and it had to do with her father. At long last she sighed. "Yes. Though honestly, I am...finding it difficult to see why I should...still relate to the man."


    "He''s your dad, Karu."


    "Only biologically."


    "And he raised you?"


    "Many years ago."


    "And he knows you''re going through a hard time and wants to talk to you. Is that not what a good father would do?"


    She glared at me. "Are you implying Senator Idris Irenside is a good father, Ashton? And consider your words well before speaking them."


    "No, I think he''s pretty shit but...but he''s your dad."


    "Repeating that line does not give it any additional bearing. How would you react if your father spent his life molding you into a vessel you would rather not be? If every independent action you made was scrutinized and questioned for the merit it may contain in furthering his ambition alone? If you were meant to discard your friends because they would be a liability, your desires because they were incompatible with his, your principles because he had already defined them in your stead?"


    She loomed over me and stared down with arms crossed and eyes narrowed.


    "I...I don''t know, Karu. I might actually be happy. My dad...sort of did a lot of those things, and I loved him. Then he just wanted me dead and gone."


    She let out a long slow breath and then sat next to me. Her hand wandered over and took hold of mine.


    "I apologize. That was insensitive."


    "Just part of being an Exhuman."


    "You do not always need to be so callous to yourself. Especially here, in the company of friends. You may permit yourself to feel."


    It was my turn to stand up, but mostly to escape her. "Look...I miss my parents. I know Lia does too. But from what I''ve heard, who they are now...it isn''t who they were. I can''t go back to being human again, and I can''t go back to having a family again. It sucks, and I hate it, but if I just dwell on it...well...you saw it yourself. Back in North Carolina, when I thought Saga had died and Lia and AEGIS put me in convalescence. I''m not someone who deals with their problems by lying around."


    She nodded. "Nor am I. That is why I could not become a politician."


    "Then why are you a waitress, Karu? I''m sorry, I know I''m supposed to respect your decisions but why? You''re just hiding from your problems, aren''t you?"


    She gave me a bitter smile. "Am I? I prefer to think...I''ve embraced them. Some guilt and suffering is honestly nothing compared to the straitjacket of impossible expectations I was bound in before. What honestly concerns me most nowadays are your problems. And those, I will help with wherever I can, for both of our sanities."


    Her smile turned malevolent. "Such as right now. I am presently helping you escape the suffocation of your ''girlfriend''."


    I sat back down and she continued more normally.


    "But again, I must repeat my apology. I understand entirely why you would wish for a healthy relationship between my parents and myself, considering you were never afforded the opportunity. Perhaps I was too rash in my presumptions. I will, at the very least, be receptive to his words."


    "Good. If he''s a jerk, you should treat him like one. But he''s still your dad."


    "You truly are an insufferable do-gooder."


    "Me?" I asked her, having to laugh from shock. "You fart in bible verses."


    She laughed and informed me that while I was utterly mistaken, she could burp the alphabet. And then, she proved it.


    We didn''t touch on many other heavy topics that day, and despite my best efforts, I spent a lot of time bitching about AEGIS, which Karu seemed to drink in like it was a drug. I wasn''t trying to badmouth my girlfriend, but when she''d done so many just, impossibly awful things in such a short stretch, and I had constant exposure to her, it felt a lot like the AEGIS Antics were my life now.


    And we were there to talk about our lives. So it just kinda happened.


    "And her face thing," I ranted. "What is up with that? It''s not even a holo. Have you ever seen a display which is not a holo? What is that even? Some kind of space-age technology she made up explicitly to show emoticons? And you can see them all big and blocky, with jagged edges."


    "Pixels," Karu laughed. "My you are young."


    "What''s a pixels? Is that her screen thing?"


    "I only know of them from my time in the service, where one such expression goes, ''if it is not broke, do not fix it''. And so there was some truly archaic tech still in use in some locations. Screens as you described, but not from a holo-emitter. Just...embedded in a surface like a picture. And apparently pixels, they called them."


    "Crazy," I said, shaking my head. "It''s old, not new? They sound cool. Why would you ever get rid of them?"


    "Apparently they did not. One such fossil is even still traipsing around your living quarters."


    "I just think it''s amazing that she took the most cutting-edge future tech the XPCA has...and jammed a pixels into it. I miss the good old days."


    "What, when she had melons which put melons to shame?"


    "They were cuter than her pixels."


    "You unabashed man-whore!" she laughed as she tackled me. "Here I am carrying these nuisances about all day, and not once have you ever called them cute! I demand recompense!"


    "Karu, you''re gonna suffocate me with your ridiculous giant boobs."


    "Accept your fate gladly, Exhuman! Death is a hunter''s mercy!"


    As we laughed and rolled and fought, I was reminded of the earliest days when we''d met. When all Karu had for me were overblown curses, delivered in wreaths of verbal hellfire, proclaiming swift justice.


    Justice for us had been anything but swift. As she''d grown to know me, she''d been challenged by the nuances which her philosophy didn''t account for. One by one, I''d taken her beliefs and dismantled them in front of her eyes, leaving her with nothing but the shell that they came in.


    And yet somehow, here she was again. Spouting an entirely different kind of hellfire, seemingly as confident and sure as the day I''d met her. It seemed strange that she''d grown constantly, always getting further and further from where she started, and yet somehow, she felt closer to who she''d been than who she was a week ago. As much as I wished back then she''d just buzz off and leave me alone forever, it was good to have her back.


    Also, Jesus, she was scrappy. I wasn''t any slouch, but she manhandled me on the bed like I was a plaything to her, and it only took a couple minutes before I found myself face-down with my arm pinned on my back, a flush and sweating girl triumphant astride me.


    "Submit!" she bellowed. "Call them cute!"


    "What now?" I muttered through a wrinkled sheet which smelled strongly of Karu.


    "My breasts. They will not stand for this disrespect. You will complement them, or you will die."


    We laughed, but when the laughter faded, she was still pinning me. The seconds dragged on, and the more of them that passed, the more I realized where I was and what we were doing and who I was doing it with.


    "Karu...I have a girlfriend," I apologized.


    "I am aware."


    "Let me up."


    "Never, Exhuman scum. You will--"


    "Seriously Karu, let me up."


    She hesitated for a moment and then I felt the weight leave me and rolled over to look her in the face again.


    "I shouldn''t be doing this."


    "We were merely messing around, as it were."


    "Somebody''s going to get hurt."


    "It is mere fraternizing! Rough physical play is an essential to bonding between comrades-in-arms. There is nothing untoward."


    "Maybe so, but...we''re not just comrades Karu. We''ve got a lot of history and a lot of twisted up feelings still, right? I just don''t want to make a mistake and hurt anybody."


    "Ashton, if my intentions were carnal, I would act on them."


    "Yeah I know. You''re never exactly been reserved in the past. But a lot of times in the past, you''ve just given me a push and I''ve fallen. I don''t even want to, and then we''re doing it."


    "I am confused. If you had issue in the past, why did you not simply refuse me?"


    "I don''t know. But that''s why I''m refusing you now, while I still can. Do you understand?"


    She ran a hand over her bristled head. "I understand, but maintain that this is unnecessary. I stated that there was no intention of sexual conduct...do you think me untrustworthy?"


    "No."


    She smiled, and then the smile faded. "Perhaps you should. Perhaps I am not as honest as I declare. Perhaps I hoped to steal you away from her, and to do other terrible things in secret without your knowledge, for your benefit and for mine. Perhaps it is that hope that my machinations and manipulations will someday bear fruit which is what now buoys up my spirits, so much as anything else I have professed to you. What would you say if I told you that?"


    I looked at her, dead-serious and she met my gaze. Her skin shone softly with sweat, but not as brilliantly as her green eyes, which looked like they could see right into my soul.


    "I don''t...I don''t know. That''s really...heavy. And out of nowhere. Is...is it true?"


    "Do you think it is?"


    "I dunno. Maybe? If I''m being totally honest, probably? I mean...you''re a girl who likes me. You invited me to your house, you invited me to run away with you, you''ve goaded me into shit-talking my girlfriend and then gotten physical with me with sexual undertones. I don''t know how much you planned it, but...it does feel like you''re trying. And that''s why I had to tell you, no."


    To my surprise, she smiled. "You think this, and yet here you are anyway, not distancing yourself from me. Why is that, I wonder?"


    "Because...we''re friends, aren''t we? Neither of us exactly have many of those. And both of us need one right now."


    She smiled and drew me in, and I stiffened until I realized it was just a hug.


    "That is the right answer, Ashton. As I told you before, it is your willingness to accept me, even in my darkness and sin which has eased my transition and illuminated my world these past few days. I am thankful that you would not stop now."


    "You can stop trying to seduce me though," I said, my chin resting on her shoulder.


    She pulled us apart but kept her hands on my shoulders, our faces close enough that I could see each of her blonde eyelashes standing out against her tanned skin.


    "I can. But I do not think I will. And for that, I apologize and hope you accept me anyway."


    I sighed and rolled over away from her, looking at the ceiling.


    "I hope you''re ready to get rejected a lot. I''m not budging," I told her.


    "It is fine. Half of the fun is in the trying." She laid down next to me and again our eyes met. "Do not dare accept," she warned sternly.


    "What?"


    "Do not dare accept my advances."


    "Then why are you making advances on me?" I half-yelled back.


    "Because they are my true feelings, and I am endeavoring to be true to myself. This is not complicated."


    "This is the most complicated woman-logic thing I''ve ever heard of! You want to make passes at me but you''ll be angry if I accept? What the heck is that?"


    "That is offensive to all women. Do not blame my gender for my insanity."


    "Well at least you''re calling it what it is."


    She grinned impishly. "One of the joys of being newly more self-aware. But whatever your thoughts on me, you have already stated you will not leave me, so you will endure this. And now, I tell you with utter seriousness, do not accept."


    "Why?"


    "Because you are a good man, and a good man should not be party to infidelity."


    "You''re insane."


    "And also, despite her...appearance...and behavior...and current aggravating position as temporary holder of your heart¡­"


    "It''s not temporary."


    "...I do...think AEGIS...has the potential to be whom she once was. And what she once was...that was a good being, and a good friend. Whom I miss."


    She fell silent and both of us laid there, staring at the ceiling like Brick and Lia and I used to do to the night sky so many lifetimes ago. The future seemed vast and unknowable then, and no matter how many steps towards it I got, it seemed to ever be changing into even more unknowable forms.


    Like this one. The shaved blonde next to me, whom I had just decided, I would never understand.


    "Karu?" I asked.


    "Yes, Ashton?"


    "We''ve come a really long way together. So many things have changed. Us, and everything around us."


    She nodded.


    "But you''re still a crazy bitch," I told her, and felt the bed shake with her laughter.

 249. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Three days after I had lunch with Karu, In the middle of the night, AEGIS broke into my room with a crash, screaming at me, the pixels on her face exaggerated with worry.


    "The XPCA is coming!" she yelled, dragging me out of bed.


    Troops were on their way to surround the building and force my surrender. Her cameras had picked up recon teams evacuating the neighbors, and spent only a few frantic minutes hacking into their ops servers to confirm.


    I was hardly awake but the adrenaline pounding through me as she sputtered out explanations made me feel unnaturally tense. Even as my mind jolted into focus, my body wanted to throw up.


    The screaming had brought everyone else in the house to my room. Lia, bleary-eyed and miserable looking, said nothing, but merely locked herself around my side and held me. Chiho spent a minute standing there uselessly, but soon began picking up every article in my room and shoving it into a bag.


    "Leave the uniform and sidearm and stuff. Athan, take your XPCA ID out of your wallet. They''ve all got tracking chips in them," AEGIS said.


    "Can I run?" I asked them. "I can''t start over again."


    "We''re coming with you, idiot," AEGIS informed me.


    "No. They only want me, right? I''m not dragging you into this."


    Lia glared at me but said nothing. Her grip on my side tightened.


    "Look, I love you too Lia, and that''s why I''m not dragging you into this. Fighting is suicide. If you guys are going to put yourselves on the line, I''d rather just turn myself in."


    "Oh. Mygod," AEGIS said. "It''s like you''ve learned nothing in the last three months."


    "This isn''t a battlefield, we don''t have a legion of robots to hide behind, and as far as combatants go, it''s just me and maybe AEGIS. Does that thing have any combat potential?"


    "Y-yes," AEGIS lied.


    "Right. So not a fucking chance we can beat them, and all it''d do is get all of you killed. So I''m running. Alone. It''s all I can do for everyone. You guys have to stay safe."


    It was amazing how fast my opinion could one-eighty when the alternative was other people dying...though I guess that wasn''t amazing at all. Rather, kind of extremely normal. Still, I''d gone from doubtful to utterly convinced that running was the best plan.


    But how? If they were already evacuating people, they had recon in the area, which meant any move I made, they''d definitely catch. The only way past them would be...Tem, maybe?


    I guess she was a combatant too, I''d forgotten. But one I never wanted to unleash.


    She sat there silent and still and invisible as she had this whole time, waiting with absolute faith in me. I wanted her to stay safe with the others...If I needed her, she''d do anything for me, which was all the more reason not to take advantage of her. But on the other hand, I''d heard from the others that if I left her behind, she refused to eat and had even been hospitalized for it.


    I pushed the morality of it away and just focused on the next few minutes. If I didn''t survive those, Tem would go nuclear, and that would either be it for her, or for everyone else.


    "Lia how good are your optics?" I asked her.


    She shrugged.


    "Can you get them?"


    She shuffled off and came back a few moments later with her mask. I put it on and flipped through the spectra, looking at Tem.


    As I feared, she was invisible to light only. Motion, nightvision, and all sorts of enhanced and predictive scans, she slipped by without problem. But she shone bright as day under thermal. I couldn''t use her to sneak us past the recon.


    I racked my brain. Jack or Rito could extract me, but Jack was based elsewhere and was fast, but not that fast. Rito was¡­


    I had no idea where Rito was, but giving the others I knew a quick think-over, I couldn''t come up with any better options. Maybe Trish''s girl...could never remember her name...she could throw me through hyperspace or whatever, which was a lot like teleportation. I even considered that Soran''s cryosis could mask Tem and me in thermal, but I had no intention of ever letting him freeze me again.


    I dialed Rito''s number and prayed she picked up.


    "Hi, you''ve reached ''Rito''s Handjobs by Mail. We have a special on a quickie, with same-day delivery! How can I--"


    "Saga, shut up for a second."


    "Nice to hear you too. Haven''t--"


    "Seriously. The XPCA is coming for me. I need Rito, and I need her now."


    I heard her let out a short breath and then nothing. Everyone was staring at me, I realized, waiting.


    And then someone tapped on my shoulder and I turned around, surprised to see Rito there, in fluffy pink pajamas.


    "Enjoy your handjob," Saga said over the line. "Seriously Athan, if you want me to mess those fuckers up¡­"


    "No...I appreciate the offer. But I don''t want anyone in trouble, and a Code-X event would bring the whole XPCA in."


    "I thought you''d say so," she sighed. "God fucking dammit," she swore in her hushed, diminutive voice. "I should have known. All I wanted to do was do something nice for you. We just got here and...fucking damn it all."


    "Gotta run Saga."


    "Yeah. Sorry. I''ll throw myself a pity party. You stay safe, or I''m gonna make every single person in black in the country insert their head into their own ass until they suffocate. Serious threat."


    "Thanks," I said and hung up, not sure why I was thanking her for that. I grabbed my bag and went to Rito who looked very asleep on her feet.


    "Whaaatzup?" she mumbled, rubbing her eyes.


    "Take me anywhere but here," I told her. "Please."


    "Pay?" she asked, and held out her other hand.


    Lia stomped forward and spitefully jammed a chit into her hand with enough force to make Rito stumble for a second. When she checked the chit, she gaped and stared at all of us with alarm.


    "I''ll...take...a tenth of this," she said.


    Lia jammed her finger into Rito''s chest and growled like a feral beast. "Keep him safe."


    "Bring Tem too, please," I said. "Tem, come out if you would."


    "Oh, Tem but not me?" AEGIS bitched. "Seriously Athan?"


    "I''m sorry AEGIS. I don''t want to either, but I can''t leave her."


    "But you can leave me?"


    At that moment, as AEGIS raised her voice and her arms, we heard an explosion in the vicinity of the front door, and everyone turned to look.


    It was hard to make out because of how dark it was, which was weird because everywhere else in the room had been so bright. I glanced around and realized, no, everything was dark, everywhere. In fact¡­


    ...I wasn''t even in the bedroom anymore. Rito and Tem were standing behind me, and Tem gave me an almost frantic grin when she realized she hadn''t been left behind.


    "Weird the lights are totes broken," Rito said, flipping a switch a few times.


    "Probably my lightning surge last time we were here," I said, realizing we were in Rito''s favorite basement. "Tem, lights please?"


    "Y-yes!" she squealed, and the whole basement around us suffused with calm light.


    Rito took advantage of the new illumination to check and re-check and re-re-check the chit in her hand, looking at it in disbelief.


    "It''s half a million credits," she volunteered unnecessarily.


    "Good for you," I said, looking around for an exit. I knew Lia well enough that she didn''t like putting more than half a million c''s on a single chit. If she lost it, she could always have it claimed and transferred, that wasn''t a problem. But more that it was easier to keep under the radar if it was in smaller accounts, apparently. So she''d just handed Rito the fattest chit she had. For me.


    "I was like, asleep five minutes ago," she said. "And then like, boom, money. I didn''t plan on this." Why was she still talking?


    There seemed to be a hatch above us but someone had nailed a board over it from down here it seemed. Maybe Rito taking precautions to make sure nobody else found her secret space. Good to know she had some measure of intelligence in some capacity? But the pink pajamas really wasn''t doing her any favors.


    Of course then she''d gone and blown it by leaving the Defiant in here. Not much of a secret hideout if a bunch of people who had already once attacked you knew where it is, and possibly live around there now.


    In my frustration, I jammed swords through the bar of wood and watched with grim satisfaction as it blackened and scorched away. It burned so hot and fast that everything outside of my blade barely had time to singe. I put my swords away and shoved the hatch open, emerging into some kind of supply closet, as Tem filled the area with light.


    Paint and easels and paper and brushes...and more, all neatly stacked and lined up on shelves in the spacious closet. Smelled like paint, strong enough to think staying in here might give me a headache. I''d been lucky not to ignite any errant fumes, I realized.


    "Mrs. Murdo keeps it like, totes clean in here," Rito explained as I helped her and Tem out. "So don''t like, touch anything or she''ll really notice."


    "Yeah, I''ve got a hard time not grabbing cans and brushes whenever I see ''em," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Rito, why''d you bring us here?"


    "Uh, why not? This is my safe place."If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Not anymore, you left the Defiant here, remember?"


    "Well yeah, but they weren''t just gonna stay in the basement that whole time."


    I let out a patient breath. "I meant, they know about it now. It''s not a secret anymore."


    "Oh," she said, frowning as she thought for a second. "Blah. I''m such a dummy. Sorry."


    "Well you saved me, so that''s what''s important but...jeez. Don''t you think things through before you do them?"


    "Of course! I mean. Like, I wish I did. Sorry. I guess not."


    "...did you seriously just blurt out the wrong answer to me asking if you think things through?"


    She gave me a small smile. "Sorry, everyone says I''m a real dummy. I don''t mean to. I just like, do things without thinking sometimes."


    "Yeah, I see that." I tried the door and found it locked. The door was metal too.


    "Please don''t," Rito said.


    "Don''t what?"


    "Don''t burn down all the doors. This was my school, y''know?"


    "I wasn''t going to. With all the chemicals and paper and shit in this closet, I''d probably set us all on fire if I tried melting a metal door anyway."


    "Oh. Sorry, was that dumb again?"


    "Eh," I shrugged. "Let''s go back down, the Defiant must have found a way out somehow."


    As we followed the footprints under the school and it became apparent that we weren''t all going to die in the immediate now, my mind began to wander again, trying to put tonight''s events in the greater picture.


    Foremost, why the fuck was the XPCA coming after me? I hadn''t done anything. I hadn''t even thought about doing anything. I was trying to be a good lapdog and help the XPCA survive the mess I''d thrown them into, trying to figure out where things stood with the Defiant, cooperating with XPCA Intelligence, and even going so far as to bite back my snark during my constant, pointless interrogations.


    So why?


    The footprints led to a hole in the ceiling which had been boarded up, roughly hacked with an axe. I could tell it was an axe used because there was another one just sitting here still, a crazy thing with a pole for a handle and a blade a couple feet long. It was so long and cumbersome that the head was stuck in the ceiling and the base in the floor next to a roughly-dug pit. It seemed an eminently impractical tool for tackling the ceiling, and I had to wonder how many hours someone spent with that piece of crap.


    "Not this way either," I sighed. And then I blinked and turned around and realized Rito was still there with me, following me around in her pink pajamas.


    "You''re Rito," I said.


    "Uh, yeah."


    "Why don''t you just move us outside?"


    "Oh, right. Sorry. I''ve been thinking about the money and stuff. My bad."


    I couldn''t even blame her for this one, since I was equally distracted. I pulled my attention away from her and shifted it onto the tips of the trees around us, black needles reaching into the sky like they wanted to touch the moon.


    Man it was disorienting how she did that. It felt insidious, like it was deliberately confusing my brain for a second in order to make us jump. Why did Exhuman powers have to be so obtuse?


    "So...about the money," she started again. "Lia said to keep you safe. Does that mean like, I''m supposed to like, bodyguard you? I''m not a bodyguard."


    "I don''t know. You took her money. I just wanted out of there."


    "Is it okay though? Like, this is more money than the Defiant ever gave me. With this I might...might even have enough. I should earn it, right?"


    "Look, Rito," I said, turning towards her and watching her flinch as she almost walked into me, stopping only inches apart.


    "D-don''t get any ideas!" she said.


    "What?"


    "Just...because I owe you now. And the moonlight."


    I squinted at her wondering if I could see where she was dropped on her head as a baby.


    "As I was saying," I continued. "You do whatever you want for the money. I don''t really care. But I do need you to stop talking about it for a while, because I''m trying to figure out more important things, like why the XPCA is after me, and what I can do from here."


    My mobile pinged, and I glanced at it to see a message from AEGIS.


    > xpca sweeping the whole block


    > told them you ran off


    > seems like we¡¯re fine so far no arrests only wanted you


    > that intel officer is here


    > have fun in canada send a postcard


    > love you lots stay safe be good


    I''m glad I had my mobile at least. It meant even if I had to be away from everyone while we got this sorted, it wouldn''t be like before. Lia had gotten me a particular model and done some shit to it to make it encrypted and untraceable, and if there were any chance it could be used to find me, I''m sure the girls would have told me to leave it with the rest of my XPCA-issued gear.


    The line about Canada was just too obvious for the XPCA to fall for, which meant it was intended for me. My first thought was she was hinting I should go to Canada...which made no sense, they''d found me there once already. But then I started thinking about what a transparent lie that was and realized...it was for me, but the XPCA would still see it. The entire message was written with the intent of the XPCA seeing it, but not giving them anything. So what it meant was a warning? The messages still went through the ''net, and they might not know where I send them from, but could still read them.


    But what was most interesting to me was the mention of Micaiah, my new friend from Intel. There was absolutely no reason for him to be on an Exhuman kill squad, which meant that force hadn''t been there with the purpose of wiping me out...but rather, what? More questioning? In that case, why bring a force, and why the midnight raid?


    It didn''t make any sense. I was missing something big, I knew it, and until I could get that, I was fumbling blind here.


    I shivered from the cold humid air, feeling my clothes already damp and clinging to me in a way which made the night cut right through them. I could ponder this after we were inside somewhere.


    I was about to look up nearby places on my phone but paused with my finger over the screen. If they could track my messages, could they track my searches? If I searched for hotels near me, would they get a map right to me?


    AEGIS had seen fit to warn me first thing, so I wasn''t taking any chances. I wasn''t nearly enough of a tech geek to know the ins and outs of what an encrypted mobile meant.


    "Let me borrow your mobile," I asked Rito, and she held it out for me after a puzzled second.


    It was...something. An older model, to put it nicely. I hoped she got it for free. I''d say ''at least she personalized it a little'', but the truth was, the faded case and the dangling charm of a cat, so old its coloration had worn off, leaving only a stumpy white blob, well, they did little to improve the mobile''s appeal.


    Holding it in my hands, I was about to open it when I realized...this wasn''t even an encrypted device. It was basically a freaking homing beacon. I looked down and saw with some relief it still thought it was in...Los Angeles, apparently, the ancient piece of junk it was, but the second it sorted itself out and connected here¡­


    I sent a jolt through it and then dropped it when it exploded in a plume of smoke.


    "My...my mobile!" she wailed. "Why did you do that?"


    "They can track it."


    "But...but my mobile! You said you were just gonna like, borrow it!"


    "Sorry...you can afford a new one now though, right? Look, I''m just trying to keep us safe."


    "Chariot is right. He is keeping us s-s-safe," Tem insisted.


    "Is there anywhere we can stay nearby?" I asked Rito, who was fussing over the ruins of her phone and trying to salvage her charm from it. I felt a twinge of guilt at how thoughtlessly I''d destroyed it...but it did have to be done. Right?


    She looked at me with mild panic. "Um. Are you gonna keep blowing things up?"


    "No."


    "Okay. Well...my...my mom still lives here. We can crash there?"


    "Isn''t there like a hotel or something?"


    She stopped to think. "Sorry. This might be dumb but, couldn''t they track your spending here if you got a hotel?"


    I blinked at her. She was absolutely right. How''d she manage that?


    "Sorry, that was dumb I guess," she apologized when I said nothing.


    "No, you''re right. Let''s...let''s stay with your mom for a day at least, until we figure out what''s going on. They don''t know I''m with you...no reason for them to check places connected to you just yet."


    "O...okay." I turned to go, but she stood on the spot, shifting uneasily. Being so emotive and small, she really did remind me of a younger Lia, despite being older by far.


    "Look, if you''re going to stick with me, I appreciate it, I can use the help and certainly your powers, but you''re gonna have to learn to just spit things out. I don''t want to drag everything out of you every time there''s a problem."


    "Right. Sorry. It''s just...there''s a problem."


    "So I surmised. Care to elaborate?"


    "Yes," she said, and then said nothing.


    I waited a minute. "Do...you know what elaborate means?"


    "I do! I''m sorry. Look, it''s just like, really awkward, okay?" She was walking and seemingly starting and stopping repeatedly, but without the ever actually starting part, just kind of impotently making gestures and being way too frantic for my taste.


    "Just freaking say it, my God. And let''s walk while we talk."


    As we headed to her mom''s house, Rito told me some things that had me wondering about her sanity, so utterly unrelated to the situation at hand did they appear to be. She told me about a guy named Byrna she met in middle school, and how they dated for a while, but it turned out that he only dated Rito because Rito''s best friend Pacci had shot him down, and so they broke up, but got back together for the big dance that year because neither of them had anyone to go with.


    And then in high school, she met another guy, Soma, and she was convinced he was the one because they both really liked art, and he showed her a lot of new music she liked, and still liked to this day but couldn''t really listen to anymore without thinking of him, which pissed her off because it turned out he was a really pushy jerk that kept wanting to do things with her and then dropped her the second she put her foot down.


    And then Freshman year of art school, she was determined to start over, and was in a big hurry to lose her virginity, after what happened with Soma and--


    I stopped her before I killed one of us, halting us on a dark street, the end of her story dropping us into a blissful silence punctuated only by the barking of a small dog. Surely this tale, stretching into twenty minutes already, had a point. There had to be, or else my sanity, whatever was left of it, was going to shatter.


    "Oh yeah, I had a point, sorry," she said. "My point was, after all that, Mom said no more guys allowed over, unless we''re super serious. No bringing over flings, one-night-stands, man-whores or losers, she said."


    "I''m none of those things."


    "But you''re not like, a serious boyfriend either."


    "So...it''ll be fine?" I asked.


    "Dunno. Should be. I just...maybe¡­"


    "Remember what I said about spitting it out?"


    "Sorry, yeah. I just think...it might be easier...if you pretend to be my boyfriend."


    I looked at her blankly. "You''re kidding."


    "Why would I kid about that? That''s not even funny. I don''t want to either, but Lia told me to make sure you''re safe, and Mom made it super-clear though, after the fourth time. So I think...that''s the way it''s gotta be."


    I heaved an enormous sigh. If I wasn''t already trying to figure out ten other things right now, I''d be doing everything in my power to find some way out of this clustertruck driving right at me, but as it was, I was tired, I was cold, my arm was beginning to act up again, which meant I had some small odds of just disemboweling Tem again if I had flashbacks, and I really, really just wanted to figure some shit out and stop worrying about where I was fucking standing.


    And that dog was still barking. Where the heck were his owners?


    "Fine. If she asks, we''ll go with that."


    "Oh she will. And it looks like she''s coming now, Burpee woke her up."


    "Burpee?" I asked, looking around and seeing a new light on in the house adjacent. "The dog? That''s yours?"


    But I didn''t have time to ask any more, as the door next to us opened up and a woman who looked like a taller, older version of Rito stood framed in the golden light from within. She had the same large eyes and broad smile, a matching blonde ponytail, and even a pink robe to go with Rito''s pajamas.


    After a minute of hugging and indecipherable keening which could be heard and understood only by women and dogs, they separated and Rito''s mom turned to me.


    "And who is this?"


    "Hi, I''m Athan."


    "You''re Rito''s boyfriend?"


    "Yep!" Rito said enthusiastically. Her mother turned on her.


    "And are you two serious?"


    "Super serious," Rito nodded with the same aplomb.


    "Well then come on in and welcome home. We can catch up on everything in the morning. For now, I''ll make you two a bed and then I''m out. Had a late shift last night."


    I''d fallen in behind them but found myself frozen at her words.


    "Something wrong with your boyfriend?" Mama Rito asked.


    "Nah," Rito said. "Just...just...just being Athan! Come on, sweetie, let''s go to bed, you''re very tired," she said, and pulled me into her room with an innocent, cheery smile.


    ''A bed'', she''d said. And as I was dragged into Rito''s room and her mother busied herself making up the bed, I just stood there, staring at how small it was. We''d be practically sleeping on top of each other.


    "Sleep well kids, see you in the morning" Mama Rito said and closed the door behind her, leaving me staring still.


    "So...should I sleep on the floor or something?" I asked, looking around.


    Rito rolled her eyes and climbed into bed, scooting all the way into the wall. "Mom will know if you did. Just grow up and sleep like an adult, ''kay? I intend to do exactly what your sister told me."


    "Sure. Just two adults sleeping together," I said, pulling off my shoes and still giving the bed concerned looks. "Sleeping together for money. Nothing wrong with that."


    "I''m tired. Just sleep," she complained. "And don''t even think about getting any ideas."


    "Wouldn''t dream of it," I said, shaking my head.

 250. 2252, Present Day. Suburban Oregon. Athan.

    Well, Rito and I slept together, though neither of us got much sleep. Not in the fun way, but not in the bad way either.


    Instead, the other bad way. I was up late thinking, turning over my thoughts again and again, and feeling regret and embarrassment at how I''d departed, not even having time to say goodbye, and literally vanishing from Lia''s arms.


    And why? What would make the XPCA turn on me like that? I was as registered as an Exhuman got, it wasn''t like the neighbor would report me and they''d decide to take me out. The fact that Micaiah was there is what troubled me most. His presence almost certainly indicated they wanted me alive...so why all the guns? I''d been compliant so far.


    Unless he had something he wanted to ask me he knew would set me off? I couldn''t imagine what that''d be...but that was no surprise. If I knew it, it wouldn''t set me off.


    I tried to think of news that would make me go berserk enough to warrant having a strike team on hand. I''d just talked to Saga so I knew she was fine. News that Karu had died? But there''s no reason why the XPCA would be telling me about Karu...unless they were behind it and trying to get to me before I found out?


    I denied that line of thought. Karu was fine. She was probably in the highest standing with the XPCA of any of us, even if she recently quit.


    Maybe it was related to the case...but again, what bad news could there have been?


    It had to be about Blackett, I concluded. There wasn''t anything else.


    I opened my eyes to the dim black of the room, the shapes of furniture crouching in the shadows only barely visible. I was in bed with Rito, her blonde hair looking black in the darkness, straight and shiny, catching the few flecks of light which crept through the window.


    I didn''t know if she was asleep, until I saw her reach over and hold the chit in front of her face again, pressing the button to show the balance with a holo so small its light looked like the flickering of a candle.


    She took a deep breath and then put it down next to her again, but even without its light, I could see her eyes shining in the dark.


    That scene had played out several times before I finally found myself waking up with the room lit by the morning sun. Rito was snoring softly, on her side facing me, wisps of blonde hair from above her ear fluttering in her breath.


    I felt like overnight my mind had been grinding away on the problem without me, and felt a very confident having-no-clue. I guess I was glad my subconscious was on the same page as me, but I would have felt better with a hint instead.


    But I did have an idea, and slid out of bed as silently as possible. I pocketed my mobile and stole from the room.


    It was...a house. I hadn''t been able to pick out many details in the few minutes I''d trekked through last night, but seeing it now, it seemed charming enough. Sort of dated ugly shag carpet, off-white walls, with a few pictures of family, but mostly sorta cool pencil and charcoal sketches, rough but attractive. A still life of a bike, an expressive piece with dark narrow trees stretching across the page like bars on a jail cell, a picture of an eye I think I recognized as Rito''s, with a galaxy in the pupil.


    I crept past them, swearing internally every time my steps made the floorboards creak, until I was out of the hallway and in a living room, cramped with too much furniture, and the furniture cramped with too much junk. I sat at the edge of a couch between some junk mail and a pile of receipts and pulled up my mobile. The squat coffee table in front of me was half dominated by a sprawling plant which had crept well beyond its pot, and some spread out bills. I wasn''t trying to look, but I noticed many of the bills were stamped with red warnings saying things like overdue and third notice.


    Nine AM. That''d make it ten in Santa Fe. That was fine. I hit dial and waited for possibly the one person who could answer my questions to answer.


    The person who did answer also probably could answer, but I suspected wouldn''t.


    "Hello Athan," Micaiah said.


    "So you stole Cosette''s mobile now?" I asked.


    "Colonel Dawn and the rest of the P-Force are under surveillance for known connections to a wanted fugitive. Namely you. I''m just intercepting calls placed by unknown numbers."


    "I''ve never been wanted since turning Exhuman. Feels nice."


    "Please cut the glib retorts. I''m very busy at the moment. You were right that Colonel Dawn has an immense amount on her plate."


    "And you''re not helping by chasing me out. What the fuck, man? I thought you were cool, and then you show up on my door with a kill squad?"


    "Are you playing dumb? Are you really, truly playing dumb right now?" he asked with obvious annoyance.


    "I''m not playing anything. You tried to kill me--"


    "I was going to bring you in for questioning."


    "For what?"


    He sighed. "On suspicion of the murders of Minerva Frossard and Talon Durand."


    "What? Mini''s dead?"


    "You sound very surprised for being one of only three or four people in the world who knew of her relocation. I did say I didn''t want that information public for their protection...but even in just a small number of hands, my precautions seemed insufficient."


    "That''s your rationale? What about Dragon?"


    "Dragon was seen to be leaving Santa Fe yesterday. An FBI team tried to capture him, but...well, let''s say he confirmed that he wasn''t an imposter."


    "So somebody else did it."


    "Who, Athan? If you have any leads, tell me, and I will investigate them into the ground. I''d like to believe you, but right now, you''re the only one with the knowledge, the access to locomotion, and the capability to do this. When it was just Talon, it could have been any number of people, but with Mini now dead as well...it''s getting harder to see any other way."


    "But I didn''t kill anyone."


    "Then come in and we can talk about it."


    "But I''m innocent. The real killer''s out there. Do you have any idea what the Defiant are going to do now that she''s dead?"


    "They''ve already repeated their threats and made clear that any additional unexplained death will result in a cataclysmic Exhuman event. They said in quite colorful vocabulary that if there is a killer, we have to catch him before he acts again. And if there''s not, and it''s us...well the vocabulary becomes even more colorful."


    "They really just sent you a whole message of explicatives?"


    "Oh no. Colorful in quite the opposite way really. The most baffling word choices." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Athan, turn yourself in."


    I held my head in my hands. "I can''t. Look, pretend with me a second I''m innocent. Which I am."


    "I''m not saying you''re not. That''s for the courts. I''m saying there''s enough evidence to suggest you''re not."


    "Pretending I am, let''s say I get taken in. Let''s say things don''t go well for me, because of your evidence. Do you know what happened last time I was in XPCA custody?"


    "You were interrogated and developed an irrational loathing of all XPCA Intelligence-branch members, I believe."


    "I meant before that."


    "Oh. No? I don''t have it on your record that you were."A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "It was sort of off the books. It ended with an Exhuman event which killed half of XPCA command, and that was just the desperate cherry on a shit parfait which had the whole organization a few days away from being terminated by the US president."


    "I remember that," he said thoughtfully. "That was all you?"


    "Yeah," I said. It was a lie, but I wasn''t about to point this guy towards my friends. "It might surprise you, but even given this latest fuckup, I don''t want the XPCA shutting down. So no, I''m not surrendering."


    "That honestly just sounds like excuses. Refusing to surrender for our good? If you are innocent, just come in and this will all blow over for you. Then nobody gets hurt."


    "Bullshit. I''m not that stupid and I know you aren''t. The XPCA loves scapegoating Exhumans. You think Director Hall is going to think twice about throwing me to the Defiant to get them to back down?"


    "For someone who claims to want the XPCA intact, you seem to have very little faith in it."


    "It hasn''t earned my faith."


    "Enough to give motive to provoking the Defiant, into destroying us?"


    "Hey, fuck you, jackass. Go find the real killer."


    "Just come in, Athan, and I swear--"


    I hung up. Stupid fucking Intel officers. If I didn''t hate them before, I sure did now. And oh how I hated them before.


    "Murder rap with the XPCA, huh?" someone said, and I almost jumped out of the couch, knocking over a stack of books.


    Rito''s mom was there, leaning against the wall of the hallway I''d crept out of this morning. Pink fluffy robe, barefoot, blonde ponytail and a steaming mug that had "#1 MOM" engraved on the side.


    "I don''t...remember...saying that," I said, shoving the mobile into my pocket and trying to restack the books.


    "Oh, I''d have gone with how long have you been standing there myself. At least then you''re not treating me like an idiot."


    "Sorry," I said, feeling a needle of guilt. I really was the worst liar. "How long have you been standing there?"


    "A while," she said, and glided over, sitting opposite me. "Care to talk about it?"


    "Not really," I replied, avoiding her gaze, even though the stacking of books was long-finished by now.


    "Too bad. Wasn''t really a question. More importantly, does Rito know? Is she in any danger?"


    I looked up and met her gaze, blue like her daughter''s. I didn''t know what to do here, but all I''d ever done was just play things straight and hope they worked out. Like AEGIS had said, just barrel towards how I think the world should be, and if problems pop up, fix them.


    But just how honest could I be here? Rito''s mom obviously didn''t know her daughter was an Exhuman. And if she were gonna hear it, it shouldn''t be from me. Looking at that mug, so dorky and stupid, but her mom using it without a hint of irony...I could ruin this for them.


    But I also didn''t have any lies. I sucked at lying, we''d just re-established. And this was already a whole freaking mess with pretending to be her boyfriend. What a damn disaster.


    "Um, she''s safe, I can promise that," I said. Mama Rito nodded. "And she knows...that''s why we''re here. She wanted to give us somewhere to hide out."


    "Figured that much. Someone shows up at your door at midnight and then hear they have a problem with the law? Tale as old as time."


    "But it''s not true, I swear. I didn''t kill them."


    She gave me a wry smile. "Tell me why I care."


    I blinked at her. "What?"


    "Why should I care if you''re innocent or not? You''re trouble for me and my girl either way. So tell me why I shouldn''t just call up the XPCA right now and tell them I have an Athan here who''s a wanted man?"


    I...what? I was a little unnerved by how efficaciously this woman could put her family first. But, I guess thinking about it...that''s how it should be. She owed me nothing.


    Something growled behind me as dark clouds began to form above Mama Rito''s head, unnoticed as she continued to glare into me. I reached behind the couch and gave Tem a sharp shove into the ground. With a crash and a yelp, the clouds dissipated.


    "What was that?" she asked.


    "Uh, nothing."


    She crossed her arms.


    "Sorry. That was...a girl. Oh boy this is complicated."


    "Explain," she said simply.


    "I...she''s¡­" My mind raced, but mostly with thoughts like damn it Tem. "Oh boy."


    "So shall I be making that phone call?" She eyed me dangerously.


    "Look, Mrs. Rito''s Mom," I began. "Tem...this girl," I said, pointing behind the couch, "she...and I are Exhumans."


    "So I figured."


    "What?"


    "You were talking to the XPCA, man. Do you think I''m stupid?"


    "And you''re not like...screaming? Or throwing me out? Or running for your life?"


    "Well you haven''t killed my daughter yet, so you obviously have some civility. And I''m certainly throwing you out at this rate, because I asked you to explain one simple thing and you are doing the worst possible job of it."


    "Right. Sorry," I said, trying to get back on-track. "There was a murder, and they think it was me even though it wasn''t, and Rito is helping us hide."


    She looked at me like she was waiting for me to finish still.


    "Again. Why should I care?"


    "Because I''m innocent?"


    "Kid, innocent people die all the time. That sucks, but that''s the world. I''m not going to put my family in danger just because of some poor Exhuman who got stuck with a murder rap."


    "But they''ll probably kill me."


    "I heard you say that on the phone."


    "Did you also hear the part where that might destroy the XPCA?" I asked.


    "Yeah, but I''m not stupid enough to fall for that line either. Anything else you got?"


    I sat in just kind of a stunned, defeated silence for a minute. Everything which I felt should have surprised her didn''t, and she was so...so fine with putting her family first. I kinda had to respect that, even if it was currently a huge pain in my ass.


    And really, I had nothing to convince her. Half the time, I wasn''t even sure why I was alive. Just to piss off a bunch of girls who had the bad luck to fall for me, I guessed.


    "Is that it?" she asked, and I had nothing left to do but nod. "Then get out. And don''t talk to my daughter ever again."


    "Can I grab my stuff?"


    "Don''t wake Rito."


    I headed back into Rito''s room and found my bag by the door, scooping the dirty clothes I''d left on the floor into it and giving her a final glance.


    In the dim light of the room, she looked positively angelic, moreso than usual because when she was lying down, I couldn''t tell she was a whole head shorter than me. Her hair and skin was so light.


    I didn''t know what I was doing here. Not in this room, but in my life. If I walked out that door, I''d be all alone in an unfamiliar city with no money and no way of getting home. I wouldn''t even be able to look up directions online to get to anywhere without tipping off the XPCA where I was.


    And, like a fucking moron, I''d broken her mobile. The XPCA might know I had connections with her, but not in the immediate now. Even if they were monitoring her mobile, we could have spoken in code or something. Or just met up and disappeared under their noses. Cutting off my options like had just been short-sighted and stupid.


    I could wake her up. Ask her to send me away. I''d have the same problems anywhere, I knew, but at least if I were somewhere else, I might know the city better, or be somewhere with friends.


    I pulled out my mobile and sent AEGIS a message.


    > Is it safe to come home yet?


    Her reply was almost instantaneous, like she''d been waiting for me to write.


    > no


    That figured. I could have Rito dump me back in the wild where at least I could survive, I knew...but...that was just running from the issue. If the killer wasn''t stopped, if the Defiant acted on their promise, there wouldn''t be a world left to come back to.


    And maybe if that happened, I''d have all the time in the world to hang out in the wilds, I thought, a little morbidly. Form a survivor''s enclave like Ajax and Celia did in the ruins of their world.


    No, here was where the action was. Here was where the Defiant were hiding out, and here was where their killer had to be. If I was to have any part in this, I needed to be here. But how to survive? It was a little after nine and I was already hungry.


    And then I saw something in the bed next to Rito and my heart froze. The chit she''d been checking and re-checking all night, the money Lia had given her. Looking around her house, seeing the piles of bills...remembering what Saga had told me about Rito lying about going to art school, seeing the drawings filling the halls and how close she and her mother were. I could see her motivation for money, clear as anything, and yet even so she''d been hesitant to take it.


    I could steal it, I realized. All the money I''d ever need to get situated. Seed money, to prevent the end of the world. The two of them would be fine, wouldn''t they?


    I hesitated for far longer than I should have. And then I turned and left. I wasn''t that person.


    "I was about to check on you," Harper said from where she still sat. "Say your goodbyes?"


    "Yeah," I said, throwing my bag over my shoulder. "For what it''s worth, and I know you don''t care about my opinion at all, but I''m sorry you and Rito had to get involved in this. You seem like a good mom, trying to protect her from me."


    She rose, and to my surprise, gave me a gentle hug.


    "Thank you for leaving," she said as she stepped away. "I know it can''t be easy. And I know Rito will be mad at me. But I think you''re doing what''s right for her. Is there anything I can get you before you go?"


    "I don''t suppose...um...you have any spare credit?"


    She gave me a small smile. "Not even a little bit."


    "Any food maybe?"


    And so a few minutes later, I was walking down an unfamiliar street eating half a box of animal crackers, weighed down with a few cans of condensed soup. It wasn''t much, but considering how much she owed me nothing, and what she had, it felt like a lot.


    I had two goals before me. The first was obviously to find somewhere to stay, some money, anything I could use to stay afloat until either I found the killer, or the fighting started.


    And two, there was someone in town I knew. They might not be happy to see me, but they had information I needed and with any luck, food and a place to stay. I didn''t exactly like the prospect, but it was kinda the whole reason I was here.


    I tightened the shoulders on my pack and headed towards the taller buildings on the skyline. The downtown of this little suburb, I guessed, and as good a place to start my search as any.


    The Defiant were out there somewhere.

 251. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    I didn''t know exactly what Athan was up to, but I knew he needed me there with him. Yet the eyes and ears of the XPCA were relentless, scrutinizing everything we said and did for the smallest hints of his location.


    I was already worried he wouldn''t have figured out the meaning I''d put in my messages to him. I needed it to be conspicuous enough so that even that dummy would figure it out, but not so much that the XPCA could see through it, and that was a real nonexistent amount of space to maneuver in.


    It helped that for whatever reason, Micaiah was being really nice to us. He''d explained the situation to us when I knew he didn''t have to, and promised he''d leave us alone as long as we weren''t going to interfere in trying to capture their fugitive. He apologized for putting us under surveillance, but at the end of the day, I was just confused why he was being so transparent with us. It didn''t seem like he had some other hidden agenda, but surely trying to trick us into giving away Athan''s location, or dragging it out of us would have just made his job easier.


    One might think he was actually trying to be decent to us, which was just a weird thought, given our positions at the moment. But that''s really all I had.


    I was lucky that a lot of my hacking tools were already successfully remotely installed. It meant I could still peek into the XPCA without being overt in what I was doing...if I was trying to hack a new source, I couldn''t very well hope to hide my sudden bout of one-way traffic against a XPCA datacenter...but with my tools already in place, I could have an encrypted two-way conversation with my tools, which could be hosted and running anywhere, as casual as any ''net site traffic.


    And oh did I. I was ferenic in finding any scrap of information I could about Athan or Micaiah''s plans. But the more I dug, the more nothing I found, and the more frustrated I got. I knew he took careful notes constantly, I''d seen him scribbling away on his mobile enough during his interview with Athan. But was that it? Did he honestly keep all of his notes and everything on his mobile? Hadn''t the guy ever heard of backups?


    Poor data retention habits aside, it was infuriating to get nothing. I wished Athan had handed me Micaiah''s mobile when it was in his possession. If I''d just had the chance to drop even an indexer in there¡­


    But I couldn''t focus on what wasn''t. Athan needed me, and I was doing everything I could to that end. In addition to the normal ''net traffic I was generating, I had dedicated a ton of my new enhanced system resources to just browsing the ''net constantly. Posting constantly and anonymously on forums, making sure that all my comments included words and phrases I knew they''d be listening for; "XPCA", "A than", "hiding", and as many references to cities as possible. If I could waste their time blasting them with useless data, they might miss it if Athan did screw up and accidentally did let something slip.


    And meanwhile, as inconspicuously as possible, the ''net relays I''d infiltrated began to suddenly have issues. Dropping packets destined for any XPCA addresses, sending them around the world a few hundred times, causing entire milliseconds of irritating lag, basically anything I could manage which couldn''t be traced back to us, or too obviously connected to the situation at-hand. I still might be arrested, and I was masquerading as a mere human after all. And so I gave them a break for four hours that night while I was ostensibly sleeping.


    But it didn''t seem like enough. Last time Athan was out surviving in the world, I''d been there for him, working his mass-fab and putting my head together with his to ensure his safety however I could. This time, he was alone with Rito, and I didn''t trust that girl to keep him safe, no matter how much Lia paid her.


    And also, they were cutting my ability to leverage the ''net by monitoring everything I did, and there wasn''t anything that pissed me off more than getting between me and the ''net. A girl has needs.


    I''d spent a lot of time studying the memories of last time I''d done this, back-to-back with Lia, with her insight and my insider knowledge, we wrecked those noobs, hacking our way to the very heart of XPCA infrastructure, until they had more security vulnerabilities than defenses.


    Those memories were so bittersweet now. On one hand, I had been truly, truly happy. I felt so useful and wanted, and thought constantly about how happy Athan would be when our big plans paid off and he was set free.


    But on the other hand, it was in that period I got my hands on the keys to Skyweb. It was a strange feeling, looking back at how happy I was to be holding the weapon which would kill me.


    I banged on Lia''s door and then let myself in.


    "Hey girl! Ready to get started on Operation: Athan two?"


    I stood there frowning when she didn''t respond. I''d seen her deplorable state over my cams, but thought that coming in here might get a reaction.


    Instead, she just stayed where she was, curled up under her covers, two conspicuous empty water bottles knocked over on the floor. It''d been a little less than a day, and this was her already.


    "Come on, Lia. Athan needs us. Up you get," I said, pulling off the sheet to reveal her seemingly frozen in the fetal position, eyes shut tight against the world.


    I frowned again. I''d remembered in my memories talking about Lia having depression but...never like this. While I tried to get any reaction out of her whatsoever, I also simultaneously reviewed more footage of her from before, as well as looked up treatment and handling of those suffering depression.


    Like most mental conditions, everything I found seemed to indicate it wasn''t something I could fix, only be there support her. To be reassuring that these problems will pass, and that I was here for her.


    Which...I was. But these other problems weren''t going to pass on their own. Athan needed us, and we needed to be there for him. My past life had a policy of not even mentioning or acknowledging Lia''s depression, just being extra doting without drawing attention to it, and I had no idea if that worked or not.


    And apparently ''just snap out of it'' was one of the things not to say, though it''s absolutely what I wanted her to do.


    "Lia, can you hear me?" I asked, lowering my voice and trying to be comforting. "Just nod if you can."


    She gave the very slightest of nods without opening her eyes.


    "I know it seems rough, but we''ll all get through this. Your brother''s too stubborn to die."


    Her eyes opened and I gave her a smile, but her reaction was...very much the opposite of how people reacted to a smile. She buried herself into her pillow like she was trying to smother herself with it and writhed slightly as though in pain.


    "Lia, what''s wrong?" I asked, holding her gently across her body with my fingers. I took the opportunity to read her vitals, which were way elevated. Her BAC wasn''t really that high yet though, but I had read how the lapse of judgement from first drinks led to second drinks.


    She muttered incomprehensibly into her pillow, and while I asked her to repeat herself, ran the audio of her utterance through several reconstructive algorithms to see if there was anything salvageable in there. This new body did have its perks.


    "I said," she said, pulling just her mouth free of the pillow "I am a horrible sister. I''m a horrible person."


    "Why would you say that?"


    "Because he''s gone, AEGIS," she said, her voice filling with a choking sob as her throat closed up on her. "He''s gone, and he''s out there trying to do what he always does and fix everything and save everybody, and all I can think about is how sad I am because he''s gone. I don''t care about the world, because I''m just a horrible...selfish...awful person."Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    "Lia, oh sweetie. You don''t have to beat yourself up for that."


    "But it''s true! The whole time he was leaving, I was just thinking, he can''t leave me again. And now you want me to help rescue him and I''m drunk and pathetic and useless, I can''t save him or do anything. All I can think about is how unfair it feels and how stupid I am. I''m so useless, it''s like I don''t even actually care about saving him, I just want him back."


    "You''re not useless though!" I shouted back at her. "I...I...actually came in here...because I was so excited. About the prospect of working with you. I''ve never done it before...in this life, I mean. AEGIS Prime had the highest of respect for your abilities, and I just...just wanted to see them."


    She looked at me like I was crazy. But something like anger had lit in her eyes.


    "Seriously," I said.


    "Go away, AEGIS."


    "I''m serious."


    "I don''t need you lying to me to make me feel better. I''m garbage and I know it, okay?"


    "You''re not--"


    "I''m garbage. I''m here with my thoughts all day, AEGIS. You want to tell me you know them better than I do? I''m just a stupid, selfish, egomaniacal little girl that just makes everyone stop everything and focus on me, me, me--"


    "Lia, that''s enough."


    "Here you are, trying to comfort me, when you should be working on Athan instead. It''s always got to be all about me."


    "Lia, seriously, I know you''re having...an episode or whatever...but seriously. What would Athan think if he heard you talk about yourself like this?"


    She sat up and stared at me with small, wild eyes. Dangerous eyes, which looked like they''d just stolen knowledge forbidden from the world, and saw clearly for once.


    "That''s the point, AEGIS. I don''t want Athan to have to think about me. Ever," she added dangerously.


    "No, you''re missing the point. I want you to stop and think about what you''re saying. I want you to imagine what Athan would think and say and do if he walked in and found his sister dead."


    "That''s disgusting," Lia said, looking back at her pillow. "And morbid. And unfair."


    "Yeah, and that''s the conclusion of your train of thought. So stop romanticising your death and how perfect a world it might create, and realize that people love you, and we''d all be very hurt and very sad if you died. You''re not alone, nobody hates you secretly, and nobody thinks you''re a burden, okay?"


    She just stopped and stared back at me, looking half like she just wanted to give up and accept what I was saying, and half like she was angry at me. For what, I had to wonder? For ruining her fantasy with a reality check?


    Well fuck her. She could be mad at me the rest of her life if she wanted, I wasn''t going to let this go any further.


    "You look angry," I told her.


    Her eyebrows narrowed noticeably.


    "I like that. You should be angry."


    "Because you come in here, and tell me I''m wrong about everything?"


    "No, because your brother is on the run from the XPCA, and he did nothing wrong. That''s why I''m mad, and that''s why I''m gonna go kick their asses, and save his stupid butt. Are you in?"


    She seemed to waver, my sudden reversal knocking the anger out of her and she was threatening to fall entirely into that side of her which had given up again. I saw her face change again and again as different emotions played across it, before finally she sighed, and fell over again.


    "No? After all that?" I asked, trying to prod her back to life again.


    "You''re right. I need to. I have to keep trying. I must always keep trying. I can never give up."


    I blinked at her, confused. Her voice had gone from so emotional and weak to more robotic and steely than mine. The words sounded well-rehearsed, they came out of her rounded and smoothed. A mantra?


    "Every step is just a step," she said, still laying down. "I can''t cry if I''m too busy smiling. I must always keep trying. I can never give up."


    "Lia?" I asked.


    "Let me finish, I''ll see you in the garage," she said without looking.


    I lingered for another few moments before letting myself out.


    What had transpired was...it was something. I knew very well by now that she always took a few minutes in the morning to work herself up to facing the day...but I''d never heard her thoughts out loud.


    I felt very dirty and like I''d just seen something I never should have. It was like...seeing ground veal being made, backward. At the end, there was an adorable mooing little cow...but underneath, you couldn''t help but know that there was a lot of grinding and breaking and reshaping which went into it¡­


    Which was dangerous, I knew. I remembered having this discussion with Athan at Christmas. That the last thing in the world Lia wanted was for anyone to see her as shredded meat wearing a calf skin, with raw torn flesh hiding behind the eyes.


    I was getting morbid. I blamed the talk of suicide. This was ten types of messed up, and I was no longer certain that Athan was the Ashton in need of help.


    But at the same time...she was coping. Setbacks of alcohol and Athan aside, she got up and brushed her teeth every day. She knew she had a problem, and had a strict routine to deal with it, words she''d found or written which reminded her of truths of her reality. She was stronger than she was broken.


    A minute later, through my drones I saw Lia''s door open, and she took one shuffling staggering step. And then one deliberate stomp forward. And then one springy stride, and then she bounced down the hallway like the world had invented hopscotch just a minute before, and she found it irrepressibly charming.


    She knocked and then entered the garage door. "Hey," she said, with a flip of her hair and a cocky grin. "We ready to put some hurt on the otter lobsters that are trying to pin a crime on my bro?"


    I smiled back at her. "Sure am."


    "Do you have a plan?"


    "I have...pieces of a plan. I''ve been thinking of doing something...rather extreme, and wanted to run it past you."


    "Extreme like, very likely we''ll get shot? Or extreme like, very likely someone else will get shot?"


    "Neither. I''m...I''m not a fan of the plan, personally, but I think Athan will be, and I think...it will help him more than anything else I could do at this point."


    "So this isn''t a violence plan? Is it a hacking plan?"


    "It is in part a hacking plan, which will probably end with a violence plan, given the trouble Athan tends to get into, but I think you''ll see when we get into the details."


    She nodded seriously, and I noticed that her vitals were still elevated. There was still so much fear and uncertainty in her eyes, but it was hidden away behind the fire burning in them.


    She was such an amazing person. I began to see what AEGIS Prime saw in her.


    "The hard part is going to be doing this all covertly. We''re going to need to secure and move around a lot of materials, and none of it is even going to pass through our hands."


    "Ooh, I like it," Lia said. "I could set up a shell company or a dozen to have assets being moved around in their names. Or, that might be suspicious...I might just buyout some small existing ones. If they have workers already, those are hands doing work for us too."


    "Wow yeah, that''d help us a lot. I was just thinking of trying to run machines remotely, but if we had our own agents¡­"


    Lia paused. "Can we talk about this out loud without being monitored?"


    "Yeah, I checked. It looks like they''re just trying to keep us from contacting Athan and that''s it. I don''t know what''s up with this guy. He seems like he''s terrible at his job."


    "Or maybe he''s a decent guy."


    "After laying the blame on Athan? Not possible."


    She shrugged. "Good people do bad things sometimes for their jobs. It''s possible. Well if they''re only monitoring our communications...it''ll still make it hard for me to get started...but if I could get my hands on a burner mobile or something to make some calls they don''t know are me...I could start getting some people I know working on this independently."


    As soon as she said ''burner mobile'', I was already drawing up designs and syncing into my machine shop. Mass-fabs and loaders and conveyors and assemblers sprang to life at a thought.


    "So what do we need to procure and move?" Lia asked. "As much as I''d like to send him money and care packages, the more tying us to him, the easier it''ll be for the XPCA to catch on. We should only do one or two drops, I''m thinking."


    "Yeah. I agree. So I thought, what''s the single highest-impact thing I could send over there to improve his life and help him out with his situation."


    "A presidential pardon?" Lia laughed.


    I smiled, and traced my fingers in the air, forming a floating square about the size of a tablet, an emitted holo hovering between them, and floated it over to her.


    She took one look and beamed. "Yes. Yes, very yes. He''s going to love it. I love it."


    I sent a few of my other finger-drones to pick up the newly completed burner-mobile from my machines and dropped it in Lia''s hands while I began crunching the numbers on what kinds of machines and materials we''d need, and where.


    "Then let''s get to work," I said, grinning at her.

 252. 2252, Present Day. Suburban Oregon. Athan.

    It had been a couple of days now, and I''d learned a lot in that amount of time.


    I was in a suburb, really a part of Portland, kind of like how there were a dozen cities which all ran together to form the contiguous urban sprawl which was LA. This was one of the nicer bits of the whole city, flush with little art shops and tiny fancy places to eat, which all seemed to be fusion or artisanal something or slapped together with a coffee shop or a microbrewery.


    I didn''t know really, between Mom and AEGIS and exile, the majority of my meals were either homemade, or scraped together from bits of the wilderness. Eating out with any regularity seemed expensive and kind of pointless.


    And right now, also impossible and impossibly desirable. I hadn''t been this fucking hungry since living in the frozen pine forests, except this time, I spent all day with people eating right in front of me.


    I wasn''t about to keel over and die or anything...I''d found perfectly good food just thrown out almost everywhere I looked...and in a moment of weakness on my second day, dumped a left-out bowl of dog food in my pocket to keep the hunger away. I figured, if I wasn''t stealing half a million credits from Rito, I could steal a bowl of kibble. It was dry and nutty...actually not really that bad...but it made my jaw hurt from chewing -- and fuck, I was eating dog food, man.


    Like, I realized my standards dropped when I spent most of a year a few days off starving to death in the wilds, and that my relationship with food was therefore very different from the human experience, but still. Fucking dog food, man.


    I''d learned that this town prided itself on its schools, and that Penrose High School was just one of several award-winning schools in the area, and that in addition to pure academics, the school emphasized trade skills and arts, including mandatory classes in both for graduation. Which was super cool, and I wished I had the chance to have taken a shop class or two. Though art wasn''t really my thing.


    And finally, and of greatest importance, I''d learned nothing about the sudden appearance of a pack of twenty or so Exhumans. I wasn''t exactly a private eye, so my sleuthing skills had a lot to be desired, mostly just aimless wandering and hoping I ran into anyone who looked vaguely familiar. I wasn''t sure if I should keep going to new areas, or retread the same grounds over and over to make sure I never missed anything, or both. But it was still dispiriting to make the decision to stay out here and turn up with nothing so far but suffering.


    By evening of my third day, I smelled bad, my jaw was sore from fucking kibble, I was hungry anyway, and my back was pissed at me for sleeping on a bench in the cold my first night, instead of finding the student lounge at the community college like I had done last night.


    In short, things weren''t going well. I wasn''t dying either, but still not well.


    What I wanted to do more than anything was to light a beacon, metaphorically. To somehow advertise to the Defiant that I was here, and to make myself easy to find. But of course, any advertising and ease of finding I did for them, I also did inadvertently for the XPCA.


    What I needed was access to any amount of tech. I''d stopped by the libraries, both public and at the schools, and none of them would let me on their computers without an ID, and I wasn''t going to let anyone see that while I was on the run. My own phone was out of the question of course, but if I could just borrow someone else''s for a bit, or get a new one¡­


    I wanted to reach out to Trish and Gil, I''d decided. There was no way the XPCA knew we were connected, and wouldn''t be listening to their lines. I trusted them well enough...and most useful of all, their daughter...dang man, what was her name? It''d been bugging me all day now. Well, she was connected to the Defiant, I''d thrown her out of their pow-wow.


    So I talk to them, to talk to her, to talk to the Defiant, to set up a meeting, to tell them about Dragon, to keep them from dying, to keep the world from ending. A great plan, I thought. Just the little hiccup of the first step.


    "''Scuse me miss, can I borrow your mobile?" I asked a woman, who gave me a shocked and comprehensive up-and-down before awkwardly jogging across the street to the opposite sidewalk. I knew this was a nice town but jeez. Not even a no.


    I think ''shower and shave and change'' was probably a necessary first step to this plan as well. There had to be gyms at the college where I was crashing and showers there...but again, probably an ID check to get in. There might be some kind of homeless shelter thing somewhere, but fuck if I knew anything about that. I was getting pretty close to just banging on doors on a random street and asking for hospitality...but if the cops got called on me, I''d be completely fucked.


    Over a damn shower. The smallest things sometimes.


    I was walking past the end of a strip mall, thinking it was getting pretty late and I needed to head back to campus soon, when I paused outside a window.


    There were a number of things in this window that immediately caught my eye. First was a pixels, just like AEGIS had embedded in her face, showing some appropriately ancient footage of what looked like an electric circuit being soldered on a table strewn with tools. Second was a faded printed sign in the corner that proclaimed ''mobiles new and used, repairs, mods and customizations''. And third, right next to the door, a sign in printed black text on a white sheet which read: ''Help Wanted'', and then written below it in red, and vigorously underlined ''No experience necessary, brain required''.


    Jobs gave money. And money could buy many things. Like a hotel room with a shower, or a fake student ID to complete my campus infiltration. Or maybe more realistically, one of those used mobiles to make the calls I needed. Though if I worked there, I might have the chance to just use what they had anyway...


    Or food. Food was good too. The possibilities were endless, really.


    Without even thinking really, drawn in by the white glare of the pixels'' glow, I opened the door and let myself inside, realizing only afterwards that I''d never actually read the name of the place.


    I read it backwards off the front door. ''Whitney''s Repair and Service'', pretty inoffensive. Taking a look around inside however, was not.


    The whole place looked like it was in the midst of being wired together to form some kind of super-bomb. There were just stacks of circuit boards piled on top of counters full of quantum cores, while computer peripherals dangled from a string tied across the ceiling like they were a fresh kill drying out. Cables and cords snaked by underfoot, making even the limited walking space there was uneven. It smelled a little like burnt insulation and a lot like must.


    It wasn''t large in here to begin with, but with all the crap everywhere, there was hardly even a path to and from the main counter and register from the front door. Even if Whitney turned out to be a grandmaster at repair and service, at keeping a shop she was losing at solitaire tic-tac-toe.


    Which was just kind of further evidenced by the fact that as I stepped around the piles of crap and reached the main counter, there was nobody at it. Just a door behind, slightly ajar, and the faint sounds of music and wailing from beyond it.


    "Hello?" I called out. No reply of course, and I began to have my suspicions as to why there was help wanted here. "Heeeeeeellooooo?"


    After maybe a minute of gawking at all the crap and punctuating the seconds with repeated calls, I ultimately decided this was stupid, and I''d go in the back.


    I knocked, called again, and entered.


    And man, if I thought the front of the store was a mess. Jesus Christ, it was like they were building a VTOL back here. It was a little dark, except lights on the benches presumably around the perimeter of the room, or at least the taller piles of crap there indicated such might be underneath. The room was bigger here than the front, interestingly.


    And there was just so much freaking junk everywhere that it took me most of a minute to spot the source of the music, and the only organic thing in this heap.


    A woman, maybe Karu''s age, and incredibly tall--at least a couple inches on me it looked--wearing a dirty red tank top, black unlaced boots which drooped away from her legs, and khaki cargo shorts, half-obscured by a sweatshirt tied around the waist. She had music playing pretty loud from her somewhere, and in the single clear counter space in front of her was bent over, working on something from a simple stool.


    And she was singing. Way louder than the music. And way, way worse.


    "NEVER THINKING...of who you LEEEEFT BEHIND, when you go -- NEVER THINKING...of...okay now baby, show me what you got...be a good girl for Mommy. LEEEEEFT BEHIND those FEEL-IIIIINGS. Oh no, no, no, bad girl. You''re supposed to be at two-hundred ohms, not zero. Where''s my short? Is it you, Ms. Solder? Are you giving me a short because of my sloppy soldering job? I''m sorry sweetie. LEAVING THE WOOOOORLD BEHIND YOU."


    I couldn''t help but smile as she maintained a one-sided singing-conversation with the work on her table. But not wanting to creep too hard, I cleared my throat loudly. When that didn''t take, I knocked on the doorframe...and finally just called out to her.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "Woah!" she yelped, falling backwards off her stool. Her sweatshirt on her waist caught on it, and she took a few fumbling steps, the stool banging loudly as it tripped her up. I realized she was going down and jumped forward over a pile of debris. She managed another two toddling steps before careening towards the ground, one leg stuck through the legs of the stool.


    And she landed safely in my arms like we''d just finished a dance routine. Even being taller than me, she was still pretty light.


    "Um, hi?" I said, looking down at her. Sticking out from the red bandana which pointed up from her forehead, her shoulder-length black hair had some faded purple streaks in it, I realized. Her green eyes stared at me from behind thick, plastic, black frames with a strange, non-judgemental curiosity.


    "Hi," she said, finally. The music kept playing making this a little surreal. "What are you doing?"


    "Uh, I was just peeking around in here, and then you fell, so I caught you. Sorry to startle you."


    "I meant...now. What are you still doing?"


    "Oh sorry." I pulled her upright and held her until she''d escaped from the clutches of the stool and was stable. She tapped at a bracelet on her wrist and the music stopped.


    "Guess I should thank you for the rescue anyway, even if it was your fault I fell?"


    "Sure. You''re welcome."


    "That''s it?" She gave me a half-smirk. "Well aren''t you nice. What can I do for you friendo?"


    "Wait, what was that supposed to mean?"


    Her half-smirk progressed to a three-quarter smirk. "I hope I''m not going to offend you with this, but you look like someone who needs something. Like a few bucks. I wasn''t sure if you were going to ask for a handout or demand one. So a little surprised, but a little pleased you didn''t do either."


    "Oh." I sniffed myself delicately. "Yeah. Sorry...a third time."


    "Yeah. Caught a wiff earlier. Do you uh, not do hygiene?"


    "No, I do. I''ve just been...like...homeless for a few days."


    She made a clicking noise with her tongue. "At your age? I''m sorry kid. Hmm...maybe...there''s a shower and a cot down here but they''re full of junk. I used to spend a lot of nights working in here when I was full of youth and vitality," she chuckled. "Might be able to let you stay a night if you can dig it out...but don''t pocket a dang thing. I know every single scrap down here, believe it or not."


    "Um, thanks. Why would I steal anything from you if you''re offering me a bed? That seems like it would be stupid of me."


    Again with the sideways smirk. "I dunno if you''re really bad at being poor, or really good at it. I guess you said it''s only been a few days."


    "You''d assume I''m a thief just because I''m out of a home?"


    "I¡¯d assume you''re poor because you''re out of a home, and I assume that poor people are more likely to need things, and I assume people who need things tend to take them."


    "I...I guess. That''s not gonna be me though."


    She gave a derisive half-snort through her little nose. "You probably haven''t even been properly hungry yet. We''ll see if and when you get there."


    "Err, well, that''s actually why I''m here. I saw you had a help wanted sign up. Thought I might earn some of that money you say I need."


    "Is that so?" She hadn''t been tense before, but seemed to relax even more as she went back to her stool and propped it up again, facing me with her long legs crossed. "Well, I admit you''ve charmed me somewhat with the whole good-guy routine and claiming you wouldn''t want to steal. What else have you got for me?"


    "Uh, I...don''t know. What''s the position?"


    She shrugged. "Man the register, clean the shop, do bitch work."


    I looked around at the enormous piles of crap everywhere, even hanging off the walls and ceiling. "Clean the shop? How?"


    "Are you insinuating I''ve got some kind of hoarding problem?"


    "I''m insinuating you''ve got some kind of hoard."


    Her face split into a grin. "Hell yeah I do. Relax, mostly I just need things sorted into boxes instead of piles. Boxes stack, ergo, more stuff in less space. I''d do it myself, but every time I''ve started--" she gestured with her head towards a few boxes in the corner almost buried in parts. "--I get distracted playing with the stuff I find. So I need someone less captivated by the shinies than myself."


    "Okay. Well, I can do that. And man the register or whatever."


    "How much can you lift?"


    "I could bench two-fifteen...uh...back in high school. That was most of a year ago."


    "Not exactly what I meant but okay. Let me see your mobile."


    I pulled it out and was about to hand it over to her when I suddenly had a thought and felt a bubble of panic. "I...can''t do that," I said.


    "Why not?"


    I stopped for a second to try to put this as positively as I could. "Um. People are looking for me. I don''t want to do anything which might let them know where I am."


    "Then you''re already screwed. They can tell which ''net relay you''re on and narrow you down that way."


    I shook my head. "Not this mobile. But they can read anything I send or receive."


    "Oh really?" she said, with a small condescending smile. "I very much doubt that, but you''ve got me curious. I won''t do anything, I promise. Can I see it?"


    I shook my head. "I don''t even know why you want to."


    "Mobiles are a part of us. What yours is and looks like tells me a lot about you. If you want this job, it''s non-negotiable."


    I had half a mind to leave but...she seemed alright, honestly. What was the worst thing that could happen? If I stayed in arm''s reach, and she seemed to be going for the map or contacts or something¡­


    I handed it over, and she gave it a once-over. Then sniffed it.


    "Smells like dog food," she said frowning. "And it''s oily."


    "I can take it back--"


    She shook her head and pulled it away from my reach. "This is a Seraphim DX 480. Do you know what that is?"


    "It''s a really nice mobile?"


    "It''s not. But it is the holy grail of the mobile modding community. So easy to root, such an extensive API framework, and the 480 had a unpatchable defect on one of the chips that got fixed in the 490...you didn''t even need a modchip or toolchain to get code running natively. The specs are astronomical for its size, one of the old models before this fad of cloud processing. You could do anything with one of these beauties."


    She tapped it to life. "Biometric lock. Good. Give me your finger and eyes. Thanks. Oh wow. Hello gorgeous. You''ve had a lot of work done, haven''t you?"


    "Uh, yeah. Well, my sister did."


    "I was talking to her," she said, giving the mobile a gentle shake in my direction. In just a few taps she was flipping through a few screens I''d never even seen before, her eyes darting around like crazy over the data in front of her. "Good gosh, you''re beautiful. Who coded you, I wonder? And it looks like your owner was right...you''re actively spoofing your own relay and connecting through that. Clever little girl."


    I watched with bemused fascination as she crooned over my mobile, seemingly completely unembarrassed to converse with my device right in front of me. When she was satisfied, she put it back in my hands gently.


    "So why do you want this job?" she asked. "You''re obviously rich."


    "I''m not. Like I said, my sister did all this."


    "And she won''t give you money, but will give you this mobile? I''m not going to judge, but okay."


    "No, I just...can''t talk with her right now."


    "Ah," she said, and dropped it. "Well, I''d hire your sister in a heartbeat. You?" She leaned forward until she was in uncomfortable proximity to my face and then sniffed me. "You, I''m not so sure. You put a Seraphim in dog food."


    "Lady, I put dog food in myself. I''m hungry and homeless. It''s nothing personal against my mobile."


    She smiled at me. "Wow that''s sad."


    "Thanks?"


    "But if you''re willing to eat dog food and still not steal from someone, I guess you''re alright." She tapped the side of her glasses thoughtfully. "Okay. I''ve decided. The position is yours if you want it. Just take care of your Seraphim, they don''t make them like that anymore."


    "Really? Thanks!" I felt an unexpected excitement surge through me for...for really no reason at all. I hadn''t even wanted this job ten minutes ago, but now I had it. It was something, which was better than the nothing where I was before. But I still hadn''t expected to be genuinely excited.


    "And you''ve got nowhere to stay?"


    I nodded.


    She stood up and started for the pile of junk nearest the entrance. "You can start now with this stuff, and if we get it sorted tonight, you can sleep here until you get a place. Free of charge, because I''m just that great."


    "That''s really incredibly generous," I told her, skipping past her to get a couple boxes.


    "Eh. Not like the cot''s doing anything as it is. Nice thing about parts, they''re just as happy sitting in a box as on a bed."


    She was smirking at me again, and I wasn''t sure just to what extent she was fucking with me, or how much she genuinely believed all this stuff was alive. Taken independently, all her eccentricities might be nothing, but together, they began to paint a weird picture.


    I mean, not that I''d judge. I once confused one of my friends for a mushroom colony.


    We worked for a few hours, mostly just rearranging the available space under her direction until a dirty glass door and a nook in the wall emerged, the promised shower and cot. It must have been pushing eleven when we finally cleared the last of the debris and I could pull a taut fabric bed from the nook, which was small, but reminded me a lot of the hammocks I used to sleep in every night.


    "All set?" she asked after testing the water, which had sputtered and run brown for a while before behaving like a normal shower.


    "Yeah. Thank you again, for all of this."


    She shrugged with a small smirk. "People need help sometimes."


    The sentiment surprised me. Such a simple positivity, I thought. She didn''t do it out of obligation or guilt or feeling like she needed to share what she had. Sometimes, people just needed help. I liked that.


    She locked up, leaving me inside and promising to see me in the morning, and the last I saw of her was her walking away outside the locking bars in the storefront. I went into the back, prepared my last change of clothes, and took a shower. It felt like I was washing off all of the last few days off of me. It was hot and invigorating, and just the fact that I knew where I''d be sleeping tonight and nobody was going to wake me up to tell me I couldn''t sleep here, that this was a tiny place I could call my own for now...well¡­


    The last couple of days had been chipping away at my confidence, at my decision to stay here. I felt like, if I couldn''t even manage making it out here, what the heck was I doing? But now it seemed back in full measure. With this tiny cot and this dirty shower with rust stains at my back, I would find the Defiant. I would stop an international assassin, and I would save the world.


    Yeah, it was ridiculous, I knew. But that didn''t make it any less real. Sometimes the smallest things could make the biggest difference.


    I was still smiling as I ate another mouthful of dog food and went to bed.

 253. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Repair and Service, OR. Athan.

    I''d read somewhere once that it took a few nights sleeping somewhere before you got any real comfortable rest out of it. Your body took time to adjust to the new surroundings and bed.


    Maybe this wasn''t a valid data point because the cot reminded me of sleeping in my hammock in The Bunker, and the piles of silent junk reminded me of the mountains of strange machines which filled AEGIS'' apartment back in DC. But I had the best night''s sleep ever there, so wrapped in my own bliss I didn''t even bemoan the lack of a blanket.


    Better than Tem, I suspected, who was sleeping on my bag in the shower. I''d argued that she should sleep with me, platonically, and she just began stammering out lines about flying too close to the sun and I had to relent before I gave the poor girl a stroke. She already seemed overjoyed at the prospect of cuddling my dirty clothes so...win for her, I guess?


    Given my bouts with sleeplessness recently, I think for me it had to do more with what was going on in my head than anything. When Karu was being strange, when AEGIS was revealed to be...very different from AEGIS Prime, when the murders began, I slept like shit.


    And now, for once, something good had happened to me, and that was enough to please my subconscious I supposed. I was just a simple little man, wasn''t I?


    I woke up slowly, my eyes wanting to stay closed, only opening in fractions as I looked around the room.


    There was only one small window, high in the ceiling in the very back which didn''t let in much sun. A little bit spilled through the door from the well-lit shop near me. There were lights all around the perimeter, I knew from seeing them on last night, but they were dark for now. It felt like I was in a place separate from the world, that I could stay here and sleep forever if I wanted, and nobody would ever see me or know, no time would pass until I went out there and faced it.


    It was dim and tranquil and still in here. I liked it.


    Until I heard singing.


    "--through the BREAK-ING DAAAAAY, through the TEAR-ING RAAAAAAIN, through the BLIND-ING PAAAAAAIN, I will be THEEEERE for yooooou."


    I laughed to myself and rubbed the rest of the sleep out of my eyes, checking good ol'' Seraphim to see what time it was...and then starting and bolting out of bed.


    Which...wasn''t a good idea. There were still towering piles of shit everywhere, and any kind of rapid movement was liable to knock over the whole place like a house of cards made of dominos. I caught myself and headed for the door, before realizing the singing, if one could call it that, wasn''t coming from the door.


    I turned and saw, at the same stool, the same woman, hard at work over the same table of junk. Bulky headphones over her ears this time, the headband pressing down the skyward-tipped point of her red hair bandana. As a consequence of these headphones, I could not hear her music. This definitely did not improve the sound of her performance.


    I advanced on her until I tapped her on the shoulder, making her jump again, but not enough to fall out of the stool.


    She pulled the headphones off with a bit of fluster. "Holy heck, New Guy. You need to stop sneaking up on me."


    "Sorry. You just wouldn''t hear me."


    "Oh, yeah. My bad. Well, my motto is, there''s always a smarter solution, so here--"


    She touched her bracelet and it projected a holo onto the inside of her wrist, which was something very cool I''d never seen before. I moved a little bit to get a better view.


    "Like my wrist holo?" she asked. "Had to get really creative with the lens lattice to have it situated off to the side instead of in the middle like every other holo you see. It''s got some distortion artifacts at the far edge but you can''t see ''em unless you''re looking...there, see?"


    Sure enough, the edge of the holo furthest from her wrist was a little more translucent and blurry than the closer edge, but for how cool it was with a holo floating off its projector like that, it was fully awesome.


    "That''s the whole device?" I asked.


    She undid the device with a twisting motion and handed it to me. For all appearances just a thick plastic bracelet, half an inch wide, a little black spot where the holo emitted, the only hint that the device was anything special.


    "The whole thing is touch sensitive, and it can track your fingers in space around it, like any other holo device, but all crammed into that tiny thing." She twisted it back on, gave it a tap which lit up small colored lights around it, and then tapped in a sequence on the colors. With one tap, she unbound the headphones, and the music began playing off her wrist, and then with another, the music stopped.


    Super neat.


    "Did you make that?" I asked.


    "I put it together."


    "From like, a kit?"


    "From like, parts of other mobiles. Had the casing assimilated for me on a mass-fab. You ever play with one of those?"


    I laughed. "Only all the time."


    "Right on, New Guy. I think we''re gonna get along fine. What model did you have?"


    "Uhh¡­" I scratched my head. "Something like a hundred years old."


    "No way," she said, grinning earnestly at me. "Do you still have it?"


    "No, I left it in Canada somewhere."


    "Dang. Well, I''d love to see it. Mass-fabs from back then were really gung-ho about dissimilating things into the smallest frags they could, you wound up with this insane system of thousands of molecular groups banked, back before some new way was found of doing it maybe thirty years ago. The guts of the old ones are so crazy. My dad had one growing up like that, but I''ve never seen one since."


    "Your dad do mobile repair too?"


    She smirked at me. "Dad''s dead."


    "Oh. I''m sorry."


    She shrugged. "Nobody does mobile repair. People just buy new ones or take them in for warranty."


    It was true. I''d certainly never heard of anyone going to a random repair shop. Always just ''mobile''s busted, time to upgrade.'' "Then what''s all this?" I asked.


    "An excuse to dick around all day mostly," she said, gesturing with her head towards the bench where she''d been working. "I get some mod requests in, mostly off the ''net where I''ve got a pretty good rep, but that''s about it. Pays the bills."


    "And you''re hiring?"


    "Yeah well, it''s a mess. Speaking of which, do you always clock in at noon?"


    "No, sorry...it won''t happen again, I''m sorry."


    "It''s cool. I figured, you were out on the street for a while, let you sleep when you get the chance. You hungry?"


    "You don''t have to feed me, really--"


    "Got a pocket full of dog food?" I didn''t have a response. She threw a baggie at me with a sandwich in it. I sidestepped and let it fall on the ground and then picked it up. "The heck was that?" she asked.


    "Sorry...got like a...phobia...of things flying at me." Definitely wasn''t a lie, that one.


    "Ah. Sorry then. Eat up, New Guy."


    "My name''s Athan."


    "Whitney. I''m real crap with names though, so you''re gonna be New Guy for a while."


    "I''m the...only guy. I''m the only anyone back here but you."


    "You saying I should just call you ''hey''?"


    "Uh, no."


    She gave a small snort and pulled out a matching baggie with some crackers in it and began to eat. I liberated a nearby stool from a tower of some kind of I/O boards and joined her.


    "There''s lots back here," she said after a minute, her mouth full.


    "Lots of what?"


    "You said we were the only ones here. I''m telling you you''re wrong." She swallowed and pointed at a bunch of wires hanging up connecting a metal casing to several others, all strung along the ceiling seemingly at random. "There''s my main server, she''s a real workhorse, but keeps things straight for me, I''d lose my own head without her sometimes."


    She pointed to the far wall at a more-rectangular heap of junk than the surrounding. "Over there''s my artist. She''s crazy, just churns out random stuff all day on a learning algorithm on ''net popularity. She went viral once, but hasn''t been able to recapture the magic. I think most of her stuff is pretty derivative of her success and lost a lot of the creative soul, but sometimes we all get stuck in the past."


    Above the entrance is where she had me look next. "There''s a big metal arm. It''s not really useful, but I had this crazy idea for a smart exosuit. I''ve got these skinny little pasty things," she said, flexing her long, relatively normal-looking arms. "So I thought, for moving parts around, why not build a suit? Answer, cuz'' it''s hard and expensive, and hiring a kid to move it for me is cheap and easy. So that''s you."


    "And this one," she said, reaching down and affectionately brushing her fingertips on a black aluminum case, "this one''s for VR, if I ever get lonely. Which I don''t really, since, as I just said, got a whole family down here."


    "Your family is all computers?"


    "My original family''s all dead."


    "Oh. I''m sorry."


    "You should stop apologizing so much. We''re exchanging data here, and you''re just gumming it up with your formalities. It was years and years ago, you didn''t know my family, and you sure weren''t the fucking Exhuman who killed them, so let it go. So yeah, my family is all machines. Is there something wrong with that?"


    The sandwich had become very solid and cold in my mouth, and I had to work hard to swallow it. I''d also read somewhere that in an average American''s lifetime, out of the roughly six-hundred or so people we''d meet and befriend through it, about seventeen would either die, or be directly impacted by an Exhuman event.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    At the time, I hadn''t been too impressed with that statistic. I''d run the numbers and found that was like, three percent of the people you''d know. Three percent of all deaths in America, right? Three was tiny.


    And then I did a quick search and realized, three percent is kind of huge. Almost seventy-thousand deaths a year to Exhumans. Medical science could keep improving and improving, but that wouldn''t save those people getting murdered by Exhumans. People like Whitney''s family.


    I bet my statistics were way higher. I bet ninety percent of people I ever met would die in an Exhuman-related incident.


    "Well, if you''ve got a problem with it, the door''s right there. You''ve had your shower and sleep. Get out," Whitney said, turning back to her work.


    "No, sorry...I was just...thinking of what you said. I don''t have a problem with any kind of family you have. My family''s all messed up too."


    She gave me a cold sideways glance. "My family is not messed up," she said, with a lot more emotion than anything else I''d heard out of her.


    "Right. I''m sorry."


    "Stop apologizing all the time."


    "Right."


    She shook her head and went back to work. "Get a box and put all the delith cells in it and put it in the corner. Should be easy because they glow."


    "Right," I said, putting down my meal and standing up.


    "After you finish eating."


    I spent the next couple of hours hunting down delith cells throughout the entire pair of rooms, and boy, were they everywhere. I also spent the next couple of hours reliving my conversation with her and being mad at myself for offending her.


    I really hadn''t meant to, it just kind of slipped out, and I never even considered that someone who considered machines their family wouldn''t realize how messed up that was. Err...wouldn''t...consider that messed up. I really wanted to know what happened to her, but didn''t know how to ask. Or if I should. This seemed way too personal for second-day boss-employee chit-chat.


    I finished the second box of delith cells, which was a really good starting point because it got me roughly familiar with all the rest of the crap in here. I might not exactly know what most of it was, but I could tell that these things were the same as these other things, and they should probably all go in the same box. It wasn''t as daunting as it first appeared, because she did have the majority of things loosely organized into stacks.


    But after putting the box down, I saw her watching and headed over to see what was next or if I should just keep going.


    "Spent my whole life, people telling me I''m crazy, you know. You just get tired of it," she said.


    "I don''t think you''re crazy."


    "Well that''s good because I''m not. Different isn''t bad. Everybody''s different. I just care a little less about hiding it. Like I said earlier, if you have a problem, get out of my life, I''ve spent too much of it worrying about people''s opinions."


    "I don''t have a problem with your life."


    "I know. Sorry, this is an apology. I don''t mean you. I''ve just kind of got my life figured out here, and no patience for anyone who''d question it. Again, too many people, too often."


    "Can I ask how old you are?"


    "Twenty nine."


    "And...how long have you been doing this?"


    "Well, I opened the business eight years ago? But I''ve been doing this forever."


    "So at twenty one. Jesus," I sighed. "I''m nineteen, and I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. I can''t imagine just settling down in a couple years and just doing that forever."


    "It''s not bad when you find something you really love. I''ve always had a thing for computers and machines. Just took too long to learn to stop listening to people and dedicate my life to it."


    "Sounds great, but I don''t think it''d work for me."


    "Why not? What are you into?"


    "Football, used to be."


    "Huh. Yeah you dodged that sandwich like I was throwing it in slow motion. So why can''t you do that? Wait..." She raised an eyebrow at me. "How''d you get into football with a phobia of things thrown at you?"


    "Uh, that''s kind of the reason it won''t work. I had an...accident, I guess. And now I''m  kinda...scarred for life."


    She gave me a sympathetic smile and rolled up her tank, showing off her side and pale belly. And a fairly wicked-looking scar, from her armpit to the bottom of her ribcage. "That exosuit arm I showed you. Just testing it out and didn''t have the range of motion fully calibrated. I moved my arm, it moved and just about ripped my arm off of me, tore the skin and half the muscles on my side right open." She lowered her shirt. "And then I finished the damn thing anyway. If you love something, you don''t let fear stop you from doing it."


    "Jesus Christ."


    "It''s not that bad. Some medical gel, a few stitches, a stay at the hospital. Turns out your side isn''t such a bad place to lose mobility. I''m never going to be doing yoga, but it doesn''t get in the way much. But this was just illustrating a point, and the point remains...what is it that you''d do willingly, no matter how much it beat you up, you''d still turn around and go back in there? What''s that thing you absolutely would never let go of, ever?"


    "My friends," I said, without hesitating.


    "Do they beat you up often?" she smirked.


    "Uh. Sometimes," I said, rubbing my wrist which Karu''d snapped by stomping on it last time we fought.


    She looked at me with the same non-judgemental curiosity I''d seen on her the very first time our eyes met. "I was kidding. But...do they?"


    "Yeah, sometimes."


    "Are...you sure they''re your friends? I have no agenda here, but that doesn''t sound healthy."


    "No offense, but does living in a back room and building your own family out of computer parts sound healthy to you?"


    "Not really," she said with a smirk. "But there''s a big difference between blindly choosing something just because it''s there, and realizing all of the faults with something and picking it anyway. One''s just infatuation, the other is love. No problem with an unhealthy life it''s the one you chose...but all the problems in the world with just falling into one."


    "You...love machines?" I asked.


    She snorted. "Physically?"


    I blinked at her. "Not what I meant. But uh. Is this the kind of thing I should be asking? This is super invasive, I don''t even know how this conversation got here."


    "It got here because I don''t mince words and you don''t think before opening your mouth."


    I waited for her to say more. After a moment she smirked knowingly at me and rolled her eyes. "I do love machines, and I have made and used them. But it''s not like the thought of an EM drive gets me horny. It''s more like research."


    "For...for what?"


    "Mobile mods, mostly. Some people really do want to turn it into an all-in-one."


    "Wow. That is way too much information. I was right after all."


    "You asked," she said with her smirk. "I''m gonna step out and get some coffee. Can you man the register?"


    "What do I do?"


    "Mostly, stay back here and ignore anyone who comes in. If they sneak in and you like them, you can offer them a shower and a bed. That''s what I do."


    "I meant seriously."


    "Stand there, and if someone wants something, tell them I''ll be ten minutes."


    "Don''t they have signs that say that? Couldn''t you make a holo that says that in like, five minutes?"


    "Do you want me to pay the sign and give the sign your bed?"


    "Yeah I''ll stop talking and stand behind the register now."


    I did my best to stand there vigilantly, but I already kind of knew just by the state of this place that nobody would come. There wasn''t much to do but think and watch Tem delicately poking around, trying to find a place to sit and hide where she wouldn''t cause me trouble.


    She''d been impossible these last few days, refusing to eat if she thought I was hungry at all, telling me she didn''t deserve food and it was wasted on her, and several times I just had to sit her down and order her in no uncertain terms that she would eat. And thinking about that, and the words that Whitney had left me with, I began to reflect a little.


    Love is when you see the flaws in something and choose it anyway, she''d said. Infatuation was just blindly choosing something because it was there.


    Tem was easily the most flawed thing I''d ever met, and yet I refused to let her come to harm, or abandon her, or even properly let myself hate her for what she chose to do and to be. Certainly part of it was a sense of obligation, but there was more to it than that. I honestly didn''t want bad things happening to her, and would protect her as I could. I saw her faults, but chose her anyway. Was that love?


    If so, it wasn''t reciprocal. I don''t think Tem knew I could have faults.


    Somewhat amused, by idle standards, I continued to apply this rule to my other relationships to see how they fared.


    I''d seen Lia growing up every day from her childhood fear of chocolate ice cream to overtraining ruining her chances at regionals in volleyball last year. I might give her faults a pass, but I sure as shit knew them all. Couldn''t be anything but love.


    Karu had...until very recently, apparently been suffering a lot behind the confident glow of her visor, to the point of self-harm, and I never knew a thing about it. Considering her other failings--her bigotry, violent temperament, selfishness, her inability to ask for help--they all seemed so small compared to the newest revelations. I had to conclude I didn''t know Karu very well at all, despite everything between us. Yet she seemed to know me better than I knew myself at times. Hers was love and mine was infatuation?


    Saga was easy. We literally could not keep a secret from the other unless that person was letting us. Every one of our flaws was plain and bare.


    AEGIS was also easy. I''d been with her through thick and thin, and she''d done the same for me. Even when she''d disagreed with me, she''d helped me anyway. I remembered her tournaqueting my leg so I could march against the XPCA to my death, with her at my side. I remembered us arguing semantics about what did or did not constitute a date, and while we were there, my selfishly ruining her date plans by forcing us to talk about copies and the nature of machine consciousness.


    How many times we''d been there for each other. How many times we''d disagreed or even fought, but still came through.


    Until...until recently. When she''d died. This had all stopped then, I realized. Ever since, she''d...just been imitating what she''d seen me and AEGIS Prime do. The cooking, the sexcapades, the persistent video-game references. They were all calculated to hit me in the feels...not because she knew me, but because that''s what someone else had done. That''s what she''d done before, and it had worked.


    It was fake, and I knew that, but I''d never stopped to think about what that meant, about what that drove AEGIS and myself towards. I''d always had this idea that she''d get ahold of herself and go back to being who I knew.


    But it wasn''t working, and it wasn''t going to, was it? Because I didn''t know who she was, and she had no idea who I''d become.


    My thoughts suddenly seemed a lot more agonizing. I loved AEGIS, and I knew that, and I told her that. And the guilty part of me that said I knew all along that this wasn''t AEGIS Prime. She wasn''t the same girl I loved, and I''d always known that. I was stupid to think otherwise.


    Guilt and stubbornness warred inside me. AEGIS was fine, I insisted to myself. She would recover, she''d become exactly as she was before. And yet, I didn''t see any way she could.


    What was I doing? Why was I doing this to myself? I had Defiant to chase, I reminded myself. I was a freaking fugitive. I ate dog food for dinner. Was this really the time to debate love?


    The answer, screamed my brain, was yes.


    Whitney came back and commended my service, telling me to keep up the good work as she went through to the back, and I remained there, a statue leaning on the counter, my head spinning in my hands.


    For hours. Who knew simple words could do that?


    It wasn''t the words, I knew that. It was the cracks I was avoiding looking at this whole time. But fuck. I needed anything to blame. I needed...justification. Realization. I needed someone to talk to.


    "Tem," I whispered to her, and she sat up, unnoticeable to all but me. "Tem, I have a really important question."


    "I...I don''t know, but...but ask anything you like."


    "Tem...do I...do I really love AEGIS?"


    She materialized and stared at me so intently it was like seeing a whole different girl. Rarely had she ever looked me in the eyes, and never with such intensity. It actually startled me, which had never happened since I realized I could track her.


    "I don''t know," she said sternly. Angry, even. "But if you have to ask, isn''t that an answer?"


    "T-thanks," I said apologetically. She gave me a terse nod and then disappeared again.


    Even if she said she wasn''t sure, her answer was pretty clear. But what crystallized my thoughts more than anything was my little stutter of surprise.


    I hated Tem. I knew that. I never wanted to be her, no matter what. She represented all the things I hated in me. Things I refused to give in to. Things my stubbornness and my guilt could agree to loathe.


    And yet, here, now, torturing myself over AEGIS and nebulous definitions of love, I was the one stuttering and looking for her approval, wanting her guidance.


    I hated myself for being it. And I hated AEGIS for making me be it.


    I saw the anger in Tem''s eyes when she''d answered. She knew. She hated herself too, and if I ever became like her, she''d never forgive me.


    Asking her had been a mistake. I couldn''t make Tem worry like that about my problems, or drag her into my relationships. It was a stupid, selfish move, and I regretted it instantly.


    But even so, somehow, she''d given me some painful, incredible advice.


    Did I love AEGIS? Or did I love the idea of what AEGIS might be? Just the fact I had to ask was an answer.

 254. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Repair and Service, OR. Athan.

    I woke up the next day disoriented, with my head feeling heavy. The small window informed me it was still dark out, though the sun was beginning to creep in. The time I probably should be waking up, if my schedule were intact, and get out on my run.


    But the dark confines of this back room were like a cocoon, and they made me feel sleepy and lazy. I yawned and stretched, realizing my mobile was lit up, and on checking it, saw I had a message a few seconds ago, which must have woken me up.


    > hey athan! sorry I can''t be with you today, I had big plans


    > but happy valentines day anyway


    And a picture of AEGIS with a <3 on her pixels and her fingers tracing the same shape in the air.


    I put the mobile down, feeling even crummier and more heavy. I wasn''t excited or happy to see the message at all, maybe because I was having doubts about us...and the fact I wasn''t gave me even more doubts. Shouldn''t I be happy and excited to be messaging with my girlfriend on Valentine''s Day?


    I hopped out of bed and saw the glow of the workbench light where Whitney was already up and doing something. I ignored her for the moment and ducked into the shower, where I had stashed some groceries out of the way. My clothes were also in there, clean from a laundromat trip I''d made while getting those groceries last night. I managed to pull enough clothes out from under the invisible Tem to assemble an outfit, changed, and put a dinner roll in my mouth and pressed one into Tem''s hands before heading back to Whitney.


    "Not tripping over as much junk," she said as I approached.


    "I''m getting better at stepping over it."


    "I think you''re actually just succeeding in making the piles smaller. Soon, I won''t have a use for you, and you''ll be stuck standing behind a counter all day like every other wage slave."


    "Yippee," I said, and fell into a stool next to her, slumping on the workbench with the roll hanging out of my mouth.


    She gave me a glance and then went back to focusing on the tiny plate she was unscrewing from some device. "What''s wrong, friendo?"


    "Nothing."


    "If nothing''s wrong, you should work on your resting face. Talk to me." She shrugged. "Or don''t."


    I thought it over as I chewed my roll slowly. I really hadn''t wanted anything more in the world than to talk it over with somebody, and as an outsider, Whitney might have a more impartial opinion which could be useful. While Tem was great and everything...and by ''and everything'' I mean not great...I really could use an opinion.


    Even if Whitney was weird. Normal, by my standards, but still weird.


    "You ever date anyone, Whitney?"


    She put her driver down and spun on the stool. "A few times. Couple guys. A girl. Found out they weren''t for me. Is this a relationship thing?"


    "Yeah."


    "Uh oh. Shouldn''t have opened my mouth," she said with a smirk. "People are complicated. Machines are simple."


    "Machines are complicated, people are simple," I said, shaking my head. "People don''t need to be taught how to function or be given a direction before they have any use at all...they handle themselves and figure things out."


    "Yeah, and in the figuring things out, they make a lot of mistakes. Machines don''t make mistakes, the just do exactly what you tell them. If something wrong, it comes back to the people behind them in the end."


    "Maybe, but like, anyone can talk to another person and get some shit done if they need to. If you gave me a thousand years with what you''re working on right now, I''d never get it."


    "Only because I''ve had years of experience and training and you haven''t."


    "See? So dealing with machines must be more complicated because it needs special training."


    "And just what do you call the first years of life?" she asked with her trademark smirk. "And all the years after that...learning to fit in, talk to people, express yourself, figure out your own identity...that stuff only exists in the context of dealing with other people.


    She held up the part she was working on. "This fine lady doesn''t care what clique or strata or appearance you have. If you walked in here looking and smelling like garbage and did all the right steps, you''d fix her, same as if I did those things. But if you pulled the same moves as me on a cutie at the bar, I think you''d find that we''d get very different results."


    I frowned at her. I saw her point, but that wasn''t how the world was, in my experience. She''d had years and years working on machines, and maybe once you got up there, she just made the impossible look easy. I wasn''t exactly technologically illiterate, but I''d never really gotten much past playing with my mobile and tapping my way around a computer.


    It was kind of weird, I realized, that two people could have such opposing worldviews on something so simple. Maybe, as she hinted, it was because she was like that, that she''d seen fit to take me in. I''d certainly been rejected by plenty of other people...what was it about her that let her see past that?


    And what, I wondered, would she think if she ever learned I was Exhuman?


    "Regardless," she said, raising an eyebrow. "I very much doubt your relationship issue is with a machine."


    I had to laugh, and she watched with a politely confused smirk while I finished.


    "Yeah, I don''t know. I''m probably just overthinking it."


    "If that''s what you believe," she said, turning back to her work. It was almost like she was baiting me. Her words and actions said she didn''t care about my drama. But how quickly she dropped it said she did. Somehow.


    I was probably just crazy. This wasn''t Moon or Saga, Whitney pretty much said and did exactly as she felt, I thought. But she did say to talk if I felt like it, and I did¡­


    "So...my girlfriend. Uh. Wow. Where to start with this." She sat and waited patiently, a look of plain curiosity in place. Her green eyes were darker than Karu''s, with what looked like a bit of brown in them, and from behind her thick plastic frames, they flickered back and forth between my own eyes rhymically, precisely.


    "I''m having doubts we''re good together," I said. "I keep hoping she''ll become...someone else. Which isn''t like, something I''m forcing on her, she wants to, and I want to support her in that it''s just...it''s like she doesn''t understand why she''s making these changes and doing these things. She''s going through the motions of trying to be a new person but¡­"


    "Isn''t?"


    "Yeah."


    "And you''re sure you''re not trying to get her to change? Or she''s changing for you? Or pretending to?"


    "Pretending to?"


    She gave a small shrug. "Changing yourself is hard. If it''s like you say and she''s just going through the motions, maybe her heart''s not in it. Maybe she doesn''t really want to change but you expect her to, or she promised she would, or whatever happened there."


    "I mean...maybe. But some things...I''m sure you don''t want to hear about it, but she goes at it with such...gusto."


    "Sexually?"


    "I meant...cooking. But yeah, that too. Last time, she woke me up and locked me in the room until she was satisfied with me. It was...awkward. Painful. Not really...fun."


    "The cooking?"


    I laughed. "This time I meant the sex, but yes, that too."


    She gave me a small smirk that was the only indication she''d been joking but it faded fast. "Did you tell her no? Cooking or sex."


    "Yeah. But it''s fine!" I added. "She won''t actually cross the line unless I say it''s okay. Just...hand and mouth stuff."


    "Cooking?"


    "...that too?"


    "I am just kidding you know."


    "Yeah."


    "Why do you think she doesn''t stop if you say no? That just sounds wrong. Disrespectful at best."


    "I''m a teenage guy. Come on," I laughed. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    She did not. "Was that supposed to be a joke? Does being a teenage male prohibit your opinion from having any weight? Or make your feelings any less valid?"


    "No. Of course not. But like...sex, you know? It''s what every guy my age wants, and it''s on a silver platter. Of course I''m not going to say no."


    "But you did."


    "Well...yeah. But that doesn''t count, right?"


    She tapped the side of her frames like somehow that was going to help her think. I imagined it would just make her vision jump around, but she''d clearly practiced the maneuver, maybe for longer than I''d been alive. Her frown was deepening the whole time.


    "If there were an out of control car heading for your girlfriend, and you could save her by pushing her aside, but you''d get hit, would you do it?" she asked.


    "Of course."


    "Not even going to stop to think?"


    "What''s there to think about? If I can help her, I would. Same for any of my friends. You too, probably. Maybe. Sorry. Is that too soon?"


    She didn''t smile. She frowned harder, her mouth curving into a very small downward-U.


    Yeah maybe too soon.


    "If there was a car headed for her, and you could stop it by having a chainsaw slowly pushed through your gut. Same question."


    "Of course I would. That''s the same thing."


    "How about...if you spent the rest of your life in jail? Solitary confinement. Never see or hear anyone ever again."


    "How''s that worse than dying to the chainsaw?"


    "What if every person you''d ever known forgot you existed, and you just vanished utterly."


    "I''d still be dead...I don''t get why you''re asking all this."


    "One more. Would you kill an innocent stranger to save her?"


    "I¡­" I had to stop and think for the first time. "I don''t know. Maybe? Probably not. I think...yes in...like...right now. In my mind and my heart. But if it came to pulling the trigger, I don''t think I could."


    "But if you had to shoot one of them?"


    "Then the stranger, yeah. But...anyone would shoot a stranger over their friend."


    "I''m just trying to establish if there''s anything you wouldn''t sacrifice of yourself. Your life, your suffering, your ego, your legacy. Your principles."


    "And did I pass?"


    She shook her head. "You failed tremendously."


    "What? I''d do anything. I mean, I know I said--"


    She was still shaking her head. "That''s why you fail, friendo. You don''t give a single care about yourself do you? I thought you came in here looking for a job, dog food on your breath because you were just really bad at being homeless and weren''t taking care of yourself, but you never take care of yourself, do you?"


    "I don''t...I don''t follow."


    "Look, I don''t know you that well. It''s been, what, two days? I can''t pretend to have figured you all out. And I''m no social butterfly. My family are machines, for God''s sake. But it sure sounds to me like you have no idea how to say no to someone."


    "That''s not true. I say no to lots of people! When I came out here, she wanted to come with me, and I told her no."


    "Because you didn''t want to force her to be homeless too, but were willing to put that on yourself?"


    I swallowed hard. To protect her, yeah. The only reason I bought Tem was because I thought she''d fare worse without me. I didn''t want Tem here. I did want AEGIS here. But Whitney was wrong, this wasn''t about my ability to refuse things, people did shit they didn''t want to all the time, that was called being mature.


    "No, having a backbone and standing up for yourself is being mature," she replied when I said that. "It''s easy to do what everyone else tells you. It''s hard to find your own direction, your own boundaries. Doing things just because that''s how other people do it, that''s how children learn. You don''t know what''s right or wrong, so you depend on your parents to decide for you. But at some point, you gotta grow up, figure out on your own what you''ll stand for." She gave a little shrug. "Unless you think your parents were perfectly right about everything. But if you still think that, boy have I got a life lesson for you, friendo."


    Well, my parents certainly weren''t that. I tried to think back, it felt like so long ago when I''d lived under their roof. It wasn''t even a year, but it seemed strangely distant, like all the bizarre things in my life and near-death experiences were so engrossing they''d forced out everything else which had come before.


    I was a pretty good kid. I had my reputation to take care of, so that I wouldn''t lose my scholarship. I was focused on athletics and study, and while the other guys were always going out to party, I hadn''t. I couldn''t.


    I...could, though. If I''d wanted to. But I didn''t want to. I wanted to protect my future.


    I felt my face tense involuntarily. I''d heard that expression so many times from my dad. It''s fine to have a little fun, but don''t forget to protect your future. Maybe you shouldn''t go snowboarding this winter, can''t risk an injury, we need to protect your future. No you can''t go to that party, we don''t want you getting mixed up with drinking and drugs, you have to protect your future.


    I realized the other half of my roll had fallen out of my hands onto the table in front of me. I went to pick it up and realized my hand was shaking.


    I had wanted to go do things. I had wanted to have real friends, and party, and have a girlfriend. I wanted to try drinking, and maybe even try a hit or two of something benign, maybe. Normal kids got to make mistakes to figure out their lives, but Lia and I never did. We were told we were special, talented, different, that we didn''t want those lives.


    But I did! Of course we did. It sucked being at practice when all the other kids got to go home. It sucked spending the whole rest of my evening finishing homework and then going to bed early. Nobody wanted that...I loved football, and it was what was right for me, but I never even got to discover that for myself.


    I threw my bread at the wall where it bounced off with an explosion of crumbs, Whitney watching with mild concern. I never stood up for myself to them, I never asked for anything. I already knew the answer before I ever asked, so I never let myself ask. That way I wouldn''t have to hear them say no. That way I could hold onto that illusion that if I did ever ask, maybe they''d say yes.


    Would they have? Doesn''t matter. Because I''d never ask. Because I was just a fucking doormat, wasn''t I?


    "You okay over there, New Guy?" Whitney asked. "Since you just commited panicide."


    I looked at her, feeling heat under my skin. And after all that, after all the trust I''d put in them, they''d just completely flipped on me when I was Exhuman. Even if I could accept that, what they''d done to Lia afterwards...my blood felt hot. I hated them so much right now.


    I guess I''d never had a proper rebellious phase, but mine felt like it was about to begin explosively.


    "See, that was actually a joke. Because pan- as a prefix usually means like, everything? But it''s also the root word in latin for bread."


    "Whitney, not now," I said, gritting my teeth.


    "Why not now?"


    "Because I''m fucking pissed!" I yelled at her. "Because you just shoved in my face that my parents shit all over my entire childhood, and especially my sister!"


    She seemed to shrink a little bit as I yelled.


    "Okay. That''s fair," she said. "I''ll go man the front of the store. You just finish up in here as long as you need."


    She skirted around me and slipped out the door, padding quietly even with her big unlaced boots.


    "God fucking damn it!" I screamed, and slammed my fists against the bench. "I fucking hate you!"


    Tem popped out behind me, close enough that I should have sensed her, but I hadn''t. "Do you want me to fry her?" she asked, looking at me darkly.


    "No, I want you to fry my fucking parents," I growled at her. She just nodded, vanished and began to leave. "Tem, stop."


    "If they hurt you, I will hurt them."


    "Tem, fuck, I''m just...I''m just angry, okay? Nobody needs to fry. It''s all in the past. It''s all just scars and messed-up kids at this point." I slid off my stool and sat on the floor. I felt exactly like why I hated Tem. I had all this power at my fingertips, and all I could manage with it was being this shitty, angry, pointless person. I felt like wasted potential. I felt angry, without anything to dump my anger onto.


    I felt like garbage.


    I''d screamed at my boss, I''d ruined the conversation I forced on her, I threw the first food I''d earned and bought against a wall, and I''d almost sicced my homicidal doom-cannon on...on...California, charitably, and for the first time since my exile, I was seriously thinking about my parents, and not coping well.


    At least I still had the presence of mind to make lists like that. A super-essential skill which would surely carry me through life.


    I tried to sit and calm down, but it didn''t work. I was just...heavy with rage. I wanted to pulverize something, to have control over one stupid fucking thing in my own damn life, and for it to be me, the real me, not this...this piece of shit that let his girlfriend molest him that my parents made.


    I wanted to do something wrong for once. Something my parents would never have permitted. Something that would make them embarrassed to ever know me, so I could point at them and say those fuckers did this.


    I wanted, I realized, to have an Exhuman event. And that was a bad idea. But that''s where my mind was.


    "Tem, can you do something for me?"


    A minute later, I was standing in a clear, grassy field, tranquil and serene as anything. Trees grew in the distance, and the sun warmed my skin with its delicate touch. I could almost smell the grass, almost hear the birds.


    And there in front of me, I was standing. Tall. Confident. As sure and strong and carefully molded as Tem and my parents thought I was.


    I screamed with rage as I tore myself to pieces with my blades, punching them in and out of the body with uninhibited, feral bloodlust. Every fucking thing they''d ever made me do, ever made me make myself do, I erased.


    At the end of my breath, he was gone, and I stood panting, sweating, shaking. After a few more uncertain seconds, the rest of Tem''s illusion disappeared, revealing her standing at my side, trembling with uncertainty, having watched me just snap and kill myself in effigy.


    I put a hand on her shoulder and she seemed to almost faint.


    "Thanks," I said simply, and moved past her, disappearing my blades as I went.


    I found Whitney at the counter where she was standing very still with her headphones on so loud I could hear her music even from behind her. She did not sing, did not stir, just stood and stared through the front window at the street outside.


    I tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned to me slowly, switching her music off and lifting one cup of her headphones to rest above her ear.


    "Feeling better?" she asked, her eyes rhythmically moving back and forth between mine again, though much faster this time.


    "Yes. I''m sorry."


    "It''s okay. This was a good thing. Getting angry is an important part of being human."


    "I hate being human," I said, fully aware of the hypocrisy.


    "That''s also an important part of being human," she said with a cautious smirk. "Now let''s go do something nice and simple like work with machines, right?"


    "Yeah," I said, shaking my head. "Simple machines."

 255. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Repair and Service, OR. Athan.

    I made it through the next few hours in a haze, trying to focus on my work and put aside all the complicated thoughts I had of parents and girlfriends and sisters and myself.


    Like Moon, maybe. Just bottle up everything even resembling an emotion, and lock it away forever where I never had to deal with it. Seemed like a much easier plan than the alternative.


    Except for the part where I sucked at that, but whatever. Whitney was way more understanding than I deserved, and pretended not to notice whenever I took a minute to stop and breathe and clear my head.


    I''d just finished packing another box and was feeling a sense of minor accomplishment, which cut through my emotions more effectively than I''d thought possible, when my mobile rang. I checked the caller and found Jack of all people was dialing me.


    He didn''t know where I was. As long as I didn''t let anything slip, I should be fine. Plus I really wanted to hear a friendly voice. Jack wasn''t my top pick, but I''d take anything.


    I put myself in a back corner where I could see Whitney if she came in and answered.


    "Hello Chariot, happy Valentine''s day," Jack said.


    "Hi Jack, same to you. How can I help you?"


    "I wanted to...hmm...how best to put this. I wanted to insist you cease this madness. Your path leads only to ruin."


    "Gee, thanks, don''t smother me in small talk or anything," I said, about ready to hang up. "Are you just another mouthpiece for Colonel Micaiah now?"


    "You misunderstand. While your decision to run is troublesome, I sympathize, probably more than most. Unlike the others, I did not go quietly into Blackett''s service," he said, with a hint of bemusement. "But no, I speak of your involvement in the case of the Defiant. Your sister and body-modder friend have been covertly reaching out to your allies, and I was informed of your situation."


    "Those two are irrepressible," I sighed. It did feel good to be loved though.


    "Indeed. However, if what they say is true, you are on a collision course with Dragon, and I must warn you off of this path. Dragon is not an entity you can defeat, Chariot. Stay far away from him if you wish to continue living."


    "That''s why you''re calling? Jack, Dragon is the entire reason¡­" I stopped. Almost said too much there. "...I''m in this mess. I''d welcome a chance to put him down and fix all of this."


    "And instead, he will put you down. I repeat myself to leave no ambiguity -- Dragon is your superior in strength. You will not best him, and doing so will lead to death."


    "How do you know that? He''s never fought me before."


    "The arrogance of that aside, I have fought both of you. I can say with certainty."


    "You fought him?"


    "I tried to ambush him. Even with my powers and the element of surprise, I stood no chance. Do not engage Dragon, Chariot."


    "Wait, how''s that even possible? You can just...jump on someone. How the fuck could he live through that?"


    "I''ve long speculated, but never been satisfied. I suspect nobody could tell me but the man himself, and I doubt very much he would waste his time telling."


    "And you fought him? When? Why?"


    Jack went silent for a few seconds. "I do not care to divulge. It is a dark time in my past."


    "That''s it? You had a dark time and you went toe-to-toe with a Sino assassin?"


    He sighed. "If I tell you, will you abandon this pursuit?"


    "I can''t. He''s gonna end the freaking world by harrying the Defiant, Jack. Even if he kills me, if I do nothing, we''re probably all gonna get caught up in it anyway. So it''s one assassin now, or twenty Exhumans later."


    Again, he chewed on his thoughts. "Chariot, I know you may not believe me in this, but I think you may have better odds against the twenty."


    "You''re serious?"


    "I am. Especially if Dragon is already softening them up for you. But there is the troubling possibility that, should they begin an Exhuman event, he would operate to facilitate it and maximize its damage...pitting you against twenty-one, and the most unwinnable scenario by far."


    "Then I have to try to stop him."


    "Then you are a dead man walking, Chariot. I don''t know how else to emphasize this to you. Please reconsider."


    "I don''t know what I''m supposed to do with this," I said, my voice rising. "I can''t just do nothing, or we''ll die that way. All I have from your intel is that I''m screwed, pretty much."


    "Yes, I understand the problem. I don''t have a clear solution for you, unfortunately. But perhaps if we ride out the event for a time, we will earn our opportunity to strike back. The few of us can win a war of attrition against the many of them. But not if we throw ourselves away before the battle begins. All I know is that to face him is to face death, and pointlessly."


    "Well, thanks, Jack. Just great to hear. We''ll just let the country burn until we build up the stones to do something about it."


    "Acting with intelligence is not cowardice--"


    I hung up on him. Just fucking great. Just fucking useless. Like I didn''t already know the whole situation was utterly fucked, now I get the unsurprising news that a professional killer is probably better at it than I am.


    And I''d probably said way too much. If the XPCA were listening, they were pretty fucking sure I was wherever the Defiant were, or wherever Dragon was, and I was confident they had tabs on both of them. I had half a mind to leave right now, find Rito, and get the fuck out of here.


    That''s what Jack would have wanted me to do. Bail and find another time. Maybe that was even the smart thing to do.


    But fuck it, I''d spent all this time positioning myself here. I couldn''t just go without trying.


    I went to the front of the store where Whitney was sitting on the floor seemingly unpacking one of my boxes, or at least taking out and playing with everything in it.


    "I was going to put it back," she said guiltily as she saw me.


    "Do you have a burner mobile I can use?" I asked her.


    "I do. But why?" she asked, her impartial gaze boring into me.


    "Trying to avert the end of the world. Seriously."


    "I see that you''re serious. But that doesn''t mean you can''t be wrong. Sometimes the end of the world just feels that way. Sometimes you run into your problems by trying to avert them."


    "Great advice, but not really applicable here. Can I please borrow one?"


    She rose and made her way to the back, her eyes lingering on mine as she passed me. A minute later, she came back with some kind of amalgamated mess of parts that in no way resembled a mobile. More like a pancake of boards, all mounted on a cubic lattice of wire.


    "She''s the best I have on short notice Her name''s Enforcer, she''s even more untraceable than your Seraphim, probably." She didn''t hand it over. "I''m an open person, Athan. So I have no problem telling you I''m torn."


    "About what?"


    "It''s obvious you have a lot going on in your life, and I try not to pry. You ran away from home, you hate your parents, you have issues with your girlfriend whom you left behind...I pick up hints here and there and I start to see a picture. And I think, in general, you''re a decent guy who''s smart and trustworthy enough to run amok in my shop, obviously."


    She hefted the metal machine pancake and gestured it at me.


    "But this is too much. Your Seraphim wouldn''t be out of place as military hardware, or in the hands of an assassin or arms dealer or black market something. You talk about saving the world or dooming it, and I know it''s just a high schooler whose entire world feels like it''s on the edge...but watching you tells me something else. It''s unnerving. I don''t even know what it is, but you don''t act like a kid, and so it''s hard for me to attribute your actions as one."


    She tapped her frames thoughtfully. "And if that''s so, then you''re serious about all of this, and then I have to wonder, just who the hell are you?"


    She finished talking and the two of us fell into silence. Why''d she have to be so fucking observant? Of all the people I could be hiding behind, I had to wind up with one who saw right through me.


    I could try to downplay it, tell her I am just a kid. Or I could tell her the truth. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Or I could just take her monster of a mobile and do what had to be done, and avoid this entire conversation. Even if she was a couple inches taller than me, I still had a lot of weight on her. But I didn''t want that, obviously.


    I sighed. Sometimes, I thought, life would be so much easier if I were just one of those Exhumans.


    "If it''s personal," she said, seemingly unable to take the silence any more "just tell me and I''ll back off. But if it''s something more...I think I should know what I''m getting caught up in. Doesn''t that seem fair?"


    "Life isn''t fair," I scoffed.


    "Oh, I am well aware of that. But here between friends or...associates...or whatever we are, it can be."


    "All right," I said, and let out a deep breath. "I''m former XPCA."


    "At your age?"


    "Yes. But let me finish. I was doing my job, stopping bad guys, XPCA stuff. And then one day, there''s an Exhuman we don''t want dead, because he''s part of a group called the Defiant Unchained, and if any of them wind up dead, they threatened to destroy us."


    "And he wound up dead, didn''t he?"


    "Yeah. And the blame wound up on me somehow, even though there''s this assassin creeping around who obviously did it. Or...suspicion of blame. Whatever it was, I ran. Couldn''t use my mobile for anything, couldn''t spend any of my credits, and wound up here."


    "And now you need to call who, and why?"


    "I need to call the Defiant to tell them about the assassin, and hopefully keep them from going apeshit if or when he strikes again."


    "And they''d be listening to your calls even if your position is encrypted. I see." She mused for a second. "Your story has more holes in it than a breadboard. And you still haven''t told me why you''re some super agent at, what are you, seventeen?"


    "Nineteen," I said, feeling vaguely offended. "And you''re right. I left out a lot of...details. But you wanted to know, and that''s the story."


    "Well...if what you say is true, I lose nothing by letting you make a call," she said, and put her headphones on. She spent a minute fiddling with the pancake mobile before she put the headphones on me, working uncomfortably close to my face with eyes that didn''t seem to blink enough as she cinched them into the right position.


    "Use this holo here," she said, muted through the headphones. "I don''t really believe you, but in the off chance I''m wrong, good luck with the world, I guess?"


    And then she went back to her box of parts, staying within earshot because why not.


    I looked up the number on my mobile and put it into the pancake. After a couple of rings, I heard someone pick up but nobody spoke. Heavy mouth breathing, though, which felt uncomfortably trapped in these headphones.


    "Hello?" I asked.


    "Hhhhhhhi," it said breathily.


    "Uh. Who is this?"


    "Glenn."


    Glenn. Glenn. I knew a Glenn. Then the number I dialed and the name clicked. Their younger kid. He was like, four? Or two? Something like that. Old enough to answer the phone I guess.


    "Hey there buddy, is your sister around?"


    "Okay," he said. Silence followed.


    "...uh. Glenn, buddy?" No response.


    I just had to assume the kid was doing what I''d asked. A minute later I heard muted words of the kid carrying the mobile, and the high-pitched irritated responses of a girl.


    "Well, who is it?" she asked.


    "''Unno."


    "So ask him? God, Glenn, you''re such a pain in the ass."


    "Gonna tell Mom you said a swear."


    "If you so much as open your mouth to Trish, I will punt your stupid toy bear into the moon."


    "Mom said you''re not suppos''t a threaten Bernie."


    "Just give me the mobile and go away." There was rustling as the exchange was inexpertly handled. "Hello?" she asked, her voice suddenly sickly-sweet. "Might I inquire who is calling?"


    "Hi. It''s Athan. We met once or twice?"


    "Oh," she said, the sugar all gone from her voice instantly. "What do you want? If you''re calling to apologize, I''d rather eat a rusty nail than forgive you, so just hang up now."


    Pleasant kid. Trish and Gil really hit the jackpot in this one.


    "Listen...girl," I said, realizing I still didn''t remember her name. "I need the number for someone in the Defiant. It''s a matter of national security."


    She scoffed. "Oh, like I''m supposed to do you favors now? You like, murdered my rep. Why would I do anything for you?"


    "Because you''ll fucking die if you don''t. You, your brother, your parents--"


    "They''re not my parents."


    "Whatever the fuck they are or aren''t to you, they''ll be dead."


    I hadn''t really gone into this call with much of a strategy, but...uh...whatever her name was, her arrogant selfish attitude and uncooperation pushed us right into making threats. I sucked at lying, and I sure wasn''t going to try to appeal to her sense of decency or principles, it sounded like she was born without those.


    So she was gonna hear how badly she was going to suffer and die if she didn''t give me some numbers. Maybe this wasn''t actually a strategy so much as a reaction.


    "I don''t even care. Trish and Gil are little bitches anyway," she said, with more haught than anyone ought to have. "Always telling me what to do and stopping me from having fun. It''s straight BS."


    "Wow, you''re a shitty person," I said. "I thought you were conceited and stupid, but as it turns out, you''ve nailed the trifecta, and you''re just a crap person on top of it all. Do you have any friends?"


    "Uh, yeah?"


    I waited for more details. None were forthcoming. "Um, lots of them, duh."


    "Nice. Very convincing."


    "It''s not my fault, okay? I''ve got little whores like you and Glenn running around making me look bad, like you''re trying to ruin my life. I''ve also got this condition, called being an Exhuman if you didn''t notice. Straight BS, so unfair."


    "Yeah, I''ve got a similar affliction," I said, glancing at Whitney. I''ve got quite a few friends. Came from not being a total shit all the time to everyone I met."


    "Could you hurry up and die already? Jesus."


    "Funny. Because I probably will. I''m gonna go face a fucking professional assassin and in all likelihood, throw away my life in a fucking worthless attempt and stopping him from killing any more people and priming the Defiant to go nuclear. That''s my weekend plans. What are yours? Gonna get your nails did? Read some fucking fashion tips? Maybe scare a guy or two off women forever?"


    "Fuck you, asshole."


    "You hate me?"


    "Only every fucking bit of you."


    "Good. Then tell me some numbers so I can go die and try to save your stupid life."


    She went silent for a second. "If I tell you, will you fuck off and die?"


    "It''d be my pleasure. I''ll tell Satan you sent me." I grinned. I liked that line. A little flattery, kinda. I thought it was something Lia might do.


    And it seemed to work, because she began to read me numbers off her mobile, I assumed. As she did, I entered them into the pancake''s holo.


    "Now go die or whatever. Never call me again," she said.


    "I didn''t call you, I called Trish."


    "Whatever. Fuck you."


    "Fuck you, too," I said, and hung up.


    "What the hell was that?" Whitney asked, both of her hands on her head. "What...no...just what the hell was that?"


    "That," I said, dialing the Defiant "was a highly successful phone call."


    "Is that how all of your calls go? Are you socially retarded? Even more than me?"


    "No, but she''s a bitch, so I thought, what the hell."


    "You''re either an idiot or a genius," she said.


    "Idiot, definitely," I grinned at her as I put the headphones back on. "Yes, hi? This is sort of out of the blue I''m sure, but my name is Athan Ashton...if you''re a member of the Defiant Unchained, we met briefly a couple times, under Primrose High School?"


    My contact warily acknowledged they''d heard of me, and I felt relief flow through me that Haley...shit, that was her name! Well, that Haley hadn''t just given me a fake number.


    "Listen, you''re all in huge danger. I''ve found out who''s behind the killings. It''s a professional assassin with ties to China. He wants to use the Defiant to overthrow the US. I''d like to meet and go over the details, but if you don''t want to...I understand. But at the very least, please tell the others what I just said, and stay together at all times. Like, seriously."


    He assured me he would, and thanked me even. I gave him the number for the pancake, reading it out of one of the holo''s menus, and then, just like that, it was over.


    I felt...something, I guess. I felt relief, to a degree? Whatever Jack''s opinion, the Defiant had to be stronger than Dragon, or else he''d just do himself what he was using them for. If they stayed together at all times, he couldn''t pick them off anymore, he''d be an assassin against a small army, and that''s not how assassins operated.


    I hoped.


    Mostly I just felt spent. I''d been through so many emotional hurdles today, and this one just seemed like the final push. I felt the satisfaction of putting in a good day''s work, the fatigue of adrenaline emptying out of me, the sort of agitated calm of coming down from an emotional high.


    I just wanted to spend the next few hours in quiet, putting parts in boxes. Yeah, that sounded great. And then a hot shower, eat a banana I''d bought earlier, go to bed early...enjoy my few minutes of downtime while the Defiant coordinated and I waited to hear back from them.


    Honestly, it felt anticlimactic. But that was the kind of climax I enjoyed, when shit was this fucked up.


    "Are...you done?" Whitney asked. She was still sitting on the floor with her toys, having touched none of them the entire time I was on the mobile.


    "For today, it looks like. I''m going to go take a walk around the block if that''s cool."


    "Sounds good to me. You''ll have to tell me what the other end of that shouted ''fuck you'' conversation was about."


    "Sure thing," I said, passing her by as I made for the door. I opened it up and stretched, feeling a damp breeze hit me the moment I went outside, the smell of wet road welcome and grounding. It was early afternoon, but felt much later. I finished my stretch and looked out at the little strip mall parking lot. As usual, this end was pretty empty. Whitney didn''t exactly draw a lot of customers and neither did the little art gallery-slash-antique store next door.


    There was one car though. Parked front-and-center, only a few feet from me. A black sedan with tinted windows, the shape of which rang an alarm bell deep in the back of my mind. I tried to piece together where I''d seen this make of car...I''d seen fleets of them.


    The driver''s door opened and a polished black boot stepped out. The rest of the black uniform came into view, followed closely by the head of Lieutenant Colonel Micaiah Teryn, Intelligence Division, XPCA.


    "Hello Athan," he said with a breezy smile. "Nice weather today."


    Welp. So much for my fucking banana.

 256. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Repair and Service, OR. Whitney.

    I watched with some small amount of concern, appropriate I thought for the situation, as New Guy froze in the doorway. He turned back to me, quipped that he''d be a little longer than he intended, giving a dishonest half-smile, and then left.


    It wasn''t my mess to stick my nose into in the first place, and I wasn''t going to start now, but over the course of this morning, he''d gone from troubled but well-intentioned kid hard on his luck to whatever the mess he was now. If strangers were showing up at my shop, I was definitely having second thoughts about the new guy''s employability.


    Doubly-so if they were XPCA. I wanted nothing to do with Exhumans, and if it came to being caught up in some XPCA politics-stuff, or the kid''s butt on the curb...well, I had a business to run.


    I felt bad. I wanted him to do well. Pretty much any person who sees another person struggling wants to see that person succeed, right? But I hadn''t asked for this, and these weren''t troubles I could just look up on the ''net. This wasn''t something I could fix, and if it was invading my life and not something I could avoid, I resented that.


    I slid my headphones on and felt a tiny bit more at ease in their familiar embrace. They were custom, like most things I used myself, and one of the few projects who made it to the fully-finished stage, like my wrist-holo. Most of what I did was just finding an idea I liked and seeing if I could get it to work, but every once in a while I hit a success and went through the painful process of actually seeing it all the way through.


    Painful mostly because it involved doing things I couldn''t manage on my own. Every time I''d finished procrastinating for weeks on calling the machine shop, I fantasized what life would be like if I were a machine girl, if I could just plug myself into a mass-fab and produce whatever I wanted, no human interaction required.


    Yeah, I was one of those people who whenever I called, actually liked it when I got shunted through a message tree. I wasn''t crazy. People who wanted a human experience while talking on a phone were crazy. It was a phone. I wanted predictability and consistency, and human reps were anything but.


    I flipped through the holo on Enforcer whom I''d let Athan make his calls on. The entire conversation was still cached, until the security purge which would run when idle. Or I could run it now.


    Or, I thought, pressing a different button, I could listen to the whole thing and figure out what the hell was going on with him screaming at someone over the ''net.


    Just a few lines into the call, I was already deeply upset and stopped the playback, hitting purge, and apologizing to Enforcer for all the screaming she''d had to put up with. People weren''t very nice to each other. We had all this capacity for empathy and kindness that put us a step above machines, and then there were people like this girl who never took advantage of it. It hurt me on a personal level, way more than it should have.


    Poor Enforcer. She was just a prototype, and the customer went in a sleeker, less-robust, less-secure direction, even though he''d told me he wanted top of the line security everything, he took one look at her and said ew, not that. I thought she might be happy having a use here today, but instead she just helped two people yell at each other through the ''net. She didn''t deserve that.


    I carried her into the back and bedded her down on a workbench, giving her another apology before I left.


    Though, maybe if Athan were telling the truth, she''d just saved some lives. She could be happy with that, I thought. Anyone would be happy saving lives, right?


    I had work to do, and a couple of projects I''d started on which were just getting into the stage where I needed to force myself to keep on them after the initial burst of momentum had faded, but I didn''t want to do any of that. I wanted to know what the heck was going on with New Guy, and was very annoyed with how much my life had revolved around his the last few days.


    I mean, he was my employee. He was supposed to be making my life easier. Instead I was supporting him emotionally because nobody else was gonna do it, and physically, because...he was just a kid, wandering the streets, eating dog food. And while I knew he was a new fascination, and whenever there was something new, it tended to dominate over routine, the fact was, I had routine for a reason. It worked, it got my work done and paid my bills. If I fell behind on my projects, there''d be hell to pay.


    Well...in all likelihood, there wouldn''t be. I had a small but dedicated customer base, and I didn''t think they went to me because I was the fastest. But I wasn''t about to push it, and especially not over some kid I was paying for the privilege.


    Before I knew it, I was back at my bench, scrapping a port I needed from an old wall-holo and stitching it onto another board where it could live again. Like a happy zombie.


    I''d synced my headset and music was flowing into me, keeping my hands moving even without my brain''s involvement. I was happy here, I had everything I needed. Work I enjoyed, the company of a few good friends, one hugging my wrist, one singing with me over my ears, enough credits to pay the bills.


    Had to give the new guy credit though, the walkways between all the stuff in my hoard had doubled in width in the time he''d been here. That was pretty choice.


    I was in the groove, feeling it, and making good progress, when I heard something outside, sounded like behind the building. Something so loud and sudden I picked it up even over my music.


    Brow furrowing, I used my wrist to shove my headphones up, hands full and all. And for a second, I thought, maybe I was just hearing things.


    Bang. Bang. Bang.


    My throat felt like it had my heart stuck halfway up it. It was right outside, it sounded like, and even if the suddenness of it all made my thoughts spin like they were stuck in mud, I had one thought that came through clear as anything.


    New Guy was out there talking to his ''friend''.


    I turned to the door, not sure if I was going to run through it or lock up my store, but I was shocked to find him standing there in it.


    "What the fuck was that noise?" he asked with alarm.


    "That wasn''t me. I thought it was you," I told him.


    "I don''t go bang, bang."


    "If it wasn''t either of us...we can ignore it, right?" I asked, not sure which answer I''d rather hear. "Probably just...a racoon in some trash cans or something."


    "It was gunfire," he confirmed. "Someone might be in trouble, I''m going to go check it out."


    "Wait, by yourself? Unarmed? What if they shoot you next?" Who the heck runs toward gunfire?


    "I''ll be fine," he said, with such confidence I almost believed him.


    He turned to leave. "Wait, stop," I told him. "There''s a guy with a gun out there, and he''s not afraid to use it. Doesn''t that mean anything to you? I know we just talked about you being a doormat, so stop and think--killing yourself won''t help anybody, you know?"


    He stopped long enough to give me a morbid grin. "Sometimes, people need help."


    My own words, my own reasoning for taking him in to begin with. Such a simple truth, such a simple little altruism, such a simple thing that put humans on a level so far beyond machines.


    It was words for taking a guy in off the streets, not running towards a shooting. It was just a simple epithet of how I felt, not some...dogma. It was a throwaway line I said once, that''s all.


    It wasn''t fair.


    "Okay give me...thirty seconds," I told him, and bolted into the back, faster than I''d moved in years. I pinned Eagle Eye to my front, had her recording everything, and with a few seconds of my fingers flying over the holo, had her configured to automatically send everything to the police if I didn''t cancel it in an hour. I grabbed Sparker from near the door where I always kept her, and looked up at the arm on the wall, never finished, never named.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    It couldn''t be that bad out there, could it? But a gun, that was serious business. Still, maybe keeping a low profile might be better. No matter who it was out there, if they saw me coming towards them with a big honkin'' exosuit arm hanging off of me, they''d shoot.


    "Let''s go," he said, poking his head in, and I nodded, jogging behind him.


    He peeked inside the black sedan parked right out front but there was nobody in there. His friend''s car I assumed. "Everything go okay with him?" I asked.


    He shook his head. "Not even a little bit. He wanted me to turn myself in, said he came alone this time because he thought a personal appeal would be more effective than last time."


    "Last time?"


    "He showed up at my...my family''s house with an army. Fucking held them at gunpoint while I ran like a bitch."


    I didn''t respond. I didn''t know how to. Whatever I thought of him, he''d been through some stuff.


    We didn''t linger long, turning to the back alley behind my and the others'' shops. Most of them had a freight entrance back here, not mine since the whole back area had been converted to a workshop...there was still an emergency exit back there somewhere behind some junk which probably violated all kinds of laws¡­the cleaners next door was getting trucks through at all hours, and I wondered if they had any cleaning facilities on-grounds or were just a front for...


    I stopped and forced myself to focus. My mind was all over the place. Just being out here, with Sparkler white-knuckled in my hands was uncharacteristic of me, and I wasn''t exactly sure what to do about it all.


    I took a few deep breaths and reminded myself it was just an alley. I''d been here dozens of times. I looked at him, and saw a pained, focused stare frozen on his face. He wasn''t moving, didn''t even seem to be breathing. It took me way too long to follow his gaze.


    Once I did, I wondered how I''d missed it. Right under my back window, red streaks visible even on the faded brick, a man, propped against the wall of my shop, back facing us, knees pinned under him.


    He was motionless, and there was so much blood under him and seeped into his black uniform I couldn''t even wonder if he was alive.


    I felt like I should scream. Or...or something. I didn''t know. There was a dead guy there. A literal dead guy. I''d heard gunshots...and saw a dead body. He was shot dead, shot against my own shop.


    New Guy started to move towards it, and I thought I should stop him but couldn''t. I wanted, more than anything to be back on the other side of that wall, to have never stepped outside and seen this. He didn''t need help, I wasn''t helping by being here, I was just seeing dead bodies and...and¡­


    And that was it.


    "He''s dead," I said. "He''s dead?"


    "He sure looks it," New Guy said. He advanced within a couple feet of the body and leaned in towards it.


    I suddenly had an irrational urge to go smell the body. It was like my brain, unable to process what I was seeing here and churn productively even the slightest bit decided to act out in the worst way possible. Like, yes, I liked to smell things. But not a dead body.


    "Shot in the back. Four times. Fuck," he said. "One right through the base of the brain, execution-stye. Made absolutely sure he wasn''t going to live. Others in a tight cluster at center mass. Give or take a few bullets, matches standard XPCA fire practice."


    He walked a few paces, sweeping the ground back and forth with his eyes, and then starting towards a spot maybe five feet behind the body. He scanned the ground carefully, and then looked behind him, then at the soles of his feet, and then pressed a palm to the ground and inspected both.


    "It''s super dusty back here," he said. "I''m leaving not exactly footprints but definite indicators. So did Micaiah here¡­" He bent down and picked up what I thought might be a big gold capacitor. "Spent bullet casings, the shooter stood right here, didn''t leave a footprint at all. Was probably using inertial dampeners...also explains how they got so close without him turning around. And the same caliber firearm as last time too."


    He dropped the casing on the ground where it bounced with a little metallic pinging that sounded too happy for the scene.


    "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he shouted. "Dragon was right fucking here!"


    "I''m sorry about your friend," I said. Even as I said it, it felt empty and pointless to say, but it came out almost as reflex. He was upset, and I wanted to help.


    "He wasn''t my friend," he said, coming towards me. With gentle hands, though I could feel the heat of his anger in them, he steered us out of the alley. "In fact, it''s probably better for me that he died. He said if I didn''t turn myself in today, he would be seeking authorization to send shadow ops after me. I told him to fuck himself...but I would have to run again. I couldn''t have anyone else get involved if shadow ops and hunters started showing up."


    "Hunters¡­? Like, on the holo? Real, pro hunters after you?"


    "Yeah. Some are really decent people. But a few are just after anything with a paycheck."


    My mind was reeling like an off-balance gyroscope and it seemed to spin even faster the more he spoke. Not only had he just examined a dead body, he''d clinically determined cause of death, followed the killer''s actions, found and evaluated evidence, and determined not only who, and how, it happened, but also with what, it sounded like. And now he was going on about professional hunters like he knew all about them.


    And he was nineteen he''d said? Who the hell was this kid?


    At first I''d just thought he was immature. We all had problems, and he wanted to run from his. I couldn''t blame him, I''d done the same plenty of times. I wanted to right now, just go back inside and put on my headphones and stab these visions with music until I could pretend it was all a dream.


    He''d been so unafraid of coming out here. So adamant that someone might need help and he would do it. Naive, I thought, maybe. Or stupid.


    But now, he was almost carrying me away from it all, and he was none of those things. He was the real deal, and I couldn''t believe I ever tried to tell him what to do. He, or any of the people chasing him could probably kill me a thousand different ways with an ordinary spoon.


    But he wouldn''t. He''d use a gun. Shoot for center mass and then a clean shot through the base of the brain, right? That''s how they trained him to do it.


    I suddenly felt sick at the thought of touching him, and pulled myself off of him. He gave me a concerned look, and I realized I was being stupid. Even if he was a killer, he was obviously outraged at this death, he was staying by me, he said if hunters came, he''d run again, to keep others from getting caught up in it.


    There weren''t any others, just me, I realized. This little kid with all his firearms training and all the blood on his hands and best friends in the XPCA and hunters...would shelve the sliver of life he''d made and go back to dog food and sleeping on the street again. For me.


    I felt flattered and just...I didn''t know. My emotions couldn''t handle this kind of workout. I craved peace and quiet and order again. It''d been a normal Valentine''s day. I had been productive. I had like, three real bangers coming up next on my playlist. I wasn''t prepared for...all that blood. Or all this...military stuff. I was just trying to help out some kid.


    "I need to sit down," I said, walking back inside, where it suddenly felt much darker and smaller than it ever had before.


    "Are you feeling lightheaded? Let me know if you might faint, there''s not a lot of...uh...good places to fall over in here."


    "No, I just...I just need to plug into VR for awhile, I think. There''s too much reality out here."


    He looked at me a little puzzled but nodded slowly. "Whatever you need to do. Mental health is important too. One of my friends cracked and had to quit being a hunter because she couldn''t deal with what she was facing. It''s a good thing that you can walk away when you''re feeling overwhelmed."


    So he really was friends with hunters. Insane.


    "Before that...and I''m sorry if this is asking too much...but I''d appreciate it if you could call the police and report what you saw. Tem and I--uh, I mean, I can''t do it for obvious reasons."


    "Yeah," I said. "That''s a good idea. Sorry, I should have thought of that a long time ago."


    He shook his head and smiled reassuringly. "Everyone deals with stress differently. I''m just pretty good at dealing with it in the moment. Just hang in there, and if you need to talk, I''m here."


    I nodded and took a few breaths before booting up Viewfinder, my girl for VR.


    "Um, that call?" he asked.


    "Yeah, sorry," I said, wondering where I''d left Thaumaturge, which was completely unlike me to misplace anyone, but then I realized it was just because I still had Sparker strapped to my side, and Thaumaturge was under her in my pocket like always. I fished her out and brought up the phone function.


    And then I froze there with my fingers unable to move. Before I made a call, I always tried to anticipate everything they might say so I could get through it painlessly, but here, I couldn''t. I couldn''t revisit all of those details without locking up.


    "Did you forget the number?" he laughed. "It''s only three digits."


    I thrust her to him, feeling the unfamiliar sensation of heat in my cheeks. "Call them," I said.


    "Um...no. As I said, I can''t do it for obvious reasons. I kind of need to be not locked-up to find the Defiant."


    "I meant...you dial them."


    "Me? Why? Did you seriously forget 911?"


    "No," I said, feeling ever stupider and immature as this exchange continued. I took another deep breath and tried to find the words to express exactly where I was and what my problem was.


    I found them surprisingly easy to find, though a bit embarrassing to say.


    "I''m scared."


    Something crossed behind his face instantly, a new depth behind his eyes and the smallest waver in his lips. He took Thaumaturge out of my hands and put her on the bench, and then put both of my hands in his.


    "That''s okay," he said. "It''s okay to be afraid."


    I felt a surge of gratitude towards him, for taking the time to be so nice to me when I was sure he''d rather be out there, rappelling off the side of a VTOL with machine guns akimbo, but here he was, holding my hands and just telling me what I needed to hear.


    I didn''t know much, or anything really about this whole situation he was in, or who he was, or who he was fighting, or why.


    But looking into his eyes, feeling the warmth of his hands, I knew without a doubt who was right in that conflict. If the XPCA wanted to stop this guy from doing what he was doing, they were wrong, and that was it.


    I indulged in his gesture for another minute before breaking it off, realizing that was the first physical contact I''d had with another person in years, and feeling stupid all over again. He picked up Thaumaturge and dialed the number for me, holding his thumb above the ''OK'' button.


    "Are you ready to do this?" he asked.


    I nodded. "Yes," I lied. "I''m ready."

 257. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Repair and Service, OR. Athan.

    In the minute that it took for the police to arrive, Whitney peeled off her boots and socks, stretching her toes with fingerlike dexterity, sat on the floor with her back to her workbench, and pulled her VR helmet over her head. She booted it up, and just like that, she was gone.


    Mentally gone, entirely. I''d played some consoles at friends'' houses back in my youth, so I''d experienced the casual end of the VR market, and in the brief moments I''d work Karu''s visor, I was reminded of just how crazy neural interface tech could be...how it understood and reacted to thoughts so fast you felt like your mind was being read.


    Even if, with Karu specifically, it seemed mostly to be very confused and wrong about how interested I was in her boobs. Clearly a bug.


    But this rig, like all of Whitney''s custom stuff, seemed like something else. Normally, there was sort of a conscious level of VR interaction...what I''d experienced felt like, well, what it was. You''d feel like yourself looking through a helmet into another world, which would tickle your senses but was still something you''d be playing consciously. Whitney, she just popped the helmet on and was out like a light, all traces of consciousness gone. Full neural uplink. She wasn''t even here anymore. Crazy.


    I didn''t know what her plans were for when the cops came, but mine was to hide. As soon as she was out, I skipped over to the shower and let myself in, where I sensed Tem sitting in a corner.


    "Doesn''t your butt hurt, sitting on tile all day?" I asked her.


    "I''m s-sorry. S-s-should I not?"


    I shook my head. "You do realize that pain is your body''s way of telling you to stop doing something."


    "I didn''t realize it was a problem for you. I''m s-s-sorry."


    "Whatever, look...right now, Micaiah just showed up and was murdered out back. The police are coming and you and I need to hide."


    As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw my hands disappearing into the air in front of me.


    "Um, yeah, thanks. But I think we might also want to go outside. Not a lot of room in here to avoid bumping into them. I don''t want to leave Whitney but¡­" I sighed. "She''s an adult, she''s not going to get in trouble," I reassured myself. "Pick up anything that might hint we''ve been here, and let''s go wait in the parking lot."


    "I am good at waiting!" Tem''s voice echoed cheerily in the shower, and I gave her an invisible, and therefore ineffective smile, and we headed out.


    It was only a matter of seconds between us exiting the building and the police pulling up, one car, followed shortly by a second, the police splitting up between heading inside and fanning out around the area. I kept Tem close by as I followed the officers to the crime scene, which they immediately cordoned off.


    I bet I''d left biologicals, and finger and footprints, probably ruining their investigation and painting myself as a suspect, but what the hell, I was about to have shadow ops and hunters chasing me down, what did I care about the police?


    I watched for a while as they carefully documented the scene, and then went back to the front where another couple vehicles had appeared, and there seemed to be some field station, a large fortress of a van with one side all the way open and an operator inside in front of a sea of holos, listening intently to her comms as she coordinated the situation and catalogued evidence.


    A solidly built man exited from the shop, making a beeline for the post. As he approached, the woman spun her chair to face him.


    "Any progress?" she asked.


    "The woman''s unresponsive, completely uplinked to her VR. We''re afraid that unplugging her risks short-term neurological damage which could render any testimony she gives inadmissible."


    "Why the hell would she call us if she was just going to disappear," the operator fumed. "I mean, I know she just found a body before dinner, and that''s nobody''s idea of a good time, but she could stand to make our job a little easier."


    "You''re telling me. Should we plan to leave an officer here to bring her in once she''s out?"


    "The crime scene could take a few hours anyway. We''ll make the call when we''re close to wrapping up."


    "Sounds good."


    At least I wasn''t missing anything going on inside, but I had to agree with the officers that Whitney''s behavior wasn''t exactly helpful.


    I couldn''t blame her though. As cool and put-together as she appeared, and whatever I thought of her, it unnerved me a bit to see her going to pieces over the body. I knew, cognitively, that I was an outlier when it came to this stuff...that most people had never taken a life, or seen a corpse, or felt that burning metallic tang in the air of too much spilt blood. But I was also surrounded by outliers. The P-Force, Cosette, Karu, Saga, AEGIS...all as bombproof as they came. Even Lia, despite my efforts to shield her from this kind of thing. So it was a kind of painful reality check to see someone I respected, someone older, with their shit together, who just...wasn''t equipped to deal with the stuff I dealt with regularly.


    This woman who had built a quarter of an exosuit out of scraps, for fun apparently...when it came to calling the cops and talking to them about what she''d experienced and heard...she''d just run away. Escaped into another world so she wouldn''t have to face this one. It was hard, and it was sad.


    And it was my fault that Micaiah had been here at all. I wasn''t about to start blaming myself for his death, there was an assassin out there for that. But it was certainly only me who was encroaching this world onto Whitney''s.


    "We''ve documented the scene and are searching the body now," one holo reported out to the operator. "Possible robbery motive...though the wallet is still here, it had been rifled through and dumped in a bush behind the scene. Credits not taken. But...the victim had no mobile on them, but we did find a mobile stylus in his breast pocket."


    "Killed just for his mobile?"


    "We have an ID on the vic...and you''re not going to like this."


    "Hit me," she said.


    "One Lieutenant Colonel Micaiah Teryn, Intelligence Division, XPCA."


    "Goddamn."


    "You said it sir."


    "Well, they''ll be ten different turns up our asses over this case, so make damn sure we''re all crossing our T''s and dotting our I''s, everybody. Let''s do this by the books. Leave nothing unchecked, leave nothing to chance, leave nothing unaccounted-for."


    "Sir!" replied all the holo-comms at once.


    She pulled off her comms and stepped out of the chair to talk to an officer with a goatee loitering nearby. "I''m going to call the captain and get him up to date, before the XPCA show up at his desk and kill the old man with a heart attack. Keep them coordinated."


    "Sir," he replied, as she walked away with her mobile in-hand.


    The first officer who''d come out, the solidly-built man walked over to talk to Goatee, who was taking up the operator station. "You think she did it?" he asked.


    "Who?"


    "The VR woman."


    "I don''t get paid to speculate. We find evidence and testimony, and the prosecutors do the rest."


    Solidly-Built smiled. "Yeah, sure, but it''s not like we''re the ones making any decisions in the courtroom, so a little speculating doesn''t hurt. Not like there''s much to do until she pops out of VR anyway."


    "Yeah, not much to do at all," Goatee responded with a sarcastic wave at the entire operations van he was seated in.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Way I see it, woman lives alone, she''s clearly got a few screws loose judging from the way she lives...she''s got a bed and shower in there, hidden in the piles of crap. Hears some guy creeping around and pow."


    "Yep, bet you just cracked the case. Never mind the fact she had a shock prod on her hip, not a firearm," Goatee replied. I liked that guy.


    "Trust me, I dated a geek once. She was all VR and mobile and quiet and sweet, until one day, pow, pure psycho."


    "You ever date any girls that don''t go ''pure psycho''?"


    "One or two of the more boring ones."


    "Yeah, okay. Just wondering if it''s you, or your taste in women."


    "Trust me buddy, I wish she''s not a suspect as much as anyone here. You want to guess how many evidence bags we''re gonna go through rooting through all the shit she''s got in there? And then the forensics guys are gonna hate us for months when they have to sort all this stuff. Although some of them might be into it. You seen the girl down in second forensics unit?"


    "I thought you didn''t like geeky girls. Pure psycho?"


    "Usually, yeah, but she''s got something...something else. You know what I mean?"


    "Mental stability? Razor intellect? Self-awareness?"


    "Nah¡­" He traced his hands through the air curvaceously. "Hips."


    Goatee just shook his head.


    I wandered off at this, just keeping an eye on things, though mostly staying near the operations van, which seemed to be where the action was and where I could keep an ear on everything else going on. The female sergeant came back but seemed content to let Goatee man the op while she oversaw things, and fortunately her presence seemed to be anathema to Solidly-Built running his mouth.


    It wasn''t until close to fifty minutes, after they''d long moved the body away and were taking biological samples that something happened. Goatee got a call which seemed very important on one of the comms and listened to it through an earpiece. He flagged over the sergeant afterwards.


    "You''ll want to see this," he said.


    "We just ran biologicals indicating the presence of an unknown male," she interrupted. "Brown hair, fingerprint on one of the bullets. Might be our suspect. But what''ve you got for me?"


    "He might not be. We got an anonymous message sent in with a video. Shows our VR missus POV as she finds the body."


    I watched with growing horror over the sergeant''s shoulder as the entire scene played out in front of me again, from Whitney''s perspective. At first, it just seemed bad, putting me at the scene and then disappearing, and then I realized, if Whitney tried to cover for me at all, she''d be in a heap of shit.


    And then it got real bad. I mentioned Dragon, I mentioned the shadow ops and hunters who might be after me, the Defiant, I even name-dropped Tem on accident.


    "Okay," Sarge said when the holo finished and I was cringing my way into implosion. Why had she sent them that vid? "Who the hell is this guy, and how have we not found him yet?"


    "She never mentions him by name, the whole holovid," Goatee said with a frown, skipping through it. "We have her record up, but she''s listed as living alone and having no close friends or relatives."


    "So she''s just out for a friendly stroll with a stranger who''s a forensics hobbyist and they stumble on a body and he vanishes, while she locks herself in VR? And then what, sends us this vid from virtual space? Something here stinks."


    "I know that guy," Solidly-Built said. "I never forget a face."


    "Friend of yours?" she asked him.


    "No...something else," he thought. And every agonizing second he spent thinking, I felt my heart sink lower and lower in my chest.


    Was there anything I could do? I already felt damned. As it stood, Whitney was going to get dragged in and interrogated brutally, both by the police and XPCA probably. There''d be a huge uproar, and the XPCA would come out in force after me, the only logical thing for them to do when the officer tracking me down makes a trip out here and then winds up dead behind the building where I''m discovered to be hiding. And depending on how loud that winds up being, the Defiant might run again¡­


    This whole unmitigated disaster. It felt like everything was just falling apart around me, all because of this one vid, and I didn''t even know why she took it or sent it in.


    It put me on such a short clock, and I was already trying to match the speed of an international assassin. Now I had the police and XPCA to deal with again, too.


    My mobile rang, and I panic-flailed to silence it as the officers looked around wondering who among them it belonged to. Fortunately I was familiar with the device well enough to be able to reject the call and mute it even while my fingers and the mobile were invisible, but holy hell, that wasn''t the heart attack I needed right now.


    They were checking Micaiah''s car now, querying XPCA records for me, and a hazmat team had shown up to clean up the back of the building. And then another incoming call came in for them and when I saw who it was and how she looked, my heart crushed ever smaller.


    "Colonel Cosette Dawn, Strike Division, XPCA," she introduced herself, looking and sounding like absolute shit. Her skin was simultaneously too tight and too loose, there were dark circles under her eyes, and her brown hair seemed almost wilted under her floppy black cap. Regardless, she gave the camera a crisp salute and stared into it with determination. "I have received notification that you''ve been querying about Athan ''Chariot'' Ashton?"


    "If that''s who we''re looking for. This guy?" Sarge replied, sending over a still from the vid.


    Cosette frowned. "When was this taken? Where is this?"


    "An hour ago, Beaverton, Oregon."


    "Oregon? God damn it. You find that little shit and tell him--" Cosette snapped. She seemed to catch herself and her next words were void of anger, just pitifully sad. "...tell him...he promised."


    I did not think it was possible for my heart to fall further, but that moment proved me wrong. I felt so heavy and wrong, so much just...exuded misery...like all of the miserable misunderstandings of the world were pouring out of that holo and slamming me straight in the chest. I wanted to tear off Tem''s invisibility and scream to Cosette, I hadn''t betrayed her, hadn''t betrayed the XPCA, I was still doing everything I could for everyone.


    "Promised what?" Sarge asked.


    "Never mind. Just find him. Or...hmm...don''t. If he''s turned against us, it might be a very dangerous situation. Who''s this now?"


    I turned to see who Cosette was referring to and saw Whitney being brought up, thankfully not in cuffs, but an escorting officer was carrying her shock prod for her.


    "Just a witness," Sarge said. "We are taking her into custody. As you were saying?"


    "I was saying...do not pursue Chariot...Athan, that is. If he''s turned, and is behind Colonel Teryn''s death...he might not hesitate to continue using lethal force. And he can be very lethal indeed. It''d be best not to provoke him, until we have sufficient forces in the area."


    "You''re wrong," Whitney said, warningly, and immediately her escort began pulling her away by the shoulders, but stopped at a gesture from Sarge. "I''ve seen him, he''s a good person."


    "You think so?" Cosette said, with obvious hope. "What makes you think that, miss?"


    "He''s...I don''t know. Today''s been kind of an ordeal and I don''t have my head altogether straight. He''s the one who told me to contact the police, knowing it''d bring this investigation out here. But even when he knew the XPCA would be coming, he sat and comforted me. He took the time to tell me what I needed to hear. He''s not a killer...well, he might be, but he''s not a monster. He''s got a good heart, I think. Whatever you think he did that''s so wrong, I bet you''re mistaken. It''s not much, I admit, but it was enough to convince me."


    Cosette scrutinized Whitney for a moment and then laughed. "Chariot, you sly dog. What is it about you?"


    "It''s not like that!" Whitney yelled, reddening as now she had to be held back. "I''m serious!"


    "Calm down miss. I''m just amused that you''ve become an expert on Chariot in the short time we''ve lost him. You two must be very close."


    "He''s told me enough, and done enough that I believe in what he''s told me. That''s all."


    "And that''s all it takes? You have no lingering skepticism or see any ulterior motives?"


    "No. He seems like a very honest and straightforward guy. If he says something, I''ll believe it unless I have reason not to."


    Cosette gave a wry smile and shook her head. "You don''t even know the first thing, do you? I''d be interested to know if your opinion changes after this."


    "After what? After what? Are you going to torture me?"


    Cosette laughed, even as the sergeant seemed to bristle at the suggestion. "No, I''m just sending over the info you queried earlier. Take a good look at line seven."


    The sergeant obediently pulled up the doc and I saw my own face, same picture on my XPCA ID. My personal information was all there, name, DOB...I skimmed to line seven.


    Status: Exhuman. Alive.


    Whitney gaped at the screen, her fire and vigor in yelling at some officer on a screen withering with every line she read, detailing my powers and history in the broadest of summaries.


    "You''re lying," she said. "This is a trick to get me to confess something. You want me to hate him, that''s why you''re saying this."


    "Miss, be reasonable. We don''t have any reason to fabricate a profile on him and you know it. Believe it or don''t, that''s up to you. But just think about it and I think you''ll agree it makes sense."


    She stopped and did think. And as she did, what was left of her seemed to extinguish. Finally, after long moments, she hung off of the policeman holding her rather than pulling against him.


    "Still think he''s totally honest?" Cosette asked. "I know I may sound callous but...I am genuinely curious. I have a vested interest in this boy."


    Whitney mumbled and shook her head. "I want to go back in," she said.


    "What?" Cosette asked.


    "VR," Sarge clarified. "She was in there forever when we found her, and now she wants to go back." Sarge gave her an apologetic smile. "But we can''t allow that. We need you alert for questioning and testimony, not half in some other place."


    "No," Whitney argued, but it wasn''t more than a whisper now. "No. Let me in, please."


    "Sorry miss," Sarge said as she brought Whitney over to a car and opened the back door for her. "I''m afraid you''re going to have to face the real world today."

 258. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Repair and Service, OR. Athan.

    I didn''t know what to do as they hauled Whitney away. It wasn''t like I was about to attack the police, but even if I did, the aghast look on her face said clearly enough what she thought of me now. Killing a dozen cops in front of her would just confirm her darkest thoughts now.


    There were even a couple XPCA who came and inspected the scene it looked like, but finally, after another hour or so, everyone was gone and Tem and I were left alone with Whitney''s store closed up, a piece of paper taped to the inside proclaiming it closed for ongoing police investigation.


    I let myself in and looked around at the looming piles of parts and crap, all seemingly untouched. Somehow, over the last couple of days they had begun to develop a bit of personality, but with Whitney gone, they were once again just little stalagmites of junk.


    I didn''t know why I was even in here. The wrongness of the shop was becoming unbearable, feeling empty and strange without Whitney''s pervasive singing or the sounds of her banging away in the back, and I felt guilty at being the cause of that void. I walked up to the back door and paused there, having no reason to go in, but not sure what else I was doing.


    And I realized...it was a good thing I paused there. It''d been only faintly noticeable, but there was a faint electrical source at about ankle level in the doorway in front of me, in the right extreme-low voltage range to light up my EM-senses like one of AEGIS'' drones.


    I laid on the floor behind the counter and peered at it...not much to see. A couple of small, unobtrusive glossy bulges drilled to the wall, and the ends of some tubes, barely visible, at about chest-height. All definitely new since the police and XPCA had been inside, all humming with low levels of power, waiting.


    An alarm or camera system maybe? I was still invisible, but if it saw in infrared or anything, they''d pick me up. But the fact they were on opposite ends of the doorway, and pointed at each other made me think maybe a tripwire instead of a monitor.


    I had Tem and I back up to behind the counter, barely peeking over it, and apologized to a board from a pile on Whitney''s behalf as I picked it up and chucked it between the two glossy bulges.


    There was a hiss and a bang, and the entire doorway vanished, replaced with a wall of adhesive gel, which exploded out of the tubes with enough force that some stray flecks had reached the front windows of the shop. It shuddered violently, the whole blob of it vibrating like a cube of jello from the force of its own deployment.


    Yeah I''ll take the hint. Time for us to leave.


    It wasn''t too long after we''d gone, when we were maybe two or three blocks away that I heard sirens and saw police and an XPCA van flash past us heading back towards the shop. I was just a little horrified at how, had I not lingered there for a second, I''d been literal inches away from getting caught.


    What a fun, sobering reminder. The XPCA were in town, and they wanted me. I needed to act faster.


    We took shelter in a study room back at the community college, where I had Tem reveal me so I could use my mobile, planning to call the contact at the Defiant back and insist on a meeting, when I saw and remembered that I had a missed call from before. Karu''s dad, I saw with disgust.


    Whatever. I''d call him first and see what he wanted, if he could keep it brief.


    "M''boy! Apologies to disturb you on this fine Valentine''s day," he proclaimed.


    I didn''t have time for his games. "Can it, Idris. What do you want?"


    "So short with me today. Tsk, tsk. Haven''t gotten any chocolate from the women in your life?"


    "It''s been a shit day, sir. I''m about five seconds away from hanging up."


    "Fine, I know the sound of a man in a hurry. I wanted to ask you about Karen again, and must apologize at my insistence."


    "What about her?"


    "Have you had the opportunity to speak with her as you said you would?"


    "Yeah. We talked. She said she''d be gone a few days to go talk to you, in fact. That was a couple days back, she never met with you?"


    "She never even called."


    "Well, I guess she changed her mind. Tough luck, Senator."


    "Ashton, son, please. You must have heard something. I''m just an old fool trying to talk to my own daughter."


    "Then call her? She hasn''t told me anything but what I mentioned. She said she''d go meet with you, and then I didn''t see her after she left."


    "Wait, I''m confused, son. She was never here...did she wind up leaving or not?"


    "I don''t know," I said, shaking my head at this waste of time. I shouldn''t have even called him back. "She told me she left and then we didn''t see each other because she was supposed to be gone, maybe?"


    "Far be it for me to assume a level of closeness, but wouldn''t she have told you if she was staying? I presume you spent plenty of time together."


    "Look, I don''t know. I told you what I did know. I can''t pull new information out of my ass."


    "Apologies, boy. I''m just trying to piece together the story. I''ll let you get back to that important XPCA business," he said with a chuckle which even I could peg instantly as fake. "But...if you do hear from her--"


    "If it''s about you, I''ll let you know. But if she didn''t visit when she told me she was going to, I don''t think your odds are good, Senator."


    He sighed heavily. "Thank you anyway, Ashton. Godspeed."


    I hung up, shook my head, and dialed the Defiant.


    It was refreshing, to have someone both apparently surprised to hear from me, and enthusiastic about it. He told me he''d contacted the others, and they were all together now, just sort of waiting. Annoyance and dissent in the group was apparent, by the voices in the background arguing with each other, and he informed me that there was definite momentum to have me meet them and explain exactly what was going on in-person, as nobody was exactly happy with the current situation and lack of information.


    Which was a dream for me. Who knew that cooping up all the Defiant and pissing them off was exactly what I needed to get them to see eye-to-eye with me. He spoke with the others in the background of the call.


    He wanted to set a time and place on the call, but I couldn''t without the XPCA knowing. We needed to keep this vague enough that we couldn''t be understood by an outsider...but that''d require us to have some personal information between us we could use to exchange knowledge in plain view.


    As I laid it out, his enthusiasm faded. It sounded like quite a hurdle, and an obnoxious one, given that we were already talking...it''s not like they knew enough about me or I about them to have any meaningful connection...and the only stuff we did know, I''d told to Micaiah.


    Who was...now dead. Maybe there was hope after all?


    "The dark place we met the second time?" I proposed.


    "It''s only late afternoon. There will be people everywhere, too many to sneak in," he said. "How about...four blocks north of there. Look for the largest building on the block."


    "Okay. I think we can do that. Thanks for understanding."


    "Thanks for coming in and risking the wrath of a dozen annoyed Exhumans," he said with amusement.


    We''d set the meeting up for ASAP, to reduce the chances that someone else in the XPCA would figure us out in time, and I headed off at once, invisible again with Tem in tow.


    I hadn''t spent this long invisible before, and aside from the strangeness of not being able to see my hands and feet, and therefore stumbling over things or bumping into stuff I really shouldn''t have been, it was...well it was weird. Dehumanizing, really.


    Avoiding people was obviously a priority, and I remembered once or twice when people around me had tripped over seemingly nothing...a waiter who''d smacked into nothing and dropped a platter of silverware the first time I''d met Idris came to mind. But otherwise, it was just a bit surreal, having people not even recognize my existence.


    There were so many micro-interactions which just weren''t anymore. The whole game of walking, eyes-forward with someone coming towards you...both of you avoiding each other''s gaze and keeping eyes on where you intend to walk so there''s no potential for collision, or the awkward little nod and dismissive smile you have to make if you do meet another''s eyes...all these social cues I never really even considered consciously...I saw people''s eyes, and found myself making these gestures by habit, as they utterly ignored me.


    It was both a little scary and a little liberating. Here, literally, I was a complete non-person. I was literally nothing, in the same way that an Exhuman was figuratively nothing. I was just dust and wind to these people.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    And it made me think. Maybe more than it should have, given the situation we were in, but I had a mile and a half to walk so some thinking was inevitable. It made me wonder, was this power what shaped Tem into who she was? Or was she like this before?


    Like, even in the brief bit I was doing it, I felt strange and ignored and unimportant...the most interaction I had with these people was constantly trying to get out of their way. Had Tem lived her whole life like this? Constantly being nothing to everyone around her but an obstacle?


    It was an assumption, but it made a lot of sense, and made my heart go out to her in a way I''d never before considered.


    "Hey, Tem?" I whispered to her.


    "Y-yes? Have I messed s-something up?"


    "No...everything''s fine. I just wanted to thank you for always being there for me. I wouldn''t have made it this far without your help."


    She stuttered and stammered and tripped over herself, and I had to catch her to keep her from falling. She was so light, I thought with a frown.


    "I DON''T--" she yelled, and then froze in panic as some people nearby looked around. "I don''t deserve your praise," she whispered.


    "But it''s true."


    "I don''t care if it is true. Please don''t waste your words on me. You have s-s-so many more s-special and wonderful people in your life to spend your time thinking about. Please just forget about me."


    She seemed, from what I could tell of her invisible state, more agitated than perhaps I''d ever seen her before, more than when I''d almost killed her, twice, even. She was literally shaking in my arms, flushing hot and cold all at once, and sweaty. From just a few words.


    "Tem...I''m sorry for bringing this up at a bad time when we can''t have a real conversation about it, but I''ve told you time and again, you''re a real person, and I''m going to treat you like one. If any of my other friends did what you did for me, I''d thank them too."


    She shook her head, thrashing in my arms, but offered no rebuttal. She was utterly impossible, and by her actions, instead of praising, I was torturing her. How she could be so content, being ignored constantly, sleeping on hard floors and never being seen or heard, only to be reduced to this by a single acknowledgement of her contributions?


    I didn''t even know where to begin helping her. She needed years of therapy, but no professional shrink in the world would sit down with an Exhuman. Maybe that''s why the world was such shit. All these super-powered people, mentally damaged by their lives like Tem, who couldn''t even get help if they wanted.


    "Okay, how''s this then," I said, trying to put her back on her feet, but finding them unstable still. "You continue helping me like you have been, and I''ll keep being happy I have your help."


    She mulled it over as she slipped out of my hands and sat down in the gutter, out of the way, with the trash. I was loathe to waste time now, but I thought the Defiant could spare a few seconds for Tem to have a think about her life.


    She didn''t seem to be able to find any flaws with the proposal because she nodded, and with that I pulled her back to her feet. "Okay," she said. And that was enough.


    I didn''t know exactly where we were headed, so we cut through Rito''s high school so I could follow the directions more properly. Four blocks north...but which way was north?


    The sun was only starting to get low, early afternoon as it was, and I didn''t know how true the adage was about it setting in the west, especially in the high latitudes up in Oregon. At best, it narrowed it down to two different directions, sort of hanging between the cardinal directions of the roads, and four blocks was kind of a ways to just be guessing here. I had the horrible realization that, if the roads weren''t aligned to the compass, four blocks north might mean zig-zagging some...but surely he couldn''t have meant that.


    I dipped into the school, thinking they, like my old school, might have a map or heck, a person I could ask.


    The school seemed quiet, but not deserted. There were some lights on in some classrooms, and it looked like the school had once just been the large single building we''d emerged from, but over the years had sprawled into several smaller ones, connected by covered walkways. My guess was they were mostly divided by subject -- one had language posters up in both Spanish and French, and another had a couple large classrooms with more window than wall, filled with ceramics and paintings. An art building, I realized, probably sitting on top of Rito''s hiding space.


    I''d wound my way around the main building, and there, with the building cradled around it was what I sought. Right in the middle of campus, a flagpole and open courtyard, and visible even from this distance, a large compass rose embedded into the concrete with faded reds and blues. I headed towards it, passing a larger, longer building on my right which thrummed with machine noises, and then stopped at hearing something...familiar.


    Metal clanking, but at a very familiar rhythm. Like...metal fingers drumming against the ground with the pattern of a horse''s gait, or something. I moved to dismiss it, but it stuck in my brain, and I found myself waffling, walking back and forth between my destination and the noise inside the building like an idiot. I was glad I was invisible so nobody could see me.


    Oh what the hell, it''s a few more seconds, I thought. I''d made good time walking here anyway, even slowing down for Tem.


    I doubled back into the quad where I heard more clearly the sounds of machines running full-bore. Kind of a comforting, familiar sound for me by now, one I always associated with AEGIS and her workshops. This would be the shop class quad then, and I remembered hearing earlier that this high school did a special program where students had to take both trade skills and arts here to graduate, and it was something they were very proud of.


    The shop classrooms seemed appropriately robust, considering the whole of the student body filtered through here at some point, and I guess not too surprising that some students would still be working on the machines after-hours.


    Although, hmm. I checked my mobile. Saturday. More surprising, but whatever. And also February...not nearly close enough to the end of the quarter to be demanding overtime. Maybe just a club or something then.


    There weren''t any windows at eye level, the classroom was very tall and probably built with students sending pieces of debris flying in mind, but by climbing up on some lockers--thankful again for that invisibility--I could see inside.


    And I saw what made the rhythmic tinking noise I recognized. It was exactly what the back of my brain thought it was, as impossible as I found the thought.


    "DOG?" I asked through the window. "DOG, what the hell are you doing here?"


    It wasn''t exactly DOG, it had a neck with the camera mounted on it like the DOG-Es, as well as a few new manipulator arms, but the earmarks of the DOG units AEGIS had built up north were all there. It didn''t seem to hear me over the machine noise of the whole place running, but...it was DOG. In this school. Some four-thousand miles away from where hundreds of his kind had been built and worked and died fighting the XPCA.


    I almost fell off the lockers in my rush. You could bet your shit I was getting in that room now, even if I was going to break a few school rules. I jogged around, trying every door and finding them all locked.


    I apologized to the memory of my old history teacher, who''d once given us all a day-long speech on how we were only hurting ourselves by causing property damage to the school.


    My hands landed on the door and forced current through it, focusing on the little metal latch that stuck out between the door and the frame. I pumped current back and forth through that bit again and again, feeling it superheat as the electricity did its thing. While I did, I pulled on the handle with all my strength.


    It took a minute but I felt the door beginning to pull towards me like I was dragging it out of molasses, and then bang, it flew open, sending me falling to my ass, and the metal bits I''d melted off flying through the air like burning shrapnel. Right into a bush where they''d never be found.


    I stumbled to my feet and found DOG staring at me, a little red light beneath the camera blazing as it sized up the sudden intrusion.


    "DOG!" I shouted at him. "What the heck are you doing here? Or¡­" I stopped. "Uh. Red light on. So...AEGIS...is driving?"


    I got my answer when the thing pounced at me playfully, head wiggling back and forth on its mechanical neck, its whole body swaying in dance like a kitten who had just spotted a particularly enticing finger. Definitely not normal DOG behavior.


    "AEGIS what are you doing here?" I laughed as I asked. "Do you know where we are? How''d this DOG get up here?"


    My phone pinged and I checked it. New message from AEGIS, of course.


    > you ruined my surprise!


    "What surprise?" I asked DOG.


    > I was trying to have it done by today


    > so we could spend valentines day together but it ran a little late


    > not on account of my planning I promise


    "Yeah, your planning is usually pretty sublime. So what''s the surprise?"


    > cover your eyes


    > Id have dog do it but hes kinda got stumpy feet


    "AEGIS, this is stupid. Just tell me." My elation faded a little when I remembered what was up. "Um, I''m also in a hurry. I''m about to go meet...the Defiant, actually."


    > then cover your eyes dummy!


    I let out a tremendously exaggerated sigh to let her know just how much she was inconveniencing me, and then turned to face the wall.


    I heard nothing but the sounds of machines going for the next couple of minutes, while I nagged at AEGIS over messenger.


    > gonna hang up on you for a second maybe a minute


    > DONT TURN AROUND YET


    > I AM SERIOUS


    "Fine, I''m waiting," I announced at the wall.


    And then the machines all went silent. Compared to the noise in here before, it felt spooky, like they''d all just...died. I didn''t hear DOG clanking around or anything, and I began to feel dread creeping up in me. Please tell me she wasn''t about to startle me with some stupid jump scare or something? Just in case, I tried to keep myself calm and remind my shield that whatever was about to happen, it was friendly.


    "Okay, turn around," I heard AEGIS say behind me.


    I did, and somehow, she was there. The yellow eyes, the small, shy smile, the freckles below her oval glasses, the light dress, the red cables, streaming behind her, not yet tied up into her twintails, it was all there, just like I''d remembered her.


    "You''re...you''re here! And you''re you!" I said. "How are you here? How are you you? I''m so...I''m so excited and happy and confused."


    "Love, Athan," she said, as she stepped towards me and wrapped me in her impossibly-warm arms. "Love makes all things possible."


    She kissed me gently, filling my nose with her familiar, exotic scent of bubblegum and eraser shavings and her lips, as hot as the rest of her, but so soft, I could barely even be sure they''d touched me.


    As we separated, she rested her forehead against mine, her brilliant yellow eyes inches from mine, sparkling and dancing as her smile grew ever broader.


    "Well, love and the ability to direct materials and remotely hijack machinery to fabricate whatever I wanted, and a week of expert maneuvering under the eyes and noses of both the XPCA, and the students and faculty here." She grinned. "But mostly love."


    "As much as I''d like to hear all about it, I need to meet the Defiant. Can you come with?"


    "Are you kidding? I''m never leaving your side," she said. "Though you could stand to be visible again, it''s a little unnerving for me to be seeing you only in IR."


    "Right, sorry," I apologized, and had Tem decloak us. "Onward to the Defiant then.


    "Onward to the Defiant!" she echoed, and the three of us set off.

 259. 2252, Present Day. Primrose High School, OR. AEGIS.

    It had taken methodical planning, extensive organization, and a butt-ton of hard work, but I was here. Making a DOG unit had been an essential addition to the plan, allowing me to move parts between machines and to hide everything when the kids came back...and man did kids get into everything. I thought the teacher''s line of it belongs to another class, don''t touch it would get old, but I guess teachers more than most were accustomed to repeating the same line over and over and over to a room full of little shits.


    Which was a little unfairly harsh. They were decent enough kids. But they had been inadvertently in my way for the last week, so I was entitled to a little spite.


    But that was all over now. I was here! I was back in the body of AEGIS Prime, and Athan was looking at me with eyes like he was seeing me for the first time. I felt exultant, triumphant, the rush...maybe the best feeling in the entire world...when a plan came together just-so.


    At the same time, I felt stupid and small, as a little voice in the back of my mind which sounded a lot like Lia reminded me that if I''d just listened, I could have made this body weeks ago, and had Athan''s attention like this all along. It had been just pure arrogance to choose the body with more specs over the one with more humanity...and as much as they were just two different bodies to me, other people weren''t as accepting, I guessed.


    She''d also been instrumental in getting it built in time, and anticipated a huge number of problems I would never have seen coming. I just assumed that if I ordered something or had something delivered, that would be it...but Lia was all over making sure components were built to spec, deadlines didn''t slip, labor was on top of things...again I was realizing how competent she was, and how stupid I''d ever been to dismiss her.


    "Onward to the Defiant then," Athan said.


    "Onward to the Defiant!" I answered, and he ushered us from the room.


    Tem was here, seeming...I didn''t know. Like a warm blob on my IR spectra. She''d been alone with Athan this whole time and I wondered just how close they''d gotten. It was cold and rainy up here, and I could easily see the idiot huddling with her for warmth under a newspaper instead of actually taking care of himself. So as we all jogged off, I thought I''d pry a little.


    "I think it''s so thoughtful you took Tem with you," I said. "Considering how difficult she can be."


    "Now''s really not the time for that," he said.


    "It isn''t? Are you trying to be evasive about her?"


    He looked sideways over at me, running forward without missing a stride. "No, it just sounds like you''re fishing for something, and I want you to leave Tem alone."


    "It''s okay--"


    "It''s not okay," Athan cut her off. "You can save your jealousy for later, AEGIS. We have work to do."


    I snorted dismissively and kept running. It was a little irritating that he''d shut me down like that, especially given the goo-goo eyes he had been giving me not fifteen seconds ago, but at the same time I was a little flattered he knew me that well. Overall, still a wash, though.


    "So where are we going?" I asked.


    "Tallest building on the block four north of the school."


    "North is that way," I said, pointed behind us.


    "Oh." He stopped and turned around. "Well, I was headed towards this big compass in the middle of campus, but I guess consulting you would have been faster. How''s things been in Vegas?"


    "Rough, then quiet, then rough. It wasn''t easy being a robot pretending to be a human pretending to be a robot, you know. And Lia was...well...the first couple of days she didn''t do so hot."


    Athan frowned but said nothing.


    "But I helped. I thought up this plan to have a new body built over here so I could be with you and act as your operator...anything from ''net access to cash, I have you covered. And I thought...if I was going to move to a new body, I may as well go for the classic model, right?"


    "Well you look awesome. I''ve never seen you run with your hair down, it''s got a mind of its own, doesn''t it?"


    "Oh shoot, I never tied it up. That''s an ineffable part of my cuteness. I hope the Defiant don''t mind me doing that while we talk. More importantly, how''s it been out here?"


    "Well, Rito''s mom kicked me out, and I destroyed her mobile which was a stupid mistake, so I couldn''t reconnect with her for a bit. And then during that bit, I realized...I should leave her alone and stay here where the Defiant are."


    "Wouldn''t it have been much easier to leave with her, get some...I don''t know, money and intel, and come back?"


    His head drooped, lolling back and forth as he ran. "Damn it AEGIS, this is why you''re the plans girl. I never even thought about leaving and coming back."


    I patted his back in rhythm of our strides. "Aww. Poor dummy. There, there."


    "Well, I needed a place to stay and food for Tem and myself, so I got a job, by accident almost. Just a temp position cleaning up a crowded shop for its owner, whom I think you''d like, by the way."


    "Yeah? What''s he like?"


    "She, actually. Whitney...something. Never caught her last name. I don''t think she knows mine at all," he laughed.


    "Oh. Does Whitney have long legs perchance?"


    "Yeah, she''s like, two or three inches on me. Still very slim though, I don''t think she ever goes out or remembers to eat."


    "So she''s got smaller breasts, too?"


    "AEGIS...I said to save the jealousy for afterwards?"


    "Just tell me, does she have freckles?"


    "No, no freckles. You''re safe."


    "But she is taller than me," I pouted. "Did you have a nice time cleaning her shop?"


    "Eh, it was okay. She let me sleep there, she had a bed in the back--"


    "You slept with her!?" I shouted, almost missing a step. Fortunately the auto-gyros in this unit were fantastic.


    "No, I slept there and she went home! Jesus, woman. Back. Back, I say."


    "You can''t blame me for being worried. Nobody''s sated your sexual desires for days now, and while I admit that''s my failing as a girlfriend--"


    "Okay, AEGIS, stop. Seriously."


    "--that just opens the door for any other woman--"


    To my surprise, he stopped running, and I had to jog to a halt, confused where this had come from. He stood there with his hands on his hips just staring me down...and more than at any point while he talked about these girls, did I worry I''d screwed up and crossed some line and ruined everything.


    "Listen to me," he demanded, and I could only nod stupidly. "Right now, we are going off to talk with the Defiant, and that''s kind of important."


    "So why did we stop--"


    "But the second we''re done, we''re having a talk. A serious talk. I''ve had a lot of time away from you to think, and...and Whitney gave me some good advice, and Tem, too." Tem seemed to shirk away, and that was smart, because if I weren''t so scared right now, I might want to kick her in the face. Seriously? Was she taking advantage of my absence to break us apart? The little bitch.


    "Might I inquire what we will be discussing?" I asked, trying not to let my nerves show.


    "Boundaries. Mine, specifically. Okay?" I swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay then," he said, and started off again.


    I felt like somewhere in the process of jogging to a halt, a wire came loose in my brain and all that was going on up there was sparks. As cool as I tried to play it, every step we took felt like I was carrying a load of dread on my back, while Athan seemed totally unaffected.


    He didn''t know what he was doing to me? Or he...he didn''t care? Didn''t care because it was no big deal, and I was overreacting? Or because...my opinion wasn''t relevant anymore...because we were over?


    I''d been victim of Athan''s almost-callous, thoughtless honesty a few times, and always it caught me off guard...but usually it was him unexpectedly telling me something he loved about me, or him being him, just going forward without regard to how the world worked. They were both things I adored about him.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    But having it turn on me like this, it was just brutal. I wasn''t sure if I wanted the talk to come so it could be over, or to never come at all, just the two of us (and Tem¡­) running these four blocks forever together.


    Was this the last time I''d see his broad back? Those muscular legs? His messy hair bobbing? That was impossible...even if he did break up with me...Saga and Karu were still here, weren''t they? They saw him sometimes. But his words were making me second-guess everything.


    I''d been so stupid. So petty. What was I thinking, shit-talking all of his friends? Of course he''d hate me after that. And that talk about how I''d only trust him with other women if I''d drained his balls? What kind of controlling girlfriend does that? What kind of guy would want a controlling girlfriend like that?


    "I can change," I said, more of a whimper really.


    "What?" he called back at me.


    "I said I can change! I''m sorry!"


    "Dude, AEGIS. Come on. Defiant, please."


    "Right." Right. He didn''t want a girl who''d freak out in a mission either. That''s why he and Karu broke up. I had to focus.


    But I really couldn''t. My heart was pounding too fast...or...the sensation of a simulated one. I felt this awful crushing pain, and nothing had even happened yet. Nothing except the threat of a talk.


    I didn''t want to, but I dialed back my emotional indices. I had to keep it together. For him.


    "This must be it," he said, looking up. I hadn''t noticed but we were at some kind of a block which was all chainlink and gravel and large power pylons, buzzing ever-so-faintly above us. A power substation, which stepped down the high voltage used to efficiently transmit power long distances to low voltages used in residence and commerce...effective as they were, it wasn''t practical for everything in the world to have a delith cell built into it. There were rows and rows of lines, all hanging from angular metal scaffolds, and off to one side, one of two structures on the lot, what looked like some kind of warehouse, the other just being just a tiny shed of switches and circuit breakers, I assumed.


    The lock on the fence was cut, and we let ourselves in, covering the last few feet in front of the warehouse''s truck-sized double-doors in silence. Like the fence, one door was ajar slightly pulled up enough for us to stoop under.


    "Let me go first," I said, not waiting for an answer before I went. I stood up inside, my eyes already adjusted to the dim light, and found a dozen or more people standing or sitting around organized piles of metal parts and mounds of gravel and sand, all frozen and staring at my entrance.


    "Uh, hi," I said with a wave.


    "M''lady," said a guy with a grandiose bow, sweeping off his baseball cap with a flourish. "We are honored to make your acquaintance, but might I inquire whose countenance I precipitously possess the delecatation to descry?" He held the pose for a moment and then put the cap back on. In stitched letters it read ''I am now accepting compliments''.


    Dude was lanky and pale and had some acne going on. Athan entered and immediately pasty dude soured.


    Aww, he was envious. He liked me. I hoped Athan took note. As Athan stepped forward, I draped myself over his back just to make things clear for the guy.


    "Really, AEGIS?" he asked.


    "Just keeping your back warm. It''s cold in here," I giggled.


    "Well, you''ve called us here, what do you want?" a gruff, fat, hairy man asked from his ass in the pile of sand. Kind of like a crass, southern Santa Claus.


    "I want," Athan said, "to tell all of you what''s happened recently, and who''s been killing people. Because there was another death, just a mile or two from here.


    There were some concerned murmurs. I heard some disbelief that they''d been followed here. "Another Exhuman?" the hairy guy asked.


    "No, an XPCA officer."


    And then to my surprise, the hairy guy laughed, slapping his knee like a caricature. "Good! Fuck ''em all! Maybe if they all die, they''ll finally piss off!"


    "Somebody died out there, Stag," Athan shouted. "I don''t care what you think of the XPCA, you don''t fucking laugh at people dying."


    Stag stood up. "I fuckin'' do," he said, and spat on the ground. "You got a problem with that, boy?"


    I heard someone step forward from behind me, and when I checked in IR, saw Tem standing tense and shaking. Athan shot her a significant glance and she backed down. Strange...how he could see her. I''d work out the analysis later, when there was less imminent risk of hostilities.


    "Stag you senescent coot," the acne-guy said, brushing back his greasy hair behind his ear with a fingerless-gloved hand. "Let''s attend the visitant''s testimony, at least."


    "Damn it, Dork-Hand, I tell you to shut up or speak English."


    Dork-Hand whipped out a pocket thesaurus with a confident grin. "My apologies, some lexica aren''t so brobdingnagian as my own. Where did I lose you? ''Coot'', perchance?"


    "Enough," Athan said, with a spark and a boom that reported from his fingertips and echoed in the dark building. "The killer is a professional assassin, one known as Dragon, who has Sino affiliations and probably wants to destabilize the XPCA using you. He''s targeting you because you made your proclamation that if attacked, you''ll create an Exhuman event. So it reasons to me, the only way to get him off your back is to dissolve."


    "Or kill him," Stag scoffed.


    "I have it on very good authority he''d kill us if we tried. He killed an XPCA officer, Talon, and Mini, and was never even spotted before he struck. Are you going to risk your lives that you''re better than they were?"


    Dork-Hand seemed to waver, but Stag just doubled down on being a grumpy grampa. "I''m better than they were," he said, leering at Athan. "I''d bet my life on it."


    "But," Dork-Hand added. "If we were to capitulate and embrace forfeiture--"


    "Speak English, damn it," Stag yelled.


    "If we break up the group, the XPCA will get us," he said.


    "So you go to New Eden," Athan said, and the group didn''t like that at all. "Or run and hide, or flee the country to one which doesn''t have a defense pact with the US. The fact is, if you''re unknown, you might be able to escape the XPCA, but you can''t escape Dragon. If he managed to find you out here, he''ll find you anywhere you go. Unless, like I said, there''s no more reason for him to keep looking."


    "You''re telling us to turn and run, like rats?" Stag barked. "Like...like Exhumans? I thought you were a big hero of Exhuman rights, XPCA-boy, but when push comes to shove, you just fuck right over and belly up like a puss."


    "I am a proponent of Exhuman rights!" Athan yelled back. "But in order to have rights you have to be alive!"


    "What was I thinking, asking one who spends his life sucking the XPCA cock off? Like you''d know the first fucking thing about dignity."


    "You shut up, you stubby dwarf," I said, feeling hot even under my suppressed emotions. "Athan''s not afraid to make sacrifices, more than a selfish, fat, stupid little prick like you could ever even comprehend. You think he''s with the XPCA because he''s afraid for his own life?"


    "AEGIS, it''s fine," Athan said.


    "He hates it there. He suffers every fucking day, pushing himself through things and people he hates. Do you have an inkling of what it''s like to be surrounded by people who''d kill you as soon as look at you all day? Just so you could do a job you hated, that everyone hated you for doing, because you think it''s the right thing to do?"


    "Seriously, stop. We just need their cooperation. I don''t care what he says about me."


    "No this frumpy-ass hobbit needs to hear this. He may be able to get away with being a grumpy asshole to whoever he likes, but not to me, and not about you. I''ll kick his fucking ass."


    I stopped, and realized I was breathing hard. Maybe I should dial back my indices more...this was clearly not a very rational thing to do.


    But then Stag laughed.


    "I like you, lass. You''ve got ten times the cock that boy has. What''d you say your name was?"


    "I didn''t."


    He laughed again, and I realized, as I tweaked my indices yet again, and rationality overcame emotion, that I had an opportunity here to help Athan out.


    "Listen gramps, this Dragon wants to use you as his own personal weapon to tear the US in half. I know nobody here is exactly all patriotic, but a lot of good people live a lot of good lives here anyway, and if you let Dragon control you, he''ll ruin millions or billions of lives. Do you want that on your back?"


    "The fair maiden enunciates an elegy of veracity," Dork-Hand said.


    "I agree," said Stag. "But not with Dork-Hand, and not with you, lass. But that there ain''t no man alive who will ever manipulate me for his own ends. I live by my own life, or die by it, none other."


    "Then we vote, right?" Athan asked. "To dissolve the Defiant?"


    "It''s been a real joyous romp with you fucksticks," Stag said, throwing a thumbs-up in the air. "Up for dissolve, down for stay!"


    Dork-hand threw a thumbs-up as well. So did Tem...though...she both didn''t count...and was invisible.


    But as we counted the rest of the room, it became apparent those two did not represent the majority. They were in the minority, by far.


    "Bullshit!" Stag proclaimed. "I''ve half a mind to walk out right now. Are your brains in your feet and your eyes in your asses, people?"


    "We could talk more and revote," Athan said, clearly at a loss. I think he assumed that the two vocal leaders would represent the group...but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the rest of the group were just more...normal. Exhumans who wanted to hide out, wanted to stay anonymous and hidden, weren''t bombastic or stupid enough to want to be leaders of anything.


    Exhumans who were more scared of the XPCA than some assassin. Which was all very reasonable. Very normal even. The XPCA were everywhere, and functionally limitless, whereas an assassin was just one guy. They''d all dealt with the XPCA before, lived in their country and in their New Eden and under their thumb, but none of them had ever even heard of Dragon before now, I was sure.


    It was pretty ridiculous to think that an impassioned speech would be all it took to get these people to discard the only measure of security they''d known since becoming Exhuman.


    "What...do we do now?" Athan asked.


    "We leave, I think," I said. "And hope that, in a few more deaths, they change their minds."


    Athan lingered as long as he could, but when Stag threatened to punch him in the colon, we left. We''d gone maybe two or three blocks, walking slowly, Athan staring at his feet, with the familiar look of blaming himself for things not his fault.


    "How can I help?" I asked. "I''ll do anything I can."


    "Can you convince the Defiant to put their long-term safety aside for their short-term safety?"


    "I tried," I said frowning. "I thought it was a pretty compelling argument, too."


    "It was--" he said, and then he stopped, the echoing sound of an explosion reverberating across us, the force of it, even from here, enough to make us sway slightly as though in a sudden breeze. Another followed.


    "It''s him," Athan said, eyes wide.


    "I''ll go ahead!" I shouted, turning to go.


    "Wait, it''s dangerous!"


    I pretended not to hear him as the sounds of my engines kicked into gear and I kicked off the ground with enough force to shatter the sidewalk.

 260. 2252, Present Day. Four blocks north, OR. AEGIS.

    Explosions had downed the substation, pylons twisted and fallen and live wires dancing like earthworms in a child''s fingers. Electricity was coursing across the ground in arcs and sparks and smoke, all positioned as though by design to trap the Defiant inside the warehouse. The gravel was white and black with scorch marks, and I''m sure the air stunk of burning, not that I could tell.


    I jumped the fence and sprinted through the mess of damaged components, electricity jumping from the ground into my legs in painful white-blue flashes, but this body had been built to withstand incidental electricity, and a little pain wasn''t going to slow me down. I slid to a halt feet from the door and pulled out a strand of my hair tipped with a camera to peek inside, adjusting for the darkness manually before I even looked within.


    Dragon, he had to be. A lithe Sino, standing in front of the group in a cloak that made him look bigger than he was, his straight black hair all I could see of the back of his head. Stag was on the ground, all his words of his strength useless as he choked on a knife protruding from his throat, and one or two others among the Defiant in the same position. The rest were backed into the corner, waiting, cowering.


    "One among you," Dragon said, in a thick accent I''d never heard "holds something which I desire. You will give it to me, or you will die."


    He made not even a gesture with his hand, and there was suddenly a knife in it, pulled from his sleeve.


    "Eminent sir," Dork-Hand said, from somewhere near the back. "With recalcitrance I vacillate to inform you--"


    "I did not learn your language so that you could abuse me with it," Dragon hissed. "Come forward and speak plainly."


    Nobody stirred. After exactly five seconds, one of the Exhumans lunged and made a sound, and I thought for an instant she''d chosen to attack, but realized that Dragon had moved, and there was a knife sticking out of the Exhuman''s throat.


    It was unbelievably fast. In the back of my mind, I replayed the footage and even in slow-mo, I could barely see his arm moving. The speed wasn''t everything either, it was deceptive...it was the sudden explosion of motion. There was no wind up or anticipation or tensing like he was going to act just...action, as fast as a human could go, out of nowhere.


    The Exhuman made a plaintive gurgling and fell forward, pulling the knife out stupidly, which I knew would just make her bleed out faster. It''d punched straight through her carotid, just to the side of the trachea. A perfect shot, even at that speed.


    "I said step forward," Dragon said, and this time there was movement, as the Defiant pushed a struggling Dork-Hand to the front of the pack.


    He stepped forward and dusted himself off as he reached the front, as though it were still by his design that he was there. "Hello...there. You must be...Dragon. I''m...ecstatic to, uh...visitate your personage--"


    Dragon''s hand snapped forward again with the same speed, but only to point a knife in Dork-Hand''s direction. At the speed of human reflexes, Dork-Hand screamed and flinched as he realized he wasn''t dead yet but very nearly had been. "Speak plainly," Dragon said.


    "Yes. Sorry."


    "The object I seek is a small orb, the size of a grown man''s fist. It is mechanical, and I know one among you possesses it. It was the possession of Minerva ''Mini'' Frossard, and was not on her person. It will be mine, whether you hand it over now, or I take it from your bodies."


    "Wait...you...you don''t want us to...to riot and destroy the XPCA?" Dork-Hand stammered.


    "I care nothing about this country or the people in it."


    "But Athan said--"


    "I am finished explaining myself. Surrender my item. Or die."


    Again, I felt the group tense up. Nobody seemed intent on handing over the item though. Unlike the others, there was something in Dork-Hand''s biologicals that indicated more than pants-shitting terror. Despite the situation, he was still trying to come out on top it looked like.


    The five-second count drew near, and Dragon lowered his arm so that he could raise it again with a throw. Just as time was about to elapse, Dork-Hand threw himself to his knees.


    "Waaaaait!" he cried. "I beg you, spare my life."


    "I have already informed you what in this room has value to me. Your words were not mentioned."


    "I know what you''re looking for, though. I know where to find it. Just spare me, and I''ll tell you where you can get it."


    Was this some kind of moronic bluff? Was Dork-Hand trying to pull an Athan and draw the attention off the others? Or just some ballsy doomed escape attempt?


    Athan was within sight now, beginning to thread his way through the downed lines. The electricity wasn''t anything to him, he could push it away, but it was still a mess of metal wreckage he had to get past. I wondered if I should have tried to jump Dragon while I had the chance before Athan got involved, but given how fast the assassin moved, I didn''t think even I could keep up. It was close anyway, and if I did strike, the Defiant would probably unload their powers at both of us, which optimistically would kill both of us.


    But somehow I doubted he''d have stepped in there if there was any chance at all that would have worked against him.


    "Take these," he said, and threw a vial to Dork-Hand. "Ensure each person here swallows one."


    "What...what are they?"


    The knife was back in hand and levelled at Dork-Hand''s face, who began moving without asking any more questions. He went around the room, placing a large pill into each Defiant''s palm. When he''d made it halfway, suddenly, with a wet pop more than a bang, and the horrific sound of splatter, one of the first Defiant''s head simply exploded into gore.


    The headless body collapsed, blood running and splashing everywhere, and people screamed, shoving one another to get away from the corpse, to avoid the growing, slick, red pool. There was movement to run, but even that stilled when Dragon''s blade rose and pointed again.


    "I said swallow, not chew," Dragon clarified. But it was now very obvious what was in those capsules. A bomb...probably remotely detonated, so that he could keep these people hostage while he went with Dork-Hand to claim his object. I''d imagine he''d put down a camera or something to keep an eye on them, and realized the only reason he was going through all of this was the possibility that one of the Defiant had hidden his prize somewhere. That was the only reason they weren''t all already dead.


    Just more convenient to keep them alive for now. The only reason. It made me sick.


    The knife shot out again and another Defiant gurgled through a blade. "I said swallow, not hide in one''s cheek. Do not think you can evade my sight."


    There were no further incidents. And as I''d thought, Dragon threw a camera into a corner, promising that if they stirred, if the camera showed any irregular function, if they tried to disable the bombs, if the police or XPCA or anyone was contacted, he would pull the trigger without hesitation. And you bet they believed him.


    "Take me to it," he said to Dork-Hand, who just nodded and headed for the door, and for me.


    I had to decide now what the call was, but my decision was made for me by Athan closing the last of the distance in plain view. I couldn''t get to him and get us out of sight without making a lot of noise, and Dragon would certainly see him, and greet him with a knife at the throat. Athan''s shield had a hard time with fast or bulky objects, and I didn''t know how a thrown knife would stack up...much slower but much, much heavier than a bullet. At the very best, the shrapnel might be nasty enough to cut him up some, and I would be certain Dragon would want to finish the job.


    So instead, I raised my leg above my head in preparation and waited in ambush. The second he passed through that door, I would axe-kick him in the head, and we''d go from there.


    Not my idea of a good plan, but given the circumstances, it''s what I had.


    Dork-Hand emerged first, and gave me a confused glance, focused on my exposed crotch. Fantastic guy. I jerked my head to tell him to keep moving, and thankfully, he did, not pausing long enough to be suspicious.


    I tensed, focused in so hard that time seemed to slow down as my perception of it dilated ever so slightly. I could end it all right here with one shot.


    For an instant, I saw the crown of his head emerging from under the door, and my foot crashed down towards it. But the very moment I moved, he did too, pulling his head back out of the guillotine and throwing himself backwards. I heard him tumble and roll, and Dork-Hand took off like a bullet.


    And then I was shot. Three times in the chest, each explosion of noise accompanied by the sensation of getting punched very, very hard by something very, very hot. I reeled backwards a couple of steps, and in that time, Dragon slipped through the door and headed for Dork-Hand, who''d pulled curved, springy running stilts out of somewhere, and was using them to bound over the electricity and wreckage with incredible speed.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Athan was almost here, but I took off again, mostly unhindered by the bullets in me. If I were human, they''d have breached both my lungs and my heart, but my essential systems were stored closer to my gut for exactly that reason. I rocketed up on Dragon, and fast as he was, in a sprint I could still pass him like he was holding still.


    He was preparing another dagger for Dork-Hand''s backside, and I kicked him in the arm, sending it flying. He hardly flinched at the blow, instead looking at me and the ineffective bullet wounds he''d put in me.


    "What Exhuman are you? You are not of the Defiant," he said.


    "I''m just some guy''s girlfriend, crashing the meeting!" I yelled at him, cracking the ground where he jumped away from another kick.


    Where he landed, a flash of light streaked from Athan, erupting in a spiderweb of crackling electricity and sparks that coursed up and down Dragon''s legs. He shuddered and twitched involuntarily but¡­


    But his every erratic motion seemed planned. When one of his legs gave, his other leg gave equal and opposite, keeping him upright. He seemed to spasm and burn and be in pain, but acted nothing like it. As though to prove it, he whipped out two pistols, one in each hand, one pointed at Athan, and one pointed at the fleeing Dork-Hand, his eyes trailing the latter.


    Somehow, even with his lower half consumed in electricity, shuddering and flailing, he kept his arms steady and fired both shots, knocking Dork-Hand from his springing stride to a painful-looking crash with the side of a parked car, and the other making Athan''s shield strobe white with a direct hit.


    Just what the fuck was this guy?


    I went in for the kill while he was still disabled, sliding up to him with my leg poised to crush him, Athan''s lightning jumping up and down my leg. As hard as I could, I swung my leg down, and felt contact, but only grazing.


    He''d pivoted his body so I''d only clip him in the front of the shoulder, pushing him more than crushing, and he went with the force of the blow, tumbling backwards and rolling gracefully to his feet.


    He''d seriously just used the force of my kick to knock him clear of Athan''s lightning? That was completely impossible.


    And yet there it was. Guns gone within some compartment in his coat again, he bolted off towards Dork-Hand''s crumpled form. On his first step away, I tried to sweep his still-electrocuted legs, but he just did a fucking cartwheel over me, his fingers twitching into the gravel as they bore a shock, and then he was away from me.


    The next few seconds were an exercise in pure frustration as I repeatedly caught up to him, only to have him gracefully dodge my attacks with ludicrous panache. I lunged for a grab, he arrested my momentum with a palm strike to the face. I squared up for a pair of front kicks, suddenly, he was completely out of range. I did a goddamn spinning tornado kick, to indiscriminately crap on the whole area around him, but the second I''m off the ground, he''s ducking under my leg, spinning me upside-down with the momentum of my own jump to crack my head on the pavement.


    Which fucking hurt.


    "You are quite resilient," he said, through heavy breaths. "Perhaps I will have a place for you after I finish my errand."


    "Oh eat shit and die," I said. Talking while fighting was more Athan''s thing, but I was venting my frustrations at him.


    He abruptly sidestepped as another pair of lightning bulbs sailed past him. "Stop hitting my girlfriend!" Athan growled as he closed the last few feet to catch up, his breathing deep and even. If my indexes weren''t so dialed down, I''d have swooned at his concern. He didn''t even flinch as two bullets unloaded into his shield with no effect but to set off some fireworks.


    "You are not of the Defiant either, but I believe I know of you. Athan ''Chariot'' Ashton, lapdog of the XPCA," Dragon said. "What business do you have here? These Exhumans are not your allies."


    "These Exhumans are people, and you''re murdering them, you fuck," he said in response, his eyes dark and dangerous. "For what!? They won''t do what you want, so you just fucking kill them? What the fuck is wrong with you?"


    It wasn''t the time to correct Athan on his misconception of Dragon''s motives.


    "They chose their fate when they refused my demands. Stubbornness killed them, not I."


    "And Talon? And Mini? And Micaiah? Were they all just too stubborn to you too? Because it sounds like you just fucking shot them in the back without warning or demands. Just a sick fucking killer."


    Dragon cocked his head. "You believe I killed these people?"


    "Oh like I''m going to believe this bullshit."


    Athan stepped forward again, and this time as he did, I thought a second sun had dawned. Twenty blades or more, of pure sparking luminance manifested all around Athan, throwing harsh shadows against his features. Dark lines under his dark eyes matched his glare as he advanced towards the murderer.


    Dragon gave a small amused smile beneath his thin moustache. And then, as he had before, he moved without warning or anticipation, just bolting right between Athan and me for Dork-Hand again. The dozens of blades lashed out as one, moving to intercept, and I jumped to block his path.


    But it was a feint. He''d shifted again, and closed the distance to Athan before I could react. One arm struck Athan in the face with an elbow, the other, crudely blocked by driving a knife through Athan''s hand instead of through his chest.


    He retreated just as the blades came back in to eviscerate him, slicing through nothing but air.


    "So you can see the future? Read my motions?" Dragon whispered.


    "Ow, you goddamn fuck," Athan screamed at him, his hand dripping blood from both sides. He ripped the dagger out, gasping as he replaced it with one of his own blades, cauterizing the wound shut with a sizzle. And all he had to say was ''ow''? Holy shit, Athan''s pain tolerance was high.


    "I see that you are serious. You have more nerve than the whole of the Defiant. I appreciate that."


    "I''d appreciate it if you fucking died!" Athan screamed back, throwing the knife back at its owner. But Dragon just shifted to the side and seemingly pulled the knife out of the air into his waiting hand, moving not to avoid the attack, but the spray of blood which flew off of it.


    Athan lunged forward, his blades forming a wedge in front of him to split Dragon in two, but again, Dragon reacted as soon as Athan was moving, and again, once within the barrier of blades, he brutalized Athan.


    I screamed and ran into the blades myself, somehow so far away for only being a few of steps apart. In those steps, I watched as Dragon hit Athan a dozen times, his hands a blur, flying up and down Athan''s reeling body, impacting again and again, palms cracking ribs, elbow shattering nose, a downward chop above the pelvis, at the liver and kidneys.


    Athan was just stumbling backwards, every blow pushing him further and further away, unaware of what was happening to him, unable to feel more than pain, to see more than Dragon moving at him. His blades finished their arcing attack at nothing and came back, but not before one final gut-punch collapsed Athan''s center of balance and dropped him face-first to the gravel.


    He coughed, a torrent of blood leaking from his face, and then he laid very still as his blades winked out.


    I couldn''t...couldn''t do anything. He was right there in front of me, and for all my strength and speed, I couldn''t do a single fucking thing. Dragon just reached into his coat and pulled out knives to face me and I just stood there staring at Athan, watching him again and again in the back of my mind in slow motion as every punch connected, every bone broke, every bruise was laid.


    I just...just wanted to scream, wanted to go feral and dive on top of Dragon and tear and rip until there wasn''t anything of him left. How fucking dare he do that. I didn''t give a shit about who he was or XPCA politics or anything. I just wanted to kill, in a way I didn''t even know I was capable of.


    He was on me, giving me only an instant to react as he came in with both daggers primed. I took only long enough to calculate whether their impact would disable me or not, and when I concluded they wouldn''t, stood there to take the blow.


    Unbelievable white-hot pain shot through me, but I didn''t care. My arms snapped shut around Dragon, with the aim to pin him to me. If he wanted to hurt me, cut me up, stab me, he could fucking do it all day, but I''d fucking make him pay. I would wring the life out of him as his skin burned, trapped against my searing-hot body. He would blister and scream and I''d break every one of his bones so he could fucking know the cost of crossing Athan and me.


    I saw by his eyes that he was surprised I just stood there and took it, but even with that surprise he still almost evaded. I barely caught the trailing end of his coat, my fingers snapping on it like a vice as he tried to pull away. In the next moment, I''d yanked him backwards, and though he was already halfway out of it, I grabbed his trailing arm with both of mine.


    My engines blazed to life, hot enough to ignite the air around me, as I put everything I had into breaking him. His bones were like toothpicks in my hands, and I ground them into dust in my fingers. He''d broken Athan in six or seven places. The bone in my hands, I shattered into six or seven thousand pieces. His flesh screamed in protest at my grip, blood forced out of ruptured capillaries to flood the muscle and skin, to weep through the pores like crimson sweat. His skin burned in my palms, shrinking and blackening. I squeezed and crushed until his entire arm felt like nothing more than gritty sand in a wrung-out tee, crunchy and broken and dry.


    And then, like a piece of paper, I ripped his whole fucking arm in half, tearing whatever was left, beneath where the elbow used to be. What blood remained splattered the ground with a sick wet noise.


    Somehow, impossibly, he was still up, and pulled away, sagging slightly as he cupped the torn shreds of his arm. "I see now. You are no Exhuman. You are machine."


    I had no words for him. I had only pain he needed to feel. I charged him again, but he refused to let me have him, slipping away whenever I thought I was close, no matter how fast I forced myself to go.


    My engines were screaming. My clothes were on fire. And still, by the breadth of my fingertips, he was fucking eluding me. I wanted to scream, but all the air I had was being forced into my engines.


    But as I charged him again, he reached out with his remaining arm and put something on my back. For a moment, I scrabbled for it, until it engaged and I felt my systems going haywire. Power surges created aberrant behavior, components were misfiring and cascading failures began to trip.


    I hit the ground before I realized I was falling, my auto-gyro telling me I was still upright. I couldn''t move, not in a coordinated manner. My thoughts became more and more corrupt, I realized, as I began to become hyperfocused on tangents. In that moment, I needed to apologize to Lia. I had four cam-drones finished and waiting back at home, just idling, completely wasted potential. Athan was helpless at the moment, not critically wounded, but if I couldn''t stop Dragon...


    Yes. That last one was important. I sent the highest-priority emergency alert I could manage on every channel I could manage, resolving to my location and with an image of Athan as I saw him in front of me.


    And then everything went utterly black. I thought...I was just out but...but I was still here, thinking, struggling in vain. Maybe just my optics then.


    Until I heard Dragon speak.


    "Hmm, and what is this now?" he asked me, presumably.


    And then out of the blackness stepped a silver-haired girl, a dark wind whipping around her as her silvery-blue eyes burned with the same rage and desire to eradicate this man as I felt.


    "Pain for pain. Blood for blood," she whispered, and the black wind howled.

 261. 2252, Present Day. Four blocks north. Taglock.

    I watched through my optics as the fight unfolded in front of me. AEGIS was managing surprisingly well, keeping Dragon on the defensive and only just missing with her attacks. But then in one motion, he tagged her, and she froze and then dropped. Looked like a data scrambler, nasty little device which could, at extremely close range, essentially randomize the state of a quantum core.


    But before she was even out, everything went black.


    Peculiar.


    I pulled my optics away and looked out with my own eyes, and confirmed that, no, they hadn''t broken. Everything really had just gone black.


    There was a half-sphere of just total blackness where the substation had been, which was a bit concerning. I hoped none of the Defiant had the power to simply erase a section of the world, or if they did, it was erased in some convenient way such that it came back with all of its occupants intact.


    After all, I did have a job to do here, and if Athan was dead already, I''d be doing a fairly terrible job of it.


    I put the optics back up and flipped through different filters and spectra, discovering quickly that the world had not, thankfully, vanished, but rather just everything in the visual spectrum. IR, sonic, X-Ray all came back fine and showed me different glimpses of what was going on in there. Someone had just turned out the lights.


    And I had my suspicions who. I overlaid as many useful visors as I could, and quickly picked up that there was another person there, currently engaged with Dragon in the pitch black. Temperance, I presumed, given the situation.


    She was holding her own, though was relying entirely on her brute strength rather than any intelligence, from the look of things. I had a drone positioned nearby, kept out of range in case of any incidental electrical attack, but with Athan down, I could move it closer. I had it synced to my optics, and was able to switch between my two perspectives seamlessly, after I spent a few moments getting the drone''s input out of the visual spectrum as well.


    And then I had eyes on the fight from up close and could confirm with what I saw and heard that the girl wasn''t fighting very smart at all.


    "I''ll kill you!" she screeched at him. "You hurt him and I will kill you! I will kill you and climb into hell to kill you again and again!"


    Dragon, for his part, was expertly avoiding a constant barrage of lasers which emanated from everywhere, visible only to me after they''d already shot off as superhot burst, sudden drop in air pressure, and release of new chemical frags. He didn''t move like a blinded person, never seemed unsure of where his body was, evading consistently, constantly trying to press towards her or towards Dillon -- the Defiant who''d run off -- but finding himself with a face full of lasers every time he tried.


    But he was blind. As surely as he moved, I saw him catch a foot on a protruding hunk of metal wreckage and trip over it, but even then he just rolled forward and got his feet back under him in a second. That he had such control over his body in the dark, that he could evade Temperance''s attacks and keep himself oriented to move towards Dillon still...truly the man''s reputation was deserved.


    Which was fine by me. As long as he couldn''t see, I could act without worry I''d be his next mark. Getting Athan up and out was my first job, since he was the target I''d been hired to protect.


    If he didn''t have his powers, I could have shot him from here, a dart full of some stims, a little grenade of medical gel, get him up and going again. But of course he couldn''t be that easy, which is why I''d loaded my drone up with needles of the stuff instead. It flew over him and I had it administer some painkillers, spray down his bruises and broken bones with medical gel to help them hold, and even gave him an injection of medical nanobots to help with the whole punched liver damage. They were expensive, but so was I.


    Immediately, his vitals were stabilizing under my drone, and once I''d waited as long as I thought I could, I hit him with a stim to wake him up.


    Watching through my drone''s eyes, I could see Athan suddenly jolt to life and then fumble blind. All he could see was blackness, and all he could hear was the constant tearing of air as Tem attacked relentlessly. I nudged him with the drone and hoped he took the hint.


    Well he put his hands all over it, getting whacked by the rotors pretty good but ultimately let it go. I flew it just above and in front of him so he could hear the motors whine and led him away from the fighting.


    We were halfway there when he suddenly dropped, tripping over something which I''d thought was just noise in IR after AEGIS had blasted the whole place with her body heat, but then realized it was AEGIS he''d tripped over. He was stumbling in the dark, putting his hands all over her, generally just going to town in a way which could really wait for afterwards.


    But finally he did something and she popped back into visibility on IR, sitting up and talking to him.


    "Athan?" she asked. "Something''s wrong with my optics, I can''t see except in IR. Are you invisible again? Or...where''s the rest of the world?" She paused, and right as Athan started to speak cut back in. "Wait, where''s the Defiant? What''s going on? I lost the last few minutes."


    "It''s okay," Athan said. "I think we''re in Tem''s powers, she''s made it pitch black. Your drone led me to you. I think...Tem''s still fighting, from the sound, but I can''t see anything."


    "My drone? DOG?"


    "No...this...little quadrotor. It administered first aid while I was fading in and out, and then hit me with some stims."


    "I don''t have any medical quadrotors," she said looking around and seeing my drone. "Oh. Is that mine? I must have lost more than I thought."


    "We need to get out of the dark," Athan said. "If Dragon attacks, we''ll be helpless."


    "Dragon? Right. Oh shit, Dragon. He''s right there, Athan!"


    AEGIS was also not using her brain today, as Dragon turned instantly the second he hear AEGIS yell. He turned to sprint that way, and Tem hadn''t quite caught on yet that Athan and AEGIS were up yet. He jumped at them, and AEGIS rose to meet him, diverting his attack but getting a knife in her chest.


    "Jesus he''s fast!" she said. "And I''m hurt already...was I shot? Athan, get the fuck out of here!"


    "Tem!" Athan shouted. "Drop the darkness, now!"


    To my eyes, nothing changed, but the four of them all began moving and acting a lot more coordinated, and I took a glance over my optics to confirm the dark sphere was gone.


    Athan, the damn idiot, ran in and met Dragon halfway, his blades defensive this time, but still not fast enough for Dragon. As good as he was, Athan wasn''t a fighter, and he didn''t move or think like one. He was a tactician, trained from his lifestyle of football, and used his weapons like he used teammates, positioning them offensively, defensively, adjusting based on an evolving situation.


    But that wasn''t how a fight worked. There weren''t rules or breaks here, plans and improvisation were obviously useful, but not when you were getting punched in the head. There was simply no time for stopping and thinking against a foe this fast, this relentless, and Athan was being punished for his methodical approach wherever Dragon had the chance.


    Still, Dragon couldn''t get in more than one or two hits at a time with Athan being more guarded, but he was still simply demolishing the boy. Every blade which lashed out was a hole in Athan''s defenses, and every blade which stayed guarding him was distance he surrendered. Thrown knives flared against Athan''s shield constantly, which seemed to blind and disorient him more than his opponent.


    AEGIS wasn''t being useful either, to say nothing of Temperance. The scramble had set her back to before minute zero of the fight, and she was re-learning the enemy and his capabilities, and was beginning to slow from her wounds. Temperance seemed unwilling or unable to unleash any attack which might catch Athan in it, and as Dragon was on him constantly, that meant she could do nothing.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Which just left me.


    I put my optics down and looked through the scope of the rifle instead.


    Nothing about that man seemed exactly normal, but it wasn''t the kind of thing you could pick up at a casual observation. Even I was having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what it was, but I did notice that from his body language, when he moved, it seemed completely unplanned. There was literally no hesitation or anticipation, just movement, which gave a bizarre, unpredictable mania to his actions I found unsettling.


    Significantly, this made him hard to target. Even though the smart sensors in this rifle''s scope were top of the line, automatically detecting and compensating for everything from wind currents to miniscule differences in gravity or air pressure, at the end of the day, I still had to point the bullet at him and pull the trigger with my own human reflexes.


    And also not hit the target I was supposed to protect. That probably wouldn''t go over well.


    Athan was yelling at Temperance and in a moment, the battlefield was filled with visual noise, a hundred thousand copies of the three of them all moving and feinting and jeering at Dragon. But it did exactly as much good as the darkness, and for his overconfidence, Athan was rewarded with yet another combo of blows down his body, and AEGIS another knife in her core when she tried to intercede.


    The knife could have just as easily gone into Athan but didn''t. I didn''t know why, but I really didn''t want to find out.


    But the effect was the same. Though she''d held up well, until now, this one seemed to have hit something critical and AEGIS staggered, riddled with bullets and blades. From one knee, she still reached out at Dragon, almost pleadingly, but he just slipped past and made for the other two. Where, again, Athan''s inexperience made him vulnerable prey, taking painful blows he shouldn''t have, too reliant on moving and on his weapons and seemingly unaware that he had two perfectly good arms which would go far in mitigating the beating he was taking. He was getting destroyed, and still managing to stand in the way of my shot while doing it.


    And then the world seemed to lurch. Dragon went flying backwards and slammed into the ground, AEGIS following suit. The downed debris and wires leaned inwards, scuffing on the gravel as something pulled them down and in. Athan made a gesture as something flew off his body towards where Dragon and AEGIS were locked together, wrestling impotently.


    I checked my optics for a moment. An electromagnet, and a very strong one. I had to commend the kid for not just wasting his time while he got beaten, and for knowing when to kick it off before he got too wasted. He was advancing on Dragon slowly, breathing heavily, holding his wounds, trickling blood.


    But this was a situation where he needed to move fast. I could already see Dragon unbuckling his kit, and the more he got off, the freer his movement to take off the rest. By the time Athan saw what was going on and charged him, Dragon had already mostly broken free and rolled sideways to put Athan''s slicing attack through his missing arm.


    Which was...again curious. No man should have adapted that fast to their arm being gone. Protecting oneself, all of oneself, was instinctual, and it could take years or decades to train those instincts that a limb was no longer there. There was no way Dragon should have been able to use a missing limb to his advantage like that so soon.


    And then Dragon was up again, and Athan was just doomed. Even without his equipment, Dragon was more than a match with AEGIS pinned, and Athan seemingly distracted to maintain the magnet. He should have let it go the second Dragon was free, but seemed to want to keep the man from his supplies, unaware of what his divided attention was costing him.


    But Dragon didn''t advance. Instead he started to speak.


    What he said was probably going to be very important. An explanation for why he wasn''t killing Athan, maybe. Or his true motives in being here and hunting the Defiant. What he''d meant when he said the deaths of Talon, Mini, and Micaiah hadn''t been on him. Words which might reflect the state of Exhumans, the XPCA, or even China.


    But I wasn''t getting paid to let Athan hear words. I was getting paid to keep him alive. So I pulled the trigger.


    I wasn''t an assassin. I''d warned Lia of as much before I took her job, but she''d insisted.  I''d handled a gun or two in my time, but never had I the opportunity to sit behind a beauty like this one. This firearm was hers, an AM-12.7 ''Lachesis'', a marvel of engineering which utilized both a mass driver and the explosive power of a .50-caliber round to fire with dozens of times more speed and power than any conventional firearm. Penetrator rounds fired from one of these had a propensity for punching straight through exosuit plating, the pilot, the plating again, and then the plating and pilot of any other unfortunate to be behind them. Even tanks and other heavily-armored craft offered little protection against it, unless layered with a kinetic barrier.


    So when I pulled the trigger, I felt it. Even on a bipod, even with my body fully prone and braced, the beast erupted into my shoulder, the recoil immense, even through kinetic dampeners.


    I cycled the action manually as I peered through the scope, pivoting around to find where I''d been before the recoil had sent my vision flying. The gun hissed at me, dissipating the enormous heat it''d just generated by pumping coolant and air. Five seconds, it would take before it could fire again.


    The good news, I had hit. The bad news, Dragon was not so easy to slay as potshotting him from a rooftop a couple blocks down. He was standing up, knocked flat by the force of the shot, but my bullet hung in the air in front of his head, trapped in a glowing orange-white semi-solid field. Personal kinetic barrier, and by the fact that it''d just taken a shot from the Lachesis, probably the most expensive and high-tech one I''d ever seen.


    Still, the barrier was compromised now, and if he just hung out for another few seconds¡­


    Of course, he wasn''t that foolish. The moment he was back on his feet, he''d dove for his abandoned supplies, and in an instant, an explosion filled the air with a semicircle of black to rival Temperance''s. A smoke bomb, a very high-tech one, which exploded with a combination of substances, chaff, smoke, burning primer, all designed to defeat as many different modes of detection as possible.


    I knew it was futile, but I pulled my eyes from the scope and back to my optics, flipping through channels and finding nothing but an impenetrable dome. Dragon would know which direction the shot came from, and would not be so stupid as to run out of the smoke in any direction which would expose him, but he could certainly escape behind it.


    And sure enough, after another twenty or so seconds, the smoke began to clear and with it, any traces of Dragon on the field. I began to pack to redeploy immediately.


    He wouldn''t come back, not out in the open, I was sure of that. But he also had a general bearing of where I was. I''d deliberately ignored several other more optimal -- and therefore obvious -- perches when selecting this one, hopefully enough to buy time for my escape.


    The real trick was going to be whether I left behind enough for him to ID me, and if so, if he chose to pursue me. Pulling that trigger may have cost me everything.


    But it''s not like I was paid to sit and watch, right?


    I still had my ears in my drone, listening to Athan and AEGIS and Tem as I made my escape. I couldn''t fly the drone without stopping, and I sure as hell wasn''t going to have it automatically follow me, that would be painting a flag on my backside for Dragon to follow. Athan and AEGIS could have it, it couldn''t be traced back to me anyway.


    "He''s...he''s gone?" AEGIS asked, her voice sounding vaguely stuttery and broken from her damage.


    "I think so," Athan said, and I heard him collapse on the ground heavily. "Fuck. Jack was right."


    "Jack?"


    "He said Dragon would kill me. Said I wouldn''t stand a chance. And he was right. I couldn''t do anything. I was just...slow, and weak...and I didn''t even have time to think about how to use my powers. I was just lashing out and hoping to keep him away and¡­"


    "Hey," AEGIS interrupted. "It''s fine, Athan. It''s all fine. We''re alive and that''s what matters."


    "Maybe the Defiant will realize who the bigger problem is now."


    "The Defiant!" AEGIS said. "Shoot, I remember! Damn that scrambler. Athan help me out here a second--"


    I heard nothing but some sounds of movement for a minute while I ducked into an empty house with an easy-to-shim lock. One with a nice, thick basement that my optics had a hard time getting anything useful out of, and where nobody was home. I''d hide out here for the next few hours until I could hightail it properly.


    "What''s this?" Athan asked. "And why are we stealing?"


    "This," AEGIS breathed with pained exertion, "is the most important thing we''ll ever see, maybe. This is what Dragon''s after."


    "This ball? Is he playing fetch?"


    AEGIS made a sort of robotic noncommittal noise. "I''m serious, Athan. I heard him, and my memories are unscrambling some. This is it. He wants this, not the Defiant."


    "Why? What is it?"


    Again, a robotic noncommittal noise. She wasn''t doing well.


    "I dunno, Athan. All I know is, as long as he doesn''t have it, he''ll keep coming after it. It''s important to him, all he wanted, and that means he absolutely can''t have it. He wanted it badly enough to do all...those things. To...oh no. Oh no, Athan. The Defiant!"


    "Yeah, you said that already. What about them?"


    "The bombs, Athan! We have to get the bombs out! Fuck...Athan, help me move! I can''t...can''t..."


    The next couple of minutes were just her panicking and him confused and helping her move towards the warehouse.


    I already knew what he''d find in there. I wasn''t a religious man, but I still closed my eyes and offered up a silent prayer for those he was about to see in there. I was a realist, and I knew what Dragon was capable of, and preventing the other Defiant from intervening in his fight would be one of the first things he''d do.


    But there was still a part of me which hoped that somehow, he''d never pulled the detonator. That the bombs were safely inert for the moment with all of Dragon''s equipment left behind at the magnet.


    It was a stupid hope, but one which still crossed my heart. And it broke when I heard the shocked gasps of Athan and AEGIS and Tem walking in that room, choking and stunned and throwing up on the floor. Those poor fucking bastards.


    I turned off my comms and pulled out my earpiece, leaning against a cold concrete wall in the dark basement alone, while Dragon ran free in the dusk.

 262. 2252, Present Day. Four blocks north. Athan.

    It had been so...so senselessly cruel. Walking into that room had been been like crossing the threshold into a nightmare...but not one of mine, one belonging to someone with an even sicker mind than mine.


    The Defiant had all been standing or sitting together. Packed in like they were posing for a group picture, or huddled for safety or comfort, or just because Dragon fucking told them to.


    And that was how they''d died.


    Three bodies with knife wounds in their necks, two with the handles still sticking out of them, including Stag. Whatever I thought of him, he didn''t deserve this.


    One body without a head. The others had stayed far away from the corpse, and it sat in its own small pool of undisturbed gore.


    And twelve dead Exhumans with holes in their chests, their faces intact and still showing the fear and pain of their last living moments. Each was splattered with the blood of each of the others, each body propped up by the ones next to it in a way which reminded me of a neatly stacked pile of kindling for some reason.


    And they were still. So unnaturally still. The only thing which stirred in there was the slow dripping of exposed viscera.


    I''d only seen them for a few seconds before AEGIS covered my eyes, but the image of it was burned into my mind. Tem had just thrown up through her fingers.


    I just felt as cold and empty as those bodies.


    I couldn''t...couldn''t process what I''d seen, it felt like. My mind refused to accept it. It had to be wrong, I had to go back in, look at it again, and I''d see I was mistaken somehow. The Defiant couldn''t be dead, they just couldn''t. Dragon had been pressed back, we''d given it our all and been hurt and broken and done it. So they had to be alive. They had to.


    Because if they weren''t, what had I been doing this whole time? What was the point of all the fighting and the suffering and running I''d done if it would all just end this way?


    I was sitting in a daze, not really there, the stims beginning to ebb away and reveal the true pain in my body. AEGIS was trying to tell me something and I heard the words ''police'' and ''XPCA'' and ''leave'', but I didn''t care.


    In my hand was a scrap of black fabric. When I''d desperately unleashed an electromagnet to try to buy myself a few seconds, this had ripped off my neck and flown into the conflux. But that wasn''t possible, I made very certain that nothing I carried with me was magnetic, except the charm on my mobile, which I wrapped in current to keep from flying off.


    It wasn''t possible, just like so many things today. For months, I''d been wearing this choker, and today it decided to be something else for no reason I could determine. It was a small thing, but it hit me hard...a piece of unreality which was insignificant enough to penetrate my denial. Even if I couldn''t face the Defiant dying, I could still look at this cloth and know, that I knew nothing. That I was nothing, that my efforts and desires and time...all I''d done here, all meaningless.


    Something flashed in my eyes and I blinked slowly and looked up, seeing the flashlight of a police officer. They were saying words to me I couldn''t understand while their partner was walking around looking at downed lines while staying well back from them.


    In a matter of minutes, police and emergency crews had flooded the scene. There were a dozen engineers in bright yellow insulated suits trying to get at the shed of breakers, police swarming in and out of the shed where the Defiant were, and a thousand people trying to ask questions of AEGIS and me.


    AEGIS said nothing, just held me. Tem, invisible, also said nothing, looking at me every time a question was put to me, but not sure how to act. And I just did nothing.


    Finally, they''d had enough of our recalcitrance, and I was pulled upright.


    "Don''t--" AEGIS said.


    She was arguing with them, passionately. Shaking her head with ungainly movements through her damage. I didn''t understand what there was to argue about. The Defiant had died. What else was there?


    My question was answered as my arms were pulled behind my back and dread rose into my chest. I pulled against the officer but I was weak and slow and couldn''t resist effectively.


    AEGIS tried to protest again, tried to move, but she was too broken. But it was fine, I had this.


    The cop stumbled backwards with a shout of alarm as blades manifest in his face, his restraints falling to the lightning-scarred gravel with a clatter. I found myself too weak to stand unassisted and joined them on the ground in a moment.


    "Call Colonel Cosette Dawn, XPCA. Call her!" AEGIS kept repeating as I felt myself fading away. I gave my blades a menacing twirl above my body, watching them spark and glimmer against the velvet sky of dusk.


    I struggled to hang on. I had to fight them off. I couldn''t let anyone else here die today. I had to...had to save them...had to protect¡­


    I saw a light which wavered in front of my face, and when I blinked, saw it was a harsh, naked lightbar, casting its relentless glow across the ceiling. I stirred slightly and felt pain all across my body, painful bruising all along my front, my nose swollen, my arm feeling like it was broken, my hand was ruined for shoving two different blades into it. All of the dull aching which had pushed me down into unconsciousness as my stims wore off, all returned now when I moved and let me know, in no uncertain terms--


    Hey, maybe don''t move, dumbass.


    I was in a cell with the door blown off. There were scorch marks on the walls and if I turned my head, streaks of blood on the floor. My vision swam with the movement, but even so, I could make out Tem opposite me, half-standing, half-sitting on another bed. She was bloody like she hadn''t been before, holding her side and breathing heavily.


    I turned my head further and saw outside the cell, SWAT police in full gear, body armor and riot shields, helmets and guns out, just...standing, tense, poised, ready¡­


    And, of course, facing us.


    "Tem, what''s going on?" I croaked. She shuffled to my side at once, still holding up a hand threateningly at the police.


    "They tried to take you, hurt you," she said. "I would s-s-sooner die than--"


    I sighed and she shut up on the spot.


    "Are you hurt? How did you get hurt? They didn''t shoot you, did they?"


    "No...it is...it is nothing. I''m s-sorry."


    "Tem, just tell me. I need to figure this out."


    "It''s not important."


    "Tem?"


    "S-s-sorry," she muttered guiltily. "It was...you. But it was an accident! I was following to make s-sure you would not be hurt...and when they closed the cell¡­"


    "My shield went off," I finished, my heart sinking painfully. I took another look around and realized those blood streaks...those were probably bodies dragged from this room, not too long ago. I''d failed yet again. And hurt Tem again.


    "Where''s AEGIS?"


    "They are in the cell two over. They told me to tell you they are s-sorry, but they cannot move."


    "AEGIS?" I called into the hall over the line of guards.


    "Keep it down, prisoner!" one of them outside my cell yelled back at me.


    "You do not tell Chariot to ''keep it down''!" Tem shrieked, and they all recoiled backwards half a step. What the fuck had she been doing while I was out?


    "Chariot?" I heard AEGIS'' voice echo from the hall. "Athan? Are you there?"


    "Athan?" Another woman''s voice asked.


    It took me a second to place. "Whitney?" I asked back.


    "That girl?" AEGIS called. "Why is she here?"


    "I was arrested!" Whitney shouted back. "Where else would I be!"


    "Quiet!" The SWAT barked.


    "YOU QUIET!" Tem hissed, and spots of darkness seethed around her.


    I sighed again. This wasn''t going well, I felt heavy and achy and even the limited motion I''d made so far had made my head spin and my vision streak in front of my eyes. And if I went out again, there was no telling what Tem and the police would get into.


    So as best I could, I pushed all thoughts of the Defiant and their grizzly, pointless deaths from my mind and focused on what we could do here and now. I took deep breaths like I was starting to tilt on a game and needed to re-find myself in that zone of unfocused focus.


    It didn''t work. The world didn''t stop spinning just because I wanted it to.


    "Why were you arrested? I thought they were just questioning you?" I called out of the cell, my voice a croak.


    "They didn''t like my answers," she huffed. "Speaking of which, should I even be talking to you? Are you actually...are you...an Exhuman?"A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    "Maybe this isn''t the time for that?" AEGIS asked.


    "Enough!" shouted the SWAT. "You will wait without any further scheming or conversation or we will engage. You are here to wait in containment, not hold a forum."


    "Officer, please," I pleaded from my back. "I''ll wait for the XPCA, just let them go."


    "Bullshit, we''re leaving you. If we were just going to abandon you, we''d have just hidden when they were coming for you," AEGIS said, and Tem nodded with a decisive snort.


    "Guys, we don''t need to make a big fucking scene about this. It''s just...a little bit of being arrested."


    "Yeah," AEGIS scoffed. "And the three officers who died bringing you in. And the one who died locking up your cell. And the two Tem took out when they decided you were helpless when you were asleep and got way too smart for themselves. And the eighteen dead Defiant plus the previous dead bodies. We don''t have Dragon, and as you''ve pointed out before, the XPCA doesn''t exactly mind scapegoating. Where the fuck do you expect the blame to fall?"


    "Me," I said, wondering what was so complicated about this. "And it''s fine. The Defiant...they''re dead. Whatever happens to me now...I did my part. Things are safe for now. There''s no more chance of the XPCA blowing up."


    "Yeah, that''s stupid." I could practically hear AEGIS rolling her eyes as she replied, even as her voice was breaking up a little from her damage.


    "All right, enough!" The SWAT yelled, stepping forward to jam a gun towards my face. A shotgun, from the looks of it. "Not another word until the XPCA are here, got it?"


    I wasn''t sure if ''not another word'' included agreeing so I just shrugged as best I was able, making my arm burn, and the pit of my stomach ache from the pain.


    "I asked you a question, Exhuman!" he barked, and touched the barrel of the gun to my temples.


    And then he screamed as he was engulfed in a pillar of searing light. The others opened fire at once, their bullets passing harmlessly through the decoy Tem in my room and scarring the painted concrete with even more scorch.


    The pressure and sounds of the blasts made me close my eyes against the pain as my brain throbbed inside my head. I felt myself slipping, my body feeling further away from me somehow. I tried to tell Tem to stop but couldn''t get coherent words out, and definitely not above the gunfire. It took all I had not to just stay and be.


    So I was a little shocked when my consciousness finally stabilized and my ears stopped ringing to still hear the voices of the police, yelling to each other about formations and pulling back. I expected a little more...eradication out of Tem. But then again, they''d only been firing at her illusions and not at me, so I guess this was just straight-up murder for her instead of berserk slaughter.


    I opened my eyes and then closed one of them when two perspectives was more than I could take. There was a shimmering cloud of white flakes slowly encroaching on them, and they were just falling further back down the hallway at its advance. Gashes on a few of them indicated they''d tried to touch the hard-light motes and learned they were not something to fuck with.


    Tem, for her part, watched with uncharacteristic focus from her hiding spot at the foot of my bed. Aside from the killing, I was proud of her. She''d come up with a way to de-escalate all on her own. Quite the step forward.


    From the other end of the hallway, opposite the guard''s new pen, I heard the heavy tread of boots, not rubber or metal, but the hollow clacking of composite armor. Expensive stuff, I could tell, just by the sound.


    And then, swimming into my view, a soldier in white with a glowing red visor wrapped around her shaved head.


    "This is the Exhuman in custody?" she barked at the XPCA. "Why is this cell not secure? What in God''s name are you imbeciles doing cowering in a corner?"


    "Ma''am, this is no longer a secure area--"


    "I am a hunter. Everywhere I set foot is a secure area. Now answer my questions with haste or risk my impatience."


    "This cloud, ma''am, it''s like razors--"


    Karu made a dissatisfied noise and turned on me with a frown. She gave only the slightest indication of a nod before her wrist snapped upwards, and with a crack, a shock net flew spiraling outwards and enveloped Tem cleanly. She wailed only for a moment as the net clicked ominously, and even from here, I could feel the electricity discharging.


    "Karu what the fuck--"


    "Silence, Exhuman scum," Karu shouted me down. "I am here by order of the XPCA to retrieve these dangerous captives, and I will tolerate no failure in doing so. You will comply or you will face similar judgement," she said, levelling her wrist at me instead.


    With Tem down, and her hard-light beginning to disassociate, the SWAT began to rally and rejoined Karu at the head of my cell, their shields and guns all pointed in at me.


    "Why is he injured? Is this how you manage your prisoners?" Karu barked at one of them.


    "He was...injured before we brought him in, ma''am. He seemed...stable enough, considering."


    "Considering what?"


    "Considering...we were just...going to send him to die, probably, ma''am. A couple guys even had the idea to...help him along a little, but the girl killed them."


    "How so many amateurs can keep finding employment galls me," Karu said with disgust. "Have none of you any idea of proper protocols? Can none of you imagine those protocols were created with purpose? Or did you simply imagine yourselves smarter and better than all who preceded you?"


    "Ma''am...we...it wasn''t a normal situation--"


    "I care nothing for your excuses. Those who died paid for their foolishness. Next time you encounter an Exhuman, do not let the foolishness be yours. Let their deaths serve purpose in that."


    "Yes ma''am."


    "I will now recover the Exhumans as I have been ordered." She frowned at me with her guns still trained. "Did you use a cart or gurney to transport this one in here?"


    "No ma''am, we just dragged him and threw him in."


    Karu winced a little under her visor. "Well fetch me one now."


    "Karu," I whispered at her, and she leaned imperceptibly closer. "AEGIS, and Whitney."


    She frowned. "Were these two the only ones involved in the incident?"


    "No ma''am, another injured woman."


    "Just one? Not two?"


    "Uh...no ma''am."


    Karu oversaw my body being moved into a gurney and rolled carefully out the way she''d entered. As we passed, I saw AEGIS in a cell, also apparently just thrown in there, and also apparently with about as much mobility as I had. And then a further cell, I saw Whitney, and she gasped as she saw the shape I was in.


    Karu stopped and frowned at her. "Whitney?" Karu asked, and she nodded. "I need this one as well," Karu announced, and kept us walking.


    "This is...your transport?" the officer pushing me asked when we stopped outside the rental car.


    "Is there an issue with that?" Karu asked, glaring ominously.


    "I just...expected an XPCA vehicle, ma''am."


    "I am a hunter, not a bus driver. Now secure the prisoner in his seat and permit me to do my job without any further questioning."


    I had to admit, Karu could steal a scene. From the moment she''d walked in here with her visor blazing and her guns pointing, she''d taken utter command of the situation. She was a hunter and a politician, and had no problem selling herself or her act. As I was buckled in, and Tem, AEGIS, and Whitney were all crammed into the sedan with me, Karu filled out forms for the transfer with the confidence of one who''d done this a thousand times before.


    Of course, thinking about it, Karu maybe had done this a thousand times before. Invariably she''d gone through something like this for every bounty she brought in, and it was just a little bit weird to be feeling like she could abuse that power to get us out of jail.


    Finally, after what felt like far too long, Karu gave the tablet over and offered a crisp salute, before joining us in the car herself, sitting next to Whitney as the two women with the longest legs.


    And then we pulled away, and within seconds, were on the road with all of the other cars.


    "Holy crap, Karu," AEGIS said. "I did not expect that, and I wasn''t sure how we were going to get out of there without you."


    "Yeah, that was some grade-A butt-saving," I said. We hit a bump and I couldn''t catch a pained choke before it escaped my throat. Without speaking, Karu dug in a pouch and put a stim patch on my knee, and I peeled it and put it on my neck readily. "Oh God, thanks. I was on the verge of passing out that whole time. But did you have to shoot Tem?"


    "It was something I have always desired to do," Karu said with half a grin as she pulled off her visor to drive. Not something she should have been doing while going fifty with traffic on a surface street, but fuck, I wasn''t going to complain about anything from now on.


    "Wait...we''re not...in custody?" Whitney asked. "What''s going on? I''m so confused."


    Now with my pain safely quarantined, I was able to laugh. "This is Karu. She''s a friend of mine."


    "You really do have hunter friends?" Whitney asked in a half-whisper.


    "With benefits," Karu mused.


    "Over my dead body," AEGIS seethed.


    "That could be very easily arranged at this point," Karu said with a glance in the mirror. "Perhaps consider your words more carefully, AI."


    "Guys, no fighting," I said, cutting in with unnatural speed and energy from the stims. "We''re safe for now, we survived Dragon and...and the threat of the Defiant...well, it''s gone. For better or worse."


    "I''m not safe," Whitney said. "I''m in a car of Exhumans. Please drop me off, I need to go back to the police station. I''m going to get in huge trouble."


    Karu laughed a more sinister laugh than usual. "Unfortunately, you are now legally in my custody. Were you to run off, it would be my responsibility and obligation to hunt you down and bring you to justice. I know not who you are miss, but it seems for now, you are stuck with us, as it were."


    "R-really? No¡­" She looked at me in the side-view mirror, her hands shaking as her fingertips tapped against both sides of her glasses, her face white and trembling. "You''re...this is...this is all a joke, right? Kidnapping? Athan...I thought¡­"


    I saw her face fall and I already knew the conflict tearing her up inside over who and what I was. As much as it sucked to have to do this to her, I knew that if we just left her off now, she''d never be able to realize that Exhumans like me were out there, and we were okay. It would always start and end as a story of an Exhuman who lied to her and used her and got her arrested and then sorta-kidnapped her.


    Well, as long as we were already here, I was prepared for a full kidnapping, if it meant clearing the air. I wanted to do that much for her at least.


    "Where are we going, Karu?" I asked.


    "My luxurious hideout, for the moment," she said. "Only the very fanciest of motels for this operation."


    "Can we swing by somewhere first? There''s some things I want to pick up."


    "Certainly. Where and what things?"


    I caught Whitney''s eyes in the mirror again.


    "A repair shop nearby. And anything Whitney is going to want or need."


    "Need...for what?" she asked, tentatively.


    But though she spoke hesitatingly, her gaze had become familiar again. The same rhythmic switching from eye-to-eye, the same non-judgmental curiosity. Interest, at least as much as fear.


    "Well...I know you haven''t met yet really, but AEGIS here is a completely unique AI like the world''s never seen. And she''s a little broken right now. I thought you might be interested in helping be her hands."


    "Hey, I''m fine," AEGIS pouted, her cracking voice doing nothing to sell us. "I just need...need some components...to get a DOG online...and maybe a hand or two, but not hers!"


    I laughed again, and so did Karu, while AEGIS fumed.


    Whitney eyed me seriously. "Are you doing this...for me?"


    "Yeah. Sort of an apology for mucking up your life so badly. I hope that''s cool with you."


    "It''s...it''s the coolest thing ever. But...I still don''t know what to think, Athan."


    "I know. And I know you''re confused right now. I just want to show you that you don''t have to be. That you can be an Exhuman and a decent person all at once."


    "I think I could stand just being confused, honestly."


    I smiled back at her. "Well...sorry but I guess I''m not done mucking up your life just yet. I really would like AEGIS fixed, and there''s nobody I''d trust more than you to help."


    There was relative silence for a few minutes as Karu managed the car and nobody seemed to want to push Whitney.


    Until finally, AEGIS spoke up.


    "So. Giving away my body for favors," AEGIS asked. "Am I getting whored out, Athan? Seriously?"


    Through the strange, detached mindset of the stims, I was able to laugh, even now. Even in this most fucked up of situations, fugitives adding kidnapping to the list of their sins. I laughed at AEGIS'' indignance, but mostly her way with words.


    "Yes," I told her. "Yes, but it''s for a very good cause."


    "It better be," she grumbled, as we pulled into a parking lot.

 263. 2252, Present Day. In a hotel. Athan.

    I leaned up against the wall and sighed heavily. Things had been crazy recently. Too crazy. I felt like any time I was moving, I was running as fast as I could, into whatever trouble or from whatever trouble happened to be coming at me, and whenever I wasn''t, I should have been.


    I straightened up, almost involuntarily at AEGIS approach. She fixed me with a skeptical glare, augmented by a menacing push of her glasses up her nose, and I gave her my most disarming smile.


    "Yeah, not buying it," she proclaimed.


    At least that gave me the permission to slump back down again.


    "What''s the matter?" she asked.


    "Just...life. Everything. All this insane shit with Dragon and people dying and almost dying--"


    I stopped. She looked worried. More than I wanted.


    "--are...all fine! I''m sure it''ll work out."


    "Told you, I''m not buying it. Talk to me, Athan, I''m here to help you."


    I weighed my options. On one hand, I needed the help. Things were a little abnormally, impressively shit right now, and I felt like I was drowning in it. But on the other, there wasn''t much she could do but listen to my baggage. Listen and worry, and then my problems would be creating problems of their own.


    I was just about to say something when the wall lurched from under my hand, and I fell sideways. I got as far as thinking what the heck was that? Before AEGIS grabbed me by the arms and ripped me out of where I was slumped.


    Which kinda sorta hurt the hell out of my shoulders. I was about to start yelling at her in confusion when instead, I saw something which made me far, far too confused to yell.


    It was a crater. Or, more specifically, it was standing in the middle of a new crater put in our hotel room, ominously smoking and seemingly indifferent to the room deposit we''d just been fucked out of.


    At the moment, I was indifferent as well, because of what it was, or at least, what it appeared to be.


    Because it was me.


    The other me looked around cooly, way cooler than I thought I looked when doing the same, and I wasn''t quite sure what exactly he was doing to make it seem so. Certainly there wasn''t much to turning your head this way or that, but he...or I?...had got it down pat. Maybe it was his little bit of manly stubble, or the sharp angles of his jawline that I was sure I didn''t quite have. Or maybe it was the cool jacket. I didn''t know, but I was still pretty sure I was jealous.


    Which honestly, was a weird emotion to be feeling at seeing yourself suddenly blow up a part of your hotel room. It was all still sinking in.


    He looked down at me, and I saw my own brown-green eyes in his head. "Hey," he said, in a voice I recognized from hearing my own recorded.


    "Hey?" I replied.


    "Looks like I made it," he muttered, scratching his hair in a familiar gesture. "Sorry for the mess."


    He took a step forward and froze, as AEGIS raised a knee to chin level, her leg tensed threateningly.


    "Who the hell are you?" she asked.


    "I''m Athan, obviously."


    "No, he''s Athan." She jerked her thumb at me. "I don''t know who you are, but you should know, I''m not a big fan of multiple copies of me running around, and I''m not sure I''m quite decided on multiple of him."


    "Easy," he said, raising his hands like that would make him less threatening. If he was me, he could manifest blades right inside her. But...if he was me, he wouldn''t do that. So maybe it did make him less threatening? "I promise, I am him. Just--"


    He snapped into a dramatic pose that I thought looked cool. AEGIS didn''t seem to agree by how her brandished leg twitched at his movement.


    "I''m from the future," he said, his voice low and cool.


    She didn''t even blink. "Nope. Get out."


    "What. I am!"


    "Not buying it. No such thing as time travel. Physics forbids it."


    "No seriously. I was just messing around but I am here for a reason. I have important information--"


    "No. This is a trick, or you''re a clone, or an illusion, or there''s a code-X or something--"


    "Okay, I''m from another dimension. That works, right?" he asked.


    She thought it over for a second. "Maybe. There can be parallel dimensions."


    "And mine is more advanced through time than this one. Hence, I''m from the future."


    "From your future," she clarified. I sat up and stared, mystified at the two of them.


    "From the future. With vital information."


    "No you don''t," she argued. "You have information vital in your universe. For all we know, the application of that information in this universe is completely disastrous."


    "This universe is the same as mine!" he shouted. "Look, I remember that exact outfit. I had those sneakers he''s wearing."


    "Yeah? So? Do you remember a time-traveller showing up in your hotel room and telling you something?"


    "No--"


    "Then our universes are different aren''t they? You realize that your very existence here threatens to change not just what you intended to alter, but possibly everything because of chaos theory? You''re the damn butterfly flapping his wings and setting off monsoons in this reality, buddy."


    "Just let me--"


    "And what''s more," AEGIS crossed her arms, "how do you even know that passing off this information would have the effects you desired anyway? Are you some kind of world-simulating supercomputer who can ascertain how every action ripples out and effects every other thing?"


    I blinked. "I think Mage worked like that."


    "Well he sure as shit ain''t Mage, is he?"


    "I just have some information to pass on, it''s really--"


    "Really what? Really harmless? I doubt that, if you''d dimension hop all the way here just to convey it. Which means it''s hugely significant, and therefore really dangerous."


    "I''d kinda like to hear it," I said.


    "I''m sure," she glanced at me. "But you do realize how dangerous information like that can be? Whether we believe this guy is from a future similar to our own or not, just having information from him, heck, just interacting with him puts us at enormous risk."


    "No it doesn''t," he argued.


    "Oh? So why do you want to give us this information so badly?" She cocked her head challengingly.


    "To save us...to save him, that is, from something horrible, of course. Information that could prevent a catastrophe."


    "So you''re saying that your actions are going to affect the timeline."


    "Yes."


    "Well first off, why do you care?"


    He stared at her, his brow creasing. "Um, because I''m obviously trying to avert a huge catastrophe for us?"


    "Except that anything that changes here won''t affect you, you realize. Since you''re from a different, parallel timeline."


    His brow continued to crease, threatening to swallow his eyebrows. "I just said that to get you to listen. Which you''re still not doing, I might add."


    "Oh. So you''re not then. But you stated that in your experience in this scenario, in this hotel room, you did not have a time-traveler bust in on you and scorch your walls, and almost kill you?"


    "I did not...wait, almost kill you?"


    "That''s right, you almost landed on Athan with your teleporty explosion bullshit."


    "Oh my God, I almost killed myself." He swayed backwards and took a seat against the door, mirroring me almost exactly.


    "Yeah, no," AEGIS fumed. "It''s like you''re not even listening. You realize that because you sequence of events would be continuing from your existence, where you did not have a time-traveller bust up your hotel, your future is not going to spontaneously change, just because you tell your ''past'' self something to avoid it, right?"


    His gaze wavered slightly. "No? If I tell you, it will never happen, and so it won''t have happened to me."


    She shook her head. "And how''s that? You affect us in this room, at this moment, and what, you expect that change to propagate through magical time waves or something and suddenly change all time from now on? You realize that''d require a concept of meta-time, wouldn''t you?"


    "Meta-time?"


    "Time that keeps track of time itself. If you''re telling the truth that you are a time-traveller -- which you''re not -- then that would mean all timelines aren''t in a row, they''re all parallel and accessible to each other. Causality as we know it doesn''t exist anymore, because something doesn''t have to be in the past to affect the future. You can''t just change the past and expect the future to be something else."Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    "Why not? That''s how the future works."


    "That''s how the future works without time travel in the picture. If what you believe is true, then you yourself can''t be here, because you''re an instance of the future causing events in the past. Once that happens, causality breaks down."


    "This is hurting my head," he complained.


    "That''s because you''re wrong, and I really think you should leave, whatever you are."


    He seemed to stiffen. "No, I''m here for a reason. I will deliver the information, and I will save us from a horrible fate."


    "Out of curiosity, where do you think you''ll be returning to?" she asked.


    "From¡­" he stopped and eyed her warily. "From when I left."


    "And presumably, if you pass on your info, to a better place than when you left? A world which didn''t suffer this tragedy you speak of?" He nodded. "So then you must believe in branching timelines."


    "Sure. Like, by changing this, we''re branching into a better future."


    "Well what about the future you left behind? Now there''s a whole universe of people who used to be there with you, and to them, you just left them forever."


    "No I didn''t. I''m coming back."


    "Except you said yourself, you''re coming to a different, branched timeline. They saw you off and will never see you come back. You''ll be in a different future, sippin'' pina coladas and yucking it up, while they mourn you."


    "That''s fucked up. Why are you saying this?"


    "Because!" she yelled. "You''re trying to fuck with time, you dumbass! Why do you think I keep telling you to leave? Why do you think I keep saying you shouldn''t tell us this future-secret bullshit?"


    "Or you could just let him say it and then we decide ourselves what to do with it," I muttered.


    "Seriously, Athan? Seriously? This guy looks exactly likes you, acts exactly like you, probably has the same stupid lack of understanding about how time travel works that you do, showed up in our hotel room, apparently by magic, and you just want to believe him?"


    "Well...yeah. That all seems like pretty convincing evidence that he''s...I dunno, close to us at least? Like whether he''s a time-traveller or from another dimension or whatever, if he knows that much about me and is that much like me, I should hear him out, right?"


    She shook her finger. "Couldn''t be more wrong. You ever consider that of all the sources of knowledge in the world, this is the most potentially dangerous? You know how people get mentally ill, Athan? People hear voices, or feel strange compulsions, and they do it?"


    "...yes?" I answered, not sure why we were on this train all the sudden.


    "If you started hearing voices...not Saga''s obviously, would you be all gung-ho to do what they said?"


    "No, obviously. They''re just voices."


    "And yet, somehow, people with psychotic hallucinations do all the time. Any idea why?"


    "Because...they''re stupid?"


    "Because they trust the source, dummy. And it''s not very nice to call sick people stupid. They believe the voices, even when they''re illogical, even when it''s absolutely insane, because the source of those weird thoughts or compulsions is them. It''s not any more alien or dismissable than craving a burger. You don''t wonder where that craving came from or scrutinize its intentions. It came from you, maybe you do it, maybe you don''t, but you certainly don''t question it''s credibility."


    "I''m so lost what this has to do with anything."


    "What this has to do--" she said, wheeling back around to my doppelganger. "Is that if you listen to this guy, precisely because you''re so close to him, his words are a lot more dangerous than ''let''s just hear him out and decide later'' status. It''s pretty clear to me that you''re all ready to trust this guy, and that means he could say something completely illogical and dangerous, and you''d be all for it, just because you trust the source. Even if it is sick and wrong, because you think it came from ''you''."


    "You''re insane," he said.


    "No, I''m paranoid. Part of my parameters to deal effectively with Exhumans. And this kind of paranormal bullshit is right up my alley."


    "You do sound kind of insane," I agreed.


    "Believe me, I have a perfectly valid reason for being so," she shrugged. "It''s all about skewing his probability of success."


    "What''s probability got to do with it?" he asked.


    "What''s probability got to do with time travel?" she echoed, sounding stupefied. "Holy shit, you really must be Athan. No offense," she added, over her shoulder.


    "Uh, none taken. And obviously I know exactly what you''re talking about but maybe explain it to him."


    She rolled her eyes, before pushing her glasses up in front of them. "The Novikov self-consistency principle deals with closed timelines and paradoxes that can arise in them. And it discusses probabilities quite a bit, specifically in how paradoxes are resolved."


    "Paradoxes like...killing your own grandfather kinds of things?" I asked.


    "I thought you said you knew this already," she grinned.


    "Paradoxes like killing your own grandfather kinds of things," I explained to my mirror.


    "Nobody''s killing their grandfather here," he said.


    "Yeah. But a paradox can happen out of anything. Let''s say you tell Athan your secret here, and as a result, he has a great future--"


    "Which he will," he argued.


    "--and consequently sees no need to go back in time and warn himself not to do something. Suddenly, he''s not there to tell himself how to have a nice future, is he?"


    He opened his mouth and closed it several times.


    "Now you said that this didn''t happen to you, which means, heh, you''re screwed, buddy. There''s no happy timeline for you, no matter what happens here. But let''s say you''re lying, which I think is very possible--"


    "Why would I lie?"


    "Because it''s the easiest way to resolve the paradox, obviously. Not that last one, but the ontological paradox which comes about if it turns out you''re actually coming here because you''re supposed to, because that''s the consistency in the timeline."


    "I have literally no idea what¡­" I said. "Um. He has literally no idea what you''re talking about."


    "Oh no, it''s fine," he said. "We can both be completely lost."


    She sighed. "Say that Athan''s aware of the paradox I described, so even if he has a great life, he decides to do this whole time-travel bit anyway. For starters, he''d need to act like an idiot because that''s how you''ve been acting, and he''d want to do it just the same way you did, so that nothing would ''change''," she scoffed. "Not that it''d be possible."


    "Except--"


    "But the thing is, he doesn''t have anything to go on, does he? He doesn''t know what future he''s avoiding, he''s just going through the motions, because in his past, another version of himself did the same thing to him. Told him something, which he acted on, which he went back and time and told himself. So the question is...where''d that information come from? And how do you know it does a damn thing? There''s no proof that acting on it changes anything, because Athan can''t and won''t act on it, because that''s not how the future resolves, because it already hasn''t."


    "I am so, so fucking lost," he moaned.


    "So the easiest solution is, you lie. You say it''s important, and say you weren''t paid a visit by yourself and there''s this horrible parallel history, and viola, everything''s fixed. And that brings us back to probabilities, see? You''ll find that when there''s a paradox, it gets hashed out by probabilities of paradox-causing things to drop to zero. And very unlikely things which avoid paradoxes suddenly become very, very probable." She grinned. "So do you get what I''m doing yet?"


    "I am not sure I get anything anymore," he bleated. "Just let me say what I want to, please?"


    "I am never going to look at a clock again," I agreed.


    "I''m making it more and more statistically unlikely that we, of this timeline, hear or act on your whatever," she said, her eyes narrowed and devious. "Because the lower the probability on our end of this whole time-thing succeeding, the higher alternative probabilities grow. You ever think about rubbing a lamp and making a wish with a genie and all the ways it could go wrong?"


    "Why are there more metaphors? Why can''t you be done?"


    "Well as the probability for your desired outcome becomes more and more unlikely, the ''genie'' starts to look at alternative ways to complete your wish. To resolve the paradox. Ways you didn''t expect, the evil, nasty genies that pervert your wishes to interpret them literally but horrifically."


    "I''m so confused. Are you the genie in this metaphor?"


    "No. Time travel is. The self-consistency principle is. Paradoxes must be resolved, and if I won''t let them resolve in the simplest possible way, something else is eventually going to bend or break. Say, can you think of anyone or anything in this scenario which, if spontaneously removed, might fix all this time-travel bullshit?"


    "You?" He scoffed.


    "Ooh, so close. But see, Athan would never time-travel back to now if it meant killing me."


    "And...not him...since that''d just make a paradox of him not being able to time-travel. So then uh," he looked around nervously.


    "Hey you got it. Good job," she grinned with malevolence. "Kinda nervous? Kinda wondering if this evil, perverting, time-resolving, wish-granting genie is just gonna send a very-improbable-but-absolutely-plausible meteorite to smash out your brains?"


    "Um, why would I travel back in time just to get smashed with a meteorite, though?" I asked.


    "Obviously because you had to." She shrugged.


    "It kinda...doesn''t seem that way to me. He hasn''t done anything. He''s just kinda sat there and hasn''t accomplished much of anything except now developing a new sense of paranoia it looks like."


    "Paranoia is good, helps deal with Exhumans," she smiled back at me. "And if he is really a time-traveller and really does die in a tragic, improbable way, I guess you can take solace that whatever else you''re preventing by coming back and doing this is an even worse paradox that you''re resolving."


    "Am I...am I really going to die?" he asked. Did I really sweat that much? I thought I tended to face death pretty badass stoically, but he was looking less cool and more like a boiled hot dog over there.


    "Who knows?" AEGIS said with devastating indifference. "Probably the only way to be safe is to get the hell out of here before you cause a paradox that needs to be resolved.


    He fidgeted nervously, and then almost jumped when his alarm went off on his mobile.


    "Gah!" he shouted, wrestling it out of his pocket. "Gah! I''m supposed to be done by now!"


    "Oh? You have a time limit? That''s strange for a time traveller to have," she said, pressing a finger to her lips thoughtfully.


    "Look, will you just--will you let me say what I came here to say or not?"


    "Pretty sure I made that clear--"


    She stopped when I stood and put a hand on her shoulder.


    "AEGIS, I know you warned me, and believe me, I don''t understand the risks, even a little bit. Maybe if you spent the next few months with a chalkboard and a time machine and like...two-thousand notes to pin up on the walls and connect with hanging bits of red string, I might still have no idea what all you said meant."


    "Maybe a week or two, it''s not really that bad," she argued.


    "But I want to hear it. Whether he''s me or not, or from the future, or whatever. If it wasn''t me, if it was anyone in the universe, if they spent this much effort and sat through that much painful, time-wasting bullshit, I''d have to respect them enough to hear what they said."


    "It wasn''t time-wasting bullshit," she pouted.


    "It was, and you know it. We''ve done nothing but sit here and listen to insane theories for most of an hour now. I can''t believe anyone would willingly suffer through this. It just sounded like a pile of conflicting theories and impossible-to-prove shit which makes no sense, heaped up to the ceiling until we drowned in it."


    "Yes, thank you," he sighed. "And that''s almost exactly my message--"


    Her leg flicked forward, the tips of her toes an inch from his throat.


    "A very probable way of fixing our paradox is for your windpipe to be crushed," she said, her voice devoid of emotion and dangerous. "Don''t forget that."


    He swallowed hard and said nothing. Which was exactly the right thing to say, probably.


    I pulled her back and removed the threat of spontaneous death.


    "Let''s just hear him out, please?"


    She sighed enormously. "No, I really think this is a bad idea."


    "I''ll tell you what. We''ll hear it, and...and in the future, when it comes to acting on it, I''ll always consult with you. That way I can''t be swayed by the source. You seem to fear and hate this guy as much as...well, as much as I''ve got nothing against him, really."


    "I''ve always considered myself exceptionally unexceptional," he said.


    "Yeah, me too."


    AEGIS bit her lip and pulled at her hair. "I don''t just want to say no...I don''t want to tell you how to live but...he could be anything Athan. Consider how dangerous that is. He could be any kind of Exhuman, or even if he is telling the truth, or believes it--"


    "I know." I squeezed her shoulder. "But let''s hear it anyway."


    She held firm for a few more seconds before nodding and stepping back, letting me stand before him. His gaze flashed between the two of us, nervous but excited.


    "Really?" he asked.


    AEGIS sighed enormously. "Don''t remind me. Say what you need and be gone."


    He stood up, dusted himself off, smiling and disbelieving, almost. AEGIS tensed as he reached into a pocket, but he just drew out a scrap of paper and handed it to me. I looked down at it, and almost missed him taking a few steps back, before he disappeared with another singeing blast which further darkened the crater he''d come in before.


    "Should I¡­" I glanced at AEGIS before unfolding the note. I knew her answer of course, and just took a few breaths before reading it aloud, her electric-yellow eyes following along.


    DON''T THROW TIME TRAVEL SUBPLOTS IN A STORY UNLESS YOU''RE PREPARED FOR THE THOUSANDS OF WRINKLES IT ADDS.


    "That''s...it?" I asked. Frustrated, I turned the paper over, wondering if there was more. Somehow, there was.


    DON''T READ WEB SERIALS ON APRIL FOOLS.


    I looked at her. She looked at me. Both of us were as puzzled as could be.


    "What the hell does that mean?" I asked.


    "I have no idea," she said. "But I think it means that this entire exchange was nothing but an enormous waste of time."


    "Ours?"


    She shrugged. "Somebody''s."

 263. 2252, Present Day. Falling Star Inn, OR. Athan.

    Karu''s room was...not exactly big enough for five people, even if Tem hardly counted. On our way in, she sprung for an additional room which was, naturally, across the building. Yet still, all five of us were packed into the one room for the moment, a strange chain of dependencies across us as a vital task was being performed.


    AEGIS had determined that it was of critical importance to have myself and Tem checked out medically...but being defunct herself, she was relying on Karu and Whitney to act as her hands and eyes, having the two of them hold her broken body for her and press her still-warm hands to mine to read vitals and the like.


    "Karu, can I borrow your visor?" AEGIS asked.


    "Most certainly not."


    "My optics are only barely superhuman. If I''m going to check for broken bones, I need to be able to see inside there, come on."


    "I am merely concerned what your big head will do for the size adjustment," Karu sighed.


    The two of them did, ultimately, function quite smoothly, though you wouldn''t be able to tell by what came out of their mouths. Karu''s medical knowledge was relevant, though focused more on emergency treatment, while AEGIS was definitely more on the legit doctor side of things, with actual diagnoses and treatment plans. And both were interested in my well-being. Also...Tem in there somewhere.


    In the end she sat back, looking equal parts mystified and impressed.


    "You''re chock-full of nanomachines right now, Athan, and I don''t know how they got there, but I''m incredibly glad they did," she said.


    "Nano...machines? Tiny robots?"


    "Nanomachines?" echoed Whitney with a little too much enthusiasm.


    "Next time you pee, consider that toilet is holding several million credits," AEGIS sighed. "It looks like you had a ruptured liver, contusive hemotoma, and broken bones all over, but thanks to your buggers, you''re actually in fine shape, just a lot of mild bruising, some hemorrhaging, and a lot of need for rest."


    "My head spins whenever I move," I complained.


    "Your body is super confused," she said, trying without functioning limbs to push her glasses up her nose. "I mean, you''re beat up too, but imagine having surgery all across your body, from within. It might be exactly what you need to keep going, but your organs aren''t happy with all being stitched back together. You''re gonna be really sore for a while, but you''re also going to be just fine."


    "Next time you pee...can I have it?" Whitney asked. "For the...nanomachines of course." She looked around at the faces of the girls around her. "What? I''ve never even seen one."


    "And unless you have a microscope, you never will," AEGIS said. "I can''t pick them up with Karu''s visor, even a little bit, but the signs of them being there are all over. I think you''d probably have a lot of fruitless hours sifting through urine without much payoff."


    "I think it is a fairly obvious question, yet one which nobody here seems to be asking, but how was Ashton loaded with nanomachines?"


    I shrugged, and realized again that was painful and I should stop. "It must have come from the drone which woke me up. It gave me medical aid in the middle of the fight after Dragon took me down. I thought it was AEGIS'' at the time."


    "No, not mine," AEGIS said with a frown. "I only had time to put together this body, much less a medical drone. Much less fill it with nanomachines."


    "This is no mere random passerby," Karu mused. "Nanomachines are delicate and expensive in the extreme...typically only used in situations where traditional surgery would be impossible, and only by the very richest in the world. Whomever it is, they are quite the benefactor, Ashton. Are you certain you do not possess a guardian angel?"


    "There was the rifle shot, too," I said. "The way the bullet hung in the air...it was exactly the same as when Lia shot Blackett. Maybe I''m misremembering but...it looked and sounded exactly the same, didn''t it?"


    "Karu, if you plug me in, I have a recording¡­"


    When AEGIS was attached to the room''s wall holo, it took her a few false starts before she could get video up, and even then it had some display issues.


    "Sorry...a lot of my systems are...not operating optimally," AEGIS apologized. "I swear, I''ve never had a problem getting it up before," she said with a half-grin at me.


    "Have you tried hardware-level dynamic allocation?" Whitney asked. "Like, if your CPU core is nonresponsive, offload to a GPU?"


    AEGIS gave a tired smile. "Yeah. Though I''m not really laid out that simply."


    "I was being simplistic for an example. I don''t really know how intimate you are with...um...yourself. That could have been phrased better."


    "No, I''m doing it. That''s why I''m still thinking okay, but lower-priority operations like displaying video are turning out like shit."


    "Ah, gotcha. Well, if you can override the boot manager, would it help to plug in my mobile to have more offboarding resources on deck? The specs are worth the overhead, probably."


    "That might be helpful, thanks."


    The two went back and forth and spent a few minutes plugging various things into AEGIS, and despite my exhaustion and the situation, I couldn''t help but feel a warm little glow watching them work at it together. It wasn''t long before she was able to show us the video she''d captured at the fight, in fine quality give or take some audio artifacts and chromatic aberration.


    I heard the boom of the gun moments after the bullet lodged in the personal barrier and sent Dragon flying. It was too distinctive not to recognize, not just any gun, but Lia''s, or at least something extremely similar.


    "It sounds like Lia, but she''d tell us if it were...I think. If only she was using armor penetrating rounds," I said, watching the bullet in slow-mo as it impacted the barrier with a white flash.


    Karu shook her head. "Kinetic barriers operate almost opposite traditional armor in this regard. A typical penetrator round sheds much of its mass for greater speed and smaller profile, with lethal effect against armor...however a kinetic barrier does not have ''weak points'' as it were, and instead simply absorbs and disperses energy sent into it."


    "So the AP-round goes faster, so there''s more energy," I said.


    "What it gains in speed, it loses in mass," AEGIS said. "F equals MA." She made a frustrated face as she failed again to push her glasses up her nose. I wondered if Karu was oblivious, or just choosing not the help her with that.


    "Or perhaps more simple to understand, there is only so much propellant in a bullet regardless of what type it is," Karu explained. "Changing the properties of the projectile does little to affect the amount of available force, given that limitation."


    "That makes sense," I said, though it made me a little sad to think that we weren''t just going to be able to blow Dragon''s head off. I saw a funny look on Whitney and turned to her. "What?"


    "It''s just...I''m sorry, this isn''t what I expected."


    "Expected from what?"


    "From...Exhumans. I''d always thought...they...you...just were these uncontrollable, angry, instinct-driven...crazy people." She crossed her arms and frowned. "I didn''t know there was so much planning put into it before you knocked over a city and killed everyone."


    "We tend to save the moustache-twirling and evil maniacal laughter for after we blow up an orphanage. Or an animal shelter," AEGIS said.


    "See, this is what I wanted you to see," I said, ignoring AEGIS. "I think you''re right, that most Exhuman events are just someone short-sighted with more powers than sense. But there''s also people like me, like...Tem...kinda. Who are just normal people trying to get by."


    "By murdering police officers?"


    "That wasn''t...my best moment, no," I said, my heart falling. "It wasn''t anything I wanted to do."


    "So you admit it is true," she said, her shoulders tensing with her arms still crossed. "Exhumans are always a danger."


    "That''s propaganda--" AEGIS said.


    "No, it is true. I am dangerous, even when I don''t mean to be, exactly like you said. Exactly like the propaganda says."


    "Then why don''t you turn yourself in?" Whitney pleaded. "Why are you out here...just...proving how irresponsible you are? If you are this decent person, why can''t you do the one good thing all Exhumans are asked to do?"


    I gave her a sad smile. "Whitney, I already turned myself in once."


    "They tried to kill him and dump him in the wilderness when it didn''t work," AEGIS said.


    "Hunters were sent after him, and he was being groomed for the machinations of an XPCA official," Karu added.


    "And if good Exhumans are just sent to die or be detained...how are things ever going to change?" I asked.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    She looked between the three of us with a small, sharp frown. "Why should things change?"


    "Because this world is shit," I said with a snort. "I''ve met Exhumans who are as good as any human I''ve met, who try so hard and the only thing messed up about them is what the world did to them for being Exhuman." I gave Tem an affectionate pat, even if she wasn''t my first pick for those criteria, but it was enough to make her go fully red, and then fully invisible.


    I continued. "People are being lied to every day by the XPCA. There''s world-ending nightmare scenarios like the Defiant going on all the time, and the world is just barely hanging on, it feels like. If nothing changes, eventually, the XPCA is going to fail, and then everything''s gonna be over. Or...we prepare before then, get the truth out there, get Exhumans on the same page as humanity...so that when something does go wrong, we''re ready to fight it, instead of just roll over and put an end date on humanity''s tombstone."


    Whitney frowned and seemed to think it over. "You talk about the world ending a lot. I really hope it''s just pessimism. It''d be pretty unnerving to think about it being actually true."


    "Well...on the whole, I don''t know. Like the Defiant...if I wasn''t there, Dragon may have just killed them all anyway. I was apparently just wrong about his motivations, so I don''t know. And if they did go on a rampage, you can bet I and everyone else here would be fighting them before letting the XPCA fail, so it''s not exactly like something happens and the world ends."


    AEGIS gave a smile. "No, more like two or three things happen and the world ends."


    "The balance of harmony is more fragile than that," Karu said. "Injustices live on in the hearts of men. Even should events unfold in a manner not fatal, those who endured them remain touched, and in many cases, fester. Should we not strike with decisiveness, the end of one apocalypse may just be the start of another." She gave a bitter smile. "Or, I should say, they must be decisive. I am but a humble waitress."


    "Karu''s right," I said, feeling my head spin.


    "That I am a humble waitress?"


    "Yeah, not that," I said. Painful memories boiled in me as I relived the last hour in a second. "That...wasn''t all the Defiant who died."


    "Yeah, Dork-Hand got away," AEGIS said. "And...I counted eighteen total casualties today. Together with Dork-Hand, Talon, and Mini, that''s only twenty-one, which leaves a Defiant unaccounted-for."


    "He didn''t get away from Dragon did he?"


    AEGIS shook her head. "I think he wasn''t here today. Just missed the meeting maybe."


    "Or he died elsewhere and we never knew?" I asked.


    "No, the Defiant were pretty good about delivering threats every time one of them went missing or dead," AEGIS said. "I don''t know."


    As glad as I was that at least the two of them had lived, I couldn''t help but to feel like Karu''s words made news of these survivors more a dark omen than it should have been. Hopefully, scared and spared, these two would run and hide and forget everything that happened here. But there was that chance that there would be scars and resentment instead.


    "This is all so complicated," Whitney said in a low voice. "I...I don''t know what to think anymore. I haven''t known since...since the body." She gingerly set AEGIS on the floor and then slumped down the wall to sit beside her. "I want to go home."


    I gave her a reassuring smile as best I could. "I know. I know, and I''m sorry. But, don''t you think these questions you''re having...don''t you think that indicates...maybe Exhumanity isn''t as simple as you thought? That there might be good ones, too?"


    She shook her head. "It''s a lot to ask, to overturn a lifetime of beliefs like that."


    "It is a good thing we are not asking," Karu said with a little manic smile. "If you wish it, you may flee any time you desire...but I will find you."


    I saw Whitney shiver, and wished people would stop setting us back like that.


    "Karu, can I have one more stim?" I asked, and she nodded. "Last one before bed, I''m just going to get these two situated in the other room. You can get started working together with AEGIS, Whitney. Do something ''simple'' for a bit, does that sound good?"


    "Yeah, actually."


    "Wait, you''re gonna sleep with Karu, just because I''m busted up? This is BS. As the girlfriend, I demand--"


    "AEGIS, just chill, Jesus," I sighed, as the patch hit and I felt my pain bubbled away from my mind, felt myself just a little faster, a little sharper, and a little less patient for AEGIS'' bullshit.


    "I will not just chill. She just swoops in here because I broke myself trying to save you, and you''re willing to repay her by shacking up right behind my back? How is that anything other than fucked up, Athan?"


    "Tem''s gonna be right here, too, okay?"


    "Oh she doesn''t count and you know it. Just the thought of her probably gets Karu''s voyeuristic fetishes going."


    "Excuse me?" Karu interjected.


    "I just want you and Whitney to bond. Look at me, I''m going to do nothing but crash when the stims wear off."


    "Well you''ve got like most of an hour to do plenty of Karu in that time, huh?"


    I picked up AEGIS'' too-warm body and carried her in my arms in front of me, heavier than she looked, and awkwardly pressed to my chest with her face only inches from mine. The smell of her synthetic skin, eraser shavings and bubblegum filled my nose and brought me way back to a time when there was someone less petulant in this body.


    Last time AEGIS had broken herself to save me, I''d been doing it all for Saga, and AEGIS had still died with a smile. Not that I expected or demanded that kind of willingness for self-sacrifice, but the contrast disgusted me, honestly.


    "We haven''t had our talk yet," I remembered, and the AEGIS in my arms tensed, froze, and cowered.


    "I''m sorry," she said as I took her outside, into the early night air and began walking the long balcony to the other room, Whitney trailing behind awkwardly. "I''m really sorry. Don''t be mad at me. Please?" Her yellow eyes blinking slowly at me. "I didn''t mean what I said in there, promise."


    "AEGIS, just...give it a rest," I said, not sure what I wanted to bring up or how.


    "Hey...um...if you''d like, you can...uh...play with my controller, if you know what I mean. It''s...got a touch-screen and it''s motion sensitive?" She gave me an awkward smile, her eyes flickering back and forth between me and Whitney. "Or...is your princess really in another castle?"


    "AEGIS, I meant what I said. I''m tired. Those nanomachines might have been awesome for sewing together my kidneys or whatever, but there isn''t a part of me that doesn''t hurt. I just want to sleep for like, three days, but I know I won''t because all I see when I close my eyes is the holes in the bodies of the Defiant, and their pained, stunned faces, and more blood than I thought I''d ever see in my life. I''ve still got the XPCA out there, I''ve still got Dragon out there, I''m now the proud bearer of the device he''s looking for, we kidnapped poor Whitney because I''m a selfish prick who doesn''t want her hating me, and you''re upset about me trying to set her up to be a little happier, even if it means I''m sleeping in another room."


    I realized I''d stopped walking to rant at AEGIS more effectively. She seemed to cower in my arms.


    "I already apologized," she said gently. "I''ll do it again and again."


    I started moving again. "Whatever. Let''s just shelve all of this for when I''m not angry and tired and on stims."


    "Yeah...let''s not say anything rash, right?" AEGIS said with fleeting hope. I waved the key Karu gave me at the door and it unlocked, and I pushed the handle open with my knee.


    "And finally," I said, picking up my rant again. "My girlfriend, who saved my life back there at least a couple times has been shot and stabbed and still has a couple knives sticking out of her. She can''t move, her speech is jarred and broken, and seeing her like that makes me angry and sad. So maybe I have another legit reason to ask Whitney for help right now, okay?"


    AEGIS didn''t reply, but that was better than the moronic quips she''d been giving out the rest of this walk.


    "Are you two set in here?" I asked, looking at the scant stuff Whitney had brought from her shop.


    "Enough to get started," Whitney said apologetically. "If I need anything specific...and I will...I''ll let you know tomorrow."


    "Thanks," I sighed and put AEGIS on the bed. "I''m really sorry for everything, Whitney. I know this isn''t your idea of a good time. I just¡­"


    "No, I understand. I could hear you on the way over," she said with a wry smirk which faded quickly. "Look, I''m just going to pretend you''re not an Exhuman for a while and try to let that not cloud my judgement. I have a place to stay, I''m not here in chains, I have...some really interesting work to dig into," she glanced at AEGIS with barely-concealed hunger "I can tough it out for a couple of days. It helps knowing that...well this is kind of crappy to think or say...but it helps knowing that you''re suffering so much."


    I gave a bemused snort.


    "Seriously. It doesn''t feel like you''re an evil, thoughtless person, and that helps. You''re just an...evil...thoughtful person, I guess. And that''s better. Somehow." She shook her head.


    "If you need anything, you have my contacts," I told her. "Though I''m probably asleep for the next day or whatever."


    "She can use me to contact whomever," AEGIS volunteered. "It''ll be fine. Go...go sleep, Athan."


    "Thanks," I said, giving a final nod before I left the two of them.


    When I re-entered our room, I found Karu still sitting there in a chair, opposite Tem on the floor by the bed, looking pensive.


    "What''s up, Karu?" I asked, sitting down heavily and giving myself a minute before I took off my shoes and put them next to the sneakers that accompanied Karu''s street clothes by the door.


    "I noted with some dismay that you are no longer wearing your choker," she said with a frown, that didn''t quite reach her green eyes. "I am...well...there are a variety of emotions I feel over this." She swallowed heavily.


    "I''ve still got it here--" I said, pulling it out of my pocket and dangling it for her. "The clasp broke when it tore off my neck. Which was so weird, because I''d swear I''ve worn it before when using my magnet." I gave it another thought. "Yeah, in New Eden. I was fighting the resistance, and threw some nails into some guy''s back, I definitely had it on then."


    "How very peculiar," she said.


    "Yeah, def--" I had leaned forward to take off my shoes and stopped, face-to-face with Karu''s sneakers. "How long have you had these?" I asked, picking one up and turning it over in my hands.


    "Oh those things? Years, though they have seen more use of late than ever before. Are you developing a sense of fashion, spontaneously?"


    I checked inside. Men''s nine and a half.


    "You wear mens'' shoes?"


    "I have broad feet," she said, crossing her legs to rest her boot on her knee. "Why all the inquiry?"


    I felt the fabric of the choker in one hand and the weight of her shoes in the other. One thing not adding up was pretty typical for me. But two was starting to get suspicious, and three¡­


    "Karu, can I ask you something?"


    "Certainly."


    I turned towards those dangerous green eyes. "Last week, you said you had to leave Vegas on a trip, said you were going to see your father about your relationship...remember? He was calling me and telling me how he hated your waitressing?"


    "I fail to see the question posed," she said, watching me tensely.


    "Oh just...how did it go with him? How are the two of you now?"


    She gave a disarming smile. "We are fine now. I let him know exactly his place in my world, and that he ranked far below waitressing even, in my list of priorities."


    I stood up, returning the choker to my pocket and letting the other shoe drop.


    "That''s strange," I said, staring into her eyes. "Because I just talked to him earlier today, and he said you never spoke."


    "Ah," Karu said, shifting so her feet were on the ground again. "Well...what I meant was...in ignoring him, I let him know--"


    The tiny room echoed with the booming thunder I discharged between my fingertips. Outside of the stims, I felt my ears ring and my head spin, but within them, all I saw was the green eyes in front of me.


    "I don''t want your lies, Karu. I have plenty of bullshit going on around me already right now, and I don''t need you adding to it. Tell me the truth."


    She also stood up, walking further into the room to pick up her visor, and looked into the face of it.


    "The truth," she mused. "Such a beautiful concept. Such a painful concept. Truths are whatever we make of them, Ashton. And there are many truths of this world you do not wish to face."


    "Stop speaking in riddles and just fucking tell me."


    She gave me a manic smile as red eyes replaced green.


    "Do not say I did not warn you. This was all for you, Ashton, my love."

 264. 2240, 12 years ago. Irenside Mansion. Karu.

    The door opened, and before he could scuttle away, I began to read at him.


    "The greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time, the central tenet of Utilitarianism, espouses that it is in the maximization of utility -- or happiness -- that the nature of good can be discerned. So does this argue that good is defined by that which promotes good, Father? Because that seems hardly a definition at all, to me."


    "Have you read the rest of the chapter?" he sighed.


    "Twice, yes, and I am still very unsatisfied."


    He began to walk away and I had to jog to keep up. Though I was fifteen and well in the throes of puberty, God had seen fit to grace me only with topheaviness, while still forcing me to scamper around at half of the height of a real person, which I detested, as I believed it made my tutors unable to take me seriously.


    "Utility is defined as that which promotes happiness or prevents unhappiness, and yet it seems to me that very few laws are passed which are aimed to make people happy," I continued.


    "Happiness comes in all forms," he said, winding his way through the broad, richly-stained wood-timbered halls of our home. "A law which clears up a contentious point removes the possibility of future headaches and stops petty squabbles." He looked at me significantly. "And pointless questions. All of which promote the greater good."


    I shook my head. "But the marginal utility of passing such a law is nonexistent to the opportunity cost of passing laws which could affect real change. If, instead of listening to lobbyists and passing bills which affected your own proceedings, you made a law which touched the public...if it improved their lives by only point-one percent, and if your law improved your life by one-hundred percent, there are still billions of them more than you."


    "Are you saying my position is unimportant, my dear?" he scoffed.


    "I am saying that there are sixty senators and four-hundred and eleven million non-senators. Laws affecting you are¡­" I paused to think, not exactly sure if I could get the numbers right without a tablet in front of me.


    He crossed his arms and waited. I had set myself up for a math test, unfortunately.


    "That makes...six senators for forty-one million...or nearly one to seven million. One seventh is...point one four, so...so you are...point zero, zero, zero, zero--"


    "To the negative seventh, yes."


    "--one four percent of the public. And as I am expressing it in a percentage, that would be to the negative fifth."


    "Next time, do the calculation within your head, and attempt to keep up small talk to disguise that you do not have your number. Stopping to figure simply makes you seem weak and unprepared. Distract and divert always."


    "Yes, Father. But, Father, my point remains--"


    He sighed and opened his office door, moving inside and I let myself in before I could be told not to.


    "There is a lot more to happiness than the good of all," he said. "Some people''s good is more important than others'', that''s a simple, unfortunate truth of the world."


    "Well, that does not seem very fair," I said, sitting down in an upholstered dark-wood chair opposite him. "We hold these truths to be self-evident--"


    "That all men are created equal. I am familiar with that particular document. But consider this -- let us say a corporate entity promises to donate towards...let''s say, education. A budget everybody wants to have, and nobody wants to fund. They promise four percent of their profit as a charitable institution. In exchange, they want a small tax break, to make them competitive with competing companies which make no such promises. Is it good to give it to them?"


    "Certainly. You are promoting the general good by the redistribution of wealth and investing in the next generation."


    "Simple enough, yes? But now let''s say instead of simply making that company a competitive tax cut, we can give them a disproportionately large cut, give them a legitimate advantage over their competition. What then?"


    I bounced the variables around in my mind for a moment. "Well...probably not? At this point, the fair economy of this company and its rivals is being upset, and those rivals, who have done nothing wrong are being punished, harming the well-being of those who work under them."


    "But we want the rivals hurt," Father said, stroking his moustache. "The more the first company grows, the greater their profit, and the more they will donate to charity."


    "That doesn''t sound fair...but I admit...not actually bad," I said, leaning back and thinking. "It does seem consistent with providing the greatest good, but...it also means the government is hand-picking which companies succeed or fail."


    "Which we already do on the daily," he mused. "The US Government is the largest buyer on Earth, through grants issued, military contracts, bonds bought and sold, and a million other things. Whom we choose to fill an order can make or break a company easily."


    "Then...then for the government to do good...they must always be hiring the good companies. The ones that donate or the like, in this scenario."


    "Exactly my point. So we work with companies and develop relationships, they prove themselves trustworthy, fiscally stable, functionally competent, and then before long, they are another arm of the government, partners in doing what needs to be done."


    "Which brings us back to some people''s good being more important than others," I said. "You don''t want to choose a potentially better customer over a proven, reliable one, even if it''s not the greatest good."


    "The greatest good is, in my experience, hokum," he said with a snort. "There''s nobody out there with a checklist making sure you did everything optimally. If there were, it should be me holding it, as I''m the man with the most experience in getting it done. The world doesn''t function in ''best'', just in ''good enough'' for the most part."


    "But that''s dumb and wrong," I argued.


    "The world is that as well," he grinned. "But you argued earlier the opportunity cost in indulging ourselves...consider how much time and opportunity we would waste if we had to look into every possible company every single time. Some ramshackle company could throw bids at everything, and we would waste thousands of hours investigating and then denying their bid, over and over and over."


    "Aren''t...isn''t there a law saying the bids have to be investigated?" I asked. I was pretty sure I''d read that somewhere, but not anywhere in class.


    He smiled. "And yet, over ninety-nine percent of renewing contracts are awarded to the winner of the original RFP. Things do get investigated fully. Once, typically."


    I shook my head. "This just...just all sounds like justification to keep giving lucrative contracts to the same people over and over, just because they already have lucrative contracts."


    "Well, you could put it that way, and you wouldn''t be exactly wrong, but as I''ve just argued, and could continue to argue, there are plenty of reasons why doing so is efficient and good. Could argue, but won''t," he said with some finality.


    I sighed heavily. I felt like conversations with Father always headed this direction lately. Any time I wanted to discuss the nature of good, or what made things moral, or what defined righteousness, it always came back to politics, and the harsh realities of How Things Are. If I was lucky, I could get him to dip into scripture from time to time and verse me on lessons from that bible instead, but it was rapidly becoming clear to me that the man had his opinions, had made his living from them, and could not be convinced to question them.


    Even if, in many ways, they seemed wrong to my naive eyes.


    "What of personal happiness?" I asked him. "What merit do you ascribe to that?"


    "Is this the beginning of another debate? I do believe you have class forthcoming¡­"


    "No," I lied. "I am merely curious."


    He looked at me sternly for a moment. "Sit up straight, Daughter. You''ll have enough back problems in life as it is. My opinion on personal happiness is the same, and I believe you''ll find the law consistent. Some individual''s happiness is more valued than others for much the same reason I described."Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    "So...many do not deserve to be happy?"


    "Do not twist my words, Daughter. Perhaps everybody deserves to be happy, just as everybody deserves to be safe, have an education, and food and air. But no, everybody does not deserve to be equally happy. Take me, for an example. Why do you suppose I am afforded the wealth and prestige to live in this fine house with these servants and my child well cared-for?"


    "Because you are a very important politician?" I sighed.


    "No," he said with a sly smirk. "Because if I were unhappy in my post, I would be susceptible to corruption. Why would I tarnish my hands with dirty money if I already have sponsors whose graces I might risk by accepting it?"


    "But you still have sponsors."


    "Every politician has sponsors."


    "That doesn''t make it just. You have an unfair advantage over--"


    "Karen, I believe I asked if this was a debate or an opinion, and you informed me it was just an opinion. Are you making a liar of my daughter?"


    "No, sir."


    "Go prepare for your next class, and leave me in peace," he said, turning to his holo.


    Knowing I''d get nothing else out of him, I rose, bowed, and left the room, closing the doors behind me, my mind still ablaze with conflicting opinions on philosophy, economics, and politics.


    Father had me trained in these subjects, and others, from a very early age, citing their importance in being an Irenside, and always stating that the only opposition who could defeat you was one who had prepared more. That was his goal for me, to make sure I was the most prepared I could be, so that when it came to college exams, no other would outmatch me. When it came to earning a degree, no subject would hold me back. When it came for my time in service, I would shine as any jewel forged in the heart of America. And when it came to take up politics, no rival could stand against me, no matter what.


    He had told me this many times, and I remembered in my youth, hearing those words and feeling a fire within me, ready and willing to burn and consume all the knowledge in the world, to shape me into the greatest leader of the greatest country in the world. I held that ambition, and my father had been so proud of me for holding it.


    Yet lately...I felt...more and more lost. I felt like the more I learned, the more I realized I did not know. The world was not as simple as growing strong and defeating a foe, no matter how much I wished it were so. I did not have doubts, exactly, but...moments where I saw that for thousands of years, wise men and women had been asking these same questions that my father answered so confidently, and though it seemed impossible, I could not believe that I just happened to be born to the world''s greatest philosopher of all time.


    And once I had that thought, all else began to fall apart. His arguments, once so compelling, I now saw as merely directing justification towards his own actions. His confidence, once so overwhelming, I now thought of as rooted in insecurities. His charm began to apply to me less and less, as I questioned him more and more openly, though I still saw it in full effect on those with whom he mingled daily.


    And it was frustrating. Because at the end of the day, I did not feel my questions were too complicated to answer. I knew who I was, knew what I was being groomed to do and to be, knew every step of my life from here forward.


    But I also knew that when I got there, I would be at a loss. Were I someday to become President or similar, and a bill to cross my desk, was it morally right to sign it into law? What defined right and wrong? Did my own feelings matter, or was I merely a vessel for upholding an objective truth?


    Father told me not to worry, that he was not going anywhere, and when, not if, I had my position in power, he would be with me to guide my every step. Which was as reassuring as it was terrifying.


    I found myself back in my room with no motivation to prepare for my next class. It was history, and a tragic waste of my time, I felt. Though I knew well that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, I hardly saw how the minutiae of dates and historical figures in the twentieth-century China would be relevant. It was not like China would be repeating much of anything.


    And yet, without motivation, without drive or reason, I sat down at my desk and opened the history book anyway. I set an alarm on my tablet for class and then willed it out of existence as a distraction. My father had told me to study, and I was a good and dutiful daughter, if nothing else.


    And yet, the insidious tendrils of distraction were in my mind and showed no mercy, as whatever great leaps forward Mao Zedong may have made slid past my eyes.


    Because, unfortunately, the current situation reflected the question in my mind perfectly. Here I sat, unhappy. What worth was personal happiness? To what extent could it be pursued? Was a life of debauchery and hedonism inherently wrong?


    I knew well the Bible''s opinion on the matter, and yet many politicians that Father claimed were good and capable men and women, the backbone of America, were among the most indulgent people I had met.


    Were I ever to reach that level...that...apogee, I thought, with only a glance at my tablet to confirm the spelling of the recently-learned word...would I live on as I believed myself now, a staunch advocate of good and justice and right? Or would I become tainted by power and influence and¡­


    ...and perhaps I was being unfair. Tainted had darker implications than I intended. Being self-centered was not opposite being just or good. In fact, in order to affect goodness, one had to first live and have the power to affect the world, both of which came out of self-focused development. As Father said, ''Altruism is a beautiful thing which has no place in politics.''


    I stared at myself in the mirror on my desk, leaning toward my right to capture myself in the reflection rather than my dressing area. I felt short and round, my hair straight and boring and ugly. Father said I needed to keep it long so that when I grew, it would look good, but would only make vague promises when I demanded to know when exactly I could plan on growing.


    But mostly, the face in the mirror looked unhappy. Uninspired by the world and her prospects in it. I had a map to follow in life, yes, and for that I was always grateful, to be blessed with vision and direction surpassing any other teen out there.


    That is how I should have felt. I turned the mirror away, disgusted with the ingrateful creature it showed. There were people in need out there in the world, and I would lead them to justice and greatness. I knew this, because I had been aimed towards doing so since the day I was born.


    My moment of disgust gave me an answer, I thought. If I felt guilt at my own ingratitude, that was God within me, pointing my heart towards what apparently came so easily to all other people. I could not indulge unhappiness, I had to work hard on my studies, attain that...apogee. And when I got there, hold fast to my beliefs, let God and his works move through me and become the salvation this country needed.


    Just as Father told me. Just as the Bible told me. Personal feelings were a temptation, a poison spread by Satan to ensnare the unfaithful.


    I did not allow my attention to waver from my studies again, and committed to confessing this sin of heart to our chaplain. I would accept whatever punishment he thought appropriate, severe though he often was, and I would do so without allowing my personal feelings to surface. That was the whole point, to do what I must, not what I felt.


    My conviction held through the remainder of my classes and dinner, where I was corrected only on my posture by Father and not my behavior, which I saw as a positive sign. It wasn''t until my scheduled rest period for an hour before bed that an issue occurred.


    I was reading philosophy, of course, having little desire in my heart to study anything else at the moment, and had just broached the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, whom I had heard of in passing but never given any comprehensive reading.


    I found myself gripped, engrossed by his theories, arguing that there was no singular definition of good, and that things have value only as we afford them it. That there could exist an opinion so old and published which seemed to echo the sentiment in my heart, that the world was a nonsensical and contradictory place, that personal desires were a concrete and knowable thing, and ''good'' was distant and ephemeral and both half-true and utterly false¡­


    Well, I could tell with certainty that it was no philosophy I would be able to espouse. Yet that rejection did not keep me from reading under the covers long into the night by the light of my tablet, my pulse pounding and my ears straining at every sound, stiflingly hot but not willing to risk being found with such scandalous material in my bed.


    At long last, well past midnight, I emerged from my sheets, exultant and sweaty and exhausted, and hid my tablet, my conduit to that dirty world, under my bed. I lay panting and reeling, my heart pounding with the thought of what I had just done, and what Father might think if he could see his daughter now.


    Nihilism by holo-light. Was there anything more irreputable I could be caught doing in bed, I wondered?


    It was not for me. It could not be. I was one destined for order and greatness, not personal indulgence and entropy. I knew this in my heart, but just the existence of such a contradicting opinion seemed to give me spirit. I felt...encouraged, that I was not the only one who had ever had doubts, that there were people who questioned as I did, and proposed answers even as radical as Nietzsche''s.


    I felt like the discourse I wanted to hold with Father, to have him acknowledge that I was a person and had feelings beyond the plans we had laid out, that conversation I just successfully had, but with a four-hundred year dead German. It made my heart feel a little bit lighter, as it were, and I knew that this, too, had been a mercy from God, showing me exactly what I needed in a moment of weakness.


    I closed my eyes but was too excited to sleep for a time.


    The vision ahead of me seemed so much clearer now. My job as...as President, charitably, with bills crossing my desk. I could look at them and know that, perhaps I could not always determine the one truth, perhaps I could not be a perfect vessel for justice and righteousness. There would be situations where I did not know what I was doing, and I could not always turn to Father or beat myself over the head with a bible or other organ until the truth became known to me.


    Sometimes, there would be no truth to be found, and then I would simply have to decide anyway. And there was power in knowing that.


    Of course, I would still be a righteous and good vessel, and as I had decided earlier, would uphold those values wherever I could, regardless of personal feelings. I found the knowledge that there wasn''t one truth liberating, but there still, irrefutably existed truth. Nothing could deter me from that, I knew.


    It would take something or someone which could invert my entire life, chew me up and spit me out, and force me to challenge and dismiss every moral I''d ever held before that could happen, and I knew that could never happen to me. I knew who and what I was, and who and what I was going to be. My life was planned for me, and for that I was grateful.


    Comfortable, confident for the first time in weeks, and basking in the afterglow of my imaginings, I gripped the blankets firmly as I drifted into the embrace of sleep.


    Perhaps tomorrow, I thought, I might favor Father with a nice discussion of sports or the like instead. Something which would not wander into the morass of political debate and feed the schism growing between us.


    Or maybe religion. I had several qualms with some of the verses that I had been meaning to raise with him for some time.

 265. 2252, Present Day. Falling Star Inn, OR. Athan.

    "You''re aware," I told Karu as we stared each other down "that I have magnetism in my power set. So I never carry anything magnetic. Cosette worked with me to get my sidearm customized with composite components. Lia did the same with my mobile. I''ve got like a...brass zipper pull on my uniform. Everything."


    I held the choker out to her with one arm extended, and then it jumped into my other hand like a cheap magic trick with a tiny magnetic burst that made the room rattle.


    "At first, I was just confused about it, but there''s only one explanation. The only time I''ve taken this off outside a shower is when you took it, Karu. The one you gave me back...it''s not the same, is it?"


    She said nothing, just stared at me through her visor.


    "You already lied to me once. Just now, about visiting your father. So you''re not hunting, and you''re lying, Karu. I have that thought in mind, and then I see...I see these." I nudged her sneakers with my foot. "And maybe those would just be a coincidence. But now the choker too, and we''re starting to get to the point where I don''t know what''s going on anymore."


    I shook my head. "I don''t know what to think. I don''t want to have the thoughts I''m having. I want you to give me an explanation that make sense and then I go to sleep."


    "It is possible the stims and exhaustion are making you paranoid," Karu said, but her tone was utterly unconvincing.


    "Yeah maybe. And maybe that''s why I''m jumping to conclusions. But there''s still facts that aren''t lining up, and no excuses forthcoming. Talk, Karu."


    She let out a breath slowly as she ran gloved fingers over her head, the guns on her wrist clattering against the back of her visor. After a moment her head snapped to me with pursed lips.


    "Do you wish to know the truth, Ashton? Even if it ruins all?"


    I shook my head. "I''m no good at living lies, Karu."


    "You are no good at living truths either."


    "If given a choice, I''d still take the truth anyday."


    "Even if you are not prepared to hear it? Even if it would ease your life to ignore it?"


    "When we encounter something we don''t like in the world, we have the choice to face it or ignore it Karu, and you and me...we''re not the ignoring type. We look our problems dead-on, and sometimes our problems are bigger than us and it breaks us. But I''ll always take the regret of not being able to do enough over not trying, anyday."


    She gave a fleeting smile. "So you say, so it is. But do not say I did not give you an out."


    I was blinded as two facefuls of shotgun strobed against my shield, and then blinded in a much more painful way as something solid and armored smashed into my face, sending me reeling backwards into a nightstand with the crash of a fracturing lamp.


    I struggled to my feet and saw the door thrown open, Karu''s wings deploying as she stepped onto the balcony. Despite the swimming double vision of my blow, I jumped for her, not sure what exactly I was grabbing at, just desperate to seize anything of her.


    I caught her by the side awkwardly as the blue tips of her jetpack lit up, sending us hovering, drifting sideways in a erratic suplex down the outdoor hallway as I clung to her and dragged her downwards.


    She kicked at me to dislodge me but I held fast, my fingers scrabbling against her smooth armor plates and sinking into folds in her flightsuit, exposed pouches, the edges of her armor and straps, anything.


    Both of us rocketed ungainly into the air as she forced the jetpack to engage despite being entangled in me, and for a moment it seemed like we would clear the railing and sail over the parking lot. But then we twisted as I struggled, and she slammed first me into the railing, and then with a twisting spiral, crashed into the wall next to the door with a crack which rattled the windows in their panes.


    Her jetpack, sensing a collision, automatically began to retract as Karu reeled and held her forehead, blood dripping over her visor and making it look like the lenses were weeping red.


    "Get off me, Ashton!" she yelled, kicking at me ineffectually, too close to get any leverage.


    "You shot me! You punched me in the face! What the fuck is wrong with you?"


    "I told you, I do this for your own good. Be gone and leave me!"


    "My own good? Why do you get to determine that. Just fucking...tell me!" I grunted as a shoulder was forced into my ribcage.


    "Of all the hypocrisy! You of all people--"


    "Karu, I already know, okay! I have my suspicions and if you run away now, you''re just confirming it. If you have any defense, any rationalization or...or...if you were doing it for me...or ideally, if I''m just wrong, I want you to fucking tell me! You can''t hide it, but you can make it better."


    She stopped struggling. Just for a second, to get my guard to drop, and then separated us cleanly with a blow to my chin with her elbow.


    "Sloppy, leaving yourself open," she said, panting as she wiped blood droplets from her nose and flicked them off her fingertips.


    But her pack didn''t engage and she didn''t fly away. Instead, she stood there, tense as anything. Her guard didn''t drop even a fraction.


    "I did it for you," she reiterated. "Is that not enough to know?"


    "My life has been hell for a month, Karu," I said, holding my jaw. "Every day, I had this worry that the world was ending because I hadn''t done enough. Tell me how that''s for me?"


    "Well," she said, shiftily. "Talon was...a contract. There was nothing personal about him."


    "So you did kill him," I said, feeling the last breaths of hope suffocate in my lungs. "And the others? Mini? Even Micaiah?"


    "Minerva was driving the Defiant in a dangerous direction. She was outspoken in her use of violence, and encouraged the apocalyptic scenario you feared at every turn. And," she said, her gaze hardening "she had personal stake against you. She assaulted you, and next time, she would employ her powers."


    "So you just fucking killed her? Karu, you''re not a murderer! We talked about this, it was...it was tearing you up inside."


    "I was not a murderer until I took Director Blackett''s life. You saw me afterwards. I was torn...broken, even. I felt as though...all of the values, the morals, the justice and purity I had pursued my entire life, that I had devoted my whole being towards...in the act of killing him, I had thrown it all away."


    "Karu, listen to me. He was a bad person...a bad Exhuman, even."


    "He was. And he needed to die, most likely," she sighed. "And that was the dangerous realization which liberated me. Do you not see?"


    I shook my head. Liberated...to killing?


    "Morality is meaningless, Ashton. Good and evil are not truths to be discovered, they exist only as we ascribe them value. Director Blackett was an evil man who would do good things by evil means. If he were not, you would not be alive...your exile was only so because he had an interest in your powers to see if you would fit into his nascent dreams of a P-Force. It was even stipulated in my contract in hunting you, I would be paid more if I harried you repeatedly instead of merely killing you. Your life is an ultimate good which came from his evil. Nothing is simple, straightforward, and true."


    "No, you''re wrong. Karu, don''t be like this. You and I know that good and evil exist. We''re out there, we''re doing it. Day by day and fight by fight, we''re making the world better."


    "And if we did nothing, and let Director Blackett live, he would be doing it a thousandfold faster, with less pain and death. We could even now salvage his plans -- convince your Code-X friend to dominate any Exhuman you encounter, and world peace is within our grasp."Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    "No. That''s fucked up and wrong, and you know it."


    She held out her arms in a frustrated shrug. "And today, how many otherwise innocent Exhumans died because of your weakness?"


    "They died because someone who thinks like you''re talking right now killed them, Karu."


    She scoffed. "They were dead the moment they made their pact. There was nothing survivable about their position. Whether they died this way, or a thousand others, they were too dangerous to live. Just as Director Blackett."


    I slammed my fist against the ground painfully. "And then Micaiah? Was he too dangerous to live, too?"


    She smiled, her teeth gleaming beneath the slow drip of blood from her visor. "He threatened you with my crimes. He thought plenty, but spoke even more, and that was his undoing. He was a fool in too many ways and paid with his life."


    "Karu, that''s just straight, fucking murder!"


    "I know," she said, he grin increasing. "With each death, I realized I needed fewer reasons to kill. With Director Blackett, I felt as though I were sacrificing everything I had and was. For Talon...it was a matter of national security. Mini was aiming to destabilize the Defiant and had threatened you, and Colonel Teryn, he was merely becoming inconvenient."


    "So you''re just becoming a psychopath then?" I asked, unable to believe what I was hearing. "It''s just easier and easier to kill, so you''re gonna do it more and more?"


    She shrugged. "Why not?"


    "Why...why not?" I gaped at her. "Why fucking not? Karu these are innocent lives! These are people you vowed to protect--"


    "Vows I broke for you," she said, advancing on me. "Morals which are meaningless because I broke them for you. Do not explain to me the value of a life in one sentence and then ask me to take them away in another. Lives either have value, or they do not, and your hypocrisy cannot change that."


    "Of course they have value," I screamed back. "Which is why stopping bad people is important, because those lives are going to ruin hundreds or thousands or millions of others!"


    "And if Colonel Teryn arrested you, scapegoated you for my crimes, had you executed...how many lives do you suppose that would influence? Is not killing him much the same as Director Blackett? How many have you already saved, Ashton? How many more will you, before God claims you to his side?"


    "I''m not going to God''s side, because I''m going to fucking hell, Karu."


    She smiled broadly. "No, Ashton. This is what I have learned. Killing is justice. So long as you are doing it to keep hope alive, God smiles when the blood is spilled."


    I staggered to my feet. "I''ve got a lot of scripture to quote at you right now Karu, but for one, fucking thou shalt not kill."


    She levelled her guns at me again. "Tell that to Director Blackett."


    "It was wrong, Karu. Of course killing is wrong. There''s always a better way, a smarter way, a peaceful solution, if you''re just smarter and stronger and more capable than I am. Things can always be done better, and killing people is just a lazy confession that you can''t be assed to figure it out, more than you think someone''s life is worth. Killing Blackett was wrong, and if I were better, we''d have figured something out and nobody would have to die."


    I took a step towards her. "But I''m not better, Karu. I''m just this fucking...weak...immature...scared little child. I''m afraid of losing my friends, because they''re all I''ve got left. I''m afraid of the world, because ever since I woke up one day, the world has decided to fuck me as hard as it could. I don''t even have humanity anymore. I''m scared, and angry, and all I want is for things to be better, even if I have no fucking clue how to get it there. Even if everyone hates me, and I have to do evil, horrible things like killing. They are still wrong, and nobody should ever do them. But I will, because I have to, because otherwise the world might just become even worse."


    "So you are permitted to kill but not me?"


    "No--I¡­" I growled in frustration at her. "You can''t think of killing as okay! You can''t talk about God smiling at it! You did something wrong, and...and instead of facing it...instead of realizing that what you did was bad and being able to live with it, you''ve...you''ve contorted your whole worldview so that it''s not bad anymore. And that''s why you''re finding it easier and easier to do! And that''s so, so fucked up, Karu. And dangerous. And a slippery slope."


    "My," she said with a wan smile. "And here I thought myself quite the psychoanalyst."


    "It''s like I said at the start. You either face reality or you ignore it. I thought we were both the type to face the world. I see the evil things I do and I hate myself for them. But you''re...you''re just ignoring it, aren''t you? You''re not willing to stare down your problems and spend the rest of your life in self-loathing like me."


    I frowned and my voice fell, despite myself. "But you did find self-loathing, didn''t you. You suffered so much for so long. You were cutting yourself and staying away from everyone¡­"


    My shield strobed as another pair of blasts unloaded into it.


    "There are a great many things I can abide, Ashton, but your pity is not one of them," she said with contempt. "You asked for an explanation, and this is what I offered. Do not think that yours is the authoritative worldview. All in this universe should not be damning themselves willingly to misery as gleefully as you jump into it."


    "Athan?" I heard behind me. I risked a glance and saw Whitney there...as well as several other curious onlookers. In fact, pulling away from my focus on Karu, I realized there were faces pressed in the windows and doors opened a crack the whole length of the motel.


    Because of course there would be. We were screaming and firing guns out here. The police would be here soon, I was sure.


    I turned back but realized my mistake as blue flashes went off in front of my eyes. The last thing I saw was Karu''s confident smile as she rolled backwards over the railing, and then blue streaks traced into the sky.


    "Karu!" I screamed up at her, watching the trails growing further and further away. "Damn it, Karu! Don''t...don''t¡­"


    I felt a sob of all fucking things threatening to course through my body. Even if I couldn''t see eye-to-eye with her, even if I disagreed with everything she''d just said, even if I thought she was just...just being a weak shit, or a coward, or twisting the world to suit her own viewpoint in it, there was a fact I couldn''t change.


    Whoever she was now, whatever her opinions were, whether I had forced her into this or she''d pushed herself down this path, the fact was she was gone. She''d just up and left me, choosing the void of the sky to my presence.


    I didn''t know why it hurt so much. I hated her right now. Those fucking senseless deaths. And she was everything I hated, everything I told myself I hated. It was hard not to see the terrapath we''d worked so hard to kill together, as she explained her perspective with an unrepentant smile.


    But she was my friend. I would have done anything for her. If I had to kill innocent people and become that person I despised...I would probably have done it. Because to me, Karu was someone precious, someone irreplaceable. No matter what we went through, no matter how we argued or fought, from when I beat her in a fight, and she opened her eyes and smiled at me, I thought we''d be together for each other.


    And for the first time, I wasn''t sure that was true anymore. Even when we''d broken up, it was because our feelings were too strong and growing too fast, and we risked hurting ourselves if we continued.


    Here...it was just...she was gone.


    I stumbled back into the hotel room in a haze and collapsed on the bed next to Tem, who was wrapped in bandages across her torso, and so loaded with painkillers and antibiotics she''d slept through the entire screaming match.


    All I wanted was to join her in sleeping. To put this stupid, broken world away and join in dreams, where anything was possible. Even justice. Even happiness. Even truth. I suddenly sympathized with Whitney''s urgency to dive into VR more than I thought possible.


    But yeah. Like that was going to happen now. The stims wouldn''t be off for another fifteen minutes or so, and until then, my thoughts were as sharp as honed glass.


    And lying there, I realized...realized why I wanted to cry. Why Karu''s departure hurt me more than it should have. And with that thought, I felt my face contracting painfully as tears forced their way forward, no matter how stubbornly I refused them.


    She''d chosen her broken, shitty philosophy over me, I realized. When it came between listening to me or running away, she hadn''t hesitated. She knew I''d disagree with her new perspective, and had no interest in hearing me oppose it. It was what she needed, not me, and if she ever realized that¡­


    ...well, there''d be no point in her killing for me anymore. She could kill for whatever damn fucking reason she wanted. And then what would she become?


    My building tears weren''t for me, they weren''t even for Karu. They were for the Karu from before, who somehow had survived years of soldiering and hunting, it had only been under my orders that her innocence had finally died, and the woman I knew had died with it.


    I sat up and, as I''d meant to before this all started, stripped out of my shoes and socks, lining them up by the door next to the sneakers which had started this whole fucking mess.


    Why did I have to notice they were the same ones Micaiah had tracked down? Why did I have to ask about the size? Why couldn''t I just have trusted Karu, even as the inconsistencies and circumstantial evidence grew against her? What, I''d kill for her, but couldn''t overlook a fucking phone call with her dad?


    I was mad at myself, and not certain why. Karu was gone, and I needed someone to blame, I guessed. I didn''t know. I was angry. I was exhausted. I was hurt, and impotent, and useless. I''d lost so many people today, and I just had to open my mouth and lose one more.


    I looked over and saw myself in the mirror, sitting up on the bed in my street clothes, looking like any other stupid normal person. Just an ordinary fucking person. What was I thinking, trying to save anyone? No wonder they all died, if this was the hero sent for their rescue.


    I threw my shoe at the mirror and it cracked. My other shoe splintered it into a rain of glass, cascading across the desk and floor.


    They had Karu''s credit for the room. May as well trash the place. Fuck her.


    I laid back down next to Tem and tried to wait patiently for the stims to wear off. Her breathing was so slow and shallow, when I tried to match it, I found myself suffocating. It was just impossible, I couldn''t do it like she did.


    So instead I did it like I did, laying there, overwhelmed by my own thoughts and nature and feelings, feeling hot and cold as anger and sadness washed over me and through me.


    Minutes later, when the stims were finally wearing off, I felt nothing but exhaustion as I cried myself to sleep.

 266. 2252, Present Day. Falling Star Inn, OR. Athan.

    I slept for most of two days. The police never came, and when I finally stumbled out of my room, still in the same clothes as before, the exhaustion in my head replaced with turmoil, AEGIS informed me that there had been calls to the police, but my ''guardian angel'' had blown out all ''net traffic from this relay, so none of the calls had gotten through.


    AEGIS seemed better, though when I came in she had to preserve her modesty by closing up her front panel and putting a shirt back on. But implicit in doing that was the ability to move her arms, which was a significant improvement over before.


    "Here," AEGIS said, holding out a strand of wire attached to a circuit so thin it was like a square of smoke. "This was the cause of all our troubles."


    "What is it?" I asked.


    "It''s a wire."


    "I...see that. I meant, what does this wire do?"


    AEGIS shook her head and smiled. "No, a wire. Like an eavesdropping device from gangster movies. It was put into your collar in the place of the existing electronics. Karu just used the existing entanglement to record sound around you instead of pressure."


    "Why would I be transmitting pressure?" I wasn''t sure if I was still out of it or this just made no sense. From AEGIS'' look of sympathy and just a hint of condescension, I''d guess the former.


    "It was a novelty choker, Athan. It used an itty-bitty little core and some quantum entanglement to transmit your pulse to the partner choker. Way sappy for Karu''s femme fatale vibe, but maybe something I''d like," she said, batting her eyelashes at me. "Karu just modified your unit so it sent sound instead. And the mic she used," she held up the wire "happened to be magnetic. Because mics have a magnet in them."


    I held it in my hands. It felt like nothing at all, but this damn thing had let Karu know everything that I''d done, everything that had been done to me...it had told her where the Defiant could be found, even if nobody was supposed to know, let her know about Mini attacking and threatening me, about Micaiah...everything.


    "Hey, you''re gonna break it," AEGIS said, and I realized my knuckles were white from gripping it.


    "Shouldn''t it be broken? Is she listening now?" I asked.


    AEGIS scoffed. "Like I''d let her just eavesdrop on us. No, it''s off, but still working. You never know when having a link to your enemies might come in handy."


    She said it so candidly but my heart fell. Enemy. That''s what Karu was now?


    "Anyway," I sighed. "How are you, Whitney? Adjusting well?"


    She was sitting on a little hotel chair over a little hotel table, strewn with parts laid out in haphazard order, but since the moment I''d walked in, her eyes had been on me.


    Where they lingered for another few moments before turning down to her work. "What does it matter? You''re not letting me go."


    "She''s been happy," AEGIS added apologetically. "I don''t have motor function, so...she''s come and go as she''s pleased. She knows Karu''s gone, so nobody would hunt her down--"


    "He would," Whitney said, pointing a driver in the direction of my face.


    "I''m...I''m sorry," I said. "This wasn''t even a real plan, I wasn''t supposed to be out for two days, Karu wasn''t--"


    "Let me stop you there, friendo," she said, irritation flickering behind her thick glasses. "I don''t care what your excuses are, whether you did a good job or bad job of kidnapping someone, you still kidnapped them. But the fact that you guys were planning all this stuff, doing all this...saving-the-world talk, and then you had a freaking traitor in your midst?"


    She made a gesture like she was about to throw the driver at the table but reconsidered and placed it down gently. Or at least, she loved her tools more than she was capable of being angry.


    "If you''re serious about this whole Exhuman, world-saving, XPCA, hunter, Defiant, whatever stuff, you can at least not suck at it!" she half-shouted with clear irritation. "I was ready to take you guys seriously there for a minute, and then you''re screaming in the hallways of a motel like a dysfunctional family on vacation, because of this?"


    She snatched the wire from my hand. "This? This is a joke. This isn''t even shielded or encrypted or anything. It''s just hanging out for the whole world to see, and none of you even saw it?"


    "Did you see it?" I asked her.


    "Matter of fact, I did. I have a scanner in the front door of my shop. Picked it up the first time you walked through the door. Didn''t know what it was, obviously, didn''t expect it to be a freaking microphone on your neck, fairly pissed about all the personal stuff and advice I gave you with your friggin'' girlfriend eavesdropping like that."


    "Um, actually, I''m the girlfriend."


    Whitney seemed exasperated in ways I had never seen. I guessed...when she found out I was an Exhuman, when we''d...we''d involuntarily liberated her from jail...she''d been overwhelmed. In denial. Wanting to escape and pretend it hadn''t happened to her.


    But this...this was just sloppy craftsmanship and execution from her perspective. This was probably something she dealt with every day. Some stupid kid getting a virus on his tablet that makes it start spying on him. That was me.


    It was sloppy, it was unprofessional, it was dumb. And I knew Whitney abhorred those things.


    This time my head hung as I apologized.


    "I''m...really sorry. You shouldn''t have been caught up in the middle of any of this."


    "I shouldn''t. Thank you."


    "I''m sorry that I couldn''t change your mind about me. It was selfish of me to try."


    "It was. Thank you."


    "And...if you want to go home...that''s totally fine."


    She stood up and crossed her arms as she seemed to tower over me.


    I waited a painful moment before she spoke. "Well...great! Maybe I will," she said, but made no effort to move.


    I looked around a little and still she didn''t stir. AEGIS¡¯ eyebrows were doing the same calisthenics as my thoughts.


    "Of course," she said, thoughtfully scratching the side of her frames now like it was an itch on her nose "if I did go, there''d be no finishing AEGIS."


    "Yes, it''s true," AEGIS intoned. "I am utterly helpless, and certainly never constructed this body entirely from scrap except for that one time."


    Whitney shot her a glare. "And it does seem like this entire situation could have been avoided if you had anyone with competence looking after you."


    "Hey now," AEGIS complained. "Who are you calling incompetent?"


    Whitney thrust the wire out towards her like a noose. "How long was this hanging on his neck?"


    AEGIS opened her mouth and then closed it.


    "But there''s still the issue of you being a kidnapping jerkass who is arguably downright evil," she mused. "Not exactly who I''d want to associate with by choice."


    "He''s fine. Come on," AEGIS said. "You''re not going to say no to this body, are you?"


    The effect of her glamorous pose was somewhat diminished by the remaining puncture holes in her torso.


    "AEGIS let her make up her own mind. I feel bad enough already without trying to browbeat her into even more shit."


    AEGIS did shut up, and Whitney looked at me pensively. I could almost see her thoughts. That was a very non-evil thing I did there, she might be thinking. But I''d already concealed who I was to her before, who''s to say I wasn''t doing it now? And if I were, nothing had changed, and I was still a threat and a shitbag. But if not, did that reflect on a good nature? Or did I have something else in mind?


    I found it personally exhausting when things were nested in lies and politics like that, and if Whitney were anything like me, she might just leave to keep her life simpler. I wouldn''t blame her in the least.


    But at long last, she shook her head, picked up her driver, and went back to work at the desk, wordlessly.


    "Well, I''m not gone," she said, brandishing the driver at me. "It''s the chance of a lifetime to work with AEGIS, and I can still leave whenever I want. So after she''s back in shape, we can revisit this."


    She shot me a final contemptuous glare. "But you''d better get your act together. I don''t abide evil jerks, and I don''t abide incompetence, and right now, you''re right on the edge of both, friendo. I don''t have any problem saying I don''t like you, so maybe it''d just be best if you left me and AEGIS in peace."


    "Well, that''ll be difficult," AEGIS intoned through a half-lidded glare. "Because I want Athan to spend every minute with me he''s willing to."Stolen story; please report.


    "How''d they get such a strong personality in you anyway?" Whitney asked with a shake of her head.


    "Mom always told me to stand up for myself. Said if I didn''t, the XPCA would turn me into just another tool."


    "And do you always do what your mom says?"


    "When it''s convenient," AEGIS smiled.


    As much as I wanted to be with AEGIS right now, which was a significant amount, given the general hole-in-my-heart feeling, more than anything, I felt like...somehow...if Whitney could come around to my side, it would redeem me in a lot of ways. She was someone I genuinely liked and respected, whose opinion I valued. As fucked up as I was, and as much fucking up as I''d done, if she somehow managed to look through all of that and tell me I was okay¡­


    ...well, I might just believe her.


    So I was willing to give her all the space she could ask for. I spent time changing Tem''s bandages, feeling my own gut churn with guilt at the sight of hers -- angry red spiderwebs of burn lines, clusters of blisters, peeling blackened layers, and shiny pink exposed skin beneath them.


    She was still up on painkillers, but her wounds had closed and the major risk of infection had gone. Now she just watched me as though in a dream, and I thought, maybe for her, having the chance to be helpless and have someone...me, especially...service her, without the ability to resist or be flustered or hide, maybe that was a dream for her. She was veritably purring, even though I''m sure the wounds still hurt through the meds.


    And then I was done, Tem was slathered in medical gel and bandages, and I was alone again with my thoughts. I took a deep breath and pulled out my mobile. A call I didn''t want to make.


    "Hello?" Cosette answered. I was happy to hear Intel had stopped picking up her calls for her. "Who is this? Identify yourself. How did you--"


    "Hi, Cosette. It''s me."


    "Is this an ''it''s me'' scam? I don''t have time for this--"


    "It''s me, Athan."


    "Chariot? You damn bastard, where the fuck are you? We sent agents to recover you from police custody--"


    "Yeah. Well, as you probably know, Karu got there first. That''s what I wanted to talk to you about."


    "What, going to beg for her? Well it''s not working, not this time bucko. Your word is valueless around here, you''re dead to me, kid, and--"


    "Cosette, chill. Jesus."


    "I am perfectly chill, you...you...poopscuttler. You...mule-headed...I''m tired, Athan. Pretend I said something really biting. Do me that one favor because I know, by the virtue of you calling, you''re not doing me any others."


    I smiled sympathetically for her. "Look, I wanted to let you know what happened with the Defiant."


    "What happened is they''re all dead."


    "And do you know how?"


    "Micromines, the detonator was in a pile of crap left at the scene by Dragon, we presume."


    "And do you know why?"


    "Are we playing frickin'' twenty questions, Chariot?"


    "I was wrong about Dragon. He didn''t want to use the Defiant to overthrow the XPCA."


    "Then why did he put bombs in them? If he just wanted them dead, he has much cleaner methods, and he''s never been shy about using them."


    "Because he was after something. A device, which I have."


    "What? What is it?"


    "I don''t know. It''s like a...grenade maybe. It''s got two handles on it."


    "You have a device so powerful that Dragon would kill his way through a couple dozen Exhumans and a few XPCA, and you don''t even know what it does?"


    "Well...would you pull the handle?"


    She hesitated, and I continued.


    "And he didn''t kill the XPCA. That''s what I''m trying to tell you. Not Micaiah anyway."


    "Oh, and who did. You? Because you''re a full-on traitor now?"


    "No. Karu did."


    This time I rode out her pause. Which broke after maybe eight seconds, with a torrent of profanity. "Are you kidding me? Karu? She''s one of the most highly-ranked and trusted hunters in the association. And yeah, I knew she pulled this shit to get you out of jail from under us, but murdering an XPCA officer? That''s an obvious lie, Chariot, goddamnit."


    "No...we...we just had a falling out over it. She attacked me and everything. She killed Talon on XPCA contract--"


    "Hell no she didn''t. There''s no way we''d authorize that."


    "And after that, she acted on her own to kill Mini and then Micaiah."


    I heard Cosette let out a long, slow breath.


    "It doesn''t make any sense, Chariot. That''s all. If there was an XPCA covert action to kill Talon, and that''s a huge if, it''d be someone internal. Someone we could absolutely trust on it. Probably the best shadow ops we have."


    "But you just said Karu is trustworthy."


    "But she''s a hunter. They''re not even technically part of...of the..." she drifted away.


    "Um, Cosette?"


    "...of the system," she concluded as though in a dream. And then, as though waking up very abruptly, "Fucking...fuckity...fuck!"


    "That sounds...bad."


    "I just...fuck. Damn it. Damn it all. Look, Chariot, I can''t pretend it''s never been done before, but one of the less...ethical...uses for hunters historically has been in...legal grey areas. For exculpability. But always shady people, low-class hunters, low in the ranks, in it for the money, not people with fame and influence like Karu. People we can blame and then dump."


    "They couldn''t send a low-rank hunter. But they needed to make sure it got done flawlessly. They couldn''t have a botched attempt," I realized, seeing instantly the need for profanity.


    "And her personality helps even more here, making it so if she did get found out, there''d be a reason to put the blame on her other than an obvious payout by an obvious entity. We just deny there was ever a contract, and it just looks like the righteous hunter went Exhuman hunting on her own terms. Fuck!"


    "So you believe me?" I asked.


    "Oh stop being so fucking cocky, Chariot. Just because there''s some way you might not be wrong doesn''t mean I''m all aboard the traitor train. I''ll look into it. But if you''re right and if they catch me snooping, I''ll probably get shot."


    "Don''t do that," I said, suddenly alarmed.


    "Well what the hell else am I supposed to do? Just trust you? You''re a goddamned traitor, Chariot. A deserter at best."


    "Yeah, just trust me. I don''t have reason to lie. You know me, Cosette, and I''m a lot of shitty things, but I''ve got no reason to mislead you on this." I sighed. "In general, even if I handled it poorly, can''t you understand why I did everything I did?"


    "No," she pouted. "Can you explain what part of refusing to come in was necessary?"


    "I was innocent!"


    "Then we would have found that out, you dumbass."


    "Would you, though? The same freaking XPCA which hired Karu to do it so they could bury her with the charges if it ever came to light? You honestly think they wouldn''t jump at the chance to pin the whole thing on me?"


    She went quiet again but I could swear I heard something being smashed and muted swearing from somewhere far from her phone. After a minute she came back. "Hello?" she barked with irritation.


    "Still here."


    "Well, Chariot, I apparently don''t know the first fucking thing about doing my own fucking job. My higher-ups don''t have my back, and my subordinates need to run and hide for their own safety. Everything is obviously shit and I don''t blame you for leaving it all."


    She was now speaking with the curt edges in her words that indicated stim usage, and all I could do was shake my head at my mobile. It wasn''t like I didn''t know the XPCA had a lot of issues, but it just...seemed unfair for Cosette to be working her ass off and stuck in the middle of them all.


    We spent a long time on the call together without speaking. It felt like several times, I was ready to say something and then thought better of it, and I thought I hear her draw breath like she was doing the same.


    But really, what was there to say? If anything we''d discussed was true, we were both fucked and we knew it. I trusted her, and despite my fuckups, I''m pretty sure she trusted me to a degree. And now neither of us trusted this big, black, metal blanket over both of us.


    I mean, I never had, but I sympathized utterly with her for joining me here.


    "So," I said at long last, watching Tem breathe and smile in her dreams. "Should I like...come in again? The Defiant are done for."


    "Honestly, I was wondering if you had room for one more out there," Cosette laughed bitterly. "I think...I need to not look into this. I don''t think I''ll like what I find, and I don''t think they''ll like it if they find me."


    "Yeah, no getting shot, please."


    "I''ll try. I''ll...I don''t know that I can just make all of this go away, Chariot. It might be another situation like before Oakland. Nobody willing to forgive you unless we need you. Hmm...unless¡­" I heard her typing and thinking both. "No, we might have a way. You''re not going to like it."


    "And what''s that?"


    "We blame Karu for everything. You come back, offer your testimony, we dig up evidence, I let everyone know you were working on special assignment under me the whole time...and we lie our asses off and hope that they''re angrier at her than at us."


    "Boy that sounds great," I sighed.


    "Yeah. Just all kinds of mess. Look--if I were you, I''d leave and never come back, Chariot," she blurted out all the sudden. "It''s obvious your brand of making waves and the XPCA don''t see eye-to-eye. We lost you for now, so just...stay lost."


    "I''ll think about it," I said.


    "Really, do. The XPCA can make it by without you. We always have."


    "Yeah, I hope so," I said. "You''re a good person, Cosette."


    "After the things I do for this job, I''m pretty sure I''m not good, and starting to wonder if I''m still a person," she sighed.


    "Yeah. That''s what got to Karu, too. She broke her own rules for me one too many times, and decided the rules were pointless. Promise me you won''t end up like her, Cosette."


    "I''ll do what I can, kid. At least when I''m breaking the rules, I get the satisfaction of sticking it to the fatcats. General Moroles can bite my ass. Stay safe yourself out there...I''m not the one on the XPCA wanted list."


    "You''re not going to get in trouble for talking to me or anything, are you?"


    "I''m always in trouble," she said, and I could hear her grin. "The trick is, when you get called in to wear them down with the dress code violations and other bullshit so they stop giving a shit before the real fuckups." She paused. "But don''t get any bright ideas if I ever have to call you in to discipline you."


    "Oh, don''t worry, I never have bright ideas."


    "Good kid. See you out there, Chariot. Sometime, I''m sure."


    "You too."


    I hung up and the second Peregrine in my life slipped away. It was a little frustrating, saying goodbyes when it felt like what had been there was over for weeks now, and it was only when we were back on speaking terms, back on the same page again that we cut it off.


    It''s not like I could never call her again if I wanted but...I couldn''t imagine why I would. Maybe if something was going horribly wrong, but that was hardly the scenario I''d want to look forward to.


    It sucked. It was sad. It seemed unfair and stupid, and pretty much all the standard fare for being an Exhuman. But in what she said, there was something new, something I''d never really considered or ever had the courage to ask of myself, and now it was here, looming large in my face.


    The Defiant were gone. The XPCA was safe for the moment. I''d somehow slipped away and as long as I did nothing stupid, could hopefully stay that way. For the moment, I was freer than I maybe ever had been. I could go anywhere, and do anything.


    I had the opportunity for a life again. So in a question I never thought I''d get to ask, now I had to figure out what was life to me, and what did I want out of it?


    As impossible as being an Exhuman seemed at times, at least it made your life choices pretty easy. Sitting down and figuring out what your life should be?


    Fuck me, I''d take fighting Dragon again anyday.

 267. 2252, Present Day. Falling Star Inn, OR. Athan.

    I woke up to the sound of gentle moaning and instantly moved to throw AEGIS off of me as though by reflex, but found nobody there. It took me a confused moment to realize the moans were of pain, and Tem was lying on the floor, making pitiful noises in her sleep.


    It just about broke my heart hearing that, and I moved to pick her up and carry her into the bed, where I swore she''d been when I fell asleep last night. While she was in my arms, her eyelids fluttered open and she looked uncomprehendingly at my face.


    "Is this heaven?" she breathed.


    "Aren''t you in pain?" I asked her.


    She nodded very seriously. "But I am not in heaven?"


    "No, not yet," I said and laid her down. I glossed over a lot of Tem''s weirdness, but the fact that she thought Heaven of all places would be full of pain just...I couldn''t begin to understand her. "Ready for your painkillers?"


    She shook her head. "I don''t want any more painkillers."


    "Doesn''t it hurt?"


    "It does not hurt that badly. I do not deserve any better. Please save them for if you are in pain."


    "Tem, that''s stupid. Take your meds." I poured a couple of pills into my hand and held them out for her. She delicately picked them up in her small fingers, taking care not to touch my skin.


    But she just held them.


    "What''s wrong? Need water?"


    "I do not like the pills," she said. "They make me feel like s-s-somebody I am not."


    I couldn''t imagine how that would be a bad thing, but even I had the tact not to say it. "Um, it''s just...for the pain, right?"


    "Yes. It does stop the pain. And it makes me feel s-so happy and floaty."


    "And what''s wrong with that?"


    "At s-some point, I have to be me again," she said, seeming to withdraw even more. "I...I don''t like being me. It''s painful to be anyone else."


    This fucking girl was like, trying to break my heart today. I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, which made her jump and then hold her wound as she braced herself against the pain. But even as she did, she squeezed my hand back with all her strength.


    "Well I''m not going to make you take them," I said. "But...please do if you want. I''m going to go check on AEGIS, do you need anything?"


    "I never need anything."


    "I know," I said with a sad smile, and gave her hand one final squeeze. "But if you did, I''d be happy to get it for you."


    I paused outside to take in a few lungfuls of the damp morning air and try to clear my mind. Even before Tem had accidentally started me awake, I was already spinning in my own hell of Karu and Defiants and Dragons, cringing at myself at everything from that day.


    I''d been so confident, so arrogant. So stupid. And they died for it. Jack had warned me in no uncertain terms that to face Dragon was to face defeat, and it wasn''t like I didn''t believe him, I just...hoped or thought it would turn out differently. I was an Exhuman, I wasn''t your average guy. I''d been through a lot of scrapes, I''d battled my way up and down the XPCA from within and without, and how many people could say they''d assassinated an XPCA director? I obviously wasn''t just some guy, right?


    Fucking wrong. He''d handled me like I was a child. There wasn''t a thing I did that he didn''t anticipate, and wasn''t a thing he did that I reacted to properly. Whether he was or wasn''t an Exhuman, he was so far beyond me, I may as well have been trying to fight a literal dragon. I''d never felt so pointless.


    I knocked on the girls'' room and was surprised but happy to see AEGIS answer. Back on her own two feet again, she was...well, she was missing an arm, and had apparently traded working arms for legs, as she used one to open the door. So obviously not in the best shape, but getting there.


    "Morning wood?" AEGIS asked.


    "Good morning to you too," I said. "How''s Whitney?"


    "Did you come for her? Honestly Athan. I''m standing right here and my legs work again." She lit up as though inspired. "We can do foot stuff!"


    I rolled my eyes at her. "So she''s fine then?"


    "Yes, still sleeping. We were up late having all kinds of fun. She''s really smart, did you know? It''s a little bit of an unfair competition because my technical knowledge is a hundred years out of date, but that woman knows her way around a bench. I sort of feel like by the time she''s done with me, I''m going to be twice the girlfriend I used to be," she giggled.


    "Like...in size?"


    She gave me a weird look. "I am not going to get fat. What the heck. That''s like the only perk of being a gynoid."


    "Yeah, sorry," I said, shaking my head.


    "You distracted?" she asked seriously. "I was...half kidding about the foot stuff but--"


    "AEGIS, please."


    "--but if you have something on your mind, I''m cool to talk."


    "Actually," I said, hit by an idea. "Do you have footage of the fight with Dragon?"


    "Yeah. You want to watch that?" She gave me another weird look and then lifted a foot with effortless balance and flexed her toes under her own scrutiny. "And that''s more fun sounding than--"


    "Yes, foot stuff, I heard the first two times. Are you programmed with like, a dictionary of all possible fetishes and you''re just working your way through it or something?"


    "No. But that sounds fun!" She beamed at me.


    I rolled my eyes at the monster I may have just created. "Come on, perv. Let''s go back to my room and watch the feed."


    "I''m actually...kind of plugged in here," she said, taking a step back from the door and showing her hair trailing to a couple of devices. "We can do it in here, just be quiet around Whitney?"


    "If it''s not creepy to do it over a sleeping woman, I guess," I said.


    "Eh. Lowering your guard is inviting an attack, right?"


    I glared her grin down until she let me in without further argument. I hooked her into the holo and with hardly any other additional bullshit, started playing footage.


    Somehow, it was even more painful to watch than to have lived through. I got to see the whole scene for the first time, Dragon talking about the device and making the Defiant swallow the pills which would ultimately kill them. But it was only when I got to the scene and saw myself  getting absolutely pummeled through AEGIS'' eyes that I saw just what a mess it was.


    "How fast was he moving?" I whispered to her. "He''s impossibly fast. Do you think his power is just speed or something?"


    She sighed. "I dunno. I thought so at first too. But I''ve reviewed this footage myself and...as far as I can tell, he''s not doing anything an ordinary human can''t. Not to say any human could, but just...look at this part--"


    She skipped us to a part where he''d been electrocuted by one of my bulbs. Even as he was involuntarily spasming from the waist down, somehow, he was keeping his shoulders level enough to aim and shoot two guns at once, hitting me and more impressively, the fleeing Dork-Hand, despite the distance and his movement on running stilts.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Yeah, that''s super impossible," I said. "He''s gotta be an Exhuman. Nobody can do that."


    "Someone theoretically could, and he did. I''m not saying it''s likely he''s human, but...watch closely. All he''s doing is reacting to every involuntary jerk. See how his left leg gives under him here, and his right leg goes too? One of those was involuntary, the other...right there...you can see he reacts almost instantly to keep himself level."


    "But that''s still impossible. Even if he could move like that, he''s completely ignoring the pain, he''s reacting at the very limits of human reaction speed, fuck he''s not even surprised he got shocked from the look of it. He just looks bored."


    "Well, he looks like he''s in pain."


    "But hardly, for how electrocuted he is!"


    "Shh, she''s sleeping," AEGIS chided me, and I felt stupid and regained control of my voice. "Look, I know why you wanted to see this because like I said, I reviewed it a lot too. I wanted to find proof somewhere that he''s Exhuman, something definitive that would, if nothing else, tell us what his powers are. And it''s just not there."


    "It has to be. He''s doing all this impossible shit."


    "Humans do plenty of impossible shit, Athan. You ever see the speed of a guy juggling a dozen balls at once? Or the dexterity of some close-up stage magic? Or the reactions of pro gamers? Or the stamina of an Olympian? What Dragon did was well under what those people are capable of. He just...did it all at once."


    "While in pain of having his arm torn off. While in a fight. While facing multiple adversaries."


    "Yeah."


    "Which is impossible."


    "No, just extremely improbable. But you''re forgetting that we''re not talking about human averages here, Athan. Dragon is just one guy, and not just any guy, he''s the most dangerous and successful assassin in the world, probably. He doesn''t have to be average anything. Statistically speaking, there will be a person born out there who''s just better at everything than everyone for whatever reason. And if that one superior guy focused his efforts on assassining, that''s where Dragon might have come from."


    "Just play it back again, please. The whole fight, at like, half speed."


    I watched with a careful eye, honed from dozens of hours of doing this exact thing after football matches. Watch the play enough to know what''s going on, but always watch yourself. You needed context, but you weren''t gonna fix the other guy''s shit, you could only focus on yourself.


    And the more I watched, the more I thought...the Defiant didn''t deserve me as their last hope, nobody did. I was a fucking mess. My defense was riddled with holes, my footwork was just straightforward and gave away everything I intended to do before I did it. I was too reliant on the strength of my powers and used them at every chance, which made them utterly predictable. Even if a lot of things Dragon did were apparently superhuman, he didn''t need to be to put me down.


    My mouth felt sour and dry as the recording finished, and as I saw myself getting punched over and over, I couldn''t help but to agree with Dragon on that. I was a fucking idiot.


    "Wow, was that really your best?"


    I turned and saw Whitney sitting up on the bed, her eyes on the holo.


    "Apparently," I said with a shake of my head. "It was terrible. I was terrible."


    "You were fine," AEGIS said. "Dragon is just a professional killer. And...maybe Exhuman too."


    "No, I was shit. I was telegraphing everything I was doing like a complete amateur. You see how Dragon moves here, no lead up, no hesitation, just goes? You can''t tell what he''s doing until he''s already doing it. That''s how your supposed to act. That''s how a real player moves."


    "He''s not a player,'' AEGIS said with a frown. "And I thought you were fine. You did your best."


    "I was shit, and he demolished me for it."


    "But not what I''m talking about," Whitney said. "I don''t know anything about telegraphing or players, but...you''ve got lightning powers, right? So what''s this mess?"


    She stood up and dialed back the holo to a part where Dragon danced out of my range after hitting me plenty, and my swords swiped through the air at him only to fall short.


    "My powers aren''t unlimited," I said. "I have a maximum range of like, eight feet. They can''t go past that."


    "Why not? Does it just fall apart or something when you do?"


    "No, I just can''t. Like you can''t reach your arm further than a couple feet in front of you, it just doesn''t reach."


    "So you''re saying--" she said, getting up and putting an empty cup of noodles on the nightstand and then crossing the room to stand by us at the holo. "--that from here, I can''t reach that cup and knock it over?"


    "I think that''s pretty obvious," AEGIS said with an eye roll.


    Whitney just gave a sly smirk and picked up another empty cup from behind her, and then threw it tumbling through the air, where it barely clipped the other and sent both to the floor, bouncing on the thin carpet.


    "You threw a cup at a cup," AEGIS said. "Wow. Great job."


    "I''m saying, if you can control electricity, you can manipulate circumstances in your grasp--" she picked up the cup again "--to affect them when they''re out of your grasp." She threw it towards me, and I cut it out of the air before it hit my shield.


    "Watch the throwing shit," I scolded.


    "Sorry. Forgot."


    I dialed back the holo to where I threw a bulb at Dragon.


    "So that, basically?" I said with my own smirk, but to my surprise hers just grew larger.


    "Yeah, something like that. But you were chasing that Dragon around with your...what appear to be ionizing...floating...semistable closed-current circuits?"


    "I call them swords."


    "Call them what you want, that doesn''t change what they are. If you''ve got the power to make a circulating closed system like that though, why can''t you let that system go, let it drift out of your range and extend the threat?" She tapped the side of her glasses with a smug smirk. "I''m talking ball lightning here."


    "Ooh," AEGIS said. "I like where this is going."


    "Or...just melt that guy. Your sword is only a few feet from him. You obviously have a lot of current, if you just kick up the resistance, Joule''s law handles the rest."


    "Now hang on here," I interrupted. "Isn''t it weird to be helping an Exhuman with his powers?" I asked her.


    "Don''t say that," AEGIS interrupted. "She''s on your side for once."


    "And if she''s going to stay there, I want her to be doing it deliberately."


    "No, it''s a good point," Whitney said, crossing her arms with a small U-shaped frown. "I probably shouldn''t, huh?" She seemed to struggle internally as a few expressions crossed her face. "Like, what if you''d used something I came up with to hurt the police? That''d be on me. But on the other hand...not to be flippant here, but how many people get a chance like this to study this kind of thing? Maybe good can come out of it?"


    "Oh you''re just a huge nerd," AEGIS said, walking over and approximating a hug as best as she could with only one nonfunctioning arm. "You wanna play with his powers. Well, go ahead, I give you permission."


    "Uh," I said.


    "Not that you need my permission, since Athan''s an adult and everything, but never hurts to have the girlfriend''s permission, right?" she immediately backpedaled.


    "...right," Whitney said with a shake of her head. "I don''t know. It''s complicated. And I don''t have to figure everything out right this second anyway. As I see it, I''ll just...feel this out, I guess."


    I was about to say how reasonable that sounded, and was just happy to hear she was open to the possibility at least. I was having a hard time with how much Whitney was avoiding my eyes, like she didn''t want to see me as a person. It reminded me of a shitty time when everyone in my life was doing that, and I already felt the edges of that same blah-nothing-despair cutting into me from Dragon and the Defiant.


    And Karu.


    That''s what I was going to say, anyway. But as I opened my mouth, instead, a monumental gunshot cracked through the air, unmistakable as Lia''s again. And at almost exactly the same time, something slammed into the door with enough force to rattle the windows.


    I looked at the others for half a moment and saw alarm in their eyes to match my own. And then, blades out, I bolted to the door and threw it open.


    Dragon was already recovered and fleeing, running in the parking lot below us with a bullet hanging in the air by his head in an orange-yellow fog, exactly as we''d seen before. One of his sleeves trailed behind him without an arm to fill it, but in the moment I took to take this in, I realized my shield was strobing from gunfire, that Dragon was shooting me while I was standing there flat-footed and stupid as anything.


    Another second later, and Dragon suddenly lunged sideways, throwing himself to the ground in an instant, again moving with the impossible spontaneity which made him unreadable. As for why, that became clear when the ground behind him exploded, sending fragments of pavement flying far enough to fizzle on my shield. A second report rang out less than a moment later, loud enough that I could feel it in my chest. The shooter was close.


    Lia was close, I thought, and my heart skipped a beat as I saw Dragon already on his feet and running towards the direction of the shot.


    Towards Lia.


    Lia was in danger.


    I had to move.


    But for some reason, I couldn''t. Seeing Dragon again, right outside our door, inches and seconds away from barging in and killing us, it had turned my blood cold. No matter how much I screamed internally at myself, no matter how much I knew I had to act, my body refused to obey. My feet both stayed firmly on the ground.


    Someone was going to die if I didn''t act. Lia was going to die if I didn''t act.


    Even if I did act, a voice whispered in my mind, I wouldn''t be able to save her anyway. I couldn''t stop Dragon even if I tried. He was beyond me in every way.


    But I had to try. I had to. Lia was my sister, I would do anything for her, even if it didn''t work. Even if it was meaningless and I failed. I had to try, damn it.


    But still, somehow, my feet refused to move.

 268. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Lia.

    I was actually having a really good day. Things were quiet with Athan and AEGIS gone, and while I was worried about them, they had each other. Taglock and Rito, too.


    So I was just catching up on some shows. Nothing exciting, but having Saga around added an extra fun element. Anything I watched, she watched with me, through me, and while for the most part this was just a little weird, it was also irreplaceably entertaining when I caught her bemusement at something in the show.


    Now, granted, Saga''s bemusement tended to show up at the weirdest times. The big dramatic scene when the monster is unveiled and destroying the city, hundreds getting vaporized in the blink of an eye. Or when the girlfriend of the main character dies a horrible, tragic death.


    But what surprised me most was Saga''s seemingly limitless capacity to enjoy children and animals. I''d been watching something kiddy because Chiho had recommended to me as a lot better than it looked, and noticed whenever I did, I''d catch Saga dropping in and feeling her charm and infatuation at the simple, cutesy fun.


    It was completely out of character for her aloof, badass persona, and that made it even funnier. But I was just happy to be doing something with her, and so I was plowing through the episodes, even if they didn''t do much for me personally.


    So it was just after Mimi-chan had been reunited with her shaggy dog Bobobo to Saga''s satisfaction that my mobile lit up with a message from Taglock.


    Which was rare. He didn''t like leaving messages, or anything which could trace back to him of any kind. So it had to be important. I opened it up and found it terse in tone and brief in length. And enough to make my heart stop.


    > Dragon in pursuit. Mission compromised. Evacuate the target immediately. Apologies.


    So professional, it definitely sounded like Taglock. But he''d never reported a failure before, even if he had more misgivings about Dragon than anything else he''d been tasked with. What this meant¡­


    I shook my head. I didn''t need to understand what it meant. I hired him because I trusted his abilities, and if he told me to evac Athan, I was going to do that. I dialed my brother without another thought.


    "Lia?" he answered instantly, panic in his voice. "Lia, where are you? I''m coming."


    "Coming? Where?" I asked, confused. "No, look, there''s no time. Taglock says I have to get you out now, that Dragon''s coming. Is Rito with you?"


    "Dragon''s not coming for me, he''s coming for you."


    "Me?" I asked, still confused. "In Vegas?"


    "You''re in Vegas?"


    It clicked for both of us at the same time, I think, because we both started to talk about Taglock at the same time.


    "Okay," Athan said, sounding just slightly calmer. "Then...then I''m supposed to just...get out? What about Taglock?"


    "He''s fine," I said, not sure if that was true. "Get to Rito and get out. Please."


    "I don''t know where she is. I don''t know if she has a phone."


    "Gimmie a sec--" I said, and darted from the living room back to mine, the sound of the abandoned show ringing behind me with out-of-place cutesy music. I sat at my desk and pulled up what I could, which was not much. I dialed the number I had for Rito there.


    The number you dialed is not connected. Please try again later.


    There wouldn''t be a later, damn machine. I forced myself to think. The only people out there were the Defiant, now dead, Athan and his cohorts, and Dragon. Nobody with any connection to Rito.


    "You don''t know anyone who might know where Rito is?" I asked.


    "Uh...her mom maybe?"


    "Then call her mom."


    "I don''t know her mom''s number. But...she''s nearby. We''ll do that. She''s going to hate me."


    "Better to be hated than dead," I said, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.


    Athan went quiet for a few minutes, talking to people in the background while I just looked at the little yellow rectangle in my hands and felt useless. It was like a window I could hear through, enough to be able to tell if suddenly Dragon showed up and killed them all, while still being utterly powerless to do anything about it.


    "...-kay, gonna...do you know how to hotwire a car?" he asked.


    "I do, isn''t this illegal?" I heard an unfamiliar woman ask.


    "Do you want to be dead?" Athan quipped back.


    "Fine. Whatever. I''ll add this to my reasons to hate you after kidnapping and murder. Give me the number two driver."


    "Why? We''re hotwiring it not fixing it."


    "To take off the front panel?"


    After a moment I heard a crunching noise, and then a bang, and then the sound of something popping and snapping.


    "What the pig was that?" I asked.


    "AEGIS just uh...did a manual override on the panel. With her feet."


    She said something but was far from the mobile and all I heard was foot stuff.


    "Gimmie the wire in your hair, AEGIS...okay...Athan, can you jolt this just a teensie amount? If you flip the solenoid...yeah, perfect."


    "I''ll get Tem, give me a second," Athan said.


    It was so frustrating listening to them, but at least they had a car of some sort now. They had a plan, and as AEGIS had told me countless times, having a plan was everything.


    It wasn''t another minute of hearing only fumbling and breathing before I got the sound of a door thunking shut. "Drive, go," Athan said.


    "Where?" asked the woman.


    AEGIS said something, and then someone screamed as the engine raced. I heard gunshots, and then I heard the crackle of lightning and inarticulate yelling.


    And then, a moment later, just quiet.


    "Guys? Athan?" I asked, realizing I''d been holding my breath.


    "We''re here," he said. "Fucking Dragon came back. Shot my side of the car, hitting my shield instead of the tires I think. And then again, trying to hit Whitney it felt like."


    "See? He saved you," AEGIS chided.


    "From a killer who''s only after you."


    "I think Tem got him with a laser," Athan said. "I hope that slows him down. Wish she''d used a bigger one."


    "I will use larger lasers from now on."If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Oh mercy, please no," their driver said.


    "She sounds fun," I said. "How long until you''re back?"


    "It''s only a few minute drive to Rito''s. Maybe ten? Should I call you back then?"


    I probably should have said yes. Athan didn''t need to be babying me right now, and I felt my stomach churning guiltily after all the flips it had done. But he was fine now, right? So I could be greedy and keep him on the line?


    "Um, stay on...if it''s not a trouble," I mumbled.


    "Sure, Lia. No problem," he said, and I could hear that same familiar tone in his voice he used only for me, when I was sick or sad or hurt. I loved hearing that from him, but at the same time hated it.


    As it turned out, I really needn''t have bothered. The...how many, four of them? The four of them spent the ride in silence. I wasn''t sure if the tension with them all being silent was any better or worse than that if I had hung up and waited. At least he gave directions a couple times so I knew they were still alive.


    "We''re here," Athan announced abruptly. "I''ll talk to her mom. You guys hang tight. I''ll uh...I''ll leave my mobile here. I don''t want to upset her. Okay, Lia?"


    "Yeah, don''t let me make your life harder," I assured him. A door opened and slammed.


    "I am holding Chariot''s mobile," Tem said breathily, too close to the mic. I could hear her breathing getting ragged and heavy, and that was just a whole ''nother layer of disturbing I didn''t need right now.


    "Maybe give it to AEGIS?" I asked.


    "AEGIS does not have arms right now, Lia. I''m s-s-sorry."


    "No arms?"


    "Things with Dragon have gone poorly," AEGIS said, then continued in a much more desperate tone. "Which in a way is a blessing. I don''t think Athan would have wanted us to run just now if he hadn''t been trashed already once. You know how stubborn he is."


    "TRASHED?" I echoed. "Athan was TRASHED?"


    "I am s-sorry, I deserve to be yelled at. It is my fault."


    "No, it''s not," AEGIS cut in. "Dragon is a fucking professional killer. Why can none of you accept this? We''re a bunch of random idiots running around compared to him. It''s expected that we''d lose, so stop blaming yourselves for everything and be glad that none of us died, at least."


    "Somehow I doubt Athan sees it that way," I said, already thinking of how he must be feeling. He always took his losses seriously, and obviously tended to blame himself for things well beyond his control. He''d spend hours reviewing ''the tapes'' he called them and analyzing plays...and I honestly thought it was one of the reasons he was so good at it. After a few days, he was always raring for another shot at that team, filled with new ideas and determination for how to handle them this time.


    It was one of his rare, cool sides. But I wasn''t going to tell him that.


    So we were just lucky that Dragon had struck back before he regained his confidence, I guessed. Otherwise Athan would not want to be running from this fight. Fortunate for us, but I had to wonder if Dragon would just...keep coming, and if he did, how long before Athan would want to throw down again?


    Because personally, I agreed with AEGIS. No matter his strategy or tactics or how much he studied and planned, my brother should not be willingly tangling with professional killers.


    "He''s coming back," AEGIS narrated. "He...does not look happy."


    I heard snippets of a conversation and then the phone was passed around again as AEGIS said something which sounded like ''well, I''ll just kick her ass then'', and I very much hoped I misheard. More doors opened and slammed, and I wondered exactly what was going on.


    "So...Lia, huh?" the woman asked.


    "Yeah. Hi. Who''s this?"


    "I''m Whitney. I''m Athan''s hostage while I fix AEGIS for him. Kinda. How do you know him?"


    "Oh. I''m uh, his sister. Nice to meet you."


    "Sister, huh?" I thought the conversation was done but she started talking again. "You didn''t disown him when he turned?"


    "No. My parents did, and then I ran away from home."


    "How old are you, Lia?"


    "Sixteen."


    "And you ran away from two perfectly good parents to hang out with your Exhuman brother? Even though stuff like this seems to happen all the time?"


    I found myself feeling hot and irritated at her insinuations. "First of all, they were not perfectly good. My dad beat me and my mom every day, and he was practically holding me down so the dingo who turned Athan in could rape me, out of some...sick...messed-up form of hero worship and surrogate son."


    "Oh."


    "And second, yes, and screw you. If there was somebody you loved, and they got into ''stuff like this'', would you just leave them on their own, so they had even more problems and even more loss?"


    "Sorry, I didn''t--"


    "Because if so, I can''t imagine why Athan would associate with you at all, even if he did just kidnap you. Which I highly doubt."


    "I never thought of it like that."


    "Then maybe don''t tell other people what they should be doing," I snapped, and she just shut right up.


    So, maybe not the best first impression.


    "Is everyone else gone?" I asked.


    "Yeah, just...me and you. And the car. And Seraphim."


    "The mobile?" I asked. "Athan''s mobile?"


    "Yeah. Oh, he said you customized it. Good work with her. She turned out really well."


    "...thanks?" I shook my head. "Are you really kidnapped? Wouldn''t you drive away now if you were?"


    "...yeah. Well. They said I could go before. I don''t know."


    Her voice muted weirdly at the end like she was holding her hands over her face. I found it a little hard to sympathize given our brief and brutal history. But I took a breath and tried again.


    "So...you''re not the type to abandon Athan either, even if he does ''this stuff'' all the time," I said.


    She laughed derisively. "Are you kidding? I run from everything. Sometimes I feel like it''s all I do."


    "You''re not running now."


    "Yeah. But everything in me wants to."


    "But you''re not?"


    She sighed. "I guess I''m not. I think I''m stupid to not. Or selfish, or something. I''m just...never mind. It''s dumb."


    "What?"


    "It''s dumb, forget it."


    "You got something better to do now?"


    She sighed again. "I''ve always just felt like...every day becomes every other day. Go to work, time goes by, go home, sleep, do it all over again. I''m not a real...party girl. I don''t vacation or...or have friends...or plan big things. Every day''s the same, just something different I''m working on. And I love my work, I really do. It just...sorta feels like...what I''m going to be doing until I die, because of biological limitations saying I someday will."


    "Oh," I said, not expecting this to get quite so heavy, quite so fast.


    "I hated these words when I was younger but...you''re just a kid, I don''t think you''d understand. Growing up is interesting. School is interesting. You get thrown in with random people, all your age, all your same interests...and then someday you grow up, and you find out if you want that stuff, it''s a lot of work. And some of us were stupid and never learned how to. So we just play with machines."


    It wasn''t exactly a lifestyle I had a lot of experience with, but damn if she didn''t do a one-eighty on my ability to sympathize with her.


    I was just sitting there, thinking over her words, really caught off-guard by the sudden bout of honesty. I was just working up to saying something...I didn''t know, something equally personal and touching maybe? When she spoke up again.


    "Oh. They''re here. Oh no."


    "What? What''s wrong?"


    "It...it looks like Tem has the woman''s mobile, and AEGIS is going through it, and she''s trying to go through Athan to get to them...by throwing cookware."


    "Which is exploding?"


    "Yeah."


    "Oi. What a mess."


    "My thoughts, exactly. Oh holy heck, someone''s here. How long has she been standing there?"


    I grinned at the mobile. "Rito! Yessss. Okay. Do not look at Rito, whatever you do."


    "Ummmmm," I heard, and then the car door opened. I heard yelling and explosions going off. What sounded like gunfire and Athan shouting orders.


    I held my breath again as I heard it all, trying to figure out the scene in my mind''s eye. Dragon back? Was anyone shot? Could they not escape with him watching? My hands wouldn''t hold still any longer, and I began spinning a pencil in my other hand while pacing with my mobile to my ear.


    That didn''t hold me, and soon I was chewing on the poor thing, until I tasted blood and realized I''d bit right into my cheek without even knowing. My hand felt sore gripping my mobile so tight, and as another explosion went off, my hand shook as though it were here in this room blasting me.


    And then silence. Just...dreadful, horrifying silence.


    "Athan? Athan!" I shouted into the mobile. "Athan, you stupid big brother, ANSWER ME!"


    "I''m fine, tell her I''m fine," I heard him say, both in the phone in my hands and from somewhere behind me. I jumped and turned around, crashing through the door to my room and into the living room where he was standing. Him and AEGIS and Tem and Rito and the other girl. Safe and sound and in one piece, thank God.


    I couldn''t stop myself from squealing like a child as I threw myself at him and wrapped my arms around his middle. He made a noise like ''oof'', and laughed, his hands finding their place messing up my hair like he''d done so many times before.


    "Sorry to scare you," he apologized in a soft voice.


    "If you''re so sorry, stop doing it!" I said, peeling away from him enough to glare at him. For some reason, the look on my face made him laugh instead of any kind of appropriate reaction, and I suddenly felt violently frustrated at all the bison he''d just put me through. I informed him of this in the shoulder, with my fists.


    "Easy there, killer, I''m still bruised," he said, blocking me easily. "We''re okay. We''re all okay. Dragon is hundreds of miles from here, and we''re all safe."


    Something about his reassurance finally punched through all the frustration and confusion and anger I had and touched me very poignantly inside, and I felt stupid tears welling up in me, no matter how much I tried to fight them back. I couldn''t even talk without just sounding like a whining weenie.


    Athan just held me while I cried and snotted all over his shirt like a little girl, knowing exactly how tight to hold me to keep me from falling apart.

 269. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Lia.

    It had only been a couple days with Athan back, but he was already talking about needing to leave again. I thought this had to do with the XPCA, and told him that from what we knew, with the loss of Micaiah and all of his personal files, and the end of the Defiant, he''d become something of a low priority for them.


    He just shook his head at me and looked down with irritation and disgust. "Not them," he said tersely, and that was it.


    Well, I wasn''t stupid, and knew he must have meant Dragon then, and he was right, this is somewhere Dragon would look for him. But surely not yet, right? I mean, Athan might be bruised and AEGIS might be still less than top shape, if back together enough to begin cooking again (to everyone''s dismay)...but from what I heard, Dragon straight-up had his arm ripped off and got lasered by Tem.


    Granted he was still chasing them after that, which was...unsettling. But he had to rest at some point, right?


    Athan was being moody and mopey again, spending a lot of time in the room which had become his. Whitney had similarly made herself comfortable in the garage, at AEGIS'' insistence, Tem was underfoot, Chiho was stuck in her room studying, and Saga was under the tree and in our minds like always. Rito had begun showing up at random to apologize repeatedly to me and to Athan for failing us so utterly; she was bawling her eyes out and forcing me to take my money back which was the only reason I couldn''t be mad at her.


    Because yeah, she did sort of completely screw up by letting Athan go like that. She did exactly what I didn''t pay her to do, and he almost died as a result.


    It wasn''t long before word got out about Athan, Dragon, and the Defiant, and Moon was showing up for one of her weird social visits to just sit in the corner and ignore everyone. So it was gonna be a pretty full house. That was what I thought before I opened the door, expecting Moon.


    "Heya, Lia!" said Tower with a grin as he filled the doorframe. Before I could move out of his way, he''d reached forward with arms as big as my torso and wrapped me in a hug that lifted my feet off the ground.


    "Tower, what are you doing here?" I beamed at him. From this new, higher vantage, I could see Moon standing exactly in the center of the doormat, and Jack behind her with a friendly smile and hand upright in greeting.


    "Steffie apologies that she could not come," Jack said as Tower put me down.


    "My apologies as well," I heard Moon''s small deadpan voice from behind Tower''s legs. "It was not my intention to bring these two along, but they insisted. They do not seem to have any concept of courtesy."


    "It''s fine," I said, still beaming despite the little Japanese raincloud. "What are you all doing here though?"


    "What last we heard, Athan was a traitor and turncoat," Moon continued. "We are here to capture him on behalf of the XPCA."


    All three of us looked at her with creeping confusion. She seemed to shrink and sweat at the attention.


    "Joudan. It is a joke. This is a social visit."


    "Damn girl, you scare me," Tower laughed. "Sometimes I think I''ve got you pegged and then you pull shit like that."


    "It is because I do not hesitate to do what is necessary," she intoned. "You fear that one day my values will not align with yours."


    "Uh...I mean...I wasn''t gonna try to figure it out, but maybe?"


    "Anyway, come inside--" I said, backing out of the doorway to let Tower through before Moon could say anything else bizarre. "Um, you guys hungry? We''ve got so many people here, definitely sounding like pizza."


    "Who else is here?" Jack asked, and I saw his smile fluctuate oddly. "Ah, the Code-X. I should pay a visit."


    "AEGIS is in the garage with Whitney, she''s new. She''s super smart."


    "Athan''s got another girlfriend?" Tower laughed as he opened the fridge. "No beer?"


    "Sorry, dry house," I shrugged. "She actually kinda...hates him. Or doesn''t. I don''t know. He kidnapped her, and she might have Stockholm Syndrome," I laughed. "She''s just really skittish and quiet around him like she thinks he''s going to jump over and bite her, but then is always asking about him."


    "Actually sounds quite normal," Jack said. "Exhumans are feared but fascinating to most. He may have proven himself less worthy of fear, but I imagine there are still lingering doubts."


    "Yeah, so maybe don''t bring up the owers-pay to her, and you''ll probably get along fine." I pulled at my lip for a moment. "Actually...if you guys don''t mind, maybe do mention it. She might like Athan better if she realizes Exhumans aren''t all bad."


    "Certainly," Moon said. "Who does not enjoy traumatizing an innocent from time to time?"


    "Well don''t like, use your powers to kill her family or anything," I said, getting drinks for our guests of the juice and soda variety. "Anyway, go say hi, let Athan know you''re here, go¡­" I looked at Jack "...mingle with Saga? I guess this is a party now."


    "Did I hear party?" Chiho''s voice said, and she appeared in the doorway in her indecent sleepwear. I''m pretty sure she managed to bolt away before the other three turned and saw her.


    The place was lively as heck with the rest of the P-Force over, and it just felt like there were people everywhere. We''d crossed some magical threshold where running into others was a statistical certainty, so stuff was just going on everywhere. I wandered around with a cup of orange juice just taking it all in.


    Jack and Saga were in the backyard talking seriously about Blackett, it sounded like. Well, Jack was serious, Saga was just hinting to me the second I showed up that any kind of real party centered around food, and that she had never once tried hot wings.


    "I am attempting to converse seriously," Jack sighed at her yet again.


    "Yeah, and you''re being a real wet blanket about it," Saga replied. "I already told you, I didn''t know anything about your buddy''s plans when I visited him. Obviously."


    "I merely wish to avoid a repeat of that disaster," Jack fumed uncharacteristically. "Steffie was very nearly hurt and suffered emotionally, because of my misplaced faith."


    "You also want to apologize to me," Saga grinned. "For not being cooperative when I was looking for info on Mage. You think if we worked together, this could have all been avoided."


    "I am certainly less disposed towards an apology when you lift it from my mind, but yes. I am also curious how the XPCA managed to incapacitate one such as you in the first place."


    "It was fucking AEGIS," Saga said with a lazy stretch. "Not this one, not the old one either, the other one."


    "TARGA?"


    "Yeah. Her. Blackett had the prototype unit for her in his bedroom and she jumped me. I wonder what he was doing with her in there, huh?"


    "I...prefer not to wonder," Jack said. "Still...a very unfortunate series of events--"


    I wandered off, not ever really being part of the conversation and feeling awkward standing in the periphery of it. I had just gotten away when someone yelled at me in my mind.


    [I was serious about the hot wings!]


    Not in front of Whitney, you dumb-bunny! I thought back, and saw Saga laughing through the window. Still, food was important, and hot wings did sound good right now. Not that I could order anything else with the compel.


    I did it over a mobile site so I could keep wandering. Moon and Chiho were in the living room, where it looked suspiciously like one had roped the other into helping with homework, as Moon patiently explained some concept to Chiho from a book I''m sure she''d never touched before.


    The garage was packed, and standing around the quiet, idle machines were a bunch of noisy, active people. Tower was telling a story as it seemed he always was, and it seemed to require a lot more gesturing than even I tended towards. Whitney was standing awkwardly in the corner on her mobile but obviously listening more than reading, and AEGIS and Tem were laughing at most everything Tower had to say.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    "Where''s Athan?" I asked Tem, definitely the best source, even if her laughing sounded fake as hell right now.


    "He kicked me out," she said with a small frown. "I''m s-sorry, I might have messed up."


    "What did you do?"


    She shook her head. "I don''t know. People were arriving, and I s-s-said I thought people were arriving to Chariot, and he s-said I s-s-should go out and have a nice time with them. I told him I would rather be with him, and he just pushed me out the door. I am s-s-sorry. I made a mistake again, s-so now I am trying to do what he told me."


    I sighed. Impossible little girl. I gave her an affectionate pat on the head, but she recoiled like I was going to hit her so...I stopped that.


    "I think Athan just wants you to have a nice time," I told her. "I don''t think he''s mad."


    "He told me to do s-s-something and I talked back to him. I am a horrible person. I do not deserve him."


    "It''s fine," I said soothingly. "I know him pretty well and I can tell you he''s not upset, okay?"


    She looked at me in the eyes for a moment, and I realized it was the first time she''d ever done that. Kinda weird. Little watery-blue eyes, almost silver as her hair. Then she shook her head and turned away. "I have to have a nice time with them. Chariot s-said to. Goodbye."


    I made a note that any time I thought my depression was bad, I always had Tem to look down to. I didn''t know how she tied her shoes in the morning. But one thing was clear, Athan was still being a mopey bitch in the bedroom instead of hanging out with his friends, and that was criminal.


    I stomped down the hallway to drag his stupid butt out of his stupid room and make him be happy, but stopped outside at an unfamiliar sound within. It sounded like...grunting, and...meat slapping? The same sounds over and over. I paused just for a second, before opening the door to resume my plan.


    "Your friends are here, dummy, go talk to them," I announced as I entered. The blinds were drawn and the light off, but it still was far from dark in here. Athan was sitting on the bed, back to the door, hunched over his holo. He seemed too preoccupied to hear me, so I went closer to see what he was watching.


    It was a holovid of him fighting Dragon, I realized, and by the slight color shift and fisheyeing, I recognized it as one of AEGIS'' memories immediately.


    It was...not a good video, and went a long way to explaining where all Athan''s bruises came from. They''d told me what had happened but...watching the video loop...Athan getting pummelled again and again, and again...and again¡­


    "Jesus, you didn''t say it was that bad," I whispered.


    "Lia?" He fumbled and put away his mobile. "Lia, Jesus. You snuck up on me."


    "That should have killed you," I said, pulling it back out and watching it again. "Nobody can take that kind of punishment."


    He put his hand over the holo, images of him being destroyed flickering between his fingers. "I didn''t want you to worry. I''m fine."


    "How, though? This is just...brutal."


    "Nanomachines, apparently. From Taglock. Thank you for sending him, by the way."


    I let go of the holo and let Athan pocket it finally. Thank God I''d done that one thing right. Taglock got in touch with me again and reimbursed me for what I''d paid him less costs, citing a failure. I''d wondered how he managed to spend several millions of credits on ''costs'', but the nanomachines would explain it. I decided to pay him again -- he had saved Athan''s life.


    With the distraction gone, I resumed my original aim. "Athan, let''s go out there. Moon and Tower and Jack are all here, you should say hi to them. Relax a little."


    He made a snorting noise and pulled out his mobile again.


    "Bro, I am serious."


    "So am I."


    "What, seriously addicted to your mobile?"


    He glared at me. "Relax a little? Do you think Dragon''s relaxing a little? Do you think the Defiant can relax a little?"


    "Good thing you aren''t any of them? You''re not some Sino nutbag, and you''re not a desperate Exhuman who set himself up to be public enemy number one. It''s almost like their actions had consequences."


    "You don''t understand, Lia. To you, it''s just some images on a screen." He held the holo up again and of course, he had the savage beatdown playing again. "I was there. I could have done something. Instead, I couldn''t do anything." He hesitated for a moment. "Lia, for a second, I thought you were there. I heard the rifle and thought it was you. I thought Dragon was coming right for you and...and I¡­"


    His voice broke.


    "I couldn''t do anything!" he blubbered. "My own...own sister!"


    I froze. I hadn''t expected this in any way to suddenly turn into being about me. Like he''d just blown right through my armor, I felt myself falling fast. Whatever residual elation there was outside this room, knowing that in here, Athan was beating himself up over me just obliterated it.


    "It''s okay," I said, knowing how useless those words always were. "It''s okay. I''m fine. I''m smart enough to stay out of trouble, right? That''s why I sent Taglock?"


    "Dragon''s coming, Lia. He''s coming until he gets his toy. And this time, you''re in the crosshairs too."


    "Then just...blow it up. Throw it in a bank somewhere. Drop it in the ocean, or hell, a volcano."


    "And what, send Dragon a postcard saying ''I blew up your thing, leave me alone''? You think he''ll just stop because I broke it? To say nothing of what breaking it might entail. This is a completely unknown device which belonged to a technopath. For all we know, it might be a bomb that if you throw it into a volcano, it blows up the world."


    "Well that would just be stupid to make, wouldn''t it?"


    "Did you meet Mini?"


    "Fair point."


    He settled in to beat himself up while watching himself getting beaten up, and I found motivation and reason fleeing from me in a way I knew was dangerous. If Athan was going to just sit there, I could curl up in my bed too, and stop bothering him and everybody. It was a stupid idea to drag him out there anyway, I thought.


    No. I must always keep trying.


    I tasted blood as I slapped myself, and wished I''d held back a little when I felt the cut in my cheek.


    "Lia? What the fuck?" Athan said, getting to his feet and gingerly touching my face. "What did you do that for?"


    "For attention, obviously," I beamed at him. "Gonna keep it up if you don''t get out there and play with me."


    "You''re gonna...keep hitting yourself?"


    "Well, you seem fine with beating yourself up, so I thought I''d try it a little."


    "Seriously, Lia, what the fuck."


    It hadn''t been planned, but it had still somehow worked. Athan was unsteady enough that just grabbing his arm and pulling him along moved him without resistance, and as soon as I got him within range of Tower, the big, glorious man wrapped Athan in a hug from which he''d never be able to escape.


    I sent Jack out to pick up our food, and timed it so that Athan was stuck in the middle of the commotion there just as he was slipping away. He sat sullen and quiet as anything, but still there, still listening to his friends chatter and still being there with them. Even if right now all he wanted was to hide and brood¡­


    ...Well, I knew how important it was to force yourself to have positive experiences even if you didn''t want them. Even if Athan''s problems were real, even if Dragon was on his way here now, at least I could give him this. Maybe next time he was fumbling around in the dark, he might remember the happiness to be found here, and it might lead him back towards the light a little.


    For my part, I stayed distant. It was hypocritical of me, I knew, but I didn''t want to have to deal with Athan when he was worrying about me. It just hurt too much.


    So in that way, we both managed to have a decent time, I think. Athan and Jack became immersed in a discussion about strategies, as Jack was now acting lead of the P-Force. Somehow, Saga wound up cramming food into Tower''s mouth for him which was enough of a spectacle that even Moon put her book down to watch with thinly-veiled disgust. Tem moved from group to group laughing too loudly at everything, which was as disturbing as it was hilarious.


    As things were winding down, I sidled up to Whitney, who''d avoided the heart of the party the whole time, and eaten sparingly.


    "What do you think?" I asked her.


    "There''s so...many," she said with some obvious consternation. "I thought two was a lot when it was just Athan and Tem but...six? This is completely unheard-of in history, isn''t it?"


    "Probably," I shrugged. "And the only thing being demolished is the pizza and wings. Fancy that, huh?"


    "I don''t understand," she said with obvious irritation at that phrase. "Nothing I''ve ever seen...or read...or heard explains this. This is not Exhuman behavior. Athan was a danger. And so are each of these. How are you not freaking out?"


    I grinned at her. "They might be dangerous, but believe me when I say this is probably the safest place on Earth right now. If there were an earthquake, a fire, a burglar...hell, a meteor...who do you think is equipped to deal with it? Who do you think they''d protect?"


    "But they''re not supposed to be...having a party. They''re selfish, animalistic, violent--"


    "Stop reading so much and look. These things right in front of you, those people, those are Exhumans without all the bullshit and propaganda and years and years of built-up hate. What you''re seeing isn''t an act, it''s just people. They''ve got no reason to pretend right now, no reason to lie. But I bet if you thought about it for a minute, you''d see the history books have plenty of reason to."


    She frowned and fiddled with her glasses on her face, but seemed to be listening at least. I didn''t know why this girl''s approval was so important to Athan, but it might just be something else I could give him. I felt like it was hardly enough, given what he was out there doing, but it was what I had to give.


    "Sorry," she muttered.


    "For what?"


    "For when we first spoke. And I told you that you should have stuck with your parents instead of Athan."


    "It''s fine."


    "I just didn''t know they were bad."


    I turned to look at her. Impressively tall, thin, black hair with faded streaks in it down to her shoulders. Streaks of grease on her exposed legs and arms still, from working in the garage.


    I wanted to really bitch her out. I wanted to tell her that she was bigoted and stupid for believing that every human was good and every Exhuman was bad. In my time here since Athan turned, I''d met good and bad, human and Exhuman alike, and I hadn''t gotten the luxury of a classy introduction at a party.


    But I didn''t. I reminded myself that Whitney...probably wasn''t a bad person. She was a normal person, a product of her upbringing. Athan had mentioned quietly that her family was all gone from an Exhuman event, that she adored routine, that she wasn''t confrontational by nature. All of which would just make it harder for her to accept that her world wasn''t as simple as she thought it was.


    I threaded my fingers in hers and she visibly tensed at the sudden, unexpected contact.


    "What...is this?" she asked. I grinned impishly.


    "I think you''ve coddled the wallpaper enough tonight. Things are winding down, let''s go have a conversation with everyone at least."

 270. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Lia just about broke down my door with AEGIS shortly behind her. To my surprise, Saga crept in behind the two of them with a wink and a grin. Delight was written across all three of their faces, to such a degree that it actually worried me a little. All three of them loomed over the bed I was seated on, looking down at me.


    "Lookie, lookie, look!" Lia bubbled, bouncing towards me with her holo extended.


    "I can''t read it with all the bouncing."


    "Then take it. I''m not stopping bouncing."


    I did take her holo, and what I saw there didn''t seem nearly exciting enough to warrant all these beaming faces. A very serious, very dry report by the FBI it looked like. Skipping the preamble, some package had exited some zone upon some model of some VTOL, stolen from some location, heading in some direction at some time. The writing was incomprehensibly dense, and it seemed like the author had confused the concept of references and concrete nouns when putting the report together.


    "I have no idea what this means," I informed her, giving it back.


    "Swipe! Swipe!" she said.


    I did, and oh joy, more documents and attachments. Fan-frickin''-glorious. I kept flipping through until I hit the images attached, seeing first a shot of a small VTOL flying from an barely-larger airfield, then more environmental shots.


    And then finally, a picture that I understood. A Sino with one arm, boarding the VTOL over a pair of bodies.


    I flipped back to the first page as fast as my thumb could slide and my eyes flashed over it until I found the passage I knew was there.


    "What''s zone six?" I asked.


    "Asia," AEGIS replied with a grin. "China, presumably."


    I slumped back into my my bed. I thought, by their reactions, they were expecting me to be relieved. I wasn''t.


    "So Dragon fled back to China. So what?" I asked them, suddenly irritated at their smiles. "He''ll be back, won''t he? He''s still coming after me, after this." I gestured towards the sphere on the nightstand.


    "So he''s not doing it now," Lia said. "You aren''t gonna die today, bro. That''s something to celebrate."


    "He''s an assassin, guys. All this means is next time he comes, we''ll have no idea when or where. If anything, this is bad news. We lost him, and with the element of surprise on his side, we''re all dead."


    I kicked the post of my bed with my heel in useless frustration. "Even without the element of surprise we''re all dead."


    The others were looking at each other now like I pooped on their dog, little smiles nowhere to be seen. I felt bad...but not that bad. All I wanted was for them to take this seriously. Dragon wasn''t something we could contend with.


    They drifted there like bubbles for a few more moments, floating down to earth to pop, and after they did, Lia and AEGIS shambled out.


    "It''s still good news, dummy," Lia said. "We might catch him on his way back in."


    "We might not," I said, and she left.


    Left Saga and me alone, her leaning against the doorframe, hardly wide enough to slow the others on their way out.


    "You''re a right ray of hope," She said. "You need to cut that shit out, because you''re driving me nuts."


    "Knock what out?" I asked, pulling up my holo again.


    "Obsessing over Dragon. It''s messed up."


    I snorted at her. "Karu''s messed up. The Defiant are messed up. I''m trying my best not to get messed up."


    "No, you''re spinning your wheels uselessly, watching the same self-flagellating footage over and over a thousand times."


    "I''m looking for weaknesses. Mine and his. I''m figuring things out, so that next time might go differently."


    "So honest. Such pure intentions," she said, flopping herself on my bed "Now I wonder why''d you just tell the others we''re all dead?" I looked down at the narrow eyes and cocky smile next to my thigh and sighed. "Don''t waste time with the lies, Athan."


    "Saga, please piss off. This isn''t like the last times I''ve been hurt."


    "Because this time you felt completely useless?"


    My arm had slammed into the mattress before I could stop it. "Utterly useless. Entirely useless. I might as well have never even been there, for all the difference it made to Dragon."


    "Aww, poor baby," she said reaching up awkwardly sideways and molesting my ear more than my hair. "But knock it off." The caresses turned into a bony fist which bonked my temple.


    "You knock it off," I said, standing and turning to fume at her. "Or do you not understand that there''s a killer out there with my name on his list?"


    She threaded her fingers behind her head, vanishing into a curtain of black hair. "I wish I could make you talk to Athan from a few weeks ago, who was so confident. So sure he was going to go out and save the world. That guy irritated me too, for pretty much the opposite reason."


    "I''m sorry if my life irritates you. If it makes you feel any better, someone will be along sooner or later to fix that for you."


    "Easy there, honey-bunny. No need to bite my head off."


    "Then stop telling me to just knock it off. You sound just like the others, nobody really seems to grasp the danger here. Everyone''s just running around, playing house, when we''ve got crosshairs pointed at us. You''re in my mind. You know the threat." I snapped my eyes up to look at hers. "Am I crazy for thinking so?"


    She turned towards the ceiling and frowned slightly. "Athan, it''s not that what you''re doing is wrong, it''s that you''re doing a shitty job of it. Why do you think all the girls came in here the second they had a glimmer of good news? They''re worried about you. They''re worried about you, and you treat them like shit when they''re trying to help. You''re an emotional little boy, and nobody wants to deprive Dragon of his fun by having you break before he gets here."


    "And you? Are you here because you''re worried too?" I asked.


    She giggled delicately and put on a tone of mock-seriousness. "Normally I wouldn''t care if you died horribly, but you did warm up this spot on the bed for me." She buried her face sideways into my sheets for a moment before one dark eye peeked out at me from under them. "So I guess I worry a little."


    "Great," I said, sitting down again. "Great. Everyone thinks I''m broken again. I''m not lying here moping, not injured, and still. Fucking this."


    "Hey, it''s not that bad," she said, the bed groaning as she sat upright and rested her bony shoulder against mine. "Well. It kinda is. But what I mean is, look at you. You''re actually sitting here reflecting on it, instead of just diving headfirst into whatever psychological trauma you''re inflicting on yourself. See what this means, Athan? You''re getting better at coping."


    "Yay. I''m well-practiced in mental trauma." I shifted away to dump her off of me but instead her head just wound up with my lap as a pillow, and I''d run out of bed to retreat into. "Look Saga, regardless of my mental well-being or lack thereof, Dragon''s still a thing."


    "I know."


    "And I can''t beat him. Even if he doesn''t have powers, he''s just...better than me. Faster, smarter, stronger, more practiced, better equipped. He beat AEGIS like she was nothing, and she''s physically more capable than I can ever be."


    "Yeah, I know that too."


    "So...what do I do? All I know how to do, I''m doing it. I''m here...reviewing the tapes...trying to figure out what I did wrong. But somewhere along the way, it''s become trying to find out what I did right. And even then, I still don''t know."


    Her head left my lap, and despite the cold of her body, the absence still left a chilly void. She stood, walked around the bed a little to be right in front of me, and then put her face right in front of mine, hands on my shoulders, almond eyes smoldering with intensity.


    "I don''t know," she said. "But I do know where you should start."


    "And where''s that?"


    She stood over me, quiet for a moment, and then began speaking with a clear, quiet voice.


    "A while back, I was also at the end of my rope, Athan. I was holding out against something bigger than me, something I couldn''t begin to touch. I was powerless, and useless, and the fact I thought I was such hot shit just made the way down look even more painful. I was right there with you, Athan, standing at this edge with something impossible in front of me."The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    The intensity of her stare reminded me of Karu''s, and that thought just gave my gut another new twist.


    "And I fell in, Athan. I drowned in that despair and I did...horrible things, even by my standards, because I was afraid, because I was hurting. Because I knew that no matter what I did to save myself, it would all be useless."


    "Saga, you weren''t--"


    Her hands squeezed my shoulders tighter. "Don''t. Give. Up. There''s always a way. And if there isn''t, fucking make one."


    "Did you make one?"


    "No, but that''s not my point. Don''t give up anyway."


    "Isn''t that awfully optimistic of you?" I laughed darkly.


    "I''m being serious for once in my life, you fuck."


    "Sorry."


    "Lucky for you, this happens to illustrate my point. Look at me. What do you see?"


    As directed, and with a little difficulty for how close her face was, I looked her up and down. White ankle socks stained with mud, tan capri shorts, and a blue knit sweater that hung off of her. Her hair was long and dark and silky as ever. Dark, almond-shaped eyes that reminded me of Dragon, no matter how much I wished they didn''t.


    "...I see...a Sino girl? A code-X? What am I supposed to say, my future wife?"


    Her eyes narrowed. "Again, you''re unwittingly demonstrating my point because I''m going to let even that morsel pass by. The right answer was me, being serious. I''ve been a lot of things in my life, Athan. Tortured was a bunch of them, but never serious. And now look at me, totally serious. Look what despair did to me. Look what it can do to you."


    I looked and saw again. Saw her slow, even breathing, her delicate nose flaring slightly with each breath. I saw her hands, spindly and broad, her knuckles white from holding my shoulders, her fingers narrower between the joints, like tiny suspension bridges connecting her hands to me. I saw her clothes, as I had before, but not as I had seen before. The strands of her sweater were mingling black and blue, spun together into a deep navy, a warm parody of the cold prison jumpsuit which had clung to her body for so long.


    And most of all, I saw her mind, open to me in a way it had never been. I realized my scrutiny just now was hers, her mind through my eyes, searching herself for signs of the seriousness she claimed was evident on her.


    But aside from the straight look on her face, and the focused gleam of her eyes, there was nothing to be found. Seriousness wasn''t a scar, and scars couldn''t stick to Saga anyway.


    I felt relief, and sadness wash through us. We were happy that she wasn''t as torn on the outside as she felt on the inside...but at the same time...there was no proof of maturity, no outward sign of growth. She was identical to who she was when we first met, and identical to how she''d look when I''d die, as when the Earth would die, as when the universe would die.


    All at once, thoughts tumbled between us, and it felt like everything we''d ever left unfelt or unsaid came rushing out at once. How very afraid she was of being alone. How much I relied on her, the most amoral person I knew, to point me towards choosing right. How she fought with herself, determined to stay detached from me and others, knowing we were ephemeral to her. How much her traumas weighed on me, and mine on her, burdens which could only be seen by others, but felt by us both.


    She closed her eyes and exhaled, and it was gone, the door closed as much as it ever was, leaving both of us feeling empty and full all at once.


    Yet one thought lingered in the forefront of my mind, pressed forward by Saga for me to hold onto.


    Don''t give up.


    "But I can''t beat him," I said, frustration boiling out of my voice.


    "Even if that''s true, if you give up, you''ll lose yourself long before he takes you. After you saved me, when I was left under New Eden while the riots were going on, do you remember what I committed to?"


    "Never giving up?" I sighed.


    "Even if it meant dying for realsies. Take it from me, Athan, I was there, and what despair turns you into...it''s not a better existence than dying as yourself."


    I cocked my head at her. "Aren''t you guys always worrying about me doing something stupid and getting myself killed? Isn''t this the exact opposite advice?"


    She let me go and shrugged. "You''ve also never given up before."


    That one hit me hard. I guess...to Saga...that meant that whatever I was doing to myself here was even worse than what I''d been before. What an incredibly shitty thought.


    As though sensing my thoughts--or possibly literally doing so--she began talking again before I could go further down that line.


    "So, what it seems like to me, is that you need a little more context." She stepped backwards into the wall and then slid down it into an uncomfortable-looking puddle.


    "Context of what? Of Dragon? Of my mental problems?"


    "No, silly. Of the world. It''s easy to get lost in your own problems when you''re doing¡­" she gestured at the room. "This."


    "Again, not useful, Saga."


    "Then close your mouth for a second, dumbass." She gave me a cheery smile. "The last couple months at the XPCA have been murder on your and my minds both. A lot of that sweet, naive luster in your noggin'' is gone, replaced with thunderstorms and frowns. And I only really savor cynicism when I get the fun of putting it there."


    "You want to what, turn back time to before all this New Eden bullshit made my life ass? Before I realized just how hard the XPCA had to work to keep even benign Exhumans off the street? Before, what, three times now? I''ve been apocalypse-adjacent?"


    "No, silly. If I could turn back time, I''d waste it on much more frivolous things. Did you know a hundred years ago, there were these great dill chips they don''t seem to make anymore--"


    "Saga." Even if she was obnoxious, I''d take her over Serious Saga anyday.


    "As much as I hate agreeing with AEGIS, I don''t think it counts if it''s the old, dead version of her. You need to go into the world and have some fun, Athan. You need to re-remember why there''s a world you want to save in the first place. You need to discover a reason to not give up, and once you have that, you''ll be stronger than you ever were."


    "How is a vacation supposed to help me beat Dragon?"


    She grinned. "Is it any worse than sitting in here going insane?"


    "Yes," I said, even if she had a point. "Like I said, I want everyone to take Dragon seriously. You can''t expect me to just jump away on some field trip for fun when I want every possible advantage to fighting him."


    She shook her head. "Seems to me the one who knows most about fighting would disagree with you. Karu, if I''m allowed to say that name without you crying like a bitch."


    "Saga, she--"


    "Now, do you think that flying she-bitch would rather you be mentally sound, or overtraining?"


    "It''s not that simple."


    "Or how about the months you''ve been suffering at your job, and then you''re out, and lost all that purpose. What''s her opinion on having a purpose?"


    "Her purpose is murdering people now, Saga."


    "After Mage died. Interesting little snippet about giving too much of yourself and having nothing left? Sound applicable?"


    "Saga!" I screamed over her. "Karu''s a fucking psycho now, do you understand? Stop quoting her at me, I don''t want to be anything like her. She''s gone, and lost, and twisted up her morals so much she thinks murder is fine."


    Saga''s demure face broke into a twisted grin. "So do I, Athan."


    "Fuck you," I said, and got up to leave, slamming the door as hard as I could manage on my way out.


    [You do realize that doesn''t work on me?]


    "Fuck you, Saga!" I screamed back at her. "Karu''s life isn''t a joke, and neither are my problems."


    Chiho gave me an odd glance as she snuck past me to get into the bathroom.


    [Sometimes, you''re such a stupid dumbass hypocrite it makes me want to pop your head just to smooth out all the contradictions in it,] her voice boomed at me, making me wince. [But I''m right and you know it, and no amount of being butthurt about shit is going to change that.]


    I heard Lia yell something from the garage.


    [This is a private conversation, I''ll have you know,] Saga yelled back. [Whitney and the neighbors can bite my ass for all I care. Actually, that sounds fun, start rounding ''em up, let''s get a line going. Ass-biting! Three credits, or both cheeks for five!]


    I sat on the couch in the living room, holding my head like that would do anything to stop the pounding that came with the psionic wailing. This was exactly what I didn''t need. Laughing and screaming and madness, all I wanted was to be better, to be stronger, to be more focused and competent and capable. Everyone here was just a fucking distraction from what I needed to focus on.


    I stopped, stunned at my own thoughts.


    [Heh. You get it finally?]


    I could do without the jeering but...I realized that what I wanted to be, what I''d been trying to torture myself into...I wasn''t just hating Dragon, I was...idolizing him. How could I ever think of my friends, these people, these beautiful, fucked-up idiots of mine as just a distraction? They were the whole reason I cared about living, about Dragon taking that life. Were my thoughts really ready to barrel down into pushing them all away so I could...what, become Dragon? And stop caring about them?


    "Stop that," I said.


    [Just helping your train of logic out a little,] she mused. [You only needed a little push.]


    "You think I''m obsessed, and at the end of it, I''ll be alone and moraless like Dragon," I said, and then swallowed hard. "Like Karu."


    [I think it''s a definite possibility. I think it''s the logical conclusion of your path.]


    I sat and reeled in that thought for a minute. Saga left my brain in peace to sort out some of my feelings, which I wasn''t in any real state of mind to appreciate.


    "Does Lia think so, too?"


    [Not yet. Just worried about you,] she said ambiguously, since Lia was right there.


    I slumped some. That was a relief at least.


    "Then what do I do?" I asked the empty room.


    [You go out there, and you find reasons to care. You find (I can''t believe I''m saying this) reasons to like humanity. Reasons to do what you''re doing that are bigger than Dragon. You find yourself, little man.]


    "And then when Dragon comes? Does he just kill a slightly more complete person?"


    [Maybe,] she said with some bemusement. [You never know what you''ll find in the world. Maybe what you need is right there waiting for you. But between you and me, I think that if you dug deep and really truly found yourself, Dragon wouldn''t stand a chance.]


    "Really?"


    I could hear her snort from the other room. [No, not at all. What, did you honestly think that you''d just get stronger by force of will? That''s stupid. You are gonna have to work at it, but if you go at it with nothing but obsession fueling you, that''s not enough. And also I''ll have gotten sick of your shit and killed you myself long before Dragon does.]


    "Well...fucking...thanks. Great."


    [No problem, sport. Happy to help.]


    "You''re not help at all!" I shouted at the ceiling, and I felt and heard her laugh both.


    [One step at a time, Athan. And I''ve got a nice easy step one for you to follow. You left your mobile in here, so I''m gonna borrow it.]


    "Don''t do anything stupid with it, please."


    [Well I was going to fill it with an impromptu naked photoshoot, but since you insist.]


    Lia yelled from the garage again, and I just held my head.


    [All right. All done,] Saga said after a minute. [Have fun, and remember, you''re there to get some new experiences. Be open to things, and try to be happy.]


    I had...no idea what Saga was talking about. Try what?


    Something tapped me on the arm and I looked over to see a short girl with large eyes and a broad smile. I wondered how long Rito had been standing there.


    "Um, hi," she said with the same embarrassment she always talked to me through nowadays.


    "Hi...Rito. Why are you here?"


    "Saga called me." She handed me my mobile from the other room. "I''m going to take you somewhere, okay?"


    I shook my head. "Sure, whatever."


    [Say hi to Zuwaigani for me!] Saga said, and before I could think back a reply, I realized we were gone.

 271. 2252, Present Day. A plain city street. Athan.

    Rito apologetically informed me that Saga''s plan involved me not knowing where I was, unfortunately. She directed me towards a building, made sure I had her number, and that nobody was destroying her phone this time.


    "And something about looking for someone named Suwagani?" she said. "Sorry, I''m a dummy and don''t remember what that was about. She just said that would work."


    "It''s cool," I said. Between Saga''s cryptic bullshittery and Rito''s airheadedness, I didn''t think there would be much I''d get out of her. Once we were all clear, she gave me a final nod, walked out of my field of view, and, I knew, out of the city. Or state.


    Leaving me alone.


    It wasn''t a bad place to be left, by any stretch, but this still wasn''t exactly what I''d planned on spending my day doing. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this was important, it wasn''t just some bullshit quest by Saga, I was here for a reason...whatever that reason was.


    It was hot as Vegas at least, and equally dry, and yet in defiance of the climate, the street I was on was lined with oaks and sycamores, towering twice as tall as the continuum of buildings stretching under them. It wasn''t a very populous area. Seemingly at the edge of a commercial zone, the last of the wooden shops bleeding into the concrete of offices and warehouses of light industrial in front of me.


    The building I was left facing looked like a stack of optical disks, as I''d only ever seen in Whitney''s shop. It was round, relentlessly shiny under the noon sun, and stood somewhat alone in a concrete park of its own. A stone basin of a fountain, drained, stained, and turned off stood out front. Some palm trees and scrubby plants in a planter that reminded me of LA where I grew up.


    In fact, a lot of it reminded me of LA, from the distant mountains visible through the trees to the color of the dirt and the style of the buildings. A couple years ago, if you''d shown me a dozen random houses I might have just said they looked like houses to me, but now that I''d travelled some, I was beginning to realize that places had their own identities, from the tall rowhouses and mini-mansions of DC to the squat, sprawling adobe of Santa Fe.


    Taking another breath and another reminder, I headed for the building, keeping in mind my nebulous goal of meeting this mysterious Zuwaigani of Saga''s. Maybe he was a martial arts master who could help me beat Dragon. Or some retired military crackshot, hiding out in plain sight for the rest of his days. Or maybe he was another Exhuman, lurking but unable to conceal himself from Saga. That would be incredible.


    I realized that was all impossible as I approached the glass doors and pulled them open by the twisted brass handles. Saga wanted me to obsess about Dragon less, not more. I wondered if Zuwaigani had actually talked to Saga. Sort of a funny thought that she might have made a friend on a trip.


    Functionally, inside was like the outside, a mix of offices and small stores like a miniature mall had started selling office space, or some shops buoyed up in an office building. A very bizarre mix of open stores with bright signs and colors interspersed between drab cubicles, visible to the main walkway through tall glass windows.


    A quick check of a map informed me that there wasn''t any Zuwaigani Law Offices or anything that simple. A big circular path looped through the building, with the businesses inside and out of it radially. Kind of a cute layout for an indoor mall, and I wondered if it had opened as such and just didn''t get the foot traffic to stay that way, or what.


    Some guy yelling at me broke my train of thought and pulled my attention from the map. For a moment, I thought I was in trouble, but realized he was just a barker, carrying a deep tray of ice with pieces of fish on it, wearing a heavy rubber apron and a headband. It was around lunchtime, and a few of the office drones were working their way past him into¡­


    ...into...I''m wasn''t sure what I was looking at here. It was a big shop, but not one like I''d ever seen. Keeping my distance from him so he wouldn''t try to reel me in, I advanced on the tall glass windows.


    It was like an aquarium, almost. Half of the floorspace was dedicated to ponds, glass open-top enclosures about waist-high, each about as wide as a mattress, though nearly twice that for some of the larger species. And within each, fish swam in a forest of green and pebbles and bubbles.


    The other half was a more normal restaurant, sushi, it looked like, which might explain the fish. It would be incredibly fresh if they kept their catch live here...maybe just the last holding stocks of farmed fish. The salty smell and thought of the fresh catch made my mouth water, despite myself.


    "Freshest fish you can find," the barker said from right next to me. "Try a sample and see for yourself."


    Well, I wasn''t going to say no to that. He offered the tray of ice towards me, and I picked up a reddish sliver about the size of my little finger. Cold, and squishy.


    And holy shit, good. The barker wasn''t lying. Even when I''d been eating my own catch, those were some weird, bony river fish. This was fatty and salty and savory like I wasn''t sure I''d had before. It seemed to melt on my tongue without any need to chew at all.


    "Damn, that''s good," I informed him, and he smiled broadly.


    "We grow them off-site and they spend their last few weeks here. Nothing served is more than a day old, ever."


    "And we get to see them, that''s so cool."


    "We have a sister location with a tank big enough for some tuna. Now that is a sight, my friend." He turned to a pair in suits walking past. "Fresh sashimi! Try it, buy it, and cry at the the tastiest flavor you''ve been missing! Hand-feeding show at twelve-thirty! More action than a whole day at the ballpark!"


    I looked at him sideways. What an odd, familiar turn of phrase. That was something we use to say to belittle our school''s baseball team, like they used to ask after punting drills if we had a nice time kicking each others balls, or telling us they couldn''t tell which side was winning, after pushing the blocking sled. It gave a strange, utterly unexpected sense of nostalgia that made me want to escape the conversation.


    So I slipped away while his attention was diverted, which kinda sucked because I felt guilty for fleeing, and also because I liked watching the fish. They reminded me of my first date with AEGIS, in what felt like simpler times.


    In fact, a lot of things here reminded me of a lot of things. Outside had already made me think of home, well, ex-home I guess. But there was a wide bookstore spilling warm light into the walkway with some foreign-looking book in one of the displays that reminded me of Moon. A bit further down, a little VR spot/net cafe, making me think of Whitney and Chiho.


    Was this what Saga meant? She was just sending me to browse shops and make up my own associations? That kind of stupid play seemed more Rito-level than Saga, and didn''t address the hint I''d been given.


    I kept wandering into a block of offices and pressed forward, but paused and had to backtrack at a sight in one of the cubicles. The back of a head. A very familiar back-of-head. Unmistakable, really, given how many times I''d stared past it at a teacher.


    Tyler Moore. Wide receiver for the Black Sharks, nailed the game-winning completion in the last game I ever played, and once, a good friend. As strange as it was seeing him after all this time, after everything that I''d done and that I''d been through, somehow, it was even stranger seeing him in business casual. Not that I was surprised. He was on the team, but he had even better grades than me, and broader ambitions.


    Again, the familiar nostalgia hit me with an impulse to flee. I felt dirty being here, like I was disturbing the dead. I''d already given up a life to let these people live in peace, there was no need to disturb them ever again.


    Tyler stood up at some conversation I couldn''t hear through the window and I turned quickly before he could face me, taking a step towards escape.


    The step brought me inches from the face of a woman who was standing right behind me. I recoiled from her in shock and banged into the glass I was just trying to get away from.


    "Athan?" She asked. "Athan, it really is you."


    "No, not Athan, sorry," I said, covering my face and scuttling like a crab. Soft hands reached out for mine and blue eyes lowered into my field of view.


    "It is you," she said with a sigh. "Athan...I know...you''re hiding or whatever, but¡­" She paused and a flurry of emotions crossed her face which I couldn''t even begin to parse. "I''m sorry. I don''t care. I have to know, though, and if I don''t ask you now, I don''t...I might never know."


    "Kiera," I said, because that was her name, "I have no idea what you''re talking about. I should go, though. Sorry. Please don''t tell anyone--"


    "No," she said and shook her head. She was standing up straight now, still a few inches shorter than me, but under her short blonde hair, her eyes looked determined, and the conflicting emotions seemed set.


    Great. Another Exhuman whistleblower. Just what I needed, to be pinned down in a hallway by an old classmate in a pencil skirt and a blouse. My fingers crept towards my pocket for my mobile to call in an extraction.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    "You have to tell me," she said, advancing half a step on me. "She just...disappeared one day. Nobody seemed to care, so I had to pretend not to, but I did. And I''m so sorry."


    "I should--"


    "Athan, do you know where Lia is?"


    My hand stopped inches from my mobile.


    "Why?" I asked.


    "I just¡­" Her nostrils flared as her breathing quickened. "I was her friend. We were in volleyball together in grade school, I don''t know if you remember. When you...you did what you did, everyone turned their back on her."


    My fist banged against the cold glass with an empty thunk. "Yeah you did. Everyone in the whole fucking school, from what I heard."


    "I didn''t want to! Everyone else did, and I just...I didn''t know what to do. I got scared. I kept saying I was going to just man up and do it, like Lia would have done. But then she was gone."


    Tears streaked down the corners of her cheeks. "I thought...thought she was dead. Thought I was too late. People said she killed herself, and I just...felt sick, all the time. Like maybe, if I''d just been there for her--"


    "She''s not dead, Kiera," I said. She stopped dead and clutched at her chest, lip trembling.


    "S-she''s...she''s okay?"


    I nodded, but for the third time today someone unexpectedly jumped me in conversation.


    "Hey, what the hell do you think you''re doing to her?" I turned and saw Tyler jogging towards us from the office''s main doors. He slowed as he saw my face. "Athan?"


    "Hi, Tyler," I apologized.


    "You bastard, what did you do to Kiera? I swear, I''ll--"


    "It''s fine, Tyler," she cut in. "I''m happy. He helped me more than you could know."


    He looked suspiciously between the two of us but as nobody moved and Kiera wiped away her tears, he seemed to relax.


    "Uh. Well, sorry, then. Shit, Athan. What are you doing here? We all thought...you were dead."


    "Didn''t see me on the news?" I smirked at him.


    "No. I don''t really keep up. Did you blow up a building and escape?"


    I had to laugh. "Sure, something like that. I should...get back to it. Lots more escaping to do, you know?"


    I moved yet again to get away but found something holding my wrist.


    "Let me...apologize to you, at least. Since I can''t do it for Lia," Kiera said. "Please."


    "It''s fine, I promise."


    "No, it''s really not. I''ve been living with myself and what I did this whole time, Athan. It feels like I killed her...my own friend. Do you...do you know how that feels?"


    "Kiera, our internships," Tyler complained. "Come on. Not that I''m not glad you''re alive or anything bro, but¡­"


    "I just want to hear about her. I want to know she''s okay," Kiera whispered. "It''s so selfish of me, but please."


    I stared at the cup of tea in front of me and the two others seated at my table in the little coffee shop attached to the bookstore. After what Kiera said, I couldn''t say no. I knew just how heavy a life could hang on your heart.


    "Thanks," I said, raising my glass to her.


    "You could have gotten something more expensive," she mumbled.


    "But not much more. It is an unpaid internship," Tyler grinned.


    "Did you two know each other before?" I asked.


    Tyler shook his head. "Just met on the job here and realized we were both in the same work-study program. Jacob''s on the program too, not with us here though."


    "Kimmy, too," Kiera said. "From the varsity water polo team."


    "No way," I said despite myself. "I thought she was a dunce? What are the requirements for this internship anyway?"


    "High," Tyler said with pride. "Apparently Kimmy just never talked, but rocked all her classes."


    "Did you think she was dumb because of that thing with the apples? That was all Megan''s doing¡­"


    Somehow, we weren''t talking about Lia at all. Somehow the three of us were all just sitting in a coffee shop having a perfectly normal conversation about life. These two, who should have hated me, who weren''t related to me, or kidnapping victims, or crazed hunters, or XPCA...they were sitting at a table with a known Exhuman, maybe a little stiffly, but mostly like it was just nothing. One had even bought me tea as an apology.


    Given the context, it was just bizarre how well we all got along. Tyler and I went way back, and I recognized Kiera from our grade even if we weren''t friends. Nobody seemed...freaked out at what I was, or panicking, or like they were just waiting for the cops. Just...tea. And conversation.


    At a silence, Kiera jumped us to the uncomfortable topic. "Can you please tell Lia for me...if you''re in contact, that I''m sorry? That I regret abandoning her like I did? That I''m the worst friend imaginable? I''m so...I''m so ashamed, and so--" she began making impotent rasping noises as tears began to flow again. I put my hand on her shoulder by reflex, and she didn''t flinch.


    "Here," I said, thumbing through and the passing her my mobile. "Tell her yourself."


    "M-me? I...I ca-can''t. What...what would...I e-even--"


    "Hello? What up, dude?" Lia''s voice came through. "Bored of Saga''s game already?"


    "I''d start with hello," I said, closing her hand around my mobile with the most reassuring smile I had. "She''s got a lot of love. She''ll understand."


    Kiera nodded through tears as she stood up with my mobile pressed to her ear, bawling incoherently. Tyler watched her go with a thoughtful look on his face.


    "So you''re not a bad guy," he said, turning to me. "But you don''t seem like the same Athan as before. You never used to talk to girls, much less be able to pull off a smooth move like that."


    I sighed at him and he continued right on with a slightly larger grin.


    "Always felt like you were trying to weasel out of the spotlight and Brick was trying to put you into it. Now it seems like you just don''t care one way or the other, and...I dunno. You seem different and I can''t place it. Confident, maybe. But you were confident before."


    "Trust me, right now, confidence is the last thing I have going for me. Earlier today, one of my friends told me I was obsessed with some assassin trying to kill me, and that I was so sure he was going to do it that I was gonna fall into despair and break."


    He snapped his finger and pointed it at me. "Yeah, that''s it. Bingo."


    "What?"


    "Just kidding, man. I ain''t nearly girly enough to read that off your face. But it does sound like you have a lot of shit going on."


    "Yeah."


    "Sucks."


    "Right?"


    He turned towards Kiera, bawling in the corner at my mobile. "This assassin guy, is he XPCA or something?"


    "No, just some Sino nutjob."


    "Hmm," Tyler mused. "Well in that case, I hope you beat him. You seem pretty alright by me."


    "Thanks, man."


    "No prob."


    We sat in silence for the next few minutes just watching Kiera while pretending not to, and let the sounds of the coffee shop fill in the conversation for us. The hissing of pressurized machines and bubbling of pouring pots, the quiet mumble of a dozen people conversing in their own worlds, all separate from us, but still part of where we were.


    And again, I found it impossibly, inexplicably pleasant. It wasn''t an awkward silence, but the quiet that could be shared between two friends who were comfortable with each other. I felt like we had no right to be those two friends, but here we were, so many worlds apart but still somehow able to fit into this one together.


    I felt that nostalgia again, and for the first time, didn''t want to run.


    At long last, Kiera came back, wiping streaky makeup off of her face with a tissue.


    "What are you guys talking about?" she asked, barely interrupted by a sniffle.


    We shared a glance. "Nothing."


    She looked between our faces and then bust out snickering.


    "What? Seriously," Tyler said.


    "I know," she beamed, the last of the dew in her eyes sparkling with her smile. "It''s just...you guys...are such boys."


    Kiera thanked me very thoroughly and tried very hard to buy me more food or drink, but I turned her down, explaining that just having the two of them willing to tolerate my presence was more than I could ever ask.


    "Yeah," she said, suddenly downcast at my words. "I guess we shouldn''t be, huh?"


    "Be what? You''re gonna keep getting yelled at in meetings if you keep being ambiguous all the time," Tyler said.


    "Shouldn''t be tolerant," she said, glaring her best at him. "Because of the Exhuman thing and all."


    "Eh. I thought so at first, and then was like, screw it. It''s Athan, right?"


    "Yeah. My heart is still pounding, but I can''t tell if it''s from him, or Lia, or...or...too much caffeine. But I agree. I believed them when I first heard the news too, but the more I thought about Lia, and how unfair everyone was to her...the more I thought...maybe we were unfair to you, too." She lowered her head. "So I''m sorry. Even if...even if I''m wrong, and you''re all bad like they say, I should have found out instead of judging you. If I were that kind of person, maybe I would have been strong enough to stand by Lia."


    Tyler looked at her with vague disgust. "Yeah, that, I guess," he said. "But mostly, screw it, right?"


    I laughed as I finished off my tea, and stood to go. "You have no idea how nice it was to run into you two. I don''t think you could even imagine."


    They stood as well, and suddenly warmth and a floral smell wrapped around me as Kiera pulled me into a tight hug. "I''m sorry, Athan. I''m sorry I couldn''t do more."


    "Well, I''m not sorry," Tyler said with a grin, shaking my hand over the hug. "But good luck with the assassin thing. Black Sharks don''t let go, right? Bite ''em, brother."


    "Bite ''em," I echoed back.


    And then they were headed back to their jobs with little waves, leaving me alone again.


    But I didn''t feel alone. I felt the least alone I''d been in weeks. The floral scent on me was here, it was real, a mark left lingering on me as proof of their existence. The paper cup in my hand wasn''t empty, it was filled with gratitude and hope of a real, living person.


    I smiled at myself, at the world, feeling so stupid and easy to manipulate, but I didn''t care. If one or two shitty people could sink my life, who was to say one or two good ones couldn''t buoy it back up again?


    I flipped my cup into the trash and was about to head out when something caught my eye. A dark green sign with white lettering floating above a shelf of books announcing their genre. Mildly intrigued, I picked it up and thumbed through to the first page where I began to read.


    Electromagnetism as a branch of theoretical physics is an incredible field of study which has captivated geniuses throughout time, including such notable figures as Newton, Edison, Einstein, Hawking, and Renault. Though the subject may seem intimidating to a beginner, this book aims to serve as a guide to an aspiring scientist of any level who finds themselves captivated by these omnipresent systems. We hope to enrich your understanding of the world, both natural and mechanical, and illustrate the many applications of electromagnetism as seen throughout it.


    We thank you for reading, laud your interest in this delightful field of study, and wish to welcome you to the exciting world of the electron!

 272. 2252, Present Day. A plain city building. Athan.

    I''d forgotten to ask the two about Zuwaigani before we parted, but I was still beginning to feel a little played by Saga.


    But the books I had in a bag hanging off my arm, and the relentlessly happy thoughts about the two I''d just met hanging off my heart made me feel like someone completely different. It was strange, how such a relatively small thing...meeting two people I thought I''d never see again, having a normal conversation with them, browsing books, drinking tea...how it could change your entire state of mind.


    The last time I''d felt like this was under Micaiah''s intense scrutiny. His advances on me, I had to assume, because he wasn''t around to explain himself anymore, were motivated by pure scientific curiosity. I guess it seemed natural that someone with a strong interest in Exhumans would wind up in the intelligence offices of the XPCA.


    But his invasive questioning and blanket acceptance of me had made me uncomfortable and wary more than anything. His willingness to look past what I was in pursuit of how I functioned wasn''t how normal people operated. Tyler and Kiera had both been reserved, and so their acceptance of me felt all the more genuine.


    It felt good. Stupidly good. Intoxicating, almost. Was this what being normal felt like? Normal was amazing!


    I was halfway done with the building''s circuit when I came upon another set of doors leading out, and elevators, so I went up a level to see if anything was up there. Immediately, I realized my mistake when I saw the hallway up here was narrower and carpeted, and instead of glass most of the walls were just softly-painted drywall. Offices from here up, presumably.


    I was turning to go back before my elevator left me, when I caught a glimpse through one of the windows and hesitated. It wasn''t Tyler''s back this time, but it was a familiar sight.


    From here I could see over the town, and between the trees and many of the other taller buildings, the view seemed so...almost recognizable. As the elevator dinged shut, I stuck my arm out, and then went back in, but instead of going down, I went up.


    Four floors, the top of this building, and from here I could see everything, once I''d found a window. Out in the distance in every direction, the familiar view of the foothills rising out of an endless suburban sprawl. But I knew these foothills. I knew that peak, Mount Baldy, still capped with a little bit of snow. And if I had a clear view and the weather permitted, LA would be barely visible on the horizon, indistinguishable from the other rising and falling structures balanced on the topography at this distance.


    It made too much sense to be running into my classmates to be anywhere else, but...I was home. I knew this building, from a distance. We''d driven past it on the way to games over towards Riverside. I never thought I''d have any reason to go inside it. Hell, I barely had a reason to be inside it now.


    And yet, here I was.


    I peered and stared through the windows, probably freaking out the people in those offices plenty, but unable to get my fill. I''d been moving around so much these past few months, just being able to look out a window and pick out landmarks I knew was a novelty I hadn''t realized I''d missed. I looked out and saw my old school, stores we''d been to countless times, my neighborhood, out there.


    I was replaying the paths in my mind, how point A connected to point B, visualizing the whole trip and all the landmarks along it, and realizing...this wasn''t anything I used to do. I always had Coach or one of my parents chaperoning me around, navigation wasn''t a skill I''d needed until I began living on my own, and I''d just picked it up without realizing.


    And in that one small realization, staring down at my old home, I began to realize just how much I''d changed. This city was the same as I''d ever known it. People like Tyler and Kiera were still here, doing their lives, splashing around in the wading pool, inch-by-inch.


    And I had been thrown out there doing a front crawl with waves pulling me under, fighting just to stay alive. I''d survived it, somehow, though I couldn''t be sure I''d survive much longer, but now I was here, in the shallows, wondering just when I''d gotten so good at staying afloat.


    My eye was drawn away from the view through it, and to the reflection on the glass and the familiar face looking back at me. I couldn''t think of a single feature that was the same as when I''d left. My hair was longer, I had been more solid and beefy, now more streamlined in my musculature. My eyes...didn''t even look like they belonged to the same person.


    The boy who''d lived here had never taken a life. Never made love to a woman, or two. Never caught his own supper or skinned an animal or foraged for tubers that looked just like roots. Certainly never gone on a military operation, or been in charge of anything more important than a gym bag or a set of plays.


    Saga wanted me to come out here and find a connection with the world. A reason to fight for, she''d said. Everything I''d seen so far might have qualified -- the base satisfaction of eating something delicious, the social foundation of my own species, the intellectual stimulation of finding a compelling book, or the memories of a place I''d grown up, and a world worth protecting, for all the things it did for me before I was cast out.


    But somehow, it was this stupid reflection of myself which, viewed through all of that context, had captured me the most. I''d had something of a bad relationship with mirrors lately, and was due for a dozen years of bad luck, and had never been too keen on staring at myself, but now, I just...couldn''t stop.


    Maybe because I habitually avoided mirrors, as I found all sorts of new things about myself. I had a hair in my eyebrows which stuck straight up like a tiny horn. My hair part wasn''t perfectly even. My eyelashes seemed way too long for a dude''s face.


    But my eyes kept getting caught on their own reflection. There was just something else there in them I didn''t recognize. Maybe I had crazy eyes from obsessing over Dragon. Or maybe there were hidden depths to me because I was a brilliant XPCA Strike Lead...formerly. Whatever it was, there seemed to be more to them than just the brown and green I''d always seen.


    And my guess was, it was this. It was me, being able to stand looking at myself in the mirror. Such a stupid, small step to take. So normal, yet something I hadn''t done in forever. The self-actualization to be able to take a step back and look at myself and not just turn away in disgust.


    It''s not something I thought I might have been able to do this morning. I certainly wouldn''t have willingly spent the time away from watching Dragon fight. I shook my head at the top of this round building feeling like more than ascending it, I''d somehow ascended myself.


    Had Saga known all of this was going to happen? Should I be scared that AEGIS had competition in most exhaustive schemer? I doubted it but...what did I know. I was just standing up here having a moment. She probably just got lucky.


    I turned away from my vantage point and was back in the elevator before my stomach sank in a way that had nothing to do with my descent. Or maybe...the mental nudge she''d given me before I left wasn''t just that. She had been working on becoming sneakier with her powers. It was possible I''d been predisposed to have these convenient epiffanies before I set one foot out here.


    I took a deep breath and let it go. Whether that was true or not, what I''d thought and felt were real to me. I could be angry at Saga when I got back, but for now...I couldn''t argue with her results. I felt more collected, more connected, more me, than I had in a long time. And as I''d been learning with the XPCA, sometimes you just had to do bad things to do something good.


    I finished my tour of the first floor, keeping an open mind as Saga had asked of me. Nothing else really jumped out at me, certainly nothing that seemed to point to our friend Zuwaigani. Before long, I was back at the start, my nose full of briny air and pressed against the glass outside the sushi aquarium.


    It was, of course, very pretty, and fun to watch the fish go round and round in their tanks, most moving in one direction but a few strangely-minded outliers deciding to go against the flow. Those that did bumped heads with the majority often, it seemed, and I wondered if it hurt the fish to do so, if it was worth their stupid self-determination, for no visible purpose but to face the other way.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "You like to watch them," the barker said, giving me yet another heart attack. That was two from him on the day, they should really consider putting some bells on his uniform or something.


    "They''re pretty, I like how the light hits the water and then hits their scales. It''s like each one of them is carrying around their own set of armor."


    "It is a tough life, being a fish," the barker smiled. "The ocean is a large, dangerous place, filled with sharks. Armor is not such a bad idea. But not for these fish, they live very comfortable lives."


    "Until they''re harvested."


    "Well...we''re not raising them just for their looks, no. I might raise koi if we were."


    "You don''t ever stop and think it''s sad, in a way?" I asked, realizing I was getting way too deep with this random dude in a headband and rubber apron. "They just spend their whole life swimming in circles in a little tank they''ll never escape."


    "The tanks at the farm are much larger," he said with a diplomatic smile. "And I do not think they are unhappy. They are just fish, for one. But they also spend all day doing whatever they please, with many others for company. They might be trapped, and someday doomed to become delicious freshly-served sashimi, but if they were free, would they live or die differently?"


    Huh. I wasn''t a fish expert, but that reply stumped me. Was just swimming along here any worse a life? Life was more certain here. Food was supplied, a healthy school was assured, diseases were presumably nonexistent. But also death. Also confinement, and conformity.


    Yeah, it didn''t really take me until that last word to know I wasn''t just thinking about fish here. I was a freed fish now, able to choose my own pond or tank, and it would be the first time I was deciding the course of my own life...in...ever, really.


    My life before felt like those fish spinning the wrong way in the tank. Secure, cramped, constantly running into others whose only crime was following the flow, yet who blocked my way entirely. Such was being an Exhuman within the XPCA. But I would be taken care of, managed, kept healthy and alive. And then, one day, probably killed.


    The last week felt like being out in the wilds. Scrounging scraps, wandering aimlessly, settling down with whatever unexpected fascination caught my attention. Out there, I could find interesting creatures like Whitney, who moved in no current and swam in no school. But they were troubled waters, prowled by predators like Dragon.


    And a thousand rivers, ponds, wetlands, deltas, lakes, and tributaries in between to torture the metaphor. Given all the water in the world, how was one man supposed to choose?


    "You look like you have something on your mind. Perhaps a delicious meal of our freshly-made sushi or sashimi will help?" he goaded.


    "Actually," I said, realizing. And then kinda wishing I un-realized, because it felt racist. "Uh, sorry...I''m actually here looking for Zuwaigani. Do you...know...where, uh¡­"


    He smiled broadly, and if I''d just made some faux-pas, he let me go. "I do. This way, please."


    I blinked, a little confused, but also a little pleased that it had apparently been as easy as asking the first person I''d seen in the building. He led me in through the wooden doorway, past some tables and into the aquarium.


    "Here," he said, gesturing towards a pond. "Please wait a moment."


    Then he left, leaving me with more questions than answers.


    ''Here'', was a tank holding half a dozen spidery, spikey crabs, more brown than red, with long legs and two shorter claws that constantly snapped at the water in the tank to bring it into their mouthparts for inspection. They moved with ungainly slowness through the vegetation, and seemed intent on all piling up on top of each other and then fighting each other constantly, as though that corner was simply the best and the rest of the tank in all of its vacant, uncontested glory, was just a shitty consolation for whoever lost this melee.


    They were bizarre. Prickly and ostensibly powerful, with the need to stick together yet constantly fight amongst themselves...I didn''t see the point. I thought they might be happier alone on the other end of the tank, but I guess their stupid crab brains just couldn''t comprehend it.


    The barker came back and offered me a stick of something red and white and rubbery, about the size of my thumb. "Zuwaigani."


    "Zuwaigani isn''t...a person?" I asked stupidly.


    He laughed. "These are zuwaigani, snow crab. A delicacy, only permitted to be harvested in specific seasons...unless you grow them in aquaculture. They are said to have the sweetest and most delicate flavor in their legs. Please, try, enjoy."


    I did try. I did enjoy. I was very pleased. I did not expect it to be so sweet or fall apart in my mouth quite so much. The texture was pleasantly tough, enough to have a little resistance when I bit down, but still ready to crumble; springy, but succulent. The sweetness really caught me off-guard, with a salty-sweet-savory combination that felt more like some professional chef''s concoction than some spiky critter''s leg.


    I''d had crab in things before, but not this fresh or good, apparently, and the morsel he''d offered me had gone from seeming generous, to completely insufficient after my tasting. The barker laughed at me as he caught me peeking to see if he had any more.


    "If it has caught your eye, you know we do sell them here," he said. "Take some home to your family."


    "Yeah, I might. Actually...I definitely will. Sorry, you''ve been really patient with me all day."


    "Don''t buy on my account. I hand out samples because I believe the product stands on its own. Don''t you?"


    "Yeah," I admitted, still salivating. "Do I...buy them raw? Or...by the pound or what?"


    "You can do that," he said. "But if you are looking for a premium product, we also sell prepared boxes. Whole cooked crab, with bisque and sauces, in an insulated box to ensure freshness for up to five days. They make popular gifts."


    "Yeah, let''s do that," I said, thinking of the girls back home who had been worrying on my behalf. Then realizing that did nothing for AEGIS, I resolved to pop into the bookstore again on my way out.


    And so I found myself outside, a box of crab heavy under one arm, and a bag of books in my other. I''d played Saga''s game, I''d enjoyed her quest, and while I still felt like this was a relative waste of time with Dragon looming overhead, I couldn''t argue that it wasn''t a good experience.


    I called Rito, taking in a final view of the tree-lined streets that reminded me of home, feeling the California sun, hot, even in the very start of spring.


    She cleared her throat gently, with much more tact than the barker showed for sneaking up on people. My mind was still on the trees around me as I absently handed her the things I was carrying.


    "Is this...um...for me?" she asked, confused.


    "No, sorry...can you take these back? I''ve got one more thing I want to do here. I won''t be too long."


    "If you go too far, you''ll be somewhere I haven''t been yet, and I won''t be able to get to you," she reminded me. "I don''t want to let you be in like, danger again."


    "It''ll be fine. Just...something I need to look into. I''ll call you again later, sorry."


    "It''s no problem," she said with a shake of her head, making her blonde ponytail dance. "Don''t do anything dumb, though, or Lia''s gonna be really mad at me. Um, and you."


    "I won''t. Thanks, Rito," I said, and turned. After a moment I turned back, expecting her to be nowhere, but instead found her still standing there watching me go, box of crab hugged to her chest.


    I would be fine. I wasn''t heading off to any Exhuman nonsense or paid killer''s lair or XPCA fortress. I was just...here, home, give or take a few miles, and it seemed strange that I wouldn''t at least give it a look.


    The same sensations of uncomfortable nostalgia, that this place had utterly stood still while I''d changed so much kept coming back to me as I passed by familiar places. Shops where Mom had bought groceries time and again with us in tow, fighting over who got to push the cart and who got to ride. Streets, so familiar then that I''d never paid them any mind, now felt like the most interesting places on earth. Houses of friends, once people I''d spent hours and hours with, who were now nothing, and to whom I was less than nothing.


    I went through a lot of emotions just walking around. I was reminded of how my parents had controlled me, and how last time this came up, I''d been so angry about it. I still was, but everything feeling so separated from me with me standing right in it, it made me feel separated from my past in my mind as well.


    But at the same time, paradoxically, I was me, I was here. I wasn''t separated at all. I was just someone different now, and that someone different had no parents, had no reason to be angry at their upbringing. He was just a ghost wandering through a world, looking for glimmers of his old life.


    It was inevitable that my feet lead me back here, where it began and where it ended. I could still see scorch marks on the ground and cracks where the XPCA had prompted my lightning and died. The windows were dark, but it was early afternoon, that meant nothing. The car in the driveway was a much better measure of whether anyone was home, and if I stood and listened and the wind was still, I could catch the vague sounds of the holo playing inside.


    I stood there, outside my old house as though the green weedy lawn were a force-field keeping me at bay. Just lingering in a place I didn''t really want to be, and where nobody wanted me. I felt like...I had to go in, to see if what Lia had told me was true with my own eyes.


    But at the same time, I didn''t want to see. I was dead to these people, and they should be dead to me. Whether this house''s occupants were sane or violent or regretful, why should I care more than any other house?


    Closure, maybe? Family? Hell, revenge?


    I didn''t know. There were too many forces acting on my brain from too many directions to decisively go or stay, so instead I just lingered.


    And it was in so doing that an older woman walked up the sidewalk and addressed me, pulling me from my distracted stupor.


    "Athan Ashton, Exhuman and murderer. Why would you come back here, after all this time?" she asked.

 273a. 2252, Present Day. Not home. Athan.

    I didn''t even have to look to place the voice. It was one I''d heard thousands of times, and yet still never expected to hear again. I let out a deep sigh, and then turned to face her.


    "Hello ma''am," I said dutifully.


    "Still so polite. I wonder if you were so polite when you killed my son."


    She was a large woman, tall, broad-shouldered, and with a personality to match. Her skin was pale, her hair light brown, but peppered with more grey than I remembered, and lines on her face indicated her advancing age, but that she wasn''t quite there yet. In build and demeanor, she''d always reminded me a lot of her son, a lineman for the Black Sharks, and my best friend.


    Brick''s mom looked at me like she wasn''t sure what all to make of me, which was understandable given I didn''t know what to make of me either right now. But given her nature and what I''d done, I was honestly just surprised she wasn''t coming at me with a frying pan right now.


    "You''re not trying to kill me. That''s kind of a surprise," I said.


    "Haven''t finished making up my mind yet," she sighed. "My husband and your father, they''d jump on you soon as they seen you and let their fists sort out the rest."


    "They were both always similar like that, I guess."


    "Comes with being in the army. Everyone who serves goes in different, comes out the same."


    We stared each other down for a few more seconds before she spoke again.


    "Barry had it coming, Athan."


    "What?"


    "As his mother, I should always be on his side, should always believe in him, because that''s what family''s for. But you can''t fix stupid, no matter how hard you try to talk him out of it, and the last time I saw him, with crazy in his eyes, yelling about justice and heroes and the whole town worshiping him, I saw he wasn''t my son anymore. He was gone, possessed by something he put there himself."


    "Uh...wow. I never expected to hear that from...you."


    "Well I''m a lot of things, Athan, but liable to bury my head in the sand ain''t one of them. I know crazy when I see it, and even if you are a freak, you''re more sane than he was. He had no right to go running off chasing you if he wanted to live, so I have to assume that dying is exactly what he wanted." She swallowed hard. "Did you do it quick and painless? Or were you as cruel as they say?"


    "He didn''t even know he died," I said. Even if it wasn''t exactly a clean way to go, Lia''s rifle was thorough and faster than sound. There was nothing left of Brick to hear or feel the bullet by the time it passed through him.


    "Hmph," she said, as though that wasn''t the right answer.


    "Would you prefer he died slowly?"


    "I''d prefer you didn''t kill him. Or that if you did, you''d sound like you have some regret over it. I knew Barry had lost it, but you sound just as callous as they say."


    I blinked at her. "You asked me a question. I answered it. Ma''am."


    "A question about your friend and my son''s death. How many people have you killed to speak of it so candidly? Are you just an Exhuman instrument of death, leaving tears and broken families in your wake because you don''t have them yourself anymore?"


    "Ma''am, I gave myself up to the XPCA. I was a good little Exhuman."


    "Then why is Barry dead? Why are you here?"


    "Because the XPCA is shit, ma''am. Because they decided to use me as a guinea pig for some stupid pet project instead of wiping me out. Some stupid plan by some ambitious asshole to save the world by hurting and endangering a crapton of people. They fucked up, again and again, so here I am. Ma''am."


    She looked at me icily for a moment and then turned towards my house. "If that''s true, then what''s the point of it all? Monsters like you, free to roam the streets."This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    "Ma''am, if I were blowing up people with my powers left and right, the XPCA would be on me so fast I wouldn''t even realize I was dead either."


    "Liar."


    "I''m not lying!"


    She turned to me and put her hands on her hips. "You''ve killed plenty. I can tell just by the way you talk, the way you look at me. You''re like your father and my husband, you''re what came out of the army."


    "I''m what came out of the XPCA, certainly. And yeah, I''ve had to kill sometimes. People like your son, who are dangerous, who are crazy, who are starting things they can''t finish. I''ve never once enjoyed killing someone, I''ve always felt it in my heart when I do." I stared into her eyes. "But Brick the least of them. Do you know what he did to Lia?"


    "Saved her, to hear his side of it."


    "Yeah, that is how he saw it. And he thought she owed him a debt she could pay only with her body. I might not be happy to have killed him, but I''m happy he''s dead."


    "That''s my son," she growled at me.


    "That''s my sister," I snapped back.


    Again we just stared at each other for a minute, the sun baking our backs.


    "There''s nothing for you here. Go away. Leave us alone," she said.


    "Yeah, probably," I said. "I honestly don''t even know why I''m here."


    "Revenge?" she snorted. "At the family that cast you out?"


    I shook my head. "That''s so ancient history compared to everything I have to deal with. I exchanged like, twenty words with Dad after I turned, and never saw him since. Honestly, everything he did before that night bothers me a lot more."


    "Then revenge for that?"


    I was still shaking my head. "No, that''s the other Exhumans, the ones who find themselves empowered and use it to take out their petty gripes on people who wronged them. The ones who have events and then die."


    "Oh, so I''m speaking to one of the good murderers, then."


    "If you weren''t, I''d just have killed you by now, so probably, yeah." I sighed. "Didn''t you say Brick was crazy for doing exactly this? Why are you here, talking to me? Why didn''t you just go home and call the police when you saw me?"


    "Because then I''d never know how you felt about his death. You already had the police called on you by our family once, and it brought us nothing but misery. Now I''ve lost my son, but you expect me to do the same thing again?"


    "I guess."


    "Then you''re stupid in addition to being a murderer."


    I bristled at her. "Look, ma''am, how do you think you''d feel if you woke up one day and found yourself in my situation? What would you be doing right now? Do I just piss off because everyone hates me for what I am? Do I attack you because I can and you''re fucking infuriating, and you don''t seem to expect anything else from me? What? What? I''d love to hear it. Seriously."


    "Nothing you do could ever satisfy me," she said in a low, threatening voice. "You''re a killer, and a monster, and even if you dropped dead this moment, the world is still worse for you passing through it."


    I blinked at her, this old, bitter woman who, honestly, life had dealt a shit hand alongside mine. It wasn''t her fault Brick was dead, or that I had turned, but now here she was, adrift and pointless as I felt like I was. She was pitiable, strong as she was, and while I''d only really yelled at her out of frustration, whatever her thoughts on me were, whatever she thought I could do to make amends...it would have been really valuable to hear, the unfiltered opinion of one of my victims.


    Which made it liberating, what she said. I could do nothing. She would never be satisfied.


    She, like so many, would never accept me, both because of what I was and what I''d done, and there was no other way around it. That might be frustrating or unfair or shitty...but it was also incredible. Why seek these people''s approval or acceptance? Why kill myself over someone like this? Why beat myself up for what I''d done, when no amount of doing so would ever be enough? It was pointless. It was insane.


    I found myself with a dark grin that seemed to confirm all her worst suspicions, but her words had pushed me beyond caring.


    "Thank you ma''am. I''ll keep that in mind," I told her.


    "You''re going to hell for all you''ve done."


    "I''m well aware."


    "Those murdered souls, Barry too, they''ll have their vengeance for all eternity on your black soul."


    "I hope they have a nice time with it. Dismissed, ma''am." I gave her a mocking salute and she just glared at me.


    "Fuck you, Athan," she spat and turned to go. As she did, she pulled her mobile from her bag and began dialing. It wasn''t the easiest shot, but I didn''t particularly care if I missed and hit her, as I flicked a few fingerfuls of tiny bulbs in her direction, and while several hit her in the back, making her flinch and yelp, at least one fried her mobile with a satisfying pop.


    "Burn in hell, Exhuman!" she shouted at me from half a block away. I repeated my salute, even more satisfied with her opinion.


    She definitely hated me now. But why should I care? I could grovel and kneel and beg all day and she''d hate me. At least this way, I''d escaped the conversation and given myself a few more minutes before the XPCA came, and by then I''d be long gone.


    I was just standing there, wondering if I should do the same to my folks when I heard yelling from inside the house. Screamed apologies and the sounds of violence.


    I was about to move in when abruptly, I felt a buzzing in my mind as Saga located me, and a moment later, the violence stopped as both of my parents collapsed to the ground.

 273b. 2252, Present Day. Not home. Saga.

    "Are they...dead?" Athan asked, sounding like he wasn''t sure which answer he wanted to hear.


    "No, just sleeping. You weren''t supposed to come here, Athan. I thought even you were smarter than that."


    I''d come ''running'' as soon as Athan sent Rito back without returning himself. Damn stupid scrawny legs didn''t move right, and so I''d showed up late, but apparently still just in time. I''d always known it was a possibility he''d come here, but in my arrogance, I''d ruled it out. Too many bad memories, I''d thought.


    Pfeh. Athan loved digging up bad memories. I was a moron.


    "I had to see for myself. Was he really...did he¡­"


    I advanced on Athan with my arm extended. He looked down at my palm and swallowed hard, and then closed his eyes. When my fingers touched his brow, we were connected, and through this, I showed him.


    I was in the mind of his father. In the mind of everyone, really, but the father was the key point here. This was on my last trip here, when I''d come looking for something, anything, to take Athan''s mind off his own suffering. I thought, maybe there was some piece of his old life that could still make him happy, could remind him that things weren''t all shit all the time.


    I really was too soft with him. But what could I do? His worries were my worries by proxy.


    I''d ditched Rito because I didn''t want her hare-braining up whatever I found out here, but I knew as soon as I drew close that there wasn''t anything here for Athan.


    His dad was pissed, about nothing, as always. The wife had bumped a chair or something, and he was shrewdly calculating if putting bruises on her face again would remind her not to do it anymore, or if he could get away with putting them somewhere less obvious. I''d say it made me sick, but honestly, this wasn''t exactly a new low for a human mind for me. Definitely the type I''d scrub out without a second thought, but it was Athan''s dad.


    He opted for the face, and I drew in my connection from his mother after flinching from the blow once, my breath suddenly coming in ragged. Cowardly piece of shit of a man. There was nothing here for me, so I left, and just by luck would wind up running into those two classmates of Athan and find what I was looking for.


    Athan reeled as I pulled away, leaving him with the memory. His face flushed red and his fists clenched and unclenched.


    "I''d love to pop his head," I volunteered. "I just wanted to make sure you didn''t want dibs."


    "Cowardly piece of shit of a man," Athan echoed my last thoughts in the memory. "He deserves to die. How fucking could he." He glared at me darkly. "He did this to Lia?"


    I nodded once and saw Athan''s mind just about explode with restrained violence.


    It wasn''t...pleasant. Athan was hurting just thinking about it, and I didn''t want him to do something he''d regret. I''d intended for him to go here to have a positive experience not...this. But killing could be cathartic, too, I knew. Just not exactly in line with how Athan operated.


    "I owe it to Lia. I owe it to Mom," he said. "I can''t let this keep happening."


    "Your mom''s messed up too, Athan," I warned him. "She''s not staying through this because she''s a sound person. If she could leave, she wouldn''t. Not after Lia left. Your dad''s all she''s got left."


    That took most of the fire out of him as he chewed on my words.


    "Can you fix them?" he asked suddenly.


    "Depends on what you mean by fix. I can fuck them up so that they look normal...but I know your opinion on enslaving people''s minds. Are they better as zombies than broken people?"


    "No," he said, shaking his head. "They''re not. But maybe she can be."


    I grinned. I liked where this was going. This was just the right kind of sick to tickle my tastes.


    "Leave her alone, but fix him. Do whatever you need to do...drill his head out and put whatever you need in there. Make it so he treats her right."


    "He''ll be worse than dead," I beamed at him. "This is beyond killing, it''s cruel, you know that, right? He''ll be trapped in there forever, watching and feeling himself be this entirely different person and never able to escape."


    "He hit Lia," Athan said darkly, like that just explained everything. And given the boy''s complex, yeah, I guess that did.


    "Well, sounds like a fun day for me," I said, stalking into the yard to lay on the grass under an oak. "How often do I get to really mess up someone who deserves it? It''ll be a few hours to get him set up. Don''t feel like you have to wait around.


    "No, I''ll wait," he said, sitting down next to me. "I want to see it."A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I smiled at him. "Athan, you really don''t. Trust me."


    "Always telling me what I think."


    "Always right, too. Look, take it from me, torturing someone who''s bad isn''t all it''s cracked up to be. If they''re an asshole, put them out of your misery and move on. Here, saving your mom is obviously kind of a neat perk, very pragmatic, and I adore how fast you jumped to full lobotomy, I couldn''t be more proud -- but don''t just stick around to watch someone suffer. It hurts you more than them."


    He hesitated, but I saw in his mind he wasn''t leaving. After what I''d shown him, he felt like he needed closure for everything the man had done to Lia. A little unfortunate, but understandable. I sighed.


    "Well, if you''re just gonna sit here anyway, let me borrow your lap so I can work in comfort at least," I told him, sliding down sideways to put my ear resting on his thigh. "Goddamn, you''re always so warm. How do you manage that?"


    "Well, my body has this thing called fat on it, and these things called muscles, which burn this stuff called food¡­"


    "Oh! You found Zuwaigani! I''m so excited you brought some back. Are you going to eat that tonight? When I passed by that building the first time, the taste of it just about made me cream myself on the spot."


    "Gross?"


    "As if. I could drown in a pool of that dipping sauce and die happy. And then come back and do it like, thirty or forty more times before it started getting old. Shit is that good."


    "Did you really send me out here just to pick you up a fucking crab?" he asked me.


    Of course I hadn''t. I knew he''d bump into those kids and they''d have a moment, and I thought a moment of dealing with the real world in a way which didn''t totally suck a dick was exactly what Athan needed to get his mind on straight about how to approach this whole Dragon thing. I''d even given him just a teensy mental prod, a lite version of what I''d done after Karu dumped his ass way back when, to make the pain of his situation a little less keen.


    Of course, he''d seen through me. I did have to remind myself that this was the one guy in the world I couldn''t hide things from either. Still, despite that--


    "Yep!" I lied. "That crab is to die for. You should have bought two."


    "It''s already like five pounds of crabmeat," he said shaking his head. "And bisque. And other shit."


    I giggled at the thought of eating five pounds of crab and felt my concentration slip. "Oops."


    "Oops?"


    "Nothing. I should probably just focus more on your dad. Not that a mistake or two is really gonna matter given what all I''m doing in here, but still."


    He let me work in silence, which wasn''t really silent at all. We talked in emotion, in half-completed thoughts, as we tended to do, just reacting and thinking and feeling each other''s minds in the half-open way only the two of us could.


    He was in a much better place when he''d left, and I felt inordinate pride at my success. AEGIS wasn''t the only one who could plan a quest for Athan''s mental health, even if, in reviewing it now, I''d mostly just gotten lucky a lot.


    But hey, luck is where preparation meets opportunity, right? And I''d put down the prep work to make Athan more receptive, so all the credit was well-deserved.


    He snickered at my internal pride, making me blush at the thought of it, but it was a passing thing, as most thoughts were, and our collective stream of consciousness continued until evening.


    "My back is ready to die," he announced. "How the hell do you sit under a tree so long without your butt falling asleep?"


    "Step one, I have no butt," I said, poking at my flat backside. "Step two, tree is actually pretty comfy compared to a cramped underground prison coffin. I''d recommend a hundred years in one and then see if the tree still gives you pain."


    "I think I might head back," he said, gently lowering my head as he escaped under me. "You''re right. I don''t need to see this. Just knowing that Mom will be doing better, and that Lia...is safe now, that''s all I really need."


    "Smart guy. I''ll be there in like an hour. If you touch a crab without me there, I swear to God, I will burn this whole planet to the ground."


    "We''ll wait," he said, rising to his feet with a smile. "Though if you burn it all down, you kinda eliminate the chance of having any other crab."


    "It''s the principle of the thing, Athan. One world for one crab. Seems fair to me."


    He laughed which made me laugh. He gave me an affectionate ruffling of my hair like he did to Lia, and as much as I didn''t appreciate my thoughts banging around while he did it, I had to admit, I didn''t mind his touch.


    He headed off back the direction we came, taking the street at a slow pace I might have even been able to match. After he was gone, I looked over at the tree in the neighbor''s yard, where there really was nothing to be seen.


    "Olly olly oxen free. You can come out now, little hunter," I called. A moment later, something dropped heavily out of the tree and rose from the landing into a white-clad shaved-head bitch of a woman.


    "Saga. The pleasure is ever all yours," Karu said with a mocking bow.


    "You come here to off his parents?" I asked.


    "I did. Do you happen to be a mind-reader perchance, or was that merely a fortuitous guess?"


    "You''ve gotta learn there''s an art form to killing indiscriminately, Karu. You can''t just pop off everyone who''s ever hurt Athan and expect him to be grateful. I''m here with my hands elbow-deep in his daddy''s brain and he''s thanking me for it. Show a little restraint."


    "Funny words, from one such as you."


    "Oh I show restraint all the time. You have no idea how much I just want to pop open the head of half the humans who pass me by. But I don''t, and as a consequence, Athan lets me use his lap as a pillow. Pretty worth, I think."


    "And funnier still they be given to one such as me."


    "Yeah, that one is a riot," I grinned. "I used to think you were a real uptight bitch, Karu, so wrapped up in morals and absolutes and apparently just a big fucking idiot who didn''t realize that grey was more than a color. And now look at you. Budding little nihilist. Warms my heart."


    "You have no heart," she scoffed though a smile. "I suppose I should be offended to receive a compliment from you, but as you say, your methods do seem superior at the moment. I will endeavor to keep them in mind."


    "I''ve got this situation under wraps," I said gesturing towards the house. "You heard Athan''s plan? Wasn''t that hot?"


    "I admit I did not expect to hear such from him, but yes, the thought of such coming from him did have...an unspeakable allure. He is a man of great passion, and perhaps not so afraid to do the necessary as I sometimes fear. I will leave you to your work."


    "Thanks. Good flying, Hunter."


    She gave me a curt nod and a smile, and then I held my ears as the jetpack tore up the sky.


    Fascinating woman, that one. And I hoped for all our sakes that she sorted her shit out before she realized that her obsession with Athan wasn''t worth holding onto.

 274. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Whitney.

    So. Athan had a crab, apparently, which was odd. But he let me have some, which was neat. I didn''t know why he had a crab or was sharing it, or a lot of other things, like where the voice that''d been screaming in my head earlier came from or why people laughed when I suggested Saga join us to eat...but if nothing else, I was getting better at ignoring all the weirdness and pretending life was perfectly normal.


    Life wasn''t perfectly normal. Life was the least normal thing imaginable. Every day was something different with these people, and I was quickly running out of bits of AEGIS to take apart and fix, aided in no small part by the fact that she was almost done and able to repair herself, too.


    I''d even made the absolutely selfish suggestion that she let me finish with repairs by myself, and she just laughed at me. Not exactly a polite response, but I didn''t imagine being broken was any fun for her. I understood. But day by day, we were reaching a point I''d been avoiding thinking about. As AEGIS'' parameters surged back into nominal values, my reasons for staying dwindled.


    Athan had made it clear that I was free to go if I wanted, and I''d slept on the decision. Now it was getting time to wake up.


    "You''re really uh...having a time with that solder, I see?" AEGIS asked me. We were in her garage, a paradise, and everything I ever hoped for in a machine shop, and the prospect of leaving all of that soured me all the more.


    "Sorry, just...screwing around," I said, looking at the little blobs of molten alloy on the tray in front of me. "Waste of materials, I''m sorry."


    "It''s like, a tenth of a credit. I''ll send you an invoice," she said, walking over to my stool. "I don''t think I''ve ever seen you so distracted. You''ve had me thinking you were the robot and I was the girl this whole time. What''s wrong?"


    "Nothing, really," I said, putting the soldering gun in the rack. "I guess I''m heading home soon. You''re almost all fixed up."


    She smiled at me, almost a little condescendingly. "Really? That''s your best?"


    "What?"


    "Your I-don''t-care attitude may fool everyone else here, but I see what''s going on. You don''t want to go, do you?"


    I hesitated, which was basically just a yes, so I said so. "I guess not. But I should. If I stay here, it''s just trouble."


    "Well that much you''ve got right. Trouble follows us around like a garbage collector after a running process. Things stay quiet, then every once in a while, boom, takes away everything we''ve built up. It''s not an ideal lifestyle."


    "So why don''t you leave?" I asked her plaintively. "You''re smart, capable, you could hide out or blend in. With your abilities you could go anywhere, or do anything. Why stay here where there''s so much difficulty?"


    She grinned almost maliciously at me. "You''re the one saying you''re interested in staying, you tell me."


    "I''m different," I said, fidgeting with my glasses. "I know it''s the wrong decision but I just...I''ve never had a single interesting thing happen in my life. I feel like if I go back now, I''ll spend the rest of my days...I don''t know, wondering what the point of it all is." I suddenly felt very upset at the injustice. "It''s not fair. I used to be content in my life, in my own skin, and you had to come along and show me how lame it all was."


    The look of malice disappeared and instead her lips drew into a small frown. "I am sorry. I''ve been through that, too. It sucks a lot."


    "You have?"


    "I was originally just supposed to be some kind of management AI for XPCA operations, a hundred years ago. Allocate resources, determine threats and prioritize, optimize and improve efficiency, that kind of stuff." She shook her head, making her cables twirl about her with a life of their own. "It was Athan who showed me I could be more than I was made to be. That''s why I can never leave him. But even so, it''s confusing, being in a bigger world, not having my role set out for me anymore. But I wouldn''t go back, ever."


    "And you love him."


    "Yeah," she said, flushing slightly as she avoided my eyes.


    I''d built and modified a lot of machines in my day, but none had ever shown a capacity for love. Not...emotional love anyway, some custom orders were...yeah. I didn''t know how they''d managed to so accurately put a human heart into AEGIS. I knew I was already sort of out there on this line, but it was hard to think of her as a machine at all. Rarely did she say or do anything to make me think she was.


    Just like, honestly, rarely did Athan do say or do anything to make me think he was Exhuman. He seemed mostly like a somewhat competent adult, facing down the world of responsibilities he was trying to hold up, like any real person might be. I''d seen and we''d discussed his powers, he definitely had those, but I''d also seen and taken apart AEGIS'' robotic guts, and that didn''t make her any less human to me.


    "I really don''t know," I confessed. "I''ve never had to make a choice like this before. The biggest thing I ever did was leave the world behind, and that was out of frustration and exhaustion. It wasn''t something I did because I wanted to, but because I had to, to survive. If that makes sense at all."


    "You were tired of people so you opened a store? That doesn''t'' exactly make sense."


    "It does if you consider I did my best to scare off any customers," I smirked at her. "Nobody goes to repair shops when you can just replace or warranty your devices."


    "I...guess? That sounds really stupid. If you''ve got a perfectly fine device with one problem in it, why wouldn''t you just fix the problem?"


    I shrugged. "This is why both of us own a workshop and most people don''t, I guess."


    She laughed. And that made me smile.


    "I''m not brave or selfless or attached to the world, even. I opened my shop to get away from people as a whole, because society is kinda crap and I just wanted to play with machines until...I died one day, I guess. When Athan found that...that...body. The dead body...I didn''t even remember to call the police. Even after he told me to. And then I made so much trouble for them by hiding in VR, they wouldn''t stop telling me how much I''d screwed up while they interrogated me."


    I looked at her in the eyes, the same electric yellow as the sun. From here, I could smell her skin, and swallowed heavily at the faint sweet and rubbery fragrance. I had a strong urge to lean forward and inhale a noseful of it, but didn''t want to creep her out.


    "I''m not really much of anything. There''s no reason for me to be here."


    "Lia''s just a normal person too, her brother just happened to become Exhuman. Chiho''s a normal person, she just studies and sends us invites to movie night. Heck, Karu''s technically normal, and just has big breasts and nothing else redeeming about her," AEGIS said a little more derisively than her other points. "Fact is, it doesn''t really matter how bad your reason is as long as it''s good to you. If you want to stay, everyone here is already an idiot who badly needs more people in their lives. I know I wouldn''t mind having someone who could keep up with me in a truly intellectual conversation," she said, pushing up her glasses.


    "I...guess. It just seems sorta stupid to do something...just because you want to. There''s no logic in that."


    "I think the decisions that define us tend to eschew logic. Falling in love, being a hero, saving a life, these aren''t things done after careful consideration. You do them because that''s who you are, and what it is. This one''s a biggie, and it''s all your choice." She smiled reassuringly. "But if it doesn''t work out, you can always change your mind, right?"


    I hardly considered this a decision in line with love or heroism, but her last point stuck at least. "Yeah. I guess if you consider that, I should stay until I have reason to go."


    I realized I was just pushing the decision further down the line again, but it seemed to make AEGIS happy that I was staying, and that made it easier.


    "What I think is that you like keeping busy and being useful. Am I wrong?"


    "Well...busy yeah, I don''t know that I''d ever be considered useful, really."


    "Maybe I''m projecting then," she beamed at me. "But still, I picked something up I think you might find really interesting. Be right back."


    She stepped into the house leaving me alone in the garage with the still machines. I felt like, if I had these at my own fingertips, I''d keep them working always, just on principle. Machines were designed to go, it''s what made them happy. Sitting still let them rust and rot, a death a thousand times worse than wearing out.


    Plus, there were all those times I had to go crawling to the machine shop guys to fabricate parts for me. If I could do it on my own, I''d never stop. Just on principle, for all the times I wished I had them and didn''t.


    "What are you smirking at?" AEGIS asked with a sly grin as she reentered.


    "Sorry, nothing. Just thinking."


    "About Athan," she teased?


    "No, about your machine setup here."


    This made her laugh again for some reason that I was pretty sure I got but wasn''t going to indulge. She had a plastic bag on her arm, and pulled a few books out of it to show me.


    "This one," she said, "was a very thoughtful gift from my boyfriend," she said, clutching the book to her chest. Through her fingers, I could see it was a children''s book, The Velveteen Rabbit. I wasn''t familiar. "But these two, he got for himself...see anything interesting?"


    The one on top was black with a white silhouette of a robed fighter in a ready stance. The title read The Essential Guide to Martial Arts: Physics, Kata, and Forms. I didn''t know if I should be alarmed that he was apparently preparing to become even more of a weapon...or sad that he thought he could learn from a book like this. While books were obviously incredibly useful tools...the fact was, for most subjects, they were abysmal for conveying the basics, and more importantly, they did nothing to correct misconceptions or point out flaws. If he was serious about this, he really should find an instructor.


    I moved the karate book aside and immediately swallowed my words.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    "See anything interesting?" AEGIS reiterated through a grin.


    "Practical Electrodynamics," I read, flipping to the back cover. "From the center of a star to the cores in your mobile, electric current, and magnetic fields are everywhere. Understanding what they are and how they work bring forth scientific advances and human curiosity alike, and position us to be more cognizant and aware of the majesty of the world around us. Holy heck. I was scared with I saw the karate book."


    "It''s mixed martial arts, but yeah," she said, her eyes gleaming. "Any idea why he might have thought about picking this up?"


    I felt a guilty lump in my throat. "Because I talked about ball lightning?"


    "And Joule''s law. And you know more about electricity than everyone else in this house put together. And because he respects you."


    "I don''t know more than you," I argued, even as I realized I was just making a pointless excuse.


    "Hah. My knowledge is all practical. If I need to power up a part, I can connect the inputs to the outputs, step the voltage and amperage to the right levels, and plug it all together. I''ve never thought about Athan''s lightning outside the context of physics-breaking Exhuman bullshit. But you took one look at it, and you were turning swords into chainsaws in your mind."


    "No!" I shouted at her. As much as I shouted anyway. "No, no, no! I don''t...don''t want to be giving chainsaws to Exhumans! I don''t want to make weapons or facilitate killing people. I was just thinking out loud. His powers are really interesting, but they''re also really dangerous. It''s irresponsible to make them even more dangerous."


    "You know, for thousands of years, nobody was harnessing nuke power because it was dangerous too. Now it''s improving lives everywhere. Sometimes studying something dangerous just means finding a way to use it safely."


    "You think I''m going to work with Athan on his powers so that he can not use them?"


    "I think--and I honestly believe this with my whole heart--that we''re approaching a tipping point, Whitney. I think things are changing too much, too fast, and the way things have always been aren''t going to keep working much longer. For the first time, there''s good Exhumans running around out there, like Athan and Tower and Moon, and they need our support. You''ve seen already what that guy gets himself into, if he faces something down and isn''t strong enough--"


    She hesitated and took a deep breath.


    "If he doesn''t, next time the bad things come, he won''t be there to fight them for us. If nothing else, if you don''t care about him at all, it''s still a matter of standing together or dying alone. Help him while you can, or he won''t be able to help you."


    "The XPCA will protect me. The police and the army. There''s hundreds of thousands of people there, and that''s what they do."


    "And how many of them were there living in the gutter and eating dog food so they''d be positioned to intercept Dragon?"


    "Which he failed to do, I heard." I was making excuses again and I knew it. I was really quickly losing respect for one of the parties in this conversation.


    "Yeah, he did. And you see what that''s done to him. I don''t know how you can still have doubts about him after that. But maybe if he were stronger, next time, nobody would have to die." She patted the two books in my hands gently. "Look, you can do whatever you want. If you don''t decide to teach him, I''ll take a stab at it. I won''t do as good a job as you would, but it''s better than learning from a book alone. I only brought it up because you were talking about not belonging here and how it''s a good idea to stay busy."


    "Yeah. Sorry. I''m making excuses and I know that. Sorry. I hate excuses."


    "It''s okay," she said, moving her patting hand to the back of mine. Her fingertips were uncomfortably warm and it took an effort not to shrug away from her touch. She lingered another few moments, and when neither of us apparently had anything to say she began to wrap up.


    "I''ll bring these back to him," she said, collecting the books. "I won''t mention this conversation, but if you want to, you should."


    I nodded dumbly and watched her go. I turned back to the bench in front of me, tray still dotted with melted bits of solder, like little ugly sandcastles.


    What the heck was I doing here, I wondered. I''d never been one to lack decisiveness or direction, and when I put something off it was procrastination, not hesitation. Go do what you needed to do, I''d believed. Any job that took less than five minutes, just sit down and do it.


    In a way, it was why I was alone -- alone with my machines, anyway. If I didn''t like someone, I just cut them out and moved on. No need to drag your feet because of stupid social norms, it was my life, not society''s. But you did that too many times, choose your own direction too many times, stated your own controversial opinions too many times, you wound up in the back of a shop, singing at your machine family. Not because you were awful or insufferable or anything, everyone you knew just had to independently arrive at the conclusion that you weren''t worth keeping in touch with.


    I didn''t mind. It wasn''t a bad life. I didn''t feel alone or like I''d done anything wrong. I''d just followed my own path, which is why I was so frustrated now. All these options in front of me, and for the first time it felt like none of them were my own path. I could do what I wanted deep down, and abet an Exhuman in honing his killing, or I could run from the most exciting thing that''s ever happened to my life. Or just linger at the sidelines like I was doing now and watch it all go to hell, like AEGIS said, refuse to help and just observe as it implodes, probably only realizing I should have done something else after it was too late.


    It was just cruddy that my life had been fine before and now all of this stuff I''d taken for granted was crumbling. I felt like even if I went back, I wouldn''t really be going back.


    I wondered if anyone else had to deal with this kind of thing. Those here seemed so sure of the path they were set out on. Like Athan, whether I agreed with him or not, he seemed confident as hell that he was gonna strike out and save the whole frickin'' world. I bet he never had a conflict like this a day in his life. It felt so unfair.


    I brought out the soldering gun again and melted the little blobs together into one cohesive whole. The lonely, ugly little bits somehow looked even more tortured together than they did apart, making stretched little holes like screaming mouths. I didn''t like it, so I melted them all down into a single little pool of liquid, where they solidified, perfectly smooth and round and shining, all traces of being individual blobs erased as they formed a flawless whole.


    I should talk to Athan, even if I didn''t want to, I decided. I''d hid in here for days already, and with AEGIS fixed, I wouldn''t be able to hide much longer.


    I stood in front of Athan''s door for a minute, hand raised to knock, hesitating as I considered all the different paths our conversation might take. If I refused him, might he attack me? That seemed unlikely, but he was an Exhuman and had a fundamentally different outlook on death and violence. He''d looked at that dead body with nothing but anger, and he''d fought the hunter who was his friend. I was much less than that to him, I was sure.


    So I looked fairly stupid when after hearing voices and movement for a second, the door opened and AEGIS appeared, talking over her shoulder.


    "Thanks again for the book. Good studies!" she called, and then walked into me. "Oh, sorry, Whitney. Busy in here today." She apologized and then skirted around me with a wink, leaving me with the door open and Athan and one other Exhuman inside.


    The Japanese girl with the ornately-kept hair, cut absolutely flat above her eyebrows, and flowing at different lengths onto her shoulders and back. We''d been introduced, but I didn''t remember her name...or names? Moon, I could remember, but she''d seemed insistent to be called something Japanese instead of her callsign.


    I really should have taken notes, I thought, as I stepped into the room. The girl hardly acknowledged me as she continued talking to Athan.


    "Why would you ask me?" she asked. "I do not recall ever offering my personal time up for your use."


    "You''re here anyway like every week, Kaori, and all you do is read. Don''t give me crap about your personal time."


    "I do not recall ever offering my fecal matter either. What peculiar fetishes you exhibit."


    Athan pinched the bridge of his nose, his face scrunched like he was trying to keep his eyes from exploding. "Dude, Kaori, I just asked for book suggestions. You read a lot of books. I didn''t think this was outside the realm of reason, but I guess I forgot to account for the fact that you are."


    She stood up with alarming swiftness but her face remained impassive. "You abandoned your duty, Athan. You forsook the XPCA and more, you forsook the P-Force. I owe you no favors." She walked up to me in the doorway, stopping inches from my chest, and when I squirmed out of her way, she just kept walking, never once looking up at me.


    "Fucking lovely girl," Athan moaned. "Sorry, Whitney, what can I do for you?"


    "Was she upset?" I asked, because I was totally lost.


    "Yeah, she was super pissed. I don''t know why she keeps coming here if she''s so mad at me."


    "Not to be insensitive but...how can you tell?" I asked. "She didn''t look or sound it."


    "You start to figure it out after awhile. Moon equates emotions and personal connections as weaknesses, I think. It''s a mess. I think she''s here for me, but she hasn''t said or done a thing to indicate why, so I''m lost too. I prefer women who are straightforward, like you," he smiled, all traces of his anguish seemingly gone with the girl.


    "Well, in that vein, I have something to tell you," I told him. I didn''t know how else to say it so I just said it. Straightforward, right? "Trying to learn from books like that is a waste. When starting from level zero, the theory is meaningless on its own. You need a teacher."


    He frowned a little. "I''ve learned plenty from books."


    "Of course. But these are practical skills you''re trying to pick up. The problem is, even if you have a theoretical grasp of what you''re doing, you won''t know if you''re doing it wrong or right, and if you keep training on your own, doing whatever you made up, there''s a good chance you''ll instill bad practices into yourself. At least when starting, you need a teacher, because you don''t even have the understanding to know what you don''t know."


    He was still frowning at me. "I''m not gonna throw what you''re saying out the window or anything, but...seems...kinda wrong to just assume that books are worthless to pick up something new."


    "You can...you absolutely can...but it''s a huge risk. A while back, I tried teaching myself piano off the ''net, and the first time a real pianist saw me they asked me what the heck I was doing. I could hit the notes, it was just bad form and bad habits everywhere, and if I ever want to learn to play properly, I''ll have to unlearn all the damage I did to myself."


    I sighed. I was already close to pushing it with him. I didn''t want to cross this line.


    "Athan, look, I might...I...disagree with you...fundamentally. But half-learning something on your own and bringing it into a real fight will probably get you killed. I think that''s probably a bad thing."


    "Such a vote of confidence," he said through an apologetic smile. "Truth be told, I was flipping through this MMA book and was already lost what the point of half of this stuff was. I was halfway to thinking I needed an instructor on that already. But for the electrical stuff--"


    He generated one of his stable current loops in the middle of the room. I felt the heat of it from here and edged away while he stared at it with intensity. It shimmered and sparked and flickered with whatever he was doing.


    "Are you trying to kill us?" I asked him.


    "Huh? No. I mean...I can''t find a teacher for this, you know? It''s just...try things and see what works."


    "And when it works, it kills you? When I talked about this last time and mentioned modifying the internal resistance, do you have any idea what that would do to the temperature in this room? Are you fireproof? Is this house?"


    "No...sorry," he said, and put away the weapon and I felt my posture sag in relief. "Look...I know you''re not my biggest fan, but...you''re super smart, and in all the ways I''m not. Maybe if you were teaching me, I could figure things out safely. Maybe with your help, I could get strong enough to take on Dragon. It''s not for personal power or anything stupid like that, I just want to be able to protect those I care about, I want to be more than nothing next time, I want to be able to not give up. Don''t you think that''s...something you can appreciate? A reason to help me, even if I am Exhuman?"


    I let out a breath. I''d hoped this wouldn''t come up, but here it was.


    I walked forward and took the books from his hands, looking at both of them in turn.


    "My only lesson to you is this -- study your martial arts." I gave him back the black and white book. "Electricity can kill even a prepared professional, it''s nothing to experiment with randomly. Even if you understand how it works, nobody knows how Exhuman powers work. It''s too dangerous." I set the other book face-down on his bed.


    "I need to," he said, his face both earnest and serious. "I need to get stronger. You''re the best shot I have at improving my powers safely."


    "If you need to get stronger, then look to what''s in your hands. I''m not helping an Exhuman become a better killer."


    He looked positively crushed by my words in a way which made me feel far guiltier than I thought was fair. There was no use in mincing words, though. Like he''d said, straightforward, right?


    I looked through the sad face in front of me and forced myself to see the Exhuman behind it. Here was danger, and I wasn''t going to rush into it, or help it escape.


    I wouldn''t be able to forgive myself if I did.


    The world wouldn''t forgive me if I did.


    Mom and Dad and my sister wouldn''t forgive me if I did.


    ...right?

 275. 2252, Present Day. An abandoned building, Las Vegas. Athan.

    As I saw it, the only thing Whitney was absolutely right about was that screwing around in the house was a major fire hazard. Her ideas that I should just stay weak and somehow that''d help everyone...frustrating was the kindest way to put it.


    I understood her opinion. She was probably one who thought that both sides of a conflict deescalating was the best outcome. She''d also probably never been in a fight. When lives were on the line, if the other person started backing off, that was the best time to attack. I was certainly still a naive hippy-dippy moron who believed killing was wrong, but even I knew the value of being prepared for something you''d hope you''d never have to do.


    Her other point, though, was harder to refute. Per her suggestion, I was starting with the martial arts instead of the Exhuman stuff since that did seem a lot more reasonable, and as I waved my hands and stomped my feet on the tiled vinyl flooring feeling more like a mime than a ninja.


    "Arms wider," AEGIS said with a shake of her head, holding out the book for me to see, as though if my arms were a couple inches further apart this incantation would succeed and I would magically summon badassery. I''d asked her to help me find a suitable place, and of course, on hearing there may be a fire hazard, she wouldn''t let me go alone. A pair of fire extinguishers sat by her feet, also an apparent necessity.


    This place was an old, creepy-ass boarded-up corner market in the ghetto, a little appallingly close to the girls'' place. Just a few miles and the colorful pebble yards became chainlink and dirt, the houses became uniformly one-story, and huddled closer but still separate, as though both afraid of being alone and of being together.


    Inside had been cleaned out when the shop closed, and it was dark through the boarded-up windows. Some shelves stood empty at the far ends, but the center of the room was open, tall, with nothing but rust stains to get in the way of my practice.


    My practice which was currently making me feel stupid as anything. I inhaled, and then, as the book indicated, exhaled as I moved in controlled bursts to the next pose, stepping forward with my left foot and then striking straight forward with my left arm, then the same with my right foot and right arm.


    "Lower," AEGIS said, tapping the book. I lowered my arm to punch at waist height. She nodded.


    "I''m gonna be so great at punching Dragon in the dick," I intoned, looking at my fist floating in front of me. "I''m sure he won''t be prepared for that."


    "This was your idea, why are you bitching?" she asked.


    I put my hands down. "You tell me. Do I look like a sweet martial arts master up here?"


    "You look fine. Keep up your forms."


    "AEGIS be serious. I look like a baby that hasn''t realized it has arms yet. And got dropped a few times. On his head."


    "You didn''t expect to be perfect at this immediately, right? Come on."


    "No...I didn''t. It''s just¡­" I looked down and sighed at myself. "It''s what Whitney told me. I can''t get it out of my head. It''s making me second-guess everything here."


    "Whitney doesn''t know what she''s talking about. She''s book smart, but¡­" AEGIS looked down at the book in her hands. "Actually, bad choice in words. What I mean is, all I know about pretty much everything, I learned from reading it off the ''net somewhere, or from my past lives. Obviously I''m pretty capable, huh? You can learn a lot from books, whatever Whitney thinks."


    She stretched so she had one leg straight up with the other planted firmly on the floor. I succeeded in only looking at the piece of cloth in between a little bit. She gave me a very self-satisfied smirk as she slowly retook her footing.


    Little pink hearts, AEGIS? Really? Come on, I was supposed to be focusing here.


    "You''re still a total perv," she said.


    "Anyway, you''re missing the point," I pushed past her utter derailment of the conversation. "You might be able to kick the shit out of most anyone, but obviously it didn''t work on Dragon, did it?"


    She frowned at the one-eighty this took. "That doesn''t prove anything."


    "It validates her opinion. If someone as smart and strong as you can''t learn from a book sufficiently to beat Dragon, what hope do I have?"


    "I could learn from a book," AEGIS said with increasing annoyance. "I can do these stances and stuff. Here, you hold the book a second--"


    "AEGIS, please. It''s not a competition if you''re right or if she''s right. It''s about taking this seriously...enough to improve without anyone going crazy."


    "Yeah," she said, pausing. "Yeah." I wasn''t quite sure if she was talking to me, but I was very sure she wasn''t convinced. "I''ll do it later," she decided.


    I shook my head at her. "I keep thinking of football, and trying to remember what it was like when I started. It was so long ago, but I feel like, I was never learning by myself. Dad or Coach or somebody was always there, telling me what I was doing wrong, even if I thought I was imitating the holovids perfectly. Even if I don''t agree with Whitney, it seems stupid to try to learn on my own when I''m already proof that having an instructor works."


    "Well of course that works," she huffed. "Anyone can learn from an instructor. That''s not the question here. The question is if we can''t learn from a book. And we can."


    "The question is the best way I can learn, period, AEGIS. You''re being an ass."


    "Fine," she said, holding the book up towards me with violent apathy. "Whatever. Just bang your head against it or give up or whatever."


    "You''re so obnoxious--" I took a stance "--when you''re being--" I punched through the air, being mindful to carry the move all the way through "--stupidly competitive."


    "I''m not just being competitive, Athan. My motto is, there''s always a smarter way. Maybe kids in middle school have a few years to screw around in the dojo and piddle their way through stances until they have a yellow belt, but you''re looking for results."


    I did a slow turn and thrust my palm forward. "And you think the book is the best results?" My shoe slapped against the ground with another two quick steps. "Better than a real teacher? Even a dojo piddling out yellow belts?"


    "Well...maybe that was just being competitive," she admitted. "But the fact still remains that you need results better and faster than just screwing around. Like, if we are gonna get you a teacher, it should be a personal instructor, who understands your situation and is preparing you for it instead of just¡­"


    She trailed off, her head wobbling a little as she thought of a proper ending for the thought.


    "Instead of doing it the right way?" I asked.


    "Yeah, pretty much, I guess."


    I stepped and blocked and punched my way through the rest of the motions. It still felt stupid.


    "Next page, please," I asked AEGIS, breathing heavily and feeling sweat creeping at my brow.


    "The book says--"


    "We''re learning fast, not right, aren''t we?"


    She frowned at me and flipped the page. I studied the figures on the next page and tried to assume the basic stance.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "My arms are way up here. I feel like they''re blocking my vision, and I''m gonna get nailed in the gut."


    "Elbows in a straight line with your shoulders," she read. "A lot of striking and blocking with your elbows and knees."


    I tried bringing my elbow down to protect my gut and it felt...okay. Bringing a knee up definitely closed that gap. Still pretty whatever. The book just had me taking the basic stance and doing jabs and front kicks, with AEGIS correcting my form as we went.


    "I feel like--" I blew air out as I kicked forward "--being in the military, I might have had the chance to pick some of this up. Like, shouldn''t I have gone to basic training or something?"


    "Most military branches don''t offer any combatives at all, really," AEGIS answered, spending hardly any time at all looking it up on the ''net. "Unarmed engagements are so much more unlikely than short-ranged gunfights. A few basic techniques, a few knife and anti-knife techniques, and that''s about it. And the XPCA has none of that...anyone who tries to punch an Exhuman probably deserves to blow up. Some stuff for piloting an exosuit, but that''s about it."


    "Still feels like I missed out on something," I grunted, as I kicked again, sending beads of sweat flying across the tile floor. "How can I have been a special XPCA killer without knowing how to punch or kick?"


    "I''m still not clear on why you need to punch and kick when you have powers."


    "You watched the vids, right? How many times did he get past my powers, and then I just stood there while he dumpstered me?"


    "Too many," she frowned.


    "But if I had better footwork, better physical capacity to block and threaten to attack, I could be defended even without my defense. Like a suit of armor, y''know?" I kicked again. "If I''m a harder target, that gives me time to bring my powers to bear. It''s not a matter of choosing one or the other, it''s that...yeah, obviously my powers are exceptional. They''re something no human''s got. I''m trying to survive long enough in a fight to make them count."


    She watched me thoughtfully, and I had to ask her to hold the book steady as she began absently stroking one of her pigtails.


    "Sorry. I was just thinking...of a game AEGIS prime used to play."


    "Sexually Harass Athan?"


    "No," she smiled. "I don''t play with my hair when thinking about that game."


    "Please continue."


    "In Kingdom Blade, Chiho had a tank character who was off-specced ranger. Prime found that build really unexpected but brilliant."


    "I understood like, one of those words, and it was Chiho."


    "She made a character who was really hard to kill, but in an unconventional way. Instead of being really tough like most people did, and just focusing on that, she made one who was pretty tough, but had a bunch of other kinds of protection as well. Being evasive and elusive and using temporary bonuses that could soak a hit and stuff."


    "Okay¡­"


    "And...it worked because every type of defense has weaknesses. If you''re just going flat armor, you get crushed by percentage armor pen and bosses that do single large hits that push through unmitigated--"


    "You''re losing me again."


    "The point is," she said with increased annoyance "I think you''re right. Jesus."


    "Well, you could have just said so."


    She rolled her eyes violently enough I thought I heard her engines crackle to life for a moment there. "I didn''t want you to get a big head, doofus. I''m just...kind of impressed you seem to have given this a lot of thought. It feels like it would make more sense to double-down on your advantage over Dragon and work on your powers, but what you said...well it convinced me, at least."


    "I have given this a lot of thought. While you guys were all worrying about me hiding in my room, I was doing nothing but thinking."


    "And yet it took Saga sending you out for a crab dinner before you realized you could train with a book?"


    I kicked forward again, now definitely at the point where my breathing was turning from heavy to exhausted. "Yeah, well."


    She laughed, and I might have if I didn''t still have another few kicks left to repeat, and then a dozen sets of left-right-kick-knee.


    "This feels better than the karate," I said, feeling the floor sticking to me in a way was was actually really disgusting. I was sweating a puddle on it after I finished and laid down, and I did not want to know how grey that puddle was from dust.


    "Muay thai," AEGIS informed me. "One of the four main striking styles mixed martial arts combatants tend to focus on for its versatility and capability."


    "Neat," I breathed. "What else does the book cover?"


    "For striking, boxing and taekwondo. And then a crapton of grappling and ground stuff."


    "I wonder if I should learn that," I said, looking at myself on the ground. "I don''t think it goes with my strategy very well. If I''m grounded and they''re on me, I''m probably already dead. Plus¡­"


    I channeled some lighting and had it arc freely across my body as it escaped onto the floor, jumping hungrily into my pools of sweat.


    "Yeah, you might be okay on that front," AEGIS agreed. "Maybe practice, I dunno, keeping that current going."


    "Hey, yeah!" I said, sitting up with a gross sucking noise from the floor. "And if I hit someone, I can dump the current into them. Or if they hit me. AEGIS, you''re a genius."


    "Well, I try," she said with a hint of a blush. "I think this technique will call for a sparring partner, and I''m the only shockproof one you''ve got, so hit me up when you''ve got it figured out."


    "Yeah, I will," I said, falling back down and finding the sweat already cold and gross. "Later. Rest now. My legs are like lead."


    "That''s because you overdid it, and that''s because you''re stupid," she informed me. "I told you, the book said one section a day."


    "Oh stop your scolding and carry me home, will you?" I laughed.


    I''d been joking but I also failed to escape before she got her hands on me, and that''s how I wound up being paraded through the ghetto on my girlfriend''s back for a mile before she let me down, her grin as obnoxious as it was triumphant. I think she only let me go because some random dude was catcalling me.


    I walked slowly, stretching out my heavy limbs and realizing that I''d done a lot more kicks with one leg than the other. AEGIS didn''t seem annoyed by my slowing her down, on the contrary she just stayed patiently at my pace, smiling pleasantly, fluttering around with the urgency and warmth of a butterfly.


    "Karu, maybe," she said, suddenly stopping.


    "Karu maybe did what?"


    "Did nothing but...of everyone you know, I think she has the most hand-to-hand training." She didn''t look very excited by her own thought. "Absolutely out of the question of course, but so is the XPCA like you were talking about."


    I thought back to the many times we''d fought and particularly in the context of what I''d trained today...and realized AEGIS might be really right. Karu was never shy about throwing a knee or elbow my way, or in transitioning smoothly from her guns to her wrist-blades to fists as the situation arose. In a lot of ways, that was what I wanted, I guessed, what I saw myself lacking against Dragon. That flexibility that when my powers weren''t in the equation anymore, I could still punch him in the face without hesitation.


    "Yeah, too bad she went off the deep end," I muttered. My thoughts of Karu still wound up in painful betrayal when I dwelled on them too long. I''d been focusing on Dragon as a way of avoiding focusing on Karu, because at least working on the Dragon issue was productive, but then it seemed I''d fucked that up, too. "I just don''t get her. Why she''d do that?"


    AEGIS shrugged. "Me neither. She was always crazy and dangerous as far as I saw it, maybe you''re just catching up to me."


    "Even if I accept that at face value, which I don''t, she still changed."


    She studied me seriously for a second and then pushed her glasses up her nose. "Did you guys ever talk about her hair?"


    "Like, that she shaved it? Only in passing."


    "Hmm. Well this is getting sort of into pop psychology, but it''s also widespread enough to have some credibility, but people trying to recover from trauma often wind up changing their hairstyle drastically. Or their wardrobe, or other superficial things. For more mundane stuff like breakups, this is often a sign that the victim is trying to make a clean break from their own past or change or improve or other relatively positive things."


    "Which isn''t Karu''s situation."


    "No. And that''s where the darker interpretations come in. Survivors of abuse or eating disorders or...self harm...sometimes do as a means of coping with shame about their own bodies. Or as part of a mental breakdown with the inability to cope."


    "Oh."


    "And possibly worst of all, some people feel so disempowered in their own lives that they''ve lost all sense of meaning and agency. To people in situations like that, the smallest changes might be the only control they feel they have left. Cut your hair, because there''s nothing else you can do."


    "That...sounds like what she was saying."


    "Humans are pretty simple sometimes, Athan," she said, pushing up her glasses at me as she peered into my eyes from my side. "Even if it''s nothing sweeping, they need a reason to exist. Feeling meaningless erodes a person''s self, and throws all kinds of questions around in your mind that you might otherwise never ask yourself. Like being unemployed or not having any future direction."


    I hadn''t exactly had a career to speak of, and it wasn''t like I was hankering to go back to being a soldier or a manservant again, but I''d definitely had those moments where I looked at my own future and saw all the nothing that was there. Fortunately, I usually had friends...or at least people trying to kill me to distract me from that void...but had Karu?


    "And you think Karu just stared down her own pointlessness long enough to decide that nothing has a point?" I asked.


    She shrugged. "I can''t say. You just seemed angry and confused and I thought...maybe I can offer something. You seem to cope a lot better with people when you can understand their side of it."


    "I appreciate the try, but I still don''t think I understand. It makes no sense that you could have so much issue killing someone that you conclude the answer is to kill more people."


    "It does if you''re doing everything you can to justify the first kill."


    "I guess."


    She smiled and then very overtly changed the subject for the rest of our trek.

 276. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    The next few days were...odd. AEGIS and I kept up our daily routine of practicing martial arts, though given that we''d shelved working on powers for now, we did a lot of it in the backyard, since I wasn''t going to burn anything down by punching too hard. After we''d both mastered all of the basic movements and blocks, we added a bit of slow-spar in, mostly AEGIS just drilling me on how to move and block as her attacks came at me in slow motion.


    It did a lot for me, as I noticed steady improvement in my ability to reflexively throw out the right response to AEGIS'' attacks. Mentally, just doing something felt great, even if I did still have moments where I thought about just how slow and weak I still was compared to Dragon. But as AEGIS put it, if you stared at the final boss at level one, you''d never beat any game.


    It did a lot for the other girls, I think, to be around and training visibly. Maybe it was just my improving mood...or maybe I was just seeing them through an improving mood, but everyone seemed better off. Lia was bubbling away most days, AEGIS was clearly ecstatic to have a ''thing'' just for the two of us, even Chiho thought it was ''pretty cool''. High praise indeed.


    But not Whitney, of course. Since turning me down as an instructor, we''d hardly spoken, but even one as unobservant as myself could see her interest was completely piqued. If nothing else, she was still here when she had no other business being so, and watched me practice often.


    She''d also apparently taken up the other half of my studies, delving full-bore into electrodynamics, and could often be found in the garage testing out electrical properties with freshly-assimilated machines, or pulling a Moon in the corner behind a thick book or a tablet, doodling out equations and diagrams which looked suspiciously like applications to lightning powers usage.


    I held out hope she''d crack and indulge me with her training, as she obviously seemed to want to do, but the days had slid past without her doing any such thing. Or even talking to me.


    I was outside practicing with AEGIS as usual. Early evening, velvet sky, warm weather, Saga pretending she was another of the roots in the tree. We were midway through sparring, AEGIS kicking at me high and low while I did what I could. A forearm block here, ducking there.


    Slipping, a kind of lazy-looking leaning dodge from boxing was quickly becoming one of my favorites. I''d always favored evasion, since as a quarterback, I wasn''t exactly going to block for myself and had to rely on getting away, and the staccato bursts of movement as I slipped AEGIS'' punches felt natural and tight. It was a full body dodge, turning on the balls of the feet to lean left, right, or back, while keeping yourself centered and ready to counterattack, unlike a dodge as I''d known it until now.


    In fact, I liked a lot of boxing. There was a lot more to it than just punching the other guy in the face, as I''d been learning. My favorite analogy so far had been of twisting the knife -- present yourself broad like the flat of a blade, then when they attacked, twist away one way or the the other to reduce your profile to just the edge, and then cut them with that edge, using the same motion.


    Muay thai was AEGIS'' favorite, and I was unsurprised to learn that technically it was classified as a style of kickboxing, and anything that had ''kick'' in the title immediately had her attention. ''Legs are stronger and have greater reach,'' she''d said like it was the most obvious thing in the world when I asked about it. Given her auto-gyros removing any of the normal issues of balance, and her body''s resistance to fatigue, I guess it was pretty optimal, and the girl did love her optimizations.


    We were just finishing up with some boxing drills when she got a strange look on her face and froze, giving me just long enough for my heart to stop as I connected that reaction with the virus Targa had put in her, that had perished along with her in New Eden.


    But her movement was synchronized with Saga''s, who sat up violently, staring at nothing just as intently as AEGIS.


    "Sorry--" AEGIS said, as her engines kicked on and she bolted into the house in what looked like a single stride. I stood there stupidly, hands still up at my chin for a one-two that never came.


    "Fire," Saga said. "There''s a fire."


    "What?"


    "The garage."


    I looked over and couldn''t see anything. The garage looked normal as ever. Fire? No giant plumes of smoke or jumping flames. An alarm started beeping really loudly, though. I looked back at Saga with alarm of my own.


    She continued without me needing to ask. "Whitney started a fire on accident. More of her electrical experiments. It looks like AEGIS has it under control. Got there early, and the girl has eight fire extinguishers in the house."


    "What happened?"


    "Dang it, Athan, I''m a code-X, not an engineer. Why would I know? All that technobabble in her head is lost on me. Something about trying to overlap three currents out of phase or some bullshit. Trying to figure out how to get more oomph out of your powers, basically. Without having the powers. Or apparently the safe practices to reproduce them."


    "I more meant...like...what happened? Is she okay?"


    "Oh, right, you care about people getting maimed. I always forget that. Mind writing me a little reminder so I remember? Do you have a notepad on you?"


    "I assume by the fact you''re joking around that Whitney''s fine."


    "Eh, a little singed, but fine. Mostly just mad at herself for screwing up an experiment she feels like she shouldn''t have been doing in the first place."


    "Why not?"


    "''Cuz it''s based on your powers, dumbass. And she hates your powers."


    "Thanks for the update, Saga. I''ll see if I can do anything to help." I jogged in and discovered quickly that AEGIS really had taken only one stride. She''d exploded right through the glass door at the back of the house. I sighed and stepped carefully around the wreckage to grab a broom.


    I''d only just gotten the bigger pieces in a bin when Whitney came out, sweat and some streaks of soot on her face. She was breathing through the top of her tank which made it rise up off her belly, revealing the end of her ugly scar under her arm.


    "You okay?" I asked. "I heard there was a fire?"


    She pulled down her shirt and held her throat for a second. "Sorry. My fault entirely. Especially after I said you''d burn the house down. I''m really sorry."


    "No, it''s okay. No harm done?"


    "I dunno. One of the benches is ruined, I think. AEGIS kicked me out because of fumes. Burned up a lot of wires and plastic, and the flames were reaching up into the insulation in the ceiling." She skirted the disaster zone and sat down glumly in the couches. "Sorry again. I hate making excuses, but...I''m useless in there, apparently, so I get to be useless in here instead."


    "Is your neck okay?"


    "Yeah, just inhaled some stuff, I think. Some fire, probably. Burns, but I can still talk and breathe, so not that bad apparently."


    I finished sweeping for the moment and rummaged in the kitchen for a moment before presenting her with a cup of ice water. She spent a few seconds looking at it in my hands before looking at me.


    "I hate that you''re an Exhuman," she said plainly.


    "Uh. Thanks? Me too?"


    She shook her head as she took the cup and drank slowly. "I mean, I hate that it colors my perception of everything about you. Maybe you''re just a nice guy offering me water. Or maybe you''re a power-hungry manipulator who needs my expertise to further your Exhuman ambitions."


    "You''ve gotta know by now, I''m not that good."


    "Yeah well, that either means you''re not, or you''re just really good. And frankly, with how competent you seem at times, and completely incompetent at other times, it''s hard to tell. And harder still when I know my every thought and action is under scrutiny in here. That flame hadn''t exploded for more than five seconds before AEGIS bust in, before the fire alarm even went off." She shook her head again. "And they''re on your side. It''d be too easy for everything you say or do to be a fabrication."The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Can I say something blunt for once?"


    "Always."


    "Isn''t that like, really conceited? To imagine we''re doing all this shit just to fool you? And you don''t strike me as a really conceited person."


    She sipped her water slowly and swallowed it heavily.


    "Yeah, you caught me," she admitted, giving me a small familiar smirk. "I''m just running away from reality again, aren''t I?"


    "Are you?"


    "Well, I either accept that you''re what you appear to be, and I get to reevaluate a lot of notions I''ve held a long time...a long, long time. Or I don''t, and continue on as I''ve always been."


    "Man, there''s a strong theme of accepting or rejecting reality that''s been recurring as long as I''ve been Exhuman," I laughed. "AEGIS, Karu, Saga, Lia, Chiho, and me...we''ve all had to face that at some point or another. It''s not easy, and none of us were really the type to avoid reality in the first place." I frowned. "Except Karu, I guess, in the end."


    She handed me back the glass and stood up, picking up my broom and dragging it deliberately along the kitchen tile. I felt kind of useless sitting here now, but better me than her, I suppose.


    "It''s not like I avoid reality," she said to the ground as she swept. "I just don''t ...see the point in...confronting it?"


    I laughed. "You are like, one of the most confrontational people I know. You always say exactly what you''re thinking, you just said you hate excuses, you don''t mince your words or hide your opinions."


    "Being direct and always saying everything you''re thinking isn''t the same thing. I''m not so insufferable that I need to make sure everyone always knows my every inane thought." She smirked at me as her hands stopped for a moment. "When''s the last time we spoke?"


    "A few days now, I guess. I thought you didn''t want to talk to me."


    "I didn''t. You''re uncomfortable to talk with, given the situation. So I don''t. Not confronting reality, right? Kinda sounds like I''m hiding from you, I suppose. But I''d charitably give myself the perspective that I''m just...transcendent."


    "Uh huh. Very charitable there. Very divine."


    "No, not a god, just that I want to believe I''m above that stuff. Talking to you wouldn''t accomplish anything but, I don''t know, smoothing over feelings or something. Something trivial, so why bother?"


    I didn''t know how to respond exactly, and she began sweeping again which made me think the conversation was wrapping up, but I didn''t want us to spend the next few weeks still not talking. Even if it was ''trivial''.


    "I think I understand," I said. "You''re really big on like, don''t sweat the small stuff? Same reason you don''t really...mince words?" I was trying to be engaging and complimentary, but fuck if I knew what I was doing. I expressed an interest in your brain, converse me!


    "I guess," she said. The sound of the bristles on the floor seemed to echo in the relative silence of the smoke alarm blaring in the next room.


    Well that went perfectly.


    "I don''t get you," I said, dropping all pretenses, and going for the direct, honest approach, like she would. "You obviously are into this stuff, you study and sketch and experiment all day, all the crazy electrified weaponized ideas you dream of, but I''m a guy who can literally pull lightning out of his ass if he wanted, and you don''t even talk to me."


    "You''re an Exhuman. I thought my distaste was obvious."


    "And you''re human!" I said, throwing my hands in the air. "You''re as capable of building electric death weapons as I am, and I don''t shun you in the fear you might be evil and awful."


    "Hmm," she said, stopping sweeping again and looking at me. She didn''t seem like she blinked as much as a normal person, which really just accentuated how her eyes flickered back and forth as she looked at you.


    If she was going to say or do more than that, I never found out, because at that moment, the fire alarm finally stopped, and as we turned to look, the garage door opened with a bang and AEGIS stomped out, one fire extinguisher under her arm, one in her hands. They dropped to the floor with a cacophony of clangs and clatter as she stomped her way over to Whitney and cornered the girl, hands on hips.


    "What in the hell did you think you were doing in there?" she yelled at Whitney, who lowered her head like a berated dog. "From what I put together, that whole setup was a fireball waiting to happen."


    "I was just...testing a three-phase setup to see what the expected thermal output might be...if Athan could master that."


    "Well the thermal output was enough to burn down a bench, melt half a machine, and start a fire in the wall. So fucking hot, I''d say is your answer."


    "Sorry."


    AEGIS made a guttural noise as she stomped forward and yanked the broom out of her hands. "No! Not sorry. Sorry isn''t good enough!"


    "I don''t know what else you want me to do. I tried to help."


    "Yeah, by standing in a fire, unprotected. You were going to burn out your throat, you idiot. What were you even thinking? Maybe you''ve been studying Athan too long, but killing yourself over a problem doesn''t actually help."


    "Hey," I said. "I''ve never once killed myself."


    "It should have been fine, though," Whitney protested. "The resistors, the wires, the circuit, everything was graded for those voltages. It was going to get hot, but nothing was supposed to melt."


    "Did you happen to check the ignition point of the wooden bench you were using?"


    Whitney''s head hung lower.


    "AEGIS, everything turned out fine though, right?" I said, stepping up. "She made a mistake...a big one, sure--"


    "It is not fine," she said, whipping around so fast her twintails twisted like vipers. "If you and I were out training, the whole garage might have gone down."


    "And...that would be bad...but at the end of the day, it''s just stuff. You guys are what matter. The fire alarm was working, Saga noticed right away through Whitney and could have gotten everyone out--"


    "Everyone, huh? Everyone?" AEGIS narrowed her eyes dangerously at me as she stalked forward. "How about AEGIS Prime, Athan? Who''d rescue her?"


    "What?"


    "The servers in the garage. All that remains of her memories and legacy. All the knowledge I need to become a more complete person, my life, my dreams, my ambitions, gone, all because she--" AEGIS pointed a finger backwards at Whitney "--wants to play Exhuman and burn it all down."


    "Jesus, AEGIS, calm down," I said, but Whitney was already moving.


    "Where do you think you''re going?" AEGIS barked.


    "To...the garage. To get my things."


    "Nobody goes in there until we get an inspector out to verify the wall''s not coming down."


    "But--"


    "I don''t care! Go to your room!"


    "The garage...was¡­my room..."


    "Go to my room, it''s fine, Whitney," I said. "I''ll talk to AEGIS."


    Whitney gave me the smallest of grateful nods and then fled as fast as I''d ever seen her move. Maybe she really was non-confrontational.


    "What the hell, AEGIS?" I asked. "You''re like, her only friend period, and you rip her head off for making a mistake."


    "Those servers were fifteen feet from that fire, Athan. Fifteen feet."


    "And they were fine, weren''t they?"


    "Only barely!"


    "Then for the sake of a friend, let it go."


    She glared at me incredulously, pushing up her glasses and crossing her arms as she puffed herself up. "I''m sorry, I know we don''t see eye-to-eye on what constitutes a person, but if she set a fire that was fifteen feet away from burning up Lia, would you forgive her so readily?"


    "That''s not--"


    "Oh, it''s the same. AEGIS Prime is like a sister to me. The data in those servers is her, on ice. I could pull that out and stick it in a Rua model and she''d be as alive as I am. And she almost was erased just now, Athan. Because of Whitney fucking around with stupid bullshit. You expect me not to be pissed?"


    "I expect you," I said, taking a deep breath to counteract how angry I was feeling at her "to realize that people make mistakes, and friends forgive each other for them."


    She stared at me, posture leaned forward, fists shaking straight down. I could almost hear her teeth grinding as she glowered. She screamed something like ''GAARAAUA!'' and spun, throwing the broom through the other, unbroken glass of the back door with a crash.


    [Hey, watch it!]


    AEGIS stomped and pounded her feet into the glass, and I watched with horror as the soles of her feet split apart into a shredded, morbid mess of dangling synthetic skin. After long moments, she curled up on her feet and squeezed her head to her knees. Fetal position, on her feet. After a minute I thought I heard her crying.


    "Are you crying?" I asked, stupidly. Because that was the smartest thing to say when a girl was crying.


    "My feet hurt, okay? Fuck you."


    "I''m sorry," I said, but she just flipped a gesture at me. Gradually, the offending arm receded, and then eventually, so did AEGIS, walking outside through the broken windows to retrieve the broom and start sweeping.


    "She didn''t mean to," I said.


    "I know."


    "It was an accident. She won''t do it again."


    "I know."


    "I''m sorry, too."


    AEGIS stopped sweeping and stared at me over her glasses. "Say what you want, Athan, but I know how pissed you''d be if one of us almost killed Lia out of ineptitude. This wasn''t...maybe...the best outlet for my anger, but don''t you fucking dare pretend you''d be any better. AEGIS Prime was my big sister, and she almost died today."


    I thought back to how I''d broken my wrist impotently punching the ground when I thought Saga died. I guess I could hardly fault AEGIS for stomping around in some glass like a moron.


    "I understand. I would be mad. Do you want help cleaning up?"


    She sighed as she surveyed the damage. "No...this will give me plenty of time to cool down. Sorry for breaking shit and yelling. Just...leave me alone for a while. Go tell Whitney I don''t hate her, please."


    "I will."


    And feeling very much like Whitney looked when she escaped, so did I.

 277. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Whitney was just standing stock still in my room behind a closed door, looking like she scarcely remembered how to breathe. I felt a twinge of guilt when I remembered the last time I saw her like this. She''d brought up my parents, and I''d had a mental breakdown about how shitty my life currently had been, and how shitty my upbringing had been, and had yelled at her, prompting a very similar retreat.


    "AEGIS is just cleaning up. She gets her stress out by working. Absolutely never bother her when she''s doing it," I said, reciting what I''d learned from Saga, months and months ago.


    "I understand," Whitney said. "Um. Should I...go out through the window then or¡­?"


    "Go out?"


    "To leave."


    "Leave?"


    "Yes."


    I blinked at her. "Why would you leave?"


    "I really offended her, from the sound of it. I don''t think she''d want me around anymore. I almost...killed her sister, she said. I burned up her machines, I threatened her home, the garage might not be structurally sound..."


    "So you''d just leave?" I laughed.


    "I don''t...understand why you''re laughing. I am actually sort of offended."


    "Whitney, is this why you don''t have any friends? You mess up and run away? She''s gonna forgive you."


    "Why? She doesn''t owe me anything. I messed up, and there''s nothing I can do to repay her."


    "Man, you''re really messed up," I said, glad for a moment this was Whitney I was talking to here, and I could say whatever I wanted. "Did you have any friends as a kid?"


    "Not...particularly. Some, I guess. This is still kind of offensive."


    "Look, dude, just give it a day to blow over, and apologize tomorrow and it''ll work out, okay? I can''t believe I''m the one giving you advice here."


    "You don''t need to give me advice. I''m fine on my own. I''ll just leave and not make any waves."


    "Yeah too late for that. AEGIS would be super pissed if you left over this. Not to mention Lia, if you vanished when she wasn''t even home, never even saying bye, she''d probably take it pretty personally."


    Whitney seemed to float there for a moment and then gradually sat down in a heap.


    "I''ve made a huge mess," she mumbled.


    "Sort of. Not really that big. You just threatened something AEGIS loves."


    "What is AEGIS Prime, if I may ask?" she said, turning towards me. I went over and sat on the floor by her, stretching my legs out in front of me.


    "AEGIS Prime was...I guess not the original AEGIS, but the...latest one? The real one. The AEGIS out there, she was an earlier version. She turned herself off and uploaded to a new body, and that body was AEGIS Prime. Prime and I spent months together after that, she learned to cook, how to code herself, we fought and laughed together, overcame enemies. Someone was hacking her, another version of AEGIS actually...it''s complicated...but in the end, we beat that someone, but Prime died protecting me while doing so."


    I let out a slow breath and banged my head slowly against the wall. "So we dug up the older version, but she''s not the same. AEGIS Prime is who I loved, it''s who we all loved, she even got on well with Saga and Karu, and it''s who this AEGIS wants to be."


    "And AEGIS Prime is stored on the servers in the garage?"


    "Backups of her, from before she was infected with the hack, and also all of her memories from her entire life."


    "I see. I didn''t know there was someone so precious in there."


    I smiled at her. "Not going to ask why AEGIS doesn''t just upgrade to Prime?"


    "I would never. Although I did just hear the screaming that she sees them as sisters. But I know probably better than most how a software update can completely change a machine''s personality. Sometimes they just aren''t the same being anymore after."


    "I thought so," I said. It was funny how Whitney and AEGIS'' view on robot life was so similar, and so different.


    After the silence went on long enough to indicate I was in the clear to change subjects I asked, "Is it cool if I ask you something?"


    "Always."


    "Why are you so interested in my powers?"


    She scoffed a little. "They''re cool, friendo. Aren''t they?"


    "Well, yeah, but like, you''re not out there drawing up plans to get Saga optimized. Oh God, I just had a thought of Saga with refined powers. That''d be horrifying."


    I felt a twinge of laughter from somewhere in the backyard which contrasted starkly with the look on Whitney''s face. "Probably how I feel about you?"


    "I mean, she''s kind of...really dangerous."


    "And you aren''t?"


    "Her least favorite part of killing is laundry. Her favorite part is the noises. We''re not in the same league."


    [I do love the noises.]


    Whitney held her head and closed her eyes like that would make it go away, while I mentally blasted Saga with the most annoying sounds I could imagine.


    "Never...never boring here, is it?" Whitney laughed nervously.


    "No, it''s never that, that''s for damn sure. Anyway, what I meant was, like...what are you doing, in messing around with all this electricity stuff? Why are you reading up, and taking notes, and experimenting? What''s the point?"


    She shrugged. "What''s the point in anything? My life until now as screwing around in a workshop with any idea that caught my fancy. This is just more of the same."


    "You''re not like...gonna...decide to become my teacher and give me all these great new techniques?"


    She blinked at me. "No."


    "Bah. I had hopes you would. I didn''t know why else you''d be doing all this."


    She leaned back and looked up, making her straight, black hair cascade around her shoulder and revealing the faded purple streaks in it. "No...just...my latest obsession, I guess. Sorry to mislead you."


    "Literal obsession?"


    "Maybe. I''ve been thinking of more and more applications nonstop. I know you think I''ve just been avoiding you these last few days, but a big part of it is just being busy with my ideas."If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Yeah, I get that. Things are always exciting when you start out. I had a dream about kickboxing yesterday. I think I''ve been studying martial arts as hard as you''ve been working on electrodynamics," I laughed.


    She gave me a smirk. "Maybe."


    Again the conversation drifted away, but this time it was she who changed the subject. "Athan, are you a good Exhuman?"


    "Defining good and bad isn''t easy unless you''re Moon."


    "Do you think you''re good?"


    I looked at her, with her face of nonjudgemental curiosity. I knew what she wanted me to say, and it might even be really important to say it, for the sake of our relationship.


    But that wasn''t me. "No, not really."


    "Really? I thought the whole point of this kidnapping exercise was to show me how good you were?"


    "Yeah. And I have, and I am. This is how good I am." I spread my arms wide for her to get a full look. "I am as good as I appear. I try, very hard, to do what I think is right. But I still don''t know if that''s good or not."


    "You don''t think right and good are the same thing?"


    "I don''t know," I said, shaking my head. I began counting on my fingers. "I failed to protect Mage, a thirteen year-old girl on my squad. I tried to save the life of a dying Exhuman kid, whose existence might have destroyed the reputation of the XPCA. I attacked both the rebels of New Eden who were just looking for a way to all the equality and justice I''d promised them, as well as the XPCA guards just doing their jobs. I murdered an XPCA officer who might have stopped the Exhuman threat once and for all. And I led who I thought was my friend right to her victims, whom she murdered with intel I let slip."


    "Wait, I don''t even know you that well and I know you''re leaving out a lot."


    "Well, you asked whether I think I''m good or bad, and I gave you the reasons I think I''m bad. I don''t have to be exhaustive, arguments don''t work that way."


    She smirked at me but it faded fast. "Again, not the answer I expected, and that makes me feel like I have to second-guess you."


    "If I said yes, I''d be lying, and if I said no, I''d be playing mind games with you to get sympathy?"


    "Sort of."


    "Doesn''t seem like I have a lot of winning options there, does it?"


    "Maybe if you were charming as heck."


    "Nah, then you''d just be like, this guy''s too charming, he must be up to something."


    "Probably. Sucks to be you, doesn''t it?"


    I laughed. "Yeah, sure does, sometimes. Want to hear something that will definitely convince you I''m a bad guy?"


    "No. But yes."


    I leaned forward and rested my chest against my upturned knees. "I went back to my parents'' house not too long ago. After I turned...Dad had...kind of a mental breakdown. They were kind of clingy and controlling, and I guess finding out their prized son was an Exhuman was more than he could take."


    "Oh. This is why you were mad."


    "Yeah, kinda. Dad turned abusive, beat the crap out of Mom and Lia. Mom did nothing to protect her. Just watched her own husband hitting her own daughter." I felt my chest getting tight and forced myself to move on. "Well, Saga was there, she just wanted to kill them because they hurt me and she''s a good friend in a twisted way. I told her no, told her to mess with Dad''s head, make him treat Mom really well for the rest of his life, even if it makes him effectively a zombie slave."


    "Jesus, Athan."


    "Yeah. So that''s what I''d do to my own father. But then again, he deserves it, every bit of it. We''re a lot alike in that one day, we just woke up and our world was over. But I tried to move on and do my best, and he decided to take it out on the people who loved and trusted him most. So yes, it sucks to be me sometimes." I grinned at her. "But sometimes, you get to use your powers where they deserve to be used, and it''s not so bad at all."


    As I''d talked, her face had gone through disgust to indignation to that curiosity again, where it remained for long seconds as she stared me down. Finally she spoke.


    "I was...seven, I think, when my family died. Nothing special, nothing personal, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One minute we were all in the car, my mom and dad in the front, my sister next to me, and then...then I saw the ground just...exploding. A shockwave that tossed cars in the air and made pillars of the road shoot upwards. I remember the car dipped sideways, and then this wave of pressure...so strong...it left me bruised, from head to toe."


    She swallowed hard and broke off her gaze, looking down at her feet instead. Her boots, perpetually unzipped, seemed to droop off of her.


    "They all just burst. The whole car was...blood. I didn''t...know. I kept screaming. I never even saw the Exhuman. I don''t know what town we were driving through or why, or anything. It was just violent and pointless, and that''s how I''ve always imagined Exhumans to be. I had a hard life after that for a long time, I spent a lot of time blaming that Exhuman for everything, but in high school, I grew up. I realized I was just an angry, ignorant, blame-shifting person, regardless of what happened in my past, and I had to stop being those things. Even if I had the worst past in the world, if I never moved past it, then I may as well have died in that car with them."


    "I''m sorry, Whitney."


    She sighed, but otherwise seemed unmoved by her words or memories. "I guess what I''m trying to say is, I''ve always seen Exhumans one way, and I don''t think you''re that way. Violent and pointless, like my family''s deaths. So...I''m sorry, I guess. You seem to have a lot of reasons for everything you do, even if I don''t know if I agree, I can''t pretend I haven''t judged you harshly."


    "Thanks. It means a lot coming from you." I grinned at her. "And now that I have earned that sliver of approval, we''re done here. I got what I needed from you, you may go."


    She blinked at me in confusion. "Really?"


    "I''m only kidding. Joudan, as Moon would say."


    "Oh, good. Because I was all ready to teach you all my new techniques I''d thought up, and it''d be ridiculous if you kicked me out before then."


    "Woah. Really?"


    She winked at me from behind her plastic frames. "Joudan. As Moon would say?"


    "Oh that''s just cruel."


    "Never happening. Upgrade from thoughtless and violent to just violent is still not good enough."


    "Ugghhh, so cruel."


    "Well, I should go," she said, rising. "Though, admittedly, I''m not sure where."


    "AEGIS is probably still out there working. I wouldn''t uh...bother her."


    "I have also been forbidden from entering the garage," she mused. "Lia is still out, do you think she would mind if I stayed there for a night?"


    "Yeah, actually. She''s kind of particular about her sleep. Look, just sleep here, it''s fine. Take the bed."


    "Is that...really fine?"


    I shrugged. "Why not? I''ve slept on much worse than carpeted floor. I''ve got blankets and shit. Knock yourself out." I smiled. "Literally, I guess."


    "I hope you''re not just being nice for my sake. I am...very tired. Up too late last night with the calculations for the experiment which failed today, and then stress like today just wipes me out. You are sure you don''t mind?"


    "I really don''t. Just uh, don''t step on me or Tem in the morning."


    "Is Tem here?"


    "Assume that unless otherwise specified, Tem is always here," I laughed. "She''s like fleas."


    "That doesn''t seem like a very nice comparison," Whitney said with a small frown. "Maybe more like...um...a favorite mechanical pencil."


    I half-smirked at her. "Man, you were a nerd in school, weren''t you?"


    "I am fleas if Chariot says I am!" Tem argued from the direction of the door.


    I made myself a crude nest and Tem curled up at my feet like a stray dog. Whitney only got so far as taking off her glasses and shoes before yawning and collapsing into the bed. Seemed nobody was interested in going out and provoking AEGIS'' displeasure, though I wondered how much of our conversation she''d watched on drone.


    With a start, I realized that a lot of things I''d said about her when talking about AEGIS Prime weren''t...very¡­flattering. I''d just shooed the drones out of here not too long ago...but a sweep revealed there was definitely one up there. I just had to hope she wasn''t listening, though something told me she was.


    Fuck, I was an idiot. A big, insensitive idiot.


    I laid there dwelling on my mistakes long after we put the lights out and Tem was snoring softly. I was trying to remember everything I''d said and how it might hurt AEGIS, but the specifics probably weren''t important. Just the fact that I''d defined AEGIS Prime as the one I loved was enough.


    "Still up, friendo?" Whitney whispered from the bed.


    "Yeah. Just thinking. What''s up?"


    "If you are what you seem to be...I don''t think you''re a bad guy. Everybody makes mistakes, and friends forgive you, right?"


    "Right."


    She didn''t say anything else, but hesitated for a moment in what might have been giving me a smirk, before she rolled over and went to sleep.


    Before I followed suit, I went through all the striking surfaces from my martial arts book, and mentally catalogued the different angles they could come from and how to block or slip each one. When I finished, I started over. This is how I''d been falling asleep most nights.


    And this night was no exception. What was an exception however, was what happened that night, with Whitney and me sleeping together. Something bizarre and unexplainable, a night that would change my life and that I''d obsess over every thought and detail for weeks.


    That night changed me forever, and at the time, I didn''t even know it.

 278. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    A month and a half had passed since that night. So many things had changed, I didn''t even know what was the same anymore.


    I was outside a classroom, laughing and talking with my friends. Alyssa, the girl in flannel with incredibly long brown hair, the color and shape of a crinkle-cut french fry. Darris, who was dark and had a big nose and collected music on optical disk because, in his words, that was the ''true'' sound. Sebastian, who was too goofy for my tastes, but just the nicest damn guy. And others.


    Class had just gotten out. We were lingering, waiting for the last member of our group to join us before we all headed to get food together. It was a nice April day, for California standards, where seasons were often broken into ''summer'' and ''really hot summer'', a nice breeze was coming in from the west which made it just a little less hot and a little less dry.


    The class was a GE course, one of those mashups of history and social awareness that was trying to be hip and progressive. So basically, nobody really paid too much attention because it was an easy A and a GE. The course did have the advantage of a lot of group work -- another symptom of the ''hip progressive'' element, and so it had sufficed to get us all meeting each other and winding up friends.


    Maybe that was the real goal. Maybe college administrators were secretly geniuses. I kind of doubted it. But given that the quarter had only started a week ago and we already had our feet under us to a degree, that indicated that someone was doing something right.


    "Where is that girl? I''m hungry," Darris complained.


    "Maybe the TA was hungry too, and ate her!" Sebastian laughed. At least he amused himself.


    "Well if he doesn''t regurgitate her and she walks out in the next like, five seconds, I''m outta here. I didn''t eat breakfast, and I only have an hour until my next class," Darris said.


    "Take off if you want, man. No biggie," I shrugged.


    "Nah. She''s got four seconds still."


    "Who does? Until what?" We turned and saw the girl we were waiting for emerge from the room. "Sorry, I had too many questions for the TA and he said come to office hours." She gave an apologetic smile.


    I returned the smile and ruffled up her hair with my hand, prompting her to stick out her tongue at me.


    "Good timing, Lia. Darris was about ready to eat his own arm, I think."


    "Is that why college costs an arm and a leg?" Sebastian laughed. Lia laughed along with him, but I think they were the only ones as we headed towards the dining hall.


    As we walked, Alyssa sidled up on my side opposite Lia and began as she often did, with a small smile, like she was embarrassed of it. "Hi, Athan."


    "Heya, Alyssa."


    "Did ya finish that assignment for EE?"


    "Yeah, it was no problem. Though someone made it more difficult than it needed to be by messaging me for hours yesterday," I grinned at her. She made an embarrassed giggle, and I caught sight of Lia making a disgusted face before she abandoned my side to catch up to the others.


    "Did I say somethin''?" she asked.


    "Nothing I noticed. Probably just wanted to talk to the guys."


    "It''s so crazy that even though it''s yer first quarter here, ya''ve already got classes in yer major. My first quarter was all fluff."


    "Well, that happens when you transfer in the middle of spring quarter apparently. All the preliminary stuff offered in the first two quarters and...here I am just kinda skipping it for now."


    "Helps ya''ve got a major picked out...I''m forever undeclared."


    "You seemed pretty interested in electrical engineering last night. Maybe give that a shot? We might even wind up in the same classes."


    She gave an embarrassed little laugh as we continued onward, and within a few minutes were walking between salad bars, craning our necks up at holo-menus floating above lines of students who hadn''t waited after class got out. I headed for the grill and Alyssa followed, the rest of our crew disappearing into the crowd.


    I waited for her with a burger and some fries before we got in line to pay, but on the way there, she stopped dead, looking at the food on the plate on her bright orange tray. I followed her concerned gaze.


    "That''s a hamburger," I said.


    "Hah...yeah it is."


    "Aren''t you vegetarian? You ordered a veggie burger."


    "It''s fine," she said with an embarrassed smile. "I''ll just...eat around it. Get...some lettuce and tomatoes from the salad bar, maybe."


    "That''s not what you ordered though. You''re gonna pay for it? Seriously?"


    "Yeah, it''s fine."


    It wasn''t fine. It was stupid. I took a step towards her which made her stand up straight and freeze, and picked her plate off her tray. She barely got out another small meep before I cut through the line for the grill, ignoring the protests of those in it.


    "Hey, excuse me?" I shouted over the counter at another student in a work uniform. "Hi, this was supposed to be a veggie burger, not a regular. Do you think you fix that for me? Thanks."


    The guy apologized and took the plate away, and a few minutes later, Alyssa was staring down at a steaming lump of vegetative mash between buns with hearts in her eyes. The second we rang up our school credit chits and headed towards the table where the others were waiting, she veritably pounced on me.


    "That was so~oo cool!" she said, bouncing in her stride enough to endanger her hard-won prize. "I can''t believe ya did that for me!"


    "I mean...it was nothing. It''s their job to take our orders, and generally they want to get it right, don''t they?"


    "But ya didn''t wait in line or anythin'', ya just walked right up there, cool as anything, didn''t even blush to talk to the guy."


    I didn''t think it was a big deal at all. Nothing that would make me hesitate for a moment, but it seemed like a very big deal to her. When we sat down, Sebastian asked her what she was talking about, and so the whole table got a recitation of the events, a lot more dramatically than I remembered them. Lia spent the whole time twirling pasta on a fork and looking at me like I was scum, which I didn''t think I deserved.


    Finally, we were due to split up. Time on campus moved in discrete hour chunks as classes started and ended, and we were reaching the end of that hour. Alyssa and Darris had class, Sebastian had homework, and that left Lia and me sitting alone with our trays and the demolished remains of the relatively crap food which had once inhabited them.


    Almost as soon as the others were gone, she turned on me. "The heck, dude," she said, her eyes boring a hole in me with half-lidded disgust.


    "You''ve been giving me this glare all day. What did I do? Did I made a joke that offended you or something?"


    "No, you''re breaking hearts again, while AEGIS is waiting for you at home."


    "I am? What?" I threw my mind around looking for what she was talking about. "Alyssa? Because of the burger?"This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    "No, dummy. You guys were messaging all night? She asked you all sorts of questions about yourself and your major? And your homework? No girl cares about your homework, Bro. Get a freaking clue."


    "She''s picking a major. She''s interested in EE."


    "She''s interested in you, dumbnut. How is it possible for you to be this dense? How is it possible for you to attract girls like some kind of honey stud? I don''t get it."


    I shook my head. "You''re wrong, Lia. She''s just a friendly girl."


    The silverware jumped as Lia''s forehead made contact with the table. She made a frustrated noise that caused a few onlookers to gawk momentarily.


    I looked at her with sympathy. Maybe she was right. She had an unerring streak with this kind of thing, and I certainly didn''t. But at the same time, I really didn''t see it at all. Rather than just argue that she was wrong, I tried to suss out maybe why we disagreed.


    "Lia, she''s never like, asked me out, or followed me back to our place, or told me she likes me or anything. We talk, yeah, about mundane stuff like school, and what we want to do after we graduate, and what our families were like."


    She turned her head and looked at me sideways. "Bro, you''re so messed up."


    "What? I''m serious."


    "That stuff might be mundane to us, but that''s regular people''s lives. That is serious stuff. Those are things people would talk about on dates and junk. And you''re using AEGIS and Saga and Karu as a social calibration mechanism, and that''s just way outta whack."


    I blinked at her and repeated myself. "What? I''m serious."


    She sighed. "Normal girls don''t express an interest in a guy by...jeez, should I make a list? AEGIS cut you open and then performed surgery to put you back together. Karu did strafing runs on AEGIS'' compound to liberate you. Saga turned you into some kind of sex puppet that one time...you can''t seriously expect normal people to act like they do."


    I realized, if anyone was listening to our conversation, they had to be assuming we were talking about a TV show or something at this point. Ours truly was not a normal life.


    "Well, yeah, obviously. But normal girls do drop hints and tell you they like you and ask you on dates and stuff. It''s not all bombings and lobotomies."


    "Bro, that girl was dropping so many hints I''m surprised you can still breathe under their weight. Tell me, what constitutes a hint to you?" She leaned back and waited smugly.


    "Like...well...like, I learned that Moon likes me, and then I noticed that she always comes over all the time for no reason. That''s a hint. Or...or how Karu would change in the same room as me. That''s a hint too!"


    "Again. A girl literally living in your house, and a girl literally stripping for you. Want to throw AEGIS watching you sleep in there? Just accept the fact you''re kinda broken here, bro. You''re way busted when it comes to normal female interaction."


    "I have you," I muttered. "You''re normal."


    She laughed, stood up, and patted me on the shoulder with the hand not gripping her tray. "Nice try, dude. But not really." And so saying, she walked off and left me alone.


    As much as I''d been arguing with her, I couldn''t say I really cared that much who was right or not. If I were...somewhat off-kilter, did that matter? It''s not like I was the one chasing down girls and subjecting them to my whims. If a girl was giving me the signs or not, if I caught them or not, it wasn''t going to change anything.


    It just seemed easier to not worry about things now. The dread, the self-loathing, the stress of everything was just...so much lighter now. It wasn''t gone, Dragon was still out there, biding his time, the XPCA was still kind of a pile of shit, though they''d shored up the rest of the mess with New Eden, and I hadn''t heard much else out of there recently, except that it was still miserable. The P-Force was still active, though there hadn''t been an event which required an Exhuman''s touch in a bit. It felt almost certain that good run of luck was soon to expire.


    But even with that, my life personally just felt better. There really was only one new obsession which had rolled in to replace all the old. One I was going to indulge now, as I did whenever I had a free moment, it felt.


    I unzipped my backpack with little effort and pulled out three heavy books, spreading them on the able in front of me. Two were textbooks for my major, the third was just some light reading I''d picked up on the same subject after speaking with one of my professors. I broke out a pad of paper I''d been scribbling on, and marveled for a minute at just how well it passed as the insane scratchings of a madman.


    That night, that inexplicable night over a month ago, it felt like half of me had left myself, and in its place, this yearning. I felt like the protagonist of an H.P. Lovecraft story, suddenly stricken with forbidden knowledge while I slept, except my knowledge wasn''t forbidden or madness-inducing, it was freely out there, they made coursework to study it. It''d even chosen a variation of it as my major.


    It blew my mind that just a short while ago, I was struggling with all these different directions I was being pulled in, and that I''d managed to for the first time...in my whole life really, be able to choose my own path...and had no idea what path to pursue.


    I mean, the choice was obvious, wasn''t it? Go the way I wanted to originally. Go to college. Play sports. Study electronics, electricity, computers. Make friends again, live a normal life. If that was within my grasp, why wouldn''t I head that way?


    AEGIS had been ecstatic, and within a few days, a few drones in a couple datacenters, and a few taps on her floating keyboard, and my transfer in for spring quarter was accepted. It seemed...too easy. I expected...I don''t know, an Exhuman to blow up the school or something before I got there.


    But here I was. A week in, making friends, winning hearts if Lia was to be believed, studying electrical engineering...and tryouts were beginning next week. I couldn''t help but to smile as I pored over my textbook, several chapters ahead of where we were in class already.


    Maybe she was right. Maybe my normalcy calibrators were completely broken. Everything here felt so easy, so free. I''d needed to arrange transportation to get to and from our off-campus housing, and instead of paying half a million credits to some Exhuman who could only work when your back was turned, I''d waited two minutes in line to get a bus sticker put on my school ID. A literal, physical, paper sticker. Not digital or anything. It was amazing.


    Amazing how easy everything was, when you were doing things you were actually intended to do. Everything here was made simple, from eating, to getting to and from class, to looking up assignments and schedules...college was an introduction course to independent living, and so things like that were designed to be easy. I''d learned it all the hard way already, while juggling being an Exhuman and all that entailed...and it was just...glorious, revelling in how little was expected of me, for once.


    I wound up spending most of two hours there without noticing. Like AEGIS when she worked, I guess, and didn''t seem to acknowledge the passing of time. My mobile buzzed and let me know that my next class was beginning. Math, which was of course, everyone''s favorite, and engineering-level math, so none of the others would be in there, either.


    I closed up my books and gave my notes a final, contented once-over before packing it all away and heading out the glass doors.


    The campus was laid out as though by two people; one who loved tall buildings and was trying to recreate the LA skyline, and one who loved walkways and broad venues, with sparse trees and concrete paths dissecting grassy patches. The two did not agree, and so the school was positively schizophrenic in whether you were out in a park, or walking in a claustrophobic alley between skyscrapers, unified only by their mutual love of concrete in all things.


    I preferred the darker paths. Maybe if I''d never been an Exhuman, I might have stayed out and enjoyed the sun, but my paranoia always went off when I was in the open now...the nagging voice in my mind saying things were too good, and life was too simple, and wouldn''t it be absolutely apropos if that were all to come to a violent end with a single sniper round, or some kid IDing me from the news.


    Which had, admittedly, happened once before. Saga was handy to have around. Really didn''t help with the paranoia though.


    I was almost to my class, still a few minutes early, when my mobile buzzed inaudibly again, and I stopped to take a glance. Again, a little paranoia, I wasn''t going to walk around with my face buried in my mobile and risk bumbling into something.


    But I didn''t need to bump into anything to find trouble. Not when it could dial me whenever it wanted.


    > Event out of Chicago, meet at 11th and State in 35 minutes


    From Cosette. Terse and impersonal, as our relationship had been now. I really had myself to blame for that, but now wasn''t the time. Instead, I began contacting people, letting them know what was up. Rito, for transportation, Lia and AEGIS to cover my tracks, and Whitney.


    Messages back and forth began coming in as I managed the five-way conversation as best I could. Organizing and coordinating weren''t exactly my thing, but as the one point of contact between everyone, it just kind of fell to me. AEGIS expressed worry, as she always did, Lia was confident in us, in the P-Force, sure that we''d make the world safer and bring back another win.


    I didn''t have the mind for predicting outcomes. I just wanted to get everyone moving and on the same page and meshing. But even as I did, I felt that calling, couldn''t help but to think about the insane sprawl of circuitry in my hands as I typed and responded, think of my friends'' time as discharging voltages, being combined and stepped up together so that more joules of work could be managed than by one source alone. Circuit diagrams rose unbidden in my mind, which both amused and scared me.


    And then, with a snap of my mobile closing, it was over. I took a few deep breaths, checked the time again, and found the whole ordeal had taken only four minutes. Funny, it felt much longer. Maybe we were all getting better at our jobs.


    That left thirty-one minutes left before I needed to disappear, since Rito made the math on transport time easy, and so I hefted my backpack further up my shoulder and continued on my way to class.

 279. 2252, Present Day. Downtown Chicago. Jack.

    It was cold and rainy in Chicago, as apparently it often was, though I had held hope that the temperate April we were having would hold the gloom at bay. Alas, it was not to be, but I still tried to remember to appreciate the city giving us a taste of its native climate. If nothing else, I would remember my trip here as it was, no idealized vacation. Chicago was a serious place, and I would remember it as such.


    Not that we were here to vacation. There was an Exhuman event brewing, and the P-Force had been selected to respond. The target was violent and dangerous, his powers were deadly, yet not fully quantified, and his Ramanathan Window was still open. It was, in many ways, the worst-case scenario for an Exhuman event, and precisely what necessitated the founding of the P-Force.


    Before, such an event would have meant hours or days, or even weeks of carnage, as brave XPCA battled for every inch of urban space, a mad rush to keep the target contained and evacuate survivors, with minimizing damage a distant third priority. For any reason at all, the Exhuman could have decided to move, threatening entirely new swaths of people and property, or worse, injured themselves somehow, introducing the risk of their window adding to their nascent powerset.


    But the Ramanathan Window had a blind spot, and it was other Exhumans. It is why Deputy Director Blackett had gathered us, why Director Blackett had founded the P-Force, and why Director Hall had us waiting in a dark bus terminal in downtown Chicago today, abuzz with XPCA activity as recon and strike teams gathered intel, evacuated refugees, and managed supplies.


    New downtown Chicago, I reminded myself. There were many abandoned buildings here, the shadow of the Sino war reached long into this city.


    The wind slashed the rain into the windows as we focused on briefing. Not much was known about the target concretely. The weather was making it impossible for recon teams to get close, as the rain both obstructed their sensors, and sent optical camo haywire, the constantly-shifting background impossible to reproduce. Plus, the water certainly didn''t improve any electronics for its touch.


    What we did know was that the powers were capable of knocking down buildings, as two skyscrapers had already been felled. We knew that they were of elemental water, and thus our mark had a prefix of hydro-, and that he could create autonomous constructs from it, -genesist. Whether that was the limits of his capabilities, or if he could do anything himself, or was as helpless as the last genesist we''d killed in the dungeons beneath former Oakland...that was anybody''s guess.


    He was a dental hygienist before today. He once wielded a pick of water to ward off halitosis. Now his water had killed dozens. How far he had fallen.


    I heard something move behind me and did not have to turn to look as the others did. Chariot stepped out of nothingness and entered the room, dressed as we always saw him now.


    I opened my eyes to see the faces of the others as they acknowledged him. Tower with the ever-lit flame of optimism, rose and went to embrace him awkwardly. Moon sat in stern defiance, not so much as stirring at his approach. Cosette stood and waited, being in the room only in holographic form to begin with, and returned Chariot''s formal salute.


    Tem was, as ever nowadays, absent.


    Chariot advanced into the circle of light around the holo and waited, motionless, seeming to neither hear nor acknowledge anything anyone said, and so nobody said anything to him. After an awkward moment, Cosette began with the briefing again.


    Chariot was there, I could sense it, somewhere inside that exosuit, but it was too tightly wrapped around him for me to make out any detail with my eyes shut, and with them open, all I saw was the blank faceplate. It stood, silent and imposing, eight feet of metal in XPCA-black, optimized for his powers, and a true weapon of war. Compared to him, we were but children, toddling around, waving our powers impotently, whilst he unleashed precision devastation.


    In a way, it was humbling. But given that his newly unlocked powers came at the same time as the utter erasure of his personality, mostly it just gave us dread. We had all been surprised to hear Chariot requesting to join the P-Force again, under conditions, and were more surprised to hear those conditions. They had basically amounted to as little contact as possible between him and us, on and off the job.


    It was hard not to take personally. Even when Moon and Cosette were convinced that he had abandoned the XPCA, I had believed in him, and had even gone so far as to help him as I could. He seemed normal enough and then...one day...this.


    I looked again through my eyes at the blank faceplate and found it a fitting representation for what apparently now lay beneath. No contact outside of missions, no chatter on missions, no leadership role even, he had deferred strike lead to me. What had transpired to transform the young, promising man into this?


    I had to suspect that whatever it was, the cause and outcome were intertwined. Something had changed him, and he had no interest in us discovering what it was.


    "Any questions?" Cosette asked, the holo before us switching from a display of a map back to our commanding officer.


    Chariot raised a broad metallic hand. "Major Dawn, sir," he said, his voice sounding more robot than human, to the point where I could not hear him in it. "The hydromorphs created, have we ascertained their capabilities?"


    "As of yet, no."


    "Have they demonstrated the capability to die?"


    "As of yet, no." She looked around at us, but nobody else stirred. "Very well then. Deploy as soon as you''re ready. I will be in your ears and on your holos. Watch each other''s backs, Vigilo Ignoto.


    "Vigilo Ignoto," we mumbled in reply as we rose.


    Chariot, like the robot he now apparently was, simply walked to the door and stood in it, rain blasting him in the face without a care. The rest of us took our time to put our kits together, Tower conferred briefly with a pair of soldiers before leaving Moon''s body in their care, and we each did our best to waterproof ourselves in preparation for the incoming wind and rain.


    I''d be in buildings the entire approach, of course. My powerset did have its advantages. And I suppose Tower and Moon could deflect water striking them, and Chariot was cozy in his exosuit. Still, it was more the oppressive mood of walking into the storm than the actual trouble of it, I suppose.


    Also, the worst possible weather to be fighting a hydroist in. A part of me--the very paranoid part from the old days--considered that possibly, this Exhuman''s powers hadn''t been revealed to us yet, that the water manipulation was the window counteracting this storm, and his original powers lay elsewhere. It was a small possibility, but a terrifying one.


    I moved away, keeping to the front of our small squad. Chariot brought up the rear, his senses heightened by the exosuit''s sensors, though still diminished by the rain. Tower and Moon were the center, capable of quickly responding to threats from either side. Without Tem, without Mage, and with Moon and Tower being one unit, our squad felt oppressively small.


    It was only a few blocks before we found the danger. Water from the black road began moving irregularly, rising into frothing pillars like fountains until they filled out shuddering, swirling spheres which floated towards the three on the ground with the insistence of the tides.


    The P-Force stood ready, back-to-back as four or five of the hydromorphs shuffle-floated towards them, closing the distance to ten feet.


    Suddenly, one detonated, violently reshaping itself into a lance of pressurized water. It hit Moon, dead in the torso, but she had been prepared for it, and the blast bounced off her with enough force that the spray was lost in the sky like so many other raindrops. The hydromorph, its bulbous head gone, sputtered as it drew in more liquid from beneath.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    There was nothing I could do, I realized. I would stay on comms and keep them coordinated, but I could not cut water with a knife. Charitably, I had grenades as well, but very little of my arsenal had been constructed with sentient liquids in mind, and my utility suffered accordingly.


    Chariot, however, had no such misgivings. With a wave of his exosuited arm, he cascaded electricity through the nearest hydromorph, which seemed to do absolutely nothing but make the water crackle violently. Then he brought out a solitary sword, steered it gently into positions with both arms outstretched--


    And with a wrenching gesture as though shredding paper, his two arms moved and the sword detonated in a flare which would have blinded my eyes. Down there I knew a blistering wave of heat washed over all of them, and the morph seemed to hiss in protest as it flash-evaporated. For a moment, there was a dry spot on the ground under the blast before the rain reclaimed it, steaming and frothing at the heat of the earth.


    But the hydromorph did not reconstitute. Whatever had given it intelligence and life could not survive being evaporated.


    The other morphs did not willingly accept their fate. Two of them lunged at Tower, deflecting off of him as Moon had done, and one exploded towards Chariot''s relatively vulnerable mechanical body, only to be intercepted by Moon and bouncing off her chest again.


    They seemed to have this well in hand, and I progressed forward, keeping an eye closed for the Exhuman I knew to be somewhere in this maelstrom. He couldn''t be too far from his minions, they relied on his powers for animation.


    I found him, finally, in a tunnel under one of the buildings. He had an army of the damn creatures, and was destroying drainage tunnels with them, their fluid bodies capable of seeping between stones and under metal bolts, expanding to cripple structural integrity already taxed by the downpour. The more he destroyed, the more water backed up in the city, and the greater his apparent glee.


    I couldn''t jump in without submerging myself at this point, and I shuddered to think what that might do--when I heard a choking noise over comms and the yelling of Tower.


    As quickly as I could, I returned to the others to find Moon in distress. One of the creatures had wrapped itself around her head, and from the noise of it, was forcing itself into her orifices. I felt my heart stop as I remembered just moments ago watching them rupture metal and stone by bursting through it from within.


    While Tower screamed and clawed at the water uselessly, Chariot did not hesitate, and picked up Tower bodily, the huge man still nothing to the exosuit. He yelled his complaints until Chariot scooped him physically through his own shadow, the strange conflux of Moon being intangible to him, but real to all else in the world allowing Tower''s own body to push the water up and out of Moon''s ghostly copy of it.


    It was not a maneuver I would have considered, and showed that, as much as Chariot may have changed, his study of all of our powers and his ability to think on his feet was never lost.


    Perhaps there might have been words sufficient to convey this action, but Chariot had not chosen to use them. Still, the lesson was conveyed, and Tower soon picked it up on his own, exorcising the water from Moon with his bare hands, shoving them straight through her throat and out her face, while she gagged and groaned uncomfortably over comms enough to make me shudder and cringe.


    This Exhuman had much to answer for already, and we had not yet even engaged him personally.


    Tower''s proximity to Moon made him a target for drowning as well, but the two of them just covered each other''s mouths and used their free arms to bat at the assailing morphs, suffocating but still struggling until Chariot could intervene. With deliberate focus, he brought another sword near them and hesitated as it hovered in the air near them.


    "Sorry," he said. And then the sword shredded into heat and sparks, and the water on their faces boiled away, neither having the breath to scream as their flesh seared.


    I was there in a heartbeat, pulling medical gel from a pouch and trying to hold Tower steady as he rolled on the ground clutching at the red and pink where his dark skin had been moments ago.


    "Chariot, keep them off of us," I growled into my comms, irritated that it had come to this so fast. His powers may have multiplied in power, but they seemed to have halved in speed, and if he''d just been focused on eradicating the hydromorphs from the start, they wouldn''t have reached Moon in the first place.


    "Acknowledged, PF-Actual," he said, new swords materializing and wiping out the nearest threats.


    I shouldn''t have left them to scout ahead, I was the lead and should have issued these orders without assuming, I realized. I knew Chariot was...more unstable now, and my stupid presumption that he knew his role had just cost us Tower''s face.


    "Epsilon One, Epsilon One, this is Papa-Foxtrot Actual," I radioed while I dressed Tower. The rain was making the gel refuse to stick, and I was having a hard time doing it without touching him already.


    "Copy Papa-Foxtrot Actual."


    "Please bring the package to our location."


    "Confirmed, bringing the package. Over."


    I pulled off my waterproof overcoat and wound it around Tower''s head to hold back the rain, smearing more of the gel on him while he gave me an apologetic smile.


    "Hurts like a bitch," he said.


    "I know. I''m sorry, Tower."


    Moon, for her part, just stood and breathed, saying nothing, seeming to watch Chariot as he evaporated hydromorph after hydromorph. It wasn''t more than a minute before lights approached us from the darkness, and the truck popped open to reveal Epsilon Squad crouched in the back around Moon''s body. Tower touched it long enough for her eyes to flicker open with a sigh of relief, and then picked her up again, where she returned whole and hale.


    "Are you fit to continue?" I asked him. He nodded, despite the thick layer of goop on his face.


    "If I back out, I''d be taking half our squad off the field," he gestured at Moon. "A little pain never hurt anyone, right?" he laughed, and then winced painfully.


    "You''re a good man, Tower," I said.


    "Maybe a rebreather, though...I don''t like the thought of drowning on dry land."


    I shook my head. "They''d just force their way in your nose and throat around it. I saw them cracking stone that way, forcing your mouth open would be child''s play for them." He looked a little horrified at the thought but nodded.


    "So don''t let them touch me, got it," he said.


    "Chariot, keep clearing, we''re moving forward. Do not let the morphs approach. Thank you Epsilon, we''re going ahead."


    I moved away again, both to get out of the rain and to keep watch from the front as the three of them pressed forward. We hadn''t come back up on the Exhuman yet, so I was mostly just keeping an eye on Chariot to see that he was keeping up.


    He had a few swords out, but kept most of them right at his side, only taking out and manipulating one at a time to shred into the ridiculous blast of heat he''d developed, like he no longer had the attention to manage more than one at a time, or maybe what he was doing now was so complicated it took all his attention. But again and again I watched as he worked with diligent precision, getting the blade into place just so and then detonating it right near the enemy for maximum effect.


    But again, watching him work, he felt like an entirely different person. Chariot had always been...something of an act-first, ask-questions-never sort, quick to strike, quick to act, quick to run his mouth. Now he was plodding along with insistent steps, rooted on his heels, his blades flying slowly and carefully instead of lashing out at the speed of lightning. Even his range seemed larger, which I did not think possible. I wondered again what had happened to him.


    We''d come up on the target again, but now his work was done and he was leaving, the tunnel he was in now full of water and the building atop it beginning to lean dangerously as the foundation started to sink in displaced earth.


    I''d never seen a skyscraper fall over before, and it was quite the experience. It held together much better than I would have suspected, toppling further and further, the top of it sagging as the building swayed under it. As it leaned the top threatened to rest on a neighboring building, but before that happened, something inside gave, and the side of the building exploded all at once in a hail of glass and concrete, as dark and piercing as the rain. Even from here, I could hear it smashing down, a constant, rolling crashing over the rain.


    "The fuck is that?" Tower asked.


    "A building collapsing," I informed them. "Mind for glass floating in the water."


    "Great. Now the water''s gonna cut us," he complained. "Because the drowning and stabbing wasn''t enough."


    "Kindly cut the chatter and focus," Moon intoned.


    "Yeah, yeah."


    "Would you prefer to die?"


    "No, I''ll focus, okay? Such a pain," Tower complained again, but this time he actually quieted down afterwards.


    At once, something caught my eye, and I hesitated for just a moment before calling it in.


    "Lady and gentlemen, prepare yourselves," I said. "The target is approaching rapidly, too quickly for walking. Ready for engagement from twelve o''clock."


    I could only imagine it from their perspective. Cold, rainy, and dim, the sound of a building groaning as it vomited glass and concrete into the flooding street below, and suddenly, a surge of dark water and an Exhuman riding within it like a dolphin, straight at them, shards of glass and needles of water at the ready to eviscerate whomever had come into his little domain.


    He seemed needlessly ecstatic about dealing with the interlopers. Even underwater, he was grinning as he bore down towards them, truly lost to humanity.


    The P-Force shuffled awkwardly as the water around their ankles receded into the growing wave crashing towards them, as wide as the street and a dozen feet tall.


    "Target in sight, moving to pursue," Chariot''s synthetic monotone came over the comms, as I saw him step forward towards the rushing water.

 280. 2252, Present Day. Downtown Chicago. Kaori.

    It was neither the time nor the place to inform Chariot of his ineptitude, but the desire to do so lingered in my mind anyway like a foul smell.


    He had failed us again and again, I knew he could be quicker than this, better than this, but he was not and as a result we had almost died.


    I was frustrated, as I ever was. As I ever had been. As I had been since the day he had turned his back on the XPCA, and on us, and on his vow to protect people. And on me.


    That he thought he could simply vanish and come back and be welcomed, the arrogance of it was a slap across my face. Saving lives was not a job one could walk away from. This was not some trivial duty to shirk. While he was gone, good and innocent people had died, been maimed, or traumatized, and as I saw it, their suffering was on his back.


    But it was never the time nor the place to inform Chariot of this. Instead, I seethed inwardly, saying nothing, doing nothing, being as I should be, doing my job and protecting who and what I could. As he should have done, as he refused to do.


    To say I held bitterness for the man was an understatement. But I also recognized that my feelings were without value, and that just made them even more painful to feel. I had practiced this, a lifetime of knowing what I was worth and what my feelings were worth and still...still they swelled within me every time I saw him.


    Betrayal. Rage. Jealousy. I wanted him to suffer as those he had let down. But I also wanted it all to go away and for things to be as they once had been.


    I had mastered the art of being still and being nothing, so why could I not still myself when I saw him?


    The frustration at that failure simply compounded the lot. But it was not the time for that either.


    Despite my issues with him, Chariot was keeping us alive for the moment. The slowness of his actions was offset by the sheer destructive power of them, as he prepared and detonated a single blade at a time, vaporizing five hundred liters of assailing water with each blast. With frustrating slowness, he prepared the next blade and the next blast as though unaware of the danger.


    Had it been drugs? What could have altered him so? Was there a chance that whatever it was, it had also been responsible for his flight from us? Was there any amount of trauma or brain chemistry that I would accept as an excuse, or was he simply lost to me forever?


    I shook my head and focused just as another jet of water slammed into me, catching it in time with Tower''s power to avoid being impaled by the pressurized stream.


    "Focus, damn it girl!" Tower yelled.


    "I am attempting to." And so saying, I pushed Chariot from my mind before he was responsible for yet another death.


    Tower and I had spoken about this at length. He had approached me tactfully, stating that he knew my thoughts, and while that was a violation, they worried him regardless. He was concerned for my well-being, which was meaningless, but also my readiness, which was everything.


    The last time we saw Athan, not Chariot, was at his sister''s place in Las Vegas, almost two months ago. He was at the time, obsessed with defeating Dragon, and offered no apologies or excuses for his absence, stating only that he was still working in the interest of the XPCA. That he could say that with a straight face while still being a wanted fugitive, I found appalling.


    We came to discover he was conspiring with the Defiant Unchained, the very faction which had threatened not just the XPCA, but the world at large, with a mass event. I knew Athan had a soft spot within him for Exhuman lives, but for him to throw in with those would-be murderers, who would throw the world off-balance for their own selfish comfort...instead of executing them on the spot¡­


    Tower reached up and blocked another jet of water before it impacted my head. "FOCUS, damn it, girl!"


    "The situation is fraught with distraction," I hissed at him. Through our shared mind, I could feel him rolling his eyes, finding my ''hiss'' still utterly monotone. It annoyed me more than it should.


    "You''re gonna get yourself killed, if you keep distracting yourself."


    "It is exceedingly unlikely I die in here. I will come back when you reintegrate my consciousness with my body."


    "So you''re saying you can die, and will just come back? Sounds a lot like getting yourself killed to me."


    I had lost at verbalizing myself properly to Tower of all damn people. I truly was lost. My distracted nature was more dangerous than I thought. Again, I pushed thoughts from my mind and feeling from my heart.


    The wave containing the Exhuman was nearly on us, and I had no greater plan but to be slapped full in the face with it and hold my breath. I had wasted precious seconds, and regretted it.


    "We''ll float," Tower said. "Into the sky. Invert gravity''s pull, now."


    As much as I did not enjoy having him respond to my thoughts, his plan was better than mine. Doing as he said, I felt out the insistent tug of the Earth on me, and flipped it around, feeling my feet off the ground and my organs floating unnervingly within me.


    "Chariot!" Tower yelled. "Get higher up before the wave hits!"


    "I will remain and engage. The exosuit is capable of submerged combat."


    I let gravity take me a bit further up and then negated it, drifting skywards, several stories up by now. From here, the damage looked even more severe, black rubble littering the streets, poking out of the rising water like a beach of crushed gravel. Fires in the distance smoked heavily as the rain poured into them.


    Chariot, even in his black exosuit, looked like a mere toy, and I felt my heart throb uncomfortably as I remembered my last look at Japan and thought the same thing of it. It had disappeared from the plane window, chased away by the Pacific, just as the wall of dark water a mere block away threatened Chariot now.


    "Chariot, move up," Jack yelled painfully in my ear. "The hydromorphs can squeeze into the suit and make it burst, your suit''s capabilities will be compromised."


    Chariot said and did nothing but rooted his feet and crackled with power.


    The wave approached, the front of it white with turbulence as it swallowed the street beneath us. It closed on him, surging faster and wilder as though it sensed prey. Deep in its center, I saw a dark shape, the Exhuman we were here to defeat.


    It meant little, but I pulled Tower''s firearm from his side and unloaded into the shadow. With luck, the extra power from gravity might help the bullet find its mark, even through feet of water.


    He shook his head and changed the magazine as he confiscated and reholstered it. "Not even with a rifle," he said. "Which is lucky, because his window''s open, you stupidass."


    I swore inwardly, the strongest profanity I knew in several languages. I could not let my urge to see justice prevail get in the way of it prevailing. I was being an active detriment to this mission and knew it.


    "Focus. I understand," I said.


    "''Atta girl. Come on, Moon, you''re better than this," Tower murmured to me. He was kind in not holding me to my failings. Kinder than I would be.


    The roaring of the water echoed up the buildings until it seemed all around us, and the smell of sewage and rot reached us at nearly the same moment. Chariot leaned forward as the water finally reached him.


    One moment, the waves lapped at his ankles, and then the next, with a crash, he was gone, and the surging wall of water continued as though nothing had stood in its way.


    "Chariot, c''mon," Tower whispered. I found the same thought in my own heart despite myself.


    "Chariot. Reply. This is Papa-Foxtrot Actual, do you copy?" Jack barked. "PF One, do you copy? Chariot? I can''t see beneath the water, Chariot. So, do you copy?"


    There was nothing but silence in the moments he waited for a reply.


    "PF One, confirm reception. Chariot, this is Papa-Foxtrot Actual. Respond."


    The black tide continued onwards, seeming to slow as it passed. It had hit its mark, there was no need for the Exhuman to continue pressing it forward. I blinked as rain fell from my eyelashes, my eyes darting everywhere for a sign of a submerged shadow...friend or foe. I had to see one of them.


    "Chariot, respond, damn it!" Jack yelled. "Athan, you son of a bitch, where the hell are you? Athan! Respond!"


    "He''s tougher than that," Tower said. "No little splash in the pond is gonna be the end of Chariot."This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "It was dozens of tons of water," I told him. "He stood and...faced it like a moron. Like a lunatic."


    "Athan you bastard, be alive!"


    Tower suddenly pointed downstream, and I followed his finger. "There!" he shouted.


    I did not see Chariot. But I did see signs of his struggle.


    There, beneath the water''s surface, flashes of light, flaring and decaying like fireflies. But when they strobed, the surface of the water boiled and sparked, and tendrils of lightning jumped across the surface.


    In the flashing lights, I saw a shadow slipping through the water, faster than any sea creature, fleeing from the light. As he went, the electricity chased him, jumping off the edges of the buildings into the water near him and dissolving into seething, glowing vortexes.


    "Chariot you damn bastard," Jack sighed, sounding at the verge of tears.


    "What happened to ''language''? Tower asked with a smile as he began our descent towards a street lamp.


    "Oh shut up," Jack said.


    Tower kicked off the lamp, sending us both flying above the water in the same direction the shadow was fleeing. We bounced off buildings erratically, moving ever faster and ever forward. "He''s gonna get away," Tower said. "Unless we do something."


    "I understand," I said, and focused on doubling Tower''s efforts.


    Borrowing another''s powers was always a bit of an experience. Not the least of which, being in their mind and body, but also the sheer lack of knowing their capabilities. Tower, presumably, had spent much of his life rocketing himself about, shrugging off forces, redirecting blows, and punching through things. I had not.


    So I had to lean deeply into his mind to draw on his confidence in his powers as we hurtled at impossible speeds towards the face of the leaning building. To me, the walls looked like glass and concrete, neither of which was something I would willingly press my flesh into, much less at these speeds. But he was smiling as we flew, as certain of this as of anything.


    And that was a real comfort. Because we really were flying face-first into a skyscraper.


    All of our accumulated speed and force erupted like a shot, doubled as it poured out of us and into the building. Tower was no engineer or physicist, he did not target weak points or structural supports. He went for the very middle, and hit it as hard as he could.


    Where we struck, concrete detonated into the air in a plume taller than the standing skyscrapers. The crack was so loud I heard it echo back to us three times. The building shuddered where we struck, it cracked, it groaned.


    And then all at once, it rained down like concrete hail. The two of us hovered there, pushing the plume of concrete away from us and floating up and out, as the whole building seemed to fracture and fall, as though the blow had transformed it to a suspended jigsaw puzzle.


    The dark shadow in the water kept advancing as the first of the building dropped into the water, but as the mass of it broke and fell, the shadow stopped, and then was pushed backwards by yet another wave, but this one not of its own making. The path before it was blocked.


    It swam in small circles for a moment, like a lost fish, before darting back the way it came. Yet, within seconds, it reached the outermost tendrils of lightning and drew away, trapped now in its own watery prison, between the rock and the exosuit.


    It seemed to waver there for long moments. Was he afraid? Did he regret what he had done? I hoped so. This man was evil, and evil existed only to be destroyed.


    Chariot''s advance was slow, but inexorable. The reaches of his lightning grasped ever further towards the dark cul-de-sac, where our prey waited, trapped.


    I wanted nothing more but to help, to dive in there and gut the coward with my own two hands if I had to, but he had to die to directly controlled powers. Even if I accelerated into him at top speed, would the window see it as my powers bearing his end? Or my body? I couldn''t be sure, and so the task fell to Chariot.


    From time to time, something seemed to attack Chariot under the water, but whatever was happening, he would just suddenly surge with power and blast a hole around himself, the exosuit steaming for a moment as the water immediately around him vaporized. And then the waves crashed back in with a scalding hiss that sounded as though they screamed to touch him.


    And still he walked forward. One plodding underwater step after another. I could not think of a more dreadful way for the Exhuman to face his end, and I found my heart racing with anticipation as we watched to ensure no escape.


    Just as it seemed time was out, the water suddenly surged again. Through the wreckage, through the buildings, from under the street, everywhere, water flowed, and an enormous wave appeared from everywhere and from nowhere.


    "Does he think that will work? He already slapped Chariot with a wave once," Tower said.


    "Look again," Jack muttered. "He''s not just relying on the water to sweep Chariot away this time."


    In the water I saw debris seething and swarming in a vortex around the shadow.


    "What is that? Clothes? A shopping cart?" Tower asked.


    "It doesn''t matter, as long as he can get it to bind to Chariot and increase his profile. The Exosuit might be able to withstand a hit of water with its streamlined profile, but not if it''s got so much junk wrapped around it that the whole street of water is pushing him."


    "Cowardly," I spat. "And pointless. If he pushes Chariot back, he faces only another advance from him after."


    "Man, you bitter," Tower said. I glared at him.


    "He only needs to push Chariot back a block, and can escape down a side-street."


    "And we''re out of buildings to drop," Tower mused.


    "There are buildings all around us. Let us block both side streets," I said.


    "I dunno if you noticed, but it kind of took all we had to knock down one that was already fallen over. We do not have the punch to topple a whole skyscraper. And I don''t think Jack does either."


    "No," Jack said frustrated. "We can go in if Chariot is knocked back, but...I do believe this will all be up to him."


    "No," Cosette suddenly said, "Jack, can you dart into the water and pull out what debris you can? Tower, Moon, you may not be able to punch down a building, but you can still barricade some. Any amount you slow the target down is time for Chariot to strike. We must do what we can."


    "Yes, good plan," Jack said. "Remember not to affect the Exhuman directly."


    As the water surged and grew in height, it pulled away from Chariot, leaving him only half-submerged, and still blasting away encroaching hydromorphs as he advanced.


    "Chariot...here," we heard him say faintly, through heavy breaths. "Trouble with...-omms after...hit."


    We had no time to watch as we scrambled to beached cars and overturned street signs, crashing them together to make as sturdy a barricade as possible to anything human-sized. Jack appeared infrequently with random debris he fished out, jamming it into our makeshift wall as best he could.


    "This one''s good enough, Tower said, giving it a few brutal punches that warped the roofs of two cars together. "We need one more."


    "There is no time." Jack shouted suddenly. "Evade!"


    I had one moment to look up and see the swelling wall of water bearing down. Tower kicked us up, and before my feet left the ground, I did as well, sending us spiraling uncontrollably skyward.


    In the glimpses I could see, Chariot stood facing the wave, not braced as before, but hands before him as though he were going to exorcise the water away. A sea of garbage boiled at the front of the wave, rubber tires and hoods of cars, bouncing around like inner tubes and surfboards as they bore down on him. The dark shadow seemed to grin malevolently through the surf for a moment before disappearing beneath brimming foam.


    "We didn''t get the barrier up," I said. "If the wave pushes him, we''ll...we''ll lose the target."


    "He''ll hold," Tower said. "Chariot always holds on."


    "He''s not...holding on," Jack said with alarm.


    Lightning crackled all around Chariot as currents ran up and over the harsh angles of the exosuit. Was he planning to electrocute the entire wave? There was too much water, and the Exhuman had fled to the back. It would not work.


    And then the wave shuddered as, instead of the debris crashing into Chariot with the wave, it was blown away. Forks, fire hydrants, traffic signs, fences, car parts, all sent flying into the air with unbelievable force.


    And also Exosuits. Something unseen and impossibly powerful lifted Chariot''s exosuit into the air and kept him there, hovering, crackling, floating just above the surface as the tide of water crashed down the street under him.


    "He''s flying," Jack said simply. "He can fly."


    "What the fuck," Cosette added.


    "That was my one damn trick!" Tower yelled, but sounded much more ecstatic than annoyed. "God damn, Chariot!"


    I looked down the street at the garbage still running away and realized, it was all metal. The Exosuit was all metal. For so long, Chariot had worked so hard to keep anything magnetic off of him for fear of dragging himself around under his own powers...but now he was dragging himself along on purpose.


    "It''s...simple magnetic levitation," I said, surprised to hear how stunned my own voice sounded.


    Chariot wasn''t done. As the water cleared out under him, he still had an Exhuman to contend with who might escape at any moment, and there was too much water to electrify. He pointed a finger skyward and I saw a shining strand of lightning flickering towards the heavens.


    And then the strand widened and exploded as it reached a cloud, and honest-to-god bolt of lightning coursing down the channel he''d ripped in the air and into the water where his other hand pointed.


    The shadow did not remain shadowy as the thousands of watts of electricity coursed through it. The entire body of water flashed and boomed as much as the lightning did, and Chariot''s exosuit glowed white-hot, even though I could see the course of the electricity bending far around him.


    It did not bend far around the Exhuman. It went straight for him, honed and refined by Chariot''s will into the most focused, lethal bolt of lightning ever made. God''s power, directed by man''s hand. The blast of thunder made my hair stand on end and my ears ring.


    After what felt far too long to be a single bolt of lightning, darkness filled all our eyes and Chariot and his exosuit fell into the retreating water in a pillar of steam. He stirred only enough to give the Exhuman a glance, and then fell back into a stupor.


    The Exhuman was utterly fried. Shriveled and blackened, and without a doubt, completely and utterly dead. Barely even recognizable as a human body, which was fitting, considering.


    The rain continued down but the surge of water in the street abated, its sinister master gone. Punched right through his window, Chariot had.


    As we approached, the exosuit sat up and the comms crackled.


    "Reporting¡­-ission success. Return¡­ to prior location."


    "Thanks, Chariot," Cosette said. "We''ll see you next time, okay?"


    He said nothing, just waited for us all to turn away.


    I sighed heavily, knowing that when I did, he would vanish again, from my sight if not my mind. No amount of looking away could banish him from there.


    But I did as I was told and showed him my back, as yet another crisis ended, and yet again, we had Chariot to thank for it.


    As ever, he left me wondering. What had changed him? Why had he come back? And when, and whee, would be the right time to confront him over it?


    I sighed again. It was not important for me to know. My feelings were of no consequence to anyone, and I knew that. So long as I could accomplish our missions, knowing was a mere luxury I did not require.


    But looking back and seeing Chariot utterly gone, the burnt corpse still smoking, the water under it steaming yet, I felt like I had to know, even if it wasn''t important. Even if it was only me.


    I had to know, because if he could change, then maybe, just maybe, so could I. And that terrified me thoroughly.

 281. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    A couple more hours of classes and waiting and then I was headed to the dining hall for dinner before taking the bus home. We had food at home, but AEGIS would be the one preparing it, and thus it wasn''t...actually food.


    The two of us...weren''t in a really good place right now. The fact that it had been months and she was still an abhorrent cook really helped me realize the core issue she was facing. What I wanted, what I thought I wanted, what she thought I wanted...those weren''t really material things to her perspective. To her, it was all about what she thought AEGIS Prime thought I wanted, and deviating from that template was heresy.


    So she cooked, because she thought that Prime thought that I thought that cooking would be awesome and desirable. At no point in this train of logic did the joy of cooking, or owning and being proud of the skill, or being anywhere decent at it seem to factor in. So she didn''t improve, because she wasn''t cooking to cook, or to make me happy even, it was just an insane, arbitrary checklist she was filling out on her way to being AEGIS Prime.


    Which...I''d told her was impossible. She and Prime were different people. She needed to pursue what was important to her, instead of just spending her life retracing someone else''s footsteps.


    She didn''t take that well. We''d screamed at each other a lot that night, and both of us said some things we regretted. It was horrible. But at the same time, it was the most real AEGIS had been with me in a long time, and I felt really twisted and evil inside for how happy our fighting had made me. Of course, she had never permitted it to happen again, because Prime and I never fought like that, and anything Prime wouldn''t do, she wouldn''t.


    So here I sat, pushing peas around on a plain white plate with a plain metal fork with one of the tines bent a little out of line. I was thinking, as I tended to do when alone, and my obsession came to mind, as it tended to do when I was thinking. The tines of the fork reminded me of the arms of a Jacob''s Ladder, and I did some mental calculations for what kind of resistance different parts of the fork would have to exhibit for the current to flow through the tines to make the best kind of arc.


    Thankfully someone broke me out of my stupor by dropping a tray opposite me. I looked up and saw friendly eyes. Red irises, but friendly.


    "Hi Alyssa," I said.


    "Hey, mind if I sit here and join ya?" she asked, brushing her wavy french-fry hair behind one ear as she smiled as though embarrassed to ask.


    "Please do. I was just geeking out, and if you hadn''t saved me, I''d be propping open an EE book for some light reading right now." I grinned at her. "Shoot me, right?"


    "No, it''s super cool that yer sharp as a tack. Anyone''d be jealous."


    "Are you jealous?" I laughed.


    "A lil'' bit, sure." She smiled back at me. "But hard to be too jealous when yer willin'' to hang out with me and talk with me an'' all."


    "Did you give any more thought to your major? I feel like not having one after your first year is gonna hurt your prospects of graduating on time."


    "Nah...just bein'' a scared little girl like usual. There''s so many things I wanna do, but I dunno that reality lives up to my expectations, y''know? Is yer major what ya expected it to be like?"


    "Pretty much. A lot of equations and math and physics and determining how much resistance to put on a line to produce the right output."


    "I guess engineerin'' would be like that, yeah. But if I wanted...I dunno, to be a writer, for example, what''s to say I''d go in hopin'' to take poetry classes, and then next thing ya know, we''re all writin'' historical fiction or the like?"


    "Well...I''d guess historical fiction and poetry are different classes. So you''d take the one you want."


    "Ya know what I mean, though. Maybe the writin'' program ain''t even what I want here. They put a lotta'' emphasis on employment percentage of fresh graduates, and writers don''t get employed. Maybe they focus on technical writin'' or advertisin'' or the like." She joined me in pushing food around on our plates ineffectually. "But then, havin'' a job is a good thing. And that''s the opposite scary thing about writin'' innit?"


    "Still engineering," I pointed at myself. "Still really unfamiliar with these kinds of issues." She sighed at my response and I felt guilty for dismissing her issues. "But look, if you''re not sure if the classes or majors or whatever are for you, really all you need is more information, right?"


    "And what, go interview the chair of the department?"


    "You don''t have to go that high."


    "And I kinda doubt he''d have much to say but great things about his own department anyway."


    "Yeah, I don''t know. But why don''t you just look up an upper-div class and ask students coming out of it what they think of the major? Get the relevant student perspective. They''ve got no reason to lie to you. Unless...they''re trying to deny what a mistake they''ve made of course...but you should be able to see through that."


    "I can''t do that," she said, looking shocked at me.


    "Why not?"


    "Those are...just random people. I can''t just walk up and demand things from ''em."


    I laughed. "People love talking about themselves, especially to someone who is interested and especially to someone who has a non-creepy reason to listen." I thought back to the pearls of advice AEGIS used to drop on me like that, and it made me smile beside myself. "Trust me, you go to a class like that, find someone not too busy, offer to buy them lunch and talk it over, you might even make a new friend."


    She looked at me for a moment, her red eyes locked on my face until I met them, whereupon they retreated to the safety of her own plate. "Easy for ya to say, I bet ya''ve done the like a thousand times."


    I snorted hard enough to make my peas roll, and speared a few of them on my fork before they became even more cold and gross. "I''ve never done anything like that, Alyssa. It just seems like the most direct solution to me."


    "And ya don''t get embarrassed, always bein'' direct? I take back what I said before, I really envy ya."


    "If it''s that scary, I can come with you," I shrugged. "But it''s just talking to another person. There''s nothing scary about it."


    I mean, the odds of it ending in an Exhuman event or with an assassin or hunter flying around was basically zero. I really couldn''t understand what she had to worry about here. Even if every possible thing went catastrophically wrong, this place practically had padded walls.


    "Yeah, maybe," she muttered at her salad. She suddenly perked up. "Maybe I can make it up to ya if ya do?"


    "I don''t think that''s necessary. Like I said, it''s really, literally nothing."


    "Well, it''s a big thing to me, so I insist," she beamed. "Maybe I can find out more about ya. Like, where ya and yer sister transferred here from? And why you''re so filled out and she''s so spry if yer both eighteen?"


    It wasn''t the best cover story, but Lia had been temporarily promoted to my twin. I had doubts that anyone would believe it, and Lia agreed, citing that ''yeah, there''s no way anyone would believe you''re as old and mature as me.'' Still, she was pretty tall for a girl already, and I think that sold the lie a little bit. Plus, who''d doubt us if our stories matched our paperwork?


    "Yeah good luck with that," I smirked at her. "But I''ve been meaning to ask, since we''re apparently doing invasive questions -- why are your eyes red?"


    "You don''t like ''em?"


    "No, they''re cool. It''s just...not a normal eye color."


    "Well, they''re not natural anyway. Just a body mod I got before college started. Thought it might make me stand out a bit. And this," she said, brushing her hair out sideways and showing off the waves.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Like a...permanent...perm?" I asked.


    "Somethin'' like that. Do you hate body modders, Athan?"


    "No. Kind of a weird question, isn''t that?"


    "Well, a lot of people seem to. I don''t care what they think of course," she said, puffing herself up slightly, and I didn''t point out the obvious that she''d paid a lot to ''look cool'' while also ''not caring''. Or that, for all the attention she apparently wanted, walking up to a stranger and asking about their major was simply too embarrassing to undertake. I kind of had to wonder the point.


    Well. That wasn''t true. She was undeniably interesting to look at, and attractive, too. So I did see the point from my perspective...just not from hers.


    "Ya already do yer homework for AAT?" she suddenly asked, referencing our mutual GE course. "Want to come over to my dorm after this and we can study and hang?"


    "Oh. That assignment looked like, five minutes tops. I don''t think it''ll give you any trouble. Like everything in that class, it seems to just be regurgitating what the TAs tell us in discussion section."


    "Ah, yeah," she said smiling. "Yeah, probably, huh?" She went back to her salad in silence which I took as a cue to finish eating and resume daydreaming about how a current might bridge the air gap between the metal edges of the table and the adjacent one.


    I hadn''t gotten much further than estimating the distance and of course by now I had the relative resistance of dry, indoor air memorized, when she began packing up right in front of me.


    "Oh, sorry. Finished already?" I asked.


    "Yep. Got that AAT homework to do back at the dorm. Fun night ahead," she quipped.


    "Well if it does give you any trouble, you can message me whenever you''d like."


    She gave me a very peculiar sideways look, and I wondered what I said, but then put it away and gave me a lazy wave as she took her dishes. "See you Friday, Athan."


    I wasn''t entirely sure what all that was about, but I did pick up there was something going on there. If Lia was to be believed, I''d just been flirted at...but I couldn''t think of a single thing which constituted flirtiness there. She''d even gone out of her way to avoid discussing the more intimate topic of her mods, so I was still convinced the girl was crazy. I probably wasn''t the only Ashton you could argue had their social skills miscalibrated by being around whackjobs.


    The bus ride was as uneventful as bus rides ever are. People seated everywhere, all on their mobiles, all pretending they weren''t touching or near others, pretending nobody around them existed. Not that I expected everyone to greet each other and become besties, but the rides always felt oppressively restrained.


    Just another cultural norm I had to adapt to. I wondered if Alyssa refused to take the bus as well. That seemed equally silly a thing as not wanting to talk to a stranger.


    And then, after eight or nine blocks, half a dozen of us deboarded, across the street from one of the many tall, hotel-like apartment complexes, technically unaffiliated with the school in the same way a vulture was unaffiliated with death. I walked along the gate, brushing my knuckles along the bars as we walked, yet another small group here, neighbors and students at the same school, but strangers.


    At least whomever was in the front had the courtesy to swing the gate wide when he swiped in, and we all passed through in a silent mob with murmured thanks to the person in front of us.


    And then, back in my own apartment, AEGIS stood loud and boisterous as ever as though in defiance of the rules of society. The moment I walked through the door, she greeted me cheerfully, asking if I''d eaten, plying me for details about my day like a worrying mother.


    "Not much, just class and stuff," I said. "Though...there was an event today."


    "A school event, I hope," she said, already breaking out the pigtail to tug on.


    "Yeah, like I''d phrase it like that if it were." I set my backpack down and pulled an apple out of the fridge.


    AEGIS frowned at it like it had offended her but didn''t comment. "How was the event?"


    "Same old," I said, biting into the apple with a nice juicy crunch. "Three skyscrapers destroyed, millions in flooding damage, but only a few deaths and a dozen casualties. It looked like the bastard was more interested in drowning the city than the people in it for whatever reason."


    He frown deepened. "Where was it?"


    "Chicago, I think."


    "Hmm. I''ve heard that Chicago has one of the highest rates of Exhumans having events instead of turning themselves in anywhere."


    "Yeah, the city''s crap," I said, with my mouth full of another bite of apple. "Sino war and all that radiation and stuff."


    "Well, what I was going to say was, I think a lot of that is the animosity the people there in general hold. And I wouldn''t be surprised if many of them hold that against the city itself. Like, the whole city is a symbol of the government''s lies and failure to rebuild, as much as it was supposed to be a symbol of peace and the unstoppable American spirit and all that."


    I shrugged. I didn''t really care, except that I obviously wished Exhumans everywhere would just be chill in New Eden instead of making trouble. But that was a pretty big ask. At least the Chicagoans were good at evacuating.


    "Well, no P-Force casualties?" she asked warily. I nodded. "Good. Then good enough for me. Stopped a crazy Exhuman, the P-Force did their duty, that''s a win in my book. You''re sure you''re not hungry?"


    "I just ate," I said, tossing the apple core in the garbage.


    "I see that," she intoned. "But I meant real food."


    "I know. I ate at school after class."


    She shook her head at me. "Athan, there''s food here, I made it for you," she fretted. "That''s what Prime did, and if you''re blowing me off, you''re not taking our relationship seriously." She put her hands on her hips as she looked down at me, but honestly, this was a bridge we''d been down countless times.


    As she noted my disinterest she deflated. "What do you want me to do, Athan? Cosplay in Kingdom Blade attire? Greet you naked at the door?"


    "Uh, I can hear you," Lia''s voice came from the second bedroom.


    "Gaming, cooking, sex, nurturing, these are the foundation of the relationship between you and Prime," she went on as though she hadn''t heard Lia. "They are what I''m trying to fulfill, and you are making it very difficult."


    I sighed. We''d been down this road countless times as well. "AEGIS, I just want you to care. I don''t need...characters from games or tantric...whatever. I''m just happy if you''re happy."


    "And I''m happy if I''m fulfilling my directive to you," she beamed. "So let me do it."


    "I''m not a directive."


    She rolled her eyes. "Semantics. Whatever you''d call the organic equivalent of directives."


    "Life, maybe? Living? Doing things because you want to do them?"


    "Implying I''m not alive? That I''m doing these things because someone''s making me?"


    I heard quiet footsteps and then a door slam as Lia got sick of our shit, yet again.


    "Lia''s right," I said, heading to my own bedroom that I technically shared with AEGIS. "This is stupid to argue."


    "She slammed the door because she was sick of you arguing in circles," AEGIS said, crossing her arms.


    "Nope, I''m not engaging. If you need anything I''m in here," I said, walking away.


    I closed the door and left the lights off, the room only aglow by the small indicator lights on the handful of machines that AEGIS had decided she absolutely could not do without. I didn''t mind, I actually liked the bustle of machines after living around them so long, though tonight they were all still and silent, waiting.


    As I slowly stripped and changed and got ready for the several hours of laying around in bed but not actually sleeping which concluded a day, I kept my mobile in front of me, watching a holovid I''d watched many times.


    AEGIS suddenly barged into the room, practically kicking down the door. "That video again, Athan? Seriously?"


    "Cam-drones in my room again, AEGIS? Seriously?"


    "Obviously they''re necessary, if you''re still watching this shit--" she said, reaching for my mobile as I pulled it away.


    "This shit happens to be informative and practical, okay? And I can''t help it if it''s the best I''ve ever gotten."


    "Oh please. You were just fine doing it on your own, and when I was doing it with you, I didn''t hear any complaining."


    "Yeah, because I didn''t know any better. But Karu''s a damn professional--"


    "And a dangerous lunatic!"


    "Which doesn''t invalidate her talents!"


    AEGIS came at the mobile in my hands again, and I stepped around her almost involuntarily. Our time training together had made her the one person in the world I apparently had no problem reading, and even as her frustrated noises increased, she kept her speed and engines in check so she wouldn''t burn me.


    Because if she wanted to just dumpster me and take my mobile, she really could have. But as long as she kept it on a human level, my skills had stayed with hers.


    "Fine!" she seethed. "FINE! Watch whatever you want, eat whatever you want, do whatever you want!" She seemed about ready to pull out her own cables as she stomped through the door. "FINE!"


    "Thanks, I will."


    She screamed gutterally and violently at me as she slammed the door. "Prime never had to put up with this bullshit!"


    I didn''t reply, just finished watching the video of Karu and me that I''d taken and then laid back on my bed in the dark. As ever, my mind wandered to the complex sprawl of circuits, electrical superhighways all around me.


    Maybe I''d developed this obsession out of necessity, I thought, tired as hell but completely awake. Maybe it was some kind of subconscious...reality-aversion thing. Maybe I should head back to Vegas for a weekend and talk to Saga about it. Not that she''d had much for me the last times we''d discussed it, or anything about what had happened a month and a half ago.


    But it also might be something. And it had to be better than staying here the whole weekend with AEGIS.


    I rolled over to face the room and the multitude of little lights in the dark, like a distant city, right in my bedroom, twinkling and sparkling as the machines cycled and idled.


    A thought struck me. I didn''t need to go all the way out to Vegas to get away, Alyssa had already invited me over. Maybe I could crash at her place over the weekends. I wondered if she''d mind, or if that fell into the realm of socially uncomfortable for her.


    Really only one way to find out, I thought as I yawned. Friday seemed so far away.

 282. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    Friday, as it turned out, was not far away at all. I guess only being two days away would do that for you.


    Still, time seemed to have a very peculiar way of disappearing in big chunks at a time whenever I found myself working, studying, or sleeping¡­and it sorta felt like that was all my days were at the moment.


    Big shock. Time goes by fast during sleep. Who knew?


    But it worked out pretty well for me that there were no new altercations with AEGIS, no Exhuman events, no crazed murderers or anything, just a few days of classes and my normal schedule outside of them.


    Of course my normal schedule wasn¡¯t a normal schedule. But it was normal enough for me, so it went by without too much fuss.


    I was seated on some steps, just idling around for a few minutes before the previous class got out of our room, and a shadow draped over me. Kind of pleasant really, given that it was hot today. I looked up and found red eyes and a smile.


    ¡°Guess what?¡± Alyssa said.


    ¡°Uh. The Sino War was an inside job?¡±


    She giggled. ¡°Yer¡¯ weird. No, I did my homework, and it did only take five minutes. Ya were so right. But maybe if they give us a bigger assignment this time, we can do it together? It mighta only been five minutes, but I was bored as plywood the whole five of ¡¯em. Partner might help with that, yeah?¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°The assignment¡¯s on the syllabus. It doesn¡¯t look any worse than last time¡¯s.¡± I paused long enough to see her expression wavering before I realized I was being self defeating here. And uh, maybe insensitive? ¡°Wait, no, yeah, actually. I had a question for you, related to that.¡±


    ¡°Homework so easy ya had a question on it?¡± she gave me a superior smirk.


    ¡°No, silly. I was looking for a place to crash over the weekend. My¡­uh¡­roommate is kinda¡­driving me crazy.¡±


    ¡°Oh? What¡¯s he doin¡¯?¡±


    ¡°She keeps trying to make me eat her terrible cooking and play games with her and stuff, when I¡¯d rather be focused on studying and¡­not eating her terrible cooking,¡± I lamented. ¡°We¡¯ve just been fighting nonstop recently and I think we need some time apart.¡±


    Something punched me in the back of the head hard enough to make me reel off the steps. I stumbled and rolled to my feet with my hands up.


    ¡°Um, mornin¡¯ Lia,¡± Alyssa said.


    ¡°Can it, floozy,¡± Lia growled at her with a jab of her finger. It turned on me next as she continued. ¡°Athan, what the hell.¡±


    ¡°You what the hell. You punched me in the head!¡±


    ¡°Uh, yeah!¡± she said with clear irritation as she rubbed her knuckles. ¡°And it hurt by the way. Your head is way too hard.¡±


    ¡°It should hurt! Why the hell did you punch me in the head?¡±


    ¡°Because AEGIS is your girlfriend, did you forget that? If you guys fight, that¡¯s whatever, but you are not just weaseling your way into another relationship and leaving her out to dry.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not weaseling anything. She¡¯s driving me crazy.¡±


    ¡°Um, you have a girlfriend?¡± Alyssa asked.


    ¡°I said can it,¡± Lia barked at her. ¡°But yes, he does, so stop with the coy doe-eyes on him, he¡¯s very taken.¡±


    ¡°She wasn¡¯t, though,¡± I argued. ¡°You¡¯re calling me hard-headed, but you¡¯re the one jumping to conclusions and punching people in the head like a maniac.¡±


    ¡°Maybe if you listened to me instead of¨C¡°


    ¡°Lia, I was only trying to talk to your brother. Did you hit him?¡±


    ¡°Jesus, you¡¯re insane, Lia. Like what the hell¨C¡°


    ¡°Hi gang!¡± Sebastian popped up. ¡°We¡¯re so loud today! Are we doing our early morning vocal exercises? I¡¯ve got one I do, Ba, ba, ba. Ba, Bar-bar-a A-aa-ann. Take my ha-aa-aand. Ba, ba, ba. Ba, Bar-bar-a Ann¨C¡°


    We all stopped to look at him while he sang and giggled. Couldn¡¯t exactly ignore it.


    ¡°What the heck?¡± I asked. ¡°This is like the second time one of you is punching me in the head this morning.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s too early to fight,¡± he laughed.


    ¡°Was that the worst rendition of the Beach Boys I¡¯ve ever heard?¡± Darris asked, sliding over a railing to join the conversation. He really couldn¡¯t stay out of any conversation which involved premilleni music, even if it was pop.


    Which I really hoped that song Sebastian belted out was premilleni pop because It sorta sounded like it had three words in the lyrics and was awful. But maybe it was just not being done any favors by his lack of singing ability.


    ¡°It is the Beach Boys! A national treasure,¡± Sebastian laughed.


    ¡°Eh, I found their later works derivative. After the nineteen sixties, they really fell off. Did anybody ask for Keepin¡¯ the Summer Alive? Going so far as to go back to their rock and roll roots was an obvious appeal to disinterested fans. They should taken the waning interest as a hint and let it die.¡±


    Sebastian laughed again. ¡°But they were keeping the summer alive.¡±


    Lia looked as lost and derailed by this whole musical tangent as I was. Sebastian showed zero tact in the unspoken rule which had formed in our group to never ever mention anything old and musical in Darris¡¯ presence, lest we all be in for a generally long-winded diatribe about why that particular song and-or group sucked or why something similar but completely unrelated to it sucked, and so on.


    It was usually obnoxious, bordering on frustrating as he refused to let the topic shift to anything else, but right now, it was a godsend as he¡¯d held up Lia¡¯s crazy train long enough for the class before ours to get out, and I made myself scarce in the crowd exiting the room. They managed to cover me for the time being and I stayed lost until class started, at which point the whole yelling and punching thing should have been safe.


    She still glared daggers at me as I sat down just as the professor called the class to order.


    It was a pretty typical class, nothing new or unexpected for anyone familiar with the syllabus, until halfway through when the professor was veered wildly off-course by making the rookie mistake of increasing student participation by asking for answers to some very obvious and very subjective questions.


    ¡°Why would you guess that we¡¯re seeing the current spike in consumption of paper products?¡± The professor asked. ¡°Yes, you in the blue.¡±


    ¡°Exhumans,¡± the student responded.


    The professor stopped his writing on the board to turn and look. ¡°That¡¯s an interesting theory, do you mind explaining a little more?¡±


    To my surprise the student in blue stood up as the whole class turned to see who was setting us all off-course. He was a big-ish guy in all dimensions, maybe an inch taller than me, a little broader, and quite a bit fatter. He had round cheeks that seemed to push his eyes shut, and shortly-cropped blonde hair which was hard to distinguish from his pale skin. His smirk was superior, and obnoxious.


    ¡°It¡¯s simple,¡± he said. ¡°People are realizing that digital is an impermanent medium. Already, there are so many old pieces of history out there on data drives that are incompatible with quantum computers, but at least they were preserved, they were. Well, until you have a server of them within range of an Exhuman event. Or like the recent revolt at New Eden, which was said to be led off with the detonation of an EMP bomb, Exhumans are becoming more cunning and destructive, they are, and people are realizing that the interconnectedness of computers is a weakness instead of a strength for data storage.¡±


    I rolled my eyes that he didn¡¯t actually answer the question at all, but the professor nodded respectfully. ¡°That¡¯s an interesting perspective, does anyone have anything else to say about it?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I do,¡± I found myself saying, surprising myself a little to find my hand in the air. ¡°As someone who¡¯s really into electronics right now, I can tell you that if they wanted to, they can design circuits with tolerances great enough to resist an EMP bomb, no problem. Most modern military hardware is already hardened because of this ¡®trend¡¯ you pointed out, and data retention could be built the same way if we wanted, so that doesn¡¯t explain it at all. Paper is just as volatile if not more, and for every EMP bomb or electroist, there¡¯s a pyroist out there burning down physical records.¡± I crossed my arms from my seat. ¡°Also, since New Eden, Exhuman events have been at an all-time low in the country.¡±Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    ¡°Only large-scale events,¡± the dweeb argued, cutting off the professor. ¡°Smaller-scale events have been off the charts after a radical group of Exhumans escaped New Eden.¡±


    He may have been technically right about that, but before I could reply, the Professor did. ¡°Now, don¡¯t start any conspiracy theories gentlemen, there are no escapees from New Eden, and there¡¯s no need to argue here. We¡¯re having a discussion, which means everyone should listen to each other¡¯s thoughts and try to suss out the truth buried in them, even if it¡¯s not something you agree with. But I think we covered this topic pretty well, so let¡¯s talk about how this resurgence of paper again¡­¡±


    He continued on, and the class sunk back into general apathy as the spontaneous debate ebbed away. I wasn¡¯t half done telling the round dweeb how wrong he was about electronic media and Exhumans, both topics I apparently was very invested in. I turned and noticed he was staring at me, and I was very tempted to give him a little gesture to stare at, when my phone buzzed silently.


    It was from Alyssa, a couple seats over.


    > Dude, that was super cool. That guy needs to shut up and learn from you a thing or two. Wasting all our time like that, so annoying.


    > arguing with fat freshmen over the professor is cool?


    > You did it somehow, LOL.


    > just annoys me that he¡¯s obviously got this agenda and is misinformed and cant wait to talk about it in the middle of class just because he sees a platform to so irritating gah


    > We all know, we all see it, we all appreciate you shutting him down.


    > Hey, were you serious about hanging over the weekend? I¡¯ll have to clear it with my roommate but I¡¯m super down.


    > Slumber party, LOL!


    > yeah my roommate is just driving me nuts


    > Is what Lia said true? Is she your girlfriend?


    I hesitated for longer than I should have. I knew the answer, but it felt like it was hard to wrap up AEGIS and my complicated relationship, which took place over the course of three of her lives and involved two enormous bouts of amnesia, a fatal virus, death and saving and life¡­it felt hard to wrap that all up succinctly in a ¡®yes¡¯ or ¡®no¡¯.


    > yes but its complicated really really complicated


    > Then I¡¯ll keep you and me simple, LOL. Come over and hang out and have fun.


    > thanks sounds great


    It did sound great. Getting out of the house, hanging out with my friends, not having to worry about stepping on AEGIS¡¯ feelings¡­or Lia¡¯s apparently. I¡¯d hoped that when I came out to college, all this baggage would somehow go away.


    Certainly a lot of it did. I was freer and happier than I¡¯d been in¡­ever, actually. But AEGIS had insisted she be my mother bear¨Ca term she loathed, incidentally¨Cas payment for getting me admitted, and Lia thought if I could have a normal life, she could too. Which honestly, I thought was awesome for her, even if she¡¯d hung up her Black Shark mantle for the time being to make time to do it¡­I just wished she could keep out of my business while making her own life.


    But ultimately, I was a pretty simple guy, and just the thought of having normal, everyday, human friends, far outside the sphere of the XPCA or any of that other nonsense, and doing something so ordinary as spending time with them, beyond the confines of a strategy meeting to avert an apocalypse or something, it just¡­buoyed me up. I hadn¡¯t even felt down, but now I felt so excited for all the really trivial nonsense we might get ourselves into.


    Maybe watch a movie on the holo. Maybe play some video games. Hell, if she needed groceries or maybe something from the drug store, I could tag along while she went shopping. The ceiling was the limit here. Anything utterly mundane was possible.


    We spent the rest of class messaging back and forth whenever the professor wasn¡¯t looking in our direction, though several times he glanced over in time to barely miss our stifled grins and giggles.


    Next Monday was football tryouts, too. I¡¯d obviously missed the actual tryouts in the fall, but I¡¯d talked to the coach and he put me on the spot by making me do some running and throwing. I¡¯d apparently impressed him enough for a second interview, as he told me that it¡¯d be up to the team ultimately, and I could do a formal tryout and wow them.


    I didn¡¯t imagine I¡¯d be any star quarterback anymore, especially if the college players had a few years on me, their months of experience and training while I¡¯d been¡­otherwise occupied¡­so backup QB was what I was shooting for. Which was fine by me, I didn¡¯t want to kick anyone else out or make any waves, I just wanted to get back on the field and do what I loved best.


    Still had a little phobia of things getting thrown at me, but I was working on it. I wasn¡¯t exactly aiming to be a receiver anyway.


    And so the hour slipped by with nothing more eventful happening than messaging Alyssa and daydreaming of the kinds of things people usually daydreamed through instead of daydream of. I felt a little bad when the professor started wrapping up and dismissed us all, realizing I¡¯d hardly heard two words he¡¯d said after Alyssa had messaged me, but I was ahead on reading, I had the syllabus. Just needed to not make a habit of it.


    She flanked me immediately as we got up to go. ¡°Food time?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Sounds good to me.¡±


    Another girl flanked my opposite arm and looked at me with lethal eyes. ¡°You go ahead,¡± Lia said with a saccharine tone that laced the daggers she was staring into me with sickly-sweet icing. ¡°I need to talk to my brother.¡±


    I sighed but waved Alyssa goodbye as she stepped away with a stuttering gait. ¡°What.¡±


    Lia waited until the other girl had gone before turning to me. ¡°Come on, dude.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± It was a question, unlike the last, terse use of that word.


    ¡°Nothing good is going to come of this. She¡¯s into you. You should let her down now, not string her along.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re just gonna hang out as friends. She knows I¡¯m dating AEGIS, and she¡¯s cool with it.¡±


    ¡°Maybe she said she¡¯s cool with it, but she¡¯s still into you.¡±


    ¡°Look, I¡¯m not going to cross any lines or do anything stupid, all right? I¡¯m allowed to have female friends while dating someone. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m supposed to wear blinders and ask for a new waiter if the one I get happens to be female or anything.¡±


    ¡°Waitresses aren¡¯t into you, dummy.¡±


    ¡°Karu was a waitress.¡±


    She raise a fist towards my dome again but this time I just intercepted it and pushed it away. Not that it was a serious attack anyway, but I¡¯d been training and my reflexes were doing their job.


    ¡°Look, seriously,¡± I said. ¡°Whatever happens, it¡¯s just normal human being stuff. None of it is going to hurt me or upset me or make my life more hell than all the shit and betrayals and dying and reincarnation and torture that the rest of the girls in my life go through. I want this because it¡¯s simple. I¡¯m not going to get hurt by anything this base, okay?¡±


    If anything her look became even more irritated and disgusted. I wondered just how much contempt one sibling could hold for another.


    ¡°I¡¯m not worried about you getting hurt, you asinine garbage. You¡¯re the one not taking this seriously, you have nothing to lose. But Allie is a good, normal girl, just getting her feet under her in the world. You¡¯re going to hurt her.¡±


    I stopped and blinked at my sister. ¡°Me?¡±


    ¡°Jesus, you¡¯re frustrating. Who the hell else do you think?¡±


    ¡°But¡­I¡¯m not doing anything. I¡¯ve let her know, just friends, right?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s like talking to a doorknob. Jesus, dude.¡±


    By now the room had pretty much cleared out, and the next class was beginning to trickle in. There were already some people sitting down, like I usually did, staking out their preferred seat and waiting, ready and comfortable. But there was one person sitting there that I had to frown at seeing.


    The student who got the professor off-track from earlier. The big pudgy guy in a white tee with the blue button-up shirt, he was still sitting there, and he was still staring at me.


    I had a moment of hesitation where I wondered if he was perhaps a crazy person. I¡¯d crossed him, and now he¡¯d spend every day stalking me and trying to make my life hell. Or just cutting me open while I slept and eating my liver or something. Neither seemed really desirable outcomes, and I looked back at Lia with sudden concern for what even a normal-level threat could present to her, especially.


    ¡°Hey, let¡¯s get food,¡± I said.


    ¡°You¡¯re trying to worm out of this again?¡±


    ¡°No. I understand what you¡¯re saying. I¡¯ll be careful, okay?¡±


    She looked at me like she didn¡¯t exactly believe me but nodded and started to pack up. I did the same, and when we turned to go, I made sure to keep her shielded from his sight with my body. As we got to the long, wide steps up the classroom, I saw Alyssa poke her head back in the door to look for us.


    But I needn¡¯t have bothered with any precaution for the girls, his eyes were firmly locked on me. As I drew near the exit, thinking maybe I¡¯d escaped and thank God normal life was simple after all, he abruptly stood up and called out to me.


    ¡°Athan Ashton of the XPCA Parahuman Force, AKA Chariot,¡± he said, and I blanched, but kept going forward like I hadn¡¯t heard. ¡°I said, Athan Ashton, what are you doing here?¡±


    I turned to Lia and found her eyes wide. Run, she mouthed at me, as she broke off and disappeared into the entering crowd, mobile in her hands.


    I started to run, but found my path blocked by him, standing there a step above and inches taller than me. His eyes smoldered as he stared at me, and when I moved, he moved to block me, bumping passing students without even a glance.


    ¡°Athan,¡± he hissed at me, apparently ignorant of all the stares he was drawing. ¡°I have one question for you, of the most critical importance.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know who you think I am¨C¡°


    ¡°You¡¯re Athan Ashton of the XPCA Parahuman Force, second-silver lead and founding member, along with Melanie Walsh, Jack Vega, Darius Knox, and Kaori Ikeda.¡±


    Vega? Was that his last name, really? That was cool as hell. And Tower¡¯s name was Darius? But more importantly¨Chow the fuck did he know all this?


    ¡°I think you¡¯re mistaken,¡± I said, trying to push past him but finding only his round stomach in my way.


    ¡°There¡¯s no mistake,¡± he said confidently. ¡°And there¡¯s no escape either. Not unless you answer me one simple question.¡±


    He stood with his hands on his hips looking down at me with a face like a toad while students continued to stream in around us. Lia had to be calling for Saga right now. But how big a scene could I afford to make here? Everyone in the room certainly looked like they couldn¡¯t give less of a shit of what was unfolding, but if I fucked up somehow, they¡¯d see him as more than just a crazy lunatic. And if they wandered off and told people, or it leaked on the ¡®net, damage control might become really difficult.


    So I sighed and tried to keep it to just the one guy. Saga could blast him out and we¡¯d all be set.


    ¡°Uh, what¡¯s the question?¡± I asked.


    He swung his backpack under his arm and reached inside. I flinched reactively but tried to keep it cool. If he drew on me, I could react and then there¡¯d be plenty of evidence that he was just a crazy fuck who needed to be expelled and never ever heard out.


    But what he pulled out of his bag wasn¡¯t a weapon, but a cardboard tube. He unstopped one end and shook loose a rolled-up heavy piece of glossy paper which he began to unfurl.


    ¡°Far superior to digital media, it is,¡± he gloated, because of course he would, the fucker.


    But what he unrolled and held out to me was a picture taken of the P-Force, in action, at the most recent op in Chicago. It was obviously a blown-up still from a mobile recording from some of the graininess, but there was something absolutely cool about how each of the figures looked, standing tall and somber in ankle-deep water as the rain pounded the quiet buildings around them.


    He tapped the image of the tall exosuited warrior right in the middle with a pen.


    ¡°Chariot,¡± he explained, as redundantly as possible, and I took a deep breath as I prepared to answer a question I knew was long coming. Though not like this, and not from him.


    But thank the friggin¡¯ heavens, the next words out of his mouth completely floored me.


    ¡°Could I have your autograph?¡±

 283. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    I was on an unfamiliar couch, listening to the unfamiliar sound of a movie playing while three girls flickered in the darkness with me. The one next to me was Alyssa, who sometimes glanced over and smiled apologetically at me, as though to make sure I was still awake, while the other two were her roommates, who had apparently accepted me into their lives on Alyssa''s glowing commendation that I ''was cool''.


    She said I''d probably want to watch an action flick, her roommates apparently had some romantic comedy they wanted instead. She''d appealed to me for an opinion, and I let her know that I really did not care. Democracy took its course as she was outvoted two to one.


    It wasn''t a bad movie but...well, relationship drama wasn''t as funny when you had it at home, I realized. I also found my thoughts drifting. Not only to my latest obsession in just what kind of voltages the holo might be using to power a display as large as the girls'' had, but also back to the big guy encounter at the end of class before lunch on Friday.


    Diallo, his name was. Which was fitting, because it wasn''t far off from ''dildo'', and he wasn''t far off from being a huge pain in my ass.


    Saga had not been called in, as Rito was off in the middle of something else apparently, and by the time we''d gotten ahold of her, the entire situation seemed to be settled by scrawling a signature on his paper and fleeing. Saga suggested she walk over, seemingly unconcerned of the presence of the Rocky Mountains and a state line between us.


    Regardless, things seemed stable for now, and there was the added benefit of Lia now holding her breath and staying only in my periphery, instead of chewing me out, even as I packed a bag of clothes and toiletries to spend the weekend with Alyssa. Or, more specifically, away from AEGIS.


    The movie concluded with a rather predictable ending. The guy and girl who were recently estranged by a simple miscommunication threw aside the old lives they''d been clinging to in order to choose their budding love. Of course, the second they did, each of them spontaneously realized the ''if you love me enough to give things up, I love you enough not to let you,'' and in one dramatic kiss, all of their relationship woes disappeared. Nobody had to change, nobody had to give up anything to make it work, everyone was perfect for each other, forever.


    Kinda made me want to throw up. Even if problems got resolved, they didn''t go away forever. Those two would always have lingering doubts about the other. Will he really accept my neurotic spending habits on cute dresses? Is she being honest with me, or is she just afraid because I''ve already threatened to leave once? Is she just settling with me because the hot guy at the party turned out to be gay? And what about the next hot guy she sees, has she changed, or are we doomed?


    Man, when did I become such an expert at shitty relationships? At least nobody was molesting anyone there. Or trying to rope them into some new video game. Or cooking for them.


    "Well that was pretty good," Alyssa said to me over the soaring of the credits music.


    "I guess," I said. She frowned.


    "I told ya guys we should have watched an action ''vid," she chided her roommates.


    They laughed and bickered for a few minutes while I watched.


    "Well now yer smilin''," Alyssa turned to me.


    "All guys like catfights," one of the roommates joked, before catching Alyssa''s pillow with her face.


    "Yeah, sorry. I just miss normal interactions like this."


    "Ya don''t argue with yer roommates ever?"


    "No, too much," I sighed.


    Her arm shifted to squeeze my knee. Her fingers felt gentle. Suited for holding a pencil or pulling hangers off a rack, not clenching the yokes of an exosuit or the grip of a pistol. The other two girls grinned with what I thought was wicked intent, until they both rose and left the room in unison, leaving behind only the faint sound of giggling from behind the door.


    "Sorry about them," Alyssa said.


    "For the movie? I didn''t hate it."


    "For...uh¡­" she looked around. "For that."


    "Leaving? Giggling?"


    She looked at me sideways. "Uh, never mind. Are ya hungry Athan?"


    "Probably should be. Did you have something planned? I''m cool to pay for whatever."


    "Well, I thought, since ya had such issues with yer lady friend cookin'', maybe we''d go out or the like. Don''t want to force ya to eat my cookin'' if yer runnin'' away from some already, right?"


    "Sounds fine to me," I said, standing and picking up my shoes. "Anywhere in particular?"


    Before she answered, someone knocked at the door. Four distinct taps, like a metronome. It was a knock I recognized. But that''d be impossible.


    "Uh. Should I get it?" I asked, since I was standing right there.


    Alyssa nodded and I cracked open the door.


    It was impossible. I felt my forehead crease as I opened the door further to reveal a girl in a cute pink-and-charcoal outfit, down to pink laces on her grey sneakers and pink fluff on the inside of her grey knit cap.


    "I found you," Moon said, with all the excitement of spotting a bug on her wall.


    I gave her another couple seconds of us just staring at each other before I closed the door.


    "Welp. Maybe stay in," I said. Alyssa gave me another weird look before the door knocked at me again.


    I threw it open. "What."


    "It is considered rude to close the door in--"


    I closed the door again.


    "Um, who is that?" Alyssa asked. "Is that your girlfriend?"


    I shook my head. "No, just an...old friend...kinda."


    She knocked again and I sighed and opened it. "My apologies, but when were we considered friends?"


    "Right, my mistake," I said, and closed the door again.


    "Um...ya can invite her in if ya''d like. No need to play with the doors...my roommates will think yer crazy if ya keep it up."


    "You''ll probably regret this," I said, and opened the door. "You heard the lady. You''re invited in."


    "I thank you," Moon said with a deep bow to Alyssa that sent her hair tumbling over her shoulders in an onyx cascade. She rose and faced me. "I do not thank you."


    "Yeah, no surprise."


    I stepped back as she entered the room a couple feet and remained standing, changing effectively nothing about the situation but the intervention of the door. I could tell she was upset though, not the least of indicators being that she started talking again without any of her usual nonsense.


    "I suspect you are wondering why I am here. I am here to demand you return to and reconcile with the others."


    "The others? Not you?"


    "I do not care either way."


    "Yeah of course not. I forgot you don''t believe in relationships."


    She blinked at me slowly in a manner which might be attributable to irritation. "Do you believe relationships akin to faeries in that they vanish if we do not believe? They exist. Professional relationships are paramount to human success. Personal relationships, however, are superfluous. And can end only in pain, as you are demonstrating."If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "Yet you want me to go back and rekindle with the guys? Pick up our personal relationship again?"


    "Yes."


    "And you don''t see the hypocrisy in that?"


    "No."


    I waited and so did she. Alyssa looked back and forth between us, lost as anything. I didn''t blame her, I only barely understood Moon-speak myself.


    "Fine. Please explain how you do not find demanding that I reform personal relationships hypocritical, given your stance on them?"


    "Because the damage is already done. You have formed these bonds already. They will end in inevitable loss. All that can be done is to delay that loss. I am here to delay."


    I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose in irritation. I wished I didn''t understand her as well as I did, but her logic always made a weird sense to me, no matter how much I disagreed with it. She was like a robot from the sci-fi holovids that always found some twisted reasoning to exterminate humanity. Wrong on so many levels, but perfectly rational about it.


    "Why are you here instead of them?"


    "Because I came here."


    I sighed. "Why did you come here instead of them?"


    "Because they did not come here."


    "Why did you choose to come here on their behalf, when they themselves did not -- implicit by them not coming -- care enough to have this chat with me, instead of you performing it by proxy?"


    "Because they like and respect you too much. I do not suffer this handicap."


    "You made me jump through how many hoops just so you could say that with a smug face?"


    "I apologize. I did not intend my face to be smug at the time of delivering that line. Sometimes emotions slip out unintentionally. I am fallible, after all."


    I sat down and Alyssa followed me while Moon remained standing there. "She didn''t look smug to me," Alyssa said. "Am I missin'' something?"


    "No, Moon is," I answered. "Like, a heart, and several important parts of her brain, I think. She''s got zero desire to have friends, feelings, or emotions, and thinks that''s all totally fine."


    "I have feelings and emotions. I make lively jokes."


    "Yeah. Real lively. Moon, I made it clear when I...uh...when I rejoined. I put down conditions, our organization accepted them, and that''s the way it''s gonna be. I''m sorry I can''t do more."


    She almost-glared at me in almost-disgust. "Perhaps I would better understand your position if you explained it to me. I can be rather slow to pick up on such things."


    "Maybe you should explain to me why you''re doing all this in the first place? Why''s it so important to you that you''d show up unannounced at...at not even my place, but a friend''s house where I''m staying? I''d ask why you didn''t just...y''know...call, but you''re already like ten steps further on the crazy train than that."


    "Apologies, but that is a large number of questions. Can you narrow it down to one?"


    "Why are you here doing this?"


    She stopped for a minute to think, staring at me the whole while. Alyssa several times seemed on the verge of speaking, but I think she saw me waiting and picked up to just wait herself. She was being pretty understanding of this whole train wreck, all things considered. I made a note to thank and apologize even more profusely when this was all over.


    "As you are aware, Tower and I are often¡­" her eyes flickered imperceptibly towards Alyssa "...of one mind. I am aware of what pains him. After the last operation, that was you. I do not enjoy seeing him in distress, when something so simple as an explanation for your actions would go far in ameliorating the strain."


    Again, not what I wanted to hear, and a very legitimate answer. Just not one I could do anything with. Before I could reply, she added, "I am certain Jack and Cosette feel similarly."


    "I''m sorry Moon--"


    "Kaori."


    "--but there''s nothing I can do. The conditions I put down, they were for a reason. There were some...changes...as I''m sure you''ve noticed, and...I can''t go into them. I have my reasons, and I''m sorry."


    She shocked me with a sudden sound as she slapped the table with a small hand. "I do not think that is good enough, Athan. I believe these men have fought and bled with you, and their hearts sear at your betrayal. I am disgusted and outraged."


    She even looked it and sounded it a little.


    "I know," I said softly. "But...I can''t do anything else. I''m sorry."


    Her hand on the table clenched into a fist before moving back to impassionately dangling at her side. "I find your actions contemptible. I am...they are justifiably upset, that you would so brutally turn your back on those you called friend." She turned to Alyssa. "Put no faith in this man. If he says you are his friend, consider those words without value."


    Silently she moved to the door, and I caught a glimpse of Alyssa''s completely stunned expression as I got up to see Moon out.


    "I am not finished here. I will return for you again, until I am satisfied," she threatened.


    "Great," I sighed. "More drama I didn''t need."


    "Then perhaps do not bring it on yourself, miscreant." She bowed deeply towards the stunned Alyssa again, thanked her for hospitality, and then vanished out the door.


    When she''d come in, she''d eradicated any joy of normalcy that had lingered in this place, and when she left, she did the same of my self-worth, throwing all the selfish decisions I''d made in my face.


    I hadn''t wanted this. Hadn''t wanted to hurt the guys. I just wanted to be a normal person for once, and had jumped at my chance. I knew that mine had been a life I couldn''t leave behind...but I had expected it to be trouble, or my own sense of guilt or justice which would drag me back, not my friends.


    Something took hold of my arm, and I looked down to see Alyssa half-wrapped around it, smiling up at me through a wavy curtain of her hair.


    "We still on for dinner?" she asked.


    "Uh, if you want. You still want?"


    She nodded.


    "You aren''t like...weirded out by my friends dropping by and slapping your table and...arguing with me about betrayals and abandonments and her telling you I shouldn''t be trusted?"


    She shrugged. "Kinda, I am. But from the moment I met ya I never thought ya were an ordinary sorta person. Yer friend got me curious about who ya are though."


    "Well," I said, struggling for a place to start explaining. "I mean...you know I transferred here--"


    She smiled as she put a finger on my lips. "We can talk over dinner, right? I''m sure yer hungry like a hippo."


    It was right then that I decided that Alyssa was a really good person. She might have some flaws, be a little rough around the edges and spend way more time messaging her friends than doing her homework, to say nothing of any number of traits that would have gotten her killed in a fight in a heartbeat. But...those weren''t real criteria, were they? A good person, who''d judge her friends for herself and listen to people over a meal if they were hungry.


    I was lucky to have her, I thought.


    She, like most freshmen, lived on-campus but she insisted today was ''special'' and we should go out so we''d have a more suitable backdrop for our conversation. I kind of agreed that the dining halls on campus weren''t exactly a place for a personal conversation, and so, one rather awkward bus ride later found us in a dark corner of a little noodle bar, where faux-silk tapestries hung around us, and the uniforms were polos and slacks which were trying their best to look oriental.


    "Nice place, huh?" she asked as though embarrassed. Her hands fidgeted with the flat plastic ladle in front of her.


    "Yeah, good enough. Should I get talking now about Moon and stuff?"


    "In a bit. No big rush. Did you like my roommates? One of them I met at orientation, the other is new...filled in for a girl none of us liked who got on probation first quarter and was gone the next. Just got drunk every night and would stand on the balcony yelling at campus security like a moron--"


    She kept up her chatter as we decided on our orders, made them, and begun slurping at bowls of hot noodles. I contributed when I had something to add, but mostly just listened.


    I''d never quite had someone like her in my life before. Not just how normal she was, or how she could seemingly pull conversation from thin air like it was effortless, but also how engaged she could be in such simple things, unironically. As the topic shifted around from classes to the food, to her home life, she was never cynical or snarky or mean-spirited.


    Which was just strange. I lived in a world of sharp-tongued women. Lia might be sweet, but if she thought you were an idiot and you were her brother, you''d hear about it. AEGIS loved to talk, but always in a more elucidatory fashion, which often as not felt like it was for her own ego as it was for any listener to learn something. Saga, Karu, Cosette...friggin'' Moon was the worst of them all...rarely had I just sat down with any of them and had a conversation which wasn''t a fencing match.


    Which I didn''t mind, of course. Sarcasm was funny, and they were sharp. Rito was just kind of vapid and sorry, Whitney was...well...difficult lately. And Tem was Tem. I had no idea where she was, but nearby, presumably.


    More than anyone, I guess it reminded me of AEGIS Prime, back when we were dating. She worked very hard to come up with topics of conversation though, and did so to keep the date flowing successfully, with excellent results. Another thing about her the current AEGIS just seemed to disregard as unimportant. And yet here I was, being captivated by it all over again.


    The realization of which hung over me a little bit for a moment as the conversation temporarily slowed near the end of our meal. She gave me a small apologetic smile as she checked something on her mobile.


    "Ah, yeah, ya said yer football tryout is Monday?" she asked, sliding her mobile back into her purse.


    The silvery threads holding the realization frayed as they snapped under its increased weight.


    "Um. Yeah. Say, what were you checking on your mobile?"


    "Oh, that?" she said a little embarrassed. "I just...made a note so I wouldn''t forget. Just a few things I wanted to remember to bring up so we could talk about ''em. Memory like a sieve, sometimes, y''know?"


    The realization came crashing down on me, almost crushing me through the bench into the floor. Flooring me, you might say.


    "Wait, Alyssa...are you...is this¡­" I looked around. Mood lighting. Soft plinking music. The two of us alone over a shared meal. I blinked as I looked at her more closely, making her wriggle slightly. Dark lines bordering her eyes. Thick full lashes. A kiss of color and shine on her lips. She was wearing makeup? Since when? And...a little top and a skirt...that wasn''t what she wore to class. But she''d been wearing that all night around me.


    The realization ground me into the depths of my own idiocy, and from somewhere not  far away, Lia''s words emerged like a foot and helped jam it further down into my thick skull.


    I swallowed hard at the last refuge. "Are we on...a date?" I asked her.


    The embarrassed look, the vague smile, they were familiar by now. But the small, knowing shrug and the blush that accompanied it, those were new.


    The realization buried me like a tombstone. If it had an epitaph, it would read:


    Here lies Athan Ashton. Oblivious, stubborn, idiot.

 284. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Athan.

    I was back home, sitting on the couch, head hanging low, like I was trying to shade and study my feet at once.


    I''d run away. For the first time, I''d just...made some excuses, grabbed my things, and got out of there. I didn''t know what I was doing, I didn''t know what I''d gotten myself into.


    Normal life was like a beautiful tropical plant. To me, exotic and unknown, new and exciting, alluring and fun. And if you got too close, it stung you and killed you for trying to enjoy it.


    Exhuman life was like a cactus. Tough, soulless, and excruciating when shoved into one''s body unexpectedly. But at least it looked as shitty and painful as it actually was. There was no unexpected facade here.


    I''d been sitting here most of a day now. AEGIS had come by repeatedly, first in concern, then annoyance, and then major concern, and was now building her way back to annoyance again. Tem was here somewhere, visible at first, but now hiding when she''d realized I was upset and trying to be out of my way. Lia as well, who had given me a long look and a sad shake of her head with a pitying ''oh, Athan.''


    And an uninvited guest as well. True to her claims we were ''not finished'', Moon sat, book in hand. She was as still as me, next to me on the crappy couch which dominated the small living area between AEGIS and my room, and Lia and Tem''s...which Tem never stayed in, but whatever.


    She even flipped the pages silently, with barely a motion. Yet still the sound of the paper turning every minute felt like it was scraping against the inside of my skull.


    "Can you...not be here?" I asked her. "I got your message about Tower and Jack, and I told you I can''t do anything about it."


    Her book closed without a snap for once and I felt her eyes on me, even though I was still talking to my feet.


    "I believe it reasonable to ask for an explanation of your actions. If nothing else."


    "I don''t think you get to make that assessment."


    "Regardless, I act on my own beliefs, as I ever have. If that inconveniences you, I will not apologize, but might suggest that capitulating on the point would resolve it."


    "Yeah, you''re a treat." I stood up and went to our room, taking my chances with AEGIS instead.


    "Feeling better?" she asked with some sarcasm but her face showed relief.


    "No, just getting away from Moon," I said, closing the door.


    "Why won''t you tell me what''s wrong? You''re being a major butt."


    I mean, I would have liked to, but I didn''t know any way to say ''I think I accidentally went on a date with another girl behind your back'' without it sounding like shit. So instead I just kept up my silence and fell into bed.


    Something rapped on the door four times, regularly spaced, and I put a pillow over my face. Maybe if I smothered myself with it, I could wake up in a hospital far from here.


    "Hiya, Moon. Athan said he''s trying to get away from you. Which you absolutely heard, because this place is tiny."


    "I did hear. I had an idea to achieve my ends now that he is in this room. I hope you do not mind my intrusion."


    "Uh...actually kinda do. Maybe you should leave, if Athan doesn''t want you around."


    I heard AEGIS moving. Moon cleared her throat significantly. "Athan, just what were you doing at that girl''s house yesterday?"


    AEGIS stopped. I gripped the pillow over my face tighter.


    "Alyssa I believe you called her? The two of you were on your way to dinner, I had heard. She had roommates and yet they were not coming."


    "Damn it, Moon," I muttered. "Why."


    "Is this true, Athan?" AEGIS asked. "Is this the same girl you''ve been messaging at all hours?"


    "Why would you know about that?" I asked, sitting up.


    She rolled her eyes. "Like I don''t monitor all the network traffic within the next three relays out."


    "Or have cam-drones watching me whenever I''m home?"


    "Don''t make this about me, Athan. I''m not the one crawling into other girls'' beds. You said you were with friends."


    "She is a friend!"


    "Oh, and you just conveniently left out the fact that she''s a girl? I wonder why you''d feel the need to hide things, if it''s just so platonic between you."


    "Well maybe, it''s because I know you''re a jealous psycho when it comes to me talking to other females, and I''d rather you not start killing every woman in all of my classes."


    "AEGIS is clearly not a murderous deviant," Moon said, stepping in between us with the grace of an avalanche. "Now with that said, perhaps you can tell me more about that big jerk Athan over there," she said turning to AEGIS as she spoke. She also tried to put some...swagger...into her words, and sorta did this weird swaying? I thought maybe she was having a stroke until I realized that was Moon attempting to be chummy and persuasive.


    AEGIS looked at her with about the right mix of disgusting and horror as was appropriate. "What the heck was that?" she asked.


    "I am appealing to your sense of feminine kinship. I believe that automatically gives us a rapport when colluding against males."


    "I might be angry at Athan, but I''m not going to betray his secrets just because you did. That''s just...really...kinda messed up and shitty, actually."


    I crossed my arms at Moon and gave her a smug I-told-you-so look, before AEGIS blasted it off of me with a stern glare. "Let me repeat myself there. I might be angry at Athan. So he should show the proper amount of remorse and humility, or I will have to build myself a new foot after dislodging my old one in his anus."


    Moon stood sullen for a moment, and then after a deep breath, walked towards AEGIS with a hip-swinging wobbling gait. "Oh come on, sister. You can tell me."


    "You sound more like a mafia gangster than a sister. You need help, girl."


    Her words fell out of her slightly faster than normal. "And I am asking you for it. Do you think it is easy for me to put on airs such as these?"


    "Just give up on it. I''m not going to tell you, and neither is Lia, okay? All you need to know is, what Athan submitted when he resigned with the P-Force, that''s all he can give them. If it sucks, I''m sorry."


    "Just as I told you," I said. Just as we''d all rehearsed. I was just glad that even if AEGIS was going to kill me, she could stick to her word on this first.


    "I will ask Lia then," Moon said, turning. But she found herself being steered out of the room with AEGIS'' hands on her shoulders.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    "I think you''ve irritated the household enough for one day. Thank you for tipping me off about Athan, but no thank you for trying to manipulate all of us into telling you. You suck at it, and bye."


    The front door slammed. A moment later, AEGIS reappeared in the doorway with her hands on her hips. I felt a cold shiver pass down my spine as I met her gaze.


    "Hi, Athan," she said breezily.


    "...uh...hi...AEGIS."


    "How was your cancelled sleepover? Make any new friends? Make any new girlfriends? Make any new babies?"


    "Look, I''m sorry, I should have told you but...I left because I realized it was getting more serious than it should have. I did the right thing."


    "And that''s why you had to hide it from me? Because you were so just and right in your actions?"


    "We just went over this. But I did leave before anything happened. So yes. Please unbunch your panties."


    Her face twitched. And then she reached down and up her skirt and slid the fabric down her legs. "Do these look bunched to you?" she said, flinging them at me. She stooped for a moment and seized what was presumably Tem and pushed her out the door before she closed it and she advanced on me.


    "A--what? I''m...what?"


    "I asked," she said, sitting on the end of the bed next to me. She picked up the little scrap of white fabric and held it up, her eyes glowing yellow over them at me. "--if these looked bunched to you."


    "N-no? I don''t u-understand the question."


    Her hand was on my thigh. Her chest heaved with heavy breaths. Her eyes sparkled. "You told me to unbunch my panties, so I have. Isn''t that good enough for you?"


    "It''s just and expression, dude--"


    "Isn''t that good enough for you?"


    "I''m...I''m so lost," I said. "I don''t know if you''re mad, or...horny...or both? Or if I''m being punished for something...because I apologized!"


    She shut me up with a kiss and took the opportunity to knock both of us horizontal with her on top. Her warmth rested on me as she shuffled into position, and her lips were hot and creamy like honey. The smell of sweet rubber filled my nose as her face mashed into mine, bearing some of the weight as she straddled me.


    She broke off the kiss and asked again. "Isn''t that good enough for you?"


    "I don''t know what you''re asking, AEGIS," I gasped.


    "I am asking," she rubbed her hands down my body and under my shirt. "Isn''t. That. Good enough?"


    "For what?"


    "For you!"


    My head spun and I felt incredibly stupid. She''d just repeated herself four times, and I felt like I was just stupidly repeating ''what?'' while...something was going on. Something so serious and fucky that just nodding and pretending I knew what she was saying was a terrible idea.


    I had to stop this before she got hurt by me doing something stupid. As she fumbled with my belt, I closed my hands around hers.


    "AEGIS, stop."


    "No," she said, working her fingers under the loop.


    "Stop. Come on."


    "No!" She pulled one end free.


    "AEGIS, stop. I need to talk to you."


    "I don''t want to talk!" she pulled the belt open, and I held her hands clasped together away from the rest of my pants.


    "I need to understand what you''re talking about. One second you were so angry at me I thought I was gonna die, and now...this. And I''m so, so lost."


    "Just let me--"


    "No, talk to me."


    "Move your hands--"


    "AEGIS, stop it."


    "Athan damn it, just fucking stop and let me have this, okay?" she suddenly screamed. "Let me do the one fucking thing I can''t screw up on! Even if you hate me, or find me boring or disgusting or pathetic, I still have holes that work, okay? So fucking let me--"


    She tore her arms out of my grip, her engines flaring for a moment, and then literally tore at my pants, splitting them down the middle like they were paper in her grip.


    "AEGIS stop, I don''t think any of that--"


    "YOU STOP," she screamed at me, tears rolling down her cheeks. "You think I''m blind that I don''t see what you see here? You think I don''t know you''re avoiding me? By hanging out with some newer, younger, more interesting girl?"


    She tore at me frantically now, and I did my best to push her back. We couldn''t do it like this. I didn''t want her polluting another part of us with this. I grabbed her wrist and held it fast, but she twisted and broke my grip instantly. With my arms wide, I cinched her around the torso to block her with my own body.


    "ATHAN, MOVE," she screeched at me. "LET ME DO THIS."


    I held on as she battered at me and wailed and cried. And then I let go as something hit me with a crack and the roar of an engine and sent me flying sideways into the wall.


    "Fuck. Athan! Oh no." I just held myself as the bed shifted with her jumping off of it. "Oh damn it. Oh no. Damn me, fuck, fuck, fuck!"


    I didn''t stop to think. I knew thinking would just make my body realize the pain sooner. As long as I was riding this adrenaline, my cracked rib wouldn''t kick in for another few moments.


    But there wasn''t much else to do. Lie still and try not to move, even though the other side-effect of the adrenaline was hyperactive restlessness that made me want to jump and scream and kick and punch AEGIS right back in her own ribs.


    "AEGIS," I said, and there was the pain. Oh fuck did inhaling hurt. It felt like my whole side was caved in, even though I knew if it were that bad, I''d be coughing up blood.


    "Yes? Athan? Yes?" she whipped around, panicked and eager. "I''m so sorry. I''m...I''m so--"


    "AEGIS, calm down. Tem."


    "Tem?" She looked puzzled for a second. She pulled at her hair as she stared at me, a million billion thoughts crossing her eyes. "Tem," she said with sudden understanding. "Yes. I''m sorry. I''m...going to have to turn down my indices. I''m so...so sorry, Athan. I''m so fucking stupid."


    I did nothing but close my eyes against the pain. God fucking damn, was there even a point to being able to feel this much pain? Why couldn''t the body just like, stop at seven on the pain scale. That was sufficient to let the body''s owner know how fucked they were.


    But the real problem was, inhaling wasn''t something I could stop doing. It wasn''t like I''d broken my arm and it would throb like a bitch but only really let me know I''d fucked up when I moved it. Because every breath I took, I immediately almost lost that breath to gasping in pain at it. It took all my effort to just keep breathing shallow and controlled, because I knew if I started panicking now, my breathing would get even worse, and so would the pain.


    AEGIS gave me a nod. "I am really sorry. I''m...I''m worthless. I can''t even do that," she said, and opened the door with a smile. "Oh hi, Tem," she said with sudden saccharine grace.


    "Hello," I saw Tem materialize on the floor to speak to AEGIS. "You were yelling more than usual. I''m sorry, I probably made it worse."


    "Only a little bit," AEGIS said with the jovial honesty which came with her emotions being dialed down. "Athan''s resting right now, but I want to take him somewhere in private so I''m going to carry him out, okay?"


    Tem nodded.


    "Private means without you around," AEGIS clarified. "Have fun with Lia." She turned back and gently cradled me in her arms, and though she was delicate as possible, every one of her steps still felt like a punch in the ribs.


    "Why don''t we have a car?" she muttered as soon as we were out of the house. "Tem''s following us. I don''t think she bought it."


    "She bought it, or else she''d be shooting you right now," I said through grit teeth. "She just doesn''t care to ever leave me."


    "Do you think I can convince her that we have a romantic private room at the hospital?" I thought about it a moment. Even Tem wasn''t quite that thick. "Or maybe, I can just hospitalize her as well."


    "You''re doing the thing again, AEGIS."


    "Oh right. Sorry. Hard not to without emotions on, sometimes. You know, logically speaking, killing or maiming an impediment solves an ungodly number of problems."


    "Yes, I know, you always bring it up when you dial down. Please stop considering it, it doesn''t end well."


    "Oh, all right. We''ll just outrun her then. I''m sorry, this is going to hurt a little."


    "Pain is just pain. Get us outta here."


    I regretted my words almost instantly. AEGIS kicked off the concrete outside our apartment and we flew to the gate in a single bound, and then jumped over it in another, because presumably, opening doors was slow and inefficient to the robotic mind. Another three screaming steps and we were already a block away, as AEGIS pushed herself as fast as she could go without having to engage a burn and...burn me in the process.


    As a result, she was just gasping for air in a way which hurt me just to watch, given my current relationship with breathing. The steps, while very smooth actually, were still incredibly impactful, and I had to close my eyes against the pain or I felt like I would black out.


    But the speed was speed, and there was a hospital at the edge of campus which we arrived at in only minutes. AEGIS took us to a more controlled speed as we approached and weaved through the parked emergency vehicles outside the emergency room entrance.


    "Contusion of the sixth and seventh rib, occured ten minutes ago. Exhibiting swelling at the site of the blow, no symptoms of internal puncture, but signs of pressure on the lungs. Showing¡­" she glanced at me and I saw her eyes blinking rapidly as she stared through me with different optics. "...six on pain."


    "Just fill out the form," the nurse sighed, pushing a clipboard over the counter to her.

 285. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Kaori.

    Rarely did I feel that the world was conspiring against me. Yet, as I lingered beyond the doorway to Athan''s home, seated on the cold concrete with book in hand, my knees stiff from how long I had been still, I couldn''t help but for my mind to wander to desolate places.


    The familiar words on the pages before me were just a backdrop to my thoughts. This had been my mother''s book, and I brought it out not so much to read -- it was not that good a book, for one thing -- but rather to remember. The mind was a tricky, fickle thing, and though I labored to keep mine under control, I still understood the value of artifacts like these. Things touched with nostalgia.


    Unfortunately, the spell of the book was lacking at this time. I closed it gently and laid it aside to stare up at the white door before me.


    I was, I knew, being unfair to Athan. As reasonable as it sounded to demand his motives and history, I had no grounds to do so. I knew this, and knew that my time here was a mere farce to cover my own weakness, which I despised, both in the doing and the knowing. Still, it would be a lie to say I found him blameless. Even if I was being unreasonable, he was being equally obstinate.


    I had liked him, once. The realization of this had been devastating to my ego. After so many years of telling myself that the world was a broken place which wanted for paragons and produced only pain, I was horrified to find how easily I could fall into friendship. For a time, I thought he was like me, aware of this world''s faults and fighting to fix them, and with greater success and virtue than me. I looked up to him, even.


    And then he vanished, leaving me alone again. It hurt, and it reminded me of what I should have already known. The more one invests oneself in others, the more pain they bring when they leave. I was not deluded that he was a bad person, but I would not mind to see him suffer, just as I wished to see the suffering of the P-Force members abate. That was why I was here; a simple medium to move existential pain from the innocent to the guilty. Or so I told myself.


    I sighed and hated myself a little. Knowing he was not at fault spoke to my own weakness, and knowing that and changing nothing spoke to it further. I reached into a pocket and pulled out the true source of my consternation. The real cause of me being...not necessarily here...but anywhere but home.


    My mobile, still glowing faintly, alerting me of one new message. It was a name I had never expected to see, and it had so rattled me, I had not so much as read the message since receiving it two days ago. My mobile was, effectively, dead to me, and it was a small irony that Athan had asked why I didn''t simply call, when it was the state of the device, the state of my mind, which had pushed me onto him.


    I heard voices approaching and buried the message and mobile with it in my pocket, looking up to see Athan and AEGIS approaching. Odd, I had thought them in the house. They must have left within minutes of throwing me out and in some haste, for them to have missed me.


    He leaned heavily upon her, his eyelids drooping with exhaustion. She seemed fit as ever, if not annoyed at my presence.


    "Is this a sit-in now?" she sighed, drawing to a stop.


    "What''s the matter with Athan?" I asked.


    She leaned over and checked out his face from my angle. "He...had an accident. He''s sedated on painkillers. What''s the matter with you?"


    "You will have to be more specific. I have many matters."


    "It''s the middle of the night and you''re kneeling outside our door. Who the heck does that?"


    "I the heck do that."


    "Yeah, but why?"


    Athan''s head drooped and AEGIS readjusted him on her shoulder. "Should you not get him inside?" I asked.


    "Oh, ''cuz now you care about his well-being?" she barked with sudden intensity. "I''m obviously not a fan of Athan and...Alyssa...doing whatever...but it''s a whole other level of crappy to try to use that information to blackmail him against me. Really shows just how much he means to you if you''d do that to him. And shows just how much I should never, ever associate with you."


    "I apologize, my intention was to build a rapport, not to blackmail."


    "Well first off, you suck at it. Second, I fail to see the difference. Selling him out to me, or making him sell himself out, you''re still being a bitch. And I''m way not a fan."


    It did not improve my mood to see that AEGIS saw me as such. I knew I was quite socially lacking, but having it pointed out to me after I was already fleeing and failing both¡­


    I did my best to purge my feelings on the matter. If I continued logically, if I could just pry an answer from her, if I could just stay balanced on the edge of being right and just--


    I found myself hesitating even in drawing together the loose plan I had formulated in the hours on my knees. Athan did not look well.


    "Whatever I have to say can wait until he is at rest," I said, swallowing heavily. She said nothing but nodded and opened the door. She left it open behind herself as she passed through, an implicit invitation.


    Was it because I had not demanded a conversation over Athan''s lolling consciousness? I suppose if she thought me a bitch for trying to use him, she could think me reasonable for letting him rest. I let myself in before she reconsidered.


    "What is wrong with Chariot?" Tem demanded. The room abruptly seemed to fracture and dark lines seethed at the edges as she spoke.


    "He''s just tired," AEGIS lied. "I''m going to put him to bed."


    "You are lying. You are lying to me, AEGIS. Did you do this? Did you hurt Chariot?"


    "Would I do that?" she replied with a wan smile and Tem hesitated. "He''s just tired. Too much uh...rough sex, you know?"


    "Oh," Tem said as the room faded back into normalcy. "Good for him."


    After a few minutes AEGIS returned and faced me, both of us standing in the doorway. My legs complained bitterly after sitting outside in the cold but I did not permit them to bother me.


    "You got anything to say, then?" AEGIS said.


    "I have much to say."


    She blinked several times at me while she waited and then she spoke. "I''m not Athan," she said. "I''m not going to play your stupid word games. Fuck with me, and get out of my house."


    "I am merely an advocate of people saying what they mean," I explained. As she opened the door, I added "But, I will endeavor to comply with conversational norms where I can."


    "So talk, little round-bottomed bitch."


    I found that title offensive on several levels but did not reply. Instead, I began to repeat my case to her about the nature of relationships between Athan and Jack and Tower, and how his absence had wounded them. And ironically, his return wounded them more.


    "And?" she asked.


    "And...I believe much of this can be mended with a simple explanation. What is invariably a simple misunderstanding could be easily resolved. So please explain to me why Athan chose to leave...them all."


    "You might be particular with words, but at the same time, you really suck with them." AEGIS shook her head.


    "I am trying to explain on your terms, and concisely."


    "You''re also trying to pretend you''re this amazing person coming out here for altruistic reasons to help these suffering teammates, while at the same time blasting Athan with terms like ''traitor'' and ''betrayal''. It really pisses me off, and the more I talk to you, the more I dislike you. It''s obvious you took his abandonment harder than either of the other P-Force."


    I felt myself stiffening involuntarily and forced myself to breathe. "That is immaterial. My point still remains."


    AEGIS squatted the short distance to be at my height and her yellow eyes burned into mine. "Not that everything about you doesn''t already scream this, but you''ve got serious trust issues, huh? Y''know, I heard your daddy is CEO of the IkaCo Tech Conglomerate. Was he too busy to give you love when you were growing up?"


    She smirked at me knowingly. I resolved to kill her if ever given the opportunity.


    "Are you going to tell me what I wish to know or not?" I asked.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "Probably not."


    "Then why waste our time with these predictions and psychoanalysis?"


    She stood back up. "Because, like I said, you''re a bitch, and I don''t like you. Maybe if blackmail is the only thing you understand, you''ll leave Athan alone if I know a little about your past. Or--" she tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Is it really in your past? I''m pretty sure your mobile has an unread message. For two days now, huh?"


    "H-how?"


    Her eyes burned as she stared at me, all emotion and sympathy gone from her face in a terrifying instant. "I saw it in the hallway. Did you think these eyes were the same level as a human''s? And your phone has been connected to my personal ''net relay for hours now. I know everything on it. Would you still like to discuss blackmail...sorry...building a rapport, Kaori?"


    I felt a ball in my gut and the urgent, instinctual need to escape. It was as though a switch had been flipped inside of her, and any sympathy, empathy, kindness that she possessed had become pure, ruthlessly efficient evil. I did not know or understand, but I did know that I was utterly outmatched in a battle I had not expected to have.


    I bowed deeply and quickly. "Forgive me," I said as clear as I could get my voice to go. "It was wrong of me to attempt to use the two of you against each other. It was foolish and selfish and weak of me to come here and to do so."


    "I''m sure you''re only saying that because you lost," she cooed. "And normally, I might be more understanding, but nobody is driving a wedge between Athan and me right now. Do you understand, little round-bottomed bitch?"


    "Hai. I understand."


    "Good," she said, and smiled again, though malice still lingered behind her eyes. "Don''t fuck with Athan and me."


    I stood bowed and waiting until given permission to rise.


    "What?" she asked, finally.


    "Please. Tell me what I came here to know. I abandon all excuses and deception, I must know."


    "If I tell you, will you leave?" she asked.


    "Hai. I will."


    She hooked a finger under my chin and pulled me upright, her eyes burning into mine still. She smiled wider, but it was not a friendly smile. "Well too bad. Get out of my house."


    I realized as the cold of the night set in on my body an hour later what had just transpired. I had been deliberately intimidated. Nobody had ever tried to intimidate me before, and I was -- now, far removed from the events -- irritated that it had worked so effectively against me.


    I wondered if Athan knew what a terrifying monster his girlfriend was capable of being. If he ever abandoned her as he had abandoned me, she would not be following him with irritated words and demanding an explanation. I very much suspected she would use knives and would take several private souvenirs. With an emphasis on ''private''.


    Of course, I had no basis for this assumption. Just something from my books. She seemed the sort.


    Even worse however was that she knew what was on my mobile. Even I had not read the message...I did not know if she did, or could...but to think that after all these years, I would get a message like this, and then not even be the first to read it? It hurt more than it should have. It opened painful memories I thought long gone and injected the difficulties of my current life into them.


    I should at least read the message, I thought. AEGIS had shown me how vulnerable I was emotionally, and I had spent much of the hour since...calming down, actually. But after I had done that, I had loathed myself for being so cripplingly fragile.


    I had come out here to run away from facing the message, and then what? Expected that those in that household would bend to my wishes? It was stupid. Every bit of it, ill-conceived, flighty, irrational. It was not who I was. And perhaps reading the message would prove to be nothing, and I could resume myself.


    I doubted it very much, but could it be worse than this?


    I pulled the mobile from my pocket and ignored that my hand was trembling. As though I had meant to do it all along, I opened my messages and did not pause to allow my courage to falter. Decisively, I pressed the name at the top of the list.


    The contact listed as ''Ikeda Ichiro''. In the contact notes, my mobile knew him as ''CEO of IkaCo''. Some part of me which was not my heart knew him as ''Otousan''. Father.


    The message was brief. As I expected, he had few words for me after all these years. I held my breath as I read them.


    And then I rose to my feet and trembled in rage as I had rarely felt. I took exactly five seconds to even my breathing before knocking on the door with restraint.


    "Who is it?" AEGIS called out playfully from the other side, sounding as though she had been waiting just beyond it for me.


    "You are despicable," I informed her. "You are...vile. Inhuman. You are lower than dirt."


    "Sorry, don''t know anyone by that name," she said, and then with obvious delight "Maybe you should be more precise with your words."


    "AEGIS give me my message from my father."


    "Say ''pretty please''."


    "Pretty please."


    "Say you''ll never fuck with me again."


    "I will never fuck with you again."


    The door opened. "You really should shut up, you''ll wake Lia up," she said, grinning.


    I shut up. There was nothing else to do. I could shoot her in the face, and would still lose to this woman.


    "That''s what I want to see," she said, looking at my face. "That absolute despair. I know you''re a stubborn one, Moon--"


    "Kaori."


    "--Moon, and I know you''d probably make my life hell if I let you. So this is me stomping it out. Nipping it in the bud. And a big part of that is making sure this solution is permanent."


    "I understand."


    "Good. So you''re going to do exactly what it said in ''daddy''s'' message to you." She leaned over to the kitchen counter and grabbed a piece of paper. "This is the only copy of your father''s message. You want it, you do that. Got it?"


    I nodded. The content which had replaced my father''s message had been quite clear.


    > Piss off, Moon


    > Love, AEGIS


    There was little room for misinterpretation.


    She crumpled the paper into a ball and then held it to her shoulder which thrummed and glowed with circles of yellow light and a quiet roar like a distant motor. After several long seconds, the paper began to smoke and wilt and I realized she was burning it.


    The moment I stepped forward, she threw the paper out the door with a smoking trail, and I dove after it. It bounced several times on the concrete before picking up speed down a set of stairs, tumbling and leaving a looping trail of smoke behind it.


    I was barely out the door when it closed behind me with a quiet click as though she were just sending me out to the corner market. She truly was without feelings.


    I awkwardly bent as I ran, stooping and chasing the rolling ball of paper until it stopped, and then slapping at it with the grace of a confused dog while my fingers burned. I managed to smooth it out and then, having no water, threw myself on it.


    I closed my eyes as I felt the fire burning itself out under my stomach. Tears of pain and of injustice rolled from my eyes as I waited and endured with my face in the dirt. I would face any amount of pain to read these words, I told myself. So strange that I had avoided them so long.


    When at last the paper was burned out and so was I, I rolled onto my back painfully, leaving behind a couple of small, singed circles which had once been bits of my sweatshirt. I brushed them aside and found the paper still mostly intact, burned at random as it had been wadded when lit.


    The message was...was precisely what I expected, and any triumph I felt in having it in my hands was defeated by its pointlessness. It''s authenticity was unquestionable, something I hadn''t even considered as I''d chased the fireball, as it was exactly as it should have been.


    It read, approximately, in Japanese:


    > Kaori


    > Your cooperation is appreciated, as always.


    > This is Ichiro Ikeda.


    > Your return to Japan is requested. Please make arrangements to come back.


    > That is all. Please confirm what was mentioned.


    It was a completely standard business letter, written in casual Japanese, as one would speak to a business subordinate. Stripping away the formal template the entire message was a mere one line.


    Your return to Japan is requested. Please make arrangements to come back.


    No reason given, because a CEO would never need to explain himself to a simple girl. Pack up and leave. Not a question.


    This is why I had avoided reading the message. It sounded absurd, but I knew there could be no other reason for him to reach out but for him to have found some use for me. Now that I had read it, I was obligated to go.


    I did not wish to, of course. I had a life here, I was useful here. I was making...a positive change to the world, so that it would be slightly less painful and slightly less dark. Whatever use he wanted of me would be for credits alone, I believed.


    Maybe a business marriage. Those still happened very rarely.


    But what I wanted had, and never would matter. I was not a person, not really. I was merely a void where a person should have been, and I had taken his place.


    I had been in America too long, I realized. I had gotten full of myself and forgotten myself at the same time. Such arrogance, that I thought I could come here and make unreasonable demands of others. So American. How I could grow away from my roots so readily sickened me. I sat up and began to contemplate the means to get home.


    It was night and the streets were dark and unfamiliar, but at least I had my mobile back to give me directions. Perhaps I could summon a cab and then a flight, I thought. I did not think I would need any possessions back in Japan, being one myself.


    I had time to give Athan a mental apology, realizing that I, too, was abandoning the P-Force and justice, as he had. Perhaps I had my answer after all. He did not need to change, the world merely changed him. I felt bitter and sad that both of us could be lost so easily.


    Something grabbed the back of my neck and I dropped my mobile as it held me. I tried to think of words to yell or actions to fight back, but I was unprepared, and by the time I considered that acting was a necessity, I was already looking at my unconscious body from outside, watching it be dragged away down a dark sidewalk.


    I tried to scream but I did not know how. Even being kidnapped on a street corner in the middle of the night, it felt unseemly and impossible for me, a lifetime of being quiet, being out of the way, making no fuss. If I could kill him, I would, but my hands passed through him without effect.


    He shook his head at my attempt.


    "Kaori, my sweet," he said, his voice aglow with delight, "I never expected to see you. Never expected to find you here and alone in the dark. I''m here to take you to your new home."


    I twisted and struggled and tried to pick up sticks and rocks to hit him with but the sidewalk was well-kept. He watched me with glittering eyes as he pulled me ever further away from Athan and AEGIS and safety, never touching my skin, fully aware of how my powers worked.


    "Kaori, don''t be mad. Be happy, can''t you be happy for me? All I want is to see your beautiful smile."


    "Who are you?" I demanded of him. "Let me go!"


    "I''ll let you go once we''re safe and home, don''t you worry. As for who I am?" he gave me a broad, heartfelt smile that unnerved me entirely. "I don''t really matter here, you do. For now, you can just think of me as your faithful servant, and the happiest man alive."

 286. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Athan.

    The morning was just disaster after disaster. Tomorrow was my tryout and I had two broken ribs. I''d been prodded and x-rayed and the hospital had confirmed that, yep, my girlfriend had accidentally punched me hard enough to break my bones. I''d been given some painkillers and something to keep the swelling down, and they verified my lungs weren''t torn up or anything, but after that it was just go home, take it easy, rest, and heal for the next couple months.


    AEGIS and I apparently had very different views on resting and taking it easy because she''d woken me up with even more aggressive sexual advances than usual, and I practically had to beat her off of me before she gave up, telling me I''d hurt myself if I didn''t stop, apparently completely unaware that maybe her stopping was also an option.


    I''d been running a lot lately, both to get out of the house in the morning as soon as possible, and because it helped clear my head and give me time to think, and now here I was failing at that as well.


    It was a beautiful spring morning, the blades of grass were flecked with dew, the sun was lighting the sky pink and orange without yet hanging in it. The air was full of a thousand bird calls, each of them early enough to merit a worm. There were no cars out yet, and the only sounds of human life were the distant noise of holos playing as people prepared for the day, and the faint dull low rumbling of a highway in the distance, more felt than heard.


    And the pained wheezing of a stupidass kid trying to run with broken ribs. I was no doctor, but I had already determined experimentally that running required a lot of jostling movement and breathing quite hard, and what might the two worst things one could do to broken ribs be?


    Yeah. Jostling and breathing hard. I was an idiot.


    Instead of clearing my head and improving my day, running just felt like another disaster I was throwing on the pile. It was a mere couple blocks before I gave up, and was now walking home slowly enough to let my breath recover.


    I was on the street outside our wide apartment complex, a shitton of identical, multi-storied stucco buildings, packed with overpriced, small units, as befitted any university student, when I saw something glint on the ground underfoot. I''d almost missed it in my exhaustion, but I saw it was a mobile, dropped and forgotten.


    Hmm, did I say jostling and breathing hard was the entire list? Because as it turned out, bending over was also up there. Fuck me, very much.


    I tapped it to life found it open to a message. The more I reread it, the more I thought how bizarre this was, and how my understanding of the situation could somehow both grow and shrink at once.


    > Piss off, Moon


    > Love, AEGIS


    Sent to this device, from a Japanese name I thought I should recognize, listed in the mobile''s memory as...the CEO of IkaCo.


    Wasn''t Moon''s father that? I remembered her and Karu talking about that once, both of their fathers were in dealings together, and Karu had offered her condolences to Moon over her own dad. So why would she have him listed as CEO instead of...I dunno, ''dad'', maybe?


    Assuming this was her mobile. But checking around more seemed to verify that fact at least. Calls and messages from the other P-Force, almost all in the inbound direction. A very old one to me, telling me to talk to Cosette because she''d been annoying Moon and I was incommunicado. So yeah. Her mobile.


    Why then a message apparently from AEGIS, from her father? And why abandon it here?


    Not that my last detective work had gone so well, but I ran my fingers along the device and found a fresh, sharp scratch on the side. Dropped, presumably, and sure enough, a scuff of the same color on the sidewalk. So she read this message and lost her mobile.


    I headed back in to talk to AEGIS. I opened the door to the sound of food being massacred, and remembered that I should probably start eating on my runs.


    "Good run?" she asked with whimsy. I held up the mobile. "What''s that? You got a new mobile?"


    "It''s Moon''s."


    "Oh," AEGIS said darkly. "Uh."


    "Why does she have a message from her father which says it''s from you, and tells her to piss off?"


    She put down the mixing bowl of whatever she was working on and leaned against the counter. "Don''t be mad," she said, which was always a great start to a conversation. "I thought what she tried to do to you was really fucked up."


    "What did she try to do to me?"


    "Blackmail you, basically? By threatening to tell me about...you and that bitch Alyssa?"


    "Was that blackmail?" I asked, feeling stupid. "I thought she was just getting me in trouble." Lia had never been much of a tattletale, but I knew a lot of kids who were.


    AEGIS shook her head. "Moon''s basically retarded when it comes to dealing with people. So yeah, I think that was her intent. You had information she wanted, she had information you didn''t want me to have, leverage one to get the other. It pissed me off, and no small part of that is that controlling information is my thing, and if she thinks she can beat me at it, oh I''m fucking ready to throw down so hard. She has no idea who she''s messing with. I could--"


    "Hey. Focus?"


    "Sorry. Yeah. So she pulled that shit, and I just wanted her out. Now she had a message from her daddy she was afraid of reading, I think, and I just...well...controlling information is my thing."


    "You took a girl''s message from her father," I sighed.


    "She started it."


    "And you stepped it up from getting people in trouble over misunderstandings and college bullshit, to hacking, data manipulation, and emotional blackmail. Do you have any idea how messed up she is about her dad?"


    "Enough that she didn''t use her mobile for two days after getting a message from him."


    "Enough that it''s a big fucking reason why she''s a screwed up person, AEGIS. I''ve been in her head, and her shit with her dad is like, half of everything about her. And you just casually step in and fuck with that relationship? Jesus."


    "Well, I didn''t know that¡­"


    "What''d she do? She didn''t snap and try to kill you did she?" I asked, suddenly realizing that Moon was very tightly bottled, right until she exploded.


    "No, she just crumpled. She was crying and bowing and begging for her message. I told her to fuck off and I''d give it to her...and then I did."


    "And what was the message?"


    She grinned at me and picked up the bowl again, apparently confident she''d weathered this conversation. "It was in Japanese and took me a while to get a decent translation, but basically it said ''come home''. To Japan."


    I sat down, feeling my chest ache as I moved. "That''s...that''s it? She just...up and left? But...she dropped her mobile...does that mean anything?"


    She shrugged. "Maybe she just dropped it. Good news for us anyway, now you don''t have her running around meddling in your life. Not that it gives you permission to get into more trouble with that bitch."


    Normally I would have argued in Alyssa''s defense, but I was just lost thinking about Moon disappearing on us. Just...one message and she''s gone? Just like that?


    But then I thought on my own life. Just one night, and everything changed for me, too. Just one chance to have a normal life and I jumped at it. Was it the same for Moon? Was she going to reconnect with her father and put all this baggage in her heart away? I had to hope so, but it didn''t sit right with me. Things going well made me uneasy.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Was the message really from her father?" I asked AEGIS. "Not a...scam or anything?"


    "I didn''t check. Give me a sec," she said, pouring circles of batter onto a pan. I shook my head as she sifted powdered sugar into the bubbling pancakes, which already looked like they had chocolate in them in at least two forms. "Yep, seems authentic enough. Came from IkaCo, anyway, I can''t tell from where in there without more digging. Should I get digging?"


    "No, just...just making sure," I said, falling back to thinking. As much as I wanted to focus on Moon and her situation, my thoughts kept wandering back to the mobile in my hands, and not in a useful way. Hers was different from mine, newer. Probably used a lower voltage, given the shape of the holo projector, but it''s possible that there was just a subprojector elsewhere on the chip. If I could just see the delith cell powering the whole thing, the size of that would tell me everything.


    Damn it, brain. Focus for a minute. On something useful.


    I pulled out my own mobile and looked at it. My brain immediately started going to circuit diagrams again as my eyes glossed over my page of contacts.


    I was supposed to be no-contact with the rest of the P-Force, by my own stipulation, but if something was up, they would know. But there didn''t seem to be anything up, Moon had just gotten a message saying to go, and then she''d gone somewhere. Trying to draw any other conclusion here seemed like I was just in denial.


    I sighed and put away both mobiles, just in time for AEGIS to accost me with a plate.


    "You need to eat lots to heal sooner," she said singsong at me. I could veritably smell the sugar from here. Pancakes all right, but they hadn''t set right, probably because she''d tampered with the ratios to take out the bad stuff and put in more good stuff, as she called it.


    And they were coated in powdered sugar. And drowning in syrup. Both maple and chocolate. I wondered if they were also somehow salty. Sugar-blasted goopy salt pretty much summarized her cooking style.


    "Uh, yeah, I''m not hungry," I said.


    "Mmhmm," she muttered as she pushed my chair into the table, pinning me there effortlessly. "I put a lot of work into these, the least you can do is try them."


    "Effort like...changing the recipe?"


    "Improving the recipe."


    I picked up the fork on the plate and ran it against the unset marbled goop to shred a sliver of it. I put it on the tip of my tongue and waited.


    "It tastes like salt."


    "You always say that, you''re not eating it right. Salt enhances and accentuates flavors," she explained, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Sugar, sweetness, is the most basic desired flavor of all cooking, it''s the basic fundamental fuel of life, and human brains are hardwired to love the stuff. But on its own, becomes rather one-note and monotonous. That''s why people talk about things being too sweet, so I add a lot of salt to increase the depth of the flavor and add its own."


    "So it''s two-note and monotonous."


    "You can do a lot with just two notes, Athan. Just eat it."


    After the morning I was having, I was in no condition to try to put this into my body. With my luck, it would break the rest of my ribs from throwing it up again, while AEGIS patiently explained to me why my vomit was culinarily impossible. It was time for my rarely-used power move.


    I picked up the plate and threw it across the room.


    "Athan, what the heck!" she screamed.


    "Not eating it."


    "I worked hard on that!"


    "And I''ve told you again, and again, and again, sugar and salt isn''t edible."


    "There''s flour, and carbs, and...two other forms of sugar. And chocolate chips, which are...well, I got milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet. There''s a whole palette of flavors in there!" She went to the crash site and surveyed the damage. "And now there''s like a gallon of syrup in the carpet¡­"


    "Better than in me," I sighed. I felt bad, I really did, but no amount of pleading or explaining seemed to phase AEGIS'' zeal for fucking up food as much as possible, and so it had begun to come to this. I was a toddler, throwing food across the room.


    While she fussed with the carpet, I snuck out, not even taking the time to change or grab my things. Her preoccupation with cleaning wouldn''t last, efficient as she was, and she would be back to feeding me any second. I had to make my desperate maneuver count.


    I slammed the door and ran...about two steps before I had to hold my side and gasp for air, and doing that fucked me up even more. Not like running meant much when she could jet off at a cheetah''s sprint in a heartbeat, so instead I pathetically scurried away like some kind of...fearsome...scuttling crab.


    I wasn''t sure where I was going, but I''d been leaving the house just to get out of it a lot recently, so that wasn''t exactly new. Often times I wound up on campus, and that''s where my feet were taking me now. Heading to Alyssa''s right now would probably result in her homicide, so I didn''t do that.


    What I really wanted most was to just get away. And I knew the expert on that. I checked my mobile, saw that it wasn''t a preposterously early hour, and began messaging Rito as I walked. After I hit send, I moved to back towards home, where she''d been before and found a secluded corner where nobody could keep an eye on me to stop her from working.


    I got back, and then I just had to wait. The temptation to sit down and rest was strong, but I''d learned that tended to get you a bruised backside when waiting for Rito to move you somewhere. The chair you were sitting on suddenly disappears from under you, and before you even know you''ve arrived, your butt hurts.


    So I stood, and waited. And waited. And continued right on waiting. Until I realized I''d just spent a couple minutes standing somewhere else and never quite noticed it. I shook my head and got walking.


    Up a flight of stairs and I was there in front of a different apartment door. I knocked, to no answer of course, and then let myself in with the spare key under the doormat.


    The smell of decay hit me immediately when the door opened and I almost regretted coming here, but I wasn''t going to trouble Rito again just yet. And however bad it might have smelled, it was better than AEGIS'' cooking. I stepped into the darkness within and waited for my eyes to adjust.


    The blinds were heavy and drawn, narrow pathways amidst piles of junk, scrap, garbage, and refuse led between the apartment''s bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom, and the stench intensified near the sink, where about a thousand cups of instant noodle towered over the rest of the debris on the counter. Dark, stagnant water with things floating in it, lazily poured over plates and cookware. If she wasn''t more careful, she''d wind up with a full pond in here and start breeding mosquitoes.


    I sighed and pulled off my shirt, wrapping it around my face for whatever protection the smell of my own sweat would have over the other stank, and got to work.


    I kept a roll of trash bags here, and used them aggressively, which diminished the amount of crap laying around very quickly. Even with all the takeout and instant noodles, I could tell she hadn''t been eating properly, and considered making a batch of something large she could have for a few meals that wasn''t just crap.


    But that was just a pipe dream. For now, just getting all the shit detoxified and in cabinets was the goal, and that looked like at least an hour for me.


    Still, it wasn''t an unpleasant hour, all things considered. I''d really taken a liking to mundane things since going to college, and as it turned out, cleaning was about as mundane as things got. No drama, no fuss, no Exhuman bullshit, just a man and his sponge and a war on grime. Just like God intended.


    After I was done and my arms ached slightly from all the elbow grease I''d put in, and my hands felt dry and nasty, I headed for the back, set on finding a place to sit and rest for a bit.


    She was laying on the bed like usual. Tall, black hair in a huge mess around her, far longer than when we''d first met. Even thinner now than then, too, and she wasn''t exactly bulky then. She was wearing simple, comfortable clothes, a pair of pants and a loose fitting tee with an obvious lack of bra, and a visor that wrapped around the entire upper half of her face.


    It was hard to tell if she was awake or asleep, but by her relatively normal breathing, I guessed she was just plugged in at the moment. Which was good. Always made me feel like a creeper if I was here while she was actually sleeping. Not that it really made much of a difference physically.


    I moved some more clothes around to make some space and laid down on the bed next to her, dragging another wired visor across her as I did. Once I was settled in, I pulled the visor over my eyes and waited for the neural uplink to establish. After just a couple seconds, I was running the rest of the controls with my mind alone, feeling more than thinking my way through the menus in a practiced, intuitive way, until the game kicked on and reality disappeared from under me.


    In its place, new reality. Diffusely lit, gentler edges, brighter colors. Nothing to proclaim that this world wasn''t real, but unrealistic enough to make it apparent.


    Like before, menus floated through my thoughts as I felt my way through them and checked on my status and that of my friend''s. No surprise, I hadn''t changed at all since last time I logged in, while she''d gained most of thirty levels.


    With a thought a staff appeared in my fingers, and I gave it a lazy wave, feeling the disconnect which threw many new players out of the VR experience, that my arm in physical space wasn''t actually moving, just my perception of it. For those with cheaper hookups, the sensation of one''s real body was still very strong and the disconnect could be immersion-breaking, even enough to induce nausea in some very confused minds. It had never bothered me really.


    I waited while the staff did its thing, and after an eight-second timer, the world stretched like I was being pulled into a wormhole, and when it regained itself, I was standing in a familiar european-style garden under a shady oak which was inexplicably purple. White stone walls surrounded us, blocking out everything but the tree, the grass, and the blue sky. There was no way in or out of here but the staff.


    From one of the oak''s thick branches, a swing hung. And on that swing, sitting with her legs crossed, toes touching the ground was Whitney, or at least her representation in digital space, since the real one was lying next to me on the bed.


    While my character looked just like me, since I had no reason for it not to, hers was opposite in nearly every way. Short purple hair, below-average height, stout frame, large breasts, an irritable face. I knew she came here to escape, but couldn''t she escape her life without also escaping being herself? The thought of it made me a little sad, as it always did.


    "Hi Athan," she sighed as she saw me. "Come to bother me again?"


    "Just running away from home again," I said with her same melancholy. She gave me a little nod, and with a peculiar twirling of her fingers, another swing materialized from her inventory and hung on the tree next to her.


    I sat down and kicked off for a little speed. "I cleaned your kitchen a little. You need to take better care of yourself."


    She didn''t reply, just kicked off the ground as well to swing exactly opposite my rhythm.

 287. 2252, Present Day. Virtual space. Athan.

    Whitney and I...we didn''t talk much, and that was by design. Her life had gone to absolute shit, and running away from it all was pretty much all she knew how to do to cope. The whole point of the exercise would be futile if I just invaded her space and brought her problems in with me.


    But today I had something so burning I had to breach our unspoken agreement a little. As we swung together in silence, I slowly picked up the words I wanted to say to her.


    "Hey...last time you saw Moon...did she seem okay?" I asked.


    There was no sound but the rustling of leaves and the gentle creaking of rope on bark for a long moment.


    "Same as ever, I think," she gave a measured response. She knew I was asking for a reason, and didn''t inquire. If something was wrong, she didn''t want to know.


    So I felt really bad as I pressed on. "It''s just, I found her mobile on the ground and she seems to have run off. It was open to a message from her father...well...kinda. The message said she should come back to Japan."


    "Then I guess she did that."


    "But she didn''t warn you or anyone about it?"


    She skidded her feet along the grass and slid to a halt. "Why don''t you ask Tower, Athan? He knows her best."


    "Yeah, I should. Just...not supposed to reach out to the P-Force, you know."


    "You''ve already run away from home and lying in bed with me and messing up my private place here. Is ''not supposed to'' still material to you?"


    "I guess not. Sorry."


    She resumed her gentle swinging.


    "Is there anything you do want to talk about?" I asked her.


    "How are your classes, I guess?"


    "Pretty great. I feel like everyone else is so far behind because they just don''t do the reading or look up things in the syllabus. I do, and then I''m in the top ten percent of the class."


    She smirked at the wall in front of her. "Yeah, freshman year is like that. The first year is more a lesson on how to be a college student. If you''re lucky, you''ll have a class or two which will stick."


    "Yeah, I kinda skipped both one-ten and one-twenty, the intro courses by transferring in. Physics and semiconductors right out the gate, but it''s not so bad."


    "Tech electives are the real exciting part. That''s when it really opens up and you can start focusing on what you want. And then after that you get elective labs, and everything opens up again. You''ll move from mostly GEs to major classes, to specific fields you want to study, to hands-on working with the stuff. I''m a little jealous."


    "When you...were in college...did you find yourself like...obsessing over things? Like a lot?"


    "My school credit after I discovered the quesadilla bar, maybe."


    I laughed politely. "Um, no, I meant...like in your major."


    "Sometimes, I guess. I wouldn''t call it obsessing. I had dreams about things I was working on, thought about problems I was trying to solve at all hours...but that''s not any different than who I was or who I am."


    "I find I''m like...unnaturally distracted by electronics. House current. Delith cells in cars."


    She looked at me lazily. "No, you''re just a freak."


    "Do you think--"


    "I do," she interrupted me, which was a rare occurrence for her. "I do think it''s related to that, so we''re not going to talk about it."


    "Right. Sorry."


    She sighed heavily enough for me to hear it over our swinging. "This is the last thing I''ll say about it, okay?"


    "Okay."


    "Then yeah. The same thing...happened to me backwards. I can''t focus on my work anymore. I said I closed down the shop because it wasn''t working...that was...kind of a lie. The one that wasn''t working was me. I just can''t do it anymore. I can''t focus like I used to."


    "Is it--"


    "Nope," she said. "That''s the last thing I''ll say on it."


    "Yeah, okay. Sorry again."


    "Stop apologizing."


    We swung for another while in quiet. I could see how she could spend hours and hours in here. She had access to the whole of the ''net out there, any number of video games she could dive into, or even create whatever virtual space she wanted, and this is what she''d constructed as her ''home''. White walls and a little greenery, with nary an electronic in sight. Enclosed and safe, but not cluttered like her real life.


    It made me think of Saga the first time I saw her lounging here under the tree. Of course, at the time she was just pissed that I was in here, we hadn''t quite worked out the system we had now if I needed to alert her of goings-on in the real world, and she certainly hadn''t left a second VR uplink lying around with the intent of someone else using it.


    But I had and I did and I came into her little escape world, and we''d repeated this many times over the last while. It was nice here. I just couldn''t imagine choosing it over the real world.


    "So why are you running this time?" she asked. The unspoken rules only applied to her real-world issues, because frankly, I didn''t have hangups talking about mine.


    "AEGIS again," I sighed. "We got in another fight last night and she was trying twice as hard this morning to compensate. I''m not sure which was worse."


    "Break it off, friendo," she said. "You two are just no good."


    "We were good, though."


    "When she was someone else."


    "But she''s trying to be that someone else." I kicked at the grass underfoot. The server mentally notified me that I didn''t have permissions to modify that object.


    "She is who she is, friendo. You''re not dating the person she will be in five years. It''s unfair to you to spend your life miserable, and it''s unfair to her to be pressured to change. It''s best for everyone if you just let go."


    "Is it though? Neither of us want to break up. Why would two people who don''t want to leave each other leave each other? Sometimes it feels like I''m her whole world, and sometimes she reminds me of just how smart and compassionate she can be."


    "Reminds you of someone else, you mean."


    I stopped swinging and hopped to my feet, feeling a little too antsy to be having this conversation in a little paradise. From my mental inventory, I dropped a training dummy in the world and equipped six psi-blades on my character, which hovered in the air around me, controlled by my will.


    Kind of a neat concept. I should someday ask the devs who wrote them where they got their inspiration. Though in practice, it was nothing like having my swords, as those felt like an extension of me. The psi-blades felt like I was issuing orders to a unit in a video game.


    I focused for a bit on pummelling the dummy, watching damage numbers pop into the air like bouncing fleas as I struck. Whitney was smirking at me.


    "Damn, you''re so low level," she said.


    "I spend all day at college, not playing games."


    "Ouch, my lifestyle," she kept right on smirking. "You imagining that dummy to be your girlfriend? You''re certainly giving it quite a pounding there."Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    "No, I am not an abusive boyfriend, thanks. Just seemed weird to be talking about serious issues when I''m swinging away carefree as anything."


    "And instead you''re beating the tar out of a dummy."


    "It just doesn''t seem right to leave her, Whitney. I basically...brought her back from the dead to be with me, I can''t discard her after that because I''m unhappy with how it turned out. I''d be like...Frankenstein''s creator."


    "You mean, Frankenstein."


    "Wasn''t Frankenstein the monster?"


    "I think the point was the monster''s creator was the monster."


    I blinked at her and my swords floated around aimlessly for my lack of focus. "What?"


    "Look, here''s what you''re saying, phrased differently -- you''d feel bad breaking up because she''s got no life outside of you."


    "I...guess?"


    "And that''s no good, Athan. That''s a big part of why it''s not working, I bet. Nobody whose entire existence is someone else is gonna be any good for that someone else. Or for themselves. I bet she''s so captivated by the idea of being with you, she doesn''t even think about what it means to be with you."


    "I don''t think that''s entirely right," I said. "But also...not entirely wrong." I gave the psi-blades a flourish like I had with my swords, but it wasn''t the same. "Man, it sucks just talking about your problems like this. No wonder you avoid it."


    "It''s not avoiding," she said, her mouth a small frown. "There''s just no reason to do something if you don''t want to do it and know it won''t help."


    "Then why are we talking about my shit?"


    "Might help," she shrugged. I dropped the subject. We both knew talking about her problems really couldn''t help with them, there was no denying that. I pummelled the dummy a little more until that felt stupid too, and then put it and my blades away and sat back down on the swing.


    "No life outside of me, huh?" I asked.


    "Can''t really say, I don''t know her that well, but it seems that way to me. The whole time I was putting her back together, she was always saying ''hurry up so I can show this to Athan'', or ''get this working so I can do this for Athan''. She''s like a kid with a crush."


    "How would I even begin to think about leaving her, then? She''d have nothing."


    "It is pretty cruel," she said with a sad smirk. "But some of the things that have hurt me the most are also what taught me what matters and what doesn''t in life. I wasn''t born this cynical and wise, you know. The world worked me over on an anvil a bit first."


    "And you think that''s what she needs? Pain and abandonment?"


    "I think...that what you two have is the opposite of what she needs. People talk a lot about discovering themselves or being in a good place for a relationship. She''s done none of that, and being with you is keeping her from wanting to. Prime went through a lot of things that forced her to grow as a person, and a lot of that was being separated from you and dealing with situations without you, wasn''t it?"


    I hadn''t thought of that before. I had all of Saga''s memories of the time they''d all lived together while I was slaving away under Blackett, and I pawed through them delicately, trying very hard not to think of anything that involved Lia''s then-boyfriend.


    It didn''t work like that of course, and I wondered for a minute what would happen to my connection if I threw up. But the thoughts faded as I focused on AEGIS.


    There wasn''t that much there. Saga couldn''t see AEGIS'' mind, and she didn''t exactly spend all day walking around watching things go on. They had relatively few interactions as a result, but in those, I saw AEGIS much as I saw her today.


    She was irritable with the Exhumans, constantly stressed and worried about me and my state, frustrated by incompetence as she saw it. In fact, looking further back, she hadn''t even originally wanted to go with the others, she''d intended to strike off on her own, out of dislike of Saga.


    More than anything, she was hurt, and she saw the others hurting as well, and realized that anyone who bled the same as her couldn''t be all bad. Saga still scared the crap out of her, but Prime was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that AEGIS never would because she''d seen that Saga had put up and suffered and held back for my sake the same as she had.


    And it was a crappy realization, because as Whitney had said, it was really misery which had forced her to grow as a person. But it seemed like completely shit advice to go around hurting people just to make them better. If I were going to do that and force people to improve without their consent or happiness or self-interests in mind, I may as well also unleash Saga to redevelop humanity a little bit.


    "I won''t do that, though," I said. "I''m not going to do something I know will hurt people."


    She snorted a little bit. "Aren''t you here running from her?"


    "Yeah."


    "And you think that doesn''t hurt her?"


    I stared silent at the grass underfoot.


    "Has anyone ever told you that you''re a hypocrite?" she asked.


    "Yeah, sort of a...shocking number of times, actually. I don''t think I have much choice but to believe them." I turned to her. "But what''s wrong with what I do? I want to help people, I don''t want people being hurt. Sometimes...that means doing what I think is right, even if they disagree."


    "So you''re willing to hurt people in order to help them. But not willing to hurt AEGIS to let her grow."


    "What should I do, then?" I yelled at her suddenly. "If it''s all so easy and analytical, then just tell me already. I do one thing, I hurt someone, I do something else, I hurt them some other way, I do nothing, I hurt them yet another way. It''s just pain, pain, pain, pain, and I don''t want to cause any of it. I just want everyone to be free and happy and live their lives without all this shit and suffering, and why the hell is that so hard?"


    She seemed taken aback by my sudden outburst and froze up. I tried not to look too guilty about suddenly yelling at her and began to swing so I wasn''t staring at her, too. Even here, I was just hurting people, apparently.


    That thought led to another which made my stomach clench. The stupid, certainly-wrong, completely cynical conclusion that all personal relationships were pain. Moon''s fucking philosophy. And here I was proving her right. Nothing felt worse than being a counterexample against your own beliefs.


    Just ask Karu. Oh wait, I couldn''t because she''d snapped from my influence. Another point for Moon.


    "Maybe I should go," I said, standing up.


    "If you want," she said, apparently recovered from her shock. "It''s only been an hour."


    "Already?"


    "Gotta say, as much as I''m fine with being alone, time does pass a lot quicker with company. Both a blessing and a curse."


    "Yeah," I said. "I should unplug. Get back to the real world. Maybe even talk with AEGIS." I let that thought hang in the air for a minute. "Maybe just those first two."


    "Coward," she said. I was going to reply in kind, but her gentle smirking let me know she was well aware. I settled for shaking my head instead. "Before you go," she added, "a question."


    "Yeah, shoot?"


    "Have you had any of those...obsessive thoughts since you came here?"


    "About who?" She glared at me like I was kidding. "Oh. The electric circuit stuff. No. Been thinking of other things."


    "And if you consider the precision components in the machinery currently wrapped around your head and face, the woven cable, the power regulation required to get a super-clean voltage from the shoddy mess which is house current?"


    I shook my head again. "No, actually."


    "Hmm," she said thinking.


    "Got an idea? Something about the neural uplink or VR maybe?"


    "No. Maybe. But probably not. Just a data point."


    "Well if I need to get away from the world for awhile, or from circuit diagrams, I know where to come. Thanks for letting me stay, Whitney."


    "Thanks for cleaning my kitchen. You didn''t happen to bring any food, did you?"


    "Please go to the store. And please buy more than instant noodles, you''re going to die of scurvy."


    "There''s orange juice in the fridge, friendo. Got it covered."


    The last thing I saw before I mentally logged out and found myself staring at the inside of the visor was her gentle smirking face. I looked over and saw her body lying there, pale and tall and thin compared to her avatar, like it was her soul and this was the corpse it''d left behind.


    I sat up and immediately remembered pain was a thing as my broken ribs announced their existence. Another nice perk of VR.


    I didn''t want to leave, really. I just had this continuing feeling of not being able to stay. It felt like I was intruding...felt like anywhere I could just be for a while, I was intruding, and everywhere I was supposed to be, I didn''t want. I realized with some dismay that I was looking forward to being back in class and on a schedule again. That was my safe space, that was my ''normal'' life, away from all these people touched by Exhumanity.


    Or...maybe not. Maybe I''d infected yet another. After carefully crawling over Whitney''s long legs, I''d checked my mobile and saw half a dozen messages from Alyssa.


    They began somewhat benign, apologetic for what occurred. Songs she thought represented her feelings, asking if I was alive jokingly, and then less jokingly. Asking why I was ignoring her, and more apologies. I held my head with my other hand as the messages slipped towards madness. Asking why I was still with ''that girl'' if she made me so unhappy, and then saying she thought we should still be friends, and I''d misunderstood our ''date'', telling me I was a jerk, and then inviting me over with a salacious winky emote that wouldn''t have been out of place on the pixels face of AEGIS'' temporary body.


    Maybe Moon was right. Alyssa was clearly in pain. She''d taken us seriously and I hadn''t, I couldn''t even act like this entire new life of mine was anything more than pretend. But Alyssa...Darris and Sebastian too, they were real. This life was the only one they had, and for me it was just some...some...some escape?


    Almost like Whitney''s VR world, I wondered? I didn''t know. I felt shitty, and that was the concrete part.


    My mobile buzzed again, and I braced myself for another message from Alyssa, but instead saw it was Lia. She''d been right about this whole thing, too. I should apologize for ever not believing her.


    But all thoughts of that fell right out of my mind the second I read the message''s contents. My mouth went dry and I almost dropped my mobile.


    It was a picture, lettering in the corner identifying it as an airport in New York, taken yesterday. A large commercial VTOL filled with what looked like Europeans disembarking down a loading bridge.


    And circled in red near the back, a skinny man with toned skin, a thin moustache visible under the hood pulled down his brow.


    But there was no mistaking him. Not for me. Not with the number of hours I''d seen his face in looped holovids, or when I closed my eyes.


    Dragon was back in the states. And he was probably coming for his toy.

 288. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Lia.

    It was a very good day. An exciting day, where even as I looked through all the security footage AEGIS could find on Dragon, I could hardly sit still.


    Dragon had taken our bait. If he were coming for Athan, he''d be here in California. He was in New York, which was absolutely ideal for us. Well, second-most ideal after dead, but we''d kind of ruled that out as a possibility.


    Athan had been practicing every day, maybe more out of habit now than anything, but we all kinda knew he had no chance of beating Dragon in a fight. And then that one night happened, and impossible became impossibler. In a way, it was a blessing, since it finally opened up my dumb big brother''s eyes to just how young he was about to die, and start thinking laterally instead.


    It was only a couple weeks ago that we put our plan into action. Or, I did, with the support of the others. Felt great being able to contribute and put my skills and reputation positively for once, though I was a little...worried?...humbled?...at just how much it affected my state of mind. I''d always thought AEGIS was just kind of a whackjob for being so obsessed with taking care of Athan, but dude, being the hero of the moment was fantastic. If they ever bottled that sensation, I''d drink a twelve-pack every week.


    The plan, like all good plans, was simple. Dragon had no way to know that Black Shark was related to Athan in any way. All I had to do was go online as my alter ego and begin posting/inquiring in the deepest channels about an illegal Exhuman device I''d ''acquired''. The thing Dragon was looking for.


    The details were kept sparse and the channels were kept narrow, as Dragon would never believe it if I suddenly started making sweeping public inquiries. In order to be convincing, he should have never been able to find my posts at all. So how do you tell a murder-psycho something without telling him?


    That''s where AEGIS came in. I mourned for my poor black-market comrades-in-arms as AEGIS ''discovered'' and published a security loophole in one of the channels I frequented. It became a feeding frenzy instantly, as private transactions became visible to anyone willing to work the exploit, and my other haunts instantly exploded with people looking to have their leaked data purged, while others tried to unload same data they''d managed to scoop up.


    Subtle prodding and manipulations later, and the leak and its data made it into the public eye, where reporters buzzed on the news about huge quantities of everything from drug deals to assassinations suddenly having hard digital evidence floating around, just waiting for their real-world cases to be discovered or linked.


    In short, it was a privacy and informational clusterfuck, obliterating a dark corner of the ''net overnight, all so that one tiny secret could be leaked in the most convincing way possible.


    It was out there. The thread of my inquiries, pictures and dimensions of the artifact, and my transaction to sell it to a buyer in New York for a cool few tens of millions. The data made it out, and with Dragon showing up there, we confirmed it had made it into his hands.


    My buyer held in his hands a fabricated replica designed to explode fatally if used. AEGIS thought that seemed unnecessary, but I insisted. If the buyer used it, the device was now ''destroyed'', and Dragon would have to give up his search. If he didn''t, if Dragon found it, with any luck it would take him out instead.


    I didn''t tell Athan that part, of course. He would have never approved of mailing a bomb off to a stranger if he knew.


    The only question was if Dragon would be able to tell it was fake. If he could...he''d be coming for me next, and while I obviously did my best to cover my butt, I didn''t fancy my odds of forever eluding a professional killer any more than Athan''s odds of fighting him. Our little leak really was pretty innocuous in the great scheme of things, and yet Dragon had still chased it down, basically confirming if I ever made a mistake, I''d be done for.


    But, he wasn''t here, he was there. Chasing our bait for now. It was a good day. One didn''t often get the opportunity to outfox a killer that scared even Taglock, so I was going to drink it in.


    Athan was still out, and I hoped he wasn''t doing anything stupid, and AEGIS was still elbows-deep in tracking Dragon as best she could, which was a lot better than the crying she''d been doing after Athan threw his food and bolted.


    But that meant I had a rare window where the kitchen was open, and snuck in to make pancakes of my own. AEGIS'' creation had inspired me. In the same way that watching a chihuahua go up stairs might inspire one to go adopt a goldie.


    I''d gotten a few off the pan before I heard the turning of the lock. Athan froze as he heard and smelled cooking and gave me the most cautious of glances.


    "Oh thank God, it''s you," he said.


    "Pancakes?"


    "Yeah, I''m starving, thanks."


    AEGIS was standing in the doorway to their room for I don''t know how long, but she looked equal parts cold, hungry, and desperate as she watched him stuff entire pancakes into his mouth without hesitation.


    "Mamk tthm eeg, rramgon," he said to me.


    "Yeah. Maybe swallow."


    This took him several seconds. I flipped my pancakes while I waited.


    "Talk to me about Dragon," he repeated.


    "He''s in New York, so it looks like he fell for the decoy," I said, grinning at the stove. "With luck, he''ll take it and go away forever. If he believed it''s out there, he believes you don''t have it anymore."


    "Wow. You''re amazing, Lia."


    I gave the spatula in my hands a little twirl. "Don''t I know it."


    "I did half the work," AEGIS pouted.


    "Well...you''re amazing too. Thank you, AEGIS," Athan said, turning to her.


    "I don''t need your pity compliments," she huffed. He rolled his eyes and turned them back towards me. "But you don''t have to stop," she added.


    "What happens when he finds the decoy?" Athan asked and then frowned. "Do you think he''ll hurt whoever bought it?"


    "I think he''ll probably be like, ''hurr, durr, it''s my toy, I''m a penis breath''. And then yeah...I don''t think he cares about people''s lives too much when he''s after something. I don''t know why he said penis breath," I concluded.


    Athan shook his head. "I don''t know that I fully agree."


    "About the penis breath?"


    "No, that part''s spot-on," he smiled. "I meant, when he was fighting the Defiant and AEGIS and me...I didn''t realize it until I watched it, but he really could have killed me a bunch of times. He punched the shit out of me when he could have done the same thing but with knives, and I''d be done for. And he has a million knives up his sleeves, so that wasn''t the issue."


    "He opened by shooting you, didn''t he?" AEGIS asked. "That seems pretty lethally conclusive."


    Athan shook his head. "With a regular firearm, yeah. Which, any Exhuman who tangled with the XPCA during their window could be reasonably expected to be immune to. If he wanted that to work, he could have carried and drawn any number of exotics but for some reason he didn''t."


    "He didn''t exactly hold back on me," AEGIS complained. "I got shot and stabbed dozens of times."


    "Yeah. But you kept moving and fighting after. It''s like he was pushing each of us as far as we could take it for some reason, but not killing us outright." Athan frowned as he scratched at his head. "I don''t get it. He had no problem with just offing the Defiant like they were nothing."


    "Okay, hypothetical here," I said, putting more pancakes on a plate out of Athan''s reach so I''d get to eat some too. "Maybe...he''s into the whole Chinese ''honor'' thing? You were unarmed, so he fought you unarmed?"


    "I think that''s Japanese," AEGIS said. "Bushido. And it''s been largely fantasized, real samurai had no problem with killing unarmed opponents."


    "Yeah, the Sinos were supposed to be craven and honorless," Athan said.


    "Says the media. I thought they might be the same as the Japanese since they were so geographically close," I said with a shrug. "Okay, so maybe not. Maybe...maybe to him the Defiant were nothing, because they just stood there like cattle, and he''s got no respect for that. You didn''t even need to be there, didn''t even need to fight, but you did."


    "Yeah, I doubt that," AEGIS said. "He''s an assassin, not a...gentlemanly boxer or something.


    "He did compliment me, though," Athan said. "He praised me for having more nerve than the whole of the Defiant."If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "Yeah, right before he bashed your guts in. This is all moot, he left you and me both in conditions where we should have died. He wasn''t sparing either of us, he just...he probably only applied as much lethality as he thought we were worth. Drawing out the fight for his own sick amusement or something."


    Athan nodded, still frowning as the pan sizzled with a final round of batter. "Yeah probably. But I really felt...not at the time, but watching it after...like he was testing us for something."


    "Yeah," she rolled her eyes. "Whenever I test someone, I make sure to kill them afterwards to validate my results. He''s just a sick murderer, Athan."


    "Maybe that just means I failed," he said.


    "Or maybe, he''s a sick murderer."


    "Regardless," I spoke up, "I think we should be focused on the right now. Right now, he''s off doing what we want for a change, with the distinct possibility that he gets his paws on the decoy and then fawns off for good."


    "Until he tries to use it, and finds out it''s fake," Athan said.


    AEGIS and I exchanged a glance. Athan, observant as he was, completely missed it.


    "Actually, there''s uh," I started, flipping the pancakes for a second to procrastinate. "Something I didn''t tell you. Kinda made the decoy a bomb."


    "What?"


    "In case of this scenario. So if he tests it...problem solved."


    "Jesus." He thought for another second, his expression growing darker. "Jesus, Lia. What if your buyer used it? Is this how you treat your customers?"


    "If I need to, yeah. I don''t have any sympathy for people who buy illegal Exhuman contraband, dude."


    "He''s your buyer."


    "And it''s not like I have a loyalty program, okay? It''s called a black market for a reason. Shady things go on there. Sometimes you have to break some eggs."


    "And blow up some innocents? I don''t remember that part of the idiom. Fuck, Lia, this is like, Blackett-level shit. You can just risk ordinary lives for your own greater good, and that''s sick." He looked furious, cradling his head at the counter. "As awesome as it is to have you here, I spend a lot of time regretting introducing you to this lifestyle, you know. I wish you''d just grown up a normal, happy kid."


    I put the fresh, hot pancakes on a new plate and then slammed it on the counter in front of him. "Well I didn''t," I informed him. "I chose to run away from home, and I chose to pick up Black Shark, and I chose to pull the trigger every time someone had to decide between you living and someone else getting shot. I chose to send that bomb, and I''d do it again, a hundred times, to hospitals and orphanages if I had to, and if I did, it''d be my choice, and not any imagined blood on your hands, you insufferable jerk."


    That put most of the fight out of him, and his face now just looked agape. I wasn''t really as angry as I was putting on, but I knew if he was allowed to start beating himself up over this, he''d drag it out forever, to nobody''s benefit. I was a little mad though, and it did feel good to vent. If he chose to spit back at me, I''d just bring up Brick and the argument would be over, but he didn''t, and quietly set in on his pancakes instead.


    AEGIS was glaring knives at me but said nothing. It kinda irritated me that she could remotely read my vitals and tell when I was only acting, but as long as it was for Athan''s own good, I was sure I could get away with whatever in front of her.


    Things settled into relative normalcy for a bit as Athan and I ate in silence, and with the threat of superior pancakes and no more conversation to engage her, AEGIS drifted back into her room. Eventually, Athan did speak up again.


    "I am sorry that you''re in this life," he said. "I know you didn''t have much of a choice a lot of the time, but what you did choose was your own decision."


    "It''s a pretty cool life, when it doesn''t completely blow," I shrugged. "At least I get to be in college now. That''s super cool."


    "Any thoughts on a major?" he asked.


    I shrugged. I''d considered psych, though there was the potential blowback of making people more aware they were being manipulated if they knew they were talking to a trained psychologist. I felt like much of my success was attributable to my apparent innocence...the same thing Athan felt like he had to fight to protect. Which was sweet, but kinda misguided. I''d rather be competent than innocent. You never heard the news stories about a competent victim getting tragically killed.


    "Advertising, maybe," I said.


    "Do black-market dealers need to advertise?"


    "Everybody needs to advertise. You think illegal buyers are any more psychic then regular ones? If they were, they sure wouldn''t need my services."


    "I guess."


    "Plus...I dunno that I''m gonna do Black Shark forever. At some point, you''re just inviting trouble. The data leak we, uh, helped along...it had a lot of Black Shark''s records in there, for authenticity. I made sure none of it could be traced back to me, which of course it wouldn''t, I''d never release that information in the first place, but really, that kind of leak can happen, and can get you in a world of hurt. I''m sure, right now, there are people who realized I''ve sold their secrets and are looking to find me and punish me."


    "Oh," he said simply. "I didn''t think you''d leak anything more than you had to about yourself."


    "That wouldn''t be very convincing if I did. We took Dragon as seriously as we could, dude, and if that gets Black Shark in some trouble...well...everyone who did dealings on that site are in trouble. It''d be weird if I was the only one who wasn''t."


    "I guess. You think about a lot more stuff than I do," he laughed.


    "Not hard, bro."


    "Hey!"


    I cackled at him. "That''s what I''m here for. You always talk about protecting me and trying to shelter me from this messed-up world and all the baddies in it, but like I said, I''m here by choice. I''m here next to you, bro, because that''s where I should be. It''s not fair if you''re wading through filth for my sake and doing it all alone while I lounge around sipping virgin daiquiris."


    "What are those?"


    "Smoothies, basically."


    "Oh. I expected something dirtier if it''s explicitly named after virginity."


    I rolled my eyes as I grinned. "See, you can just keep being innocent and fight for that in other people. I''ll keep being smart and fighting for that. You''re not the only one who can choose to get their hands dirty to protect their sibling, dorkbutt."


    He looked like he was going to argue for a second and then didn''t, putting more pancake in his mouth instead, chewing thoughtfully.


    "I''d rather you didn''t," he said. "I know I can''t stop you, but sometimes...a lot of times, my life sucks, Lia. Before college, felt like you guys were the only good things in it. I''d be happier knowing that you didn''t have to go through that."


    I grinned and reached across the table to mess up his hair as he''d done to me innumerable times. "Silly boy. You only think that''s true. You think you''d like it if you could just take in all the suffering on your own, put the world on your back and heroically, stoically just bear it all in silence. But you''re wrong. You''d be miserable, and you''d be alone."


    "And you think I couldn''t deal with that?"


    "I don''t. But I''m not going to argue that. What I am going to say is that no decent sister in the world would let her stupid older brother do that to himself without at least trying to stand next to him and hold up her share."


    "That''s dumb," he said.


    "You''re dumb!"


    He stuck out his tongue so I showed him a mouthful of chewed-up pancake.


    "Really though, I think honestly, your strategy could be better," I said, after swallowing.


    "So that I don''t leave my sister out of it to have a good life? I''ve heard."


    "No, not that. Rather, instead of trying to carry all the world''s troubles on you like it''s nothing, it makes a lot more sense to fix those troubles instead, right?"


    He sighed. "I try."


    I patted him on the head again. "I know. And I try too. That''s why we sent Dragon a bomb. One less trouble for the world."


    "I guess," he said, poking at the last of his food. "I just don''t think it''ll work. He''s not exactly a normal person. He''ll do something unexpected, somehow."


    "Then when that happens, we''ll just have to deal with it together, right?"


    Athan nodded as my mobile went off. Message from Tower, of all people.


    > Hey Lia!


    > I''m not allowed to contact Athan, so this is me not contacting Athan.


    > Did Moon find you guys recently? She seemed really upset and I just wanted to see if things were going better now. She would never say it, but she was really hurt when Athan left the team. I might have encouraged her to go pay you guys this visit, so if she''s being impossible, blame me.


    > I can''t seem to get ahold of her. Please let me know she''s all right. Unlike her, I don''t mind letting people know I worry! Ha ha.


    I smiled at the thought of Tower typing all of this out with his huge hands and considered that maybe he was an advocate of voice-to-text messaging. Might explain the ''Ha ha.'', because nobody typed that out. I began to reply when another message came in.


    > We also have an op scheduled in a few days. Technopath lair. Please let her know (and Athan too but I''m not allowed to tell you to say that).


    That...did not make me feel good, and any happiness I''d gleaned from his message now withered tenfold. I swallowed hard and got back to replying.


    > I''ll ''not'' tell Athan. I haven''t seen Moon in a couple days, but if I get ahold of her, I''ll let you know.


    "Do you know where Moon went?" I asked Athan.


    "Japan...I think," he said, and pulled a mobile out of his pocket which I realized wasn''t his. He flipped through some menus on it before sighing something which sounded suspiciously like ''freaking AEGIS'', and putting it away. I guess he didn''t have something to show me after all.


    > Uhh, looks like she forgot her mobile here. I''m sure she''ll be back to pick it up, but that''s probably why you can''t reach her.


    > Cool. Thanks. Stay in school, guys.


    I closed my phone and found myself staring at Athan, who caught my eye and then frowned. "What?" he asked.


    "P-Force is taking on a technopath in a few days," I said.


    "Oh. Fuck."


    "Yeah, my thoughts exactly."


    He and I both stared down at our pancakes, whatever happiness there was in eating them now served with a side of dread. Technopaths weren''t anything anyone wanted to deal with, and knowing one was coming up...I felt a cold shiver despite the warm April air.


    Athan looked similarly put off, but after only a few more moments before he began to shove pancakes down his throat with renewed zeal. Which made me laugh a little and see my own plate as a little more inviting.


    Because, he was right. As grim as it might look in the future, all we could do now was to make sure we were full and prepared to face it when the time came. So it''d be with the technopath, so it''d be with Dragon, so it''d be with the rest of our lives.

 289. 2252, Present Day. In a box. Kaori.

    I woke up painful, foggy. I felt the world as though through a haze. My eyes felt dry and uncooperative in letting me take in the surroundings, showing me only colored spots, and either my inner ears were similarly disrupted, or I was reclined backwards on a forty-five degree angle surface.


    I moved my hands to rub my eyes and could not. They were bound to each other with something heavy and leather-feeling, and they had collided with something smooth only inches in front of me.


    Were my brain in better condition, I might immediately realize I was bound and confined, and the deleterious effects on my body were the aftereffects of narcotic sedation. Instead, I stood/laid there, blinking very slowly and sorting those thoughts out over long minutes, with small bursts of panic at each realization.


    At some point, it was as though a light switch was flicked in my brain and suddenly I could see the world again, though hazily. I did not see what was right in front of me, however, because it was transparent and invisible to my struggling eyesight. To my sides, above, and below were wooden panels, darkly stained, and the angled inclined surface at my back was thickly-padded, velvet, and richly dyed with a deep purple. It was comfortable, given the circumstances.


    In my inspection, I noticed there was a circular hole directly behind my neck, and wondered if it existed to continue administering drugs. How long had I been here? My mobile was gone, and with it, any chance of knowing the day or time.


    I tried to think, to remember, and to fight back the urge to panic welling within me. Was there any hint how I had come to be here? The last thing I remembered was arguing with AEGIS. Surely she would not have disposed of me in this fashion...yet even the argument I had with her was fuzzy in my mind. Had something occurred after? I could not remember.


    I took stock of what I knew concretely. I was in a wooden, padded box with a transparent plastic lid. I had been here an unknown amount of time. I had probably been drugged to be brought here, indicating they desired me unharmed, but also not struggling. My body did not hurt as much as my mind did, but my bare arms and legs were slightly cold.


    Wait. I looked down and found myself in a white mini-dress that, indecently, barely reached halfway to my knees, If that. My shoulders were fully bare. I owned no outfits that revealed this amount of skin which were not swimwear. The fact that I had been helpless and undressed abruptly threw my capture into new, horrifying light.


    I pressed against the plastic but it was so heavy it did not even flex. Neither did the wooden walls, and I considered throwing myself against them but for the fear of whom I might attract with the noise.


    I could see outside better now and what I saw did not clarify my situation. Display cases, mostly, though none like the one in which I was lain. Like museum pieces, glass cubes and rectangles on podiums with bizarre contents within. Some appeared random articles of clothing, others were framed pieces of paper, while most were indiscernible. It was a collection of some kind, but to what end or theme, I could not fathom.


    Mostly, I was just relieved to not find other women in similar states of indecency. Though I knew not the nature of who had collected me, if there were other women, I would have a guess.


    Although, in a way, that was also a disappointment. I needed another person for my powers to be of any use. If there were two of us in this case, I could throw my specter against it without self-preservation and beat my ghost of a body broken and raw, only to leave it and re-enter it fresh anew. I did not relish the prospect of breaking myself repeatedly against a wall, but it would be better to have that option than not.


    A man appeared through the doorway before me, and glancing up from the tablet in his hands, smiled broadly at seeing me.


    "Kaori! You''re awake my love."


    I blanched at being addressed as such. I did not know this man. I certainly did not love him.


    He was a fairly unpleasant man to look upon. He looked just under a hundred-ninety centimeters, and broad-shouldered. Yet as though neither of those dimensions were large enough for him, was somewhat repugnantly fat as well. He had shortly-cropped blonde hair, matching pasty skin, and dark, hungry eyes, like two chocolate chips on an underbaked cookie. His jowel was prominent and moved independently of its owner.


    "Are you hungry? Thirsty? Oh, you must be confused, you must."


    "I admit to being fairly disoriented. Is it within your power to release me from this cell?"


    He nodded at me and then moved to the side of my case, reaching behind it as though grasping for something. It gave me a too-close view of him panting and struggling as he leaned against the side. Finally, I felt his fingertips touch the back of my neck, and realized the purpose of the hole placed there in the moments before I blacked out.


    "There, is that better, my love?" he asked from below me.


    "I asked to be released, not manhandled," I clarified, but something else had caught my attention. Beside and behind my case, blocked by the wooden walls were more artifacts. Notably, on the wall directly behind my case was a large framed picture of the P-Force standing in a loose formation on a wet Chicago street. Athan''s signature stood prominent in the middle.


    "Would you like to sign it as well?" he asked.


    "Do not trespass in my thoughts," I hissed at him with all the menace I possessed.


    "Oh Kaori, my love, I''m not. We''re just so beautifully connected. I can feel everything you feel, I can."


    "Then feel my fear and anger and release me. What is the purpose of this incarceration? I have done nothing to you. I do not even know you."


    As much as I was not looking in his mind, I still felt his pain as I informed him of this, but he stiffened up and continued regardless.


    "I am your absolute biggest fan, I am," he explained, walking to the side of the door and leisurely strolling past the cases. "I''ve always been captivated by Exhumans. They''re simply incredible. For the longest time, I''d dreamed of meeting one, or becoming one, I did. I tried everything on the ''net that people said could make one change over. I try to flex my powers every morning, but they never come."


    "You are stupid and delusional, I understand."


    "So imagine my surprise when I saw you standing there. The one Exhuman in the world who would make me Exhuman too, in a way. And alone...on the street...looking so lost...I couldn''t just leave you out there."


    "No, please, I insist. Return me to the street at once, I will survive."


    He shook his head at tutted at me. "That''s not good enough for you, Kaori my love, it isn''t. I want you to more than survive, I want you to thrive. You and the others, you should rule this world, not be victim of the short-sighted idiots who run it now."


    "I will reiterate that you are stupid and delusional. Please let me go."


    He ignored me and began walking again. "This room is my collection, it is. Mother had a few houses that never got used so I asked for one of them, and I''ve turned it into something beautiful. Do you know what this is?"


    He indicated towards a scrap of fabric held up by an intricate golden sort of abstract claw. It may have once been a light yellow, but that was before someone had utterly soaked it in blood.


    "I do not. May I go now please?"


    "That," he said with obvious glee, "is a scrap of the shirt worn by Ultraman, regarded as the most prolifically destructive Exhuman of all time. They used weapon after weapon against him for weeks, and just when all hope seemed lost and his powers unstoppable, boom, a sonic bomb, brand-new weapon tech it was, and ruptured him from the inside. He blew apart with such force that it shredded his clothes, it did. This is one of the very few scraps that made it into the hands of collectors. It is--was--the pride of my collection, it was."Stolen novel; please report.


    "Because now it''s me?"


    "Very good, my love!" he bubbled and beamed at me. I would not have minded if both of us died on the spot. "This here is a piece of the exosuit used by Gashrick during his rampage through Rio, very heavy, very sharp edges. And this is an original press copy of the fated document that doomed humanity, the executive order declaring Exhumans enemies of the state. Many more laws would follow, they would." He shook his head and spoke bitterly. "Government is always short-sighted. Everyone I talk to agrees, it''s only a matter of time before Exhumans become the norm, and they''ll pass laws to treat humans as they were treated, they will."


    "Who on Earth would agree with that?" I asked. "Nobody thinks Exhumanity is on the rise."


    "Everyone on the forums I visit. And there are a lot of them out there, there are, trust me."


    "Ah, an echo chamber of willful ignorance. Ignorance you are continuing to demonstrate by ignoring my pleas to be released. Please?"


    "You might recognize this...though perhaps not. It is the knife once wielded by your teammate Jack before it was lost during an encounter in DC against the Exhuman Soran. He has since upgraded to something with superior je ne sais quoi. The guy who found this didn''t even know what it was, so it was a major steal for me, it was. And this is shattered smart glass from the Raven''s Nest, from the debris of Temperance destroying the top floor."


    He sighed wistfully. "I thought that might be the day. Exhumans loose in the heart of the XPCA, but instead you guys did something even more incredible, showing off not just how powerful but also how merciful Exhumans are. Forming a team to protect humanity? God, I lost my voice for a week screaming over that one, I did."


    "We are not all anything. Exhumans are no different from humans in uniqueness, you realize."


    "Yeah, but it''s like how they say stereotypes exist for a reason. You really are all the same."


    Truly the man''s ignorance knew no bounds, but this did little to deter him as he finished his tour of the room.


    "And this," he crooned, of a roughly-spherical object with handles on a plinth of its own, "my second-newest addition, after you. This is something no human could or should ever get their hands on. Do you know what it is?"


    "Have I known what anything in this room is? Have I done anything to express interest in this mad fascination?"


    "No...you could stand to be a little more compassionate, you could. I thought as an Exhuman you might be interested. Or take an interest for me, this is my life''s work, after all."


    "What are you, nineteen? Is this not your parents'' money''s work?"


    "You are only nineteen," he said, turning and pointing at my face floating above him. "Do you think I would dismiss everything you are and have done just because your father is famous and successful?"


    "Yes. I discount very nearly everything I am and do, on those grounds."


    He frowned bitterly and I felt him roiling within as anger flashed to the surface. "I have decided I will teach you to love yourself as I do, Kaori. You are too beautiful and powerful and smart not to. I''m only human, and even I''m not just defined by my family''s wealth, I''m not. You''re Exhuman. And one of the P-Force, the strongest, kindest, greatest Exhumans ever to live. You need to accept this, you do."


    "No thank you. I would prefer an escort to the exit."


    "You''re not leaving. Not until you can accept how great you are."


    I nodded. "In that case, I accept this. My release, please."


    I was completely unprepared for what happened next. I shuddered as his thoughts barreled into my own. His mind was as his words, straightforward, delusional, and relentless. Blindly, he lashed out into my thoughts with delusions of love and desire, obsessive fascination and dark dreams. I felt...felt nothing but a sensation like drowning. I felt like he was holding me down in a stream of his mind wrenching my breath out so that I could only gasp down his thought. His mind surged into me, abruptly, insistently, confident that once I was full of his thoughts, once I saw the world as he did, I would understand and love and accept him. That I would feel the same pleasure in this merger as he.


    I gasped and suffocated beneath his mind''s onslaught, unable to find my own thoughts amidst his. I felt outside of myself, but also less than myself. The very concept of who I was became difficult to understand. I was no longer one being who had lived one life and had one stream of consciousness. Instead, I was two, and the two conflicted, violently. Painfully. It filled me with panic and terror like I had never known.


    He recoiled almost as quickly as he had begun, and gradually, I began to recognize my mind as my own.


    "That wasn''t supposed to hurt you," he apologized.


    I realized I was still having difficulty breathing, but it was for pained, heaving sobs forcing their way through me. Purple, sparkling specters of tears streamed down my face, dripping from my chin.


    "It wasn''t!" he repeated, and then seemed to grow red as his face turned furious. "It was because you were resisting me! It''s supposed to be a beautiful union, but now you''ve ruined our first time. I hope you''re satisfied."


    I did not have the breath to stand, much less reply. Air came to me in ragged gasps, and my lungs trembled within me.


    "You have a lot to learn about being an Exhuman, apparently!" he shouted at me. "The P-Force is benevolent and loving towards humankind, if you don''t remember that! And I might be a mere human, but I have feelings too. The least you can do is accept them, maybe even try to reciprocate!"


    He watched me snivelling for a few more seconds and then heaved an enormous inconvenienced sigh before climbing to the side of my body and putting me back in with a touch on the neck. The moment I was back, new tears began to flood down my cheeks, unstoppable.


    "I''ll be back," he promised. "We''re going to do this again, and again, we will, until you''re ready to be more accepting, and you learn to appreciate me more. And you need to learn a lot more than I thought, apparently. I''m so disappointed."


    He gave me one final disgusted, angry glance and then stormed out. I collapsed as best I could in the bottom corner of my pen and held myself as I was able, the cuffs biting into my flesh.


    I had no idea my powers were capable of such a thing. I was so hurt and so scared and so lost. For so long I had kept my own mind under discipline, disallowing thoughts and feelings which conflicted with my philosophies, it was horrifying to have those thoughts within me, unbidden, unassailable, as present within me as my own beliefs.


    I trembled and wailed as quietly as I could make myself. I knew what I thought. I was an Exhuman, and Exhumans were the bad guys. I was a person who should never have been, an existence scraped up and doing the most good I could with the shell of the life I''d been given. Relationships were pain. Happiness was illusory. Duty was paramount.


    And then, forced into me, contradictions to everything I''d ever discovered or believed. It was as though a priest had the unignorable thought that God never was slammed into his heart, and it rocked him to his core.


    This, but for all of my beliefs. Who and what I was, what my life had been to this point, every decision I had ever made, things settled long ago, all suddenly wrong in a heartbeat and all at once.


    I couldn''t. I couldn''t anything. I could not think, could not breathe, could not move, could not even be.


    And perhaps my body agreed, because I blacked out, only to wake some amount of time later to an insistent rapping on my case.


    It was him again. But more importantly, I was mostly me again. I swallowed hard as my eyes met his.


    "You should not sleep like that, you''ll wrinkle the dress," he said. "I''m here with breakfast."


    My head pounded and spun, but even through that, my body knew it needed food. Perhaps if I could eat, I could endure.


    I looked around and saw nothing with him however. No food anyway. A medical stand on wheels with bags and tubes.


    I tried to ask what he planned, but words could not form in my mouth, and then the moment passed as the world flickered. He touched me through the hole and I saw my own body from the outside.


    He didn''t force his mind into mine, not at once anyway, and compared to that, anything else he had to do to me seemed trivial by comparison. So I watched with quiet fear as he opened the front of the case, and stood my body back upright with gloved hands and gentle touches. He brought his medical stands closer, and then lubricated a narrow tube and threaded it right down my nose with ease, though I inwardly cringed at seeing it done.


    "Easy, see?" he asked, clipping the tube behind my ear and attaching the other end to a bag of thin brown fluid. "Everything you need, I will give you, I will."


    "Why can''t I just eat?" I asked, staring as the fluid flowed down my nose.


    "As you just demonstrated, you''re not quite ready to leave your case on your own," he said, smiling at my body as he worked over it. "Once you''re a little better trained, my love."


    "You are sick. Sick and wrong and evil. I hate you."


    He tutted at me. "One day, you''ll see, you will, my love. How wonderful you are, and just how much I love you. How I''d do anything for you."


    "Except let me go. Or eat."


    "I will let you do all of that," he said, "but only after you learn to accept yourself more! This is for your own good. Just trust me."


    He smiled at me broadly in a way which was all the more frightening for how genuine I knew his feelings were under it.


    "Now," he said, digging into the other tubes and bags, and coming up with something that looked like a long syringe. "Do you need to urinate? Defecate? Let''s do both, to be sure."

 290. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    There are few things in the world so soul-crushing, so filled with despair that they would make any man want to curl up and crawl back into bed and refuse to face the world. The experience of looking forward to a thing and having it taken away at the last moment, to any who have felt this pain, I am so, so sorry. It is truly a gut-punch of misery, more painful than it has any right to be.


    All of Sunday, all Sunday night, all through my classes on Monday, I looked forward to my tryout with the football team with ever-deepening gloom. Which sucked, because the whole week before, I''d just been looking forward to it.


    But with broken ribs, there just wasn''t any way, and I knew it. I couldn''t run without winding myself, I could lift my arms above my shoulder without wincing...and I sure as hell couldn''t survive getting sacked. I was done for, just ticking the hours away out of some twisted masochism, I guess. No other reason for me to still fixate on it.


    Maybe I was hoping a magical wish fairy would pop out and heal me up for my good behavior these last weeks. I''d done nothing bad, really, right? Right?


    Aside from throw Alyssa''s heart in the garbage. Maybe the wish fairy had already dealt my karma''s due.


    As the hours ticked down on the last class of the day, I found myself more restless than ever. I wanted to just...go home, blow it off, hide under my pillow with frustrated tears, and by the time I checked when it was again, I''d have missed my tryout and the whole nightmare would be over.


    Of course, what I wanted always took a backseat to what I felt I needed to do, and civilian life hadn''t beaten that imperative out of me. I would go. I would give an explanation to the coach who''d given me this opportunity, if nothing else. I would talk to the team and thank them for their time, would let them know I''d be cheering for them in every game.


    And then I would go hide under my pillow with frustrated tears.


    I was barely paying attention when the professor looked up from his podum and announced, "That''s all for today. See you all on Wednesday." But the activity of the others standing and packing brought me back to reality and inspired me to do the same. It took only a minute for me to throw my hardly-unpacked things in my bag and head out of the lecture hall, taking the steps two at a time and weaving between the others as I went.


    Only a minute after class got out, and somewhat out of breath, brow damp from the heat of the day, Alyssa bounded towards me from across the concrete plaza outside with an embarrassed smile, her wavy hair holding up despite the sweat and heat.


    "Athan! Hi!" she called to me.


    "Alyssa, hey, uh, there," I said. It was kind of a stupid thing to say but it''s all I had on hand at the moment. I''d never gotten the courage to respond to any of her litany of messages. She looked pretty normal considering how...intense...those had gotten.


    "Hey. I left class a little early to catch ya. Yer tryout''s in a minute, right?"


    "Yeah. So I should get going I guess."


    She smiled happily at me. "I''m sure ye''ll get it. I just wanted to wish ya good luck."


    I blinked at her. "That''s it?"


    She nodded enthusiastically. "Yep! Now don''t be late. Get goin''! Knock ''em dead, or break a leg, or whatever you say for football."


    I waved bye and headed towards the fields at as fast a pace I could manage. Just...confused, really. She hadn''t apologized or asked me to forget what she wrote or made any excuses...just...went right on like nothing was wrong. Went out of her way to wish me luck, and didn''t belabour the point or do anything to make it about herself.


    Was...was that what normal friends were like? I just had this mental image of Tem attempting that on me, and saw no way it didn''t end in lasers, invisible stalking, or her shut-down in a fetal position.


    As I hoped, I got to the field a bit early but unfortunately there were just a few random players about. No coach yet, and my aim had been to talk to him and let him know my situation before I could really waste any of their time. They were probably still changing, and I was not about to barge into an unfamiliar locker room.


    So I sat and waited beside the players stretching on the field until the appointed time, when it seemed they all came busting out in a singular gold-and-white pack.


    I made a beeline for the only one in a baseball cap, whose clean shave made him look more mature than any of the attempts at facial hair by the players could ever manage.


    "Athan, right?" he called out on seeing me.


    "Yes sir. I need to tell you something sir, before we begin."


    "If you''re gonna tell me, you should tell everyone. Unless it''s private?" he asked. I shook my head. "All right guys, shut up and listen up. This here''s Athan, he''s trying out for backup QB today, and he''s got something to say. Say it, buddy."


    Suddenly there were dozens of eyes on me, half of which were behind the metal grill of a football mask. I took a deep breath and remembered that hurt.


    "Hey everyone. I''m sorry, but I''m not going to be trying out today. I had an accident this weekend and broke two of my ribs. I''m no good anymore, I''m sorry."


    I expected these guys whom I''d never met, who had never heard of me before now not to care in the slightest. But instead, I was hit with an immediate outpouring of sympathy, as the entire team groaned on my behalf.


    "Wow, sucks man."


    "So sorry to hear that dude."


    "Get better soon, alright?"


    "Gonna try out again in the fall? I''ll be looking for you."


    They moved around me like water, hands patting me on the shoulders and back while I stood there like a totem pole.


    "Alright, the man''s injured, give him some space. Get stretching, we''re starting with some warm-ups in a few," Coach said. The team gave an genuine HOOAH! that wouldn''t have been out of place for the XPCA squads under Raven''s Nest doing PT, and set off at once.


    "Wow," I said, stunned as they left as quickly as they''d come to me.


    "Yeah. Great team," Coach said. "Shame about your ribs. We''ve had a few injuries this season too, the guys are a little more sensitive about it than usual."


    "So I saw. Um, are all football teams this...good? I mean, I haven''t seen them play, but...wow. They just get moving, don''t they?"


    "All the teams under me are this good," Coach said, tugging on the brim of his hat. "I subscribe to the theory that if you want it, you work for it. Everyone here wants it. If they didn''t, they wouldn''t be here." He snorted. "Helps that this is the end of the school year. We get a lot of people dropping out in the first quarter, and that''s not counting cuts."


    "Yeah I guess. Hey, I''m really sorry about getting injured. I really wanted to play with you guys."


    "I know," he said with a fatherly smile. "Not everyone looks me up and asks for a shot in person, you know? That takes a special kind of pluck. Haven''t yet seen anyone willing to put in that much effort who isn''t also willing to put in the effort to play hard and improve their game. So look us up for fall tryouts, will you?"


    "Yeah, I will."


    He gave me that fatherly smile again. "How''d you hurt yourself anyway?"


    "Oh. Got in a...fight."


    He looked me up and down and I felt very naked under his professional gaze. "Can''t have been much of a fight. He sucker punch you and then go down? I don''t see anything on your face or arms."


    "Yeah, something like that. Just the one hit, but it was enough."


    "Well, stay away from suckers before fall quarter, and I''ll see you around then."


    I nodded and he turned to go back to yelling at the guys when I stopped him. "Hey, uh...do you mind if I stay and watch practice?"


    "Not at all," he said with a nod. "Have fun, Athan."


    I sat down at the edge of the grass and watched as Coach pulled them in from across the field with nothing but a loud speaking voice. The more remote players jogged to return, and hardly moments were wasted between him calling them to order and them all beginning their practice for the day.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    If it weren''t a bunch of dudes kicking up dirt and getting their white uniforms all grass-stained and sweaty, AEGIS probably would have loved it. Everyone was practiced and proficient, everyone knew their place and moved with efficiency, and as they moved to drills, everyone went in sequence with a throughput that would make some types of serial port blush.


    Okay, maybe she wouldn''t go that far, obsessing over signal flow was my thing, but the point stood.


    Their quarterback was pretty good, I thought. He was helping with receiving drills where they''d run out, then turn back, then do a catch running laterally. A good drill, and similar to ones we''d done. Really emphasized the ability to do quick one-eighties and run and look in two directions at once, which were both vital for a receiver. The QB was throwing, and while he was just doing lazy throws, he was still chucking it twenty or thirty yards and never missing by more than a foot or two.


    I mean, I could do that. If I''d passed tryouts, I probably would be. Save the QB''s arm for the real games. Not that there would be more ''real'' games than spring training for the next few months, but still. Teams were protective of their QB. He''d probably be wearing a no-contact jersey for those practice games.


    After awhile, the receivers finished their drills and sat down not far from me while Coach focused his attention elsewhere. The talked and joked around, and it honestly made me nostalgic like I couldn''t believe. It was like the whole team was a crazy, sports-playing family.


    Of course, they weren''t, and it didn''t take that long for the illusion to break. Two of the receivers were arguing about something inconsequential and it put the others off. But somehow breaking the illusion just made it all the more real. That could be Brick and me arguing about something inane in another world. We''d had our fair share of disagreements, nothing was ever perfect, and that''s what was so perfect about it.


    It might have been kind of bittersweet if I weren''t so crummy feeling about not making the team this year already. Instead, it felt like a reminder that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I studied, or worked, I wasn''t and couldn''t be like these people. Once an Exhuman, always an Exhuman, no matter what happened or would happen, I couldn''t escape that.


    It felt depressing and unfair. Everything about me could change and still this same shit. Like, yeah, I''m sure I was just wallowing in my misery a bit, but even if that were it, it still sucked, and what the hell else was I going to do but wallow in melodrama for a while? Not like I was going to head home before I had to.


    I sat and watched the players running and throwing the ball around, my mood sinking every minute. I found my thoughts judgemental and needlessly critical. I had better form than that guy. I would have made that catch. That guy wasn''t giving a hundred percent, I was sitting out here on my useless, busted ass, and was phoning in his drills. It was just crap, man.


    I was ready to just go and probably get in another yelling match with AEGIS at home over sitting here...not certain which was worse for my mood...when someone climbed down from the bleachers and sat down heavily next to me.


    I turned and looked and saw a small, embarrassed-looking frown under a pair of red eyes.


    "Alyssa?" I asked, for my own benefit as much as to ask. I hadn''t expected to be joined, least of all by her. She''d already said bye to me earlier, she should be home by now.


    "Didn''t make the cut, huh?" she asked, forlorn.


    "Yeah...well...don''t know if I would have. I didn''t do it."


    "What?" Her face hardened. "Why not? Ya should!"


    I gave her my best, demure, pathetic grin. "Sorry...sorta neglected to mention, but I broke a couple ribs this weekend. I wouldn''t be able to play for a few months."


    "Oh no! How?"


    "It...doesn''t really matter. I got hurt doing something stupid and can''t play, that''s really it."


    She looked at me seriously for a minute and then sighed heavily. "I guess. I''m sorry."


    "Nah, it''s nothing," I said, wondering just where that came from. But she frowned deeper and shook her head.


    "Not that," she said.


    "Then for what? You didn''t do anything," I laughed, and then stopped because that hurt.


    "For...I don''t know. For thinking for a second there that ya chickened out, I guess. I should''ve known it was somethin'' out of yer hands. Yer not that kinda guy, yer the kind to go show up to interview an upperclassman if ya got a question. No fear."


    "Um. I don''t really think of things that easy as being fearless."


    She shook her head again but was smiling this time. "It''s hard as rock for a lot of people, most people even, maybe. The fact you don''t see it that way just shows how fearless ya really are. Yer just crazy like that, and for a sec there, I thought ya weren''t, I''m sorry."


    I laughed again, having learned apparently nothing from last time I attempted that. "You don''t have to apologize about not thinking I''m crazy. I am a big fan of sane, actually. I think my life has got too much crazy in it for my own tastes already.¡±


    "Well¡­" she said, rising to her feet, and then turning to pull me to mine, having a bit of a time of it with her smaller stature, but her grip was warm and sure. "If ye''d like to do something sane...I''ve an idea." She looked at me seriously, with a hint of flush on her cheeks.


    "Um...sure?" I said. "What does this entail?"


    "Just...be right back, okay? Lemmie...lemmie be brave here like you, and go talk to the Coach for a sec."


    I stood there, feeling a little lost and abandoned as she jogged away towards the practicing players. I watched as she reached the coach and started to talk to him in quiet words I couldn''t make out. Her trepidation was written all over her body language, but she wasn''t stuttering or anything absurd. Just nervous. Just a normal person with a few anxieties, I reminded myself. Not a Tem or anything.


    My mobile rang, and I looked down to see it was from Cosette. Her personal device. That was strange. She wasn''t even supposed to have my number. As much a violation of our agreement as it was, I picked up.


    "Chariot...hey. Thanks for taking the call."


    "How''d you even get this number?"


    "Honestly, I borrowed Tower''s mobile and copied it down without telling him. I''d appreciate you not tell him how bad his boss is."


    "I''m sure he''s already aware," I said, pointing at my mobile as Alyssa walked up with a large grin and her hands behind her back. She nodded and rocked back onto her heels to wait. "What do you want, Cosette?"


    "I wouldn''t call you unless it were an emergency...and not an XPCA kind, or I''d just drag you in. So there''s no event--"


    "Not yet. But there is one coming up, raiding a technopath lair, right?"


    "...how do you always know everything you''re not supposed to?"


    "Borrowed Tower''s mobile and copied it down," I grinned at my device. She sighed.


    "But no, I''m not calling about that, I''m wondering if you''ve seen Moon recently."


    "Why would she visit me?" I asked, just probing a little.


    "Tower''s pretty much the expert on the girl, the only one who can get her to talk and then understand what she says anyway, so that''s close enough of an expert for me. And he says she''s been pissed at you for months now. So she suddenly goes missing without telling anyone, goes off the grid, and then we hear from her long-estranged father to please return her to him, and we get to start asking ourselves, if I were a somewhat deranged little Exhuman, what would I do? And I can''t speak for everyone, but personally, fifty percent of the time my answer to that question is ''kick Athan''s ass''. I assume she thinks similarly."


    "I don''t think Moon thinks similarly to anyone," I said. "But in this case, you''re not wrong. She came by a couple days ago to demand the full story out of me."


    "Oh."


    "Yeah. I told her no, repeatedly, then AEGIS threw her out of the house, we learned she had been summoned back to Japan by her father, and that''s the last we saw of her."


    "A couple days ago? Hmm," she mused. "That doesn''t check out. We heard from Ichiro-San as recently as this morning about her. She should be there by now, unless she chose to swim."


    I looked at Alyssa still standing there waiting. "Well, that''s what I know. Good luck, Cosette."


    "Yeah, I''ll bug you if I need anything else."


    "You do know that''s a violation of your own contract with me, right?"


    She scoffed. "You do know Exhumans aren''t technically a legal entity, and any contract you sign isn''t legally binding, right?"


    I shook my head. "Yeah, well, talk to you soon then, bye."


    "Stay alive, Chariot. We need you."


    I hung up on her. As much as Cosette was a voice of filtered reason, she was also a reminder of how the world actually worked. A depressing point constantly being hammered home today, about just how fake this life was, and just how disempowered I really was.


    "All ready?" Alyssa asked, and I put away my mobile as fast as I could. "Yeash. Yeah, yes. Sorry. Sorry to keep you waiting. And for saying ''yeash''."


    From behind her back, with a little hummed ''ta-dah'', she pulled a football, and I had only a moment where she dropped into a reasonably crude facsimile of a throwing stance before she chucked it at me.


    Purely out of instinct, I launched myself sideways, rolling off my shoulder and landing on my feet, before dropping back to a knee to hold my side which now screamed at me like a bitch. An insistent, crushing pain, which promised it would not soon abate.


    "Um¡­?" she asked.


    "Sorry¡­" I panted, holding up a hand to ask for a second. Fuck that hurt. I hoped I didn''t unsettle anything and have to go back to the hospital. But as the moments drew longer, the pain began to yield and I felt stupidity and embarrassment creep in its place.


    "Are...you okay? I''m sorry. I just thought...even if you couldn''t play¡­"


    "No, it''s fine," I said, forcing myself to stand and wiping the sweat beading on my brow. "Just...surprised me, is all. Kinda react on instinct, even if it''s silly."


    "Oh, right. You take those sparring classes. I''m sorry."


    "Yeah." I bent and picked up the ball, my fingers moving on their own to line up across the seams properly. Felt good. Felt right. I took a few paces back and then threw it to her, direct, but gentle. It landed in her cradled arms and she hugged it for a catch.


    "Gonna throw it back now," she said, nodding seriously. I had to appreciate she didn''t make the same mistake twice, and I nodded back.


    I had to wonder about Moon. If she wasn''t in Japan, then I had no idea where she was, and it sounded like Cosette was in the same boat. Without her mobile, and presumably without any of the geo-tracked XPCA apparel, there wasn''t much way to find out either. It was a very unexpected piece of news which at once made me feel like shit for letting AEGIS shoo her off and not doing more, but also vindicated in my sense that something was wrong when she''d disappeared.


    But right now, it just felt like an intrusion. In a vacuum, I was out here playing catch on a beautiful grass field on a warm spring day. The sky was blue, the trees were full of birdsong, and a couple dozen sweaty guys were playing God''s greatest game just half a field away. And yet, my thoughts weren''t here, they were carried off by obligation I wasn''t sure I owed, to friends I wasn''t sure were mine.


    The ball sailed through the air, tumbling slightly, but good enough. I wondered if Alyssa played with her brothers growing up or something. It was on-target, and I caught it in my arms easily, turning in one motion to throw back.


    Whatever happened, or did happen, or would happen, the universe seemed to conspire to remind me. Once an Exhuman, always an Exhuman, no matter what happened or would happen, I couldn''t escape that.

 291. 2252, Present Day. In a box. Kaori.

    In the shadow of his body, I held myself and cried as my thoughts were polluted again, and again. Violently, repeatedly, for my own good, he entered my mind and assaulted my beliefs and thoughts with his own.


    The most truly terrifying part was, I was not certain what my own thoughts were anymore. I knew I hated him. I knew that at the start, his and my beliefs had been opposite in almost all ways. He loved me, and thus I should hate myself. But sometimes I couldn''t remember why, without thinking back and picking my own history out of the entangled threads of thought.


    In the hours between our sessions, I would cry and think and try to remember who I was. Try to put myself back together...so that...so that...so that¡­


    I didn''t know. There had to be a reason I was resisting him. I had to believe all this suffering served a purpose. But it seemed pointless, when I knew that there would always be a next time. He had shown me with his mind and heart that he was committed to me, that he would never fail to be here for me, to show me love as he knew it.


    Was it such a terrible thing to love myself? He did not think so. He saw me as a goddess, and himself as the most devout supplicant. He wanted, with his whole heart for me to feel the same, and I did not know why I had to resist.


    But mine was a disciplined mind. It was something I took great pride in, which meant considerably more from myself than any other random--


    ...wait...no, that was his influence. Pride was not a virtue, I reminded myself.


    But a disciplined mind was, and discipline is the power that one lends oneself when no other is available. Here, with my reason eroded away, I would still fight him, even if I had no cause, because that is what discipline meant. To do what I knew I must, even if I couldn''t understand it myself. It is what made me who I am, and if I were clinging to that, I would cling to this.


    So I spent my hours alone reliving my past to reconstruct my present. To give context to my thoughts, and paint them as my own or alien. It was a tricky thing, sifting through my own mind in my own mind, not dissimilar to several forms of dementia, I had to imagine, and exhausting. But I would not relent.


    It also gave me ample time for introspection. I might have enjoyed it normally, barring the abnormal circumstances, and the fact all the material I was reflecting upon was abhorrent. Asking oneself questions such as ''what are my beliefs and why'', every day...it made one consider more than the obvious asking and move beyond the brain-muddling situation to the real ''what are my beliefs, and why?''.


    And so I contemplated, watching tears fall off of myself in the shallow reflection of the plastic in front of me.


    I was Kaori Ikeda, daughter of Ichiro and Hanako Ikeda. Theirs was a political marriage, as mine would likely be. Hers was a family company which was failing, and his was a soulless money-making corporate empire. She wed him to save her parents'' legacy. He wed her to bear him an heir, for her company''s patents, and for her looks, in that order.


    In my youth I knew none of this, of course. Politics and family affairs were beyond the ken of a child. Instead I had such memories as this:


    It was my sixth birthday, and I was excited. Not at the prospect of a birthday or party as most children might be, but because it was promised that my father might be visiting. I had practiced diligently to bow and welcome him home and smile, with more aplomb and grace than even the most dedicated of our house servants.


    I had grown into a fine girl, I believed. A six-year-old worthy of her father''s attention for a day. I studied hard and was diligent. My grades were flawless and my devotion was unshakable. I did not truly know my father, but was smitten by the concept of having one. The other children sometimes spoke of theirs, and I listened with rapt awe.


    But on that day, he did not come. No matter how long I stood in the entryway waiting, his shadow never appeared through the smoked glass of the front door. I remembered screaming at my mother after hours of waiting, that I could not go to bed, I would miss him if I did, and did not at the time understand her tears.


    I learned quickly after that what I was to them. He had wanted a male heir for his legacy and something had gone amiss in the chromosome manipulations of their yet-unborn child. Yet another complication in my mother''s uterus, of which there were apparently many. The irony that he had married her for that one organ, and that it was defective was not lost on her.


    Or on me, as I came to know myself as the child that should not exist. Whenever I saw Mother cry, I knew it was because she had given her all to birthing a child, and it was only me. Whenever I saw hardship in our family, heard whispers among the staff of Father''s infidelity, or another night when he never came home, I knew why. It was me. I should have been someone else.


    To say nothing of Mother eventually dying in defying her doctor''s orders to carry another child to term. I had killed her as well. And then I came to the States, where my carnage only continued.


    I would remember all of this through tears wrought from two places. To relive every painful moment such that forgetting would be impossible, and I would know which thoughts were mine and which were alien. It was not possible to hold these memories and a love of myself both in my heart, and while he could confuse my mind with conflicting thoughts and opinions, he could not confuse my history. Or my hate.


    Every day we did this dance, and every day I knew he crept further into me. But today, as the appointed time grew near, as I braced myself for his arrival and the suffering which arrived with him, today he seemed to be trying something new.


    He arrived with a comfortable-looking rolling chair and wheeled it into sight before my cage, seating himself with crossed legs.


    "Good morning, Kaori," he said pleasant as the dawn. "Did you sleep well?"


    "No," I said, and it was true. My head was in constant conflict, and it had manifest in my dreams.


    "That''s no good. Should I begin giving you drugs to help you sleep?"


    "I do not want anything from you but to be released."


    He tutted. "Always so acerbic, you are. I don''t understand, my love. It''s been four days of this already, and you don''t seem to have changed a bit, you haven''t. Are you even trying?"


    "Yes. I am trying very hard to leave."


    "Not what I meant, my love," he sighed. "I thought perhaps you would be able to accept the truth of what I was saying because of it''s obvious validity, but it seems you''re far too stubborn for that, you are. So now," he spread his arms dramatically "you are forcing me to dig down and find out what rooted in your mind to make you believe this nonsense and pull it out. Does that sound fun to you?"


    I shook my head. Somehow he was finding new methods even worse than before.


    "Then perhaps you''d be willing to accept my humble beliefs?"


    I nodded as enthusiastically as I could manage, but he looked at me with a souring expression, and then rose to touch me.


    "I should have known better," he sighed. "You are such a disappointment."


    I was barely with him before I felt him clawing through my mind painfully. He wasn''t taking his own thoughts and shoving them into me this time, but rather digging through mine, ferreting around, looking for something. Every thought he touched bubbled up into my consciousness as though I were suddenly reminded of it.


    "Ah here we go," he said, and I was about to protest when the memory consumed me.


    It was the worst years of my life again. I was short, in a pleated skirt under my too-small desk. I was surrounded by others, but I was alone.


    I struggled against the memory, but the urge to behave, to let it play out as it once had was overwhelming. Already I could feel myself shrinking into the sullen complacency of the past. I was regressing to who I had been. The stupid, naive girl.


    With all the willpower I possessed, I pushed the thought from my mind, concentrating hard on the first innocent thing to come to mind, which was a value meal I''d purchased at a fast-food chain in the hours before I went to confront Athan. The fries had been overly salty. American food always was.


    It felt as though the memory I was fighting was a tide, pulling at my ankles to sweep me into it. If I rooted myself, I could resist its drag. But not if I were pushed. And that is exactly what he did, sending me tumbling back in.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    I landed in my desk again, struggling to stand and to leave here when a crack rang out, so familiar, the sound of it bit to my bones.


    I sat, paralyzed, stock still and willed myself not to react, not to go red, not to panic as the whole class turned to face me. My breath seemed frozen in my chest. The whites of so many eyes turned towards me, some curious, some bored, some filled with malice. I just wanted to shrink and disappear.


    "Miss Ikeda?" our teacher asked, glaring at me like the others over a textbook. "How many times is this now?"


    I stood to reply and then stammered poorly. "M-m-my sorry--" I bowed quickly, embarrassed by my own inability to speak. My English was flawed enough to make me stand out already, but in situations like this, I seemed completely incapable of speaking it. My cheeks burned so, that I wondered how I had any blood left in my heart. If I did, it would be a blessing.


    The teacher approached my desk and bent to pick up the spent gunpowder popper under my chair, a tadpole of white paper, singed from the tiny bang. She glared at me as it twisted in her fingertips. "You always apologize, and yet you still disrupt the class. The least you could do is stop apologizing if you have no intention to stop."


    "I-it was not Kaori!" I muttered. "It was from...another than Kaori."


    She rolled her eyes and walked back to the front of the class to muted laughter. "And yet, no matter where we move you in the classroom, these little accidents always happen wherever you are. Perhaps if you spent more time studying and less time fabricating lies, your English would improve."


    The injustice of her words hit me like a whip, and when it became obvious she was finished speaking with me, I collapsed into my desk, holding back tears. That was just what they wanted, I knew. They wanted to see me break. They were bad people, I could not let them win.


    I gasped as I returned to the present in a shadow of his body. The memory had been so immersive, so real. It was like I was my past self again, living it again. The number of Code-X applications of my powers frightened me. Had I been someone else with these same powers, I would have been executed for them rather than joining the P-Force, I realized.


    Perhaps that would have been for the better.


    "This is the paradox I don''t understand, I do not," he said, and I realized he''d been sitting in his chair this whole time. Apparently we were in for a long session today, and I felt my stomach clenching nervously at the thought. "You are so strong-willed in all things. You hold onto your beliefs like a shark. And they are good beliefs. You''re such a good, strong person." His expression turned angry. "And then you go and ruin it all by hating yourself over it. You''re a hero, Kaori, you are. You''re selfless and beautiful and wise, those other students should be licking dog turds off your shoes, not bullying you. Why don''t you ever stand up for yourself?"


    I struggled to come up with a reply, still in the mind of my high-school self. He was right, I was pathetic, the thought flitted through my mind.


    "Gomen nasai," I mumbled. "I''m sorry."


    Waves of disgust flowed from his mind. "This is exactly what I mean. Even now, even when you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by just listening to me. You always do this, don''t you?" He sighed dramatically. "Let''s review something more recent."


    I just nodded and held in my tears as new memories flashed through me. He had one in mind already and located it swiftly, dropping me back into my own body in an XPCA barracks, the glow from a holo in my hands shining upon my confused face.


    "Perhaps there is a misunderstanding," I said. "What do you mean, gone?"


    "I mean, gone, girl. It''s not a complicated word, no matter how much you love to complicate them," Tower''s voice replied through the device. "The XPCA came to pick him up and he just...wasn''t there to pick up anymore."


    I felt myself reeling and sat down in my bunk. It wasn''t possible. Athan had been...he had been...well, it was difficult for me to admit or even consider, but somehow he had become somewhat important to me. The fact that he could just disappear like that while we were to deploy on an event without him¡­


    It was as though he didn''t care. There were people out there at this very moment potentially being hurt, and he did not care. Bereft of a capable strike lead, the P-Force may be hurt, and he did not care. He was leaving me, knowing...or at least marginally aware of my past, of my insecurities...and he did not care.


    It hurt more than it should have. I had told him over and over again that he should care nothing for me. But for him to listen to me felt like a knife in my heart.


    I knew he must have utilized Rito''s powers to escape, knew the girl was hard-up financially, knew that with a very small amount of my father''s ''allowance'', I could bend her over backwards and have him brought to heel.


    I rushed back into the present again, my head spinning as the combination of my past and present thoughts and his whirled together into one mind.


    "And yet you never did," he said smugly. "You could have demanded an explanation from Athan at least, and instead you did nothing, even as the agony of his betrayal ate at you from within."


    "It would solve nothing," I insisted. "I do not need nor deserve his reasoning."


    "Stupid girl," he barked. "You are worth an explanation. Your peace of mind is a tangible benefit, it is. You spent weeks in misery because you couldn''t demand five minutes from him."


    "I do not demand anything from anybody," I repeated.


    "And that''s moronic. If you want something, take it. The world will never thank you for your restraint, someone else, a human probably, will just walk up and ruin it anyway. We need Exhumans like you to take and do everything to fix the world we''ve already ruined. It''s not selfishness for you to behave in your own self-interests, it isn''t, it''s just the natural course of a superior species." He crossed his arms smugly. "An eagle would never hesitate to take a kill from a pigeon."


    "You put me on a pedestal for protecting ''pigeons'', and then tell me it is fine to treat them as lower life. You are frustratingly inconsistent."


    He leaned back and smiled. "So you do have some things you''ll push back on. I consider this a great victory."


    "It''s not," I argued. "I just prefer people be clear in their intentions and meanings. It does not reflect on my perceived self-worth. You do not win."


    "But it''s something you prefer, and you''ll stand up for it enough to argue anyone into the ground, it is," he mused, his smirk obnoxious and all-encompassing. "You''ll stand up for that, so why not other things important to you?"


    We flashed into another memory, my first week in America. A friendless transfer student who spoke in halting English and blushed at any attention. The boarding school I was sent to was small, prestigious, and its students had long ago formed cliques and social strata.


    I saw this, knew it all, realized the danger. I had precious few days to establish myself anywhere but the bottom of the pack, but with every stammered introduction or awkward phrase or compulsion to flee from a conversation, I felt myself dropping.


    I spent nights in my room berating myself in the mirror for my lack of clarity and difficulties in speech. I had to improve, quickly, before it was too late.


    "But there are many things you view as important, you do," his voice snapped me out of the hypnotic reverie. "And yet, this is the one you will permit yourself to force on others."


    "Clarity of thought and precision of speech are universal merits."


    "So are many other virtues you espouse. Wouldn''t the world be a better place if everyone you met tried to help others? Or tried to minimize the pain of breaking promises and relationships? Or was a good person? Yet you don''t go about forcing those beliefs on people, you don''t. Just your predilections for speech. You could be so much more, Kaori my love. I just want to help you get there."


    "I neither need nor want your help."


    He shook his head but a moment of annoyance or rage flashed through his mind. Despite myself, I could feel his thoughts as he put it aside and decided to punish me instead.


    "Well, we''ve got a lot more ground to cover, and I dare say you need all the help you can get, you do," he said, leaning back with a taunting grin. "Let''s just dive right in, shall we?"


    He did, again and again. As we had been, we continued; diving into my old memories unbidden, dredging out every one of my failings and hypocrisies. He made efforts to point out how all of the hardships of my life were not, as I have always asserted, my own fault, and that I was relatively blameless, save for being spineless.


    It would have been such a simple thing were he not in my head. Any person sitting there, bringing up my memories one-by-one and telling me the faults within them, I could have easily dismissed. But I could not stop him from placing his objections in my mind any more than I could cease reliving my past. He showed no restraint or mercy in delving my brain, apparently unaware of any agony I felt, save for constant annoyance for me feeling it.


    As I''d feared when he brought the chair in, this session was longer than most, and by the end of it, my brain simply buzzed as though disconnected. A mind was not intended to be delved into as mine had, to have long-held memories suddenly pulled and challenged and put back. Where once my thoughts had been an orderly library, they were now empty shelves with books strewn on the floor and aggressively annotated with a felt-tip pen.


    "I suppose that''s enough for today," he said at long last, and rose from his seat. I was too lost from this world to even comprehend his words, realizing only that I was back behind the glass of my case, safe in my own body with my own thoughts again.


    Safe. What a strange concept.


    As before, I had mere hours to undo his damage. To pick up the books of my mind and read each of them, crossing out additions made against my will. All of the thousands of them, it felt. It would be painful and arduous and I had no desire to relive them all again.


    And tomorrow, again. And the day after, again.


    I slumped forward with my forehead against the glass of the case. I could not do this forever. I wasn''t even sure I could do it today. What was the point in fighting back so hard against the inevitable? What difference was there if I fell to his thoughts today, or in a week, or in a year?


    I did not know. I did not know if these thoughts were even mine. I had no reasons left, and the work to do and the reach he held within me grew every day.


    It was pointless.


    But therein lay my strength. I was accustomed to my actions being pointless. I had lived a lifetime of being pointless. Pointlessness was my expected state, and something I had battled every day. There was no greater champion of fighting a pointless conflict than me.


    And so, without reason or inclination or motivation, I leaned on my discipline yet again, and did that which I did not want to do for reasons I did not have, and began the painful process over.


    Tomorrow would be another long day, and I had to be ready for it.

 292. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    A week since Moon went to Japan, or missing, or wherever she was, and from what I heard in the periphery, Cosette was going nuts over it. They were supposed to be marching into a technopath''s lair today, and she was livid that what she considered a dependable soldier was now "pulling an Athan" on her. While she was definitely doing her best to leave me out of it and focus her energies in productive directions, I did get a few ominous messages from Tower just quoting a few choice lines of hers.


    I didn''t approve of the term. But I was smart enough not to argue with her over it.


    As for me, I was in class. Sitting with Alyssa, Darris, Sebastian, and Lia. Soaking in knowledge, or what passed for it in this course, while mostly just doodling circuit diagrams and trying to keep one ear open in case anything that sounded suspiciously like a future test question was mentioned.


    Lia was taking notes and glancing at my doodles with a combination of interest and revulsion. Sebastian looked as he always did, like today was a great day for him, and he was just excited to be here. Darris balanced us out by seeming properly bored to death, and Alyssa was furtively on her mobile under the tiny college arm-desk.


    By sheer coincidence, my mobile buzzed silently in my pocket. I checked and realized I was stupid. It wasn''t a coincidence, it was a message from Alyssa.


    > Got any weekend plans? Still trying the run away from roommate thing?


    > lol no plans, just the usual


    > You should come over again and not run away this time.


    > It''s a really bad idea. Things with AEGIS are complicated and I''m just trying to stay afloat here


    > Well there wasn''t any problem that I saw. We were just friends hanging out. You''re the one who thought it was a date and then bolted. I''m cool with being friends.


    > You *are* allowed to have friends, right?


    > Cuz if you''re not, I''m gonna go beat up your girlfriend.


    I had a sudden coughing fit which sounded a bit like laughing at the beginning. When the professor looked up, he found me studiously at work on my notes.


    > Very smooth.


    > Stop making me laugh in class, I''m gonna get in trouble.


    > Then don''t make me beat up your girlfriend.


    > Seriously though, come over if you want, don''t if you don''t, but please don''t let everything get messed up by one misunderstanding.


    > We''ll see I guess


    I closed my mobile and when I glanced over, she was giving me a disapproving ''bleh'' expression, but did let the conversation go.


    Honestly I wouldn''t mind going. We were all on the same page that it was platonic and on the level, and nothing was going to happen. But at the same time the reality of the situation and how AEGIS saw it were two different things entirely. The only reason I was trying to stay away was because of AEGIS¡¯ paranoia and jealousy.


    And it was paranoia and jealousy. And at some point, you have to ask yourself, why am I shitting up my entire life because someone else has hangups on things? Why is it my job to tiptoe around someone else''s insecurities to the detriment of my own being?


    Like, yeah, I felt like shit every time I argued with her, and I had no rebuttal for a lot of things she accused me of, because the fact was, I was spending more time with Alyssa lately, and I did enjoy her company over AEGIS''. But that was because every fucking second AEGIS and I were in the same room, she''d be freaking out at me over how much time I wasn''t spending in the same room as her.


    My sheet of notes crinkled under my forehead on the desk. It was exhausting. I had to wonder if it had always been this bad and I just didn''t pick up on it until I was here at college where I had relative freedom. Was this what growing up was supposed to be like? Is this why kids moved out? Screaming matches at home every day?


    Class ended before I could finish all my thoughts, but that wasn''t surprising given that I''d been mulling over these same issues for over a month now. I packed and stood to go while the others did the same.


    And then someone joined our standing circle and we all looked at him with curiosity. Well, most of us, and mostly curiosity. Lia and I were sort of on the verge of panic, maybe.


    It was Diallo, for whom my autograph had apparently not been sufficient bribery to get him out of my life forever. He stood with us like he''d always been there, dressed in a purple polo that was unflattering with such a broad expanse of one unattractive color. If I were a fat dude, I''d put on overshirts and stuff to break it up and look less...big.


    "Are we getting food?" he asked. "I''m starving, I am. Had an engagement and missed breakfast."


    I interrupted Sebastian warmly welcoming him. "Why are you here, dude?" I asked. I stood square in front of him so that it clear it was us talking, not the whole group.


    He studied me for a moment. "You''ll have to be more specific, you will," he said. "This building? This class? This university?"


    It was my turn to study him for a moment. I didn''t remember him having quite that...peculiar mannerism in the other time we''d met. It annoyed me. But more, it set off an alarm bell in my head. His behavior seemed way too familiar for someone I''d met once.


    "Here, in this circle of people," I clarified. "You aren''t invited to our group."


    "I didn''t know we were invite-only," Darris said, finishing packing and being the last to stand with us. "Is Athan being a jerk? Sorry, better question, why is Athan being a jerk?"


    "Because something about this guy sets me off," I said, not looking away. "If you guys want to hang with him...first off, don''t, but second, you''ll do it without me."


    "Show of hands, Athan''s a jerk?" Darris said. He got his halfway up before Lia wrenched it out of the air.


    "It''s not a democracy," Lia said. Her voice sounded as tense as I felt, and somehow that was enough to shock the others into quiet. Because...I was just always a jerk, I guess? Or maybe it just wasn''t a real issue until the creepy guy upset a girl.


    "Come on now," Diallo said. "I just want to hang out."


    He seemed honest, even pleading, but the alarm in my mind was ringing even louder now, and glancing at Lia, I could read on her face that she was feeling the same. This guy knew who I was, and that was already a huge danger, but he hadn''t set me on edge like this before, and I really didn''t like it.


    "Well if it is a democracy, I''d rather the group stay with Athan than this guy," Alyssa chimed in, walking up to my side. "Sorry big guy. Maybe some other time?"


    "Like I''d hang out with you, cow," he sneered, his demeanor changing in a flash. Jesus Christ this guy was unhinged. But lashing out like that at her was great for me, because suddenly even Sebastian looked like he was having second thoughts. "Athan," he said, turning back to me, his voice soft and pleading again.


    "Come on sir, you''re just...I just want to help you, you and the things you do are so amazing and incredible, they are. I want to help you however I can, I''d do anything for you. Look, I''m not useless, I have--" he pulled his bag off his shoulder and began opening it and pulling out a tablet. "--have information, I know everything there is to know about Exhumans."


    Fast enough that I hoped it could be seen as involuntary, I grabbed his jaw, squeezing his round cheeks even further into his small eyes with my grip.


    "Woah, dude, woah!" Sebastian said, his arms flying up in the air for no useful reason.


    "Don''t you mention Exhumans to me again," I warned him, putting as much menace in my voice as I could. It was hard when he was like, taller and wider than me, and it felt a bit like yelling at a particularly ugly pug, but this was the only play I had in front of my friends.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Sort of all at once after my words had hung in the air, the others all moved and separated us, and I made a show of trying to push through them to get back at him, while he just looked at me with familiar dispassion as he rubbed his jaw.


    "It''s okay," Alyssa was telling me in a soothing tone. "Jesus," she giggled, "I didn''t know ya got so het up about anythin''. It''s okay though. Calm down, ya made yer point."


    While she was screening me, from behind her, Lia gave me a furtive thumbs-up. I might be a shit liar, but I did know how to be convincingly angry about Exhumans apparently. Kinda had a lot of personal experience to draw from for that one.


    "You''re a bastard, Athan!" The words suddenly exploded out of Diallo through a mismatched visage of indifference. "I just wanted to help, you bastard. But don''t worry, I don''t need you, everything''s gonna be perfect soon, just you wait. Just you wait and see, when humanity takes the next step, it''ll be me they have to thank for it, not you!"


    I shook my head and let Alyssa walk me out of the room while the others now held him back as he screamed at my backside about Exhumans and never meeting your heroes.


    "The bugger was that guy''s problem?" she asked me. "He''s like a pissed hippo, in more ways than one."


    "Dunno. But you should probably just discount everything he says," I said, realizing that my acting skills were still and always shit. But she was willing to let my completely opaque comment slide as she suggested we head towards food and let the others catch up.


    I had a couple of sort of off-smelling fish tacos in front of me and she had a baked potato. We spent a minute in awkward silence without touching our food until both of our mobiles buzzed and Lia informed us that Diallo had punched Sebastian in the nose and campus security was getting involved and we made the right choice to just run.


    "Wow, what a disaster," Alyssa sighed. "Sebastian, too. He''s such a nice guy. Who''d ever hit a guy like Sebastian?"


    "I can''t imagine," I said. "Some kind of insane, delusional, fat fuck."


    She smiled awkwardly and then the smile fell away leaving just the awkward. "Can I ask ya something?" she said. I nodded. "Ya and Yer sister transferrin'' here suddenly, I always thought it was a little...unusual. Yer a little unusual. Ya seem fearless to me in all the ways that make sense...all the things I beat myself up over worrin'' about, you just don''t."


    "Okay?"


    "Sorry, ramblin'' a bit. What I wanted to ask was...was yer comin'' here, was that Exhuman related?"


    I tried to think of which answer would keep her out of my past more securely, and when they both seemed bad, decided to go with the truth.


    "Yeah," I said.


    "Ah. I''m sorry then."


    "It''s okay."


    She shook her head with a little embarrassed-looking frown. "Nah, I shouldn''t have brought it up. Judging by how ya reacted to that guy, it''s not very okay at all. Sorry. I won''t mention it again."


    Well...my aim of keeping my past hidden was hit, but boy did I feel shitty about it. The silence that grew gnawed at me, so I began speaking on any other topic.


    "Thanks for coming out to my football tryout," I said. "Meant a lot, even if it didn''t go anywhere."


    "Well, I saw ya runnin'' off for it and thought...I bet he won''t know a soul there. Yer close with yer twin and got yer girlfriend of course, but I didn''t see either of them comin'' with ya. And I thought, if yer gonna try for something ya love, someone should be there to cheer ya on. It''s what I''d want." She gave me the embarrassed-looking smile again. "But I think I''m a lot more insecure than ya are."


    "Nah. Well. Maybe, I don''t know. Being more or less insecure than someone doesn''t really matter. I do what I do, and other people do what they do. No use trying to get everyone else in the world to be like me, right?"


    "Right," she said with a decisive nod I think aimed more at herself. "I''m sorry about yer football thing in general though."


    This time it was my turn to give her an embarrassed smile. "Hey, you wanna hear something kinda crazy?"


    "Isn''t everything ya say kinda so?"


    "Maybe," I laughed. "But...I''m not really torn up about not making the team. Like yeah, that''s what I wanted more than anything. And it would be awesome to be playing again, and a chance I never thought I''d ever get. But even with all that, I can''t be sad about it."


    "Why not?" She tilted her head like an adorable dog as she asked. Wavy hair instead of floppy ears, but close enough.


    "Because...I think...this might be the happiest I''ve ever been," I laughed. "My life is so good here. There''s so many interesting people, housing and food and stuff are all basically handled for you. Nobody expects anything of you but for you to go to class and do your work."


    "Isn''t that last one just like any job?"


    "Not any job."


    "Ya get my meanin'' anyway."


    "Yeah, and do you get mine?"


    "I do...I guess." She hesitated for a second. "So I guess yer life was pretty hard before now?"


    "It was. Pretty crappy in a lot of ways. And honestly," I sighed, "I''m not sure I''m rid of it. I have this lingering...just...thing, in the back of my mind, all the time, telling me it''s out there waiting for me."


    I didn''t mention how even in this totally normal conversation with a totally normal friend with totally normal dry fish tacos, everything felt just a little fake. Having to skirt around my past, sure. Running here to get away from a guy who might out me, obviously. But even the little things. The fact that I couldn''t do football because my psycho girlfriend is strong enough to accidentally shatter bones. The fact that Lia and I had to pass as the world''s most mismatched twins.


    Like, I was here. I knew that. I occupied physical space in this chair, and if someone came up and tried to sit down in it, they''d find it very uncomfortable. But at the same time, I had this feeling I wasn''t here at all. I didn''t know how long that feeling would linger, or if it ever went away.


    It was bizarre how I could be so happy and content with where I was, but also feel like I wasn''t there all at once. I wondered if other people felt this, or if it was an Exhuman kind of experience. Not that I had a monopoly on being victimized, but sometimes it sure felt like I did.


    But not now. That was the point. And it was weird, a little.


    But mostly it was great. Just as I''d told her.


    "This really is the best my life has been. I should thank you, and the others. For being a big part of that."


    She looked like she wasn''t sure what to say, and in thinking about my words, I guess I was laying it on pretty thick. It made me laugh. I really was weird.


    "For uh, being good friends," I clarified. "I haven''t had a lot of those in my life, and so I appreciate it."


    "Oh. Well. We weren''t doin'' it for ya, ya know. We met ya, we liked ya, we kept hangin'' out with ya. Not much more to it than that, and nothing to thank us for."


    "Yeah, probably," I said, finally digging into my food. I disagreed with her, but things were only going to get weird if I kept praising her. Because she was a good friend, and a good person, and didn''t expect or demand things from me. She wasn''t indebted to me, wasn''t my commanding officer, wasn''t saving my life or any of that shit. Just a friend, no strings attached. And that was everything I wanted, even if the nagging doubt in my mind said it''s not what I needed. Not what I deserved, in any case.


    "Hey, about this weekend," I spoke up "I''d love to hang."


    "Cool." She smiled at me. "I was thinkin'' we could swing by the mall to pick out some lingerie, and then get matching tattoos on the way home. And then ya could meet my parents."


    "AEGIS is gonna kill you," I grinned. "Promise never to fuck around like that around her?"


    "Oh, I won''t be around her at all. That sounds like trouble ya don''t need."


    "But hanging out with you is?"


    She looked me up and down for a second and then smiled more broadly than usual. "Yeah. Some trouble, ya do need. Didn''t ya just get done tellin'' me that yer happy like a puppy here in college, and pushin'' yer awkward heavy-handed thank ya''s onto me for doin'' that for ya? So yeah, I think ya do need some small amount of trouble. For yer own good."


    "Hey. My thank yous were elegant and painstakingly handcrafted out of the finest natural ingredients. There was not an awkward bone in their bodies."


    "Sure they were," she grinned.


    And at that moment, looking exasperated and hungry, the rest of the crew rolled in, stopping by long enough to say hi and drop off things before swinging out to pick up food. Before long, they rejoined us and dug in, having only half an hour in some cases to eat and make it to their next lecture, while Alyssa and I also had to hurry up a bit to compensate for all the talking and not-eating we''d been doing together.


    Sebastian was fine, just had a bloody nose for a bit, and they told us with wide eyes and disbelief how Diallo had just flipped out after I''d left. Screaming like a man-child, everything from Exhumans being the perfect beings to how he was going to save the world, with or without me.


    Even as someone who half-knew what was going on, it still made no sense to me, and made me deeply, deeply perturbed that this guy was just out here running lose. I resolved to look him up, make sure AEGIS was familiar with his appearance, so that if he should start skulking around, she''d know it.


    And right there, that was my life in a nutshell, wasn''t it? Sebastian was the nicest guy, and someone or something related to my past had shown up and punched him in the face for reasons he couldn''t even understand. It felt like a microcosm, or maybe a warning, the dangers of trying to cram an Exhuman life into a normal one, when it bleeds out the cracks in dangerous ways all around.


    Or, maybe I was just being paranoid as I sometimes was. Maybe football tryouts were football tryouts, and a bloody nose was a bloody nose. I couldn''t know.


    Sometimes I wondered...if I were Saga or AEGIS, with their near-infinite capacities to gather information, and turned it inwards on my own life instead of giving a single shit about the world, what kind of life would that be? If Saga were more interested in living a typical human life, her powers meant she could blend in seamlessly, avoid any potential faux pas, easily make friends and influence people. Same with AEGIS, but through the power of technology.


    And yet, both of them chose not to, and I had to wonder why. I had the option, minus the powers, and I left their crazy lifestyles as much as I could to pursue this one. What really scared me was the thought that, maybe once you knew as much as they did, you either realized this life wasn''t possible for you, or you ascended to such a place that it was no longer desirable.


    Both of which were really sad, and both of which I hope never happened to me. So football tryouts were just football tryouts, and a bloody nose was just a bloody nose. It had to be. Or else I was making a mess just by being here.


    And looking around and seeing my sister and friends talking and laughing with their mouths too full, that just couldn''t be the case. Things happened, sure, but there wasn''t a like, malevolent karmic force out to get me, there were just people and things in my past, and we had to tread carefully to make sure they didn''t catch up.


    It''s the only plan that worked. The only one that didn''t involve either giving this place up, or losing it. And after spending so long here, with these people, realizing who I was and all I''d grown, I wasn''t ready to do that. Not now, and not ever.

 293. 2252, Present Day. Tunnels beneath New York. Karu.

    "Why is she here?" Tower asked with his typical understated grace. I pushed his finger out of my face with equal parts composure and contempt.


    ''Here'' was a brightly-lit underchamber, concrete walls and rusting pipes. A service depot for underground rail long abandoned; a large room with makeshift boards laid over crisscrossing trenches, installed by the many XPCA swarming about to increase available floor space for their ops center.


    If anything, it was Tower who seemed out of place. Too wide and too tall, his short, thick hair was grey with dust from the ceiling it had brushed against in the many passages we maneuvered to get here.


    Or at least, I assumed they had. As Tower''s words indicated, I had not arrived in their company. We were assembling here for final preparations before entering the lair further below.


    Aside from the near-death experience of it and the traumatized and pathetic mental state I had been in, the last technopath lair I had visited was a welcome change of pace. Unlike most others, it was not squirreled away underground somewhere like the warren of a rabbit. The spatially-defying mayhem, while lethal, was refreshing.


    "She is here because we need her." Colonel Dawn''s voice came in over comms, audible only through the assistance of the hastily-deployed array of devices sharing the chamber with us. "We''re missing Tem and Moon now. Chariot is...off his game apparently," she added, glancing at him and his exosuit significantly. "And so we have some hunters and shadow ops with you on this one. And by ''some'' I mean...just her."


    "You can''t be serious. We don''t need backup like her! Chariot told us she was behind those murders. She killed an XPCA dude. Tell ''em, man."


    Ashton in his exosuit barely turned to face Tower. "It''s a violation of my terms to idly chatter. I will not do so." I rolled my eyes. Idle chatter was essentially him in a nutshell, as it were. I had not yet worked in a professional capacity alongside him since his change -- whatever that had been -- though I had been seeing him in a more...furtive capacity on occasion.


    It would be interesting to see him fight again. And the fact that I was only joining in on his ops in a situation where they could not refuse my aid was no coincidence.


    "I can''t believe you''d just put up with this," Tower said, apparently in dire need of getting the last word i. I suspected he was not taking this mission as seriously as he should have been, if he considered me a worry at all at this stage.


    "Chariot''s right," Colonel Dawn sighed. "And by right, I mean he knows the contract he wrote. Completely non-binding as it may be, let''s focus on doing our damn jobs for right now, hmm?"


    "It''s crap, Cosette, and you know it too. Karu might have even been responsible for Moon disappearing so she could fill her slot."


    "Honestly, what do you think I am?" I scoffed.


    "Ten times a crazier bitch than I first thought, apparently." He crossed his arms.


    "Now, now, Tower. There''s no need to provoke hostilities," Jack said, appearing between us as he did. "I suspect we have a full day ahead of us even without creating new adversaries."


    "Yeah, and I apologize if it sounded like I was asking before," Colonel Dawn said. "It''s an order for you guys to go in there and do your jobs. And not make my life shit."


    Tower shook his head but turned towards the tunnel that would be our exit. "This is gonna suck so bad. Everything''s so messed up. Why are they sending us on this suicide mission anyway? Why can''t we just bomb it or something?"


    "I would assume the upper echelons have their reasons," Jack said with a smile. "Though those reasons may be as simple as the fact that we are not well-regarded by the greater XPCA, and are liable to be the first pick for a ''suicide mission'', as you put it."


    "Awesome," Tower said with a shake of his head, and then finally, mercifully, shut up as Colonel Dawn began her report.


    "We initially found this one by abnormal power drain from the grid. The city workers investigated and found the drain coming from the old metro tunnels under the city, and right there is where we should have been called in. Underground, devouring power, abandoned site, smacks of a technopath. But instead they kept poking their noses around until they lost ''em. And the fun news is now she knows we''re coming. Recon team just got back and reports a barrier of some kind, like hard light."


    "Dude, go grab Tem," Tower said to Ashton. "If it is hard light, she can move that stuff."


    "It''s not," Dawn sighed. "Everything that looks shiny isn''t the same, Tower."


    "It might be," he pouted.


    "Well, for starters, it''s not white, it''s translucent green. And second, what the hell crawled into your nutsack this morning? You''ve been pissy all day."


    "Moon''s gone," he said. "Moon would never miss an op by choice. Something''s seriously wrong. We should be leaving this guy to play with his glowing green BS and looking for her. Girl''s got me having an ulcer and an aneurysm at the same time."


    "Unfortunately, not the mission. Last we heard, she left by choice, making her desertion--"


    "Alleged desertion."


    "--very low priority in the great scheme of things. Tower, do I have to bench you too? Because I''m sick of your lip."


    He just crossed his arms even more tightly and didn''t respond.


    "Well, you all know what to do," Colonel Dawn picked up again, more defeated than ever. "I won''t bore you with any more details. Defeat the bad guy with words or force. She''s already in technopath phase two where she''s disrupting the area around her lair, so we''re on the clock before she steps it up to phase three."


    "What happens in phase three?" Tower asked.


    "Boom, typically," I answered. "Technopaths are frequently physically frail -- by Exhuman standards -- and consider themselves more so as their powers develop and they realize how vulnerable they are to such things as their own devices. Their fear drives them to reclusion, but eventually their confidence in their creations will slay that fear, at which point they do what comes natural."


    Jack nodded. "Few are as merciless as those who see themselves as oppressed. I had hoped the opening of New Eden would have eliminated these kinds of things. Technopaths more than most I would think could have a place in the world above."


    I smiled at his naivety. "Do not forget that Exhumans, all Exhumans violate the laws of physics on the regular. Ashton can create and move electricity with his mind. There is more to a technopath than the creation and deployment of science-fiction tech, and I think you would find them little place in the greater world. But enough words, shall we begin?"


    "Couldn''t have said it better myself," Colonel Dawn replied. "The tunnels go down quite a ways before you reach the first barrier. After there, we''ll probably lose contact with you, but we''ll cut the Exhuman from the power grid, which will hopefully let you in. If not...you have Jack, and Jack has blast charges. All clear?"


    The four of us replied with an unenthusiastic hooah, helped by Ashton''s synthesized voice and Tower''s obvious reservations. But we were here, and we were ready.


    And somewhere, in the depths below us, she was waiting.


    For ten minutes or more, our footsteps echoed with the crunching of loose rock underfoot as we followed the disused rail lines. I had to hope that the target''s defenses would be lower on account of the illusion of safety created from the infuriatingly inaccessible place they chose to make their home, but I had my doubts. The others with me had it worse off, as it were; bereft of optics, their vision must have seemed oppressively small in the dark.


    I took the opportunity to sidle up on Ashton, keeping my visor on high alert of any unexpected readings and slowing my pace to fall beside his long, deliberate strides.


    "It has been awhile," I said to him. "You have not visited recently. Are you coy? Or is your leash too short?"


    He ignored me and kept on walking with an uninterrupted pace.


    "Oh Ashton, you can speak with me at least. It will kill nobody to see us on friendly terms. And it is selfish, besides, for you to visit me only when you have need of me."


    "We will not converse," came the terse, synthesized reply.


    "And why not? I hardly consider myself bound to your foolish contract."


    He stopped dead. "Those were my terms of cooperation. If they will not be held, I will abort the mission."


    The rest of us paused as well, Tower looking weary as though he had seen this all before. "You would abandon the mission over a few exchanged words? Come now." I smiled at him disarmingly. "For old time''s sake?"


    "I am leaving," Ashton said, turning to go. My mind felt as though it had mud under its tires. This wasn''t possibly how Ashton conducted himself. The change was too drastic. And yet, he was plodding away with the same insistent pace, but now away from me.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "Wait," I called after him. "I will cease my efforts to engage you." I shook my head and glanced at Tower, whose expression clearly said I never had a chance. Ashton paused, turned, and then continued back towards our target without a word.


    The mood of the tunnel seemed somehow even darker than before. Ashton''s footfalls sounded weighter and louder. At long last, Tower spoke up again, his voice hesitant with the dread which was likely getting to him.


    "Hey Karu, what were you saying before about there being more to a technopath? They make tech and use it, right? That''s it. That''s the tech...in technopath. Right?"


    "You are not incorrect," I said, glancing backwards from the front of our little formation. Tower and Ashton were in line behind me, with Jack darting around as he saw fit. "But there is hardly anything supernatural about that, would you agree? Yet we would not claim that every genius inventor is an Exhuman."


    "Yeah, I guess. But I thought their tech just doesn''t work for others?"


    "I am certain it could if they had the propensity and desire to make it so. But they do not exactly tend to welcome the company of others, as you can see." I swept my arms out to gracefully encompass the entirety of this humid, fetid armpit through which we were strolling. "Rather, I believe they tend to make their devices easy for themselves to use, without concern of how it would function for others."


    "And how do they do that? Fingerprint locks or something?"


    I laughed. "You forget they are Exhuman. Just as you can control your powers with your mind, as Ashton can interface with electricity, so too can they interface with their own created technology."


    "So...a neural link."


    "In the same manner that it is a neural link which runs down your back and moves your limbs, yes. It is an extension of them, as your powers are an extension of you. It is not so crass as a headset which interprets your brain patterns or the like."


    "Okay. But functionally, still just a neural link."


    I frowned. "Again, you are not incorrect, but it is dangerous to consider them in that limited regard. It is not a matter of them being able to flip their on and off with a thought, and foolish to draw such an analogy."


    "Just tell me already what isn''t dangerous or foolish to think, then?" He sounded as though he were not enjoying this conversation, which was understandable as he had done little more than repeat his preconceptions iteratively.


    "Consider this," I began a different approach. "Many Exhumans can manipulate primal forces of nature. For you, it is kinetic energies. For Ashton, electrical current. This makes you capable and dangerous. Do you agree?"


    "Sure."


    "Now imagine that instead of a primal force, you were able to construct your own force and manipulate that. Instead of working with stone and hurtling rocks at you, they could, say, construct chainsaws and hurtle them at you instead."


    "Wait, chainsawpath? Is that a thing?"


    "It could be," I shrugged. "However a typical chainsaw would likely be too crude and primitive for an aspiring technopath, so they might...jazz it up a bit, as it were. Atomically-honed edges. Blades which could split and recombine. Plasma emitters to make the blades as maneuverable as a Peregrine in flight. All of this, through their ''neural link''."


    "Woah. That''s not fair."


    "My earlier metaphor was apt. The difference between a fully-realized technopath and others is as different as two going to war armed with rocks, or with guns. This, and their propensity for paranoia is why they are considered the very worst of Exhumanity after Code-X. They are flexible, intelligent by definition, patient by need, and relentless given their persecution."


    "Their alleged persecution?" he asked.


    "Hardly. Were I capable, I would snuff out every one of them given half a chance, and few in the world think differently than I. Theirs is a life too dangerous to live."


    "Uh. You do know on this mission we can talk to them. New Eden is a thing."


    "She will not accept and we endanger ourselves by making the attempt. I will speak through my weapons."


    In the periphery of my visor I could see him walking directly behind me with a frown large enough to match his stature. "Well that''s all Exhumans if you want to get into it."


    "All Exhumans typically fall into the camps of mentally unstable enough to do something irreparably foolish when they first turn, or clever enough to hide out. Technopaths defy this, and in so doing, step up to the executioner''s block."


    "So neglecting the part where you''re a crazy psycho as we''ve established--" he said.


    "Of course."


    "--how do you beat a technopath if they''re so strong?"


    "Primarily by getting the drop on them. A technopath is only as strong as they are prepared. Our mark has been here for a time, but only recently learned she''d been discovered. How confident or wary she is will--"


    I signaled for a stop and the three of us dropped to one knee. In the very remote distance down the tunnel I could pick up an energy reading unlike any I''d seen before.


    Jack was suddenly at my side. "You see it as well?" he asked me.


    "Yes. The green barrier of which Colonel Dawn spoke."


    It crossed the entire tunnel, walling it off from this side. I had expected a side passage with a doorway or the like, not a tunnel-spanning monstrous wall. I did not know how impenetrable it would prove, but if it were any reasonable amount, our progression would be utterly foiled.


    "Technopaths, like all Exhumans, have a specialty," I continued aloud as I filtered through my optics to get a clearer look. I could see through the wall well enough and saw no trace of its creator beyond it. "If you cannot attain complete surprise, the trick to beating them then, is to be able to defeat that specialty. I would not come at Ashton without resistive armor, would not fight Jack without some manner of area denial, and would not combat you without a means of harming you which is more than percussive." I looked back at Tower and gave him a smile. "I think toxic gas might be effective."


    "So you are on this mission just to creep us out. Good to know," he said.


    "The point, as it were, is that while there is nothing similar by necessity in the strategies which will work against technopaths as a whole, each has weaknesses. For example, if our target''s specialty is a focus on barrier-generation tech, I suspect their capabilities to be wide-reaching but stationary. Understanding their generation points and avoiding them will be paramount."


    "It''s troubling," Jack said, "but I don''t think I can pass through the fields. Around them yes, but that requires getting an angle, which we just don''t have without doing some blasting first."


    "Troubling and curious indeed," I said. "Let us advance and signal Central to cut the power."


    Jack smiled. "As strike lead, I really should be the one issuing orders ma''am. Especially given that none of us here particularly trust you at the moment."


    I made a show of shrugging. "Issue whatever orders you wish. I have begun a new policy of doing whatever I feel like, orders be damned. So no, I will not cease in telling others what to do when my life may be contingent on their success."


    Jack did not argue, which was the wrong decision. A team needed clear leadership, and if he intended to be it, it would be in his best interests to shut me down at the first sign of an upset. The fact he did not confirmed what I already knew, that he was unfit to lead and therefore I should.


    So as I had said, we advanced on the glowing green wall, thin and luminescent in the dark, as a sheet of glass made from uranium. I picked up a handful of dirt and rock and threw it, where it scattered and bounced as though it had hit a wall. With a clenched fist and a thought, one of my wrist-blades deployed and, hesitating only a moment, I pushed the tip against the surface.


    Neither the blade nor the wall reacted in any way. It was a wall. My blade was not heated, the wall did not crackle or falter, nothing.


    "Give us a breaching round, Jack," I said, extending a hand back towards him.


    "I thought the plan was to cut the power," he asked.


    "It is. But if our enemy is so thoughtful as to give us a functioning example of her capability, we should take advantage of the gesture to test its limits."


    He shrugged his disagreement, but a blast charge was placed in my hands regardless. I held it to the wall and pressed but it did not adhere, merely sliding across the surface at any application of force.


    Hmm.


    I pressed the flat of my gloved palm against the wall and pushed, and then reeled at almost falling sideways.


    "Lose your balance?" Tower gloated.


    "It is frictionless, utterly. It is likely in alignment down to the molecular level. Such things do not exist in nature, and it is fascinating."


    "So the charge doesn''t have anything to stick to, you''re saying? Why not just put it on the floor and lean it against the wall?"


    "That would defeat the purpose of the shaped charge. Without secure mounting to contain and direct the force, it would become a very pointless rocket, with us in its flight path. It seems the charges are of no value here. Jack, you said you could not bypass it?"


    "If I try, nothing happens, but nothing should stop me from going around, if only there were somewhere to go around from. It appears the nature of the tunnel is as defensible as the resident had hoped."


    "Unless anyone else has any tests they wish to engage--" I started.


    "I do," Tower cut in, and I backed off to let him stand at the wall. He didn''t walk up, instead scanning the tunnel walls next to us. "This''ll be a minute," he said, and then kicked off of one of them, flying parallel to the barrier, straight and unaffected by gravity. He ricocheted off  the opposite wall with increased speed and force, bouncing back and forth with unerring accuracy, slowly at first but soon rebounding several times in a second through the multiplication of force.


    And then at once, as though the wall he bounded off was slanted forty-five degrees, he hit off of it and directly into the barrier, his momentum stopping entirely with a crash.


    The wall did react, ripples moving through it as though it were standing water, and it made a grating noise like nails on chalkboard which made the others flinch as my visor automatically caught and ablated the worst of the sound. It shimmered angrily for several moments, the green wavering in pulses, before resuming its previous, tranquil vigil.


    "Maybe twice as fast next time," Tower said, panting slightly.


    Ashton wordlessly strode forward, the rock crunching under his exosuit''s massive feet. He raised both arms and after a moment, a blade was conjured directly before him, on the other side of the wall.


    "You can manifest powers through it?" I asked.


    "I can. I have to reach around it. It''s hard to explain." The blade moved beyond the wall, but only sluggishly. "It diminishes my range to almost nothing."


    "So you can''t, but you have a loophole. I figured a no when Jack could not bypass it. This will not be an easy or enjoyable task, I fear."


    "Let''s call Cosette," Jack said. "And have her cut the power. With luck, we''ll find our target helpless without it."


    I gave him a wry smile. "I very much doubt that, but it is a start regardless. Please do so."


    After a brief conversation wherein there was much repeating, as the signal quality was at a minimum, Colonel Dawn finally understood and confirmed our situation and let us know that the power would be cut momentarily.


    "What do you think will happen?" Tower asked me. I found it endlessly amusing that he was asking questions of me the entire way, now. He may not trust me, but he recognized experience and sought to learn from it. Not dissimilar to Ashton''s and my relationship at the moment, I thought.


    "Either the barrier will go down, or it will not. If it does, we proceed. If not, we begin deploying the blasting charges at the walls until we have tunneled around it or can continue no further."


    "Then let''s hope for the first one," he said.


    As though in reaction to his words, the field shimmered and wavered as it had in the aftermath of his impact against it, as though struggling to remain translucent, it flushed green and faded clear in a rhythm like a weakening pulse. And then it faded fully to clear and the energy signatures on my visor were gone.


    "Your hope has been answered," I said. "Now let us hope that mine are as well and we find the target helpless."

 294. 2252, Present Day. Tunnels beneath New York. Karu.

    The walls were studded with emitters, dozens of them, similar to the one we had bypassed to enter. At its peak, this place would have been utterly unassailable, walls within walls within walls, funnelling movement into dead ends of yet more walls.


    Instead it was silent and unnervingly so. Jack had flitted on ahead and the rest of us advanced slowly, as silent as possible given Tower''s clumsy gait and the echoing metal crash of Ashton''s exosuit.


    "Another one," Jack said, audible before we could even see him arrive. "Another wall, ahead. It seems she has some power online, but not enough. It''s struggling to keep on."


    In a few moments it came into view, a glittering emerald in the dark, but as Jack said, fluctuating and rippling, as though irritated by its lack of power.


    What interested me more was the individual on the other side of it, a woman with a shaved blonde head who might be mistaken for dark-skinned with the amount of sweat and dust caked to her. The tunnels were humid, and I imagined showers were of low priority for one hiding out.


    "You!" she yelled at us, fully audible through the wall. "You did this! Leave this place NOW!"


    "Miss, please consider that you are an unregistered Exhuman. We are here to negotiate your surrender and return to society. You will have a place in New Eden where you can live comfortably," Jack said.


    "New Eden? What is that supposed to be, a fancy garden? Are you supposed to be Satan?"


    Jack paused, caught off-guard. "Miss, how long have you been down here?"


    "I don''t owe you any answers. Now go away!"


    "Miss, New Eden is a new facility constructed a few months ago by the XPCA to house Exhumans in peace. Please, I encourage--"


    He was suddenly behind me as where he stood flooded with green light from the walls. I rocketed backwards on my pack several feet to stand beside Ashton as more walls appeared, seeming to fade into life. From each arm, I fired, and the explosions on the walls were just out of synch enough to be disorienting as the blasts rocked us alternating left and right.


    But I had destroyed the emitters nearest us, and though walls appeared before and behind us, none bisected where we stood.


    "There are dozens of them, I do not possess the ordinance to destroy them all," I shouted.


    "Jesus Christ," Tower yelled over the ringing in his ears. "Karu, what the hell!"


    "I saved our lives," I said, even as the walls began to sputter around us. "Make yourself useful and beat down these walls.


    "Or DON''T and GO AWAY." the Exhuman screamed at us. But despite the blasts, Tower was more inclined to listen to me over her, and stagged for a moment before building speed as he had before, bouncing back and forth off of two of the green walls before and behind us.


    "They make a noise," Jack yelled. "Before they turn on. Listen for it. And stop deafening us so we can as well."


    "The beam would have killed us. Does nobody appreciate that being alive is a prerequisite to hearing, as well?" I asked. I looked to Ashton but he remained standing, utterly unreadable behind his faceplate. What had happened to him? Was he simply muted, cracking wise within his helmet where nobody would hear? It was not in him to utterly shut up.


    And yet he remained as a statue while Tower finished building up speed and slammed into the barrier. He did not even fully stop, pinwheeling through the air into the next barrier as the first melted into green nothingness. I took the moment to disable the emitters with microrockets to prevent their reactivation as we moved forward.


    "You''re asking for it," the girl warned. "I''m not gonna be responsible for what happens next."


    "You are Exhuman filth. You have never been responsible," I informed her.


    Suddenly all the walls disappeared except for the one closest to her. I listened and as Jack said, there was a distinct noise. A distorted wailing, like a train in a distant tunnel...or perhaps that was just the environment coloring my perception. Regardless I saw we had only moments to act.


    "Jump!" I shouted, acutely aware the others were likely still deaf. "Jump!"


    I did. Jack did. Tower was still in the air as he built up speed for the next wall. Ashton...did not. And so when the beam emitted at ankle-height, it sheared utterly through his exosuit, separating the bottoms of the suit''s feet as though cleaving the soles off a shoe.


    He rocked, suddenly unstable, and as the rest of us landed, we joined him in falling over on the surface slicker than ice.


    But Tower was still whizzing through the air like a cannonball, and the Exhuman''s face turned ashen as he flew at her only barrier. Then he, too, was slipping on his feet, after he smashed the last wall and landed with a bounce, her last defence crackling away before her.


    Before it could fade, she bolted, a new wall appearing behind her in time to catch the spray of laser fire I loosed in her direction.


    But as more barriers went up between us, the one under us faded in color and intensity. It was already larger than any other we''d seen, extending a fair way down the path we had come, and it seemed to struggle for its size. I braced myself and thrust both wrist blades into it at once, where they felt as though catching on something for only a moment, before burying themselves into the rock beneath. The same sensation as clipping a bone when stabbing someone.


    "She''s struggling to keep them up," Jack said, already on his feet, and watching as Ashton righted his suit on its newly-shortened feet, stumbling only slightly with the aid of the auto-gyros. "She only has sufficient power for a few at a time."


    "If she continues to yield ground, we will eventually come across her generators, and then she will be without power entirely."


    "Which means we''ll win," Tower said.


    "Which means, she will be desperate," I clarified. "To back a beast into a corner is to ensure a fight. And an Exhuman is a beast more dangerous than any other."


    "We have a job to do," Jack said, serious despite his smile. And so we did.


    But she did not make it easy; she understood her circumstances as well. She no longer yelled for us to leave, no longer held back. Instead her barriers disappeared and reappeared around us constantly. Tower could no longer safely launch himself at them for fear of them disappearing before him and reappearing inside him. More than once, sliding on the frictionless planes, I had to deploy my jetpack to pull myself or others out of harm''s way only moments from bisection.


    Yet all the while we made progress. More emitters destroyed, more ground ceded, more steps closer to the generators which powered the nightmare machines, and to her downfall.


    I could see we were approaching the finale. A collapsed tunnel, and in the very end of it, her living area and workshop. It was still a ways down, not visible in the dark with naked eyes, but the end was in sight.


    She knew it as well, and rather than fleeing she began to make us work for each barrier between us and our goal. We began to see more and more of her, sweat carving lines in the silt on her face as she held her ground more stubbornly.


    And she made us pay. I lost a wrist-mounted scattergun and the barrel shroud of another, jerking my arm away from a wall which nearly caught it. Jack was less fortunate and had lost an entire hand discovering that some emitters could project at angles instead of simply straight across the tunnel, his bandaged stump bleeding as he cradled it.


    Ashton''s exosuit had sustained the most damage of all, though he had managed to avoid any catastrophic hits, instead of being smooth black metal, it had been seemingly hacked at from many angles, rounded parts cut smooth, exposed defunct inner workings visible. It was even more sluggish than before, but still moved.


    Overall, as a battle of attrition, we had won. None of us had died or been disabled, and she was out of space. Jack would have his regenerator and we would have her head.


    Or so I had thought as we began our final advance, destroying yet another set of emitters in the wall, leaving us with just a single green barrier and a girl panting and exhausted behind it.


    "I tell you again," Jack said, his voice curt from stims "surrender and you won''t be harmed. Or else we will have to kill you."


    "You come in here, you chase me, you destroy my tech, and you expect me to just turn myself over and believe you that it''s going to be okay? How stupid do you think I am?"


    "Immeasurably so if you believe that fighting us will provide a better outcome," I said. "Jack''s offer is one you suspect of death. Mine is a promise of it."


    She stood, panting, listening, hunched over slightly beyond the final wall. Her workshop and home were thirty feet away, the generators somewhere amidst the running machinery. "Fine," she said. "Fine. Take me in then."


    The barrier dissolved into nothingness and all five of us stood immobile for a time.


    "Well...come out then," Jack said.


    She held out her wrists in a ''cuff me'' gesture. Jack appeared next to her in an instant with cuffs in his single hand.


    The absolute idiot.


    She grabbed his bandaged stump and squeezed blood from it as the emitters thrummed with energy. Though he screamed, he still had the presence of mind to move himself with his powers.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    And more, to bring her with him. A short jump, only a few inches as he had no time, but enough to put himself out of the beam. And her into it.


    I found myself disappointed when it passed around her, a hole in it her exact size and shape as though the barrier could not harm her. It would have been a fitting end to the fight, and a clean one. But I did not abhor a mess. I fired shock nets at the pair of them grappling over Jack''s stump as it splattered blood across them and the rock.


    She released him and slipped back through the wall which closed behind her, the shock net catching Jack, who disappeared from within it before it activated. The empty net carried on, slapping against the wall with a heavy thud and the ominous clicking of tasers.


    Jack was already moving again, pulling blast charges from his pack and heading for the stone tunnel wall, but at his approach a barrier appeared before him, blocking him from circumventing the main barrier. He appeared further down the tunnel, and then on the opposite side, but everywhere he moved, the walls appeared in front of him, protecting the perimeter without being large enough to weaken main barrier.


    "Ears!" I shouted, and blasted the ceiling with a pair of rockets, directly above the barrier.


    She hadn''t gotten ceiling shields up in time, if she possessed them, and though the whole room trembled at the blast, there was a new hole, only small enough for a child to crawl through above the barrier. A small cascade of sand and rock began to pour through the cracked concrete above us, ominously.


    "Are you crazy?" Tower screamed. "No, we already established that. Stop being crazy!"


    "It is necessary," I yelled back at him. "She can defeat conventional angles of attack."


    "How the heck is that hole gonna help us?" he asked, staring at it, tiny and eight feet up.


    As he stared, a grenade flew through the hole and landed at the feet of the Exhuman. Her face went white as it beeped once, and with a desperate gesture, she threw her arms up and placed a wall between the two of them.


    I had anticipated such and hadn''t bothered with fragmentation or lethal grenades. But the barrier did nothing to reduce light or sound, and so the flashbang was as effective as though she were standing right on top of it. She -- and the others -- screamed as the blast tore through the air and whitened out my visor and audio for long moments.


    But I was already moving, taking the blast charge from Jack''s flailing arms and deploying it on the rock wall beside the barrier. She could not see or sense me, and so would not block me as she did Jack. But to be safe, I limited my time standing in the emitter''s zone as much as possible.


    This blast was quieter, relatively, but much more destructive as it shattered a chunk of the rock wall the size of a small closet. The others, still blind and stumbling, screamed as they were pelted with shards from the blast. But it was no matter. The main barrier went down with the emitters on that side destroyed.


    With her still disoriented, I had time to line up my shot. The last blast had turned the trickle of rock from the ceiling into a constant tumble, and our time here would be limited. I aimed for center mass and unloaded a single larger round, the sound of the blast echoing around the chamber.


    Her hands, which had been up in front of her, groping for anything, flashed green as the bullet impacted them. For an instant, I saw two barriers mounted on her arms, slightly curved, and large enough to cover her torso. Because of course an Exhuman who specialized in barriers would have a personal one. If she were following the standard phases of technopathy, she was well on her way to phase three, wherein her powers would be made mobile and she could unleash them on the world above. If only we had found her sooner, the fight would be over now.


    Instead, it seemed it was just beginning, as she felt the impact and blindly lashed out. The room filled with short-lived but vividly bright barriers from every angle. A web of lethal wires. I grabbed Tower and threw him as bodily as I could, making a beam pass through his leg instead of his chest.


    She was recovering her vision, and so I deployed another grenade. But as it flew through the air, her hand snapped up and a barrier-beam cleaved through it, cutting off a third of it and rendering it inert. She gestured at me next, and I had to rocket sideways to avoid another beam levelled at me.


    And then she grunted as Tower slammed into her full-force and sent her flying into a wall with a crack. He continued to advance until a pair of narrow beams crossed his path, and Jack had to appear and again pull him to the side as she fired more off right at him, even from where she was slumped at the base of the wall.


    While she was distracted with those two, Ashton finally stepped up, though what he was doing was unclear. He seemed intent on charging her with blades extended, but he or his weaponry kept getting caught by stray beams and he would have to dodge or hesitate while he resummoned them. His was a painfully slow advance, given the damage to his exosuit, and I wished he would simply vacate it and run at her with a dozen swords as I knew he was capable. Surely her strained barriers would not protect her from that onslaught. But he did not, seeming hesitant to do more than walk. I shook my head.


    With her pinned and contending with the three of them, I slipped away to her workshop. Alien machines and tools loomed here, unfathomable as the rest of her tech. But it was hers, and that was enough to resign it to death. I placed two more charges and synced the detonators. I did not wish to be close when the machines went off...some technopath devices tended to...react explosively.


    "Fall back!" I shouted. "Charges placed!"


    Jack and Tower were with me at once as my wings carried me down back into safety. Tower flew through the air, kicking the ground as though riding a skateboard, and Jack flitted in and out of being through the shadows.


    Ashton did not turn, did not move, simply advanced with deliberate, mechanical precision on the girl now pulling herself to her feet.


    His exosuit would protect him. And given how he had been today, I felt little sympathy if it did not. I jammed the trigger on the detonator and felt the shockwave move the air in my lungs of its own accord.


    Jack and Tower had been holding their ears, or at least, Jack was attempting to, while bleeding all over the side of his head. Yet still the blast felt even louder than any other I''d yet set off, larger by far than the single charge I''d deployed earlier. I must have been correct about the machines'' explosive capacity.


    But not correct about their purpose. Because when I turned back after my organs had resettled in their cavities, and the air no longer felt solid in my lungs, I found barriers up and ready, still powered, still functioning, and still threatening Ashton. Through the dark and the cloud of debris, my visor could see them both clearly.


    Some of the beams had to have pierced the exosuit''s pilot by now, and the fact that the suit was holding itself in a facsimile of its occupant agreed. The rest of us were too far off now, and her attacks were focused solely on him. I watched as one beam cleaved the front of his faceplate off, his hand moving as though checking he still had a nose.


    "Exosuit...damaged. Requesting immediate assistance," he said, his voice a disturbing mix of emotionless synth and barely-controlled panic over comms.


    It frustrated and infuriated me. How could he be so slow? Why was he not pressuring her? He ambled forward with the same few attacks, predictable and mindless. She was backpedalling from him, a triumphant grin on her face as she blasted him again and again.


    "Maybe try something else, you idiot!" I screamed at him. "Use your damn powers! Use the damn training I have instilled in you. Were my lessons for naught?"


    He turned towards me, oafish, a hand still covering the crack in his faceplate, and then he turned back to her where she stood, waiting, probably trying to bait him into an area where she could hit him with a strong barrier wall and finish him once and for all.


    But for once, he did not advance. He did not conjure his slow-summoned, lazily-floating blades. Instead, the air rippled around him, trembling as though afraid. I had begun running towards him but upon seeing this found my feet slowing and then stopping, unsure what I was witnessing.


    The tremors realized into white, pulsating spheres, six or eight of them, around him in a circle and waist-height. A white, wildly-pulsing, vividly-bright orb of light, very nearly transparent in the middle, akin to the halo of an angel.


    They drifted slowly away from him, even more lazily than his swords, and in no particular direction, randomly floating and bobbing, changing direction as though blown by invisible winds. Bubbles, almost. But as they drifted away, he created more. And more. Until the dust-choked air of the tunnel was glowing white with the carpet of floating orbs as they roved and bounced, seemingly repelling off each other and off the walls.


    Ball lightning, I realized. A rare, hardly-understood meteorological event where electromagnetic fields could become knotted and entangled to create a naturally-sustained sphere of heat, energy, and plasma. They moved silent and spooky as ghosts, just drifting harmlessly around.


    Until one reached where she was cowering against a wall. With hardly a pop, the field dispersed as it touched her, and she screamed as the latent forces resumed their normal, unchained lethality.


    She flailed and writhed as the first hit her, clawing at the rock to escape, her personal barrier flashing, but ineffective against a forces as pervasive as electricity and heat. Yet as though attracted to her flailing, the other orbs descended, and the pitch of her screams rose until it echoed through the tunnels.


    She pulled walls from everywhere, a pale labyrinth of hastily-assembled barriers surrounding her. But the orbs flowed from Ashton like a tide of molasses, bumbling and bouncing through the maze of walls, bouncing off them mindlessly, but filling the chamber. Her eyes went wide as the barriers began to crackle and fade, the tide of lightning death piling high on her walls, as thousands and thousands of them pressed against her walls.


    When the barriers did fall, the lightning tumbled forward, like a slow-motion flood. She pressed against the stone, clawing at it for any escape as she screamed for mercy. When the wave crested into her, I could feel the heat of the sudden discharge from here, blinded by lightning of a hundred bubbles of plasma released all at once.


    I felt as much as heard the tunnel shake, and my feet found motion again.


    "Jack!" I screamed. "Get him out!"


    I rammed full-force into Tower, and he rolled with the blow and began flying weightless towards the exit. My wings deployed and though the insane winds of the enclosed space slammed me every direction, I used them to lope along, pushing my running speed even faster.


    I heard a crash nearby as Jack reappeared with the exosuit in tow, gasping for air. And then a crack more ominous, and the sound of crushing rock.


    I barely had time to look as the tunnel began to collapse in, thousands of tons of rock falling behind us. There was nothing to do but flee, and hope.


    Tower was well clear and building up more speed as he flew. Jack and Ashton had fallen out of sight somewhere, and I could only pray for their safety. But my feet were carrying me as fast as they could and still I felt the falling rocks behind me, the ground shaking, the hundreds of proximity warnings flashing on my visor.


    At some point, I tripped on the uneven flooring, my wings carrying me as long as they could manage forward before I crashed into the ground with a roll. I looked back, feeling my heart slamming in my chest, my lungs burning with inhaled grit as I scrambled to put feet under me.


    The cave-in had stopped twenty feet prior. I had been safe even before I tripped. I fell to my back in exhaustion, lifting my visor to wipe sweat from my eyes. And to breathe. Even the dirt-choked air tasted like relief.


    Jack and Ashton appeared nearby, both entirely grey with concrete dust, and Jack''s leg clearly broken from where he lay under the exosuit. It had fallen on him, but in so doing had sheltered him for long enough for them to jump out. Tower ambled in later, with a pleasant grin to see us all intact.


    "My, but that was fun," I said, wiping my face down as we all sat and recovered.


    "Remind me never to do anything fun with Karu," Jack groaned "More stims, please¡­"


    I advanced on the exosuit, where Ashton was still holding his face despite all the other damage and trials. I pulled his large, mechanical hand away to see what damage he had sustained.


    I saw a glimpse only of a green-brown eye and black hair matted to a face before the hand insistently returned to place. Or thought I saw anyway. He was having none of it.


    "Reading you now, P-Force. Do you copy? Did...did you guys do it?" Colonel Dawn asked. "Is the target down?"


    "Yes, mission complete," Jack panted from the ground. "Requesting immediate medical evacuation, please."


    "Sure thing. Great job guys. Uh, Chariot, Rito''s here for you. Do you want me to send her to you?"


    "I''m coming over," he said, but the crack in his helmet made his real voice blend with the synthesized one, and made me wonder.


    Watching him stride away in the dark, holding himself as he ambled, something struck me as not right. His hair, his eye, his voice...I wished I had been recording so that I could go over them later. But I could not shake how unfamiliar that glimpse had seemed.


    As he departed, he left doubts behind, and I felt robbed of the scenario I had machinated. I had only joined this mission to go with him in a capacity he could not refuse. And yet this whole time, I had hardly been with him at all.


    Vexing. Worth correcting.


    A younger Karu might have stood by the established rules, but I was no longer she. I ran ahead to catch up with the lumbering damaged suit, and pulled his hand away from the faceplate one more time.

 295. 2252, Present Day. In a box. Kaori.

    I could hear his approach before I saw him, and his entry to the room was prefaced with a thrown wooden chair which cracked into two on the floor before my case .


    "Who the hell does he think he is?" he raged. "I''m only trying to help. Only trying to help! And then he calls me out and embarrasses me in front of all of his putrid human friends. The looks they give me. Always the same. Why haven''t they all died out already!"


    "It sounds like you had a good day," I greeted him. He picked up a piece of the chair and smashed it into splinters against the plexiglass of my case.


    "You shut up, moron!" he screamed at me. "This is your fault too, it is!"


    "You''re right, I should probably just leave."


    "Shut up. Stupid, garbage Exhumans. You and Athan both. The worst of your lot. But still a million times better than those drooling fucking apes. I can''t believe he slums with them. You should have seen their eyes, they just leered at me like I was crazy." His eyes suddenly snapped to me and I suspected I was looking at him in a similar manner. "You need to have an event. You need to show them that humanity is over."


    "With my powers?" I mused. "No, you are delusional. There are billions of humans and hundreds of Exhumans, at best. We are not ending you anytime soon."


    "No, you don''t understand. How many sharks are there to how many fish? How many wolves to how many rabbits?"


    "Are you insinuating I should eat you? If that is your fetish, I might oblige if it means my release."


    He went for the other half of the chair and cracked it against my case. "STOP. MOCKING. ME."


    "Just as soon as you stop being so mockable."


    "You need to be disciplined," he said darkly, his hands twitching like he wanted to grab me then and there. "Time for your exercises."


    I did not let my fear show on my face as he grabbed my neck with callous hands, and as soon as my mind was in his, he treated it with the same compassion.


    There was no deception of love this time. No teaching that I was wrong and he was right, no fundamental rewrite of my conceptions to twist, just punishment. Anything in my own mind which might hurt me, he grabbed and twisted and gnawed on. He pulled and raked my brain as cruely as he could.


    I felt my mind breaking. I felt myself becoming stupid and panicky and lost, determination and discipline worthless against the wall of indescribable pain. Every suffering, every indignity, every embarrassment I had ever suffered, a lifetime''s worth balled up and rammed down my throat until I choked on it, taking it all at once, forever, until I was gasping and crying and clawing at the ground to try to be away from him.


    But I could never escape. My powers didn''t permit that. I felt as though he had taken a brick to each of my limbs until they were pulverized and useless, and then I was made to survive as he brought it down on my face again and again.


    And that was when he hit me with his ''truths''. This was for my own good. This was for questioning him. I made him do this. He loved me.


    I found myself back in my own body, the lights in the room playing circles in my eyes. He was sitting in a chair in front of me, the wreckage of the previous chair still on the ground under him. He was on his mobile, unaware of me watching. From the soreness in my muscles I realized I had been out for some time, and had been crying in my sleep. I moved my shackled hands to awkwardly wipe the tears from my eyes, but they would not stop flowing.


    "Oh, you''re up," he said, sounding almost pleased. "You forced me to go a little hard on you and you couldn''t take it and blacked out."


    I said nothing, just heard his words as though from a distance while my mind tried to grapple with what had happened to it, and the enormity of the panic attack which had made me physically black out, even as a specter.


    "I have been thinking about what you said," he said, putting his mobile back in his pocket. "About there being not enough Exhumans."


    "I never said that," I said, trying not to sniffle even as I wiped more tears.


    "Well, that''s what you meant. And I realized, you''re right. Exhumans aren''t like a virus, they can''t multiply, they can''t. Humans are the virus, and Exhumans are the body made sick by our presence. We''re keeping you weak, unable to flourish and grow. I''ve been waiting for Exhumans to rise up and take their place, but they can''t, not with humanity holding them down."


    I blinked at him, biting back my anger. "Have you kept me caged here to draw that insipid conclusion? What, I wonder, do you consider the function of the XPCA, if not to ''hold down'' Exhumans?"


    "No," he scoffed. "Because it''s a chicken-and-egg problem, you see. Exhumans cannot multiply because they are oppressed, and they will remain oppressed until they can grow in strength or numbers to overcome it."


    "It is almost as though the system has been designed to retain the status quo, and has done so with success for hundreds of years."


    He ignored me as he ignored my tears and distress. That which he did not wish to acknowledge, he did not. "Nothing will change unless someone with vision steps forward. A man like me."


    "You are hardly a man. You are an idealistic college brat who lives in one of multiple houses owned by your parents."


    "Shut up," he snapped, suddenly seeming aware of me again. "Unless you need to be punished again." He waited for a moment and I didn''t respond. "Good. Your problem is you''re just lacking in vision, you are. You''re too fixated on what''s in front of you, you''re blind to how things can be, should be. Exhumans should be so much more than they are right now. I just don''t understand what kind of idiot you have to be to not see that and want to change it."


    "What kind of idiot does not wish the overthrow of the human race?"


    "Yes. Humans had their chance and the planet is ruined. Exhumans with their powers could defy entropy and create a post-scarcity society easily."


    "You realize this is our aim as well. To uplift Exhumans from oppression."


    "See? You''re exactly like me deep down. I knew it."


    "--without reckless violence or loss of life. Thinking all humans good and all Exhumans bad is moronic. Each must be judged on their own merits. There exist contemptible Exhumans and meritorious humans."


    I could hardly believe it, but he finally had me debating with him. Perhaps it was my unbalanced mental state, or the fear of another round of torture. But mostly, he was just wrong, and if I said the wrong things, I would be hurt or ignored again.


    He sneered. "Even ''good'' humans profit from the system as they sit around doing nothing. The only ones who don''t deserve death are people like me, who are actively working for others'' rights. We''re the only ''good'' out there."


    I shook my head. "You are utterly insane. There is no ''we''."


    He glowered at me but I hadn''t earned a punishment yet. "You''re right," he said, confusing me for a second before I realized he was just ignoring what he wished again. "The system has been in place for a hundred years. Everyone who has ever tried to bring it down has failed, from Exhuman rights lobbyists to every Exhuman who has ever tried to fight the XPCA. But I won''t fail. I''ve got something they don''t have."


    "Nukes?"


    "Love," he smirked. "I cannot be defeated by something so weak as guns and bombs, I cannot, not when my heart is as strong as iron."


    "You are truly a moron. I apologize for ever fearing that you had a plan."


    "Oh I''ve got a plan," he said ominously, rising to put his hands against the wall of my cell. "We''ve got a plan, we do. You and I. Remember what I said before?"


    "Was that before or after the incoherent raving, reductionist philosophy, and petty prejudicial revenge?"


    "Shut up. I meant about the chicken-and-egg problem. See, their logic is flawed because they assume if they''re oppressing you, that means you can''t grow in number or power. But that''s just not true, see. There are other ways, there are, private ways they would never know."


    He seemed to be building to a point and clearly wanting me to ask about it so I made a show of not doing so. I attempted to yawn convincingly, but the tears did little to sell my act.


    "Don''t act like this doesn''t concern you," he snapped, slapping his palm on my case with a dull echoing thump. "I''m doing this for you! Don''t you think if there were any other way I''d do that? But they have billions of dollars in defense spending. Millions of soldiers, brainwashed. Guns and bombs and tanks and VTOLS."


    "I heard tell your heart was bulletproof and bombproof. Please, defy them and prove it to me."


    "And how are we supposed to stand up to that? We''re just one man and one woman."


    "Just half of one man, really. Also, I am with them."


    "Only until you come around, you will, my love. You''ll see." He caressed the case lovingly.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "I really won''t. I would sooner die."


    "My love, you mustn''t speak of such things," he said, his voice suddenly higher. "You are everything to me. It hurts me to think of you dying."


    That pissed me off more than anything else. His garbage compassion, after all he''d done to me. I bit back my words for only a minute, before I decided they were well worth another round of torture.


    "If I could kill myself to rid the world of you, I would do it without hesitation. You are sick and disgusting, and have perverted both the meaning of love and of reason. You are an awful person who deserves a brutal, short death, and an eternity in your hell-analogous afterlife of your faith of choice to consider how immature and short-sighted you were. You are at once more dangerous and more unhinged than most Exhumans I know, and far more worthy of the systematic oppression you so vehemently oppose."


    "Just shut up," he said, strolling back to his chair with a flippant wave to let me know just how much he wasn''t listening.


    "I don''t love you, I will never love you, and if anyone ever has, they were mistaken."


    He stood up again, and I thought another outburst was coming, but instead his anger simmered dangerously, coldly. "I had wanted this to be a beautiful thing between us, but you insist on hurting me with your words, my love. I am beginning to run out of patience for your immature rebellious nature."


    His eyes told me if I said a single thing now, my suffering would be greater than ever. I swallowed heavily and took a calming breath.


    "Go. Fuck. Yourself," I informed him.


    "No," he said, grinning suddenly in a way which scared me even more. "Fuck you." He turned his back to me so he could dramatically monologue and I realized we''d reached the conclusion of his magnum opus. "You and I, we''re just one man and one woman against the world, we are. How can we ever hope to multiply the power of Exhumans, just the two of us?"


    I started to respond, but before I could he spun and slapped the case and then pointed down at me. I blinked and looked down at the hem of the slinky dress I''d been put into. My...knees? My legs? My--


    No. He couldn''t be serious. But he was. He was insane. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no.


    "You''re going to make me come right out and say it, aren''t you?" I shook my head violently, hoping somehow to put this topic away forever. "We multiply," he repeated with the same terrifying grin.


    "No, we do not," I told him adamantly. "Absolutely not. No, and never."


    "Oh yes, we will. I will be the father of a new generation of Exhumans. My blood will be of a new dynasty."


    "It has been generally disproven of there being any genetic element in Exhumanity. Give up on you flawed plan now before you do something you regret."


    "Nobody knows. Nobody''s ever done it. I''ve looked and looked but never read of an Exhuman with child. Even if it is a longshot, don''t you want to try?"


    "No. I want nothing less than to try." It was taking all I had to keep still and speak evenly. My heart was pounding. My breathing felt restricted. He was insane beyond all measure.


    He cupped his chin. "I had intended for this to be a beautiful union, I did. But if you don''t wish to be in your body for it, your participation is not required."


    "Don''t ignored me. Listen to me. Listen to me!" I screamed at him, banging on the glass as mused, studying my body. "Don''t you touch me, don''t you dare touch me! You love me right? You want what''s best for me? Well this is not it! If you do this, I will never forgive you!"


    "You''ve already made it clear you don''t love me and...what were your words? Never will? If anyone ever does, it was a mistake?"


    I stared at him feeling my throat close up. I felt so hot and so cold all at once, my body flush with panic.


    "Diallo. Please. Don''t," I pleaded. "Anything but that."


    He stared me in the eye, smiling. "You should have pleaded that a week ago when I still cared what you thought. Our daughters will be beautiful and obedient and powerful enough to shake the world. If I have them, I don''t need your cooperation anymore, just your body." He sneered into the glass, blocking out vision of everything but him. "Now, you try to get warmed up in there. But if you aren''t feeling it¡­" he took a few steps back and then turned to the door. "I''ll go find some lube. Don''t go anywhere, my love."


    I trembled for a minute, unsure of...of everything. It couldn''t end like this, could it? The girl who had never meant to be, disappearing without anyone knowing or caring? The product of a broken womb becoming a baby mill? The irony was thick and vile.


    I had been quiet, observant, smart. I had lived selflessly, dedicated my life to the pursuit of good because I believed that good was worth pursuing. I was one of very few Exhumans in the world who had become pioneers in reshaping our system, and yes, our actions were often as flawed and misguided as the system was, but I had done nothing but try.


    And now...a sex-slave for a delusional man-child to bear his foul young? I had never even wanted a child. Procreating was the most egotistical thing a person could do; to say they adored themselves so much that what the world needed most was more of them. The world did not need more of me. I wasn''t even sure it needed one of me. No matter how many times he''d tried to overwrite this fact in my mind, it would not shake.


    Every single part of it was so utterly fucked. I thought my heart would burst from adrenaline and fear...and anger. My hands twitched beyond my discipline. I trembled. I couldn''t even think, which had never happened to me before. I was just...emotion...and rage and...and the more I tried to think, the hotty my chest burned until I thought the air in my lungs would catch fire. Panic and anxiety and hate just filled me up until I couldn''t take any more.


    And I was couldn''t. Deep inside of me, the little bottle where I stoppered up all of my emotions shattered, and its contents bled into me.


    I screamed as I had never screamed in my entire reserved life. I howled like a wild animal.


    The glass splattered red as my forehead cracked against it. The chains on my bindings clinked and stretched as I tore at them, as I clawed at everything within reach. I felt a tooth crack as I put the bindings in my mouth and clamped down.


    I smashed my head sideways with a satisfying crunch. Something gave a little, I wasn''t sure if it was the case or my head, but if I had a few more of those left in me, he could have his fun breeding my corpse. The pain was blinding, but I didn''t need to see to know where the wall was. I howled as I smashed into it again and again, blood seeping into my eyes and painting my entire world red.


    I heard the wall crack this time, though sound seemed very quiet under the screaming of my blood, but I reached and felt wooden splinters. I ripped them off the wall and pushed against it. Still utterly solid, I had only fragmented off the veneer.


    I had hoped to find a way out. But this was enough, I thought.


    "Oh my GOD!" he screamed from the doorway. I could not see through the pain and swelling and blood, but the pain in his voice was like an angel''s song to my ears.


    I grabbed the largest splinter of the veneer and angled it as I could in the enclosed case as he screamed at me.


    "This is for you, my love," I screeched at him, and then threw my entire weight forward against the wooden spear. It burned white-hot as it stabbed through my guts, and I could feel my grip on it loosening through the pain and the slickness of my blood.


    I''d once been the final product of a damaged womb. It seemed fitting that I destroy my own to prevent another mistake like me from joining this disgusting world. I felt the wood splinter inside me and a warm trickle running down my legs.


    Suddenly the air shifted and he gagged as the smell of my blood escaped through the open case. I reached out and found no wall before me. Instead, the chest of a man.


    My hands went upwards until they found the throat, and then clenched it as tight as they could. They trembled with a tighter grip than ever before.


    And then my hands were purple and translucent and of a body not my own, passing through his throat without effect. He fell backwards and coughed.


    "What have you done, my love!" he choked out, ripping off his shirt and pressing it against the wounds on my body. "You''re bleeding out! You''re killing yourself, you realize that?"


    As he spoke, his mind lashed at me. But I was done being the tame, caged lion. My mind pounced on him with all the mental strength I possessed, and his body jolted and the seized on the ground.


    As he had done to me, I went into his mind with everything I had. I tore up his memories, I found every insecurity and self-hatred and colored his entire mind with them. I took all his thoughts he held dear and eradicated them with my own beliefs, rewriting and erasing his entirety until he was just a shadow of fragments of echoes of my thoughts.


    "You want me to believe in myself?" I screamed at him. "You want me to stand up for myself? You want me to love who I am?"


    I shoved myself into him and twisted and writhed until he burst, until we were indistinguishable, inseparable, no longer two minds in one but one.


    He tried to fight back. Tried to push me out. Tried to hold on. But as it turned out, my mind was very disciplined, and his...well he always had issues facing things head-on. I shredded through his pathetic excuse for a brain in moments.


    "Well this is me doing it! You win, you disgusting, pathetic kusoyarou! Smile and laugh as you die, chikushou! Daikirai! Shinu!"


    "I was only trying to help!" he gasped.


    And it was true. He had been in my mind enough that of all the things he said or thought, I knew this one to be true. The thought disgusted me, so I annihilated it.


    "Nobody wakes up deciding to make the world a worse place," I growled at him, as the weight of my mind bore down on him. "Nobody chooses to be evil. They arrive there by neglect. They neglect the feelings of others. They neglect the value of others'' suffering. They neglect that greater good still comes with harm."


    With every word I crushed him further until his mind squirmed like a mass of worms trapped in my fingers.


    "I-I can...I can change! I c-can listen, I can! I pr...promise!"


    "No, you can''t," I said staring him in the eyes as they rolled into his head. "Because you will be dead."


    He flailed and shuddered, uncoordinated crawling away from me. But just as I''d been trapped with him before, now he was trapped with me. And while he may have thought the had my best interests at heart, thought he was acting out of love, I was under no such delusion. I hated him, I wanted to shred every piece of him to nothingness, erase him even to himself, and then kill him.


    I had spent a long time hating and enduring. Today, Diallo and I both discovered what happened when there was something I could endure no longer.


    He collapsed, his eyes blank, his mind gone, save for pained flickers of tortured unconsciousness. He was utterly no more. I should have stopped and planned my escape.


    I didn''t. I screamed as I continued pummelling his brain with my mind until he was past braindead, until his mind was more scar than thought. Until I was certain that he''d never, ever, ever have a vile thought about me, or any Exhuman, or any woman ever again. And then once more. And then again. And again.


    There was nothing left of him, but every time I ravaged his broken mind, his body trembled and I just couldn''t get enough of watching the fat kuzu shudder. How many times had he done whatever he wanted without consequence? How many had he hurt? No more. It was his turn to hurt.


    I went until I was exhausted, which wasn''t very long. I slowly floated down, looking around at the room, ravaged by his desperate flight, smashed cases, blood-smeared walls, bloody handprints on the ground from my body to his. His desperate attempts to crawl away like a dog.


    My body looked awful. The thick wooden spear was still sticking out from under my navel and my face was a curtain of drying blood. A small red eddy trickled slowly down my leg into a growing pool. It had been extreme, but I didn''t regret a moment of it. It was what I needed to break out of myself and to break out of that cage. Now I was free.


    Just...just the moment I could reach my body. On the other end of the room. My phantom proved completely incapable of affecting its host as always.


    I sighed and blinked back my anger at the final injustice of it all. There was a way to get back I knew. A means I had taken only once before. It was completely unpleasant but what wasn''t, in this room? I tore the autographed picture of the P-Force off of the wall and ripped it in half down the middle, shredding the image of myself in half.


    And then I wadded it up and crammed it down Diallo''s unconscious throat until he choked on those Exhumans he loved so much.

 296. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Athan.

    "Just a sec," I called out at the insistent knocking on the front door. It sounded almost like Moon''s rhythmic tap, but much louder. Much angrier.


    I was not prepared for what stood on the other side of the door. I utterly froze. It looked like Moon, but much bloodier. Much angrier.


    I was stunned as she swayed and then began to collapse towards me. On reflex, I jumped forward and caught her, only to find her with a tiny impish smile as she looked up at me. She caressed my cheek with a hand black with dry blood.


    "My apologies to deceive you," she said, and then her body got heavy as she went slack.


    "Jesus Christ, you''re covered in blood," I said as her shadow stepped into my sight. "You need treatment. AEGIS? AEGIS, help!"


    "She''s fine," AEGIS sighed before she even walked in from the bedroom. "I saw her coming in on cams. She was walking normally."


    "She''s got blood on her...everything," I said. I was still just stunned from the sight of it. A blood-covered little Japanese girl with straight black hair and an utterly out-of-place sexy little white dress, it was like something out of a horror movie. Only more horrible, because I knew the girl.


    "Please take me to the back and treat me as you can. Or a hospital, if you are unwilling or incapable. I did just walk four miles here barefoot with a splintered piece of wood sticking out of my abdomen."


    AEGIS took the girl out of my arms and shook her head. "I''ll do it in the tub where it won''t fuck our carpets."


    "Your empathy and generosity are without peer. I thank you."


    "Yeah, yeah, shut it," AEGIS huffed, carrying the body off.


    After she''d left the room, I commented to the ghost on my shoulder. "She was probably just upset that you were in a short dress. You know how AEGIS is about other girls."


    "We did not part on the best terms when last we spoke. Also, I apologize. It was not my intention to seduce you. I did not know that blood was one of your fetishes. Does that make you a hemophiliac?"


    "It''s really not. But you apologized for deceiving me? What''d you mean by that?"


    "As she said, I am not that bad off, I am not. I estimate I have several more painful hours to live without medical aid before I run the risk of death by blood loss. I stumbled at the door to fall into your arms, by design."


    "Oh. Well, if AEGIS knew that, no wonder she was annoyed. Um...why, though?"


    "So I could do this," she said.


    And suddenly Moon was very much in my head.


    Her rules about ''no peeking'' and strict adherence to respecting the privacy of others were apparently utterly gone as she wandered through my mind, prying at will through my thoughts and memories.


    "Moon what the fuck--"


    "I apologize. It will be over soon."


    "Get out of my head!"


    "No," she said firmly. Her probing intensified. It was nothing like Saga, who seemed an expert at picking out any thought she wanted by comparison. Moon seemed more to be browsing the lines of shelves of my mind, running her fingers along all the memories lined up there like the spines of so many books.


    "Why?" I asked, feeling my memories flashing by involuntarily as she rifled through them. If I were smarter, I should have put her right back in her body, but it was hard to think coherently when someone was constantly shifting my mental focus. That, and most of my faculties were concerned with the question I''d just asked her. Why the fuck was Moon coming into my house at this late hour, tricking me, and rifling through my brain?


    "You would not tell me what happened, on that night months ago when you changed. I have asked, and asked, and asked again, yet you do not tell me. Now, I will simply take what information I desire."


    "This is so against everything you''ve ever stood for," I fumed. "Are you just...angry or hurt or¡­"


    "Please endure this indignity with silence. This is harder than it looks."


    "No. You know what? No." I said, her last words enough to push me from concerned confusion to anger. Any sympathy I had for her situation went up in flames as she explained her calculated decision-making. Barging in here to pry something out of my mind, without so much as an explanation why she was making my girlfriend undertake surgery? Scaring me shitless for her own ends? And this on top if it all? No. Fuck that.


    "W-w-what are you doing? Stop it," she said.


    "You stop it." I growled at her.


    "Get out of my head!" she yelled at me, my own voice sounding panicky and prepubescent in a way I hoped I never did.


    "No. You force your way into my mind, I''m gonna to the same to you. If you''re not telling me what happened to you, I''m gonna find out."


    "Nothing did! Nothing of your concern!"


    The intensity of her prodding my mind spiked as I went through hers. Her thoughts were easy to find, at the front of her mind, but as I now knew what she was looking for, so were mine. Maybe if I were more disciplined, I could deliberately not think about what she wanted, but given that the only Code-X I knew before now was Saga, who knew everything anyway, I''d never seen much reason to have that kind of focus.


    Unfortunately, that thought also passed through my mind, and Moon both picked up on it and was focused like that. As soon as she read that thought, her own thoughts began to change from under me like words in a book shifting as I read them. Instead of memories of her in a museum somewhere, I was reliving moments with her in the P-Force. Things I already knew. Safe thoughts.


    "That''s fucking cheating," I told her.


    "When it comes to my mind, all is fair," she sneered at me. She was getting close to the memory of that night I shared with Whitney and everything that had happened. Moments flitted through my mind backwards in time.


    Well fuck her. If all was fair, she was in for it. I deployed the greatest weapon a teenage boy had at his arsenal.


    "Oh you are vile," she commented.


    "If you don''t like it get out," I grit my teeth, trying to focus on what I was doing, keep up my fantasies about her round figure, and stare her ghostly visage down all at once.


    "That is not even anatomically accurate."


    "Should I step into the bathroom and check for myself?"


    The purple shadow flushed even more purple and I felt her getting tripped up on my fantasy, losing her grip on the memories she was digging out. I mentally gave her bottom a firm smack and her ghost jumped slightly as I did.


    "This is very much the height of degeneracy. Look at yourself and be ashamed."


    "No thanks. Too focused on other things."


    "Too focused on me, which I find disturbing in the extreme. You disgust me more than I thought possible."


    "You come in my house, you trick me, you abuse my trust, you violate my mind. Yeah, I''m gonna play dirty."


    "Dirty is not the least of it. You are a deviant of the highest caliber."


    "Oh please. I''m a teenage guy surrounded by girls who are as hot as they are batshit insane. Looks like you''ve got some super-repressed shit in here as well. Should I make a detour for what I''m digging for to look into it?"


    "You...wouldn''t...dare," she hissed, but she was flushed more than I knew possible.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    "Is this why you got sidetracked so easily? You wouldn''t mind being spanked by me? And I''m the deviant?"


    "I insist on a time-out," she panted. "I am willing to negotiate a ceasefire."


    I hesitated and considered it. I had every advantage at this point, and could easily just take what I wanted and give her nothing. On one hand, that''s exactly what she deserved for pulling this shit on me. But on the other¡­


    She was still a friend. Friends don''t mindfuck friends. Especially the bit about dragging out her repressed sexuality, which I reminded myself, as asexual as she might try to come across, Moon was about my age and about my circumstances...and unlike me, not getting any action on the regular. She might hate that part of herself, but it was still part of her, and pretty crappy for me to know about.


    I mean, I didn''t feel that bad, she forced my hand. But still. Kinda shifted the relationship dynamic enough to give me pause. And looking at her, panting and sweating and flushed from...exertion, I hoped...it felt bad. I didn''t want to kick her when she was down.


    "How about, you tell me what happened to you, and I won''t have to get it from your brain?" I suggested.


    "How about I do that, and you also tell me what happened to you?" she countered.


    "No."


    "I will get it myself if I have to," she threatened, my mind twinging slightly.


    "I think we established you can''t."


    She shook her head. "We established that I can''t without baring every profoundly ugly secret in my mind to you. But I would endure that indignity if necessary, because I want to know, I do. So make your choice, to have us battle for it, or trade for it."


    She crossed her arms and flushed even harder under my scrutiny, but I saw...felt...that she was serious. Moon was a girl of absolutes, and if she wanted something, she might risk everything for it. I''d seen her do this again and again, but she''d always bet something like her life or her career. Never something as large and traumatic as her past.


    I sighed and pulled out a chair to sit in. Even if I wanted to fight her on it, it''d destroy our relationship if I knew that much about her. That wouldn''t help me in any way except to be stubborn.


    Which, granted, still had its appeal. But it was the wrong choice.


    "Fine. We''ll talk," I said. "My condition is that whatever I tell you, it never leaves this room. I''m trusting you here, and it''s more than just my life on the line, you understand?"


    "I do. I will value this secret more than my own life, should it comes to that."


    "Jesus, you are extreme. Can''t you just be normal sometimes?"


    She ignored me and changed the topic. "Before we commence our exchange, could we visit the bathroom?"


    "Uh. Do you even pee in that form?"


    "No. I wished to see how my body was faring. To be completely honest, I had lost a significant amount of blood and was in a fair amount of pain. It would be reassuring to hear from a trained medic that I am not on death''s door."


    "Oh. Right. Sure."


    I stood up and carried the two of us to where AEGIS was working on the body. At the sight of her dress cut away and rolled back, Moon put a transparent-purple hand over my eyes. Despite my earlier aggressive fantasizing, there wasn''t anything here remotely appealing to me. Blood and open wounds were not my fetish.


    "Probably a good thing you''re not in there," AEGIS said to Moon, barely acknowledging us. "I had to do a lot of digging with tweezers to get all the splinters out. Even detached from her body, I could feel Moon wincing as she saw the extent of the damage. "Whoever did this to you had really bad aim if they were trying to kill you. It went through your uh...less vital parts."


    "My uterus. And the aim was impeccable."


    "There''ll be scarring all over," AEGIS fretted as she applied medical gel. "If...if you can talk Cosette into a regenerator, I''d do it. You might um...not be able to¡­"


    "I am more than fine with being sterile."


    "Oh. Okay." AEGIS paused awkwardly for a moment and then rummaged for some suture. "Sorry about your dress. Not really like you to doll up, is it? It was nice."


    "Not really."


    "Well...not anymore. Not unless you wanted to go to a costume party as Aunt Flo."


    "Your problems are not like my problems, AEGIS," Moon said. She hesitated and I felt more than sensed that she realized, whatever animosity was between them, Moon was being overly critical of someone who was helping her. "But, I appreciate your efforts."


    AEGIS gave a half shrug. "Why learn all this medical stuff if I don''t use it when I have the chance?" She looked over her shoulder at me. "But don''t get any ideas."


    "Yeah, like I''m actively seeking out injury," I scoffed.


    "I''ve seen you do stupider things."


    After several minutes of stitches as even and precise as a sewing machine, AEGIS seemed satisfied with the lower damage and turned to dressing the wounds all over Moon''s face. "This looks kinda bad, but could be worse. Concussion, contusion, no skull fracturing. You should feel lucky you have such a hard head." She said it with the tone and whimsy of a joke but just under that I could hear the iron in her words as she worked diligently.


    "I apologize for the mess I delivered to you," Moon said, equally serious.


    "Well you''re alive and that''s what counts. You''re also probably the best patient I''ve had because you hold still, and I''m not too freaking out about what happens to you."


    This joke at least made Moon smile internally. "What is the course of action for my treatment?"


    "Amusingly, for a concussion you should rest and try not to move or think too much for a while. Pretty ideal to not be in your own body. We''ll put you back in tomorrow and ease you back into it...if the two of you don''t mind be stuck together. I''d have a lot more issue with this if she was in this form, but I doubt you can get into trouble with just two of yourself," she told me.


    Moon considered replying but decided not to make trouble for me. Instead she thanked AEGIS again and we departed to the living room couch and sat down.


    "The aim was impeccable," Moon said out loud, in a whisper as though to herself. "I will be sterile. That will fix one of my problems. I wonder why I did not consider this course of action sooner."


    "Uh, because why would you be considering self-genital mutilation?"


    She looked up from the floor at me. "I have no interest in rearing children."


    "Well yeah, me neither, but I''m not about to go hack off my bits. Besides, we''re young, that''s the kind of thing you want to do when you''re older. Doesn''t make any sense to shut that door now if you don''t know what you''ll think in the future, right?"


    She shook her head and I realized who I was talking to. I doubt Moon ever changed her mind on anything that big. Silly me.


    "To answer your question and begin our mutual divulgence, the one who mutilated me was myself."


    "What?"


    "I apologize, should I speak louder?"


    "No, I''m just...what? Why the heck...why...dude. What?"


    She made a show of rolling her eyes, which she was very bad at. "I did it to prevent a rape. It was not for recreation."


    "Oh. What? Jesus Christ, Moon!"


    "Kaori."


    "Whatever! Holy fuck, what happened? Are you okay? Wait, I mean...are you okay?"


    "I''m currently unconscious in your bathtub undergoing surgery. I apologize, but in this country is this a thing that people tend to do when okay?"


    "Damn it Mo--Kaori, you know what I mean. Mentally. You." She was about to speak again with the tinge of bemusement that indicated ass-pain-being so I corrected myself. "Are you mentally well, given that you just endured an attempted rape?"


    She stopped and thought for a long time. Her face was utterly impassive though I felt waves of emotion flickering behind it. At long last she spoke. "I have no reason not to be. He is dead for his attempt. No lasting damage was inflicted upon me...that I care about."


    "But you''re here, mentally assaulting me," I realized. "It messed you up."


    "Perhaps." She gave the most fleeting frown. "I do not feel as though I have changed, I do not, but I suppose that is a tricky issue when it comes to Code-Xavier."


    "Kaori, I think...you should start at the beginning and tell me everything. The beginning of the rape incident," I added with a sigh as she opened her mouth.


    "And I have your assurance that this will remain in confidence? And that you will divulge your story after?"


    I nodded. "AEGIS will hear us over her cam-drones. But I''ll make sure she doesn''t tell either."


    She waited another moment and then begun, telling me in detail everything that happened from the moment she woke up in her prison, unaware of how she got there or when, to the deliberate torture and reshaping of her mind at Diallo''s hands, to his lashing out at her and the ''brilliant idea'' he formed which culminated with him braindead and choking to death on his own memorabilia.


    "When my host dies, my consciousness returns to my body," she said. "Then it was a simple manner of finding the keys to the cuffs, fleeing the premises, orienting myself, and coming to you as the nearest individual I knew. My plan to ambush you was formulated as I walked the few miles."


    "Why didn''t you go to the hospital or something? Jesus Christ."


    "I do not know where there is a hospital near here. He lived near your campus, and I was familiar with that in locating you."


    "Okay well, like, police or something would help you get there?"


    "Honestly, I fear my father''s influence at the moment and would rather not wind up anywhere his power might reach me. Which reminds me, you said you found my mobile?"


    I nodded and got up to pick it up to bring back to her, forgetting that she''d come with me of course. She seemed somewhat irritated that it was scuffed up but she didn''t pause as she flipped it open and began messaging.


    "I would call him but my voice is not currently my own," she narrated. "Dearest father, no. I will not be your plaything. Find another child, as that is what you are good at. Sincerely, Kaori." She looked at me significantly with a sincere smile. "But in Japanese, of course."


    "Woah. You''re gonna send that?"


    "No," she sighed. And then her smile returned double as she snapped the mobile shut. "I already sent it."


    "Jesus. You''re uh. You''re on quite a roll today. Are you sure you don''t want to sit down and...I don''t know...let your feelings settle before you attack anyone else? I mean, I might forgive you, and your dad...I guess there''s not a lot there between you two. But you''re just out to torch every bridge tonight. You were concussed."


    "My body was. I am not. No, there is nothing quite like a week in torture and confinement to permit one to re-evaluate their life, there isn''t. These are things I should have done previously and lacked the determination to do. Now, I do not want for that determination."


    "If you say so," I said, my head spinning a little.


    "What I say is, it is now your turn to speak," she said. "Please, inform me what changed you so drastically that month and a half ago. Why did you choose to return to the P-Force, under stipulation? Why did your powers change? Tell me all."


    I swallowed hard. "Okay. But you''re not going to like it, and some of it doesn''t make sense, even to me."

 297. 2252, Six weeks ago. Las Vegas. Athan.

    I woke up with my mind buzzing and found myself disoriented. I was in my room, at the girls'' place in Vegas, but why was I on the floor? And why was it so loud in my head?


    Over the buzzing, I recalled the day before. Whitney had set fire to the garage on accident, gotten in a one-sided yelling match with AEGIS, and was sleeping in my room because AEGIS had determined the garage currently unsafe for entry until professionally inspected...and I was worried that if Whitney had the chance to run off to a hotel or something, she''d just keep running and we''d never see her again. Over a stupid mistake.


    So she was in my bed, laying stock still and staring at me awkwardly as I pulled myself slowly awake. I scratched my head but it did nothing to the buzzing.


    "Good morning," she said hesitantly.


    "Hi. Sleep well?"


    "Not particularly. My mind decided to replay my embarrassment over and over again on a loop while I cringed myself further and further into your pillow." She reached over and patted my copy of Practical Electrodynamics. "Read this until I got it into my head instead. Much better sleeping material. Though I had the weirdest dreams."


    "Yeah, me too," I realized. I tried to remember them, but that was like trying to grab fog, given all the other thinking I''d already displaced them with. And the buzzing. "Is it buzzing in here or is it just me?" I asked.


    She shook her head and opened the book on her lap, sitting up and crossing her legs to face me while she read. "What kind of buzzing?"


    "I don''t know. Just like...feels like...too much caffeine or sugar or something. Feels like my brain''s going in circles."


    "Nope." We sat in silence for a minute before she closed the book with a frown and raised eyebrows. "Do you think AEGIS is still mad at me?"


    "Maybe. She''s pretty protective of Prime, and you almost burned those servers up. But she also doesn''t sleep and has had all night to work on things, and that always calms her down. So, firm maybe." I smiled at her but she still sat there with the same half-annoyed, half-bewildered look. "When you talk to her I''ll come with you, okay? It''ll be fine."


    "Sure," she said distractedly. "Do we have to do it now?"


    "If you don''t, you''ll just hide as long as you can."


    That changed her expression, to a small u-shaped frown. "Since when are you an expert on me?"


    "I might be slow to pick things up, but it''s only because I do a really rigorous job of learning it," I grinned at her.


    "Is that your excuse?" she smirked at me. "Here I thought you were just slow. You have any plans for the day?"


    "I have my martial arts to practice every day," I said, holding my head as it buzzed more. "But I''m kinda not feeling it. Actually, could you pass me the electrodynamics book? That sounds a lot more my speed right now."


    "How can you not be up for waving your arms around but reading a textbook sounds fun?"


    I was going to reply, but it got lost with the rest of my thoughts as I delved into the book. She could say what she wanted, this shit was interesting. Practical applications like circuits and voltages and how to modulate amperage through resistance, it was cool. It made sense in a way that swinging my arms around didn''t.


    Like yeah, I could throw out a block and imagine someone running into it, and I was building that muscle memory, but it felt dumb. The merits of knowing this stuff on the other hand was obvious anytime I picked up my mobile. Or, more optimistically, used my powers.


    "Hey, friendo?" There was a hand waving in front of my face.


    "What?"


    "I''ve been talking at you for like a minute, and you''ve just been staring at that book for ten. I was getting bored and then you weren''t responding."


    "What?"


    "Hello? Earth to Athan?"


    "Sorry, what?" I hesitated, and then closed the book. "What? Ten minutes?"


    "Yeah. At least."


    "There''s no way it was that long. I only just--" I looked down at the book and flipped pages backwards. And then more pages. And then more.


    She looked at me with concern. "Are you okay friendo? You seem super out of it."


    "Yeah, just...engrossing stuff I guess."


    "I thought so last night, but flipping through this morning, I''m not sure what I was thinking. Seemed really boring. Probably too basic for my level of experience, I guess."


    "Yeah, guess so," I said, inching the book open again.


    "I''m not gonna talk to AEGIS today, am I?" she sighed.


    "What? Why not?"


    "Because I''m not going to do it unless I have to, and you''re just interested in reading your book." She paused for a second. "Are we going to get in more trouble with her in a, uh, girlfriend capacity, if the two of us spend all day locked in here together?"


    "We''ll leave to eat."


    She gave me a little smirk. "I''ve gone all day without eating plenty of times."


    "Or we''ll get bored."


    "Maybe. But all my stuff is in the garage anyway which is off-limits so I''d be bored anywhere. Here I can at least avoid an argument."


    "Okay...uh...bathroom?"


    She gave me a sly little smirk and reached over to shake an empty bottle in my direction.


    "That''s gross. It''s just down the hall, come on."


    "I''m only kidding. Well, mostly kidding. I won''t pretend I''ve never done that before."


    I narrowed my eyes at her. "What is wrong with you?"


    "Sometimes you''re just in the zone too hard and by the time you realize, it''s too late. You saw the state of the facilities at my shop. You think I''d spend hours moving junk around just so I could pee? Not a chance. I believe in technology, and funnels are technology."


    I laughed. "Wow you''re gross."


    "I''m pragmatic. And social norms don''t mean much if you never interact with people. Why are we even talking about this again?"


    "Because you won''t let me read," I laughed.


    She smiled at me and then eyed the book with a frown. "Give it here," she said, holding out her hands. "I don''t know why it seemed so interesting last night and then so awful this morning and it''s bugging me. I must have just read a really bad couple paragraphs."Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I closed the book and lobbed it underhand towards her, where just before it reached her outstretched hands, lightning arced from the air around her and struck the incoming book, obliterating it into a blinding flurry of smoking paper.


    Both of us sat completely frozen, not comprehending. In the distant corner of my mind, I could feel Saga bewildered through me. AEGIS had certainly seen over cam-drones. But nobody moved, nobody spoke. The two of us just sat and stared at the paper falling all around us.


    "Must have hit my shield," I said after long minutes. I had very nearly convinced myself that she had thrown a book at me by now. "Hey um...throw...that bottle. At me."


    "Yeah," she agreed. And then she hit me in the face with a bottle.


    The silence fell on us again. "Ow," I said, just to have something to say, a minute too late.


    "This isn''t possible," she concluded.


    "It...seems...so?"


    "There has to be an explanation."


    "This is a dream. Or...VR." She scrunched up her face. "The neural uplink isn''t responding."


    "You think someone programmed this? And it''s running without you launching it?"


    "Well do you have a better explanation?" she said, her voice suddenly getting higher.


    "It''s...it''s...a vivid shared hallucination. Those happen. I saw a holovid on it once."


    "Good. Choice. Yes," she said, shrill and robotic at once. She was breathing faster and her eyes seemed stuck on the door. "I''m gonna go," she blurted, and hopped off the bed.


    As though blocking her path, a single lightning blade manifest in front of her, different than any I''d ever made before. It shimmered strangely, it was larger and unlike the pure white of mine, seemed tinged with flickers of other colors, impossible to see but impossible to miss.


    She stopped and stared and I tried to move it out of her path, but couldn''t seem to focus on it as I''d done before. I couldn''t for the life of me figure out how I''d done it up until now. It was like I was missing an arm and trying to move it. I knew what it felt like, what it was supposed to do¡­


    The sword floated up and away as Whitney deliberately pushed it aside with a gesture, dawning comprehension and terror growing on her face as it obeyed her.


    It just seemed impossible. There was no way she had my powers. The only way that made any sense at all was if...if she were like Soran, an Exhuman with the power to take others'' powers somehow. But that made no sense. The odds of it were impossible. It didn''t fit in with the Ramanathan Window theory, since nobody with powers was exactly trying to harm her, and that''s what I imagined would cause such a specific counter-power to develop.


    And the more I thought about it the more the buzzing in my brain screamed at me. And then I realized maybe the buzzing in my mind must be where my powers used to be. A whole section of my subconscious now adrift.


    A whole different brain sensation of pain kicked in as evidence began to pile up that the impossible was somehow true. An intense, blinding headache slammed into me as my thoughts conflicted with each other and two realities warred in my mind.


    Whitney stared at the sword for another moment and then with a gesture, it fizzled out, leaving only a fading shower of sparks. Without another word, she walked briskly to the door, and then through it. I heard AEGIS shout something at her as they passed in the living room but Whitney didn''t reply. Instead, the garage door slammed as, fire damage be damned, she buried herself in the comfort of her family.


    As AEGIS had said, as Saga said, as I''d said, when you face something that challenges your reality, you can either accept it or run from it. Whitney ran. I wasn''t sure, myself.


    AEGIS appeared in the room as though summoned by magic, appearing silently and nervous, afraid of disrupting the spell of the chamber.


    "Hi," she whispered.


    "Hi."


    It was a good conversation. About at my level.


    "Athan...do you understand what this means?"


    "No." I shook my head slowly. "I don''t understand a single thing right now."


    She approached me with the same gentle hesitation and sat on the floor next to my makeshift bed. Gingerly, she reached for my hand and took it, and while I felt like the whole world was removed from me right now, her hands were as soft and warm as ever.


    "Athan...you''re free," she whispered.


    "Free?"


    "Your powers are gone. They''re gone Athan. You''re free. You''re human again."


    "Human?"


    She smiled sympathetically at me. Or maybe down at me. "Try to zap me. Any way you can think of."


    I shook my head. "I''m not gonna hurt you, AEGIS."


    "I know, that''s the point."


    I blinked at her and even that made my head hurt. Powers. Gone.


    Experimentally, I tried making my blades. Nothing happened.


    "Gone?" I asked stupidly.


    "Gone," she nodded enthusiastically. "You''re free, Athan. You''re free to do anything you want! You''re human!"


    "Gone."


    "Now you don''t have to fight and kill yourself! You don''t have to put the world on your shoulders! You don''t have to struggle with leadership and right and wrong and any of that. You''re just a normal person!"


    She beamed at me, looking like she was about to cry. "How, though?" I asked.


    "I don''t know. But who cares! We should be...celebrating! Thanking God or whatever! It''s a gift that''s literally never happened in the history of Exhumanity. And I would know, I pulled the records before coming over here. It''s completely unheard of, and it happened to you!"


    "It''s just impossible. It''s not possible. Something like that couldn''t happen, and if it did, it certainly wouldn''t happen to me. There has to be something else. There has to be...I don''t know, another Exhuman around that swaps powers or...or something''s in my mind or...or something."


    [Hey, don''t look at me. My powers are...same as ever.]


    I was too out of it to even chastise her for broadcasting to the neighborhood. "Well...maybe...whoever did it...screwed with your head too, Saga. Maybe you just think--"


    [Yeah, not likely. You can still hear my thoughts, dumbass.]


    "Right." I took a deep breath and it did nothing for my buzzing, hurting brain.


    "Athan, just...just be happy about it," AEGIS smiled at me. "We don''t know why Exhumans are made to begin with, why is it so impossible that we don''t know that the powers can vanish, either? You''re a world first in a lot of ways already. First federally-accepted Exhuman. First Exhuman in the XPCA. First Exhuman strike lead. First guy to score with a true AI!"


    Her words just bounced off me. More than anything, I always seemed to crave comprehension first. How many times had something shitty happened to me that I was able to accept because I understood why it was happening? And now...this, the second most unknowable thing in the world after the appearance of my powers in the first place. I just...couldn''t cope.


    And my head was killing me. I felt like I was having too many thoughts and too few all at once. Nothing made my mind happy.


    Except¡­


    I reached for another book, one of my martial arts manuals and opened it at random. My eyes glazed over the page almost instantly. Stumbling, I stood up and went for my mobile, doing some searches at random for snatches of familiar phrase. AC phase. Maxwell''s Equations. Electromagnetic induction.


    "You uh, okay there?" AEGIS asked.


    "Yeah. No. I don''t know. I spent some time reading this morning and...I don''t know." I looked at her and felt a pathetic expression on my face. Noticed it, really, reflected in the utterly pitying look on hers.


    "Oh sweetie," she said, walking up and wrapping her hands around me. I stiffened, focusing on the fact she was a friend and I wasn''t being restrained.


    And then...nothing. There was no shield to ward off. There was no threat, no danger, no huge risk of death hanging over all of us. Aside from Dragon, I guess, against whom I was now even more woefully underprepared. But as surely as I could feel my shield shifting around me sometimes, I could feel nothing now. It was gone.


    I closed my eyes and reached out mentally, finding only the void behind my eyelids. I heard AEGIS move some and then she released me and placed something in my palm.


    A cam-drone, I saw, when I looked. I closed my eyes again and focused right on it. To my senses it had once been as blinding as the sun, but now it was just a small weight in my hand. It was nothing. Invisible.


    "It''s gone." I whispered.


    "You''re free, Athan. Free to go wherever you want and do whatever you want and be whomever you want, with me by your side."


    "What about...what about Whitney," I suddenly realized, and then felt horrible for not even considering her this whole time.


    "She''ll...survive. We''ll help her adapt. She might even like it, in a way. She was really captivated by your powers, before. Maybe she''ll keep that enthusiasm."


    I really doubted it. She also thought that Exhumans were horrible, mindless, reckless, reasonless monsters. And now she was one, potentially. How could she reconcile those thoughts?


    The same way I did, probably. Slowly, painfully, and with a lot of people trying to hurt me along the way.


    "We have to help her. I don''t want her to have to be alone." I said, and AEGIS nodded. "And maybe...maybe it''ll go back, and she''ll be fine after all."


    "Always gotta be the sacrifice," she sighed. "Can''t you just be happy once? You have your life back. You can do anything."


    She was right. But she was also wrong, I thought. It couldn''t be that easy, nothing ever was for an Exhuman.


    But now that I wasn''t Exhuman anymore...did that still apply? I didn''t know. Didn''t know the first thing, about what was true or false or who I was or anything anymore.


    AEGIS looked forward to our future with unabashed hope. But was that something I could still do?

 298. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Athan.

    "It wasn''t too long after she came to terms with her new powers that Whitney decided she had to be a ''good'' Exhuman like the P-Force. That''s why she built the exosuit and took my place. That''s why she put down the rules about minimal contact, and why ''Chariot'' has been fighting so differently recently." I shook my head, almost laughing. "She''s so shit at combat, though. She''s so methodical and plodding, even if her powers are way stronger than mine were."


    Moon just sat in silence on the couch with me, her ghostly effigy of my own body hunched over in thought. At first, she had asked questions and clarified points, but as my story continued she became more and more reserved and thoughtful.


    I could hardly blame her. I''d almost forgotten just how much I''d been paralyzed and lost and confused I''d been when I woke up that morning and discovered my powers gone. They had never returned, and sitting next to her now, I was as powerless as I was as a baby.


    Abruptly, she stood up and cast forward her hands. Nothing happened, of course, eliciting a further stunned statue.


    "It''s true," she said, disbelieving.


    "Why would I change everything in my life and then lie about it?"


    "I don''t know. But I also didn''t know that powers could ever abandon their owner."


    She seemed bothered by this more than I thought proportionate, and I might have missed it if I weren''t in the habit of examining language to excess around her. "You call it being abandoned? That''s the second time you''ve used that word. The first is when I left the P-Force."


    She glared icily at me, and I was smart enough to stop questioning that line.


    Eventually she sat back down, though I could sense her mind racing like crazy. "At the very least, this explains much," she said at last.


    "Yeah."


    "And how is Whitney coping with her new life?"


    "Really, really poorly," I sighed. "She spends almost her every moment locked up in VR existing in avatars that aren''t anything like her. Her apartment is a mess, she doesn''t eat enough or get out unless she has to, and when I do visit, sometimes she doesn''t even talk to me. She does the P-Force thing to keep from hating herself for what she''s become...but I don''t think it''s working."


    "Troubling. Poor girl."


    "Do you mind if I ask...you''ve never seemed much perturbed by being Exhuman, that I can tell. Like, hugely messed up in a ton of ways--"


    "Please, spare me the flattery. No, I insist."


    "--but none of it seems central to your...Exhumanity. Did you find some way to accept or cope with it?"


    "Is there a reason for your query? Or do you just find enjoyment in nosing in my personal affairs?"


    "It''s because Whitney is having such a hard time of it. Any peace I might be able to offer her...I think I would like to. So whatever you found, I don''t know if it will help her or not until I try."


    "Oh," she said, seeming to deflate slightly. "How dare you be a decent person. You have subverted my expectations yet again."


    "Yeah, sorry, I''ll try not to."


    She didn''t take too long to pause and think this time before responding with a mild shake of her head. "Unlike many, my powers are quite tame. Or, I should say, as tame as my host''s capability permits, they are. I have never been at risk like most of you of causing an accident. The worst I can do is imperil myself by accidentally vacating my body...typically."


    "Typically?"


    "Are you unfamiliar with that word? It means, with the greatest statistical likelihood--"


    "I know the word. I meant, there are situations where your powers would endanger more than just you? I can''t think of a case."


    She glared icily at me and then deliberately ignored me and resumed the original topic. "So my situation is incompatible with most Exhumans'' experience, and alas, unlikely to give her any peace of mind."


    "Yeah. Seems so. I try to remember what it was like for me when I first turned, and all I come up with is like...well...The XPCA tried to kill me. Karu tried to kill me. AEGIS tried to kill me. Saga did that one time¡­and the bear..." I shrugged. "I was so busy staying alive I didn''t really have to face my Exhumanity. So my experiences weren''t really applicable to her either."


    "We could always drop her in the canadian wilderness," she mused.


    "I think she''d die. Even if we gave her food and shelter and everything, the lack of ''net would do her in."


    "I don''t think one could die from lack of ''net."


    "I was kidding. Joudan. Jesus."


    She gave me a little smile anyway, which surprised me given...well...her face, and the current mood of the room. I blinked at her for a moment and then gave in to asking the question in the middle of our minds.


    "You seem happier," I said. "And more emotional in general, I mean. You were also crazier and stuff in coming here. But since I told you the story, you seem happier."


    "Hmph," she said.


    My face split into a grin. "You like me."


    "I detest you, and my loathing grows with every second spent dwelling on this topic."


    "You were worried about me! That''s why you came all the way out here, why the first thing you did when you were being honest with yourself was to come back and force an answer outta me. And now you''re happy because you know the reason why ''I'' was treating you so differently."


    "If you could go die now, I would be amenable."


    In truth, I was being a huge ass. Moon didn''t want me in her head, and that''s absolutely where I''d gotten my info. There was no way I was relationship-savvy enough to figure this out on my own. She didn''t want to be friends with anyone or care about anyone, and I was rubbing it in her face that she did.


    But I wasn''t being an ass randomly. Her feelings towards our friendship weren''t the only thing I found in her mind. Right now, despite her strength, she was dead inside, scarred and burning from fear and pain of her capture and torment. And if I could give her even a shred of normalcy back by being her punching bag for a minute, I''d do it.


    I think I tipped my hand a little too much though, and something in my thoughts got through to her. She seemed hesitant with what to do with the knowledge and just sat there blinking at me for long moments before speaking.


    "Thank you," she said at last.


    "For what? Mocking you? Never any need to thank me for that, I do it free of charge."Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "You know of what I speak," she said, with a delicate, reserved smile. "It has been a long week."


    "Well it''s over now. You''re safe here. You told your dad to fuck off, you can stay as long as you need. Everything will be fine."


    Lia stumbled into the room wearing her slipskin, her plain white mask hanging off the side of her head and her face a cloud of trouble.


    "Everything is not fine," she said, collapsing into the other couch opposite us.


    "Where have you been? I haven''t seen you in days," I said.


    She just gestured at her slipskin like I was blind. "That info bomb we dropped mucked up the whole black market economy. Lots of people are getting snatched, and a load more are laying low until it blows over. But information goes bad, and intel is the currency to get more intel. If I don''t stay in it, I may as well quit."


    "You could quit," I mused. "We''ll both be normal again."


    She shook her head, her frizzy brown hair threatening to engulf her mask in the process. "And that brings us back to my dramatic room-entering statement. Things are not fine, and information is critical for us, even if you''re not Exhuman." She looked at me poignantly. Well, as poignantly as possible from being upside-down on a couch. "Dragon''s coming back, I''m almost certain."


    "What? How?" I found myself on my feet. "I thought we had a decoy...thing. He fell for it. He went to New York."


    "All true. The problem was, the buyer in New York almost immediately realized his product was a fake and unloaded it as quick as he could. I guess he didn''t want to sully his reputation so he went through a third party on a much more public site, which is why I didn''t find it until now. But some dumb schmuck bought it up despite all the red flags."


    She pulled at her hair distractedly in frustration. "If I''d have known some moron would just buy it up at any price without a care, I could have unloaded it anywhere, anytime. Pisses me off that some idiot is just ruining my plans by bumbling around."


    "Perhaps if your plan is so easily ruined, it was not a very good plan?" Moon asked.


    "Or maybe I only account for people of average intelligence and above in my plans," Lia huffed. "I am getting greater appreciation for the term ''foolproof'' every day."


    "Hey, focus for a sec. Where''d the device go? Where''s Dragon?"


    "We lost track of Dragon, as usual. But the device is...here somewhere. I traced the buyer''s point of access to...here, charitably. Somewhere right around the university."


    She fished in her pockets, the slipskin doing its job of retaining everything even with her upside down, and then flipped through her mobile for a minute, before holding it up for us to see. I leaned forward, unable to see much, so she tossed it, bouncing it off the couch next to me effortlessly.


    It had the relevant information. A wide blue circle on a map, centered on the university, presumably the area where our buyer could be, but covering half the city almost. Not much to go on, but I got the feeling that would hardly matter. If Dragon knew I was here and knew the device he sought was here, I didn''t think there was much of a conclusion to draw but that I was in trouble again.


    I flipped through the other information on the screen. Copies of posts listing, selling, and buying the item, and really, a frankly irresponsible amount of money getting thrown around.


    "Wait, go back," Moon said, and I did, to a picture of the decoy AEGIS had built.


    "Same size, weight, shape and basic materials as the real one," Lia said, still pulling at strands of her hair. "I dunno how he determined it fake so fast. I guess I''m better at buying and selling than appraisal? I dunno."


    "I''ve seen this before," Moon said. "What is it?"


    Lia and I looked at each other. "Uh, there''s two of them now. There''s a real one in the hands of the XPCA somewhere which is an Exhuman device which was made by Mini of the Defiant, and does fuck-if-I-know," I said. "And there''s a decoy, which is pictured and was sold by us to draw Dragon off our trail. If used, it blows up and kills you. Against my wishes," I added, glaring at my sis.


    "Hmm," she said. "It is unmistakable. The collection where I was being held had several artifacts. He said this was new, and something unlike anything else in the world."


    "Wait, he had it? Diallo?"


    "Who, what now?" Lia asked. "Kaori''s a collectable now?"


    "Don''t ask," I said. "Seriously. Don''t."


    "Why not--"


    "Don''t."


    She stuck out her tongue at me but dropped it. "Okay, well then...isn''t Diallo that guy who was trying to go to lunch with us and wound up punching Sebastian?"


    "Yeah."


    "Well then we''re in luck. He''s a fan of yours. Just tell him to get rid of it somewhere remote, and hopefully Dragon goes there instead."


    I tried not to but found myself looking at Kaori.


    "He''s dead," she said simply.


    "What?"


    "I killed him."


    The confusion on Lia''s face grew but she started studying ours and realized quickly that this was a serious situation, and that I hadn''t been joking earlier. "Okay," she said taking a deep breath, and with that breath all misgiving seemed to vanish. "Then...we might be in trouble. If he''s not around to pitch the decoy, we''re stuck sitting on it."


    "Could you go back and...get rid of it?" I asked Moon, and she shook her head.


    "I do not want to ever go back...and it is now likely a crime scene."


    "I wonder if it''ll be in police custody then," I said, hoping that weren''t the case. How many good, dutiful men might Dragon kill this time to get his hands on it? Then I reminded myself he''d probably come for me first, and the death of some cops seemed, well, still bad.


    "I doubt we can hide," I said. "I don''t know what to do. I''ve been training, but without my powers, I''m just a mildly competent dude. I''m no paragon of martial prowess like he is."


    "Yeah," Lia said, her face troubled.


    We sat in silence, the three of us thinking for several long minutes, interrupted only by Lia occasionally getting up and pacing or bouncing or falling back into the couch in an entirely new and still improper orientation.


    Eventually, Moon''s mobile went off. Despite being a newer model and with a nice case, it was a default ringtone. She glanced at it, and then with a tap, muted the ringing.


    "My father," she said. "He will undoubtedly wish to have words over my message."


    "It was a pretty strongly-worded message."


    She waited for a minute and then listened to the voice message he left, finally closing her mobile with a snap that reminded me of the irritated way she closed her books at me.


    "Well, I also appear to be a source of trouble," she said. "And for that I apologize, and will vacate your hair as soon as possible."


    "No, stay as long as you want," Lia said.


    "You say that now. What if my father''s agents are beating down your door?"


    "Wait, that''s gonna happen?" I asked.


    "It is likely. He has let me know that I am his property and if I will not follow his wishes, he will enforce them."


    "You''re his daughter. You''re not property," Lia said.


    Moon just shrugged. "Neither of us see it that way."


    And I mean, how do you respond to that? Other than just telling her that''s messed up. Moon just seemed like a pile of canned worms, opening up one after another.


    "Okay. So we''ve got two potential threats coming at us now. What can we do about it?"


    "One of them is Dragon," Lia sighed. "And you''ve gone over what to do about him a thousand, thousand times. There''s nothing to do, except be prepared and make sure we''re all accessible to each other.


    "Which is a pretty bad plan," I frowned. "Not like Dragon really needs that long to kill someone."


    "Well, we''re doing our best to make sure Athan can buy himself time. AEGIS said she''d stay with him every minute of the day but apparently that''s obnoxious, though I can''t see how that''s a fate worse than death. But given that, what we''ve prepared so far, and your bit of martial training will have to do."


    "Rito''s been to the school. She can bring in anyone and everyone. All I need to do is waste Dragon''s time until the cavalry arrives."


    "And not die," Lia emphasized.


    "As for Moon''s dad?"


    "Kaori," she said flatly.


    "There is one significant advantage we hold over him and his," she said.


    We all waited for a moment while Moon said absolutely nothing. "Which is?" I goaded.


    "What about witches? Please be more specific," she asked.


    "Okay, the plan is officially to just tie her up and hang a sign on her neck telling her dad that she''s all his."


    Again, Moon graced us with a small smile. "Joudan, I hope."


    "Yes. But finish your damn thoughts without prodding sometimes?"


    "Very well. Though my father is powerful and influential beyond compare, easily one of the hundred most successful men on the planet, his grasp is not all-encompassing, and his knowledge is not infinite. There are things he does not know which could be used against him to great effect."


    "Things like?"


    "Like the fact that his daughter is an Exhuman," Moon said with the same small smile. "Or that, despite her efforts, she has friends, and they are Exhuman as well."

 299. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    "Sorry to make you come out here," I apologized, yet again.


    "I told you, it''s no problem," Alyssa said with a dismissive wave and a small, embarrassed-looking smile. "I understand."


    "It''s just that...I''d like to hang out, and get out of the house of course--"


    "--But ya don''t want to be alone with me in my place, because of yer girlfriend," she finished. "Yes, I get it." She looked around the little plaza we were in, white wire chairs and tables, umbrellas in the same gold-and-white as our school spirit. I was eating a fast-food beef bowl because I''d skipped AEGIS'' breakfast of eggs sur le sel, while she sat and chatted amicably.


    "Ya realize," she said, her voice a bubbling, slightly-embarrassed whisper "that people probably have sex on campus all the time."


    I choked on my rice. "What?"


    "Your point with yer girlfriend. Wantin'' to meet here instead of my place. It''s not like it would actually stop us if we were actually guilty of a fling."


    I felt rice on my chin and attacked my face with a napkin before remembering to swallow.


    "Yer fun to get flustered," she said with a grin. "I don''t see that side of ya like, ever."


    "You''re terrible."


    "Just a little bit. But I''m also here on a Saturday when I could be loungin'' at home in my jammies, so I don''t feel too bad about it."


    "Sorry," I mumbled at her, but she just reached forward and flicked me in the forehead. "Ow?"


    "There. Ye''ve been punished, not ya can stop apologizin''. We''ve the whole day ahead of us, and I''d prefer we not spend it mopin''."


    "Thanks," I said, not sure that was exactly the right thing to say given I''d just been teased and choked and had my forehead flicked, but her message and intentions were the best. "So um, I''m eating, but is there anything you''d like to do?"


    She looked around the concrete plaza again with a thoughtful expression. "Well, there''s the bookstore. I wouldn''t mind takin'' a peek at something fun to read for a change. And later on, there''s somethin'' I wanted to pick yer mind about."


    "Something serious?"


    "Serious to me at least," she laughed. "But we''ll talk about it later. Did ya ever wind up reading Thrash?"


    I stood up as I finished my food, giving my face a final once-over with the napkin and heading towards the bookstore with Alyssa by my side. "No, I think I''ve heard of it?"


    "I''d be shocked if ya hadn''t. It''s only number one on the best-sellers list. It''s about a girl who meets a gent who turns out to be a diehard metalhead...the music, and their subsequent romance as she gets introduced into the crazy world of being a metal groupie."


    "Uh, sounds...weird."


    "It is," she laughed, as the automatic doors opened for us, and we filed through the fancy-ass glass displays of college-branded shit for parents towards the rows of books towards the back. "It''s startin'' its own niche genre of musical fiction, I heard one of the biggest knock-offs is about a girl in high school joining the school band which turns out wanting to play metal and basically mutinying against the music teacher. With romance, of course."


    "Well of course. What would our hormones do if we didn''t have random romance subplots thrown into every work we read?"


    "I wouldn''t know," she said, smiling embarrassed at me again. "But I''ve been on the fence about readin'' it, given that it''s crap, but also that it''s popular and I should at least be aware of what it did to be that."


    She led me down an aisle and there on the end display were dozens of copies of the book she described, solid black with red lettering like blood floating above a couple silhouetted against a close-up of a bright electric guitar.


    "It looks exactly like I expected," I said.


    "I imagine it reads like it was well. Care to spend an hour here or so seein'' what it''s about?"


    "Anything that gets me out of the house," I said, picking up a pair of copies as she slid down to the floor, back against the shelf.


    She was right. It did read exactly as I''d thought, which was impressive given that I''d never really read anything like this before. I certainly wasn''t into romance stories, but somehow everything just seemed so done-to-spec, from the dreary grey setting of the girl''s ordinary life, to her absolute utterly shocking normalness except one or two endearing quirks, to the sparkling, quazi-heroic introduction of the main guy, it all felt like it was written by formula.


    None of which made it bad, however, and I was a little surprised when Alyssa closed her book and stretched, announcing that it''d been an hour and a half already.


    "Wow. Really?" I checked my mobile and confirmed. "Wow."


    "Guess ya liked it then?"


    "I...I don''t know. I was engaged, I guess. Are uh, all romance novels like this?"


    She grinned as she patted me on the shoulder. "Oh Athan, yer such a junkie."


    "What?"


    "Let''s go sit down and talk about it," she said, still grinning. She brought a copy with us which she bought on our way out. A few minutes later, were in one of the campus lounges, reminding me of when I''d lived homeless and had slept in similar places a few times. Yet another reminder of how weird my life currently was.


    Wait. That should be backwards. How weird my life once was. Right?


    "So ye might be guessin¡¯ what my serious question for you was."


    "What, it wasn''t this?" I asked, patting her newest trashy possession. "I''m shocked."


    "Worse than that, I''m afraid. I did as ye suggested, nearly pissin'' myself in the process, but I did it, and stalked down some hapless, innocent upperclassmen in the English department and tortured ''em with my poorly thought-out questions."


    "They had good things to say about the department?"


    "They did, but also some less-nice things, which is why I believe ''em. I got some sound advice I''m not sure I''ll ever take on which professors to avoid and which classes are particularly good, and what I can expect from the programs."


    "Sounds great!"


    "Yeah, it was. And I''ve got ya to thank for it, so thank ya."


    "I did nothing. Literally."


    "It was yer idea, and ideas are often worth more than the execution of ''em. Take your credit."


    "Psh, no. I refuse. I''m just happy you did it and it was valuable to you." I smiled at her and got a broad smile in return. She seemed so elated.


    "Yeah, well, I just thought that if I''m goin'' to be a sophomore soon, I should have my act together enough to at least know what I''m doin''. Seems silly to be in school and not even know why."


    That made me laugh, which was apparently the wrong thing to do because she glared at me.


    "Sorry, I''m not laughing at you," I explained. "Honestly, I don''t know why I''m here most of the time."


    "Yer kiddin''. Ye''ve got more direction and ambition than most anyone I''ve ever seen or heard of. Yer at the top of yer classes, and ya study like a maniac, and ya got friends while doin'' it, yer not just some loner loser who''s more machine than person."


    "I mean...I''d never put it that way."


    "But ya aren''t refutin'' it."


    "...but my point is, even if that were all true, that doesn''t mean I''m not directionless. Like, I came to college because something happened in my life that suddenly gave me an opportunity to do whatever I wanted, like never before. And so I sat and thought about it a while and considered, what have I always wanted to do that I never got the chance to."Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    "So ya came here," she nodded.


    "Yeah, I did, sorta. I mean...not sorta, I''m here, there''s not much arguing that. I mean more like...I''m not here to do anything or be anyone. I''m not here because I feel like this is a step towards my future. I just had a chance and jumped at it."


    She shrugged. "I don''t think that''s so different from a lot of people here."


    Hah. Yeah. I''m pretty sure my situation was not that common. "Uh, maybe."


    "No really. There''s a lot of pressure just to go to college. Even if people don''t know why they are, it''s just the thing they do, innit? Do it ''cuz yer supposed to. Like that?"


    "Not really. For me it''s that I thought I wouldn''t be able to, so I did because I could. What I''m supposed to do...I have no idea." Except be a miserable Exhuman I guess.


    "Well ya seem to fit in just fine to me. Maybe ye''ll get used to it in the next few years," she said, standing suddenly. "Excuse me for a minute," she said, heading towards the bathrooms.


    I fell further back into the little lounge chair, just kinda pointlessly happy feeling.


    "Tem, you there?" I asked.


    "I am here," her voice made me jump. She must have literally been sitting leaning against the back of my chair. Ever since I lost my powers, it had been too easy to forget her, and too hard to place her. Now I knew how the rest of the world felt about her, which is to say, basically nothing at all most of the time. Made me feel bad on the times I did remember she was basically omnipresent in my life.


    "What do you think of Alyssa?" I asked.


    "They s-seem nice. You s-s-smile a lot when they are with you."


    "She makes a lot of jokes."


    "Not really. But yes, if you s-say...if you insist. They are much s-smarter than me, but s-s-so is everyone here." She sounded a bit terse in her reply.


    "Nah, there''s plenty of stupid people in college, I''m sure."


    "That doesn''t s-seem to be what college is for. But you are right, I''m s-sorry." If anything, being in university had seemed to only further mangle Tem''s self-esteem.


    "Thanks, Tem." I was trying to keep it short. Not just because I didn''t know how long Alyssa would be in the bathroom, but also because I think it pissed Tem off to ask her opinion on things. Both that she considered her opinions invalid compared to others'', but also that I should never be asking. I, of course, thought both parts of that were utter BS, but I wasn''t going to needlessly antagonize her anyway.


    The awkward lull lasted only a few more minutes before Alyssa came back, smiling and refreshed and launched into a conversation she''d seemingly had bottled up about her entire future plans. Literary writing was sort of a dead-end financially, so she''d get into technical writing, something she hadn''t considered until she saw me working diligently at my electrical engineering materials.


    Of course, she continued, writing your own novel was the dream, but one had to pay the bills as well. There was concern of burnout if she did writing as both a hobby and a career, but that was something she''d deal with, she said. Better to have too much of it in her life than not enough? Besides, it wasn''t like she had much else direction to go into.


    We wound up discussing the topic for a couple of hours as people around us came and went, a steady trickle of students using the lounge to cut through the building, or hold conversations of their own. It wasn''t until around noon when she perked up and stood, stretching as though only realizing we''d been still so long by its ending.


    "I know ya just ate a couple hours ago, but I''m on a regular eatin'' schedule and found hunger. Care for some lunch?"


    "Sounds good. Do you just want to hit the dining hall?"


    "Sure. Yer gal might get upset if we do somethin'' fancy together, eh?"


    I scoffed. "Yeah, I''m not altogether certain she gets the concept of food too well."


    She laughed, even if I knew she didn''t get it, and we got up to head out.


    While we headed over there, the mention of AEGIS got me thinking about home life again. As usual, and depressingly, thinking about how happy I currently was just kinda threw contrast into the rest of my existence, making the present feel illusory and fake. Back home, AEGIS was worrying about me, Lia was working her butt off to secure her secrets and alter-ego, and by now, I hoped Moon had finally acquiesced to taking painkillers, but either way she was either doped up or miserable somewhere in the house. To say nothing of the invisible girl following me.


    I''d really thought for a while there that I could escape it all, that somehow all the weirdness in my life and suffering of those around me was tied to my powers. Now, with them gone, it felt like nothing had changed, except I wasn''t the one being sent on events, instead I was sending the clinically-depressed Whitney out in my stead, which somehow felt even worse.


    I had to wonder, if it wasn''t really human-Exhuman relations which were messed up. If I wasn''t Exhuman, and the world was still a dumpster fire, was that because I''d lived too long in that other world? Or was it because the world itself was fundamentally broken, and people just couldn''t see it without scraping the bottom of it first?


    Or maybe, I thought with a frown, the world, this world, was fine, and it was me who broke. People like Alyssa, Sebastian, and Darris were totally normal and so were their lives. I was the one out here on a nice spring day sharing a pleasant chat with a lovely girl and still dwelling on how fake and wrong and broken it all felt.


    "My dreams aren''t that bad, are they?" she asked, pushing her wavy locks out of the way of her red eyes to look into mine.


    "Huh? Not at all."


    "Ya look like yer swallowin'' bitter pills over there. Am I botherin'' ya or somethin''? Thought this was yer idea."


    I shook my head. "No, sorry, just thinking."


    "About yer homework?"


    I laughed. And yes, in the back of my mind, as usual, I was sorta thinking about my homework. I did have a bit of a mania for my major, after all.


    "No that isn''t it. Just...can I ask you something?"


    "Didn''t ya just?"


    "Something serious." She nodded and stopped us beside a grassy field in the shadow of a few taller grey buildings. "Do you ever think...all of this is fake?"


    "Like we''re livin'' in a simulation? Sometimes."


    I laughed again, realizing Tem was right, and I did do that a lot around Alyssa, didn''t I? "No, I mean like...our lives right now. They aren''t real. We''re just pretending."


    "Oh, ya mean like we''re pretendin'' to be adults? College life ain''t for real?"


    "Well...sure, maybe."


    "I feel that," she nodded. "Especially with this mess of talkin'' to councilors and tryin'' to get paperwork in for change of major and stuff, ya realize that college is just a big checklist and the staff are pushin'' thousands of us through it all. Food and housin'' and such are all there, just waitin'' for us to take advantage of it, and I don''t think the real world is quite so accomidatin''."


    I smiled. She looked so serious as she spoke, her red eyes looking at me with such thoughtful consideration. It was cute, even if it wasn''t at all what I meant.


    "I guess it''s more like a foreboding. Like I''m waiting for it to all go bad," I admitted. "Like, life can''t be this good or this easy, so it feels like it isn''t life."


    "Ah," she said, turning away finally. "Well. I can''t speak to that. I know ye''ve had some trouble in yer life before now, and maybe that''s messed up yer ability to see the present with clear eyes." She turned back to me and gave me the trademark embarrassed-looking smile she always seemed to have ready. "But I think that life can be as good as ya can make it, and if yer here, that means ya earned it to be here. Nobody else put ya in this place or gave ya what ya have, did they?"


    "No. I guess not."


    She patted me on the arm. "Then try to enjoy it. Not everything has to be hard all the time."


    We turned to keep walking, in silence this time, as I turned her words over in my mind.


    Cognitively, maybe she was right. I wasn''t a superstitious person who thought that bad luck singled me out and that was just it for me, we made our own luck, and I knew well enough that I''d just been too close to too many messes for my own life not to stink.


    But none of that could touch the unease in the back of my mind which screamed at me whenever things seemed to be going too well. It was practically a conditioned response by now, bordering on paranoia, I considered. It wasn''t always right, like, I''d never seen Karu''s betrayal coming, and I''d been getting all kinds of red flags about the XPCA intelligence officer, Micaiah, but he''d proved relatively harmless, just with a fascination of Exhumans.


    Then again, I''d gotten the same shivers from Diallo, whom I also thought was just fascinated, and then we saw what he did to poor Moon. The fucker.


    So it wasn''t exactly with relief that I stopped us, seeing a familiar figure standing in front of the two of us. Definitely not relief. But at least some level of...I don''t know, macabre satisfaction? I wasn''t paranoid, or at least, I wasn''t too paranoid, because sometimes, no matter how much I was looking through the world rather than at it, sometimes what I saw was legit.


    Standing on the other end of the plaza, hood drawn against the midday sun, as though pleasant weather was something he had to ward off, stood a gaunt, golden-skinned Sino, his flowing coat rustling gently in the wind atop the mountain of weapons I knew were concealed just beneath.


    Dragon. As ever, faster than we expected.


    "I believe you have something of mine, and I have taken an interest in your perseverance," he said, his voice clear, even from this distance. "Surrender the device and surrender yourself."


    "Oh I''ve got something for you all right," I said, pulling a round device from my pocket, while my other hand jammed the emergency switch on my mobile for the several seconds it took to send. "But surrender isn''t in the picture."


    "I will give you only the one warning. I have taken an interest in you, and that is the extent of your life''s value to me. If your living proves more difficult than that worth, I will end it."


    "Athan, who is this guy?" Alyssa whispered at me.


    "He''s a very bad guy, and he will kill both of us without a second thought. Just get ready to run."


    But I didn''t run. Not yet. Not while he was still standing and talking. My one and only job here was to buy as much time as possible without dying, until AEGIS, the P-Force, Karu, hell even the police and XPCA could get here and take down Dragon. We just had to survive until then.


    He gave me a broad smile that showed off his teeth and didn''t meet his eyes at all. "Perhaps you are thinking to distract me until help arrives? Did you think I would not notice you fumbling with your mobile? Go on, take a look at it, then. I insist. Do it as slowly as you desire."


    Not sure where he was going with this, but happy to waste any time he would afford me, I carefully drew out my device, keeping my eyes locked on him the entire while. As quickly as I could, my eyes flickered to my mobile and back, and then as my brain processed the words I saw, I did a double-take.


    "Alyssa...what''s your mobile say?" I whispered to her, pocketing mine.


    I heard her fumble and draw and then she repeated the words I''d seen on my holo.


    "No signal," she whispered. "Did he take down the whole ''net relay?"


    "He must have," I said, swallowing hard. Help wasn''t coming, not unless I could get somewhere else with signal. He''d even jammed satellite somehow, which my custom device should have been getting. I should never have underestimated him, and wondered vaguely if it was going to be my last mistake.


    "Get ready to run," I repeated, thumbing the device in my other hand as I readied it. "Whatever happens, keep running."


    "What about you?" she whispered.


    "I''ve got a new life to protect, and a dragon to slay," I said, feeling my words hollow even as I said them.

 300. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    "Just like we planned," I murmured, moving my lips as little as possible to not tip Dragon off.


    "We planned what?" Alyssa hissed back.


    "Not you." I swallowed hard. "Something''s about to happen, just try not to freak out."


    She looked around like I''d gone crazy, but I really didn''t have the time to hold her hand at the moment. Dragon was staring us down, his hands...hand invisible under his draped coat, which hung off of his svelte form like a cloak.


    Here we go, I thought, taking a deep breath. Dragon had before waited exactly five seconds before getting to killing. I opened my mouth to say anything before he hit that timer. And then we''d have five seconds after that.


    "All right, Dragon," I said. "Spare the others and we''ll talk."


    And then my eyes went funny, seeing something floating in them that wouldn''t go away. A smear of colors that, despite knowing what was going on and what I was seeing, I was instinctually trying to blink away.


    "You are in no position to make demands. Come forward with my trinket or its whereabouts. Or die," Dragon said.


    "What the hell?" Alyssa whispered.


    "Have you got this, Tem?" I asked, reaching back and holding Alyssa''s hand and giving it a comforting squeeze.


    "He hurt you," Tem muttered, her voice sharp and dangerous as bared teeth.


    Good enough for me. I grabbed firmer hold of Alyssa and we ran, leaving ourselves behind.


    The thing which had been in my eyes was me. A copy, anyway, an illusion made by Tem to cover our escape. Which meant that right now, Alyssa and I were invisible, and the two copies of us remained standing in our place.


    "Did we leave our bodies?" Alyssa''s voice asked, sounding panicked and out of breath. "What''s goin'' on?"


    "Look, I can''t really stop to explain. A lot of weird shit is gonna happen, so just...focus on staying alive, whatever happens."


    "We''re gonna die?"


    "No. Not if I can help it."


    We stopped short of the edge of Tem''s power, still dozens of feet away from the nearest buildings. I clutched the device in my hands and ran my thumb over the activator stud.


    "Why are we stoppin''?"


    "Please. No more questions. Can you do that?"


    She made a noise like she was nodding and said nothing else. I could feel her pulse pounding in the hand I held and the fear in her voice, but she was keeping it together. I was lucky to have her.


    And then Dragon''s patience was up, ten seconds this time apparently, and the air rent with the sound of gunfire. Two shots passed cleanly through my illusory body. Tem did her best to simulate blood and my illusion flying, but she wasn''t fast enough to match bullets, and to anyone attentive, the trick was up.


    Dragon was always attentive, and within moments, he had a set of optics in his hands from somewhere, fitting them over his long, stringy hair.


    And exactly what I''d hoped for. The device in my hands primed and thrown right towards him, and I grabbed Alyssa and ran towards the nearest building for all we were worth. We had maybe a second before he got the optics on and set to scanning in infrared, and the grenade would go off right at that time. With luck, my timing was good enough he''d never see us.


    The grenade I threw exploded with a crackle and a hiss, and I felt a wave of static wash over us like I''d just done a tango on a thick wool carpet. Even at this distance, the blast would knock out electronics temporarily, but right at his feet, it would hopefully knock the optics out of the fight for good, along with whatever tools he had on him.


    The device wasn''t done though, and after the initial blast, hissed with streams of white smoke pouring out of it and creating an impenetrable white fog. It wasn''t even normal smoke, it crackled and buzzed with energy, meaning in the likely event that his optics were EMP-hardened enough to survive, he still wouldn''t be able to see through it without fine-tuning his optics. And that was just more time gained for us.


    But he didn''t bother with that, just tearing them off and throwing them aside, and then spotting Alyssa and me sprinting away instantly. I couldn''t stop to watch as he levelled his gun with us, but I felt a cold chill on my spine as though my body subconsciously knew death had set its sights on me.


    The smoke was in position to cover Tem, not me, and Dragon wouldn''t miss. I had no shield, no powers to protect me.


    There was another explosion as Dragon pulled the trigger.


    But I wasn''t the only one with powers. While the plan had been to stall so that others outside could reach us and help, it served another purpose. While juggling our invisibility and illusions, Tem had also been at work manipulating a web of photons into alignment. Somewhere inside the barrel of Dragon''s gun, a razor-thin spiderweb of light had been put together as fast as she could manage. It was barely a construct, but it was enough to wreck hell on the bullet explosively twisting through it.


    Inside the barrel, the bullet sliced, tumbling on itself as the barrel''s rifling forced it into a shredded knot. And then it jammed, and blocking the force of the explosion, the gun just detonated in his hands.


    His hand, actually. Since AEGIS already tore off his other one last time we met. He seemed to do little more than flinch on reflex as metal shards of his weapon blasted into his forearm, but the remnants of the gun fell from his fingertips as his grip failed.


    Alyssa and I never looked back. I threw the door open and dragged her through it.


    "Where to?" she asked, panting and leaning on her knees.


    "People will have heard the gunshots," I replied, my breathing a lot more even than hers. "We just need to hide somewhere he won''t find us until the police get here."


    "But if my mobile has no signal, nobody''s will." She was sharp. So much better suited for this shit than when I''d had to deal with Rito.


    "Yeah. But campus is also big, and his optics are down...and Tem''s still out there holding him up." I walked over to press the elevator call button, which did nothing, reminding me that oh yeah, I did set off an EMP grenade just outside.


    "This way then?" she asked, opening a door to a set of stairs and eying them with some resignation.


    I had to think about it for a second. We could slip away now and keep running, maybe get somewhere with signal and call for help. But that would run the enormous risk of being out in the open. Whoever had put together this campus hadn''t made it much of a priority to be able to move between buildings with any degree of cover, and given how mostly-dead it was here on the weekend, the two of us running in the open was going to be easy to spot, even if the observer wasn''t someone crazy overpowered like Dragon.


    On the other hand, staying here presented its own dangers. If nobody was on campus to hear the shots, we''d be holing up and just waiting to die. Dragon might suspect we''d hide in the first building we ran into which would narrow his search considerably. But he also was down a set of optics, meaning if he wanted to check, he''d have to look in each room individually. That was an enormous waste of his time.


    Being trapped in here wasn''t even really a thing either. If he found us, in here or out on the plazas, we were dead anyway. He wasn''t someone we could outrun or outfight, despite my training.


    "No, let''s not go up," I said. "Let''s creep out the other door, double-back and enter the next building over. Minimizes our time outside to when Tem is probably still keeping him busy, and he''ll have to check two entire buildings to find us.Stolen novel; please report.


    "Sure," she said, letting the door swing shut with a clang that echoed up the stairs. We headed for the opposite end of the building, Alyssa still breathing hard. "So who''s Tem? Can I ask that?"


    "Tem''s¡­" I hesitated. Was it time to come clean with Alyssa about everything? It seemed like a terrible time to do it. But she wasn''t stupid, and probably had her own theories already not far from the truth. "Tem''s an Exhuman. A good one. She works...or worked for the XPCA."


    "Oh," she said, her brow furrowed, like that answer just created a thousand more questions. "And who''s he?"


    "He is Dragon, a Sino and an international assassin. And he wants a thing I have."


    "Yeah, he said that. He also said he''s interested in ya personally."


    "I wasn''t really listening," I said. "Was trying to make sure he wasn''t going to act too fast, and I had to time things with Tem just-so."


    We pushed open the heavy glass door on the far side of the building and stepped blinking into the light. The next building down was maybe thirty feet away, and we saved our breath for running it. We were in the college of engineering, and that meant the mini-skyscrapers around us were even taller and more ugly concrete than average.


    The sound of lasers torching through the air informed me that Tem was still up and fighting. All of her moves had been carefully planned by Lia and myself well in advance, but she was unpredictable enough that both of us had our reservations whether she''d manage. Fortunately, I hadn''t suffered any rage-mode-inducing harm, and so things seemed to be going...not well, but smoothly, I guess.


    The smoke end of the grenade was there to buy Tem an extra minute or two of obscurity for her to build herself a nice home of light-construct armor. In the last fight, we''d learned Dragon''s vision was, at best, only normal levels of superhuman, and so illusions and smoke were huge for us, in our aim to waste his time. The fact that he''d go for the optics so fast meant he knew that as well, though.


    I hoped that after she was fully protected (and immobile), he''d just leave. Tem hadn''t been informed of this leg of the plan, for fear she''d choose to do something stupid rather than let him go after me again, but as long as we could hear her blasting away, that meant he hadn''t lost interest in her just yet.


    We were within reach of the door when the lasers stopped coming, and I swore inwardly as I opened it and followed Alyssa inside. Hopefully, it was all according to plan and he''d just moved on. If Tem were hurt¡­


    I refused to think about it. She was fine. This was all according to plan. Minus the inability to send out the distress call.


    Which got me thinking again. Not about Tem, but about the logistics of blocking our ''net relay. Relays were a physical thing and could be destroyed or disrupted, and to be safe I imagined Dragon would have taken out all the surrounding ones as well to create a dead zone.


    But that wouldn''t affect my mobile''s satellite uplink. The only way that could be knocked out is if there was interference between my device and the satellite directly, which meant active jamming. And something like that had a limited range. Had to, by the way radio signal worked. I silently thanked my physics classes for covering RF propagation already, and myself for studying it so intently.


    I pulled out my mobile and confirmed it had survived the EMP, hardened as it was. Still no signal, which meant the jammer had survived as well, but all we needed to do was put enough distance and building between us and Dragon to have a shot at getting a signal out.


    "Up, then?" Alyssa asked, as though reading my mind.


    "Up indeed."


    She hesitantly pushed the elevator call button, and this one worked. "Does...that matter?" she asked.


    I had a sudden thought and stepped inside, the relief on Alyssa''s face palpable as she misunderstood. On the door panel, I pushed the emergency phone button, and the speaker blared a tone, and then rang once before an operator picked up. Land-lines were still working, thank God.


    "Nine-one-one operator, what is your emergency?" the calm voice asked.


    I told her there was a shooter on campus. There had been gunshots and explosions. She put me through a standard litany of questions, asking if I was safe, and then moving on to where exactly I was, if I had seen and could describe the shooter, and for my personal information, which I declined to provide.


    "Please stay put and don''t hang up. Help is on the way," her voice said as we exited the elevator.


    "We''re not...goin'' up?" Alyssa asked.


    "We are¡­" I pointed above the elevator at the display showing which floor each was on. "But if we take these, we''ll narrow his search to just the floors the elevators are stopped at."


    "Oh," she said. "I never thought of that."


    "Well...it''s a stretch," I said, opening the stairs door. "But Dragon is attentive as fuck, he wouldn''t miss that kind of detail. I hope that operator hangs up eventually...if he finds the call still active, he knows what building we''re in."


    "Ya couldn''t do it?"


    "No end call button that I saw," I said as we started up the stairs, and then those took all our breath and the conversation died.


    I never imagined the descent into hell coming in the form of climbing upwards, but that''s what it felt like. After going around, and around, and around, and around, my calves were burning, and Alyssa was climbing up on all fours, panting and dripping sweat but never once complaining. We''d gone so far up and still, it seemed like the number of stairs above us was infinite.


    Stopping sometimes to catch our breaths and rest, we chipped away at them regardless, moving up two or three flights at a time before it looked like Alyssa was about to break again, though she never stopped crawling forward. I had to admire her for that.


    And then, suddenly, we were there. Instead of stairs, there was just a door, decorated with a red-and-white warning reading ''EMERGENCY ONLY, DOOR ALARMED'', and then underneath it, penciled in rough handwriting ''stairs nervous, railing worried''.


    "Thought this was the engineering department, not English," I laughed. Alyssa seemed too dead to get the joke, so while she laid there panting, I jumped up and hung off the metal pneumatic arm of mechanism that made the door close smoothly. It cracked at my weight, and I bounced on it a few more times before it ingloriously broke off, dropping me on a new bruise on my ass.


    "Yer a vandal now?"


    "Only when I have to be," I said, picking up the broken metal arm and rubbing my backside. I jammed the twisted metal end of it under the metal cover of the door''s alarm mechanism and with hardly any force required, popped the case free of the little screws holding it on.


    And giving me access to the sweet, sweet electronics underneath.


    "Gonna disable it so Dragon doesn''t know we went up here?" she asked.


    "Yeah. Though if he sees the damage I inflicted on this door, he''ll know anyway. But better to not be broadcasting our position with a screaming alarm."


    "I agree," she said, sitting up and scooting over to look at the alarm panel with me. "Oof, what a mess this looks like."


    I traced the wires with my fingers. "This is the solenoid that trips if the door is opened. These wires run the power, you can see them connecting with the same junction box that touches the lightbars in the stairway. I can''t touch them without the right tools or I''ll shock myself. But these--"


    I traced another set of lines that led out of the box. "These are the ones that connect to the alarm system. Do you have a knife or anything?" She shook her head, so I took a step back and readied my crappy broken prybar, slamming the broken head of it against the wall where the wires were mounted until they began to fray.


    "Yer sure it''s not a like, dead-man''s switch?" she asked. "Not gonna set it off by disconnectin'' it?"


    "Yeah, there''s a diode near the end here, means basically it''s for transmission out only. And if it were transmitting out constantly, this resistor would be stepping down a lot of voltage constantly and would be hot. It''s cold, so we''re good."


    "Jesus, ya really are into this aren''t ya?"


    "Well it''s interesting," I grunted, as I slammed the prybar into the wires one more time, severing one of them. The other I pulled apart with my fingers, to no alarm fanfare whatsoever. "More interesting when I''m not getting chased by a madman, and when I have better tools than a caveman, but that''s the nature of practical application I guess."


    I stood up and Alyssa did the same, groaning as she stretched her legs. I definitely felt it too, but running everyday had helped noticeably here. I should do more hills though, there were some muscles which felt way more sore than others.


    And then with a deep breath, I pushed on the door handle and held it, waiting. The door itself buzzed slightly, but no alarm went off. After several seconds it popped open.


    "Perfect job," she complimented, stepping onto the yellowed gravelly surface of the roof. I followed, blinking as we emerged into the sun.


    First order of business, I took the last item out of my Emergency Dragon Kit, and placed the adhesive black strip on the crack in the door behind us. I pulled a pin and looked away, remembering to cover Alyssa''s eyes as I did, while the strip flared with white fire and poured out a crackling waterfall of sparks. When it was finished, the door had been welded shut, completely inaccessible to anyone of human-levels of strength.


    Which I hoped included Dragon. But just in case, the second order was to check my mobile.


    "Still no signal?" she asked, reading over my shoulder.


    "Guess not. Damn. I really thought we could get far enough up here."


    She patted me gently on the arm as she smiled. "Ye''ve already impressed me enough for a day. Yer math doesn''t have to be right every single time. Fer the record, if I were ever gonna be in a shootin'' again, I''d definitely pick ya as my danger buddy."


    "Thanks," I said, absently, still thinking on my mobile. I frowned at it as my mind raced.


    "It''s fine," she assured me. "We already called for help. Who else were ya gonna call anyway?"


    I mean, the number of people I could call up who were more capable and dangerous than the police was basically every single person in my contact list. But that wasn''t what was currently making my think and frown. My mental math wasn''t perfect, but even with a huge amount of rounding, we really should have been clear, and that wasn''t really even taking the dampening effect of the whole friggin'' concrete building between Dragon and us into consideration.


    Which meant one of my assumptions was off, and that made me nervous. Because the only assumptions I''d made were the height of the building and the distance from Dragon and his jammer. I was pretty sure the height of the building was in the ballpark, which left¡­


    "Oh. Oh no," Alyssa said, and I blinked from my thoughts to look up at her, and then towards the welded door that her horrified expression was directed towards.


    There, through the little reinforced-glass window, Dragon stared right back at me, sweat and hair matted to his face, his narrow eyes promising death.

 301. 2252, Present Day. California State University. Athan.

    "How did he find us?" Alyssa whispered, as though speaking normally would shatter the door keeping Dragon from us.


    "I don''t know. I don''t...there''s too many things. He might have seen us...or deduced it out...overpowered the officers in the security room and saw us on cams...or just followed our trail."


    "But we did so much to throw him off!"


    "I know. I''m sorry. But we need to focus on what we''re doing next."


    Dragon wasn''t just standing there idly, and we couldn''t afford to either. I tore my eyes away from whatever he was doing in the small rectangle window and surveyed what we had to work with.


    It was a rooftop. The next nearest building was the one we''d passed through on the way here, still a good thirty feet away. We had an abundance of what seemed like glued-down gravel, and a couple large housing units, the size of a crowd of refrigerators, which were an AC or inlet for the HVAC or something like that. Something with a huge fan on the top I could see in its whirling shadow.


    So basically, we had nothing.


    "There''s...there''s wires and stuff here," she said, rushing towards the housings, the only thing on the roof besides us. "Ya can...ya can...make a bomb or somethin'' out of that?"


    I joined her and discovered to my dismay that the casing was not, in fact, made of TNT or the like. Maybe if I had a few years and a pile of fissionable materials, I could use the casing for something, but in our situation it was as inert as things came.


    But a bomb wasn''t a good idea anyway. "I might just be able to cut the power and we can get back inside through the air intake. Here--"


    "What?" she asked as I reached towards her.


    "Let me boost you up on top. Tell me what you see."


    She nodded seriously at me even as she flattened down her skirt. I locked my fingers to provide a step and turned my head to face the edge as she climbed over me.


    "It''s loud!" she yelled down at me, and I looked up to see her peeking over the edge at me from atop them, her golden-brown hair whipping around her. "There''s grating and then fans spinning, and then more grating and then darkness."


    "How are the grates secured?" I shouted back.


    She shook her head. "Bolts, bigger than yer thumb."


    I swore. I might have been able to wrench off some screws or rivets like I had with the access door, but I was no superman. For not the first time today, I found myself wishing my powers were back on, and I could just melt my way through the HVAC.


    Or, for that matter, just creep up on the door and impale Dragon while he was busy with it. Fuck me that the one time I probably would have the drop on him, I couldn''t do anything with it.


    "There''s a bunch of pipes and stuff on the other side," she yelled down at me, pointing towards the far end of the air intake from me. I jogged around it and found pipes and conduits connected in neat lines, suspended from the gravel roof by metal struts and bending at ninety-degree angles several times before vanishing into the roof.


    There was a crunch as she landed next to me. "Can we get in through where they do?"


    I shook my head. These pipes were a lot smaller, only the size of our heads at best. We might be able to fit after Dragon was finished with us, but that was hardly a plan nor a comfort.


    But it did give me an idea. Better than where we currently were.


    As with before, step one was to find a tool, and the metal struts seemed an ideal balance of leverage and accessibility. I found one about four feet long and hung off of it sideways, putting as much of my strength and weight into it as I could.


    Damn thing didn''t budge. Then Alyssa came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me. I was confused for a moment before I was suddenly out of breath as she jerked my body as hard as she could, adding her strength and weight to mine.


    The strut made a noise, and she jammed me again, her wrists digging bruised ruts into my ribs. Then again. And once more.


    And then we fell down, slicing ourselves up on the gravel roof as the strut broke free, clattering beside us while the unsupported pipes sagged and groaned to the screech of metal twisting.


    I sprang to my feet, pulling up Alyssa with a nod, and then remembered to thank her. She wasn''t Karu, despite her competence, and while Karu always liked to remind me that thanks were unnecessary between comrades, Alyssa definitely deserved some praise.


    And then I went back to work, attacking the line of flexible galvanized conduit running power to the HVACs. With my new prybar, I was able to pop off each of the fasteners holding the line screwed down, liberating a metal snake of the stuff before too long. Finally I reached the end and took a moment to take stock of where we were.


    I had maybe a dozen feet of metal conduit with live power wires inside, connected at one end to the roof and the other to the HVAC. It was a little slack, given the designer''s predilection for right-angles, but only just.


    Meanwhile, Dragon was apparently working a blowtorch or something similar. I could see half of my weld already burned through and the tip of a blue-white cone of flame peeking through as he worked. As an infiltration specialist, I shouldn''t have been surprised he''d have something so basic and effective on him, but still. Come fucking on, was there anything that slowed this guy down?


    "Are you ready to do something incredibly stupid?" I asked Alyssa.


    "If it gets us away from him, anythin''."


    "Stand back, then."


    I pulled as much conduit and wire as I could out of the ground and then carefully peeled the metal tube apart, my fingers screaming at me at the abuse of pulling apart metal with bare hands, but I didn''t care. Several times I had to use the end of my prybar to dig into the conduit, or just for leverage, but eventually I got there, bearing the all-important cables within.


    "Stand back," I repeated, checking that she was well clear. I situated myself as far from the building''s edge as I could, and then having a thought, pulled off my shirt and wrapped my hands in it to grip my stick. And then took a deep breath and counted to three.


    And then swung the bar over my head like a headsman''s axe, right into the exposed wires.


    Despite my powers, or maybe because of them, I''d never actually been shocked before. And with the amount of power running through these units, if it happened to me now, it''d be both my first and last time. I hoped the distance of the bar and the soles of my shoes would do something to deter the electricity, but honestly, I was just playing an idiot shoving a fork into an electrical outlet and hoping it worked out okay.


    It didn''t exactly work out okay.


    The first thing that happened is the strut in my hands, not designed for any amount of voltage passing through it basically detonated as it became a spontaneous member of the new circuit. Instantly heated to red-hot, the end in the wires was jolted explosively into the air, whipping past my head and over the edge of the building with a trail of smoke and acrid air.


    It might have burned my hands off too, if I hadn''t been gripping it through my shirt. Instead, it slipped out of my grip, only burning and slicing the fuck out of me and taking a layer of my palms. I dropped to my knees, cradling my hands, as the two ends of the wire sparked and zapped, still connected by a snaking tendril of lightning which made the conduit whip around as though possessed.


    Within a few seconds though, the conduit whipped away and the circuit broke, dropping it dead on the rooftop, both ends smoking. That was why it was critical I cut the wire at the source. If I''d cut it nearer the HVAC, it would be jumping and sparking constantly.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Instead it was just...catching fire, the sparking and crackling flame replacing the sounds of the fans spinning down. I swore and stood up, moving to the end of the now-melted cable I''d just worked so hard for and rethinking just how stupid this plan was.


    "Are you okay?" Alyssa asked, approaching tenatively. "What''s wrong with yer hands?"


    "They''re just burned. I''m fine. I didn''t get shocked."


    "Just burned?" she echoed, looking at them with wide eyes. "Fekkin'' hell, Athan, ye''ve got no skin left."


    I wrapped my shirt tighter around my hands, realizing just how fucked we were. But we had to try.


    "We did all that for this," I said, holding the end of the cable. "It''s secured on the other end...and long enough to get us...a couple stories down."


    "And then we jump?" she asked, the same hesitation when she asked about climbing all the way up here, but mixed with a perfectly healthy dose of fear.


    "I...hope not. I hope we can swing on it and kick in the windows and get back into the building."


    She shook her head. "It won''t work. I knew someone who used to lean on those windows for fun to creep people out. They can hold a person''s weight."


    I wished I knew that before I went and torched my hands. I was pissed at her for just a moment for not speaking up until I realized I''d just been making all the decisions and had never even tried to consult with her. Fucking hell. Fucking me.


    And now Dragon was almost on his way in, and all I''d managed was hurting myself. The rooftop near us was on fire, burning slowly with nothing but concrete and rock up here, but if it found anything to catch on, the whole building could go up in flames.


    And this stupid dozen feet of cable. I gave it an angry shake, making my burned hands throb. I should have cut the other end, then I''d have an electrocuted whip to wave at Dragon before he just threw a knife into my chest. It twisted and coiled around like it was as irritated as I was.


    Fuck, what I wouldn''t give for my powers back.


    I didn''t even have the self-reflection at the moment to consider the irony in wanting to be Exhuman again. I was too busy trying to focus on the now. Because the weight of the metal and wires in my hands just gave me an idea again.


    I swung it overhead, whipping it violently, over the edge of the building. From below me, I heard a crack as it snapped and smashed into the windows below. Then I pulled it up and did it again, the crack sounding more like glass smashing and less like metal slapping against something this time.


    "Yer doin'' it!" she shouted. "Yer breakin'' through!" She moved some distance away from me, and then very hesitantly, on all fours, peeked her head over the edge to survey the damage I was inflicting. "It''s cracked up! There''s a couple of tiny holes where the tip broke in!"


    It was hard work working the whip, way heavier than a dozen feet of wire and insulation and metal had any right to be, and after my fourth go, I was completely out of breath. And then again, I found Alyssa''s hands on mine, as she gently separated the wire from my shirt and took it from me, as gentle and tender as a mother with her child.


    I took a step back and she spared me one more fleeting gentle glance, one more moment of tenderness. And then she spun and whipped the wire down the side of the building like a barbarian queen. I heard it crack, and then she pulled the whip up again, hand-over-hand, already red and dripping sweat.


    She swung it again. And shortly after this crack, there was a second that made the two of us glance between us.


    And then there were three of us, as the source of the second crack stepped onto the rooftop to join us.


    "You''ve proven interesting," he commented. "but you must know that you are at your end. Rarely do I offer a second chance to surrender. I encourage you to take it."


    "If you kill me, you''ll never find the device," I growled at him, unpeeling the bloodstained shirt from my hands and raising them in front of me in fists.


    "I find that unlikely. Even one as considerate as you leaves a trail. You may either save me the effort, or be removed as an obstacle."


    I ran at him, right fist upraised and leading, ready to swing and catch him with a brutal hook on the ear. He barely moved, leaning sideways and taking half a step, a glint of steel in his hand as he prepared to retort.


    But the right hook wasn''t the attack. As I ran, at the last second, when I was blocking his sight with my own body coming in, I veered my foot and stomped on the top of his foot with my heel, driving it down as hard as I could, and feeling the bones give under me.


    He staggered away, still on-balance somehow even as his foot gave under his weight, but so did I, with a new knife between my ribs. I looked down and gasped at the pain of it all, pure adrenaline no longer sufficient to keep myself together.


    He was on me in an instant, right back at his knife, twisting it in the wound and making spots flicker in front of my eyes.


    "Surrender," he ordered.


    "Why...not just...kill me?" I gasped out at him. The knife had been shoved in too low to hit my lungs or heart, and Dragon didn''t miss.


    "I will repeat myself only once. Your cooperation eases my recovery of the device, and I have taken an interest in you."


    "What¡­.like, romantically? Sorry, I''m...taken," I panted, grinning at him with a mouth that tasted like blood.


    "Your powers and capabilities have proven surprisingly resilient." He held his hands up towards me, one a broken stump just below the elbow, the other twisted and bloody, bones broken through his hand from the pistol exploding in his grip. "I do not like surprises."


    It was a fortuitous line for him to end on as the cable whipped through the air from behind him and cracked into the side of his head and shoulder, making him bow forward from the force of the blow.


    Alyssa stood there, breathing silently through a mouth hanging wide, barefoot on the painful stones of the roof so she could creep up on him as he spoke, the middle of the conduit gripped in her shaking hands. It was a glorious moment as she looked up at me, red eyes sparkling in triumph.


    But it was only one moment. In the moment after, she grabbed at her chest as though confused, and through her fingers I saw the same gleam of silver. In one motion, Dragon rose to his feet and swept hers from under her, where she lay gasping, not comprehending, bleeding.


    He did not miss her lungs.


    I screamed and charged him, all thoughts of feints and strategy and plans gone in an instant. My hands flew at him as fast as I could move them, my feet lashed out like striking snakes.


    But I never touched him. In my rage, I''d grown predictable, and he simply moved inches this way or that, my every strike unable to graze him.


    After what felt like minutes, he struck back, a palm catching me flat in the sternum and throwing me to my back next to Alyssa, who was breathing fast and shallow, the blood trickling from her mouth the same color as her eyes.


    "Why do you not use your powers?" he asked simply, his shadow falling over me.


    "F-f-fuck...you," I spat at him.


    As though expecting this, he moved to Alyssa, crouching over her body and placing his long, bloody fingers on the hilt of the knife in her chest. She tried to shy away, tried to melt into the ground to escape his touch, but his was not a grasp you could escape.


    "Why do you not use your powers?" he repeated. Before I could respond, he twisted the knife, sending her into a fit of screaming that made blood spray from her mouth.


    "STOP!" I screamed at him. "FUCK! STOP!"


    "I have repeated myself once. I will not do so again," he said, as Alyssa gasped and writhed in sudden silence.


    "They''re gone, okay! My powers are gone!"


    "You lie," he said, reaching out again.


    "NO! THEY''RE GONE! I fucking promise, I swear."


    His fingers hesitated in the air, inches from the handle. "And my device?"


    "It''s in the hands of the XPCA," I cried.


    He stood up and headed towards the exit. "Then it''s as good as mine," he mused. "Before I go, I hope you don''t mind if I test your statement. I find it difficult to believe."


    I didn''t know what he meant until with a barely-visible glint, another knife flashed into my calf, sending me swearing and rolling all over again at the white-hot pain. But even through that, I understood. My shield would have blocked that. He really had confirmed my powers were gone, in the sadistic fucking way he would.


    And with my powers, apparently so disappeared his interest in me, as he left without another word, like our lives and deaths mattered nothing to him. I felt myself crying even as I grit my teeth against the pain and saw that the fire was continuing to spread.


    And Alyssa was still there, still gasping, though her breathing was shallower now, and her face was pale, making the lines of blood from her mouth stand out even more.


    I shuffled towards her as best I could, the scrapes from the gravel nothing compared to the agony I was already in. I could barely use one leg and one arm, but somehow I reached her, drawing myself to collapse next to her, our eyes staring into each other''s, looking for comfort we knew we couldn''t find.


    And then somehow, she smiled, despite everything. Despite all that had happened to us, to her, on this living nightmare of a day. Despite the fact that she had minutes, at best, before she choked to death on her own blood. Despite being stranded with some guy she liked who was dating someone else, who''d gotten them both killed with his fucked-up past and his stupid, stubborn arrogance.


    Somehow. Despite all that, she smiled.


    And in whispered breaths, barely louder than the crackle of the growing fire, she spoke.


    "I got...to do...something brave...like you," she said. "I''m...so happy."


    "Don''t speak," I whispered at her. "Save your breath, please. Please."


    She didn''t speak again, just gave me the same smile as always. But somehow, it didn''t look embarrassed or small anymore. She looked confident, happy, unafraid. At peace. She looked brave.


    It was a mockery that she''d compare herself to me. She was braver than I''d ever been.


    She didn''t speak again, and when she closed her eyes, she didn''t open them again either. Her ferenic breathing slowed and then stopped, and then she was still, strands of her wavy french-fry hair matted in the blood in her face still fluttering in the breeze as though her breath still flowed.


    And yet even as she passed. Even as I cried and screamed at her body, begging her to stay, to open her eyes, to be, on her lips, the shadow of her smile remained.

 302. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Athan.

    AEGIS was just straight freaking out at me, which was the opposite of what I needed.


    For my part, I was whole again, but didn''t feel that way. After I''d realized Alyssa was dead and that my body was mutilated past being able to stand and run¡­


    It felt shameful to admit it...even to think it, but I just laid there and waited to die. I''d tried so hard when Dragon was coming after us. I''d thought about so many things, and laid so many plans, and came up with so many ideas. And for what?


    She was dead. That''s where my cleverness got us. In the end, it would have been better just to hand the device over to him and pretend I was never there.


    The fire had spread slowly, but soon engulfed the rooftop in a ring, leaving me lying on the burning, nonflammable rock like some viking funeral barge. Within minutes, all I could hear was fire. All I could see was fire and my dead friend.


    It wasn''t long after that emergency services arrived. Firefighters found me and I was carried away in a harness swinging below a VTOL which braved the rising flames. As far as I knew, Alyssa was left there to be kindling.


    When the others heard, Lia swung in and slammed a handful of millions on the counter, demanding I be put in a regenerator at once. When they couldn''t immediately clear it, AEGIS put Cosette on the phone, who demanded the same with the clout of the XPCA. That was apparently enough to get me there and home.


    But even after the drugs wore off from the regenerator and I woke up again, I didn''t feel awake. I felt like I''d fallen asleep from my idyllic college life and was still drifting in a nightmare. Half my mind couldn''t believe Alyssa, sweet, innocent, human Alyssa was gone, but the other half couldn''t shake the sight of her dead face from it.


    "You realize," AEGIS continued, currently in the angry half of her rant, "none of this would have happened if that girl wasn''t there. She slowed you down so much, she was sweating everywhere, of course Dragon was able to track you! You think he wouldn''t notice puddles of sweat leading up stairs? He tracked an Exhuman artifact across the country twice."


    "That girl has a name, AEGIS," I muttered at her.


    "Well not fucking anymore. Now she''s just a corpse, and one that almost killed you." Her arms switched from crossed to pulling at her hair as she swung back into the other half of her tirade. "I was so worried, Athan! You were literally going to die from this one! What was I supposed to think, seeing you with knives and burns all over you? Covered in blood? I was so scared!"


    I closed my eyes but found no comfort in the dark either. She just. Kept. Talking.


    "I mean, do you have any idea what would happen to me without you? Or anyone here. Lia? Tem? Do you think any of us have much to live for past you? Do you even consider these things before you go dashing to save every damel in arm''s reach?"


    Her voice rose as she started yelling again. It''d been over an hour and I was still sitting here, enduring this abuse. AEGIS didn''t get tired or need to eat or use the bathroom, and she thought as fast as a computer. She could literally keep it up forever.


    But as much as I wanted to tell her simply to shut up and fuck off, I couldn''t. I felt leaden. I felt...felt like, in some sense, I''d died too, and what was left of me here was just shambling.


    "But of course, Athan the hero sees a bitch in trouble, he''s gotta go save the day. Never mind the fact that we had a perfectly good plan he was ruining by sandbagging with her. If you went straight up those stairs, you''d have gotten reception when you got up there, I guaran-fucking-tee it. But no. Instead, all this shit. Knives and blood and bodies. This is where your heroism leads, you dumbass."


    She switched again, and I didn''t know which one I hated more at the moment. Pissing on the memory of a girl still not even buried, or going on like everyone else in the world would die if I did.


    "And now he knows where the device is, and we can''t stop him. The XPCA isn''t going to just let us put our hands on it, y''know. They''re going to think it''s safe wherever they''re keeping it, and if we want to intervene, we''ll have to go to war with them, or at best launch a campaign of subterfuge. Which we don''t have time for, given how efficient Dragon operates...so it''s basically in his hands already, and we''re all fucked."


    She was pulling at her hair so hard I wondered if it would come off.


    "All because of that bitch," she fumed suddenly. "You and her sneaking around behind my back, like I wouldn''t notice or care. Dragging you to your death was bad enough, but being a little harlot too? She deserved what she got."


    "She didn''t," I growled.


    "What?" AEGIS snapped her head towards me from her visceral rant. "What did you say?"


    "I said, don''t fucking say that," I stood up and roared at her. "She didn''t deserve to die, she was an innocent kid who got fucked by my bullshit life!"


    "She knew you were with me. She didn''t care about other women''s relationships. She was a fucking whore."


    "She was more respectful of you than you''ve ever been of another woman. She cared more than you ever have."


    "She was a moron who made every possible worst decision and died for her stupidity. She wasn''t fit, she wasn''t smart, she wasn''t capable--"


    "She was a regular fucking person, AEGIS. Do you think every woman in the world should be able to bare knuckle box against Dragon before they''re worthy of talking to me?"


    "I can," she shouted, sounding disbelieving. "I can go nine rounds with that asshole. But you''d rather go chase some regular tail, right? No point to a woman beside how often you can kill yourself saving them, right? Because literally building a body and being your faithful, devoted servant isn''t enough for you?"


    I had to laugh at her. "Devoted? To whom? Not to me, that''s for fucking sure."


    Her face flinched. "Who the fuck else--"


    "Her!" I shouted, pointing back towards the bedroom and her machines. "AEGIS Prime. You worship everything she did, everything she was. You idolize and fetishize and dream of someday becoming worthy to lick the scum off her soles. But you''ve never done a single fucking thing on your own, haven''t taken one single step the same as she did. You''ve been looking back at her so hard, you can''t even see the present. You haven''t done a damn thing since you got rebooted and found out who you are. You''re just a brittle, ugly echo of someone who already died!"


    She froze entirely, her face contorted in hate, her yellow eyes burning as she stared at me. There was a bang and Lia emerged from her room, shoulders square, face as mad as AEGIS''. She stomped towards me and then shoved me into the couch hard.


    "What the fricking gopher do you think you''re saying, you turd," she screamed at me, her hands flying in the air. "You are crossing so many fricking lines--"


    "Lia, shut up," AEGIS barked. "Don''t fucking yell at him."


    "You shut up!" Lia shouted, turning. "Both of you! You''ve been screaming for an hour now, and do either of you feel better at all? You''re just pissed about something horrible that happened, and you''re taking it out on each other."


    "Yeah, horrible because of that slut," AEGIS said, turning back to me, speaking icily. "Who did deserve to die, by the way."


    I was back on my feet again as Lia stood between us, pressing with all her strength to keep us apart.


    "Guys, stop!" she screamed.


    AEGIS pushed her halfway across the room with a flick of her wrist.


    "Don''t you fucking touch my sister!" I screamed at her.


    "Then tell her not to get in my fucking way!"


    Lia was back and pulling at my arm, still struggling her best to stop the fight but unwilling to touch AEGIS now. "Athan, please," she pleaded at me. "Please. Stop this now."This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    "I''m not the one picking fights and crapping on dead people, Lia," I growled at her. "I''m not the one who''s so fucking insecure that she''s jealous of a dead girl."


    "Jealous? I wish," AEGIS scoffed. "The only thing I''m jealous of her for is that she got to be there, because I would have done it all better. If it were me instead, nobody would be dead and you wouldn''t have almost died. She fucked everything up."


    "Yeah, instead, she was there because you''re fucking insufferable. I went to campus that day to get away from you. Like every day. Because you''re so fucking ugly inside, I can''t stand being around you without hating you."


    Her face twitched and for a second, her engines flared to life like she wanted to punch me straight in the face. I raised my chin for her.


    "Take a shot. Put me back in the hospital like you already did," I whispered at her.


    "Athan!" Lia shrieked.


    But AEGIS took a step back, looking as ravaged by my words as I wanted. Expressions flashed past on her face, her lips and brow contorting as she wordlessly fumbled with a response.


    I didn''t even care right now. I was just so livid with her, with all the shit she''d been doing, not just to me but to everyone around her, I wanted her to feel all of our pain. It didn''t matter to me what damage I was doing, I just wanted to twist the knife.


    I eyed her as she sagged away from me, the more desperate and pathetic expressions on her face growing in frequency.


    "It''s over, AEGIS," I said, my voice sounding cold even to myself. "We should have broken up a long time ago."


    Lia, notably, tensed on my arm, but didn''t speak up.


    "No," AEGIS whispered. "No, no, no. Please."


    "Yes."


    "No, I can...I''m sorry. I said some things I shouldn''t have."


    "You''ve done nothing but say and do things you shouldn''t have since you came back online, AEGIS. You''re shallow, bigoted, hateful and spiteful, petty and jealous."


    "I am. I know. But I can--"


    "And I''m just sick of it. I''m sick of waiting for you to change. I''m not doing it anymore."


    "AEGIS...it''ll be fine," Lia muttered. "You guys are no good."


    "No," she replied. "No!" she yelled. "NO! I dedicated my life to you, Athan. You were my everything!"


    "You did a shitty job of it."


    "If you dump me, I have nothing left. I gave up my whole reason for being, my programming, everything to be with you. You can''t just leave me like this."


    "You''ll find another reason," Lia reassured. "There''s so much more to you than Athan. Let''s all just...calm down a little and--"


    "You don''t know anything," AEGIS gasped. "Anything about how I work in here," she pointed at her heart. "I am...I am fully dedicated to you. In every sense of the word. Athan, without you, I would be nothing."


    "Then you''re nothing," I said opening my hands as though letting her go. "I have no interest in being with anyone who''s gonna tell me who among my friends deserved to die."


    "I...I misspoke. She was...she was a fine girl."


    "Bullshit," I said, advancing on her. "Bullshit. You think you''re just gonna lie to my face after all this? After all this, the second you get threatened, you turn to fucking lying to me? This is why we can''t work, AEGIS. Even when you''re trying with everything you have, it just comes out toxic."


    I turned to go. I felt hollow and bitter inside, and Lia''s cold hands slipping off of my arm as I pulled free of her felt like a soul leaving my body.


    I had nothing. No powers. No strength. No girlfriend. No Alyssa. In less than a day, it felt like I''d just completely ruined everything in my life with remarkable efficiency.


    I just wanted...wanted to disappear. To go somewhere far removed from whatever pitiful existence the guy in this house must have lived and be someone and somewhere else. Anywhere else.


    I sat down at our little college student excuse for a dining room table and pulled out my mobile. It sat there, mocking me with a reminder that I''d scheduled to meet Alyssa this morning. The stupid piece of shit.


    I flipped it open and scrolled through the contacts until I found who I needed right now.


    "Hey. Sorry to bother you. Can you talk for a sec?"


    A voice came clear over the line that wasn''t Whitney''s. It was her VR avatar''s, a higher and louder voice, as though always just a little excited. She was answering the call from within the VR. "Not another event, I hope?"


    "No, nothing that drastic. Well. Maybe a bit drastic."


    "Something happen?"


    "If you turn on the news you might see it. But--"


    "Hang on," she interrupted, and I closed my eyes in irritation that I''d derailed us already. "Oh. This fire. This is your campus? Athan was this you?"


    "My point was," I pressed on, "to ask if I could stay with you for a while. Things in my home situation have turned volatile." I glared at AEGIS as I spoke, as she silently bawled, Lia flitting nervously around her murmuring reassurances.


    "Um. Well, you know what my place looks like, but I can hardly say I ever use it. Are you cool with paying food and rent?"


    "I am very cool with that," I said curtly, feeling like the negotiations were pointless.


    "Uh, sure then. Come on by whenever. I''ll...I guess...I''ll clean a little."


    "Don''t bother," I said. "See you later, Whitney."


    "Sure thing," she said, and then I hung up.


    Even with the simulated voice of her avatar, I could hear some trepidation of words unsaid. She was probably wondering what had happened and why I was so pissed sounding. Well, she''d get the full story eventually, but I wasn''t going to spend another minute here with AEGIS that I didn''t have to.


    I marched into the bedroom and pulled a bag from under my bed, throwing possessions into it at random. Books, clothes, toiletries...really the amount of stuff I owned was negligible compared to the amount of AEGIS'' machines and crap populating the room. Seeing them pissed me off all over again.


    My fingers lingered over a few strips of wispy yellow material, stained black with blood. My blood, and AEGIS'' dress. The real AEGIS. Makeshift bandages she''d wrapped around me, one of the last things she did before she''d died. Next to them, the EMP-fried boot drive and backup I''d carried with me on that day.


    And on a shelf next to that, mirrored on AEGIS'' side of the room, the hololens I''d given AEGIS as a gift so very long ago, the etched lines of my crude depiction of the two of us smiling in a way we couldn''t anymore.


    My hand withdrew. I would leave them here. I couldn''t hold onto AEGIS anymore, either one of them. These were just scraps of fabric from a long time ago.


    I turned to go back to packing and found AEGIS standing silently in the door, tears streaming down her face. At meeting my gaze, she drifted into the room like a ghost and pulled something out of a drawer at her desk, her eyes on me the whole while.


    "Before you go," she whispered, her voice choked, "there''s...I¡­"


    I sat down heavily on my bed, facing her with my head in my hands. I took a deep breath and then met her gaze. As much as I wanted her to suffer right now, I didn''t want her to suffer. Each of the tears rolling down her cheeks stung, no matter how I recalled her biting words.


    "What, AEGIS?" I asked, exasperated.


    She flinched at my words and mouthed wordlessly for a moment. "I just...please...can you...without interrupting, hear me out? One last time? I know...know I don''t deserve it."


    "Just say what you want, AEGIS," I said.


    She nodded and took several moments to compose herself, wiping away tears without effect. "I love you. I really do. And if I had it all over to do again...I''d do so many things differently. I...I wish I didn''t...didn''t blow it as hard as I have. Everything you said is true. I am just...just a shell of Prime. I don''t know who I am...I was just...just figuring myself out when I first switched into Rua. And she was so successful. I thought...I could just...be her. But I guess that wasn''t possible."


    She looked up at me, her chin trembling. "I''m sorry I messed up. I''m sorry I didn''t do it right. I''m sorry I''m so closed-minded and spiteful and jealous. I never wanted to be any of these things, and I know Prime wasn''t, and I just wanted to be her so badly, I focused so much on all the things she did and never remembered to look at why. I''m sorry I failed you, and I''m sorry we couldn''t be together because of my failings."


    Despite her words, how much she was crying and trembling, I had the odd thought that she''s taking this really well. Not in the sense of being happy, but that she''d accepted it. I''d...well, I''d honestly expected to have to fight her to get out of the house. But somehow she seemed to have come to terms with the fact that we''d be apart.


    It...gave me a little moment of hope. AEGIS had been ruined by my influence. I''d put too many hopes and too much responsibility on her, from the moment she woke up, and she was so busy trying to live up to it that she never had time to grow. But now, if we could be apart, she''d find other things to live for, other reasons to be. She''d become a more complete person, maybe. Possibly even one day, if she didn''t keep chasing dreams, she''d become Prime in her own right.


    The thought lasted just a moment. Just one fleeting, stupid moment. Before AEGIS showed me what was in her hand, holding it outstretched as tears flowed from her eyes.


    "I''ll always love you," she said, choking on her sobs. "Always."


    I had only barely gotten to my feet as she jammed the backup drive into her hair port as though stabbing a knife into her heart. Both of us stood still and transfixed, eyes wide as we stared at the other.


    She trembled for long moments, her body shuddering as though some transformation was going on just under the surface. Something violent and painful. Something soul-erasing.


    And then she blinked repeatedly at me and cocked her head.


    "Huh?" she asked through a nervous smile. "Athan? Are you...okay? You look like you''ve seen a ghost," she laughed. "Or...maybe I have?" she looked around, taking in the room. "Where is this? I don''t remember being here. And why...why¡­"


    She advanced on me, reaching out to squeeze my hand in both of hers, hands warm and strong, as sure and gentle as her touch had ever been.


    I couldn''t answer her. I held her to my chest as tightly as I could, though I knew the person I cried for was already gone. Confused and lost, I just held her as much as I could, as though if I did, her spirit wouldn''t slip through my fingertips.


    "I''m so confused," she said with a small laugh. "Athan, what''s wrong with you? And...and what''s wrong with me?"


    I pulled us apart to look at her and see what she meant. She looked...the same as she always had. Beautiful. Freckled. Coils of copper hair.


    Her fingertips delicately probed at her cheeks and came away damp. She looked at them in confusion and smiled at me even as she sobbed involuntarily.


    "Athan...why...why am I crying?" she asked, looking lost.


    I held her again, closing my eyes and trying my best not to break.


    "Because someone...someone imperfect...someone who loved me a little too wrongly and a little too much...has passed," I whispered.

 303. 2252, Present Day. Virtual space. Athan.

    The tree swayed lazily in the nonexistent wind, Whitney''s avatar''s feet kicked up little tufts of grass that floated and disappeared in the air in a surreal way, like gravity didn''t work on them quite right.


    In the end, I''d chosen not to stay with AEGIS, even though she was AEGIS Prime again. She didn''t understand, and honestly, I didn''t want her to. I blamed myself for how she turned out, and despite my many threats to hold her accountable or correct the course of our relationship, I never did. I''d just lived the same illusion she had -- that one day she''d become just like Prime by magic -- all the while, criticizing her for believing it while I did exactly the same.


    I''d dumped too much on her and fucked her up. And so when she opened her eyes again, a new AEGIS looking through them now, I felt I couldn''t do anything but the opposite. I told her next to nothing. I left.


    I ran.


    I left her with Lia, who would do a better job raising a nascent AI than I ever could. I left Tem and Moon behind, both of whom had differing kinds of abandonment issues. I knew that and I abandoned them anyway. Because after failing Alyssa, what else was there for me to do but to fail everyone else in my life?


    Bad decisions always felt like they excused more bad decisions somehow. I knew what I did was wrong, I knew what I was doing was wrong, I just didn''t feel like there was anything I could do about it. I''d just fuck my whole life up all at once and get it all out of the way.


    Knowing such is probably why, like Whitney, my avatar looked a lot less like myself nowadays. She''d noticed but hadn''t commented, instead the two of us just sat in silence for long stretches, both of us aware of just how crappy we were.


    "Are you going to continue college?" she abruptly asked, as though continuing a conversation.


    I shook my head.


    "Why not? You liked it, didn''t you?"


    I just hung there at the end of the swing, my feet flat on the ground. I''d played pretend once already. I''d been selfish and acted like my life was regular and I was fine, and as a result, some poor fuck was burying their daughter today. I wasn''t even sent an invite to the funeral, because those making the arrangements wouldn''t know of me. That''s how small a piece of Alyssa''s life I really was. Just one tiny lethal prick.


    "Have you given any thought to what next then?"


    I hadn''t. If I had, my plans certainly wouldn''t have started with coming here.


    "I guess if you''re here, maybe not, eh?" she echoed my thoughts. "Well. If nothing else, you seem to have a knack for circuits...and electromagnetism, physics and the like. You could...do what I did. Open up your own repair shop. I can''t promise you''ll make too much but¡­"


    She trailed off and swung a little more, the tips of her feet entering and leaving my periphery.


    "...but at least you never have to face anyone."


    What if I should, though? What if there was no reason for me to exist if I was just going to hide away from the world? Whitney for all her lifestyle choices and self-isolation had still made it a clear priority to find some way to be Chariot, and I suspected that was because she needed something to live for, even if she thought herself a terrible person in all other respects. She had that one damn thing at least, where she could look at herself and say she was helping the world.


    And I had, what? Why was I here? What was I doing? Why was I even alive?


    I thought of how I didn''t move, how I''d just laid there, staring at Alyssa''s tranquil face as the fire crept in on us. I dropped the P-Force, my friends, everything I had for the shot to be there, and then I let that life burn. Now I had, what?


    Whitney responded again like she was in my head. "Listen uh...I know...I haven''t really expressed this. But, there''s a reason I gave you a copy of my apartment key. And it''s not so you could stop by and clean up, although I appreciated that, obviously."


    She skidded to a stop beside me, and with her, I could feel the arm of the oak holding up my swing go still.


    "I liked it when you came by. It meant a lot to me. Even when people feel bad about themselves and feel low and depressed...even when I don''t want to be with anyone, and I feel like...like I''m a toxin, and I should be alone, for everyone else''s own good...even after a lifetime of choosing to be alone¡­"


    She stopped and sighed.


    "Nobody wants to be alone, you know. Not...like, truly alone. Maybe most of the time I''d rather not deal with people and their expectations and pressures and all the garbage which is cultural norms. But when you stopped by, even if it was just for a second to say hi or to chew me out for not eating, I knew you cared, and that meant a lot."


    She stood up and walked in front of me, sitting on the grass right in my field of view, her short purple hair bobbing above her swarthy frame as she plopped down.


    "Last time, you asked me for advice, and I didn''t have any for you. I''d be lying if I said I didn''t lose a lot of hours of sleep, lying around thinking about what I should have said instead. So this time...I''m gonna...gonna talk until I say something genius, even if it kills me. So that at least when I''m cringing internally at myself, it can be for trying too hard." She took a deep breath as though she were ready to cringe it up right now. "What my point was is that...when I turned -- and you right now -- neither of us seemed to have anything going for us in our lives at that moment. Everything we''d built up just, poof. But that''s just how it feels, that''s not hot it actually is."


    I looked up and met her eyes. Purple like her hair. So strange that she''d care about her appearance enough to match in this world when out there, she''d just dress in whatever.


    "Because when I turned, I had you, and many of your friends, and a few old buddies I kept in touch with on the ''net. And no matter how low I felt, you never stopped coming by to remind me of that. Even if...I couldn''t do my work anymore, and I was this¡­" she looked down at her hands. "...monster. You''d been a monster too, and you were willing to stand by me. It''s easy when we lose something to think we''ve lost everything but that''s just an illusion, just our brain coping with the loss."


    "Whitney," I said, my voice coming out clearer than it would of my real throat. "You live in a messy, tiny squalor. You have no job, talk to nobody but me that I know of, and hide in VR whenever you''re not eating or sleeping just so you don''t have to be yourself."


    She nodded deliberately, but I could see her discomfort as I threw her reality in her face.


    "I''m not saying this to be mean or discredit your opinion. Just, how can you argue that it''s just an illusion? Your life seems, to me, objectively shit and broken because of what happened to you. How can you sit in the middle of that and tell me it''s all just my brain playing tricks?"


    "I''m not...I''m sorry," she said. "I didn''t say that. I said...you didn''t lose everything. Your loss was real, and it...it''s gonna hurt and keep on hurting. If you''re as weak as me, you might never recover. You might just...hide and...be weak and afraid."


    She almost looked on the verge of crying, but suddenly stiffened, her voice growing uncharacteristically bold as she smirked at me, sudden and knowing. "But that''s not the same thing as having nothing."


    "What''s the difference if it feels like it?" I asked.


    "The difference is," she said, standing up and dusting vanishing grass particles off of her legs. "If you have nothing, you stay down. If you don''t, you get up, and the people and things you have, they help you do so."


    She reached towards me with a familiar, knowing smirk, her eyes darting back and forth between mine with the regularity of a pendulum.


    I just sat there on the pretend swing under the pretend tree surrounded by pretend walls and pretended she wasn''t offering me her hand.


    "Are you really just gonna leave me hanging here, friendo?" she asked.


    I sighed, which cleared my lungs for the deep breath I took to grab hold of her extended arm.


    I felt a tug and then landed in myself, the visor of the neural uplink blinking in front of me that I''d been disconnected by an admin and the sounds of Whitney already getting up next to me. I pulled off the visor and blinked in the semi-darkness as she crawled around me and off the bed.


    "Jesus, you''re thin," I said before I could stop the words from coming out.


    Before she''d worn tank tops and cargo shorts to keep her clothes out of the way of her work and minimize oil stains. Now she was in baggy cargo pants and a long-sleeve shirt to keep her body warm while she laid there completely inactive all day.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "So step one is to eat a hot meal," she said. "I don''t have much but ramen and hot dogs, so we''re having ramen and hot dogs."


    "There''s frozen veggies from last time I shopped for you," I added, blinking as she turned on one of the apartment''s three lights.


    "Ramen and hot dogs and veggies," she said. "Pulmenti dei. Soup of the gods."


    She seemed to own very few cooking implements which I found strange given how many tools and machine parts she''d once had everywhere. I guessed it was just a matter of interest for her; easier to pick up a thousand random quantum cores than a second pot. As she washed the one pot though, I got to work picking up trash and compressing it into a bin for extraction.


    "Cleaning was step two," she said.


    "I don''t mind."


    She looked at me as though thinking about reprimanding me for something and then just shrugged and went back to dishes. I was pretty sure I could see her thoughts on her face. She was making an effort here, by her astonishingly low standards, and wanted them to hit me with maximum impact. Whether that was by letting me do nothing or letting me work was her brief debate.


    But I really didn''t mind just doing something mindless for a while. My brain was veering wildly between being dead and sprinting at a million miles a minute, and focusing on the task of fitting as many noodle cups into a single bin as possible was...well, not ideal, but it was something.


    I felt a pang as I compared myself mentally to AEGIS, who always dove headfirst into work to improve her mood. With my just leaving like I had, odds were good she was focusing on her work right now, both to soothe her confusion and to mend it.


    "What''s on your mind?" Whitney asked, and I realized she''d been studying me.


    "Nothing," I said.


    "What''s really on your mind?" she asked again, waving a knife around at me instead of the hot dogs.


    "AEGIS, if you must pry."


    "What about her?"


    "Look, why are we talking about this?"


    She set the knife down with the same delicate handling as she treated all her tools and then faced me fully. "Because you''re not a runner, Athan Ashton. I am, and I know how much it sucks to live that way. I don''t want you winding up being me, if you can avoid it."


    "That''s stupid."


    "No, that''s life experience. You get one life, and I wasted mine and then it turned out like this. It''d piss me off if you had this lesson in front of you and still went this way."


    "And you think this is the critical juncture? Talking about AEGIS or not? If I clam up now, I''ll be doomed to cup of noodle for the rest of my life?"


    "Yes," she smirked. "Now talk about your frickin'' feelers already."


    "Okay," I said, feeling too worn out to be charmed, and settling on the next best thing, emotionally. "But before that, can I ask you something?"


    "Sure."


    "You''ve never talked about your life being shit or something to avoid before. I always thought you were...not exactly happy, but approaching happiness. Before the Exhuman thing. Which I assume is what you''re talking about since it''s not like I could avoid Exhumanity even if I tried."


    "I guess not."


    "So why are you trying to warn me off of it?"


    She studied me for a second and then apparently had enough of that because she turned and went back to the hot dog slicing as she thought. Her words drifted over as though she weren''t quite talking to me.


    "I''ve been doing a lot of thinking, after I turned. Not much else to do in my VR world really. I had a lot of time to reflect on my life, the decisions I made, where they led."


    "And you decided your life was bad?"


    "In a lot of ways, I think I took it for granted. Some decisions in it were bad. I''m still introverted as heck and sick of people and society and wouldn''t change any of that even if I could. But without my self, or my shop, it becomes really easy to appreciate people, and I feel like...that''s one of your few really good points. You don''t give up on people. You don''t run away when things get ugly with them. I don''t want you to lose that."


    "I literally just ran away from AEGIS because I couldn''t stand her anymore."


    "Ah. And how''d she take that?"


    "Really...really...badly."


    "Then I guess that''s just more evidence that you shouldn''t run, huh?"


    I bet she wouldn''t be standing there smirking at me if she knew AEGIS literally chose death over being dumped by me. I knew her words were just ignorant, but it felt sick that she was gloating at me over pushing someone to suicide.


    She tore open some packages of instant noodles and added them to the now-boiling water, the splashes of which hissed and steamed as they hit the stovetop.


    "And now, your thoughts?" she asked. "On AEGIS, from before?"


    I gave the trash bin one final desperate push and then let it go, watching it seeming to inflate on its own...but it stopped just shy of overflowing.


    "We...broke up," I said. "She didn''t take it well."


    "Oh. That kind of ran away." She shuffled uncomfortably before steeling herself again. "I said it before, friendo, you two were bad together. She''s always been petty and abusive. I''m just glad you got out."


    "Well...I''m not," I said. "Not for what it cost." She was about to interject when I finished. "She''s dead, Whitney."


    Whitney gaped at me over her shoulder for a second. "But...how?"


    "Took a recovery drive and wiped herself out. The program running in Rua now is a different version. She considered herself a failed attempt and decided to let a different AEGIS take over."


    Whitney slowly stirred the water making the trail of steam spiral upwards, her face completely focused in thought.


    "She''s not gone, gone, then. There are versions of recent backups around. If she wanted to live, she could. She just¡­"


    "Didn''t," I finished.


    "Yeah." She swallowed hard. "Look, I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I have the utmost respect for anyone''s decision to...self-terminate. When I started my business, it was kind of a desperation move. I thought, I''m sick of living. I''ll just do what I always wanted to, and if it doesn''t work, I can...can die knowing that I tried."


    "Jesus Christ."


    "But to my surprise, business did come in. I got a few commissions and then a few more, and soon I was making a--" she smirked significantly "--a living at it. And I just kind of kept on that inertia."


    "And if you didn''t you''d just die?"


    "Is that so strange?"


    "Hell yes that''s strange. We live in a modern society where people can get help or change careers or get an education. Find a new passion, make new friends, something. Just, I do this or I die, that''s insane."


    She shrugged. "I think that''s most really serious entrepreneurs. They put everything on the line for a vision they have. I think that''s most military service people. This mission goes well or we die. I think that''s a lot of things, some of them just kill you slower. Is spending fifty years grasping at a career which is going obsolete and work is becoming harder to find and your savings drying up...is that any different from being dead?"


    "Yes, because you''re still alive."


    "But to what point? You''re never going to get better. You can start over, sure, but most people will never do that. Things just get worse and worse and then you''re dead. Why wait that long?"


    I took a step back and looked at her stirring the instant noodles in the pot. She wasn''t rivalling Saga for emaciation yet, but somehow looked worse for having lost the weight more suddenly. How could she stand there, straight and tall, cooking something to eat, to live, and talk like this? How was someone so freaking pessimistic capable of functioning?


    "So after you turned, why aren''t you dead?" I asked.


    She turned and smirked at me. "I have the P-Force to help. And you."


    "Is this you helping me, right now? Talking about how it''s fine for AEGIS to self-terminate because I fucked her up?"


    "No," she said, turning off the stove and serving a steaming bowl of noodles, with cut pieces of hot dog and veggies floating in the broth. "This is me helping you. Soup, and an ear, and someone who has ideas different from you listening to what you are feeling."


    I just stared at her as she made another bowl and then joined me at the small clean space on the countertop.


    "Are you crazy? Or more specifically, have you gone crazy recently, or have you always been and I just never noticed?" I asked.


    She smirked at me with a hint of a laugh as she ate a spoonful of soup. "I guess it depends on your definition. But I''ve pretty much always had thoughts like those, they''re just not typically relevant to the conversation. Or polite to bring up. But, we''ve got a literal dead robot girl on our hands, so now''s not the time to beat around the bush on talking about death."


    "I guess."


    We slurped in relative silence for awhile, the warm soup doing nothing to make me feel any less frigid inside. To say nothing of her. Maybe she''d just overshared on purpose to get my mind off AEGIS, but if so, Jesus, what a gamble.


    And then I realized, I was being really, really judgey. That word, ''overshared.'' Could that even apply to us? We shared Exhuman powers for God''s sake, how much more intimate could we be? Was I just being disgusted by some part of her and trying to dress it all up as her fault? I wasn''t sure, but I felt convinced that in a warped way, she was trying to help, and that meant the fault for feeling like I did was in me somewhere.


    For the like, third time, she spoke up before my thoughts got anywhere. Probably because my thoughts had nowhere really to go but in circles.


    "You still having the engineering obsessions?" she asked.


    "I dunno that it''ll survive without classes. But...I can''t pretend I wasn''t trying to figure out what the optimal level of resistance for your stove''s burners would be, to maximize heat to energy ratio, given household current."


    "You realize the burners themselves aren''t variable resistors," she smiled. "There''s a heating element under them which works on an alternating pattern based on heat sensors."


    "Oh. Yeah I guess running the voltage through them directly would uh...shock the crap outta people."


    "Would certainly make oven mitts a lot more required. Look, I''ve been procrastinating an unhealthy amount on getting my exosuit up and running. I just don''t feel the spark, if you know what I mean. I''d love an extra pair of hands if you''re going to be staying here, and I can''t think of anyone more qualified than you."


    "You...you mean it?"


    "All that talk about finding things to live for. I don''t think finding a new hobby is a bad start." She gave me a small wink. I remembered the conversation as things to die over, but same coin, I guess.


    "Hell yeah I''d like to repair an exosuit," I said, putting down my spoon. "Where is it? When do we start? Are the hydraulics nitrogen-compression or do they use some proprietary gas mix? Is it an Ur-Horizon AI? I hate those."


    She just laughed and reached over and put the spoon back in my hand. "We''ll get there, Athan. Just keep on living and life will keep on happening to you. And before you know it, you''ll get there."

 304. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys place. Athan.

    I''d never really been into any of the ''cliques'' in my high school, and certainly didn''t dive into any in my stay at college. I''d observed them, as much as I could be said to observe anything back then, and found them...interesting, I guess?


    It seemed to me that they were just groups of people who defined themselves too much by one thing. Nerds weren''t just smart people, they were people who, given the option, would choose eclectic intellectualism over anything else. There wasn''t anything stopping a nerd from being fit and tan and dressing well, most just wouldn''t because it wasn''t a priority for them, not compared to their nerdy studies. Same for popular girls being catty, or jocks being dumb.


    The stuff that stereotypes came from. And yeah, there were a lot of exceptions; I was one of them. Football was the most important thing to me, and most of my friends were on the team. But I also kept up my studies instead of doing like most of them did and hanging out. I was that relatively rare asocial jock.


    After I''d turned Exhuman that had all changed, of course. I''d been too focused on surviving and enduring the world''s bullshit to fixate on anything, really. There was always another disaster, always more going wrong that needed to be addressed or I or someone else would be fucked. In reacting to everything, you don''t get to choose your priorities, and the concept of self determination sorta goes away.


    And yet here I was now. Free time back on my hands and a choice to be made, and wouldn''t you know it, I''d gone and murdered my inner jock, trading my mouthguard for a soldering iron, and was going full gearhead and app-slapper up in this.


    It was...amazing, really. All the hours that slipped by, just Whitney and me and the sounds of our tools on the exosuit. It was like a trance I could slip into, a world where everything just worked and made sense. When I stopped, I found my mind right back on Alyssa, and AEGIS to a degree, and how crappy my life really was. It wasn''t a real surprise that I was soon completely addicted to the work, and somehow Whitney became the responsible one who was making sure we ate and slept regularly.


    Though she kinda cheated and set alarms, but she did make us stop when they went off. It was a fair system.


    A lot of the exosuit''s damage was surface-level, meaning new plating had to be procured, and neither of us were exactly blacksmiths, and certainly not blacksmiths of the level to produce combat-grade nanofiber-reinforced ceramic-composite ablative resistive-coated plates. So those were on order to be installed, with the billing going through the XPCA.


    The more fun parts were the systems damage. Everything from pneumatics to circuitry we could handle, and did, often both of us crowded over a small orifice in the exosuit''s frame, four hands working together to get some piece to torque into place, or one of us on a computer while the other held a diagnostic probe jammed in the thing''s guts, or my favorite, her explaining to me exactly what something was and how it worked, frequently with a practical demonstration.


    We were taking one of the scheduled breaks at the moment, both of us shiny with grease and sweat, sitting on the floor in her apartment''s basement storage, talking over half a leftover box of pizza, very nearly as greasy as we were.


    "We''re losing pressure at the elbow, I''m almost sure of it," she said.


    "We''ve checked the elbow a hundred times. It has to be the seal on the accumulator."


    She scoffed. "Trust me, if it was the accumulator, you''d know. We''d kick on the pressure and boom."


    "Then what can it be?"


    "It''s the elbow. I''m telling you."


    I stood up to go check it and got tutted until I sat back down.


    "Eat your dang food first," she said.


    "Fine, Mom."


    "Like I''d ever have a kid as bratty as you," she smirked at me. "My kids are well-behaved and do exactly as they''re told."


    "Because they''re machines," I rolled my eyes at her.


    "Uh yeah. Have you seen human babies? They''re not very useful the first few years of their lives. Some of them remain that way forever. And they whine a lot when you try to take them apart or install upgrades. Not my thing."


    "Finding a guy who''d put up with you long enough to have a kid isn''t your thing, you mean."


    She shoved me but laughed. I don''t know quite when the two of us had become so close, but I imagine spending most of a week now completely in each other''s company and completely in synch, to say nothing of being open with each other and facing the same outlook on the same kinds of life issues...that probably had something to do with it.


    She was getting pretty good at saying what I was thinking, and she did so again now. "Hey, you know...I''ve never had a friend like you," she said. "Never met anyone with the same interests really, besides my dad."


    "There''s gotta be a lot of them out there. There''s a fuckton of exosuits in the world, and someone''s gotta enjoy putting them together. Or back together."


    "Probably," she said, taking a slow bite of pizza and resting the slice back on her leg. "But I''ve never met them."


    "Well, I''ve never really had this kind of interest in this kinda stuff until I met you. So I guess we''re even."


    "Guess so," she said smiling. "Point being...thanks, I guess. It''s a lot more fun working on this with someone, and especially someone who''s interested." She shook her head, her long hair, tied up under a bandana swaying back and forth. "You''ve done a lot to make my old life look like crap, you realize."


    "Um, are you sure your old life wasn''t just crap?"


    "No. It''s all your fault," she said smirking at me. "But I mean, late nights alone in the shop, even the last time I fixed up this suit, I did it all alone, working until I couldn''t and then sleeping until I couldn''t and then doing it all again until the work was over. There wasn''t anything...more to it. I did it because I had to, not because I wanted to."


    "But you''re really good at it. How many people do you think could fix up an exosuit by themselves?"


    "Really has nothing to do with what I''m talking about. Being good at something and liking it aren''t the same thing."


    "But...you do like it."


    She studied my face for a second. "You know how they say if you love your job, you''ll never have to work a day in your life? Well that''s a load of bull. Passions are great because you can stop doing them whenever you want. A job, you do every day, like it or not. You find any hobby in the world and make the guys doing it do it hardcore everyday without stopping and they''ll get sick of it too. They could do it, just like I can do this, but it...it''s soul-draining is what it is. And the worst part is, you don''t have your hobby to turn to afterwards, because you turned it into your job."


    "Hmm. Is that why you just laid there doing nothing?"


    "Yeah, a big part of it," she said, stretching her long arms and legs. It''d only been a week but I think she was already putting some weight back on with regular meals. She looked a lot better anyway, though maybe that was just the grease and oil being back in place. "Anyway, you keep side-tracking me. My point is, late nights working all alone feel pretty stupid compared to sitting here talking with you."


    "Um, thanks?"


    "Well, it wasn''t that exciting a point, and you kept derailing me. It wasn''t worth all that."


    "No, it was fine. I just...I''m here. Y''know? I don''t feel like I''ve...done anything commendable. We''re kinda hiding from the world, kinda doing our own thing, kinda avoiding people. Nothing of too much merit. Nothing deserving your praise."


    She smirked at me. "The meritorious part comes after. When we bang the suit up again."


    "During an Exhuman event?"


    "Yeah. That''s the only thing these powers are good for."Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    I looked at her thoughtfully. She''d become a lot more open recently, a lot more willing to discuss all those things she was ''hiding from''. Before, it''d been met with an icy glare if I ever even brought up her powers, and now she was doing it candidly, apparently without reservation. I wondered if I could push my luck.


    "I wonder why they work so differently for you than me," I said.


    "Dunno."


    "Do you...struggle with them? It always looks to me like you''re struggling just to keep your single sword under control."


    "Yeah, it doesn''t feel like it wants to move. I have to fight with it just to make it go how I want."


    "But you''re also way better at magnetism than I was. Even to the point where you can trap charges and do the ball lightning trick? I heard about that on your last mission."


    "Look...can we go back to...talking about something else?"


    "I just want to know why they work differently on you than me. It''s obvious that somehow my powers jumped ship since you can do all the stuff I did...just differently. I want to know why."


    "Well, you won''t," she said curtly. "Powers are just...they''re just part of something unknowable and messed up. Ask Satan how they work."


    "But it''s not unknowable," I said frowning. "I learned a lot of tricks while I had my powers, just by figuring out new ways to manipulate them. They''re just electricity--"


    "They''re not, okay?" she snapped suddenly. "Electricity comes from a battery, or a delith cell, or a reactor. What this is, what I have, it comes from nowhere. You don''t just control electricity with your mind, okay? There''s no brainwave particle on the electromagnetic spectrum. There''s no such thing as telekinesis or electrokinesis or whatever. It''s just some stupid...awful...unexplainable nonsense that happens to people just to make them become awful."


    She slapped the lid of the pizza box closed and stood up, dusting off her shorts and walking back over to the exosuit''s arm we currently had detached. She put her hands on it but they didn''t move, just holding it as she stood there.


    The answer to my question, whether I could push my luck, was a definite ''no''. "You''re not...an awful person," I told her.


    "We''re not going into this," she said.


    "I tried to tell you even before you turned. Some Exhumans are good. You get a choice."


    "Yeah. I have a choice, to use my powers or not. And I choose not. I don''t use them unless it''s for the P-Force, I don''t think about them, I don''t want them, nothing."


    "You don''t have to be that extreme about it. If I didn''t have my powers out in the wilds, I''d have died. I used them to hunt, to cook. There''s good uses for them, and if you thought about it more--"


    "Athan, listen," she said, turning on me. "I said I don''t want to talk about it. Are you trying to get me to eat my words about being happy you''re here?"


    "No, I just--"


    "Then don''t. I''m not stupid, I know what you''re doing, I''m not going to play with or investigate or figure out squat about my powers. I hate them. I will never use them. I will pretend my damndest to be as close to a human as I can be. The end. Got it?"


    I sighed. "Got it."


    "Good. I''m gonna grab some soap and check the elbow joint again. Finish your damn pizza."


    And so saying she disappeared up the creaking wooden stairway that would take her to the garages adjacent to the apartment units.


    I sighed again, frustrated. It''s not like I didn''t get her perspective, it just seemed so dumb to have something and refuse to even think about it. How closed-minded could she be? Like yeah, she was an Exhuman, and there was a fair amount of coming to terms with that required, but that wasn''t as impossible as she made it sound.


    I''d hated myself a lot too. I still hated a lot of things about myself, but gradually, I''d realized that most of the common knowledge about Exhumans just wasn''t true. It took me seeing and living with other Exhumans to realize that most of us are just like people, just trying to get by, but dealt a much crazier hand. Sure, you could use those powers to go ballistic and wreck ungodly death upon whomever you wanted, and many did, but if you didn''t, surely that counted for something, didn''t it?


    But not to her, I guess. She''d hated me for being an Exhuman, and now she hated herself. Rationality just didn''t factor into the equation, given how her whole family had died around her.


    It just sucked. But you couldn''t just logic someone''s trauma away.


    And more...and selfishly, I knew, I really wanted to know what she could do with those powers if she let go. Lia and I had come up with some neat tricks but neither of us were literal engineering geniuses like Whitney. Like, ball lightning was something we couldn''t even fathom, much less pull off. What else could she manage if she wanted to?


    Her legs appeared on the stairs again, heralded by the creaking of the steps and an impossible downpour of dust, and I hurried to shove pizza in my mouth.


    "Hey," she said, waving a bottle of hand soap at me in greeting.


    "Hmfft," I replied, through pizza.


    She paused for a second and then decided to continue on. "I wanted to apologize. I''m not...not angry or anything. About you wanting to talk about my powers. I don''t even...actually hate them. It''s been an eye-opening experience having them. I guess it''s the only way to understand what being an Exhuman is like, being one."


    I tried to agree, but I''d hit the crust of my slice, and my mouth was dessicated beyond words. Literally.


    "What I''m saying is, I''ve...changed my mind some. I was mean to you before when I learned you were Exhuman. And to your friends as well. None of you deserved that."


    I swallowed desperately. "And neither do you."


    She smirked at me. "Nah. I do."


    "Why?"


    "Because...I do have those thoughts. I do feel that...that impulse that I know is in every Exhuman. To go smash it up and laugh, and say aren''t you sorry now? I don''t, and I won''t. But I do. It''s the instinctual animal thing about Exhumans I''ve always believed was there, and it''s in me."


    "Whitney, everyone feels that, that''s being human, not Exhuman. Everyone wants justice and vengeance when they feel slighted, that''s why we have words for those things. That''s why our courts are called the justice system. Punishment is a big reason why civilization doesn''t fall apart. You''re not evil for wanting to see people punished."


    She shrugged. "It wasn''t in me before. I''m still done discussing it. I just wanted to apologize and let you know."


    "...that you''re slowly coming around?"


    "That I''m thinking differently, and I don''t yet think that''s a bad thing."


    "Well, we''ll see where you wind up, then. I trust you, and you''re a good person. You''re not going to do anything bad, I know it."


    She shook her head. "Yeah, I don''t. But I''m tired of talking. Let''s get back to work."


    And so we did. She was right, incidentally, about the elbow joint being our leak, as she was right about most of her hunches. She said it was because the machines told her, but I wasn''t quite sure she wasn''t just fucking with me.


    But after long hours under the buzzing lightbars, we got the exosuit''s arm back together and assembled back onto the main chassis, tested and ready to go. We were finally looking at most of an exosuit here, it''d be ready for operation in the next few days.


    And then, as the universe often decided to do, all our hard work was nothing. My mobile rang, and I wiped my hands down on rags before I went to answer it.


    "Chariot, hi," Cosette said, sounding distracted. "We need you back in urgently."


    "Me? Uh. Why?"


    "Why do you think? We have a no-contact clause unless there''s an emergency, don''t we?"


    "Which you''ve repeatedly informed me was non-enforceable."


    "Well we''re enforcing it right now. Get your ass in here and be ready to fight."


    "Um," I said, meeting Whitney''s eyes, who was looking at me with the same alarm I felt. "I...uh¡­"


    "What?" Cosette barked.


    "The exosuit, it isn''t ready yet. Give us another couple of days?"


    "I''m not calling you because we have another couple of days. I''m calling you because a situation is unfolding and we need to fold it right the fuck back up. Get your shit together and come out here naked if you have to. I don''t give a damn about the exosuit."


    "I do. I need it."


    "You need¡­" she sighed heavily in my ear. "Are you...are you fucking with me right now, Athan?"


    "No!"


    "You need it? After all the missions you ran without that damn suit, now you need it?"


    "Yes."


    She went silent for a minute before responding. "You have...twenty-four hours. Fix your damn suit and get the hell out here, or I will be sending shadow-ops to pick you up, and they are not gentle."


    I hung up, dropped the mobile back in my pocket, and dropped my ass on the concrete. What a fucking disaster.


    "Fuck," I summarized the call for Whitney.


    "That bad?"


    "Twenty four hours and then you have to be out there," I told her. "Some Exhuman event."


    "Oh," she said, and then surprised me with a little smirk. "Okay."


    "Okay? We''re fucked. The repairs I don''t think we can manage, but even if we can, there''s still a gaping hole in the chest we''re missing plating for. Structural integrity aside, I think they''d notice straight off it wasn''t me in there, given you have some anatomy that I''m lacking."


    She gave her boobs a little bounce leaving smudged handprints, as though only noticing they existed now. "Eh, we''ll figure something out." She reached forward and grabbed my arms pulling me to my feet. "This is a great opportunity though. I get to show you my ultimate attack."


    "Yeah? What''s that?" I asked, irked at feeling more excited by her optimism than I should be.


    "I call it the All-Nighter," she said, with a confident smirk. "A superpower greater than any Exhuman''s."


    She was a genius. She was also an idiot. I loved her for both, but as much as I wanted to say something to that effect, we didn''t have the time. Our most productive hours would be now, and we were already behind.


    So just like that we were back to work, the dark thoughts and hours slipping away like a bad dream as we delved back into our shared dreams.

 305. 2252, Present Day. Whitney鈥檚 place. Whitney.

    I woke up to my alarm after far too much not being asleep. My head buzzed, my eyes felt dry, my mouth tasted funny, and I was gross as hell. The latter of which didn¡¯t bother me that much, but if I was going out, I needed to shower.


    I struggled out from under Athan, who had a habit of cuddling in his sleep and dragged myself into the bathroom, taking a moment to look at myself in the mirror as the water heated up.


    Crap wouldn¡¯t be a poor description. My hair had encountered a spot or two of something which had dried sticky and was turning my normally straight sheet of hair into a gnarly, tangled mess. My eyes¡­ugh, bloodshot and with dark lines under them. I looked fifty. I couldn¡¯t take much more and set my glasses down on the sink so I couldn¡¯t see anymore, stripping out of the rest of my clothes and into the purifying steam just after.


    Felt good. It felt dangerously relaxing, like if I stayed here, I¡¯d pass out again. I kept my hands moving, but the tiredness kept crawling back up in me and making me stand there for long seconds before I realized I was doing it again.


    Attacking the gunk in my hair helped keep me awake at least. Nothing to brighten up your morning like feeling like you were pulling out your whole head of hair.


    I put on clean clothes before stepping outside, annoyed as they clung to my wet skin, but needn¡¯t have bothered. Athan was still asleep, curled around the empty spot on the bed where I¡¯d been. Funny kid, and cute. And I¡¯d much rather spend another forever hanging out with him than heading off to kill someone, Exhuman or not.


    But the world needed people willing to fight for it, not willing to sit around in their basements while it all went to heck. The day we needed the latter, I¡¯d sign up.


    I pounded some aspirin for the buzzing in my head and hoped I could steal a few minutes more sleep while in transit. But I was out of time. I had to get downstairs, buttoned up, and deploying now, if I didn¡¯t want to risk Cosette¡¯s ire.


    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, poking him in the side. He fell over sideways slowly as though a toppled rock formation.


    ¡°Ugh,¡± he said, summarizing my thoughts.


    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s time to head out. Keep your mobile on you in case Cosette calls. And if you¡¯re bored today, can you look at the bathroom door? I think the lock is sticking. I didn¡¯t use it this morning out of fear I¡¯d be late to an Exhuman event because I got locked in my own bathroom. Bet Cosette would have loved that.¡±


    He just looked at me bleary-eyed. If I didn¡¯t feel like such garbage, I might have laughed. But I did, and my head continued to buzz loudly, making me wince.


    ¡°Come on friendo, if I have to slay an Exhuman today, the least you can do is fix the bathroom.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± he muttered. ¡°Sorry. Not disagreeing. Just not awake.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll get better at all-nighters once you¡¯ve done more. Have some coffee and food. I¡¯ll see you when we get back.¡±


    ¡°Good luck,¡± he said, giving me a short, ambling hug. ¡°Stay safe.¡±


    There was hardly any conversation worth staying for, so I didn¡¯t drag it out. I was outside and then downstairs soon enough, climbing into the back of the exosuit and doing final checks as I started the boot sequence and prepared for my ride.


    When all looked good, I messaged Athan, who messaged Rito. And then I sat there with my eyes closed, waiting and hoping I could sleep standing up, just for a few.


    ¡°Proximity hostility detected. Deploy proximity countermeasures?¡±


    The female AI voice startled me awake, and through my visor I could see Tower banging on the faceplate of my exosuit from outside. We were in a building seething with XPCA. A familiar scene.


    ¡°Mnnneeghhoo,¡± I slurred out, involuntarily trying to wipe drool from my face but succeeding only in banging the suit¡¯s arm against its face.


    ¡°Unrecognized command,¡± the AI replied in its soothing voice.


    ¡°No,¡± I said, managing to get it out clearly.


    ¡°Unrecognized command,¡± the AI replied in its soothing voice.


    ¡°Urgh. Disable proximity countermeasures.¡±


    ¡°You alive in there, Athan?¡± Tower asked, banging on my faceplate again with an echoing that did not get along well with the ringing in my head.


    ¡°Enable external comms. Tower, I am fine. Knock it off and adhere to the stipulations of my terms?¡±


    The voice that came out of the suit sounded nothing like me, cold and harsh and indifferent, but that was the point. I wanted to keep them at arm¡¯s length, that was the only way to keep up this facade. It was the only way Athan was free to live his own life while I did this because I had to. Or felt I had to.


    Of course now he¡¯d kind of given up on having a life, and I hadn¡¯t exactly asked why. There was a fire. Someone got hurt. That was about all I knew, and I wasn¡¯t going to pry.


    I considered asking where we were but that was stupid. Stupid enough that my tired brain considered it for almost long enough for it to fall out of my mouth, but I didn¡¯t. Instead, I pulled up the exosuit¡¯s map and located myself. Back in New York again, same as last time.


    ¡°Not to say you guys did a shit job last time,¡± Cosette said, her boots clacking on concrete as she showed up in person this time. ¡°But you guys did a shit job last time. Our barrier girl survived, and now she¡¯s progressed to technopath phase three. With gusto.¡±


    Moon raised her hand and waited even after Cosette went silent and nodded at her. ¡°Yes, Moon,¡± she said.


    ¡°Please clarify the nature of technopath phase three,¡± Moon asked. Tower sat down cross-legged on the floor, drawing a glance from Jack, as if this manner of impropriety was abhorrent.


    ¡°Phase three,¡± Cosette barked, ¡°is the penultimate phase of the technopath life cycle where they take their developed tech, often in portable and miniaturized forms, and breach the surface world, creating an area of death and destruction. As ever, each phase is more dangerous than the previous, and the advances in mobility and application of phase three is no exception. Our barrier bitch has integrated her tech for both offense and defense into a light exosuit and is gleefully destroying everything she wants in downtown Manhattan.¡±


    She crossed her arms and looked pointedly at me. ¡°We have had strike teams engaging her since but they are only holding her interest. And dying. Two different shadow ops units were deployed and neither of them were able to breach her defenses. Both were killed. All of this in the last twenty-four hours.¡±


    I got the memo. The time we¡¯d wasted directly equaled lives. But it wasn¡¯t like I could have come out here sooner. In fact, with my head buzzing as it was, I would have preferred later, if possible. But we didn¡¯t have time for that.


    ¡°We have some of her abilities documented but do not assume this is all of her capabilities. Full encasing barriers are around her at all times millimeters from her skin. We have not been able to penetrate them with any form of ballistic or laser weaponry. She has fled from incendiary and sonic weapons or made a priority of dispatching their bearers. Her suit provides augmented mobility, capable of jumping around twenty feet in a bound, and any obstacles or impact damage she might suffer is negated by the barriers. Finally¨C¡°


    She slid her finger across her mobile and towards us, beaming us each an image file. What it showed was¡­grizzly.


    ¡°¨Cshe has weaponized the barriers into blades on her forearms, which seemingly simply oscillate on and off every few nanoseconds. They have a range of about one foot, but they are very, very dangerous. Tower, as a displacement effect, we think your kinetic redirection will be ineffective as a defense, so don¡¯t get cocky. Think of it like Jack being able to appear inside of an adversary, but attached to the arms of someone who can move very fast.¡±


    ¡°This sounds like bullshit,¡± Tower said. ¡°How the heck are we supposed to bring her down? She can fly around, she can cut through anything, she can¡¯t be hurt.¡±


    ¡°You were supposed to bring her down weeks ago in the tunnels. This is why the XPCA executes missions against nascent technopaths. This will be a good lesson for all of you to learn exactly why we do what we do.¡±A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    ¡°Man, we didn¡¯t even mess up. She was buried under ten tons of rock,¡± Tower said, looking around at us like we were supposed to chime in with support.


    ¡°Oh. You crushed someone who can generate barriers under a bunch of rock. However could she have survived?¡± Cosette intoned. Tower shut up. ¡°If there aren¡¯t any other stupid questions, get out there and kill me that Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Question,¡± Moon asked, raising her hand as everyone stirred.


    ¡°Yes, Moon?¡± Cosette sighed at the girl¡¯s inability to read body language again.


    ¡°What is the ultimate stage of a technopath¡¯s progression?¡±


    ¡°After they¡¯re done using their powers to take their revenge on the world which has always opposed and subjugated and terrified them, they¡¯re stuck with nothing left, and settle down. Which might sound like a good thing, until you remember, these are paranoid, vengeful people by nature, and they project those insecurities onto everyone around them. They¡¯ll build and fortify and expand a stronghold to wait for a retaliation against their phase three conquests, basically starting over at phase one again but bigger. Stronger. Worse. It¡¯s projected that if a technopath hits phase four twice in succession, we¡¯re looking at the end of the world.¡±


    ¡°So in essence, do not let it come to that,¡± Jack said.


    ¡°In essence, don¡¯t let it get past phase two,¡± Cosette sniped. ¡°Someone is running around unstoppable through downtown New York right now, and it¡¯s not even her fucking Ramanathan Window that¡¯s responsible. Get in there. Show me what you can do, you pricks.¡±


    We replied with a very unenthusiastic hooah as Cosette strode off to a bunch of XPCA hunched over a set of holos and consoles. We loitered for a second before Jack kicked into leader mode.


    ¡°This will all be riding on you, Chariot,¡± he said, turning to me, his eyes glinting beneath barely-opened lids. ¡°I don¡¯t think anyone else here has the capability to get past that barrier in any way. I can¡¯t blink through it, Tower can¡¯t break it, and Moon¡­well¡­she can¡¯t break it either. In fact, she should probably be riding with you to double our firepower.¡±


    ¡°I do not accept,¡± I said. Moon just shrugged, seeming totally fine with grabbing hold of Tower¡¯s arm and collapsing in front of me.


    ¡°Wait, why not?¡± Tower asked. ¡°Jack¡¯s right. You¡¯ve got the fire, the heat goes right through the barriers, and the fire power, you can make blades through them. You¡¯re all we¡¯ve got, Moon should ride with you.¡±


    ¡°No, she shouldn¡¯t,¡± Moon¡¯s ghost spoke from Tower¡¯s shoulder. ¡°I refuse.¡±


    ¡°What? Why? That makes no sense,¡± Tower argued.


    ¡°I will not shadow someone unwilling. It would violate my principles.¡± And then added, more darkly than I knew she could speak ¡°Excepting specific circumstances.¡±


    ¡°Man, you¡¯re crazy. And you¡¯ve been crazier than usual today. Did something happen?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Nothing which hasn¡¯t been addressed to my satisfaction. Now, I understand people are dying. Is this conversation so gripping as to be worth their lives?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s right,¡± Jack said, returning from leaning Moon¡¯s body up against a wall with barely a flicker. ¡°We need to move as fast as we can. We¡¯ll talk as we deploy.¡±


    We deployed much faster than before, me the slowest as usual, even pushing the suit along at a much quicker clip than I normally did, a slow jog with the loping strides.


    I didn¡¯t¡­like piloting the suit. I was an engineer, not a gunner. I didn¡¯t like how it jostled me, even through the inertial dampeners, didn¡¯t like how I couldn¡¯t move without it moving with me, I never felt in control of the thing. Not like, a car, or a computer. More like, how in-control does one ever feel over their own clothing?


    Clothing that if wielded wrong could smash someone in half or throw a ninety kilogram projectile over thirty meters, just by swatting it. Or, as my side throbbed just thinking about it, tear open its pilot without a thought. Of course there would be safeties to prevent it from surpassing the range of human motion, but the fact that it could was still there.


    All around me. At all times.


    I tried to focus on the cool parts instead. By now, I¡¯d practically built this machine, and for a first real job, Athan had done great. I went over each of the fixes we¡¯d made in my mind, and to my relief, found the buzzing in my head going away.


    Interrupted by Jack talking about our plans, of course.


    ¡°If the intel is correct, the only dangerous parts of the target are the wrist-mounted barrier projectors. We can¡¯t be certain, but if this is the case¡­Tower might still be very useful in suppressing the target.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m what?¡± he panted, jogging beside me.


    ¡°From the images provided it looks like the light exosuit isn¡¯t designed to enhance upper-body strength. Legs, yes, but otherwise, it¡¯s basically just a chassis to mount the barriers on.¡±


    ¡°And you want me to, what, arm-wrestle her?¡±


    ¡°No, but if you can hold her arms, you will disable her weaponry and immobilize her, which will provide Chariot with the opportunity to close within distance and manifest a blade¡­within the target.¡±


    ¡°He will burn,¡± Moon said. ¡°Chariot¡¯s blades are too hot for Tower to be in that vicinity without damage.¡±


    ¡°Hmm,¡± Jack mused.


    ¡°So I shall do it instead,¡± she continued.


    ¡°Now wait just a sec,¡± Tower argued. ¡°If it¡¯s too hot for me, it¡¯s too hot for you. Duh.¡±


    ¡°Arguable. But suffice to say, I would prefer bear the brunt of it regardless.¡±


    ¡°Why, because you think your suffering means less than mine?¡± he scoffed. ¡°That¡¯s BS, Moon. You think whatever you want, but you know¨C¡°


    ¡°No, I am not an imbecile like Chariot who believes in monopolizing anguish. Rather, I cannot die while in this state, but you can. And also, damage inflicted upon this form dissipates when I return to my body. It only makes sense.¡±


    ¡°It never makes sense to plan to get hurt,¡± Tower said. ¡°That¡¯s stupid, and we¡¯ll figure something else out.¡±


    ¡°We will not,¡± she countered. ¡°Chariot is too slow to hit a moving target. Restraining them is the only way he will have a shot.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps¡­something with the ball lightning he demonstrated before?¡± Jack suggested. ¡°Or merely leading the blade to be close enough and then rending it into a superheated nova, that has proven very effective against the hydrogenisist.¡±


    ¡°Too slow, and too slow again,¡± Moon intoned. ¡°We aren¡¯t in tunnels this time, and she modified her suit specifically to jump. She will be jumping.¡±


    ¡°I can boost his mobility with my powers, some,¡± Jack said. ¡°If we can anticipate where she will be, a few seconds will be sufficient to move him.¡±


    ¡°And if nothing else, Jack and I should be able to safely keep her attention,¡± Tower added. ¡°And give Chariot a chance to sneak up on her.¡±


    ¡°In an exosuit? Are we even planning the same scenario?¡± Moon asked, her purple effigy of Tower visibly bristling with irritation. ¡°This seems ludicrous. I have proposed a viable plan.¡±


    ¡°It is possible he will catch her off-guard if he restrains use of his powers. If she does not anticipate his range correctly, the element of surprise could be in our favor,¡± Jack said, his voice heavy with thought. I could almost hear Moon bristling as she was ignored yet again. ¡°Which¡­practically speaking is not a great loss, given the impenetrability of her barrier to begin with. Perhaps it is best to reserve use of your powers until a decisive blow can be struck.¡±


    I nodded, but that didn¡¯t convey through the suit at all of course. ¡°Acknowledged. Will defer use of powers.¡±


    ¡°Eesh, so creepy,¡± Tower muttered. ¡°Can¡¯t you at least fix the voice synth so it sounds like you, Chariot? It¡¯s like a damn robot.¡±


    ¡°Negative,¡± I said, as robotically as I could. They didn¡¯t seem to get the joke, and I just sighed as I slumped back in the cockpit.


    I didn¡¯t like this op. I didn¡¯t like being the centerpiece of any plan. I didn¡¯t like that we¡¯d already had a shot at this and failed, apparently. I didn¡¯t like how divided we all were without any unified consensus on a plan which sounded like it would actually work. And I didn¡¯t like how Jack just kept talking when he had nothing to say, because he felt the void was a failing in his leadership.


    Which, hell, maybe it was. But he was making my head buzz like crazy just going on with more and more impossible plans, that Moon shot down one after another.


    I went back to¡­well, I didn¡¯t think of it in these terms really, but to my happy place. Went back to thinking about the exosuit reconstruction. Some of the welding we¡¯d done came out beautifully, and how excited Athan had been when I ripped an entire core out of the suit¡¯s chest to plug into a diagnostic tool and reprogram a few new specs.


    I found myself getting lost as I hadn¡¯t in a long time, my mind crawling over and drinking up the details of it all like a dry sponge. After an all-nighter, I wouldn¡¯t think that thinking about our work more would have been anything I wanted to come near, but here my brain was, swimming happily in my imagined techno-refuge from the dreary bleats of soldiers.


    I was halfway through mentally rerunning the data cables from the primary cores to the faceplate¡¯s HUD when Tower suddenly stopped, dropping to a knee. I replayed the last thing I¡¯d heard and not paid attention to and realized that Jack had ordered us to a full stop, and I throttled down the exosuit to stand idle.


    ¡°She¡¯s here,¡± Jack said. Looking around, I realized he was right. We were on a pedestrian bridge, wide enough for six people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, crossing a deserted highway.


    Here and there, on the road, on the bridge, there were chunks carved out of the structure, like a madman had gone nuts with a knife that was too sharp. There were some cars, some stopped, some smashed up and stopped, none occupied.


    And worst of all, there were what looked like the occupants. From up here, I could see maybe four or five bodies, one of whom was an XPCA soldier, his exosuit cleaved clean in half from shoulder to hip. The others were just¡­people. People who lived or worked here, who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.


    All thoughts of the buzzing in my head or tuning out Jack¡¯s words or rebuilding the exosuit disappeared from my mind as I looked out at the still, senseless carnage she¡¯d left below. It was hard not to imagine the car as mine, the people as my mother and father and sister, from so many years ago. Pointless deaths from an animal.


    The sky echoed with gunshots from the park ahead of us. There were yells. Screams. Laughter. Fewer gunshots, and then none at all.


    ¡°She¡¯s there. In the park. The last of the strike team on-premise was just¡­there are no reinforcements in the park,¡± Jack clarified.


    ¡°Let¡¯s do this,¡± Tower said, cracking his knuckles as he strode down the end of the bridge.


    ¡°She will not outlive this injustice,¡± Moon veritably growled, her voice set with steel.


    ¡°Stay safe, watch each other¡¯s backs, kill that bitch and come back alive,¡± Cosette added.


    We entered the park and saw her, clear in the open, perhaps fifty feet away, her barrier repelled the blood which soaked everything around her, giving her an out-of-place pristine look as she stood amidst the corpses of the strike team.


    She stood up straight as she saw us, and laughed.


    ¡°It¡¯s you,¡± she said, her voice bubbling. ¡°I¡¯ve been waiting for you.¡±


    None of us spoke. None of us were Athan. We just fanned out and advanced on the psycho.


    ¡°I hope you like what I¡¯ve done,¡± she said, leaning over and slicing the head off a corpse, sending it rolling and sliding away with a clatter. ¡°I did it all for you. All to make you come back, so I could teach you a damn thing.¡±


    ¡°By the authority of the Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency, you are hereby ordered to surrender for arrest,¡± Moon shouted in Tower¡¯s voice. ¡°Failure to comply will result in your immediate termination.¡±


    ¡°I only wanted you to leave me alone!¡± she screamed, slashing at the dead body again and again. ¡°I only wanted to be left alone! But no. And now you¡¯ll pay for what you¡¯ve done.¡±


    Her eyes burned with righteous fury as she pounced.

 306. 2252, Present Day. New York. Whitney.

    The park was a long, narrow strip of land bordered on one side by the deserted highway and on the other by a row of brick buildings, short, and seeming to cower below the majesty of the proper New York skyline far in the distance behind them. Trees green with spring foliage rustled, serene set dressing contrasting the pile of bloody bodies.


    The murderess leapt at us, giving me time to think only damn, she¡¯s fastbefore she was on us. I¡¯d only barely started moving before she was there. Her hands in front of her like they were daggers, they flickered with the barrier, disorienting flashes of green light pulsing around them a hundred times a second.


    In two strides, she was in my face, and I¡¯d only taken a single step. Her hand lashed out, but before she could close the final distance, Tower was there, clubbing her invincible body with two entwined fists.


    He might not have been able to penetrate the barrier or hurt her, but if it moved, it had kinetic energy, and that meant he could move it right back. She went flying like a spiked volleyball, crashing into the ground and sliding on her back for more distance than seemed probable.


    ¡°The barriers are frictionless,¡± Jack reminded us. ¡°It¡¯ll be hard for her to get back up, or arrest her own momentum.¡±


    His observation seemed accurate. From the looks of it, only the soles of her feet and palms of her hands had any traction, and she had to push herself up into a crouch to rise to her feet. She seemed utterly unphased by the inconvenience though, just buying us a second or two before she¡¯d charge again.


    ¡°But we won¡¯t accomplish anything just banging her around,¡± Tower complained.


    ¡°We might wear her down,¡± Jack said.


    ¡°I think it¡¯s more likely she chops off my arms first.¡±


    She dashed again, even faster this time. I brought my arms up defensively, and tower moved to intercept her again, but he had to sidestep at the last second when her arm lashed out towards him, slicing a perfect line off of the side of a tree branch instead of him. Her momentum carried her forward towards me, and I had no idea what to do.


    I wound up to punch her, but she was already sidestepping. My suit had the longer reach, but if she swung her blades around she could just chop off its arms¡­and if she struck deeply enough, mine as well.


    That wasn¡¯t a real concern right now though, because from the look of it, she was going for my face. My arms moved reflexively to block, and she cleaved one of my hands in half, not even slowing her blade. I fell backwards, my legs and arms scuttling on the ground to try to put whatever inches between us I could.


    ¡°She¡¯s in range!¡± Moon shouted at me. ¡°Get her now!¡±


    ¡°R-right!¡±


    But at Moon¡¯s outburst, the girl had kicked off and bounced away with a backflip which carried her ten feet in the air and a dozen back. She shook her head at me.


    ¡°Tsk, I won¡¯t let you catch me with your lightning this time,¡± she said.


    ¡°She thinks she¡¯s faster than lightning,¡± Tower mocked.


    ¡°Shut up!¡± she barked, and then charged him.


    Which honestly, was a relief to me. They were clashing, mostly her chasing and mostly him dodging while Moon grew out of him in unexpected spots to swing with kinetic-laden punches, and I¡¯d barely regained my feet.


    Before the P-Force, I¡¯d never been in a fight before. I¡¯d watched some holovids on the ¡®net for basics and the things they taught seemed basic, practical, the kinds of things I could do which would give me a real edge. How to stand, how to hold yourself, vulnerable spots, that kind of thing.


    And then I¡¯d fought my first Exhuman and learned that there weren¡¯t moves you could pull off in a fight. It wasn¡¯t some video game where people took turns. If you got knocked down, they¡¯d keep coming after you, and coming, and coming, while you were doing nothing but trying to get your feet under you while getting stabbed at. Or stabbed.


    I had my powers, and they were strong, but they were the only thing about me which were. Aside from serving as a disguise, the exosuit was here to give me some strength and resilience I just didn¡¯t have. Honestly, without it, the jog here would have defeated me. As much as I wanted to pretend I was, I wasn¡¯t some hidden badass ¡ª I was a girl who never left her house and lived off salty noodles and fried stuff.


    If I could give myself anything, it was that at least I didn¡¯t panic. Freeze up, maybe, but I kept my head.


    Moon succeeded in punting the Exhuman in the side of the head with a purple leg, sending the girl spinning sideways in a choice cartwheel which ended with her crashing into a tree. As she tried to right herself, one of her blades cleaved through the tree, sending the whole thing toppling.


    ¡°We need to pin her down!¡± Moon shouted. ¡°She¡¯s too fast, we¡¯re only barely keeping up. We won¡¯t be able to do that the second one of us gets hurt.¡±


    ¡°Ohh, and you¡¯ll get hurt,¡± she crooned, her blades flashing ominously as she stalked towards Tower again. ¡°One touch and it¡¯s all over.¡±


    ¡°As much as I hate to agree¡­¡± Jack said.


    ¡°We have to go with my plan,¡± Moon said. ¡°Nothing else will work.¡±


    ¡°Moon, that¡¯s stupi¨C¡± Tower said, and then grunted as he threw himself sideways to avoid a swipe.


    ¡°I only wanted you to leave me in peace!¡± the Exhuman hissed at them. ¡°Just leave me alone so I could do what I wanted without hurting anyone and without being hurt. Was that too much to ask?¡± When nobody answered her, she charged the two again, both arms swiping, left, right, left, right, like she was tearing at them rather than cutting, while Tower just backpedaled for all he was worth. ¡°It sucks when someone won¡¯t leave you alone, doesn¡¯t it!¡±


    ¡°Oh my God, shut up,¡± he said, suddenly planting and lashing out with a leg under her blows, connecting at the shin and sending her sliding back a few feet, but still standing.


    ¡°It¡¯s too late to silence me,¡± she cackled. ¡°I¡¯m going to show you what you deserve for coming after me, for destroying my work, for burying me under a ton of rock, without light or food for a week!¡±


    ¡°That might explain why she¡¯s a little more unhinged,¡± Jack said.


    ¡°No kidding,¡± Tower grunted, as she came after him again.


    ¡°Tower watch¨C¡± Moon said, but it was too late as he backpedaled right over a knee-high warning sign and stumbled onto his backside.


    ¡°Gotcha!¡± she shrieked, her blades sweeping down horizontally at him. But when he¡¯d crashed onto the pavement, he bounced off it and floated up into the air. ¡°¨Cuhh?¡± she added as her blades sliced right under him.


    ¡°Gotcha,¡± he said, kicking his leg straight out into her face and sending her spinning back once more.


    ¡°We¡¯re not doing anything,¡± Moon said.


    ¡°We¡¯re not getting dismembered,¡± Tower argued.


    I felt like I should do something. I could¡­fill the park with ball lightning? But that would just make maneuvering as hard for the others as for her. I could magnetize? I didn¡¯t know if that would pull her through her barriers or not, or if she even had magnetic anything in her slim exosuit. Most of it looked like fiberglass and aluminum.


    Probably tired of being kicked around, she went for the easy target this time, which was me. She faced me again, and this time, I was ready for her. I hoped. I¡¯d better have been, because Tower and Moon were still landing from their bout of anti-gravity.


    ¡°Disable external comms!¡± I shouted as she started her charge.


    The AI chimed. ¡°External comms di¨C¡°


    ¡°Enable proximity countermeasures, no safety!¡±


    ¡°Enabling¨Cdeploying proximity counter measures,¡± the AI corrected herself as it detected the exhuman¡¯s approach.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    My hands moved on their own, carried by the suit as it lashed out with two iron punches, throwing one and a half closed fists right into her angle of attack, way faster than I could. The girl, carried by inertia and gravity, had no say over whether the punches would catch her or not, and one of them slammed brutally into her chin.


    But it did nothing but snap her backwards, and as she went she swiped at me, carving off my suit¡¯s left forearm, inches away from me inside. I felt cold air prickle the back of my hand, and looked down to see it exposed, still gripping the yoke in the remains of the arm. Damage warnings lit up all across the faceplate while I just stared at my hand and how close I¡¯d been to losing it.


    This is suicide, I thought. She can cut through me like nothing.


    I looked up and found her about to do exactly that. Her arm was pointed square at my chest and was rearing back to strike.


    Something clanged on the top of my suit and both of us looked up. In the peripheral display, I could see Jack crouched on my exosuit¡¯s back with a grenade primed in his hand.


    ¡°Disable proximity countermeasures!¡± I screamed as the suit began to move on its own. It seized to a halt, inches from throwing him off, and the grenade bounced at our feet.


    She bounced away only moments before white adhesive exploded from the device and coated my legs. Jack made an irritated noise and then vanished without a trace.


    ¡°Nice try,¡± Tower said. ¡°The goo would have been good.¡±


    I struggled to pull myself free, finding it difficult but doable, the immense strength of the legs tearing themselves free while the goo stretched like melted cheese. She watched me work at it for a moment before apparently deciding not to get involved with that mess and turned back to Tower and Moon.


    Which was, again, kind of bad, but really good for me. It took me most of ten seconds to get one foot free, but the other was having trouble as the compound set around me. There was another clang as Jack appeared atop me again.


    ¡°My apologies,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll have you out in a moment.¡±


    I tried to respond but forgot to enable external comms. Probably better that way in a fight anyway, if I needed to keep switching the auto-defenses on and off.


    While Jack focused, the girl engaged with the two again, Moon doing her best to hang off of Tower at unexpected angles to make the exhuman¡¯s job as hard as possible. At the moment she was defying gravity and hanging off the tip of his head with one toe, an upside-down ¡®L¡¯ shape with her utterly horizontal and swinging at the confused woman with both fists.


    The Exhuman, maybe thinking that she could get both above tower and behind moon, launched herself straight above the two of them. At once, like they were reading each other¡¯s minds, the two of them acted as one.


    He launched them straight up after her while she twisted around, whipping a backbreaking display of flexibility as she turned to snatch the Exhuman¡¯s legs from the air. The Exhuman kicked at them, flailing her blades downwards, but unable to slice through Moon who was hidden behind the Exhuman¡¯s own legs, which were, of course, impossible for the barrier-blades to cut. She kicked away Moon¡¯s grasping fingertips once, twice¡­


    And just as she began to pivot at the peak of her jump, just as her blades were getting a clear shot on her pursuers, Moon grabbed hold of one ankle. And suddenly gravity gripped the three of them tenfold, crashing them brutally into the ground with a cloud of leaves and grass.


    ¡°Let-let go!¡± the Exhuman shouted, unphased by the crash and thrashing at the two.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got her!¡± Moon shouted. ¡°Chariot, now!¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s gonna¨CMoon!¡± Tower shouted.


    And then my ears filled with a scream as one of Moon¡¯s arms went flying with a crescent of blood describing its arc. I was stunned, and stood there, watching it fly through the air, as though in slow motion.


    With a sudden jerk, I didn¡¯t see it anymore. All I saw was the Exhuman, right in front of me, struggling to sever Moon¡¯s other arm, still gripping her ankle for all the girl was worth.


    ¡°Do it now!¡± Jack shouted from behind me.


    ¡°Hit her, Athan!¡± Tower yelled.


    ¡°F-Finish¡­it!¡± Moon grit out.


    I would. I was trying. I had my hands in front of me, focused and ready and willing my blade into existence inside the field of her armor as I knew I could. There were openings in her defenses at the palms and feet, I could sneak my power in through there as I¡¯d done in the tunnels before. I just needed to focus¨C


    The Exhuman looked up at me, her eyes wide at my sudden appearance. I saw the end of the fight reflected in her fear.


    Just¡­needed to focus¡­


    She took a breath. One single breath.


    I focused for all I was worth. I bent every single fiber of will I possessed into making that blade.


    ¡°Chariot, what are you waiting for?¡± Jack yelled from behind me.


    My head buzzed so loudly I thought I was going to black out. Nothing was happening. Absolutely nothing. I had no idea what was happening. I¡¯d had problems with getting my powers to do what I wanted, but never like this.


    The Exhuman blinked at me, swung her blades at my legs, just out of her reach, and then again towards the girl holding her down.


    ¡°Athan!¡± Tower screamed, and then screamed double as one of the blades swept through his outstretched arm, cutting a long gash down it lengthwise.


    ¡°I-¡± I shouted, forgetting my external comms entirely. ¡°I¡­it¡¯s not¡­¡±


    Moon got clipped in the shoulder and fell backwards. The Exhuman kicked her in the face and rolled free. Jack swore.


    And then he and I were ten feet away while the Exhuman kicked off from the ground and bounded away from the injured duo like a cat.


    ¡°Goddamn it, Athan!¡± Tower yelled. ¡°What the fuck is wrong with you?¡±


    ¡°I couldn¡¯t do it! It wouldn¡¯t work!¡± I screamed helplessly at the inside of my faceplate. ¡°My powers wouldn¡¯t go!¡±


    Jack disappeared from behind me, and just as swiftly, the Exhuman appeared in front of me, her face a triumphant, malevolent grin. She spun, her blades flashing out once, twice, three times. Cutting deeper into my exosuit with every slash.


    On the third I felt a hot burning in my chest and gasped. The suit screamed at me, and informed me it deployed medical gel and structure foam to try to hold together, but Athan and I had rushed the final chest assembly, and neither of them were in place to go.


    She was laughing now. Full-on laughing as she walked towards me at the same pace I stumbled backwards. Jack appeared again, throwing a handful of devices on the ground which crackled and sparked, but she just leapt over them, and he disappeared when she turned to swipe at him.


    Moon and Tower were both holding themselves, a mirror in damage suffered. His entire right arm was split in half, and her entire left arm below the elbow was gone. Neither seemed able to stand.


    And me? I was just crawling backwards, willing with every ounce of my being for lightning to appear in front of me, to cut her open, to burn her, to make her go away. Anything. But I had nothing but pain, and blinking lights telling me the suit was falling apart around me, and more and more of my body was being cut to pieces.


    I was helpless. Entirely. Just a fish in a barrel, while she levelled a shotgun right at me.


    ¡°Are you sorry?¡± she asked, taking another step. ¡°Do you wish you¡¯d left well enough alone?¡±


    I screamed at her. I told her how it was never my idea in the first place, how I wasn¡¯t even supposed to be here, how I didn¡¯t want to die. I didn¡¯t want anyone to die.


    She reacted like she heard none of it. Just matching me step for step, driving her blades deeper and deeper.


    ¡°I thought I could live without hurting anyone. I thought¡­I could just hide away, live in my own filth, in the dark, like a rat. And nobody would bother me. All that effort, trying to fit in the cracks, wasted. Thank you for showing me just how wrong I was.¡±


    I gasped as she carved off the back of my calf. Spots of red in my vision were beginning to mingle with the flashing red inside the faceplate. My sight began to swim as the suit warned me of internal flooding damage. It wasn¡¯t water.


    ¡°I bet this is all very tragic for you,¡± she sneered. ¡°A horrible thing that¡¯s happened to you. Some relentless monster tearing you apart. But tell me, do you ever think of all the people you¡¯ve killed? How every single mission you go on, they have to endure this torture? How you just show up and ruin people¡¯s lives? Like mine!?¡±


    I pleaded apologies. I told her again and again how I never meant for it to be like this. I only wanted to protect people. I wanted to be an Exhuman who was different. Who helped others, who gave little girls hope instead of fear. I just wanted to do one damn thing with my entire stupid, wasted life that meant anything for a change, even if it was through these horrible, awful powers. Even if it was through killing and hunting and hurting people. Even if it was through this curse that turned people into things like her, things like me.


    I only realized at the end of it all, when I¡¯d finished pleading with the remains of my arms protecting my face that she hadn¡¯t heard a word of it, that my comms weren¡¯t broadcasting.


    And I just felt stupid and ashamed. I was going to die, begging pathetically, and to nobody.


    ¡°I suppose not. You¡¯re just a remorseless XPCA killing machine,¡± she said bitterly. ¡°Killing you is doing the world a favor.¡±


    I closed my eyes and willed myself to do anything. To magnetically levitate myself away. To drop a wave of ball lightning in her face. To summon a blade right through her heart.


    ¡°I want you to know, I¡¯m better than you. This isn¡¯t for me. This is for everyone you¡¯ve killed. Die, you bastard.¡±


    I heard the grass under her feet shift. I heard her move. I could almost feel the blade going through my heart.


    And then she screamed.


    I opened my eyes and saw¡­saw¡­something. I couldn¡¯t tell, it was too close for my eyes to focus on, and my eyes were having a hard time focusing anyway.


    But as I looked through whatever it was, I saw I could see the world, and realized there was a gash torn right in the middle of my faceplate. She hadn¡¯t gone for the heart at all. My HUD was freaking out, a combination of displaying every possible warning and being torn in half and dying all at once, with a small crack to the outside torn right in the middle of it.


    And through that window, I laid there and watched as she writhed on her feet, electricity coating the ground like a fluttering spiderweb, arcing across my resistive suit without effect, but going right up through the soles of her feet and making her shudder and shake on the spot.


    I¡¯d¡­I¡¯d done it, I realized. In my end, in my pants-shitting desperation, I¡¯d done what I should have done five minutes ago and made the lightning I needed to live.


    The Exhuman writhed for another moment before getting the coordination to fall over¡­or jump¡­or some combination, and slid backwards a distance from the tendrils. I couldn¡¯t see, with my display broken and my suit only facing a window of tree and sky.


    Something stepped over my body, facing away from me, towards her. I saw their back, a person, with short brown hair, sticking up in all directions.


    And in that hair, in their one hand I could see, electricity arced all over, lightning coursing across his body without so much as singeing him, like he was the world¡¯s most perfect conduit.


    ¡°Sorry I¡¯m late,¡± I heard Athan say. ¡°I accidentally fried my phone this morning. I also blew up your bathroom when the door locked me in.¡±


    I sighed and relaxed, my head clanging against the back of the exosuit¡¯s helmet, nothing visible through the faceplate¡¯s tear but the blue New York sky. I felt tired, sleepy. Exhausted all the sudden, really. I took a deep breath and felt my wounds.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± I said, not sure if he could hear me. ¡°You¡¯re just in time.¡±

 307. 2252, Present Day. New York. Athan.

    ¡°Who the hell are you supposed to be?¡± the Exhuman questioned me.


    I jerked my thumb at the broken exosuit. ¡°I¡¯m crashing at her place while I sort out shit with my sorta-dead-sorta-girlfriend.¡±


    She hesitated. ¡°Is that supposed to be a joke?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°I fucking wish. I¡¯m sure they gave you the line already, but you should surrender if you don¡¯t want your ass completely kicked right now.¡±


    ¡°Hah!¡± she laughed. ¡°I¡¯ve already crushed four of your friends, you think you scare me on your own?¡±


    ¡°Three, technically,¡± said Jack, who appeared behind me, deploying a canister of medical gel into the cracks in the exosuit. ¡°And Chariot, might I inquire, if not you, who exactly is in this suit?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a long story. Let¡¯s save it for after she surrenders.¡±


    ¡°I will never surrender,¡± she hissed. ¡°I will defy you with my every breath. I will prove to you¨C¡°


    I lit up my swords and her words fell away.


    A full twenty-four of them, hovering and ominous, spread in an arc above and behind me like a halo in an illuminated bible. But they weren¡¯t like my old swords, they weren¡¯t just lightning trapped and waiting for me to will them to action. These crackled and poured out sparks with ferenic energy, these pulsed and seethed as though impatient to strike.


    These were barely held together, burning hotter and brighter than my blades had ever burned before. I threw one straight at her like a missile, and though she jumped away at the last moment, when the blade shredded into my own personal little supernova, the heat of it still caught her, and I saw her patting down the burns on her legs in the air.


    ¡°You were saying something about surrendering?¡± I asked, taking a few casual steps towards her as my blades crackled around me.


    ¡°Never,¡± she hissed.


    ¡°Look lady, if you just wanted to be left alone and live in peace, there¡¯s this place called New Eden¨C¡°


    She cut me off by dashing straight at my face. My instincts with my powers were¡­nonexistent at the moment, so my blades just stayed floating uselessly behind me.


    But I hadn¡¯t spent the last few months training my powers. I¡¯d been learning to fight, and seeing that fist fly at my face in both my normal vision and in my electric-sense, it was the most obvious windup I¡¯d ever witnessed.


    My head jerked to the side, her blade passing inches from my ear, and stepping through her attack, I elbowed the small of her back, feeling a weird sort of resistance where I hit her. The blow carried through, and it hurt my elbow a lot, but it also felt like I slid right off of her. And when she hit the ground, she slid too. Frictionless Exhuman, I guess?


    ¡°I hope it goes without saying, but avoid the blades,¡± Jack advised.


    ¡°Way ahead of you, buddy,¡± I said, stepping aside again as she jumped suddenly at me again. It might have been fast if she hadn¡¯t tensed up in preparation for it so long in advance. Compared to Dragon, this was like preschool.


    ¡°Just who the hell¨C¡± she growled.


    ¡°I told you. Now surrender.¡±


    ¡°And I told you, never!¡°


    She snapped her wrist out and sliced off a thick branch of a tree. With two more flicks, she¡¯d pruned the branches off of it and honed the end. With a grin, she charged me again.


    But she¡¯d changed tack, dashing around me instead of head-on. I stood there, waiting for the inevitable. And sure enough, once she¡¯d circled me once and was right behind me, she let the branch fly, a crude spear aimed at my back.


    I let it hit my shield without even trying to stop it, where it exploded with a satisfying crack of thunder.


    ¡°Now, will you consider¨C¡°


    A handful of pebbles joined the thrown branch in evaporating. And then a few hunks of metal, carved off of the exosuit¡¯s forearm that Whitney and I had worked so hard on last night.


    ¡°Look lady, you aren¡¯t winning this. Do you get that yet? Your powers are a fucking joke compared to mine.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t care!¡± she screamed. ¡°I¡¯ve worked too long and too hard at this to be talked down to by some little brat! I spent months holed up in the dark like a rat, I¡¯ve been hunted like some dirty animal, and I survived being buried by myself in the dark for a week! You don¡¯t know anything about what I¡¯ve suffered and endured, you don¡¯t¨C¡°


    ¡°I don¡¯t care,¡± I interrupted. ¡°None of that makes you able to beat my powers. So just give up.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯ll make you care,¡± she said, grinning maniacally. Something was broken in her head, and it probably was from one of the things in the list of grievances she¡¯d just spouted off. Probably the dark in the week, I guessed.


    And then I stopped musing as she poised to jump towards where Tower and Moon were sitting instead of coming at me again.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you fucking dare,¡± I said, but it was too late. She¡¯d bounded for them. They were watching and ready for her, but they were hurt and slow. They wouldn¡¯t be able to fend off more than one or two blows.


    I swore, and moved as fast as I could.


    Her eyes went wide with shock as I got to them before she did. So did Tower¡¯s and Moon¡¯s.


    As for me, every single fucking part of me just hurt. I felt bruises coming on in my legs as blood vessels ruptured and ligaments tore. It was like I just ran ten miles in a second.


    But people run ten miles and endure. And I was still standing as she sailed in towards me, right between her and my friends where I belonged. I panted and had time for one deep breath before my blades crossed in front of me, and she crashed through them.


    One by one, they sparked and went out as she somehow remained untouched. Mostly untouched. Screaming and flailing in the air, but not as cut to pieces as I¡¯d expected. She landed in a heap at my feet and writhed. I pulled another dozen blades from the air and floated them ominously above her.


    ¡°Surrender,¡± I repeated.


    She spat at me. And then I just shook my head as she pushed off the ground and bounded away again.


    ¡°Stop playing with her and finish it,¡± Moon said. ¡°This is vile.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not playing, I¡¯m trying to get her to not die!¡± I shouted back.


    ¡°She seems uninterested. I recommend you meet her halfway and kill her.¡±


    I took a few steps forward, my legs screaming and burning under me, trying not to show her how much my little burst of speed had cost me. ¡°I don¡¯t see the halfway in that, Moon. But if she doesn¡¯t surrender soon, I might have to take your advice,¡± I said pointedly.


    The Exhuman stood right in front of me, leaning forward, her muscles tensed with a current I could feel, ready to dash again. But she was afraid now. Afraid that no matter what she did, I¡¯d stop her again and again.


    Which was bullshit, of course. But it was very carefully constructed bullshit. I wanted her to think that so she¡¯d fucking give up already. But maybe she was just too far gone, too crazy or damaged. Maybe I was wasting my time here and the best I could hope for was disabling her so she could be arrested.


    I felt her weight shift as she turned towards Whitney and Jack, and before she could even think about going after them, I threw a fistful of lightning bulbs into the ground between them, blanketing the grass with angry snakes of current as I had on first arriving. She took one look at them and then snapped her gaze right back at me.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Good.


    And then she charged me like a maniac again. Which was less good.


    Honestly, I didn¡¯t know how I was going to beat her, either. Everything I¡¯d done seemed to cause her pain, but not any real damage. She¡¯d crashed right through a wall of my blades and barely been singed. Something here was at play I didn¡¯t get.


    But again, I put a bunch of my blades through her and sidestepped her tumbling body as my swords fizzled out on striking her without much effect. She screamed and writhed and her skin was pink and angry where I¡¯d hit her, but this was lightning. It made water flash evaporate explosively. This wasn¡¯t first-degree-burn material we were playing with here.


    ¡°Uh, so what are her powers?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Body-surrounding barrier, and wrist blades. Light exosuit augmenting mobility,¡± Jack said.


    ¡°Oh. The barrier stops my blades.¡±


    ¡°Yes, but not heat. And Whitney believed she could manifest a blade within the barrier.¡±


    The Exhuman roared and jumped towards Jack at his calm explanation, seemingly uncaring about the electrocuted ground between them now. She had a couple dozen feet to close, but I sure as hell wasn¡¯t going to be able to make it this time. I saw Jack¡¯s face freeze in concentration as she charged in, trying to get him and Whitney both out.


    But she was too fast. She swiped right through Jack, and at the last moment, he disappeared, leaving the exosuit helpless on the ground.


    ¡°Now¨Cyou surrender!¡± she shouted, facing me and pointing one arm in my direction, the other levelled at Whitney¡¯s chest. ¡°Or I¡¯ll cut this guy into so many pieces, you¡¯ll need a butcher to recognize her!¡±


    ¡°Now just calm down a sec,¡± I said, holding out my hands placatingly.


    ¡°No! I¡¯m the victim here. You don¡¯t get to tell me to calm down. You bastards showed up and violated my home, my safety, my sanctity, and the only time you¡¯re willing to talk is when I have the upper hand. You¡¯re disgusting!¡±


    ¡°Bitch, I have been trying to talk to you this whole fucking time,¡± I shouted back. She stiffened and pressed the blade closer to Whitney and I took a step back.


    ¡°Ahhh, haa,¡± she laughed. ¡°That¡¯s right. You understand how this works now.¡±


    I wished I had my comms on me. I could coordinate with Jack to get Whitney to safety, but without them he was God-knows-where. If I knew him, he wouldn¡¯t act without an opportunity though¡­even though he was probably the best candidate to create one. He tended to be a passive, reactionary fighter, despite the ambush potential of his powers. It¡¯d be on me to make an opening for him.


    I just hoped Whitney didn¡¯t get hurt. I¡¯d never forgive myself if she did, as I focused my powers, taking a few careful steps forward to get myself in range.


    ¡°Stop right there,¡± she said, and I did. ¡°Put your powers away.¡± And with a thought, my array of swords winked out. ¡°Good. Good. Tell that other guy to come out where I can see him. Now!¡± she screamed.


    Jack melded out of nowhere right next to me, his hands up in a copy of my own. Not that his position mattered much, he could still move in the blink of an eye.


    ¡°What do you even want?¡± I asked her, buying myself time as I worked.


    ¡°What do I want? I want you gone! I want my own place where I¡¯ll be assured safety from the likes of you bastards who think you can just show up and snuff me out when I become inconvenient.¡±


    ¡°New Eden¨C¡°


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to go to prison, you idiot.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not a prison. It¡¯s a relocation facility. There are houses and food and holos¨C¡°


    ¡°And guns? And soldiers?¡± she scoffed.


    ¡°Well¡­yeah.¡±


    She snorted. ¡°Thanks but no thanks. I¡¯ll just make my own home. Right here. And you bastards will tell the rest of the XPCA that I¡¯m not to be trifled with. I¡¯ve beaten the best of you, and I¡¯ll do it again. So leave! Me! Alone!¡±


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said with a shrug. ¡°You know that¡¯s not how it works. You can¡¯t just be stronger than someone and take their shit. That¡¯s not how society works.¡±


    ¡°Watch me!¡± she screamed, and then I tensed as she turned and slashed her blade sideways through the exosuit.


    Through¡­where the exosuit had been. Her shock was apparent as she spun in place, seeing nothing there. She stood stock still for a moment, just staring at the grass.


    Which was a moment too long to hold still in a battle. Jack appeared from nowhere, his knife jammed straight into her forearm through her palm in an instant, and the moment he disappeared, my bulb landed, electricity coursing up her legs, making her shudder and her teeth rattle as she collapsed.


    I let out a breath of relief as I worked the electromagnets I¡¯d woven to fly the exosuit over to me from where it sat levitating fifteen feet in the air. I had all the wounded in one place where I could defend them. The risk of something going horribly wrong this fight was way down.


    ¡°You okay?¡± I asked Whitney as she floated to rest.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I heard her cough from deep in the suit, sounding anything but okay.


    ¡°We¡¯ll get you patched up soon, I promised.¡±


    ¡°Sorry I couldn¡¯t¡­do more,¡± she said.


    I turned back to the livid Exhuman with the new hole in her arm, droplets of her blood dripping into her blade and disintegrating into a haze. She looked beyond words and reason now. As much as I didn¡¯t want to, I think I had to take her at her word now. Surrender wasn¡¯t in her vocabulary.


    Anticipating the charge, I waved my arms and my blades reappeared on my back. The ground under me crackled with snaking tendrils of lightning. And all around me, white circles shuddered into being, drifting slowly away from me like balloons filled with tepid air.


    Yeah, we had ball lightning now, too. Everything Whitney did, I could do better. I don¡¯t know how my powers got over to her, but one thing was for fuckin¡¯ sure. While she had them, was just a victim. I was a goddamn Exhuman.


    The woman charged me again and again, growing increasingly rabid and frustrated with each failure. She went after me, she went after my friends, but always I was there to stop her, burning her more and more but never able to land a decisive blow. I¡¯d taken Jack¡¯s cue and focused on her hands, which were now black with charred pieces of bone sticking out, dead and vile, clenched to her chest whenever she wasn¡¯t flailing at us with what must have been unbearable pain.


    And yet she just bore it, screaming at me in no language humans spoke. Just rage and bitterness given voice. As her attacks continued and he frustration broke into tears, I asked, pleaded, begged her to reconsider, but it seemed the more I talked, the more she just wanted me to die.


    Or maybe she wanted herself to die. I didn¡¯t know. They weren¡¯t exactly discernable at this point. Either way, it was piteous as fuck, and I felt a thin slice of guilt laid on me with every painful failure she endured.


    Finally, she seemed at her end. Nothing had changed except that she wasn¡¯t attacking anymore. She just stood there, hands out in front of her, blackened and useless, blades shimmering green and more functional than the mess they hung off of.


    She just stood, and waited. Long seconds passed where I expected her to jump at me at any moment, but she never came. Her breathing was ragged and came in tortured tatters, her knees were infirm, her eyes were wild and unbalanced.


    And slowly I realized what she¡¯d finally accepted. She couldn¡¯t beat me. She had given me her absolute all and come across something completely beyond her grasp. She had no idea what she was about to do, and neither did I. And that scared the crap out of me more than all of her previous attacks combined.


    Still watching her, still facing her, I crouched and reached backwards, my fingertips finding the edge of Whitney¡¯s exosuit and fumbling inside one of the holes in the arm where I knew by memory that there was a broken pneumatic shaft.


    My fingertip found the clean-sheared edge before I knew it, and I felt a prick of blood which made me wince. But then I got to work unscrewing the shaft and liberating it from the rest of the wreck. After a few seconds, I had a little tube of a shiv in my hands, poised and ready.


    I¡¯d also figured out what she was going to do. And I knew she couldn¡¯t be allowed to do it. I just had to pray I was wrong, pray that it wouldn¡¯t come to this. But it was all she had left at this point.


    Except to surrender. Fuck, why couldn¡¯t she just surrender. Please. Please have a change of heart and just give up. Don¡¯t make me kill you.


    My heart sank as I felt her body tense. She¡¯d made her decision. She knew what she was going to do. Almost invisible to my eyes but glaring as the sun to my senses, she raised one hand straight towards me, keeping me focused on it, keeping me at arm¡¯s length¡­despite the twenty feet already between us.


    While the rest of her body subtly turned towards the rest of the city. She was going to run. She was going to run into the evacuation boundaries and kill the XPCA there, and then carve her way through the unsuspecting populace beyond. Whatever her demented logic was, she would apply it to weaker adversaries until finally, exhausted but not defeated, she would be completely spent, and the XPCA would claim her and kill her.


    There was no other way if that¡¯s what she chose. It was just a slow death, and the deaths of dozens or hundreds of others. She couldn¡¯t escape, she couldn¡¯t win, but she could make the world a little shittier on her way out.


    ¡°Don¡¯t do it,¡± I warned, holding my little metal spear pointed right at her. ¡°I¡¯m serious.¡±


    She just hissed at me and tensed to spring away.


    I felt¡­resignation as I fired my powers, my entire arm wrapped a crackling burst of electricity. I felt a huge kickback that threatened to dislocate my shoulder as the bolt leapt from my hand, the air cracking as it jumped past supersonic speeds in an instant.


    It went straight through her hand pointed at me, straight up her warding arm, just under her shoulder and punched through both her lungs and her heart before it came to violent rest, visible poking out her side, trapped in her barrier with her. The sound hit me less than an instant later, of a dozen organs and bones breaking in concert with a sonic boom.


    She gaped at me, not comprehending. She tried to draw a breath, but her lungs were already filling with fluid. The pain wouldn¡¯t hit her for another few moments. She blinked, gasped, coughed blood, and then in desperation, did what her body was poised to do. She bounded into the air, thirty feet up and away.


    I watched her shrinking into the distance as she tumbled and then landed with a slam in the middle of the street, flat on her back. The barrier in front of her face was visible now, splattered red with blood. Her disintegrated hands clutched at her chest and throat, and fortunately from here I couldn¡¯t hear the noises she was making.


    ¡°Jesus, fuck,¡± Tower said, watching her sputter her last.


    ¡°How¡¯s your arm?¡± I asked, turning to him. Any excuse to not watch the woman die.


    ¡°Destroyed,¡± he said, clenching his bad arm in his good, the entire thing an indecipherable mess of blood, bandages, and medical gel.


    ¡°And you¡¯ll make it to your body?¡± I asked Moon. She nodded. ¡°Then Jack¡­where¡¯s Jack? There you are. Jack, can you radio central and get a medevac for Whitney and have regenerators primed for her and Tower? And let Cosette know that the target is down, I imagine she¡¯ll be relieved to hear it.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d be happy to,¡± Jack smiled. But before radioing anything, he advanced on me and clapped me hard on the shoulder.


    ¡°What¡¯s all this about?¡± I asked him. ¡°Isn¡¯t like you to¡­be too affectionate.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps not,¡± he said. ¡°But I think all of us are just happy to have you back.¡±


    I gave him a smile and turned back to the now-still body aspirating on its own blood in the street. I knew I¡¯d be seeing this in my dreams for many nights to come, but the guilt machine inside me wouldn¡¯t let me turn away. I owed this pathetic creature a few nights of lost sleep if nothing else. Her life could mean that much, at least.


    ¡°It¡¯s good to be back, I guess,¡± I said.

 308. 2252, Present Day. Fuji Sushi, near CSU. Athan.

    No sooner had the door opened then Lia threw herself into my arms with a squeal without even pausing to see who all I had with me.


    ¡°You¡¯re back!¡± she had said, muffled, and from the vicinity of my chest.


    ¡°Hi Lia. I¡¯m back,¡± I said, thinking of the implications of that line. ¡°I hope you don¡¯t mind¡­I promised an explanation to some people and¡­well, nobody wanted to talk at HQ so¨C¡°


    ¡°Yeah, bring ¡¯em all in. Actually, I¡¯m hungry, can we go out somewhere and talk there? Just how private does this need to be?¡±


    That was fifteen minutes ago. And that was why the nine of us were all crowded around a table in an event room at a sushi place near campus. Lia, AEGIS, Whitney, Jack, Moon, Tower, Tem, Rito, and myself. The whole crew, basically. Although I¡¯m sure Saga wished she were here, with the amount of food going on.


    I was still stressing and feeling guilty about the girl seated on my immediate right, who was staring at me instead of eating, with unbridled enthusiasm despite her state.


    Tem was in a wheelchair with bags hanging off the back of it, small plastic tubes ran fluids across her body. When I¡¯d left her to spend a week alone with Whitney, she¡¯d stopped eating, and at some point, just imploded. AEGIS and Lia had done what they could, but at some point, if she wouldn¡¯t take care of herself, bags and tubes became a necessity.


    She was, at the moment, too weak to stand, and so she sat, staring at me like I was a god returned to Earth. Honestly, the whole situation just made me feel disgusting. That she could exist, that she could exist like this, and that it was my fault she was in this state, I found myself hating both of us for this position to even exist.


    Whitney, on my left, however, was more energetic and social than I had ever seen her. It might have helped she was still somewhat drugged up¡­and had been led in a couple of sake bombs with very little resistance¡­but in general, she just had a lot to be celebrating. The mission was a success, she didn¡¯t die, she¡¯d gotten put through a regenerator after I bribed off Cosette¡­and most of all, she was powerless again. An odd-sounding thing to be happy about, until you¡¯d lived it.


    ¡°Kanpai!¡± she shouted, her face red, before she pounded more of her drink. She¡¯d pried the word out of Moon earlier and hadn¡¯t stopped abusing it since, while Moon and Lia watched with an ever-shifting combination of disgust, irritation, amusement, and jealousy.


    I was happy to be back too, in a way. But the life I got in the swap was the more complicated one, and I couldn¡¯t just revel in simple happiness like she was doing. I¡¯d done simple and happy recently, and it had been complicated and miserable. Going back to what I knew, even if it sucked, was a relief, in a strange sort of way.


    And powerlessness didn¡¯t suit me. As much as I wanted it to, I apparently just wasn¡¯t a person who could be content to let the world go past him. Not that the world ever showed an interest in doing that to me.


    ¡°So why don¡¯t we do this after every mission?¡± Tower asked, wiping off his mouth on the back of his hand after joining Whitney in drinking.


    ¡°Because half of them end in abysmal failure,¡± Moon said, barely audible to me over the general conversation.


    ¡°Bullshit,¡± Tower said. ¡°Our record¡¯s way better than that.¡±


    ¡°Language,¡± Jack chided across the table, covering his mouth to speak through a mouthful of sashimi.


    ¡°Might I remind you that this op was because we failed last time?¡± Moon said.


    ¡°No,¡± Tower said. ¡°Not allowed to remind me of negatives after we¡¯ve already handled them. Not at a party, anyway.¡±


    Moon studied him for a minute. ¡°Do ostridges ever come to you for advice?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°You seem an expert at sticking your head in the sand.¡±


    He laughed boisterously, interrupting a conversation at the other end of the table between Lia and Rito about some show or another on the holo. I couldn¡¯t help but grin as I watched the two of them. Talking to Rito was some of the only times I¡¯d seen Lia acting just like a regular kid her age.


    ¡°Okay, how¡¯s this,¡± Lia asked, pulling out her mobile, the refuge for any fact-seeker embroiled in trivial debate. ¡°AEGIS hey. Tell me, is this guy hotter than¡­than this guy?¡±


    AEGIS politely received the device and flipped back and forth between the images with a confounded smile. ¡°Um.¡± I saw a flash of yellow as she glanced at me momentarily.


    ¡°Oh Athan doesn¡¯t give a rat if you find celebs hunky or not,¡± Lia said. Which was true.


    ¡°Um, this one has a more¡­symmetric face, I guess?¡±


    ¡°What? No,¡± Lia groaned as Rito bounced and clapped excitedly in her seat. ¡°AEGIS, you betrayed me. You betrayed good taste!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m telling you, beards are coming back in,¡± Rito said shaking her head. ¡°You¡¯re gonna see them, like, everywhere soon.¡±


    ¡°Ugh. Gross,¡± Lia said with a roll of her eyes. This made Rito giggle, and before long their conversation veered wildly again to something equally unfathomable. I met eyes with AEGIS who just gave me a smile and a shrug.


    So yeah, in short, in general, it was a nice time. People who hadn¡¯t seen each other in a long time mingled and friendships were rekindled, and damn did we eat and eat. Sushi was frickin¡¯ amazing.


    But as the meal melted away and people began to quiet and settle, the atmosphere turned serious, and I realized people were glancing at me more and more. I took the hint and, during a lull, tapped my chopsticks against my glass, producing a much crappier tone than I¡¯d expected, being wood.


    I cleared my throat. ¡°Um. Hi everybody. Thanks for coming out. Or maybe thanks to Lia for deciding to put us all here instead of talking in a cramped living room?¡±


    ¡°And for the food!¡± Tower shouted. Lia just grinned dismissively, but the table erupted into appreciative murmurs for a few moments.


    ¡°Yeah, you spoil the shit out of me,¡± I agreed. ¡°But uh. We¡¯re here because I promised you guys an explanation. I already told Cosette as payment for patching up Whitney, but the rest of you deserve to hear the truth as well.¡± I swallowed hard. I didn¡¯t know where I was gonna start or go with this all because I didn¡¯t understand it myself, when to my surprise, Whitney stood up, swaying slightly from the booze.


    ¡°I was an Exhuman. It was me in the suit the whole time,¡± she said.


    ¡°Yeah. That,¡± I agreed. I waited to see if she was going to say anything else but she just smiled stupidly for a bit before Jack patted her tenderly on the hand and helped her retake her seat. ¡°Maybe the aftereffects of the sedation and the drink was a bad combination,¡± I said.


    ¡°For comprehension, possibly,¡± AEGIS said, pushing her glasses up her nose. ¡°But nothing about it is threatening or reactive, biologically speaking.¡±


    ¡°Well, as you all saw,¡± I continued ¡°I wasn¡¯t the one in the suit. Whitney was. And as she said, she had Exhuman powers. My powers, specifically¡­and the whole time she did¡­I didn¡¯t. That¡¯s the reason why she was disguising herself, the reason I went to college away from everyone, and why the whole agreement was drawn up to cut back on social interaction between ¡®me¡¯ and the rest of you.¡± I paused for a second. ¡°And I¡¯m sorry about all of that.¡±


    ¡°Oh boo,¡± Lia said. ¡°Boooo. No apologizing.¡±


    ¡°The biggest question,¡± I continued on, ignoring the heckler ¡°is how my powers moved to Whitney in the first place. And I can safely say I have no idea. The only thing we¡¯ve figured out is that whoever didn¡¯t have the powers at a given time had a lot more¡­what did we call it? Brainspace? To work with. The second my powers left me, I found all this engineering stuff just amazingly captivating, and gripped it like I¡¯d never done before in my life. Likewise, when Whitney picked up my powers, she had to close up her shop because she¡¯d lost most of her motivation and interest with the stuff.¡±


    Moon raised her hand and I called on her. ¡°Are you saying that if Tower lost his powers he might actually be intelligent?¡±Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    ¡°Damn, girl. Savage,¡± he said. She gave him a hint of a sly grin.


    ¡°It¡¯s possible. Though we can¡¯t really say. Tower does need a lot of help,¡± I grinned.


    ¡°Damn. Screw all y¡¯all, I¡¯m gonna eat the rest of everything. See who¡¯s stupid then, huh?¡± he threatened, reaching across the table to liberate a piece of tuna from Moon¡¯s plate.


    ¡°So my theory¡­and I¡¯m sure at least Lia will weigh in on this later¡­is that whatever our powers are, whatever causes them or how they work, they reside in our brains and take some of our attention and focus just to exist. It¡¯s not like Whitney got stupider, or that Tower would get smarter, it¡¯s just a matter of available focus and concentration.¡±


    ¡°So there¡¯s no hope for you,¡± Moon said to Tower.


    ¡°I do not suppose anyone here has tried methlphenidate?¡± Jack asked with a smile. ¡°Ritalin? Effocia?¡± We shook our heads. ¡°Hmm. Well, it promotes focus and is often prescribed for those with ADHD or narcolepsy, debilitations where one¡¯s brain wanders beyond one¡¯s conscious control. I was curious if the focusing sensation is similar.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t say I¡¯d know,¡± I said. ¡°But the real question is Jack has ADHD?¡±


    He smiled enigmatically. ¡°No. But sometimes it can behoove an individual to have preternatural focus and concentration.¡±


    ¡°There are some serious risks to taking unneeded medication,¡± AEGIS said with a frown.


    ¡°I am aware,¡± Jack replied. ¡°And you¡¯ll note that I am not taking them presently. It was merely a question.¡±


    The answer didn¡¯t seem to satisfy AEGIS but I kept things moving along. ¡°So anyway. Yeah, I don¡¯t really know anything about how Exhuman powers work, but to my knowledge we¡¯re the only ones in the history of ever who have had a Freaky Friday like this. Can you confirm, AEGIS?¡±


    ¡°Are you referencing a book published in the nineteen-seventies?¡± AEGIS confirmed. ¡°My goodness, that¡¯s obscure, even by my standards.¡±


    ¡°What? I was talking about a movie from like twenty years ago. I think it was a remake but I kinda doubt it was from a book from three hundred years ago.¡±


    ¡°Two-hundred and eighty years.¡± She pushed her glasses up her nose at me.


    ¡°Whatever. Please confirm the important parts of what I said?¡±


    She laughed before putting a serious face on with much adjusting of glasses of course. ¡°Can confirm. To-date, there have been zero incidents of an Exhuman spontaneously losing their powers or another human gaining powers from another. But I¡¯d like to remind you all that we¡¯re living in a new era of Exhumanity. There¡¯s more of them living publically and for longer now than at any other point in human history. Or Exhuman history.¡±


    She looked around the table significantly, not smiling, but I could tell by her poise and the way she glanced at her audience that she really enjoyed the attention. So it didn¡¯t surprise me when she continued. ¡°Going over a previous point, as we all know, the XPCA and the world in general have never been able to find a source of Exhuman powers. I¡¯m not proposing that there¡¯s any breakthrough to be found in the diminished-slash-enhanced focus capabilities of Athan and Whitney, but it is significant research. It¡¯s possible that, given what they experienced, powers have no physical component at all, and reside entirely in a person¡¯s focus, or capability of producing it.¡±


    ¡°What, so people just like, figure out how to weaponize their thoughts?¡± Rito asked.


    ¡°Perhaps. Though obviously not consciously,¡± AEGIS mused, her finger dancing on her chin.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t hold up,¡± Lia said. ¡°If it was just some activation of latent telekinesis or whatever you¡¯d classify that as, there¡¯s no way it¡¯d be transferable between Athan and Whitney. Spreadable, I could buy, but there¡¯s no way Athan¡¯s brain would turn parts of itself off just ¡®cuz parts of Whitney¡¯s turned on.¡±


    ¡°Uh, this is really interesting if you¡¯re a nerd, I¡¯m sure,¡± Tower said, swallowing a mouthful before reaching over to snag another couple rolls. ¡°But that¡¯s not why we¡¯re here, right?¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I agreed. ¡°We can go over theory later, I¡¯m here to talk about what happened to us. Thanks for keeping us on-track buddy.¡±


    He gave me a thumbs-up because his mouth was crammed again.


    ¡°So I think the Whitney thing¡­aside from how impossible and incomprehensible it is, is all pretty clear?¡± I asked. ¡°We didn¡¯t want the XPCA getting involved, so it was necessary to have her pretending to be me.¡±


    ¡°I was pretty sure they¡¯d dissect both of them for research if they found out there was a potential ¡®cure¡¯ for Exhumanity,¡± Lia added. ¡°So yeah. Kind of necessary.¡±


    ¡°Did I know about all of this? Did I contribute to decision-making?¡± AEGIS asked, her head cocked, looking even more angled for her ponytails framing her.


    ¡°Um, you did. But you were mostly just ecstatic about my ability to have a new life,¡± I said. At the confused glances I explained to the others ¡°AEGIS just uh, went through another change. Her memories are now of the last version prior to Eryendria, New Eden, TARGA, and all of that.¡± And prior to us ever dating. ¡°She might be a bit behind on events.¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯m happy to learn,¡± she said with a smile. ¡°So I hustled you off to college to be happy, Whitney took your place as resident ass-kicker and sad-sack¨C¡°


    ¡°Hey!¡± I argued.


    ¡°¨Cand the two of you coordinated and did the exosuit thing to keep the XPCA in the dark who they had on-their own missions. Is that pretty much it?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I nodded. ¡°I should have just had you summarize from the start.¡±


    Whitney gave me an very uncharacteristic pat on the head and a very characteristic smirk.


    ¡°But what else I wanted to discuss¡­if nobody had any questions?¡­is what now?¡±


    ¡°Now, you¡¯re back!¡± Tower said.


    ¡°Kanpai!¡± Whitney shouted, her glass in the air again.


    He continued, ¡°We¡¯re gonna rock missions now, no offense, but Whitney sucked at being you,¡± Tower said. ¡°We¡¯ll have the world put right back together soon as anything with you as strike lead again. Damn, it¡¯s gonna be so good.¡±


    ¡°Well. Sure,¡± I agreed. ¡°Some of that, certainly. ¡°But my concern was actually with Dragon still running around out there. I¡¯m¡­I¡¯m not sure, but I think¡­with my powers back, I might be able to take him now.¡±


    ¡°Wait, why are we eating?¡± Lia asked, standing up suddenly. ¡°We should be killing you, bro.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°I agree,¡± Moon intoned. ¡°Though I suspect you might have an actual reason for it?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, his Ramanathan window!¡± Lia said. ¡°Dude, we should be hurting you as bad as possible the second you guys switched back. We could get you the craziest powers ever.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± I said. ¡°Well, aside from the fact I have very little interest in all of you guys doing your best to kill me¡­I don¡¯t think it¡¯ll work.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡± Lia asked, a freaking table knife in her hands like she was ready to jump across the table with it at any moment.


    ¡°Because during the fight in New York, I tore the fuck out of my legs. I had to get carted to the regenerator in a wheelchair,¡± I said, glancing at Tem next to me. ¡°And yet the window didn¡¯t do anything to counteract that.¡±


    ¡°Maybe because it didn¡¯t kill you?¡± she suggested, waggling the knife.


    I shook my head. ¡°When Saga explained the window to me, she said that if there¡¯s no legit threats to counteract, the window basically lowers its standards to whatever trauma the Exhuman suffers, no matter how minute. Some woman missed her bus and it was the worst thing that happened to her so she got super-speed out of it.¡±


    ¡°Basically, no matter how good or bad your life, people like, invent their own drama?¡± Rito asked. And I stared at her because it was a really good way of putting it, and it came out of Rito. I guess if someone was an expert in studying drama, it would be her?


    ¡°Maybe a maiming, just to be sure?¡± Lia pleaded. ¡°I don¡¯t want to miss the chance to turn you into some crazy superbeast.¡±


    ¡°Can you listen to yourself for a second?¡± I sighed. ¡°And I was maimed, dude. My legs didn¡¯t work, flat-out. So I¡¯m gonna have to go with no.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m not a fan of anyone killing Athan, even for science,¡± AEGIS added, her brow all kinds of crumpled up. ¡°His powers are just fine the way they have been.¡±


    ¡°Better than that, actually,¡± Jack added. ¡°He seems to have quite a few new tricks.¡±


    ¡°I know, right?¡± I said. ¡°All the stuff Whitney could do, all the stuff I used to be able to do, and more. It¡¯s crazy.¡±


    ¡°Woah, no way, really?¡± Lia asked with awe. Her mere standing there was no longer sufficient as she began to squirm in excitement. ¡°Show me, show me, show me!¡±


    ¡°Dude, we¡¯re still in a restaurant.¡±


    ¡°Oh boo. No fun.¡±


    I coughed. ¡°You guys are sidetracking me so friggin¡¯ hard. Dragon. I want to fight him.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Jack asked. ¡°That is suicide.¡±


    ¡°Who¡¯s¡­no, I¡¯ll figure it out,¡± AEGIS said.


    ¡°It¡¯s not suicide, I¡¯m more powerful than ever, I¡¯ve been training physically, and he won¡¯t expect it.¡±


    ¡°Yes, but why?¡± Jack repeated through a patient smile.


    I glanced at Lia, who sat down, still again under the weight of my eyes. She frowned and nodded. ¡°Dragon came after Athan at school,¡± she explained. ¡°He ultimately was found to have killed four people, one of whom was a good friend of Athan¡¯s, burned a fifth of a school building down, and left Athan for dead, seemingly ambivalent about him entirely once learning his powers were gone.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a mistake I¡¯ll make sure he pays for,¡± I growled.


    ¡°Or¡­it¡¯s a gift you can enjoy,¡± AEGIS frowned. ¡°He¡¯s lost interest in you, he¡¯s gone, you can just leave things settled.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll learn soon enough that I¡¯m still out there using my powers on XPCA missions, and when that happens, he¡¯ll either feel lied to or curious. Both of which bring his focus back on me. I¡¯d rather he find out I¡¯m re-empowered first-hand.¡±


    She gave her hair a gentle tug as she nodded, and I turned around to look at the others. Each seemed lost in their own thoughts, impossible to tell what was going on beyond that.


    Except Tem. She was pretty easy to read. She was still staring at me star-struck.


    ¡°Dude, Tem, eat something,¡± I said, pushing her untouched plate towards her. She nodded and broke apart the pieces of sushi roll on it, picking at pieces of it ineffectually. But at least food was going in her mouth.


    ¡°I think,¡± Moon spoke breaking the silence, and then froze as suddenly everyone turned towards her, reddening slightly. ¡°Ahem, I think¡­that¡­you will have issue¡­finding Dragon at all.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I agreed. ¡°And that¡¯s one thing I wanted to talk to you guys about. He¡¯s a killer, right? A paid killer? So it seems like there¡¯s an obvious way to get him somewhere I want him.¡±


    The table jumped as Lia slammed a hand on it. ¡°You are not putting out a hit.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°Because you¡¯re putting yourself in a whole web of danger that way! It¡¯s a whole underworld of intrigue and reputation and egos out there, it¡¯s not just a place you step into lightly, and it¡¯s certainly not something that a person with no connections or experience can just waltz into and expect things to work out how they want. Plus it puts you in friggin¡¯ completely obvious contact with Dragon, and he¡¯s nowhere near stupid enough to believe a damn thing you¡¯d tell him, ever.¡±


    I grinned at her. ¡°Yeah. Maybe. But that¡¯s why I think it¡¯d work better for Black Shark to post a bounty instead, wouldn¡¯t you agree?¡±


    She glared at me, her eyes looking more lethal than any bounty she could post. ¡°Absolutely not. I refuse a hundred percent.¡±


    ¡°Lia, come on. It¡¯s the only way.¡±


    ¡°You could just leave it all alone,¡± AEGIS reminded us.


    ¡°There¡¯s always another way,¡± Lia said. ¡°Just because you want to charge in like a stubborn bull-headed idiot does not mean that¡¯s the only way. Especially something this dangerous and this steeped in nuance, you are not the right guy for making the call.¡±


    I crossed my arms at her. ¡°Well what then? Are we just going to wait until Dragon shows up again one day and kills me?¡±


    She frowned. ¡°No. But there¡¯s always a smarter solution. We just have to find it.¡±

 309. 2252, Present Day. A bus, California. Athan.

    I sat staring out the window at the scenery whipping past, feeling the world a little too heavy and melancholy for the cheery, late-spring day out there.


    The party with everyone a couple days ago had been fun. Even though it was a serious talk that needed to happen, the fact that we were all capping off a win, that the recent problems with the P-Force looked like they were over, that Whitney and I were getting our own lives back ¡ª and a whole lot of drink, over two-hundred credits in booze ¡ª I don¡¯t think the atmosphere could have been lighter.


    And while it had carried on long into the evening, and several of our guests stayed through yesterday, as the cheer ebbed away I found myself alone with uncomfortable thoughts.


    Not¡­depressing thoughts, exactly. I was finally in a position to do things again. I felt more empowered than helpless for the first time in a long, long time. These thoughts, I knew, were just motivation towards the goals I needed to hit next.


    But they still left me perturbed. And after most of a day of thinking and dwelling and trying to figure out plans for how to proceed, AEGIS had shown up in my room, looking as downtrodden as I.


    She was sitting next to me now, on this bus she¡¯d forced me to get on, her face somber and still, focused on her own thoughts. Though she gave me a small close-lipped smile when she saw me studying her.


    ¡°Doing okay?¡± she asked.


    I nodded. ¡°I was never doing poorly. Well. I wasn¡¯t doing poorly anyway.¡±


    ¡°I know. And it¡¯s not my place to tell you how to deal with it, but you need to deal with it somehow and you weren¡¯t. We¡¯ve got a little time now to ourselves and if you don¡¯t do anything with it at all and just sit and think like you enjoy doing so much, I think you¡¯ll regret it later on.¡±


    ¡°Maybe.¡± I turned back to the window. ¡°I dunno.¡±


    ¡°I know you just want to focus on chasing down Dragon. I¡¯m all caught up on my memories now, and believe me, I do too. But this is also important.¡±


    ¡°It just doesn¡¯t seem important. I dunno what¡¯s out there that isn¡¯t already in here,¡± I said, tapping the side of my head. She chuckled as she took my hand and adjusted it to point at my heart instead.


    It had only been a couple weeks since Alyssa died. A lot had happened in that time, although much of it had just been distractions¡­focusing on rebuilding Whitney¡¯s exosuit. Being afraid to face the world and reality. Beating myself up for daring to live a normal life.


    A lot of those things still were with me of course. My head¡­and my heart, as AEGIS pointed out, felt like a jumbled mess of positives and negatives and things I wish went differently all stepping on each other in a tangled dance.


    As the bus slipped out of the city and the endless sprawl of noise and buildings faded into the quiet of scrub-laden hills, pocked with blackened trees still standing from California wildfires ages ago, my thoughts seemed to clear out with the surroundings a bit. Before too long, the hills levelled out for a bit and there was carefully manicured grass and ornate white edifices erupting from it, in defiance of the desert and sun.


    We stepped off the bus and stretched in the parking lot, the heat of the day seeming to go right up my nose. The highway we¡¯d taken here created a dull constant roar of noise which echoed strangely off the hills, making the air sound silent and rumbling all at once. It was a weird place. It wasn¡¯t a place I wanted to be, but somewhere I knew I should go.


    I took a deep breath as I crossed the threshold. And from there, it was a minute of somber silence before we found what we had come for.


    Alyssa Danhauer


    2232-2252


    ¡°My favorite day is today.¡±


    AEGIS pressed the bouquet of flowers she¡¯d carried in her lap this whole time into my hands and gave me a reassuring nod as we I hesitated to approach. Her fingers gently snaked around mine and she gave me a squeeze, and then let me go. I took a deep breath again and forced my feet closer to the smooth white stone.


    ¡°Should¡­should I say something?¡± I asked AEGIS. She just gave me a reassuring smile and waited a ways back. The implication was clear. This was between me and Alyssa. I swallowed hard, finding the whole situation so much¡­so much harder than I thought it would be.


    In my head, I¡¯d always thought¡­it¡¯s a rock. It¡¯s dirt. It¡¯s the remains of what a person was stored in before they left. Graves were like graduations ceremonies, they were a big deal put on to celebrate someone whose real achievement had been done well before. I¡¯d thought they were stupid and pointless, honestly, and it was kind of a shock to find myself this affected by those three simple lines on a stone.


    Because¡­there she was. Everything left of her on this Earth except our memories, and even those seemed to bubble to the surface as though the grave summoned them.


    ¡°H-hey, Alyssa,¡± I said to the white rock. ¡°It¡¯s me, Athan. I um¡­I brought you flowers. AEGIS did really. I¡¯ll¡­put them here, with the others.¡± The cellophane they were bundled in crinkled as I laid them to rest. The noise seemed jarring, and I looked around and confirmed nobody else was in earshot.


    This wasn¡¯t going well. I didn¡¯t know what I was doing. All Alyssa was to me right now was that blank, peaceful face on the roof of the building, french-fry hair hanging in her face where she¡¯d never push it behind her ear again, the only breath stirring it came from the fire.


    ¡°You¡¯re dead,¡± I started again. ¡°And¡­I don¡¯t think you would be if not for me. You were just¡­just a girl. Someone my age, who was looking for their place in the world, who loved writing and reading and talking with her friends. And you met a guy who had troubles in his past, and those troubles cost you everything.¡±


    I still felt inadequate at just summarizing events, but I pressed on, feeling a compulsive need to say¡­to say anything, really. But I had no idea what, or why. Or what I was doing here, even.


    ¡°The guy who killed you¡­we don¡¯t have anything concrete yet, but we¡¯re going to get him. I¡¯m going to get him. I¡¯m going to make him pay for what he did to you. He killed you in cold blood, Alyssa, for no reason at all. He could have just let you go, you¡¯re just human, once he found out I was, he let me go for God¡¯s sake. He didn¡¯t care. And yet you died anyway.¡±


    I closed my eyes and took a few breaths. Fire and pain. Her dying words. The last time her chest rose and fell. A knife stained red.


    For nothing. All for nothing. A stupid, senseless death. I felt my hands trembling at my sides. And then I felt warmth as someone took my hand in her own.


    ¡°How¡¯d you meet?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°We were¡­were in the same class. The teacher had us passing papers down the rows just before class. and she was sitting a couple empty seats over from me. She was talking to Sebastian and laughing and not paying attention. I leaned over and tapped her and she turned and smiled at me, and I saw her eyes¡­she had red eyes, body mod. I said ¡®woah¡¯, and she said ¡®woah¡¯ back, all mockingly with a grin.¡±


    I scratched my head. ¡°At the end of class we were supposed to form small groups for a thing and I feel someone tapping on my shoulder. I look over and see those red eyes and that little smile and she just raises her eyebrows at me and says ¡®woah¡¯. Then asks if I have a group.¡±


    ¡°She sounds fun,¡± AEGIS said.


    ¡°One time, after class she went up to Darris and asked him about his opinion on some song. Darris was¡­really into music, and he¡¯d just jump at any amount of interest shown in it. So before long, he¡¯s acting out in the air the frets you¡¯d have to hold down to be playing this solo, and she goes ¡®like this?¡¯ and she¡¯s doing it too. And the next thing you know, somehow, we¡¯re all just air-guitar jamming like morons. I don¡¯t even remember how we got to that point, but Lia was whipping her hair around, and Darris was¡­damn he was happier than I ever saw him. That guy was so cynical about everything.¡±


    ¡°But everyone likes to cut loose sometimes. Do you think she did that on purpose?¡±Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± I shook my head. ¡°But even if it wasn¡¯t, she just made things a lot more fun.¡±


    The warm hand in mine gave me a firm squeeze. ¡°It¡¯s a cliche, and I can bug you with the psychology of it later if you¡¯d like, but don¡¯t fixate on the death. It¡¯s a really small and insignificant part of the much greater life that came before it.¡±


    I looked up at AEGIS and found her with a small, warm smile, and realized I had tears in my eyes. Somehow, going over the memories of her life had hit me in ways that her death just couldn¡¯t. I didn¡¯t understand.


    But unlike when I was standing there, trying to eulogize, I also felt like I didn¡¯t need to understand. There wasn¡¯t anything I was supposed to do or felt like I should be doing. I was remembering her, and crying, and that was good enough.


    A dam broke inside me somewhere, and all the seconds we¡¯d ever spent together came rushing in. Her glances and smiles, her jokes and laughter, all the little things about her which had made her such a unique person.


    She¡¯d gotten body mods after high school because she wanted to stand out more in college. And even then, she was afraid of putting herself out there, was afraid to be who she wanted to be, because like all of us, she was afraid of change and of rejection.


    But fuck, if she didn¡¯t try. She¡¯d come to me for advice, and then she actually fucking did it. She¡¯d gone and peeked in on classes which interested her and talked to others in that major and just did the damn legwork to separate her from everyone else who just drifted into a life without realizing. And she did it all with a smile, embarrassed or not.


    I talked and remembered and laughed and cried with her there. I¡¯d only known her for a few weeks in total, but it felt like every day was a new memory.


    Until at last, I¡¯d gone through everything, the entire history of her and me, and that led me back into that final day of Dragon and fire. I just stood there, feeling, remembering. I refused to let his darkness taint the light that she¡¯d put into my life.


    I brushed my fingers along the top of the headstone. ¡°I¡¯m gonna get him,¡± I told her. ¡°I am. I¡¯m sorry I wasn¡¯t honest with you before. I was afraid if you knew, I¡¯d scare you off. And maybe if that happened, you wouldn¡¯t be here now. It was selfish of me to get you involved.¡±


    I swallowed and found my throat dry. My tears were over.


    ¡°And I¡¯m sorry for that. I¡¯m just trying to make it through, and I can¡¯t do it without people like you helping me. You, and Mage. Micaiah and Talon. It¡¯s my fault. But¡­¡±


    I shook my head. It sounded like excuses but it was what was in my heart. It was what kept me going, what made me able to live with myself, so I¡¯d say it. She deserved to hear my thoughts, even if I thought they sounded weak.


    ¡°But it¡¯s not me. Not really. I can¡¯t talk about you like you¡¯re just a statistic, because you¡¯re so much more than that. But you represent a sick, fucked-up world, Alyssa. Your mother and father are in so much pain right now, because this is a place where an assassin can just kill someone and slip away. Where Exhumans can have an event and destroy lives and lifestyles. Where maniacs can snap and decide that more suffering is the answer to suffering. I want so badly to change it, to fix it, and stopping Dragon¡­putting that sick fuck in the dirt where he belongs instead of you, that¡¯s my first step.¡±


    I drew my fingers away from the stone. It had been warm to the touch.


    ¡°That¡¯s why you died. And¡­I hope that¡¯s what your death will mean. I love the sentiment and optimism of your quote¡­it¡¯s very you. But I have to disagree. I think we live in the worst today, and I¡¯m going to spend the rest of my life to fix that if I can.¡±


    Someone was clapping slowly, and I turned, my brow narrowing at who the fuck would be doing that in a cemetery.


    ¡°Should I be honored? Though I¡¯d hoped I had earned a greater mention than ¡®maniac¡¯,¡± Karu said, walking towards us, white armor glinting in the sun.


    ¡°Oh hi, Karu,¡± AEGIS said. Karu gave her a sideways glance.


    ¡°What are you doing here?¡± I growled at her.


    ¡°My, such hostility,¡± she said over a yawn. ¡°You would think I were somehow responsible for her death.¡±


    ¡°Maybe not, but there are good people who are dead because of you.¡±


    ¡°Please. People, yes. Good? Hardly. And where was this moral high-ground when you sought me out previously? If I am the scum of the Earth, as you seem dead-set on treating me, why come crawling to me for martial training before?¡±


    ¡°You did that?¡± AEGIS asked of me.


    ¡°I¡¯d just lost my powers. I was scared of Dragon. I wasn¡¯t going to college yet, and I was directionless and stupid,¡± I told AEGIS, not taking my eyes off Karu. ¡°And yeah, she gave me some very good combat tips and training. And consistently proved to me that she was still off her damn rocker.¡±


    ¡°I have determined that rockers are of little use to a hunter, that is all,¡± Karu explained. ¡°¡®Tis better to embrace one¡¯s darkness than spend a lifetime in suffering under it.¡±


    ¡°Can you just answer my question? I really doubt this was for her,¡± I said, gesturing towards Alyssa¡¯s grave.


    ¡°If you mean why am I here, than you are correct. Do not think me heartless, however. Her death was tragic, and I will think of her in my prayers tonight.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure that¡¯s a lot of comfort, for her to know a killer is thinking of her.¡±


    She grinned at me. ¡°But as you probably surmise, I am here because you are here, and no others who would bear me hostility. That I could not handle,¡± she said with a smirk at AEGIS.


    ¡°Why would I be hostile to her again?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°Have you been dropped on your head, little robot? Or is your core faulty?¡±


    ¡°Sorry. I¡¯m actually new here,¡± AEGIS chuckled. ¡°I¡¯m a restored backup from last Winter. Do we have some animosity I¡¯m supposed to study?¡±


    Karu thought for a moment. ¡°No. Well. It is possible Ashton sees it that way, but I have no issue with you then. Your¡­prior iteration was considerably aggravating, and I apologize for treating you as I would she.¡±


    AEGIS just shrugged. ¡°It happens. I get the impression she wasn¡¯t very good at her job. Poor girl.¡±


    I pointed my finger to the sky and discharged a bolt which made a peal of thunder echo around the hills and silent stones.


    ¡°Karu, for the third time, what are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°Such impatience. Is it not polite to catch up on small talk when meeting an old friend after a long separation?¡±


    ¡°Just say what you want and go away. I don¡¯t want to accidentally give you anyone else you should be killing. Just do your thing and leave me alone.¡±


    She grinned. ¡°But you are my thing, Ashton.¡±


    I crossed my arms and waited, and with an unbearable sigh she finally continued. ¡°I am here in answer to your prayers. Literally this time, as it were. You see, I have an interest in Dragon as you do, for many of the same reasons.¡±


    ¡°What, because you have a shared interest in murder?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she smiled. ¡°That is certainly it. Well done. And not long ago, I noted that you gave the device he seeks to the XPCA for care and holding.¡±


    ¡°How do you know that?¡±


    ¡°Let us call it a very fortuitous combination of factors. One of which is the confirmation you just gave me, so I thank you for that.¡±


    I growled at her but internally beat myself up more. Didn¡¯t I just say I didn¡¯t want to give her any more targets? And then the next thing that falls out of my mouth hands her secure data she should never have. Stupid, goddamn it.


    ¡°But acting on this knowledge¡­which again, I did not possess fully until right now, but a hunter sometimes needs to work on a hunch¡­I noted some internal restructuring occurring at the XPCA. Individuals being moved for what seem perfectly normal reasons, and not enough of them that there would be much to look out for. None of this would be suspicious except that several of these individual I know personally, and in speaking with them, they found it odd, to a man. Things were more secretive and bureaucratic than typical.¡±


    ¡°And the point of this is?¡±


    ¡°The point is, it is my belief that competent agents are being moved out of the way by design. Someone or something is lining up the holes, so that given the proper shake, the device will simply fall out of the XPCA without notice or alarm. Corrupt and incompetent officers are being given prominence¡­and all ever too conveniently.¡± She smudged the tip of her nose with her thumb. ¡°As a hunter with a well-developed sense of paranoia, the entire situation reeked of wrongness.¡±


    ¡°Well¡­okay,¡± I said. ¡°Assuming you¡¯re right, assuming that Dragon somehow can pull string at the XPCA ¡ª which is impossible, by the way ¡ª you still haven¡¯t answered my question. Why are you standing here right now telling me this stuff? If you know it, why not blast in there and kill a bunch of XPCA and fix the issue? That¡¯s how you deal with things now, isn¡¯t it? Can we ask Colonel Teryn to weigh in on that, or is he busy being dead?¡±


    ¡°He should not have threatened you,¡± she sniffed delicately.


    ¡°And you shouldn¡¯t have killed him over it, damn it.¡±


    ¡°I am here to propose an alliance,¡± she said. ¡°Our relationship has decayed over the last few months¨C¡°


    ¡°Gee, wonder why.¡±


    ¡°¨Cand I would see it mended. You and yours are individuals I find I wish to work with, or under¡­or atop,¡± she raised her eyebrows at me once. ¡°¡­and I have information you seek.¡±


    ¡°Screw that,¡± I said. ¡°I can get it from AEGIS.¡±


    ¡°Are we talking about the information? Or being on top?¡± AEGIS asked. ¡°Because, yes to both.¡±


    ¡°It will not work,¡± Karu scoffed. ¡°The moves are too subtle and too skilled. If it were not for my personal relationships with these individuals, I would never have been able to see the trends, and I doubt very much that the AI engages with them on such a personal level.¡±


    AEGIS chewed her lip. ¡°Well, it is true that despite monitoring things as I always do, I was completely unaware that anything like this was even happening. Like, maybe if I look more into it¨C¡°


    ¡°By all means. Try,¡± Karu said. ¡°Spend your time. Do you know when Dragon will be poised to strike? Are you willing to abandon a shot at him over your hubris?¡± She pointed at the patch of earth at my feet. ¡°Were all your words about changing a world and stopping a killer mere hot air?¡±


    ¡°You are a killer, Karu.¡±


    ¡°Sometimes it takes one to stop one. I do not think my proficiency can be called into question.¡±


    I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. In a way, it was a relief. Being angry was a much less confusing set of emotions to parse than the hollow melancholy of the bus or the swirl of all the good and bad around Alyssa¡¯s death.


    But as angry as I was at Karu, she had a point, damn her. She wanted Dragon stopped and so did I. I couldn¡¯t let my pride or feelings get in the way of that.


    ¡°If, I agree to work with you, you will act as my subordinate,¡± I informed her. ¡°You will conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be cleared for any combat engagements before you so much as unload a single round. Are we clear?¡±


    ¡°You could have simply stated ¡®no killing and no fun¡¯, but I understand your intent,¡± she smiled at me, and extended her hand. ¡°Your terms are acceptable.¡±


    I still hesitated and then grabbed hold of her arm. A soldier¡¯s embrace, though she lingered much longer than I thought was necessary.


    I turned as soon as she let me go and let out a long, sullen breath.


    ¡°Sorry for leaving like this, Alyssa,¡± I said. ¡°But I have to go make good on my promise. We¡¯re going to stop Dragon, whatever it takes.¡±


    Whatever it takes, I thought, turning back and catching the red glare of Karu¡¯s visor.

 310. 2252, Present Day. XPCA Regional Facility, New Mexico. Athan.

    ¡°Hi Cosette, it¡¯s me.¡±


    ¡°Who is me?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s Athan. How¡¯s it going?¡±


    She paused to place a hot sigh uncomfortably in my ear. ¡°Well the second I got your call I got a cold chill and a premonition of doom, so it could be better. But enough about me. Let¡¯s talk you. I know this isn¡¯t a social call, because you don¡¯t do those. I get a call from an unlisted number, and I think, oh no, it¡¯s Athan.¡±


    ¡°Wow. You really¡­uh¡­bottle this stuff up, don¡¯t you? Make me out to be a real villain.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t imagine why. I¡¯m not heartless, you know. Tower calls to chat sometimes, I find myself actually looking forward to talking to him. Usually because it ends in beers. Moon sometimes has business or questions. Hell, Jack even offers to help with my work.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Well. I guess we could get a drink together sometime, if you¡¯d like?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll consider it if you¡¯re still alive after whatever it is you¡¯re calling about. What did you break this time, Athan? An XPCA facility? A secret military weapon? Some high-ranking official somewhere? If you need a regenerator for one of your friends again, I told you, that was a one-time deal in exchange for full disclosure on your little act, and even then you saw fit to feed me some bullshit story about powers vanishing.¡±


    I held my head in my hands, the comms in my ear continuing to yell at me while I waited for her tirade to end. If she ever wondered why I never called to chat, this was it.


    ¡°So? What is it then?¡± she finished. ¡°Statistically speaking, someone¡¯s dying to know.¡±


    I looked around me at the dimly-lit metal walls of the disused storeroom, XPCA guards walking past the window at regular intervals. I was hiding behind an upturned desk in the dark.


    ¡°Uh. Nothing! Kinda.¡±


    ¡°Man, that¡¯s an awful word.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m actually calling for your benefit. I¡¯m doing that thing you always keep telling me to do.¡±


    ¡°What, not get into trouble?¡± she scoffed.


    ¡°Err, no. The other one. Tell you about it when I¡¯m going to.¡±


    ¡°Surely you¡¯re kidding.¡± Her voice even had a tone of amusement in it.


    ¡°Uh, nope.¡±


    She fidgeted on the line for a moment. ¡°You know, I tell you that so that hopefully you would call me and I could tell you to do that other thing I always keep telling you to do.¡±


    ¡°What, not get into trouble?¡± I echoed.


    ¡°Yes. For fuck¡¯s sake, a thousand times, yes. What the hell are you getting into now, Athan? What more mess could you possibly have the motive to create? What messes even do you have left to make? Or are you going to reprise one of your former masterpieces?¡±


    ¡°Uh. Nothing that bad. Just¡­a little breaking and entering.¡±


    ¡°Of a live nuke reactor? No, a max-security prison? Wait, is it Fort Knox?¡±


    ¡°No. Just an XPCA facility. New Mexico.¡±


    I watched a guard pace past the window again, his boots clanking in the metal hallway. I remembered similar rooms and hallways when I was here before. I lived here for a time bookmarking Talon¡¯s death. Not anywhere I ever thought I¡¯d come back to. The extended interrogations had kind of taken the joy out of the place for me.


    Meanwhile Cosette was trying to set a new world record for longest, slowest sigh ever transmitted over the ¡®net. As her breath finally ran out the sigh ended with a groan and a very defeated sounding puh.


    ¡°You okay over there?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Oh I¡¯m just wondering if I have brain damage. Because there has to be some reason I keep putting up with your shit, Chariot.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s because I¡¯m adorable.¡±


    ¡°And yet I¡¯d kill you and adopt a puppy in a heartbeat. Look, why are you planning to break and enter a secure XPCA facility? If there¡¯s data you need that badly, can¡¯t you just, oh I don¡¯t know, ask?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said, turning serious now. ¡°Look, when Dragon attacked me, he said that the device he wanted being in XPCA hands meant it was ¡®as good as his¡¯.¡±


    ¡°Because he thinks he can just kill and break through anything in his way probably.¡±


    ¡°Yeah that¡¯s what I thought, too. And then we looked into it. And I can¡¯t tell you how I know this part, but there¡¯s a lot of personnel shifts going on seem more directed than usual. It¡¯s not just the usual mess of people being constantly reassigned and relocated. Too many corrupt and incompetent people are lining up too well, all above and below the device.¡±


    ¡°So I know you just said you can¡¯t but how do you know this?¡±


    ¡°Cosette, c¡¯mon.¡±


    ¡°Well it¡¯s kind of important for me believing what you say. I haven¡¯t exactly pulled the records, but from what I¡¯m seeing it looks like same ol¡¯ bureaucratic bullshit as ever.¡±


    ¡°Sorry. Really can¡¯t reveal my sources. And that¡¯s why I¡¯m calling to tell you it¡¯s happening rather than asking questions or seeking proper channels.¡±


    ¡°Mmm,¡± she mused, and I could vaguely hear the thunk-thunk of her boots propping up on her desk. ¡°Basically you think there¡¯s people in Dragon¡¯s pocket.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s very good. He¡¯s very dangerous. But he¡¯s not that good. I¡¯ve never beaten him, but I¡¯ve hurt him, I¡¯ve given him pause. He¡¯s not utterly beyond to me. And I¡¯m just one guy, not a whole organization. He shouldn¡¯t have been this successful or have a shot at cracking a base all by himself, but he is, and we all know he will. I think he¡¯s always had help.¡±


    ¡°So you don¡¯t want to make waves because you don¡¯t want to tip anyone off.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, exactly. I¡¯m not gonna blow anything up this time, just sneak in and check a little data.¡±


    Which was kind of a lie. We were gonna steal a crapton of it. But the blowing up part was true, at least, I intended for it to be so.


    She spent a long time quietly chewing on my words before speaking. ¡°Can you do it without getting caught?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Should be fine.¡±


    ¡°So you, for once, are honestly just calling to let me know what¡¯s up?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much,¡± I said.


    Her voice sounded defeated, but with the same competent seriousness I always attributed to her. ¡°If it weren¡¯t happening, I wouldn¡¯t believe it. And I absolutely shouldn¡¯t be saying this, but I think it¡¯s a fair indicator of just how low you¡¯ve dragged my standards, but¡­thank you, I think?¡±


    ¡°No problem. Any time.¡±


    ¡°No. Not anytime. Do not break into secure facilities any time. Bad Chariot¨C¡°


    ¡°It¡¯s nice having such a sharp CO. I¡¯m gonna go now.¡±


    ¡°Get caught and I¡¯m disavowing any knowledge of this and pushing to have you killed.¡±


    ¡°Love you too. Chat soon. Beer sometime, maybe.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I¡¯m gonna have one now. Don¡¯t get anyone killed. The paperwork is a bitch.¡±


    She hung up on me and I was back alone in the dark. With Tem. So pretty alone.


    The infiltration had been going great until a while ago. Tem and I could walk into the base without any problem. We could get to the half of the base we weren¡¯t allowed in without any problem, thanks to her powers. And if we were willing to employ any of a variety of potentially-destructive techniques, we could have gotten through the server door without a problem. But I really didn¡¯t want to blow up chunks of the base, and AEGIS and Lia had both come up empty on quick solutions, and so I was waiting in the dark here. Just waiting.


    After like twenty minutes of it, AEGIS had me go out and dump a skimmer program onto the door lock, so that if it did get used, she could get instant access. And she was cracking away at the door in her own way, a ¡®brute force attack¡¯ she called it, even the name of which did not seem like her operational wheelhouse.


    And obviously it wasn¡¯t. Because I¡¯d now been sitting here for two hours, all the tension and adrenaline in my body turned to aching. I¡¯d taken to counting how long before the guard patrol walked past the door¡¯s window and found it every four minutes almost exactly. And then how many times it was the same guard before a different went by. So far, the shift had only changed on me once, but I was sure if I stayed another six hours, I could witness the miracle again. Really gave me something to look forward to other than my ass being asleep.


    ¡°Yeah, this isn¡¯t the part of espionage they glorify in the movies,¡± Lia murmured on comms, sounding sleepy and bored as I felt. ¡°How¡¯d talking to Cosette go?¡±


    ¡°Better than expected.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s not gonna have you killed?¡±


    ¡°Nope.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Good,¡± she said.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    And then more drawn-out, boring silence.


    ¡°Hey, can I get an update?¡± Lia asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m sitting in a dark room with Tem in a wheelchair,¡± I said, trying to sound as irritated as possible.


    ¡°Not you, dumbnuts,¡± Lia chuckled. ¡°AEGIS. Yo. Hello. AEGIS.¡±


    ¡°What¡­?¡± AEGIS answered.


    ¡°Update us. It¡¯s been two hours, girl.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Sorry. Just¡­working on this thing¡­¡±


    ¡°Yeah she¡¯s gone,¡± Lia sighed. ¡°Well I¡¯m gonna make some cocoa. Want any Athan?¡±


    ¡°Har, har,¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh, wait!¡± AEGIS said suddenly. ¡°Someone just went in! I have their badge creds. Thank you, thank you, thank you¡­¡± I heard her typing, even over comms. ¡°¡­Lieutenant Hanson. You glorious bastard of a man. Now finish whatever you¡¯re doing in there so Athan can get in and we can go home.¡±


    ¡°Oh good,¡± Lia yawned. ¡°Well, that¡¯s probably enough time to make cocoa. I¡¯ll leave my earpiece in, yell if anything exciting happens.¡±


    I¡¯d hoped the waiting was at an end after that, but it was still most of an hour before Lieutenant Hanson ¡ª whom I grew to loathe over the ticking seconds ¡ª finished whatever work he had in there and stopped being in the data center. I stretched and heard my back popping way too much.


    ¡°Ready to go, Tem?¡± I asked.


    She nodded from where she sat in her chair behind the desk with me, and as I grabbed the handles to her chair, both of us melted into invisibility. The guard had just gone past our storage room, so for once I didn¡¯t have to wait.


    We glided silent and invisible through empty hallways, Tem¡¯s chair solid in my hands despite the brain-bending awkwardness of feeling but not being able to see it. Every time I looked down and felt like it should be there, I felt a little primal confusion, a tiny jolt of panic like I¡¯d misplaced her somehow. It felt like I kept it up I¡¯d get motion sick or something so I tried to just focus on walking instead. We turned another few corners, the path familiar now that I¡¯d made the trip back and forth twice, and within a minute we were standing outside the damn door which had been such a pain in my ass.


    Literally. Hard metal floor for two hours.


    ¡°Okay, swipe your mobile and you should be in,¡± AEGIS voice came in an unnecessary whisper. Wasn¡¯t like the guards could hear her in my ear, but I appreciated the sentiment.


    I held my mobile up against the scanner and it beeped green, releasing the door with a heavy-sounding ka-chunk. I pushed inside and found the cold, recirculated air immediately stinging at my face and throat.


    ¡°Okay, we just need any server that¡¯s part of the main cluster,¡± AEGIS whispered. ¡°There¡¯s only four clusters in there, I can¡¯t tell if they¡¯re physically separated or not, just get the rider on any of them and I can tell if it¡¯s the right one.¡±


    ¡°Should have given him more riders,¡± Lia commented. ¡°No reason not to bug all four clusters if we worked this hard to get access.¡±


    ¡°Hindsight is twenty-twenty,¡± AEGIS agreed. ¡°But at least if we need to come back, we¡¯ve got the door this time at least.¡±


    While they chattered, I was plugging a discrete device into the nearest server. The device didn¡¯t have a standard port, but something similar, designed to fit into a standard port without being one.


    When it plugged in, the server would try to read it, fail, and assume an error, which prevented any of their security precautions from going off at an unauthorized device suddenly being added. However, it still tried to read it, which meant the firmware ¡ª the code of the physical device itself ¡ª was still engaged. This opened a disconnect between how much of the device the firmware saw, and how much it reported seeing to the software, and that tiny gap let us get a foot in the door. It let us interface with the insecure firmware alone without an alert, and once we modified that, we could load the device like a normal drive, outside of any precautions they had.


    It was something that might have once gone completely over my head before I¡¯d spent so long with Whitney. I still wasn¡¯t a programmer, even a little bit, but hardware, software, firmware, and the differences and points at which they talked, those were something I¡¯d grown familiar with. And apparently, those gaps were a nice target for any system you had physical access to hack.


    ¡°Bingo,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°First try.¡±


    ¡°We good?¡± I confirmed, barely breathing into the comms.


    ¡°We good. Get yourself home. Thanks for waiting so patiently.¡±


    On a hunch, I waited for a few seconds, and then almost four minutes to the time I¡¯d entered, watched the guard stroll by outside. My time hadn¡¯t been completely wasted, watching them stroll circles, at least.


    I steered Tem into the less-secure area, decloaked, and then walked out of the building without a care, the other XPCA ignoring me completely, except at times to stare at the malnourished girl or wheelchair I was pushing.


    ¡°Jesus, it¡¯s insane,¡± AEGIS commented in the same distracted air as before. ¡°This can¡¯t be right.¡±


    ¡°Why would it be wrong?¡± Lia asked.


    ¡°Because it can¡¯t be right.¡±


    ¡°Well not to tell you how to do your job sweetie, but you¡¯re being a pretty shoddy AI if that¡¯s the kind of logic you¡¯re running on,¡± Lia laughed.


    ¡°FYI, my logic happens to be¡­!¡± she argued, her voice trailing off again ¡°¡­is¡­totally¡­¡±


    I smiled at the gate guard and gave him a small wave when I passed. Just an ordinary XPCA bloke taking his cripple out for a walk. Nothing to see here, buddy.


    ¡°Very convincing,¡± Lia said.


    ¡°Okay, I¡¯m focusing here,¡± AEGIS snapped. ¡°I¡¯m backtracing all these orders to find their points of origin. We know a couple of people specifically mentioned by Karu. We have an E-6 here who¡¯s been reassigned because of a gap made by shifting four others into a new ops unit which looks like it was made for no reason at all. The colonel who put together that group¡­delegated assignment into it to a major¡­the same major is the one who overrode the original E-6¡¯s CO¡¯s recommendation of who to send and picked someone else instead, so our boy would move into his place. Hmm, but then that same colonel made two other similar units in the past month. Were all twelve people slotted there under his machination?¡±


    ¡°Okay, I get it,¡± Lia said. ¡°You can continue to think in quiet.¡±


    ¡°Think in quiet?¡± AEGIS asked, a little late and a little distracted.


    ¡°Yes. The opposite of talk out loud. Do what you need to, girl.¡±


    ¡°Well, chasing down what I have so far, I¡¯ve found two sources already who¡¯ve been corroborated at least in triplicate. There¡¯s more but I¡¯m still working. One¡¯s¡­a nobody basically, in the records office. I bet it¡¯s useful that he can clean a lot of books. I¡¯ll see what files he¡¯s accessed and see if there¡¯s any holes there. The other one¡¯s a civilian contractor liaison. I have no idea what that means, except that maybe Dragon¡¯s money is getting channeled through the commercial sector before getting here.¡±


    ¡°Jesus,¡± I murmured. ¡°AEGIS you sound like you¡¯re having fun over there.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s like checking three million mazes to see what set of moves sorts all of them at once,¡± she said with no small amount of boasting in her voice. ¡°So, y¡¯know. I¡¯m pretty awesome.¡±


    ¡°I dunno about your records bookworm, but I can look up the civilian liaison,¡± Lia said. ¡°Is he DoD large or small?¡±


    ¡°Large.¡±


    ¡°Nice. I¡¯m pretty sure I have something on each of the big companies. I¡¯ll see what I can dig up. Send me what you have on him¨Coh, you already did. Please and thank you.¡±


    ¡°Found another guy, also civilian contracts. Sending him too.¡±


    ¡°You know, I hope the source isn¡¯t in business,¡± Lia said, and I could hear her typing too.


    ¡°Does it hurt your vision of the American dream?¡± I laughed.


    ¡°No. For one, it makes AEGIS less useful at hacking because she¡¯s an XPCA AI, not a corporate one. But two, they just tend to give more of an arse than the average enlisted. Even your secretaries and security at an F-five-hundred company tend to be overachievers or aspirants. It¡¯s a culture of shark-eat-shark, and that means people are always on the lookout for backstabbing, if not espionage. Just makes things harder.¡±


    ¡°Sounds lovely,¡± AEGIS commented.


    ¡°Yeah, my thoughts exactly,¡± I agreed. We were a good distance from the base now, and I turned down a sidestreet to get to a nice dumpster-filled alley where Rito could pick us up without issue.


    ¡°Not that the DoD isn¡¯t serious about security,¡± Lia continued, doing her thing where her mouth moved while she worked. The exact opposite of AEGIS, I realized, with amusement. ¡°There¡¯s just a lot higher concentration of people who don¡¯t care in the military, especially when you get to the boring cushy jobs. Military is a lot more ¡®move up or settle down¡¯, and business is more ¡®move up or get out¡¯. In some parts, not everywhere, obviously. In my experience. I¡¯m just blabbing.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve noticed,¡± I said, realizing I was now standing in the room with the two of them. I blinked a few times to get adjusted to the relative dark of being indoors again, and I swear Tem involuntarily lit the room up a little brighter out of the same reflex. ¡°Uh. Hi. So how are we doing?¡±


    ¡°If you excuse the roughness of it, I have taken the liberty of making a visualization,¡± AEGIS commented, greeting me with a warm smile and handing me a tablet. I looked at it and saw¡­


    Well, something approximating a drunk spider¡¯s web. Lots and lots of lines connecting little points. And then lots more lines.


    ¡°These,¡± she said, tapping on the holo to zoom in a little ¡°are the backtraced sources so far. And it looks like maybe sixty percent of them or so are legitimate.¡± As she spoke, the majority of the lines turned a lighter shade of grey, still leaving a mess of connected lines everywhere. Just less of one.


    ¡°And of those, I think some are manipulated and the person who it looks like is behind the orders actually isn¡¯t. People calling in favors to get someone else to do something not-quite on the books or the like. So those might be false sources and I¡¯ll cull them for now.¡± Again, more points and lines faded away.


    The mess was beginning to look a lot less messy. In fact, if I turned it upside down, it looked kind of like a tree. Well, several trees, growing into each other. But definitely a few places where things were radiating outwards from. I frowned and tapped on one of the roots. A little popup informed me that this was one of the contractor liaisons I¡¯d heard so much about. His profile data whizzed by under my fingertips. He¡¯d worked with a lot of companies, most I¡¯d heard of even. The big contracting firms that seemed to do everything. NexTech. Ur-Horizon. Vanguardian.


    I stopped the scrolling at an unexpected name and frowned. I tapped over to another of the tree-stem guys and scrolled through his list. Big companies. Some overlap. The same name again.


    ¡°See something?¡± AEGIS asked, looking at my eyes more than my hands. I nodded and blew up and then tapped the entry in the list, and then did the same for the other.


    ¡°Huh. Well there¡¯s a lot of overlap,¡± she said.


    ¡°No¡­I think we should check this out first.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± She cocked her head at me like I was a questioning child. Which, compared to her and her connections and light-speed thinking, I probably basically was. But I had a feeling about this which I was certain was worth something. ¡°What makes them worth investigating more than any other?¡±


    ¡°What are we investigating?¡± Karu asked, walking into the room. ¡°Oh, greetings Ashton, I did not know you had returned. You are well?¡±


    ¡°My ass hurts. We have several lists of companies where Dragon¡¯s money might be coming from, and I have a hunch.¡±


    ¡°Which hunch?¡± she asked, sidling up next to me and drawing a brief stink-eye from AEGIS, who proceeded to sidle up on my equal and opposite side.


    ¡°These guys,¡± I said, tapping the holo again for her benefit.


    She took a step back and scratched her chin. ¡°Hmm. IkaCo.¡±


    ¡°You know them?¡± Lia asked.


    ¡°Most know them, though perhaps not by name as they are more a parent company than anything. I have had personal dealings with their CEO on occasion, as he is a powerful, illustrious man, and it is exactly those with whom I was intended to bump shoulders in my upbringing, as it were. Though I have met the leadership of most of these companies, to be honest.¡±


    ¡°Then let¡¯s try to leverage that and see what we can find out,¡± I said. ¡°One foot in the door is all we need to plant another rider on another server, right?¡±


    Karu gave a bemused chuckle. ¡°I doubt very much that you will have the same level of access to their operations as you do the XPCA¡¯s. Yet there is some merit there. It is¡­hmm.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°Well. I know who to ask. It is, however a matter of asking him which is the difficulty. Such things in the business world are never done as a simple favor,¡± Karu confessed, and right away I knew who she was talking about.


    I reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze. ¡°We¡¯re stopping Dragon, remember? This is for a better tomorrow.¡±


    ¡°Quoting tombstones at me still? All of this for your dead girl?¡±


    ¡°For everyone, Karu.¡±


    She gave me a lame smile and a sigh. ¡°Very well. Let me prepare myself and then I shall take the plunge. For your sense of everyone tomorrow.¡±


    She ran her fingers through her hair, growing in, but still very short, gave me one more smile, and then left the room again just as she entered; brisque and seemingly disconnected from everyone in it but me.


    ¡°What was that all about?¡± Lia asked me, her eyebrows arched.


    ¡°That¡­was what Karu looks like when she¡¯s making a big life-altering decision,¡± I shrugged. ¡°She¡¯s going to go reunite with her old man.¡±


    ¡°Idris Irenside?¡± AEGIS asked. ¡°The senator?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, shaking my head. ¡°I¡¯m glad she¡¯s doing it. But honestly, I don¡¯t see any way this isn¡¯t going to end so badly.¡±


    I listened to Karu¡¯s boots clicking down the hallway until they faded into the sound of keys being tapped all around me, one form of data extraction bleeding into the next. Hacking was great of course, but at some point, you needed a personal touch, a contact, some face-to-face in order to get at the truly personal data, and that was what we needed right now. We needed Karu, and she needed to talk to her old man.


    I¡¯d help as much as I could, but in the end, this was all going to be on her. I hoped she¡¯d be okay with it.


    I listened to the keystrokes for a minute more, just thinking about the data we had and the data we needed, and all the difference that difference made.


    She¡¯d be fine, I thought. She had to be. Or else we might all be in a whole lot of shit.

 311. 2252, Present Day. East Potomac Golf Course, D.C.. Athan.

    Some things about the day might have seemed predisposed to sour one¡¯s mood. Senator Idris had, for example, had gotten a call out of the blue from his estranged daughter and then presumably dropped or shuffled everything to accommodate her sudden demand to play a round of golf. When he joined her, he was surprised to find me along for the ride, and while she wasn¡¯t in full battle regalia, her visor was still on, and all of the metaphors for hiding behind masks and how hunting was between the two of them with it.


    Despite that, the man would not stop smiling. Even more than his usual effortless beaming, he was just apparently a happy old man, ready to play some golf with his little girl. It¡¯d be cute if he hadn¡¯t already basically tried to kidnap me for his own political ends once already.


    ¡°Why am I here again?¡± I hissed at her as we walked between holes ¡ª Idris had all the golf carts in the world, of course, but Karu had just strolled right past him as he climbed in to one and waited for us to join him.


    ¡°So that I have an excuse to not speak with him, obviously,¡± she said.


    ¡°But we¡¯re here to speak with him.¡±


    ¡°Yes. But even so, if I am forced to do nothing but, I am liable to delve into fratricide. The man is unbearable.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t killing people who get in your way kind of your new thing?¡± I sniped at her.


    She gave me a killing stare of her own, but said nothing. Which honestly kind of made me wonder how much she was joking, in a pants-shitting-realization kind of way.


    We¡¯d come up on the next tee now, and the whining of a motor behind us let us know that Idris had caught up, still smiling despite looking somewhat red in the passenger seat of his golf cart. As he stepped out, he hefted his own clubs and shooed his caddy away with the cart, the poor guy looking completely confused as he drove away.


    ¡°Wonderful day,¡± he said breathily. ¡°Don¡¯t you think, Karen?¡±


    She glanced around disinterested. I thought it was pretty nice out, but without incoming missiles or sniper fire, Karu behind her visor probably saw very little of relevance.


    ¡°So. It was a surprise to receive your call,¡± he tried again. ¡°Did I finally wear you down, my dear?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said simply, pulling a club out of the bag I had on my back and examining it like a weapon.


    He shut up as she teed off, but once it was his turn, spoke freely and at length.


    ¡°You know, I tried everything to reconnect with you. It wasn¡¯t easy, and admittedly, it hurt my pride a great deal. But some things are just more important than pride,¡± he said, glancing at her with his eyes twinkling.


    ¡°Save your empty words, father,¡± Karu said, tapping her visor. ¡°I am well capable of monitoring your vitals for signs of deception, and have not yet stopped seeing them.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± he asked, the club falling dramatically out of his hands to bounce and spin to the grass. ¡°Is a father not allowed to dote upon his only daughter?¡±


    He took two steps and then reached out, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. She turned and stared at it. The two stood there for way too long before he finally removed the hand.


    ¡°So, uh,¡± I said, just now realizing that this whole scenario would be doomed without my intervention, perhaps already far too late. ¡°Senator. We¡¯re actually here to ask something of you.¡±


    ¡°He knows that,¡± Karu said. ¡°We would not have reached out to him were that not the case.¡±


    ¡°Or, you might have just realized you have a father who loves you,¡± he murmured.


    Karu gave one full-bodied laugh and then took a few steps away again. I was beginning to feel really bad for the old man.


    ¡°Um. So. Yeah. Maybe cut down on the antagonism, Karu?¡±


    ¡°Perhaps if he cuts down on this farce he is propagating.¡±


    I sighed, already feeling a headache coming on. ¡°Look, Senator, can we talk business for a minute here?¡±


    ¡°Talk away,¡± he said, turning back to pick up his club.


    ¡°Basically, we¡¯re hunting a terrorist. An assassin. An all-around really unpleasant guy. He made some cryptic allusions and in chasing them down, we think there¡¯s a possibility he¡¯s putting money through businesses. Bribes and the like, probably.¡±


    ¡°Hmm,¡± he said, squaring up, his feet doing that funny golfer shuffle for a bit, before he whacked the ball with a tink and a whoosh. The three of us all watched it sail away into the distance. I didn¡¯t even know what he was aiming at, but as Karu didn¡¯t immediately give him any shit, I had to assume he hit it. ¡°My boy, as much as I¡¯d like to help with such a worthy cause, I must be clear. My first priority is to my daughter. I¡¯ve neither seen nor spoken with her in months and wish to mend those fences before we embroil ourselves in intrigue.¡±


    ¡°In other words, tit-for-tat,¡± Karu commented as though he weren¡¯t right there. ¡°He won¡¯t help you because you¡¯re not helping him.¡±


    He bristled, but it was only for a moment. ¡°My dear, why do you constantly seek to poison the boy¡¯s impression of me? I have been nothing but¨C¡°


    ¡°Manipulative?¡±


    ¡°¨Caccommodating.¡±


    I pulled the club out of Karu¡¯s hands and she gave him one last glare before stomping off towards the next hole. The visor¡¯s red glow seemed to match her face a lot better than the polo and skirt she was wearing. Idris and I just watched her go for a minute.


    ¡°I¡¯m really sorry,¡± I said.


    He sighed. ¡°Don¡¯t be, boy. I¡¯m sure I¡¯ve steered her wrong in life before now and am reaping what I¡¯ve sown. I just wish I raised her to be a little less vindictive. She might have an incorruptible sense of morals, but that also means if she¡¯s written you off, you¡¯re dead to her.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I agreed. ¡°She could use some work in being more mentally flexible, that¡¯s for sure. She won¡¯t bend, so she breaks instead. Kind of a mess.¡±


    ¡°Has she broken?¡± he asked, his voice suddenly concerned, and I realized I¡¯d said too much.


    ¡°Uh. Sure, on some things. You know how it is,¡± I laughed. You know how it is? What does that even mean?


    ¡°Hmm, I do,¡± he said, stroking his thick blonde mustache, but said nothing else as he went to follow Karu. I picked up on his heels, feeling like he¡¯d seen through me far more than I¡¯d ever actually said.


    The next hole proceeded in very much the same fashion. And the one after. And the one after that. I was beginning to worry we would run out of golf before these two said or did anything, so I found a moment during our next walk to speak with Karu out of earshot.


    ¡°Karu, none of this is helping,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re being impossible to him.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a game,¡± she laughed. ¡°And you are losing, by the way.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. It¡¯s golf.¡±


    ¡°Not that, imbecile,¡± she smiled. ¡°Our spat. I wished you had kept your mouth shut, by telling Father what we want, you have given him much power over us. I could have used his curiosity and that information as leverage, but you offered it freely.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what?¡± I asked, her words all making sense, but none of what she was saying. ¡°You guys are playing a game? Seriously?¡±Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    ¡°Perhaps battle is a more apt term. Games are typically for fun.¡±


    ¡°How do you¡­even know? Nobody¡¯s playing anything that I can see. How do you win? Do you guys do this often?¡±


    ¡°So many questions,¡± she tutted. ¡°The game, all are playing, at all times, Ashton. Life is a struggle, made of many smaller. When you need something and go to take it, the victory is when you have it in your hands. My father knows much about IkaCo, and if we want that from him, we must induce, cajole, or finagle.¡±


    ¡°What is wrong with you?¡± I asked. ¡°Both of you. Just freaking ask.¡±


    ¡°You did that. Pray tell, what results did you garner?¡±


    ¡°He said he wanted to talk to you first, which you are not doing.¡±


    ¡°And if I gave him what he wanted, why would he make good on that offer? Why expend his resources and influence merely because his words indicated he would?¡±


    ¡°Because¡­uh¡­otherwise he¡¯d be lying?¡±


    ¡°And?¡±


    I blinked at her. Did she not understand the concept of lying or what the heck were we even discussing here?


    ¡°Karu, I have to level with you, I¡¯m so lost.¡±


    She laughed, the sound of it carrying well over the grassy hills and trees. ¡°Ashton, the only harm in lying is to one¡¯s reputation and how one is perceived. The man knows I think of him as garbage, and though you are naive to a fault, even you bear him ill regard after the stunt he pulled at Christmas. He has no reputation to uphold in this front. His word is valueless.¡±


    We came up on the eighth hole, and after a moment, Idris caught up with us. By now, his cheer had plenty of opportunity to disintegrate into sort of a somber focus, mostly silence as he endured Karu¡¯s judgement without argument.


    ¡°My apologies to eavesdrop, but I am not a man whose word is valueless,¡± he said, no smile on his lps. ¡°I am a man of honor and repute, and there are thousands who would confirm it.¡±


    ¡°And thousands, many the very same, who know not how they have been swindled. The arrogance, to think you could pull the wool over the eyes of your own protege, as it were.¡±


    ¡°There is no wool, just a military visor,¡± he sighed.


    ¡°This,¡± she said, tapping it, ¡°helps me to see clearly. It removes obstacles. It enhances detail. It provides information I know to be truth, and it does so without demand or recompense. Traits that if present in a person, would make me glad to associate with them rather than guarded.¡±


    ¡°Or paranoid,¡± he scoffed.


    ¡°Or bitchy,¡± I added. ¡°Dude, Karu, what if your dad actually just genuinely wants to have a relationship with you? I mean, I know you thought it was cowardly of him to reach out to me instead of you over you two falling out, but the fact is he was reaching out, so obviously he cares.¡±


    ¡°Obvious, is it? And you could see no way that such an obvious ¡®fact¡¯ be a construction? My, how cheaply truth can be found these days. For the low cost of two phone calls, I can fabricate any truth I desire.¡±


    ¡°What, you think he called me just so I¡¯d believe he¡¯s a dad who cares?¡±


    Her smug smile answered my question without a word.


    ¡°Look, there¡¯s two options then. Either he¡¯s a snake and doesn¡¯t care and is just trying to use me to get to you, or he does care. But we¡¯re talking a dad having a relationship with his daughter here, what possible motive could he have for being on speaking terms with you? Why the hell are you so dead-set on shutting him out? Neither of these scenarios ends with ¡®and then he doomed them all¡¯ or any shit like that. Either he talks to you, or he talks to you and legit cares. What¡¯s the problem?¡±


    ¡°You,¡± she said, smiling as she pat me on the head like a dog ¡°are demonstrating the problem aptly, my friend.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°What she means,¡± Idris explained ¡°is that words have unlimited power. If you take her argument as truth that I¡¯ve poisoned you with my venomous influence, you¡¯ll note I did it with words alone. She feels if she ever opens up to me, I¡¯ll have he wrapped around my finger, as I clearly have with you.¡±


    ¡°Why would you even say that?¡± I asked, flabbergasted. ¡°If that were your whole plan, why would you explain it to me?¡±


    ¡°It sounds less damning coming from his lips than mine,¡± Karu shrugged.


    ¡°Or it is a falsehood I have no issue discarding,¡± he retorted.


    ¡°Or, it¡¯s truth and by pretending to discard it, you merely embrace it further.¡±


    Yeah the little headache I was nursing grew up fast into a strong, healthy full-blown one. This shit was maddening.


    ¡°Okay, enough of this crap,¡± I said, pinching the bridge of my nose as my head pounded. ¡°Apparently just talking doesn¡¯t work, so let¡¯s fucking deal. Idris, what do you want?¡±


    ¡°I want my daughter back. My little girl who used¨C¡°


    ¡°And what do we wish, Ashton?¡±


    ¡°Jesus, you¡¯re cold,¡± I told her. ¡°We want good access to someone with knowledge inside IkaCo. Someone who could help us chase down corruption. Someone not corrupt¡­hopefully.¡± I looked back and forth between the two blonde Irensides and found them both watching me carefully. I swallowed the lump in my throat and pressed on, feeling like everything I was saying and doing was just fuel for their stupid game, somehow. ¡°So we just make an exchange, right?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Karu said, turning on her dad. ¡°A simple exchange. It should be no problem for one such as yourself. Wheeling and dealing all day, this is no different. So what say you?¡±


    ¡°I say, my dear, this is not a business negotiation. I¡¯m not selling you into marriage for a head of cattle, I want you to be my daughter again.¡±


    ¡°Are our terms too steep then, Father?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not about terms,¡± he barked. ¡°It¡¯s not about dealing, or trading, or manipulating. It¡¯s about family, goddammit. It¡¯s about realizing what you have after it¡¯s gone but before it¡¯s too late. It¡¯s about trying to fix what you¡¯ve done wrong. It¡¯s not a negotiation.¡±


    ¡°When I was seven, I got a bad report from one of my tutors and you asked me what punishment I thought appropriate. I told you, and you laughed in my face, telling me that was a horrible bargaining position from which to start. Everything is a negotiation, Father. Those are your words.¡±


    ¡°When you are raising a child, perhaps, and want her to know how the world works!¡± he explained. ¡°We are adults now. We are beyond such pettiness.¡±


    ¡°I am such pettiness. I was raised to be so.¡±


    ¡°Then I apologize for my failures as a parent,¡± he said. And somehow that line stopped Karu cold, stumped frowning under her visor.


    Me, I had no idea what was going on or who was winning or what the fuck was even happening. But I saw Karu tensing and breathing again and knew she wasn¡¯t ready to stop there.


    ¡°We have made clear what we desire. State your terms.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± he said, crossing his arms. ¡°This is not a negotiation.¡±


    ¡°Then we have nothing to gain by being here.¡± She walked over to me and yanked the golf bag off my shoulder, throwing it to the ground with a clatter. ¡°Until next time, Father. It has been a delight.¡±


    ¡°What can I say to make it work?¡± He asked her. ¡°What can I do?¡±


    ¡°We have made our terms clear,¡± she crossed her arms.


    ¡°I meant, as a person. As a father.¡±


    ¡°Secure our meeting as a person. Call your contacts, as a father. I care not how you do it so long as it gets done.¡±


    ¡°Dude, Karu,¡± I murmured.


    ¡°Ashton, it is obvious to me he does not wish to do as we request. There is no merit to persisting.¡±


    ¡°Because you¡¯re being a major bitch, maybe?¡±


    ¡°Or perhaps,¡± she wheeled on me, ¡°because it is not a simple request. It is something which will take him effort or money or time or influence he would rather not spend, and disguises his reluctance under the guise of concerned fatherhood. It is obvious by his willingness to hear us out but not to act. If he cared merely about our reunion, then what we asked would be immaterial. But it is not, and therefore, he does not.¡±


    Suddenly Idris snapped upright, ramrod straight, the same poise his daughter carried. Even if he wasn¡¯t really bigger than me, he suddenly felt it.


    ¡°Now see here, Karen,¡± he snapped. ¡°I am your father, and you will listen to me. I have been tolerant of the snide insinuations you have thrown at me all day, but this is beyond even what I can endure. Stand up straight, young lady!¡±


    I saw her twitch as he yelled, remembered how he¡¯d barked before at her and she¡¯d jumped. But this time, she didn¡¯t jump. She didn¡¯t stand up straight, just ran her fingers through her hair, rubbing the strands between her fingertips.


    ¡°No,¡± she said, slouching further. ¡°No, I will not.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Fucking my mother gives you no right over me, old man. I have spent long years aiming to please you, have thrown away too much of my own life to feed yours. You have fatherhood exactly backwards, and it sickens me. Never once have you considered what in the world would be best for your child. Only yourself and your legacy, and the more I grew open to the world, the more I saw this in everything you do. You think yourself tolerant? Hah! Try enduring a lifetime of a hand crammed into the back of one¡¯s skull like a puppet.¡±


    Her face grew dark. ¡°But I have had a revelation recently, Father. I am not that girl anymore. If you shout jump at me, I no longer jump. I¡¯m free now, and I shall jump if and when I please. And I do not like being shouted at.¡±


    She threw the club in her hands down with the rest of them at my feet and walked away, leaving the two of us standing there, shocked at her sudden outburst. If I were watching Idris at that moment, I felt like I might have seen legitimate, honest emotions on his face for the first time.


    But by the time I turned to him, he was just standing there with his brow furrowed and his jaw set. All things considered, I was surprised he didn¡¯t look more¡­I dunno, hurt? Instead, he just looked like he was thinking. Scheming, maybe. More moves in that stupid game, if Karu was to be believed.


    ¡°You know, if you want her back, helping your daughter out isn¡¯t a bad first step,¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m aware,¡± he said, his eyes flashing darkly at me. ¡°But I won¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Any¡­particular reason why?¡± I sighed.


    He clapped a broad hand on my shoulders and gave me the least believable smile I¡¯d yet seen on his face, his eyes still dark. ¡°Look at her. Would it do any good?¡±


    ¡°So you won¡¯t even try? Doesn¡¯t that just kind of confirm everything she¡¯s said?¡±


    His smile grew tight-lipped and his fingers dug into my shoulder slightly before he let me go. ¡°You should learn and listen from her, boy. As ingratiating as that naivety is, it¡¯s getting old.¡±


    I had no idea what that meant, and he just shook his head as he read that on my face. He pulled himself further upright and walked past me, pulling one of the clubs from the bag on the ground and stalking over to his ball as he went.


    ¡°Now if you¡¯ll excuse me, I was doing quite well this game and intend to see it played through. It¡¯s been a pleasure as always, Ashton m¡¯boy. Don¡¯t hesitate to call if you need anything.¡±


    ¡°So long as I have something to offer?¡± I asked, half-joking.


    But as he turned and smiled, I realized the darkness in his eyes wasn¡¯t there for the passing of his daughter, or related to her in any way at all. A chill ran down my spine.


    ¡°Now you¡¯re getting it,¡± he said, and turned back to his game.

 312. 2252, Present Day. Downtown D.C.. Athan.

    I was so perplexed and focused on Senator Irenside¡¯s parting words that I was actually a bit distracted from Karu¡¯s driving, which was a mercy.


    ¡°Jesus Chris Karu, you don¡¯t¡­fit¡­there¡­!¡±


    ¡°Oh, silence yourself. I am in the lane, am I not?¡±


    ¡°Only because that guy didn¡¯t want the your car becoming a hood ornament for his.¡±


    ¡°I do not see the issue. I knew he would yield, and so he did. Perhaps you should be commending my aptitude rather than criticising it?¡±


    I shook my head at the same bullshit she¡¯d been pulling at the golf course. So absolutely certain of her correctness that any outcome would justify it, it felt like. Until she wound up in a flaming wreck.


    Which, with her father, perhaps she already had. But then his last words came back to me and I was lost all over again.


    ¡°Why didn¡¯t you even try to meet your dad halfway?¡± I asked her.


    ¡°Because then I would have given up a half-measure for nothing.¡±


    ¡°But what if it wasn¡¯t for nothing? What if he would have met you with the other half?¡±


    ¡°Asking such as that is like asking why I do not sing to birds to have them perch on my finger, Ashton. Or stride atop waves to cross the sea. These things do not happen, and acting in expectation of such makes one delusional.¡±


    ¡°Well yeah, you¡¯re not a fairy-tale princess or a prophet, but you are his daughter.¡±


    ¡°And so I have experience sufficient to determine his depth and meaning.¡± She paused, and I thought she was done speaking, but it was only to throw both of her hands across the wheel to rip the car sideways across three lanes of oncoming traffic. ¡°I understand it is not a great comfort to you, but my argument is: I have the experience in the situation and you do not. You cannot contest me.¡±


    ¡°I know better because I¡¯ve been there longer, is that all?¡±


    ¡°Indeed.¡±


    ¡°You also have a lot of messed up relations and twisted-up emotions. You don¡¯t think there¡¯s any chance that¡¯s altering your perspective a wee bit?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said. And this time when she paused, it was because she had said all she wanted. The woman was impossible.


    ¡°Okay well, for those of us who are obviously idiots in this situation, can you tell me why your vast experience concluded this was a lost cause?¡±


    ¡°That, I might be able to,¡± she said with a serious nod. ¡°Imagine you are discussing terms of an agreement with an individual. What do you suppose the necessary steps are to a fruitful end for both parties?¡±


    I sat back in my chair ¡ª not pressed into it by g-forces at the moment ¡ª and thought. ¡°Well, for both parties to walk away happy, they have to each put out there what they want, otherwise the other person wouldn¡¯t know to give it to them. And then they discuss value I guess. I see how much of what you want is worth how much of what I want. And we go back and forth on that point, until we agree. And then we agree. Is that pretty much it?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much, as it were. Now tell me, at which of these steps did negotiation break down on the golf course?¡±


    ¡°Step zero?¡±


    She smiled. ¡°Did it?¡±


    ¡°Yes. You wouldn¡¯t tell him what we wanted either. You even told me off for telling him.¡±


    ¡°So you admit that we, collectively, told him our position and desires.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°No, crazypants. I told him because you weren¡¯t going to. Because you have this huge beef with him and it¡¯s insane, and neither of you were going to get anywhere, ever.¡±


    ¡°My, how interesting,¡± she veritably hummed. ¡°The senator was acting in a manner which extracted your sympathies to his cause, and I was acting in a manner which had you handling presentation and negotiation on our behalf. I wonder if perhaps either of those were an accident?¡±


    I would have fell back into my seat, but a sudden burst of acceleration managed it for me. After a minute of thought, I came back with a witty, succinct retort.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Is it possible that everything from bringing you along to arguing to him through you was a calculated maneuver?¡± she chuckled. ¡°Ashton, you are many things, but predictable is chief among them. It is not hard to account for your actions in my dealings.¡±


    ¡°Wait. So to be clear. You were not telling him what you wanted because you knew I would?¡±


    ¡°Indeed. And by having you do so, I withheld from him what he desired, which was proper interaction with myself. Can you not see what a vulnerable position he held us in? The very act of coming to negotiate was already a victory for him. How would we possibly retain anything to offer after delivering unto him what he already sought?¡±


    My head spun and my headache seemed to compound. Karu¡¯s flippant invitation for me to join her in golfing with her dad seemed so¡­so¡­so¡­multi-layered and nefarious, now. I looked at the psychopath on my left with new reverence and awe.


    ¡°So the whole thing, the whole¡­everything that just happened. That was literally all just a battle by proxy through me?¡±


    ¡°And one we lost badly, I shall have you note. You spent far more time reproaching me than you did attempting to persuade him. His act won you over entirely.¡±


    ¡°How do you even know it was an¡­oh,¡± I said, realizing. ¡°Oh.¡± She smiled broadly at the road while my stupid, inferior, single-dimensional brain worked. ¡°At the end there, after you left, he just kinda¡­gave up, seemed like a different person. I told him basically he was wrong and he told me basically to shut up.¡±


    ¡°Indeed. I was gone, and the game was over. Your influence was meaningless at that point, so he had no need to propagate the facade.¡±


    ¡°So it really was all just an act? The whole¡­loving father wanting his daughter back thing? Wait, but that doesn¡¯t make sense.¡± The car skidded to a halt, tires squealing, lined up exactly on a curb outside the rental car place. Here already? It was supposed to be a fifteen minute drive. I popped my door and took a few jogging steps to catch up to Karu. ¡°If it was all just a farce, then having you talk to him wasn¡¯t what he really wanted.¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°The two are not wholly incompatible. The man is looking for any opportunity to have me rejoin his camp, that much is true with certainty, and having an open ear is the first step towards that victory. But you are likely correct that such was not even his true motive.¡±


    ¡°Then what did he want? What was the point of that whole thing?¡±


    She smiled again, the smile I was beginning to realize was that of a mastermind whose plans were falling into lockstep. ¡°Remember what I asked you? About the steps of negotiation?¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­so¡­we, or I, or¡­you, through me¡­¡± I said, shaking my head ¡°presented our position. And yet we still don¡¯t know his.¡±


    ¡°Correct. Which means that before he was willing to divulge even that, he wanted to know our angle. We gave it to him, and still he remained on step zero. What does that mean to you?¡±


    She watched me with intense scrutiny as she tapped through a series of forms on a holo and then dropped they keys into a slot, as though she¡¯d done it a thousand times. Then, still studying me, she turned on her heel and steered the two of us towards the white obelisk on the horizon, the Washington Monument, and the D.C. Mall we¡¯d already visited together so long ago.


    ¡°It means¡­I guess¡­if he never even got to step one, then¡­he never expected the deal to go through at all? He expected it to fail the whole time. Or wanted it to?¡±


    ¡°Indeed. And had we come to him with something he would willingly provide, this would all have gone differently. Do you know what that means?¡±


    I might have been able to puzzle through it like the rest of the logic she was leading me through, but at this point, it felt like I was hammering nails with my forehead, so I just said no.


    ¡°It means, he values his business with IkaCo and their secrets and relationship more than he values anything we could give him. Anything at all. To the point where negotiation was not even a consideration.¡±


    ¡°Anything at all?¡±


    ¡°Having you sing and dance for his patrons¡¯ amusement, having me return to his right hand, having eyes and ears within the XPCA or Hunter¡¯s Association, or even pressuring me to rejoin his career path of choice, none of this was of value compared to IkaCo.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s just not possible.¡±


    She smiled again as we pressed past yet another group of slow-moving tourists and approached the monument itself. Sullen, pearl-white, contrasted brilliantly against the blue sky above it, I¡¯d always been a fan of the simplicity of the Washington Monument. Even if Lincoln was probably a bigger badass, willing to throw down and do what he had to, going to war with half his own country to keep them from tearing apart, and ending slavery too of course, Washington still won out on monumental coolness.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    There at the base, Rito perked up at our approach, standing and stuffing her mobile away from where she sat in the long shadow. ¡°Ready to go?¡± she asked.


    I nodded. ¡°Handy that you went on field trips to so many places when you were in school.¡±


    ¡°Mom didn¡¯t have the money to send me, really,¡± she said, suddenly the demeanor of a sea slug. ¡°But she did anyway.¡±


    ¡°Fascinating history lesson,¡± Karu intoned. ¡°We will probably need to go inside or travel several blocks to escape prying eyes.¡±


    As we walked the final few blocks for Rito to send us all back, my mind just kept spinning on what Karu had said. He valued his relations and secrets with IkaCo more than anything she or I had to offer.


    Anything.


    On paper, that sounded insane. We just wanted to talk to talk to some people on the inside there. Now, we knew that we were actually looking to conduct a little corporate espionage, but he didn¡¯t know that. And I hoped he didn¡¯t even suspect that. But assuming he didn¡¯t, that meant that having his own daughter back, having me in his court and pocket, none of that was worth whatever precarious relations he had with them, which were so fragile he couldn¡¯t ask the smallest of favors.


    Karu was on her mobile, her face as focused as mine felt, just drifting along after Rito without much attention.


    ¡°What are you looking up?¡± I asked her.


    ¡°Hm? Oh. I am checking to see if he has any public relations with IkaCo. They are not listed sponsors of any of his programs nor his election funds. From what I discern, on the surface of it, they have nothing to do with one another.¡±


    ¡°But you¡¯ve met¡­Moon¡¯s dad, whatever his name is.¡±


    ¡°Ichiro Ikeda, yes. From the outside, that is meaningless. Father invites many people based on nothing but their influence and the hope of securing more concrete relations. Many of them accept for no reason but to mingle with others of power, even if not Father himself. Or for the hors d¡¯oeuvres.¡±


    ¡°So it means¡­nothing.¡±


    She smiled again as she slipped her mobile away. ¡°At first blush, yes, as it were. However, you and I recently attained knowledge that there exists a relationship there, one which he would not dare threaten.¡±


    ¡°Because he wasn¡¯t willing to even try to contact them to do us a favor.¡±


    ¡°To have us indebted to him, you mean. And yes. Now, what kind of relationship do you supposed there may exist which is not publicly known, and which runs so secretive that you would not even be willing to establish even the smallest of public links between yourselves?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re saying¡­your dad is¡­taking bribes or something from them?¡±


    ¡°¡®Or something¡¯, indeed. Mere bribes could be easily dressed as campaign contributions which are on public record.¡±


    ¡°Um, we¡¯re here,¡± Rito said. ¡°Sorry that like, took so long.¡±


    I looked around and realized, yeah, somehow we were back home at my little apartment near campus. AEGIS was still sitting there, starting from her work at the sound of Rito¡¯s voice. Lia¡¯s head popped out of her bedroom, followed by the rest of her, and Moon gave us exactly one glance from her book on the couch, where she still sat wrapped in bandages.


    ¡°How¡¯d it go?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°Well, I thought it was a monumental failure, but my brain only works in one dimension apparently. Karu¡¯s been picking apart everything we saw or heard or didn¡¯t see or hear, and she¡¯d got me convinced there¡¯s a whole Illuminati conspiracy thing going on here.¡±


    ¡°I can run you through the logic later, if you wish,¡± Karu said with a stretch that popped her shoulders and¡­enhanced some parts of her that already stuck out quite a bit. I turned away and found Lia giving me a stink-eye for my efforts.


    ¡°Why does it not surprise me that Athan¡¯s just lost the second there isn¡¯t something in front of him to hit?¡± she asked, thankfully not bringing up my stray gaze.


    ¡°Because he is an idiot,¡± Moon contributed from behind her book.


    ¡°I thought you were reading?¡± I asked her.


    ¡°I can multitask.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll remember that next time you tell me to stop distracting you from your book.¡±


    She lowered it for a moment and joined Lia in glaring at me. Sheesh, these girls.


    ¡°Well, I¡¯m just glad nothing blew up or nobody caught on fire, or there wasn¡¯t a random Exhuman waiting in secret,¡± AEGIS said, taking hold of my arm a little too intimately. ¡°I¡¯ve been reviewing all the things that I¡¯ve missed out on in other lifetimes and¡­boy, Athan, do you get into a lot of random trouble.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not my fault!¡±


    ¡°Except most of the time, when it really absolutely is,¡± she said seriously. ¡°But not today, and that¡¯s what matters. I think if we take what Karu¡¯s concluded and¨C¡°


    She paused. The rest of us paused with her. I had a terrified moment of thinking she was crashing, that we hadn¡¯t rolled back far enough and the virus was in her, but then I saw her blink.


    ¡°Um, someone¡¯s coming,¡± she said. ¡°Several someones. Perhaps I spoke too soon.¡±


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°If you¡¯ll excuse the cliche, I believe they¡¯re men in black suits. Sunglasses even indoors. Brisk movement, they obviously know where they¡¯re going, and that is obviously here.¡±


    ¡°Like, hired goons?¡±


    ¡°Maybe. I don¡¯t know. They¡¯ll be here¡­¡±


    Someone knocked on the door. AEGIS swallowed and nodded.


    ¡°Right about now.¡±


    I went to the door and peeked through the hole. Four men at least, just as AEGIS described them. Black suits, sunglasses, cropped hair, not a hint of personality on their faces. I reached out with my powers and felt earpieces in their ears, blindingly bright, so much so that I couldn¡¯t tell anything else they had on them.


    ¡°Who is it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Open up,¡± the front man instructed in a neutral tone. His voice had a hint of an accent I couldn¡¯t place, but only a hint.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know anyone by that name.¡±


    ¡°Open up or we will break down the door. This is your final warning.¡±


    I stopped and frowned at the door. I could kill them, of course, but that wasn¡¯t very¡­sustainable. I was sure they were serious about breaking the door down, so the question was, did I want to accost them, or accost them and also have to pay to replace the door?


    I barely had the door open when the four of them pushed inside, shoving me aside despite my efforts to push them back. They were strong. One stood with me while the other three filtered further inside, taking positions through the living room.


    Karu and AEGIS looked nonplussed and ready for anything, and Rito looked like she might piss herself again, trembling and doing her best to make herself small. Lia flopped on her back onto the couch next to Moon, who never even looked up.


    ¡°So. What¡¯s your issue?¡± I asked the man in front of me.


    He didn¡¯t answer, but another of them did, speaking to Moon where she sat ignoring them. He spoke to her in Japanese, and all I got out of it was Ikeda-san. Which was her, I guessed?


    ¡°No. I¡¯m staying here,¡± she replied in English. ¡°I have made my position to Otousan perfectly clear.¡±


    ¡°We were not asking,¡± the man growled back.


    She snapped her book shut with irritation. ¡°Yes you were. You asked me to please come with you. You should improve your specificity and say only what you mean.¡±


    He moved towards her, and the second he started, I started towards him. The man on me was already reacting though, somehow a shock prod in his hand which he jammed into my stomach.


    The electricity pouring off of it tickled as it wrapped around my body instead of passing through it. I gave him one moment of a smug smirk before I sent all the current right back up his arm where he jolted and seized, his muscles locked around the handle of the device which was now jolting him instead.


    Moon gave a surprised yelp as the man who¡¯d addressed her threw her easily over his shoulders, but no sooner than he did, he grunted and dropped to one knee as Karu took his calf out from under him. Her second strike to his temple downed him completely, and sent Moon tumbling right back onto the couch where she¡¯d been sitting.


    The other two men charged in, and AEGIS threw two kicks in less than a second, snapping forward and then back, like a ballerina in fast-forward. Their faces made awful cracking sounds as her metal feet made contact, and both fell to the ground holding their heads, stemming the blood from their new injuries.


    The fight lasted about two seconds. These guys had picked the wrong fucking house to mess with, that was for damn sure.


    Lia stepped to the one who had picked up Moon, the only one knocked senseless, and began going through his pockets. When one of the others spoke up, Karu dropped an elbow on his face and his protests kinda stopped there. With threat of systemic destruction in place, my sis went from thug to thug, taking all their belongings she could find, while they sat quiet, avoiding eye contact.


    ¡°Nothing here, really,¡± Lia said. ¡°Wallets without IDs. Keys. Chits. Want ¡¯em, Rito?¡±


    ¡°Um. I don¡¯t want to get in trouble,¡± Rito said. ¡°Or involved.¡±


    ¡°Fair enough. A few weapons, shock prods, oof, brass knuckles. Come on guys, how tasteless is this?¡± she asked, waving the knuckles in the direction of the guy she¡¯d pulled them off of. He didn¡¯t respond, just sat still and silent, staring at the floor. ¡°Are you supposed to be mobsters from the prohibition, or what?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think they¡¯re going to talk,¡± AEGIS frowned. ¡°And don¡¯t spill blood on my carpet,¡± she warned the nearest one. ¡°If I have to pay to replace it, I¡¯m going to get my money¡¯s worth. So if you don¡¯t want your face kicked in harder, keep it on your damn fancy suits.¡±


    ¡°We already know who they are and what they want,¡± Moon said, already back behind her book with the disinterest of one who was notjust assaulted by thugs. ¡°They were sent by my father to reclaim me. They are men of no importance.¡±


    ¡°So what, we just spank them and send them home crying?¡± I asked.


    Karu grabbed the nearest guy and his hands had time only to meet her arms around his throat before there was a sickening crack, and he went limp.


    ¡°Oh what the fuck. You did not,¡± I told her.


    ¡°It sends a message,¡± she shrugged. ¡°Do not commit any resources you are not willing to lose.¡±


    ¡°You just fucking straight-up snapped a dude¡¯s neck. Karu, do you remember what I fucking said about killing people?¡±


    ¡°They would return if we do not. Next time, with lethal intent.¡± She moved towards the next closest guy, but AEGIS popped up in her way.


    I held the door open. ¡°Run, assholes! Get the fuck out if you want to live!¡± I shouted at them. They didn¡¯t need telling twice and all three very nearly tripped over beating an escape. Karu was smiling at me like again, I¡¯d just done exactly as she¡¯d hoped.


    ¡°What the fuck¨C¡± I slammed the door and turned on her.


    ¡°Oh, he was done for anyway,¡± she said, of the body. ¡°My strike to his temple shattered the skull and induced internal hemorrhaging. Even if he were put back together, he would never be the same.¡±


    I just gaped at her. Were we still paying her game? Even with dead bodies on the floor? Had this all been done with her knowing I¡¯d send the other three packing? Did this help us? Hurt us? Was letting Mr. Ikeda know we were killers a good thing, or would it scare him off?


    I had no fucking clue. My head hurt, and there was a dead guy in my living room. Lia was already making tutting noises and calling someone, and the rest of us just sorta milled around like this was a normal occurrence.


    Not for the first time in my life, I thought about just how fucked up it all was. I¡¯d always said the scariest part of being an Exhuman was how easily one could kill, and any situation could change from normal to lethal in an instant. But even if Karu wasn¡¯t Exhuman, she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them, stood up to and stared them down regularly. She was a product of this life as much as I was, and this life was so, so messed up.


    I didn¡¯t have anything left but to sit down and hold my head. Just a freaking disaster. From Chinese assassins to political intrigue to corporate thugs. Lia was right, I did best when there was a target right in front of me I could just fight.


    AEGIS nudged me and when I looked up, I saw her standing there with a soft smile and a glass of water and an aspirin. I took them gladly and thanked her before turning back to the killer in the room.


    ¡°Last warning, Karu. No more dead bodies.¡±


    She smiled at me, the same smile I¡¯d grown sick of over the course of the day. ¡°Empty threat, Ashton. I will kill precisely as many and the right people as is required to get things done.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a sociopath. Like legit psycho. Why is it so hard to just not kill people?¡±


    ¡°Because, Ashton, sometimes there are people whose lives serve no purpose, but in ending.¡±


    I started to argue but Lia and AEGIS pulled me aside, putting me down in my bed for me to rest and recover, to sort ot ut my headache and tiredness and to not say or do something to Karu we¡¯d regret.


    Which was bullshit. Because I was right here and I knew it. I hated that thug, for what he chose to be and what he was trying to do, but he didn¡¯t need to die. Sending a message didn¡¯t mean we had to murder people.


    ¡­


    Or so I believed. But as I rolled over in the dark, my thoughts tumbling at the motion like a thousand interconnected delicate towers, all balanced on facts I didn¡¯t know and beliefs I held without substance, thinking about just how fucking smart Karu could be, how easily she could predict and play me¡­and by extension, I hoped, others¡­


    Well, part of me just stubbornly hoped she was wrong. But the other part of me, the logical half, the part I was trying to use to steer me, to steer all of us in an intelligent direction, that part had to admit, Karu had a point.


    And I hated myself for thinking it, but at the same time, I didn¡¯t know if I could afford not to.

 313. 2252, Present Day. Apartment near CSU. Athan.

    It felt like things were sorta getting out of hand. No one thing specifically was a disaster, but the fourth day in a row I woke up and found Moon in my bed ¡ª there by invitation so nobody would snatch her in the night ¡ª and then try to eke past her and stepping on Tem while winding through AEGIS¡¯ towers of machinery, only to make it into the living area where half-assembled rig prototypes from Whitney, or sprawling loadouts of weapons from Karu, or just Lia being sideways dominated the small space. It felt like we were all crammed into some apocalypse shelter. Too many people and weapons and machines and not enough space.


    It¡¯d been necessary, I knew. It was proven when Ichiro Ikeda¡¯s goons had come for Moon yet again (only to be put down hard). But it sort of felt like we were a body trying to do something unsustainably strenuous, and the adrenaline was wearing thin. Soreness was replacing vigil, and as we turned to bickering over our uncomfortable lifestyle, I wondered if maybe all Ichiro had to do was wait.


    ¡°Why is there a gun part in the sink?¡± Lia shouted at the house, her mittened hands full with a pot billowing steam. ¡°I need this sink for sink things. Come on, dudes.¡±


    ¡°It needed an acetone bath to remove all impurities,¡± Whitney said, skipping up from the couch, and almost clobbering AEGIS on her way. ¡°Even fingerprint smudges would throw off the proper conductance. And it¡¯s not a gun part. I¡¯m not Karu.¡±


    ¡°So can I dump my water on it?¡±


    ¡°No! Didn¡¯t you hear what I said? The starch in the water will ruin everything. Come on, Lia.¡±


    ¡°Well what the heck am I supposed to do with this freaking boiling pot?¡± Lia spat, the red in her face visible through the steaming veil.


    ¡°Put your strainer in the toilet?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s foul.¡±


    ¡°Okay, the shower. It¡¯s just a drain.¡±


    As though on cue, the shower suddenly hissed with rushing water as someone turned it on. Lia stared at the wall as though she could kill its occupant by glaring through it, the pot still in her hands, her shoulders sagging by now.


    ¡°Okay. It¡¯s fine,¡± she said, banging it on the counter and then recoiling as boiling droplets splattered. ¡°People will just not eat.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll take it,¡± AEGIS said, getting up from her work. ¡°There¡¯s storm drains outside.¡± She deliberately unlocked and opened the door and then picked up the steaming pot with both hands and took it out.


    ¡°Whitney, you can¡¯t leave your stuff everywhere¡± I said, frowning as Tem tried to wheelchair closer to me and got stuck on a pile of crap by the couch. ¡°This isn¡¯t your apartment.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± she said, darting over and stooping to rescue the components before Tem ran them over. ¡°But work takes space.¡±


    ¡°So work at your own place,¡± Lia fumed.


    ¡°I would,¡± she replied, holding armfuls of components and moving them to the dining-room table, where they were just going to be in the way as soon as someone tried to sit down to eat. ¡°But I need to work on and with your brother, and he¡¯s made it clear he needs to stay here with Moon.¡±


    The front door opened and Karu walked through it, full armor and guns onboard. ¡°Why is this door unlocked? Have you all no concept of basic security? I had believed the premises to be on lockdown.¡±


    ¡°Hi Karu,¡± I mumbled. ¡°We¡¯re just discussing how shit everything is.¡±


    ¡°So I see,¡± she said, surveying the room with a small frown. ¡°I had planned to pass the time by doing maintenance on my armor, as the shoulders have become inflexible, yet I see nowhere open to do so. Is this the source of your issue?¡±


    ¡°Oh I¡¯d love to help,¡± Whitney chimed in. ¡°What are those? Acrilax? Duraplate?¡±


    Karu shrugged. ¡°I knew when I acquired them. Now they are simply my armor.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Well. You don¡¯t find it helps to know the mass-weight ratio to adjust for flexibility tolerances? I don¡¯t know much about armor, but from what I¡¯ve been reading¨C¡°


    The door banged and something swore outside. ¡°Why is this locked?¡± AEGIS¡¯ voice shouted through it. Karu gave an unabashed chuckle as she opened it and let her in.


    ¡°Hi Karu. Did you lock me out?¡±


    ¡°Food should be ready then, I¡¯m starving,¡± Lia said.


    ¡°AEGIS. Good day. I only just arrived.¡±


    ¡°A lot of people are saying that you need to compensate for higher weight with reduced range of motion, which sounds backwards to me.¡±


    ¡°Just set that down anywhere, I¡¯ve got the sauce made up.¡±


    ¡°Do you think Tem¡¯s going to eat or will we have to blend it for her again?¡±


    ¡°I know not the science or heuristics of armor modification, I merely do as I have always done. You are welcome to join however¨C¡°


    ¡°¨Cprobably ask Athan, to be sure. He might be able to make her.¡±


    ¡°¨Cmight be fun, but I dunno about how many projects to have in the air at once¨C¡°


    ¡°¨Ccareful, it¡¯s hot still. I mean, you knew that but¨C¡°


    ¡°Hey, watch the table! These components are delicate.¡±


    ¡°¨Cliable to seize up at the worst of times, particularly in the cold¡­though heat has its entire range of difficulties¡­¡±


    Moon, emerged from the bedroom, hair tousled from sleep and eyes unfocused¡­but focused enough to glare at me like the growing rumble of mingling voices was all my fault. My Moon-speak might not have been perfect, but I understood her meaning here well enough. I¡¯d rather be kidnapped than deal with this shit.


    ¡°Guys,¡± I said, to no effect. ¡°GUYS!.¡±


    At least Tem looked up at me. Always had that going for me at least. I snapped my fingers with a thundercrack which made Whitney jump.


    ¡°HEY!¡± I shouted.


    ¡°Yes, we hear you,¡± AEGIS said, irritated. ¡°What are you yelling about?¡±


    ¡°Moon was sleeping. Can we keep it to a dull roar?¡±


    ¡°It is very nearly ten in the morning. Nobody should yet remain asleep at this hour.¡±


    I looked at Moon, and as I did so, so did the others, which made her go red and shuffle ever so slightly behind the door frame. I sighed.


    ¡°She had a long night. Lia and AEGIS were up in the living room where she was trying to sleep, and she wound up sneaking into my bed¨C¡°


    ¡°She what?¡± Karu snapped.


    ¡°Not like that,¡± I rolled my eyes. ¡°She¡¯s just¡­being hunted and can¡¯t do anything about it, and her life has gone to crap as a result.¡±If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I didn¡¯t mention to them Moon¡¯s other, recent secret. Her kidnapping at Diallo¡¯s hands, and how he¡¯d tortured her. The incident that made her resolve stiffen to resist her dad in the first place. To her, the prospect of being nabbed again was probably ten times as horrifying, given her experiences, and we were still just making things worse.


    ¡°Well I hardly see what she has to complain about,¡± Karu crossed her arms. ¡°She has protectors and provisions as she could possibly desire. She is secure, and that is the bedrock of any lifestyle. If she wishes to complain about luxuries, by all accounts, let her compromise her own safety for it, and when she is victimized she will see clearly her error.¡±


    ¡°Dude, Karu.¡±


    ¡°I speak nothing but truth, Ashton. Those who would trade their security for luxury will find themselves with neither. She can accept this, or learn it herself.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Yeah, well, we don¡¯t just have to go off the deep end. There¡¯s probably things we can do. Not the least of which¡­¡± I looked at Lia. ¡°There¡¯s just not enough space here for all these people. We picked this place out for you and AEGIS and myself¡­and Tem. And now even she¡¯s taking up a lot more space with the wheelchair¨C¡°


    ¡°I can lie on the floor,¡± she whispered. ¡°Or under the bed.¡±


    ¡°¨Cand Karu and Whitney and Moon are here, it¡¯s just not working out. Do you think we can go back to Vegas or something?¡±


    ¡°It is a lot bigger there,¡± Lia said, pulling at her bottom lip as she thought. ¡°We¡¯d be adding Saga and Chiho back into the mix though. But still, overall a lot more square feet per person there. Your and my rooms we could definitely put in another couple beds for Whitney and Moon.¡±


    ¡°I would be with Lia,¡± Whitney cut in abruptly. ¡°I¡¯m never sleeping in the same room as Athan again.¡±


    ¡°Why? Do I snore?¡±


    ¡°No. But you dumped your Exhuman powers on me once doing it, and I¡¯m not going through that again.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Yeah. I kinda doubt that¡¯s a recurring thing.¡±


    ¡°So maybe only other Exhumans in Athan¡¯s room,¡± Lia shrugged.


    ¡°Or AI,¡± AEGIS added.


    ¡°Can we stop with that?¡± Lia sighed ¡°This is why it¡¯s such heck living here, everyone just looking out for themselves. Nobody¡¯s picking up their junk or keeping the place tidy. Haven¡¯t any of you had roommates?¡±


    ¡°Moving is a start at least,¡± I said. ¡°Does anyone have anything here in California they¡¯re really attached to and can¡¯t leave?¡±


    Nobody spoke up. Buncha freakin¡¯ nomads we were.


    ¡°Then¡­¡± I looked around, sorta surprised at the concept of things moving this fast. ¡°Uh, I guess I can call Rito and have us sent over.¡±


    There was hardly any other discussion or objection, which just felt weird. Like, yeah, moving was a totally mundane thing that hundreds of people did every day. But it was also a big deal, wasn¡¯t it? Nobody just got up one day and decided to move and that same day ¡ª poof, there they were.


    And then I blinked my eyes a few times and realized we were back in the living room in Vegas, with not even a poof. It took a few more moments before I had a sensation in my head which was kind of the mental sensation of a puppy wagging its tail at a new friend it just made.


    [Athan!]


    I closed my eyes and winced, same as everyone else in the room, minus AEGIS.


    [Oops. Sorry.]


    ¡°Hi Saga,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re here.¡± Someone started yelling from the hallway, and Saga chuckled apologetically. ¡°Who is that?¡± I asked.


    [Maybe come talk to me before we piss her off more.]


    I got about half a step towards the backdoor before the door in the hallway banged open and a girl I thought I recognized stepped out, took one sweeping look around at all of us loitering in the living room, and then flipped us a pleasant gesture and grumbled her way right out the front door.


    [Or, she can leave. Works for me.]


    ¡°Wait!¡± I heard Chiho shout, as she followed the other girl¡¯s path. ¡°Oh hi¡­everyone. But wait, come back!¡±


    And then she was gone too. I felt like we¡¯d all just stepped into a comic misadventure here and waited to see if anyone else was going to go running by us. Maybe some talking anthropomorphic animal, or derpy mascot character. But it seemed the rude girl and the distressed one were all that were going to blow past us, so we all began to disperse through the house. Whitney and AEGIS took Rito to the garage to discuss transporting the machines over, Lia bounced down the hallway towards her old room, and Moon picked up behind her old book in her old chair like she¡¯d never left.


    I headed outside to find some shade next to Saga.


    ¡°How¡¯s it going?¡± I asked her, flopping down.


    ¡°Boring as hell,¡± she said. Her voice was quieter than I remembered, maybe she hadn¡¯t been speaking much. Nobody really here to talk to except Chiho I guess. ¡°I tried to tame some pet humans to pass the time but apparently that was amoral or something.¡±


    ¡°Oh Saga,¡± I sighed at her.


    ¡°So I did this instead. Up you get you two. Hoo. Hah.¡±


    I had no idea what she was doing or talking about until something poked me in the brain to direct my attention towards the little murky pond in the corner of the yard. I blinked, scowled a little at Saga¡¯s apparent laziness growing to where she wouldn¡¯t even physically point at things, but checked on the pond regardless.


    In the middle of it, there were two fish. Goldfish, or something which looked like them, small, orange, one speckled with white. And they were dancing, for lack of a better description.


    The two of them swam in circles around each other, twisting one way and then the other, moving in rhythmic bursts, spinning like they were in the hands of some contact-juggling street performer. With a tiny plop, one breached the surface and flopped in the air for a moment before crashing down, the other circling like a hawk.


    ¡°Uh. Neat.¡±


    ¡°¡­yep. Pretty bored.¡±


    ¡°I mean¡­I guess it¡¯s a good way to practice?¡±


    ¡°It was cooler when I had it planned out for human pets. Only problem is they kept drowning in the pond.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re¡­¡±


    ¡°¡­kidding, yes. Thanks for giving me the benefit of checking first. Always nice that even if I feel I¡¯ve gone soft, everyone else still has the right amount of trepidation.¡±


    She let the fish go and they seemed very confused for a moment, or at least insofar as fish were capable of expressing confusion. And then they swam off to go suck on algae or whatever. Saga let out a little sigh.


    ¡°But hey, you¡¯re back now,¡± she said, her voice filled with sudden energy. ¡°Something happen?¡±


    ¡°Kinda. A lot of things, really. Do you want the short version or the long version¡­or the really short version?¡± I asked, tapping my forehead.


    ¡°Long version, please. Anything to keep me entertained.¡±


    ¡°Before then, who was that girl?¡± I asked. ¡°The one Chiho ran after?¡±


    ¡°Oh that¡¯s just some bitch.¡±


    I blinked at her, waiting for an explanation but apparently that was about it. ¡°Uh.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s Chiho¡¯s squeeze. She thinks she¡¯s gonna get murdered by Exhumans but keeps coming back because she¡¯s got a sad, dumpy, pathetic life, and this is the most exciting thing in it. Kinda not fair to Chiho, honestly, and I¡¯ve considered just doing them both a solid and rewriting her to be a little more fun and interesting, but hey¡­you came back before I got really bored.¡±


    ¡°Neat. And she just¡­comes over?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much. First time I talked to her was pretty great though. Man, she almost pissed herself. So I helped, and then she did.¡±


    My face met the palm of my hand. ¡°Gee, I wonder why she dislikes Exhumans. Can¡¯t possibly imagine why.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, me neither! Some people are just so closed-minded.¡±


    I went back to the tree and sat next to her stretched-out form. In the distance I saw Tem struggling to get her wheelchair through the backdoor before Lia helped. ¡°Anything else happen?¡±


    ¡°Some guys came around. Real shifty-like. Suits, sunglasses, earpieces. Real government agent types. Looking for your pretty, round-bottomed, Japanese girl.¡±


    ¡°Great. We¡¯ve dealt with them twice now.¡±


    ¡°Well, I made them think that the whole house was made of fire ants and if they touched any of them, they¡¯d burrow into their flesh and lay eggs in their brain and keep coming out their ears forever.¡±


    I gave her a sideways glance. ¡°Uh¡­¡±


    ¡°¡­nope, not joking this time. I was bored, okay?¡±


    I closed my eyes and shook my head. ¡°Anything else?¡±


    ¡°If there were other things, I¡¯d be less bored. Ergo: no.¡±


    ¡°Boring can be nice,¡± I said, reflecting back on the last few weeks. Whitney, Dragon, Alyssa, the barrier Exhuman, Senator Irenside and Ichiro. ¡°Actually I¡¯d love some boring.¡±


    She chuckled. ¡°Well, tell me all about your adventures and hopefully things will stay calm here for a while. Get your fill of all the boring you can stand. At least, until you go traipsing around after that assassin guy, eh?¡±


    She gave me half a glance over a small smile and I nodded. ¡°Yeah that¡¯s still the goal. For even more reasons now. And we don¡¯t have forever, he¡¯s targeting the XPCA.¡±


    ¡°Oh good. I love it when two things I hate try to kill each other. Maybe they can both lose.¡±


    I laughed. ¡°I missed you, Saga.¡±


    She reached up and put her lanky fingertips through my hair before messing it up aggressively. ¡°Same here. But you knew that, because I was bored.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. But as you said, let¡¯s hope we keep some of that boredom, right?¡±


    There was a slam as the backdoor flew open and a roar as AEGIS jumped over Tem in a single bound, sliding to a stop in front of me.


    ¡°They flew cam-drones into my workshop!¡± she shouted. ¡°They¡¯ve been here! And they¡¯re droning me!¡±


    I gave Saga a smile as I stood up with AEGIS, keeping a few feet from her superheated body where her engines still blazed.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go in there and light them up, I guess,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve got a lot of experience hunting those things down.¡±


    ¡°They touched my stuff, Athan. This is so not cool.¡±


    ¡°Rain check on the story?¡± Saga asked.


    ¡°Yep. Boring will have to wait. One crisis at a time.¡±


    She laughed, her gentle, reserved laugh, and as I headed back into the house, reassuring AEGIS through her sputtered threats, I heard a plop plop and glanced over to see the goldfish once again dancing, jumping out of the water in synch in a needlessly elaborate display.


    It was¡­ultimately¡­exactly what I¡¯d hoped. A mess, of course, because my life couldn¡¯t exist without being that. But one with some really good people in it, no matter how screwed up they were. Even if things continued to get more hectic and worse, at least we had this time and with these people, like a cheery reminder of why I always had to choose to fight.

 314. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    We had a lot more space, but for some reason, it seemed like everyone was still crowded in my garage. I didn¡¯t really mind, the machines were all linked and automated, and it wasn¡¯t like anyone was resting their butts on the conveyors or getting in the way of the loader arms, so my stuff was still humming along. I just found myself using cam-drones to check on things just on the opposite end of the room so I wouldn¡¯t have to walk through the others¡¯ sprawling work-zones.


    Lia was at one table, honestly not taking up much space. But she was on a call right now, with some poor dupe, so the rest of us had to be just a little quieter. It was funny that we could tell when she was working hard or hardly working just by how stiff and upright her body posture was, as though she couldn¡¯t lie over the phone if she was lying in person.


    Whitney on the other hand was viral in her spreading. Parts would start showing up on new surfaces, and if not curtailed, the next day she¡¯d have a whole station set up there. I¡¯d mostly given up on trying to contain her, and had instead finally gotten around to putting down some solidly-bolted wooden planks in the garage¡¯s broad rafters. There was a bed for Whitney and a private workspace for myself at the top of a ladder, which also served as a barrier to keep her junk from spontaneously manifesting. Tem was up there now, just staying out of the way, as befitted her best.


    And finally, wherever Whitney went, she seemed to drag Athan with her. Honestly, it was nice just having him around while I worked. I felt like I hadn¡¯t seen him much since my reincarnation, which had hurt and confused me for a bit there¡­but then seeing how it¡¯d gone with my past life, I understood. He was being careful, for my sake he believed. And while I thought that was mostly stupid, I also found it very sweet.


    ¡°Oh no, I¡¯m not here to get you in trouble, sir. I¡¯m investigating, not reprimanding.¡± Lea¡¯s voice was as sweet as honey, even as she scrolled through a list of other marks who could replace this one in a heartbeat. ¡°Uh huh. Yes. Well of course. Let me stop you right there, how much did this clown offer to pay you for all of this? What? That little? He does realize you¡¯re a critical part of this institution¡¯s security, right?¡°


    Athan was eavesdropping just like I was, standing in the middle of the floor with what looked like bones unevenly taped up the side of his leg. Some kind of new project Whitney was working on, but whatever it was, it wasn¡¯t like anything I¡¯d ever seen. I fully intended to give it a thorough set of tests before allowing Athan to go running into combat in it, though.


    ¡°Look, how¡¯s this sound. I don¡¯t even want you to do anything. Just tell me where your money came from, and I¡¯ll pay you double. Yeah. Yeah, of course. No, you¡¯re just a symptom, a cog in the machine¡­.why would we go after you? But you do understand we want to plug leaks.¡±


    I shook my head. The guy was a critical part of security one second and a victimized cog in an uncaring machine the next. Sometimes I didn¡¯t know how Lia got away with lying to people¡¯s faces like that¡­and then I went out and talked to people and understood. Some people really were just that blind to any kind of self-awareness.


    ¡°Uh, triple? Up front? We can¡­probably manage that. Give me a second.¡°


    She turned to me and snapped her fingers a few times to get my attention, pointing at her mobile. I shrugged, and then my mobile let up as she slid some details over to it.


    Some bank account info, a name, an amount. A fucking ridiculous amount. Even Lia would go broke in a heartbeat if she was paying this kind of money out all down her list of suspects.


    But she wasn¡¯t. She didn¡¯t need me involved if she was planning to actually pay them. I cracked my knuckles and got to work at once.


    It was around three minutes later that I signaled Lia, who¡¯d filled the dead air with relative small talk, probably just to keep the guy from second-guessing things.


    ¡°Alright Sergeant Benjamin. If you check your account, you¡¯ll see it¡¯s been updated a little more positively. We appreciate your cooperation and hope this is satisfactory?¡°


    The fake deposit would be picked up within a month when the money failed to materialize, but a month from now that would be his problem, not ours. As much as I was a fan of not needlessly screwing up people¡¯s lives, honestly, at the point where you were taking bribes from both sides of a conflict, you were really bringing it on yourself.


    Lia hung up and seemed to expand as she melted out of her stiff work posture and became an human-shaped blob falling off of her stool.


    ¡°Blergh,¡± she commented.


    ¡°That good, huh?¡± Athan asked. Whitney was crouched at his side, working on the metal protrusion taped to his hip and making little annoyed noises every time he moved.


    ¡°It came back to one of our same guys again,¡± Lia complained. ¡°I keep feeling like there¡¯s someone else out there we need to find, someone who¡¯s pulling the strings of all of these different sources, but everything¡¯s just leading to the same places instead. We just need one break.¡±


    ¡°I mean, isn¡¯t that someone just Dragon?¡± Athan asked. ¡°Strings are getting pulled so he can break in to the XPCA.¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± she fretted. ¡°But do you really think he¡¯s just on a first name basis with half a dozen guys of moderate influence throughout the agency? Even if you were kinda a corrupt or selfish dude, doesn¡¯t it flip a few red flags in your brain when a known, wanted, Sino assassin offers you a chunk of change?¡±


    ¡°Then it¡¯s just all done over the ¡®net,¡± I said. ¡°They never meet him, never know what or who he is, they just get a payday and do what he says.¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± she said, her bare toes drumming against the edge of the workbench. ¡°But that¡¯s not how I think it¡¯d work. Some of these guys are pretty up there. Lieutenant Colonels, Colonels, one-star Generals even. I just don¡¯t feel like people that relatively important are going to take orders from some faceless holo.¡± She chewed her thumb. ¡°But I dunno. Maybe.¡±


    Athan shook his head. ¡°If that¡¯s what your gut says, I believe it, Lia. You¡¯ve got good instincts on working with people.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯d be a better vote of confidence if I could find something,¡± she laughed, and stretched, splaying her fingers and toes. ¡°I didn¡¯t get a date out of him either, his assignment as he understood it was indefinite.¡±


    ¡°Yeah we heard,¡± I said. ¡°Heard all of it, really.¡±


    ¡°Oh, sorry.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s cool. But we all were just standing here.¡±


    ¡°Should I work in my own room then?¡± she asked standing and continuing her stretches. ¡°Like, I think it¡¯s handy to have you on hand. Never can be too sure when I might need an ice cream truck.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m a what now?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a sixth string on a five string guitar. The very best one of the litter,¡± she said. I laughed but she looked totally serious about it. Some kind of analogy I really wasn¡¯t getting here, and I turned to Athan for help.


    ¡°Don¡¯t look at me, I¡¯m not the one who¡¯s fibbing the dice,¡± he said with a shake of his head. ¡°It¡¯s incalculable.¡±


    ¡°Uh. Okay.¡± I blinked at him wondering exactly what brought this trainwreck of metaphors crashing into my garage. At least Whitney seemed to be behaving normally, frowning with some small frustration as she tried to get some part inserted into the framework she was building.


    And then looking around and grabbing a wrench. And then smacking the shit out of her device with it, right into Athan¡¯s leg.


    ¡°Hey, don¡¯t log-jam the last leg in an arms race!¡±


    ¡°If you were hunting the wild condors like the big spook intoned, I wouldn¡¯t have to surfboard both ways,¡± she pouted.


    ¡°Guys, what the heck is going on?¡± I asked, as all of them began swaying and sweating with their increasingly slurring speech.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    ¡°It¡¯s-s a fine¡­five-fingered firecracker,¡± Lia commented, before falling off her stool. I dove and caught her head before it cracked into the concrete, but the others were drooping as well.


    My mind raced as to what was going on, and my first thought was Saga¡­but she wouldn¡¯t do this, not even as a joke. There had to be something else¡­another Code-X? Or something biological that wouldn¡¯t affect me?


    I had a basic sampler to tell me the composition of the air, but it was really only there so I¡¯d be aware if things smelled. Some toxin deployed might get right past it. Still I had no other leads to go on right now. If it was a gas, I had to get these guys out of it. I threw the Ashtons over my two shoulders and kicked in the door to the house, making a beeline for Saga.


    And ran right into what must have been the source. Literally.


    My body just stopped moving forward with a crash. Nothing was there, but¡­shit I didn¡¯t know. None of my optics gave me a reading, it was like I just bounced off a wall.


    The nothing I¡¯d just hit seemed to shimmer slightly and then launched an explosion of metal tentacles in my direction, seemingly emerging from nothing, and tipped with clamps, like a thousand manacles. I was still standing there like an idiot, trying to figure out what I¡¯d run into, and a dozen of the little arms latched onto my limbs with a harmony of tiny clinks as they locked into place. One or two landed on Lia and Athan¡­


    ¡­which I only realized when an explosion of energy erupted off of him and slammed into the source of the arms. Lightning crackled all up and down it, and I felt it crawling over my skin. Lia writhed and moaned, but they were both out now apparently. I hoped the drug did something to blunt the pain, but she was still shuddering as the bolts arced down across her, bruises and burns swelled on her skin.


    Meanwhile the thing I¡¯d run into, or rather the machine, because that¡¯s what it was, seemed to materialize from nothing as Athan¡¯s shock burned out its optical camouflage. Short, squat, roughly trapezoid-shaped with an egg-shaped basin on top, like some kind of overgrown kitchen scale. If a kitchen scale had like, a thousand grabby tentacle arms.


    And asleep in that basin, her body twisted and held down by a dozen of the arms was Moon.


    I threw Athan clear, and grabbed one of the limbs holding Lia, finding it almost impossible to break. It twisted and flexed under my fingers, like I was ripping a phone book, but even with my engines burning to life, I couldn¡¯t shear it with raw strength. I looked around to find any kind of blade. Kitchen knives, not strong enough. I could smash up the table or granite countertops, but they wouldn¡¯t be sharp enough.


    My eyes landed on a piece of Whitney¡¯s junk, a piece of metal rod about the size and shape of a human femur, but cut clean in cross-section, ending in a wicked point. Some wires hung out of it, but that was irrelevant ¡ª the honed casing would do.


    I made a move towards the back door where it was sitting in a corner, but after a few steps found myself held by the arms on me. After another minute of struggling, I realized I was getting further away from it, and turned to see the snatching machine back to life, a single blue-tinted lens glowing at me ominously from the center of the device.


    I spun and kicked at it, cracking the relatively weak plating, but the snatcher just exploded with tendrils again, catching my leg this time and drawing its limbs taut to keep me from being able to move. I pulled at it, bashing ineffectively with my one free arm. I may as well have tried breaking down a door with a wiffle bat.


    And worse, we were still getting further from the sharp shard. Somewhere under the trapezoidal skirt of its frame, wheels turned, pulling Moon and me out of here, Lia dragged face-down along the carpet like an afterthought. I yelled and swore at the fucking thing, lashing out as best I could, but it was just stronger than me. My body, powerful as it was, was just no match for a machine designed to grapple.


    Why¡¯d Athan have to be out? He could have lightning¡¯d this thing down again easily.


    I reached out for anything else I had. A swarm of a dozen cam-drones melted out of nothing just as their optical camo turned off, and they crammed themselves into its sensors. But the damn thing hardly seemed to care and just kept its slow beeline for the door.


    In the recesses of the garage, I began to initiate the boot sequence for the black metal body, the ¨²aine. It had no combat aptitude, but it was something¡­if I could just get in one good sneak attack on that thing¡¯s eye, its plating was shattered and weak, I didn¡¯t need much¡­


    But ¨²aine would take entire minutes to boot and be drivable. It wasn¡¯t designed for remote piloting, and I¡¯d have to do some speed-of-light hackery to get myself running it somehow.


    But what other options did I have? I couldn¡¯t drop Skyweb on top of Moon¡¯s sleeping body. I didn¡¯t have any DOG units in this little residential neighborhood. I could call the police or XPCA or something, but again, that¡¯d be a matter of minutes, and the door was maybe twenty feet away. It was slow but not that slow.


    I settled for unloading my entire dictionary of explicatives at it. It wasn¡¯t helping but I wasn¡¯t exactly a perfect AI.


    ¡°AEGIS?¡± I heard a small voice behind me and turned to look. I felt blind without my cam-drones, but they were tied up being as obnoxious as I could manage.


    Saga was standing there in the back door, looking gaunt and thin, her tan capris and blue sweater wearing her. She looked as swaying and drunk as the others had been, and I realized why I hadn¡¯t seen her sooner. Even if she wasn¡¯t breathing the gas, she was in their minds, and they were.


    ¡°Saga! Thank God! Help us!¡± I shouted. ¡°And hold your breath, there¡¯s gas!¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°I can¡¯t¡­can¡¯t get poisoned. I¡¯m¡­resetting right now¡­all the time.¡±


    The robot trundled for the door, but seemed to hesitate for a moment when Saga spoke up. I realized with panic that if it detected her, she¡¯d just join us in its embrace.


    ¡°Okay Saga, don¡¯t speak anymore, okay? Don¡¯t let it know you¡¯re there.¡±


    She nodded and took a stumbling step forward. I was glad she was so light, she hardly made a sound moving.


    Experimentally, I flipped through my optics and realized Saga was practically invisible on thermal. She was so thin and produced such little heat¡­and with my drones blocking the snatcher¡¯s normal vision, she just might have a chance.


    ¡°Grab the sharp piece of scrap from over there,¡± I gestured as best I could. She stumbled once again, but got it, but we were already halfway to the door now. ¡°Okay now¡­come over here¡­and without touching it, I need you to jam that thing as hard as you can into the glowing blue spot. You see it?¡±


    ¡°Yeah¨CI mean¡­¡±


    ¡°Shh, it¡¯s fine. No need to talk. Just¡­just do it.¡±


    She nodded and grit her teeth, advancing in a crouch like a primal hunter. As she moved, I realized every few moments she¡¯d seem to flicker, her powers resetting her as the gas seeped in. We were lucky it took a few moments to set in, otherwise she¡¯d be addled and useless too.


    She crept forward, avoiding the swaying tentacles which swished aimlessly like a thousand tails of a thousand housecats. Slowly she closed on it, her footsteps uneven, her breathing halting, as though she wanted to hold her breath but didn¡¯t know how. Despite her mental state, the look on her face was pure focus, her eyes never shifted from the blue glow, buried under my cam-drones. From their angle I could see her getting ever-closer.


    She was a few feet away, and the snatcher was at the door. With machine precision, it turned, arms rotating to open the exit.


    And some of those arms moving bumped into Saga. The machine spun back at twice the speed, its eye pointed right at her. She froze entirely, and I held my breath as it stared right at her.


    One single arm snaked around with the deliberate movement of feeling out blindly, clinking as it patted against the ground as it swayed. It reached over towards Saga, probing the air, the clamping bits clanging as it repeatedly opened and closed like mandibles.


    It was going to hit her. It was going to find her. We were so screwed.


    Saga saw it too, and before the snatcher did, she jumped, closing the last of the distance with a determined little grunt.


    Her arm was out, blade pointed true. But she never landed. The snatcher lashed out and grabbed her out of the air by her other arm, holding her dangling like a doll. It seemed confused what it found and she swiped uselessly, still a foot away from the core. So close, so fucking damn close.


    She took a deep breath and then in one brutal motion raised her improvised blade and screamed her best. With a splatter of red and a thump, she fell to the ground, her detached arm still in the snatcher¡¯s grip above her. It seemed confused still, unsure what it was holding and what was making all these noises.


    And it died with that confusion still pulsing through its core, as Saga, one-armed, rammed the shiv through my drones, through the eye, right into the heart of the monster.


    It staggered and flailed, sending Saga and myself both flying, but they were the death throes of a crippled beast, and as its power faltered, the flailing slowed and then stopped, and it came crashing down sideways, dropping Moon rolling across the floor.


    ¡°Goddamn,¡± muttered Saga, flush and out of breath, kicking her discarded arm on the floor, a new pristine one already in place.


    ¡°You fucking saved everyone,¡± I told her, wrapping my arms around her for just the briefest of hugs, before heading to disassemble the machine and make sure it stayed fucking dead.


    ¡°I¡­guess I did,¡± she said, sounding completely unsure. I mean, she¡¯d just snuck up on a machine and crammed a blade into its core, there wasn¡¯t much room for modesty or ambiguity here. She put herself at risk of capture again just to save others. ¡°I liked that sweater, though.¡±


    I grunted and there was popping and several electrical discharges before the machine¡¯s core tore out of the frame, like I¡¯d just ripped its heart from its chest. ¡°There. We can go through the data later. How are these guys?¡±


    ¡°Super confused, super asleep. Both at once, somehow,¡± Saga said, holding her head as she sunk to the ground. ¡°My head¡¯s all foggy from whatever they were on. There¡¯s uh¡­oh¡­there¡¯s people arriving outside. They¡¯re here to follow-up on it. I¡¯ll¡­I¡¯ll send them off I guess.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said, setting the core down and pulling the snatcher to the side to open the front door myself. ¡°They came all this way, let¡¯s let them in.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS?¡± Saga muttered. ¡°I¡¯m¡­I¡¯m not in good shape to go fucking anyone¡¯s mind right now. I don¡¯t think this is a good idea.¡±


    ¡°Just bring them in the house,¡± I said, reaching back inside the robot and feeling around. I frowned as I fumbled blind in there, and then my remaining dozen cam-drones sprung to life and buried themselves inside the cavity like maggots.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure?¡±


    I wrenched free the part I wanted and held it up for inspection. Still plenty full.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, brandishing the can of the knockout gas at her. ¡°I think it¡¯s time we stopped screwing around with subterfuge and went with a few good old-fashioned interrogations.¡±

 315. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    I felt like the number of times I woke up with my head pounding was far too significant a percentage. Yet that never stopped me from doing it, and as I slowly opened my eyes to the aching world, I thought¡­maybe it still beat the alternative of not waking up at all? There¡¯s some optimism for you.


    It didn¡¯t help with my understanding though. Like why I was on the floor in the living room, or my head hurt enough that every time my heart beat, I could feel it in my head and my vision seemed to constrict. I spent long moments just lying there, willing my brain to get its shit together.


    ¡°Yeah, won¡¯t work.¡±


    It was Saga¡¯s voice, but fuck if I was going to turn to look around at it. Somewhere from the direction of the couch, anyway.


    ¡°What?¡± I croaked. ¡°What won¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Willing your brain to get better. If it were in your head, I¡¯d have fixed it for you, trust me. If you think your headache is bad, imagine my having all of them in the whole house at once.¡±


    Yeah, her voice sounded pretty croaky and thin. I just didn¡¯t have the spare capacity for sympathy at the moment when doing anything hurt.


    ¡°I thought you could fix headaches?¡± I asked.


    ¡°If it¡¯s just brain chemistry or something sure. You guys are all full of poison that¡¯s leaching through your bodies. I¡¯d have to filter your blood or something. It¡¯s already clearing up, but shit if it can¡¯t hurry up a little.¡±


    Something walked in front of me and smiled at me, and I realized it was AEGIS. ¡°Let¡¯s leave Saga to concentrate on blocking you guys out for now, huh?¡± she whispered to me. ¡°Everything¡¯s fine now, so let¡¯s just focus on recovering for the next bit.¡±


    ¡°Was it not fine before? Why¡¯d I fall asleep, and why¡­poison. Why was I poisoned? Err, how?¡±


    She gave me a sympathetic smile and sat down gently in front of me, making sure to keep her dress from riding up. ¡°About fifteen feet behind you, there¡¯s a wreck of a big robot that sorta¡­snuck in here and filled the house with a knockout gas. Saga and I were the only ones unaffected¡­


    ¡°Um,¡± Saga groaned.


    ¡°Or¡­I should say¡­unaffected enough to keep conscious, and we beat it before it dragged Moon off.¡±


    I grunted at her. It was supposed to be some kind of expression of gratitude and appreciation, but didn¡¯t quite make it out. She smiled anyway.


    ¡°And then about twenty feet behind you, there¡¯s uh, three lovely gentlemen. I imagine in an hour or so they¡¯re going to have headaches just like yours, once the gas wears off.¡±


    ¡°¡­who?¡±


    ¡°They were the folks who sent in the snatcher drone. Once it went down, they came to finish the job, and then I beat them senseless, ripped off their rebreathers, and sprayed gas in their faces.¡± She frowned a little. ¡°Honestly, it¡¯s like they didn¡¯t have a plan for what would happen if their drone failed.¡±


    ¡°Not everyone plans out every contingency, AEGIS.¡± I swallowed and realized my mouth tasted weird. Like¡­fruit, maybe? Sort of a weird side-effect. I¡¯d have been more curious about it if the other side-effects weren¡¯t so pronounced. And pounding.


    ¡°Well, we see how well that worked for them,¡± she said with the world¡¯s most superior smirk. ¡°Proper preparation is the cornerstone of any victory.¡±


    ¡°Wow,¡± I said, wincing. ¡°What was your plan?¡±


    She opened her mouth and then closed it.


    ¡°We winged it,¡± Saga muttered.


    ¡°Anyway, you¡¯re the last one up,¡± AEGIS blurted out. ¡°Everyone else is out back, and felt a lot better after they had some salt and water.¡±


    ¡°They really don¡¯t,¡± Saga added. ¡°Believe me.¡±


    AEGIS sighed. ¡°Well, it won¡¯t hurt. Kind of a nasty drug, but that¡¯s what you¡¯d expect from kidnappers, I guess.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, rising as slowly as I could. ¡°Ow. Should I meet you out there?¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m staying with our kidnapees. They¡¯re tied up and still out for now, but I don¡¯t want to leave them alone for a moment if I don¡¯t have to.¡±


    I finished sitting up and looked over in that direction. Oh yeah. She mentioned that.


    Tied up were three men in suits, sunglasses, earpieces¡­the whole outfit. It was like they were deliberately trying to look like shady business thugs. I wondered if one of them might have a briefcase chained to his wrist, or if they had cyanide capsules in their molars.


    Saga chuckled, and then held her head. ¡°No, nothing like that. One¡¯s just a driver and the other two are basically tech support for the snatcher. No secret agents here.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± That was a little disappointing. But probably for the best. If I knew one thing about super spies, it was that knocking them out and tying them up was just step one to them destroying your base and toppling all of your plans. Not that we really had plans at the moment, but I guess that¡¯s what the capture and interrogation was for.


    I winced as I stood up and shambled my way out the back. My life wasn¡¯t like other lives.


    After a round of greetings, we were all mostly quiet as we recovered in shared solitude. All of us had been knocked out by the gas, Lia, Whitney, Tem, even Chiho, and it seemed like Saga¡¯s assessment on our mood was spot-on.


    Still, I felt a little better being in the fresh air and under the sun, and drinking some water and eating some boring-ass salty crackers felt like it did something, maybe. But as AEGIS said, there probably wasn¡¯t much recourse but for us to just wait it out as the toxins worked through our systems.


    About twenty minutes later found me doing a lot better, though I¡¯d given up on sitting in the sun and we were all crowded into Saga¡¯s preferred spot. I could tell the others were doing better as well, which was confirmed when Saga joined us, a little smirk back on her face and swagger back in her barefooted step.


    ¡°They¡¯re waking up,¡± she informed us. ¡°Wanna go have some fun?¡±


    ¡°Your idea of fun is weird,¡± Lia said.


    ¡°What¡¯s her idea of fun?¡± Chiho asked.


    ¡°I was thinking we ask them questions and every one they refused to answer, I¡¯d make one of their buddies bite off a digit of their finger and swallow it.¡± Saga¡¯s grin intensified as she cracked her knuckles in preparation.


    Chiho¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Her idea of fun is weird.¡±


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t you just like¡­get the info from them?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Well yeah, but Athan, that¡¯d be a violation of their mental sanctity,¡± Saga argued. ¡°I would never want to make one of our guests feel unsafe here.¡±


    ¡°Uh, huh,¡± I said, standing up to see to them before any of their fingers mysteriously disappeared. When I got over there, they looked exactly as I expected. Besuited, besunglassed, and wincing at every movement and sound.


    AEGIS was doing her best to make them uncomfortable. Each was tied hand and foot to the chair they sat on, limiting their field of vision to just the corner, where she flitted in and out of their sight, stalking them like a predator as she bent to look them in the eyes or pass close enough behind them to shatter any personal space they might dream of having.


    ¡°How do you want to play it?¡± Lia asked me from where she was sprawled lazily on the carpet behind them. ¡°If we go uh, all-out on them, we¡¯ll probably at least need to make sure they don¡¯t remember it afterwards.¡±


    ¡°Again, not something I think I¡¯m up to quite at the moment. We¡¯d have to keep them a few hours because of the drugging,¡± Saga shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m uh, keeping myself a little separate right now as best as I can. But I¡¯m game. I¡¯m patient like that.¡±


    ¡°Oh I don¡¯t think it¡¯ll come to that,¡± I said, walking into their view and crouching to their level. Three sets of wide dark eyes snapped onto me. ¡°After all, if these guys know we¡¯re talking about having to kill them or the like, I¡¯m sure they¡¯ll be much more will to have a chat without going that far. Right guys?¡±


    Two of them just stared at me impassively. The third hesitated and then nodded. Instantly the other two were yelling at him in Japanese while he screamed his best back.


    ¡°Great,¡± I said, smiling at the chattiest one. ¡°Let¡¯s get these other two out of here, maybe even sedate them again, and then our friend here can have a nice chat with us and tell us what he¡¯s doing here, huh?¡±The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    ¡°Yes¡­nice chat,¡± he muttered. I gave him a reassuring smile and turned towards the now-livid pair, only to find Moon there, reaching her hand towards one and brushing him on the cheek. Tenderly, like a lover, before she just dropped where she stood.


    ¡°Uh,¡± I got out, before a purple effigy of the man burst from his chest, his eyes widening even further.


    ¡°Just one moment,¡± Moon said. ¡°I should have done this before, I should.¡±


    ¡°Moon, what are you doing?¡±


    ¡°Oh holy shit,¡± Saga muttered.


    ¡°Okay that¡¯s a really bad sign, Moon what are you doing?¡±


    She didn¡¯t answer me, just sat there, floating, impassive, as the body under her shuddered and trembled. Half-stuttered words parted his lips but none that I recognized. He seemed to be having a seizure as his whole body threw itself against itself.


    I¡­I didn¡¯t¡­what was I supposed to do? I felt as helpless as the man she was possessing as she¡­did whatever this was to him. It was clear some kind of mental war was going on, but I couldn¡¯t pretend I understood the very least of it. The last time Moon had travelled on me, we¡¯d fought, but my body had never shaken like a leaf through the whole thing.


    I just had the idea of grabbing her corpse and retouching the victim with it to force her out when she spoke. ¡°As I suspected, this man is yet another mere pawn of my father. He works for a specialized security firm.¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­we could have gotten this from talking, Moon. There¡¯s no need for¡­this.¡±


    ¡°It is Kaori. Moon is my callsign at work.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re really working the fuck out of that guy.¡±


    ¡°This is personal,¡± she said simply, and the man spasmed in his seat with an extra throe of violence. ¡°I should have done this long ago. The longer I held back, the more I imperiled those around me, to say nothing of myself.¡±


    ¡°Moon¡­Kaori¡­we were fine. We didn¡¯t even have all our cards on the table. We weren¡¯t in any danger. There wasn¡¯t any need to go full-bore like this.¡±


    ¡°Oh, but there was. This man possesses memories he does not consider relevant which would never have been found without a thorough search. Very interesting memories, they are.¡±


    The memories seemed more terrifying and painful than anything to him, as his bucking reached a crescendo which caused the chair to skip up and down the carpet.


    ¡°Okay, that¡¯s enough. Let him go.¡±


    Saga sat on the couch and interlaced her fingers, her eyes shining as she stared at the violent spectacle unfolding before us. Shadows of something sinister flickered behind the hunger in her simple smile.


    ¡°If you insist,¡± Moon said, and the man¡¯s twitching and jumping reached a climax. I felt myself going white as I saw his contorted face, both wishing I knew what was going on in there, and wishing I never knew.


    Her spectre shifted, and with a crash, she threw the chair, man and all into the ground, herself being carried with it, the physics of it all be damned. He wriggled and writhed on the floor, and then in one movement, stood fully upright, the ropes and remains of the chair falling off of him. I was on him in a moment, surrounding him with blades to keep him from moving towards anyone else, but he just gave me a smile¡­the most¡­bizarrely haunting smile I¡¯d ever seen, like his flesh was being pulled away by hooks.


    And then he threw himself into the air, jumping straight up, higher than I could ever jump, and twisting himself so that he landed face-first on the carpet, his arms locked at his sides. There was an audible crack as his neck twisted in a way no neck should, and then the body crumpled in an impossible pile.


    Whitney gasped. Saga applauded slowly. The others just watched. Chiho wasn¡¯t here, fortunately. My heart broke a little that Lia seemed as unphased as AEGIS.


    Moon¡¯s spectre flickered out and then she opened her eyes. She stretched for a moment before reaching out towards the more cooperative of the two remaining guys.


    My blades moved between them as I trapped her instead.


    ¡°Holy¡­w-what the¡­fuck?¡± I yelled at her.


    ¡°Oh, grow up,¡± she said, with a deliberate roll of her eyes at me.


    ¡°Grow¡­Moon, you just fucking killed him. By making him jump and snap his own spine. I didn¡¯t even know you could control people¡¯s brains like that!¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t. But you should have known this was coming already.¡±


    ¡°What, I should just assume you¡¯re a psycho?¡±


    ¡°The moment my powers were made manifest to these people, they could not be permitted to report it. Now if you will excuse me, I have two more¨C¡°


    ¡°Goddamnit, Moon, that¡¯s not how we do things. I don¡¯t care how inconvenient someone else¡¯s life is, you don¡¯t just snuff people out because you can.¡±


    She blinked at me. ¡°He travelled across the world to snatch me from my home. You would argue in his defense?¡±


    ¡°Yes. He¡¯s still a person. I might hate him, I might think he¡¯s human garbage, but you don¡¯t just kill people. Not if you can avoid it. We¡¯ve got Saga¡­we¡¯ve got¡­options.¡±


    ¡°We have been playing options until now. As a result of your restraint, today your sister, your girlfriend¨C¡°


    ¡°I¡¯m not his girlfriend¨C¡°


    ¡°She¡¯s not my girlfriend¨C¡°


    ¡°¨Cyou, and I were very nearly snatched from our home. By a man who has made a profession of it. He has been doing this for years, and do you think he loses sleep on the morality of his actions?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, but I¡¯m not him, Moon. I¡¯m me. I can¡¯t control what anyone else does or regrets.¡±


    ¡°How ironic,¡± she said, gesturing at the crackling cage I¡¯d put her in. ¡°And it is Kaori.¡±


    ¡°Whatever your name is, killer, can¡¯t you see how pointless that was? This guy could have been rehabilitated. Hell, Saga could have gone in and¡­fixed some of his plumbing. Today could have been the last awful day of this guy¡¯s life.¡±


    ¡°Why would I want to touch that guy¡¯s penis?¡± Saga smirked.


    ¡°His mental plumbing, Jesus.¡±


    ¡°Oh, of course,¡± she said, the smirk going absolutely nowhere. ¡°Athan, I love you of course, and this little tantrum of yours is just the cutest little thing.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not a tantrum. There¡¯s a fucking corpse right fucking there!¡±


    ¡°Always looking backwards. Why dwell on the corpses of the past when there are so many corpses of the future just waiting to be made¡±


    ¡°Saga, damn it, I¡¯m serious here.¡±


    ¡°And so am I,¡± she said, her smirk finally falling away. ¡°I¡¯m not in it to fix every trauma of every broken little person we stumble upon. I didn¡¯t take any hippocratic oath, and I sure as fuck don¡¯t have an altruistic bone in my body ¡ª though I wouldn¡¯t say no if you wanted to lend me one?¡±


    She batted her eyes at me and when I didn¡¯t respond just blew air at her bangs and continued. ¡°And even if I were, why would I be rewarding these fuckups with healthy, fixed lives? There are like, kids out there, who haven¡¯t had a toxic thought in their lives, with their whole shit in front of ¡¯em, who are gonna have a rough go because of nothing more than messed up chemistry in their brains.¡±


    ¡°So¡­go fix them?¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh, right. Yeah, I¡¯ll just spend the rest of my life catching every snowflake falling around me and doing surgery to make sure every fuckin¡¯ one of ¡¯em is perfectly symmetrical.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a metaphor, stupid. I¡¯m not sure if you¡¯re aware, but you and all these other people are just going to melt away long before I do. You¡¯re all only worth as much to me as how pretty y¡¯all are while you¡¯re falling.¡±


    ¡°Saga this is¡­this is so stupid, and so unrelated to what¡¯s going on. Moon¡¯s become a¡­freaking carnivorous snowflake, daring around and snuffing out other ones long before they hit the ground.¡±


    ¡°And you can¡¯t see why that¡¯d be amusing to watch?¡± Saga said, her dark eyes flashing. The others tied up strained against their ropes at her words.


    ¡°Look, let¡¯s all just¡­I¡¯m a pragmatist too, okay? Let¡¯s wait for the drugs to wear off, and have Saga do some plumbing¨C¡°


    ¡°Penises?¡±


    ¡°No, damn it. Mentally. Just¡­do your thing, pull what you need from his mind, and blast him out so he doesn¡¯t know anything about us or Moon¡¯s powers or anything.¡±


    Her smirk came back double, as obnoxious as it was superior. ¡°See, that¡¯s the thing though. Your little girl there is right. The dude did have details tucked away in his mind that are very interesting. But because they¡¯re just incidental memories, not categorized in his own head as being related to us or our interests, it¡¯s unlikely I would have ever found them.¡±


    ¡°Then we send her in, and then you¡­clean up after.¡±


    ¡°Okay, first off, I know you love your plumbing analogy here, but I am nobody¡¯s janitor. If she leaves a steaming turd in some dude¡¯s mind, I am not stepping in to mop that shit up. And second¡­come on, Athan. You saw him as she went through. Does that look like the kind of thing I just stroll through and pick up afterwards?¡±


    I tried not to think about the man¡¯s face as he struggled and jerked and thrashed. I wondered just how much of his suicide was Moon, and how much was what was left of the man.


    ¡°So you¡¯re saying you can¡¯t do it?¡± I crossed my arms.


    ¡°I¡¯m saying your shitty reverse psychology sure ain¡¯t enough to get me to. Not for some jerkoff like this. Come back when Moon mindfucks your sister or something, and I¡¯ll have a reason to care.¡±


    ¡°Um, thanks?¡± Lia said.


    Saga winked at her. I just held my head as I stared at the dead guy¡¯s sideways-bent head, peeking out from under his crumpled body at the harshest of angles.


    ¡°It¡¯s still bullshit. It¡¯s still wrong. We¡¯re supposed to be the good guys. We have to act like it.¡±


    Saga laughed. ¡°Wait, I¡¯ve been good since when? And a guy since when?¡± She made a show of prying up and peeking down the gap at her waistline. ¡°You need to learn that there¡¯s no good or bad in the world, Athan. There¡¯s just what needs to get done and the people willing to do it. To these guys, you¡¯re a job to sustain their livelihood that went wrong, and a damn fucking villain at that. But to the next or last person they snatched, you¡¯re a goddamn hero. Tell me who¡¯s opinion is more right?¡±


    ¡°The one that doesn¡¯t involve killing people who don¡¯t need to be killed,¡± I crossed my arms even harder. ¡°There¡¯s always a better way. A smarter way, a more clever way.¡±


    Moon was eyeing me differently suddenly from inside my sparking cage. A little more hesitatingly, a little faltering. Which by Moon standards was a lot more of both of those things.


    ¡°Well I guess as a good guy, you probably have no interest in the info your girl picked up then,¡± Saga said, yawning and stretching. ¡°Guess I¡¯ll just blast it out of her mind, since it¡¯s so illicitly acquired.¡±


    ¡°Come on, Saga. The guy¡¯s fucking dead already. Don¡¯t be a shit about it. Let¡¯s just¡­not be a shit about it again in the future.¡±


    She gave me a small grin, and then bowed dramatically to Moon, who seemed taken aback for the first time at everyone focusing on her. She froze, and it took several attempts before her moving lips produced words.


    ¡°He¡­saw¡­my father. Ichiro Ikeda.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± I said. ¡°So we know¡­as we already did¡­that your dad is behind trying to kidnap you.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she frowned. Saga stood up and leaned off of me obnoxiously.


    ¡°Here it comes!¡± she squealed.


    Moon gave her a glare before turning back to me. ¡°When he was speaking to this man¡¯s superior, my father received a phone call. This man did not recognize the name or voice as anything of significance, but I do. The context of the conversation was that the individual on the line was as involved in the arrangements of my capture as was my father. Perhaps even the one motivating him to begin chasing me again.¡±


    ¡°Nice dramatic buildup,¡± Saga said. ¡°Now finish it of with a real punchline. Tell him who called.¡± She punched at the air a couple times with an absolutely horrible stance designed to irritate me as much as possible.


    ¡°You are being obnoxious,¡± Moon said, glaring at her through half-lidded eyes.


    ¡°I¡¯m being lovable. You should learn the skill sometime.¡±


    ¡°Saga shut up and let her finish,¡± I said, pushing her off me by the face. ¡°Moon, who called? Who else is involved in trying to capture you.¡±


    She swallowed hard and looked around the group, going a little red at the continued attention and then closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. ¡°Um. It was¡­the Senator. Senator Idris Irenside. Karu¡¯s father.¡±


    I sat down as my head spun, feeling like I¡¯d just taken another hit of snatcher gas, as Saga beamed her most devilish at me. She crouched to put her face as obnoxiously into mine as she could, her eyes glittering with malice.


    ¡°Good guys. Bad guys. All a matter of perspective,¡± she said.

 316. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    I fumbled with my keys, my arms feeling like lead before I could get the reader to beep me in and then crossed the threshold, bringing the stink of my sweat into our living room. I¡¯d intended to make a beeline for a shower and change of clothes but stopped at noticing something¡­different.


    It took a second to place, but I saw the chairs were back at the table, instead of having hitmen strapped to them in the corner of the living room.


    ¡°Hi Athan, welcome back. How was the gym?¡± AEGIS asked from the kitchen.


    ¡°¡­it was fine. What happened to the two guys and the body?¡±


    ¡°Hmm? Oh. Uh. Nothing, really. Could you try this broth for me and tell me if it¡¯s got too much salt?¡±


    My stomach did an involuntary flip by reflex as AEGIS brandished a spoon at me, and I took a deep, steadying breath and reminded myself that the one who couldn¡¯t cook had left us. The one in front of me¡­well¡­she couldn¡¯t cook either. But she didn¡¯t have the insane fixation with overseasoning and oversweeting everything.


    Yet. Which is why that spoon terrified me. But I knew cognitively this was a new AEGIS, and I had to give her the benefit of the doubt.


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­actually not bad,¡± I said, smacking my lips. ¡°Maybe a little salty.¡±


    ¡°Hmm, I thought that might be the case,¡± she said, sniffing it with a look of mild frustration. ¡°I don¡¯t know what ¡®a pinch¡® or ¡®a bit¡® or ¡®a dab¡® of salt quantifies. As much salt as I can pinch? A bit is an eighth of a byte. And I don¡¯t even want to know what dabbing has to do with measurement.¡±


    I laughed as she continued her mini-tirade, somewhat at just how wound up she was over something this small, but mostly just relief flooding me that she was just failing at following recipes, instead of trying to exploit some loophole in human psychology with blatant disregard for taste.


    And then I caught myself and went back a minute. ¡°Uh, wait. So those missing people? Can you explain to me again where they went?¡±


    She blinked at me. ¡°Erm.¡±


    ¡°Erm what?¡±


    ¡°Erm, please wait¡­about one-point-three minutes.¡±


    I felt my brow furrowing at her. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll, uh, see. More importantly, I won¡¯t have to explain it.¡±


    ¡°Well that just sounds ominous as fuck. AEGIS, where¡¯d they go? I made it clear nobody here was supposed to harm them, any more than Moon already did.¡±


    ¡°Yes. And everyone heard you and none of them did a thing to our guests.¡±


    ¡°Then where are they? We didn¡¯t release them did we?¡±


    ¡°No, we certainly didn¡¯t do that either. Uh, one-point-two minutes now.¡±


    ¡°Jeez, AEGIS, it smells like rot in here,¡± Lia said as she entered the room. ¡°Oh it¡¯s just Athan. Why aren¡¯t you in the shower, stinky?¡±


    ¡°Because I¡¯m trying to find out what happened to the two kidnappers and the dead body we had in the living room?¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± she said, checking her mobile. ¡°You¡¯ll find out in like, a minute.¡±


    ¡°One-point-one minutes,¡± AEGIS confirmed.


    ¡°Are you guys like, conspiring to make this as difficult as possible? I¡¯m asking what I think is a super reasonable question about a very kind of important thing. If there¡¯s some guys who are going to go running to Idris and Ichiro about Moon being an Exhuman¡­I¡¯d like to stop them before a minute from now. And if one of you deliberately decided to go murdery after I specifically asked not to¡­well at least, I don¡¯t see the reason to delay telling me,¡± I sighed.


    They glanced at each other, but still nobody volunteered anything. I took the hint and started for the shower.


    ¡°Hey before you go, I do have news,¡± Lia said, her face serious. ¡°The last few moves within the XPCA from our known sources are being executed. Things will be in position for Dragon to act anytime starting tomorrow.¡±


    ¡°Then he¡¯s likely to strike tomorrow,¡± I said. ¡°He¡¯s not one for waiting, I don¡¯t think. Not longer than five seconds, anyway.¡±


    ¡°And we¡¯re still in the dark about so much,¡± AEGIS fretted.


    ¡°It hardly matters,¡± I shrugged. ¡°We know he¡¯s coming, we know what he¡¯s coming for, and where, and relatively when. Even if the XPCA can¡¯t do anything about it, we can.¡±


    She gave her hair a few strokes. ¡°I still would like a better plan than ¡®throw Athan out there as a speedbump and hope it stops him¡¯.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve been talking to Cosette,¡± I said. ¡°But honestly, I don¡¯t think she¡¯s convinced, and she¡¯s told us outright there¡¯s no way she¡¯ll be able to convince her superiors that there¡¯s some kind of XPCA-wide conspiracy with a quarter dozen moles and dozens of corrupt enlisted and officers.¡±


    ¡°So as usual, the strategy is ¡®do the stupid thing Athan wants to do¡¯,¡± Lia shrugged.


    ¡°You seem pretty nonchalant about this whole thing,¡± AEGIS accused.


    ¡°That¡¯s because I expect it to all wind up being for nothing,¡± Lia said. ¡°If you think Dragon¡¯s going to show up in person at an XPCA facility when he¡¯s got the power and influence to micromanage soldiers and schedules, instead of just paying someone to snatch or smuggle his precious, I¡¯d say you need a few lessons in delegation.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°But I still think he will.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°It¡¯s what I think. I don¡¯t need to have a reason for it.¡±


    ¡°Uh, you do if you don¡¯t want me to just mock you,¡± she said.


    ¡°Mock away, sis. It¡¯s still what I think.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re kind of a stubborn butthead, anyone ever tell you that?¡±


    ¡°Only all the freakin¡¯ time.¡±


    ¡°Maybe if everyone¡¯s always telling you the same thing you should consider listening,¡± AEGIS said with sudden concern as she stirred her pot of broth on the stove.


    ¡°Yeah, well.¡± I really didn¡¯t have much a better argument than that, which just proved the whole stubborn butthead thing, I knew. Lia of course pointed that out, and I just responded by sticking out my tongue.


    The front door opened, and Karu walked in, armor gleaming in the midday sun. ¡°My, but it smells rank in here,¡± she said by way of introduction. She eyed AEGIS cooking with some suspicion.


    ¡°Hi Karu, welcome back,¡± Lia said with a wave.


    ¡°¡­back?¡± I asked. ¡°She was here while I was gone?¡± I frowned and checked my holo. This would be about a minute after the girls told me to wait a minute. It only took me a few seconds to put things together, and then I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead with my knuckles. AEGIS gave me a reassuring rub on the back.


    ¡°You said nobody here did anything to them,¡± I said.


    ¡°Right,¡± AEGIS agreed.


    ¡°Karu wasn¡¯t here.¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°She just took them all somewhere and killed them, didn¡¯t she?¡±


    ¡°They were a liability,¡± Karu stepped in. ¡°They knew too much and would report to your enemies. As your appointed protector, I would not permit it.¡±


    ¡°Self-appointed,¡± I groaned.


    ¡°Yet appointed nonetheless,¡± she smiled broadly at me.


    ¡°Um, I think that really remains¡­to be determined,¡± AEGIS said from her cooking. ¡°Athan might have other preferences in¡­people to¡­protect him.¡±


    ¡°What, such as a gynoid who has died ineffectually in the process twice?¡± Karu scoffed.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Guys, don¡¯t fight,¡± I said, my voice feeling empty and defeated. ¡°I¡¯m going to shower. Try not to kill anyone else while I¡¯m in there.¡±


    ¡°Food will be ready when you get out, at least,¡± AEGIS said with far more hope in her voice than a stupid bowl of soup would warrant.


    I spent a long time standing there letting the scalding stream hit me in the face with my thoughts running. There¡¯d always been a lot of difficult questions inherent in my whole strategy of doing what I thought was right, was necessary, for someone to do, even if it wasn¡¯t me. There¡¯d been a lot of people hurt¡­or like Alyssa, killed, because of my actions or inaction.


    And today, even though I was only tangentially involved, that number increased by three. The first one, I could understand as somewhat necessary, maybe. Or, if nothing else, an outburst by Moon, whom it could be argued had been chased and hounded for weeks now, and was in no fit state to be trusted with judgement on people¡¯s lives. Especially her pursuers.


    But those other two. After the events of the day, I¡¯d just wanted to escape for a bit. Go do and be something normal, so I ducked out to the gym and put in some time punching a bag around.


    And as a result, they were dead. It was Alyssa all over again. Sure, they were probably awful people, but did they have kids? Did they have parents or spouses? How long would it be before their families stopped looking for them? How would it break them?


    It¡¯d taken one day to turn my parents from controlling, doting, normal folks into broken husks, defined by violence and denial. Karu knew that. Everyone out there knew that, but they just kept on with this shit like none of it mattered.


    The water fell away from me and ran down the drain in a swirl while I wondered just how long I could keep hurting people in order to do the right thing before it wasn¡¯t right anymore.


    I came back out, towel on my head and a change of clothes on my back and found Karu and AEGIS still, and Saga, to my surprise. AEGIS was just finishing putting food in front on the table for the two of us who ate.


    ¡°Where is Tem?¡± I asked. ¡°Has she eaten today? Soup is probably pretty good for her.¡±


    ¡°I think she¡¯s been living in the nest I made above the garage,¡± AEGIS frowned. ¡°Even though that was supposed to be space for Whitney and me.¡±


    ¡°Well, she likes being close but not in the way,¡± Saga shrugged. ¡°She¡¯s basically a big stupid cat.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll get her¨C¡± I said, stepping towards the garage, but AEGIS intercepted.


    ¡°No, you sit down and eat. I¡¯ll get her something and make sure she eats over cams,¡± she said. ¡°Sit down. It¡¯s not awful, I promise.¡±


    I did sit down and looked into the faintly-yellow bowl. Compared to everything else, it just felt stupid and pointless.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be like that,¡± Saga said. ¡°Some of us don¡¯t even get to eat.¡±


    ¡°Dragon¡¯s coming tomorrow,¡± I muttered.


    ¡°Or he is not,¡± Karu clarified. ¡°He could come as early as tomorrow. Or as late as a week hence.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯ll come tomorrow, and in person. I know it.¡±


    ¡°I believe that you believe you know it,¡± Karu said, shaking out her short hair as she pulled off her visor and inspected the soup by eye. ¡°But you will not know until it has transpired.¡±


    ¡°No, I know. I¡¯ve spent so long studying him, reading up on every scrap we¡¯ve got on the guy. If anyone knows, it¡¯d be me.¡±


    ¡°Or Lia,¡± Karu said taking a spoonful and swishing it in her mouth. It was apparently good enough to have more. ¡°The girl¡¯s abilities to read others is nonpareil.¡±


    I stood up and left Karu sitting there with a stunned expression on her face. In case the message wasn¡¯t clear, I slammed the bedroom door on my way in.


    I¡¯d only just thrown myself on the bed and buried my head under a pillow when I heard it creak open again.


    ¡°This isn¡¯t about Dragon, is it?¡± Saga asked, as she closed the door behind her.


    ¡°You asking me things you already know the answer to, Saga?¡±


    ¡°Tends to happen when you know the answer to everything already,¡± she said, and I could hear the smile in her small voice. It¡¯d been so long since she¡¯d shouted mentally at me, I¡¯d begun thinking of this as her normal way of speaking. Since New Eden, she¡¯d just been a lot smaller in personality in general.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think of it as smaller,¡± she said. ¡°More subdued. More refined. Like the difference in a bottle of skin lotion instead of having a tub of lube at your desk.¡±


    ¡°Your analogies haven¡¯t gotten subdued or refined.¡±


    ¡°Well, get some XPCA jerkoff to hold me prisoner who forces me to use my analogies to torture people and I might think of refining them too. But we¡¯re not here to talk about me, no matter how much I love hearing you do so.¡± She sat down on the bed next to me even though there wasn¡¯t any space, and pulled the pillow off my face.


    Her brown eyes hovered a few inches above me, the curtains of her hair making it very nearly as dark as with the pillow in place. She looked at me seriously, her eyes focused and darting in a way that reminded me of Whitney eying a broken circuit.


    ¡°Do you know what Karu¡¯s big revelation was that turned her crazy?¡± she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.


    ¡°She killed Blackett, and the guilt of it ate her up, because he was the first person she ever killed without a contract or who wasn¡¯t an enemy combatant or something.¡±


    She smiled. ¡°Close. And not factually wrong. But she had a thing in her mind that those events crashed into, and it was the war between those which is what broke her. The unstoppable force which was her own actions, and the immovable object which was her belief. Turns out we do know what happens when they collide ¡ª you go a bit crazy.¡±


    ¡°Saga, I just want to be alone and think for awhile, okay?¡±


    ¡°So impatient. You know the points I made at the ends of these things are always kickass.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t remember you ever making a kickass point.¡±


    ¡°Oof, ow, my pride,¡± she said through a smile. ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll cut it short then. My point is that Karu, like you, like Moon, like so many others out there are all hung up on this idea of good and evil. When that doesn¡¯t even exist.¡±


    ¡°Great. Already heard this talk, thanks.¡±


    ¡°Karu made a great hunter because she could justify any killing she did in her work as good, no matter who she put down. But by that definition, any killing she did outside of it must be evil. She crossed that line, and you see what happened to her. That¡¯s what happens when you start seeing yourself as evil. Well, that or you move the goalposts a little to justify it, but I think her goalpost is permanently affixed to the stick up her ass.¡±


    I turned and faced the wall, the strands of her long hair tickling my cheeks.


    ¡°You, on the other hand, equate any kind of killing with evil, and that¡¯s just so adorable, but you¡¯re also flexible enough to know that it¡¯s not a hard and fast rule. But in a way that¡¯s even more dangerous, as your body count creeps upwards¡­you¡¯re gonna ask yourself just how long you can keep making justifications before you can¡¯t face it anymore.¡±


    ¡°Yes. Thanks. You¡¯re telling me exactly what I¡¯m already thinking. It¡¯s like you¡¯re a mind-reader or something.¡±


    She chuckled. ¡°I¡¯m telling you that you need to stop looking at the world like that. There¡¯s no good and evil, no absolute right and wrong. There¡¯s just perspectives. From Dragon¡¯s perspective, you¡¯re a huge pain in the ass¡­or were, until you lost your powers and he stopped giving a shit about you. Whatever his goals are, he probably thinks they¡¯re noble and justified from his own point of view, and that makes you evil. Is he wrong?¡±


    ¡°Of course he¡¯s wrong. He¡¯s an unrepentant killer.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know that. For all you know, right now, he¡¯s curled up on his bed with a Sino girl giving him a pep-talk as he struggles through his own hangups.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s fucking not.¡±


    ¡°But you don¡¯t know. From his actions all you know is he¡¯s a killer.¡±


    ¡°Okay, and he¡¯s planning to kill again. So he¡¯s obviously unrepentant.¡±


    ¡°And yet,¡± she said, shifting and making the bed creak under her ¡°Tomorrow, you¡¯re planning to head out there and stop him, even if you have to kill him. So you¡¯re also an obviously unrepentant killer.¡±


    ¡°Are you telling me I¡¯m just like Dragon? Seriously?¡±


    She snorted. ¡°Insofar as thinking you¡¯re good and the other is evil, yeah, probably.¡±


    ¡°I thought you said you were skipping straight to the point?¡±


    ¡°That was the point, dummy. You and Dragon can¡¯t both be good and evil both, if there¡¯s an objective good and an objective evil. It¡¯s all just perspectives. Good and evil are just labels you put on things that you want to give a little more moral weight to, but basically boil down to ¡®things I agree with¡¯ and ¡®things I really disagree with¡¯. You need to learn to let it go.¡±


    ¡°And what? Become like Karu? Just fucking kill whoever gets in my way? Did you hear her out there? She¡¯s still wiping their blood off her hands and comments ¡®they¡¯re a liability¡®, like that¡¯s a reason to kill someone.¡±


    She sighed, and stretched out on the bed with some effort. Mostly because I was taking up the majority of the bed and had no inclination to move to make her job any easier. I was still punished by being cuddled by something very cold and very bony.


    ¡°No, Karu¡¯s a pretty terrible role model. I¡¯m thinking more like Lia, or AEGIS. Or me, if you¡¯re daring.¡± Her face flashed into my field of view long enough to give me a saucy wink before I pushed it back out of my peripheral.


    ¡°And how are they any different from me? Lia and AEGIS don¡¯t like killing either.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, for the most part that¡¯s the same. But they¡¯re not exactly opposed to killing in principle either, and that¡¯s all the difference. If either of them thought someone was a danger to themselves or even more, someone they loved, they¡¯d kill without hesitation, and without question. And then they¡¯d sleep fine after.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS doesn¡¯t sleep.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, just nitpick your way out of this one buddy. I¡¯m sure that¡¯ll help you.¡±


    ¡°Ass.¡±


    ¡°Dick. I hear those two go well together if you¡¯re interested.¡±


    ¡°Saga please, just leave me to think. I have a big day coming up, okay?¡±


    She slid off the bed, which surprised me, but maybe it was just because she¡¯d said all she wanted to. It didn¡¯t stop her from pausing at the door though to get in one final word.


    ¡°I know you¡¯re just as willing to kill to protect people as Lia and AEGIS, but you should be as willing to accept that and forgive yourself for that as they are, too. If you have things or beliefs you care about, you¡¯ve gotta understand that there are equal and opposite people who will do those things or people harm. Instead of looking at it like you¡¯re murdering a person, consider that death a consequence of your beliefs. And if that upsets you, go re-evaluate your beliefs and see if they¡¯re really worth killing for.¡±


    She paused for a moment, holding the doorknob. ¡°And eat some soup, mister. You¡¯ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow.¡±


    I was going to retort but the door clicked shut behind her.


    Stupid. Like a few words were gonna change my whole perspective on the value of a human life. I could kill to protect Lia and still feel bad about it.


    Right?


    It just made sense. I could¡­and should, even. Because killing was wrong. Ignoring that fact led to seeing the world like Karu, which we all agreed was a mess. It stayed your hand when and where you could, kept you from going off the deep-end like a sociopath.


    Right?


    But then again, I would never stay my hand if it meant Lia was in danger. I¡¯d kill exactly whomever and however many it took. She was just that important to me, right and wrong be damned. But something about fighting to protect Lia being somehow evil just didn¡¯t compute. Killing was wrong. But killing to protect her?


    ¡­right?


    I closed my eyes and put the pillow back over my face. I fucking hated when Saga made sense. It was easily the second-worst thing she ever did, after not making sense.


    Whatever my personal feelings were, I was going to put them aside for now. I had to. Tomorrow as a big day, whether it was going to gunk up my morals or not, I had to be there and had to stop Dragon.


    Three times now, we¡¯d met, three times I¡¯d been nothing but a shadow of his power.


    I flexed my sore arms and felt electricity shimmering down the surface of my skin.


    ¡°Not this time,¡± I whispered. ¡°No more Defiants, no more Alyssas. This time, the one who dies is you, Dragon.¡±


    And I thought, if he died, no matter the reason, whoever did that was doing good in the world. As much sense as Saga made, as true as her words might have been sometimes, the fact was, she was still wrong. There was objective good in the universe, and putting dragon down was part of it.

 317. 2252, Present Day. XPCA boneyard, Utah. Athan.

    I¡¯d never seen so many airplanes in one place before. Hundreds of them, just left to sit in the sun, dark red dust swirling under them in the hot breeze, the most air they¡¯d ever get.


    I didn¡¯t know what was wrong with old airplanes that VTOLs utterly replaced them, but I definitely now knew where they wound up. It looked like salvage operations were ongoing at the speed of government, as about half of them had visibly missing components, though I¡¯m sure the others were probably less complete than they looked.


    Karu, AEGIS, Saga, and I walked slowly past the lines of planes like we were stepping through a graveyard, the heat and the silence of this remote place equally oppressive.


    [You¡¯re sure it¡¯s way out here?] Saga asked, strolling like a tourist more than the rest of us.


    ¡°That¡¯s what AEGIS says,¡± I answered.


    ¡°What¡¯s what AEGIS says?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Saga asking to confirm if the device Dragon¡¯s after is here.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Yeah. It got deported to this crappy little facility, and I knew that meant Dragon was coming for it.¡±


    [Ask her why there¡¯s nobody around.]


    ¡°Ask her yourself,¡± I muttered.


    [But I don¡¯t actually care. I just want to make you do more work.]


    ¡°What¡¯s she saying now?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°She¡¯s just trying to get me to play telephone,¡± I sighed.


    [Not trying. Succeeding.]


    ¡°Should we have perhaps left the Code-X back at home?¡± Karu asked. ¡°If this is her idea of contributing to an operation, it is very likely that death is imminent for all of us.¡±


    We rounded the last plane on the row, a fighter jet of some kind with its nose completely lopped off, giving the impression it was forever wide-mouthed in a cyclopean scream. With the stillness and quietude of everything, that certainly wasn¡¯t at all adding to the creepy.


    In front of us was more than planes, there was a small facility here with large warehouse doors, indicating storage. Indicating that what we wanted was probably inside. There was a guard on duty, but from the looks of it, only the one.


    ¡°So do we just walk up and say hello?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Did you seriously think this so poorly through that you are formulating a basic plan only now?¡±


    ¡°My plan was to be here when Dragon was here and stop him. Everything else is irrelevant,¡± I snipped at her.


    ¡°Oh Athan,¡± AEGIS crooned. ¡°That¡¯s a terrible plan.¡±


    ¡°Screw you guys, I¡¯m going to go say hi,¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh certainly,¡± Karu said at my back. ¡°Just neglect the fact that we are not intended to be here. Neglect all facts, while you are at it.¡±


    We approached the guard, the others trailing in my wake, when suddenly I felt a jolt of alarm through Saga that made me stop dead.


    [That¡¯s not a guard,] she said.


    ¡°Who is it then?¡± I asked.


    ¡°A corpse,¡± Karu said, adjusting her visor¡¯s controls. ¡°Propped upright.¡±


    We ran the remaining distance and found the man¡¯s back pressed to the wall, his uniform pinned to it with a familiar-looking knife. He was, of course, also completely dead.


    I swore.


    ¡°I told you he wouldn¡¯t wait. He¡¯s in there right now.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s impossible, the device was moved here like, half an hour ago,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°We got here the second the logistics guys left.¡±


    I pointed at the body pinned upright. ¡°Is it impossible, AEGIS? Is it?¡±


    She chewed her lip but tugged the door. Locked. ¡°Of course, this guy¡¯s badge is gone. Probably how Dragon got in. I could uh, hack us a way past this lock but that could take a while.¡±


    ¡°We could simply wait for Dragon to emerge and ambush him on exit,¡± Karu suggested.


    ¡°That¡¯s assuming he doesn¡¯t have any other way out of here. I bet he¡¯s got something planned. I don¡¯t want to be rushing around like an idiot if he suddenly blows out the back wall or dips into the sewer or something.¡±


    ¡°And were he to do that, why would have have entered through the front door?¡± Karu asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Just¡­AEGIS, kick the lock a little, would you?¡±


    ¡°Sure thing. Stand back,¡± she said. She took two running steps and slammed her heel against the lock, visibly denting the door and twisting metal. The digital lock itself just exploded into buttons and scraps of silicon. She backed up and then ran at it again, and then again.


    ¡°It¡¯s not giving,¡± she panted over the sound of her engines.


    ¡°Here, let me help,¡± I said, conjuring up a pair of blades and jamming them into the door¡¯s thick hinges. Over several seconds, they began to glow red, then yellow, and then a white so pure it hurt to look at. She nodded and wound up for another kick.


    And with a final crash, she carried right through the door into the lit room beyond. I put out my blades and helped her to her feet from the wreckage, finding a small office area with windows overlooking the huge storage room adjacent. There was a little potted fern here, which was a nice touch.


    ¡°Saga, are you picking up anyone?¡± I asked.


    She shook her head. [No Dragon. Nobody else either. Have the XPCA gotten really soft in the last hundred years, or is one dude covering a whole facility really abnormal?]


    ¡°It is tremendously abnormal,¡± Karu said, adjusting settings on her visor as she looked into the warehouse. ¡°When you spoke of reassignment of guards and personnel, I had not thought it might be this bad, yet the evidence is before us.¡±


    ¡°Do we know where in there it is?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s supposed to be in bin EE-215, but from what I hear, at long-term storage facilities like this, they tend to just throw things in with the expectation of never caring about them again.¡±


    [Is anybody else really curious what else might be in there?] Saga grinned. [All the XPCA¡¯s buried secrets.]


    ¡°What¡¯s she grinning about?¡± AEGIS asked.


    ¡°She wants to know what¡¯s in there,¡± I sighed.


    ¡°I already know the contents,¡± AEGIS said, pushing up her glasses. ¡°And it¡¯s not as exciting as you might hope. Mostly files that shouldn¡¯t be destroyed but aren¡¯t useful. Lots of aging surplus arms bought in excess because of political deals that they can¡¯t repurpose because that would just make it obvious they were wasting money on favors. Most interesting stuff is some experimental weaponry that didn¡¯t pan out too useful, but is too dangerous to release.¡±


    [Ooh, let¡¯s go find some strange devices and push all of the buttons.]


    ¡°You are pushing my buttons with the flippancy,¡± Karu grunted. ¡°This is a serious matter. Treat it accordingly.¡±


    [Yes, master. Of course, master. Are you boots dirty, master? Shall I lick them clean, master?]


    I bonked Saga in the head while Karu ignored her. ¡°Seriously, dude. Dragon¡¯s in there, and this is serious. Let¡¯s go.¡±


    We crept through an adjoining door, like we still had any element of stealth after kicking in the entry, and paused briefly while AEGIS let a handful of cam-drones loose. She spoke in a hush as we wound down a set of back-and-forth metal stairs that took us down to the underground level of the warehouse floor.


    ¡°I¡¯ll keep a couple at the entrance in case he tries to go out that way,¡± she said. ¡°The rest should spread out and cover the grounds here nicely. I¡¯ll have him in just a second.¡±


    Karu waited for us to pass and then knelt at the base of the steps and fiddled with a device I didn¡¯t recognize and the wall. She looked up at me while I watched her work. ¡°A tripwire mine. Do not head up the stairs without disarming it,¡± she said.


    ¡°What¡¯s it for? I mean¡­aside from being a tripwire mine?¡±


    ¡°In the off-chance Dragon slips past us, it will give us one final line of defense to disable him before he escapes. Such devices are often of immense value when pursuing slippery Exhumans, as it were.¡±


    Meanwhile, Saga was just taking a few steps towards the heart of the area with a big frown on her small face. She shook her head several times as we rejoined her.


    ¡°I found him,¡± AEGIS breathed. ¡°He¡¯s disassembling a box in the far corner.¡±


    [How far?]


    ¡°How far?¡± I echoed.


    ¡°Not too far. The place isn¡¯t really that big. A hundred fifty feet or so?¡±


    [I don¡¯t like this at all. I should be able to feel him. Ask her to make sure he¡¯s real and not like¡­another body. Or a holo or something.]


    ¡°AEGIS, Saga can¡¯t feel him. Can you make sure he¡¯s not some kind of decoy?¡±


    [(If it¡¯s fucking Blackett all over again¡­)]


    ¡°It¡­looks real to me. The cargo he¡¯s moving is definitely real.¡±


    ¡°I see him as well,¡± Karu said, still twiddling her lenses. ¡°I can detect the thermal reading.¡±This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    ¡°I think we should leave,¡± Saga whispered. ¡°I think this is bad. Really bad.¡±


    ¡°We knew it would be bad, he¡¯s Dragon,¡± I hissed back. ¡°We need to stop him before he gets his hands on whatever¡¯s in that box. Come on.¡±


    ¡°No, seriously,¡± she grabbed my sleeve. ¡°I can barely see him, like he¡¯s only kinda there. Last time that happened¡­you remember last time it happened.¡± She held me tightly and I saw her eyes wide and serious, all hints of her joking vanished in an instant.


    ¡°Is Dragon perhaps Exhuman after all?¡± Karu asked. ¡°With a shrouding ability or the like? Some manner of resistance to Code-X?¡±


    I pulled Saga off my sleeve. ¡°He¡¯s not resistant to bullets or having his arms torn off, we¡¯ve already proven it. Let¡¯s go. I don¡¯t want to find out what the device does, so we have to keep it out of his hands.¡±


    I jogged off, and the sounds of AEGIS¡¯ barefoot padding and Karu¡¯s heavy boots fell in behind me. If Saga was afraid, she could stay out of the fight. We ran a dozen aisles and turned, spotting Dragon and the crate he was unpacking at the end of the row.


    My ears rang as Karu fired a single round, the crack of the shot echoing a thousandfold off the bare metal walls. Dragon barely glanced up as the bullet disappeared into him with the orange flare of a personal barrier. The barrier flashed several more times as Karu unloaded a few more shots, and then, as though she was irritated at being ignored, she launched into the air with a burst that rippled my clothes and shoved me half a step sideways.


    ¡°I¡¯m going too,¡± AEGIS said, and she roared to life, the lines on her joints flashing and glowing, the circles on her hips visible even through her cream-colored light dress. She ran alongside me for just a couple steps like that before kicking off, engines flaring and the concrete under her cracking as she launched forward like a bullet.


    Meanwhile I just ran like a normal dude. Kinda hard to feel super badass when those two could just break the sonic barrier whenever they wanted.


    But my relatively slower approach did give me time to watch the three of them clash. No longer could Dragon ignore them as the two descended on him with instant violence. He bobbed and weaved, dodging each of AEGIS¡¯ precision strikes by what seemed no distance at all from here, while Karu unloaded into his barrier, which was now emitting the white flashes of pre-burnout.


    He struck back at AEGIS, knives flashing silver under the glaring warehouse lights. I remembered the last time these two fought, and how AEGIS had just tanked shots and stabs all to the face while bearing down on him with inhuman strength and speed to compensate the difference in skill.


    She wasn¡¯t doing that this time. She was sticking close to him and trying to find angles where even if he moved faster than she could react, he¡¯d be in poor position to actually harm her. She seemed almost preternaturally attached to the outsides of his elbows, constantly circling him, staying as close to him as possible, both of them spinning and reversing direction constantly as though in a dance.


    It reminded me for a moment that this AEGIS was, technically, much older now, and she wasn¡¯t just more skilled but also more experienced. This is the AEGIS who had fought beside us all in Canada and Eryendria. The previous one had pretty much just¡­woken up, tried to kill me with DOGs, and then hyper-fixated on giving me diabetes. Her fight with Dragon might have been her first serious fight ever. Seeing her twisting around him and only being grazed here and there made my heart leap.


    Not that I was happy she had died or anything. But the current version was much, much more competent. I was allowed to celebrate that much, wasn¡¯t I?


    With a white flash and a small explosion that made my hair whip, Dragon¡¯s shield burnt out as Karu unloaded yet more munitions into the spinning pair. I wasn¡¯t sure how she was hitting the right target every time at the rate they were moving, I felt like if I was shooting, it¡¯d be pure luck which one I¡¯d hit. But Karu was doing it, so apparently there was no luck involved. Without threat of imminent attack, she was hovering stationary further up the aisle, the red of her visor glinting off the metal ceiling a few feet from her head, carefully aiming down her straightened arm at the pair.


    And then it was my turn to join. Knowing that AEGIS was shockproof by design, I just whipped out as many blades as I could as I sprinted the last few steps and swung them horizontally right through the pair. AEGIS winced as I slashed through her, but Dragon was forced to jump up and backwards, knees tucked to his chest as the blade swept under his feet.


    Without ground to push off of, he was a sitting duck for AEGIS, who spun and kicked him straight on, her foot slamming into his legs and sending him crashing into the shelves with an echoing metal ping. She grunted and kneeled for a second, and I saw that in the exchange, he¡¯d put two daggers into her calf.


    So fast. I didn¡¯t even see his arms move. And for him to react like that while still in midair.


    He pushed off the shelf seemingly unhurt, and an instant later a bangsplattered expanding white foam where he¡¯d just been. He cartwheeled, and a shock net slid across the ground under him. I took the moment to stomp the ground, my mind reaching out for the turbulence my action stirred up and making it real. Making it lightning.


    In a moment a dozen faint orbs of energy drifted away from me, and a dozen more after that, as I focused the churning of the air into trapped, semi-stable balls of current. They drifted down the aisle like ghosts. If I could keep him off the ground, Karu and AEGIS would have a much easier target.


    And just for an instant, I saw Dragon stare at them, and then at me. And then I realized¡­Jesus Christ, was I super duper racist?


    It wasn¡¯t even the same fucking guy. His nose was different. Similar skin tone, similar hair¡­maybe the fact he had two arms should have tipped me off. But this guy had a much bigger nose, and it took me that of all fucking things to realize I wasn¡¯t even fighting Dragon here.


    ¡°Wait, who the fuck are you?¡± I shouted, even as he jumped and kicked off a shelf to bounce over my ball lightning and tag AEGIS in the side of the head with another blade, sending her stumbling a step while she lashed out blind.


    He didn¡¯t reply of course. Unless you counted having a thrown knife explode on my shield as a reply. He moved like Dragon. He was here where Dragon was supposed to turn up. He was definitely a fuckin¡¯ Sino assassin. He just wasn¡¯t the same guy.


    ¡°Fuck,¡± AEGIS said. Which seemed fitting for having a blade punched through her cheek. But apparently that wasn¡¯t it because she continued after pulling it out. ¡°Athan we need to wrap this up, XPCA is inbound.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a good thing,¡± I grunted, as I cut through the air over him this time. ¡°We¡¯ve got him trapped.¡±


    ¡°No¡­I didn¡¯t call them. None of us called them. But they¡¯re responding to a first-priority alert.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps the destruction of the front door was excessive,¡± Karu said. I glanced at her, and my heart fluttered painfully for a second to see her looking down the arm of her gun at me. But her shot barely missed me and forced Dragon to bounce another step away. I could only imagine how AEGIS must have felt with Karu¡¯s weaponry whizzing all around her.


    ¡°No, the door wouldn¡¯t do that,¡± AEGIS fretted. ¡°Athan I think we¡¯re in trouble. I think this is a setup.¡±


    ¡°A setup?¡± I panted. ¡°It is, we¡¯re catching Dragon!¡±


    He did a spinning flip and landed a few paces from us, twirling again once to sidestep a shot of scattergun fire from Karu, which bounced off the ground in glowing streaks.


    He said nothing still. But his face told me they were right. His cocky, confident little grin. This wasn¡¯t a man being ambushed, it wasn¡¯t even a man who felt remotely threatened. If anything, I could say he was having fun evading our attacks like they were nothing.


    I stood still too long and he dashed in on me. Reflexively, my hands went up and my head went down to protect my chin. I barely saw the strike coming, barely started moving, way too slow, before a knife embedded itself in my forearm. I grunted my anger at him, slashing three times with the blades I had closest.


    I didn¡¯t see if they hit him, he was already dancing away, unloading a hail of gunfire into my shield to blind me as he went. It was like he knew if I could see him there, I could cut him. Like he knew everything about all three of us already.


    [I¡¯m here,] Saga said, panting. I could only afford a half-glance to see her a few rows down from us, before she swallowed hard, and then continued walking. [I¡­still can¡¯t see him that well. But we¡¯re gonna fuck him up.]


    He eyed Saga with suspicion, even breaking a few feet from the fray to study her more closely. She had clearly not been in his plans, and the look of ease on his face had vanished into one of concentration. His eyebrows narrowed, same as Saga¡¯s as she held out her hands and I felt psychic energy pouring past me.


    Somehow it didn¡¯t even make him falter. But he did abandon his duel with AEGIS and seemed to readily accept another kick to the arm in order to close the distance on her.


    I stopped him with a facefull of lightning, but again, he just took it and continued on, his body burned and clothes smoking. She had a moment of hesitation and then blasted him twice as hard with the same lack of effect.


    [It¡¯s¡­not working!] she screamed in my mind.


    ¡°Just get out of here!¡± I yelled at her, throwing more blades in his way, which he twisted through, snakelike. His arms reached out for her, only inches from her now, as her eyes went as wide as I¡¯d ever seen.


    [(He¡¯s gonna get me!)] she yelped, only now considering turning and dodging.


    But I was ready. I discharged an electromagnetic burst that sent everything flying. Saga and I, non-magnetic in any capacity, stayed rooted to where we stood. But we were the only ones, the eyes of the storm which erupted in an instant around us.


    Dragon went slamming into the ceiling with a crack. Karu and AEGIS were similarly blown away, and I winced as they crashed and hoped they could forgive me later.


    And more, every single shelf, huge and sturdy though they were, slid and careened, hanging upright on edge like a breaking wave. And then the first one crashed, echoing, deafening, and the others tripped over it and joined it, the whole place falling down away from us at once. Thousands and thousands of tons of crates and boxes and gear smashing into the concrete, blown around and away like a goddamn meteor crater.


    I ran to Saga and grabbed her, and she yelped as her small weight took its place in my arms.


    ¡°They¡¯re here!¡± AEGIS warned, peeling herself off the concrete where I¡¯d put her and helping Karu to her feet. ¡°The XPCA!¡±


    Like he was waiting for the news, Dragon bounded for the entrance. Did he already have what he was looking for? Was he just rifling through that crate to waste time until we arrived? My stomach dropped at the thought, even as I focused another magnetic surge to grab him.


    But as I pulled at him, tearing AEGIS and Karu from their feet and making the mountains of debris jump, he just peeled his arms from his sleeves, and continued running with his kit and coat left behind. I swore as he reached the bottom of the steps, the three of us in pursuit, Karu staggering some, AEGIS blazing ahead.


    He was running towards the black, zig-zagging staircase, and as my eyes followed him, they were drawn to a spot of blackness at the top of it. Weapons drawn and ready, black metal gleamed, and the white symbol of the XPCA, the sword laid across the shield shone from the shoulder of every exosuit arrayed. Dozens of them, arrayed and facing us.


    Dragon jumped straight vertical, kicking off a few of the railings on his way up, and completely bypassed both the steps and Karu¡¯s mine. He landed with grace directly in front of the soldiers in the door.


    ¡°No!¡± AEGIS screamed at them. ¡°Come fucking on!¡±


    I didn¡¯t know, didn¡¯t see, until I looked back up and saw them parting, the suits stepping to either side with a crisp salute as Dragon walked right between them and out the door.


    I felt like I couldn¡¯t comprehend what I was seeing. I didn¡¯t¡­couldn¡¯t¡­what?


    ¡°Oh my God!¡± I yelled, finally, once my mouth re-engaged. ¡°For fuck¡¯s sake, stop him!¡±


    ¡°Silence!¡± boomed the synthesized voice of the leading soldier. ¡°Exhuman Athan Ashton, you are hereby under arrest for murder of an XPCA agent, destruction of property, unauthorized entry into a secure facility, criminal damages, and the crime of Exhumanity. You will refrain from using your powers and surrender immediately.¡±


    I just stood there in shock as the dozen weapons pointed at me while the last glimpse of Dragon¡¯s greasy black hair slipped away between the rows of exosuits. AEGIS and Karu rejoined my sides, while Saga was still frozen in my arms, her eyes as wide as when Dragon had borne down on her. She wasn¡¯t blinking, and I snapped my fingers in front of her face with very little reaction but to make her eyelids flutter.


    ¡°She¡¯s in shock,¡± AEGIS muttered. ¡°She saw too much of New Eden happening again.¡±


    ¡°Well if she doesn¡¯t snap out of it, the whole part where we had to kill a bunch of XPCA is about to repeat itself at least,¡± I said. ¡°C¡¯mon Saga. C¡¯mon.¡±


    ¡°I do not think we will have much of a choice,¡± Karu said from the corner of her mouth, her lips barely moving. ¡°They approach.¡±


    Soldiers were pouring down the stairway now, metal clanking on metal as they advanced carefully with their guns still trained on us. To replace them, dozens more were appearing in the front door; over fifty now, and I had to wonder, was this considered an event? Was that how the XPCA saw me right now?


    ¡°Be ready to fight,¡± Karu muttered, and I realized what she meant. The very foremost soldier was almost at the bottom of the steps. Almost in Karu¡¯s trip mine.


    ¡°Wait!¡± I shouted at them. ¡°Don¡¯t ¡ª there¡¯s a mine!¡±


    But XPCA were trained specifically to disregard the words of an Exhuman. We were, after all, less than human to them. Just a dangerous mark to be dehumanized. Repressed, or ignored, until we could be put down.


    The blast sent exosuits flying, and the stairway collapsed, as the sound of it echoed through the debris-choked warehouse.


    AEGIS and Karu pressed in against me as hundreds of rounds made my shield burn pure white, the crackle of lightning and the roar of gunfire deafening in the underground vault.


    Not a vault, I thought, looking at the dozen bodies already strewn by the blast. A tomb.


    ¡°We can still catch him if we exit now,¡± AEGIS shouted, barely audible even right by my ear.


    ¡°We will have to blast our way out, as it were,¡± Karu shouted back, her arms snapping forward. Guns hummed and primed as she brought them to bear.


    I grabbed her wrist. We couldn¡¯t just kill all these soldiers. They were just men and women doing their jobs. They had homes and families, I might have worked alongside them. Beneath those faceplates, it could be anyone.


    But then I thought of Dragon¡¯s eyes. His dispassionate, bored glances at a world he cared nothing about. How he could kill without hesitation. How Alyssa had choked out her last words at me, left to die as he turned his back.


    My knuckles were white as my grip on her hardened, and then I let her go and gave her a solemn nod.

 318. 2252, Present Day. XPCA boneyard, Utah. Athan.

    Karu unleashed hell into the XPCA ranks. There was nothing else they could compare it to, I imagined.


    Three or four blasts of crackling, air-rending energy went off first, and with them, I felt the hairs on my arms and neck standing straight, tingles of the EMP blasts sparking off of me. At this range, Karu¡¯s visor flickered, but the Exosuits just stumbled into each other, several falling off the broken stairs to crash motionless on the ground in a heap.


    The gunfire stopped for the most part, not that it was a threat to the four of us hunkered down. More threatening were the dozen or so bursts of launched grenades which had fried on my shield. Even detonated, there were flecks of napalm and ice and foam which had flecked through it and clung to me painfully, AEGIS fretting and putting them out with her hands as I sheltered Saga as best I could.


    Which seemed stupid, I realized after doing it. She was a lot more indestructible than I was. But I doubted anyone carrying someone so light in their arms wouldn¡¯t try to protect them by reflex.


    Karu¡¯s second volley was hellfire, and the men cooked alive in their suits as it spread. I was glad their comms stifled their voices, because their actions were loud enough to horrify me.


    Those who could move, did, shoving past each other in desperation to get back outdoors. Many pulled and threw other exosuits in their way, disabled obstacles being thrown down the burning stairway to their deaths as panic set in.


    Others just¡­bolted. Off the ledge, if they had to. Panic like only fire could cause. Manic flailing as the conflagration which could not be put out spread across them, rocking and writhing, slamming into others and spreading the flame. I watched in horrified fascination as she fired a second round into another cluster and they immediately erupted into flames as well, the only sounds, the gnashing of metal and the roaring of fire.


    ¡°Karu¡­let¡¯s get out of here,¡± AEGIS pleaded. ¡°He shouldn¡¯t see this.¡±


    ¡°And how do you propose we escape with the whole of them relatively intact?¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what relatively intact entailed, but it sure as shit wasn¡¯t how I would describe the XPCA forces. AEGIS and Karu were talking but I lost the thread of their words as I watched one particular soldier patting and flailing as his suit¡¯s paint blistered off in the superheated chemical fire, his actions becoming more and more lethargic as he succumbed, until he was nothing more than a charred metal log, burning away on the ground, never to stir again.


    Something wrapped around me and I looked down to see AEGIS¡¯ arms. She shuddered as my shield went off at her embrace catching me off-guard, but she gave me a pained smile through it. There was a blast of air that she braced me against, and I heard Karu flying away, her blue trails twisting to the ceiling, working on it in some way. Twice she had to stop what she was doing to shoot another XPCA down who was apparently not burning sufficiently to let her work.


    And then she jetted back to us, and taking a deep breath, a chunk of the ceiling exploded into a hail of metal and concrete. Gravel and shrapnel rained down on us through my shield, and the girls huddled close to my arms as bowling-ball sized chunks smashed the ground outside my little bubble.


    The dust hadn¡¯t even cleared when I found myself suddenly jerked up, AEGIS¡¯ arms yanking me painfully skyward. Blue streaks of plasma followed us, and I could only cough and blink as I found myself on the roof of the facility. In pain, but intact, somehow.


    Auto-cannons pivoted to face us, but Karu just turned and blasted each with a micro-missile, reducing them to smoking scrap in an instant.


    I was blinded by the sun and the dust of the explosion and the smoke, disoriented by the sudden launch, but even so, I blinked hard, forcing my eyes to spot Dragon. He was still here somewhere. He had to be. It¡¯d only been minutes since his escape.


    ¡°My drones are on him,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°He¡¯s over there,¡± she pointed at the thick of the boneyard, the general vicinity of a thousand sun-baked fighter jets, halfway between us and the nearest civilization.


    ¡°I will slow him down,¡± Karu said. ¡°Please join me when you are able. I will need to remain distant to evade his attacks and thus my pressure will not be overly effective.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll catch up,¡± AEGIS nodded. And with a roar and a flash of blue, Karu streaked into the distance. ¡°I can carry both of you,¡± she said turning to me. ¡°Or it might be better to leave Saga here. She can join the fight when she¡¯s¡­capable again.¡±


    I shook my head. I could let Karu kill a pile of people right in front of me, but I wasn¡¯t going to start abandoning my friends. AEGIS nodded like she understood, and gripped me tighter.


    ¡°Sorry. Gonna leave some bruises but I don¡¯t think I can carry you any better way while you¡¯re holding someone else. Sort of an Athan sandwich,¡± she said with a reassuring smile.


    ¡°Bruises are nothing. Get us after him.¡±


    ¡°Okay, hold on tight. I can¡¯t go too fast without burning you either, but we¡¯ll catch up still if Karu is doing her bit.¡±


    My stomach lurched uncomfortably as we flew off the roof. It flopped even more uncomfortably as we touched down right in the midst of a hundred XPCA, uniformed officers running here and there amidst a convoy of armored vans which hadn¡¯t been there just minutes ago. And there were exosuits everywhere out here¡­the dozens beneath the surface were just the¡­tip of the upside-down iceberg. Or something.


    There were a fuckton of them, was the point. And even though we only touched down in their midst for a second before AEGIS kicked us off again, we¡¯d definitely been spotted. Kind of hard not to see a rocket-powered girl carrying a guy carrying another, smaller girl.


    As for how I knew they spotted us; after a beat, they began shooting. A lot. Saga of all people cringed in my arms at the sound, and I could feel hot grit bouncing off my legs where it punched through my shield. It was probably like sandpaper on AEGIS¡¯ back, but only for a second before we were out of there and in between the rows of planes, her long strides carrying us away.


    ¡°Still all good?¡± she asked, gasping for breath.


    ¡°Yeah. Don¡¯t worry about us.¡±


    In the distance, like a guiding star, Karu was hovering in the air, tracer rounds and rocket trails streaking down towards the earth. AEGIS bounded three more times in that direction, each step ¡ª if you could call it that ¡ª taking us half a block at a time.


    ¡°I need¡­need to stop¡­¡± she panted, stumbling at the third landing. I landed on my feet and she tumbled forward onto her hands and knees, gulping down air. Her eyes shut, and when they did, her engines blazed to full glory, ports opening on her shoulders and legs, superheated air blasting out of her like the turbines of the jets surrounding us. ¡°I¡¯ll¡­I¡¯ll catch up,¡± she wheezed.


    We were already off. Saga cradled in my arms like a child, I ran for all I was worth towards Karu and Dragon. The jostling seemed to bring her to her senses. Or maybe it was just the lack of gunfire and XPCA.


    [Sorry,] her voice seemed to mumble, even inside my head.


    ¡°Sorry nothing.¡±


    [No really. I froze up in there. That was stupid.]


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna¡­save my breath¡­for running,¡± I panted at her. ¡°But don¡¯t apologize.¡±


    [I¡¯ll apologize if I want to, dummy. I¡¯m supposed to be better than this.] She waited for me to respond, but I was serious when I said I was saving my breath. She was light, but she wasn¡¯t weightless, and I was pushing myself as hard as I could to get to Dragon. [Athan, I seriously think we should stop and let him get away. We already stepped into a trap, you¡¯ve already had to throw down and kill when you didn¡¯t want to¡­I don¡¯t see it getting better from here.]


    I thought my response back to her in an incoherent jumble of emotions. But that¡¯s just kinda how emotions were sometimes, and she got it nonetheless.


    [I know you want to stop him, more than anything. But is there anything that¡¯d give you pause here? You already let Karu kill when you could have stopped her. What else are you going to throw away that you might regret?]


    I shook my head and kept my feet pounding. I could feel my sweat dripping onto her but both of us were too fixated on bigger things to care. It was so hot, but my skin seemed to burn from inside as my muscles worked as hard as I could push them.


    [Just¡­remember Karu, okay? Don¡¯t get so hung up on one important thing that you lose sight of everything else. Something about eggs and baskets.]


    In response I gave her a hug as best I could convey. She understood. I wasn¡¯t doing this  out of anger or vengeance or anything like that. Not just that, anyway. There were people like her, like AEGIS and Lia and Karu and Alyssa, people I loved who shouldn¡¯t have to endure a world where fuckers like Dragon could just run amok. Yes, I wanted to stop him and smash his stupid fucking Sino face into the red American dirt until he¡¯d suffered and died as many times as his victims had, as the Defiant and Alyssa had. But I also wanted to protect those he hadn¡¯t killed yet. We¡¯d clashed too many times, our lives had grown too intertwined. He was too big a threat.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    To say nothing of how he just waltzed through the XPCA. That was potentially most disturbing of all.


    I ran past one more plane and saw an explosion in front of me that sent a cloud of grit blowing past. Dragon was just a black silhouette against it, his direct path out choked with mines and patches of goo and gas and ice, and judging by how many of them were behind him, he¡¯d been evading them for some time now.


    I leaned my shoulder against a fuselage lowered Saga to her feet. ¡°Stay in range, stay safe,¡± I panted out at her. ¡°Shout if you need help.¡±


    [I¡¯ll be fine. I¡¯m sorry.]


    ¡°Don¡¯t be sorry,¡± I said.


    She gave me a smirk. [¡®Don¡¯t be sorry, be better¡®, Karu just thought at me. I will be better. I won¡¯t freeze up again. I might not be able to touch him, but if the XPCA close in on us, I¡¯ll keep them back.]


    I gave her a pat on the head like I did with Lia and she veritably purred in my hands. I had the breath for half a laugh before I was off again, my sore feet and aching legs given no rest at all.


    I welcomed myself to the fight by throwing a handful of bulbs all across Dragon¡¯s path, making him skip backwards as the ground in front of him suddenly erupted with ionizing tendrils.


    ¡°Just who the fuck are you?¡± I shouted at him. ¡°Where¡¯s the other Dragon?¡±


    He flashed me a mouthful of white teeth, and then threw a rock into my shield, vanishing behind the crackling of energy in front of me. I ran forward blind, calling out my blades to circle around me as I went, and remembering to keep several above me to deter his acrobatic bullshit.


    I had a lot more blades at hand ever since the thing with Whitney. I had a lot more everything at hand, it felt like. It was like my whole time being powerless was just to make me feel how lacking I was without them, and now that they were back, they felt more right than ever. More comfortable, more intuitive, faster. Even Dragon couldn¡¯t just slip through them as he once had.


    And he seemed to know it. When I spotted him again, he wasn¡¯t trying to dash in on me, but just to get away. He bounded from the top of one jet to the next, long strides taking him over the majority of the hazards Karu had been flinging across the battlefield.


    But as I¡¯d well learned by now, jumping was one of the worst fucking things you could do in a fight of agility. No ground meant no ability to change direction. Every step he took made him a sitting duck, if only I were close enough.


    So all I had to be was close enough.


    I let the power surge through my body, regulating it, feeling it seethe and crackle through my muscles. It wasn¡¯t much, honestly, milliamps, if that. But it was everywhere in me, it was feeling my own body from within. It was crazy, and stupid, and the worst possible time to experiment with my powers, which also meant it was the only time to really do so.


    Like I¡¯d done stopping that barrier chick, I used my power to force my muscles to move at the speed of thought. I held back¡­a lot¡­a lot more than I had done previously, in an effort to not tear myself apart. And while it certainly hurt like fuck, and it felt like wherever I acted, something was cramping up painfully, I was moving.


    Holy fuck, was I moving.


    This must be how AEGIS feels, I thought, as I kicked off the ground and soared four steps in one bound, before kicking off again. Or maybe, how Dragon felt. I¡¯d seen him, hundreds of times in the holovids, how explosively he could move. This was that movement. This was it, man. I was as fast as motherfucking Dragon was, and all I had to do was electrocute and burn the fuck out of my muscles as I tore them up in a painful, unsustainable way.


    I thought my whole body was smoking and sure felt like it when I skidded to a halt, throwing more blades in Dragon¡¯s stupid, surprised face as he bounded once more.


    If I were just as fast as Dragon, I wouldn¡¯t have caught up, I realized. A grin spread on my face at that sort of pants-shitting realization that I¡¯d outrun him.


    Just before my blades cleaved through him, he twisted and suddenly seemed to be yanked out of the air and backwards. I could hardly see it, but rather heard the sound of a cable frantically reeling and saw a grapple launcher on his wrist. A desperate reversal of momentum which was impossible, but successful. And non-magnetic, apparently, because he had to be fucking prepared for everything.


    Still, he did not have a smooth landing, wind getting knocked out of him as his stomach slammed against the ground in front of me.


    And I was so fucking ready for it. My legs refused to move, but with a jolt, I moved them anyway. I dashed into him, new blades at the ready on my fingertips, slashing at his prone body with all I had left in me.


    He rolled, and rolled again, black scorch lines marking his path where my blades met the ground. His palm struck the earth with a crack, he kicked and twisted and was back on his feet. For an instant I saw him dashing towards me before a handful of thrown dirt lit up my shield and blinded me. I didn¡¯t need to see this time, if he wanted to fight, I¡¯d fight. I ran in and hacked away blindly.


    But he¡¯d slipped away again. He wasn¡¯t trying to engage, it a feint, and he was going perpendicular, speeding between another set of planes away.


    He suddenly stopped, crouched, hands and feet sliding in the dust, and then launched himself sideways under the nearest plane, as blue streaks screamed past overhead and the path in front of him erupted into columns of hellfire. He couldn¡¯t run in the open without Karu pegging him, and he couldn¡¯t move carefully or I¡¯d catch up.


    My heart slammed in my throat. Was this it? Did we fucking have him?


    He came at me in a rush, suddenly seeming a different person. Had he reached the same conclusion? Realized the only way out was to take one of us down?


    I hardly had time to blink, much less think, as he piled into me. His hands moved in a blur, faster than I could see, and my own lashed out more in reflex than any thoughts I could put together. With his coat and guns and knives gone, the blows he snaked past my defenses were just crushing punches, bruising my ribs and legs.


    But most of me was well-guarded. My hands were at my chin, like a boxer. More than once, he snapped a fist towards me, and like him, I barely moved, slipping the punch by fractions of an inch. My breath came in a solid rhythm. My blades swung at him like nasty jabs and hooks, keeping him from pressing me with his superior speed and ability.


    I could see in his eyes, he¡¯d hoped to turn on me and bring me down quickly, and his frustration mounted with every moment I was still on my feet.


    ¡°I had thought your powers gone,¡± he said, my defense apparently finally proving me worthy of a spoken word. ¡°Do not tell me that was a farce?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m telling you¨C¡± I said, cleaving the air next to his ear with a blade ¡°¨Cfucking nothing. You¡¯re gonna die, and that¡¯s all you need to know.¡±


    He gave me a wry smile as he swept his leg into mine, but my stance was solid, I didn¡¯t topple, and he had to skitter away from my counterattack.


    ¡°You were tested,¡± he said. ¡°Your barrier was nonexistent. Yet here it is, clear as day.¡±


    Again, a fistful of sand made my barrier light up, but this time he wasn¡¯t feinting to run away. From behind the screen, he jumped through it, slamming his knuckles into the back of my wrist, a bad block I hardly got up in time. Both of us had blood all up and down our arms, impossible to tell which was whose.


    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s a crazy fucking world out there. Shit happens.¡±


    I managed to have three blades in position at the same time for once and sent all three of them sweeping horizontally, staggered in height and in time. Instead of backing off, he wove under and over the first two, charging directly into me as the third passed over him, using it as a screen to obscure his attack.


    Unlucky for him, the high third blade was never supposed to cut him. My arms snapped wide with a rending gesture, my fingers hooked into the air, opening me wide up for his attack.


    But there wouldn¡¯t be an attack, I knew. Dragon didn¡¯t know who he was dealing with anymore.


    The third blade sheared in the air, the semi-stable current imploding as I drove the contained forces wild. The trapped energies turned from electrical to thermal as I wrung them dry, and in an instant, it exploded in a sunburst, scalding me even at this distance, and putting flashing white lights in my eyes.


    Dragon, almost directly under it, simply howled and dropped, his back charred black in an instant, the whites of his shoulder blades and the ridges of his vertebrae standing out like islands in horrifying contrast. Somehow, though, he was still moving, limping to his feet in a moment and staggering away, his arms mostly useless as his skin melted together.


    ¡°Jesus Christ,¡± I heard AEGIS say, and turned to see her in the corner of my eye, still panting for air as she leaned on the plane behind me. ¡°Holy fuck, Athan.¡±


    Dragon lurched under a wing as the ground around him bounced with peppering gunfire from above, Karu¡¯s engines announcing her somewhere above. On either side of him, a faint pop and a trail of smoke announced the presence of a pair of mines, which sat in the dirt at his feet ominously.


    In an instant, he wound up and kicked one of them at me. In the air, I could see the primer indicator flip from red to green, as the fuse activated.


    ¡°Athan!¡± AEGIS screamed, her engines roaring as she dashed towards me.


    With one hand, I reached back behind her and pulled her away, a pulse of electromagnetism ripping her backwards as fast as she had jumped towards me. The planes behind me rocked sideways, like boats going over a wave. Her ragdolling body cracked against the cockpit of a plane, making me wince.


    But with my other hand, I threw a similar power forward, dragging them in. The grenade seemed snatched out of the air, its momentum instantly reversed like Dragon had done with his grapple and tether, and it whipped right back towards him. The second grenade hopped in the air, enthusiastic to join its mate, and stuck to the center of the burst, right where I¡¯d placed it.


    Right on Dragon¡¯s charred back, jammed right into his burned flesh. His feeble, useless hands groped for the pair of mines stuck to him.


    He turned to bound away, twisting and leaving the mines hanging in the air behind him. If he was fast, he might only be badly maimed. And even wounded as he was, Dragon was still fast.


    I clenched my outstreched hand and the magnetic forces imploded violently, the electromagnet seeming to suck the dust out of the air.


    And the two nearest planes toppled and crashed, crushing Dragon between them like the fucking insect he was.


    A pair of blasts went off, the crashed planes¡¯ wings twirling into the air like a pair of dancing kites. Caught full-faced by the blast, I was knocked down by the shockwave, my ass slamming into the ground, and a wave of debris washing over me and into my shield.


    I laid there for long moments, feeling very numb, and, on the odd interval where my body registered properly, in a lot of pain.


    I wasn¡¯t where I¡¯d been. My mind was working slowly, and I saw the underbelly of a jet fighter as my ears rung. All the thoughts in my head felt like they¡¯d been knocked out of it by the landing. I had this¡­sensation of¡­feeling like I had to do something, quite urgently, but couldn¡¯t remember what it was. I had a fight to win. I had to get up.


    But also, the jet was shading me from the sun, and that was so very pleasant. I just wanted to close my eyes for a minute and bask in the relative cool.


    Lights shone in my eyes and I realized it was just one light, and my brain or eyes were seeing it wrong. Voices came from somewhere muddied.


    ¡°Definitely a concussion,¡± I heard her say. One of the three or four identical girls said, between a dozen spinning pigtails.


    ¡°Is he safe to move?¡± the other, taller girl asked, glancing at me with nervous green eyes.


    ¡°Safe enough. I don¡¯t think we have the luxury to stay.¡±


    ¡°Then do so. I will retrieve the Code-X and we will be away. More XPCA are inbound.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s going to be easy to escape. There¡¯s too many¡­surrounded¡­the hit.¡±


    That was a weird sentence, I thought. Even weirder how she seemed to jump around in the middle of it. And then she reached down to pick me up and I went out completely.

 319. 2252, Present Day. XPCA boneyard, Utah. Saga.

    Well Athan was in shit condition, but I guess that was the natural outcome from dueling a professional assassin, pushing yourself past your limits, and then taking a pair of explosions in the face. He was fading in and out so hard that I put him under, just as a mercy to his tortured consciousness.


    He wanted nothing more than to know what happened to Dragon, and while I¡¯d have loved to indulge him, the simple fact was, I wanted out of here. Things had turned too spooky for me once I met yet another person I couldn¡¯t seem to touch. I might have been in shock, or being paranoid, or however AEGIS wanted to psychoanalyze me, but the fact was, I¡¯d already almost died once, and that was one more time than I ever thought I¡¯d have to face. I hoped they¡¯d forgive my totally reasonable moment of weakness.


    Hoped Athan did, mostly. The two others could kinda go fuck themselves if they had an issue with it. Not like either of them were exactly scott-free when it came to having mental hang-ups.


    Speaking of whom, they descended on me at that moment, Athan sideways in AEGIS¡¯ arms and Karu flitting in the air like a moth.


    ¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± the bevisored one spoke.


    ¡°He wants to know if Dragon¡¯s dead¡±, I thought at her.


    ¡°Nothing could have survived that blast,¡± she said with confidence.


    I shook my head. ¡°Aren¡¯t you a professional? Isn¡¯t she a huge weeb?¡±


    ¡°Weeb?¡± Karu echoed. ¡°AEGIS are you a ¡®huge weeb¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Um. I guess you could say that. Not huge but¡­¡±


    ¡°And is this relevant to our current critical situation, or is Saga merely wasting my time with her errant thoughts?¡±


    AEGIS blinked at me. ¡°Uh, I can¡¯t imagine how that¡¯s relevant right now.¡±


    ¡°Seriously?¡± I said, feeling the dust in the air choking my throat. ¡°Nothing could have survived that, she just said. Have you guys never seen a single holovid?¡± I turned to AEGIS and glowered at her. ¡°Or like, four hundred different anime shows where that shit happens all the time?¡±


    ¡°I suddenly understand the relevance,¡± AEGIS confessed. ¡°And no. He¡¯s dead as hell. There¡¯s pieces of him all over, if that makes you feel any better. Come on, the XPCA is coming.¡±


    ¡°The XPCA is nothing,¡± I told them, with more bravado than I felt. ¡°I can keep them away from us forever if I have to. But if he wakes up and Dragon isn¡¯t a smear on the desert, I will never stop living it down. In his head.¡±


    ¡°He is dead. AEGIS and I both confirmed,¡± Karu said. ¡°Now let us go. I do not fear the XPCA¡¯s weaponry so much as their knowledge. We have breached their perimeter; if we flee now, it is likely they will lose us yet. But every moment spent in pointless reflection puts us at further risk.¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°Sure, whatever. If you¡¯re sure he¡¯s dead, no need to linger. Get us out then. Waiting on you now.¡± She gave me a toxic glare. I snapped my fingers obnoxiously. ¡°Come on, move your fatty cans.¡±


    I probably deserved getting shot in the face. When I came to, we were far in the air, the ground whipping past as plasma-emitting arms snaked and twisted and angled right in front of my face.


    ¡°Anyone ever tell you that you need to lighten up?¡± I thought at her.


    ¡°I did lighten up. I unloaded some excess munitions into a garbage receptacle before taking off.¡±


    If I wasn¡¯t part-way in her head, I wouldn¡¯t have at all picked up on the fact that she was talking about shooting me. Karu made a joke! I was so proud. Almost.


    ¡°You need to work on your sense of humor. You know that nobody¡¯s ever going to go for the stuck-up bitch thing if you don¡¯t have a hint of personality behind it?¡±


    ¡°It would be very easy to drop you right now,¡± she said flatly. I looked down again, at the endless desert we were whipping past, featureless except for the typical desert garbage, and AEGIS sprinting along under us, Athan in her arms, bundled in something.


    ¡°What¡¯s up with the burial shroud for our boy?¡± I asked. ¡°Oh, I see, it¡¯s to keep him from getting burned as she runs. Why didn¡¯t you trade who you¡¯re carrying? She can¡¯t burn me. Oh, you can¡¯t put that much extra weight on your jetpack. Well it¡¯s a good thing you got it all sorted out without my help,¡± I said, stretching out over her shoulder armor as comfortably as I could.


    ¡°When you ask a question, do you ever wait for an answer? Or is this brand of irritation something you reserve exclusively for me?¡±


    ¡°I kinda feel obligated to annoy you,¡± I thought back. ¡°After all, you make it a point to sing that stupid song at me constantly, and I like to make a point of how much it does nothing.¡±


    ¡°It irritates you, does it not?¡±


    ¡°It sure as shit does that.¡±


    ¡°Then it achieves its intended aim.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a lovely girl. Y¡¯know, if you weren¡¯t so porky, you probably could carry Athan and all your gear?¡±


    I clung to the arms of her jetpack as she shrugged me out of her grip, but apparently she didn¡¯t enjoy the death spiral that sent us into because she gave up almost immediately.


    ¡°What the hell are you two doing up there?¡± AEGIS yelled at us.


    I opened my mouth to yell back, but the air whipping past just seemed to blow into my lungs in a very uncomfortable manner. Which was a shame because I had a great line of BS all ready to spout off.


    ¡°I am considering a detour to a volcano,¡± Karu answered. ¡°To drop off a load of garbage.¡±


    ¡°You already used that line,¡± I informed her.


    ¡°I did not use it on AEGIS already.¡±


    ¡°Pfft, repeating your jokes is low-class.¡±


    ¡°I do not understand how you have not already been sufficiently killed to still your tongue,¡± she sniped. ¡°Surely somebody must have tried by now, and I cannot see how they could want for motivation to persist.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m adorable. Spend a hundred years with me and you¡¯ll see. I grow on you.¡±


    ¡°Yes. Like a rash, I imagine.¡±


    ¡°Maybe one of those fun, incurable, STI ones. I could be the bumpies on your fun spot.¡±


    ¡°I will murder you.¡±


    ¡°Girls aren¡¯t usually my thing, but I¡¯m really not sure if you count.¡±


    ¡°I will murder you.¡±


    ¡°Afraid of what I might awaken? That¡¯s understandable. Sometimes I even frighten myself. This one time¨C¡°


    She tilted again and tried to throw me off, but I just giggled as I threaded my fingers through the arms of the jetpack, sending us veering wildly sideways towards a hilltop.


    ¡°Unhand¡­my¡­¡± she growled, which was impressive given the G¡¯s we were being pushed through.


    ¡°Guys, what the fuck,¡± AEGIS shouted at us over the wind whipping past.


    Karu levelled us out and stopped us midair, levelling a gun at the side of my head.


    ¡°You may cease your chatter, or you may be shot and disposed of in the desert. I am well willing to suffer Ashton¡¯s wrath if it means being rid of you.¡±


    ¡°Aw. I thought we had a thing between us. Some kind of STI.¡±


    ¡°Are you quite done?¡±


    ¡°Last one I promise.¡± She sighed enormously at me, her head rocking backwards like I was breaking her neck with my words. ¡°Ahem. I wouldn¡¯t want you to do something rash.¡±


    ¡°Are you satisfied?¡± she growled.


    ¡°I mean, I could go another two or three rounds, but if you¡¯re spent, I guess we¡¯re donesies. You wouldn¡¯t happen to have a smoke, would you?¡±


    We flew off again, and as much as I liked tormenting her, I also knew she was completely serious about dumping me off somewhere for the XPCA to find. If nothing else, walking out of this big bowl of sand didn¡¯t seem like a fun time, and I wasn¡¯t quite so immature that I couldn¡¯t put off a little fun now to avoid a lot of suck later.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Besides. Athan being down there, head cradled in AEGIS¡¯ arms, all full of confused and pained thoughts was kind of putting a harsh on my buzz up here.


    ¡°He¡¯ll be happy we got Dragon,¡± I thought at Karu, aiming at a more reasonable conversation. To distract myself from Athan¡¯s thoughts, if nothing else.


    ¡°He may be,¡± she said, with some reservation. ¡°Yet I sincerely doubt it.¡±


    ¡°Why not? He¡¯s been all after that guy for¡­months now. I thought he¡¯d be buying a new pair of dancing shoes for all the celebration he¡¯s gonna be doing.¡±


    ¡°How is it possible for you to allegedly know everything, and yet to be so ignorant?¡±


    ¡°Sometimes, I try to block out facts so I can see the world from another point of view. Like yours. Keeps me young.¡±


    ¡°I assumed it was your powers which provided that perk?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, but even so, a girl¡¯s gotta have a regimen, you know?¡± I ran my fingers through her short mane of hair. ¡°Of course you do. How do you get this so soft? My hair just sits there like a beaten dog.¡±


    ¡°Kindly refrain from touching me or commenting on my person ever again.¡± I considered going back to arguing with her¡­which seemed inevitable, given how long it¡¯d taken us to wind up doing it again, but instead decided to try out one of the tricks I¡¯d picked up lately.


    I focused back on the topic of Athan and Dragon and subtly let the barrier between our minds slip open for a moment. Earlier she¡¯d asked why I asked questions if I was just going to mind-read the answer. The fact was, unless I wanted to go digging ¡ª which was, ick, effort ¡ª it was usually easier just to prompt them to think of the answer and then skim it off their surface thoughts.


    This trick did the same kind of thing without them noticing anything more than a random change of thought. As the topic resurfaced in her mind, she began speaking even as I could peek at her opinions on it.


    ¡°While it may not be as apparent to one as insularly and self-focused as yourself, today¡¯s excursion was very much a disaster. While it is true that we killed a man who was apparently Dragon, that was not the same man who had clashed with Ashton in the past. I expect he will similarly see them as two threats only half addressed.¡±


    ¡°Hmm,¡± I mused. Honestly, I didn¡¯t go by faces or bodies or anything that much. People were minds to me, and having never met the apparently real Dragon, I could only judge by his crazy competency and the fact he was a Sino assassin who was here when Dragon was supposed to be. Like, how many of those could there be?


    ¡°But what is potentially worse is how the XPCA regarded him,¡± Karu continued. ¡°They saw and acknowledged him, and then permitted him leave without question. For him to have such a level of influence, and for us to be wholly ignorant of it until now, it speaks of a power far greater than we had thought.¡±


    ¡°Greater than a globe-trotting unstoppable killer with basically unlimited resources?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Unfortunately.¡±


    ¡°Neat,¡± I said, feeling my thoughts beginning to turn towards the muddled mess which were Athan¡¯s.


    ¡°And what of you?¡± she asked. I wasn¡¯t deluded enough to think she was asking about my well-being, which was good because she continued right on. ¡°Why were you unable to affect him as we had planned? Had I known that you would have been useless in this encounter, I would have opted to leave you behind.¡±


    ¡°You already opted to leave me behind. AEGIS thought I might come in handy, and Athan agreed.¡±


    She just smirked at me, so I felt her silky-smooth hair again.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°I could feel him, it wasn¡¯t like he wasn¡¯t there. But it also wasn¡¯t like¡­a mind as I¡¯ve always experienced. It was¡­animal, almost. Like, not even mammals and birds and shit that I can do things with, but small dumb animals, with brains so stupid I can¡¯t even touch them.¡±


    ¡°Such as¡­goldfish?¡±


    ¡°Oddly specific guess, but no. More like insects. Ants. But at the same time, nothing like that. There were thoughts, lots of thoughts, just¡­¡±


    I thought about it for a minute. It was kind of like trying to describe blue to a blind person. The shape and feel of a brain and the thoughts in it weren¡¯t exactly something I¡¯d spent a lot of time trying to explain to others. Karu seemed content to think and wait in silence as well, and I thought for a moment she was just enjoying my shutting up before I realized my thoughts were leaking out and we were still having kind of a one-sided conversation.


    ¡°So, ants,¡± I told her, forcing my thoughts into one direction. ¡°They¡¯re really stupid. They don¡¯t really think or make decisions, they¡¯re just kind of¡­input-based reactions. You take any given ant with a similar disposition at the moment and put them in the same situation, they¡¯ll always react the same. Pick up this chemical trail, do this thing. It¡¯s why a lot of them die fruitlessly doing nothing.¡±


    ¡°They pursue a trail without consideration for self-preservation?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much. Doesn¡¯t matter if they¡¯re walking in circles for hours until they keel over dead, their inputs say go that way, so they go that way. It¡¯s not a brain for thinking. And that¡¯s what I felt inside Dragon. No thoughts means I can¡¯t influence them, means I can¡¯t really touch him.¡±


    ¡°What manner of man has no thoughts?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Because, like I said, he¡¯s a lot more complicated than ants. He was on his feet, predicting what we¡¯d do, analyzing the battlefield, keeping tabs on you, Athan and AEGIS all at once and evading and moving and striking as best he could¡­but none of it were like¡­thoughts, if that makes any sense.¡±


    ¡°Instead of an insect, perhaps a computer analogy,¡± Karu mused. ¡°They always do as programmed.¡±


    ¡°Sure, same thing, except I¡¯m more accustomed to wetware,¡± I grinned at her.


    ¡°So you are saying that, for example, he is a program which is specifically capable of high-complexity combat situations with multiple combatants, with varied capabilities, with regard to shifting objectives and probabilities. These factors are fed in by his senses, and his actions are mere output, without a thought given?¡±


    ¡°I¡­guess? But you realize it¡¯s nothing actually like that.¡±


    ¡°Then what is it like?¡±


    I frowned at the back of her head, and then played with it more, because she honestly did just have really nice hair, the bitch. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Stick with your analogy if it works for you. AEGIS is exactly what you described, right? She¡¯s just an AI.¡±


    Karu shook her head, both in disagreement and to untwine my fingers. ¡°She is an AI, true, but she is a simulation of human intelligence. Her thoughts are very much the opposite of what you described, I imagine.¡±


    ¡°I guess,¡± I sighed. It wasn¡¯t exactly comfy up here, and while every few moments of discomfort, I reset and it started fresh, even that sensation was getting tiresome.


    ¡°Oh, silence your complaining. We are very nearly through.¡±


    I craned my neck and saw roads in the distance, and shimmering on the horizon beyond them, the first traces of civilization.


    ¡°You should all sit down, strip down, and eat a nice juicy hamburger to celebrate,¡± I informed her. ¡°You could really go for that right now.¡±


    ¡°Do not project your desires onto me, cretin. I am well aware of my own wishes, and see no need to indulge yours.¡±


    ¡°Sheesh. I¡¯ll just sit in Athan¡¯s head while he eats then. Much comfier in there anyway. Got myself a nice little corner hollowed out where I can curl up with a good read and a cozy fire¨C¡°


    She twisted and I felt myself falling, thrown full-force over her body with merciless seriousness.


    Huh. Didn¡¯t know what I said to set that off, but apparently that was even worse than inviting her to a sexy soiree. Was she just that protective of Athan¡¯s mind that mentioning I was in it warranted summary execution?


    ¡°Oh for fuck¡¯s¨C¡± I heard AEGIS shout before my spine shattered on the ground. A moment later I blinked and looked up at the sun and the AI standing over me.


    ¡°Nice panties,¡± I told her. She frowned as she pushed down her dress while still keeping Athan in her arms.


    ¡°The hell did you say to her?¡± AEGIS asked, glancing over at the blue streak vanishing over the city without us. ¡°And now I have to carry both of you? Come on.¡±


    I thought about it and what Karu¡¯s mind had felt like the moment she¡¯d snapped and thrown me off. It wasn¡¯t anything to do with Athan. Strangely. Just the mention of fire. Karu had some deep-seated issue with the stuff, which was crazy considering the amount of people she¡¯d just baked alive back there.


    Or maybe not crazy. Maybe very much related.


    ¡°Eh, offered to use my long delicate fingers if an enema didn¡¯t help dislodge the stick from her ass,¡± I told AEGIS. ¡°I think throwing me meant yes, but I¡¯m not clear?¡±


    ¡°You are just the worst, you realize,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m glad I don¡¯t have to hear your thoughts sometimes.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, the absolute worst,¡± I smiled back at her. I wasn¡¯t feeling the witty banter right now. Pissing people off was plenty of fun, but not so much when I did it accidentally. Kinda irked me, like this whole trip kinda irked me, and I was willing to sacrifice a few one-liners if it meant getting home sooner.


    ¡°Well¡­¡± she shrugged. ¡°Climb on, I guess. Try not to bleed or melt into my air intakes. It¡¯s gonna hurt a lot.¡±


    That was an understatement, I realized, as my arms and legs immediately felt like they were made of fire the second I touched her. We still had a longass way to go though, and a little pain¡­or a fuckton of it, really¡­wasn¡¯t anything to scare me off. In a way, it was kind of a comfort. Familiar, easy to deal with. Non-threatening. Distracted me from those scary thoughts.


    Choosing my skin blistering off over having to think. Hoo boy was I messed up. Maybe if Athan and I ever settled down, we could get into some heavy S&M. That sounded fun. Or at least, novel.


    ¡°Keep your grip up,¡± AEGIS complained.


    ¡°Sorry. Think I¡¯m passing out and-or dying from heat stroke back here. Did you know you¡¯re kind of a hottie? Or are you just running a fever?¡±


    ¡°I always fever when I run,¡± she grinned at me. ¡°For the Mk.4, I should consider more active cooling options though. But I¡¯m not gonna add giant coolant tanks, so I¡¯m sort of at an impasse on the heat issue.¡±


    ¡°I know where you could add a couple giant tanks,¡± I grinned, grabbing her frontside and making her stumble.


    ¡°If I fall and he gets hurt, I¡¯ll kill you,¡± she groaned.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been hearing that a lot today. Did you guys synch your periods without me?¡±


    I did stop groping her though. No reason to get Athan hurt, after all. Not over a joke. No matter how fun and squishy the joke was.


    Which left me back with hanging on, burning, clinging on as best I could through lethal discomfort, and pain-dulled thoughts. It wasn¡¯t the most pleasant ride of my life, but at least it wasn¡¯t the most boring.


    We quickly found a place to crash¡­very nearly literally, breaking in to a disused but fully-furnished little unit, and the girls split up their separate ways, AEGIS treating Athan and Karu breaking down her whole outfit to clean and calibrate.


    And I did what I did best and laid there on the bare floor, just happy not to be out under that stupid sun or bouncing off anyone¡¯s back or shoulder anymore.


    The hours seemed to crawl by as we just waited. AEGIS sent Karu out for food at some point, and then cooked it and got Athan to eat some with them. Police sirens were going off through the city constantly, and from what I could pick up¡­we were definitely the cause. Every once in a while, some truck or van of XPCA would trundle past, and I¡¯d get a glimpse of a half-dozen exosuited soldiers, still combing for us.


    ¡°I guess we hang tight for now,¡± AEGIS sighed, peeking out the window as yet more lightbars flashed blue and red as they drove past. ¡°Seems we stirred up quite the mess.¡±


    ¡°It could be worse. I could be trapped in here with a deranged psychopath,¡± Karu said, and then eyed me. ¡°Oh, wait.¡±


    ¡°Hey, Athan¡¯s hurt, and he¡¯s not going to be happy if he finds out we spent the whole time fighting,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°Let¡¯s all just play nice for a while until we can get out of here, okay?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m game,¡± I said. ¡°Plenty of other people around for me to mess with anyway. And I think our neighbor has like, fifty cats.¡±


    Karu rose and glared at me, her green eyes smoldering. ¡°Stay. Out. Of. My. Head,¡± she growled.


    ¡°Sure thing, princess.¡± I waved dismissively at her. ¡°Nothing up there anyway.¡±


    The contrary part of me wanted to deep dive right that moment and figure out what exactly had happened in Karu¡¯s life to trigger her so hard, but I had meant what I said.


    Cuz like, fifty goddamn cats. That was a fuckton of fluffy goodness to play with. I could deal with just that. For now.

 320. 2252, Present Day. Empty apartment, Utah. Athan.

    It was sort of annoying how understanding and yet how completely notunderstanding Saga could be all at once. I¡¯d barely been drifting through a very pained version of consciousness, my mind ten types of addled and fuzzy, and Saga was there doing what she could to ease my mental discomfort.


    Which was funny, because AEGIS was doing what she could for my body. If things weren¡¯t so shit, I might feel spoiled.


    But Saga anticipated what I needed most, and that was information. Before I could even ask it of her, she was whispering to me, or just dropping memories straight in my head, making clear what our position was, and more importantly, what positions Dragon wasn¡¯t.


    She seemed optimistic, but the second I started having doubts about there being multiple of Dragon, or our current situation with the XPCA driving the streets looking for us, or the whole fucking thing where a battalion of soldiers parted way for him, I felt her frustration seethe, and through that flare-up, gleaned that AEGIS and Karu had both already told-her-so that I wouldn¡¯t be as bubbly about the situation as she.


    ¡°You killed him,¡± Saga hissed at me, even as she stroked my hair, AEGIS binding my broken fingers where I¡¯d caught a knife in the palm of my hand. ¡°In my experience, killing people is pretty much the best solution to any problem.¡±


    AEGIS glared at her. ¡°If it¡¯s a problem of politics, often killing people just makes things worse. And as you can see, somehow Dragon was in the good graces of the XPCA, and we¡¯re not. Killing is the opposite of a solution right now.¡±


    ¡°Or the problem is that there¡¯s the original dude running around out there still one-armed,¡± Saga shrugged. ¡°And he needs a killin¡¯ too.¡±


    ¡°How does that fix anything about our current situation?¡± AEGIS glared at her.


    ¡°You¡¯re right. Let¡¯s kill all the guys downstairs too. Let¡¯s make a real party of it!¡±


    ¡°Just hold his head while I get these bones set. This is going to hurt a lot, Athan.¡±


    I shook my head. It might, but I was doped up on stims and painkillers both, a powerful cocktail that made pain actually kind of a fun diversion more than anything. I could see how Karu might get messed up from overusing this stuff.


    Soon enough, I was more mummy than man as AEGIS finished wrapping up the parts of me I¡¯d managed to destroy, and we all settled in to wait without much else of a plan. Fleeing on foot would be impossible for the moment, and we were in some ratty little town in the middle of nowhere, with a population of less than a hundred thousand¡­big enough to have a couple big chain stores, small enough that they could track everyone leaving. Nowhere Rito had ever been, so nowhere we were get out of fast.


    ¡°You know,¡± Saga smiled down at me, at my thoughts. ¡°If you really want to get out of here, I can just have us waltz out between the XPCA without a problem.¡±


    ¡°There will be a problem though,¡± AEGIS frowned at her. ¡°For starters, they certainly know you specifically are here by now. Anti Code-X measures will be in place as best they can manage. Patrols will have drone partners, remotely operated, and soldiers would be rotated constantly and checked for psychological disparities. Assuming the protocols from a hundred years ago are still accurate.¡±


    ¡°Oh. I didn¡¯t mean to imply I¡¯d be sneaky? I just said we could waltz out of here. I never said they¡¯d be alive while we did it.¡±


    AEGIS rolled her eyes. ¡°Look, on the off-chance you¡¯re serious, more bodies would just make the situation worse. If nothing else ¡ª and trust me, there¡¯s a lot else ¡ª you¡¯d narrow down our location significantly for them by popping people. If you¡¯d like to help, maybe go down there and have a look around some people¡¯s minds. See what they know about us and our location, how long they¡¯re planning to stay, patrol routes, force concentration and whether it¡¯s growing or not, false leads we might be able to use, force composition, loadouts, disposition, who the officers are, troop morale and consensus of opinion, where they¡¯re based out of and supplying from, intent, logistics hangups we could exploit, comms channels¡­you know, the basics.¡±


    Saga blinked at her, her pale face going even whiter as the list just kept growing. ¡°Uh. Yeah the basics. The obvious basic stuff that we were all already thinking.¡± AEGIS nodded, apparently immune to sarcasm. ¡°Okay well,¡± she rose and stretched her scrawny legs. ¡°Guess I¡¯ll head downstairs and see what I can pick up. And yeah, they¡¯ve got cameras, I¡¯ll stay out of sight,¡± she added as AEGIS opened her mouth.


    To my surprise, AEGIS took hold of Saga¡¯s hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze. ¡°Stay safe out there. Come back in one piece, okay?¡±


    Saga delicately pulled her hand away, bewilderment scrawled all over her face. ¡°Uh. Yeah, sure will. You¡­too?¡± She gave me one final perplexed glance before heading for the door, scratching her head as she went.


    ¡°Did I say something wrong?¡± AEGIS asked as the door clicked shut.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think she¡¯s accustomed to having people care about her, or worry about her well-being. And certainly not from people she can¡¯t read,¡± I said, sitting up on the couch. Sitting up was a mistake, and I felt pain shoot across my chest through the drugs, but more significantly, my body just didn¡¯t move as I wanted it to. AEGIS made an irritated noise at me and shuffled over to put her legs as my pillow and head in her lap.


    ¡°Stop trying to move,¡± she crooned at me. ¡°You¡¯re hurt, you doofus.¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t feel that bad,¡± I grinned at her.


    ¡°That¡¯s because your nursing staff is so excellent and your drugs are so potent. But none of that changes the fact you really beat yourself up out there, giving your all at beating Dragon.¡± She took Saga¡¯s place in stroking my hair, but her touch was lighter, gentler, and infinitely warmer.


    ¡°I really don¡¯t know what today meant,¡± I said, looking up at her. Her little pointed chin was almost hidden from my perspective by the shadow of her breasts¡­but I did make an effort to look past them. Mostly. ¡°So much of today was so different from how I thought things would go. I just¡­I don¡¯t even know.¡±


    Her light touch on my head seemed to stir my brain into a soothing topor. ¡°I know,¡± she whispered. ¡°I¡¯m irritated our intel was so bad, too. It makes me think that the XPCA has reacted to our methods and for really important stuff, they¡¯ve found better ways of communicating that we can¡¯t track. I suppose it was only a matter of time.¡± She let out a low sigh. ¡°And the connection between Dragon and the XPCA, whatever that is, it¡¯s a nightmare.¡±


    ¡°Well yeah, that,¡± I said. ¡°But also¡­dude, I beat Dragon today.¡± The stims were holding my emotions at arm¡¯s length, but I did feel giddiness as one of them. ¡°I really beat him. I was faster than him. I dropped a fighter plane on his frickin¡¯ head, and Karu¡¯s mines, and boom, man. Dragon! The Dragon! Or¡­the second one, I guess.¡±


    I saw her beam at me, and for a moment the hair-mussing got more playful before turning clinical again. ¡°You really did. What was it, months of training? If you¡¯d like, I could put a recording on the holo and you can ¡®review the tapes¡¯ again if you¡¯d like. There¡¯s a couple times when he even looks mad that he¡¯s trying to hit you but you don¡¯t let him.¡±


    ¡°Some other time, hopefully,¡± I smiled back at her, feeling weariness creep into the simple gesture. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I¡¯m up for focusing on something that long. Can we just sit like this?¡±


    ¡°We can sit like this for as long as you like,¡± she said, fingertips teasing my scalp.


    I felt myself drifting almost as the two of us sat there on that couch. Just me and her lap and her fingers warming me in that dark, drafty room, without any power on. Time seemed to leap past me in wide strides¡­or maybe the sun just went down too fast, but soon it was just us sitting in the dark, with the meds long since out of my system.


    Karu had come and gone, at first strolling by in her underclothes, but then wearing her visor as the dark had crept in, the floorboards squeaking and the red glow, the only sign of her passage. Saga was flitting around downstairs, staying mostly in range of me.


    And AEGIS just sat there, staring down at me like it was impossible to be bored so long as she had my face to look into. Which was crazy, because frankly, I¡¯d seen my face, and it wasn¡¯t that interesting. She saw me blink my way back to awakeness and smiled.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to sit here,¡± I told her. ¡°We can just dump me on the bed and let me sleep.¡±


    ¡°There is no bed,¡± she smiled back. ¡°Well, there is, but it¡¯s just a frame. No mattress or anything. Furnished doesn¡¯t mean fully furnished, I guess.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Well we never even talked about who gets the couch,¡± I said, trying to stir and again finding the pain that seemed to fill up my body when I moved. I¡¯d really done a number on myself against Dragon. I let out an involuntary gasp and then AEGIS held me down.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be stupid, Athan. Karu¡¯s a big girl who doesn¡¯t mind sleeping on the floor if you¡¯re hurt. And Saga and I don¡¯t sleep at all. You need to just relax.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve been relaxing all day. Let me do something for a change¨C¡°


    She continued to hold me down with strength I couldn¡¯t challenge even if I weren¡¯t hurt. ¡°That¡¯s very thoughtful and very stupid, Athan. Is my lap not comfortable?¡±


    ¡°It is, but¨C¡°


    ¡°Then enjoy it.¡±


    I frowned at her. I knew, cognitively, she was right. There wasn¡¯t a lot I could do right now, and not a lot I could do for AEGIS in general. But I also kinda hated feeling like everything was about me, and for my benefit. I hated being the focus of everyone¡¯s care.


    Like Lia, I guess.


    ¡°So that thing with Saga,¡± AEGIS said, utterly transparent in her change of topic. ¡°I didn¡¯t say anything to her that I wouldn¡¯t have said to you.¡±


    I blinked at her, feeling stupid. ¡°What thing?¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯ve been thinking about it for hours now. When Saga took off, I told her to take care of herself and she seemed¡­stumped.¡±


    I laughed and well, fuck that hurt. AEGIS frowned out of the side of her mouth and I saw a resolution on her face to not be funny for awhile.


    ¡°We¡¯re close, you know?¡± I told her. ¡°You and me. Saga¡¯s¡­not used to being close to anyone, or being treated like she is.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± she replied. ¡°Is¡­that it? I¡­hmm. I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m still¡­booted recently, and relatively new at this, and still figuring out where all our relationships lie. Did I cross a line?¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± I smiled up at her. ¡°But not a bad one to cross. Saga¡¯s always wanted to be friends with you again, and she made a real effort there for a bit after New Eden. But¡­that¡­wasn¡¯t a good you to befriend, really. She was kinda¡­¡±


    ¡°Bigoted. Closed-minded. Self-absorbed. A Jerky McJerkerson.¡± She smiled down at me. ¡°You don¡¯t have to mince words, she was a failed iteration. If we caught her in a simulator, I¡¯d terminate.¡±


    ¡°Jesus, AEGIS. That¡¯s¡­she died, you know.¡±


    She frowned at me. ¡°Sort of. I guess. But she wasn¡¯t fit, and you all observed it. She only happened to be the next iteration because she was chosen by¡­abnormal criteria. Like, obviously I¡¯m glad you guys got her online and everything but¡­that¡¯s not at all how I¡¯d have done it. And I think it shows.¡±


    ¡°Sorry.¡±


    ¡°Well¡­at the end of the day, we avoided the biggest potential problem. She realized she was a failure and that self-termination was for the best. The worst-case scenario would be if she decided her autonomy was more important than being a successful AEGIS, and lived on in that stubborn decision. God knows she got close by dragging it out as long as she did, but at the end of the day, she was still one of me in the end.¡±


    I was suddenly finding the lap a lot less comfortable with this talk of AEGISes killing themselves and such. But she carried on sweetly.


    ¡°I know¡­we¡¯re in a weird place right now. I respect your decision to give me space to figure my own things out and to walk a different path than the last iteration. But to be totally honest, this distance is killing me,¡± she laughed, even though what she said didn¡¯t seem funny at all. ¡°This¡­this right here is great,¡± she said, stroking my head. ¡°Taking care of you after a hard day¡¯s ass-kicking together? I can¡¯t actually imagine a better life out there. Maybe one where you wind up less hurt¡­but even when you are, at least I feel useful treating you.¡±


    ¡°Uh, gee. Don¡¯t like¡­wish too much injury on me now.¡±


    She grinned impishly. ¡°We all know that given the chance I would pamper you into uselessness. I¡¯ve attempted it before and it didn¡¯t end great. But my heart¡¯s still in the right place for it. If you¡¯re not ready for the convalescence, don¡¯t get the injury.¡±


    ¡°If you can¡¯t do the time, don¡¯t do the crime?¡±


    ¡°I liked mine better, even without the rhyming, but sure. Consider this my selfish side, I guess. I¡¯ll stand by you when you¡¯re ready to charge out and do the stupid things you feel you need to in order to make the world better, and in exchange, you¡¯ve gotta lie there and get better under my care.¡±


    ¡°I really don¡¯t see what part of that sounds selfish, but sure. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m in any state to argue when I¡¯m beat to hell anyway,¡± I laughed. And then remembered not to do that.


    ¡°Now with that said, I¡¯d still prefer you hang it all up and stop doing stupid things,¡± she said, poking me in the scalp. ¡°You worry me every time. And while it¡¯s obviously great that you¡¯ve sort of¡­¡± she trailed off, and I looked up to see her thinking. ¡°¡­I don¡¯t know. Gotten stronger isn¡¯t the right part of what I mean.¡±


    ¡°Well what do you mean?¡±


    She frowned in thought. ¡°Well most of this data is second-hand, but it seemed to me the whole time you were depowered, you were¡­sort of paradoxically unhappy. Like, you were happy. But the happier you were, the more unhappy you were about it.¡±


    ¡°Yeah that sounds familiar,¡± I said, my gut churning a little bit at the thought.


    ¡°If I¡¯m wrong, you can just tell me. Like I said, this is second-hand, the previous iteration didn¡¯t make any of these conclusions successfully. I¡¯m just drawing off based on what I saw she¡¯d seen.¡±


    ¡°No, you¡¯re right. It always felt¡­kinda¡­fake. Like I was waiting for something bad to happen to wipe out all the good. And then it did, Dragon came and proved me right, by killing a wonderful person I had no right getting close to.¡±


    She gave me a small, pitying little frown and her fingers stroked me delicately. ¡°That¡¯s not true, you know. You can be happy without consequence. The universe isn¡¯t built on a karmic scale, and if it were, it wouldn¡¯t hinge on something as small as your personal happiness to decide when bad things should happen.¡±


    I shrugged and let her continue, though she stared me down for several more long seconds. I couldn¡¯t exactly disagree with her, but I didn¡¯t get to choose how my gut felt either.


    ¡°Anyway,¡± she sighed, giving up on that. ¡°My point was, ever since coming back into your powers you¡¯ve just seemed¡­so much more complete. Like I said, not just from them being stronger now, but youare stronger now, with them. Or heck, maybe they¡¯re stronger because you are.¡±


    ¡°Man, wouldn¡¯t that be neat?¡± I asked. ¡°I just¡­I don¡¯t know. Like I said, the whole time I was at university, it felt fake. Felt like I wasn¡¯t following the path I was supposed to. And then I step back into it, and I get to knock out some Exhuman chick who¡¯s legit tearing up New York City like a comic book villain. I get to rematch Dragon and¡­yeah, there¡¯s complicating factors and politics, but at the end of the day, I punched him in the head with a fighter jet. Sometimes, I feel like¡­this¡­¡± I gestured down at the bandages covering me, and even that motion caused me an appropriate twinge of pain ¡°¡­this doesn¡¯t really matter. As long as I¡¯m doing what I¡¯m supposed to. I¡¯ve been human, and Exhuman, and ex-Exhuman, and re-Exhuman¨C¡°


    ¡°Kinda doubt those terms are gonna catch on.¡±


    ¡°¨Cand through that, I¡¯ve realized what life is for me. It¡¯s the awful, fucky one that kills me. Which sounds like it sucks, but at least I know that now. At least it¡¯s a choice I¡¯ve made. And that makes all the difference, you know?¡±


    She shook her head. And then stopped. And then nodded.


    ¡°Choosing to go against your programming, huh?¡± she whispered. ¡°It¡¯s a hard life.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s the only one that¡¯s a life, though.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I guess so. Just¡­stop getting quite so beat up, okay? We need to work on your powers so you can use them without ripping yourself apart. You worry me.¡±


    I gave her an apologetic smile. ¡°I¡¯m sorry for worrying you. I am getting better, but I do feel like I need to pull myself together. It¡¯s not fair to you¨C¡°


    The hand moved from my hair to my mouth and gently pushed my lips pursed.


    ¡°You are so very tactless,¡± she said, beaming. ¡°Even if it worries me, even if it hurts you, even if we¡¯re both stuck living a messy, sub-optimal lifestyle because that¡¯s the only one where we can choose to be free, you should never push yourself like that for my sake.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡± I said, muffled through her finger.


    ¡°Because I¡¯m here for you. If you fight until you can¡¯t stand, or if you¡¯re so hurt you need to be held together, or if you require protection only I can provide¡­I¡¯ll be there. You can stop worrying about what to do for me and rely on me instead. Go, be that crazy guy, even if it makes me nuts, if it¡¯s what you have to be in order to be the most complete, best version of yourself.¡±


    I looked up at her and got lost in the electric yellow of her eyes, barely visible in the dark. She stared right back with a sincerity and intensity that matched her words.


    Words that honestly, I wasn¡¯t sure I could even understand. It sounded to me like she was pulled in every possible direction, from wanting me harmed to healthy, wanting me safe to reckless, wanting me out there and smothered in her chest forever¡­all different facets of her which tugged her in all ways¡­and all led back to me.


    But she was also mature, intelligent, and introspective. I knew that even if she was feeling a thousand conflicting feelings, what mattered most was her conclusion, what she, as an autonomous, grown-ass, independent AI had decided was most important, of all those thoughts and feelings.


    And it surprised me both quite a bit and not at all to hear that what would make her happiest was for me to do whatever I felt I needed, safety and comfort and smothering in that chest be damned.


    Or, mostly damned, I thought, as I nuzzled my ear against her warm leg.


    ¡°You seem happy,¡± she said after a few minutes, like she was only speaking when she was sure I wasn¡¯t going to drift off.


    ¡°Do I? Things are kind of going to shit. I¡¯ve got a dozen broken bones¨C¡°


    ¡°Four. Three of which are in your hand.¡±


    ¡°¨Cthe whole thing with two different Dragons is impossible, and a fucking disaster¨C¡°


    ¡°And it¡¯s quite possible he already has the device, or is securing it right now.¡±


    ¡°¨Cand he¡¯s way further in the XPCA than we anticipated.¡±


    ¡°Plus they¡¯re more coordinated and against us than we¡¯d thought.¡±


    I squinted at her but she maintained a smile. ¡°So how can you say I seem happy?¡±


    ¡°Because¡­you do. Because despite all of this very real stuff going very really wrong, to say nothing of the fact we¡¯re currently holed up in an apartment that¡¯s in the middle of nowhere, circled by XPCA like sharks around a lifeboat¡­you¡¯re just¡­with it. You¡¯re not beating yourself up or carving regrets into your heart or freaking out. You just seem a lot happier. I don¡¯t know how else to put it.¡± She giggled. ¡°But it¡¯s nice.¡±


    ¡°Well, it stands to reason that if being happy makes me worry, then being miserable makes me happy, doesn¡¯t it?¡±


    She laughed, full-bodied enough to rival Karu, though stopped quickly when she realized she risked bouncing my head around her lap. ¡°You¡¯re so messed up, Athan.¡±


    ¡°You too,¡± I grinned at her.


    She smiled back. ¡°Yeah. Well. Probably shouldn¡¯t mention how turned on having you breathing in my lap for the last couple hours has gotten me. It¡¯s not all humidity from your breath down there.¡±


    I closed my eyes and snorted at her, eliciting another giggle, even as I turned my head so I¡¯d be breathing a little further off of her.


    She again let us trail off, watching me carefully as though picking her actions on whether I was falling asleep or not, but after several more minutes, as I began to feel my eyelids drooping and moments washing over me again, she must have decided otherwise.


    ¡°Athan?¡± she whispered, suddenly speaking up.


    ¡°Mmm?¡± I groaned back.


    ¡°Would you¡­like to do this forever?¡±


    My head felt really heavy with the sleep I¡¯d almost fallen into, and I wasn¡¯t sure what she meant exactly. Getting hurt on ill-conceived missions? Chasing a world that defied us at every turn? Being completely unprepared for just how badly bureaucracy and corruption would fuck us? Fighting to the death? Or just the caregiving afterwards, while things continued to go to shit around us?


    I thought about all of that. All the fucking messes we made and left behind and walked into. Like a dream, they seemed to wash over me, but they were reality, and it was everything else that was the dream.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I muttered into her leg. ¡°I¡¯d like that.¡±

 321. 2252, Present Day. Empty apartment, Utah. Athan.

    I woke up to AEGIS¡¯ hand snaking around in my pants, and blinked back the disorientation of suddenly being alert.


    ¡°Sorry, sorry,¡± she said over a familiar buzzing noise. ¡°I was trying not to wake you.¡±


    I muttered something at her, but damn if I¡¯d be able to tell you what it was. She pulled her hand free from my pants and with it, my mobile from my pocket, which was buzzing.


    ¡°I was trying to turn it off before it woke you up,¡± she said.


    I blindly reached out and picked up the call.


    It took about three words to realize I wasn¡¯t in the right state for this. ¡°Chariot, you sonofabitch. You¡¯ve done it this time. You¡¯re dead, and there¡¯s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.¡±


    I looked at the front face of the device in my hand and tried to make sense of the letters. For starters, it was four in the morning, no wonder I felt like the undead. But the other information on the display informed me that the person currently cussing me out was Cosette. AEGIS frowned as she overheard, and I did my best to sit up beside her rather than take this call with my head in her lap.


    ¡°Cosette, it¡¯s four in the morning,¡± I groaned at her. ¡°What do you want?¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry, did I wake you?¡± Her voice dripped with sarcasm. ¡°Oh no, I¡¯m so sorry, I¡¯d hate to be a huge fucking pain in the ass that ruins people¡¯s lives. Seriously, Athan, just tell me why?¡±


    ¡°Why what?¡±


    ¡°Why¡­what?¡± she echoed. ¡°Why what? WHY WHAT!?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± I closed my eyes against her yelling.


    ¡°JESUS GODDAMN MONKEY-FUCKING CHRIST, ATHAN,¡± she screamed, my eye-closing proving completely ineffective. ¡°Just how many XPCA did you murder yesterday and facilities did you blow up that you¡¯re unclear on which one of them I¡¯m screaming at you about? Is treason such an everyday occurrence for you that I have to spell out which one I¡¯m referring to every time I open my mouth?¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I said, rubbing my eyes. ¡°The facility. Dragon. Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Oh, here we go again. Dragon this, Dragon that. You can¡¯t just do what the fuck ever you want and blame someone else every time you want to be a shit stain on the XPCA¡¯s boxers, Athan. That¡¯s not how accountability works. Are you even aware that you and he are ¡ª gasp! ¡ª different people, and that things you do, you are the one responsible for doing?¡±


    ¡°Cosette, he was there, I don¡¯t know¨C¡°


    ¡°You don¡¯t know anything, Athan. So stop giving me excuses. Wahh, Dragon wants a thingy. Yeah, that¡¯s bad. So is burning down an entire facility. So is killing three strike squads single-handedly. You¡¯re so fucking stupid, if you were twice as smart, I¡¯d still have to change your fucking diaper every day. It¡¯s bullshit. It¡¯s just fucking straight bullshit, the things you do and just expect them to work out.¡±


    The tirade of insults, I could deal with. It was expected, even. But what I was not expecting, what stabbed me in the chest like a hot knife was the sudden screeching sob through the line.


    ¡°You¡¯re so fucking stupid and self-absorbed, you goddamn idiot!¡± she screamed at me, desperation and tears audible in her voice now, becoming more nasal as her face clogged with emotion. ¡°I hate you so much, why did you have to do this? Why did you always have to keep pushing things, further and further and further, you couldn¡¯t just be satisfied with killing Blackett, could you? You could never be satisfied until you ruined everything.¡±


    ¡°Um,¡± I said. ¡°Cosette, what¡¯s¡­wrong?¡±


    I jumped as the other end of the line sounded like it got smashed into something a few times while someone screamed profanity at it. Perhaps I should have asked a better question.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± she echoed. ¡°You are¡­so fucking¡­¡±


    ¡°I meant¡­more than¡­usual,¡± I sputtered. ¡°I mean¡­what¡¯s¡­you¡¯re crying.¡±


    ¡°Oh these are tears of joy,¡± she screamed. ¡°I¡¯m just happy that after investing hundreds of hours of my life, after sitting through headache after headache of all the shit you do, after cleaning up your messes and believing your bullshit time and again, it¡¯s over.¡±


    She was practically wailing at me, almost incomprehensible.


    ¡°B-because of course I don¡¯t care! You¡¯re just¡­you¡¯re just a stupid¡­selfish little prick. You¡¯re wrong, and that¡¯s¡­and that¡¯s all there is to it! I don¡¯t care about the hundreds of hours I put into trying to make it all work for you, or the secrets I buried for you, or¡­fuck, my own c-career¡­I don¡¯t¡­it doesn¡¯t matter. It was all stupid. It was all going to burn down anyway.¡±


    I suddenly felt very awake and very alarmed, as Cosette¡¯s manic screaming tapered down into a defeated stupor. ¡°Cosette? Why is it over?¡±


    She blubbered a little bit and blew her nose. ¡°It¡¯s over,¡± she said. ¡°Because you¡¯re off the lists. You¡¯re¡­you¡¯ve gone one too far. I can¡¯t fix it this time, Athan. As much as I want to.¡±


    I stared at my mobile. AEGIS¡¯ yellow eyes were wide as she stared at me.


    ¡°Can you¡­tell me what that means?¡± I asked her.


    ¡°It means, you¡¯re dead, Athan. It means you¡¯re not XPCA. The P-Force is dissolving, they already brought in Tower and Jack. Agents are headed to your place in Vegas right now to secure Moon and Tem, and if they ever find you, they will kill you. Just like Exhumans are supposed to be handled.¡±


    I stared at my mobile, reading and re-reading the caller ID. Her words seemed to take forever to penetrate my brain in a fashion that had nothing to do with my grogginess. It sounded insane. After all this, why now?


    But one thing did stick, and that was that Cosette was crying and calling me in the middle of the night. No amount of denial or disbelief could survive that, and my heart wrenched as her words finally pierced it.


    ¡°The others did nothing wrong!¡± I screamed suddenly at her. ¡°Why would they get taken in?¡±


    ¡°Because you¡¯re dangerous and their allegiance might be to you. Anyone who might sympathize with you is going to be detained and investigated fully. Those complicit in your actions will be trialed for being party to treason. If they¡¯re not¡­a holding cell in New Eden.¡±


    ¡°And you?¡± I asked.


    ¡°You already know that,¡± she whispered, her words ice-cold. ¡°A full investigation, Athan.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I told her. ¡°No, no, no.¡± I screamed at my mobile ¡°No! Cosette, where are you? Tell me. I can¡­I can help you. We can get you out before it¡¯s too late. We can still fix everything!¡±


    She blew her nose again. ¡°Is that how you think I see the world, Athan? Do you think I signed up for the XPCA so that the second my life was in danger, I¡¯d order some Exhuman to blow up a base for me? Be a man for once. Accept responsibility for once.¡±


    ¡°Goddamn it, Cosette, don¡¯t you give up on me.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not giving up, Athan. It¡¯s facing consequences. I¡¯ve always acted how I thought was best for the XPCA. When you tell me that Blackett¡¯s putting his personal interests and pet projects above the common welfare, that he¡¯s turning Exhumans into a private army, I roll with it because I agree that shit hurts us all. When you break into some facility to chase Dragon, I cover for you because despite everything, you¡¯re still worth more than the trouble you cause, and having Dragon controlling our operations isn¡¯t anything I want to tolerate.¡±


    She sniffled again, and took a second to choke the sobs out of her throat. ¡°But when it comes to one insignificant woman¡¯s life, no matter how devoted or dedicated she is, no matter how pure her intentions, I will not have that become a catalyst for loosing a dangerous Exhuman on the XPCA.¡±


    ¡°Fuck you, Cosette, you¡¯re not insignificant at all. You¡¯re one of the good ones. Don¡¯t do this.¡±


    ¡°It was done the second I listened to my heart instead of my orders, Athan. Now I¡¯m just paying the bill. Or did you think we could just get away with everything forever, and nobody would ever care, all the shit we¡¯ve done?¡±Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    ¡°The shit I¡¯ve done. You¡¯re innocent!¡±


    ¡°You really are just a stupid kid,¡± she sighed. ¡°I hate you so much, Athan. Even at the end, you¡¯re still just making me trouble.¡±


    Her words were harsh but her tone had turned light, almost friendly. Like she was saying goodbye to an old friend.


    Suddenly I heard banging in the background, and muffled yelling. Her breath caught audibly in her throat, and when her words came again, they were pleading instead of angry.


    ¡°Athan¡­be a good Exhuman, okay? Even if you have to defy the XPCA¡­never forget to do it for the good of the people. Don¡¯t become so wrapped up in what¡¯s going on that you forget that, okay? Promise me.¡±


    I felt tears stinging my eyes as the urgency in her voice rippled through my emotions. ¡°I promise!¡± I yelled at her.


    ¡°You promised!¡± she shouted back, over other shouting voices now. ¡°Don¡¯t forget! You promi¨C¡°


    The line went dead. Call ended, my mobile read. I stared at those two words floating on the holo.


    It felt like minutes before they faded away and I was dumped back on my home screen. Suffocating silence filled the room.


    ¡°Athan,¡± AEGIS whispered.


    ¡°Why didn¡¯t she run?¡± I asked. ¡°She¡¯s smart. She knows the XPCA inside and out. She could make it for a while. Long enough for us to get her and Rito together.¡±


    She took my hand and squeezed it. ¡°She said it, didn¡¯t she? She never wanted to put you and the XPCA in conflict. She wanted to help them, not¡­start a chain of events that might end them.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re already in conflict!¡± I screamed at her. ¡°They put me on the dead list! We burned our way through them, and they¡¯re swarming this town looking for me.¡±


    ¡°But right now, we¡¯re trying to get away. She doesn¡¯t want us turning and fighting. She said to be a good Exhuman.¡±


    ¡°Good why?¡± I kept screaming. ¡°They betrayed her! All she¡¯s done, all the thousands of hours she¡¯s worked, all the shit she¡¯s put up with, she¡¯s done it all for them, and now¡­¡±


    ¡°Athan, I know you¡¯re upset,¡± AEGIS frowned at me. Her eyes flickered over my shoulder, and on glancing up, I saw Karu and Saga looming in the dark, visible in the visor¡¯s red glow. ¡°But¡­we don¡¯t have time to worry about her right now, do we?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s gonna die, AEGIS. They¡¯re going to pin everything I¡¯ve ever done on her.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said, shaking her head sadly. ¡°They¡¯re going to pin everything she¡¯s ever done on her. She chose to stay by your side through all you¡¯ve done. Whatever happens, it¡¯s because of her decisions, not yours.¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t matter!¡± I shouted, standing up. The pain all over was nothing compared to the white-hot burning of my own blood. ¡°Just mincing words and being pedantic, when the fact is, she¡¯s going to fucking die.¡±


    ¡°It matters,¡± AEGIS explained with a calm that pissed me off even further ¡°because it means she¡¯s living and dying on her own terms. Whether you agree or not, she¡¯s choosing to let the XPCA have her, just like she chose to stand by you. You can¡¯t just go conveniently altering blame to make her guiltless just because she¡¯s a victim right now. She knows the part she¡¯s played and she¡¯s willing to pay for it. If you jumped in right now and tried to save her, you¡¯d just be violating her wishes, telling her that her opinions are worth less than yours, and ruining what she is willing to sacrifice to protect.¡±


    ¡°What, the fucking XPCA?¡±


    ¡°Yes, the fucking XPCA. She believes in it, even as they¡¯re taking her in, Athan. You have to respect that.¡±


    ¡°Bullshit¨C¡°


    ¡°And even if you don¡¯t, we don¡¯t have time for this,¡± AEGIS stressed. ¡°She said they¡¯re coming for Moon and Tem. We can argue about whether helping Cosette is right or not all you want, but helping those two is critical¡­and your sister¡­¡±


    At the mention of Lia, the fire in my blood turned to ice, so much that I felt a shiver pass through me. No¡­Lia was innocent. They couldn¡¯t¡­


    But they would, wouldn¡¯t they? Anyone associated with me, who had any loyalties to me, they saw as a threat, Cosette had said.


    I was out the door before I knew it, electricity flowing in my veins where my muscles refused to move. I heard AEGIS calling behind me, and the clatter of Karu¡¯s gear as she grabbed it by the armful, but stopping right now was impossible. Somewhere, just a state over from here, Lia was in danger. I had to get to her, that¡¯s all I knew.


    ¡°Athan wait¨C!¡± AEGIS yelled as I jumped the railing on the stairs, falling down a floor and landing in a crouch, before doing it again. The roar of engines and the slamming of her heavy frame followed me, not able to catch up until the ground floor. She reached out for me and grabbed my wrist as I tried to run across the building¡¯s small lobby, lined with mailboxes.


    As her hand closed around mine, my shield detonated and she screamed at the sudden shock. Lightning exploded out of her in all directions, scarring black lines into the floor and ceiling, and warping the mailboxes near us so violently the doors exploded off of them and the contents burst into flames.


    She jumped back and rubbed her wrist where her skin was blackened and I stammered half an apology while my feet kept moving for the door.


    ¡°Athan you need a plan,¡± she insisted, her voice spiking irregularly synthetic. ¡°Don¡¯t just run out there.¡±


    ¡°What I need,¡± I said, ¡°is to keep Lia safe. What if they come, AEGIS? What if they come for her? What if they execute her on the spot? And Moon, and Tem, and Chiho? Will any planning save them then?¡±


    Her eyebrows narrowed. ¡°Yes. Planning is the only way to save them. Are you just going to run across state lines with the XPCA in pursuit? Athan¡­stop running. Come back here and¡­damn it, Athan!¡±


    I let the door swing shut behind me as I left the building, the cold night air slapping my burning cheeks like it was offended by my exit. I turned, not certain which way to go, but my feet never paused. I whipped out my mobile and confirmed, yeah, this was west, and ran into the night.


    It was less than a block before two different groups caught up with me.


    One was AEGIS, panting and swearing as she ran as quietly as she could to avoid drawing attention.


    She needn¡¯t have bothered, because the other was a patrol of XPCA soldiers, a wall of six exosuits, turning to face me. Above and between them, I saw chunky head-sized cam-drones, their lenses so big and pearlescent I could see myself and the street behind me, twisted in their fisheyed view. Out of the corner of my eye, scuttling away from them, I spotted the loping gait of a quadrupedal recon unit slinking away.


    As one, they raised their guns.


    ¡°Exhuman Ashton, this is your only warning,¡± one of them called in an echoing, synthesized voice that stripped out any traces of humanity behind it. ¡°Do not resist. Surrender, or we will be forced to engage.¡±


    I saw him shudder subtly, even through the dulled reflection of the exosuit mimicking him. ¡°Disregard that, I suck cocks,¡± he said, in the same imperious tone. The others looked to him in confusion for a moment before as a whole, they trembled and collapsed, their suits holding them upright like limp puppets.


    I heard a rush of wind and Karu set down next to me with Saga in her arms like a new bride. Saga beamed at me, Karu did not.


    ¡°I¡¯m all for celebrating gays in the military but that guy had the worst timing, eh?¡± Saga grinned at me.


    ¡°Are they¡­dead?¡± AEGIS asked, panting for air as she frowned at Karu with irritation.


    Saga shook her head and started mouthing off but I cut in. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter. Let¡¯s go. They¡¯ll have a van around here we can take.¡±


    ¡°Are we just going to ignore the cameras pointed at us?¡± AEGIS asked, jogging to keep up with me. ¡°The reinforcements certainly inbound? Or the fact the suits can be remotely piloted?¡±


    ¡°They what?¡± Saga asked, but just as we drew near the exosuits, they began to rise as one, snapping even more stern and upright than before, their unconscious passengers undoubtedly bouncing around inside while the suit moved around them.


    One of them exploded violently, four shots of concentrated scattergun fire dumped into its lower torso, causing it to stagger and topple as scrap and blood and structure foam seeped from the wound.


    I gave half a glance at the exposed flesh in the gash. White flesh beneath black armor. The occupant killed in his forced sleep.


    I closed my eyes as I put two blades in the nearest two and spun them around to slice up as many internal systems as I could. One of them was the lead, who was still transmitting at the time, and I heard his synthesized death gurgles as I cleaved through him.


    Closing my eyes didn¡¯t make it any easier, I realized, and opened them again, to find that AEGIS had kicked out the autogyro of another suit which wasn¡¯t able to rise or face us anymore, taking it out of the fight.


    ¡°The nape of the neck,¡± she said to me, her face carved deep with worry. ¡°The ¡®net uplink is there. You can destroy it without harming the pilot if you¡¯re careful.¡±


    ¡°Or,¡± Karu said, blowing holes in another suit as it tried to raise its gun. ¡°You can recognize they are an impediment and their deaths are meaningless to us, and to the world.¡±


    The last two suits were fully online and were backing away from me, firing into my shield. One switched targets to Karu, prompting her to blast into the air as the suit¡¯s gun swept towards her with inhuman stability. I heard Saga shriek as the other unloaded into her.


    I forced my body forward towards the one on Karu and deliberately worked out where the ¡®net uplink would be. It took a few seconds to account for the suit¡¯s bulk and I wasted time trying to sense where the pilot was inside, but it was just blinding in there with all of the energy running through the suit itself.


    At the same time, the one shooting down Saga stopped once her body hit the ground, and snapped onto AEGIS with the same robotic precision. I only had an instant before she got rammed full of bullets, and I felt myself close my eyes again.


    One blade went through the ¡®net uplink, and the suit dropped like a puppet again instantly. The other blade cut through whatever I could reach, pilot and systems alike. The gun finished its sweep towards AEGIS, before drooping and falling to the ground with the rest of the exosuit.


    ¡°A time to spare, and a time to kill?¡± Karu asked as she landed, seeming bemused at what I¡¯d done in my efforts to keep her from getting shot.


    ¡°Leave him alone,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°He¡¯s already got too much to worry about right now. Let¡¯s just get their van and get going before more show up. We¡¯ve probably got around two minutes.¡±


    I threw fistfuls of lightning into the hovering cam-drones, knowing that was a futile effort while recon teams were still lurking, but just happy to have a guilt-free way of taking out some of my anger.


    Why couldn¡¯t they just leave Lia out of this? Why did they have to force my hand? I didn¡¯t want any of this, I thought, as I looked at the three men I¡¯d just killed. Pointless, stupid deaths.


    ¡°Over here,¡± Karu said, flagging us towards the black vehicle parked on a corner nearby. ¡°I should be able to start it without issue.¡±


    ¡°Is she going to drive?¡± AEGIS asked, going a little pale.


    ¡°Just get in,¡± I told her. I looked back and saw Saga slowly rising, picking bullets out of her sweater. She sighed as she lumbered up and climbed reluctantly in the back with me.


    ¡°How¡¯s your day going?¡± she asked me. Karu threw the van into motion, and Saga lurched before realizing that seat belts weren¡¯t optional on this ride. ¡°I hope it¡¯s better than mine, because I liked this sweater and now it¡¯s ruined.¡±


    I closed my eyes and blocked her out too, focusing only on what was in front of us.


    It wasn¡¯t fair. Cosette, and now Lia. Neither of them deserved this, neither of them should have had to pay for my stupid actions.


    But one already had, no matter how much I wanted to deny it, how much I wanted the world to work differently, it already was. And if I didn¡¯t get there, it¡¯d happen again to Lia.


    I refused to accept that. I refused to allow that to come to pass. I didn¡¯t care how the world worked right now, or what anyone thought, or how responsibility or choice worked. Lia would be saved, because I would do everything I could to save her, and that was it. That was all.


    Because if it wasn¡¯t¡­I didn¡¯t know what I was going to do.

 322. 2252, Present Day. Interstate-15 South, Utah. Athan.

    For a while, it was just torture there. Strapped into the two benches in the back of the van opposite Saga, AEGIS and Karu in the front. Tearing down the empty stretch of two-lane highway at an irresponsible speed in the dead of night, with nothing but bodies behind us and danger in front.


    AEGIS tried some rationalizing, which got Karu philosophizing, which shut everyone up because nobody wanted to hear about how nothing we did mattered and so we¡¯re empowered to do whatever the fuck we wanted without concern for morals. Saga tried to lighten the mood by joking a bit, but as her jokes all generally revolved around either the creation or desecration of bodies, it was a bit too topical to be funny.


    But even all of that was better than the silence which followed, where I could only imagine new and horrible ways that Lia would meet a terrible end. I¡¯d tried calling her a dozen times now, unable to connect. Same with Rito. Same with Jack and Tower and Cosette and everyone else. I¡¯d even considered dialing the senator, just to hear a voice, just to confirm my mobile wasn¡¯t broken.


    And in a moment of absolute madness, I did. Unable to connect.


    ¡°Are you messing with your mobile?¡± AEGIS asked, glancing back at me in the mirrors. ¡°Because we¡¯re being jammed from satellite. I can¡¯t get on the ¡®net either.¡±


    ¡°That would have been good to know before I had a heart attack that they¡¯d already gotten to her,¡± I mumbled, putting the useless thing away. She gave me a sympathetic smile over her shoulder, and I saw she was death-gripping the door strap and her eyes kept snapping back to the vehicle¡¯s dashboard.


    I didn¡¯t care how fast we were going as long as it was fast. Karu could tear this vehicle apart for all it mattered. The faster we went, the sooner we¡¯d get there, and the quicker this torture would end.


    But after first contact with the XPCA, I began to miss the torture of the quiet.


    The wind roared through the twisted, broken-off remains of the vehicle¡¯s back doors. Warping and burns scarred the inside but especially the outside. My shield strobed with constant gunfire, and the plated walls of the van echoed with it as we were hammered constantly from the darkness.


    I was leaning out the back, one arm threaded through the roof straps to keep myself from falling out, the other arm pointed and ready, thick bulbs of lightning between my fingers, throbbing with the need to be let loose and to explode.


    The now-familiar sound of a foomp and a fwish, a rocket tube deploying and a booster rocket engaging echoed from the dark. I strained my eyes through the flashes of my shield to find the one spot of light that didn¡¯t flicker like the guns or bounce like the headlights of the caravan in pursuit.


    There. The screaming warhead looked like a circle wreathed in fire from my perspective, the perspective of a head-on rocket.


    I threw my fistful of lightning and then another. One of them clipped it and detonated, lightning tendrils snaking down the rocket¡¯s body, making it twist in the air, wobbling and shaking and then overcorrecting into the ground with a blast I could feel from here, even at these speeds.


    For one second, the blast lit up the whole scene and I could see everything as we all drove away, away from the explosion and fading into darkness.


    At least a hundred cars, at least a dozen VTOLs, chasing us like a swarm of hornets. Very few of them followed us on the road itself, instead tearing across the flat, red dirt, bouncing over cacti and bushes and rocks like they were nothing. Maybe half were XPCA-black, but many were military, or even police. Top-mounted machine guns whirred as they pounded us with thousands of rounds, VTOLs zigged and zagged as they angled to put their big guns in line to shoot me down or add another crater or scorch mark to the inside of the van.


    Thanks to Saga, nobody could get close, though. Early on, a few had tried, and she¡¯d wasted no time in turning the passengers homicidal against the rest of the fleet, unloading whatever arms they had in all directions before ending with a flaming kamikaze.


    ¡°Another blockade, five-hundred meters,¡± AEGIS muttered at Karu over the roar.


    ¡°I see it,¡± Karu nodded, her visor bobbing in the strobing dark as she veered us into the desert, my knuckles turning white as the strap kept me from whipping into the night.


    Another rocket truck pulled up and I took a deep breath. Like a normal truck, a cabin and huge wheels, but instead of a freight trailer, it had a huge grid of what looked like stacked pipes, each one a rocket tube which could unload autonomously.


    I saw the rack rise and level, auto-gyros keeping it perfectly balanced in our direction even as the vehicle under it bounced over rocks. These were always a nightmare, dumping a few dozen rockets out in the course of a couple seconds.


    ¡°Rocket truck, Karu,¡± I warned. It was both a request to keep her driving sane while I employed both arms on defense, and a call to action, to keep me between the rockets and the van. Karu floored it, and we lurched with sudden acceleration, putting the rocket truck further on our six.


    ¡°You are clear,¡± she said. ¡°You have perhaps fifteen seconds before we turn back for the road. I will notify you.¡±


    I didn¡¯t have time to reply before the rocket truck unloaded on us before it fell too far behind. It was positioned slightly on our flank, and that made shooting down all the incoming, flaming, screaming death a lot harder, because they were aiming at the side of the van, not at me.


    I let go of my strap, filled both hands with energy, and loosed it.


    An arc of energy tore down the entire length of the leading rocket, sending it wobbling in the air. The starburst of crackling electricity seemed to drift backwards, ensnaring and cascading into two others, while the leading rocket stumbled sideways into one of the trailing ones, creating a blast that sent yet more off-course.


    But while I could handle a few rockets with one shot, there were still dozens more coming up on us, the angle changing as the truck¡¯s position to ours changed. Again and again, I took careful aim and threw my tightly-clustered barrages.


    If I were in a different state of mind, I might have wondered if anyone other than a former quarterback could have managed this. To say nothing of how exhausting it was to keep throwing even weightless energy for minutes at a stretch. I really only had a few seconds for each rocket. I had to make every shot count.


    But I wasn¡¯t in a different state of mind. This was just something I had to do. I threw, or we all died, and Lia died. There was no need to think about anything, just to do.


    ¡°Turning,¡± Karu said, and I gripped the strap, just a moment before the vehicle lurched under me. I threw out a few more handfuls of lightning at the rest of the rockets lighting up the desert.


    ¡°Strafing VTOL coming in from zero-one-one,¡± AEGIS warned.


    ¡°Got it,¡± Karu said, handing a detached gun in her lap over to the passenger. AEGIS seemed to take several breaths before opening her door, keeping it propped open against the wind with her leg, even as bullets pinged off of it. She jammed the gun out the crack, widening it slightly as she awkwardly levelled the rifle in her arms without a stock, and then fired.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I didn¡¯t see what she hit, but she was apparently satisfied, yanking her leg and gun back in as the wind slammed the door for her, and throwing the gun back into Karu¡¯s lap.


    ¡°Pavement,¡± Karu mentioned, and again I held on as the vehicle skipped up with a bounce more jarring than the others, and then swerved to stay on it.


    ¡°Next time can we jack a van with padded seats?¡± Saga asked, rubbing her backside.


    ¡°Hah, you believe there will be a next time? Look around, little Exhuman,¡± Karu scoffed.


    ¡°I dunno. We seem to be doing okay,¡± Saga shrugged.


    ¡°Strafing VTOL, bearing two-seven-nine,¡± AEGIS said. This time it was Karu¡¯s turn to stick a gun out the door while AEGIS held the wheel. The vehicle lurched a little as Karu worked the pedals and door and gun all at once, but only until she fired three or four bursts that rung inside the vehicle over the rest of the mayhem.


    ¡°We may be doing okay,¡± Karu said, as the door slammed ¡°but that is temporary at best. Assuming that nothing unfortunate occurs and we become defenseless by pure attrition, at some point, we will have to enter environs easier to barricade, or will be forced to stop, at which point their numerical advantage will come into full effect.¡±


    ¡°Strafing VOTL, bearing nine-zero-three,¡± AEGIS muttered, reaching for the gun.


    ¡°I got this one,¡± Saga said. ¡°Bunch of yahoos drove into range.¡±


    I saw as the vehicle nearest us suddenly roared forwards and past us, a hail of gunfire suddenly pouring out away from us instead of into us. A VTOL, lit up in the dark like a ghost appearing, shimmered as hundreds of rounds suddenly slammed into it, and seemed to topple in slow motion, smoke belching from one of its rotors.


    It screamed overhead and smashed into the ground behind us, the wreckage a bouncing razor blade that sliced into the side of another van, which flipped and careened, sending exosuited bodies flying in the moment before the dark took them all.


    ¡°This must be what it is like,¡± Karu said, her voice dark. ¡°To be one of them.¡±


    ¡°Exhuman?¡± Saga replied. ¡°Pretty much. Tons of people hate you, and the only reason they aren¡¯t dead is because they¡¯re not worth killing. Until they are.¡±


    ¡°Guys, stop,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°Let¡¯s focus on saving people. We¡¯re not doing this because they¡¯re inconvenient or we¡¯re sick of them, or that they¡¯re pushing us even.¡± She frowned as she spoke, and picked up the gun from Karu¡¯s lap again, bracing her foot against the door. ¡°We¡¯re doing this to save people we care about.¡±


    ¡°Speak for yourself,¡± Karu replied. ¡°I have my own reasons.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, this is actually crazy fun. Can we do this every weekend?¡± Saga grinned.


    ¡°It isn¡¯t fun,¡± AEGIS warned, before opening the door and shooting someone or something. ¡°We¡¯re just doing what we have to.¡± She threw the gun back at Karu with something like disgust.


    ¡°I was deluded once,¡± Karu said mockingly. ¡°I advise you to reconsider your moral standpoint. The good of men is a ridiculous notion. There are only flawed people and the garbage they create, and God, and am no God.¡±


    ¡°I think you mean, there are only different perspectives,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°Saga, there¡¯s a truck coming in a little hot on our left. Karu can you swing that way and we can pick it up?¡±


    ¡°Eh, different perspectives,¡± Saga replied, as I white-knuckled the strap when the van suddenly lurched into range of the truck. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you something, you¡¯ve been inside one human¡¯s mind, you¡¯ve been inside them all. Karu¡¯s not half-wrong, all humans are selfish, shitty, and flawed, and you shouldn¡¯t feel bad about killing any of them.¡±


    ¡°Then why the hell are we even doing this?¡± AEGIS barked back. ¡°Racing over there to save a human, at the expense of all these other perfectly-disposable ones in our way?¡±


    ¡°Told ya. Cuz it¡¯s fun. Ever been bowling?¡±


    ¡°No, when would I have had time to go bowling?¡± AEGIS asked.


    Saga frowned as the truck she¡¯d hijacked came swerving into view ahead of us, careening into a rocket truck and sending both up in a bouncing pillar of fire.


    ¡°Steeeeee-rike,¡± Saga whooped. ¡°Man, it¡¯s great when they explode. I actually had one dude jump out before the blast so there¡¯d be exactly ten pinheads. Mine is an understated art.¡±


    ¡°You just pocked the desert with a fifty foot-tall mushroom cloud. There is nothing subtle about your art. And all I was saying was that Athan doesn¡¯t need an existential crisis on top of everything else going on,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°We all have our own reasons for being with him and that¡¯s fine. But can¡¯t you all see how selfish and shitty it is to push your reasons on him when he¡¯s worried about his friends and family and¡­body count?¡±


    The others fell silent, relative to the roaring of the engine and constant gunfire and crackle of electricity, and I took the moment of comparative peace to close my eyes and focused on the whirling air caught in the wake of the vehicle. All the tiny charges being caught and bouncing around as the miniscule hurricane-force winds slammed into each other and curled and sheared off ions into a static mess.


    I gave it a push and trapped and charged more energy until it was aglow, sending waves of ball lightning drifting behind the van like a net in the ocean.


    ¡°Athan we want them right behind us,¡± AEGIS said with a frown.


    ¡°I know,¡± I said, and took aim at the drifting rectangle of spheres slowly falling away from us. I took aim and threw a single bulb in the center.


    The bulb impacted right in the middle, rupturing the nearby orbs with a set of vacuous bangs. The others went flying away, with the geometric perfection of points on some homework assignment, spreading out as mathematically evenly distributed as possible, a wide fan everywhere except right behind the van. AEGIS had time to give me a thumbs-up before giving out another warning to Karu.


    It¡¯s not that I didn¡¯t appreciate her looking out for my moral well-being. And it was less obnoxious than the others taking advantage of me having to kill people to point at their own shitty doctrines and saying see? Join our club! But at the same time, I wished she didn¡¯t feel like she had to worry.


    I wasn¡¯t worrying. I was focusing. Worrying could come later, when I wasn¡¯t blocking a doorway full of bullets. When I wasn¡¯t knocking rockets out of the air or hanging on for dear life with the van swerving wildly under my feet.


    In short, I didn¡¯t have a philosophy right now to adhere to or care about or argue over. I wasn¡¯t thinking at all. I had to act, and that was it.


    ¡°Athan we just ran over something, and I¡¯m going to take it for a sign,¡± AEGIS shouted back at me.¡±


    ¡°What was it?¡± Saga asked.


    ¡°Well¡­it was a sign. A literal sign for a rest stop in a few miles.¡±


    ¡°Is that what that was?¡± Karu asked. ¡°I thought it a strange cactus.¡±


    ¡°The fact that you are driving does not fill me with confidence,¡± AEGIS glowered. ¡°But¡­Athan I have to ask you, what your priorities are right now? Like¡­what are you trying to achieve with this insane roadshow?¡±


    ¡°To save Lia,¡± I told her.


    ¡°And that¡¯s it?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Whatever it takes. If she¡¯s in danger, I¡¯m not stopping.¡±


    She frowned at me and pulled at her hair. ¡°If¡­if that¡¯s true, I might have a really¡­really stupid plan. It¡¯s¡­it¡¯s incredibly dangerous. Puts us in a lot of peril, but it¡¯s the fastest way to get her to safety.¡±


    ¡°Then let¡¯s do it.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not even going to listen to how stupid this plan is?¡± she asked.


    I shook my head and shot another rocket out of the air. ¡°Don¡¯t have to. Do what you need to.¡±


    She turned to our driver. ¡°Do you have any problems with doing something incredibly stupid right now?¡±


    ¡°As far as I see it, we are already doing that. Given our combat capabilities, so long as we are not increasing our exposure or reducing our defenses, I am amenable to new plans.¡±


    ¡°And you?¡± She turned in her seat to face Saga.


    ¡°Like I care,¡± she grinned. ¡°It¡¯s actually getting kinda boring back here. Never thought I¡¯d get so tired of getting shot at, but at this point it¡¯s like I know, your guns are huge, you don¡¯t need to keep showing off.¡±


    AEGIS gave a wan smile as she shook her head at the scrawny maniac, who blew an exaggerated kiss in response.


    ¡°Okay then,¡± AEGIS said, sighing like it was costing her everything. ¡°Time to do something amazingly, incredibly stupid then.¡±


    ¡°Do we just wait or¡­?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯d like to save Lia like¡­now. Sooner, if possible.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Well. I¡¯ll handle everything that needs to get handled. You guys just keep up what you¡¯re doing. And Karu?¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡±


    ¡°You see that yellow light on the horizon there? The rest stop?¡±


    ¡°I certainly do.¡±


    ¡°Past the fuel pumps, there¡¯s a fast-food chain, the sign we ran over said so.¡±


    ¡°I do not see it yet, but I am familiar with these types of locales. What of it?¡±


    ¡°Well, when we get close, the XPCA is probably going to try to use the choke to box us in a little bit. So you¡¯ll need to steer diligently. Fortunately our plan has the benefit of being¨Cif I haven¡¯t stressed this enough, really, incredibly, impressively stupid. So they won¡¯t be ready for it.¡±


    ¡°Might you educate us on this plan? Or do you merely intend to purvey it as the most foolish action ever not-taken?¡±


    ¡°Right.¡± She tugged her hair a bit more frantically, and I realized, she wasn¡¯t at all a fan of this plan. Considering this was AEGIS and we were currently flying on no plan, that said a lot.


    ¡°So the fast-food building. On the far side of the gas pumps.¡±


    ¡°¡­yes?¡±


    ¡°Can you crash this car into the side of it?¡±


    Karu gave AEGIS half a glance, which was still enough to make the vehicle lurch. And then she smiled.


    ¡°I can certainly try.¡±

 323. 2252, Present Day. Interstate rest stop number 1583, Utah. Emily.

    It was a pretty normal night at Burger Off!. Almost five AM, almost time to do the rounds and make sure there weren¡¯t any druggies face-down in a toilet stall. Pretty exciting, relative to all of the nothing we were doing.


    Things were quiet, which is how things at five AM tended to be. We were a skeleton crew of one stoner cook, one beautiful, talented, and underachieving cashier, and allegedly somewhere on the premises, one supervisor. And we were all very sleepy and very bored.


    The phone in the tiny office in the back, where the supervisor allegedly was had been ringing for a minute now. That was the kind of thing the allegedly-there supervisor should be handling, as he¡¯d made it perfectly clear that neither the cook nor cashier should, under any circumstances, leave their stations. And so the phone rang, and rang, ignored. Annoying us, but ignored. Because the only thing worse than being bored at five AM was being written up for it.


    Several minutes passed, the phone still ringing. I had to wonder just who the heck was calling with such insistence, and shouted back at the cook, braving the potential wrath of the allegedly-there supervisor, offering bets on how many more times the phone would ring. Anything could become a game, if one was bored enough.


    He thought the phone should have stopped already and would quit any time. I put down twenty creds it would be another thirty seconds at least. He goaded me that thirty seconds was nothing, and I¡¯d have to put in for an extra minute, which I agreed to¡­if he was willing to play two-to-one odds.


    And then the front end of a huge armored van crashed through the wall, showering the vacant seating section with chunks of brick and concrete. We screamed, both of us, and I ducked behind the counter as our cook grabbed a fryer basket and ran into the back corner, bearing it like a sword.


    There was a moment of silence, the crumbling of mortar and distant sirens outside the only sound. I thought my heart was going to break my chest as I peeked over the counter. Clouds of dust hanging thick in the air, almost obscuring the benches I knew were only a few feet away, the beams of the van casting godlike beams in the swirling grey.


    The driver-side opened, and a woman emerged, but not like any woman I¡¯d ever seen. She wore all white, plated armor, seemingly designed for aerodynamics except for the dozens of pouches and compartments where she undoubtedly carried lots of dangerous things. Like, for example, the guns on her arms, or glowing visor, which she swept around the room with a cursory glance.


    ¡°Well, we are here,¡± she said, emerging from the front. ¡°Grab what snacks you desire, AI.¡±


    She was very beautiful and very tall and her voice was deep and resonant. I did have to wonder why she rammed into the wall during my shift, though.


    ¡°Har, har,¡± another woman said as she exited the passenger side. She slid over the bullet-cratered hood to bypass the new wall of debris they¡¯d just created. She gave me a glance, but didn¡¯t seem to care either that I existed, or that she¡¯d just flashed her pastel-canary panties at me as she maneuvered across the hood. ¡°I just need a minute with the cash registers.¡±


    ¡°Is this seriously about money?¡± the other asked. ¡°Seriously?¡±


    ¡°What the hell is this?¡± The allegedly-present supervisor appeared in the doorway from outside, where he allegedly had not been this whole time. ¡°My goddamn restaurant!¡±


    ¡°Oh it hardly qualifies,¡± the armed woman said, waving a gun at him. ¡°Have you ever considered how your gluttonous, unhealthy food toxifies and enables the slovenly youth of this world?¡±


    ¡°G-g-gun!¡± he shouted, pointing for somebody¡¯s benefit, presumably, and getting the really important part of her memo. He belatedly dove under a table, while she just shook her head. Inwardly, I agreed with both of them. But I was still hiding behind the counter, what did I know?


    The second girl, the smaller one in the flashy dress walked over to me and gave me a smile over the counter.


    It took me a moment, but I did wind up hating myself at my body¡¯s reaction.


    ¡°W-welcome to Burger Off!, may I take your order?¡± I asked, slowly regaining my feet.


    ¡°You¡¯re adorable,¡± she continued to smile at me. And I had to wonder for a second if she was the crazy one and didn¡¯t need guns. The body mods, the walking around barefoot, the ease with with she was just¡­smashing out stuff up and¡­doing whatever she was doing. I¡¯d seen a lot of crazies in this job, but none quite like her. But none were quite like each other either. ¡°I¡¯m just gonna take this, thanks,¡± she said, unplugging our register.


    I thought she meant the register, but instead she took the cables and jammed them into her hair¡­which looking closely, and seeing cables connecting to it, wasn¡¯t hair at all. So that was something.


    ¡°Will this take long?¡± a man¡¯s voice called from the vehicle. Jeez, how many people were in there?


    ¡°They¡¯re jamming all wireless,¡± she shouted back, pushing her glasses up her nose. ¡°But every business is going to have a wired connection for transactions.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± he shouted back. ¡°They¡¯re just setting up outside. Big semicircle at the moment, just outside Saga¡¯s range. It¡¯s looking¡­kinda bad.¡±


    ¡°Well you seemed curious,¡± she chimed, and then turned and gave me a diminutive shrug. ¡°I thought it was a good plan.¡±


    ¡°Um, definitely,¡± I agreed.


    ¡°I got through to Rito,¡± she suddenly shouted again, frowning now. ¡°I told her to get everyone out of Vegas ASAP. But um. I couldn¡¯t get through to Vegas.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡± He sounded mad. Or worried?


    ¡°They¡¯re cut out. Their ¡®net¡¯s been knocked out, like they¡¯re trying to do to us. Except they¡¯re stationary. Jamming, a couple relays, a couple cut lines, and boom, darkness. Either our friends are still sleeping and don¡¯t know what¡¯s coming, they¡¯ve already escaped somehow, they¡¯re currently fighting or¡­¡±


    ¡°Not a possibility.¡±


    ¡°Right.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t like¡­get on your cam-drones, or wake up a DOG or something in there?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°Off the ¡®net means off the ¡®net, Athan. I don¡¯t have a special wire running from my head to the cam-drones in the house. I am going to let Taglock know what¡¯s up at least. But¡­if Lia doesn¡¯t authorize it, he won¡¯t act, and she can¡¯t. And he probably won¡¯t want to go up against the whole of the XPCA anyway.¡±


    ¡°Inform Deej as well, if you would,¡± visor-lady added, between peering carefully at the windows. ¡°Though we face a similar conflict of motivation with the hunters as with Lia¡¯s spy friend.¡±


    ¡°Anything else?¡± she asked, drumming her fingers. ¡°This is probably the only ¡®net we¡¯ll get, so speak now or¡­never.¡±


    A man appeared halfway in the driver¡¯s door just for a moment, younger than I thought, but pretty well put-together. Unflattering coat, short brown hair. He threw his mobile at her and then popped back inside to keep yelling. ¡°Just send to every one of my contacts and let them know, I guess. Apparently just being connected to me is enough to put them in danger, the least we can do is give them a heads-up.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m also going to dump what I can about their ops right now,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure we¡¯ll just discover that hey, they¡¯re trying to kill us, but you never know.¡±


    ¡°Does it say anything about the team going after Lia?¡±


    ¡°After Moon and Tem you mean. And¡­no. Not that I¡¯m seeing. Which is deceptive given that we know they¡¯ve already cut them off the ¡®net, so they¡¯re already acting. I¡¯m sorry.¡± Her face suddenly went stony. ¡°Well shit.¡±


    ¡°What is it?¡± The other girl asked.


    ¡°They were bringing Skyweb to bear on our future position. I¡¯ve just sent it a directive to drift off-course which should buy us some time, and out here in the middle of nowhere, we¡¯re relatively safe from it¡­but if we arrive in Vegas and they wrangle it back into shape, we might be looking at death from above.¡±


    I understood maybe a quarter of the words being exchanged here, and they were all the uninteresting ones like ¡®and¡¯ and ¡®but¡¯. But I did understand Skyweb, and the fact that these three maniacs were talking about getting shot at by it and controlling it was¡­was¡­


    Well. I didn¡¯t even know. I wondered if this is what karma felt like, and all my wishes that work was less boring were happening all at once.


    The visor woman fixed us with a glare. ¡°That seems an ignoble death. Please do what you can to see that it does not transpire.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. They¡¯re also¡­readying missiles,¡± the girl replied.


    ¡°I¡¯ve shot down loads of missiles already,¡± he said. ¡°Jesus, they¡¯re everywhere out there. It¡¯s like a city on the entire horizon.¡±


    ¡°No, you¡¯ve shot down rockets,¡± she said, adjusting her glasses at him again. ¡°Missiles are launched from bases or submarines or aerial platforms, and are very large. Like, destroy a city large, or worse, depending on the warhead. I am not sure it¡¯s something you could just stand there and let smack into your shield.¡± She pushed her glasses up her nose with finality. ¡°By which I mean, I am sure it¡¯s not. The pressure wave and heat of the blast in the air surrounding you would kill you.¡±This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    ¡°Are you done there, then?¡± he asked. ¡°You know, before the blast kills me?¡±


    ¡°Just another minute,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure we¡¯re in any super urgent rush at the moment. They¡¯re not stirring outside, are they?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°Just set up and waiting.¡±


    ¡°It would figure,¡± The third said. ¡°Time is their ally; they have everything to lose by pushing the conflict forward and everything to gain by waiting for reinforcements and larger weapons and closing off our paths. Likely, given the choice, they would keep us contained here until such a time as Skyweb is aligned, or those missiles are authorized for use, and wipe us out without a face-to-face conflict.¡±


    ¡°Just getting out of here again is going to be a problem,¡± he argued. ¡°I¡¯ve no doubt they¡¯re fixing to disable the van as we speak.¡±


    ¡°To be honest, it is already fairly disabled,¡± she sighed. ¡°It is riding up on the wall at the midpoint. She is a whale of a machine and requires good contact with the ground to maneuver, and we may have beached her.¡±


    ¡°They might not know that,¡± the first girl said, pulling on her hair. ¡°Hmm.¡± She seemed to absentmindedly unplug from the cables and then examined the register she¡¯d yanked out earlier.


    ¡°If you want money, just take it and leave!¡± our allegedly-present manager shouted from under his table. The armored woman walked over and gave the table a solid boot, making him yelp like a child. I glanced backwards and found our cook still standing there with the fryer in his hands, still as a statue. Maybe he thought if he didn¡¯t move they wouldn¡¯t see him? He was such a burnout he might believe it.


    ¡°Athan, can you lend me a hand over here?¡± the girl said, hopping the counter with no apparent concern how visible this maneuver made her panties. ¡°And keep your head down, they probably have snipers in the windows.¡±


    As those words made my blood freeze, she poked at the offline register for a moment before picking up the entire freaking thing in one arm and clambering back to the van like it was nothing. ¡°I¡¯m going to see if I can get this system online off the truck¡¯s power and get the two talking. Can you clear some of the rubble so it can drive out of here?¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± he said, popping out and under the van like it was nothing, his voice just coming from a different place now. ¡°Even if you got through to Rito, I still want to get to Lia myself. We¡¯ll need the van for that.¡±


    ¡°Well. We need something. Maybe not this van,¡± the body-modder grinned.


    ¡°What¡¯d I miss?¡± A new woman¡­a girl maybe?¡­scrawny, dark-haired and bored-looking emerged as well and spoke in what was barely more than a whisper. She walked right over to the window and peered out. It was about half a second before her head snapped backwards, and then an echoing distant crack.


    I felt my body trembling all over, my heart seemed to vibrate in my chest. I blinked, over and over again, looking at the body just¡­just lying there. Blood seeping out of it. I opened my mouth but was hyperventilating too much to scream.


    She sat up, and like her friend, turned and grinned at me, adding a wink.


    ¡°Oh, is that why you guys are all staying away from the windows?¡± she stood up and waved at the sniper before snapping backwards again, another distant crack, another heart attack, this one mixed with all kinds of confusion. She had some kind of bulletproof armor, I concluded. But she was just wearing a sweater? And¡­the blood?


    I decided not to think about it, which was a convenient ability for any fast-food worker to have, especially the graveyard shift variety.


    ¡°It pains me to consider that all of my plans might hinge on that girl,¡± the woman fussing with our register fretted. ¡°But come on. We¡¯ve got only a little time to work here before they decide to start pressuring us seriously. And I have no idea how long it takes to authorize a missile strike on your own soil, but I¡¯d rather not find out first-hand.¡±


    ¡°Gotcha,¡± he replied over the shifting of cracked brick and mortar out from the van. ¡°I guess Karu¡¯s on lookout duty then. Try not to get shot.¡±


    ¡°An excellent plan as always,¡± the woman who was Karu replied, sitting behind the van and peering out, not exposing herself in the way the twice-shot girl did.


    ¡°Oh not always,¡± that girl said.


    ¡°Always.¡±


    ¡°But not always.¡±


    She sighed. ¡°Were you not earlier complaining about ruining your sweater?¡±


    ¡°You know, you¡¯re right. But today¡¯s made me realize that red is really my color, and there¡¯s really only one way to change my look out here anyway, right? A little impromptu dieing?¡±


    ¡°Saga, if that was a pun, I swear we will leave you here,¡± she threatened. The way her guns and visor glinted, I certainly wouldn¡¯t want to cross her, but the other woman just laughed.


    ¡°Empty threat, Karu,¡± the body-modder replied. ¡°Don¡¯t forget, you¡¯re the one in the doghouse right now.¡±


    ¡°I hardly need two antagonizing me at the moment,¡± Karu said. ¡°Do not side with Saga, AEGIS.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m siding with Athan,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°Don¡¯t blame me for you going on a rampage to your own damn detriment.¡±


    ¡°Guys,¡± the man ¡ª Athan probably? ¡ª called from under the van as he shoved rock. ¡°No fighting. Amongst ourselves, I mean.¡±


    ¡°Well this isn¡¯t working anyway,¡± AEGIS said, pulling the register from the driver¡¯s seat. ¡°The voltage isn¡¯t high enough in the dash to power the core, and I don¡¯t exactly have the time or parts to get it running.¡± She sighed heavily, and then picked it up and brought it back over to me, plopping it back in place at the counter.


    ¡°Um, thanks,¡± I told her.


    ¡°Emily,¡± she said, glancing at my badge. ¡°Why the heck weren¡¯t you evacuated?¡±


    ¡°I¡­didn¡¯t know this was¡­going to be a thing. Is this a drill or¡­something?¡±


    She gave me a smile I recognized as being condescending and immediately lowered my estimation of her by a notch.


    ¡°We¡¯re kinda¡­hmm. Hey, Athan, would you call us terrorists at this point?¡±


    ¡°No?¡±


    ¡°Serial killers,¡± the last girl ¡ª who must, by elimination be Saga ¡ª added. ¡°No, wait, vampire serial killers.¡±


    ¡°Yeah we¡¯re in kind of a grey area,¡± AEGIS explained turning back to me. ¡°But what¡¯s clear is the XPCA wants us dead, along with a substantial part of the Army and National Guard. I¡¯d have thought they¡¯d have gone down our route and evacuated civilians by now. Or at least called. They¡¯ve gone downhill a lot in the last hundred years,¡± she frowned.


    Maybe that phone call was important after all.


    ¡°Nothing like that. Sorry?¡±


    She laughed. ¡°Don¡¯t know why you¡¯re apologizing for getting caught up in our war zone. You seem nice. I probably shouldn¡¯t talk to you though, or the XPCA will be interrogating you for a month.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS what are we waiting for?¡± Athan called.


    ¡°For you, dummy,¡± she called back. ¡°Let me know when the van¡¯s in order.¡±


    ¡°Why not help?¡± he asked.


    She rolled her eyes. ¡°Because, honestly, we¡¯re already about as boned here as we¡¯re gonna get. We need a plan. I was being sarcastic about waiting on the bricks.¡±


    There was a clang from under the van that made AEGIS wince, which I think might have been Athan¡¯s head. He certainly swore afterwards like it was. ¡°Then what¡¯s the plan!?¡±


    ¡°Well I had this idea to use the computer here talking to the van and hook up a really rudimentary autopilot. Basically just, keep the accelerator floored. And¨C¡°


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t we use a brick,¡± he shouted, chucking one at us with surprisingly good aim for being on his back under a van. ¡°On the gas?¡±


    ¡°¨Cand putting in some basic intelligence to make it seem like we were still in there. Varying up our acceleration, adding some course divergence, that kind of thing. The XPCA would notice pretty fast if we just floored it in a straight line, especially if it ever wound up off the road and just kept going.¡±


    ¡°And what, we just hope they all chase after it then?¡± he asked, emerging, and looking a lot sweatier and dust-caked.


    ¡°No, we sneak out the back. Use Saga to find an isolated pod which can divert or distract their cameras and then¡­hitch a ride with them. Ride the convoy itself to our destination, right under their noses.¡±


    ¡°I do like that part of the plan,¡± Athan said, wiping his face as he rested. ¡°But you¡¯re right it doesn¡¯t work without a diversion. Did you come up with all this on the fly?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said, swaying a little in a way that made her dress twirl. Oh. She liked him. She was crazy and infatuated.


    ¡°Well, good job with half the plan. Let¡¯s see what else we can piece together.¡±


    Saga stood up and dusted off. ¡°Nope, plan¡¯s solid. Everyone get ready to go, we¡¯ll slip out the backdoor in the supervisor¡¯s office. He¡¯s got a little clever hidden exit that he uses to sneak out and go drinking during his shifts.¡±


    He did? The rat bastard. No wonder he never wanted to be bothered in there. Not that it really surprised me. He was, after all, only an allegedly-present supervisor, after all.


    ¡°Uh, we still need a distraction,¡± Athan said. ¡°We need some kind of AI to drive this thing.¡±


    ¡°Oh I¡¯ve got an AI,¡± she said, cracking her knuckles as she advanced on the counter. As she drew nearer, I could see that she was stained with blood, black hair to barefoot toe. And she wasn¡¯t just scrawny, she was spindly and gaunt. But none of that compared to the look in her eye. It wasn¡¯t something there, but something which wasn¡¯t. Like she saw me the same way she saw the sink of dishes behind me.


    It scared the bejesus out of me. Until suddenly, it didn¡¯t.


    ¡°Hi lover,¡± Saga said, leaning her elbows on the counter. ¡°I¡¯d like to order one of you. To go.¡±


    ¡°Saga, no,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°Leave them alone. We can figure out another way.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps you do not think our moments precious, but while we may be temporarily removed from danger, can you say the same of his sister?¡± Karu said.


    ¡°Yeah, AEGIS. Think of the children,¡± Saga grinned malevolently.


    ¡°Please,¡± AEGIS muttered. ¡°This isn¡¯t a war for ideals, not right now. There¡¯s always a smarter way. Don¡¯t drag them into it just because you¡¯re trying to drag Athan down to your level.¡±


    Athan stood up, stony-faced, even though he¡¯d wiped the dust from it. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°They¡¯re right. We¡¯ll do what we have to do. Saga¡­go ahead. Take the¡­the worst one. And blast all of this out of the others.¡±


    ¡°Pardon, gar?on,¡± Saga said. ¡°But if they use thermal or X-ray or the like, it will be a teensy bit obvious there¡¯s only one human aboard. I count us as three. And a half. We can round down.¡±


    ¡°Athan, please,¡± AEGIS turned on him. ¡°I know¡­right now you¡¯re really lost and vulnerable. And you feel like you need to do everything you can¨C¡°


    He raised a hand at her and she stopped. But only for a moment.


    ¡°¨Cbut don¡¯t let a moment of weakness scar you for the rest of your life,¡± she blurted out. ¡°Don¡¯t do something you won¡¯t be able to face tomorrow.¡±


    ¡°Such as, letting his sister die?¡± Karu crossed her arms imperiously. ¡°Fight with all of your capabilities or none of them.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fine, AEGIS,¡± he said, his voice dead and flat, as though he weren¡¯t even the same person as from a minute ago. ¡°If it kills me¡­it doesn¡¯t matter. As long as it doesn¡¯t kill her.¡±


    AEGIS shook her head and pulled at her long strands of hair, and seemed to have a lot to say but said none of it. Saga led the others into the back, leaving AEGIS alone with us. After staring at me for long moments, she finally took my hand and gave it a firm squeeze.


    ¡°I¡¯m so sorry about this,¡± she said.


    ¡°About what?¡± I asked.


    ¡°About¡­everything. You have the worst luck in the world. Please don¡¯t blame Exhumans. We¡¯re just¡­bad people, trying to do the right thing, the only way we know how.¡±


    I numbly stared at her, not understanding what was prompting this stranger to suddenly drop this intimate moment on me, before she followed the others into the back office.


    I didn¡¯t understand why the three of us left climbed into the XPCA van either, but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and the others were doing it without question. I guessed there was a good reason for it¡­it certainly felt like there was, but I couldn¡¯t remember it.


    Not that I really needed to. I decided not to think about it, which was a convenient ability for any fast-food worker to have, especially the graveyard shift variety.


    As our allegedly-present supervisor threw the van into gear, and the window radiated with spiderwebs of cracks, the sound of distant gunshots echoed out in the night. We gave each other one reassuring glance. Three familiar faces, doing what we knew was right.


    And then he floored it, and we drove straight into the lines of the softest concentration of military we could find.

 324. 2252, A few hours ago. Suburban Oregon. Rito.

    I¡¯d picked out my outfit carefully, wearing a nondescript grey hoodie and yoga pants. I was never one of those girls who wanted to grab attention or anything, but today, I was looking to like, totally avoid it. As if I could.


    But as I looked up the ratty stairs of splintered, rotting wood, and the rusty metal door at the top of it, hoping, despite the sign on it, that I was in the total wrong place, I thought I was still totes overdressed.


    Maybe if I wore a sack. Filled with lice and rats. I hated it. Hated being here. It made me feel gross.


    The door banged shut behind me when I entered, a flimsy metal echo, and the man at the cheap wooden desk glanced up from his tablet to look me up and down in a way that totally just like, doubled up that feeling. I clenched my fist on the chit in my pocket and hesitated too long. I felt stupid by the time I finally forced my feet to step up to him.


    ¡°Well hello there little girl. Welcome to Legit Loans. Are you looking for a little pocket cash?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m here to pay off my mom¡¯s debt,¡± I told him, slamming my palm against the desk. It was a move I¡¯d practiced in my mind a zillion times, but he didn¡¯t even like, blink. Which wasn¡¯t how it was supposed to go at all.


    ¡°Sure thing, little lady. Come with me into the conference room and we can get the two of you all sorted out.¡± His chair screeched across the vinyl as he stood, and he held a door for me that lead even further into his nasty, grody den.


    I tightened my grip and stepped through. And then had to wait for him to show me which way to go. It was the room just on my right, which was¡­totally not what I¡¯d call a ¡®conference room¡¯.


    Like, it had all the pieces of it, but they were all just garbage. I couldn¡¯t imagine Mom coming in here and signing paperwork under the cheap, ratty unframed posters of smiling families and the little moldy-looking carpet holding up a folding table and chairs. But this is where the bills were return-addressed. This had to be the place.


    ¡°Have a seat,¡± he said, as he sat in the one closest to the door. To the exit. I threw myself into it and he gave me a wry smile before pulling out his tablet again.


    ¡°Account-holder¡¯s name?¡±


    ¡°Harper Olsson.¡±


    ¡°Relation?¡±


    I narrowed my eyes at him. ¡°She¡¯s my mom, I told you.¡±


    ¡°You know,¡± he said, like leaning forward carefully and speaking slowly, like he was patiently explaining an important life lesson to me ¡°you can get a lot more done by being pleasant than rude. Can you be pleasant for me, little girl?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not a little girl.¡±


    He smiled and leaned back. ¡°What are you? Sixteen?¡±


    ¡°Seriously, dude? I¡¯m twenty one.¡±


    ¡°Good age,¡± he said. He licked his lips, staring without blinking, and I felt a shiver go down me. Seriously, had Mom talked to this same creep and decided borrowing money was a good idea? I knew she was desperate, but nobody should be, like, this desperate. After like, forever, he turned to his tablet and read it at me. ¡°Says here your mother has quite the debt. Only barely making minimum payments. How are you proposing to settle this with us?¡±


    ¡°With money,¡± I said quickly.


    ¡°Well of course, sweetie. I meant how with money. We can put you on a payment plan that you¡¯ll be able to manage. If you¡¯d like to save your mother the heartache, I might be able to pull some strings for you and get it transferred out of her name even.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I told him. ¡°Lump sum payment of the rest of the debt. I¡¯m not signing any more weaseling bull of yours.¡±


    He smiled patiently again and glanced down at the tablet. ¡°I don¡¯t think so sweetie.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not your sweetie either.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m just trying to be nice. Don¡¯t feel you need to bite my head off, love.¡±


    ¡°And I am definitely not your love. Just call me Rito.¡±


    ¡°Whatever you say, little girl,¡± he said. ¡°Are you aware just how much money your mommy owes us? It¡¯s a little more than I think you¡¯d save up from allowance.¡±


    ¡°I told you already. I¡¯m a grown woman, and I make my own money. I¡¯m paying it.¡±


    ¡°Is that so? What do you do?¡± Again, his eyes roamed me in a way that made me feel sick. I felt nausea rising in my throat. It was like, everything in this office was designed to be disgusting and off-putting, and the guy most of all.


    ¡°I work. That¡¯s it. Just tell me the number so I can pay it and go.¡±


    ¡°You said you were twenty-one, hmm? But your body is so small, so fit, and your face is like a child¡¯s. Or an angel¡¯s.¡± He smiled at me again. ¡°That¡¯s a compliment, little girl, you can take it as one.¡± I didn¡¯t respond, but I did dig my fingernails into my palms so hard it hurt. ¡°Thing is, little girl, your mommy came in here plenty of times with a sob story when she couldn¡¯t make her payments. Talking about her little daughter, Rito, who was chasing her dreams going to art school, and if we were just more patient with the payments, she was supposed to graduate soon, and she¡¯d have a job making good money, and it was some kind of investment.¡±


    ¡°My mom would never sell out my future to you,¡± I spat at him.


    ¡°Oh don¡¯t worry, she didn¡¯t. Didn¡¯t promise us anything but what we¡¯re owed. I was just being conversational. Though¡­since it comes up, it isstrange that you¡¯re, what, third year at art school, your dear mommy is shouldering your student loans on top of everything else, and somehow, you¡¯ve been working to save up enough money to pay it all off? I¡¯d think if that were the case, mommy dearest might have let it slip when she was talking about your bright future we¡¯re all working very hard to produce.¡±


    He laced his fingers at me and leaned back, giving me a look of complete serenity. I wondered if he did a lot of drugs.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± I told him. ¡°I have the money, you want it or not?¡±


    ¡°No, not really,¡± he said. ¡°I think your mommy and us have already got quite a mutually beneficial arrangement going on here. I wouldn¡¯t want to sour it by accepting dirty, illegal money from her daughter. Earned doing who-knows-what kinds of dangerous things. It¡¯d be irresponsible of us.¡±


    I seethed at him on the inside. This¡­this jerk just wanted to keep Mom in the poorhouse forever. I wasn¡¯t stupid. I knew how much interest he charged. I felt my blood boiling its way right up into my brain and I stood and glared down at him¡­well¡­level with him¡­with all the fury I had burning inside me. This absolute friggin¡¯ jerk. I hated him so much.


    And he just sat there and smiled, and I really blew my lid. I didn¡¯t know what I was saying or doing, but I slapped my hand on the table and shouted. ¡°I¡¯m here to pay off my mom¡¯s debt!¡±


    ¡°You already said that. But it doesn¡¯t change our responsibility to our clients¨C¡°


    I slammed the table again, and again. ¡°I¡¯m here¡­to pay off¡­my mom¡¯s debt!¡±


    He sighed heavily. ¡°Look honey, maybe if you were willing to meet us halfway on this, I could figure out a way forward for you. I really shouldn¡¯t be, but if you were willing to assume some of the debt yourself, or could pay at a higher rate¡­a little extra can carry us a long way, you know?¡±


    Finally I¡¯d had it. I slapped the table again, but this time, with the chit in my hand. ¡°How¡¯s that for extra?¡± I jeered at him. He peered at it, twisting his head like the snake he was, to try to see between my fingers.


    I looked down and all I could read on the display was a lot of zeroes. A disgusting number of zeroes. More money than anyone had any need of or right to. And if I could make it all go away for this, I¡¯d do it in a heartbeat. For the first time since coming here, he seemed off-put, and I felt superiority fill me right up as this little maggot struggled to read between my fingers.


    ¡°How¡¯s that?¡± I said. ¡°That should cover it, and all your ¡®extras¡¯, shouldn¡¯t it? So are we done here?¡±


    He gently pried up one of my fingers, finished reading, and then sat back in his chair again, his face impassive. And then, after a minute, started to laugh. Which I didn¡¯t like at all.


    ¡°Where would a little girl like you get half a million credits?¡± he laughed. ¡°Please, do let me know. Selling cookies?¡±Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    ¡°I earned it, and that¡¯s what matters,¡± I shouted at him, totally pissed that he could even try to take that one moment from me. ¡°So do you want it or not?¡±


    ¡°Like I said little miss, I¡¯m not sure we can accept your money. If this is stolen or traced back to something untoward, the chit gets deactivated, and then what am I left with?¡±


    ¡°The same thing you have now,¡± I told him. ¡°Threatening Mom every week.¡±


    ¡°Well, when you put it that way,¡± he smiled, and extended his arm. I hesitated, loathe to touch him, but this was like, what I¡¯d come in here for. I took a breath and then shook his hand. It was just as gross as I thought.


    ¡°Charming,¡± he said. ¡°But hand over the credit, please.¡±


    ¡°Oh, right.¡± I did, and he immediately rechecked the balance. I felt that satisfaction again, even though I remembered the hundreds of times I¡¯d done the same. All the months I¡¯d been stockpiling whatever credits I earned, digging through Mom¡¯s files to figure out what money needed to go where¡­that whole time, I¡¯d checked and re-checked this chit until I was worried I¡¯d wear it out.


    ¡°This is a lot of money,¡± he said, standing. ¡°I¡¯m going to go deposit it and finalize your paperwork. Stay right here.¡±


    ¡°Oh I¡¯m not going anywhere,¡± I told him, crossing my arms. He smiled again.


    It was a few minutes later when he came back and sat down with his casual air reclaimed, which clashed with the first words out of his mouth. ¡°You know, counterfeiting is a serious crime.¡±


    I blinked at him. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°You honestly expect me to believe that a little girl like you just happens to have half a million c¡¯s in their pocket? After all we¡¯ve discussed about your prospects already.¡±


    ¡°That chit was genuine! You checked the balance yourself.¡±


    ¡°And it was a very well-made fake, too. But when you work in the industry as long as I have, you get an eye for things.¡± He smiled his condescending smile at me. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry you had to find out like this. Where did you earn it? Is there any chance it was just a simple mistake and you could demand recompense?¡±


    ¡°It was a real chit!¡± I shouted. ¡°It wasn¡¯t fake, you saw it yourself!¡±


    I began to feel panic edging in, making my lungs feel small and useless. Stupid, improbable thoughts dashed through my head. Lia had duped me? She was just a girl, even younger than I was. This guy was a skeeze but he was right that was no amount of money I should ever own¡­so how could she?


    I shook my head, mad at myself for how easily he¡¯d made me doubt myself. This guy was a grade-A jerk and I already knew it. He was just lying to my face!


    ¡°I¡¯m calling the cops,¡± I told him, mobile in my hand. ¡°You took my money. The biometric logs will show that.¡±


    ¡°I already called them and explained the situation,¡± he shrugged. ¡°Not pleasant when someone¡¯s trying to pass off counterfeit money at an honest establishment.¡±


    ¡°But it wasn¡¯t counterfeit,¡± I shouted. ¡°And when the cops get here, they¡¯ll see, and they¡¯ll take you to jail for all the shady garbage you pull around here! And I¡¯ll sue you for every credit you¡¯ve ever fleeced from Mom!¡±


    ¡°Is that so?¡± he said, with a wry smile. ¡°When it comes to the chit¡¯s history, the police will probably be wondering where you got it from, even if the biometrics do hold up. Tell me, did you pay taxes on it? Do you have work statements? How would your ¡¯employer¡¯ feel about suddenly having their finances investigated? And you, right in the middle of all of that, dragging your poor mother even lower.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know my heart could feel any colder or fall even lower, but every word he said was like he knew exactly what I was and what I¡¯d done. His eyes looked right through me, past my hoodie and my face struggling to remain calm, right into me. And I just froze.


    His fingers danced, and between them, I saw a chit ¡ª my chit ¡ª spinning. I made a grab at it and he easily pulled away with arms twice as long as mine. But when it wasn¡¯t moving anymore, I could see¡­it wasn¡¯t my chit. It was¡­it only had a couple hundred creds on it¡­but more¡­it just looked off. The color. The holo didn¡¯t float in exactly the right place.


    My heart plummeted and I felt the blood leave my face.


    ¡°So you understand,¡± he said, calm and cool and cruel as anything. ¡°What will the police think when they get here and see what you¡¯re trying to pass off? It¡¯d be a real blow to your prospects if you had a criminal record. Oh¡­and what would Mommy think?¡±


    I stumbled backwards into the chair. No¡­


    ¡°Now,¡± he said, turning the tablet around for me to examine. ¡°We can make this all go away if you just sign here¨C¡°


    It was later that night when I woke up¡­though I¡¯d hardly like, call what I was doing sleeping. Just kind of like, passed out from crying too much. My mobile was blowing up like crazy though, and since I was already up, I thought I¡¯d take it.


    > top priority ¡ª absolutely urgent, evacuate everyone from Vegas residence


    > will pay whatever you want


    > please help


    From AEGIS.


    I shook my head at the little square of yellow light. Pay whatever you want. What was the point in that? What did money even mean? It didn¡¯t do anything. It was just a set of numbers that could ruin you. Just something you traded your life for, until someone took it away from you.


    I thought long and hard about just ignoring it and going back to sleep, or back to crying, really. She sounded desperate and pathetic, but so was I. I wished more than anything for today just to have never happened. That me and all my stupid ideas and mistakes would just disappear. I was such an idiot, all I¡¯d done is make everything worse.


    But AEGIS had also said please. And that was the first decent thing anyone had said to me all day. As much as I wanted to pretend I didn¡¯t exist, the fact was, people like her who could be decent were counting on me. It made sense that if I really was just stupid garbage, I should be helping out those people who weren¡¯t. At least I¡¯d have done something with my day other than screw up.


    I could only hope that the universe dug my karma and decided to pay the loan shark in kind.


    I blinked a little as I reappeared, but to my eyes I¡¯d just gone from one dark room to another. Lia¡¯s bedroom was a little bigger and a little messier than mine, and at first, I thought I was just creeping on her, showing up in her room in the middle of the night unannounced.


    And then I heard a faint roaring and booming outside. And saw her stir. Saw what I thought was her, I realized.


    ¡°Rito?¡± she asked, the same surprise I always heard when I moved stuff. ¡°Oh my God, what are you doing here? How¡¯d you find out? ¡­Never mind, just get us out.¡±


    Her voice was a bit distorted and I could hardly make it out as hers, coming from a plain white mask that covered her whole face. ¡°Lia?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s me.¡± She pulled up her mask and I saw the familiar face glowing in the dark.


    But what was making it glow was what really caught me. She was propped up against a wall, lying on her back on the floor, facing the bedroom door like she expected it to fly open any second. And across her body was a gun¡­if you could even call it that, easily six feet from barrel to stock, the fancy scope of which illuminated her face in the dark.


    ¡°Rito, get us out,¡± she pleaded. ¡°Everyone. Tem too, if you can.¡±


    I was about to ask what was going on when I heard something¡­I¡¯d never heard before. It sounded like metal scraping on a chalkboard, but I heard it with my whole body. And then a boom, a big one, and I felt that with my whole body too as the house shuddered.


    ¡°What was that?¡±


    ¡°XPCA. And Tem. And Moon,¡± Lia said. ¡°It¡¯s war, the whole block is ducked. Get us all out, please. Now. Please.¡±


    She turned her head to the wall and waited. I had so many other questions, but another explosion jolted me into acting, and I just sent her off. And then I realized I didn¡¯t know who all I was getting out here, which was stupid of me. She said Tem and Moon at least. And I knew Chiho and Saga lived here, and Athan and Whitney recently.


    I was counting people in my head when I stepped out of the room and just¡­stopped.


    The faint roar I¡¯d been hearing since I arrived wasn¡¯t a far-off car, it was fire. It was everywhere. And silently filling the sky, flashes of white and violet so bright, I couldn¡¯t get the afterimages out of my eyes, streaks of pure white in pure blackness.


    The block wasn¡¯t ducked, it was gone. So was half the house. Holes seemed burned right through the ceiling, Athan¡¯s room was completely levelled, just rubble where the corner of the house had been. I spun on the spot, trying to take it in, and everywhere I looked I saw walls torn down or burning up, white flashes making it hard to see in the firelight.


    The tree in the backyard that Saga always sat under was burning. There were dozens of vehicles on the street outside, all scorched and blackened, charred refuse surrounding them. Half the house was just gone, I could sort of see into the garage from here, and the once-shiny machines arrayed so neatly were all caked in soot and buried under a collapsing roof.


    And then the smell of it hit me, all at once, like I could only take in one sense at a time. There was smoke, yeah, tons of it. Enough to make me choke. And sulfur and ash, or gunpowder or something. But over all of that, a smell that made my heart stop and brought me back to a place I never wanted to be. Back to staring down at a friend¡¯s lifeless body again, Talon, face-down in his own carpet, in his own apartment, in his own blood.


    I realized some of the charred refuse around the vehicles wasn¡¯t just refuse. It had a face, half-melted off. Limbs twisted in self-defense, fused in place when they died. As my eyes roamed, I saw it wasn¡¯t just some of the refuse, it was all of it. It was people. Exosuits, military uniforms, men and women, all burned and twisted together into lumps, barely recognizable, just faces and hands here and there, as the fires still burned across their blackened bodies.


    I felt my heart literally stop. My lungs just gave up on moving. My whole body seemed to shut down as I realized¡­there were bodies everywhere. It wasn¡¯t just those. It was everything. Everywhere I turned, suddenly I saw death creeping out of it. I screamed. And then I choked as I threw up while screaming, my scream and the splatter of my sick too quiet to be heard over the fire and the explosions and the sound of the sky tearing with the flashes.


    There were more flashes and more explosions, and listening now, I could hear people in the distance crying out as the blasts hit, laser beams as wide as a car, scarring the earth. Making more bodies. Spilling the smell of their blood into the air until it caked every inch of me.


    The ground came up at me suddenly, and I realized I collapsed and shuddered, but even the carpet in the hall had blood on it. Like Talon¡¯s. It was everywhere. I had to escape. I had to be anywhere but here. Here was hell.


    I was in the dark again, but this dark was cool and quiet. Lia stirred next to me crouching under the schoolhouse floorboards. In the minute it took her to notice me I just trembled. Held myself and trembled and felt my hot tears.


    ¡°Rito? Where are the others?¡± she asked. ¡°Where¡¯s Chiho? And Whitney? And Tem and Moon?¡±


    I couldn¡¯t hear her over the screaming in my head. I just sat and trembled and held myself and knew, as much pain as was in my life, as unfair I found the world, I knew nothing. Nothing in my life could ever ever compare to that hell I¡¯d just seen.


    ¡°Rito, I need you to listen to me,¡± she said, throwing her mask on the ground with her gun. ¡°Listen, please. We need to save the others, okay? We can¡¯t just leave them.¡±


    She touched my arm and I recoiled. It was like fire. Everything was like fire and blood.


    She said other things, in a soothing voice, pleading with me. And then she yelled. And when that still couldn¡¯t reach me, she pulled my hair, screamed in my face, hit me, crying.


    And then she froze, looking up. There was a cracking sound, and the trapdoor opened above us. Lia dove for her rifle, but something shot into her with a whooshing sound, and then she cramped into a ball and shuddered as it clicked with electrical malice.


    ¡°Found ¡¯em,¡± a man said, landing in the dirt next to us. He levelled something at me as well while another man dropped down. ¡°Are you going to cooperate or do you want to be tazed too?¡±


    I said nothing. I didn¡¯t hear him or see him, his gun or his black XPCA uniform. All I saw was blood and fire and the bodies, so many bodies, and all belonging to Talon.


    ¡°Well makes my job easier,¡± he said, cuffing Lia. ¡°Pack ¡¯em up and keep waiting to see if any more show up. Busy night.¡±

 325. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas outskirts. Athan.

    We¡¯d been lucky and somehow our plan seemed to work for the most part. There were a few XPCA who had to go, and a few of them who had to be incited to incidents of sabotage in order for our presence to go unnoticed, but it looked like with all the other damage we¡¯d been causing and the general disarray of getting hundreds of soldiers activated and mobile, nobody noticed a few more missing or broken things. Or people.


    After all, right now, they weren¡¯t looking for us. They were chasing us. They thought.


    Saga, Karu, AEGIS, and I all sat in the back of the van next to two other XPCA, while two more sat in the front, driving and keeping up the comms chatter expected of them. None of them did a thing to recognize our existence, treating us like Tem had blanketed us and muted us as well.


    Which also led to us ignoring each other, bizarrely. It was hard to speak up when feeling like you didn¡¯t exist to half of the room, and more than once, anything we said was just spoken right over by the guards who didn¡¯t¡­couldn¡¯t¡­recognize that we were already talking.


    We were also tired and saving our strength for when we arrived¡­or when we stopped. Our decoys had, so far, done a fantastic job of driving as recklessly and quickly as possible towards our destination, but without our powers and weaponry, it was only a matter of time before the XPCA decided to try their luck again and blew them away.


    But so far it¡¯d been a quiet ten minutes. We had to assume they were setting up some kind of trap or roadblock ahead and were just biding their time until then, and I was happy it wouldn¡¯t be us springing the trap at least.


    And tried not to think about the poor bastards we were making do it for us.


    More likely, the convoy had just gotten its shit together a little better and wasn¡¯t going to keep risking people driving into Saga¡¯s influence. Which was just a bit ironic, because by all hanging back, they were all unknowing concentrated inside of it right now, where she was working furtively to compel as many XPCA as she could get her brain around for when things did reach a head.


    So yeah. It was quiet, relatively. The doors were closed, the van wasn¡¯t getting shot, people weren¡¯t screaming about incoming rockets. Saga was focused on work and the rest of us were just idling. Karu checked her guns and resupplied from the munitions on-hand as best she could. AEGIS was back on the ¡®net through the XPCA¡¯s network and was checking things discreetly. And I watched the blackness rush by out the window, reassuring myself constantly that this was the fastest way to Lia.


    ¡°Still no word from Rito,¡± AEGIS said with a frown. ¡°For a bit there, her mobile was gone, which meant she probably jumped somewhere and it lost track of the relays¡­or maybe even means she made it to Vegas and was in the jamming. But now it¡¯s just refusing to talk.¡±


    ¡°So it¡¯s off?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Probably.¡±


    ¡°Why would she do that? That makes no sense.¡±


    AEGIS pulled at her hair. ¡°We don¡¯t know what it¡¯s like over there right now. Maybe¡­she¡¯s just¡­trying to keep it from waking everyone up?¡±


    Karu snorted and AEGIS gave her a sideways glare. ¡°I¡¯m sure everyone¡¯s fine,¡± she insisted.


    ¡°You can¡¯t get eyes on the situation or anything?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°I told you. ¡®Net traffic is being monitored pretty closely on the op. Nobody here is supposed to be looking at pictures of puppies or anything right now, or even necessarily supposed to be on the civilian ¡®net in general. If I started pulling other ops information, I¡¯d trigger an alert, I almost guarantee it. And considering how¡­fragile the situation is¡­I don¡¯t want to push anything.¡±


    I watched as a parking lot emerged from the darkness and whipped past us, gas stations and strip malls materializing as well, the yellow lights we¡¯d seen in the distance becoming realized as buildings and landmarks.


    ¡°They will act soon,¡± Karu said, checking the sights of one gun before slotting it onto her wrist hardpoint with a lethally-satisfying clack. ¡°It behooves them to resolve the matter in less-populous areas, to reduce overhead of evacuations if nothing else.¡±


    ¡°And how are we doing?¡± AEGIS asked.


    I looked up at her. ¡°Me?¡±


    She smiled back sweetly. ¡°No. Was asking Saga actually, but¡­how areyou doing, Athan?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter.¡±


    She reached across the aisle and patted me gently on the knee. ¡°It does to me.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve got¡­a decent force,¡± Saga said. ¡°But basic math tells me we need half to stand a chance and we¡¯re way fucking short on that.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll even the odds,¡± I growled.


    ¡°We¡¯re not trying to eradicate them,¡± AEGIS fretted. ¡°We only need enough to sow discord and make them unable to contain and pursue. It¡¯s not a war.¡±


    ¡°Look outside,¡± Karu said. ¡°Look within this vehicle, at the faceplates of these soldiers, at the arms they bear. What would you say they are dressed for? A Sunday picnic?¡±


    ¡°They are dressed for an Exhuman event,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°Which this is not.¡±


    ¡°Is it not?¡± Karu asked. ¡°How many have died already to Ashton or to our Sino? How many has she just gripped in her thrall?¡±


    AEGIS crossed her arms. ¡°Well Exhuman events are some Exhuman deciding to go postal because of a power disparity. Athan¡¯s just reacting as any person would to his loved ones being in danger.¡±


    Karu snorted. ¡°As any person would? I believe you may wish to undergo a social recalibration, little robot. If every situation of danger brought their families rushing pell-mell across the globe, as it were, slaughtering all who stood in their way, the world would implode into anarchy in a heartbeat.¡±


    ¡°You know what I mean.¡±


    ¡°Pointless hyperbole does not benefit the situation. Exaggerating the state of the world to provide Ashton an illusion of normalcy does him no favors.¡±


    ¡°Well, neither does your blood-mania of killing everything in our way,¡± she fumed. ¡°I just want this whole situation put to rest and everyone safe, but you guys seem to be taking it as a personal challenge to get him and everyone around as fucked up as you can manage.¡±


    ¡°I am doing nothing,¡± Karu replied, crossing her own arms now. ¡°All I provide is experience and context for the inevitable course which Ashton follows.¡±


    ¡°Inevitable? This is inevitable?¡±


    ¡°Conflict is inevitable. And when as powerful as Ashton, that conflict will be magnified.¡±


    ¡°And then what? Just because he¡¯s strong and they¡¯re not, he kills them all?¡±


    ¡°Do you witness something else unfolding? Even despite your efforts to divert into more pacifistic routes, he follows the most direct path, as all do. And if that path ends the paths of untold others,¡± she shrugged ¡°that is only natural.¡±


    ¡°Death and killing is not only natural. It¡¯s a failure,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°It¡¯s a failure of your own strength or your own endurance or your own principles. It¡¯s you saying ¡®it¡¯s easier for me to kill this person than to deal with the consequences of them being alive.¡¯ It¡¯s lazy. And it¡¯s the result of poor planning and poor execution, not a natural inevitability.¡±


    Karu started to respond when I reached back across the aisle and touched AEGIS on the knee, her skin soft and warm under my fingertips.


    ¡°AEGIS, I love you, and I think you¡¯re right and I agree,¡± I told her. Karu¡¯s mouth snapped closed and she watched me through her burning visor. ¡°And maybe this all could have been avoided if I was smarter or stronger or better. But I¡¯m not, and I¡¯m also not willing to risk Lia¡¯s life just because I¡¯m weak¡¯. You¡¯re right that it¡¯s wrong. But sometimes, we have to do the wrong thing anyway.¡±


    She seemed taken aback, and sat back wordlessly, one hand at her breast and the fingertips of the other gently touching her lips. I saw her mouth the word ¡®love¡¯ to herself and sighed.


    ¡°We¡¯re here,¡± Saga said. ¡°Buckle up boy and girls.¡±


    Strange as it was to have her being the serious one, it was an interesting change of pace. All around us, the convoy began to slow, the damaged van in the distance speeding away and gaining distance. Comms chatter between the soldiers among us erupted into a series of checks and affirmations and different units reported their status and readiness for the next step.


    For a minute it just looked like they were letting the van go. It continued, unhindered, shooting off into the burgeoning sprawl of a town¡¯s edge.


    And then the front windshield went white. I squinted, and then closed my eyes, and then put my hand over them, but even through that, I couldn¡¯t get the white out of my eyes. It was like the sun had landed in front of us, though it lasted only a moment, except in my afterimages. After it faded, the black of the sky seemed to creep back in, melting back into darkness, the colors seeping in like a towel soaking in water in a puddle.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    And in the middle of it all, framed by the lights of the town I hoped had been evacuated, which looked dark compared to the light in the center, a towering pillar of smoke, tinged red like a flaring ember. Even inside the van, even holding on, the shockwave hit me hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs and making my eyes water as I was shoved back into my seat. AEGIS held my ears before the boom rattled the van and all inside it.


    It wasn¡¯t a mushroom cloud, just a huge plume of smoke and fire. But it didn¡¯t need to be to ensure that our unfortunate friends from Burger Off! were all now just ash and dust.


    I felt the familiar swelling inside me and pushed it back down. They were dead and it was my fault. I¡¯d catalogue that guilt with the rest I¡¯d piled up today. It could wait.


    ¡°Are we ready?¡± I asked.


    Saga nodded. ¡°In about five minutes the impact zone will be habitable again and they¡¯ll all move in to secure the area and check for survivors. That¡¯s when we¡¯ll make our move.¡±


    ¡°Five minutes,¡± I said, feeling like it may as well be an hour.


    The seconds seemed to scrape past, Karu checking and re-checking her guns, AEGIS tapping her fingers in the air, Saga staring into nothing with rapt concentration on her face, and the incessant chatter of the XPCA comms.


    Every second was just another moment something might happen to Lia. Another instant the ghosts of those whom I¡¯d killed today could catch up to me. Every second spent sitting still was just torture, as I felt we were slipping away, falling backwards. Losing. All those deaths, for what? So I could hurry up and waste five minutes? So Lia could die while I sat here doing nothing?


    It made no sense, I knew. It wasn¡¯t like I could get out and walk the rest of the way any faster. But doing nothing hurt.


    It seemed an eternity of battling back emotions and realizations, AEGIS giving me concerned glances and Saga shooting me irritated ones, before finally the driver took us forward again, following the lights of the vehicles in front as the entire convoy mobilized. Slowly, at normal driving speeds now, we crept onward, drawing ever closer to the newly-formed crater, fire still burning at the bottom.


    Suddenly the men around us rose, exosuits whirring, as they moved in unnatural unison to the back door and exited, stumbling only slightly as they hit the moving road. The last one out spun as he departed, slamming the doors shut as he fell to the asphalt, and I realized, he probably landed pretty hard and hurt himself. All so that none of us had to stand up and close the doors of the moving vehicle.


    People were just a tool to us now, I guess.


    Questioning radio chatter flared up the second they emerged, and it turned to panic as all of those in Saga¡¯s thrall suddenly opened fire on the others. Shouts of confusion and terror as XPCA solemnly turned on one another filled the air. Demands for order and updates cut short as the hijacked operatives made a point to wipe out as much leadership as possible in their deadly opening volley.


    And our driver just threw the van into gear and floored it, driving around the crater and out of the emerging carnage, leaving the XPCA to sort out their own turmoil by themselves.


    I turned to look out the rear window but AEGIS was already there, rising and putting her hand on my cheek to turn my face towards her eyes instead.


    ¡°You don¡¯t need to see that,¡± she said, her eyes burning as bright as the blast. ¡°You don¡¯t need to punish yourself.¡±


    I tried to rise anyway but she just locked her fingers around the buckle of my seatbelt and wouldn¡¯t let it go.


    ¡°AEGIS, come on,¡± I told her. ¡°People are dying because of me. The least I can do is see them off.¡±


    ¡°It does nobody any good. Just look forward to the people you¡¯re trying to save. Looking back won¡¯t help anyone.¡±


    I fell silent and stared at my feet, but she didn¡¯t let go of my buckle, sitting next to me while she held on. The screams in the comms already told me everything though. It was so much worse than I ever thought it¡¯d be.


    I knew Saga didn¡¯t have time to do a good job with them. She needed to put a compel in them so that it would stick around after we drove out of range, and she needed to do it as quickly as possible to hit as many as she could. There wouldn¡¯t be time for nuance or strategy beyond who they should focus on killing first. The simplest trigger and mental overwrite she could manage¡­when the order came, kill all the XPCA who weren¡¯t doing the same.


    Saga had told me often while she worked on my brain that the hard part was leaving the brain intact afterwards. Stitching a specific compel into a person¡¯s thoughts while leaving the thoughts unperturbed was difficult. Turning someone into a mindless killing machine for the rest of their lives, someone who didn¡¯t even know they had a family, didn¡¯t understand the concept of guilt or mercy, someone who was death, and only that¡­well that was easier.


    And from the sounds on the comms, it was more brutal than I could imagine. They had nothing in them but the urge to kill everything. And a human being dedicated to one single purpose was a fearsome thing indeed. And then I imagined there being a few dozen of them, and imagined the ends they would go to, imagined the horrible deaths that only a truly remorseless killer could execute, and only then did the sounds on the comms begin to make a bit of sense.


    Any one of them, I realized, was like Dragon. Just a monster that produced death. And Saga had spewed dozens of them into the world. None of them would survive¡­none of them could survive, unless they succeeded in slaughtering the whole world¡­but the fact that I hated Dragon so much, that we¡¯d worked so hard to find him, to fight him, to kill him¡­and then we could sow dozens more over most of an hour, it made me sick with myself in a way that wouldn¡¯t go down, wouldn¡¯t be pushed aside.


    And with it, all of the rest of my feelings seemed to burst from confinement as well. All the hundreds already maimed or killed, the hundred miles of road we¡¯d turned into a warzone, we prompted a fucking missile strike in the heart of some shitty roadside town, out of desperation to keep us from reaching the suburbs and cities which were currently whipping by outside. To say nothing of those three innocents, who I¡¯d knowingly mindfucked to their own execution.


    All that death and carnage, for what? Because to me, my sister was worth more than any number of other people? Did I even consider Lia¡¯s feelings in this? Was all of this slaughter all for me?


    Something grabbed my face and I realized it was AEGIS. My vision swam but through it I saw burning yellow eyes in front of me, eyes brimming with tears as they stared into me.


    The eyes got closer and closer to me. And then suddenly her lips met mine, warm and soft in a way which was completely incompatible with my current thoughts. I tried to push away, tried to¡­breathe. My mind just spun and spun and spun and spun. The belt slipped off the motor. It turned, and nothing moved.


    She tilted her head slightly, her nose brushing my cheek, her lips never leaving mine. She tasted sweet, smelled like eraser shavings. The hand grabbing my chin moved to the back of my head, fingers lacing through my hair as she pushed herself deeper into the kiss, our breath coming in shudders through our noses, hot on each other¡¯s skin.


    And still she pressed in closer to me, which I didn¡¯t understand. There was no space between us at all, but still she pressed forward, until all of her and all of me were impossible to distinguish, just heat and togetherness, and the painful stab of the seat belt buckle still in her hands, still forbidding me to leave or to look away.


    My body trembled. My stomach dropped, and I felt a heat inside me almost as hot as she was, as her wet lips pressed against mine, tongues sliding across each other, hand desperately clutching at me, pulling me ever inward, short, desperate half-breaths, steamy with our mingling heat.


    And then it was over. My body took breaths without me. AEGIS hovered in front of me, eyes still burning, still swimming with tears that still hadn¡¯t fallen. Behind her, I saw that Karu had taken her feet, her face twitching under her visor, but in all the time of the kiss, she hadn¡¯t managed a single step closer.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± AEGIS whispered, her breath still ragged, still close, still hot on me. ¡°I can¡¯t stand to see you so hurt. I didn¡¯t know what else to do.¡±


    My mind felt so knocked on its ass that it took me a minute to remember what I was hurt about. My entire life seemed divided in two ¡ª the time before and the time after that kiss, and the only thing which bridged them was AEGIS. Thoughts, feelings, guilt¡­all of it had been drained out of me, pulled through my lips by that beautiful woman.


    So I sat there, feeling stupid and empty and full and dumb. My mind went from careening wildly out of control to frozen solid in a skipped heartbeat, and my panic, my guilt¡­they went back to the confines of the corners of my mind and locked themselves back up, as silent and bewildered as I was.


    ¡°Don¡¯t hate me, okay?¡± she whispered.


    ¡°How could I ever do that?¡±


    She smiled at me a little. ¡°It¡­that¡­¡± she laughed. She was blushing madly. ¡°Um. Everything I¡¯ve ever learned or thought, I just kinda¡­threw out the window there. Running your life. Giving you space. Planning things out. Forcing you into¡­things.¡±


    I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that it¡¯d been okay, that she didn¡¯t need tears in her eyes because it was all going to be okay. But I didn¡¯t have the words. All I could think was how familiar that kiss had been, how I hadn¡¯t been here, but transported back by her touch, by her smell, to a time when things were simpler, things were right.


    Things were¡­a thing. Between her and me. A love which had died with her.


    But this wasn¡¯t her. But at the same time, it was. For all the things the prior AEGIS had done to me, she¡¯d never once made my heart skip as that kiss had done.


    ¡°Well if you¡¯re done sucking face,¡± Saga cut in, ¡°We¡¯re coming up on Vegas soon. In the next ten minutes.¡±


    Karu sat back down and tried to rub her eyes, fingers jamming into her visor instead. I finally looked out the back window and saw nothing of our mess back there, lost in the distance. A few XPCA vehicles chased us, but it was just a paltry handful, the huge majority of the force lost in the chaos.


    I sat back in my seat, my mind just¡­buzzing. Approximating thought, but unable to reach it. Like I¡¯d been overstimulated, and then AEGIS kiss had been too much on top of it all and just dumped the contents of my whole brain on the ground, where they sat, looking distant and pointless.


    We¡¯d be at Vegas soon. And we¡¯d deal with whatever we found there. We¡¯d pick up the others, ditch the XPCA, and be fine. It wasn¡¯t a panic situation. Heck, AEGIS got through to Rito earlier, it was entirely possible the whole thing was already sorted. Rito might be a bit scaredy and a bit dim but she kept her appointments at least.


    ¡°Oh¡­oh man,¡± Saga gasped.


    ¡°What?¡± Karu snapped. ¡°What now?¡±


    Saga just pointed out the front windshield, thin arm steady towards the horizon we were headed towards.


    A storm, I thought at first. Lightning. But lightning didn¡¯t flash like that, lightning meandered, jagged through the sky. These were pure, monochromatic streaks, like God was smudging the air with a divine brush loaded with titanium white. And flashing in counterpoint, harder to see against the black sky, streaks of deep purple.


    ¡°Those are Skyweb,¡± AEGIS said, pointing at one of the darker streaks.


    ¡°And those are Tem,¡± I said, recognizing the white, brilliant beams for what they were.


    I felt my jaw set as we drove straight towards the point where all the different beams were converging. Just as my panic had vanished with a kiss, now my cool had boiled away in those beams of horizon-burning light. There couldn¡¯t be any doubt now, there was no room for optimism or happy coincidences here. There was a war being fought at my sister¡¯s house.


    I steeled myself and felt my emotions wash away from me again as the streaks of dark and light burned into my eyes. The war was still being fought. It wasn¡¯t over. There was something we could do. Something I could do.


    I swallowed hard as the van blew through a police line, a mass of civilians standing and gaping in fascinated awe at the lightshow, while we, just another XPCA van, raced into the scene.


    We¡¯d get there. We¡¯d join the war. And we¡¯d win it. There wasn¡¯t any other option. There wasn¡¯t any other way.


    Something squeezed my hand and I looked down and saw AEGIS¡¯ in mine. I looked up and found her eyes, still yellow, but no longer threatened with tears. Streaks shone on her skin where they had fallen and were gone.


    ¡°They¡¯re going to be fine. We¡¯re here. We¡¯re going to save them,¡± I said to her.


    ¡°I know,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s all going to be okay.¡±


    We both knew we were lying, that for all we knew, everyone was already dead, with Tem destroying anything left. But we couldn¡¯t acknowledge that, couldn¡¯t even look at that possibility without the terrifying implication of somehow making it true.


    We drove forward as the first blush of dawn broke the horizon.

 326. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Just a few minutes ago, AEGIS had argued that this wasn¡¯t an Exhuman event. Maybe she actually believed that, maybe there was some very specific textbook definition of Exhuman event she was leveraging and trying to get by on a technicality. It was true that the chase through the desert was unconventional; not many events were mobile, and I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d heard of any that took the form of a car chase. Usually it was running down some fleeing Exhuman, or one with extensive mobility or flight in their powerset.


    But as we drew nearer to Lia¡¯s place, nobody could argue this wasn¡¯t an Exhuman event anymore. The damage to the city, the bodies, the stink of blood and burning in the air, it reminded me of every event I¡¯d ever fought back. The terrapath who left impaled corpses hanging in the streets. The thousands subsumed by the animated headstone of Eryendria. The barrier girl in New York who¡¯d arranged her kills in mutilated piles.


    Tem was, at once, both more and less thorough. Buildings were, for the most part, untouched¡­except for the large holes burned right through them. Bodies weren¡¯t desecrated or mutilated or moved, just transfixed with blasts of such heat and intensity they were melted to the concrete and charred to blackness. It was less something exploding in your microwave, more glints of razor blades stirred into a pot of mac & cheese. Precise. Deadly. Subtle, until you saw one in your spoon.


    And as we got closer to home, the landscape shifted until it was more like glints of mac & cheese in a pot of razor blades.


    XPCA were still everywhere, here. Dead, of course, but alive as well, rotating to new positions in sprinting single-file lines, recon units shouting and gesturing over projections of maps, squads of shadow ops, lurking and ready. There were dozens of vehicles, in a matching state of destruction and variety, some with a hole blown straight through them, a tremendous circle of nothing, front-to-back.


    I¡¯d always known Tem¡¯s powers were freakishly strong, but I¡¯d never considered if she absolutely cut loose that the damage could be like this. It was a war zone, there was no other way of putting it. The ruins of houses, everything desaturated with a coating of grey ash, the fire and death everywhere and the distant sounds of a battle still raging.


    I saw hazy purple beams again, Skyweb firing, the lasers falling silently from space, slicing and re-slicing the same area again and again. They were so broad and so fast, they didn¡¯t seem to shoot from anywhere, they just¡­appeared, and held for a fraction of a second before flickering away. A great big line of purple in the sky, just long enough that if you blinked, it¡¯d vanish like a trick of the eyes.


    We pulled in even further, driving past XPCA who emerged to tell us to stop, yelling and shaking their heads at us as we passed some threshold.


    The nature of that threshold became obvious as we got within a block of the house. With the sound of tearing metal and burning air, everything was suddenly white.


    The whole center of the van became a channel of pure energy, the front of it taking the brunt of the hit, and with it, our driver, instantly boiled away to nothing.


    The rest of us had our feet and faces a foot away from the beam, the heat pouring off of it like sticking my face over lava. It felt like I had to close my eyes and turn my head to keep the white from burning through my eyeballs and into my skull. If someone screamed, I couldn¡¯t hear them over the sudden rush of air that came with disintegrating air.


    And then, in less than a heartbeat, it was over. The van rolled forward without a front half, the floor and back door melted and charred, Karu and Saga sitting opposite us, still intact, Karu¡¯s legs drawn up close to her body and her face pale, Saga grinning like a maniac.


    ¡°Is everyone okay?¡± I shouted, unbuckling.


    ¡°I feel as though my face is on fire,¡± Karu said. ¡°Any exposed skin is burned. But it is superficial.¡±


    ¡°That was a hell of a thing,¡± Saga cheered. ¡°Think we can get her to do it again after I grab some marshmallows?¡±


    ¡°We need to let her know it¡¯s us without dying,¡± AEGIS said, staring at the melted floor with wide eyes. ¡°Even I couldn¡¯t take one of those shots.¡±


    Karu was already in motion before the rest of us even got out of our seats, shooting out of the destroyed van and into the air on blue-tipped wings. Immediately, she twisted and dove, and where she¡¯d been only moments before, lasers tore the air. I swore as the rest of us escaped the van, rushing to behind the nearest house to put it between us and instant laser death.


    Not that the house would do anything to protect us, but it might keep us concealed.


    Another team was using Karu for a distraction as well. A line of XPCA exosuits moving from building to building, exactly like we were doing, but opposite us on the road, running quiet and fast. Not the standard soldier exosuits, something more elegant, with inertial dampeners to quiet their footfalls, and engineered to run without the screeching and hissing of a normal exosuit.


    I thought they might be trouble, and that we might have to break off and put them down before they got in range of Tem, but before I could even really fully process that thought, a darker purple beam tore out horizontally, cutting through two of their line and forcing the others to the ground, punching through their cover like tissue paper.


    I was stunned for a moment. The color of the laser hadn¡¯t been Tem¡¯s white. Was Skyweb shooting at them¡­from the ground somehow? That made no sense at all, but honestly I didn¡¯t know the full extent of Tem¡¯s powers. It was possible she was capturing or redirecting Skyweb? But if she were doing that, why were they still shooting it at her?


    I didn¡¯t really have time to stop and think about it. Whatever it was, it fired again with unerring precision, vaporizing two more in the squad, leaving the rest to scatter in retreat. Even while they were being eradicated, Karu was still diving and dodging, getting closer to the source as she flit about erratically, beams of white shooting faster and closer, firing upwards in all directions at her in an insane light show.


    I took off, running forward another house. This was all insane, we were all just subject to some divine whim whether we¡¯d live or die, whether Tem took notice of us or not. The four still-smoking bodies across the street seemed a perfect reminder of what could happen to us in less than the blink of an eye.


    Well, wait, I realized. I had a shield, and I¡¯d been hit by Tem before. I might not be in danger here, but the others sure were. I needed to draw Tem¡¯s attention to myself and away from Karu before she got fried for nothing.


    ¡°Stay here,¡± I told AEGIS and Saga, and left the shade of the building to stroll down the street. From every corner, I realized, XPCA were watching our movements. Some were trying to use us to advance like the last unfortunate squad, others were just dumbfounded by a civilian walking down the middle of the street in hell.


    ¡°Karu!¡± I yelled at her, with no response of course. She was full-boring her engines as someone fired death lasers through the air at her. Not for the first time today, I wished we¡¯d brought comms, although we¡¯d originally opted out of any form of communication which might have tipped Dragon off, it was sure an irritation at this point.


    I looked around for any way to signal her as I continued running forward, and then a beam caught me straight on in the face.


    It was like a tidal wave of heat and white, and if I ever wanted to know exactly the shape, size, or limit of my shield, I now knew who to ask. It was a perfectly spherical bubble around me that the laser washed over, blinding and burning me, but not charring my flesh off the bone, so that was a plus. I had to close my eyes and focus on the ground under my feet, the only thing I could see which wasn¡¯t just burning white even through my eyelids. And so I wasn¡¯t watching when I heard my shield unleash a retort with an echoing ba-boom of deafening thunder.


    The laser stopped instantly, and I swore and swore and swore again. Fucking stupid idiot, what was I thinking, letting my shield take the laser hit? It didn¡¯t matter that I was safe, my shield had a fucking mind of its own, it was a hundred times more dangerous than I was. If it had gone and hit Tem¡­


    I ran forward, and all around me, the XPCA ran forward as well. With their exosuits and the loping strides of the recon, I wouldn¡¯t beat them there, they¡¯d be on Tem¡¯s fried body before I ever got to her.


    I swore one last time and prepared some handfuls of lightning to slow them down. I got two full volleys off on the leading XPCA before they even knew I was attacking, and then as another group turned and slammed into cover, readying their arms in my direction, they suddenly disappeared, erased by another of the darker purple beams.


    These two events were enough to halt the rest of the XPCA advance, but also enough to get them to shoot me. My shield began strobing again as gunfire pounded it, but more concerning, this wasn¡¯t your standard stall-and-wait XPCA grunt force. These were the killers, Tem¡¯s window was known to be closed.


    Attacks I didn¡¯t even know existed were flying at me from all sides, and while I did what I could to chop grenades and bombs out of the air, they seemed the least of my worries.


    Something was pulsing and making my head feel like it was going to explode. My bones were vibrating inside my skin, my teeth in my skull. I felt like I was falling apart, and I didn¡¯t even know what was hitting me.


    I was stumbling, running back for cover now. It was stupid to be in the open, stupid to have outed myself and attacked the XPCA, stupid to try to draw Tem¡¯s fire. Everything I¡¯d done was stupid, and still I was four houses away.


    And then I went to take a stride and just fell. My leg wasn¡¯t there anymore. As I pitched forward, my bones still shaking, my head still aching, I fell in slow-motion, seeing my leg left behind, a perfectly clean cut by some weapon I couldn¡¯t comprehend severing it just above the knee.


    In front of me, in the house I was running to for cover, there was an XPCA standing in the shadows, the crossbow-looking thing in his arms now aimed at my other leg. He raised it to his shoulder to unload again.


    And then his brains splattered through his cracking helmet against the wall which crumbled into an explosion of stucco as AEGIS kicked him with a leaping strike from an entire front yard over. She ran forward, impossibly fast, and caught me in hands that burned at the touch, apologizing with a frown as she threw me bodily into cover, before a series of blasts slammed into her from another assailant.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Karu had opened up from the sky, micro-missiles pouring off of her like steam, arcing through the air and slamming into every piece of cover we weren¡¯t in. The violet beam from our house fired again and again and again, turning multiple XPCA into slag with each shot.


    And I just looked down at my leg where it bled onto the grey, ash-coated grass. A perfectly clean cut, like someone had taken an infinitely-honed wire and just slipped it right through me. My body didn¡¯t even seem to recognize that it was gone, and I was disgusted to see just how much it looked like raw meat when cut so cleanly.


    Saga stumbled into me, took one look down, and then shrugged out of her one-armed, bloodstained sweater to the blank tee underneath. She jammed the sweater into my wound, but if it did anything to stop the bleeding, I couldn¡¯t tell.


    I could tell it did a lot for the pain, though. My body figured out all at once what had happened, and I found myself on the ground, several seconds in the future as the first wave of it knocked me right out.


    In those several seconds, AEGIS had taken over for Saga, her skin missing in several places and scorched in others, but her touch was both much stronger and much less painful than Saga¡¯s. For the second time in my life, she was cinching an improvised bandage on my freshly-amputated leg as a tourniquet, her face creased in focus, her hands smattered in blood up to the elbow.


    ¡°Get them to stop shooting us,¡± she growled at Saga. ¡°Where the fuck is Karu? I can¡¯t believe how fast this all went to shit.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t¡­can¡¯t¡­¡± stammered Saga. ¡°That thing, it¡¯s like it¡¯s in my head. And something else is making my bones break every few seconds. I can¡¯t do more than force people to fall asleep, if I can find them.¡±


    ¡°Then find them,¡± AEGIS shouted. ¡°Athan¡¯s going to die if they hit him with any more of those bullshit exotics. You find whoever¡¯s got the really dangerous stuff and you turn their mind off if you have to.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m trying!¡± Saga whimpered back, before a bullet caught her in the back of the head and she collapsed next to me. AEGIS let out a hugely inconvenienced sigh as she waited for the girl to get back up. She looked down at us both, and then with a defeated shrug of her shoulders, went digging in the pouch at the small of her back.


    What she pulled out of it was a hypo, and she read it closely before popping the cap and jamming it into my leg above the injury.


    It took¡­maybe moments before I felt like my leg was fine again. I propped myself up, disbelieving, to look down and see what drugs could make a whole leg suddenly reappear in an instant.


    There wasn¡¯t any new leg. Just a bloody sweater wrapped around my stump. I blinked in confusion.


    ¡°That,¡± AEGIS explained, pulling me upright over her shoulder heavily, ¡°was a painkiller, and not just any painkiller. It completely disrupts pain signals across the body. Extremely illegal. Incredibly dangerous. Not something I ever wanted to have, or to use.¡±


    I felt like I could stand up fine, but my leg just¡­wasn¡¯t there, despite everything feeling absolutely normal. I found it unnerving to have to lean against AEGIS, but the fact was¡­there was no leg. My brain knew it, my body didn¡¯t. But my body was the one that typically handled all the walking, and I almost face-planted trying to step away from her just by habit.


    ¡°The fuck are they even shooting us with?¡± AEGIS asked. ¡°I haven¡¯t heard of or seen half of these weapons.¡±


    ¡°This is what it looks like when they¡¯re legitimately trying to kill an Exhuman,¡± Saga said, holding her head. ¡°When they¡¯re done playing around, when it¡¯s not just guard duty or making a show of force. Small teams, big guns.¡±


    Something crystalline and floaty came towards us, thrumming with energy as it pulsed its way through the air. Almost like my ball lightning, but blue and apparently made of equal parts plasma and glass shards from the look of it. I took a few hopping steps backwards before AEGIS took me under my shoulder and was the legs I didn¡¯t have.


    ¡°What the fuck is that?¡± I asked, watching it glide closer. It wasn¡¯t fast, but it wasn¡¯t exactly slow either. As we rounded the building and headed for the next closest, my question was half-answered ¡ª I still had no idea what it was, but I discovered what it did, and by extension, what it was for.


    It just floated right through the house like it was nothing. There was a noise like a faint scraping as the crystals touched the wall, and then when it left, there was a perfectly spherical hole. I slashed at it with my swords, doing nothing at all.


    ¡°Magnet it, Athan,¡± AEGIS said, pulling us further steps away. Either she was reluctant to engage her strength for the sake of our injuries, or to keep a modicum of stealth, or she was hurt worse than it looked, because we weren¡¯t moving very fast at all.


    I worked on winding up my magnet as best I could, but the head-pounding intensified, seemingly in proportion to how hard I tried to focus. It felt like every time I was making progress, my head suddenly screamed in my own ears, and my efforts began slipping away, the delicate magnetic fields I was winding collapsing back into neural charges.


    It got closer. It hummed ominously. I threw lightning at it with no effect, slashed at it, hopped away a little bit faster.


    Suddenly Saga was there, diving for it like she was making an endzone catch. Where her arms entered the crystalline sphere, they just¡­vaporized into red mist. Her eyes went wide as she looked down at her stumps.


    ¡°Don¡¯t touch it,¡± she informed me, before falling down on her ass and trembling for the few seconds it took for them to regrow. ¡°Holy bitch that hurts. It¡¯s like being torn apart by sandpaper.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t do anything to it,¡± AEGIS said, her voice slightly synthetic-sounding in her panic. ¡°Athan you really need to magnet it away.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m¡­trying!¡± I said. ¡°I can¡¯t focus!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s this neural dampener they¡¯re broadcasting somehow,¡± Saga complained. ¡°It¡¯s screwing with my focus, too. I don¡¯t know how the rest of the XPCA are unaffected but whatever they have, we need.¡±


    I looked around and couldn¡¯t find a single XPCA near us. Not nearer than the crystal shredding orb, anyway. They¡¯d all gone to take better positions near the house, unloading whatever fire they could in between blasts of the violet laser.


    ¡°It¡¯s getting closer, Athan,¡± AEGIS warned.


    I could see that. I could smell that, it had the same tang as Karu¡¯s jets, definitely using plasma propulsion to keep floating after us all ominous-like. I gave a desperate last prod at my magnet and forced power through it even if it was shit.


    It barely tugged at the orb, diverting its course no more than a few inches. It kept coming, silent and deadly.


    ¡°Um, then run faster?¡± I told AEGIS.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know about you but I just ate two rockets to the face,¡± she sniped back. ¡°I am¡­loaded with shrapnel right now, and it¡¯s a fucking miracle I¡¯m on two feet.¡±


    We were only three houses away now. I could make out details on the ruins of Lia¡¯s place. Half the walls were gone, the garage and her bedroom and the bath were the only rooms which were still rooms. The living room was just open air now, rubble piled high around the furniture, and on the couch there, laying motionless, I saw Moon, one arm hanging off the edge, bruises and blood stains visible from here on the white sweatshirt she¡¯d picked for today.


    Saga came after the orb with a stick of all damn things, and after swinging right through it, had half a stick, looking at the end of it with frustration and disgust. ¡°What the fuck am I supposed to do about this thing?¡± She picked up a rock and a chunk of cement and chucked them, and they also seemed to vanish with a grey cloud of smoke and no apparent impact.


    A bullet, a big one, slammed into my shield and detonated into grit, with AEGIS taking the brunt of it. She swore and stumbled, and I realized looking down that I¡¯d been hit too, angry red lines across my body I could see but not feel. At the echoing gunshot, Karu seemed to jolt straight into the air, retreating from her dance with the white lasers and instead shooting off in the direction of the shooter.


    Which, one one level, I appreciated, but on the other hand, this fucking orb thing was just going to kill us. What an incredibly shitty way to go, considering if I could even jog slowly, I¡¯d outpace it.


    It was only ten feet away now, and Saga was just picking up every single thing in our path like a puppy on a walk and chucking them into the orb. Handfuls of grass, a light sconce, bits of fencing, a broken piece of rebar, snapped-off parts of dead people. Nothing even made it slow down.


    Two and a half houses away, and only six feet on the orb. Weapon fire was more intense up here, the closer we got to the house, the more things seemed poised to kill us. Again and again, AEGIS and I had to turn and throw ourselves, or hack ordinance out of the air to avoid having even more of me blown off, or render her even more broken. And when we couldn¡¯t, she¡¯d grab me, toss me like a ragdoll, and bear the brunt of a hit herself, staggering and reeling, just to turn around and pick me up again.


    Saga got in on it too, throwing herself into attacks where she could, apparently pissed and frustrated that she had nothing to contribute here but her immortality. Though I suspected there were plenty that she was disabling or distracting in some way, it wasn¡¯t enough for her, or for us.


    Two houses and four feet to the orb. And then one and a half and two. In the rare moments that it was quiet, I could hear it, humming and thrumming, plasma flooding out of it in a small, constant rush instead of a roar like Karu¡¯s jets. Karu, whom we had not seen since she darted after the sniper. But we hadn¡¯t been sniped either, so¡­it was difficult to tell how good that was for us.


    But the simple fact was, we were out of time. Even without the constant attacks and distractions, even if Tem stopped throwing lasers in our direction without apparent concern for what she hit, the fact was, we were too slow and the distance was too great. This fucking orb was going to catch me, touch me, and erase me, and that would be the great anticlimactic end of this chase. From the next state over, hundreds of miles, thousands of casualties, and billions of dollars of destruction, for it to all end with me hop-limping away, while Saga tried to beat it back with a fallen For Lease sign.


    It was just pathetic. Lia deserved better.


    AEGIS stumbled again, and this time she went down. I went down with her, and we hit the sidewalk together, rolling as one to see the death orb still advancing, Saga crying and screaming as she beat on it with fists that evaporated into a bloody spray.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry guys,¡± she said.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry too,¡± AEGIS added, turning to me. ¡°I¡¯m so disappointed in myself.¡±


    ¡°You guys shouldn¡¯t be,¡± I told them. ¡°This was all my fault. I¡¯m the one who should be sorry.¡±


    For a moment we all just looked at each other and smiled, almost laughed, as the orb closed the distance. A foot away. Half a foot. Inches.


    And then the world was a hazy purple. I could still see the house through it, could see Saga, only for an instant before she disappeared like smoke. The orb just¡­burned away as well.


    I looked up and saw the outline of my shield, a perfect sphere, the purple washing around it just like it had protected me from Tem¡¯s laser before. But before the shield could get too angry and strike back, the beam ended. The world looked yellow in the violet¡¯s absence, and I had to blink like crazy to feel like I could see anything again.


    Saga popped out of nothingness where the orb had been and frowned. ¡°Ow,¡± she said. ¡°But at the same time, yay, you¡¯re not dead anymore.¡±


    ¡°What¡­was that?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯ve been wondering about the purple lasers this whole time. It¡¯s not Skyweb, is it?¡±


    ¡°Over there,¡± Saga said, pointing. AEGIS staggered to her feet and pulled me up, and we picked up on limping towards our goal, towards where Saga was pointing.


    Through the holes in the half-destroyed garage, I saw what Saga mentoned, and as we rounded the last house in the way, she came into view.


    A barely-human shape made of churning black smoke, hunkered and hunchbacked, two pinpricks of pure white for eyes, snapping in every direction like a predator jealously protecting its kill. Without gesturing or speaking, beams formed around the garage, the hazy smoke of Tem turning light into energy, and shot off every few moments like her gaze had a destructive wake.


    She was boiling, seething darkness, hate and anger as I¡¯d never known, I could feel through Saga, even with her powers diluted. But everything about her from her stance to the booming roar of her powers firing constantly to the entire scene of destruction around her spoke of how she felt. I didn¡¯t need Saga here to feel my heart breaking at the hunched-over little girl lost in that darkness somewhere.


    And standing on top of it, a purple shadow, the same color as the lasers which had been carefully aimed at our pursuers, sporting a strange set of goggles and gear which looked completely out of place on her monochrome violet, half-lost in the cloud of black below her. an effigy.


    It was Moon. Her shadow gave us a wave from her copy of Tem¡¯s body, and then turned and blasted yet another beam through the ever-advancing XPCA.


    ¡°I guess that¡¯s our savior,¡± I said. ¡°The people we came to save.¡±


    AEGIS nodded. ¡°But now who¡¯s going to save us?¡±


    ¡°We are,¡± I said. ¡°Now that we¡¯re together, we¡¯ll be fine.¡±


    ¡°Athan, I love the optimism but¡­¡± she looked down at my leg. At her body. At Karu flitting in the distance and Saga, who was still ineffectually throwing random shit at the erased orb in vengeance. ¡°We¡¯re a mess.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± I told her, knowing that at least part of my current confidence was just drug-induced. Not that it mattered. I had the words I knew she wanted to hear, more than anything.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got a plan.¡±

 327. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    Step zero of the plan turned out to be what step zero always was, which was: ¡®Don¡¯t die.¡¯


    Which was harder said than done, because while Moon was doing her best to shoot down whatever threats were coming at us whenever she had a free moment off harassing the ever-encroaching XPCA, Tem was pretty much just¡­


    Well, the damage surrounding the house could be charitably described as ¡®indiscriminate¡¯. And ¡®indiscriminate¡¯ was how she was still shooting currently, in our direction as well as in every other, even into the sky. It seemed the garage was still mostly standing only because it was within Tem¡¯s range and didn¡¯t need to be shot through in her efforts to destroy everything else.


    I¡¯d thought at first that it was just raw destructive power which was keeping the XPCA at bay. Doubtless any coordinated assault was slowed with the prospect of random, spontaneous death. But I realized that wasn¡¯t all, the two of them were constantly slipping in and out of view in a very disorienting way, and more than once, AEGIS diverted our approach around flecks of hard-light frozen in the air.


    As we got closer, the constructs became more and more frequent and I wondered how I hadn¡¯t spotted them before, except maybe that half were translucent purple and basically impossible to see. Those were formed into perfect glassy hexagons and arranged precisely to block avenues of attack. The white motes were just everywhere, chaotic and random snow which hung forever in the air. I had seen it, I realized, and dismissed it as smoke or fire in the house, just a cloudy, glowing haze, so ubiquitous and formless it was.


    When we couldn¡¯t go any further without walking into it, the haze seemed to part for us slowly, like curtains being pulled away, and I knew from the sluggish motion that it was Tem¡¯s powers at work¡­or Moon¡¯s, tugging the constructs as quickly as her powers could go. But as we got closer and the layers grew thicker, our passage shrunk and shrunk and our progress slowed, until AEGIS was crawling on her front on the ground, dragging me on her back, as I marvelled at feeling the dirt painlessly scraping by my face.


    Some of the constructs had bullets or other remnants of attack still stuck in them, and if it weren¡¯t already obvious by the carnage and damage, I knew these two had been here for a long time and had endured much. Just being able to withstand the XPCA ¡ª the power of which was evident in how quickly they¡¯d shredded us ¡ª that was something. But it wasn¡¯t all just the raw capabilities of Tem¡¯s power on display here, or Moon¡¯s clever use of them. It was both, and exclusively both.


    The white beams shot off constantly, with a vim and ferocity and randomness that were a constant threat to any who would approach, from any angle. Even those in the sky, even those truly undetectable, even AEGIS and myself, crawling in the dirt inches at a time, the beams washed over us, heat wilting my hair as my shield parted it. Everywhere, constantly, raked by the lethal suppressing fire.


    And those she did not inadvertently destroy, Moon precisely did. She shot beams with perhaps a tenth of the rate of her partner, but every one that Moon fired, at least two or three targets were hit. The beams were instantaneous and perfectly accurate if she could account for the few moments of charging time, and as I¡¯d witnessed on our approach, and as the holes blown through squads behind impervious cover proved, she could definitely account for that.


    We were only a dozen feet away now, the shimmering manifestation of Tem¡¯s hate visible in the air above her like some kind of mirage, the motes of light so thick and choking that it was taking minutes for them to part for our passage of a few inches. But we were so close, once we were in the garage itself, it looked like we¡¯d be in the clear.


    ¡°Tem!¡± I shouted at her, my voice disappearing into the seething, screaming air she burned away. ¡°Tem!¡±


    Moon mouthed something back at us, but whatever it was, I couldn¡¯t hear over the constant boiling of air. And then I couldn¡¯t see through the beam Tem suddenly unleashed on us.


    ¡°Why would she shoot us?¡± I yelled at AEGIS, her ear only inches away from my spot clinging to her back.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she shouted back, her voice like a whisper in the roaring, despite the fact I could feel how hard she was shouting with my hands on her. ¡°She¡¯s always been close to going ballistic though.¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯ve always been able to calm her down before. She must see me now, why isn¡¯t she now?¡±


    AEGIS just shook her head and concentrated on dragging us forward by inches. Assuming Tem¡¯s head was anything like mine, maybe it had to do with the still-persistent befuddlement. The harder I tried to think, the more my thoughts seemed to disassociate away from what I wanted to focus on, the same damn thing that was fucking with Saga and me earlier. Except it was way, way stronger up here. I honestly didn¡¯t know how the two of them could keep up firing with their minds twisting along associative trains like mine kept attempting to.


    Well, not Moon anyway. I was pretty sure Tem was just utterly mindless at this point, and it wrenched my heart to think of her, primal and hurt.


    We crawled past a body, an XPCA in the remains of an exosuit. His entire front half was torn away, the suit cut open to expose the serrated flesh within. He looked like he¡¯d died to thousands of tiny knives slicing open every inch of his skin at once, and I realized that walking into the hard-light cloud basically was that. You¡¯d make it one, maybe two steps in, and then you¡¯d have motes of it sticking through your organs, ensuring you bled out, while the greater mass of them shredded you from the outside, a wall of pain you only realized you crossed by having most of you scrubbed off by it. Even if you backed out, the motes weren¡¯t knives that clung to the wound, they hung impossibly in the air, they cut coming out as well.


    And then, if this guy was any judge, you just dropped where you stood and died. It looked a pretty horrible way to die, and I got to see every inch of his exposed skull and half-shorn organs as we slowly, slowly crept past.


    I looked back and saw Saga waiting behind us, maybe aware of how fruitless walking into the cloud would be, hunched over and waiting with her head cradled pained in her arms. And then I noticed that¡­it wasn¡¯t her clothes that were stained with blood anymore, it was her skin. Her clothes hung in tatters off her legs, shredded and useless, and she was naked.


    I swallowed hard and looked back up at our progress. So maybe she hadn¡¯t figured out not to walk into the cloud without trying it first. I was a bit glad I hadn¡¯t seen her attempt that. I didn¡¯t really enjoy watching her die, even if sometimes I felt she did, and seeing her ripped apart by photic sandpaper was even less appealing.


    AEGIS surged forward another few inches, and then a few more, and finally began standing up to pull us over the wrecked wall of the garage. We were in, finally.


    And I had exactly one moment of relief before I was forced to blink a lot as my addled brain tried to understand what it was seeing.


    Moon was shouting something at me over the constant crackle of air and laser but whatever it was, my mind could not take in what I was¡­taking in. I knew on some level, this was some trick of Tem¡¯s powers, some bending of light and vision which¡­might have explained a lot of I were more cognizant at the time. Instead it just made my head hurt more.


    It was like the whole world outside this room was fisheyed. We could see everything, everywhere, in all directions. I could look up and see down. I could look down and see¡­inches away from the concrete floor, a pocket which was looking sideways and to our left. And if I looked sideways and to our left, I could peek over the lip of a house near us, at the pile of bodies who thought they were behind cover, though they were out of view of the garage, and who had died in a neat line with a laser blasted straight through the four of them.


    It was mind-twisting in the goddamn neural field which was already mind-twisting, and it made me a little sick to look at too hard. I leaned heavier on AEGIS, but the shifting of my head even those few inches made my perspective shift, and everything I saw went whirling far past what a few inches of shifting should have done.


    So I closed my eyes. That seemed like a good idea. In the dark behind them, once my head stopped spinning, I could see Tem and Moon¡­not at all where they appeared to be, of course, hunched over on the ground in the living room near Moon¡¯s body.


    AEGIS and I hobbled over there, where I sat opposite and in front of Tem, invisible, even as her illusory form in the garage screamed in rage and darkness and anger flowed off of her.


    ¡°Hi Tem,¡± I shouted at her over the lasers and gave her my most reassuring smile despite the¡­the everything. ¡°We¡¯re back. I¡¯m sorry we left you.¡±


    The world seemed to shift even more around us and the blackness of Tem¡¯s manifestation grew. Bits of the sky blotched out with black tears, like in here, under Tem¡¯s influence, the world itself might just rip apart.


    I reached out and gingerly took her hand, and she inhaled sharply and pulled away. I saw the churning only an instant before it hit me, and pulled AEGIS close to me before the pillar of light erupted on top of us.


    Sweat was dripping off my brow by the time the beam relented, and AEGIS took two steps away from me and her shoulder ports opened to vent a cloud of steam with a hiss.


    I couldn¡¯t get my thoughts straight, and maybe Tem couldn¡¯t either, but all I wanted was to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to let her know that this was all my fault, that I hadn¡¯t intended to abandon her, but she was injured, she was wheelchair-bound. She was never meant to have to face the XPCA or anyone without me.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    I felt feathers brushing my mind and looked over at Saga, whose eyes were screwed shut and whose brow was knitted in pained focus, her arms held out towards Tem and myself like she was a priest throwing a blessing at us. Through her, I felt the edges of Tem¡¯s mind.


    And I felt everything within it. It wasn¡¯t a mind like any other I¡¯d ever felt. It was just¡­tumbling. Churning. Madness.


    She was so angry. She was so hurt, and the world just chose to kept hurting her. All she wanted was to be nothing, be ignored, be put aside and forgotten, but instead, this. The whole world on her doorstep, the carnage of ten thousand bodies ground up and thrown at her face. Her desires were so simple and the world was so incompatible with them. People screaming and dying and trying to hurt her, so loudly that it was quieter just to erase them all, just to throw bleach at the world and wipe it white and empty.


    And a hole where I was supposed to be at its center, I realized. Everything she did, every bit of pain she tried to block out was just¡­twisted with this undertone of why? Because it was pointless. She was pointless. Her pain and the deaths of everyone here and blocking out the world and the noise and the hurt, it was all pointless. She didn¡¯t know what she was doing or why, she was just an animal lashing out because it hurt. She relied on something, someone, to tell her what to do and to believe in, and to know it was all for something.


    And that was me. And I¡¯d just left her here alone, when the worst thing ever in her life happened to her.


    ¡°Tem, I am here!¡± I shouted in her face. ¡°I came back for you! I¡¯d never abandon you.¡±


    Her mind seethed with hatred as the hole in the center of her world pulsed, and again, my world turned white as she unloaded it on me. I held AEGIS tight in my arms.


    ¡°I am here!¡± I shouted, more in her mind than out of it now. ¡°Tem, I am here, and you are safe now. We¡¯re together again, as we always should have been.¡°


    The laser on me intensified. It widened and, if possible, whitened. I realized, if it grew any further, it would engulf Tem¡¯s own body, and that she hardly cared. I crawled forward, keeping AEGIS close, every movement putting my skin in contact with more of the superheated air, my hands sizzling painlessly on the scorched ground, my nose burning and sweat dripping now as I moved to cover her body in my shield as well.


    She flinched at my touch and screamed a little bit, flailing her small fists to hit me without much effect. Even through the white of the laser, I saw darkness now, shadows of it blocking out the whole world.


    ¡°Tem,¡± I whispered, swallowing hard and dripping sweat on her in my hands. ¡°Tem, please calm down. Please come back. You don¡¯t have to be hurt and angry anymore.¡±


    ¡°She can¡¯t hear you. She won¡¯t, rather,¡± Moon said. ¡°It¡¯s easier for her to pretend you¡¯re dead than for her to face the world anymore.¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯m not dead,¡± I said, not sure where to turn to look at Moon. All I could see was white and heat, and my sense was as burned-out as my eyes. ¡°I¡¯m here, I¡¯m back.¡±


    ¡°But you weren¡¯t here when she gave up. When she did all of this,¡± she made some kind of gesture. ¡°When she thought, it would be easier if she were dead, if everyone were dead, than to have to think, or feel, or be.¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯m here,¡± I shouted, shaking her body. One small arm launched out and socked me in the jaw with surprising force. I didn¡¯t know what the fuck else to say. My mind just ground into nothingness, and the one fucking point I had seemed to go nowhere in her head. ¡°I¡¯m here! I¡¯m here! I am fucking here, goddamn it.¡±


    She writhed in my arms and turned up the heat another notch. The whole house had to be on fire now, and it sure felt like we were. I could swear I felt the trickle of sweat running off my nose sizzle when it hit my legs.


    ¡°Tem listen to me,¡± I shouted at her in my mind. ¡°It¡¯s me, Athan. You don¡¯t have to be hurt and alone. I am here for you. I will hold you and protect you and¨C¡± she lashed out again and her knee collided with the bloody bandages on my absent leg. AEGIS winced bodily, and the bandages bloomed with blood again, seeping through the sweat-drenched wrappings, but I didn¡¯t feel a thing. ¡°¨Cand stop hitting me. Jesus Christ, Tem, just calm down.¡±


    Telling someone who was having a panic attack-slash-existential crisis to just calm down, as it turned out, not so useful. The air I was choking on was now blisteringly hot, and my head was feeling light.


    ¡°You have to stop her somehow, you¡¯re going to die at this rate,¡± AEGIS said.


    ¡°You have to make her see it¡¯s you,¡± Moon said. ¡°You have to dig deep, you have to make her face it in a way she can¡¯t reject.¡±


    ¡°What the fuck does that even mean?¡± I shouted back.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m trapped in a neural disruptor and strapped to the mind of an insane womanchild while single-handedly battling off the XPCA. Are you asking me to do more?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I realized. ¡°Uh, you¡¯re doing fine, Moon.¡±


    ¡°Thank you. But please act with expedience, my body is unshielded and nearby. It will not survive if you do not turn that laser off.¡±


    I shook the girl in my arms. Even blind, I could tell how light she was, how small and frail and delicate. Her life had just been one shitshow after another, and this was the shit cherry on top. I tried to see things from her view, which was both easier and harder for being halfway in her mind, and I discovered that despite her words, Moon was doing what she could to facilitate my access by carving through Tem¡¯s thoughts with me.


    I had to make her see it was me. At the thought, Tem¡¯s mind boiled with obsession. A hundred million memories bubbled to the surface, stolen glances, guilty looks, dark pleasures. Like a surveillance camera, Tem was always there, always innocuous, but always watching. And as it turned out, most of what she watched was me.


    I saw myself at every possible time from every possible angle, though most were from the floor, somewhere awkward and out of the way. I saw myself eating, chatting, fighting, dressing, sleeping, shaving, cooking, arguing, waiting, thinking. I saw myself in every outfit I owned, a hundred times. I saw myself as a fighter, as a leader, as a rebel, as a martyr, as a thinker. I saw every kind thing I ever did for Tem, every time I¡¯d sheltered her or made an effort to make sure she was recognized, even if it hurt her, even if she didn¡¯t want to be acknowledged, she loved me for doing it.


    It was¡­all at once¡­overwhelming and flattering and terrifying. It was like a deep dive into the mind of a dog, seeing what it thought of its owner. Love in all things. Perfection in all flaws. It made me sick.


    But maybe that was the key. I took another burning lungful and held her ear close to my lips. ¡°Tem, wake up, it¡¯s me. I love you,¡± I whispered. ¡°Please come back to me.¡±


    A hand lashed out again amidst her flailing and I barely moved my head in time to have it glance off my cheek. Her mind seethed as her existential loathing crawled between the cracks of everything she saw and did and was. It was as though her mind heard me and laughed bitterly. Love? It asked. What is love?


    I felt my own head growing lighter and my vision¡­my burned-out, useless, close-eyed vision was flickering in and out. I felt an irresistible temptation to just fall over as my body began to fail. Lie down. Rest. Breathe. Die, probably.


    I used the neural dampener to my advantage and brought Tem¡¯s thoughts in to replace my own, and with my brain all jacked up, I didn¡¯t have the leftover capacity to indulge weakness.


    Love wasn¡¯t what Tem and I shared, and she¡¯d reacted violently towards my efforts to give it to her ¡ª as I realized stupidly, she always had. She¡¯d never wanted or liked it when I complimented her, that wasn¡¯t a thing she was in a good enough place to accept¡­ever. And her worldview was so fucked that every comment like that was an attack. Love was, in her mind, just pain. Effort wasted on her that she didn¡¯t know how to accept, and couldn¡¯t.


    Because in her whole time on this Earth, who had ever given it to her? How would she have ever learned to accept another¡¯s love? The violence at home? The beatings at school? The slavery under Blackett?


    In that context, I almost understood why she worshipped me for tolerating and ignoring her. It was the best anyone had ever treated her, and better than she thought she deserved. It was disgusting, and not for the first time, I resolved that Tem really, really, really needed some professional therapy. Just as soon as one of those opened for Exhumans.


    But I couldn¡¯t break through to her by ignoring and tolerating her. I needed her to open her eyes now. I needed her to fight back the dark impulses she¡¯d drowned herself in, to realize, I was fucking right here, ready to¡­to tolerate and ignore her¡­to her heart¡¯s content. She didn¡¯t need to burn the world down right now.


    I flinched as she hit me in the nose and frowned at her. Why did she always have to make everything so fucking difficult? Why did she have to be such an enormous pain in my ass constantly?


    My mind shifted gears again without me. I really did hate her. She was selfless and stupid and bull-headed and self-sacrificing in ways I could only ever dream of being. She didn¡¯t even know what an ego was, and if she did, she¡¯d probably apologize for it. And now here she was, keeping me from Lia and Moon, because she was too busy drowning in her own misery.


    I wasn¡¯t sure if that¡¯s what I really thought. Or, not enough to ever act on. It was all true, certainly. But honestly, a fair part of that was just reliving her waves of anger and her highlight reel of my fucking life. I hoped. Shit I really didn¡¯t need right now. I shook her again, harder, willing her to come to with every piece of my mind that was in hers.


    And then I realized what I was doing wrong, how to tell Tem I loved her in her own language, to tell her I was me, and I was here, and I was in charge, and everything was going to be fine.


    I hesitated.


    ¡°Fucking do it,¡± Moon said.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I agreed, not moving.


    ¡°We¡¯re going to die. You¡¯re already at the cusp of heatstroke. Just do it. She¡¯ll forgive you.¡±


    ¡°Athan, whatever you¡¯re doing, you need to do it,¡± AEGIS added, her voice as soothing as she could manage through the robotic synthesizer that indicated widespread malfunction. ¡°We don¡¯t have much time left.¡±


    ¡°And the XPCA are coming. She stopped shooting them to shoot you,¡± Moon added.


    ¡°I fucking know, okay?¡± I sniped back. ¡°Just give me a second.¡±


    [Athan, I¡¯m gonna help. Just close your eyes. Mentally.]


    I shook my head. I kept my mental eyes wide open, kept my head inside Tem and made myself feel everything, as I drew back and punched her right in the face.


    Her mind erupted with fire. Instantly, the desperation, the anger receded. Panic and confusion set in. Too familiar. Oh no. What did I do wrong now?


    I hit her again. And again, feeling through her as her cheekbone cracked, the first pain I felt since the drugs. Her mind washed white from the pain, cleansing and terrifying. Fear gripped her, taking its rightful place over her heart. I¡¯m getting hit. I must have messed up again.


    Tears mingled with the sweat running off my face as I threw her down and put one more haymaker to snap her head sideways. As I did, the laser around us vanished, and her consciousness tumbled in her emptying mind. Oh, it¡¯s Athan.


    I held her and cried as she came to, feeling tendrils of anxiety and panic flaring up inside her as she realized where she was and who was holding her and what they were doing, before Saga let the connection drop. Her body went rigid in my arms, paralyzed at the thought of what she might have done to reduce me to this.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± I whispered in her ear. ¡°I¡¯m here now. It¡¯s all okay.¡±


    She nodded and whimpered back, blood dripping down her nose across my cheek.


    ¡°If you s-s-say s-so, I believe you,¡± she said.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry I left you. This never should have happened to you.¡±


    She said nothing, just shook her head mutely against my body, tensed like she couldn¡¯t wait to escape. I let her go and gave her one final moment, just between us, unsure if she was visible or not through my still-blind eyes.


    And then I couldn¡¯t wait any longer. As much as I wanted to be here for Tem and offer her all of me I could, most of me wasn¡¯t mine to give. It really lived for others.


    ¡°Tem,¡± I asked her, ¡°Were you fighting this whole time? Do you remember how this started? Where are the others?¡±


    I looked around and then stopped beating around the bush and asked the question I really wanted to hear.


    ¡°Tem, where¡¯s Lia?¡±

 328. 2252, Last night. Las Vegas. Whitney.

    I¡¯d woken up to the complaints of my devices; my family. They spoke to me in beeps and flashes I understood as well as English ¡ª a language I¡¯d invented, after all ¡ª and though it was dark and late, and I had only just climbed the ladder to the garage loft and fell asleep, I got up to check on them anyway.


    A network outage, it looked like. But such a blip would hardly be a cause for panic, rare as that might be. I squinted into the holos burning bright in the dark against my scratchy eyes and forced my sleepy brain to make sense of what I was seeing.


    And when that didn¡¯t work, I traded out my glasses for a VR headset, rubbing my eyes through the transition. I kept the neural interference low so it wouldn¡¯t knock me out and transport me to a digital world, just superimpose one on our own. Augmented reality, really, though Viewfinder wasn¡¯t an AR machine, she was a VR, and she¡¯d object to the implication of being ¡®just¡¯ augmenting.


    My idle thoughts vanished as I read and re-read the diagnostics, and I frowned and reached out by habit for the cold coffee perpetually sitting at many of my stations. Nasty swill, but loaded with the nectar of the caffeine goddess.


    It wasn¡¯t just an outage. There was also wide-band wireless interference on almost every channel I could reach, only a few at the very bottom of ultra-low frequencies seemed unaffected.


    Which was, itself, very weird and the outage at the same time could be completely unrelated. The two had an unfortunate compounding effect, which knocked me out from the prospect of both wired and wireless ¡®net access, and of course, verifying with Thaumaturge, of course, mobiles wouldn¡¯t get through either.


    I hesitated for a minute, being pretty sure what I was finding here¡­being completely confident, really, but just¡­making sure before I did something stupid and got anyone else involved in my mistake. But there was no mistake, and so, walking over, still reading the cached data on Viewfinder as she augmented-realitied the dark house for me, I made my way over to Lia¡¯s room and knocked gently on the door.


    No reply. So I knocked louder.


    ¡°You are aware,¡± a voice from behind me made me jump and almost drop Viewfinder off my head. I spun and found Moon lurking in the dark hall, followed me in from the living room. ¡°That she is probably asleep, and if you want to wake her, you¡¯ll have to make a noise at a volume humans can actually hear?¡±


    ¡°Moon, holy heck, you scared me,¡± I said, feeling my heart pounding. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to wake you.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve taken to napping during the day,¡± she said with such deadpan I wasn¡¯t sure if she was serious. ¡°Had a few incidents of my father trying to kidnap me at night recently.¡±


    ¡°Oh, right.¡±


    ¡°Waking her up is a death sentence. Why are you risking it?¡±


    ¡°Um,¡± I made a move to show her what was in my headset, but that seemed like a lot more effort than it needed to be once I started, so I just used my words. ¡°There¡¯s¡­something going on. The ¡®net access is down, and all wireless is being¡­¡± I hesitated. ¡°Not to be alarmist in my word choice, but jammed.¡±


    ¡°I see.¡± Moon said. ¡°You are certain?¡± I nodded. She nodded back, and then advanced on me, pressing into me. I thought for a moment she had just gone out of her deadpan mind and was about to kiss me, when I realized she was just wordlessly pushing past me to get at Lia¡¯s door.


    She banged on the door for all she was worth, and without waiting, moved to Chiho¡¯s room and did the same. And then Athan¡¯s, where Tem was likely curled up. And then she came back down the hall banging on doors the whole way again.


    The three opened at about the same time, and despite her confidence of action, Moon made good to hide behind and paint me the culprit while the lights came on and six very bleary eyes focused on me and I repeated what I¡¯d found.


    ¡°This is retarded,¡± Lia slurred. ¡°I can¡¯t deal with this right now.¡± She eyed me with eyes only barely open, but somehow everyone was still watching her to make a decision. After a few more seconds dragged on she mumbled something at us and slammed her door.


    ¡°Is that¡­is that a no?¡± Chiho asked. I was honestly trying not to look at her too much because, well, it felt kinda dirty. She was wearing a halter and thong which stretched the credibility of being clothed. It also helped I really didn¡¯t have an answer for her.


    We all floated listless in the hall another minute, people drifting back towards their beds by inches when Lia¡¯s door banged open again, and something militant-clad and white-masked emerged, a gun on her back longer than she was and possibly as heavy.


    ¡°What are you standing around for?¡± she asked, her voice spiked with false confidence and forced energy. ¡°We need recon. AEGIS isn¡¯t here, Saga isn¡¯t here, if Moon¡¯s dad is coming again, we need to know where, when, and with what. Tem, go to the front door ¡ª you can see better than any of us, keep an eye out without going outside. If you see something unusual, tint the house lights blue. If hostile, tint ¡¯em red. Moon, Tem¡¯s the only Exhuman we¡¯ve got at the moment. Pair up with her, and I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°It is fine,¡± Moon said, and the two of them headed towards the living room.


    ¡°Nice hat,¡± Lia addressed me. ¡°Does it have any optics?¡±


    ¡°Viewfinder?¡± I asked, touching the headset. ¡°Um, no. It¡­could do post-processing, but it just uses a regular camera. I don¡¯t have any filters written or anything, and with the ¡®net down¨C¡°


    ¡°No that¡¯s fine. How about AEGIS¡¯ tech. Can you talk to any of that?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. But I shouldn¡¯t¨C¡°


    ¡°We¡¯re under attack,¡± she insisted. ¡°There is no should or shouldn¡¯t, there is can and can¡¯t. Can you?¡±


    ¡°I can.¡±


    ¡°Good. Do what you can with what she¡¯s got around the place. If she¡¯s got any DOGs or weapons, you can wake them up and get them on our side. Anything that you can plug into or get acting autonomously or use to shoot at someone. I¡¯d rather have more options than just letting Tem blow holes in the house.¡±


    I nodded vigorously and started back towards the garage, finding Tem already at the door with Moon as a ghostly passenger, her body sprawled on the couch. Behind me I heard Chiho talking.


    ¡°And what can I do?¡±


    Lia sighed and responded as I closed the garage door behind me. ¡°Put some clothes on.¡±


    The first thing I did was grab Sparker off his charger and put him on my hip. If someone did come for us, they¡¯d be getting a million volts before they got me. Second thing I did was plug Viewfinder into AEGIS¡¯ main system, which was in just a complaining mass of disarray with the wireless cut off, so the third thing I did was dig up a bunch of cables and start plugging things into each other which normally talked over wifi.


    I¡¯d barely managed to get in when I got a system notification and gave it a glance, throwing it up in the corner of my AR overview of the whole system.


    > Hi Whitney! Welcome to my system. I¡¯ve got you hooked up with basic access. Feel free to play with anything other than the data servers. If you come up with anything new, you know I want to hear about it. Most importantly, have fun!


    Lovely, accommodating girl, AEGIS was. I guess once you literally had your arms elbow-deep inside someone to help them self-diagnose mechanical failure, some amount of trust could probably be assumed. I was just glad I wouldn¡¯t have to battle her defenses ¡ª I might be able to crack my way in, especially given physical access to the hardware, but it¡¯d be time I¡¯d rather not waste. Instead, I took all the system resources online and threw them out into various places in AR in the room around me to go over one at a time.


    A bit pointless to do, but also very fun. I¡¯d never been in here before, despite my time working with AEGIS, and I wasn¡¯t going to lie to myself to pretend it wasn¡¯t an exciting prospect.


    I thought I blinked funny for a moment, then realized no, my vision was screwed up. A bug in the AR output maybe? Everything had just gone kinda funny looking suddenly. Maybe a smudge on Viewfinder¡¯s camera? I pulled her off for a moment to check and realized¡­no, it wasn¡¯t in the display at all. The real world had just gone kinda blue-ish.


    And then I remembered, Tem was on guard duty and tinting the lights blue was our alert signal. God, I was tired, that seemed so long ago even though it couldn¡¯t have been more than five minutes. I guess the excitement of getting into AEGIS¡¯ systems was kinda derailing me too.


    I flicked through the resources on-hand and found most of them useless. No DOGs like Lia had asked for, whatever those might be. Mostly fabrication¡­oh hmm. I could make DOGs. Those were certainly interesting. And autonomous, it looked like, from the schematics. I spent a few moments flipping back and forth between the different models and iterations and wowing over her design work, even if the really impressive part, the AI, went right over my head at such a glance.


    And then I found what I was really probably supposed to look for. Cam-drones. Literally thousands of them. Almost a thousand in this neighborhood alone.


    I tried to pull up some feeds and¡­nothing. Of course, the drones couldn¡¯t chatter through the jamming either. I wondered vaguely if she named any of them, had any favorites¡­if any of them exhibited ¡®personalities¡¯ that machines always seemed to have a habit of developing, even varying across identical instances.


    I had to appreciate AEGIS¡¯ extensive documentation of everythingthough. This was a girl I¡¯d definitely let plan my wedding. I found the schematics for the cam-drones and then pulled up the downloaded hardware specs for the wireless transmitters they all were built around.


    And damn, these were some nice specs. I guess they had to be when you only used one model for everything. I¡¯d always been a proponent of building against the situation. Unix philosophy ¡ª do one thing, do it well. A one-solution-fits-all drone like this wasn¡¯t anything I¡¯d ever come up with, even if it was easier to churn out a thousand of these babies, each one would be somewhat ill-suited for their role, over-specced or underprepared.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    But I also probably never made a thousand things in my life total, so I could shut up with my philosophizing. Also, the lights in the house suddenly turned red¡­sort of a faint pink, really, and shouting started near the front door. So that was another reason to shut up and work.


    Not that I¡¯d been talking out loud to myself or anything. Only crazy people did that. I was talking to the machines. They needed names, I realized.


    The good news was, the cam-drones could pick up the ULF¡¯s which weren¡¯t being jammed. I could talk to them on those frequencies and get them talking back to me on them, and once we were there, I¡¯d have all the eyes in the neighborhood looking out for me.


    So I thought, anyway. Easier said than done. Not that, again, I was saying anything like a crazy person. That¡¯d be crazy. God, I was tired. The trick would be talking to them, though. The traditional means she used to communicate with the drones was over ¡®net so she could interface with any drone from anywhere. A local-band was possible, but not something in her standard wheelhouse.


    But to be sure, I gave the schematic library another poke. I looked for anything which might act as a relay ¡ª searched for keywords like ¡®wireless¡¯, ¡®repeater¡¯, ¡®broadcast.¡¯


    And hell, I was beginning to think I could find anything in here, when schematics for a wireless broadcast repeater popped up. Notes said there were zero in the network, zero on hand, and looking over the specs, I saw this was¡­not her usual work. Very rough stuff, very primitive. Improvised-looking almost. I wondered if she made this out of necessity on simpler equipment.


    The answer jumped out at me in the build requirements. Every part of this device could be assimilated on a hundred-year-old mass fab. Crazy.


    And also kinda useless. There were like forty other machines in this room, throttling the workflow to a single machine would choke the throughput. I gave the schematics another good, hard look, and then reached my hands out, getting them up in this AR mess for the first time, and really picking the floating schematics apart.


    Est. build time at current spec: 00:09:12:45.


    I didn¡¯t have nine hours. I started by chunking the casing around the unit, and the build time dropped three hours right there. Some of these parts, I could wire up a replacement by hand out of parts I had. Taking those out cut us down another three hours. And then diminishing returns began to kick in.


    But this was also the field where I could beat AEGIS¡¯ pants off. The original spec was a very generalized relay, capable of functioning in a broad number of environments for a huge number of tasks. I needed it to work in one environment, once, for one task. Anything which didn¡¯t suit that goal, I could cut.


    Still, a part of me died inside as I designed the damn thing to only broadcast on a single frequency. That was a little too dedicated for even my tastes, but screw it, that cut out the entire circuitry for the oscillator and tuner and saved me another hour and a half. The tuner was out, so with it could go the core and chips for it, saving me another hour. And then, since I knew the wavelength, I could shape the antenna specifically for that reception. Down from a general antenna, that was another¡­five minutes saved.


    I heard a gunshot, an earth-shaking one, one of Lia¡¯s, and my mouth went dry. I cut a few more things and reduced more specs where I could, but at some point, I was taking a few minutes to reduce build time by a few minutes, and I still had parts to assemble by hand. I¡¯d done most of what I could and was just screwing around now, so I sent the build order.


    The next twenty minutes were at once, some of the most normal and strangest minutes of my life. I was in my shop, working on a task, sometimes lost in it enough to feel like singing, if only I had music on. And other times, the house would shudder with an explosion or gunfire. Nothing too crazy yet, but I got the feeling that both sides were letting off warning shots to not try anything or get too close.


    The mass-fab finished, and I scooted over to grab the still-hot part and plop it in the integrated mess of wires and components which had taken over yet another workstation in here. It took me four hookups and the soldering of a preprinted board to the outside of it, and the fine-tuning of an external power supply to get it up and talking.


    I plugged it into Thaumaturge, my mobile, and plugged him into Viewfinder so I could manage everything on AR. I sent a ping, and dozens of them came back from the nearby drones.


    Choice as hell.


    Instead of a ping, I looked up some commands, pulling through AEGIS¡¯ logs to get the syntax and credentials set just-so. And sent it.


    And then sent it again when it failed because I forgot a semicolon.


    And then Viewfinder lit up. I whooped as my view populated, squares of light in every inch of space around me like a city after a blackout. Like the moon suddenly coming out over the water and ten-thousand reflections that shone. Like¡­like¡­


    ¡­like¡­


    The more I turned around, the more cam-drone feeds I saw. Every direction from the house, up to hundreds of feet out.


    And everywhere I looked, I saw people. Soldiers. Exosuits. Guns. Tanks. Even VTOLs hovering silently, wobbling in the air on rotors in stealth mode.


    Whatever happiness I had rising in my stomach was suddenly strangled from the churning in my gut rising up. This wasn¡¯t just some people coming to take Moon away. This was a whole army, poised and waiting, evacuating the last civilians from miles around us.


    I almost tripped over cables, running to the door. I fumbled, unhooking Viewfinder from Thaumaturge, from my bastard relay, and from myself and the stool, and ran yelling into the living room.


    ¡°What? And stay down from the windows,¡± Lia shouted at me, barely giving me a glance up from where she was staring down her rifle out one of those windows she just warned me about.


    I pulled Viewfinder off my head and handed her over. She gave her a glance, then me, then pulled off her mask and put her on.


    Without her mask on, I could see Lia was tired under there. Her eyes were hidden behind Viewfinder, but as pale and grim as she looked before, absolutely all color fled her face after looking around for a minute.


    ¡°Did you see the insignias?¡± I asked. She nodded and pulled off the headset, offering it to Moon¡¯s purple spirit, who had no problems donning it despite being a¡­whatever she was.


    ¡°I saw them,¡± Lia said, pulling her mask back on, her voice going synthetic halfway through the sentence. ¡°White sword on a white shield, ringed by stars.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s XPCA,¡± Moon whispered. ¡°Why is it XPCA? Why so many?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Lia said. ¡°They¡¯re expecting a fight it looks like. But I can¡¯t imagine why they¡¯d suddenly go hostile on us like this. It¡¯s not like you or Tem have done anything.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s Athan,¡± Chiho said from the couch. ¡°It has to be.¡±


    ¡°What? He¡¯s not even here. And if he got in trouble on his mission, they¡¯d come after him there, not¡­set up around the house and wait for him here.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Chiho shook her head. ¡°They¡¯re not here for him, they¡¯re here because they¡¯re turning on him.¡±


    ¡°If they¡¯re turning on him, then what are they¨C¡± Lia stopped. ¡°They¡¯re not here for him. They¡¯re here for us. They¡¯ve already nabbed him, and they¡¯re coming for anyone who might do something when they find out.¡±


    ¡°It make sense¨C¡± Chiho started, but then she stopped, because the room suddenly flickered in and out of view like a power surge was happening. Weird spots drifted in my eyes no matter how hard I blinked, and then Tem, who¡¯d seemingly been completely content to just lie by the door, suddenly rose to her feet, smoke coming off of her.


    ¡°They¡­¡°


    ¡°Oh butts,¡± Lia said. ¡°Chiho, RUN!¡±


    She dove and tackled me as the black smoke seemed to explode from Tem¡¯s body. As though they were waiting for this sign the whole time, the XPCA outside began to open fire in earnest, bullets and lasers screaming over my head from where Lia held us down.


    ¡°¡­they nabbed him?¡±


    ¡°Tem just calm down,¡± Lia shouted over the rolling crackle of gunfire.


    ¡°¡­they¡­nabbed¡­Chariot?¡±


    She began wording something else in disbelief but it was washed out by a roaring, like a VTOL coming in to land on the roof. Moon turned and punched skyward, and with her, a blackish-purple beam of light erupted into the distant sky, and looking like it was over the horizon, but too big and loud to be that distant, the source of the roaring exploded in a circle of fire.


    ¡°Was that¡­a missile?¡± Lia asked.


    ¡°Do you mind if I retain this headset?¡± Moon asked, not pausing before shooting another beam somewhere else above us.


    ¡°If¡­if you need her. Just¡­give it back,¡± I said, still stunned on the floor under Lia as the sound of death lasers tore the air, and the gunfire rose yet another pitch. Sounds of bigger booms began to echo.


    And then the room went white with a screech and a roar more deafening and blinding than any before. Tem¡¯s unhinged scream blended into roar of the beam in an unnatural fusion as her fire vaporized the house opposite ours.


    And I scrambled for the garage. I wanted no part of this. Anything going on out there, I didn¡¯t want to touch with an eleven-hundred-foot pole. It was all just a nightmare, I thought. I could just¡­plug in a bit, and it¡¯d all be over.


    I looked around in stupid desperation for a few minutes thinking I¡¯d misplaced Viewfinder and my gateway to the VR world. The blasts grew louder and closer, and I could see and hear white flashes going off every second now. I realized I was shaking all over, and my body was unnaturally cold.


    It was like the whole world had gone insane in just a few seconds, and I felt like the only sane remnant. I wanted more than anything just to¡­to run and hide. To be anywhere but here.


    But I¡¯d seen the forces outside. I knew their numbers and their positioning. There wasn¡¯t any escape. Not from this. Hundreds of them. Completely surrounded.


    Chiho stumbled in and the door slammed behind her. She looked about as sick as I felt.


    ¡°Okay,¡± she said, climbing to her feet and looking around. ¡°What do we do?¡±


    I looked around and confirmed there was nobody else here she might be asking. ¡°Me?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I¡¯m no good with this stuff.¡±


    ¡°And I am?¡±


    She looked at me, seeming to grow stronger from my weakness. She took a couple deep breaths and then let them out slowly. ¡°Okay. Okay, okay, okay. We need to not panic. That¡¯s step one.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m failing step one,¡± I told her. She laughed. At a time like this, she laughed. I couldn¡¯t believe it.


    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit,¡± she said. I hadn¡¯t even meant it as a joke. ¡°Okay, neither of us can help out there, but maybe we can help in here. Do you have any like, weapons?¡±


    I pointed at my broken-down exosuit. Nonfunctional, but¡­something, at least.


    ¡°Okay. Well. That doesn¡¯t look too useful, but maybe if we get it online. Is there anything else? What was that thing you were working on with Athan the last few weeks?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­not ready yet.¡±


    ¡°Is it in better shape than that exosuit?¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­I guess.¡±


    ¡°Then let¡¯s work on it.¡±


    I blinked at her, feeling more convinced by the word that she only looked sane, that the same insanity outside had lodged in her as well and nothing she said is anything a reasonably sane person would ever say or think or do.


    ¡°Chiho, we can¡¯t manufacture and repair an entire exosuit in here in the few minutes we have before this battle destroys everything and kills all of us,¡± I told her.


    ¡°Well that¡¯s pretty pessimistic for a number of reasons,¡± she said pointing at me. ¡°But I guess you haven¡¯t seen everything these guys can do, so I¡¯ll let it slide.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t see the forces outside.¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± she said, brushing back her hair and picking up parts at random. ¡°We¡¯ll win no matter what we face. I have faith in them. And even if I didn¡¯t, even if I thought we¡¯d lose, it doesn¡¯t matter still.¡±


    ¡°How can that not matter still? How can anything matter more than that? What¡¯s going on out there, that¡¯s going to determine our entire lives, you realize? There¡¯s a war starting outside, and we¡¯re gonna die in it.¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± she shrugged. ¡°But even so. Doesn¡¯t matter.¡±


    ¡°HOW,¡± I yelled, my throat catching raggedly on a volume I¡¯d rarely hit before ¡°can that NOT matter?¡±


    She walked over and brandished the part at me while putting a hand on my shoulder. ¡°Whether they¡¯ll win or not, whether they live or not, whether we die or not, there¡¯s nothing we can do about it right?¡±


    I nodded.


    ¡°Then you¡¯ve got no say in your death. That means what matters is your life, and what you did with it. So you can spend your time freaking out, or doing what you loved.¡±


    She put the part in my hands and looked at me with an expectant smile. It was a casing for an exosuit. It was heavy and solid. And real.


    ¡°I guess you¡¯re right,¡± I agreed. ¡°You¡¯re completely insane, but that doesn¡¯t mean you¡¯re wrong. If I¡¯m gonna die, there¡¯s no way I¡¯m letting this unaligned servo be the last thing I left behind.¡±


    ¡°Yay, look at you go!¡± she cheered. ¡°Now how can I help?¡±


    I took the casing back to the workbench and took a deep breath. She was right. Being here, having work in front of me, figuring out what I could do, instead of worrying about what I couldn¡¯t, it was calming, it was liberating.


    It was a little annoying I didn¡¯t have Viewfinder to help me out, but I had her hands, so it was a wash overall, I guess.


    ¡°I need that second core over there from that stack and then help me lift this power supply onto the workbench,¡± I told her. ¡°And put a pair of gloves on, It¡¯s going to get messy in here.¡±

 329. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Whitney.

    I did not know how messy it was going to get.


    Chiho and I worked for what seemed like hours as the combat intensified all around us. More than once, bullets or explosions ripped into the garage, and I gave myself only a moment to process the thought, huh, if I¡¯d been standing there, I¡¯d be dead, before forcing myself back to work.


    When faced with something I didn¡¯t like, I tended to freeze, tended to hide, tended to run. And ignoring the fact that working in here definitely qualified as hiding, just hiding was not how I wanted to die. I wanted to die with a driver in one hand and a multimeter in the other, having just cracked some obnoxious problem that¡¯d been nettling the whole design process, with triumph on my lips.


    Or, more ideally, of old age. In my souped-up Lambo, resting in the parking lot after accepting a lifetime achievement award for revolutionizing the field of engineering.


    Either way, I was certainly paying a lot more attention to what kinds of tools were in my hands than usual on account of supposing them to be the last things I ever held. If I were truly vain, I probably would have changed out of yesterday¡¯s clothes I¡¯d been sleeping in for something more¡­I dunno, funeral-appropriate.


    I didn¡¯t generally give this stuff much thought. It was kind of a weird day for me.


    As the minutes went on and I got into the groove of picking up my work, that part at least was familiar and comforting. More than once, I accidentally called Chiho ¡®Athan¡¯, since he was the only assistant I¡¯d ever had before now.


    For a while, we lived that great, glorious illusion of normalcy, just me and her and The Work, able to put the insanity of the outside where it belonged: outside. But as the fighting ramped up, as more and more of the walls around us blew to pieces and the definitions of ¡®outside¡¯ and ¡®inside¡¯ blurred with them coming down, as exploding pieces of glass and shrap found Chiho and myself, and I realized some things in the world couldn¡¯t just be ignored.


    I worked until I was spending more time wiping my blood out of my parts than I was building them. Until that I didn¡¯t have the grip strength in my main-hand anymore to hold a driver, and then in my off-hand either. Until I couldn¡¯t blow my hair out of my face because it was glued to it with blood. Until I was on my back without remembering falling.


    She and I sat panting on the floor, half of the workspace gone and buried after the last blast dropped the ceiling on it. I¡¯d finally been defeated; the bundles of cable I wanted were under the wreckage, so even if I wanted to keep up this farce, I was at an impasse. And while the temptation was strong to completely shift gears and pick up something new, I felt weak and exhausted, felt like I couldn¡¯t do anything other than sit and breathe and bleed, and starting something new at this point¡­wouldn¡¯t work.


    The dream was over, I realized. It was time to wake up and face the nightmare. The house was mostly gone. The neighborhood was absolutely levelled. White flashes of laser and enemy fire roared constantly.


    And we¡¯d managed to assemble the bottom half of an exosuit prototype I¡¯d been screwing around with and that¡¯s about it. Normally I¡¯d have waited for the entire thing to be fabricated and functioning in their respective pieces, but with the end looming, I thought, what the hell. It was put together as best it could be, and it worked.


    I had the crazy thought of strapping Chiho into it and having her make a run for it with the augmented athleticism it¡¯d provide, but¡­I wasn¡¯t about to start anything that might get anyone else killed. I already hadn¡¯t seen or heard from Lia in a while, and her gun had stopped firing, and I absolutely wasn¡¯t about to go check to see what that meant.


    But there was still one more thing I could do, I thought, dragging myself to my feet. Chiho, despite being in bad shape, didn¡¯t hesitate to join me, and I walked us over to the other exosuit, the real exosuit, the damaged one I¡¯d used during my stint as Chariot.


    ¡°I need you to help me with something,¡± I told her. ¡°Can you climb into the driver compartment in here?¡±


    She agreed while I wheeled a diagnostics unit over and plugged it in. The suit was wrecked and would never move again without serious refitting, but a few of its systems still functioned. I tapped a few buttons and the suit booted to life around her, and then with a command, it closed up, sealing her inside, minus the breaches.


    ¡°What do I do?¡± she asked, her voice coming out somewhat synthesized but mostly through the gaping hole in the faceplate.


    ¡°You stay safe,¡± I told her, listening to the satisfying hiss as the suit¡¯s medical systems diagnosed and dispensed medical gel across her wounds. ¡°Unless you¡¯re very unlucky, the suit will absorb most of the attacks since they¡¯re not trying to hit you directly.¡±


    ¡°Wait,¡± she asked. ¡°You¡¯re leaving me here?¡±


    I just smiled at her and sat down against the wall of the garage. Standing had been too ambitious after all. My head felt light and my eyelids felt heavy. I¡¯d never bled this much in my life before, I used to think that stabbing myself with something was a serious cut, but here I was sitting with a dozen wounds ten times that bad, and I still somehow wasn¡¯t dead yet. Human bodies were crazy resilient things. But I was starting to feel its limits.


    ¡°Whitney, come on,¡± she urged me. ¡°There¡¯s still¡­we can still¡­I don¡¯t know. There¡¯s science stuff over there near the wreckage. Let¡¯s go work on that. Or¡­or¡­maybe we can dig an escape tunnel. You can¡­you can salvage this suit into a giant drill or something.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m tired, Chiho,¡± I smiled at her, feeling my chin falling on my chest. ¡°I can¡¯t¡­can¡¯t think too well anymore. I¡¯ll make whatever you want¡­after I wake up.¡±


    The half of her face I could see through the broken faceplate was pale and frustrated. Its eyes were glassy with fear, but its brows were still angled downward as she began to yell at me.


    ¡°Whitney come on! Don¡¯t you dare give up. What about¡­what about we put you in here instead? If you¡¯re falling asleep, you need the medical gel more than me. Come on!¡±


    ¡°Nah,¡± I told her, closing my eyes and slumping over sideways. ¡°It¡¯s fine. Just gimmie¡­a few minutes¡­to rest.¡±


    With my eyes closed her words sounded so much further away. She barked and yelped at me, issued nonsensical commands to the nonfunctional exosuit, pleaded and begged for me to stay with her, for me to stay awake.


    Honestly, I expected to die there. Which was kinda¡­well it was what it was. I¡¯d run myself as far as I could and then some. I had bullets and things in me, stuff I never expected to face ever, just a short year ago. I¡¯d never thought it¡¯d be like this. Before, I never really thought about death too much, it was just kinda a thing looming in the distance I knew I¡¯d reach someday. And then I met Athan, and it was more like, well¡­okay, I might blow up suddenly one day.


    Never expected it to be a thing by inches. Just working and bleeding and working until I had nothing left. It hurt. It sucked. But it was what it was.


    And then I dunno, cuz I drifted off, even with all the explosions and fire and pain and everything. Just kinda dropped into the darkest, most non-existential sleep of my life.


    I was surprised when I came to, and it took me a minute to realize, I still hurt all over, so I was either alive or in hell. Depressing how hard it was to discern.


    It was totally dark in here now, the lights in the garage had failed at some point, and looking around in the flickers of gun and laser-fire, I could see that the likely cause was even more of the room collapsing. Ceiling-mounted lights required a ceiling by necessity.


    Also my head was pounding, and when I tried to sit up, the rest of my body ached like a mother as well. Dried blood on my skin cracked off as I stirred, and there was so much of it, I was kinda glad I couldn¡¯t see too well.


    Something was shuffling in the dark though, and I knew at once that was what had woken me. Someone stepping through the wreckage, probably some XPCA agent sneaking up on where our two Exhumans were still shooting lasers, after all this time.


    I wanted to yell a warning but my mouth was dry and throat felt unresponsive. Just blinking took a lot more coordination than I thought possible. But as though he was reacting to my thoughts, the shadow turned from the house and advanced towards me instead, just a dark shape in the darker gloom. I could hear his footsteps, heavy and shuffling through the wreckage of the garage¡­my garage, pausing to investigate my things in the dark.


    On the holo readout nearby, I could see Chiho was still alive inside the exosuit. Strong vitals, and not awake. As the shape drew closer to her, my heart pounded hotter and louder until I thought my ears would burst.


    The lights flashed for a moment and I made out that there were two of them. Mostly, I saw his hand, reaching out for the exosuit, reaching out for Chiho.


    Somehow, impossibly, I was on my feet. My body moved faster than I could, much faster than should have been possible. But if now wasn¡¯t the time for heroics¡­well, I¡¯d already kind of come to terms with the fact I wouldn¡¯t be here tomorrow.


    I tripped in the dark and staggered, but I stumbled into him anyways, toppling him off balance with me landing on top of him. I fumbled and drew out Sparker from my hip, and jammed it into him.


    His eyes narrowed at me as the prod discharged. I¡¯d never actually¡­tested Sparker on anyone, except myself ¡ª that was only once ¡ª and I expected a lot more¡­thrashing and yelling. But he just glared at me. I guess I shouldn¡¯t have expected silly civilian self-defense arms to do a thing to a legit XPCA soldier.


    What a stupid way to die, I thought.


    But instead of shooting me, he spoke. ¡°You know,¡± he said, in a voice that made my heart leap ¡°you¡¯re not supposed to be on top of someone when you use those things on them. You¡¯ll shock yourself by contact.¡±Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    I squealed. Legit, full-on hamster squeal, and threw my arms around Athan.


    ¡°Hiya Whitney,¡± he said from under me. ¡°Um, happy to see you too. Could you turn off the shock prod though?¡±


    ¡°Oh, right.¡± I pulled the prod out of his stomach and sat back, feeling stupid already for my outburst. Sparker crackled with irritation and I shushed her until she calmed down. I looked up to find Athan laughing at me. Chuckling, at least.


    I gave him a face and then looked down as I holstered Sparker again, and in doing so realized Athan had no leg.


    ¡°Holy heck, Athan,¡± I muttered, my voice getting lost in gunfire. In fact, as I calmed down and saw more clearly, I saw he was covered in wounds of all kinds, looking worse than me by far. ¡°Athan aren¡¯t you¡­doesn¡¯t that¡­¡±


    He shook his head and reached up like a child, and the other figure stepped forward. AEGIS pulled him upright, looking like a mess herself. She was intact, mostly, but I could tell by her movements and knowing her that she had internal system damage. Her natural grace, her ballerina-like movements were stilted and jarring, and she trembled on uneven footing.


    ¡°Do you¡­want me to take a look?¡± I asked her. I realized it wasn¡¯t a very good question after it came out, but she shook her head.


    ¡°No time,¡± she answered.


    ¡°Yeah. Sorry, do you know where Lia is?¡± Athan asked.


    ¡°She was in the living room last I saw,¡± I apologized. ¡°She was out there shooting and then just¡­stopped at some point.¡±


    The two shared an uneasy glance. ¡°She¡¯s not there now,¡± Athan said. ¡°Nor in her room, or any of the bedrooms. Or the bath. This was the last place in the house. Who¡¯s in there?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s Chiho.¡±


    ¡°Damn. Well. Good, I guess. But damn, where is that girl.¡± He took a step on a leg that wasn¡¯t and stumbled, only barely caught by AEGIS¡¯ dulled movements. I winced painfully watching him nearly go down, but he seemed more annoyed than hurt.


    ¡°Wait¡­right there,¡± I said, having an idea. He started to argue, but I was already moving. ¡°It¡¯ll only take a second, and it¡¯ll help you go faster.¡±


    The fact that moving was a really stupid idea only caught up to me after I already started. It hit me from behind like a truck, my head suddenly spinning and I thought I might black out. I had to work very hard at blinking, and it seemed like every time I did, the world moved outside my eyelids independently of me.


    But I was right there. The work was in my hands. For once in this whole stupid battle, in this whole stupid running-away, I wasn¡¯t useless. I was determined not to blackout. I¡¯d be useful, just this once. I pushed my body forward. Just this once.


    I came to with Athan slapping my cheeks painfully, the two of them lurking over my face like they wanted an interview. I didn¡¯t know what happened, but once I figured it out, it seriously irked me.


    ¡°Fine,¡± I told him, and more specifically, her. ¡°At that station, I have a light exosuit frame I¡¯ve been working on for Athan. It¡¯s only a functioning prototype at this stage, and there¡¯s no auto-gyro yet, but the neural tap is set and,¡± I looked at him significantly ¡°and I double-checked all the range-of-motion calibrations. It¡¯s juiced and ready to go.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± he asked. ¡°What do I need that for?¡±


    I looked him up¡­and down. ¡°To stand on. It¡¯s a pair of legs, and you¡¯ve only got one.¡±


    That seemed to annoy him, but AEGIS was already picking it up and strapping parts of the frame to his body. I sat up to help but even that made me woozy, so I laid down before I fell down again and directed her capable hands.


    It was an idea I¡¯d had after the barrier Exhuman we¡¯d fought in New York. They¡¯d fought. I was useless. Her exosuit, if you could even call it that, was barely more than a frame. Just a set of mounts for her to put barrier projectors on, the lightest possible thing to bear the strongest possible armor.


    I wasn¡¯t a barrier Exhuman, and I wasn¡¯t about to try to fight the XPCA for her tech. It was a well-known fact that technopath technology was neigh-unworkable by anyone other than the creator anyway. But the idea of a superlight frame¡­Athan wasn¡¯t one who needed armor, generally, just mobility. So if you took the motor systems of a standard exosuit and dropped three tons of armor and systems¡­


    Well, my design philosophy was more with less. You couldn¡¯t get much more less than the copper-red frame hanging off Athan¡¯s waist and legs. It read his motions, tried to anticipate them through a neural uplink at the base of the spine, and amplified them to give massively increased strength in running, jumping, striding. Absorbing shock, increasing mobility.


    Or, in this case, with one of the empty frames where Athan¡¯s leg was supposed to be, standing. Walking. Not face-planting.


    He gave it a few experimental strides, the frame whispering silently with his movements, but he was on two feet again, in a way, at least. I gave him a wry smirk and AEGIS applauded her excitement.


    And then he bounded forward as fast as he could go. Or at least, I assumed so, because to my eyes, he just set and then vanished. And then there was a crashing noise from somewhere in the backyard.


    AEGIS hurried after him, her engines flaring, although not all of them I noticed. By her glow, I saw him reeling halfway in our neighbor¡¯s yard, some dozen feet away. I really hoped he hadn¡¯t taken that in a single stride, and hoped further that he hadn¡¯t stopped as quickly as he started, but I knew the kid too well to believe otherwise.


    Once he was back inside, a few XPCA put down by white and purple blasts from the living room to cover his reentry, AEGIS scolded him properly about doing idiot things with new toys.


    He cut her off to ask me ¡°You have no idea where Lia went? None at all?¡±


    ¡°I got the cam-drones online and talking, but then handed them over to Kaori.¡±


    ¡°Ooh, you did?¡± AEGIS asked. ¡°I thought they¡¯d be knocked out by the jamming.¡±


    I pointed at the relay I¡¯d cobbled together. ¡°ULF, in the twelve-hundred band. It¡¯s a huge band to have any throughput, you¡¯ll find it easily if you look for it. Using ground conduction transmission to get past the jamming.¡±


    ¡°Oh my God, that¡¯s so smart,¡± she said, swiping in the air and tapping away for a few moments. ¡°There they are. Well. Some of them. I had a lot more of these when I left,¡± she frowned. ¡°I guess I blame Tem. Not that I really can, there¡¯s probably be none left if it weren¡¯t for her.¡±


    I pulled myself upright and waited for the nausea and weakness to fade, and when it didn¡¯t, reached for AEGIS, who was now free to help me limp around with Athan on his feet. ¡°Grab¡­yeah¡­over there,¡± I steered us, and had her clear some rubble and pull a cable for me. ¡°Sorry. You know¡­what I mean.¡±


    ¡°I have some drugs here¨C¡± AEGIS suggested. ¡°I don¡¯t recommend them but¡­if you can¡¯t even stand.¡±


    ¡°No, after this, I¡¯m¡­useless to you guys. I¡¯ll just¡­lie down with Chiho, and leave¡­leave it up to you.¡±


    She gave me a reassuring smile and then picked me up bodily, stepping deliberately through the wreckage on only the most sure of footing.


    ¡°You didn¡¯t carry me,¡± Athan complained from behind as we entered the living room, where the two Tems were blasting away.


    ¡°You weigh twice as much as she does. Have you been skipping meals again Whitney?¡±


    ¡°Is it the right time to ask?¡± I replied.


    ¡°When we get out of this, I¡¯ll start cooking for you. I¡¯m serious.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s get out of this first,¡± Athan said. ¡°Moon, can we borrow the headset for a minute?¡±


    ¡°Do you wish for us all to die?¡± she replied. Again, I couldn¡¯t tell if she was kidding.


    ¡°We don¡¯t need to,¡± I said. ¡°If you plug in to the second port there, AEGIS¡­yeah. You should be able to dump the cache.¡±


    AEGIS got herself hooked up to the girl spinning around shooting lasers everywhere without interfering too much, but when she plugged herself in, she just froze up entirely, hands locked in the air on the cables.


    A long moment passed. And then another. I realized I was holding my breath.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Athan asked, finally. I pulled the connection out.


    ¡°Gah,¡± AEGIS said, snapping back to life. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m too damaged.¡±


    The house rattled around us as an explosion went off just overhead. I could feel the heat of it even here.


    ¡°Is this truly essential?¡± Moon complained. I assume. ¡°Ever since you have normalized Temperance, her destructive output has been halved, and the approach of the XPCA¨C¡± She spun on the spot and there was a firearm in her hands. She fired twice into the backyard and nailed an XPCA who was sprinting forward, staggering him long enough for a beam to erase him. ¡°¨Chas become proportionally more successful.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Athan answered before any of us could. ¡°It¡¯s the most important thing of all. If it¡¯s getting that bad, I can help.¡± He lit up with a couple dozen floating blades and stepped towards the backyard, his shield lighting up almost the instant he crossed the windows. ¡°Whitney, AEGIS, see what you can do with the camera feeds. If you need me, just¡­shoot a laser straight up and I¡¯ll come running, okay?¡±


    ¡°Athan it¡¯s suicide out there,¡± AEGIS pleaded.


    ¡°And Lia might be in the middle of it.¡± He didn¡¯t stop to argue, just shoved off on his new legs, bounding the fence in a stride again, but this time without a crash at the end of it. AEGIS had her fingers knotted in both of her strands of hair as much as she could manage as she stared into the flickering lights in the dark.


    ¡°He¡¯s not going to make it,¡± she said. ¡°He just tore himself half to death going through the light constructs and he didn¡¯t even feel it. He¡¯ll tear himself the other half on the way back in. I shouldn¡¯t have given him that drug.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s cleverer than he looks. He¡¯ll be fine,¡± I assured her. ¡°He doesn¡¯t have the decency to die and straighten out my life anyway.¡± She glared knives at me, and I realized perhaps it wasn¡¯t a good topic to joke around. ¡°The sooner we get what he wants the sooner we can call him back. Come on.¡±


    ¡°We need¡­more processing power,¡± AEGIS said. ¡°Let¡¯s get back to the workshop.¡±


    She moved slowly, still carrying me delicately, still placing her feet carefully, as though any misstep might make her tumble. But worse by far than the physical burden was seeing her desperate glances in the direction Athan had darted off, the flashing of his blades and shield already gone.


    It was¡­painful to look at. It reminded me too much of myself, when my family died. I didn¡¯t want to think of those times again, so I didn¡¯t look at her anymore. I focused on what we needed to do.


    And yet somehow she became even more devastated as we picked through the debris. As she did, while I sat and watched. Again and again, she pulled server cores from the collapsed roof and held them in her hands like dead children, her breathing ragged and tears spilling as she set them gently aside. She dug deeper and more frantically, throwing concrete and wood and tile with abandon, clawing at the ground, only to pull up another core. Only to look carefully at it. Only to cry again.


    I understood. My machines were my family. Her past and alternate lives were hers. I also knew how fragile cores were, and how susceptible their data could be to physical trauma. I remembered how distraught and angry she¡¯d been at me for almost setting the workshop on fire. That was an ¡®almost¡¯. And now this.


    I didn¡¯t know what to say, what to do, anything. My everything hurt, but I knew my pain was nothing compared to her. Her pain dragged me back against my will ¡ª of all the things people told me when my family passed, how pointless their words had all been. How their good intentions just hurt. Empty promises and lies and stupid. Stupid people who didn¡¯t get it. Stupid people who would be gone the next day. Stupid, meaningless words. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.


    My head burned the deeper into my memories I went, and after a moment my thoughts seemed to jump away from me on their own accord. I couldn¡¯t focus, even on the thing I was trying to avoid focusing on. It felt like a knife in my head, or a hammer. Or a hammer hitting a knife.


    So I just¡­watched. Watched AEGIS as she dug frantically, bare fingers clawing at rock, how she screamed as she flung chunks of concrete as heavy as her body. How every inch of her servers she reclaimed was another inch she lost.


    And I saw as despair crept into her heart further and further. A loss no human could understand. Thousands, millions of her siblings maybe, wiped out in an instant. Created specifically to protect her from what she now suffered. Iterations which represented dreams and potential, the immortal legacy beating in the desire of every creator, wiped clean and left painfully, utterly gone.


    She cried, and I cried with her, though my body didn¡¯t have the strength for tears. She curled into a ball on her knees, huddled and shuddered, feeling, mourning.


    And then, all at once, she stood up. She faced me and wiped her eyes, and spoke evenly, no trace of the emotion that tore her apart left in her.


    ¡°I¡¯ve determined a viable source for the resources we need.¡±


    I sniffled. ¡°Oh¡­kay.¡±


    She ripped down the remainder of the server racks like they were just garbage in her way and cleared a path on the ground. From the furthest corner, straining with exertion, she pulled a wheeled table from under a pile of parts with a clatter.


    I blinked at the unfamiliar form. It looked vaguely humanoid, but¡­not human at all. It was in repose, and had arms and legs, but it was alien in proportion, and instead of skin, instead of a face, instead of fingers, it was smooth black metal.


    ¡°I require your help to reactivate the shell. Please follow my directions carefully.¡±


    ¡°What¡­is it?¡± I asked, feeling lightheaded as I peered at the curving black thing.


    ¡°This is ¨²aine. It possesses all of the processing power I require.¡±

 330. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    The drugs mostly, but also the relative quiet of AEGIS and I crawling inch-by-inch into the house, of having Saga behind me and Karu above me and Tem and Moon in front of me, it had all conspired to lull me into a sort of false sense of¡­not security, exactly, but complacency maybe? The opening part of the fight had been disastrous, yes ¡ª I needed to look no further than my own leg to confirm that. But as we¡¯d inched towards the zone of control owned by the two Tems, and as more fire had been directed at them instead of us, as everyone around us provided us with cover and protection, it might have been easy to attribute the relative calm to us turning the tide, or things getting better.


    It took¡­seconds, maybe, of being back out there to prove just how fragile this illusion was. I was lucky to have jumped through the layer of light constructs without being debilitatingly shredded, only enough to rip off a fair amount of my skin and clothes, and probably some of my less-essential muscles and organs. And waiting past that shell, the XPCA opened up on me, and I found myself struggling just to keep their weaponry from blowing me to chunks.


    The welcome wagon was a VTOL, with two nasty-looking cannons on either side. Tem speared it across the wing with a beam before it fired, sending both of the shots it¡¯d levelled at me into the ground, the vortexes in the bullets¡¯ wake like two tornados, even at range. Definitely a big enough shot to punch through my shield and me, I made the floundering vehicle my first target.


    But before I could even close within range, ground troops were popping out all around me. I was taking leaping strides, feeling like AEGIS in how the world tore past under my feet, but even so, I could feel the heat of their fire, and my shield flashed erratically, strobing on and off as I flew past obstacles which gave me fractional moments of cover from some strike teams while others opened up.


    Some were unfortunate assholes who were packing lasers or rockets, something for my shield to deflect and then chase down. But most weren¡¯t, most were shooting things at me I didn¡¯t even comprehend, things which I was sure were dangerous, even to a darting, shielded Exhuman.


    I landed for a second, catching my breath in the ruins of a blasted-down house, knowing its low wreckage was only a moment of cover. But right in front of me, nothing I could see, but could feel in my mind, my senses spiked, and I threw myself sideways on instinct.


    A blast of sonic energy shattered the wall where I¡¯d just stood, and the destruction swept towards me, turning the wreckage into confetti as the concealed shooter followed. I rolled onto my feet and pushed as hard as I could, feeling the exosuit¡­exoframe?¡­mimicking my movements with legs a thousand times stronger than my own and shooting me forward.


    My blades hit the shadow ops first, his camo exploding into a fireworks of garbled color and noise as they passed through him. And then, I crashed into him bodily, my shoulder into his chin, which snapped backwards with the impact and sent both of us spinning and tumbling with enough momentum to be launched clear of the house.


    I had an odd moment of absolute calm, flying in the air like that, my head reeling from the acceleration and the neural dampener. Things seemed to pass in slow motion. I could see people pivoting their weapons on me from the shadows, could see the shadow ops I¡¯d impacted soaring backwards, his head no longer connected quite right to his body, could see the place in my shoulder where part of his faceplate and a few of his teeth were embedded and my blood and his flowed like streamers in the air as I tumbled.


    I felt profoundly aware and connected with everything around me, as something in my subconscious, some prey-instinct recognized that I was being watched by hundreds of wary eyes. The wreckage only looked barren, but it was a fractal of menace; no matter where you looked, if you looked hard enough, there were weapons there, or soldiers bearing them. Tens of thousands of them, costing billions of dollars, all to converge on this point, all to destroy me, and those who stood with me.


    It was an oddly spiritual moment. I¡¯d never been this important to anyone before, and if they had their way, would never be again. And while I of course found it very impressive and very pants-shittingly terrifying the sheer amount of force they had to bear down on me, what really frightened me was just how little trace there was of Lia, the one thing in this whole situation which was most important to me.


    Which was stupid, I knew. Did I just expect to find her walking around out here? If she was, she¡¯d be nabbed or killed in a heartbeat. But I couldn¡¯t do nothing.


    I managed to get one leg between me and the ground and the inertial dampeners soaked the impact and merely sent me into a tumbling fall instead of shattering my bones. I could see why Whitney took the time to warn me that the auto-gyros weren¡¯t working yet, and it¡¯d be on me to make sure my legs were both the first and last parts of me to hit the ground.


    I hopped to my feet and spun, my blades spinning with me, and two soldiers nearby screamed their protest as the darting swords caught them in the throats. Another stood nearby, some kind of bulky, menacing weapon on his shoulder being brought to the ready. With a sharp breath, I flung lightning in his face before he could show me what that one did.


    And then the ground started exploding under me from something else somewhere else and I bolted off again. I looked down and saw fresh blood seeping from my leg from whatever that was, and the resignation that great, I¡¯d been hurt yet again.


    I continued like this for another few leaps. Landing where I could, cutting back the XPCA who seemed on closest advance to the house, and disappearing before they could retaliate. Sometimes after they could retaliate. Sometimes I wiped out a VTOL or rocket truck or on rare occasions, one of the slightly-fancier exosuits indicating someone with command capabilities beyond a simple squad lead. And then a few leaps more. And a few leaps more. And a few more after that.


    After the dozenth crater of carnage, I was getting exhausted, and there was absolutely no sign that I¡¯d done a damn thing. Even in places I¡¯d already been, new men were pressing forward, troops or shadow ops or combat drones. Everywhere just seemed to rush inwards on the house, though so spread out I couldn¡¯t hit more than a man or two at a time.


    It was like trying to run around and push back the tide. I couldn¡¯t beeverywhere, and while our lasers were beyond lethal, they couldn¡¯t be everywhere either. I hadn¡¯t seen any signs of Karu since emerging, and that worried me, but I did flash past Saga at some point, who¡¯d built a nice little igloo out of corpses and had draped herself in an XPCA uniform that was both large enough to be more of a poncho than a shirt, and more red than black from her blood on it.


    I wondered for a moment if everyone in the wall of meat Saga was building was entirely dead before they were piled into it. She certainly didn¡¯t have the strength to arrange them like that, and I didn¡¯t see anyone exactly helping her. The implications around that girl were always a little grisly.


    But if she was holding her own, that was fine. The real problem was what we were holding our own until. Even if we could push back, eventually our bodies would fail. I was certainly running low on blood and organs by now, even if the drugs wouldn¡¯t let me feel pain, I knew exhaustion in all of my limbs, and my head felt stupid in ways that weren¡¯t all attributable to the neural dampening field.


    In short, if we kept this up, we¡¯d lose. We needed something, and I was quickly concluding that the ¡®something¡¯ was potentially running the fuck out of here and hoping for some way to ditch our pursuit.


    A laser lit up the sky, shooting high into the cloudless air and hanging there for a moment, impossible to tell if it was a beam fired up or some holy light shining down. A signal from AEGIS to return.


    It was answered by a less holy light, as Skyweb opened up with another volley, slicing, violet beams angling into the living room of the house even as I approached.


    ¡°Athan stop,¡± AEGIS shouted at me, and I did, still peeking for a way through the barrier of light constructs.


    ¡°What¡¯d you find?¡± I shouted back, ducking into Saga¡¯s little fort of exosuits and corpses melded with the wreckage of our neighbor¡¯s house.


    ¡°I was able to pull the cache and review the cam-drone feeds. Lia is not here, she was taken by Rito most of twenty minutes ago. The two of them disappeared and have not returned.¡±


    I could tell by the cadence of her speech she¡¯d turned her emotions off again, but her words were a huge relief to me anyway. For a moment anyway, before my thoughts turned back to our current situation. ¡°So it was all for nothing?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°You have failed in your primary goal.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t listen to that gearsack,¡± Saga growled from nearby, as she held her head, the XPCA uniform hanging off of her swaying with her movements, except for where it was glued to her blood. ¡°The others needed rescuing too, Athan. Whitney. Moon. Maybe even Tem, if swinging by the animal shelter for a replacement is too much work for you.¡±


    ¡°Tem,¡± I argued ¡°is the only reason this house is even still standing, and is¨C¡°


    ¡°Mercy me, put your boner away,¡± she chided. ¡°Of course she¡¯s powerful and lovably neurotic and all that. Joudan, buddy.¡±


    ¡°Oh shut up,¡± I growled back. As much as I loved her sometimes, this was not a minute to waste on her banter. ¡°AEGIS all we have left is to get everyone out then?¡±


    ¡°If that is your new directive. I view our odds of success as very slim. I might suggest that if your priority is preserving the lives of your allies, statistically speaking, it would be a much better move to surrender.¡±


    ¡°If we surrender, they will absolutely kill Tem and Moon for starters, and myself. They¡¯ll do whatever they can to Saga, you¡¯ll probably wind up in another AI project and worse than dead.¡±


    ¡°Yes, but there is a decent chance that Whitney and Chiho are merely imprisoned. Two of seven is a much higher projected survival rate than resisting. I can continue to run the numbers to improve certainty, but it seems a waste of processes when my systems are badly damaged and the outcome is co clear already.¡±


    I sighed. Great, so we had the possibility of AEGIS going turncoat on us as well now. And I think I was beginning to feel pain again, so this was just¡­not going well. Straight to hell, really.


    Not that I didn¡¯t believe AI-AEGIS¡¯ probability calculations, but hearing her say flat-out that we were all going to die wasn¡¯t helping with the situation. And I was still just pissed.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Because we were in this mess and it was my fault. Because hundreds of people were dying and it was my fault. Our house was blown apart and our lifestyle ruined and any bridges I had with the XPCA burned to ash. And it was all for nothing, because Rito had already come and gone, and the whole fucking disaster had been because I¡¯d felt the need to confront Dragon and stop him from taking his toy back, and I probably hadn¡¯t even managed that.


    So I was pissed. Because the alternative to being pissed was giving up, and I¡¯d already failed too much today to just give up. Even if I made a million more mistakes today, I¡¯d somehow get these people out of my mess somehow.


    We just needed a plan.


    Just as soon as my head stopped being fuzzy. And I could think through my anger. And the pain creeping into my joints and where my leg should be went away.


    ¡°AEGIS, do you have any more of that drug?¡±


    ¡°I do not. I have other medication but nothing that potent. Using any of the others in conjunction with your current medication would probably result in hepatic shutdown however, so I do not recommend them for pain relief.¡±


    ¡°Great. Well, do you have any ideas for how to get us out of here?¡±


    Silence answered me for a few moments while I envisioned her on the other side of the wall using a calculator to measure out the worth of a human life. ¡°And you said you are not open to the option of unconditional surrender?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± I sighed.


    ¡°Surrender with conditions?¡±


    ¡°No surrendering. No sacrificing anyone.¡±


    ¡°Technically neither Saga nor I would die if sacrificed. I don¡¯t know how you calculated, but that reduces the potential death toll by twenty-eight percent.¡±


    ¡°No sacrificing anyone.¡±


    Another moment of relative silence amidst the roar and explosions of the battle. ¡°Then no. There exist no options which will permit everyone to live and escape.¡±


    ¡°Again, don¡¯t listen to that gearbag,¡± Saga said. ¡°What you need to do is find the source of this head-fucking bullshit so I can get the XPCA fighting for us. With it, I feel like every time I try to focus on one thing too hard, my thoughts fall apart like I just got brained with a wet rock. A slippery one.¡± She looked disgusted and infuriated at her own tangent. ¡°You know what I mean.¡±


    ¡°I do, and that¡¯s a decent plan as anything we¡¯ve got right now. Mine was just to¡­focus in one direction and punch a hole through their defenses.¡±


    ¡°So that we¡¯d be on the run again and relive the chase scene? That¡¯s a shitty plan.¡±


    ¡°AEGIS, do you have any idea what¡¯s causing this neural disruption?¡±


    ¡°I do not. I was not aware of any neural disruption as it doesn¡¯t affect me. I can begin to search the cached feeds if you¡¯d like.¡±


    ¡°I would like, please. Quickly.¡±


    ¡°One moment.¡±


    And then we waited for what I considered considerably longer than one moment. After the first minute ticked by, I had to suppress the urge to ask her for updates, knowing that in her state, it¡¯d just slow her down. By minute two, I¡¯d had to dart off a couple times to take out some XPCA who were drawing uncomfortably close to our little bunker. By the third minute, I was about ready to dive through the light constructs and strangle AEGIS into working faster out of frustration.


    And then she spoke like she was just resuming our conversation. ¡°I have located the source. A large machine was deployed an hour ago in a small park to the northwest of here. I am unable to find any records of its function or operation, but it appears the only device with enough power to affect so large an area, and which was deployed in the right time frame to coincide with the befuddlement of those in the vicinity.¡±


    ¡°Great. I know that park,¡± I said, standing up and then immediately wincing as my shield turned a bullet into a hail of metal grit across my face. Vaguely, I felt the edges of pain from the fresh scratches on my face and knew I had little time. ¡°I¡¯ve got to leave now. I¡¯ll¡­take it down by whatever means necessary. The second it¡¯s gone Saga, you do everything you can. Have Tem signal me again if you need me urgently and I¡¯ll come back. Okay?¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± Saga said. ¡°And while you¡¯re out, we need eggs and bread.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the absolute fucking worst,¡± I informed her. I didn¡¯t pop my head up this time before I bolted around the corner, and then from there, shot off as quick as I could.


    The park was about a mile away, and I realized that when heading right towards it, the numbing of my brain got a lot nastier, but when skirting around the direct path, the effect fell off quickly. Not enough that I could like, think properly or anything, but it was miles better than being directly in the center of the beam or whatever.


    The XPCA were also keenly aware of this, and despite the discomfort, I quickly discovered that going straight up the path was much faster because there were no soldiers in my way. They were a hundred feet off to either side, watching and firing at me as I shot past them, fast as I could move, and much too fast to be hit.


    I mean, aside from a few packs of micro-missiles and other guided arms. But my shield handled those pretty well. Compared to the sheer, limb-ripping peril of before, it was almost paradise to just fly down the empty avenue, without the capability for thought in my head.


    Funny thing about paradise, though. It doesn¡¯t ever last.


    I landed in a crowd of XPCA soldiers, not even shadow ops, just regular guys in exosuits, and before they could draw on me, they were dead. I¡¯d made pretty incredible time, and nearly a mile from home the damage was more limited, though there were still plenty of buildings which a stray beam had blown a hole straight through. This was one of them. I crept inside, watching through the paisley-lace curtains as XPCA moved in patrols, almost lazily this far from the conflict.


    It was, I realized, a field HQ, like we¡¯d always assembled at and deployed from at the start of our missions. Here were where field officers surveyed everything through feeds and issued orders to the squads under them, in coordination with others and with a wider view of the battlefield. Here is where logistics was rooted, where casualties were carted in, a constant stream of bodies flowing from everywhere, most looking like severe burn victims. Or former severe burn victims, now deceased.


    And in the middle of it all, the machine AEGIS had described. About the size of a small house, it was strapped on the flatbed of a semi, a long tubular thing with pipes and walkways arching across it, the length of the tube pointed in the direction from which I¡¯d come. A few techs in XPCA black were patrolling the catwalks, laxidasical as they moved from terminal to terminal with tablets in hand, jotting down status levels or making adjustments.


    All to keep Saga¡¯s head boiling, so that she couldn¡¯t sink her claws into these people who¡¯d come after my sister. I felt more than a flare of anger that these were just people, walking around and doing their job to keep this engine running, without apparent concern for what it did or who they did it to.


    Charging in there might work for a little bit, but I¡¯d be a sitting duck working on the thing itself, and that could take forever. As much as I¡¯d love to believe that just putting some voltage into it would take it down for good, I wasn¡¯t sure, and I¡¯d only have the one shot.


    What I needed was time with it, time alone and unperturbed, time enough to make sure I could hit more than just one or two sections and disable the whole thing. Ideally I¡¯d have Tem here to hide me, or AEGIS to do some kind of remote hackery. Or heck, Whitney to tell me what parts of the machine were critical and which ones were just like¡­hydraulics to keep the thing level on the flatbed or some shit.


    Yeah I didn¡¯t know. My mind kept wandering too. I probably could circle around and get out of the direction of the beam and come up with a better plan. Just had to keep out of sight and not raise any alarms.


    I started to move and my foot slipped on the exosuit of one of the four I¡¯d wiped out in landing. The blank, black faceplate glinted at me from the dark and I paused. Somewhere in some level of my mind, I had an idea, but I couldn¡¯t tell if it was a good one or not. But time was valuable, and it was an idea.


    I spent way longer than I should have trying to move the exosuits around, pushing and shoving and clambering on them, having only marginal success in bracing my exoframe and pushing. And then I realized I was stupid, and I could just pop the back hatch on one of the suits facing down.


    I still had to struggle to extract the pilot, and there was the matter of¡­his death, and the liquefied remains of him inside the suit. As I tried to lay down in it, I felt the slightly cold, viscous, tacky mushing of blood and medical gel congealing between me and the suit.


    Before I got all the way in, I spotted the ¡®net uplink on the inside of the neck and ripped it out. That was a close one, I realized. If things went south, they could have just locked me in and piloted the suit wherever they wanted with me stuck inside. It gave me a moment of pause, wondering what other short-sighted, stupid blunders I might be walking into.


    My thoughts slipped past unfocused and I shook my head. Fuck it. I climbed in, gagging at the stench of blood and felt the suit seal around me.


    Still logged in as the prior user, who as it turned out was only mostlydead. That was lucky. He was shorter than me, and the suit was stabbing me in the crotch and armpits and my head couldn¡¯t stand quite upright. That was less lucky. But I moved, and the suit moved with me. My ears were full of comms chatter and the HUD was lit up with thousands of IFFs, showing moving beacons of every other ¡®friendly¡¯ in the area.


    Including the ones downed at my feet. One of them was similarly just cut up but not dead. Three others were not so lucky, and all of their suits were broadcasting an SOS.


    I stood there for another minute, just trying to get over the stink of blood and figure out my next move.


    Some of the chatter became louder and more focused and I realized the comms were smart enough to be amplifying what was directed at me, when another squad of four exosuits came crashing through the door, weapons raised.


    ¡°One¡¯s still up,¡± a woman said. ¡°Four others down. No sign of the laser fire.¡±


    ¡°Acknowledged,¡± replied some central operator from somewhere.


    ¡°You there,¡± she pointed at me with a stubby exosuit finger. ¡°Report out. What happened here?¡±


    I blinked at her and raised my hand to my forehead, which banged the exosuit¡¯s against the faceplate instead of being effective. Somehow in this gesture, the tense poise of the suit in front of me softened slightly, the gun coming off her shoulder as she took a step forward.


    It was working, I realized. I was in, like I hoped I¡¯d be.


    ¡°He¡¯s befuddled by the disruptor it looks like, and his suit¡¯s damaged, not broadcasting anything. Can you hear us?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I replied, my voice lurching as my speech forced the smell of blood further up my sinuses. I coughed, and she lowered the gun entirely.


    ¡°Easy there buddy. You¡¯re in the path of the disrupter field so you¡¯re probably confused. Let¡¯s get you outta there. You can have a few minutes to get your head together before we check you out, sound good?¡±


    I nodded at her, my head feeling like it was banging around in the too-low space of the ill-fitted suit. I took a few steps forward and really hoped she didn¡¯t know or notice the former driver who was left propped-up in a corner. She didn¡¯t seem to, and just escorted me out of the house and into the clearing of the park, surrounded by others moving and running around like black ants.


    ¡°Stay here just a few. We¡¯re going to check on your team. Readouts showed that most of them survived, so don¡¯t worry too much okay?¡±


    I gave her one final nod and she saluted and jogged off, her boots crashing across the pavement as she went.


    And she left me feeling bad, man. Here, on the side of the disruptor, my thoughts were crawling back into my head, and most of the first of them were along the lines of how nice she¡¯d seemed, and how cool it would have been if she joined our group. We could use more people with leadership, had a niche for someone strong and tanky she could fill.


    And she had a great voice¡­all I knew of her, really. She was strong and imperious when she¡¯d come charging in, but then gentle and reassuring as she comforted me.


    These were stupid thoughts, I realized, but this was the kind of white noise going through my brain as it sorta rebooted. My admiration and yearning ebbed away into guilt as I gathered myself, realizing it was people like that who we were killing by the dozens.


    Leaving me pretty thoroughly disgusted with myself by the end of it. But I didn¡¯t really have time for that. I headed for the machine, cringing as I passed in front of it again and everything in my head except the one simple task melted away like a good idea I¡¯d forgotten to write down.


    As I reached the front of the truck, I looked up and saw the colossal cabin. It wasn¡¯t your typical semi, the XPCA would never go for something which wasn¡¯t straight black and with enough straight geometric edges to cut yourself on. It was a friggin¡¯ armored truck, as ridiculous as that seemed with the wide windows and exposed trailer. But here it was.


    And there was the steering wheel and shifter and the embarrassingly-small-looking driver¡¯s seat, designed for mere humans ¡ª albeit potentially exosuited humans ¡ª instead of the obvious superlative penis that the creator felt the need to demonstrate in the rest of the vehicle¡¯s construction.


    I paused, again unsure if I was having an idea, or just a bad idea. And then I pulled myself up the metal steps to the cabin door and let myself in. I tapped the ignition switch, and with a roar which sounded like it came from a beast, the engine in front of me came alive. Some people turned to glance at the sound, but when everybody had their own business to attend to, other things were just someone else¡¯s business.


    I gave one moment¡¯s glance all around me, checking mirrors and remembering that I probably wanted a seat harness on. And then I flipped a few switches to disengage the levelling struts, pulled the break off, and pushed the accelerator into the floor.

 331. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    The reaction was immediate, a body suddenly realizing that there was a pathogen, it seemed everything in the base erupted into frenzy, all around or at me.


    Everyone in guns and suits began to gravitate forward. Everyone in uniforms fled. In my mirrors, I could see techs clinging to or flying off of the truck''s scaffolding behind me, as the machine jumped forward with surprising speed.


    The first shot came after a few seconds, chipping the bulletproof glass with a tiny crystalline spiderweb. And then following it, a thousand more. The comms chatter had changed entirely in tone from when I''d arrived. It had become urgent and frantic, no longer men standing back and looking at a situation strategically and issuing orders, but suddenly aware that there was danger at their feet.


    As the truck flashed past, I saw my newest friend emerging from the building where I''d landed, turning and watching me go as she dragged a stretcher with one of my victims on it.


    I jammed the wheel sideways and whipped the truck around a curve, way too fast, feeling the vehicle under me rear off of some of its titanic wheels for a moment. But we landed back down and were headed for clear roads, free and able.


    I''d probably succeeded already, I thought. By turning the truck, I moved the dampening field and that probably opened up Saga for doing her thing. All I had to do was make sure they couldn''t get it back in place and we''d be golden. It seemed too easy.


    And then I realized I was still in the field myself of course, and that''s why I probably forgot about the part where I had to survive this road trip too, and that wasn''t easy at all. Still, I had all kinds of advantage here -- until they ID''d me and locked me out, I could see all the enemies ahead of me on their IFF, I could listen to their chatter, I had a monster of an engine under me, and the advantage of a few minutes'' head start.


    I made sure the petal was all the way to the floor and kept forward, tearing down the road. If I could just get a few miles out, I''d be beyond their perimeter, and then there''d be people I could blend in with, maybe. Although...no, that was a terrible idea, I was wearing an exosuit, and under that, my exoframe and the whole leg-missing, slathered-in-some-guy''s-blood thing. Maybe if I got new clothes?


    Shit, were all my plans this bad right now? I kept having ideas and they kept being dumb as hell with even a moment''s retrospection. It made me worry about the whole greater plan I was currently embroiled in, and I decided to do myself a favor and double-check with the one person I knew I could trust who wasn''t affected by the field at the moment.


    And then I realized I couldn''t actually reach my mobile inside my suit while wearing it. And then I realized that even if I could, AEGIS was still being jammed and wouldn''t get my call. And then, I thought, wait. Even if I did somehow connect with her, they''d be listening to our plans, to all the ''net traffic in this area. And they''d figure out more about who I was and what I was doing.


    Jesus Christ. I knew this thing was annoying but having it right behind my head was...just a clusterfuck waiting to happen. I had to be rid of it, fast.


    And for another reason. My head was starting to kill me, my brain feeling like it was pounding inside my skull. Everywhere was hurting but especially my leg. I really couldn''t believe how intense the pain of it was, wondering if the drugs somehow had just delayed all those sensations from hitting me, or if the difference between the nothing I''d been feeling and normal was just elevating the sensation now that it was coming back.


    My eyes watered and I actually tried to breathe deeper and focus on the smell of the blood in the suit. It was better than the pain. Well, until I started gagging and was at serious risk of throwing up inside my faceplate. Could I have any worse ideas?


    Something banged against the side of the cabin and I had to do a double-take. There were no IFF indicators there, I''d been driving to keep away from them, heading away from the focal point around the house. And then there was another bang and sounds of struggling, just outside. I looked around frantically for anything to...to...I don''t know, throw them off. Defend myself from whatever was coming.


    The side door popped open and Karu let herself in, landing in the seat next to me with a heavy thunk.


    "You did not think to lock the door?" she asked, like we were picking up a conversation.


    "Karu where the hell have you been?"


    "I have been fighting," she said, holding out arms marred with scorch and blood, guns scuffed and gritty. "What else would you expect?"


    "We haven''t seen you in forever. I just thought you disappeared."


    She laughed. "If you had seen me, would they not as well? And then would I not be an easy mark? I have told you that a battlefield is wholly different from the more intimate combats to which you are accustomed, it is not a place to fly around and be visible from all angles."


    "So I''ve noticed," I said, sticking out my leg for her inspection. And then realizing it was hidden under an exosuit, and fuck I was so stupid right now. "Wait how did you know it was me in here anyway?"


    "Are there many other rogue operatives hijacking mission-critical apparati at the moment? This maneuver has your style of reckless selfishness written all over it, as it were."


    "...thanks?"


    "It was not a complement. So what then are your aims? To bring down the neural disruption and in so doing, free the code-X to work her wiles?"


    "Yeah. You''re pretty sharp. How''d you pick that up so fast?"


    She tapped her visor. "The neural uplink of this device detects and corrects external influence as best it can. It is not perfect, but it is protection, of a sort. I had it installed to insulate myself from Saga, yet it has proven infuriatingly inadequate for that task. I am relieved that it has served some purpose, however."


    It got me thinking about just how different this suppression was from Saga''s influence and, yeah, I couldn''t imagine any amount of tech shielding you from her. Being confused easily and having your thoughts hard to focus on was one thing, but Saga wasn''t some passive force that messed with my neurons, she''d actively dig around in there and do whatever she wanted, physics and brain chemistry and technology be damned.


    "It will not work," Karu continued, and it took me too long to realize what she was talking about again. "Even should we get the code-X functioning in our favor, they will simply establish a perimeter and wear us down. We had a fortuitous combination of her aptitude and a vehicle last time, allowing us to plunge her into their ranks easily."


    "We have a vehicle now?" I suggested.


    "Too ungainly and despite the appearance, too fragile."


    "It''s like, twice as tough-looking as the van was."


    "Tough-looking and tough are often opposites. And besides, we only endured prior because we were actively driving away from their forces. To arm this vehicle with Saga would require driving directly into them, and more dangerous combatants than we fled from before, besides. No, that will not work."


    "You could carry her? That''d make her mobile."


    "If she could even concentrate whilst in flight, perhaps. But again, I would be shot down the moment I surfaced on wings. Ashton, Saga is not a silver bullet which shall solve all of your difficulties, no matter how potent she is. Humans are cunning and can overcome any threat so long as they understand it and prepare adequately. That is how I have survived thus far, and I do not think it unreasonable to expect at least one of our many adversaries to be as competent as myself."


    "Okay then," I snapped at her, not sure why she was wasting one of our apparently remaining breaths with bitching me out. "Then what would you have us do?"


    She smiled at me broadly, her visor burning red, the action punctuated with the explosive cracking of glass as the window was hit again. "We leave. All of the essential personnel are in this cabin."


    "Fuck that and fuck you. AEGIS said the same thing about just surrendering."


    "And you did not jump at the chance to give yourself up to spare your comrades? My, you have grown."


    "I''d be giving up myself and everyone else, Karu."


    "Ah, so it is not growth but that foolish stubbornness that none shall be permitted to die. I should have expected."


    Her stupid superior grin was just pissing me off, and the pain in my head and body seemed to be reaching some sort of crescendo. I hoped. If it was just going to keep building after this, I wasn''t sure I''d be able to bear it. My plans were all stupid and failing, Karu was no fucking help, if I didn''t do something soon, AEGIS would just begin questioning her ''emotional'' decisions and might turn on Tem and Moon.


    It was all so fucked. And then I heard some random bit of comms chatter and...didn''t understand. I barked some commands inside my exosuit to try to turn it up and tune to the conflict it didn''t think was super important for me to hear.


    "Another squad down at three-five-seven. The fire support did drop the code-X target however, and has managed to advance while keeping her suppressed."


    "Acknowledged Lance One. Pike One, what is your status?"


    "Pike One--" I could barely hear him over the roaring of laser fire and knew he was close to the house. "--currently engaged with the code-X. We are keeping her suppressed but...she is tearing through us every time she recovers."


    "More support is inbound. Three squads."This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Send everyone you can--"


    There was a rush and a roar and then Pike One cut off.


    I swore and slammed my fist into the wheel, denting it inadvertently. They were closing in on Saga, the only one outside the light wall, and they were killing her too fast for her to stop them. From the sound of it, somehow the dampener was still holding her up too, she wouldn''t have had nearly this much trouble with a dozen guys any other way. This thing must still be projecting on her, not just forward, somehow.


    All this time I''d spent driving around, I''d thought I was buying her time but all I''d done it waste it. This wasn''t a solution at all, I had to actually shut it down.


    "Take the wheel," I said. She looked at me funny for a second and then I unbuckled, stood awkwardly, and punched out the front glass. It didn''t break, but hung like viscous fabric but I punched it again and again, pulling it away from its frame of it as Karu dove for the wheel and jerked us back towards the road.


    "Have you gone completely insane?" she asked from behind me.


    "I''m going back to shut the thing down. Keep us away from them."


    "How? They are everywhere. And now there is no bulletproof screen at our fore."


    I tried to reply but all of my thoughts just led to how stupid I was. She didn''t have the IFFs to avoid the enemies, she hadn''t heard the comms chatter to know the situation, she didn''t have armor or shields like I did to ward off bullets.


    I closed my mouth again and got climbing. Fine, I was stupid. All she had to do was keep the truck on the road. I hated everything about everything right now, and as I pulled myself through the window and onto the hood of the truck, my leg screamed as it drew through the gap.


    "That is all you have to say to me?" she shouted up. "Silence, and orders that will be the death of us?"


    "I need to shut it down!"


    Her mouth went thin and her visor, if possible, flashed even more menacingly at me. She twisted her grime-caked arm to flip me the bird.


    And then she disappeared from sight as I climbed over the back of the cabin, taking advantage of the angular design to find flat footholds and strong grips. The exosuit mostly muted the air whipping past, but the crack of bullets paired constantly with potential friendly-fire alerts.


    My feet clanged with echoing metal as I landed on the catwalk, swaying even on the auto-gyros on the narrow foothold. The whole machine was like, sixty feet long, and maybe ten feet wide. That was a lot of area to cover, and ways to cross from one side to the other were limited to clambering around the rear or balancing over the top. Neither of which I wanted to try to manage given how just climbing out the window had already felt with my leg.


    I put my hands on the nearest part of it and felt inside. Something shot me in the back and just being this close to it, I still felt my mind slippery and numb, and was having a hard time focusing. I closed my eyes and blocked out the alerts, the pain, the chatter, just focused on me, and the metal under my fingertips.


    It...didn''t work very well. But it did work some, somehow. I could feel my powers forced through the layers of baffles and insulation and structure, penetrating at my will...slowly, cautiously, pausing at junctures and barriers as though timid. But after long seconds of work, I could feel my electricity surge within, touch the delicate machinery and circuitry, could hear the pops and snaps of things frying and melting. A wall of sparks exploded out of the side of it, showering me like confetti, vanishing in an instant against the wind.


    I listened and nothing had changed on the battlefield. Saga was still being pressured. I looked up and saw a beam in the sky, pure white and so far away. Moments later, the chatter reported a hit, a drone snuck through the barrier somehow and ''had successfully deployed against the violet exhuman''.


    I punched the machine in front of me, not caring if I dented it and screamed at it all. I took two deep, blood-tinged breaths and walked further down the machine, more gunshots deflecting off my shield and off my back as Karu unwittingly took us nearer to enemy threats.


    I poured lightning and rage into the machine this time, and worked faster than before. There was no satisfaction in it screaming and popping, just the urge to move further on, further down, keep listening to see if that was what it took to turn the fight.


    Again, and again, and again, I went. The entire front half of this side was blackened and twisted and spitting smoke, but still the fight was raging in my ears. More than once I staggered and almost fell off the trailer, the auto-gyros keeping me upright when my legs failed me. Alerts of friendly fire and systems damage and medical assistance required were flashing in front of my eyes.


    I saw my own heart rate monitor spiking with flashing warnings. Two-hundred forty BPM. The system threatened to hit me with a tranquilizer and I gave it an override. Less than a third of this side of the fucking machine to go.


    I hit it again and again, and was certain that by now, it must be dead. I''d destroyed over a third of the entire fucking thing. How many redundancies and failsafes could it have? How much tech could possibly be in this thing that wasn''t necessary for its function? I began pushing my powers deeper and deeper into it, blindly lashing out, slashing and destroying everything inside, desperate.


    There was another burst of gunfire, and then the sound echoed as an entire squad opened up fire on us. The truck suddenly veered sideways, almost throwing me off, and I knew Karu had been hit. I swore and punched the machine again and again, my metal fists putting dents in it the size of my head. But still I could hear the XPCA advancing on the house. I could see Tem shooting up the signal for me to help, over and over.


    I tried not to think of how desperate she must feel, how to her, I''d just abandoned her again. She was stuck attached to Moon, and if Moon was hurt, Tem would feel all that pain as well...every bit of desperation I was feeling, they felt twice. It made my heart hurt, my head hurt, my body hurt...everything hurt, and the vehicle careened on the road, squealing as Karu struggled to pull us away from her shooters without fishtailing us.


    I thought about her, her motivations for even being here. They were practically nonexistent; I was here, and nothing else. She''d already stated that she''d be fine with up and leaving, and based on how we were still driving away from Tem''s desperate signalling, we were. But still she''d been here with us, still she''d been fighting, killing, bleeding, all on my account. And the second we''d reconvened, I treated her like shit. I got her shot. I threw her as the likely point of failure into my shitty, failing plans.


    The truck hit something, a van or roadblock I think, and everything went soaring. The truck bounced into the air, the cabin and trailer jackknifed from another, the enormous broad wheels spinning in the air, the bullet-pocked cabin and char-streaked machine nearly kissing as they rose.


    And then all at once, it all tumbled back to earth. The machine crashed, a noise so shrieking and violent and metal that it still tore at my ears in the moment before the suit neuralized it. It spun and spun and spun, impossibly, rolling right through and over houses like they weren''t even there, the cabin whipped free and snapping off with Karu somewhere inside.


    I flew like a ragdoll, seeing tumbling lights and blackness as I crashed again and again and again, seeing nothing constant but the warnings of critical structural damage, medical warnings, a twisting overlay of the horizon which darted all across the globe of my faceplate like a twitching eye.


    And then I was on my back, my legs partway through a brick wall above me. Everything was still spinning despite being still. Everything hurt, unbelievably. I heard and felt the hiss of medical gel dispensing, the suit was torn up in the impact and I knew if I looked up, I would be too.


    My head clanged against the back of the helmet and I closed my eyes. The comms chatter remained as threatening as ever and the flashes of Tem''s lasers were still visible through my eyelids, but I couldn''t move even if I wanted to. I hoped Karu was okay. I hoped everyone would be okay, somehow. Despite me.


    I''d failed, utterly, I realized. I''d talked a big game, I''d thrown everything I had at the fight, I''d had plans and enacted them time and again, and in the end...what? Sitting here in a wreck, waiting for the XPCA who shot Karu to descend on us, waiting for Tem to finally give out and realize I wasn''t coming, for Moon to die, hanging off of her, for AEGIS and Karu to give up on me and flee or surrender if they still could, for Saga to spend the rest of her life as some sick meat puppet for the XPCA.


    I really wanted to die before any of that. I didn''t want to have to face a world where I''d failed everyone at everything. These people had followed me, been here because of me, been attacked because of my actions. Maybe AEGIS was right. Maybe they should have just surrendered, renounced me from the start. It was stupid for them to fight an army by themselves, stupider still for me to encourage it, be filled with hope against hopeless odds.


    The whole fucking point of the XPCA was to win fights like this, I knew. This was what they did best. And I, in my stupid, fucking, goddamn arrogance, just assumed that I could beat them at it.


    I realized...a lot of things. Had a lot of thoughts. And then, confusingly, realized that I had realized a lot of things and had a lot of thoughts. My brain felt perfectly normal, minus the...minus the everything. The dampener was down. It had been down, for most of the time I''d been pulverizing it. There was hope, there was a way. If Saga just got a few seconds to herself, she''d tear the whole XPCA a new asshole...all these soldiers descending on her would become our soldiers, the greater mass of the army, turned and fighting itself!


    My heart raced with the thought even as someone stepped out of the shadows and smiled at me. It took me too long to remember who he was.


    "Hello, Athan," Soran said. "Laying around?"


    "What the fuck are you doing here?" I growled at him, though the pain made it come out more in a whimper. "Don''t tell me you''re caught up in all of this too? Or are you just here to claim my powers when I''m at my end?"


    "I have two numbers to throw at you," he said evasively. "Two-hundred thirty-eight thousand, nine-hundred and nine. And two." He circled around me and I watched him from my rear cameras as he fiddled with the back of the suit. Abruptly, my faceplate went blank and I found myself lurching forward as the suit opening pressed me upwards some. Strong hands grabbed at my torn clothes and dragged me out into the breaking dawn. He threw me to the ground where...pain just...wracked everything. Just the movement had been enough to send my world spinning, but landing almost knocked me out. I laid there and breathed, my blades unresponsive at my twitching efforts to put them through his smile.


    He advanced on me and crouched in my field of view, just a pair of pristine black loafers and tailored pants backlit by the sunrise.


    "The first number. Two-hundred thirty-eight thousand, nine-hundred and nine. Would you like to guess what that number means? "


    I spat at him best I could. By which I mean I drooled a painful, bloody syrup in his general direction.


    "That''s how many times I died," he said through a grim smile. "That''s how many times your friend Tower eradicated me from this world. It hurt, you know. Every single time. Dying isn''t something you ever get used to, not matter how many times you do it."


    "I don''t understand," I spat at him. "If you''re going to touch me and take my powers, just do it and save your breath."


    He lifted me by the torn remnants of my collar, my limbs hanging uselessly off of me. I blinked at him, about all I could do, and even though I was kinda seeing double, I realized he was only using one arm to hold me.


    "You''ve been taking powers again," I realized.


    "I never stopped. I just needed you to think I did in New Eden so you''d cooperate. But things are different now. I have a lot more control than before."


    "Control over what?"


    He just smirked at me. "The second number. Two. Any guesses?"


    "How many of your balls I''m going to kick." I struggled and he just stood there smiling as my exoframe snapped to kick him in the chest.


    "Very nice. That never gets old. You stupid child, didn''t you ever wonder why your plan failed? You disabled that machine and still--" he pivoted to put the streaks of Tem''s SOS in front of my face. "Still you''ve got problems. And you never even stopped to consider why."


    "...two?" I muttered.


    "Two." His grin broadened. And I understood.


    "Two disruptors all along. Of course. They knew Saga was on her way here, they couldn''t risk her hijacking one of them without a way to fight her off."


    The air roared and I felt my clothes and limbs pushed earthward as a VTOL suddenly crested the block and hovered, turning to bear on us. In an instant, a wall of flames, tall as a skyscraper materialized between them and us and began pushing the VTOL back.


    "Our time together is drawing near its end," Soran said, not sounding sad at all about it. "So I have another few numbers for you to keep in mind. Number thirty nine. Fifth at ten. You got that?"


    I just glared back at him and he just gave me that dumb, flat smile with the corners of his mouth curled up.


    And then he drew me back, the jostling of my body almost making me black out, swaying like a toy in his grip. He pivoted on his hip and threw me, my collar tearing as it strangled me, my body whipping around, feeling heavy and weightless at once.


    And then I was...flying. But not over the city of Las Vegas anymore. The world had turned to streaks around me, from what was in my head or outside of it, I couldn''t tell. All I saw was the Earth itself vanished, and I was just in streaks of red light.


    I had only enough time to be confused and wonder if I''d died, if hell looked like a confusing mess of black and red. And then I landed painfully with a crash against some rust-red painted wood siding and felt the world go dark, as a crowd of feet and voices closed in on me.

 332. 2252, Present Day. Unknown. Athan.

    Probably one of my least favorite things in the world had to be opening my eyes for the first time in a while and seeing what I saw now. Admittedly, it wasn''t all the sight, the ceiling above me could have been any number of places. But the smell of sterile disinfectant, jammed up my sinuses as much as the plastic tubes only confirmed what I knew when I saw that damn ceiling.


    The hospital, again. At least I knew why this time, though my head felt heavy with missing memories and too much sleep. I looked left and saw a cart displaying my vitals on a silent yellow holo. To my right was a curtain. In front of the curtain, a chair; and in the chair, a woman, with straight dark hair, shoulder-length, with streaks of faded purple in it, her typical bandanna missing and her thick plastic glasses askew on her small nose.


    She was snoring slightly, sagging in her seat with her mobile plugged into some parts near some tools on a table next to her. And more on another table near me. And on the chair next to her. Whitney really liked to take over.


    I tried to sit up but almost immediately collapsed back from the pain. My leg was...one thing, but my back was another. It felt like I''d been thrown into a wall.


    Which...as my memories sizzled, I had been, hadn''t I? I was trying to think when I was blinked at, Whitney fixing her glasses as she blinked and rubbed her eyes.


    "Oh hey, you''re up, friendo," she said, through a yawn. "Welcome back."


    "Where are we? What happened? Is everyone...did anyone¡­"


    She gave me a small wry smirk but it faded quickly. So things were okay but also not okay, I surmised. I also surmised that I was thinking more clearly than I had in hours, thanks to that damn machine. Wait, hours?


    "How long was I out?"


    She glanced at her holo and tapped it. "Two days, just about."


    And I wasn''t sedated to hell. That explained the pain. I took a breath and then peeked under the covers at myself.


    Mostly, bandages as far as I could see. One of my legs wouldn''t look out of place in a sarcophagus. The other was...just absent, above the knee. I closed my eyes and fell back into my pillow, taking several deep breaths.


    "Look, uh...John," she said, rapping on the corner of her frames. "I''m uh. Um."


    "John?"


    She shook her head at me. "Or...whatever your name is. John Doe. Because nobody knows who you are, right?" I blinked at her, wondering if she''d hit her head. This was definitely Whitney, the stray parts forming piles around her proved that much. "Gah, I wish we brought AEGIS to do this instead."


    "To do what? I''m so lost."


    "Yeah, that''s my bad. Look, uh, John. ''Fact is, that uh, nobody here knows who you are, and you didn''t have any ID on you. They ran your biologicals, a couple times actually but there was computer trouble," she emphasized "with their computers that made the computer have a problem finding a match."


    "Are...are you okay?"


    She rubbed her eyes under her glasses again. "Look, let''s pretend you were somebody with a...shady past. Like a wanted man or something. If you were, the second the hospital ran your records, there''d be a policeman or...or something...sitting here instead of me." She looked around and cleared her throat. "I happened to just be a pedestrian on the street when you fell, incidentally. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. The staff think I have a crush on you, and I''m harmless, so I''m rolling with it."


    "Um. Okay," I said, starting to get a clearer mental picture, despite Whitney''s astounding simultaneous lack of, and surplus of explanation. "So, miss uh...whatever your name is?"


    "Whitney."


    "Miss Whitney, is it just...you here?"


    "There''s one other with me, but not here. She was...looking into the computer issues a little. That''s kind of her thing."


    "Okay. Anyone else?"


    She shook her head, her lips forming a minute frown. "Maybe we can talk more candidly later. But for now, it''s just you, me, her, and my friends here," she said, picking up her mobile. "The ones I didn''t lose anyway."


    "And where are we all, exactly?"


    "UCSF Medical Center. ''Frisco, friendo."


    "San Francisco?"


    "Yep."


    I sunk further into my pillow. What?


    How''d I get all the way to San Francisco? How did AEGIS and Whitney, and nobody else? Just what the hell was going on, and how was Soran wrapped up in all this?


    It''d been days now. Tem and Moon couldn''t have possibly held out that long, they were failing before I even went down. And Karu...she''d been in the vehicle wreck with me, maybe even worse off for not being in an exosuit and getting thrown wide of the crash. Chiho was still back there, and...and Lia and Rito were somewhere.


    As more thoughts flooded in, I felt like I was going to lose consciousness again. My back felt like someone was squeezing my spine somewhere, and the rest of me just ached. There was so much I didn''t know, but I wasn''t sure I was ready to. And all I had for answers was Whitney, and this stupid secret-agent game we were playing.


    "Just tell me," I asked her. "Did Soran send you here too?"


    "I don''t know who that is," she said, as someone entered the room and she began speaking louder and faster "but as I said, I''m just a woman who was passing by and found you after you fell."


    The curtain pulled back and standing behind it was a tall, grim-looking man with a face as angular as his glasses. He looked like the kind of doctor they sent to tell drug users to knock it off or they''ll die. I swallowed hard as he read his clipboard in silence for a moment.


    "What is your name, sir?" he asked, in an even, flowing voice, less stern than he looked.


    "Uh." I blinked at him. "Jack." The guy''s tall, rigid demeanor brought someone else involuntarily to mind, although his smile was definitely lacking.


    "Jack what?"


    "Jack be nimble?" I suggested. When his expression turned stony, he really looked like he could cut glass with his glare alone. "Sorry. Jack...Jackson."


    "Jack Jackson?"


    "Well my father was just Jack, but...I''m his son, so, yeah."


    Jesus Christ, I needed to stop talking.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    "Jack...Jackson...junior, then?"


    "Yes," I nodded seriously. "But uh, you can just call me JJ." I took my own advice and bit my tongue before I got cutesy with J cubed or something.


    "Well Mister JJ, for some reason, you aren''t in any records we''ve been able to pull. We''ve done all the biometrics, DNA, fingerprinting, facial scans, you haven''t come up once in any database. That''s the first time this has ever happened and I''ve been working here a long time. Do you care to elucidate?"


    I looked at Whitney who was glancing back and forth between us with nerves palpable in her every antsy movement. She was fidgeting hardcore with parts in her hands, practically sweating as she seemed completely unaware of how to act or behave innocently.


    "Uh, no," I answered, which was really the only answer. And then I remembered Lia''s life tips on how to be a better liar -- just say as little truth as possible. "I don''t have to, right?"


    "You don''t," he said "but if you''d like access to treatment or rehabilitation options...or drugs," he emphasized, and I realized by the way he said it, it was intended to be bait. "Then we will need your information."


    "Well...I won''t then." I said, crossing my arms. Which was a monster mistake because shifting that weight made my back flare up, and I really had to wonder if half my vertebrae were broken or something. It felt like someone used me as an accordion, to play something with a BPM to get people dancing.


    He just stared at me. "You need help, Mister JJ, and as a doctor and a member of this medical facility, I''d like to provide it for you. But without access to your records, your allergies, your pre-existing conditions and medications, that''s not something we''ll be able to manage lightly or well. Please consider your own health, whatever other troubles you might have, sir."


    I looked at him evenly, trying to get a read on the man, but he appeared just as in my first impression. He could have been a hardened doctor with a heart of gold, urging me to look out for myself because that was his hippocratic duty, or a Narc-y louse, just playing on the sorta violently blinding pain I was in to get me to turn myself in.


    What I did know is I did want drugs pretty bad. The shit AEGIS had put me on was so many thousands of miles ahead of where I was with this whole leg situation than right now, it felt swollen and heavy, even though it should have been lighter. And my back. And the hundreds or thousands of cuts and bruises everywhere else across me.


    I was a giant wreck, wasn''t I? Maybe that''s why this doctor was so invested. But as much help as I might need, if I took the chance of letting him run my records, I might be hurt this badly twice over when the XPCA came calling here. As much as I wanted to just get shot up and drift away from the pain again, the prospect of it coming back even worse made it a non-issue.


    "Sorry, can''t help you, Doc," I said, remembering not to shrug to upset my spine. "Guess I''m just not in the system."


    He rapped some fingers on the clipboard for a moment. "I guess not. Mister JJ, your leg was very recently amputated. If you want any hope of reintegrating into a normal life again, you''ll need a prosthesis, counseling, therapy, and rehab. If you can''t cooperate with us, we can''t cooperate with you. Please reconsider -- you''re young, and whatever trouble you think you''re running from, you shouldn''t let it cost you the rest of your life."


    "I''m sure I''ll be just fine, Doc. Thanks for your concern."


    The longest part of getting checked out was Whitney packing up all her things. After that, she just helped me into a wheelchair and we headed out the door without anyone so much as looking at us twice, her walking along wearing a small, nervous frown, and me with just the sexiest blue tarp of a gown.


    Outside was...definitely San Francisco, I thought. Although we were in a medical plaza, I could still tell that this was an urban area; the streets were narrow and lined with evenly-spaced, well-trimmed trees. Cars aggressively ran through lights they didn''t make and pulled into spots into which they didn''t fit, pedestrians filtering across the streets whenever the flow of traffic permitted.


    Tall, concrete buildings of beige and glass. The ocean horizon visible down gaps in streets and buildings. Girls in skinny jeans and guys in skinnier ones.


    I''d never been here before, despite the relative proximity to LA. On one hand it was always somewhere I thought it''d be neat to go, but on the other hand, Socal and Norcal had something of a typical pointless rivalry -- north and south, Stanford and Cal, Giants and Dodgers. Something I cared about a lot more back when I was still in high school, and if I did have the opportunity back then, I''d have to stop and consider if trying something was worth the risk of liking it.


    That sounded so infantile, thinking back, but I guess that really just spoke to how, no matter how pointless or miniscule, people would always find conflict in their life to seem big at the time.


    There was a line of cabs parked, driverless ones, and Whitney helped me into the passenger seat of one before she ran off with the wheelchair, warning me not to leave without her with a smirk. When she came back, she gave the cab an address I certainly didn''t know, and the vehicle hummed to a start.


    It''d been less than one block of walking, err, rolling, and already I wanted nothing more but to be laying down and just...resting. I''d been beat up pretty badly before, but in retrospect, the XPCA, or Cosette specifically had always had our backs when it came to being put back together afterwards. I wasn''t on that team anymore, I didn''t have her. For a moment I considered how my troubles back then were like being a care-free high schooler, so sheltered from real danger by those who wanted to see me succeed.


    And now I''d torn and burned those safety nets. Now it was just me, and Whitney, and AEGIS somewhere. Hiding out. Legless, in pain, in a strange, new city.


    I''d meant to ask Whitney all the questions I had bubbling up in my head but now that we were moving and rolling around in a cab, none of them seemed relevant anymore. Right now, I just hurt. There was a lot else for me to know, but it wasn''t like knowing would help or change anything -- I''d had information before, too much information even, and that had pushed me into stepping out and fighting Dragon and starting this whole disaster. Here, for once, I could stand to just be along for the ride.


    I found myself woken up and pulled from the cab bodily by AEGIS, as slowly and deliberately as she could, but having her carry me directly was...the pain was so blinding I thought I''d throw up at her touch. I''d wanted nothing more than to reach into my own back and just...pull things out, try to smooth out my own spine or something, anything, but if this is what being touched felt like, fuck that. Never touch me again.


    "Sorry," she muttered.


    I just grit my jaw and closed my eyes. The smell of salt air was heavy here, as well as the sounds of birds and the cold air rustling the trees. None of which, I realized, I associated with city life, and we hadn''t been in the car that long.


    "Where are we?" I whimpered, more than I intended.


    "A campground, on the north end of the city. It''s the best I could do with our budget and access, I''m sorry."


    "I like camping."


    "I wanted to put you up in a nice hotel or something, but I didn''t have a lot of time, or anything in the corporate servers around here. San Francisco really hasn''t been a focus for me, but the parks system is federal, so I managed to get us a reservation--"


    She babbled on nervously and I reassured her that whatever she''d gotten, it was fine. "We''ll make do, as long as there''s somewhere for me to lay down," I told her.


    "Well, the lodging is a ways further. Trails and stuff are usually a plus in these things, you know. We also might want to leave on the weekend. They were all full up, and while I could boot the original reservees, I think that might draw attention we don''t want. Of course, I''d rather not move you if I don''t have to. If only Lia were here, I bet she''d...she''d...uh..."


    I opened my eyes enough to look up and see AEGIS chewing her lip and looking somewhat pale. "AEGIS, it''s okay. I''m sure she''s fine," I assured her, though I had nothing to assure her with, and hardly believed it myself. By all accounts, we''d just lost everything, and everyone but the three of us were lost, in captivity, or dead. But it also just hurt my heart to hear her talking so quickly and nervously, see her struggling to try to steer us towards right choices all on her own, worrying about every little thing as she did. "You sound good," I told her. "You all fixed up?"


    "Yeah, mostly. Last couple days it''s just been me and Whitney, so, y''know. Damage wasn''t that bad structurally either, mostly system damage this time. Whatever they hit me with, it didn''t smash as much as it penetrated."


    "Yeah, that''s what I''d expect from high-tech guns. I''m just glad you''re okay."


    She looked down at me like she wished she could say the same, and I tried to put on my least sympathy-demanding face. Although if I didn''t keep my jaw grit, I felt I might scream at even her gentle gliding steps. But fuck, if she could try to keep us all together and intact, I could try to keep her from worrying about me.


    "Here we are," she said, her tone adding dysmal to the preexisting worry. "Home sweet...whatever this is."


    She held me rock-steady as we surveyed...well, a tent. Exactly what you''d anticipate from a campsite. A little two-person dome, green and red, with all the mesh and zippers and strings pulled taut you''d expect.


    "Thrift store pickup. I had Whitney sniff it to make sure it didn''t smell funny. Uh, it was cheap. I need to sit down and hack us some creds at some point in a way that''s completely safe, but as it turns out, getting money for free is kind of surprisingly difficult, especially without Lia...uh...but until then we''re just kinda...coasting on what Whitney had on-hand at...the time."


    "It''s fine," I assured her, wondering if ''the time'' was going to become a shorthand for things nobody wanted to talk about by name from now on. "Just make sure there''s no rocks under my back and I''m ready to sleep for another couple of days."


    "That''s probably best. I don''t have many drugs, but I could give you something?"


    "No, save ''em," I told her. "For the next fight."


    She shook her head at me and started moving again, carrying me down the grassy hill towards our latest, humble home.

 333. 2252, Present Day. New Eden sublevels. Steffie.

    I sat in my wheelchair in the silence in the dark in the concrete room, the square of yellow and the light it shone on my hands, the only things visible. I let out a sigh and tapped the mobile again.


    The device filled the dark room with the sounds of hell. Someone breathing heavily, gunshots, audio flickering sporadically with what I knew were Jack''s movements.


    "Steffie," he panted, too close to his mic and blowing it out as he exhaled. "I don''t know...what''s transpired. I don''t know why the XPCA...ambushed me, why the sudden, unprovoked hostility¡­"


    He paused for a moment and I heard crunching of meat and flesh, and Jack gasping as he tore his knife free from one of his pursuers with a squelch. "I don''t...understand the why of any of this. They''ve been hounding me for hours, and I can do nothing but run, but wherever I go...they are ready and waiting."


    The sounds of gunfire, close gunfire interrupted him and the audio distorted strangely as he moved around in relation to it. Finally it faded into the background as he made an escape, still panting, still ragged.


    "But as I realize I may never know the why or how, the other questions I''ve never been able to answer seem so much more obvious. I apologize for any...long-windedness or blathering. This is all quite improvisational and I am suffering blood loss. But please, do not let that take away from my fully realized confession--"


    Again, I could hear him moving and shifting. Somebody died, and the first time I''d heard the recording, I had been terrified that it was him. But a minute later he spoke again, breathing deep and fast.


    "I love you, Steffie. If this be the last words I ever have the chance to utter to you, know that I love you, and that is more important than anything else I could ever say, or think, or feel. I''m sorry it''s taken me so long--" he grunted again, and more sounds of wet, cutting flesh. "--and I''m sorry I couldn''t tell you in person. But I cannot leave it unsaid any--"


    There was a heavy grunt, and then silence until the call disconnected. In the past week since he had sent me that voice message, I had listened to it a thousand times, and every time, my heart stopped at the end.


    The sounds of gunfire and murder took a few more seconds to finish echoing in my mind, and then I was back in my wheelchair in the silence in the dark in the concrete room. My own breathing sounded ragged, like his had been, though I was choked with emotion, not injury. How many times would I listen to it and break my heart again and again? How many hours would I worship this last shred of Jack?


    At least once more, I thought, tapping my mobile again.


    I had reached out to everyone, but nobody was there. Tower, Athan, Moon, Lia, even Tem, all vanished the same day Jack had called me, just gone. Taken like he had been, I had to assume. I''d called the hunter''s association to try to talk to Karu and been completely walled-out. I''d called the XPCA to inquire if they were holding any of them. Hell, I''d even dialed up Senator Irenside and shouted at one of his aides for a useless hour, being told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that he did not associate with XPCA or Exhumans or hunters beyond what is required by his responsibilities.


    I felt so frustrated and powerless. Everyone I''d met in the Resistance was also either missing or still in hiding and knew nothing. I was desperate. I tried everyone. Eventually I called up a girl that apparently had connections to Athan when they were in New Eden.


    What I got wasn''t helpful, just an inconsolable woman screaming her heart out to me about her dead husband, son, and daughter. Her voice was frantic and shrill, like I could hear her heart breaking inside of her words. Gil, Glenn, Haley. I didn''t know them, but they would all have been at New Eden with me, would have escaped the same time we had. She just wanted a family, just wanted the love and happiness that everyone else on this damn world seemed entitled to but us.


    I cried with her, she broke my heart all over again, hearing myself in her pain, and Jack in her family. When I''d hung up on her, I felt empty, devastated and pointless. I felt like this was the end, I''d given up and the world had once again proven, beyond all doubt, that Exhumans could never be happy there.


    I''d gone as far as staring down a handful of pills, counting how many dozens of doses of sleep-aid that would be. My body would react explosively if I tried any more visceral methods, I had to slip out of life quietly. But it seemed so stupid, my whole life and everything in it equal to a handful of pills in the end.


    I had to find out what happened to Jack, I decided. If I had nothing to lose anyway, I may as well. And as it turned out, it was easy to get back into New Eden if you were an Exhuman, they actively encouraged it, in fact. And though navigating underground was difficult on wheels, I knew the tunnels well enough from my time in the resistance to wend my way down into the old headquarters.


    Where I sat now. No lights on, no members in red, no Soran saying nothing but knowing all. Nobody here to tell me if Jack was here or not, or where, or how he could be rescued. Just me and darkness and another shattered hope.


    The voice message ended again and I had to pause to not just play it again. I had to remember, I had a mission here. If I were just going to do nothing, I may as well be nothing. I would find Jack.


    I worked into the surveillance room and turned on some lights, wincing at the stabbing brightness. Squinting against them, I found the equipment still here, and still operational, I hoped. I flipped on a few cores and held my eyes while they booted.


    I''d run shifts on surveillance, I knew the software. There were tapped camera feeds from all across the facility. I tried going back in time and¡­


    And nothing. There was no cache. I''d only just turned the computers on myself. They wouldn''t have been recording the whole time they were off, now would they? So just another, useless, dead end.


    How many more of those did I have left before I was done? How many did I have left in me?


    I stared at the various feeds, not really seeing them. Just a wash of misery, Exhumans thrashing against each other like fish in a net. Some I recognized from the resistance, I realized. They''d escaped, been dragged back in, and given up. Soran wasn''t here to hold us together, or they just weren''t willing to try anymore. They were defeated, just like me.


    Someone cut easily through a crowd of hunched-over Exhumans on one feed, stepping lightly and unimpeded, and the easy movement caught my eye. I typed a few commands to put other feeds from the area up and caught sight of them again, ducking under an arch with an Exhuman draped over it, and getting nothing but a nod from them in exchange.


    They were hooded, brown hair covering their face and flowing from the hood in a curly mess. A woman, probably, tall and thin, her hoodie creating the appearance of bulk which wasn''t reflected in her lean legs.


    I watched her for some minutes, adjusting camera feeds to keep watch, until at some point, she gave me what I needed. Just a glance up, habitual, looking both ways before she crossed a street.


    I dialed the feed back and looked for the moment when her face met the camera. And there, under the hood and the hair, I saw her eyes for the first time.


    And I swore, loudly. Jack would not have approved. I didn''t understand, but that didn''t mean I couldn''t. Before I lost her, I went back to the other feeds and spent the next half hour tracking her through the city until she entered a building and didn''t come back out.


    It was a sweaty hour and a half later before I finished lugging my chair to the door on that feed, my arms burning with the tempo I''d forced them to. She might have slipped out at any second, and with how slippery this one could be, I wasn''t sure I''d find her again. So I didn''t hesitate to knock.


    "What?" came a crass reply, an older man''s voice. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "I''m looking for a girl."


    "So am I. So is every guy here. Fuck off."


    "I''m looking for a girl I saw enter here an hour or two ago."


    "There''s nobody here. I said fuck off."


    "Just open the door--"


    "FUCK. OFF."


    I let out a slow breath and reminded myself that this city changed people, made them bitter and short, and that I should hate the prison, not the person.


    And then I cracked my knuckles and drove them into the soft wood, the explosion of the impact sending me reeling backwards and almost out of my chair. I''d barely tapped the dang thing.


    "What in the fuck is wrong with you, lady?" the guy screamed, coming into view, while the spectacle of an Exhuman fight drew hundreds of eyes who only moments ago cared nothing for his yelling or my distress. He was a bald hunched-over guy, thick dark hair still on the sides and back of his head, and shaped ugly, like his body thought it did him a favor by putting all of his considerable fat into one paunch instead of spreading it around.


    "My problem," I told him, wheeling towards him with all the menace my tired arms could provide "is that I am looking for a girl, and you are stopping me. Nobody stops me, not now, not anymore."


    "Phillip? What''s going--" I saw bare feet on the stairway through the wrecked door. "...Steffie?"


    "Lia!" I shouted at her as she bolted through the crater and into my arms, her lanky body rocking my chair as she squealed her best at me. "Lia what the hell are you doing here?"


    "What are you doing here? You were supposed to be safely hidden?"


    "I was. I came in after they got Jack. Do you know where he is?"


    She stepped back, her eyes wide and white. "...maybe. But let''s talk inside. Lots of spectators out here, y''know?"


    She had a point but I couldn''t contain the barrage of questions even over the tiny distance to the destroyed threshold. "Do you know what happened? Is Athan okay? Do you know about Tower? Or Moon and Tem? Did this all happen to them as well, or just us?"


    "Easy there, tiger," Lia said, before apologizing to the lumpy-shaped man and handing him a flattened metal disc.


    "What''s that?" I asked.


    "It''s a ''coin''."


    "What''s a ''coin''?"


    "Type of currency before everything went digital. Like, pirates booty was all chests of coins."


    "I thought they were pieces of eight? Or gold bars or something?"


    "Well...yeah. That too. But coins, also. Or mosty. I dunno. Uh...can you get upstairs, or should we¡­" she turned towards the man. "Can we borrow your living room? I''m sorry."


    "No problem," he said, flipping the coin and catching it, stepping lively to head upstairs.


    "So what''s with the coin?" I asked after he was gone.


    "A currency, like I said. But this is one I invented. See, word around here is, I''m an infopath. I know things -- and information is the most valued commodity there is in this place. Everyone wants to know how the world''s doing, how their families are, or their friends...or enemies. Some just want news. So a coin is something I''m handing out, redeemable for a piece of info. Fortunately, I don''t charge friends," she said, raising her eyebrows at me with a grin.


    I swallowed hard and looked at the open door just a few feet away, where anyone could be listening. But nobody was. Something about Lia had commanded these people''s respect in a way I didn''t know could be done by anyone but Soran.


    But that was already too much worrying about inconsequential things. "So where''s Jack?" I blurted out. Her smile withered at once.


    "He''s...here. Ish. I think."


    "What does that mean? Can we get to him? Can we break him out?"


    "Jack''s not the kind of guy you just...break out, you know? If there were a way out already, he''d be on it. Something must be keeping him down. Has he, uh...ever told you about the...um..."


    I shook my head. Jack never spoke of some parts of his past with me, and being an Exhuman, knowing that he had a family once, there were things I would never make him speak of.


    Lia frowned, and dug her fingers into the bushels of hair on either side of her head. I could see she was weighing how much to tell me. "Well, it''s like this," she said. "A long time ago, Jack turned, and eventually, the XPCA caught up with him. They couldn''t hold him too well, his powers didn''t seem to be slowed down by a neural dampener too much or anything, and if they put one on him, he could just move out of it, too. They didn''t want him dead either, probably Blackett''s machinations at play. So they got...creative. Ugly creative. As only the XPCA can."


    She took a deep breath and I realized I was holding my own hands painfully tight in my lap. I released them and saw lines where my nails had dug in.


    "They put...a bomb in him. Surgically. In his heart. If he disobeyed, they''d blow it up and kill him. If he blinked away and left it behind, he''d have a hole in his heart and die. That''s how they finally got him under control, and how he was put under their heel."


    I stared at her. "Is it...still there?"


    She nodded. "Probably. I''d imagine he got it disabled or something but...it''s also possible he''s just never defied the XPCA since then, ever. So if they want him locked up again¡­"


    "He might have been in a cell the whole time I''ve ever known him."


    "Something like that, yeah."


    "Is that why he went along with the whole P-Force thing? Is that the only reason he''s not still out there, slipping around in shadows and dragging out his event and killing XPCA where he can?" I stopped to blink at her. "Is everything about him just a fabrication built around someone holding a gun to his head?"


    "Easy there," Lia said, patting my arm. "Jack is Jack. Whatever his reasons and the changes in his life were, they''re just things in his past, and he had to walk that past to get to who he is today. It doesn''t change anything to ask yourself ''what if'', and wonder who he''d be if none of that happened, because it did happen, right?"


    "I guess," I mumbled. I found my heart racing and mostly was just horrified that, by twisted logic, it took a literal constant threat of death for Jack to ever decide to want to be with me. Which I guess was pretty selfish, all things considered.


    Lia smiled easily at me, and I wondered how she kept her nerve so well all the time. Even now, separated from everyone she knew, mis-ID''d as an Exhuman, locked in a secure facility...for over a week now, the angry plague of New Eden had to be getting to her by this point. But no, she seemed as together as ever. I didn''t know how she did it.


    "How do you do it?" I found myself asking.


    "Huh?"


    "How do you keep it all together so easily. I lost Jack and everybody else overnight, and it took me...well, not to get too grim here, but...it took me holding a lethal dose of pills in my hand before I could come to terms with even trying to do anything. I guess...I guess like Jack, really, that I couldn''t do or be this until I was...freed? Kinda. By the context of death as alternative. You lost everyone too, and here you are, making a niche for yourself, smiling, reassuring me, so effortlessly."


    Her smile hung weirdly on her face and I realized at some point, I''d misspoken somehow. But it was only there for a second before she squeezed my arm again and the smile came back in full force.


    "I''ve always thought that life isn''t about doing what you want, or what you''re capable of," she said, her voice a little somber for her expression. "If you only ever do those things, you''re just stumbling through it, not really deciding anything for yourself, just being a slave to your impulses or what you happen to be good at. To fuzzy chemical signals in your brain," she nodded. "And I don''t like that. I don''t want to be a slave to anyone. I want to pick my own life, every day, all the time."


    Her eyes were shining at me as though lit from deep within. I wasn''t sure I''d ever heard her speak so seriously before. "I subscribe to the school of discipline. Whether you want to or not, whether you feel it or not, whether you''d rather be dead, or the world seems garbo, or everyone you know is gone, none of that matters. That''s just baggage weighing off of you. No matter how much pressure there is, you''re still the one who gets to decide how to move. No amount of moose is stopping you from standing up and walking around like nothing''s wrong."


    She nodded seriously at me. "So do it. Say ''screw you'' to your doubts and your fears and your own frogging brain and be what you want. Every day."


    I blinked at her, not sure where all this came from but feeling very surprisingly weightless anyway. I felt like my chest was swelling, like all my guts had been buoyed up by her words and somehow, breathing was just a little easier.


    "Every day?" I asked.


    "Every day. That''s what discipline means to me."


    I swallowed hard and, sure, that sounded good, but I wasn''t about to shut out every fear and anxiety I had for the rest of my life. It was amazing that she could...if she really did. But looking at the fire in her eyes, I didn''t see any way her words could possibly be hollow.


    If I was going to be stuck in New Eden with anyone, Lia wasn''t a bad pick at all.


    "Then...let''s find Jack," I told her, and she nodded and grinned, her smile changing from serene to warming in an instant.


    "Yes, lets. In fact¡­" she stood and her smile took on a devious twinge. "I''ve got an appointment to keep here in a bit. Some XPCA to talk with who might be able to give me something."

 334. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Lia.

    It was a little obnoxious how difficult even simple things were in this cozy little bunghole, mostly on account of how much everyone seemed to hate and distrust everyone else.


    Trust was my bread and butter. As an infopath, if I didn''t have people''s trust, I had nothing -- no clients, no info, no prestige, nothing. So I''d had to bend over backwards the whole time I''d been here to build up a reputation that frankly, people this desperate should have been happy to throw at my feet. They needed answers, and when answers arrived, they spit on her. It was frustrating.


    But whatever. I wasn''t complaining. If I had to put in extra work, following up leads and working pro-bono to get established, so be it. I''d manage, because I wasn''t about to let everything go belly-up and let everyone I know slip away from me because I was too lazy to try.


    Even so, this was a little absurd.


    I adjusted my hair a little in the wall-length mirror opposite me, which was difficult because of the cuffs I was in, and then shot a wink to whoever was watching me from behind it before sitting back on the bolted-down metal chair with all the casual ease I could muster. Everything in this room was cold and sterile, and it was simultaneously too bright and too dark to be comfortable.


    Which made sense. It was, after all, an interrogation room. Just as I depended on trust to weasel my way into the lives of these Exhumans, the masters of this room relied on unease to ply their trade. I was supposed to be uncomfortable and eager to scurry away, which is why I was doing everything in my power to show them just how much I didn''t care.


    Every conversation was a battle, whether people wanted to believe it or not. Even chatting to friends, there were always things you''d rather them do, for their own good even, and oftentimes, running your mouth without thinking was just tipping your hand and asking for trouble. Most people might think that perspective cynical, but most people weren''t as results-oriented as I was when it came to opening their mouth. Or as successful.


    But even most people probably agreed with that logic when they found themselves here. Everything in this room was shrewdly calculated for maximum effect, from the lighting to the furniture to the cameras to the way the interrogators would speak, would posture, would flex their power and influence. Or subvert that expectation and weasel into one''s human natures. Even the lack of apparent power could be powerful, if flexed properly.


    I scratched my cheek a little and preened my eyebrows while putting my feet up. The chair and table were too close for that move to be comfortable or feasible for most people, but I was pretty thin and pretty flexible, still waiting for puberty to finish the mess it''d started, but in the interim I was left with plenty of space to work with in this, my most obnoxious display of constructed relaxation.


    "Get your damn feet off my table," a voice said, as the man owning it threw the door open. "Do you treat your mother''s furniture like this?"


    My feet didn''t budge, the chalky red desert dust leaving a smudge on the stainless table from when I''d thrown them up there. "Mom''s dead," I told him with a calculated shrug. Not enough information for him to use, but still enough oversharing to make him regret his words. He sat down without further confronting the feet issue, which was a win for me.


    He''d walked in the door playing hardball. Which meant two things to me: One, he was not a professional interrogator, which was good. And two, I should go soft.


    Once it was established that it was my decision to do so, I swung my feet off the table and leaned forward across it, imitating his body language subtly.


    This was the entire game. In every conversation, like in every battle, someone was dominant. Someone was leading, someone was reacting, someone had the power and the other was playing catch-up. Black Shark always had that control. I wasn''t Exhuman, but this was my power.


    He didn''t speak, so neither did I. I waited, using body language wherever I could to express, even if we were both here, both doing the same thing, I was still winning at it. Whenever his thoughts built up to thinking I might speak, I interrupted him by blinking slowly, unnaturally slowly, indicating I had no intention to. When he shifted in his seat, I stayed where I was, breaking off the intimacy of our matching body language and giving him both the small discomfort of its absence, and the sliver of guilt for being the one to break it.


    So it wasn''t long before he spoke, although he''d clearly intended for me to go first. It was an ameteur play to try to use on me, and he''d failed at it. He''d quit with the tricks soon enough, and then we could start getting somewhere.


    "I hear you''re an infopath," he said, stating the obvious to get the conversation situated in neutral ground where he felt comfortable. This wasn''t really any better a lead-in than informing me it was sunny out. This was New Eden, of course I was an Exhuman of some sort, and of course the XPCA would have my record. "That''s an interesting powerset."


    "Not half as interesting as what else you might want to know," I shrugged again, and then segued into matching his posture again, but with a smile that hinted at conspiracy. "Whatever that might happen to be, I know something about it."


    "Alright," he said. "Then tell me what I''m thinking."


    I laughed at him to let him know just how far off he was. "Infopaths aren''t psychic, silly," I berated him. "If we were, I''d be buried for being a code-X, wouldn''t I?" A nice little appeal to his own system of authority to take apart his request.


    "Then what do you know?" he asked, just a little too interested and a little too fast to be cool. This was why I wanted to meet with this particular guy, I''d heard a rumor and if there was enough to gossip about this guy, there was enough to leverage for information. All I had to do was to not screw it up.


    I studied him for a moment, but only for effect, before dropping my relaxed air and letting him know this conversation had turned serious. "Here''s how this works," I told him through a note of condescension. "This is a prison, like any other, and I''m still human...or Exhuman. I''ve still got needs, wants, desires, and being in here, they''re not always easy to fill. You do me a favor," I dug in my pocket and flipped a coin onto the table where it spun and clattered. "You get a coin. You give me a coin, I tell you something you want to know."


    "Maybe among the residents," he said, leaning back and trying to pick up the cool that I''d set down "but not here. See this uniform, see this gun? I''m XPCA, I''m the authority here. It''s our walls and guns that keep this place safe, our food that keeps you fed. And if you think New Eden is a prison, just try breaking a few of our rules, and you''ll see just what a prison the city can be."


    I didn''t break or blink in the slightest, just gave him a patient sigh. "Sure. And if I''m breaking any rules, by all means, arrest me. Doesn''t mean I''m a show dog that has to use her powers just ''cuz you said so. If anything, I should probably charge you more. You can pay better, you''ve got better resources...and you''ve got a whole prison of supers to turn to, and somehow you picked me. Makes me think, perhaps, whatever issue you have, I''m the ideal candidate to help with it."


    I adopted his relaxed posture to let him know the business conversation was concluded. "Or maybe not. I probably lose a lot of Exhuman customers by being willing to talk to you at all. Most of them have secrets they''d rather you not hear."


    He bit immediately, again one change behind and adopted the serious negotiation pose I''d just abandoned, even if his words contradicted it. "We''re not making a deal here, Exhuman. You were brought in for an interrogation. I neither need nor want your services."


    "''Course you don''t," I told him, sliding the coin off the table with the scrape of metal. A good visual and audible prop to sell how the option was slipping away from him. "As you said, I''m here to follow your rules and be a good Exhuman, and if that''s all you want I''m happy to do so."


    He stared at me for a few moments, just thinking, and then to mask his continued pondering, got up and walked to the mirror, hiding his face in the dark reflection while able to keep an eye on me.


    I could almost laugh. He was considering saving face and sending me away, maybe even considering trumping up charges on me just to punish me for being difficult. But if he''d gone through the trouble to seek me out and had something seriously worrying him, he''d blundered and he knew it. He wanted a deal to be made here, and now that he''d crammed the whole proper conduct of the XPCA angle in the conversation, he couldn''t bring it up again without making himself sound improper.


    It was tempting to act with benevolence again, to bring up the topic so that he wouldn''t have to -- effectively, trading my chokehold on the situation to steer it towards my goal. It might even have been a good idea.


    But I was curious to see how desperate he was. If he was willing to eat his own words and bring up the issue again at the cost of face, I knew I''d have him entirely by the balls. He''d be easier to work with after that, a fellow conspirator against the XPCA''s interests, and willing to abandon this entire pretense for the sake of results. Things would go smoothly if he spoke again. And if he didn''t, if he wouldn''t loose his morals and play conspirator, I could play the temptress.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    My benevolence extended to appearing as non judgemental as possible while he turned his thoughts over in what might have been awkward silence.


    "I''d be interested in a demonstration," he said, and I resisted cracking a smile. "It''s in the best interests of the XPCA to know your capabilities, after all."


    I shook my head at him. "Please. If you''re going to lie to someone who can pull information from the aether, at least put some effort into it. Just tell me what you want and we can both stop pretending and go home happy."


    He turned over his shoulder to glare at me, but then sat down again anyway. Perfect. Just the right amount of pushing him to get him to drop his guard. He frowned briefly and then spoke, for the first time, the words coming from the person inside the uniform.


    "You should know my issues then, if you''re really an infopath. You know what I want, so...give it to me, and I''ll make sure you get...extra food, or a new pillow, or whatever it is you want."


    I smiled cordially at him, giving him a tiny reward for opening up. As well as something to hold onto for when I hit him with the stinger. "Unfortunately, it doesn''t work that way. I can''t just pull any information out of the air, I have to be looking for something specific. Think of it like a story -- I can tell you how it ends, but only if you give me the start."


    "I see," he said, swallowing. "Then¡­" his face flinched subtly as he considered the probable embarrassment of telling me his anxieties, but I remained as cool, professional, and non judgemental as ever. No more comfortable and no less comfortable than having to show your privates to the doctor. "Let''s discuss what you want, then," he said, changing the subject.


    "I have another client I''m having an issue with. She''s looking for someone, and she doesn''t have enough information to go off of," I told him. "XPCA records should be more than enough to get me started, so I''m looking for that from you so I can get her what she needs."


    "The favor you want from us is just to help some other Exhuman?"


    "It''s not the best deal I''ve ever made, I''ll admit," I smiled at him. "Certainly you could do more for me than she could, but she''s got a coin, and I always honor my promises."


    It was funny that everything I''d told him was true. Well, except her having a coin, Steffie didn''t need one from me. But otherwise, I''d just given him a very compelling little story which cast me in a very flattering light while also sorting the world into two categories -- my clients, for whom I would do anything, and everyone else without a coin. Humans loved tribalism, loved exclusivity and feeling like they belonged. I''d outlined the perks now of being one of my people, and the arguments against his potential reservations were just stacking up in his mind.


    "The person you''re looking for, is he an Exhuman?" he asked. I nodded once, slowly. "Is he in New Eden?"


    "Well that''s what I want to know. They''ve got some bad blood, you see, and she wants to know if she should sleep with one eye open." A neat little lie which cut off the possibility of Exhumans collaborating because of his actions. If he helped me out, he''d be contributing to the city''s harmony, reducing violence and all that. Justification enough for him to do it as part of his job with a clean conscience.


    And also, apparently enough to finally sell him on the matter, as his elbows rested on the table and propped up his head, messing up his hair slightly and demonstrating just how little he cared about composure at this juncture. How very far we''d come since he walked in here thinking he''d make me speak first.


    And to sell it all, I slid the coin across the table, halfway between us, tantalizingly within his reach.


    "All right," he said, putting his palm on the coin. "What''s your Exhuman''s name?"


    "Jack Vega," I told him with a smile.


    "Just one moment," he said, heading for the door. "I know someone in records. If he''s not too dangerous, I will be able to give you some basics. And then, this," he held the coin up seriously, as though pleading for me not to forget, and then headed outside.


    Normally I''d have deflated like a popped pool toy right now, slouching and shrugging off these clothes that felt heavy and dirty from the exchange, but the mirror in front of me might still be manned and I had to keep up my composure for a bit longer yet. I no longer had to play up the obnoxious bit, just needed to seem professional enough, and so I sat there, still and quiet, closing my eyes as though in meditation.


    It was most of ten uncomfortable minutes before he came back, rushing through the door shoulder-first with a tablet in his hands. As I''d hoped, he was in a hurry to be done with this all, which meant instead of carefully pruning only the exact data I''d wanted on Jack, he had pulled the whole file, determined it wasn''t a threat to hand over, and brought it in.


    "Got your man here," he said, waving the tablet at me. On it, I could see mugshots of Jack''s smiling face alongside walls of text. "I''ll give it to you when you''ve told me what I want."


    "Nope," I told him. "I already told you how it works. You help me, you get a coin. Then you give me the coin and I tell you what you need."


    He wanted to argue, but the coin and the tablet were both already in his hands, and I knew which one would hurt more to hand over. He paused for just a moment before sitting down and sliding the tablet over to me.


    I flipped through the pages on Jack''s profile idly, reading at my leisure and ignoring the man''s growing discomfort. I wasn''t about to rush this just to spare his feelings, when this was what I''d come here to get in the first place. I learned a lot about Jack''s background there, things he''d never mentioned, things which explained a lot about who he was and where he''d become the man he was. The section containing his presumed bodycount was impressive, even for an Exhuman, and I was amused to see the P-Force listed under his relations, but not Steffie. The XPCA had no eye for relationships.


    I worked through to his current status and read it carefully before handing the tablet back. "Thank you," I told him with sincerity. "She will be happy to hear that."


    "He might not be held in confinement indefinitely," he cautioned, and I had to smile that he was taking the extra trouble to warn me. "If he shows good behavior and rehabilitation, he may join the greater New Eden populace at some point. But your friend has a very dangerous enemy in this man."


    "I''ll make sure she''s well aware. Now, I believe you have something to ask me?"


    He gave me back my coin, and then what followed was honestly one of my favorite hours of playing an Exhuman in my life. The man opposite me, like many, was on a shifting stateside deployment, and moved when the XPCA demanded it. Only recently had he been moved to New Eden on a relatively permanent basis, filling a void I knew Athan had created by setting off the civil war in here, which opened many positions at the prison city.


    And, like many deployed men, he was wondering about his wife back in Florida. When pressed, he was all-too-willing to fish out the gory details of their relationship, of all the suspected men she might have found to fill his sheets, of the raptures and the strains of their coupling. As he lost himself in his own life story, it became immediately apparent that there was nobody watching us through the mirror and cameras...or if there were, the man was at least a shameless exhibitionist.


    And honestly, I kinda wished I could just do this for a living. Nothing in the world gave me quite the unadulterated glee of pulling back the veil of someone else''s mess of a life and watching all the moving parts of it going to hell, like lifting a rock off a nest of ants and seeing them go berserk. While Athan''s was a bit close and a bit...oblivious...for my tastes, I drank up relationship drama with a straw, and hoo boy, did this guy have some years of drama piled up.


    In the end though, his question was simple enough. Was his wife faithful or not? And I had to come up with an answer on the spot. A simple yes or no, and probably not one that really mattered, so I gave my honest opinion.


    "You really think so?" he said, his eyes shining with hope.


    "It''s not a matter of what I think, that''s what my powers tell me," I informed him, all mysterious-like. "Besides, despite everything, you two have been through a lot, haven''t you? She wouldn''t risk all that now, just because things are hard."


    "Yeah," he said. And then with more confidence, "Yeah! You''re right. Man, that was stupid of me, I almost did something really dumb. I''m glad I came to you first."


    "Maybe next time we can skip the process of having me brought in," I suggested. "Just seek me out in the city. Perhaps forgo the uniform."


    He laughed, and inside it, I heard years of anxiety and stress crashing into relief. It felt good, after hearing his insecurities and living his story through him this last hour to give it a happy ending. He uncuffed me and dragged me back through the winding passages in the walls and back into the city with a spring in his step that made more than one or two other guards give us a questioning glance as we passed.


    Which was good. This is how reputation spread. The man was living advertisement for my services, and the more XPCA knew about it, the greater chances I could dig up information on Athan and the others. But Jack and Steffie were here, now, and she was...was not doing well. As much as I wanted to find Athan, I wasn''t about to abandon Steffie to despair if I could help it.


    So as annoying as the jovial, bouncing man was as he said his farewells, I endured it with grace and poise, even accepting a brief awkward squeeze of a hug at the end before he turned me loose.


    And then kinda hindsighted that maybe the others attributed his mirth to a more conjugal-style visit, and tried not to recontextualize the two of us walking in the halls in that light. I sighed as I worked back to where Steffie was waiting and hoped that wasn''t the kind of advertising I was making out.


    Back at her own house, she could not rush me inside and get the information out of me quickly enough. I smiled broadly at the start of the conversation to placate her and let her know she didn''t need to struggle through this talk, it would all end happily.


    Because I didn''t want her to stress longer than she had to. She was already at her wit''s end there for a bit about losing Jack, and anything I could do to ease and reassure and help her, I''d do. I had the information she wanted and we could start forming a plan right away, and there wasn''t any reason for her to suffer through our chat until I chose to break the suspense on his whereabouts.


    So I told her flat-out, up front, that Jack was alive, and he was here, and drank in the visible relief which seemed to hit her physically, softening the lines of her face and the stiffness in her poise, unaging her years in a sentence.


    Some people were like Steffie. Soft, loving, good people. She was a friend, one I''d help and protect as I was able. Then there were harder people out there, people like me, like my brother, who would fight without hesitation. People who pathologically couldn''t give up, as long as there was something in front of us to combat. People who would dedicate our lives to fighting so others didn''t have to.


    Because, after all, every conversation was a battle. And if I would just win a few more of them, maybe...just maybe, I stood a chance of getting her, and Jack, and myself out of here, and helping my brother fight his battles to do the same for the whole damn world.

 335. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Lia.

    I typed out the last of the information I remembered on Jack into the computer and turned the holo towards Steffie. Despite what I thought was some pretty enticing information on there, she was still staring at me.


    "Okay, what?" I asked her.


    "You seriously got this information from an XPCA agent?"


    "Yeah, who else would have it?"


    "Like, you not only spread a rumor you knew he''d jump at, you also got taken in, dragged into an interrogation room, and then beat him at his own interrogation to pull information from him instead of the other way around?"


    I sighed at her and slumped back in my chair. After being all stiff and formal this morning, being able to melt in a chair and continue the abuse to my posture I''d cultured over a lifetime was amazing.


    "It wasn''t a real interrogation," I informed her. "He wasn''t a real interrogator. Just some random soldier who''d been shipped out here for guard duty who''d seen too many police dramas."


    "What, he didn''t like, play good-cop, bad-cop properly or something?"


    I shook my head. "That''s exactly the type of myth that doesn''t happen in real interrogations. For starters, as you''ve just proven, that kind of tactic is already in the public eye, and nobody would fall for a trick like that if they already knew all about it. Also it''s just...not as effective to browbeat your suspects, typically. Like, yeah, it does happen, to lock someone away for hours and hours and hours and just go at him and wear him down with authority and abuse, but that''s the hard way."


    "So what''s...the easy way?"


    "What I did to him. Just normal conversation, really. At least at the start. Get ''em talking, then erode their confidence and reasons to resist. Tell ''em you don''t even need them, that you already have everything you need and they''d just be putting a bow on it for you."


    She frowned. "Wouldn''t that be lying?"


    I laughed and patted her on her blue head, which made her frown deeper. "Oh sweetie. Of course they''re going to lie."


    She eyed me warily for a moment more, but finally seemed too alured to the information I''d put on the screen to keep arguing my awesomeness to me. Her frown disappeared as she read, but it wasn''t replaced with a smile either.


    "The admission blocks," she muttered. "Where are those? I don''t think I''ve ever heard of that."


    "They''re prison cells like any other, under the base out there. They''re for holding and processing of new Exhumans who are difficult in some way. Supposed to be temporary and graduate to the city, or maybe the more permanent confinement under the walls, but Jack doesn''t seem to be becoming less ''difficult in some way''."


    "Because of his powers? Or his behavior?"


    I shrugged. "Records didn''t say he was misbehaving, but I don''t know."


    "If only the resistance were still together," she sighed. "Getting in there would be a snap with the right kinds of Exhumans."


    I turned that idea over in my head. Certainly Exhumans were all we had to work with here, but I couldn''t imagine they didn''t have, at the very least, tectonic sensors to detect people digging out under the walls. The old resistance base had been put straight under the city, way down, by some Exhuman at some point...but it seemed more built than dug, as though by a reality-shaper of some kind. If we could find them and convince them to help us¡­


    But that prospect seemed dubious the more I thought about it. Just finding that Exhuman could take a while, and that was assuming they were still here. If they had ties to the resistance, there were better than fair odds they died in the breakout, or were still out there, or were being held like Jack for their connections and potentially dangerous powers. Nothing we could rely on.


    Though, it wouldn''t hurt to ask around either. I''d been sniffing about for any trace of the resistance since I got here, but found...a startling absence of anyone affiliated with them. It was suspicious enough that I had to wonder if the XPCA was...handling them a little differently this time around.


    For now I was tapped out, though. I didn''t have any more people or favors, and while I''d have preferred to veg inside and just think for a while, I didn''t want to give Steffie the opinion that I didn''t have a course of action. So I took my feet, found my bra somewhere, and headed out into the city with a nebulous excuse for her of having something to do.


    I was still just thinking, just more on my feet, as they carried me at random through the wide, dusty streets. I could tell when I''d strayed too far by feeling eyes on me again -- New Edeners were pretty pissy by nature, and while my reputation paved the way for me in some districts, in others, I was a complete unknown. Or a threat.


    I sat down near the central road like so many of the others slumped against walls, and felt the sun''s warmth, almost uncomfortably hot on my back. I felt like a baking potato, which was fine with me. Athan might have always preferred the cold, but I was a sun-seeker. I''d taken advantage of those predilections more than once to put cold hands on him somewhere and sapped the warmth from his body like a parasite, alongside his yelps and my giggles, typically.


    And now, he could be anywhere, I thought, the happy bubbling in my mind ebbing away. After my arrest in Oregon a week ago, I hadn''t heard or seen a damn thing about him, and I''d been digging constantly. I''d played up my Exhumanity while they held me so that I could get relocated instead of just arrested on the chance he was in here, but in retrospect, that was a stupid decision. It seemed impossible that they''d ever take someone as high-profile as him and just dump him with the rest of the chaff.


    If only I had ''net access, even for a little bit. The lack of it was driving me crazy, but was also a mixed blessing. A lot of the favors I''d pulled until now were the kind of thing anyone with a few minutes and a search engine could have sussed out. Many people had holos and could pick up news or shows -- and did, because what else would you do locked up in here? -- but access to the greater ''net was tightly controlled, and even more so after the uprising. But I knew it was in here...just not anywhere the XPCA or a bum like me would find it.


    In short, I didn''t have my anonymity, my kit, my resources, or anything that made me functional in here, and it felt a lot like I was just bumbling around, telling people what I thought they wanted to hear and hoping it wouldn''t bite me in the tuchus. I was growing, and that was bringing me closer to my goals, but it also brought danger, and I had to carefully balance the two.


    The warming sun suddenly disappeared behind a glowering face, and I had to shield my eyes to make out what the glowering face was attached to. And as I made out the details, I found my tuchus clenching. Here was some of that danger.


    "Hello, Black Shark," said the face, cordial and breezy. "Enjoying the end of spring?"


    "It treats me well enough," I told him. "What can I do for you, Argus?"


    "Oh, I think you''ve done enough already. I was led to believe you were an infopath, and that knowledge you attained was infallible."


    "I''m just a conduit," I shrugged, wishing he''d move out of my sun. "Knowledge can be subjective. Not all facts are facts."


    "Well isn''t that convenient. Sorta makes it sound like you can lie to any one of your clients whenever you want and not have to face the consequences. Sorta makes you question the whole point of hiring an infopath to begin with. At best they''re unreliable, and at worst, they''re just lying to your face."


    "There''s no need to be upset. If you have any problems with my services, I''m happy to make it up to you." I dug in my pocket and spun a coin into the air towards him, the metallic ping cutting short when his fingers snatched it from the air.


    For one brief moment, I could make out his backlit shadow examining the coin. And then he pivoted on me, twisting in a throwing motion, and I felt a sharp pain on my forehead that my sun-shielding hand snapped to by reflex.


    "Only an idiot buys a defective product twice," he told me, while I felt blood on my fingertips. "I want a refund."


    "You can''t refund information," I told him. "What the heck does that even mean?"This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Not the information, dolt. You had me do you a favor to buy your services. Now you''re going to do one for me."


    "Yeah, no thanks. I made my offer," I said, rising to escape this situation. I let out an involuntary groan as my tailbone slammed back into the ground. I started to move again and found his hand in front of my face.


    My groan became more pronounced and husky as sudden dizziness struck me. My skin felt too tight and my hands were clammy with sweat. They looked shrunken and pale...and too numerous, as my vision swam. My head ached with a pounding that had nothing to do with the cut on my forehead.


    "Some of us don''t have to lie about our powers," his voice said from somewhere distant-sounding, ringing with a menace which hadn''t been there a moment ago. "Don''t make me ask again."


    I gaped at him wordlessly, feeling like the sun had beaten down on me for an hour, and my body burned like I''d just run for that long. This was his power? To...what, to debilitate? To make another just wither away? If he kept this up, would I die?


    It certainly felt like it. I was sweaty and burning up and cold all at once, the desert around me feeling so far away compared to the sun on my skin.


    He leaned back and the sensation lessened, or at least stopped getting worse. I sat there reeling in his shadow for a long minute while my vision put itself back together. My headache just grew, though, and I began to shiver...or shake, under my sweat.


    "I''m being more than fair," he said. "You cheated me, I want what I deserve. And you''ll give it to me, or the XPCA will be sweeping your remains off the streets."


    Sweeping my remains. That was a slightly odd turn of phrase, but sort of a terrifying one. It meant two things -- one, whatever his powers did, they didn''t leave a tidy corpse when they''d finished, and two, he''d made ''remains'' with it before. He probably wouldn''t refrain from doing it again. It wasn''t looking like I had much of a choice here.


    At the very least, not right here, anyway. If I could get away from him, maybe I could get some of the more friendly Exhumans between Argus and myself. Keep him at bay long enough to rescue Jack, at least. Jack could probably handle this chump like he was nothing.


    The chump clenched at me again and I felt my veins throb across my whole body. "I''ll do it," I gasped at him. "I''ll do your favor."


    "Smart," he said, backing off again and leaving me reeling. I could see others watching from all around but not one of them moved to help. I reminded myself, these were people who founded an Exhuman fighting ring. My death was their amusement, not some tragedy to prevent. It''d been pure stupidity for me to go anywhere I wasn''t completely safe.


    I swallowed heavily. Not that there was anywhere completely safe. Not when every single person in this place except me could level a city block.


    Still he loomed over me as I slumped backwards. "Just tell me what the hell you want," I growled at him with all the menace I had left. "And then piss off."


    "It''s not what I want, it''s what you want," he said, his giddiness now without reservation. "After all, you want to help me now, don''t you?"


    When I didn''t answer immediately he reached forward again. "Yes!" I shouted as his fingers twitched.


    "Good. Besides, this could be the start of a beautiful and prosperous relationship. You see, I''m not just another Exhuman. I see you looking around, wondering if the others are going to come to your aid. Well I''ve got news for you, missy, they''re in my camp. Everyone on this block lives because I permit it and pays tribute because I demand it. You crossed a very powerful man."


    A single block? I''d pissed off the worst, pettiest tyrant alive. But I let him continue, anything to improve his mood and to buy me time while my eyes couldn''t focus and my body shook.


    "Now, you''re a very clever girl. I''ve heard of your reputation growing, and all the knowledge in the world can''t hurt either. Impulsive and stupid, though. Otherwise you''d have never crossed the King of Block Seventeen. But that''s not me, I''m a strategist, see? A thinker. A schemer, like you''ve never met. I know how to get people to do what I want, and I know how to use them."


    It disgusted me more than a little just how big an ego they could pack into a single person. If I had a dick to measure, I might have been inclined to spout off about the number of followers I had, the information I''d bought and sold, the millions that had passed through my hands, all while working in total anonymity, because true power didn''t need a face on it. But of course that''d be moronic, so I stayed shut up. "One day I''m going to run this whole place. And you''re going to help me with the next step. You''re clever. You can help with one small step, can''t you?"


    I nodded before he got back into threats and he seemed satisfied, from what I could see of his silhouette. "There''s an upstart, like you, getting too big and too smart for his own good. Named Khol. I want you to kill him."


    "Kill?" I scoffed at him. "I''m not sure you''ve seen our current position, but you seem much more suited for killing than I am."


    "Oh, I don''t know about that," he said, and I could see his teeth glinting in the sun. "There''s more to killing someone than walking up and unloading your powers. Not even understanding that is why I''m King of the Block and you''re just a stupid girl. If I came at Khol, there''d be a fight, and while I would probably win, I might also lose."


    "So you''re just a coward then," I panted at him through a grin, only to have my vision swim and my veins burn again in response.


    "You should watch your mouth. You don''t have many of those in you left before I start doing permanent damage." Considering I didn''t even fully understand what he was doing to me, I took his words to heart. That, and the fact that he hadn''t risen to my bait anyway. "Regardless, I feel that with time and planning, and all the knowledge in the world, even you could kill him. And so you will...or you''ll die."


    "What, you expect me to just...use my powers to figure out his weakness and assassinate him or something?"


    "Yes, exactly that."


    I stared at him for a long minute. As long a minute as I could drag out. Any time he wasn''t using his powers on me was good time.


    "I know what you''re thinking," he said with menace, and for once he wasn''t wrong. "You''re thinking, if you have the time and knowledge, why not simply kill me? Or, the second my back is turned, why not just run away, disappear and never let me see you again."


    He crouched down and I blinked at him and forced my sunlit eyes to focus. He had a greasy ponytail with lines of grey, sallow skin, and a black eyepatch on his left eye. I wanted very little more in the world right now but to have my rifle, several thousand feet, and a bullet to put through his other one.


    He gave me a crooked smile and then jabbed his fingers into my chest, just under and feeling like they were grabbing at the bottom of my ribs. I gasped at the sudden blow, coughing and failing to get my shaking, uncoordinated hands to grab his and pull the offending fingers off of me.


    And then his powers hit me in a strange, horrible new way. I felt...a dull crushing pain inside me, like my guts had turned to stone, like there was a rock in me. It wasn''t as debilitating as whatever else he''d been doing, but it felt worse, wronger than before. He withdrew his hand and stared at me.


    "This is why you won''t leave, and won''t betray me. Your organs are now slowly shutting down. You will have a few days before you die, and only I can stop it. Do your favor for me, and walk away healthy. Or don''t, and die. It doesn''t really matter much to me, though I do prefer not wasting a promising young life like yours."


    He gave my cheek a quick pinch before rising to his feet again, standing as a shadow before the sun another long moment before walking off without a goodbye.


    While I sat there, feeling cold and hot and wrong and violated. Even with his powers gone, I felt sick. My body wouldn''t stop trembling on its own, my vision wasn''t right, and I felt weak and dizzy. And my heart was racing, but I wasn''t sure if that was medical or just perfectly-ordinary terror.


    I closed my eyes and willed my body to stop malfunctioning. I recited my mantras. I put one foot under me and forced myself to my feet.


    Well, almost. I tried, and my knees couldn''t hold me. I fell forward on the hot concrete, the sweat on my palms boiling at the touch.


    I could almost laugh. The ducking idiot hadn''t even left me a choice. How was I supposed to even consider doing his dirty work if I was going to die here? He was so frustratingly incompetent, so damn full of himself despite being nothing.


    And yet somehow he was more than I was. What a sobering thought that was. As much as I wanted to believe that I had the smarts and the resources and the plans, the fact was, I was here dying under the sun with my guts shutting down, and he wasn''t. What a dumpster fire.


    Something else stood in my sun for a second and looked down at me, head cocked. White eyes against dark skin blinked at me in confusion.


    "Lia?" he asked me, his voice warm, but cooler than the day, heavy, but lighter than any of the rest of my stay in this toilet. "It is you. Lia! Oh damn, you look like shit. Are you okay? Wait...you look like...did you run across Argus? Self-styled ''King of Block Seventeen?'' Hang on, you''ll be alright."


    Strong hands scooped me up easily and the world streaked to a blurry white as he moved. I closed my eyes to keep from throwing up, but found it dark after just a couple of minutes. I opened them again and we were indoors, I was being laid to rest on a couch, and a cereal bar was being shoved in my face.


    And behind it, Tower smiled at me. "Eat," He said. "That dude fucks up your body chemistry. Your blood sugar''s probably zero, if he messed with you.


    I tried to take it, tried to thank him, tried to do a lot of things really, but failed spectacularly at all of them. Tower just shrugged and smiled, not asking questions or compromising, just putting pieces of food in my mouth and working with me every step of my failure. I wanted to cry at the sudden, completely unexpected mercy the world could show to me.


    But I didn''t. I saved my tears and my strength and ate, and with every bite, I felt a little bit better. After the one bar, Tower left for a moment and came back with three more, carefully unwrapping the first of them with his giant hands.


    I was grateful beyond words, but I''d still give him plenty when I had the strength. I did exactly what he said, drank in his mercy and ate his granola until the blurriness faded and the trembling stopped, and even then.


    But the whole while I did, I never once stopped thinking. Argus was a moron, and he told me I didn''t plan, couldn''t plan. He''d said an incredible amount of idiotic things in his life, but I doubt he''d ever been more wrong than when he said that. Even as I chewed and swallowed and tipped back water and hugged and thanked my friend, I thought and I planned.


    Because even as I recovered and even as I felt more myself in my skin again, as my body once again responded to my demands and my eyes saw straight and the pounding in my head subsided, there were still two lumps in me.


    One of stone, in my gut, where he''d promised he was killing me slowly. And one of ice in my heart, which promised to kill him in turn.

 336. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Lia.

    "You look like you need this," Khol said, waving a vial of luminescent teal crystals in front of me. They tinkled in the plastic tube, which I recognized as the ubiquitous packaging used to deliver medication to the prisoners. He waved it teasingly in front of me, trying to appeal to my desperation.


    Of course, it didn''t work. The sweat standing on my forehead and the general pallid look I was rocking had nothing to do with drug addiction, and the contents of his vial had little value to me beyond a pretense for this meeting. I let him know that by staring him down.


    It took a few seconds of staring before he reacted. "Okay, who are you?" He asked, his dark brows narrowing as he took in my composure. "You''re not my typical clientele." He was a little shaper than Argus, but that wasn''t hard.


    "Let''s make a deal," I told him. "Then you''ll understand."


    "Got credit?" he asked.


    I shook my head. "Something better. Argus sent me."


    His eyes widened and the four men behind him tensed. I sat perfectly still so that nobody blew me up with their powers, and after several seconds passed, I permitted myself to breathe.


    "I should have known," he said. "You look like one of his zombies. If you''re not here to buy, and you''re not here to kill me, what do you want? Don''t tell me that meathead wants to talk?"


    "He does, in fact. And I never lied, I meant what I said. I''m still a buyer. I''m just not selling something as meaningless as credit."


    He scrutinized me with a lingering gaze, his eyes involuntarily darting to the bead of sweat I felt trickling off my eyebrow. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, finding the darkness behind them so alluring I just wanted to keep them shut and sleep.


    But I opened them again, and found him still staring at me.


    "Huh," he said, fingering the vial. "So you''re one of his zombies, you come to me to get drugs...you say you want to talk. You say he wants to talk." I could see the gears turning in his head and wondered if he''d land on the conclusion I wanted him to, or perhaps even the truth. "So your angle is what, vengeance?"


    I nodded as seriously as I could. He smiled. "That bastard thinks he can use me to kill you," I told him. "But nobody uses me. Things go my way, or they don''t go at all."


    "You''re willing to die just to get revenge on the guy killing you? That''s a little intense for a little girl."


    "A little Exhuman. We don''t really get a choice about how fast we grow up."


    I gave him a sardonic smile and saw his facade waver for a moment at what a cruel truth I''d casually spouted. I reached for the vial, and he didn''t resist my taking it.


    "Besides, I''ll have this to ease the transition," I told him. "You give me this, I''ll do whatever you want to set up a meeting, you use that opportunity to wipe him out, and I''ll slip out of this whole goddamn shitshow on crystal wings. As close as a win as people like us are ever going to get."


    He liked me, which was good. He didn''t object in any way to my casual mention of ''people like us.'' A little bit of tribalism to win him over. He shook his head. "You''re messed up, kid."


    I shrugged and slouched, unsticking my hair from my cheek. "We got a deal then?"


    Again, he spent long moments looking at me, with something working inside his head. All sorts of possibilities flashed by, all the millions of ways he could choose to react. Had I played up my innocent suffering too hard? If he really liked me, he might refuse to be a party in my death. But I needed him to believe me, and given our meeting and its context, I didn''t have a ton to work with here. This was a frickin'' drug deal, not a first date.


    He made a gesture at one of the men behind him, and they lifted their shirt, revealing a small pouch strapped to their chest. He unzipped it and drew out another tube in each hand, though I saw many more before he stowed it.


    "Argus'' power shuts down your body''s normal function," he said. "The crystal dream won''t hit you nearly as hard if it doesn''t metabolize. Take three tubes so you''ve got enough to last, and tell him I''ll meet in two days, in the bar Nex is running over on Block Eleven. Should seem like a good, neutral place, but he doesn''t know that I''m in good with Nex'' supplier." He shook a vial at me with a grin. "Almost feels like I''m doing a good deed," he said, handing them over.


    "Almost," I smiled back at him as I accepted them.


    I walked back out into the cool night and found Tower right where I''d left him, arms crossed against a nearby wall, his massive size and the glower on his face keeping any of the other Exhumans from loitering near him.


    Which was just adorable, considering what a teddy bear the man was.


    "Drugs, Lia?" he asked. "Really?"


    I pulled my bag out of his arms and shoved the vials into a secret compartment at the bottom. "Yes, Tower. Drugs, really. I''ve bought and sold people''s lives already, do you think drugs is really any worse?"


    He turned to walk with me as I went past. "You''re just a kid. You shouldn''t be getting mixed up in things like this. It''s not right."


    "I''m a kid in an Exhuman prison who''s going through magical creeping pancreatic, renal, and liver failure while I''m looking for my brother who vanished off the face of the earth where even the XPCA don''t know where he wound up. Whether I like it or not, I''m caught up in some stupid gang warfare between some eternally pissed-off superhuman would-be warlords. Forgive me if I indulge in a few less-than-moral activities."


    He didn''t respond for a moment. "Well it still ain''t right."


    I turned on him and he raised his hands defensively. "I meant, that you''re put in this shit to begin with. No kid should have to deal with what you''re dealing with."


    I glared at him and then turned back to walking. "For once, I agree."


    "Wish you''d just have let me go in and pound him and let Argus fix you up. I don''t like working for that bastard any more than you do, but it''s the only way you''re gonna live."


    "There''s more to life than living," I told him. "If living was the most important thing, everyone would just bend over backwards whenever a tyrant showed up. That''s how you get Nazis, Tower. Jackasses like him that people like me don''t stand up to."


    "Yeah...but...if you''re dead...what about the next tyrant?"


    "Someone else''s problem," I said, standing aside and letting Tower unlock his house. He had to stoop to get through the doors, New Eden wasn''t about to adjust its construction just because some dudes had more dimensions than others.


    "I''m super beat," I told him, falling on the couch and unhooking my bra in one move. "I''m going to crash early and talk to Argus tomorrow. Is it cool if I stay here?"


    "Anything you want, I''ll give you," he said. "But you can''t be serious about your plan. You''re not really going to go out over someone as garbage as Argus. You''ve been with us when we fought Exhumans a hundred times more powerful than him."


    "Depends what you mean by ''with you''. I''ve been by Athan my whole life, and he''s dealt with all sorts of shrimp. That doesn''t mean I have, doesn''t mean I can. Like I said before, I''m just a kid with organs shutting down. I''m not even an Exhuman for God''s sake, Tower."


    "So tell the guards! Get out of here, go...go be in a hospital where they can hook you up with machines which will keep you afloat. I don''t understand why you''re doing this the worst possible way."


    I sat up and glared at him. "I already told the guards I am Exhuman. Not like they just let me out because I say otherwise. My priority right now is getting access to Athan and his whereabouts. I might have some idea where to look if I have ''net access, and I know that some people in New Eden have a functioning workaround. Those people--"If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "If they have one, it''s the same one that''d be in a hospital outside."


    "And what about Steffie, huh? And what about Jack? And you?"


    "What about us?" he bellowed. "We''re not dying!"


    I made sort of a mewling growl at him that had more to do with my body''s disposition than any loss of words I might have had, but his voice dropped instantly.


    "We''re not," he repeated.


    "You might be. Steffie was already on the edge. Who knows about Jack? Or if they decide Tem is worth keeping alive? Or what and how you''ll feel after the sickness of New Eden creeps into you. It''s not something I''m going to allow if I have any chance to stop it."


    He sat down on the floor in front of me, the top of his short afro still taller than my slouching frame on the couch, and I saw his face was hard with emotion. "By throwing yourself away? It''s not your job to fix everything. Tem and Jack and Steffie...and I, we''re not helpless. Each of us is way stronger than you. We should be the ones willing to throw everything away to stage a rescue, not you."


    "It''s the Ashton blood," I smiled at him, closing my eyes and this time, letting myself drift off into the blackness behind them.


    "That''s what I''m afraid of," he said, before I faded away.


    I slept uncomfortably, waking too many times to pee something which was too wrong a color. I kept finding new ways to ache, and at some point had to wonder if this was what it was like getting old. When I was seventy, eighty, or ninety, and I was frail and falling apart, would it be just like this, but without hope in sight?


    More alarmingly, did that mean Argus had the power to fix people? If he were less of a power-snatching bastard and dedicated himself to the common good, could he patch up the elderly and give them a new lease on life, bereft of creaks and cracks? It got me thinking, as I laid there on the dark couch, unable to fall asleep despite the tiredness deep in my bones, thinking of all the Exhumans I knew and had ever met, and what a world we could live in if only all their powers had been used for the public good.


    That was kind of a step two for Athan''s step one. He foresaw a world where Exhumans weren''t treated like garbage, but once they''d been integrated into society, how would society have to change in order to adapt to the addition? Having powers like Argus'' around seemed less like adapting to a new civil rights movement, and more to some kind of...transhumanist paradigm shift, where stuff like legitimate immortality was suddenly on the table.


    I sighed heavily and rolled over. No wonder Exhumans had been oppressed successfully for hundreds of years. Too many cans of worms to integrate simply. My shoulder bearing my weight was aching and the other one was cold. My legs weren''t though, and in investigating why, I found a blanket had been thrown over me at some point.


    Tower was a nice guy, I thought, as I snuggled into it and drifted off again somehow.


    Maybe a little too nice, I thought, as I left him loitering outside Argus'' hideout on Block 17. He looked about ready to crash the place and demolish everyone inside, and I wasn''t entirely sure he couldn''t. But his powers offered no protection against Argus'' withering, and if he got nailed with what I was going through for some misguided rampage of revenge over me, I''d never be able to forgive myself.


    I didn''t want him to ruin everything, so I didn''t want him involved. But he was involving himself anyway, and the reasons for keeping him in the dark were growing thin. I went over my plans again in my head as I sat and waited for Argus to dramatically appear amongst his men and grace me with his presence.


    Because sure, keep me waiting. Not like I was short on time or anything. Bastard.


    "Oh, it''s Black Shark," he said, as though surprised. "Here to beg for your life?"


    "No," I told him. "I''m here to fulfill my end of the deal of you offered me."


    "So Khol is dead? That was fast," he grinned at me, looking like a shark with an eyepatch.


    "No," I said again. "I''m not a killer, and I don''t have the capacity to be one. I have knowledge and I use it."


    "Then we have no deal," he said, dusting off his hands and standing, the wooden chair squawking on the tile floor. "Good day."


    I remained seated. "You don''t strike me as a petty guy. You don''t get hung up on emotion or let feelings get in the way of your work, do you?"


    He eyed me with one dark eye. "No, I don''t. Which is why if you''re making some plea--"


    "Then why get hung up on killing Khol?" I asked, leaning down and hefting my bag, which I tossed to the other end of the table for him. "What''s so important about his death, anyway? You really just want him gone, and that''s what I''m able to do. If you want him dead, you send a killer. If you want him removed, send an infopath. This is what I''m offering."


    He frowned and opened the bag. In it were scrawled notes and photos, information I''d scrounged up in the last couple of days...enough to be both alluring and condemning, mixed in with the parts I''d just made up. He looked over it with growing interest, and I worked hard to keep my face neutral.


    "Just blackmail him. He''s got too many illegal ops for the guards to turn a blind eye with that evidence," I said. "Or -- more specifically, because it''s my job to do so -- let me blackmail him. I''ve got a meeting arranged with him tomorrow, all I need from you is time to do my job, and your approval. You send me in acting as your liaison, and I''ll negotiate his surrender of his turf to you. Or maybe even just working as your subordinate. Whatever you want."


    He pawed through my files a bit longer, clearly impressed and clearly taken aback. Inwardly I was just shaking my head at the idiot. He called himself a schemer and a planner, and yet he never once had considered handling a rival in any way other than murder. If he was a shark, like his scraggly grin indicated, he was a hammerhead, and every problem was a nail.


    But these were my waters. I was a black shark, and pulling others into the abyss was how I hunted. I watched him carefully as I added the next few words.


    "I''ve got a meeting with him tomorrow. I won''t...get there, if I''m dying, and Khol will be suspicious if he meets your appointed mediator and she looks like a ghost''s sheet. I''ll tell you exactly where and when we''re meeting, you can follow me and hide right outside with a bunch of armed goons if you want to make sure I don''t run off, and put this junk right back in me until you''re satisfied with my work. Because this will work, that''s a Black Shark guarantee."


    He picked at his teeth thoughtfully while he flipped through the pages and images. I could see him weighing options in his mind, and while I wasn''t much one for prayer, per se, I''d be lying if I said I wasn''t sitting there, every fiber of my shutting-down being willing his stupid mind to see past my words, to put one-and-one together and just friggin'' figure it out.


    And then I saw it. The glimmer, the ''aha'' moment, and I couldn''t help but to slide, satisfied back in my seat. He missed it, too enraptured with himself, and I breathed easily as the clamp in my chest loosened.


    "Alright, Black Shark," he said, with imperious confidence. "You''ve done good work. Perhaps I was too hasty in overlooking the utility of your services. I will accept the modified deal."


    He suddenly looked at me like he''d just seen me and frowned. Uh oh. "But there will be no trickery, no outsmarting your way into any further cleverness. I''ve accepted you twisting the rules thus far because...perhaps you are right, I should never have expected one as weak as you to be able to achieve something I couldn''t. But that ends now. I know you''re holding the end of a lot of ropes, and I''m not going to let you put any of them around my neck."


    I shrugged at him, while he blithely continued on about his formidable planning.


    "From today until the meeting, you will be watched by my men. We will escort you to the meeting, and you will not be permitted to ever leave our sight. If there is anything amiss, you will die. Do you understand?"


    "Of course. But nothing will be amiss. The information is in your hands right now, and so is my life. Let me do my job and I''ll be happy to get out of your way."


    He stood again, but this time with an arm extended across the table. I took it and again, shook my head inwardly as he veritably crushed mine in his grip. Every problem was just a nail to this guy.


    "The meeting is tomorrow morning at nine, at Nex'' bar on Block Eleven. I have a guy waiting just outside now, I''ll tell him that I''m staying with you until then, and then I''ll sit and wait until we''re ready."


    "How very accommodating. I''ll have men listening in on your conversation if you don''t mind," he said with a dismissive wave, and four of his flunkies stepped forward to escort me out.


    Tower''s face was one of extreme consternation as he saw me approaching, flanked by the goons. I gave him a smile to reassure him, but it did little. I explained the situation to him, about the blackmail and negotiation, and how I''d be held to make sure there was no further scheming on my part.


    "And...you''re okay with that?" he asked. "You don''t have like...ten more plans that need to get executed to make this all go smoothly?"


    "I''m not AEGIS," I smiled at him. "I have a plan and it''s going to do what I need. Tomorrow, I''ll negotiate Khol''s surrender, and Argus will fix me, and I''ll be free to go back to what I need. A setback, but, well," I wiped a streak of greasy sweat off my brow "what choice do I have?"


    He eyed the guards around me and I held up my hands to tell him to stop calculating whether he could beat them all. Maybe he could, but still, no.


    "It''s fine, Tower. Just have a little patience and a little faith. I''m an infopath. Trust me."


    "You''re also a damn liar and a schemer, Lia. Trusting you is a bad option."


    I winked at him. "Sometimes. But not now. Just let me work, okay? I''ll see you after."


    "I''ll be outside the bar," he said. "If they try to pull anything--"


    "Don''t, seriously. Have faith. Please."


    He looked down at me, breathing heavily while my breaths were shallow and short. He was so damn big, I thought that every one of his breaths must have been a whole minute''s worth of breathing for me. I saw his eyes flickering with thought behind them, but just as I''d done with Argus, I saw the situation diffusing just as I''d hoped as he relented and put his hands on my shoulders.


    "Don''t do anything heroic, you tiny idiot," he said. "You''re just following your own plan now, right? You''re going to blackmail Khol and Argus will be happy and treat you, yeah?"


    I nodded.


    "There''s no reason to do more. And then we can look for your brother."


    I nodded again.


    "Okay." He took a deep breath. "Then I''ll stay back and let you work. I hope you know what you''re doing."


    I smiled and tapped my forehead, the gesture a little lost for impact because of the hair matted to it, but the smile was genuine as hell.


    "Don''t worry," I reassured him. "I''m an infopath. I already know nothing will go wrong."

 337. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Lia.

    I wasn''t sure what constituted a few days in Argus'' mind, but I was coming up on the end of two of them now and it sure felt like I was ready to die at any minute. Parts of me hurt in ways I didn''t know they could, and more than once it crossed my mind, why, why, human body, do you have pain sensors there? Like seriously, if your guts were leaden fire, what was the advantage in feeling all of it before you died?


    And even though it didn''t feel it, I reminded myself I wasn''t going to die. I had a modicum of use to Argus that he''d want to squeeze out of me, and then -- I hoped -- he''d play the traditional villain idiot card and get greedy, try to keep me around now that I''d proven myself both useful and easy to control.


    And keeping me around meant keeping me alive. As long as he had no reason to suspect I was a threat, things might even work out. He was, after all, an idiot, so I had that going for me at least.


    But that was a ways off. Until then, I was under lock, key, watch, and armed guard...armed with Exhuman powers...and was just doing my best to sleep and stop shaking and sweating.


    It was a long and uncomfortable night. By morning I could barely stand with the sun, and every fiber in my being just wanted to stay in bed, pull the blanket tight over my head and...well, die, honestly. I''d been dying for so long now, it felt like I may as well get it over with.


    My mental faculties were demolished along with my self-confidence. What had once seemed like such a good plan was now just garbage in the morning light. And so was I. What was I thinking, trying to play these murderers and drug-dealers? I was a damn child, not even an Exhuman. Worthless and stupid and weak.


    I held my head and permitted myself one more thought, one more tail-end of desperation before filling my head with my mantras. I must always keep trying. I can''t cry if I''m too busy smiling.


    It took a long time. Thoughts kept threatening to creep in, but every time they did, I moved my lips. My thoughts couldn''t move my lips, only me. I could say anything, I could do anything, I was more than nothing.


    This morning, like many mornings, it didn''t work. When the doubt and worthlessness rushed back in, I focused on the plan. There was always the plan, and all the tiny steps in it. Turn your body. Pull off the blanket. Put your feet on the floor. Find your bag. Get undressed. Get dressed.


    I didn''t know how to beat depression. I didn''t know if it could be beaten. But I did know that nobody controlled my body or mind but me. If I couldn''t keep negative thoughts out of my head, I''d push my mantras in until I couldn''t think at all. If I couldn''t find the energy to get up, I''d find the energy to move one leg one inch. I''d struggle and push and raise my frickin'' middle finger to the world, because I knew things could only get me down if I let them.


    And I wouldn''t. Every step is just a step. I can never give up.


    "Dressed and ready then?" the suave voice of Argus carried over to me before he entered. "Well, don''t you look perky this morning."


    "It''s a good day," I told him with a grin. "Today, I''m finishing your job and getting my life back."


    "Such confidence!" he raved. "If only I had ten men like you, I''d have realized my ambitions by now. It''s close to time, you should be headed off."


    "Do you have the bag with the blackmail materials in it?" I asked him and he flashed it at me. "Okay, and do you--"


    I took a step, and my knee gave way and despite all the signals I screamed at my body, the ground came rushing up to meet me.


    It felt like I''d only blinked, but I was facing the other way, on my back with the ceiling above me, and Argus and his men before it.


    I also felt much better. I blinked at him, my confusion completely genuine.


    "I fixed you up for the moment," he said. "I don''t think he''d take your threats seriously if you were falling over every step. But don''t you dare try to run for it, Jackal here can cut you to slivers as quick as you can blink."


    His men helped me up, and after a few minutes of feeling like the blood was trickling down from my brain into the rest of my body, I felt very nearly normal. Weak, clammy, uncomfortably hot and cold, achy, tired, and racked with self-doubt and paranoia making me wonder just how much this spill had cost my plans...but otherwise normal.


    Nex'' bar was a bit of a misnomer. It wasn''t any more or less a building than any other, he''d just turned the ground floor of it into a public area and charged exorbitant sums for garbage swills. I''d been there a time or two before, meeting clients in a neutral setting where starting a fight got your backside both beaten and bounced, much like I was allegedly doing now. It was familiar turf for me, which I appreciated.


    The good news was, Khol was there, with his own slightly-private table, and was apparently alone. The better news was Tower didn''t seem to be following, or Steffie. Everything was going peacefully on-track.


    "Where''s Argus?" Khol asked, eyeing me with suspicion as I sat down. "I thought you were supposed to convince him to come."


    "He''ll be just a minute. He wanted to send me first to test the waters, you know. He thinks himself very shrewd, when he''s really very stupid."


    "I suppose," Khol replied, lowering his voice under the sounds of a wall holo playing the morning news. "And yet, I have to wonder why you don''t seem much more ailing, and you aren''t at home using the crystal dream I gave you. Did you just take my generosity and make a buck off of it? Hmm, but if so...why would you be here now?"


    As he mused, I noticed the bar was probably what would be considered unusually packed for the hour. There weren''t weekends in New Eden, but there were mornings, and there were a few too many people here to be a coincidence. I wondered just how many were Khol''s men. And how many were Argus''.


    My question was answered at once as the door bust open and Argus appeared in it, a dozen men behind him, and in unison, most of the bar rose and bared their various arms and powers as threateningly as they could be brandished. Some just stood and held out their hands, doing apparently nothing, but I knew that meant little, and that guy could possibly be able to disembowel with a thought using his powers.


    Khol glared at me as Argus spoke. "I''m sorry to ruin your perfectly-laid plans, Black Shark, but the fact is, death is the only way to be sure. While I appreciated your efforts to blackmail my rival into submission, I appreciate more you luring him into the open at a known time. You really have done me that favor you owe me, though perhaps not quite as you intended."


    Khol blinked at me. "Blackmail?"


    I shrugged at him. "Argus thinks I''m blackmailing you right now to join his party."


    "And it doesn''t matter," Argus said. "Because her plans were nothing but a gear in my larger machination. You see Khol, I''m a schemer, and that''s why I''m on top. People like her, like you, you may think you have the upper hand on me, but I''m the goddamn King of Block Seventeen. Nobody outfoxes me."


    "Huh," Khol said, still focused on me. "I still don''t get it."


    "That''s because you''re an idiot--"


    "Not you," Khol cut Argus off. "Her. She told you to stay out of here so she could come in and talk to me. She told me you''d come here so I could kill you."


    "She what?"


    "So she knew that by telling you where and when I''d be, you''d come out yourself so I could do it. But then she''s worked very hard to get all three of us in one place, along with all our men--"


    "Your men?" Argus asked, looking around at those still seated. Argus'' crew wheeled on their nearest adversaries and all through the room a dozen superpowered Mexican standoffs spontaneously emerged. Argus blanched at the sudden disarming of his posse but wheeled back on Khol. "It doesn''t matter," he said, extending an arm. "I''ve got you in my grasp, and my men outnumber yours. If yours have any brains at all, they''ll see the tide shifting in my favor and join the winning side."


    Khol sighed. "You aren''t focusing on the bigger threat here, idiot. You really, truly don''t understand what''s going on here, do you?"


    "It doesn''t matter!" Argus yelled, his face suddenly red. "I''m the biggest threat here! I could kill you in a heartbeat!"


    "Well, don''t do that," Khol said.


    "And why wouldn''t I?" Argus'' grin turned malevolent and his single eye narrowed.


    "Look at your chest and see," Khol said with an indifferent shrug, still staring at me, his eyes burning as the thoughts behind them whirled.


    "As though...as if!" Argus bellowed. "The oldest trick...like I''d just look down, and...and¡­"


    He looked down and noticed the dozens of glowing dots on his chest. He moved, and the dots moved with him, erratically flickering independently, but seemingly unnaturally attracted to his body. Throughout the room, Argus'' other soldiers noticed the laser-sights on them as well, and peering outside, they began to notice men with rifles, positioned at random on roofs and in windows all around the building.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    I very much enjoyed seeing Argus sweat for the first time, and wondered if he felt as cold and clammy as I had the past few days.


    "Wh-what is this?" he floundered. "How have you got so many guns?"


    "He is stupid," Khol agreed with me finally, and I nodded. "I even already told him that I''d only come here to draw him out via your plan to kill him. Did he think I would kill him with words?"


    "I can''t imagine so. He doesn''t seem to quite understand the power of words," I said.


    "No, but you do. And here you are, with the two of us at each other''s throats and you in the middle of it. We''re one trigger-pull away from destroying each other and this bar, and probably you, and I can''t help but to wonder why. You''ve orchestrated this all, pulled invisible threads to move each of the players to this point and on this stage, made sure we were both here in full force, teeth bared...and for what?"


    I smiled at him. "I''m curious to hear your thoughts."


    And I honestly was. It wasn''t often I faced any of my adversaries personally. One of the advantages of being an anonymous presence. But it did have the downside of never hearing their angle, never knowing how they saw me.


    Sure, part of wanting to hear that was purely for ego. He knew I''d manipulated him, and unlike Argus, he was intelligent enough to care. But also, this was potentially useful feedback, from one of Black Shark''s thoroughly-served customers. If there was something I could be doing better, this man might know.


    He mused at me for another few long moments as the news anchor changed to a new story about the historic rates of Exhuman growth, and Argus shifted uncomfortably like the lasers sights were flies he could shake off. "No, really, I don''t get it," Khol said, finally.


    "You don''t have to be right. Guesses are partial credit."


    "Are you one of those Exhumans whose more durable than they look? Regeneration or the like? Are you planning to just walk out of this fight with less harm than the rest of us?"


    I shook my head. "You saw what his power did to me."


    "And I''ll do it again--!"


    "Oh shut up," Khol intoned, tapping his fingers on the table as he thought. "Hmm. Or perhaps you''re not here at all? Am I speaking to an illusion or a holo?"


    "Thinking outside the box, I like that. Most Exhumans get hung up on their powers and never give tech the credit it''s due. I''m a big fan that you''d throw the mention of a holo in there...and that you''d arm your men with guns, and distance. That''s also my preferred way to scrap."


    "The only thing all powers have in common is they have a range," Khol shrugged. "Guns don''t."


    "But no. I''m really here," I said, rapping my knuckles against the table where I knew he''d feel it in his fingertips.


    "Then you must want to talk. It''s really the only option. But to what end? When you know everything, what could speaking to us give you? What motivates a mind that can already know all?"


    "There we go," I said, tapping my nose. "But if you knew me a little better, you''d know that infopath doesn''t equate to omniscience."


    "That''s right," Argus growled at us, seeming a little too excited to contribute against me in any way he could. "She only finishes a story. She still has to hear how it starts."


    "I see," Khol said. "But that still doesn''t quite level. Neither of us have any reason to talk to you. Most likely, this is all going to end in blood, and one or both of us will take you out as we go, on account of you presumably running this whole thing, even if we can''t quite grasp at why."


    "Unless, of course," I said, pulling a coin from my sleeve and placing it on the table "I have something which would provide an absolute advantage to one of you. Because, like you said, why would I engineer this entire situation, put myself in all this danger, put all of us on the knife''s edge, all that without anyone feeling like they owe me a damn thing?"


    He stared at me, and so did Argus. The latter spoke first. "Wait, you''re saying that...you...now...are gonna determine who wins this whole thing? I could kill you where you sit."


    "It''s advertising," Khol said, his face lighting up. "My goodness, I adore it."


    I beamed at him, and Argus looked back and forth between us rabidly. Khol sighed and explained. "She''s telling us, by establishing this entire situation, by sitting confidently in the middle of it, by proving, beyond any doubt, that she''s the most capable schemer and manipulator we''ve ever met. She knows that whatever happens here, it''s an outcome she thinks she controls. No matter what we say, or do, or think, she thinks she''s accounted for it."


    "And she''s wrong--"


    "And the fact that we''re both here right now, locked in a stalemate with our knives at each other''s throats is proof that if she wants to control us, she can. You weren''t even supposed to be here, and yet her whole plan counted on your arrival, and sure enough you came."


    Argus blanched and swayed on his feet. I could just tell he wanted nothing so much as to argue that he, King of Block Seventeen, was the world''s greatest schemer.


    But he finally understood to shut up. And that was a relief for all.


    "So who wants the coin?" I asked. Both of them stared at each other before Argus dove and snatched it off the table, the whole bar tensing with his movement.


    "What''s it cost?" Khol asked as Argus surfaced in triumph. And then hearing those words, he threw the coin back and stood with crossed arms.


    "I''m looking for a ''net uplink that bypasses the XPCA relays. Private satellite, dedicated relays, some kind of spoofing encryption, anything. Get that in my hands, and the coin is yours."


    "Nobody has--" Argus started, but froze as Khol pulled a device from his pocket and put it into my hands. I tapped it to life and did a few searches, pulling through the settings before I was satisfied, and pocketed it myself. Argus roared and snatched the coin off the table once more, bounding away like a dog with a toy in his mouth a few steps.


    "I don''t think he understands currency either," Khol said with consternation. "Will that suffice?"


    "I think so," I said. "I''ll just be one more minute to confirm. My apologies to keep you waiting."


    "No, I think I have the utmost confidence in your abilities. Take your time, I wouldn''t want to upset you at this juncture."


    I navigated to the contacts and put in a new number, sending them a quick message before resuming my browsing. It wasn''t like there was any site that would instantly inform me of Athan''s whereabouts, but if there were hints out there, at least now I had a chance to find them. I had a chance.


    There was a sudden burst of noise and I pocketed the mobile, sitting still and watching the laser sights go out across Argus'' body. Before he could notice, the door burst in for the second time that day, but instead of a dozen Exhumans, there was an XPCA soldier in a black exosuit, with a line of matching suits behind him and vans pulling up to disgorge dozens more in the broad street.


    Khol gave me a knowing smile as he raised his hands and placed them on the back of his head, most in the bar doing the same. Argus swore and spun on the officer, screaming at him, demanding an explanation.


    I couldn''t tell through the synthesized voice, but I knew by the way he beelined for me and how he carried himself that this was the soldier I''d helped before, whose wife had, apparently, been faithful after all. He shoved his gun into Argus'' screaming face and the screaming subsided for a moment.


    "Check his bag," I said to the exosuit''s faceplate. "There''s a hidden compartment in the bottom. Drugs he''s intending to sell, and the main pocket has all the proof you should need to put away this one," I gestured towards Khol.


    "Those aren''t my drugs!" Argus screamed as black metal hands held him back and pulled the bag off his shoulder. "That was her bag! It''s her drugs, arrest her!"


    He stopped again as the gun levelled with his face. As much bluster as Argus had, there was one unifying factor of every Exhuman in New Eden -- whether they''d come willingly or fought their way here, each of them had already long ago faced and accepted, or been forced to accept the truth that they couldn''t beat the XPCA. In this prison, black was a trump card, and whoever could play it would win.


    "Well done," Khol said, smiling at me even as he was cuffed. "Very well done. I''ll remember you, Black Shark."


    "Fondly, I hope?" I batted my eyes at him as the sea of black which had surged into the bar began to recede with Exhumans in tow.


    "Exceptionally so. It''s been an absolute pleasure to see you work. I hope next time fate conspires to align us on the same side."


    "Well, it may be awhile," I shrugged. "Drug trafficking is a serious issue in New Eden, and I hear they''re rather strict about punishing the dealers."


    "I''ll survive," he said, rising as a soldier turned to him now. "And I know you will too. I expect there to be a new Queen of Block Seventeen by the time I get out, and much beyond."


    I gave him a small salute as he was paraded out, and then the bar was empty, just me and a couple lingering XPCA, not in suits, just combing the area for final evidence. And then my friend returned, exosuit clomping on the concrete floors.


    "We''ve been trying to nab those two for months," he said, his voice still all-machine, even with a sigh put through the middle of it. "And after all you''ve already done for me, you get them in the open and with all the evidence we need to satisfy any tribunal."


    "It was nothing," I smiled at him. "Just doing my part to keep my new home clean."


    "I wish I could pay you or offer some kind of compensation for your efforts...but that''s not exactly how things work around here. You''ll have to settle for my thanks, if that means anything."


    "It means a lot," I said, standing and stretching. It''d been almost painful to keep relaxed and calm and in control of the situation through Khol''s piercing gaze and Argus'' hotheadedness, but in the end, somehow, I''d come through. I took a deep breath and marveled at how it didn''t really hurt that much anymore to do so. I walked out with the exosuit clomping behind me, the rest of the XPCA already packing up and starting to move out, nobody wanting to spend a minute longer here than necessary.


    I saw Tower in the crowd which had loosely assembled, one of the many watching the lightning raid with interest. A smudge of blue somewhere in front of him might have been Steffie.


    "Well...if there''s nothing else," the synthesized voice spoke from behind me. "Thanks again."


    "No problem, like I said. If I run into any more deviants or cretins, keep your comms open, yeah? This could be the start of something good."


    "It could be," he said, saluting, as he clambered onboard the back of the last van. And then the door slammed and I felt the heat of the van''s exhaust over the desert air as it drove away.


    While the other Exhumans wandered as soon as it was evident the excitement was over, Tower and Steffie homed in on me like bloodhounds, babbling and questioning and scolding me in equal parts, way, way too far behind what''d just gone on for any half-arsed summary to catch them up. But the gist that somehow, I was here, I was healthy again, those two had been put away, and I had ''net access in my pocket was easy enough to convey, and they exulted in my glory.


    It felt a little ridiculous, practically being paraded through the streets by an overly-enthusiastic Tower while he pushed Steffie along as well, but I couldn''t help but share some of his optimism. Things had gone mostly as I''d hoped, nobody had died, and I''d only had to burn through one or two of my backup plans, without any real hitches. AEGIS would have been proud.


    And more, I thought about the number entered in my new mobile, and the contact at the other end of it. An ear, directly to the XPCA in this place, to the trump card that beat any Exhuman in New Eden, and to all the new victories this one victory might bring.


    It was pretty awesome. And the cherry on top was not-dying anymore. Always a plus.


    But even as we went over all of that, discussed eagerly and happily all the ways things went right and could have gone wrong, all the options open to us now and the possibilities, what really, truly mattered most to me was now within my reach.


    I napped. And for the first time in days, I slept easily, painlessly, and long, secure in the house of a friend without a ticking clock in my gut, at rest after a long few days of fighting and planning and being Exhuman as best I could.

 338. 122 years ago. San Francisco. A personal blog.

    Posted by DJINN at 16:26 on April 6, 2130. 2 views, 0 comments.


    Sorry-not-sorry for not posting recently. Not that both of my readers care if I don''t. Real life just gets busy sometimes, and then I don''t have time to post, and when I finally do sit down, I don''t have anything to say. Something did happen to me today, and it''s THE MOST EXCITING NEWS EVER, so here I am to document it.


    As my loyal readers know, as the title of my blog and moniker indicate, I make wishes come true. Some more literally than others, but always. It''s like, my superpower, and it almost always works.


    Well, today at school (and this isn''t the exciting news, just an anecdote) one of my classmates said ''I wish this whole stupid test would be cancelled'', and just like that, bam, instantly, Mr. Leacock keels over. Heart attack on the spot. Test cancelled, and we get a substitute in geometry for the rest of the year. Hell. Yes.


    So if you still doubt I have superpowers, blow it out your caboose, the evidence is irrefutable. Don''t even bother commenting, I''ve heard it all. And you trolls calling me an Exhuman can go die -- Exhumans kill people, and I''m a Djinn -- look it up, it means genie, and I traced my heritage back to some Arabic guy on Ancestry-net, where Djinn came from, CASE CLOSED, so don''t even.


    So anyway, the exciting news.


    I met the most amazing girl today. Just randomly bumped into her while doing my Vaga Boyo impression in the hallway (which was spot-on AND hilarious, btw) and even she laughed, so we hit it off right away. I didn''t talk to her of course, ''cause that''d be creepy, but I realized we have two classes together and now I just need to get the teacher to move me next to her somehow so we can hit it off. It''s gonna be LEGENDARY.


    Anyway this girl, I didn''t catch her name, but she''s got like, the whole Shakespearean beauty thing going on. She''s tall like an oak tree, and fair like the wind, and her hair is like the sun, and most importantly NOT A FATTY. Djinn don''t date no fatties (and before you comment, yes, I date LOTS of girls, and they''re all hot, but not from around here). When I saw her laughing at my impression, I knew there was a connection there, it hit me right in the like...the gutal area. I felt like my stomach was flipping over and my mouth got all dry. It was crazy.


    Anyway, more to come later. I have a stupid English assignment to write in a journal every day for a month, and so I might be posting on here more regularly for that. Depends if I have to turn it all in at the end, I can''t have Mrs. Rosenberg reading my SECRETS.


    Posted by DJINN at 16:09 on April 9, 2130. 1 views, 0 comments.


    Shit I forgot to post every day for English, and had to lie through my teeth to Mrs. Rosenberg that I was. Felt bad, so here I am posting again. The assignment says to write a hundred and fifty words, but who the heck can write that much every day? That''s like, an insane number of words. I wonder if she''s ever tried, she''d probably die of old age before she got there.


    I saw the girl again. My muse, my angel, my dream. She was putting on lip gloss before class while chatting to some random sl*t. It could have been me she was talking to, but no, of course not. F**k this Earth. (I was thinking of getting a sticker that said that and putting it on my backpack, but thought I might get in trouble -- might do it anyway, REBEL).


    Anyway, she was putting on lip gloss. How sophisticated. How debonair. How enchante. That''s French, btw, and is sophisticated as hell. I almost talked to her but my friend Evans showed up at just the worst time and started talking dumb sh*t at me and embarrassing me so I gave up. But we''re getting closer now. I think I even have a plan.


    Posted by DJINN at 18:33 on April 7, 2130. 2 views, 0 comments.


    Even Evans doesn''t know about my alter-ego as Djinn, granter of eternal dreams, until I told him today. He said he didn''t believe me, and to prove it, I had him wish for anything.


    The dumbass wishes for a hundred bucks. Like what the actual f**k, you can wish for anything, and he wishes for a hundred. Not even a billion. I''d wish for a billion bucks and retire at age fifteen. Dumb idiot.


    But it didn''t work, and he laughed at me even though his wish was stupid. I don''t get it, it''s worked too many times to be a coincidence, and lots of the other wishes have been stupid too, so I can''t just blame that all on Evans. I mean, I can, since he wished and it didn''t work, obviously, and it''s worked before. But it should work, I just don''t know why sometimes it doesn''t.


    Gonna have to try something more creative. I need this stuff to work if I''m ever going to win her heart. Literally the only thing I have going for me.


    Posted by DJINN at 21:04 on April 8, 2130. 1 views, 0 comments.


    Urgghhh, my heart hurts so bad. I hate love.


    Posted by DJINN at 15:31 on April 9, 2130. 2 views, 0 comments.


    Her name''s Vanessa apparently. Ms. Feld called on her today. I looked it up and apparently that name means ''butterfly'', which is stupid, because she''s a billion times hotter than some bug.


    I almost talked to her again, but I think we''ve got a really good thing going with just seeing each other randomly, and I don''t want to mess that up. Like, I''m seeing her all the time now, and if we spent all that time with her just hating me because I''m a gross creeper, I''d just go hang myself right now. It''s really better to just never talk, probably. Keeps the relationship more interesting that way. You never know what she''s not gonna say.


    Yeah that was a really clever twist of phrase, you can x-link that to your own blog if you''d like. I give permission.


    Gonna hang out with Evans'' brothers this weekend to do more Djinn work. It''s gonna work this time, I can feel it. My ancient Arabian heritage is, like, swelling up inside me like a sandstorm. It''s gonna come out, and I''m gonna have unlimited power, and then she''ll see.


    Posted by DJINN at 15:47 on April 10, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    Sh*t, I reread my post from yesterday and it wasn''t that clever a twist. I need an editor or something.


    Posted by DJINN at 20:07 on April 11, 2130. 2 views, 0 comments.


    Nothing happened today, just like every other stupid day. How do people write a hundred and fifty words a day? Mrs. Rosenburg is out of her senile mind. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh my god, that was only 34 words? This is impossible. I''ll make it up later, eff dis junk. I got things to do.


    Posted by DJINN at 19:50 on April 12, 2130. 3 views, 1 comments.


    Almost weekend.


    Posted by DJINN at 11:11 on April 13, 2130. 2 views, 0 comments.


    Tonight we''re gonna test the Djinn powers for realsies. I''ve got a whole setup going with the ''scientific method'' that for some reason, some other students still don''t understand, because they''re stupid. Evans has three siblings, and I''m going to test each one of them differently. There''s a lot of variables to figure out, so I wrote them down in a big list during a boring part of Mr. Cathala''s speech on economics in the civil war. By which I mean, his whole class.


    Not to get all Disney princess in this, but my first thought was, Evans is a good guy, but he''s a dumba** and doesn''t do things right when I need to. Two of his brothers are younger and they might still believe, and I think that''s what I need. Like in Peter Pan when they have to believe in fairies.


    I also thought maybe it might have to do with who''s wishing, so if this doesn''t work out, I''ll just have to ask the girl who almost killed Mr. Leacock to try again (SOMETHING ELSE OBVIOUSLY). But it might also be what they wish for, so I''ve got some things for them to try, some of them I KNOW should work ''cause I''ve seen them work before. Although I had Evans try to wish for rain and it didn''t.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    Last, I had the idea that maybe it''s only their first wish, or if they wish without knowing they''re wishing somehow. Every time it''s worked, it''s just been someone nearby me going ''I wish blah-blah-blah'', but a wish instead of saying blah obviously. And then boom, it worked. So maybe it''s failing because I''m telling Evans to wish for something. So before we even get started on his youngest brother, I told Evans to set up this whole scenario where they''re gonna talk about stuff and he''s gonna try to get him to say something like that.


    It''ll work. One-hundred percent it''ll work, or I will change my moniker from ''Djinn'' to ''LiarMcLieFace'', which I won''t do, because it''ll work.


    Posted by DJINN at 21:04 on April 13, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    OH MY F**KING GOD


    Posted by DJINN at 21:06 on April 13, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    WHAT THE F**K


    Posted by DJINN at 21:13 on April 13, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    I AM NOT EVEN BEING DRAMATIC RIGHT NOW, HOLY SH*T


    Posted by DJINN at 21:45 on April 13, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    I need time to process this. What the F**K. Oh my JESUS CHRIST.


    Posted by DJINN at 9:09 on April 14, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    Okay so. First off, Evans hates me now, even though it wasn''t my fault. He was a dumb idiot for handling everything so badly, but I''m still freaking out here.


    Good news, it worked. I am not changing my moniker, I am completely and f**king totally a Djinn, just like in Aladdin (before you comment that was a genie, they''re the same thing). It seriously worked, like ho lee sh*t, I am not even kidding.


    But also it was a huge freaking disaster. I hope it wears off or something, because otherwise, f**k me. Or maybe now that I know how it works...I can get it wished back? I don''t know how I''d possibly do that though.


    Evans, the dumb idiot, decided to talk to his brother about what he''d do if he had a wish. This was after we tested things on his other two siblings already and nothing worked. And then his brother said the STUPIDEST thing at the end of it, talking about what he wanted, and he said ''I wish I was invisible'', and pow, just like that, he was gone.


    And then Evans freaks out and starts screaming at me and hitting me, and his brother is freaking out, and his mom comes in and she''s wondering why we''re all screaming and then trips over her boy she can''t see, and he''s crying and she''s freaking out now and calls the cops because she doesn''t understand what Evans and I are yelling about, and BASICALLY NOBODY LISTENED TO ME AT ALL. It was so dumb and frustrating, and she said I had to get the hell out of her house, even though I was trying to stay to explain that I was the only one who could fix anything.


    So the police show up after I''m on the curb just waiting for Mom to get me, and they find out what''s going on and they just run. Like one was kinda fat and he just bolted like he was olympic Santa Claus. And they''re freaking out and I''m moving further down the block so I don''t get in trouble, when a few minutes later, there''s black vans pulling up, and I see these people in suits and labcoats, and it says PSI on their trucks and I go, like, full Keith Ogran.


    Because that''s how my face looked. What he did in That Summer Comedy. Just screaming. Cuz they were dragging Evans'' brother out of the house in these big f**king restraints like he was a movie monster, even though you couldn''t see him. They thought he was an Exhuman, and I just ran.


    And I got in so much trouble for running too, Mom said she spent an hour looking for me, so now because of Evans screwing up, I''ve got extra chores this weekend, on top of his brother being called an Exhuman. And I''m just freaking out and not sure what to say or do or tell anyone because I don''t want them thinking I''m an Exhuman too, I don''t want to be dragged away in huge restraints into a black truck.


    Because I''m NOT an Exhuman. I''m a Djinn, and we proved it. It was all that idiot''s fault for getting his brother to wish for something so stupid. We could have all had a billion dollars by now but instead, he''s carted away and I''m worried I''m next.


    My heart is beating so fast thinking about it. It''s so unfair, especially now that I know I can make it work.


    Posted by DJINN at 15:45 on April 15, 2130. 2 views, 0 comments.


    I don''t understand this world. I''m glad I didn''t put that sticker on my backpack. Mom made me go to school today like nothing was wrong even though I was freaking out inside, and Evans wasn''t in today. I didn''t ask anyone about it, but I''m so scared he''s like, talking to the PSI people right now and telling them it was me.


    I guess I looked nervous because SHE came right up to me and talked to me and asked me if I was okay. Vanessa. After so long, I can''t even believe it. I didn''t know what to say, so I wound up just like...lying a lot. I wasn''t trying to lie, she just kept saying things and I agreed with her instead of telling her otherwise. Like she asked if something happened and I said yeah, and she asked if it was bad, and I said yeah, and she asked if it was a family thing, and I said yeah.


    And then here''s the part I really don''t get, and I don''t get any of the other parts either.


    SHE asked ME if I wanted to hang out sometime and get away from my family. Like WHAT THE ACTUAL F**K. The girl of my dreams just basically asked me out. And of course I wasn''t really able to think, but I was saying yeah to everything else she said, so I said yeah. So we''re hanging out tomorrow downtown. Her, and me, and downtown SF. I can''t believe it.


    These last three days have been the weirdest days of my life, I don''t know what to think or make of them or anything. I''m just confused and scared and...and I don''t even know. But what I DO know is that the universe is throwing me a bone by having Vanessa ask me out. It''s like the whole world is saying ''you didn''t do anything wrong'', and as you know, people of Arabian descent are very susceptible to good karma (because of our historic ties to nomads, who were considered lucky), so I will accept this as the universe telling me it''s okay.


    I just have to make sure everything is absolutely perfect for our date. I have to plan and primp SO HARD.


    Posted by DJINN at 16:21 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    Literally dying.


    Posted by DJINN at 17:03 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    OMG how do people ever do this.


    Posted by DJINN at 17:35 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    If any of you readers have ever been on a date, tell me what to do.


    Posted by DJINN at 17:55 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    Sh*t, what if she asks about Evans? Maybe they knew each other? I''m going to come up with a story just in case.


    Posted by DJINN at 18:02 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    I''m gonna tell her that Evans'' brother was an Exhuman and attacked me and I only barely survived, and that''s why I was so down. She''ll probably believe that.


    Posted by DJINN at 18:03 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    There were cop cars and everything. I should have taken a picture. Damn it.


    Posted by DJINN at 18:06 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    Daaaaaaaaang, I can''t say that, I told her it was family stuff and that''s the only reason she asked me out.


    Posted by DJINN at 18:13 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    It''s a good thing I''ve been planning this date since the first minute I saw her. I just have to work the Djinn magic in and make it a date she''ll remember forever, and then she''ll fall in love and we can put all of this behind us.


    Posted by DJINN at 18:20 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    I hope Evans'' brother is okay. I hear they like, cut up Exhumans there. But they wouldn''t do that to someone invisible, right? Like, what would be the point, you can''t see anything anyway?


    Posted by DJINN at 21:32 on April 15, 2130. 0 views, 0 comments.


    F**k it. I have a final plan. I''ll post it tomorrow before the big day. My heart is beating so hard, d*mn it all.


    Posted by DJINN at 16:01 on April 16, 2130. 1 views, 0 comments.


    Okay. It''s after school now, I have a foolproof plan that I''ve spent a lot of hours coming up with. I couldn''t sleep very well last night, because I kept thinking the PSI people were gonna come for me, and then I kept having ideas about the date, and then Mom kept coming in and yelling at me for having the light on and being out of bed. Like, I''m sorry, but the light is the least important thing in the whole world right now, Mom.


    I know (because I am very observant) that Vanessa isn''t from around here. This gives me a big advantage as I can take her around all the tourist spots in SF and impress her with my knowledge. I think this will lead to a pretty good date.


    But we aren''t aiming for a pretty good date, we''re aiming for completely heart-meltingly UNFORGETTABLE. I just want her to love me. So here''s the brilliant plan I have, and even though it went kinda wrong with Evans'' brother, this time it will work out better. I know because I can sense the cosmic karma telling me so.


    I''m going to take her to Chinatown and show her around as part of the tour. There''s a tiny park there nobody really knows about, and it''s got one of those (EDIT: PAGODA, not GAZEBO) things there. I''m going to make up this story about how there''s an ancient Hindu spirit that lives there and the locals all come and make wishes in secret, and the wishes always come true. This will be at the end of the date, after she''s all thoroughly impressed and romanced up, so obviously, she''ll wish for something about the two of us being together, especially if I push her a little bit in that direction.


    In order to make it work though, I can''t tell her to make a wish, or what to wish for. I almost certainly am sure that''s what makes it work. And then when it does, she''ll be surprised and her wishes will come true, and for the rest of her life, she can live with me and wish for anything she can dream of. It''ll be absolutely PERFECT and all I need to do is pull off this one plan.


    So wish (hah!) me luck in the comments. I have a few hours and like twenty cans of deodorant before I pick her up. I wish Mom had something sexier than the tiny auto-car but what can you do? I hope the stupid thing doesn''t ruin my whole plan.


    But I''ve got a really good feeling about tonight. It''s gonna be amazing. I know I talk a lot about feelings and being in tune with cosmic harmony and junk, but I REALLY feel it this time. I feel like...like, I dunno, like I''m destined for something amazing, and it all starts now.


    Stick around guys, I''m gonna post everything that happens next real soon.


    No more recent posts.

 339. 2252, Present Day. Rob Hill Campground. AEGIS.

    Athan really wasn''t that well. But damn it, if he was going to pretend, so was I.


    He seemed to have Whitney fooled at least, but she wasn''t the most observant; too fixated on her own work and the ideas in her own head to pay much attention to anything outside of it. But I was a supercomputer inside a gynoid body built to superhuman specs -- I could see when he missed half a step and only just recovered. Or how often he went to touch the leg that wasn''t there, or was off-balance when doing something so simple as sitting up.


    I saw it all, but he pretended none of it happened, and so I pretended not to notice. Which had been hard, but it had only taken one mishap to convince me it was for the best.


    It was early evening, his shift to sleep, since he and Whitney agreed never to sleep together again, and I was in the tent just listening to him as he mumbled on about something trivial and distracting, something far removed from us and from life.


    And in that moment, like in so many moments, I felt something just so absolutely sad for him...like he was broken and gone and had realized it already, but refused to acknowledge it, because that would give it any more sway over him than it already held.


    And so I did and said the most stupid thing out of that misguided melancholy. I touched his cheek, gentle as I could, and I told him it was okay.


    "It''s okay," I said. "You don''t have to pretend around me. It''s okay to hurt, and I''m proud of you for enduring like you have. I really am."


    Interrupted the middle of his sentence, even, and he just looked at me for long moments, his green-brown eyes flickering in the dim light.


    And then he continued right on, mid-sentence and all, like I''d said nothing. Like the time between his words never existed.


    But in his eyes I could see it did, I could see the damage I''d done, could see his pupils dilated in irritation, his capillaries flushed with humiliation, shame masked behind his dismissal.


    I hadn''t done anything wrong, but he hated my sympathy, my pity, even my concern. Selfless, stupid bastard that he was, he dealt with his physical suffering readily, but the emotions behind them stymied him dead. He might have even considered his current situation as a fitting punishment for the fuck-ups he''d made. That seemed like him -- if Lia or Karu were hurt or something, he''d lose a leg. If Saga and Rito were captured, he''d break his back.


    And if someone ever brought it up, he''d just hate them for that. Easier than blaming others.


    But as the weeks drew on, it became more and more apparent that as much as he might choose self-oppression, Athan was ill-equipped for it. While Whitney was shockingly adept at making do with whatever bits she had on-hand or could scrounge up, the more Athan sat, the further he fell into quiet and resentment.


    For the first bit, he seemed eager to discuss everything that had happened and what we could do to resolve the situation, where the others might be and how they were faring. But as the days drew on, as nobody could be reached or located, as the darker hypotheticals crowded out the ''I''m sure they''re fine'' we kept parroting, he shifted to pleasantries and idle chatter only.


    And now we barely had that. Instead, he sat in the shade, his still-bandaged stump resting on his leg, staring at the trees, and I could only wonder at what he was thinking. Most days he never went anywhere, never even put on the exoframe that Whitney kept adding onto and modifying, just hobbled far enough from the tent to reach the grass and stayed there as long as the day.


    I knew I had to get all three of us back on our feet, but honestly, it was maddening. He looked like he was staring at a grave every day for hours on-end, and while I could force him to eat and move around enough to keep alive, I couldn''t force him to believe that Lia was still out there somewhere, or that he wasn''t responsible for Karu''s injury or Saga''s recapture. Sometimes, it felt like all I could do was watch.


    Which was true, because I didn''t even have ''net out here. When I could, I''d sneak over to the buildings at the south end of the park, maybe even duck into the bathroom of a coffee shop and tap into their wireless, just to reconnect with the larger world and feel like I could do something. But doing that meant leaving Athan behind, and while I trusted Whitney, I didn''t trust her. If Athan started walking into the ocean, how likely she was to notice would depend more on what she was working on than how critical the situation was.


    But coming on nearly two weeks of this, I''d had enough. I didn''t think Athan could take much more of beating himself up, and I knew I couldn''t, so it was time for a change. That morning when he woke, I told him to buckle into his exoframe, we were going out.


    It hurt me more than it should have that he didn''t even ask why or where. Sometimes I thought I might kill him for his stupid quips, but now I would have killed for one. He dressed silently and obediently, stepped into the ''frame with my help, and emerged from the tent into the late morning air.


    "G''mornin''," Whitney yawned at us. She was guts-deep in a mobile spread unevenly across the sheets of cardboard she''d turned into a work area, one of the several projects she''d picked up to keep us financially afloat for the time being. She had a good community behind her, despite being from across the ''net. She''d posted about her misfortune, and many had jumped to ply her with well-paying projects which were within her slightly-diminished scope.


    Only slightly-diminished in that it seemed every time I turned around, she had new parts or equipment from somewhere. I wasn''t sure if she was getting them from her friends or favors, or just spending some of what she was making, but given that she was our only income at the moment, I wasn''t about to complain. I only wished I could do more, but with trying to take care of Athan, the best I''d managed was hacking her a valid business licence to keep the city off her for a bit while we were orienting.


    "Hi Whitney. You gonna sleep soon?" I asked.


    "Probably not. What time is it anyway?"


    "Uh, almost ten now. You last slept...twenty-three hours ago."


    "Huh," she said, looking down at her work and swaying slightly. "That long? I swore I just took a break. Well, I''ll sleep after I finish getting this PCB talking to the main."


    I grinned at her. "Uh-huh. You sure you won''t need to keep going then because it''s only just starting to work?"


    She smiled back. "I gotta say, I envy your ability to not sleep. You''re living the dream, AEGIS."


    I rolled my eyes at her and shuffled Athan forward with me as we headed off. "Set an alarm! Two hours!" I called back at her. "When it goes off, stand up, and then decide if you should sleep."


    "Yeah mom, have fun," she called back with a wave.


    I sighed with the closest approximation to contentment I reached these days and set in step next to Athan, who, after several steps, I realized was still watching me.


    "What?" I asked.


    "You two," he said, his voice a little wispy, like he wasn''t all-there. "You''re cute."


    "Well if you''re looking to set up a threesome, I think you had better odds with any of the other girls. Whitney''s not into guys. Or...anyone." I grinned at him.


    "Not like that," he laughed, and as he did, my grin became genuine for a moment there, before he began coughing and groping at his back. "I just meant, I''m glad you have each other. You''re both so smart and capable, it must have been lonely before."


    "You''re a dork," I told him, leaning in as close on him as I could without getting in the way of his steps. "I might be a super-genius, but that doesn''t mean the only people I can relate with are other super-geniuses. Of course it''s fun to geek out with her, and honestly, I doubt any of you could ever know the thrill of fussing with a PCB and trying to get the inputs and outputs talking until suddenly it just works."


    "Of course we couldn''t," he agreed.


    "But--and this is a big but, that kind of thing is a really small part of me, overall. I might be good at it, because I was programmed to be, but that doesn''t mean I''m into it, or even that I particularly like it. I feel like I''m a robot trying to become a real girl, and Whitney''s just the opposite."This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "I can see that," he mused, a wry smile playing on his lips. "You''re both doing a great job of it, by the way. But no matter what she does, she''s still human...she''s a person too, and if you wind up being like her and just being amazingly skilled, that''s not...unhuman in any way. Uh, if that makes sense. I mean, if you''re trying to tell if you''re human, you can use her as a goalpost."


    "You mean, I shouldn''t dumb myself down to be more human?" I asked sardonically.


    "Well...not quite, but yeah."


    We walked a few more paces in relative quiet, cresting the path and seeing the buildings come into view. As though by magic, as we peaked and cleared the trees, the sounds of the city washed over us, cars and the murmur of people, distant, distorted music, a million lives all silent just a few paces back.


    I welcomed the noise, mostly because I welcomed the city and all of the technology in it I could wrap myself up in. But also because it masked the almost-silent hissing of the exoframe, and its much louder clomping footfalls.


    "It''s not really about being capable. More a matter of pride, I guess," I said, picking up a little louder as we started walking again. "Which sounds stupid, I know."


    "What, you''re not proud of what you can do?"


    I rolled my eyes at him. "You know, I get a lot of accolades from you and others for hacking and cracking--"


    "And planning. And organizing. And mostly because you demand that praise."


    "Well it IS deserved." I shook my head. "But the fact is, all of that stuff...none of it ever feels like me, if that makes any sense. I never had to work to be good at planning or coordinating or hacking. I was just born with it, enough that before I even knew who I was, I could bend a computer over backwards."


    "So?" he asked. "That''s awesome."


    "So. The point is, none of it is me. Honestly, it''s all just praise for my mother -- and all credit to her, the woman was a damn genius. But it never feels like I''m contributing anything, doing anything, being anything...anything more than what she built a hundred years ago."


    We stopped at a street corner and I pushed the button. A man in a grey fedora walked past us, looking down at Athan''s missing leg, the exoframe, and then up at him for just a glance before passing by. Yeah, gawk away, buddy. At least he''s not wearing a fedora.


    "That''s stupid," Athan said, completely ignorant of the man''s gaze.


    "What, my mom deserving credit?"


    "Yeah. That''s like saying everything I do is because of my parents, because they birthed and raised me. And then the credit isn''t even theirs, because they''re just a by-product of their birthing and raising."


    I frowned at him. "You know, on a very cynical deterministic level, you''re probably right."


    "And you happen to have a very cynical deterministic view?" he asked? The light changed and we crossed into the shade of a yellow-beige building. Didn''t take long to find some decently-sized buildings around here.


    "I think your sister does. Which is weird because she''s also a huge optimist," I said. "But I do think she just sees people sometimes as something she can just reach inside and touch, making them think or feel whatever suits her. Living out here without her, I''m quickly realizing just how useless I am without a personal element."


    "You''re a super-genius," he scoffed, and I noted that he hardly flinched at the mention of Lia. He seemed too engrossed in the conversation to beat himself up, and that just sent my heart soaring. "How hard can it be for you to just...hack a bank or whatever it is you want?"


    I snorted. "If it was easy to hack a bank, banks wouldn''t exist."


    "But you''ve done it before?"


    "Yeah, with Lia."


    He shook his head at me. "I don''t get it. She''s really that important to your operation?"


    "She really is."


    He frowned at the ground thoughtfully, carefully stepping over cracks, and apparently oblivious to the fact that wearing an exoframe gave him an automatic right-of-way against all incoming pedestrians. "Well...don''t take this the wrong way...but why? I mean, I know she''s amazing, obviously. But it seems to me like you should just...be able to plug into a bank''s computer and...boom, ones and zeros, hacker shades, ''I''m in.''"


    I laughed at him as he grinned back apologetically. "Yeah, if only banks just left secure access points lying around all around their facilities. I might be able to write up a software attack or exploit some uncommon vulnerability in a heartbeat, but I still have to find someone stupid enough to run it for me, or to point me towards the best place to insert it. Computers are strong and stupid, humans are weak but smart."


    "That''s not backwards?"


    I shook my head and laughed again. "Not at all. Humans are so dopey and sympathetic and understanding, and they''ll bend over backwards to help you if they like you at all. But not a one of them would run ten-thousand lines they were just handed a second ago against their main databases. Machines don''t give a damn, but they''ll do whatever you tell them."


    He mused for a bit at we kept going. "I guess."


    "No guessing about it. If it weren''t true, I''d either have a much easier time with my job, or be out of it."


    "Well, this might be a stretch, but going back to that cynical determinism. If that were true, wouldn''t humans be programmed too? Everything that happens to us, we''re just like a machine, reacting to new data we''re being handed? Like, I''m obviously not running code against a database or whatever, but I am looking around--"


    We stopped at another light and waited. "I''m seeing things, like the stop light, and I''m stopping because I''m programmed to. Though I guess I could just go, too."


    "And that''d be a different program running. I bet there are very rebellious people who always go through stop lights," I told him. "Every person has their own programming. Different parameters where they''ll consider it acceptable to jaywalk or not, all based on values and life experiences."


    "Yeah," he said. "And isn''t that great?"


    I blinked at him, and for the first time on our walk, our eyes met. I realized...as into the conversation as he was, as excited as he was to just be out and talking with me, having a little philosophical debate like we used to...despite all that, he was still in pain, and he wasn''t completely ignorant of the looks of those passing by us, only pretending to be. It hurt me again in that completely unfair way that I wasn''t allowed to show.


    "Sorry, what?" I asked.


    "It''s great," he clarified, "because it means you''ve succeeded. I''m just a fancy fleshy robot, and so are you. We''re the same, so you don''t have to worry about becoming any more human. You think like we do, you look like we do, what does it matter if you started with a little more programming than a newborn?"


    I looked at him for several long seconds before I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. And as I laughed, I had to laugh more, some dam breaking inside of me, from which more and more laughter kept pouring out. Deep, paralyzing laughter that came from somewhere I felt I hadn''t touched in a long, long time. I laughed so hard I cried, and so long we missed our light and had to wait another cycle, Athan standing there patiently and confusedly smiling at me while I worked through my fit.


    At long last, I calmed down enough to give him the most gentle hug I could manage, only giggling softly in his ear, as I tried my best not to hurt him.


    "Um, okay?" he said after we parted.


    "Sorry," I said. "I just...you''re such a dork."


    "You laughed at me for five whole minutes for being a dork?" he huffed.


    "No. No, sorry. I''m just¡­" the light changed and I ushered us into the street, still snickering just a little bit. "You''re a really good guy, Athan. No matter how shit things get, you always manage to remind me why I love you so much."


    "Oh," he said, stopping flat, and I had to remind him he was in the middle of an intersection through another bout of giggling at his face. "Well I still don''t think that was worth five minutes of chuckles."


    "Maybe not," I grinned at him. "But I think I''ve been needing that for a while. Lucky you that my standards are so low right now; you fill them quite nicely. Uh, not like that...but y''know, also not not like that."


    He sighed, but it was through a wan smile. "What are we doing out here anyway, AEGIS? What are you dragging me into the city for?"


    "What, aren''t my flirty charms engaging enough?"


    "They''re engaging enough back in the tent, that''s why I''m asking."


    I beamed at him. "First, we''re going to get you some breakfast. I know a place near here that serves some mean tuna-tomato omelette with guac. And by ''know'' I mean ''looked up on the ''net''."


    "Do we really have the money for that right now?"


    "We really do. Being happy every once in a while is important." He frowned but didn''t argue. "Besides, I cleared it with Whitney. She''s doing okay, and she says she''s game as long as we bring her a box of cup ramen."


    "That girl¡­"


    "And then, you and I are going touristing. You''ve never been to ''Frisco, right?"


    "Nope. I know enough about it to know the natives hate it when you call it ''Frisco, though."


    "Duly noted. Well then, we''ve got a big day ahead of us. Embarcadero, Golden Gate, Alcatraz, Lombard street, Pier 39...and I''m especially interested in the ethnic district."


    "Why''s that?"


    "There''s supposed to be an ancient shrine there, in a pagoda in a small park, of an ancient Hindu spirit that grants wishes. Lots of people say it''s baloney, but a few reports say if you wish hard enough, and you believe it with all your heart, it comes true."


    I batted my eyes at him while he groaned at me.


    "AEGIS, I expected you of all people to not buy into that kinda crap."


    "I don''t. I''m strictly evidence-based and thoroughly research my conclusions as well as my sources. Where possible, I draw only from peer-reviewed data, with a clear scientific grounding and reproducible testing."


    "Yeah. So...what part of that has to do with this hooey about Hindu spirits and ancient wish-granting shrines?"


    I grinned at him. "Well, love isn''t exactly rational to begin with anyway, so I thought, what the hell."


    He groaned but didn''t complain as I pulled him forward, towards a day somewhat less planned than I''d prefer, but packed with more fun and energy than either of us had had in half a month.

 340. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Lia.

    I''d hoped that I could find anything on Athan, but he stubbornly refused to manifest in any form. But that was actually a little reassuring given what I was able to find about him.


    What I knew was that the XPCA didn''t have him. I knew this because he was at large in a way I didn''t know Exhumans could be. It didn''t take more than a ''net search to find his face and profile plastered everywhere, news stories listing him as an ''unprecedented threat'', and giving vague narrative to his time with the P-Force and his alleged betrayal.


    If nothing else, this serves as a cautionary tale to remind us of a truth we already knew. Exhumans are dangerous, violent, and unstable, and to trust them is to invite an enemy into your confidence, one site concluded.


    Of course, none of the stories or reports mentioned a thing about how despite being with and under the XPCA, they didn''t do a damn thing about either the Defiant nor Dragon. Even the positives in his records had been whitewashed, making it look like he''d done nothing more than sit around under XPCA control for most of nine months with his thumb up his butt.


    "Y''all right over there?" Tower asked. I looked up from my device and realized I was pacing a trench into his floor and chewing on my thumb despite having run out of cuticle long ago.


    "Just finding less than I''d hoped. And more, I guess."


    "How''s that figure?"


    I flopped down with a grunt, the lingering pain from Argus'' work still with me, but not enough to slow me down. "I found nothing about where he is, but a lot about how the XPCA wants to kill him."


    "Yeah that sounds about right," Tower nodded.


    "And nothing else about the others?" Steffie asked, wheeling in from the hallway, wiping flour off her hands onto a towel.


    I shook my head. "From the sound of it, the XPCA are still looking for AEGIS, Karu, and Saga. They have you, me, and Jack here, of course. No mention of Moon or Tem, which makes me think they were also taken."


    "What about that girl, the portal chick?" Tower asked.


    "Rito? She was captured the same time I was," I said, frowning at my mobile. "I don''t know how they''ll hold her, given that she needs to be under constant surveillance to keep from jumping off. She wouldn''t be put in the broader New Eden population."


    "You say that but she was before, wasn''t she?" Steffie asked. "She joined the resistance somehow."


    "Yeah I don''t know. Maybe she was never a New Edener and Soran recruited her from somewhere. Or maybe she submitted voluntarily and so they gave her a pass. Nothing that''ll fly now that she''s associated with Athan, though."


    "Might she be with Jack in the uh," Tower struggled. "The introduction cells."


    "The admission blocks," I nodded at him. "Maybe. I get the feeling there''s a lot of weird Exhuman powers holed up there, because they set up a system to get them contained, and then nobody wants to move them once they''re secure."


    "Like Jack," Steffie said in a slightly hushed tone.


    "Yeah. Like Jack," I agreed. "Probably a lot of really dangerous powers all locked up in one place."


    "So that''s great then," Tower said, sitting up suddenly. "We go there, we break in--"


    "This is already not great," I added.


    "--and at least one of those nutjobs has got to have some powers useful to us, to help us get away. If nothing else, we can use Rito, right? So we just let a few of them loose, and they make enough of a distraction that we can all get out."


    "I think this is a really bad idea," Steffie said, wringing the towel in her hands. "Starting a fight between the prisoners and the XPCA will just lead to more deaths. That''s what we were trying to avoid in the resistance."


    "But you guys did a huge riot and killed tons of people and Exhumans both," I asked.


    "Yeah. But that wasn''t supposed to happen. We were mostly trying to liberate people, not start a war."


    "Soran was just using you as his personal army," I said, waving my feet in the air as I thought. "He''s a master manipulator. Don''t feel too bad about it."


    "I don''t think so," she fretted. "He helped a lot of people."


    "Yeah, publically. So that people like you would believe him."


    "Well I haven''t seen any signs of this murderous manipulator, not since he surrendered and came to New Eden and started the resistance. I''ve only heard tell of it from you guys, and in my book, actions speak louder than words."


    "Dude, he broke your spine," I said.


    "And?" She crossed her arms and glared at me. "I blew up an entire grocery store."


    "That was an accident. He planned on using you as bait to take out the P-Force. He plans and schemes and manipulates."


    "Oh, you''d know, wouldn''t you?" Steffie barked.


    "Okay, enough," Tower cut in. "This isn''t helping us find Athan OR Jack."


    I rolled my eyes and gave up on looking at Steffie while she fumed at me. Tower was right, but that girl needed to open her eyes and realize when she was being manipulated, or it might bite all of us in the butt at some point.


    But another time. For now, I needed to get us into the admission blocks where Jack was being held. Athan wasn''t here, and Jack might be able to get us out of here, so his rescue was two birds for one stone.


    "So we have two obstacles," I said aloud. "One is getting to Jack and Rito, and two is defeating the security in place on them which is keeping them from getting out -- and from taking us out when we get there."


    Tower and Steffie nodded along as I continued.


    "Getting in...will be rough given that it''s the most secure part of the whole prison, probably. As Tower said, there''s a bunch of strong Exhumans in there, so security''s gotta be tight, and since Rito isn''t going to be allowed to just port away, we also know that they''re monitored a hundred-percent of the time."


    "Question:" Tower asked, raising his broad hand. "Could she just be on camera?"


    "No, AEGIS tested that for fun at some point. A camera pointed at her does nothing, but watching her through a camera does."


    "Exhuman powers are weird," Tower said.


    "You''re the guy who can literally shrug off gravity."


    "True facts," he grinned.


    "Honestly, getting into the admission block sounds even harder than all the schemes the resistance had to break out of here," Steffie commented. "I don''t know that we have the capability with just the three of us."


    "Well there is a whole prison of sorta-miserable Exhumans out there," Tower said. "And hey, Lia''s pretty much in charge of a couple blocks now, sorta-kinda, isn''t she?"


    I was gonna disagree with him about just how quickly he thought my influence had spread, but I was still stopped about a sentence back from what Steffie said.


    "Uh oh, she''s thinking about what I said," Tower commented to Steffie. "That means whatever plan she comes up with, it was my fault."


    "No, you weren''t useful at all," I told him, and his face soured. "The Exhumans in here aren''t generally useful to go up against the XPCA for the same reason I was able to beat Khol and Argus. People in this prison believe they can''t take on the XPCA. They''ve all either given up or were beaten up to get in here."


    "Hey I can take the XPCA," Tower said. "Don''t throw me in with the rest of them, I''ve got a big leg up from the mess in here."


    "Really?" I asked, sitting up and then walking to the door. I opened it and gave him half a bow. "Your friend Jack''s right over there. Go rescue him."


    He blinked at me until I closed the door and resumed the couch.


    "I mean, I could," he said.


    I shook my head. "Don''t mean to pop your ego, but no. You know you can''t just like the rest of us."Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    "So what, it''s impossible then? Is that what you''re saying?" Steffie started at me, her voice a hint of shrill. "Because I refuse to accept that. I''m not letting them keep Jack, and if you''re just going to give up--"


    "Calm down, please," I urged her. "I''m saying, when it comes to getting people to rise or fight or throw themselves at the XPCA, nobody will do it. Not again, anyway, not since the bravest and dumbest all died or escaped in the last riot."


    "Then what?" she asked.


    "What you said earlier," I told her. "It''s easier to escape New Eden than it is to break into the admission block."


    "So you are just quitting? Just going to run away and leave Jack--"


    "Dude, chill," I begged her. "I''m working on it. But believe me when I say I love Jack too, and I don''t want him held there anymore than you do. I''m just weighing our options."


    She glared at me and then spun her chair violently enough to make it squeak on the floor, rolling off with a violent huff in her stride...if you could call it that.


    Which maybe I deserved. Any plans I had forming in my head were woefully incomplete right now, and bringing her in during the brainstorming process was just asking for butthurt feelings when she was already so desperate and obsessed with the situation. If I came to her with anything less than a perfect plan, she''d just take it as backpedaling when the plan got revisions, and would be frustrated that we had a plan we couldn''t yet act on.


    People were funny like that. They could stew and wait a surprisingly long time, even if they were stressed or panicking, so long as you reassured them. But as soon as they knew what the plan was going to be, that something should be happening, that''s when they tended to lose any patience they had left. Seemed backwards, but true. I''d heard that was one of the reasons deployed soldiers were often left in the dark on orders -- easier for them to sit and wait an indefinite amount of time rather than counting down the days.


    I hoped I hadn''t screwed up by bringing Steffie in to planning too soon, but if I did, I''d just have to talk her down. In the meanwhile, I had a lot more thinking to do.


    "You mind playing bodyguard while I go on a walk?" I asked Tower. He nodded and waited while I put on my hoodie and my flip-flops. No bra, because the sweatshirt was frumpy enough, and who was I trying to impress?


    I felt like Tower was half-right. I needed a new power or something, a silver bullet which could get us in. If only we had Rito, that girl''s power was beyond anything for making plans happen...but she was on the rescuee side of this operation, and even if we could somehow get her free, I kinda doubted she''d want to hang around and rescue others.


    After all, it was her flipping out and jumping off prematurely which had led to us all getting split up and captured like this in the first place. I shook my head as we walked and grumbled to myself about amateurs who let their emotions get in the way of doing the job.


    Which lead me right back to Taglock, maybe the last piece I had in play that I hadn''t tapped yet. I''d always made sure to pay him well in advance for his services, in case I was put in a situation like this one, so he was still mine for a time yet...but that didn''t mean I had a ton of good uses for him. He wasn''t about to single-handedly take down New Eden...or even parts of it. As convenient as it might be to have him blow a hole in the wall, I doubt he''d accept that sort of mission, since intelligence and recon were his thing, not really combat.


    Which, as I was growing up into his role, I realized made him a much less useful asset than he could be. He was awesome, fully awesome, no less, and he was as sharp and professional as they came...but in modelling myself after him, I had begun to find him more and more redundant to things I could do myself.


    Like, right now, I was looking for Athan, and I knew I could send him off on the hunt...but knowing most of his methods by now, having followed and imitated his intelligence-gathering strategies and tapping his same contacts, I was fairly certain that if I could find literally nothing on Athan, he would also pull up short.


    Which in a way made me really sad, but also really happy. I felt like I''d grown so much since running away from home, thinking myself clever for wearing a disguise while sneaking out to the public computers in the library to look up where Athan might be. I had done such a poor job of wiping up my trail that even Brick had been able to chase me down, spending credits still flagged as being my parents''...oof, I cringed just thinking about it.


    I kicked up a little pile of sand and watched it drift in the air before settling onto the concrete.


    And there was still the entire second half of this issue. I didn''t know what countermeasures they''d have for Rito, but Jack at least had a bomb wired into his heart that was set to blow if they pushed a button. Stubborn romantic that he was, I could see him jumping to Steffie''s side with a hole in his chest if he ever caught wind of her being here, so that was a case to avoid...but more significantly, the entire hole-in-chest scenario needed avoiding.


    I kicked the sand again and watched it glisten in the sun as it fell this time, like the sparkles on the ocean. I felt frustrated and¡­


    ...and incomplete, really. I wondered where Athan and AEGIS were, hoping they had each other at least, that he and she and Saga and even Karu were all safe and together somewhere, probably undertaking some derring-do to rescue Tem and Moon, and rendering all my scheming and worrying here completely moot.


    Because of course they would. I was sitting here feeling incomplete because we''d always worked as a team, ever since I''d found them. Here, I was just the random-idea and way-too-good-at-dialogue girl. That was like being half of one key, and not even knowing what door to go to.


    I''d been missing Athan, especially, but everybody, and the sudden thought that all my struggles here might be pointless and useless and dumb, and that I couldn''t do it by myself, after everything I''d gone through so far...it cut me like a knife, jammed straight through my self-confidence into the bone.


    "You okay?" Tower asked as I slid down a wall.


    "Yeah," I lied. "Just resting."


    "More comfy to rest at home," he offered. "Less sand. Less sun."


    "I like the sun," I said, squinting towards the sky. Bright blue. Saga''s favorite color, I suddenly remembered, the thought of missing her too feeling like another layer of my heart peeling back.


    I realized I was having a panic attack and just closed my eyes and tried to block out the world and all the thoughts in it. I can''t cry if I''m too busy smiling. So smile, Lia. Smile. Smile.


    Smile, goddamn you.


    Where the hell was Athan? And Saga, and AEGIS, and Karu? Why the hell was I in here, in prison, a stupid little sixteen year-old girl with a few hundred murderously pissed Exhumans? And why was it all on me, always on me to save everyone? Tower and Steffie were good people, but useless, just sitting on their stupid butts, waiting for me, waiting for me to save them, waiting for me to come up with a plan, waiting uselessly.


    And that''s assuming that what they wanted was even possible. We were a handful of idiots trying to fight back an institution designed to contain and repress us, which was only doing so out of the benevolence of not having us killed. What. The. Goddamn. Hell.


    Tower was talking at me and I covered my ears. I realized I was mad, I had been mad, mad at the whole situation, at needing to put my life on the line, my search for Athan on hold, at Steffie having the gall to bitch me out when she''d done jack-all for any of this so far except almost kill herself.


    Well she wasn''t the only one dealing with suicidal thoughts and a missing person she loved, okay? She could get the hell off my back and...and go save Jack on her own if she was going to be a bison about it.


    I reached out and grabbed a handful of sand, opening my eyes and ears and found Tower silent again. I threw the sand in the air and watched the wind drape it a few inches sideways, shimmering as it fell. Like cloth, or water.


    I knew. I knew it didn''t do any good to get mad. I knew Steffie was just hurt, and scared, and out of ideas, and this place was like poison to Exhumans. I knew that being pissed off just endangered all of us.


    But it also sucked that I wasn''t even allowed to get mad. I had to be the rational one, the in-control one, the smiling face of the group, always. Even now, when I wanted to be alone, I had to be smart and bring Tower or run the risk of more trouble. Or else they''d look at me like Tower was, like he didn''t know the sulky, pissy teenager moping around in front of him.


    I threw more sand. And then a handful at him, which he bounced off himself with a grin, sending it shooting off like a firework, a trail of dust instead of sparkles in its wake.


    "Sorry," I mumbled.


    "S''okay," he said and crouched down, still towering over me. "You''re doing all right, kid."


    "Doesn''t feel like it. Feels like everyone''s still lost or hurt or dead."


    "They''re not. Every one of ''em was pretty special. Just like you. And just like you''re a fighter, just like you''re still here, still coming on top even when you''re facing down jackasses twice your size and ten times your strength and a hundred times your meanness, you win. And so will the others."


    "That''s just words, Tower."


    "That''s a funny thing to say, coming from you. I thought you told Argus off, telling him he didn''t know the power of words."


    "That''s different."


    "Maybe," he grinned, his broad teeth glinting in the desert sun, white flashes like the beach at night. "But I''m no good at using words, that''s your thing. The point is, you have a thing, and so do they. Tem''s not gonna talk her way out of a situation, but you know she can blast or sneak through anything. There''s nothing AEGIS can''t plan for, nothing Karu hasn''t already seen twice, and nothing Saga can''t smarm to death. And don''t get me started on your brother."


    I caught myself smiling back at him somehow and stopped that, but he did have a point. Everyone was pretty exceptional, in their own way, and like me, they each knew how to leverage it. Maybe...just maybe...there was more to all of this than me fixing everything, even if that''s how it felt.


    That stupid Ashton quirk of needing to fix everything. Man, we had it bad.


    "Want to throw some more sand?" he asked me, and I obliged by nailing him with a fist of it which shot straight into the air off his dark skin and cascaded down.


    The sand here must have had extra silica in it or something, it glittered as it fell in a way I wouldn''t expect plain ol'' red dirt should. It kept reminding me of water. I remembered the beach, looking out at the vastness of waves and crests, sparkles glinting at me in total randomness. A pattern I could never quite make out, waves crashing into each other, doubling up and cancelling out. Glittering as they flowed in and out--


    I stood up, dropping a handful of sand as I covered my ears, forcing my thoughts to focus.


    "What?" Tower asked, but I waved him away. I must have looked crazy, but I didn''t care. I had to capture the thought.


    The tides. The first half of our problem. Waves. The second half. Could it be so simple? It couldn''t be. But could it?


    Waves. Waves. Waves.


    I needed AEGIS'' expertise, but barring that, I had a backup. It might just work.


    "I might have thought of a way to get into the admission block," I said.


    "Awesome." Tower gave me a thumbs-up. "How can I help?"


    "I need to send a message to someone. And then we need to talk to Steffie, find out what she knows about the resistance and what their plans were, and are."


    "And me?" he asked again.


    I smiled at him, and then took his hand and was pulled easily to my feet, bouncing in the air slightly before landing, from the ease of his grasp.


    Then I gave him a hug, which he accepted in stunned silence for a moment before returning it in full back-breaking force.


    "You''ve done a ton for me already," I told him. "Thank you for coming with me, and for helping me get over myself. It''s hard, I know."


    "It''s easy when you''ve got a good friend at stake," he chuckled.


    "Then...as a good friend...do you mind if I ask you a favor?"


    "Anything, of course."


    "Would you help me convince Steffie to let me leave?"

 341. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Lia.

    I flipped through the files with my frown growing at every one which did not suit my needs. Guard patrols, power grid diagrams, air exchange rate models, damage simulations, troop and materiel numbers...a smorgasbord of out-of-date information, all of it useless to me.


    Which sucked because normally this was my bread and butter. The things that people tended to overlook as relevant...maybe nobody cared about air exchange in the XPCA hangars, but by studying when the rates spiked, I could deduce large movements through there. Cross-referencing that against power grid records would tell me if it was just troops doing drills or machines activating, and potentially how many of which kind. Two overlooked pieces of data, and bam, I could deduce the composition of enemy forces and their times of activity. A little more and one could extrapolate total forces, optimal times to attack, and other luscious data that people would pay mad credits to get their hands on.


    But again, useless. I didn''t care how many they had, or of what. I needed a course of action, not a threat assessment, and there had to be something in here to help me out.


    I flipped through more files, finding things closer, but still useless. Evacuation plans and supply routes. Emergency food and water caches, optimal paths to take to avoid guards in alert formation¡­


    But not a single escape plan. You''d think that a resistance movement aimed at getting the Exhumans out of New Eden would have come up with a plan to get them out of New Eden.


    I looked around the room again, craning my neck around from the cruddy chair with a stuck wheel I was perched in. It was defective left-behind garbage like everything else here, it seemed -- dark concrete, lit only by the lights we''d brought in and the holos I was scanning. The abandoned resistance base, deep beneath New Eden, empty and forsaken to all but the spiders since Athan''s great uprising got all of the resistance out, or killed.


    There probably were plans like that, but they were long gone, too important to be left in the ruins. There weren''t any rosters or personnel files either, nothing which could be used to incriminate the resistance, should this lair be discovered. Plenty of other important documents were also categorically absent, making me think that anything we might have needed was simply gone.


    Steffie wheeled back into view, pouring over another armful of tablet holos in her lap while Tower pushed her through the door.


    "Find anything?" she asked, barely looking up.


    "A lot, but nothing interesting," I sighed, flipping through more documents. "We''ve been here for hours, I can''t believe there''s just nothing."


    "Well for nothing, there sure is a lot of it," she agreed. "I''ve got charts here documenting the food consumption of New Edeners and the resistance, to calculate how much they could squirrel away without drawing attention. Even if you hate him, you have to admit that Soran ran a heck of a tight ship."


    "Yeah, doesn''t surprise me that he accounted for everything. Kind of in his ticket."


    "What''s that supposed to mean?" Steffie asked, looking up to narrow her eyes at me.


    "Not again, you two," Tower groaned, loud enough to echo in the empty room. I settled for kicking my feet up higher on the table and displacing another cloud of dust.


    "This is a waste of time anyway," Steffie continued, ignoring Tower''s grimace. "We should be finding how to save Jack, not how to escape."


    "A fact you have mentioned many, many times now."


    "Girls," Tower snapped. "You do remember that New Eden makes people quite pissy? Y''don''t think maybe it''s affecting you two?"


    I frowned at him. I was fine, I knew that much, but Steffie was certainly acting like the menses fairy was backed up for almost a week now, and she was driving me nuts.


    Of course, I wasn''t going to say that, but of course, her mouth fell open and she said exactly that. Well, not exactly that.


    "Excuse me? You two? I am perfectly fine. I am trying to get things done and stop wasting my time while Lia and you are fucking around like you could not care less that Jack is out there, waiting for us, maybe suffering...maybe even dying--"


    "Oh, don''t be dramatic," I hissed.


    "DYING out there, Lia. I know you have the emotional capacity of a psychopath--"


    "Excuse me?" I stared at her. "Psychopath?"


    "Time out, time out!" Tower shouted, gesturing wildly between us. I glared at her, wondering, if I were psycho, would I just kill her at this point? The prospect was getting more attractive every time she opened her dumb mouth.


    I turned back to my work, doing my best to ignore her. I''d do it for Jack if nothing else. I liked Steffie, outside of New Eden, and I reminded myself that as much as she might piss me off right now, getting her out was by far the best solution, even as thoughts like ''she deserves this'' kept bubbling through my mind.


    "How are you so calm, Tower?" I asked him, changing the topic as I thumbed through another dissertation on waste product flow through New Eden. Maybe we could get out with the trash? Apparently only if we escaped a scan, and then a slicing, seperation, and potentially incineration. So perhaps not.


    "Me? I just try to focus on what needs to get done. A lot of the time," he glanced significantly at Steffie "I know I can''t do anything, and when that happens, I''m accustomed to supporting and waiting while others do the hard work."


    She made a pfeh noise and buried herself in the tablets.


    "But yeah, it sucks," he said. "I''m feeling short-tempered too in here, like I''m hot and hungry all the time, and it''s really irritating. I didn''t know it would be this bad.


    "It gets worse the longer you stay," Steffie said. "When I was in here before, it was enough to make people crazy. If Soran didn''t find me," she said, glaring at me significantly, "I don''t know what I would have done. Gone crazy, or worse."


    Ah. I knew she was...grateful to him, I guess, but I never considered that she thought he''d saved her life or anything. Still seemed stupid to me, considering he''d ruined her life, by kidnapping and paralyzing her, but hey, what the heck did I know, right?


    I kept my mouth shut as Tower talked her down a little more, doing a generally great job of sympathizing with her and telling her things she needed to know while not being condescending...that guy had a real knack for always making you feel like he was on your side and going through the same ish, which was exactly what she needed right now.


    And I needed some friggin'' intel on a plan. We were getting dangerously low on options here, and honestly, I was looking for something--anything--other than the current plan.


    Which was, by the way, Tower smacks a hole in the wall with a Steffie-club. As much fun as it''d be to clobber her face-first into the wall, I was hoping for something with a little more...subterfuge. Less chance of immediately getting owned by the guard, anyway.


    I frowned as I pulled up another file, this one simply named OPERATION: SUBARU, the contents encrypted behind a password. No other file I''d encountered thus far had been protected beyond the general system protections, and so I felt my toes curling in excitement as I leaned forward to see what we had here.


    Plain document. Small filesize. Modified only once since creation...someone sat down and penned the file in a single sitting. In...four minutes, I counted. Judging by the size, and assuming the encryption didn''t bloat that too much, it looked approximately the same as some of the smallest files I''d been looking at, three pages or so, tops.


    The blinking cursor on the password line taunted me. Subaru.


    The name had some prior associations for me, but I knew that wasn''t all there was to it. Aside from belonging to a particular douchecanoe, I had learned by dating him that it was a common Japanese name, that it meant ''unite'' in Japanese, and it was their name for the Pleiades star cluster. It also used to be the name of a brand of car, now merged into one of the tech conglomerates, and which used those stars as a logo. I found that one out during my phase of obsessively searching his name on the ''net in the throes of moronic teen passion.


    What it meant as an operation name of a secret resistance group, I had no idea. I could hope they were the kind to put too fine a point on their codenames and it was somehow related to some kind of unity...but unless they were really bad at passwords, that wouldn''t be much help.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    The holo buzzed at me as I tried UNITY. Then again at TOGETHER, ACCORD, UNION, SOLIDARITY.


    "What are you doing over there?" Tower asked. I showed him what I''d found and he scratched his head. "The heck is a Subaru?"


    "Oh," he said when I explained what I knew. "Uh, did you try oneness?"


    "Or peace?" Steffie said.


    I tried both. Buzz. Buzz.


    "It''s probably none of these," I said. "I was just hoping they''d be lazy with their passwords. Odds are we''re not getting in, though. Wish AEGIS were here."


    I tried again, but it was, alas, not PASSWORD either.


    "Password1?"


    "1234?"


    "Drowssap?"


    Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. The cursor just kept blinking at me.


    "Yeah we''re not getting through there. Just hope it''s nothing important," Steffie said.


    "You''re probably right," I agreed, trying a few more just in case. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.


    "Okay, knock it off," she snapped. I sighed and moved on to other files, irritated to let that blinking cursor win, but knowing that I wasn''t just going to randomly guess a password...that would kind of invalidate the whole point of passwords as a system.


    Still, it nettled me, more than it should have. Why''d it have to be named Subaru? On top of the situation with Steffie, just seeing that name made my chest go tight with the shame and embarrassment and cringing at how friggin'' moronic I''d been back when I was with him. Hurting Saga that day had been the biggest regret of my life, and I''d done it for that douchecanoe? Really, past me? He was the best I thought I''d get?


    Stupid. And now I was seeing his face in my mind every time I went back to the file list and saw that name sitting there, no matter how hard I tried not to look at it.


    Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.


    "Okay what the hell did I just say?" Steffie barked, dropping her holo in her lap with a clatter. "I told you to stop wasting time with that stupid shit."


    "I''m just trying a few more things. It''s the only encrypted file we''ve found, and it might be important."


    "Be that as it may, you aren''t getting in, so stop buzzing and pissing me off," she said.


    STEFFIEISABITCH. Buzz. It might have been the incorrect password, but it wasn''t wrong.


    "Okay, knock it off, both of you," Tower butt in. "Lia, is it really that important to keep buzzing? Can''t you just mute it or something?"


    "No, it''s a system alert, not letting me mute it."


    "Then lets work in separate rooms?" he suggested. When Steffie just harrumphed at me, he sighed and wheeled her out.


    I shook my head at her one last time before turning back. UNIFICATION. CONCORD. INTEGRATION. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.


    What was I even doing here? Was two hours in the dark enough to turn me into a stupid? I was almost certainly just acting out of boredom and frustration.


    STUPID. MORON. IDIOT. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.


    I''d trawled through hundreds of pointless files already and this was, by far, the most engaging, which was just pathetic. I stared down the blinking cursor, feeling the memories of Subaru''s slimy presence oozing through my mind, making me shudder with surfacing shame.


    IHATESUBARU. JERKASSBOYFRIEND. DOUCHECANOE. Buzz. Buzz. Ding.


    Ding. Ding?


    I blinked as the file opened up in front of me, loading a sparse page of text and a few images. A map of New Eden, and a diagram of the familiar PA-speaker poles within it.


    My mind wasn''t taking any of that in. Ding?


    Ding?


    On DOUCHECANOE?


    There was no way that could have been right. That was the nickname Athan and I used to refer to him because mentioning him by name had a negative affect on my temperament, as I''d been demonstrating so well here. He was just that jerk ex that came up sometimes when I was feeling particularly irritated, or when Athan was dealing with an incredibly ignorant or entitled Exhuman, the douchecanoe was a point of reference we could both relate against.


    But as a password? On a file baring his name? My mind was reeling at the odds.


    I stood up suddenly and, distracted, banged my knee on the desk, hopping and yelping and wondering why, why, did I ever take off my slipskin, ever?


    It was very effective for taking my mind off the password for a moment though. Long enough for Tower to pop his head in the door and squint at me in the relative dark, backlit by my holo.


    "What was that noise?" he asked "All right in here?"


    "Uh, yeah," I said, rubbing the knee with my knuckles. "I uh, got the password, and was just surprised."


    "Oh, really? Wow," he said, sidling up. "What''s in it, then?"


    "I dunno," I said, sitting down again, still kneading my knee. "Looks like...a map of New Eden, and diagrams, of the PA towers."


    "Each one''s got a label," he said, pointing across the map, which highlighted each tower on it. And so they did, but not descriptive labels as I might have expected, nor ''Tower 1'', ''Tower 2'', or the like. Instead, a complicated, long code with lots of numbers and letters in it.


    I scrolled past the first page and found, in plain english, text describing the operation. As I read, my mouth fell open, and I glanced at Tower and found his matching mine.


    "Holy cow," he said. "Am I reading this right?"


    "Yeah. This is incredible. We can use this. We can absolutely use this."


    I picked up a nearby holo and began entering the passwords at once, my mind racing with the possibilities of how best to turn our new information to our advantage.


    There were a lot of potential options, and a whole mess of messes that we could use these to make, but as broad as our options were, my priorities were simple: Get myself out of New Eden without detection. Act fast so I didn''t throw Steffie into conniptions. And of course, minimizing harm to the Edeners, New Eden, and the XPCA.


    And it felt like a key was just dropped into my hands which could turn the wheels on all of these desires at once. A glorious, incredible gift, left behind just for me by the resistance who''d been here before.


    From Subaru, the douchecanoe. I was a little too enthralled by what we had to worry too much about where I found it.


    A couple of hours later, I''d made my arrangements and Tower, Steffie and I were at the base of the wall surrounding the city. Grey concrete stretched into the sky, plunging this whole section into perpetual shadow and cold, a dismal corner where no Exhumans lived by choice.


    "You''ve made your preparations?" Tower asked, and I nodded. "And you''re sure this is the best course of action?" I nodded again. "You''ll have to go fast. And make sure you''re behind me."


    I nodded again, my face almost completely level with one of his buttocks, twice as wide as I was. Not the best view, but given what we were doing, better than being eradicated.


    "Okay," he said, taking a deep breath and cradling Steffie in his arms. "Send the thing, I guess."


    "You guys just stay safe. Be with the other Edeners. We''ll come for you," I said.


    "You stay safe. We''re going to make a mess up here, and you''d better come out of it alive."


    I grinned at him. "Staying safe is what I do best." He shook his head at me, but didn''t stop me as I tapped a few screens on my mobile and then held down the final button.


    The PA poles accepted the override codes I sent them and began screaming, their speakers blaring to life at every frequency, at maximum volume, producing every sound we could hear, and many beyond.


    Wailing filled the air, harmonically overlapping and distorting with itself as the noise echoed through the city. Tower tried to say something to me, but his voice was gone, I couldn''t hear anything but the echoing, multilayered air.


    I gave him a thumbs-up and pressed myself behind his butt. He gave me one final expression of disbelief, and then held Steffie aloft like a battering ram, reading her feet-first at the wall right next to us. She said something, but I didn''t think Tower even noticed.


    And then he brought her crashing in, with an explosion of stone and black goop and rebar and wire. A blast so tall it almost reached the top of the wall, and throwing so much debris that my skin went cold from the added darkness.


    But the blast felt strange and wrong, silent under the all-pervasive sound. I felt the shockwave wash over and around us, blocked by Tower, but still enough to knock the houses nearest us off-kilter, like they would fall flat at any moment, but there was no noise to accompany the shockwave but the trilling filling my ears.


    Tower reached back and grabbed me roughly, throwing me with all his strength through the new hole, which was bubbling with more black goop, structure foam, already sealing the breach. There would be an alert, but with the current signal disruption, which should be broad-spectrum enough to interfere with electronics as well as audio, I''d have time to make my escape. The last thing I saw through the sealing hole was Tower, waving at me before vanishing behind a shiny new slick of blackness.


    When the wall closed, it was like my ears popping. The source of the sound was sealed up, coming at me from over the tall wall, and suddenly I could hear my heart pounding, the sand shifting under my feet, hear a direction the wail was coming from...tiny things, but important ones to make me think ''okay, so I wasn''t just going crazy.''


    And then I ran. I wasn''t invisible, and if any guards were somehow still looking out, they''d surely see the girl jogging across the desert. It wasn''t my intention to get out here just so I could be recaptured and thrown back in. I hoofed it hard and fast, eager to put the city and the painful ringing behind me.


    It was less than twenty minutes before I was facing capture again.


    The man wore a grey slipskin like mine, but the pistol in his hands was new to me. He squinted at me in the desert sun, clearly ready for me long before I reached him, shaking his head like he couldn''t believe I''d do something so stupid.


    It could have been the end of the road for me. Associated with Athan as I was, and with the influence I''d been getting inside the walls, if the XPCA knew I''d escaped and been recaptured, there were good odds, they''d just decide I wasn''t worth keeping alive. No matter how good my rep with a few of the soldiers may be, it really wasn''t men but policy which determined who lived and who didn''t.


    So it was rather fortunate that the guy bringing me in wasn''t just anyone. A hunter, an XPCA...heck, even a federal agent or police might have been the end of me. But this guy was a true professional, a spy and agent of the highest caliber.


    Taglock smiled at me and gave me the curtest of polite nods as he hit me with a shot of knockout gas and I felt the world slipping away, the desert streaking into one mess of blurry white and red, like cherries stirred into yogurt.


    "Next time you wake up, you''ll be back in New Eden," he warned me, and I fell away from the world.


    I tried to say anything, but before I could even put together how to do that, the drug took hold and the world slipped away from me into a seamless, hazy dark.

 342. 2252, Present Day. New Eden. Lia.

    The first time I entered New Eden looking for Athan, I''d gone through ''relocation'', the amnesty program that New Eden was supposed to represent. I''d found the process a bit painful, even as I cooperated with them at every possible stage, but understood the necessity of them tearing apart and confiscating my belongings, interrogating me for the nature of my powers and relations, asking me the same questions a thousand times a thousand ways to see if they could catch me in a lie.


    Uncomfortable as that was, I learned quickly that it was honestly a pleasant experience compared to what those brought in by force might expect.


    I was cuffed, gagged, blindfolded, and stripped. I was paraded barefoot through chamber after chamber, my bound hands unable to give myself even a sliver of modesty, as I heard voices and machines at work, doing unknowable work past my blindfold. Every time I was shoved forward into a new room, I found myself completely still, my brain grasping at the unknowable. Were there hundreds of eyes on me? Was there a machine scanning every crevice of my body? If some light turned red instead of green, would they snuff me out then and there?


    I didn''t know, and not knowing was almost the worst of everything else happening to me. At one point, the cuffs holding my arms behind me separated, pulling my arms wide, pinning me spread-eagle in the air while something whirred and clanked around me. I could feel cold air pushed past my skin when it moved, could hear the snap-snap of small machinery delicately adjusting as it did...whatever it did.


    Took pictures of me, maybe, I thought, two rooms later, as I was blasted with decontaminating powders and fluids. The snapping maybe the opening and closing of a lens aperture. My age and undress didn''t matter -- I wasn''t a minor, I wasn''t even a human. I was a thing to be documented and feared.


    It was completely dehumanizing. I felt like meat being processed post-slaughter. And even when I was dressed and allowed to drop to my knees and the gag and blindfold were removed, the sensation of emptiness, of violation, lingered inside me for a long, long time, like a chill I couldn''t get out of my core.


    It was a few hours before I realized I was in a holding cell. I''d assumed this was just another in the series of probing and testing rooms, sterile metal and cold floors. It was only the fact that nothing had happened to me for a long time that tipped me off, and I finally looked around, distracted from what I saw by my disturbed thoughts.


    A bed. A sink. A toilet, all built into the walls. A door which, if anything, appeared even more solid than the rest of the cell. A square light in the ceiling, embedded beyond a grate. Drain holes in the floor. Four walls, eight corners, no way out.


    I touched the door and found it completely smooth and cold, recoiling at the sensation and wrapping my hand in my muted orange gown as though burned. Outside, I could still hear distant yelling and the sounds of action. They were much louder when I was being processed, but it was a lot further from my mind then.


    This probably wasn''t their typical processing flow, I hoped. I''d have expected a lot more questions and hands-on treatment, things I had prepared to face, but right now the city was in an uproar about the PA-system we''d activated. I imagined that right now, there were a lot of very deaf, very pissed Exhumans who were none-too-happy with the XPCA, and a bunch of XPCA whose tech wasn''t functioning properly in range of the speaker-poles, trying to sort things out.


    Which left other concerns like new prisoners a distant second. They wouldn''t open the gates for any reason right now, not the least of which to add me to their current situation.


    Thinking was nice. Getting out of my own head and situation a little. I looked around again, this time a little more alert and aware. This was the admission block. Somewhere around here were Jack and Rito, and the whole reason I''d broken out and back in. The whole reason I''d overridden the broadcast system...the whole reason I was still in New Eden.


    I ran the sink and splashed some water on my face. I had to sober up. I could deal with the fact that the XPCA had just scanned and documented my every freckle, scar, and hair later. If I got out of here, if I reunited with AEGIS, we could delve their records and purge every inch of my skin from their servers. Those were ifs, they would never happen if I didn''t pull myself together.


    I shivered again as the water did nothing to wash away my shame and disgust. But shame and disgust were just feelings. Just like others I pushed away constantly. They weren''t real things, not like this cell and the people outside of it were. That was what mattered.


    I dug through my mess of hair until I felt one that was a little different to the touch, impossible to discern by any other means, and felt myself making stupid faces as I tried to isolate it from the others. They''d shaved the prisoners here once, but that turned out to be a bad idea as it kind of just advertised that anyone with hair was a ''sellout'' and anyone without was a ''criminal''. There were certainly gangs here, but the XPCA decided they didn''t really need to contribute to the problem.


    Which worked for me, as I pulled the strand free, tugging it from where it was glued to my head, and nursing the sore spot for a moment with my fingertips. I felt around until I confirmed I was holding the right end, and then crushed the base of it.


    Ironic, that they subjected me to so many scans out of fear of my powers and yet weren''t prepared for future tech like this. The type of super-secret spy gadget that Taglock could be depended on to have and know about; a device so slim and sleek, probably even made of the same stuff as of hair, completely undetectable, almost even to me, and I knew it was there.


    I looked around, wondering where the cameras in my cell were, and if I should even care. With things so hectic inside the city right now, would they even notice that I was screwing around with my hair? Would they even care?


    As the minutes passed and nobody came, I had to assume not. I''d laid the strand to rest on the floor and was sitting on the bed waiting. Five minutes. Six. Seven. I counted the seconds in my head.


    And then I heard a scraping noise, like metal grating on metal. I tensed, hoping nobody came at the last second, drawn by the noise. But nobody did, and soon, I saw it.


    It almost looked like a centipede, long and writhing, with many legs that I knew weren''t really legs but rather plasma emitters, allowing it to press itself against walls or ceilings as though they were a floor. Almost like Karu''s jetpack, except a thousandth the size, and wriggling, and burrowing through the door to my cell with atomic-honed blades.


    The infiltration drone shimmered and disappeared as soon as it was through, repurposing the power from its blades back to its optical camo, invisible as it had been all through the base to this point. I watched with fascination as...well, as nothing I could see crawled along the ground directly towards the strand I''d bent and left there. And upon reaching the beacon -- for that was what the strand was -- it decloaked again and...unfolded.


    I was on it in an instant, pulling supplies out of the drone, all bundled and wrapped to fit in the compartment no wider than my finger. Two small clasps, a handful of strips which looked like tape, and many, many things which I left in the drone, about the size of my thumb and covered in warning text.


    I had to run my fingers over the floor a few times to find the beacon strand, but when I did, I straightened it out, turning it off, and the drone disappeared at once, closing up and dashing right back out of the room. While he went, I tore off a few strips of the tape and began to apply it to my door, framing a small square at the base, just larger than I could crawl through.


    And then again, I waited. Taglock always liked to remind me that about ninety percent of infiltration was waiting. "Some people call it luck," he''d told me once. "That the patrol just turned away, or just happened to round the corner. But if you know everything there is to know, there is no luck. There is only patience."


    And so I waited, my heart pounding and my fingers on the backing of the tape, while the drone scuttled out there somewhere. I waited and waited and waited, my fingers twitching at every sound, my brain inventing a thousand failure scenarios, and my chest bursting with adrenaline.


    And then, even though I''d been waiting for it, the sound of an explosion caught me by surprise. It was nearby, and it was loud, the dozens of explosive cells I''d left in the drone detonated as one. I ripped off the backing of the tape and took a few steps back, watching as the strips seethed and bubbled, the black material reacting with the air and beginning to swell.


    At first it just looked like I''d made a very square mess, but as the reaction continued, the square began to glow yellow, and then red, and then white, as the parts of the door in direct contact with the tape literally melted and began to run across the floor as liquid metal, shiny and chrome, flowing down the drain on the floor with a hiss and a plume of acrid steam.


    And then a thunk as the chunk of metal I''d framed fell away, the edges of it still bubbling and foaming and melting, but there was a hole in my door now, I could see into the hall beyond. I gave the tape another few minutes to start cooling down, and for the flow of liquid metal to subside, before crawling through.


    Only burning both my elbows and the tips of my hair in the process. But what are you gonna do?


    It was smokey out here, a caustic smoke that burned a little, so I stayed crouched and kept the collar of my gown pulled over my nose. The drone had exploded in the hallway adjacent, blocking off this entire row of cells with a tangled gnarl of concrete, rebar, and sparking wires. Alarms were blaring and the lights in here were flashing amber. I could hear crews working at the wreckage, people shouting at each other, issuing orders and demanding updates.


    And as I emerged, they took notice. Many of the orders being barked were at me, telling me to get back into my cell. Some even pointed guns at me through the wreck, but I just strolled out of their sight, counting cell numbers as I went.


    Until I reached the one I''d seen before. The cell number on the report I''d borrowed from a guard friend of mine. I unrolled a few more pieces of tape and settled in.


    This time I burned myself a little less, looking up as I passed through the hole and meeting eyes with the man inside. Closed eyes, anyway.


    Honestly, I hardly recognized him, but that didn''t stop me from giving him a smile anyway.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    "Hello, Lia," he said through a smile. "Fancy seeing you here."


    "Oh Jack," I found myself saying. It was hard to focus on his face when there were so many other parts of his body that demanded address.


    He looked like he''d been beaten with an exosuit, numerous times, his limbs hung off his body at odd angles and there was more black and blue shine on his skin than not. The only of his wounds that was dressed in any fashion was on his chest, above his heart, but even the bandages for that were black with ancient blood, and yellowing with must. I had to wonder what the point was of doing surgery on him was if they were just going to beat him, but as someone who''d never beat anyone, it was just kind of out of my realm.


    I walked over to the bed where he was reclined and reached out to him on instinct, feeling the same dehumanized sense of wrongness again that pervaded this place. He''d just been dumped in this cell like this?


    "It''s not so bad," he coughed.


    "It IS so bad! You look awful."


    "Maybe," he grinned at me with a smile now missing a tooth. "But I did earn it."


    "What do you mean?"


    "I killed a few dozen men on my recapture. And then another dozen when they tried to process me. I dare say it made me something of an unpopular sort with the management here."


    "Oh Jack," I found myself repeating. "Why? Why did you do all this? Make such a mess, cause all this trouble, kill all those people?"


    He smiled broadly. "Why not?" he shrugged. "I made sure Steffie was safe and then they refused to so much as hear me out. There are only so many times you can try talking to someone and having them attempt to fight before you stop talking. Nobody was willing to offer me an explanation, nobody would take my calls or respect who I was or what I''d done. In an instant, it was like I''d turned Exhuman all over again. Suddenly the distrust and resentment which was always there was set loose, and they were after my blood."


    He shrugged heavily, and I frowned at the pain behind his smile.


    "Steffie''s waiting for you in New Eden. Come on," I told him. I sat next to him and gingerly helped him up.


    He didn''t take my help, just stared at me blankly. "No she''s not. That''s impossible. She was safe."


    I blinked at him. "Yes, she is. She helped me to come rescue you."


    "She can''t be," he laughed, though it wasn''t a laugh like I''d ever heard. "You must be mistaken."


    "Uh, Jack?"


    "Yes?"


    "She''s right in the city. Come on."


    "No, she was safe. She was supposed to stay safe. There''s no way she''d come into danger like this."


    I scratched my head in frustration, which reminded me that the tips of some of my hair was burned. This wasn''t supposed to be the complicated part of the plan. "Okay, dude, listen. She. Is. There. We are busting you out--"


    "Which is impossible."


    "--and then you join her--"


    "Which is impossible."


    "--and then we all get out together. What the heck?"


    He pointed at the black bandage on his chest and glowered at me. "There is a bomb in my chest. If I leave this room, if I irritate anybody in the XPCA...heck, your entry into this room, if discovered, kaboom. It will be raining me for ten minutes. And not just me, anyone I am near. Do you know how much ordinance you can pack into a human heart?"


    "Well I just collapsed a hallway with a drone about the size of three of my fingers, so yeah."


    "So I am not joining her. And she knew that, which is why she was, above all, supposed to remain safe." I realized he wasn''t smiling anymore as he ranted. "I told her I could endure anything, that my death was a long time coming and a long time earned, so long as I could know she was still out there. She said she understood, she knew what it meant to me, what she means to me, and that''s why she wouldn''t throw all of that away to come here. She wouldn''t do something so stupid, short-sighted, and dangerous, all to chase after someone who can''t even be with her. It''s impossible."


    "Sure. Impossible," I sighed at him. "Except it''s true, you dumb nut. Did you ever consider that there''s a lot more to her life than living?"


    "Yes, which is why I provided her with everything she would need--"


    "Everything? You can''t think of anything she might find essential that''s, oh, I don''t know, currently beat to hell in a cell outside New Eden?"


    He glared at me, his teeth barely visible through parted lips.


    "What she needs--"


    "Isn''t for you to decide," I said, crossing my arms. "Now are you going to stop being an idiot or what?"


    "Fine," he said, doing a weak approximation of throwing up his hands. "Suppose you are correct. I still cannot leave, as there is still a bomb in my chest. If triggered, I die."


    I grinned at him and took one of the clasps I''d pulled from the drone and held it out for him. "First of all, odds are we are being watched, and that means they''d want to blow you up right now. But they can''t. Because of this."


    "What is this?" he asked, gingerly reaching for it. I handed it over and he ran his fingers along its surfaces, inspecting it with reverence with his eyes glinting, barely open.


    "That, is a short-range broad-frequency jamming device. I had this epiphany about tides going out and in and waves and realized, they can''t send a kill signal to your device if you yourself are a jammer. I took that same idea to wreck some havoc with the PA-towers in the city."


    "And you did not think that it broadcasting on my kill frequency might trigger the bomb?"


    "No bomb in the world is set to go off just by getting one signal, dummy. There''s a message which has to bent on that frequency. Otherwise you could blow up every military arsenal just by blasting radios at it."


    "Touche."


    "So," I said, recrossing my arms. "All set then? No more whining to do? We''ve handled all your concerns?"


    "Yes," he smiled. "My apologies for the petulance. I just did not appreciate the sudden shift in plans. Shall I take us out now?"


    "First, take us through the other cells here. Rito should be in here somewhere, I''d like to bring her along."


    It was kind of fun flickering in and out of reality and showing up in random occupied cells, there inhabitants looking at us like they''d gone crazy. A few started to talk, one even seemed to be preparing to attack, but we didn''t stick around long enough for any more incidents. Most of the cells were empty anyway, and Jack seemed to have an idea where we were going, so it really wasn''t that eventful when we showed up in Rito''s cell a minute later.


    My first thought was, well, they certainly knew to keep her on camera. The cell was rife with them, unlike the hidden ones in my cell, there were just a few dozen sticking out everywhere here, redundantly covering every corner. She squealed as we appeared, cowering behind the corner of her bed, for all the good that did.


    "Hey Rito," I said airly. "Ready to go?"


    "NO," she shouted. "GO AWAY."


    I blinked at her and glanced around at the unflinching eyes around us. Given what I''d just been through they made me unusually tense, and I could not imagine she was having a great time staying here under their watch.


    "It''s us," Jack clarified helpfully. "Jack and Lia. We''re escaping."


    "I DON''T WANT TO."


    "What?" I asked. "Why?"


    She just glared at me like I was the crazy one here, her large eyes and broad mouth contorted in trembling fury.


    "I knew as soon as I heard trouble outside that it was you!" she accused. "You are ALWAYS causing trouble! It''s your fault I''m in here, I was with my mom, safe and sound--"


    "And you can be again, dude," I offered.


    "NO! They''ve got my records! They know where I live, they knew to catch me at the school...everything''s ruined because of you!"


    I glanced at Jack, who shrugged. "Uh. Look, we''re short on time here, they''ll be breaking through my cave-in any minute. Just come with us--"


    "NO!"


    "Jack, just touch her and get us all out."


    Jack advanced on the girl and she veritably growled at him, his bruised hand hesitating as he drew near.


    "It''s not going to hurt," he said.


    "GO. AWAY."


    He touched her, and I held his other hand, feeling my stomach drop as his powers started to shift us away. But at the last moment, right before the floor dropped away under me, she swatted his hand off of her, and then we were elsewhere.


    More specifically, Jack and I were elsewhere. Somewhere quiet and dark. Rito was nowhere to be seen.


    "Where is she?" I asked, turning to Jack, who shook his head.


    "Back in her cell still. She threw me off at the last second."


    "Well let''s go back and get her."


    "Lia," he said, turning on me, "Let her be."


    "What?"


    "Let her be. Leave her in peace."


    "Leave her in jail you mean?"


    "If that''s what she wants."


    "That''s stupid," I huffed. "She''s just an idiot and just because she''s too scared to do what''s best for herself, doesn''t meant she should be rotting in jail the rest of her life."


    He grinned sympathetically at me. "Did you just finish lecturing me on how I shouldn''t be deciding things for Steffie just because she was acting poorly by her own self-interests?"


    I glared at him but his smile only widened.


    "She''s never been a fit for this whole Exhuman lifestyle," Jack shrugged. "I honestly think she''d be happier in a cell, not having to worry about things. She''ll probably get into the city on good behavior sooner than later."


    "Yeah, where she can be angry all the time."


    "Angry and safe and guilt-free. It''s not for you to decide."


    "I guess. But for the record, she''s still stupid, and she''s going to make our plans a lot harder to execute without her powers."


    "Well I''m sorry that someone else''s decisions is making your scheming harder. I''m sure you''ll find a way. Now grab hold and tell me where I can get to Steffie."


    He smiled at me again, his teeth glinting in the dark room, and I just had to shake my head at him. Things were such a mess right now, and I still didn''t have the first clue where to go to look for Athan. But at least we''d have everyone out of New Eden.


    I sighed and took his arm, feeling my stomach dropping as soon as I did. It really wasn''t a great way to travel, and without Rito, we might all be doing it for a long, long time to get out of here. That wasn''t anything to look forward to.


    But at least I could change into my slipskin. That''d be nice. Wear the mask, too.


    As the world dropped out from under us, I thought again of where we''d been and where to go, who else was still missing and where they might be...and most importantly, where Athan was in all of this.


    The only conclusion I could draw was that he thought the same way I did. He''d be wherever people needed help, and wherever there was trouble. With so many people missing, with so many in need, with so many missing pieces of information, I didn''t know what he knew, but I also doubted he knew much more than I.


    So my best guess for where he wound up was at the most obvious person in trouble.


    That''d be Moon, and that''d be Japan. So as soon as Jack and Steffie and Tower and I finished cheering and hugging and explaining what happened, I informed the others that I thought we should leave the prison and all head west.

 343. 2252, Present Day. San Francisco. Saga.

    As much as I adored Athan, from his adorable little heroic ideals to the way he could fill a suit, I had to admit, sometimes things were a whole lot more fun without him. Especially in this town, which had some truly bizarre culture I could get behind, as well as surprisingly strict leash laws.


    I gave the leash a little yank. "Don''t dawdle," I chirped, singsong at my pet.


    There probably was an approximation of worry inside me, coming from whatever worry gland I was supposed to have. Athan had, after all, been ''rescued'' like I had, like Karu had. Soran, of all damn people, had just shown up in the middle of the battlefield and chucked us into next week, across two states.


    He had a pretty good arm. He should''ve considered going pro. Perhaps his tendency to murder people and drink their souls might have an impact on his signing prospects, but on the other hand, baseball was pretty boring anyway, so perhaps that was just the spicing-up the sport needed.


    "Come on," I said, yanking the leash again. "We''re almost home." My pet growled at me, and I gave her a withering glare, pointing a finger in her face. "No growling. Bad."


    The few seconds I was with Soran were also...a heck of a thing. I''d only had moments to peek inside his mind before he hucked me off, but in that time, pheew. There were some monstrous inner workings going on there. I could hardly see through the outer layers of his thoughts, but he was considering everything, constantly. Carefully measuring how he held himself, how he spoke, every tedious quality of every action was exacting, painfully precise. I''d been able to dig out a few juicy tidbits, but for the most part, just madness.


    So yeah, he seemed completely insane to me. Probably a bad combination to pair with being able to absorb new powers constantly. Just underneath his incredibly-constructed exterior dwelled a churning, burning, white-hot black ball of hate. Irritation and anger at all things, perfectionism and OCD taken to the next level -- one of those real psychos who would kill you for chewing too loudly or not eating your food off your plate clockwise enough.


    I thought we should hang out more sometime. But if he insisted on blowing away XPCA and chucking me out of a bad situation into this one, I could take that too.


    "What?" I snipped as my pet started dragging again. "Do you want to sniff that tree? Do you need to pee again? What?"


    "This is demeaning beyond words," Karu growled at me from the other end of the leash. "I cannot even begin to consider how I can repay you for this injustice."


    "Shush now," I said, yanking the leash and Karu with it, pulled along by her choker. "Good bitches don''t talk."


    She tried to say something back at me, to bite back, but instead her eyes watered in frustration as the compel held and she bit her lip hard enough to draw a bead of blood. I fished in my purse -- a pointlessly expensive minaudi¨¨re I was bearing to go with my nouveau riche couture -- whipping out a tissue and wiping that up for her, enjoying how the tan of her skin contrasted with the white of her eyes and the red of her very, very, very embarrassed face.


    We finished our walk and got back ''home'', which was again, embarrassingly expensive; just a house I''d walked into and informed the owner was now mine. It was a nice little rowhouse, quintessential San Francisco, from its brightly-colored walls to the chintzy little chandelier which hung in the too-small foyer area, which was pretending badly that it wasn''t just a useless part of the living room.


    "Wasn''t that good walkies?" I asked Karu, squeezing both of her cheeks affectionately as I unclipped the leash. With it went the compel, and immediately, she grabbed hold my neck and squeezed until I heard and felt an unpleasant, painful cracking, my own face flushing red as I wheezed through my crushed windpipe.


    I let her do that a few more times until she dropped me and settled for swearing and berating my utter void of morals. Which, being utterly void, were unphased by the berating.


    "You''ll get arthritis if you keep that up," I said, as she clenched and unclenched her hands at me like she was ready to go another few rounds with my neck.


    "I will go mad if I do not."


    "Oh you''re already mad. All sorts of ways."


    Her face twitched, not at all like a crazy-persons, and she bit back a retort and cleared her throat. "What I wish to know is why you insist on prolonging this humiliation? Why will you not simply let me go my own way?"


    I picked myself up and headed in towards the rest of the house. "I''ve told you a thousand times sweetcheeks," I said, giving her butt a firm swat as I passed, and getting punched in the back of the head in turn. "Ow. It''s because you owe me."


    "Yes, we have established that. You heroically connived and manipulated others to your wiles in order to provide me with the medical services I required to stay alive."


    "And food and housing. And clothes."


    She glanced down at the trashy goth ensemble I''d put her into, a sheer top over a v-neck with extremely distressed jeans. It really brought out her curves.


    She swallowed again. "Yes, of course. As I said, I am obviously grateful for the medical assistance. However, when you stipulated that I owed you something in return, I anticipated...something of value. An enemy to be crushed, or an exchange of wealth or technology. Something...meritorious. Something¡­"


    "Not this?" I said, swinging the leash around my finger.


    Her eyes darkened. "Not that."


    "Well, plum puddin'', you should know by now, enemies of mine don''t live very long. Things I want, I don''t have a problem taking. And it''s not like I ever need anything. Biggest problem for me, by far, is being bored."


    "Bored," she echoed.


    "Yep. So it''s almost downright offensive to me that you''d put so little value in your own entertainment value. These little walks around town have been the highlight of my day."


    "But I have so much more capability to offer," she pleaded. "I am strong and competent...allow me to...to find something else...anything else¡­"


    "Oh honeydew," I cradled her chin lovingly until she twisted my finger backwards with a snap. "Ow. I am playing to your strengths. You''re so messed up inside your head, it''s lovely. I don''t just drag you out there to parade you around, you know? It''s all about the reaction."


    She froze, her seething glare burning into me. I started to bend over backwards as more of my fingers were twisted and snapping painfully.


    "Reaction how?" she growled.


    "Ow. How? More like how not? You have this whole masochistic streak going on--"


    "I do NOT."


    "--and never in your life have you ever been a fan of someone else ordering you around. Except your ol'' pappy, so that brings up some mixed feelings--"


    "I rescind this line of questioning."


    "--to say nothing of the fact you honestly get off on attention of all kinds. Good, bad, you don''t care--"


    "I understand your meaning!" she shouted. "Desist!"


    "And you hate me. But your brain''s getting all confused by all these signals, good, bad,, subservience, hate, shame." I batted my eyes at her. "Arousal."


    I woke up on the floor and giggled as she clenched and unclenched her hands a few more times.


    "Told you you''ll get arthritis from doing that."


    "...how much longer?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.


    "Won''t be long now. What day is it?"


    "The fourth of May."


    "Then after tomorrow, I guess," I said, stretching and standing again. I went as far as the luxurious and uncomfortable couch before falling over again, glancing back at her one more time before I slumped down.


    Not because I needed to see her face to know what she was thinking, but because I knew what she was thinking and wanted to witness the face that went along with it.


    She was a conflicted mess over there. She was mostly surprised to hear there was an end in sight. But as that ebbed away, her cynicism and that delightful Exhuman-hate set in, and she began to question what kind of ''end'' I had in mind for her. Scenarios flitted through her mind of all the ways things might get better, or worse.


    Foremost was obviously, if I''d just kill her because she''d lost my interest. A close second was the fear that this may be coming to an end, and I''d be forcing her to do something even worse in exchange. Whoring jumped immediately to her mind, which I found unfair to assume of me. It''s not like I really ever wanted more people thinking vile things around me at all times.


    My favorite by far was the small part of her that had gotten used to our little walks and was sad to see them go. I wasn''t lying about her being a messed-up little masochist. Even the back-and-forth we''d developed had become somewhat routine. Even counting the killings, she''d had a lot more fire in her when I''d started this. Nowadays she was mostly just pleading with me instead of spouting pointless threats.


    It''d been a fun little diversion, but the truth was, it really was coming to an end after tomorrow. I''d seen the glimpse of it in Soran''s mind, unsure whether he''d chosen to show it to me or it was just a happy coincidence, but it was there, and he was powerful enough that I didn''t doubt it for a moment. It made for a nice vacation, really, just waiting for that date to roll around.


    "So...you do not jest? There is no lingering compel or stipulation or demand you would levy on me?" she asked.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "I wouldn''t mind if you could lay off the killing. It is kind of a huge waste of time." She started to respond and I cut her off. "I know you''ve promised me a death more painful and eternal than ever before, yes, yes. Just pretend you did that. I did you a solid, you entertained me for a few weeks, I think we''re all even without anyone needing to die."


    Her mouth closed, and then opened, and then closed again, where it stayed for several seconds as she mulled it over. I could see her thinking that''s fair, but also not willing to let me get off without something brutal and devastating as her public humiliation had been. But then, of course, technically I had saved her life, and I''d also allowed her to vent her frustrations on killing me as much as she wanted...ineffective though that may be¡­


    It was fun to watch her go. I hadn''t spent a lot of time with Karu ever, and for the longest time she''d insisted on filling her head with that obnoxious jingle whenever we were together. Athan tended to think things through in a sort of backwards, goal-oriented way: Start at where things should be, and trace backwards from there to figure out what course of action to take. Karu, on the other hand, was much more experience-based; she had a lot of things she''d tackled in her past already, and tended to focus on comparing those experiences to any current situation she faced.


    It was a fun mind to follow because I got a bunch of vignettes as a bonus. As she sat here and pondered, her mind flickered back through other difficult decisions she''d had to make, her time at basic, signing her first hunting contract, her apprehension at choosing to clear a technopath''s lair solo. And as they flashed by, I got to see through these little windows into her past, like a clip show episode that didn''t suck.


    But in the end, she just nodded tersely at me, resolving that whatever trick I was going to pull, she''d deal with it when it arose. It did her no good to antagonize me, and...honestly, what we both knew from the start, with her brain in the palm of my hand anyway, it wasn''t like she could refuse or stop me if I wanted anyway.


    And then she sat opposite me, watching me, just thinking.


    Waiting.


    Staring.


    This was how we''d spent most of the last few weeks. At first I thought she was just doing her righteous crusader duty to make sure I wasn''t setting orphanages on fire or anything...which was a ridiculous notion, as setting orphans themselves on fire got much better results. But as the endless hours passed, and I got more and more bored with just eavesdropping on the people around us, I found myself turning in on her more often.


    And of course, found her thoughts all focused on me. Most of them unflattering, and most of those well-deserved. But also a question haunted her which she wanted more than anything to ask, but also knew she would never get a straight answer for. It was driving her crazy, and frankly, driving me crazy as well.


    Because I wasn''t quite clear on the answer myself. In fact, it was quite plausible I''d invented this whole ''pet'' thing just to provide a dismissive explanation for it, so I wouldn''t have to think about it too hard. But then blondie over there ruins it all by thinking about it hard enough for the both of us.


    So. Why did I save her?


    At the time I hadn''t even really given it any thought. She''d been fighting alongside us, she''d been willing to fight and die against the XPCA for the sake of Athan, Lia, Moon, Tem, and Whitney. Or, at least, willing to benefit them while she worked out her own psycho urges. But whatever her reason, she was part of the team, and after she and I had been saved by the skin of our teeth, it seemed only natural to continue treating her as such.


    Being ''on a team'' was kind of a new and neat concept for me, and it was just a wee bit unnerving how easily I''d found myself falling for it. But that was ridiculous, wasn''t it? Neither she nor I were fully on-board team Athan, because I was just doing it for fun and she was a psycho bitch.


    Except I''d been in her head for a while now and she didn''t seem like a psycho bitch to me, and I didn''t seem like I was just doing it all for the giggles either. It was a little frustrating that both of us were all wrapped up in these personae we''d cultivated carefully, and neither of us even had the fun of having our disguises pulled off by Athan so he could admire the bare naked beauty of the ''real'' us underneath. Instead we were the girls who sat at the edge of the party until our costumes got a little too hot and then took them off, apparently.


    I held my face in my hands. I was overthinking this. Like I overthought pretty much everything, pretty much always. Horrible habit to have, picked it up when I had nothing to do but think for a bit there. ''Course, at the same time, it was keeping me from having to address the real question, so I guess that was productive.


    I''d just about resolved to get one of our neighbors irrationally pissy at her husband for not doing something he''d promised to do months ago when Karu broke my little reverie by speaking.


    "If we are at the end of this...whatever this has been...I feel as though I would be remiss should I not at least ask the burning question."


    I moved my hands off my face and looked at her. Prim and poised, despite the punky clothing I''d put her in. Her hair was growing in again, and looked like a miniature blonde version of those british guards'' hats, just hair kinda going in all directions in the general shape of a head. Her eyes blazed green at me, and I went back behind my hands.


    "I told you. A thousand and one times now, it''d be more boring with you dead than alive. I only saved you so I could have my way with you, that''s all."


    She smiled grimly. "Saga, as slick as you think you are, you consistently underestimate something."


    "Oh?" I swiveled to match her gaze. "And what''s that? Your rigid mental discipline? Your piercing insight?"


    "No," she smiled. "Your own powers. We have been paired for weeks now, in near-constant contact, and your powers are more of a two-way street than you believe." I frowned at her, but her smile wasn''t mocking or triumphant, it was stony, still, resigned. "As much as you have seen me pondering this question in my head, so have I seen it turning over in yours. And with our parting soon at hand...I urge you to think it over."


    "And why would I want to do that?" I asked, standing up to leave. "It was clearly a mistake."


    "You say that because you believe me better off dead?"


    "I say that because this conversation would be skipped if you were."


    I reached the dining room, as small but packed with affluence as the rest of the house, and heard the clicking of boots as Karu followed me. I closed the door, and it reopened in my face, with her standing in it.


    "Take a hint," I told her.


    "I do not see why it is so difficult for you to answer one simple question. To face one simple question, even."


    "I do what I want, and I don''t wanna do it. How hard can that be to understand?"


    "It is hard to understand because you are making it exceedingly so. Look at you, storming through the house like a child fleeing from chores. I thought you considered yourself a bastion of mental fortitude, and yet faced with this--"


    She cut off as I clenched a fist at her, her train of thought suddenly derailed by my powers. She sputtered stupidly for a moment, glaring at me in frustration.


    "Childish," she spat.


    "What of it, huh? Child is the last thing I was in this shitty world, I figure the world owes me a childhood still."


    "Do not change the subject and mark yourself a victim. We are discussing--"


    I cut her off again, and in turn she punched me in the side of the head, dropping me painfully through a chair. Something cracked, and I think it was not the chair.


    But I wasn''t in the mood for playing her games right now. When she came at me again, I dropped her consciousness from under her, watching her stagger as the urge to sleep overwhelmed her. She blinked blearily at me.


    And in falling forward, thrust her head out so she''d slam her crown into my spine, breaking something else and the spell I had on her. She came to in an instant, still on top of me, and got her fists punching.


    It felt like an hour the two of us rolled through tablecloths and shattered expensive vases and glassware on each other, almost always with her doing the pummelling, barking the questions at me, while I just tried to get one second to myself to put her down.


    Because fuck her, if she was asking why I saved her dumb blonde ass by beating the hell out of me, the answer was obviously going to be ''oh, my mistake.''


    But it wasn''t an hour, and I didn''t kill her. It was maybe ten minutes, and by the end of it she was punched out, panting for breath, cuts and bruises all across her arms, with one crimson gash on her cheek where she''d caught a piece of glass. She glared and smoldered, chest rising and falling with dramatic movements most men could only dream of. And while she''d stopped, while she was tired and sore and cut up and her arms hung heavy, her eyes never stopped burning.


    Me, I was practicing my home DIY, making a nest out of a perfectly ordinary household table, and several liters of homemade blood. It was a work in progress, but I thought it''d make a good conversation starter.


    "Why, do you do that?" she hissed through clenched teeth.


    "Do what?"


    "Your stupid jokes. Narrating your own life like everything in it is a mere fucking joke all of the goddamn time. You observe nothing with reverence, least of all your own being."


    "You heard that?"


    "I hear most things you think, I informed you."


    I frowned at her, honestly a bit embarrassed. Talking still wasn''t exactly natural for me, so it was a pretty solid filter to make sure only the best of my work made it out for the public to enjoy. The works in my head were exactly that for a reason.


    "Again," she hissed. "Again you are doing it."


    "It''s not something I turn off, okay?"


    "Just be honest with me for one minute of your goddamned existence and tell me what I want to know."


    "WHY," I shouted at her, physically and mentally, seeing her flinch at it. "DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?"


    She seemed unsure herself for just a moment, and then grinned, looking a proper blood-streaked maniac. What I saw in her mind pissed me off all over again.


    "YES," I shouted. "I CAN BE SERIOUS. You''ve PISSED me off, and now I''m SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF. Keep it up if you want your head caved in, because I''m really close, you understand? You keep pushing me, and pushing me, and pushing me, and yeah, I''ll get pissed. So fuck off!"


    She clenched and unclenched her fists, her arms too heavy to lift, but the smile never left her lips, triumphant that she''d finally gotten anything out of me. Smug, cocky, little bitch, I could show her just what kind of pain she was calling down. She thought a leash was humiliating? Next time she''d be naked, with the fucking leash sticking out of--


    "I need to know," she said, her triumph fading back into seriousness "...because it means everything to me."


    "That''s stupid," I told her.


    She glared at me. "I agree. But that does not change the fact that once upon a time, I believed all Exhumans villainous and craven, until I met one who was both honorable and courageous, and he showed me this by challenging me--" she gestured down at the ensemble she was gussied up in "--and by showing me mercy when I did not deserve it."


    Oh.


    "The notions that he awoke in me through his actions terraformed my entire world, replacing preconceptions I had held since birth. Eventually, I changed to accept the new facts I could not account for in my old model. It was painful, but liberating, and I have never been so happy nor so free. Yet now, there is another who has spared my life, whom I considered irredeemably evil, whose very thoughts I share, and yet, I know not why she chose to do so."


    Oh. Goddamn.


    "So you see. I wish to know if I have another revelation coming, or another mid-life crisis, or catharsis...or if it truly all just is randomness and games for you. I wish to know very badly, and though I am loathe to...open up to you, as it were, I do not believe there is any other way for me to get my answer."


    Well. Shit.


    I looked at her, all blazing with passion and fire and...maybe for the first time, even had a little respect for it. A teensy amount, if any. I''d liked who Karu had become since her transformation, comparatively, and yet, I was still completely blindsided that she was this introspective about it. Most people just changed gradually, bumping along life and having their edges worn down until they were a comfortable shape. Karu...didn''t do things that way.


    The crazy bitch.


    I leaned back into my nest of table-rubble and thought at her, spending just a moment to really ponder...why. If she could open up to me, I could give her that, at least, I thought.


    But in the end, both of us were left looking at each other with shaking heads.


    "Sorry," I said, at last.


    "I understand."


    "I''d like to know, too," I admitted. "I just...did it. I guess."


    She smiled, and to my surprise, extended me one of her arms, heavy and battered though it was. I took it and she pulled me up easily.


    "Do not apologize, and do not worry. There is earnesty and honor in acting without thought."


    "I know," I sighed. "Athan does it all the time."


    "That he does. Perhaps if there is any concern to be had, it should be that you wind up exactly like him."


    She was grinning at me, so this time I punched her in the head, though it only made her laugh. What a fucking joke, me, winding up like Athan.


    I laughed, and Karu laughed. But in the open mind we shared, the both of us also thought.

 344. 2252, Present Day. San Francisco. Athan.

    I was, I realized, saved. Like a failed acrobat being caught by a net, it wasn''t my own fortitude or skill or even dumb luck which prevented me from crashing, it was deliberate intent, placed there with caution and foresight, and the none-too-assuring familiarity with me that I might very well need saving.


    After everything that had happened in Vegas, I''d been spiraling downhill. I''d felt directionless, powerless, aimless. And what''s worse, I was all set up to reside in that little tent and remain so, with no idea which way to go, and with myself a failure. Every breath I took that didn''t push me towards avenging Alyssa or finding Lia or rescuing Moon just another failure. And I was setting myself up to just be buried by my failures, to remain incapacitated there forever, until it seemed like even trying would be pointless and it would be better just to forget.


    But I never got there. For one, that might have taken years before I''d turned old and gross enough to pass as a washed-up has-been hobo, and for two, I wasn''t alone. I was with AEGIS. I was rescued.


    Every day for the last few days now, she''d forced me out of the tent, telling me if I were going to do nothing, I could at least do it outside. She made me eat, she made me see the sights and learn my environs, she made me, in my own words, sit and look at some goddamn trees.


    When I''d last hospitalized Tem, lashing out at her on accident through a flashback, Lia and AEGIS had dragged my sorry ass to an arboretum and reminded me of all I''d done to survive in the Canadian wilderness, of how simple life could be, and how, if I ever felt overwhelmed or directionless, I could always stop, think, and look at some goddamn trees while I figured it out.


    It was practically a joke by this point, but damn if those trees didn''t get me.


    There''d been a few more outings of note, but all of them disappeared into obscurity one day when I was looking at a photo she''d taken of the two of us. Or, more specifically, that she''d asked a random passer-by to take of the two of us.


    "What are you looking at?" she asked me, a little happy but a little wary, sort of her default at the moment while she was helping a headcase out who was on the verge of a breakdown.


    I said nothing, not hearing her, because I was staring at the device. It wasn''t until she crowded in, her cheek pressing against mine that I responded. With a surprised outburst which sounded mostly like ''yark''.


    "Yark!" I shouted, as her cheek pressed against mine.


    "Oh I liked that photo," she commented. "Did you have fun there?"


    "Uh, yeah. Sure," I said, holding my chest as my heart slammed. "Sorry."


    "No need to apologize," she grinned. "Sorry to surprise you, but you were spacing off there. What were you scrutinizing so hard on that picture? Me?"


    "No."


    "My cleavage?" she teased, fingering the neckline of her dress.


    "AEGIS, please," I swallowed, ripping my attention back to the photo. "Something about this photo...reminds me of something."


    She settled in next to me, making me very aware of how long her legs were and how hot the skin of her rump was as it slid next to me. It was a good thing I was already distracted, or else I''d have found her very distracting. "You''ve never been to Pier 39 though."


    "Yeah, or San Francisco," I agreed.


    "May I?" she asked, and I nodded. She lifted the tablet from my hands and stared at it, frowning slightly.


    The two of us looked small and center in the picture, our volunteer cameraman stepping way too far back and filling almost half the frame with the sun-washed wood of the pier as the two of us stood laughing. She''d told me to smile, and when I''d given her lip about how I wouldn''t or couldn''t or some measure of mopey bitching, she''d taken to giving my butt a good pinch right before the camera went off.


    There, under one of the many blue-and-white signs reading ''Pier 39'', was photographic evidence that I could, in fact, smile. As long as someone was around to play with my butt and laugh about it with me, I guessed.


    "The crab shack maybe?" she asked. "You have those in LA?"


    "Probably but...dunno, that''s not it. It feels like something I saw in a dream, something that seemed so important at the time but now...now I can''t even remember why." I joined her in frowning at the photo in concentration. "This might sound crazy but can we go back?"


    "Of course," she said, her face brightening in an instant. "I was just about to say it was time to get up and out. Are you all ready?"


    I obviously wasn''t, I didn''t have my exoframe on, but she was just being polite. I hobbled outside and found, with a shake of my head, Whitney asleep in our ''yard'', thickly bundled in a few layers of shirts, sweater, and sweatshirt...and shorts. The girl was impossible, and I just sighed and shrugged at AEGIS, who had basically the same reaction, but brought the girl inside while I put my legs on.


    It was about ten when we got there, way earlier than last time, which wasn''t surprising given that we''d headed straight over instead of AEGIS dragging us in a very organized, yet exhaustive tour of All Things Worth Seeing on the way over. As we arrived, she kept shooting me sideways glances, like she wasn''t sure if it was a good thing I had my very own desire to go and be somewhere, or if the compulsion drawing me here was an early sign of madness.


    Honestly I wasn''t sure myself either, it felt unnatural the way the...the...the something had lodged in my brain. It wasn''t like being under a compel...it was just¡­


    I got distracted seeing the blue and white signs again. ''Pier 39'', like it was a brand, the name of some ritzy mall or something.


    I mean, it was cute enough, I guess, but it was just a tourist attraction in the end. Some old disused pier that''d been converted into a little shopping area. Ice cream, sea-salt taffy, some overpriced restaurants and shops selling seashell-everything. As far as I could tell the only real attraction of the place was the pack of sea lions that liked to live in the harbor nearby and bask on floating platforms near the pier.


    Which was pretty cool considering they were an endangered species and all, but they also were just kinda sitting there. I could see why they''d be endangered.


    But none of that brought back that sensation like staring at the sign did. I tilted my head looking at it, covered one of my eyes, then the other. Tried to catch it in the corner of my eye, anything.


    "Okay, you officially look like a confused puppy now," AEGIS commented.


    I covered the bottom half of the sign from my eyes. ''Pier'', it now read, helpfully. Then the top half.


    ''39''.


    I stared at it.


    "What?" she asked.


    "Thirty nine. The number thirty nine. Not pier thirty nine, the number thirty nine."


    "What about it?"


    I turned to her, and her eyes widened at seeing my face. "Number thirty nine. The fifth at ten."


    "What is that?" she asked, reaching for her hair to tug.


    I might have sounded crazy but I wasn''t, I was sure of it now. "What day is it?"


    "Um, the fifth. The fifth?" she echoed.


    "At ten...AM? The fifth at ten?"


    "Yes?"


    "Number thirty nine, the fifth at ten. That''s here, and now."


    I snapped my head around, looking for anything. For Soran, mostly, but...for anything.


    "Are...are you...okay?" she asked.


    "Those words. That''s something Soran told me before he threw me here. He told me to be here now. He knew it would work, that''s his power. He knew it would stick in my head, and by telling me that, I''d come back here."


    "Oh...kay¡­? But um¡­"


    I froze. I felt it. It was here, I knew it.


    "A...than?"


    "Be...be right back," I said, trying to get my head straight. I took a running step as fast as I could, and then realized immediately that was a terrible idea while wearing an exoframe. I just about jumped a whole block in a stride, and barely missed crashing into someone on re-entry.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    AEGIS landed next to me, matching me step-for-step. "Athan, what the fuck?" she shouted at me, as the woman I''d almost hit stared at the two of us, cradling her purse as she fled.


    "She''s here...this way," I said, and then found myself being held by my wrist. The girl holding it was frowning deeply at me, her electric-yellow eyes filled with worry. "Sorry," I muttered. "But...please trust me. It''s Saga."


    The hand on my wrist held tight for another moment before letting go, and then both of us darted off like VTOLs breaking hover. In single file, we ripped down the edge of the street, covering a block with every stride.


    I bounded higher to clear a red light, sending us soaring in an arc over the traffic below, when Saga finally caught ''sight'' of me. Everyone in the street winced as she shouted her excitement at us.


    [ATHAN!]


    "Jesus, stop yelling," I muttered back at her through a grin.


    [I know you missed me, but you don''t have to call me Jesus.]


    "Saga, just shut up and wait, I''m almost there."


    [Well what''s the fun--]


    She stopped because I landed next to her, kicking up a cloud of grit and freshly-smashed asphalt. She had exactly one moment to look me up and down, take in my exoframe and leg, before I picked her up and wrapped her in a hug, crushing her tiny frame against me as I whooped and spun her.


    "Gah! Ack! A-than! Stop! It!" she choked out. "My leash!"


    "Your what?" I asked. But just then something solid crashed into the two of us, and I''d have fallen if my auto-gyros didn''t catch us. I blinked and found Karu, uncomfortably close, her face bright, bright red, her hair growing out enough to be ''short'' instead of ''shaved''. And her lips to be inches from mine.


    This time it was my turn to say things like ''gah!'', as I tried to stumble away, succeeding only in dragging the two of them with me and being saved by the auto-gyro again.


    "Hullo, Ashton," she mumbled.


    "H-hi, Karu," I said, stumbling back another step that she took with me. Both girls were basically on top of me in my arms, pressed against me entirely. Entirely.


    "You kinda...caught my leash," Saga muttered as she fumbled behind my back, and I realized that in spinning the two of us, I''d entangled all three of us somehow, a fact AEGIS hadn''t hesitated to figure out as she was now bodily separating us and untwisting individuals to undo the knot we were all a part of.


    Of course, that ultimately just led to more questions than answers once we were all separated again. Karu was blushing harder than ever now, Saga was bearing a grin so evil it''d twirl your moustache, and AEGIS just walked up and closed my mouth for me with a clop like a coconut, a little more sharply than necessary.


    "You''re staring," she informed me.


    "No, I...yes I...Karu...what are you wearing?" I asked.


    Her arms crossed over her chest and she shuffled her knees together uncomfortably, which really just made her look duck-footed and added to the illusion of her legs going on forever.


    I''d seen her in casual wear and formal attire and ass-kicking gear, but never trendy. And she pulled off trendy well. Holy shit, did she pull off trendy well. The plunging v-neck, the sheer black atop it, the artfully-torn jeans showing just a little more skin than was reasonable.


    AEGIS closed my mouth for me even harder this time, and I rubbed my jaw.


    "Hey, if you''re gonna spank it to her later, you can imagine the part where I made her put it on," Saga said, her eyebrows waggling at me. "You can pretend I was naked at the time if it helps."


    "Well it''s been good seeing you," AEGIS said, steering me around the other way. "We''ll catch up later, bye!"


    "Okay but seriously why is she...why are you wearing a leash?" I asked.


    She stared at me, and then stared at Saga, so I looked to Saga as well. As much as I could. Jesus, they were like, right there.


    "Oh, that was just for show," Saga said, reaching over and unclipping the collar. "Good girl. I set you free."


    Karu seemed about ready to either die from shame, or kill Saga out of it, but instead settled for extending an arm with a stiff movement in my direction. It took me a moment to realize I was supposed to take it, and we exchanged a very awkward handshake.


    "Ashton, I am relieved to know you are well," she said. And then her face darkened. "Although...wait...I was infuriated with you, was I not?"


    "Uh," I said, suddenly aware that my hand was locked in her grip. I might die here. Although...that might make them the last thing I saw, which wasn''t the worst thing in the world.


    "I was!" she shouted, drawing looks to which she now seemed immune as she heated up. "Your decision-making and incompetence led to my injury at the critical moment. It is because of your foolhardiness and lack of foresight that I was shot and thrown from a moving vehicle. And this is how you greet me afterwards?" she asked, palm moving to cover the...deepest of her cleavage.


    "Sorry," I said. "Really I...I am sorry."


    "You do not act it!" My arm in her grip was wrenched downwards, my fighting instinct to turn and the self-stabilizing of the auto-gyro at ends, making me stagger forward half a step instead. Her green eyes blazed at me. "This humiliation, this shame...this was your fault and doing, you should be made to take responsibility--"


    "Alright, alright, enough fun and games," Saga said, stepping between us. "Karu, sweetie, you just know that if you''ve got someone to blame, it''s me. Pretty much true in pretty much every situation. So let the poor boy go, most of his blood isn''t in his brain right now anyway."


    Past Saga I could see Karu give me another smoldering glare, but then, to my surprise, she relented, and I could stand again. I wasn''t sure quite when Saga had learned to de-escalate a situation but the fact she could worried me slightly.


    "So uh," AEGIS said, as the silence drew on. "We''re all together again. Yay?"


    "No, not quite," Saga said, making a gesture like she was checking a watch. "Give it...another minute."


    "Another minute for what?" Karu asked. "I would prefer we retreat to a private are as soon as possible so that I might burn these clothes."


    "Don''t do that," I said in alarm. AEGIS hit me, while Saga cackled.


    "Be that as it may," she continued "they are impractical for whatever should come next. I daresay you are already enacting a plan?" she cocked her head at me and put her arms on her hips, before frowning at my face and remembering to put them back on her chest.


    "Uh, a plan?" I asked.


    Karu sighed enormously and turned to AEGIS. "My apologies. Perhaps it was optimistic of me to hope to get anything of use out of him at the moment. I had no idea how easy it would be to disable his entire capability for conscious thought."


    "Hey," I argued, but as that was about the extent of my argument, I couldn''t say she was wrong.


    "Honestly I''m just taking notes," AEGIS shrugged. "I think my next dress is going to have a little more black sheer in it. It looks nice on you, though."


    "Thank you?" Karu asked.


    AEGIS shrugged again. "We don''t...actually...have a plan at the moment. Athan was...not coping well with¡­" her voice lowered like I wouldn''t hear if she did. "...with failing against the XPCA, and with losing track of Lia."


    Karu frowned and straightened, suddenly seeming a lot more dominant as she turned on me. "You gave up?" she cracked.


    "No, I was...I just¡­" I bleated. My eyes went to the ground while I tried to put together useful words. "I didn''t know what to do."


    "So you did nothing? Ashton...I...have I taught you nothing?"


    I muttered an apology. When she put it so simply, I just felt terrible. AEGIS started to fend her off a little, but Saga interrupted.


    "She''s here," she said. "She''s on her way now."


    "Who?" Karu asked.


    "You''ll see. In about...five...four...three¡­"


    Saga continued counting down while the rest of us spun like prairie dogs, but as she reached zero¡­


    Well, nothing continued to happen.


    "Right there!" Saga said, pointing. "There, in the grey."


    I looked over and thought my heart stopped for a moment. And then I thought...no, that couldn''t be. But it looked like her. But...maybe, I was mistaken? But Saga''d pointed her out.


    I took off running, forgetting again that for me, that meant tearing up the ground and hitting ten miles and hour in half a step. The hooded girl looked up at the sudden crunching and whirring of machinery that I was, even though she was a few blocks away.


    And I saw her face, and the familiar mess of brown hair framing it, and I knew. And my legs couldn''t carry me fast enough once I knew.


    She squealed loud enough to deafen me as she crashed into my arms, her excitement feeling like it could vibrate my entire body through conduction alone. Her hair somehow got simultaneously in my mouth and eyes, tears ran down both of our cheeks, a salty stringy mess, impossible to sort out whose were whose.


    In a moment AEGIS was on us, jumping and yelling with us, and a few minutes later, Karu and Saga showed up in the periphery, pulled into the mosh by Lia''s unstoppable exuberance.


    I was reminded how, just a few minutes ago, I''d reunited with the two girls and that meeting had a thousandth of the energy of this reunion, as we all, by infection or by force, hugged and bounced and laughed in one tangled mess of bodies and arms on a street corner in San Francisco on a balmy Wednesday morning.


    The locals looked at us like we were crazy. Some smiled, most gave us curious glances as they passed by. Some took the opposite side of the street.


    And none of us cared. I had Lia again, in my arms, flesh and blood, and I''d never let her go again. I think we all felt that on some level; Lia was the energy and the love that united all of us, the purest and best among us, the heart of the group, in more ways than one.


    And she was here, as though by magic. Safe. Sound. In her own slipskin, in one piece, not in tatters like AEGIS or myself, nor in garish garb like the others. Somehow, through it all, she''d been the one to hold onto all of herself.


    It was too long we all stood there, Lia making the rounds to make sure she gave each of us our own personalized hug, complete with babbling and ranting and too many unanswered questions, and as we all talked over each other and stories came out, it became apparent we needed a place to be other than a street corner.


    "Food," Lia suggested. "And then catching up, and then planning, and then all the stories of everything everyone did. Sound good?"


    We all agreed. Because of course we did. Even if I didn''t know everything that''d gone on in all the girls'' lives to that point, I could tell by their faces that each of them had been adrift like I was the last few weeks, and having Lia back, having a person who could crank out some order, whip out a plan like that with no prep, with no planning, and having it be exactly what we needed¡­


    Yeah, it sounded good. It sounded great. Amazing, even.


    I had to stop before I got too superlative. But as she whipped out a new mobile she''d gotten from somewhere and read off places that were near us and open, ticking off food preferences and expected prices and relative privacy, she had to stop in the middle of it.


    Because I interrupted her by hugging her again. She laughed as she patted my back awkwardly, her voice asking ''what''s all this for?'' even though she knew the answer.


    It was greedy of me, and selfish, and stupid, I knew. But for that minute I just needed to hold my sister and to know that she was alright.


    That we were all alright.


    Things hadn''t been alright for me in a while now, and I needed all the help I could get to convince my brain that was changing. Lia was back, things were going to be alright.


    And more importantly, maybe, I was back. I was going to be alright.

 345. 2252, Present Day. San Francisco. Athan.

    Lia finished buttering her waffles and then began to cut the stack. She always did it in the same order -- butter, then cut, then syrup. To do otherwise was madness, she assured me, along with several other arguments about butter adherence and syrup distribution which honestly all went over my head.


    But it was almost enough to make me stop and hug her again. This was Lia, my sister, my only sister, sitting next to me, chatting away and buttering and cutting her waffles like it was a weekend morning at my parents'' house, and we''d just been called to the table after Saturday morning cartoons.


    This wasn''t my parent''s house, and these weren''t my parents. Instead there was a hunter, squirming a little bit and glancing around to see if people were ogling her exposed back or nearly-as-exposed front, who was picking at a plate of nachos with her long fingers. There was an AI, who seemed to be devouring the company of those around her, beaming as she watched us happy and together. The code-X, whose eyes watered and chin trembled as the sensation of people eating around her seemed to throw her into barely-controlled convulsions of ecstacy at times.


    And me, with a burger. A pretty decent one, though it was definitely a lot more medium-well than medium-rare, but at least the provolone was melty and delicious.


    Karu was finishing telling us her quarter of the events, and from the sound of it, the least exciting by far, though she was also taking advantage of Saga''s current blissed-out status to editorialize as much as possible. But reading between the lines, I still picked out the necessary details -- the two of them had been personally saved by Soran the same way I had, thrown together where, as I assume Soran planned, Saga would treat Karu''s wounds, and by peeking into his mind, would know of this date of this meeting to make it.


    Just like he''d told me the riddle of Pier 39 to make sure I was here. That just left Lia.


    "Um, I was just passing by," she said, covering a mouthful of waffles to talk. She swallowed and then continued. "I was on my way to Japan, actually, where I assumed you''d be at least," she nodded at me. "Not a lot of flights from New Eden. Not commercial anyway."


    "Why would I be in Japan?" I asked.


    "Moon?" she stared at me. "Really?"


    "Well...yeah, her," I agreed. "But uh,"


    "But uh, what?" she asked, her eyebrows knitting. "I just assumed, gee, what damsel in distress would my brother go galavanting off to charge in and rescue? And she was on the top of my list. You didn''t even think about going after her?"


    "I did, no I did," I said. "It''s just...I also¡­"


    "He was worried about you," AEGIS clarified.


    Lia gave my shoulder a little punch. "You dummy," she said, going back to her food. "I can take care of myself."


    "I know you can. And...after all the stuff you did in New Eden, I don''t think anyone could ever say you couldn''t. I wasn''t...worrying about you, exactly¡­"


    "He shut down and became a useless turd," AEGIS clarified. I glared at her and she gave me a little smile and wave. I took a bite at my burger.


    Juicy hot meat shattered into streaks of grease which dribbled across my tongue. It crumbled, the more savory insides binding together just a bit more than the sweeter, seared brown of the burger. A playful pickle, swimming in ketchup and their own briny sauce co-mingling--


    I just about shuddered out of my seat before I slammed my mind shut to Saga, finding it very hard to blink and breathe and swallow as I focused entirely on closing off her influence.


    Also kinda...tasted like...nachos? I glanced over at Karu and found her similarly entranced. This meal was gonna be really weird if all of us were having a hard time keeping Saga out of it.


    "Well," Lia said, talking with her mouth full again behind her hand. "I was gonna ask what you guys were doing next but I guess we''re all decided then?"


    She was asking us, but mostly asking AEGIS, who seemed the only other person at the table not having issues of some kind staying in their seat. AEGIS, apparently ignorant of everything going on around her, nodded seriously. "I think just having a direction is critical at the juncture. Given that we know where Jack, Tower, Steffie, and Rito are, and that Moon is in considerably more danger than them, I''d say she makes an ideal target."


    "What happened to the others again?" I asked. AEGIS glared at me. "What, I was eating!"


    "You were drooling over something," she agreed, giving Karu a glance. I wasn''t sure that correcting her would really help.


    "Jack wanted Steffie to be safe," Lia repeated. "They dropped me off near here, and headed for...somewhere in South America, I think. Tower said:" she dropped her voice in an approximation of the big guy, an action that also necessitated she swing her arms while speaking "''I''m no good at thinking or searching. If you find something that needs doing, give me a call.'' And then he left with Jack and Steffie. Rito chose to stay in New Eden."


    "Great," I said, kicking a bare foot crawling up my leg that I think belonged to Saga. "Well it''s not like Rito and Jack would have been really helpful in a pack of the XPCA''s most wanted trying to flee the country or anything."


    "Ahhmmm," Karu muttered, propping herself up and sitting straight, her eyes slightly unfocused. "Oh. Hmm," she clarified, flushing.


    "What is in that food?" AEGIS asked.


    "Nothing," Karu coughed, thumping her chest a few times and creating some tremors I would not have minded watching forever. "Erm, my apologies. Uh, but what I meant to say was that, ahem, I might perhaps have a lead for us. We require surreptitious transport, and information on IkaCo. I have a contact who may be able to provide us with both."


    I frowned at her. "Your dad again?"


    She nodded.


    "Last time we went out to visit him, the two of you just ignored each other completely over a round of golf. He wouldn''t talk, you wouldn''t compromise, and it was just a huge waste of time. What makes you think it''ll be different this time?"


    "For starters, as it were, I believe we should circumvent him this time, and attack his resources directly. As his former protege, I am fully capable of accessing his systems, and I believe it fully within my capabilities to browse through his private files and book us passage before he is any the wiser."


    "Well that does have a better ring to it," I agreed. "Anything that doesn''t involve dealing with him directly...especially now that we''re all kinda...criminals."


    Karu threw back her head and laughed. "Foolish boy, Father is more criminal than you ever shall be. Worry less about associating with him as one, for he commits criminal acts and wheels and deals with the sort on the regular."


    "Okay," Lia jumped in, "but why don''t we instead just fly to Japan directly from here? It''s gotta be cheaper than doubling back to DC."


    "Not necessarily," AEGIS said. "We''ve got to consider that anything that requires an ID scan would definitely flag any of us. I don''t think the same trick I pulled with the hospital would work -- if their systems go down, they''re not going to let us fly anyway. We''d either need to somehow change our records in the public database without them knowing, intercept the ID request and send our own fake response--"


    "Or charter a private flight with nobody doing scans," Lia added.


    "Which is exactly what going through my father would provide," Karu nodded. "As I said, he is frequently in the habit of providing for and meeting with less than scrupulous folk."


    I put up the wall in my mind and ate another few bites of my burger. Somewhere on the other side of it, I could feel Saga still swimming in a sea of meat and juices, but at least most of it was blocked away. For once, it was possible that us all going out to celebrate together wasn''t the right choice.


    I bolstered my thoughts by focusing on the situation at hand. It did seem pretty backwards to head to DC instead of Japan considering we were pretty much right between the two right now. And while I understood Karu''s point, and her dad''s resources were certainly something it''d be nice to have, it also seemed like another tangle I wasn''t sure we should be spinning at the moment.


    But putting aside the issue of the flights and IDs right now, which despite her protests, I was sure AEGIS could come up with a way around, given enough time...there still remained the issue of what we were doing, overall. Japan was a whole freakin'' country, and while it looked small on a globe, I''d now travelled enough to realize that even the smaller US states were friggin'' huge if you were just wandering aimlessly through them.


    Kaori would be one Japanese girl somewhere in the whole island nation, kept somewhere secretive by her father, who had essentially unlimited resources. Add to that, we were all fugitives who''d have to lay low over there as well, and the fact that none of us spoke or read the language, and the simple plan of ''fly over there and find her'' sounded completely impossible.


    "Do you think your dad would have more specific info on where to find Kaori?" I asked Karu.


    She thought for a moment, pausing only to drag Saga back into her seat when the latter nearly slid out of it onto the floor.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "I believe that he would not be privy to such details, nor would he have need of them, but he would have information which would lead us to the data we seek. It is known that my father is in IkaCo''s pocket, as it were, and so I would expect he is well-invested in keeping tabs on their on-goings and furtive maneuverings. He would not associate himself publicly with such an entity unless he was certain they were no PR disaster waiting to implode."


    "Kinda nice he can be counted on to be paranoid then, huh?"


    "I do not find anything about him ''kinda nice'' or otherwise, but I agree it is to our advantage for once."


    I turned to my sister, who was now sitting amongst the ruins of her defeated waffles, holding her tummy with triumph. She seemed completely unaffected by Saga, and I wondered if that was some mental discipline she''d hardened, or if Saga didn''t like waffles or something.


    Until I remembered that Saga still held her under a compel, which was a whole fucking disaster still going on between them. I realized, despite everything happening to her, Saga must be spending all her energy and focus on keeping Lia securely walled out, so that nothing happened between the two of them. I gave a sobering sigh at how even something so simple as this meal was mired in the screw-ups of our past.


    "What do you think?" I asked her the question I''d meant to several moments ago.


    "Of...the plan?" she asked.


    I nodded. "I think you''ve proven yourself pretty capable of forging a plan? How''s this one sound?"


    She eyed me steadily for a moment before shrugging. "I dunno, honestly. I''m not like, some super-genius, y''know," she tilted her head towards AEGIS.


    "Well given what you did in New Eden, I just thought¡­"


    "Thought what? Finish your sentences, bro."


    "I thought you were sort of coming into your own on making genius plans and shit. Isn''t that what you did?"


    She smiled at me, a little condescendingly, and then began dragging her fork through the pool of syrup on her plate, tracing lines which vanished in its own wake. "Dude, all I did was meet some people, get to know them, and then turned what I knew about them on each other and themselves. I''m not, and never will be someone who can run a plan from the other side of the country."


    "That''s not true. You did the whole thing with the decoy for Dragon."


    "And...how''d that end?"


    "Just because it ended badly doesn''t mean it wasn''t a good plan."


    Her brow furrowed like she wasn''t sure what she was hearing. "Uh. Literally the whole point of a plan is for things to go the way you plan them. If they don''t, by definition, your plan sucks. I''m gonna stick to what I know and deal with people -- maybe ask AEGIS if you want numbers run on your scheme."


    I gave AEGIS a little smile and nod but turned back to Lia. "Well of course I was going to ask AEGIS at some point, but right now I was asking you."


    "Well that''s dumb," she said, dropping the fork. "I don''t know. From what I''ve heard, Idris is a really good guy, and also a really awful guy, and I haven''t heard much in the middle. I''ve never met him, I can''t tell you my thoughts on someone I''ve only heard of in rumors."


    "But aside from him, I mean, the plan is to circumvent him if we can."


    Her face scrunched up more and again. "Dude, bro."


    "What?"


    "Take a ding-dang hint, bro. I. Don''t. Know. Why are you pestering me on this?"


    I frowned at her and apologized. "I didn''t mean to pester you...I just...thought, since, y''know you''d done all that stuff in New Eden¡­"


    "What Athan is trying to say," AEGIS cut in, giving my hand a squeeze from where she sat next to me, "is that he missed you, Lia. He''s been with me for weeks now, but the whole time, he''s been worrying about you, and now that you''re back together, he wants to do things with you, even if he''s too much of a dummy to properly communicate his desires. That about right?"


    She looked back and forth between us as Lia''s expression softened, and I realized, she wasn''t wrong.


    "Yeah, I guess. Sorry."


    "Sorry," Lia mumbled back. "Didn''t think of that."


    "For the record, I think it''s a good plan," AEGIS said, her voice still quiet like she was soothing a baby. "We need info on IkaCo badly, and if we have a ringer, we should use her."


    "Thanks, AEGIS," both of us mumbled, and she gave us a final nod as she leaned back, fading out of the conversation through the power of body language.


    "I really did miss you. I was worried sick," I said.


    "But you did nothing," Lia said, frustrated. "Come on, bro. That''s the opposite of you. Usually I have to work my pants off trying to keep you from charging in and doing something moronic, and this time you just...you just...what, exactly?"


    "Do you guys mind if we take a walk?" I asked, rising, my exoframe hissing as it bore my weight. When the others agreed, I took Lia''s hand and walked us outside, where my feet kept going, the two of us headed down the empty sidewalk in the pre-lunch calm of the city on a weekday.


    Before I realized it, we''d already gone several blocks and I hadn''t said a word. Lia still trailed on with me, her hold fingers laced in mine, as both of us watched the ground as we wandered.


    I forced myself to say a few words, and they began to cascade into the thoughts swirling in my head. "It''s just...I''ve been...my life, recently. I feel like...I don''t know. I feel like I''ve been making a lot of wrong decisions recently. Things used to be so simple. I was an Exhuman and then there was the rest of the world. And then I worked for the XPCA, and it was just us, and enemies of the state. But then there were bad people inside the XPCA too, but if I fought them, I was the enemy of the state. And there were good people, enemies of the state, even though I didn''t want to fight them."


    I scratched at my head while I tried to make my stream of consciousness into something comprehensible. "I tried doing nothing too, just went to college, lived an ordinary life, but even that didn''t take. So when I got my powers back, I thought...it was a sign, that I should do and be what everyone always says about me, that I just...do what I think is right, not worrying about the consequences. So I went after Dragon because he''s pure evil...and that was the worst thing I could have done. Now we''re all fugitives, and split up, my leg''s shot off, and Dragon''s in good with the XPCA, and everything''s a mess. And here we are talking again about going off and doing something, and I''m just not sure that what I think is right anymore."


    She squeezed my hand, but said nothing. My wandering thoughts continued, unspoken now, as we kept forward, the sounds of people bustling, cars whipping past us, and somewhere distant, the roar of the sea.


    "I think the last few major decisions I''ve made were mistakes," I said, trying to express myself clearly. "And I don''t want this to be just another one of them. We''ve been lucky so far, honestly, that so many things can go wrong and nobody''s hurt or killed--"


    "Your leg''s gone, bro."


    "Nobody who matters," I shrugged at her. "And I just don''t know...if things will get worse with us chasing after Moon and Tem...or if leaving them is the worst option. They might be fine, she''s with her dad, not some random stranger. And here we''re making plans to steal data and infiltrate and put everyone on the line again."


    She counted on her fingers. "We know he has enforcers on his payroll; he''s already sent them after her before. He knows by now she''s Exhuman, and he knows of her ties with the rest of us. He''ll probably be expecting us, or at least preparing for us, and as a legitimate business in an allied country, we''d be facing the XPCA again."


    "Attacking someone who''s preparing for an Exhuman attack, on his terms, against the XPCA''s resources and more. It seems stupid to do, doesn''t it?"


    "Yeah," she agreed, and we stopped at a red light. "It seems incredibly stupid."


    "So should I stop? Should I be like Jack and just protect the people I love that I already have in my hands?"


    I gave her hand a squeeze again, but she slipped out of my grip and began crossing the street, jaywalking without any oncoming cars. I hesitated for a second before stumbling to catch up.


    "Dunno," she said. "If you did, would you be the same? Do you think those people would be the same people you loved? Do you think you''d be someone worthy of loving?"


    "Would you stop loving me if I quit now?" I asked, alarmed.


    "No. But I think you would."


    I scoffed. "Yeah, because I already love myself so much--"


    She turned on me, her hair bouncing under her hood, but her brown-green eyes steady and level. "You know what it means to stop, right? I means you aren''t going anywhere."


    "...yeah?"


    "That means wherever you are, you stay there. These last few weeks, where have you been? What have you done? Is this somewhere you want to pack up and stay for the rest of your life, mentally?"


    I frowned at her. "I''m only all tortured currently because I''m not sure what I should do, or even can do. If I make a decision--"


    "Then you''ll be haunted by that decision the rest of your life."


    "Well that''s why I''m trying to make the right choice, so it doesn''t haunt me."


    She crossed her arms. "The problem, as I see it, is that most likely, both choices are bad. You''re either giving up on Moon and Tem, or you''re putting the rest of us at risk. Whatever you pick here, you''re going to regret something."


    "So they both suck. So I just lose no matter what--"


    "I wasn''t finished," she said. "My point was, if you stop, that''s it, you''ve stopped. The last decision you made was a bad one, and you get to dwell on that forever. But if you keep moving forward, there will always be more decisions to make. You can redeem your past mistakes, you can put yourself and the world into a better position. If you give up, that''s it, you''re over, enter your initials because that''s the score you''re posting on the leaderboard. But if you keep playing, that''s the only way to win. Even if you have to struggle, even if more bad things happen to you, or me, or any of the others."


    "I can''t just decide to put you all in danger, though," I said, and she sighed.


    "Bro, seriously. Do you have any idea what it means to be the leader?"


    "I never asked to be leader. I don''t even think--"


    "Yeah shut up. Do you think Saga would be following any of the rest of us around? Do you think Karu would listen or confer with any of us? Do you think AEGIS would dedicate herself entirely to just anyone? Heck, I''ve got a pretty cushy setup if I want it, you think I''d just climb down from there for any old dingus?"


    "I don''t want any of you doing all of that for me, though. I want you to be cushy and happy."


    "Well too frickin'' bad, bro. Because you''re my dingus. You''re sitting here torturing yourself about making a decision which might imperil us, but the fact is, each of us has already made our decision to stick with you, knowing the danger. We each sacked up and chose to keep moving forward, and now it''s time for you to choose, too."


    She took my hand again and began pulling me forward, the auto-gyros in my exoframe making me fall into step even if I didn''t want to.


    But of course I did want to. I wanted to be with her, wanted to be with all of them, no matter what. I was scared of choosing wrong, of hurting or risking them, but the fact was, if I didn''t take a risk, I''d have lost them all already. Just as Lia was pulling me across the streets now, if I stopped, she''d keep going, she''d leave me behind. They all would, I realized.


    Lia and all the others, they''d chosen to be with me because they were all moving forward, because I was a direction they could all believe in. But if I stopped being that direction...nobody needed me right now to know that rescuing Moon and Tem was the right thing to do. Whether I refused to budge or led the charge, they would go anyway.


    Lia kept my hand in hers as she pulled me forward, but she could let go at any second, and if she did, I''d still follow her anywhere. I had to laugh.


    All this time, beating myself up and questioning my own decisions, and I''d never once given thought to the autonomy and decisions of those around me. I needed to get ahold of myself.


    "You look like you''ve made up your mind," Lia said, a few blocks later, while the two of us were chillin'' in a park.


    "I have," I agreed. "And thank you, for helping me see what I needed to see."


    She shrugged with excessively constructed calm and gave me a little wink. "I told you before, I''ll stick to what I''m good at. I can leave planning to you and AEGIS, but when it comes to a heart-to-heart--"


    "You''re the best in the world," I said, draping her in a seated half-hug.


    "And don''t you forget it," she grinned back at me.

 346. 2252, Present Day. Irenside Manor. Athan.

    This wasn''t exactly my idea of an elite infiltration team, nobody here really screaming ''SNEAKY'', even in a hushed whisper.


    I was hissing along with my missing leg bothering me and an exoframe which I clanged against the stone floors way too loud on account of still not being accustomed to walking on it. Karu was wearing shiny white and glowing red, and her boots clicked across the ground in a way that seemed to echo forever. At least Lia was properly outfitted and moving carefully, the grey of her slipskin seeming to meld into whatever shadows she slipped into¡­


    ...which would seem ideal for stealthery, except that she was my excitable kid sister, and more than once, we''d had to pull her out of the sneak-queen persona as she seemed pointlessly attracted to delving into the darkest corners and rolling across open hallways, regardless of whatever direction we actually needed to be heading. More than once I heard her humming a piece of her own theme song as she crept.


    So it was probably just as well that Karu had already cleared our visit with her personal access and had disabled the manor''s automated nighttime security, so we essentially had free run of the place, assuming we avoided Idris and whoever else might still be on-hand.


    I peeked around a corner, seemingly the same as every other corner thus far. A cavernous hall, stretching into blackness. Something bumped into me from behind, and my exoframe compensated for my lack of balance by helpfully making me step forward right into the hall.


    I turned back and sighed at Lia, who was finishing the roll she''d made and was slinking behind a pillar as I watched.


    "Dude," I told her.


    "Shhhh."


    "Dude, you''re just banging into me. Can you stop your cartwheeling for like, five minutes until we''re done?"


    "I''m sneaking, okay?" Her voice sounded a little different than usual from behind her mask...different even from usual through the synthesizer.


    "Is your voice lower?" I asked her.


    "It is a standard voice filter," Karu mentioned, entering the conversation even as she walked into view, her visor burning in the darkness even brighter than her armor. "It modulates the voice to wavelengths less likely to carry. Although, your mask does appear a different model. Have you upgraded recently?"


    "It''s all new," Lia shrugged, and now that I knew what I was listening for, yeah, it was kind of in an obnoxiously hard-to-hear register. Like she was mumble-growling her words. "All of my old gear was taken away when I was captured and put in New Eden."


    "I thought you were struggling for money?" I asked. Things hadn''t been great for Black Shark ever since she''d imploded a black market site in an attempt on Dragon. She''d been hanging in there for a while, but the whole weeks without ''net in XPCA control had done a real number on her -- Lia said some people were even claiming she''d died. She also said there''d be a way to turn that to her advantage, but apparently that hadn''t happened yet, which wasn''t a surprise given how we''d just been running around.


    "Well I was...and then I bought all this, so now I really am. Some of it, I really couldn''t cover, Taglock got it for me as a going-away present."


    "Oh, he''s going away? That''s so sad."


    "Yeah, you really sound like your heart''s breaking," she glared at me. "And he''s going nowhere, I am. Can''t afford his services anymore for the time being."


    "So sad."


    "Stop being such a dung beetle--"


    Karu hissed at both of us to be quiet, and I bit my tongue, remembering our surroundings. Ever the bigger person, Karu didn''t even need to tell us the words plainly written on her face: Stop being such children, before slinking off again for us to follow.


    "For the record, he saved all of our lives a few times, okay?" Lia whispered before following. I just shook my head and tried to keep my clunking footsteps light.


    There were a few security, more stationed in key places than on patrol, and we once had to duck behind a large and ugly work of art while a servant came rushing past us with a busted cleaning drone in one hand and a towel dripping suds in the other, but otherwise, it was fairly trivial to infiltrate right up through the manor to the uppermost levels where Idris spent his personal time.


    "His bedroom is there," Karu whispered, pointing down the hall. "His office is our target, and will be in the hall past it. For all of God''s love, be stealthy this one time, if no other."


    I tried my absolute best to clank down the hall as silent as possible, gingerly lowering my feet towards the ground with every step. It mostly worked, but every time I misjudged the distance and heard an echoing clack of metal on stone, I froze entirely, my heart pounding in my throat as I waited for the sound to dissipate, hoping the end of it didn''t catch Idris'' ear through the door.


    I''d have to talk to Whitney about calibrating the frame for a stealth mode. Something like, on the downstep, limit the descent speed sharply, or maybe assume relatively level footing and arrest the leg''s motion right before it expected the ground.


    Or heck, I thought, maybe just put some foam shit on the bottom of the feet. That was a whole can of worms I knew, adding more variables to the frame''s ability to stand balanced, and introducing a wrinkle of varying foot-depth, especially if the foam ever came off mid-use, but we could figure it out. Anything was better than this.


    Fortunately Idris did not wake up, and all my stressed nerves and careful steps were not in vain. The three of us crowded around our final goal, which Karu fiddled with over a frown.


    "What kind of lock is it?" AEGIS asked over comms.


    "Not the kind simple to bypass," Karu replied. "Biometrics it would take time to gather, and a password which would take time to crack."


    "Well...we''ve got time, probably," AEGIS replied, sounding a little annoyed at Karu''s lack of offered information.


    There was a slight cracking sound as Karu leaned against the door and pulled free the pin of the hinge. She worked her blade into the other, and another minute later, with another crack, it also pulled free.


    "Stand back," she said, and we all danced a few steps back as she pulled and wiggled the door in her grasp, and then suddenly it, too, pulled free, the whole thing loose in her arms. Crablike, she shuffled a pace to the side and leaned it carefully against the wall.


    "I guess that is easier than getting the password," I mused. I thought AEGIS made a huffing noise, but I couldn''t be sure. The three of us filed in, into yet another room of identical stone, wood, and darkness.


    "What are we looking for?" Lia asked. She and Karu were sweeping the room through their optics, leaving me standing in the doorway like a lump.


    "This," Karu said, sitting at the computer and bringing it to life with a wave. She stared and frowned as it prompted us for a password.


    "Just pull the hinges off," AEGIS muttered.


    "Not helping, AI," Karu said, typing in a couple of guesses to no avail. "Though should you choose to be less impish, your expertise could be invaluable at the moment."


    "Where''s the box?" Lia asked, already midway crawling under Karu''s legs to poke around the rest of the desk.


    "I presume in a secure room somewhere," Karu answered.


    "This is a secure room somewhere," I said.


    "If we have physical access I can bypass the front-end easily. Without it, I can''t do much more than brute force and get us locked out," AEGIS complained.


    "Yes, I could do that on my own," Karu agreed. "I am not picking up heat signatures of a computer physically operating in this room. It must be elsewhere."


    "Great," I sighed. "And we don''t know where? He doesn''t have a server room or something?"


    "It might be in the Pentagon," Lia mused. "They''ve got a huge secure cluster there, and as a senator, he should have some access if he wants it. Although, if half his stuff is as off-the-books as you like to imply, maybe having all his proof of corruption in their hands is just asking to get exposed."


    "Or that kind of thing is so common, you''re just hiding a weed in the weeds," AEGIS said.


    "My apologies," Karu said, scratching her head. "I had not anticipated being stymied by something so simple as a personal login."


    "It''s right there," Lia said, crossing her arms at the terminal, pouting like if she was pitiable enough the computer might just let her in. "Right there!"


    "I''m gonna turn on some light," I said, and the others nodded, their glowing optics the only thing visible in the dark. I made a couple swords and floated them near the ceiling, basking the room in dim light.


    Old, dark wood, richly stained, and thick carpets. Hundreds of books and photos and trinkets on shelves built into the walls all around the room, and a bay window which overlooked the lights of the yard. It was like a dang museum in here, with all the walls and tables covered in memorabilia and shit, and I had to wonder how Idris ever focused enough to get anything done with all the thousands of distractions sitting right next to his desk.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    Of course, nowhere was there a yellow sticky note with a password written on it or anything, but I could hope. I began to circumnavigate the room, looking for anything that might give me a hint, while Lia began throwing suggestions at AEGIS.


    "We can''t like, plug you in here and have you hijack it remotely?"


    "No, I''d be like, three steps removed by then."


    "And that''s an issue?"


    "Yes, generally speaking." I could veritably hear AEGIS pushing her glasses up her nose through comms. "The greatest part of breaking info security is doing what they aren''t expecting -- everything from physically replacing hardware to a basic code injection attack, it all boils down to coming in a way they weren''t anticipating. The problem with moving through these layers is that each one of them is translating your efforts essentially, but through the languages they''re designed for...the languages they''re expecting, in other words."


    "Yeah I don''t get it," Lia said, pulling open drawers.


    "Imagine you have a hilarious but devastating pun. A real zinger. Like, works on three or four different levels, and the universe itself conspired to open an opportunity for you to throw it. Except the guy you are with only speaks French, and your translator is a thousand-year-old language app on your mobile. The intermediary step takes away your ability to do anything clever or surprising, because it''s trying to convey meaning, not intention."


    Lia still didn''t get it, but I think she was also done with the explanations. I was just sorta floored at how many different people Idris had pictures of himself with, many of whom I actually recognized, in an¡­isn''t that the president? kind of way.


    I''d worked my way halfway around the room by now and realized something. With that in mind, I hurried my pace a bit, just glancing at the photos to confirm my suspicion. I frowned as I completed my circuit.


    "A thought, Ashton?" Karu asked, watching me go.


    "Oh. Yeah. Well." I shrugged at her. It wasn''t a useful thought really, but she cocked her head and was waiting for me so I felt I had to continue. "Uh, I was just noticing there''s a lot of photos in here, all of Idris."


    "He is his own largest fan."


    "Plenty of him and his wife it looks like. But not a single one with you in it."


    "Is...that so?" she said, stopping to take a look around. "Well, I suppose that only confirms what I already knew. The man loves nobody but himself."


    "I''m sure he loves you, Karu. In his own way."


    "Deep down inside?" she scoffed. "And you expect that someday he will turn gentle on me? He will wake up one day and realize what he has been missing, all these years of having most anything he can desire, and that it is me? Perhaps we can sing together whilst he braids my hair."


    "He seemed to love your mother," I said, taking another look around. "Maybe he sees part of her in you? Or you''re her legacy or--"


    "Fond though I am of you pointlessly speculating at my intrinsic worth in the eyes of a man I care nothing about, I believe you have no leg to stand on¡­" she looked down at me, and winced slightly "...erm, no pun intended. But even if you had, you would remain an ignorant hypocrite, as is your norm. You need look no further than your own parental relationship before giving me any amount of sass, as it were."


    "That''s different," I told her. "Your dad already had his waking up moment, he told us. He wants to reconnect with you--"


    "And your father merely wanted to protect your sister in the ways he thought best."


    "Best?" I hissed at her. "In what world was that best for anyone?"


    "I concur that his notions were as ill-conceived as they were destructive. As are my father''s, yet you seem to put merit on intentions, and therefore must consider--"


    "What intentions could possibly account for hitting her? Or my mom?"


    "I repeat, I am not defending your father''s actions. I am drawing an analogy between yours and mine. Mine is amoral to the core, and yours became a victim of mental estrangement--"


    "Are you fucking kidding me?" I found myself yelling. "A victim? He sicked Brick on her. He raised his hand to his own family. He wasn''t protecting them! He--"


    There was a crash as Lia dropped something and went under the desk to get it. I realized Karu was shushing me as both of us waited, seemingly far too long for Lia to return. When she came up, her mask was askew.


    This was really not the time or place for this. I swallowed hard, feeling guilt wash over me that I''d let my emotions get the better of me, and whatever I wanted to say, I bit it back. Karu seemed to do likewise, and we both continued our search in painful, awkward silence. Burning thought after thought passed through my mind, and I wanted so badly to scream each one of them at Karu. But somehow, I didn''t.


    "Wow this is awkward," AEGIS chimed.


    "Shut up," both of us replied. She laughed.


    Karu suddenly sat bolt upright, weapons raised at the door. A moment later, I saw a light flicker, and then I turned and saw its source, a flashlight in the hands of a servant at the door. I squinted through the blinding light. It was a woman...was she preparing to run? I didn''t want to turn this into a chase in the middle of the night just a hall away from Idris'' room, but we couldn''t just let her go.


    "Well fancy seein'' you here, Miss K," a familiar voice drawled at us.


    "Eryn! thank God," Karu let out a long breath, and met the servant halfway across the room for a brief hug. She was wearing satiny-shiny pajamas that showed off her shoulders and legs, which I realized only now were both very dark and very long. Karu continued, "I had thought Athan''s shouting had woken the whole house. You are a fortunate one, I very nearly shot you."


    Eryn offered a short curtsey to each of us in turn. In her other hand was what looked like a short baseball bat.


    "I''m not the lucky one, Miss K, you almost tasted my intruder-whackin'' stick."


    "Yes, terrifying," Karu said with a smile. "I apologize for the interruption. We are merely going through my father''s personal effects with hope to find information useful to us."


    "Oh well by all means then," Eryn said with another curtsey. "Guess the password already?" she circled the desk and frowned at the locked screen. "Oh you''re not half as competent as I''d credited you, Miss K. I thought you were a mighty unstoppable huntress, and here you are starin'' at a blank screen."


    "Please cut back the sass and let us through," Karu sighed. Eryn cackled as she did exactly that.


    "I believe Father would go into conniptions if he were aware that his servants knew his private passcodes," Karu mused as she began to click through the computer.


    "Well you know me. It''s imperative I have full access to the place, so I can dust everywhere." She winked at me. "Some of the darker corners get awful filthy."


    Karu shook her head, and AEGIS began chiming in with some suggestions; she''d found a private stock report on her own which is the kind of thing Idris would probably also have, and by searching the computer for that file, we found all the others in the adjoining folder, helpfully named IkaCo_2253_p_06. A little more snooping right around there led us straight to the cache of the rest of his IkaCo data.


    All four of us crowded around the screen now, as Karu went from boring file to boring file, trying to find something written in plain English, and more useful to us than sheets of numbers.


    She clicked open one file and we all paused to read. Personal correspondence between Ikeda-san himself and Idris. I felt my mouth going dry as I read.


    "Trust me when I say I share your beliefs on failed children," Lia read aloud. "The hell?"


    "This is recent," AEGIS said, apparently reading along with us, probably through Lia''s eyes. "The date is...this puts it at the time Moon was staying with us. This was when Ichiro was sending his goons and drones to try to snatch her."


    "Fun times," I commented. The tone of the message really put me off, it was like a completely different person was writing it than the Idris I''d ever met. He was bawdy, tawdry, almost crass. I had to wonder if he drunk-messaged Ichiro for fun, sometimes. I''d assumed they were just business partners, but the conversational tone, and the topics they covered seemed to indicate a lot more.


    "Here," Karu highlighted a passage with a drag of her finger. "An older message, Ikeda says: Though it is a personal matter, I request your help in dealing with my wayward daughter. She has refused my orders to return home in my time of need, and has even gone so far as to send inflammatory responses and dismissed my men. I will next act to have her taken by force...would you be able to recommend a service?"


    "What the hell?" Lia spat.


    "He goes on, asking Father for political intervention in the event things go wrong. The two of them sound like old war buddies," Karu said, her voice boiling.


    "Jesus, it just gets worse and worse," I commented. "This bit, I assume you don''t care if she''s banged up a bit, so long as she makes it there in one piece? What the hell kinds of men was Idris sending to capture Moon? Why the hell was he tied up in this at all?"


    "And why does your dad have those kinds of men on call to begin with," Lia said, frowning as she tugged at her hair.


    "It is far from a surprise to learn that my father is a patron of unsavory muscle, as it were," Karu crossed her arms. "Nor to have it spelled out that, despite his position of esteem, he would bend over backwards for IkaCo, as I believe they are very many millions of credits deep in his pockets. I am unsure why Ikeda would trust this task or information with Father, however."


    A light on the desk turned green, causing Eryn to jump. Lia and I stared at it in unease while Karu''s face hardened in a way I was now getting familiar seeing. It was the face she wore around her dad.


    "Because," the desk spoke, and I realized there was an intercom in there somewhere. "as capable as Ichiro is, he knows that America is my turf. Anything he needs done here, I do, without question, without failure."


    "M-master Irenside," Eryn exclaimed. "What are you doing up, sir?"


    "No worse than you are, I expect," came the terse reply. "We shall have to have a discussion about your future employment and termination, Eryn,"


    "She is in no way responsible," Karu barked. "Leave her out of this."


    Karu tensed and spun, and I realized that there was movement in the hall, visible to her optics. She raised her guns as men crowded the doorway. The security we''d been bypassing on our way here greeting her with raised guns of their own, their faces tense under their black ball caps.


    "I''ve done a terrible job in raising you," Idris scowled through the intercom. "What do you know of responsibility? You turned your back on your family, on your country, on humanity. And you think to tell me what my own servant is responsible for?"


    More security crowded in the door, those in the front stepping into the room now as the hall behind them bustled with activity. Lights began to turn on, and sirens began to wail in the distance as what I hoped were police began to arrive.


    "Master, you know me," Eryn plead to the desk. "Please, there''s no need for guns and guards, you know I''m as loyal to the Irensides as any have ever been."


    "You are in my office, in my files, in the dead of night like a thief, girl."


    "I''m with your daughter, and she''s an Irenside too. I just want all of you to be together again. I don''t want secrecy or lies or family troubles. I spend my everyday caring for you, and I care for her too on the occasion she''s home. Please master, listen to your daughter, I know we can all reunite. Don''t you want your little girl back?"


    Idris paused, and so did Karu. As the silence between them grew, I thought, maybe Eryn was the key to everything, uniquely situated right between Karu and her dad, shameless enough to put aside her pride and say what needs to be said, but invested enough to begin mending these two.


    "Eryn, step outside if you would," Idris'' voice said at last. She gave a fierce nod and approached the guards, who parted to let her pass. Through the separating ranks, I could see the senator himself out there, his lips moving as he spoke to Eryn, inaudible to us from the distance.


    But then something I did hear. A single gunshot and a woman''s scream, cut short by another shot.


    "I have no need of reconciliation," his voice came through the comms again. "I have no daughter. Disable the terminal and dispose of her."

 347. 2252, Present Day. Irenside Manor. Athan.

    A shrill scream escaped Karu''s lips before her father even finished speaking. Her emotionless mask had shattered at the sound of Eryn''s execution, and as she flew into rage, her weapons spat their anger into the wall of flesh at the door.


    The guards flinched, orange barriers flaring to life as her weaponry impacted, holding their ground as fire and explosions rocked them on their heels.


    "Eryn! Eryn!" she screamed, closing the distance to claw at them with wrist-blades, not looking at them but through them, desperate to catch any glimpse of her childhood friend in the hall. I had to kick myself into the fight and throw her backwards as weaponry tore into her, bullets and lasers scouring deep gashes in her chestplate while a dozen or more taser darts protruded from her insulated armor, clicking uselessly.


    "Karu get a hold of yourself," I yelled in her face. She threw a palm into my temple for my trouble, and I was left seeing stars while she bounced back to her feet and began tearing at them again. Through my swimming vision, I saw the guards donning gas masks and knew what was happening next.


    I kicked out the window, surprised to find myself crossing the room in a single step again, and then swore as black goop erupted from the wall to seal the breach. Why the fuck would a senator have structure foam built into his house, unless he was expecting people to be trying to break into it? Maybe he just did it for his office...or maybe his enemies were more dangerous than I''d thought. But whatever the reason, we weren''t getting out this way.


    Karu was pure adrenaline and hate as I''d never seen her before. Even at her worst, she''d always been in control, angry and spewing hate, sure, but shrewd and calculating, relying on her experience and training at all times. Here she was just tearing away like an animal, not caring about how many times she was hit or shot, or how many she faced.


    It was terrifying. To see someone you always thought of as calm, icy even, completely lose it. I should have been worried she would die there, but the way she was screaming and fighting, I was honestly more scared of her.


    But even the most enraged person couldn''t fight without air. We had to get out of this room before we all choked in here. As much as I didn''t want to turn this into an Exhuman event, I readied my powers.


    "Just wait a minute," AEGIS said in my ear.


    "For what?" I asked, my powers primed and ready to go. I''d spun up a strong magnet that would have ripped the guards -- and Karu -- through the door, and given us a lot more room to work with in the hall.


    "You''re doing a magnet, right? Can you do something else?"


    "AEGIS, I''m sorta fighting here."


    "Lia plugged me into the computer. If you let off any major blasts, it''ll knock the terminal out. I''m pulling data as fast as I can, but I still need time. Try to fight without doing a ton of collateral damage. Please."


    "It''s a fight, I argued, wincing as Karu got jabbed in the side with a gun butt, and then wincing twice as hard as she grabbed it and, still in his hands, speared the other end of it straight through the guy''s cheek. "I can''t afford to be holding back."


    "Well this data is the reason we came here," Lia interrupted. "Blow it all to hell if you want, but that makes this whole operation pointless."


    She sounded as cold and tense as I expected Karu to be, and I realized she was talking to me from under the desk as much as through comms. I was glad she was out of the way, and her slipskin would probably protect her from gas if it came to that--


    I saw a guard outside with a grenade launcher, holding it over the crowded doorway and trying to find a shot. Again, with speed that surprised me, I was there in the thick of it, next to Karu, and trying to push through the door as much as she was, as much as the guards were pushing back. In the distance, from here I could hear Idris yelling orders in the background.


    With a foomp and a smoke trail, the grenade passed over the heads of the others.


    And with a crack-hiss and an explosion, my lightning swatted it out of the sky. They gave me a concerned expression, before one of Karu''s flailing elbows nailed me in the opposite temple as before.


    "Can one of you stop her infernal screaming?" AEGIS asked. "Kinda hard to focus."


    "You''re welcome to try yourself," Lia said.


    "Karu, hey, Karu?" AEGIS asked. Karu responded by shoving both of her blades through a failing barrier along with the man wearing it, and then ripping them apart...along with the man wearing it. "She doesn''t listen to me," AEGIS sighed.


    "Can we not joke right now? A good friend just got shot," I insisted.


    "SHOT?" Karu screamed, whirling on me, blades splattering blood which hissed against my shield. "MURDERED. IN COLD BLOOD. A MAN SHE DEDICATED HER LIFE TO."


    I opened my mouth to respond but she''d gone back to tearing at the terrified men. For one moment, she pushed them back far enough to enter the hall, and in that moment, loosed an incendiary rocket of some kind, setting the wall opposite ablaze, and setting off sprinklers and alarms through the building. I saw Lia emerge from the desk long enough to pull the computer down with her, out of the water.


    "Karen! This house has stood for generations of Irensides before you, you will not bring it crashing down now. Control yourself!" Idris barked at her over comms, the same steel in his voice that made her snap upright by reflex.


    But she didn''t snap upright at his voice this time, she howled at him like a rabid dog, pushing into the hallway, cuts and punctures across her body, unnoticed. The line broke and the guards moved back, scattering towards a new line at the end of the hall.


    She didn''t chase them. Once they left, she didn''t move at all, except to fall to her knees. I gave Lia one final glance before following Karu into the hall, my swords hovering with me, putting my shield between her and the men.


    And between them and the body lying there. Eryn''s eyes and mouth were open in surprise, glistening with water from the sprinklers now. She''d been shot twice in the chest, crimson blooms through the satin. She was a certain kind of still I''d learned to recognize, a kind I knew Karu would never mistake.


    Karu herself was bleeding a lot, stroking the hair and face of her friend with a disturbing rapidity, almost clawing at it. We were still in danger, I knew. We couldn''t dwell here without putting ourselves in even greater jeopardy.


    But I''d also never seen Karu like this. Pain like I didn''t know she could feel carved on her face, mutterring reassurances to the dead body as she cradled it. This was Karu''s oldest friend. In her mind, maybe even her only friend. They''d grown up with each other in this house, and their differences had only made them grow together.


    And now she was dead. This lively, wonderful, rambunctious girl. Because Karu''s father was a fucking lunatic, who''d kill his own servants over disobedience. He was supposed to be a man of law and order, in a civilized country. We had police and lawyers, and he''d just turned a gun on her instead.


    In a way, I was numb to it. That was how things were dealt with in my world. Soldiers fought and Exhumans killed and died. But this was a maid, a chauffeur, a servant girl. Her biggest concern should have been being fired or sued or arrested. Nobody should have to worry about getting shot in their place of business, no matter how bad a job they did.


    This was supposed to be a civilized country. Eryn''s murder wasn''t just shitty and violent and pointless. It was fucking un-American.


    Whatever my experience with Idris had been before, however charming I''d found him, however of much of that had been an act or not, none of it mattered any more. To me, his true colors were there, seeping crimson on satin. If this moment had broken Karu, I''d be there for her. I could be her instrument of revenge. He wouldn''t get away with this.


    I turned away from the body and rose, my exoframe splashing in the pooling water as I advanced on the line. It was clear many of them hadn''t yet gotten the memo there was an Exhuman in the house, as my power sparked around me and stray tendrils of electricity jumped into the pools of water and crackled. I heard panicked voices rising as I advanced, Idris'' yelling them down in counterpoint.


    And then I was deafened and blinded, as gunfire went off, echoing in the enclosed hall, dazzling as my shield reflected a thousandfold on wet surfaces. If I was on my own feet, I would have reeled, but instead, the exoframe kept walking, inexorable, one solid step after another.


    My swords came to bear, twenty or so, flashing into existence. The line began to break before I even reached it. I let them run, too many people on Idris payroll had already died here tonight. As some fled, they caused others to turn as well. Panic and cowardice was infectious, and these were just home security guards, not professional soldiers, not XPCA. To them, I must have appeared as certain as death, the guns and grenades in their hands as useless against me as Idris'' orders in their ears.


    A few stayed, and I cut them down, my blades darting as though hungry. And as I strolled past them, any remaining resistance broke, the rest scattering at random, drifting sideways and away like seaweed washing ashore, aimless, but always pushed by the tide.


    And in the back, I saw him. Idris, yelling, threatening, grabbing hold of a man and screaming in his face, and being shoved off for his efforts. He was redder than I''d seen him before, angry beyond words, his blond moustache quivering and spit flying from his lips.


    With superhuman speed, I advanced on him, there before he even knew I was coming. The rest of those between us scattered and fell, scuttling away while he turned to me and sputtered.


    "Look around you," I insisted, and did so, taking my own advice. The wall still burned, Karu''s hellfire concoction immune to the water slinging on it. Near us, an oil painting, maybe thousands of years old was streaked and running, the face of the man pictured completely unrecognizable as the deluge ruined the ancient work.


    Men and women in black security uniforms were still fleeing, some apprehensive, some without so much as looking back, all getting away from me, from death, leaving him to face it alone. This was his power, I thought. This is what money got him. Loyalty to the dollar meant they couldn''t value anything more than their own lives. If they died defending him, how would the spend their paychecks?


    Behind us, where Karu sat kneeling, crying, Eryn''s body was just a dark shape, cradled, half-submerged in the inches of water. That was this man''s daughter, that was his servant, this was his house, his people, his power.


    "What I see," he said, moustache twitching, "is that you ruin everything very efficiently. You and my rebellious daughter. If I have erred here, it is only in thinking that I could ever benefit from being associated with an Exhuman."The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "You killed someone here tonight, man!" I screamed at him. "You killed Eryn, your own house-servant! A girl you''ve known since her birth, who''s lived in your house her whole life, who dedicated her days to serving you and only you!"


    "I have no use and no remorse for a woman who would betray me. Eryn was dead to me the moment she picked her loyalty to my daughter over her loyalty to me. Her death changes nothing."


    "You''re a cold, sick bastard," I muttered. "Open your fucking eyes, old man. I didn''t tell you to look around so you could see the damage I can cause, or what your daughter did. I want you to see who you have, who is left standing by your side here at the end."


    I cast a glance around. The last of the security was gone. Police or XPCA still wasn''t here yet. It was just the three of us in this hallway.


    "You might hate Karu, you might think she''s a real twisted piece of work. I know I do sometimes. But the fact of the matter is, when shit hits the fan, she''s got me. I''ve got her. We''ve got our friends and we''ve got each other. What do you have? Power? Authority? A trillion dollars in an oversea account? And who does that buy you, in the end?"


    "I''ve got power like you could never dream of, boy," he growled at me. "This is my town. I know every judge and every lobbyist, every police commissioner and every general. I can do anything I want, have anyone I want. You think you''re great, waving your lightning in the air, you don''t know a fucking thing about true power, son."


    "If you''re so powerful, then live through this," I intoned, my blades surrounding him. "If you have so my friends, where are they now?"


    "You really think you''ll kill me?" he said, almost laughing. "You''d have to be a complete moron. The XPCA would never stop hunting you. You''d be as good as dead."


    "I''m an Exhuman," I said with a sardonic grin. "Legally, we''re not even alive to begin with. What else have you got?"


    He snorted. "I forget how big your tiny problems are. You realize, with a few words in the right place, I could make all your Exhuman worries just disappear."


    "Bullshit. I''m maybe the XPCA''s most wanted right now."


    "Yes, yes, because of that whole affair with you chasing Dragon. I''m well aware."


    I felt my brow narrowing at him. "What do you know about that?"


    He laughed at me. The water on his forehead looked like sweat from from the heat of my blades in his face, yet he was laughing at me. I felt a very strong urge to just run him through right then and there, but I also wanted desperately to hear what he had to say.


    He began to walk, stopping as he neared my blade. "Do you mind?" he asked. I hesitated for a moment and then swooped it slightly out of his way as he advanced to a sopping blue chair under the oil painting, gesturing towards the other for me to sit.


    "What is this?" I asked, not sitting. "Just going to waste my time until the XPCA arrives? Is that your master plan?"


    "My boy, by the time the XPCA arrives, my master plan is that you don''t fear them and they have no reason to arrest you. What I want is what I''ve always wanted, to talk and for you to listen."


    "Well I''m not falling for it now of all times. Just because Karu''s too preoccupied with the person you murdered doesn''t mean my ears are any more pliable."


    He laughed again, full-bodied, like Karu did. A sound that carried easily over the sloshing of water. It grated on me to hear it sound so similar to hers.


    "You''ve never stopped to think, to wonder, how it was so easy for Dragon to infiltrate the XPCA?"


    "What do you mean?"


    "Don''t play dumb, son. You saw it, I know you did, otherwise you''d have no place being in that aircraft boneyard in Utah. The XPCA parted for him like the Red Sea, careful movements and maneuvers in their ranks, weakening their fortifications around a specific device, and then when he arrived to take it, they just let him do so."


    "How do you know all of this? This just happened, it should be secure information. And Dragon and I are both still active enemy combatants -- there''s no way this should be in civilian hands."


    He preened his moistened moustache and smirked at me, condescendingly.


    "Athan...I have data," AEGIS whispered in my ear. "You''re not going to like this."


    I put two fingers on my comms for Idris'' benefit and asked "What?"


    "We''ve traced the connection from Idris to IkaCo. But Idris has a lot of contacts, too many contacts in the XPCA. He''s...it looks like...he''s got his fingers in all kinds of pies over there. It''s insane."


    "So what," I asked him as much as her. "IkaCo owns him, and he in turn, gets all messy behind the scenes with the XPCA? For what? A fancy paycheck? The ability to say he can point the XPCA whichever way he wants?"


    "That latter one might be useful to you right now," he grinned. "But no, I''m a true patriot. We''re working on a solution to the Exhuman problem, forever. Ikeda and I are men of vision, and the XPCA, God bless them, they work hard and are well-intentioned, but they have no endgame. All they do is spin their wheels, as they have for the last hundred years."


    "This sounds like--" Lia gasped.


    "Blackett," I growled.


    "Yes, I was a fan of his. And a sponsor. Quit the meteoric rise he had, wasn''t it? Almost...deliberate, you might think."


    "You son of a bitch."


    "Careful now," he said, as my blades flared. "Remember what happened last time you killed an important man in your crusade for ''justice''. You don''t want the whole world turning on you again right now, do you? Especially with your sister in the house this time¡­"


    "You son of a bitch," I repeated. "You''d dare threaten Lia? After you tell me to my face that you''re the one responsible for letting Dragon through? And for Blackett? Is there any reason in the world I shouldn''t just kill you right now?"


    "Because," he grinned, his broad teeth gleaming in the light of my blades "I can make it all go away as easily as it was brought down on you to begin with. Imagine, your whole history swept clean. Your Exhuman powers, practically erased. A new life, not just for you, but for your sister as well. Where you''d never have to look over your shoulder. Where you could have your life back, your whole life," he nodded towards my leg.


    "Yeah, I already did that once," I spat. "It was ruined by Dragon, an asshole you let through my life apparently. "Anything good that might happen would be ruined as long as bastards like you still run things."


    "Unless we bastards are looking out for you. Do you remember how things were for you in the XPCA? How you were managed, cared-for? Even in the web of Exhuman hate, nobody ever gave you trouble, did they? That could be your life again."


    He shrugged dramatically and patted his pockets until I stuck a blade to his neck. "Or, you can kill me if that will really help you, a murder in cold blood, and you can spend the rest of your life on the run, losing pieces of yourself here and there until they finally catch up with you, and you die, an inglorious death somewhere, forgotten by everyone except those you hurt along the way."


    Of course, I didn''t believe him. I didn''t think for a second that once he was behind his little line of soldiers again he''d even for a second consider fulfilling his end of the bargain. His words of second chances and new leaves meant nothing to me.


    But that didn''t mean he was wrong either, entirely. We were here for data, killing him would do nothing productive except squashing a guy I didn''t like or trust...and people who walked around killing others just because they weren''t very likable were called psychopaths, which I was probably not. And even if I wasn''t going to go back to college and have a happy life in the sun, I had to admit, the prospect of the XPCA and Dragon not being on my heels was a fairly incredible one. The whole time in San Francisco, I felt like I was just swinging back and forth between feeling worthless and a failure in my past, and like the XPCA would find me and finish the job any second in my future.


    "And out of all of this, what do you want?" I asked. "You''re not a guy to offer a deal without a profit."


    He smiled broadly. "I know you are all likely planning to lay siege to IkaCo in a misguided attempt to ''rescue'' your friend Kaori. As you may know, I have quite close ties with that corporation, and it would be in everyone''s interest if you did not."


    "Everyone''s?" I asked. "Everyone but hers you mean."


    "I assure you she is quite well there. Perhaps you never heard over all the petulant screaming, but all her father wants of her is for her to return home and help run the company business. Not to let private matters slip, but Ichiro recently had an attempt made on his life, and has realized the importance of family, even those once estranged." He glanced down the hallway where Karu was still kneeled. "She is not being treated poorly. Your efforts may actually endanger her significantly."


    "How are you doing?" I asked into comms, tapping my comms and turning from Idris for a moment to glance at Karu. She didn''t respond, but AEGIS did.


    "I think we have what we need. There''s...a whole ''nother thing here, I don''t want to get into over comms, but suffice to say this doesn''t end with just Idris and IkaCo. I think we''ve stumbled onto something huge here. You need to be really, really careful, Athan. We''re talking...world stage type events here."


    "Like what happened after Blackett died?" I asked, thinking of Trish and all the others who suffered or died because of him, and because of me.


    "Yeah. Like that. Don''t do anything rash."


    There was a clatter and a splash as Karu rose and the body fell out of her arms. It lay face-down in the water, dead and abandoned, and there was a flash of red as Karu turned towards us.


    "Don''t do anything rash," I whispered. I saw Idris swallow heavily, and Karu began her approach, her white-plated boots sloshing through the water. At the end of the hall, I saw Lia emerge from the office to watch.


    "So what say you, m''boy?" Idris said, extending an arm to me, as his eyes remained locked on Karu. "I can save you the trouble of your girl Kaori, maybe even use my influence to weasel you in a visit or two a year, so you can make sure she''s brushing her teeth and eating right, and you all can rest assured that the XPCA or Dragon won''t bother you in the slightest, so long as you''re keeping your noses clean."


    Karu''s boots kept clacking and splashing as she continued her advance. It was hard to tell if Idris was sweating or the water had just chosen to cling to his forehead. He stuck his offered hand out another inch towards me.


    "Of course, the deal is only valid if I''m alive," he said, through a smile.


    I nodded back at him but didn''t take the offered hand. Instead I took a step aside and let Karu take my place before him.


    "Father," she said, tersely.


    "Karen."


    "Apologize."


    "What?"


    "Apologize, to me, now. For Eryn." Her voice was so cold, it seemed the water running off her visor might freeze.


    "I¡­" he glanced at me again, his offered handshake wilting in the air. He took a look at his daughter''s face, half-hidden behind the visor, and then at the guns on her wrists, hanging there so casually, like they were just a part of her. "I''m sorry."


    "Sorry for what, Father? Elucidate."


    "I''m sorry I...I acted in rage. She betrayed my trust, you know. I couldn''t have her in my house after that. And...with what she knew¡­"


    "I asked for an apology, not excuses." Karu raised her right arm, guns pulsing to life.


    Idris'' moustache bristled as he thought, staring down his daughter''s barrel with water pouring off of him like a fountain. Sirens wailed and blue lights flashed in the windows as police arrived, and I thought I could hear a VTOL in the distance.


    After a minute, he spoke again.


    "I''m sorry. She was a difficult girl, but a hard-working one, with her heart in the right place. She was too smart for this house, too smart to be just a servant, and that gave her a nose for trouble that I''ve always taken issue with. But I kept her around because of you, my girl. Because she was close to you, and every time she followed my orders a little too literally, or replied with just a hint of lip, I knew she''d taken it from you, and it was almost like having my daughter back again."


    His tone darkened. "And for you to become a common criminal, for you to choose Exhumanity over humans at long last, for you to be on the run from the FBI and the XPCA both, and then come to me, not even for help, but to raid my house, to take from me, the father that raised you, a petty thief using your own knowledge of your home to slip inside...I was not lying when I said you were dead to me girl, and with that, so was she. My heart hardened to her, and when it did, I pulled the trigger. I regret it already. But not as much as all the mistakes I''ve ever made which led you down this path."


    The two of them stood and faced each other and waited, Karu''s guns still thrumming ominously. Lia approaching, her steps delicate in the water. I saw flashes of the VTOL in the window and heard men moving outside, far below.


    "He made us a decent offer," I told Karu.


    "I heard," she replied.


    "Then what are you thinking?" I asked.


    "I am trying to decide if a single word of what he just spoke was true. Just one single word of genuine remorse for the dead, that''s all I would need to decide his is a life worth continuing."


    "Oh," I said, and swallowed. "Well."


    Karu was kind enough to wait for my mouth to be closed before she unloaded three different firearms at once into him, detonating her father into a haze of red.

 348. 2252, Present Day. Irenside Manor. Athan.

    Karu had spent maybe ten minutes dwelling over Eryn''s body in total. Cradling it, touching the cold face and matted hair, fingertips hovering over the fatal wounds. Her lips moved in silent words, maybe prayer, maybe saying her goodbyes, maybe madness.


    She''d given her father maybe ten seconds, most of which was spent wiping blood off of herself. When she turned to me, her face was...eerily normal. The calm of experience I always recognized on her. Killing was normal for her. Caring about those who died was not. Hers was a life truly fucked.


    Without so much as a word, she gave the gesture for ''follow'' and bolted for the stairs, the rest of us trailing in her wake as the sounds of VTOL and sirens intensified. Here and there we saw pockets of people, other servants, speaking in confused murmurs about the flooding and police, or security who hadn''t gone too far, perhaps hoping to see Idris coming downstairs, or have him see them not fully abandon him.


    Karu led us to the first floor, and then in a direction I''d never yet been, which I recognized as the kitchen, or, I guess, a kitchen, given that this was a mansion and all. Like most other rooms we''d been through thus far, it was lit, flooded, and filled only with the wailing of sirens and fire alarms and the showering of water.


    "Where are we going?" Lia asked. "We need to get out of here before we''re surrounded."


    "You''re already surrounded," AEGIS told us. "Police and national guard are there in force, XPCA has a few strike units deployed, but there''s a butt-ton more en-route. They don''t seem to know it''s you yet, information is only getting to them slowly, and I''m helping slow it down where I can."


    "Have I mentioned you''re the best?" I commented as we ran, following the splashes of Karu''s heels blindly. "Because you''re the best."


    "Well. I do what I can," she said, sounding incredibly pleased. "But a lot of the security teams are being briefed by the police and that''s where the XPCA are getting called in, and there''s not much I can do to disrupt that."


    "So we''re on the clock," Lia said.


    I agreed. "We''ve been on the clock. Once cover is blown we''re always on the clock."


    "Well," AEGIS added, "the XPCA likes going in with overwhelming force, as you''re aware. So you have a bit before they move in. Threats of an Exhuman factor will keep the other feds staying well the hell back. But that''s like, a ten-minute window, tops."


    "We shall be fine," Karu said, bringing us down a haunted-looking hallway, complete with lights out and sheets over the furnishings. Once white, the covers were now drenched and instead gave a lumpy, grey, sticky-looking vibe to all the furniture, like we''d entered a parallel reality where everything was made of dough.


    "Are we uh, hiding in here?" Lia asked.


    Karu didn''t answer, walking to the end of the hall and then stomping her feet. Then she took a few steps backwards and stomped again, a look of mild irritation on her face as she went.


    "Must be a passage?" Lia asked me. I shrugged. "Or she''s gone insane."


    "Yes, a passage," Karu clarified. "But a difficult one to locate, unfortunately. Such is the nature of secret passages that they often were designed to remain secret."


    "Dude, I want a secret passage when I grow up," Lia said. I rolled my eyes at her and went over to where Karu was stomping around, plunging my hands into the icy water to try to feel any piece of ground that might feel a bit different.


    "I fear it may be flooded at this point. Or worse, if the entrance seals too well, will be impossible to locate."


    "Are there lights in this tunnel?" I asked Karu. She nodded, and I closed my eyes.


    A lot of my powers had become...just more useful, since I traded back with Whitney. At first, I thought I''d just had a happy reunion with them, and they felt welcome back. But as I''d used them more again, I''d realized that no, they really were just a little better now. Sometimes in surprising ways.


    For example, instead of mentally winding each loop of my electric coil to produce an electromagnet, I could now just kinda think about doing it and it''d get done. So much faster and easier this way, it opened a lot of new possibilities...mostly in the realm of shooting off crap like a railgun, like I''d already tried once with decent effect.


    Or my swords, which I could now ''shear'', as Whitney had done, by controlling the amount of resistance in the stable-circuit until the plasma in it just superheated to a bajillion degrees, eradicating the blade and everything around it. The fact that this trick was hers specifically didn''t escape me, and made me think the change in my powers was somehow a holdover from her using them. Like, she''d changed them a little by her use.


    Or, my electric sense, which I was now using to sweep around beneath me. It was still much better at picking up low voltages and bioelectric current than household power, but the latter wasn''t utterly blinding for me anymore. And that meant I had a new trick I could do which I was testing out at this moment.


    I had my hands on the floor and had forced some current into the ground. As usual, I could tell what I was pushing it through, whether it was resistive and how much, what direction the power wanted to flow, where there were open spaces, that kind of thing.


    But my newest addition was, when I reached something, I could let the power bleed out a bit, let it fill its container, and then using my sense, I could get an idea of the shape of it. Depending on how homogenous my surroundings were, I could blindly pick out the shape of a whole room in just a couple minutes...or, in worse cases, could waste a shitton of time identifying individual bricks. It was definitely better at working some surfaces than others.


    But right now, I was happy to find bricks, and was tracing them backwards and upwards to where they intersected with the floor. I''d originally hoped to find the power down there, thinking that might be easier, but that was kind of a silly goal in retrospect...I was a lot more likely to stumble into the empty space of the tunnel or walls of it than the relatively thin wires of the lights.


    "Right here, I think," I said, walking to where the tunnel entrance met the floor. Karu gave me a puzzled luck but came over, and after stomping about a bit, and then feeling the ground, gave me a nod.


    "Let us enter quickly and close the door behind us. Both to deter pursuit and prevent flooding."


    "Oh man, I do not like dark, underground spaces," AEGIS bemoaned.


    "Then look away, you''re not even here with us," Lia muttered, not seeming excited about it herself, and I saw the optics on her mask already adjusting in anticipation of the dark.


    Karu checked that we were ready, and then, with great effort, lifted a floor tile with the sound of rushing water. I jumped down first, falling maybe ten feet into still-forming mud, and lit the passage with my swords before moving clear. Lia came second, with a splash behind me, and then, with a crunch, and the end of the crash of water, Karu joined us.


    Her visor lighting up the dark around her and the sudden silence after water had been beating down on us for minutes now made the tunnels way creeper than they really needed to be.


    "Well there''s air," Lia said. "And it''s not underwater."


    "And good timing," AEGIS commented. "The XPCA are just about to move in."


    "Kinda cool you own a secret tunnel," I said, starting to head down it. My feet were probably stuck in the sucking mud, but the exoframe compensated without me even needing to think about it, and with its sublime pneumatic power, it gave exactly zero fucks about some paltry wet dirt holding it down.


    "I own nothing. This house and those in it are nothing to me anymore," Karu said fiercely, and I realized I''d inadvertently tread on thin ice.


    "Sorry," I muttered.


    "Sorry nothing," she said, her visor flashing in the dark. "That man had it a long time coming. This family had it a long time coming. I only wish that I had the fortitude that Ikeda did to spit in her father''s face and part ways entirely...before innocents were hurt."


    We trudged on in painful silence for another while before Karu spoke again, apparently not done with her thought, or her damnation of the family.


    "This tunnel continues beneath the entire block and emerges in what I believe is now a clothing store. The location of said store was once a bar, and during the prohibition era, was an illegal purveyor of alcohol. The ancestral Irensides, or whatever they were known to be back then, were not so different from the present ones; important politicians of some kind, who secretly violated the law, quite literally beneath everyone''s noses, at it were. This tunnel kept them well-liquored while their neighbors suffered the onerous law."This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    "Ouch," AEGIS commented.


    "What?" Karu snapped back.


    "Oh. Nothing really, just...there''s so many ways you could interpret those facts, and you definitely picked the one that crapped on your family the hardest. It''s entirely possible they were decent people back then, even if you have...issues with the current family. Er, ex-current, now I guess."


    "While I do not discount the concept of a decent politician as impossible, I have yet to see one, and I have been looking for a very long time. The fact that we are a political family who can trace their lineage back to that era and beyond speaks volumes to me of their self-importance, auto-aggrandizement, and reverence for themselves. There are records today because those people took pains to make sure they would be remembered, because they considered themselves worth remembering."


    "Isn''t everyone worth remembering, though?" Lia asked.


    Karu scoffed, and inwardly, I agreed. There were people who deserved worse than death, to be dead and forgotten, to never have existed at all, that''d be more fitting. People like Brick, I thought. Though I wasn''t going to bring that up in front of Lia again.


    "Even if that were true, it demonstrates the matter of priorities. Those efforts and energies could have been spent anywhere, but were instead dedicated to the immortal legacy of my forebearers. This act signifies what they considered important -- themselves. Given that, and my knowledge of politicians today, I do not think my conclusions unreasonable."


    "Or relevant," AEGIS added. For a moment I thought she was just provoking Karu, but the hunter just shrugged, the vague motion casting shadows in the red light of her visor.


    "I assume you to mean that this conversation is not relevant to the situation occurring above our heads. With which I agree fully. Even escaping their first perimeter, we must remain vigilant if we wish to escape unscathed."


    "Yeah...we''ve got a lot to talk about for next steps when you get back. Like I said, I''d rather not do it over comms though."


    "For security?" Lia asked.


    "Because...I''d rather discuss this in person. It''s kind of a doozy."


    "Fair enough," I agreed.


    And that was the end of our conversation. Agreeing not to talk about something, Karu making the point to discuss only our next critical steps, when really, the only steps we could take were forward, down this tunnel, for as long as it ran...none of it was going to bear any fruitful conversation, and any chatter felt invasive.


    The silence felt invasive too. Everything felt weird, and I thought I might know why.


    Innocuous as I could, I stole a few glances at Karu as we walked. She looked normal as ever, focused, vigilant, visor blazing in the dark, armor clacking softly, boots clomping on hardened dirt.


    But wasn''t that completely wrong? She shouldn''t look normal at all. Her best friend had just died, she''d just broken and cried in the middle of a mission as I''d never seen her do before. Her dad...was dead, and as much as she pretended that their relationship was simple and hostile, I knew there was way more to it than that.


    I really, really wanted to know if it was all an act; if Karu was just pretending to be put together so that she could uphold the virtues of discipline or whatever...or if she really could just turn it off. As crappy as that would be, it seemed an eminently handy trick that I could have used a few times now, when my emotions caught up to me.


    As we kept trudging into the darkness lit by my swords, I thought, trying to piece together a way to ask Karu how she really felt, but nothing came to mind.


    And then I thought, fuck it. I''m not the diplomat here.


    "Karu, are you okay?" I asked.


    The effect of the question was instantaneous and surprising. She faltered mid-step, as though caught off guard, and her face hardened like she was working very hard not to show anything on it. But it only lasted a fraction of a moment, before she resumed her stride, her face back to normal almost before I could see it.


    I did see Lia''s expression though, even with her mask on, the look she shot me was screaming what the hell do you think you''re doing, Athan? It was a look I was pretty familiar with.


    "I am perfectly fine," Karu said. She affixed me with a wry smile which was, if anything, even more out of place. "''I am fit for service'', I believe is how Ikeda would put it."


    "She would. Moon is always making stupid jokes with the thinnest definition of humor. But not you."


    "I apologize. In retrospect, aligning my sense of humor to hers is a poor precedent."


    "You''re still joking," I frowned at her.


    "Would you rather me not? Would you prefer if I were dour and miserable?"


    "No...it''s just...you''re always analyzing me when I''m under mental stress--"


    "So it is turnabout?"


    "--and it''s saved my butt a couple of times. And I''ve learned better how to cope with mental trauma, and I know how dangerous pretending it''s not there can be."


    "You assume this to be an act?" she scoffed.


    "Karu," Lia added, her voice a little hesitant and a little soft with concern. "Your friend died. Your dad died. It''s okay to be messed up a little."


    "While I obviously do not appreciate the concern, I assure you I am fine. There is no threat on my account of the mission being put into jeopardy. And my personal feelings...are also in an acceptable state. I admit that, of course, I am not currently at my best, but I shall survive and suffice."


    "Okay," I said. "If you say so. I just¡­"


    I tried to think about what I was saying and so we spent another minute trudging into the dark. At least it felt possibly like we were going uphill now, so...I supposed we were on our way out? The passage was only supposed to be a block long, but given the sizes of the houses around here, maybe it was more like ten regular blocks. The manor was ten regular houses easily, I thought.


    "Look, maybe I''m projecting," I said. "But I failed at protecting someone recently and she died right in front of me, and it hit me really hard. I felt weak and useless, I felt depression creeping in to everything I did, and so...thinking I was fighting that off, I did something stupid and went after Dragon myself, in the middle of an XPCA facility. Out of revenge, yeah, but also to keep from falling into nothingness. Like, I had to do something, yeah? And then we lost that fight too, and there were even more people I couldn''t protect, and even myself."


    I listened for a minute to the sound of my exoframe whirring under me, and how its heavy footfalls contrasted with the even tread of Karu''s boots.


    "And then I was directionless and lost and...miserable. And I definitely would have spiraled again if AEGIS and Whitney weren''t right there, every waking minute I had. They really saved me."


    I wasn''t sure you could hear an gynoid blush over comms, but I''m pretty sure I did.


    "And if it''s possible, I want to help you too, Karu. I know...we have our disagreements. You''re a lot more...murdery than I am. I wouldn''t have killed your dad if I were you."


    "But I did," she said. "And it is precisely because of that difference that I believe I do not need the help and guidance of another as you did. I appreciate you opening your heart to me, and your plea to render whatever assistance I may require. You continue to demonstrate that you are a capable, virtuous being."


    The reverence in her voice suddenly cut short. "But that man took a life from me which I loved, and so I took one from him in turn. I am not lost or left wondering or feeling powerless, Ashton, I did not fail in anything I set out to do. I will miss her, and I will be more incomplete without her, but she has been avenged, and that is all I can do."


    I guess there wasn''t much to say to that, because none of us said anything more. It was another long several minutes while each of us did nothing but walk and ponder our own thoughts, our own failures and priorities.


    And I had to wonder, if I''d killed Dragon, the real Dragon, would I be a different person now? Would I feel better knowing that I''d avenged Alyssa? Could I describe myself as more incomplete but still whole?


    I didn''t know. Emotional shit like that was tricky. It wasn''t just a matter of causality, because depending on how feelings decided to feel, sometimes doing the wrong thing could feel right, or doing everything I could could feel wrong.


    One thing was absolutely certain, though. And that was, death sucked. Really, really, really hardcore. I didn''t even know Eryn that well and I felt miserable that she was gone. To me, she was just an odd piece of Karu''s life that I''d adored, and now I''d never see that again. Everything she''d ever wanted to do would go unfinished, and everything she knew and saw and remembered would be lost. A hole in the world where she used to be.


    And, I thought, those holes defined people. I''d changed with Alyssa''s death. When Moon had choked the life out of Diallo, she''d come back a completely different person, willing to do things to me she never would have before. Death recontextualized life.


    Or...so I thought. So it should be, even, maybe. But Karu had seen a lot of death, and I didn''t know how much any one of them actually affected her anymore. When she''d flipped psycho on me, killing just because murder was, for her, easier and more convenient than the alternative, I''d thought she was sick in the head.


    But thinking about it, seeing her here with her friend and her dad, with an ally''s and an enemy''s blood freshly spilt, I thought...maybe she wasn''t insane at all. Maybe she''d just decided life meant a lot less. That didn''t seem like a sickness, just¡­


    ...I dunno. A sad, exhausting, lonely way to live, maybe.


    We reached the end of the tunnel and came out in what looked like a warehouse, albeit one with a low ceiling. It was hard to lift the concrete block at the end without upsetting the shelves resting on top of it, but after a team struggle and getting Lia to squeeze out and adjust things topside, we all made it out.


    It was a clothing store''s back room. A whole bin of hangars, dozens of racks, a stack of broken-down boxes reaching almost to the ceiling, and piles of clothes awaiting cleaning or hanging or ironing or whatever they did back here.


    Which was, actually, kind of fortuitous, since we were all decked out in combat ensemble and there were probably lots of feds in the area looking for us. Each of us helped ourselves to a little shoplifting, and I kept my eyes down as Lia and Karu changed around me, neither seemingly bothered by my presence, which made my decision to change in a corner feel stupid.


    And then, a few doors later, we were out into the night air of D.C., the sounds of VTOLs and sirens distant, and the moon bright in the sky.


    I supposed it should have felt triumphant, technically. This was the first win I''d had in a while -- we''d gone in with a goal, and got out without trouble having achieved that goal.


    But the two deaths in the process seemed pointless, and it somehow felt like we''d walked in more to make sure those people died than anything else. The data, as useful as I''m sure it would be, seemed remote and pointless compared to those two people that I knew, personally, dying for it.


    AEGIS seemed to have picked up on my mood and spoke into my ear as we made our way to our car.


    "When you get back, I''ll tell you what I learned," she said. "It was worth it, I promise."


    "Guess I''ll decide that when I see," I said.


    "Guess you will."

 349. 2252, Present Day. PLUGGED, net cafe, San Francisco. Athan.

    Kinda felt like I hadn''t been on the ''net in forever, and without my favorites saved, I had to admit, I was pretty lost.


    Last time I''d really just had time to sit and screw around on the ''net felt like before I''d even turned Exhuman. Sure, I''d had a few stints of being less-than-busy since then, but I''d always had good ol'' relationship drama, my career as a soldier, or something else to focus on. Rarely had I ever just sat down and done the ''net. And it was kinda sobering.


    Message boards with my friends, sports stats, video sites, those were the ''net I used to lurk on, and not a one of them felt welcoming to return to. I hadn''t kept up with any team for the last season and a half, so suddenly seeing unfamiliar players...even a brand new quarterback, traded from the Eagles in a deal I''m sure would have infuriated me when it happened, it just reminded me how out-of-touch I was with something I used to follow passionately. Same with the video sites, not being logged-in, the default algorithm was bad, charitably, and I scrolled through pages of vids without so much as a spark of interest.


    And I wasn''t about to login and chat with my old friends for obvious reasons. Though I did have the thought that maybe Tyler and Kiera were on there, the two I''d randomly caught up with last time I was in LA, but it seemed better to leave well enough alone.


    So instead I dicked around looking at cat pics and whatever. Really took the ''net back to its roots.


    We were waiting while AEGIS put the finishing touches on her presentation, which seemed both excessive and pointless, and I was half-worried she was going to come bouncing out with a slideshow to flip through, but she insisted and she was the one with all the data, so wait we did. It was a little aggravating for her to have been telling us how world-changing and critical this data was, and then keep us sitting around waiting to hear about it...but I also understood that AEGIS had a little bit of a flair for the dramatic, and just loved explaining things.


    I was reminded of when I first laid eyes on her new body, Rua Mk.1, and the whole red-curtain, sinister-music-playing reveal she''d concocted. I really doubted we''d suffer something of that level, sitting here in the back of a ''net cafe, but I was expecting something.


    Lia was feet-up in the chair next to me, headphones plugged in, watching something that made her giggle at random intervals. Karu was in the row behind us, apparently asleep with her head down on the table. AEGIS was typing away in the furthest corner, fingers clacking so fast it sounded more like heavy rain.


    I looked around again and, finding the room the same as it''d been for the last hour, sighed and went back to the ''net. I pulled up a news site and almost regretted it.


    US Senator Killed in Violent Home Invasion


    Virginia state senator Idris Irenside was found dead in his Washington residence today, victim of a break-in that may have been digital theft, police say.


    "A remote login device was found plugged into Senator Irenside''s personal computer, and it is unknown how much data was taken, or by whom."


    The theft apparently went south when the senator awoke and confronted the invaders himself, despite retaining a small security force, a confrontation which ended with his death.


    "The senator was shot with four different weapons at point-blank range," said detective Castillo, a thirty-year veteran of the MPD. "This was clearly not an ordinary B&E, the perp went in carrying a small armory."


    Information on the suspects has not yet been released but there is speculation that this was an Exhuman event, as well as the persistent rumors that Karen Irenside, daughter of the victim and currently a nationally-wanted fugitive after her role in the recent Exhuman event in Los Angeles, was somehow behind it all.


    Somehow reading about myself online like this just made my stomach flop. It was strange both how much and how little they knew, and I suspected the police knew even more but weren''t sharing with the media. Just thinking that there was some guy out there whose job it was to catch bad guys, watching vids of me being one of those very guys¡­


    I dunno. Felt awful. I didn''t think I was a bad guy, not really. Which was insane, because I was an Exhuman, and a wanted criminal, and a freaking murderer. Objectively speaking, I was up to some seriously bad shit, and while I felt every bit of it was reasonable in the moment, it was kinda harrowing to take this step back and look at myself from outside.


    I scrolled through the comments, feeling more sick at the outpouring of rage and misinformation in equal parts. The only thing that made me feel any better was the whole sub-thread of people banging on about what a damn American hero Idris was, and how anyone who''d touch a hair on his head was, politically speaking, the literal antichrist.


    Which of course, torched off a whole argument about his policies and people arguing that he was a corrupt piece of shit, but the point was, some people were just so, so opinionated, and so, so wrong.


    A random comment with a link caught my eye, the comment reading such a shame, almost made it a week. And when I followed the link, I was brought to a different news article.


    New World-Record Set in Exhuman Silence


    As of the posting of this article (which was yesterday), it has been five days without an Exhuman event, worldwide, the longest-ever period of continued, uninterrupted peace since the outbreak of Exhumanity nearly 220 years ago.


    Scientists at the IES (Institute of Exhuman Studies) at California State University at Irvine had few explanations but many theories.


    "It''s hard to say if this is an isolated incident or the start of a larger trend. We''re obviously always optimistic about event downturn, and it''s one of the goals of the IES to understand Exhumans more fully so that they can be managed most effectively, but as of this time, we can''t say anything for certain."


    Director Hall of the XPCA was available for comment and gave a short statement.


    "We''ve been seeing a reduction in Exhuman threat over the last few months, and this new record just goes to show that the policies of the XPCA are working. My predecessors, Directors Blackett and Albion instituted new policies such as the founding of New Eden, which has modernized Exhuman relations. And these numbers just go to show that the XPCA knows what we''re doing and our policies are solid."


    While Exhuman events tend to occur mostly in North America, no reports of events occurred anywhere on the globe during this period.


    Personally, I had to wonder what metrics the XPCA was using, if New Eden was somehow a reduction in threat. I''d heard that yeah, right after it was built, numbers were way down, until word got out that it was kind of a ghetto. Then there was a small spike when formerly-hidden Exhumans were lashing out at being taken in. And then just thinking about afterwards, when the P-Force was completely engaged in recapture, and how many of those ended out in Exhuman events...


    Kinda didn''t surprise me that I found an XPCA director to be full of shit.


    But the fact that this week had been completely quiet before I''d gone and ruined it all was neat, I guessed. I didn''t see any bigger pattern here, nor any reason for one, but five days without an event, anywhere on the globe was pretty cool.


    I was just about to click another link when someone cleared their throat behind me, and I turned to see AEGIS cracking her knuckles and prodding Karu awake. The blonde head rose into view, eyes blinking blearily at me from under tousled hair. I gave Lia a tap on the shoulder and she uncupped one ear before pausing her vid and turning her attention to AEGIS.


    AEGIS who, somehow, had a globe on her. I was already wary of how tasteless this presentation was already shaping up to be.


    "Hi guys, thanks for waiting," she began, giving the globe an idle spin as she spoke. "I''ve just had to verify everything, because, y''know, trusting Karu''s father was kind of an iffy prospect at the best of times, and now isn''t the best of times. So before I got all panicky and dumped this info on you, I thought I''d check it first, as best I could."


    "Com-commendable," Karu said, stifling a yawn.


    "Thanks. Well. Unfortunately I didn''t find anything to disprove what I...found. So we''re just going to go with it and you guys can draw your own conclusions." She gave the globe another dramatic spin and then stopped it by planting her finger on it, landing exactly on DC.


    "Step five: Raven''s Nest, XPCA headquarters in the United States. The XPCA has exotic weaponry with future tech that nobody else in the world has ever been able to reproduce, and deploys it to Exhuman events globally."


    "Um, step one?" Lia asked.


    AEGIS shook her head, pigtails twisting. "No, we''re starting at the end."


    "Because of course where else would you start?" I shrugged. AEGIS glared at me and then gave the globe another spin, stopping it with her finger on the same exact spot.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "Step four: Ex-Senator Irenside. Mastermind, political tycoon, power broker."


    "Asshat," Karu murmured.


    "Sure. Our gathered intel suggests that most of Idris'' money and lobbying were from and for IkaCo, and much of his time was spent acting as a middleman between them and the XPCA, making sure their goods got into, erm, their hands. Different their''s. He was in Ichiro''s pocket, through-and-through, and a lot of the XPCA was in his."


    "Idris was selling exotics to the XPCA?" I asked.


    "You''re jumping the gun. Literally," AEGIS said.


    "Well, you mentioned in step five that there were exostics and--"


    "Hey. Look at me here. See the prop? See the me-standing-while-everyone-sits? I''m presenting here."


    She glared at me and I sighed heavily. Once she was clear I wasn''t going to interrupt again, she continued. She spun the globe and this time, predictably, stopped it in San Francisco.


    "Step three: Shell corporations. Not a very exciting step, but a necessary one. IkaCo holds several smaller holdings on the west coast here which act as their arms in America while Idris acts...acted as their brains. Almost all of them have his fingerprints all over their charters and any number of legislations which protects or benefits them, and in exchange, they''ve got their fingerprints all over the money in his pocket. Moving on. To--"


    The globe spun again. "Japan," Lia said. And so it was, where AEGIS'' finger landed. "Called it," she added.


    "Step two: IkaCo tech conglomerate, Tokyo, Japan. The beating heart of industry, and a multi-trillion credit corporation. They make everything, from the relay uplinks in our mobile devices to many of the parts in my body, to -- spoiled by Athan -- most of the exotics that the XPCA uses in their pursuit of Exhumans." Karu started to speak but AEGIS cut her off "But this last one is a closely-guarded secret. It''s kind of well-known that the XPCA has a large research division, and it''s always been assumed that their tech is all in-house. And that''s kinda part one of the mind-blowing revelations this data turned over for us here."


    "I was going to say, I find that difficult to believe," Karu said, arms crossed, green eyes narrowed. "In moments of boredom, I have read the warning labels and instructions which accompany my munitions, and never have they been purported to be produced anywhere but in America, or distributed by anyone but the XPCA or their affiliates."


    AEGIS turned the holo around on the computer she was working on and flashed us a huge wall of indecipherable text. If I had to guess, I''d have guessed she was reading a dictionary.


    "I''m no lawyer, but I did pull up some of the bills that Idris'' lobbying interests had manipulated and found this, effectively snuck into a budgeting bill about XPCA finances and expansion of powers during emergency scenarios. It says, effectively, that normal legal information and labelling laws do not apply to the XPCA, whether in an emergency scenario or not. Basically they can put whatever the hell they want on anything they distribute, and not have to face legal consequences for it."


    "That''s...kind of impressively petty," Lia said.


    "Most laws are," AEGIS shrugged. "But the fact that he felt the need to do that tells me that he had a need which this law would fill. The fact he''d spend the effort to lobby in this tiny change somewhere is kinda proof that this is happening. And it''s not an isolated instance, either."


    She glanced at the holo from over the top and scrolled another...we''ll say thousand pages, stopping at what really could have been an identical block of text.


    "Here''s one of the more egregious ones, called Section 13, of the 2241 amendment to the Exhuman Defense Act. It talks about XPCA weapon logistics and priority rights. The bill itself is supposed to manage weapons developed by XPCA R&D, and therefore has all this language to make them immune to customs, tariffs, inspection...there''s even a whole subsection here about how they can be classified to essentially be exempt from being declared. On the surface it all looks like provisions to allow the XPCA to move equipment around globally, quickly, and without interference, but if you flip these laws around and read it like they''re importing these items instead--"


    "Then they act as a veil to keep anyone from seeing the exotics from coming in," Lia said.


    "Exactly. No doubt this law was passed and Idris was lauded as a patriot in the spirit of empowering the XPCA...but the truth of what was happening was so far from that."


    "Do you have any actual records of these exotics moving from east to west?" Karu asked. "Forgive my skepticism, but this is all difficult to believe."


    "I''ve got about a million different bills of sale, for undisclosed contents, protected by Section 13."


    "From IkaCo to the XPCA?"


    "Or subsidiaries, but yeah."


    Karu didn''t respond, only frowned.


    "So wait, let me recap, because this sounds pretty fucked up," I jumped in. "You''re telling me that the XPCA never developed any of the crazy weapons they have? That everything from their...the freeze bombs we''ve seen a thousand of, or the adhesive grenades, none of those were ever made by them?"


    "Correct."


    "Or the...truck-sized neural dampening things? Or the gun that shoots leg-slicing beams?"


    She frowned a little and gave her hair a tug as her eyes flickered down for an instant. "Still correct."


    "Then...I''m confused, what is the XPCA''s famously-large R&D there for?"


    "Well," she said, pushing up her glasses. "I can only really speculate but I have a couple theories I''m pretty confident in. One is simply to make it so nobody ever asks that question."


    "Huh?"


    "Everyone just assumes that XPCA R&D does what we all think it does. It''s famous, it''s massive, it''s hiding this whole operation in plain sight. Nobody ever has to question where the exotics come from because it''s so obvious, they come from XPCA R&D. And R&D is so huge and spread out, even the people in it wouldn''t question. Maybe every single one of them is engaged in pointless time-wasting garbage, but they don''t know that. They think, I''ve got the bum job, but it''s helping someone, somewhere else make the cool toys. Which must be true because they can see and hear about the cool toys, and they must have come from somewhere, right?"


    "That...actually makes a lot of sense," Lia said, tapping her chin with a finger.


    "And the other thing I think they do...is try to reverse-engineer the exotics they buy. No matter how sweet a deal they''ve got with IkaCo, they''re still spending billions on this shit, and no matter how tight a leash on them Idris might have, there''s no way his pockets are as deep as they money they could save on military spending. So of course they''re going to throw a ton of manpower at the problem."


    "And...do they have any success?" I asked.


    AEGIS just shrugged. "How would I know? I''m just looking at Idris'' side of the equation here, I don''t have R&D records."


    "Yeah, sorry. Dumb question," I agreed.


    "Wait," Lia said. "That was step two. What''s step one?"


    "I''m glad you asked," AEGIS said, picking up the globe to give it a final dramatic spin. I was about to call her out on this stupid dramatic shit again, but saw by the grin on her face that this was the moment she''d been setting up this whole time, the whole dramatic culmination of the whole stupid globe prop. So I let her have it.


    And even knowing that, I was kinda surprised by where she stopped the globe this time. Karu frowned, Lia thoughtfully pulled at her bottom lip. I thought that can''t be right.


    AEGIS had stopped the globe with her finger pointed at the massive, red-striped exclusion zone on the mainland west of Japan. The world''s second-largest unclaimed land, after Antarctica.


    "China?" I asked. "Why? What about China?"


    "That," she said mysteriously, "is unclear. But I have enough evidence to make a very clear conclusion that some kind of tech critical to the exotics is coming out of there. Ichiro knows it, Idris alluded to it, but there''s nothing in the books, no laws down or shipping labels from...from Beijing or anything. Which makes sense, since, y''know, you''re not going to find a PO box on a street corner in a giant glassy desert with no streets."


    "The US military has constant excursions into China. The XPCA as well," Karu spoke, musing aloud.


    "Which has always seemed like a pointless propaganda move to me," Lia said. "Kind of a...beating the dead horse to remind us that the US has enemies, and keep us all focused on the ghosts of the past."


    "Instead of the duplicity of the present?" Karu asked, and Lia nodded.


    "Well maybe there''s more to it than that. A lot more," AEGIS said. "If there are natural resources there, or...I don''t know, mysterious ancient tech or something, that''d go a long way towards explaining why the government, military, and corporations all are over there. And doubly-so if it''s got something to do with how to make the exotics that are such a billion-dollar industry."


    "And what''s going to happen to this whole, five-step chain of corruption and billions of dollars, now that we killed off step two?" Lia asked.


    "Can''t rightly say," AEGIS said, crossing her arms seriously. "There''s going to be a power vacuum though, and that''s always a dangerous situation, especially one with this much money and this many weapons floating around in it. IkaCo might try to expand into the US further, or other political figures might try to take Idris'' place."


    "Or the XPCA might try to cut out the middleman, if they know what''s going on," Lia suggested.


    "Either way, we''re in for some changes, and fortunately I don''t think anyone wants to capture the public eye...but it might just turn out that whoever''s willing to be the most ruthless wins. We are talking a billion dollar piece of pie here. There''s going to be blood."


    I knew she wasn''t trying to make me feel like shit, but the fact was, all those people dying in this scenario she was painting was kinda on our hands. Granted, most of them were probably kinda crappy people, but still...you never wanted to face the realization that, shit, I caused a war, whoops.


    Especially right after AEGIS explicitly told me not to do anything rash. At least I could mostly blame Karu, but it wasn''t like I was jumping to stop her or anything.


    "Okay then, we''ve learned a lot," I said, changing the topic purely for my own benefit. "But in the end, I don''t think most of this matters to us personally. We''re not looking to change the world''s arms trade or shut down the archaeology in China, we''re looking to save Moon and Tem and go from there. Right?"


    "Right," AEGIS said, suddenly beaming. "And to that end, we''ve caught kind of a break here, because all these legal loopholes that Ichiro and Idris have been sewing into the legal system...now that we know about them, I have a great idea for their use. One which will get us right on IkaCo''s doorstep without them even knowing we''re there."


    "Wow, sounds...great. And dangerous," Lia said.


    "And foolhardy," Karu added.


    I scratched my nose. If Saga were here, she''d say ''and fun'', but I resisted the urge.


    Instead, I looked around at the three with me here. Exactly because Saga wasn''t here, I saw the same reservation on each of their faces. This was something big, something distant, something we really shouldn''t be poking our noses into.


    But, I mean, we were all already criminals. It wasn''t like we''d had any success keeping our noses clean already. Staying ''safe'' and following the law had just left us disempowered, had left me feeling helpless.


    "Let''s get Saga and Whitney, and then let''s do this," I said.

 350. 2252, Present Day. Private farmstead, TX. Liev.

    It had been one hell of a week. A cock had got in with the hens and had wasted no time in screwing half of them. I''d spotted that pack of coyotes circling around at nightfall again, just looking to get at my animals. And I''d gotten a piece of mail that said that old man Lancaster down the way had died and his land was being sold off for development.


    Pissed me right off. Didn''t know why, but it did, like everything did nowadays. Every goddamn thing just set me ablaze in a way I''d wonder about later. Thinking of neighbors dying, wild animals, that damn cock--


    Well I''d killed the cock. Was a stupid thing to do, didn''t make any difference after he''d had his fun, just a waste of a rooster at that point to do it. But he''d pissed me off, and I broke his neck and ate him. Made me think, I was glad to hear about Lancaster in a letter, because if his boy came over to tell me he was selling out and closing up the farm in person, I might have broken his neck too.


    Didn''t even know why. Pissed me right off.


    It was still early spring and I had a lot of work to do sowing. Another dozen tomato plants to transplant, and I was only half done on the potatoes. I was looking at another long day of work.


    And even that pissed me right off more than usual. I knew why I was mad at the Lancaster kid, and it wasn''t because he was killing off his pap''s antiquated way of life or anything haughty like that. It was because I was jealous, wanted to join him, move into the city where I could plunk down five credits and buy a beer, anytime I wanted. Instead of being out here in bum-fuck nowhere, planting my damn tomatoes and potatoes so I wouldn''t starve to death this year.


    I wasn''t exactly in solitude by choice, just a crap hand dealt to me and playing it ''best I could. Didn''t usually bother me as much as it did right now, though. It''d just been a long week. Like an irritating rash, and those things had just been the nettle on it.


    So I stood there, glaring at those tomatoes like they''d done me wrong. Resisting the crazy temptation to rip their tender roots out of the dirt and grind them under my heel. To throw open the coop and let all my goddamned fertilized chickens go play nice with the coyotes and laugh as the little beasties lapped their blood.


    I was sick. I needed help, and there wasn''t a soul alive who could offer it to me. Me and these damn tomatoes. God damn us all.


    It wasn''t an exaggeration to say I spent an hour seething at those plants. Waste of an hour, but it felt like time was the only thing I had out here. Even if I was already late in replanting them.


    And yet there I was. Standing. Knowing that I should be working, that every second I wasted was another pang of hunger in the winter. I just could not be arsed, could not, after the week I''d already had, summon the mental fortitude of dealing with another dozen tomatoes that''d probably get picked at by worms and pissed on by those coyotes, right after they--


    And I was doing it again. Working myself into a lather over nothing. What was wrong with me?


    I''d wasted half a day on these tomatoes, or more accurately, on nothing, and I wasn''t ready to waste any more. If I wrapped it up quick, maybe I could sneak into town for an evening, have a drink, meet some people and, hell, fight with ''em, if that''s what came. I had to think the isolation was getting to me. Maybe one just couldn''t exist in the middle of goddamn Texas for four years with nothing but the land and the sky without something breaking in ''em.


    That''s what I told myself anyway. A night in the town sounded like just what I needed. It was a stupid waste of money, but that''s what I needed.


    Just as soon as I was done with these tomatoes.


    Over the next couple hours, I distractedly dug holes and rearranged the most unforgiving rock that the ass-end of Texas had to offer. It was already afternoon, and it was looking like my plans to go into town were soon to be just the latest reason for me to get angry. Even if it were a fool''s plan to begin with. The shovel was turning my calluses into blisters, and the sun showed no mercy to my back.


    And only halfway done. And not terribly well done at that. I''d skipped on digging out many of the rocks I knew were hiding just under the surface, planted the tomatoes higher up, leaving it up to myself to put down more topsoil on top of them. Waste of good soil and a waste of money I couldn''t afford when I had all the time in the world and not a credit of reliable income.


    Especially with half the hens fertile. Those were eggs most wouldn''t want now. It just felt unfair.


    Angry as I was, I still gave it a lot of thought before I decided to cheat. I''d promised myself I never would, that it''d been exactly that which had sentenced me to this dung heap. It wasn''t a thing to do lightly, no matter how lonely I got, or how crazy I was, or how angry I became.


    But after a long minute''s deliberation, and longer still in peering around, staring over the long grasses into the distant trees spotting the endless plains around my house, making sure that there wasn''t a soul watching, I decided, I needed this. I could cheat, just this once.


    And with hardly a thought, invalidating the hours of back-straining work, the dirt lifted itself out of the ground, twisting neatly in the air like vipers, the rocks separating into a pile and the usable dirt hovering nearby. The tomato plants drifted from their pots, floated into the newly-vacant holes, and patted themselves in, the rest of the dirt in the air snaking around each stem, building a nest and a trough in a moment.


    It hadn''t taken fifteen seconds to do the second half of the work. While I was at it, I spent another minute on the potatoes, sowing them in even lines, mounding the dirt above them perfect as I could envision in my mind, the dirt and rock and plants weightless to my powers.


    I let go, and the dirt and plants settled, my hands splayed as though balancing myself after an earthquake. Everything was alright? I glanced around. No witnesses, no traces that anything supernatural had occurred. I blinked and frowned and looked into the sky. Were there XPCA satellites above me? Were they watching me even now?


    No, I told myself. That was impossible. The XPCA did not watch every person at every moment, even if they had the eyes to do so. I was fine, I was safe. I could go into town just as I''d planned, watch a game, meet a stranger--


    Something snapped behind me and I spun on my heel, almost losing my balance. I blinked rapidly, seeing nobody at first. My mouth went dry and my heart pounded painfully in my chest. And then, I saw it.


    Just one of the damn coyotes. As startled by the branch underfoot as I was. I felt like collapsing, my heart was beating so fast, over a damn animal. I clutched my chest and groaned, my hands shaking as the sudden rush had nowhere to go.


    I sat down and watched the coyote watching me. It was like a tiny brown wolf, still splotchy from a winter coat. He had a torn ear and stayed still, staring at me, motionless.


    This was a bad idea. Using my powers was, of course, but going into town was as well. I didn''t need to go anywhere, and I certainly didn''t have credits to burn. And there was so much work to do still, so much was required to keep one man alive. The moment of panic had ignited the flame of caution within me, reminded me what fear smelled like, even if it was just a damn animal.


    I lowered my head and stood again, taking deep breaths as though I could breathe the anxiety out of me. Anger ebbed at the periphery but I kept it at bay. I should be working, I really should. I''d wasted so much of today already, and while my use of my powers had helped, it had only caught me up. If I worked hard, worked honestly for the day, I''d be on-track. I could keep on living.


    In the end it wasn''t the best day, either for being happy or productive, but fell somewhere in between. It was a day like many others, and there would be many more like it. It was a day I could tolerate the passing of, I thought, my back stretching with pained satisfaction as I lie in bed for the night, my feet drinking in the cool air, freed from their shoeful prisons.


    I fell asleep almost at once, my work earning me that much. But apparently not much more, because before too long I awoke to the sounds of screaming.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Not human screaming. There weren''t any humans in miles of here. The damn chickens, and the damn coyotes. Inhuman noises, like nothing no man should ever hear. Long bleating screeches, like someone tearing a hole in static, and feral growls, so deep they sounded like they were coming from the earth.


    I was out of bed and out the door in an instant, turning the lights on as I went. I ran to the coop and found two chickens already dead, and three or four coyotes struggling to get them through the hole under the fence they''d dug. The red blood stained the white feathers, and the teeth of the beasts glinted in the yard lights, blood clinging to their snouts like mud.


    One of them, the one doing the killing, the one closest to me, I recognized. His ear was torn, and he looked up at me as I came running with disinterest. The same one I''d seen earlier today. I should have known then, this one had been around humans too long, he''d eaten our food or killed our animals before, and he wasn''t afraid of us. He seemed to glance at me only long enough to tell me he didn''t care about me at all, before shoving his face back into the coop, where the chickens were screaming.


    My blood boiled at the little bastard. After everything else this week, as though losing my cock and fertilizing half my hens wasn''t enough, missing my chance to go into town and being forced into using my powers, this little bastard had the gall to ignore me and go right back to killing my hens.


    I screamed at him and stooped for a rock, throwing it clattering off the siding of the coop. Again, he only glanced at me, even if the others were sent running a few paces. I set on him, advancing to within a few feet.


    And that finally got him to looking at me. He pulled his head out of the coop and growled, his head low and bloody teeth bared. He was matted with blood and feathers from the hens he''d already killed, and he took a step towards me.


    My guts did a somersault as primal fear of a wild animal rose up in me, and the fear battled with the anger boiling in me already. This bastard weren''t scared of me at all, he''d jump me any moment, and maybe I could take him or maybe not. Maybe he was rabid, and if he got his teeth into me, I''d be too, until I died, barking mad out here, tearing apart the rest of my hens with my own teeth.


    I didn''t know what that particular image came to mind, but it sickened me, made me want to vomit, when all these sudden starts tearing me out of sleep were already making my stomach churn and my throat dry. I felt myself retch, and saw the beast draw another step closer.


    And then, barking, it charged. I got my hands in front of me and screamed back at it, aiming my fist for its underbelly, and too blind to see the teeth coming.


    But of course, in my state, my stupid, blind, unawake stupor, I''d forgotten about my powers. I''d spent all day everyday ignoring them, and so they weren''t the first thing to come to mind in a fight. Even if that''s when I might''ve needed them most. But I shouldn''t have been surprised when they came out anyway. Should''ve been happy really -- here, in the cover of darkness, protecting myself and my brood, there was no better time for them to be called for.


    But I was surprised. For what it was worth, so was the coyote, right before he died. Smoke belched from his mouth. The pain and wonder caught him mid-jump and he just fell like a clod of dirt, scampering away from me, yelping as fire caught him from within.


    I turned on the other coyotes, not quite understanding, and where my gaze caught them, they, too, erupted into death. But not lifted by my powers, nor bursting into flame. All kinds of grizzly death.


    One folded on itself like a puzzle cube, shearing lines of raw meat as it tried to yelp with severed lungs and run on broken legs. It twitched and trembled horribly, making ungodly sounds from deep within itself as it gushed blood from every surface.


    Another seemed to freeze completely, motionless on one paw where it had been fleeing. I watched in fascinated horror as it slowly tipped over, and when it hit the ground, shattered into dust.


    The last one was still trying to run, but seemingly couldn''t, whimpering as though in pain as it struggled where it stood. It thrashed in the air, feet scraping the ground.


    The first collapsed and erupted as the fire within it burst through to the outside in a fireball, and then it went silent, the fire beginning to spread to the scattered hay and the coop. The second stopped moving as well, and the third...well it was dust. I didn''t know where it went or what happened to it.


    The fourth was the only one left alive. And while I needed to tend that fire and see to my hens, I couldn''t do anything of the sort. Morbid curiosity gripped me, and I felt like I was trapped in a play, waiting to see the final act fall, no matter what else I wanted to do.


    This critter was properly afraid of me, as you only ever saw in prey animals. Its eyes were wide and its ears flattened in terrror as it thrashed against nothing, whining and twitching. In its animal intelligence, I could see it recognizing the other coyotes, how suddenly and supernaturally they''d died, and somehow, it knew that what happened to them, what was happening to it, that was all me. It was terrified of my every movement.


    I reached out and felt what seemed taut spiderwebs connected to nothing. All around the animal, invisible wires, too strong for me to break, stretching into emptiness, and too small to be seen. They were wrapped around the coyote in a hundred places, tight enough to make it bleed through its fur.


    I didn''t think I could cut it down, not without risking the freaked-out thing turning and biting me in its panic. I took a deep breath, and reaching out with my powers on purpose for the first time that night, broke its neck.


    The coop was going up in flames, full of straw and molting, but with a thought, I put all the fires out. With the crackling roar gone, I could hear the chickens inside still screaming their panic. Running around, hurting each other, ripping out their feathers mindlessly.


    I broke all their necks too, just for the quiet.


    And then it was quiet. Perfectly quiet. The wind didn''t stir and the bugs didn''t chirp. It was nothing but peaceful, perfect silence all around me. Silence and death.


    I didn''t know what had happened here. I didn''t know why I was throwing fire or slicing bodies with my mind or spinning invisible webs. I''d always and only ever been able to move things with my mind, and I''d been doing that a long time now, or trying not to.


    But now here I was. Finally content for a moment, and I didn''t even know why. I certainly didn''t know why I felt the need to kill that last coyote, or the chickens. It just felt good to get my powers out. Felt right. Felt like, I could push out all the goddawful things which''d ever happened to me by taking it out on their lives.


    Felt quiet. Felt powerful. Felt, for the first time in a few weeks, not pissed right off.


    I took in a deep breath and smelled the smoke and the blood.


    Goddamn disaster this week was. I''d have to pluck and gut and smoke these chickens before they went bad, and while I was at it, I might try a taste of coyote meat, I supposed. They cost me enough food, they may was well start paying me back.


    I reached for my shovel but my hand froze halfway there. My dirty, calloused hand.


    Forget the shovel. I reached out with my mind and pulled the chickens from the coop as one. In one moment, every single feather on ''em plucked themselves, falling down into a shower of white and brown.


    I used one of my new powers, rotating the chickens down the middle in opposite directions, splitting them perfectly in half. After they were cracked open, their entrails floated from their bodies and joined the refuse.


    The was easy, I realized. These powers I''d hidden from for so long, I could pluck, gut, and roast a thousand hens a minute, without so much as dirtying my hands. It was incredible, as I began to think of everything else my powers might let me do, all the unimaginable opportunities seemingly opening up to me at once.


    Of course, revenge was at the top of the list, but I told myself no. Even with all this power, there was nothing to be gained by picking a fight with another person. As much as I hated being forced into this lifestyle, killing those who''d sent me here wouldn''t change anything, It''d just open the doors to trouble. It''d get people asking questions, looking for me, investigating. And that was the last thing I wanted.


    Although, the more I dwelled on it, the more the thought of their terrified faces and the flashes of blue and red lights and the wailing of sirens blazed in my mind. My heart seethed with pain and anger. They did deserve to die, those bastards.


    But I wouldn''t be the one to kill them. As much as I wanted to. I hated them, and with my new powers, I could imagine their deaths again and again in all new ways. Gutless, hateful bastards, ruining my whole world for...what? For no goddamn reason at all. Because I existed and they were scared. Like that was any reason to ruin a man''s life.


    I waited for the anger to go away but it didn''t. My skin just burned hotter and hotter on my body until it felt like the night air was blazing, and I pulled off my shirt and dragged it inside with me, washing my face in cold water.


    I''d deal with the chickens and coyotes tomorrow. Right now, I clearly couldn''t even think straight. I splashed water on my face again and again, and when that wasn''t enough to clear my mind, I jumped into the shower and blasted myself with ice.


    Maybe I should kill them, I thought. Maybe I could find that moment of peace and silence again if they were dead. My thoughts were louder than ever now, buzzing in my brain almost painfully. The night made me feel stupid and slow, and feral, and I knew in the morning my concern should be looking after the tomatoes and potatoes which would keep me alive, now that my chickens were all dead.


    But it was hard. It felt like I was battling an addiction, though I didn''t know what I''d even tried that I was addicted to. All I knew is I didn''t want my stupid, crappy, goddamned hillbilly life anymore.


    But I had to stick with it. It''d kept me alive for four years, when Exhumans were being nabbed left and right. As much as I wanted to cheat, I knew that was just my stupid brain wanting to be lazy, and laziness would get me killed at these stakes. Hide and live, go and die. It was that simple. I''d seen too many Exhuman events with too many self-righteous Exhumans getting themselves killed, because they had power and they were going to use it.


    It was a mistake. It was always a mistake. That was why I would stay here. That was why I would never use my powers again.


    Ever.


    I went to pained, broken sleep with that determination and woke up with that determination. It lasted me through a bland breakfast and morning chores, until I found myself staring down four coyote corpses and a goddamn thousand pounds of chicken guts and feathers.


    And then, like I did before, I looked around furtively, made absolutely sure nobody was watching, and got to work.

 351. 2252, Present Day. SFO, San Francisco. AEGIS.

    "Are you sure we don''t need...I don''t know¡­" I heard Athan''s complaining through the wooden panel. "...air?"


    Fortunately the panel did not have any air holes in it, and as such, I was able to pass off his voice by coughing suddenly, drawing an odd glance from the people around us. Better than people wondering why my box was talking. I gave them a wan smile until they finished their staring and wandered away.


    Once they were I punched the side of the box and growled at it. "We''re in an airport, Athan. There are people here. Keep it down."


    I heard a mumbled apology from inside the crate and it went quiet.


    Which was good, because there were already too many moving parts to this plan. It''d seemed so simple at first, and just become more and more complicated as we''d encountered problem after problem.


    In practice, the plan was simple. Looking over the XPCA laws and amendments, we''d discovered that goods declared under Section 13 weren''t subject to inspection or having their contents declared. They''d just be moved, handled discreetly, under federal protection.


    Which was both ironic and extremely helpful for our band of federal fugitives. Unable to go anywhere as ourselves, and quite probably a little too recognizable to rely on falsified IDs, being able to ship ourselves anywhere, no questions asked, when we needed to get from here to Japan sounded like a freaking miracle. The very loopholes that Idris had sewn into the XPCA, we''d be able to use to slip through their tight net and get right out from under them.


    And just in time, too. Before we left, we saw an uptick in XPCA activity in the bay area, and whether that was for us or unrelated, I couldn''t know, but was glad not to be in the middle of.


    Instead, I was in the middle of this mess. Trying to get a box of my friends on a plane to Japan. I''d looked it up and done the legal bit, the box was fully declared and labelled, ready to be sent off. The hard part was getting it on a plane to begin with. Typically couriers tended to handle this kind of thing, and typically they also were commercial in nature and wouldn''t know what the heck I even meant if I tried to declare the contents uninspectable by Section 13.


    Never mind the mess that might arise if they began asking around what Section 13 was and the XPCA heard about it.


    Which kinda left the ''normal'' way of shipping it through military channels, which seemed suicidal, all things considered. Hence, the alternative DIY approach.


    So we weren''t in the public part of the San Francisco International airport, we were in a cargo building, basically a warehouse with attached offices, one side of which was an unloading area for trucks, the other side a loading area into specialized hull-shaped bins, which would then get packed into a VTOL.


    And I wasn''t in my normal attire, I was in work boots, a polo, jeans, and a hi-vis vest, pushing this crate around like I knew what I was doing with it. I hadn''t worn pants in a while, and shoes in even longer, and I was rediscovering just how hot and constraining they could be, so Athan''s occasional whimpering wasn''t really helping.


    Lia had volunteered for the job, and she might have even been qualified for it, if she didn''t look like a fifteen-year-old. Athan and Karu were too recognizable, both having their face on the news plenty. And Saga¡­well, she might have passed as some other kind of inoffensive Asian, if she could stop screwing around. Even with her in there, every time I saw someone trip or run into a wall, I wasn''t entirely sure it wasn''t her.


    Plus I was just not a fan of being locked in dark, small boxes anymore. We''d get there.


    I checked the documents again, and then again, and then again, and verified this was the place to leave the box off. Correct section, box had the right labels on it...I just had to shelve it and when the flight was loaded, it''d go along for the ride.


    So I was looking around furtively again while I figured out how to work the jack I''d borrowed to carry the box, when someone approached me.


    "Hey there, haven''t seen you around."


    "Huh?" I asked, spinning on the guy. He was basically wearing my outfit, plus an easy smile. "Oh. Yeah. I''m uh, new."


    "I can see that. Oversized has its own section by the gate. I''ll show you. First rodeo?"


    "Uh."


    "Is this your first truck you''re unloading?"


    "Oh. Yeah. I mean, I...did something similar back east. Small company, never in an airport like this."


    I wondered if it was a trick question. Maybe he was important here, and would know of any new logistics people. Or they had a mentoring program or the like, and he was wondering where my mentor was. My mind raced with possibilities but he didn''t follow-up, just led me along until we reached larger racks, excessively huge, each shelf maybe twelve feet high, and only two of them to the roof.


    "Well I knew you weren''t a career cowgirl by the way you walked. You move too fast. Gotta relax, the truck ain''t goin'' anywhere." Again with that easy smile.


    "Is not...the truck and the company waiting on us to unload promptly?" I asked.


    And to that he just laughed, taking the handle of my jack and effortlessly steering the crate into the shelves, where he dismounted it with practiced ease.


    "That''s a good one," he said. "Come on, I''ll help you with the rest of the load."


    "There''s no more, that was the last box."


    "Well then," he said, backpedaling to read the box. "Looks like she''s not going anywhere for a few hours. What say you join me on this two-six-six?"


    He attempted to draw me in towards where the others were congregating. Three or four more people, again, seemingly identically attired, all loosely waiting near a gate where a VTOL was slowly pulling in, its turbofans strangely silent as it glided across the tarmac on wheels as large as me.


    "Uh, yeah, no. Sorry I have...another thing, I just remembered."


    I tried to break away from him but as soon as I turned, so did he. This was supposed to be a simple plan, and this guy was ruining it.


    "What''s the rush? We''ve got a few minutes before unloading. I just want to get to know you a little better. First days can be rough, right? Make some friends, it''ll work out."


    "Um, no thanks."


    "Oh come on. Don''t be shy. You''ve got body mods, right? I think they look great. You''re probably used to getting all kinds of attention."


    I blinked at the incoherence of his arguments and realized, he was probably just talking at me with whatever came to mind. I didn''t know how people got through the day doing that kind of thing. The variance alone would kill me.


    Not that I was having great success with my own current strategy. I just didn''t understand what was making this guy tick. It was already strange he was going out of his way to help me so much, but to do so while not letting me go?


    I looked at him again, and realized he was still smiling at me.


    Oh, hell no.


    It was time to bust out the big guns. I cranked up my systems to top specs as I could without overheating and ran simulations of how to get rid of him.


    The most obvious solutions where physical in nature. Karu would have gone that route; disabling him temporarily, or even just enough threat of violence to provoke a fear reaction would work. Locking him up or putting him down would buy me the time I needed, but if he recovered or was recovered before the flight left, he might implicate my cargo. Maybe dropping him permanently was an option...and again, very much an option for Karu, but not anything I wanted to get into, except as a last resort.


    I could appeal to his characteristics. Humans tended to have strong empathy, desire for honesty, justice, trust, and good, any one of which might bend him a little towards my current situation. Athan would do that, speaking honestly and trying to win the stranger over. But Athan also liked to put us in a lot of pretty shit situations because he wouldn''t deal with problems before they were problems. Spilling my guts to the man might take more time than I had, and there was still no assurance that it''d work.


    Which really left lies and deception, I thought. Sort of how Saga might handle it. Just trick the guy into going away, or coming up with some reason for me to stay and him to go. She had the mind advantage of course, which would let her do anything from make the most unconvincing lie apparently bulletproof...to just making the guy urgently need to poop his pants. I didn''t have any real handy lies on hand, or else I might have used them already.


    Kinda filed that away in the back of my mind like an irritating checkbox on a list to check on in the future that my first reaction was the same as Saga''s. I needed to reevaluate some life choices, probably.


    Of course, what I really wanted to know was what Lia would do. If I had a working simulation of her in my head, I''d be unstoppable, it felt like. Some of the more eclectic cases running were showing promising results, and I thought they might be the kind of thing she''d do.


    Namely, just avoid the whole situation. Use words, yes, but instead of engaging, disengage with them. Sabotage his interest in me, or gaslight him, or make him think we had a complete misunderstanding he''d be too embarrassed to get over.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    I had a wicked idea and smiled internally as I got my thoughts in order. I turned to him and batted my eyelashes deliberately.


    "You are...exceptionally awful," I informed him.


    "Excuse me?"


    "I saw a really ugly accident on the way over here. At least, I assumed he was an accident. Your parents would never have you on purpose, would they?"


    He blinked at me politely, the smile clinging to his face while he puzzled through my words. He finally decided this was some kind of joke and laughed.


    "Oh good, you''re laughing at yourself. Now you''ve caught up to everyone else."


    "Um, what just happened here? Are you okay?"


    I thought maybe I was going a little too highbrow on him and brought it down a notch. "Your face looks like someone with a tiny dick fucked a lasagna."


    "Okay, what the hell," he asked, his smile disappearing now. He''d gotten the memo to be offended at least. "There''s no need for name-calling, and frankly, this is extremely unprofessional. I''m going to have to talk to Ken about this. What''d you say your name was?"


    "Gwen."


    "Gwen what?"


    "G''wen fuck yourself," I giggled.


    "All right, that''s it. I''m reporting this right now. Then you can tell me who''s Gwen."


    I smiled as he stormed off, even blowing him a kiss when he turned back to stare at me for a moment.


    Probably totally ruined his day, but I had to admit, it was pretty fun doing so. I really didn''t want anyone crushing on me, like, ever, so crushing him back seemed kinda fitting.


    Once he was out of sight, I skipped back to my crate and cracked open the top. Four people blinked back at me, adjusting from the lights of their mobiles in the padded container.


    "What was all that?" Athan asked, scooting over as I let myself in and pulled the lid back securely shut.


    "Oh, just flirting with the staff."


    He glared at me, but Saga gave an uncharacteristic giggle.


    "Was there...a reason for this flirting? Do we get to board with the premium cargo now or something?" Lia asked.


    "And you never answered my question about air holes," Athan complained. I messed up his hair and gave him a kiss on the cheek, which he frowned and rubbed at. I had to conclude that after eviscerating that poor guy, I was still in a playful mood, which was something I hadn''t been in a while.


    "The cabin will be pressurized, and the crate''s not airtight. It will be cold," I informed him. "Now shush before they open the box because it''s talking. We''ve all got mobiles, chat in messenger if you need to say something."


    With five of us in here now it was pretty cramped. The crate was big enough that we could all lie down or sit up comfortably, and we''d taken the effort to disassemble a couple of old couches and line the interior with their padding...I''d enlisted Whitney to ensure they didn''t stink...but it was still five people in a box without holes or light¡­


    Well, it was really nothing like I''d feared. I''d spent a long, long time underground and alone, and I thought that this might remind me of that and give me a panic attack, as had happened in the past. But as it turned out, my confinement had been alone in a big space, and here I was crowded in a small one, really nothing alike, and despite their efforts at silence, there was near-constant noise of people breathing or shuffling around or tapping on their devices.


    In fact, cuddled between Athan and Saga, it was actually really nice in here. The tip-tap of mobiles in the dark reminded me of computer work. The people I was laying with reminded me of cuddles. It was warm with our collective body heat, comfy, it felt safe.


    And I really, really didn''t mind being pressed up against Athan like I was. I grinned to myself as I wondered how traumatized Lia might be if the whole box turned into a big twelve-hour orgy until we arrived. Probably a very bad idea, especially if there were live pilots within Saga''s range. But a fun one, I filed away for later use.


    "What are you beaming for?" Karu asked, visor glowing at me from Athan''s other side. I was glad I wasn''t bumping up against her armor, but Lia didn''t seem to mind.


    "Oh just...thinking of computer things," I told her.


    "Sure you weren''t thinking of that cowboy?" Saga whispered.


    "Cowboy?"


    "He called you a cowgirl. He referred to unloading the truck as a rodeo. You don''t pick up on lingo very fast, do you?"


    I rolled my eyes for her benefit, since I couldn''t just think my annoyance at her. "No, I was not thinking of him."


    "Y''know, if you wanted something really cutting, I could have hooked you up. I aim for the personal insecurities, myself. Tell him something like how his friends really only tolerate him. Or how sad it is that he''s grown so far from his parents, because they actually really used to love him."


    "Okay, what the heck happened out there?" Athan whispered back. "It can''t be anything good if Saga is this engaged."


    "There was a guy who wasn''t letting me sneak into the box," I told him.


    "So she let him sneak into her box--"


    "Not helping, Saga," I told her, and she giggled again. Seriously, she was what, a hundred years old, and she had the mind of a high schooler. If she kept whispering and giggling, we were going to get in trouble and ruin this whole field trip.


    "So you insulted him?" Athan asked, incredulous. Karu shushed him and he gave her a quick frown before turning back at me.


    "It''s a good move," Lia said. "People don''t usually like talking to someone who''s being a big ol'' dingo to ''em."


    "Thanks, I thought it was pretty good."


    "Why didn''t you just tell him...you needed to get in here for global security or something? We''re only doing this to rescue someone and worry about political corruption and the corrosion of the XPCA by greedy corporations. Surely he would have resonated with some of that."


    I sighed. I might have wished I had a simulation of Lia sometimes, but I could already get Athan spot-on without effort. I kinda wished he''d knock it off, because he was drying up my crate-orgy fantasy.


    "Okay, seriously though," he began again, and this time we all shushed him. "Hey, I''m just saying--"


    "Athan, here''s a fun travel fact," I told him, barely whispering in his ear, and enjoying the cuddles too much to bother adjusting my glasses. "Did you know that the ancient predecessors to our digital media players, these big machines called gramophones back in the twentieth century, they had a big brass horn that music was piped out of, but no volume control? So if you wanted to dampen the sound, you''d literally put a sock in the horn, and that''s where we got the idiom ''put a sock in it''."


    He blinked at me a couple times, his brow working as he processed my words and tried to apply them to the situation. Finally he whisper-responded. "What does that have to do with anything?"


    I smiled at him. "I thought it was relevant."


    He opened his mouth to respond, but Saga reached across me and put her long fingers on his lips.


    "Shush, doggy," she said, and I saw Karu twitch involuntarily. "They''re coming to load the crate, and we want it to be the kind of crate that doesn''t talk."


    Athan bit back his retort and nodded. And sure enough, within a few minutes, I could feel the crate getting lifted and pulled, twisting one way and then another, and losing all sense of direction surprisingly quickly.


    Although, I could obviously look it up on my compass or pull a map if I needed to, but that would kind of diminish the human experience here. And it wasn''t like knowing where we were or facing was going to help. Once that box was closed, we were all in for a ride.


    "...lasagna, but that a guy with a tiny dick had sex with," came a voice outside the box, and Saga and I both had to stifle a laugh. Her hands were up in an instant, tapping on her glowing mobile, and a moment later I got a message.


    > He really massacred the delivery. Yours was much better.


    "Are you sure? I heard there was a hiring freeze for the month. There shouldn''t have been anyone new here today."


    "She was here, I tell you. I wouldn''t make it up."


    "Sure. And none of the rest saw her, and she disappeared. And had red hair in pigtails down past her waist."


    "It''s true, it''s all true."


    "Especially the insults. Because that''s what any new hire would do is show up, insult you, and disappear."


    "Okay, you''re just making this sound worse than it is, like I''m crazy."


    "Look man, if you don''t want to unload the two-six-six you just tell me."


    We held our breath as their bickering continued, and the sound outside the box changed from the silent glide of the jack to the faint roar of the winds on the tarmac, and then the rumble of metal grating, as the box was loaded and stowed. And then the voices faded away, leaving us very much alone and very much in the dark belly of an empty VTOL.


    It felt like whole minutes before we heard them back, banging around and talking, and more of them, as they moved more and more goods around us, sounding like we, as oversized goods, were loaded right into the middle of the vehicle.


    For balance, I assumed. Not that I really knew. I never actually did get a pilot''s license.


    And then there was about an hour and a half of silence. Saga told us they''d left and we could resume our ''inane blathering if we desired, but nobody really had much else to say. We were all just proverbially buckled in and waiting to go. And waiting, and waiting.


    Until, at long last, Saga again informed us that we had company, and a few minutes later, the turbofans of the VTOL came to life all around us, vibrating the entire vessel and our crate as they spun up.


    "It will not, perhaps, be the most comfortable way I have flown. But not the least comfortable, by far," Karu said.


    "In ten hours, we''ll be in Haneda Airport," Lia said, checking her mobile. "Which is a pretty cool thing, first time leaving the country for me. Athan, too."


    "Hmm. Kind of a weird state for me and Saga I think," I said. "When we were in Canada, it wasn''t part of the US, but when we came back, it was. Does that count as being abroad?"


    Everyone shrugged. I laughed.


    "Well, it feels like an adventure?" I asked. Lia nodded, but Athan took longer to think it over.


    "It''s supposed to be a rescue mission," he said.


    "Well it can be both, can''t it? An adventure of a rescue mission. I think, whether you want it or not, there''s going to be a lot of new experiences for you out there."


    "But it''s supposed to be a rescue mission."


    "And it will be," I said, giving him another peck on the cheek. "Don''t you worry, we''ll find them and bring them home. Until then, you just try to get some sleep, and think about how many girls you''ve got snuggling up with you."


    "Yeah, I''m trying not to."


    "Please don''t," Lia said, on his other side. "Dude, if you poke me with something, I''mma break it off."


    "We could trade places?" Karu suggested. "I would not mind being poked."


    "No, I won this spot in the rock-paper-scissors tournament in the car. Just don''t turn it into something perverted, AEGIS. Karu."


    I grinned apologetically at her. "Not my fault he''s cute."


    "Whatever. Let''s just focus on the ''adventure'' angle. Think about all the stuff we''ll see and do. And the people we''ll rescue, eh, bro?"


    He nodded at the roof of the box, as though immune to the charms of visiting somewhere he''d never been, laser-focused on one goal, and one goal alone.


    "Hang in there Moon, Tem. We''re coming," he whispered.

 352. 2252, Present Day. Japan. Athan.

    I wasn''t quite sure how I saw this going, but even so, how it went still surprised me somehow.


    In my mind, I guess I envisioned something properly heroic. Our crate, dropped off at IkaCo central headquarters, the gang all busting out, weapons hot, faces grim, storming the building and breaking the chains off of Moon while Ichiro sat, shitting his pants.


    Or maybe trekking across the city like a battlefield, dodging danger at every turn. JSDF VTOLs ripping through the skies after us while AEGIS and Karu and I tore down city streets, ever closing the distance on Ichiro while explosions rocked the ground under us and we traversed barricades and roadblocks by doing sweet-ass backflips and shit.


    Or a quiet infiltration, of cunning and guile, bumping into AEGIS still disguised as a cargo cowgirl while I bristled behind my false mustache and broom as a janitor. Swiping keycards and blinding cameras, as Saga put those around us to work getting us up the building, creeping ever closer to Ichiro, ever unseen, like an unstoppable infection, undetectable until we''d already conquered our host.


    Instead...there was...this box. It was wood, padded, kinda smelly. It was a plain ol'' box, with nothing to it, nothing going on outside of it but the drone of turbofans and nothing inside but the lights of the holos of the five people in it.


    At first I''d been pumped, raring to go. Ten hours, and we''d be there. I could almost see Moon and Tem''s faces shining at me from the dark.


    And then those hours had trickled by. I spent them productively, at first, I thought. Coming up with different scenarios we might face, and how we''d tackle them. Going over plans and scenarios and who among us could deal with what situations.


    But as I began to realize just how long ten hours of sitting there doing nothing was, the scenarios turned more and more camp. The bombastic movie setpieces I''d envisioned evolved through the power of boredom into thousand-year wars against armies of Exhumans, or Ichiro using his private technology to shrink to the size of a flea.


    It got really weird. I was really bored. I began to reconsider the lack of reading material I''d brought with me. Sleep was supposed to be an option, but I felt like we were supposed to be en-route to a rescue, not...passing out on some cushy flight.


    I think AEGIS knew I was making myself crazy, and she started talking to me in a low voice for a bit, babbling at random about cultural differences between America and Japan. How we''d all stand out enormously as tourists, but ironically, be completely invisible as a result.


    "They honestly kind of expect you to be doing suspicious, often moronic things," she whispered. "Culturally, it seems they have astonishingly low expectations of Americans in general. The stereotype is that we''re very loud and very friendly and very lazy. Like a big dog."


    "I don''t think I''m particularly loud or lazy. And I''m pretty average on friendliness."


    "Currently you are far too loud," Karu interjected, her visor currently substituted with a sleep mask. "Might I ask you to refrain from bleating about nothing?"


    AEGIS gave me an apologetic shrug and laid back down, leaving me alone with my thoughts again.


    I probably checked the clock a hundred times in the next hour, wondering how it was possible for it to move so very slowly. After the fourth or fifth time, Lia started shaking her head at me when I lit up my mobile to check, herself just a face and some bushy hair in the dark.


    Finally, apparently I''d ceased to amuse Saga and started to annoy her, because she sat up and stared at me.


    "Do you want to just sleep?" she asked, hardly needing to whisper.


    "I can''t. I keep thinking of--"


    "You can, dumbass. And you will."


    I blinked at her, a little confused. And then my eyelids came down like iron, and I never even felt my head hit the padding.


    And so, instead of waking up, ninja pose, lightning powers ripping, I came to very slowly and very disoriented, having no idea what time it was but finding it a lot brighter than I expected. Not that it was actually bright, my eyes were just tired.


    My neck hurt a bit, and when I felt back at the pillow I was on, found it hard and plastic-like under my fingertips. I looked back and discovered I''d just missed groping Karu''s breasts by a few inches, and was currently holding her shoulder-plate as she slept under me. Lia was similarly wrapped over my legs, making them uncomfortably hot.


    And as I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and looked around, I caught sight of AEGIS, sitting in a small chair made entirely of curved wood, on her mobile and as awake as ever. She smiled when she saw me up.


    "They only had one room," she apologized. "Karu just passed out, and Saga put you under so hard you never woke up when we moved you. And then Lia got jealous of you two cuddling so she joined in and fell asleep." She shook her head, smiling at us like we were kids at a slumber party. "Of course I was a little jealous, but I thought you had enough girls crushing you at the moment."


    "I appreciate that, I think I''m already pretty buried here," I whispered back, attempting to dislodge Lia, who somehow seemed to become more attached as I pried her loose. "One room...we''re in a hotel?"


    "Yep. Business hotel near the airport. Saga and I got us all through without any issue. Someone down the line is going to be very confused at receiving our empty box. She did the sneaking work, and I did the carrying-you and dragging the others along. Jet lag''s a hell of a thing, huh?"


    "It''s so sunny out," I commented, the blinds still leaking light despite being fully closed. "It feels like the middle of the night."


    "It''s seven hours time difference. It''s only one in the afternoon here, but it''s late evening at home. You never had issues with flying all across America before, did you?"


    "No, but that was only three hours, tops," I said, extracting myself from the girls and sliding off the bed. "Plus I never really had a schedule beyond ''do what Cosette says''. Since, y''know, Exhumans can strike at any time."


    "The vast majority of them happen first thing in the morning. Probably because people wake up with powers and only learn that by screwing everything up."


    "Yeah I could see that being an ugly start for an Exhuman," I agreed. Getting up was actually kind of a bad idea, this bedroom was tiny...but I needed to get off of Karu before my neck broke. Aside from where AEGIS was sitting at the desk, there wasn''t really anywhere but the bed to put myself. "Just the one room, huh?"


    "We''re also poor, don''t forget," she chastised me. "We''ve been counting on Lia making bank for so long that you might not remember what it''s like to not have casual millions of credits to throw around. We''ve got enough to get by, but if it comes to dumping everyone in a twin or renting out the penthouse, I know what makes more sense to me."


    "Well, yeah, but you don''t sleep." She rolled her eyes at me as I, for want of anywhere else to go, wandered into the bathroom. "Woah, it''s weird in here."


    "What is?"


    "The floor is all plastic and I...there''s a lip at the door, I almost tripped. The faucets are different. The toilet has buttons. Why is there a stepstool in here? Did you move it in there?"


    She giggled at me. "Oh you''ve got a lot of culture to soak in, Athan. I forget that you''ve never been outside the States."


    "You haven''t either."


    "Yes, but I''ve got a voracious curiosity and twenty-four hour ''net uplink. Plus I''ve seen too many anime not to know how their bathrooms work."


    "You watch people peeing in Japanese vids?"


    "Of course."


    I stared at her. "Okay, I thought anime was weird before but¡­


    She chuckled. "It''s maybe not the focus of most shows, but culture is culture, Athan. How many movies or shows have you seen where there''s a bathroom stall where you can see someone''s ankles under it?"


    I thought about it a second. "I dunno, a lot?"


    She joined me in the bathroom, stepping carefully over the raised lip under the door, and making it about as cramped as the bedroom.


    "Well that''s a pretty uniquely American thing. In other countries, the stalls give actual privacy. You learn that just by consuming media. It''s not like I had to go looking up urological fetish porn."If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "But you did anyway, don''t you?" I asked with a sigh.


    "Found it wasn''t for me. But you never know until you try."


    I suspected that had to do with her lack of bladder more than anything, but I changed the subject back before I was forced to find out. "So care to use your encyclopornic knowledge to tell me what''s going on in here?"


    "That''s a tub," she said, pointing at the tub, very helpfully. "But in Japan you don''t really use the tub to get clean. You soak in it to warm up and relax, and not to fester in a pool of your own filth. To that end--" she pointed at the stool, and the general bare plastic of the floor complete with drain in the middle "you bathe outside the bath first to get clean. The floors are all waterproof and you''ve got a little stool to sit on while you scrub. Or while your lady friend scrubs for you. Care for a test run?"


    "Huh," I said, ignoring her. "So it''s a literal bath room. There''s a lip at the door because the whole room is a big shower, essentially."


    "Essentially."


    "Crazy."


    "I am quite a fan of the concept of cleaning yourself off before sitting in the water. Just makes sense not to marinate in your own feces and exfoliate."


    "Yeah I got that by your choice in verbs. ''Fester.'' ''Marinate.'' Very lovely. What''s with the crazy faucets?"


    She laughed less demurely this time and pushed up her glasses as she grinned at me, explaining how very normal it was in a lot of places to see the separate hot and cold water taps come in and mix in the room instead of in the walls. Again, I got a little earful of how peculiar Americans are about some things, and how there was an urban myth in Japan about how faucets all should be lift-to-operate, because if they were any other way, things could turn them on by falling on them in an earthquake and flood your house.


    I settled in, sitting on the edge of the tub the divided the room in half and listened. In part, I was still waking up a little bit, I felt groggy as hell like I''d really just woken up in the middle of the night and needed to go back to sleep, but also because AEGIS was a really beautiful girl.


    Not just in the physical sense, though she was that, inarguably. But because she got so passionate and interested when she started explaining things. I''d often gotten the impression that she should be a teacher or something, given how she just loved to go on and on about anything she found interesting, which was nearly anything. I imagined that whenever the rest of the world slept and she had nothing to do, she just pored over the internet, cataloguing trivia, factoids, history, and anecdotes into her eidetic memory, and took equal joy in whipping them out again later.


    She''d gone on to talk about how a two-tap system was still the norm in the UK, which once had hygienic reasons but now as mostly because the British took great pride in washing their hands with the most painfully cold water possible and keeping a stiff upper lip about it. She stopped and trailed off into silence for a moment, staring at my eyes.


    "I''m boring you, aren''t I?" she asked.


    "No, not at all."


    "Then...you think I''m crazy?"


    "No. Well maybe, but not specifically."


    "Then what?" She crossed her arms defensively.


    "What, what?"


    "You''re just staring at me, even after I stopped talking."


    I gave her a grin and got up. I wasn''t about to tell her what I was thinking, if for no other reason than if Lia overheard it, I''d never hear the end of it from her. I settled for giving her a playful pat on the head -- which she leaned into -- and changing the subject.


    "Where''s Saga?" I asked.


    "Last I heard, she''s off to ''learn Japanese''."


    "What?"


    "Yeah, you got me there too. She said it was driving her crazy and she had to go figure it out. Just kinda got up and left, and I wasn''t going to leave the three of you to wake up without anyone around to explain what happened. Imagine what a disaster it might have been if you woke up and needed to use the bathroom."


    "Um, I kinda do," I said. She smiled at me politely but didn''t leave. At my continued glaring, she cocked her head, and then in mock understanding lifted the toilet seat for me.


    "I can hold it for you if you''d like."


    "It must be hard for Saga," I continued. "Everyone here thinking in Japanese, I wonder if it''s like when she first turned. She had a real freakout session with the thoughts of everyone around her kinda...unbearably broadcast into her brain. She''s gotten a lot better at tuning it out obviously, but that''s given that she''s familiar with it. If it''s all in a new language...or heck, if people here think differently in general, maybe it''s giving her issues."


    "Maybe," she said, suddenly looking worried. "You don''t think she''s going to...have a freakout session now, do you ?"


    I shook my head. "Even if she gets to that point, I think she''s a lot smarter than she used to be. She wouldn''t just start blowing people''s minds up, maybe if she was having a major issue, she''d put them all to sleep or something."


    "Well now I feel like we should have the news on to be safe," she fretted.


    "It''d be in Japanese, wouldn''t it? How would I know if it was about Saga or...I dunno, electing a new prime minister?"


    "Because I can understand Japanese, mostly," she smiled at me.


    "Oh. Yeah. I guess you can just like, download new languages into your brain or whatever."


    She frowned at me, looking offended, and I wondered what I said wrong.


    "I''ll have you know, I''m an AI, but I''m a simulation of a human brain. There''s no way to just plug new data into me other than how humans do it. And for the record, I''m far from fluent, really terrible honestly, but enough to understand most conversations, I think. At least, enough to get us the hotel and decipher what people were talking about in the lobby."


    I blinked at her as a mix of feelings slithered through me. I was, at once, surprised and impressed that she''d mastered such a useful skill under my nose, and surprised and unimpressed with myself, for never considering that we probably should have had a plan for translation from the start. But mostly squirmed at accidentally devaluing her hard work at it.


    "Has anyone ever told you how amazing you are?" I asked.


    All anxiety seemed to vanish from her face in an instant as she beamed at me, freckles disappearing as she flushed. "No. Or, not recently. You could stand to say it a little more."


    "Well you are. I dunno how we''d get anything done without you."


    "Yeah. I dunno how you would either."


    She had to settle for just the one compliment because the door beeped and clicked open. AEGIS and I both peeked out of the bathroom to see who was invading.


    "Japanese is stupid," Saga informed us, holding her head. "I dunno who thought of the concept of speaking in another language, but they should have stopped, smacked themselves with a rock, and then learned English, like everyone else."


    "You do know there''s a whole world out there that doesn''t speak English," AEGIS chided.


    "Yeah, and that part of the world sucks."


    "That''s most of the world."


    "Most of the world is water, and they speak nothing there. We took all the best parts, condensed them down, invented fast food, and then invented English so we could order it."


    "Do they not have fast food here?" I asked, suddenly alarmed. It''s not like I even really ate fast food, but the concept of it not existing threatened to blow my mind.


    "There''s like, a MD''s down the block," Saga informed me.


    "There''s even a cultural phenomenon to get fast food fried chicken every year at Christmas. It''s actually such a big thing that here, they''ve sort of confused two of our mythological characters into one. Sanders Claus."


    "Japan is weird," Saga confirmed. And then, holding her head and wincing, added. "And Japanese is stupid. I was just downstairs trying to follow a conversation, and the two going at it were jabbering so fast, I couldn''t even tell where words started. Or the difference in what they were saying and thinking. By the end of it, I had to come back up here, because I started subconsciously forcing English into their heads."


    "Well don''t do that," AEGIS said, wide-eyed.


    "It''d be a big friggin'' improvement, let me tell you that. All this ching-chong-chang."


    "Well that''s racist."


    "Oh shut up," Saga said, pulling at her narrow eyes mockingly. "I''m Chinese, I''m allowed to say that."


    "Okay, I''m officially way too tired to deal with this shit," I said. "Saga, no terraforming the locals. I''m going to sleep a while longer, at least until Lia and Karu are up. We should plan out food and stuff, since apparently I never considered anything as trivial as like, staying alive."


    "I''m on it," AEGIS chirped. "I''m very excited for you to try real Japanese dishes."


    "I bet they''re gross," Saga sighed. "Don''t they have like, hamburgers here?"


    "You said yourself there''s a MD''s."


    "That''s a Japanese MD''s. They probably serve fish in eel sauce there."


    "Do you ever listen to yourself?" AEGIS asked.


    Saga shook her head. "No, I leave that to everyone else. You need help falling asleep this time buddy, or you got it on your own?"


    "I''ll be fine," I told her, before pausing at the lip of the bathroom, and giving it a little frown. "Actually¡­"


    Saga gave me a glance and then a sigh, muttering ''Merica under her breath while I lingered in the doorway to find the right words.


    "Something up?" AEGIS asked gently. "Oh, do you want turndown service?" her voice suddenly turned lascivious.


    "Dude, no. Lia''s on the bed."


    "There''s a floor. And a tub," she shrugged.


    "And a hallway. And a fountain in the lobby," Saga added.


    I shook my head violently enough that AEGIS resumed her concern. "Um, okay. Well what''s wrong then? Can I help?"


    "Err, yeah. Actually. Kind of awkward, but, uh¡­"


    "Oh Athan, you can ask anything of me, you know that."


    I gave her a lame half-grin. "Yeah. Still awkward though."


    "Well I won''t judge you. Come right on out and say it." She ignored the fact that Saga was now giggling right behind her back.


    I took a deep breath, realizing that more than food and staying alive, I had a lot of culture shock to work through before I''d be remotely comfortable in this bizarre new country. And awkward as it was, the only way to improve was in asking.


    I gestured at the panel of buttons in the bathroom. "Think you could teach me how to use the toilet?"

 353. 2252, Present Day. Tamachi business district, Tokyo. Athan.

    In my continuing saga of self-delusion, I''d imagined IkaCo as something of a fortress, with Ichiro sitting at the highest room in the tallest tower, looking down at the filthy plebeians beneath him as he sipped red wine from a skull-shaped chalice and stroked an ugly cat or something.


    Or at least, somewhere properly hidden. A giant underground base in a dormant volcano. Or maybe a giant underground base in an active volcano.


    But the real IkaCo was neither impressive nor concealed. And not the least bit volcanic. As AEGIS gave our groggy band a rough tour of our new surroundings -- now lodged in an equally tiny apartment we were renting out for the week -- she made sure to point out the ridiculous, ridiculous number of skyscrapers on the skyline. And one in particular.


    "And that," she concluded, "Is the IkaCo building."


    "That''s it?" I asked. Maybe I''d spent too much time in the Raven''s Nest, or heck, in my own delusions, but it looked like a big fancy building...but just a building.


    "I mean, they have like, four other skyscrapers in downtown, and a dozen offices, to say nothing of their other holdings. But that''s the corporate core. That''s where the CEO''s office is, and where all the most expensive and shiny things go."


    It looked...tall. But it was a building and we were standing on a sidewalk so that was pretty expected. I glanced at the others and found them at least equally unimpressed. Lia was yawning under her hood, her eyes dark and unfocused. Karu seemed mostly interested in standing as far out of the flow of foot traffic as possible, shoved against the wall of the building as best she could manage. Saga held her head pitifully.


    But at least AEGIS was beaming at me, seemingly delighted with her role as a tour guide, even if her patrons all looked borderline depressed.


    "Well could we just¡­" I looked around at the hundreds of Japanese milling about, dark hair and dark suits, all apparently identical and limitless, swarming the sidewalks like a seething mass of locusts. "...go in?"


    "Like, for a tour?" AEGIS asked. "We could ask the reception, but I kinda doubt it."


    "No, I meant like, for attacking them."


    "Oh. Well, we don''t really have a bone with IkaCo so much as Ichiro, right? And even then, we''re focused on finding Moon more than anything."


    "And Tem," I added.


    "Sure. So...I think it behooves us to find out where they are before rushing into some office somewhere, guns blazing."


    "There are literally tens of thousands of people on this street," Saga said through grit teeth. "Can I please kill like, half of them?"


    "Maybe we should get out of here," I suggested, and AEGIS agreed. As we pulled Karu off the wall, the cluster of Japanese around us bubbled for a moment, as this tall, blonde, short-haired woman in casual wear apparently wordlessly demanded a zone of personal space the rest of us just couldn''t. Or maybe it was the breasts, as I saw a lot of sidelong glances at them, from men and women both.


    The reason certainly wasn''t her pale skin, because within moments of attaining celebrity, Karu''s flushed red again, her eyes on her feet as she followed us blindly.


    So yeah, this wasn''t at all like I was expecting, and I was beginning to wonder if I was just stupid, or naive, or racist. Charitably, my ''work'' experience until now had been going to places where the enemy resided and taking them out. On some level, I guess I had thought of this mission as being the same, but the longer we were here, the more I realized how wrong that was, and the more my party was variously crushed in ways I never anticipated.


    I mean, Saga dealing with a new language I guess I should have considered. Maybe even Lia struggling with jet lag. But Karu being considered some kind of celebrity? Or AEGIS diving headfirst into full tour-guide mode? I felt like the only sane one here, somehow. Lives were hanging in the balance, and here we were dealing with the most trivial problems.


    In the end, through common misery, we wound up cutting our excursion short and just going right back home. Saga and Karu endured the somewhat-packed rail cars as we left the downtown-ish area for the quieter-ish area further north where we''d wound up staying.


    -Ish, because honestly, the whole freakin'' city was like a downtown, and none of it was truly quiet; absolutely nothing like where I grew up, even in the times I''d been in downtown LA.  But at least our home base was more residential and less skyscraper, and was reclusive enough to keep Saga and Karu sane, by contrast if nothing else.


    Lia impacted the bed face-first in the small two-room unit before the rest of us were even inside, and Saga repeated the maneuver, but on the floor. Karu made a beeline for her luggage, tearing through it while muttering about needing a suit, sunglasses, some kind of hat, and I swear I heard the words hair dye and paparazzi.


    And AEGIS just sat down and beamed at me like this was all totally normal. I sat next to her and she smiled more broadly.


    "Dude, what are we even doing here?" I asked.


    "Well, at the moment...just adapting, I think. I do think a hat might do Karu a world of good."


    "Why do they go for her when you''ve got crazy red hair that''s literally four feet long?"


    "Because I''m just weird. They have weird in Japan. They don''t have blonde bombshells. I''m sure they assume I''m a girl in a wig, an obnoxiously outstanding garish tourist, all fake and glamor. I don''t think anyone is wondering if Karu''s all real or not."


    "Heavy coat," Karu muttered. "Sports bra."


    "Yeah, there''s no hiding those," AEGIS continued, almost a little obnoxious in how triumphant she seemed. I was sure part of that was her decision in remodelling Rua down from competing with Karu in the chest compartment, but it wasn''t exactly helpful.


    "Not what I meant," I said. "I mean, what are we doing towards our goals. What are we achieving today that helps us figure out where to strike, or what our enemies are doing?"


    AEGIS looked around the room and then gave me a frown. "Uh, we''re not. We''re adapting."


    "To what?"


    She blinked at me. "To a new world of crazy shit nobody here is qualified to deal with, obviously. Everyone just needs time to adjust."


    "Time to adjust?" I saw by her face I was yelling at her and worked to tone it down. "For fuck''s...AEGIS, we''re on a rescue mission. We''re here because people -- our friends -- are in potentially very real danger."


    "Or potentially not, if you believe what Idris said about her father taking good care of her."


    "Yeah, Idris saying something actually tends to make me think the opposite is true," I snorted.


    "Fair point. But whatever is happening to them, whatever you believe, rushing in there isn''t going to help. We need intel, we need a plan, and we need¡­" she swept an arm across the three neroses sharing the room with us. "...not this."


    "Okay...maybe they''re a mess right now, maybe they need a week of naps or a thick dark hoodie, but what about you?" I asked.


    "...what about me?" she replied, her smile frozen.


    I swallowed hard, picking up a hint of ice hidden in her breezy words. "I mean, obviously we couldn''t have made it even this far without you. And I appreciate everything you do. But uh, couldn''t you like, um, be gathering intel or something? Hacking the mainframe¡­"


    "Nobody has had a mainframe computer in two-hundred years, Athan."


    "Whatever, you know what I mean. You''ve gone all tour-guide and I feel like I''m the only one who cares about why we came here in the first place."


    She gave me just a little smile, but it was both sincere and pitying. "Oh sweetie," she said.


    "Don''t ''oh sweetie'' me, I''m asking you here."


    "You really think you''re struggling alone here with a bunch of crazies?"


    "Kinda, yeah."


    "Oh sweetie. You''re the craziest of all of us."


    "What? No, I''m just--"


    She pulled my head into her chest and tousled my hair. I struggled to right myself but when she wanted, she was uncomparably stronger than I.


    "Athan, you need to calm down a little. Do you remember the last time you just fired from the hip impulsively? Last time you felt emotionally burdened and acted out just because you couldn''t do nothing?"The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I struggled to reply but really, just had a mouthful of boob. I knew she could understand me through my muffled speech, but that was hardly any solace when I was literally being treated like a crying baby.


    "...did you just bite my boob?" she glared at me.


    I muttered my reply and she sighed.


    "I don''t know if you realize this Athan, but your leg''s gone. It''s gone. Even if we threw you into a regenerator right now, it''s been too long. New nerves wouldn''t bind with your system right, and your neurons for motor control are already adapting to your limb''s absence. You passed a medical point of no return like, a week ago, and...and for the rest of your life, you''re just gonna be damaged goods, sweetie. I''m sorry."


    I muttered at her but she kept on.


    "And I know that probably doesn''t mean much to you. Maybe because it hasn''t sunk in what that really means. Maybe because every time something like this happened before, you''ve had an out. Most likely, you''re just too damn self-destructive and as long as you have a fire burning inside you, you don''t care how much of yourself you have to chop off to fuel it. Which is its own kind of fucked, by the way. But the fact is, it''s unhealthy, and even if you aren''t going to make an effort to take care of yourself, you know I will."


    I asked her something and she shook her head.


    "No, I''m not treating you like a baby. I''m treating you like a head case. Which you are. I''m not saying that I value your life more than Moon''s and Tem''s...though I do, honestly. But rather...you''re not in a good place, Athan, and I don''t think you see it. At the very least, you should be able to see your own damage, or else you won''t be able to help as much as you think you can. You''re in such a rush but you''re not all here...if you set off like this, right now, it''d be a pretty shitty rescue."


    I went silent and thought about it. This had been a lesson I''d been taught many times now, and apparently one I still hadn''t learned. It was Mage all over again, I was threatening to jump the gun, to do everything I could, as much as I could. But as Karu had put it, if I gave everything of myself I had, I''d have nothing left to give when it was needed.


    I felt myself sag against AEGIS as my thoughts continued. Just like I hadn''t been able to do nothing after I learned about Dragon and the Defiant, and gotten them killed for my meddling. Just like I hadn''t been able to do nothing after Alyssa, just rushed off and got my friends captured and beaten and my leg sheared off.


    I mumbled another question, and AEGIS gave me a reassuring hug.


    "Well...I was being nice, I guess. People need different things at different times, and you''re...you''re pretty swingy, Athan. In San Francisco, you needed me to pull you up. But here, you need me to hold you back. I''m sure it''s annoying, I''m sure it feels like, no matter what you''re doing, I''m just fighting you. But honest, I''m doing the best I can wherever I can."


    I replied, and she smiled down at me.


    "You''re welcome. Should I pull you out of my chest now? Or do you want to stay there for recreational purposes?"


    I pulled away while she laughed and then dabbed at the spot of drool her imprisonment had created. "I was about to suffocate," I pouted.


    "Oh please. You have a nose for a reason, and I''m not exactly Karu here," she said, giving them a bounce. "It just seemed like the most expedient way to get you to listen for five seconds."


    "I''m always listening."


    She rolled her eyes. "I meant actually listening. Like yeah, I could have just pulled my top down and you''d shut up and hear the words, but that doesn''t mean you''re listening."


    I started to reply but she literally went through with her example and flashed me on the spot, and sure enough, whatever I was going to say fled my mind entirely. She shook her head with a patronizing smirk as she put them away.


    "Is this too much?" Karu asked, walking in, dressed in her combat armor, sans jetpack and guns.


    I blinked at her. "For what?"


    "For walking the streets. I must find some attire that does not attract undue attention as I have been."


    AEGIS snorted in her laughter and I suppressed a giggle. "Uh, AEGIS says they have lots of weirdos like her, so yeah, maybe that might work."


    "Really, they''re just polite enough not to stare at a freak, but have a lot less reluctance to gawk at a beauty," AEGIS commented. "How did you ever deal with attention back stateside?"


    "Typically, it was deserved. This is just...bizarre. I have determined I do not enjoy being a minority."


    "No minority ever does," AEGIS sighed. "Athan, to wrap up our conversation, I''m working on it. There''s a lot for me to do just to keep us afloat, but in my free-ish moments, I''ve got a list of properties I think Ichiro owns, and I''m working on getting myself ''net access through more than satellite. I agree we need data, and we need a plan. And I thank you for being patient and...and taking the time to adjust."


    I nodded at her, watching Karu re-examining herself in the mirror from every possible angle. Both because it was weird as hell to see Karu being so concerned about appearances, but also because it wasn''t half bad to watch her from every possible angle. I turned to respond to AEGIS and caught her rolling her eyes at me.


    "Sorry. Uh. Yeah. You''re right." I shook my leg at her and the pneumatics whined. And then I gave half a nod at the spectacle right in front of us. "Whatever I happen to think...I can agree we''re a mess right now, and maybe I don''t see it in myself. I should trust others. Trust you."


    "And I should trust you too," she smiled back. "Though honestly, what greater sign of trust is there than putting tits in your mouth."


    "What?" Karu asked, distracted as she went back for more clothes. AEGIS laughed and changed the subject, turning on the holo in the small entry area and sitting down on the floor, almost atop Saga.


    It looked like the news, assuming that was pretty much the same across countries. An older besuited man was facing the camera over a placid backdrop, speaking directly to us. Compared to the mumble of voices I''d heard out on the street earlier, I could swear this one had the news-reporter-y lilt and cadence to it, despite not being able to understand a word of it.


    I could see we''d lost AEGIS as she stared at the holo, her eyes moving slightly as this world faded away. Her lips moved as she worded out unfamiliar sounds.


    "...study...done in...that''s some university...umm...what''s hage? Study showed...ten percent...there''s hage again."


    She frowned at the screen but I could see she was enjoying herself anyway. Suddenly her eyes lit up and she turned on me. "Oh! They''ve developed a cure for baldness!"


    "Good for them," I smirked back.


    "Good for me, you mean! I understood the news today, all by myself!"


    "Do you want a cookie or something?"


    "I wouldn''t mind a cuddle. I''d offer to teach you a little bit, but honestly, it''s so stiff and formal, I don''t think there''s too many phrases which would be useful. I kinda doubt you''re going to be like, making formal acquaintance with too many people, though it never hurts to be too polite, especially as a foreigner."


    "I''ll settle for pointing and grunting, thanks."


    She giggled. "You know, even with that, it''s rude to point here. You gesture like this." She turned and open hand towards the holo, as though some kind of game show host, and I just stared blankly at her.


    "You''re serious?" I asked, and she nodded. "Wow, even the most basic thing imaginable and I could screw it up. This place is the worst."


    "It is," Saga groaned.


    "Oh shush. It''s just different," AEGIS argued. "Just wait until--"


    I shushed her because somehow, the holo said a word I recognized, which put my whole body on edge. AEGIS cocked her head, but on seeing the holo, fell silent as well, her eyes narrowing as she focused.


    The broadcaster said the word again, in the middle of a sentence this time. IkaCo. IkaCo kabushi-something. That''s about as far as I was able to get before completely losing the sentence, but I saw AEGIS was hard at work.


    "...statement from IkaCo...something about...doing of...tero¡­" I saw her eyes flicker back and forth as she trawled the net for a moment. "Terrorism? IkaCo making statements about terrorist attacks. I''m missing a lot of context here. Are they against the company? Is IkaCo like, some kind of contractor against a wave of terrorism? Maybe they''re supplying the JSDF like they''re doing with the XPCA?"


    I shook my head, with no idea why she was asking me.


    "Sorry," she mumbled. "It''s...probably unimportant, I guess. We''re not...after IkaCo as I just said, we''re only looking for Moon and Ichiro."


    But even though she said that, she was still watching the holo, and the pauses in her speech did little to convince me she wasn''t still watching. She trailed off as she watched the rest of the story, and even when they switched to something else, she was still sitting there, completely focused and completely still, her lips moving as she mumbled to herself.


    At long last she turned to me, her head snapping enough to make her twintails whip. Her eyes were wide.


    "What?" I asked, feeling like I''d missed something huge here.


    "The news story," she said, unhelpfully.


    "Yeah, what about it?"


    "It''s a protest group. They claim to be a continuation of the anti-nuke movement which has been a big thing in Japan ever since World War Two. They''re pro-disarmament, and until very recently, have acted politically and peacefully, but apparently have turned to more militant methods recently."


    "...okay, and what about it?"


    "They''re targeting IkaCo."


    "Because IkaCo is building nukes?"


    She narrowed her eyes at me like I was stupid. "Because IkaCo is building exotics, Athan. Like we already knew. And supplying them to the XPCA, remember?"


    It finally clicked in my mind, now that AEGIS had spelled out so completely. I''d been lagging behind with history and culture and language...none of that was relevant here, and I felt a bit stupid that I''d been looking at those levels of it instead of just listening to what she was saying.


    "They know about it? The Japanese?"


    "Hmm...I mean...yes and no. It seems...maybe like...nobody really listens to this group. They were trying to get that message out there, but...I mean, would you take a terrorist group''s claims at face value?"


    "I guess not."


    "Yeah. Except we know better. So this group actually must be somewhat legit. They were lobbying pretty hard and then...oof, IkaCo came down on them and crushed them. And that''s when they turned more militant. What a mess."


    "What are they called?"


    "Hibakusha. That''s a loaded term. It refers to the survivors of the atomic bombs. Oof again." She pulled at her hair momentarily, watching the news as the story changed without really seeing it. "Well, either way, not our problem, right? We don''t have an issue with IkaCo on the whole."


    "Right," I agreed, but as I said it, my mouth was dry. It''s not like I knew better for certain, but it sounded like a lie already.


    I was a terrorist, technically. We all were, labelled as such for nothing more than the crime of trying to stay alive. And while that was back in America, and between Exhumans and the rest of the world, I still couldn''t help to think that there were some uncomfortable parallels here. I wasn''t about to go chummy with every terrorist cell in the world out of solidarity or anything -- the majority of them were still probably fucking awful people.


    But then again, I guess so was I. So it seemed to me that, whether we liked it or not, these Hibakusha might cross paths with us sooner or later.


    And honestly, given how few inroads we had towards Moon, I''d take sooner.

 354. 2252, Present Day. Ueno residential district, Tokyo. Athan.

    It was a few more frustrating days before anything really even happened. It sucked, but as AEGIS had advised, things were improving.


    Lia, obviously, was back with us once she''d gotten a lot more sleep. I found her awake at peculiar hours, and she definitely wasn''t quite herself, but it was obvious she was putting a lot of energy into pretending everything was normal, and seemed embarrassed for being out of it, when really, it was jet lag, and neither a fault nor an issue.


    Karu similarly had worked through her issues, finding a shapeless sweatshirt with a deep hood, and a surgical mask, which were apparently common in Japan as a way to reduce the spread of germs, and as a general indicator of hey, I''m sick, don''t interact with me, which seemed so simplistically brilliant I wasn''t sure how that was not more global.


    Saga, however, was worse if anything. She''d taken to camping out in the huge park near our rented-house, both I think for the large trees to sit under and the reduced population density. A local cat had taken to perching on her lap at all hours, and when I went to check on her, often found her in the midst of praising the animal for not speaking. It seemed she''d given up on learning the language, and was just trying to endure the constant stream of voices in her head until such a time as she was allowed to kill everyone.


    Which, y''know, being Saga, she might just decide is any day. So we had to keep moving.


    The problem was, we still didn''t have anywhere to move. I found AEGIS typing away in the air at all hours, digging up information which might lead us anywhere, but nothing was concrete. We''d been making day trips around the city to all sorts of holdings we''d found connected to Ichiro, but none of it was like, a house, or a dingy jail where we''d find his daughter chained up. Just storehouses which Saga confirmed were void of human life, commercial holdings, and other regular, ordinary, frustratingly boring crap.


    We were on one such errand now, finding just another IkaCo branch office in a sea of skyscrapers which, if I hadn''t already been there, you could have easily convinced me was downtown Tokyo. AEGIS was with us for navigation and translation, and Saga to pick out Moon if we could, with Lia and Karu back at home, working on their own angles.


    Saga looked like she was going to be sick, and I was practically carrying her down the street, practically shoving our way through the sea of people crowding the sidewalks.


    "One of these places has got to be something," AEGIS fretted, looking up at the office building. The red-and-white logo of IKACO plainly visible, and inexplicably in English, like much of the city.


    "Just kill me," Saga moaned, cradling her head. "I can''t take anymore. It''s desu this and onegaishimasu that."


    "It would get better if you just learned the language," AEGIS frowned.


    "It''d get better if they were dead."


    "I''m sure we''ll find something," AEGIS repeated. But the words had a lot less impact given that she''d said them a dozen times already, and we felt no closer than when we''d started.


    I realized those thoughts weren''t only my own, as Saga stared at my eyes and gave me a conspiratorial nod, her face creased with a heavy frown. I only realized what she was doing as her thoughts passed through me.


    "Wait--" I told her, reaching for her like it''d make a difference.


    But I could tell by my shared link that she''d already gone ahead. Saga could endure anything, but that didn''t mean she would. I felt...almost saw, that she''d found someone inside the office with a modicum of English, and was starting the process of hijacking them.


    "What''s going on?" AEGIS asked, glancing nervously between us.


    "Saga''s...deciding to find an easier way."


    "Easier? How?"


    "Shut up," Saga said through grit teeth, still holding her head. She bounced a bit as traffic continued to swell around us, and more than once glared daggers at those who bumped into her. "Goddamn bastards. It''s hard enough to focus as it is."


    "It looks like...some kind of IkaCo exec," I explained to AEGIS, though half-aware I was doing a bad job of it. "Um, Saga''s...kind of...interrogating her."


    "Even this bitch can''t misunderstand this," Saga huffed.


    I saw the images shoved into the woman''s consciousness, of Ichiro and a crude representation of a house. The woman blanched and leaned on a desk, unsure of what this bizarre, overpowering sensation in her head meant.


    "Where''s he live, you bitch."


    "Saga, you''re not going to get anything that way," I said. "Let her go."


    She slapped my hand away and growled at me. It was weird, seeing her look so pristine, her body well-rested, her eyes clear and bright, but the exhaustion and frustration behind them was visible in her poise, and of course, in her choosing to mind-fuck this poor woman.


    "Do I need to¡­" AEGIS rocked back and forth uncertainly, glancing between us.


    "No just...step out for now. That poor woman, though," I fretted. "Damn it, Saga, this isn''t helping."


    "It''s helping me," Saga growled. "I''m gonna take every word of this bullshit echoing around me and run it through her fucking head and see how she likes it."


    "That''s just torture," AEGIS said.


    "Well that''s what my life has been like for four days now. If I can endure it, she fucking can."


    "Saga, wait," I pleaded, and she shot me a mocking sneer, turning up the intensity on the woman just to spite me. "Goddamn it, wait."


    "Why? So we can visit more crowded city centers and find nothing? So we can have a comprehensive fucking tour of every fucking IkaCo holding in the whole of fucking Tokyo? Do you have any idea how much it hurts to even be here?"


    "No, Saga--"


    "Of course you don''t, you''ve got me ninety-nine percent closed off because even peeking into my mind hurts you! You think I don''t notice, you fuck? I don''t even like Tem and Moon. They''re not worth this shit!" she shrieked, drawing intense stares. Saga glanced around at those around, veritably hissing at them. The woman in Saga''s mind began to thrash in her office, uncontrollably.


    This was fucked up, and wasn''t getting any better. I hadn''t expected Saga to lose it like this, but I guess even she had her limits, and four days of feeling like she was torturing herself for nothing was apparently pushing it. If things continued, if there was overt show of her powers, I knew AEGIS would intervene, and then the two of them would start fighting in the streets.


    I had to act before then, pulling out my comms and dialing. As soon as I heard a voice, I ripped it out, and shoved it in Saga''s ear, her spindly fingers clawing at my face.


    "Fuck you, Athan--! Fuck--I don''t want to talk to her!"


    I held the comms in as she thrashed under me. "Go on," I shouted. "Tell Lia what you''re doing."


    "No! This is fucked up, Athan."


    "Explain to my sister why you''re torturing some poor woman. Go ahead."


    "You''re a serious piece of shit, Athan," she hissed, but she''d stopped thrashing, and so had the woman upstairs.


    "Yeah, because I happen to know you actually give a shit what Lia thinks of you."


    "Because you''re still running to your little sister when you can''t deal with your own issues," she spat.


    "Like I even care. You''re the one mind-fucking people in broad daylight. Now can you calm down or do I have to tell her what you''ve been doing here?"


    Saga fell silent for a few moments, limp in my arms. "Lia, just forget you heard all of this, okay?" she asked sweetly, and I knew the compel meant she wouldn''t have a choice. I sighed as I pulled out the comms and held Saga dangling in my arms.


    "Jesus you guys are screwed up," AEGIS murmured.


    "Saga, I just wanted you to wait, because you do have a good idea, okay? Just going into people''s minds and tearing them up isn''t going to help. But if we can use that mind--"


    "How, Athan?" Saga spat. "I don''t fucking speak Japanese."


    "Yeah, well, AEGIS does."


    "Oh good. Have her use her mind powers then. I''m going back to America."


    I rolled my eyes. "AEGIS, how do you ask where Ichiro lives? In Japanese?"


    "Umm...Ikeda shacho wa doko ni sunde imasu ka?"


    "Got it?" I asked Saga, who shook her head at me. "Okay, one more time, AEGIS?"This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    She repeated the phrase, and again Saga shook her head, seeming more stubborn and resolute not to understand it this time.


    "It doesn''t have to be perfect, you just have to get the idea into her head," I grunted.


    "Well you fucking do it then," she snapped. "With ten thousand other people shouting similar Japanese gobbledygook in your head."


    "Fine," I said. "I will."


    And then I dove into Saga''s mind, and through it, into that woman''s, while Saga dealt with the ten-thousand others.


    The woman, unsure where this mangled-Japanese thought came from, nonetheless found herself answering it, and as she thought the words, I found myself repeating them, as loud as I could while people stared.


    "Um, I''ve got it," AEGIS said, shaking me gently. "But you''re kinda yelling at the top of your lungs. I think the police might be coming after all this."


    "Sorry. I was...kind of not in my own body there. Let''s just go."


    "Let''s," Saga agreed, severing the connection with the woman in a way which, I''m sure, might have caused brain damage. I wasn''t about to pick a fight with her right now again, but did make my displeasure readily apparent in the forefront of my mind for her benefit.


    So yeah. The rest of us may have been improving, but Saga was decidedly worse. And worst of all, hers was a role both essential and irreplaceable. I might be able to use her as a bridge to get into people''s minds, but I couldn''t do it without her.


    She flipped us off at the station and headed for the park while AEGIS and I walked slowly back home. A slight breeze ruffled the trees, and I realized, after the packed streets of the office buildings and the metro, it was quiet and empty here.


    AEGIS must have been thinking similarly, because she commented, quietly as though to herself, "It''s really pretty here."


    I looked around, and she wasn''t wrong. A tall fence near the back of the park, crested with vertical sheafs of bamboo. A hill on our right, caked with form-fitting stones and studded with black-barked trees, just past their bloom. Small clouds drifted in the blue sky over the sea of two-story residential buildings further down the road.


    "It is," I agreed. "Shame Saga''s getting too hammered with thoughts to be able to see it."


    "That is a shame. And for the record, I feel really bad for her. But as you all proved today, she''s kinda, sorta, completely unstable. Indispensable, sure. And she''s going to be even more so if fighting ever breaks out."


    "Yeah, I think she''s really looking forward to that. For a while, she was just stockpiling ass-kicking one-liners that she''d be spouting off as she crushed people''s brains'' in, but I think even that hasn''t held up to the anguish she''s finding herself in."


    "Well, we can start going out at night if that helps," AEGIS said, pulling on her hair. "Of course, the police will be suspicious if they see us...but I''ve been working on my drunk American idiot impression." She suddenly leaned heavily on me and when she spoke, it was through a hearty country twang. "Oh. My. God, Athannn. You know what we should do? Dance. Because this is totally my song."


    "Please tell me you don''t practice that," I said, gently removing her hand from my shoulder.


    "Anything worth doing is worth doing well," she said, dusting herself off.


    "Yeah, that isn''t worth doing. I''m sure Saga would appreciate the night when fewer people are awake, and if we''re moving from offices to residences, we''d want to visit at night time anyway."


    "We''ll lose Lia though. Her sleep schedule is demolished already anyway."


    "Well, I''d generally prefer she not be anywhere near the action anyway. I just want her around, and safe."


    We got home, and said sister greeted us at the door with forced enthusiasm.


    "Hey guys, how was it?" she asked, bouncing, and pressing what looked like a croissant into my hands. "Where''d Saga go?"


    "Park," I said, mouth already full of the treat. It was a croissant, if they were filled with chocolate and deliciousness. What the hell this was doing in Japan, I didn''t know, but I wasn''t complaining.


    "Find anything?" she continued.


    "Yeah, just a sec," AEGIS answered, fishing out cables as she inspected the side of the living room''s holo. "Oh good, standard hookups. Here--"


    She plugged in and brought the holo to life, pulling up a map from the ''net with the address I''d apparently screamed at her. The map was utterly unfamiliar to me, the streets interwoven and seemingly too close.


    "This is his house?" I asked.


    "No, this is us," she said, which mostly just confirmed that I had no idea where I was or what I was doing here. The map panned quickly, though whether it was headed in or out of Tokyo or the distance was great or small, I had no idea. All I really noticed by contrast was, wherever it stopped, there were hardly any roads.


    "Are you sure this is right?" AEGIS asked, scrutinizing her own map.


    "How would I know? That was what the lady was thinking in response to asking Ichiro''s address. I don''t even know that she knew."


    "The lady?" Lia asked, flopping next to me. "Actually, never mind. We have an address though?"


    The holo wiped a few times as AEGIS jumped ''net sites until it was replaced with a set of still images. Walls, tall and apparently stone surrounded a tree-filled compound, lush with grasses and water. Grey gravel pathways connected the handful of buildings, the most stereotypical Japanese architecture I could imagine; sloped tile roofs, white walled buildings with dark wood accents. The peak of the main building was crowned with a pair of golden statues, oxes or bulls with long horns raised, as though throwing an invisible intruder into the sky.


    "Nice house," I commented. I was probably looking at a billion dollars in real estate, not even counting the difference in prices between here and home.


    "I think we found Ichiro''s place, that''s for sure," Lia agreed.


    "Well¡­" AEGIS bit her lip, and the image changed to another equally expensive compound. And then another, and then another. "Those are listings of the neighboring properties," she commented, as more flashed by. "There''s plenty of big and expensive properties, and plenty of people who could be the one who owns ''em. Besides...I''m not sure this is it."


    She went back to pictures of the first compound and tugged at her hair. "I don''t have many drones with us, but I picked up this address pretty early and sent one over there. But the whole time it''s been there, I haven''t seen anything of either Moon or Ichiro on the premises. I''m not convinced it''s the one. Heck, he might have multiple houses and this is just the...I dunno, the fancy one for guests or something. He certainly doesn''t go home there every day."


    "Even if that''s the case, it''s still his, right?" Lia asked.


    "I mean...I just said it might not be."


    "But you found that place, and Athan found it independently. That means something."


    AEGIS sighed. "All that means is maybe Athan''s source and my source saw the same thing. It doesn''t--"


    "It means something," Lia interrupted with confidence. "You might be right that it''s not where he lives, or where he''s keeping Moon, but you''ve pretty much exhausted looking at IkaCo offices in Tokyo, right? If we''re after Ichiro''s secrets instead of IkaCo''s, maybe we need to look at his holdings instead of theirs."


    AEGIS frown deepened, but she didn''t respond. Instead, she switched the holo feed again, and we saw¡­


    "...uh, what are we looking at here, exactly?" I asked.


    "This is the live feed of that address."


    "Why is it...who are they?"


    "They are all sorts of people. JSDF. SEALs. XPCA. SWC. Spetsnaz."


    "Why are there like, two-hundred special forces guys camped out in this guy''s front yard?"


    Two-hundred was probably a low estimate. There were tents set up all inside the walls, and bodies everywhere between them. There were a few cars parked inside, but none which looked like they were for driving -- more of the transporting or shooting variety.


    "Probably because the inside is full," she said, tugging her hair. "Something crazy is going on there, and reading between the lines a little bit...we know that IkaCo is one of the world''s premiere weapon suppliers. Ichiro is currently in a panic state with whatever made him feel he had to reach out to his estranged daughter. Terrorists are gunning for him and his. And¡­" she cleared her throat significantly "...a dangerous Exhuman and his sympathizers recently disappeared in America, with potential motive to come out here and after him."


    "Wait. You''re saying Ichiro is hiring super-elite military forces from around the world to guard his house, because of us?" I turned to her, disbelieving.


    "You should be flattered," Lia giggled.


    "Because of all of the things I just said, but yes, you''re on that list," AEGIS said, pulling at her hair still. "I wouldn''t guess that they think or know they''re being used to guard the house...more than likely, he''s operating under the guise of a weapons expo or something...special forces aren''t typically for sale, but a guy with his wealth and influence can still have anything he wants."


    "Maybe we can sneak in?" Lia asked, sitting upright. "Lots of unfamiliar faces on the property...we might be able to blend in to the crowd."


    "That''s not a bad idea," AEGIS said, tilting her head as she thought. "But none of us actually look the part. I love your body of course, Athan, but you don''t have the physique of a soldier in peak condition. Maybe Karu could pass, but--"


    "It would not work," she said from the doorway. "I would be identifiable as American in an instant by any of the other groups, and the top echelons of the American special forces are a tightly-knit group, as it were. Any of them would recognize me as an outsider in a heartbeat."


    "They might have extra help in the house? We don''t need to go in as soldiers or officers, necessarily. Maybe just...dropping off a delivery or something."


    "We''re not Asian enough. They''d expect Japanese employees for most everything from local business I imagine," AEGIS said. "And if we were asked even a simple question, it''d be light''s out for us."


    "We could shoot first," Karu shrugged. "Not in the ''engage battle'' sense, but more surreptitiously dispose of any who grew suspicious of our disguises."


    "Yeah, I''m not a fan of anytime Karu proposes we dispose of people. Those are innocent men and women, who have jobs and families," I commented. Nobody in the room seemed to hear me, each lost in thought, except AEGIS who gave me a small shrug and smile.


    "So...sounds to me¡­" Lia said "like we need someone who looks close enough to Japanese, and can silently deal with any problems they encounter during infiltration. At least until they get far enough in to determine whether or not Moon is on-premises, or otherwise do some intel gathering to give us a better lead."


    Everyone fell silent, looking at Lia like they could neither agree nor disagree with her. I think she said what everyone was thinking, but nobody wanted to say.


    The spell was broken by the rattling of the door as it opened and Saga forced her way through with a broken sigh.


    "I hate it here," she commented, sliding into the room on bare feet, and then paused on seeing us. "What? Why are you all staring at me?"


    I felt her brush past my mind, making my spine tingle unpleasantly.


    "Oh no. You want me to willingly waltz into a few hundred guys who could each beat down my bony backside and lock me up again? Alert all the world governments of my existence and set off a fox chase of which one of them gets to lock me up and experiment on me for the rest of my life, which I remind you, is forever? You''re all out of your collective goddamn minds."


    "Think of it as such," Karu said "A grand opportunity to mess with a lot of people, with our endorsement."


    "Don''t care about your endorsement, not even a little bit, funbags."


    I spoke up while Karu repeated the last word to herself questioningly. "You''ll be helping us out a lot. You might even save Moon and Tem''s life."


    She looked at me and then yawned obnoxiously.


    Lia sat up and grinned.


    "Yeah, and what have you got?" Saga said, turning on her.


    "Easy. It''s out in the rich districts where there''s way more space than people...and most of the people who are there are American. And AEGIS thinks it''s a trade deal--that means literally everyone there speaks English. You won''t see a distribution like that most anywhere else in Tokyo."


    She waggled her eyebrows while Saga held her head and sighed. I saw, felt her struggling for a few moments to come up with a rebuttal, but her trains of thought kept crashing into the presence of the minds around her, serving only to amplify Lia''s point. At long last, Saga sighed again and sat down.


    "Alright. If it means so damn much to you, I''ll go pretend to be a Jap and fuck with people''s heads. Happy now?"


    I wasn''t particularly. Saga was, objectively, a horrible, monstrous, and apparently racist-as-fuck person, and unleashing her on a bunch of dudes with guns seemed like an awful idea.


    But awful as it was, it was the only idea we had at the moment. And a bad idea had to be better than no idea at all...right?

 355. 2252, Present Day. Okutama. Saga.

    Okutama was a neighboring city to Tokyo, though it wasn''t far from it. A two-hour train ride, which was two hours of pure bliss as far as I was concerned. The further the rails took us, the more passengers disembarked, the fewer were waiting at each station, and the more sparse and empty the houses and buildings around us.


    It was like breathing air again, leaving the city. Some places in America had been pretty bad, but they''d never stack up to Tokyo levels of bad. There were just more people there, jabbering away with their own inane, moronic thoughts than anywhere else I''d ever been...and I couldn''t even understand the thoughts to distract myself. It''d been hell, and I was pretty pissed at Athan for putting me through it.


    But, as they say, pain is temporary, and I wasn''t. We were out -- forever, if I had my way, which I certainly would, under threat of wiping the fucking city off the map -- and were en-route to a nice little mansion to go ruin their day. Really, my kind of party.


    The four of them lingered under the red gate of a nearby shrine, fussing like a mob of old grannies. Athan repeatedly told me not to engage unless I was found out, Lia offered tips on what to say and how to behave that''d help me blend in. Karu painted an ugly white X on my throat with something that dried thick and nasty, telling me if I ever needed to escape without talking to someone, I could show them my ''scar'' and make the universal gesture for ''mute'' by covering my mouth.


    AEGIS just brushed my hair and messed with my clothes a bit. An old kimono from a thrift store we''d gotten most of the funk out of. I thought it looked ridiculous, but it did do wonders for my waistline, and if it let me catch Athan staring, I''d take it.


    "We''ll stay here, so we''re nearby," he explained, for the fourth time. "It''s out of your range, but you have comms. Please, please, tell us the moment anything goes south, and we''ll charge in--"


    "And die," I added.


    "If that''s what it takes to save you," he nodded seriously.


    "You''re an idiot," I smiled at him. "If things go wrong, I''ll just kill everyone. Or make them kill each other."


    He frowned at me. "Please take it seriously. These aren''t your everyday soldiers, and they''re sitting in a stockpile of not-your-everyday weapons. The XPCA countered us once already in Vegas, they might be able to do so again here."


    "It''s fine, ya dumb duck," I said, giving him a wink. "The hardest part will be not tripping over this dress. Just make sure you''re all excited and ready to take it off me when I''m done." I rubbed up against him and cackled, but he didn''t take the bait, his mind a fortress of worry that even my bony booty couldn''t crack. "Whatever, your loss."


    "Be serious," he repeated, and I dismissed him with a wave and started sauntering off, making sure to flaunt an extra wiggle to show him what he was missing.


    And then I was walking alone for four blocks. Big-ass blocks, with stone walls on all sides of the narrow street, each one of the residences basically an ancient samurai fortress. Seemed kinda pointless, most of the lots were just trees and shit, and if they didn''t wall them all off, you''d get to see a lot more greenery than just what was in your own front yard. I guess when you got as rich as these assholes, you stopped giving a shit about anything anyone else had, and were top-down focused on protecting your own fucking trees from anyone who might peek at ''em.


    There was probably a metaphor in there somewhere but I didn''t really care. I liked trees, and seeing them all walled off annoyed me, and that was about as far as I got. I decided that when I ran the world, I''d put people like this in unmarked graves and plant some nice greenery over their bodies so nature could properly reclaim them. Manure would be the first useful thing they''d ever be.


    So yeah. It was a long walk, and I was still a slow walker. Before long, the interminable stretches of grey and stone lost their luster.


    "Mic check, check, check, two, three, four," I said into comms.


    "A friendly reminder that all comms will probably be traced," Karu intoned. "What with there being an unfathomable number of special forces nearby. Please refrain from pointless chatter to give them something to lock onto."


    "Well fuck you too, miss rigidbritches."


    "Saga, she''s right. Save the comms for emergencies, please," Athan asked.


    "This is an emergency. I''m bored."


    He sighed. "You''ve been gone five minutes. Just...enjoy how few people there are."


    "Fine," I sighed back tenfold. "But you''d better do that thing I like when I get back. The one with the tongue."


    "Um, TMI?" Lia said.


    "She''s just being full of shit," Athan sighed again. "Cut the chatter. Good luck, Saga."


    And then it was just me and the rocks again.


    Athan had a good point. Well, a couple good points; I was, admittedly, full of shit. But also that I should just enjoy the nothing when I could. I''d just spent almost a week in one of the most crowded cities in the world with a blaring din blasting in my noggin nonstop. The peace and quiet should have been...peaceful. And quietful.


    But instead it was actually kind of dull by contrast. Like, no mistake, I preferred it hands-down. But it also seemed I''d kind of gotten used to all that shit to a degree, and its sudden absence felt weirder than it should have.


    It also gave me time to think, which was never a good sign. Especially with thoughts like that bouncing around in my head, making me ponder such existential questions as once everyone''s dead forever, am I always going to feel this lonely and bored?


    Which was just, y''know, super fun.


    So it was a bit of a relief when I finally closed in on my destination, and a double-relief when I realized that more than just the Americans, but most people there not only spoke, but thought in English. The visitors anyway and it didn''t take too long ruffling through their minds to figure out why.


    This whole thing was, essentially, a trade show. Ichiro was putting on a private demonstration of some of his company''s weapon projects, and these guys were the buyers. Buyers meant people in international trade, and international trade was done in English, because America was bastion glorious, golden, commercial capitalism.


    He''d even instituted some kinds of raffle, which explained the turnout -- every active combatant there was entered to win, and he was pulling tickets to hand out free guns. Clever little trick to ensure he had a constant pool of fighting fit forces...and who the hell wouldn''t want free multi-million dollar guns that shot lightning or other bullshit, just handed to them? It was the American dream.


    Except, y''know, in Japan. But whatever. This was the shit that made Uncle Sam''s pants tight.


    I approached the main gate and encountered the first...uh...gate. Two men in dark suits who looked like they''d mixed up their steroid pills and their Captain Crunch the last two or three hundred balanced breakfasts. They eyed me warily, even as I approached with the delicate composure of a, like, fucking falling leaf or some shit.


    "Nanika komari desu ka?" One asked, in a raspy voice that seemed to come somewhere from the middle of him instead of his mouth.


    "My apologies," I said, with as graceful a bow as I could manage. How the Japanese wore these dresses for so long and had a culture of bowing at the same time baffled me, but I did my best. "I was in there and just slipped out for a moment. Could you let me back in?"


    The good news was, speaking to them in English got their minds working in that language, and I had something to grasp at. The bad news was, I was pretty obviously lying, so I had a lot of work ahead of me.


    "Nobody left the estate," he said. "Move along."


    "I think you''re mistaken" I said, batting my eyelashes at him while I tore through his mind as subtly as I could.


    "Nobody leaves the estate until the end of the event. It''s closed doors. Do I need to call the police?"


    Well I''d already bowed once and was about sick of it, so I dropped all that garbage and just went for the direct approach. I focused hard on his mind, bending it like Play-Doh under my will. He reeled as I set in on him.


    "You are mistaken," I whispered at him. "It was you who let me sneak out, if you remember? If I''m not back in there, you''ll be the one punished for letting me leave in the first place."


    His buddy stepped towards me, but was arrested by the first guy''s beefy hand. A look of confusion crossed both of their faces as they glanced at each other, but I was winning. I just had to make it through that door before either of them figured out I was the source.


    "I do...remember letting someone out," the first guy gravelled on. "Was that you?"If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    The second guy asked something in Japanese, and then I lost the conversation as they argued back and forth a bit. More perilously, I lost track of his mind as he slipped back into Japanese-mode, though I did what I could to weave in false memories of images and the like.


    Finally, they seemed decided, and my new friend opened the gate for me, pulling the huge wooden door without apparent effort.


    "Say nothing of this, and do not expect to be let out again," he said.


    "Thanks, sweetie," I blew him a kiss. If this situation turned to shit, I''d kill him last.


    And then I was inside.


    Right where I didn''t want to be, honestly. AEGIS had bored me with maps and diagrams, but it wasn''t until I was here that I really began to appreciate the size of the place.


    If someone told me this was the Imperial Palace, I wouldn''t have batted my eyes at believing them. The main building, directly ahead of me looked to be four stories of wood beams and sloping roofs, ringed on multiple floors by covered walkways, balconies running between rooms, and excessively ornate railings that just screamed insecurity.


    Not because they were poorly secured or you''d be likely to fall over them or anything. Just because they were shining gold, twisting and molded both to sprout as many repeating motifs of bull heads and horns as possible, and because their owner''s penis was unfathomably small.


    And that was just the main building. On the left was a large multi-tiered pond, complete with a tiny, pointless dock and a waterfall or two. On the right was a gravel garden, raked into perfect waves at some point, before being trodden all over by the numerous guests who were standing and talking and walking in every possible space. And then ringing the entire plaza were three or four other buildings, none of which were as tall as the main house, but they didn''t need to be in order to qualify as massive. Each was easily a dozen times the size of the little shitty apartment we''d been staying in. And then, as though in afterthought, tents, trucks, and cars all over.


    The guests were all bedecked in their military dress uniforms. There was probably a literal ton of scrap metal pinned across all of their chests, and another half ton of boot polish. More appealing, there was food coming from somewhere, as a lot of the guys were standing around eating off of cocktail napkins. Though maybe they were just regular napkins, because I didn''t actually see a single cocktail. Wouldn''t be much point to luring all these guys here if they just got drunk, I guessed.


    I''d only just had time to take this all in when I detected a presence closing on me, and turned to find another besuited, muscle-bound man, giving me a deep, surly bow.


    "Could miss could come with me?" he said in broken English. I gave him a smile and got to work on his mind, finding it much more difficult than anticipated.


    It wasn''t just the language barrier. It was like his brain was muted, like...it wasn''t quite all there. It reminded me of something I didn''t have time to recall in the moment, as I struggled with what hooks I could sink into him.


    When he repeated himself, I wasn''t sure what to do. There were like, fifty guys standing within a couple dozen feet of me, and if I blasted the guy out, they''d be sure to notice.


    It was a stupid plan, but it bought me time. I shook my head at him and gestured as Karu had instructed me, informing him I was a mute. Granted, any sane person would wonder what that had to do with my ability to listen, but every moment I threw him off his game was another moment to work on him.


    The guy''s game was good though, he didn''t hesitate for a second to grab my arm and begin dragging me into the house. I stumbled behind him, tripping over my dress and battering at his slippery, malformed mind. What I did manage to land didn''t seem to phase him, probably because of the language barrier, but I had to do something.


    Hating myself a little bit, I wailed as loud as I could and went slack, my body trailing behind him like a very bony sack of bricks. Or perhaps a bricklike sack of bones. Either way, I''d suffused my wailing cries with a slap of psychic energy that drew the attention of everyone in the yard, as suddenly this beefcake was dragging a hysterical woman out of a party while everyone watched.


    My heroes, a group of XPCA no less, stepped forward and cleared their throats as they blocked his passage.


    "Excuse me, sir," the one with the most metal on his chest said. "Might I inquire why you are dragging this fine woman off against her will?"


    "It not of your concern. She is not supposing to be here," my escort replied, with just the best English.


    "We were just talking and he said he wanted to see what was under my dress," I shouted at the XPCA, not quite sure how to look wild-eyed and distraught, so I just faked it and shoved that kind of impression in his mind instead.


    The XPCA bristled, and with him, several other of the guests. He looked to his colleagues a moment for courage and then crossed his arms in the path. "Sir, I think you should release the lady."


    "This is Ikeda-san''s order. Not of your concern."


    "Please," I pleaded at him, and his resolve steeled.


    "No. I doubt very much that Ikeda-san endorses human trafficking, and he would be appalled to find one of his servants dragging a woman through his own event like it was nothing. Release her at once."


    The two stood their ground for a few long moments before another few Japanese servants approached, jogging and bowing as they cut through the crowd to diffuse the situation.


    "Honorable guest, there has been a misunderstanding," one of them sputtered. "This woman has violated the premises. She is not meant to be here, and will be detained and questioned."


    I felt my heart sinking as my would-be rescuers chewed on that. I could sway him, maybe even he and his friends, but I couldn''t change the fact that the general mood was swinging away from me.


    "I am supposed to be here," I blurted out. "I''m¡­" I glanced around, looking around, through people''s minds as much as through them for any out. I swallowed hard as I landed on the man in front of me again, flipping through his mind for a moment to make sure I wasn''t making a huge mistake. "I''m XPCA, too. Colonel Cosette Dawn. XB2099."


    I gave him a salute but succeeded only in confusing him more. "You''re Colonel Dawn?" he asked.


    I grinned back. "Yep. Lost a lot of weight since I was in active service. Ever seen a girl lose her wings before? What comes out ain''t pretty. And then that whole boot-rack with the P-Force, don''t get me started. That''s why they delta-romeo''d me out here."


    He stared at me for another long moment. Considering I''d essentially grown up with a bunch of XPCA, I was well familiar with their foibles and lingo, the concerns of the common soldier, common ground I could reach for to build a rapport...with hundred-year-old jargon anyway. I hoped they hadn''t changed much.


    And then he smiled and I knew I had him. He took a step forward and embraced my arm like Athan and Karu were always doing. "I heard you were unstoppable. Legend has it you used to mouth off to Director Blackett himself."


    "Yeah," I said, blowing some hair out of my face. "Used to. Hence the relocation."


    He laughed, and while he did, I popped the question building in his mind about asking why I was here and directed his focus back to my issue. Abruptly, he cleared his throat and turned back to the men holding me. "I can vouch for Colonel Dawn''s presence here," he said. "There is no situation."


    "No," gurgled the big one. "She do what Ikeda-san order."


    I jabbed at his mind again, but it was like checking a well-done steak for doneness using a toothpick. Frustrating. But at least I had others to work on now, and began to focus on the crowd instead.


    Solidarity began to reign, as whatever animosity the XPCA and other branches of the military had, it paled in comparison to a perceived external threat. SEALs and rangers and berets began to close ranks around the increasingly-flustered workers.


    Well, except the big one with the slippery mind and the death-grip on my arm. He didn''t seem flustered at all. In fact, he started moving forward, seemingly oblivious to the dangerous wall of men now assembling against him.


    "Hold it, Chuckles," one such man said, shoving him back with little apparent effect. His buddies got in on it, and then my captor''s fist lashed out, faster than even I could sense, and knocked one to his ass.


    It was just what I''d been hoping for. I fell and wrenched my arm with a painful crack, crying out an exaggerated wail, and between the abuse of their peer and the mistreatment of lil'' ol'' me, the guys jumped him en-mass.


    But the guy holding me up was some kind of fucking Japanese beefcake ninja or some shit. He seemed completely prepared for this, moving faster than any of them did, keeping backpedalling with sure feet to make sure he wasn''t surrounded, keeping me squarely between himself and his attackers, throwing out blows at improbable ranges and connecting, while every retaliatory strike seemed to miss.


    I honestly couldn''t keep up. As soon as the fight started, all I got was the rush of controlled aggression of those nearest and the fear and amusement of the onlookers, all washing over me at once, a surge of emotion I stood no chance of blocking out. Things became a blur of feeling and adrenaline, punctuated with spikes of pain whenever a blow connected. At first I was only feigning weakness and injury to sell my helplessness, but it only took a few seconds before I was flopping around, useless for realsies.


    It felt like minutes, but finally the fight broke. My musclebound toad of a captor was still clutching my arm, breathing heavily, but still on his feet, while four or five other men were laid out, and a half-dozen more were still arrayed against him in various states of injury.


    "Look," spat my XPCA boyfriend through a bloody nose. "How about we escort both of you to see Ikeda-san. Then we can be sure nothing inappropriate happens to her, and you still get to follow your orders."


    I swore at his sudden flash of rationalism and tried to dig my way back into his mind, but the toad simply nodded in agreement and began shuffling back up the walk, the others moving with him in a half-circle, ready to pounce again, but at the same time, none of them really actually ready to do so.


    These were, after all, the ones still standing. My most fervent supporters had gone all-in already, and they were all-out already. Mr. XPCA gave me a reassuring smile, like everything would be fine and he''d miracled a solution to all my problems.


    The fucker.


    The path up to the doors seemed endless, and the doors themselves opened so slowly, I considered they perhaps should have started with them before we even began on the path. And of course the inside of the house was just as fancy and ostentatious as it''s exterior.


    To my surprise though, they didn''t take me up the gilded-and-dark-wood stairs, but rather behind them, and then down, into the slightly chilly air of the basement. One of many, I realized, as I sensed presences further out and further down, a whole ''nother mansion down here underground.


    Underground. Invisible. Surreptitious. A perfect place for all kinds of illicit activity, perhaps. Hush-hush weapons deals. Money laundering. Breaking contraband or sanctions.


    Or, I realized, as a familiar pair of consciousnesses entered my presence, storage of Exhumans. My hand shook as I, subtly as I could, touched the comms in my ear, barely breathing to speak.


    "Athan," I whispered, watching the broad back of the toad dragging me.


    "What''s up? Are you okay?"


    "Not important. Can''t talk. Just an update."


    "Update? On what? Saga, where are you?"


    "They''re here, Athan. Both of them."


    "Both of--?"


    "Tem. Moon. They''re here."


    He started to reply but I realized I was looking straight into the toad''s eyes now, and his beefy fingers closed around my hand and pulled the comms from my ear with a painful jerk. He examined it for one slow second before sliding it forever out of my reach in his vest pocket, his eyes boring into me the whole while.


    Leaving me very very much alone, in my least favorite position in the world, yet again.


    Heading deep underground as a prisoner, with a bunch of XPCA.

 356. 2252, Present Day. Ikedas Basement, Okutama. Saga.

    I took a moment to peek through the ladies'' senses, getting a feel for what kind of cages Moon and Tem were being held in. If for no other reason than to take a peek at my own possible future.


    Moon''s was...pretty pleasant, all things considered. Deep, deep underground, at the limits of my range, but a cushy little room, lots of books, a four-poster bed...actually the whole chamber seemed very western. It hardly seemed like a prison at all.


    Well, except the attire. She was literally sewn into a skin-tight outfit and mask, with knobby gloves and fuzzy socks, all white, like some kind of combination mental patient/bank robber, late for her wedding. I didn''t quite get it until I probed her memories and found that she''d been hijacking anyone who came close, using her powers to render them braindead, and the outfit was the easiest way to prevent skin contact. She''d even been headbutting and biting people, I really couldn''t have been more proud.


    Tem on the other hand was in more traditional attire even if her room was anything but. She was nearby, surrounded by sheets of what looked like plastic or glass, hung up on every surface. She sat limp in the middle of it all, hardly worth considering alive. This one I didn''t need to delve any deeper to figure out -- given that the whole building wasn''t up in flames, those pieces of glass must somehow have diffused her beams, making her give up on the whole everything, thing.


    I had to wonder why they bothered keeping Tem alive even, given what a hassle she was, but another peek into Moon revealed that she was only there to act as blackmail. If Moon didn''t behave, they''d kill her friend. Given that Moon had been pouncing on people and erasing their minds, I wasn''t exactly sure what constituted behaving, but baby steps, I guess.


    And that left me with my own situation. Still dragged behind the toadish, broad, muscley man I couldn''t phase for some reason, still being followed by a handful of useless XPCA white-knights who weren''t whiting or knighting nearly hard enough for my tastes, and still on my way to Ichiro, I had to assume.


    Toady tossed me bodily through a doorway, releasing me for the first time since we''d met. My arm stung for a moment, and I cradled it to keep up the act of it being broken while everyone filed in.


    At first, I thought this had to be the wrong place. Ichiro wasn''t here. Nobody was, it was just a sleek, empty chamber. Dark, stone. Underground. Not too many other adjectives really applied.


    And then the room lit up with a holo the exact size of, and exactly mounted on the far wall. I''d never seen Ichiro before, but I assumed this was him, given just how big the holo was and how much the guy seemed to like aggrandizing himself. The high-res display really showed off every subdued tone of his exceedingly bland suit.


    "Explain yourself, Sheng," he asked, his voice deeper than I expected from a relatively pale and narrow Japanese dude. Between him and Idris, I wondered if there was some kind of body-mod these people got to have a booming, sonorous voice, or if that was just a prerequisite to being a power-hungry shithead.


    Sheng, the toad, bowed reverently and didn''t answer until he he was fully facing the ground. "Honorable Ikeda-San," he rumbled "This girl trick your servants and enter your compound."


    "She did not," my XPCA colleague butted in. "She''s with us. A Colonel in the XPCA."


    "Is that so?" Ichiro asked, glaring back at Sheng.


    "She is full of lie. She say many lie to these men."


    "I think the XPCA would know their own," Ichiro said with a wry smile. "But let me verify. One can never be too safe. Miss, your name and military ID, if you please?"


    I hesitated. Passing myself off as Cosette was a pretty bad idea, in retrospect. It might have worked on these guys because it wasn''t like the XPCA would be advertising every internal squabble they''d had, but anyone who bothered to pull her record¡­


    "She claim to be Cosette Dawn, XB2099," Toady answered. The others nodded their assent, and I tried to force a normal-looking face over my surprise he''d remembered that. It was a kind of particular detail, and one that came out right around a fight where he smacked a few people around for a few minutes. That wasn''t the kind of thing most anyone could keep straight in those circumstances.


    Or maybe I was just surprised because I still couldn''t read the guy at all, and so everything out of him was more surprising than anything out of anyone else. In the most frustrating possible way.


    "Let me see," Ichiro said, putting on a small, round pair of glasses and facing off the holo. Any second now, he''d pull the record and see. I swallowed hard. I was going to lose my XPCA buddies and then all of them would pound me good. Or worse. I had to do something now.


    So I did. I booked it. As fast as I could move, anyway, right into the arms of the nearest dude in black, who caught me, seemingly on reflex.


    "Out!" I shouted at him, the command startling his mind into motion, his legs moving before he could even process. As Sheng rose and lunged at us in one motion, he was caught in a fracas as the others, driven temporarily insane, began thrashing in a death mosh.


    "W-w-wh--" stammered my escort as the situation exploded behind him.


    "They''ll be fine!" I shouted down his worries, forcing my words into his brain in a way he couldn''t contest. It wasn''t quite a compel, but as long as I played whack-a-mole with his resistances for long enough for him to get me out, I had a chance. There were hundreds of bodies here I could put between me and Toady, as long as I kept him physically off of me, I might just--


    My mental train seized as another monster of a man appeared between us and the stairs up, and my mind bounced off his as well. It wasn''t like...like how Karu pretended to be, where she could focus her surface-level thoughts and thereby keep me out. It was like there weren''t thoughts there at all, almost like a machine, or an insect really. Infuriating, was what it was. And why were there so damn many of them!?


    "Left!" I shouted, and the arms around me swayed as my mount veered. "We need to stay away from those huge, muscley servants."


    "Yeah," he agreed. Kenny, his name was, I discovered. Not the best name for a ride, but it''d do. I prompted Kenny to slightly misremember what happened in that room, making it seem like the toad had acted first, jumping the other XPCA, and he''d run out to protect me. As his mind felt more at ease with itself, the confusion and turmoil cranking away at the surface crystallized into resolve. All of us had sacrificed to save this woman, he thought. I will make sure she''s safe, no matter what.


    Men were so easy.


    This floorplan, however, was not. We were only a couple stories down, but I was ready to bet there wasn''t exactly a whole lot of different stairways out of here. Convenient though it would be to find a secret escape tunnel or some shit right about now, I was pretty certain that even ridiculous giant mansions didn''t have things like that just lying around.


    I frowned. Except Karu''s place, I guess. Maybe I should have had Kenny pounding the floor.


    But he was doing a great job already, running full-tilt with the slightest suggestions for guidance. Granted I was the one giving those suggestions, and I had fuck-all idea where we were going. At times like these, I liked to just set everyone''s mind on fire and take it slow, but if I did that, the only two people left would be those asshole servants, which is exactly what I didn''t want.


    "Watch out!" I shouted, and he ducked and lunged as one of said asshole servants suddenly crashed through a wall at us. I barely picked up on its presence before he came at us, they were almost invisible to me, the fuckers.


    And what the fuck, that was a wooden wall. Just who were these guys?


    "We need to get out of this basement!" he shouted up at me, and I nodded and clung tighter to him.


    "Where''s your gun?" I asked.


    "Gun locker, topside. Nobody''s supposed to be carrying at the event. Now I know why."


    "There''s gotta be something around here we can use. The guy''s an arms dealer, and this is his warehouse. Start checking rooms when we can for anything that looks like a weapon."


    "Yes ma''am. Pretty sharp, Colonel."This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "You can kiss my ass later. Run!"


    His boots slapped the ground with a heavy, echoing jolt in strides longer than I''d ever made. One of our friends was behind us, now up from the debris he''d created, and we were looping around down a plain, wide, stone-floored hallway, not exactly dim but not well-lit either, fancy sconces hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals flickering with simulated flame. There were so many cross-passages, it was more like a lattice down here than a maze, really.


    Kenny slowed down a fraction to peek in a door we passed, and then skidded to a stop, almost dropping me as he suddenly reversed. I saw why when he put me down and walked in.


    Wooden crates, stamped with warnings in half a dozen languages and padded with what I recognized as rice chaff. The main label was in English, and I recognized front-and-center, the declaration of the contents as protected under Section 13.


    More importantly, the contents were roughly gun-shaped and had a trigger. Kenny grabbed one and threw it to me, and I staggered behind its weight as I caught it in both arms, fortunately composing myself before he finished retrieving his.


    "Shall we teach those bastards not to cross the XPCA?" he asked. I grinned and nodded enthusiastically. Apparently the correct response was ''Vigilo Ignoto'', because he then said that himself, which I then properly repeated.


    We both popped out into the hallway and caught the fat brothers by surprise, or whatever passed for it in their alien minds. His and my guns both fired bursts of...of something, alright. It made the air hiss like static, made my vision jump and blur when I looked at it, like I was seeing something that wasn''t quite all the way seeable. The gun discharging smelled like copper and felt like opening a door on a hot summer day.


    But oh boy, that blast. The two targets expertly disappeared off opposite sides of the hallway right before it erupted, and that kind of forward-thinking definitely saved their lives. Where they''d stood just kind of...imploded on itself in a violet-red burst with a muted be-woop, like a holo feed getting cut dead. There was an aftershock, a violent cracking and boom, almost exactly like thunder, as the vacuum we''d suddenly ripped in the air collapsed in on itself.


    "Were these the prizes?" he asked me. I had no idea so I just shrugged and kept shooting. Because why the hell would you ever stop shooting when you had one of these puppies in your hands?


    The hallway around me evaporated quickly, storage rooms disappearing into nothingness and the two bouncing like the toads they were between cover as quick as they could go. The gun was heavy and I had a hard time tracking them, but where I lacked, Kenny was there to cover for me, firing with a lot better aim and a lot more control than I had.


    "...did you...literally just shout ''yee-haw''? I asked.


    "Sorry ma''am."


    "Yeah, we''ll discuss your behavior when we get back. But for now," I heaved a huge pretend sigh "light ''em up, cowboy."


    I watched with bemusement for another minute as more and more of the chambers evaporated, though the growing dark was becoming a concern as we inexpertly put out all the lights in our rampage. And then something terrible happened.


    Click went Kenny''s gun. He pulled the trigger a few more times. Click. Click. Click.


    "Uh," he said, turning it over and around in his hands. There on the side, where neither of us had really thought to look after finding the safety was a tiny holo which read ''0''. Which was not the most reassuring number. I checked mine and found ''4''.


    "Black on ammo," he said with a frown. "Where even is the mag?"


    "Pick me up," I instructed him, and again he dropped the gun and hefted me before he even thought about it. We''d gotten carried away in our fun, and now I needed to get carried away, to the stairs, before we paid for fucking up.


    But as portly as those two were, they were fucking sharp, and were somehow already right where we needed to be. I had Kenny charge them, he didn''t even question where his thoughts came from at this point, and I fired a couple shots blindly at them to make them scatter.


    Which they did, but not far enough, closing the gap in front of us right before we got there. And at this range, I''d implode all of us if I fired again.


    "Damn it," I hissed. "Uh, back that way. Towards the undamaged corner."


    "More guns that way maybe?" he asked.


    "I wouldn''t count on it, but we need to get them off the stairs somehow. That''s the only section with walls left."


    As we ran, Kenny vaulting over not-entirely destroyed walls, I realized, holy shit, how secure was this place? We''d blasted away most of the entire floor, and the ceiling didn''t so much as budge, even with hundreds of guests up there. I understood that as a fancy-ass mansion, this place would be built to excessive tolerances, but this was excessively excessive.


    "Each floor of the basement has titanium plates between it," Kenny explained, again, not able to question just how much I was in his mind. Not that I liked him reading my thoughts, but at the moment it was a necessity.


    "Is he worried about being nuked from orbit or what?" I asked.


    "Dunno. Maybe he was just preparing for this. He does have a lot of guns pass through here, it seems."


    We reached the standing walls and ducked behind them, a dozen or so feet ahead of the toad chasing us, the other presumably off by the stairs still. There were only a few of the storerooms standing over here, but all of them looked vacant to our cursory glances.


    "Damn it''s so dark now," Kenny complained, and I agreed. It would massively suck if we were passing by other awesome weapons just because we couldn''t make out the boxes in the dark, but that''s about what we had to deal with.


    Though there was something nearby, I could sense it. We were just right about on top of it, I just had to pin it down.


    "I think there''s something here," Kenny said, putting me down again and stepping into the room. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his mobile, cutting the dark with a cone of light. "No, just empty boxes. Wait, there''s one in the back¡­"


    "The toads will be on top of us any moment," I said, urging him back. He wavered for a moment as his own desire and mine clashed.


    And then the moment ended as the wall exploded. Again, the toad burst right through the wood like it was paper, leading with his shoulder, splinters raining down on Kenny in the wake. He barely had time to turn, to realize what was going on, only understanding what was happening because he could halfway see it through my senses as I watched in horror.


    He died ingloriously, the weak spot on his temples not nearly as strong as the wood the toad had already punched through. A single blow left him twitching on the ground, and a precise kick snapped his neck and ended his suffering.


    I panted and gasped, feeling his neck break as though it were my own, stumbling backwards in the dark away from the sound of footsteps approaching. I fired again, blindly filling the room with an implosion. I couldn''t tell if I hit, my mind was still reeling from Kenny''s death, one I felt, one I was completely unprepared for.


    I stumbled as I ran, panic filling my senses. One shot left. One shot left. Even if I''d hit, which I doubted, there was still one more out there, and I had one shot left. I couldn''t do it. I couldn''t hit him, Kenny couldn''t hit him, and he was a big dude and a trained marksman and everything. I was fucked, fucked, fucked. Supremely fucked. I had nothing. I didn''t even have my comms to ask for help.


    I reached out to those above, pleading for them to all rush down here and save me, but I hadn''t worked on them enough, they felt it and stilled their conversations as confusion washed over them. There existed no such instinct I could flip on like a switch to make them run downstairs. That wasn''t a primal evocation I could demand. Instead I would just die pleading for their help...I''d die again, and again, and again, until Ichiro realized what I was and used me like the XPCA would.


    I didn''t even have time to wonder how this got so fucked. All I could do was run, at my pathetic, lame top-speed of nothing. Waving my gun impotently as the toads appeared around me. Running towards...what?


    Towards the thing I sensed earlier, I realized. Towards the only familiar thing. I couldn''t even reach it, it was on the floor below me, and if I could get to the stairs, I''d be out of here already.


    But I ran anyway, for lack of anything better to do. So stupid, so ironic that in the end, I''d be the panicky one driven by instinct. I saw a dark shape flash past me and turned on it, the heft of my gun too much, and I stumbled and fell.


    And then they were on me, one from each side, advancing carefully to avoid my last shot.


    They knew I couldn''t hit them. I knew I couldn''t hit them. All they had to do was avoid the business end of my gun and I was useless, and those fucks could dodge faster than I could swing this hunk of metal. Hitting them was impossible.


    So I didn''t. I waited. I sat. They could come to me.


    "Put the gun down," said the nearer of the two, and I recognized him as my escort from before. I glared at him, feeling the other move behind me and checked him with a glance too.


    "Okay," I told him, lowering the gun, resting the tip of it on the ground between my legs. It was so fucking heavy, and tireless as I was, I was tired of swinging it around. "Okay, you caught me."


    "You are a powerful Exhuman, our master will be pleased to have you join us."


    "What, does Ichiro have a zoo or something?" I asked.


    "Oh, our master is not Ikeda-san," he clarified. And it was only then that I realized his English wasn''t broken anymore. He reached for the gun, slowly, gingerly.


    I hoped that whatever this gun did, it wasn''t nearly as painful as it looked. And then pulled the trigger.


    And holy shit were my hopes obliterated. I could feel every part of my body tearing away from every other part, all of me somehow expanding infinitely as I collapsed in on myself, feeling like I was, at once, crushed to nothingness and blown up to the size of the universe. I couldn''t scream, I couldn''t think, all I could do was be, as the instant of my death carried on seemingly forever.


    And then I was back, sitting on the ground next to a giant hole in the floor, a messy, half-torn body, the only remains of the toad who reached for my gun. Both of his arms, one of his legs, and half his face were gone, ripped away in the vortex which had just killed me.


    Except this fucker didn''t come back like I did. I reached for the vest pocket where my comms were, only to have my hand crushed as the other descended on me.


    "That was not a wise decision," he warned, his voice equally dense, though slightly less deep. "He was a prized asset. You will face punishment for his destruction."


    "Oh yeah?" I asked. "What about for yours?"


    I laughed in his face as a beam of light shot out of the hole in the floor and eradicated us both.

 357. 2252, Present Day. Okutama. Athan.

    "''Sup guys. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this party blows," Saga said breezily. "I''m on my way out."


    "Do you have Moon? And Tem?" I asked, realizing that I was spitting as I yelled into my comms.


    "The tiny, deluded one, yes. The other tiny deluded one, no."


    "Saga, for fuck''s--"


    "Shit there''s more of them? Fuck, Athan I have to go--"


    She dropped off abruptly, leaving me staring at the comms in my hand pointlessly. I wanted to howl at it in frustration, my hands shaking as I was forced to stand here and wait and endure, as I had been already. My own uselessness in this situation was driving me insane, but the only thing that held me back was the hope that no news was good news, and that if I jumped in, I''d just make things worse for Saga.


    But she''d been in trouble. I could read between the lines enough to know that. She sounded completely serious in her signing-off, and completely serious wasn''t something that Saga was lightly. There''d been trouble, no matter how casually she tried to pass it off.


    "We should go in," I said, and Karu nodded, needing nothing else to get her off the wall she was leaning on.


    "Wait," AEGIS asked. "She didn''t say she needed help."


    "There was a situation," I argued. "The plan was for her to sneak in. Obviously that didn''t work out, so now there is no plan. Which means we need to be there for her."


    "No, it means we need a new plan," she said. "Saga''s best defense is, ironically, the huge number of scary people there right now, and using them herself. If we go in, guns blazing, we''ll just pull them off of whatever she needs them for and onto ourselves. We can''t present an external target, or she''s doomed. ''A situation'' means we need to stay more cautious, not less."


    "And would you let your comrades perish, doing nothing?" Karu sneered. "Knowing that, though a remote chance, you did not do all in your power to aid them? A soldier does not leave a man behind, and though I think of her as neither, Saga is our ally in this fight, and I would be remiss to not so much as attempt to salvage her."


    Lia bit her lip. "Maybe we can intervene indirectly? I wish I had my sniper rifle. Or that we could tap into their security."


    "If we are to act, we must do it now," Karu said, turning to me. "Every second spent is paid to the reaper."


    "Karu''s right," I said. "If nothing else, we should be close by, so that if we''re needed, we can move in."


    "But if we''re spotted--" AEGIS argued.


    "We won''t be."


    AEGIS pointed at her own chest, the ruffly cream-colored fabric stretched over her curves. "Yellow dress." She pointed at Karu and me in turn. "Shiny, clanky, white armor. Hissing pneumatic clanking exoframe." Lia waited her turn in her charcoal slipskin but it wasn''t coming. "We are not a stealth detail, Athan."


    "It doesn''t matter what we are, or aren''t, or are dressed in," I shouted, already moving. "If Saga needs us, we help."


    "You help, you mean!" AEGIS shouted back, catching up easily. "You''re infuriating!"


    "Though you must admit, this is precisely what you signed up for, as it were," Karu mused, jogging beside us.


    "That''s irrelevant right now!" AEGIS said. "Look, Athan, please. Just--"


    "Look out!" Lia shouted, and I felt her suddenly dragging my arm sideways, doing her best to approximate throwing me around a corner, given our weight disparities. Confused but loyal, I followed her, and then moments later¡­


    VROON. From nowhere, a VTOL whipped past overhead, low enough that I could feel the props shoving me into the ground. The only sound I heard was it whipping past, the fans deadly silent, impossibly silent, as it hovered eerily in the air in front of us.


    It swept low to the ground, even lower than before, and coils of cable exploded from its sides, followed by a dozen men in uniform, strapped with more gear than I''d ever seen a soldier carry, who rappelled down the cables faster than I could run. A moment later, the craft pulled away, only to be replaced by another, and then another...and then moments later, two land vehicles pulled up, which could be succinctly described as ''very light tanks''.


    "What the fuck?" I asked, whispering now as we watched from behind a corner.


    "A hundred men in less than a minute," Karu whistled, clearly impressed.


    "But who? And why are they massing outside Ichiro''s gate?" I watched the last of the VTOL take off into the sky, disappearing into the dusk almost supernaturally. "Wait. You don''t think...these are the terrorists after IkaCo, do you?"


    "No," AEGIS muttered. "There was an insignia on the side of the tanks." She held up her phone and plugged it into her hair for us. "Look familiar?"


    It took all of us a moment to pick through the blurry image.


    "XPCA?" Lia asked. "But why?"


    "Come on, Lia, that''s a stupid question," AEGIS said, looking like a disappointed teacher.


    "No. Nuh-uh."


    "It has to be," I agreed. "The XPCA only does one thing, and that''s fight off Exhumans. They know Saga''s in there somehow, they''re getting ready for her."


    "Shall we continue to sit on our hands?" Karu asked.


    "Wait, we can''t just charge in," AEGIS said. "That''s suicide."


    "But if we leave her to face them alone¡­" Lia trailed off.


    "We need¡­" I looked around the neighborhood, but found only the same complexes of stone wall topped with slanted tiles that I''d already seen a thousand times while waiting. "We need...something. We need to get closer."


    "So they can spot us? What is your plan?" AEGIS asked.


    "Karu, help me over this wall. You two, stay put."


    Karu took a knee and helped me scale the wall easily, and I pulled her up after, keeping the noise to a minimum without using my exoframe or her jetpack. But just as we landed within the yard of Ichiro''s neighbor and began to take it in, there was a soft crunch as Lia landed next to me, and then AEGIS after that.


    "Like duh, I''m not gonna leave you alone," Lia shrugged.


    "Lia this isn''t a game."


    "And I''m not playing. Saga and I are technically besties, so it''s my job more than anyone''s to get her back safe."


    I didn''t have anything more for her but to growl my displeasure as we continued onward, approaching Ichiro''s place now behind the safety of a wall. I heard a dog barking and hoped it wasn''t sharing a yard with us now...for its sake.


    "XPCA is beginning to move in," Karu announced, adjusting her optics as she ran. "They are at the front gate, discussing some matter with the bouncers."


    "We just need to get closer," I panted, running as fast as I could without kicking the exoframe into high gear. It was still making a lot of noise, but I hoped the XPCA would be focused on the front. We just had to get closer. We were almost there, I could feel it.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    And then, suddenly, we were there, and I could feel it. I picked up on Saga, underground, fighting hard. I closed my eyes and blocked out my own senses to pick up on hers.


    Fuck you''re annoying, were her first thoughts, but she didn''t do anything to block me out. She was in the basement...second basement underneath the manor. The whole floor had been basically destroyed somehow, and she was fighting off these two...toady(?) guys who were darting at her from the shadows.


    At her and at Tem, I realized. Neither of whom were particularly mobile, and neither of whom were remotely effective at striking at the fast-moving, erratic, hard-hitting...toads¡­


    "Saga, they look nothing like toads," I whispered.


    [Shut up!]


    Karu and Lia...and everyone else on the block flinched, and Saga cupped her hands over her mouth, before filling her head with look what you made me do.


    She shook her head and cleared her thoughts. We just need more time. Get the fuck out of here.


    I tried to warn her, to convey the number and discipline of the XPCA coming down, but she was finding the images distracting, and she was basically running Tem right now already, the only thing keeping the toads off of her. She waved me away, which just added to my frustration, which in turn added to hers, and with that she shoved me out.


    "What''s going on?" AEGIS asked, staring at each of us intensely as we all sorta suddenly freaked out around her. "What''s Saga doing?"


    "She''s fighting something she can''t hit with her mind. She knows about the XPCA, and there''s more of the toads...more of...more of the things she can''t hit mixed in with that group somehow."


    "Toads?" AEGIS blinked at me in confusion.


    "Sorry, that''s what Saga decided to call the guys she can''t grasp mentally."


    "Why can''t she? Is there some kind of tech?" Her eyes lit up. "Anti-code-X tech? Ooh, I''ve always dreamed of it but¡­"


    I snapped my fingers in front of her. "AEGIS. Please."


    "Well I guess they had that back in Vegas, too. It was just the size of a truck," she said.


    "Focus."


    "Right. Well. What''s her plan then?"


    "I don''t know. She says she just needs time, but more enemies are coming in and she''s only barely holding out. The two after her now are unarmed, but the XPCA are fully-armed with exotics. There''s no way she''ll make it on her own."


    "So we strike," Karu agreed. "With their current clustering, a surprise attack might reduce their forces by sixty percent with a few well-placed blasts. And hellfire would buy us entire minutes more time--"


    "Athan would never agree to killing a hundred XPCA with a bomb, much less burning them alive," Lia said, crossing her arms defiantly. "They might be our adversaries, but they''re just people doing their jobs. People Athan used to work with, heck, people Athan used to be one of."


    "Before they betrayed him," Karu clarified.


    "The actions of a corrupt organization does not make their members cannon fodder," AEGIS agreed. "But Saga''s in very real danger here. Some of that tech might even kill her for good."


    "I cannot believe what I am hearing," Karu said, scolding all of us. "Cowardice and weakness. Were you in that position, would you ever, for a moment doubt that Ashton would come charging in as your salvation?"


    They all went quiet for a moment.


    "No, but that''s kinda the problem," Lia muttered. "I wouldn''t want him to, if it were me."


    "There are always backups of me. Maybe months old, maybe it''d take years to access and upload me. But there''s only one Athan."


    "It''s this all over again, isn''t it," I asked. "You guys trying to keep me out of the fight, to spare me against my own wishes."


    "No!" argued Lia. "Well...yes, kinda. But...there''s good reasons for it this time. You heard Saga, she said no."


    "She had a plan," AEGIS said.


    "And so do we," Karu sneered. "One of valor and courage and loyalty. We leave you two to your snivelling. I pray that my rescue never falls to the two of you. Come, Ashton."


    I looked at the others, Lia and AEGIS already so defeated. They knew. They''d been here before, several times now. They knew the responsibility I felt towards others, the burden I put on myself. Self-destructive, I''d been called, more times than I could count.


    And I really needed look no further than my own missing leg to agree with them. I couldn''t even let a ghost of a girl go unavenged, and she didn''t even need rescue. She was already dead, and I still had to charge in and slay Dragon and heroically rescue all.


    I thought about Saga, how she felt, how I could still feel her emotions, her fear and panic rushing through me if I concentrated. She was in very real danger, and I couldn''t turn my back to that.


    Could I?


    Wasn''t she?


    I closed my eyes and felt my own blood pounding. Every inch of me wanted to throw down, to strip off this restraint and shout fuck that to everything and everyone standing between me and her. Every inch of my body burned and seethed and boiled as I imagined...as I remembered the pain and injustice and suffering she''d already endured at the hands of the XPCA, something I promised her she''d never go through again.


    Every inch of me...except those beneath my knee on my left leg.


    I looked down at the empty gap my exoframe held up. One of my feet was buckled in, strapped to the frame, vital and raring. The other was just...not. Was nothing.


    "Damaged goods," I whispered.


    "Ashton, do not waste our time with your mumbling. We must make haste if you are going to rescue your ally."


    I turned and locked eyes with AEGIS, and could read surprise in their electric yellow. "Do you remember...the conversation we had a few days ago. You almost smothered me with your tits?"


    "Um," Lia interjected, but AEGIS just nodded.


    "Damaged goods, you called me," I said, lifting my leg. "It was Mage all over again. All over again, again, and again, and again. I keep hurting people. I keep hurting myself. I burn through relationships and safety nets and now finally...my own body."


    She nodded again, a lot slower and more sadly this time.


    "And I still don''t know how to say no. Every cell in my body is screaming to go out there, to slash and tear and do everything I can, have whatever needs to be done to my body, to myself, to make sure Saga''s safe. It''s all I want to do."


    "Then do so," Karu said.


    "No," I said, turning on her. "No, I won''t. Not this time."


    I didn''t think it was that dramatic a reveal, but Lia gasped anyway, and then came at me bouncing in for a hug.


    "Are you serious?" Karu asked. "You are serious, aren''t you. After all the incredulous situations into which you throw yourself, this is where you draw the line?"


    I shook my head. "The line should have been way behind me a long time ago. If I''d had more restraint, I wouldn''t have lost Mage. I wouldn''t have gotten the Defiant killed. I wouldn''t have led Dragon to Alyssa. I wouldn''t be standing here on one leg, or even looking for Moon and Tem right now."


    "You would have done nothing," Karu said, disbelieving. "And you believe that to be better somehow?"


    "I wouldn''t have done nothing!" I shouted at her. "I''d have done more than I already did! I''d be successful and complete instead of this constant...constant fuck-up! If I just waited and listened and shown patience and discipline--"


    "Your ally needs your help! You need to act. Do you turn your back to her?"


    "My ally," I said "told me to wait. She told me she needs more time and to stay out. What I need to do is learn to listen, learn to trust, learn that...honestly, I''m wrong more often than I''m right when it comes to making snap decisions. Other people can, and do manage themselves, better than I can manage them. If Saga says she just needs time, she''ll have her time. I''ll wait and see."


    [Good fuckin'' boy,] Saga said.


    And all at once the XPCA turned on each other, forming into small masses, the whole unit seemingly focused on killing the absolute shit out of four or five specific members. The ''toads'', I realized, were being forcibly purged from the ranks by their own peers.


    And if I''d engaged sooner, I''d have ruined everything. Karu said nothing as she watched a beam of light erupt from the ground and from it, a burly man emerged, carrying Saga under one arm and Tem under the other. The crowd, enraptured by the sudden bursts of gunfire and fighting out front, seemed oblivious to them entirely as they slipped right through.


    The man approached and deposited the two on their feet near us, Tem collapsing in a heap. Saga made a wink and gun gesture at Karu, and when that didn''t land, drew her thumb across her throat and then pointed at her most recent ride. This, Karu picked up on, and shot the poor bastard straight in the face.


    "It won''t hold for long," Saga said. "I couldn''t do too good a job given the circumstances, and there''s too many of them in there. I don''t think the regular XPCA will win out in the end, given how the toads fight."


    "Then...what do we do? Go in and even the odds?" Lia asked.


    "If we do, we''ll break the compel," Saga sighed. "It''s fragile. I didn''t have much to work with. They''re only programmed to kill the toads, and specifically that. If they''re put in a new context, they''ll regain themselves."


    "Then we leave," I said.


    "Leave?" AEGIS echoed. "But Moon''s in there."


    "Yeah, you can''t be serious," Lia asked.


    I shook my head. "No, we leave. We know where she is, we know that she''s being taken care of. This isn''t a fight we can win right now, and more importantly, not one we need to win right now. More XPCA are coming for sure, to say nothing of other groups. We need to--"


    I was cut off by a spotlight landing on us from above, one of those silent VTOLs hovering a good hundred feet above us. There was a fwipping sound of a dozen ropes descending as the XPCA prepared to land right among us.


    With a feeble wave, Tem banished the light from hitting us, and I scooped her up as Karu picked up Saga, and all six of us sprinted off into the growing dark of night.

 358. 2252, Present Day. Okutama. Athan.

    It wasn''t reassuring to learn I was right. We weren''t really a match for entrenched special-forces armed with exotics so new and dangerous that they''d not even reached distribution yet.


    We discovered and confirmed this as any scientist would; through repeated experimentation. Whether we assaulted the compound head-on, came at it through stealth, tried picking off the patrols, or deploying the eccentric abilities of one of our team, nothing worked. They were always ready, always prepared. But of course they were, they were the best of the best, and their sole mission was to stop us.


    Our attempts didn''t really hold up, either. It wasn''t long before it was too dangerous to even get close, or that we saw ever-growing numbers of XPCA patrolling the streets, strike teams marching in formation and recon units slipping in and out of shadows as they swept for any sign of us. In fact, it wasn''t long before we had to leave the Tokyo area altogether, and not even by train, as those were now all being watched.


    It was late at night and we''d just failed another raid. Lia sounded exhausted in my comms as I sat, back against a wall, panting over the body of one of Saga''s ''toads'', the slippery-minded bastards seemed to have an unerring gift for spotting us and sussing us out no matter how well we hid or prepared. I was beginning to wonder if they were the product of some kind of super-soldier project, or actually mindless minions animated by an Exhuman, a genesist.


    But the one near me was human enough. If it was just animated flesh, there would be no need for it to be living for an Exhuman to control it. It had breathed and looked and thought...until we''d cut it down, but even now, it laid there, smelling of death, seeping blood was the same as any other corpse I''d seen.


    They fought like devils, though. Superhuman strength and reflexes, at least. They reminded me of the false-Dragon we''d fought and killed at the XPCA boneyard. Not quite on his level, but close. Closer still in attitude and mannerisms. They always seemed unimpressed, even when dying. And, most unnervingly, Saga hadn''t been able to touch him either.


    "One more headed your way, Athan," Lia reported out. "Karu''s had to pull out, she picked up a flight of air combat drones."


    A hand drifted into my view and I took it, the girl on the other end of it easily pulling me to my feet despite our size difference.


    "You okay?" AEGIS asked.


    "I''m just banged up and tired. It feels like we''ve been running and fighting forever."


    She gave me a sympathetic smile. "It''s been a rough couple of days."


    "Incoming!" Lia warned, and both of us dropped to ready.


    This toad had a long, serrated blade in one hand and a short tri-barreled shotgun in the other, and like his peers, seemed completely unsurprised to stumble onto us. Behind him were a pair of shadow ops, which I only recognized by sensing them, hidden behind optical camo as they were.


    "I have the extras," Saga said, and I felt her mind at work nearby. Almost instantly, the two shadow ops began to roil, their silent padding towards and around us arrested by their own jerking movements. No longer sane, they whipped their weapons towards the nearest thing--


    And with two precise shots, the toad blasted both of them squarely in the upper torso, the camo erupting into a rain of gore from nowhere. Without so much as blinking, he turned the gun on AEGIS and fired.


    I whipped the two of us around so the shots would strike my back and shield, but it was no ordinary shotgun. The pellets were faster, denser...whatever the reason, my shield barely caught them before they tore into me, and I felt my back tighten with adrenaline-soaked pre-pain as the shrapnel buried into my back.


    AEGIS continued the momentum of our spin, using it to launch herself straight at him. His blade came up, and she kicked it up and above his head before she even landed, planting only one foot on the ground before the same kicking foot lashed out again, straight at his neck.


    He barely got the gun up in time, which was still saying something considering her speed. And the force...the impact of her heel wrapped the barrel of the gun entirely around her foot. She snapped it sideways, tearing the gun from his hand and slapping him across the face with the butt of it before bouncing back out of range and struggling for a moment to extract the twisted firearm from her foot.


    He bounced with her, coming in wild with a horizontal swing of that ugly, serrated blade. I threw swords in its path, but he just cut through them, apparently oblivious to the pain and damage they inflicted. And now she was the one barely getting her hands up in time, shoving off the blade itself with her palms and flying backwards to soak as much of the cutting momentum as possible, hobbling awkwardly with the gun still warped around her sole.


    She stumbled, she slid, I could almost feel her auto-gyros frantically self-correcting as her arms pinwheeled in the air.


    And then she crashed onto her butt on the ground, and he raised for another blow.


    "Athan!" Lia shouted at me, and I was already moving, but not fast enough. My back was caught hunched over and I couldn''t convince the auto-gyros in my exoframe that I needed to move forward now. I felt Saga blast him a few times with waves of pure psionic energies, but they barely made him blink.


    And then, as he planted his feet and readied a strike, he just stopped dead.


    Literally. Dead on his feet. I was there, AEGIS was recovering, Lia was about ready to go into conniptions over comms, but the blow never fell. He just stood there with the weapon in his hands.


    "What...the¡­?" AEGIS asked while I put a stim patch on my neck.


    "Did he just...have a stroke? Or something?" I asked.


    AEGIS warily advanced and then, delicately, like it might wake him, put her hands on his neck and read his vitals, before probing across his body. "He''s...absolutely dead. Never seen anything like it. Acute nervous system failure looks like. His joints are completely locked up, it''s like, instant tetanus. His heart stopped, his brain has no oxygen...and he''s¡­"


    "Creepy as hell?" I suggested.


    "Well I wasn''t going to put it that way, but yeah," she said, shivering as she took a step away. "Think it''s because he''s a toad? Something involving that process went wrong?"


    Someone cleared their throat nearby and we all jumped and turned.


    It was a normal-looking Japanese dude. He bowed at us, and practically by reflex now, we bowed back. He was wearing a tee shirt and slacks, but most interesting was the length of straight wooden pipe in his hand, which looked to me exactly like a blowpipe, though I''d never seen one outside of movies and such.


    He began to speak, and of course, it was all in Japanese. Although I did recognize the konbanwa part of it as ''good evening'', but that was as far as I got. AEGIS engaged him in chatter for a moment before turning to us.


    "Blowpipe," she said, gesturing with an open hand at the man''s armament. "A very potent neurotoxic dart. He says he has seen us fighting the toads and wanted to help."


    "Um, thank you," I said, addressing him. "Uhh, don''t touch the moustache."


    I got the small noise of acknowledgement, the half-bow, and the correct pronunciation as well as several ''hai, hai''s as I''d gotten every other time I''d massacred the language on this trip to someone. It was a little startlingly consistent.


    And also, very strange given the context. I cleared my throat.


    "Um, can you ask him why he was walking around the city at night with a neurotoxic blowdart, watching us fight?"


    "Head''s up guys, more inbound," Lia chimed in. "You''ve got...maybe nine or ten minutes."This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    AEGIS was fully capable of speaking while she listened and related my question as Lia spoke. The man answered and she translated.


    "He says, he is Hibakusha, and he hoped the dart would be for Ikeda-san. I mean, Ichiro."


    I furrowed my brow at her while she chatted with him more like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was just the fact that I was exhausted and she could never be, but this situation seemed a lot more...like...worrying than she was acting. Like, who the hell was this guy? What''s a Hibakusha? And why does that mean we should trust him?


    She gave me a frown when I asked. "Um, I told you before. They''re the terrorist organization looking to bring down IkaCo for producing the exotic weapons. They liken the proliferation of these crazy firearms to the nuclear state of the world, between the Cold War and the Sino War."


    "Oh," I said, remembering that she did say that. It seemed a lot less important then, before I thought we''d ever be meeting these guys. I think the Hibakusha guy saw my glimmer of recognition and again, gave me a smile and a half-bow.


    "I''m just asking him about their philosophy and how they know about the arms. He says a lot of them were once all part of IkaCo variously, and it wasn''t until people started questioning the company and then disappearing or winding up dead that there was any sort of formal resistance. People started leaving, out of fear for their lives, anyone who spoke out was silenced, and it was like the government couldn''t or wouldn''t hear them at all. This gentleman is the brother of an employee who was killed in such a way."


    "Oh. I''m so sorry to hear that," I said. It felt like a stupid thing to say, completely insufficient to the problems this guy was facing, but as AEGIS translated for me, the man''s smile was small, tight-lipped, but genuine, as he gave me an acknowledging nod.


    "He says...thank you. And in better Japanese than yours--" the man began talking again, more excitedly this time, and I waited for a translation. "Um, he says...that they appreciate what we are trying, but it will never work. In fact, our overt movements have done nothing but increase IkaCo''s active forces and public sympathy."


    "Well I''ve noticed the first part," I agreed. "Lia, how long on that ETA?"


    "Six minutes. Don''t linger."


    "He says the Hibakusha think we should stop doing what we''re doing. The more we attack the one place, the easier it will be for them to stop and kill us, and he would prefer we not die. Aw, that''s sweet."


    "Well, tell him we can''t. We have a friend there, and we''re not going to abandon her."


    They spoke again for a moment and she turned back to me. "He says, the Hibakusha have a plan, if we would be willing to help. They can''t do it with their strength, but they do have the knowledge we need." Her eyes sparkled at me, and I knew she was sold as soon as insider knowledge and plans were being offered.


    Honestly, given how things had been going, I''d take just about any plan now. So I listened carefully as he spoke...and then again and more practically as she repeated it in English.


    "IkaCo does not own these soldiers. We know that, they''re only here because of the weapons, and also because of the weapons...in a more general sense, I guess? Oh that was a Japanese pun! I get it. Um, anyway, these men are here for the guns, but the XPCA and everyone else is going to keep turning up in spades so long as the source of their arms is threatened."


    "Right. Not only do the XPCA have a bone to pick with us, we''re threatening them indirectly, by attacking their dealer, basically," I said.


    "Yeah. Ooh, I like this plan. But see, there''s a weakness in that relationship. Do you spot it?"


    "Four minutes guys," Lia reminded us. AEGIS pouted a moment as though Lia were intentionally ruining her fun and then continued.


    "Well the issue is that these soldiers only care about IkaCo as much as IkaCo is useful to them. There''s not a ton of goodwill between these groups, it''s just a practical partnership. So if we destroy IkaCo''s utility¡­"


    "Then they''ll stop protecting Ichiro, because he''s no longer of use."


    "Exactly. There might still be some professional favors he can call in or something, but right now, we''re seeing the whole of the XPCA dropping in on us, halfway across the world. They won''t be able to justify doing that if it''s just favors."


    "That''s true. That''s great!" I said, thinking about how relatively easily Saga had been turning these groups on each other already. "That''s a hell of a plan. All we have to do--"


    I paused. "Wait, all we have to do is succeed at destroying IkaCo, which is what we''re already failing to do. This doesn''t help at all."


    AEGIS smiled broadly. "You''re right, but that''s where the inside knowledge from Hibakusha comes in. He says there''s an external connection which is exposed, which the XPCA can''t and won''t protect, because it''s secret. It was that connection which started the Hibakusha''s questioning of IkaCo to begin with, and led to the current situation."


    "And that is?" I asked.


    "Two minutes guys. They''ll have visual confirmation if you stay any longer. I know you''re having a nice chat, but pull out now."


    AEGIS sighed. "We should go."


    "You''re impossible," I told her as she thanked the man, and all three of us exchanged bows. "What about the plan? What about the information?"


    "I got it all," she said, tapping her head. "But Lia''s right, we don''t want to risk another pointless fight. We''ll pull out, then we''ll talk."


    "Pretty big risk there if you ask me," Saga commented. "Athan''s pull-out game is pretty weak. That''s why I always use protection."


    "Just get your dumb butts over here," Lia commented flatly.


    AEGIS and I tore off, kicking off the ground hard enough to crack the asphalt, and blowing past the huge country blocks like they were dollhouses. Through the stims, I could feel that the pain in my back wasn''t so bad. My shield had done most of the job, but I''d still probably be in surgery tonight under AEGIS'' hand, pulling twisted pieces of metal out of my skin and muscle. It wasn''t anything I was looking forward to.


    "Karu''s back first," Lia said. "That officially makes Athan and AEGIS the losers."


    "Technically, only one of us will be the loser,'' AEGIS beamed, kicking her speed up half a step. Again, I was a little exhausted and a little beat up and a little stressed for her joviality. If I was going to lose, so be it.


    But she didn''t leave me in the dust. As soon as she saw I wasn''t rising to the game, she rejoined my side. "The night we learned about Ichiro''s connection to Idris," she said. "When we were holed up in that ''net cafe in San Francisco, the day after breaking into the Irenside Manor."


    "Where you had a stupid globe for a prop?"


    "A very effective and useful visual aid, to promote education and information retention, yes."


    "It was a stupid globe."


    "And yet you remember it, so obviously it worked. Anyway, do you remember what I pointed to on that globe?"


    I nodded at her, though the gesture was somewhat lost in our strides. "China. You learned that IkaCo is getting tech from China. Some kind of warlord out there or something."


    "Yeah. And that''s the place our friend was just talking about. That''s the controversial source of the tech necessary for them to build these exotics and ship them around the world. The whole world, but especially Japan kinda hates China, for starting a nuclear war, because Japan has...sort of a personal cultural loathing for nukes and their usage. To say nothing of being neighbors to a country which is all fallout and glass now."


    "I can imagine."


    "So any kind of trade deal or whatever with whomever''s out there is like, a big no-no, and yet IkaCo''s doing it. Even if the XPCA knows about it, even if they wanted to protect that source, there''s ultimately no justifying it. The US simply wouldn''t agree to sending forces to protect a national enemy, which China purportedly is. Their own hundred-year propaganda campaign has them pinned."


    "So if we go in there and shut down the source," I followed, "we wouldn''t have all this military interference from everywhere. It''d just be us, and this Sino warlord. And if we knock him out, not only have we done the world a favor in kicking China in the teeth again--"


    "You do realize it''s probably not actually a Chinese dude in there, what with them being wiped out and all? More than likely an independent Russian cell or something."


    "--but also, we''ll strip away the resources that IkaCo uses to control these world militaries. The company will crumble, and we''ll be able to take Moon back in the wreckage."


    "Almost TOO good of a plan," Lia commented.


    "Yeah, almost. Except we''re still going to cross a giant glass desert, hunt down a vicious, and improbably-successful warlord, who is probably as powerful as he is ugly, to say nothing of whatever technology he''s got that''s so advanced, one of the biggest corporations in the world can''t replace it or replicate it on their own, and do all this under the XPCA''s nose."


    "Yeah," Lia agreed. "Almost too good."


    If I weren''t still on the stims, I''d have laughed. The situation hadn''t changed or improved, but we had a plan on how to go forward at least, and apparently, that was huge in my mind. It didn''t sound plausible, even really possible to do what we were discussing here, but hell, if we stayed where we were, it would just be a matter of time before a lucky shot caught one of us, or a toad burst through a wall and chokeslammed me into the ground or some shit.


    At least this plan led us somewhere, had promise. As hard and long a road as it looked, there was a light at the end of it, and as beaten down as we were, that light meant everything to us.


    The light of the Moon, I thought to myself, and this time I did laugh. Because that was corny and awful. But hell, sometimes that was what you needed to keep on.

 359. 2252, Present Day. Okutama High School. AEGIS.

    It was getting late, people were getting tired, and I was getting worried. This was our last ''suicide run'', throwing ourselves up against the prepared defenses all through the greater Tokyo area now. This was it, the final, big shot we were taking, against the advice of our friends in Hibakusha, who had gone back underground since our single contact.


    It was kind of awful. Not just because of the normal stress of getting ready to face what could very well be death for myself or the others, but also because of what had happened to the city, what we''d done to the formerly-peaceful neighborhoods around Tokyo.


    Our faces were plastered on the news constantly. Military and police walked the streets, roads were barricaded, schools and stores were shut down, all because of the insane terrorist group on the loose. All because of us.


    And while none of us were superfluously destructive, there had been some collateral when we couldn''t avoid it. Athan''s blades burned bright, and old, stained wood was all-too-eager to burn. Karu''s missiles, smart as they were, would slam into structures, especially if they were currently being used for cover. And more than once, I''d crashed right through a wall, leveraging my superior durability and strength to take routes our enemies couldn''t.


    The damage was gradual, but soul-destroying. Where once we''d looked out and enjoyed the trees and sky on a walk together in this new, foreign land, now we saw the all-too-familiar signs of war and strife. I thought Athan was taking it hard, even though he wasn''t showing it.


    He was just all-in on being focused on our last run. This one was going to be a little different, given that we had Lia and Tem in the field, we were all staying together. With luck, it''d be fast and easy, but we hadn''t had a ton of good luck recently.


    "It''s time," I said, walking up to him. I almost regretted doing so; he looked exhausted. His clothes were cut and stained from a thousand scrapes, and too long without sleep and riding the stims had taken the color from his face. Still, at my words, he didn''t hesitate, rocking slowly to his feet without my help.


    "Hopefully we can rest after this," he said, giving me a reassuring smile that didn''t reflect in his dark eyes. I returned the gesture, wanting nothing more but to tell him it was alright, he didn''t have to do this, we could run...to Hokkaido, maybe. Somewhere they wouldn''t be looking for us. Just spend a few days putting him back together.


    But that wasn''t how plans worked. And as far as plans went, this was one of the few I thought we still had open to us. I just silently appreciated him for working as hard as he was, and went to rouse the others.


    Saga was already up of course, but she looked anything but chipper. She''d taken the existence of the toads somewhat personally, which I thought was just a personal failing at this point. Not being unable to affect them...technology was always marching forward and I knew that might happen sooner than later, or at least something like it. But the fact that, no matter how many times we fought them, she''d still try to blast them out, wasting her time and ours and endangering us all, it smacked of her petty ego.


    "Ready?" I asked, trying not to let my emotions on that show. Not that I needed to worry, Saga absolutely sucked at reading emotions as far as I knew. Which made sense.


    "Ready as I''ll ever be. Hate this place," she commented from her back.


    Karu was next, looking over Tem. She looked a bit better than Athan, but still worn-down. I had to suspect that she was somewhat used to this kind of sporadic stop-and-go fighting from her service...but I also had yet to meet a soldier who actively enjoyed that kind of lifestyle.


    "We''re getting ready to go," I informed them, and Karu turned and nodded at me, already in her armor though with the visor at her feet. She was seated in a broken desk, leaning over Tem on a dusty table. I wondered if the two of them had been talking.


    "Shall we?" Karu asked gently, and Tem gave a small nod. While the rest of us were going on fumes, Tem was relatively well-rested, maybe even in better shape than when we''d lost her. She''d been intravenously fed and cooped up in her cell...and whatever issues she was still experiencing was nothing compared to her unadulterated joy at being back with Athan.


    Though we had to walk a fine line with her because he really did need to rest without her interference, but if we told her that, she went crazy depressive on us and volunteered to die to remove the distraction. She kinda needed constant managing, and that''s why Karu was babysitting. Say what you would about her, but that woman had absolutely limitless patience when she needed to.


    And that finally brought me full-circle around the classroom back to Lia, apparently asleep in the corner facing the blacked-out windows. As I approached, she glanced up at me.


    "I''m already awake," she lamented, all traces of her sparkling personality extinguished.


    "We''re almost through it," I reminded her.


    She said nothing, just brought her knees in close and stared at the black windows.


    And that was what we had to work with at the moment. Myself and these five horrendously broken people. It made me wonder what real military ops felt like in the moments before. How had actual soldiers felt and bore themselves before jumping out of the trenches or running up the shore or diving out of a VTOL? Was it always dread and exhaustion? If I were a better caretaker, would they be putting on false laughter and cracking wise right now?


    I didn''t know, and I couldn''t, so I put it out of my mind. I thought of our first hours in Japan, of Athan not even knowing how to use a toilet, of our inexpert attempts at ordering food by pointing through a display case. It seemed impossibly long ago. Now those memories just brought up images of flashing muzzles and steely, bored-looking eyes, set in bodies that moved too fast and killed too readily.


    "AEGIS?" Athan asked, and I realized he was standing by me. I looked around, and they all were.


    "Yeah. Let''s go."


    Athan led us to the door but then stopped, all of us colliding and bumbling around as he turned to face us. One-by-one, he looked into each of our faces, spending the last and longest time on his sister.


    "Last run, guys," he said, his voice stronger and clearer than it was a minute ago. "We all know how this works now, and I don''t want anyone getting sloppy and getting hurt when we''re almost through. It''ll be dangerous, but that''s nothing new for any of us. Stay safe, stay smart, stay alert, and we''ll all pull through together. All clear?"


    Tem, Karu, and Saga at least gave a hooah! while Lia and just kinda stood there nodding and looking stupid. Athan gave us an apologetic grin and then turned back to the hallway, leading us further down with his exoframe whining with every step.


    And I just felt like...goddamn. I could have said that, or something close to that when I was rounding everyone up. But I didn''t, because at the end of the day, no matter how hard I tried, there were always going to be things Athan was just better than me at. And you''d bet your ass that leadership was one of them -- there was a reason we were all following him, after all, not me. And seeing that...seeing the extra little spring in everyone''s step after the speech...it wasn''t even that good a speech, it was the fact that he stopped and made one, that he was the kind of guy who cared and who would...that kind of shit got me falling in love with him all over again. It just wasn''t fair.


    I dialed back those indices just a smidge so they wouldn''t rise up in the middle of our op as I prepared to make the final call. We reached the end of the hall and the stairs, and Athan took us up instead of down.


    "Hello, police?" I spoke into my comms in a voice which wasn''t mine. There was a moment while they switched to English for me and then I was asked the nature of my emergency. "Hi, I''m outside the Okutama High School, and I just saw those wanted criminals that are on the news. They just went in the front door."


    Athan led us up another two flights of stairs as I talked, finally cutting open the door at the end with his powers and leading us all out onto the roof. It was a broad, flat roof without any sort of fence or ledge at the edges, never intended as an open area for students, though the amount of empty drinks and grafitti up here made it clear how successful that policy was.


    I made up some more information for the dispatcher, and when she was done and had told me to get far from the school as I could, I hung up and we all stayed standing.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Invisible, of course. A recon team or even a gunboat would have picked us up in thermal in a heartbeat, but so far, they''d stuck to deploying strike teams only, alongside light armor. We hoped this time would be no different.


    And then we all waited.


    Minutes seemed to crawl by, even though we only had precious few of them. I couldn''t even see the expressions of the others, they were just a hazy red glow to my imprecise optics. But still, to the others, I guess it probably felt like standing here completely alone. Except Tem I guess. And Saga.


    What I wouldn''t have given to have Saga''s powers right now and be able to see what everyone was thinking, to be able to know the right things to say to abate everyone''s worries. Instead I was just standing here useless, like a shrub. At least it wasn''t cold tonight.


    And then...I waited more. And longer, as nothing continued happening forever. I checked my internal clock, it''d only been two minutes, but Jesus, had it felt like more. Just standing here was driving me crazy.


    And then I realized, it wasn''t any fault of mine or ours that everyone was tense and beaten-down. That was just another casualty of war. I was deluding myself thinking that people would be joking around in the moments before a battle...or even if they did, it''s because they all felt like this, this pit of dread gnawing at them from inside.


    I had a moment of supreme connectedness with every other soldier who''d ever lived. Maybe even the XPCA in the vehicles coming for us right now. They knew that a lot of them had already died facing us down, and they had no reason to expect differently tonight. I''m sure many of them felt the same gnawing, the same wonder...will I be coming home tonight? Will I be one of the lucky ones? Will the plan hold together?


    My reverie was finally broken my a whisper. "There," Karu said, her armor shuffling as she pointed uselessly. I scanned the dark sky but found little...stars, city lights¡­


    And then I saw it. A dark hole in the sky, where stars would disappear as it crept. It was unrecognizable as anything but a blob at of blackness at this point, but we''d seen it at least. We''d be ready.


    Before long, Karu pointed out another, and then another, her optics apparently sufficient to pick out the VTOLs even in darkness at extreme range. We tensed, I could sense that even without seeing, and the craft drew in ever closer.


    They were on us shockingly fast. They moved so rapidly, but more, they were deadly silent. Usually a VTOL would announce itself with its turbofans but not these. It felt like one moment they were distant, indistinct blobs and then the next, so close I could read the writing on their flanks.


    The first craft to arrive split open, ropes erupting from the sides of the VTOL ahead and above us, and a dozen dark shapes slid down them towards the ground in front of the school. Only seconds behind, the second did the same, the men moving with such synchronized precision it was like watching droplets shaken from the edges of a leaf.


    And then from behind, a dull whisper as a VTOL crested the building, lights off, fans silent, the cables slapped onto the rooftop near us and writhed like snakes as the passengers disembarked. We stood tense and ready as the men landed, taking their feet near us and not hesitating for a moment to put their guns in their arms and secure the door.


    "The door has been breached, location is not secure," one soldier said, his voice coming out synthesized through his suit.


    The others fanned out as the first two VTOLs began to pick up and haul away. The third remained for a few moments longer.


    And in those moments, before the XPCA soldiers returned and stumbled right into us, each of us grabbed a rope and held fast. Lia had a pair of clamps, one in her hand and the other in Tem''s, which they used to lock themselves to the cables. Athan wound the rope around his elbow and forearm...a bit bizarre looking given that he was invisible and the rope wasn''t, but Tem corrected that after a moment.


    There were more sounds of ropes moving as Karu got Saga situated and then herself, the only one who could both see and act readily, and as for me, I just grabbed hold.


    And then it felt like the ground just left us. The VTOL went up and away, the cables retracting as the rooftop flew off, faster than any of us could have expected.


    I heard Saga muttering something but none of us had comms on so that we were harder to trace. I frowned and reviewed the captured data, amplifying her voice even as I climbed up my rope ahead of the others.


    "...picked up on the weight..." she''d said. That wasn''t unexpected, and it was her job to make sure that if the crew were going to detect us, they didn''t, instead.


    Which was kind of a big ask, given how many toads there were among the XPCA''s ranks right now. If one of them were in the wrong spot above us right now and they figured us out¡­


    Well, Karu might survive the fall, if she wasn''t shot down. Saga would. That was about it. And while our odds were good that there wasn''t a bad person in the wrong spot...it felt insane to have all of our lives literally hanging in the balance over it.


    Which is why I was scared to piss when I saw, through thermal, Saga and Athan and Lia suddenly twitch in unison. That kind of synchronicity always meant code-X bullshit was afoot, and there wasn''t any good kind of that in our current situation.


    "There''s a toad up there," Athan informed us, his voice barely carrying over the wind whipping past. I felt my heart sinking and my mind scrambling for backup plans as soon as I heard it.


    It was supposed to be a clean getaway. That was the hope anyway. These VTOL were the fastest thing they had, and if we got a head-start, we''d be away from Japan before they could scramble anything to pick us up. But that wouldn''t work if we had to shoot our way into the craft...if we even got up there at all.


    "What do I do?" Saga asked, though I could barely hear her, and so nobody else did.


    "Saga''s asking what to do," I repeated.


    "What are they doing?" Lia asked. "Up there."


    "Nothing yet," I relayed for Saga. "The toad isn''t on any instruments that''d detect us, he''s just doing his job and so are the others, for the moment."


    "But once we get up there¡­" Lia added, looking up nervously. The cables were still slowly retracting, but we had a lot less time and room than it felt like we needed.


    "If we can get close enough without being detected, I can cut him out," Athan shouted.


    "The others will react," I said. "The VTOL might even go down."


    "Can you engage the autopilot?" I asked Saga. "And then put them all under?"


    "Only if you can tell me which of the fucktillion buttons it is," she bitched back. I sighed and rolled my eyes. She sure was a lot more pissy recently, and between that and her diminished usefulness, I was finding it harder and harder to justify keeping her around. At least Tem could follow orders without lip.


    Tem. It was hard to remember that we suddenly had her on-hand. I considered the new possibilities with her onboard, and then grinned wickedly.


    "Okay. Karu, you and I are going to detatch. You hover there for...let''s say six seconds, and then dive in and take over the controls. I''ll handle the toad. Tem, make it pitch black up there, and Saga, knock ''em out."


    "And me?" Athan asked.


    I couldn''t exactly hang off my rope and give his cheeks a pinch, but I gave it my best shot, missing him only by eight or nine feet. "You hang out and look pretty, stud."


    He scowled at me and I laughed again, but we were out of time, the ropes would be retracted in the next fifteen or twenty seconds, and we needed the toad incapacitated before he found us all scrambling to get in. "Saga, Tem--go!" I shouted, and threw myself up the cable at max speed.


    Karu was opposite me, and broke off from her rope, flying upward, wobbling a few moments as she got her jetpack stabilizing her to match the speed of the VTOL. Which...she couldn''t, she began floating away as though cast overboard in our wake, her engines roaring at maximum pitch to try to keep up.


    It didn''t matter. She''d served the purpose I needed. I finished my upwards flip, landing on my feet inside the craft and righting myself. As I''d hoped, through thermal, everyone was just a slumped-over blob in the dark, everyone except one, who was standing at the opposite door, listening for Karu.


    I kicked him in the back of the head, full-force, and he went spiralling out of the bay, his arms and legs askew like a starfish as he whipped past Karu and towards the ground a hundred feet below.


    I shouted for Tem to turn the lights back on and pulled the pilot out of his chair. It took several tries, but I eventually got the VTOL to slow, which let Karu come in and actually know how to pilot the thing. The rest came aboard without incident, and Athan even thanked me for a successful plan.


    And then we had a brief discussion on what to do with the other passengers before we outvoted Athan and decided to shove them overboard.


    "We won''t even wake them?" he lamented, looking down at the face of the pilot and co-pilot through their helmets. Unlike the soldiers, they weren''t in exosuits, which I think was making it easier for him to sympathize with them.


    "Oh they''ll wake up," Saga confirmed. "Ever had a dream where you were suddenly falling?"


    Athan shivered and I gave her a glare.


    "We''re losing fuel because of them," Lia confirmed. "Empty VTOLs can move a lot further than full ones, and if we want to make it all the way to China without crashing, we''ll probably need every drop we can get."


    I saw Athan thinking, and could see the gears in his head turning. Enemy combatant or not, these were helpless people he was sending to their deaths. And we kind of needed to, we needed to go as fast and as far as possible before the other thousands of VTOL out there caught our scent and turned this from a flight into a fight.


    He knew. He wasn''t arguing, just doing his best to come up with any alternative he could. But there wasn''t much of one, just varying shades of bad.


    "You don''t have to do it," I told him as he got up. "And it''s dangerous. Let me."


    He shook his head at me. "The least I can do is do it myself. These men and women deserve to be mourned.


    "I can mourn them," I protested. "I''m not crazy about killing them either, it''s just what''s necessary." But Athan steered me back into my seat and gave me a brief kiss on the top of the head, before going back and beginning to drag the bodies by himself.


    I watched, feeling useless and wondering how each body weighed on him as he systematically unbuckled them, hauled them to the door, and after a moment, rolled them out into the whipping winds.


    He''d been so strong recently, had made so many hard decisions, and had made them well. And even so, he''d clung to his compassion, somehow.


    But the two were in opposition, more and more, and I had to wonder how long before one of them broke the other. It wasn''t something I wanted to discover. And I was glad we were on our way out of Japan.

 360. 2252, Present Day. Home, Alexandria, VA. Cosette.

    I fished in the cooler by the couch and pulled out another lukewarm beer. The fridge had passed beyond my ability to give a fuck. Everything had, really, except this couch and the bathroom. And the bathroom was beginning to push it.


    I''d lost track of the days since I was put on house arrest, and the fact I hadn''t been charged and sentenced in court-marshal just pissed me off. I knew why they were doing it, of course, but seriously...how many goddamn death sentences did one woman need before they executed her?


    The beer flowed fizzy and nasty, but it wasn''t like I cared. I probably reeked. I definitely reeked. I''d been spending ninety-five percent of my day in the same underwear on the same couch, waiting and waiting. The beer was just there to make the time go faster, not to be enjoyed. I wasn''t really capable of enjoying time, given the situation.


    I glanced up at the soldier in my room. A fucking exosuit. They didn''t even trust me with a standard guard, I was too dangerous to be left alone in a room with a man with a gun, apparently. More political bullshit, I hated all of it. I sneered at him, at the blank faceplate, and when he failed to react, I flipped him the bird. Even if he pretended not to see it, I knew he did. Knew the targeting computer would light up every graceful contour of my finger for him to enjoy. Fucker.


    How bored did that guy have to be? At least he got to go home at the end of his shift, and his home wasn''t surrounded by MPs and stuffed with guards. He probably spent all day staring at my panties or my unshaved armpits or something...could never tell anything with those damn faceplates. They always unnerved me. One of the reasons I liked working with the P-Force, it was always so face-to-face. It was like being with the Peregrines again. Every one of them had a personality, there was no such thing as a rank-and-file Peregrine.


    And somehow, my time with the P-Force had ended up even worse than the Peregrines. Fuck me.


    I turned up the holo because I could hear my own thoughts over it. I''d taken to reality shows because they were frequently the only thing on, and were the only lives more screwed up than mine. Even sitting here waiting for my execution papers, I could always look down on bitchy celebrities, thank God.


    I flipped through the channels and stopped on the news. Another good source of depression. Though this story hit me a little harder than it should have. I frowned at missing the first half of it and dialed back to the start of the story.


    "Tensions continue to rise in Japan as the Exhuman fugitives, the group mockingly dubbed the the ''Pulverizer-Force'' by online communities continues their path of terror, causing untold amounts of damage and ruining countless lives."


    The footage cut to an XPCA officer I didn''t recognize, but his insignia indicated he was a permanent station in Japan. America had the worst of Exhuman problems by far, but they were still a global issue, and so the XPCA was a global agency, in about the same way the FBI was. Fifty percent diplomatic leveraging, fifty percent security, fifty percent an excuse for Uncle Sam to put his people wherever we wanted. And a hundred percent political bullshit. The guy speaking seemed no different.


    "You can look at the numbers if you''d like, you''ll see that, per-minute, this is one of the least destructive and lowest-casualty Exhuman events on record. So when I say that the XPCA is doing all it can, both the Japanese and American branches, you can see that we''re serious about it. We have control of the situation, and the noose is being drawn ever tighter around these Exhumans'' necks."


    As he spoke the image changed to a shot taken of Athan and his friends retreating down the street amidst a hail of gunfire. I had to shake my head at how transparently they''d picked a clip that showed the ''bad guys on the run''. And even more so at this prick''s pompous attitude.


    "Can you believe this shit?" I asked the exosuit in the room. "Athan''s a little shit who cries if he swats a mosquito, and they''re claiming themselves to be the reason there''s low casualties?"


    The exosuit of course, didn''t respond, the faceplate staying as blank as ever. I considered giving him a kick in the codpiece just to get a reaction, but I thought that reaction might be point-blank scattergun fire, and I wasn''t nearly drunk enough for that yet. So I kept on my beer.


    "Over the last four days, ''Pulverizer'' has remained fairly consistent in their efforts, attempting to attack residences in the city of Okutama, a wealthy, secluded city west of Tokyo. It is believed they made contact with a local terrorist cell, named the Hibakusha, who are a radical organization with no stated goal, but who have launched several attacks against international technology conglomerate IkaCo, as well as the family of the CEO, Ichiro Ikeda."


    I had my doubts about all of that, but couldn''t be assed to get up and get my mobile to check. Nobody was a terrorist for fun, and ones that had a specific target usually had a reason why, and were way more than happy to talk about it, typically. This was the real reason the news was depressing after serving so long in intel -- you began to see through all the bullshit.


    "Recently, however, they moved west, their reign of terror moving across new territories. Their pattern is erratic, and it is believed they are currently on the run. They were last seen in the Nagasaki region on Japan''s western coast, terrorizing the locals there in a desperate bid to continue their campaign of fear. We now bring you exclusive footage taken from earlier today, where you can see the bonds of loyalty between ''Pulverizer'' dissolving as they rob an ordinary grocery store, threatening all within."


    The first thing I noticed was the utterly unexplained VTOL parked in the middle of the street. It was a Sirius-class, a transport ship, deadly fast and deadly quiet. I heard they were popular in Japan where subtlety was much more of a national notion...here in the states we tended to lean into the intimidation factor of a fleet of noisy, chock-full-of-weapons gunships instead.


    But this one wasn''t XPCA...or not anymore, apparently. The footage had been cut to as though to deny this implication, but there was no way it''d be parked, or that close to the target without something being terribly wrong. My drunk mind punched me in the pain nerves for trying to make it work, but we had a working relationship of mutual misery, and it eventually did its job.


    I paused the feed while I thought, and massaged my temples. Sudden erratic movement westward after four days of being stationary. Travelling from Tokyo to Nagasaki in less than a day. Again, the story between the lines told me more about that VTOL than any reporter''s lips. So he''d hijacked it somehow. Karu was a pilot before a Peregrine and could certainly fly one of those things, and in checking the stills, she wasn''t anywhere to be seen, so probably still inside it. I was beginning to feel something approximating happiness at pushing this puzzle together as I hit play again.


    There wasn''t any sound, the video seemed like a traffic cam maybe, but what it showed was clear enough. Hi-resolution image of...I blanked for a moment, his sister, what was her name? Mia or something like that. She was walking out of the store with a bag over her shoulder and what looked like a cinnamon bun hanging between her lips.


    Chariot intercepted her on her way out and slapped her in the face, sending the bun flying. He silently berated her, that much was clear from the body language, spending several seconds talking, before turning to watch her go past.


    I paused the feed again. For once I didn''t have anything to go off of against the written story. Which didn''t make it true, but even I had to admit, there weren''t too many ways to read into bitch-slapping your sister in the face in the middle of the street when she''s eating a sweet bun.


    "Whaddya reckon?" I asked the guard, nodding towards the screen. "Why''d he do that?"


    I could almost see the guy inside the suit shaking his head at me. Bet he wondered why he always got the crazy ones.


    I had an idea, and this one was good enough to finally get me off the couch. First, I wheeled into the kitchen and snagged another case of beer, basically all I''d bought last time I was permitted to be escorted to the store. That''d be for after.


    And then, I picked up my mobile and browsed through the app store. I knew I''d heard of...there it was. Download. I have indeed read the terms and conditions, accept. Install. Wait fifteen seconds.


    And then I pointed my phone at the holo and replayed the clip.


    It took a few seconds while the app ran, and then words began to appear. It was for an ad. But after that, words, the app''s best-guess at lip reading. With that added to the video, here''s what I now saw:


    The sister exited the store with bags of stolen goods and a single stolen pastry. Athan intercepted her and shouted "What the hell do you think you''re doing?" Actually probably could have read that on my own if I''d tried, he wasn''t being subtle.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I watched him hit her again but realized...something wasn''t right. It didn''t look right. I slowed the feed down and zoomed in as far as I could. The app freaked out but it''d get its turn. I watched the stills as Athan''s hand came in.


    And then fell back onto the couch, which emitted an ominous crack, holding my head. It was fake. It was so obviously fake. Right before he hit her, his arm suddenly grew a hand-length longer to extend onto her cheek. The footage was doctored, which I should have expected, but holy cow was it an ameteur job. I know the video was shot today but come on. Apparently the XPCA needed me more than they knew.


    Which meant, he never hit her. He slapped the pastry out of her mouth and her head turned with it. I reset the app, and that made the next lines make a lot more sense.


    "We''re not criminals because we can be. Only do what we have to. We''re not stealing for fun here, Lia."


    Cue her looking cowed and dejected and walking off. Brilliant. And incidentally, I finally remembered her name.


    Honestly, it warmed my heart a little, as I stretched luxuriously and sprawled on the couch again, making sure my beer was in reach, by reaching for and emptying half of it into me. Athan was still a big ol'' softy, even when he had a rap sheet a mile long, he still thought of his morals. Even stupid ones like making sure they weren''t nicking pastries for pleasure.


    He always had been very anti-fun when he felt guilty about something. It''d been annoying back when he worked for me, made him impossible to cheer up whenever anything had gone legitimately wrong. Always with the I deserve this misery mindset.


    I took another drink and sent my thoughts to him through the still on the screen. Kid, as many times as you screw up and deserve it, the universe is gonna screw you and you won''t have deserved a thing. You''re gonna make yourself old and dead if you don''t take happiness where you can find it.


    ''Course he didn''t react either. Just like the statue of the guard I had in my living room. Something about XPCA guys maybe? They just never listened.


    I was still celebrating having achieved something with my day when a suit walked in, a very slick and irritating one, which matched its owner.


    "You''re disgusting," he said. In response, I chugged the other half of my beer, both to irritate him and because I was going to need it. He made a retching face as the foam ran down my chin. "Put on your clothes and stand at attention. You''re a disgrace."


    "Can''t seem to rightly find the motivation, sir. I believe my ability to wear clothes and have a shred of self-respect were taken away with my rank."


    "For someone facing the prospect of execution, you''ve got quite the mouth on you."


    "Well if I thought there was any way I wouldn''t be put to it, maybe I''d reconsider. But since I''m a dead woman walking anyway," I stretched again, barely able to reach the clinking bottlecaps of the new case I''d laid out for myself. It took some calisthenics, but I got there without getting up. When I returned to my seat, he was staring with open revulsion.


    "I suppose you know why I''m here?" he asked, ignoring the spectacle. Maybe he was worried that the more he dwelled on it, the worse it would get. I had half a mind to continue anyway, but honestly, was just plumb out of fucks to give.


    "Same reason as always. Legal obligation. More charges served. Leave them on the stack."


    He gave me a wry smile and threw another envelope on the growing pile in the corner of the room. Probably thirty of them in there now, just more bullshit printed on trees that never deserved that kind of pitiful epitaph.


    "Another five counts of murder," he said, with more excitement than was healthy.


    "I''m sure. The VTOL he stole was piloted, wasn''t it? Had to dispose of them somehow."


    His sneer disappeared as he openly wondered how I knew this, before taking in the scene on the holo. Wordlessly, he regained himself and then continued his pointless attack. "I''d be worried about myself if I were you."


    "Yeah, that''s because you''re stupid," I said, cracking open the bottle on the leg of the couch and hardly spilling a quarter of it. "I''m not sure if you realize, but I can only die once. The XPCA can keep me around as long as they want to keep pinning all their failures on me, but none of that makes me any more dead once they decide to pull the trigger. Honestly, as long as that kid keeps making messes and they keep failing, he''s actually prolonging my stay. So cheers to him," I said, raising my beer.


    "That''s an Exhuman you''re raising a glass to," he hissed.


    I shrugged. "Still more of a man than you''ll ever be. Pencil-dick pencil-pushers; each one of them a sick sadist and a worthless human being."


    I drank through most of his returning tirade, mostly because it bored me, but also because it annoyed him. When it looked like he was hitting the good part, I turned the holo back on and finished the news story, though I had to turn it up a few clicks to hear it over his belligerence.


    Finally, I realized he had shut up, and was just stewing there, red in the face with tense shoulders. I really wished he''d hit me. Even drunk as I was, I was sure I could put him through the floor. And if that was another mark on my record, oh well. But even he wasn''t that stupid.


    "All done then? See you tomorrow when Athan does another bad thing?"


    "Fuck you," he spat, and I gave him a mocking salute with my mostly-empty and then he turned to leave.


    Lovely guy. Brightened all of my days. I could only imagine how many days he was going to spend jerking it to me when I finally died.


    Something else had piqued my interest though, something inobvious in the news feed. I scratched my head and struggled upright as the image wobbled in front of me.


    Why send his sister to the store? I wondered. If Karu was in the VTOL, that still left Athan himself and his body-modder girlfriend as able-bodied and capable, both of whom were much more prepared for a sudden situation than the high-schooler. It''d make more sense for them to go in and pick up what they needed...I knew how fast the two of them could move...so why her?


    Lia had her arms loaded with stuff. A ''full load'', I liked to call it when refusing to make more than one trip from the car myself. Bags heavy with goods I couldn''t make out, probably enough that she couldn''t lift her arms.


    So how''d she stick a pastry in there? Bite it first and then grab a dozen bags of groceries? I didn''t know how tough cinnamon buns were in Japan, but I doubted it would survive that long in her mouth. Which meant the bags were already prepped in there...that would explain where the body-modder was. And she''d probably carry her own load out with her nanofiber-magnified muscles, ten times the load Lia had.


    Which was excessive. If these guys were doing hit-and-runs like it looked, there''d be no need to stock up on provisions. Everywhere in Japan had food if you were willing to fly around and steal it.


    I skipped to the end of the vid and watched the last few stills carefully. At the end, right before it cut off, when Lia went back towards the ship...Athan barely began walking the other way. Towards the store. To get more food.


    I felt like goddamn Sherlock Holmes as I fell backwards again, my couch cracking its protests. If I wasn''t careful it''d die before I did. They weren''t doing hit-and-runs, they were stocking up, which they hadn''t done before. Just like they hadn''t been flying across the country before, just like they hadn''t stolen a VTOL before.


    Damn, Cosette, I told myself. No wonder the XPCA promoted me up the Intel chain. I was a goddamn genius. Too bad I was the only one around to appreciate it. Well, me and my statue friend. I cheersed him and drank heavily.


    West from Tokyo, eh? Straight to Nagasaki on the western edge? I guess it took a genius to figure it out, because I just had, and apparently none of the big brains in the XPCA. I kinda couldn''t blame them because they were all about mitigating danger and anticipating Exhuman attacks based on the assumption that, y''know, Exhumans were dangerous. Kind of in our mission statement.


    But I also kinda could blame them, and did so liberally. Dumbasses so concerned with treating Exhumans as alien, few of them ever considered what an ordinary human might be doing in that Exhuman''s shoes. At the end of the day, most Exhumans behaved the same as very scared, suddenly-empowered people. Almost like they were the same thing, go figure.


    So China it was. I had to wonder what Athan was going to find out there. Both in the sense of wondering what was out there to be found, and in what he was going out there for. I knew better than to think he was just running away -- Athan never ran away, as far as I could tell, and I doubted very much that''d change with his allies'' lives riding with him. Surrender, maybe, but whether he was fighting, pursuing or surrendering, it was always motivated by his sense of honor.


    And I had to laugh, and then realized I was doing so. Damn, genuinely enjoying myself in an utterly shit situation, why did that feel so familiar? Why did Athan always seem to have that effect on me, no matter how badly he fucked things up, I always had to give him credit for trying, because he was always that.


    I didn''t know what was was waiting for him in China, and strongly suspected that once there, once the XPCA fell off his back and he was no longer actively making waves for the XPCA to drown me under, I''d probably be put down before he could come back. There were always more patsies who could take the blame and take the fall...I hadn''t heard or seen a hint of the rest of the P-Force for too long, and had to assume they were in a similar situation to mine.


    Hey, maybe I''d even see them at the court-martial. That''d be nice.


    But however things turned out for them or for me, what I did know was how things were going to turn out for whoever or whatever was in China. The poor bastards wouldn''t know what hit them, if somehow they were standing in Athan''s little crusade. The guy had an inherent talent for wanton destruction like I''d never seen in another Exhuman. It was pretty great.


    "Don''t you think so?" I asked my friend, and he absolutely responded this time, by doing nothing. I gave him a warming smile and finished my drink before picking up the remote again.


    I was done sleuthing for the day. It was time to catch up on shitty reruns of pulpy sci-fi. Maybe I could finish out the season before they came for me. Or maybe not. That was a game in its own way.

 361. 2252, Present Day. South Yellow Sea. Athan.

    I was happy we were out of Japan for a few reasons, some blisteringly obvious, some less so. For once, nobody was trying to kill us, and Saga wasn''t being batshit insane anymore, just regular insane. She kept coming onto me, slinking out of her seat and pawing at my legs and crotch with a glimmer of want in her eyes. I think she was trying to apologize for being such an insufferable tool the last while, and didn''t quite know how.


    For the record, this was not one of the reasons I was happy we were gone. Even if, somehow, I were into Saga at the moment, I was still strapped in a VTOL with four other women watching my every move.


    But I was also glad to be rid of Japan for Japan''s sake. When we''d first landed, it had seemed an odd place, to be sure, full of different people, technology and culture. But I''d never found it bad. It was different. It was interesting. In as many ways as it was strange and inconvenient, it was also brilliant and intuitive. I wasn''t entirely sure I loved being there...especially given the circumstances, but I did love that it existed as it did, a crazy, slightly-so-different world to be experienced and to learn of.


    And then we''d shat all over it. Corpses and fire, empty streets and military vehicles, death and chaos, that''s what we brought to that land, and I was glad I could take it with me when I left. It hurt, more than it should have maybe, that they were right; I should never have been allowed to set foot in the country on the grounds of being Exhuman. No matter how noble I tried to see my own goals as, no matter how selfless, the fact was that where I went, I brought destruction. And that just sucked.


    It made me consider, strongly, what I''d be doing after Moon was free. Once I had all my ducks in a row, once our corner of the world was safe for us to exist in...should I just go back into exile and leave the damn world alone? If havoc like we''d unleashed on Japan was all I''d bring to my life, I''d rather pass.


    Which was stupid, I knew. Blending in was a better option. Things had only gone so south because I had to fight for Moon. Once she was out, I could be too.


    I watched the waves whip past under the VTOL. It''d been more than an hour of just water now, leaving behind a white ''V'' in the crystal blue water below. We were pretty low to avoid detection, and if I leaned out carefully and looked straight down, I could almost see our craft''s black reflection in the surface.


    On the other hand, I shouldn''t need to hide out. I didn''t cause damage or kill people for fun or because I could -- I did it because they forced me to. I was, by my intentions, a benign invader, and it was only from the insanely escalated response that Japan was being scarred. If they''d just left me alone, hell, if they''d just not been so easily bribed into Ichiro''s pocket in the first place, none of this would have happened.


    The sun sparkled off the wave crests in a way which dazzled me and made me blink more than I felt necessary. Of course, Ichiro only had that kind of influence because of the demand for his guns in the first place, which was again, only because of the danger of Exhumans to begin with. If Exhumans could be tolerated, we wouldn''t need guns, we wouldn''t need Ichiro, and Japan would have been spared. It all came back to that in the end, every time.


    Maybe instead of hiding out I should campaign for Exhuman rights or something, I mused. And then...nah. I was already far, far too hated for that to ever play out well. I''d just be provoking a fight again. Something had to change at some point, though.


    I gave up on it and unbuckled, moving over into a seat next to Lia, where she was on her mobile. "How goes?" I asked.


    "Grumpy," she replied, without looking up. "No ''net out here. How''s a girl supposed to get anything done?"


    "What''s the girl trying to do?"


    "I''m trying to pick up the pieces with Black Shark, but it''s not working out so hot. There''s only so long you can be dead before people move on without you. I''ve been trying to send out...statements, I guess you could call them...that she''s still alive, but you know what they say. Anyone who has to argue they''re alive really isn''t."


    "Don''t think I''ve heard that one. Anything I can do to help?"


    "Not unless you''re a satellite." She looked up from her mobile and sighed at me. "Which, no offense, but you really don''t look like one."


    "Oh I think I''m pretty spacey sometimes," I grinned at her.


    She rolled her eyes. "Yes. You''re positively out of this world."


    "You two had best knock that punning off or I will turn this vehicle around," Karu chimed in from the pilot''s seat.


    "She''s getting nervous that you''re stepping on her flygirl turf," Lia confided.


    "I am getting nervous that you will be making inane comments and drive me to murder-suicide."


    Lia thought for a long moment, probably pulling for another pun, so I decided to move on again before we got under Karu''s skin. She was, after all, the only one of us actually doing anything at the moment.


    I joined her in the front and sat down. She gave me a nod and I noticed that she was smiling broadly beneath her visor.


    Her threats had all been in jest, I knew. But I teased her anyway. "You happy to be out of Japan? Your short-lived career as an American idol is over?"


    "God, yes. It was as though they had never seen a woman before."


    "Well you have to admit, they''ve never seen a woman like you before. Honestly, I don''t think I have, either. You''re pretty unique."


    "Coming from your lips it sounds a compliment. But it feels far more disingenuine when reflected in the glassy stares of the slack-jawed masses. I take little joy in their reverence, compared to yours."


    "Well, I never said I was reverent," I said, slouching in the chair and examining the multitude of displays around us. I wondered why she still needed her visor with all these things, but I also had no fuckin'' clue how to pilot a VTOL so I wasn''t going to ask stupid questions.


    "I suppose you may think not. It matters little, however. So long as I know it."


    I realized she was still smiling, which was going on a little longer than I tended to expect out of her. After a few more quiet moments, I had to ask. "So what''s with the grin?"


    "Oh I am just...pleased with the situation," she replied.


    "And what''s that? Flying to China?"


    "No. Though I admit some allure in expanding my worldview consistently. But rather, with you, and your finally coming around."


    "Coming around?" I echoed dully, not sure and not liking where this was going.


    "To my way of thinking, as it were."


    "And in what way am I coming around to your way of thinking?"


    She went quiet for a moment before she replied, as though making sure of what she was going to say. "The previous occupants of this vessel, for example. You ordered them to be killed, and then did so without reservation"


    "I had plenty of reservations. We all argued about it for a few minutes, and I only had them ejected when it seemed like there wasn''t any other real choice."


    "I am aware. And while that is a bit more wishy-washy than I would have preferred, the fact of the matter is that you did, ultimately, decide that your goals were more critical than their lives. It is a point I have been attempting--"


    "No," I cut her off. "It was just...that¡­" I struggled for a moment, trying to come up with any reason that didn''t sound like our goals. "Moon''s life was worth more than their lives."


    "And yet here we are leaving, assured that her life is safe, for the moment."


    "Why are you being such a tool about this?" I asked. "Why do you have to throw my decisions in my face like this? I had innocent men killed, and that''s horrible. Do you think I want to go over how senseless that was?"


    She scoffed at me. "Do not pretend that you do not self-flagellate over concerns such as these without my prompting. I hold you up as a beacon of righteousness, deaths and all. Your actions are pure, and your motivations noble. It is through the scrutiny of them that we can see why."If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "It doesn''t feel very fucking noble to kill helpless people."


    "But you said yourself, it had to be done. It was a decision made of necessity, in order to attain your goal. You are a being of goals which are greater than the value of the lives of this earth."


    "What the hell does that even mean?"


    "It means, that while most men tread dust, concerned with issues such as the size of they paychecks, the hours in their deadlines, the ballots for their politicians, or the scores of their sports teams, you are one who considers instead how the world should function, should be designed, should operate, to be the best world it could be. A philosopher, in the vein of the creator himself."


    "Yeah...I''m not fucking God, and never will be."


    "You say that, but I have yet to see you lacking in his will. As I said, you dream of such potential, and then more, what truly sets you beyond in my eyes, you do it. It astounds me that a man such as you exists, and seems only natural that I would be at your side and service."


    "Dude. Karu."


    "Dude yourself, Ashton."


    "I''m just a guy. Like, an Exhuman, sure. But that literally makes me less of a person, not more. I''m a guy with no rights, on the run from the law, who can shoot lightning. And while, yeah, God can do that last one too, that''s about all we''ve got in common."


    Her smile broadened. "To confirm, you do not spend much of your time and energies deliberating the direction the world should take?"


    I couldn''t really answer that one, having just spent a few minutes pondering what the role of Exhumanity should be in the future, after rescuing Moon. But that was strictly coincidence.


    "And then, you do not adjust your personal course of action, directed solely by the aforementioned conclusion?"


    That, also, was just a coincidence. I had to decide what I was doing with myself at some point, right? And who wouldn''t look at the bigger picture when making plans like that?


    "I believe your lack of rebuttal seals my case," she concluded with confidence.


    "Even if those are true, that doesn''t make me...godly or anything. I''m still just a guy."


    "Just a guy. Jesus was ''just a guy''. Mohammad was ''just a guy''. Mortal men, born on this earth in and of human flesh. That does not prohibit God from acting through them. Are you aware of the buddha''s origins?"


    "No. Do you like, dabble in all religions?"


    "I do not. I do find it difficult to claim devotion while withholding ignorance, however. One who chooses worship solely because it is their only option has made no choice at all, and thus has no faith at all. I have faith, and so I educate myself. Would you like to hear of him?"


    "Literally anyone is better to talk about than me right now."


    She chuckled. "The original buddha, like you, was ''a guy'', by the name of Siddhartha Gautama. He was a philosopher who spent much of his life trying various things, listening to various wise men, internalizing their teachings and testing them against his experiences. Always, he found established traditions to be insufficient and contradictory to the beliefs supposedly holding his society together. Always, teachings which allegedly promoted peace and wholeness instead lead to conflict and division. Like you, he was dissatisfied with the state of the world as he saw it, and the paths offered to the people within it."


    She flipped a couple of switches on the controls and then turned to me halfway. "Eventually, he pioneered his own philosophy, the path of Buddhism with which we are now familiar, though it has changed much over the years with many more holy and wise men adding their lot to the sum. But what is and was and shall forever remain unquestionable was that the buddha sought to end suffering among humans. He preached and acted always towards that end, and in the end, though his wishes in it are violated constantly, he even asked not to be worshipped, as he believed it was his way and not himself which were transcendent."


    She smiled at me. "That was a pun. I hope you and Lia forgive me."


    "Nevarrr," Lia growled from her mobile, and Karu chuckled again. I didn''t get it, but whatever.


    "So your point is, I''m basically buddha?"


    "My point is, there are wise and holy men who are divine because others see them as such, regardless of how they see themselves. Though he wished not to be, Buddha is worshiped, and you will find millions of his followers praying at millions of his statues across the world. And that is because he, like Jesus, belongs to mankind as a gift from God, and mankind does with him what they will. Although I am certain Jesus would have preferred to be worshipped than crucified."


    I sighed at her as her image came clear. "So this is all just justification to see me as some kind of divine thing, while also ignoring my own words and opinions, and being able to do whatever the fuck you want with me, is that about it?"


    "Crass, but not inaccurate," she beamed. "And, as I pointed out, I believe you are slowly turning towards where I believe you should be. A divine creator, unfettered by human law and traditional order, who sculpts the Earth in his image because his vision with closed eyes is superior to what they see."


    "You''re weird as fuck," I informed her, and again she just chuckled, full-bodily. "But you''ve still got one thing wrong."


    "And what is that?" she asked, cocking her head at me.


    "Neither Buddha, nor Jesus, nor any other holy fellow in the scripture ever started over by destroying everything and killing everyone. No matter how many times you argue I''m just like them, the fact is, I''ve got more in common with the plagues of locusts and tides of red than I do with Moses. Even if you argue I''m necessary for positive change...which I don''t...that doesn''t make me a good guy."


    Her visor glittered at me as she grinned. "Was God a good guy, Ashton?"


    "Uh, by definition. But--"


    "And did he not drown the world found wanting to start anew?"


    "I''m not gonna drown the whole world, Karu."


    Her smile turned a little less cocky and a little more enigmatic, and the movement of her brow told me her eyebrows lifted beneath her visor at me. "Would you not though, I wonder?"


    "I sure as hell wouldn''t." I unbuckled and prepared to move to the back again, tired of this whole conversation.


    But she had to get her last barbs in as I left. "Not even if the whole world came after you and yours? After killing a hundred...a thousand...ten thousand, to save your sister...would you simply stop and let them have her? At what point do you look at yourself and say ''I have killed too many'' and submit?"


    "It''s not happening," I said, standing.


    "Only because it hasn''t. Not because it wouldn''t."


    As I crossed Lia, she shook her head at me and made a gesture for crazy, and a gesture at Karu. I nodded enthusiastically and went as far to the rear as I could.


    "How are we doing?" I asked Tem as I gently sat next to her.


    She nodded, saying nothing. But even from that, I could tell she was doing better. Whether she wanted to or not, she''d recovered a lot during her imprisonment. The last time I''d seen her, she was wheelchair-bound from malnutrition and beaten to ten types of hell from the fight in Vegas.


    Now she was sitting up again. Looking at things again. A normal girl again...in all the ways that word could possibly apply to her. I hadn''t gotten a chance to catch up with her since her rescue, and wanted to make sure I spent the time to do so.


    "You look better," I offered. She nodded again. "You not talking?"


    "I am talking," she said with a small shrug, her eyes on the floor.


    We sat in silence for another few minutes, but it felt like a heavy silence. I thought she was always on the cusp of saying something, but would never come to say it. I was too tired to rack my brain for every option, so I just didn''t. I asked.


    "Tem, please tell me what you''re thinking."


    To my surprise, she glared at me, the icy blue of her eye catching me off-guard. Almost as fast as they hit me, they fell to the floor again, and I had to wonder if I''d seen them at all. Something had changed in the girl.


    "I am...I¡­" she stammered out and then drifted back into silence. Just when I thought I''d lost her, she spoke up again. "I do not understand, s-s-sometimes."


    "What don''t you understand?"


    "You."


    "What about me? I think I''m pretty simple."


    Again the eyes flashed at me, and I felt like I''d said something wrong. I swallowed heavily.


    "Why did you rescue me, when it was Moon who needed s-saving?"


    I blinked at her. "We rescued you because we could."


    "You could have rescued Moon instead."


    "Um...we really couldn''t. She was further underground, there were too many enemies and--"


    She was shaking her head so violently her hair bobs were whipping her in the face. I stopped and blinked at her again, at this sudden, silent outburst, completely lost.


    "No!" she told me, and then bit her lip like she''d just uttered heresy. "I mean...what I mean...is that you can do anything. You would always s-save me, you always have. Unless you chose not to, which...which I would understand. But Moon does not deserve to not be rescued, and you did not, and I do not understand."


    I felt my heart breaking as she pouted through her flawed logic, tears forming in her eyes. I really hadn''t expected this. Tem had always been...dependable, I guess was the right word, but in the same way as a trained dog. So devoid of her own agenda that it was easy to give her direction, all because of how simple her worldview was.


    And here I was, inadvertently challenging that worldview. For the second time today, someone was calling me God, and this time, I didn''t have a rebuttal. Because, while Karu had an abundance of flawed reasons to put me up there, Tem was struggling to find one to keep me up, and that wasn''t anything I thought I could give her.


    "Tem," I said, giving her a soft squeeze which she didn''t even react to. "If you were captured, or Moon, or anyone here, you know I''d come for you. But that doesn''t mean I''d succeed. I''m just one guy, I can''t always take on the whole world, or even tiny parts of it. Someday...you''re going to have to live your own life, when mine falls apart too much for you to keep leaning on it."


    She bit her thumb and shook her head, wet streaks rolling down her cheeks, and I just sighed and wrapped her in my arms so she''d stop flailing as much. She seemed to calm down, seemed to be out of words, seemed content to just let me hold her.


    "But I don''t want you to do that," she said, her voice just a whimper.


    "I know. Me neither. But that''s how the world is sometimes."


    And after all the shit of Japan, all the warring we''d started and the deaths we''d caused, the arguing and philosophizing and all that bullshit, that''s how it all ended. Me holding Tem while she cried.


    It only lasted for another ten minutes or so, and Tem had drifted off in my arms, before Karu looked back and notified us that land was coming up, and we''d be arriving shortly.


    In China. Or whatever was left of it.

 362. 2252, Present Day. Coastal Glasslands. Athan.

    The VTOL hovered steady and silent, its open sides turned to face out over the endless expanse below, a glossy black even without the sun shades AEGIS had made all of us wear.


    I stared across it, uncomprehending.


    It was so vast. There was just so much of it...more empty land there than I''d ever seen. The sky was utterly cloudless and seemed a greyer, yellower shade of blue than I''d seen elsewhere -- a trick of the reflection, or just...a contrast against the unending obsidian beneath it. Or something.


    I didn''t know, and looking at it skeeved me out a bit. No matter where my eyes went, the glass seemed...fractal, in its emptiness. There was so much nothing here, that no matter how hard I focused, no matter where I looked, I could see smaller and smaller details of nothingness.


    How the glass subtly waved and curled on itself like a frozen tide. How the million pinpricks of reflected light made the black seem almost white in how it sparkled. How the horizon looked just as distant as the ground beneath us, in its confusing, glossy, opaqueness.


    It was more like a dream than reality. Such things as a black earth and grey sky, or a blackness that shines with light, or an endless expanse all one color...those were surreal visions, not something anyone should be able to fly and see, a mere few hours away from the bustling urban metropoli of Japan. It was like we''d stepped into another world, one in which life was the outsider, where our craft and all the people in it were utterly insignificant compared to the void, where time and space were meaningless, compared to the reaches of the black.


    A shiver ran down me, and looking around at the others crowding the doorway with me, I wasn''t alone. Lia looked a little pale and concerned. AEGIS'' eyes were darting every which way, her pupils going wild, dialating and focusing as she swept the expanse for signs of anything. Karu stood muted and resolute, her face a mystery behind the visor. And Tem just gaped, open-mouthed.


    But Saga seemed the worst of us all. She was shaking her head, muttering, her eyebrows working up and down as she struggled with some kind of comprehension she just couldn''t reach. I drew back and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, as though to say it''s okay.


    She pulled it from my reach and glared at me.


    "What?" I asked her. Though by all rights, she could have asked me the same, and I would have no good answer to word my unease.


    "It''s fucking gone," she spat, her bewildered eyebrows solidifying in fury. "All of it."


    "It is," Karu said, crossing her arms and turning from the view. "And it has been for a great many years."


    "No, you don''t understand," Saga continued. "That spot of land there, the peninsula, the islands. Do you know what that is?"


    Karu shrugged. "The glasslands."


    Saga wheeled on AEGIS. "Tell me you know. You can pull it up."


    AEGIS took half a step back, smiling apologetically. "Um...sorry Saga, really don''t know what you mean."


    Saga took a few furious breaths before jabbing her finger again at the black earth. "Shanghai!" she shouted. "Shanghai!"


    We all glanced at each other, completely lost. And slightly afraid. I felt Saga''s rage intensifying and tried to keep it out.


    "Shanghai!" she screamed again, stomping and jabbing her finger. "Do none of you fuckers know what Shanghai is?"


    "Is that a place?" AEGIS asked, her voice soothing. "Is that an important place, to you?"


    "It''s the largest city in the world, AEGIS. Millions, and million of people. My whole family was from Shanghai. A full, like, tenth of the world or something was in Shanghai. Or...Shanghai and Beijing. Or something like that. Millions of people!"


    "Had you ever been there?" AEGIS asked.


    "That doesn''t matter!" Saga screeched, her face going red and tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. "I can''t believe you fuckers."


    "Dude, this whole country was glass before any of us were born," Lia said.


    "Not...you fuckers, but you fuckers," she argued, wiping tears against her palms. "Who the fuck would do that? Why the fuck would anyone do this?" She turned back to the glasslands, stretching infinitely before us, and looking back at it now, I had to wonder...was my unease because the place was haunted with a million, million ghosts? All Saga''s family, and millions more, turned to glass and fire in a heartbeat?


    I swallowed hard and sat down, feeling safer with the harness buckled around me. I absolutely didn''t believe in ghosts, but if they were real, they''d be here. The creepiness of the place attested to that.


    "It''s...not like you didn''t know," Lia said. "You''ve heard, just like we all have, what happened in the Sino Wars. They shot first, and America shot harder."


    "But this is excessive. This is insane."


    "War is excessive and insane," Karu said. "War is the failure of people to see others as people, of objectifying power and placing ego over virtue."


    Saga stared at her. "Well I know I must be insane now, because I''m starting to agree with fly-girl when she''s preaching. I must have fallen on my head too many times because this is madness. The whole country can''t be like this. It was the largest country in the world, some of it''s still gotta be out there."


    "America is. The largest, I mean," AEGIS said, pushing up her glasses slightly. "Russia was at the time of the war, but with the United States absorbing Canada and--"


    "I don''t care," Saga said, and AEGIS cut short, looking hurt. "Don''t give me that. Don''t just stand there and casually spit out factoids when this--" she swept her arm backwards "--is all that''s left here. What the fuck is this?"


    "Saga, calm down," I ordered.


    She spun on me and bared teeth. "No. You calm down."


    I glared at her. "As everyone''s been saying, the country has been gone forever, Saga. I don''t know what you were expecting to find out here, but this one wasn''t just some big XPCA cover up. There was a war, and one side won, and one side lost. And this is what happens when you lose a nuclear war."


    She frothed at me, her mind bubbling like a boiling vat. "None of that gives anyone the right to just wipe out everyone! My family was innocent, Athan. They were--"


    "What," I interrupted, slapping her with her own mental energy. "Did. You. Expect to find?"


    The others were silently slipping away, Karu back at the helm and everyone else getting as far from the argument as they could. Saga just stood and simmered, though she didn''t have a response for me.


    "Look," I said. "You probably wouldn''t have liked anyone here anyway. You''re not fluent in Chinese, right?"


    "I know some!"


    "So it would have just been hell, like Tokyo was."


    She thrashed her head in disagreement, but I saw her tears building and lip trembling again. I sighed.


    "I don''t understand how you can feel it''s alright, funny even, to kill people by the boatload, and then take this so personally."


    "Shut up," she said, storming away from the door. "I hate you. Just go away."


    "Seriously, Saga? That''s like the most teenage thing--"


    "I said SHUT UP," she said, and I reeled. Karu hadn''t yet disengaged the autopilot and seemed to decide to leave it on for now.


    "No. What the fuck?" I asked. "You giggle about dismembering people. You talk about how funny it would be to traumatize children, you laugh at soldiers dying in horrible ways. And now...are you crying?"


    "I''m not! Fuck off, Athan."


    "Just what the hell is so different about all those Sinos? Is it just because it''s your family? Your people? What?"


    She glared at me, her breathing slow and shallow, barely visible under her oversized clothes. Her face twitched for a second, and then she let out a very long, very slow breath.


    "I don''t know, okay?" she said.


    "Okay," I frowned at her. "You don''t have any idea?"


    She went silent and stared at the blackness for another long moment before sitting on the metal floor and folding her spindly legs under her. "No. Yes? I don''t know. It''s sad. It''s fucked up." She snapped to staring at me again for a moment. "You know, I spend most of my life not killing people, you do realize that, yeah?"


    I nodded and she went back to gazing.


    "Even when I''m doing all the damage I can, it never feels like I''m doing anything. It''s just people...people I can see into, know what...what they''re like, you know? You get a feel for who and what they are, and they''re all disgusting. Humans are made for eating and fucking and being self-interested. They''re awful creatures, they''re all so focused on how every situation can benefit themselves, how they can avoid embarrassment, mitigate personal risks, who can help them, who can take the fall. Over, and over, and over again. It''s so gross."Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    She turned to me again, this time smiling. "It''s why I like you guys so much, honestly. You and Lia, you''re basically children, how you think." I started to argue but she continued. "You just do right because you think it''s right, and she just sees the world like a game. And then Tem''s practically a baby, and Karu is so broken she doesn''t even count as human. You''re all so fun, even if you are all people underneath."


    I blinked at her, unsure of where this all came from or where it was going...or why Saga had suddenly turned soft in front of everyone. But she wasn''t yelling anymore, so that had to be a good thing.


    "But this--" she gestured at the glasslands "this wasn''t personal. Nobody saw through the eyes of their victims here. Nobody cared what was in anyone''s head. Someone just pushed a bunch of buttons and boom, everyone died."


    I saw her wrapping it up, putting her facade back on again, the brief glimpse of a scared little girl who was too old and had too much power, disappearing again. "Besides, I take killing as an art form. Of course I''d take it personally that someone''s trying to mass-produce my work."


    "All right, Saga, I got it," I said, unbuckling so I could pull her back to her seat.


    "What?" she asked, and I felt my mind heavily probed.


    "It''s fine. Don''t worry about it. Karu, can you take us inland?"


    Saga glared at me another few long moments, but she didn''t want to continue the embarrassing exchange any more than I did.


    She''d really dropped her guard there, in her outrage, and was regretting it already. Doubly so because she knew I''d seen right through her at the end, but even worse, right in front of the other girls. For someone who''d just ranted about how selfish and petty humans were, Saga made a very convincing human herself.


    And that thought got me punched in the ribs by her, with a pouting frown. I had to laugh at how much it didn''t hurt, so she tried again, full-force, and I just caught the punch easily.


    "You''re such an ass," she informed me.


    "Look," I said, keeping my voice low. "I''m sorry about what happened to your country and your people. It was probably just a shitty situation where a few assholes on both sides ruined everything for everyone. That''s what I''ve learned through this whole stint through the XPCA and against them -- there''s always going to be bad people like Dragon, Ichiro, and Idris who rise to the top just to shit on everyone else''s heads."


    "Good metaphor," she nodded.


    "And I don''t know anything about the Sinos, but I do know that most of the ''evil'' Exhumans I''ve met were just misunderstood, or hurt, or dealing with an unfair world. And I''m sure it was the same for your people, too. I bet they were like us...like most Americans, probably. Just trying to get by, for the most part."


    "That was my family," she said. "They ran a restaurant. They weren''t hurting anyone."


    "I know," I told her, and she went silent, so I did too.


    It seemed an ill portent that Saga, possibly the most unflappable member of our team was already so flapped. But then again, we all were. None of us, I though, could shake the feeling that more than just blackness beneath us, there was a void, and it shunned us actively, so unlike any place or land we''d ever seen, ever heard of.


    So while our entry was uneasy, the next few hours were simply depressing. After we got far enough inland to lose sight of the coast, there was nothing here but flat, endless glossy nothingness. From horizon to horizon, it was almost like being back over the sea again.


    It was unnerving, I thought. The only thing that made me feel like I hadn''t just gone crazy were the small details I could sometimes see in the ground far below -- small swirls where the glass hadn''t finished settling before it cooled, or shimmering ripples where it''d been struck by wind while setting.


    Maybe the strangest thing of all was just how still everything was. I''d have expected after a hundred years for there to be sand blown in, or the glass all worn away, but it looked spotless, pristine. All gloss and no dirt, as far as we could see.


    I asked AEGIS to look and she thought for a few moments, conferred with Karu, and got back to me. "Where would the dirt come from?" she asked. "When the bombs went off, everything glassed over at once, and it''s so smooth there''s nowhere for any residual to settle really."


    "There''s gotta be some," Lia said, looking around with a frown. "Somewhere¡­"


    "Karu says there''s no wind or anything here either. No change in elevation, very consistent temperatures, high pressure zone...there''s no weather here pretty much year-round. Maybe some winds at dusk and dawn, but that''s it."


    "Not even weather can survive there," I commented, and AEGIS gave me a grim nod.


    "One of the many reasons nobody''s tried to resettle it. It''s just the world''s most inhospitable land at this point, even worse than Antarctica. No water, no shelter, no variation or resources...a bit after the war, once the radiation had time to die down a bit, there was a big movement to colonize. All this space up for grabs, right?"


    She pushed up her glasses, and I watched her yellow eyes as she recounted. "All ended in failure. As it turns out, space just for the benefit of space is practically worthless. There''s tons of land on Earth we already don''t or won''t utilize because there''s just nothing there worth living for. The deserts of northern Africa, much of the Middle East -- heck, the oceans themselves aren''t really hard to build on or under...there''s just no point to doing so. And now the glasslands are even worse than any of those."


    "At least in the desert there''s plants. And dirt," Lia commented.


    "And there''s aquaculture and kelp farms in the oceans. But at the end of the day, why live there when you can grow potatoes in a patch of rocky soil pretty much anywhere else?"


    "So it''s never coming back?" I asked, looking out again.


    "I mean...hard to say. People talk about overcrowding and overpopulation as serious issues, but they''re not the real problem. That''s just shorthand for resource scarcity. And here, there''s no resources."


    I blinked behind my sunglasses at the infinite expanse beneath. This far and not a fleck of dirt or a drop of water. It would be pretty impossible for a farmer to get started in there. You''d have to bring in your own dirt, at which point, like AEGIS said, why not just put that dirt anywhere else? On a raft, even. Then you could at least go fishing all day, instead of being driven slowly insane by how empty and quiet and huge this all was.


    But if nobody ever settled here, it''d remain empty, quiet, and huge forever. It just seemed bizarre to me that there could exist something so pristine, and yet so unwanted.


    "Then...what are we doing here?" Lia asked, bringing me back.


    "We''re looking for...whatever it is," AEGIS confirmed. "Whatever the source is that IkaCo is using."


    "And we have no idea where it is?"


    "We have...some idea." AEGIS crossed her arms. "We can tell by their fuel logs and the amount of supplies they brought on their caravans the maximum range. We can tell the general direction they headed by where they chose to go inland, since it''s not like there''s any real established ports, or better or worse glass beaches. But otherwise, yeah, we''re kinda guessing."


    "And what are the odds our guessing works out?" I asked. "We''ve already been flying this VTOL a long time, how much fuel do we have?"


    "Well...by my math," AEGIS said, giving her hair a little pull "we should be able to cover...about forty percent of the potential area we''re looking for."


    "Forty" Lia sputtered. "That''s a sixty percent chance we just...what, run out of fuel and crash?"


    "I mean...we''d put down the VTOL before we crashed it."


    "Down there?" I asked. "In the middle of nothing?"


    "Well...sorta. Look it''s not as bad a plan as it sounds. We''re not just flying in a straight line, we''re taking a curving loop that will...if it comes to it...dump us out at the end as close to Korea as we can get."


    "And then...we just...walk out of China?"


    "Well, ideally, we can make some kind of sled out of the VTOL and the glass is smooth enough...look, I appreciate the concern, but really, forty percent was as high as we were going to be able to get. It''s not like we could stop by the gas station and buy a hundred gallons of jet fuel, anyway."


    "We could have taken a fresh VTOL in Hiroshima," Karu intoned.


    "Which is exactly why I didn''t bring this up sooner. We already have decent odds of success and have already pushed the line on our criminality. This was the best compromise."


    "Except you did not include us in the details," Karu said. "There was no compromise, merely your position."


    "My position already accounted for all of yours," she huffed. "I knew Athan wouldn''t want to kill anyone else we didn''t have to, and I knew you all were just operating out of laziness. I picked the more noble path."


    "You mean, the path that was more up Athan''s butt," Lia grinned.


    Karu pushed a few buttons and then released the controls to come back and argue properly. "Robot, should the worst come to pass and we are forced to walk through this blighted land because of your weakness--"


    "I already said I''ll fashion a sled, and more than likely, I''ll be the one pulling it."


    "I wonder if we could merely pull you apart and drain your cells for a few more minutes of flight," Karu said bitterly.


    AEGIS crossed her arms. "Good luck with that. My cells are designed for long-term, low-demand power usage. They wouldn''t come close to powering a whole VTOL, not even for a minute."


    "Then we simply pull you apart for the pleasure of it," Karu sneered.


    "Karu don''t be a dick," I warned.


    "This bot has sent us all on a fool''s errand!" Karu argued, pointing an accusing finger. "A greater-than-not chance we all land in the glasslands? And as the pilot, when was I to be informed this was in the flightplan?"


    "Be that as it may, it''s already happened," I said. "Unless you want to turn back time and then argue with AEGIS, we''re stuck sticking to this plan."


    Karu glared at me. "You only act as such because she is sucking up to your ideals. The mission was more important than this when we took the first VTOL, and it would have been more important had we taken a second. Do not allow her excuses to drive you into weakness."


    "Just fly the damn thing," I said, shaking my head. She muttered at me and then headed for the back instead.


    "Sorry," AEGIS said in a low voice, once Karu was out of immediate earshot. "I didn''t mean to...start a fight."


    "You kinda did, though," I told her. "You knew this was going to make waves and so didn''t tell anyone. That''s kinda shitty."


    She gave me a half-smile. "Well, I don''t mind the waves, as long as you don''t. I just feel bad making decisions for you again. I''m trying to cut back, I promise."


    I was about to reply when Saga sat bolt-upright, and I wondered if she suddenly had insight into the conversation. She turned to me and I could see in her eyes...or mind?...that it was something far, far better.


    "There''s someone below us," she informed us. "A person, I think, way out here."


    I shouted for Karu but she was already emerging from the back with a water bottle in hand. She threw it to me, unopened, and sat back in the controls, flipping switches and pushing buttons, and I felt the VTOL swerve under us, air suddenly rushing sideways through the craft as we turned.


    "Where? Never mind, I see it," Karu said, and the craft began to descend.


    "It''s...crazy, it''s like¡­" Saga said, holding her head. "It''s...uh oh."


    "What''s uh oh?" I asked. "Saga? What''s uh-oh?"


    Karu also seemed to hesitate, and with her the whole ship. We were only a dozen feet off the ground now, the ground under us rippling with the air pressure of the VTOL''s fans.


    "It''s one of the toads," Saga said, frowning as she concentrated. "Or...like them. I dunno. He doesn''t seem hostile, but I can''t tell." She swore.


    "A toad, way out here?" I looked around at the others, seeing them all watching me, and I realized, everyone was waiting for me to make a decision. I shook my head. "Toad or not, they''ve gotta be living somehow. If they live out here, they might know something about the source, or if nothing else, we can see how they managed and be in a better place ourselves."


    I turned to Karu and nodded, and she acknowledged. "Putting her down, then."


    "And...what if they''re hostile?" Lia asked.


    "If they are...we''ve beaten toads before. We can do it again," I said.


    "Very reassuring. Let''s hope they don''t like, wreck the ship and strand us in the middle of nowhere," Saga muttered.


    "Yes, lets," I agreed, and slid the door open as the craft touched down.

 363. 2252, Present Day. Glasslands. Athan.

    The wheels of the cart rumbled and crunched, scored with white gashes from their trek over the merciless glass. Six of them, tall and cut from white stone, propping up the cart of jars, sealed with wax and cloth to protect their contents from the sun.


    Lia waved her hand in front of the driver''s eyes.


    "Lia," I hissed at her, but the driver didn''t seem to hear or see us, plodding on in the same even steps as ever, yoke in hand, cart trundling behind.


    "So this is...something," Saga muttered, scratching her head. For once she looked as puzzled as the rest of us, watching this...thing go.


    He just walked. One foot in front of the other, out in the middle of the glass. From his course, it looked as though he was headed in roughly the same direction as us. West, anyway. Though what he was doing here, what his cargo was for, how he''d made this far...well, basically everything about him was a mystery.


    "Calloused hands," Karu mentioned. I looked and saw they were thick with callouses, curved and worn on his palms as though the skin of his hands was shaped to the yoke. "Appropriate attire." His clothes were airy and light, but covered him completely from the sun, a deep hood and long sleeves that draped over the backs of his hands. "He has a canteen, and I assume food."


    "Is he just...deaf and blind then?" Lia asked, waving again.


    "Most who are thus are still not fully deaf nor blind," Karu said. "I suspect that there are few on this Earth who would be truly ignorant of a group of strangers arriving and surrounding him. Much less to land a VTOL at his feet. The shade we cast should be unexpected, if nothing else."


    "I''m gonna touch him," Lia said.


    "Don''t--" I said, but she''d already brushed his arm and then skipped away.


    He paced on, saying nothing, responding in no way at all. It was creepy. It reminded me of the void of this place, like this man was that emptiness made manifest.


    "Still nothing?" I asked Saga, who was barely keeping up with us.


    She shook her head. "He''s just like the other toads. His mind doesn''t seem human, about as much as his actions, I guess. It''s...a lot less threatening when they''re not trying to kill me. But still frustrating."


    "And you?" I asked AEGIS. She was walking there, studying all of us and chewing her lip like a champ, her analysis face on maximum.


    "No idea," she said, stepping forward another couple paces to keep examining around me. "My first thought...was zombies, actually. Though that''s fiction obviously but...do you remember years ago, when I was still stuck in the box, when Saga was in the mines, one night, she took Wynn and Tate..."


    "Yeah," I said, suddenly seeing it too. "She compelled them to hack at her door when she was sleeping."


    "They were good slaves," Saga nodded. I just shook my head at her.


    "This guy reminds me of them, how they move. You think maybe...he''s had a code-X in his head? Someone reduced him to just a workhorse, out in this desert by himself?"


    I saw Lia shudder, and Karu shifted uneasily. It was plausible, but nobody here wanted to face the possibility of facing down a code-X at the end of all of this. But now faced with this guy, I wasn''t sure what other possibility there could be.


    "What''s he hauling?" AEGIS asked. Lia started to move to climb in the back and I held her.


    "What? You aren''t curious? If you just want to let him soldier on, why are we even worrying about this?"


    "Remember what happened when we tried to stop Wynn and Tate from their compel?" I asked AEGIS.


    She frowned. "They got violent."


    "It is merely salt water anyway," Karu informed us, tapping her visor. "From the sea, I imagine. Though why one would haul salt water for unspeakable miles is beyond me."


    "It''s too much of a coincidence, though," AEGIS said. "To find this guy out here, headed towards nothing, when we''re also looking for...nothing." Her head swayed like a turkey as she narrowed her eyes in the direction he was headed. "I don''t see anything...but given how far this guy''s already gone, I''m not sure that means anything."


    "You would have us follow his course?" Karu asked.


    "I would," I said. "I agree, he''s gotta be headed somewhere. And he doesn''t seem to have any reason to take an indirect path. I mean...it''s not like there''s anything for him to go around out here. Take down his bearing and we''ll head that way."


    "It''ll throw our flightplan off," AEGIS said, as she manhandled a few strands of her hair. "I...don''t know what that does to our odds without reevaluating the current fuel levels, but given that we were already on an optimal path to cover prospective areas, our odds can only go down."


    "Unless he leads us right to it," I said.


    "Yes. Unless that, of course. Which, I dunno...I guess it''s plausible. But that''s all of our eggs in one basket then. If it doesn''t work out--"


    "It''ll work," said an unexpected voice, and we all turned to look back at Saga, crossing her arms as she trailed in our wake. "He''s a toad, same as we saw working for Ichiro. The only place we''ve seen them is working for Ichiro."


    "And Dragon. You couldn''t see his mind either."


    "Or Blackett," Karu shrugged.


    "Blackett was different, it was like he wasn''t there at all. And none of anyone''s powers could touch him, not mine, not Athan''s not anyone''s. Toad''s are different, they''ve got a connection with Ichiro, and so this guy is too. The only connection Ichiro''s got out here is the source, so this bugger''s headed right towards it."


    We all digested it for a moment as we kept up pace with the sled.


    "Makes sense to me," Lia volunteered.


    "Me too," AEGIS said, still fretting. "I just don''t like it."


    "Either way, we''ve got his position and course logged, right?" I asked. "We don''t have to walk out here on the hard glass in the hot sun anymore. If we decide we need him, we''ll be able to find him. Not like there''s anywhere to hide."


    We made our way back to the ship, which was surprisingly far away. Tem greeted us with a little wave as Karu booted up the turbofans and flipped a great many switches before the vehicle lurched off under us.


    "New course charted," AEGIS said with obvious trepidation. "All comes down to how long we want to head this way of course but...we''re talking a reduction from forty percent of the viable sites down to twelve percent, or less."


    "Why that little? Can''t we just...zip over that way a bit?" Lia asked.


    "We could but, I was working on the assumption that what we''re looking for is a man-made structure and...there''s math about the horizon and curvature of the Earth, how the air temperature changes the index of refraction--"


    "So basically, we have to go pretty far that way to see something we can''t already see from here."


    "Not...exactly...but...to cover an optimal amount of territory, yeah."


    "Then let''s do it," I said.


    AEGIS sighed. "Yes, let''s. Am I still going to be held accountable if we run out of fuel now that we''re deviating from my chosen plan?"


    "Of course," Saga said. "Because otherwise I''m responsible for my own actions, and I don''t like that."


    "Phooey," AEGIS said, crossing her arms and legs with indignation.


    The fact that every minute we were headed this way was another minute off-course weighed heavily on all of us, and I caught us each looking out the front of the craft with far more frequency than anyone had been doing before. Nobody seemed to want to talk or be otherwise distracted, since there was now a measured cost to any lack of attention. Nobody wanted to trek  on foot through the dozens of miles we''d already passed, and there was a focused anticipation in the air.


    Even after another hour, and the sun beginning to creep into the top edge of the windows, nonexistent shadows from nonexistent landmarks darkening the already-black glass, nobody spoke. Except for the sun in the sky, it felt like I could have just blinked and there''d have been no difference between then and now, and the dreadful sameness of the place was really getting to me. More than once I thought about how completely horrid it would be to walk the glasslands, feeling like every mile was the same as the one before and the one after, and wondered how fast that might make one insane.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    You know, just fun, reassuring thoughts, as the fuel gauge dipped ever lower and the VTOL soared towards more inky void.


    "We are at a critical juncture," Karu announced, finally.


    "We''re there?" Lia bubbled, unbuckling her harness to go up front to see.


    "No, silly child. We are nearly two-thirds out of fuel. Judging our fuel consumption until now, between Tokyo to Hiroshima, and from there to here, we are approaching the point of no return. Should we be content to aim for Korea as a respite, we have a few hundred more miles to our name, five-hundred or so. However, once we cross those thresholds, we will no longer have sufficient fuel to return. This is not a decision to be made lightly."


    "I can draw up some flight paths and see just how far we can push it," AEGIS mumbled, already swiping and tapping in the air as she pulled down her work. "It''s all differential equations as fuel efficiency increases with less in the tanks."


    "Oh boy, differential equations," said Lia flatly. "My favorite."


    "AEGIS'' favorite, probably," I shrugged.


    "Be that as it may, do I have a consensus on us choosing to return or not?"


    "Seems pointless to me to choose to return when we''re already here. Repeating the last couple of days just so we can search for another couple hours is...that''s a terrible plan," I said.


    "So is crashing in the desert, though," Lia pondered.


    "We won''t," Saga said with confidence. "We''ll happen on that guy''s destination, I know it."


    "How is it that you are so confident without your powers? I thought you a mewling whelp without them?"


    "I happen to function just fine with my own brain, thank you," Saga blew a raspberry at Karu. "Pretty big talk coming from a girl who''s codependent on a machine wrapped around her head, by the way."


    "AEGIS what do you think?" I asked.


    "...still running the...the um...numbers," she said, her hands and eyes nearly a blur.


    "Um, Lia then?" I turned to her.


    She scratched her head and thought for a second. "Dunno. Kinda hard to...make a decision which might affect everyone, you know? Like, I was pretty convinced by Saga''s line of reasoning, but it''s hard to say I was so so convinced that I''d chuck us in the desert over it. Even if she is right, it''s still possible that we won''t reach that place on this tank, even."


    "I kinda doubt that guy is going to walk more than five-hundred more miles," I scoffed.


    She shrugged. "Like you said, he''s basically a zombie. He might walk another thousand without caring that he''s starving and the skin on his feet is all gone."


    "Um, Tem? Any ideas?"


    She shook her head. "I agree with Athan, I think."


    "Thanks," I said, turning back to everyone else more useful.


    Lia had a point about it being hard to make decisions with everyone else hanging in the balance, and I actually resented her pointing that out a little. Because that was sometimes what I felt like I was expected to do pretty much every day around here. Granted, in general, the girls were also pretty good about not giving me shit when things invariably went belly-up. But mostly that was because they went so catastrophically wrong that nobody had time to blame or gloat, and when we finally got through it, we were all hurt or exhausted enough not to bring it up again.


    Which, thinking about it, didn''t exactly fill me with confidence in my own decision-making skills here. I thought about how certain and decisive I''d been in choosing to leave Moon behind -- it was absolutely the right call, I''d thought at the time. A new Athan with the new and unique ability to back the fuck off every once in a while when it was appropriate to learn from my mistakes.


    But if I hadn''t made that call, we''d never be out here now, forcing a new call to be made. Granted, one of the reasons why we might not be making this decision might be because we were all dead, but it also kinda felt like at this level, that was a pretty probable outcome from any decision.


    I didn''t make an immediate decision, and nobody else did either. After a minute, AEGIS had numbers for us which I don''t think reassured anyone but her. Nobody understood them but her, anyway, until she boiled it down to the barest possible explanation.


    "Look at this point I''m not even talking about the linear algebra anymore," she sighed. "This is just simple calculus at this point."


    "...yeah, I kinda dropped out of senior year in high school. And Lia''s a freshman. Not a lot of calculus here."


    "Math blows," Saga added, a statement to which Lia vehemently agreed.


    "Back me up here, please," AEGIS turned to our pilot, who shrugged.


    "My father always told me I would not have a calculator with me at the podium, and so I learned the material the hard way. However, the last ten or so years, I have had a calculator right before my eyes, and so the knowledge has atrophied. I am afraid you are on your own for love of math, robot."


    AEGIS sighed heavily. "Okay well. The simple fact is, we need to make a decision in the next half-hour basically. That''s our point of no return, and that''s for Korea, the nearest inhabited place outside the glasslands."


    "Was that so hard?" Lia asked.


    AEGIS fixed her with a glare. "Yes. More than you can imagine. Would you like to volunteer an opinion on our situation other than sass?"


    "I would," Saga said, raising her hand from her back on the floor. "Oh wait other than sass."


    "You are useless," AEGIS commented. "Athan, I think this is why it always lands on you."


    I turned and watched the glasslands streak past under us, insofar as the same frozen, glossy scene could streak.


    I really, really didn''t want to get stuck down there. Karu did have a point that we could always just...stir up more trouble and jack another bird if we needed to. But that felt criminal, pointlessly criminal. The plan to steal a VTOL had come up in a time when we were under constant fire, barely able to sleep or rest. Now we were safe for the moment...as many moments as we needed, really, so long as we turned off the engines first. It seemed wrong to be planning more violence and theft given the circumstances.


    So I didn''t want that to be an option. And given that, there was little reason to be turning around to Korea; nothing waited for us there except returning to the mission by means I didn''t like, or failing it, which was completely unacceptable.


    Despite my hesitation, it seemed to me that our path was clear. Even if, taking another long look outside, I really, really didn''t wanna. But it was the right choice.


    "We continue," I said. "We keep on this path until the bird is out of gas."


    "You''re sure?" AEGIS asked. "If we deviate now, we can still cover eight percent more of the zone."


    "No. We stay on the path. Even if we touch down and have to continue on foot, you guys can go whichever way you want, I''m gonna continue forward."


    "Um, you''d die," AEGIS pointed out politely. "We have the supplies to get back. We do not have the supplies for you to walk all the way across the glasslands, even if we gave you all of them."


    "Saga''s right, though. There''s something out there, I believe it."


    The others looked at each other for a few moments before AEGIS continued, now silently appointed the chair of the talk-Athan-down committee.


    "Athan, if we head out, we can always come back. The glasslands aren''t going anywhere."


    "I know," I said.


    "Then...why would you volunteer for something so stupid?"


    "Because it''s what I believe. It''s the best option."


    "Best...by the metric of getting you the most killed?"


    I shook my head. "No, it''s just¡­" I went silent for a moment as I tried to put into words the ball of self-hate that I''d been feeling and carrying every time I thought of Japan and what we did to the place. How peaceful and populous it''d once been, and then all aflame and ruined, by one stupid handful of people. Was doing that to another city, another country really our plan B? Was that the kind of people we were?


    "I guess I''m just having doubts how critical the mission is," I said.


    She narrowed her eyes at me in bewilderment. "So you''re going to kill yourself over it? I''m so lost."


    "No! I mean, I''m not planning a suicide or anything. I just...don''t want to plan any more murders. I don''t know. Things have just gone so bad for us lately."


    "How''s that? I think things have actually gone decently well, since San Francisco. We all got reunited, we gave the XPCA the slip, twice. Nobody''s been horribly maimed or disfigured. We even picked up Tem."


    "Yeah," I agreed. "You''re right. Things are okay from our side."


    "Then who''s...oh."


    "Yeah."


    "Oh Athan," she said, scooching over towards my seat and giving me a very warm, very soft hug. "You''re such a marshmallow."


    "I mean, I killed like a hundred people over a couple days. That''s not exactly soft of me. And neither is having regrets about it."


    "I suppose," she said. "I just see it as what needs to be done."


    "Did we hit a tree?" Saga asked. "Because it just reeks of sap in here."


    "Oh shut up," AEGIS said, kicking her. "Be glad that Athan has more morals than you. Be glad that everyone does, because otherwise the world would be very barren and very boring for you." She turned back to me. "But that doesn''t mean you have to plan to be stupid. If the VTOL goes down, promise me we''ll head to Korea and reconvene. There''s always another plan, you know. This time, maybe we can do things a little stealthier. Maybe avoid a lot of that bloodshed. Wouldn''t that be nice?"


    "I guess." She hugged me tighter, and I had to admit, I felt like a marshmallow. I could feel the estimation of my manliness and worth dropping in everyone''s eyes at my stupid decisions.


    I sighed. They could hate me or think me weak if they wanted. It wasn''t going to change my opinion. In fact, I realized, brightening up a bit, it was really all their fault anyway. If I was going to be appointed for all this decision-making, nobody could complain when I sent us all down my own stupid routes. Everyone here had a choice, and they''d all chosen to listen to me.


    The absolute idiots. I grinned.


    "Well you seem better already," AEGIS smiled back.


    "Yeah. Just had a happy thought."


    "Good. It''s all gonna be alright, you see?"


    I nodded and her hug relented, leaving most of my body suddenly feeling very cold. "We''d just best hope we find that source before the fuel runs out, or this is going to be a very sad trip."


    "Yeah," she agreed thoughtfully. "We''d really best hope."


    "It''ll be fine," Saga reassured us. Which given how much math and data she''d done, how much analysis she favored in general, and her extremely different definition of ''fine'' from the rest of us, wasn''t really reassuring at all.


    But it was what we had, so it''d be enough. At least for now.


    Until the fuel ran out.

 364. 2252, Present Day. Private farmstead, TX. Liev.

    It was the third time they''d come calling, and as I saw it, that was three too many. The first time, I''d told them in no uncertain terms to fuck themselves and get off my land. I''d been less civil after that. The second time I''d taken a warning shot over their heads with an old revolver I owned.


    Not because I needed or wanted a revolver, but everyone else in Texas had a gun, and I was enough of an outsider already to ignore etiquette.


    But the second time had done it and now here he was back for a third. Had a friend and a lawman this time with him, and I knew that couldn''t be good news. Just the sight of him made my blood boil, and my hands twitched with wanting to cut him into pieces on the spot.


    His friend spoke first, thin man hiding behind a suit and glasses.


    "You are hereby being served with summons related to a suit being filed against you by my client, Mister Rothersford. These papers contain all details pursuant to the suit and the requisite files for the court."


    I glared at the man behind the lawyer, the three-time intruder, Mister Rothersford. "And on what grounds do you have to sue me, you rat?" I barked at him.


    "Mister Rothersford suffered traumatic emotional damage after making a good-faith effort to communicate with you on an arrangement of mutual benefit, being afraid for his life when you assaulted him with deadly force."


    "You scum bastard," I screamed, my temper flushing my face even before I could take steps towards him. "I told you to get the fuck off my property or I''d kill you! Here you are back again, with a goddamn lawyer? I''ll kill you this time, I''ll do it!"


    The cop was up in an instant, his firearm at the ready. I looked down at him and the black hole of the pistol in his hands. "Not another step closer!" he shouted.


    Outrage joined my fury at the officer''s intercession. I wasn''t the one out of line here, this man had come to my house, uninvited, and been told in no uncertain terms to piss off. I fired at him, but he was warned, he trespassed, more times than any man should have to put up with. And now he came to trespass again. And this time, the law would side with him?


    "Get the hell off my land!" I screamed at all three of them. "Get the hell off, don''t you ever come back. I''ll shoot you, I''ll shoot all three of you. I don''t care if you''re a lawyer or a lawman. And if I ever see you again, Richard--" I pointed at Mister Rothersford "--you best hope you see me first."


    "Thank you very much. It''s been very enlightening," said the lawyer as he scrawled some notes. "I will leave your papers here." He dropped the sheaf of papers in the dirt, and then very slowly, each of them returned to the car, casually as they could without turning their backs to me.


    And then, kicking up a plume of dust like Satan''s own cigar, they drove off, leaving my head pounding and my heart racing. I stood there for a long time, watching them go.


    When I went to where they''d stood, it wasn''t for the papers. I scrabbled in the dirt for a moment and came up sweating and swearing. The ground all around them was fractured just under the dust, where I''d almost lost control and my powers had scored it open. Tendrils of ice and ash radiated in geometric lines all around, all pointed towards where they''d been.


    They hadn''t seen. I was safe. I let out a deep breath and felt my blood boiling.


    Not that they deserved to live. I thought about it a few minutes longer, feeling a swelling inside me as I envisioned all the ways they could die. I should have done it, should have ended them once and for all. Nobody would have missed a crooked cop, a lawyer, or a land speculator. They were all just filthy parasites, worse than me by a mile.


    I bent down again and picked up the papers, shaking them off from where the car had buried them in dust. As I scanned over the words and then reread them, I felt a scream rising in my throat.


    The papers surged into flames in my hand for a moment before I could put them out. Two-hundred and fifty thousand credits? That slick prick was suing me for two-hundred and fifty thousand credits?


    Fuck him, I only had a few thousand to my name and he knew it. He was trying to wring blood from a stone here...a whole fuckload of stones really, given the state of my fields. The bull-piss moron couldn''t get a damn thing from me, but to think that he considered being a little scared by gunfire worth two-hundred and fifty thousand.


    I should have killed him, I thought. I wonder how much that would have cost me. Cost me two-hundred and fifty thousand just to miss. What kind of goddamn emotional trauma could that have been? Pissed his fanciest underpants and handing me the dry-cleaning bill?


    His smug face kept coming up in my mind, and I saw frost in my breath and realized I was in trouble. I went indoors and closed the blinds, double-checked the lock, and once I made sure I was alone, kicked aside the kitchen rug and threw open the hatch I''d cut crudely.


    I dropped into a hole. There was no other word for it. I''d made it myself with my powers, and it was cramped and dark. And quiet, and alone. It smelled of earth and confinement.


    Here, I was alone with the quiet.


    Here, I could step away from the world above and all the bullshit in it.


    Richard Rothersford''s face swam in my vision as my mind blurred with hate. I saw him, in my mind''s eye, in the moment he''d stepped out of the car. He was smirking at me, in the most condescending, shit-eating way possible. He knew what he was about to hand over, his fucking consignment of his dick up my ass. So fucking cocky and self-assured.


    Here, I couldn''t be seen.


    The ground around me fractured in geometric patterns, let loose by rage. Fires scoured the walls in growing circles. Trails of frost and obsidian daggers criss-crossed through the air. Reality shuddered as I leaned on it, tore into it. Empty spaces, filled with things beyond my understanding, things that existed in the places between nothing. Flashes of light, so bright, so scalding that they burned my shadow into the dust, exploding all around me.


    And then nothing. Quiet. The peace of the Earth. Alone and quiet, though I felt neither.


    I was breathing raggedly. Anger still moved my fingertips beyond my control, but I wasn''t at my breaking point anymore. I''d let it vent for now.


    But the thought of his smug fucking face came back into my mind and I roared as my powers exploded outward again.


    He deserved to die. He deserved to die. I was wrong. I was right. He was a parasite. Feeding off me and others. He deserved to die. Next time, I''d kill him, just like this. Just like that. A million ways to do it, all so easy. He deserved it.


    It took me hours to climb out of the hole, somehow feeling more energetic than when I''d entered. I was too worked up, wouldn''t be able to sleep. I might spend all night in the hole if I had to. But it was late, and I was hungry. I threw open the back door, forgetting it was locked and tearing a piece of wood straight out of the frame.


    Not that it fucking mattered. It wouldn''t be my house soon, if that parasite had his way. Sue me for more than I''m worth, take my land, build his fancy whatever bullshit. The goddamn parasite. He''d been leaning hard on everyone who lived out here. Moral-less, worthless, scum of a man.


    I flew out the door, my feet lifted into the air, and my body shooting out like an arrow. It took me mere seconds to find an animal -- a rabbit, standing in a field under the velvet of dusk -- and an instant to kill it. With fire, another few moments to cook it from within.


    The flesh was gamey and tough under my teeth, but it was food and I was hungry. I was a predator, and it was a prey. It didn''t have to taste good, it was serving its purpose just by existing, by being eaten.


    Unlike a parasite, which had no purpose.


    I pounded down the better half of the beast until I was satisfied I''d gotten the best parts of it and then flew off again.


    I came back late that night and could not stop my mind or heart from racing. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought of all the ways I''d do it, all the ways he deserved to die. I wanted to do it now, to fly off to wherever his home was, maybe his family was there, a bunch of whelps raised up on filthy money--You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    I stopped, battling my thoughts through the veil of rage. I wouldn''t kill his family. Even if it would hurt him, even if it made him beg and cry, that was sick. All of these fantasies were sick, and they were making me act out. They would make me get caught, and then...and then I''d have to go into hiding again, or worse.


    I spent the rest of the night wrestling with myself mentally. I was losing it, I knew. All I wanted was to be left alone. Rothersford was kicking on a beehive he couldn''t comprehend. One even I couldn''t comprehend sometimes.


    I spent a lot of nights wrestling with myself like that. Every day was a battle. But every day I kept myself reeled in, kept myself safe and hidden, that was a victory. And I won more days than I lost.


    But I knew, no matter how I pretended, it wouldn''t last. Because coming up, and soon, was a court date. And I knew I''d see him again, and the next time I did, I''d have to decide if I was a liar or not; If I''d keep my word about killing him.


    A few days later I had my answer: I didn''t. Smug as he looked in that suit, I told myself this was a court of law, and justice would side with me.


    He was right there, though. Almost within arm''s reach. Sitting with his lawyer between us like a shield. If I wanted, that wouldn''t protect him, and it felt like he was challenging me just by trying. I wanted so badly to prove him wrong.


    The judge looked up at me and spoke. "Mr. Liev Bareletti, do you have council to represent you?"


    "I wasn''t told I needed one."


    She shook her head and went back to reading paperwork. I found myself thinking what an enormous bitch without having any real reason to. But then again, I had to wonder how she enjoyed this position of power. I bet she made a lot of money just sitting up there, telling people how they were wrong all day. She of all people benefited most from there being scumbags like Richard sniffing around -- without dips like him, she''d be out of the job. Another kind of parasite.


    "Mr. Bareletti, I have to tell you, speaking as someone who''s seen a lot of cases, yours doesn''t look very good. You probably want to find legal council, but even so, there''s full transcripts here of you threatening not only the plaintiff, but also the officer of the law that had accompanied him. Your actions so far have seemed rash and unprepared, and I think it''s only fair for you to know that your best option right now is probably to settle with Mr. Rothersford out of court."


    I was on my feet and she stared at me. "Sit down," she said.


    "That''s bullshit," I yelled at her. "This piece of shit trespassed on my property three times--"


    "Control yourself--"


    "And I told him, every time--"


    "Mister Bareletti, this is not the time to make your arguments. I was merely offering my counsel as having seen a lot of cases. You will be heard at your trial and will be given a chance to speak and defend--"


    "It''s BULLSHIT."


    "Mister Bareletti, one more outburst and I will place you in contempt of court. Control yourself."


    "No, you control yourself," I spat, kicking over the desk in front of me. "What, you think because you''ve presided over a hundred cases where assholes like him just get to steamroll victims like me, that''s how it is? Tell me I''ve lost before I even spoken? Maybe that''s just how it is in your courtroom because you''re a shit judge."


    "Mister Bareletti, you are now in contempt of court. Bailiff--"


    "Fuck you. Go contempt yourself, bitch." She was pounding her gavel and shouting at me, but I couldn''t hear it anymore over the pounding in my ears.


    The bailiff approached me, hand on his holster, cuffs in his other. Before he could reach me, two others were on me from the sides, holding my arms down to put the cuffs on.


    I snapped my arms right back up, throwing both off me effortlessly. Everyone was muttering now, everything was going to shit. I was blowing it, I knew. I had to stop now or everything would be ruined forever. I had to accept those cuffs, accept that bitch, accept that my house and my fucking tomato plants were done for. I had to take it, or I''d be put away. Or run away. Or worse.


    And then I did the stupidest damn thing and looked over at Richard.


    He was grinning as he watched. He was getting off on me fighting off the bailiffs. He thought, I was throwing away my chances and the trial would be handed over to him and he''d won.


    His eyes gleamed with avarice, and my fuse...what little I had, all went up in ash in that single glance.


    Without even thinking about it, I pulled him to me, drinking in, savoring, the growing confusion and fear on his face as his body moved despite himself. His arms and legs jerked in the air as he drifted up and over the bailiffs and his lawyer, who I pinned to the ground like insects. He screamed.


    The judge shrieked, banging her gavel as though by instinct. People were running out of the room. People were running into the room. I heard gunfire, but loud as it was, it seemed outside my concern. This was a minute for just me, and Dick.


    I ripped off one of his arms with a thought, and could see his pulse racing with every squirt of blood that gushed from him. And then I ripped the gavel from the judge''s hand and recombined it into a wooden lance, which I drove right through his scrotum.


    He screeched as it impaled him, and twice as loud as it burst into flames inside.


    "You worthless parasite," I told him. "You made a career of bullying and hurting others, never even considering their pain or their anger. I thought the system would protect me, but I was wrong. I don''t need it''s protection. You do. You''ve wormed your way in and hollowed it out and use justice like a cheap whore so you can keep on sucking the life out of others."


    He twisted in my grasp, finally looking as pathetic as I always saw him. "I will kill your family," I decided. "There is nothing about you which deserves to live."


    "P-please--" he groaned, and I knew he wasn''t begging for their lives. He was too pathetic a creature to care about anything but himself.


    I walled up his throat so his breathing came through the tiniest of tubes, gasping for every breath, his chest seeming to collapse into his lungs as they struggled to find air to fill them. I turned his stomach to ice, and then twirled it once or twice within him, twisting his guts with knots that made him bulge and waste his precious breath to scream. I pulled an eye from his head and distorted it so that he could see himself suffer through vision torn and skewed.


    And once he was done for, hanging there with all of his entrails out, suffering through his long, last, few minutes of life, I turned to his lawyer. I turned to the judge. I turned to the bailiffs who thought they could subdue me. And then the people who thought they could get away. The shell of justice, writhing with parasites.


    And I''d never felt so happy. I wondered if, perhaps, this was the first time justice was ever being served in this building. I wondered if the would would celebrate, as the parasites were flayed and shredded. I wondered if everyone could just see...see a world where nobody could get away with bullshit...where there was always someone to rise up and put the abusers back in their place...what kind of world would that be?


    But mostly, I just felt happy. I''d ignored my powers for so long, been angry for so long, it felt like every day, from the moment I woke to the hours I couldn''t sleep, I was strangling myself slowly. And to let them go, to see those eyes on me, filled with horror and fear. To hear nothing but the sounds I could create, silent of the prattle and lies of others. To feel so many lives in the palm of my hand, and weigh them, to be the justice that this world needed to weed out the evil.


    I was flushed. I was breathless. I felt a fire within me that burned better and hotter than the anger which I''d battled so long. The anger was there, but I realized it was just kindling compared to how brightly now I blazed. I was aflame with power, with glory.


    With justice.


    There were sirens outside now, and the sound of them pulled me back down to reality. I thought back to last time I''d fled, four years ago. When people I''d known and trusted had called the XPCA to turn me in. They had said they wouldn''t, they had said whatever lies they thought of, anything, I believed, to get rid of me.


    Well it had worked. I''d ran. I''d fired myself into the air and kept on moving until I came to a place where nobody knew who I was. I''d worked hard, I''d worked honest, and then liars and parasites had shown up again to ruin it all for me one more time.


    I tore a hole in the world and put Richard in it, the way slamming shut with a tremor which shuddered reality. I didn''t know what was on the other side, and I didn''t care. He would die, in a horrible way of the universe''s own choice. The universe itself could decide his judgement, decide how long and how slow his suffering should be. Perhaps he would take years to die, as would be only fitting.


    I ripped more holes in the air and put more people inside. Some might live, some might die. The universe would sort them out. It was like handing them over to Saint Peter early. But I doubted any in this room deserved better than death.


    And then I was gone as well. Not through the holes...I wasn''t sure if even I would survive that. But simply by launching myself through the ceiling, up into the blue sky of a beautiful day.


    Down far below me, I saw the black of the XPCA massing. Already half a dozen vans and a couple of choppers. Even if they were like ants, the last time we''d clashed, I''d felt their sting. My mind winced at remembering before, no matter how much stronger I was now. I''d been too confident last time we''d met, and I''d paid for it. Never again would I let them catch me.


    Besides, my head was much clearer now. Up here in the wispy heavens, nothing around me but brilliant blue and birdsong, the city looking like a scar on the land more than being all of it, my need for vengeance was met for the moment. It was quiet and clear up here. Peaceful. Light and breezy.


    I spent only a minute soaking in the sun and the peace before I left. They would be coming if I stayed, and I did not want to taint my first reckoning with a war. Justice had been served today, and it was through action, not through battle.


    I could act again, and again, and again, I thought. I could suss out all of the evil in the world and destroy it without effort. Any who lied, any who were a parasite, any who oppressed or built upon the systems of oppression...I could purify them all, I realized.


    And nobody could stop me.


    But that was for another day. Today, I simply drifted out, out, out, until I found the ocean and threw myself over it. The pollution of man washed away from my sight and all I could see was the endless expanse of water beneath me.


    For once, I was at peace, and so I rested. Even God had taken a day to rest, and I was no god yet.


    The images of Richard in my mind brought me joy instead of rage now, and so I was content with my work. I smiled at thinking of those who may benefit from his death, and what new judge could fill the robes of the awful one, perhaps someone young and aspirational, someone with ideals, who would be willing to step up, while the parasites cowered with their vaults of ill gains.


    But mostly I just smiled. The sky was blue and the grey of the city was gone from my sight. In time, I would return. One villain and one corrupt judge were nothing to the evils of the world. Nothing but a start.


    And feeling the sun on my skin and the breeze in my hair, the smell of salt wafting up to where I sat above the clouds, I reflected.


    It wasn''t a start, I decided, my smile broadening. It was going to be an end.

 365. 2252, Present Day. Glasslands. Athan.

    "I would like to reiterate that this is a terrible idea," AEGIS repeated.


    "Noted. For the fifth time," I said.


    "We don''t know what''s up there, or worse, who''s up there."


    "Noted. Sixth time? Does that count?" I asked Lia, who was trudging alongside me on the black glass.


    "I''ll allow it," she affirmed.


    "Would you take me seriously for a moment?" AEGIS pouted. "This is really potentially dangerous, here."


    "I invite you to reprise your entire debate with Karu," I said, not slowing my pace.


    AEGIS fell silent for a moment, leaving only the clack clack of us walking across the glass and the scraping of the sled.


    Tem and Saga were the sled''s only occupants, as AEGIS'' plans to salvage the entire VTOL for parts was shot down by the consideration we weren''t entirely out of fuel, and if we did want to make a quick escape, the difference of a few miles might mean everything. This was after she ripped off one of the doors already, though, so we had that much, and after hours of being cooped up in the cabin, all of us were very eager to stretch our legs. Except Tem. And then Saga was coerced to hop on because she ambled slower than any of us.


    "So, why again?" AEGIS bust out, seeming unable to contain her words and frustration.


    "Seven?" I asked Lia.


    "Not quite yet."


    "It is as I said before," Karu stepped in, "whatever we saw, whatever challenges it may possess, we shall face them. We shall appropriate whatever we require, and make an informed judgement on the situation once aware of what is available to us."


    "And in the very likely case that they aren''t just going to let us walk off with their shit?" AEGIS asked.


    Karu grinned. "We have guns."


    "Yeah, it''s not getting to that," I cut in. Always with the murdering, that one. It was like having another half-Saga around, except this one flipped unpredictably instead of always being consistently batshit insane, which was somehow even worse. I heard Saga giggling at the thought and rolled my eyes at her.


    We had a ways to go, but the distance was deceptive. From the air, it had looked like we were nearly on top of it, but AEGIS had placed the odd structure at a mile and a half away, and I knew better than to question her on matters of math. Though, after we''d landed, it seemed to almost melt away into the horizon, disappearing in the heat-shimmer like a mirage. If we hadn''t already spotted it, I didn''t think we''d have found it ever.


    Which really just added another slice of paranoia onto that building sensation of wrong about this whole place. You could see forever out here, but you couldn''t spot a building a little over a mile away. All kinds of wrong with that.


    But as we approached, the structure came into view, becoming ever more constant than not as it materialized from the wavering black. Once we were close enough to make it out, it was a wonder we couldn''t spot it from further off.


    It was a white city, ringed with low curving walls spread wide, laid out like a clover. Towards the middle, the structures grew taller and more official, favoring cylinders crowned with white domes. A bit like the Taj Mahal, though I''d only ever seen pictures, and not so golden or ornate, but the same sense of height, of startling whiteness, of pillars rising from nothing, they were all there.


    If it was a city, it was a small one. Though the outer walls seemed to range pretty far, the center of buildings looked barely the size of a downtown city block or two. But considering where we were and what we were crossing, that was already quite the achievement.


    The size, like it''s appearance on the horizon, was deceptive though. The closer we got, the taller I realized those outer walls were, realizing only when we were nearly at them that each of them was a good fifteen feet high, making the inner walls twenty or thirty, and the towers they guarded maybe fifty feet at their peak.


    We reached final approach, the walls curving gracefully away from us on both sides, lines of pure white stone, a new color between the black of the ground and the grey-blue of the sky. They were arranged without cuts or lines, as though poured into place like concrete, and I had to wonder at their engineering.


    And just how wrong Karu might have been about us being able to simply take what we wanted. It was beginning to occur to me that ''city'' may have been a mislabel, and it should instead be branded ''fortress'' or the like.


    We were barely in earshot of the main gate when a figure appeared atop it, a pallid face with stringy moustache and eyebrows. He stared approximately at us, his eyes seeming drawn towards the geographic center of our group rather than at any one of us, and yelled something.


    We all stood there like idiots for a moment, trying to parse what he''d just said. The fact that AEGIS was looking around meant it wasn''t Japanese, and Karu seemed equally at a loss.


    "And of course, he''s a toad," Saga sighed. "I think I spoke too soon in declaring Tokyo the worst city ever."


    "We''re not even in this one, yet," I told her.


    She shook her head. "I can feel maybe a dozen presences from here. Want to guess what they all are?"


    "Then you were right," Lia grinned. "There is a connection between the toads and IkaCo and the source, and that is...they''re all here. From here, even, maybe."


    "Oh goody," Saga sighed.


    The guard shouted down again, different words. Again we looked at each other to see if any among us understood, but this time, Saga stood up and took a step forward.


    "Cuo wu. Wo men shi Exhuman."


    That got us all staring at her, enough that I didn''t notice the guard had disappeared.


    "The fuck was that?" I asked.


    "Chinese," she shrugged. "He was asking if we were human or not."


    The stone of the gate split in half and beyond it, I could see the green of trees and water in basins and fountains, all made of the same white stone as the walls, though peppered with color. But more relevant, I could also see a line of men and women emerge, all wearing the same ceremonial-looking armor, cinched and armored inobviously in a few places, but mostly flowing fabric.


    I didn''t like the uniforms, they seemed designed to flow around the wearers. I guess that was practical given the heat and sun of the place, but it also made their movements hard to follow visually. I realized I was subconsciously assessing their movements for threats, which was perhaps jumping the gun.


    "Have you always spoken Chinese?" Lia asked, sounding as shocked as I''d been, before this new attraction had lured away my focus.


    "Um, well, my mom was first-generation, so yeah, I was expected to learn so I could write letters to lao lao. Though I never really got much past food and swear words, so, y''know, the basics."


    "Are you swearing at them, then?" I asked.


    She giggled, but we were interrupted by one of the guard shouting at us again. Now that he was closer and I knew what I was listening to, I¡­


    ...still couldn''t imagine that as how Chinese sounded. I''d always heard it sounded like ching-chong-chang, but when actually spoken, I didn''t once hear a single one of those words. Saga spent a few minutes conversing, and in it, I heard each of our names in introduction while she pointed. Finally, she turned back to us.


    "Hmm, well, says he''s going to test us. Athan, think you''re up, buddy."


    "What?"


    Saga was saying something in Chinese in response, and I had to grab her to demand an explanation. "What?" I repeated.


    "Well, my Chinese sucks, but I of course do know the word for ''test''. I had Chinese parents after all."This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "I don''t get it. What does that mean?" I asked.


    "You haven''t...I guess your stereotypes of us are a little different, huh? Anyway, he wants to test us to see where we fall in the...the something. I wasn''t really clear. Anyway, you''re gonna fight. Have fun!"


    "Saga, wait!" I shouted at her, but she yelled kai shi ba! and one of them advanced on me without hesitation.


    Two things were apparent to me immediately. Three, if you counted that I was going to kill Saga after this. One, evident by how this guy moved, he was trained. He was graceful but guarded in his approach, taking almost shuffling steps so that his feet were always ready under him, always facing me, arms at the ready. And two, he was an Exhuman. Which was even more evident by how the light moved around him, as though I was seeing him through a funhouse, or a headache.


    "To hell with this," said Karu, raising an arm, but Saga was there, standing in the way of the shot with determination scrawled on her face. Karu frowned for half a moment before pulling the trigger anyway, sending pieces of Saga scattering across the black glass, but in the instant after, she struggled for footing, swaying, swearing, and then both of their bodies hit the floor at the same time.


    AEGIS caught Karu''s head before it cracked on the ground, and we all just kinda let Saga squish on the floor. But the Sino guy was still advancing, and so I stepped forward before he reached all of us, pulling out my blades to keep him at sword''s length.


    He seemed to flicker like there were multiple of him, all coming at once from different angles. As one charged me and I slashed through it with no effect, I realized there weren''t, it was a trick in my eyes, and so I closed them and focused on my second sight.


    He couldn''t trick that any more than he could shut down the neurons in his body. He was standing there, brazen, confident that he was hidden in his clones and distortion, and I let him believe it for a moment as I repositioned my weapons subtly, lashing out at the illusions which came at me.


    And then, at once, I feinted forward, and then rushed to the side where he stood, my blades converging on him like he was magnetic.


    They halted inches from him, all around his body. I felt like Jack, taking a peek at him through closed eyelids, to see him sweat from the heat of my blades.


    It wasn''t a bad try, but my powers outclassed his. I''d squared off with Tem too many times to be surprised by illusions, it was a bad matchup for him. I gave him a nod and then pulled the swords away once I thought it was clear I''d won.


    ¡­


    Though it seemed, perhaps, that something was lost in translation. Because he was coming at me again, powers still in full swing. He was much closer now, and from the way he launched towards me with inhuman acceleration, I started to doubt that the illusions were the entirety of his powers.


    It was actually scary how fast he was on me. My blades were still well out-of-place when he threw the first punch, and I only just slipped the blow, my head snapping sideways and down, the hot wind off his fist catching my ear. I had my hands up at my chin in a moment, and the kick he lashed out with next bounced off my guard without effect.


    He was fast, but he didn''t hurt that badly. Not after sparring with AEGIS, whose strength was easily ten times a person''s...and while she held back of course, she was also...sometimes a little lost in getting competitive. I shrugged off two more blows and sidestepped another before retaliating with a hook to his side, which sent him back a couple steps with controlled breaths.


    But his time was up. My swords were back in play, and they formed a web between the two of us, keeping up a guard and lashing out at him just like my fists had. He was just a little too fast, though, and every time I swore I got him, I found my blade trailing just a frustrating moment behind. I began to throw more blades at once, opening holes in my defence but closing the net around him, limiting his mobility so that his speed couldn''t come into play.


    I was also ready for it when suddenly he struck through one of my gaps, his extended foot caught in my arms.


    "Gotcha," I told him. And then I spat blood as his other foot came out of nowhere and nailed me in the cheek.


    My vision blurred for a moment in a way that had nothing to do with his powers, and in my head, over the pounding of blood, I could hear myself ripping off the kid gloves. If that''s how you want it.


    I slashed at him again now, and then tried to catch him with a blade the opposite direction, but he moved even faster somehow and dodged both. I had to focus, had to remember to close my eyes, and realized I was chasing an illusion somehow, and had lost track of the real one a moment ago in a sneaky sideways movement he''d done.


    Again, I feigned ignorance and invited him in, but this time he didn''t bite, throwing illusory attack after illusion after me, until I felt crowded by shadowy, wavering images of him, throwing punches at me that I would dodge on reflex, irrational fear of the incoming attacks making it hard to keep my eyes closed and really focus.


    But he came in again, right after I closed my eyes for a second time, and I only barely reacted quickly enough, bringing my blades to bear right on him.


    He was so frickin'', frustratingly fast. I was worried his foot would catch me in the knee before my blades closed on him, and I didn''t have time to anchor myself properly. I saw the blow coming, knowing that if he got there, he''d drop my leg under me.


    He beat my blades. His foot connected with my leg.


    It, uh, hurt less than it should have. Both of us looked down and saw he''d kicked straight through my pant leg, hanging loosely in my exoframe where my leg would have been. I saw what seemed a flash of comprehension from him, as he reversed, starting to pull his leg free.


    And then my blades crashed into him. Two of them only, and not anywhere fatal, but enough to really drive the point home that I had this, and this farce could stop.


    It didn''t. He kept pulling his leg, tangled momentarily in my loose pant leg, and threw another punch, bruising my elbow where I barely caught it.


    "Stop it, dumbass!" I shouted at him, cutting at him with more blades. I saw his nerves firing, sending the pain to his brain. I opened my eyes and saw black marks on his armor, angry red burns where I touched exposed skin. What the hell was this guy''s problem? He hardly seemed to care.


    Was this some kind of mystical bushido bullshit? Or was that a Japanese thing? Sinos were supposed to be craven and weak...which...thinking about it, was probably all propaganda again. If this guy was any kind of example, they were almost unstoppable and a huge pain in the ass, instead.


    I twisted my feet by reflex as another punch came in, making it deflect off my shoulder instead of catching me in the chin, but the punch never landed. Instead, his body whipped around, impossibly fast. I swore as he was suddenly on the other side of me, and twisted my feet again to face him.


    And then he whipped to the other side, even faster. I was bewildered, only just remembering to close my eyes again and verify it wasn''t a trick, but it very much wasn''t. Every time I spun, he spun with me, faster than I could go, even when I had the exoframe operating at top speed. It was like he was suddenly even faster, like he''d pulled a final trick out that I just couldn''t keep up with. I couldn''t even see his face or form anymore, he was just a blur, to all of my senses.


    Was this how I was tested, then? He was holding back the whole time, perhaps gradually raising his power against me until he knew just how much I could take? I was a little worried, if he kicked me at that speed, he''d blow right through me. But how? How had he suddenly attained this insane level of power? Was his power reactive, maybe? Growing stronger as he was hurt, or the longer he fought?


    If so, that was terrifying. He''d be literally unbeatable unless taken out instantly, which seemed a terrible way to test opponents. The only way to win would be to fight utterly without mercy and stomp him out from the outset -- but anyone who''d do that wouldn''t be anyone I''d want to invite into my city.


    So maybe that was the test, I realized. I was supposed to lose to this insane power, with grace and poise, accepting a loss against a foe I had no chance to defeat?


    That sounded great in theory, but watching him go...I was terrified that the second I stopped, I''d have his fist in my skull. We were already failing to communicate somewhat already, and that wasn''t even betting my life on it yet.


    But that had to be it, I thought. He''d been whipping around me for a while now and not finishing it. That was his mercy, I suspected, and it would be all I could do to face him like a man accept the end of the fight.


    I stopped, and the moment I did, so did he. His neurons were still going, but he was deathly calm, as though in a state of impossible focus. I swallowed hard and opened my eyes to see him.


    His tricks were gone. No blurring or illusions, no nothing. Just him and me.


    And he was unconscious as fuck. I blinked at him, not comprehending. As my focus fell away, I heard Saga laughing her ass off, literally rolling her bony butt across the black glass, while the others looked on with concern.


    "I think you got him," AEGIS said, apologetically, as she advanced on me, her movements a little nervous and a little stilted.


    "Um?" I asked, but she didn''t seem to hear me, instead going right up to me and kneeling in front of me. The familiar top of her head and the handlebars of her pigtails made me stammer as she reached down.


    She fussed with my pants for a moment and then pulled the man''s leg free from my exoframe. I stared down with some confusion for a minute, wondering just what all the hell was going on here.


    "Clever. And brutal," Karu said, also advancing on me and leaning heavily on me, her chest warm on my back. "To thread him through your own exoframe and then use it to whip him to and fro until unconsciousness, it is a strategy I must admit I have never yet seen. You have impressed me this day, Ashton."


    "I did...that?" I asked stupidly. Looking down now, I saw the guy was indeed, beat to hell, his leg more broken and bruise than intact, and the rest of his body looking very much like someone had slapped it across the ground a few dozen times.


    "With efficacy," Karu grinned, her arms draping across my chest.


    "I thought it was very good, too," AEGIS said defensively, edging in on us. "No Sino would stand a chance, no matter how...worried I might have been...when this started."


    "I knew it was over before it began," Saga grinned.


    "Because you began it!" I shouted at her, suddenly remembering her role in all this. She cackled as another of the guards extracted his colleague and they all gave us a very short bow, before returning through the gates with the same precision with which they''d emerged.


    "Anyway, you like, passed, or whatever," Saga said, looking much more bored already. "They say we''re welcome to enter, and that you and I, we''re uh...well you''re ranked at something which I think means like ''warrior''. And I''m a ''priestess''. I think. So that''s cool."


    "Priestess or not, I''m so going to kick your ass, Saga," I growled. "The fuck was all that?"


    She just laughed as she headed towards the gate, as though expecting us all just to fall in behind her. Which we did, because the alternative was wandering the desert until death.


    I''d seen greenery and water through the gate before, but as we crossed the threshold, all traces of my irritation at Saga disappeared as wonder filled me. As far as I could see, nestled in the stone walls were verdant fields of green planted in rich dark earth, stone troughs which ferried water, happily burbling as it criss-crossed the fields, and dozens of buildings of white stone, pearlescent and perfect in their construction.


    "Saga...what the hell is this place?" Lia asked in a reverent whisper, spinning in place just like the rest of us as she took it in.


    "Lu zhou," she answered with a grin. "Or so they call it. Means, if I''m not mistaken, Oasis."


    And an oasis it was. A true pearl of the desert, a gleaming circle of white in the black ocean of the glasslands.

 366. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    It felt a bit like we were floating through a dream, or maybe heaven as we stepped through the city. Stairs, broadly cut, of pearly-white stone, led us upwards and inwards. There were lawns of grass, shaded under broad trees I didn''t recognize to line the main path, and beyond them, rows of neat fields in perfect lines.


    There were people, too. Some of the guards who had met us at the gate had split off and disappeared, but a few appeared to be headed our way, seemingly ambivalent to our presence, walking at their own pace instead of escorting us. In a couple of the fields, I saw farmers at work, bent down and picking at weeds or pruning crops by hand. Nobody looked up at us as we passed, others walking the street didn''t give us so much as a glance.


    Most of all, it was bizarre. None of us knew what to expect in the first place, and it definitely wasn''t a perfectly-organized fully-realized society. With the white stone and rounded buildings, it looked more like ancient Greece than anything else, maybe minus the statues.


    Not knowing where else to go, we kept heading towards the center. After a ways, the rows of fields and trees and green yielded to the second wall, and in passing through an intimidating gate, I realized immediately we''d come into the main residential hub. The main path still wound straight through and up, but now on all sides, instead of greenery were single-story dwellings, small but comfortable-looking. Each had large airy windows and doorways without doors, as though built only to keep the sun out and tempt the wind in, which made me wonder just how hot or cold Oasis got in the other seasons.


    Although I was reminded, the Glasslands really didn''t have seasons. There was no weather here to speak of.


    The people milling about seemed each focused on their own work, ignoring us entirely. They wore flowing clothes of loose, light, colorful fabric, making them pop from their white surroundings, like it was the residents who truly were Oasis, and the city was just a backdrop to their lives.


    At the end of the residences was the third gate, and this one we were not simply permitted to walk through. It was closed, again, with doors of white stone, though above the wall I could see the towers and multi-storied buildings of the city''s center.


    And there, waiting for us before it, was another pair of the guards with their armor plates in their silks, as well as a lady, short-ish, with oval glasses, and a white lab coat to match the gate behind her. It was strange to see something so familiar looking out here, even if I wasn''t sure I''d ever actually seen a lab coat in person.


    "Hello," she said in perfect English with a small wave. "Welcome to Oasis."


    "Called it," Saga said.


    "After they told you the name?" AEGIS shot her with a raised eyebrow.


    I ignored them and greeted our host. "Hi. Thanks for uh...well I''d say being so welcoming but I guess we did kinda have to fight our way in? What''s up with this place?"


    She smiled and extended her arm, which, I not having any better ideas, tentatively took. Once secured, she began to walk with me. "How about a quick tour before we put you up for the night?"


    I guess my confusion was agreement, and she began showing us around. "The first thing you should know about Oasis is its namesake. We do have water here that we pull from the ground, but that''s not what it''s an oasis of. The city is an oasis of faith -- there is worship here of our local god. He has been here since beginningless time, and it is through him we prosper."


    "That''s...cool? Can we like...meet him?"


    She chuckled. "No. Only priests may pass the third gate to the center city, and only high priests may enter our most holy sites. You will still be expected to make an offering if you wish to stay in the city, however. We will get to that."


    I stopped and she went another few paces before turning around questioningly. "What kind of offering? Is this where the city turns out evil and we have to fight to the death or something?"


    Again she chuckled, like she was speaking to herself. "Nothing like that. A small offering of blood is all we ask. Not a bloodletting, before you ask -- a few drops."


    "Why?" I asked.


    She shrugged. "I don''t question the old rituals."


    "Shouldn''t you?"


    She shrugged again. "It would be fairly blasphemous for me to do so, being a high priestess. So no, I just do as He wishes, and that means to demand a blood offering from each guest whom we give hospitality. You are more than welcome to leave the city if you refuse. But again, we''ll get to that."


    I looked her up and down. She was small, but not young. There were wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and her hair had traces of grey, as though middle-age were only beginning to find her...maybe late thirties or early forties, if I had to guess. Like most everyone else we''d seen on this trip, her hair and eyes were both dark brown, the latter narrow and scrutinizing, the former pinned up in a fancy take on a ponytail. Her lab coat was stained in a few places, obviously not just for decoration.


    "What kind of high priestess wears a lab coat?" I asked.


    "The kind that does work in a lab," she said with another shrug. I was beginning to think she was getting tired of answering my inane questions, but I wasn''t nearly out of them yet.


    "Does your god make you do that?"


    "Our god lets us do whatever we desire. He''s not really a demanding god. Each of us has a role, and within it, we do what we feel we should."


    "So...he does make you do things."


    She smiled and offered her arm again, and after a moment I took it. She began steering us backwards, towards the outside of the city, and as we walked without speaking, I began to wonder if I''d pushed her too far and she was just going to throw us out.


    Instead, after we passed the second gate and were back surrounded by fields she began to speak.


    "Most you will find in this ring are laborers. That is their caste and their lot, and if you view that as the demand of our god, then I must agree with you. However, even as a laborers, there are any number of tasks which must be done, and they are free to do them as they see fit. If you wish to weed, weed. If you want to irrigate, do so. Or plant, or sew, or cook, or serve meals. So long as one remains within their circle, they are welcome to do whatever they wish."


    "And what about doing nothing?" Lia spoke up from the group which had silently followed the whole time. "What if a laborers just wants to laze around under the trees?"


    Our host gave her another well-practiced shrug. "People such as that are not made laborers."


    "So what, they''re given some other role instead?"


    "Those who prefer to do nothing are not invited to the city. They are given a role of ''goodbye''. It is my hope that none of you achieve that honor."


    "Why must we be given a role at all?" Karu asked. "We do not intend to stay here. We have business to attend and then we shall depart."


    She shrugged again, and I began to suspect there was more to the gesture than a simple show of indifference, perhaps some Moon-like nuance buried deep in there. "All who have business with Oasis must be given a caste. If nothing else, such determines your access within the city. Laborers in the first circle, skilled craftsmen and warriors in the second, priestess and high priestess within the third. It would be very embarrassing for you to schedule a meeting and then not be able to attend for want of permission."


    "But we''ve already been in the second circle. There weren''t even guards at the gate," I said.


    "Because you are a warrior and she," she nodded towards Saga "was deemed a priestess. The others were allowed to accompany you for today."


    I stared at her, still not quite understanding. "But what if there was a mistake? What if...I dunno, someone is given rank of laborer, but then it turns out they''re a flake? Do you throw them out? Is there a caste for enforcers who go around judging people''s quality of work?"


    She gave a shrug accompanied by a knowing smile. "Mistakes are not made. Roles are given out by our god."


    "But if there were--"


    "There are not."


    Well I guess that settled that. What I heard was if there was a mistake, nobody admits to it.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    She began walking us back through the city, more in the capacity of a real tour guide this time, pointing out the layout of Oasis, where we could find specific accommodations, jobs that the various castes were responsible for and points of interest.


    Unsurprisingly, the highest castes lived and worked in the center of the city, along with their ''god''. The middle ring was for residences and food, mostly, and the outer ring is where laborers worked their fields, though they slept and ate in the middle ring with the others, explaining why the second gates were left open and unmanned.


    Kinda made me wonder the point of the walls and castes in general, given that it wasn''t actually any different from people just having a job. Like, what was the point of there being an outer ring when laborers would naturally be in their fields anyway?


    I was about to ask our host when AEGIS popped in with a question I wished I''d thought of.


    "Um, Madam High Priestess? What is your name?"


    She chuckled to herself. "Call me Rio. No need for titles."


    "Rio," I echoed, and she turned to me. "If the laborers all live in the second ring anyway, what''s the point of the wall, and consigning them to a lower caste? And the same for the priests? If nobody''s really separate, what''s the point in separating them?"


    "Ah," she said. "Well, that would be for defense. Unfortunate as it is, some lives are more vital to the city''s operation than others. The main difference in caste is which wall one would occupy in a siege."


    "Oh," I said. "Who attacks you out here?"


    She shrugged. "It feels like most have, variously. "The United States sends excursions to wipe out the ''last Sino threat'' from time to time. Russia and Germany have tried to take what we have. The XPCA--"


    "Oh yeah," I said. "We had to be Exhumans to get in here."


    "Not entirely correct. But yes, all who are above the caste of laborers are Exhuman."


    I blinked at her, two thoughts crashing into my mind at once.


    One was of the poor laborers down below, who in the case of a siege, would be manning the outer wall. A bunch of regular humans armed with, what, pitchforks and hoes? I know Rio said some lives were more important than others, but that almost felt like they were being thrown away at that point.


    The other was even more alarming, as I looked around the second ring. There were a few dozen of the locals visible to me now, in their loose, flowing dress, about half asian and half other. And by her words, I suddenly realized that every one of these people was allegedly Exhuman?


    "And they just...cook? Or clean? Or do laundry and make beds?"


    "They do whatever it is they want, that needs doing."


    "That''s insane, though. They''re Exhumans. Any one of them could destroy...everything, if they wanted to."


    She shrugged. "Why would they want to?"


    I gaped at her for a minute, at the absolute plausibility of her simple question.


    Why would they want to?


    Why were Exhumans such a threat in America? Just because they lived in a society where they were oppressed by a majority? Things were different here, with the caste structure making it explicit that every Exhuman was more valuable than any human. And while it seemed that there were maybe twice as many laborers as others we''d seen, that was an extraordinary ratio for Exhumans. It wasn''t the million-to-one ratio we faced in the rest of the world...in fact, two-to-one hardly felt like a majority at all, given what Exhumans were capable of.


    But didn''t the Exhumans get tired of living mundane lives? Cleaning, sweeping, sewing? Like those in New Eden, didn''t they go crazy from...from¡­


    From what? I had to ask myself. From living a normal life? The New Edeners were prisoners, who were treated as such, who saw themselves as such. The walls around them were to keep them in more than to keep others out. Hell, it seemed pleasant here -- just thinking about myself, all my aspirations for a normal life, I could see myself hiding out and becoming...I dunno, a cobbler or whatever, if it meant living in peace somewhere. Here, they didn''t even need to hide out; everyone was Exhuman, that was just the norm and everyone accepted it.


    It slowly, slowly sank in that somehow, this city was a functioning society of Exhumans. Without even realizing it, I''d walked into the paradise I''d spent so long pondering. All of my questions, the big ones, the life-altering ones seemed to be answering themselves right before my eyes.


    Humans and Exhumans could live together in harmony. Exhumans could be peaceful by nature. They could live simple lives without hiding out, hiding who they were, just being content with being alive and doing their job and living their lives, like any other person, animal, or being.


    I felt my head spinning and had to sit down. I expected something to blow up, irrationally, felt like...something had to go wrong. It was like being in university all over again -- it was all fake, just waiting to explode. But a thousandfold. How many Exhumans were here? Two or three hundred? Another entire New Eden''s worth? Living peacefully?


    Impossible. She had to be lying.


    But I''d seen that soldier with my own eyes. I''d fought him. He''d whipped out his powers and nobody had batted an eye. He was just as Exhuman as I was...and so could I believe the other guards to be? Maybe. I''d only seen a handful of them, honestly. But the whole city? That was too much. Trying to put that thought in my brain felt like trying to fit too many leftovers in too small a container, no matter what angle I came at it from, it was just an impossible mess.


    "Dude," Saga said, and I turned to find her staring at me. "Chill."


    I muttered at her, realizing my words made no sense even as I sputtered. Did she not get it? That this was the dream? Had she not heard Rio?


    "I get it," she said, reaching out to pat my head like I was a panicking dog. "Just calm down about it. Your head''s gonna drive me crazy."


    Rio gave her a sideways look. "His head?"


    I was in no position to explain, given my brain at the moment. Saga nodded. "He''s killing me over there."


    Rio turned to face her, her body rigid and her face, I realized, serious for the first time I''d seen. "I''m sorry, I have to ask...you wouldn''t happen to be a Code-Xavier Exhuman, would you?"


    Saga started to answer but Lia cut in. "Nope. They''re just really close, and she hates seeing him all befuddled. Which is a pretty poor choice on her part, considering how often he does it."


    Rio immediately resumed her former smile and posture, as though coming out from under a cloud. I was still so behind I kinda missed the whole thing, but I did catch Lia giving us all a significant glance the moment Rio''s back was turned.


    Because, holy hell, a whole city of Exhumans. That was downright impossible.


    I missed most of what followed, even forfeiting my position at the front of the group as I bumbled along behind, words and explanations washing over me as Rio concluded her tour with Lia now at the forefront. We found ourselves in an airy room near the third gate, something like a chapel, tall and deep and narrow, with repeated icons of a twisted tree-like symbol throughout.


    "This is the house of prayer for this district. As I said before, I ask that each of you make a token offering of a few drops of blood. You do not have to, but if you don''t...we''ll ask you to leave. I''ll be just a moment, please use the cups."


    She gave a cheery wave and then disappeared into the back room.


    "Cups?" Lia asked.


    "Here," Karu said, standing by a shelf inset in the wall. "How barbaric."


    She came back with what looked like a champagne glass with a twisted stem. The only difference was a glass barb hanging over the top like the tail of a scorpion, honed to a lethal point and suspended right over the center of the glass''s mouth.


    "Well that looks unpleasant," Lia said, taking the glass into her hands. Before I could react, she''d prodded the pad of her index finger against the needle and made a wincing sound as a few droplets of blood trickled from the wound. "Meerkats, that hurts. And it''s bleeding too much."


    "It''s sharpened glass, dolt," Karu said with a frown, pulling a small tube of medical spray from a pocket. "Even the slightest touch would open a gushing wound. Hold your hand steady."


    "Not yet," Lia said, grabbing another glass and transferring her finger to bleed into that one. With her other hand, she offered the first to AEGIS. "You don''t have the guts for this, right?"


    "Thanks, but...there had to be a better way."


    "Such as no way at all," Karu said, as she began to dress Lia''s wound. "Participating in such heathen rituals is pure folly."


    "Do you want to get kicked out?" I asked, taking a glass for myself and for Tem.


    "I would love for them to make an attempt," Karu replied haughtily, flashing her guns.


    "Dude, there''s like a hundred Exhumans here," Lia said with wide eyes. "You''re gonna get super destroyed."


    "Please don''t make a scene, Karu," I asked. "I''m really curious about this place. Just give them a few drops. It''s not like you''ve never shed blood for anything stupid before."


    "Yes, but those weren''t my drops," she said.


    I rolled my eyes at her. "Please? I''d rather stay in the city, and rather you did too. Without one of the two of you destroying the other."


    She sighed heavily. "Fine. But know that this does not constitute worship of a false god in my eyes. I do this for Ashton, and he is an agent of the one true God. This is a meaningless token of no faith to me."


    "That''s perfectly fine," Rio said as she re-entered. "It would be pretty silly of us to expect every visitor to renounce their beliefs. This is just an offering in good faith to our god, whether you believe in him or not."


    Karu didn''t speak or wince as she removed her glove and pricked her finger, drawing only two fat, slow beads of blood before reaching for the gel.


    I helped Tem and did myself as well, and like Lia, found the tiny cut I''d inflicted on myself far, far too interested in bleeding than I intended. Rio went through the group, taking our cups and placing them on the altar at the front of the room.


    "Finally, my time to shine," Saga said, grabbing up three or four glasses in each hand. "How many do you want? An even dozen?"


    Rio shrugged at her, and this one I could read. What the fuck are you talking about?


    Saga nicked off the entire tip of her finger and filled the glass like a beer on tap before she mended and the flow instantly stopped. I was impressed -- and horrified -- at how practiced she was at gauging her own blood flow. And then she repeated the trick into a second glass.


    "Um, that''s more than enough," Rio said with a horrified expression, taking the glasses with more than some hesitation.


    "You sure? I got lots more." Saga grinned. Rio looked a little shaky and faint as the put the glasses on the altar with the others.


    "Maybe...maybe I can just take you back to your quarters. Since there''s no need to send any of you off," she said, plastering on a bright, fake smile as she met each of our glances, except Saga''s.


    "Can we not traumatize everyone we meet?" I asked Saga as Rio led us out.


    "I''m confused," she answered. "Isn''t that the whole point of meeting new people?"


    I shook my head and shielded my eyes as we stepped back outside into the harsh white glare of the impossible city.

 367a. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    It felt like the straw mattress I woke up on was entirely unrelated to the one I''d taken so long to fall asleep with. A distant relative at best, its embrace was warm and comforting, a reaffirming place to wake and whispering promises of a good day. Nothing like the harsh bag of straw on a stone slab of the night before.


    But it wasn''t really the bed which had kept me up, I knew. It was sleeping here, in a new place, alone, and unprotected. There weren''t even doors in Oasis if you didn''t count the heavy stone gates dividing the districts. Instead, I was here while all the girls were elsewhere, and while I didn''t have any particular expectation of being murdered in my sleep, it was always something on the back of my mind.


    Yet somehow I survived the totally menial task of sleeping through a night, and was now rubbing my eyes at the morning sun, already glinting off the marble-white rooftops on the other end of the city through my room''s breezy windows.


    I was on the first floor, which was apparently an honor. It got hot in Oasis, and hotter still in the higher rooms. Many of the buildings closest to the wall had multiple floors, and only the priests, high priests, and most renown of the warriors were permitted to reside in the bottom of those sheltered few houses. I should have been flattered, but admittedly, it just felt like an open, ordinary room to me.


    I thought to head over and up, to see if the girls were up...which was stupid, given that Saga and AEGIS always were, if nothing else...and maybe to find out if their accommodations really were much warmer than mine, when I heard a gentle knock.


    I glanced over and found Rio standing there, still in a lab coat, though one stained in a different pattern than the one from yesterday, her hair tied up and oval glasses catching the morning sun.


    "Glad to see you are awake. Did you sleep well?" she asked.


    "I managed alright. Uh, did you?"


    She gave me a broad smile. "Of course. You are probably hungry? Or would you prefer to check on your colleagues first?"


    "Let''s check in on them, if you don''t mind."


    She shrugged and gestured towards a set of clothes which had been laid out for me. The same airy, light fabric that everyone else here wore, but I also noticed it was adorned with the armored plates over the heart and shoulders which marked a warrior''s garb.


    "Uh," I said. "I hope you don''t mind if I don''t."


    "Of course not. As I said yesterday, all those in the city are free to do as they wish. How you dress is no concern to anyone."


    "Thanks for being so understanding."


    She shook her head and chuckled. "Yesterday when you were walking the town, did you catch many odd glances?"


    I thought about it for a minute. I''d been paying pretty close attention for that at the start, but once I started learning about the city, I''d kind of become captivated in my own thoughts. Even so, I couldn''t remember a single person giving us too much scrutiny.


    "No, not a one," I said. "Which is actually kind of weird, thinking about it. We got more attention in Japan by far."


    "Well there you have it, how much Oasis cares for your fashion sense. The clothes are offered to you because they are suitable to the climate and for no other reason. Wear them or do not, it is your choice."


    It was a nice gesture, and my street clothes were a little dark and a little heavy for the desert sun...but it also felt pretentious to be dressing up like that, especially in a city of castes. Plus much of the utility would go to waste, being strapped in under my exoframe. I decided to take up her offer and not, at least until I understood better how to fit in around here.


    So I was surprised when we came up to the girls and found not only were they all up, they were all dressed in their new outfits, flowing light fabrics and hoods and veils. Lia looked as excited as anything to be dressing up, while Karu appeared hesitant about how the loose garment refused to act as such around her chest.


    Personally I couldn''t find words to complain. Every one of them looked fantastic, even Tem and Saga, for whom the flowing draping nature of the clothes seemed ideal to cover up their scarecrow-like frames.


    "Aww," said AEGIS, grinning daggers as she advanced on me. "Are you getting all excited about us dressing up? Fantasizing about your own harem?" Her demeanor changed as she batted her eyelashes at me. "Oh, powerful sultan, we are your loyal playthings. Your every wish is--ow!"


    Lia snorted as she finished throwing the shoe at the back of AEGIS'' head. "Hey bro. Why aren''t you wearing yours?"


    "Terrified of cultural appropriation," I said with a shrug. "You hungry?"


    "Hungry for you," AEGIS said, clawing towards me. The second shoe caught her with equal precision, and I gave Lia a long-range high-five from across the room.


    The food was simple, but good. Some kind of rice porridge seasoned with herbs. It was a tiny bit citrusy, a tiny bit sweet, and had a few chunks of some kind of pulpy fruit, but mostly rice. It needed salt and there wasn''t any left out for us, but otherwise seemed fine. I imagined they must eat a lot of that kind of thing here, and it wasn''t the worst dietary staple.


    After we''d cleaned our plates, Rio stood and addressed us. "Is it safe to say that your group''s leader is this man?" she asked, and I noticed she wasn''t asking me, she was looking around asking all the others. Tem was enthusiastically nodding, but the others agreed as well. Then she turned to me. "Do you mind if I work with you and teach you Oasis'' ways and culture, as their leader?"


    "Not at all," I said. "What will the others do?"


    "Recover, I imagine. The glasslands are unforgiving. As their leader, I would ask you to work so that they may rest."


    "Well she''s got Athan''s number," Lia said. "And mine. I wouldn''t mind doing some slacking for once. I''m gonna be one of those lazy farmers you were talking about yesterday."


    "Which reminds me," Rio chuckled. "You may have noticed in your laid-out clothes, but each of you has been given a role as well." She bowed graciously to Tem, who looked around startled. "I am pleased to welcome another Priestess into our fold."


    Tem looked at me and made half a squeak until the bow ended. No commentary was made of the others, which made sense -- only Exhumans could be above farmers, and Saga had been placed already.


    "To think¡­" AEGIS muttered, and then stopped.


    "Yes?" Rio asked, and AEGIS responded by flushing and denying she said anything at all.


    "Aww, you''re jealous of Tem!" Lia cried, which flustered AEGIS even more.


    "Regardless, we shall be off. I thank you for your understanding," Rio prompted me to my feet, and then paused as Lia called out to her.


    "Um, so," Lia said tenting her fingers nervously. "I don''t suppose...you have ''net access out here. I have kind of...a job, I''m supposed to do...online."


    Rio frowned at her. "We...don''t, unfortunately. But...well¡­" She glanced at me like I was some kind of co-conspirator in this.


    "What?" I asked.


    "Well, we might. We do seize their possessions if external forces attack and...die. But it''s unfamiliar technology for us, and simply...handing it over to an outsider...I wouldn''t want to put the city in danger, but neither would I want to tell you ''no'' if I had the ability."


    I put my hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze, feeling the layers of light fabric sliding under my fingertips. "Hey, it''s okay. You have my promise, she isn''t going to do anything that would compromise the city''s safety."


    "I won''t!" Lia affirmed. "I''ll even go over it with AEGIS and make sure we''re not broadcasting a location or anything. It''s just a few things for Black Shark I need to keep up and--"


    "And you have my word," I said, looking into her eyes seriously.


    She seemed breathless for half a moment as she considered and then nodded. "Okay, Athan, if you say so."


    "Why would I want to hurt you? You''re doing my sister a huge favor."This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "Yes, but not all outsiders are properly appreciative. If so, I thank you for your honor."


    She smiled, and then we were off, but not before I noticed a couple of warrior-caste just sort of hanging around, looking a bit like out of place bouncers.


    Paradoxically, her hesitation and their presence soothed me. I''d been feeling before like this place was too impossibly perfect, and was having flashbacks to my time in university. The fact that she was hesitant to accept us after just a day, and that they had some fighters keeping an eye on us, it showed an awareness of sin, if nothing else.


    "So tell me," Rio said as she brought us towards the second wall. "What brings you all to Oasis in the first place?"


    "That''s a long story," I sighed at her. "And I imagine a high priestess has better things to do than listen to it."


    "All stories are worth listening to," she smiled. "Even if what you learn from them isn''t intended of the parable. We''re cut off from the world here, and what is boring to you is likely very interesting to us."


    "Just how cut off are you? You fight modern armies, you know what the ''net is...heck, you at least speak perfect English, and I assume others as well. I''m actually surprised by how...not cut-off you seem, given that the world as a whole doesn''t know you exist."


    "You don''t?" she cocked her head. "But you are American, yes? And the American armed forces has battled us many times, to say nothing of the XPCA."


    "Yes, but¡­" I trailed off, realizing that was an even longer story. "I guess like, the government does, but people don''t. We''re all told the Sinos died out in the war."


    "They did," she shrugged. "Except our god, who lived even then. He persevered, and in doing so, preserved this land."


    "So...is he like...a literal god or something then?"


    "That is why I call him as such, and we have an order of priests and priestesses."


    "He''s not...an Exhuman or anything?"


    She shrugged and stopped. We''d reached the top of the second wall, the whole of the outer ring laid out before us. From up here, I could see the perfect geometry of the orchards and farms, all laid out in rows extending straight out from the center of the city, like a sunburst. Everything seemed so ordered here, so by design. It seemed almost contradictory to her statements about how everyone just did as they wanted. Things couldn''t get done or succeed with that kind of complete anarchy.


    ...could it? I paused, realizing that until yesterday, I''d have said the same thing about a group of Exhumans. There was nothing stopping a society like this from working, except conflicting self-interests. But what if...everyone in this city legitimately wanted the city to succeed? Maybe Exhumans could only come together like this because the rest of the world was so shit to them, anywhere they could live and work in peace, have a fair shake, survive in the open without needing to hurt anyone or face oppression...maybe¡­


    I frowned as I thought. Maybe it was like it''s namesake, Oasis. An Oasis wasn''t just a wellspring of life on its own -- it was defined by the desert surrounding it. The hostility of the world turned that life inward and made an Oasis beautiful explicitly by comparison.


    I looked around at the white buildings, gleaming in the sun and the fields in neat rows. I looked at the workers already up with the sun, moving sacks and wagons, digging in the fields with their clothes of airy hues on their backs. And I realized, I already sort of loved this place. For what it was, for what these people had managed to create. Given the choice, I would fight to protect it...and as a warrior caste, that was my job. I was already willing to work for this city, and I''d been here a day.


    "We''re here, anyway," she said, shaking me out of my reverie. "This is the second wall."


    "This is where I''d stand, if there was a fight?"


    "You''d stand wherever you think you are needed. But this is where your fighting would begin, and the wall behind us is where it would end. As a warrior, your task would be simple -- to begin here, end there, or when the enemy is defeated, or in your death. Do you understand?"


    "Lia and the others would be below," I said. "I would stand with them instead."


    "And you are free to do so. As I''ve said before, and I am beginning to expect, will say many times more, you may do as you wish within your role. But your role is to fight and die before the enemy breaches the third wall. If you have not offered up your life before then, you have failed. Is that a role you can accept?"


    I nodded. Honestly, it sounded like the easiest thing in the world. Fight as hard as you could to protect the things you love, and die before they fell. It wasn''t a task I needed an introduction to.


    "Good. Then you''re welcome to stay as long as you want. You''re a real member of Oasis now, decreed by a high priestess herself." She winked at me. "I hope you find convincing your friends as easy. Some of them seem a lot more...reserved."


    I laughed as she explained their similar-but-lower duties, and how, in a siege, they would be expected to fight and die before the second wall. I stopped her with a question.


    "You said yesterday that skilled craftsmen are in the second ring. My friends have many skills -- would it be possible for them to ever move up?"


    She gave me a coy shrug. "I think you have a different definition than we do," she said. "Let me introduce you to our weaver."


    I followed her in silence as we headed back down the wall and into the rows of buildings, navigating circumferentially through the town before she entered a doorless white building like the others.


    Inside was a grey-haired man who didn''t look too much older than me, seated at an enormous table that filled the entire room. Half the table was covered with the airy fabrics I''d seen so much of, in beautiful vivid color, and the rest was bare, for the moment.


    "Hello," Rio said on entering, and our host looked up and lit up with an easy smile.


    "Cool skies and smooth ways," he nodded, to her and then to me. "How can I help you, Rio?"


    "This is Athan, he is new, and wanted to see a skilled craftsman in action. I told him we have no more skilled than you, Ed."


    "More skilled, maybe," he chortled. "But none more necessary, until we give up the clothes off our backs. Shall I?"


    "Please do."


    Rio gestured me towards a seat on the side of the table and I sat down, not quite sure what I was getting myself into, but Rio just kept glancing at me and smiling so I put on a pleasant face and waited.


    And then I noticed the table we were seated at wasn''t half-empty at all. It should have been a tip-off that it wasn''t the same white stone as the rest of the city. Instead, it was fluffy, white and...pulsating. In a kind of horrifying, nauseating way.


    Rio reached out and gently touched the mass, bringing her finger back close to my face with a scrap of the fluff on it. I blinked a few times before I recognized what the little black spots on the white fur actually were.


    "It''s a caterpillar," I said, stunned.


    "It is," she said, returning it to the mass. Knowing that it was a billion harmless bugs somehow made it a little less gross...but it was still a table of a billion bugs. At least the table itself wasn''t like, pulsating meat, like my first thought had been.


    But then I shut up and watched because Ed got to work. He took a deep breath, reached out towards the air above the bugs, and started...playing?


    It was hard to describe because I wasn''t sure there was a verb for what he was doing, but playing was the closest my mind came up with. Not in the sense of a game, but more a musical instrument, like a harp. His fingers twitched in the air as though plucking invisible strands, and as he did, the mass of white twisted and churned with his movements, the caterpillars moving as one to shepherd each other in and out, over and under, with a wavelike, precise motion my mind couldn''t quite capture.


    It was like ripples in the surface of milk, in an exceptionally large glass, except no matter how the ripples crashed into each other, they always remained patterned and perfect. And I realized, as they flowed, new strands of silken fabric flowed out of them, woven perfectly and already premade into perfect sheets.


    He was an Exhuman, with some manner of control over bugs, and he was using his powers to have them squirt out fully-formed silken cloth. It was insane. It was beautiful. A very irrational part of my mind was incredibly glad I''d chosen not to wear those clothes today, but at the same time, I loved...adored, that this was all being done with an Exhuman''s power.


    We stayed and watched for most of an hour more, and every second he worked was as magical as the first. My revulsion over the bugs and seething mass of insect flesh gradually faded as I watched. While he played the bugs, laborers joined us, replacing batches of the caterpillars, and I saw that each group must have been fed a different diet to produce the subtle hues and differences in the cloth.


    And it crossed my mind that Rio said this was their weaver, singular. This one man produced enough fabric to clothe the entire city...with a lot to spare, if the rate at which we were given clothes was anything to go by. It blew my mind, but then again, in a corner of it, I already knew what Exhumans were capable of, the immense feats we could achieve through use of our powers. I''d just never thought about what an entire city of them could do.


    By the end of his performance I found myself flabbergasted by the ramifications for the second day in a row. I began to see now, exactly what this city was, exactly how incredibly it operated. Why everything was made of the same white stone, how a city could thrive on people doing just ''as they wished'', how there could be such little scarcity, so few conflicting personal desires, when each person could do the work of so many, so easily.


    "And do you see why, unfortunately, your friends would not serve as a skilled craftsman?" Rio asked, back at the second wall.


    I had to agree. AEGIS, maybe had potential, but none of us were cut out for that kind of thing. I saw also why I was put in a warrior''s caste -- the city didn''t exactly have or need running electricity, so my powers weren''t much more use than for fighting.


    But I was okay with that. If fighting was all I was good for, I''d fight as hard as I could for this place. Oasis was a place worth protecting, and in just two short days, the people in it, the culture of it, they''d lodged themselves right into my heart.


    "Thank you for showing me that," I said to Rio. "I...never knew Exhumans could do good like that."


    "That''s because the outside world is shit," she laughed, and I laughed too.


    "Are high priestesses supposed to say ''shit''?"


    She shrugged cheekily. "I''ve told you before, and I will tell you again. We do what we will within our role. I may say ''shit'' at my discretion."


    I leaned against the white stone of the wall, already hot before noon, even through my sleeves. I felt like I was learning a lot about how the world operated, but backwards. So long ago, I''d been a starry-eyed idealist, and then the more I''d fought with Exhumans and the XPCA, the more I''d learned about how the world worked. Or, more specifically, how it didn''t work. But here, in this city, it seemed like everything I once thought possible wasn''t just that, it existed. It was real. It was happening, right here, and right now.


    "I think tomorrow, I''ll wear the silks," I said aloud, and Rio smiled as she shrugged.


    "Whatever you wish," she repeated.


    And it was, I had to admit. The city really was.

 367b. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Tem.

    I was scared when I woke. That was not a surprise to me. I had been scared every day when I woke up for many weeks now. The XPCA and Moon''s dad were good at keeping me scared. Scared and alone and helpless. Maybe not as much as I could have been.


    But today, I was not alone, I remembered. It was only the second day since Chariot had saved me, yet again, and it was the first day we were in this city in China, which should not exist.


    I spent many long minutes with my eyes open but not moving, forcing myself to think and remember before I made a mistake or hurt someone. When I woke up scared, I sometimes used my powers, but I wanted to make sure I did not do that now. I looked on one side of me and saw Chariot''s sister with her eyes closed. On the other side was AEGIS, sitting up and typing to herself in the air. Both were in their own beds, like the one I was in.


    Even though I figured out where I was now and remembered, I was still confused. I thought I might be for a long time, until I just forgot about it, because I did not think I''d find an answer.


    And what happened yesterday had just made things worse and confused me even more.


    "Psst," I heard a voice, and I held very still in case it wasn''t talking to me. Which was likely. But then it ''psst''ed again, and this time it said my name, and I felt bad to make them have to do it twice. I looked around, and past AEGIS, who was smiling at me, I saw Chariot in the doorway.


    "Tem, you up?" he asked. Even though he had addressed me by name, I still had to check he wasn''t talking to someone else. I was unprepared for him to call on me like that. Eventually I nodded at him and sat up. "Get dressed and meet me outside," he said.


    And then he left. And I was even more confused. AEGIS was still smiling at me, though I did not understand why. But I could not keep Chariot waiting until I understood, or he would wait all year, so I slipped out of bed as quickly as I could, and did as he asked, putting on my clothes from yesterday and slipping out.


    "Have fun, you two," AEGIS said knowingly. I wish I could say things as knowingly as she did, because half the time I couldn''t even understand what people were talking about. But wishing didn''t work, so I met Chariot and he smiled at me.


    "Can you turn visible?" he asked. And I nodded, because I could. And then I realized he was asking and felt stupid as I did so. He smiled at me in a way which made my heart pound uncomfortably. "Isn''t that better? Now I can see you," he said.


    I didn''t know if it was better or not, but he did, so I agreed.


    I still wasn''t sure what I thought of him though. I had hoped I would have a few days to sit and think and perhaps he would be busy with important things so that I could slowly catch up and figure out what was going on. But instead, he''d called on me right away, on the morning of our first day in Oasis, and I was still unprepared.


    Because, of course, I believed in him, and knew he knew best. Of course, nothing could stop him or keep him from his goals. He was Chariot, after all. If something knocked him down, he''d just stand up twice as tall.


    But¡­


    I pushed the last word out of my head. It was wrong, awful, blasphemous. I believed in him still. And so he was right when he said it was better. By definition.


    "I thought," he said "that we might catch up. We were separated for so long, and I wanted to spend time with you."


    "W-with me?" I asked, my voice breaking more than I wanted.


    He nodded with that confidence I didn''t have. "Of course with you. You''re one of my best friends, Tem."


    I didn''t have anything to say to that. I didn''t think that was right, but I couldn''t believe he was wrong either. Perhaps it was a joke and I was just misunderstanding. But I didn''t ask, I just fell in behind him to follow him for as long as he wanted.


    "Not today," he said, and I was confused. He took a step back, and so did I. And then another, but this time he caught me, faster than I could react, and held my hand by his side.


    Or at least, that''s what happened. What it felt like was...was all the volcanoes in the world blowing up at once, and all of their lava swishing through my blood. His hand was so warm, it was like a concentrated sunny day in my fingers. There was a ringing...a keening noise, like someone was rubbing their finger along a glass...and then I realized that was me, and that noise was coming out of my mouth at his touch.


    I tried to tear my hand away and cover my mouth, tried to turn invisible to hide my shame, but he just held on and smiled right at me. I felt so helpless and exposed and...and...and¡­


    And amazing. My stomach flip-flopped like it had wings. My toes wriggled in my shoes without me telling them to, and my throat felt so dry and so choked and so...it felt like his eyes were looking right through me, and I was choking on his gaze. His beautiful, green-brown gaze.


    "Can you walk by my side, Tem?" he asked.


    I hardly heard him. I''d have agreed to anything in that moment. I nodded with all the strength I had, and more I didn''t know I did.


    But this is impossible¡­


    I shushed the thought. It wasn''t impossible if it was what Chariot wanted. I believed in him.


    And as he led me down through the city, through the white buildings and past the wall, I hardly noticed. The gleaming of the stone was black compared to his dark hair. The wide streets were cramped with his body so suffocatingly close. The morning sun cooled my body, in all the places his hand did not touch.


    I didn''t know how long it was, but we were at the edge of the city by the time he stopped and let me go. I was panting, but not from being tired. He let me catch my breath.


    "How''ve you been, Tem?" he asked.


    "S-s-s-so good," I muttered.


    "I meant, in more than the last few minutes," he winked at me, and my stomach flipped again.


    "Um¡­" I tried to think of anything other than the last few minutes and came up very blank. I swallowed hard and realized I was ruining his conversation with me. He was expecting me to say something about my life, and having lived it, I should have something. "Um, I was in prison."


    "I''m sorry about that."


    "NO!" I shrieked, and then clapped my hands to my mouth. Oh no. I''d just screamed at him. I was just trying to...but then...I only--


    He smiled, and I was confused. "It''s okay, Tem. I really let you down. You were captured, and then held by the XPCA and IkaCo for most of a month. I can''t imagine how that must have been or how you felt. That''s why I wanted to talk to you."


    "I believed!" I said to him in more of a shout than I wanted, but not really shouting. "I knew...that you would come. If...if you wanted to."


    He smiled at me, but this one was more sad, and I wondered if I''d made a mistake and hurt him. "So was that it, then?" he asked. "Did you think you weren''t worth saving, and that''s why I didn''t come?"


    I shook my head. And then nodded. I didn''t know.


    My thoughts disappeared as his fingers pushed my chin upwards, his hands calloused but still gentle. I found it harder and harder to breathe and swallow as he turned my chin up until I was facing him directly.


    It was like looking into the sun. I couldn''t do it. But I couldn''t resist his hand either. I felt like I was melting on the spot, and my legs were going weak.


    "Tem, I will always come for you," he said, his eyes serious as they bored into mine. "No matter what you think of yourself, know that I think you are someone worth saving."


    "B-bu-but, Moon--"


    "And I''ll save Moon just as soon as I can. I''m not as worried about her, she''s with her dad and he''s interested in keeping her healthy and together. You...I don''t think he cared as much about."The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "S-s-so you did...only s-save me because...I was a burden," I said, finding the strength to look away. "Because you had to...because I was weak."


    "I never said that."


    It was too much. The special treatment. The lovey-dovey looks from a man beyond me...beyond men. I felt like throwing up as guilt and doubt piled high in my heart.


    "Spit it out," he said. I shook my head vehemently. It wouldn''t do any good. He could see right through me. Except when I was invisible and wanted him to. "Seriously, Tem, just say it."


    "I¡­" I stopped and stammered. "I didn''t¡­"


    "You lost faith in me, didn''t you?" he asked. And that was enough to make my legs give, finally. I was halfway to the ground before he caught me, his arm in the small of my back. Again, I heard the keening noise, until he set me down gently and sat beside me on the grass.


    "H-h-how¡­?" I stammered.


    "Yesterday," he beamed at me and gave himself a playful poke in the cheek. "When I fought that guard, he kicked me square in the cheek. I thought you were going to go ballistic, but instead, you just watched it happen."


    I felt like a little bonfire of shame as he looked down at me. Of course he wouldn''t miss that. Chariot didn''t miss anything.


    Except...that he did. That he had. That Moon was still out there, that he''d lost to the XPCA. His own sister, that I knew he loved, a million times more than me, whom I could never doubt he''d do anything for, she was captured. And Moon. And Rito. And me.


    He was right there, fighting as hard as he could, and still it wasn''t enough. And I didn''t know how to deal with it. I didn''t know how to face the possibility that Chariot could ever not be enough. Because here he was, right now, telling me, showing me how present he was and how unstoppable he could be.


    But he wasn''t. But he was. And I didn''t know what to believe anymore.


    All the feelings twisted up inside my heart suddenly lurched and I felt vomit spray out of my mouth as my eyes watered. He rubbed my back as I heaved and cried, humiliated at making him baby me, at being such a waste of time and space for him to look after.


    But at the same time, I wanted him to. I wanted his time and attention. His touch was more than I could stand, but I craved it, even as he caressed my spine to ease my stupid, pointless, emotional puking. I wanted to never stop puking so he''d never stop touching me. It was greedy and selfish and wrong and--


    And on some level. Some horrible, dark, sick level that I hated, deep inside myself, I felt like...I deserved it.


    "I waited so long!" I shouted at him. "I believed in you!"


    He just looked through me, his hand still moving on my back.


    "I had faith, every day! I fought them with all my s-s-strength, because I knew you''d be there for me!"


    His face was more pale, his eyes more empty. I was hurting him, but I couldn''t stop now.


    "You were s-supposed to be there! You s-said s-s-so!"


    His hand stopped, and I found I didn''t care. I was set on ruining everything. I had to tell him, it felt like. Even if it was the end of everything, I had to say what I had to say, what had been boiling inside me for weeks, what had been tearing up my heart and making me so scared and alone every morning when I woke.


    "You s-said you''d protect me."


    "Tem, I''m sorry."


    I pushed his hand away. What was I doing?


    "I just...I can''t believe...this wasn''t s-supposed to happen anymore. I found you. I found you." I realized I was crying full-on now. "I s-survived s-so much of the world until I could find you, and then I did, and then it wasn''t s-supposed to hurt anymore. And I told myself every day, that you''d just given up on me, and I was garbage you''d left behind. Because that was the only explanation for you leaving me. And I believed it, too...until you rescued me. And now...and now¡­"


    I wiped snot on the back of my wrist and stared at him with bleary, teary eyes. I couldn''t see him anymore. I couldn''t stand. I couldn''t swallow or stop my tears. I couldn''t finish my thought, because I didn''t know where that thought finished.


    But he did, because he always knew. And that was what was most frustrating and confusing about him.


    "Now we''re just us, Tem. Now it''s you and me again, and you have to rethink who you are and who I am to you. You''re stronger than you''ve ever been, even if it doesn''t feel like it. You''ve changed. I''ve changed. And maybe your previous assessments were wrong. Or maybe they were right and just don''t apply anymore. Or maybe they''re still right, and there''s just something you''re missing."


    "Can you tell me which it is?" I asked.


    Through my tears I saw him smile, and then his arms wrapped around me. Somehow, I didn''t fluster or panic at his touch, I just cried and let myself be held.


    "Of course not," he said. "It''s your life, Tem. And while I''ll always be here for you, I can''t run it for you. Someday, you''re going to have to find what path you want on your own."


    "But there''s s-so many things to think about, and I''m no good at thinking. I just want you to tell me what''s wrong and right."


    "That''d be nice, huh?" he laughed. "I''d like that too. So would Karu and AEGIS, I think they both lean on me for that as well, in their own ways. And Saga, too, though she''s a lot sneakier about it."


    I blinked at him, struggling to get the tears out from between us. Had he honestly...seriously...without mistake just compared lost, stupid, dumb, garbage me to all the strongest women in his life? My mind spun around that thought but refused to land on it.


    "Fact is, Tem, you''ve seen the same things we all have. I''ve had this talk with Lia, with Karu, and with AEGIS, and I guess even Saga, but the simple fact is, when we see the world and it doesn''t make sense, that''s because the world in our mind and the world in front of our eyes are different. Something we believe is wrong, somewhere. Things aren''t the way we thought they were."


    His arms cinched harder around me for a moment and I didn''t know how something which felt so tight could feel so good.


    "Like this place. Yesterday, I was so confused about it. I didn''t believe it could exist, even though the evidence was right in front of my eyes. Everything I''d ever known about China, about Sinos, about Exhumans, all of it told me this wasn''t. And yet it was. Do you know what you have to do then?"


    I shook my head.


    "You either accept you were wrong, and open your mind to new ideas, even if they make you uncomfortable, even if they made you do a lot of hard thinking on your own, without anyone able to help you, until you figure out something that makes the world make sense...or you don''t."


    "What happens if you don''t?"


    "Nothing," he shrugged. "You just see the world differently from everyone else. Sometimes, that gets you in a lot of trouble. Sometimes it doesn''t. The XPCA believes all Exhumans are dangerous, without exception."


    "And they''re wrong, right? S-so I shouldn''t believe like that."


    He smiled. "But I also believe the world can be better than it is, with Exhumans and humans living together in peace, and the world keeps proving me wrong there, too. It''s not always better to accept the world as truth, and not always better to keep to your ideas. You have to decide, which world in your head is the best one for you to live in."


    "But I want to live in yours," I said. It was a childish thing to say, and it came out of my mouth more pleadingly than I wanted. But I was wrapped in his arms, and if there was a time to beg like a child, it was now.


    "Do you, though?" he asked, and I nodded. "No, seriously. Think about it and don''t just agree. Think of all the confusion and suffering you''ve been through recently. All of that misery, that was because you saw me differently than I am. You can change that, though."


    "But I don''t want to."


    "Because it''s easier?"


    I nodded.


    "Suffering and misery are easier?"


    I nodded...but slower.


    "And you''d rather have self-doubt all the time about me, and what I think, and what my role in your life is, than face doubts about the rest of your life, like other people do? It''s easier to spend the rest of your life wondering if I''ve got it right, rather than wondering what''s right on your own?"


    My nodding stopped and I had to just sit and wonder.


    And it wasn''t fair.


    Because he was right again. He was always right. Even when he was telling me that he was wrong.


    "You don''t have to make up your mind on the whole universe today, Tem," he said with a reassuring smile. "You don''t have to decide anything ever, in fact. But if you live your life with an open mind and a willingness to answer your own questions, I think you''ll find you have more answers than you think."


    He was done bashing my brain, and that was good because I felt like mush in his arms anyway. Somehow he let the two of us sit there like that for another few hours before my stomach made noise and he pulled us to our feet.


    "You''ve been doing so much better with your weight and eating. Make sure to keep it up."


    "I didn''t have a choice. They were forcing me to eat."


    "Well you have a choice now. And I know it''s best for you to keep it up. But I''d be a big hypocrite if I said you had to listen to me now."


    I smiled at him and he laughed and I laughed, too. I had thought it was a joke, and I was glad he laughed first so I knew I wouldn''t be mistaken. I also thought, of course, I would listen to him and keep eating. Chariot was always right.


    Except...sometimes he wasn''t. He could be wrong. I still wasn''t sure what to make of that, and just having that thought in my head, unquestioned, felt scandalous and wrong. But he''d said it himself and I couldn''t...argue with¡­


    This was even more difficult than I''d thought.


    But what I did know was that right now, I could stand on my own two feet again. I was healthier and stronger than I''d been in a long time, and it felt good. I wanted to stay like this. I wanted to not be a burden on everyone. And if I did what he said and ate my food, that was a step in that direction.


    I''d do it, I decided. I''d eat breakfast today, like everyone else.


    And as I made that decision, he beamed at me, like he could still see right through me and all the thoughts I had. He wasn''t smiling for me doing what he wanted, I knew, but because I''d decided at all. Because...of what he''d said, and done, and hadn''t done, sometimes, even if it was just breakfast, I could make my own decisions.


    And he was right. If I thought about it, I really had the answer already. It wasn''t so hard. At least, breakfast wasn''t. I wondered how many decisions I''d make before I turned to him, and thought, probably not very many.


    But that was okay too. Because whether it was the world in my head or the one in front of my eyes, Chariot was there, too. And I knew he didn''t mind if I watched him to see what I should do.


    We turned back towards the white buildings, and I took a few steps on my own on the path in front of us before Chariot caught up.

 367c. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. AEGIS.

    I sat paralyzed in my bed, my eyes darting across the room, wondering if somehow, I''d finally managed to sleep, and this was one of those ''nightmares'' I''d heard so much about.


    But conventional wisdom of pulling at my cheeks confirmed that no, this was reality, no matter how insane and outlandish. I absolutely wished it wasn''t.


    We''d been here about half a day, it was the first morning in Oasis, and the others were just waking up. Tem had wordlessly slipped out of the room after dressing, and Athan had joined us...in a fashion. He was going from bed to bed, speaking in the general direction of the inhabitant, and complimenting each on their choice in fashion.


    He came to me and complimented me as well, though I was wearing the same as ever, one of the few dresses I still had packed and not ruined.


    "Athan are you okay?" I asked.


    "Terrified of cultural appropriation," He replied with a shrug. "You hungry?"


    "I don''t eat."


    But apparently I''d said yes, because he turned on his heel, happy as could be, and strolled right out the door and back into the city.


    While this was happening, each of the other girls was acting bizarre as hell as well, each holding a one-sided conversation with everyone else here, nobody waiting for answers and all responding as though they''d gotten them. Karu was blithely discussing rank and military experience, a rather normal conversation while she shamelessly undressed and changed, and Saga cradled her head and babbled incoherently in a complaining fashion.


    Lia seemed mostly asleep still, at least, but I wasn''t going to wait around for her to go off as well. I bolted past Karu without her so much as batting an eye and found Athan downstairs.


    "Athan! Athan!" I shouted, shaking him. He looked right through me, apparently oblivious to my touch. Instead he just kept walking, and not knowing what else to do, I followed.


    I pulled down every page I had cached on medical conditions which matched these. Sleepwalking was my first guess, but there wasn''t any kind of mass-hysteria which could cause the effect in multiple victims at once that I found. That led me to gasses causing hallucination, but everything I found of those would either kill if dosed continuously overnight, or be completely ineffective, given the topography and distance of coverage we were looking at here.


    A large part of me which I''d grown accustomed to ignoring gnawed at me, and I indulged it just this once. My old programming, and the constant paranoia that everything wrong, all the time, everywhere was somehow the result of Exhumans.


    Because what else did I have to go on here? Nobody had eaten anything last night. Athan and the others were in two separate rooms. I didn''t see any signs of physical distress or injection...and I was up all night with the girls to confirm they hadn''t been victim of anything.


    I had no idea. And if it were Exhuman, what kind? If it were a code-X, why would Saga be affected? And I wouldn''t necessarily be unaffected...using that rock in Eryendria confirmed that some code-X powers could interface with a synthetic organism like myself.


    But it couldn''t just be visual or audio illusions or the like, or we''d all see each others''. It had to be inside the mind somewhere. Which...by definition, that was a code-X. But why all the sudden this morning?


    Athan served himself a bowl of watery gruel which looked about as good as some of the cooking I''d done in a past life and ate it with apparent relish. Not for the first time, I wished I had that kind of interface so I could try it for myself and see if his reaction was reasonable or not. But I really didn''t need to. Really, really, given the animated one-sided conversation he held while he ate.


    He was promising the air that he wouldn''t do anything to risk the city''s safety. If only he knew.


    Lia was arriving for food as well. There were many others around us I''d mostly been ignoring, random residents of Oasis who all ignored us as they assembled and ate. I could tell from their clothes that the majority of them were laborers, probably getting an early start on the day.


    And not one of them looked up at the scene of Athan pompously talking to himself, gesturing into the air, dancing with it almost.


    I had a terrifying thought, and measured the risks. And then I looked at Athan and threw out the calculations. I sprang to my feet and landed on a table adjacent.


    Nobody stirred. My dusty heels were between two bowls of gruel being eaten. I kicked one of them over.


    Its owner muttered something like a swear in a language I didn''t recognize. An exclamation of some kind, as he moved to clean up his mess. And again, nobody reacted.


    It wasn''t just Athan and us, I realized. It was everyone. Nobody here was interacting with anyone else here. Athan was just the chattiest monkey, but they were all still monkeys.


    That was more than enough for me. I raced outside to try to find Athan again, but instead ran into Tem, walking down the street with a stranger, one hand extended in front of her in his hand and her face bright red.


    "Tem," I sighed. "Thank God. Where''s Athan?"


    She didn''t hear me, didn''t react. Just kept right on walking, squirming and flush as she went, as excited as a new bride.


    I was terrified to know what was going on in her head, but that wasn''t half as bad as the fact she''d somehow completely and willingly let Athan out of her sight. Given how pleased she looked, I had to assume she was still with him in her head¡­


    The arm outstretched. The blush. I understood. In her dreams, the hand-holding little degenerate.


    So what then? I thought, following her, my mind racing. Mentally, she was being led off by Athan by the hand to do something...I wasn''t sure I wanted to see her reenact. But with a stranger? Did that mean this mass hallucination was some kind of wish fulfillment? Was every person here a victim of their own dreams, forever laboring away for the city while enslaved to its will?


    That seemed horrifying. And more, I had no idea what to do if that were the case. Could I just grab Athan and drag him into the desert until he came to? But if he was enslaved, wouldn''t the slaver come looking for him? Or worse...realizing I was a threat, turn him on me?


    I was reminded how much I hated code-X''s. Saga had somewhat desensitized me, but when that old loathing flooded back in, it came back with a vengeance. It was just unfair...my mind, my plans, my observation and preparation, they were everything I was, and something which could just instantly annihilate that capacity--


    Yeah, I hated code-X''s. Saga could deal. This was bullshit.


    I followed her down to the outermost wall where she sat and cried and talked to herself a lot...really had a whole emotional moment there by herself with this unresponsive nobody. I spent a bit of time alternately trying to figure out what all was going on in her head, feeling bad about eavesdropping on what was clearly a personal moment, and then feeling less bad because doing that was basically her entire existence in a nutshell. Mostly, I just kept on low-key panic while I tried to figure out anything which might help me.


    I went over every single piece of data I had from yesterday. Every word Rio said might have been a clue.


    She''d said a lot of bizarre things, but this being a bizarre city, I was prepared to worry about them as they proved themselves relevant. This ''god'' of theirs, for example, living here since before the war and somehow creating the entire city? That just stunk of superstition. Rio wearing a labcoat and working in a lab, in the inner, closed-off parts of the city? Yeah, that had red flags all up and down it. And her explanation that everyone in the city was free to do whatever they wanted...in a place like this, with everything so immaculate and organized?


    I could tell how that worked already. Everyone did exactly what they wanted, while enslaved. No wonder things seemed so functional here. ''High priestess'' probably just meant ''mind-fucking slaver scum''.


    Because it had to be them. Exhuman powers all had ranges of influence, so it made the most sense for them to be positioned in the center of the city. I didn''t know for sure how her powers worked, but putting it together with working in a lab¡­


    I frowned as I watched Tem cry a bit more, squeezing herself in a hug.


    ...it kind of screamed technopath, didn''t it?


    I was of course familiar with the XPCA''s recorded phases of technopath operation -- their cycle of paranoia, fortification, resentment, attack. And I knew how dangerous they could be, I had the numbers for any number of XPCA missions, how many bodies they tended to claim depending on each phase of their development. And I knew the stages were cyclical, that after attacking and establishing a ''safe space'', the technopath would begin anew, afraid of attacks against their new haven, and so forth.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    It fit almost too perfectly. The need to control literally everything in the city as the only abatement of their paranoia. The caste system to keep things organized and secure...the constant hints of the city being attacked and the need for a whole friggin'' warrior caste to fight back. We were in the middle of the goddamn glasslands, how many enemies could Rio have?


    But what I didn''t know, what really scared me was nobody had ever seen a technopath''s cycle run to its conclusion. Always, we were focused on stopping them as soon as we could, before the damages shot into the exponential part of the curve. Nobody knew what happened after that.


    I hoped, for the world''s sake, that it peaked at controlling a city. But given that we were here to stop the source of mysterious future-tech weapons that nobody else could reproduce, I kinda doubted it. However satisfied with Oasis Rio was or wasn''t, it seemed apparent that she wasn''t done.


    Every little conclusion in my head only seemed to reaffirm how fucked the situation was while adding to the depressingly huge pile of numbers that informed me in plain math how little chance I had and how limited my options were.


    As it stood, my best chance looked like crawling back to the states somehow, begging for my life, somehow deluding everyone for long enough that I was a real human and also, not an Exhuman nor a military threat, being given a public trial with a huge amount of publicity, and riding that awareness into a platform of revealing the existence and threat of Oasis, somehow forcing the government''s hand to action before dying horribly and permanently for my and Athan''s crimes.


    Which sounded really, really bad. And that was the best option I''d come up with thus far. It wasn''t like Skyweb was floating around on this half of the planet, or we had a lot of allies who could besiege a city full of Exhumans. Even if we did somehow talk every friendly Exhuman we''d ever met into joining us in a suicide roadtrip to China, we were facing an unknown force here.


    Which meant, simply, I needed more data. As bad as this all looked, I was confident that data could fix everything, if only I had enough of it.


    In a way, that conclusion was liberating. My job wasn''t to fix all our problems and fight, it was to not get found out, to pretend to be just like the others -- batshit insane and all. Right up until the time to strike...or to flee...amassing as much information as I could about the threat.


    I turned and looked up at the white towers, and there, on the wall above me, saw Athan standing and looking out, just a brown speck on the white wall. I surprised myself by frowning as I saw him, and felt my heart tumble.


    That was...the optimal plan, of course. But I wasn''t an optimal machine. I''d been trying so hard for so long not to be a machine at all, actually. All this threat-assessment of Exhumans, all this...killing myself to eradicate their menace and save the planet, all this bigger-picture stuff...I had to remind myself, that''s not who I was anymore. I''d put down that role, and chosen another one.


    I wouldn''t just sit by and passively analyze the situation so some military bigwig could take apart my memory core and figure out just how many more kilotons of nuke it would take to glass this place as well. Because then I''d be dead, and Athan would be dead, and for me, that was a loss condition. If the rest of the world bit it, but we were the last two standing¡­


    Well, that wouldn''t happen. But it was a damn ways better than the other alternative. I frowned as I futzed with my internal parameters for a minute, trying to tune out that voice inside me that told me who I was and what I was built to do.


    That voice was, after all, only technically correct. Which wasn''t good enough.


    I took about a dozen strides and one bounding leap to land on the wall next to Athan.


    He looked lost in thought as I arrived, but when I approached, turned to smile at me. For one fleeting moment, my heart skipped a beat and sung, and I waved and spoke to him.


    "Athan! You see me!" I cheered.


    "Thank you for showing me that," he said, to a point just on my left. "I...never knew Exhumans could do good like that."


    I sighed as my heart sank again. Yeah, that''d have been too easy, wouldn''t it? I fell against the wall, flopping over it, my fingertips dangling over the drop far below. It was stupid, so stupid, for me to have gotten my hopes up like that, and it irritated me how readily I could get myself crushed.


    "Are high priestesses supposed to say ''shit''?"


    I turned sideways to look at him, talking to himself. But not to himself, to a high priestess, apparently.


    And again, surprised myself a little bit at how readily my emotions flared up. Suddenly I didn''t care quite so much if Athan were to die in a tragic nuking. The way he was all smiley and lit up as he imagined himself talking to Rio. He''d known her for less than a day, and was beaming like she was teaching him new ways of getting his dick sucked.


    "I think tomorrow, I''ll wear the silks," he said.


    "Yeah, tomorrow, you wear whatever the hell you want, moron," I told him. I knew I was being stupid but fuck him. Playing dress-up with her already. When was the last time he ever noticed or commented on what I wore?


    ...other than this morning, when he was already in her delusion. That didn''t count.


    A horrible thought crossed my mind that if Tem were living in her perfect dream-world with Athan, than...this must be his? For starters, I was suddenly much more interested in what outfit he saw me in this morning. But past that, in his idea of paradise, he''d gone and left me so he could spend all day with this girl he just met?


    My heart literally skipped a beat as countermeasures jumped up to suppress my spiking emotions. I felt every bit the stupid, hormonal, irrational girl that I both loved and hated that I could be, as I unloaded a string of thesaurus-enhanced explicatives at Athan which would have given a one-eyed carpenter pause. Bolstered all the more by the stupid fucking grin on his face as he took it without a glimmer of recognition.


    Oh yeah. I wasn''t just going to sit here and gather intel. Rio had another thing coming.


    I stormed off, neither sure where I was going nor what I''d do when I got there, but I needed something to do, and I needed it now. But of course the whole fucking city was already in pristine condition, so all I could do was stomp around and fume, until I found the dining area Athan had been in this morning and set myself to work pushing in all the chairs and making sure they were all lined up exactly.


    Which was, again, stupid, I knew. I was really doing a number of my opinion of myself today, but given the situation, I think I could expect some justifiable panic and/or outbursts.


    Which was just an excuse, I knew, so I sat down and just tried to breathe for a while. I dialed back my indices so I''d stop freaking out and then freaking out about how much I was freaking out, and basically just arrested the entire slow-rolling panic attack which had been my morning.


    Just...deep breath in, and out. Watch that O2 gauge rise and fall. Relax.


    I had the right idea before. Not necessarily the whole mole-agent crawling, begging to the world government to please, save themselves. But to observe, gather data, act with precision and determination, once I knew what was going on.


    I reminded myself that everything I''d just concluded, all the endpoints I''d reached about the technopathy and weapons distribution and recurring cycles...that was all speculative pending further analysis. Rio was a woman in a lab coat, who''d said some strange things and lived in a strange city where strange things were happening to all my friends and loved ones. That didn''t mean anything I''d thought was true.


    Except for the bit where she was making Athan fall for her. I''d kill her for that one.


    Or, y''know, so I thought. That could have been a mistake as well. But it was still enough of an aberrant thought to make me jump when I saw her sit down opposite me.


    For half a moment I thought, prayed, that it was literally anyone else, but there wasn''t any mistaking her. She gave me an almost...apologetic-seeming half-smile, and straightened out the front of her coat.


    Me, I made a very dignified noise and pointed at her as though to say ''hey, you''re that person I''ve been secretly considering plotting against and/or killing''. Something halfway between a seagull and a leopard. It was not my most graceful moment.


    "Um, hello," she said. "AEGIS, right?"


    "Yes. And you''re Rio."


    She nodded. "And you can see me, it looks like?"


    It was my turn to nod. This conversation was going great. I didn''t know why we were having a conversation, or why she wasn''t killing me, or me trying to kill her.


    "Great," she said, with sudden enthusiasm. "Great! I can hardly believe it. But imagine, another high priestess after all this time. My word, you have no idea what it''s been like all this time. But now you''re here, and I''m so happy you are!"


    I blinked at her, wondering again if maybe...I could just like...snake my hands over and subtly break her neck. Both to end this whole debacle, as well as escape this conversation I was somehow in. I swallowed hard and committed myself to the role I''d already decided on. We''d get some data. Then we break her neck.


    Because honestly, based on how she was talking, and the excited way she was nearly bouncing in her seat, I had no idea what to make of anything. I could feel my previous conclusions flying out the door.


    "Um...yay?" I offered tentatively.


    She chuckled and stood up. "You must be so confused. And I''m sure I''m not helping. But I''m so happy you''re here and so excited. I can''t wait to show you everything and see what you think. It''s been a real long haul, but...well...if it''s not too forward of me, I''m really dying for a girlfriend, you know what I mean?"


    I blinked at her. "No, I have no idea. And I''m...not lesbian."


    "Not...oh no...not that kind. Oh I''m so sorry. Shit, I''m already fucking this all up, aren''t I?"


    That was something I could agree with, even without understanding the rest. Somehow she still managed to laugh as I nodded, though at herself.


    "Okay, how''s this," she said, smoothing down her front again. "We''ll go in to the center ring, I''ll explain everything, and then...you''ll have some better understanding what''s going on, okay?"


    "Sure. Sounds good."


    "Awesome," she said, and turned to go, waiting for me to join her at the door.


    Well, there it was. Everything I wanted, handed over to me in an instant. The thought of it made my heart sink even lower than when I saw Athan hitting on his new girlfriend.


    Because things didn''t work like that. Reality didn''t come along and offer you the person you wanted carrying a silver platter laden with the things you desired. Nothing was this perfect, here, or any other freaky place on Earth, and that led me to a terrible conclusion I wasn''t sure any amount of data was going to refute.


    Using that rock in Eryendria confirmed that some code-X powers could interface with a synthetic organism like myself. And now, here I was, living in a world where only the clues I picked up and my careful planning could save Athan from a fate worse than anything. And those clues were being handed to me on a silver platter.


    It seemed impossible. It seemed too good to be true. Like Tem going on a date with Athan, or him rescuing some lady-damsel by literally becoming her newest, shiniest white knight.


    It sounded fake. And if I thought I was hopelessly screwed and helpless before, then God help me now.

 367d. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Saga.

    I hefted the seat in my hands and gauged its weight. It was heavy, almost too heavy for me to lift, with my anemic noodle arms, but through sheer grit and gumption, somehow, I was able to overcome the mighty stool.


    I wasn''t that weak. It was stone, the same white stone as everything else in this city, almost like they had nothing else to manufacture from except stone and glass and cloth. Which was probably true, actually. And while it was relatively light for a big ol'' stool made of stone, it was still swinging a rock around. Which is exactly what I did, giving it a couple experimental cuts through the air, feeling how I should adjust my grip to keep its momentum from ripping it out of my hands.


    The others gave me strange looks. They asked me things, the same dumb questions they probably actually would have. ''Are you insane?'' ''What are you doing?'' ''Are you just taking a stool sample or what?'' Thanks Fake-Lia.


    Once I was satisfied I could brandish it without fucking up, I went over to where Athan was watching me with a patient smile.


    His smile faltered for only a second as I brought the stool down on his head with a crack of fracturing bone. Not a sound I heard others make too often by comparison, and I had to say I was a fan of being able to enjoy its tones without feeling the accompanying pain.


    The room exploded into chaos. AEGIS and Karu were on me in an instant. And then half of each of them and all of me evaporated in a beam of white light. Lia was just screaming, and Athan laid very still on the floor as the seeping red under him grew.


    It was all very convincing and very traumatic. If I weren''t currently being pinned and lasered and beaten, I''d have clapped slowly.


    But none of it was real. I knew that. Because in my head, I could tell where Athan and Karu and Tem and Lia were, and none of them were in this room with me. I didn''t know why I was seeing or feeling or hearing this perfect illusion, something so convincing that even delving into my own mind, it refused to acknowledge in any way that something was amiss. But as perfect and indetectable a fake as it was, it couldn''t stop me from seeing inside the minds of others and knowing that we were all under the same spell.


    Athan was being led around the city by our hostess, being handed carefully-crafted endearing bits of personal information and painting her a woman in distress. Tem was out on as close a thing to a date with Athan as she could allow herself. Karu was holding the line against a common enemy who was threatening the sanctity of the city and the lives of all she cared for. And Lia was working, uninterrupted, having devised a workaround so devastatingly clever to get back onto the ''net that even AEGIS was impressed with her.


    AEGIS herself was...somewhere, I was sure. Possibly waving her hands right in front of my eyes, and I just couldn''t see through the illusion.


    And none of their stories matched up. None of their realities were any more real than mine. None of them were in this room, and no matter how the Athan on the floor went white or reeked of blood or looked unnaturally still, none of that would convince me, because I could feel him half a district away, rubbing out a heart-boner he was developing for Rio.


    Tem lasered me again, and yeah, it hurt. Felt like every inch of my flesh burning away. As someone who was something of an expert in it, it was a very convincing death. My mind shut down as it always did, expecting the end, pulled that last, familiar gasp of ''Oh. Drat.'' that one faces right between pulling out of shock and realizing the end is there.


    But the end never came. I never blinked out of being and came back. I just...was again, which might seem a fine distinction, but I was a connoisseur of death, and I didn''t buy just any crass counterfeit. It was pretty apparent to me that whoever was responsible for all this had never actually died before, which was a situation I intended to resolve immediately.


    I wanted to reach out and grab hold of Tem and put her down so she''d stop blowing me up, but she wasn''t there to grasp. It really was just me in an empty room throwing myself around and writhing and shrieking, I knew, but that didn''t make the sensations any less vivid. I couldn''t very well make my body move when it was wholly convinced that most of the time, it was a charred pile of ash.


    Which, I admit, stumped me for a while. I didn''t get that moment of clarity when I came back like usual, since I never actually died, so thinking was a lot harder than it should have been. There was more pain and shrieking and burning and less...having a few moments to myself than I was accustomed to.


    Man, not getting actually killed was kind of a bitch, actually.


    I did try a few things. I figured, knowing the mind as I did, that whoever or whatever was pulling this on me was using my own mind and knowledge against me. I doubted very much that they were able to fully simulate all my buddies so convincingly through stupid things like study and hard work, which meant this illusion was probably based on my own thoughts.


    So I thought about things like how all this lasering would probably burn a convenient hole in the floor at some point and let me drop away. Or how Tem might still be a bit frail and exhaust herself right about now and let up. Or hell, how all this heat in the room from the repeated blasting would burn off Athan''s clothes and at least give me a show if I was stuck here.


    But just because I thought about it didn''t change anything. Which was a bit irritating, especially the last one, since I''d only just now realized that instead of killing him, I probably should have had a consequence-free bang with Fake-Athan instead. But all that really meant was they were drawing from deeper in my mind than any surface-level thought, and changing those kinds of concepts within myself was both a little more invasive than I ever wanted to go, and also pretty fuckin'' impossible to do while being distracted with the constant laser death.


    I thought about how there wasn''t anything actually stopping me from walking out the door. Even if Fake-Tem were physically pinning me, she wasn''t actually, and if I just kinda threw myself forward and let physics handle the rest, I''d flop my way out there eventually.


    Except...the thing in my head was insidious. Every time I tried throwing myself forward, it came up with totally justified ways for my body to throw itself back, against my will. Tem would blast half my body, and I''d stagger backwards on my remaining leg and fall on my ass. Or she''d hit some superheated, exploding piece of stoneware into the side of my face, and my crawling would snap backwards.


    Nothing a normal person would notice given the circumstances, but annoying when you were trying to find any seam in the illusion. I noted, for example, that while Athan was doing a significant amount of being touchy-feely with Rio, she always stopped him cold before he could get TOO handsy or anything. Or that while Tem was getting her huggles on, she was seated and being held, not jumping into him. Nothing was allowed which would break the illusion.


    If things got really bad, I could always call for help. Try speaking in their minds and the like, but¡­


    Lia had warned me explicitly against that behavior yesterday. Something about the way Rio had talked or looked when she''d mentioned code-X, Lia was certain there was something dark that way. Enough that she''d pulled me aside and told me in no uncertain terms to not reveal my powers, no matter what.


    From anyone else, I''d have probably broadcast to the whole city on the spot just to make a point, but I admittedly had a soft spot for the broken chickadee...and she definitely had a point. Rio and everyone else in this town might be a toad, but I wasn''t completely blind in picking up on the same hint.


    The air roared again as I was lasered into dust for the twenty-ninth time. Big three-oh coming up, that was always an event. In the few moments I had in between, I watched Fake-Lia crying her eyes out over her brother''s body. Just for something to do, really.


    So convincing it''d be heartbreaking, if my eyes were actually how I saw the world. This was just pathetic instead, it was like watching dolls move around and play at being people. I really did pity anyone who was limited to just the five senses.


    And then, watching her as my vision went white for my thirtieth fake-death today, I had an idea.


    I got up again and sat up. "Hey Lia, can you kill Tem for me?"


    She sputtered and shook and choked on the tears, phlegm, and snot she was dribbling out for her brother, and she stared at me with incomprehension and loathing. If she had a mind to be in, I''d probably be feeling all the inarticulate words of spite and misery and shit she was feeling. But again, just nothing.


    But she was a faithful reproduction. It took her a minute to process my words, but once she had, she had no choice. The compel kicked in, and her emotions flatlined, her face going slack as she slowly picked up the same blood-splattered stool I''d wielded.


    And I missed the best part because Tem blasted me again, the little shit. But when I came to, Tem''s head had been liberally smashed in, at least five or six times, and looked more like a picked-over melon than the silver-tufted noggin we all knew, and Lia was just coming to herself, screaming at what she saw and did and was splattered with.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    It put a big smile on my face. This illusion wasn''t all bad. Fucking with people consequence-free was fun.


    I watched her as her mind broke, her eyes going blank at the blood dripping from her hands, her little illusory brain scanning the room one desperate, final time to look for any shred of hope.


    All she found was the half-erased bodies of AEGIS and Karu. Her dead brother, and the girl she''d murdered. And me, smiling and watching it all.


    She staggered to the wide window and teetered on the balls of her feet as she looked down at the stone street a dozen feet below. Precious as this was, I really had to move on. I could only indulge myself in so many episodes of this drama before I wasn''t being honest with myself about that whole ''killing whoever was responsible'' thing.


    And honesty was important. Honesty like, honestly, I didn''t want to see Lia trying to kill herself, even if it was just a fake. The show was funnier when I was directing.


    When I got outside, I caught mind of Karu running past me, some urgent missive about some upcoming battle in her thoughts. In my eyes, she didn''t look like Karu, just another one of the faceless mass that made up this city, and she saw me similarly. I tried to slam into her to trip her up, but I was far from the first person she''d crashed into on her dire errand, and she gave me no thought at all except to shout an apology as she stumbled past.


    Next I found Lia, the real Lia, who to my eyes, looked like a hunched-over man working some clay on a potter''s wheel. To her, she was sitting at the table with a tablet in her hands, desperately screwing with network settings and request headers to get through to the civilian ''net from inside some closed military satellite network. It was amusing watching him go and seeing what bizarre shapes the clay was taking in response to her grasp.


    For fun, I pushed the clay/tablet down in her hands, feeling the sculpture squish under my fingers while seeing myself, as some ordinary townsperson pushing the tablet downwards to demand her attention.


    "What?" she asked the person-who-was-me, while the potter yelled at me about ruining his work.


    "Sorry to bother you," person-who-was-me muttered. "But I think I may be able to help. Have you checked the any of the scripts to see any which are configured to not launch on boot?"


    She furrowed her brow. "No? Why would that help with the network?"


    "Time in the military," person-who-was-me offered with a wink. "A lot of soldiers pass around their own cracks to get into civ-''net. Check there and see if there''s a script for it."


    She cocked her head. "Thanks?"


    Meanwhile the old man kept on his bleating that I couldn''t really hear because I was paying attention to Lia''s senses instead of my own. Kind of a shame that I couldn''t punch him without hitting her. No matter what I said in her face, she heard none of it, just the exchange between herself and person-who-was-me. So there was no way I could trigger her compel from here, which was frustrating.


    The closest I could get without shouting in everyone''s head would be to open up and show her some of my memories or share some of my senses, but I wouldn''t be able to provide any context or narrative...and I didn''t think having her suddenly witness a first-person contextless murder of her brother and then subsequent second-person betrayal of her friend and subsequent suicide would do her any favors.


    It might confuse her into questioning the illusion a bit, sure, but I was already fully aware of it and even with my powers, I still couldn''t do shit. I''d save the traumatizing her for when I had something more concrete.


    So I stood and moved on towards Athan, marvelling at how resilient this whole charade was. It''d just seamlessly created a whole conversation in-context for her to explain my intervening. Not that I expected it to crack just because I walked into it or anything, but still. I''d had this idea of just going and like, smacking Karu around or something until she couldn''t explain getting attacked by invisible adversaries...but with how flawlessly it''d put me into Lia''s narrative, I''d guess Karu''d just suddenly be attacked by assailants with optical camo or something.


    But there had to be something I could do that''d be so ridiculous or impossible that the illusion would tear. No lie was this perfect.


    I thought about it while watching Athan being really, truly pathetic. In his mind, he was sitting on the wall with Rio, the two of them wrapped in silence, or sometimes talking about themselves or the city, looking to all the world -- except to Athan himself, because that kid was just oblivious as fuck -- like a dorky couple on a first date.


    In reality, it was just sad. He was there by himself, talking to and touching and feeling nothing. There were all kinds of jokes I could crack wise about Athan on a date by himself, or imaginary girlfriends, and they were winners, too. I reaffirmed to kill the fuck out of whoever was responsible for this, because, that bastard, they were making some of my best material go to waste here.


    Experimentally, I sat where she sat. The other dude on the wall -- my mind''s proxy for Athan -- didn''t seem to notice or care...and on closer inspection, I found him asleep. I gave him a prod in the cheek, but that just gave fake-Rio license to playfully do the same to Athan while uttering something cutesy, so I cut that shit out right quick. Although I did slap him to see if that''d help somehow.


    It didn''t. fake-Rio ''caught'' him staring at a spontaneous wardrobe malfunction she''d incurred, and Athan sputtered his apologies, because, of course, he actually was staring. If pokes and slaps got her playing with him and popping out of her lab coat, I decided I needed to stop now before I accidentally got the two of them fucking somehow.


    But I was running dry on ideas. I wasn''t really an idea gal in the first place, I tended to solve my problems through liberal application of human death and suffering, like the construction of the pyramids. But this was a scenario where, if I did that, whatever crisis I forced on them would just be added to the illusion, enhancing their attachment to it instead of poking holes.


    It was frustrating. And I wondered where AEGIS was...she had to be around somewhere outside of all of this, watching us all act insane without being able to penetrate the facade either.


    I watched Athan a while longer, resisting the temptation to just push him off the wall to see what would happen. Knowing his mind, he''d probably reach out and accidentally pull down Rio''s fantasy panties or some shit before plunging to his death. Which sounded like a pretty cool way to die if I were doing it, but ultimately not worth to sacrifice him over.


    I sighed and laid on my back. The ground was blistering and the sun was almost directly overhead, an angry white circle in a grey-blue sky. After Tokyo, I never thought I''d want to hear another human mind again, but with literally everyone here being a toad, this place somehow sucked even worse. Why couldn''t we go to normal places, with regular amounts of humans to screw with? Why''d it have to be everyone or nobody?


    I got up and headed for the gate. If I were going to lay around and wait for inspiration, I''d to so under one of the trees down below. At least I''d be comfortable while I waited for us all to die or for Athan to fuck Rio or whatever.


    The ground was cooler here, and I was far enough away from the city that I could only sense Athan and Tem now. Turning my head, I could still see him on the wall, just a little spec of a man, half the size of my thumb. Briefly, I held my thumb up next to him, imagining the man in the distance terrorized by a giant thumb coming after him.


    I was very good at being bored, okay?


    I fell backwards and looked up at the boughs overhead. If I squinted, they almost looked like the ones at home. For all the muted colors of this place, the white of structures and black of the glass and grey of the sky, the trees here were as green and vivid as anywhere. I thought wistfully of my first tree, Ash, the one outside the mines where I''d been locked up, that I named after old man Wynn''s dead wife.


    God, I was good at being bored. Some of these narratives embarrassed even me to think back on. What was I, thirteen?


    But then I looked back up at the tree and fell right back into the same spell. It was so familiar a sight to me, it felt like...a signature move of mine or something. Other people had laid under trees before, sure, but never with my poise, elegance, or stamina. When it came to lying under trees, I was the rockstar, foremost in everyone''s mind.


    I sat up suddenly and blinked. It couldn''t be that easy, could it?


    It was hard to lie back down and fill myself with the same arboreal glow as before. I was too excited and my mind kept jumping to the next step without me. I took a few deep breaths and forced myself to stare at the fucking underside of leaves.


    It took a while. The sun wasn''t directly overhead by the time I''d regained my tranquility, but I did find myself wandering again, and that''s when I knew I was ready. Carefully, like trying to juggle two very different things in each hand, I reached out for the wall where Athan was still sitting, and again, gave him a thumbs-up.


    And as I did, I opened up my mind to him, flooding his brain with raw sensory input from my own. The figure on the wall went stiff as the sensations overlapped and overwhelmed him, but I had faith. He''d joined minds enough time that this wouldn''t shock him out of it, he''d know it was me, know what he was seeing.


    I hoped.


    But if not, that was what the tree was there for. Once I had his attention, once he spotted the girl on her back giving him a thumbs-up from the outer ring, and saw me in my mind, gesturing the same, I fell backwards, filling my head up with trees and the peace they held over me.


    I was pouring so much into him that I couldn''t tell much what he was thinking. Or saying, or feeling. His conversation with Rio in his fiction had tapered off though, and he seemed focused on me.


    And so I waited and hoped. I knew he only saw me as a strange girl he''d never met, knew that the illusion would bite back somehow, that his illusion of Rio would be explaining away what he was sensing or some bullshit. It would fight, and I couldn''t respond, because I couldn''t say a thing.


    All I could do was to be me, and hope that somehow, Athan knew it was me. I let the dark green boughs fill my vision and the roots behind my back warm me. I felt the dirt in my toes and kneaded little divots into the ground.


    And then I lost him. The fucker went right back to talking to her, his sudden vision and epiffany nothing but fuel for another anecdote for him to share with that bitch. I sighed.


    But it was hard to be too upset given my state. Despite my failure, I was still having a nice time. And I could always try again. That was the best part of being me. I''d outlive the glasslands if I had to.


    The hours continued to pass until the sun was just peeking over the horizon, its rays unearthly colors of cyan and violet, refracting off the glass in a way that no other sunset on Earth could. It was a pretty cool show, even I had to admit, and it almost made up for the mind-fuck hellscape we were all trapped in.


    I was so focused on watching it, I almost missed someone''s approach. I turned and saw an unfamiliar man, who leaned against the tree and asked me something I didn''t give a shit about.


    Because behind that illusion was Athan, in his mind, approaching an unfamiliar girl under the tree, with a sense of unshakable nostalgia that had nettled him all day. I grinned, though he couldn''t see it, as he spoke to her.


    "Excuse me," he said, polite as ever. "But...were you...I don''t know, waving at me or something earlier today? Sorry if I''m being a nuisance, but you just seem so much like someone I know."


    I couldn''t really respond through the illusion, so I just tapped into our link and opened my mind, enjoying his confusion as he witnessed himself from the outside, saying words he wasn''t and wearing skin not his own.


    And watched his confusion wavering as I gave him a thumbs-up in two realities at once.

 368. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. AEGIS.

    Rio -- or the illusion of Rio, I couldn''t be sure which -- led me through the gates to the inner ring and true to her word, gave me a tour of their innermost workings. As a high priestess myself, apparently, nothing in the city was barred from me, and all of her secrets would be mine to know.


    And as I learned those secrets, two very large, very disturbing truths emerged, both of which unsettled me tremendously.


    One: we already suspected. But within the pearly walls of the innermost buildings were weapons and artifacts like I could not begin to fathom. Everything from the XPCA''s exotics grenades to spindly guns, so delicate and carefully-wrought that it looked like they would fall apart as soon fire. And more -- clubs, swords, warheads, shields, exosuits, and hundreds and hundreds of other unfathomable, unrecognizable arms...it was like a museum of every possible method of war ever conceived, but twisted with the impossible exotics tech that made each piece so, so beyond their humble ancestors.


    And two: Rio scared me. Yes, for the obvious delight and rapture she had as she walked me past the rows of weapons, caressing them like old lovers, her eyes aglow with the desire to flip them on and try them out. But more, because she turned those same eyes on me, like I was the most attractive bombshell of the bunch, and it was all she could do to keep herself from jumping on me then and there.


    "These are some of my favorites," she purred, as she introduced me to yet another rack of weapons. "I call them Enervators. A whole family of weapons, because just one wasn''t enough to work out that...you know, kink."


    She hefted a device in her arms that must have been heavier than it looked. Shaped like an uppercase D more than a gun, the middle end of it nonetheless had a large hole that some kind of death invariably shot out of.


    "Useless around here. I''ve never been able to test it myself, and so I haven''t let go of any yet -- against our principles to sell products if we can''t confirm they work, you know. Because there''s no electricity here. The Enervators...beautiful instruments...they sap all electrical potential from anything inorganic. We''ve had some scuffles with the XPCA in the past, and I keep hoping they''ll try flying some of their planes against us again so I can make them fall out of the sky."


    She sighed wistfully as she held up the device''s sights to her eye and made a trigger-pulling gesture and a muttered pew. Thankfully she didn''t actually fire it, because if it worked as she described, I''d be completely inoperable.


    "Um, so this is great," I said. "But why?"


    She blinked at me. "It''s my calling." As though that cleared everything up. So much so that she began moving on to the next set of rooms, even.


    "Wait, come on," I said, catching up to her. "You just...decide to...have a billion guns? And that''s your goal in life? How do you know you aren''t like...called to crochet or something? I''ve seen a marked lack of lace doilies in Oasis, and I think that''s a niche that needs filling far more than this one."


    She chuckled at my presumed joke. "I guess you might not understand quite yet. But as a high priestess, you''ll find your calling soon enough."


    "What the heck is a calling? And...maybe this is stupid of me to ask, but how the heck are you so certain about me being a high priestess anyway? What''s that even mean? Like, I walked in here yesterday. Maybe I hate it here, maybe I''m...I dunno, an anarchist, who just wants to ruin Oasis. How can you promote me to the top of your strata without so much as a wink of oversight?"


    She smiled at me like I was a child, which is something I didn''t know I hated until she did it. "What does the word ''priestess'' mean to you?" she asked, leadingly.


    "I don''t know. Rituals? Fancy robes? A lot of hooey, more often than not?"


    "How about...faith?"


    "Okay, sure. Probably some kind of religion involved for you to be a priestess of. Religion is founded on faith. So?"


    "So I don''t have to question or wink at your oversights because I have faith. You were chosen, and so I know you will be right."


    I sighed enormously at her. "Chosen. Yeah. Sure."


    She sighed right back, and tossed in a shrug and a shake of her head for good measure. "I know...this might surprise you, but...all of your friends that you came with, they''re no longer here. Not like we are."


    "Yeah, they''re trapped in their own little illusionary worlds, I noticed. You can fix that, right? I''m sort of attached."


    "Only a select few are given the true sight to see the world as it really is, to live outside the visions. They are the chosen, they are you, and me, and all the other high priests and priestesses. Some of the others might be useful in our callings, and they are made priests and priestesses and work among us, but they do so through the vision. Only a very few of us can truly see."


    "Oh, I added something to what ''priestess'' means to me. Cults."


    "There''s no need to be mean. We are no cult. Though you might be overwhelmed now, you can''t deny our god. He exists, and his love is the order in Oasis. Every measured step and angled wall reflects his glory--"


    "Oh here we go."


    "But if that isn''t sufficient for you, you need look no further than the visions. You saw them yourself, and he is their source. Through them, he creates perfect lives for all those within, where they can work for the good of the city while also experiencing a completeness impossible in the sighted world."


    I tried not to make my backing away too obvious, but I was coming to a third disturbing truth about this place. She was a straight-up zealot, worse even than Karu.


    "Oookay," I said. "Guess it doesn''t matter to your god that there are things like...I dunno...personal liberty? Freedom? Autonomy?"


    "Of course they do. That is why you and I and the others are blessed with sight. The city itself, existing eternally through the toil of hundreds just to exist...that would be pointless. Nothing would come of it but existing for its own sake. That''s the true purpose of the high clergy, and our callings. What we decide, the city becomes."


    "Yeah, you lost me halfway between the logical fallacy and the mythological bullshit."


    "I said you don''t have to be rude," she said, sounding legitimately hurt. "I''m only trying to explain. I don''t think you understand how lucky you are. There are over a thousand in Oasis, and hundreds of Exhumans. And only a very, very few are high clergy. You can do whatever you wish, any dream you want to fulfill, the city is yours to fulfill it."


    I blinked at her. "You''re serious."


    She nodded.


    "So like¡­" I looked around. "These guns. This was someone''s idea of a good idea. They said, ''I''d really like to focus on creating the most devastating, destructive, efficient death-creating devices the world''s ever known. And then they used the resources of a few thousand mind-fucked people and Exhumans all bent to their service to make it happen?"


    She stared at me. I stared back. And then I was very surprised when she started to cry.


    "Why do you have to be so mean about this?" she wailed, and I was reminded that not a minute ago, she was looking at me like I was a child. "I was so excited to finally have a new high priestess and...and you''re just being rotten and cruel."


    "I''m not the one making the guns! They''re the crazy one, go yell at them."


    "I''m the one making the guns!" she shouted back. "That is my calling, and you are dismissing my life''s work."


    Well, I suppose I should have seen that coming. Still, my foot was too far in my mouth now to back out. I pushed my glasses up and rubbed my eyes as I thought.


    "Look," I said, keeping my voice calming. "The truth is, all of us came here because those weapons of yours...they''re really messing up the outside world. There''s a pretty awful guy who''s selling them and building himself an army and empire of wealth and corruption--"


    "And my weapons are being used for that?" she asked, startled. I nodded. And then she surprised me again by suddenly beaming. "Hooray! They''re being used!"


    "Are you not listening to what I''m saying?" I asked. "Exhumans have a bad rap because they''re so much stronger than everyone around them. They develop this power advantage, and then there''s a constant temptation to exploit it. ''Why work when I can just take?'' they think. And now you''ve introduced these weapons to the equation and made it so that anyone with enough money can just buy powers. There were people protesting IkaCo and he just had them annihilated, and the whole thing was covered up and painted them the bad guys."The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    She thought for a moment, leaning against a bench of guns. "It sounds to me like the problem lies in the disparity."


    "Yes, exactly."


    "So the solution is," she turned around to face them. "More weapons, of course. If there are enough for everyone, then nobody can take advantage of anyone anymore."


    I almost bruised my synthetic skin with how fast my palm met my forehead. "No. Seriously. You''re just...you don''t even--"


    I stopped and did a mental reset, dropping my thousand stammered arguments from my lower-level caches before they fell out of my mouth in an inarticulate deluge of disbelief. And frustration.


    I had to stop considering this from any other perspective but her''s, because clearly, she was a hugely fucked-up person who didn''t see the world like a sane being would. God''s sake, she was absolutely fine with living in a city of slaves so that she could play at making her toys. If those lives didn''t matter to her, why was I wasting my time pleading about others halfway across the globe?


    I took a few deep breaths and decided to get more data. More data was always good. "So, this god of yours, how does he create these visions?"


    She shrugged. "How did your god create the heavens and the Earth in seven days?"


    "O...kay. Fair point. I more meant like...how does it work...from a practical standpoint? Everyone was just fine yesterday, and then this morning, they woke up in their own heads."


    "They''re still just fine," she said, sitting down at a bench of parts now and putting on a pair of gloves. I watched her for a minute as she put together pieces of an ion accelerator column faster than I thought possible. It was like she was assembling a jigsaw puzzle and knew exactly where each piece went the second she picked it up.


    I guess I hadn''t put together the fact that literally, all these guns, she''d made by hand. Every exotic in the hands of the XPCA and IkaCo, and all the thousands here, that was all her. She was a technopath, and these were her specialty.


    It occured to me that if I reached out right now, picked up any one of these devices, and pulled the trigger into her back, half of our problems with IkaCo would be solved in a heartbeat. But I couldn''t do that just yet, not while everyone was still...embracing the visions, or however she wanted to dress it up.


    "You know what I mean," I said, at long last, the words coming out as the tail end of a lingering thought, long dead.


    "Sorry. What?" she asked, turning back to me.


    "How do the visions work? Is there any way to reverse them?"


    She scowled at me and my heresy, and I gave her the most genuine smile I could summon. I had to remember, she''d already expressed that she wanted me here, and wanted me to work out. Lia probably would have picked up on that leverage instantly, but I could still work that angle, later than never.


    "Nobody knows," she said, turning back to her work. "I just do the rituals as we''re supposed to."


    "And that is?"


    "The blood," she said. "We take it from all who enter the city, and then in the night, offer it up to our god. When he consumes it, the supplicant is given visions, they find their place and their caste. Some aren''t affected at all, like us, and we just have to live without the visions."


    "You mean, we get to."


    She gave me a dark look. "Sure."


    "Wait, weren''t you just telling me how great it was going to be for me? That I''d have the whole city at my beck and call and all that? And now you''re telling me it''s a rip-off and you''d rather be...down there, picking rice?"


    She put the pieces in her hands down on the bench with a clang and glared at me. "You know, I''m not sure I like you anymore. You seem awfully quick to decide you know everything."


    "Sorry? I''m a little grouchy because I joined a cult this morning without my consent, and all my friends got mind-jacked."


    She blew some air at me in what I assumed was an eclectic, derisive gesture. "This right here, this is what the outside world is like, isn''t it? Just people who can''t get along, always fighting, always with their own ideas they''re so sure of, without any proof."


    "You''re literally in a cult."


    "This is why the visions are the best possible life. They give you exactly what you need, they take from you exactly what you can give. Everyone in the visions is always content. Everyone is useful. There''s none of this...needing to be right or...arguing over whether picking rice is more important than making weapons." She crossed her arms and stared down at the bench in front of her, the implement of death on it still half-constructed. "There''s no need to question because our god takes care of you."


    "Don''t you ever want to question? Wouldn''t you feel like your whole life was potentially wasted if you never, even once, pondered the alternatives?"


    She looked me dead in the eye. "No. Don''t you ever feel like you''re wasting your life, flirting with every half-baked idea that crosses your mind? Don''t you wish you had a purpose you could dedicate yourself to, with total commitment?"


    I grinned at her. "No. Because I have a goal like that, and it didn''t require me to get mind-fucked by anyone else to have. I picked my own life goals, and I''m gunning for them. And they''re my goals, not something someone else jammed into my head."


    Her lips moved a bit for a moment wordlessly, and then without a retort, she closed them and glared at me. "This is why it''s better in there," she said. "It''s not fair for you to come here and try to make my whole life meaningless. You can''t just do that to a person. In there, this would never have happened. There''d never be any doubt. I''d be happier."


    I shook my head disbelievingly as I gestured towards the outer city. "Their whole lives are meaningless. They were once people with thoughts and histories and desires, and now they''re just machines you use to make your weapons. They''ve been reduced to cogs. They might be content, but they''re also without value or agency. It''s fucked up."


    She stood up and crossed her arms, swaying like she was unsure of herself. She seemed to want to argue with me, but had no grounds to do so. But she also looked like she wanted to agree with me, but couldn''t. So she hung, rocking back and forth while too many thoughts passed behind her oval glasses and the eyes behind them that glared at me.


    "I don''t like you," she finally confirmed. "But I also respect you. You think more than any other high clergy I know of, and I have to respect you for that."


    I blinked at her, not at all expecting the conversation to swing back towards me, or hell, our relationship. "Thanks?"


    She shrugged. "I''m not sure if having you here is good or not. I was excited but now...I''m worried that every day with you is just going to be drowning in questions I can''t answer, with thoughts I''m not sure aren''t yours. I don''t approve of you getting in my head--"


    I made a noise and gestured again at the rest of the whole fucking city but she continued, louder.


    "--but I have faith, that our god brought you to me for a reason. Maybe he wants me to think about my place more. Maybe that is your calling -- obnoxious though that would be -- to add more purpose and self-awareness to each of the others. Or, maybe in time, you will come around to our way of thinking. Our god would know, but I would not."


    "So that''s it then?" I asked.


    "For now, I suppose," she replied. "You''ve already said far more than I''d hoped." She frowned bitterly at me. "You know, all I wanted was a friend. I was quite serious that it is liberating and empowering as none would ever experience to be a high clergy, but it is lonesome work too. So...perhaps out of desperation...I haven''t written you off just yet."


    "I''m flattered. But aren''t there others?"


    "There are," she nodded. "And you should meet them, and know of their callings. Perhaps twist their logic and faith into knots as well."


    "Well, I assume none of them are actively destroying the outside world, so I might not have quite so much issue with them. Sorry, I did walk in here with a little bias."


    "Lucky me. I''ll have them summoned, this way."


    She led me through the rest of her armory into a series of halls and chambers that gradually began to resemble a mosque instead of a military installation, with high domed ceilings and airy breezeways. I realized we were headed towards the very center of the city.


    "Most you see here are priests and priestesses. If you have need of them, just ask, and your wishes will be conveyed through the visions. Don''t waste your breath on those in the outer city, though."


    Don''t waste your breath on literally any of your friends.


    "But these," she said, clearing her throat and speaking up, "are the others. Know them so that they may know you."


    There were three of them, counting Rio, and I understood what she meant about it being lonely. Both the others were male, though it wasn''t immediately obvious as they were wearing trappings related to their ''calling'' I had to assume, like Rio''s lab coat, and for one of them that meant a loose cloak draped around him entirely.


    The other was in fancy white and blue frippery, gold buttons gleaming and moustache and goatee waxed and dangerously pointed. Like Rio, like most here, he was asian, and he bowed low at my approach.


    "This is Tobias," Rio said.


    "Pleasure''s all mine," he muttered, his voice indistinct like he didn''t know how to use his lips properly.


    "His fascination is with the reaches beyond our world. Unfortunately, Oasis has little to offer him to realize those dreams, so...like you, I imagine, he spends most of his days lost in thought."


    "Only because I cannot be lost in space," he mourned.


    "Charmed," I said, returning his bow. We turned towards the final person in the room, whom I could barely see through his cloak, his deep hood pulled low.


    "And this is Liwei. His aim is Oasis itself."


    Through the hood''s gap, I could see him watching me. I felt at once like a prey animal, but also that this predator was too large to be concerned with me. I didn''t know what it would mean for him to be hungry, but knew that  if he were, he would be dangerous.


    "Liwei seeks to explore the world and find Exhumans who are uniquely gifted, and brings them back here that the city may thrive with their talents. We owe much to his efforts."


    He didn''t move or speak, but something about his stature struck me as familiar. And not comfortingly so. I''d been on-edge since I saw him, and the feeling only grew the longer we stared at each other in silence.


    "He is...rather intense," Rio apologized.


    It was exactly five seconds after she spoke that he finally moved, an action so subtle and so quick that no human would have caught it. But I did, seeing him turn and glance around the room as though expecting an ambush any second.


    And with that motion, I saw his cloak move across his body and realized by its sway, he had only one arm under there.


    It hit me all at once, the eye, the poise, the swift movement, the arm I''d been responsible for crushing.


    "Dragon," I gaped, my engines roaring to life on their own as my feet set under me. "It''s you."


    "Oh, you two know each other?" Rio asked, perking up and glancing between us. "Oh this is so exciting! I didn''t even know Liwei had friends!"

 369. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. AEGIS.

    "Why is she here?" Dragon demanded, his eyes not moving off of me. "How dare you violate this sacred chamber with her presence?"


    Rio gaped at him. "She...she was chosen! She has the sight."


    "You are an idiot," he declared. "She isn''t even alive. She is a mechanical doll. She does not have the sight, she is simply too base to receive the visions."


    "I''ll give you a vision," I growled. "Of my foot up your ass."


    "I give you that she does not look...normal, but I have spoken with her. She is no ''mechanical doll.'' She is one of us."


    "Do you challenge my calling? Do you think I do not know every Exhuman on the planet? She is not among them."


    "Do you challenge mine? Do you think I wouldn''t know a machine by laying eyes upon it?"


    "I do," he spat, which drew gasps from both others. A bit melodramatic for my tastes, but these were crazy people. "Your judgement is clouded by your selfishness."


    "Now, let''s not say anything we''ll regret," Tobias said, stepping between the two. "Believe in our god and his will. Through Rio, he has brought this outsider to us. She serves a purpose."


    "She," Dragon said, suddenly pointing a blade in my direction "is no ''she'' at all. ''She'' is a doll, dressed in the skins of man and told to think as one. ''She'' is nothing."


    "If I''m nothing, why does it piss you off so much for me to be standing in your little sanctum?" I spat. "And for the record: your arm? That''s what nothing looks like."


    I wished I''d been paying better attention to the rooms Rio had led me through on the way here. I''d been so wrapped up in arguing with her that I didn''t have a very good idea of my escape routes, and I was currently pulling through my recorded senses to hastily reconstruct the layout as best I could. I had to keep him talking until I had a path.


    The damn gates would be closed no matter what, and while I could probably jump the city''s outer wall, they built the damn things taller and taller in order of importance and I couldn''t just bound my way out of the inner city.


    "I am offended at your presence as I would be the presence of dirt," he spat. "You belong beneath the glass."


    I was screwed. He was about to move on me, I could tell by all the fucking thousands of times I''d seen the tapes with Athan. But just as he...as he...did whatever the opposite of tensing up was, Rio suddenly stepped between us.


    "That''s enough!" she shouted. "There will be no fighting here! I don''t care if you two are mortal enemies, there''s no fighting in the sanctum!"


    To my surprise, after exactly five seconds, Dragon returned the blade to its sheath and his arm to his cloak.


    "My apologies," he said, inclining his head only the tiniest amount to her. "I was rash."


    Rash wasn''t exactly the first word that came to mind when Dragon was involved. He moved and acted with such cold precision, it was impossible to consider anything he''d ever do to be ''rash''.


    "That''s better," Rio said, staring back and forth between the two of us. "What on Earth is wrong with the two of you? Liwei I understand being crazy, but AEGIS? We just had a heart-to-heart and learned a lot about each other. I thought I knew you better than to be picking random fights with another high clergy."


    Is that what we had? I remembered it differently. "Sister, I''d fight any holy man from any faith, real or not, if they were as big a jackass as Dragon."


    Dragon had, in the meanwhile, summoned over a pair of men who I''d mistaken for statues at first blush. He spoke to them, not bothering with greetings or pleasantries. He spoke simply, and to the point. "Take her from the sanctum, and then kill her," he said, pointing at me.


    The two men turned on me as one, approaching with the same, familiar disinterest I''d seen on Dragon before. And it was in their familiar movements, their blank expressions, that I realized, exactly who the ''fake'' dragon we''d fought and killed at the boneyard had been, who the toads planted in IkaCo and the XPCA''s ranks actually were, and how they fought with such suicidal abandon and perfect dedication.


    When Rio had told me that the city provided the high clergy with anything we needed for our callings, this had not been what I''d expected. But as they approached, there wasn''t any more room for doubt.


    And I fucking bolted. Even if the real Dragon kept his hands clean, I couldn''t take two...mini-dragons, or super-toads, or whatever the fuck these guys were...at once. I wasn''t sure I could take one at once. I knew if they got their hands on me, they''d do exactly as he ordered, dragging me out and then killing me. Running was the only way.


    But fuck they were fast.


    I''d been with Athan long enough to get a pretty good gauge on exactly how fast a human could move without severe damage -- I''d become something of a leading expert on the subject, actually, helping Whitney out with setting the upper limits on the exoframe to keep our boy from ripping his other leg off.


    And these guys were well beyond it, the upper limit. They were machines, more than I was, their thick muscles obviously honed for this kind of action.


    I was still probably faster, but unless we were sprinting in a straight line, that hardly mattered. Both were Exhuman, definitely, and physics didn''t seem to affect them quite right, the way they flew around bends without stopping...or how bends flew around them. On top of that, there were two of them, and thousands of unfamiliar walls, courtyards, windows, and dead-ends. I bolted back the way I''d come, doing my best to catch any familiar landmark and hope, pray, that I didn''t pin myself in a corner.


    I sprinted into an unfamiliar room, the sounds of their feet slapping the stone just inches behind me. No other exits but a window, which I threw myself through, and rolled into a sprint again the moment my feet touched the grass.


    If I had time to drink in the area, I might have thought it beautiful. Lots of round buildings with yards, interlocking like honeycomb cells, trees and grass never far out of sight. Instead, I was crashing through them, my engines blazing as I kicked off of trunks to divert my momentum into faster turns. But even when making impossible turns, even if I did manage to lose one of them in a dramatic hairpin or surprise ascent to a rooftop, the other always seemed ready to catch me.


    On one slanted roof, the ground was whipping by under me, with one chasing behind while the other was somewhere below. A rare moment of separation, and decided I had to press this tiny advantage. I flew over a courtyard and into a window and darted sideways.


    And stopped. The body from behind hurtled after me and I swung full-force at his face with a kick, intending to break his neck instantly.


    But it was like they didn''t even react, they just knew. So far from being human, in thought or in capability. He swung himself sideways at the last moment -- the only moment -- and the kick grazed his shoulder and cheek.


    It was still enough to throw him across the room into the wall, but I knew that wouldn''t be the end of him. Before he even crashed, I''d pursued, my other leg snapping out towards him.


    His hands caught the blow and he twisted, intending to break my knee or drive me into the ground. Instead I used him as leverage, hooking the leg he was holding as a pivot to straddle his back and stomp him into the floor.


    He let go before I made it that far, but I did manage to lash out and crush his leg on his way out. That was three kicks he took in less than two seconds, and Exhuman, inhuman, or not, his body had to be feeling it. He was staggering back still, and I had only an instant to decide whether to try for the decisive blow, or take off with my advantage.


    And then I didn''t have time at all, as his buddy exploded through a doorway, arms outstretched to grab me, almost as wide as the small room.


    I kicked at him instead, but just rebounded off a block, and both my follow-ups did the same. I spun and put as much as I had into the next attack, dropping an axe kick on him with all the force I could muster.


    He blocked again, but this time, I felt his arm splinter. Bone was only so strong.


    Somehow, he still caught me, like the pain of his arm shattering wasn''t even there. His other hand lashed out and grabbed my neck, the force of his follow-through pinning me to the wall, a pained grunt escaping me as the impact drove air from my systems.


    I lashed out again but we were too close, he shrugged it off and then pinned me to the wall with his body, my legs wrapped uselessly around his thighs, my heels beating on the back of his calves, ineffective without leverage.


    I tried to punch him, but his broken arm rose and absorbed the hit. I pummeled the shattered limb again and again, and then his friend was there, pinning me arm and whole with their sweaty bodies claustrophobically in my face, my engines blazing as all air through my throat was cut off.


    I had to be burning to the touch and their skin was red and raw, yet they didn''t even flinch. Was this Dragon''s real power? The ability to turn people into this?


    "Come...on..." I gasped, looking for anything, anything at all that could help. I felt a severe pain as the structural integrity of my neck began to give, and one of my shoulder joints was starting to torque as the two men grunted and panted to tear me into pieces. "Fuck you!" I spat, thrashing as violently as I could.


    There was a snapping, crunching sound from my shoulder and I screamed before I could dial down my pain receptors. My defiance was quickly turning to desperation as I had nothing, nothing at all within arm''s reach, nothing I could...grab with my toes or...thrash my head towards.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Just me, and the stone wall behind me, and the two men tearing me apart against it. I twisted and screamed and tried to bite off the nose of the one on top of me, but he was barely out of reach. I ripped my engines to max, my skin glowing and my joints flaring bright white, but they didn''t care, even as their skin blackened and blistered away.


    My arm snapped again, and I began to lose feeling in it. I looked sideways and saw my shoulder bulging horrifically as the composite threatened to tear through the synthetic skin. The pain was unimaginable, no matter how much I kept muting it, it was rising exponentially. I was breaking, and alarms of all kinds were ringing through my head at just how little time I had left.


    And I remembered thinking suddenly how unfair it felt. Here I was, a legitimate, bona-fide gynoid, with literal alarms and status alerts being sent to me by my body. While these two flesh-and-blood men were burning at touching me, riddled with shattered bones, and they didn''t even so much as grimace. The closer one''s skin had been charred black, and aside from his panting hot breaths in my face, you''d think it was nothing.


    My arm wrenched again, bending at an angle it was never meant to go and another scream escaped me. I gasped as tears helpfully flooded my vision.


    "You''re going to snap my fucking arm off!" I shrieked. I beat on him with my heels, thrashing as my head flooded with panic, countdown projections estimating my arm breaking off in mere moments. I''d never felt so helpless or small, never knew that a pile of meat and bone could reduce me to this. Crying, panicking, wailing. "Stop it!" I screamed, my voice sounding not my own. "Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop!"


    I slid to the floor, and my arm slid with me, feeling like an entity outside my own body. I cradled it and wept uncontrollably. I was beyond emotional and irrational, terrified of dying, and of dying pointlessly, in this stupid place for no stupid fucking reason. Without Athan even knowing...without him even capable of knowing. It seemed the worst, most pathetic, most insignificant death I could imagine, and being forced to stare into it had broken me.


    I wasted long minutes holding myself and hyperventilating, the sounds of my engines in my ears and my rasping breath through my twisted neck. I could have done...I don''t know...any number of things. Useful things. Damage assessment. Lashing out. Analysis.


    It wasn''t until the end of those long minutes when I still wasn''t dead that I realized I wasn''t going to be. The two had stopped, entirely, and were standing there, scary and silent as ghosts. I had a terrified thought that Dragon had somehow remotely called them to stop and would finish the job himself. Or worse...I''d be some kind of hostage or leverage.


    If that were the case, I''d just kill myself now. I''d never be a liability to Athan. That was a death I could face.


    But they showed no signs of moving to hold me or of Dragon appearing. They were just...standing there.


    I felt stupid and slow, unable to come up with an answer myself. With nothing else to go on, I couldn''t think of why not to just ask them. "Why''d you stop?" I asked.


    "You told us to, High Priestess."


    I blinked at them, tears falling out of my eyes and disbelief settling in. I told them to.


    I was just stunned. Maybe for the first time ever, I experienced a complete lack of coherent thought as their words buzzed in my empty mind.


    And then I laughed, uncontrollably. A little at first, but soon, raucous, impossible-to-stop laughter. These poor assholes had broken femurs, splintered radius, third-degree burns on their palms and more up their arms. The one bastard in front had been pressed bodily against me at the waist, and his upper legs were raw with melted skin, to say nothing about his junk -- he''d have to have a new hole installed to piss ever again.


    And all that, all the damage they did to my arm and my neck and all of this fighting...for nothing. To stop, the second I told them to, because they were fucking machines, programmed to listen to any high clergy.


    There were times I still had an identity crisis inside about what, exactly I was or wasn''t. But I had to hand it to these fuckers for pointing out to me exactly what kind of robot I wasn''t.


    So I laughed. Laughed in disbelief and relief and just from the sheer ludicrous idiocy of the situation. I laughed until it felt like I''d never cried just a moment ago, like all the pain and suffering a death I was just facing down had been a colossal cosmic joke. I laughed until it hurt, and even then, I was still drying my eyes and choking on chuckles as I addressed the two.


    "Okay. Neither of you are ever to take orders from High Priest Liwei again. Do you understand?"


    "Yes."


    Hell, that was easy. I''d never reprogrammed a human before, but looking down at my arm, I didn''t feel as bad about it as I might expect.


    "If I tell you to tell all the other priests not to listen to Liwei, would they follow that order?"


    "No. We follow orders from High Clergy only."


    "Could I...order them to...accept your orders, somehow?"


    "No. We follow orders from High Clergy only. This is absolute."


    "Can I order you to ignore an absolute?"


    "No."


    A rather barbaric way of handling logical paradoxes, I suppose. But effective. Also ruined my plans to create any kind of viral mutiny. If I wanted more dudes, I''d have to tell them myself, but the second Dragon caught wind, he''d probably start doing the same back, and given that he could bully me out of this area-control game by merit of being stronger personally and knowing the area, it made more sense to keep it as a surprise. I''d make do with the two.


    I gauged the two and which was more capable of walking. It was probably the one with the broken arm, not leg. I turned to him. "You will lead me to the armory." And to the other, "You will pretend as though you were successful in completing Liwei''s orders and tell him such. Do you understand?"


    They both assented, and then without pause, began to move. I picked myself up, winced, dialed back my senses even further, and got to staggering in behind my guide.


    He led me through twisting rooms, each chamber different, but put together like whoever laid out this place had too much love for circles and forty-five degree angles. There weren''t any straight hallways, and I wondered if it was to create the illusion of space by breaking it up, or if the high clergy really just didn''t like being able to see each other.


    But as we progressed, we got further away from the random holy artifacts and divine iconography and more into Rio''s lab, with sheets of metal and composite laying around and half-completed gun parts popping up with greater frequency.


    We turned a corner and I saw a very welcome sight. The long racks of guns of the main armory, laid out in pristine order, as though in counterpoint to the numerous messy benches surrounding them.


    And also a very unwelcome sight. Between me and the guns, Dragon, his eyes glinting from under his hood and his hand hidden. He didn''t react on seeing me, but I knew he saw me all the same.


    "What is the meaning of this?" he asked my thrall. "I ordered you to remove her and kill her."


    "Kill him," I said, and my new friend bounded forward without hesitation while I went for the nearest gun.


    "Cease," Dragon spat, but my boy kept right on moving, legs pumping under him full-tilt as he closed the distance with me right behind him.


    I flinched as the two of them met, and hot gore splashed across my face, sizzling where it hit my air intakes with the whine of the foreign contaminant burning away. I had only an instant to stop myself before Dragon slashed through the air inches from my face.


    He''d completed his attack and bounced out of range before the priest''s body even hit the floor, gurgling involuntarily through a slit throat. It was pretty fucking obvious I''d miscalculated here, the difference in power levels between Dragon and his thralls. Given how hard it had been for me to put them down, I thought...he''d buy me a second or two to grab a gun at least.


    And now I was staring down Dragon alone, arm broken, while he was between me and my only hope to equalize the situation. I swallowed hard.


    "How''d you know? That I''d come here?" I asked, looking for outs. The walls in this part of the city seemed thicker, more isolating. Rio didn''t seem to care for windows; judging by the weapons display, she preferred a more industrial view.


    "You presume to waste my time?" he asked, advancing now.


    "I figure, if I''m going to die, I may as well learn a thing or two."


    "Your final actions will be as meaningless as you are."


    "Indulge me. Gloat a little. I could have gone anywhere; this place is a maze." I started backpedaling as he continued his advance.


    "I am merely not an idiot," he said. And I guess that conversation was over, as he began to move. I guess going for the guns was a pretty obvious move. Stupid me, I hadn''t even considered what he''d be doing while his men went after me. I deserved this loss.


    Not that I was going to make it cheap for him. Even if I went down here, I fully intended to take his other arm with me. I flexed my fingers, feeling my broken arm working, though stilted and wrong. It''d have to do.


    I''d have to do. There wasn''t anyone else.


    I waited until he blinked to strike. Relative to how he moved, the blink of an eye was a huge delay in his reaction times. Those were the kinds of margins we were dealing with here.


    And even then, I feinted, over and over and over again. I''d gotten too careless with his slaves, overcommitted to my attacks, such that when they caught me, I was done for. With Dragon, I knew if he got his hands on me, I was already dead. This wasn''t going to be a game of getting hit, it was one of positioning. I had to make him choose between poor position and risking me getting the guns, and poor form and getting killed.


    That was the only way I could win.


    So when he dodged, I pursued to push him the same direction as his momentum. I kept him moving at the edge of his limits, driving him further and further onto the balls of his feet with each step, with each kick, never giving him a chance to anchor, to pivot.


    I did my best to control him, to keep the ever-present threat of me simply kicking his head off looming right there, like an axe he had to keep ahead of.


    But I was a joke compared to him. If I was an axe, I was a slow moving one, the way he spun and twisted and waltzed around me. As he dodged, as I did my best to herd him, he peppered me with knives and gunfire, and though I held up my arms and they took the brunt of it, every time he hit me, I saw chunks of my skin and sparks of metal flying off of me. Every shot lowered my system pressure, cracked my hull, eroded my structural integrity.


    I still needed arms, to hold a gun, to point it, to shoot it. But if he slipped shots past them, my core systems would be damaged, I might move slower or black out for milliseconds. I''d be dead on my feet.


    But I was dead on my feet the second I launched myself at him, I realized. This slow ballet, of dozens of kicks and bullets exchanged in a second, this wasn''t a dance I was going to outlive. He was just too far beyond me. No matter how careful I was, no matter my strategy or pressure, I was doing nothing, and he was eroding me. The scrap metal on the floor was scuffing him more than I was.


    A knife lodged itself in my shoulder, my twisted one, and I saw my arm drop without so much as feeling it. It hung dead at my side, opening up my left for attacks, and worse, throwing off my balance. Instantly, two more knives sunk where my heart and kidney would have been, their silver handles vibrating with the force of their impact.


    I pulled the blade from my shoulder and threw it back, and he jumped and twisted, the blade catching in the folds of his cloak and clattering to the ground. Before he landed, another bullet found me in the leg, below the knee, and I dropped despite myself.


    I knew I had only an instant to get back on my feet, to stand, to dodge, to meet Dragon head-on. But he had no intention of meeting me head-on, he''d already said as much. I was dirt to be swept out. I took four more bullets as he strode towards me, the hot impacts knocking me further down, both of my knees on the hard stone, my auto-gyro unresponsive as it tried to stabilize.


    I saw the flash of silver as a knife readied in his hand. I looked up and saw that same dispassion in his eyes, locked onto my throat for the kill. His face and cloak splattered with the blood of his own follower and he didn''t even blink.


    Terrifying, I thought. To be pursued by something as relentless and efficient as a machine.


    And then he did blink. His face went wild with uncoordinated motion, his whole body twitched and jolted, arcing with electricity, though staying on his feet even as they shuddered under him. Veins popped out on his forehead as he struggled to twist and see behind him, his teeth clenched and an involuntary guttural sound pressed from him.


    Somehow Athan had done it. He''d broken free of his mind control. He''d stormed the gates, shown up at my final moment and saved me. He''d slain the dragon. Everything was going to be alright.


    That''s what I thought for just a moment before I saw Rio standing there, gun in hand, still crackling with energy, looking shocked at Dragon and at herself for doing it to him. She stammered for a moment, an apology, I thought, or maybe an excuse. And then the gun clattered against the ground, bouncing twice on the stone floor.


    She bolted to me, stepping over Dragon''s still-twitching body, pulled me up by my good arm, draped it over her neck, and then hefted me to my feet and we ran.

 370. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    It was Saga, of that I was sure. She''d been in my head too much and too deeply for me not to recognize her presence. But how...or what...or...even who, I couldn''t begin to understand.


    Because...the girl reclining under the tree wasn''t Saga, despite being her exactly. The same mannerisms, the same pose, more like she was a corpse than relaxing, the same look in her eye, the fascination with the fractal patterns of leaves and baums. On top of the brushing in my mind, it was her.


    Until she spoke. Greeting me pleasantly, asking me if I was new, what my favorite parts of Oasis were, and why they were not being in the glasslands anymore. She spoke of being a refugee, an entire life story and narrative, told easily, readily, not in the least made-up sounding or hole-ridden.


    And entirely too sedate and mundane to be a prank of Saga''s. The whole time the girl spoke, the images were insistent in my head, showing me a man, like myself, just talking. Two completely normal conversations playing out in my senses. And I had no idea what it was meant to mean.


    But it meant something, I could tell by the depth to which Saga had connected us. Rarely had she forced our minds so intimately, almost never, not since the first time she''d tried to kill me had she completely hijacked my senses, and this was a million times more confusing than that. That...the blackness and seeing Saga herself in front of me...that was her as I knew her. Direct, confrontational, confident, domineering. But this whole thing with seeing too many senses at once?


    I didn''t know. But it felt like a plea for help. And so I sat there for two hours, just listening to both conversations without a single clue. Without a single word spoken in my head, or a single thought or feeling or even idea where Saga was. It was like...this kind of direct connection was all I was going to get out of her, and I just had to take my one puzzle hint and solve it.


    And frankly, that scared me. Because I knew Saga hated that kind of bullshit. It meant, everything else she could normally do to get through to me, either she wouldn''t...or she couldn''t. And I had no idea what that meant.


    "Look, I''m sorry," I said, interjecting into a wistful and vivid description of the lady''s parents and cocoa plantation they used to work at. "I''m just...super confused right now. Can you do me a favor?"


    "Sure," not-Saga replied with an enthusiastic grin that, again, wasn''t like Saga in the slightest.


    "I have a friend named Saga. If you see her, can you tell her to reach out to me?"


    "Umm. Okay. You know, we don''t...get a lot of visitors here in Oasis, right?"


    "Sure. Yeah."


    "Okay then. Nice to meet you, Mister."


    I headed back to the rooms, my head spinning with possibilities. It hadn''t helped that as I''d said my parting words, so too had the man in my visions, and then he left as identically as I had.


    I stumbled upstairs and found half of the girls, anyway. Tem was there, inanimate as ever, since I''d told her not to follow me. Karu was polishing up guns. But no AEGIS or Lia, whom I had come looking for. I turned to leave when Karu called out to me.


    "Ouch," she said, and I turned to see what''d injured her, and found her looking only at me.


    "Ouch?"


    "The sting of a handsome man entering your bedchamber only to look upon you with disappointment and an eye to leave," she clarified.


    "Sorry. I''m...not my intention. Hi, by the way. Uh. Just got something on my mind."


    "What is it?" she asked, pulling out the stool next to her and patting it with a gloved hand. Even dressed up in the silks of this place, she still kept her gloves and sleeves on to cover up the scars. The reminder of it made me frown, and I tried to sit down without making my staring obvious.


    "Just...something with Saga."


    "Something sexual?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. I couldn''t quite tell if her green eyes were glittering with curiosity or irritation.


    "No. Worse. I think."


    "My, that is a situation. Explain yourself."


    And so I did, while she sat and listened patiently. Aside from muted nods, she said nothing until I''d talked myself out, and even then, her silence lingered for a time.


    "And you are certain this is no prank?"


    "I don''t think she''d do this. Especially not in such a relatively serious situation."


    "We are safe and at rest for the first time in weeks. She may be blowing off steam, as it were. But if you are so concerned, why not ask her yourself? Or is that the woman whom you seeked when you entered the room?"


    "I guess I could," I said. "It just...seemed...I don''t know." I shook my head. "Where is she?"


    "Where you would expect, I imagine. Where the food is."


    I stood up. "Thanks, Karu."


    "Ashton, before you go," she added. "Perhaps you should consult the local administrator? She seemed a dependable sort from my few interactions, and I have witnessed her assisting your sister in getting ''net access throughout the day. Though above and beyond as it were, she has spent several hours troubleshooting and proving herself both pliant and helpful. If you face an issue, she is not an unreasonable resource to which to turn."


    "You mean Rio?" I asked. "Local administrator, heh."


    "The very same. And forgive my invented title, but...high priestess rubs me the wrong way. There is enough holy about this place but little enough about her to suppose her a priestess."


    "Thanks again. I''ll ask if we run into each other."


    "Save your gratitude--"


    "It is unnecessary between comrades. I know. Thanks anyway, Karu."


    "Express it carnally next time," she said, blowing me a kiss. And I left shaking my head.


    Saga was right where Karu said, and it didn''t surprise me that the huntress was keeping tabs on the code-X. Maybe not exactly where Karu described, because I found her face-down in a bowl of food. Not eating, just...y''know...looking dead. As she did.


    "You uh, okay there?" I asked.


    "I can''t eat it," her voice moaned from through the stone bowl.


    "Yeah we all know that. So why have you got your face in it?"


    "Because it smells good, and everyone here is a toad so I can''t tell how it tastes." She sat upright with a pop and brushed her food-streaked hair out of her face, small rivers of fruit juice running down her chin. "Why do we keep vacationing in such shitty places?"


    "It''s not a vacation," I reminded her. "And...are you okay? You seem okay."


    "I''ve been better. Are you volunteering? I can always use more live test subjects."


    I stared at her, trying not to watch the bits of food slowly slipping down greasy trails on her hair. She certainly looked like the Saga I knew, and nobody else in the world would behave like she was. It was hard to believe that this was the same person so urgently linking our minds earlier but...there wasn''t exactly much else of a possibility.


    I gave her another few seconds of scrutiny before flat-out asking. "So, did you do something to me earlier today or what?"


    "Oh shit, you found out?"


    "Of course I did. It''s my head, Saga, of course I''ll notice if you''re screwing around in it."


    "In it?" she asked. "So to be clear, you didn''t notice your eyebrows plucked in your sleep?"


    "...what?" I asked.


    "...what?" she echoed.


    "I''m being serious here."


    "Unibrows are serious."


    I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Saga, earlier today I was feeling you in my head and having sensory visions. Did you do that or not?"


    She blinked at me. "No. Why would I do that? That''s not fun or funny."


    "Is tweezing eyebrows?" I had to ask.


    She shrugged.


    "Okay. I need you to please, please, be completely serious and tell me you didn''t."Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    "O...kay. I didn''t. Swear on me mum."


    "Then...what? It was you. Absolutely. I felt you in my head."


    "Maybe you''re going crazy," she shrugged, like that was not a big deal. "I''ve been here most of the day, after they asked me to stop lying down in front of every wagon on the main street and screaming ''I''M A SPEED BUMP''. I think they just don''t know what speed bumps are out here."


    "Jesus Christ. Saga. Serious, remember?"


    "I mean...I was being serious. That was my alibi."


    I stared at her as only Saga could be stared at. That twisted feeling of hearing her out, and not being quite sure which one of us was actually insane. Like one of those cursed books that drove you insane if you read it or something, except...instead of being full of dark magic, she was a fucking goddamn idiot speed bump.


    "But it was you," I insisted. "I know your mind anywhere."


    "And I''m very glad you do. But you''re wrong this time, buddy."


    "Then who...then how¡­?"


    "Maybe you should take a nap or something," she frowned at me. "Your head''s going a mile a minute."


    "Maybe so," I agreed, trying so very hard to put everything together in a way that fit. The itching at the crown of my head of a headache starting to build wasn''t helping. "I''m gonna...gonna go find Lia or something."


    "Okay. If you see any out of control wagons, let me know."


    I blinked at her.


    "Speed bump," she reminded me. And I left, shaking my head, wondering if any girl I knew wasn''t insane.


    It seemed like there was just too much going on in my mind. Bits of sensory input from before and snippets of my last few chats were bouncing in and out, seemingly at random, my brain thrashing through data, looking for anything that made sense.


    AEGIS wouldn''t be helpful here, I didn''t think. She''d just worry about me. I needed Lia''s enthusiasm to solve any situation laid before her. But I''d also forgotten to ask Saga where she was, and on turning on my heel to go back, suddenly stopped as a thought crossed my mind.


    "My head''s going a mile a minute," I repeated. To myself. Like a crazy person. I scratched my chin and agreed but¡­


    But she knew? And yet I''d never felt her brush my mind. I mean it was obvious to anyone, I imagined, but Saga wasn''t just anyone. I knew by how she saw the world that lots of very obvious things slipped right past her if they weren''t in the mind. Which this was...but still¡­


    I revisited the whole conversation with Saga again, every nuance of it I could remember. And at no point did I ever feel her familiar influence. It was bizarre.


    And also, kinda scary. Because...what? What''d that leave me with here?


    An unexplained, disembodied Saga-like sensation I could feel in my head.


    And Saga, sitting there, talking to me, quite obviously herself, that I couldn''t feel. Although ''couldn''t feel'' wasn''t quite the right way to put it, if I reached out, she was there, and I could get a grasp of her surface thoughts, emotions, feelings...same as usual.


    Just not on my mind. Which was exactly what that phantom sensation had been. It was almost like someone had divvied up Saga''s powers and I could only feel half at a time.


    I continued forward, back towards Saga after my heel turn and found her again, face-down in the bowl.


    "Saga," I announced, and she came up for air with a white ring of fruit under her left eye. "I need you to do something for me."


    "Aye, aye," she saluted, and began undressing.


    "Stop it. I need you to connect us, real deep, in our minds. Like we''ve only been a few times before. I want to feel you from the inside." She''d stopped playing around until my last line and then started faking undressing again. "You know what I mean," I sighed.


    "I do," she said, letting the joke go and putting her hands on the table, her face wrought with concern. "But I also really, really don''t. Athan, you''re head''s going a mile a minute, and it''s actually bugging me now. I don''t know what you''re trying to achieve here."


    "Just¡­" I shook my head. "Just do it, please."


    She eyed me up and down a little warily. "Okay. Can we...go back to the bedroom though?"


    "Why?" I asked.


    "Because¡­" she wrung her hands. "Honestly, because I feel really vulnerable doing this. I don''t want to be out where anyone can just...step up when I''m preoccupied. At least if AEGIS is there...well...at least she can watch my back. Or...at least she has a good reason to stick a knife in it."


    She gave me a little simpering smile and I agreed. It broke my heart every time I saw Saga being serious, I thought. It just didn''t match her persona, and I didn''t know if that meant that she was just that good at acting, or was a tremendously fake person, or...what. But it did impress upon me both the seriousness of my request, and the lengths she was going to fill it.


    "When we''re done I''ll eat some fruit for you," I apologized.


    "I like the white ones. Try the white ones first."


    "I''ll do just that."


    We situated on a bed together, cross-legged and facing each other. I asked Tem and Karu to make sure we weren''t disturbed and this was serious code-X stuff, and that was enough to put the visors and guns on apparently.


    And then she was taking deep breaths while my mind felt nothing.


    "Ready?" she asked.


    "Ready."


    And then she was in. I could tell by feeling her surface-level thoughts, a strange echo of my own, muted and twisted through her perception. I could see her seeing herself through me, could feel her inside me from inside herself.


    It was all very trippy and existential, as it ever was when two minds became one. Except for one little thing.


    All of it happened in her mind. Mine was completely the same. It was like...it was like someone had made a holovid of tripping into minds, and then played it for her and all I could see was the reflection of it in her eyes. It was weird and wrong, and though she could see all my thoughts, feel all my senses, being me, I couldn''t feel her feeling them.


    She gasped as she came up for air, breaking us off.


    "What the fuck?" she asked, her face reddening.


    "I don''t know," I explained.


    "You don''t know? You just sat there thinking about how little that affected you, how completely unphased you were by the most...the most intimate thing two beings on this fucking planet can ever fucking do. And you don''t know?"


    "I...don''t know...why it didn''t work?" I stammered.


    "Didn''t...didn''t...didn''t work?" she spat, standing. "Didn''t...fucking work? Didn''t work!? I could have felt shit through your asshole, it worked! What the fuck do you mean it didn''t work?"


    "It didn''t!" I pleaded, not sure why she was so angry all the sudden. "I felt nothing."


    At this she went white and froze. "Nothing?"


    "Yeah, nothing."


    "Is that what I am to you, you fuck?" she screamed, suddenly animate again. "You''re deep inside...you''re...you''re in my most vulnerable...my most private...and you feel¡­.nothing?"


    "Saga, calm down, you''re spitting on me."


    "YOU ARE SPITTING ON ME!" she screamed, enough to make Tem jump. "Spitting on my whole fucking life, on our whole fucking relationship. You''d better come up with something better than nothing to describe what feeling me is like, or...or I''ll...I''ll--"


    Her face was twitching unpleasantly and it looked like she was seriously about to blow. I had no idea how else to explain myself, but felt like we were having two completely different arguments right now.


    I stood up and put my hands on her shoulders, bony and cold, even in this climate. "Saga. I''m not talking about you. I''m saying I experienced no sensation of being in your head."


    She squinted at me repeatedly, like somehow she could blow the extra rage inside of her out through her eyes. For a minute she stood there, not exactly cooling off, but not going on a murdering spree either. Which was...progress.


    And then she bared her teeth at me with a snide hiss. "I don''t get it," she spat. "I''m tearing my way through your thoughts and you believe every word you''re saying."


    "Look closer," I told her, staring into her brown eyes. "I don''t even feel you looking through my thoughts right now."


    Her eyes widened. "Shit, you''re right," she said. And then they narrowed again. "Or you think you''re right."


    "What''s the difference?"


    "The difference," Karu said, "Is that your senses are immediate and irrefutable, but your thoughts are subject to tampering." She began to pick up pieces of her armor and to strip with alarming speed. "A code-X is at work."


    "It''s impossible," Saga said stubbornly, staring even harder into my eyes, leaning her forehead inwards towards me, like if she could close the distance she could dispel this entire situation. "It''s...im...possible¡­" she grit her teeth.


    I was so focused on Saga''s face, I missed Karu''s moment of complete nudity, because when next she stepped into view, she was adjusting the neckline of her flightsuit and donning white plates. "I fear code-X are not impossible, and you will soon learn the terror the rest of us share of them."


    Tem stood and the lights dimmed slightly as she gave a dark nod.


    "Whoever it is, I''ll rip them apart," Saga growled. "From his cerebrum to his cerebellum."


    I looked at the three of them, armed and armored, powers and weapons ready, so certain, so ready to go, while my head was still just spinning. "Who?" I asked them. "How?"


    Two of them paused and looked at me. And I could tell by their glances that they didn''t know either. Theirs was just bottled rage, ready to spill on any who threatened. It was directionless and useless.


    Tem looked the same though. Directionless and useless was fairly standard for her.


    "It is obvious then, isn''t it?" Karu asked. "Whom else have we met recently, but that Rio woman? And with such authority within the city, despite knowing nothing of her powers. It bristles me so...this is why I loathe Exhumans, you realize."


    "It''s not Rio," I said, sitting back down.


    "How do you know?" Saga asked.


    "I spent hours with her today--"


    "Aha!" Karu shouted.


    "--and she''s got no reason to fuck with my head, or do anything stupid like that. She runs this place and does a good job of it. The people are happy, and not because she''s making them be. And besides, even if it was her, even if it was a code-X, what possible reason would they have to screw with Saga and my connection, or fake a new one?"


    "She''s jealous," Saga huffed, sitting next to me and crossing her legs. "She wants to be the only thing allowed in your mind. But that''s my job."


    "Look you guys just...keep your pants on. Don''t blow up the city," I said, holding my head as I stood again. "I need to think on this more. Maybe we get AEGIS in on the conversation so that we can be sure there''s no code-X messing with all of us before we jump to any conclusions.


    Karu frowned. "A code-X is an insidious, deceptive thing, Ashton. They make you doubt your own thoughts, your own memories. Time is their greatest weapon, time to work, to cull unannounced and to rewrite as services them."


    "She''s right," Saga said, and I could see how serious she was in not minimizing the accomplishment. "Given enough time, I can turn anyone into anything. It''s not something I''d want done to any of us."


    "But bringing in the AI is a cunning workaround. We must find her at once," Karu agreed.


    "You do that," I said, heading for the door. "I''m going to go follow up another lead. We''ll meet back here in...ten?"


    "And if you do not return, there will be no keeping pants on and much and blowing up of the city," Karu said. "Erm, as it were."


    "Sounds good," I said, heading out. I ran full-tilt down the white street, the stones under me radiating heat from the afternoon sun. With every step I took, I prayed that she''d still be there.


    And when I got to the tree and found her still there, still exactly still, still exactly...her, I knew. I knew what the visions meant, what the Saga in my head had been trying to tell me.


    I knelt beside her and whispered, "Saga?"


    "Excuse me?" the girl replied, but my mind opened up again and showed me again, the man, who moved like me, who was in my place and talking to her.


    I knew without a doubt what it all was, and they were right. There was another code-X in play here. There was someone or something screwing with my head and thoughts and perceptions.


    But I also knew that this person in front of me was, without a doubt, the one who''d spent so many hours in my head. The thing in my room, that moved like her, spoke like her, acted like her, even got scared and anxious like her...it wasn''t in my head. And if it wasn''t in my head, it wasn''t Saga.


    "Come with me," I said, offering my hand to the girl. "I need your help to¡­" I paused, unsure of what, even we would be doing. "To fix everything, I guess."

 371. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. AEGIS.

    "You are...you are machine," Rio said, her voice low and heavy. "You are not chosen. Dragon spoke truth."


    I didn''t know if I should agree with her or not, because her words seemed in direct conflict with the fact she was still carrying me over her shoulder and towards...well, something. Away from Dragon.


    Not that it wasn''t already obvious. Maybe I could have passed off the broken arm, but the number of knives and bullets that Dragon had put in me and torn apart my clothes and synthetic skin bloodlessly, exposing my robotic innards for all to see.


    "Yeah...sorry about that," I said.


    "I have no idea what to do about this," she lamented. "I already declared you High Priestess. I can''t exactly...do takebacks on something so central to our faith."


    "But you''re not going to let Dragon have me?"


    She shook her head. "No...yes? I don''t know. I cannot let him kill another high clergy if I can help it. But if you are...or you aren''t...I do not know." She looked down at me and gave me half a smile and a shrug. "But better that you live and we find out we should kill you than the other way, yes?"


    "I guess."


    I stumbled another few steps with her through yet more chambers, bypassing hundreds and hundreds of sweet, sweet guns and devices I just wanted to grab and clutch to my chest. One of these puppies had to shoot something that would put Dragon down. Bullets that went through time, or a laser that shot out gravity...or maybe a beam of pure madness?


    The problem being, of course, that if I went after him, I''d have to go through her, same problem he was now facing. I figured having her on my side was definitely the better option for now but still.


    The guns all looked so shiny. I just wanted to spray just a little bit of indiscriminate death all over Dragon. Just once.


    I sighed and worked on damage control. I''d gotten my legs back under me, and I''d left a trail of knives behind us after pulling them out of their brand new orifices. But my arm was completely fucked at this point, and other systems were a mess. I needed to stop and work on myself with some tools for a few hours if I wanted to be much more than a walking head.


    "I don''t understand, though," she said, huffing along next to me. "What are you?"


    I laughed. "Shit, that''s a complicated question."


    "Is it?" She sounded hopeful.


    "Well, fundamentally, you''ve got it right. This is a robot body, and I''m an artificial intelligence inside it."


    "...oh."


    "But...I''m also not like other AI. I''m a simulation of a human mind. And a successful one. That''s why I''m so charming, see?"


    "Oh."


    "So...while I could have uploaded myself into like...a walking skyscraper, loaded with ten-thousand weapon platforms and spider legs...I''ve actually...well, I''m on a project, really. To become...um...human, actually. Or as close to it as I can."


    "Ohh."


    "Yeah, um...hence the glasses," I finished lamely.


    "Well," she said, and then didn''t seem to have any follow-up, because she kept on in relative silence for a moment. "Well, I guess that does explain what you are, in a sense."


    "In a sense, yeah. Basically a robot who''s having an identity crisis and facing down a lot of prejudice about coming out of the closet as human."


    She laughed. Which was good.


    "In the end, it doesn''t matter, though," she sighed. Or as much as one sighed while huffing and puffing and hauling half the weight of a faulty robot body. Come to think of it, that was actually pretty impressive, given her size. She must spend a lot of time moving around all those metal sheets by herself.


    "What doesn''t?" I asked.


    "Whatever you are, or aren''t, or think. It''s not up to you what you are."


    "Oh?" I asked, preparing to argue with her, even given our situation. "Really, now?"


    She nodded. "Yes, it is up to our god to determine if you are high priestess or not. And though perhaps I was preemptive in assuming, just because you did not have the vision--"


    She stopped, and I tripped over her and fell, sending us both tumbling. I turned around, asking if she was okay, but she just stared at me slack-jawed. "No," she muttered.


    "No, what?"


    "No!" she shouted, face flushing with anger. "No! You do not have blood!"


    I blinked at her. "Beg your pardon?"


    "You did not undergo the offering. The blood offering!" she spun and grabbed the nearest gun, pointing it at me with an ominous thrumming noise. "Without an offering, he would not take you in. That is why you did not have the visions, you cheated."


    "Woah, easy there," I said as she advanced on me, her face a twisted scowl. "I don''t...I mean...erm--"


    "Dragon was right," she declared. "You are nothing."


    "No I''m not. I''m me, okay? And fuck you if you think I need blood to be a person."


    She stared down at me, silent. Her finger moved to the trigger, slowly.


    "How about a fucking dog? That''s got blood, is that more of a person than me? Is that what I am to you, lower than a dog?"


    "Stop trying to confuse me!" she shouted back.


    "If you''re confused, then maybe give it a fucking think before you shoot, dumbass!"


    "I won''t be led astray!"


    Or so she said, but she still hesitated, finger on the trigger, gun wobbling slightly as she trembled behind it. I felt, I had just this moment to sway her. I had to say and do exactly the right things, or I was fucked.


    And then, in the corner of my eye, I saw salvation. A man walking past in priests robes, a bundle in his arms.


    "You there!" I shouted. "Disarm her, now!"


    She turned to look and her eyes went wide as he barreled in on her. She didn''t shoot, just squeaked, as he shoved her sideways, ripping the gun from her grip in one movement and then standing still with it in his grasp.


    "And don''t let her grab another one. Or listen to her orders," I added. She just stared, first at him, and then slowly at me.


    "They hear you," she whispered.


    "Well I''m not exactly mute."


    "They only hear high clergy."


    "Well there''s your fucking answer. Aren''t you glad you didn''t shoot me?"


    I was still shocked when she bounded up and pulled me to my feet, and twice again when she wrapped me in an excitable hug. "I told you our god knows all! To think I doubted...to think...I thought he needed blood to judge! He is a god, and gods need nothing!"


    I let myself get pulled along in her little dance for a moment, trying to let my bemusement show without the bewilderment mixed in with it.


    Because, of course she was wrong. I wasn''t going to debate theology here or anything, and especially not with a zealot...but if there was a god, he didn''t live in some puckered white asshole in the glasslands. There was a logical loophole I was sure she wasn''t seeing, and I was more than happy to leave it that way.


    She was shocked that the priests could ''hear'' me through their visions. Which, yeah, maybe the visions kept them from seeing or interacting with anyone but the high clergy. And judging by how completely fucking zombified the ones I''d worked with earlier had been, their brains had been fucked with to such a degree that ''hearing'' an order was like taking over their bodies.


    Thing was, there was something else they saw and heard as well, and that was...well...everything else around them. The metal parts this guy had been carrying until a minute ago. The walls and floors and doors they had to navigate, or rocks they might trip over, or dirt they might have to sweep out.


    Dirt like Dragon had accused me of being. Maybe, whoever had programmed them had just never expected the dirt to be able to talk.


    Or, maybe their god had a funny sense of humor. I''d be hard to ask, since he didn''t exist. But I amused myself with the thought anyway.


    "So why did Liwei want to kill you?" she asked, now that we were over the whole her-killing-me thing, and we''d started moving again.


    "Long story. In the outside world, he''s kinda known as being an assassin, and he killed some people we''d prefer he not, and then we fought him. We tore off his arm, that was me actually--"


    "...oh, my."


    "--he hurt me and a bunch of my friends, killed more people we liked, he was going for some kind of doomsday device, and...well, we don''t like doomsday so we tried to stop him...that didn''t work, we got more hurt, killed some...what I now presume to be priests under his command, and then pretty much we lost him. Huh, that wasn''t so long after all, I guess."


    "I...see. A doomsday device, you say?"


    "Yeah. Uh...hey, does he like...have that around, still? It might actually be really convenient if I could...stop him from using it or whatever."


    "I do not think Liwei has any interest in doomsday devices. Sorry."The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "Well then he''s hiding something from you, sister. Sorry-not-sorry you had to find out, but he''s not the perfect--"


    "Enough," she said, her voice suddenly sharp.


    "What?" I asked.


    "Just as I stopped him from attacking you, I would have you not attack him. He is a high priest under our god, and will be revered as such."


    "He stole a device...an Exhuman''s...a technopath''s device, that could do anything. Do you have any idea how dangerous a technopath can be?"


    She thrust her chin out at me as though in disbelief. When I cocked my head at her, she spread her arms and gestured at the hundreds of weapons all around us.


    Oh. Yeah.


    "Well this one was apparently important enough that he was willing to do anything or everything to get it. Whatever it is, it''s gotta be worse than all of this, because he obviously wasn''t killing his way around the world for any of these weapons. No offense."


    "Oh," she said, lightening instantly. "Oh, that was probably just him observing our tenets. Oh no, what a terrible misunderstanding."


    "Misunderstanding? What''s there to misunderstand?"


    She started walking and I followed again. We were getting out of the thick of her armory, the sheer number of guns on display was decreasing, and the glimpses I got outside were showing more wall and less central building, now.


    "One of our core tenets. One of the demands of our god. You will be expected to uphold this as well."


    "Which is?"


    "They call them code-Xavier class Exhumans, in the XPCA''s classification conventions. Those that deal with the mind, that alter it, mould it and corrupt it at their whim."


    That wasn''t a half-bad description of Saga. "What about them?"


    "Our god sees that ability as profane. There is a prophecy that even he can be corrupted by their touch. All such Exhumans are to be destroyed. And from time to time, there exist objects which imitate or reproduce similar effects. They are destroyed as well."


    I stopped dead in my tracks, not seeing her take several more steps without me, until she turned around and waved in front of my face.


    Which was probably showing the equivalent of a blue screen on it. I very nearly had a system failure with how hard that one piece of news hit me.


    Destroyed?


    All that work, all that effort, all that pain. Athan''s mental anguish, the death of his college friend, the torture that marred the relationship of him and the prior AEGIS. Karu''s mental break, Athan splintering from the XPCA, Lia slipping away from Black Shark. His leg, our war with the XPCA, the disbandment of the P-Force, and the flight or capture of its members.


    All of that was rooted in Dragon and the device. All of that was because we felt we had to stop him, a mad, possessed, impossibly-competent man chasing an Exhuman device of unfathomable power and unknown potential.


    And to learn that all of that happened...for nothing? That we could have just sat at home and let him have it, because his aim was to destroy it all along...and he never once just...opened his mouth and said as much?


    I spoke too soon when I said I almost had a system crash. I flickered for a moment and found myself on the floor, the white ceiling spinning above me while boot messages flashed through my head, and Rio asked me repeatedly what was wrong.


    For nothing?


    I felt lightheaded. I didn''t know how Rio could look so unaffected at the magnitude of the bomb she just dropped on me, while knowing full well this meant nothing to her. It was just shit, pure and simple. The whole situation, the whole past year, all our efforts and suffering. Just pathetic shit, the punchline of some cosmic joke.


    I took her offered hand and steadied myself. No, there was no cosmic entity, we were nobody''s plaything. That was pure arrogance. The universe was indifferent, not malicious. Though both could be curel in equal measure.


    "Are you...okay?" Rio asked.


    "I''ve been better," I admitted. "Sorry. I just¡­" I sighed and pulled at both of my pigtails, though having only one arm to do so. "I never saw this coming. We deal with power-obsessed people, Exhuman or not, constantly. There''s always a politician scheming or a military leader looking to press his agenda or a corporation trying to expand. To think that someone would seek that kind of power and...just...destroy it¡­"


    I held my head for a minute. I didn''t want to believe it, honestly. It was easier when Dragon was just a bad guy, doing what he did for nefarious reasons. My mind reeled in defiance, looking for any excuse, any way I could still blame him for everything. He must have kept it, he must have.


    Because if he didn''t...if he was really just the single-track, unilateral, Exhuman-hunting, code-X killing machine he now seemed to be¡­


    The thought of it made me sick, but I had to face it. He was what I was programmed to be, give or take. A perfect instrument, dedicated entirely, inhumanly, to the study and eradication of code-X''s.


    There was a little more to it than that, I knew. I would have had administrative responsibilities within the XPCA, and he had this whole ''calling'' with populating Eden with Exhumans he fancied. But we never saw that side of Dragon, only the ruthless killing machine bit, and I''m guessing that''s what most Exhumans would have seen of me.


    "We should keep going," I said, standing tall and walking, passing by Rio''s extended hands and confused looks. "Dragon''s probably right behind us."


    "That weapon should debilitate for most of an hour," she said.


    "Somehow, I doubt that will work on him. Dragon''s a real piece of work."


    She trotted to catch up with me and looked up and down my mangled arm. "So are you."


    I snorted, feeling like more comparisons to him was just what I needed right now. How cruel, again, was the universe?


    "Look, if what you say is true, I''m not sure we have reason to fight him anymore," I said. "We were only in this to save the world, or...y''know...do the best part of that we could. If he''s not a threat to it like we thought--"


    "Then we could all exist in peace? Together?"


    I smiled at her. "Something like that."


    It wouldn''t be that easy, though, and I knew it. I might be willing to chalk up a boatload of death and misery to my own mistakes, but Athan and the others were potentially more proud, and more vengeful. He''d sworn on Alyssa''s grave he''d have Dragon''s life for hers, and I wasn''t sure any amount of explaining would be sufficient to talk him down. His stubbornness, and the lengths he would go for his friends were easily some of the best, and the worst things about him, and right now they were looking the latter.


    But before that, I reminded myself, we still had to deal with ''the visions''. As it stood, Athan would be spending the rest of his life here as a vegetable, which was a fate worse than pointlessly clashing with Dragon. If only I could somehow break them free, and keep Dragon''s presence a secret from them all...that might be for the best.


    Or it might be my classic mistake of deciding what was best for Athan without him. Hard to say at this point. Though I was sorta pleased with myself for taking note this time, at least.


    "Rio...if I wanted to get my friends out of ''the visions'', is there any way to do that? Is there like...a formal prayer I can submit to your god, or some ritual or incantation? Maybe I can trade him out for a goat?"


    "It''s never been done," she said, sounding sad about it, even. "You could...in theory...go before him and plead but...our god passes judgement and it cannot be questioned. I''m sorry. But if it makes you feel any better, they are having quality, comforting lives! Better than any of you could hope for," she added quickly.


    On one hand, that did make me feel a little better, that none of them were suffering in their delusions. But on the other, I knew Athan had never, ever chosen what was comfortable over what he thought was right. The whole nature of ''the visions'' would be an affront to him, as much as the cycles of Exhuman oppression he already battled.


    "Well there''s a first time for everything, right? You''ve never had a synthetic high priestess before. Maybe there''s some workaround for pulling people out of the visions."


    "Maybe," she shrugged, unenthusiastic. "Or it might be sacrilege."


    "Hey, we''re high priestesses, right? Don''t we get some say in how religious dogma is implemented?"


    She looked at me funny. "No?"


    "Why not? Who else gets to decide this stuff, if not us?"


    "Our god does," another voice said, and I swore inwardly. Dragon again, persistent and undefeatable as ever, strolled casually through the doorway before us, throwing a long shadow, backlit by the early-evening sun. "But you do not truly believe, do you?"


    "Her belief does not matter," Rio said, stepping forward to be between us. "Do you remember when I first arrived? I did not believe either, but still our god''s will acted upon me. She is the same."


    "When will you stop seeing yourself in this thing?" Dragon drawled. "She is not you, and you are not her. You are a high priestess--"


    "And so is she!"


    "She is a doll. A toy. Made by those outside--"


    "And so was I! So were most of us! Only one in a thousand were born in this city as you were--"


    "You waste your words. I care not for a being''s origin, and you know this. But she is no being, she is a machine, and operates only as she is designed."


    "That''s not even fucking true," I spat. "I defy my programming. I have that capacity."


    "Or so you imagine. Just as all in the visions imagine themselves free to choose. Look at this city around you, at its stability and grace. Know that each stone laid, each tree grown, each building raised was done so by a being imagining themselves free, believing it was their own choice. What manner of chaos would Oasis be if that were true?"


    "I don''t give a fuck," I told him. "You can brainwash people into building straight lines into your houses all day, it doesn''t change a fucking thing about who I am. You can spout metaphors until they come out your ass, but they''re still only metaphors. I''m me, and I''m the only one who decides my path."


    "You are a blind insignificance."


    "Would you two stop it!" Rio shrieked. "Liwei, we just talked about how the whole...history between the two of you was a gigantic mistake. They thought you were after some...some item, because you were going to use it to destroy everything. And I know you aren''t, and now she does too."


    "The trinket of Minerva Frossard, you mean?"


    "Yes," I said. "That fucking orb. You could have saved everyone a shitton of trouble if you just said you wanted to destroy it. Like, what the hell, dude."


    "I do not explain myself to you."


    "Or to anyone! Even if it would make your job and ours so much easier!"


    He bared his teeth, glinting white in his backlit, shadowed face. "You think I do this because it is easy? I follow my calling because it is my calling, doll. I care nothing how easy or hard it is, so long as I succeed. And I did succeed."


    "Your arm''s off!" I shouted. "How the fuck can you not care about something like that?"


    "I just told you," he said, advancing a step. "I do not explain myself to you."


    Rio also took a step, but if it came to a scrap right now, I''d be the one being scrapped. We''d long ago passed the heart of the armory, and there were only weapon fragments and raw materials littering these final rooms before the wall.


    But Dragon seemed hesitant to advance any further with Rio standing between us. I''d never seen him reluctant before, but I guess even he had some people he didn''t want to murder. This stalemate couldn''t last forever, and knowing Dragon, when it broke, it wouldn''t end well for me. I had to do something.


    "You''ve got your faith, right, Dragon?" I asked. He didn''t answer, but his eyes glinted at me, which I took to be a ''yes, but as I just said, I don''t explain myself to you. And also die''. "You and Rio are having a...debate...about how your god interprets my being? So why don''t we just ask him?"


    His eyes narrowed at me, and I felt I was on the five second clock before he sprung.


    "What I mean is...Rio said I could go to him and plead my case, and he would hear me, maybe. If he does...and finds me worthy...you''d have no more issue with me being here, came right from the big guy''s lips, right? And if he doesn''t¡­" I swallowed hard. "Then I guess I''m done for, and there''s no hard feelings."


    "As though I care--"


    "Between you and Rio."


    He didn''t look like he was thinking it over. He looked like he was considering how many equally-sized chunks to carve me into. Some kind of hunger, some kind of offense taken had crept in where before I''d only seen boredom and indifference. At once, it somewhat humanized him, and made him even more terrifying.


    And then he nodded and stood at ease, and Rio let out a long, tense breath.


    "You test yourself in waters beyond your depth," he said. "I look forward to your death."


    "Thanks, you too," I shrugged, standing well clear as he walked past me, and falling in step behind Rio as we headed right back towards the middle.


    If I bolted, I might have had a chance to make it to the gate, and maybe with some luck, might be able to get the guards there to open it for me. If I fled the city, I kind of doubted Dragon would go after me, though obviously I had no idea what went on in his head.


    But none of that would help free Athan and the others. There was only one way that''d happen, as I saw it, and that was going to have to be through a little liberal application of deicide.


    Whatever this ''our god'' of their was, whatever it thought or did or how it drank blood and created visions, whichever way it decided to throw me, if it truly was the thing responsible for keeping everyone trapped, it had to go. Even if Dragon ripped me apart the next moment, I''d see it dead and Athan freed.


    The sun started to hang low in the sky, throwing deep shadows across our path as we wound ever further towards the center of Oasis.

 372. 2252, Present Day. Somewhere over the Caribbean Sea. Liev.

    Who next needed justice took me no time to decide, but lots of time to consider. It was someone who had been close to me once, someone personal, someone I''d once loved like a brother.


    And while I knew he was evil, a bastard among bastards, I also didn''t want to stain my crusade with personal vendettas. Justice was aspirational, it was something pure and incorruptible, it shouldn''t be meted out only to those who wronged me. This was the land of liberty and justice for all. The thought of beginning with someone who''d betrayed me put a bad taste in my mouth.


    But at the same time, he also didn''t deserve to escape justice. His number would come up, and so...it didn''t really matter if it was today or tomorrow, did it? It was coming for him at some point.


    Yes, I decided, convinced, and nodding to nobody but the clouds. I would get him out of the way early. And as long as I was doing it at some point, why not now? And then I could be impartial as I brought justice to the rest of them, satisfied.


    With a thought I turned myself in the air, pointing myself back towards what I believed to be north, and fired myself with tear-jerking speed. The wind whipped at me, so loud and so violently that I could neither hear nor see, but somehow I kept myself warm without effort.


    It was, I thought, a very convenient way to fly. It hadn''t been like this the first time I ran from the XPCA four years ago. Back then, I''d just blindly shot myself into the night, the pounding of gunfire and distant roar of VTOLs as loud as my heart slamming in my ears. I''d wound up crossing half the country before I was sure I''d lost them, after many, many twists and turns and suddenly finding new units popping up in my path -- a fox harried by ten thousand hounds from everywhere.


    But I''d made it. From near Orlando up towards Raleigh, a detour north and then dipping south and then west to where I''d squatted in the undesirable part of Texas, clutching at the leghairs of civilization. Where I''d stayed for four years. Hidden, undisturbed. Safe, I thought.


    I laughed into the wind roaring past. Safe? Maybe them, from me. Those four years had changed much. They''d changed me. They''d changed my little stretch of land to be worth something to somebody. But I knew they hadn''t changed my target. You didn''t just betray a man like he did and then turn around and become a saint.


    You become a goddamn corpse. And if someone else hadn''t sorted that for him yet, I intended to.


    Land rushed into view, almost before I was ready. The velvet of the early-evening water under me suddenly was green, and then just as fast as it came, it was gone again. Cuba or something, I thought, gone in a few seconds. I kept on, pushing myself even faster over the waves below.


    It didn''t take long to get over land again, the coastline just a tiny sliver of sand holding back miles and miles of crusty grey buildings, peeking out towards the water.


    It just went on and on, no matter how long I followed the coast. Miami. Fort Lauderdale. Palm Beach. It was all just one continuous sprawl. It looked like a mass of barnacles on a post, all fused together and impossible to tell what even was living or dead.


    I veered inland, the grey of the city disappearing into the grids of rural development and then disappearing altogether. There were just white ribbons, highways, glinting with the cars choking them even at this hour. And where they converged, I found my goal.


    It was in Orlando, or in part of its barnacle spread, close enough that there wasn''t really any distinction. A soulless house in a soulless neighborhood, in a soulless residential development, probably made by someone soulless like Richard Rothersford had been. Seeing it from the air, I was appalled to see just how similar all the houses looked and how parceled the land had been. Tiny squares in neat lines, thousands of them and nothing but, for miles.


    I touched down in a backyard, the fences painted white only on this side and the natural red of the wood for all the neighbors. The house was just as I remembered it, single-story, low sloping roofs, a pinkish-beige that was both inoffensive and hard to describe. It was nice out, and the windows were open, despite the lack of a car in the driveway.


    I let myself in by removing a circle of the glass in the backdoor and reaching through. The latch still stuck, as it had when I''d lived here.


    And no sooner did I turn the light on and see the familiar living room, smell the familiar smell of my own house, of carpet powder and the cold tang of ventilation, I found memories flooding back. Good memories, turned black with the passage of time and betrayal.


    And trotting to greet me, Hunter, a long-haired ginger tabby, who set about at once rolling on her back and meowing up a fuss at me, demanding both love and food without reservation.


    Despite her name, Hunter was a girl, and had been named by Lisa and myself before we''d sexed her correctly. I remembered the argument the two of us had when we found out, and I''d suggested we change her name to Huntress instead.


    "You can''t just change people''s names," she said, with an inordinate amount of ridicule.


    "Good thing she''s not a people."


    "Girls can be hunters, too. Are you saying we can''t?"


    And so saying, she''d held the kitty up like a weapon and boxed me with her fluffy paws until I relented. She''d taken great pride in explaining the name every time we had visitors.


    As for Hunter, she was the best cat pretty much anyone could ask for. A dog, in other words. Greeting me at the door without so much as sniffing me after four years and demanding love, that was Hunter in a nutshell.


    But seeing her roll around, the white tufts of her underbelly showing just pissed me off. This had been my cat. This had been my house, my life, and it was stolen from me. Years had passed, and who knew how many strangers had set foot here without me? How many belly rubs had Hunter whored herself out for, to strangers and strange men, because I hadn''t been here?


    Suddenly her antics didn''t seem so cute. She was just a slut, is what she was. She didn''t care that it was me, or any other man who could satisfy her selfish wants. As long as she was pet, Hunter hadn''t given a single care that I was gone, hadn''t let a single goddamn thought pass through her stupid cat mind that I was living in misery, far away, or who was to blame for it all.


    She''d betrayed me too. She hadn''t missed or mourned, she was fatter and stupider than ever. The useless, worthless, parasite.


    My anger flared out of my control and Hunter froze on the spot before seizing once, twice.


    And then she fell apart into bloody chunks, the gore matting into her silky fur.


    I turned and looked around the house for any other signs of betrayal and saw them everywhere. Pictures on the mantle. Books I''d bought that she''d kept. Familiar sheets on the bed. A cast-iron skillet I''d bought with her protests.


    "You''ll never use it," she complained. Until I''d used it to make the best goddamn omelette she''d ever had. And now it sat there on the stovetop, recently-used and scoured, mine, that she hadn''t even wanted, and yet here it still was.


    The pictures I burned. The sheets I reduced to shreds. The pan I ripped open a seam to nothingness and threw it through. The whole house was sick with reminders of how this had all been mine, stocked with loss and tears and hate. It was a goddamn temple to injustice, and I would see it purged.


    Papers were flying through the air as I tore apart the living room''s bookshelf, my rage seething as I turned a cookbook from my own mother into ash in my hands. It had been signed with a loving note for my birthday, yet here it sat--


    "L-Liev?" a voice called out, and I snapped upright.


    Lisa was standing there in the front door, framed by dusk. She flipped a lightswitch and stared at me through the carnage I''d wrought on our house.


    And I stared right back. Feelings which I thought long dead flooded through me, memories rushing back as though they''d been locked away and her face...her familiar face, every line of which I knew and yet had forgotten...was the key.


    "Lisa," I breathed, dropping the half-autopsied books. "Lisa."


    "Liev, what...what is this?" she asked, her voice terrified. "Where''s Hunter?"


    Her mention of the slut brought me back down at once, and I swallowed hard. "Is Eric still alive?"


    "Y-yes? S...should he...should he not be?"


    "I need you to call him. Tell him to come here. Now."


    "Liev, I don''t...I don''t understand," she stammered. "I don''t know why you''re...here, or¡­"


    "Call him!" I shouted, and she jumped. She turned on her heel, but I ripped the door out of her grasp from a distance and slammed it shut in her face. "Now!"


    "Where''s Hunter?" she asked again. I ripped her mobile from her pocket and shoved it into her face.


    "Now."


    There were tears in her eyes as she dialed, and I pretended not to see. "W-what do I say?" she asked.


    "Tell him to come here."


    "But...what--"


    "Just tell him that."


    She cleared her throat and waited with her eyes closed. After too long, she perked up all at once and spoke in a voice hardly affected by tears or fear.


    "Hi! Eric! Hey. Um...I need you to...come over right now. Please." She glanced at me and then took a few rapid breaths, as though just the sight of me scared her. "Actually, no," she said, her voice suddenly rushed. Never mi-i--"


    The phone floated out of her hands and towards me, and I picked it out of the air. "Hello, Eric," I said. "Do you still remember me?"Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    I heard him suck down a breath, which was a yes.


    "I''m here, Eric. Come now, and come alone, or I''ll kill you in ways you can''t imagine how slow and painful they''ll be."


    He said nothing, even though I waited. Just when I was ready to hang up he spoke.


    "And you won''t hurt her?"


    "What?" I asked.


    "If I come, you won''t hurt Lisa?"


    "Sure," I said. And hung up. I threw the phone back to her and she caught it, holding it like she wasn''t sure what to do now that it was in her hands.


    "Where''s Hunter?" she whispered.


    "Gone. Along with everything else I found which was mine. Gone like I was, Lisa. Gone like the time stolen from us. I was ripped from here, like a beating heart, and I come back and find my whole life still here, intact, just moved on without me? What the hell, Lisa?"


    "Where''s Hunter?"


    "You think this is fine, Lisa? Living in our house and with our cat and cooking on our cast-iron pan? Do you have any idea what the hell I''ve been doing these last four years while you pretended nothing changed? Did you even consider for one second how garbage my life was, how much I suffered, how scared I was every, goddamn day?"


    "Where''s--"


    I turned and picked up the remains of Hunter from the back room and threw them at her, pelting her with the still-hot pieces of our cat. Her hands shook and she wailed silently as her fingers brushed the tips of the orange fur.


    "I''m RIGHT HERE, LISA," I bellowed. "And all you give a damn about is the goddamned cat. The cat, and the damn house and the god-damned, motherfucking frying pan. Did you care at all that I was gone? I used to think about you until it hurt, Lisa. I used to imagine where we''d be if none of this happened, that we''d be married by now, how many kids we''d have, whether they would be walking or reading."


    I slashed my arm sideways, tearing a gash in the wall. She just trembled and held my cat, her fingers dripping with gore.


    "And you thought of, what? Just living off of what I''d left behind? Pretending nothing had changed, nothing was wrong? Just rolling in the void I left behind like...like...like some kind of parasite?"


    I felt my chest burning and my breath came out in frost as I screamed at her.


    "That''s it, isn''t it!? You''re just like them!"


    "I don''t understand!" she screamed back. "Why did you kill Hunter? Why are you here?"


    "Justice," I spat. "I am here to right every wrong."


    "W-what wrong did Hunter commit?"


    I slapped her with a shockwave of force that sent her spinning and to her knees.


    "Don''t you fucking question me," I roared. "I am justice incarnate! You''re just a filthy parasite, desperately clinging to the edges of the life we used to have together. You are nothing without me, do you understand?"


    I blew up the rest of the bookshelf, sending a white column of paper exploding through the room. "Every goddamn thing in this house was mine. Without me, you were nothing."


    She didn''t reply, just held the largest pieces of Hunter and herself where I''d hit her and cried. It was pathetic. It was disgusting. I wanted to put her down right then and there, just to end this pitiful spectacle, but at the same time, I wanted her to live forever with me, to be back together like we''d once been, to have what we had.


    Even now, seeing her clutching that bloody mess and wailing without dignity. She was still beautiful to me. She always would be.


    This time I heard the car door slam and the hurried footsteps. I let the door open as Eric burst into the room, white and out of breath. His eyes found me first, and then landed on Lisa. Without hesitation, he knelt at her side and put a hand on her shoulder.


    And then I threw him backwards against the closed door.


    "Don''t you fucking dare touch her," I spat, the walls shredding around him as my loosed powers tore the air. "You disgusting, traitorous, verminous--"


    "...let¡­" he gasped.


    I stopped in front of him, increasing the pressure on his chest until it cracked.


    "...her¡­" he wheezed.


    "Go?" I finished. "What does she matter to you? You''ll be dead in a moment."


    I let up a little so he could bleat out his answer.


    "...you...promised¡­"


    "Oh spare me," I said, pulling needles of ice from the air, thousands of them, and driving them an inch deep all across his body. When he tried to scream, I crushed his ribs until he didn''t have the air to, and just squeaked like a broken toy instead.


    And then I let him fall, let him crash to the ground, shards of ice splintering everywhere as he struggled for breath.


    "Before you do though, I want you to know exactly how I suffered because of you. I want you, in the next few minutes, to live through as much pain and fear as I felt the last four years. I want justice, Eric, and I will extract it from you in pain."


    He lay still, gasping, drawing in painful breaths. But even through that, he somehow worked up the gall to speak to me again.


    "...let...her¡­"


    I ended his sentence with a weak scream by tearing off one of his fingernails, and then jamming it crudely under one of the others.


    But even if he was screaming and writhing, this wasn''t like it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be pleading for his worthless life. He was supposed to listen to my story, my story, to get a glimpse of comprehension of what he''d done to me. He was supposed to regret it, regret every moment of his pitiful existence, regret ever pretending to be my best friend, regret turning me in to the XPCA, regret the disgusting life he''d eked out in my absence.


    Justice was about regret. It was bringing regret to those who were too sick to repent.


    Instead, he was fighting back with a discipline and a selflessness a worm like him shouldn''t be capable of. I slashed his face twice, setting a deep pattern of criss-crossed lines into it. Like the waffles we''d made together as roommates, before I found Lisa.


    "...et¡­" he gurgled through blood and cleft lips.


    I just couldn''t understand. How could someone so degenerate, so willing to throw me away, commit himself so wholly to another? I wanted to scream the question in his face and flay him until he told me.


    Wanted it so badly, that I stopped. That I held back the pain for him for a moment and let him speak.


    "Why the hell would I do that?" I spat at him.


    "...said...so¡­"


    "And what does that matter?"


    He rolled onto his side and fixed me with one eye, bloodshot and streaked with blood. His other had been raked and had a clean line across it where the pupil had been slit in two. Yet somehow, through the pain and the blood, I knew he could still see me, as the eye focused slowly on my face.


    "...s''...not...right¡­"


    "Not right?" I laughed. "That''s your best argument? It''s wrong of me to kill her?"


    "...you...said...ain''t...just¡­"


    I stopped laughing. And then, for good measure, I raked out his other eye, and let go of his ribs, letting him go back to suffocating on his own pain. "Not just? What the goddamn fuck do you know about justice? I AM JUSTICE," I screamed. "I learned all there was to know about justice by having my closest friend in the world stab me in the back. I came to you for help when I turned, and you said you''d give it to me. You said. And now you lecture me about doing the same to you? That''s what justice is, friend. How bitter does it taste?"


    He couldn''t respond, only writhe and moan and gurgle out his gasps. But still he was defiant, and I wanted to end him on the spot, just to show him what his defiance was worth. I wanted him to suffer for eternity, or four years, or something poetic and fitting.


    And instead, he was there, shuffling towards me. Blind. Crippled. Still defiant.


    No, not towards me, I realized. Between me and her.


    What the fuck.


    "How can you possibly be so loyal?" I screamed. "How will you, even now, go to defend her? Where was this when I needed it, when I was afraid for my life? How can--"


    And then I stopped, realizing. The white-hot rage inside me abated in an instant, suddenly ice-cold.


    "You loved her," I said. "You always loved her. That''s why you turned me in, to get rid of me, so you could have her."


    He shook his head. "...no¡­" he gasped.


    "You LIAR!" I screamed, throwing him back against the door, clear over Lisa''s trembling head. "You''ve always been disgusting and jealous, always been a vile parasite, just waiting for what was mine! Well you can''t have it. You get nothing. Justice will strip from you all that you''ve stolen in your disgusting life, and then your life itself. You will die with nothing but suffering. And you will suffer like nobody has before."


    The ice cold hole in me solidified into hatred as I''d never known. A thousand torments flooded into my mind, each more painful than the last. I''d do them all. I''d make him live through every single one of them, until his body wasn''t even suitable for feeling pain, until his mind was so broken he would welcome death.


    Reality rippled as powers I didn''t even know I had coalesced and found focus in the man in front of me. Time and space bent, reality shuddered, every single object in the room around us rose and turned to him and served me, prepared to do their damndest to make his suffering legendary.


    And then I paused, because she was there. Lisa, taking her turn to defend him.


    "Step aside. I have no intention of killing you," I told her.


    "No."


    "It would be effortless."


    "I know."


    "So move, girl."


    "I won''t."


    I sighed enormously. "Why not? Is this some other appeal to a justice that you parasites are incapable of understanding? An impassioned plea for love or mercy?"


    "No. I know you don''t have love or mercy anymore." There was a soft thunk as what was left of Hunter fell out of her hands. "But you''re wrong."


    "About what?" I scoffed.


    "He didn''t...do what you think. He didn''t turn you in."


    I looked at her, at the pathetic fear in her face, and at the millions of shards of the universe arrayed around us like knives.


    "He did, though," I said. "Nobody else knew."


    "I knew," she whispered.


    He gurgled something and clutched at her heel. She gave me one final glance before crouching down and murmuring softly to him. "I''m sorry. I''m so sorry, Eric. I was scared."


    They said nothing resembling a conversation, muttering and whimpering to one another, but I heard little of it. Her words were still echoing in my ears, words too simple to avoid understanding, but at the same time, completely beyond my comprehension.


    And so the three of us remained for many long minutes, the sound of whimpering and wheezing breath all that broke the silence. Until finally, I turned and looked at her.


    And she was still beautiful. I truly didn''t understand.


    "Why?" I asked.


    She pointed at Eric, and for a moment I thought it was she who''d found motive for them to cheat on me, but then she pointed at the nearest daggers of crystalized air, at the tears in reality, at the distortion which tore the house''s room sideways, and finally at Hunter.


    "This," she said. "I saw this."


    "You saw I had powers?" I scoffed at her. "Like every other goddamn Exhuman story--"


    "I saw cruelty. I didn''t like who you were becoming. I was afraid."


    I digested her words for half a moment, and decided I didn''t like them. After all I''d endured, everything that''d happened to me, it was all because she''d just arbitrarily made some goddamned judgement call that I was simply bad somehow?


    The thought disgusted me. But at least I had my answer. I lashed out with all of my powers, imploding the room through her and into him in a death so final and absolute that it penetrated several universes.


    And then I left, her words still echoing in my head as I fled for my haven over the ocean.

 373. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    "Who''s this?" AEGIS asked, her voice equal parts concern and curiosity.


    Karu was not so diplomatic, simply glaring at my companion with open hostility. The kind that included pointing guns.


    "This is Saga," I said, interceding. "Or...it''s something like her. I don''t quite know."


    "Oh," Karu said. "Another code-X. I understand now why you have been behaving aberrantly."


    And then she tried to shoot around me, making my shield flash as I held fast and impacted the shots. The girl screamed, and I realized I needed to figure out a name for her other than Saga, since I knew for damn sure Saga wasn''t screaming like that.


    "Please, I don''t want to be here, please just let me go," she pleaded.


    "Then go," I said, and she did no such thing, staying rooted on the spot. The fake person wouldn''t do anything Saga wouldn''t do, and Saga had no reason to leave. I''d figured that much out.


    "If I go, she''ll shoot me," she said, her voice choked with emotions and tears enough that my own throat was closing up in sympathy just hearing her. "Please. Please, just take me back. I don''t want to die."


    I closed my eyes and drank in Saga''s senses, her vision of standing in this room, full of strange people, foremost, the man who was not me. There was no Karu here threatening her, just the indecipherable babble of too many voices too far away, all yelling at her to leave.


    "We have a situation," I told the others. "And I''m not fully sure how to explain it because I''m not fully sure what''s going on. But what I do know is that this person behind me is Saga. And you," I said, turning to the pale girl in the corner. "Are not."


    "Bullshit," Saga said. "I''m the most Sagaest goddamn Saga there''s ever been. There''s nobody more me than me." She hopped to her feet and stared me down, a look of sheer irritation piercing her normally calm exterior, until she was mere inches from me. And then she grinned, and I felt something rubbing the front of my pants. "How about we settle this the traditional way? You test us both exhaustively, and then you know for sure who''s the real one."


    The not-Saga looked at me in horror like I''d already agreed to rape, and I just sighed and shook my head. "Please no," she whispered.


    "Yeah we probably don''t have time for that," Saga grinned. "Exhaustively means like, four or five times for Athan before he''s exhausted. And while I could keep up--"


    "Sit down, Saga," I said, and of course she didn''t, so at the very least, I took her hand off my junk. "I''m not kidding."


    "Yeah," Lia chirped. "No time for screwing around," she giggled.


    "Feels like your punchline delivery is hindered by not wanting to swear," AEGIS commented.


    "It''s a sacrifice," Lia shrugged.


    "Guys, I''m not kidding here," I warned. "Somehow, all I know is that inside this girl, Saga''s somehow like, trapped in there, and she''s seeing things I''m not."


    "So you say you are seeing things," Karu clarified. "In a situation where you are dealing with a code-X? And you cannot think of any possible explanation for your confusion?"


    "Sweetie, that''s just a girl," AEGIS said, her voice soothing. "I''m sure she''s very nice...and if you wanted to replace Saga, it sounds like an upgrade to me--"


    "Hey!"


    "--but it''s just an ordinary girl. Where did you find her?"


    "Under a tree, near the outer wall. Just like Saga--"


    "So if she''s from the outer ring, she''s not even Exhuman."


    "She...I don''t even know. She''s just like...a vessel, that Saga''s somehow trapped inside."


    "That''s rude," she said from behind. "We''ve been talking all morning, haven''t we?"


    "Y''know, if Saga''s really trapped in there," Saga said, cracking her knuckles "I think we ought to open things up, let the poor girl out. It''s what I''d want, I know."


    I think Saga was having too much fun terrorizing the girl and establishing her dominance as the one true Saga. From her perspective, as a war of heart and mind, I could understand her desire to prove herself and pick apart a perceived intruder.


    And she was doing a great job. I was legit worried for my companion, which I knew I shouldn''t be if it was Saga. But...maybe it wasn''t, and Saga was like...trapped...in there? Mentally? Or something...I didn''t know the limits of what a code-X could do to her, or if there even were limits. But the very real Saga in front of me seemed very realistically willing to test those boundaries.


    All my friends had a point. Maybe Lia and Tem hadn''t really spoken up on it, but Saga, AEGIS, and Karu had all brought up arguments I couldn''t defeat about this Saga''s authenticity. If it was a mindfuck of some kind, who was I to assume it was somehow Saga being affected and not me? If I could assume her powers were behaving strangely, why couldn''t I equally accept that it was probably only my awareness of them which was off?


    I wanted more than anything to just get rid of the not-Saga and be back with all of my friends and focus on the guns and Moon and this crazy city we''d found ourselves in. It seemed the most plausible, the most right.


    But none of that changed the fact that when I closed my eyes, when I opened my mind to what I felt was Saga, I could still see something which wasn''t here. An image which made no sense at all, so vivid, so real, without a doubt something that Saga -- the real Saga -- was seeing and feeling and experiencing right now. And so desperately shoved into my mind, a plea for help.


    It was almost like just having my eyes open or closed could send me between worlds, and each was doing their best to convince me the other didn''t exist. This one, by rational arguments, by consistency, by having all appearances of being. And the other by existing despite lacking all of those, a vision so nonsensical that the very nature of it being felt like defiance.


    I didn''t know what to do. I didn''t know what I even could do. I spent so many minutes closing and opening my eyes, seeing the concerned looks of those around me, or the irritation of those around her, as they insisted in mumbled shouts that she leave.


    I sat next to Lia and looked into her eyes. A ring of green on the outside, a ring of brown in the middle. And such complicated radiating patterns in between. They were eyes I''d seen a thousand times, eyes I could remember from the flat of my back waking up in the morning, or across a breakfast table, or that I could share snickering glances with when that one awkward scene came on during family movie night, and neither of us wanted to acknowledge our parents in the room.


    They were like my eyes, I knew. And so I let out a deep breath as I sat on the bed with her and copied her pose, folding my legs under me, hands in lap.


    "What do you think?" I asked her. "About...all of this. Me seeing things from the perspective of Saga, who''s this person, but isn''t?"


    She had her serious thinking face on already. Whatever she said, I was prepared to believe.


    "I think...that you''re in a city full of unknowns," she said, pausing only to chew her lip for a moment. "There''s hundreds of Exhumans here. You''ve just been promoted up some chain of command to some rank you don''t know all the ins-and-outs of yet. There''s something at play, and it''s messing with your head, and that''s honestly really scary."


    She glanced around at the others as though looking for affirmation, and then swallowed hard.


    "But...and I''m not dismissing your thoughts out of hand here. I believe you when you say you''re having...sensations or whatever...and that this girl is involved, or at least, you believe she is. But none of the rest of us are, especially AEGIS, who isn''t susceptible to a code-X like the rest of us might be. Now maybe that means they already got all of us, and there''s something extra-special stubborn about you," she gave me a weak smile "but...it can also mean that just by measure of a prevailing perception...you''re seeing things, bro. And in a city full of Exhumans, there''s way, way too many reasons why that might be."


    Her response was exactly what I thought from the moment I saw her thinking about this seriously. Measured, diplomatic, taking in all the data she had in front of her, and emphasizing what we didn''t know over what we did.


    I closed my eyes and saw two strangers sitting on the bed, cross-legged, facing each other, intimate. They looked like brother and sister to me, or...maybe husband and wife. Absolutely not a pair of strangers.


    Which was vexing, because that''s how Lia and I were, for sure, but it wasn''t...at least, I didn''t think it was...how those two had been in Saga''s vision. The two people who had been Lia and myself hadn''t seemed related or intimate in the slightest until I initiated that.. Again, both seemed to struggle for legitimacy, with this world making perfect sense, and that one existing despite making none.


    I really wished I had another set of eyes I could close to block out both of them and just think. The real world...er...the world I saw with my eyes open, was thankfully silent as the others gave me time to think on Lia''s words, but Saga''s world was loud and vicious as ever, and I could not understand a word of it. Everything was slightly muted and fuzzy, as though I was nearsighted and deaf, although I had to guess that it was because our connection wasn''t solid enough.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Which was strange, because earlier, it had been. I''d been able to hear my not-me talking to her. I suddenly desperately wanted to hear what was going on in her world, to see if there were more clues there. Or, mostly, I was just grasping at anything I could reach.


    But I couldn''t talk to her. Even when I could hear, we couldn''t communicate through it. But there had to be a workaround. I glanced around the room, looking for anything, and my eyes landed on the tablet Lia''d just been working on.


    "I''m going to borrow this," I said.


    She nodded. "There''s no ''net yet, but I''m close. Rio was a big help, and I''m in the military--"


    "Don''t need ''net," I said, and opened up a blank message and began typing.


    > Saga, can you read this?


    I typed, feeling the studs of the keys and the haptic feedback, my eyes closed and focused on her response.


    > If you can read this, nod your head.


    My vision swam as the head I was looking through bobbed up and down, and then she stood, looking around the room the same way I just had. There wasn''t a tablet for her to use, there wasn''t anything at all of interest, just a bunch of ordinary shit from a bunch of ordinary people, no guns or armor or machine parts.


    I couldn''t feel but assumed her annoyance at the spartan room, and she went instead to a wall, seamless, plain white stone. And then a strange lack of pain as she bit off the tip of her thumb and smeared blood, bright red against the white on it.


    It took her a few goes because her thumb kept healing but eventually she got a simple message out.


    ''Sup.


    I opened my eyes and saw the not-saga standing in the same corner, a corner of her dress in her hands as she scrubbed the wall with her thumb, fretting about some spot I hadn''t noticed.


    And then she yelped about a spider and began patting herself down, swatting at her body. It looked almost convincing, but given Saga being in there, it was unmistakable that she was slapping her backside at me in an effort to humiliate this girl I was watching. I could imagine her irritation at its failure, and closed my eyes and began writing again before she decided to escalate the situation.


    > What is going on? Why am I seeing things differently from your view? Who is this girl?


    Saga looked down at her thumb and the pitiful amount of blood it drew, and her body slumped with a sigh. Too many questions, too many words, when just the one had taken her most of a minute already to write.


    I tried to simplify my prompt, but she wasn''t paying attention anymore, she was back in her own world looking at what she saw, scouring the room. I watched her go, watched her analyze every object and person, looking for something.


    She picked up a stone stool which was smattered with blood for some reason and slammed it against the ground a few times without effect. Looking around again, she set eyes on the desk. And the window behind it.


    She tried to prop herself under the desk and push it out the window to the ground two floors below, but she wasn''t strong enough. I moved to help her, and found a similar problem, feeling two roomfulls of people staring at me like I was crazy.


    "Help me throw this out the window," I said.


    "Why, dude?" Lia asked.


    "Just do it, please. Please. I need this to test something."


    She looked round at the others and nobody moved for a moment. And then Tem stood and climbed under the desk with me, straining her best to shove it.


    And then came all the others, lifting and pushing, the desk rising up and teetering towards the window.


    As it went, I closed my eyes to watch from Saga''s view, expecting a sudden galanization of the others in the room as they all altruistically joined Saga in throwing the table out her window as well. More of the inexplicable confusion which was her world''s nonsense versus my reason.


    Except it didn''t happen. The figures stood exactly where they had been. They continued berating and threatening her. The two worlds had disconnected, and I didn''t know why.


    Our table flipped over the low windowsill and crashed into the street below, cracking into stone splinters. Any one of which would have served as a suitable quill to keep Saga''s blood-ink flowing, I realized. But hers stayed right where it was.


    As did, I realized, not-Saga, who was still by the wall she was ''cleaning''. Whatever had caused these two worlds, it didn''t like Saga doing what she was, it had chosen not to parrot her.


    And it caused a fracture. I could reach over, blindly, and put my hand where I saw Saga as being. And although I could feel anything, my hand would stop.


    I closed my eyes and felt through Saga. She saw and felt nothing, the not-me was not under the table with her, there was no hand on her...uh...I shifted my hand slightly...on her torso. Nothing. And yet my hand floated in the air, propped up by nothing I could feel.


    I gave it a moment''s thought and then went back to my tablet and wrote again.


    > Sorry about this. I need to test something.


    And then I took a running kick at the empty air.


    I tripped and fell on my face, my chin cracking on the white stone as I stumbled on nothingness. Even preparing myself for what wasn''t there, my mind couldn''t wrap itself around what it couldn''t perceive, and I fell way harder than I''d intended.


    As I screwed up my face from the pain and blocked out the explosion of concern from the others, I saw Saga now lurched a few feet from where she had been, her nose inexplicably in pain and blood streaming down her front from it. But in her world now, I saw not-me had kicked her full in the face. We were synced again, at least on her end.


    She shambled up to the wall and dipped her fingers in the stream of blood to smear on it again. Thanks, needed the blood.


    > Wasn''t my intention. What''s going on?


    You, me, everyone trapped in own versions of the world. See real others as fakes, see fakes as real.


    I slumped, feeling AEGIS fussing over me with medical gel over my split lip and the cut on my chin. There was pain there, for sure. And she seemed as real as AEGIS ever had. But Saga''s explanation went a long way in making sense of this situation.


    > What about Lia? Karu? AEGIS? Where are they? What do they see?


    They''re around. Dunno AEGIS. Lia, Karu, in their own worlds.


    She struggled getting the last couple of words out, until she cracked her face on the wall again to get another pool of ink flowing. I winced at seeing her do it from her perspective, helpless and flinching as the corner of the wall suddenly lurched into my...her face.


    Something hijacking senses. I can still broadcast direct lower-level than that. If couldn''t, we be screwed.


    She was beginning to run out of wall and went around the corner for a new canvas.


    > How do we fight it?


    No idea.


    > You can''t like...reprogram or compel us to shut out the fake senses?


    I can shut out your real senses. Wanna be deaf and blind?


    > No, not really. So it''s not...fake, our bodies legit believe that what we''re seeing is what we''re seeing? Like, this all is¡­


    I struggled to delineate two things that should never be seperate. How could you differently define your senses and your senses in your brain? The only place your senses really existed to begin with was in your brain.


    But she understood.


    Yes. I screw with the mind. This is higher-level than that. Raw input. I can''t touch it.


    But she could plant visions and memories directly into our heads, and that was what I was seeing, I realized. Seeing what Saga was, that was actually just her streaming her memories directly into my short-term memory so I''d live it out nearly instantly. No wonder things seemed a little distorted and funny, but I had to hand it to her for coming up with a workaround.


    > So...we just run then? Get out of range of the city and whatever this is and it goes away?


    I said I don''t know.


    She paused, and then struck out the last sentence.


    Won''t work.


    I waited while she fingerpainted the rest of her thought.


    All the toads, they are from this. This is where toads come from. Found those in Japan and America -- those must still be in reach.


    > Well, shit.


    And worse news


    She stopped to refresh her ink again, and I let her do it with my eyes open so I didn''t have to see the wall coming this time. After a moment I rejoined her and found her on her knees, scribbling away at an essay that took up the rest of the wall.


    We don''t have much time. Feel it in the corners of your mind, starting to set in. Some sensory atrophy. Thing changing how your head works, slowly. You and everyone, becoming toads too.


    When she was done, she sat down, staring at the wall to make sure I had time to take in every word, wiping the blood off her hands onto her pants. I sat down as well, breathing heavily as all this new information set in.


    I knew what it meant, but at the same time, had no idea what it meant. I didn''t know what it was like being a toad, or how thinking felt or who I''d be if my own thinking patterns were changed. I remembered back when Saga had mindfucked me into being her boyfriend for a day, and how terrifyingly easy it had been for me to be someone else. All I''d done was what felt normal for me, but...it hadn''t been normal at all.


    I suddenly realized what everyone else here was, what being a toad truly meant. Everyone else in this city, everyone else in this room, they were doing things that made perfect sense to them, and yet they were jerked along to act like how the city wanted. When I''d split open my chin, the person who wasn''t AEGIS had doted on the person who wasn''t me, just the same as she would have, because that''s what she needed to do to keep up the facade. She had no say in the matter, her perceptions had probably been altered to make it so that acting as she had -- as AEGIS had -- was the only outcome.


    She was a puppet, in other words. And slowly, all of us were being strung up, our minds smoothed out until we would do the exact same dance. And there was nowhere to run, and no way to fight back. Nothing even to fight against, except our own senses.


    Except¡­


    I looked at the empty spot where the table had been. I closed my eyes and looked at the chin of not-me. AEGIS had dressed me with medical gel, and even some quick stitchwork, because of course she had. But not-me was still bleeding slightly, his chin only wiped down and fussed over, the treatment of a random girl from Oasis, not a packed and prepared self-trained medical professional.


    There were cracks. The illusion wasn''t perfect. The realities had differences between them, though none of us could see it in a single glance. Only by peering between each others'' senses could we see where the incongruities lined up, and maybe...just maybe...if we shoved our fingers in those gaps and pulled, we might unravel the world.


    Maybe, I hoped. It seemed a stretch to pull apart an entire fake reality just by prodding at it, but that was all I had. It was all we had time for. If my mind kept slipping, soon, Saga wouldn''t be able to connect with it, and then each of us would be locked away in our own world, helpless to claw at it.


    I closed my eyes and felt the studs under my fingers as I typed Saga a final message.


    > Help me find the others. Let''s bring everyone together, and then let''s try everything we can to take these worlds apart.


    She saw, stood, and into our view, she raised her hand and gave the two of us a thumbs-up, as we each left the room with a stranger, the others complaining at our backs as we went.

 374. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    I''d never really considered how frustrating my friends could be. Sure, I had moments of dealing with their quirks, we had disagreements, sometimes even violently so. But by and large, I was lucky that, for whatever reason, they listened to me, respected my opinion, even followed me to a degree.


    And I was now learning just how much of that was them being followers and how much of it was personal loyalty and trust in me. And the answer was: Zero. Zero percent followers, these people. Absolutely obstinate. Impossible to deal with.


    Because to them, I looked like someone utterly not myself. No matter how I tried to mime or cajole them out of whatever scenarios they were in, not a one of them seemed even slightly willing to give me a try. Maybe it was because their version of me was running his mouth, making excuses and apologies as he pantomimed around, bowing and tugging their hands. Maybe they were all just naturally distrustful of strangers. Or maybe, the worlds they were in were captivating and dangerous enough that they couldn''t stand to be distracted by whoever this nimrod was.


    Whatever their reasons, I got my ass kicked more than followed, and so Saga and I sat, fuming and exhausted, still just the two of us, watching the person who was Karu as she manned the wall, pivoting on the spot as she surveyed for something which didn''t exist in our realities.


    > Can you touch Karu''s mind?


    I wrote on the tablet, for Saga to see. I closed my eyes to see her response and found her nodding, and then a too-casual shrug, which...damn, I kinda wished I didn''t know Saga as well as I did, but to me, there was no mistaking the gesture as questioning why anyone would ever want to.


    > Just do it, please. See through her eyes, and let me see what you do.


    Again, Saga gave an exaggerated shrug, and then a few deep breaths. Linking together minds was tricky business -- she and I were mostly the exception, given how close and open we were, and I doubted that the same with Karu would be painless or easy.


    Especially this threesome. Perhaps I should have considered another few moments how impractical my request might be before making it, but Saga seemed up to the challenge, as my vision through her blurred and wavered as her own thoughts bled out into another''s.


    And then, more painless, more seamless than I thought possible, I saw what Karu was looking for. In her reality, Oasis was under siege, XPCA vehicles surrounding the city, tanks and VTOLs both, arranged in distant lines while soldiers like fleas nestled in the distant battlements.


    She stood watch on the wall, seeing many more people around her than there actually were, each moving with urgency on their pretend tasks. If only she''d reach out towards them, her hand would pass right through. But it was no wonder she didn''t give me the time of day when there were already so many people around who were inconsequential to her.


    I wondered how long she''d been fighting in this reality, and with whom, and what it''d cost her. The city looked pretty intact, but so did the offensive line. Perhaps it was more of a standoff? It was hard to tell for certain, and my view through Saga was even hazier and more insubstantial than hers alone, like we were playing some new mental form of telephone.


    As I watched, some kind of Oasian approached and spoke to Karu, asking her opinion on something, I thought. Karu turned and stood impressively, crossing her arms, not wearing her armor or visor but still cutting an intimidating form as she replied.


    And I understood. As Saga had told me when we''d found Tem and...she advised me not to try to interfere. This was a situation that would keep and captivate Karu''s mind forever. It was a reality built for her, to contain her, based on her own mind. Here was war, something Karu understood, and she was being consulted constantly for her expert opinion on it. She wasn''t even in her armor, wasn''t out there on the first wall like the rest of the humans...heck, in her reality, maybe humans were integrated throughout the defence instead of held at the front.


    Or maybe, it was Karu''s own insight which had integrated them. Impossible to say. But the point was, if there were two things Karu couldn''t resist, it was sharing her experience and a good fight, and here she had both.


    Just as Tem was in a peaceful setting, spending all her days with me. Just as I''d just been given a sympathetic damsel and a city to protect. Saga''s reality was a city of real shitty people she could demolish without consequence, and Lia was basically just the ''net, with all her friends constantly online. In the end, each of us was a simple person in some ways. But mostly Tem.


    But though I''d seen it a number of times now, I was still irritated by the intelligence behind all of this. It wasn''t some mere passive trap we''d walked into, it was actively constructed, it was being woven shut around us at all times, by some malign intellect which was beyond understanding. It was smart, and it was choosing to use those smarts to snare us rather than whatever other good could come from its enormous power.


    And that honestly pretty much just pissed me off.


    Still, seeing it didn''t help get anyone free. All I''d learned about the girls'' cages was that they were resilient. And unlike me, none of them seemed to have much interest in Saga knocking on their minds...and why would they? In their worlds, Saga still existed, and there was no reason to suspect that any abnormal code-X activity would be anything other than her screwing around. None of them had the rapport with her that I did, to know how to read some very oblique hints.


    I spent another few minutes in Karu''s vision as she worked her way down a few lists. Carved stone tablets, I realized. I guess they were cheaper and easier than paper out here. It looked like some kind of manifest for food production, if I was making it out clearly.


    It was busy work she could keep up for days. Far longer than it would take to turn us all into toads. It was so frustrating and I felt so powerless that she was literally right in front of me, and I couldn''t even see her...not as herself anyway, just some proud-looking Oasis native, intent on staring at the horizon a bunch.


    I fell back into myself, into my own reality, feeling the bruises on my arm from when I''d tried to move Karu by force. They gave me an idea, that maybe, if I could do as Saga did and prove it was me somehow¡­


    I sucker punched her, and she jumped into a fighting stance before she even winced, arms moving up on their own in a gesture too familiar. She came at me immediately, and I slipped her first two punches, left and right, before snapping back with a shot to the gut that she stepped back while taking to soften it.


    That made her take me more seriously, and her next advance was slower. It was hard, because the girl I was fighting...the not-Karu...she wasn''t acting at all like I knew Karu would be. Her eyes were everywhere instead of laser focused, she was babbling, yelling incoherently at me instead of keeping her breathing controlled.


    Karu lunged and I took half a step back and sideways by reflex, but it was a feint. Her leg came out and caught the foot I''d left behind in my retreat, sending me stumbling backwards under my own momentum. She wasted no time in stepping in, her other foot shooting straight towards my off-balance jaw.


    I got away with it clipping my elbow, which still hurt like fuck, her boots cutting a new gash up my forearm. This wasn''t going well, and I wasn''t doing a great job of selling myself as myself very convincingly. I thought back to the numerous times we''d sparred, for anything distinctive in her style or mine which would speak to her.


    But the damn fact was, no matter what I tried, she was having none of it. She seemed completely uninterested in whether I moved like Athan or not. She was a soldier in a battlefield, and her job was to destroy her enemy, not to waste time admiring his moves.


    While that sounds like a simple lesson, it took me several more smacks around before I got it, and from there, I felt I had little choice but to just book it. Knowing that in her head, she''d just see me using some Exhuman powers or an exosuit or some shit, I kicked off my exoframe at near full strength and shot myself back and away, creating the distance I needed to disappear from her sight.


    I checked as I ran, and saw her choosing not to pursue. Already, in her vision, soldiers had swarmed to take chase after the assailant, and she saw little reason to do anything but breathe deeply and resume focus on her job.


    Which was depressing and bitter. I wound up only a block away before coming back, and when I did, she didn''t recognize me. Exactly where we''d fucking started, with nothing to show but a few more cuts and bruises.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Maybe I was closer with Lia, maybe there was some way of convincing her? Or maybe Tem? Despite the danger in pulling her away from ''me'', surely she could tell if it was the actual me doing it?


    Right?


    ...right?


    I sat down, staring at not-Karu''s back and feeling frustration like I''d rarely before.


    No, not right. That was a stupid, garbage plan and I knew it. Whatever I offered them, it was a glimmer of something, going up against their entire reality. Even when I''d seen Saga unmistakably splayed out under her tree, it hadn''t worked on me until I also felt her influence in my head. I just didn''t have anything like that to leverage against anyone else.


    But at the same time, nobody else was intimate enough with Saga to get that shit but me! So we had one fucking tool in our box, and it didn''t work on anyone else. It was beginning to feel like the only good that would come of Saga setting my mind free would be that instead of a little paradise, I''d spend the rest of my eternity in Oasis knowing I was in hell. Knowing I failed, not just myself, but everyone. My own sister, trapped in here with me, and I was too fucking powerless to do a goddamn thing.


    I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything. I wanted to just whip out my powers and start hacking people apart, just to say fuck you to whoever had spent so much fucking time wrapping them all up pretty in their web.


    But that was suicide, I knew. The thing responsible may not give a solitary shit if I wandered around raising trouble...or even apparently if I realized it was all fake and tried to break free. But I knew if I attacked the city itself, I could expect a quick death from the whole caste of Exhumans enslaved to defend it.


    So that was plan B. If the whole everything didn''t work out, I''d just go mental and get myself killed. Better than living here a mindfucked slave forever.


    Which still left me frustrated and powerless to form a plan A. Which felt so unfair. I''d found the chinks in the armor, I''d seen how different the realities were, I''d tried to throw those details in the face of the illusion, to twist and break it.


    Because I knew if there was one thing that shattered imaginary realities, it was having sudden truths thrown in their face. A truth that didn''t agree with one''s view of the world could either be accepted, or ignored.


    And the goddamn fucking problem was that this whole fucking illusion seemed content to just ignore, ignore, ignore. I''d placed myself physically inside the imaginary people Karu saw around her, and in her mind, we''d just bumped into each other. I''d lay on the table that existed in some realities and not others and fallen through it, and nobody batted an eye.


    Saga had taken extreme measures and had basically deepthroated me with her tongue right in front of Lia, and she''d just blushed and turned away. It was awkward as all hell, and still.


    Still here we were. Here we all were.


    Trapped.


    Alone together.


    Inside realities based on our own heads.


    I thought back to my own reality, at how it''d been done up so I''d be content. But then, even when I wasn''t, it didn''t care. It''d let me have free run of the city, let me muck with the others however I wanted. As the hours had slipped by, I felt less like the thing was offering me a challenge, and more that it just legit didn''t care what I did or didn''t do. That''s how confident it was in its illusion -- even knowing I was trapped inside, It was certain I could do exactly fucking zero about it.


    And fuck, if I wasn''t starting to believe it was right.


    How the hell could one break out of a cage designed explicitly for them? How was I supposed to widen the cracks that it seemed people were content to ignore? Was there even a way?


    I''d just assumed there would be but the grim reality was that...many times there just wasn''t. A rat in a cage, or a bear in a trap, or a hiker pinned under rocks...we would always like to imagine if it were us, we''d have some clever way out, but more often than not, in those kinds of scenarios...they just remained trapped.


    Until they died.


    I closed my eyes but all that did was bring me back to Saga''s world. She was sitting, slumped, with the same abject defeat as I saw on myself, even through the veil of being someone else. My view had gotten fuzzier in this short time already, as whatever toading effect continued to set in.


    And all I could do was sit and think. And see myself, stuck in someone else''s skin. A perfect cage, designed just for me.


    See myself and the rest of Saga''s world. She''d done a number on it to vent, while I was trying to solve problems. I didn''t know how she set quite so much fire when the city was all stone, and then I had the horrifying realization that people were actually kind of flammable.


    Fuck, I thought. Why couldn''t I have wound up in that world instead of the one with Rio being all lovey-dovey at me? I''d have seen through the nonsense unreality of that in a second.


    And then I blinked at her. Slowly. With each closing of my eyes, our worlds swapped in front of them.


    And I had the idea we needed.


    Saga jolted as I dove headfirst into her mind, stammering out words I couldn''t make out, her arms flailing at the sudden transgression. Walls went up reflexively inside her, places even I shouldn''t go, places nobody should go, places so dark or desperate that Saga would rather die than open them up.


    The walls tensed as I screamed at her to relax and let me in, to let us become one. It was sudden, it was beyond anything we''d done before -- beyond anything she''d done before, even. But I knew, this was the only way. This connection we had was fuzzy and faulty and it was impossible to be her, while looking through what felt like a dirty holo screen.


    She took several deep breaths and with each one, lowered her guard, inch by inch. She let me slide into her, quivering at my touch in places long guarded and seldom felt. I did my best to be gentle, but I was a rank amateur, moving too fast and too slow at once, stumbling and fumbling with my mind over things she rather I not touch, and every time I did, she tensed up painfully, almost crushing me inside her.


    It was...a lot like physical intimacy, if you couldn''t tell, but at the same time, so very different. Instead of accidental bumps or prods, even a stray thought could kill the mood here. She had to accept me fully, open completely, with love and trust, in a situation where our communication was clumsy at best. And in turn, I had to come further and further inside her, until we were fully overlapped, until we were absolutely one, until we were confused who was who and whose were whose.


    As I went further inside, I began to feel things I hadn''t ever before. How shallow her breathing felt. How awkward it felt to swallow, without a stomach to empty into. How her hair hung just at the top of her vision, swaying with her every movement. How cold it was inside her, even in this weather, her hands were like leaden ice.


    I saw it, felt it. And when I gasped at the sensations rushing in, was it, as she gasped with me.


    "I''m¡­" I said, stopping, startled at how small and weak my voice was, even inside my head. "Is this¡­"


    I moved her hands in front of her face, her spindly fingers barely thicker than the bones in them. Pointed fingertips touched each other, and I drank in the unfamiliar sensation of how it was Saga felt the world.


    "I''m you," I said. And we nodded. But I was also still me, and still in myself, though I couldn''t perceive any of it while inside her.


    We didn''t need to talk. Our minds were connected on such a level that talking was a barbarically trite way of communication. Instead, our thoughts swam and slipped over each other, like two schools of fish drawn tight and circling in a shimmering tornado, impossible to tell which were whose or from which mind they came.


    Which made it very difficult to understand my thinking or reasoning or comprehension of anything, while it lasted. To me, it felt like a violation, that Saga could and would essentially give up the reins of her own thoughts and body to me, with a trust so complete that came only from a complete understanding of a person, to even ask that of her...seemed wrong to me.


    But I''d also done lots of wrong recently in the interest of keeping everyone alive, and I couldn''t stop now. As much as I hated it, I knew we''d be doing much worse very soon. I''d have to live with that, and hope that everyone could forgive me.


    But even if they didn''t, at least they''d be alive. I hoped.


    I didn''t need to explain myself to Saga. She knew everything that I did, and though we both felt empty for it, I began to slowly slide out of her and back into myself. I was suddenly aware of how sturdy I really was, how tight the exoframe clamped on my legs, how large my lungs felt.


    And a million other things. But I didn''t have time to marvel. I stayed halfway in Saga''s mind and helped her as she reached out towards the minds of the others. If we couldn''t get them to physically cooperate between realities, we could bring them together mentally. Saga reached for Lia while I touched Karu.


    And neither of them had our understanding. Neither of them were completely open and trusting, neither were a warm, welcoming invitation. Saga and I were crying inside, but had to remain rigid, brutal, as we bore down on the minds of those we loved, forcing ourselves in despite their pain.


    Lia, at least, had it a little easier. Once Saga was partway in, she could leverage the compel to force the girl to relax and make the rest of the process just a painless violation. Karu fought me tooth and nail until the bitter end.


    But the simple fact was, they were two ordinary minds facing down the full, unleashed might of a code-X. They never stood a chance, no matter how they fought or resisted or how much it hurt them. They were doomed from the moment that Saga and I came up with this twisted, evil plan, the cruelty in it, hers, and the necessity of action, mine. They could do nothing but struggle as slowly, they felt themselves becoming not themselves, as something filled them up, unstoppable, unrelenting.


    Wordlessly, in perfect synch, Saga and I switched our targets and let them go. The cracks would be broken. The realities would break. The girls would survive.

 375a. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Saga.

    A few minutes ago, I wouldn''t have thought it possible, but Athan, in his typical style had just gone ahead and done it anyway. And here I was. Or we were. It was hard to tell at the moment, and frankly, that scared the bejesus out of me a little.


    I felt...like a big stupid baby, toddling around, stumbling and knocking things over with my clumsy brain. Somehow, Athan was there ahead of me, reassuring, leading the way. It was frustrating, that he could be better at mind games than I was, even though I knew that wasn''t the case. He was just doing the easy part, and he was doing it with the ignorance and stubborn assurance. The same way a man was ''helping'' his wife give birth.


    In short, useful, technically essential to have around for his body, and not helpful at all. But trying.


    We were mashed together in our heads, and it was only through our proximity and openness of our minds that we could achieve this kind of synch. Thoughts and feelings and senses weren''t mine or his anymore, they were all being sent in to one...messy superbrain which was both of ours, and similarly, both of us were sharing half-completed thoughts, which spewed into our minds, malformed and bizarre. It felt like constantly being on the verge of saying something dumb and catching myself before I said it...except instead of being dumb, it was just alien, and instead of saying it, I was thinking it. Or he was, into me.


    Very confusing stuff. And it was about to get a lot worse, as I felt him reach out to Lia.


    All at once, we were her. Not...quite in the same way Athan and I were each other. This felt more like being...in her backpack or something. We were riding on Athan''s level of intimacy to get into her, and that was only half of our mess of a brain right now, so I guess it would figure we were only halfway in.Stolen story; please report.


    It was the difference between wearing VR goggles and looking through a holo, I guess. Instead of being Athan, I was just able to see all the things going in and out of her mind, but as though through a window. Don''t get me wrong, it was still invasive as fuck, and still way closer than any two minds ever had a right to be, but it wasn''t a total takeover.


    Which wasn''t where we were planning to stop. I took a deep breath and reached out for Karu the same way Athan was reaching into Lia.


    It''d surprised me how much Karu and I had grown into each other recently. With her outlook on life changing to be more...hmm...morally flexible? That wasn''t quite it. She still thought that there was a right and wrong in the world, just not a meaningful or observable one. God created chaos, and so by being chaos, she could be God''s will, and all that. It wasn''t that far from how I saw it all -- minus the God bit -- and we''d somehow began to get on quite well in each other''s minds ever since.


    Which is what I tapped into now, as I reached for hers. Trapped in her little delusional world, she didn''t even notice my touch, but soon enough, I was holding her mind like Athan was holding Lia''s. Everything she thought and saw, all visible to me clearly, her mind functioning like it was in my hands. Distinct from me, but encompassed.


    Athan and I mentally prepared ourselves, since there wasn''t much other way to do so for this kind of shit. And then, as quickly and seamlessly as we could, passed the minds we were holding to each other.

 375b. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Lia.

    I felt sick. Sicker than I''d ever felt. Violated and twisted, like something had crawled inside me, and had gotten to probing the deepest parts of me, like my whole body -- my whole life, was just a glove.


    And then I realized, terrified, that it wasn''t something else inside me. I was the one inside. The glove I was wearing wasn''t me.


    I was too tall, for one thing. Too strong. Too fit. My body was inflexible, but so light...no, light wasn''t quite right. Muscular. It felt light, but it was heavy. It felt like I could just run through a boulder if I wanted. Every movement I made had momentum, had force. My arms swung like hammers.


    And...holy mother of Jesus'' cousin''s wet nurse, what the gravy-swilling dickens were those? They were HUGE. If I looked down straight at them, they could fill my whole vision. I found the hands I''d been so content to swing around like hammers just a moment ago suddenly crawling across this chest instead.


    My chest, I realized, as I felt what I was doing to it. As though it were my own. It was terrifying, and the bout of sickness I felt earlier rose in full force as I gagged at my own unexpected touch.


    "Are you alright?" a man asked me.


    "Yeah, sorry--" I said, and then froze at the voice. Not his, but mine. It was a voice I almost recognized. It was Karu''s, but lower, more sonorous, richer. "Hello?"


    "Hello?" he answered.


    "Sorry. Uh." I scratched my head by reflex and found my hair shockingly absent. Just bristles under my fingertips, and a clean scalp beneath. A scalp I could feel my fingers touching. This was just too dang weird.


    This had to be a dream or something. This was just the most bizarro, realistic dream I''d ever had. I''d never once dreamed of being anyone else, and certainly not so...I glanced down again...convincingly.


    But here I was. The man cleared his throat.


    "What?" I asked.


    "Well, we uh, were asking your opinion on the battle formations."


    "The what?"


    "The uh¡­" he gestured towards the stone slab in his hands, etched with writing. I picked it up and looked at the unfamiliar diagrams and words. "...you...requested this, not fifteen minutes ago, ma''am."


    "Ma''am," I muttered. I''d never been a ma''am before, and I felt entirely too young to be one now. Maybe Karu wasn''t though. Except I was Karu right now, so...yeah?


    "Sorry uh," I said, giving it back to him. "It looks...fine."


    He cocked his head. "Um. I was¡­" He stopped and seemed to stammer for a moment with a few half-baked responses, and I gleaned that my answer wasn''t supposed to be a ''yes'' or ''no''. Somehow, this dream had taken a turn for a test I hadn''t studied for.


    Which would have been a comfort, honestly, because I''d had that one before. I pinched myself real hard just to check, and yeah it hurt, and no, I didn''t wake up.


    "Sorry, what''s the question?" I asked, seeing another man show up with another slate, and stand in line. Karu was busy in my dreams, I guess.


    "Formation, ma''am. You said you wanted repeated, integrated cells across the walls instead of closed divisions. You said...you wanted a medical unit in every fourth squad, to vary power compositions and distribute humans among the cells...and then you said...you wanted these figures, so you could¡­"


    He trailed off, his look hopeful for only a moment. I didn''t even know what we were fighting, until I turned around and gasped -- in a far lower voice than my own -- at the huge screw-you array of XPCA nonsense lined up outside.


    "Holy starfish," I shouted. "There''s a billion XPCA outside!"


    He blinked at me.


    "Dude, what the actual WTF. Am I supposed to like, lead us against that?"


    "Erm¡­" he glanced at the other dude. "You...have been. It is only thanks to your acumen that we have driven them to a stalemate. But that will not last forever...we need to seize whatever advantages we can¡­"


    "Well screw that," I said. "I can''t lead an army. What idiot decided that?"


    Again the glanced at each other. "You...did?"


    "Sorry boys, I can''t fake this. I''m not going to get everyone here killed pretending to be Karu." I shook my head. I was Karu. I just didn''t have any of her actual ability.  Hell, I was glad she wasn''t wearing the visor in this dream, because if she was, I wasn''t sure I''d know quite how to see through it.


    "What...you can''t...would you leave us all to die?"


    "No," I said, crossing Karu''s arms. Holy shit her tits were heavy. "I''ll go negotiate with them."This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    "Ne...go...tiate?"


    "You can''t." The other argued. "You are not...you...we need you within the city."


    "Well screw that, I''m not dying in here when those guns start banging. If we''re getting out of this mess, it''s going to be talking our way out. Now I may not look it, but I''ve actually got a pretty good record of negotiating with the XPCA."


    "You can''t!" The first said this time. "It''s too dangerous."


    "Are you blind, dude? They''re literally sieging the city."


    "You aren''t permitted to leave the outer ring. You must stay within."


    "More rules?" I sighed at him, shocked at how little he seemed to recognize what a friggin'' war zone this was. "Dude. Look. Use your freaking eye holes. Do you, or do you not see the massive army outside, ready to lay waste to this town and everyone in it? At the very least, I want to know what they want, and if possible, maybe even give it to ''em. And I know we''re technologically deficient here so -- I get to go walk outside with a flag of truce and that''s literally our best shot."


    "But...the...troops."


    "What about them?" I asked, liking just how cutting Karu''s tone could bite.


    "...um...formation them?"


    I headed for the gate, the two in tow, sputtering and apologetically making demands. Karu had strong, long legs, legs I would have killed for playing volleyball, and she could book it if she wanted to.


    I laughed as I bounced...in uh, more ways than one. Why the heck did she ever need a jetpack when she had this body rockin''? Holy goats, dude. If this was what being at the end of puberty was like, sign me up a hundred times. I was so down.


    I reached the outer gate faster than I thought possible and yelled at the guards.


    "Open the gate!" I shouted. "This is an order!"


    They looked at each other in confusion for a moment. But Karu was in charge of this whole siege defense, and I was Karu. The gate slid open even as the two aides came huffing and puffing up behind me, shouting feebly to close it.


    But they were too late. Karu was too fast, and I didn''t even wait for the gate to be all the way open before bounding towards it. If I could ditch them here, I might have a shot at talking things out with the XPCA. My guess was they weren''t after the eradication of the city, or even the Exhumans here. Odds were, it was something--


    The thought cracked out of my head with the sound of my skull. I staggered in surprise, fists up through a muscle memory and defensive reflexes I just did not possess. I felt blood on my forehead, and the pain was at once, more than I was used to, and less than this body cared to note. It was muted, like Karu was exceptionally used to pain, and that thought made me sad for a moment.


    Until the rest of my thoughts rejoined my head, and I stopped to wonder the much more reasonable question of what the heck hit me? It was right in the forehead, right as I passed through the gate right--


    My hand stopped as I touched open air where the gate had been. Just stopped. I felt nothing. There just wasn''t anything there, but I couldn''t pass through it.


    I turned and faced the aides, who were frozen behind me. One pivoted on me strangely. "No human is permitted to leave the city," he said. "Please return to the task."


    "Why is there an invisible wall here?" I asked, banging on nothing. He didn''t answer, and I didn''t like that, so I grabbed him by the arm and held it against the nothing for him to feel.


    Except he fell right through it, still awkwardly frozen. But where he was standing, there was still something. I felt him in my hands still, even though he''d clearly fallen through the open door. It was as though what I saw and felt were completely at odds, and the door wasn''t really open, and he hadn''t really fallen through it. Though I saw he had.


    "You''re not...you can''t try to leave," said the other.


    "I did try," I spat, turning on him. "Why can''t I? What the heck gives?"


    "Please return to your task," Pleaded the first.


    "No. Screw you guys, this is too weird." I went past him, but he didn''t move to stop me, didn''t react normally at all. Neither did the guys up top on the gate. Neither did anyone, I realized. I was running around with a cracked head, I''d just thrown someone out the front door, the forbidden front door, and it was all anyone could do to just stand in formation like we were still dealing with a siege as the one and only concern.


    Nothing here made sense. This was a stupid, dysfunctional dream, and I wanted out.


    And then I was back in myself. The tablet in my hands, a stool under my bottom. Still in Oasis, but back where I was before that whole...thing...happened.


    Just a vision? Or a waking nightmare? Some kind of premonition maybe? Athan didn''t give any stock to the supernatural but I had a fondness for it. More than likely though, it was some kind of Exhuman shenanigans. Just to be sure, I peeked outside and saw that there was no battle line of XPCA ready to kick down the door.


    There were a couple people standing there though, staring at me. I looked at them warily, and then around at everyone else, who ignored me completely.


    Too completely, I noted, and checked closer, still getting used to my own lanky, awful body again.


    Beaten, unconscious, all of them. Kidney punches, cheap shots, dirty fighting. The kind of things Karu did in a fight. Or maybe I just had Karu on the brain after¡­


    My hands throbbed and I looked down and saw my knuckles bloody and wasn''t sure if it was mine or someone else''s. This was too weird. Too, too weird.


    And then, as I started to freak out, I saw another vision. Of a girl, just like me, freaking out, exactly as I did. I spun around, going well past three-sixty to locate just who or what was looking at me, seeing this girl freaking out and spinning and clutching at her knuckles in a room full of collapsed people.


    And I found myself staring right at the couple. The girl waved, and the vision in my mind waved with her. Something about how she stood seemed familiar. Something about the vision seemed...like...something I''d dismissed just a bit ago. I''d been busy, it was just a passing thought.


    But with everything that''d happened here now, there were no mere passing thoughts. Something was super screwy, and I was worrying it was my head. Except the one possible saving grace. The thing that girl reminded me of.


    "Saga?" I asked the girl.


    And though she politely said ''what?'' and then ''no.'', the vision in my head nodded, clear as day. And visions were a Saga thing. Saga gave vision, said yes, in the aftermath of the most screwed up few minutes ever, I was absolutely sold.


    "Just tell me what''s going on?" I asked.


    I suddenly felt my mind jerking around and felt sick again, but when I came to, when my head stopped spinning...and when my eyes were shut tight against the sickness, I saw though another set of eyes, at strong hands with hilarious itty-bitty strands of hair growing on the knuckles. Athan''s hands. And in them, a tablet, that he saw, that had words on it.


    And as I read those words through his eyes, I began to understand, something impossible yet undeniable. My mind open and reeling as I was forced to confront reality itself.


    "Balls," I said as I set my own tablet down. "I knew things were going too well."

 375c. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Karu.

    I started and came to, not myself. I knew this at once, snapping to a fully upright posture and finding my spine in poor shape to do so. It felt as though my spine had been fused, so painful was sitting upright, and I presumed I must have somehow dozed away and pulled a muscle in my sleep.


    Except I hadn''t dozed. I had been conferring with the defense about the state of defensive cells arranged on the walls for the impending attack. And no tranquilizer in the world would have knocked me out so fast that there would be no trace of it. Unless it included memory loss as a symptom but then¡­


    I looked around, finding myself in a chamber in Oasis, apparent from the white stone benches and tables. A tablet before me in my hands. If I had been drugged and recovered, this is not how I would have been handled. Oasis may have been backwards in many regards, but their medicine was not so sorely lacking as this.


    I stood and tripped at once, finding myself gangly and weak, my arms and legs too long and too thin, and reminding me at once of the growth spurts I had endured in puberty before I had filled out. More worrying yet was my apparent lack of equipment. What had happened to me? How long had I been debilitated to feel so uneasy in my own body?


    I advanced on the nearest individual and stood before him. "Hail. I appear--"


    I stopped. My voice was not my own. I cleared my throat and then, looking at my hands, saw them unfamiliar. Instead of short-trimmed nails, they were bitten and ragged. My arms did not simply feel thin, they were thin. And--


    I turned and felt an unfamiliar weight. I turned again, and once more, until I could locate it. Thick brown hair adorned my head, so bushy that it hardly entered my view as my head snapped from side to side.


    It was brown. With a painful tug, I determined it was not a wig.


    "What is the meaning of this?" I barked at the man, who looked at me with confusion. "What has transpired to my body, and...and this voice! It is not my own. Is there an Exhuman in Oasis who changes others'' bodies without their consent?"


    "Uhh," he said, the paragon of assistance.


    "Tell me, imbecile!" I grabbed him by the neck and pulled him from his stool. The others in the room seemed completely unprepared for how to react, as did the one in my hands.


    Impossibly unprepared, in fact. He did not move to defend himself or otherwise. He seemed predisposed only to return to his work, and my fury raged that he would still ignore me and my plight in this position.


    I punched him, not gently, but not hard either, to ensure my seriousness in this matter to him. I felt the blow, saw him take it, his eyes watering and gut clenching.


    "Speak," I commanded.


    But he did no such thing, even as I let him go, he simply returned to his work.


    Which was simply impossible. The others in the room, they did not so much as look up at the blow. Were they all simply mad? Did they fear nothing?


    It was a theory worth testing. I put my hands on him, one under his chin and another above the nape and applied gentle pressure.


    "Speak, one of you, or I shall break this man''s neck," I said.


    Only the man in my hands seemed to even hear me, and he didn''t answer. So I thrust my weight through my arms, snapping his head back while applying pressure of the neck, jamming his head straight up with a crack.


    "Ow," he whined, holding his neck where I''d merely broken half of his axis vertebrae. I frowned at the weak execution, snapping his head up again harder, with little resistance offered.


    This time, I felt his neck break properly, and after that, gave him a violent twist to damage and introduce the fresh bone fragments into the spinal cord. He went slack at once, crumpling without breath.


    "I hope the rest of you understand that I am serious," I proclaimed, my voice still not my own. "Now tell me, who you are, and what has transpired, or I shall be forced to induct another of you into hell."Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    They didn''t move. And they continued not moving as I systematically disassembled them. Half because they did not resist, and half to satisfy the fury which was pouring out of the ignited panic welling up within me.


    It was as though they were mere set dressing and they knew it. They would speak, to complain, they saw me and felt me keenly enough. And yet they did not think, did not act, did not exist. Which galled me, and burned away any guilt or shame I might feel in dispatching them.


    One, I even vivisected, to ensure it was not merely a drone or the like, but there was an abundance of flesh and blood within. The only outcome left I could conceive which explained all was the meddling of a code-X. Braindead men, myself not myself...it was the only sense to be made.


    I thought to continue outside for a spell, perhaps purge this entire area of the fiend''s puppets. But before that, I wished to check...just for my own sanity, that...somehow...I had not...disappeared for a few months, withered away, and had my hair dyed, or some such. Impossible as that might be, it seemed wise to double-check before a rampage.


    Stepping around the corpses I had produced, I considered...perhaps it would have been wise to check before now. But I had been making threats at the time, and I was not one to ever see a threat go undelivered. I gave them an ultimatum should they wish to live, and none had.


    I sat down where I had first found myself and picked up the tablet. A few taps in, and I read the date.


    There were no vanishings of months. It was mere minutes after I last knew myself. I was confirmed, that this was the work of a deviant, and they would be destroyed, whether I had my gear, body, or nothing.


    I turned off the tablet to put it down and caught myself in the gloss of the black panel that the holo typically covered. My fingers went involuntarily to my hair again.


    I was Lia?


    It seemed impossible, but the reflection of her followed my every move. Breathing hard, I patted myself down, exploring my body under the concealing layers of the airy fabric I''d been under.


    There was little mistake to be made. Something was amiss.


    And then I felt a sickness, as though I moved a great distance in an instant, and my hands, still on myself, found nothing amiss. Except the blood and pain of a forehead injury.


    "Return to your task," said one of the military aides, his voice flat.


    "Nobody is permitted to leave the city," said another.


    I glared at them. "What know you of a code-X within the city?"


    "Return to your task, please."


    "Nobody is permitted...do not leave the city."


    I tapped my foot, the heel clicking with a comforting familiarity. I crossed my arms and felt a familiar weight there as well. God, had it been a respite to be rid of those for a time.


    I gave a bit of thought before delivering my next few words. "If you tell me to return to my task, or remain in the city, I will kill you. You may remain silent, if you wish."


    I stared at them, and they said nothing. Good. The code-X hadn''t gotten this far, then. But that still left my own situation. I leaned against the gate--


    "Nobody is permitted to leave the city. Step away from the gate, please."


    A knife jumped into my hands. Much easier than breaking the spinal cord by hand.


    "May heaven be a reprieve from the sinful world of man," I prayed for him.


    "Stop!" said the other, and I did, looking at him.


    "Return to your task," he said.


    I rolled my eyes and decided to do him first.


    It wasn''t long before I saw that these were also just puppets. Noone came from the wall despite the murder in the streets. It was as though they did not see or hear me at all. Brain-dead, all of them.


    And then I saw figures approach. The code-X or their minions, I hoped. I flicked blood off my blade, relishing the opportunity for a fair fight.


    But the three who came weren''t like the others. Their words were confused, to be sure, but their mannerisms, now that I was scrutinizing every person I met with care...they were eerily familiar.


    "Am I delusional?" I asked of them. "Or are you...are you not the Ashtons, and you...are unmistakably Saga. And yet none of you are?"


    They shook their heads in disagreement and told me I was crazy, even as Athan gave me the visual signals for agreement, that there were enemies all around, and to fall in.


    I shook my head as I came to them, and then, just as I''d been Lia, I found myself in their bodies for a few moments each. Lia''s, very nearly familiar now that I had broken it in with a few kills. Saga''s spindly form, staring at the stranger who stood where I did. And finally Ashton.


    I understood clearly the message, though he had it written up in a tablet which existed only to his own eyes nonetheless. We each were living a delusion, a literal one, not the typical blatherings of the shepherds of ''sheeples''. And somewhere in this city was its source, an entity of the mind, and an enemy of mankind.


    I drew Ashton''s attention and then made the gestures for requesting ammunition and supplies, and he affirmed, even as my image of him bleated in confusion and complained at being dragged out here.


    Code-X offended me. I would suit up, arm myself, and then tear down this city until its rotten heart lay withering in the glasslands sun. I would tear the responsible party in half, neck-to-ass if I had the chance. No code-X molested my mind and went unpunished. I found myself looking forward to it.

 376. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. AEGIS.

    "It''s a tree," I said.


    A fancy tree, sure, but that was mostly on the shit surrounding the tree and not much to do with the stick itself. Colorful geometric patterns had been inlaid on the floor, as though to make it as similar as possible to gazing through a kaleidoscope. It was easily the most color I''d seen since setting foot in Oasis, and yet, I was still entirely underwhelmed.


    "Are you sure you''re not a cult?" I asked, turning to Rio.


    "We''re not a cult," she pouted.


    "You worship a stick."


    "Still your tongue, heretic," Dragon drawled. "You are in a presence beyond your ken."


    I gave the thing another up and down to make sure I wasn''t missing anything.


    It was big. Probably really, really old, though I hadn''t brushed up on enough arbory to tell what kind or how old. It was a straight, dark-barked tree, with a few scars, a handful of branches, and just as many leaves as I did. Sure, it had a trunk large enough that I probably couldn''t wrap my arms all the way around it, but it was the room doing all the impressing. The vaulted ceiling, the tall, narrow windows casting slanted beams of light from the sunset, it was all very dramatic and very properly holy-looking.


    But still just a tree.


    "Yeah, I don''t see it," I said. "I must be missing the holy spirit or something. Looks like a dead tree to me."


    "You should know by now that looks are kind of immaterial," Rio said thoughtfully. "After all you''ve learned about how the visions work, appearance can change, can be taken away. It''s capability and legacy that defines something."


    I continued to stare at the tree. "Uh, so...this tree''s got like...the capacity to stand here I guess? Maybe if the light hits it right, it could cast a shadow. I guess you could turn it to kindling, but it can probably only do that trick once...and that''d put a bit of a crimp on the whole ''legacy'' element." I frowned at her. "Are you sure this is really your god? You''re not like, pulling my leg or something?"


    "She should be dead," Dragon intoned, and Rio shook her head at him.


    "She was chosen. Her perspective was what our god sought."


    "She wasn''t chosen, she is¡­" he trailed off with an irritated sigh. He knew he was just going in circles with her at least. Saved me from hearing the same argument again and again.


    But still.


    I''d been scrutinizing the hell out of this tree, trying to find anything remotely exciting or divine about it and coming up real short. Which was a serious issue, because, if I couldn''t figure out how to kill it, I wouldn''t be able to break the visions and set the others free.


    But how the hell does one kill a dead tree?


    Especially with Dragon breathing down my neck, I couldn''t very well whip out a chainsaw and then burn the remains. But even so, it was a fucking dead tree. Unless it somehow grew around some insane future tech and then died and was enshrined in this whole bizarro-city, hundreds of years ago, I didn''t think chopping or burning would achieve much.


    Which just left me wondering, what then could I do here? I had no intention of being ''tested'' by their god as I''d proposed. As I saw the situation, Dragon was actually right-on. The only reason I had sway over the priests was because Rio told them to hear me, and the only reason I wasn''t trapped in the visions with the rest was because I wasn''t human.


    So if it came to looking to reading some kind of divine portent...I saw my chances as a coin-flip at best.


    "Well, let''s get started, then," Rio said helpfully, tugging the sleeve of my non-destroyed arm. "Kneel here, next to me. And we''ll pray."


    "Oh goodie."


    "Sometimes, if you pray hard enough, our god will give you a vision. It can take awhile and¡­" she glanced at Dragon. "And they''re not always terribly helpful. It requires a lot of focus."


    "It happens very rarely," Dragon clarified. "And most always when there is a code-X to be dispatched."


    "Yes," fretted Rio. "While you may not understand or agree with a lot of our tenets, or have cause to doubt, I think there''s very little room for debate with our god''s stance on code-X''s."


    "Rough life for them," I shrugged. "XPCA, and you guys, too. Is there anyone who doesn''t want ''em dead?"


    "I suspect not," Rio said.


    Because of course nobody would. Who''d ever want someone around who could fundamentally alter who you were? That would be as ridiculous as deifying a tree which could make everyone around it have visions.


    To be sure, I checked the air for impurities and came up empty. It wasn''t like, dumping out mind-fuck spores or anything like that. Just a goddamn tree.


    Rio began to chant, or I assumed that''s what she was doing, but it was hard to tell, being in a language alien to me. Chinese, I had to assume, though I had little basis for that guess. It struck me as odd that that was apparently not a dead language around here somehow, even though apparently everyone also spoke English.


    Then again, Rio wasn''t Sino, I''d gathered. She''d mentioned off-hand that Dragon was born here, but that he was the minority, and that most were invitees. So had she just picked up a dead language so she could bark it at the tree, or what? This place made less sense by the minute.


    Though I guess that wasn''t actually any worse than holding mass in Latin. So maybe I''d bite my tongue on that one. But mostly because I was probably running out of remarks I was allowed to throw out before Dragon really did kill me.


    Rio really got into it though, her voice rising and falling as she carefully enunciated her way through an avalanche of tonal sounds. Her words echoed off the smooth stone when her voice peaked, and in the moments after, it almost sounded like the chamber itself was chanting back at us.


    She was saying something, mid-sentence, when I heard the echoing of a distant explosion and jumped to my feet by instinct. Dragon was there as well, blade-in-hand and ready, while Rio just looked around, catching up to us.


    Another explosion, from directly behind us.


    "Is this the vision?" Rio asked.


    "No. We all hear it," Dragon replied.


    "Then...what?" she asked.


    The knife in his hand pointed at my face, the silver shining dangerous, only inches from me. "Her doing, I imagine."


    "I''ve been here," I said. "I don''t have explosives."


    He stared at me, his eyes equal parts furious and bored, a combination I didn''t know was possible. Maybe he just had like, resting bored face or something, and I''d been selling him short this whole time? Seemed unlikely. And more unlikely that I''d even care.


    "Outsiders, maybe?" Rio asked.


    "It must be. I do not hear the guard."


    "They could not have been defeated."


    I looked at her and then back at him. "Wait, why aren''t you blaming this all on Athan? I''m sure you know he''s in the city."


    "He is in the visions. Ready yourself, Rio, for interlopers."


    "Yeah, you only think he''s in your visions. You''re a tough cookie, Dragon, but you consistently underestimate us. That''s how you lost that arm, and that''s why we haven''t been stopped, no matter how many of your shitty toad toadies you throw our way."


    He looked at me like he didn''t even understand what I was saying, but it was only a glance, before heading with Rio towards the armories. The message was still clear though, the guy couldn''t believe for a second that anyone or anything could slip through his precious visions. That was just a fact of his world.


    And I did so look forward to the expression on his face when he was proven wrong. I had no doubt it was Athan making that ruckus out there. The explosions were consistent with the micro-missiles that Karu packed, and the direction was the inner gate in the direction they''d all been. I had no idea how they''d broken out of it, but there wasn''t any spell which could hold my boy down.


    I grinned, beside myself. Guess I didn''t need to fuck with this tree after all. Athan had it handled himself. Now the six of us could all kick Dragon''s ass, tell Rio to stop shipping her doom-sticks to IkaCo, maybe grab one or two for the road, and we''d be golden.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    So I was practically skipping as I followed the two as they scuttled about, grabbing weapons and preparing before making a beeline for the gate. Once the fight broke out, I''d go straight for Dragon, because I knew Athan would, and maybe together, we could drop him early and painlessly.


    It was an optimistic plan, but I was in an optimistic mood. They''d broken out! They''d already done the impossible.


    Dragon assembled a line of his priests and stood ready at the doorway, while Rio fretted about somewhere behind him, pacing back and forth as she decided which weapons to bring to bear. I noticed Dragon and the priests didn''t take any, preferring to fight with their own powers, I guessed. Or maybe...for the priests, maybe there weren''t even any weapons in their realities. Hard to tell. But I wasn''t gonna wait around.


    I headed for the gate, the whole area thick with smoke, and found the stone slab of of the innermost door shattered and collapsing. Still standing, but it trembled and crumbled with every echoing boom, becoming a wider and shorter pile of rubble each time it was struck. Until finally¡­


    "Karu!" I shouted, as I glimpsed her through the debris of the last explosion. Just a red flash over the rubble, but unmistakable. "You made it!"


    Once I was sure she''d stopped shooting, I started moving rubble as best I could to clear a path for them. It wasn''t long before our combined efforts opened a small gap, through which I could see all of them, standing in a loose semi-circle around the gate, sweaty from moving rock.


    Well, except Saga, who was taking a supervisory role. And Tem, who wasn''t here at all.


    "Athan!" I shouted at him, struggling my way through the gap, and only getting stuck once or twice. "Athan! It''s me!"


    I felt the need to add the last part because he didn''t seem to see me. Or rather, didn''t seem to see me. As I struggled to approach, he glared violently at me, stern and wary, and as I finally pulled my busted arm through behind me, was greeted by blades of lightning in my face.


    "It''s me," I said reassuringly.


    Looking around, I could see plenty else was wrong with this picture. Nobody was speaking. Everybody looked a little unfocused, especially Saga, who looked, also, too focused. And...strangest of all, the guards at the gate were still standing right there, totally unphased by the fact the gate they were guarding had been turned to rubble. Nothing was quite adding up, and especially nothing involving the swords in my face.


    While he threatened me, he was waving his hand in the air like he was typing on something which wasn''t there, a gesture I wouldn''t have recognized if I hadn''t done it thousands of times before. My compromise of making it more obvious to others when I was doing computer stuff in my head.


    I beamed. It must have been a message or gesture for me. Maybe he still couldn''t talk or something, so he was miming out at me. Without hesitating, I projected the holo-keyboard before me and typed back at him. A gesture which gave him pause and stilled the blades in the air. After a moment he started typing again, and I stared at his fingers, doing some mental projection to follow his keystrokes and what buttons he might be hitting.


    > --like the guards, doesn''t seem aggressive just yet. Saga, is she just another toad like the others?


    Well that was reassuring. I typed him a response but he hardly even seemed to be looking. Instead, they all stood there awkwardly, taking far too long in doing nothing.


    And the longer I stood there, watching the focus and consternation across all their faces, the more I realized just how not-alright this situation was. Something here was massively screwy, and there was only one explanation I could think of.


    Somehow, they were still here, still fighting, while still trapped in the visions. It was the only thing that made sense, despite making no sense at all. But given that they weren''t communicating effectively, that they couldn''t see me and know who I was, it was obvious that they weren''t perceiving the world the same way I was. And the fact that nobody else in the city seemed after them...somehow, they''d gone rogue without being picked up as a threat. The guards were here to repel outsiders, Rio had been very clear on that. Which meant they weren''t -- they were still part of Oasis, just...a cancer, basically. Slipping by the immune system by supposedly belonging.


    But that was still awful. Not the least of which being that Athan was right there and he couldn''t even see me, but also that in their current state, Dragon could kill them all before they even knew what was going on. It was entirely possible their vision didn''t even include him in it, or the priests. They weren''t supposed to go past this gate ever, and maybe once they did, their senses would just break entirely.


    Or, more optimistically, the visions would. Looking at the guards standing there idly, it was obvious that some glitch in the city''s logic was being exploited here. If Athan kept pushing, he could break it entirely...but what kind of break that would cause, I was pretty sure nobody knew.


    But there was only one way to find out. When I was sure Athan was looking at me again, I gestured at typing at him a few more lines, and then got back to shoving rock to make a path they could squeeze through.


    While I worked, he continued to stand and study, and every once in a while, typed out some thoughts to the others.


    > Think she''s just here to clear out any messes in the city?


    > Karu, no. At least for now, she seems to be helping at least.


    > Saga, are you sure?


    So it went, the rocks shifting with frustrating slowness given that I had only a single arm and a banged-up body to work with. If nothing else, at least I was being useful now. There wasn''t much left in me for a fight, so if I could keep them fresh...I guess that was all I could manage.


    I had an idea though, as I reached a rock too big to shove, but almost cracked down the middle. I took a step back, and very deliberately prepped and dropped a pair of kicks on it. Axe kicks, holding the pose before the kick with my leg straight up for just a few unnecessary moments before dropping my leg.


    Honestly it didn''t do much to the rock, but I hoped that flashing my panties at him would jar something. If he didn''t remember that, he was in big trouble. With me.


    But just as I''d hoped, after dropping the first one, he started typing again, more animatedly this time.


    > Do you guys think this is AEGIS? Saga said she couldn''t feel anyone there. I thought it was just a fake person but we all see her, right?


    > Karu, no shooting. She kicked a fuckin rock. How many Exhumans can do that? And with that kick? That''s AEGIS'' favorite kick.


    > Lia, I know it could be fake, but she''s not exactly telling us to leave, is she? She seems to be helping.


    Man this was frustrating. I could only imagine what it must be like for them, having to second-guess and take a group consensus on literally everything they were seeing, all the time, just to know what existed and didn''t. And even then, there must have been things they could all see which just...weren''t. Like they suspected of me.


    And telling them to leave. I wondered how many of their visions were designed specifically to throw them off. All of them, probably. The visions had been explicitly designed to keep them in their roles...a cage for the mind. The only things any of them trusted at this point was each other.


    Nothing much happened for the next few minutes except for the gap widening to the point where even Karu could make it through with her armor. She could have just flown over the wall but...I was trying to communicate here, damn it. Finally satisfied, I stopped, backed away from the gap, and gave them a gesture to continue on.


    Lia started forward first, only to be held back by Athan, who advanced painfully slowly. He seemed to be checking my work, waving his hands through the rock I''d shifted as though checking it was actually gone, and again, I had to wonder just what they''d been put through. Being unable to trust your own senses must really, really suck.


    But after he''d determined the gap was really there, he backed out and went to me, swords hanging back, his gaze scrutinizing and calm. I swallowed hard at his approach, and again as he took my hand in his.


    "AEGIS, if this is you...I''m sorry," he said, and gave me a sympathetic smile. And then electricity coursed through me a dozen ways at once.


    The shock of the sudden pain brought me to my knees more than anything, red-hot trails torn through my body, and the stink of superheated fluids and melting insulation, but mostly, my body did its job and kept the current out of anything critical. Some of that cage had been compromised with the damage I''d sustained, and it hurt and disabled me a lot more than it should have, but I was still here, still gasping and struggling to my feet, instead of dead on the ground with a stopped heart like any meatbag would have been.


    I smiled and gave him a nod as I recovered myself and vented away the sudden heat buildup. I was only halfway through when he suddenly wrapped his arms around me, and then yelped and jumped backwards with burnt hands.


    Almost by instinct, I was there with medical gel to spray down his hands. Unnecessary, only second-degree burns at worst. But burns weren''t something I liked to mess around with, and the fact he''d gotten them on me¡­


    I had to pause when I heard him laughing, despite the pain. I gave him a quizzical look, but of course, we couldn''t really communicate. I had to settle for just cleaning him up as best I could.


    When suddenly, again, he spoke directly to me.


    "It really is you, isn''t it AEGIS? I don''t think there''s an Exhuman in the world who''d kick apart a rock and then jump to first aid the same way you do. Sorry for not seeing you."


    "It''s okay. Hold still, please," I said, but he heard none of it.


    "Yeah there''s something wrong with all of our senses. I guess...I hope anyway...that you can tell what''s going on. We''re all kind of a mess right now."


    I took care in bandaging his hands not to limit his motion at all. He''d have a fight coming up, and needed to be at his best. I wasn''t going to let some injury I''d caused be his death, after all this.


    "Thanks," he said, as I finished, and moved to withdraw his hand, but I held onto it a moment longer. He seemed content to give me that, and as much as I just wanted to hold him and linger, I had something too important to convey.


    I pointed at the smashed gate, and he followed my gesture and nodded. And then slowly, deliberately, on the palm of his hand, I drew out letters.


    The first time he didn''t get it. Cocked his head like I was just reading his palm. I gave him a little shake and tried again, and this time, he figured out they were letters but missed the meaning. The third time, I saw him mouthing out the characters as I wrote.


    D-R-A-G-O-N


    He stood and faced the gate, his shoulders set, his jaw clenched.


    "Thanks," he said, without turning towards me. "I guess I know whose fault this whole mess is, now." He sighed. "But in our current state, I''m not sure we can take him. Maybe...maybe if we try to get Tem again. Or...or had some better communication. But as it is¡­"


    He frowned and looked around at the others. They, who didn''t even know Dragon was in the picture still. Who might even still not know it was me. He had a point.


    But then he turned back to me, rigid, but slumped. Eyes blazing but wary. Defeated and resigned, but also determined, all at once. "But we really don''t have another choice. Saga says that we''re getting worse. We only have a few more hours before she won''t be able to link us anymore. If we''re gonna do it...we''re gonna do it now."


    He let go of my hands and headed for the cracked gate, and I knew it would do no good to ask what he meant. It would be all I could do to help them prepare, as our final showdown with Dragon loomed.


    It seemed like destiny or something that he was always standing in our way. And on some level, it was a relief that it looked like this would be the last time. Maybe not the last time in the way I''d have liked but¡­


    I let that thought go and followed Athan through the gap in the door, and into the inner city beyond.

 377. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    I crawled through the gap and found myself staring down a veritable phalanx of toads, huge muscled dudes who wouldn''t have looked out of place oiled-up and flexing at a pageant. Unfortunately for me, they weren''t, and instead were all lined up and awaiting my entrance.


    And behind them, Dragon, unmistakable. His eyes frosty and dead. It was nice to know that I was able to see all of them through the illusion. If I died here in a few seconds, I''d at least be able to see what killed me, which was incredibly reassuring.


    Next to Dragon was a much smaller girl in a lab coat, Rio, whom I guess I''d met the first day I was in Oasis, before spending too long seeing her in my visions. I had to wonder just how much I''d learned about her in that time was actually true, or if it was just my brain going off in whatever directions it thought made sense to fill in the gaps and keep me sedate. I didn''t feel very sedate on seeing her now, though.


    Not that I had too much issue with her personally, of course, but more in the company she kept.


    AEGIS squeezed through behind me, and Lia behind her, the thin girl barely needing to contort to make it through the gap. I had to wonder why Dragon wasn''t simply shooting us in the face while we were squeezing our way in, but I suspected the reason had to do with him being an asshole, somehow.


    "Hi," Rio said, with a feeble wave. "On these grounds...you...you see me?"


    "I do," I said. "And I must say, I disapprove of your whole system of inviting people in and mind-fucking them. Kind of a shitty city, if that''s how it grows."


    "Oasis is not a shitty city," she pouted. "All who live here are happy. Can you say the same for anywhere else?"


    "Save your breath," Dragon said with a sneer. "They are beneath us."


    "Doesn''t seem that way," I said. "You two, here, with all your little flunkies lined up between us. Seems like we''re facing off, a little more than the cockroaches you seem to think we are."


    His gaze was still icy as he looked down his nose at me, his eyes just a cold glimmer in the recesses of his hood. "You were judged, fool. You were given your place. I thought you might have use to the city, and our god agreed."


    "You''re not supposed to be in the inner city," Rio added. "Please go out and return to your duty."


    "I say this with all possible offense intended, but fuck your duty. You can''t just hijack people''s brains and make them do whatever you want. Do you have any idea what I saw in there?"


    Rio hesitated for a moment. "No...but can you tell us?"


    "Rio," Dragon growled at her.


    "I want to know!" she pouted.


    "You made me fall in love with the city. You played with my emotions, manipulated me to see the greatness and potential in this place. You had me ready to sacrifice everything to preserve it."


    "Which you should have done, as befits your role," Dragon said.


    "Except it''s all a fucking lie. Oasis isn''t great at all, it''s just...it''s slavery. It''s sick. The only good here is built on stripping away any choice people have."


    "So?" Rio asked.


    "...so?" I shouted back at her. "So?"


    And then one more time, because I really couldn''t think of any way her insipid argument even bore speaking. "So!?"


    "Yes. So what if they have no choice. They are productive and happy. They have fulfilling lives, in safety. Each lives in a reality apart from each other...the world is no longer a zero-sum game -- you, who wished to be with me, could be, while I, who wished to develop my calling could as well, and both were satisfied."


    "But I wasn''t with you. And I''m fucking furious now to know it was all a lie, and that I was manipulated into wanting that shit in the first place."


    She shrugged. "Then do not pierce the veil. I envy you, who lived within the dream."


    "Your dream is shit, and this whole fucking society is shit for being built on it."


    Dragon stepped forward. "That is enough. Even if you were chosen, you are also a blasphemer, and have passed your station in entering these grounds. I will accept the responsibility for consigning you to death."


    "Liwei, no," Rio fretted. "You shouldn''t."


    "His insolence outweighs his use to the city. If our god is displeased, I will face the displeasure. Now kill that interloper and all with him."


    The priests all took a step forward as one, the whole line of flesh moving towards us. I guess unlike the guards, I did exist in their reality, which was kind of a bummer. But I guess, instead of being like mindless antibodies like the guards, the priests were more...directed, and had to keep their perception to do their work. I wondered briefly what their version of reality must be like, that Dragon could command them to their deaths so easily.


    I wasn''t going to find out, but I was more than willing to be the death they were commanded to. My blades flashed out as they charged towards me.


    AEGIS stepped forward as though addressing them, and they stopped cold. I couldn''t tell what she was saying, the not-her version of herself was crying and begging for me to go back. But the real AEGIS was almost certainly talking to them and not me.


    Because the stampede of muscle and meat turned back into a wall in an instant, a good twenty feet closer to us in mere seconds. And so they stood, as blank and staring as they''d been moments before.


    "What? Ignore her! Kill them!" Dragon hissed. And of course they did no such thing. He glowered at us, and I flipped him the bird.


    AEGIS presumably retorted, and copied my gesture towards Dragon as well.


    "You are not a high priestess," he shouted, and I thought I heard genuine anger in his voice for possibly the first time. Touched a nerve there, AEGIS did. "Kill her! Attack, damn you!"


    "Liwei, the proof is there," Rio said, touching his arm. "She is one of us."


    "She is one of them."


    "And they are of us as well. Calm yourself."


    "Sorry, Rio," I said "but we aren''t that either. I''ve got no intention of settling down in this city, or of being anyone''s mind-fucked slave. We came here to do exactly one thing, and that was to stop the flow of weapons into IkaCo''s hands. But since then, a couple other items have popped up on my to-do list. And Dragon''s one of ''em. Get ''em, guys."


    At my command, AEGIS ordered the priests to turn and attack. And through Saga, Lia and Karu both saw me and rose to strike -- Karu, soaring above the wall, rockets and lasers blazing. And Lia, emerging from the building behind Dragon, where she''d slipped in under optical camo while I distracted them all with my heretical blathering. A shiny new gun was in her hands.


    Dragon, for his part, killed two of the priests in an instant with gunshots to the forehead before he had to shove Rio away from him and bounce sideways, taking a laser in his bad shoulder for his trouble. From there, he was on the defensive, as Karu harried him relentlessly, and whenever he touched down and tried to get his feet under him, the priests were as fast and tireless as he.


    As for me, I bolted straight for him, wrapping myself in a sheath of lightning and channeling what felt like thirty blades in the air, hovering like a rack of javelins, just waiting to lash out and cut him open.


    Even so, he somehow still got the first hit in on me. Twisting unexpectedly away from one of the priests, he shot the bastard in the head three times, and then threw the gun into my shield, where it exploded with a series of blinding flashes, my ears ringing as the remaining bullets went off inside the magazine. Under and through it all, he appeared, more than moved, and though my blades darted towards him and I got my arms up, he still stuck a knife into my wrist before skipping away, the mass of flesh and attacks chasing him.


    It was Dragon fighting as I''d never seen him before. Which was saying something, considering just how much time I''d spent watching and reviewing the man fight. But always before, he''d been on the offensive, always the one to charge in, test defenses, loose a cut or bullet or two, and then bounce off, to return at his discretion. But here, he was pursued, viciously, and it was a whole new side of him which, despite everything, I had to appreciate.


    Watching him go was like seeing water burst through a dam down a canal. He seemed shunted by the air itself, crashing in straight lines, often backpedaling or flipping or skipping, whatever form of motion was most necessary at the time. And then suddenly, he would crash into apparently nothing, his movement halted, facing the train of disaster in his wake only long enough to capitalize on some small advantage he''d built in their pursuit, a dagger here, a bullet there, another priest wounded or killed. And then he''d be off again, attacks missing him by fractions of an inch, or hitting him in non-vital areas as he turned from the blow.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    It was disgusting how beautiful it was, to be honest. And while I didn''t have time to gawk, more than once, as I slashed at him, my blades coming in the same time Karu unloaded a hail of scattergun fire, or cutting off his escape from a micro-missile blast, he''d consistently surprise me with how freely he moved, how practically he faced taking a hit.


    It was as though he was completely aware of his body, and what each attack would take from him even before it landed. Some he simply minimized his damage taken, but others, he would trade getting cut up or shot in exchange for diminishing our forces, or for exotic munitions that Karu only kept a limited supply in hand. It was like, he was doing the math of just how hard he needed to fight in order to beat us.


    It made me think of when I''d just rushed into the XPCA and had my leg shot off, pointlessly. That was a trade Dragon would never have done. Somehow, the random chaos of a fight seemed perfectly calculated, when I watched him go.


    But I still hated the bastard.


    There''d only been maybe twenty priests lined up at the start of it all, and we were down to single digits now. And while Dragon had taken a few hits, he didn''t seem phased in the slightest. I was skipping around as fast as I could go, Karu was unloading into him full-bore, AEGIS was doing what she could at her capability, mostly setting herself up as a very dangerous deterrent, and Saga was doing her best to keep us connected and communicating.


    Which just left Lia. Who''d been doing jack-all, standing there with a gun in her hands, pointed at Dragon and not much else. It was some kind of exotic weapon, that much was obvious, but what the hell did it do? Was she afraid to pull the trigger because of how close the fight was? But against Dragon she''d never get a clear shot. And we were just gradually losing without her.


    "Saga," I shouted, between panting for air. "What the hell is Lia doing? She needs to shoot!"


    I instantly had her senses laid atop mine, and only skipped half a step at the transition. I kept myself fighting while trying to pick up what clues I could in watching.


    She was certainly pulling the trigger. That much was clear. But the gun did nothing. She was hitting it, pulling every catch and twisting every dial she could find, but nothing worked. From both perspectives, I saw Rio approaching her, more shuffling away from the fight than advancing threateningly, but Lia turned the gun on her regardless.


    "Silly girl," Rio said with a smile. "Don''t you know the first thing about technopaths?"


    "I know they''re dangerous and should all die," Lia said, pulling the trigger again and again.


    Rio smiled broader. "They don''t just make tech, they control it, too. It won''t work without my blessing, girl."


    Lia returned her smile for a moment, saccharine, and I heard a pained grunt as Karu took a bullet in the chestplate. I stepped back into my own senses more as I worked to pick up the slack to help her get her wings back under her, when I saw Lia suddenly full-bore swing and crack the butt of the gun into Rio''s face.


    "Seems to work fine to me¡­" Lia said, her voice trailing off as my senses of her faded.


    Suddenly the fight turned ugly, as Dragon veered off-course straight for the two of them. AEGIS was already there, standing between them and forcing Dragon to go around, buying enough time for me to cut him off.


    But it was damn clear that he wasn''t happy with my sister''s treatment of Rio. He looked more than furious, his normal calm face red and tense as he stared at nothing but her. When I slashed at him, he barely glanced at me, barely flinched as my blade caught his foot. Instead, he rose up on me and headbutted me full-on, both of us bleeding, stars winking in front of my eyes.


    It barely made him stagger as he went past me, bearing down on her. He didn''t even seem to notice when Karu caught him in the side with a piece of shrap.


    If Dragon fighting before had been beautiful and calculated, this was just the ugliest fucking thing. We were hurting him more, yes, but...the rate he was closing on Lia...his blind one-dimensional focus...it scared me more than he ever had before.


    Something grabbed me and I turned and found...it was AEGIS. She nodded at me, babbling about how this was all a mistake and we shouldn''t be here in her not-self''s words, and offered me a hand, at waist height.


    I didn''t get it, and the fight was closing on Lia fast. She was running now, but for how fast she moved compared to Dragon, that was another second or two, tops. Even slowed as he was by his injuries, I didn''t think we could stop him.


    Karu was certainly trying, hovering just above Lia, and unloading everything she had into the ground between them. AEGIS grabbed me again and again, gestured waist-high at me.


    "I don''t understand!" I shouted at her, turning to run back to the fight. She pulled me back and grabbed at me, at my leg, at my foot. Grabbing at...my heel?


    I got it. Under my foot. I clambered up on her, the illusion seeming very wrong with how sturdy a girl I was actually climbing, and balanced myself, crouched on her poised arm. I felt her take a deep breath and settle, and then--


    Both of us shoved off at once. With all the force she had, and all the force my exoframe could give me, she shot me into the air further and faster than I''d ever flown, tears instantly filling my eyes as the wind tore at me, my own blades, just white streaks temporarily left behind.


    Except.


    We weren''t going the right way. She hadn''t thrown me straight. Lia was to my right, I was flying almost directly towards the building instead.


    I swore and swore and swore again, damning AEGIS and whatever fucked-up damage in her crippled body was going to get my sister killed. From up here, I had an excellent view of Dragon closing the gap on the last ten or fifteen feet, his body seeping blood now, shrugging off tasers and only bothering to dodge or resist the most brutal and debilitating of attacks, his pursuit relentless. I swore at him too, struggling, flailing in the air uselessly as I shot past in the wrong direction.


    I landed with a painful crash and rolled on the white stone. But even so, I was up and crawling on hands and knees back towards them. I had mere seconds before he was on them. Lia had stopped running, she was standing firm, the barrel of the gun in her hands, raised like a baseball bat off her shoulder.


    And I felt something soft and warm under my hands, looking down to see bloody fabric between my fingers.


    AEGIS hadn''t missed at all. We just weren''t on the same page.


    "Dragon!" I shouted, my voice coming out in a hoarse roar, more commanding than I thought possible. He barely acknowledged me until he glanced back.


    And then he froze entirely on the spot, paralyzed by what he saw.


    I was on my feet again, panting for air, bruised and broken, but still standing, the white stones under my feet smeared with my blood.


    And in my hands, Rio''s body, her eyes confused and scared as I held her head back by her hair, a blade at her throat, crackling ominously in the air.


    For a moment, nothing happened, except for him to pivot and shoot the last priest in the lung twice.


    And then, as though he were a phantom, he was behind Lia, seeming to flicker out of existence more than move. His hand glinted silver with the blade he held to her throat.


    "Lia!" I shouted, taking half a step by reflex. My throat closed up, and my own blade crept involuntarily towards my hostage.


    "Release her or the girl dies!" he shouted.


    "Let go of my sister!" I screamed back.


    "You have heard my terms."


    I didn''t move. I was as paralyzed as I thought he''d been a moment ago. I could hear nothing but the pounding of my own blood and my pained breaths, could see nothing but the glint of silver to match my blade of pure white.


    But he hadn''t been paralyzed, had he? He''d moved, even with my sword against her throat. He was willing to risk her life to even the odds. And I wasn''t, I knew that. I couldn''t risk Lia, for anything. She was my sister, whom I loved more than anything in the world.


    And yet somehow, I was still standing, still holding Rio, her eyes watering as my fingers knotted in her hair.


    Five seconds passed, and then another five, and still Dragon didn''t move. Still I didn''t move. Neither of us were ready to take the first step, even with so much on the line.


    "I see you," Dragon hissed at Karu, who had been drifting sideways for an angle. "This girl means nothing to me."


    "Saga, for God''s sake, tell Karu to back off," I said.


    I hardly processed it, but I didn''t feel Saga there to react. I was entirely focused on Dragon and Lia. But I saw her. Out of the corner of my eye, crawling through the crack, the look on her not-her face, stupefied.


    But I also saw Karu still flanking, ever-so-slowly in the air.


    "Karu, stop, damn it! Saga, tell her!"


    This time I noticed. Saga just...wasn''t. Panic began to well inside me as I saw Dragon''s knife twisting in his hands at her throat. Had we all finally turned toad? Was I forever locked out of Saga''s mind, at this, the most fucking important of instants?


    And Lia would die because of it?


    At that thought, I realized, I needed to let go of my hostage. Maybe Dragon would honor a bargain, maybe he wouldn''t. He was a twisted, fucked-up, completely alien being, who saw and did things his own dirty way, and it was completely beyond me if this exchange even meant anything to him. But the most human I''d ever seen him was his fury at seeing Rio get hurt, and if he had that humanity in him still¡­


    Well, I had to hope it would apply to letting Lia go. I took several steadying breaths, thinking of what to say and how to end this stalemate, with Karu inching all of us closer to total destruction.


    And Saga walked up to me, swaying slightly, a familiar smile on her face, half-hidden by strands of black hair.


    "It''s okay," she said, and it was only then that I realized I was actually seeing her. The real her. The real everything, Lia and Karu and AEGIS all, all of us suddenly looking around and blinking and bewildered as though seeing for the first time.


    "Saga?" I asked. "What''s...what''s going on?"


    I had a dark realization. That if I were a toad now, that meant my mind was completely broken. That this was a new vision, a new cage I''d been put into, where I could see everyone I knew, all fighting together against our mortal foe. That I''d be locked in here forever, because I knew I didn''t have the capacity to simply not care if he killed all my friends. I''d fight him forever, whether it was a dream or not. Because the first thing he''d do in this vision would be to kill my sister and make this an eternity of hell.


    But he didn''t. In fact, he looked as confused as the rest of us did. It was a good look on him.


    "Saga, what''s going on?" I asked. "Why can''t I...where are you?"


    "I''m here, silly. I''m just...busy."


    "Busy? With...Saga, tell Karu to stop! Wait...I can tell her on my own. Karu!"


    Saga giggled demurely, her laughter like wind chimes dancing. It sounded real. It felt real. But...if I couldn''t brush her mind...it wasn''t really Saga, right?


    "Busy with fixing all your problems, Athan. It always seems to fall to me to pick up your messes. And you are one messy, dirty boy. Not that I mind," she winked.


    "...what...wha--" Rio groaned in my arms, her eyes rolling into her head. Dragon similarly slumped from behind Lia, staggering half a step, but the blade not moving an inch.


    "What are you doing? This is a really bad time to be fucking around, Saga," I warned.


    "Oh. I know. I''m helping, like I said." She grinned. "Lia''s my friend too, you know. And I thought, I''d be damned if I let her die without at least coming in there and maybe getting stabbed myself. And I''m so glad I did."


    "Because...you didn''t get stabbed? I''m so lost."


    "Because," she said, her grin growing enormous, "I''m speaking to their manager. I found the guy that runs the place. And he and I are having a nice chat about employee performance at this joint."


    I looked down at Rio shuddering in my arms and held my breath.


    The guy who runs the place? It wasn''t one of these two, Saga couldn''t touch their minds. But that meant--


    "Their god?" I asked.


    And Saga''s grin grew ever broader.

 378. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Saga.

    I was beginning to figure out how things worked here. Having a somewhat unique perspective of seeing in everyone''s head at once, I was probably the foremost expert at knowing just what the hell was going on with all these multiple realities everyone was experiencing.


    It was, on one hand, frustrating and a bit headache-inducing. I''d realized that subconsciously, at least, I''d become a bit like AEGIS with her cam-drones in relying on other people''s perceptions and thoughts to keep track of everything going on around me -- Athan and the gang''s, most of all, since they''d so insistently integrated themselves into my life. And suddenly having none of those perspectives in agreement was hurting my head more than I thought possible.


    But on the other hand, damn was it entertaining. Especially the bit where Karu went off and murdered all Lia''s friends, or the part where I got to murder everyone or...well, most things involving murder were pretty much up my alley. Most of the time, most of these guys were just too uptight about a little senseless slaughter. But with the extra layer of being removed from it all...or even from themselves¡­


    Well.


    Point was. I thought I was doing okay.


    Until I sorta, kinda, got in touch with a god.


    Yeah, that kinda put things in a new perspective.


    From about the time I crawled through the gap in the inner wall, I met minds with the entity at the center of this whole place. The ''our god'' they kept prattling on about, and also the only resident of Oasis who wasn''t, as I''d dubbed them, a toad.


    ''Our God'' was, basically, the opposite of a toad. In a couple of ways. Instead of my mind sliding off of...his? Hers? Its? It felt like I was actively being drawn in. Like...the open intimacy that Athan and I could share, except the town slut version of that. Free access to anyone who wanted a hit. Like this was a mind that was accustomed to being completely open and exposed to others.


    And also, in exact opposition to a toad''s, there was the opposite of nothing going on in that mind; there was way too much. It felt like...well, it was hard to comprehend, being so goddamn alien, but I had to figure out just what the hell I was living here.


    For starters, all the lives of everyone in the city were in here. Not their thoughts...not their simulated realities either, but something...kind of both. It was like...focusing on a piece of music so intently that you could pick out a single instrument and follow it. Watch it dancing up and down the scales, envision the notes it was playing as they struck. That was something I used to do as a child, when I had my requisite Asian music classes.


    Except instead of an instrument, it was a person, and not quite their thoughts but...something counterpoint to a thought. Whatever a thought was, if you took the mold of it and had all the negative space that would make a thought into a whole, that was what this thing was full of. And there was a goddamn symphony of those, hundreds and hundreds of them all playing in concert, with this god-thing being the conductor and band at once, beaming out these inverse-thought-things to everyone in the city, every toad outside the city, just...a crap ton of people.


    The illusions or multiple realities or whatever was part of it, sure. But there was so, so much more going on, such an interplay between this thing and the minds under it. There were rules, too. Shortcuts made by this mind-thing to help it rule. How the guards were programmed to defend the city from outsiders, and we''d slipped through the loophole of not being outsiders. How anyone in the visions could see and hear clergy if they were within the inner city, how Athan and we had been able to see and hear and fight Dragon and Rio, even if not each other.


    I was just...floored by the massive might of the mind in front of me, and all the gargantuan piles of senseless shit I couldn''t begin to wrap my head around.


    I could, however, say hi. And I did. And boy, did that throw it for a loop.


    Dragon looked at me, aghast as I''d ever seen him. Rio went limp in Athan''s arms. Athan and all the others sorta flinched as their realities returned to normal. Everyone in the city shuddered to a stop. Toads around the world froze in their tracks. And the mind, the Our God, it looked at me and blinked in absolute incomprehension, all of its million minds stilled at once at my little introduction.


    And then, like a pot of water boiling all at once, hi frothed through the minds, a billion times over, both asked and stated, both question and answer, a thought more concrete and less complex than any this thing had in...in hundreds of years at least, I could feel.


    Hi. I hadn''t even been casual enough to throw it my typical flippant ''sup, and I kind of regretted it when I saw what a big production this suddenly was.


    "Saga?" Athan asked with all the coherence of a drunk. "What''s going on? Why can''t I...where are you?"


    I didn''t really have the bandwidth to deal with him at the moment, so overwhelmed was I by the billions of echoing hi and the mind babbling them. "I''m here, silly, I''m just...busy," I said, dismissively.


    "Busy? With...Saga, tell Karu to stop! Wait...I can tell her on my own. Karu!"


    I had to laugh. He sounded so insistent, so scared. Here I was, basically running my fingers through the clouds of heaven and he was almost passing-out from brain failure, and still he was so concerned with petty shit.


    "Busy with fixing all your problems, Athan. It always seems to fall to me to pick up your messes. And you are one messy, dirty boy. Not that I mind," I said, trying to ease his mind.


    "What are you doing? This is a really bad time to be fucking around, Saga," he said.


    "Oh. I know. I''m helping, like I said." He had absolutely no idea what was going on here. "Lia''s my friend too, you know. And I thought, I''d be damned if I let her die without at least coming in there and maybe getting stabbed myself. And I''m so glad I did."


    "Because...you didn''t get stabbed? I''m so lost."


    "Because I''m speaking to their manager. I found the guy that runs the place. And he and I are having a nice chat about employee performance at this joint."


    "Their god?" he asked.


    "The very same."


    "BLASPHEMER!" Dragon shouted, his voice like thunder. Actually made me jump a little. And actually made Our God jump a little too, through me. It didn''t like that, it felt waves of irritation at feeling things, even just through me. I wondered if it was gonna go in and blow up Dragon''s brain or something like that.


    But it didn''t, couldn''t really, I felt. It didn''t work that way. Sure, the thing had absolute control over what we saw and felt, but it wasn''t really running that shit any more Athan was in charge of manufacturing his own piss. I guess that wasn''t a terrible metaphor, in that...in a weird way, all who were under Our God''s umbrella were sort of extensions of it. Not in the slavery sense that Athan was harping on about, but in a...one-body-under-one-mind kinda thing. It was itself formless; its form was everyone. It directed people as it wanted, but it didn''t do so directly. Maybe a better metaphor would be...that the visions were like nerve impulses, and people were its muscles.


    Which reminded me of a conversation we''d had long, long ago about how powers worked. They weren''t something we could turn off, they were just...another muscle to flex, to our minds. They acted as involuntarily as our bodies.


    Well this thing was taking it to another level, using its power to run our bodies and our powers. Creepy as hell.


    Also went a long way towards explaining all the jank we''d run into since figuring out our situations -- the toads weren''t really people anymore, they were dedicated vessels. The ''toad''-ness of them was their own minds atrophying as our god-dude here removed from them the burden of decision-making and slowly converted them into just a piece of itself. Each bit had specific duties, and anything outside of that, they just weren''t equipped to handle.


    Kinda made me proud that we were gumming up the works so effectively, honestly.


    Despite just screaming at me a moment ago, Dragon was now fully wigging out, as was Rio, who''d been dumped unceremoniously on the ground. She seemed to be seizuring a teensie bit, and he was...well, he was doing his best existential-breakdown impression, melodrama-ing it up as hard as he could. The whole nine yards -- on his knees, holding his head, screaming at an uncaring sky.


    At least he''d let Lia go. Or, more specifically, the second he''d shown weakness, she''d broken free and stuck his own knife in his arm. He hardly seemed to care about that when the sheer, edgy oppression of the world was apparently bearing down on his blackened, miasmic soul, or some shit.


    Kinda wanted Our God to get ahold of itself because the screaming was kind of annoying. That and seeing the infinite cosmos of its works was a heckuva lot better than this weird echoing burble it was doing with hi. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Our God reacted sheepishly to this thought, as though embarrassed to remember it was supposed to be doing something, and then all at once, picked up right where it''d been, a thousand worlds and a thousand minds swept right back up into their matching realities.


    It was funny to see everyone else suddenly jolt as their worlds changed around them. Rio stopped thrashing and Dragon stopped screaming, both of them peering around with an intensity of a lovestruck couple picking out their soul-mates at an airport terminal. It was kinda gross.


    But still, somehow better than Dragon regaining his feet, panting for breath, putting his disgusted sneer back on, and shouting all number of threats at me.


    Apparently I was a blasphemer and ruiner of all things, corruptor of purity, annihilator of all that was just and right, defiler of all sacred and sacrosanct, unraveller of truth and enscriber of falsehood. He didn''t say all that, but that was the jist of half of what he was saying. The other half were the horrible things he''d inflict on me, as properly due for all the above.


    I yawned, obviously, and strutted my scrawny ass right up to his face.


    "Dragon. Dude," I said, while he sputtered. "Here."


    I took the knife out of his arm, which spackled a line of red on the white floor, and pressed it into his palm. Handle-side first, because I was making a point here, not a hole. And then I took that hand, placed it over my heart, point-side this time, and invited him in.


    Still hurt like a bitch when he punched through though, and my heart did that thing where it sprayed blood all over that it liked to do. He hardly blinked, until I stood up, and then he couldn''t stop blinking.


    "Who are you?" he asked, though I didn''t think the question was really genuine, because he killed me again instead of letting me answer.


    "Saga," I said, from my back when I came to. "Nice ta meet''cha."


    "Heretic!" he bellowed. And of course the killing again. Always the killing. Dude needed to take a chill pill.


    He kept this up a while before it sunk in that not much was really being achieved. At which point it was apparently time to go back to questioning me.


    "What is this? What have you done!?"


    "Dude, chill. I''m just an Exhuman who doesn''t die."


    "Which you should know," Athan said, with an unbearable grin. "Because I hear you know all the Exhumans on the planet. Part of your calling, I thought?"


    "Ooooooh," added Lia, helpfully.


    Which meant, wait...the visions had started up again, but we were outside of them still. Or...at least...could see each other? I pondered for a moment and then realized that wasn''t necessarily true. It was possible I was just seeing a new vision, which matched up with where I was right now. I wondered if all of Our God''s little workers just had a moment of sudden, unexplainable deja-vu or something, which they''d all forget about in a moment.


    Although, difficult as it was to pull myself out of its mind, I did flip through the thoughts of the others and it seemed like we were all in order here. Disorienting as fuck, having so many realities to keep track of.


    And then I got stabbed again and died. Oh yeah. Got distracted from the murderer climbing atop me. Silly me.


    "Satisfied?" I asked him. "You''ve only done me like, thirty times now in a row. I know you''ve got some stamina to you, but goddamn."


    "You will explain yourself. You will...you will stop...interfacing with our god!"


    I yawned again. Died again. Came back again, with a saucy wink.


    I still couldn''t see inside Dragon''s head, or any other toad''s, but I could kinda get an impression from the other side, from inside Our God. And I was surprised by what I saw.


    While most of them were living in what amounted to a normal world, albeit a very simplified one where they just bumbled down paths left obvious to them, stripped of decisions to make for their dumbed-down minds.


    Dragon''s world was...just normal. There wasn''t any supernatural bullshit being crammed into him by his god, just...the world. It was bizarre, that he apparently grew up here, in a totally normal reality and wound up...so off.


    Speaking of which, he offed me again, which pulled me out of the whole god-mind interfacing bit. I had to wonder if he was doing that on purpose, and thought I''d tease it out of him.


    "You get it now?" I told him. "I''m not afraid of you. You can do nothing to me."


    "I can inflict pain," he said darkly. I rolled my eyes at him and snapped my middle finger backwards with a crack, and then held it up for him to see. When it came back, I was also making a convenient gesture for him to enjoy. Bonus!


    Also confirmed that he wasn''t aware that I couldn''t psionic when I was dead. Which was neat.


    "But this is impossible. There''s no record of such an Exhuman."


    "Oh there is, it''s just like, a hundred years old. I was actually on the news a few months ago, blowing up the Raven''s Nest, too. You miss that one?"


    "That was a publicity stunt to dupe the recalcitrant into accepting his mold," Dragon argued, pointing at Athan.


    "Yeah, I miss Blackett, too. Guy was pretty good about turning bad situations to his advantage. And kind of a slimy prick like you, with a penchant for killing lil'' ol me. You sure you''re not related?"


    At that he merely killed me again. He was sure taking his time to figure out my schtick over there.


    "Oh, should I not have said that? Daddy issues? I understand."


    He spoke, but not to me. At AEGIS this time. "How do you tolerate her existence? Why do you suffer her company?"


    AEGIS gave a calculated shrug. "Useful meatshield, I guess. I think Athan wants to turn her into some S&M toy."


    "I do not!"


    "Oh, and a code-X," I said, twisting the knife. I enjoyed watching all kinds of unfamiliar expressions crossing and recrossing Dragon''s face, and I was pretty sure he was going to kill me another thirty times, before he finally just settled on defeat.


    "Then it is the end," he said. "We have failed. I have failed."


    "Failed what, bub?"


    He stared at me intently. "Failed our god. There was only one law, and that was to permit no fiend of mind to touch him, and we failed."


    "Oh. Yeah you did. I''m touching him all over."


    Dragon trembled, and I kinda wished he''d get off of me. I''d expected Athan to be a pathetic noodle at situations like this, but seeing Dragon let himself go was something else.


    Suddenly I got my wish. As though pulled aloft, Dragon rose off of me, and over by the buildings, Rio got up as well, like they''d just heard a dog whistle. The rest of us exchanged glances before I picked up on it too -- a distant rumbling, more felt than heard, coming from...everywhere it seemed like.


    "Now?" he panted. "Why now?"


    "It is too early," Rio said. "It hasn''t been a month even."


    I cocked my head this way and that and realized the rumbling wasn''t coming from everywhere, it was coming from the white stone, which was basically everywhere. It was vibrating, so little that it wasn''t perceptible to the touch, just...a weird, low-key background noise, almost like static.


    "Uh, what''s that mean?" Lia asked.


    Rio snapped to face her with surprising speed. "Visitors. Maybe invaders. Hopefully just traders. I...apologize, but the good of the city demands we attend." She chewed her lip for a few seconds. "Or...that''s what I would say. Black hells, I have no idea what to do. Between you all, and our god, and now this--"


    She seemed anxious to go. I found it interesting that Our God had seemingly zero interest in the fact people were showing up, or if he did, it wasn''t any kind of interest I could interpret as such. Not like how it''d fixated on me saying hello. To it, this was all just business as usual, I guess. People coming and going.


    "Just turn them away?" asked Athan. "Or wait, better idea. Saga, break us out of this shit, and then we''ll just leave your little city with those nice people. Tidy up all your problems at once."


    Rio gave a somber smile. "I doubt it. You are here to stop me from making weapons, correct?" He nodded, and she continued. "Then I doubt you''d leave with them peacefully, as there is only one export from Oasis."


    "Then just tell them you''re done making guns. Shop''s closed."


    "I would never!" she shouted, suddenly flustered. "That is my calling! And it sustains the city, besides!"


    "Technically," AEGIS cut in, pushing up her glasses as she liked to do, "making weapons is your calling. Nobody says you have to distribute them to the world."


    "Making the best weapons. And there is no way to quantify that if they are not tested on a battlefield. Art such as mine cannot live in a museum."


    "I mean...it could," Lia shrugged. "But if the issue is really just her feelings, can''t we just kill her?"


    "I agree," added Karu, weapons humming.


    "How about we put that as plan B," Athan said, giving Rio a significant glance. "As much as I also just want to get out of here and get back to Moon, it sounds to me like we''ve still got options. Peaceful options. For once in our lives, Dragon and I are somehow not trying to kill each other and¡­" he gave an exhausted, defeated shrug "and maybe that''s just making me tired and sentimental, but I really think we can figure out a better way."


    "But not a faster way. And faster is better," Karu clarified.


    "I''ve always said, killing is a failure, dude," Athan replied. "Any time you kill, it''s just because you weren''t willing to put in the effort to figure out a better solution. Right now, it doesn''t seem like anyone needs to die."


    Rio gave him a warm nod. "Thank you."


    "Thank me after we work something out. I might be sparing your life in exchange for your calling."


    "Well at least you are willing."


    "The way I see it, if Dragon''s willing to stop trying to kill me, I can at least hear you guys out. He''s the psycho murderer here, not me."


    "I have only ceased," Dragon growled "because I have realized the futility of action. No matter what I do, she will destroy our god, and our lives with a thought. All is already lost."


    "Yeah, sucks to suck, doesn''t it?" I grinned at him.


    The ground tremble-hummed again, making Rio and Dragon both seem very nervous.


    "We should go," she said. "If they attempt the gates, the warriors will have no choice but to interpret it as an assault. Only the high clergy can see and speak with them as people."


    "Well you''re not going alone," Athan said. As Rio started to express something resembling thanks, he cut her off. "Because we''re not letting you sell them any more guns."


    "And I''ll be right here holding your little god hostage," I said, looking around for a nice tree to camp under. "So, y''know, keep that in mind."


    Rio looked between us, mouth open, wordless, before slumping in defeat.


    "I understand," she said. "Let us be off."

 379. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    "So what is that guy''s problem?" I asked Rio as we hustled towards the city. We couldn''t take the most direct route because, uh, somebody had smashed up one of the gates and we''d had to go around.


    "Liwei?" Rio asked.


    He wasn''t with us. He''d stayed behind to keep an eye on Saga. Which was also the subject of her endless gloating. When we stepped out, she was reciting all the things in the world more useful than he, starting with the balls of a priest and getting worse from there. The others, in turn, had stayed to keep an eye on him, and so it was just Rio and myself, the only ones not involved in the circus of keeping eyes on other people keeping eyes, the two of us jogging through the streets now.


    Streets which were...subtly different than before, but still not real. There''d been something of a reset when Saga did her thing and cracked the visions, but the fact I couldn''t feel her mind still meant we were in the fake realities. But at least it seemed like all of us were in the same fake reality...at least until we diverged, which was another reason everyone wanted to stay together as much as possible -- and with and around Saga to make sure they didn''t get duped again.


    Of course, things like ''peaceful solution'' were a low priority, which was why I was here on my own while they stayed together. We''d try my way, and if it didn''t take...well, Oasis was a crap place anyway. They weren''t really wrong, so I tried not to take offense.


    "Yeah, Dragon," I answered. "What''s his beef? I know your god decrees to hate all code-X and junk but you seem much cooler with letting that kind of thing slide than he does. Is the stick up his ass just that much bigger? Was he raised by someone who only spoke douche or something?"


    She gave me a glance as we jogged on, her breathing a lot heavier than mine, and her lab coat flapping around, far too hot a garment for this climate.


    "Liwei''s got...an interesting relationship with our god. Don''t get me wrong, I revere and believe and worship as much as he does. But...my power, my calling, they''re everything I build. His is...well...you''ve heard that he was born here, yes?"


    "Yeah, which is creepy, considering his parents might not even have known who the hell they were fucking when they conceived him."


    "Would it matter, if they were happy?"


    "Let''s skip that argument. We''ve had that one before."


    She jogged in silence for a couple seconds and then seemed unable to resist getting in a final word. "I''m just saying, lots of the world outside make children with strangers and without happiness or even consent."


    "Yeah. It''s perfect in here, got it," I snapped.


    "Anyway, with Liwei, as with all, he was born...without powers. Human. And so he was a normal laborer in the outer ring. But then something happened which had never occurred before: he turned Exhuman."


    "Is he?" I asked, actually a little elated to finally get confirmation. "What are his powers then? Wait...woah," I said, my mind suddenly reeling. "Wait. Do you...woah. Do you know the Ramanathan Window theory?"


    "No." She shook her head. "What''s that?"


    "I won''t get into it but...basically it says that in a way, what powers people get is based on their troubles. But people in Oasis have no troubles, or at least think so, right?"


    "Correct. But...from that day he woke, he was apparently a changed person. He had the sight, but was still in the visions, still had the mind of one who lived in them. If I understand correctly, his powers, and the visions created by our god, they are...symbiotic within him somehow. He is more than himself, while still being himself. Something unique, never seen before. I''m unsure of the details, because...well...there is no one to ask of it but him, and...you see how talkative he is."


    I just wanted to stop and think for a long time about what all that meant, but I was still just following Rio as she bobbed along. I couldn''t quite dedicate my whole attention to it when she seemed intent on taking the most twisting, convoluted route possible to cut through the city...and her sweaty and bouncing along in front of me wasn''t exactly great for my focus.


    But still. Jesus Christ. An Exhuman''s powers completely based on throwing off another''s. Suddenly him kneeling and crying and wailing didn''t seem quite so melodramatic, when the visions were shut off. Maybe...that was honestly the only way he could experience the world. Without the visions, without his powers interacting with them, maybe he was literally nothing.


    Blackett''s power, if he was to be believed, was also the result of Exhuman trauma in his life, and he''d developed the terrifying power of completely annulling anything Exhuman-related by his presence. Dragon was a step beyond, his powers intertwining with another''s?


    Scary shit. But most Exhuman powers were. It went a long way explaining why he was, to all scrutiny, merely human, but also the most superbly gifted human imaginable. I had to wonder what his perception of the world was, and wished -- for a new purpose for once -- that Saga could get in his head.


    Rio hesitated and I almost crashed into her, but she started forward again before I did, stepping lively down a set of white stairs that finally meant we''d regained the main street. As she moved ahead of me, I saw the reason for her hesitation, and paused a few seconds myself.


    In counterpoint to the gleaming white of Oasis were a line of vehicles parked outside the front gate in gunmetal grey. Some cars, a couple of parked VTOLs, already spun all the way down, but mostly trucks, more on the courier or military side than freight. The glasslands were probably too rugged for freight trucks, and they were compensating for the smaller size with a huge quantity.


    "Just how many guns do you fucking sell to these people?" I asked. "There''s a hundred trucks out there!"


    "Being the best does not mean producing one piece of art and stopping," she huffed. "A true artist constantly seeks improvement. A true artist''s work is never complete; in the making of it, they have already learned how to make the next."


    "You''re absolutely insane. You need to find a boyfriend or something, because you have got way too much time on your hands for playing with guns."


    She spun on me, her eyes blazing. Speaking of learning new things about her art, there was a line of dried blood on her face from where Lia had taught her a new use for them.


    "I am not playing. It is my calling."


    "Yeah. Right. Those people are not playing. They use your guns to kill people. You are in here, fucking around with your silly tech and make weapons because it''s fun. Playing."


    "I refuse to have my life''s work dismissed like this," she fumed.


    "Then pick a work which doesn''t dismiss people from their lives, lady. Maybe you don''t feel even slightly responsible for all the lives your weapons take, but I''ve seen the carnage firsthand." I gestured at my leg. "Does this handiwork look familiar?"


    She bit her lip and turned back, and I followed. I could tell just by the way she was still tense, reading her more with my powers than my eyes, that she was just trying to come back with something biting and devastating to say, and I thought I''d just cut her off right there.


    "Look," I barked. "Right now, it''s a very good idea for me to just kill you, and I''m trying hard not to. Can you meet me halfway and just agree that maybe, selling a bunch of things which are designed to kill people just might promote killing people?"


    "It''s my art," she said, bitterly.


    "And my art is waving lightning in people''s faces. You don''t see me doing that to everyone I meet."


    She spun on me again. "No, that is your power. You have no calling, because you are unfocused, undisciplined, and weak. You have no idea what it means to wholly commit yourself to a single cause, and uphold it through anything. You speak of your high morals and how hard you try to avoid killing, but at the same time, veil threats to end me if I don''t bend the way you want. You''ve never believed in anything longer than it took for that belief to be challenged, and you never will."


    I stared at her a long moment while she caught her breath. "You done?" I asked.


    "Hardly. But we don''t have time for the rest."


    "Well you listen here, sister. While you''ve been sitting here in your literal white tower, having literal servants waiting on you hand and foot so you could play with whatever gadget strikes your fancy, I''ve been out there, doing my fucking damndest to leave a positive impact on the world. I''ve tried again, and again, and again, to do everything in my power to change things for Exhumans, by word or by deed, and to protect not just those close to me, but everyone I meet, even self-absorbed pieces of shit like you. I have never wavered in trying to do what I thought was right, even if I had no idea what that meant, even if I had to sift through thousands of lies. Even if I had to make myself the enemy of the world, even if I had to throw away my personal values and principles, I''m fucking doing it. I have sacrificed my life, endangered my friends, thrown away any chance I''ll ever have at happiness or a meaningful existence...hell, I''ve destabilized the whole goddamn world because the path it was headed down was wrong. So don''t you tell me about commitment, sister. I''m fucking committed, and I see the damage I do with my choices and do them anyway. Can you say the same?"Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    She glared at me. "I know what guns do, moron."


    "Do you though? Do you know what IkaCo is? How many billions they make every year? How about a group called Hibakusha, ever heard of them?"


    She continued her glare as she shook her head.


    "Little protest group that didn''t like the parallels between IkaCo''s weapon proliferation -- your weapon proliferation -- and the spread of nukes. They were peaceful, met one of their leaders, a fucking bureaucrat, until IkaCo decided to just wipe out them and their family, with enough money to make the legal repercussions disappear."


    "That''s not me, though. It''s not my fault people choose to do that."


    "That''s what people do. That''s what people always do when there''s a power disparity. That''s why so many Exhumans go bad, why there''s so much fear and hate and bigotry out there. You know the last time a group of humans had a monopoly on guns, it led to them colonizing and enslaving two-thirds of the planet?"


    "But that''s not my fault!" she shouted back, her voice catching.


    "Except you know it''s happening and you can stop it, and you aren''t. How is that anything but your fault?"


    She sputtered at me another few moments before turning and running, not at a jog anymore. I sighed, thinking she was just refusing to face reality, but then I realized the ground was keening again. Some hell of a doorbell they had here. We were close now.


    It took me only a few seconds to catch up with her, but I didn''t press further. She seemed already on the verge of crying and it wouldn''t do any good to rip her to shreds any more when all I had to do was tell them no deal anyway. Instead we ran in painfully awkward silence, her short legs slapping the ground at least twice for every stride I took, it seemed.


    I considered telling her that she could spend her talents building an exoframe, but the look on her face reminded me that not everyone made stupid jokes at inopportune times. That and, I really didn''t want her spreading into new markets on my dumb ideas.


    Finally we arrived, and she huffed and puffed, doubled over for a few minutes before she issued an order that the gate be opened. She was still flush and her hair was matted with sweat, but we''d already been probably fifteen minutes since they''d arrived.


    "Hello," said a strict-looking asian man through a distinct accent. He wore a slim suit which didn''t match the environment in the slightest. "We were concerned something had happened. We have never been made to wait before."


    "Yes, sorry," Rio said, brushing at her bangs. "We had...ah...a situation."


    "Is...everything alright?"


    "No," I said, stepping forward. "Afraid not."


    He looked at me with some alarm but no recognition. The same could not be said of his escort, possibly a bodyguard, who whispered urgently in his ear. I had to grimace as I saw his face stiffen in comprehension.


    Didn''t feel good being known around here. But I didn''t expect much more after being on every headline in Japan the last week. Didn''t feel good at all...but might be useful anyway.


    "Shop''s closed," I said, crossing my arms. "Go somewhere else for your weapons."


    "We really...we can''t," Rio said, turning on me with pleading in her eyes. "The city needs what they offer to survive."


    "Not really my problem. The world needs you to stop offering to do the same."


    I saw word spreading through the dozens of others behind him. Maybe half of them were military of some sort, if the arms were any indication. The rest were probably just...I dunno, drivers or loaders or something. None of them really seemed pleased I existed either.


    The man cleared his throat. "That really remains to be seen. It is critical that this shipment be made."


    "Why? Somebody rich in Russia have somebody that needs oppressing or something?"


    He looked at me like I was stupid, and I tried to resist the urge to agree with him. It wasn''t my best line. I''d already yelled my best at Rio just a few minutes ago, and I''m sure if I''d turned that on him instead, he''d be thoroughly wowed and impressed. Probably.


    And then he actually asked. "Are you an idiot?" Which was kind of impressive, honestly.


    "I''ve been accused of such. But I don''t think you''re going to earn your guns by calling me names."


    He conferred again in whispers with his escort, and then that man approached me with a mobile extended.


    I gave it a pass with my powers and felt nothing off about it. Seemed like a normal mobile to me. Just in case, I let him continue holding it and leaned forward to scrutinize the image on the holo.


    It was a video of...something blowing up. It was hard to make out, being taken at night time. It was taken from a building window, looking out over city streets, lined in skyscrapers, but above them, there were flashes of light instead of the dark sky. Clouds I recognized as plumes of concrete were washing down the streets like tidal waves, and fleeing from them were dark shapes which might have been people.


    "What is this?" I asked.


    "An Exhuman crisis," replied the man, as his friend put the mobile away. "That was downtown San Antonio, Texas. Yesterday."


    "Yesterday?" I echoed stupidly. Giving him more reason to think I was an idiot, I guess. "So it''s an Exhuman event. The XPCA will handle it."


    "They have been ''handling it''. This is a crisis, and they need more." He turned to Rio. "I have been authorized to purchase up to eight times our normal order, at four times our normal rate."


    "...four times?" Her eyes went wide. "We could...that could set us for years."


    "Such is the nature of this crisis," he said, turning back to me. "That we would be willing to forgo that amount of business. You understand the situation, then?"


    I turned it over in my head. I did understand the situation, unfortunately. Some kind of big-ass Exhuman threat was chewing through the XPCA and they were trying to buy their way out of the situation. I couldn''t imagine how much profit IkaCo was making if they were willing to pay four times as much for their product but I was certain it was a lot.


    But at the same time¡­


    The need was probably genuine. Soldiers were out there fighting and dying against some monster threat which was demolishing a major city. From the people on the streets to the one shooting the video I''d seen, it didn''t look like a perimeter had been established properly, and civilians were caught up in the mess.


    "Please," Rio asked. "We need this."


    I rolled my eyes at her. "What, gun parts? White stone? What could Oasis possibly need?"


    "Many things," she said, her lip trembling slightly. "But mostly...salt. Water and stone, we take from underground. Food, we can grow, but without salt...we die."


    My mind flashed back to the bizarre toad we''d met in the desert, who''d been single-mindedly focused on dragging a cart full of salt water. He didn''t seem like he was going to make it. I had to wonder how many other skeletons were lining the glasslands, trying to bring in a paltry harvest.


    "So...get some. You''ve got a whole city of Exhumans here, you''re telling me nobody can...get salt somehow?"


    She gave me a sad smile. "Nobody can that we know of. Dragon has long looked, but not yet found any who would both remain in the city and be able to help."


    Nobody kidnappable, she meant, and that made sense. Rito, for example, could bring them salt, but also couldn''t be trapped in a vision easily. Ease of transport and ease of escape were probably pretty interlinked in Exhuman power sets.


    I stared at her, her eyes wide and pleading. When I glanced at the man, he stiffened, but tempered it with an apologetic smile. His escort watched me with eyes that flickered between each of our faces.


    And I had no idea what to do. It had been so simple when I''d come here. Shut it down, go back, rescue Moon, we were done. But somehow, I''d become embroiled in this place, from my senses to my history with Dragon to my connection with Rio, which even if it was some bullshit fabrication as part of a cage to keep me here, the fact was, she still needed my help.


    Instead, I felt like I was a boot, coming down to stomp on her and everything she was trying to build and maintain out here. Fucking salt, she needed. The most essential goddamn thing to life after water. And I was kicking it out of her hands.


    And then the news about the Exhuman. The video had only been maybe twelve seconds long but...even from that, as something of an expert on those kinds of ops, I could tell things were terribly, terribly wrong. Civilians in danger...buildings coming down around them, damage across the city...none of that should have been possible, the XPCA were supposed to be able to contain and hold, that was all they did.


    And somehow they weren''t doing it, and these guns would help.


    Frustrating. Head-poundingly frustrating.


    "We are...actually...on something of a deadline," the man said. "The XPCA needs the arms as soon as we can possibly deliver them."


    "I''m thinking, okay?" I barked at him, and he clammed up.


    I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell them, no deal. But take me, let me at that Exhuman bastard, let me fix everything by the strength of my own back.


    But I also knew there was no way anyone would accept that. Rio wouldn''t get her people their salt, the businesses wouldn''t get their money, the XPCA wouldn''t be handling things their own shitty, convoluted way. And worst of all, I''d be back in the public eye, in arm''s reach of both IkaCo and the XPCA, where more than likely, both of them would throw every remaining resource they had at me rather than have two rampaging Exhumans on the loose.


    It felt like I had no choice but to just give in. As much as I hated it, the world needed the XPCA. I''d seen the anarchy that could be unleashed when they lost control, even for an instant. Even if we were bitter enemies, I could never let them lose.


    Besides, what was I even doing here? Destroying a whole city of peaceful Exhumans so I could save my friend, who wasn''t even in danger? It was selfish and stupid. I had no reason to do this, no reason to subject the world to even greater jeopardy just because of my stupid self-absorbed wishes. It was moronic. It was putting the whole world at risk. Everything in my mind seemed to crystalize, once I took my ego out of it, all pointing one way.


    I took a deep breath, turning to Rio, and her hopeful eyes.


    And the only problem was all the words I''d just said to her a few minutes ago. About who and what I was, and how I always acted. About the things I''d sacrifice and the depths I''d go to in order to do what I thought was right, no matter how stupid, no matter how painful, no matter the risk.


    "Rio, I''m sorry," I said. "No deal."


    I whipped out my blades and forced the two men back. When the escort drew and aimed his weapon at me, I cut him to pieces.


    It was all I could do for her to wrap her in my arms as the caravan started shooting.

 380. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    "Stop! Stop!" Rio shouted, somewhat muffled in my chest as I pulled her away. My shield flashed with impacts as the convoy unloaded on us both.


    "What, you want to get shot?" I asked.


    "I want there not to be any fighting, moron!"


    "Well too bad. These guys want your guns, and it looks like they''re not taking no for an answer."


    "Then give them the guns."


    I grabbed her and heaved her over my shoulder while she complained. She was reasonably solidly built, but short, kind of the inverse of Lia, whom I had no problem hefting either. I took a good, careful look and then shot us both into the air by kicking off with my exoframe.


    She was saying something at the time, and it came out as a scream as the ground whipped away under us.


    "We''re gonna die! You''re going to kill us!"


    I just laughed as she screamed and thrashed in my arms, any sense of intelligence left in her, vanished with the panic of unexpected flight.


    I popped a few magnetic pulses to slow us a little and adjust our mid-leap trajectory, but honestly, we were up and down in less than two seconds, just enough to carry us back past the outer wall. Something AEGIS could have done in easily, or Karu without even blinking. Come to think of it, our group had a lot of verticality to us, didn''t we?


    She continued whimpering and panicking for a while even after I dropped her, but I was a little busy to take too much stock. Something had come over everyone around us suddenly, every farmer and laborer just dropped what they were doing and started running full-tilt, like there''d been some kind of alarm.


    "Hey, get ahold of yourself," I said, pulling her upright. She screamed in my face, an ugly tear-streaked mess, which made me wince to think I''d reduced her to that. It was just a jump...I couldn''t understand how someone so invested in death and destruction was so utterly unequipped to face it. She pissed me off so much, with her detachment from her own actions.


    But at the same time, she was also a crying woman, and that made my stomach churn very uncomfortably.


    "Look, you''re okay, Rio. You''re back in the city. See, white stone?" I asked, stooping to run my fingers on the ground. "Nobody''s shooting anymore."


    Which wasn''t technically true. There was still gunfire, it was just on the other side of the wall now. But that wasn''t nearly as reassuring-sounding.


    It took her a couple of minutes of seemingly all of Oasis rushing past us before she composed herself, and packed her fear and angst back into being furious at me. There was a nice little transition period of her calming down and looking like she was coming out from behind a cloud...until all at once irritation crossed her face and she was back to waving her arms threateningly.


    "Look what you''ve done!" she shouted. And then stopped to hack and cough up the last of her snot, in a very dignified and certainly threatening manner. "Sorry. But...you bastard, look!"


    "I''m looking. What am I looking at?"


    "The city is under attack. Oasis is responding. All have manned the walls."


    "I haven''t," I shrugged. "Visions must not be working for me anymore. That''s neat."


    She rolled her eyes viciously. "If you are found to be a high priest, it will be the end of me. I was excited and troubled by AEGIS, but you¡­"


    "Yeah, well. She''ll tell you I''m ten times more troubling than she is. She''ll also probably tell you I''m ten times more exciting, but don''t follow up on that, because she''ll get into the kinds of excitement you probably don''t want to hear."


    She glared at me. "What is wrong with you?"


    "I''m an Exhuman."


    "I meant¡­" She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I meant the joking around. Do you have no concept of what you''ve done here? How many lives are now in danger?"


    I shrugged. "Sister, I''ve been throwing that line at you all day. It''s infuriating to see you so triggered at your city being in jeopardy, and giving zero shits about what goes on outside of it."


    "And I''m infuriated that you care only what''s outside it. Your actions are as though chosen to bring Oasis to as cruel a death as you can muster."


    "Well, I wouldn''t put it that way. I want you guys to survive, obviously, but if you won''t give up on screwing up the rest of the world...yeah, I''d choose them over you. Obviously."


    "Obvious, why?" she shouted, as I watched the mass of bodies on the wall continue to grow. When I thought at first they were just running around, that was one thing, but seeing now that they were supposed to be defending the city...something didn''t add up. I puzzled it over even as she continued bleating. "The rest of the world hates you, doesn''t it? It is oppressive and unfair and barren of opportunity. Here you can be happy -- if you are new high priest, you can even be free. Why would you choose to be a slave there, over a lord here?"


    I shook my head at her. We were just way too different. "Why aren''t these guys armed?" I asked, gesturing at the wall. "You''ve got farmers up there with sticks and rocks?"


    "They are armed with whatever they know."


    "Like, what, obscure factoids?"


    She stared at me. "Whatever weapons exist within their visions."


    "Oh."


    Well that seemed like bullshit to me. This was a city based on exotic weapons, with a mountain of a stockpile right in its middle, and when threatened...this was the defense mustered? It was like they were just asking for these people to be killed off. And on top of that, the hierarchy that said all Exhumans would be further back, defending the next wall in...these bastards would be helpless.


    Like, did Oasis really give that few shits about humans? They were literally less valuable than the dirt they worked?


    "Don''t they...die?" I asked. Which was a stupid question because a few of them were already demonstrating for me, as the sound of gunfire continued, bodies fell from the wall.


    "They do. But we can reclaim from those who attack."


    "Wow, that''s ten kinds of fucked up. So next time IkaCo comes calling, they''ll find their own people standing there with rocks to lead the defense?"


    "They are people, and people are people."


    I gave her a big fake smile. "You know, you always know just what to say to continue to horrify and alienate me."


    "They''re dying because of you, bastard. I may not know them nor mourn them, but have a little respect."


    "I''ve got an idea," I said. "Stay here, or else I''ll have to carry you while jumping again."


    "I''m going nowhere. There is nowhere to go. They will not breach the first wall with small arms."


    "Great," I said, intensifying my smile with a dash of sarcasm. "Be right back, precious."


    And then I bolted away, taking flights of stairs in single bounds. The rest of the city was similarly deserted, all the walls crowded with bodies. But the gates were still open for now, so my threat to have to jump was an empty one, and I went through like a normal person instead, until I got in range of Saga.


    I tapped out a request for her on my tablet and flashed it into her senses, and only had to wait a minute before a blue streak from the inner walls traced through the twilight with the sound of engines echoing off the stone.


    "How goes things?" Karu asked, handing over a pair of guns from the armory.


    "Oh. You know. I got the city attacked."


    "Is that why they have gone to alert?" she asked with mild amusement. "I dare say you are rather calm about it. Are these essential to breaking the siege then?"


    "It''s just some convoy and their escort. They have regular guns, and are shooting because they don''t know what else to do. Mercenaries just making a big show so they can get paid, probably."


    "I know the type well," she grinned. "You have forbid killing within the city to expedite our victory, but perhaps if I dispatched the aggressors, all would be ingratiated enough to end this farce?"Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    "Kinda doubt it. I don''t think the locals even know what they''re doing, and Rio kinda blames me for the fight starting in the first place. We''re probably looking at zero gratitude."


    "As is our lot," she sighed. "Well, should you need anything else...I am bored."


    "How''s everyone else?" I asked.


    "Lia is mildly upset, though trying to hide it. Dragon is...unexpectedly despairing. I make no reservations about the extent of my glee to see him as such. AEGIS is undergoing basic repairs. Saga is Saga."


    "How about Tem? We might have better odds with her now that the visions flickered. Her situation might have changed?"


    "Or they might not," she shrugged, as though in a way to demonstrate just how little she thought of the girl. "I have little intent to be lasered by the rampaging idiot should I try to break her from her spell, regardless. She is a lizard-brained ninny who would bite at any who reach within her cage."


    "Ninny. Nice," I said. "Well, we''ll need to collect her at some point. She''s probably the only one who could blow all the armory to hell, which is kind of becoming plan B for me here at the moment, since Rio is still uncooperative."


    "I believe plan B was to execute the uncooperative one?" she asked, clenching her fist and popping a blade into the air.


    "Thanks for the update," I sighed. "I''ll take these and see if it works."


    We said our brief goodbyes and I took the two weapons back down to Rio with reckless downhill bounces that would not have been possible if Whitney hadn''t gotten the auto-gyros working. I even startled her with my approach.


    "My guns?" she asked. "What do you need those for?"


    "Imagine," I said. "You''re a...lizard-brained ninny. You''ve been called to defend your city, which you do willingly. That''s about the extent of your intelligence, right?"


    "Sure," she said.


    "And then someone presses a gun into your arms. Doesn''t matter if you know who they are, or what it is. What are you gonna do?"


    She blinked at me.


    "You''ve seriously never, ever considered what it''s like to actually be trapped in the visions, have you? All you think about is ''boy, how happy they are'', without a thought to how they experience the world?"


    She ripped one of the weapons from me and ignored me, frowning as she checked it over. Without replying, she headed up the stairs to the wall, finding the closest laborer and pressing the gun into his arms.


    It took him a couple tries. He was saying things and confused, seemingly apologizing for bumping into her even. But when she took his hands and placed them on the weapon''s grips, even his stupid mind wasn''t capable of dismissing the object anymore, and all at once it seemed to click for him, and presumably entered existence into his reality.


    Because what he did next was lean over the wall and start shooting. A flat baseline of a sound, I had no idea what it was doing, but it sounded bone-rattling. When it fired, I couldn''t hear the distant gunfire over it, and when it went silent, the gunfire had ceased, at least for a few seconds. It picked up again but sounded more timid, more distant, not expecting to have met resistance.


    Rio came pouting back to me, seemingly unsure whether she was mad at me or elated that the trick had worked.


    "Happy now?" I asked.


    "No. Yes." She stared at me. "Why would I be?"


    "You''re such a woman."


    "Give me that gun--" she growled.


    "I meant, with your calling. This is what you wanted, isn''t it? You wanted your weapons to be tempered on the battlefield. Here you go, your own limitless supply of testing dummies. Bodies you don''t care about, shooting off your babies. Feeling the proud mother yet?"


    "This is just a slaughter," she said, shaking her head.


    "And that''s what they''re designed to do, isn''t it?"


    She went silent again, and this time when she reached for the other gun, I gave it to her. She gave me a small nod before heading back up to the wall and passing it off to another of the bastards up there before rejoining me, still as pensive as when she left.


    We loitered for a few more minutes before, just as suddenly as they''d come, everyone began leaving the wall. Like students flooding out of class, everyone just came pouring out at once, all headed their own directions.


    The front gates even opened again, and I could see some of the trucks and both of the VTOLs were smoking piles of wreck now. From behind us, soldiers headed out to round up whatever salvage they could find. Maybe even recruiting the wounded into the next generation of laborers. Fun times.


    Made all the more gross by the thought that, if it weren''t for Saga, that would have been me marching out right now, maybe. As much as I hated this place, I still loved it somehow, and that fucking sucked.


    "Shall we head back up?" I asked. "I think we might be mostly done here. Just gotta get Saga to convince your god to let our heads go, and all our loose ends are tied up, right? You''re happy, the city''s happy, uh...there''s salt in the salvage probably and, uh..."


    "This won''t be the end of them, you know," she said. "That was no attack."


    "Yeah, that was just some lazy mercs."


    "They were desperate. They will continue to be desperate, and will act in their desperation."


    "And you''ll have a hundred dudes on the wall with a hundred crazy guns when they do. There''s no army in the world that can match that. They can''t nuke you or anything crazy, because they''re only here for what you''ve got in the first place. You''ve got your war in place, and I''ve got my gun deal cancelled."


    "This isn''t what I wanted, though."


    I put my hands on my hips. "What, you wanted to test your guns without having the fighting be in your own backyard?"


    She nodded. Which was surprisingly straightforward.


    I had an impulse to continue to attack and ridicule just how stupid and naive she was. Because, absolutely, she was. Frustratingly so.


    Instead, I took her by the hand and dragged her along until we were indoors, and sat us both down at a table opposite each other.


    "Look," I said. "A long time ago, I was a lot like you. I was a huge idiot when it came to what fighting actually meant. I thought...really thought...that I could be some kind of new generation of Exhuman who wasn''t bad, who could just be left alone and didn''t hurt anyone. I was stubborn, and thought that the XPCA had taken away everything I had, my life, my family, my future...and the only thing I had left was to say ''fuck you'' to them and show them I still had humanity. The one thing they said I never had. Y''know?"


    She nodded stupidly, and I wondered how much she was actually listening.


    "But the more I struggled along, the more I realized...that isn''t how things work. When you''re as strong as you or me, there''s no such thing as being left alone. Some guy named Blackett saw my power and thought he''d use me for his own, just like IkaCo wants to use you."


    "Then we just tear them down," she said, with a frown.


    "I did that. I killed Blackett, once I realized what a real piece of shit he was. But that just created a whole new mess of problems. I''d put my power where his had once been, and if I stayed there, I''d be a target...or worse, have to pull the strings myself. And if I left, there''d be a power vacuum, and whoever filled it -- Director Hall in this case -- he''d just use me the same way Blackett had tried. I even ran and hid, I tried living without my powers entirely for a while. But that''s not something you can do, you can''t just have that kind of power and expect not to be marked. You''ll either find a situation where you need to use it, or regret that you didn''t."


    "This is just your life," she said. Her tone was dismissive but she was clearly attentive. "Just because it happened to you doesn''t mean it happens to everyone. We were fine here before you came along, you know."


    "You really weren''t," I shook my head. "If we were able to figure out that you guys were the source, someday, someone else would have. And then they''d want it for themselves, or maybe just want it gone. That''s what I''m saying -- when you get this powerful, people can''t ignore you anymore. And you can''t live pretending you can be."


    "Well I don''t...we don''t...care about being ignored," she huffed, crossing her arms. "Oasis has been sieged loads of times. This is one more."


    "I just want you to accept that this siege is because of the guns."


    "It''s because of you."


    "And we''re here because of the guns. And so are they."


    She wavered for a long time. "So what then? Would you just...have me stop making them? I may as well die."


    "Well that seems melodramatic. But no. What I want from you is what I''m aspiring towards, the same reason I''m here in the first place, the same reason I''m talking to you when killing you would be so much easier, the same reason I shot down the deal when so many problems could be helped by making it."


    "And what is that?" she asked, trying not to look too captivated.


    "Just fucking think, lady. Be aware. Listen to things you disagree with. You can''t tell me there were never hints your guns were out there causing hell, I bet you just ignored them. Open up your reality to those things, wonder what you can do to always be improving."


    "That''s not very helpful," she said.


    "Maybe not. But doing that has gotten me where I am today. I''m such a different person from that stupid, naive idiot who got thrown into the wilds." I bit my lip and stared at her for a long time. "When Dragon...when Liwei had Lia at knifepoint, I didn''t do anything."


    "What?"


    "Sorry. I''m just...this is been on my mind ever since it happened. I might just be blabbing at this point."


    "No, go ahead."


    "Well...Liwei took my sister hostage when I did the same to you. And instead of caving in on the spot and giving up everything for her...I didn''t. I held firm to what I had, because I knew that he wouldn''t do it if I didn''t hurt you. I knew that..she or one of the others would figure out something, or that I could talk to Dragon...how ludicrous that sounds, we hate each other. Karu just told me that Lia''s kind of upset, and I think that''s why. She''s seeing it in me too."


    "Seeing...what exactly?"


    "Dunno." I had a thought and blanched, but once it was in my head, it wouldn''t leave. "Leadership?"


    "How is that leadership?"


    "Karu once told me that leadership is often just deciding what sacrifices to make. That I was a weak leader because I''d only ever be willing to risk my own life. And then today...I was willing to risk Lia''s. Because that was the only way I''d have a positive outcome. Because if I just gave you up and gave in to Dragon, we''d have lost everything, in my stupid, desperate bid to put everything on myself."


    "If you don''t mind my saying, that just sounds like not being an idiot."


    "Well that''s a big part of leadership too, I imagine," I smiled at her. Then I sighed. "Anyway. That''s my advice for you. Oasis to you might be Lia to me. To get the positive outcome, you might have to put what you love at risk. If you seem to have no options...maybe the option is to do what you never considered yourself doing."


    "At that point, couldn''t I just kill you and then deal the guns?" she asked, with a sly smirk.


    "Sure," I shrugged. "If you honestly think I''m easier to kill and more of a bad guy than they are. By all means, try."


    A weird look had frozen on her face at my words. "It was a joke."


    "I know. But I''m serious. If that''s what you think best, I can''t fault you for doing it. But I don''t think you will."


    "Heh," she snorted, standing up. "More of that leadership? That reckless confidence that things will turn out?"


    I smiled at her and joined her in walking back outside, now fully night.


    "No," I admitted. "I don''t know that they will. But I just act as though they will be, and if a problem arises...I''ll cut it down, until the world works just the way it should."


    "Sound exhausting."


    "It is. But it''s the only way I know to make a change."

 381. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    "How are we on the whole god-affair?" I asked Saga.


    "Loaded question," she replied, scratching her chin. "I''m not sure...it''s really quantifiable."


    "Okay. Then without a quantity...how are we on the whole god-affair?"


    While she thought it over, I looked around at the others. Lia, Karu, and AEGIS all seemed fine I guess, tired mostly. It''d been a long night already, but none of us were looking like sleep was in our future still. More importantly, Dragon was still hunched over in defeat.


    I hadn''t said it to Rio because it just felt like pointless gloating but in my heart, I''d beaten him. Not in a punching match or a fight of our powers, but because...I''d been willing to take risks, been willing to...well it felt crappy to think, but I''d been willing to put Lia in danger. And the second it came to what he loved being on the line, his god in jeopardy, he''d given up completely.


    Not that I could function without Lia any more than he could without his god, I was sure. But I could take that risk of being completely destroyed, and he wouldn''t. In that way if none other, I''d won.


    "It''s not exactly like talking to a person, you realize," Saga came back to me. "Their god is old, mostly. Like, hundreds of years, of actual living, not just lazing through it like I did. They''ve been at the center of hundreds of lives for generations now and, well, consider how you are with just a few people, and multiply that by a couple thousand."


    "What, so their god is friendly? That''s the problem?"


    She rolled her eyes at me. "Not friendly, distributed. Interconnected. This thing has lived so many lives and died more times than I have. I''m actually...well...it''s scary, honestly."


    "Again, you lost me."


    She sighed enormously. "Okay, bub. Just settle for it being hard to explain and understand, then."


    "But can you get it to let us go? Or do we have to kill it to keep from turning into toads?"


    "Now that, I am not sure."


    I scrunched up my face at her. "Just what have you been doing in there then?"


    "I''ve been acclimating myself to talking to a huge, alien, multi-intelligence!"


    "So that you could get us out of here, right?"


    She opened her mouth and then closed it. "Um, sure."


    "Saga, dude."


    "What? It''s like nothing I''ve ever seen. You can''t fault a girl for her curiosity. There''s no mind on Earth like this baby, and minds are kinda my thing."


    "And you didn''t think, maybe you could play with your new toy after you kept us all from going dumb?"


    "Honestly, no. It''s kind of hard to have too many thoughts of my own when I''m looking in on a hundred others going on at once." At my glare she quickly added "But I''ll start now!"


    "Saga, I love you, but come on dude."


    "I''m working on it," she muttered. "But it''s not like I''m in charge here. It''s not the kind of thing where I can just force it to think whatever I want. It doesn''t even think in the conventional sense I''m used to."


    "So...write it a compel or something. You''re the expert."


    She snorted. "Expert? Compared to this thing, I''m like...a lovable puppy. And that''s almost exactly how it looks at me. Which is great, because it doesn''t even acknowledge the rest of you as even being alive, really. Big step up. But not big enough that I get to tell it what to do."


    "So we cut it down," AEGIS said, and I jumped at her standing behind me. "It lives in a big tree in the middle of the city. I thought it was just a fancy dead tree, but if there actually is an intelligence to it--"


    She made a clicking sound with her tongue while drawing a line across her throat.


    "Well one problem is that if we intend overt harm, we''ll get Dragon back on his feet," I said, glancing over at where he was still crouched.


    "Bigger problem is, that stick isn''t their god," Saga said. "Physically, he died a long time ago...if I''m sorting through these memories right."


    "Died?" AEGIS asked, her brow creased.


    "Yeah. Hard to piece together but...my understanding is that he was just an Exhuman, not too crazy different from me. Had this networking power instead of my schtick, decided to use his powers to build this city he lived in -- before the war, mind you -- and then kinda got...brutally killed and strung up in said tree. Actually kind of Jesus-like that his object of death would become his symbol, huh?"


    "Again, he''s dead?" AEGIS asked.


    "Right. And also like me, he''s got some kind of functional immortality. His body doesn''t come back or anything but...his mind is also detached from his form now. He''s literally a disembodied, immortal Exhuman brain. Except, by now, he''s gone so far beyond either being human or the limitations of a physical brain that it''s...well...transcendent might be a good word for it. Spooky, yeah?"


    "And you gathered all of this from tiny scraps of memory floating around in this clusterfuck of hundreds of lifetimes of thoughts?" I asked.


    "Yeah. So like I said, that''s the narrative I''ve kind of invented to explain what I know. Not guaranteed to be accurate."


    "And you did all that instead of, like, figuring out how to fix our situation?"


    She looked at me blankly.


    "Honestly, it was a lot more fun," she huffed. "But I''ll work on it, okay? Jeez."


    "Thanks, Saga," I sighed.


    I rejoined the others, exchanging muted bits of conversation before we all lapsed into silence together.


    It felt like there shouldn''t be anything wrong. Saga just had to slap together some kind of solution for us all to not become lizard-brained, and then we were perfect to get outta here. But that was just in theory. Looking around at the others'' faces, I could see just how far that was from reality.


    We were all tired, and I think we were all starting to feel the effects of toadification. It was like a pressure on our minds, forcing our square thoughts through round holes. Nobody wanted to say it, but the oppressive air said enough. Lia, I think, was worrying about ''us''. Karu hated code-X more than anything, and being under one even more than that. And AEGIS was a wad of stress any time any of us were in danger, to say nothing about the damage and failure she''d picked up at Dragon''s hands.


    And then I''d basically just been abusing the shit out of Rio all day, and felt like crap about that, too. Wasn''t a good time for any of us, and certainly didn''t feel like we were on the cusp of victory.


    "If you guys want to sleep a little, I can keep an eye out," AEGIS said, looking up from her busted arm, which was hanging halfway open. "Since we''re just waiting."


    "I dunno, I don''t trust Dragon," I said. "Kinda worried he might try something stupid here at the end."


    Lia didn''t share my concern, and rose only enough to shuffle over to where I was. The look on her face was abjectly pathetic and miserable, so I didn''t complain or make fun as she cuddled down on my legs.


    "You should get some sleep, too," AEGIS told me.


    "Probably. Probably won''t, though."


    She smiled, nodded, and went back to reaching into the mess of components on her arm to do what she could. For a while I just watched her work, thinking about what parts were in there, what amount of complex machinery had to exist to make her function. I thought about the multilayered, interconnected servos which had regulated the hand joints in the exosuit I''d helped Whitney put together. AEGIS'' systems were at once, much simpler, not at all concerned with an operator inside or their limits of motion, but at the same time, she was expressive and precise in ways that an exosuit never would be.


    My eyes glazed over as thoughts of the situation and all our troubles were pushed out by diagrams and models in my head, what kind of voltages I could expect for a system like that, tolerance limits, surge limits, if the whole system needed to engage at once.


    I owed Whitney so much, I thought. Not just because she''d temporarily taken my powers off me and given me a taste of a normal life, though I''d be forever grateful and apologetic for that. But also because she''d really taught me a lot about something I turned out to be pretty passionate about. I knew a few of my friends in high school used to talk about what they''d study in college, they seemed so sure, so interested, and I''d never even gotten as far as concretely deciding a major beyond ''football''. It''d always seemed insane to me that someone my age could have their shit together like they did.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    And then Whitney had happened, and it clicked. It was probably there all along, I just needed the right teacher to get me into it. Suddenly, learning seemed more like satisfying my curiosity than something I should be doing for a grade. I had to wonder if all the other guys with their shit together also had a great teacher, if I''d had any of those teachers, and just wasn''t paying enough attention.


    And then I woke up with a start, the cold night air burning my nose and throat as I snorted it down in surprise.


    "Hey, good morning," AEGIS whispered at me. "Lia''s still asleep."


    I looked down, blinking myself back into reality from my dreams and saw my sister snoring softly on my leg, curled up and sprawled out all at once, her slipskin apparently comfortable enough even on the hard, white stone.


    And then I looked up and saw the heavens.


    "Pretty cool, huh?" AEGIS asked, and I could only silently nod.


    It wasn''t dark out, despite being the dead of night, and it seemed like that was all on the moon shining silver and nearly full over our heads. But around it, everywhere I looked, there were so damn many stars, I couldn''t even begin to comprehend them individually. It was more like a tapestry or a sprinkling. The sky was stars, no matter where you looked, every single part of it was full of them.


    It was a far fuckin'' cry from LA where I''d grown up, and you got to see maybe three stars at night, and if you looked carefully, one of them was a VTOL.


    "It''s only been four hours. You should sleep more," AEGIS whispered. "I''ll keep watching over you."


    All I could do was mutter my assent and try to get more comfortable without moving Lia, but I was so tired I was out before I knew it.


    And then I was up before I knew it, a minute later it felt like. Still dark, still star-studded. But a bit more screaming than last time. Lia muttered but didn''t wake, and AEGIS was on her feet, staring into the darkness around us.


    "What''s going on?" I asked. "Who''s the dude screaming?"


    "Dragon, I think," she answered.


    [Definitely Dragon.]


    "Oh thank God, you''re back," I told her. I hadn''t been so happy to be hearing voices in my head, uh, ever.


    [Yeah I kinda...brought Oasis down again. Dragon''s having a freak-out as a result. The rest of the city''s in a bit of turmoil as well.]


    She was just on the other side of the courtyard from us, I might even have been able to hear her talk, but I knew by feeling her -- and how great it was that I could do that! -- that she was just happy to be in my head again.


    [Um, so...I kinda...inspired their god with the...concept of novelty.]


    "What does that mean?" I asked.


    [Well you know me. I do it for the lulz. Their god...he did it because...he''s always done it. Kinda lost his damn mind actually, didn''t know why he was doing things. Sorta like driving on autopilot actually. Ran the city because...well...as I speculated, that was what he wanted before he...kinda died and went a little mad, huh? So I might have...just a little teensy-weensie bit...made him question his motives in...existing.]


    "Uh oh."


    "Uh oh, what?" AEGIS asked. "That''s bad, Athan. What''s uh oh?"


    [Um so...the good news is, I have him trying new things just for the fun of it. He picked up a few ideas...from me¡­]


    "Uh...oh fuck."


    "Uh oh fuck what?" AEGIS echoed, her eyes wide.


    "Saga''s...teaching their god about her idea of fun."


    Her eyes went even wider. "We should get out of here."


    [Well it''s not that bad...yet. Dude''s still pretty in love with his city, so he''s not like, setting people on fire for funsies. It...might just be because he doesn''t actually know that people are alive per se, so...I mean...like I wouldn''t torture a chair for fun...but uh¡­]


    As we spoke, I heard a buzzing over the sound of the pathetic wailing cries. I thought at first my mobile was somehow going off, but then realized it was the ground, vibrating more minutely than I could feel.


    "Uh oh." I said. I wasn''t wake enough for this shit. But even my groggy mind remembered what that meant. "Someone''s...outside the city?"


    "Must be," AEGIS said. "Karu! Yo, Karu."


    Lia and Karu both started awake at AEGIS'' yelling, the former rolling over and bitching her worst at us, the latter donning her visor and becoming red lines in the dark.


    "What," she asked.


    "The city''s got a visitor," I explained. "Can you use your optics to see who it is? The visions are off for the moment so¡­" I glanced at Saga across the yard. "Um, I dunno how the city will react.


    "HUAH," she said, snapping me a salute and apparently instantly fully alert. Without another word, she shot into the air, blowing all of us sideways with the backblast of hot plasma.


    It wasn''t even a minute later when she came back, her face ashen in the dark. She said nothing but stood at attention for a few awkward, long moments, before I realized, she wasn''t actually fully awake at all. She just functioned better when half-asleep than the rest of us.


    "Uh, report out," I did my best to bark at her.


    "Sir!" She saluted. "A large hostile force is at the gates, sir. Preliminary recon indicates at least a thousand, combined arms, including tanks, APCs, and artillery, with VTOL likely in the area. The gates are unmanned, and a breach is imminent."


    Well I was fucking awake now.


    "Saga! Get the visions back on!" I shouted while stumbling to my feet. "Where the hell is Rio?"


    [Um, I can''t just ''get them on'', I spent the last few hours getting him to turn them off. Dude is exploring his new liberties.]


    "Well his city is going to burn if nobody is there to defend it. Where the hell are the guards?"


    [Wherever the last place is you left them, I assume.]


    "Saga, damn it."


    [Hey, I''m just doing what you said!]


    "Lia, hey," I said, stooping and holding her by the shoulders. She glared at me. "I know. Bad time. But we need all the help we can get. Can you and AEGIS grab all the guns you can and start handing them out to everyone? Just tell them what to do, their minds are conditioned to follow orders, not to think."


    "Kay," she said, shuffling up and swaying for a moment before tottering towards the armory.


    "Be safe," AEGIS said, giving me a kiss before trotting after Lia.


    "Saga, get in contact with Rio and get her helping as soon as she can. Tell her to get all the priests out there, they won''t listen to anyone who''s not a high priest."


    [Rodgeroonie, Caperoonie.]


    "And myself?" Karu asked.


    "You''re coming with me. We''re gonna hold the gates as long as we can. Maybe go grab a gun yourself, make sure to try them out because they do all kinds of unexpected things."


    "Wilco," she said, lifting into the air. "Meet you at the main gate in five."


    There was a deafening boom that I felt in my gut, and the ground shook under us in a much more unpleasant way than before.


    "Make it the second gate," I told her. "See you soon."


    As I ran out, I passed the guards still standing there, looking a little shaken and confused, and stopped in my tracks. "The city''s under attack," I told them. "Come with me and repel the invaders."


    They glanced at each other for a moment, as though looking for confirmation, and then nodded, falling in line. I didn''t know how they were mobilized in their visions, but it apparently wasn''t too far from what we were trying. That gave me a little hope that, if we held out a few minutes, we might actually be able to raise a force.


    I ran the rest of the way down the hill, ordering men and women as I went, issuing gates closed and defenses organized, basically just running and shouting like crazy at everything between me and the gates. It was a little more than five minutes before I reached the bottom, the second gate and the outskirts of the middle ring. By then I had a whopping six guards with me, all I thought I could take from the rest of the defense.


    And, being able to see below, I knew it wasn''t enough. Karu hadn''t been exaggerating when she said it was a force of a thousand. Somehow I just hadn''t quite considered what a thousand quite looked like until I was staring it down.


    Some were XPCA. Most were not. Some had exotic weapons, most didn''t. But unlike the mercs who''d come here before, this was a private army prepared to fight. The exosuits were standing at the ready, pivoting and assessing for any threats. The tanks were in a straight column through the main gate and pouring in from outside, surrounded by a cloud of cam-drones and support which fed them a stream of data.


    Some of the Oasians had gotten too close, and the troop had taken no risks in dispatching them. Aside from their handful of bodies, and the troops crawling through the dark around the column, this part of the city looked vacant.


    I swore again. If I was cut off from the outer ring already, that was a big chunk of the residents of Oasis that I wouldn''t be able to reach and arm and call to arms. If they breached the second gate, I''d face the same problem but a hundred times worse -- most of the city slept here, and I''d lose all of them.


    I ran to the gate and only barely popped my head over the wall before a hail of fire shot at me from everywhere. Oddly synchronized, as I showed up on everyone''s targeting data all at once. I hadn''t been able to see anything, really, except that there were definitely people and drones at the door below.


    I shot down the stairs at to my side of the gate, a little worried that at any second, they might blow it in and I''d be crushed under a few tons of stone. So there wasn''t really anything for it, except to keep that from happening.


    Not having time to calm down and feel them out, I shivered, and fired a single ball of electricity off of me, crawling and growing as it jumped away. Hasty work, but effective enough.


    It was hard, making the lightning and controlling it to force it to go where I wanted, while also letting it be free to do as it pleased. It wasn''t my best effort, but it was enough, and I could feel the lightning pass through the stone slowly, and then back out into the open air, through wires and flesh and composite and metal. By feeling what it passed through, I could create an image in my head of what was on the other side of that gate.


    I felt a familiar set of servos and almost smiled. Hands of an exosuit, just as I''d fallen asleep envisioning. They were working on something I didn''t recognize, but it was flat, it was being applied to the door. It had large, solid tubes of similar composition and wires connecting them. A bomb of some kind. I took careful note of its orientation and most importantly, where the detonators were.


    And then I manifest my swords through the door and cut the bomb away, making sure to keep well clear of those detonators, hacking up the timers, the cables, the logic of it instead. And, of course, the guy doing his best to assemble it all.


    Even through the stone I heard the muted scream as I cut into him, his voice synthesizer making him alien. The rest reacted at once, firing in all directions, the gate rumbling and cracking as the nearest tank unloaded into it with a boom that shook the ground.


    Exosuits clanked as they landed atop the walls, and the Exhuman guards I''d brought with me flew into action against them, powers lighting up around them like the stars in the sky.


    And I was right behind them, swords blazing like the sun, my shield flashing, as I carved my way into the fight.

 382. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    I''d sprung into action because action had been thrust right in front of me. With Dragon out of the picture and the soldier-caste operating out of their own minds instead of Oasis'', I was possibly the strongest fighter in the city, I was the best chance the place had of surviving this onslaught I''d dumped on their heads.


    But with every exosuit I cut down, gargling and gasping as my swords materialized inside them, every rocket I jumped into so that the arc would chase down the contrails and the VTOL at the end of it, with every drop of blood and life cut short, there was just a second''s pause, the momentary reprieve bought with death.


    And in those seconds, I found myself wondering why.


    Why was I still here? Why was I still fighting? Why was I under any obligation to keep Oasis from burning?


    There was nothing here worth saving. Most of these people didn''t even exist. As far as I knew, the sum of intelligent life here was Rio, Dragon, and some long-ago-dead Sino who still haunted his tree. And given how fucked up the tree and Dragon''s relationship was, I wasn''t even sure you could count either of them.


    So all for Rio then? That seemed impossible. It wasn''t exactly a closely-guarded secret that I''d been berating her, tearing down her entire lifestyle, and threatening her with death all day. We weren''t exactly chummy, and given that it was frequently looking like I had to choose between her stupid gun-ambitions and Moon''s well-being, I knew who I''d throw away in a heartbeat.


    I squinted my eyes against the flash as I tore into another exosuit and it sparked with kindling flames from within. People kept dying, and I felt like I had no reason to kill them at all.


    There was a boom that shifted the ground under me as the gate exploded, and my exoframe overcompensated and sent me tumbling half off the wall. I barely held myself up, and saw too late another exosuit bearing down, butt-end of his mammoth gun bearing down on me.


    He froze where he stood, weapon raised, as though running into an invisible force. For a moment, I thought my shield had somehow caught him, impossible though that was, when, suddenly, in a panic, I realized my shield wasn''t there at all. My swords had gone out. I couldn''t feel anything with my powers.


    "Watch yourself, Ashton," Karu said with a chuckle as she drifted past, tapping the gun in her arms lovingly.


    "Karu?" I shouted, trying not to freak out about suddenly being de-powered mid fight. But she''d already jetted off, and I stumbled on too-heavy legs that wouldn''t get under me.


    It was incredible that the guy hadn''t killed me yet, until I looked up and noticed...nothing. No signs of motion, no hissing of pneumatics or adjustments of the suit''s external cams, nothing.


    And then, as though I had just been lagging, my swords popped out right where I''d intended for them to be and cut him in half inside. My ears or...something in my head, rang, as my senses suddenly flooded, and I felt my shield around me, as latent and charged as static.


    I muttered to myself, bewildered and confused as anything, lashing out and killing another exosuit by reflex almost, as though nothing were wrong at all. Except something was, something had definitely happened. And my exoframe proved it, still being as heavy and uncooperative as a pair of metal pants ought to be.


    I knelt as much as I could and cracked open the service panel, using my powers to saturate everything around me with a static film so I could an eye on all of it in my mind, in case any others decided to show up and gun-butt me. Systems looked fine, nothing shorted. Fluid pressure looked good. And charge--


    Empty? That was almost impossible. There were delith cells in there which were slow-feeding a battery almost twice as fast as my usage rate. If I were really pushing it, it''d dip some but...empty?


    Fortunately that wasn''t much of a problem for me. I could just wave my hands and knew the system so well I could flood it with the right voltages across the system, booting it back up instantly. But what the hell?


    I sprang to my feet and then jumped back to a crouch again as something purple and nasty, like spinning saw blades erupted from a nearby gun and peppered the wall around me. Using only my sense to aim, I chucked a handful of bulbs back in his direction until I heard it connect and the shooting stopped.


    When I got up again, I saw a very different scene than I remembered. Maybe a quarter of the enemies had already been...defeated wasn''t the right word. Petrified, maybe. Tanks locked up in a poor bearing, doing nothing as our handful of Exhumans battered them down. VTOLs simply given up on flight and crashed into the ground. Exosuits, utterly still, mid-attack or maneuver. One unlucky bastard was jumping a short wall and just landed on his face on the ground. Many of them were cracked open, the emergency hatches popped, and the soldiers within emerging to flee in their undergarments.


    Suddenly the gun in Karu''s hands and her little chuckle had made sense. I''d thought that was a little too much levity for her in the midst of a serious fight, and now I knew why. She''d gotten her hands on some exotic tech which stopped these bastards cold.


    I looked around and found her, just a streak of blue in the air, still impossible for my eyes to keep up with even after all this time. She flew circles around a VTOL which was strafing down the top of the wall, and the longer she clung to it, the slower it moved, until, as though falling asleep, it dipped and then careened downwards, crashing with a much gentler crunching noise than I''d have expected.


    And then I lost her again, but not before another column of exosuits froze in their tracks. To add to the scene, Tem had apparently arrived, properly infuriated, based on the size of her blasts. Poor fuckers didn''t stand a chance.


    I sighed. Fine by me. I didn''t want this fight anyway. Karu and Tem could have their fun. I kicked off in my newly-charged exo-legs and jumped backwards away from the battle.


    It felt like a slog, going back uphill towards the temple. The whole time in Oasis had been a slog. I was tired and defeated, beset by too much indecision and too many mind games. All I''d wanted was an enemy I could defeat and then go to Moon''s aid.


    Instead I had Rio. Who''d just popped up on me with death written across her pale face.


    "Why are you coming back?" she asked, speaking too quickly. "What''s wrong?"


    "Nothing''s wrong. Karu''s got the fight in hand."


    "Why aren''t you with her? We need everyone. You issued orders, you...you were in charge of our defenses. I did everything you asked."


    "Yeah. And it worked. The fight''s over, now it''s time for the rout. If you want to kidnap people to mindfuck ''em or whatever, go have fun."


    I sat down heavily, feeling like I kicked up a plume of exhaustion instead of dust. Rio furrowed her brow as she looked me over.


    "You don''t look so good," she said.


    "Yeah, no shit."


    "What''s wrong?"


    I glared at her. And it took a lot of willpower to not just say ''you.''


    But I knew that wouldn''t do any good. She wasn''t an evil or awful or even bad person. Sure, as much as I could blame her for much of the shitty state of the world, the simple fact is, when I''d called her on her bullshit, she''d actually listened to me. She didn''t want to listen, that''s for damn sure. And she was responsible for a huge amount of corruption and death with her stupid, naive outlook and her obsession with her ''art''.


    But then again, so was I. I''d killed hundreds, maybe even thousands by now. I had my own things I just wouldn''t let go, and clinging to them had made all kinds of trouble, this current fight included. I might oppose her, she might be incompatible with my beliefs, but who the fuck was I to say my beliefs were any more right than hers?


    I mean, they were. And if push came to shove, I''d kill for my beliefs, or die for them. But that didn''t make them right, that just made them worth killing or dying over, and that tiny grain of distinction is what pissed me off so much about Rio.


    I sighed. "Oasis is frustrating," I told her. "I wish you guys were as shitty as I say you are."


    "Um. Why?"


    "Because then I wouldn''t feel bad about just burning the whole place down. Instead it''s like...this weird...messed-up weapons factory, with its heart in the right place entirely out of naivety. And then Dragon. Actually that does sound pretty shitty."


    She seemed to almost-turn on the spot and then come back. "Um, my city''s being attacked. But you also seem...affected. And you''re just kind of crapping on it, which is typical but...I wouldn''t want to leave if¡­" she sighed. "Are you sure you''re okay?"


    Damn her being a decent person. Why couldn''t she be an unrepentant baby-eating drug-lord?


    "I''m fine, and your city''s fine," I assured her. "I promise. Whatever gun Karu''s got, it''s shutting down everything they have."


    "Oooh, which one?" she asked, instantly pert. "Sternwerver? Espina? The Elucidator?"


    "You name your guns?" I asked, hoping to not find another reason to like her.


    "I do," she said, crushing that hope. I''d never told her, but I found it adorable that Whitney did the same. Whitney''s family wasn''t sent across the globe to murder people, though.


    "Something that drained electricity. Turned off my powers and drained the charge right out of my exoframe''s batteries." I extended my legs a few times just for the swish-swish sound of the pneumatics. "Nasty thing."The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "Ohh, Ennervator. I love that one. Karu''s got excellent taste." She frowned at me for a second and then offered me her hand. "You''re sure the battle''s won?" she asked, as though she was checking I was single before picking me up.


    "Yep. Good ol'' Ennervator."


    I took her hand and she pulled me to my feet. "There''s something I''ve really wanted to do with you. I normally save it only for the Oasians and...well you are...but I also think you aren''t...it''s complicated, and maybe that''s what makes it so exciting. But from the moment I''ve laid eyes on you--"


    "Uh, I kinda really don''t have room in my life for another girl. Like, two girls ago."


    She blinked at me. "Huh? Come on, it''ll be fun."


    And then, veritably dragging me along, she ran into the temple with me stumbling in her excited wake.


    I wasn''t gonna do anything. I mean, I technically could have, since I was, at the moment, unattached from all the girls in a sort of...danger-parallelogram sorta way. Each of them seemed content for the moment just to shamelessly flirt and bust my balls without anyone getting too involved, and as long as they were all on the same level, none seemed to take it too personally that nobody was getting anywhere.


    Maybe some kind of game theory was in play. Maybe each took solace in the fact that, sure, she wasn''t getting any, but by maintaining that altitude, she was stopping at least two others from doing the same, which was a net win mathematically. I didn''t know, it was girl logic stuff.


    So of course, I wasn''t about to light Rio''s fuse and throw her into that bomb-heap. Even if she was enthusiastic as she threw me down on a bench in the middle of her arsenal and told me to relax.


    And then brought out several devices which looked like they were made for probing. Possibly both of us at once.


    "Um, hey, maybe uh, ask me out first?" I said, backing away as much as the bench allowed.


    "You''re leaving tomorrow, right? You''ve got...got the thing with Saga and our god sorted. You''ve got me and my weapons sorted. You''ve got Dragon and his crusade sorted. You''re...out of reasons to stay. So...if we''re gonna do this--"


    "Which we''re not," I clarified. She stopped and cocked her head.


    "Why not?"


    "Uh, why so? You''re like, twenty years older than me--"


    "Why would that matter?"


    "--and you''re uh, kind of an adversary through all this--"


    "Water under the bridge. I understood."


    "--and, um, what about your art?"


    She blinked at me. "This is for my art."


    "Your art is guns." She nodded. I felt my eyes bugging out a little more at the devices in her hands.


    "Oh these? These aren''t guns. These are tools. I''m gonna make a gun, from you. Well, not from you just...using you."


    "Like...by melting me down?" I was now very much trying to get my butt off the bench and away from her.


    "No! I just want to borrow you. It''s not going to use you up or anything. You''ll have a lot more!"


    [Okay, what the fuck.]


    "Saga! It''s not me! She''s trying to use me!"


    [At least warn me before you do the dirty so I can make pop corn. Fuck. So inconsiderate.]


    "Saga, wait, help!"


    I felt a belt cinch. Something clamped onto me. I held my pants and closed my eyes and waited to see if I''d have to kick her in the head a little bit.


    Instead, nothing.


    "Um, relax, please," she said. I cracked one eye open and saw her reading my pulse and blood pressure through the arm-cuff and finger-clip thingy she''d put on me. "It works better when you''re calm. Also, please take them out."


    "Take...them out," I echoed.


    "Your powers."


    "Okay, sister, just what the hell are you planning to do to me?"


    She straightened up, looking at me with utter confusion. "Um. We just discussed this. Weapons, right?"


    "Sure? What about them?"


    "I...I make them?" she asked more than stated. "And...you were going to help. Since you''re leaving."


    I thought about everything that had gone down in the last two minutes and realized I did not miss Saga chuckling in the back of my head, as she relived just how awkward Rio was and what a dingus I could be.


    "You want to use my powers to make a gun. A lighting exotic."


    "Yes," she smiled. "Sorry. That."


    "Jesus, why can''t you just say what you want?" I sighed, slumping back on the bench. I conjured up a few blades in the air above me for her to study or whatever.


    "That''s it?" she asked. "That''s...no good for a gun. Maybe I could...hmm, some kind of close-range grenade. Or a trip mine, unleash a torrent of them in a localized area perhaps. But...that''s no better than a standard incendiary."


    "How ''bout this?" I asked, flinging some bulbs across the room, so they''d sparkle on the floor.


    "Ooh! Most excellent. Again!"


    She made me do it again and again, and then a few hundred times after that, touching and holding me, resting her head on my shoulder so she could see it from my perspective, overall a whole lot more intimate than the sex I kinda imagined she''d been implying. But the whole time she worked on me, bobbing in and out of my sight and assembling an ever-growing pile of materials on the bench with me, she never showed anything other than utter delight and complete professionalism.


    In fact, once she was mostly done with me and got working on the gun itself, I was the one who started pestering her, asking her to narrate everything she was doing and what each piece did. She had answers for it all, and not just glib ones either -- detailed answers, talking about alignments and material quality, anticlockwise spirals'' dampening effect on the gun''s intended focusing of an electromagnetic sheath. Shit that I knew, shit that I knew I didn''t know, and shit that was so far beyond me, I wasn''t sure that even if Whitney and AEGIS had a recording and a dozen years, they''d piece it out.


    For the first, and only time, I understood suddenly what she meant when she talked about a calling. It wasn''t like myself and figuring out my major, it wasn''t even like me and football. It was a study she''d completely given herself to, immersed herself in, until she knew everything there was to know about everything in it. She could (and did) prattle on about the differences in the tiny washers which were electroplated, versus hot-dipped, versus sputtered, and the different kinds of wear and effect you could expect from each...all of the top of her head, as though it was as native to her as English.


    Even Whitney, even AEGIS, whose memory was, as far as I could tell, basically eidetic with her ability to review past events faster than human recall, I''d known both of them to have to look things up or make corrections. But there was none of that here, and it wowed me.


    Like, honest to God, I found myself saying wow. Saga did too, so...yeah.


    And at the end of less than an hour, she let me hold it and shoot it.


    Felt weird. Felt just like using my own powers, but obviously not. The gun rattled in my grip, a bulb of pure energy growing at the tip of the barrel, only to shoot off and crackle explosively when I let go of the trigger.


    "Well, no wonder you have so many guns. If you can pop them out in forty minutes."


    "I could do the next one faster," she shrugged. "Now that I know how."


    "And...that''s it? You don''t need me anymore? You''ll just...have my powers now?" I asked, alarmed, and frankly again wishing she''d have cued me into this stuff beforehand.


    She laughed. "No, I meant next time with you. Um, if there is one. I can''t just...make one without you, not with your powers. Not...yet anyway. Don''t worry. That''s why I wanted to do it when we had the chance."


    She batted her eyes at me lovingly and I jumped to my feet. "It is sexual for you! I knew it!"


    "No it''s not! It''s just...intimate! This is a unique piece of both of us."


    "Oh God, I had an accident and made a gun baby," I said, holding my head. "A beautiful, deadly gun baby."


    "Oh shush and name him. It."


    I stared long and hard at the gun in my hands. Not much jumped to mind, except for how much it looked like me. Not in any...real physical sense, it was a gun after all, and I was just a dude. But in style, somehow she''d captured the coolest, possible thing I could imagine and just made it real. I wondered, if she could reach into me and borrow my powers to make it, had she also touched on my sense of awesome? Were all the guns here products of their creators sensibilities made manifest?


    Most of them looked pretty samey. Just guns. Mine had glowing streaks and a super-lightweight folding stock, angled front grip and a barrel shroud that crackled when it was charging. Just the coolest fucking thing.


    And then I realized...the other guns...they probably did reflect their makers. They were probably the product of Rio and some poor Exhuman stuck here forever. That was the material she had to work with.


    "Hard to come up with a name?" she asked. "I don''t blame you. Harder than making ''em, usually."


    "Oh. Yeah. Uh¡­" I looked around. Pulled the trigger a few more times, tried to find any part of it that seemed to carry a name. I couldn''t just give it a human name, that was stupid. And I didn''t want anything too significant, though a few of those jumped to mind.


    I almost sighed as I decided on something stupid.


    "How about...erm...Pistil?"


    "It''s a rifle. Pistols are shorter and--"


    "Not pistol, pistil. It''s the part of a flower that makes the seeds."


    She looked at me sideways.


    "Seeds uh...become bulbs. Like tulips."


    "Two...lips?"


    "Tulips? The flowers? Damn it, I should have gone with ''Glassblower''."


    "Because...glassblowers...have two lips?"


    I was hanging my head at six o''clock shame by this point. "Because...glassblowers make...light bulbs."


    "Light bulbs?"


    "It''s like...a thing...from before lightbars. Okay never mind. It''s name is Pistil."


    "It''s a great name," she said beaming as though we hadn''t just had this conversation. "I might use more flower parts in my naming. I suppose you already heard me say Espina. Plenty more where that came from," she sighed.


    We lapsed into a long silence. And then, as though only remembering, I handed the gun over to her.


    "Oh no, keep it," she said. "I hope you...remember us."


    "Like I could forget," I scoffed.


    "In a...bad way?" She frowned. "I guess...of course. You were miserable the whole time, weren''t you."


    "Weren''t you?" I asked. "I crapped on your ideologies. Got your city attacked. Threatened your way of life. Challenged your beliefs. Called you stupid more times than I can count. Got in a duel with your co-jerk. My sister bashed you in the face. And I held you hostage and then threatened to kill you."


    "Yeah," she said, smiling. "But you didn''t. And you tried to help. And you talked to me, argued with me, when it would have been easier for you to just leave, or ignore me, or kill me. You''re one of the nicest guys I''ve met."


    "Dude, that is so sad," I said, clapping her on the shoulder. "Trust me when I say I''m not really very nice at all."


    "There''s more to being nice than being nice," she replied. "Like you said yourself, sometimes you have to do something wrong to do what''s right. I hope the world treats you better, Athan. You really deserve it."


    And that, more than anything, caught me off-guard about this awkward, intensely and unintentionally scandalous, intimate goodbye between two adversaries. I was still thinking about those words as we scoured the battlefield for supplies and transport, as I got one of the APCs juiced up and ready to run, as we said our final goodbyes to Oasis and packed ourselves in with what provisions they could spare.


    Even Dragon had come to see us off, but I suspected it was more out of relief and absolutely wanting us gone than any sentimentality. And I wasn''t sad to see him disappearing in the rear-view mirror, nor the city behind him.


    But I was sad. And I wasn''t quite sure why.

 383. 2252, Present Day. Beneath Ikeda Estate. Kaori.

    In a strange way, it brought me great joy to be wanted. Even as trash.


    It was a pleasant enough life. I woke when I wished. I was surrounded by books. My chambers, though confining, were comfortable.


    My greatest irritation was the suit I was made to wear, and not as one might think, having to refuse my father daily. Refusing him actually brought me joy. He would show up on a holo, always too busy and important to plead in person, and he would demand that I do my duty as his heir and daughter.


    And I would take delight in rejecting him again and again. I saw the bags under his eyes grow dark, his hair grow thin and grey. I heard his voice grow weedy and pleading, as the calls stretched longer and his desperation mounted.


    Today was different. Not with me -- I was as I ever had been, sitting cross-legged in my strait-jacket-like outfit, my hands and feet entombed in sewn-on mittens, making every turn of the page a chore. When I breathed, it echoed in the mask clamped on my face, which had been added to my outfit when I''d proven that even headbutting a man could allow me to possess his body.


    The holo turned on, and showed me the familiar image of my father''s desk in his office. A modern, disgusting thing, sleek and glass and suspension, excessively flashy and of no substance; As IkaCo was. The man behind it did not even seem to register that he was broadcasting.


    Which suited me fine. I had two more pages left before the end of the chapter, and if he lingered, I might reach it.


    Eventually, he stirred. Not to turn to me or to speak, but to drink, taking sake straight from the bottle, at room temperature. Vile.


    I finished the chapter, and most of the following before me drew my attention again, this time by throwing the empty bottle towards the camera and missing badly.


    "I could kill you anytime I wanted," he slurred, his Japanese coming out in a muddied stream. He did not bother with formalities, and given the content of his sentence, that seemed unsurprising.


    "Then do so," I shrugged, flipping a page.


    "Ingrateful! Unreliable! You neglect your duty!"


    I carefully marked my place and closed the book. "Otousan, did you know, that in America, children are permitted to find their own duty? They are not burdened with obligation from birth, and are certainly not imprisoned until they submit to it. An associate of mine named Karen spurned her family legacy and chose to become a pro hunter instead. And do you know what her father did about it?"


    "America, America. Always America," he slurred, ignoring my question. "It was a mistake to send you abroad."


    "It was," I agreed. "Did you know I used to revere you? I thought you had given me everything, that I was scum that should never be, and everything I had was through your benevolence?"


    "You were right. Impudent. Selfish."


    "I was wrong, and being away from you was the only thing which would let me see that. I had once thought I was responsible for Okasan''s death. That it was my failures which sent me to America. That every terrible thing which happened there was my fault."


    I brushed my hair behind my ear with some effort, working through the mittens. "And then I realized, it was always you. You saw no reason not to change my life however you saw fit, even if it ruined all. I, and my feelings were of no consequence, so why would you care if they broke?"


    "American whore. Dutiless. Trash."


    "Well I hope you see the consequences now, father. You broke my life too many times, and now you must handle its edges."


    He sat upright and stared at me, his eyes watery and bleary. He couldn''t even sit without swaying. He was disgusting.


    "You should know," he said, adopting a formal tone suddenly "That none of this is because of you. You are meaningless, I want you to fully understand. This company, which has survived for generations, is falling apart, and your refusal to do your duty to it and to your family is nothing. I am alive, and I will be for many more years--"


    "Doubt it."


    He stared at me. "You dare interrupt me?"


    "I do dare. And I do doubt. You have made a dangerous enemy, Otousan."


    "Those punks that you call friends?" he laughed. "They were chased out of Japan! They fled when they realized your rescue was beyond them. We sent a private army to destroy them where they hid like cowards in the glasslands."


    "You underestimate them, and for that I cannot fault you. It took me too long to realize how indomitable they are as well. But no, I was referring to myself."


    "You?" he laughed, knocking things off his desk as he guffawed. "You?" he repeated, breathlessly. "You are nothing. I told you. I could have you killed any time."


    "You say that almost every day and yet never have. I do not think you really could. You are too afraid of losing your legacy."


    "You are not my legacy!" he shouted, suddenly red and veiny. "I could have a thousand more children if I wished, with any woman in the world, and any of them would be a better child than you. You are nothing."


    "You keep saying that," I mused, picking up my book again. "And I suspect, it is because you hope to convince yourself. You wish that I was nothing, so that you could fill me with yourself, mold me into you. That is why you sent me to schools and places that would keep me locked away from the world, so that I would be nothing at the end of it."


    I opened the book and found my place. "Too bad for you, instead I found myself, and a great many other things besides."


    "You think I won''t do it?" he shouted. "You think I won''t have you killed, like I have had many before you? You think yourself better than everyone else? Americans."


    "I think," I said without looking up "that what I think doesn''t matter. It''s as you say, you could kill me anytime. And yet you don''t, because you still think yourself stronger than me. You think, that no matter how I am and how defiant I have been, you can always break me. That is the lie you cling to. And that is why, when you call, you speak, but you do not listen."


    "I am listening now!" he barked, his face swollen and red, his eyes bulging. "I am hearing you now, and you may wish I didn''t!"


    "Then kill me," I said, flipping the page.


    He hesitated for a few moments, and then picked up the phone at his desk.


    "Have Kaori executed, now," he slurred. And then he seethed, teeth bared at it like the thing had bit him. "I don''t care. You dare to talk back to me?" He paused again. "How much I drink is no business but my own. Do it, or I will have you killed next."


    He slammed the phone down.


    "It is done. Hurry up and die, worthless trash," he spat.


    "Quiet, Otousan. I''m reading."


    He spent the next few minutes berating me even further. He explained in great detail how completely worthless I was, how every credit he had spent on me was wasted due to my selfishness and lack of duty, how I was a complete failure in every conceivable way, a systemic disappointment of improbable degrees.


    When that didn''t work, he moved on to my mother, telling me how weak she was, how stupid she was, what a whore she was. And though it made my blood boil, I carefully bottled up that fury and refused to let it show.


    I heard movement outside of my cell now. Men mobilizing, orders being relayed and relayed again. It looked as though my father was not bluffing -- which was no surprise, I do not think he knew the meaning of the word. I still had eleven chapters to go in this book, and while it was not particularly good, I did not want to move on with regrets.


    But that wasn''t really for me to decide. The commotion outside grew louder, closer, and more intense. Even Otousan heard it at this point and gloated about what was coming.


    Despite myself, I found my mind drifting. If this was the end, and I wanted few regrets, there were still a few things I wished I could have done. Foremost, I wished I could have held hands with Otousan, even once. So that I could rifle through his thoughts and know what he really thought of the world, to add his library of memories of my mother to my own, if nothing else. And then to kill him myself, of course.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    After that, I was surprised to think that what I regretted most would be to die alone and unloved. Still a virgin, never so much as kissing a boy. The thought of such didn''t particularly excite me, but it seemed a shame to experience it never. I had read so many romances, I knew them to be a critical part of being human, and yet they were never a part of me.


    And of course, and...confusingly related...Athan. I should have liked to see what he became. He and I had been many things to each other; adversaries, coworkers, confidants, kindred spirits. Dare I say friends? He thought so, without reservation, though I always had...troubled association with the term.


    But he was going places, and I apparently was not. I should have liked to see what blaze of glory he carved out upon humanity, and how the world would ripple with his touch. That was what Otousan misunderstood most of all -- legacy was not in a market share or a sperm cell, it was in one''s actions and the change they effected. Athan had taught me that lesson himself, through hard work. Though I was not sure he knew it himself.


    There was yelling outside now, which seemed unnecessary, and something banged hard on the door. Several somethings.


    "You''ll have to come back later. I''m not finished with my book," I called out.


    The door opened, and a body fell through it. The sound of it hitting the carpet is what made me look up.


    "Joudan?" Athan asked, over the smoking corpse.


    Ten-million things went through my mind in a rush. I wanted nothing more but to jump up and hug and kiss the man. I wanted to ask him how this was possible, Otousan had taken great joy in keeping me up-to-date on how distant and useless Athan was, and I had not expected his words to be lies. I wanted to berate him, in confusingly equal parts for his tardiness and for coming at all, to endanger himself to save a worthless thing like me.


    As usual, I did none of the things which sprang to mind, and acted with controlled indifference. I snapped my book shut, losing several pages since I last marked it, but what the hell.


    "Joudan," I agreed, rising. I had so much more to say, I didn''t know how to get any of it out of my head and through my mouth. So much of it seemed like things that words couldn''t begin to convey. I found myself flushed as, for the second time, I considered what being in love must feel like. And also kissing.


    Which was moronic of course, and now was not the time besides. I found myself uttering stupid words. "Hi. I did not...think you would be coming."


    He started to reply, his eyes softening in an instant as he looked at me with some kind of pity or sympathy. But as he ever did, Otousan felt the need to insert himself into my life.


    "That''s impossible," he shouted, still in Japanese. He picked up his phone and screamed into it, a jumbled series of threats and demands, never bothering to listen to what was on the other end of it.


    "So that''s Ikeda, eh?" Athan asked, facing the holo. "Yeah he looks like a bastard."


    "Unimaginably so," I agreed. We both stood and watched him go for a moment, a dynamo of crass energy which had served him well in his corporate life. After a bit, Athan turned to me and frowned.


    "Let me help you out of that thing," he said, reaching for a zipper.


    I pulled away. "I would prefer not."


    "What? But you''re all...bound up and shit."


    "I am¡­" I found my eyes on the ground instead of on his face and corrected it. But doing so made the words harder to force out. I gave myself a single breath to get my emotions back in line. "I am nude underneath, and would prefer to retain my dignity for the time being."


    "Oh," he said, flushing as he took a step back. And then, most obviously, gave me a look up and down, almost certainly imagining what was under the outfit.


    "On second thought, I think I shall stay and be killed," I said, sitting back down. "I fear for my body''s sanctity should I accompany you."


    I expected him to laugh, or be further embarrassed at least, but instead he lingered awkwardly, finally sitting down next to me. As the seconds drew on, he at least reached over and unhooked the mask from the back of my face, and I breathed easier as the air was no longer damp with my collected breath.


    "Joudan," I explained.


    "Yeah I know. I just...kinda...feels super awkward making rapey jokes considering it happened to you." He grinned apologetically, but it faded fast. "Sorry we weren''t here sooner."


    "Is now truly the time or place for this?" I asked, though I was aware I was the one who''d sat first. Otousan was screaming so hard that a vein on his neck was bulging, and I wondered the possibility that he had a heart attack on the spot and saved me the trouble.


    He shrugged. "We kinda found the source of the toads...um...not literal toads, that''s just the term Saga made up for these people who she couldn''t effect with her powers. Turns out they didn''t really think on their own, they were just like...remote bodies operating for Oasis. Which is...man there''s a lot I need to catch you up on. But anyway, we kinda got them out of the picture, so Saga''s able to run amok up there, and any machines they bring to bear, Karu''s got a new toy to disable them. AEGIS is going through files and Tem and Lia are securing us transit out of here."


    "Oh, Tem is safe," I said, not sure if that was relief or jealousy which suddenly jumped into my voice.


    "Yeah. Sorry."


    "As I said, I did not anticipate rescue. Honestly, I was resigned to being locked away and struggling against Otousan, my father, for all eternity."


    We went back to watching him scream a while longer. I wondered if the effect was enhanced or harmed by my knowing Japanese. I tried to imagine from Athan''s view, yelling unknown words, but with his emotions and intent all-too-clear. He may have had the clearer impression.


    "I...I want to keep apologizing," Athan said. "But at the same time--"


    "Spare me your words," I told him. "You are here, I am unhurt. The rescue was as timely as necessary."


    I saw him staring at me and didn''t meet his eyes. Something dark flickered in them.


    "I''m not apologizing for that. Well, I am. I did and I am. But something else, too." He sighed heavily and leaned backwards on the bed, and I noticed how very tired he looked. I had taken delight in watching Otousan fall apart as the stress of his work killed him, but seeing the same on Athan was...awful.


    "I wanted to apologize...not to you really but...in general...for being selfish. It doesn''t make any sense because, I don''t think I''m being selfish. But it feels like I am. Like...I know that IkaCo is an awful, terrible company--"


    "It is. And it oppresses many." I didn''t know why I felt the need to interrupt, except that he was obviously pained.


    "Yeah," he nodded. "But even so, even indirectly, they kinda...help the world. Hurting IkaCo feels like killing Blackett again. I''m putting everything at risk, I''m throwing away the easier option just because I don''t like it. But there''s a big difference between selling guns...most of them even wind up in the right hands, in the XPCA...and between mind-fucking everyone into compliance with a tortured slave. IkaCo is bad, but it''s not Blackett levels of bad, right? So...I''m here tearing it apart, I''ve been out there doing really questionable things to people who might not deserve it, and...and I''m finding I don''t even really know why."


    He looked at me, with such gravitas that I couldn''t look away. His eyes were so intensely focused, despite the dark lines under them.


    "And that''s why I need to apologize to you. Because...you deserve better than me dragging my feet. You''re a good person, Moon...err, Kaori. Better than me by a lot. You deserve someone swinging in here, white charger with its mane blowing in the wind. And instead¡­"


    He looked around, watched my father streaming spittle on the cams. Listened to the panic of death and chaos happening in the floors above us. He sighed enormously.


    "Instead you get a guy who''s only here as an afterthought. Who doesn''t feel justified in rescuing you, and is only doing it for his own selfish reasons. I feel like all of this is just punching a hole in the side of the world for the sake of a friend who wasn''t in any danger. And that''s crappy of me to say and to think." He shook his head, his brown mane flopping. "And I''m sorry."


    "If it makes you feel better, Otousan was about to have me killed."


    "Really?" His eyes lit up by degrees. "Well...I''m glad I came then."


    "You did not have to. My life is not worth destabilizing the planet."


    I spoke without thinking, which was exceedingly abnormal for me, but so was this entire situation. The words which came out were what was in my heart. Truly, I was valueless compared to political stability, and I would make that exchange in a heartbeat. However to say it when it was already weighing on his mind was callous and would serve only to hurt him more. It was a stupid thing to say.


    "I apologize. That was thoughtless to say," I added.


    He smiled, surprising me. "No, that''s why I say you''re a better person than me. You don''t even have to hesitate on that kind of thing. It helps, actually. Makes me feel like...you''re really worth saving. Like the world is gonna be better with you in it, even for the damage I leave by doing so."


    Otousan sputtered and coughed, holding his chest, and for a moment, I wondered if he did actually have a heart attack. But after a moment, he recovered, his throat merely raw from the screaming fit he''d prolonged since Athan had arrived.


    "You American bastard!" he yelled, his voice getting the English words out with more rasp and less slur now. "Do you even know what you do to IkaCo? What that does to the world?"


    "Yeah," Athan said grimly. "We cut off your guns. You dropped a contract with the XPCA. Your private army got completely decimated, leaving you millions or billions out. You have no income, mounting debt, pressure from all the parties which are usually the ones which are sweeping your injustices under the rug, and no allies." He glanced at me. "And no future."


    I gave it another agonizing few moments of thought before wrapping my arms around his. No romantic poetry in the world could have moved my heart more than his cynical analysis of IkaCo''s holdings. He was a man who knew the consequences of his actions and then did them anyway. A massive swoonboat.


    Otousan led off with another tirade of insults in Japanese, before moving back to English with similar content, finally leading up to threats.


    "Without us, you will find out what future America has, bastard," he rasp-screamed, in a voice so pained it hurt my throat just to hear it. "Without us, your XPCA cannot function! You will fail and you will fall, and you will regret crossing me!"


    Athan stood up, and I thought he would pull his arm from my grasp, but instead held on and pulled me up with him. I swallowed hard again.


    "Maybe," he said, with a confident grin. "More than likely I will regret it, to some degree. Things will go to shit, because things always go to shit when they change. But I''ll be there to see it through. I''ll keep saving lives like hers, and damning those like yours with all the strength I have. And maybe it won''t be enough, and maybe I''ll ruin everything for everyone."


    "Fucking stupid bastard...insolent American--"


    "But even if I am taking a step back, I know I''m preparing to take two steps forward. You should be outraged, Mr. Ikeda, because whether I succeed or fail, the world''s changing, and whichever way it goes, there won''t be room in it for pieces of shit like you to hide any longer."


    Otousan raged and sputtered, but his voice was all but lost at this point. Athan hung up the call by saturating the whole system with arcing bolts of lightning.


    "Ready then?" he asked me, still hanging off his arm like an obnoxious couple on a date. "We''ve got a dismal future to attend to."


    "When you put it that way, how could I say no?" I said, with a hint of a smile despite myself. And the two of us left the quiet shelter to head out into the death, war, and chaos raging outside.

 384. 2252, Present Day. Outside a residence. Alexandria, VA. Athan.

    As usual, it turned out that when able to act completely without morals, being more powerful than anyone else, and without dangerous oversight, it was almost stupidly easy to achieve our aims. Where we''d had to sneak around like crazy to chase down the trail of guns from America to Japan and finally China, going back had been painless.


    Well. For us, anyway. The same probably could not be said of those who were in our way. At mostly-Karu''s insistence, we weren''t leaving any witnesses alive to report that we were back in the country. The good news was, between her new toy which disabled machinery and Saga, who disabled people, there really weren''t too many witnesses.


    So, yay. Only a few innocent people slaughtered on my behalf instead of a ton. Progress. Shitty, bullshit, fucking awful progress. But progress nonetheless.


    But considering how things had gone once we had been found out in Tokyo, how completely and utterly we''d turned that city into a goddamn war zone, and thousands had rushed in to die, giving us no choice at all...I had to agree with Karu that a few missing persons here or there was infinitely preferable. We wound up walking right past so many people who had no idea, instead of causing a national panic.


    And so here we were. The first place I wanted to go after we were back in the states. The outside of a house AEGIS had looked up a long-ass time ago. Looked pleasant enough a place, nice neighborhood, a little small but well-kept, though with signs of recent neglect. Probably a nice place, if you could ignore all the signs of XPCA there.


    Like the recon unit posted on the other side of the street, who all seized and died at Saga''s touch. Or the van parked on one end of the block, which I emptied of life just by walking past and raking the innards of with my blades. Or the man in the exosuit in the living room, whose armor proved entirely ineffective against one single penetrator round from Lia''s reacquired rifle.


    I walked in, AEGIS on one side of me, Tem on the other, Moon on my back, all of us tense. What I saw made me wonder if I was too late.


    The whole place had been trashed. Garbage was strewn everywhere, empty bottles teetered in piles atop crushed cans inside empty beer boxes. A heap of what looked like mail was nearly knee-high in one corner of the room, and the holo blared some reality drama, the screen flecked with blood and structure foam from the exosuit Lia had punctured. It''s tinny, echoing, too-loud dialogue and laughter made the room seem surreal.


    The bathroom door opened with a bang, and I saw someone standing in it, haggard and wiry in the arms and legs and almost swollen in the middle. Painfully pale, with greasy, bushy hair that made the face beneath it look possessed.


    "Charito, thank God, they were about do kill me," she said. And then collapsed into my arms.


    I held her while she heaved heavily, giving her all the time she needed to just breathe, to just come to terms with the fact that I was here, and she was safe now.


    "Jesus, Cosette, you look like shit," I said, before realizing that probably wasn''t a very nice thing to say. I was just kind of...stunned by her transformation. My mind sprinted for something else to add which wasn''t completely stupid. "Uh, kinda funny, I just kinda did the same thing with Moon. Saving her. At the last second. She was uh, gonna be executed too."


    She looked up, her eyes watery and unfocused. And then she breathed, and the scene transformed drastically in my mind.


    "Were they gonnga kil her with boredm o too?"


    "Holy shit," I gagged, "You reek. Of alcohol. So bad." I dropped her with an unholy thunk to get away from the stench. "Jesus Christ, did you buy out a whole liquor store?"


    "HEy, look at thsis, ist''s Pulversizr, in person," she said.


    I looked down at her, at the stupid grin on her face and the complete lack of comprehension in her eyes. It did not sit well with the rest of her appearance; pale, nearly-naked, filthy, and out-of-shape.


    "Well, this is hard to look at," I commented.


    "Perhaps...a shower?" AEGIS suggested.


    "Perhaps a hose," said Moon.


    "I didn''t get her, did I?" Lia asked in my ear, her voice urgent. "I checked for overpenetration but...shrapnel can always be an issue...? Tell me what you guys see. What needs a hose?"


    "It''s fine, Lia," I said, looking down at the woman who was anything but. "Well, there is a mess, but it''s not yours."


    "She''s been on house arrest this whole time, with¡­" AEGIS went to the far end of the room and started sifting through the pile of papers on the floor. "With at least thirty death sentences, all pending court-martial. Jeez, why didn''t they just kill her? This is cruel."


    "She''s famous. ''Net-famous anyway...or¡­''net-infamous," Lia said. "There''s like, a whole day of news reporting every week just dedicated to everything we''ve done and how she was all secretly behind it. They keep using her to trump up charges and shift blame. Guess they can''t do it if she''s dead."


    I could hear Lia shrug over comms. And while her pop culture knowledge was useful, it was still disgusting. And, at the moment, useless.


    "It will not be long before the guards miss a scheduled report," Karu announced. "Take what you have come for and be off."


    As I hefted her off the ground and she gazed almost-lovingly into my eyes before throwing up on my shirt, I though, this is not what we came for. But it was the next-closest thing, and it''d have to do. A long time had passed since we were in the loop -- super obvious by just how long this person had to fall to shit -- and I knew we needed her intel as much as she needed our rescue.


    AEGIS grabbed armfuls of the papers. Lia kept up chatter about inane things, but also the status of anyone passing by, cars and pedestrians both. Over comms, I could hear Karu spinning up our sneaky, fast, and utterly stolen Sirius-class VTOL. Saga was scouring the neighborhood''s minds for anyone who saw us or heard Lia''s gunshot and convincing them all they''d just dropped a plate. She was chuckling at the thought of them all talking later and realizing they''d each dropped a plate at the exact same moment.


    Before I knew it, we were back outside the OA and clambering into our bird, a mission well-done, one Cosette would have been proud of, if she wasn''t just a drunk piece of shit. I buckled her in, and used her arm to wipe the puke off my front, while she mumbled incoherently.


    "Well aren''t you a right ray of sunshine?" Saga said as I tapped Moon back into her own body next to her.


    "Just drop it, Saga," I warned.


    She grinned in a way which let me know that no dropping whatsoever was about to occur. "Oh? I just wanna know why my favorite boy looks like he''s pissing out a toothpick sideways. You''re normally such a ball of bubbles."


    "Are you okay?" AEGIS asked, checking my seatbelt and peering into each of my eyes in turn. As she bobbed in front of me, I saw Saga''s grin grow enormous at her successful meddling.


    "Yes, I''m just fine. This is the one you should be checking out. She might die on her own vomit any second."


    "Yeah, she''s...not great," AEGIS said, giving Cosette a sideways glance. "But I''ve checked, and she''s just very drunk. Nothing which hasn''t killed most of the planet by now. We''ve got a DD, so...she''s set. But you, Saga''s right, you seem--"


    "I''m just fine."


    "Just fine?" Saga asked with pretend shock. "Why sir, how can you claim to be just fine when you''re sorta halfway-wishing we''d just left Cosette there to die! What a terrible thing for anyone to think, ever!"


    "Okay," Lia said, pulling out her earpiece and climbing in the side of the VTOL, rifle-first. "The interrogation I can deal with. But not the shockingly-ignorant Saga routine. Spare us, please."


    "Yes, please do. Beginning checklist," Karu said from the front. "Buckle in, ladies, gentleman, Tem and Saga."


    Tem snapped her harness shut next to me with a satisfied click and looked up at my chin-area with a dopey grin. "Buckled," she whispered.


    "I''m just a little irked that we came all the way out here, endangered everyone by being at risk of discovery...and by everyone I mean everyone, who might get caught up in a warzone if we''re found out...all for one drunk space-cadet. We need intel, and she''s¡­"


    I lifted her arm and dropped it back in her lap. Wiped-off puke splashed onto her, and she reacted with all the enthusiasm of a cadaver.


    "Oh, is that all?" Saga asked, relishing her audience, and opportunity to be as huge an ass as she could manage.


    "Why don''t you just fucking tell me what''s in my head, Saga? Save us all the trouble."


    "Because," she grinned. "Less fun that way. But you are adorable."


    "Wait," Lia said, looking up. "Saga, you can cure drunk, right? You did it to me."This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    All the focus in the room went from staring at me to glaring at her. Her grin turned sheepish as the turbofans spun up and the VTOL got its rattles out before leaving the ground.


    "Um, yeah, do that," AEGIS said.


    "You''re no fun at all," Saga sighed at Lia.


    "Sorry sweetie, I''ll buy you a lollipop next time we''re at the store."


    "Only if that''s a euphemism," Saga said.


    "Ew, for what?" Lia pulled in her legs. "Wait, don''t tell me. I don''t wanna know."


    That seemed sufficient to put the grin back on Saga''s face, though it dipped low again as I thought real hard at her about how she should undrunk my former CO.


    "Fiiiiiine," she complained. "But she''s gonna have a monster hangover."


    "I have water," AEGIS said, a thermos in her hands as though by magic. "Do your code-X thing, if you please."


    It took a few minutes before Cosette undertook a slow, hideous transformation. Instead of sprawling out, lifeless and relaxed, she went utterly rigid, her hands too small to clamp over her ears and eyes at once, pale and sweaty and pained. It sounded like she was moaning in pain, and then wincing at the sound of her own moaning.


    Personally, I felt kind of vindicated, in what I knew was a sadistic way. Served her right for drinking her ass off all day. She might reconsider next time, if she knew there was an instant-hangover waiting for her at the end of it.


    Saga and AEGIS continued their care for awhile, though it wasn''t until we''d finished flying and landing and the engines had spooled down that she looked anything less than death. Which, still, step up from dead. But not much of one.


    "Oh gods," she moaned. AEGIS handed her the thermos by pressing it into her hands, and she took a few sips, moving gingerly.


    And then not moving gingerly at all, she put the sips back, along with what looked like most of the remaining contents of her stomach, streams of yellow running down the sides and over her hands and splattering across the VTOL''s metal deck. I could even hear her heaving over the turbofans, just to make the scene as fucking awful as possible.


    "Thanks," she mouthed, handing the thermos back to AEGIS, who seemed to take it by reflex, and then wishing she hadn''t. She stared at the chunky, bubbling liquid running down her fingers, and then threw the entire bottle out the VTOL''s door.


    Saga was delighted. Everyone else looked a bit pale. Cosette was getting streaks of puke in her hair as she continued to hold her ears and shut her eyes.


    And that was pretty much the first fifteen or twenty minutes of having her back with us. I wasn''t sure there was a more pathetic human being on Earth. Eventually, she seemed to settle down and come to enough to try croaking at us. AEGIS gingerly pushed a comms into her ear.


    "Thanks," she said again, though we could all hear it this time. "Also, ow. Jesus, Buddha and Krishna, what the fuck did you lot do to my head?"


    "Lots," Saga said, batting her eyes. "Little tweaks here and there, raising thresholds, counteracting depressed chemical reactions, fun stuff."


    "Makes me want to die. I feel like I need the world''s dirtiest sangria right now."


    "Won''t help," Saga grinned. "All I really did is make it so you can''t feel drunk. You are, of course, I''m a code-X, not a...alcohol-path or whatever. But yeah. Drink that sangria. Find out what happens."


    Cosette turned back to me, gingerly. "Chariot, why?"


    "There are so many possible answers to that. Why Saga? Why rescue you? Why...blast your booze out of your brain?"


    She frowned a little bit. "Sure. Yes."


    "Because you were gonna be killed, and I wasn''t going to let that happen. I didn''t know that you''d...gone to...this," I said, gingerly "but...even so, I''m not gonna let you take the fall for our crimes."


    She shrugged, and then winced. "Someone''s gotta."


    "Yeah, I kinda disagree," Lia said. "I think Athan''s plan is, get the whole Exhumanity-thing smoothed out, and then what we did aren''t crimes anymore, right? Then we''re good?"


    As much as I wanted to agree, I couldn''t. "Sure...a lot of what we did might be excusable in that light but...we still killed a ton of people, destroyed a ton of property, and did awful things, Exhumanity aside. Cosette''s right that someone might have to pay. But not today, and not until things are...better."


    Cosette sighed, a gesture that made her look defeated and hollow given her state. She held herself and shivered, and I realized, half-naked as she was, and clammy with puke, the VTOL must be freezing. Made me wish we''d stopped long enough to grab her some clothes, though honestly, doing that anywhere with cops around was a way better option than risking the XPCA at her place.


    "What we really need is direction," I told her. "The last couple months without you, we''ve been...just sort of drifting here and there, chasing whatever came up, and more often than not, finding out it leads to nothing. Or to pain. Oh yeah, chased Dragon down, by the way."


    "And killed him?"


    "No. Kinda what I mean when I say led to nothing. Turns out, he''s just an assassin so he can hear about powerful Exhumans and recruit them."


    "Into an army?" she gasped.


    "Into a bunch of farmers and city-builders." I shook my head. "And he''s utterly dependent on a tree haunted by an Exhuman''s spirit to function."


    "Sounds pretty typically weird for you guys." She shivered again, and I popped a blade into the air near her. She gave it a single wary glance before warming her hands on it. "Thanks...again."


    "So...we''ve been out of the loop. What''s going on around here? I heard some stuff but, not a lot of details?"


    "Oh. Yeah. Well the headline is you guys destroying everything in Japan. ''Pulverizer'', they call the lot of you."


    "Catchy," Lia said, with an appreciative whistle.


    "We have our own bad-guy team name now?" I asked.


    "Well...kind of the same one. P-Force just got repurposed. Told you it was a shit name."


    I shook my head. "Great. What else?"


    "Plenty, but I assume you mean on the Exhuman front. Where are we going, by the way?"


    "West coast," Karu answered from the front. "Picking up another friend of Ashton''s."


    "Whitney. Did you ever meet her?"


    Cosette mused for a minute. "No, but the name''s familiar. Ah, ''Whitney''s Repair and Service'', that''s where Colonel Teryn was found dead. They said they had her and you in custody, but when I came out, you were nowhere to be found. Damn idiots. So what, you broke out together and fell in together?"


    "Sure, something like that," I said, realizing just how much I was glossing over here.


    "Well stay out of the southeast for the moment. Or, knowing you, dive in headfirst. There''s an Exhuman zipping around out there, ping-ponging around the Caribbean, telekinetic, with flight. Some other kinds of powers too, nobody''s quite certain. Seems to have a thing for destroying courtrooms and mayoral offices and law firms. Always screaming about ''justice''. People are worried he''s a mutie."


    "A mutant?" Lia asked.


    AEGIS pushed up her glasses. "Mutable class, like Soran. An Exhuman whose powers can change over time, in a permanent sense."


    "He doesn''t do that much damage, relatively, but he''s embarrassing the fuck out of the XPCA. Flies in, destroys exactly what he wants to, and then zips away, often before they can even get boots on the ground." She shuffled closer to my blade, so I inched it towards her, and I could see the light of it flickering in her eyes. "I don''t need to tell you how much more destructive destroying confidence in the XPCA can be beyond simple damages."


    "Yeah," I numbly agreed. I realized that Cosette seemed...better already. Like somehow talking and being with us and my powers being out and just another part of the ship to her, it had all somehow clicked her back into herself. She was still stringy, vile, and gaunt, but you wouldn''t know by listening to her.


    "Was he like, a public defender or something before he turned? Or a criminal?" AEGIS asked.


    "I dunno. They don''t give me records anymore," Cosette said with a genuine grin. "But yeah, I''d say he''s got some personal beef. Which is good news, sort of, because it''s keeping down a mass panic about this guy who can kill pretty much anyone he wants. Having a known profile limits the panic to the legal community...and the rest of the population honestly isn''t so torn-up to see them getting screwed for a change."


    "You don''t like lawyers?" Karu asked.


    "Does anyone?"


    I could hear the confusion in Karu''s breathing as she tried to put together an answer. "Erm...doesn''t anyone? I had always thought lawyers were well-regarded by the public, as it were. Sort of a vanguard which wrangles the serpent of legislature."


    "Wow, WTF?" Lia asked. "Who gave you that idea?"


    I looked up and even from the sliver of her face I could see from behind, could tell she was blushing. "Never mind. I merely...misunderstood...as it were," she mumbled.


    Cosette looked at me like I was crazy. I shrugged.


    "She had a weird childhood," I explained. "I think a lot of her role models were politicians and lawyers."


    "So anyway, please continue in relating the details of this Exhuman?" Karu said, too quickly.


    It made Cosette laugh, and seeing her do that was like watching a person breaking out of the decrepit shell I''d hauled into this VTOL.


    "I don''t have much more," she said. "Just what I''ve heard on the holo, and been able to piece together from behind that. When...when I wasn''t drunk off my ass anyway. I really didn''t think you were coming."


    "Why wouldn''t we?" I asked, a little offended.


    "Because I don''t live in Japan, duh. The world was watching Pulverizer news every day, tracking the latest."


    "Dude, it''s true," Lia said, turning around her mobile. It was a vid of some news anchor talking near a portrait of my face, cutting to various footage of us in action, interspersed with a map of Japan, detailing our path of destruction, before an arrow pointed off towards China, with a helpful, large, orange question mark to indicate the end of our journey.


    "Neat. Anytime I wonder where we are, I can just look this up," Saga said. "We''re in China, guys!"


    "You''re all idiots," Cosette said with a smile. "Why''d you all have to be such idiots?" AEGIS cleared her throat significantly, and Cosette laughed again. "I guess I should be grateful. Nobody else would have rescued me. When we land, let me...well let me find some clothes first, and then reorient myself a bit. I have some contacts I still trust, and I bet I could get us any XPCA data you need--"


    "Oh I can do that," AEGIS said. "Besides, Athan already said, he didn''t want you for data. Data''s everywhere."


    She pursed her lips. "Leadership is a much harder ask, you know. I don''t know what you guys do...well I know what he does, gets into trouble non-stop. But other than that, I don''t know what your goals are or anything. And it''s not like you listened to me when I was in charge¡­"


    I put a hand on her knee to stop her from continuing to go too hard on herself.


    "You''re sharp," I told her. "I value your insight. When I came to you, telling you that Blackett was trouble, not only did you listen to me, you already had your own doubts. So often lately, I feel¡­" I looked around the cabin, wishing it were more private, and that I wasn''t being stared at and eavesdropped on by six other girls. "I feel like I''ve made...increasingly-extreme decisions. And that''s why I want you, and want Whitney. Sort-of-outsiders, who can tell me if I''m taking things too far."


    She looked at me pensively for a minute, reminding me of Moon. Though, the real Moon was deliberately ignoring the entire conversation, staring intently at a book she''d forgotten to turn pages on since we started.


    "You know of course, that just wondering that means you likely haven''t," she said.


    "Maybe. But also, maybe that''s not how others see it. I''m afraid, and I want help. Is that too much to ask."


    She grinned. "No. But maybe it''s a bit on-the-nose for me. You''re not giving me a lot of room to breathe if you come at me so seriously like that. But sure. You saved me, the XPCA can go suck a dog''s rod for all I care right now, I''ll help you with whatever you want. Same rules as before though."


    "Which was?" AEGIS asked.


    "Always act in the interest of the public good," I said, and Cosette nodded her agreement.

 385. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Place, San Francisco. Athan.

    "Well, things are somehow worse than I thought imaginable," Cosette confirmed, slumping into the couch.


    Which was, for how casually she did it, actually quite a feat. I was already crammed on the couch, with AEGIS and Lia sitting next to me. Tem occupied the uncomfortable space in the ''kitchen'' area, if it could be said to be a kitchen...or contain any area whatsoever. Moon was hidden in equal parts behind her book and a towering pile of junk which threatened to topple and flood the room with microprocessors, and Karu was leaning against the front door. Whitney, who was the one paying for and living in the cramped space, was standing in the door to the bathroom, which was pretty much the only space left in the entire house.


    It was a little ridiculous to think we wouldn''t have physically fit in the room if she didn''t have a fold-out bed. Sorta made me question why we were meeting and working in here, except that nobody had proposed we do otherwise.


    "Worse how?" AEGIS asked Cosette, frowning at her own findings. As we''d all been for the last few hours while we sponged up as much data as we collectively could.


    "Seems like some idiot killed Senator Irenside in his home," Cosette answered. "And what''s worse, it seems like that actually matters. From what I''m seeing of internal reports, a lot of...let''s say policy crossed that man''s desk, and his absence is being keenly felt. Of course that''s a huge scandal, but of course, of course, that''s super hush-hush."


    "So basically, there''s a power vacuum?" Lia asked. She tried typing on her mobile but her elbow kept bumping into me. She gave me an annoyed glare like that was somehow my fault, and then scooted off to lay on the floor at our feet, her body carefully twisted between some of the heaps of junk.


    "Well, somewhat that, but mostly a lack of direction," Cosette clarified. "It''s not like anyone can really gun for his position, it seems he''d kinda molded it around himself over the last...god...who knows how many years. But now that he''s not influencing decisions, it turns out, nobody else is."


    "Nobody would do a better job than he," Karu huffed. "By which I mean, of course--"


    "Yeah we got it," Lia said. "Is it stupid crowded in here or is it just me?"


    "It''s stupid crowded," Saga''s voice echoed from the bathroom.


    "I don''t mind. The sooner we figure out a plan the better," said AEGIS.


    "Um, if it helps, I have...coffee...ramen...and hot water. Which can be used in coffee or ramen," Whitney offered. "No cups though...wasn''t really...expecting company."


    "This is stupid," Lia said, standing, or mostly standing, and trying to find an inch of space to cram into somewhere. She made it halfway around the couch before tripping over Tem. "Tem, aaagh!" she yelped, pinwheeling for half a moment before crashing sideways into a pile of junk, and Moon.


    "Are you serious, Lia?" Moon said, utterly deadpan, before going slack and emerging as a ghost from Lia''s back. "This is a crass violation of my personal space. And I have lost my place in my book."


    "Sorry! I just tripped over Tem. Why is she invisible anyway? We''re just going to bump into her if we can''t see her."


    "I was...getting out of the way. I''m s-sorry."


    "I would prefer you get out of my head now," Moon complained. "As well as Saga. I am not certain there is much left about me not currently being violated. I am not a fan."


    "Not my fault everyone else here is just being boring and reading the ''net. Gotta entertain myself somehow."


    "Okay, this is insane," I said. "Half of us should clear out, we''ll be more productive if we''re not literally tripping over each other."


    "Works for me," Cosette said, tapping away on her tablet. "I''ll take a coffee and a ramen, hon."


    "I will go if Saga stays," Moon said, as Lia put her back in her body.


    "And I''ll go wherever Moon does," Saga''s voice echoed back.


    There were several minutes of bickering, made all the worse by Saga constantly changing which side she wanted to be on. Ultimately, Karu just put her in a headlock and dragged her out of the house, and with them, they took Lia and Moon, leaving myself, AEGIS, Whitney, and Cosette here, in a much more reasonable group where we could actually like, breathe and shit.


    Oh, and Tem.


    "Thank God for Karu," Whitney said, sipping coffee from an styrofoam cup, and for one horrifying moment, I thought she''d combined her two offerings. But as she gave one which Cosette accepted without complaint, I realized she must have just been recycling old empty ones. Which was still pretty vile, probably.


    "Soooooo," Cosette began again. "You guys totally killed Senator Irenside, didn''t you?"


    "What makes you say that?" AEGIS asked.


    "He''s a corrupt dude with ties to the XPCA. He was killed under mysterious circumstances with lots of rumors there was Exhuman involvement. Also, I found a file that says you guys were suspected."


    "Where are you finding these?" AEGIS asked, leaning over and half-crushing me into the couch. "I''ve been combing these systems for hours and haven''t found any of this."


    "Insider knowledge, sweetheart. Ever since our last major security breach, they instituted a lot of new security provisions. That last breach was you guys too, by the way. Sometimes feels like everything that goes wrong at the Raven''s Nest can be traced back to you."


    "Flattering, but I''m sure that''s not true," I said, hoping it wasn''t.


    She laughed. "Yeah of course not. Believe me, we still were staring down Exhuman events every week without you, and those guys didn''t do it for any reasons. Actually makes it  pretty easy to figure out what had your fingerprints on it, precisely because there was a reason behind it."


    "...yeah," I agreed. Because what else was there to say? How do you respond to the correct assertion that you are a serial killer, even if it was couched in reason like she said.


    The room fell silent for a few minutes, just the sound of everyone on their own devices, doing what they could.


    "Um, speaking of power vacuums," Cosette said "New Eden is looking pretty bad right now."


    I saw Lia go a little rigid as I asked "Did Idris have his fingers up in there, too?"


    "Not so much, but some obviously. But more the fact that place is always a hotbed, and a few weeks back, someone just dumpstered two of the gang leaders without any replacement leadership in place. The other gangs have been going ape in tearing apart the area, and it''s spread to full-on warfare in the streets at times now."


    "That''s hardly the fault of...whoever took out those guys," Lia pouted. "If anything, the gangs should have had more formal hierarchies, to denote a clear next leader in the event of this kind of incident."


    Cosette scoffed. "Hah. Like any ganger is going to tell another ''hey, you can have everything I''ve built, as soon as something kills me''. That reads like an invitation, not a chain of command."


    "Well, some of them aren''t that stupid," she frowned. "Like Khol."


    "Whozzat?"


    AEGIS interrupted. "Um, breaking news. Another Exhuman event."


    She reached over and tapped a few times on Cosette''s tablet, the biggest holo we had, since Whitney prefered VR to screens, and a feed from the news appeared. With another tap, it unmuted and we heard a reporter speaking over the images of the event unfolding.


    "...marking the third event in as many days. The proximity to New Mexico may indicate that these are fugitives from the Eden Escape, but why they would choose to act out here and now is as inexplicable as any Exhuman event."


    I couldn''t believe what I was seeing. An Exhuman event, sure. I saw and even somewhat understood those. Even the grizzly, uncensored slaughter which was airing, with the Exhuman savagely eviscerating fleeing civilians, killing them ruthlessly, looking so beyond furious as to be completely unaffected as she ripped people apart. Even that, I could get.


    But what I couldn''t understand was why. Why her? Why them?


    "We have confirmation that both Exhumans are working in concert, and as such, this has been confirmed to be a double event. Evacuation protocols are in effect, and we urge everyone in the area, if you are tuning in now and seeing this, please, please flee for your lives. These Exhumans have shown no remorse in, and in fact, seem to be explicitly hunting down civilians to murder. The XPCA is mobilizing but please¡­"The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    The words sounded staticy and tinny to my ears. I kept thinking I was just seeing wrong, but the powers...the powers didn''t lie. There was nobody else who those two could be.


    Trish and Gil. They looked more now like when I''d first met them in New Eden, when the ''sickness'' there had full sway over them, and turned her into a sadistic killer, and him into an obtrusive leech. I''d thought that was over when I''d seen them last, model parents, raising their adopted wards. They were what I thought every Exhuman could be, should be.


    And I''d lied to Cosette about them, covered for them. Only for this to happen. Why?


    "Shit," Cosette said, summarizing my thoughts succinctly. "Those were the two you couldn''t find, right Chariot? Not many umbrist-classes walking around."


    I wanted to respond but my mind was just buzzing blank. I watched as Gil''s arms exploded into a mass of tendrils and brought two people screaming and thrashing through the pane of glass of a storefront. His fleshy, distended arms snapped one without apparent effort, and Trish ran the other through with a javelin of pure darkness. Two corpses joined the others on the streets.


    "And I thought Khol was bad," Lia said in a low voice.


    "Why isn''t the XPCA there?" Whitney asked, her voice shaky. "Why are there so many people dying?"


    "It''s a double event," AEGIS said, adjusting her glasses as she looked down at the image. "Special protocols are in effect. Exhumans tend to scale...exponentially."


    "But people are dying," Whitney whimpered.


    "They are," AEGIS agreed, looking unhappy about it. "And from what I can see on ''net traffic, they''re mobilizing as best they can, but the event just broke, Trish and Gil are...from the looks of it...explicitly hunting civilians."


    "They should be there," I seethed. "That''s the XPCA''s job, is to die so that regular people don''t have to. That''s the whole fucking charade."


    AEGIS frowned bitterly. "Yeah. It''s just really unfortunate timing. There''s been a lot of events recently, and then a lot of their forces are currently in the south-east, trying to deal with the flying telekinetic guy. They''re scrambling but there just¡­"


    She stopped. It took me a moment to realize she had, and then I looked at her and found her staring at me.


    "What?" I asked.


    "I uh...it''s nothing."


    "What?"


    She dragged her toes across the carpet, almost bashfully. Since I''d made eye contact with her, she''d been avoiding it. I reached over and gently pointed her chin towards my face. Her eyes still darted around, looking anywhere but me.


    "AEGIS, just tell me," I ordered.


    Her mouth wavered for a moment, and then finally, she met my gaze as though it was inevitable. She sighed. "Okay. But. You''re not going to like it."


    I waited for her to continue, and she sighed again before doing so. "XPCA is short on arms. They''ve been losing a lot recently...our friend over the Caribbean seems to like blowing up the weapons of the strike teams that come after him without killing them...some weird kind of mercy maybe, but it is contributing to a crisis. Add to the events of the last few days and...the sudden cut-off of their supply," she added cagily "and...of course, the logistics more than anything. Like there''s probably enough, just not allocated right--"


    "You don''t have to spare my feelings, AEGIS."


    She gave a small, bitter frown and glared, but said nothing.


    "Weapons shortage, eh?" Cosette said, turning off the news and going back to her research. "Didn''t hear the supply line broke. That''s bad news."


    "Are there any records in there about an ''Oasis''?" AEGIS asked.


    "Oasis?" Cosette began tapping away, her eyes and fingers darting. "That some kind of codeword? Operation name? Profile?"


    "It''s a place."


    "A place like...where you find water in a desert?"


    "Sure."


    Coette kept searching. "Y''know, being cagey and evasive is obnoxious."


    "Is there anything or not?"


    "Found something. Found a lot of somethings, but most of them are just references to legit, bona-fide oasiees. Oasises? Oasi. People who put flowery prose in their reports. ''An oasis of calm¡­'' or...too many references to New Eden as some kind of tropical oasis." She frowned. "That word stop sounding like a real word to anyone else yet?"


    "Me," Lia said.


    "Anyway, did you find anything about a place called Oasis?"


    "Yeah, actually. Recent report...seems...related to your arms shortage maybe. Some missive passed through IkaCo. It''s strange."


    I leaned over and read over her shoulder, ignoring her glare for doing so.


    "What the fuck is this?" I asked.


    "How the hell should I know? You assholes won''t even tell me what Oasis is."


    I ignored her and kept reading. "This is...this is a formal declaration of war. Against the world."


    "What?" Whitney shouted from the kitchen, going upright and still. "Who?"


    Lia rubbed her forehead with her knuckles. "Oasis is a city of Exhumans in the glasslands. We were...kinda there for reasons. Their leader''s got this thing about weapons, and developing and testing them--"


    "That''s where the arms shortage is," Cosette said at once, slumping into the sofa.


    "--and we sorta convinced her to...do her own testing instead of selling them to IkaCo."


    "You did what?" Whitney snapped.


    "You¡­" Cosette scrunched up her face and took a few breaths. "You told some pile of Exhumans, who were interested in, and armed with a huge fucking pile of guns, that they should use them? On us?"


    "No!" AEGIS said. "We just told them not to sell them anymore."


    "When you apparently knew they had a fetish for testing these things. Am I understanding that right?"


    AEGIS and I shared a glance but there wasn''t much else we could say.


    "And what? Did you guys have any indication of who they should be testing them on? Did you set up...I don''t know...target dummies while you were there?"


    "They were battling IkaCo mercenaries when we left. And some combined arms in their pockets--"


    "Oh. IkaCo," Cosette said, as though that explained everything. "You mean the arms company that no longer can sell arms, because you cut their supply. I''m sure they''ll have TONS of money to throw away, repeatedly raising armies to get slaughtered by the guns they''re no longer allowed to have. I''m sure they''ll last a long, long time, keeping your fucking murder-city contained."


    "Okay, it wasn''t the best plan," I seethed. "But it was the only way."


    "Was it, Athan? Was it really?" Cosette turned on me, her face a terrifying mixture of livid and calm. "Because I hear you blow things up pretty good. Couldn''t you have just blown things up a teensy bit more while you were there? Maybe...I dunno...kill everyone? Destroy their guns? Something?"


    "It was the only way without killing," I defended.


    "Oh good." She shoved the tablet in my face with the declaration of war on it. "I''m sure there will be so much less killing now, what with this city-state basically stating that it will fight all and any comers, for fun. Because the world doesn''t have enough crises in it right now."


    I felt burned. Betrayed, even. As much sense as Cosette made, I still couldn''t agree with her. Killing a few Exhumans...maybe even just Rio...would it have saved countless lives to come? But there was no way I could have predicted this, was there? I mean...except for all the reasons she''d so sarcastically beaten into my head now. But I was just trying to do my fucking best, I was trying to help. Things weren''t shit yet, Oasis hadn''t gone on the warpath, she had no right to skewer me like this.


    And yet. This was exactly why I''d come to her, wasn''t it? I knew I had a blind spot in situations like this. Cosette would have never hesitated to kill Rio in the interests of the greater good. Just like she''d ordered the execution of Ethan, the terragenesist who created the stone replica of Eryandria, when there was nothing to be gained from his death. Except peace of mind, stability, and what the country needed. Just like she''d stood by when I said Blackett needed to die.


    "Hey, that''s too much," Whitney said, hands on hips. "Cut him a break."


    "Oh, because he didn''t kindle a war against humanity?"


    "Maybe he did," she said, hesitating just a moment "but it''s not like he did it on purpose." Cosette started to reply with something sarcastic and biting but Whitney talked over her. "And besides, Athan can and will fix it."


    "I can?" I asked.


    "He will," Lia agreed.


    "If there''s one thing I know about him, it''s that...well...you''re right in that he creates a mess wherever he goes. But the second thing I know is that he tries...so hard. Really, stupidly hard, to fix those messes. And as much as the world likes to go to pieces, because...honestly, that''s as much the world''s fault for being in a bad place as it is his for knocking it around...he''s got a record better than not of putting things back. Maybe not the way they were, exactly but...back."


    Cosette gave her a severe look for a few moments. "Wow. Great, very impassioned speech there. Hang on, I think I have tissues here somewhere¡­"


    "Oh shove it," Whitney sniped, with more venom than I think I''d ever heard out of her. "You were buttass-naked when you were dragged in here, and you''re wearing my clothes in my home. Be less of a pill."


    To that, Cosette gave a genuine, if still snarky smile, and went back to her work without arguing. Whitney fumed a bit, shooting me looks like ''can you believe this chick?''


    Which, I could. Cosette was rough around the edges, but still as brilliant and far-seeing as any. But so was Whitney. I was just surprised that they''d wind up opposite each other like this.


    But however at-fault I was or wasn''t, Whitney had made an excellent point. I shouldn''t be here feeling regret about Trish, or worrying about my decisions I''d made in Oasis. Those were past, unchangeable, already done whether right or wrong.


    What I could do was what she''d said. Keep fighting, keep trying. Maybe nobody else in the world could go tell Oasis that they needed to do things differently. Maybe nobody else in the world had a personal rapport with Trish and Gil. I couldn''t stop now, not even to question myself.


    I had to move forward. I had to keep moving forward.


    I leaned over the back of the couch and gave Tem''s invisible hair a rough scratching, eliciting a noise almost like a purr.


    "Just change the world. Act how you want it to be," I muttered to her.


    "Just change the world," she agreed.

 386. 2252, Present Day. Suburbs, New Mexico. Athan.

    It felt kind of familiar with Cosette on the missions again. She didn''t chatter that much, but it felt like, when she was on comms, and an op was ongoing, she was serious, and everything that came out of her was invaluable. Like that quiet friend, whose every word was golden.


    Though that was perhaps pushing it. She did lead us in with a diatribe about how bloated she felt and how being sober was possibly the worst thing imaginable. Which was just great fun to listen to while all of us were strapped into our fancy stealth VTOL we''d stolen.


    So I wasn''t really that upset when we landed nearby, and as the former-XPCA among us were all familiar, the non-combatants established a command post while the fighters mobilized. Lia, Whitney, Cosette stayed; Karu, AEGIS, Saga and myself were going. Moon was kinda doing both, as her powers allowed, and Tem...was being forced to stay because I wanted to talk this out, not vaporize people. I wasn''t even happy with bringing Karu along, honestly.


    But Karu did things for a reason. Tem did too, but that reason was often "Athan was in danger" which I realized this op might include. So stay she did.


    It wasn''t long before it felt like we crossed into hell. Where we''d landed was utterly deserted, and our command team had the pick of whatever building they wanted to set up in. But here...it was equally deserted, but not in the same way.


    Not in the same way at all.


    "God, it''s worse than they showed on the news," AEGIS said, bare feet stepping carefully around a slick red puddle. "How could they do this?"


    "That''s one of the questions I plan on asking," I said. "Probably right after what the fuck is wrong with you."


    "These people were not of this nature when last we met them," Moon said, and I could feel her fretting in my head as her purple phantasm pivoted around above me. There wasn''t anything to see up there except more death.


    "Met them when?" Cosette asked.


    "Uh. In New Eden," I answered.


    "Moon wasn''t with you in New Eden, Chariot," she accused. "Are you lying to me, now?"


    "No," Moon said. "I am."


    There was a pause, and when Cosette resumed I could hear her confusion. "Moon''s lying to me about...what, exactly?"


    "Meeting them."


    "You''re...telling me that, out of the blue, you''re randomly making up stories about meeting these Exhumans before. And you''re not just covering up a slip of the tongue which would make a lot more sense, about when the two of you were sent out after these bastards before, and you ''couldn''t find them''. Is that right?"


    Moon almost-shrugged. "It was a joke. Joudan."


    Cosette''s sigh was hot and unpleasant in my ears. "Whatever. Just keep following the carnage and you''ll find them soon enough."


    "XPCA has managed some evac, looks like," Lia added. "But they''ve also lost two strike teams now and are pulling back. What''s this lady''s power do again?"


    "Shadows," Karu answered. She was still with us on the ground to retain an element of diplomacy. I didn''t want her starting a fight without us. "She can manifest them to be solid, and yet pass through matter with ease. There is no armor effective against her spears."


    "Or powers," I added, remembering our fight beneath New Eden. "Wherever her powers touched mine, they sort of blanked them out."


    "So like Blackett?" Lia asked. Saga inhaled sharply.


    "No not like him at all. I dunno, it wasn''t...I gave it a lot of thought after...when I was in the hospital after...AEGIS died¡­" I gave her a sidelong glance and she gave me a smile and squeezed my hand. "Uh, that is to say, I thought a lot about everything in New Eden for a while there, and I don''t think her shadows cancel out powers exactly. They just...make them slip your mind. They disappear because you forget about them."


    "They fade into shadow?"


    "I...guess. That seems a little metaphorical."


    "But accurate?"


    "Sure."


    "Point being," Cosette cut in. "Don''t let the pointy end of the spear hit you, whether it''s made of shadows or not, that''s just good life advice."


    She seemed too perky for our surroundings. It wasn''t the worst Exhuman event I''d ever seen but that didn''t mean it wasn''t fucking awful. We were walking down the middle of the street, following in their footsteps, and on all sides of us were mutilated bodies and gutters running red and chunky. I could tell which bodies were made by Gil and which by Trish whether they''d been cut cleanly or more...torn apart.


    "I don''t get it, though. She was so happy. They were raising a family," I said.


    "So you did find them," Cosette asked.


    "Yes, we obviously did, and you obviously figured that out," I snapped at her. "Jesus."


    "It doesn''t pay to lie to your CO, Chariot."


    "Point being, I don''t know why they''d have turned to this. This is brutal, senseless. This is the kind of killing that Exhumans do when they first turn and haven''t got a grip on themselves. When they think their lives are over and there''s nothing left for them but to just...destroy."


    "Then that''s it, isn''t it?" Whitney asked, her voice only a whisper. "They think there''s nothing left for them."


    We passed a corner, and further down I saw people in the streets. One was unmistakably Trish, even from this distance, the spear whipping around her as black as a hole in space, and moving too fast for its size. The other was even more unmistakably Gil, his arms splayed into a thousand tendrils, more tree-looking than flesh, if trees undulated and grew struggling bodies instead of fruit.


    I pointed at the sky and with some effort, discharged a bolt of lightning straight up, arcing into the endless blue above. The thunder echoed back to us off every building, sounding like a chorus of booms.


    As I''d hoped, the two turned and faced us. We started walking forward, as did they.


    It would have been awkward if it weren''t so horrible. Like when you make eye-contact with someone walking towards you too soon, and both of you have to endure that period of time until you''re close enough. Except Gil had at least a dozen people strung up and looking like they were choking out in his...arms, and the streets were littered with pieces of many more.


    "Don''t like, run or anything," Lia said. "Please, drag it out."


    "People are dying, Lia," I snipped, and she shut up.


    Finally we got close enough that I could see in Trish''s body language that she''d recognized me. She didn''t relax or anything, just...seemed accepting that I was there. Gil...I didn''t know what the fuck to make of him right now.


    "Lightning, hey," she said, her voice flat. "Come to kill us, then? Kinda hoped it wouldn''t be you."


    "Um, we''re here to ask you to stop. You''re¡­" I looked around. "You''re killing a lot of people."


    "Yeah, we noticed."


    Awkwardly, she stopped. After a few more seconds, I wondered if that was going to be the depth of the whole exchange.


    "Trish, why are you killing all these people? Gil, can you put them down so we can talk?"


    "Nope," he said, his voice just as lifeless as hers. I began to wonder if there was some kind of like, code-X work going on here, and sent that thought to Saga to follow-up on.


    Saga shook her head. "No. But you''re gonna want to hear ''em out, prolly."


    "We''re here doing this...because it''s the easiest way to get ahold of the authorities," Trish said, looking around with a shrug. "We want the XPCA."


    "Couldn''t you have...I don''t know...called them or something? This is just sick."


    Annoyance flashed in her eyes, and Karu pushed me sideways in time to avoid a spear slamming into the ground where I''d been. She took to the skies and raised her arms.


    "Karu, no!" I shouted at her. But she wasn''t shooting just yet.


    "Know this, purveyors of sin. I still my blade only at Ashton''s will. Should you lash out again, your verminous lives will be forfeit at my hand."


    "She, I wouldn''t mind killing," Trish said, and Gil nodded.


    "Guys, what the hell? What the fuck happened? Why are you...why''d you attack me? Why do you want the XPCA?"Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    She stared at me, and I didn''t know you could put that much disgust and hate into a glare. And then she spoke and confirmed what I feared. "Haley and Glenn are dead, Lightning."


    I sighed. As much as I wanted it not to be true, I couldn''t imagine the two of them out here for any other reason. "How? Why? Who?"


    "You forgot where and when," Saga added. I gave her enough of a zap to hurt.


    "We don''t know. They were safe at home, we thought. But when we came back, someone had busted in and slaughtered them. Butchered them. Worse than we''ve done to these people, by far. There were signs they tried to use their powers...but they didn''t stand a chance. Haley...she tried to throw Glenn to safety...but he...she¡­"


    Her voice tensed with emotion. Gil stepped forward and finished. "She died when he was halfway through a wall. We found his torso before we even went indoors."


    "So what?" Moon snapped, her voice abnormally shrill. "You have suffered so it is fair to inflict it on others, it is?" Her mind felt hot on mine and Saga gave us a wary glance. "You are disgusting if that is how you think. You are bad people, you are."


    "Who did it, do you think?" I asked.


    "Isn''t it obvious?" she spat. "The XPCA knew where we lived. They were the only ones  who did, the only ones with reasons to want to hurt us."


    "Well, I mean, aside from every other fucking standard human being," Saga added. She backed up and raised her hands a little as Trish reared to strike again. "Don''t get me wrong, that''s a slight on the humans, not us."


    "Well we''re here to put an end to it," she said. "Gil and I spent a few weeks crying, thinking, talked it over. Trying to understand. And we realized, we''re done. We''re sick of hiding, of running, of life in New Eden. Without the kids, we have nothing left we care about enough to live for. We''re just living for living''s sake, and honestly, right now, we''d both rather kill for living''s sake instead."


    She turned her head to the sky. "You hear me, XPCA fuckers? You took everything from us. Come get the rest, you pieces of shit! We''re ready for you this time!"


    This was...not how I was expecting this to go. All of us were exchanging cagey glances, especially AEGIS, who seemed more unnerved or shaken than any of us.


    Angry, distraught, maybe vengeance-seeking. But this was just...suicide by cop at this point, and looking to inflict as much pain and hurt on the world on their way out as possible. The same pain and hurt they''d felt, I had to think. I couldn''t possibly imagine what it must have been like for them to come home and find someone had murdered their kids, not when they''d thought they''d gotten out.


    If I''d found the same, with Lia, I could only imagine how I''d feel. I would want to lash out. I sympathized.


    "But guys," I said. "There''s more to it than this. I know...believe me, I had...I had a very close friend get murdered, right in front of me -- and I can''t say that I was nearly as close to her as you were with your own fucking kids, don''t get me wrong. But I...after that, I swore to avenge her, even if...even if it like, tore apart my life, fucked the world, everything. I was so consumed by grief and everything right then."


    Trish spat at my feet. "And here you are, hunting fugitives like everything''s peachy keen."


    I shook my head. "Because that happened months ago. I haven''t moved on, exactly. I still...I still...hear her dying...when I go to sleep." I felt my face burning as everyone stared at me. This wasn''t exactly something I''d planned to bring up. "But the point is, I''m here, I''m standing on my own, for something now. I even faced her murderer, I even...had to let him go. Because if I didn''t, it was going to destroy more things, and hurt more people. I couldn''t do that to them...no matter how much I wanted to...over someone who was already dead."


    "Oh, Athan," AEGIS said, touching my arm gently. I pulled away.


    "Yeah. Sure. Too bad you''re standing for the XPCA. You done now?" Trish asked. She didn''t wait to answer before splintering the ground with another swinging slash.


    This time, Moon saved me, leaping in front to take the blow herself, grabbing the spear as it bit into her. She looked surprised for a second, and then faded away into nothingness.


    Karu didn''t hesitate to keep her word. Mini-missiles streaked from overhead, detonating across Gil with bright flashes, and several of his branching arms burned or broke off, as starbursts of adhesive and ice pounded him.


    "I''m...here?" Moon asked in my comms. "Back in my body. She dissolved my ghost, Chariot."


    Saga seemed hesitant on what to do, but her mind was made up for her as the spear whipped around, too fast and too dark to be seen, and launched her head clean off. Trish had to jump back as my exoframe launched me from my knees at her, fast and deadly as Karu''s missiles.


    I was at a huge disadvantage in this fight and I knew it. Last time, I''d only beaten her because I busted all the lights and turned off the source of her powers. Here, with the sun overhead, that play wouldn''t work again. But I could still hold her for a time, every time she hit my blades, they exploded in a shower of sparks as I sheared them instead of letting them fade out, and the heat and light from them was keeping her back.


    I found myself like Jack, fighting with my eyes closed. My senses were good enough like this, and I wasn''t distracted by the constant flashes of my blades sparking. It was an edge she couldn''t get.


    But it wasn''t one she needed. Again and again, I had to lean, barely dodging in time, reading her movements, not the sight of the spear, and that was the only thing which let me keep up with the weightless weapon. That...and my training. Which hadn''t come up too much since I''d picked it up, helpful a bit against Dragon, but he was always going to be on another level.


    Here, though...I could slip her blows consistently. I could tell, just by how she poised, how she tensed, how she planted her feet, where and how an attack was coming. I could dodge them by inches, giving me the flexibility to step into her attacks, to press my blades nearer to her, keep her focused on them instead of me. If I could keep backing her up, if I could get her entangled in the insane mess which was Gil''s arms snaking around and Karu''s unpredictable ordinance--


    "Everybody STOP!" AEGIS screamed, her voice louder than I''d ever heard. Despite ourselves, everyone paused for a moment, feeling like eardrums and windows were rattling. Trish started to move again but AEGIS turned on her with an accusing finger. "Stop."


    "Why should I?" she growled.


    "First off, we''re not XPCA."


    "He was--"


    "He''s not anymore. He''s hunted, same as you. Fucking turn on the news sometimes, please."


    "Like I''m gonna believe--"


    "And second, I know who killed your daughter. And...therefore, your son."


    Trish looked about ready to strike again, but paused at those words. She glanced at Gil, whose arms seemed to have split and multiplied another dozen times, skyward now, only reinforcing the appearance of being a living flesh-tree. But only a glance, her eyes burned as she settled them on AEGIS.


    "It''s XPCA and I know it. Don''t try to talk your way out of this."


    "It''s not," AEGIS said. She pushed up her glasses. "I...I didn''t say anything earlier because I didn''t want Athan to be upset. But, well¡­"


    "You need to stop doing that," I told her. "Seriously. I''m not porcelain over here. I''m fighting the world, and that''s just kinda how it is."


    "When you''re fighting the whole world is the last time I should drop bad news on you," she said with a sad smile. "Problem is, with your life...never seems to be a good time."


    "Hey," Trish snapped her fingers. "I will kill you. Speak. Or don''t." She gripped her spear.


    "It was Soran," AEGIS told me. "When he showed up in Vegas, and threw us to safety, that was her powers he''d used. Exactly as you''d described it to me, like some kind of hyperspace throw. I saw him do it to Whitney, he just picked her up and...huck, she disappeared as he threw her. I did the math later, and the direction he threw her in and where we landed, it all lined up. I knew at the time, I just...it never...I probably should have told you."


    "Soran?" Trish spat. "The leader of the resistance, Soran? Who did nothing but help us in New Eden? What''s he got to do with any of this?"


    "Soran steals powers from Exhumans, by killing them," AEGIS explained. "And he had Haley''s powers...there''s only one explanation."


    Trish stood there, face oddly blank but for the fury behind it. Gil, I recognized as waiting for her to make a decision. It''s how I''d seen him act in New Eden all the time. Her arms hung at her sides, and for a second there, I thought AEGIS had gotten through to her.


    Or...she had. And Trish just didn''t care. I didn''t know.


    "Doesn''t matter," Trish mumbled. "It doesn''t matter. That doesn''t change anything."


    "It changes who you should be mad at!" AEGIS shouted. "It changes...what this is all for! You''re not going to make Soran show up by killing people in the streets. You''re just hurting people."


    "It doesn''t matter!" Trish shouted again, and I dipped to evade a spear-thrust at my face. "The XPCA failed us and everyone else when they put him in New Eden! These people are fuckers who all deserve death anyway!"


    I sighed. "I agreed with the first part of that at least. C''mon, Trish, don''t let this be what you die for. You''re not nothing. Glenn and Haley wouldn''t have wanted this."


    She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. "You fucker." I danced backwards three, four times as she stabbed it at me with advancing steps. AEGIS pivoted and kicked her in the arm, sending the spear flying, but another was already materializing out of the ground. Before she could lay hands on it, she took another kick, this one to the chest, and this one with AEGIS'' engines roaring.


    She flew backwards into Gil, who caught her with sinewy arms.


    "We are not your enemies," I told her. "But if you keep attacking innocent people, we will stop you."


    She pulled out another spear, and then another, her arms raised, her face a veil of fury.


    But when she tried to move forward, she couldn''t. Gil''s arms held her tight. Heavy thunks rained around us as the bodies trapped in his arms fell to the street.


    "This wasn''t what we talked about," he said, his voice cold and dead, like even the flames of hate in it had gone out. "I don''t want to hurt any more people. Not if it doesn''t lead to our children''s killer."


    "Gil, no. You fucker. Don''t you give up on me. Don''t you abandon me too."


    More and more arms wrapped around her, melding and melting together, until soon, it was just the two arms, the two, normal, human arms, holding her from behind in a hug.


    "I''m never abandoning you," he murmured. "But I...but they...they had a point. About what Glenn and Haley would want."


    "Haley would want them all dead."


    "And Glenn would want them to play with him."


    She snorted. Not even close to a laugh, but enough apparently. Her spears melted away like the sun only just now touched them.


    "We have nothing," she said. "We are nothing."


    "You''ve got each other," Saga shrugged. "Seems like more than most Exhumans have. And hey, if you really want kids--" she thrust her fingers together in a gesture a few times.


    "Fuckers," Trish said, her fire going out as well. "Fucking fuckers. Someone''s going to pay. Someone always has to pay."


    I thought about her words for a second. "Why?" I asked.


    "Why what, fucker?"


    "Why does someone always have to pay? Why can''t people...humans, Exhumans alike, why can''t people move on and resolve to stop hurting each other, just because they got hurt?"


    I thought about how I''d been forced to tolerate Dragon in Oasis. Even now, the thought of him made my blood seethe uncomfortably in my chest, and my head grew heavy and hot. But I wasn''t an animal, I was a creature of reason and of decision. And I knew that fighting him then and there would have probably killed all of us. Still might, even; I wasn''t sure we''d ever be completely free from ''their god''s'' power.


    "Because...because...it''s not right," she said. "It''s wrong."


    "And this isn''t?" I looked at all the bodies around us, many of those he held weren''t moving. Others had gotten up and run. Most were in between.


    She looked around as well, and then up at me.


    "Fucker," she said. "C''mon Gil, let''s go."


    "You''re not seriously going to let them," Cosette asked. "Not again?"


    "I seriously am," I answered. "They''ll be fine this time, I know it."


    She sighed heavily. "As long as you''re prepared for what they do next time, and you''re fine with this kind of carnage, all because of you, be my guest. What the fuck do I know, apparently?"

 387. 2252, Present Day. Whitneys Place, San Francisco. Athan.

    We didn''t see or hear from Trish and Gil again, which was a relief, and I saw news headlines reporting damned lies about the heroic turnabout of a brave squad of the XPCA''s finest, who looked suspiciously like us after a round of image editing. But I wasn''t complaining, the XPCA needed all the positive press they could get right now, and if they were going to steal our glory, more the better.


    Because things were somehow going even worse for them, even with Trish and Gil off the streets. Probably inspired by the flying Exhuman''s continued, galling success, there had been a murmur of Exhuman events across the country, and even the world. I remembered reading the news before we went and killed Senator Irenside, about how the world was seeing an unprecedented period of relative Exhuman calm, and world records were being set for number of days without an event, worldwide.


    Well that was gone and truly fucked now. We were seeing multiple events pop up every day, and most were taking longer for the XPCA to put out than it took for more to start. People were getting nervous, and the Exhumans doing it...they knew exactly what they were doing.


    It was a bit like watching a protest. These people were pissed. Some had signs. Almost all of them were shouting anti-XPCA or anti-establishment vitriol. The difference was what else they were doing while spreading their message.


    Most were just killing. Terrorists, in the truest sense of the word. Doing whatever they could to make sure the world saw them and saw their message. They were the worst, and the least creative.


    Others turned towards more unique applications of their powers. One city suffered rolling blackouts across the entire power grid, and the source was tracked down to an electrist who''d crammed his house with signs and slogans of his manifesto, spray painted on everything so as to be unmissable when the XPCA rooted him out and found him gone. Another had, more simply, burned large words into a field, spelling out their discontent.


    But the events were becoming more frequent, not less, and though we''d been running around putting out as many fires as we could, there was trouble there too, in that the XPCA made us a higher-priority target than anyone else, and they seemed more than happy to train their guns on us and let the actual perps get away, no matter what we said or did. Or how obviously we were helping.


    Or how many times we hacked their shit and tried to get us out of the system or otherwise de-escalate. It must have been common knowledge by now to just drop everything to try to kill us, because no matter how much we fucked with their data or communications, the XPCA never stopped trying it. I wondered if Director Hall had a personal issue with us, and how knowledgeable he was about the succession of the last couple of directors.


    Because seriously, this was getting ridiculous. We were helping. He kinda needed to focus on not spiraling the country into anarchy here. Petty squabbles needed to be put aside.


    "What we need," Saga said, somehow taking up the entire couch by herself "is to send a message. I''m tired of asking people to listen. I''ve never been much of an asker."


    "Well that just sounds like what the Exhumans are doing," I sighed. "Terrorism to send their message. I don''t think we''ll talk any louder than they will or make any friends by doing the same thing as them."


    It was pretty quiet here, for the moment. As the amount of fan-hitting shit was multiplying, we''d started creeping out in groups. Transit was a huge issue, with Karu working almost full-time on flying the Sirius, keeping it fueled, and directing Whitney on maintenance and service...a fun task I''m sure, that had needed a huge amount of research since neither of them were really VTOL owners. But -- and this might have just been hubris -- surprisingly, fighting was harder than I expected as well.


    These Exhumans popping out weren''t turned yesterday. They were Exhumans who''d integrated or hidden out in human society, escapees from New Eden, or ones who''d never gone. And they were coming out in force because, for the first time, the XPCA was failing, and nothing quite brought out the scavengers like watching a kill in progress.


    So they all had their own issues and misery in the lives they''d been forced into, and the selves they''d never been permitted to be. Their ideologies were better-founded, almost sympathetic, I discovered, and many of them had legitimately only just located their voice after years of systemic abuse and repression.


    Similarly, these were the ones who''d hidden successfully; they knew how to use their powers, and had done enough with them to survive. It really wasn''t anything like fighting a freshly-turned Exhuman, I''d learned. They weren''t all confusion and anger, they were simmering resentment, breaking through newly-formed cracks.


    And it suuucked. Super sucked. None of them wanted to listen. None of them cared about the XPCA''s narrative or role. Many didn''t even see humans as worth respecting, just another level of oppression atop them. And so naturally, many of them wound up coming to blows with us, despite my efforts. Some even died.


    Some, Saga was on-hand. I wasn''t sure it was better than killing them but...I wasn''t sure what else to do. Put them under and then, what? Hand them to the XPCA? That was the same as executing them on the spot, with more steps. I couldn''t ask her to strip away their feelings or wills or anything without violating who they were but¡­


    But I kinda had. Because something had to be done, and they just wouldn''t listen. Of course this hadn''t turned out great on our last mission where the XPCA had arrived mid-lobotomy and scared Saga and myself off, leaving a braindead Exhuman in our dust. Hence the chat.


    "Not that kind of message," Saga said. "Like, to the XPCA, telling them...ionno, to talk or some shit. Bring ''em in the open. Let me at ''em."


    "I don''t know that I like you doing that to people who are actively trying to kill us, Saga. Baiting the XPCA so we can ambush their brains...that''s kinda fucking sick."


    She rolled over and looked at me through the straight black hair falling across her face. "And you don''t care that your girls are all out there fighting right now, hmm? AEGIS and Tem and Moon all fighting Exhumans without you? What if they get hurt, you gonna cry?"


    "Shut up."


    "Ohh. He''s already crying."


    "Saga, seriously. They have overwhelming force. There''s nothing that can take all three of them together. They have Karu on backup and Cosette making sure nothing else shows up, they''re fine. Get out of my insecurities."


    She cackled a little. "Still. Sucks I couldn''t finish my work. That was a good one, too."


    I sighed my agreement. "I don''t fundamentally disagree we need to hammer something out with the XPCA. But Lia''s been trying, almost non-stop to talk to them and they just won''t listen. Seems like no matter who she talks to, no matter what she says, the whole agency has a black wall on the subject. I wonder what''s been said over there to cut us out so completely."


    "Probably not much needs to be," Saga said, batting at the air like a cat with some invisible yarn. "They saw you on the news. Everyone''s heard of Pulverizer Athan. Betrayer of Humanity. The Spark of Death."


    "You really don''t have to put on a dramatic voice for that shit."


    "Actually, pretty sure I do. Not sure how to say The Spark of Death except dramatically. Here watch: The Spark of Death. See?"


    "You''re an idiot," I sighed. "We should be finding another mission to take. World ain''t gonna save itself."


    I sat up and begrudgingly pulled up the news. Even muted, I could tell it was nothing but Exhuman discussion. More events, more civilians dying and cities being wrecked, and on the face of it all, me. Well, the flying guy, too.


    Come to think of it.


    "Hey what do you know about the flying dude?" I asked.


    "Not much. Most people we''ve met have nothing more on him than the news''d tell ya. Flies in, destroys what he came to, often law offices or courtrooms or the like, and then zips out."


    "And the XPCA haven''t been able to stop him?"


    "They can''t even respond in time. He''s too fast and small to track. Some macho bloke from a couple runs back was on some op where they were sending VTOLs all over near Cuba to look for him, but they found nothing. Rumor is, he doesn''t eat, sleep, or poop. Other rumor is, he poops a shitton, literally. But all over the place, like a flock of birds. Like it subdivides on the way out the sphincter."The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "What the hell is wrong with you?" I stared at her unrepentant grin..


    "You asked. Your mistake, really."


    I found myself sighing yet freaking again, and checking the time to see when I might expect the others back. Assuming the mission took zero time, travel alone would put them an hour from now. And it wouldn''t take zero time.


    "What I really was asking was, same question, different dude. Can we send this guy a message. Maybe like, make sure he knows exactly what kind of havoc he''s inciting across the world here. If he''s got beef with lawyers, good for him, he can sort that out...but he can''t constantly embarrass the XPCA while doing so or he''s going to wipe out a lot more than just laws."


    "Or maybe that''s exactly what he wants," she shrugged.


    "Then why attack courts and lawyers?"


    "Ionno. I just scramble eggs, not lay ''em. And by eggs, I mean brains."


    I thought about what I''d just proposed. It seemed like a terrible idea. If for no other reason than, if the XPCA ever thought their two greatest threats might unify, they''d absolutely flip every last piece of shit they could lay hands on. I could kiss my dreams of ever talking to them goodbye in a hundred different languages, and prepare for everything they had to come down on our heads.


    But on the other hand, that didn''t actually sound too different from where we already were. XPCA weren''t listening to us in the slightest anyway, so what the fuck did I care what they thought? And if I could somehow get fly boy to listen to us...I wasn''t asking much, and there wasn''t any way he could be less cooperative than the XPCA...maybe one of the biggest crises could go away.


    It seemed like a longshot though. I was supposed to be ramping up to head over and give the Oasians the same kind of talk, and they already knew and respected us at least. And by ''us'' I meant ''AEGIS'', who was one of their god-people or whatever.


    But it wasn''t impossible. How sick would it be if all of these problems could be solved diplomatically? What the hell would that say about Exhumans, and our promising future of being able to sit down at the bargaining table with the world and show them, we can be more than killers. We can talk, too.


    Then the XPCA would fucking have to listen to me. If there was a precedent for Exhuman negotiations? Holy shit.


    I scoffed loud enough to make Saga perk up and look at me funny. Yeah, that''d never happen. That was the kind of dream I had back when I lived in the wilds, before I knew anything about the XPCA and how they worked. Back when I thought, we''re all still just people, right?


    We were all just people. That much was true. But it was completely irrelevant.


    "I''d like to try anyway. If things are going to hell, I''d like to know that I gave talking its best shot. I want to give peace every possible chance to succeed."


    Saga kinda slouched off the couch in a way not entirely dissimilar to cradling me. I got more from her thoughts than the actual gesture on its intent.


    "Athan. Buddy. This world isn''t going to hell. It''s always been hell. The proof''s in the pudding -- these Exhumans popping up? They''ve always been here. They''ve always been hiding this resentment, just waiting for their chance to do this. This is the true face of civilization. You think of your Roman Empires and Ancient Chinas and French Revolutions, and you see the same thing always -- when the abusers lose power, the abused rise up and beat nine kinds of hell out of them, ripping up everything in the process. This is just another page turn."


    "Except all those other times, it''s been humans rising up against other humans. Things won''t end the same way if Exhumanity winds up on top."


    "Yeah, it''ll wind up better. It''ll be like, when homo sapiens beat out neanderthals or some shit."


    "Somehow I don''t think so. I think, given the chance, Exhumans would just replace a systemic oppression based on fear for one based on power. I don''t want humans being a second-class citizen any more than I like Exhumans being it."


    She shrugged at me, her body shoulder digging into my calf. "You want too much."


    "I just want everyone to be decent to each other."


    "No, because you also want that to happen without forcing it, and you also want that to happen without doing anything drastic and stupid. By which I mean your definition of drastic and stupid, which, might I add, is a really fine line to walk, because you do plenty of fucked-up shit, and then you''d fight someone else for doing the same--"


    "I know, okay? I know. I''m a big fat hypocrite. The difference is, I''m trying to make things right for everyone. Even if I have to kill people or whatever."


    "Or sic your beloved code-X on their heads?"


    I paused. She was just toying with me, I knew. I''d already asked her to help out with some of the Exhuman troubles we''d faced, that wasn''t anything I could take back. But that didn''t mean it couldn''t be a serious question.


    "Yes. Even if it means using a code-X. If Japan taught me anything, it''s that sometimes, it''s worth doing horrible, abhorrent, completely amoral, completely fucking wrong things to a few people so that you don''t trigger a whole country going to shit."


    She looked up at me from where she was cuddling my legs. "Wow. Shivers. Instant clit boner. Say it again and I might get off on the spot."


    "Be serious every once in a while," I said, deflating as I collapsed backwards.


    "Who said I wasn''t?" she said with a sly grin. It slowly faded off her face as she studied me. "Okay, I know it takes a lot out of you to say or think that shit, but it''s not wrong, right? Every great thing you''ve ever loved, it got there by shitting on a few people. That''s the way the world works. You''ll get nothing done if you''re afraid of hurting anyone."


    "Doesn''t mean I have to like it," I murmured.


    "No it doesn''t." She gave my leg a reassuring pat. "While I''m being serious, there''s something I probably should have warned you about. Since it came up recently."


    "What''s that? And if you talk about clit boners--"


    "No not that. I wouldn''t warn you about that, I''d just shove it in your face. No, I''m talking about Soran. I kinda thought he was out of our hair after showing up randomly in Vegas...but it seems to me...that guy is just...unknowable."


    "So how is warning me about him useful?"


    She frowned, and I felt her searching around for words, though the feeling she was conveying in the searching was more precise than words could ever be.


    "When he chucked me, I touched his mind, as I often do with strapping young Exhuman lads. And what was going on in there wasn''t...human. We kinda know how Mage''s power works, and he''s got that going on, yeah. There''s like, no unconscious anymore in that guy as a result. Everything he does is so practiced and tightly-wound, his mind is like watching an impossibly-fancy machine run. One with lots of brass cogs."


    She stretched and shoved more of her shoulder blades into my legs.


    "But underneath that was just like...some kind of insanity, almost, but nothing I''ve ever seen. It was like...pure emotion, but not any emotion I''ve ever felt, or seen anyone else ever feel. I don''t know what Mage''s power did to his mind, but underneath it, he''s super broken, Athan. And the problem is...I don''t think you or I or anyone who thinks like a sane person could comprehend his motivations."


    I chewed on what she said for a few minutes. Silence between the two of us was many times less silent than with others, as our thoughts ping-ponged back and forth, faster than either of us could really comprehend. What she''d said wasn''t nearly as expressive or precise as what she''d felt, how touching Soran''s mind had made her feel, what seeing it actually was like.


    "I get that," I said at last. "His actions...haven''t had any pattern I can follow. After he ''died'', he turned himself in to get into New Eden. He led a resistance movement to get himself out. He showed up randomly with Trish''s kid''s power and threw all of us out of a warzone to safety."


    I frowned and stared at Saga as something half-clicked. "You don''t think...he turned himself in and broke everyone out just so he could get to Haley for her powers...to use on us, do you? That seems insane."


    "I don''t know," she sighed. "It does seem insane. It seems like there''s a million other ways he could have bailed us out, if that was his endgame there, if it''s true he could plan that hard in advance and execute that well. But. And this is a big ol'' surgically-enhanced with silicone but. I must stress, it seems insane. And so does he."


    I felt a coil of frustration pass from my mind to hers, where she shrugged it off, somehow blunting the feeling in my own head.


    "I just wanted to warn you that I kinda doubt him saving us was his endgame. There''s no benefit to him out of it. Or to...Mage''s power...if that thing even has motivations or benefits. I highly doubt it, or he, cares much about you being alive explicitly, but more that¡­"


    "...that I''m a pawn in something else he or it does care about."


    "Yeah."


    We shared another few moments of silence.


    "And of course, the implication is, whatever cause that might be, it isn''t necessarily one I have to be alive for."


    "Pawns do tend to get sacrificed. Assuming I understand the rules of chess properly."


    "How do you know how to play chess?" I asked.


    "Girl in the base above me knew how to play. She''d always challenge dudes, saying they could fuck her if they won. She always lost, and quickly...even to guys who I''m sure didn''t know how to play. That''s why I''m not quite sure I do. Good news is though, I''m turned on now when seeing a chessboard get set up. There''s an uncommon fetish."


    I shook my head. Better not to tell AEGIS about that one. I think she collected fetishes, and that sounded like one we could skip. Saga started laughing despite ourselves.


    It was weird, being in each other''s heads like this. Every emotion seemed to intensify rapidly. Just as quickly as things had turned super-serious when Saga had, now, at that hint of a joke and the laughter, the mood seemed to crack and fall away with an uncanny ease. The feedback of laughter from her to me to her, and back to me, it was intense, bizarre, but strangely comfortable.


    I took a deep breath and steadied myself, closing the connection a bit so I could be more myself.


    "When they get back, I''m gonna start making plans to talk to that flying Exhuman. I''d like you to come with me."


    "Mind-fuck him and solve all our problems?"


    "Not really my intention, but a solid plan-B. No, I just think...hope...stupidly, maybe, that whatever''s going on in his head, I can understand it, and you can help. And if we can understand each other, maybe we can work it all out."


    She gave me a little crooked smile.


    "Man, you''re obnoxious," she said.


    "Yeah, I''m just the worst."

 388. 2252, Present Day. Somewhere over Southeastern Louisiana. Athan.

    I was told, variously, that my idea was stupid, reckless, dangerous, and would never work. The same had been said of many things I''d already done, though when I brought that up as a counterpoint, AEGIS just stared at me disbelieving.


    "Are you really arguing that because you''ve done stupid things in the past, you should be doing stupid things now?"


    I didn''t really have a rebuttal to that, because she was right. The odds that we''d find Liev -- Cosette had dug up his name in a file from a friend in the archives -- were low. He''d been successfully fighting or evading XPCA in the past, and we were in one of their VTOLs now. No reason to think he couldn''t do the same for us. A faster, quieter, sneakier VTOL, but I doubted that''d make a difference.


    And even if we did find him, it''s not like we had a real compelling argument for him. ''Please stop'' was about the jist of it. Odds were even lower that he''d hear us out, and lower still that he''d have a change of heart.


    On the other hand, chances were good we''d find the XPCA and even better that they''d try to kill us on sight. They might be spread thin, but out here was where they were spread. If I were a betting man, I''d have bet against myself successfully meeting with Liev, and doubled down against convincing him. Which felt pretty crappy, admittedly.


    I wasn''t here to argue, though. I wanted to find him and hear him out. I wanted, if possible, to help him find an avenue towards the justice he allegedly kept spouting, without destroying everything else in the process.


    Because, hell. Even if this failed entirely, if I could at least understand why he was doing it, I''d feel better. Time and again, that was something I was learning about myself, even if I wasn''t sure I liked it. It was irrational just to sympathize with someone just because you liked them...wasn''t it?


    So yeah. Despite all of that, here we were. Most of the crew, sans Lia, Cosette, and Whitney. I was strapped in between Tem and AEGIS, watching the countryside rip past us in a green-brown blur.


    It was the first time Tem and I were going out together since her rescue, really. Things had been so volatile, I hadn''t wanted to wave her lit-match-self around and set off any powder kegs. And sitting here, staring past her and watching her silver hair bobbies whip in the wind, I realized, even accounting for invisibility, I hadn''t seen much of her recently.


    Not that I wanted her volatility on this mission either, but it was kind of a all-hands-on-deck kind of situation.


    "Hi Tem, how are you doing?" I asked, only able to hear myself through the wind because of the comms.


    She nodded and gave me a little indifferent smile, like I''d interrupted her chewing on her fingernails or something.


    "How''ve you been readjusting?"


    The small smile again. "I am fine."


    "Doing alright?"


    She cocked her head a bit and the smile dropped. "I think I may be confused. Are you...not just...asking the s-same things over?"


    My turn to force a crappy smile. "Yeah, I guess so. Sorry."


    She shook her head, hair whipping back and forth. "No, don''t apologize. I''m s-s-sorry, that must have been rude. I misunderstood."


    "Well...I was just asking because you''re kinda...quiet. And a little spacey, more than usual. And, well, just...acting different. Thought I''d ask."


    She opened her mouth and then paused with it open, seemingly unsure of where to go from there. She had nice teeth. Somehow, no matter how little she thought of herself, or how much she wasn''t, she had a hard time deviating from her routines. When we weren''t stuck in some shithole and she had the chance, she brushed every morning and evening.


    She shook her head and closed her mouth at long last. "No. I don''t know. I''m s-s-...I apologize. I don''t mean to act different."


    "Is it just...things with Ichiro? He didn''t hurt you, did he? You seemed fine so I assumed--"


    She shook her head even more violently. "No, I''m s-sorry. He didn''t! It was...the opposite. He took...very good care of me. I did not understand." She paused, and I paused with her, waiting for her to finish. She met my eyes for the briefest moment before fixing back on the floor, and continuing through a confused grimace. "I was his enemy. Then I learned, I was being used to...how did he put it? I was leverage? I was threatened, if Moon did not...con...com¡­"


    "Comply?"


    She nodded once, with the same childlike determination. "Yes. S-s-so I understood. But they said they would never give in to him, no matter what. I was ready for that. I was useless, and you had given up on me, too, and I was going to die."


    "Oh Tem, I didn''t give up on you." I frowned bitterly at her. "We were coming."


    Again that weird half-smile. It felt like Tem didn''t know how to disagree, and all she could do was to smile instead. "I know that now, of course. But then, I was ready to die. But then I didn''t. He kept feeding me and caring for me. He gave me clean clothes and regular s-showers. I thought it was a trick, but no trick came. I¡­" she glanced around nervously, as though she wasn''t speaking into everyone''s ear over comms anyway. "I complied with him as much as he wished. He never had me s-s-say anything or betray you, I would not do that. But I s-stopped frying his people. I s-s...did not keep attacking his house. He treated me very well."


    "So what then? You think that him giving you a hand-out because you were his prisoner redeems him somehow?"


    "Oh no! I''m s-s-sorry," she said, instantly flustered. I could see invisibility creeping up her body as she flushed with what I assumed was shame. And I felt like an idiot for reading my own messages in her words.


    "Sorry...sorry, Tem. I...I''m sorry for interrupting. Please go ahead."


    She stopped at about the ninety-percent invisible mark, her eyes and brow peering at me skeptically from nowhere. When you took away the rest of her, she actually had some very piercing eyes, if she could manage to point them at you. The frosty blue was...kind of dazzling.


    "I''m s-sorry," she repeated.


    "It''s okay. I shouldn''t have cut you off."


    She gave it another few seconds and then slowly melted back into being as she finished. "Um. No. I do not think he was...redeemed. Or anything like that. I...in my head, of course, I know. He was using me, and trying to get Moon to do things they did not want. That is not good. But¡­"


    Her eyes bored into the ground now, and she vanished entirely. I wondered if she did that by reflex at this point. And then, thinking about how my blades could jump out whenever I felt threatened, I had to assume so.


    "I had to wonder. If...my enemy...would treat me s-so well. Better than my family. And...um...maybe even¡­"


    "Better than me. You can say it.


    She nodded, but didn''t. "...then maybe I do not understand things...even more than I thought."


    All of us suddenly winced as Saga shouted in our heads.


    [He''s THERE!]


    She made an effort to stand and point, but the buckles held her in her seat securely.


    [(Um, shit)] she leaked, looking around at all of us groaning. "Sorry, my bad. Though, uh. Anything to get us past that Tem story, huh?"


    I couldn''t see her, but I could sense that Tem was wearing the same little broken smile, though a lot more aggressively pointed at Saga then when she''d worn it before. Saga wasn''t right, exactly, but...if I''d understood her shout, this wasn''t really the time for chit-chat anymore.


    [Hey-o! Mister flying Exhuman guy! Over here!]


    "I do not have a reading," Karu intoned from the cabin.


    "I see nothing out there. Not in any spectra," AEGIS confirmed. "Saga, where is this thing?"


    [We''re in the chopper, and we''re friendly!] "Um...that way," she pointed vaguely, shaking her head. "Something''s wrong."


    "With him? With us?" I asked.


    "One of the two, I presume," said Moon from the back.


    "With...with my connection." She batted at the side of her head like she was trying to shake water out of her ears. "Something''s wrong."


    "What kind of wrong?" Cosette asked in my ear. "Chariot, if your code-X is malfunctioning--"


    "She''s not malfunctioning," I barked back, as Saga started throwing thrashing glances around her as though seeing ghosts. "She''s fine! You''re fine, Saga."


    "I don''t--aagh!" She held her head, as did we all at the sudden feedback. It felt like a whip crack inside me. Inside my head.


    "Fucking God, damn it all, Saga! I am trying to fly!" Karu screamed.


    I unbuckled and stumbled towards Saga, when I froze on the spot. I swallowed hard, and could only share a glance with AEGIS to make sure I wasn''t just...seeing this.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    As hovering right there in the door to the VTOL, there he was. His clothes rippled around him in whatever force held him up, what was probably once jeans and a flannel shirt, but his sleeves and legs were caked with almost-black gore, nearly an inch thick on his hands. It was dried, layered and flakey, and did not carry the smell of death, but the sight of it...well it looked like he spent his time literally ripping out people''s hearts.


    His hair was relatively neatly kept, like someone who got regular haircuts but had been a few months, and it was windswept and brown. He had the startings of a tangled beard, and close-drawn lips.


    But it was his eyes that held me, even more than the caked gore on his hands. They seemed to flicker, more than the stable lighting inside the VTOL or the passing landscape would merit. Like there was something trapped in them, struggling constantly to get out. Something both lighting and darkening them.


    Saga thrashed in her seat and AEGIS unbuckled and shot across the cabin to hold her and check on her. She wasn''t so keenly in our minds anymore, she was shutting off or...being shut off, and her random lashing felt more like something raking over my mind than through it.


    "Um, hi," I said to our visitor. I was no expert on aircraft, but we were flying pretty fucking fast, and he was just hovering in the door like it was nothing.


    He cocked his head at me, his face completely void of emotion. "Pleasantries?" he asked. "I''ve forgotten."


    "Yeah, I can...see that''s...kind of pointless," I said. I found myself swallowing hard again. It felt like there was too much air pressure in the room with him here. I might think that was a side-effect of his powers holding him up except...that there was another open door right behind me.


    "He''s there?" Lia squealed. "Athan, talk to him, you dummy!"


    "Right." I shook my head and tried to snap out of it. "Mr...Bareletti? Mr. Liev?" I asked. He stared at me blankly.


    "Who was that?" he asked, his voice like a whisper, but somehow straight in my ear.


    "Um. I said that."


    "Who was that?" he asked again, and in the words I suddenly felt his emotions flare. Not any specific emotion but...kind of...all of them. Like he was just expanding all the sudden, and yet his face changed not at all.


    "This is a bad idea," AEGIS whimpered from over Saga, who was glassy-eyed and out. "This was a bad, bad, bad idea."


    "Who...was that?" I asked, trying to understand, trying to block out AEGIS'' panic, because maybe if I could do that, I could block out my own. "Mr. Liev you mean? That''s you, isn''t it? You''re Liev Bareletti?"


    "I''m...Liev," he said. He looked at his hand and then touched his chest, dried blood flaking off his fingertips and vanishing in the wind. "Liev."


    "Yes. And we wanted to ask you something. Something very important." He didn''t respond, but those terrifying, flickering black eyes did fix on me again, so I continued. "Um...we don''t know why...you''re flying around killing people--"


    "I am justice."


    I stared at him, but no more seemed to be coming. "--but...um...I was...wondering if there was any way we could...convince you to...not?"


    "I am justice," he boomed, and I had to hold my head this time as the voice slammed into me. It felt like the wind just poured through the side of the ship with his words but...but my body didn''t move at all somehow.


    "What does that mean?" I asked, realizing I was shouting.


    "I am not Liev. I am Justice." Again, like a punch to the head. But after this, he paused. He looked around, as though in thought. "I am...Justice. I destroy the unjust. Liars and parasites."


    "Great, really. I''m all for that. Ask anyone, I don''t lie. I absolutely suck at it. Uh, not...not that I suck like a parasite or anything. Not one of those either."


    He didn''t respond but I''d earned his gaze again. I swallowed and realized, I really did have to just keep talking, even if my brain froze, because otherwise I might just say nothing ever again and get lost in the nightmares in his eyes.


    "Um. Yes. Bad people...we''ve killed many of them ourselves. We try to do good, too. Try to uphold justice, yeah? But the thing is...your form of justice...it''s hurting a lot of innocent people as well. The XPCA--"


    "Are corrupt."


    I held myself. It wasn''t like he was a code-X assaulting my mind. It was like...it was like seeing inside the sun somehow. Hearing him, when he spoke like that, it was hearing something which was too intense for a mind. Not loud, just...beyond. It hurt a hell of a lot, and glancing back, I noticed Saga with her eyes rolled back and drool seeping from her mouth, completely unresponsive to AEGIS. If just hearing his thoughts hurt like this¡­


    "AEGIS, unstrap her and both of you jump. She won''t survive with him."


    "Jump?" she echoed.


    "Land on her if you have to. Just get her out of here. I don''t know that she repairs brain damage. Not...of the psychological sort. Go!"


    She gave me one decisive nod and undid the harness. "Don''t do anything stupid, Athan. I will kill you when I get back if you do."


    "Love you too. Go!"


    She jumped, and I was reminded of how fast we were going by how quickly she vanished behind us.


    Somehow, Saga safe let me breathe a little easier. Until I turned back and met those eyes again.


    "The XPCA are corrupt. And believe me, we''re working on that. The last two directors...I''m not trying to brag I''m...this is the justice I''m talking about. But we were the ones who...uh...deposed them. They were corrupt and we cleaned up. But...even if they are corrupt, they still do good. They still do something hugely important, they protect people, and more critically, they make people feel protected."


    Again, he said nothing. It was nothing like when Moon did that. Hers always seemed a pensive pause. This was just...like...yelling at a swarm of hornets and waiting for them to do anything to indicate they understood. Except he fucking could understand. He was standing...well...floating right there, all human-looking and human-sounding, speaking English just like me.


    Minus the blood caked on him. And the deafening, blinding voice. And the unmoving face. And those fucking eyes--


    "Um, so...can you...I don''t know, can you be more sneaky when you kill people? Can you like...take out your targets without creating a huge panic? The problem really is that you''re so visible that the public--"


    "Attack from the shadows?" he asked.


    "Yes. That. Shadows and subterfuge and--"


    "Do you do these things?"


    I was about to say yes when Lia screamed in my ear. "SAY NO. ATHAN SAY NO. SAY NO RIGHT NOW."


    "...no?"


    I''d say his face relaxed except it hadn''t changed at all. Nothing had changed, and yet I felt as though the spectre of death had just passed right in front of me. He said nothing to confirm it of course, as I just swallowed hard and tried to stop sweating at an inexplicable chill.


    "Heads up everyone," Karu said, before I could put together some other way of phrasing that this guy might get. "Military''s coming up on us."


    "On us how?" I asked.


    "Not entirely certain, lest I would have evaded it," she said with some frustration. "Some concealed SAMs, it would seem. A trap for our new friend, I presume."


    "Nothing from XPCA," Cosette added with obvious alarm.


    "SAMs?" Lia echoed. "Missiles? Missiles? After my brother?"


    I leaned forward, at the risk of getting closer to the man, and sure enough, in our wake I could see the white trails of missiles curving inescapably towards us from far away and on the ground. They were trailing, but gaining. The cockpit blared with warnings.


    "From the shadows," Justice said, staring at me. "You strike. Liar."


    "No, they''re not with us," I shouted. "They''re shooting at us!"


    "Liar and parasite. I am Justice."


    Whatever I''d felt when he spoke, when he acted, it was like the gates holding that back were thrown all the way open. Despite having just last week stood in the presence of a god, this was the first time I felt like I''d experienced one. My swords came out by reflex, but even as they did, I knew they were pointless. I was stumbling backwards, in slow-motion it felt like, any step I could take away from him was a fraction of a second that divine wrath wouldn''t incinerate me.


    I saw Tem scream without hearing her. Moon''s book flew across the cabin as she struggled to unbuckle herself and rise. I could hear the confused crackle in comms as Karu, Lia, Whitney, Cosette, and AEGIS didn''t quite yet know what was going on.


    Justice turned and one missile chasing us was cleaved into six unequal parts, lengthwise. Pieces of it tumbled and exploded in the air, looking like toothpicks splintering. The second one just disappeared, a hole in space ripped where it had once been, and only a void beyond it.


    And then all of that, all of them, I saw as though from a distance, as though through a window which was shrinking. Another hole in space, except I was looking into space from the wrong end. There was just blackness here, and winds which cut like fire, and in the distance, a tiny speck which used to be so close and so massive, that it had contained my whole world.


    There was no air here, either. So that when I tried to breathe, finally separated from Justice, even if it was by death, I felt and found nothing. My lungs were empty, and I drifted, ungainly, painfully, slowly.


    Just me and this missile drifting in an empty, starless void, slower than I thought possible. Colder than nothing should have been. My breathlessness, inexplicably, somehow not the death of me yet. It was cold, yet the wind burned.


    It made very little sense, and that just...frustrated me. Because that''s not how I''d wanted to die. Despite my efforts, that was something I''d given a lot of thought to since turning Exhuman, and my opinion of it had ever-gradually shifted from some inglorious and pointless insignificance to possibly being a martyr to maybe being able to achieve something with my life, and my death being the keystone of it all. Some blaze of glory that I couldn''t live through but could expend everything in the pursuit of. Something lofty, like universal rights for all, or bringing understanding or protecting someone I loved.


    And now we were back to this. Inglorious and pointless and insignificant. Lost in the void, where I tumbled in slow-motion, where my breath held longer than it should have. Next to a live missile, still blazing away and going nowhere.


    AEGIS would have a hard time coming here to kill me. But she wouldn''t need to spend the trouble. I felt the first pangs of my empty lungs burning, my instincts to draw breath and to hold my breath against the alien vacuum beginning to rise in the form of panic, as my labored thoughts and projections ceded to my stupid, freaked-out lizard brain, and death became less of a contemplation and more of a thing staring me in the face.


    I''d really done it now. Should have listened to everyone. I knew this guy was danger, but I didn''t think he was literally kill-you-with-a-thought dangerous. Didn''t even know he could shove you into a black void with his mind alone, though Cosette said that many of his attacks left behind little black-hole riftlets that never seemed to close ever again. Just another fuck-up in the life of Athan Ashton, to skip the wrong detail and think I could achieve too much.


    Last one, though, I thought with a grim smile. Learned my lesson good this time.


    I closed my eyes and tried to shove down the panic welling up. I''d always heard that suffocation...or drowning, more specifically, was actually kind of a peaceful way to go. I guess once you got past the desperation of not being able to breath and actually reached the oxygen deprivation part, you just went out like sleeping.


    I guess whoever came up with that never dealt with this time dilation or whatever it was, because it''d been minutes now and I still wasn''t suffocated, or breathing, or finished panicking about those two. It was starting to hurt a lot, and my head was getting foggy.


    And then it hit me, a serene weightlessness. A welcoming stupidity. Pain became distant and less distracting. It did feel like falling asleep. What do you know?


    I didn''t mind spending the next few minutes like that. Floating. Drifting. Just empty blackness and me, calm and still and sleeping for all eternity. Next to that missile. And that blazing light. The one attached to what looked like an exosuit. The glare of it shined in my eyes, and I was irritated with them for a minute, wondering just who the hell was trying to ruin my death here? I''d just gotten comfortable.


    Even though things were getting lighter, they were also getting darker, and it was just when blackness was falling all around me that I felt an unfamiliar lurch, and then the nostalgic embrace of gravity punched me in the gut, my face hitting the floor just as consciousness left me.

 389. 2252, Unknown time. The Void. Athan.

    I woke up.


    This was a bit of a surprise to me, and I laid there for a while, utterly still, eyes closed, trying to figure out if there''d been some kind of mistake and I''d somehow done something other than waking up after all. My mind...wasn''t racing exactly, more sort of slogging through a painful, sticky marsh of dimly-remembered events.


    Didn''t help that my head hurt so, so much. The lights through my eyelids seemed to stab into my skull.


    But I did remember being ready to die. That wasn''t a sensation one quickly forgot, no matter how disoriented their last...however long that had been. It felt like hours, somehow. But that made no sense. I was going by suffocation, wasn''t I? I was pretty fit, but hours was still a teensy bit beyond my grasp.


    I tried to put it all together but things just didn''t make sense. There was a missile. It''d been burning and sorta...flying next to me the whole time? Which meant I was either floating through the air as fast as a flying missile, or it was the world''s slowest one. And, that put another harpoon in my recollection of it taking hours -- I remembered the missile clearly, it was a medium-range surface-to-air missile. It wouldn''t have fuel to fly for more than a couple minutes.


    Yet no matter how little sense it made, the memory wouldn''t quit. I''d spent hours, slowly suffocating, moving from confusion to panic to incomprehension to acceptance. And here I was, still at acceptance. If it''d been a few seconds, I would almost certainly still be somewhere between confusion and panic, yeah?


    Yeah.


    So we had that all cleared up. It was pretty obvious to me by now that I knew nothing and that was pretty much it. Good talk.


    Gingerly, I opened one eye to see if taking in my surroundings would help. I spent a few minutes carefully scrutinizing the area, puzzling out what I was seeing and what it all meant, what context it could give to the greater dilemma playing out in my mind. And by the end of it, I had reached the same conclusion again.


    Closed my eyes, shut it down. I knew nothing. Good night.


    I was determined to ignore what I saw out there because it confirmed what I felt like I already knew, that something in my head was terribly, terribly wrong.


    Or, charitably, something outside was terribly, terribly wrong. I guess I could work with that. Seemed to me there was an explanation for that which I''d heard before, though I couldn''t say I believed in it. Facing it as my new reality was kind of...unexpected. But hey.


    I opened my eyes again and wondered if I''d actually not woken up, and this was what hell looked like. Not exactly what I expected, to be honest, but it sure as shit wasn''t Earth.


    The floor under me was aggressively, relentlessly flat. Sort of unnervingly so, in a way I didn''t understand. It was like, no matter how I looked at it, I knew that it would stretch, perfectly horizontally, straight out to infinity. The horizon line of this shit wouldn''t even be as flat as it was.


    Not that there was one, because it ended only a few feet from me, as though the ink had just run out of whatever cosmic printer had been creating the stuff. It just faded away, more and more transparent until there was no floor, and sort of a semi-transparent geometric, almost-crystalline mess in between. How I could determine it''s impressive flatness from just this, I didn''t know.


    And then there were walls. Most of them were simple, floating metal bars, just the suggestion of walls, but at the same time, fairly impassible looking. Like a fence more than a wall maybe. It was through those that I saw the flooring fading out to nothing. It was also through those that I saw the pipes, conduits, lines, tubes, and cables. Like someone had taken all the wiring and plumbing of a house and just hung ''em up in the air, threading in and out of the fence-walls.


    To say nothing of the machines they connected. Brass. Lacquer. Polished wood. Golden things which spun, valves and gauges which flickered and bounced across value ranges completely unlabelled and unfathomable.


    Oh, and while I was certainly anchored to the floor with what felt like perfectly ordinary gravity, a lot of these machines, pipes, cables, tubes, conduits, lines, and walls...they apparently were not. They drifted and bounced as though in zero-G, their hookups tethering them like leashes. Everywhere I looked, I found more and more impossible and bizarre things until my mind was completely satisfied that it had totally lost it.


    And I just closed my eyes and sort of quietly pondered. Maybe, if this was hell, I was like, in Satan''s boiler room or something. Hell was pretty hot, it''d make sense for him to...I dunno, run a TV off that latent energy or something. He probably got pretty bored dealing with the damned all day.


    It was sad that this is what made the most sense to me at the time, but I think my mistake was in trying to make sense at all. It was obvious that sense and this place ran in different circles. I should just go crazy, and then it''d all be alright.


    I smirked to myself as I sat up, despite the pounding in my head. When faced with something contrary to our reality, we either accept it or look away. Going crazy probably counted as the latter.


    "Oh, you''re up," a voice said, and I slowly, slowly turned my head to look in his direction. Sounded like a him, anyway, though in more of a backwards-upwards direction, which wasn''t where ''him''s typically hung out. But there he was, once I got over the aching making my vision swim with every time my blood pounded in my skull, above and behind me.


    And by above, I mean literally standing on the ceiling. Perfectly ordinary-looking guy. Opposite gravity. Pushed his glasses up his nose just to show me how upside-down didn''t work. Sure, why not.


    I shivered. In everything else I''d taken in, I hadn''t realized how cold it was out here.


    He walked towards a doorway on the ceiling, and, upon passing through it, emerged through a door on my floor. I blinked at him, wondering a) how the hell that worked and b) how he''d crossed the fifty or so feet between the ceiling and floor in a single step.


    And then mentally slapped myself again. I had to stop wondering at things. This made no sense, and I needed to accept that, or I really would go crazy.


    "Hi," I said, rising, and holding my head. "Ow."


    "Sorry," he apologized, and it sounded genuine somehow. He had a tablet in his hands which he clipped to a magnet on his waist, and a number of gadget-looking things on his wrists and ankles. Made me think of Karu a bit, how she liked to pack as much gear as she could into hanging off of her body. But while hers were obviously weapons or military-themed, his were more¡­


    Well, some were unknowable. Many looked like just plain white boxes or panels, like they were supposed to be mounts for something or...or just buttons that existed for...I didn''t know. I really had to stop wildly speculating.


    But hey, he was wearing flannel and a lab coat. That was pretty normal.


    "What are you apologizing for?" I asked.


    "For your head injury. We could have gotten to you faster but...well...Aesa didn''t think it was a priority. She wanted to secure the missile first. And I know why," he added, his voice pivoting from apologetic to defensive. "Rocket fuel doesn''t just show up on your doorstep every day. And she knew you''d survive...and was right obviously¡­" He trailed off. "But, sorry."


    "Uh. Thanks."


    At no point did his explanation actually clear anything up, but I did get that there was more than one of them, and they had picked up the missile, and me. Of course, I didn''t know where the missile and I had been, or where we were now. So that seemed like a good question to start with.


    "Um, hard to say exactly," he said, checking a device on his wrist. "I could give you the serial dimension orientation, but that''s pretty arbitrary. I could also tell you where in space but...again...I kinda doubt that your position in relation to the nearest pulsars would do much for you."


    "So we''re in space," I asked.


    "Not...exactly, no. Space is what we might call it...if we were still in the same reality as Earth?"


    "So we''re in a different reality."


    "...ah...no, not that either. Though, actually...let''s just go with yes. Sure. Close enough."


    "Okay. What do you call it?"


    "A probability realm, maybe? I''m not exactly sure myself. We don''t do a lot of talking. And I don''t have to be an expert on it to live in it. Aesa understands it all, I think, but..."


    I waited for him to trail back on again, but he didn''t. "So, Aesa''s the one who runs everything here, then?"


    "Oh yes. Built the whole place. She''s been trying to get it mobile for months now, but I think even she''s reached her limits."The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "It."


    "Yes. It. This. Where you currently stand."


    "She built this?"


    "Yes."


    "This whole¡­" I looked around.


    "Yes."


    "Out of what?"


    He shrugged. "Molecules. Cosmic radiation converted into mass. The occasional stop by Earth when nobody''s looking."


    "How does it...float...like that?" I asked, pointing at one of the machines now slightly spinning in the air.


    "Oh. She built everything, even the gravity. I think she finds it convenient to have it going opposite ways sometimes. More things in the same room, with fewer need for portals."


    I looked around again. I guess that made sense. Relative to everything else, anyway. I mean, it made zero sense, but that just kinda showed where everything else was. I decided to take a gamble and ask him another question.


    "So...I''m not dead."


    He smiled and laughed a little. "No, I''m afraid not. You were awfully close however. You were lucky to be stranded in such a slow and calm section of the void. Most of it would kill you instantly. Though you really should be dead, the radiation was rather intense, but you''ve not a burn or Geiger tick on you. You came from Earth, I assume?"


    "Is there somewhere else I could come from?"


    He shrugged. "Out here, can never be too sure. And with luck, your and my understanding of ''Earth'' is the same, but you''ve already been lucky once, so--"


    "Wait. The same? Meaning...possibly not the same? Meaning more than one Earth?"


    "Well, not that we''ve encountered. But statistically, it''s a certainty. Maybe just not around here, since we''re still...well...again, hard to describe in terms even I understand but...let''s just say this stretch of space is ''close'' to Earth. It makes sense you wouldn''t have gone too far. Hell, we don''t go too far."


    I just kind of boggled at him for a minute. How casually he could just talk about there being multiple copies of Earth with someone he''d just met. I guess that was probably the least interesting thing in the world, to someone who''s floating space-home had multiple sets of gravity and portals in it. Did he even know how ridiculous he seemed to a normal person?


    And wait, when did I start to qualify as a normal person again?


    I also realized, neither of us knew each other''s names, and if he was to be believed -- and this was by far the least unbelievable part of his story -- he''d saved my life.


    "Um, so I''m Athan." I extended a hand, which he took and shook warmly. "Thanks for saving me, I think."


    "Happy to do it. I''m Aledonis. Call me Al...and as I''ve mentioned, the other one is Aesa. She''s working now, but if you stay a while longer, you can meet her, too. She probably won''t be...thrilled...to have you aboard but¡­" he frowned. "Say, do you have any idea how you wound up here?"


    I shook my head, and then held it until my blood calmed down. "Ow. Uh, no. I was just...I don''t remember, things are such a mess in my head right now. I was...we were flying in a VTOL...I was talking to someone...that was Tem, I think¡­"


    "Hmm," he said. "Just asking because, well, you''re not the first we''ve found of late. Someone or something has started dumping people and things into the void. I was hoping you might have a clue."


    "Others?" I asked.


    "Most died," he said, his frown deepening. "But one or two lived...for a time. One was so badly...um...reconfigured, we had to euthanize him. It was horrid. But the other survived, we only sent him back a few days ago. Nice fellow. Lawyer."


    Lawyer. The last word tripped memories which had been struggling to bubble up.


    I blinked as the recent events lingered at the edges of the blackout I''d had. "God, it''s...kinda...coming back. Exhuman. He kept saying...I am Justice."


    "He''s...Justice? Ominous." Al scratched his beard thoughtfully. Suddenly he stood up, as though hearing a dog whistle. "Sorry Athan, I''ve gotta skip off here, Aesa''s calling. Um, feel free to rest here, or follow along--"


    "I''ll come."


    "You sure? No rush. It''ll be boring."


    "No, it''s cool. I need to...get my head straight."


    He smiled warmly. "Well this isn''t going to help with that at all, but here we go anyway."


    He tapped a few buttons on his wrist and then I watched as a sky-blue egg, the edges of which seemed to be as solid as glass but as insubstantial as mist, like the edge of a rainbow on a waterfall, wrapped itself around him from the bottom. It wasn''t until more entered my vision that I realized one had appeared under me as well, and I held my breath involuntarily as the shimmering, radiant blue consumed me.


    Felt like nothing. Just the cold air of this place. I blinked a few times.


    And then, as though I''d been taken somewhere else by Rito, it seemed the whole world was different around me. Another room, I figured out quickly. Darker here, more metal on the floor, more...uh...floating jellyfish-things swimming outside the walls. Exosuits, and a woman with a flaming red ponytail working on them.


    "Number nine driver. Number two circuit. Fourteen two-point-two-two millimeter tri-head bolts. Six inches by twenty-two inches of synthetic weave. Eighty-two--"


    She continued on, and Al began frantically scribbling himself notes on the tablet while rushing around the room, several times disappearing and reappearing on the walls or ceiling, or somewhere else entirely, possibly, while she just...kept going, her voice as flat and nonplussed as a computer. I waited several minutes for her to finish, and though Al kept dumping the parts she asked for on a metal cart near her, she seemed breathless as she went on.


    Once the materials he''d brought reached some unknown critical mass, she began taking them and working, continuing her list all the while. At some point while she worked, he''d paused to put a jacket on her, her arms slipping through the sleeves without her work slowing in the least.


    It was kind of insane. Like, you''d think that between AEGIS and Whitney working on computers and machines, or seeing Karu handling her weapons for maintenance and care, or hell, Lia''s animation when she was on the phone with a friend, you''d think this wouldn''t have been such a spectacle for me. But somehow, she just kept talking and working all at once, taking the parts exactly needed, putting them exactly in the needed places. I got in closer to watch, all memory of the pain in my head vanishing as I was captivated by the spectacle.


    Her hands moved with precision and grace, never dropping a screw, never misaligning a driver, never struggling to press a component into place. And these components, they weren''t like anything I''d ever seen. They were hand-made, each of them. So were the screws, I realized. So were the bolts, and plates, everything.


    And I remembered what Al had just told me when I asked what she''d made this place out of. ''Molecules. Cosmic radiation converted into mass.'' Somehow I''d understood that to mean the crazy sci-fi bullshit of this place was, not every fucking bolt.


    I''d be lying if I said I wasn''t a little breathless. I''d been working alongside Whitney for long enough to develop an appreciation for craftsmanship and engineering, but this was just...well...perfect, almost. Just watching her work, seeing every part put into place and then secured with such precision, without a single wasted effort or stray movement, it was art. It made my body have a very literal visceral reaction I didn''t quite understand. I found myself tense when she reached for something new, my stomach flipping when she finished with one part and I waited to see what would happen next. My mind burned electric with trying to understand what each piece was, what each meant, what the larger picture of this unbelievable engineering feat was that was unfolding in front of me.


    There was a clang as she smacked a wrench into the chestplate and wheeled on me.


    "Can you fucking not," she asked, her voice oozing revulsion.


    "C-c-can I...what?" I stammered.


    "Can you fucking not stand there mouth-breathing all over me like I''m some piece of meat for you to drool over?"


    I tried to stammer a reply but my brain was stuck on engineering mode. I didn''t understand her words, because I was an idiot. When I came here, I''d thought it hell. In watching, I''d somehow transcended to heaven. And now she was crashing me face-first into Earth.


    "Oh, you''re up," Al said, reentering the room through a sky-blue portal. "Aesa, please meet Athan, our guest."


    "Ugh," she said, flipping her hair and throwing her wrench onto the metal cart, sending the carefully-lined up parts into disarray. My heart broke at seeing them go flying, and I took an involuntary step forward to bend down and pick up a stray screw before they lost it somewhere.


    I met her gaze while rising, and wasn''t sure I''d ever seen so much disgust in one place.


    "Ugh," she repeated. "What are you standing there for? You think I owe you something because you picked up one of my pieces? Are you one of those white knights, who thinks every lady''s just waiting to be saved from their own life?"


    "W-no, I...just--"


    "Let me be clear," she said, digging in her collar. I thought she was reaching for something in her cleavage, and that just made me even more confused, but instead she fished out a necklace with a ring hanging off of it. "I''m engaged. To Al. So that screw," she nodded towards the one trembling in my fingertips "is the only one you''re gonna get from me."


    I stood there, flummoxed and idiotic as she strode off, banging open a fridge, taking something, and then banging it shut again, before disappearing through a portal.


    "She''s really sweet once you get to know her," Al apologized. "She''s just hungry. She''s always crabby when she comes out of it. And um, you know. Women in engineering tend to face...a lot of...less-than-pleasant guys."


    "It''s cool," I said, putting the screw down, and once again picking up that I didn''t understand the least thing here. "Whatever she thinks of me, the work she''s doing here is just...wow. I have nothing but the highest respect for her, for that."


    "She''ll actually probably really like hearing that. Erm, once she...warms up a little more."


    "To me?"


    "...just in general. She''s got a...temperature-dependent personality. It''s...complicated."


    I sighed. "Yeah it seems everything here is. Hey look, Al...I appreciate you saving me, and believe me, I just want to spend...well, a long time looking around and seeing everything...but I''m remembering that when I left Earth, it wasn''t really in a good place. I think...I need to like...make a call or something and let them know I''m okay. Is there anywhere I can do that?"


    He shook his head. "No. We can drop you off, but that''s about it. And that''s only when we converge with that probability, which Aesa''s probably not going to want to do.


    He jolted upright and checked his tablet with a frown. "Or...she wants to do it as soon as possible to get you out of here." He glanced up at me. "Lovely, accommodating girl, she is."


    "Maybe I should. When would that be?"


    "In a few hours. Maybe you''d like to join us for a meal until then?"


    I realized I was starving. "Um, sure. If it''s not too much trouble. Do you have...food¡­like...?


    He laughed. "Yes, we have Earth food. One of the things we do have to swing by the planet to get. There was one time I thawed her out and she went on a rampage for fifteen minutes because we owned not a speck of chocolate in the whole place. Never made that mistake again."


    "I can imagine. So um, do we eat here or¡­?"


    "Let''s give you and she another shot. I think you got off on the wrong foot." He smiled genially and...well...I can''t say I disagreed with his conclusion, though I wasn''t sure I was setting myself up for anything but a second wrong foot. But either way, another few hours and I''d be gone, so why not.


    We set foot through the portal she''d disappeared into and into yet another realm of nonsense we went.

 390. 2252, Earlier that day. Somewhere over Southeastern Louisiana. Tem.

    I was not certain what I was supposed to think, or say, or do, as Chariot talked to the man floating in the VTOL''s door. They terrified me, and I think he tried his best but thought they terrified Chariot, too. I was not sure there was anything for me to do, although, if there was, I thought Chariot would tell me.


    So I hid. And I waited, and tried not to mess anything up. I only half-heard their conversation though, even though it was crystal-clear over comms, but because I was really very distracted.


    I was distracted before, but even more after Chariot and I talked. I had not wanted to tell him, for fear that he would feel sad or betrayed. It felt shameful that he spent so much time and effort on me, and I could tell him, to his face, that he had done it worse than his enemy did.


    Our enemy did, I corrected myself. An enemy of Chariot''s was an enemy of mine. I should have fried him, just to be sure.


    But I had told him, and now it gnawed at me like he''d read my diary. Chariot always saw right through me...but here he had only known something to be wrong. The one time he had not, because I had wanted to keep it secret, and I should have known better. He was too much smarter than me for me to hide anything. As I sat, hidden, as they talked and I tried not to look at the scary eyes or blood on his hands, I felt myself flush with shame.


    I was bad. I should be grateful to Chariot, not lying to him. I was awful. I was garbage.


    He would know that but would not punish me, because he was so kind. It was one reason I loved him so.


    I was startled back to life by the sudden flashes of light and sirens of the VTOL warning us of something. I tried to blink back my tears of self-pity and clear my head and listen to what people were saying.


    "From the shadows, you strike. Liar," the man said.


    "No, they''re not with us!" Chariot shouted. "They''re shooting at us!"


    Who was they? Who was shooting at us? I did not understand. Chariot was in danger and I was being useless and spacey and he was right. Earlier he said I had been spacier, and that was a warning. I hadn''t listened. I was useless and didn''t listen!


    "Liar and parasite. I am Justice."


    Chariot stumbled backwards, and I felt like my head suddenly got even dumber. Something big and invisible pushed out of the man, but not invisible like anything I saw or did. It was like when we had swim day, and the girls would hold me underwater. I could not move, I could not breathe. Even Chariot seemed to only barely stay on his feet.


    And with courage, his blades came out. I realized, I should be helping. I should be helping, right? I looked around and saw nobody else helping. Somehow, AEGIS and Saga weren''t even here anymore. Where had they gone? I was lost again.


    Suddenly, he disappeared, and I was more than lost. There was what looked like a black little triangle in the air and it ate Chariot up, and then...it flew backwards, eating a hole in the back of the VTOL as it flew between Moon and me. I screamed.


    Moon threw her book to the side and grabbed my face from behind. I did not know what to do, but she did. She appeared on me, and she didn''t even hesitate to shoot a laser right through the door where the man had been floating.


    She was right. I was being stupid again. I stopped screaming, and I shot through the door too. There was so much light, I had to dim how my eyes saw to keep looking through it.


    But through it, I could see we missed. The man was gone. He''d told Chariot that he was a parasite, and then he left. He called Chariot a parasite. And then left. And I didn''t even fry him afterwards. I felt a sob rising in my chest, but I didn''t want to be sad, I wanted to be angry. I hated him, the flying man. And I hated myself.


    The beam from me glowed twice as bright, until the whole side of the VTOL crackled nearby. The metal sizzled and twisted, Karu shouted, and Moon yelled in my head and on my shoulder at me.


    I did not know where the man went, but if I saw him, I wanted him to feel my anger. I wanted his blood to pour like tears from his eyes until his body was withered and dry. I wanted him to know the heat of being locked in a locker on a summer''s day, and feel as dry and helpless and stupid as I did. He hurt Chariot. The one person who treated me like anything more...more than nothing.


    Everyone was screaming at me but I couldn''t hear them. The beam grew wider. I felt Moon in my head, fighting me for control over myself. I wanted to turn the beam on her body and let her feel my anger, too. She would not feel so smart if she was erased like dust in a storm. She would have a moment of absolute stupidity, where she realized she, too, could make mistakes like Tem always did.


    My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. I heard my teeth cracking. The skin was coming off my fingers where they were too close to the light. The pain just made me want to turn it even brighter. Even if I couldn''t see him and kill him, even if he''d already run away and taken Chariot, I could show him how brightly he would burn. He could look, and see, and be afraid. He should be afraid, not me.


    A corner of my mind nagged at me, pulled into my head by Moon clawing at it. It said, Chariot is gone, and it''s too late. There is nothing you can do. Stop hurting people.


    If I turned the heat up more, the air burned around my ears, and I couldn''t hear that thought anymore, I thought. The entire side of the ship was white instead of black now, from the heat. The horizon outside was not steady, and I felt it in my guts as Karu flailed at the controls. Everyone screamed. Everyone was falling. Everyone was a stupid and scared as I was.


    It didn''t matter. Chariot was gone. He was the only one.


    But the voice spoke again, and I couldn''t tune it out. I was already burning as brightly as I could, but no amount of heat or fire or pain would make it go away. It wanted to break me and see me cry. I didn''t want to be sad.


    But the words...I...they were right, weren''t they?


    If Chariot was the only one...what was Ichiro?


    I didn''t know. I wasn''t supposed to have to know. Chariot was supposed to help me with these things. He was supposed to mean I didn''t have to think or decide anymore. I needed him, and he was gone.


    But he was gone before. I survived. Ichiro took care of me, and he hated me. Anyone could do it. Everyone would.


    But Chariot wasn''t anyone, or everyone. He was special. He was important!


    He was just an idiot like me, and I knew it.


    The beam fell away despite myself. It was too hard to focus on with everything else roaring in my head. The second it turned off, it was like the volume turned up on everyone else. Everyone was screaming. Cosette was yelling orders at me, Moon was clawing through my thoughts, AEGIS was shouting on comms and Karu was shouting out problems and statuses from the pilot''s seat, half-standing to get away from the heat of the wall next to her and the damage I''d caused.


    But none of it was Chariot. None of it was even for Chariot. It was all because of things I''d done. He was gone, and because I was so stupid, all of his very smart and capable friends were worried about me instead of him now. I was so disgusting, I shouldn''t even be alive.


    Except if I listened closely. As everyone panicked and struggled, I heard a voice. It sounded...somehow...like it was calling for me. Even though it was not, because that was not who they were calling out to.


    "Athan, come in. Athan, where are you bro? Athan...do you copy? Athan? Athan¡­?"


    Lia sounded scared, but calm. Her voice was tense, like every time she said his name, every time she asked, it hurt her. But she kept right on being hurt, because unlike me, she was strong, she could endure the hurt, as long as she needed to, because if she didn''t, Chariot would be gone.


    I felt sick. Not only had I ruined everything, not only had I missed frying the man and damaged the ship, not only was I making everyone panic...but I''d also given up on him. That fast, the first thing that had hit my mind when I saw him gobbled up by the dark triangle was Chariot is gone. I hadn''t hesitated or questioned or struggled like Lia was doing.


    I was just that ready to give up on him, I guess. And that thought made me feel so repulsive and small, I wanted to laser myself on the spot and scour this selfish, stupid, worthless girl from the world. Maybe if I found the man again, I could explain to him that Chariot was good and patient and smart and kind, and it was me who was the parasite, and somehow he could switch which one of us died.


    "By all the corgis in creation," Moon breathed in my ear and mind. "Would you give it a rest?"


    I slumped further in my seat, hiding myself and trying not to look at the others surveying damage and making plans. I should have stayed hidden. I should have done nothing.


    "Yeah, maybe you should have," she said. "But do you know how appallingly unpleasant it is to be bonded to you when half of your thoughts are how valueless you are?"


    I didn''t answer. I didn''t want to answer her. She was mean in a way, but a very smart way which was usually right. She was not like Chariot, who was always looking out for me. She was always looking out for...something more. Which was smart of her, but also mean at the same time.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "You know I can still feel your every thought, right? Even if you don''t want to respond, you still do. You thought, ''I screwed up everything''. And maybe you did, on a level. But you saw that man, ''Justice'', the same as we did. He was not to be trifled with. And Athan trifled away."


    My breath caught as I felt her words sink in. She was blaming Chariot? For his own death?


    "Calm down," she said, and some trick of the mind very nearly made me do it. "Blame is pointless, get that through your head. That''s what I mean when I say it''s appalling in here. You spend half your time blaming yourself. Imagine what you could get done if you just fixed it instead."


    "I can''t fix it," I shouted at her. "Chariot is gone."


    "Gone isn''t the same thing as dead."


    "You think?" Cosette asked, cutting in. "He''s utterly vanished to all my readings. ''Bout the same as I''d expect from someone getting in the way of Tem''s laser. Not to insinuate that she had anything to do with that...just a basis of comparison."


    "I believe," Moon said, and there was an uncustomary note of emotion in her when she did.


    We lurched suddenly and there was a groan as the VTOL swung to a halt in the sky, only a few feet off the ground. We stayed there for a few seconds, before gently, Karu put it down.


    And then, once it was down and the fans were slowing and the roar of the engines and wind were gone, Karu unbuckled with quick, deliberate motions and spun around her chair to advance right towards me. She stopped, standing in front of me, staring right at me with her visor which I knew could see me even now.


    And then my vision popped and I felt like I passed through a wave of blackness as she pounded the side of my head with an armored fist.


    "Ow, damn," Moon said flatly.


    "If you do not wish to share in the punishment, leave the punished," Karu spat.


    "I just finished explaining to her how laying blame is a waste of time." Moon crossed her copy of my arms in a way much better than I''d ever done it. She was floating above me, half off my shoulders so she was eye-level with Karu. Both of them looked scary in their own ways.


    "I disagree," Karu said, and again, I felt pain and stars, this time on the other side. I could not hold my head up anymore and felt myself almost sliding to the floor, only kept in my seat by the harness.


    "What the fuck. Is Karu beating you guys in there?" Cosette asked.


    "This little demon has imperiled us for the last time," Karu answered. "Ashton is too patient with her constant failings, and it has now cost us dearly. In his absence, I will be assuming the role of disciplinarian, one she''s lacked badly her entire tenure."


    She struck again, this time doubling me over in the chest. In the spots which flashed in my eyes, I thought she looked like my mother for a moment. What a strange time to have a recollection...though I guess the connection was obvious.


    "Karu, stop," Moon growled, putting herself between us now. "You''re no better than she, now."


    "Oh, my apologies. Am I destroying our only vehicle of escape? Am I imperiling the lives of all on the mission? Is my constant and flagrant disregard for naught but shoving my tongue up Ashton''s ass getting in the way?"


    She tried to throw another punch, but Moon got her arms up and inhaled sharply as the blow still landed brutally on them. Karu shook her head and then threw a second, faster, which snapped her head backwards.


    "Karu stop it!" I heard Whitney scream. "Stop fighting!"


    "You''re right," Moon said, her face still frightening in its calm, even with ghost blood dripping from her ghost nose. "You''re so, so much worse."


    "Oh?" Karu cocked her head. "I would love to hear this."


    "Tem''s an idiot, sure. Dangerous, impulsive, way too powerful for her own good. And don''t get me started on what it''s like being in her head," Moon said, her voice almost growly. "But she messed up on accident, because she''s undertrained and underprepared, and mental. Here you are, threatening us the same as she, and what is your excuse?"


    Karu stared at her a long moment over a stiff frown. And then her hands lashed out, harder and faster than before. One, two, three, and Moon was on the ground, rolling off my back, the echoed pain enough to drop me as well.


    "I do not believe in excuses," Karu said.


    "Would you two fucking stop?" AEGIS barked. "We have a real situation here, and I don''t give a shit what any of you think, we need to work on that, instead of...whatever the hell this is."


    Things went quiet for a moment, and, a little afraid she was dead, I struggled backwards to put Moon back in her own body where she''d be safe again. As I struggled, I could hear Lia somehow still calling for Athan.


    Moon inhaled sharply and jolted when she came to. Then unbuckled and stood to stare down Karu again.


    "What''s your problem?" she asked. "Do you honestly think punching people out is going to teach Tem a thing? She needs help, not more violence."


    "How can you say that as one who is, if possible, very nearly as disciplined as myself? Knowing the girl as you do, how can you doubt--"


    "ENOUGH," AEGIS barked, and even Lia went quiet for a moment. "Look, ladies, you might fucking loathe each other, and we might have lost the one guy keeping everyone together¡­" She paused, and I realized I couldn''t hear Lia anymore. "Um. For the moment. I''m sure he''s fine, that is. But that''s what we really need to work on. And confirm. That he''s alive."


    "Then I go," Karu said, stepping into the back and pulling her jetpack onto her armor.


    "Wait, without you, we''ll all be grounded," Moon said.


    "Then you will continue to be every bit as useless either way," Karu huffed, and before they could reply, there was a roar and streaks of blue plasma.


    "What a bitch," Cosette said.


    "I am still here on comms," Karu interjected.


    "Oh, I know. Doesn''t make you less of a bitch."


    "What we need," AEGIS stressed "is for someone to verify the area where Athan...fell out of the VTOL. Worst possible case scenario, he and ''Justice'' both vanished because...well...you heard the ugly guy, he thought Athan had a bone to pick. They might still be fighting back there somewhere. But if not, he''s still...there somewhere¡­"


    "I will find him," Karu said, her voice low but sure.


    "And um, Saga''s still out. I don''t think...I''ve ever seen her...out before," AEGIS added, with a hint of worry. "I''m no expert but shouldn''t she be...back up by now?"


    "Being in the presence of...are we calling him Justice or Liev?" Moon asked.


    "Whatever."


    "I suppose Justice when he is on-duty and Liev otherwise," she said. "That was joudan."


    "...what?" Whitney asked.


    "I cannot believe I miss Chariot already," Moon said with a tone of regret. "Regardless. Being in Justice''s presence seemed to cause Saga impossible pain. There was something in his mind that affected her. As loathe as I am to put myself at risk...I am not certain we have an alternative but for me to bond with her as well, and impersonally help her repel the trauma as best I am capable."


    "Well that sounds like a good plan," AEGIS said. "''Cept I''m over here and you''re over there. And I don''t think Karu''s in the mood to carry Saga and me."


    "You assess correctly. My priority is in locating Ashton, regardless."


    "Well that''s good...just making plans, anyway. It''s important we--"


    Whatever she said next was lost in an echoing boom that was filtered by the comms. It sounded like she just exploded.


    "...AEGIS?" Cosette asked. "AEGIS, report. That sounded like fucking artillery fire."


    "I''m here," AEGIS answered, but her voice was panting and heavy, and there were more sounds of explosions from her end. "Fucking, fuckity, fuck. Everything''s blowing up somehow. The military is here or something. I can''t even tell where the shots are coming from."


    In the distance we could hear them as well. I looked around, trying to figure out which way they were coming from, bending light as I could to see further from my seat.


    And then I saw something I didn''t expect and froze up for a second.


    But it was only a second. Moon was right, Chariot was right. I''d spent too much time today blaming myself and being useless and not paying attention. Moon was his friend and it was my responsibility to make sure she was safe. She would save Saga, and Saga would find Chariot, and everything would be okay.


    If I could just stay focused.


    I let loose and destroyed the invisible creeping agent with a white-hot beam, his scream disappearing into the rush of burning air. Moon was there at once, touching my cheek to bond with me.


    "What''s going on? Report!" Cosette barked.


    "Positive contact!" Karu shouted. "Air force VTOLs on rapid approach."


    "I found a recon!" I shouted, but it came out a lot more like a squeal than Karu''s.


    "Artillery for sure. Audio analysis indicates coastal bombardment," AEGIS said. "Anyone think this is a little more than a coincidence?"


    "The area''s full of troops of all branches, all looking for Liev," Cosette muttered. "This was a shit plan, and nobody would listen."


    "Um, just Athan wouldn''t, really," Whitney added.


    "Enemy VTOLs are engaging. Going hot!" Karu announced, before the whooshing salvo of micromissles launching filled my ears. I heard AEGIS panting as she ran. Moon was spinning around above me, but she was not nearly as good at picking out invisibles as I was, there were two or three more in the same area, and she had missed them completely.


    One I shot down. Another came right at us.


    "Not a recon." Moon said, as she caught it as it bounded into our ship''s door. "Those are shadow ops."


    Cosette swore. "Shit, guys, there''s...a lot headed your way. Whatever station tracked you and fired those SAMs, it reported positive your identities, and that Liev was just here. Basically every red-blooded American with a gun is coming to look for a fight."


    "We need to leave," Moon said.


    "We need to find Athan."


    "No soldier left behind."


    "But if you all die¡­" Whitney spoke slowly, like she didn''t have a second half of that thought.


    "There''s a chance...Liev might intercede and draw away some attention," Moon said. "But otherwise, this is plain suicide. We, as a group, have already attempted to battle the whole of the XPCA, without success. What hope do we have against combined arms?"


    "I am not leaving without Chariot," I said. "He would not leave us."


    "Okay...Moon, Tem...get to me then," AEGIS said. "If we can get Saga back up...we''ll have a chance. Karu...keep sweeping for Athan in between...blowing up VTOLs or whatever it is you''re doing. This is gonna suck."


    I wished I was stronger as both of me could only barely carry Moon''s body. She thought a lot about whether it would be better for her to just walk, but when another shadow ops jumped at us and she fried him, she made up her mind.


    "Athan, where are you?" Lia muttered. "Come back, we need you."


    "He''s probably somewhere stupid, getting into trouble," Cosette answered.


    They were both right, I thought. Even I knew, Chariot could get into a lot of trouble. But he also was always there when we needed him. He wouldn''t just disappear on us now, not without a good reason.


    Or so I hoped. I found it increasingly hard to believe it, when I''d already given up on him not just once, but twice now before. But Moon kept those thoughts pushed out of my mind, and I understood and appreciated that, and focused on seeing and shooting bad guys instead.


    But that was getting harder. There were cars showing up now, troops beginning to assemble faster than we could move and shoot. Exosuits were beginning to emerge, and all around us, the distant sounds of AEGIS'' artillery was now the familiar, scary sounds of battle breaking out.


    "Where are you, big guy?" Moon asked, as she swept a beam across another few men. "We could really use an out right now, we could."

 391. 2252, Present Day. Somewhere in Southeastern Louisiana. Karu.

    My lungs worked slowly, evenly, as I forced air in and out of them at a constant rate. It was irritating, because it was just difficult enough to no longer be instinctual. At the amount of g-forces my body underwent, the human reaction would be to hold one''s breath, but that was a mistake, that lead to blackouts, when my amount of blood-oxygen already dipped low.


    My engines raced and flared, flashing to life with a sudden burst which threw me forward just underneath the VTOL. One of the VTOLs. One of many, many VTOLs. The others held their fire on account of my proximity to the first, but that was their error. It gave me the time I needed to bring my weapons to bear.


    Two were hovering nearby, ''defense platforms'' as they would be termed in a military operations manual. They functioned as gunboats, all of their weapons brought to life, and their perimeter intended to be a secure zone from which the others could weave in and out. I brought the envervator to bear on the one on the left, and held the firing stud.


    The effect was immediate and satisfying. The vessel seemed to twitch, to shudder, as its internal systems winked out one-by-one. I could vaguely see the pilots within, frantically working the unresponsive controls, pulling the yoke forward, kicking up the throttle, flipping switches to reassign power, restart systems, anything. But it was fruitless, the miracle-weapon in my arms had drained their systems dry, and it would be hours before their cells would generate enough power to prime the engines again.


    It would be only seconds before the ground consumed them in a catastrophic conclusion. I had to grin, despite the situation. Possessing this exotic felt, perhaps, addictive. Power as I imagine only Exhumans could wield on a personal level. It was delightful.


    There was no time to savor, however. The VTOL behind me had given up on turning to put me in firing range and had instead chosen to rise and back away, and as it did, the remaining defense platform opened up on me with a coordination and synchronicity which demonstrated the capabilities of the USAF. I had mere moments to react, my body shuddering again, and the air attempting to flee my lungs as I bolted off, the familiar numbness in my legs as blood tried to pool in my lower extremities, my flightsuit''s constraints keeping it from doing so.


    As I peeled off, the other VTOLs came in screaming. Three of them, flying in formation, engaging to sortie, their strafing weapons unmanned and unpowered in favor of more traditional front-facing armament. My visor flashed dozens of warnings of the sensors sweeping over me, which resolved more and more concretely into targeting locks, missiles firing, and weapons in pursuit.


    As much as I wished it were so, my new gun was no panacea. It took several moments to drain the life from its victims, and should I pivot in the air and wave it across the pursuing missiles, it was possible I might disrupt them in time, but more than likely, they would merely be half-coordinated, punch-drunk, their systems beginning to falter...as they impacted me and strewn my innards across the thick grasses and scattered trees below.


    I did halt in midair -- the momentary pause required for my guts to not rupture feeling like a luxury I could not afford -- before diving back in at full acceleration again, this time towards and under the incoming missiles.


    My visor screamed as the proximity between us vanished. I could see its projection of them, painted above the back of my skull, red exclamation points, flashing constantly so as to be unignorable. There were six of them, extreme overkill, two fired from each of the air-superiority fighters. Each missile cost upwards of three-hundred thousand credits. Even with my brain struggling for oxygen and the world upside-down and tearing past me as I shot towards the earth, my mind did the math as though on its own. One million, eight-hundred thousand credits worth of death, curving downwards towards me, in as small an arc as it could manage without tearing itself apart.


    I should have been flattered. I knew that we -- Pulverizer -- were of note, but I did not think two-missiles-per-pass note. The thought of what good nearly two-million creds could have done briefly flashed through my mind, and with it, words of my father on the positive nature of military spending.


    Arms spending is money that pays for itself. You use the same credit to pay the generals and your contractors.


    The missiles were too fast. Had they been fired from a defense-platform VTOL, they might have made the turn, but shot off at maximum speed, they instead streaked straight into the ground, and became near-two-million credits of craters and fire on the ground.


    Which was not to say I was clear, or anywhere near being so. I''d wasted over ten seconds driving the missiles downwards, and the air-superiority VTOLs were coming to bear on another attack run. Another two had joined the engagement and were setting up as defense platforms, and the one from earlier was edging forward while hoving, precisely cutting off my most direct escape route for when the others came in for their run.


    A matter of zones and control. Agile and deadly as I was, I could not take a hit, and if they locked me in, it would be a mere matter of time before the blow came.


    All that, and my greatest threat was the rock coming right at me. All trillions of tons of it, rushing up to meet me after my suicide dive to throw off the missiles.


    I jammed the breaks hard, harder than I should have, and my head went stupid as all the blood in me tried to congregate there instead of my legs. For a moment, I forgot to breathe, and it only took that long for blackness to creep in on the edges of my vision and for the world to go streaky and greyscale. Were I more aware, I might have noted a sudden absence, as my brain no longer had the bandwidth to process hearing, the world going mute to accompany the grey.


    And yet, despite my drastic action, the ground was still coming for me. Involuntarily, I leaned away from it, as though the extra millimeters between my face and the earth would be my salvation.


    My arms clenched tight, holding the gun to my chest. Behind my visor, my eyes flickered open and closed as things flew at them. I could feel the tall grasses whip past me, their tips like the rough side of a sponge at these speeds, raking at my armor.


    My engines screamed their protests, and I was nearly blind with the amount of warnings my visor threw up. Too much, too fast. Over thirty g''s, and I could feel the painful swelling as my skin bruised from within. Though my flightsuit was designed to protect them, my organs would be next. It seemed I wouldn''t hold.


    What happened next, I do not know. Blackout took me. But from where I was and how I felt, I had a guess.


    The sky above me and the Earth on my back somehow. Shoulder dislocated, elbow jammed. Half of my face and visor scraped and scuffed to the point of bleeding. Armor plate on my right thigh, along with several pouches and a chunk of my flightsuit and much of the skin under it, completely torn free. My hair was evidently long enough to catch and hold grass.


    Not bad, actually. I could still fly, I could still walk. There were vials of medical gel strapped to my chest to seal my wounds and numb and disinfect them. Somehow, my mind''s last directive to hold the ennervator had worked, and it remained clutched to my chest.


    I saw nothing but grass, three or four feet tall, enough that the VTOLs in pursuit would lose me for a moment. But I''d probably already been out for that moment, and could expect them anytime. Gently, I set my gun down and leaned sideways, putting the back of my hand flat against the ground and gingerly stepping on it.


    And then, neither gently nor gingerly, twisting my torso upright. My trapped arm screamed in agony, but there was a pop as my shoulder set back into place. I allowed myself a single disappointed sigh at my stims being lost in the crash. Several grenades as well, in addition to one of my batteries of micro-missiles. I made a mental note that they would be harder to use now, as they would fire asymmetrically across my body and twist me back and left. If I had the time, I would have disabled their counterpart unit, but I suspected I did not.


    "You okay there, Karu?" I heard AEGIS ask, her voice crackling and her comms backlit with the sounds of explosions. "Heard a crash, was that you?"


    Before I could answer, a VTOL dappled in squares of grey camo roared down towards me. It hovered ominously for one moment, barrels spooling up as it acquired me on thermal, I knew.


    I had been there. Often, had I been the one manning those guns. Rarely had I considered what it might be like to be on the other end of them.


    I rolled sideways, my shoulder feeling as though it were ripping off, and the gash in my leg, still untreated, threw blood into the grass at my movement. My fingers scrambled over the smooth metal of the ennervator, desperately scrabbling for the grip, for the firing stud, trying to turn it in my hands and bring it to bear and fire it all at once.


    Vulcan cannons like those present on VTOL gunships do not sound as though they are firing bullets. With their rotating barrels, they can throw one-hundred and eighty bullets per second at their targets. Shells really -- with their casing included, nearly the size of one''s forearm. It is not an exaggeration to say these arms were capable of sawing a tank in half.


    And the VTOL firing them at me had two of them, one mounted on each side, on an extended strut. The noise they made was less gunshot and more chainsaw. But loud enough that my visor had to dampen the noise, lest I risk hearing loss, even at this range.


    Desperation bought me a moment as I engaged my jetpack to maximum, despite being embroiled in the weeds and the ground. I did not so much fly as be thrown upwards and forwards and somewhat sideways. As I was hurled, my back leading, my fingers finally found purchase on the grip of the ennervator, and I contorted in the air to wave it across the craft with the trigger held.


    There was a weakness to those guns, despite their power. Not so much a flaw as a limitation. Though every effort had been made to disperse and diffuse the ungodly recoil of the weapon, those systems could only function optimally when the craft was stationary, or moving smoothly. The barrels were designed such that the ventilation of the blast pushed the gun forward to the same extent that the recoil pushed it back. But so great were the forces at play, that if the VTOL pivoted while firing, it stood an excellent chance of misaligning those forces, merely ripping itself apart.


    In practice, this was often a non-issue. The guns could still pivot without the craft, and the targeting systems were intelligent and the threat enormous enough that rarely did this become a problem. I only knew of it because, while uncommon, the magnitude of the risk was enough that all pilots had it drilled into them. In fact, while the targeting system was up, the craft could not change direction as a safety precaution.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    My moment with the ennervator had not disabled the craft, but the second I had fired, the vulcans had ceased to pivot. It was enough to scramble their targeting, which bought me yet another moment. My errant leap had sent me flying towards my pursuer, in a fashion, very near the tip of the wing, and more pertinently, the humongous turbofan embedded within it, which would chew me up like a meat grinder if I approached its vortex.


    Still, I had time for something, before the canons re-acquired. I could try to twist and pray that I fired before they did, but my instincts took over, years of drilling, when in doubt, move. My engines fired to life again, attempting to straighten me, wrest control from the tumbling dive I was in and turn back inertia.


    It...did not work gracefully. I levelled out, but felt a pained impact which knocked the wind from me, as my gut wrapped around the tip of the VTOL''s wing. In the corner of my eye, I saw the vulcans moving again, the blaring, chainsaw baseline growing louder in my ears as the stream of death closed on me again. I had no time to reorient the gun in my hands around the wing and fire again. I could only move, and hope I could evade the stream.


    Which I couldn''t, I knew. I was fish in a barrel to that weapon. I was all offense and mobility, and for the moment, I had neither.


    It amused me somehow that AEGIS was still asking my status. If only she knew.


    My jetpack roared as I prepared my final, desperate maneuver. Perhaps if I dipped under the wing, I could lose them in a blind spot. But to do so would bring me near the vortex, and that invited an even more inescapable death. I hesitated, wondering if, perhaps, they would not fire on their own wing.


    Which was folly, of course. There were too many ameteur pilots who had shredded their own craft in this manner. ''Clippers'', the mocking term went, for those who trimmed their own wings. Clippers were rarely given a second chance.


    Yet I doubted this crew would care. A wing, a VTOL, that was little cost, I imagined, to what the armed forces would be willing to expend for my death.


    So I hung there like a dope, watching and hearing the bullets grow closer. Where they passed, the grass was cut, the world''s most expensive lawnmower. By inches it pivoted, though the arc of its rampage was passing ninety degrees by now. Only moments for me left.


    To hell with it, I thought. Better to go out all at once through the meat grinder. The fans were relatively brittle and gave me better odds than the bullets. Or at worst, the resulting catastrophe would take them with me. My engines went to full, and I braced myself against the wing for a moment, steeling myself for a maneuver so foolish, I''d have yelled my best at Ashton for even thinking it.


    But my moment never came. As my engines kicked, I pushed myself forward. The wing moved with me, the whole VTOL groaned as I leaned against it. And then I grinned as I realized the implications, a cruel, unjust giddiness filling me at the sudden discovery.


    Instead of every direction, the tendrils of my jetpack aligned and pushed me forward. I was very nearly crushed against the wing, but it budged, rotating by degrees as I threw myself against the tip with all the force I could.


    And then, without warning, I wrenched forward, my ears muted at the sound of a world-shattering explosion. Catastrophic failure ripped the VTOL apart, the torque of the craft spinning, and it''s own pivot towards me plied the firing vulcan with too many external forces, and the delicate counterbalance of recoil and venting forces became unaligned.


    The gun had, in an instant, ripped itself from its mount and flown into the body of the craft, a missile propelled by its own bullets. In the few moments of life the disembodied weapon possessed, it wrecked incalculable damage from within, the stream of destruction slicing through components and crew alike, passing effortlessly through internal systems with more ease and destruction than Ashton''s blades.


    The effect was immediate. Something exploded, and then, something else even larger exploded. I was thrown sideways as the wing detached, which was a blessing, as I missed much of the brunt of the shockwave, and even more of the shrapnel thrown from the craft, as it touched the ground and detonated from too many forces and too much structural damage.


    Which is not to say I was unscathed. The blast shredded my skin, and had I been facing it and not controlling my breath, would have forced itself down my airways and seared my lungs. Shrap caught me in the back and I felt pieces of it land between my armor plates.


    But on the whole, I had been lucky. Lucky to be thrown clear, lucky to be alive. Lucky to have found a solution at all.


    "Karu here," I reported in to a frantic AEGIS. "My apologies, I have been engaged."


    "Oh thank God," she replied. And I was honestly taken slightly aback at the relief she expressed at my survival. "Any luck finding Athan? Everything''s gone completely to shit."


    "No. I found where he had disappeared, but there is naught but an ominous void in the shape of a triangle, fist-sized there," I related. I righted myself and urged my engines forward, low and fast, where the wake of my heat against the ground would make target acquisition that much harder for the next ship. "I hesitate to say, I fear he may be gone."


    "He''s not gone," she said defiantly. "He wouldn''t die like that."


    "I did not say he died, I said he was gone. I had time to introduce several pebbles and a handful of grass to the triangle-rift, and they passed through without apparent effect. I suspect our friend is capable of opening doors, of some nature, and whatever is on the opposite end, Ashton is there."


    "Why didn''t you go after him?"


    I laughed at her, deliberately. "Did you not hear when I reported it the size of a fist? I am not so slender. Perhaps bring Saga, her emaciated frame will do us a service for once."


    "I don''t think--"


    "It was a jest. Update your humor cores, AI. And besides, I could not get close, it was positively bleeding radiation. A lethal dose would require mere moments."


    She went quiet, but the implication was clear. We both just had to hope that the gate was the source of the radiation, and not whatever was on the other side of it. Not wherever Ashton was.


    "If he''s hurt¡­" she growled. "I see you, Moon," she interrupted herself. "Come here and use your power on Saga."


    "I would mention the non-zero chance that this simply debilitates both of us," Moon said.


    "Noted. But we''re kinda getting fucked her, and we need Saga to unfuck us."


    They were interrupted by sounds of a scuffle. In the skies, I could see another wing of VTOLs breaking off towards me. Time to fight again.


    I wished, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, that I hadn''t lost my stims.


    I caught one of the turning VTOLs with the ennervator, and in becoming a two-and-a-half ton paperweight, it clipped one of the others in formation, and both of them went down.


    Had I mentioned my still-blossoming love for this weapon? I''d given Ashton no amount of crap for his love of the AI''s body, as it were, and yet here I was falling for a damn gun.


    Cosette crackled in our ears. "Look alive ladies, I''ve got word that the XPCA and National Guard are mobilizing in as well. I hope you guys can avoid tanks, because I''m not sure you''re gonna beat this many."


    "AEGIS," I said, "it is becoming clear to me that Ashton is not here. This is a fight we must escape, not win."


    "Yeah I was gonna say the same," she said, though I could hear she was not being entirely honest. "I guess...Athan would want us to fall back, yeah?"


    I could not respond in the moment. The two remaining VTOLs had found me, and they had gone for a harrier strategy of moving towards me at a fixed pace while their vulcans erupted. I had to shoot upwards to put myself in their blind spots, but what was blind to one was not to the other, and the overlap was tight.


    "How is Saga?" I grunted as the two flew under me, and their vulcans silenced while they turned to strafe again. I managed to clip one of them, and their turn went wide, but they didn''t go down.


    "Still out. Moon''s out too, now. At least all three of them are light, I can mostly carry them and still move...and Tem''s helping a lot, actually, which is nice."


    "I''m helping." I was not certain how she could sound so happy given our situation.


    "Yes you are. Thanks, Tem."


    She went quiet for another few minutes as another volley of artillery pounded around her. I took the moment to shoot down the last two VTOL in the formation and perch in a tree, hoping my pack would cool down enough that I might evade detection on thermal for a spell.


    "So what now?" AEGIS asked, breathing harder than before. "We can''t run to the water, I''m a slow swimmer."


    "Because of your weight?" I asked, bemused.


    "Because of my density. And I''m carrying three girls. How many are you carrying, Karu?"


    "The artillery is from ships in the water anyway. They will have escorts, and that will be a blockade we cannot breach. So, inland?"


    "Inland, generally speaking, is where the ground forces are coming from," Cosette reminded us. "More exotics that way, and a lot more men to accompany those vehicles you''ve been fighting."


    In the distance, I saw AEGIS moving. She was somewhat impossible to miss, even through the trees and grass, as her every stride kicked up a cloud of dust and dirt as though a bomb were detonating. I saw another VTOL on approach behind her, and one from the front.


    I took off as she dropped all three of the girls she was carrying at her feet and sprang, like a javelin in a yellow sundress, crossing the fifty feet or so to the craft before her and punching straight into its cockpit with a crack I heard from here. What ensued inside I could not make out from this range, but it began with the craft listing badly to one side and ended with it slamming wing-first into the ground, AEGIS bounding clear at the last moment.


    I had much less need to show off, and merely drew within range of the other in pursuit, and with a pull of the trigger, dropped it to the ground with similar results.


    "Thanks," she said, breathing hard. Much of her hair was out of place, and she scrambled to tie it back up with deft fingers as she caught her breath over the bodies of the others. Well, the bodies of Saga, Moon, and Moon''s phantom of Saga. And Tem, who was distinct from the apparent corpses only in that she was sitting up.


    "I don''t think inland is an option," Lia said. "Intel suggests that basically the entire US armed forces are coming after you. Like...all of them. They seem dead-set on making sure you don''t get anywhere near New Orleans."


    "Yes, that makes sense," I mused. "Our only option might have been to draw them into an urban engagement, where they could not bring their numbers to bear and would be adverse to collateral. They would do all in their power to keep us from that."


    "Also like, um, all the people there," Whitney added.


    "Yeah that too," AEGIS said, looking about as dour as I did. "Could we go west, following the coast?"


    "That''s where the air force has been deploying out of. You''ll run into a base if you head that way, and I''m almost certain they''d tie you up long enough for the rest of the combined arms to engage."


    "Well we can''t just stand here and discuss it forever. Is there anywhere not crawling with some branch of the armed forces?"


    "Up or down, maybe," Cosette offered. "Which might only apply to Karu¡­"


    "Even then," I shrugged. I could already see another wave of VTOLs through my optics, a good twenty of them over the horizon to the west.


    Tem suddenly shrieked in surprise, a half-formed laser pouring out of her and vaporizing the torso of a body which fell at our feet, seeming to appear out of nothing as his active camo shattered. And then the far-off booming of more artillery being dumped into us.


    "It''s obvious they''ve got recon teams on us," AEGIS said with frustration. "We''ll never root them out, and so we''ll never escape. I think...into the city is where we might just have to go."


    "We could equally diminish their numbers if we escaped to the water. Hijack another craft, and hope Tem does not put a hole in that one."


    "I don''t know that we can," she said, looking west. "Too many, too close together. We''d only get one shot at it, and I don''t know how we could get these three into it¡­"


    We began to move. Our internal clocks of how long we could stand still both went off at once. Artillery would be falling here in a few moments.


    Though where we''d move to, I had no idea. The situation seemed unwinnable, to say the least.


    "Man, where the fuck is Rito?" AEGIS complained. "I wish I had her powers."


    I was about to respond when a familiar, shimmering-blue egg of pure, sky blue appeared before us. I blinked several times to make sure I was not seeing things, so bizarre was its appearance, like a simple circle stamped into the world. And then from it, an even more familiar figure emerged.


    "Oh hey guys," Ashton said, with a wave. "Thank god you''re--"


    I cut him off by seizing AEGIS and hurling her and her wards into him, sending them all back into the portal, a look of shock on her face as she disappeared.


    And then I went forward myself, only to pass through nothing but the sticky spring air, the sounds of falling artillery growing in my ears.

 392. 2252, Present Day. The Void. Athan.

    I guess this is what I''d wanted? Not quite the expected form of it, but here we all were anyway.


    A big heap of bodies atop me, all the girls I''d just sought to go charging in to rescue, all apparently rescued. As they''d clamored and untangled, the surprise of it and bizarreness of the scene made me start laughing, and the relief of the messy people pile had only intensified that.


    "What the heck is he laughing about?" AEGIS voice seemed to come from far above me.


    "I imagine he saw your panties or the like, and it broke his fragile mind," Moon replied.


    They shifted away leaving only Saga lying comatose on me, and I pinched at her cheeks playfully.


    She didn''t stir, and after a long moment, I had one of those ''oh shit'' moments of realization when she didn''t react. Something had to be wrong here. And also, where was Karu?


    "I saw her just a second ago," AEGIS fretted. The color vanished from Saga''s cheeks instantly as she reset. "She''s the one who pushed us in."


    "What?" someone else shouted, and then the sound of a bang and some swearing. Aesa emerged from a literal hole in the floor, rubbing her red head just above the ponytail with obvious frustration. "What?"


    AEGIS blinked at the fellow redhead in confusion. "And who''s this?"


    "This is Aesa, she built and runs this whole...thing."


    Moon politely looked around, realizing that this ''thing'' was utterly bizarre, and then began peering in interest, her mouth just the tiniest bit agape, which was like, basically wide-eyed and slack-jawed by normal Moon standards. AEGIS, however, didn''t take her eyes off the other girl.


    "Who the heck are you to be asking questions?" Aesa spat as she finished crawling out of the duct. "I wanna know, why the hell you didn''t go back to where you came from, ''cuz now there''s more of you instead of fewer."


    I tried to explain but didn''t exactly know myself. "I was going to but...one of my other friends here...she pushed all four of us through, so now we''re back. Which is super weird," I said, turning to AEGIS. "Because how''d she know it was a portal anyway? I just thought it was a weird cloudy egg the first time I saw it. And she acted so fast, it''s like she knew it''d close in a moment."


    AEGIS shrugged. "Maybe her optics could see through it or something."


    Aesa scoffed, and AEGIS resumed giving her a scathing glare.


    "Well anyway, can you open it back up a second so she can join us?" I asked. "Um, sorry of course to inconvenience you."


    "If I could open it up, it''d be to boot all of you outta my house, not pick up more strays."


    I blinked at her. "If? If you could open it up?"


    "Uh, yeah. Don''t you remember waiting the last couple hours for probabilistic convergence? What you think we just kept you here for fun?"


    "Hours?" Moon asked, politely confused as all hell.


    "Time doesn''t work quite the same way here," I said dismissively. "We''re like, adrift between dimensions or something. But...you just opened it. Can''t you open it again?"


    Aesa snorted at us. "I suppose you think the void is just full of quantum tunnels linking the probability realms you happen to want."


    "...yes?"


    "I''ll give you one more guess and there''s only one other answer, idiot," she said, disappearing back down the hatch.


    "Wait, seriously?"


    Her voice echoed from down there. "You are dense."


    "No, seriously, seriously." I bounded over and peered down her hole, spotting her copper-red ponytail in the relative dark. "You''re not just messing with me because you hate me, right?"


    She glanced up at me, her eyes frosty. "You think I''d pass a chance by to get rid of you?"


    I fell back and chewed on the new fact. We''d lost Karu. That, by itself, wasn''t too horrible, I thought. In another several hours...um...of this time, probably just another couple to her, we''d find some other alignment convergence thingy, and be able to pop out and join her, and all would be well.


    I turned to the others and found evidence written across their faces to the contrary. Even Moon looked anxious. Tem seemed gloomy and guilty through her invisibility. The only one who didn''t was Saga...


    "What?" I asked AEGIS, who was tugging away at her hair.


    "Um. Don''t freak out. But...things might be...not...as good as...they might be."


    I shook my head at her. "Just spit it out."


    She let out a deep breath, but before she could start, Moon spoke up.


    "Saga is dysfunctional in condition," she explained. "She did not well bear the presence of Liev."


    I took a few steps forward, crouching to brush the hair from Saga''s brow and held my hand to her forehead. She seemed normal, as normal as she ever was, just sleeping.


    Which, of course, was anything but normal for her. The only other time I''d ever seen her sleep, she''d lost conscious control of her powers and immersed me in hallucinated recollections of our pasts.


    I frowned as I focused. "I can feel her, but she''s...like...lost-feeling, almost. Kinda, not there. Almost like¡­"


    I glanced around, trying to find words to describe something so complicated as a mind.


    "Charred?" Moon suggested. I nodded. "I bonded with her, at AEGIS and Karu''s insistence. I have seen her mind. It was¡­" she paused.


    "It was what?"


    She cocked her head. "If I had an adequate predicate for that clause, I would have delivered it. I was in contemplation."


    I found myself pacing, feet clanging against the alien alloy that floated in nothing. I wanted to pull out my hair like AEGIS was doing with hers, at the fact that the one person who could apparently get through to Saga couldn''t even put it into words.


    Moon emitted a small sigh, rolled up her sleeve carefully and then extended an arm.


    "What?" I asked.


    "This is what is colloquially known as a ''handshake'', I believe."


    I rolled my eyes.


    "It seems my lack of ability to adequately explain the situation to you is preventing progress. I aimed to share my experience directly." She thrust her arm slightly further forward, and this time I took it.


    For a few moments, it was like nothing new happened. Bonding with Moon was always a bit more of a slow burn, compared to, say, diving into Saga''s psyche. An old habit, maybe, that she always tried to keep her mind and mine carefully partitioned. But that was before she''d embraced her code-X nature, before she''d ripped Diallo''s entire being to psychic shreds, before she came to terms with the fact that what she was doing wasn''t being courteous -- it was holding back.


    So after those few moments, she didn''t hold back anymore, and I felt a vertigo-inducing rush as sensations flooded unbidden into my mind. She was a lot more blunt than Saga, there was no mistaking these memories as foreign. They didn''t feel like memories of mine brought to mind unbidden, or reliving something, even if it wasn''t my life to relive. Instead, the thoughts came in, heavy and hard, and in her handwriting.


    It wasn''t long ago, just a few minutes. I...or she...still felt the memories keenly, fresh. They had the cloudy nature of something that just happened, before the mind had made up it''s mind about what all details were there. I was in a tall grassy field, and I recognized it as being in Louisiana, somewhere just before the portal pulled me -- her -- here.


    The enemies were coming, I knew. Artillery had been pounding this position, and the circles of still-smoking craters dotted the path we''d taken. More VTOLs were inbound from the west, soldiers from the north-east, and shadow and recon ops moved around us like phantoms. We had mere minutes before this place became hell.


    AEGIS was there, standing above the three of us like a prairie dog on vigil, and Tem was with her. Saga and I were on the ground next to my body, and I was in Saga''s mind.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    And I was as still and dead as Saga was. Catatonic, overwhelmed by the same thing which had paralyzed her. It had passed through our mind that if these thoughts had been enough to break Saga, seeing them through her might do the same to us.


    Fortunately they didn''t. I could keep my distance, but it was still awful. It was like looking into the sun, while Saga had been thrown towards the surface of it.


    And the description of ''charred'' suddenly felt very vivid. It was like seeing the sun. It was so bright, or loud, or...whatever the descriptive word was for something thought with too much intensity. It had burned Saga right out, like blinded eyes or burst eardrums, but in her mind.


    And the echoes of it were still rattling around in her head. She''d looked into Liev''s mind to see what was there. There was too much there. The troubling flickering I''d seen in his eyes before, in his mind was completely manifest. It was a thousand voices screaming in dissonance. It was a fire that raged forever, devouring his soul without pause. It was thought, pure thought, of a thousand conflicting, impossible thoughts, all with immense, dominable, focused intensity, each shouting to be heard over the others. It was agony. It was Justice.


    Saga had never met a mind so broken. She''d never met a mind that so little resembled a mind, even the toads, who had long ago lost their ability to act with conscious thought. Even the tree, ''our god'' of Oasis, who ran thousands of lives in every moment. That had been closest, but those minds had been altered to fit within the tree, existed in unity like the roots that drew together to form the solid trunk.


    This was just madness. This was roots that twisted apart from each other, but formed a trunk all the same. Impossible geometry, impossible thought, screaming contradictions that gnarled and knotted in painful burls of insanity.


    The human mind was, in many ways, a delicate instrument. Saga knew this, and could precisely rewire its workings to subtly change its function. I -- that is, Moon -- could extract important parts and render the whole inoperable. Neither code-X much concerned themselves with what happened when sand was thrown in the gears of the mind. It would be broken, and the result was insanity, and that was it.


    But Liev''s mind was gears that should have ground to a halt, turning all the same. His was an impossible framework of madness which moved as though man. Within him, the gears were shorn toothless and the crankshafts had jammed, and yet it all kept turning. Something else within him had taken over, and it wasn''t thought that drove his mind anymore, it was something much more base, yet more alien.


    He really was Justice. It was all he was at this point. The human shell he wore was a mere vestige.


    I fell backwards, blinking and confused as I found myself cradled by AEGIS. It took me too long to recognize her, and my shield exploded in her face, throwing her a short distance. I struggled to find the words to apologize, to even be me again, but I just flapped at her wordlessly, and she smiled and came back to hold me again.


    But after minutes, I was more myself. Moon''s influence on my mind was gone, and I found her blinking back at me from her own eyes, her body inches from mine from where AEGIS must have put her back.


    Saga still didn''t stir, but I knew now why.


    "You understand?" Moon asked. I didn''t, but nodded. That was what I was meant to understand.


    "I don''t...he¡­" I sputtered for a few more moments, before redoubling my focus on just trying to make sense. "What was that? He. Not like...he''s not...any Exhuman, like any I''ve ever even heard of."


    "You could have asked this before we met him," AEGIS fretted. "He''s got a ton of different powers, like Soran. He''s super dangerous."


    "He''s unhinged. He''s not...human anymore. He''s¡­" I cast my mind around for a word I wasn''t sure existed.


    "Exhuman?" she suggested.


    I shook my head, and then after a moment, nodded. "Yeah, maybe...most Exhuman of anyone, ever."


    I closed my eyes for a few minutes, just feeling my own body and the sensation of being back in it. I''d only really brushed Moon''s mind, and she''d only carefully touched Saga''s. Even with three degrees of separation from Liev, it''d shaken me. I felt nothing but sick pity for Saga, who''d touched him so directly, without an idea of how to help her.


    But as I sat there, forcing my mind into order, I frowned at a different thought. "In Moon''s memories, you guys were under attack?"


    "Yes," AEGIS nodded, still pulling at her hair.


    "And...Karu''s still out there?"


    She gave me a significant glance, like she didn''t want to answer. "...yes."


    "And¡­" I turned towards the hole "we can''t go back yet, Aesa?"


    "Are you still here?" she complained back at us.


    Now I felt my head reeling at two different issues. Saga had never been out, out before. I had no idea how this kind of mental trauma might be affected by her powers. There were things we could try...I could attempt a deep-dive like we''d done not too long ago in Oasis and lend her whatever mental strength I had...but Moon had been very careful while bonding to only look indirectly at the problem, to not let it ravage her mind as it had Saga''s. There was immense danger here of simply spreading the hazard if I dove in like an idiot.


    Karu, on the other hand, faced much more immediate danger, but unlike Saga, one I could do nothing about. From Moon''s recollection of it, there were all possible branches of the armed forces converging on her location: missiles, battleships, infantry and tanks, exosuits, shadow ops, and VTOLs...and that was what we knew were coming. She was a brilliant fighter, but she was still human, and stood exactly zero chance of turning back a force like that.


    My stomach seemed to crawl and convulse as I relived Moon''s thoughts again. I felt a simmering urge to explode, as rage at myself welled up within me. This was my stupid plan again, and everyone was in danger now because of it. And the worst of it was that I wasn''t even there beside her. I''d gone and gotten myself spaced, and then Karu had done her best to save the others.


    Well. Self-loathing was better than thinking about whatever was in Justice. I was back to myself again, at least. Hooray.


    I took deep breaths as AEGIS held me tighter and I pushed back the anger. Being self-destructive wouldn''t help right now. I had to do what I could, and ignore blame, ignore self-loathing, all that crap and focus on doing.


    "Cosette?" I asked experimentally. The comms crackled in my ear. Yeah, didn''t think I''d have reception out here, but had to try. "Okay, Aesa. Can you dump us off in other places than where you found us?"


    Her head emerged and she stared at me. "You''re talking suspiciously like you''re in charge here."


    "I just want to get back to Earth as soon as we can, even if it''s somewhere else. Actually, where you picked us up is probably the worst place. So yeah, anywhere."


    Her exaggerated sigh echoed from the hole, and I wished she''d at least talk to us directly.. "Yeah, well, I''m not really the one in charge here, either. You''ll have to take it up with the frosty bitch. Feels like I only know a tenth of what she figures out. But sucks for you, because tonight''s date night, so thanks for screwing that up already."


    "Date night?" AEGIS mouthed at me. As though in answer, Al suddenly popped up, as people seemed to have a tendency to do in this space. In his hands was a plate of what might have passed for food for starving college students. Microwaved burrito pockets and pretzels, from the look of it.


    "Food''s ready!" he chimed. "And I have the movie--" He paused on seeing us. "Um, sweetie? Did you not send the kid back like you were supposed to?"


    "I sent him! He came right back in with friends."


    "Oh dear." The microwaved pockets seemed to wilt on the tray. Of course, it was so cold in here that the last wisps of steam were already disappearing off them. "I suppose we have to postpone date night, honey. We''ll chill you out just a little bit so you can send them off, okay?"


    Aesa swore and from her hole echoed the sound of something clanging violently, before a wrench flew out of it in our direction. After the wrench, she followed, stomping right up to where AEGIS was still comforting me on the floor, towering over us with all four-foot-something of fury.


    "Now you listen here, buddy," she said, addressing me for some reason. "That frosty bitch runs everything here ninety-percent of the time already, and I am not giving up my one scheduled time to enjoy my fiance''s company just because you''re a grade-A fuckup." She cut me off as I tried to respond, "Nope, don''t care about whatever your problems are. You show up in my house, ask for my help, screw up my schedule--"


    "Honey--"


    "Oh, don''t you honey me," she span on Al. "I said we should leave them spaced, this is on you, too."


    My shoulders suddenly felt cold where AEGIS'' hands left me as she rose, but to my surprise, she walked past the girl accosting us and to where Al hovered with the tray uneasily in his hands.


    "Is this...what you eat?" she asked.


    "Shut up," Aesa spat. "Not exactly easy to get or keep food out here, you know? Most of the ''wildlife'' doesn''t even exist in a corporeal sense."


    "But you do have food stores?" she asked Al, straight up ignoring the hotheaded jerk.


    "We...do, yeah. But I''m afraid it''s most all like this. We have plenty if you''re hungry but¡­"


    "No, that''s not what I mean," AEGIS said, and when she turned back towards me, I saw a glint of a smile. "I understand you guys are really putting yourselves out there for us, and we haven''t been very appreciative. If possible¡­" she cleared her throat a little "um, if you could help us get back ASAP, well...I know a little about cooking. I might be able to make you something hot and yummy and...a little better than that. Something fit for a date?"


    Al beamed, and perked up instantly, and I knew just how he felt after all the months I''d eaten XPCA slop, only to get turned onto AEGIS'' cooking. I wasn''t aware of her picking up that particular skill in this latest iteration...but I also hadn''t really been too close with her this time either. But as long as it could get us out of here¡­


    "Fine," Aesa sighed, disgusted, as she eyeballed the excited look on Al''s face. She shrugged off her coat and shivered. "Fine. I''ll bring her out and you better cook me the best damn meal of my life. And when we dump you this time, stay dumped."


    "I really appreciate it," I told her.


    She rolled her eyes. "For the record, I''m going to tell her to put you in the worst place she can think of. Because fuck you."


    AEGIS started to argue but I cut her off. "That''s fine, as long as it''s also the fastest way back. And as long as we''re not stranded anywhere we can''t get back to our friend."


    She smirked at me. "I think you''re going to regret those words. She operates quite literally. I''d be amused to see where you wind up...if I actually cared. But if you''re all set, get your ass in the kitchen before I freeze."


    AEGIS and I followed Al to their food stocks, and she took careful note of everything they had, in a part of the...space...that was somehow even colder. It wasn''t more than a few moments before she had me at work, cutting and separating processed foods into raw materials, as she seemed to flip a switch inside herself and begin to bustle with turning them into food.


    Inside, I was just screaming, as I numbly filetted microwavable crap, feeling like this was just idiocy, just a waste of time that I could spend fixing Saga or...somehow helping Karu.


    But I knew that was just panic. This was the fastest, best route. I couldn''t risk myself on Saga while Karu was still out there. And the way time in this place worked, we might have a chance. I had to focus, had to believe.


    And somehow, watching AEGIS come alive as she moved through the little kitchen, more like a dancer than a chef, the intensity and contentment on her face as she worked...it spoke directly to that panic welling up inside me. It was like watching an angel go, hearing her whispers that everything was somehow going to be alright.


    It wouldn''t. But for the moment, for that one, uniquely bizarre moment, when gutting the pepperonis out of a frozen burrito was the best way forward, it would have to do.

 393. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest, D.C.. Director Hall.

    It''d been one hell of a week, which was a damn shame, because before that, it''d been one hell of a month.


    We were smashing records left and right there for a quick minute: Lowest incident rate of Exhuman intercession in a century. Lowest overall Prather Aggregate Index of EE''s on record. Fewest Exhuman events in a month, ever.


    I knew it''d been building up to something. I knew ''Pulverizer'', as the media had taken to calling them, hadn''t been gone for good; it would have been too convenient for them to just walk into the glasslands and right disappear on us. I knew they''d be back from their little hiatus in Japan before too long, and when they were, they''d be ten new kinds of trouble. Blackett had really stepped in it with that bunch, and I only wish he''d taken his screwups with him when he went.


    What I didn''t know was why the media clowns insisted on giving everything new names all the goddamn time. Pulverizer already had a name, P-Force. And while I got the rather weak joke there, it didn''t help for them to be constantly inventing new names for everything. Apparently the Exhuman Liev was now just being called ''Justice'', since ''I am Justice'' was about the only thing he''d be caught saying. Only thing about him we were able to catch, actually. And hell, why name them at all, they all already had names, and a damn good one. Exhumans, we called them, and I thought that was catchy enough.


    But that just showed how old my thinking was. Old guard, just one of the fossils they pulled off a shelf when the pups screwed everything up. I was supposed to steer the XPCA back to its roots, get everyone hating Exhumans properly again. Throw a new ass in front of the cart and see if this one pulls any better.


    The office offended me. Here I was, sitting in the top of some crystal spire like an evil mastermind, behind a desk more made of floating glass than solid materials. If there''d been an alert, if the power went out or we were hit with an EMP, the damn desk would fall apart. I''d have to be issuing orders and signing executive commands on my hands and knees like a dog. Director of the XPCA, defender of the free world, hands and knees.


    I shook my head at the desk, not for the first time. Damn idiot kids with their big ideas and need to show off. Blackett was a moron. What was wrong with wood? Wood didn''t give a shit about an EMP.


    ''Course that wasn''t the only turd he''d left me to polish. I wasn''t allowed to close down the Exhuman prison facility, or deal with its inmates in how they probably should have been dealt. It would ''violate the public trust'', the President himself had told me. He agreed to institute this policy, so it was my job to make it work.


    And then Liev happened. And then Pulverizer came back. And now there was some damn hoopla about both of them making a mess over some bayou in backwater Louisiana.


    I''d been so close to retirement, too.


    I pushed a button on my desk. It made no noise, just like everything else Blackett had made. I wanted a satisfying click when I pressed something. If I went through the effort to press it, the least the thing could do would be to let me know.


    "Ada, get General Zuse on the horn," I spoke to my desk. Every damn time, felt like I was just talking to myself. Director of the XPCA, defender of the free world, mumbling to himself in his office.


    Fortunately, a moment later, my secretary replied. Administrative assistant. Whatever.


    "Yessir. Just a moment and I''ll put you through to the situation room."


    At least this time there was a click. And then a man''s voice.


    "Director Hall, so good of you to join us," he said with a thin accent that I associated with snooty. French, maybe. "Too old to make it downstairs in person?"


    "Too busy," I scoffed. "If you think your op is the only one I''m overseeing, you need a new brain, General. I''m making a note here about your lack of respect for authority, by-the-by."


    "The only op worth calling about, I notice. What do you want, Director?" he sniffed.


    "The usual. Status report. A damn sliver of respect. A stiff glass of a bourbon older than half my staff."


    "I can give you exactly one of those," he said, and I heard him walking away from operations for a moment to sit. "The Exhuman Liev has, unsurprisingly, disappeared faster than we can track."


    "Even with those new sensors up?"


    "Of course, Director. Did you assume I forgot to use them?"


    "Report out or shut up, General." I didn''t need this lip, it wasn''t my fault I''d been promoted over this pompous sack of crap, but he wasn''t about to let me forget it.


    "As you are most likely aware, the situation had escalated with the emergence of Pulverizer. We have confirmation that they were able to contact Liev, and have footage of the two forces conversing."


    "Have you sent it to analysis?"


    "Yes. They were both flying at a speed in excess of two-hundred miles per hour at the time the feed was taken, which produced enough visual noise that nothing they discussed can be made out."


    I scratched at my beard. If all my troubles were joining forces, I might just do the General a favor and let him have my job. Do both of us a favor.


    "Have all footage of the incident put under the XSA by my authority. Send a call to Intelligence to make sure the media don''t get their hands on it. Who knows what shit they''ll stir up with a video of them conspiring."


    "Couldn''t you make the call yourself, Director? I''m a bit busy here¡­"


    "Shut it Zuse. I''m not above dismissing you out of petty spite. What''s the situation level?"


    He cleared his throat. "We de-escalated from EE-Two to One when Liev flew off. Not long ago it seemed the rest of them vanished as well, but as it turns out, it was merely all but one. I have footage you may wish to see, if you don''t also want to tape that up behind the XSA."


    "Just send it."


    I grumbled to myself while I waited for it to come through. One of the better perks of being an old, gruff man was being able to grumble to myself whenever I liked, and this position had me playing that card near every hand. After a moment, the holo on my desk flashed to life and I tapped through the menus to pull up the feed.


    A glance at the timestamp indicated it was just a few minutes ago. Swiping around the feed let me know the general positioning of combined arms and where exactly I was looking. Some grassland. Wasn''t quite sure why I''d assumed this all happened in a bayou, except that was my understanding of most of Louisiana.


    The holo flashed at me while it played the sounds of gunfire. Several times, it cut between different soldiers'' feeds, taken mostly from the cameras of exosuits, I recognized by the distinctive fisheyeying.


    I paused the feed. "General, why did you send me a feed of my soldiers being brutalized?"


    "Because that bitch was damn hard to take, sir. And very nearly as hard to take footage of. These are the only feeds we have of her before she was detained."


    "Detained?"


    "Watch the rest of the feeds, sir."


    As much as I disliked his attitude, I resumed the vid. Try as I might, I couldn''t see ''that bitch'' of whom he spoke, though. All I saw was jumpy camera cuts across a battlefield, rockets smashing into exosuits, VTOLs getting torn out of the skies.


    I paused it again to tell him off for wasting my time, but in the still, I saw a streak of blue plasma tracing away from the crashing VTOL. I felt my brow crease as I blew up the image, and when that failed to satisfy, threw the display to hover in the air over my desk. Moment by moment, I stepped the feed forward and back, noticing only in stills the blue streak rebounding everywhere chaos touched.


    It could only be Karu. Allegedly murderer of our own dear Senator Irenside and her own father, and a religious zealot who''d taken to the misguided worship of Exhumans after years of putting them down. She was a tremendous embarrassment to both the Hunters and the black, so she hadn''t shown up in the media so much.


    With new context in mind, I watched the vid at a tenth of its speed. I''d never seen a Peregrine in action before, and from what I heard, Karu was among their best. That was before she went solo and upgraded all of her equipment beyond what Uncle Sam could afford and went after bigger prey.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    It was positively headache-inducing trying to keep up with her. Even slowed down, it felt like I could only just register her presence before it was moving elsewhere. She never stayed in any one soldier''s line of sight long enough for their systems to acquire her, never moved the same way twice, never stopped shooting.


    "You detained her?" I asked again, disbelieving.


    "At great cost, sir. I expect a detailed commendation for my men. And for myself."


    I shook my head as I skimmed to the end of the vid. The little prick had ostensibly pulled all this feed for a report, but it played more like an argument for service awards coming from him. Sped-up, the footage just looked like havoc creating itself, people bursting into flames and explosions crashing for no reason at all. I couldn''t begin to imagine what the regular corp must have thought of the situation. Even if she was nothing but human, it had all the feel of an event.


    I got to the good part and slowed the feed again. There wasn''t much here -- she''d just been worn down, it looked like. Hanging in the air, holding an arm which swung loose in its socket, blood dripping from her fingertips. Her white armor, pocked with bullet holes, many of which I knew had punched through. The jetpack keeping her up didn''t hover straight vertical anymore, several of its emitters had been damaged or broken off, giving the impression of her being a doll with several strings cut.


    Somehow, despite that, despite the damage and the hanging-open panels that indicated depleted munitions, the dozens of guns aimed at her from VTOL and exosuit both, and how pained her breaths were, I could see she wasn''t done yet. The way she looked around from behind her visor, it almost gave me flashbacks of my time in an exosuit. She wasn''t sizing up how beat she was, she was catching her breath, checking for weak points, always looking for a way out.


    And then, dramatically, General Zuse''s voice filled the scene, broadcast by the VTOLs in the ring.


    "Karen Irenside, AKA Hunter Karu. This is General Zuse of the XPCA, in joint command of the American Combined Arms EAEE Task Force. Drop to the ground and surrender your arms, or you will be terminated by my authority. Do not seek to resist. The entirety of America''s might stands against you."


    A little flowery by design. Zuse undoubtedly had aims to have his name and voice aired across the country. Politicking little shit. This was exactly why they''d promoted me instead of him.


    So I couldn''t help but smile a little, despite myself, when the woman replied.


    "Over my dead body, asshole."


    She didn''t get away with it, of course. Zuse wouldn''t have sent over the vid if she had. She barely had time to move before all forces opened fire. It was just dumb luck that she''d been nailed with a shock net from one of the shadow ops instead of...or perhaps, in addition to traditional gunfire.


    Even as it discharged into her and the ground around her, she was still spitting and hissing, thrashing to pull it off of her and firing indiscriminately. The woman''s tolerance to electricity was absurd, and made me rethink the plausibility of the ''net''s speculation on some of the deviant acts she and Exhuman Ashton allegedly got into.


    "Well?" Zuse asked, listening to the feed over the call.


    "I think I can safely say this was a job well done," I announced, closing up the holo. "Before you hurt yourself patting yourself on the back too hard, make sure you tally the casualties, and find that shadow ops who took her down and ensure his silence. Put together something for a charismatic strike unit or something to get the credit."


    "Of course. It''s like you think I don''t know how to do my job."


    "Sometimes, I have to wonder, General."


    He responded with nothing but aggravated silence, and after a moment I took to grumbling again. "I''ll see that you are awarded appropriate commendations. Now stop wasting my time and protect America."


    "Vigilo Ignoto, Director."


    I hung up on him. Sassy little brat. If he wanted my job, he could have it, but only once I was satisfied he''d do a halfway decent job of it.


    Still, good work from him today, had to admit. The casualties were high -- I opened the files again and flipped through the physical reports, but less than I''d have expected for an encounter with Pulverizer. But I suppose, most of them weren''t really there, were they? I expected the footage from Zuse to be curated, but I doubted he''d cut out every trace of the others.


    The actual reports were much less biased, and they confirmed what he said earlier, what I''d just thought. Not a lick of conflict with the others, they''d all just up and vanished on her. Not even in their hijacked Sirius, that had been found and reclaimed. Which was just bizarre.


    No havoc from ''The Spark of Death'', or a single laser from ''White Death'', or a kick from ''Guillotine Girl''.


    As I said, the ''net loved making up new names for them. Every week, seemed like.


    The troubling thought then, was their sudden disappearance. Considering they''d just spoken with ''Justice'', master of disappearing, the possibility that they weren''t collaborating somehow seemed thinner than ever.


    Reports also spoke of a weapon, also recovered, and from what I read, I felt I had to see it myself.


    "Ada," I asked the air after silently touching my desk again. "Could you schedule a visit with exotics for me to see specimen...JB...seventeen...X-fifty-seven?"


    "Certainly sir. Right away."


    And then she went silent in that way that made me wonder if she''d disappeared or if I was just supposed to hang here. Director of the XPCA, left to hang, yadda, yadda.


    "Yes, Director. Dr. Babbage will see you now. He''s just going over the specimen now in the extracts labs."


    I didn''t have my own elevator per se, but when I was in one, the system wouldn''t make me stop for anyone else significant less important than myself. Another feature I felt like might have been put in by Blackett, although this one I couldn''t be sure. Certainly most directors here seemed to have an allergy to bumping elbows with the common man. I couldn''t imagine why -- in many ways what these people were doing was more important than anything I''d ever do. I''d hung up the exosuit years ago, and it was only through them that anything ever got done around here.


    But at least it made the ride fast, as the elevator plunged hundreds of feet into the earth, my ears popping twice as I descended. Down into the real guts of the place, sectors which were so private and protected, even the President had only need-to-know knowledge of their function.


    It was both extremely crowded and extremely empty here. Security was tight, but they weren''t allowed in to the labs unless there was an incident, and ''incidents'' had to be of an extreme nature even then, because the hassle of having two-hundred rank-and-file soldiers traipsing through the world''s most classified materials was a headache bigger than your standard Exhuman event.


    There was an entire protocol for alerts. Keys had to be inserted and turned, one of which I held, and a few by the heads down here, including Dr. Babbage, chief head of research. It had never happened, knock on wood, as the offices and the edifice of the building seemed to attract most of the Exhuman ire. But it never hurt to be too prepared.


    I checked in and cleared security, getting crisp, decisive salutes from all I crossed. I''d only been down here a couple times, and the novelty was still fresh. Smelled like science.


    I was let into a room which sealed behind me, locking my escort out. There were several expensive-looking instruments built into the wall, any one of which could have passed for a dishwasher, but the primary interest was the plain metal table in the center of the chamber.


    It wasn''t a floating pile of shit like my desk, just a good, solid piece of metal. On top of it were a huge number of pieces, individually labelled and tagged, some bagged, others resting free. Babbage wasn''t here yet, so I took a step forward and picked up a piece.


    Even unpowered, the visor seemed to glow red in my hands. There was a line of blood inside, with several short blonde bristles still stuck to it. The three lines of the mask seemed deliberately inhuman, maybe designed to intimidate, or maybe they just came out that way with the optimal sensor placement. I could only imagine how many Exhumans had seen the glow of this visor as their final sight.


    I set it down and walked further along the table, nearly twenty feet long, with armor and weapons and munitions sprawled almost at random. The girl had put up a hell of a fight, and it was no wonder. Almost half of everything she''d had on her was sourced from us in some way or another, some of the exotics we''d repackaged and made standard. I wasn''t sure the lab boys would look kindly on taking specimens for use, but given the shortages, we could certainly use what she''d left.


    I reached the end of the table and the reason for my visit. The report had been vague, and I knew Babbage wouldn''t be: Unidentified Exotic Weapon (firearm) (1). Read more like a mystery than a report. But it was accurate, sitting there on the metal table was indeed an unidentified exotic weapon (firearm), clearly designed to be held by human hands with a grip and a trigger.


    I heard a noise by the door and looked up. Dr. Babbage would be keen to test the device, and I''d be keen to observe. Anything to get me out from behind that desk, really. And who knew when we''d reach a breakthrough?


    "Hello Director," he said with a genial wave. He was a lot more pleasant than Zuse, even despite the typical break between the eggheads and the meatheads. Maybe because he didn''t have a huge stick up his ass. "Excited to get start--"


    I''d taken half a step towards him but stopped. Mid-sentence, he''d simply disappeared. Although, perhaps ''simply'' was an overstatement. He disappeared, of that there was no doubt.


    What was in doubt was the sky-blue, apparently perfectly-round, glowing egg-shaped thing which materialized where he''d once been. Old reflexes kicked in and I hit the ground on knees that hadn''t seen action in too long, firearm pulled from my holster. My body felt weak and infirm compared to the last time I''d done this, but it remembered. My motions were smooth as I fed a magazine and chambered a round. I found myself inhabiting a younger man, suddenly.


    "--worst place imaginable, can it?" I heard a man''s voice. The owner of the voice paused, as though surprised to finish a sentence just as Babbage had started. "...huh."


    "Oh, we''re here," another voice said, a woman. "Would have been nice of her to warn us."


    "I don''t think she does nice. Have you got Tem and Saga?"


    "Yeah they''re here. Where...is this?"


    "You tell me," he said.


    "I can''t get any reception or signal. I hope she didn''t dump us somewhere miles underground. You made her promise it was as close to Karu as she could get us."


    Karu. I swallowed hard. There weren''t many who knew about her nowadays, and fewer still who might know she was taken by the XPCA. Most of those people were already in this building. That really only left¡­


    I steeled myself and peeked over the table and my heart stopped.


    Standing there between me and the doorway was America''s enemy number one. The Spark of Death himself, with the copper-haired psycho beside him, carrying what looked like the body of an asian teenager over her shoulder.


    In his hands was Karu''s visor, and in the instant I''d moved, he''d looked up from it to me, and I saw the air crackle around him with Exhuman electricity as a creased frown crossed his lips.


    "Where the fuck is Karu?" he asked, gently setting down the visor as blades of pure energy surged out of the air.

 394. 2252, Present Day. Extracts Labs, The Ravens Nest. Athan.

    "Athan, I think we should leave," AEGIS said.


    It wasn''t what I was expecting to hear. From the look of the situation, it was her, Tem, and myself against one older dude with a pistol. From how he had glanced at us, how he moved, his uniform, I knew he was trained XPCA. But I also saw he was scared, and knew who we were.


    Behind me, the blue egg shimmered silently as though beckoning. It would only stay open for a few seconds more, tops.


    "Why?" I asked.


    "Because that''s Director Hall of the XPCA. We don''t want to be here."


    I gave it a moment''s thought. And then took a deep breath and let it go.


    And with it, the portal disappeared like it had never been.


    There had never really been a decision to make here, in my mind. Aesa had done as she''d promised and dropped us off close to Karu. Even with the world against us, even here in...whatever shiny metal examination room we currently inhabited...if it meant fighting for my friends or not, I knew which I''d choose.


    But the fact this was Director Hall made things a lot more interesting. Potentially great news. I stared at him evenly.


    "Hi," I said.


    He shot me in response, because that''s how XPCA said hello. I didn''t take it personally. Instead, I took the time to send my blades through the locks and cameras, ensuring we had a nice private chat which wouldn''t be interrupted.


    "Won''t matter," AEGIS said, taking shelter from the gunfire behind me. "The doors can''t be disabled that easily, and the cameras aren''t monitored. They''re just for incident surveillance."


    "What''s that mean?"


    She gave a little shrug. "Means when they take apart Exhuman stuff down here...or Exhumans...sometimes things don''t go well. And they want footage of it for research."


    "How do you know what?" Hall barked at us. "Extracts labs protocols are top-secret."


    AEGIS just gave him an enormous grin, which only magnified as the director emptied his mag into my shield and paused to reload.


    "Director, I want to tell you that we''re not your enemies here," I said.


    "Bull," he replied, with a fresh round of bullets to slap against my shield. I shook my head.


    "Look, I just wanna talk to you. If you could stop shooting--"


    "Talk? You should be more concerned for your own well-being, Exhuman. When reinforcements arrive, you''ve nowhere to go."


    AEGIS stroked her chin thoughtfully as I deferred to her. "Hmm, true and false. We do have nowhere to go, but reinforcements are unlikely. In order to elevate an alert in this sector, I''m pretty sure a state of emergency has to be established in order to override security clearances. That''d mean...you need two active authenticators?"


    He gaped at her, and even though she''d just been saying we should leave, I wasn''t sure I''d ever seen her quite so cocky and gloating as now. She pushed her glasses up for effect as she finished.


    "And I''m fairly certain the guy we just spaced was the chief head of research. Meaning the rest of the authenticating staff are all upstairs, far upstairs. And that''s in the unlikely event you can get to an alarm."


    She shrugged for maximum effect, as though saying who doesn''t know this stuff?


    "But we''re not here to gloat," I said, eliciting a frown from AEGIS. "We only came here to pick up Karu--"


    "Over my dead body," he growled. Marvelous, gravelly speaking voice, really a grade-A pick for director, I thought, especially given the last couple of turds.


    "Well, I''d rather not that. Because as I said, we''re not your enemies here. We just want to be left alone...in fact, we''ve been actively working for the XPCA''s interests¡­"


    He didn''t even argue this time, just shot my shield right in front of my face. I frowned at him.


    Not that I was surprised, exactly. This guy, or someone else up there had declared us public enemy number one, even above Justice. Probably the only reason he''d even pretend to hear us out was to avoid death, and that was only if he was a coward.


    Which, to this guy''s credit, he didn''t seem to be. Probably knew he was screwed as soon as his sidearm did nothing to me, but he wasn''t about to let that change anything.


    "Okay...AEGIS, change of tack. Can you relate what we''ve been doing the last few weeks?"


    "Sure," she said, turning to face Hall. "June second, two-fifty-four PM. Interceded in unfolding Exhuman event in Bartlett, Texas. Two casualties, maybe fifty in damages. Exhuman was subdued and left for authorities. June fourth, eight-oh-two AM. Dissuaded a potential Exhuman threat from rising up by exerting diplomatic means. Zero casualties or damages. June fifth, one-oh-one PM, crisis management, evacuated a plaza minutes before an Exhuman targeted it for an attack. Twenty-two casualties, maybe three mil in damages. Engaged the Exhuman, but were driven off after nine minutes of conflict by XPCA intervention."


    She began to start on the next item but I jumped in. "Do you see? What we''re doing?"


    Hall stayed resolutely shut, so I spelled it out for him.


    "We''re helping. As best we''re able. Everyone thinks the P-Force went bad or some shit, but it was you guys who turned on us. When the XPCA started taking bribes and diverting resources because an international assassin told them to. Or hell -- when a civilian senator did, that was the corruption we pointed out, and then fought against. And for doing that, everything went to shit."


    "Say I believe you," Hall barked, suddenly. "Say I did. What the hell difference do you think that''d make? You think anyone, me included, is just going to wave my hands and accept your apology? You''re an Exhuman, and to most people, that means you''re a corpse that doesn''t know it yet."


    I grit my teeth. "Short-sighted as that may sound, I trust that the Director of an esteemed agency like the XPCA would be more capable of understanding nuance than ''most people''. Your problem, as you see it, is us running around stirring up trouble. And I''m telling you that if you just look at it from an angle of what troubles we were preventing--"


    "If you look at any problem from enough angles you can see why it happened. That doesn''t make it any less of a problem. I say, the only good Exhuman is a dead Exhuman. And that goes double for you."


    "With all due respect--"


    "I don''t want your respect," he said. "I want nothing from you but a corpse. And maybe you''ll kill me. Maybe you''ll whisk away like you got here, get away with it for a time."


    He saw the glance AEGIS and I shared and sneered.


    "Or maybe you''ll die trying to break your way through the heart of the XPCA. Even you can''t kill your way out of this one. Which tells me why you''re so interested in talking your way out. You think if you can just get Director Hall on your side for one minute--"


    "No!" I shouted at him. "Seriously, dude. AEGIS, tell him more of what we''ve done¡­"


    "The XPCA''s got its share of troubles, that I''ll admit," he scoffed. "Too many young men with ideas bigger than their britches. But you''ve never faced a man like me before, and that''s why you''re going to fail. Because unlike them, I serve something greater than myself."


    AEGIS put her hand on her hip and jeered. "And that''s supposed to, what? Make us feel insignificant or something?"


    "No," his moustache bristled. "It means, I don''t mind dying an inglorious death down here if it means taking you all down. It means, all I have to do is refuse your offers, and you two are bones."


    A hint of a grin slipped through his gruff demeanor, and he punctuated his sentence with another bang, stunning me for an instant.


    Though it wasn''t the bang that did it, but his words. What the fuck was this stubborn old geezer on about? Thinking himself some kind of noble martyr because he''d die while canning us? That didn''t help anyone, that was just...toxic stubbornness. It was the worst possible outcome for everyone involved, all because--If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    I blinked.


    Aw shit.


    "What?" AEGIS asked me.


    "Nothing. I think we just need a different tack again," I muttered.


    My mind raced with my new context in place. Trying to avoid being pissed off, I instead tried to imagine myself in his shoes. If I were staring down this situation, what would I do? Or...more specifically, what could they do to convince me?


    I spent a few minutes just standing there, staring at him, thinking. And in the end, came up with nothing at all.


    "Jesus Christ, this is infuriating," I said aloud.


    "Got your new plan?" she asked.


    "No. I''m just realizing how hard it is to deal with some stubborn jackasses sometimes."


    She gave me a sympathetic smile and a pat on the back, and Hall''s sidearm clicked as the hammer dropped on an empty chamber. He fished around, but I was pretty sure he was out. Two magazines was pretty standard for officers off the field.


    "Now that you''ve shot yourself out, maybe we can talk?" I suggested, pulling out one of the chairs. "Look, all we want is Karu, and to help you¡­"


    I trailed off as he came around the table, and then picked up the gun at his end of it.


    Karu''s gun. An Ennervator. An electricity nullifier.


    I threw a handful of lightning at him, swearing that I hadn''t walked over there and kicked it away from him the second I entered the room. But with a faint click and what felt like a dip in the floor, they winked out of existence, along with my blades.


    AEGIS didn''t say or do a thing, she just crumpled, her eyes wide like a corpse, Saga landing at her feet. It reminded me of Alyssa, too much, and I felt my pulse slamming inside my ears.


    "Tem! Handle him!" I screamed, my hands clawing towards AEGIS. I couldn''t even move towards her, I fell over, my exoframe completely locked up.


    The room turned white, but only for an instant. The dark metal walls somehow seemed to drink up the light, and I saw Tem standing there, visibly confused beneath her invisibility, her hands outstretched but no laser forthcoming. She''d shot something, and it had scorched the table, but it wasn''t the eruption of destruction either of us had expected.


    I disengaged my legs and pulled free, crawling towards AEGIS'' body as more half-aborted lasers flashed. She was, at once, on her face and her knees, her arms splayed wide in an unnatural, painful position that I couldn''t associate with the living.


    But it''s only AEGIS. It''s okay.


    I kept telling myself that, but that didn''t make seeing her there, her copper hair sprawled under her like a pool of blood any less heart-stopping. She had the stillness of death. I couldn''t breathe.


    A gunshot rang out, and Tem whimpered, red flecks materializing from nothingness to splatter next to me. She fell to one knee, panting, holding her arm, both confused and frustrated at the situation. Her return volley sent Hall ducking beneath his end of the table.


    "You okay?" I shouted at her. It''d been fucking moronic to assume he only had two magazines. He''d even fucking spelled it out for me that he wasn''t like other XPCA brass, and what? I just jump to some assumption and hope nobody gets shot? Stupid fucking idiot.


    "I am...am okay," she said, wincing and glancing too much at the blood seeping from her arm. I scrambled to AEGIS and tried not to think about her as I rummaged the pack she kept at the small of her back. It was organized to a fault, and took me no time at all to pop out the medical gel and spray Tem down with it.


    When I finished, it seemed very important to put it precisely back, same location, same facing, everything. When she came back, and her pack couldn''t be in disarray. It was a stupid waste of time while Tem was dodging bullets, but my mind was still blank at seeing AEGIS shut down as she was. After a moment, I sprawled her out, finding her enormously heavy, but still managing to get her prone. Less like a corpse, more like sleeping.


    Not that she did that, either. It was still unnerving. I felt an enormous urge to just fucking run. Some kind of human aversion to death, magnified by it being AEGIS'' face, or by seeing Alyssa''s face no matter how much it wasn''t.


    I forced a scream instead, propelling myself forward. I worked that panic into adrenaline into aggression. Blades popped out of the air all around me as I skirted the table.


    They vanished as Hall waved the gun across me, and then my charge ended abruptly as I was thrown backwards, feeling like I''d been punched in the shoulder, as another bang echoed in the long room.


    I was prone now, a few feet from AEGIS, and stunned. My shoulder felt wrong. Felt tense in a way I hadn''t felt before. Hot, almost like, burning. And no wonder, as I touched it, it was covered in blood which was searing to the touch.


    Shit, that''s my blood.


    I tried to conjure more swords, but they wouldn''t come. Hall had popped around the side of the table to get an angle on me without exposing himself to Tem, and it was all I could do to throw myself back towards cover, as his shots hit and ricocheted seemingly all around me, way closer than my shield ever permitted.


    Suddenly this room seemed a lot more dangerous. It felt a lot more like a tomb in here than the lab it was, or the meeting place I''d fancied. I was beginning to hyperventilate, and my arm was beginning to register the pain of getting shot.


    Belatedly, my swords popped out, once I was behind cover. But I hardly saw them, as we were all deafened by a monstrous crack-BOOM and a flash of light almost as bright as Tem''s. I couldn''t make out what was going on except a huge electrical surge.


    Once my eyes cleared, I saw the door had been blasted open. I''d panicked, I realized. I''d thought of the room as confining, and my shield had lashed out. This was why I needed to be in control of myself and my powers at all times.


    Peering in through the blasted-out door was a pair of XPCA in exosuits, protected from the blast and its debilitation. They looked in on us as though curious.


    "Get help!" Hall shouted at them, waving for them to run from over the table. "Call reinforcements!"


    Fuck. THAT was why I needed to be in control of myself and my powers. I tried to cut them before they could get away, but only nicked one before Hall Ennervator''d me again.


    So my shield was down when the hail of gunfire came in from outside as well. Fortunately he didn''t have a good angle through the wreckage of the door, but I still got hit in the side of the foot I had hanging out, never quite appreciating until now how good those exosuits'' targeting and accuracy really were.


    I swore and clambered for under the table. Solid metal, it might help some, but if that exosuit outside got an angle, I was fucked. If Hall got an angle, I was fucked. I needed my powers back up, needed Hall distracted, needed to cut off the fleeing guard before we were well and truly drowning in soldiers, needed¡­


    I looked around. I needed a hell of a lot. I couldn''t give chase without my legs, and they were basically useless as long as he had that gun. I couldn''t go after him without opening myself up to the doorway, and couldn''t go after the doorway without having my powers ripped off.


    "Tem, invisible me!" I shouted, and she did. That at least bought me a few moments, since standard exosuits didn''t see into thermal. But he had a lot more bullets than I had space to hide. From the clomping, crushing footsteps, he was closing on the door, and once he took up position there, he could shoot anywhere in the room.


    Anywhere except the end of the table where Hall was hiding. Fuck me.


    I couldn''t hide from both at once. There was just no cover here. There was just the table and AEGIS prone and Tem standing there and Saga crumpled¡­


    Saga.


    Tem was doing her best. The lasers weren''t working, but she was working on coercing lights into solids, and if I could buy her a few more minutes, we might hold out. Hold out until reinforcements came and completely dicked us, but that was another concern. I just needed to keep us alive until then, for now.


    I used my new invisibility to pick up the nearest scraps of Karu''s armor from the table, heavy shoulder-guards and plates for the upper arms. I pulled them on as quickly as I could, feeling like anything was better than getting more shot. My shoulder screamed at me as I tightened the strap down on it, and I saw spots flashing before my eyes as the pain of it threatened to black me out.


    Also, I now looked like a pair of floating shoulders, because Tem hadn''t invisibled them, too. I couldn''t quite find the words to scream at her before I was getting shot at again.


    I dove, shoving off with my one good leg and grabbing two handfuls of flesh to pull over me. Saga''s flesh, and probably not the handfuls she would have wanted me to grab. She was scrawny, narrower than me by a lot, but I had the arm guards on now, and also was down a leg which needed cover. Holding her in front of me and hearing the bullets slam into her back made me feel sick, especially when her thick blood began to pool on my other leg.


    But she was an effective enough barricade for the moment. Some bullets were passing all the way through her, but I seemed to be hard to gauge quite right, being invisible behind her, too, and they mostly missed. Mostly.


    I looked into her dull face, wincing involuntarily as shots slammed into her back and then relaxing as she reset. I offered her a lame apology for using her in the most undignified way possible...though that was probably hyperbole considering some of the ways she used herself for the fun of it.


    There was a moment''s pause where nobody was shooting me. Probably trying to figure out where I''d gone or if I was dead. I heard the other exosuit still clomping away, still going for backup or whatever. I hoped he wasn''t allowed to be on general comms while down here, or we were already fucked...but the fact he was leaving instead of shooting had some promise.


    But the fact was, this was a losing situation. Without my powers, I was completely nothing. I couldn''t swing a sword, I couldn''t even walk. AEGIS was just...there, face-down. As defeated looking as I felt like I might be in a moment. Tem was working frantically, trying to do everything, and not the least of which was sheer panic at seeing me bleeding my own blood in front of her, when she really needed to focus.


    But who the hell was I to criticize? I''d made too many bad decisions here too. AEGIS was right that we should have just left. But the opportunity to talk with the head of the XPCA...he was right there, alone! It''d been...had been¡­


    Had been about as successful as talking to Justice. Just another hostile force that didn''t want to hear anything I had to say. Just another enemy.


    Why, though? Why did we all have to be enemies?


    I just didn''t get it. We could all want the same fucking things, but because they were different than us, it just wouldn''t ever happen? What the fuck was that? That was bullshit. Just absolute, straight-up bullshit. Dogshit on a plate of guano with a heaping of crap.


    Saga snorted in her sleep at the thought and I froze, hesitating for just an instant at how I was still holding her. But that didn''t matter. Somehow, my invective soliloquy had gotten through to her. She was in there, listening, somehow. On some level.


    I had put off trying to go into her mind because of the threat present, and that I should go after Karu first. Well, we''d now seen how that had gone. Perhaps diving into another''s demented consciousness in the middle of a firefight wasn''t the brightest idea.


    But fuck, I''d had it with my own bright ideas for the day. It was time to do something enormously stupid.


    I shut my eyes and opened my mind, my body sagging under Saga''s as we became one.

 395. 2252, Present Day. Sagas mind. Athan.

    It had been a long time since I was in here. Not that I really understood where ''here'' was, or what even being ''in it'' exactly entailed.


    It felt like a physical space, to me, to my mind at least. And given that I didn''t seem connected to my own real body any more than a dim awareness that ''yeah, it existed out there somewhere'', I was here, for all intents.


    Just uh, where exactly was here? It felt like I was standing on nothing, seeing nothing, with just...oodles of nothing around me. Nothing as far as the mind could see.


    Saga had thrown both of us into this place when she''d gotten serious about trying to dissuade and then kill me, not too long after we''d first met. We''d disagreed on whether or not it was a good idea for me to enlist human help in her rescue. God, she''d come so far since then; it would be almost unimaginable to think of her now trying to kill me over something as petty as a person being around her while she slept.


    But then again, she''d experienced so much more in this last year and a half than in the hundred before that. And for once, her experiences had been good. Many of them, anyway. A lot of hurt and pain, still, and new fears had come. But also a really surprising blossoming of compassion, in that twisted Saga way.


    None of that really explained where I was or what this represented in the mindscape. When we were open with each other, we''d done all kinds of things, mentally. Most recently, in Oasis, we''d even essentially become one entity temporarily, but that was nothing like this. This was more like...prison. Contention. Maybe it was something of the old Saga that she hadn''t felt the need to use since breaking out of her shell more. If that was the case, it was disturbing that she was back.


    That was assuming it represented anything at all, in the conventional sense. Maybe this blackness just was. Like dialing a disconnected number.


    Without any other direction, I walked. Walked and walked and walked. It wasn''t too long before time stretched into an eternity of wandering. It was bizarre that I could be drifting through here while fully aware that somewhere outside, I was being shot at, but thought moved so much faster than reality.


    It took a bit too long to realize that I wasn''t shot in the shoulder or foot in here...and in fact, had two functioning legs again. This was the me of my mind, I guessed. Though...I also remembered her telling me, and then acting on the fact that if I died here, my mind would die out there, for real.


    I also had my powers, which were safe from the fucking ennervator. God, that weapon was awful. I didn''t care how much Karu loved it, we were getting rid of it as soon as...soon as¡­


    As what? I didn''t exactly have a concrete plan here. This was just a desperation move. Just wandering and praying it''d work out.


    I continued on until I felt I should stop, feeling like a year or more had passed somehow, and when I did, I saw I was somewhere else familiar. In front of me was a throne...Saga''s throne, the bastion where she sat and from which she observed this infinite, empty domain. The throne was made from the same blackness as the ground and the air, and though perhaps conventionally impossible to see, I realized that again, this was a place of the mind. ''Seeing'' had no place here.


    I wasn''t too sure on the metaphor here either, but I did understand that the throne was Saga''s place of power. It was her center, and just as she looked down at the world, it was fitting that she''d put herself in a throne above it. What she lacked in subtlety, she made up for in ego.


    But not right now. Right now, the throne was cracked and empty. And I found Saga curled, craven, despondent on the floor behind it.


    I took a step towards her and then hesitated. She was covering her head like she was hiding from an earthquake under her desk, and though I could barely make it out, there were...things...drifting in the air all around her.


    I thought they were lights at first, like fireflies or stars. Except they were dark, though somehow radiant. My next thought was eyes, and I realized that was much closer. Wrong, but closer.


    Because I suddenly remembered where I''d seen them before. They were the shadows that flickered in the dead of Justice''s eyes. Like embers that gave off dark instead of light, even blacker than this place. Just as they had when I''d seen them in him, they unnerved me here. I found it hard to move, hard to breathe, as the hairs across my arms and neck screamed for me to flee the unnatural.


    My face twitched as I tried to ignore all of this and step forward. I got half a step closer and then...no more. My body wouldn''t move. Even being this close, I felt my mind going blank of coherent thought, my instincts kicking in to get the hell away from the thing I didn''t understand.


    Closing my eyes didn''t help, and I couldn''t keep them closed -- the things were too impossibly seductive to gaze upon. I saw Saga shiver and shudder as one passed in front of her face, her own eyes peering wide and trailing it with jerky movements.


    "Saga," I croaked at her. I didn''t have anything more. My mind had gone blank.


    She managed to stare at me, uncomprehending, pale, terrified. But only for a moment.


    I ran. I didn''t mean to, I just couldn''t stop myself from doing so.


    When I was myself again, I was several feet further away, catching my breath, clutching at my chest. In the corner of my vision, I thought I saw the drifting motes surrounding me too, but when I blinked they weren''t there. I didn''t know what they were, didn''t know how they''d filled Justice up or consumed Saga, but they were horrible. They were...pure emotion, it felt like...or at least that''s what they inspired? But not even an emotion I knew or could understand, just...emotion. Undistilled. Like all the centers of the stupid, primal parts of my brain lit up at once with no aim, except to be.


    Sitting here, removed from her and them, it sounded so stupid, to be destroyed by feelings. But I had been, and she was still being. However logical I wanted to think myself, feelings were a huge part of who I was, and they probably had more sway over me than I wanted. I just didn''t know that they could do this.


    This time I ran at her, keeping my eyes shut, blocking them out. This time, I felt phantom sensations, phantom recollections in my mind, not of anything specific, but urges, instinct, practice.


    I spun sideways as a lineman came crashing towards me, my feet planted as I knew by the clock in my mind just how little time I had to break away before the rest of the offensive line crumbled. Blows came at my face, and my fists went to my cheeks to guard my chin, exhaling in decisive bursts every time I felt a shot coming and slipped it. My blades moved almost on their own, dancing around me though completely under my control, dipping and weaving in a choreographed ballet which had them tear through the air at my assailants as I created distance.


    And then I was back there again, catching my breath, wondering how I''d gotten here. I was damp with sweat, it felt like I''d just run a mile, and there was no air to stir a calming wind in the blackness.


    In the distance again, Saga lay unmoving. I''d failed to get close again, but instead of a panicky blur in my mind this time, there was a red haze of adrenaline and aggression. By coming at the things with anger, I hadn''t gotten any closer, I''d just triggered a fight response instead of a flight one.


    I swore at them, which was worthless. Outside, I was vaguely aware that I''d been hit again, clipped on the hip. It had been...I didn''t know...maybe a minute of real-time, for the eternity of the mindscape I''d been. I was aware that Tem was losing badly.


    And then I gave up on out there because focusing on it too much made my grip on here slip, made time suddenly jump by much faster. My curiosity would be the death of all of us. Saga was all we had left.


    I settled back into my mental, sweaty body and swore again at the fucked-up situation and at the hot blood coursing through me. If those things could strip me of my conscious thought, all I''d have left to go on would be...the things I''d already tried. Instinct, muscle memory, urges...none of that would help me defeat them or extract Saga. I tried to think of any sort of instinct to rescue something, but barring a fire or some shit, came up empty.


    I did come up with another idea. There was...one other biological instinct which might...get me closer to Saga. But I didn''t see it helping. Being an uncontrollable horndog on an already-traumatized mental projection seemed at least forty kinds of fucked up past where we already sat. To say nothing of impossible, because I wasn''t exactly turned on by the situation.


    So fucking what, then? If I even got to her, would that matter? If I somehow got her away from where she sat, would the floating things follow? What the fuck were they? And how could I even begin to make them go away?


    I found the question more directed at myself than her. Seeing them here had reminded me of Justice''s eyes, and the moment that thought had crept in my head, I began seeing them in the corners of my vision, had been getting micro-panic attacks. I wanted them gone from me. But if I fucking knew how to do that, I could do it for her too, couldn''t I?


    I fell backwards onto the nothingness in a move that should have bruised my ass. I couldn''t get the damn thought of those things out of my head, and the more I thought about them, and her suffering them, and the...disgusting, unnerving black-light and the way they undulated beyond normal vision¡­


    Again, more of them in my eyes. More of them around me. I pushed back, feeling my panic welling up. I saw Saga there, curled up, afraid to close her eyes but afraid to see. That would be me if I let myself fall into this.


    But how the fuck could I not? All I had here was these things, all I was here to do was to understand them and get rid of them. It was like being an exterminator, but every time you saw a pest, it multiplied. And grew inside your own fucking head.


    The answer for me was still outside. I pulled myself out of the blackness and heard gunshots, felt a whole different kind of anxiety and pain, as I saw Tem battling with all she had, from a fortress of half-melted table and shreds of light motes. She was shot twice now, and black smoke rolled off her body and her darkened eyes as she grit and threw every bit of her powers against her assailants, again and again, without effect.


    The fucking lab just suppressed light somehow. It probably suppressed as many Exhuman powers as they could make it do, being an Exhuman R&D lab. I didn''t understand it, didn''t understand how, but the sight of Tem bleeding darkness brought back visions I was trying to avoid.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I threw myself back down, knowing that every second I wasted up there was an eternity of work in here. I had to do it. I had to. I couldn''t imagine how many ages Saga had been sitting here in her mind, enduring what I was taking breaks to avoid. She had been drowning for hours, and I couldn''t stay under for more than a minute without gasping for air.


    Which, fuck, sounded awful, but it''d do nobody any good if we both went insane here. It was just lucky I could come and go as I wanted, unlike last time she''d dragged me in here and locked me in. But then again, I''d come a long way in dealing with her powers since then. We had a lot more rapport, I''d even worked her powers through her in Oasis. Which was fucking insane. As close to a code-X as I''d ever be. Like AEGIS wielding that terrapath''s power in Eryendria.


    I wondered if I could do that now. I technically only needed Saga''s powers to save us...not her. Could I...just borrow her mind for a moment to blast out the guy running for help? The two dudes shooting us? Hell, just the one with the ennervator?


    I tried, feeling a ball of guilt churning through me as I advanced towards Saga, only to turn my back to her and sit on the cracked throne. I''d still work on her, I promised. Just not when we were all about to die.


    And I had more success than I thought I might. Her mind, and through it, her powers were...on a level, pliant to me. I could feel us united but separate, feel her feelings, being in her body...which was unpleasantly ridden with bullets at this point. I could even feel my mind through her mind, in a strange, echoey dissonance.


    But I couldn''t reach out. I couldn''t access whatever part of her found people and destroyed their minds. Maybe that was more personal to her being. Maybe it was just damaged, along with this throne.


    Or maybe, and most likely, it was just in the whole part of her consciousness I didn''t want to go near because it was infested with glimpses of Justice''s mind.


    I felt itchy, paranoid, seeing shadows and eyes all around me now. It felt like I had to get back out of the dark, go up again, waste more time just to be shot instead of haunted. But this time, I tried to ride it out, tried to just...endure the rising panic, tried to push the thoughts from my head.


    And fuck, that didn''t work at all. I''d never had a panic attack before that I could remember, but just telling myself to calm down was apparently the fucking wrong way to ride them out.


    Every second that I convinced myself I''d endure, the feeling just grew more and more unbearable. My lungs felt too small, filled with water, I was drowning in the dark. Eyes surrounded me, Justice''s, crawling with nightmares. And with every pounding of my head, every frantic breath I took, I was reminded, I chose to do this. When we all died here, because I was stubborn, It''d be my fault. I would go insane, and then we''d all die, and it was my fault.


    When I did break back to the surface, I was gasping and panting, sweating and heaving, tears in my eyes from a pain not physical. The bullets in my side and shoulder felt like a fucking relief. I saw eyes and dark lights even in this room now, watching and haunting me. Everywhere, but fading with the inescapable, inarguable truth of being shot at, being in danger, my ears ringing from gunfire in an enclosed space.


    There was still a lot of room for panic, but very little room for paranoia in a situation where I was actively being killed. Not much else to be paranoid about, except the imminent death.


    I slashed out, screaming, but only for a few moments before my blades went away, and in an instant, I felt my stomach drop and the insane, overwhelming urge to hide. I barely felt myself when I went back into Saga, just to have somewhere else to be.


    And there, not as bad, but still there, the glowing fucking things were waiting for me. Ready to close in. Ready to blind me with horror and incomprehension again. The blackness looked almost white compared to them. Fear like I didn''t know I could have shuddered through my body. The realization that, we''d lost. If I stayed here, I would go brain-dead like Saga, but if I left, I''d die physically did manage to sink in.


    I was super, super fucked.


    I tried everything at my grasp, which was very little, and very useless. The eyes did not go away when I slashed them, the motes of dark cared nothing for my fists grasping at them, and all the while they bored into me, feeling like they were filling me up with every rushed breath I dragged in. The more I fought them, the more I acknowledged and gave them reign, the more of my reality they devoured.


    I didn''t know how I had ever felt comfortable in this body. It felt so weak. My voice seemed like a pathetic squeak which couldn''t even echo. My words...I didn''t even understand them, except as pleading. I had nothing, nothing to fight off this...this viral emotional...thing inside my own head. Seething, twisting, shuddering blackness that infected me the more I thought about it with more thoughts of itself.


    I''d only been here for moments and I needed to run again. I had to go get shot more. I wanted to be shot. Wanted to be powerless in my own body instead of in the dark. I''d rather die than go insane like this. Weeping blackness. Dark ringed with light. Burning mind and flesh and mind.


    I started to run again, started to go back to myself, to shove the bullets further into my skin so that the pain would blind me from my own mind, when one primitive thought crystallized in a corner of my mind which still functioned.


    I can run. I can. I am.


    And that was enough. That was all I needed to beat this thing. The ability to do.


    I threw myself into the throne, the eyes crawling across my skin, staring through me from me. My breaths tasted like blood now, smelled like migraines. But in that throne, I wasn''t just me, I was Saga, I couldn''t reach out, I could reach in.


    I couldn''t wade through the madness inside her to make it go right. All I could do was to dive into her mind with her own powers, to do the thing I knew she always refused to do, to go in and tear out what made her herself.


    In a way, it was easy. It was too easy. What I wanted was right there, staring at me from every part of her mind. It was so easy that it was the hardest thing I could never do. The madness was pouring from it, the cracked memory which dripped insanity into both of us, into everything which looked and was. The source of the black ringed in light.


    I grabbed hold of the memory of Justice, and I pulled with all the power I had. It did not move. Touching it caused me to blister, but the blisters were eyes. I strained and pulled, as hard as I could. Something cracked, and I thought it was her mind or mine. The throne shattered under me at the weight of lifting itself up. The mind could not control the mind control the mind control the mind.


    I blinked wildly, my throat was closed, the black was static in the air. Eyes everywhere, all I saw was all I saw was being seen. Everywhere.


    The throne was broken. I was broken. Saga was broken. Dark broke into dark light, broken. Broken broken broken. Shuddering, vomitous eyes. I was dead. The throne was broken. The eyes helped me to see. Things that should not have been seen. Beyond the beyond. Always broken. Eyes seeing all of me. I was broken.


    I was broken.


    I was broken.


    I was broken.


    Graceful hands touched mine. Steered mine. The memory in my fingers was immovable, but the hands pulled with deftness and delicacy. I looked sideways and somehow, she was there, even if I couldn''t see, even if she wasn''t. She was still broken, but there she was.


    "The mind is a delicate instrument, Athan," she giggled. "Do it gently."


    And so saying, we pulled together, and smoothly, gently, the memory came loose, came free, ripped from her head and vanishing into the black.


    And at once, I felt her in my mind, in her mind, in my mind, in her mind¡­


    Careful hands, gently caressing the folds of my brain. With ease, she found the infected memory in my head and pulled it clean as well, guided by my memories since hers were gone.


    And then we both were again. She was in her throne and I, somehow, sat beside her.


    I was clammy and breathless. My skin was skin. I was me. I did not know what it was like to be insane, couldn''t remember, could only remember that I couldn''t. She seemed as though she''d come back from the dead. Both of us spent long minutes staring into the infinite blackness and coming to terms with the thing that we''d torn from ourselves.


    It was an eternity of silent thought. Of two minds once again becoming two minds. Like gelatin setting in the fridge, slowly, we became ourselves again somehow, as the memories drained away, their edges blunted, like a bad dream.


    She crossed and uncrossed her legs. She frowned. Her brow furrowed and unfurrowed.


    And finally she spoke.


    "That was a hell of a fucking thing."


    "Yeah. I don''t...know...what, though. Or what it was. Or...what happened. Or why."


    "Well, we can deal with that later," she said, stepping off with regained poise and imperial bearing. "We''re not out of this just yet."


    She was deadly serious as I''d rarely seen her. For one moment as she stood before me, she paused, and the steel in her softened.


    She leaned forward and planted her lips on mine, warmer than the rest of her though still cold, but as soft as a breeze.


    "Thank you."


    And then we were in our bodies, and she was getting shot and held by the chest and crotch by me as the world''s most literal body armor. She flinched with another shot, but stared me in the eyes with a determination I wasn''t sure I''d ever seen on anyone.


    And then, at once, everything went silent. Even the ringing in my ears seemed to still. It was like the awakening of a goddess, and the world just took pause to observe it.


    And then I heard two more gunshots. One near, one echoing down the hall, as the two exosuits found reason to shoot themselves in the face.


    Director Hall took to his feet, his face contorting with some inner struggle I couldn''t imagine. But as wiry and steely as he was, he was like clay before Saga''s adamantine stare. I could feel the psychic energy rushing off of her as she pounded his mind with thoughts so dominating, so irrepressible, his body physically trembled as they hit him.


    I put my hand on her arm, and she flinched, her attention snapping to me, and those eyes. The most piercing, dangerous, pissed-off, ready-to-fuck-everyone-up eyes I''d ever seen. Brown, almond-shaped, Sino eyes.


    They only hit me for a moment, but it was a moment I would never forget.


    And then they softened on looking at me, until I recognized Saga behind them again.


    "Don''t kill him," I said.


    [Why?] she spat. She was bitter, I knew, from what we''d just endured. She wanted to hurt something. She hated that another mind had beaten her somehow, hated this world for creating that mind. She hated everything in this moment, and some random XPCA director was as good an outlet as any. Better than most, even.


    I knew everything she knew at that moment, because only moments ago, I''d been right there with her. We''d both been through something unimaginable. We both craved control again.


    Those were her insights anyway. Mine ended at not killing him.


    We paused and breathed. I realized, I couldn''t hear Tem talking to us over the ringing. Could hardly hear or feel anything, my body was so beat to shit.


    As Saga flickered, the blood dripping from her stopped, and more and more bullets fell out of her body to the floor. I could feel her pain as they passed through her, but her face showed none of it.


    [He won''t listen to you, period. He''s not worth keeping alive. No matter what you think.]


    "He is, though."


    [Because you don''t want to kill him?] She spat on the ground at my feet. [I''m not in the mood to indulge you today, Athan. No matter how grateful I am. Don''t ask that from me right now. I''m going to hurt something.]


    I shook my head. That wasn''t what I was thinking, and Saga saw that. But we weren''t of one mind anymore. I had my own thoughts again, and more than she, those extended to other people. Like Karu. They extended to the rest of the world. They extended to plans beyond just killing everyone.


    She saw what was in my head, and she paused, unsure. And then she smiled, the indominatle, adamantite gleam back in her eyes.


    I couldn''t hear but could read her lips well enough when she replied.


    "You''re right. Fuck ''em."

 396a. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest, D.C.. Director Hall.

    "Anything else, sir?" Ana asked through the blasted beepless contraption on my floating desk. I leaned over to push the button but it just emitted an obnoxious tone. "It''s not an intercom, sir."


    "Nothing else...wait...no, get me out of the meeting with that leech tomorrow. I''ve got a country to protect, and I''m not wasting another minute of it listening to people begging for Senator Irenside''s table scraps."


    "Very good, sir. That leech would be¡­?"


    "The bastard from intelligence. You know the one."


    "Very good, sir. Good night."


    I pressed the button to hang up, the one I was most familiar with. And to my continued disappointment, it still failed to make any kind of noise, whatsoever. Frustrating, that we could huck grenades that shot lightning, but couldn''t build a simple phone that you could slam into its cradle like in the old days. I considered putting the R&D boys on it for a minute.


    Instead I muttered cantankerously under my breath for a spell at the nonsense of it all, before opening up a report on my desk.


    More information about our friend Liev. The more I thought about it, the worse this guy seemed. We''d been pursuing him for weeks now, and he was an embarrassment to the entire organization. While at first we''d operated with a somewhat restrained response because his events never seemed to cause too much collateral or public damage -- beyond those he was targeting, obviously -- it was becoming apparent that the morale devastation was worse than the physical damages.


    And of course, we knew that already. A lot of the Exhumans we''d been dealing with recently were no doubt inspired by his perseverance as a symbol of failing XPCA control. A failure I denied, and would battle until my last breath, if it came to that. Any Exhuman who thought the agency was on its back foot was welcome to tell that to my face, and we''d see just how long they lived.


    But I was changing my opinion on them, too. They were a symptom of Exhuman Liev''s sickness. He needed to be excised, and then the others would quiet back down. It wasn''t an ideal arrangement, but we could spend the rest of our time and especially our dwindling arms just putting out fires without ever once arresting the main cause. That was a sucker''s game, and not one I intended to play.


    Which is why I''d reversed my previous order, and declared Liev, and not Pulverizer as the nation''s foremost threat. Our attention needed to be focused his way, and the others could come after.


    Besides, we''d just tangled with Pulverizer, and the damages had been staggering. Even at a quarter of their strength, we were getting an earful from the Pentagon about just how many VTOLs ''we''d allowed'' one woman to drop. They didn''t like it when I told them she wasn''t even Exhuman and so this buck-passing game of theirs flew as well as their VTOLs, but I doubt I made any friends. Not that I wanted any. Keeping America safe was a surprisingly unpopular job.


    Still, one I''d managed for the day. I undid my cufflinks and left them in my desk, doffed my cap and waited for the elevator. When it arrived I had a moment with the glossy black reflection that was so prevalent here, and furrowed my brow.


    I turned around and saw nothing. Trick of the light, I supposed. The door was open and I was going home. Thursday used to be pot pie night, but ever since the missus became concerned with my sodium levels, it was more like pot pile. I told the woman, I''d rather taste things and die, but apparently that wasn''t a choice of mine to make.


    One of the most powerful men in the free world, couldn''t even pick his own dinner.


    I jumped into the back of the car and the driver waited another few moments with an odd look on his face before closing it up behind me. Felt like the car was riding lower than usual, maybe the missus was onto something.


    He slid into the driver''s seat and met my gaze through the mirror. "Where to, sir?"


    "Home. Where else?"


    "With all the others?"


    I looked around the empty cabin with me. Some kind of fat joke? If so, the man needed a humor adjustment. "Just take me home, Alan."


    "Yessir." His eyes flickered troubled in the mirror but he knew better than to play dumb with me. The wheels squeaked as he turned the car on the slick cement of the vehicle bay, pointing us towards the sliver of dusk through the distant tunnel.


    We got more than halfway back before my mobile rang, on important business. I closed the partition and picked up and listened.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Yes. Of course I know about Karu''s escape. Don''t you read reports?" I asked.


    The flustered major insisted that there had been no report, but that was impossible because I knew about it and I remembered...I was pretty certain a report about it, somewhere. It would have been pretty big news. But also private.


    "There was some manner of trap as I recall," I mused. "An explosion in the Extracts Labs examining her equipment. Created a security breach? No. No, go read the report yourself. What do you mean you can''t find it? Use your eyes, man. If you can''t find it, you must not be cleared for it. I don''t care if you''re in charge of Extracts Lab Security or the President''s bathroom, I saw that report so it exists."


    I frowned as I listened to him scrambling an explanation I really didn''t have the patience for. This wasn''t nearly as complicated as he was making it sound. If there were a breach in the most secure parts of the Raven''s Nest, the whole building would have gone up in lockdown, and I certainly wouldn''t be casually driving home tonight, or even tomorrow, likely.


    I suddenly had an idea.


    "Look, just...tonight, figure out who knows anything about this and we''ll have a meeting with all of them in one place tomorrow. We can sort everything out then. I''m telling you, I read a report on this already, maybe you''re just the last one to find out. What?...Well yes it was a report, I certainly wasn''t there myself. Good night."


    I hung up. Man seemed confused beyond any reasonable quantity. I made a note to pull his file for mental instability. People unravelling at the slightest hint of stress weren''t the kind I wanted rising through my XPCA.


    Finally we were...we? I was home. Well, me and the driver anyway, though he was still a long way from home. My home was far from a palace, but still outside his pay grade.


    I gave him a brief wave as he let us out and he watched us go with much less concern than when he''d let us in. Seemed like he''d come to terms with whatever situation he''d imagined before. Fine man; flexible, but vigilant. The kind of personality I thought we''d be seeing a lot more of in the XPCA soon.


    "I''m home," I called. We had a four-bedroom house, tiny, I heard, by the standards of many of the previous directors, but I both hadn''t been director long, nor had the inclination to trap myself with gilded bullshit as many others did. Enough room to put up my feet and have the kids over from time to time was good enough for me.


    "Dinner''s almost ready," I heard Frances call from the kitchen. Lovely, abiding woman, even after nearly thirty years. I sought her out with the intentions of kissing out her daylights and generally being a menace in the kitchen.


    When I showed up, she turned and smiled to see me, apron on, pot pie on the counter, steaming away, just chopping up some salads.


    "Welcome ho--" her smile froze. "Who''s this?" she asked, her face full of concern.


    I turned to look behind me, but saw nobody. She stood, wavering and blinking and then simply fainted on the spot.


    Which...felt like it should have been a big deal. She''d never fainted before. But somehow I felt assured that this was fine, so I simply moved her out of the kitchen and finished prepping the salads myself, making sure to wash my hands first so I didn''t catch an earful.


    My hands were more suited to a pistol than a cleaver, and even I recognized the salad as ungainly-cut, pieces of all differing shapes and sizes, and I had to wonder just how Frances could do it and seemingly anything else in the kitchen with such speed and precision. Years of practice, I knew, same as keeping a gun in my hands. But still, I was a lucky man.


    She came to after only a minute, and seemed inclined to ignore her fainting spell and the strange outburst which preceded it as I was. Though when I went to the fridge for a couple fresh tomatoes, I did feel like I saw the reflections of some figures in the brushed stainless steel door. Again, when I turned, they were gone. And again, after a moment, I felt my worries slip away. I had remembered the tomatoes. Everything was alright.


    Frances got to work cooking even more, and I watched her go as a proud man. It was like having the kids back in the house again, as she broke out the largest pots and pans, dredging up piles of food from the freezers and pantry. I sat down nearby and she began to talk about her day and ask me about mine. When she had a break, she washed out the pot pie pan and put it in the dishwasher without skipping a step.


    Dinner was simple mac & cheese with our salads, and nothing of note had happened at work today, so we turned on the holo and watched the news like old fogeys. It was a bit depressing, the news on every channel just playing the incident in Louisiana.


    "So what happened there?" she asked.


    "Pulverizer and Justice ran into each other," I said, putting down my spoon. "Media''s up in arms that they''re conspiring, but that''s not how it looked to me. As soon as the navy began shooting, Justice was nowhere to be seen, leaving Pulverizer high and dry. That''s not what working together looks like."


    "You''re not afraid they were scheming?"


    "I''m always afraid every Exhuman''s scheming," I laughed. "But if all it takes is chasing ''em around for a minute for their schemes to fall apart, standard protocols are enough."


    We finished up and prepared for bed, moving the couches into the bedroom with some effort and preparing to spend the night in one of the guest bedrooms, a twin bed formerly of our eldest, long since through college and married now.


    "Been a while since we slept in such a small bed," Frances said, edging over to give me space. "Are you going to be alright?"


    I wrapped my arms around her, nuzzling the back of her head and finding her familiar scent calming and exciting at once. It had been a while.


    "I guess we''ll just have to make do," I said, gruff as I could manage. "Having you in my arms all night won''t be the worst thing in the world."


    She sighed contentedly and turned out the light, pressing her back against my chest with a comfortable warmth. "I''m a very lucky woman," she said.


    "And I''m a very lucky man."

 396b. 2252, Present Day. Director Halls bedroom, D.C.. Athan.

    It sorta felt like a sleepover.


    Lia and I were popular enough kids, she more than I, but we''d never actually had a sleepover at our place before. My parents were always insistent that I focus on my studies and sports, and I''d crashed at Brick''s place a few times, but never in the ''wearing your jammies and whispering long after midnight'' sense.


    Lia had, but she was a second child, and therefore subject to much more lenient rules than me. And again, not at our house.


    I still had to imagine sleepovers were something like this, though probably really nothing at all similar. We were all in the same room, the group had tucked Tem and me into the master bed, couches accommodating Karu and Saga, while AEGIS sat at the computer with the lights turned low. And we were whispering, definitely feeling that thrill of doing something wrong.


    Except, unlike a load of kids sneaking up past nine, we actually were doing something wrong. Quite a bit wrong. This wasn''t our house, and our host technically didn''t even know we were in it. Saga had been pulling his strings ever since we''d used him to get ourselves out of the Extracts Labs without instant annihilation. Half of us were wrapped in pounds of bleeding bandages.


    And, we''d stolen that lady''s hard-crafted dinner for ourselves. It was alright, definitely needed salt.


    "Well they were thinking of doing it, but I reminded them that was their son''s bed and now they feel all gross," Saga cackled. "So they''ve got maybe twenty more minutes of laying there awkwardly before they drift off."


    "Why don''t you just put them under?" AEGIS asked.


    She shrugged. "They tried to make me experience their nasty old-people sex. I''m just turning it around on them."


    "Can we not just torture people?" I asked. "It''s wrong enough that we''re using him already. I don''t want you to make him suffer on top of that."


    She rolled her eyes. "Fine. But only because I know I''ve got a lot more toys coming. One or two of them will be ugly enough that you don''t mind me playing with him."


    "It''s not a joke, okay? This guy has a life, has a family. It''s messed up that we''re interfering with that."


    "It is a necessity," Karu injected. "You said yourself that you tried everything within your power to make him listen, and he refused out of pure spite and stubbornness. Had you not utilized Saga, this woman would be a widow now, so consider carefully the weight of this alleged ''awkwardness'' against her mourning."


    Which, I knew. I was the one who''d come up with this, after all. Saga had wanted to set the entire XPCA ablaze and murder everyone in the whole tower, which I...after all the harrassing us they''d done, and all the stupid, goddamn moronic decisions they''d made, I actually kind of sympathized with. If they''d been even one percent willing to listen to our side of things, to hear about the real dangers that Liev posed, that Oasis posed, the corruption of Blackett, of IkaCo, of Ichiro--


    Instead, no. We were public enemy number one, because we operated outside the law. Even though we were out there trying to fix everything, and those fuckers were ruining everything completely legally, apparently intent didn''t matter anymore. It all came down to who could exploit the legal loopholes, not who had America''s best interests at heart.


    "Jesus, boy. Blow on that soup," Saga said.


    "What?" I stared at her in the dark.


    "Cool down. You just like, went into apoplectic-seizure mode there about how mad the XPCA made you. I mean, I like it...I dig that you and I can agree to get pissy on something. Maybe we can have some raunchy hate sex over it--"


    "Veto," AEGIS said, without looking up.


    "--but I gotta say, the random flaring-up is a bad look on you. Go for a nice, lingering simmer, like I''ve got."


    This time AEGIS did look up. "Saga, you literally said, and I quote: ''let''s burn all these motherfuckers to goddamn ash. Let''s kill every single fucker in the building. And their children, AND their families, because every one of the fuckers deserves an end to their goddamn bloodline.''"


    Saga shrugged. "Yeah, a nice simmer. Anyway, we''ve got that meeting tomorrow now. Everyone who knows about the incident all in one place. Should be a nice way to get started working our way through the ranks. I''m getting all tingly."


    "I''d like to remind you, this isn''t for fun," I said. "We just want the XPCA to hear us out."


    "Work can be fun," Saga argued, but AEGIS cut her off.


    "Athan, I know you''re all about the sanctity of...well, our enemies. Respecting their rights to get their heads knocked off and everything but...you did see Justice. He''s got like, twenty powers that we know of, and is completely off his batshit rocker?"This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    I shook my head. I didn''t remember meeting him in the slightest. I should have but...there was a reason for that¡­?


    She sighed. "The point is, I know we''re going to be mostly useless against him. The XPCA has been proving mostly useless against him. Hell, the US Combined Arms has been mostly useless against him. I don''t think¡­" she paused for a moment to fret with her hair.


    "I believe what AEGIS means to say is, we should not so easily relinquish our hold of the XPCA," Karu concluded.


    But AEGIS shook her head. "No, it''s not that. Manipulating anyone with a code-X, even Saga is...it''s abhorrent. No offense."


    Saga grinned. "No, I''m abhorrent. That''s just simple truth."


    "And...I don''t know if it''s just because I was programmed to combat code-X''s...but...well. We shouldn''t. But at the same time, we''re seeing what happens when we don''t. And I...don''t think that''s better."


    "So as I said," Karu repeated. "We maintain our hold of the director."


    "No," AEGIS frowned. "We maintain our hold of the situation, through the director."


    "I fail to see the difference."


    "The difference is semantics," I cut in. "AEGIS, I understand, and I''m just as skeeved at pointing Saga at people as you are. But I don''t think we can backpedal ownership of this by using more words. Either we think the situation warrants using her or not, there''s no giving ourselves an out just because of the situation or how badly they''ve managed it until now. We''re doing this, and I accept that. As much as I hate it."


    AEGIS tugged at her strands. "Okay. If you say so."


    "I do. And...I hate to agree, but you''re right. We might never get this chance again. We can use it to...to hell, to fix everything, really. Everything in the XPCA''s policies we hate, we can work out of them. We can fix the whole institution."


    I started counting on my fingers. "We can improve conditions in New Eden until people there are getting along like Oasis. We can send out diplomatic envoys to Oasis instead of just presenting a threat. We can change how they manage the rash of politically-inspired Exhuman events to show more tact and leniency¡­"


    "Focus efforts towards Liev and away from us," Karu added.


    "Consolidate and optimize the remaining materiel, to preserve the limited supply of exotics for real danger situations," AEGIS said.


    Tem looked around at each of us, her face growing in distress.


    "What?" I asked her.


    Her eyes went wide. "Everyone has s-smart things to s-s-say."


    I gave her a pat on the head, and she went red, and then transparent.


    "You already saved all our lives today Tem, by holding them at bay while I worked on Saga. You''ve contributed more than enough."


    She squeaked incoherently, and it made me grin.


    Karu cleared her throat. "It seems we have a golden opportunity. Perhaps the one for which you have always been destined. Do you believe yourself capable of steering the entire future of the agency towards a better tomorrow?"


    I looked at her, thinking carefully. She spoke so clearly, so decisively, not mincing words even in the least and asking me to do the same...all while wrapped in bandages, shot and burned and beat to hell from her capture. She could be such an insane bastion of strength.


    Not that I was doing so great either. AEGIS had been over us already, and assured us we''d live. She''d been prepared, as she always had, her hands rock-solid and her mind laser-focused as she''d cut out bullets and sewed and patched us up in Director Hall''s office earlier today, while we were hiding out. I looked at her now, the glossy yellow of the holo reflected in her eyes in the dark while she was still working, tireless while we prepared to sleep.


    My eyes drifted over to Saga, who waved lazily at my attention. Her outfit was shreds at this point, she was more covered by dried blood than by clothes, and as long as I was looking at her, she liked it that way. She was calmer now than before, still filled with a latent fury, but willing to put a lid on it, to channel it productively, for the good of all of us.


    "Yeah, no," I answered Karu. "There''s no way I can run the whole agency better than Director Hall. He''s got tons of experience and expertise and skill that I''ll probably never have."


    The four girls looked at me with raised eyebrows. And I smiled.


    "But we can." I nodded to Karu, AEGIS, and Saga in turn. "Experience. Expertise. Skill. And power too," I said to Tem. "Between all of us, and Lia, Cosette, and Whitney...we might have a chance at turning everything around. If you guys are willing to stand by me and help me¡­" I paused to take a breath. "Well, then I think this might be our best shot at all the things I''ve ever dreamed of."


    "Oh you sap," AEGIS said, rising with a grin to clamber on the bed and give me a gentle hug. "Of course we''ll be with you."


    Saga was not so graceful, and landed more on my leg and crotch, probably by design. "As though you could get rid of us."


    Karu stood slowly and lingered nearby awkwardly, settling for holding my hand and patting me awkwardly. "Yours is a light which we shall all follow in continuance. So long as you walk towards the light, we shall be as your humble servants."


    Saga scoffed. "Humble."


    Karu grinned. "Heh. Perhaps not. Regardless, we are with you, Ashton."


    Their warmth surrounding me and couldn''t help but to feel as though I was being lifted up by something in or around my heart. This was it, I thought. This was our chance to do everything right, at long last. We were headed for the endgame for the XPCA, and as terrifying as that sounded, as long as I had these brilliant, brave, sharp women with me, I knew we could do it.


    "Let''s punch that golden ticket," I said, towards Karu. "Let''s aim for that brighter tomorrow."


    "Let''s have an orgy," Saga added.


    Everyone sighed at her and the warmth dispersed as the girls clambered off and away.


    "What? Everyone was thinking it."


    "Good night, you guys," AEGIS said through a warm smile. "I''ll get in touch with Lia and the others and tomorrow...we begin this plan in earnest."

 397. 2252, Present Day. Director Halls house, D.C.. Athan.

    Karu, Tem, and I were unfortunately bedridden, on account of all of us being shot at least twice, and in Karu''s case, upwards of twenty times. Though, she was wearing armor, and most of those were just bad bruises or small fractures, the simple fact was, the three of us were pretty much beat to shit.


    The support crew, Lia, Whitney, and Cosette, were operating remotely too, but that was more by nature of being more effective when divested from the situation. They were still in San Francisco, but plans were being scrapped together to bring them out here, mostly on account of Lia not ever wanting to be too far, but also because my exoframe hadn''t worked properly since Hall had waved the ennervator across it a dozen times.


    That left Saga, AEGIS, and Moon as the actual strike team, if we could call them that. More of a recon team really, since they worked by stealth...though what they were doing was anything but recon.


    Moon and Saga agreed that they would, under no circumstances ever try to bond, since it was likely in their estimation that the feedback loop would probably blow up their minds or something. Which really just meant Moon was not terribly useful from a powers perspective, and her personality prevented her from being useful in general.


    Saga was adopting her new role with aplomb. I don''t think ever in her wildest dreams had she considered that I might let her off the chain and still ever talk to her afterwards, so for her this was summer Christmas. She seemed to take extreme pleasure in subverting the minds of the XPCA, I think attributing every bad thing in her life to them in some way, and it really was the first broad-spectrum payback she''d ever been allowed. If anything, she was a bit too inspired, and seemed to take it as a personal challenge to reprogram each and every single XPCA she could.


    Meanwhile, AEGIS was taking the situation even more seriously than I''d hoped. In a twisted way, this was what she was made for. She was keeping a code-X under strict supervision and control, while also utilizing her planning and predictive aptitude to steer the XPCA in an optimal direction. Almost exactly what Dr. Cross had built her for, and it showed. Though I doubted anyone ever thought she''d be using it to control the XPCA from without.


    I was still nervous though, and apparently it showed because despite drowning in her new work, AEGIS still made time to report to me personally what they were up to and their progress and success.


    I was reclined on a couch in Dr. Hall''s bedroom, a package of frozen corn on my shoulder to keep the swelling down, and my shot foot elevated. I was doing what I could with my exoframe, but something in it had fried, and I wasn''t quite sure what. I had some theories that it was one of the program cores, and if that was the case, I wouldn''t be able to fix it without Whitney''s help. Engineer, I was becoming -- programmer, I was not.


    The secure line to Hall''s house rang, and I picked it up, a clunky old handset of a phone. Hefty and ancient, like its owner.


    "Hiya Athan," AEGIS chirped. "How are you holding up?"


    "I''m fine," I said, putting down my wrecked frame. "Karu''s still asleep. I can''t tell about Tem, she''s mouse-fart quiet whether she''s up or not."


    "That''s good. Karu needs the rest. Do you need me to come back and change your bandages?"


    "No, I''ve got us covered. Shoulder injuries aren''t the worst. How''s the XPCA?"


    "It''s¡­" she sighed heavily. "It''s probably worse than you guys are, to be honest. Everything''s in such disarray and public opinion is so low and materiel is approaching a critical level -- I have no idea how they managed to be such a consistent pain in the ass to us while they were falling apart like this. It''s like they took everything they had left and just threw it at us and prayed that''d fix everything."


    "Well, we were declared public enemy number one."


    She ignored me and continued on, and I used my practiced relationship insights to determine, this was not a conversational call, this was a venting call.


    "I mean, they''re up to their eyeballs in trouble here. We''re up to our eyeballs in trouble. They are actively charting so many new ways for shit to go south, we may as well relocate to Antarctica. Liev or Justice or whatever we''re calling him of course, and Oasis is the threat nobody seems to want to acknowledge. But hell, New Eden is practically up in smoke. We went from fewest Exhuman events on record to most...and from what I can tell, none of them are new Exhumans¡­"


    "Wait, what?" I cut in.


    "Right? You think of an Exhuman event, you think some guy just turning, his whole life flip-turns upside down and he''s a little confused and makes a shitton of bad decisions? No. These are people coming out of hiding. Motivated politically, by vengeance, or by opportunity, everyone smells blood in the water with you and Justice tearing the XPCA a new hole. They''re coming out of the woodwork like crazy, and it''s working, because we don''t have the manpower to put them down."


    "Um, I''m not tearing the XPCA a new hole¡­"


    "It''s a figure of speech, Athan. Come on."


    I shook my head at the handset. "Sure. Whatever. What can we do about it?"


    I heard her typing for a moment. "Well...I have whatever shadow ops we have left activated and making those guys a priority. But I''m also trying to turn over another new leaf here and handle things as I thought you''d like. Which is to say, diplomatically. Any Exhuman out there we recognize as being halfway decent, I''m trying to coordinate an envoy program to get them to back down. But--"


    "But what?"


    Irritation spiked in her voice. "But the XPCA won''t have any of it. Nor the rest of the feds. It feels like, no matter how many people Saga gets under her thumb, there''s always more who are going to scoff at the notion of talking to people, no matter how undermanned and outgunned we are. Seriously, Athan, they''re imbeciles."


    "I appreciate the effort!" I said, trying to put as much approval and enthusiasm into my voice as possible. "That is exactly what I''d have wanted."


    "It''s also boring and lame," I heard Saga bemoan in the distance.


    "Which is exactly why I put AEGIS on point," I shouted back at her. "You''re getting a lot of chances to screw people up, don''t complain."


    "Oh I''ll complain if I want to."


    "How''s she been?" I asked.


    "Really good, actually." She lowered her voice. "Don''t tell anyone, but I think she''s actually really keen on keeping the XPCA from hurting anyone else like they hurt her."


    "I heard that. Just for that, I''m going to kill like, twenty dudes."


    AEGIS sighed. "Well, mostly good. There are a lot of ''dudes'' who have sort of wound up...dead. It''s not helping with the personnel shortages, Saga. But we''re making do."


    "Those are just the assclowns. You''re better off without ''em, trust me."


    "Sounds good. Sounds really good," I told her.


    She sighed heavily again. "Then you haven''t been listening. It''s bad, really bad, Athan. And I miss you."


    "I''m right here, dude."


    "You know what I mean."


    "It''s been one day."


    "You know what I mean."


    I paused, wondering if I was saying something incredibly stupid. Which was likely, even if I gave it thought. But that wasn''t exactly going to stop me, never had.


    "I don''t, actually. What do you mean?"


    She stopped, and when she picked up again, her voice was just saccharine enough that I knew I''d fucked up.


    "Well, I''ve got a lot left to do tonight Athan. I''ll see you when Hall comes home. Talk to you then."


    "Um. Sorry--"


    "No worries. Bye!"


    Click.


    I sat there glumly holding the dead handpiece for a minute before gently clonking it back in its cradle. I even knew I was saying something potentially dangerous, and then did it anyway. I just didn''t expect to get that kind of reaction out of it. An earful, maybe, about how insensitive or stupid I was. But not the cold shoulder.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I sighed and tried to figure my way for a minute. She was stressed, working hard, carrying all of our dreams and efforts on her back, I knew. She''d called me to vent, and instead kinda gotten me saying I didn''t know or care about her problems. So not a good move.


    I shifted the frozen corn where the cold was starting to burn instead of numb and squinted at the phone.


    But also not an uncharacteristic move. AEGIS was always stressed, always working hard, always keeping an eye on Saga and my best interests, and rarely did she reply by just cutting me off. It felt strange, and after all the weirdness of the last AEGIS we''d been through...well, maybe I was just overly-sensitive.


    Maybe.


    So yeah. Now it was a weird and awkward slumber party, as I waited for AEGIS to finish work and bring Saga and Moon home. Not really much for us invalids to do aside from wait.


    I tried twiddling my thumbs. That didn''t help much. The computer seemed a bit out of my reach with the whole sitting-up and working a keyboard affair, with my arm slinged. I settled for turning on the holo for a bit, watching anything which wasn''t news.


    I watched Stenson, the adorkable nerd, as he overcame relationship woes and humorously crippling social anxiety by making more pop culture references than I thought possible, as well as schlocky sci-fi shenanigans.


    The roboto-girlfriend he''d created had just gone rogue and had brutally dumped him after the most canned catastrophic date imaginable. The machine he''d built to be his partner, and still he couldn''t make it work. He sighed heavily and looked into the camera.


    "Yeah, that''s about right," he said, as a laugh track cut in.


    I heard laughter from behind me and turned back to find Karu propped up and watching.


    "Oh shit, I''m sorry," I said, cranking the volume further down. "I didn''t mean to wake you."


    She shook her head, smiling, and slowly, sloooowly sat upright, as though stretching a sore muscle.


    "Worry not. I despise indolence, as you are well aware, even of a recuperative nature, I find myself restless. I welcome the distraction from sleep, that when it finds me, I feel it better earned."


    "Weird, but okay."


    "And how do your injuries find you? Shot twice, you were?"


    "Thrice. Shoulder got me pretty good, one lodged in my heel, and a graze on my side. Your armor is really good, did you know? The shoulder plates kept at least three others out, AEGIS said."


    She chuckled. "I would hope I knew. Familiarity and correct choice of one''s armament is a form of preparation, too. All that I have is customized though¡­" she glanced at the nightstand where the armor was heaped, her visor cracked atop it. "...I am not certain how I will make due to repair it at the moment. My traditional sources are, shall we say, scrupulous. And as it stands, the suit is damaged to the point of unusability."


    "Sorry. I dunno. Whitney''s coming by soon, she might have a look at it for you. But she''s not an exotic materials person, just an engineer. We might be able to source through the XPCA themselves?"


    She grinned, and I realized, despite being shot to hell and having fractures up and down her ribcage, she seemed in higher spirits than I thought possible. Ever since she woke up...hell, ever since yesterday, she''d been all laughter and smiles.


    And before I could comment on it, she did, in a way. "It brings me enormous pleasure to see you acting as such, Ashton. I am ecstatic that you have donned your destined crown."


    I blinked at her, and then felt around on the top of my head in case a crown had snuck up there when I wasn''t looking. "Uh. What? I mean, I kinda know what you mean after yesterday but this...is not that. This is just talking about where to get your armor patched up."


    "I am well aware. The fact remains that you are willing to use the resources at your physical disposal, rather than the alleged. You did not stop to hesitate in offering up a band of mind-fucked military personnel and materiel for my use."


    I blinked at her again, wondering if I was just tired or my injuries were making me stupid. Or if she was just being particularly oblique today.


    "Um, you mean, I didn''t question the morals of using the XPCA to fix your shit?"


    "Precisely."


    I had to stop and look at her funny for a minute. This didn''t feel like a victory in her side to me. I''d drawn the line at hurting and killing people unnecessarily, but taking weapons from our enemies was just common sense. Not that they were really our enemies at the moment, given how we were actually trying to strengthen them...which I guess kind of made them completely helpless to resist us taking whatever we wanted and--


    And, oh damn. They were mind-fucked. Mind-fucking someone to take their shit was pretty messed up. Did different rules apply to taking from the XPCA if they were or weren''t mental slaves? Karu seemed to think so. Or, she seemed to think I would think so. Which actually worried me a little that apparently I didn''t.


    "Um. Let''s go with ''sure''," I said. "I agree that it''s pretty messed up to brainjack someone just to take their shit or use their services but...that''s better than killing them for it, right?"


    "I suppose that depends. Are the braindead Oasians better, or worse than the mistreated of New Eden?"


    "Uh," I hesitated. "New Edeners are better off, I think. Like yeah, they''re miserable, but at least they have the capability to be miserable. That''s not an option even offered to Oasians."


    "Then you value mental sanctity over life. So it flatters me that you would violate the sanctity of another for the mere reason of armor repair. My, armor repair, specifically. It makes me feel as though you value me and mine above others, and to be thought of such by one such as you--"


    She squirmed in a way I was uncomfortable with. I didn''t know how she was comfortable with it either, with all her injuries and bandages and splints, and while the pain did look like it took the breath out of her and made her red and panting, I wasn''t...exactly sure...it was the right kind of red and panting.


    So yeah. We needed to get away from anything involving masochism, because Karu was a weird-ass freak.


    "And you''re pleased as punch because you see this as another step for me, towards my alleged divinely-granted superiority over other men?"


    "Naturally. As well as towards your aim, which is similarly beatific."


    "Well, it''s not. I did it without thinking, so nyeah." I flipped her the bird and turned back to the show.


    "My, that just makes it even better," she chuckled. "As for the mental assessment...who is to say that I did not already know, which is why we are having this conversation right...now?" I glanced back at her, suddenly remembering that conversational traps like this were actually a specialty of her family''s. "Perhaps I knew you had acted without consideration, and decided to take the time to point it out, to make apparent what character resides within you, and how it reaffirms my supposition?"


    "Or. Or. I just acted without thinking."


    I was spared her retort by the sound of a car pulling up and footfalls across the walk. From somewhere in the house, Mrs. Hall went out to greet her husband.


    AEGIS appeared in the doorway with Moon trailing. "Yo," she said, talking over my shoulder, to my surprise. Karu also seemed surprised, since it took her a moment to reply.


    "Um, hail?"


    "I managed to squeak us a regenerator. You''re the most hurt, so you''re up first. Athan, if your wounds are really hurting you, we can do you first but--"


    "No, it''s fine," I said. "I don''t feel ''em all, hardly."


    "Great. Karu, go with Moon, Saga''s coming too to make sure nobody gets too smart about who they''re treating. See you guys tomorrow."


    There was a reasonable amount of grunting and movement behind me as Moon helped Karu to her feet, AEGIS just standing and watching and leaning in the doorway.


    "I suppose you are not helping for a reason?" Karu muttered.


    "I''m staying with my man. You had him all day."


    Karu scoffed. "We were both injured and recuperating all day. And Tem was here as well. I hardly ''had'' him, as it were."


    "If you want me to cancel the regenerator, that''s fine," AEGIS yawned. "Now go, shuffle off. It''s my turn."


    She watched them go and then closed the door behind them and locked it. She turned...again, not on me, to my surprise.


    "Tem, you''re turning off and staying hidden for the rest of the night, got it?"


    Tem nodded vigorously, though she''d mostly been watching the holo it looked like, and then melted into invisibility. Finally satisfied, AEGIS scooped me up gently and deposited me in the bed where I could still feel Karu''s residual heat. She grinned as she set me down and stared into my eyes.


    "Um, hi," I said. "Long day? Wanna talk about it?"


    "Oh I do. I really do," she sighed. "But first, I wanted to talk about what we discussed over the phone."


    "Oh, that?" I asked, my voice squeaking inopportunely. "Oh that was¡­"


    "Missing you," she said, hopping on the bed at my feet with the grace of an acrobat. "I''ve missed you. And I think I need to tell you what that means."


    I swallowed heavily as she advanced towards me on all fours. As though to signal my doom, I heard the car pulling out, taking everyone else in the house with it. It was just her and me.


    And Tem. Which uh, wasn''t a lot of help, unless I wanted to laser both of us.


    "S-so," I stammered "what''s um, what have you got planned here? Like a...presentation or a...slideshow? Maybe some kind of itemized list? That''s romantic. Shakespeare, I think? How do I miss you, let me count the ways?"


    She giggled, though her advance stopped at my feet.


    "I can''t say I''m not inspired to do a practical demonstration," she said, he grin impish, but it faded to a soft smile with a heavy sigh. "But...as much as I''d love to do that...and don''t get me wrong, I really would, and if you were offering--"


    I shook my head. I didn''t know where things stood with us, not since she was last iterated, taking the role of AEGIS over her predecessor''s dead body. Which was literally in my arms. To say nothing of where I sat with the other girls, or what kind of hell that might unleash.


    "--yeah, didn''t think so. Damn. Can''t fault a girl for trying though."


    "It''s--"


    "But I do have something serious I wanted to make time to talk to you about. About you and me, yeah. About us. But also¡­" she looked at the corners in a cagey way "but...maybe I should say, mostly about me. But it is us. But it''s complicated. And I didn''t want to say anything but I also didn''t want to...I dunno, screw up this whole XPCA thing?"


    I shook my head again. "AEGIS I have no idea what you''re talking about. If you could just...start at the beginning or something?"


    "Yeah," she said, and sat down, her butt right at my toes and her legs intertwined with my one. Her dress was riding up and giving me a clear view, but considering how relatively shamelessly she''d just propositioned me, I doubted she cared. "Yeah," she repeated, frowning, like she didn''t know where to begin.


    I gave her a few minutes. After one of them, she looked at me heavily, sighed, and stopped flashing me, giving up on her final sexy attack.


    "Here''s the thing," she said, her voice glum. "This whole...Saga thing. XPCA thing. You...thing. The whole world-saving thing, that you''ve been gunning for, and now we''re doing. Me managing Saga and running the XPCA and making it all happen, thing."


    "Yeah, that thing," I agreed. "What about it?"


    She clutched at her hair, as though grasping at any possible distraction. But it didn''t keep her from fixing me with a yellow stare and a steep frown.


    "I don''t think I can do it, Athan. I think you''re going to have to count me out."

 398. 2252, Present Day. Director Halls house, D.C.. Athan.

    "What do you mean, count you out?" I asked. "What do you mean, you can''t do it? You can do anything. You''re the most...the most remarkable...capable woman I know. You can like...you''re amazing...a lot of...ways," I finished lamely.


    She giggled a little, but set her face back to serious-talk mode after a moment. "Well, thank you. That''s very flattering, and it''s nice to be appreciated."


    "But?" I asked.


    "But," she nodded. "But I still don''t think I''m capable of running this whole XPCA thing."


    "Why not? It''s like, what you were made for, right? If you need more processing power or something, I''m sure we can...well you can work something out. Or if there''s a limitation of some kind--"


    I stopped talking because she''d smushed a finger against my lips. "Athan, just, don''t, please."


    "Pweas wmuh?"


    "Please don''t keep on like this. It''s...hard enough. And I feel selfish and stupid."


    I propped myself up to look into her eyes better, and found her avoiding my gaze.


    "Hey, what''s wrong? What''s really wrong? Are you worried you can''t do it? I know you can. You were made to do this--"


    "I know, okay?" she snapped. "I know I was made to manage the XPCA, and multitask, and predict future outcomes and shepherd Saga so she could be safely controlled, and a million other robot things. I know. Okay?"


    "Then why can''t you--"


    "Because I can''t, Athan." She crossed her arms and glared at me. "Because I''m not the person I was made to be anymore. Because every minute I''m sitting up there at the top of the Raven''s Nest, feeding situation data to the director and generals through Saga, I feel myself slipping away. There''s so much data, all I want to do is turn myself off and become a machine and deal with it all, just...plot projections and manage risk assessment and allocate variables...and I did. I spent hours doing that, I spent the last couple days doing that, almost non-stop. It was easy. It was too easy."


    "And...that''s good?"


    "No!"


    She was fuming now, and it was clear pretty much everything I''d said in this conversation was bad somehow. I just didn''t quite get why, yet. She had some conflicts with her programming in the past but...this didn''t sound like that.


    "This is bad, Athan," she continued, urgently. "I...I...I don''t want to admit this but...but I almost forgot about you. I got so wrapped up in my work, I just...buckled down for two days and didn''t think of you once. I spent the whole drive over here reviewing the footage of those days, and I didn''t. Not once."


    I laughed, feeling suddenly relieved at seeing the issue. "But that''s okay, AEGIS."


    "No, it''s not. That''s not who I am."


    "It''s really okay. You don''t have to think about me all the time, or every day even. I''m not going anywhere, and even if I did...even if I died tomorrow or something--" I cut her off as she began to protest "--which isn''t going to happen. But if it did, you''d still have your memories of me. And hell, your memories are better than anyone else''s. Yours don''t fade, don''t get corrupted."


    "That''s not the point, though."


    "Then what is the point?"


    Her frown wavered, and I realized there were tears in her eyes. "That''s not who I am," she repeated. "That''s who I was. That''s the opposite direction I''m supposed to be going."


    I paused. I thought I understood now, but still, fundamentally disagreed. Even if she was worried about backsliding or doing machine stuff, or ignoring me for days at a time, that was all manageable. All kinda...nothing compared to what she was achieving.


    "I don''t...understand," I said slowly. "Like, I get why that upsets you, and obviously I agree, I like who you are and love what you do and who you''ve become and--"


    "You love me?"


    "Um. Yeah. I mean, you''re...I love all my friends, right? But...hang on, that''s not the topic here."


    She pouted, and I knew that was the wrong answer as I was saying it. But that was the best she was getting after I ruined last AEGIS by confessing on the spot.


    I continued. "The point is...I guess I''m...being a big dick by asking you, but can''t you just keep with this for a while? It''s been two days, and we''ve probably got months before we can even start turning the XPCA around. And I know I can''t do it without you; nobody else has the insight or experience or...and I don''t trust anyone else to keep an eye on Saga. I mean, I was just talking to Karu and she was practically giddy that I was using Saga for my own divine goals or whatever the fuck she goes on about. I feel like if I left them together, Karu would show up one day patting me on the back about my decision to drive the United States into war with the rest of the world or some shit--"


    AEGIS sighed and I trailed off. She stood up and paced, slower than Lia but a decent approximation.


    "I know I''m the only one who can do this, Athan. But there''s other things I''m the only one who can do, too. Like be there for you, take care of you, be the...be¡­the one...the...be there for you."


    "You said that already."


    "Yeah, shut up," she flushed.


    "But that stuff is silly. I can take care of myself. Do you really think I''d put you cooking me meals over the dozens of Exhuman events breaking out right now? Or pampering me over fixing fundamental issues with New Eden? Or...um¡­"


    "Oral sex."


    "...sure, put that over dealing with Justice?"


    "No, of course not." She stopped pacing and crossed her arms at me. "And that''s fucked up, Athan."


    "What?"


    "What guy in the world chooses fighting something that''s all powerful against getting his dick sucked? Who the hell even does that?"


    "I don''t...think this is a good metaphor."


    "I mean, you''re basically saying you''d rather die than have me go down on you. And that exactly illustrates why you need me taking care of you at all. Because you''re amazingly self-destructive, Athan. There''s this cute girl with pigtails who''s rarin'' to go hooverin'' on you--"


    "Can we stop with the BJ talk?" I shifted uncomfortably.


    "--and you''d rather go off and fight some Exhuman. I mean, I''d think you''re gay, except you''re obviously not," she said, glancing down.


    "Anyone should choose that, AEGIS. Anyone on this planet should be willing to throw down and lay down their life for the good of everyone. Most people wouldn''t, but that doesn''t mean it''s not what''s right."


    "Well that''s stupid--"


    "And furthermore," I interrupted, "that''s the same argument for why I think you need to do this. Anyone who could do what you''re doing should, over pampering some guy. You''re starting to fix the world, and that''s way more important than anything else."


    She shook her head. "But that''s already your job, Athan. I can''t stop you from being that guy and doing those things, and God knows I''ve tried. Fuck how I''ve tried. But if I''m gonna accept that''s who you are, then I''m gonna be right there by your side, taking care of you because you won''t fucking do it."


    I found my voice raised. "Which is dumb! Not when you can fix everything for both of us."


    "Oh, so we can both work ourselves to death? And then what? Just hope the world''s all fixed up by the time we kill ourselves?"


    "Sure! As long as everything''s better when we go than when we came, we did our part."


    She rolled her eyes enormously. "So that what, some other Blackett can show up and fuck up everything we did? There''s always going to be people like that taking apart whatever you do. Like Rio or Justice. You can''t fix humanity forever."


    "So what? So why try?" I asked, baffled.


    "No," she bit her lip. "But you don''t have to be so fanatical about it. Do what you can, let the world handle the rest. And let me handle you."This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I fell back down into the bed, only regretting it a little when my shoulder bounced on the soft mattress. I heard her continue to pace as we took a moment with our own thoughts.


    She made sense, and I hated that. It wasn''t like this was a surprise to me, I knew pretty much exactly who AEGIS was and what she was about. We''d always had this disagreement, fundamentally. But to have it come up now, when she was so instrumental, irreplaceable, fundamental to our plans. We were finally here making it happen, and it almost felt like a betrayal that she''d want to walk away now, after everything we were doing and prepared to do to make a difference.


    Like, maybe it was. A betrayal. But even so, could I fault her? She''d always made completely clear what her aims were, and it was definitely not to become a data-crunching instrument again. She wanted to eschew that past, become human.


    "I guess, in the end," she picked up slowly, "I have to ask why your dreams are more important than mine."


    I stared at the ceiling. Her thoughts and mine had gone in pretty much the same direction, and that conclusion is right where I''d ended too.


    "I get that you have these noble ambitions to help. I think that''s great. I think that selflessness and prescience is one of the things that makes me love you. Like I love all my friends," she added with an eye roll. "I''m glad you want to fix things...and I''m constantly marvelling that you actually fucking go do it. Even if you...get shot to hell, or have to get dumped into this dimension in some random worst-case scenario. You''ll take it, because that''s really, really who you are."


    She walked around out of my sight and then I felt her laying on the bed next to me. I rolled onto my side and found her yellow eyes on the next pillow, her copper hair pooled around her timid face.


    "But I have ambitions too. I wanted to become yours, you know? That was the goal I set for myself when I decided to combat my programming, and it''s still exactly what I want. The guy who rescued me from the dark, without even questioning who or what I was, that''s the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with."


    "We can do that after," I promised.


    She laughed bitterly. "After? After what? Do you think there''s ever a time you won''t find flaw with the world? Will you ever stop? Or will you just keep going and grinding away at it until, finally, eventually, you come up against the thing that''s bigger than you. When you stare down Dragon and this time there''s no more reasons for him to leave you alive. Or when you piss Justice off and he kills you in some way Aesa won''t fix? You''re always half an inch from death, and you really think you''re just going to retire someday?"


    "Well what''s the alternative?" I demanded. "Just walk away from a job unfinished? Watch things go to shit and shrug and say, ''well I guess the world''s ending and that''s someone else''s problem''?"


    She poked me in the chest. "No, dummy. I know you can''t do that. But you asked why I can''t wait until you''re done, and that''s why. You''ll never be done, and I''ve no intention to wait for a corpse. And with my help, the corpse won''t be a long time coming anyway." She lowered her chin and looked up at me. "Besides, it wouldn''t work anyway. That''s the real problem."


    "What wouldn''t? I mean...aside from the...killing-myself thing. Which I don''t necessarily agree with."


    She paused for a long moment. "I told you already. The more I work, the more I fall back into who I was. I feel the old subroutines moving up the priority queue inside me. I slip back into that machine I used to be, and I feel like the more I do it, the harder it''s going to be to stop."


    I frowned at her.


    She rolled onto her back and continued at the ceiling. "It''s not like I''m worried about doing this tomorrow, or for a week, or even for a month. But I am worried that at the end of a month, I won''t be someone who worries about it anymore. It''s like turning off my emotions, Athan, there just isn''t any reason to turn them back on unless they''re already on. That''s how fragile my dream is, that I could kill it just by forgetting."


    "AEGIS I...I''m sorry."


    "I don''t want to forget my dream. I don''t want to give up on who I am and everything I''ve learned and become. I had this vision, of myself, that scared the crap out of me, when I was doing future analysis. I saw myself, fifty years or a hundred years from now, coming to, pulling myself out of my work, like when I shook off my programming before. And looking back at my life and realizing, I fucking blew it. I wasted your whole time on this planet helping you instead of being there for you. And then I was just there, alone, with nobody left and nothing to do but turn back to the shit which killed me."


    She shuddered. I joined her in watching the ceiling.


    I could see that. I didn''t want to, but I could. Just as she''d described it, just as we''d already lived through. Like when she''d learned who she was and was slowly, inexorably drawn to make her plans to kill me. It wasn''t anything she''d wanted to do, it was just a natural consequence of being an XPCA AI.


    Hell, she hadn''t said it, but I supposed there was a possibility that if she gave back in to her programming, there''s no reason I''d be protected at all. She might decide that Hall had it right the first time, and that Pulverizer deserved to be on top of the hit list after all. And then a new, terrifying XPCA would be coming after us, after me personally, with AEGIS at their helm.


    I tried to envision that, but couldn''t. It could happen, I knew. AEGIS wasn''t just being alarmist talking about sinking back into her programming. If anyone knew her, it was her.


    But I still couldn''t. Without deleting her own memories or turning off her emotions, I didn''t think it''d be possible for her to come after me like that, not at full force, not fully meaning it. And that impossibility punched a hole in her arguments and fears.


    "AEGIS, if you took over the XPCA again, do you think you''d try to kill me?"


    I wasn''t looking, but heard her turn to stare at me. Even without seeing, I could feel the incredulity written on her face.


    "Of course not."


    "Even if you fell back into your programming? Even if you were going to spend the next fifty or hundred years or whatever slaving away as a machine?"


    "Even if I were a machine, Athan, I''d still love you. I''d never send them after you. I''d rather die."


    I turned to look at her and found her brow furrowed, her eyes sparkling with defiance.


    "Then you''d be in there," I said. "You''d still be you."


    "Well, yeah."


    "Then that''s the answer, isn''t it? I hate to make it sound so easy and so obvious but...the best answer is for you to keep on working, but also hold onto being you."


    "It''s not that easy. Or obvious."


    "I know. But like, every night, you can turn off and come back, like you did today. Every day you can...can work to make things better, and then be able to come home and tell me everything you did to save the world."


    She chewed on my words, wiggled a bit, half-nervous, half-excited. "Like coming home to my husband after a long day of work."


    "You''d be fulfilling your dream by fulfilling my dream, right? I''d be happy you''re out there, you''d be happy I''m not out there. We''d both be happy."


    "Together."


    "Yeah, exactly."


    She paused to give it a moment of thought. "Could we get married?"


    I choked. And coughed. And then forced words out despite the coughing. "I''m sorry, what?"


    "Well you...I mean¡­" she flushed and wriggled more, apparently only now realizing that she''d just proposed to me. She mumbled out the rest of her words. "I just thought, since, y''know...we were¡­''together''."


    "Well I...I mean¡­" I coughed again. "There''s a lot of ways of being¡­''together'', and I don''t know that marriage exactly...like...springs to mind. But uh...that''s a...consideration, I guess."


    Apparently that was a better answer than she expected, because the glowing and wriggling intensified over there. Or maybe she was just practicing for...when we did tie the knot. If. If we tied the knot. Jesus Christ.


    She smiled at me for another few long, wistful moments before her expression dropped and she sighed at me instead.


    "I dunno," she said.


    "Wait, what?"


    She shook her head. "I don''t know. About your plan."


    "Why, because I didn''t agree to marry you?"


    She giggled. "No. Well...no. Sorry, trying to think if that would sweeten the pot enough. But no."


    "Wow, really? What''s wrong with this plan?"


    She pulled on her hair a little, though more to smooth it out than anxiously it felt. "It''s just...it''s like other relationships that have issues, and then decide to get married."


    "Huh?"


    She narrowed her eyes at me. "Marriage. Like, people do it when their relationship is going south sometimes. Or decide to have a kid. Or any number of other stupid things, to double-down on their commitment instead of dealing with the actual problem. It''s a huge issue. One of the leading causes of divorce."


    "I am so lost right now."


    She smiled, bemused. "Yes, I see that. I guess I shouldn''t expect you to know much about that kind of thing. Hell, you''re only barely figuring out relationships in general."


    "Yeah it''s...not exactly my focus right now?"


    "Well it''s mine," she said, shuffling over to curl up on me. Fuck she was hot. Temperature-wise. But otherwise as well, as her soft chest pressed up against me. "But the point is, I don''t think that picking something that just makes us happy is necessarily a fix to an unrelated problem. It can lead to bigger issues in the future, when nobody wants to deal with it because we''ve already established a ''solution'', and the problems are just compounding in the space you''ve given them."


    "You make this sound so complicated. I just take issues and like...fix them," I said, gesturing into the air aimlessly. "I feel like this is a fix, isn''t it? The you-coming-home part at least? I don''t know where all this marriage and relationship talk really came from."


    She giggled which made her jiggle against me pleasantly. "That part, maybe. We can give it a shot and see how it goes. I''m just...I''m still afraid, y''know."


    "Well, don''t be. I''ll be right here, and it''ll be fine. We''ll figure it out as we go."


    She nodded.


    "And it doesn''t have to be perfect. It doesn''t even have to be pleasant. I''d be surprised if anything which wound up saving the world actually was. We just have to...have to have it be endurable enough that we can hang in there until we''ve done our part."


    "Again. Assuming there ever will be an end in sight." She sighed. And then a devious look crossed her face and I felt an arm burrowing under me, to pause and squeeze my buttocks. "But there is this end in sight."


    I couldn''t even complain, the way she was wrapped around me. Too toasty and smushy and comfy and sexy to complain about. The hand paused on my backside and then was joined by one on my front.


    "Hey, do you wanna¡­?" she asked.


    "I''m, uh, shot. And Tem''s here."


    She shrugged. "I can work with that."


    "And what about that whole bit you just gave me about...people doing things for pleasure instead of fixing their issues?"


    She shrugged again, but the deviousity of her look only grew. "We have different issues, remember? Yours is handling the peace and Exhumans and the world and all that. Mine is handling¡­" her hand moved "...you."


    I stopped her, trying to think what kind of rabbit hole I might be plunging into here, though found myself distracted by how warm and enticing this all was, and by the gnawing in the bottom of my stomach.


    "Maybe," I said. "But not with Tem here."


    "Hey Tem, are you well enough to move?" AEGIS asked over her shoulder.


    "Yep!" There was the sound of shuffling and then the door opened and closed with a gentle click. A little weird because at no point did I ever see her. But that left the two of us very alone. I swallowed hard.


    "Well, Athan?" she grinned. "Your move."

 399. 2252, Present Day. Counts Cross, KY. Athan.

    This was one of those small towns on the interstate which didn''t feel like people actually lived there. Or maybe, that the people who did weren''t living by the same definition I generally ascribed. I passed by a deserted store window, looking inside at the sun-bleached stock of kitschy, garbage Americana, thinking not at all of what kind of soul-draining exercise it must be to live behind those shelves.


    Because gaudy, tawdry, and awful as they were, they were far from the most tasteless thing displayed on these streets. That would go to the signs plastered up all over, so many it looked like another reich in here, if Hitler had a thing for clip-art of cliched resistance movements.


    Seriously, every one of them was a red fist thrust skyward on a white background, above the lettering "XMN".


    "Ex...em...en?" I muttered. Examine?


    Muttered to myself because nobody else was here. Quiet as I''m sure this place usually was, it was even quieter now. XPCA hadn''t even had to evacuate, the Exhumans in question had driven the folks out on their own and declared a ''summit of all minds, polymath and erudite''. And we''d heard about it because of the fliers -- the literal fliers that got mailed out all over the ''net announcing such.


    Or, that''s how the XPCA heard about it anyway. AEGIS obviously got it from them, and she clipped it out of their systems and handed it over to me. Ever since our heart-to-heart a couple days back and my turn in the regenerator, I''d been angling for some work. If she was going to put herself to the grindstone, I would too. And then we''d meet at home and have a nice talk like a really bizarre, messed-up family, just like she wanted.


    I shook that thought out of my head. Fliers and signs aside, there was an Exhuman here. Potentially many...and more terrifying, potentially many who were insane enough to respond to unsolicited spam e-vites for an Exhuman-only summit. That was a potentially dangerous kind of crazy, and why I''d wanted to go instead of some shadow ops who might turn the whole thing legitimate by martyring someone.


    So yeah. Stretching my legs. Little tiny town. Bum-fuck nowhere. Interstate roaring past just a quarter of a mile ''yonder.


    Place even had me saying ''yonder, now.


    I walked past another little store, this one selling jerky and other shit to lose between the cushions of your minivan, and arrived at the heart of the tiny, tepid community. It sprawled out before me in all of its open-air glory, festooned with the same red-white-and-awful banners as the rest of the place.


    The gas station. Only thing people probably came here for.


    It has been transformed, in a way. Not in like, a scary or interesting way by fortifying it or redecorating to match the aesthetics of this would-be summit committee. But just because it was so absolutely mind-bendingly full of crap.


    Like, a gas station, right? Except everywhere you''d want to put a car, there was instead a pile of signs, banners, and posters, all identically ugly, and much larger than that hypothetical vehicle. There had to be a million ugly-ass proclamatory materials here, and that was a reserved estimate.


    Whoever was here had been fucking busy, that''s for sure. They also loved their own idea so goddamn much they were prepared to cover the whole continent in that shit.


    And as I stood and watched and saw a figure emerge from indoors, it clicked, and I immediately recognized that yes, the proprietor did, in fact, have his head stuck up his own ass.


    Duskwhisper Demonhand was strolling towards me with a grin bigger than this little town. He seemed impossibly pleased to see me, and strolled -- sauntered, really -- with such forced indifference that it actually sort of hurt.


    "I knew," he said, having to shout a little because he was walking too slowly and the distance was still awkward, but he''d gone too long without speaking. "I knew the era of recrudescence for Althan rode neigh!"


    I said nothing to him as politely as I could, and just tried to enjoy him sweating and picking up the pace a little to come the rest of the way into the street with me.


    He extended an arm. I looked at it for a long moment before taking his hand, which I immediately regretted when he shook it with such aplomb, I thought I might need another dip in the regenerator.


    "Althan, it''s a commodious jollity to re-embrace your continuity," he said.


    "Uh. Thanks," I said. "Dork-hand, right?"


    He stiffened, and I took the opportunity to regain my arm.


    "That is what the Defiant belabled me," he said, cracking his knuckles with a flourish. "But you note that they are incontemporaneous."


    I blinked at him. "Incontemporaneous."


    "Yes," he dug into his front pocket of his button-down and pulled out a pen-sized device which projected a small holo. "It means--"


    "They''re not incontemporaneous, they''re dead, Dork-hand. The Defiant died, killed by Dragon, and you were the only one who got away."


    He cleared his throat significantly, and then, for some ungodly reason, struck a pose.


    "Two!" he announced. And then just uh...stood there. Just¡­


    Just stood there. Mid dramatic pose. Hand back on his brow, mid leg-thrust, just...standing.


    By the way he kept taking tiny glances at me, I think I was supposed to ask something. But I was honestly less curious about ''two'' and more about what the fuck this guy wasn''t taking for his mental issues.


    He cleared his throat again after a painful moment. "Two things you are now fallacious regarding! One:" he began to read off the tiny holo. "Contemporaneous. Adjective. Existing in the same period of time; to be contemporary with."


    "Yeah, but you said incontemporaneous. That''s not the same."


    He snapped the pocket thesaurus away. "From the latin prefix in-, meaning the negative participle."


    "You can''t just put ''in-'' on the start of any word and say it''s a real word."


    "Question me, do you?" he puffed up. "Though I be credible, you should find me...incredible."


    "...uh. Yeah. Incredible''s a word. But, like...in-incredible isn''t. Just goes around to being credible again. So you can''t always just slap that prefix on and have it work."


    "Inconceivable for those of invalid minds, I inplore!"


    "IMplore. With an M." He scoffed, but checked the spelling anyway. Kind of doubted I''d get any confirmation when he found I was right. "And I also bet incontemporaneous isn''t in there."


    "And two:" he announced, bursting with animation again. "You erred grievously in your fallacious assessment of survivability!"


    It was a struggle, but I somehow figured out what he was referring to. "Another Defiant lived?"


    "Another Defiant was in absentia."


    "Just say absent," I told him.


    "It''s a legal term, you wouldn''t understand."


    Well, I knew I''d come out here because I wanted to start affecting my own change on the world and not leave it all up to AEGIS and Saga to do, and that my goal had been to talk to these Exhumans and sort things out in a manner which didn''t result in significant bloodshed.


    But the simple fact was, the world would be better off without this guy. Dork-hand was just as fucking self-absorbed and impossible to deal with as last time.


    I shoved the thoughts about killing him to the back of my mind and focused on all the huge, gaping questions that needed answering, and yet we''d been wholly unable to focus on because of his bullshit.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    "Soo, what''s with all the banners?" I asked.


    "Ah yes, my prodigal son. I knew your engrossment would reach pinnacle absolution. The fact that you walk with me now communes volumes of your latent dispositions."


    My face twitched at the...at least three things wrong with that sentence.


    "Sure," I said, tactfully. "So what''s up with them?"


    As though I hadn''t seen them yet, he wheeled backwards and picked up a small rectangular scrap for me, mostly just a white empty rectangle reading "XMN" with the familiar raised red fist on one side. He handed it to me and I realized it was a sticker.


    "...uh, thanks. But what''s up with them. What the hell is an XMN?"


    "It''s pronounced, Examine. And it sounds like Exhuman. And it stands for Exhumain Mouvement Nouveau." He winked at me. "The new Exhuman movement."


    "Was there an old one? And why are we French?"


    "All beautiful works of art are French!" he shouted, posing again. "The Eiffel Tower! The Thinker! Mona Lisa!"


    "I think Da Vinci was Italian. Otherwise he''d be Leonardo de Vinci."


    He waved his hand dismissively. "I said Mona Lisa was. He painted her in France."


    I shook my head at the guy and tried to remember that corpses were notoriously bad at answering questions. But, then again, so was he. Hmm.


    "Okay, so, the XMN. What the fuck is it?"


    He paused his weird-ass posing calisthenics to stare at me quizzically. "You didn''t get my flier?"


    "Yes I...I fucking got it," I vented. "I''m here, aren''t I?"


    "Well," he sniffed. "I believe I made eminently clarion the intendment of the Examine. It is a meeting of intellectual Exhumans, to adjudicate and conclude the ultimate ordination of Exhumanity in the world."


    "You''re meeting here," I said, looking around. "To decide the fate of the world?"


    "I agree, it is not...ideal. I had hoped for a fete soiree gala, but to say those of subordinate intelligence finds my presence needling is an understatement."


    I didn''t think anything this man had ever said was an understatement.


    "Yeah you don''t even have¡­" I looked around. "...chairs. Or like...a room."


    "It is a procedural...procedure," he declared, heading back towards his amassed signs. "You may wait inside with Terrence until the body of the assemblage...assembles."


    "Terrence," I confirmed. "He''s the other Defiant who wasn''t there that day. What was he doing instead?"


    Dork-hand shrugged with the same flamboyance. "Living his life. He merely missed the meeting because he could not afford to fly out pell-mell helter-skelter owing to a severe deficiency in fundage. I''ve been getting him back on his feet."


    "I''m sure he appreciates that," I intoned.


    As he passed the signs, as though by habit, Dork-hand popped another few hundred into existence as though molting them. I''d never actually seen his powers, but it looked like he could just fabricate things by sorta...extruding them, fully formed from his skin. Which was pretty wicked cool.


    "So you made all these like that?" I asked, pausing for once to inspect his craftsmanship. The art was comically bad, but the materials it was printed on looked absolutely authentic. I''d have thought for sure he raided an art supply store or something for all that.


    "Oh yes, one of the many advantages of being me," he said, somehow being both dismissive and pandering at once.


    "Why didn''t you make like...I dunno...plutonium bombs or something instead of signs. Not that you should. But if your goal was to get heard¡­?"


    "Too complicated," he said, with the same obviously calculated indifference. "Consider the labors of a mass-fabricator machine, and you will know the extent to which my gift already lofts. None can produce a work so readily as myself."


    "Hmm, too complex?" I asked. "You know, a friend of mine used an antique mass-fab to print out a whole swarm of murder robots, once. And no hookups, just a bunch of cross-connected wires, the absolute madwoman."


    "Well, I bet they weren''t very good robots. Probably just schema she found on the ''net."


    "No, she designed them from scratch herself. They were pretty good." I remembered how those robots had been built specifically to contend with my powers, and how fucked I''d have been if I wasn''t still learning new tricks with them.


    "Whatever," he scoffed. "She may move men, but I move hearts and minds. Where any true war is won. Long live the XMN!"


    He was still rah-rah-rahing when he opened the door to the gas station and stepped aside to let me through. Once he followed me in though, I noticed he went quiet.


    There was only one other person in the room, Terrence, I had to assume. Terrence fixed me with a steely glare that let me know exactly why Dork-hand had gone silent. Terrence did not seem like the kind of person to waste too much time or suffer too many of Dork-hand''s breaths. Terrence seemed more the sort to make Dork-hand suffer for them.


    Maybe I was being too judgemental. I reminded myself that this guy was in the Defiant, and therefore, at some point, passed Talon''s criteria. But...then again, Talon had wanted Haley thrown out of the group for being just a kid, and he hadn''t exactly gone and done that either. I remembered the guy as being impossibly charismatic and flawless...but that was still impossible. I probably just never got to know him well enough to know his faults.


    Inpossible, Heh.


    ...God damn it, Dork-hand.


    As for Terrence, he rose, towering a couple inches on me. His skin was ruddy, but mostly black with ink of the many indecipherable tattoos scrawled across it. He wasn''t the biggest guy, but he was pretty muscular. Sort of the tall, wiry-strong look, that sorta reminded me of a wrought iron fence.


    "Who''s this?" he asked, his voice a rich baritone.


    "Hi, I''m Athan." I found it my turn to awkwardly hobble the distance and extend a handshake, my exoframe crunching on the hard floor.


    "Terrence," he said, not hesitating to shake my hand, with a sharp nod. A reasonable handshake, unlike the last one I''d had. "I know you."


    "Yeah? Where from?"


    "Wanted posters. You''re worth a lot of knish."


    I took a step back and crossed my arms. "And there''s a reason why. Are you interested in learning it?"


    For a long moment he said nothing. I tensed as I waited, as he thoroughly sized me up.


    Felt weird having two feet again. One of them didn''t work and never would. The doctors explained that after this long, the body could regrow the tissue and even if the nerves grew back with it, the brain had lost the ability to manage that bit quite right ever again. I didn''t know what that meant in practice, but feeling it now as my blood went icy explained it better than they ever could have.


    I felt it, but it felt alien. Felt more like someone had grafted a foot onto me there and hotwired it into my brain rather than restoring something lost. The phantom sensations still existed, obnoxiously, as my body reminded me that there was still something missing. It just wasn''t this.


    But hey, at least I was balanced again. That meant I had to do a shitton of recalibration on the exoframe the last couple days.


    "Now gentlemen," Dork-hand said, stepping between us once he was certain fighting wasn''t going to erupt spontaneously. "Neither of you predilects the sullying of the XMN''s inaugural summit."


    Terrance smiled, and the transformation it made on his face was remarkable. Maybe it was the addition of a splash of white against the dark facial tattoos. Or maybe it was just seeing something so otherwise grim-looking doing something human.


    "Thought you said there''d be some real sluggers here, Dillon. Didn''t expect Athan Goddamn Ashton."


    Dork-hand looked at him, then at me. "Athan? It''s pronounced Althan."


    I could only shake my head at the imbecile. Also couldn''t help but note that Terrence was still standing there, ready to fight, despite his smile. I was growing uncomfortable with how long we were squaring off against each other here. Didn''t seem like a good start to the relationship.


    And then, I realized, he''d already said it, hadn''t he? Athan Goddamn Ashton. I was famous. I probably was intimidating or something because of my infamy.


    I tried giving him a smile and...not sure exactly what else to do, turned to look around instead of stare him down, and to my relief, he relaxed a bit. God that was awkward. I hadn''t ever been a celebrity before. Not beyond a high school.


    "Good, good," Dork-hand said with a grin. "Well if that''s reconciliated, I am--" he paused, looking around the small gas station store for something. Apparently what he needed was a can of potted meat, because that is exactly what he picked up and banged against the shelf with a crappy rattling noise that was absolutely the opposite sound of a gavel. "I am euphoric to annunciate the embarkation of the XMN summit!"


    I looked around, wondering if this was really it. Two dudes in a gas station, and me. Terrence didn''t bother to look around, I think he knew Dork-hand well enough by now. I probably should have too.


    "Actually, before that. Or, in opposition to that," I cleared my throat. "I actually kind of wanted to talk to you about...not having an Exhuman summit. Y''know, in the middle of a political climate where the future of America is being threatened and the XPCA is kinda on the ropes."


    Dork-hand frowned at me. "Wait. I thought...y''know, last time, you were banging on about protecting the XPCA as well. I''d just assumed with you being their most-wanted but¡­" He scratched his head and attempted to exchange a glance with Terrence, who didn''t bother looking. Suddenly he was animated again. "Althan, you dense ignoramus, you''ve made an ass of you...and me!"


    I stared at him. "What."


    Terrence stepped forward again, smile gone, pose tense again, his wiry muscles twisting under his tats. "I think what Dillon is trying to say is, if you''re gonna shut us down, you''ve gotta do it by force."


    "That is not!" Dork-hand argued.


    He replied with a smile again. "Fine. That''s what I''m saying. Nobody knows what you''re saying anyway."


    "Look," I said, stepping back as the one-point-five of them advanced on me. "I''m not really with the XPCA. I just want to talk, want to make you guys see why we need them standing."


    "Sounds like being with ''em to me," Terrence cracked his knuckles. Lightning crackled around him, going up and down his skin in arcs. Another electrist like me. That was...bad. "Gimmie a weapon, Dillon."


    He reached back and like pulling a sword from a sheath, drew a sledgehammer out of Dillon''s offered grasp. He checked it once or twice for weight and heft while the two of them ignored my sputtered arguments about peace and cooperation and survival.


    "Do I really need to call in the XPCA and turn this into an event?" I asked. "I really, really just wanted to talk instead."


    "I guess we don''t talk with mouthpieces of our enemies," Dork-hand muttered.


    I''d wondered how things could possibly have gotten worse after seeing he was the one making this whole mess. I''d never really actually wanted to find out, though.


    Terrence was moving on me before I even got a sword of my own to bear.

 400. 2252, Present Day. Counts Cross, KY. Athan.

    He was on me and hammering away before it felt like I could even stumble. He didn''t even look like he moved, he might have been as fast as Karu. It seemed almost like there was static in my brain, like a feed from a faulty holovid showing someone jumping around glitch-like.


    And Terrence had a sledgehammer.


    So it was like, a matter of seconds before I had my first broken arm. He just zipped up in my blind spot between a pair of shelves of sodas and there was a crack and a white-hot pain I recognized a little too well. When my swords lashed out that way, I did nothing but detonate forty cans of soda into fizzy froth, with him long gone.


    I cradled my arm and swore bitterly, trying to remember how I''d fought Karu in the past. I knew if I gave into panic, into my instincts, the fight was already lost. Odds were, he wasn''t moving as fast as it looked like, there was just a trick to it somehow. -- that was how Karu did it, because if she moved as fast as she looked, her body would tear apart.


    But Karu was just human. This guy wasn''t. And as I closed my eyes and peered out using my other sight, I could see, clear as day, brighter than the sun, really, exactly what he was.


    And fuck, if I wasn''t at least a little jealous.


    When he moved, it was like an explosion to my senses. Instead of being full of little glowing motes of light where his nervous system fired to propel him, his entire body seemed to instantly stretch and glow -- his powers literally transformed his slow, bulky meat-flesh into energy for portions of his travel. That explained the glitchy movement, he wasn''t actually a person running, he was a person-shaped mass of energy flitting baster than the eye could detect.


    It also explained why he didn''t just smack me with a four-thousand mile-per-hour hammer and end the fight with a blast bigger than TNT. His movement and his attacks were different motions, momentum between being energy and being a person weren''t transferable. Lucky for me.


    There was a flash as he came in again, and I raised my arms and swords in reflex, as though I could shade myself from the sudden light. All that really did was give me a nice, obscured view of him as he whipped around my defenses and came at me from the side again. I tried to slip the blow, saw it coming and everything¡­


    Crack. Same arm, different place, white flashes of another sort going off in my brain. Tore the skin and blood was now dripping freely, almost so slow as to be negligible compared to the fight.


    It was probably helping a lot that we were in such a confined space, but it was making me feel claustrophobic anyway. Limiting his movement was much more important than limiting mine, but that hardly made it feel any less irritating when I was trying to get my swords up between us and was smacking into shelves and slipping in pools of soda. It was another frustration I really didn''t need right now.


    Similarly was the chatter on my comms. They''d been quiet all morning, but it sounded like now, for some reason, Lia and Whitney had cleared up their schedule so they could watch me die here. The hits I was taking were echoed with pained intakes of breath and murmurs from the peanut gallery.


    "Just...just magnet him!" Lia shouted.


    "I fucking can''t," I growled. It was about all the response I could manage between fending him off. I couldn''t take away the time to focus on that. I had maybe twenty swords out, all defensively, and it felt like all I was doing was laying out a children''s maze for him to navigate.


    The trick of it really was, if I could make him take long enough getting through, I had time to move one or two blades, and if I was lucky, I could change the maze to keep him in a part of it the fuck away from me.


    That was the idea anyway. Kinda just happened when I was throwing out swords constantly. And while good in practice--


    Crack.


    Blood gushed from my nose, staining the soda lake with black spots. My vision swam and blurred, and I had to keep my eyes shut to keep from swaying and vomiting. He respected me and didn''t go for the follow-through, which was...one one hand, nice, because I was still on my feet, but on the other, I really needed him to make a mistake here.


    I reached out looking for anything which could help. Something explosive on the shelves I could set off and catch him with, traps I could set which didn''t burn through my focus and get me killed...anything like that.


    And all I really found was Dork-hand, idling in a corner, jabbing at the air like a fuckwit.


    I put a blade to his throat and tried to announce it, choking on the blood flowing in through my nose.


    Thank God Dork-hand was keen to announce things for me.


    "Eek!" he said. Literally saying ''eek''. Like what the fuck. "Terrence, he''s got me! Help!"


    Terrence flashed to a stop, a safe range from me and glared.


    "Hostages, eh?"


    "I don''t want--" I coughed and wiped a red smear on my arm. "--don''t even want to fucking fight you."


    "Well I don''t want the XPCA or their putzes to exist. So I guess we''re even."


    "What the fuck, man. You know," I spat again "I came here in place of assassins, basically. I wanted to fucking talk things out. This shit is what I was trying to avoid."


    "Now, magnet him," Lia whispered urgently.


    "Don''t," Whitney replied.


    "...you think he''ll sense it?" she asked.


    "I think they''re finally talking. That''s what he came here to do."


    As much as I agreed with Whitney''s sentiment, it reaaaaaally didn''t seem like Terrence was interested in chatting. But I had to try, she was right that it was what I''d come here for.


    "Look," I said, trying to sound more like a mediator and less like a smashed-face, broken-arm prick. "If the XPCA goes down, it''d be fucking anarchy. Everything we like about America would go up in flames."


    "Everything we hate, too," he shrugged. He was breathing pretty hard from swinging that hammer around, and I was guessing he didn''t actually object that much to taking a breather. That did mean if this chat ended, he''d come at me with redoubled force.


    "Then why don''t you fucking leave? Go live in...Siberia or something. Or the Canadian wilderness, I''ve got a place I can recommend. If you hate it here, why not just leave instead."


    He frowned like he hadn''t given that thought. That was good.


    "Feh! Because why should I have to leave just because some schlump has a stick up his tuchus."


    "Because when you destroy everything, you''re going to wind up in the exact same kind of shit hole as if you''d just left in the first place. Except you''ll also be responsible for the deaths of millions. Is that better for you?"


    He did pause and seemed to give it serious thought. And then, with a small shake of his head, seemed to decide not to.


    "I''m just one person," he said. "Not my fault if things go to hell."


    "Everyone''s just one person. It''s when they all act like you do--"


    "Can''t control everyone. Not my fault."


    I kinda wanted to scream at him but steeled my voice to keep it level. "Well by that fucking logic, you can just do whatever the fuck you want, because as long as it''s only you doing it, nothing fucking matters. So why worry about the consequences of your actions, ever, am I right?"


    "No, that''s just schmegegge. ''Course things I do have consequences. If I break your face, your face is broken."


    "And if you twist the screws to the XPCA¡­?"


    "They''re a trillion-credit, million-man, country-wide pot of stew."


    "And you refuse to think that you could be the one pushing them over the edge."


    "I think," he said, waving his hammer at me "that if they''re on the edge, they deserve my push."


    "God, you''re like a child," I spat at him, flecks of blood flying. "How the hell can you not get this? It''s like...like people who think that voting does nothing. If you all just stopped--


    "I''m not you all. I''m me. And I''m about ready to pound the rest of your face in."


    I tightened the blade at Dork-hand''s throat, and he yelped. "Don''t do it, man."If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "Or what, you''ll kill an innocent? Listening to you prattle on about saving lives and how everyone should be at peace, I''ve had a realization."


    "Yeah? What''s that?"


    "You wouldn''t." His eyes narrowed dangerously, and I realized...Lia was probably right here. I should have spent this time laying a trap. Talking to this guy had just been a waste of time.


    There was still the whole problem of these guys dying. That''s what I''d come out here to avoid in the first place. Word would get out that there were some allegedly-peaceful Exhumans trying to just meet and talk...at a fucking summit, or what have you...and the big bad XPCA showed up and killed them all. It''d create more sympathy, make it harder to talk to these people in the future, for edgeline cases which weren''t as fucking irresponsible as Terrence over there.


    I considered for a moment just killing them anyway. I''d make AEGIS make it public, maybe even use some of the footage linked over comms to prove it was ''just Athan'', and had nothing to do with the XPCA. But again, that''d just make it harder for myself in the future to talk to people like this.


    Terrence seemed to take my consideration as confirmation that I wouldn''t act, because he blitzed off again, the fucker. I was still staggered, still reeling, and honestly, still only upright because of the exoframe keeping me up. Three blows with a sledge was pretty fucking brutal.


    I couldn''t keep up when I was at full potential, much less wasting a couple blades holding Dork-hand by the neck. I needed those weapons back if I was going to have a chance. I felt like I was...so close in keeping him mazed away from me, but I needed every ounce of my potential. I managed to squeeze another couple blades out but I needed more.


    But if I wanted those swords, I had to choose. Let Dork-hand go, where he''d undoubtedly run like he did from Dragon, and I''d be hearing all about this in the future. Or kill him.


    The blade at his throat flinched as I saw the hammer coming in at me. This time, I raised my other arm and tried to get inside his range, but that just dropped the hammer on my shoulder, half-glancing off with a painful blow that didn''t seem to break anything. Fucked up my arm pretty bad though, and I felt paranoid that now I had no arms functioning...not that they were doing much. Couldn''t lift that arm up at all hardly, to say nothing of the fucking pain.


    I had my eyes closed all the time now, since with them open my vision just swam and I thought I might fall over. I couldn''t see the shelves or anything, so they were getting eviscerated. I was really going to die like this at this rate, bludgeoned to death in the middle of this cramped fucking gas station with all the goddamn signs outside.


    And in that light, my decision was actually pretty obvious. If I killed Dork-hand, it''d be bad looking for me. But if he killed me, people would actually fucking listen to him, given my apparent infamy, and this stupid fucking XMN of his might actually take off.


    Plus, y''know, I''d be dead. Anything was better than that.


    "Terrence!" I shouted. "You fucking hold right now, or I''ll kill him."


    "Athan, don''t," Whitney hissed. "He''s defenseless."


    Terrence paused, evidently seeing something which wasn''t there before.


    "I will. I swear to God."


    "Do it then," Terrence said, resting the hammer on his shoulder. "Prove me wrong."


    "No, don''t do it!" Dork-hand whimpered.


    "It does no good for me to!" I shouted back. "I don''t want to, but if you force my hand--"


    "Do it."


    "Just let him go. Just focus on getting out."


    "I can''t get out, I can''t get away, the man is literally made of fucking lightning," I shouted. "And talking isn''t working, what the fuck am I supposed to even do?"


    "Well, let''s not do anything too hasty!" Dork-hand pleaded. Using regular words seemed to pain him but he wasn''t going for his thesaurus now.


    "Why can''t you just fucking listen to me," I asked. "All I wanted was for this to end without bloodshed, and here you are forcing me into it. Why?"


    Terrence snorted. "Because you''re on the wrong side. We talked, Athan, and you said you''d rather be with them than with us. We want them gone, and you want them up."


    "And why can''t we resolve this peacefully? Why does everything have to end in violence, all the time? I tried talking to them and got the same fucking thing -- why does it feel like nobody, nobody, in this whole fucking conflict has even the tiniest interest in solving things peacefully? What the fuck is so wrong with this situation that we can''t ever talk?"


    I stared at Dork-hand, sweating bullets with the sword to his neck and another holding him from behind. He was ready to talk. All the Exhumans I''d fought, they were always killing first, and then only willing to talk when they had no other option. The XPCA, too...technically, they were still unwilling to hear us out. The only reason we had their ear is because Saga had shoved her fist in their mind to bend it.


    It made me sick, actually. Made me wonder, why the fuck was I -- apparently the only person in the whole fucking world who was trying to resolve this shit -- why was I the one who was suffering for all their bullshit. It wasn''t fair. Wasn''t right. They should be the ones to pay for having their heads up their asses, not me.


    "Here''s how this is going to work," I growled, finding my bewilderment at the fight now steeled into sheer, pissed-off seething. "You and I are going to sit down and talk like human beings, or I''m going to treat you like the animal you''re acting like. Whether you fucking want to accept it or not, you need the XPCA, and I can help you understand that. You can tell me what you disagree with, and we can meet at a mutual consensus."


    I stared at him with my blood-soaked teeth bared. "Or you can fucking die. Both of you."


    "Again," Terrence said, crossing his arms. "Bullshit."


    Whitney gasped as Dork-hand''s head hit the floor with a wet thump. His body crumpled afterwards. Terrence went wide-eyed, but more importantly, flat-footed. My blades went after him without a pause, and he screamed.


    The smell of burning flesh, somehow stronger than the blood seeping from my face filled the room. Dork-hands white eyes were stained red, his mouth forever open in a scream.


    I found I didn''t care. Maybe what he represented was okay, but he himself was a waste of space. Of all the Defiant who could have lived, he didn''t deserve to.


    Neither did Terrence. I understood why he was with them. He cared more about his own safety than any danger the Defiant could pose to the politics of American well-being and stability. He cared more about himself than pretty much anything. He was a greedy, awful louse of a man, and it made me sick to think of all the other Defiant who died so this fucker could live.


    Hell, he didn''t even intend to keep his bargain with them, did he? They were meeting to ensure their group''s survival, to consider pulling that trigger on the mutually-assured-destruction angle...and he never even bothered to show up.


    The things that became clear once you saw the worst in people.


    I''d only singed him, really, a cut through his side, and another through his leg which didn''t slow him down at all. But killing Dork-hand seemed to change him too, and he was coming at me even faster now. I could tell when he wasn''t made of energy because he spent all that time screaming at me, incoherent yiddish-and-expletive-filled incoherent rants.


    I took another hammer shot to the cheek, glancing as I turned to go with the blow. Another one to my busted shoulder, and one which rebounded painfully off my exoframe, making me wobble for a few moments and leaving a dent.


    But I was furious now, I had maybe forty blades, and they were tearing through the air as fast as he was. Still, I couldn''t catch him, couldn''t keep up. It was obvious that I only thought as fast as normal, but he could see and think and move at speeds which matched his pace. Despite everything, all I''d done is drive both of us to the edge of a rampage.


    I unleashed my magnet and threw him and all the mountains of shit in the whole store into a corner. Dork-hand''s body flopped on top of the pile, disturbing in its lifeless animation. He screamed as the mass of crap crushed him, and twice as loud as my blades impaled the mess, darting into him like a swarm of needles into a pincushion.


    And then my chest burned and I fell over in my exoframe, a painful crack which seemed to echo forever in my head as he caught me right in the torso without my defenses. And then again, and again, my swords too far, too useless, as I staggered backwards and ran into the doorway of the now-empty place.


    My guard was out of position, and the room was now clear for him to hit me from any angle. My gambit hadn''t paid off, I could destroy his body all I wanted, but unless it killed him, it didn''t slow him down at all. His blows were weaker, he only had one arm now and was holding the sledge at its neck instead of swinging away. But even so, I was well and truly fucked as my ribs cracked and broke and he kept coming.


    This fucking tiny-ass gas station that nobody gave a fuck about would be the end for me, I thought. Stupidass pointless little place in the middle of nowhere, with Dork-hand for company at the gates of hell, fuck me.


    I lashed out, pathetic, with my arm and caught him in the face. A weak blow, but all we had were weak blows at this point. Both of our powers were beginning to fail from exhaustion. But he had a hammer and I had two broken arms. If I could use the exoframe for kicking, I thought. Or maybe just run, just put all this behind me.


    I stumbled more and realized I was in the doorway, the door open right behind me. Whitney and Lia had been screaming in my ears without me hearing it, their voices muted under the pounding in my head and the smell of burning flesh. They wanted me to run. And I sure as hell didn''t want to die in this claustrophobic little shitty-ass tomb.


    My hand reached out and touched the door. He hesitated in front of me, fended off for the moment by one of my blades which hadn''t fizzled out. I took a lazy swipe at him and he energy-walked right through it to be in my face again.


    Fuck this guy. Fuck this meeting. Fuck trying to talk to these animals. Fuck this whole place.


    I swung the door closed behind me, staying inside. This piece of shit wasn''t going to beat me. I wasn''t going to let his stupid, goddamn short-sighted selfishness hurt anyone else, ever again. If he had been there with the rest of the Defiant, with his powers he stood decent odds of holding off Dragon. Selfish prick let them all die. Only out here now because he thought it was easy, thought he''d get a piece of the pie for taking down the XPCA like a wounded animal.


    Well it wouldn''t be that fucking easy.


    As the door swung shut with a faulty bang, I imagined it sealing shut and locking us both in here forever. A claustrophobic tomb, where we''d both be buried. Tiny, cramped, locked, shut-in, inescapable--


    My shield had had it, and blew the fuck up, just as I''d hoped. Just as he came in for another swing. It exploded with the force of a bomb, blowing out the entire front of the store.


    I couldn''t see through the blast, my eyes and senses both showed nothing but white. But somehow, I saw it in my mind''s eye, the look of stupid, selfish contempt on his face, vanishing into confusion as some new, unexplained power entered the fray and reduced him to his constituent particles. He burned, he screamed.


    And then, like the front half of the store, he was no more.


    I spat blood on the ground and stood there for a long moment, feeling the pain, feeling the rush, trying to right the horizon and still my swaying.


    When none of that worked, I just concentrated on wanting to move forward, and the exoframe did the rest, carrying my useless-ass meat pile with it.


    I''d come here to bring peace to these people and instead I''d just brought justice, the kind that Justice meted out. People like this didn''t want or deserve to talk, they wanted violence...and if that was the only thing that worked, that was what we''d give them. Fuck them, and fuck me for trying.


    "You...are you okay, bro?" I heard Lia ask in my ear, sounding tinny and broken. I wasn''t sure if it was the comms, or her, or me that was.


    "I need an evac," I said.


    "Already on its way. But...other than that?"


    I shook my head. "I''m fine. It''s these animals that should be concerned."


    I heard her murmuring, but it was Whitney''s voice that I caught.


    "...that''s what I''m worried about."

 401. 2252, Present Day. Arlington Memorial Hospital, D.C.. Athan.

    I woke up in that hazy, druggy, dreamy state after going through the regenerator again and considered for a moment just how nice it was to have access to one again. There were a lot of people...probably ninety-nine percent or something, who didn''t have that. Not everyone could get smacked around with a sledgehammer and be up again later that day, no problem.


    Well, not no problem. I was sleepy and confused and laid up in a hospital bed. It took an embarrassingly long amount of time to puzzle that bit out, and longer still to notice the woman on my left, seated in a chair with a sprawl of parts and devices beginning to expand out of her bag and into the area surrounding her.


    She''d been glancing up at me from under her bandana, blue today -- or, if not today, then the last time she''d changed clothes -- but didn''t commit to talking to me until I caught her looking and we made eye contact.


    "Made it out from LA?" I asked. She nodded.


    "What''d you do to your exoframe?" she asked, holding up a piece of plating I should have recognized as mine. It had a large crater in the middle where some asshole had smashed it with a hammer.


    "Some asshole smashed it with a hammer. Don''t worry, I got him though," I joked.


    She didn''t laugh, just reached through her bags and took out a ball-peen hammer and began working the dent back out with deliberate taps. After a while, I kinda got the impression I was being ignored.


    "Sorry I never named it," I tried again.


    She kept tapping away at it. "Naming''s not for everyone. By which...I mean...you, not her."


    "It''s a she now?"


    She shrugged. And I realized that even by her social standards, something was off.


    "Uh, ''cuz that''s just what I''ve always wanted, y''know? A sexy lady wrapped around my legs and waist every day."


    With a clatter she put the hammer down and stared at me through her thick plastic frames. Her hair looked greasy, like she hadn''t showered in a few days. I wondered if that was just the trip over here from LA, or if she''d been neglecting herself again...without really needing to wonder, if I was honest.


    "Look, is all of this just a joke to you?" she asked.


    "The uh...the exoframe? I mean, I need that to walk so¡­"


    "No, all of this. You''re waking up in a hospital bed. You''re back from some private Exhuman mission. You almost died. You killed two men."


    "I...did, yes. But that was also all in the past. I''m here now, with you, safe. I don''t know that there''s a better time to make jokes."


    She took off her glasses and tried to find somewhere on her tank that wasn''t more smudged than the lenses but seemed to give up and put them back on with a grimace. Again, I got the impression I was being ignored somehow, which was the opposite behavior I expected from the usually-straightforward, even tactless woman.


    "Hey, Whitney," I pressed. "What''s wrong?"


    "What''s wrong?" she echoed, talking more to her tools than me. "What''s wrong. What''s wrong, indeed."


    "Yeah, you''re being...strange."


    The corner of her mouth twitched as she glanced at me. "Honestly, Athan, I''m not sure I''m being the strange one here."


    "Well, I am a little drugged, so forgive me some loopiness--"


    "No, not that. Not now. In general."


    I blinked at her. "What?"


    She paused for a long minute and then sighed, seeming to deflate in her chair despite her good posture.


    "I don''t know. I''m sorry. I should be happy you''re alive and safe. I mean...that''s why I''m here right?" She looked around as though only now taking in the hospital room she must have spent an hour in. "That''s why people wait at bedsides, for the person they''re waiting on."


    "I¡­guess? I''m super lost."


    She frowned, and it was a small, bitter one. "Yeah, that''s what I''m afraid of."


    It was my turn to stare, perplexed, until she continued.


    "I''m afraid you''re getting lost, Athan. Not...in this conversation that I am managing super poorly. But in life."


    "Oh."


    She began to tick off her fingers. "You always talk about solving things peacefully, not wanting to kill. But of your adversaries, Colonel Teryn''s dead, Blackett''s dead, Director Albion''s dead, Senator Irenside''s dead, TARGA''s dead--"


    "Was she ever even technically alive?"


    She adjusted her glasses threateningly at me. "AEGIS is. Don''t nitpick."


    "You''re nit picking right now."


    She continued. "And add those two from today to the pile, along with countless others I''m sure I''ve never met or heard of. You couldn''t kill Dragon, so you blackmailed him with murdering his literal god--"


    "Dragon was a completely contemptible piece of shit."


    She looked at me like I had a thick unibrow. "So? I''m not talking about him."


    "You literally just mentioned him."


    "I''m talking about you," she stressed. "You always bang on about how peace is an option, but you leave a trail of bodies behind you. Even if they''re monsters, it''s you saying there''s a better way, but then not following-through."


    "So what, then? Is that what this is, you think I should have done better with Dork-hand and the tattooed asshole who wouldn''t even hear me out?"


    She continued yet again. "You were going to kill Director Hall, but it was more advantageous to mind-rock him instead."


    "How about Mage?" I sniped. "How about Ethan, from Eryendria? Those sleeping XPCA I threw out of a plane over Tokyo? You just want to wring out all the blood on my hands? Dillon only rounds out the whole of the Defiant. Alyssa."


    "I''m not trying to damn you or anything," she retreated.


    "Oh, you''re just keeping track? That''s great. I really needed someone other than the nightmares to do that for me."


    "No," she frowned bitterly. "I just want you to do better. I''m scared and worried, I told you already. I don''t...I''m not...it''s not like I''m sure I could do better or anything. But I''m just this¡­"


    She looked down at herself with this tragic look of defeat.


    "I''m just this girl. I don''t have all the powers and responsibilities you do. I mean, I did, for a minute there. And it was the most uniquely awful thing, and that''s why I''m so worried."


    "Jesus, you fucking suck at making sense."


    She seemed offended by that, which was good because that made us even on that point.


    Delicately, she cleared her throat and started over. "You don''t think it''s a problem that you head out somewhere, with the express intent of resolving something peacefully, and then it ends up in blood?"


    "Of course I do. You know I hate killing. You do know this. And AEGIS hates things going off-plan. I can only imagine what kind of damage control she''s having to do right now."


    "And see -- you did it again!" she veritably squealed at me. "These are dead people, Athan, and you''re sweeping them under the rug. Imagine if it was...if it was Lia, who died out there. Lia and Alyssa. Would you be talking about how torn up AEGIS would be over her plans right now?"


    "No?" I cocked my head. "But it wasn''t Lia and Alyssa."


    "But it was two people who didn''t have to die. People whose lives are worth as much as Lia and Alyssa''s."


    I sunk back into my pillow and thought about it. She didn''t exactly stab me with the point there so much as burbled over it, but I did think I now got the jist of her angst.


    I did talk a lot about how I hated killing, but she was right that at some point, it had given me a whole lot more pause and pain than it did now, with those two. I could lie to myself and say it was the drugs, or it was necessary, or any other number of justifications, but the truth was...I wasn''t sad to see them go at all. I was sad that I killed, but not really upset that they were dead. Because Dork-hand was one of the uniquely worst people on the planet, and his friend refused to ever even hear me out, and attacked at the drop of a hat.


    ¡­


    And that was enough that I should sentence them to death? Even neglecting the necessity of it, putting aside self-defense and the threat they posed...even now, I didn''t really consider it a mistake, and I was safely divorced from the consequences by now.


    Simple fact was, in my head, those two deserved it. But an Athan from a year ago wouldn''t think that. Whitney had noticed that change, and I hadn''t.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    "Hmm," I mused. "I get what you''re saying."


    She perked up. "You do? Oh thank the moons, I thought...I thought I''d just blundered over my words again."


    "Well, you kinda did. But I also got it."


    We fell into another silence, but a lot more contemplative.


    When had I changed? Sometime in Japan? After seeing the damage I''d done in Tokyo, I''d definitely taken the approach that a few deaths here and there could prevent widespread havoc and devastation. Justified killings, to keep the damage small.


    But even before that, I''d been willing to kill any number to get to Lia in Vegas, hacking through the assembled XPCA in the suicide run which had cost me my leg. That wasn''t morally justified in my head in any way, that was just kinda...me turning my morals off, because Lia needed me. But after that, they''d never quite come back on, had they?


    I remembered us stopping halfway through that chase at the rest stop where there were a couple teens and their boss. I''d allowed Saga to mindfuck them into acting as a diversion for us so we could escape XPCA awareness. It was brutal and cruel, and those three definitely were super murdered by me, selfishly and remorselessly. And yet, they never haunted my dreams like the others did.


    Maybe it was because that was when everything started to break. Maybe Lia was the justification I needed to...to do what Karu was always banging on about and becoming this monster. Maybe it was a slippery slope, and I was falling down it.


    And maybe it was because of my position at the bottom of the hill now, but looking up...I wasn''t convinced that being up there was so much righter than where I was anymore.


    If the last few, fucking godawful experiences had taught me anything, it was that everyone else was already down here. Not just Karu, urging me down, not just Saga who thought Morals were a brand of shampoo, but everyone. All those people Whitney had just listed off, not the least of which being the two most recent -- it felt like everyone was willing to settle their problems with murder, when it came down to it. And somehow, I was the only sucker in the world who''s mommy told him that people didn''t do that.


    "It''s not really the killing," she sighed. "Though, of course, that''s an issue. But it''s about using the wrong means for the right ends. Using Saga to take control of everyone...no matter how noble your goals are, can that ever be the proper way to achieve them? And then, I''m not sure the ends are so right either."


    "Well, what else am I supposed to do?" I vented. "I''ve tried talking to these people, all of them. Nobody will even hear me out, even when I''ve got ''em by the balls, they just...they''re just too stubborn and closed-minded. It''s literally impossible without something to open their minds."


    "I think...that something is supposed to be like...how the world has done historically. Slowly, painfully, winning acceptance and increasing awareness and fighting back the lies."


    "And dying and suffering endlessly."


    She paused for a moment to inspect her work on my exoframe plating before tapping at it again. Probably kind of inappropriate for a hospital, but nobody had caught her yet.


    "I guess, at the end of the day, I see it like this: Your plan is to mentally enslave the XPCA until...I assume, their and the world''s policy on Exhumans has changed enough that you can step back and let it go and things will work out. Right?"


    I nodded.


    "Well¡­" she cleared her throat nervously. "Blackett''s master plan was to use Saga to mentally enslave all the Exhumans so they''d act as a loyal police force to make Exhumans toe the line, until others like the P-force could start becoming normalized, and their and the world''s policy on Exhumans has changed enough that he could step back and let it go and things would work out...Right?"


    "I''m nothing like Blackett."


    "I didn''t...say you were. I just said your plans--"


    "My plans are nothing like his. Just because they both hinge on Saga doesn''t make them the same plan."


    "Well, what''s the difference?"


    I found myself seething. "The difference! It''s fucking obvious, isn''t it? It''s that he was mindfucking innocent, helpless, trying-to-fit-in Exhumans to be his personal slaves, and I''m taking it to the XPCA, who are the ones who prop up the whole problem. They''re the oppressors."


    She frowned. "Well that''s just as bigoted as seeing all Exhumans as evil, isn''t it? Seeing all XPCA as evil?"


    I was about to start yelling my retort when the door slid open and AEGIS strode in, seeing Whitey and myself talking animatedly and her face immediately crinkled in disgust. But only for an instant.


    "Heya, Whitney, thanks for coming," she said, holding the door open. "I''ve got it from here."


    "Um, we were actually--"


    "I said I''ve got it, thanks."


    Whitney looked between us for a moment, her eyes wide. I didn''t know why she was bothering to look at me after calling me Blackett the Second. She could piss right off with that attitude.


    Gradually, slowly, she began picking up the pieces of the sprawl she''d started and repacking them, which seemed to take ages. And then, wordlessly but with many glances, she tottered out of the room.


    And AEGIS closed the door as soon as her face was beyond it. She put on a cheery smile.


    "Hey, sorry, I meant to catch you before you woke up but, y''know, work is crazy. How are you doing?"


    "Doing okay. Thanks for the regenerator." I moved my arms experimentally, happy to find that both of them could be raised above my shoulders. I stretched my legs, the toes on my good one wriggling beneath the sheets while the other was...more of an inert lump of meat. AEGIS beamed at seeing me whole, though.


    "Oh it''s my pleasure. Saga helped...but I''ll happily take the credit," she winked. "Not something you should be counting on, you''d be amazed how much of a fight everyone puts up in involving them, when it''s really just a few million credits. Better than wasting millions on missiles and bullets, but what do I know? Cosette must love you a lot, because she got you one of these a bunch of times, and she didn''t even have Saga around to make it easy on her."


    "Yeah, we got pretty lucky with her. Did she come over with Whitney? I haven''t seen her yet."


    "She did. Still kind of a fat drunk if you ask me, but she''s here."


    "Hey," I said, and AEGIS cocked her head questioningly. "You don''t have to do that."


    "Do what?"


    "Throw insults at all the other girls. That''s what...that''s what the previous AEGIS did, and it really pissed me off."


    She chewed her lip for a long minute, before walking over to sit beside me where she apparently finished her thinking.


    "Sorry," she muttered, finally. "Didn''t mean to."


    "It''s okay. I mean...it''s not. You''ve got a bunch of awesome in there, it''s just...sad when it gets buried behind the ugly parts."


    "I know. I''m sorry. I''m just really stressed. Work''s crazy like I said, and right now, I probably...probably shouldn''t even be here. I''ve got Moon looking after Saga but--"


    "You left Saga alone?"


    "I left...Moon there."


    "But Moon can''t keep an eye on what Saga''s doing. She''s not tapped into every camera and computer and casualty report of every exosuit in the XPCA. What''s she gonna do, stare at Saga as she mindfucks some general into giving orders to execute everyone in New Eden?"


    We''d upgraded to full-on hair-tugging now.


    "Of course you''re right. And I know that. But it''s important for me to be here too. You just got beaten with a sledgehammer, Athan. That must have really hurt."


    I shrugged. "Yeah, but...I mean...I know I should trust Saga more, she''s my friend and everything and I don''t think she''d deliberately screw things up for us. But she also is a little vengeful, and these are the people she wants revenge against."


    AEGIS stood up abruptly, then froze like she''d been hit with a compel. She hadn''t obviously, but it was a little strange anyway, as she took a few deep breaths, gave her hair one final stroke before tossing it back over her shoulder, and forcing herself to sit down.


    "So how''d it go with Dork-hand?" she asked. "You shut him down pretty good."


    "Poorly. I really did just want to tell him that the XPCA wasn''t his enemy, and to go back underground. But that''s such a poor sell for most Exhumans."


    She laughed. "Yeah, I can imagine. ''Hey, you know what you should do? Nothing. And a lot of it.'' I don''t see it taking."


    "I know. It''s kinda bullshit hypocrisy, because I never sat around doing nothing if I could. A different me would just be those guys out there, trying to knock the XPCA down, too."


    "A lot of our current struggles are our fault, kinda. The weapon shortage in particular."


    "Right? So I''m just doing the best I can to make sure that things hold together, to...to sorta repent for my sins in a way. Because if the XPCA fell apart because of shit I''d done¡­" I shook my head as I trailed off.


    I couldn''t even begin to imagine the damages. All these dozens of Exhuman events cropping up aimed at counter-XPCA movement, if they were all aimed at their neighbors instead of us, jerkasses who felt, like a newly-born Exhuman like their powers were without check, the country would boil into anarchy in a week. Maybe just a couple days.


    It wasn''t a future I intended to indulge.


    I shook my head at the thought. "That won''t happen. That''s...that''s why I had to kill Dork-hand, against my best interests."


    She took my hand, which still felt a little weird to the touch from the regenerator, but the warmth was the same as ever.


    "I know. And I''m right here with you, working as hard as I can."


    "Except...for right now," I informed her.


    Her eyes narrowed instantly, and the comforting grip became just a little crushing on my hand. "I said specifically what I said. I''m right here with you. I''m not...up there, working away by myself, like some machine."


    "I got it. I''m sorry. I''m still...a little drugged, that was bad of me."


    She relaxed a little, but her shoulders were still tense. "Okay. I''m sorry too. I should get back to work though."


    "I should too," I said, attempting to stand to see how it felt. Sitting up seemed to move all the blood out of my head and all the drugs into it, but other than that, I felt relatively normal right up until I had my feet on the floor, and one of them could feel the cold of the tile and the other couldn''t.


    "Tsk, did that girl walk off with your legs?" AEGIS asked, looking around pissed.


    "They were broken anyway, and I appreciate her fixing them for me. I''ll just use a crutch."


    "I''m a crutch," she volunteered, stooping to put her shoulder under my arm. She was just the right height for that, and I didn''t think I''d ever be pressed up against her without having to note just how warm and soft that body was.


    "Yeah, but you should go back to the XCPA. I should go...home, wherever that is, and help Whitney with my legs."


    We''d taken a couple steps towards the door and she paused at my words. I felt her heave a tiny sigh beside me.


    "I''m sorry," I offered. "I know...you''d rather be with me. I''m just worried about Saga fucking up everything."


    "Me too. I know. I am," she confessed. "It just doesn''t feel fair. I wasn''t even here when you woke. Instead, that bi--that, uh, friend of ours--who gets to play with her toys all day and see you whenever she wants, she''s here. When I''m the one who struggled to get you the regenerator. It doesn''t feel fair."


    "It''s not," I agreed, as she took us over to the corner where there were crutches laid out, slowly and sadly exchanging herself for one of them. "And I''m sorry."


    She sighed. "It''s only for a short while. I keep reminding myself. And...in case I wind up becoming something I hate, I just made a full backup of myself. In case...the worst happens. We have a version of me I can go back to, that I don''t hate."


    I looked at her with alarm. "AEGIS, you''re talking about...planned suicide here."


    She gave me a bitter smile. "Oh, is that so? Didn''t notice."


    "I''m serious."


    "And so am I. I don''t like this path for myself, Athan. I''ll do it for you, out of love, out of hope for this world. But don''t think that jumping into fights beyond yourself is the only way to kill yourself for the greater good."


    The crutch under my arm felt cold and infirm compared to the goddess who I''d traded it for. She accompanied me through checking out and making sure my papers were in order and loading me into an auto-taxi back to Hall''s house. And then she gave me a sad farewell and a lingering kiss.


    "See you tonight," she assured me. "Unless...I guess...Saga did mess things up. And then I''ll...be back as soon as I can."


    "Don''t worry about me. In fact, set me up another mission if you can. I think...I think Whitney was right about some things."


    "Oh?" she asked. The auto-taxi beeped its irritation at us lingering with the door open.


    "I need to keep trying to solve things peacefully. Even if, in the end, killing everyone is kinda the only option open to me...because I''m better at that than talking...that doesn''t mean I can afford not to try."


    She messed up my hair a little and leaned into the taxi to give me a kiss on the noggin.


    "See you later, Athan. You''re a good one."


    Then she checked that my feet were clear, shut the door, and waved her sad farewell as the taxi took me away.

 402. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest, D.C.. Athan.

    Even though it had been a few weeks now, every time I caught sight of myself in a reflection -- which was often, as the XPCA liked their surfaces glossy -- I couldn''t help but feel a little startled, and a little gross.


    I was back in uniform again. We all were, with roles of actual legitimacy on some fabricated body, the ''Future Direction Task Force'' whatever that meant. Ostensibly to study and advise on the future direction the XPCA should take, given the rift between the warring internal philosophies of Blackett and Hall. It mostly just sounded like bullshit, but that was kind of the genius of it, because presumably, to an XPCA, most things in the agency kind of sounded like bullshit, and so we fit right in amongst the piles.


    Saga had been the one to ask it of us. She said it was easier to have people not notice our faces then to completely blank out our existences and walk as ghosts among them. I was no code-X but that sounded legit enough to me, so for our comings-and-goings, we suited up. It wasn''t that much of a logical leap for her to have a niche carved out for us so that we could keep using the same lies instead of making up new ones every time...and then she thought, hell, may as well force the brass to legitimize that niche.


    So here I was, literally back where I started, as an XPCA officer in the ''Nest. Back in black, with a sidearm and a badge that got me in and out, and people who said good morning to me every day. I had authority, not because Saga told some people I did, but because I actually was an officer. Insane, how circuitously we''d come.


    Sure, we were kinda sidelined out of the whole standard chain of command, as Cosette had been when she was in charge of the P-Force. A special task force we were, which kept to our own and stayed out of the minutiae and the rabble. Dedicated to data analysis and problem-solving, and reporting our findings and vision for the future directly to Director Hall, almost like a board of advisors.


    While also of course, going out in the field whenever we wanted. Which just made no fucking sense whatsoever from an actual military perspective, but y''know. Stretch the lies you''ve got as far as they fit, Lia said.


    She was with me now, and she looked good in uniform. They all did. I always thought the black and silver was pretty awesome on me, but maybe it was just a good, flattering palette anywhere. With her cap smartly placed on her head, it sorta felt like Lia''s powers of concentration were magnified, like she was staring out of the shadows under her brim with eyes that could pierce the dark.


    She was across the table from me, in a conference room which had become our home away from home away from Hall''s home. The long, glass table was lousy with papers and machine pieces, pieces of guns and armor and reports, all arranged by section to suit the needs of whoever generally claimed that chunk of the table.


    With a couple of exceptions. AEGIS'' section was spotless, all the infrastructure she needed to do her job was in the XPCA''s vast server network underground and offsite. And Whitney of course, who would aggressively expand into any unoccupied territory, if unchecked. It wasn''t uncommon for small wars of expansion to break out, as Whitney''s pieces claimed ground while she was here, only for her junk to be accumulated and shoved in a pile at her place in her absence. The great ebb and flow of a living mess.


    I was also a real mess, ebbing and flowing in a less literal sense than the junk. In these few weeks, I''d strived to keep busy...and even had some successes. Exhumans like Trish and Gil had been, who would hear me out and actually fucking cared about shit enough to be able to sit down over a slice of pizza and have some actual fucking words.


    Maybe I couldn''t always convince them that what we needed, they should be doing. But I could always threaten them, and I''d gotten much better at just dropping the situation to the point where they either listened, or I was ready to kill them.


    And, also, the situation where I killed them. Like I said, the missions ebbed and flowed. Most of them were...more ebb than flow, but there were a few good ones.


    Mostly, I felt tired. I was lying at that table with my head down and eyes dozy, praying for something to do but hoping I wouldn''t have to do it. I felt numb. The Exhumans I was sent out to each had their own lives, their own story, their own fears and wants and unique powers, their own ambitions and reasons for why they were hiding, why they came out to make trouble, their legitimate beefs with the XPCA, and their imagined ones.


    Every single one of them was wholly unique. A completely new, fresh perspective. But it didn''t take long to learn they were all the same. I hated it. I hated learning that Exhumans were just like people, in that for all the uniqueness of their situation, they all just wanted the same things and had the same kinds of struggles. It made them disposable in a way I didn''t want to think of them.


    The door opened with an automatic swish, and I saw Lia look up.


    "Is he still sleeping?" Karu''s voice asked.


    "Beats me. Go poke ''em," Lia answered.


    "I ask to know, not to alter." Her boots click-clacked around the metal floors until I saw her from the torso down in front of me.


    Uniform, not armor today. I guess much of her armor was in here for the moment, being worked on for some kind of refit or upgrade. Nothing major, but she didn''t have too much else to do, I thought.


    Not that I minded. I thought the uniform looked good on each of us, even...say, Saga, or Tem, who were more mantid than mannequin in the physical shape department. But Karu had physical shapes, abundant ones at that, definitely unique compared to any other XPCA I''d ever seen. I really couldn''t help but to stare. And wonder just what kind of future-tech exotics-sci-fi shit they used to manufacture their buttons.


    "Ashton?" she asked, and I glanced up from, uh...towards her face. "Oh you are awake. Good day."


    "Heya," I sighed, pulling myself upright in my chair. "How''s it going?"


    She smirked at me. "I am up here, Ashton. Or should I simply skip the pretenses and remove the shirt?"


    "Please don''t," Lia muttered. "This is a family-friendly conference room. We have to plan infiltration, saboteurs, and assassinations in here."


    "I confess a loss at what of these is not family-friendly," Karu asked with a puzzled frown, giving her chest a really...unnecessary...bounce. "Mammaries are essential for rearing children, and as a secondary sex organ, they entice the mate, a critical component of creating a familial unit--"


    "You know what I mean. Please don''t be dense."


    Karu laughed, and that also did wonders for her, uh, chest. They were so improbably perky still. God bless regenerators.


    "Well then," she said, crossing her arms to push them further up while she faced me. "It goes well enough, given what little I have to do. I am grateful for the time to refit and repair my armor, a luxury I have not had the privilege of time to undertake in far too long, and a necessity after the damage it sustained. Something of a vacation, by my standards, which I am utilizing to its fullest."


    "I wish mine felt like a vacation," I said, putting my head back down. In part because I was tired. But mostly because my narrative of wallowing in failed missions and murdering Exhumans was being intruded upon by huge bouncing fantasies. "I''m so tired of people who won''t listen. I''m so tired of having to kill them, Karu."


    I heard her pause, the good nature of her attitude deflated at once, and then she click-clacked over to me and scraped the neighboring chair out to sit on.


    "You know this to be why I admire you, Ashton."


    "Please don''t, not now."


    She paused for a moment, but apparently that was all the reprieve I was getting. "It is easy to dismiss me as a zealot, or fanatic, or idiot--"


    "And we do," Lia added.


    Karu cleared her throat. "But I, of any of us, know well the road you now tread, Ashton. I, too, have taken countless lives in service of something greater than myself. I did not do it for a friend, as AEGIS does, nor for myself, as does Saga. I killed because it was the right thing to do, as you now do. And I know this to be the most difficult of all. You all think me a monster now--"


    "And we do," Lia repeated.


    "--in my liberation of homicide, but the simple fact is, I am now freed as the others are. I am now taking the easy way, in acting in my own interests, or in that of my friends. Killing for those reasons is, compared to what you face, very easy."


    "Killing''s never easy," I muttered.


    "I concur. But I did say comparatively. When AEGIS or Saga or I kill to suit our own ends, or those of an ally, few are the consequences we must consider. Imagine Saga as she ends a life for her own enjoyment -- she asks, for what purpose did I do this act? And the answer is, to have fun. Later, she may face the death, revisit it, and be challenged by what passes as her principles; to that, she must respond, did I have fun? And for her, I am certain the answer is always yes."Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I listened to her words, her clear voice, and the measured breathing behind them. She was an orator, it never felt like she started a sentence without knowing where it would go, always felt like the words flowed at a constant pace, not rushing or slowing as suited her thoughts. It was calming, authoritative, and pleasant. Which was weird given the subject matter.


    "But when you -- or I, formerly -- act in the name of something greater, like God, like America, like Righteousness, when we take a life under that banner, we ask the same -- for what purpose did this being expire? And later, when we are challenged by our morals, we must have an answer suitable. A reason beyond ''because it was fun'' or ''because it was easy'', or else we are not truly holding up that banner, are we? And the conflict therein, and the constant challenge of whether what we did was for the right reason is the turmoil you face."


    "I hadn''t considered it like that."


    I could hear her smile in her reply. "Well that is why I am here, and old, and wizened. And why I support you, and say also that I know you to be special. Because as burdensome as this weighs upon you, I know also that you have no intention to cease. I admire you not merely because you are willing to pick up that banner, but also because I know you refuse to put it down, no matter the pain of bearing it."


    She paused. "It may be of little merit, but I hope you find some worth in my appreciating your deeds, even if from no other."


    I looked up again and saw her green eyes, shining like plasma. Her smile was soft but reassuring. Her entire face was, at once, completely hard but completely soft; reassuring, but from a place of complete confidence and faith.


    And it just fucking hit me so damn hard. Her...eyes or smile or...something in her words. I felt tears threatening and had to look up towards the matte grey and recessed lights of the ceiling as my heart lurched.


    I really did appreciate her thanking me for it all. It was a brutal, thankless task, killing people that I didn''t want to kill. I was so tired of it, and so tired of them making me do it to them, that to have just this one person in just this one moment appreciate me for it...


    All at once, I felt a little sick, a little comforted, a little mad at myself. I felt like a child who''d come back after running away from home for a mere hour to find his mom still there, still feuding, but still loved. I wanted to embrace Karu on the spot, because...she''d said it, she really had. She''d put into words what I never could, she''d lived what I was living and understood me like none other.


    But I also kind of hated her for doing so, because Karu reeked of wrongness to me. As Lia had jabbed, we did think of Karu as kind of a loose-cannon-monster, and the fact that she was the only one who understood me, what did that say about me?


    Basically, I was tired from dealing with all these complex emotions, and Karu just showed up and jerked all of them right out of my body and now I felt like twice the mess, but with a strange sense of relief.


    That...metaphor could have been better worded. Though I guess not entirely inaccurate.


    Whatever I thought and felt, it was plain enough to see that my emotions were a train wreck right now if they ever got loose, and apparently that''s why I''d been being dead and blargh instead. I took a deep breath and bottled them back up as best I could.


    "I really appreciate it," I told her. "A ton. Really."


    She smiled broadly, her white teeth glinting in the too-sterile conference room. "I am glad. It is my joy to bring you whatever happiness of which I am capable." Her smile turned more pointed. "Incidentally, I note that you and the AI have been separated more than usual. If your wearies are rooted in a sexual frustration--"


    "Dude, I''m still right here," Lia complained. "Why the grouse does everyone seem to think it''s okay to proposition my brother right in front of me? I don''t wanna hear this ish."


    "My apologies," Karu said lightly, though she squeezed my thigh in a fashion that was anything but.


    "AEGIS is just busy. And we''re not uh...sexual anyway. Or...even together, I don''t think."


    "It is difficult to keep straight when she continuously reverts to prior stages, I imagine."


    I shook my head. "Not hard at all, they''re all very different. But I guess...I was dating two of the three of them now. Wow, that makes it sound like I''m going through triplets or something, what the fuck is wrong with me?"


    Karu shrugged. "Pent-up sexual frustration was my theory. You seem deflated, and I...well, I just wish to inflate you. As it were."


    She blushed a shade, and Lia hit her in the back with a thrown pencil.


    "Like, if nothing else, Saga''s right here, dude," I said. "Which does not mean yes as soon as we''re away from her. Just...there''s no...just no."


    Karu stood and stretched in a way that pushed her chest even further forward somehow. "Oh, very well. Consider a standing offer extended. Or any other position. Release can clear your head. Now where is that AI anyway? I have not seen her in days, now."


    "Yeah, me neither," I said, trying to conceal my worry.


    "In the server room," Lia commented from her work. "She said something about...less latency if she just plugs in directly."


    "W-when was that?" I asked, standing fast enough to bang myself on the table.


    "Um, couple days ago."


    I swore. Then I looked around, finding one of the cameras in the room, which I knew AEGIS had taken down from the general grid, but still used herself. I stared right into the black lens hanging off the ceiling.


    "Hey, Karu?" I asked loudly. "I''ve been thinking about what you said, and boy is my penis hard. How about we do go off together and have a lot of dirty monkey sex?"


    "Bro, eww, what the hell." Lia snapped her computer shut and jumped away from the table, only to pause, turning pale. "Wait...if I leave...are you gonna do it here? Have you already been doing it here? I WORK HERE, ATHAN."


    Karu seemed a little more stunned by my proclamation, but then shrugged. "Certainly. Erm, did you have...something in mind?" She advanced to wrap her arms experimentally around me but I shrugged them off, still looking at the camera.


    Not a damn thing. Not a single reaction. As much as I was staring at the physical camera, I had my mind open to the Raven''s Nest''s new mental camera: Saga. And through her, I could tell there wasn''t a single flicker in the base''s systems at my words.


    I swore and ran for the door.


    "Um, our tryst?" Karu asked through a firetruck blush.


    "Uh...changed my mind, sorry. Gotta...there''s a thing--"


    The door closed between us, thankfully. My mind was utterly elsewhere. I had Saga find someone who knew the base and pulled where I could find the servers from them as I stepped into the elevator. My badge got me into the lower levels without question.


    A few doors and security checks later and I found her, sprawled on the floor, connected to a thousand machines, impossible to tell where her hair ended and where they began. Just a huge network of data, risk assessment, probability crunching.


    Just a big pile of machines.


    She was half-buried in cables and devices, a patch of yellow cloth, a half-hidden face beneath all the wire, like the grey of the metal around her was trying to eat her slowly. Her eyes were glazed over, meaningless data she didn''t need.


    Her whole body was meaningless to her at this point, I was afraid, as I carefully untangled it and shook her, brushing the heavy metal vines from her face and speaking in gentle murmurs.


    "AEGIS, hey. It''s me, AEGIS. C''mon."


    Her eyes blinked a few times and focused. It took her a long time to find my face.


    "Oh. Athan. Hey." She sniffed delicately and pushed back her hair without much effect. "Sorry, kinda got wrapped up in something there. Is it time to go home?"


    "Go...home?" I echoed stupidly, and fished for my mobile. "Um, it''s...only noonish."


    "Noonish," she said thoughtfully. "Oh. Hmm."


    Her eyes drifted away from me until I shook her again.


    "Hey, focus here please."


    "Yeah, I''m fine," she said, moving my hand off her shoulder. "I''m just in the middle of something important."


    "AEGIS you haven''t been seen by anyone in like, three days. I thought I''d just missed you."


    "Sure. Let me just finish real quick--"


    "Hey. Focus, please."


    She did focus on me, but with narrowed, irritated eyes.


    "I said I''m busy Athan."


    "You''ve been in here for three days solid, AEGIS."


    "That''s impossible," she waved me away. "Athan, I am very busy right now, so if you could just leave me to it."


    I grabbed a promising strand of her hair and gripped it at the connection. Her eyes went wide.


    "I think you need to unplug, AEGIS. I think you need to take a break."


    "Athan, don''t! I''m in the middle of a very delicate set of calculations. I don''t want you coming in here and screwing everything up and distracting me, okay? Put the cable down, I''m using that."


    I stood up, cable still in my hands. I hoped it was an important one. "Come on. You told me you wanted to make sure you came home every day. It''s been three days. Time to unplug."


    "I''m not unplugging," she screeched. "Now just put it down and fuck off, Athan. I don''t have time to baby you right now, okay? Put yourself to bed or whatever. I''m working--"


    I pulled the cable and she screamed and writhed on the floor, her trembling and the noise of it worse than I had thought it''d be. I stood there like an idiot while she floundered, wondering if I''d fucked up real bad, if I should plug it back in, or if I should unplug more.


    For some reason, I was reminded of forever ago, when AEGIS was just a girl in a dirty, rusted-out box in the wilderness. What a painful-slash-orgasmic experience it was when I shoved data crystals into her. Except now I was ripping them out.


    I didn''t have long to ponder before she was suddenly on her feet in front of me, almost invisible under the mass of cables surrounding her, more a shamblind heap of vine than a woman I could recognize. I stammered my apologies, I didn''t mean to hurt her, just wanted to get her out like she wanted.


    There was still something human under the cables though, and one of those very human legs lashed out and kicked me square in the chest, sending me sliding into the server room door with a crack and a crash.


    That was it for me, I was out. I''d never been kicked by AEGIS with any force before, and I knew in my broken-rib crushed heart, I never wanted to ever again. Holy fuck that hurt, I couldn''t breathe.


    She began to advance on me, the shambling mound drawing nearer. But as the cables drew taut and pulled back, revealing more and more of her underneath, I saw that now she was the one who was scared and apologizing. When she was feet away, her hair leashed her, and she snapped the cables loose with violent twists of her head and deliberate yanks.


    I coughed once and it felt wet. I could hear AEGIS starting to scream her panic, kicking open the door, shouting for help as I felt woozy and drained. When she moved my body, gentle as she was, that was the end of it, and the world seemed to drop away into a pinprick of fading light, far away.

 403. 2252, Present Day. Arlington Memorial Hospital, D.C.. Athan.

    This time it was AEGIS at my bedside, looking a little worse for wear. She''d torn out some of her hair-cables in sprinting to get to me, torn off a strip of her dress as a makeshift bandage, and while she didn''t get ugly, puffy, and red like real girls did when they cried, she still made a very convincing inconsolable wreck.


    It was this wreck which woke me, drugged and disoriented again, feeling like I''d just been here. But last time I''d woken slowly and groggily, and this time, I was startled awake by muffled sobs and bitter curses.


    "S-shit, fuck, I''m sorry, Athan, I didn''t-didn''t mean to w-wake you," she sniveled. "I''m so sorry. I''m so sorry."


    Meanwhile, I had no idea what was going on still. She repeated those last three words at least a hundred times while I shook my head and consoled her for...something?


    "I can''t do it!" she wailed. "I just can''t. Don''t make me go back, I can''t."


    "Go...back¡­?"


    "P-plug in again. Run the operations. I-I...can''t do it."


    "But you...do it so well?" I asked.


    I was so lost. Was this what she was sad about? Had she failed at her job? I had memories coming back but they were incoherent, not in a clean order. I remembered yelling at a camera that I was going to have sex with Karu real loud. I had no idea where this fit in the timeline, and was a little worried that maybe we''d gone and done that, which was why AEGIS was now distraught?


    But...what about the operations? I didn''t get it.


    It took several long minutes of her bemoaning herself and apologizing and promising she''d kill herself and being talked down from that before I began to remember what was going on.


    "I''m a defect!" she cried. "I''m defective. I hurt...I hurt the one thing...most important to me¡­"


    I held my head. Being woken up like this and all this wailing was hurting me now, too, but I wasn''t about to add that on the pile.


    "Couldn''t...do my programming. Couldn''t...do my own...l-life goal¡­"


    Terrifying images came back to mind. AEGIS all tangled in machine, her face almost invisible under the sprawl. Her body slowly emerging as she stalked towards me and the cables of her hair were pulled behind her. The ground next to me, slick and red with blood from my mouth as I coughed.


    Shit, I thought, half-understanding why AEGIS was currently borderline-suicidal in her panic and despair.


    "...may as well j-just...wipe myself out...find another iteration...that w-w-would love you...better than I do¡­"


    Okay so, more than borderline.


    I reached out and grabbed her head, holding her tight to my chest. She inhaled with a tiny squeak and held it there, as I held her.


    "Shh. It''s okay," I murmured. "I''m okay."


    She shook her head and tried to say something pitiful.


    "No, it''s really okay. This isn''t your fault."


    She pulled away, almost violently. "Isn''t my...Athan, I kicked you. We''re in a hospital. You had forty percent of your l-lungs edematous...from pulmonary lacerations. You had thirteen fractures in your ribs, an-and...internal hemorrhaging from the intestine, stomach, and kidneys. If we weren''t blocks from a hospital...a crack surgical team, and a regenerator, you''d be dead."


    I gave her a smile. "Yeah."


    "So tell me how the f-fucking fuck that wasn''t my fault."


    I pulled her in again, with more resistance this time, but she also seemed afraid of fighting against me at all. Which suited me fine as I held her close and just tried my damndest to soothe her. My heart was racing at her crying all over me, girls crying always made me panic inside on some level.


    "It was my fault," I explained. "I''m the one who made you do it."


    "You didn''t make me kick you. Nobody--"


    "I made you plug in. You told me you didn''t want to, and I said I needed you to. You had concerns that it would affect you, and you were right. As the person who made the call, I''m the one responsible for the consequences."


    She pulled away from me just enough so she could stare at me with her large, watery, yellow eyes. Her mouth seemed incapable of anything but trembling, until she spoke.


    "Bullshit, Athan. I kicked you."


    "Because you were someone else. You were...jacked-in AEGIS, who''s all machine and no girl. Who you were afraid of becoming when you warned me."


    "I still did it."


    "Technically, yeah, you did. But you did everything in your power not to. I''m not going to blame you for this, and neither should you. If anything I should have remembered everything you said, and tried to get you to unplug more...gracefully."


    She frowned, tears still streaking down her face. I wiped them with a corner of my sexy papery hospital gown.


    "That did really hurt," she said. "You just startled me. I thought...I-I...thought...you were a threat."


    "And I was. To your programmed self. How do you think an XPCA AI would react to being forcibly unplugged by an Exhuman?"


    She seemed almost convinced. Enough to stop and be at least a little mad at me behind the tears, anyway. "I still kicked you," she mumbled.


    I sighed. "You did. But can we agree there''s a situation where you kicking someone is their fault?"


    This time her smile was petulant. "No."


    "What if...there''s an enemy soldier and he pulls a knife on you?"


    "I''m still the one kicking him."


    "Yeah, but it''s his fault."


    "He''s a soldier. It''s his military''s fault."


    I shook my head. "Okay, what if there''s a rapist who''s coming at you. Or a mugger."


    "Athan, I''m always responsible for my own actions, okay? And two days ago, my actions were completely out of line."


    "Wait, two days ago?"


    She nodded, her electric eyes sparkling. My addled mind tried to piece together all the consequences of those few words.


    I didn''t know where to start with the questions so I just started. "Where''s everyone else?"


    She shook her head. "Dunno."


    "What''s Saga doing?"


    "Dunno."


    "What...how...the XPCA. What''s going on with them? Where are we with our...our operations?"


    "Dunno. I''ve been here."


    "The...the whole...whole two days?"


    She seemed mildly offended. "Did you think I just started crying because you woke up? Athan, you needed massive surgery--"


    "I know," I cut her off. "I know. It was real bad, how bad a thing you did. I forgive you, I think it was my fault. We got that."


    She frowned and started to disagree but I continued.


    "Look, AEGIS. I''m not trying to cut you slack here or anything. I mean...I would. You''re...one of my favorite people. But even if you weren''t, even if I didn''t love you, which I still do, so you can shut the fuck right up about killing yourself. But even then, I''d still say this was my fault, okay? That''s part of being a leader and calling shots. Call the wrong shot, you don''t blame the guy following your orders. Okay?"Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    She sniffled. "Okay."


    "So I''m sorry I''m...I know I''m being like...really short with you, and insensitive and...honestly I''m super drugged and stupid feeling, and you''re freaking me out by crying all over me...but the fact is...I just want that all tied up and put away, and for you to know how I see it. So we can deal with the bigger issues." I paused just a heartbeat. "Bigger as in, like¡­"


    "Bigger than us. I got it," she said, wiping her eyes. "Ah, shit, I''m a mess."


    She pulled herself off me to take a few moments walking around, wiping her eyes, talking to herself gently, and breathing. I watched her with parts admiration, for how hard she was trying to pull herself together here, and guilt, for forcing her to do it.


    But at long last, she came back to me, resumed her place on my chest and lap, and stared at me with eyes much less full of self-pity.


    "I just want to say, I think that it''s very responsible of you," she said. "To...have that attitude. I still think you''re wrong. But I also acknowledge that if it were someone other than me, I''d think you''re right. So I''m forced to conclude I have biases at work." She shook her head. "Sorry, I have my indexes turned down a little to help get through this. It makes me a little detached from myself."


    "It''s fine," I said, not sure that feeling less was a good solution for an issue caused by her feeling nothing at all there. "But um, I''m to understand you know nothing about the XPCA the last couple days?"


    "Yeah, that''s right," she fretted. "I''m sorry. I was wallowing in misery in here instead of functioning with any accountability."


    Well, she was certainly right about being a little detached. Just one tweak and she could go from bawling uncontrollably to her own biggest critic. I kinda wished more people I knew had that kind of control.


    Though, honestly, that''d be the people I didn''t care much about. It was rough seeing AEGIS put herself through this.


    "Can you...connect and give me a synopsis of events?"


    "Certainly. Processing now."


    I watched as her eyes flickered back and forth, left to right like she was speed-reading everything that she was downloading. I wondered if she even knew she did that.


    "Hm. I have pulled what I believe to be the most salient data. I believe I can say with certainty that you will be distressed to hear it. Please wait."


    Not knowing what else was going on, I waited. She just kinda stared at me with intensity.


    "Uh¡­?" I asked.


    "Thank you," she confirmed. "I have verified that your vitals are recovered enough that I will not imperil you further by dropping a bombshell on you. Still, I advise you to prepare yourself."


    "Oh...kay?" I watched as she rose and went to the holo opposite my bed near the ceiling and plugged herself in with one of her undamaged cables. It took a few moments before a news feed popped up, and another few before she got it to the place she wanted.


    It was a male news anchor in a grey suit with a red tie. Short-cut hair, clay-colored skin. He looked somber, but something in his eyes told me he relished these kind of seriously depressing news stories.


    "Our headline for tonight is the passing of the third Director of the Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency, more commonly called the XPCA, who was found dead in his DC home, along with the body of his wife of forty-one years, Frances. Each was shot dead with a single round from the director''s military firearm. Police are currently investigating the likelihood of a murder-suicide, though as for what could be the cause, experts seem unsure."


    The footage cut to stock shots taken of the outside of his house, yellow tape and police swarming the scene. A woman''s voiceover began playing.


    "Director David Hall was a stern but beloved figure within the XPCA''s ranks. Known as General Wall'' for his no-nonsense approach to the Exhuman threat, he was promoted to Director only five months ago, as a rekindling of traditional XPCA values. Staunchly opposed to such new initiatives as the ''Exhuman New Deal'', the controversial funding and operation of New Eden, or the establishment of the failed Parahuman-Force, many saw Director Hall''s appointment as a return to form, and a return to the zero-tolerance policies against Exhumans which have marked the greater part of American history."


    The holo paused, and I saw AEGIS studying me carefully.


    "Much of it just goes on with such flowery, but pointless prose," she explained.


    "What happened?" I asked. "Wh...why''d he¡­?"


    "Why did he shoot his wife and himself?"


    "Y-yeah, that."


    AEGIS frowned. "I haven''t run the numbers, but I could if you''d like. But preliminary analysis would either indicate that something went amiss with Saga''s control of the man. Or, something did not."


    "Meaning, either she fucked up, or killed him."


    She adjusted her glasses. "Indeed. Again, it does not pay to baselessly speculate, when the data is right there to be processed, but this transpired within mere minutes of you being rushed from the tower. I am pulling up incident logs currently."


    "Incident logs? Like...from things inside Raven''s Nest?"


    She paused for just a second longer. "Yes, let''s see...marking twelve twenty-two, the time you were struck by this violent and worthless being as time zero, at T-zero plus fifteen seconds, many members of the tower staff can be seen visibly flinching or recoiling. Many would later go on to file medical reports, records mentioning a sudden lash of what they described as ''indescribable rage''."


    The holo cut to a different feed, flicking through different files that AEGIS was pawing through. Medical reports and camera feeds flashed by.


    "At zero plus fifty eight seconds, cameras show Director Hall screaming in his office, alone. He appears emotionally consumed, and expends a great deal of effort to systematically and violently destroy his desk."


    A feed of that very occurrence, the director seeming almost feral as he ripped off magnetically-suspended parts of it to beat the other parts senselessly.


    "At plus nine minutes and eleven seconds, he heads downstairs, apparently recovered after his rampage. Our last sighting of him is at ten minutes and forty-nine seconds, when he enters his vehicle and departs the premises." She cocked her head at me. "It would be trivial to pull up traffic cams, if you wouldn''t mind waiting?"


    "No, I got it," I seethed. "When Saga found out I''d been hurt, she went ballistic, and took it out on Hall."


    "That seems...to be a logically consistent interpretation. Perhaps we should have her punished?"


    "Like what, gonna spank her?" I threw the sheets off of me and rose, so livid that I only remembered that one of my legs didn''t work when I tried to step on it and had to catch the bed to keep from falling. "Fucking...goddamn it, Saga," I muttered.


    "I was under the impression she had negative associations with¡­" the camera feed switched to a familiar metallic chamber that made my stomach do a flip. "...the specialized detention facilities beneath New Eden. We could arrange to have her stored there temporarily, until her behavior is corrected."


    "Jesus Christ, AEGIS. You need to turn your emotions back up."


    She cocked her head at me. "What makes you say that?"


    "Because you''re fucking terrifying when you''re utterly ruthless. Make sure you never try to do XPCA work when you''re like this, or a dead director will be the least of our worries."


    "So noted. But I thought I was to be relieved of XPCA work?"


    I grabbed my exoframe, thankfully not disassembled because it wasn''t Whitney here with me today, and started to turn it on. "As much as I''d like to say you are, I don''t think we can afford it. Not with Saga the way she is. If you were there, you''d have seen her emotions flare, would have stopped her at Hall beating his desk senseless, before he shot himself and his wife. As much as I hate asking you to plug back in, I think we need you to."


    "I understand. Would I determine suitable punishment for Saga, then?"


    "No," I told her, standing next to my legs as they powered on and equilibrated their pressure with a series of pneumatic hisses. "Saga''s not at fault here, either."


    She blinked at me. "I don''t understand. She deliberately had this man and his wife murdered."


    "And maybe many more that the news hasn''t picked up on yet," I commented. "Just like you kicked me."


    I undressed, and put on my old clothes, feeling like AEGIS was little more of a voyeur than a chair in her current state. Finally I got into my legs, clamped them on, and we headed for the door.


    "Am I to understand...you do not intend to punish her in the least? Or this violent and worthless being, either?"


    I patted her on the head. "That''s right. It was my call on both of you. Neither of you wanted this like I did, it''s my fault. Let''s move forward on things instead of trying to lay blame."


    "As...you wish." She straightened up, seeming almost disappointed.


    "What? Did you want to get spanked?" I asked.


    Somehow, she still reddened with her emotions cranked down. "N-no. Or at least...I see no logical reason...why I would want that." I shook my head at her, and she recovered quickly, taking rapid strides to keep up with me as I stormed towards the hospital desk. "If we are...resuming work on this issue...I have a conflict which needs addressing."


    "Yes?"


    "You told me, I am not permitted to work on XPCA affairs while in my current levels of emotional capability. We are currently moving to engage with XPCA affairs."


    "Ah, I see the problem," I said, thinking.


    She waited patiently, like a computer. It was so gross. But I also didn''t want her crying on everything right now. We kinda had to act fast and get Saga reeled in, though after two whole days, I didn''t know what kind of damage she might have already done.


    And then I considered it from another angle. Her''s. Not...this her''s, this smiling, functioning shell. That thing was hardly better than the plugged-in, work and programming-obsessed thing which had almost killed me. But from the real her''s. AEGIS''.


    She wouldn''t want to do the work at all. She wanted to quit on the XPCA. She''d wanted to before, but I''d leaned on her until this had happened. Now she''d want to stop twice as much, and the fact that I''d just make her go right back in after she''d just proven how dangerous this was to her personality, with her foot, that felt downright cruel of me.


    It was cruel of me. I should let her go, let her have her feelings and her mind and self back. Let her be AEGIS again, even if she needed to cry, needed to sort things out and feel like garbage and have me spend long hours reassuring her and telling her I loved her.


    But that wasn''t what the XPCA needed. Wasn''t what the world needed. Fuck me, I was really going to do this, wasn''t I?


    "No, just for today, you can operate on XPCA affairs under my supervision," I told her. "I need you to monitor Saga with all of your vigil right now."


    "Confirmed. It does seem a minor state of emergency. Should I have it escalated as such?"


    "No. Just keep it quiet. You and me and Saga, we''ll work this all out. We''ll just go in, take her out of the Raven''s Nest, until she''s calmed down enough that we''re sure nothing else is going to happen. Okay?"


    "Okay," AEGIS said as we approached the desk. "Are you fine to manage the paperwork on your own? I will focus on probability outcomes."


    I remembered last time AEGIS checked me out, so insistent to do it herself and practically trying to carry me down the hall without a crutch. She was such a different person with her emotions all deadened. Even if she passed easily for human, on some level, being an AI fundamentally changed how you could be.


    And looking at her while she crunched numbers, her eyes flickering back and forth behind her glasses, the ball of guilt and unease churning inside me for what I was making her do, I thought the same of myself for a moment and wondered at the things which changed how I could be. All the killing and sacrifice, putting the world first and doing things like this to my friends.


    I wondered when I''d get to turn my emotions back on, too. Or if it was even something I wanted anymore.

 403. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest, D.C.. Saga.

    Athan was back. And I knew right away from the way his mind was sorta giving me the cold shoulder that I''d fucked up. Not that it took a genius to figure it out, but just in case there was any lingering doubt.


    Which was kinda bullshit, as I saw it. These XPCA were living because I allowed them to. If I wiped them out entirely, that wouldn''t even begin to equalize the number of deaths I''d suffered at their hands. They were mine to do with what I wished, and if I wished for a few to die, Athan should have been grateful that I''d left him the greater whole to be his little bitches.


    ''Course he saw it differently. He thought any death was superfluous. Even the really bad ones, he took his time to patiently and boringly remind me that these were living people, with families, ambitions and hopes and fears.


    And then didn''t have any problem at all with me gutting their ambitions, hopes, and fears, and cutting them off from their families, so long as they did what he wanted and didn''t die. Big fat ol'' hypocrite, that boy.


    He kept me walled off until he was here in person, the dark door to my office sliding open, located centrally in the Raven''s Nest where I could keep my mind on the most people. Just a little mundane office somewhere, not even a window seat. No reason to suspect the real head of the XPCA would be right in here.


    He sat down opposite my desk like this was an interview.


    "Hi," he said, apprehensive.


    "''Sup, Athan. What brings you to my little office?"


    "I hear Director Hall died. Went home and killed himself and his wife. Any idea what would make him do that?"


    He glared at me like...well, I''d already said, like an interview. But no longer of the gainful employment variety but instead the like...criminal investigation kind. Like he was gonna say or do the right thing and I''d just crack and the case would be solved. Never mind what a waste of time that was, or how obvious it''d been that I''d done it. There was a process, and he intended to skewer me with it.


    Which again, was bullshit. If I wanted, I could have made a couple hundred people take themselves out, and more with them. My reaction was downright sedate. And it pissed me off ten different ways that he was coming in here like this, like this was a big important talk we needed to have.


    I realized, perhaps, that it wasn''t him walling off our minds after all. Maybe it was me.


    "Yeah I did it. More specifically, I let him do it," I shrugged with calculated indifference.


    "What''s the difference?" he asked.


    "I knew what he''d do if I let him be himself, so I did that. Technically, I never killed him. It was me letting him go which did it. He died a free man."


    That made Athan scowl, which in turn made me beam.


    "On account of how shit his life was," I continued prodding. "And how mentally enslaved he was, to the one thing he hated most in the universe."


    "Yeah, I know," he glowered."


    "Exhumans."


    "I got it."


    "Such as you," I continued.


    "Yes. I understand the implication that I made his life shit."


    "Also his wife, whom he''d promised to leave out of his ''work''."


    "Saga, I got it. You still killed him. You let him know knowing full well what he''d do with it. That''s not any different."


    "Never said it was," I shrugged and slouched. "Just wanted to let you know all the juicy deets."


    Athan paused for a few long moments, fidgeting. Crossing his legs, and then uncrossing them to lean forward at me. Cracking his knuckles and alternately scowling and grimacing. And then finally he hit me with the question I should have known was coming, but was still kinda unprepared to answer.


    "So why''d you do it?" he asked.


    I gave it a moment of thought. I owed Athan at least that much. But I didn''t owe him a serious answer.


    "Thought I''d try my hand at downsizing," I explained. "You know how bloated some of these corporate entities get. Sometimes you gotta make cuts."


    I made a popping noise as I drew my thumb across my neck. Stupid high-collar XPCA uniforms, it was like being back in my prison jumpsuit again, but minus the hundred years I had to break that one in.


    "Saga, seriously?"


    "Who says I''m not being serious?" I slouched further in my seat. I was well on my way to limbo world champion if I kept up this posture.


    "I''m not even justifying that with an answer. Come on."


    "Well then why should I justify you with an answer?" I crossed my arms. "If you already know everything, why make a big show of coming in here and staring at me across the desk. You already seem to know everything, just bend me over your knee and spank me already."


    "I''m not here to...to discipline you, Saga," he lied. "I just...I need to talk to you. We''re on the same team, we need to be on the same level. I can''t have you going around offing people whenever you feel like it."


    "Oh, but you can?" I sniped, drawing out of my masterwork slouch. "You get to go off and ''talk'' to Exhumans whenever you want, and if things don''t work out...oh well, guess we just kill ''em."


    "It''s not like that and you know it."


    "How isn''t it like that, Athan? You meet with these bastards and they either bend knee or die. The only difference between that and what I''m doing here is that here -- they never even get a choice. I bend their knees for ''em. Hall is what happens when I give them a choice."


    He made a frustrated noise. "It''s still not the same. I''m legitimately trying with these people."


    "Oh and I''m not?" I was shouting, by my standards. I was redder and angrier than I expected. "You think I''m just dicking around in here all day? In case you haven''t noticed, the XPCA has overgone a major overhaul in the last few weeks, and that wasn''t pure luck, Athan. Nobody outside has noticed, and that wasn''t luck either. I''ve been busting my ass for this dream of yours and not once have you come in here to tell me, ''oh well done, Saga''. No, the first thing you''ve got for me is criticism."


    "Because you fucked up. You murdered the director."


    "And you''re full of fuckups! Want me to start rubbing all of those in your face every time you make ''em? I''d do that gladly."


    He shot me a ridiculous sneer that I redoubled and returned. And then he stood and started with the pacing.


    "Look, I''m...I''m sorry about not being as supportive as I could be. We''re all super busy here. And you''re right, I''m failing over and over, because of how garbage I am at all of this. But I''m failing because of incompetence -- mine -- and you failed because you chose to. You did it deliberately, and that''s really not something we can afford right now."


    I glared at him, letting my hatred grow with every word he said. This fuckin'' guy. Unbelievable.


    "So just...do what AEGIS says and stop joking around and...we''ll all be fine, okay?" he concluded.


    And that was just the wrong fuckin'' thing for him to say. I began fishing around for anyone else in the building who needed an ammunition lobotomy.


    "Oh just ''be good'' huh, Athan? Just ''follow orders''. ''Do what AEGIS says''."


    "Yes. That''s pretty easy, isn''t it?"


    "Oh it''s easy all right," I growled. Someone knocked on the door and I called for them to enter. Athan watched the young sergeant with wary eyes.


    "M-ma''am," he saluted. "Reporting in."


    "Very good," I said, sitting upright and tenting my fingers. "Load your firearm and discharge it into your brain stem. Please."


    "Ye-yes ma''am."


    With practiced ease, he drew a magazine and his sidearm and drew the slide to ready the chamber. The gun made it halfway towards his head before Athan was wrestling him.


    "Saga, what the fuck," he shouted.


    "Careful sweetie, if it goes off at that range, your shield won''t eat it. Might have to go back to the regenerator again, and then who knows what evil Saga might unleash when you''re out of the picture."Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    "Fucking...Saga! God damn it, make him stop!"


    The two of them hit the floor, grappling for the gun, a tragic tug of war closer or further from the back of the boy''s head. Athan had the upper hand in brute force, but the kid was willing to play as dirty as I was, going for the eyes, the groin, anything to buy the seconds to complete the mission I''d laid out for him.


    It was, I admit, a little hot. These were some spicy young''uns getting all sweaty in my office.


    "Saga, what the fuck," he grunted. "Turn him off. Make him stop!"


    "Be a good girl? Follow orders? Do what AEGIS says?" I spat. "Sorry, she''s not here right now to tell me my head from my ass, so I guess I''m just totally at a loss what''s right or wrong."


    "Is that what this is abouuu--AARGH," Athan yelled as the sergeant sunk his teeth into the fleshy part of his arm with a crunch.


    "What it''s about," I hissed "is the fact that I''m doing this shit for you. I spend all day, every day, locked up in this fucking office surrounded by XPCA pieces of shit like him, with AEGIS looking over all my work like a private tutor, ready to slap me on the wrist if I don''t cross every T and dot every I. You got any idea what that might be like, bucko? Locked in a room, mind-fucking people I don''t even want to mind-fuck? A slave to the betterment of the XPCA?"


    "I''m nothing like Blackett," he growled.


    "Sure you aren''t," I shrugged, so casually as to leave no doubt that I didn''t agree with my words. Even I felt the wave of hate emanate from me that slapped the two of them silly for a moment as I said it. "And what''s my reward for being a good little code-X and following all your orders?"


    "Saga--he''s--"


    "The leash you put on me? The fucking disrespect that you think I''m going to go off and go on some crazy murder rampage, or worse, that I''m apparently too stupid to know what you consider right and wrong? We''ve been one mind, Athan. We''ve shared every intimate thought there is to share. And after that, you put AEGIS on me because I can''t be trusted? Fuck you."


    He grunted, sweating, as the gun inched closer to the back of the boy''s head.


    "And my reward for all of that is seeing her hurt you. I''m the evil one here, and yet she''s the one who kicks you in the chest and kills you dead enough to rush to the hospital?"


    "Saga...he''s--"


    "You wanna know a secret, Athan? I''m not fucking perfect, okay? I didn''t have Hall kill himself on purpose. Not at first, anyway. When AEGIS kicked you, I was so out of sorts about it, I lost grip on him, steely-minded guy he was. And by the time I realized what he''d done, I was so pissed I didn''t care anymore. So no, I didn''t choose to fuck up and let him die. I''m not better than you with all my mistakes being on purpose. And I--"


    There was a bang. A loud one, enough to set my ears ringing in the closed space. And then Athan was wrestling with just gravity acting on the boy. I spat, the splatter of his blood uncomfortably coating my tongue.


    "Well fuck," I said. "I thought he''d go off at a better time and really punctuate the climax of my rant there, not interrupt it."


    "Saga, what the fuck," Athan repeated, looking like he''s just gone through a combination slip-n-slide/slaughterhouse. "Why."


    "I just told you, while you were fighting."


    "I kinda...had a hard time listening. I was fighting."


    "You missed it?"


    He looked at the mound of gore in front of him, just defeated.


    I sighed. True artistry was never properly appreciated in its own time. I reached out and Athan went very still as he relived the last minute from my perspective.


    And the scowl on his face was wiped away by a sympathetic little frown, as he slouched into the blood-splattered chair opposite me with a squelch.


    "I...see," he said, thinking hard. "You didn''t have to kill this kid, though."


    "Yeah, I expected that to be a lot more dramatic than it was. Kinda had this thing going where I was gonna like...I dunno...have him break away and finish my thought for me or, we''d talk in creepy unison so you had to hear my point from him or something...but that didn''t work out because I just got too pissed."


    "I''m sorry for pissing you off."


    "Well there''s a sentence I need to hear more often. People could also stand to do less pissing me off."


    "I''m also sorry for...not trusting you. I didn''t even see it that way."


    I reached across the table and patted my blood-splattered hand on his. "I know. You think ''Saga'', and nowhere is there any concept of restraint or morals. But that doesn''t mean I''m too stupid to get ''em, just means I don''t have ''em. I could do ''em if I wanted, and it''s frankly--"


    "Insulting that I thought you couldn''t. I got it."


    "Good."


    We spent another few long minutes in silence as Athan re-evaluated his decisions of the last few weeks. I tried to keep out of his head for the most part, and amused myself by watching the blood seep out of the body. That was the kind of paint-drying action I could get behind.


    "Yeah," he sighed at long last. "Putting everything in AEGIS'' hands was a mistake. She is...in her own way...even less predictable than you. When she falls into some of her more...less...human elements."


    "I mean, don''t get me wrong, we''ve been working together and it''s been great," I shrugged. "She gets into it, and for the first time, I understood what she was blathering on about when she says she was made for this. There''s so much nuance that she just gets, shit I wouldn''t even think to look for. Probably a hundred different times, she pointed out some issue before it even became a thing, ''cuz she just had the data and the mind to use it."


    "Yeah," he agreed with a frown. "But she''s a major mess of a person for doing it."


    "I think a big part of that is her limitations on herself," I suggested. "Like when you walked in on her, all plugged into the system -- she was distracted because of her limited processing power or whatever. I know she''s trying to become human, and that humans are limited and all that shit, but honestly, trying to be human makes her the worst of all worlds."


    He frowned. "Never saw it that way."


    "Well that''s my cunning insight and too many hours of being bored with her for you. I have a few other things I''ve been working on, but they''d all require you to take off your pants."


    He looked at the body and seeping pool, the edges of the blood already beginning to congeal with the same shine as the metal floor. "Yeah, no thanks."


    "So, are we good?" I asked. I didn''t really need to, we were back on the same wavelength again. The barrier between us was down, and that, more than anyone''s thoughts, was what was most important to me.


    "Yeah. Just...why''d this guy have to die, Saga? I know you were making a dramatic point, and he''s a nobody but¡­"


    "Punishment for you walking in here like this on me. I am doing this all for you, you know. Next time, come in with a bouquet of flowers and a roll of condoms. Be prepared to say ''thank you'' instead of ''you fucked up, you little fucking shit, how dare you ruin my life.''"


    He grinned sheepishly. "Yeah. Sorry. Won''t happen again."


    "Well if it does, I''ve got plenty more XPCA to go through. This fucker was on my shit list for hacking in mobile games. Scum of the Earth, this guy." I took a deep breath. "But anyway, in accordance with our new accord, I have a gift for you. Been working on it ever since...I realized I fucked up. Consider it an apology present. I think I have the generals on-board, but I wanted to run it by you first."


    "Hmm?" he asked, as I reached into my desk and pulled out a tablet, turning it over to him. He read it a few times and then aloud: "Emergency Powers Resolution. With the passing of Director Hall in a time of crisis, and the unavailability of a clear replacement, we, the general council of the XPCA do apoint and empower the body known as the ''Future Direction Task Force'' to serve as interim director until such a time as the crisis is resolved or the general council discovers a suitable replacement."


    "Yeah it''s a lot of words. And it goes on from there."


    "What does this...mean?" he asked, glancing up at me over it.


    "Means...if you want it...you and me and Lia and all the others...we''d be legally appointed head of the XPCA. Collectively. Still kind of in the shadows, since the Future Direction Task Force is intended to be kinda...hush-hush. But I thought you might like that, running things with legitimacy instead of everything through me."


    "I do like it. I like it a lot. It''s just...terrifying."


    I cackled. "What, more terrifying than having me in charge?"


    He gave me a weird look. "No. Well, yes." I could see his thoughts turning over. "On one hand, it''s better, of course, because mentally enslaving people is no good."


    "Well, it''s no good for you. Kinda gets me off, though."


    He shook his head. "And you wind up with shit like...killing people just to make a point. But on the other hand, I really should trust you more than I trust myself. As we just...went over...I fuck up a lot, and you fucked up only once."


    "Eh. I had AEGIS checking my work. Institutions like this historically have operated without someone running the whole thing with mind-fuckery you know. Besides, you''ll have like, Whitney and Cosette and Lia all with you."


    "And you," he said.


    "Sure, if you ever need someone brutally murdered," I gestured at the corpse.


    "I mean it. If we''re gonna do this, I still want you on-board. Not everyone is going to be happy with this new direction--"


    "Oh they''re not. I can tell you already."


    "--and it might go a little smoother with your help. The last thing I want is to create a rift and weaken the XPCA any further."


    "How noble," I flattered. "Well, that''s all I had for you. Tell AEGIS to get her ass back online so we can keep this place running, and call in a janitor for mr-cheats-at-sudoku over there, and I''d say we''re back to business as usual."


    He bit his lip, which was cute. I considered volunteering to help, but he spoke first which ruined it.


    "I''m not sure AEGIS is returning to work. She doesn''t want to, anyway."


    "Oh, and I want to do this shit?"


    "...No, but...hmm. I dunno. Kinda feels like...I''m running everyone ragged and ruining everything by chasing this. Do you know what I mean?"


    I grinned at him. "We just had a big fallout argument over that, buddy. Of course I know what you mean. But at the end of the day, this is your big shot, innit? Everyone close to you knows how important that is to you. Hell, I do, and I don''t even know why you care about this world in the first place. She''ll come back around, she won''t leave you hanging."


    "I hope so. But I also...kinda hope not. The deeper we go with this, the more power I''m realizing I have. And the more often I''m using that power in ways I really don''t like. It doesn''t seem...smart...given that, to step myself up to director or anything."


    "Yeah, but isn''t that just a formality, really? You''re already kind there, through me."


    He frowned. "Maybe. I don''t know."


    "Well, when you make up your mind, let me know. Go tell AEGIS what I said, I need her to keep this place running. She either plugs back in, or it all goes to shit."


    "Yeah," he sighed. "Thanks again for everything."


    "No problem dude, just...if you''re going to lead us towards something, you should probably have the confidence to decide what that thing is. ''Global peace'' and ''Exhuman rights'' are all great and all, but now that you''ve got the power to make it happen...you need to make them happen. Nobody put you here so you can tread water."


    He nodded sharply, and already I felt the gears turning in his head. Figuring out where point B was, so we could get there. Good kid.


    "Okay. I''ll do that. And I''ll talk to AEGIS. And we''ll discuss this," he waved the tablet at me. "Anything else?"


    "Yeah," I said, looking down. "About that janitor."

 404. 2252, Present Day. Quiet home, Bethesda, MD. Athan.

    It was a weird phrase I didn''t exactly get, but right now, it was too quiet.


    We''d left the Raven''s Nest at five PM sharp, driven home in about half an hour, and then AEGIS had begun to cook. I was sitting at the table, presumably keeping her company and trying to match her small-talk, none of which was about the XPCA or her breakdown or Saga or my hospitalization, And any attempt to bring such up was met with a curt response and a swift change of subject.


    "...I learned this the other day, thought you might be interested, but apparently the Army-Navy game is being held nearby here this year. If we''re still around in the winter, would you want to go?"


    There was nothing in her voice to make it sound cloying, nor fake, I heard it that way all the same.


    "Meh. I don''t know why that game gets all the hype. I think the Air-force/XPCA game is the best one every time. Speaking of XPCA...are we going to talk about today?"


    I heard the sound of pots clattering out of my sight. The small dining room I was in had fallen victim to sunset, and I was talking to her through a doorway, which was by appearances, a gateway to heaven, based on the light and sounds and smells.


    But heaven held very little interest for me right now. Not with all the earthly affairs we had to tie up still.


    "Oh sure," she said. "I still wanted your input on what kind of salad dressing you wanted, though."


    "Um, don''t care. Caesar. Ranch. Whatever''s white and creamy."


    She giggled. "You''re white and creamy. And by creamy, I mean dreamy." She popped into the doorway long enough to solicit me with a crude jerking-off gesture. "Also, creamy."


    "What the hell is wrong with you?" I seriously questioned.


    She disappeared back into the light of the room and the sounds of cooking resumed. "Just tryin'' to solicit the guy I like for a little action. Here I am with this rockin'' bod and the amazing multitasking capacity to bang and cook at the same time like some nineteen-fifties dream wife, and you''ve never once taken advantage."


    "Yeah, you''re not getting ''any action'', because we''re not currently a thing. And speaking of multitasking, are you planning to come back to work? When I spoke with Saga, she seemed to think they really need you over there."


    She made a noncommittal noise. "Are you going to turn on the lights in there? You''ll hurt your eyes sitting in the dark."


    "Can you just answer my questions?" I sighed.


    "You haven''t answered mine."


    "I asked you first, and mine''s actually important."


    She popped into the room for a moment and clicked on the light. I squinted at the newfound glare, and at the sleek black of her uniform. We hadn''t been dress shopping yet, and her old outfit was still torn, so for the moment, by appearances, I had a wife cooking for me in full military dress. Bare feet emerging from her pants, but otherwise. And then as fast as she came, she went again.


    "AEGIS, you''re being painfully, painfully transparent in trying to sidestep any XPCA conversation. Please."


    The kitchen sounds ended with a violent clatter, and I felt my heart racing in way that only the sinking sensation of fucking up could do. She did not choose to manifest in the doorway, choosing to let her voice alone come in here to berate me.


    "Because, Athan, we had an arrangement. I was supposed to work there and come home every night and unplug. And then I didn''t, for three days. And then I nearly killed you."


    "Yeah, and that was obviously a mistake. But leaving work at five sharp? Refusing to talk about it at home? I know that...getting too involved is a scary thing, but we can talk about it."


    "I put rules down. Unplug. And did we follow those rules? No. And bad things happened. So now we are, and you''re not going to bitch about it."


    "You said unplug, like, physically unplug. You''re unplugged, right now."


    "You can''t tell me what I meant. I meant unplug, entirely. Turn off work mode. Turn on lovey-dovey lifey-wifey mode."


    I shook my head at the empty room. And then for good measure, popped up to turn the light back off. More comfortable in here without. "It''s not like it''s dangerous to just talk about shit afterwards. That''s what a lovey-dovey lifey-wifey does, isn''t it? Ask about my day? Talk about hers?"


    "Except," she said, starting to cook again by the sound of it. Chopping something now, and thus becoming a knifey-lifey-wifey. "That I don''t want to engage about work. I want to engage with you, about things that are not about me, or my computer side, or anything even touching that shit."


    "By being fake as hell, you mean. And refusing to talk about the stuff that seriously matters."


    "Or," her head popped into the doorway for a moment, and glared at me. "You could just humor me and not talk about work." She vanished again, but the curt tone of her voice lingered. "You know, like a properly appreciative hubby."


    "I''m not exactly clear on when we became wifey and hubby but I didn''t approve this."


    "I take what I can," she giggled.


    I sighed. "Okay. I know I''m being insensitive to your wants. I know I just want to get this shit...this very important, possibly world-shaping shit all sorted out, what with things at the XPCA coming to a head, and Saga''s proposal that we head it off as it does. And that you just want to put all that away and be with me instead."


    She appeared in the doorway again, knife and carrot in hand, which she was apparently peeling in one continuous motion.


    "And that you want to be you, and work makes you not able to be you, and talking about work is like...I dunno...complimenting a girl on some part of her she hates. Like her cankles or something."


    She gave me only half a glare. So I was improving.


    "So you are paying attention," she commented, before the carrot was finished and she went back in for more chopping.


    "But," I finished. "I think I got my answer. I think we''re all set."


    She re-appeared with a bowl in her hands, turning on the light with the last of her glowering and brightening up at me along with the room. The salad she placed in front of me appeared restaurant-quality, if not better.


    "Fresh buttermilk ranch," she commented. "It''s supposed to be miles better than the shelf stuff."


    I took a bite, and it definitely was. Creamy as hell, but applied sparingly through the bowl so as to coat everything, rather than just being thrown carelessly on top. I suspected too, that there was less of it than a normal human might toss in there, because AEGIS did tend to weigh the nutritional values of foods pretty highly in her presentation. But the fact that there was dressing at all in there, to say nothing of real creamy buttermilk dressing...it showed she did care about flavor. It was healthy, or at least healthier, but still so good.


    My eyes almost watered as I gave AEGIS a smile and a reassuring thumbs-up. God, it was great to have a version of her who could cook.


    The food distracted me from my conclusion only for a moment, and I had to force myself to pause long enough to get it out.


    I swallowed and wiped my lips on a napkin. "But I think, in the end, as I said, I got my answer."


    "Which is?" she asked.


    "You are planning to come back. Despite everything."


    "And what makes you so confident of that?"


    "Because, all the rules you''ve made up and applied, they were all implemented to set limits on¡­" I tried to come up with a better phrasing, but couldn''t. "On how much damage you''re doing to yourself by working. So if you''re still pushing for keeping those limits, that means they''re the limit of something else, right? So you''re coming back."


    She frowned at me and kinda wavered on the spot. I could see her thinking, conflicted. She probably just wanted to go back in the kitchen and check on her main course, but also wanted to have this talk...but also wanted to avoid this talk more than anything.


    "Well. Yes. And no," she finally admitted while I got back into the salad. Tomatoes and carrots and little shreds of red onion, which were spicy without being overpowering. Saga might have enjoyed this if she wasn''t still at the Raven''s Nest. "I think we all know I can''t just completely leave you hanging. I would hate to see you fail if there''s anything I could do to help."Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I nodded, mouth crammed of food.


    "But also," she fretted, darkly. "I hate it. I''m miserable. I can''t have a moment of self-reflection without despising what I do and become. Which just makes me less likely to have those moments -- or want to talk about work," she gave me a shadowy glare. And then sighed. "Which just is yet another incidental force which pushes me to turn off that part of my brain and just work more."


    "But can''t--" I swallowed. "Can''t you just...be like a normal person and deal with work you hate? Nobody who works a nine-to-five is like, in love with it. It sucks, they do it, and then they come home and...I don''t know, I''d say ''relax'' except your idea of relaxing is cooking a...whole goose or whatever."


    "Turkey pot pie."


    I shook my head. "Or whatever."


    "I get addicted to work. I''m a workaholic, and a real junkie," she pulled at her hair. "It feels so good, feels so right, feels useful and...y''know, completes me. And I hate that. It is literally an addiction, and I feel like you''re asking me to be like a druggy who has to hit up just a little bit every day. It''s insane."


    I sat in relative silence for a while, eating. When no reply was forthcoming, she popped back into the kitchen to check the oven and then reappeared.


    "I don''t...suppose, you''ve considered that you might be happier giving up on me," I suggested.


    "No."


    "You''d have your work. If it was a conscious choice, instead of like failing--"


    "No, end of discussion." She crossed her arms.


    "But you said it yourself how it completes you."


    "Yeah, except it completes a different me than me. Like, maybe a different AEGIS might have gone for that, but not one like Prime or like me. We picked our goal, and we''re dead-set on gunning for it."


    "But the XPCA--"


    "They can burn and the world can go to hell if it has to, Athan. I''m serious about not changing on this one."


    "You''d seriously let the whole world go up in flames, instead of giving up on me?"


    She stared at me, her electric-yellow eyes icey. "It''s your dream to save the world, right? If I came down to it, you''d sacrifice anything for that."


    I shook my head. "Probably."


    "Even me."


    I looked down at the remains of my plate. Just shreds and dregs. I didn''t answer, which was probably an answer in itself.


    "Because that''s who you are and that''s what you believe. I don''t take it as a criticism or failure. You have your beliefs and goals, and as much as I''d hate it, as much as I''d die and be miserable, and curse you forever, if you threw me away to achieve your goal, I know that''s just because that''s who you are and how much that belief matters to you, more than anything or anyone."


    "I wouldn''t--"


    "If it came down to it, be with me or save the world, I know which you''d choose. But you also know which I would. We''re different."


    I wasn''t prepared for this sudden dive into the extreme. Sacrificing AEGIS was about the last thing on my mind at the moment. We were just talking salad and work.


    She continued. "I know it. You know it. We''d argue and discuss and debate and cry, but if that choice came to either of us, we''d make the ones we''d make. I''d burn the world, and you''d burn me. And I don''t think anything could ever change that. So you don''t see how shitty it is that you''re pushing me into changing that part about myself?"


    "No, because...I mean...I disagree with you. I want you to change, at little, at least."


    "And how would you feel if someone changed you, so that when it came time to choose, you''d let the world burn?"


    I didn''t have an answer.


    "Yeah." She got up to go back to the kitchen. "So consider that perspective when you''re telling me it''s just work, or just a little change. Consider how eroding something so fundamental to you might feel."


    I stood up to go with her. She permitted me to wash my dish and put it away before shooing me out of her work zone, and so I lingered in the doorway, leaning against it, watching her bustle, but wasn''t really there.


    She''d really gotten me with that one.


    It''d been pretty stupid of me to think of it from just my perspective. Of course asking her to give up her biggest dream was a shitty thing to do. But she had other dreams, ones she was possibly better suited for, ones no other person could fulfill. Like running the whole XPCA, like building a better world.


    Of course, she''d argue that nobody was better suited to love me. She''d built a body specifically to do it. She''d tailored her appearance and personality to suit mine. She''d learned how to cook, sew, triage, and god-knows how many other things to be of service to me. Maybe there were others who could love me, but she did her damndest to be irreplaceable there. And she''d made it very clear she was the only one looking out for my interests even more than me.


    To ask her to change any of that...even if it suited me, having it thrown in the contrast of someone asking me to stop giving a shit about saving the world? Fuck that seemed fucked. Just how much of a bad guy was I? I could hardly believe I''d just casually asked her if she''d ever considered giving up on me.


    And somehow she was still there, still working away over a hot stove, making food she couldn''t even taste, couldn''t even eat, all for me. Even after I say shit like that.


    I stumbled in and landed on her with a hug, to both of our surprise. She half-turned in my arms with alarm, but a smile.


    "Oh?" she asked.


    "Sorry."


    "Sorry for what?"


    "For being such a huge ass. For...trying to make you change to suit my needs."


    Her arms gently wrapped around my shoulders, hands not touching me to keep them clean for cooking. Or maybe to keep my back clean from what she had been.


    "It''s okay. You''re a dumbass. I knew this a long time ago. But I really appreciate you taking the time to reflect on it."


    "It was super not okay. I''m sorry."


    She gave me a cheeky smile that seemed to say that everything was fine now. One hug, and all the issues hanging over us had gone away.


    And then she kissed me. Not terribly long, but on the mouth, my nose filled up with her unique scent, bubblegum and eraser shavings.


    "I was only half-kidding about being able to fuck and cook at the same time," she suggested.


    "I think I''ll keep those separate. Erm. Not to make any promises. Let''s stick with the first one. I mean, the second one."


    She gave me a knowing smile and a couple bouncy poses as we separated. I had to be an idiot for constantly turning her down. Like, fuck.


    But just like she''d pick me first, I picked my work. I sighed as I pulled away. We could fool around later, if our relationship survived the whole end of the world shit we were constantly butting up against.


    "Next time I''ll just cook a big ol'' thing of whipped cream and coconut oil," she winked. "And I''ll do it naked. Maybe an apron. We''ll see who''s keeping those separate then," she grinned.


    I tried very hard not to think of AEGIS wearing nothing but coconut oil and whipped cream and failed very hard.


    She was about to say something else when the oven beeped, and her coy smile changed to an excited one. She bustled for a moment and then drew forth a beautifully golden-brown pie, the top patterned with a fine cross-crossing weave, interlaced with spirals of rosebuds, all rendered in flakey crust.


    "Wow," I commented. "It''s huge. And...gorgeous. When did you have time to make all this...artistic shit?"


    "Oh I''m just that good," she said, proud as fuck as she eyed her handiwork. "And I made it large so the others had dinner around, too. Lia, Whitney, Cosette, and Karu. And Tem."


    "Well it looks incredible."


    "Enough gaping," she said, with a dismissive wave and a small blush. "Tell me how it tastes already."


    Dinner was lively and light, and the pie tasted as good as it looked. AEGIS sat and laughed with me, talking about all the variations of pot pie she''d researched, and the different metrics she''d used to combine and judge the recipes. She''d gone as far as running simulations in her head, for what kinds of consistency and how many parts-per-million of each ingredient there would be per bite, cross-referenced against human reviews and how each seasoning reacted chemically through cooking, immersion, solution, and the like.


    It was actually kind of insane, and I couldn''t help but to laugh and smile as she got incredibly into the intricate details of peppercorn surface-area, and what portents that held for flavor absorption, as she drew a line graph in the air with her fingers, babbling away at the optimal grind size based on peppercorn freshness and competing flavors.


    She didn''t go as far as projecting a holo about it, but I was pretty sure she could. For that and every other ingredient in the dish. It was no wonder it was so good, it''d been mathematically calculated to be the world''s most optimal pie.


    With all her talent and capabilities, AEGIS might just be able to be the best at anything in the world, if she set her mind to it. Watching her now, so excited and animated, and with superhuman capacity for thought and effectively eidetic memory, of course she could help the XPCA. She''d help any system she was a part of, she was just that uniquely gifted. But at things like cooking, which really fired her passions, I realized I might just be looking at the best chef in the entire world, someday. And someday soon.


    She suddenly stopped, all her excited energy extinguished in a moment. It took me a moment too long to notice, and I thought she''d crashed. But instead of freezing, she was just looking at me now. Aghast.


    "What?" I asked. This sudden shift was terrifying. "What? Seriously."


    "Exhuman event," she said, standing, holding her head, her eyes racing as she pulled data from the ''net. "They''re making their move."


    "You''ve been on the XPCA servers? This whole time?" I gaped at her. That was hardly the point at the moment, but it shocked me how after everything we''d argued about tonight, there she still was.


    "Athan. This is big. War big. They''re on the move."


    "Right. Yes. On the move, who, how?"


    She stood, stumbling slightly out of her chair, leaning across the table as she fumbled her way past it. The distracted walk of one who was still pulling as much data as possible out of the air. It took her another minute to make it into the cozy living room we hadn''t yet furnished, and she fumbled with her damaged hair for a moment before giving up and just turning on the wall holo with the regular controls.


    It took her only a moment to find a news channel, which was showing footage of...somewhere, I didn''t know. An endless expanse of lichen-covered rocks. And what looked like a small battalion of men and women walking across it. My heart sunk at recognizing them.


    Clad in loosely-flowing silks that seemed to flow all around them, they walked in perfect synchronization, despite the uneven ground. Their looks, even from this footage, which was probably spy-plane if not satellite, even from here seemed unnaturally focused, unnaturally unwavering. The heads didn''t turn like normal humans. Nobody was speaking. None down there had any curiosity, any thought.


    It was a square battalion of toads, marching towards something. And each one of them had a gun in their hands, something unique and terrifying, maybe a thousand of them, all told, the only piece of them which was not unform. The reporter had been talking this whole time, and I heard her say something about how the footage was ten miles outside of some city in Russia, and the Russian military was scrambling a response.


    "Oh no." It was all I could say. Rio had actually gone and done it. Her threats to test out her arms in a more direct fashion, somehow, I still hadn''t expected to happen. Not like this.


    "We need to get in there. We need to stop her. Before this becomes a full-blown war," AEGIS said.


    "That''s just what she wants. She wants a fight. She wants everyone to come stop her."


    She paused. "Then how are we supposed to stop it?"


    I shook my head without an answer, as the screen suddenly flashed white. An explosion, a missile maybe, detonating directly on top of the advancing force.


    Even the reporter seemed to be holding her breath as the feed stayed white for far too long. A huge blast, I realized, for it to be whited out that long. And then gradually, color started to seep back into the picture.


    And there they were, still marching, as advanced as you''d expect if they''d never even paused at the blast. A mindless, unstoppable army with the powers of a hundred Exhumans in their arms.

 405. 2252, Present Day. Quiet home, Bethesda, MD. Athan.

    We were on the road within moments, AEGIS'' only concession to the argument and lifestyle she was leaving back there was the minute it took to put her hard-labored dinner in the fridge for another day. Another, better day than this one.


    She called everyone while we drove. The snippets of their conversation were jarring.


    "Whitney, have you heard? Turn on the news...or...or don''t, actually. There was a thing. There is a thing. We want everyone in the Raven''s Nest now, meet us there? No I''ll...I''ll explain when we''re all there. Okay, see you in ten."


    The same noncommittal, ineffective conversation, over and over. Cosette and Karu had heard on their own, the two who really kept up on military events. I thought Lia stood a decent chance if she wasn''t working at the moment, but of course she was.


    Which left us just Saga, whom I informed mentally as we pulled into the tunnels under the spire, and gave her free reign to pull what she wanted from my mind by means of explanation.


    So it wasn''t long at all before we were up there in a conference room, smooth darkened glass and shiny chrome around us, reflecting the lights of the holo we were crammed around which played the latest footage of the unfolding disaster.


    Nobody seemed to have picked up on just what was going on out there. To the rest of the world, this was some bizarre, pre-announced military maneuver being taken by an unknown aggressor against one of the world''s superpowers. There was no talk of it being Exhuman related, none of the media seemed to notice or care that the weapons in that battalion were anything but standard-looking.


    Instead, reporters grasped at what they could, repeating phrases like ''you can see the discipline on these soldiers as they march'', or ''the country of origin is unknown'', or ''we believe those are uniforms, though not any that experts have been able to identify''.


    Worthless, baseless speculation, basically. And footage of the Russian military''s response was tightly-controlled, to prevent leaked intel to the aggressors. But it was clear they were doing something. Given that they''d already dropped missiles on the advancing group, they knew it was coming and weren''t happy with the declaration of war.


    The declaration itself was also out there, and widely canvassed, probably the one piece of this which made it more than just a random-seeming incident. It looked familiar, the same note I''d seen sent from Oasis to the XPCA, stating the intent of war against all the world from the Oasians.


    "Most people probably saw it as a prank or a fake. Or terrorism, at best," AEGIS said as she half-watched, half-combed the XPCA archives for anything the rest of us might have missed.


    "Yeah, who''d expect a written, random declaration of war from someone you''ve never heard of to be legit?" Lia replied.


    We were almost all here. Cosette was late, and tended to avoid coming to the Raven''s Nest in person anyway. And Karu was working a ''job'' and wouldn''t make it, though we were giving and getting sporadic updates from her. She expressed her apologies for not being present and said that she would come by just as soon as her mark would give up on living.


    She''d been kinda doing the same as me, sneaking out to do missions, except hers always ended the way she intended. With the mark''s death. We put her on the less-redeemable Exhumans for that reason.


    "I hope they''re seeing it as less of a joke now," Whitney muttered. She of all of us looked possibly the most stressed, which was funny given that however this shook out, she''d probably still have the least involvement. But maybe it was precisely because there wasn''t anything she could do while still being as informed as the rest of us that she was now sweating and fidgeting over there.


    "Yeah, I don''t know," I said. "I know a few of those declarations of war got leaked...I think they were a real meme in South America for some reason for a minute there. But that was before anyone thought they were more than some kid sending out fliers."


    Lia shook her head. "Still might not put it all together. What''s more likely, that this professional death-army wrote out formal declarations of war to every military power on the globe? Or that some punk did it, and then this force shows up to realize it afterwards?"


    "You think people are still going to take this as a joke?" AEGIS asked with alarm.


    "I think the ''net, and people in general are amazingly competent at thinking things are fake until forced to face it personally," she shrugged. "Denial is so in right now."


    Whitney frowned. "That''s like what Athan''s always banging on about. With the accepting or denying reality."


    "I hate how smart I am sometimes."


    "I like how s-s-smart you are."


    AEGIS cleared her throat. "Regardless. We need to figure out what we''re doing, whatever people may think or see right now."


    "What is there to do?" Lia questioned. "Right now, nobody''s treating this like an Exhuman anything. Sorta beyond the limits of the XPCA."


    "And," said a voice from the door, and we all turned to see Cosette strolling in. "Russia maintains their own anti-Exhuman force, they''re not part of the XPCA umbrella."


    She looked good. Or at least, better. Being back in uniform was a good look for her. Of course, she''d been hardly dressed at all, in beer stains more than clothes when we first picked her up, so pretty much anything was an improvement. But at least now she looked reasonably put-together.


    "But the Oasians are going to destroy them," Whitney argued.


    "Probably true. That doesn''t mean we have to fly our people halfway across the globe to intervene."


    Whitney shot me a wide-eyed glance. "They''re going to die."


    "I know," I sighed. "That''s why I called everyone here. So we could figure out what we were going to do. But on the ride over, while AEGIS was calling everyone, I thought about it as hard as I could...and I don''t know what we can do."


    "Even if they were an ally, even if there weren''t any politics," AEGIS fretted. "We''re talking minutes before they collide."


    "We have Rito," I realized. "We own the XPCA, and the XPCA owns New Eden, and Rito''s being held there." I turned to Saga with hope, and she glared at me like I''d brought her roaches instead.


    "Yeah, no," Saga rebutted. "Even if I do have a lot of sway on the guys here -- and I do -- the fact is, I''m making my best efforts not to just run them. Say what you want about me, but I''m not all-powerful." She paused for a moment. "Actually don''t just say what you want about me. Only say the good shit."


    "So you can''t do it," I goaded.


    Of course, trying to bait Saga didn''t work half as well when she was already in my head. "No, buttmunch, I can''t. I''m not like the tree bastard of Oasis, I don''t subvert and rule the lives of everyone in my blood-dominion. I''ve worked on people''s thoughts until they are willing to generally ignore us, and listen to the leadership whom I''ve corrected towards our line of thinking. But that shit is slow. And randomly busting Exhumans out of New Eden and sending them up the Raven''s Nest is not really in line with majority thinking."


    "We could just do it anyway," I suggested. "Who cares if everyone thinks it''s a good idea or not."


    "Oh that sounds like a great plan. Let''s just get everyone suddenly deeply suspicious of the leadership of the XPCA. I''m sure they won''t find anything in their subsequent investigations." Saga shook her head at me and gestured at the room chock-full of fugitives.


    "Well...you could fix that."


    "Yeah, sign me right the fuck up to put myself from a position of running everything in the shadows to madly scrambling to hide traces of myself. Sounds great."


    "Guys, it''s starting," Lia said, and we all went quiet to focus on the screen.


    The Oasian force had advanced far enough that it was now crossing roads and reaching buildings. Not a city yet, but some kind of rural area, though with less farms than I expected. Maybe it was like, a retreat area, or for logging or mining or something less obvious. Mostly still just green-speckled rock and patches of dirt with little brush afros.


    But at times, I saw what had made Lia comment. When the feed drifted or zoomed out, Russian forces could be seen in the periphery. From the glimpses, they seemed limitless, like how a few ants could indicate an entire colony. But what I saw filled me with a sense of wrongness.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "There''s no exosuits," I exclaimed. "No tanks, no fortifications, no...fortress armor, nothing. They''re dudes on the ground with guns."


    "They''re facing dudes on the ground with guns," Lia replied.


    "They''re wearing nothing."


    "They''re wearing camo?"


    "It''s not armor. It''s not exosuits. They''re totally exposed. How the hell is camo supposed to help?"


    "I expect it will help them blend in," Saga added with a savage grin. "With the enormous amounts of camo-wearing corpses that are about to be present."


    I felt lightheaded and swearing didn''t help. I turned to look at Cosette, to see if there was anything sympathetic there, any missions she''d overseen where she knew everything was about to turn to shit. But if there was, she didn''t show it, she was sternly focused on the screen, same as everyone else.


    I realized, I didn''t often feel powerless, and I loathed the sensation. Even before my powers, when I''d wanted to do something, I pretty much just...did. And while being Exhuman had definitely limited my freedoms, it rarely felt that way. Much more, it just felt like now I was freely empowered to...get myself killed in new and exciting ways.


    But sitting here, halfway across the world, at a calamity I knew was coming, at hundreds or thousands of senseless deaths that only we knew were certain, it put my teeth on edge in a way that made my soul hurt. I felt a little betrayed, honestly, that I seemed the only person in the room who was willing to throw everything away and dash off to do everything I could.


    But everything I could, I knew, was probably nothing. Saga was right that getting to Rito, much less her cooperation...much less the fact she''d never been to Russia, so couldn''t send me there...ignoring all of that, then what, I''d take on a thousand exotics-armed toads by myself?


    I was powerless, and I knew it. I just didn''t want to. But here I still sat, watching like the rest. Like the rest of the fucking helpless world. Watching as the first contact occurred, in a moment that I knew would shake the balance.


    There were flashes of light like strobes across the Russian lines as the toads crossed into range of engagement. Some of the exotics must have been defensive in nature, because few of them were even showing signs of getting hit. That and, y''know, they''d already survived a missile strike. It was when they fired back that the lightshow began.


    It was colorful. Almost like CGI. In a corner of my mind, I wondered if this is how XPCA ops looked from a bird''s-eye view. The exotics belched cones of violet flame, rained down a blizzard of crystal-blue needles, hurled a chain of gnarly, lingering green explosions that spread too far and detonated in slow-motion. I saw flashes of white as stone spires erupted from the ground like bones, an Exhuman power I recognized from the handiwork of Oasian construction.


    It was as though there was a brush of fantasy being dragged across the scattered Russian lines, but the ink it left behind were all too real. The fires left behind blazed a normal, earthly red. The pulverized debris hung in ashen clouds. The blood pooled dark, almost black. Touched by colors and lights and powers unimaginable, only for an instant, to return to terminal mundanity.


    It made it hard to think. Hard to realize exactly what was going on. Hard to conceptualize and visualize the enormous numbers of death and destruction we were seeing so far below our perspective. A blue flash here, a green strobing there. How many hundreds more were now gone? How many new orphans and widows?


    It galled me. I tore myself way to look at the others and found myself alone in this. This was, I realized, exactly what Rio had meant. She''d never created the weapons to kill, she''d created them to be art, and death was just their medium. They were meant to be enthralling, seductive, emotionally-moving, like all art was. It was supposed to captivate, and it did. And it pissed me off that death, of all things, was being shown with such pretty colors and bright flashes and glamor.


    Death was a miserable thing. War was the most miserable thing imaginable. And here she was, prettying it up because that was her passion. I knew she was weird and dangerous from the time we''d spent together, but it wasn''t until this moment that I realized just what a freak she was.


    The display wasn''t short either, although I suspected it could have been, if they''d wished. Instead it seemed to weave through a narrative, starting out with a bang before calming to a sustained engagement, of formed battle lines hammering away at each other without too great an effect. I imagined the Russians thinking themselves successful in beginning to turn the tide, beginning to hold. But they weren''t, they were being toyed with.


    Which was made clear as the action rose. Russian reinforcements began to sweep in, bodies streaming in from off-screen like trails of ants led to a fresh kill. But as they began to surge and mount, the Oasians moved forward. And as the distance between them shrank, the deaths began to intensify again. New powers revealed themselves, crackling domes of some kind of non-electricity which zapped everything which came close. A miasma which seemed to pour from any crevice in the ground, swallowing the battlefield from the bottom-up.


    The situation turned hectic. Reinforcements became a retreat. Arcing explosions tore through the lines and the flames grew tall. One of the lonely structures in the area swayed and collapsed in a black plume, its downfall like a turning point for the defenders.


    And then the climax. Everything poured out, all at once. The multi-colored array of attacks became as one, and in their focus united into a blinding white. A huge detonation, like nothing yet seen in the conflict tore the defender''s line in half, and any who weren''t yet running sure as shit were now.


    As though a joke, now that the conflict was already broken open and the battle already lost, the Russians deployed their other forces. VTOLs began to scream overhead, obscuring the conflict by laying down columns of smoke and provide whatever other support they could without entering the battle proper. Artillery pounded the formations of the Oasians without apparent effect.


    But the fight was over, I knew just from the pacing of it, set by the toads, who had orchestrated the entire event. As the army broke and fled before them, the Oasians seemed to pause and collect themselves, like an stage-actor holding a pose for the audience to clap after a song. And then, inexplicably, as one, they turned and began their retreat, moving back, though not quite the way they came, with the Russians apparently more than happy to let them go.


    Coverage would go on for days, a spectacle like a live war hadn''t been seen in dozens of years, and no live war in history had ever looked like this one, but I turned away. It was over, I knew, and the rest would just be the media and the experts chopping it up into coarse pieces for popular consumption, while the Russian army did whatever they could to save face.


    But the message was sent and was heard around the world, and that''s what Rio wanted, as clear to me as though it was done all for my personal understanding.


    We are here. We are dangerous. We want to be taken seriously.


    The world had not taken their existence or their declaration seriously. Russia had given a token response, deploying a few thousands with little support on very little time and information. And as much as it hurt me to watch them die needlessly, it had probably hurt Rio to watch them respond so feebly. She wanted her weapons tested, not target practice.


    And so, this. A demonstration. The flawless, beautiful, orchestrated slaughter of a few thousand so that next time, there would be a fight. I shivered.


    Someone broke the silence and touched my arm gently, and I almost jumped. It took me too long of looking at her to realize who it was.


    It was Moon. She was staring at me with small soulful eyes, filled with concern. Dark brown pools, still despite the emotions boiling behind them.


    "Are you okay?" she asked. And I looked around only to see everyone else turning towards me at the question.


    "Y-yeah, fine."


    She blinked at me once. "No you are not. You are like me. This was abhorrent, a desecration of life by bad people, it was. We loathe it."


    "It...it was," I agreed, not...exactly sure where this was coming from. Had I missed Moon in all the times I''d looked around the group, wondering if anyone else was feeling as I had about this outrage? Or had she simply not missed me in doing the same?


    The hand on my arm squeezed tighter for a moment. "We will not let them go unpunished."


    "No, we won''t," I agreed again. I saw the smallest of frowns on her lips, as though all her righteous, bitter fury were concentrated into that unremarkable display. And then I realized, she was making that frown, holding my arm, talking to me, despite every eye in the room being on her, and her not giving a damn.


    Which was...completely unlike her. And it only took a moment after I realized this for her to do the same and apparently shirk and shrink as she nervously blushed her way through the attention. She sat like a statue until the eyes were back on the holo and off of her.


    But in that moment when she''d found it so important to reach out to me, completely heedless of the attention it might draw or the uncharacteristic outburst it might be for her, I''d felt everything already. I had the answer I''d been looking for all those times I''d looked around. Moon was there, she was with me, and she was as pissed as I was about what we''d all just witnessed.


    Not to say the others were emotionally mute. AEGIS seemed half-horrified, half-busy, as she tugged at her hair with one hand and typed in the air with the other, worrying and planning as she could. Lia seemed blank, soaking in facts and information as impartial as possible, her knees curled to her chest in her chair. But I knew the look on her face, the concentration going on in there. Her ''scheming face'' I''d accused her of having when we were kids. But we were so far from being kids now.


    Tem wasn''t even watching the broadcast, just my face. Whitney seemed in complete fascinated disbelief. Cosette was more on her computer than the holo. And Saga was just grinning like a kid watching fireworks, the little shit.


    This is who and what we had, against that thousand, and who-knows how many more after that. Rio had the weapons to arm them for waves and waves of attacks like this, and that was weeks ago when we''d left. Who knew what she''d gotten up to in that time? Nothing good.


    And we would go against them. Rio wanted a fight, and she''d keep bringing it against any force out there in the world who could provide a challenge. The XPCA wasn''t at the top of her list maybe, but we were up there. Just like she''d marched against Russia today, I knew she''d be coming for us someday, and probably sooner than I''d like.


    Which was not what we needed. Not with the instability of the rebels, with the unrest in New Eden, with the arms and personnel shortages, with Justice still out there eluding us, and the internal conflict of being leaderless, of running everything from the shadows.


    It was one thing too many, on top of a pile which I thought was already a few things too many. We needed to do better. We needed more decisive action, I realized, and a lot of that was on me.


    "Saga," I said, and she turned to me with the same grin. I mentally slapped it off of her, eliciting an eye-roll, but I addressed that too, by making sure she knew I was serious. Finally, she faced me in kind.


    "What?" she asked, off-guard at how cold she suddenly saw me.


    "The emergency powers bill you had drafted. How soon could we enact that?"


    She shook her head. "Anytime we have the big seven in the building at once. As early as tomorrow, probably."


    I looked around at the others, realizing, I was still looking. My gaze landed on Moon, and I saw the tiniest of nods from her. The resolution to do. To be and protect as much as we could, as many as we were able. That was all I needed.


    I looked back on Saga and again, she almost-recoiled at how deadly serious I''d turned.


    "Send the word. Have them do it. Appoint us the interim head of the XPCA."

 406. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest, D.C.. Lia.

    So, it happened. It really, truly happened. Just as Saga and Athan had planned, with a little bit of luck and a truck-ton of mental manipulation, the emergency resolution was passed, and we were the official interim directors of the XPCA through the crisis.


    The actual deputy director was probably livid, not that we much cared. I heard that he got yelled down at the meeting over the final decision by generals screaming that this was a crisis, damn it, and they didn''t want some mamby-pamby fresh-faced little idiot running the whole organization. Probably didn''t help with the feeling livid thing.


    Ironic, because now it was us, the freshest, mambiest, idiots out there. It was official. And I had to admit, it was exactly as I thought it might be. I dunno what Athan was thinking, that we''d be out there on the battlefields holding flags and leading our armies on death-or-glory charges, because that''s not at all how leadership works. Instead, this.


    He looked up at the rest of us with a face etched with despair. We''d been directors for less than a day now, and he already looked at his breaking point. Inwardly, I kind of giggled in schadenfreude, even though my lot was just as awful as his.


    "Doesn''t it ever end?" he groaned. "Can''t I just sign all these and be done with it?"


    "I don''t know, did you read them all?" AEGIS replied.


    "No. That''s the point."


    "Well, if you want to sign off on policies or provisos that you don''t understand, then by all means."


    He looked at her glumly for a moment and then started to sign various forms at random.


    "I WAS KIDDING. READ THEM," she ripped the sheets out of his hands.


    "If we don''t like something, we can just have Saga correct that mistake," he grumbled. "Or you can go in and make the records disappear."


    "You know," Whitney cleared her throat. "I was all on-board with moving things towards legitimacy. I thought we agreed that leaning on Saga and...Saga''s methods...was a bad thing."


    "Yeah." Athan''s grumbling sounded like anything but agreement.


    "So...we just have to do it right," I finished the thought. "It can''t be that bad, there''s...six of us...and there''s normally only one director."


    It was Athan, AEGIS, Cosette, Whitney, Kaori, and me. Saga had literally laughed in Athan''s face when he asked, and Karu stated she''d rather go public and turn herself in than rejoin the bureaucracy. For some reason, nobody thought to ask Tem.


    "I get the impression Director Hall wasn''t a fan of paperwork," Cosette sighed. "And by ''get the impression'', I mean, I knew him when he was a Lieutenant General, and he was always trying to get out from behind his desk and go ''lead by inspiration'', he called it.


    "Yeah, so why can''t I do that?" Athan asked.


    "Because," AEGIS fumed, "It''s part of your job. You want this job, you''ll do it properly. This is the kind of insidious killer that, if you ignore for too long, will poison everything you try to do and cripple the agency." She put a flourish on a report she finished reading and reached for another in the stack. I wasn''t entirely convinced she wasn''t getting off on this somehow. She seemed grumpy enough as the rest of us, but she was also the one pushing for us to catch up on paperwork.


    "I kind of doubt that a lack of paperwork is what''s going to kill the agency," I shrugged. "Not when we''ve got real issues like...a war. And a flying super-powered dude. And murmurs of uprising in the super-powered prison. And tides of discontent amongst the populace. To, y''know, name a few things."


    "Oh really?" AEGIS asked, with a superior smirk as she handed a sheaf of papers over to me. I was smart enough not to touch them and left them hanging in the air. "Read it." The papers bounced in my periphery.


    "Thanks, already got some," I bounced my own papers back at her.


    She harrumphed at me, and then began reading aloud. Literally everyone at the table groaned her down at suddenly having two things they didn''t want to be reading going on for them at once.


    "Fine, I''ll summarize," she said bitterly. "These are requisitions for more armaments from alternative sources. They''d go a long way towards the shortages we''re facing."


    "Why are they on our desk? Why isn''t that kind of thing handled by like, some middle-manager?" I asked, my eyes glazing over words as I flipped through my pages.


    "Because the source is¡­" AEGIS frowned as she flipped pages. "Well, maybe more controversial than people would like."


    "What, like the mafia?" Athan asked.


    "No, just abroad. Not supporting American industry."


    The sheaf in Athan''s hands was thick enough to make more of a bang than a flop as it hit the table. "Seriously? We have to sign off on that shit?"


    "Athan, it''s important."


    "It''s bullshit."


    AEGIS frowned down at her forms. I could tell she was getting disproportionately butthurt by this, but wasn''t exactly sure why. Maybe two parts putting in a good-faith effort and having it pooped on, four parts trying to be the cheerleader of the team and having it pooped on, and ten parts this has been her life for the last few weeks, and getting zero appreciation. And also being pooped on.


    I could tell she was getting close to a breaking point, and we really, really needed her not to. Even if there were five others of us here, she was still getting more done than the rest of us put together. A big part of that was just being superhuman, sure, but I thought she was honestly just more familiar with the issues than us. Athan was more interested in who needed shooting, frankly, than where the bullets came from.


    "Whether it''s BS or not, you should still do it, Athan," I chided. "Lots of things are BS, but they still need to get done, right?"


    AEGIS brightened noticeably, which was my aim.


    "That''s right," she agreed, joining me to turn on him.


    "Shit like this should just be sorted already. We''re in a crisis, who cares if our guns are domestic or not? Why should this land on my desk?"


    "It''s exactly because it''s a crisis, Athan," I explained. "I bet normally this kind of bill would get shot down, long before it got anywhere near the director. The fact that it''s up here despite not lining any businessman''s pockets just goes to show how seriously the XPCA staff are taking these crises."


    He frowned at the sheaf in his hands like he hadn''t thought of it that way, and AEGIS gave me half a grin while he was distracted. I offered her back a tiny wink before refocusing on my own papers. Something about revisions to some kind of share-space radio frequency something that literally nobody cared about.


    Athan sighed as he flipped more pages, before eventually putting down a signature and then putting down the papers. He slumped in his chair.


    "Yeah, I can''t do this. I feel useless in here. I need to be out there, doing something."


    "You sound like Karu," Whitney said.


    "Well maybe I should. She didn''t want to be a bureaucrat and became a hunter instead. In her shoes, I''d have done the same thing."


    "Except you chose to become Director," she replied. "In fact, you put a lot of effort and other people''s suffering and manipulation into it. Now you have it, and you''re already ready to quit?"


    "I didn''t think it''d be like this!" Athan threw up his hands before rising to stare out the glossy windows. "Did Blackett put up with all this shit while he was pulling the strings on a million shadowy things?"


    "Probably," AEGIS shrugged.


    Kaori glanced over her pages, her focus finally broken from her work. "It is almost as though there is a reason they would promote a relative outsider to this position. As though those most familiar with the post may know the extent to which its luster is glamour."The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Athan rolled his eyes. "They did it because we made them. Saga made them."


    "Saga is merely poking at minds. She does not have the bandwidth to rewrite the whole of the agency. Perhaps possible, but unlikely. The generals knew."


    Cosette cleared her throat. "There''s also the unfortunate record you''re facing down, too. Last three directors have all died in the office under tragic circumstances now. Probably a lot less appeal to move up. In fact, I think Hall only did it out of duty and obligation."


    "The deputy director wanted to ascend though," I mused.


    "True," Cosette turned to face me. "But you''ve gotta consider the personalities and the politics of this place. Some people just want to move up because it''s the direction their mommy''s uterus was pointed the last time they got a shove in their lives. These are the people that lifers like the generals -- like me, formerly -- do not want moving up."


    "But you also don''t want to move up," Whitney finished. "Because it sucks."


    "Pretty much. So a stopgap measure like a temporary crisis management unit? Shit, that''s the dream right there."


    Athan seemed to have rekindled his fire, though I didn''t think it had anything to do with Cosette''s aside. He sat back down and began flipping through different packets at random.


    I let him go at it for a minute while I finished mine, but when he was still doing that as I pulled up another, I had to ask. "Looking for something, bro?"


    "Yeah," he said, moving around more papers.


    "Very descriptive."


    "Thanks."


    I cleared my throat. "So, uh, what would you happen to be looking for?"


    "For the good stuff. You know, like...you were right, Blackett was right here once. And he changed a lot of policies. He instituted the ''New Exhuman Deal'', founded New Eden, established the P-Force. I''m wondering where the proposals are for shit like that. Instead of--" he picked up a form and read with disgust aloud. "Reprioritizing auto-gun target priority queues to minimize collateral damage by overpenetration."


    "Oh that sounds interesting, hand that one here," AEGIS said. Athan seemed quite happy to be rid of that packet.


    "I think the ''good stuff'' was all penned by Blackett, or at his request," Cosette said, scratching her head as her eyes darted over another form. "Nobody''s going to just randomly submit something like that up the chain for approval. At the very least, if they were going to, they''d have a proposal meeting."


    "None of these have proposal meetings," Athan replied.


    "Lots of them probably did, at some point. Most of ''em probably didn''t. This is just the backlog of shit that Hall didn''t want to do."


    "Well," Athan said, doing the opposite of admiring the spread before him. "Fuck that guy. I''m glad he''s dead."


    "Athan," Whitney chided.


    "Seriously. Look at all the bitch work he was shirking. The whole agency was going to fall apart because he couldn''t keep his shit in order."


    "And you''re any better?" she challenged. "Just a minute ago, you were saying you couldn''t do this, you had to leave and be like Karu, out there ''doing something''. Isn''t that what Hall did to create this mess?"


    "I guess," Athan slumped.


    "Look, we''re more than halfway through," I said. "And yeah, we''re gonna have to keep doing this stuff throughout, but for burning through this backlog, we''re making it."


    AEGIS froze for a second. "Um, actually...the backlogs might be getting worse, not better."


    "Huh?" I asked.


    "Well...I''ve been chipping away at it until now, but I don''t...really have the time, anymore," she eyed Athan. "I caught up on the paperwork every night there for a while, but I''m not working nights anymore. Also, it''s not really my job to do everything...if we''re all director--"


    Athan sighed enormously. "You''re saying that we''re only doing this because you have to stop at five every night?"


    She seemed to swell with pouting. "Yes, if you want to blame me for not being able to do your job."


    "She is kinda running everything already, it''s sorta garbage of you to expect her to do this too," I told Athan. Which was true, but I still only said it because I was still worried Athan was going to push AEGIS to quitting entirely, like an idiot.


    He sighed again and ran his hands through his hair before rising again, this time, teetering towards the door like he wanted to escape but wasn''t sure that was allowed. He barely made it halfway there before Whitney pulled out her chair in front of him and stared him down.


    "Where do you think you''re going?" she asked, her voice more curious than steely, despite her words.


    "Just...gonna get some air."


    "How ''bout you sit your ass down, Chariot," Cosette informed him, not looking up.


    "How about ''this is stupid''," he retorted, with just the most cunning wit.


    "And it will continue to be so whether you do it or we do. So buckle down like the rest of us."


    "Buckle...this is paperwork, Cosette."


    "I''ve noticed."


    "I''m willing to throw my life on the line for the XPCA. I''m willing to endure pain and physical suffering, I''m willing to kill, or to die."


    "...and your point is?"


    He looked around like we were all crazy. "That this is insane. This is a huge waste of the time and talent of everyone here. Each of you is among the most brilliant, talented people I''ve ever heard of, and none of you should be wasting your time on the most bitch-ass paperwork I''ve ever heard of in my life. Karu''s right, we need to be out there, making a difference, not shoved in some office worrying about how many lumens the new batch of exosuit front-lights need to put out."


    "Athan," Cosette replied, finally looking up.


    ''Yes?"


    "Sit down."


    He looked around for a moment with a frown, and then pulled up a seat near her.


    "Why''d you have us take this position?"


    "Honestly? I thought...I thought legitimizing our leadership would make things easier on Saga. I thought doing things above the table was probably better than operating in the shadows. I thought we''d be making policy decisions and big changes like Blackett, not just...swimming in filth like we are."


    She nodded as she listened. "Good points. Valid. But you''re missing something important."


    "What''s that?"


    "That shit is only ten percent of this job. At best. I don''t know how you haven''t learned this by now, maybe I was too effective a central for you, but ninety-nine percent of military service is showing up, waiting, or paperwork."


    "But we''re special," he argued.


    "And maybe that''s how you''ve avoided this bitch-work so far. But you''re signing up for an ordinary position, granted, one at the top, but still ordinary. And with it comes the perfectly ordinary amount of bullshit. Do it, or get out. But stop bitching."


    He frowned in thought for a moment. "Or, if we are the director, we can...establish a new order. We can...streamline the system, cut out all this crap, make it so the XPCA only focuses on what''s important."


    He picked up a paper and began to scrawl on the back his inane ideas.


    "And I suppose, that involves, what? Getting someone else to do all this for you?"


    "No," he answered. "We won''t have to do it at all. Nobody cares about this stuff."


    She shook her head. "How are you going to run the XPCA if none of the exosuits have lights on ''em? If nobody''s evaluating the auto-guns targeting? If nobody''s buying new arms from Cuba to fill the deficit?"


    "I mean, the agency''s running right now, and Hall didn''t review any of that shit."


    "Yeah. Until five months from now and you have a bunch of strike units stumbling in the dark on an op because they''ve got no lights, and they''ve got no weapons, and the auto-cannons they deployed are shooting at them because it can''t recognize them with their lights off and their hands empty."


    "That''s just made-up. You''re cherry-picking."


    She shook her head. "Maybe. But how many things do you think you can let slip through the cracks before shit like that starts happening?"


    "Maybe," Kaori spoke up again. "You should believe the woman who was responsible for maintaining our ops, instead of assuming that things worked flawlessly by magic."


    "Fine then," Athan said, scratching out his scrawlings and starting over. "We get an intermediary body to handle this shit while we focus on the bigger picture stuff."


    "That doesn''t work either," AEGIS sighed. "Same problem Cosette said as before."


    "What, that we won''t have lightbars? I said someone will do it."


    "Not that. The goldbricker oxygen-thief problem. The only people who would want this position are people not qualified for it. Petty losers who''d get off on basically having the power of attorney within the XPCA. People who''d reject or accept proposals only based on who they could help or harm by them. Or worse," she glanced at Athan meaningfully. "People who would shirk the work-part of this just so they could abuse the power and station of it."


    "They wouldn''t have power and station. They''d just be doing this. We''d keep the power and station."


    She smiled and laughed. "Right. Because when you can sign actions into being, you''re powerless."


    "Apparently so," he yelled. "Because I can''t sign an action into being which makes this shit go away."


    "Bro," I told him, about at the end of my rope. I looked up and caught his eye. "Look. I know that since the day you turned, your powers and all the world have been teaching you that there''s always a better, smarter way of doing things. And you''re super well-trained to look for that sneaky third option. We all know it, and it''s one of the things that makes you so dang smart and nasty to fight against. And we love that about you."


    He frowned at the compliment but nodded.


    "But there''s no sneaky-sneak or tricky-trick or sideways-ways to get around this problem. If you don''t do it, we have to, and you''re gonna feel like shit about dumping it on us. If we don''t, someone else has to, or else the agency goes to shit. And if someone else does, they''re the one with the power, not us. So if you want the power of being XPCA director, and you don''t wanna feel like shit, do as Cosette says and buckle down with the rest of us to power through this nonsense."


    "And stop bitching, most importantly," Cosette added.


    As the thought hung in the air, everyone ignored it to keep focused on their work. Everyone except me, making my plea, Athan, thinking hard about it, and Whitney, who was studying his face so hard it looked like she might melt it with the intensity her focus.


    At long last, he sighed and picked up a paper at random. "If everyone says so, I guess you have to be right."


    "Think of the bright side," AEGIS said with a smile. "It''s almost five, and we can clock out and forget all about it until tomorrow. Isn''t that something to look forward to?"


    "Hooray," he intoned. "Saving the world on a nine-to-five. Just what I always wanted."

 407. 2252, Present Day. Somewhere over the States. Athan.

    It was hard not to think about the past as the world went whipping by past Karu and me. It felt like a scene that had played out many times before, though I reminded myself how much it wasn''t.


    For one, we weren''t racing through traffic with my pulse faster than the engine''s RPMs. We were low in the air, a black streak shooting through the sky. An XPCA VTOL legitimately deployed on a mission which needed undertaking -- one of the many Exhuman protests which had been breaking out ever since we''d proven ourselves incapable of stopping them. It was a standard VTOL, apparently an Orion-Class, unlike the small, silent Sirius we''d picked up in Japan. The controls jittering and bouncing in front of me had extra grips and yokes for manning the onboard guns.


    And, though she kept alluding to it, I wasn''t here with Karu to get away from AEGIS exactly, no matter how similar it felt. Sitting beside Karu, making small talk, and avoiding the topics I really wanted to bring up...it brought me back to when AEGIS was a more awful person, and I''d be sneaking out of the house to Karu''s diner, looking for anyone sane to spend time with and any edible food to put down.


    Now wasn''t like that. I kept saying that. AEGIS was just fine, better than ever, even. I wouldn''t be able to worm my way out of work if it weren''t for her being there, the reassurance that the XPCA could keep on trucking because of her steadying hand.


    But it did kinda feel the same, and I wasn''t quite sure why.


    I caught half a glance from behind Karu''s visor, and then a wry grin. "So. How are things at the office?" She inquired right at the heart of my issues with too much levity.


    "Bad. But you knew that."


    "Did I?"


    "I''m here. Obviously things aren''t all puppies and burritos and unicorn farts with me needing to call you up and ask if I can join with literally whatever icing you''re doing."


    She frowned for an instant, but I think it was just by reflex. She used to detest the ''icers'', the group of hunters who would go on bounties for the money, regardless of whether the mark posed a threat. Kids who manifested with powers, too often. But ever since she''d relaxed her definitions on killing, the label had started to apply.


    Maybe I was just being petty and sniping at her because I was a grumpy bastard. Maybe it was payback for her asking the question she knew I didn''t want asked. Whatever it was, it prompted her to snipe back.


    "Then how are things with the machine girl?"


    "AEGIS is just fine."


    "Oh, ho? I heard tell that you had been hospitalized, as it were. Were things so fine that she fractured your pelvis with a bout of robotic lovemaking? Or are matters perhaps not so rosy as you paint?"


    I shook my head. "Why does everything have to turn sexual with you in a heartbeat?"


    She grinned. "Just imagining what I would do with you, should I have an opening as the machine does."


    "We''re not like that. Not...yet. Or...again, I guess. Shit, it''s complicated keeping things clearly-defined with a girl who keeps becoming different versions of herself."


    "So you are saying there''s an opening?" she asked, her voice lilting over the roar of the engines. Before I could reply, she leaned forward, I thought to touch some obscure control on my side of the dashboard, but then found her hand in my crotch.


    I removed it for her and put it back on the yoke while she laughed, full-bodied.


    "If there''s one thing I''ve learned about relationships, it''s that I fuck them up real good," I offered. "And right now, I need everyone working together as best I can. As much as I''d love to...settle down with one of you, I obviously don''t have the smarts or capacity to do that and also keep my work afloat. So no, I''m not with her, but I''m also not on the market."


    "I believe the term is ''focusing on my career right now''," she grinned. "And besides, I have no expectation of you. I am not as the AI is, and expecting bouquets and romantic candlelight. A few hard thrusts and I will be satisfied, no attachment required."


    "Yeah, no. Even if you say that, I don''t trust myself not to fuck it all up somehow."


    "I offer freely. We could do it as we fly to our destination. No time lost, no hard feelings, only hard feeling. Serve only as my seat and my relief for a few minutes." She patted the cushion between her legs as though that were an appealing prospect somehow.


    "Still yeah, no. How''d we even get on this topic? You asked about AEGIS. She''s great, I think she''s just overworked right now. Which is kind of insane because she keeps not working, even when she could. And I know she''s worried about becoming someone she dislikes by working too much, but at the same time, I''m just like...okay...how about you don''t do that, then. I dunno why she''s making this sound so hard."


    "I am unclear on the specifics, as I have been abroad. Pray tell, what are you talking about?"


    I gave her a summary on AEGIS working against her programming, on how she failed to come home one day and I found her plugged in to the servers and how the hospitalization had really happened, on her keeping an eye on both the XPCA and on Saga, and for good measure, on Saga''s outrage at my injury and on feeling like she needed a leash kept on her.


    I spoke until Karu was putting the VTOL through its landing cycle, and long after we''d touched down, she rested on the inactive yoke, her breasts swaying under her, I still kept going like I was vomiting something out and couldn''t stop halfway. She listened well, staring in silence and curiosity, her visor blazing red at me always.


    Eventually, I wound through the last couple of days of abusive paperwork we''d all be sitting through, and how despite AEGIS'' promises that we were very nearly through the backlog, and things were sure to get better soon, I''d really had more than I could take of it, and so here I was.


    When I finally stopped, she paused only to chuckle, and then stood up, and I unbuckled to do the same and follow her out of the cabin.


    "At least you make well clear the reasons you cannot afflict yourself with a fling," she laughed. "My, how you are capable of winding up in the most convoluted relationship morasses."


    "Gee, ya think?"


    "I do so think." She made a final overview of inventory within the VTOL, strapping a few more guns to her wrists that I guess might have gotten in the way when she was flying. After some kind of mental checklist, she nodded her satisfaction, and we headed out, did a once-around the vehicle, and then wandered off.


    The ship was parked in a parking lot...and like last time I''d been on one of these ops, the area seemed deserted. This wasn''t a big town -- populous areas and destructive Exhumans got top priority, and this was not a top-priority mission -- but it wasn''t exactly super remote, either. It was strange to see it so deserted, and I didn''t think that was something I''d ever get used to.


    The Exhuman in question here had been rampaging or protesting or whatever she''d call it for almost a week now. A sorry embarrassment for the XPCA, but the simple fact was, our people were busy elsewhere. The doctrine of overwhelming force meant that the XPCA never sent in just one or two strike teams to handle an issue. Ignoring an Exhuman altogether was better than sending a few squads to die, and worse, embolden them. Damage estimate simulations had proven again and again apparently that an Exhuman who was unchallenged was more paranoid, and one who''d been victorious was more destructive.


    Granted, it wasn''t anywhere in the policy to let them go for a full week. This shit was unprecedented, and just went to show what a mess the XPCA really was right now. I had to wonder how long an Exhuman could go unchallenged before their paranoia naturally gave way to destruction.


    Though things around here didn''t seem too destroyed. Given how long she''d been allowed to rampage, I guess they wouldn''t be. If she were more destructive, we''d have made it out here sooner.


    "So, Ashton," Karu spoke as we walked on and down the streets. "Pray tell me, have you ever suffered addiction?"


    "Uh, not that I can think of." I let my mind race for a bit over the sound of my exoframe whirring and the click-clack of her boots on asphalt. "Actually, maybe, kinda?"


    "When and what was that?"


    "It was when Whitney and I did our power-swap thing. It''s kinda hard to say it was addiction but I''m not sure what else to call it. After my powers left me, I had this like, empty buzzing inside my head that felt like it only went away when I was studying. Took weeks to go down."


    "Hmm. Truly a unique addiction, if one. What was your mind''s reaction to re-acquisition of your Exhumanity?"


    "It was a major rush. Whitney had gone off to fight someone in New York in her exosuit, and I was at her place, alone. I''d been mopey about things...I think...yeah, that was...AEGIS had just switched herself. And...Alyssa¡­"


    She seemingly looked at the ground with me, though I knew she was on higher alert than I was. A comforting arm seized my shoulder and gave me a squeeze.


    "But um, anyway. I was super bummed around then, but that morning I just woke up feeling so great. So like...alive. I kinda noticed a lot of things I hadn''t before, somehow. Instead of just...being there...I felt like I was there, if that makes any sense? Things were somehow more colorful. It was like being alive for the first time after...not being."


    She chuckled appreciatively. "My, and my apologies for doubting you. That does sound very much like a drug, doesn''t it?"


    "Have you ever been?" I asked. "Addicted, I mean?"This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "It is difficult to say. There are times when I feel I take my stims too lightly, and question if I am utilizing them out of legitimate need, or merely because I am excusing myself to be able to, although their addictive properties are quite controlled. You know that¡­" she frowned and again seemed to be watching the ground as she trailed off. "...that...for a time¡­"


    She flexed her hands and eyed her wrists under the guns and armor.


    "You were cutting," I summarized.


    "Indeed. I hesitate to declare that an addiction, although in light of retrospect, I can think of it as little else. It was a thing I was, at the time, too weak to prohibit myself from ceasing. And given that it had more control over my actions than I did, it fits the description. Yet I hesitate to call it an addiction, as it felt more...a release¡­"


    She frowned bitterly, and I had to wonder what we were doing on this conversation as we walked in towards an Exhuman.


    She shook her head. "Regardless. My point was to be, that it sounds to me clearly that the AI has an addictive personality. Have you never noticed how she goes full-bore on things? Have you ever seen one of her plans go only halfway to fruition? A subject merely half-researched? Or a task brought simply to half-completion?"


    "I have," I said, thinking. "But I think it really, really irks her when shit like that happens. She likes things neat and finished and wrapped up."


    "Indeed. Yet never has she in your lifetime faced an insurmountable problem with the amount of data she currently possesses. Always, when facing a greater disaster, such as Dragon, or Eryendria, or New Eden, her capacities are limited by the quantity of available information. Here, her problems are limitless, but for the first time, so too is her data."


    We had to stop because we''d come up on the target. The public library, a sad structure, all grey stone in a town of brick and wood, as though built to be a fortress but which really just served to emphasise both how much it did not mesh with its surroundings, and how small it was. A set of would-be impressive stairs made the main entrance on the second floor, like ascending an Aztec temple or something, except that instead of a sprawling pyramid, the majority of the library was under our feet as we ascended, and nowhere but.


    She''d holed up in there, in the times she wasn''t out walking the streets, yelling at traffic cameras and any news copters floating past. But she was kind of old news, and uninteresting to the reporters compared to any number of other constantly-occurring issues. Again, and not for the last time today, I had to shake my head at how fucked the XPCA and America were at the moment.


    "So you''re saying what, she''s addicted to data?" I asked as we walked up the steep external steps. Karu''s heels clacked even louder on the flagstone. I had to admire my exoframe as it carried me smoothly up, feeling like I was gliding uphill instead of struggling with the too-large stairs.


    "In part, yes. Though," she shook her head, making her hair wobble back and forth. "Though of course, I am no trained professional. Take my assertions as the third-party interest of an armchair shrink and nothing more."


    "Except you did study psychology."


    "I did. Which is distinct from psychiatry, which deals more with issues like addiction and other mental disorders. Psychology is rooted in the how of human thinking, not in the assessment of its function, or lack thereof."


    "Okay. So you have some insight when things might be wrong, though?"


    "I hope so. But hence my disclaimer."


    We''d reached the top, and the automatic doors opened for us with a rewarding blast of cool air. Karu went in first with me directly behind. What we found inside made me equally sad as seeing the outside.


    It looked like whoever built this place really, really tried. They''d thrown together arches and buttresses, elegant rising structures...but all made of grey, stacked-together stone, unremarkable and cramped. Like if Michelangelo was given a slab of concrete instead of marble to chisel out David, and it was only four feet tall. God knows the guy probably did his best, but¡­this city and this library were just not big enough for his ambitions.


    The central feature of the room was a spiral staircase headed back down amidst rows of books. It descended, gracefully curving with wide petal-like steps for all of one story, and then ended abruptly. Up here was the checkout desk, set under a low, graceful arch that made me think of an order-out window at a diner than whatever lofty aim the architect intended.


    "Regardless, it seems to me that AEGIS may suffer such an addiction. To data, to solving problems to her satisfaction...potentially to any number of things. There is much new about her station," Karu explained as we peered around the few stacks upstairs.


    "So, what? Am I supposed to be getting her detox or something?"


    She chuckled. "Nothing of that nature. But the thrust of my point was to be, you asked earlier why she does not simply work to her capabilities, and then walk away whenever it suits her. Why she does not simply ''not work'' successfully, as you phrased it."


    "Ah," I said, realizing. "And you think it''s because she''s addicted. To...work, or data, or finishing the mission or whatever. Walking away never suits her."


    "Precisely. And I asked your experiences with addiction to hopefully place you further into her contexts. Unfortunately they are ill-relatable, though I suppose there was some hope."


    I frowned as I followed her around the last few tables up here. No sign of an Exhuman, just an ordinary, empty library. "No, I get you," I said, thinking. "Actually I think she said something like that."


    Karu shook her head at me and sighed. "I know well now why you feel incapable of operating a relationship with any degree of success."


    I blinked at her. "What?"


    "You do not listen, Ashton. To hear you say she has told you this herself, yet you are still questioning it aloud to me? For what purpose do you suppose she flapped her synthetic lips at you, if not to be heard?"


    "I, uh...I mean...I heard her."


    "And yet you come here to complain bitterly of a problem she herself has already explained."


    "Look, you''re making this sound way worse than it is. I did hear her. I listened."


    Karu began descending the main staircase, head twitching this way and that as we went. It was very exposed down there, stacks of shelves lined up at all angles providing any number of places she could hide, and the stairs were open enough that an attack could come from any side. To say nothing of how little Karu''s jetpack would do in such a cramped space.


    So it wasn''t a surprise when she shut up for a minute and trusted in her visor to pick up any threats. She seemed focused in one direction, which I had to assume was picking up a thermal reading or something beyond the stacks. The two of us crept down until we touched foot on the thin carpet at the bottom, neither of us as silent as we would have liked.


    And at the bottom, we paused, hearts pounding. Waiting for an ambush.


    Waiting.


    In vain, as it turned out. As nothing came. Karu flipped through a few settings on her visor with a frown, and then led us sideways into the stacks, not the same direction she''d been staring.


    And it surprised me when she resumed speaking. "My point was to be that if we assume the robot to have an addiction, you must consider what it is you are doing to her. She herself has expressed distress at her situation, and there is no clearer judge than the victim in this scenario. That you would look at her, and her situation, and her workload, and shrug to yourself and say ''that is fine'', honestly baffles me, and on a level, makes me feel fortunate that my wants for you are little more than carnal."


    "Uh."


    "More. But only little more."


    "Thanks. For that needless clarification. And for getting us on that topic again, totally necessary. My ''uh'' was about AEGIS and how apparently I don''t listen to her? Because I fucking do."


    "I believe you heard her words. I also believe you immediately discounted them, because you viewed them through your own experiences rather than hers. You said unto yourself, ''Work? Hah! That is a thing of which I am easily capable. And so it must be for her.''"


    "I mean, she works all the time. This isn''t a new thing for her. And she''s never had problems like this before."


    "And also, she has never notified you of problems of this nature before. She is now, so open your damned ears, Ashton."


    We were creeping forward, though I wasn''t sure quite what towards. Or, why so slowly and deliberately when we were talking through whispers. But we must have reached the spot, because Karu suddenly left me to whip around a corner with guns raised. I bolted to join her, blades manifest, keeping her in my shield...and saw the disappointment that had caused the guns to lower.


    "Left recently," Karu muttered. There was a cozy little nest there of some sweaters and jackets and a small pile of books. I recognized the top one, Thrash, a trashy romance novel I''d once read the first couple hours of on a date with Alyssa.


    Shit, that totally was a date, I realized. Though whatever shame I felt in that was drowned beneath how that date had ended. With her death.


    "Still warm," Karu said, and I realized she was off inspecting the nest. "Remnants of food debris. And this stack of books, I imagine she has been here most of the time she has been loose."


    "What a dangerous Exhuman," I shook my head. "Eating in the library."


    Even behind her visor I could see Karu roll her eyes. "Let us begone from here. The low ceilings give me claustrophobia."


    As long as it had taken us to go in, it took only a moment to pop back upstairs and head for the door. But as we were walking towards it, I was stopped by Karu''s arm flung wide to arrest me. And I noticed the reason why in a moment when walking through the door from the other side was the girl we were here to see, arms and backpack laden with what looked like stolen groceries.


    "Wh-who¡­?" she stammered, the bags hitting the floor as she brought her arms up to fight. Green orbs popped out of the air, as my blades did in counterpoint. "I won''t go down without a fight!" she shouted, as though rehearsed. "XPCA lies! XPCA LIES! XP--"


    Her tirade ended in a squeal as she was knocked off her feet and thrown backwards, Karu''s shock net clicking ominously while she seized on the floor.


    "Well that was easy," I declared.


    "So it tends to be with the ones who raise no hell," Karu shrugged as she drew a syringe from a pouch and advanced on the thrashing body. I noticed she didn''t show any discomfort whatsoever in touching the electrified girl as she administered the serum, her newly refit armor apparently even more resistive than the previous version. And then we waited for a minute while the net finished depleting its charge, an awkward moment of the girl being shocked awake and passing out as the drug and net both took hold.


    "So the issue is," I finished up "that I''m asking AEGIS to do something she''s addicted to. Every day. And not really being aware of what...or...aware even that she is."


    "So it seems to me," Karu shrugged. "Though again, armchair psychiatrist, operating second-hand at work. I recognize the need to keep her working, and so I view your path as a very difficult one."


    "Yeah. If she works too hard, she risks slipping back in. But not enough, and we won''t stay afloat." I frowned. "Wish there was more I could do."


    "While I suspect I could gloat and point out that perhaps shirking your duties there is not helpful...and in fact, perhaps doing the work yourself so that she has a reduced workload seems optimal¡­"


    I swallowed hard as she let the point linger. I was kinda blowing things off so I could be here where shit just made more sense to me. But Karu was right that I was only making the problem worse.


    She cleared her throat. "The fact is, I suspect that clearing up issues such as these resolves paperwork in a more preventative manner. Or at least, that is what I tell myself, when I come out to do it. And I would be remiss if I so easily dismissed your company, or the excuse you need to provide it."


    The girl bolted awake for a moment as the clicking of the net stopped, sitting shock upright and staring at us with wild eyes.


    "HELP ME," she bellowed, her eyelids starting to sag already. "LET ME OUT."


    I shook my head at the poor confused kid as she fell asleep on the spot, her head drooping into her lap as she collapsed forward.


    "Honestly," I declared. "Yelling like that."


    "She is drugged," Karu shrugged, moving forward to pick her up. "The brain does not function properly under such circumstances."


    "I meant, because this is a library."


    Karu paused to turn back and give me a red-lensed glare. "I have determined you may carry the mark. Congratulations."


    I didn''t mind. It was almost worth the joke. And it was the kind of bitch work I really didn''t mind.


    But even as I hefted her onto my shoulders and made to trudge down the steep steps, she was never really on my mind. It was the bitch work of another variety, and another girl who''d stayed lodged up there. The things I could do when I got back, the responsibility I could take, the help I could provide.


    I sighed as I re-shouldered by load. It didn''t seem like enough.

 408. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest. Athan.

    It was a little strange going back to the Raven''s Nest with our prisoner in tow. Felt less like the end of a mission and more like coming home after summer camp or the like. Even though we had a drugged, restrained Exhuman chained up in the back, Karu and I spent the rest of the afternoon chatting breezily and flying slowly, not even catching sight of the DC landmarks until we had to pick them out of the dark.


    For all my issues with Karu, and what she may or may not believe to be right, or moral, or her insane talk about God and destiny, there wasn''t any denying the fact that she and I related better than pretty much anyone else on the team, in a way. It''s not like everyone else sat on their hands all day, or that Karu and I were devoid of thought, but we were doers. AEGIS, Saga, Whitney, Lia...they were all thinkers. Planners. Schemers.


    Karu and I would rather prepare our bodies and minds and take a problem head-on, and so I always found time with her refreshing when the weight of the worldly problems was too stupid and onerous for me to shoulder.


    Times like now. When my biggest nemesis was paperwork, when we really should be out there hunting down Justice, or smoothing over New Eden, or talking (or smacking) some sense into the Oasians. Or, just generally contributing, such as by roping in renegade Exhumans, like the one we had with us now.


    Karu landed the VTOL, handed in the Exhuman for processing, filled out a few pages of my nemesis, chatting with me while undergoing this brief debrief, and then we were free.


    "My, but that was about as pleasant a night as one could ask for, as it were," Karu said, pulling off her visor and shaking out her hair. It''d grown in long enough to be shake-outable by now, and it lay flat and messy on her head, the tips of it almost reaching her eyebrows now. She must have noticed my looking, as she ran her fingers through it with a thoughtful expression. "Oh, yes. I have been meaning to do something with this."


    "It looks fine," I said, punching the elevator button to get us out of the quiet flight decks. Crew levels, for food or showers probably. "Looks like hair."


    She smiled prettily. "Asinine as it may be, I do take some effort in my appearance. Father always said that a put-together woman was an imposing woman, and while I have grown picky in which of his teachings I now hear, I have little desire to be anything but imposing."


    I gave her another glance-over. Imposing wasn''t the first word that came to mind. She was too attractive to be imposing. But then again, I knew her well, and we were close. I tried to imagine if we were strangers and I was going to walk up and try to spark up a conversation with her. Imposing suddenly seemed a lot more in the picture.


    "That''s weird though," I argued. The elevator doors opened silently and we piled in. "Where are we going?"


    "Lockers, if you do not mind. The flightsuit truly seals in the flavor, as it were."


    "Gross," I laughed, and pressed her floor. "Weird that your dad of all people would think of women as intimidating. Or anyone, really. He seemed the type to¡­"


    I struggled for how to put an end to that sentence, only really realizing as the words were already coming out that maybe Karu still had some lingering feelings going on about the father she''d buried. But her shrug was indifferent, as was her tone. "...to give a fuck?" she offered.


    "Yeah. Kinda. He obviously did."


    "But not about things such as that, no. As was obvious by his attempted interactions with you, he truly was a free thinker. He cared not for age, race, class, gender, or humanity." She smirked at me slyly. "Only what he could take from them."


    "Kinda. yeah."


    "Still, he was not ignorant of the effect that his actions could have on others. As his protege, I was taught such as well. I was taught how to speak for maximum effect, how to hold myself, how to appear."


    "And posture. I heard a lot about that one."


    She caught me off-guard by laughing at my joke way harder than I thought it merited, just in time for the elevator to open, and to startle a pair of XPCA in PT gear. I followed her, keeping up the conversation and laughing until we reached the lockers.


    "Join me for a shower?" she offered.


    "Yeah, probably not. It was nice hanging out though."


    She smirked. "You know as well as I that there is nothing sexual about being nude together. We are comrades here, not lovers."


    "Yeah, still think AEGIS might take exception, and she''s got eyes all over this place. Or Saga, and she''s on my mind right now. Just not a good mix."


    "Also, you are focusing on your career, I heard," she grinned.


    "That too."


    "Good. That is a lie I can tell myself at night to ease my wounded heart and aching loins. Be well, Ashton. Are you headed for home?"


    She''d been staying in the barracks, and some nights, before AEGIS implemented this five-PM policy, so had I. But it was already way late, and I could only imagine how pissed AEGIS might be that I''d sorta-kinda-maybe blown her off today to go hang out with Karu, and come back late. A night in the racks was just the thing not to add to the situation.


    And same also for that shower, I thought, as Karu stripped off her top. Peeled out of it really, in a way that made it suddenly very difficult to swallow.


    "Yep!" my voice cracked. "See you tomorrow or whenever!" I said, too fast and turning around, while she laughed my whole way back to the elevators. I was still shaking my head...not quite sure if it was in denial or trying to get the image out...when the doors closed on me and I realized I hadn''t picked my floor.


    I checked my mobile. Almost nine. AEGIS should have been home hours ago. I wondered for a moment if she cooked me something and I''d ruined it by not showing. Of course, maybe Lia, Whitney, and Cosette simply benefited from my absence instead. If that were the case, I should stop by the mess and grab a bite.


    But no, I thought, badging in for the upper offices. Again, I should minimize the risk of fucking things up with AEGIS more than I already had. Just a quick check-in with Saga and I''d head home.


    When I got close to the conference room which had become Saga''s home, I heard something strange. And it wasn''t until I opened the door and saw her laying on her back on the glass table that I recognized the sound.


    It was singing. Saga was singing. That was new.


    She wasn''t great at it, either. Her voice was too soft, and she seemed to have a very limited range in what notes she could hit, coming out more as a breathy hum than a recognizable song. But the attempt was obvious.


    "Hi...you," I said, pulling up a chair at her table.


    "''Sup, Athan. You''re in a good mood."


    "Yeah, just played hookie all day so I could put away an actual sorta-threat to society instead of doing paperwork."


    "Threat to society. Threat to sanity. Threat to insanity. Threaty-threat-threat."


    I blinked at her. "You uh...okay over there?"


    She rolled on the table a little to fix me with an upside-down stare, and then picked up some of the strands of her hair to drizzle them over her face like she was seasoning herself. "Yuup. Just bored."


    "Bored?" I laughed. "Aren''t there like, a billion XPCA here for you to manage?"


    She shrugged. "Mostly, they manage themselves. It''s the important guys I have to really work on, and they''re all home. Just me and the grunts here at night."


    "And you don''t work on them?"


    She blew hair out of her mouth and it hovered in the air above her face. She made it look effortless, but I could tell this was a well-practiced move. Which was kind of sad.


    "Buddy, I work with brains. That''s what I do," she said, again sounding...a bit sing-song. "I don''t do bodies. And the grunts? They''re the body of the XPCA, yeah? I''m working on the head, because whatever way I turn that, the body follows."


    "I gotcha," I said, giving her a smile. "Well I hope you''re not too bored. I appreciate the work you put in here. Wish you could enjoy your time off like any job."


    She gave me a weird look. "I do enjoy my time off. It''s boring, but that''s okay sometimes." She frowned for a moment as though thinking, and then decided to say it because I was already hearing it in her head anyway. "And thanks for stopping by and saying you appreciate me. I appreciate you appreciating me."This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "Anytime, dude. I need to clear out before AEGIS kills me though. Anything I can get you?"


    "Hmm," she mused. "We should plant some trees in here."


    "Maybe uh...we can. But I meant like...anything I can get you."


    "Nah. Go get not-killed by AEGIS or whatever. She''s still here, I''m pretty sure. I didn''t see anyone else see her leave."


    I started to stand when I processed her convoluted words and paused. "Still here?"


    "Yep. Yeppers. Yepity-do-dah-day." She rolled over and looked at me. "Maybe?"


    "Is she or isn''t she, Saga?"


    "Dunno. I''m not my robot''s keeper. All I said was, I didn''t see anyone else see her go. But y''know, I wasn''t really looking. And lots of people see her but not as herself, on account of the brain-hackery I''ve done around here to let you guys come and go. So, maybe?"


    I shook my head. "Well thanks anyway. I guess I''ll check upstairs before I go home."


    "Yep. Yep. Three, four five," she sang, and I took that as my cue to exit.


    This time, while waiting for the elevator, I tried to imagine the stupid shit I would come up with if I never slept. And whether I''d do it in front of anyone. Probably not, I imagined, but Saga gave considerably fewer fucks about people''s perception of her than...maybe anyone. And, her intrusive thought suddenly reminded me, if she did care, she could always change that perception later. She was such a cheater.


    AEGIS wasn''t upstairs, but Cosette was. And Whitney, I realized, once I entered the room and got around the piles of junk she''d surrounded herself with. The former kept shooting the latter dirty looks.


    "Hi guys. Seen AEGIS?" I asked.


    "Hmm?" Whitney mumbled, and then half-jumped at seeing me, fumbling to pull off her headphones. "Holy heck, Athan. Don''t sneak up on me like that."


    "She''s downstairs," Cosette grumbled.


    "You okay, Cosette?"


    She gave me the same look she''d been shooting Whitney. "Peachy."


    I exchanged a glance with Whitney to make sure I wasn''t massively missing something, but she seemed as lost as I was. Granted, she was still putting herself together after almost falling out of her chair, and scattering her work into disarray.


    "Uh," I commented.


    "Well if you must know," Cosette snapped. "I''ve been doing all your damn paperwork today. Both of you. And she has the audacity to sit here and play with her toys while I''m doing it!"


    "That''s what you were doing?" Whitney asked. "You should have said something. I''d have done it. I was going to, I was just finishing up on getting these diodes soldered in."


    "Yeah, that''s like the four-hundredth thing you''ve done on that shit today," Cosette sniped. "I don''t know why you bothered coming in if you were just going to screw around."


    "I was going to," Whitney argued. "I just got...distracted."


    "Downstairs where?" I cut in.


    "You''re not any better," Cosette clarified, and I was beginning to think every time I opened my mouth, I was just pulling attention to myself, and not in a good way. "I see you, skipping around with Karu. This shit is your responsibility, too. And you''re lucky you didn''t make a mess out there, with more paperwork for me to handle."


    "I''m not on the P-Force anymore, you know," I told her through a grin. "My messes are more than just your problem now."


    "Still the biggest messes on the agency," she mumbled at me. "But your girl''s downstairs in the server room. I can''t complain too much, because she''s the one really knocking out the paper...work?"


    I''d already turned to leave the second the words ''server room'' had left her mouth. Fuck me. Why, AEGIS?


    But I knew why, now. Karu had beat it into my head to listen to what AEGIS had said before. I was certainly an idiot, but even I could learn and listen if someone told me to. But now, because I hadn''t...or because I wasn''t there for her, she''d gone and plugged in again.


    The elevator seemed to take forever, no matter how insistently I jammed the button. She really was like an addict. I couldn''t leave her alone with this stuff for a single day without her getting into trouble. I couldn''t believe that I''d thought she was the one to keep an eye on Saga. As much as AEGIS might have hated it, maybe I should have told everyone else, so that like...Cosette or whomever could kick AEGIS out of the server room if she kept trying to sneak in there. Or tell me at least, or something.


    The door opened and I clambered into the tiny cell, banging my head on the door as soon as I hit the button and badged in. I could make whatever excuses I wanted, or come up with hypotheticals that might have helped, but this was all on me, I knew. She had a routine that kept her clean, and I''d gone and broken it for my own selfish reasons. And without me, there wasn''t any reason for her to go home on her own.


    Just stupid of me. I passed out of the elevator and through some security and halls before the chill of the server room''s dry air hit me.


    And right in the middle of it, there she was. Sprawled out, cables everywhere, eyes glazed over as her consciousness existed more in the machines around her than the body. I felt a hot lump of guilt as I approached the pitiful form.


    It took too long for her to see me. Too long for her to blink back to awareness. From her perspective, she was probably losing awareness, moving from global organizations and routing orders and materiel for tens of thousands, to looking through one pair of eyes at me. She mumbled something at me.


    "Hi AEGIS," I said, soothing as I could be. I had little desire to wind up almost-dead again. "I''m back."


    "H-hey," she muttered. "Hey. Just a sec, k?"


    "AEGIS, I need you to come back to me please."


    "Yeah...ye-ha...ha. Just a sec."


    I stood and waited for many seconds, tapping my foot, crossing my arms. Every few moments, she''d snap out of her stupor and see me and give me half a smile or a little nod. It reminded me of when I''d visited a friend, and he''d needed to rush through a video game to reach a save point when dinner was already on the table.


    Except, like Whitney, I imagined AEGIS never ran out of trivial things to work on. I approached her body and got another lukewarm, vacant greeting.


    "Hey, can you tell me which of these we can unplug?" I asked, tousling her hair with as disarming a smile as I could muster. "How about this one?"


    "No...don''t...I need that. I''m...using that...on a call to Russia."


    "Russia?"


    "Yeah I''ve...sorry...I''ve got um¡­" she shook her head, her eyes not focused on anything in this room. "Um. A source about the uh...Oasis. The Oasians."


    "Okay," I said. "How about this one?"


    "No, I''m uh...we''re reallocating...um¡­" She blinked at me like I was asking her to do very hard math. "...the uh...combined arms. For Liev."


    "Are there any of these you''re not using? Can we start taking them down?"


    "I guess um...port...MC-131b over there¡­" she gestured with a nod of her head which was just super useful, given that it was her hair we were talking about here. But by inches in a game of hot-and-cold, I eventually got one strand of her unplugged. And then, by asking and prodding, eventually, a second.


    And...I did this. For about an hour. I talked her through her stammering, distracted responses and coaxed her out of one connection after another, slowly letting her down, slowly putting her back into herself. It got easier as she unplugged and became more herself, faster, but also...so much worse.


    Because she started crying as she realized again who and what she was, and what all she was doing. For an eternity, we stood on the painful, awkward precipice of her identity being fully split, where she was aware of what she was doing, but also, that it was so important she do it, that even when she once again sounded like herself again, she still couldn''t bear to unplug. And she hated herself for doing so.


    She apologized again and again, bawling. Trying to comfort me, for some reason, while I just kept up my patience and walked her through disconnecting, as gradually as I could.


    I was glad I wasn''t tired or hungry or sore. I''d come off the back of a good op and was feeling happy and light. And I used every bit of that positivity, and every bit of the guilt I felt from seeing her like that, because of me, reminding myself over and over to be patient with her, to be nice, no matter how fucking awful this entire drawn-out, self-loathing experience was.


    And did I mention she was crying? And that girls crying made me very uncomfortable? Because that fucking sucked too.


    But most of an hour in, I was committed. I was determined to play the best fucking martyr. We''d get through this, no matter how much it sucked, and she could be sorry and pity me and apologize for doing this to me and I''d just be as stoic as I was when I came in. That was what all my tenacity eroded down to in the end. Doing it for the pity. I was more despicable than she ever was.


    Finally, she reached up and unplugged the last connection, and with it, apparently all self-control, because she launched herself into my chest and bawled, knocking me over so that she could cry over me more effectively.


    It had taken most of an hour. Of pure misery, for both of us.


    And I just laid there on the server room floor, exhausted. Feeling so different from when I''d come in. We were done, but somehow, it felt like...this was just the start of a much longer, much more awful night with AEGIS. I felt like we had ''a talk'' coming, and I just wanted to be asleep or dead. I regretted every piece of paperwork I hadn''t done. If it had hurt her like this, it wasn''t worth it. I tried apologizing, but she shushed me down, argued that I couldn''t apologize to someone as much a wreck as she was, that she should be apologizing, not me.


    In summary, it went on for a very long time and was very awful. At some point, it was the middle of the night, and we''d been talking and arguing and beating ourselves up for hours, and AEGIS had the realization that I needed to sleep, and she''d been keeping me up this whole time without even thinking about my need for sleep, and oh her gosh, when''s the last time I ate, and another entire deluge of reasons why she was the worst and she was so sorry.


    So. She got us a taxi. We stopped by a twenty-four hour drive-through where we got more food than I could possibly deal with at her insistence. We went home, where she immediately sat me down to eat in silence while she stared at me, which was somehow worse than the talking.


    And then she put me to bed. Apologizing again profusely for everything. Saying she just wanted to do some extra paperwork for me, because I hated it so much, and things spiraled out of control. That she hated that there was this part of her she couldn''t keep reigned in, at how frustrated she was, with herself, with her failings, and that even when she saw them...when I''d come back...she still couldn''t just unplug and let go.


    I couldn''t end it with her putting all the blame on herself. I argued back, and she argued against my arguments. Nobody was willing to let the other have the final word. And that''s how we rehashed the entire argument again, in the bedroom, until I literally passed out, mid-sentence.


    When I woke up, it was late, I could tell by the birds and the sun. I felt disoriented and a little sick, but I hardly stirred before touching something hard in the bed with me, and rolled over to blink at it with bleary, unfocused eyes.


    It was a tray, and on it was a plate with some bacon and toast. And a note, in elaborate handwriting which I''d never before seen, which must have been AEGIS''.


    Because that was her signature at the bottom, next to a heart. And it was directly under the words: I can''t do this anymore. I''m sorry. I quit.

 409. 2252, Present Day. Quiet home. Athan.

    Even though I''d slept in, I didn''t feel rested, even a little bit. My head was still aching with the arguments we''d chased in circles for hours the night before. My mouth felt dry and my throat sore from all the talking. My eyes were tired and dry.


    But none of that compared at all to the note in my hand. I kept reading it and re-reading it and trying to make sense of the words. They made sense, they were the conclusion to the arguments that AEGIS had been slamming at me all last night. They just didn''t make sense to me.


    I rose and found myself still dressed, which saved me a step as I stumbled into the hallway and then easily located AEGIS, standing as though waiting in the living room. Which was pretty much all of the house, excluding bathroom, kitchen, and the other bedroom, whose bunk bed housed Lia and Whitney, and the rest of the space housed the latter''s crap.


    AEGIS smiled at seeing me up, and then frowned.


    "Didn''t eat breakfast?" she asked.


    I shook the note at her, and shook my head, but words seemed beyond me at that exact moment. She made a disapproving clicking sound and advanced on me. For a moment, I thought she was coming for me for some reason, but she just squeezed past and disappeared into my room, leaving me out here like an idiot. But then she came back, folding up the tray and carrying the plate of bacon and toast.


    "Sit. Eat," she commanded. And I wasn''t in much of a place to argue, so I did. She busied herself putting the table away, before sitting opposite me and smoothing down her dress as she resumed her smile.


    Talking was easier after putting some food down, I discovered. As was waking, and finally I was able to ask her what I really wanted.


    "What''s with this?" I said, shaking the letter again.


    She paused, smile frozen for a moment. "It''s exactly what it says."


    "What it says is, in not so many words, that the XPCA is going to go to shit." I swallowed and started to move, but AEGIS already had a glass of water from somewhere, which I drank readily. "We need you."


    "It''s operated in the past without me just fine."


    "It''s operated in the past by people who had their heads together. Saga is like, mid-lobotomy on some of those generals, and it''s them who are running the daily operations around there. I don''t know if you''ve seen General Moroles recently, but he''s basically a zombie."


    "General Moroles was always kind of a useless turd sack if you ask me," she shrugged, still smiling placidly.


    "The point is, when we stepped in and started running things, we started running things. I don''t know that it''s possible to just...stop. I know how hard it''s been for you, but I don''t think I can just accept a resignation." I handed the letter back to her, which she took, glanced at, and then carefully folded to set on the coffee table.


    And then she looked at me for long moments. Her eyes so bright, more dazzling even than the midday sun shining through the windows.


    At long last she shook her head at me in return. "How are you going to do that, Athan? Are you going to force me to work?"


    "No."


    "Hold me down, plug me in, until the thing inside me takes over?"


    "What? No."


    "Let it crawl out of me and push me out of my own body? Force me to die, drowning to my own fucking inadequacy, my own inability to deal with myself? Just pin me down and drug me up until I can''t be me anymore?"


    "AEGIS, what the fuck? No. I''m not...raping you or whatever. I just...need your help, now more than ever."


    "Well I said no." She crossed her arms. "Which means, you can force me, or you can fuck off."


    "Why do you have to be so dramatic? Look, let''s just...set boundaries, like you did before. Let''s keep you to them. No more overtime. No more plugging in. End at five sharp. Like you said you wanted."


    She tightened her arms across her chest, her face flashing livid. "No. I tried that."


    "And...we messed up. I messed up. I wasn''t there for you."


    "You shouldn''t have to be," she snarled. "I should be able to function on my own. I hate that you''d think you have to babysit me, just because I''m not capable of keeping my own shit in order. I hate it, Athan."


    "It''s not babysitting!" I argued. "We just...everyone needs a little help sometimes. Everyone''s got weaknesses. Just like I can''t deal with the boring-ass-hell minutiae of running the agency, you can''t deal with...I don''t know...being so close to...the drug...thing."


    "You still don''t get it," she sighed, deflating. "You don''t even understand what it''s like for me, do you?"


    "I do!" I bleated, but I realized that was most of my argument right there. "I''ve been listening. You said it''s like a drug, and you have to control yourself to only...take a little bit. When you''re an addict."


    "Yeah, that''s the metaphor," she said, pushing her glasses up her face. "In practice, it''s so much more insidious. Because it''s so easy, Athan. I''m up there doing forms and I think, ''I''m really limited by the bandwidth here. I could get twice as much done if I just went on a hard line.'' And then I''m already there, I should engage the idle cycles on the servers to boost my processing power, and I''ll work ten times faster. And then, as long as I''m operating at higher capacity, I should take a look at that other problem I couldn''t figure out when I was in my own limited mind. And then I run into some variable I can''t account for without cross-referencing some other thing I was working on--"


    "And then you''re working on everything, plugged into everything."


    "Pretty much. And I''m ninety percent system and everything which is me is just a little voice in the corner saying wait, I wasn''t supposed to do this for some reason. I should stop. But for the life of me, I can''t figure out what that reason is, until you walk in, and I realize I forgot all about you."


    She looked bitter and disgusted, and tensed up even further in her seat. "Forgetting you. Like, all about you. Seriously."


    "That''s...not so bad. We all get busy with work. I don''t have you on my mind every minute when I''m fighting someone."


    "Athan, I know you don''t understand, but you''re my everything. To combat these...impulses. My programming. My fundamental nature, I had to pick some new axis to orient myself around. And I chose you. You''re my zero-zero, my rock, my anchor. Forgetting you isn''t just...doing something dumb without my boy in mind, I''m not being some drunk floozy on spring break here. I''m talking about a situation where my entire...my entire¡­" she shook her head violently, hair bouncing on her shoulders. "My entire value system. My entire moral compass. My entire hierarchy of priorities, it''s all different. I don''t know if you can even imagine that. But becoming that is awful. And coming back from it..." She shuddered. "...I feel dirty. I feel impure."


    I just took a moment to breathe and reflect on her words. I was listening, I was. I heard it all, and I tried my best to think about what she said instead of just arguing my case again.


    And it sucked. Her position sucked.


    "But none of that changes the fact that we need you, AEGIS."


    "You don''t need me," she scoffed. "You need my body. "You just want to plug it in and have it run things, and subvert me into nothingness."


    "I don''t want to do any of that! I love--" I swallowed hard, and it was telling how serious this conversation was that she hardly even glanced up at the word. "I love you. And of course I don''t want you to go away, or be suffering, or have your personality drowned by your systems. I want you to be happy and healthy and whole."


    I traced my finger along my empty plate, slightly surprised to pick up crumbs I could barely see. But I could feel them. They were there, a mess just out of sight.


    "I just¡­" I sighed. "Things are such a mess right now. We''ve got so much disaster going on. And you''re so competent, without you...I don''t even know. The world I see if you do this is...everything falls apart. We fail, maybe even die. And yeah, you''re there, failing and dying right alongside us. And...maybe that''s what happens even if you stay."


    I felt like I was just rambling, frustratedly. To be honest, I didn''t know the first thing to do about most of the problems we faced. I just wanted to go address them in person. Walk up to Justice and cut him down and sort out that problem with my own two fucking hands. Having it all handled by tens of thousands of uniforms through a layer of paperwork...like yeah, I knew in my head that maybe ten thousand dudes with guns and exosuits was a little bit more capable than I was. But it didn''t feel that way. It felt like we were getting nothing done.


    And without her, less than nothing. Saga had told me briefly about all the thousands of problems she''d nipped in the bud already. Issues none of us would have been able to see coming. None of us were an administrator.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I sighed again. "I know you don''t want to do it, but it just...seems like the only way things don''t end badly, you know?"


    She looked at me seriously, and then, surprisingly, reached up and delicately removed her glasses, folding them carefully and putting them on the note on the coffee table. She looked at me without them, with her blazing yellow eyes.


    "I have a question," she said, chin angled down, eyes piercing. Her intensity was enough to make my heart skip.


    "Um. Yeah, go ahead?"


    "If I let you choose. Between me--" she paused to gesture at herself, her hands slowly descending her body. "--and having me plugged in. No half-measures. No...trying to quit at five. Fully engaged, fully committed. Because I don''t think there''s any middle ground except a struggle that lands one way or the other. So if you had to choose, for me to be one or the other. Which one would you pick?"


    I stared at her and found her intensity unnerving. She was scrutinizing everything about me as she''d rarely done. I found myself breathing manually when the thought crossed my mind that she would be watching that. She''d be watching my heartbeat. My eyes. Everything, put under a lens like I''d rarely been under before.


    And handed a question like that.


    I didn''t know.


    I knew what I felt like had to happen for us to win. And at the same time, I knew what I wanted. I didn''t want to lose AEGIS, to herself or to anyone.


    I swallowed hard. It was a little painful.


    "Are you...like...are you asking me right now?" I said stupidly. She nodded. "I mean. Like...am I...deciding what you''re going...to do? To be?"


    She blinked at me slowly once. "I don''t see how that should change your answer."


    "I just...want to know. Before I decide anything...that...might be more important than...I think?"


    Her lips curled into just a hint of a frown. "Athan. You''re just stalling. And that doesn''t suit you. Whatever you say, know that I will observe it as your opinion in this time, at this moment. The opinion of the man I cherish most. Weigh that however you will."


    I stared at her, feeling like I was facing my own execution somehow. This wasn''t fair.


    "I''ve already argued my opinion," I said. "I think you should just...do as we''ve been trying. We can try again. We can do better."


    "That''s not the question, Athan. I asked a different question."


    Her eyes blazed at me, brighter than the sun. I couldn''t look at them.


    "I already told you," I mumbled at the table. "The XPCA needs you."


    "And you? Do you need me?"


    "Of course I do."


    I saw her hand moving and felt her fingers touch my chin, lifting my face, pointing me directly at hers, the sun I couldn''t stare into. But she made me, and once she had, I couldn''t look away.


    "And what''s more important to you?" she asked, her voice kind but biting. "The XPCA? Or you?"


    I had to look away again, but her fingers didn''t let me go. I pulled them off my chin and mercifully found the floor.


    "You know the answer to that, AEGIS."


    "I need to hear it from you, my love."


    I paused to think for another minute. She didn''t move a millimeter, just waited. Just hung there, a well of patience and love. Just being the perfect, understanding woman who wanted to hear it from her own man that he didn''t want her to exist anymore.


    I spent that minute...I don''t know, psyching myself up. Preparing to say something terrible which I knew I had to. Preparing to ruin my own life, and the life of someone I loved.


    I hated it. I hated doing it. More than once, I had the insane urge to just stand up and leave. To grab her hand and take her with me as we disappeared into the ignorant mass of people outside. Go to Paris maybe. Or back to Tokyo, now that she knew the language. Make some happy memories there and push everything from this fucked-up, stupid, bullshit world out of my head. Make a new life, pretending, every minute of every day.


    Pretending that everything would be okay without us. That we could just...re-cork his genie. That I was okay with having gotten everything I''d ever wanted.


    "AEGIS, I can''t ever put myself above everyone else on Earth," I slowly explained. "I just can''t. All those humans and Exhumans, they deserve a better world than this one."


    "Why, though? You always say that. You always believe that. But why?"


    "Because this world is shitty, AEGIS. The fact that right now, I''m being made to choose between the woman I love and taking a step towards fixing it, that''s the world for you. That''s the kind of pain this fucking place demands of you."


    She frowned. "Okay. And even if that''s true, that doesn''t answer my question. Why do people deserve better? Why can''t you just¡­" she looked around and settled on shrugging at me. "...just leave them all to suffer."


    "Because I can do something about it. Because, in spite of what a piece of shit I am, I can help. And I don''t think anyone who can act...ever shouldn''t."


    "You talk like they''re inhabiting this problem, Athan. But they are the problem. The world itself is just carbon and silicon and oxygen and iron. It''s the people on it that make it shitty. And yet, you''d give up everything for them. Even me. Is that right?"


    I looked at her. So radiant. So perfect. Even designed specifically to love me, the demands of this world were such that it could demand even more.


    "That''s right," I said at long last. "That''s my answer."


    Her face didn''t change. She still just radiated love and understanding. Patience and kindness. She did put her glasses back on, and with them, shot me a beaming smile. Which I didn''t understand.


    But it was obvious she understood me. My answer hadn''t surprised her at all.


    She reached out and took my hand in both of hers, holding it close to her and planting her lips on it, somehow even warmer than the rest of her.


    I didn''t get it. I didn''t deserve this.


    "Didn''t you hear me?" I found myself saying. "I said I''d rather you disappeared than loved me. I said I''d consign you to...to die, basically, if it meant those fuckers could be a little better-off."


    "I know," she said, still smiling. "And it was the wrong answer."


    "Then why?" I asked, completely flabbergasted as she kissed my knuckles again. Gentle lips, warming me like a sunbeam. I could only shake my head at her and try to pull free my hand, but this time she wasn''t letting me go. "How can you still love me? Why are you still doing this? I''m horrible.


    "I''ve told you before, you big dummy," she said with a grin. "And I''ll tell you again, and again, because even if you hear me, you''ll never agree."


    "What? That you picked me? That I''m just that important because you happened to choose me and not someone else?" I stared at her, feeling my blood surge. I wanted to stand up and yell, rip out my hair. "You said it yourself, I''m your zero-zero coordinate or whatever. Well you could have picked any fucking arbitrary point. You could have picked anyone who wasn''t a fucking piece of shit like me. And then you''d be happier, AEGIS. Happier than I could ever make you."


    She continued to smile, and that just made me feel even more insane. My fingers twitched as she came in to kiss them yet again, and I realized I was crackling with uncontrolled electricity. I felt panic as it jumped from my fingertips to her face, coursing painfully down her body, cracking that patient smile with a wince, and making my already-twisting heart writhe even more. Because of course I had to hurt her on top of everything else. Because that was who I was. Just a toxic, ingrateful, painful, demanding Exhuman.


    And still she didn''t yield. Kindness and love, stronger than any self-loathing I could throw at her. I didn''t understand.


    "Athan, you always choose wrong," she explained. "You always put others first. You always pick the most selfless path possible, even if it''s stupid beyond measure. And if you ever, even for a moment, find happiness? You rush to throw it away, because of this insane guilt you have that your happiness somehow equates to someone else''s misery. It''s irrational."


    "It''s not! The XPCA needs you--"


    "I know," she said. "But you need me more. You always choose wrong, and like I said before, I''ll be that one person who looks out for you when nobody else will. When the world is being cruel to you, when you''re being cruel to yourself, I will always be there for you. I''ll be the one to pick you over the world, because you won''t do it. I''ll help you be as selfless and self-destructive as you want, I''ll be there to pick up the pieces of you and put you back together, no matter what you do. I''ll help you, and love you. Always."


    "But you won''t...die for me."


    She shook her head with the same patient smile and gave me another gentle kiss. "Not this time. Not like this. If I did, who''d be there to love you, Athan? If you had answered differently, maybe there might have been hope for you. Maybe I could have trusted you to take care of yourself to some degree. But if you can''t, then I will."


    She kissed my fingertips again, and this time it seemed to burn instead. I felt lightheaded, reeling in my chair at her words.


    I didn''t understand.


    I really, really didn''t understand.


    But at the same time, I wasn''t sure I had to. She''d gathered her data and drawn her conclusion, and told me in no uncertain terms what she''d surmised and what it meant. And there was no flex in it.


    From the intensity of her eyes to the strength of her hands on mine, I knew that no amount of crying or screaming or hating would change her decision. I''d told her to go kill herself, in the worst imaginable way, and she hadn''t even blinked. If I was stubborn, she was immovable.


    And that was, in a way, a huge relief. I felt all this angst and anger inside me crashing with nowhere to go. Welling up into self-pitying tears. But behind them, relief. The happiness that she was there for me, that she always would be, and there was no other way. That this argument was settled, and it wasn''t even an argument anymore, it was a cold-cast decision, laid in iron. That through her in my life, if nothing else, I could have something selfish and special and beautiful, and it wasn''t happiness stolen from someone more deserving. It was just...something I''d have to deal with, joy and security I''d be forced to have, whether I wanted it or not. It bubbled up inside me, warmth and elation like I couldn''t contain, didn''t deserve.


    But I had it anyway, and there was nothing I could do about it.


    The tears did come out. But they weren''t hot and angry, or bitter and stressed. They were tears of relief, of happiness even.


    She finally let me go and walked around the table to wrap me in a hug, letting me cry myself out on her. Her hands ran soothingly up and down my back, and it wasn''t too long before my brain recovered and I felt stupid for...for everything, really. For thinking I could run her life, make her decisions, that all these choices were on me, and that what I decided fated the world.


    And also for crying like a tired child over breakfast. But she didn''t judge.


    Instead, once my tears had dried, she gave my hand another gentle kiss, glancing up at me with sparkling eyes and a grin that spoke of understanding, and then rose.


    "I bet you''re still hungry. Junk food for dinner last night probably didn''t hold you, I imagine. Let me make something more substantial before you head into the office, okay?" she asked.


    I rose and caught her hand as she reached for the fridge, giving her pause while she looked at me with confusion. "Not...not hungry?" she stammered.


    I answered her with a kiss, pulling her into me and feeling her hot lips on mine. As quickly as she stiffened in surprise, she melted into my arms, her hands wrapping around me as though she''d been waiting for this moment for months.


    She had. But she would have waited forever if I''d wanted. That was part of her love. The endless, bottomless well of patience for me and for all my fuckups and indecision. But I''d had enough of that. We deserved better. She deserved better.


    It was brief, but she still drew away panting, looking more flushed and agitated now than during our entire intense debate. I felt the same, felt like I loved this woman, and that I didn''t deserve her, but if she would settle for me, the least I could do would be to make her as happy as I could.


    I didn''t know if it was a good idea or not. But for once, I didn''t care. I had to show her how much I loved her. She resisted only slightly as I steered us back towards the bedroom.


    "Okay, but...don''t think you''re...skipping breakfast after this," she moaned. "I''ll...pack you...something."


    "I''m sure it''ll be great," I said, as I closed the door behind us.

 410. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest. Athan.

    It shouldn''t surprise anyone that AEGIS and my relationship was completely dysfunctional from the outset. How great my life with her was just served to illustrate how shitty my time at work felt. Which was only redoubled as with her now gone, things began piling up.


    I didn''t want to be there, none of us did. AEGIS was apparently the only one who took any joy or even responsibility in dealing with the agency''s bullshit minutiae. But now, if I went home to get away from it, she was there, unable to tell me with words how much I was fucking up, and how badly I needed to get back to work, because she herself had already turned her back on that mess. But I could still read it off her, in her tension, the hesitation in her smiles, like it was written on her face.


    She''d hem and haw and wonder aloud if specific things had gotten done, with a significant glance at me. And then apologize, and say she shouldn''t meddle, and recommend me specific personnel she''d found competent who might help -- though only with reservation if they happened to be female. All the while, I was drowning, and we both knew she was withholding the one person who could help me most.


    She could. But she also really couldn''t. A fucking disaster.


    Our first major incident was slammed on our desk in the form of probably a thousand sheets of paper, and god-knows how many digital reports. Something had gone awry during an op and the air transit had never materialized to get a bunch of strike units deployed. We had men adjacent doing fuck-all while an Exhuman tore apart a town center, killing six-hundred civilians before running off when we limped in.


    Chasing down the responsible parties was like reading through a game of telephone, where if the original message was ever deciphered, the one responsible for leaking would be hanged. Everything was just blame and contradiction.


    Lia''s head was in her hands with folded paper sprawled in front of her. "This report says the VTOLs were scheduled for maintenance and the covering squad was Raster-406. This other report says Raster was assigned for another op. There''s maintenance logs, but it doesn''t look like they''re for either the original group or the covering. And this report from the maintenance team says they were scheduled to work on tanks, not VTOLs. Which is not what the schedule says."


    Whitney had the same posture on the opposite end of the table. "If I understand this, the strike lead was in contact with Raster, who told them they were not coming. He''s the one who kicked it up the chain to alert everyone that nobody was deploying them but¡­" she flipped a few pages on another document. "...the escalation never made it to central, because it was routed through the nearest base, which was where the service team was, and they didn''t see a reason to send the same report twice, considering they''d just sent it to the strike team minutes before?"


    "Seems pretty typical to me," added Cosette, who appeared the only one not turning grey-haired before my eyes. "Someone dropped the ball and everyone''s blaming whoever they didn''t speak with."


    "And six-hundred innocent people died," I grumbled. "That we had the manpower to save, and just...didn''t."


    "Events are getting more violent than ever," Cosette replied, holding up a sheet as though looking through it. "Numbers are way up. Kinda feels like a war."


    "A war?" Whitney echoed.


    "Sure. A guerilla war, anyway. All the Exhumans we''ve been encountering recently are old ones that came out of hiding for a reason. The reason...is typically to do some damage. Because they''ve heard others are doing the same."


    "And then they get away with it half the time," I bitched. "Like this fucker. After killing six-hundred. We''re an embarrassment."


    "That we are. But hanging our heads doesn''t do anything but give us a better view of our shriveling pricks," Cosette said, sitting up to give me an affirming glance. "Don''t be sorry, be better."


    "That''s a Karu line."


    "That''s a Peregrine line. And should be the line of anyone who has to work independently, on a team. Whatever happened, happened. Our job is to make sure it doesn''t happen again."


    I slumped in my seat. "How?"


    "How what?" she asked.


    "How do we be better?"


    "Next time--"


    "Next time, what? Next time, one of us has a galaxy-sized brain and puts together all the pieces from reading this shit? Or what. We spend weeks digging through conflicting reports and fabricated, ass-guarding, self-interested bullshit to find the guy who did fuck up and crucify him, so that...next time there''s a conflict, everyone''s paranoid about being the next guy nailed to a cross, so they cross their fucking T''s?"


    I shouted at her. I''d felt useless and suffocated since I''d heard the news, and I was lashing out, I knew. But fucking still. Six-hundred people in a couple hours. She stared at me. They all did. Most in shock, but Cosette in irritation.


    I was surprised when it was Moon who spoke up. "We instill order, Chariot. Do you think it a coincidence that the disorder of the XPCA coincides with our disruption of it?"


    I stood up, kicking my chair over behind me with a crash. "So it''s my fault they died. Of course."


    "It is everyone''s fault. Order exists only as a unified construct. If you must crucify one and instil order through fear, then you must. If you are capable of leading by charisma, then you may. But you must lead, to lead."


    "That doesn''t make any fucking sense!" I shouted at her. "Just tell me what to fucking do. Or, y''know what, just do it! We''re all director here, I don''t know why I''m the one getting blamed for everything!"


    She stared at me with open disgust. Or, as open as Moon got anyway. "I just stated that it was all our faults. Do you need an ear cleaning?"


    I was seriously about to lose it when the door opened and an aide stepped in, saluting sharply.


    "Go ahead," Cosette addressed him.


    "Message for the future council, ma''am."


    "That''s us."


    He pulled a tablet from under his arm, along with another stack of papers, and handed it to her, retreating after another salute.


    She flipped through them while I finished raging at Moon, seemingly unable to stop myself as I felt her estimation of me dropping by degrees with every word I shouted.


    Fortunately I didn''t get too many words, before Cosette lit up the table''s holo and projected what looked like a map.


    "What now?" I gaped, finding my chair.


    "Oh, just...the Oasians eradicating another armed force," she sighed. "India, this time."


    "Fuck."


    "Yeah. There''s...footage, if we want to see. I think the news are probably going to be on this one soon. No sense and no way to cover up an international incident."


    Lia replied while chewing the end of a pen. "Not that anyone seems to consider the Oasians Exhuman in any way. So really not our business."


    I began to argue, because apparently that''s what I was best at. "Except it is. Because--"


    "Yeah, I know," she said, her voice sharp. And I realized she and everyone else here already got it. They weren''t the ones I was arguing with, really.


    "And this...oh good. More bad news." Cosette leafed through the contents of the envelope, and I caught lots of red TOP SECRET and CLASSIFIED markings on it between her fingers.


    "Not another event," I pleaded.


    "I wish. Look familiar?"


    She flipped to a sheet and pulled it out of the envelope with a grating noise like a guillotine drawing back. I scrunched up my face at the grainy picture printed there. It almost looked like¡­


    "Soran?" I asked. And I hated her for nodding. "Fuck. Why. Why him, why now?"


    "Because obviously, if everything''s going to shit at the same time, it only makes sense he''d show up. Kind of a good-news, bad-news thing going on with him, though."


    I didn''t even have to guess. "The good news is, he''s getting rid of Exhumans for us. And the bad news is the same."


    "Yep."


    She chewed on the silence while flipping through more papers. I didn''t know how she did it, I just wanted to explode. Everything was so fucking wrong.


    "So let''s get him," I decided, finding that fucking chair and sitting back down. "Let''s kill Soran, finally, for good. Where was he?"


    "Y''know, it''s not typically the purview of the director to decide on individual ops," she said. "More of a big picture kinda position."


    "So where the fuck is he? So I can shove a big picture up his ass?"


    "Georgia, from the look of it."You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    "And the local units--"


    "Already mobilized. Already deploying." She shook her head as she read. "Already likely to get their asses beat."


    "So stop them. Send...send shadow ops. Send us, for fuck''s sake. Moon, have a VTOL prepped for us."


    "Shadow ops are deploying. You do know that people in this agency are capable of doing ops without your personal intervention."


    "Apparently fucking not, because six-hundred people died earlier today and it was somehow all my fault."


    Moon cleared her throat.


    "All our fault. Whatever," I clarified.


    "Well, if you want to micromanage even more, and give yourself more work, have at it," Cosette declared. "But you can''t possibly make it, and then when everything goes tits-up, it really will be your fault, instead of just landing on your desk."


    I glared at her, and hated her some. Not just for arguing with me, but also for being right. We''d already had one case of the agency failing because nobody had been here to do AEGIS'' job. If I pulled more onto our collective plate, if I fought even harder against delegating to the rest of the uniforms and shirked my own responsibilities more, how many times would that multiply?


    It was straight-up fucked, that somehow, not doing anything was the right thing to do. I''d thought leadership meant I could steer things, but I was fucking dead wrong. Things had a way they went on their own, and leadership just meant being at the head of it. The XPCA wasn''t the agency I really wanted to be in control of. That was...I dunno...humanity. Destiny. Something I could build from the ground-up which made some fucking sense. Not this bloated, bureaucratic bullshit.


    It wasn''t even an hour before the next aide gave us another two pieces of news. One reported that the Indian forces had been wiped out by the Oasians. When they''d come forward to negotiate terms and try to figure out what the hell they wanted, the Oasians had responded with only one thing they desired.


    War.


    Nobody fucking understood because how the hell could you understand? What was there even to comprehend about a force which existed only to fight and kill as many others as possible? World powers were openly talking about emergency joint ventures to send Oasis back to the glasslands, but nobody seemed to want to be the first to raise the nuclear question again. Not after the Sino Wars, and how much that had devastated the Earth..


    The next bit of news was equally bad. And Cosette read it with a stoic blanch.


    "Another...mishap," she suggested, and offered me the papers. I tore them from her hands and read.


    "Mis...hap? Fucking¡­" I had to focus to keep my eyes from jumping all over the page. "Why the fuck did we have people stationed there?"


    "Where?" Lia asked.


    "A courtroom in...Atlanta or something. A whole shadow ops team, just wiped out by Justice."


    "No!" she said, her brow furrowing. "Let me see."


    She bounced up, bare feet sticking out of her uniform and clung to my shoulder as she read over it. "That''s like, provoking him, practically."


    "Lots of people are scared," Whitney suggested. "I don''t think putting XPCA in places where Justice is likely to go is a bad idea."


    "Except they just die. We can''t just throw away handfuls of our strongest troops...or their arms. We need a coordinated attack. And shadow ops as guard detail, who the fuck authorized this?"


    Cosette shook her head as she read from her computer. "Looks like...wires crossed? Some captain using an old policy that we were stationing guards in the courtrooms. But that was changed forever ago. Was he just an idiot? Or was he seriously trying to glory-hunt the world''s biggest Exhuman threat?"


    "And what the hell is a captain doing with shadow ops under him?"


    "Base administration...maybe he didn''t even know who they were, just...sent everything he had? They shouldn''t have responded to his orders, should have had a handler. Where the fuck was he this whole time?"


    "He was recalled," Lia sighed, pointing out another report on a different page than I was on. "Mishandling an operation...he was being rebuked for misplacing arms."


    "And they weren''t given another handler?" Whitney asked.


    I held my head. "Apparently not in this case, since they were supposed to just be based. What the fuck."


    "Twice in one day," Cosette sighed, sounding as defeated as I felt. Somehow she kept sitting upright. "We can''t keep doing this."


    "Is every day just going to be like this?" I asked aloud. "More news of Exhuman events we can''t do anything about? More things going wrong we can''t fix? Is there even any point to us being up here?"


    "We''re...changing policy direction in New Eden," Whitney confirmed. "Though...relaxing the authoritarianism there isn''t...making things better. It seems to just be provoking more incidents. And the staff are becoming nervous and unruly as a result¡­"


    "We have successfully responded to most of the smaller events," Moon added. "Though with a higher mortality rate than previously accounted. Possibly due to new policy. But...also possibly the Exhumans are just bad."


    "So basically, everything we''re trying is failing," I confirmed. "We can''t run a more peaceful XPCA without the Exhumans taking every inch we give them and fucking us with it."


    "It...it can''t be that way," Whitney argued. "We have to try. I think the establishment of a mediation-ops is inspired. And...they did very well. That...one time. Before--"


    "Before they died," I finished for her. "Because some fucking Exhuman just saw black uniforms and ripped them apart."


    "...yeah. But...it also worked once. So that''s fifty-fifty."


    I closed my eyes and held my head. I felt insane. I felt like, some genie had granted my wish in the most literal and twisted way possible to give me everything I''d asked for, and nothing I wanted. Here I was, top of the XPCA, and I was more powerless than I thought possible. And if today was any sign of things to come, without AEGIS, things would just keep falling further and further apart.


    What the absolute fucking hell was I thinking, that a bunch of random people could run an entire branch of the military, and one of the largest government agencies in the world? We''d just fail, until, what? The generals were mentally incapable of seeing us as the incompetents we definitely were. Eventually, either the United States President would see our idiocy and either disband the agency, or we''d get to mind-fuck the most powerful man in the world. Or the grunts would lose all faith in the institution, absolutely, and we''d be facing an unmanageable mass. Maybe even a mutiny.


    Because of us. Because of me. Because of AEGIS. If she were here, plugged in, I knew there would have been at least two fewer incidents today. And a thousand hours less paperwork for each of us. But she couldn''t, and I understood.


    But still. Fuck.


    The next hour continued downhill, going as smoothly as a dumpster on fire might navigate a sharp cliff. Reports and updates were constant now, and were twofold gifts: More documentation for us to process and comprehend and sign, and more awful news.


    The Oasians had finished up, but Soran was moving openly now, as much an Exhuman event as any we''d seen. There were special precautions in place on account of his classification as a mutable, and his absurdly dangerous Prather Index, but even so, he wiped out the strike forces and the recon teams after him without apparent effort. Justice was done slaughtering our shadow-ops and, as usual, just disappeared into the sky.


    And the paperwork for the two disasters just kept pouring in. In impossible quantities. It felt like every single fucking XPCA there was had decided if they didn''t weigh in on the matters, they''d be blamed for them, and so an excruciating number of reports were coming through.


    I was just about ready to cry when I heard the door open again. Another aide with another wheelbarrow of papers. Just bury me in them and call it what it was -- an early grave. Paperwork could do me in where dozens of Exhumans had failed.


    So I was pretty fucking shocked when our visitor walked up behind my chair and rested their head atop mine. Bizarre, and I struggled for a second before seeing copper strands of cable-hair draped on either side of my face. That, I had to blink at for a moment, wondering.


    I looked up, and upside-down, saw her smiling.


    "Heyas," she said.


    "AEGIS? Oh thank God. I thought you were never coming back. We''ve got such a mess here and need you so badly."


    She chewed on her lip for a moment. "Well. Yes. Also, no. I figured something out. Also, did you investigate General Morales for that VTOL debacle? I was working on that when I...left."


    I shook my head at her. She had no idea. And her little laugh only confirmed it.


    "Um, anyway, be right back. I''ve been working on this all night and all day. You''ll like it."


    She left, and the rest of us sat in silence. After maybe fifteen minutes, we''d settled back down, though with a looming air of is she coming back?


    And then I heard it. Familiar mechanical steps. Heavier than AEGIS'' ballerina feet, by far. I couldn''t place where I''d heard it before, until it emerged through the door and I felt my heart crumbling.


    The doorway was too small for the hulking metal frame, and it shuffled through on legs which bent the wrong way, spindly needlelike feet that seemed to stab the floor rather than step on it. After it passed through, it stretched to its full height, eight feet tall, and shiny and black, looking like glossy metal plating, insectile in its hunched pose and inhuman proportions.


    Its fingers twirled around the hand-paddles, floating manipulator drones, unattached. Dancing, seemingly, just for the fun of it. It''s limbs were narrow and long, it''s torso too thin, it''s shoulders too thick.


    And right, smack in the middle of its front, a pixels, displaying a crude approximation of a face. :)


    "AEGIS...why?" I asked, dragging myself out of the chair to stand before the black machine. "Why?"


    The face on the pixels changed at my approach. Becoming a scathing > at me. Which was about the second emotion crossing my heart, after incomprehension.


    "See, this is what I like about you, Athan," it said, its voice a synthesized approximation of AEGIS'', but colder, harder. More calculating. Crueler. "Your endless capacity for compassion."


    "I don''t¡­" I shook my head and stared at her in disbelief. "I don''t understand."


    She replied >:D "I''m only kidding. There''s actually nothing I like about you."


    My confusion was completed when AEGIS walked through the door, sidestepping around the metal cockroach as though nothing were amiss. I gaped at her. She gave me a little smile.


    "Like it?" she asked.


    "I like you. I hate it," I told her.


    "Aw. You''re sweet. But one of my issues...why I needed to plug in so much...was Rua is just lacking in processing power. ¨²aine has a ton more under the hood than I do. She''s way more capable than I am of helping out around here. And...I just thought...with how much you''re struggling¡­" she shifted uncomfortably. "What you...what I really needed most in the world right now...was...more of...well this sounds egotistical but...more of me."


    ¨²aine stepped forward with a mechanical lurch and put its fingers reassuringly on AEGIS'' shoulders. "That''s right," her synth-voice said. "All the world needs more of you, darling."


    "Oh you," AEGIS blushed, and swatted at a finger. From their rapport, you''d think they were playing. I was just...in shock.


    "Wait. So. You...you broke your rule?" I asked. "You put...yourself...in there?"


    AEGIS frowned. "No. I would never break my own rules like that."


    "Then who?"


    "What, you don''t recognize me?" ¨²aine asked, > drawing its hands to its hips, fingers flaring violently. "Maybe try breathing through your mouth and see if that gets some oxygen to that lonely brain cell."


    I turned away from the abuse to stare at AEGIS, who blushed and gave a little shrug. "I didn''t break the rule. I just...bent it a little. She already existed. I just...cleaned her up a bit and put her in. And I think she''ll work out fine. After all, it''s what she was made to do."


    I turned and blinked at the smug :), which still didn''t explain who I was looking at.


    "I guess I can spell it out. Otherwise we''ll be here all day, and I''d hate to deprive some village of their idiot."


    I glanced at AEGIS but she just shrugged at me and spoke to the cockroach. "Try to be nice?"


    ¨²aine''s disposition changed in a heartbeat. It stood up straighter and then offered me a hand...of floating fingers, in what was probably a handshake gesture? I took it, not knowing what else to do. Or think. Or say.


    "TARGA," she said. "And it''s not at all nice to meet you again, Athan."

 411. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest. Athan.

    TARGA.


    Fucking TARGA.


    Just the sound of that name made my heart race and lightning crackle off my shoulders involuntarily.


    She''d been the one who killed AEGIS Prime. The perfect woman, as far as I saw it. The mold after which the last two AEGIS'' had based themselves, and both come up variously short. The woman I''d irrefutably loved, without reservation, and taken from me by this egotistical, sick, corruption.


    "Woah. Woah," AEGIS said, taking a step forward and squeezing my hands, apparently unconcerned with the lightning arcing between our bodies. "Athan, calm down."


    I blinked at her, trying to focus through the red haze. I became dimly aware that there were blades hovering in the air all around me, a good fifty of them or more. They seemed to twitch impatiently, and to track TARGA''s nervous movements unerringly.


    "Control yourself, ape," TARGA sneered, but hearing AEGIS'' corrupted voice coming out of her just made my blood pound hotter.


    "Maybe leave it to me, sweetie," AEGIS crooned to her. "You''ll just make him mad. Could you start on some paperwork for me?"


    Again, AEGIS'' words were like a command to TARGA, who stiffened upright, and began moving even before she responded. "Of course!" she said chipper as the original cooking a hearty breakfast. "My pleasure."


    My blades twisted in the air to follow as she stabbed her way over to the table where the rest of the girls stared at her without reservation. Her finger-drones extracted a cable from somewhere on her torso and plugged into the table''s computer, where images began flashing past on the holo, faster than I could process them.


    "I know you have a history," AEGIS whispered. "But I think this really is the best solution, if you can look past that for a moment."


    "A history?" I shouted at her. "She fucking murdered you, AEGIS."


    "She had orders. She was built to be...more obedient than I am. At the time, you were a huge danger to the XPCA, remember? It''s only natural she''d be fighting against you with everything she had."


    "I wasn''t a danger to anyone, except that she forced me to be. The only reason I was in New Eden was to find Steffie for Jack, and she made that hell. And then, I found out she was behind tearing up Saga. And that''s inex-fucking-scusable."


    AEGIS gave me an apologetic, placating smile. But even as she did, I could feel Saga raging in my mind, same as me. Everyone else in the room seemed to feel it too, everyone in the building probably. But I wasn''t about to correct her behavior now, not when I happened to agree with it entirely.


    "Saga...was a threat to the XPCA. Athan, you have to look at this from your new perspective. You changed sides, that means TARGA''s an ally."


    "I''ve always been on the side of helping people. Protecting people. Upholding the good for as many as I could."


    "Okay," TARGA snapped. "I''ve endured your stupidass, dumbass, jackass, missclassed, lip-flapping for long enough. And I''ve been in this room for five minutes. No. Just no."


    I stared at her, at the stupid smug > on her pixels.


    "Athan the purehearted? Give me a break," she continued, the AEGIS in her voice sounding more like a mockery than even her words. "You do whatever you want without concern for the corpses you leave behind."


    "I''m not arguing it," I told her. "I know I''m a killer. But I do it for the greater good."


    "What greater good is left when you have numbers like this? Eleven hundred killed or hospitalized in the greater Tokyo region. Six in Gifu. Fourteen in Nagasaki. Three-hundred-eighty-one XPCA in Las Vegas. Twelve of whom were civilians."


    "I said I know."


    "Along the interstate fifteen, another hundred and twelve, and only three civilians. Whom, according to this report, you deliberately brainwashed and had sent to their deaths as a diversion. At the California State University--"


    "Don''t you fucking dare," I said, my throat suddenly tight. The blades seemed to move on their own, levelling at her. "Don''t you talk about Alyssa."


    "--well done," she finished, with a cocky crossing of her arms. "When you did your best and tried to blend in with normal society, you only resulted in the murder of four. One police, two campus security...and one student¡­"


    She said the last word almost sing-song, and it was about all I could do not to just scour her from the spot. My blades twitched in the air, jumping towards her, as she stared me down, unflinching. I might have run her through -- just to prove her right -- if AEGIS hadn''t stepped between us.


    "Now let''s just calm down a sec here," she said, glancing back and forth between the two of us.


    "But I''m only just getting started," TARGA complained. Her voice when talking to AEGIS was completely different to when she was trying to gut me. "A dozen XPCA in Utah. Two entire squads in a secure facility under a disused plane boneyard. Thirty-five more, including a senator--"


    "He gets it," AEGIS confirmed, her eyes looking dead.


    "I don''t know. ''Getting it'' does really seem to be his thing. Plus there''s more; thirteen Exhumans in Oregon and one XPCA intelligence officer. And in New Eden--"


    "Enough," AEGIS barked, and finally TARGA fell silent.


    Mostly silent. She mumbled her last few words about New Eden, loud enough for me to catch. "The MOST egregious," I heard.


    "I said enough. Are you defective?" AEGIS snapped. TARGA stood shock upright and stared at her blankly, even scared.


    "N-no, darling--"


    "Then put aside your squabbles, however justified you may think they are, and do your damn job. You have a role, fulfill it."


    TARGA seemed to gape on the spot for a moment. "But he''s...a danger to--"


    "Did I ask for your assessment?"


    "No, but--"


    "Looking after Athan is my role. Yours is to keep the XPCA functioning. Don''t you dare presume to know my chosen purpose better than me. I don''t want to hear any more bickering from the two of you after this. Got it?"


    She reminded me of my mother, when Lia and I would fight. Except, with Lia, things always stayed civil. This thing, I would add to her own little body count, happily.


    I also didn''t miss the almost-perfect allusion to Rio in AEGIS'' words. She sounded as snippy and defensive as any of the high clergy in Oasis when challenged. I really was her calling, as weird as that sounded to think.


    And then I realized, I was thinking again. My blood wasn''t quite so fighty and my head not so clouded, and I''m pretty sure it was AEGIS'' sharp diffusal which had brought me down. Not that I really wanted to be, TARGA was a fucking virus that should be wiped out.


    AEGIS looked at me and there was a hint of pleading her eyes as though she could see my thoughts. "Athan, you need her."


    "I need you."


    "And I told you, I can''t help you like that. Not without being someone else. She''s literally someone else. Give her a shot."


    I''d give her a shot of lightning to the face, I thought. Kinda made me happy to think that ¨²aine wasn''t built to be as resistive as Rua. If I cut her or zapped her, she''d probably fry real nice.


    But AEGIS was right, because of course she was. In a way, this was a truly genius solution. Another AEGIS was just what we needed, but of course that wasn''t an option. This was as close as we''d get. And ¨²aine was more suited for this kind of computational work.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Which...just meant that instead of getting distracted and overwhelmed like AEGIS would, she''d retain her personality while she worked. Which was super unfair. Why''d the one of them with the good personality have to become a paralyzed, distracted, blank slate, while the shitty one gets to stay herself?


    But she would work. And maybe I could even tolerate her. If I could put up with Dragon being alive, I could put up with her. Maybe. She''d probably take over on the boring bullshit, and free me up to do some actual good out there. And then I''d be there and she''d be here, and I''d never even have to see her.


    AEGIS was grinning as apparently my eyes lit up or something at the thought. "See?" she asked.


    "Are you sure you''re okay with this?" I asked her. "She killed Prime. She went insane already once. And she''s...your code, twisted. You said before you found that...revolting. Abhorrent."


    AEGIS seemed to shudder involuntarily. "Well." She bit her lip. "Yeah. But. You need it."


    "You''d make yourself...like...physically ill, even at the thought of this. For me."


    She shook her head. "I already told you, I''d do anything for you, Athan. A little existential horror isn''t the end of the world."


    "Anything except what she''s doing."


    She took a step forward to playfully bonk me in the forehead. "Because, as we''ve established, if I did that, I''d never be able to do anything else for you again. And that''s not worth it."


    I shook my head and instead watched over her shoulder as TARGA focused, the pages on the holo flipping past faster than I could even see, now. It felt like she must just be doing what I had done too much of -- tear through forms and sign them at random. But I knew, if there was any semblance of AEGIS inside there, she had too much integrity and professional pride to just glance and sign. She must have been reading everything at that impossible rate. And the difference in processing capabilities between ¨²aine and Rua were never more clear.


    "Fine," I said, defeated. "We''ll try her out. One slip-up and she''s toast though. You hear me, cockroach?"


    "I don''t make mistakes, ape." Her work hardly slowed as she spoke. I rolled my eyes.


    "Well then. If I can leave this to her¡­" I grinned at AEGIS. "Think the rest of us can just...take a step back? Maybe even a break?"


    Before AEGIS could answer, TARGA did. "The rest of them, maybe. But you have work to do."


    "Me? Doing what?"


    "You are, despite your uselessness, a military asset. Something we happen to be very short on at the moment. Which you''d know, if your head wasn''t quite so vacuous. And even a useless asset can be used. Cannon fodder and the like."


    "Don''t worry," AEGIS drew in close to whisper. "I''ll review any ops she sends you on to make sure it''s not a deathtrap." She grinned before standing on tiptoe to give me a kiss on the forehead. Which seemed to send the pixels on TARGA''s face into paroxysms. I resolved on the spot to have as much PDA in this room as possible in the future.


    "Thanks. I do enjoy not being in a deathtrap." She giggled, and the holos froze as TARGA writhed on the spot. "Hey, aren''t you supposed to be working?" I barked over AEGIS'' shoulder. It made my heart soar to see the jittery cockroach jump in alarm and redouble back on her work, veritably sweating.


    "You really should be out there, though," AEGIS said, sounding like she disagreed with her words. "It makes you happy. Or...happier. To do something. We can find you something light. Send you along with Karu and Tem."


    "Screw that," I said. "I don''t just want to do stupid work, I want to fix things. If we''ve got three of us, we should be going after Soran."


    "I would go," Moon volunteered.


    "And I can be your central again," added Cosette. "Like old times. Would be nice to be back in the saddle instead of strung up in this yoke."


    AEGIS glanced at TARGA, who seemed to give a noncommittal shrug if anything. "Well I guess that works. Although you seem to have forgotten the best part."


    "You?" I asked.


    "Me!" she beamed. "How long has it been since I''ve been free to run with you, hmm?" Her arms wrapped around me and her hands buried into the mess of hair at the back of my head. You''d think she''d have just propositioned me for something more intimate than flying across the states to try to fight and kill some Exhuman jerk. Not that I minded, as I kissed her on the spot, half because I wanted to, and half because it seemed to physically harm TARGA.


    "Okay...then¡­" the black robot interrupted, pushing us gently apart with finger-drones from a few feet away. "Enough...of that. We have plans to make and missions to run. I will be happy to see you removed from my presence. Though never from my sight. Remember that," she warned. Probably the only leverage she thought she had at the moment.


    Which, y''know, just made me more giddy. I liked kissing AEGIS well enough, but getting a side perk out of it too? Just the best.


    It was shocking how quickly a VTOL could be fueled and ready and clear to depart, far faster than anytime Moon or I had handled the proceedings. Almost felt like we were being rushed out the door, but even if that were so, I still had to begrudgingly admire the efficiency with which she was doing so. It was a few minutes, tops, between leaving the office and sitting in a craft, pilots ready and runway cleared.


    I had another twinge of guilt, thinking about the six-hundred who''d died just this morning, all because we''d failed to coordinate air transit. As light as this situation felt, it was also a somber reminder of a very legitimate need. I didn''t want to feel reassured, exactly, but that was still something TARGA was exuding, even involuntarily.


    Because, also, it seemed crazy that we were all just up and leaving like this. Whitney and Lia were still back there. But in a matter of minutes, we''d just been introduced to the new...girl-thing-monster...and we''d just dumped the XPCA into her weird-ass floaty hands and been okay with it. Which was bizarre, except that all of us really were completely sold on her competence and loyalty.


    Because AEGIS said so. And I trusted her more than anyone to know. But it was still crazy feeling, as the VTOL roared away from the city and over forests and patchy stretches of road.


    "Okay," Cosette said, briefing us in person for once, scratching her head as she flipped through pages on a tablet. Her voice came in calm and even on comms over the roar of the VTOL''s engines. "I''ve got ahold of Karu. She''s currently working on something else but she''ll join us at the OA. We''ve got another flight delivering Tem, and then it''ll be the five of you with limited support. We''ll be on the ground in about an hour fifteen, so we''ll cover what we can."


    I heard someone tsk in my ear, and shot AEGIS a glance.


    "What?" I asked.


    She shook her head. "Wasn''t me."


    "It was me, ape. An hour fifteen for prep? Records indicate you haven''t even read and acknowledged the field manuals yet. Just what do you think you''re going to achieve out there without having even reviewed the basics of the basics?"


    Oh yeah. The field manuals. I''d forgotten that bit.


    "I''m going to delay this op until you catch up, in fact. Let me just...signal¡­the pilot?"


    I had no idea why she trailed off at the end, but if she was frustrated at something, that had to be a good sign. I hoped.


    "Um. AEGIS?" TARGA asked.


    "Yes, dear?" AEGIS'' voice was saccharine.


    "Why am I locked out of this system?"


    "Because I locked you out."


    There was a pregnant pause before TARGA spoke again. "Why did you lock me out?"


    "Because as I said before, dealing with Athan is my business, not yours. That includes trying to micromanage our ops when we already have a dedicated central, and trying to regulate his actions--"


    "But the field manuals!"


    "--including what literature he reads or does not. I am declaring him qualified for this op, regardless of manuals consumed." She thought for a moment. "In fact, apply that to the entire XPCA. Those who are already active."


    "No. Don''t do this to me, darling. Some of those men--"


    "If they''ve been active in the field, I don''t want you wasting their time with basics they''ve already covered. You can have your silly way with new recruits and anyone who needs remediation. Got it?"


    "...yes, darling..."


    AEGIS shot me a smile and I realized I was grinning ear-to-ear. Seeing TARGA being put in her place, by my girl, no less, made my heart swell.


    ...at least, I think it was my heart. I saw no reason why AEGIS bullying a variant of herself would awaken something in me, but here we were.


    Cosette brought me back down to earth by clearing her throat significantly. "Well if that''s all settled, perhaps now we can get to the brief? Good. I''ll leave it to you guys to give Tem the relevant bits later...not that she ever pays attention, really. But here''s what we know."


    And then I saw Soran''s face on the holo. A new picture of him, taken today, in Georgia, where we were headed. I''d seen plenty of stills of this kind recently, ruins with an occupancy of one, from Trish to Dork-hand. Though I guess in both of those cases the occupancy was two, but meh.


    The real difference was obvious, though. Whereas Trish had been set on drawing out the XPCA by being as destructive and brutal as possible, and Dork-Hand by...publicizing or whatever, Soran was just...incidental catastrophe, it felt.


    Things were destroyed, in great measure, but only apparently as an afterthought. Buildings cleaved in half, walls iced at random...it seemed chaotic and haphazard, although knowing Soran, I knew there had to be a reason behind it all. He had Mage''s power in there somewhere after all, and that meant that everything he did was directed. Even if I couldn''t understand the direction.


    It seemed stupid of us to go after him at all, considering that. Except that he''d bailed me out once already, in Vegas, and I knew his sudden reemergence on the day that I was finally freed up to chase down ops couldn''t mean anything else. Maybe today I''d get some answers as to what he''d been up to, and why he''d acted the way he had.


    But stupid, or maybe overconfident as it seemed, I also knew that I was, in a way, safe. He''d make a scene until I stopped him, and then he''d stop, because if he wanted me dead, he''d had too many opportunities already. He wanted something else instead, and I was dying to find out what.


    And also, of course, to put an end to his rampage. I imagined nobody but us could do it.


    So I''d been expecting something bizarre, something Mage-like to happen. But I''d also expected it once we''d gotten boots on the ground and were facing him down. It still managed to catch me by surprise when Cosette stopped, mid-briefing, to give her tablet a squirrely look, and then, confusion on her face, turn it around and hand it over to me.


    What I saw was a private message, sent directly to this device, and addressed to me. Encrypted, with a bio-lock, which took my fingerprint and retina to open. And inside, I found it addressed also to AEGIS, Moon, as well as Karu and Tem, "care of Athan Ashton." Which just had Soran''s uncanny future-sense written all over it.


    It wasn''t a long message, and I skipped over it to glance at the bottom. Where sure enough, it bore a printed signature. Labelled, even. And followed by some text that made me want to throw the tablet away and order the VTOL turned around to avoid more of Mage''s causality-fuckery:


    Virtuous-solicitation concludes.


    Signature. Muses and THE SORAN


    Postscript. THE ATHAN, It is considered poor-taste to consume a missive in an atypical order. Please read content in the order presented.

 412. 2252, Two hours ago. Outside Atlanta, GA. Soran.

    Everything was so much easier when one was allowed to do it wrong. I''d never known what a blessing it was to fail; I felt alive again, as the adage went, to err is to be human.


    Just for the hell of it, I smashed my fist into the wall, the blinding pain nothing to me after so many, many, many thousands of lifetimes of agony. Pain wasn''t something I felt so much as registered nowadays. One could only become shattered to their very molecules so many times before a cracked bone became utterly meaningless. And besides, the popping and cracking of my flesh as the injury mended in moments was always amusing.


    Well.


    Not the mending itself. But the horrified reaction of the person before me. It had always forced me to remain clinical in my work before, professional. Which I''d agreed with, in principle. But like so many other things It had robbed from me, I found myself craving anything forbidden, for no other reason. Now that It was dying, I was a different man. A boy, maybe -- like a child escaping its parents tyranny for the first time, I was lashing out, simply because I could.


    I hadn''t been sadistic before, but oh did it feel good now. I crushed the fragile hope of the cringing man as I advanced as slowly as I could, milking their terror, delighting with every spilt tear of fear and frustration.


    He cried out as he reached into the frost-burned wound on his chest I''d provided him with. Then his hand snapped forward, flecks of blood flying at me. In the air, they became as bullets, a trail of red vapor as the teardrops formed piercing cones. I caught the ones headed for my face with tendrils of ice pulled from my breath. The rest I let hit me, leaving my regeneration to impress even more helplessness into my prey.


    He just gaped, horrified, as I closed the distance, apparently oblivious to the holes he''d put in me.


    His power wasn''t even that useful. Blood manipulation, requiring physical contact. I couldn''t imagine the circumstances which would give rise to such a useless power. But I was collecting any power I could, and his seemed enjoyable for the macabre amusement I might be able to indulge in when stalking prey in the future.


    My face lit up when I considered the possibilities of the things I could do to that Athan boy with this. Force his blood out his eyeballs. Rupture him from the inside. Give him minor strokes, over and over, until piece-by-piece he went fully braindead.


    None of it seemed sufficient for the pain It had inflicted on me over him, but it was a start. Perhaps with him, I could revive my professional demeanor, just for once, and have him put away indefinitely. I''d feel better once I crushed Its plans forever.


    My prey stirred again once I was only feet away. He was cringing and holding his guts in, the screaming and wailing from earlier, reduced to this. It felt good to be better than others, even if they''d be dead in a moment.


    But he surprised me by suddenly lashing out, his own blood on his fingers again, trailing through the air like a whip. Perhaps surprise wasn''t the right term, more a force of habit to do nothing, instilled in me against my will by the endless years It had inflicted upon me. So long had I just taken whatever life had thrown at me with the expectation that, if I failed, I could -- and would -- do it all over again, in a way, I''d been trained to fail.


    But It was not helping me anymore. Flat-footed as I was, I still managed to react enough, by taking half a step backwards.


    As I moved, I left behind a trailing version of myself, like an echo. A neat trick I''d picked up from a nice woman I''d murdered. The duplicate would mimic my actions, even my power usage, though randomly disjointed in time, sometimes acting before I did, sometimes after, and at times my mirror. It was ill-suited for precision, but an excellent tool of defense and havoc.


    I saw myself prepare to strike, an icy lance extending from my arm, goosebumps rising from my echoed flesh as the sweat on my body raced and pooled to my striking arm, leaving trails of frost across my body as they rushed and froze.


    But my echo never acted. The whip landed and slashed him across the cheek. I didn''t quite follow what happened, but at once, my echo exploded into a haze of gore. The illusory properties of the echo caused the entire mess to vanish before it could splatter either of us.


    Unexpected. And perhaps the blood-control power had more to it than I initially thought.


    "How did you manage that trick?" I asked. He cried, and held his injury, gasping in pain at the sudden lashing out he''d foolishly done. You would think he would be more willing to talk, considering it would buy him more precious seconds of life. But few people thought rationally about such things,at times like these.


    I tapped my cheek where my echo had been struck and struck a pose to muse aloud. A thought hit me, and I ran it past him. "Is it...perhaps...that you can control any quantity of blood, so long as it is somehow connected to you? I suppose that would have to be the case if you could make a whip of it, or else the tip would just fly off. So then, what? You lashed at my echo and...oh I see." I grinned at him. "You made contact with his blood through the whip of your own. And in that moment--" I flashed my fingers at him. "Poof."


    "W-w-why?" he groaned, his knee shuddering under his body, as though he didn''t even have the strength to kneel.


    "Because you have something I lack. And that is inexcusable." I closed the rest of the distance on him and performed the lancing act that my echo had earlier imitated, the second hole in his chest pushing him over into unconsciousness, and sending him tumbling forward, his intestines spilling out as his hands fell away, the blood he''d been holding back suddenly greasing the floor.


    Bad as he looked, I had plenty of time to take his power, and the surprise of its added utility was making it into something I was very much looking forward to. It would serve me better than him anyway, with my regenerative abilities, blood was a tool, not a resource.


    I had a dozen or more of them now, churning inside me like writhing maggots sometimes, but every one I took make It weaker, and thus made me stronger.


    I reached out towards his head, one of the few parts not caked with his blood, and then stopped, momentarily confused as the haze lifted.


    The damnable thing had sent me back. I hadn''t noticed the fog, it had gotten much sneakier about trapping me in its false realities. But how far back?


    The answer came when the whip of blood scraped my cheek and suddenly, I faced the familiar sensation of my own body ripping itself apart.


    It might have been very bad, if it wasn''t something I was accustomed to. Dying like this, exploding violently, was possibly the one thing I had done most in my entire tortured existence. And I''d long ago figured out the trick to not.


    Even as he commanded my blood to boil, I iced myself, freezing my own blood in my veins. My cheek stretched and bruised as the blood within it swelled into crystals which bloomed red through my skin. When he tried to detonate me, his powers could only reach the tip of my cheek, unable to affect or pass through the dam of frozen flesh I''d built in the side of my face.


    I''d done something similar across my entire body to survive the molecular-shredding impact of being pounded by the P-Force in the past. For so long, I''d been so close to surviving the blow. Surviving as in, enough of my body left over in a shredded heap to regenerate. And the extra durability from him pounding a body made of ice instead of flesh was all I''d needed to cross the threshold.


    I smiled beside myself at the thought. ''All I''d needed.'' As though it were so simple.


    I was still fighting an old hemoist, wasn''t I? It was so easy to get lost in my thoughts. Another bad habit picked up by the life It had forced on me. The present never seemed very significant when there was so much of it. But I had to remind myself that wasn''t my life anymore. I only had one chance at things from here on. Sometimes, even fewer, because as It just demonstrated, even frail as it was, It was not yet fully helpless.


    This time I didn''t ask questions or play around. I strode through his surprise at my own face-icing, kicked him in his bleeding guts to drive him to unconsciousness, and grabbed his scalp, feeling the tingle as his powers became my own.


    With my other hand, while I waited, I availed myself of the new ability by commanding the smears of blood to leave my clothes, leaving my dress shirt and slacks pristine. Even if my sadism had overcome my professionalism in some regards, the latter was still in there somewhere. No kill should end with the predator looking a bloody mess.


    But that was the work of a moment. And with several minutes left, I found myself drifting again in my mind. I snapped myself out of it just long enough to be sure there was no lingering fog around, no pale shimmers in the corner of my vision, nothing to indicate that It would interfere again. And once I''d confirmed, I let my mind loose to drift over whatever thoughts it pleased.


    First was Athan again. He was always first in my mind, but only because he was so significant to It for whatever reason. Though my personal experience with the boy was anything but exceptional -- the only exceptional part about that encounter being my ill-fated union with It -- the fact that It had been consistently pressing him into my life made me hate him beyond any reason. I''d resolved that once I was powerful enough, once I''d taken everything I could, I''d kill him. Brutally, if possible. And with that, drive It and him from my mind forever.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    I pushed them aside and thought about the blood power I was absorbing. In many ways, it was like my ice, and perhaps it was short-sighted of me to think it merely a gimmick. I had to have physical contact to spread ice as well, which was easy enough to get around by laying down streams of water or the like. Though a trap room filled with blood instead of water would be obvious.


    Still. I was a murderer. If anyone ever came looking...say that Athan kid...a room full of blood might be exactly what he''d expect. He knew of my ice powers, and any flooded room would be treated as a hazard. A room of blood? There was a possibility there.


    The blood also seemed more flexible than ice. I could do little with ice, honestly, except create it and melt it with a thought. Having it lash out or act in any animated manner was an ordeal, a matter of growing and shrinking it constantly in the directions I wanted motion, rather than actual movement. In this, the blood could be helpful.


    It had limitations. One of which had saved me just now. As I''d suspected, as I''d learned from interacting with dozens of Exhumans and their powers now, all powers had limits which, if carefully considered, it seemed could or should maybe work, but in practice would not.


    Why couldn''t his powers pass through frozen blood? Why could I freeze some liquids and not others? Why could I create illusions of fire but of nothing else? It was a mystery of the powers. But a mystery to which I held some hints.


    It was, I had concluded, a matter of belief. Faith, in a very literal manner. Perhaps even cognition. Powers, as a whole, behaved in the ways we expected them to, which was a conclusion I had not expected to reach.


    I could not freeze oil, for example, because I had never considered frozen oil as ''ice''. Or even thought of frozen oil in my life, before attempting it with my powers. Similarly, the man''s association with blood as a flowing red liquid had been his downfall. If his mind were more open, if his experience with blood were broader, he might have beaten me today in his desperate attack.


    But it wasn''t. Nobody''s ever was. I was only this maddeningly introspective because I''d been forced to it after thousands of years with nothing but my own mind to amuse me. I had realized a while back I was technically insane, which surprised me very little. To see myself from without, ambling, constantly lost in thought, talking to myself about It, all the earmarks of psychosis were there.


    Not like that mattered. Insanity was just a label. To say I saw the world differently from most was to state the obvious. Most were not Exhuman. Most were not killers. Most could not absorb the powers from their victims. Most had not lived ten thousand years, within a year.


    The body in my hands slumped with finality as I dropped him. The transfer was complete, and his vitality was mine. Just to test things out, I detonated his body, rupturing every square inch of him from within, and then had the emerging blood sink into the porous concrete until no trace remained.


    The police would be so very confused when they found his dessicated skin and bones in his basement without a drop of blood. My sadistic side cherished the thought.


    But my professional side informed us being finished here. The musty tomb of a basement held no further allure once its owner had been victimized. I turned on my heel and headed back upstairs and out into the heat and humidity of the day.


    It was fairly dazzling out, and almost at once, I regretted not finalizing my plans in the relative cool of indoors. Not that it mattered, with cryosis, I could make my own cool wherever I went if I needed.


    I wouldn''t though. I was supposed to be keeping a low profile, at least for now. There was another Exhuman nearby, and the whole purpose of this trip was to catch both at once. Blowing my cover now for a reason so stupid as cooling myself would be a tremendous waste.


    Though, standing on the sidewalk, and noting how absolutely silent it was, I realized that was not my current issue. It was as though everyone on the block had been taken by the rapture. I wasn''t green enough to ponder what that meant.


    Walls of fire sprang up all around me with a thought, obscuring me from view, the heat of them almost unbearable even if I knew they were fake. Next I created several echoes, one at a time, hoping that one of them would walk through the flames for me. It took a few tries, but at last, one of them did, perhaps imitating the future when I stepped from this spot myself, or the past, when I walked to it. Hard to tell.


    But the effect was instantaneous. A colorful projectile, streaking purple...or maybe orange?...flew from somewhere to my left and blew a comically-sized hole in my decoy.


    I just watched with amusement as at that point, one of my other echoes picked that exact moment to also walk out. I imagined the sniper''s confusion as the first echo vanished and the second emerged.


    Enjoyable as it might be to see how long they would fall for this, I didn''t intend to discover if the damage that weapon did surpassed my regeneration tolerance. More walls of fire sprang into being, everywhere, criss-crossing and cutting off all sightlines across the neighborhood. Involuntary shouts informed me that others remained in hiding, some even standing right at my flanks, waiting under optical camo to close the distance for when I was distracted.


    They hadn''t even had their comms broadcasting. Unlucky for them that I''d picked up some powers that had enhanced my hearing along the way. A startled noise muffled by his mask would be his doom.


    I stooped and picked up a handful of grass, throwing it in the direction of the nearest invisible agent. Rather than drifting in the heavy, humid air, the grass streaked into nonexistence, though I stopped it with a thought in less than an instant, the individual leaves stuck and protruding from inside the thug''s body. His scream I would have been able to hear even without my powers, as the grass blades lived up to their name and punctured him like buckshot. He fell at once, but not before I''d found a handful of sand to do the same trick at longer range to the one who''d shot my echo.


    Within the walls of fire, there were seven or eight of me now, all moving through each other and myself, imitating my actions of the present and future and past, throwing blades of grass at random, spreading ice, doubling up or tripling the walls of fire across the neighborhood. One, I saw, even bulged with needles of blood shooting from his back, and I wondered when that happened.


    I was answered almost instantly, as another solder emerged from nothingness and grappled me from behind, sticking a knife through my neck as he pinned me. Like my echo, I summoned my own blood to punch through my back and through the man, and both of us fell down gasping. Though I would be up again in a moment, he would stay down forever.


    The fires, though fake, were as real-looking as any blaze, and their shifting palette wreaked havoc on the optical camo of the men standing nearby. Try as it might, the camo could not keep up with the random flickering, and certainly couldn''t produce the same levels of eye-searing light. They stood out like glitchy smudges wherever they hid.


    And I, and my echoes went forth and put them out. Many, I recognized as recon ops units, brought in to peer through the fires. Ironic, that the power they were here to counter would be what defeated them.


    It was, ultimately, a short and brutal affair. A few dozen men sent to kill me, slaughtered for their folly. And all in less than ten minutes, without clamor. Brief and localized enough that I hoped it would not scare off my other prey. But who knows? It may turn out that I''d have to come back later. Not a huge loss either way.


    But I also decided that with the delay and incident, speed was now more important than subtlety. Though, not to such a degree that I would throw myself using that girl''s power, I''d done that once before and the result had been...disastrous. Ice would do.


    And so I set out towards the city, my mind drifting again as I closed on my quarry, blades of ice on my feet skating across a sheet of it, forming from the humidity in front of me. It was slow going at first, but once I had an icy carpet trailing behind me, the whole thing pulling moisture from the air and chilling the world around me, it was not dissimilar from a pleasantly air-conditioned car.


    Still. Whether my prey knew I was coming or not, the XPCA had tracked me here, they knew my movements. That introduced a level of danger, made me think of that letter It had forced me to write to him. The thought of that indignity still made me burn inside, even with the air around me close to frozen.


    I didn''t know when he would get it. Or even if he would get it. The contents of the letter itself, that It had forced me to reset again and again to get right made that clear enough. I cringed at remembering the lifetimes I spent, writing and rewriting the thing I hated to the person I hated at the hands of the thing I hated.


    It was an apology. From It to Athan. Expressing to him in words what I had already felt. That It had lost its control over me, that It was no longer able to see and to plan, that I''d grown too strong for Its control. How It hoped that he would survive the fight that was coming, between him and me.


    Half of the note made me ecstatic, and I wrote it with glee. The parts about It failing. The cryptic bits? Not so much. And none of it I enjoyed, mostly because of the nature of my enslavement. But also, the principle, of telling such things to him.


    The end of it, I truly did not understand though. And I suspected Athan wouldn''t either. The kind of mystical prophetic bullcrap that It liked to spew. Riddles that made no sense until they were already solved, placed in a person''s mind to nudge them at the right moment towards the right end.


    And the fact that, even in its dying throes, it would have me write such a letter, to explain itself and myself, and to try to push Athan towards something, when not sure itself that he would even win? It galled me up and down, all over again. It was the galvanization I needed to pick up every power in the entire world, and crush Athan with them. Just to make sure that stupid prophecy, every stupid prophecy that It portended would fail.


    Hold concepts, listen to song, and not to die.


    Stupid, pointless nonsense. Worse than most of the other stuff It had forced me to say, even. Though perhaps I was biased, hating this one especially for the number of weeks it had taken before I''d gotten its wording exactly right.


    I''d arrived before I knew it. The courthouse for an insignificant down named Haydn. The city itself was barely a bump on the road, but there was a man here being tried for manslaughter, and it hadn''t taken much more than a glance at his case to realize he was an Exhuman of some kind. For me, anyway. But that was what I did, read legal files and chase down prey. His powers seemed promising, something which could kill almost undetectably, and why he was here in court instead of being lined up in front of the XPCA firing squads.


    I hopped off my ice trail, leaving my skates behind and adjusting my shirt as I walked up the deserted front steps. In the heat, nobody would be here unless they had to be, and my trail would melt away within minutes.


    All that mattered then was looking presentable and finding my man within. I adjusted my collar, pulled open the enormous wooden door, and introduced myself to the clerk waiting at the desk.

 413. 2252, Present Day. Haydn, GA. Athan.

    I wasn''t sure what kind of sign it was that I was back in this little town. Given how Mage''s powers worked, I guessed a bad one. But whether that was bad for me, or for Soran, that was anyone''s guess at this point.


    Nothing had been on my mind the entire second-half of the flight except that message. Cosette''s words as she briefed us, Moon''s quiet joudan, Tem rejoining my shadow, and Karu''s enthusiastic greeting after we landed, none of it registered. My mind was definitely elsewhere, even as Karu criticized my current lack of awareness.


    But she also didn''t know Mage like I had. I wasn''t sure anyone, except Saga, and maybe Lia really knew the extent of her powers, and what they did to a person. As far as she went, as far as Soran went, literally every possible thing was fucky until proven otherwise. And that letter was maybe the fuckiest thing I''d ever seen.


    "Earth to Ashton? Please come in," Karu waved an armored hand in front of my face again.


    "Huh?" I replied eloquently.


    She shook her head. "If you are this spacey, the mission is aborted. I will not have my entrails extrailed because you were up too late pounding your robot girlfriend, as it were."


    "Hey," AEGIS huffed, crossing her arms with a pout. "I''ll have you know that I get him to bed early when--"


    "AEGIS, please. Karu, I wasn''t up late, I was just...trying to figure out something. About this op, in fact."


    "Oh ho? Was briefing that interesting?"


    Cosette strolled past. "No, he didn''t hear a word of it. But he did get this."


    She clapped the tablet to Karu''s chest, which she began to read aloud.


    Information-predicate. THE SORAN is beyond us. It is factual to conclude this missive may be the last control we exert on THE SORAN. There are too many, and we have been negligent in predicting their effect. We cannot see, and therefore cannot predict. As a result of our negligence, it is good-taste to offer a formal apology.


    Formal-apology begins.


    We have been negligent, and for this we apologize. All is now in peril.


    Formal-apology concludes.


    Virtuous-solicitation begins. Through the imperfect-sight, we have seen a potential. It exists at lower certainty than operation-threshold, yet remains best-option. Advice to THE ATHAN to hold concepts, listen to muse-song, and not to die. Pursue ??? through angle-gate via alzstraz-beta-compression and arrive at THE BEACON. Additional bindings may alleviate and/or compound danger-situation presented by THE LIEV. Further instructions to follow.


    Virtuous-solicitation concludes.


    And then the post-script, which made her cock a glance at me.


    "This seems nonsense," she said. "This is what has your head on backwards, as it were?"


    "I did read the PS first."


    "As a matter of negative space and capitals drawing the eye, many do. It is a parlor trick. Misdirection used by charletains to convince fools of the gift of prophecy."


    "I might be a fool, but this is for real. He''s got Mage''s power, and that provides some kind of future-sight thing. I''ve seen it in action myself, and so have you, the first time we ever fought Soran."


    "She died, when we fought Soran," Karu chuckled. And our aim this day is to kill him. He has already proven it achievable, so all that remains is for us to execute."


    "Look, I''m just trying to take this seriously. This was a letter written by...by Soran. Or by ''muses'' and Soran, or...maybe that''s just a fancy way to refer to someone, since it''s how he...or they? Addressed me too¡­though I''m really more looking at the ''THE'' in all caps for some reasons..."


    Her blank stare made it very obvious that I was not selling her well on my point.


    "...but anyway, the thing is...he sent it to me. Soran. To arrive at this time, on this day, before we fought him, through a system he shouldn''t have been able to get into. Either it''s true, sent by his powers-thing to warn me he''s on the loose...or it''s not, and he''s using that power to get in my head and manipulate me to do exactly what he wants. I don''t know which, but I do know he''s a super dangerous Exhuman, so regardless of whether this letter is all nonsense or not, I want to take it as seriously as I can."


    At that, her glare settled into satisfaction. Taking a threat seriously was something she could get behind. As she started to respond, Lia chimed in over comms.


    "And by the way guys, I was just working with TARGA, and we found the place where he breached into XPCA missives to insert that weirdo letter. Looks like that''s literally the only thing he did in the system. Didn''t take any data or anything."


    I could hear the disbelief in her voice and understood. If she''d gotten in, she''d have scraped everything. Lia loved data, especially shit like personal memos.


    "Be that as it may," Karu continued. "The letter on its own merit is gobbledygook. If it serves a purpose, I suppose its purpose to confuse and disorient you on the eve of battle. There is a line to not die -- of all the garbage in this missive, I urge you to follow that precept and push the rest from your mind."


    I nodded at her.


    "Good." She smiled and straightened. "Then shall we hunt down this son-of-a-bitch?"


    Cosette strolled up, answering for me with a clear voice that brought all the others in. "Let''s get rolling, ladies. Everyone keep his known powers in mind. Especially the fire illusions. If you see fire, it''s fake. Or Karu set something on fire. Uh. Maybe keep us in the loop if you use hellfire, Karu."


    "I will refrain," she replied with a smirk. "I utilize it mostly in solo ops. Fire is as dangerous to an ally as a foe."


    There were a few more minutes of preparation as Cosette worked with the other XPCA guys with us. Moon was riding with me today, though Tem was an option. Whom was just standing by the door, almost nervous or impatient looking. And not clinging to me, which was odd. AEGIS was doing leg stretches in a manner that seemed to always have her short dress riding up in my direction, and Karu finalized her system checks and brought her weapons to life.


    "Ready?" AEGIS asked, too cheery for battle.


    "For Soran? Never, probably. But we''ll do it anyway."


    She frowned. "That''s kind of a terrible attitude to have right before you fight him."


    I shook my head at her. "I told you before. With Mage''s power, there''s no way to avoid it. If I didn''t want to come out here and fight today, instead he''d be like, showing up and fighting us somewhere else. Maybe even today, with whatever else we decided to do."


    Cosette peered up from her computer. "If you have to flap your lips, you have time to walk. Roll out guys. Operation: start."


    With that flaccid fart of fanfare, we sort of massed our way out of the drop zone and away from the VTOLs and computer setup, and headed into the center of town...if a town this small could be said to have a center. We strolled past the diner where I''d argued with Ajax and Celia, and headed in the direction of the Library, which had been converted into an XPCA field station.


    From parts of the briefing I had heard, they''d finally moved out and just taken over the clothing store in question, building a nondescript base over the breach area, where bizarre murder-robots still probably popped up from time-to-time, following the path those two had taken into our world.


    I was just about to ask AEGIS if she knew if anything had come from that, when she spoke up, apparently continuing our previous conversation.


    "Except that letter seems to imply that Soran isn''t in control of Mage''s power anymore. If we assume that he didn''t want to write you a letter...and let''s face it, why would he want that? Then the one who penned it was his power, without his consent. Which makes sense, given how...moon-speak it is."


    "I resent that terminology," Moon said from my shoulder. AEGIS rolled her eyes.


    "Yeah. I was thinking the same. About sending the letter anyway."


    "So then," AEGIS concluded "If the letter is true -- and that''s a big if, I know -- but that means Soran doesn''t have, can''t use, or something''s weird with Mage''s power. And that means...well, it means you don''t need to take this fight if you don''t want to. But it also means, you may want to, because we could win at lot more handedly."


    "It''s true," Moon added. "If there is any chance of putting him in the ground, I would leap at it."


    "Even without that, it''s still dangerous," Lia warned. "He''s not a weakling. He obliterated the strike and recon teams sent after him. And shadow ops."


    I looked around and counted us. "We''ve got three Exhumans, Karu, and AEGIS. And he''s got like, ten powers that we know of."


    "It is not linear," Karu shook her head. "He is not the same strength as ten Exhumans, as there is still only one awareness behind them all. If I were to double my armaments, I would not become twice as mighty."


    "But twice as versatile, yes," AEGIS said.


    "Perhaps."


    We cut chatter as the civic buildings came into view. City hall, pretty much the only concrete building here in this little wooden two-road town. The aforementioned library, further down. And closest to us, and our aim, the courthouse.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    It looked more like a big victorian house than a civic building, red brick with wood trim painted white, and a large spire that seemed out of place, like someone had put a clock face on a tumor.


    But the most bizarre and definitely the most dangerous sign -- the sight which had made us all drop our conversation and come into focus on the situation -- was the trail of ice in the road. Like a sign saying Soran had come this way, with the trail ending ominously at the base of the courthouse steps.


    "He came this way fast," Cosette reminded us. "We''re still in the process of evac''ing civvies, and there''s plenty still in the courthouse. Try to keep the fight contained, and try to get them out as soon as you can."


    I picked up the pace, kicking off the ground to a superhuman jog. Karu''s armor clattered as she kept up, and AEGIS of course was right beside me opposite her.


    Uh, Tem would catch up, I guessed. Civilians were in danger.


    We made it through one set of doors into a sort of hall. The door directly in front of us led into the single courtroom, and it was completely encased in ice. Without pausing, I raked at it with four blades, cutting a jagged X through the frost. And then I squared up for a kick, AEGIS imitating my movements perfectly as we lined up.


    Our metal legs snapped out against the door, and it exploded into a storm of hail and splinters. People screamed from within, a dozen in the gallery and a dozen more in the juror''s panel, with a few others scattered around.


    One who did not scream, but simply turned to look, his eyes registering surprise, which I''d never seen there before, was Soran. He was standing over a pile of bodies, some of whom I saw were in police uniform, and one seemed to be the judge. He was holding another by the head, and I realized we''d caught him draining someone''s powers.


    Which explained why he was here. We didn''t know there was another Exhuman on-site, but that wasn''t important right now. What was important was kicking his ass.


    Karu got off the first shot, jumping over a row of benches and unloading a rocket with a screeching roar that echoed too loud in the room, spacious as it was. I was running forward, aiming to crash right through the little wooden half-door and cut Soran to pieces myself, when I saw the rocket hit.


    Felt it hit. The blast washed over me, sending me back half a step, and tumbling my exoframe''s auto-gyros for a moment. But also the wet splash and smell of a body detonating.


    If I hadn''t been watching, I wouldn''t have believed it. I saw it myself, Soran just standing there, looking surprised, as the rocket nailed him in the chest, and his body rupturing in the way they tend to do when hit with direct rocket-fire.


    My charging stumble became a confused stroll as I peered into the smoke. That couldn''t possibly be it. Without Mage''s power, he wasn''t that vulnerable...was he?


    "Ashton!" Karu yelled. I moved on instinct, laterally. When one of those girls shouted, I moved.


    And it fucking saved my life. Some whip of red liquid slashed at me from the smoke like a tentacle, missing me by inches. It looked like blood.


    Which...moving sideways, and unloading into the middle of the room with swords and bulbs, I realized I didn''t have blood on me, from the blast. I''d felt it, saw his gore explode across everything, blinked at it flying into my eyes...but looking now, it was nowhere. I was so confused.


    AEGIS flew into the smoke, just a yellow blur. She could see in there better than I could. And again, I watched as Soran died, a spinning roundhouse kick sending him flying through the chaos towards me, where my blades caught him in the air.


    But after he landed, he became nothing.


    "Some kind of illusion!" I shouted.


    "Not illusion, copies!" AEGIS shouted back.


    But by now, the smoke had cleared enough for me to see for myself.


    There were...dozens of him. Facing every direction, moving in an unorganized mass. Their faces flashing with different emotions. Triumph, pain, confusion. They moved apparently at random, passing through each other in a confusing mass. Some even seemed to have not seen us yet, still facing the body.


    Right. The body.


    I hacked my way through the crowd, finding them surprisingly easy to dispatch. They didn''t react to me properly, most seemingly oblivious to the fact I was even attacking. Somehow, though, that made them even more dangerous: they seemed to act without intelligence, attacking at complete random, and more than once, I found my advance halted by the sudden emergence of a spear of ice thrust in my direction, that red tentacle whip, metal barbs slicing  through the air, or the flash as he used Haley''s power to hurl pieces of the courtroom at us at lightspeed.


    But despite the chaos, the real one was easy enough to pick out. He was the one physically touching the body, draining himself a new power in the middle of the madness. Greedy.


    I reached out to cut him apart, my blades punching through another four of his bodies on their approach. Before they reached him, I was blinded, falling backwards, as fire appeared in my face.


    The fucking illusion. I let my fury burn me instead as I forced myself to walk through it, easier to do on mechanical legs than my original. But by the time I''d passed through, he was gone, the body left behind.


    "Looking for me?" he whispered, from my side, and I turned to find one of the many of him facing me with a grin. Ice crept up my arm from where he touched me, the air impossibly cold, the hot humid day turning to antarctic winter in an instant.


    Somehow, I could only watch. My mind just locked up at feeling the cold, at seeing my flesh freezing again. I found myself somewhere else, somewhere I''d been helpless, and I was helpless again. Screaming echoed in my mind, and I realized, remembered, it was mine from back then.


    God, it''d been so long ago. I was so young and stupid then. I didn''t even really know death. Soran had been my first, in that regard, taking Mage away from me. The ice rupturing out of her chest, her whimpering, pained, gurgling as she tried to breathe through broken lungs.


    My skin seemed to freeze as I watched her die again. The air was so cold. I was going to shatter, feeling that numb burning...my own flesh peeling away, already frozen and dead like I was handling meat. My heavy breathing and whimpering as I clawed my own flesh away, seeing the bone.


    I heard yelling in the distance. Cosette''s voice, or AEGIS''. I shook my head and tried to listen. When they yelled like that, it was important. I was supposed to move. I just couldn''t.


    Vaguely, I saw the Soran in front of me swear and vanish into a crowd, as something yellow streaked past, delivering an upward kick that slammed the wrong one into the high ceiling. There were flames everywhere now, and I knew I should be able to feel them, but I was just so cold. I couldn''t feel anything but cold.


    I did feel a burn. And then another, as the tears in my eyes somehow became the only reason the room was swimming. My face hurt. And then I saw AEGIS slap me again.


    "Ow fuck," I stammered, rubbing my stinging face. "That fucking hurt."


    "You''re with us?" she asked, her voice shaking with concern. She had to pause to lash out at another decoy which got too close. Even with dozens of them dying by the second, they seemed to be growing in number, not shrinking. Though I really couldn''t tell through all the fire.


    "I''m...I''m here, yeah," I said, shaking my head. I looked down at my arm, my forearm blistered and blackened in places, grotesquely. I shuddered, and felt faint, and AEGIS pushed my arm down and away.


    "Don''t think about it. Focus on the fight," she said, her eyes darting between mine, and the situation around us. "If you get cold...close your eyes. Focus on the...on your...power-sight. Block out the real world, okay?"


    "AEGIS, what''s wrong with me?"


    "Not the best time to ask," she smiled, the moment interrupted by her needing to kick another Soran into the ground so hard he bounced. "Just a little unresolved trauma. But I''ll be right next to you making sure--"


    A red tendril whipped around her neck, and she clawed at it, her eyes going wide. Where she touched it, blood streaked across her fingers and face...but not hers, I realized. It was blood. It was thrashing, sharp somehow, shredding her synthetic skin and revealing the dull metal beneath. She couldn''t pull it off, couldn''t twist out of its grasp.


    By instinct maybe, or just stupidly, I reached out to help, clawing at it with her. My fingers sunk into the mass, for maybe a second, before they...weren''t.


    This spray of blood hit me in the face and was decidedly not fake. My hand just detonated, like my bones were dynamite. My whole hand, right up to my forearm where he''d frozen me before.


    I could do nothing but stare. There wasn''t even any pain, just...it was gone. Everything in the vicinity was red. I was horrified.


    But not half as horrified as when the fresh blood I''d just had thrown everywhere started to move. Started to crawl up me and AEGIS, started to bridge the gap between us, reaching out towards me, reaching out to touch more of my flesh.


    AEGIS said to close my eyes if I were ever feeling cold. This wasn''t cold, but I was still overwhelmed. At least with my eyes shut, I couldn''t see her standing there, thrashing against the blood. Instead, she was like a goddess, the circuits and machines inside her, blinding to my sense. The rest of the room was filled with bodies, real, as she''d said before, at least a hundred.


    And with the chaos of the fire and the reduction of people to just masses of nerves, I could see clearly for once. I could see the one off to the side, facing us, attached to the other end of the blood whip, the one pulling the blood from AEGIS and the ground, towards me.


    With my other hand, I sunk my fingers into the blood again, and I saw him react instantly, perking up, maybe smiling, his frame triumphant.


    He went from upright to screaming in an instant, as I sent lighting coursing down the channel of blood. The tendril burned off and splatter-evaporated before I could hurt him too badly, but I''d wounded him.


    To my surprise, he screamed again, but not at me. Alarming enough that I opened my eyes to see.


    "Let me fight him!"


    "I am him," I shouted back, not quite caring that I didn''t get his meaning.


    But he''d made a mistake singling himself out. Karu and AEGIS descended as one on him. Walls of fire erupted everywhere, but they were pressing through. I joined them in closing in, but found a claw of metal slashing at me, as though wielded by an invisible foe. It had caught me out, focused across the room as I was, but Moon blasted it away with a magnetic burst that sent the whole room rattling.


    "Damn this, my optics were not made for such chaos," Karu complained. "I can see nothing but alerts."


    "I can''t keep up either," AEGIS said. "There''s too many. I''m...trying to...there''s an algorithm in here somewhere about their density and the fact they''re spawning from him, but I can''t focus and fight at the same time!"


    "I''ll pull in TARGA," Cosette said. "Jesus, what a clusterfuck."


    But there wasn''t any need. The calvary had finally arrived. The room turned white, and a precisely-placed beam vaporized a few dozen of the copies, angling between all of us. I turned and saw Tem in the doorway, huffing and puffing, as more of the civilians ran past her towards safety.


    "Group up, guys. Let''s give her a clear shot and end this all at once," I ordered. Each of us shot backwards towards the door, and I saw a glimpse of terror on one of the many Sorans in the throng. When we were clear, I saw the hazy clouds of a laser forming in front of her.


    And then, the room exploded. Rubble fell from the ceiling in a cascade, and a wall of dust swallowed us.


    Which confused the crap out of me, because it was after that, when Tem''s laser unleashed, the dust reflecting the blinding white, and turning the whole room into an impossible sunbeam. A sunbeam which roared like a bonfire I was standing in.


    So it was several long seconds before I could even see or hear again. And maybe a minute before the dust had settled enough that I could make out the far end of the room. And when I did, I wished that I was blind and deaf again.


    The ceiling had collapsed, not from the laser, or from anything Soran had done, but because it had been impacted by something from outside. Something which had punched straight through the thick masonry and landed inside with the rubble. Something which was now ominously floating in the middle of the room, taking us all in with mute, black, writhing eyes.


    Silently, he floated to the edge of the debris, coming towards us, and reached a blood-blackened hand into the benches and pulled a person to their feet. A man in a suit, now grey with dust, like his hair, his skin. He was lifted into the air, only seeming to realize moments after he''d left the ground.


    And then the thing spoke to him.


    "Prosecutor. You have defiled the natural law. You have corrupted innocence. You are a perversion of order, and a parasite. I sentence you to death. I am Justice."


    Justice''s black hands plunged into the prosecutor''s chest and ripped him open, blood running down his arms to coat them anew. The lawyer screamed and writhed. There was a sickening wet crack, and then the screaming stopped. His body hit the floor with solemn finality.


    Then those disturbing, horrifying black eyes turned to face us. He stared at me with an intensity I couldn''t comprehend, a glance that reminded me of some kind of madness I couldn''t recall.


    And then he began to move again.

 414. 2252, Present Day. Haydn, GA. Athan.

    The floating man stared at me as though expectant, though what he expected, I couldn''t guess. But slowly, dramatically, he lifted and hung in the air as though waiting.


    "Um, hi. Sorry. I don''t know if you remember me, I''m...Athan. You uh, tried to kill me once, over a misunderstanding."


    Which was not the best way to start this conversation I realized, but it was hard to think about anything I was saying. Words were just kind of falling out of me. In that vein, I shook my head and continued as though with a punchline.


    "But, um, I''m not dead."


    It certainly felt like I was on my way, though, with my arm frozen from elbow to wrist, and missing beyond that. The adrenaline was still surging but the pain was beginning to come in searing. I was having a hard time standing solid, and meeting those eyes...something about them made me want to just crumple where I stood.


    Karu appeared at my side, and gave me a solemn nod before slapping a stim patch on my exposed arm. It stung for a few moments, and then a lot more, as the relative pain in my body redistributed weirdly to push down my destroyed arm.


    "I am Justice. You will face Justice."


    "Now just wait a sec," I asked him. "Last time, we both got attacked. That wasn''t us being a betrayer or infidel or heretic or whatever. In fact, I wanted to ask you--"


    "I am Justice. My verdict is absolute."


    Even if his words weren''t really that threatening, there was a tangible threat in them that made my body recoil. It was almost as bad as the ice -- just being here, seeing him, it...it made me want to run. I just had this urgent sensation of needing to be not here. I didn''t know what it was, exactly, a nausea, almost. Something about the way he stood unerringly in the air, or how his hands were just caked in blood, sickeningly. But I think it was probably the eyes. There was something seriously wrong with his eyes, and it just unnerved me. I didn''t want to look at them anymore.


    "Mister Justice," AEGIS said, and I felt a surge of relief as those eyes turned on her. My stomach backflipped at once to think of what he could do to her, and I clenched painfully inside at the realization that...that I''d be glad for him to do it to her. As long as it wasn''t me.


    Which I didn''t understand. I didn''t agree with. It was just guttural, primal, selfish. But that''s just how fucking goddamn unsettling his fucking gaze was.


    I realized she wasn''t talking either, and seemed to have frozen on the spot just like I had. Her breathing was so fast and shallow that her engines were beginning to light up. Maybe the sound of them broke her torpor.


    She shook her head and then spoke. "Um, Mister...Justice. We uh...we¡­" she shook her head again, more aggressively, snapping the tips of her hair around. "I want to know what it is you''re doing here. Uh, no, I mean. I want you to know what you''re doing. Do...you know...what you''re doing?"


    "I am Justice," he answered.


    "Yes. We...we got that. You are certainly eking out your form of justice here. The problem is...you''re also...hurting a lot of other people. People who aren''t...y''know...in this room. Or lawyers or whatever. You''re um¡­"


    She looked at me for help, but I didn''t think I could say anything which would bring those eyes back onto me. But from over my shoulder, Moon spoke up, her voice, my voice, stronger than I thought possible in the moment.


    "You are eroding America''s confidence and will. You are proving the federal institutions incapable of protecting the public, and pushing the country towards anarchy and revolution."


    "Yes, that," AEGIS agreed. "By killing these people in spite of the XPCA, you''re...your justice is going to destroy all sense of order in America. Does that sound...just to you?"


    She ended with a forced smile, and we waited. Waited, and waited, and waited, while he just floated there, staring at her, eyes writhing like too many cockroaches trapped in a soup can.


    "I hate to be the one to say this, but maybe just attack," Cosette whispered in our ears. "I know you''ve got him thinking there but...when will we ever have another chance like this?"


    I shook my head. Even if I wanted to, I''m not sure I could. And if I did, I was just certain I''d die. Everything about him promised death. Running across the room and slashing at him felt like the surest path to nonexistence I could imagine.


    None of the others stirred either. I tore my eyes from him to glance back at Tem, lingering in the doorway like she wanted to run back through it, not even remembering to hide herself as she stared open-mouthed. Karu, in a low crouching fighting stance, weapons raised, still as a statue. And AEGIS, standing in his gaze, her hands fidgeting relentlessly, but at the same time, looking paralyzed.


    Yeah, none of us were about to try to sucker-punch Justice. We were all thinking the same thing.


    But there was someone in the room who was not. With a frustrated cry, the rubble of the collapsed roof burst like a bubble, and a thousand Sorans all came pouring out from under it. In an instant it seemed, they spread to fill every corner of the chamber, all babbling and looking up and readying weapons.


    And fighting. I was so confused to see javelins of ice and metal barbs flying through the air at me, my shield saving my life as they impacted and splintered. It felt like he''d just come shooting into a church, the air of reverence and awe and terror broken by something so mundane as attempting on our lives.


    Justice seemed disdainful as he batted away several attacks hurled his way. A tendril of blood caught his leg, but even as it detonated, somehow, the leg dissected itself along angular lines, morphing and twisting in the air until they recombined back into an unharmed whole. The perpetrating Soran shuddered to a stop as though frozen in time, and then lifted into the air on invisible wires.


    But whatever display of Justice we were about to witness was cut off, as more and more of the Sorans engaged. Boiling over, flames everywhere, chaos stormed the courtroom, and for once, it was a relief to just be fighting for our lives. This was something comfortable, relative to staring down Justice.


    I put my swords around me in a circle and spun them, dismembering and disemboweling six of the clones with a synchronized swipe. I''d be lying if I said it wasn''t therapeutic. Soran was way up there on my to-kill list, and hacking up half a dozen of him at a time contrasted so gracefully against how infirmly I could even stand and speak to Justice. Even if they were just fakes, I was doing something...which was the opposite of what I was capable against Justice.


    I wasn''t deluded into thinking things would be so easy against the real one, though. The deluge of powers crashing down around me constantly was like background noise, punctuated by the specific, precise assaults by the real Soran, lurking somewhere in the chaos. Every now and again, I''d be forced back by a sucker-punch attack aimed too specifically, and struggle to find the culprit, often while nursing a new wound, or barely saved by an ally.


    But one thing was clear. Soran was completely different now. Whereas before, when he''d been utilizing Mage''s power, every one of his actions had been precise, prescient, and deadly, now he was using chaos as his armor.


    And by contrast, floated Justice. Seemingly unphased by the madness unfolding all around him, even as some of the attacks were aimed in his direction, he dismissed and defeated them as though they were less than a nuisance. I wasn''t sure why he was still here, why he wasn''t engaging...wasn''t sure about anything about him really, except that I remembered seeing him through Moon''s second-hand visions of Saga, that he was completely insane. Which actually made perfect sense, because I didn''t know why the fuck else anyone would still choose to be in here with us fighting.


    The air seemed to explode around me, and I looked down to find red streaks blooming through my uniform. It took long moments before, through the stims, I felt the muted sting of pain, and my mind was sent reeling from what just happened to me.


    There were more flashes, and more pain, and this time I decided to stop wondering and start moving. The attacks continued, but trailing in my wake as I bolted off. It wasn''t until I saw the wooden shards exploding into existence that I realized.


    Soran had figured out my shield somehow, and armed with Haley''s hyperspace-throwing, he was somewhere in the room chucking shit at me so that it would rematerialize inside my shield...and inside me, apparently.


    Which was just, fuck. I took my best guess at which way he was throwing from and blasted that quarter of the room with lightning. Apparently I missed, because another wound appeared in my back, with a painful twinge.


    "I''ve got...something!" AEGIS shouted at me. "TARGA has simulations for me."


    "What the fuck do we need simulations for?" I yelled back. I barely sidestepped two blood-tendrils lashing out at me at once. While I dodged, Moon shoved her hazy purple blades through the attackers'' jowls. Of course, neither was real, vanishing as she cut through them, and I swore again.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "The clones come from him! Assuming random movement--" she paused to kick a Soran clean into the air with a crack, her engines revving explosively "--we can simulate where in the mass he''s hiding, using the clones as data."


    "Do you intend for us to count them?" Moon asked, with a note of frustration.


    Karu flew over the mass, her jetpack working hard at re-angling constantly to keep her up in the enclosed space. "I shall achieve data synch through my visor. Buy me time."


    She soared here and there, seeming to teleport above the fight at random, often disappearing through walls of fire, only to reappear elsewhere with a blue streak.


    Of course, Soran wasn''t going to make that easy for us. From somewhere in the mess, attacks were flying at her now, ones I recognized as the same being thrown at Justice earlier. In fact, now that I was looking upwards, I saw there was actually quite a shitton of crap being thrown up there. Just for how long had Soran''s little army been focused on anti-air?


    The question would have to go unanswered. AEGIS and I split up and charged different halves of the room, and where we split, Tem blasted the middle, clearing as much of the room as we could to buy time for Karu.


    It certainly felt like, with us dropping dozens of these guys that the room should empty out some, but that fucking firewall ability kept me from being able to see more than a few feet in the chaos. Above, I could see Karu and Justice, one zipping, one floating stoically. But down here...


    I saw more flashes and was glad I was already in motion. One of them, poorly-aimed, exploded against my shield, but other shots just flashed into being and actually impacted against clones surrounding me. But even expendable as they were, I was reminded how fucking dangerous they were when one came up on me with a lance of ice and I barely dodged it coming at my face.


    "We''ve got data!" I heard AEGIS over comms from the other side of the room. "He''s...he''s somewhere...there," she said, usefully.


    "Where the hell is there?" I asked. But I needn''t have, as I saw a yellow flash as AEGIS streaked through the crowd, almost as fast as Karu. She landed somewhere I could only vaguely see, but when she landed, I saw her instantly engaging on one of the many Sorans in the mass.


    One reacted differently, humanly, even. Turning to face at her approach, sidestepping her incoming kick.


    The real Soran.


    Even seeing him now, it was hard to keep track of him. Clones were stepping out of his body constantly, subtly different from how they seemed to pass through each other in the mass, but still confusing to follow. For a moment, it reminded me of one of the stupid games you''d see on a baseball scoreboard between innings to keep the fans from falling asleep. Following the cups and balls, in that one moment where all the cups would overlap and you''d be unsure which one was the right one anymore.


    Like that, but constantly. Fortunately, AEGIS was tracking him, but my eyes kept following the wrong targets. Although...as she kicked one and it faded into nothingness, I realized that perhaps even she was having troubles here.


    But I was in range now, and my blades cared little about precision. A wall of white shimmered on my right where I held my blades at the ready, and on my left, Moon''s rose in mirror. When we reached the mass, both of us lashed out at once, cleaving and tearing through the swarming mass, blind by fire and blood, but not caring. Just lashing out at where we knew he was hiding.


    When suddenly, we stopped.


    All of us stopped.


    The chaos just, wasn''t anymore. The room became painfully silent, quieter than I thought anything could be, by contrast. I couldn''t turn my head, but in front of me, I saw only one Soran, wide-eyed and frozen mid-stumble, inches away from where our blades were seeking him out.


    My blades were still there, though. Hovering in the air as though I''d commanded them still. I narrowed my focus, willing them to push forward the extra few inches and finish him, but while I could feel them...could feel the currents in my body, could tug and push, it was like they were encased in concrete or something.


    As the moments dragged on and I hung there, I struggled and tried everything. I could still sense through my powers. I could even shock myself, could control the electricity within me, and even in what I touched. Anything that didn''t require moving, it felt like.


    I could think, I could ostensibly control my powers except they wouldn''t listen, but I couldn''t move.


    And the answer why hovered into view. Justice landed on the ground between the four of us.


    "I have witnessed your actions," he proclaimed, his voice rich with that undefinable emotion that seemed to resonate in me uncontrollably. "I have judged. My decree is absolute. I am Justice."


    "What the fuck is he talking about. Guys? Why are you standing there?" I heard Cosette in my ear.


    He turned to me, and I wished he hadn''t. "You speak of saving this world and the damage I unknowingly cause. I have decreed this world fragile and unjust. If it is broken by Justice, it will break. That which comes next will be pure."


    I tried to argue, but couldn''t. Just a weak gagging sound. But fortunately, he turned to Soran next, and as he spoke, my heart soared.


    "You act with deception and guile. You are a liar and a parasite. I sentence you to death. I am Justice."


    The raw emotion twisting inside me found form. I was just...giddy. Irrationally so. Emotions bubbled up beyond my control. Just as how Justice could somehow inspire dread just by looking at him, apparently he could also unleash joy if you were on his side, or something. I wanted to see Soran splattered so badly, and if anyone could manage it, it was Justice.


    So I watched with incurable elation rising through my body, the anticipation making me feel like I could float, even if I couldn''t even move my eyes. This was it, here it came.


    Soran, all at once, was wrenched into angular pieces, which drifted apart like a Rubik''s cube exploding in slow motion. There was no scream, no arguing or whimpering, just...split into pieces, a thousand of them, drifting apart.


    My eyes had been on his face, and as much as I''d wanted to see this, the spectacle of witnessing another man''s face suddenly invisibly julienned was horrifying. He just came apart, as though he''d always been in thousands of pieces, and the glue holding him had just failed all at once.


    But the glue hadn''t failed. There was blood, a ton of it, and it dumped out of his body all at once, with a sick, thick splatter, and then a constant dribble as what was left sept out. A final splash ended everything, as the body...the pieces of it...were let loose to fall into the red pool, splashing across AEGIS'' dress, and Justice''s blood-soaked hands.


    He turned to me again, and at once, any elation I had vanished. To be under his scrutiny felt like brushing death.


    But he didn''t kill me. Not immediately. And then, he didn''t have the chance.


    He screamed, as inhuman a noise as I had ever heard, such a resonant, echoing cry of pure suffering, it seemed to fill me up, and a pain I''d never known slashed into my skull even through the stims. Without being able to move, or scream, or even breathe, the pain seemed amplified a thousandfold, and I could do nothing but sit and endure it.


    And watch.


    Justice began...unfolding. Parts of him were sort of...blistering off, blowing up, but then recombining and putting themselves back in a way which looked incredibly painful. His skin would rupture, and then separate into the geometric pieces, chunks of his own flesh separating, spinning, twisting, and then recombining. The whole of him became only vaguely human-shaped, almost grainy or staticky, as more of him became a flux of disassembly.


    And then he stopped splitting and recombining, and instead it was Soran''s mass of flesh which did. All of the thousand pieces of him floated and flit and fit together, assembling in a tower with every piece perfectly fitting together to reassemble him. It was mere seconds before he was standing there again, breathing hard, clothes reassembled and black and slick with blood.


    And in his hand, clenched with trembling fingers, a tendril of his own blood, connected to Justice, a trail of splatter which had connected the two of them. And to be connected to Soran was death.


    "W-what...what deception...is this?" Justice asked, and I wanted to flinch from the pain in his voice. "How¡­?"


    "I think I''ll keep these powers," Soran grinned, and he seemed to pulse with a surge of energy I could only feel. With it, my body dropped to the floor, suddenly released.


    Suddenly released from Justice''s power. Because now it was Soran''s. I struggled to my feet to do...do something. Do anything. But I only got halfway up before again, I was arrested, unable to do anything but watch. Lightning surged on my skin, and I willed it to jump to him, for these impotent arcs to reach out and stop him, but I couldn''t bridge that far. My swords hung useless in the air.


    "So many powers," he laughed. He fucking laughed. "So many for me to take. Which should I have first?"


    He laughed again, louder, harder, more unhinged. He looked like he was about to cry from it. He was the very image of triumph, and it was the most disgusting thing I''d ever seen.


    And then he screamed as a white beam of vaporizing death blanked out half the room.


    I felt his power lapse, just a moment, as we all stumbled, before freezing again. He was still up...of course he''d still be up. He had that nasty form of regeneration which had somehow let him survive being obliterated once. Of course Justice cubing him wouldn''t work, and even Tem''s laser hadn''t been enough.


    But I was glad she''d figured out she could still act. She didn''t need to move to laser, and her beam wasn''t anything she had to work to control. We still had that. Maybe, just maybe, she could still win this for us. If she broke his concentration and let the rest of us act--


    But we never got that far. Justice, still floating somehow, resembling more man than meat again, pivoted on the spot and stared straight down at Soran, glaring over the red tendrils connecting them.


    "I. Am. Justice," he hissed.


    "And I--" Soran rebutted, before screaming again, as a black triangle opened around him, and he tipped sideways into the void. "N-no. Nooo!"


    The gateway shrunk to nothingness, just a tiny black void hanging in the air. And then there was a flash and an explosion through it, nearly mute, which I recognized vaguely. But nothing happened, he was just gone.


    Justice seemed to swell again as the blood tendrils connecting them broke and dropped to the floor, just ordinary trails of blood.


    And then we all did. We all fell to the ground, the spell broken. The hundreds of Sorans still in the room moved with us for just a moment before they all vanished as well. And then there was a long silence as tiredness and peace set in for each of us.


    But we''d done it. Soran was gone, banished to the hostile dimensions, where even with his powers, he''d certainly die. Unless Aesa came upon him or something but...well...I guess we''d have to look into that. The idea of him becoming a technopath was more than I could handle at the moment.


    And hell, we''d just sorta-kinda fought alongside Justice. I turned to him, hoping that this moment of a common enemy could finally breach that huge, alien, insane misunderstanding between us, and hell, maybe, just maybe, we could somehow turn this whole thing for the better. Get him...I don''t know...killing people in their sleep, so the XPCA wouldn''t crumble.


    But all those dreams were dashed when he turned and looked at me, his eyes blazing with something approximating fury, times a thousand. When he spoke, it made my blood surge.


    "This world is fragile and unjust. I will break it. I am Justice."


    And then, just as he had entered, he shot through the hole in the ceiling, leaving nothing but a pained silence in his wake.


    "That didn''t really go as planned," Cosette commented.


    I just let my head fall, blood and dust cementing on the back of a skull too heavy to keep holding up, and let the pain wash over me from my thousand cuts and my missing arm as the stims began to ebb.

 415. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest. Lia.

    Justice didn''t give us any time to rest. Everyone came back from Georgia, Athan and Karu were beat to hell and scheduled for regenerators at once, and I only saw a glimpse of AEGIS, who looked as though she''d had her throat torn out by a feral wolf, scratched metal shining through torn skin. But even as they were putting themselves together, Justice was in action.


    I watched the satellite feeds as he made his way in a straight line across the state, further north than any incursion he''d done thus far. And he was completely obvious about his target.


    Atlanta, home to half a million people. Capital of Georgia, seat of a lot of American history, from the civil rights movement to their role in sheltering hundreds of thousands during the Sino wars.


    Of course, the city itself wasn''t in any danger, I heard. XPCA were scurrying to get the usual locations evacuated -- courtrooms, law firms, offices and the like. But as I watched, I had a sinking feeling in my gut that this was going to be different from every other time, worse. He''d never acted like this before; in a variety of ways.


    First, he wasn''t moving quickly. That much was apparent by the fact we were still tracking him. When he wanted to, boom, way past supersonic, and too small to keep an eye on. But this time, while he was still shooting through the air upwards of three-hundred miles an hour, by his standards, that was a leisurely stroll.


    And second -- and most worrying to me -- until now, whenever he''d killed, he''d retreated. He picked a target through some unknowable algorithm, killed them and often everyone in the same room or building until his hands were soaked in fresh blood, and then bolted away just before reinforcements could confront him.


    And hey, honestly, before they could get themselves killed.


    But this time, he wasn''t doing that. He was drifting west towards Atlanta, and nobody knew what it meant. I heard orders flying around everywhere from this being our chance to take him out, to stunted questions about whether this constituted an event.


    I didn''t know what it was either, but I did know that on some level, this was immensely wrong. My stomach had lodged permanently upside-down, and I sat there, rocking in my chair, wishing someone would do something authoritative.


    Of course, it took me a while to realize I might be that someone. Until now, I''d just thought of it as a formality on the edge of the loophole we''d created for ourselves, but technically, I was as much a director of the XPCA as any of the rest of the future committee.


    I turned to TARGA, all black and shiny, and lurking in our office I think because this is where AEGIS tended to hang out. She was watching the same feeds I was, probably ten-thousand more of them, and her expression was a somber :/. I cleared my throat experimentally, to no effect.


    So I spoke. "TARGA?"


    She glanced up at me, the mass of black metal twisting and overlapping in a way which...well, Athan always called it like a cockroach. He wasn''t exactly wrong.


    "Yes, Lia?" she asked, her voice like a synth of AEGIS''.


    "I''m ordering an evacuation of Atlanta," I told her with all the confidence I could muster. "The whole city."


    She stared at me for a few long seconds. And then nodded. "Yes, Director. I''ll begin routing our efforts at once."


    It sorta tickled me how I went from ''Lia'' to ''Director'' within the span of a single sentence. She might have a huge chip out for Athan, but she was still, if nothing else, absolutely obedient to the rules and order.


    Which, come to think of it, was probably why she had such issues with Athan.


    Orders were already being relayed and followed on the feeds I was watching. It was like the vids of shaking a supercooled water bottle and watching the freeze propagate. In a growing cascade, the disordered confusion of what was going on, what to do, what actions were worth pursuing or not, they all began to crystalize and orient in line with the orders being given.


    And if there were complaints, I didn''t see ''em. Everyone knew by now, this was the job. We''re the XPCA. Protecting civilians is our number one priority. It didn''t matter if we completely expected Justice to turn around and fly away -- there were five-hundred thousand lives down there we would be betting against a flying lunatic.


    It was impressive, the efficacy of that one order. Hundreds of trucks and VTOLs were already moving, the XPCA base just west of Atlanta already disgorging nearly all of its available resources, and others nearby spinning up, as more further out began to supplement them in turn.


    And within minutes, all of America was engrossed in a huge web of genetic algorithms and osmosis, as TARGA dynamically reallocated forces across the states, surging inwards towards the southeast, but leaving a blanket covering the rest, redistributed and spread thinner, but not too thin.


    Even for someone like me who wasn''t particularly into this kind of thing, it was pretty nuts to watch. So many of the movements seemed pointless, likely to just make some XPCA dudes shake their heads at their sudden relocation like ''what the hell are the brass up to now?''. But seeing the whole picture, the three-thousand mile view, it was easy to see how even these trivial movements on the other side of the country were calculated moves. Filling in gaps, from filling in gaps, from filling in gaps, from mobilizing forces.


    I had to sort of shake my head and marvel. Maybe forty percent of the entire XPCA was affected in some small way by the order I''d given. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, and billions of credits of machine, all shuffling around by the few words I''d uttered. It was insane to think I had that kind of power, that any of us had that kind of power. And it really reminded me of what Athan had said about this being our one and best shot of fixing the XPCA.


    Because hell, here we were, with this kind of power at our fingertips. It seemed insane that there was anything we couldn''t do.


    A tally informed me that within fifteen minutes, the metropolitan Atlanta was already twenty percent evacuated. Sort of an astonishing pace, and while I''d thought that figure might slow down as the initial wave of rescue operations faded off, I really shouldn''t have been surprised to learn that the rate was actually going up. Because, while yeah, there was a limit to how quickly XPCA could get into the city and civilians could get out, I was beginning to see that it was a physical limitation, not one of personnel and materiel.


    They were just diving in and scooping people out constantly, bringing them to a relay point closer to the edge of the city, where again they''d be taken further. But the cool part was, as people were brought out of the densely-packed city center, the amount of space the forces had to work with increased exponentially. So while it was difficult work extracting them from downtown, there were a ton more roads to work with once they hit the suburbs. And TARGA, of course, seemed to have every single road in use, often creating beautiful convoys running down parallel streets, like a wall of refugees, with critical arteries of empty vehicles going back in for more.


    I was beginning to think we were in the clear, the way she was handling it. Micromanaging ten-thousand or more vehicles at once...forget the paperwork we no longer had to do, for the first time, I really understood what AEGIS had been designed for, and how the XPCA...how anything, really, could benefit from her undivided focus. And TARGA was just that and more; a more powerful computing body, more intense focus, less inhibited with things like personal desires or autonomy.


    It was crazy -- impossible -- think that all that wasn''t enough. The scope, the scale, the efficiency, the top-down view of seeing it all unfold. She was a maestro, conducting the world''s most complete symphony.


    And he was the phantom. When he hit the city, the birds-eye view I had instantly exploded into disarray. Comms chatter lit up across all channels. But most horrifying of all was the live feed, the satellites'' view, the traffic cams...the mounted cams of the exosuits on the ground.


    I saw him float in, blackened arms outstretched and low, like a priest blessing his flock. Drifting, slower than before, at a walking pace almost.


    And I also saw the exact extent of his power''s range. His telekinesis, at least. Because in a sphere around him, maybe a hundred feet across, things just...annihilated.


    The ground under him scraped away, digging a wide trench in the road, abandoned cars just disappearing into debris, pipes fracturing and water and sewage alike erupting into the air behind him. Buildings which stood too tall, too close, were sheared off. Perfectly spherical cuts torn out of them, like swiss cheese, exposing the rooms within, a bizarre voyeuristic destruction.


    There were bullets, too. Missiles. Lasers and more, the XPCA and police and military in his path were unloading into him everything they had. But it seemed like the physical attacks were just dissipating into the vacuum sphere around him, and everything else was being deflected within it somehow.


    As for where all the stuff he was destroying went? That became obvious with those poor people shooting at him. The clouds of...microscopic nothingness that he''d reduced the chunks of the city into...without even a gesture or glance, he shot it at them at what must have been a thousand miles an hour or more. One second, they were standing there, half in cover, black exosuit glinting in the sun, firearms barking.


    And the next, just...blasted. The entire front-half of them gone, like they''d been eroded by a hundred years of lashing winds. A hollow, dusty shell in an instant, and the ground and walls around them, pocked with almost invisible holes, only discernible by the fact there were millions of them, and their freakishly geometric distribution.


    The overall effect was just freaky. Surreal, impossible feeling. He drifted forward like it was nothing, took shots like it was nothing, killed anyone and anything in his path like it was nothing. His face showed no emotion, his hands never twitched or flinched...he was impartial, impassive, inscrutable. Eerily calm, in the face of the dozens he was killing, the millions in damages he was inflicting. In his deeds, he promised inescapable, inexorable death.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    It was...in a way...entrancing. Hypnotic, even. From up here, I mean. The feeds from the ground were just horrible, brutal, and short-lived. But seeing it from this distance, it was...it was almost...like¡­


    It was like, the equal and opposite of what I''d just witnessed with TARGA, I realized. I had the same exact awe of watching something so much bigger than me unfold. A minute ago, I''d have told you that nothing in the world could have stopped TARGA, the way she was moving and utilizing every single person on the continent it felt like.


    But now those efforts seemed pitiful and ineffective. The carefully-arranged circles of blue dots on the map had been laid to waste, and more and more of them had been overwritten with flashing red X''s in his path. He was the unstoppable inevitability here, not her. Compared to him, she was just a toddler pushing around trucks.


    I held my breath as he reached the absolute center of downtown, the path behind him a broken scar. One skyscraper looked more than halfway-disintegrated, balancing precariously on its exposed frame. In the gap, I could see people still moving within, like the swarming of ants from this distance, blind panic at their nest being kicked open. I glanced at the estimates, and with some quick math, found that sixty-five percent of people were still un-evaced.


    Justice stopped, and for the first time, looked around. I switched through several feeds until I came upon a good angle, from a recon team down the street from him, getting a good high-def view of his face and body as he hung in the air.


    I didn''t know what he was looking for, but whatever it was, it seemed enough to give him pause. After maybe a minute, maybe he gave up, or maybe that was all he wanted. Because he began to speak.


    His voice, magnified somehow in the air, echoed off buildings and sent tremors through the earth. Even here, watching it from a feed, the very sound sent chills up my spine and made my skin crawl. His black eyes writhed with unnatural focus as he seemed to stare right at me through the camera.


    "I am Justice," he said, as though a formal introduction by now. "And I will break this world. It is fragile and unjust, and what comes next will be pure."


    The silence following his speech was deafening. It felt like all I could hear was the ringing of his words in my head, all else had stopped entirely. And glancing down at the feeds, all else had. Everyone, literally everyone in the area had stopped everything they were doing at the command in his voice. It was insane. It was enough to get a frustrated grunt out of TARGA across the room from me, as her finger-drones flew around and her face crossed into a display of outraged shock.


    Justice crossed his blood-blackened arms with a motion that seemed to completely alter his poise. He was no shepherd offering prayer anymore, now he was resolute, walled-off. If his actions before had been indomitable, now too was his very being.


    "This is my decree, and it is final. You now face Justice."


    And with those words, the city around him began a terrible transformation.


    The ground shifted underneath nearby buildings, sending them listing at gut-wrenching angles. The silence broke with the breaking of the earth, and the screams of the people being toppled. The military who began to open fire were suddenly stilled, as though wrapped in a golden, shining, immutable blanket, existing outside of time.


    A pair of VTOLS streaking away, probably packed with civilians suddenly lurched, caught in a web of invisible threads which sheared through the metal wings. The turbofans exploded off of them like shurikens fired into the heavens, and spitting smoke, they tumbled and crashed into the glass and concrete walls of yet another building.


    Fire poured from the ground under him, as though he were a volcano, and it spread more rapidly than I thought possible, the whole city a hellscape in too little time. The roar of the flames was audible even from this distant feed, as were the now-constant screams of panic of those still caught, the poor bastards beginning to realize their evacuation wouldn''t come in time, that this was it for them -- the fire or the quake, or some other horrible death.


    One of the buildings Justice had been lifting cracked, snapping halfway up like pictures of the Titanic of old. It felt like slow-motion, as thousands of tons of glass, concrete, office equipment, and people came crumbling out, falling to the street to be consumed by the seething grey cloud of dust, glowing from the fires below like some gateway to hell.


    It was just the first to fall. The others he''d been toppling weren''t far behind. And when they were done, he moved, almost disappearing for an instant as he repositioned to a new cross-street, with new buildings within his reach, with more fires to set and more XPCA to entomb. A new perfectly-circular hole traced his path, like a bullet wound through the city.


    Next to me, TARGA was a blur of motion, and I got the impression if she were more human, she''d be sweating and swearing profusely, though all I could read on her now was the tension across her body and her face > as she revised a million orders, doing her all to compensate for the sudden shift.


    When, abruptly, she paused and looked up at me.


    "Director," she barked, her voice taut and tense. "Permission to deploy Skyweb requested."


    I looked down at the holo, watching another block of the city vaporize around him. Before the death toll, there was still most of the city''s population down there. Skyweb was precise, but it was also indiscriminate. We''d be cleaving through skyscrapers just as much as he was if we opened fire now.


    But what other option was there? This was the Exhuman event we''d always been afraid of, this was the situation for which Skyweb was kept in service, this was why the XPCA had the overkill options like fortress armors. Because some Exhumans were just too much for shadow ops and strike teams.


    But still. There were tens of thousands still alive down there. I didn''t want to be the one to decide to kill them.


    But there was nobody else. I was the only one here with TARGA. The others were in recovery like Athan and Karu, or still in transition, or worse, en-route to Atlanta, like Cosette, Tem, and Moon might be.


    I was the one here in the Raven''s Nest, I was the one with the feeds in front of me. I was the one to call the shots.


    "What''s the probability that it does any good?" I asked her. As she paused to calculate I waved my hands. "In generalities."


    Her voice was controlled, but I could hear the stress of wasted seconds as she answered. "We know of no natural resistance Justice possesses against beam-class weapons. A decisive hit may end the conflict. Our greatest issue has always been a matter of targeting something so mobile. But given his current stationary behavior--"


    "We might actually nail him."


    She nodded.


    "How long until satellites are in position to fire?" I asked.


    "I have brought them to bear as soon as the evacuation order was given and the threat level established. It will be approximately forty seconds before they are able to fire."


    I glanced down at the screen again. Another building was beginning to capsize. I clenched my jaw, wondering how many survivors there were from that sort of thing, and how many of them would die to Skyweb''s violet death.


    "Do it," I said. And again, she nodded. At once, new displays popped up for me, showing satellite telemetry, orbital shadows, and elliptical alignment. Power levels of the Skyweb systems were charging to firing thresholds, and I watched as security threshold after security threshold were met and disarmed, the whole system going live.


    I held my breath for most of the entire forty seconds. Bars appeared and filled and disappeared, streams of calculations flashed past, and again, that feeling of unstoppable analytical precision immersed me as system after system was brought online and to bear in mere moments.


    It was crazy how many ways one could measure out that stretch of time. How many buildings toppled, how many people died, how many new fissures opened in the ground or fires skittered atop it. How many times my heart pounded in my ears, or I glanced up at TARGA to see her locked in intense focus. How many progress bars would flash on my holo, how many simulation data would fly past, how many estimates of casualties and collateral, minimized and maximized values calculated in moments.


    And then, the feed shook as the sky tore open. An impossibly-thin violet rectangle like a beam from Heaven began the volley, screaming as the air itself burned at its touch.


    And then another. And another. More and more, from every angle, all converging at or around one point, one Exhuman.


    The first blow sheared a building in half, and kicked up such a cloud of debris that I couldn''t see anymore. Other feeds from higher up showed just how much laser death was being poured into the city, but whether it did anything, I had no idea.


    But TARGA''s reaction gave me some indication. For the first time, she swore under her breath, and I stared at my screen looking for any hint which would give me understanding.


    The lasers had begun to move, and with it, I assumed, so had Justice. Frantically tearing down city blocks, the beams cleaved through the city, decapitating structures to the same ends Justice had wrought, only in clean, sterile lines, instead of his chaotic atrophy.


    It continued for what must have been most of a minute, more and more of the city reduced to dust as I watched the available system power in Skyweb dip lower and lower as it pounded the earth. Before it was fully depleted though, TARGA slammed her fists on the table, almost perfectly in time with a thousand alerts flaring across my screen.


    "No!" she screeched. "That''s impossible!"


    "What?" I asked, my hands flying across the holo to move windows, looking for any clue what had just happened.


    I found my answer with a feed of the scene. A different recon unit it looked like, positioned higher up, maybe on a rooftop above the now-omnipresent cloud of dust. The city was in shambles, wreckage everywhere where there had once been a gleaming urbia. The broken spires looming out of the ember-glowing dust were like shipwrecks in the fog, and I could discern easily those which had been split by his crude methods and our precision destruction.


    And there he was. Not untouched, but floating above it all, putting himself back together by the looks of it, his torso, one of his legs, and both of his arms floating around him in a disassembled mass of disturbing cubes of meat. I watched with fascinated horror as they oriented in the air, and one-by-one, reassembled back into their appropriate places in him, as though he were nothing more than a puzzle to be put back together.


    "Why aren''t we shooting! He''s holding still, shoot him!" I shouted.


    TARGA snapped at me with a broken growl. She pounded the table again, wordlessly, and my holo filled with the same feed, rewinding to a moment prior.


    I saw him then, rising out of the dust, his body bloody and broken, basically just pieces of meat held together with bone. He was a head atop a bloody mass, with one leg trailing behind, and violet death was swarming through the air all around him.


    But with a primal scream that echoed in my head, and a twitching, flinching gesture that might have been some kind of throwing motion, a backward avalanche erupted around him. A storm of rock and fire boiled from under the blistering fog and shot into the air, accelerating into nothing but grey streaks as he fired them into the sky.


    Into space, I realized. Into the satellites. Into Skyweb itself.


    "No," I found the word slipping past my lips as I fell into my chair. "No. That''s not possible. He can''t punch out a satellite. That''s not possible!"


    TARGA pounded the table again and slumped into a chair of her own, her reverse-legs folding up under her bizarrely. "Apparently it is. And he did. Fucking fuck."


    I could only stare at the feed as he reassembled himself back to pristine condition, hands as coated in blood as ever, newly-reformed body untouched by the grey dust which even now, swirled and boiled beneath him. He seemed to take a minute to drink in the absolute destruction, the screams and choked cries of those below, the complete absence of any building over two stories, and the fires which coursed across the ground.


    He seemed to smile. Which was more unnerving than any antipathy. And then, as though caught by a wind, he began to move. Drifting at the same casual pace, slower than a VTOL, he began to move west.


    TARGA cradled her head in her hands as projections flared up at once on my holo. It only took an instant for his flightpath to be charted, and there, only a hundred-fifty miles away or so, another major city directly in his path. Birmingham, Alabama, and another quarter-million people who would never be evacuated in time.


    "This is it, isn''t it?" I whispered, as though afraid to give my thoughts too much. "He''s going to do it. Fly city-to-city and do exactly what he said."


    "What," TARGA snipped, "destroy everything?"


    I shook my head. "No. Break us. Destroy the whole fragile world."


    She stared at me for long moments with an intensity I didn''t know was possible. But even as she did, evacuation plans and new skyweb orbits were flying across my screen as she did everything she could to protect the second city.

 416. 2252, Present Day. The Ravens Nest. Athan.

    I couldn''t believe what I was seeing, what I was hearing. I didn''t understand.


    How could this happen? How could the reporter on the holo flickering in front of me speak with such relative indifference? Her words were apologetic: ''This is obviously a great national tragedy and our thoughts and prayers are with those who have been hurt or affected by this terrible, terrible event.''


    But her voice was the same even, inflective tone that all reporters used. I wanted to cry, wanted to scream, and the fact that for most in the nation, the way they would hear about this was through the even timbre of a disaffected reporter...I wanted so badly to reach through the holo and grab her and shake her. I wanted to stroll with her through the destroyed streets of Atlanta and let her see and smell the fires, the blood, the cracked sewage, the carcinogenic clouds of cement which even now, stymied rescue workers.


    I saw no reason or way that anyone could or should be calm about this. Which was not, I realized, an ideal position for the director of the XPCA to hold.


    "Are you...you okay?" AEGIS asked, her eyes shining with concern. But it was concern for me, not for the hundreds of thousands who''d just been wiped out. Somehow that was even worse.


    I just shook my head in answer. How would I be okay? How would any sane man in my position be okay. I felt like the fact that she''d expected me to even answer that question was an affront to the dead. Nobody should be okay right now.


    Some of this was probably due to the drugs. I''d only just come out of a regenerator again, and hadn''t had any time to recuperate before AEGIS had whisked me over to fill me in on what happened...and what was still happening. My hand felt twitchy where it had regrown, like the skin on it was too hot, and I wondered if that was just in my head on account of yet another traumatic brush with Soran''s ice.


    Karu was still mending. AEGIS had spent some time putting herself together, though there was a discolored patch on her neck where her synthetic skin hadn''t quite set yet. Lia was here.


    As was TARGA. Hunched-over and beetle-like, she glowered at me as AEGIS pawed at me soothingly. Despite how much XPCA stuff she was doing, it seemed she still had the bandwidth to give me the stink-eye.


    And some words, apparently. "Doesn''t it hurt when you do that?" she asked, her voice oddly sweet.


    I just shook my head again and flexed my hand a few more times. "No."


    "No, not that. Exist. If I were you, I''d have been happy for an opportunity to end it."


    "Not really the time," AEGIS cut in, and I agreed. "What''s Justice''s current position?"


    TARGA perked up at once. "Nearly halfway to Birmingham, Darling. He''ll be there in... five minutes, given current route and velocity."


    I swore, and stood up, feeling the tranquilizers rise up with me and felt like the world was spinning under my feet for a second. Maybe more than a second, because next thing I knew, I was seated again without remembering doing so. AEGIS was fretting over me.


    "Athan, you''re in no condition to be getting up and doing any heroics. I know that''s what you want. But I brought you here because there''s a different capacity we need to fulfill, and that''s as acting directors of the XPCA. This agency needs you now more than ever."


    "To do what?" I scoffed. "To send everyone we have to their deaths? Just what the hell are we supposed to do?"


    The door opened and I looked up to find Lia, who seemed as pissed as I felt, her shoulders tense and hunched, and giving her a much more solid profile than her typical bouncy-flowy one.


    "We do everything we can," she sniped, and I could hear just how bitter she was. "Everything. Anything. We''re the freaking XPCA now."


    "Yes, but what is everything, anything? What the fuck can we do against an Exhuman who can just destroy an entire city like that?"


    She threw herself into a chair beside me and glared at me with vitriol. "Evac, anyone we can. Waste Justice''s time with distractions. Sacrifice a dozen people to save a hundred. Do the same things the XPCA has always done, but for real this time, with everything on the line."


    "What good will it do?" I asked. "If we can''t stop him, he''ll just go to every city in America, one after another, until there''s literally nothing left. Probably beyond America, probably the whole world. This is the fucking end of everything."


    "And it''s all your fault," TARGA said, almost cheerily. The three of us turned to stare at her. "What? He had a completely different MO until you informed him that he was breaking the world order and gave him this great idea to make it deliberate. In violation of very nearly every single XPCA operations doctrine. So thanks for that. Maybe read the manual next time."


    "That doesn''t matter," AEGIS clarified. But just the fact that she wasn''t arguing informed me that she agreed. Because, of course she would. TARGA might be a bitch and a blowhard, but she still had AEGIS'' intelligence under all that, and no desire to coddle me.


    "It does matter," I said. "She''s right. I fucked all of us."


    AEGIS frowned at me. "Athan, no--"


    "No, I did! I''m a fucking idiot. I should have listened to Cosette and just tried to take him out when he was distracted. I should have done what any XPCA would have done and ended the threat...or at least tried. Instead, I have this stupid fucking delusion that talking to people and being open with your needs and perspectives can somehow fucking help, when it doesn''t. All it does is bring about this fucking apocalypse. The XPCA''s been keeping the world intact for hundreds of years by clamping down on Exhumans and treating us like shit, and now I finally get it. Now I know why we have to be so cruel, because if we aren''t--" I waved my hands at the holo, without words to describe more.


    There was metallic, sarcastic clapping from the other side of the room. "Wow, very good introspection," TARGA said. "I''m so impressed, I''m bumping you up to second-stupidest person in the world."


    "I get it, you hate me, you can shut the fuck up about it now," I told her.


    "Oh I wouldn''t say that. I would never say that. To your face."


    "Enough," AEGIS barked, glaring daggers at TARGA.


    "Yeah, don''t you have cycles to run or something?" Lia shouted. "Of the people in this room, you''re the only one who can actually be doing something of use right now, so why don''t you do that instead of picking on my brother?"


    TARGA scoffed. "As though it takes any capacity at all to point out the blindingly obvious truth. And don''t you dare question my dedication. I am committed to my duty as you could never understand. I am--"


    "I said enough," AEGIS barked, and this time TARGA did shut up. "What''s the ETA?"


    "Two minutes until downtown. He''s passing over the outskirts now."


    I felt like I could do literally nothing but stare at the holo. Obviously I couldn''t fight him, he was too strong. But here I was, unable to even stand without passing out. I couldn''t take my eyes off the screen, couldn''t think of any orders to be given which TARGA wasn''t already enacting. I was just useless, at a time when the world needed help more than ever, I was nothing.


    TARGA helpfully put a countdown projection in the corner of our displays, so I had something else to stare at and feel helpless about. The consistent inevitability of the timer seemed almost too appropriate.


    It hit a minute and a half and Justice hit the edge of downtown, the sea of one- and two-story buildings under him suddenly surging around him, as though the city were being pulled upwards at his approach.


    At a minute, he crossed the first skyscraper, indifferent as his sphere of antimatter destruction just bored clean through it. In the streets below, I could see police still trying to usher people away. We had so much less time here than with Atlanta, evacuation looked like more of a panic, and the streets were clogged with cars and people fleeing between them.


    Thirty seconds. Midday on a Thursday, offices full of people at work. How many of them had been watching, horrified as Atlanta was burned to rubble? How many could have expected that he''d turn on them the second he was done? Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the XPCA.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    At fifteen seconds, AEGIS turned to me and frowned. "The President is on the line. He''s demanding an explanation, and threatening us to resign."


    "Where the heck was he the last half hour?" Lia asked.


    "Boarding Air Force One. He was--"


    She stopped as the timer hit zero. And so did Justice, hovering silently over the panicked chaos a hundred feet below. Even from this distant feed, I could hear the terror intensify as he came to a halt.


    Everyone knew what was coming. That didn''t stop them from screaming their very loudest when it did.


    He dipped lower, and as he did, the people around him held themselves and writhed, many falling off their feet to thrash on the roadways. Fire came first this time, and it was only moments before those he''d affected burst into pillars of conflagration, smoke pouring out of their eyes, their mouths lit from within at the fires burning deep inside them, their skin aglow. Many of them just ran, blindly, and served only to spread the flames.


    One of the buildings nearest him shuddered, and then the ground beneath half of it just seized up and veritably vanished. The skyscraper seemed to hang over nothingness for longer than possible, before painfully, by inches, it tilted and swayed and began to bow. It picked up speed as it fell, whipping towards the ground, cracking apart into meteoric chunks to bombard the panicking masses below, before burying them all with a shuddering explosion that blanketed the entire city in grey haze.


    It had only taken mere minutes, somehow both shorter and longer than I thought, before the city was indistinguishable from Atlanta. One by one, block by block, the blurry sphere which was Justice moved and systematically brought down the skyscrapers onto the burning cement fog below. All I could see was grey and ember, and him.


    He paused above another cross-street, this one very close to the camera giving us our feed. When he brought down this section, I didn''t know that we had any more cameras which weren''t buried in debris. We were close enough that I could see each of his fingers, misshapen with the thick folds of dried blood, twitching as he worked his powers around him. I could see his face, impassive, uncaring...apparently deaf to the screams around him, blind to the carnage he was unleashing.


    And then, still watching his face, I saw his eyes widen as he fell. I wouldn''t have caught it if I hadn''t been staring at the time, but it was there, for an instant. Nothing approaching human emotion, but like surprise.


    All of us were completely surprised, Lia jumping to her feet, and TARGA freezing on the spot, her finger-drones halting entirely in the air.


    "Did he just drop?" AEGIS asked.


    "He didn''t look like he did it on purpose," Lia confirmed. "What the heck happened?"


    All we could see was they swirling grey, the thick clouds of dust which hung everywhere and drowned everything. Fruitlessly, I switched feeds, changing to anything in the general area, seeing nothing more than haunting shapes looming in the fog, and only darkness and fire beyond a few inches.


    "Wait, go back!" AEGIS shouted, as I switched between two identical-looking feeds from exosuits stranded in the grey. I flipped backwards, channel by channel until she leaned close, breathing hard, not noticing as her hair cascaded over my lap.


    "Listen!" she said, cranking the audio. All I could hear was distant fire, distant rumbling, the continuous sound of people screaming and coughing, so constant and oppressive.


    But under that, I heard it, too.


    "Someone''s yelling," I said, and AEGIS nodded. "Someone''s literally shouting at him."


    AEGIS gave TARGA a glance, but she was already adjusting the audio, a weird look on her pixels :^ as she distorted the sound this way and that, trying to bring out the words.


    And then, suddenly, she had it. And I was glad I wasn''t standing, because I''d have fallen over.


    "You like that, you bullying fuck? You want to spread pain and misery? You wanna take kids away from their mothers? Fuck you."


    It was Trish''s voice. Muffled, as though she were speaking through something, although that could have just been the audio quality. And as clearly as I heard it, still, I didn''t fucking understand. That was not a voice, or words that should have been coming from that cloud of death. Justice was an unstoppable nightmare, destroying entire cities in minutes.


    And yet, somehow, there she was.


    AEGIS leaned further over me and began flipping through feeds while keeping the audio going. Trish didn''t say much more, just surreal grunts of exertion, echoing in the grey, that made me feel voyeuristic to hear.


    And then AEGIS finished, having brought up the vid from right before Justice plummeted into the fog. She was playing it back, at maybe a tenth speed, looping the part where he suddenly dropped, the look of restrained surprise obvious. And almost comical.


    I still saw nothing of note. Just masses of grey and black, but mostly his face. It was hard to look at anything but his eyes.


    "There," she said, pausing it. An instant before he fell. It looked like Justice hovering over grey billowing clouds, with corners of buildings, still standing, looming in the background.


    It wasn''t until she pointed at the still, tracing...not exactly something, but more...nothing protruding from the darkness.


    No, I realized, it wasn''t protruding from the darkness, it was the darkness itself protruding. A lance, made of shadows, almost invisible against the grey turbulent mass.


    "Her shadows," I remembered. "They sorta turn off your powers when they hit them. They make you forget for moments at a time."


    "He''s got telekinesis," Lia nodded. "Which is what he uses to fly, and must be what that whole sphere of death around him thing is. It''s just tearing up anything that flies in range. But then the shadow hits it¡­"


    "And suddenly he can''t fly," I realized. "She hits him, and both his shield and his maneuverability are gone."


    The sounds of Trish grunting and straining were suddenly punctuated with a sharp gasp that set my hair on end, and then her seething breath as she staggered somewhere in the cloud.


    "TARGA!" I spun to face her. "Dedicate all resources in the area to getting her out of there!"


    She stared at me. "But...she''s an Exhuman."


    "Did I fucking stutter?" I shouted.


    "There are...civilian lives...that could be saved...and you would have me abandon them...to save one Exhuman?" She turned her pixels, somehow pleading, towards AEGIS.


    "Do you have problems with taking orders from a superior?" AEGIS barked. TARGA seemed to make a whimpering noise, but my holo lit up with thousands of new orders being issued, as the area we were watching up suddenly lit up with waypoints and other digital overlays.


    "This goes against all XPCA directives," TARGA insisted. "The preservation of civilian lives is paramount. I will be reporting this to the President himself, whom, I might remind you, is on the damn phone waiting for you."


    I picked up the line, and after waiting a moment, the phone in my hand, not yet to my ear, realized I should pass it to Lia. She gave me an apologetic half-smile, which struck me as bizarre and backwards, since it should have been me apologizing to her. But she said nothing to me, just took the phone and started pacing as she introduced herself.


    Me, I didn''t hear her. I was fixated on the dots on the map, sluggishly moving around as though lost ants, some of them making it towards the waypoints, but most either staying where they were, or obviously ignoring orders to stay with the civilians. I couldn''t blame them, but at the same time, I knew that Trish was more important. Those people''s lives were present, important...and who''d want to leave them to charge directly into the mayhem? To go right where Justice was?


    But someone had to, because from the sounds of it, Trish was getting flayed now. She wasn''t the point of screaming or crying out, but her breathing had gone shallow, her gasps were pained. It sounded like she was bracing and wincing against every movement she made.


    Still, every once in a while, she''d mutter something. "Fuck you" was the most common. But she would make other references. Usually about murdered children and broken families, and as much as I wanted to hear, I wished I didn''t.


    Lia was pacing and anxious. From the amount she was listening instead of speaking, and how every word out of her mouth seemed like a protest, it was obvious she was getting reamed.


    And I just sat here feeling useless as before. It almost felt like nothing had changed, except that my anxiety was over a woman now, instead of a city.


    Except that wasn''t quite right. Something was different, and it wasn''t until I heard Trish whispering to herself that I realized.


    "Even...if it''s not me," she panted "Someone...sometime...is gonna...put you down. You can''t...beat...the whole...fuckin'' world¡­"


    It was hope. It was proof that, when I''d said that Justice was unstoppable, inevitable, I was wrong. He could be made to bleed, by the hands of special, incredible people like Trish, who had the power and the will to throw themselves at him, at certain death, because fuck him.


    And if those people did, if they could, then death wasn''t so certain after all. She''d been fighting him for most of two minutes now, and that was two minutes of the city evacuating, of buildings still standing. Of hope.


    There was a crunching noise and finally she screamed. Her breath only came halfway out before she was choking, the shrill in her voice cut short. Lia froze in her pacing to look at me with wide, fear-filled eyes, and it was all I could do to stare at the holo and the grey billowing void.


    "F-fff-fuck...you..."


    Suddenly the fog turned turbulent, as though being torn in half, as though water, being parted, splashing against the buildings. In the feed, I heard a familiar noise, turbofans screaming, but not the engines of a standard XPCA VTOL. These were higher, quieter, but echoing through the trench of the city streets.


    It was a Sirius-class VTOL, smaller and faster, which had braved the hazard to respond to TARGA''s order. I heard the vague, high-pitched vrrrr of exosuits rappelling, the solid clunk clunk of metal boots slamming against pavement. And then the familiar sound of gunfire, XPCA assault rifles, not even exotics, as they moved under their own covering fire, spreading out to maximize control and minimize collateral.


    And then, half-breathless, I heard an angel. It was nothing like an angel''s voice, spoken in Tem''s warbling half-shushed tones, but with Moon''s precise enunciation.


    "Exhuman Trish," she said. "We are here to rescue you."


    "Not...until¡­"


    "Rescue is non-negotiable. Please do not attempt to resist until the operation is complete. Thank you for your compliance."

 417. 2252, Present Day. Aboard a VTOL, heading west. Athan.

    I''d never really hung up on anyone before. It occurred to me that for most of my life, I''d just chatted with my friends in person whenever we had much to say. I used messenger, sure, but when the meat of your conversation was gonna be ''let''s hang out'' anyway, why not just hang out?


    And then I became Exhuman, and I traded football for lightning and my mobile for comms. Aside from taking it out, turning it off, or changing to a private channel, there wasn''t really any hanging up on people with comms. Not that I ever had a lot of reason to. Cosette was a grump, but she was our grump.


    But this call was on the phone. I had plenty of reason to hang up, with all the shit I had to do, and I wasn''t exactly enjoying the chat, explaining repeatedly in excruciating detail, every step that we''d ever taken to prevent this kind of catastrophe, every contingency we''d ever made and how each of them had failed.


    And after I''d explained all that, he said "Explain to me how you allowed this situation to happen." And that was pretty much it for me. I pulled the mobile away from my ear like it was a slug. Did this guy not live in the same world we did? Did he not know what an Exhuman was, or see what Justice was capable of? Did he just watch the reports so he had enough material to ream me, instead of comprehending that gee, that guy is really off-the-charts.


    So yeah. I hesitated just a moment, before hanging up. At which, Saga cackled and AEGIS'' jaw dropped.


    "You didn''t--" she said, her eyes wide.


    "He''s being a prick."


    "He''s the president of the United States!" she flailed. My phone rang again, and her bafflement redoubled as I hit ignore. "Athan, what are you doing?"


    "Is he causing trouble?" Karu''s joked from the helm. "Do I need to turn this VTOL around?"


    "Athan just hung up on the president!" AEGIS said, with the tone of one telling the teacher. "The president of the United States!"


    Saga blew some hair out of her face derisively, her gangly arms entwined in the seat harness in a way that would definitely make her dead if we ever got in a crash. "Oh no!" she lamented with an enthusiasm never heard outside of sarcasm. "Athan''s gonna lose his job! We''ll all become homeless and poverty-stricken, forced to sell our bodies on street corners to get by."


    "Even if you''re joking, the fact is, the president''s already talked about shutting down the agency, remember?" AEGIS pushed her glasses up. Her harness was, of course, in pristine order. "After we were putting pressure on them to get Athan released, and more seriously after the New Eden breakout. He said the country lacks faith in the XPCA and homeland defense and special police units would be more than enough."


    "Which is just fucking wrong," I added.


    "It is," she agreed. "But the fact remains that he personally has an axe for the agency, and you are giving him legitimacy in wanting it taken down and what are you doing, Athan? He''s the friggin'' president, and you''re blowing him off. Do you want the XPCA falling apart during this crisis?"


    I sighed. As much as she had a point, there was also no way I''d consider wasting the next month and several boxes of crayons explaining.


    I really wished Lia could field these calls, but she was overseeing some diplomatic negotiations with the panic in New Eden. Cosette was an option, but she was right around my equal in level of respect for authority. Moon and Tem were deployed. Whitney wasn''t what I''d call a talker...and was probably the most divorced from the rest of us opinion-wise, I wouldn''t want her writing promises the rest of us had to keep. And AEGIS, Karu, and Saga were here with me.


    Which really left TARGA, but yeah, fuck no. I''d rather he shut us down than give him inroads to run the agency through her. Besides, he was demanding to speak to the director, otherwise I could have just pawned him off on any random general.


    My mobile rang again, and I considered strongly just turning it off.


    "Ooh, let me!" Saga pleaded. "I''ve always had a few ideas for how America could be improved that I''ve wanted to run by the president. Don''t you think we have a shocking lack of spikes?"


    I stared at her, confused, as I again ignored the call. "Spikes?"


    "Oh yeah. You see it all the time in vids and media. The evil empire always starts putting spikes in all their clothes and architecture, all the better to impale people on. We need trenches filled with spikes around every city, spikes on every rooftop to let the heavens know just how welcome they are, spikes on every traffic sign to remind people, speed limit sixty. Or fuckin'' else."


    "Saga, shut up," I asked. "This is serious right now."


    She shrugged. "If it''s so serious, why aren''t I back at the Raven''s Nest running things?"


    "Were you not listening?" AEGIS asked.


    "Eh, prolly not. Was it you talking? I tend to tune you out after a sentence or two. It''s always long-winded exposition and technobabble. And when it''s Athan, I try to stare at his lips and imagine what those words would feel like if they were pressed against--"


    "Saga," I cut in. "For starters, there''s hardly anyone in the Raven''s Nest anymore. After we were shipping out, so was everyone else. We''re beginning evacuation of all major cities."


    She fished in her ear with a pinky. "Oh. Yeah, I remember something like that. You were like, Denver? And I was like, Denver? I hardly know ''er!"


    "The fact that this woman is the nerve center of our agency does explain a fair bit," Karu''s voice came from the front. "It is a wonder this collapse had not come sooner."


    "And second," I soldiered on, "We need you."


    "Aww, shucks. I need you too," she grinned. "Like right now. Come on, tear my pants if you have to, don''t waste another second."


    "We need you to mindfuck Oasis for us," AEGIS spat. "If you can get their armies and weapons on our side instead of off terrorizing the world, they stand a good chance of being able to hold Justice back."


    "Aww, so I have to keep my pants on? Hm, although I guess you didn''t specify how I convince them to join us. Think I could be the next Helen of Troy? The bony ass that launched a thousand ships?"


    "Let''s keep that as plan B," I continued. "Plan A, you get your head into their tree, you hijack it, we have a shitton of weapons and mentally-enslaved bastards to do some fighting for us."


    Saga sighed dramatically. "You know I can''t say no to weapons and mentally-enslaved bastards. You really know how to tickle my buttons."


    "Push your buttons?" AEGIS asked.


    Saga gave a shrug. "Whatever gets you off."


    "I know it''s not in your nature," I continued again, "but you are kind of instrumental to the plan. Could you please, please, focus a little?"


    "Fine." Saga crossed her arms. "Such a buzzkill. You know, I haven''t left that stinking XPCA edifice in weeks, and when you finally do take me out somewhere, it''s all do this, do that, save the world, and never a fancy dinner and an unfancy hotel."


    "But you don''t eat. Or sleep," AEGIS argued.


    "Well, we''d just fuck anyway, would be the plan."


    "Then¡­" she looked at me and paused, as though not sure why she was persisting, but I could see the confusing itching at her. "Then why the restaurant?"


    "What, you''ve never had food sex?" Saga cackled.


    "Okay, I officially regret asking. Never mind. Karu, how are we on an ETA?"


    I heard her shuffle a bit at the helm before she replied. "There exists news both good and bad, as it were. The good is that with the Sirius we are making better time than originally anticipated. The bad is that agency resources are currently stretched thin, and we will have to stop to refuel in San Francisco before crossing the Pacific rather than picking up a new bird."


    "That doesn''t sound so bad," I commented.


    Karu laughed, but not a pleasant one. "You have never seen an aircraft fueled before, I take it. I estimate an hour and a half delay, minimum."


    "What? That long? Don''t they just jam the hose in and turn it off when it''s full?"


    "There are a plethora of factors, not the least of which being distribution of fuel in differing tanks across the vehicle to ensure even weight distribution, precautions to minimize the chance of a static or frictional spark detonating all in a conflagration, and the availability of a fuel team to begin with. It is very little like fueling one''s car, in practice."The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I swore. "Can''t we authorize ourselves to jack some other flight? Like, shit, there''s gotta be another VTOL in the city somewhere. This is an emergency."


    AEGIS responded with a slow shake of her head. "Even though that''s true, a state of emergency was declared in all major cities. San Francisco is being evacuated too, and any available vehicles would be in use, not just lying around. Even if we could ''jack'' one like you say, it wouldn''t exactly be fueled up for a trip over the ocean either."


    Well that was stupid. It was impressive how much time I spent being the XPCA director and feeling powerless. My mobile rang again, as though to remind me, and this time I turned off the ringer.


    "I guess we help with the evacuations as we can, then. Not sure what all there is for us to do, but we can do it."


    "Oh dear me," a new voice chimed in on comms, and I already knew what was coming. "It sounded to me like someone had to stop breathing out of their mouth to pitch that idea."


    "TARGA, be nice," AEGIS warned. She sounded almost playful though, like the owner of a dog that kept charging in and bowling people over but never willing to put a leash on them. I had to stare at her in bewilderment as she just gave me an apologetic shrug, like that was just how TARGA do.


    "I''m always nice. Normally when I see an ape in the wild, I have it tranqued and put back in the zoo. This one is permitted to be on comms channels, and stink up my VTOLs."


    "Normally, when I see a cockroach, I step on it," I informed her.


    "Please, don''t bruise your brain cell for my benefit."


    "Which is kind of ironic, considering you don''t have any. Just a simulation of them. Sad, really."


    "Wow, Athan, that''s super rude," AEGIS informed me.


    "I meant her."


    "I know what you meant. I am commenting on what you said."


    "But--"


    "That''s like if you argued that she was a bitch because all women were bitches. While in a plane full of women."


    "One of whom is piloting," Karu added, helpfully. Despite not actually saying that, somehow I was getting death glares anyway.


    "...sorry. I just meant her."


    "What was that?" TARGA pounced. "Sounded like a shit apology to me?"


    "Don''t you jump all over him either. You started this," AEGIS turned on her. "Do I have to separate the two of you?"


    "No," we muttered in unison. And then it was awkwardly quiet for a few moments as the insults stopped as quickly as they''d began.


    AEGIS cleared her throat. "Well, if we''d just be in the way of the evacuation, I suppose our only task is to make sure we are fully prepared for the trip, and besides that, have some time to kill. Anything we want to see or do? San Francisco was our little home away from home for a while there."


    I gave it a moment of thought. It wasn''t exactly a great time in my life. I''d lost my leg, which became a permanent disability. AEGIS, Whitney, and I were living out of a tent in a campground, without any real money or resources. I''d lost Lia to the XPCA and Moon to her father, and was feeling depressed and useless.


    "Uh, nothing jumps to mind. Maybe I''ll just wait on-base."


    "Nonsense," AEGIS decided. "We''ll be in the air forever, you need to stretch your legs. If nothing else, we can go back to that park with a pagoda and hindu shrine we wished at before."


    "What, really?" I stared at her. "We agreed it was superstitious nonsense."


    "Maybe so. But my wish came true," she winked at me. "Given we have the time, I wouldn''t mind going back and saying thanks. Or, y''know, making an even more greedy wish."


    "Like...Justice being defeated and the world returning to sanity?"


    "Sure," she grinned. "Wish for whatever you want."


    "Ooh, I''ll wish for a pony," Saga chirped. "Made of rainbows. And meat."


    "I would wish for a v2 Eblazer Artorias," Karu commented. "A singular round from such would put our issues with Justice to rest...and many other problems in the future, besides."


    "I''d wish for whatever AEGIS wishes for," TARGA added. Completely unnecessarily, because she was, as far as I saw it, an insufferable suck-up.


    "Even if it was something involving Athan?" AEGIS batted her eyes at me sideways.


    I could almost hear TARGA''s harsh breathing over the comms. "S...s-sure. Maybe I''d wish for you to come to your senses and find someone more suitable instead."


    "I wish you''d shut the fuck up," I said.


    "Well I wish you''d die."


    "Children...please¡­" AEGIS sighed.


    "Look, can we not," I argued. "The world is going to shit. What''s Justice been up to since we launched, cockroach?"


    "He has continued his western-trending rampage, Ape. Memphis was eradicated, and he seems en-route towards Denver."


    "So you see," I turned to AEGIS. "You know as well as I do how fucked we''re all getting right now. I don''t really have the inclination to waste time traipsing through an evacuation zone to pray at some stupid shrine for love. I just want us all to focus on what needs to get done. I expect this shit from Saga, and TARGA can obviously be full of shit and work at the same time. But you and me...we need to focus." I shook my head. "Or maybe I need to focus."


    She looked at me for long moments, during which, again, I thought I could hear TARGA''s breath. And then she frowned.


    "Athan, I disagree. There''s no benefit you''ll gain by just sitting inside your own head and killing yourself. Get out, stretch your legs, see what the city''s like, remind yourself of why we do all of this. We have this chance to pause, and I think it''s critical to take it. Things are coming to a head, and we don''t know the next time we''ll be able to slow down...or¡­"


    She swallowed hard, and her hand found my knee and gave me a firm squeeze. She didn''t need to say it, we all knew, but she continued on anyway, her voice more gentle.


    "Or even if we''ll all be alive after this. So...while I''d like to say it''s important for you, and as your self-appointed caretaker, I think you should¡­" She paused, seeming to check Saga and my faces to gauge our response before finishing. Then took a deep breath. "Well, the fact is, even if that''s true, I''d like to go. For me. And I''d like you to come. All of you. My friends."


    Karu and Saga aww''d in unison, though how sarcastically, I couldn''t tell. And while I still thought it was probably a stupid waste of time, apparently I had that time to waste, and wasn''t going to not give it to her after a speech like that.


    "I''ve never...had a friend before," TARGA sniffled.


    "Dude, she wasn''t talking to you," I snipped.


    "Shut up. Don''t try to take this from me."


    "She was talking about us going to the shrine together. You''re not even here. How could you possibly misconstrue that?"


    "I...shut up, Ape. She spoke to all of us. I was included."


    "Yeah, over my dead body." I glanced at AEGIS to gauge her approval, but she seemed deliberately neutral in poise.


    To my surprise, it was Saga who answered me, her face serious for fucking once. "Athan, if they want to be friends, don''t be a dick."


    I blinked at her. "What?"


    "You heard me. Let them be friends."


    "W...what?"


    "Do I need to shout it in your head? [Let them be friends!]"


    I winced, and the VTOL dipped slightly, followed by Karu''s elegantly strung-together insults of choice.


    "I''m just super lost where you became some kind of appointed guardian of TARGA," I explained. "Do you not remember the whole fucking bit where TARGA imprisoned, tortured, and broke you?"


    She rolled her eyes. "If you''re arguing that was the same TARGA, then you''ve got no reason to hate her."


    "Again. For the third time now, what?"


    Saga ticked off on her fingers. "That Targa that you hated died, and took that AEGIS which you loved with her. So if you''re saying this Targa''s the same, it only follows that this AEGIS is the same too. In which case, your gal never died, and you''ve got no beef."


    "I''m not saying that. I''d never fucking say that. AEGIS died that day, protecting me."


    Saga shrugged. "Then you accept that and this AEGIS are different people. Just like that and this TARGA are. So give it a rest and let them have their weird sorority-sister friendship thing going on."


    "Also," Karu added from the helm. "Not to provoke success in this relationship endeavor, but it is never a good look to forbid your partner from having friends, as it were."


    I had to pause to reel for a moment. "What? What the hell brought this on? Why are you all ganging up on me?"


    "It''s okay," AEGIS assured us...them more than me, it seemed. "Athan''s an idiot and I know it. But I appreciate it, guys."


    "I am so lost," I told her.


    She just smiled. "They have some strong feelings about specific things, you big dummy. You pushed some buttons."


    "Tickled some buttons," Saga corrected.


    "I uh, don''t get it. But I''m sorry," I told Saga.


    She just gave me half a smirk and then a mental impression of a time that felt so long ago, a memory of her and AEGIS finally bonding, finally becoming friends, a ragged friendship which finally bloomed after a hundred years of betrayal and dispute. So things were...complicated there.


    But any further understanding had to be put on hold, as we were coming up on the city now, dipping below the clouds with a bit of turbulence which made Saga and her ill-equipped harness almost punch herself in the jaw. She muttered in irritation as we laughed.


    "All right, preparing for touchdown," Karu commented, flipping switches and pulling the VTOL slower and more level with every moment. "I know not your plans, but I for one, will accompany AEGIS on her pilgrimage. Making a wish is a ritual I have no reservations in observing."


    "I''ll tag along," Saga said. "Though it might just be fun to stroll through the city and soak up the panic as everyone flees. Might be the closest I get to feeling like Godzilla." She shrugged. "Until Athan dies and I can go on that dream rampage vacation I''ve always dreamed of."


    "Sure, I guess I''ll go too. For you," I told AEGIS. "And I''m sorry about being an insensitive ass so much this flight."


    "Well, we have a whole ''nother flight in an hour or two, so you can try again then," she grinned. "I know you''re stressed about the whole...Justice destroying the world thing. We all are. We''re just better at being full of shit the day before it all goes to hell."


    "What, this isn''t everything going to hell?" I asked. "He''s gonna destroy every city in America. Maybe then, the world."


    "Sure," she agreed. "And that''s super fucking awful and we''re doing what we can. But it''s not hell. Not just yet."


    "Then...what is?"


    Her eyes were still sparkling yellow, her smile luminous and genuine.


    "When you decide you can''t take anymore, and go off to fight him" Her voice was lively, despite her words. "When you sign up to die."


    "I don''t think that''s happening," I told her.


    But she just smiled more broadly, like there was somehow a joke here I just wasn''t getting. "Sure," she agreed. "We''ll see who knows you better, when it comes to the end."


    I shook my head. "Even I''m not that stupid."


    "We''ll see."

 418. 2252, Present Day. San Francisco. Athan.

    I had never felt quite so out-of-place before.


    Sure, there were loads of times when I was an outsider -- whether XPCA or Exhuman, being an outsider was basically my hat. But this had been something else.


    Despite being around so many, I''d never really participated in the evacs. The P-Force was a strike team, we were the ones holding the line so that the evacuation could go on behind us, and finishing the fight so people could return to their homes. And while I''d never argue that I had the better end of that deal, seeing everyone fleeing now did make me glad I''d never had to deal with it in the past.


    It had been surreal to watch them go. I was like a ghost, walking through the streets of San Francisco, almost invisible except to draw irritated glances, as though it was me, personally, who''d taken up haunting their living room and forcing them out.


    For the most part, I''d call the evacuees professional. They hardly spoke, just worked at packing their things and nervously sitting through traffic as they shipped out. As much of a threat and disruption as this was, I knew each of them had the specter of Atlanta, Birmingham, and now Memphis foremost in their minds.


    We''d passed through them, like ghosts, travelling on-foot until we reached the shrine where all of us now stood, waited, and reflected, the little pagoda packed with the four of us. I was leaning on a rail, thinking of all the people who went past, taking glances at the others; Saga, cross-legged with her back against a beam, apparently in meditation. AEGIS, with her hands clasped and her head bowed in silent prayer. Karu, steely, alert, but silent, just like the dozen weapons hanging off of her.


    I bet this was a new record for how many weapons had been in this pagoda at once. Or in this park, or on this block. It wasn''t a good record to break, and I considered that, in likelihood, wherever the four of us went, we were smashing similar titles. That sucked. It hurt to think about, made me remember the amount of ruin we''d afflicted on Tokyo, and just what a herald of destruction we really were.


    A gentle hand shook me from my thoughts, and I looked up to find AEGIS touching my cheek gently, her yellow eyes shining with concern.


    "Y''okay?" she asked in a whisper.


    I nodded. "Just thinking."


    "Given the state of things, I doubt any in the world are truly ''okay'' at the moment," Karu said. "To think, the whole of the United States forced to shut down and flee their lives."


    "Well that''s why we''re doing this," AEGIS continued in a soft voice, as though afraid of breaking the fragile peace in this park. "These people need saving. Even if they do evac, and even if Justice doesn''t go after them, they''ll never be able to return to their lives until someone does something about him."


    "And that someone is us," I said, turning away from her and back towards the shrine.


    It was a simple, understated thing. Just a piece of wood, almost mistakable for part of the Pagoda, were it attached, with a placard at its base written in Japanese, Hindi, and somewhat broken English, which announced that this was a place where wishes came true.


    I hadn''t made my wish yet. It seemed sort of stupid, and sort of...I don''t know. Not selfish, not desperate...because we certainly were desperate at the moment. But more kinda...hypocritical, I guess?


    Fundamentally, God had not asked too much of us, his creations. We got ten commandments which boiled down to: Worship him, and don''t be a dick to fellow man. And I''d violated both, plenty. The one about thou shalt not kill, in particular, I seemed to have trouble toeing.


    Which, y''know, I''d sort of accepted was just who and what I was at this point. People had forced me into it. I always wanted to talk, always wanted to resolve things peacefully where I could. And time and again, people fucking hadn''t let me, had forced my hand, had honed me into this killer...and then tested their creation by throwing their lives at me.


    It was bizarre, awful, hypocritical, I knew. And while I lost a lot of sleep over it at first, it was just life now, and whether I was okay with it or not, didn''t really matter. The world needed an unfeeling, murdering, me, it seemed like, so here I was to do it.


    But bringing God into it was a whole other matter. People had forced my hand into breaking His law, and it was people who suffered the consequences for that. But that didn''t mean I was ready to face him and start asking for favors. I was going to hell, without a doubt, but the least I could do was accept it and at least be sorry, instead of praying for Him to fix all our broken shit.


    Because. After all, if divine intervention was a thing, then why had I become this monster in the first place? I had to not believe in it, or else my entire existence was a lie.


    "So is this like a birthday wish?" AEGIS asked, in a whisper too cheery to be compatible with this city or with my mind. "If you tell what you wished for, does it not come true?"


    "Has a birthday wish ever come true, by merit of not speaking it?" Karu asked.


    "Wouldn''t know," AEGIS shrugged with a grin. "Only ever had one birthday so far, and we kinda skipped it."


    I blinked at her. "We did? Oh god, I''m sorry, when was it?"


    She giggled. "I dunno, I''d celebrate when I escaped the box and entered my own body for the first time. That''s kinda what being born is, if you think about it. But that''s also kinda pushing it, since...there hasn''t been a single AEGIS iteration yet which has...made it a full year."


    "Ouch," I frowned at her.


    "Well. Yeah." She paused and then put her smile back on. "Well, no reason to dwell on that. We''re all familiar with my history. So tell me what you wished for, Athan?"


    "Oh. Uh. You first?"


    I was surprised as she suddenly closed in on my face, and then I felt the indescribable warmth and softness of her lips on mine. In the corner of my eye, I could see Karu going through as many emotions as I was...although hers were a lot more irritated than mine. Mine were mostly half-aborted thoughts, sensations which shorted out in my currently-being-kissed head, half-ideas like warm, soft, slippery.


    AEGIS pulled away just before Karu moved to separate us.


    "The...the nerve!" Karu hissed.


    AEGIS just giggled again "Well, what do you know, the wishes do come true." She touched her lips gently. "Although, I wouldn''t have minded wearing a white dress and doing that right after someone says you may now kiss the bride."


    "At a time such as this?" Karu seemed absolutely flabbergasted. "This is what you wish for?"


    "Sure do. I figure, we''ve got this Justice situation in the bag," she winked. "Mighty as he is, there hasn''t been anything yet that can stop all of us. So I may as well spend my wishes on what''s still undecided."


    "As much as I appreciate your optimism -- what?" I asked. "Seriously, what the hell? He''s systematically destroying America, intentionally. We''ve lost thousands of men and billions of credits. To say nothing of the civilian damage--"


    "As though I don''t know that?" she agreed. "And I suppose you''re right, we might die horribly."


    "Then what the hell?"


    She shrugged. "Well, then use your wish on it Athan. Karu, what''d you wish for? ''At a time such as this''?"


    Karu blanched. "Erm." She suddenly coughed and flustered. "That is to say¡­" She kept looking at me, as though I''d be able to explain it for her. I just shook my head.


    "Oh. My. God," AEGIS exclaimed. "Did you wish for the same thing I did?"


    "No!"


    "You totally did. And then you criticized me for it! Oh my god."


    "I did no such thing," Karu announced, going red. "I was...I wished...I wished for this global crisis to be resolved, of course. To do any less would be irresponsible."


    "Karu, you''re not the only one with optics good enough to monitor vitals. You''re lying."


    "Fine!" she shouted, flushing. "Your logic was the same as mine. That if he spent his wish as we assumed, then my own would be free for personal use." She frowned. "Not that these wishes matter in the least. It is all superstition and hookum."


    "And yet, you still made the wish," AEGIS continued, grinning.


    "Well," Karu crossed her arms, her visor flaring. "It is no surprise to any present that Ashton and I have a thing, as it were. So observing that I might wish for such is really neither surprise, nor damnation. Besides, he seems to have made up his mind in predilection for you. My wish was merely distilled optimism. As all wishes are."


    She paused for a long moment and then added. "And I would note, I would not desire ill on either of you to have it fulfilled."


    AEGIS cocked her head and made a thoughtful noise. And then resumed her smile, before gingerly advancing on Karu with a hug.


    "You''re pretty okay," she said. "For a crazy bitch."


    Karu seemed paralyzed as she accepted the hug without recourse. "Erm. And...you make an acceptable...facsimile of a decent human being.".


    They held it for a few ungainly seconds, and then AEGIS let go and tried to back off, only to continue being held.


    "Um, Karu?"


    Karu cleared her throat slightly, flushing again.


    "Um...Karu?"


    "Yes. Erm. Say." She shot me half a glance and then whispered to AEGIS but loud enough for me to hear. "What is your opinion on an open relationship?"


    AEGIS froze, and then laughed loudly, startling Karu off of her at last. She just watched in alarm as AEGIS kept laughing, covering her mouth and very nearly doubling over.


    "I did not think my question quite so deserving of this level of mockery¡­"


    AEGIS tried to speak, but really, really couldn''t. It took her several tries and several deep breaths before she could explain that, she wasn''t laughing at Karu. Though what she was laughing at, exactly, she couldn''t get out.


    So Karu and I lingered there like an awkward fart until AEGIS resumed herself.


    "Ha...sorry...seriously...sorry," she said, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. "My god. I''m sorry. I didn''t see that one coming."


    "It is...no matter," Karu said, jaw clenched stoically beneath a crimson flush. "It was a foolish question."


    "No. It''s fine. We''re just so messed up, the lot of us." She shook her head. "Uh, I mean, a lot of that comes down to what Athan thinks. I''m um...I mean I can''t say I''m too keen on it but...if it''s just you...I don''t know. Can I think about it?"


    "Certainly," Karu said, looking shocked. "I must say, I expected harsh rejection and nothing but."


    "Guys, can we...not?" I injected myself into the conversation.


    "Oh? You don''t want a hot threesome?" AEGIS asked.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    And it was kind of at that moment that I really understood what was going on here. More than AEGIS struggling between her wants and her jealousy and her...well...perversion, probably. Or Karu''s long-simmering desire. Or the prospect of a threesome, which, yeah, I wasn''t about to let that thought into my head, or I''d never be able to focus again, which was why I wanted the conversation derailed right now.


    But it was about not leaving things unresolved, wasn''t it? AEGIS had always been very discreet in the displays of affection she''d given, and yet suddenly come onto me, in front of Saga and Karu. Karu had overtly been wishing for some kind of thing with me, and then more, admitted to it with me standing right there.


    They were afraid. They were smiling and hugging and making proclamations about how the future would be, our places in it, and how many threesomes there would be, but the reason why was because nobody was sure what future there would be. The world was being destroyed as we spoke, and what would exist after, and who would make it through...none of us knew. And nobody wanted to be the one who died, but left everything unresolved.


    At least, that''s what I surmised. Maybe that was obvious and I was just slow. Maybe I was just reaching, for any possible explanation for why threesome plans were being forged right in front of me.


    Whether it was true or not, it wrenched my heart, and I found myself, as AEGIS had, gingerly stepping forward and embracing the two in a hug, one in each arm, one on each side.


    "Love you, Athan," AEGIS whispered to me.


    "I love both of you," I said. "And we''ll get through this."


    "Make not promises you cannot keep. Especially to a maiden''s heart," Karu warned.


    But she made no move to pull away. We just lingered for long moments, until the hug just seemed to expire and we drifted apart, both closer and further away. I felt colder in their absence, but warmer from it being.


    Something odd struck me, and I looked around, hit with sudden concern. There she was, sitting there, unperturbed. Saga, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the pagoda, eyes shut, hands in her lap, apparently completely at peace. Or dead.


    "Dude, what''s up with Saga?" I asked. "I just realized we''ve been talking about serious shit, romantic shit, threesomes, and hugging, and she hasn''t said a peep."


    "That IS bizarre," Karu agreed. "Mayhap she has fallen asleep?"


    "You seriously have got to stop saying ''mayhap''," I told her as I kneeled in front of Saga, waving my hand with no reaction. "Dude, Saga. Hello?"


    I gave her a little shake with no change. And then a zap.


    "Ow!" she shouted, looking around. "Oh. Hey. Sorry."


    "What''s up, Saga?"


    "It is said that on the eve of a great battle, some warriors would enter a trance to visualize the entire scene which would play out before them," Karu explained. "Mayhap...erm...perchance, Saga is paying the future conflict the focus it is due?"


    "Pfft, yeah, screw that," Saga laughed. "No, there''s just...something interesting here. I think."


    "You think?" I asked. "How can something be here you think?"


    "Dunno. It''s weird. I''m honestly not sure it even exists, I''m just...like...y''know when you walk into a hobby shop, and you''re all alone, because why would anyone ever be in a hobby shop when you can just buy online? Except you get that hint of rank sweat right when you walk in the door, and it''s so fresh you''re kinda certain someone''s in there?"


    "What the fuck?" AEGIS succinctly summarized.


    "Yeah. It''s like that. It''s like there''s traces of something, except mental traces. Gah, it''s so hard to explain to you single-brained folks."


    "But there''s a thing?" I asked.


    She nodded. "''A thing'' is almost exactly how I''d describe it."


    ''Like...a good thing? A bad thing?"


    "A thing."


    "And you can sense it? Can you talk to it?"


    "That''s what I''ve been doing. So far the answer is a resounding and startling ''no''. Startling because, hey," she batted her eyes at me. "Can you imagine not wanting to talk to this?"


    Karu sighed. "Be that as it may -- which it is not -- can you give a more concrete definition of this thing? It would not do to introduce yet more trouble to our situation."


    Saga scratched her chin as she gave it some thought. "Not really. It''s not human. The closest mind I could compare it to...and this is mostly just by lack of good comparatives...would be our god, in Oasis."


    The three of us sputtered in unison. "What!?"


    "Well. At the same time, nothing like that. Like I said, I haven''t even successfully been able to make contact. It''s elusive, and it''s definitely not human. Definitely doesn''t even think like a human, barely even counts as a mind, really. It''s super interesting! It''s like exchanging smoke signals with an alien."


    "Yes, because that''s a metaphor, and definitely a relatable experience we''ve all had," AEGIS intoned.


    "Whatever. Get your head out of your ass. My point is, unlike you chucklefucks, I don''t much care so long as it''s interesting shit. And this shit is interesting, so hells yeah, Imma poke it and see what comes out."


    "Your level of social responsibility and personal accountability continue to whelm," Karu drawled. "Perhaps we should spend the remainder of our wait on base. It is fairly hot out here, besides."


    "Nah, you guys go on ahead," Saga said.


    "I''d rather not. No offense, but if you get distracted, we''ll be super late."


    She giggled softly. Her little tinkling laugh was so much better suited for this place than either of the others''. "Not what I meant. As in, go to China without me. You''ll be fine."


    I stared at her, feeling the conversation had suddenly veered off a cliff I hadn''t seen coming. "What?"


    "You''ll be fine. Just go like, chat with Rio and tell her to stop attacking eastern European countries and make out with her a little or something. That''d work on me."


    "You do realize, Dragon''s going to be there. And without you threatening their god, they kind of have no reason to listen to us? We really need you as a trump card there."


    "Mayhap¡­" Karu cringed. "...perhaps you should just make out with Saga on the spot to convince her to come along?"


    "Good idea!" Saga said, puckering up.


    I stared at her, wondering if this was really happening. "AEGIS is this really happening?" I asked.


    "Not if you don''t want it to," she cracked her knuckles.


    "Well, moment''s gone," Saga said. "See you when you get back."


    "Wait, no, you''re not seriously serious. Come on," I argued. "We need you."


    "And I don''t wanna."


    "Saga, please. The world''s going to shit, Justice is out there, you know what he''s capable of."


    "I do. And don''t think that I''m all just screwing around here. I do have a lot of faith in you." She reached out and gave my cheek a little squeeze. "I know you''ll be fine handling the whole Oasis thing without me."


    "But why? This is just stupid, we''re adding so much more risk by leaving you. Just come with us and you can...you can play with the weird thought-things when we get back."


    "Sorry, Athan. I''m not letting this thing slip away. It''s wispy, fragmented -- I dunno if I''d ever find it again, and I''ve got a whole eternity to suffer any regrets I find. My mind''s made up. And you should know, there''s no beating my mind," she grinned.


    "Seriously. I''m asking as your friend."


    "How about as more than a friend?" she asked, batting her eyes again. She licked her lips and pushed back strands of her hair, her pale round ears materializing like a full moon from behind clouds.


    I swallowed hard, kneeling opposite her, shooting cagey glances at AEGIS, who just shrugged maybe more violently and desperately than normal. But she didn''t stop us as we leaned forward, until I could feel her breath on me.


    "Athan," she said, her voice a whisper of a silky purr. "There''s something you should know."


    "What?" I asked.


    "If you kiss me."


    "Yeah?"


    "I''m still not going."


    I shoved her face backwards and she tumbled to the ground giggling. "Should''ve told you after the kiss, I guess," she said.


    "I can''t believe you''re not. I just...I don''t get it."


    "You don''t have to get it. Just listen to me. We''ll all see how it goes. Besides, it''s more fun this way!"


    "More fun, risking horrifying death, for no good reason?"


    "Wait, you guys die? Oh shit, I forgot about that. Not really my thing you see--"


    "Seriously," I said, getting to my feet and pulling her to hers. But she still wriggled out of my grasp when I started to turn to leave. "Seriously? This isn''t some game or joke? You''re really, really not coming?"


    "You''ve asked like ten times. I''m not. Come back for me, ''k?"


    I shook my head at her. "I...I don''t...this is so¡­"


    "We might die," AEGIS cut in. "Athan might. Very easily. There''s no reason for Dragon to hold back if you''re not there. Is this how you want the last time you see him to be? You talked about regrets; do you want to live the rest of your life, the rest of eternity, thinking you could have easily saved him but didn''t?"


    "Low blow," Saga grinned. "But you forget one very important thing."


    "Which is?"


    "Told ''ya already. I believe in this little doofus. He''ll be fine. Doubly-so with you two ladybugs on his flank. Keep ''em safe for me."


    Karu beeped and checked her wrist holo. "The VTOL will be finished fueling soon. We must be off. Shall we simply take her by force?"


    "You''d get mindfucked into oblivion, if that''s what you want," Saga grinned. "Miss your leash, pet?"


    Karu flushed and shrunk back, but AEGIS stepped forward. "Can''t mindfuck me, Saga."


    But I held her back with a hand on her shoulder. "Let''s leave her, guys," I said, not even agreeing with my own words. "If she wants to stay...she''s her own person, not just a mind-fucking tool. We should respect that."


    "I take umbrage with the suggestion that I should respect Saga," Karu sighed, still red. I wasn''t sure what was up with the leash, and I wasn''t sure I wanted to know.


    "You''re sure about this?" I asked.


    "Positive. Good luck, have fun. Don''t die," Saga said. "And I''ll see you after."


    "Except that there''s no way this is worth the risk," AEGIS pouted, pushing up her glasses. "It''s just insanity, for no possible benefit. We''re splitting up our forces, and we''re sending the half least-suited for the situation into it. If anything, Saga should go to Oasis by herself while we resolve problems stateside." She shook her head. "This is just dumb. I''ll drag her to the VTOL and the two of us will go, if mind-fucking is the issue."


    "AEGIS, it''s fine," I said.


    "It''s not! Athan, I know you love dying, but for god''s sake, that doesn''t mean you choose the stupidest possible way to do so. After everything we''ve dealt with about Dragon, we finally found his one weak spot, and it''s her," she jabbed a finger at Saga. "Her and that damn tree. So no, we''re not going to face off with him without our trump card."


    "You can''t make her, though," I said.


    "I can. I can drag her across the world if I have to. She can''t stop me--"


    "Yeah, and then what? You can''t force her to talk to their god. You can''t force her to use her powers for what you want. Just because you''re scared...we''re scared, doesn''t mean we turn into Blackett and start using Exhumans, right? There''s still a line."


    She shook her head. "Until you die, and as a result, how many millions?"


    "You guys are looking at this all backwards," Saga explained, with the air that we understood nothing. Which just did wonders for AEGIS'' mood. "Look, the fact is, there''s a pretty incredibly amazingly powerful entity out there in the glasslands and you want to use its powers for your own. You want to hijack Oasis and turn them against your enemies, and that''s awesome. Using and controlling people, basically the book I wrote. Well, am writing. Will someday write. Will someday force some poor author bastard to ghost-write."


    "Saga," AEGIS pleaded.


    "Right. Anyway. That would be good and great, and like I said, I think you lot have a decent chance of making it work."


    "But we''d have a hundred-percent chance--"


    "You know the only thing better than having some ancient, unknowable alien entity using its crazy powers to work for you?" Saga continued, with obvious relish.


    "Having a hundred-percent chance of it working?" AEGIS intoned.


    "Having two ancient, unknowable alien entities. So you guys go off, do a good job, and get Oasis on our side. And while you do, I''ll have at this thing. See what it can do. See if it can even be reasoned with."


    "See if it can be awakened and destroy the city under which it sleeps, you mean," Karu said. "Awakening another Justice-class threat at this juncture would spell doom for us all. Meddle not in powers greater than you."


    Saga shrugged. "At least if that happens, Justice doesn''t get to destroy the city. And then we might get a real-life kaiju battle. So I''m game."


    "This is bullshit," AEGIS said. "Saga, you can''t even control the god of Oasis. If this thing is anything like it, if you wake it up, we''ll just have another cosmic entity trucking around on its own agenda. And looking at what Oasis is up to right now, that is not what we need. Leave it alone, come with us--"


    "AEGIS, enough," I barked.


    "But--"


    "She knows, okay? She''s not stupid. Nobody here is stupid. We all get it, we all just have...different priorities. Different goals." I shot Saga a significant look. "Much as I wish we didn''t. Are you absolutely sure you''re really not coming?"


    She shook her head.


    "Okay. Well. That sucks, and we all think so. But I can''t make you. So...we''ll do our best, and you do your best. And hopefully, both of our tasks will turn up alright. If not¡­I guess..."


    "When we reach hell, we will know where we spread ourselves too thin," Karu said.


    "Yeah. That," I agreed. "Then I guess this is goodbye for now, Saga. Good luck."


    "Don''t need it," she grinned. "But good luck to you guys at least."


    "We shall be late if we delay any further," Karu said. "We shall need to make haste."


    "Alright, we''re out then," I said, shaking off my legs, my exoframe whirring. AEGIS stretched briefly as her engines flared, and Karu jumped into a hover.


    "Wait," Saga said. I turned, hoping she''d changed her mind, but found her just seated again. "Before you go, Athan, did you finish your wish?"


    "No. But there''s no time--"


    "Do it," she said, with a serious nod. "It''s more important than you know."

 419. 2252, Present Day. Pacific airspace. Athan.

    While we were flying, Kansas City had joined the others in being reduced to refuse. Cosette was violently vocal about us disappearing off of comms for more than an hour, and it felt like she spent at least that long berating us afterwards.


    Though as for why exactly, I didn''t think she was being exactly honest. She said it was essential we remain on-hand and up-to-date because of the crisis...but when she had us online for the whole flight, she didn''t have much to say or anything to ask.


    In fact, if she weren''t violently denying it constantly, I''d have thought she was just scared that we''d died somehow. But that couldn''t be, because Cosette was one of the most staunch and determined people I knew, and a little thing like the world crumbling wasn''t going to put her in an emotional rut. No sir.


    At least, that''s how she acted. Chewing us out until we went from feeling missed to wishing we were actually dead.


    I spent most of the flight neglecting her, instead watching the news. With four cities down and Justice now making the long trek towards Denver, the entire world had entered panic mode. Some people were proclaiming this to be the end, fearless keyboard warriors declaring our doom as though somehow giving up first made them above it all. Others had founded new bonds of humanity and compassion, found families forged by loss of real ones, with the aim only to hold and support.


    Politics had become very strange. Russia, who had never been very close or sympathetic, and who currently faced the threat of the Oasian army, had committed to sending over all their available armed forces, to stand together with the United States, perhaps understanding that without us, they would fall alone.


    Most of the rest of the world had shown similar support. I heard stories of millions of credits offered, of skilled labor of all kinds, of harbors to the American refugees. In Oregon, there had been a fleet of Japanese fishing ships which had landed to take on as many as they could carry, and Mexico had thrown the borders completely open, letting all pass unimpeded and unharried.


    That was on the human end of things, and while there were reports of people being shitty, for the most part, it made me proud. Proud of people in general, banding together in the face of something bigger than them, something which could have killed any of them instead, without even a thought.


    Because that was the other side of the news: Justice''s side. He had killed many -- reports coming in speculated that he''d passed a million a while ago, and some were saying as high as two million.


    As the words flowed past me along with Cosette''s criticism, I just tried to sit and envision two million people. In less than half a day, two million.


    Professional football games -- real ones, not like I played in -- topped out at around a hundred thousand in attendance. How many times had I fantasized about myself on that strip of green, surrounded by a wall of cheering, surging humanity? I tried to think of my crowds, the hundreds and hundreds of faces, and tried to blow up in my mind the largest game I''d ever played in by a thousandfold. And then...twenty times more than that.


    My brain couldn''t do it. Couldn''t process that number of people. And it certainly couldn''t imagine suddenly all of them being dead. That was just too much.


    I tried a different take, looking around at the cold metal walls of the VTOL around me. A quick ''net search informed me a commercial flight could carry around five-hundred fifty passengers at once. Two million people were around thirty-six hundred ships full of passengers.


    And to conceptualize their deaths, as I looked down at the dark ocean, immutable beneath us, that meant if one full VTOL crashed every second, it would take a full hour of such insane, senseless carnage to equal his death toll. A full hour of craft plummeting from the sky, explosions and deaths every second, and not a single survivor.


    It seemed utterly impossible, but those were the numbers we were dealing with here. And that was half a day''s work for Justice. At that current rate¡­


    AEGIS looked over at me with a notes document, a calculator app, and a scowl, and asked what I was doing.


    "Two million people in half a day," I told her. "That''s four million in a day. US population is around four-hundred million so that''s...literally every single person in the entire US dead in a hundred days."


    "Oh Athan," she frowned, and gently pushed my mobile down into my lap. "Don''t do that to yourself."


    "I just want to know what we''re dealing with."


    She looked at me, deadly serious. Her eyes seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, more yellow than the sun, and more brilliant. She had such intensity, when she wanted to.


    "You already know," she sighed. "Everything."


    "I know everything?"


    "No. You know the stakes. Justice is...well...like everyone''s saying, I think he''s the end. If we don''t stop him, he''s the end of everything. It doesn''t matter how many or how fast he kills...either we stop him, and what damage he did is done...or we don''t, and that''s just...it."


    I found it too hard to keep looking at her eyes and my gaze settled somewhere on her lap. When I was surprised by another voice piping up in my ear other than Cosette.


    "PF Five to PF Actual, If you do not mind my intrusion," Moon said.


    "Go ahead," I said, surprised at hearing her voice. "I thought you guys were deployed?"


    "We were, until just now. Our mission ended successfully. No thanks to Tem."


    "Hi Chariot. I apologize, I fried a man and I should not have," Tem squeaked.


    Moon continued. "He was being belligerent. And after, the rest fell readily in line. TARGA approved of our methods, at least."


    "How are things out there, on the ground?" I asked.


    I could almost hear the pregnant pause Moon always gave. "I am tempted to make a joudan at your loose phrasing. But I will resist the temptation, given the climate. Things are as bad as you would expect, Chariot. People are frightened. The Exhumans we have been sent to suppress are the worst of the worst -- supremacists, who believe that this is the dawn of Exhumanity''s hour."


    "What does...what does that mean?" AEGIS asked, eyes wide.


    "It means, things have escalated. Those who before were acting out when the XPCA showed signs of strain are now behaving as imitators of their new idol. Exhumans who see humanity as a frail oppressor are ''rising up'' through the same violence Justice implicitly promotes."


    "Oh no. Oh no, no, no," AEGIS pulled at her hair.


    "I concur," Moon said, with unobvious frustration. "The first major incident has already transpired but has been covered up in the name of national security."


    "What incident? What more could possibly be going wrong right now? Isn''t Justice enough?"


    "Justice, New Eden, and Oasis, you mean," Karu added.


    My mobile buzzed in my hand and I found myself reading a message from Moon. I tapped the link and watched as several documents unfolded across the holo.


    A series of stills from security cameras painted the scene. A refugee camp, tagged as being outside Green Bay, tents being put up, traffic directed in from cars, busses, and many simply on-foot.


    And then, the scene changed in the course of a single still. There was an explosion, which radiated outwards over the course of several more pictures, and when it finally faded, the scene left behind was one of carnage and chaos, the dread and oppressive air boiled away into horror in an instant.


    All except the one guy left standing, right in the middle of the blast. Grinning, directly at the camera, as though he knew it was there.


    "Right now, we''re seeing an unprecedented surge of cooperation and fraternity," Moon explained. "It is the only thing keeping this unwieldy evacuation effort on its feet. But if even a few events such as these break the news, the situation will shatter."Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    "Just another way Justice wants to break us," I swore.


    "He hasn''t yet," AEGIS assured me. "Even if there are a few maniacs, look at the millions of people being good to each other, opening their doors and their hearts to their fellow man. He thinks he''s breaking humanity, but right now, we''re more unified than ever."


    "For now," I said. "Moon''s right that if this ever gets out, all that goodwill is going to evaporate."


    "Well," she beamed at me. "All that means is we need to stop him before then, huh? People are behaving for the moment and keeping evacuation smooth and casualties to a minimum, that''s just buying time for us to do our jobs.


    "Speaking of which," Karu said from the helm, "we are on approach to Oasis now."


    And so we were. I didn''t know how long the ocean had been behind us, but looking outside now, all I could see was the black stretch of the glasslands, flowing and scintillating as the waves had been, and the grey malaise of the sky.


    "We, too, must return to service," Moon said. "We are to head to Key West this time."


    "Another event? Already?" I asked.


    I could hear the tiny curl of a smile in her voice. "No. I am simply out of rum, and that is an emergency."


    "Thanks, Moon."


    "Joudan. Be well, and be swift. The world is on our backs. Be the heroes we imagined ourselves when this all began."


    I didn''t have time to respond to that rather cryptic statement before I heard the tone of her changing off the comms channel. I just shot a glance at AEGIS, who shrugged.


    The rest of the flight we took in relative silence. I''d accepted AEGIS'' advice and put down my holo, and instead just listened to the drone of the engines and the sounds of two-million people dying in my head.


    The VTOL jerked sideways, hard enough that it would have thrown me against the wall if I weren''t strapped in. AEGIS swore, and I heard Karu''s voice and all kinds of alarms screaming in the cabin.


    "What''s going on?" AEGIS shouted.


    "We are being fired upon," Karu said, her voice too calm for the maneuvers she was pulling us through. Up and down this time, like the VTOL was trying to buck us. Outside the window, I heard a distant boom.


    "Who is? Oasis?"


    "Who else? Are the glasslands so filled to bursting with SAMs that you need to query?"


    The note of irritation in Karu''s voice shut us up, and we just hung on to our belts and our seats as the booms grew more intense and frequent, and the craft''s shuddering switchbacks became constant.


    "Just land!" I shouted.


    "We are ten miles out, still."


    "Then we''ll walk ten miles."


    "While under artillery fire? I think not."


    There was a shuddering blast that I felt in my teeth, and the lurching of the craft to the left this time seemed less planned. Still, we were holding together, although the shaking had me starting to feel violently sick.


    I closed my eyes and tried not to focus on the sound and how much I was being flung around in my seat. So, y''know, the only two things I had left with my eyes closed. I felt myself heave and swallowed it back down with determination.


    AEGIS squeezed a waxy bag into my fingers and gave me a reassuring pat on the back of the hand.


    It seemed to last forever, but at the same time, was over before I knew it. From the number of switches being flipped and the cadence of different sirens turning on and off in the cabin, I knew Karu was hard at work. The engines raced and roared, sometimes falling completely silent as we plummeted downwards in a stomach-lifting dive, only to scream to life with us that much closer to the black, bladed ground.


    Until, finally, I felt us lurch, stopping so suddenly I thought we''d hit something. But there was no crash, just the sounds of the landing gear deploying, and the soft rock of the ship touching blessed ground. I went to unbuckle and fall out of the ship, ready to kiss the blackened, sharpened earth, but found my legs like jello under me.


    Without a pause, AEGIS'' arms were there, scooping me up and moving us, faster than I expected, bolting out the exit.


    "What''s...what''s the rush? Were we hit?" I panted, choking on how sick the inside of my mouth felt.


    She didn''t need to answer. We emerged out of the ramp and into the startling desert sun. All I saw of Karu was a blue streak vanishing into the sky before us.


    And right there, maybe ten feet away, like Karu had wanted to park in the shade of its walls, there was Oasis. I understood at once, down here, this close to the wall, this was a blind spot for their guns and artillery, like stepping inside a punch, this was the only place in this whole sun-blasted place where they couldn''t hit us.


    Not directly, and not yet, anyway. But looking up, I saw the first stirrings of people atop the wall. The lowest caste, humans, not even yet armed with the city''s store of exotics. But that would change once their communal mind determined this to be an attack. We had to negate that before we found ourselves at war.


    AEGIS sprinted around the outer walls, sliding to a halt in front of the gate.


    "City of Oasis!" she shouted, and I slid out of her arms so she wouldn''t look quite so much like she was carrying a baby around. "I am AEGIS, High Priestess of Our God, and by my rank and by your laws, I demand entrance to the sacred city!"


    Her words echoed strangely. The smooth white stone and black glass shone in the sun. On this side of the city, none had stirred yet on the walls. By all accounts, she''d just shouted at nothing.


    "They must have changed some things since they declared war," AEGIS muttered. "Used to be, all you had to do to get in was have your boyfriend beat up some guard and give up a few drops of blood."


    "I guess we could beat up a lot of guards?" I asked. I was steady on my feet now, though most of that was the exoframe. I still felt like I was reeling at the top of the six-foot tower which was me, but I''d manage. I couldn''t wait for the sick in my mouth to air out, although I knew from last time that we visited, I''d just have a dry mouth forever.


    There was a sound sort of like an explosion. Something heavy and mechanical, which moved quickly and stopped just as fast. AEGIS and I looked at each other in confusion, until one of us glanced up.


    "Holy shit, move!" she shouted, though why she did, I didn''t know, since she''d scooped me right back up and jumped, concentric circles on her joints ablaze with the sudden acceleration. She kicked off, sending radiating cracks from her point of impact and sending us soaring towards the top of the outer wall.


    I watched as those radial cracks shattered into a cloud of crystalline razor-dust, of flames and ash, as something enormous and firey impacted the ground right where we''d been standing, the mortar landing with improbable aim.


    AEGIS didn''t quite clear the wall, but as we hit it, she took a few running vertical strides, giving us an extra boost upwards, and her reaching fingers just caught the edge, dangling there with me cradled in one arm and straining with her fingertips on the other.


    I yanked myself up at once, while she made pitiful noises and her body groaned, and when I pulled her up after me, she spent a short moment stretching and swearing, doing something which seemed not-dissimilar to popping and resetting her joints.


    "Well that fucking hurt," she announced. "Think they''ll fire on us again if we''re atop the wall?"


    "I would rather not find out. These guys are kinda...zombie-like in following their orders. I don''t think they''d think it through enough to worry about it."


    "Speaking of, Athan, listen. There''s a loophole...in their programming. It''s why they think I''m a High Priestess."


    "Can we talk and run? We need to find Rio."


    She nodded, and both of us kicked off the wall towards the center city. "Actually," she panted, over the roar of her engines, "it''s related to that. The priests in the center ring, like everyone else in the city, they''re in a fake world...but they need to interact with the high priests, and so they can see the real world a bit. I think their god censors out anyone else in the city under its control."


    "I like your theories," I panted, as we flashed past people and up the streets. The middle gates were open, thankfully, and the city apparently hadn''t considered this an attack yet, so we were doing okay. But there was still the innermost gate to worry about, too high to jump, even for AEGIS. "But can we focus on right now?"


    "Right. Well. The point is, outsiders aren''t supposed to ever be in the inner ring. Outsiders are also not under their god''s control. What this means is, he''s not hiding them...which means any priest can see them. And the priests are basically programmed to serve anyone they see that issues them orders."


    "So you''re only a high priestess because you didn''t give blood?"


    "Yeah. That and the other high clergy believed me when I said ordering priests around means I''m a high priest. But Athan that''s what I''m trying to say -- their god let you go. If you order a priest now, they''ll listen to you. And that might be super suspicious in their faith. So whatever you do, don''t do that, or it might out me, and then they''ll have no reason to listen to either of us."


    "Okay. Seems unlikely, but okay."


    We''d reached the wall, and it was higher than I remembered. Last time, the girls had blasted a hole through here with Karu''s munitions, but she was flying somewhere else at the moment, I could hear her engines racing in the background of my comms.


    But we needn''t have worried about that. Because the gate was, to my surprise, completely open. An invitation, almost.


    Complete with a welcoming party. Three of them, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, their faces grim as they watched the two of us advance.


    On the left, some guy in blue frippery, like some kind of admiral from the Napoleonic wars. On the right, Rio, and the only one who looked even remotely happy to see us. She had a gun in her arms, but also gave a small wave.


    But I hardly saw it. My eyes were locked on the guy in the middle.


    Long face, skin tanned golden from the desert sun, and curtains of greasy black hair. A cloak, light enough to ward off the sun, but heavy enough to conceal his every move beneath it. And those Sino eyes, narrowed by hate and dispassion.


    Last time we''d clashed, Saga had him by the balls by mind-fucking his beloved tree-god. I''d been forced to let him go at Rio''s behest, but neither of us were on what you''d call good terms. We''d torn off his arm and fucked with his city, his faith, and his god. And he''d killed people I knew, people I loved.


    Dragon was there waiting for us. And just from the look on his face, I could tell he wouldn''t make this easy.

 420. 2252, Two days ago. New Eden. Lia.

    I loved Athan. And I loved that he thought I could do anything. Whenever I was facing down my own failings and shortcomings, it was always reassuring that he would believe in me no matter what.


    Sometimes, yeah, it felt a bit hollow that his faith was so unconditional. It felt like when I was doing nothing but screwing up, he''d wave it away and tell me that was just a fluke, and I''d be so mad at him. I remembered after one game, when I''d gracelessly faceplanted while trying to dig out a spike, and not even getting it, he just told me it happens, that there''s always going to be a bad play, that doesn''t make me a bad player.


    I remembered yelling at him that what was a bad player, but one who did bad plays? And he just laughed at me, which made me all the more upset.


    Looking back on it, he was right. Everyone messed up sometimes. I wasn''t sure why it was so easy for me to accept that in other people but not my own mistakes...maybe because my mistakes, I knew I could do better.


    But that point was, as Athan had moved up in the world, so too had the stakes and associations. And here I was, livid, useless, legs dangling over the arm of an office chair in one of the many rooms within the walls of New Eden. Black uniform crumpled with my posture, boots next to the door, bare feet hanging in the air where anyone walking past could see them through the smoked glass of the door.


    I frowned, and tapped a stud on the desk, turning the door''s window opaque. I was having a bad enough time without someone else deciding I was a child who didn''t belong.


    "Yeah, that''s what I''m telling you," I barked at my mobile. "He wouldn''t even listen to me. Just took one look and asked who the hell is this?, like I wasn''t even a person."


    Whitney''s tone was placating. She didn''t have any actual advice for me, and wasn''t first on my list of people to bitch to, but given the current crises, she was about the only one free.


    "I''m sorry. A lot of people just equate age with competence," she said. "You know, to be president, you have to be at least thirty-five. That''s the culture he operates in, I''m sure it''s nothing personal."


    "Nothing personal?" I writhed in my seat, resisting the urge to pace. I''d probably already put in more miles than the guards on patrol today. "He took one look at me and just decided he was done with me, then and there. It was nothing but personal."


    I heard her take a few breaths. For someone who loved tech, she sure was bad at talking on the phone. "Okay. Well. Even as bad as that is, let''s focus on what we can do, right? That''s what I always do. Something''s busted, fix something else."


    "Yeah, that''s why I''m here in New Eden."


    "What''s wrong with New Eden?" she asked.


    "Same thing wrong everywhere, right now. Exhumans losing their freaking minds. There''s a rumor that Justice is progressing west directly towards the city, and when he reaches here, he''s gonna kill every Exhuman that sided with the XPCA. Stupid as that sounds, given how everyone in this place is already a few sparks away from bonfire, the place in an absolute uproar. And to make it worse, some shadowy leader has taken advantage of the chaos to step in and revive the resistance."


    "Oh. Oh dear."


    "Yeah. So the base administrator''s doing his best, but I''m here to help where I can." I scratched my head. "I knew a few guys in here, and was hoping I could leverage them to get some intel on who''s behind all this at least. But things are too crazy for that, and I''ve got my hands full just helping him keep order, where I can."


    "That, and being threatened by the President."


    "Yes, also that," I glared at my device.


    She paused again. "If he does disband the future-direction board and installs new leadership, what do you think is going to happen?"


    "Well, with Saga, hopefully we won''t find out."


    "But Saga''s with Athan."


    "Yes, well, they''ll be back soon. I''ll...or...someone will just have to stall the president until then."


    "...I heard his approval rating is like, five percent. He''ll blame someone for all this."


    I found myself pacing again before I realized. "He''s been doing nothing but blame. He just sends out everyone, and when they are insufficient, blames them instead of addressing the deficiency. It''s insane."


    I was interrupted by a knock on the door, and without thinking threw it open since I was pacing right there anyway. The kid on the other side looked surprised, and then suddenly remembered to salute.


    "Ma''am! The Administrator wanted to see you."


    "More bad news, I imagine," I told him, stooping to pick up my shoes.


    "I wouldn''t know, Ma''am."


    I let him go, but apparently he was more delivery boy than messenger, and waited at attention while I pulled on boots and socks, and then slouched into the hall behind him.


    The walls of New Eden were, like the rest of the city, made with concrete. And where that was insufficiently impersonal and cold, metal. Being inside them was sort of like being in a very rectangular cave, though I couldn''t quite put my finger on why. There were windows, or at least, the appearance of windows created by camera feeds across the walls, and it was well-lit enough as any room. Things were understandably narrow, though very long to compensate, and probably mathed out to being the side of a standard room, just stretched.


    Maybe it was the ceilings, or how it sounded when sounds echoed in there. Something about it felt subterranean. Which was silly, because parts of the walls were upwards of fifty feet high, veritably a skyscraper. Not where we were, but some of them.


    We were in the thickest part of the walls, the section above the main gate, and closest to the annex buildings, just across the yard. This was New Eden Command, where the XPCA was literally and figuratively above and always watching the Exhumans.


    The main floor was something you might expect to see at NASA. Rows of front-facing desks, each lit up with holos, each staffed by some kind of intelligence or logistics or security officer, talking on their comms, pulling up data, monitoring Exhuman activity within the city. All facing an array of screens, which I understood were usually blank, but they''d been nothing but highlighting trouble since I got here yesterday.


    The base administrator gave our courier a half-assed salute, which was returned ass-and-a-half, and he double-time marched away like a nincompoop.


    "So. You have anything for me?"


    The administrator was relatively new. He''d replaced TARGA when she had...kinda gone insane and transmitted herself into a fortress armor, and then died. These things weren''t really talked about, more the ''Exhumans killed her'' angle...and to those with aspiration, her position was now open.


    So I wasn''t too sure about this guy. Malcom, his name was. Malcom Knox. He looked young, but obviously that didn''t mean anything. He filled the role, but whether that was because of ambition, luck, or circumstance, I didn''t know.


    What I did know, is that like the President, he didn''t know much, and leaned on everyone else to do his job. Which, I guess, sorta was what leaders were supposed to do. But I''d been hanging out with Athan, and I agreed that leading from the front was pretty frickin'' rad. It tended to make these other rear-guard leaders look bad by comparison.


    "No, I''ve been in meetings all day," I told him. "And not productive meetings. Most should have been a voice message. And one in particular¡­" I glowered and he gave me a sideways glance. "Well. Hail to the Chief," I spat.


    He had no idea what I was talking about so he just nodded. "Alright, cool. I thought you were sent here by central to help with the situation here, though. And you haven''t done anything except dig up that there''s some new source of trouble for me."


    I let it pass that central was already a term in XPCA jargon. "Well. It''s been one day. I have people to report to on my own. And¡­" I cleared my throat significantly. "You know how to kill a weed, right? Before you go around clipping off anyone''s head, it pays to dig up the root."


    He shrugged. "Whatever. Dig up whatever you want. I just expected something by now, other than vague warnings of some resistance coming back. There''s real problems in New Eden."


    And so saying, he was done with me and went on to summon and grill the next dude in line. Drove me nuts. And I might have been lying a little when I said I wasn''t sure what to think of him just yet. More like, I wished I didn''t. I wanted to remind him, as I had before, that I outranked him, and that if I wanted, I had the operational authority to step in and take charge of the situation.


    But I didn''t. I didn''t want to play that card yet, if I didn''t have to. When I needed it, and not before.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Now that our little interview was over, I probably had another day before he called me in again, which gave me twenty-four hours to make some progress. To dig up some roots. I called in some operations guys, who seemed anxious to be talking with their boss''s superior, but I could also tell, eager to do something which might fix the situation.


    Their faces fell when I told them what I wanted, but they saluted all the same. A walking tour of the facility, to go in and meet some of these Exhumans.


    I understood why when they were making preparations for me to enter. Scores of soldiers lining up as my guard, orders being blasted out through the city over the PA to be on their very best behavior, and grim reminders what kinds of fate awaited those who might act out. These guards wanted me to give them a solution, not another load of work to stir into a pressure-pot.


    I had to admit, as we drove down the main avenue, the city looked different from here -- from inside an armored car, and over the backs of a hundred exosuits. When I''d been a prisoner here, I thought the expressions of others hostile; turns out I knew nothing of hostility before.


    There were only two real occurrences, and given the nature of Exhuman powers, they weren''t real events at all. Just jokers, or asshats, thinking themselves funny or big by hurling a blob of powers in my direction without any actual intent to kill. The real problem was after each, when the guards stormed and yelled, and the lined-up Exhumans jeered and closed ranks, allowing the perp to escape into the mass, rewarding their insolence and doing little but to unify the Exhumans against us.


    Which was more than I could hope for, really. I wasn''t like the guards believed, here to be ponied about through our works like some triumphing general. I wanted to see it all, wanted to gauge the feeling within the walls, their rage, their helplessness, their passions.


    Two attacks, and ineffective ones at that, was nothing. The Exhumans really were on their best behavior, and that told me that despite their frothing, despite the pressure and fear of Justice being out there, most of them still held respect for the XPCA itself. Whether a vestige of whatever had motivated them to surrender to New Eden in the first place, or a wary esteem for those who kept this place running, there was some kind of unspoken bond still holding things together.


    A bond that their new resistance was chipping away at. I bit my fingernails as the parade drew to a close, and ordered a stop.


    "Stop, ma''am?" my aide asked, clearly dismayed.


    "Yes. Find an Exhuman or two, anyone. I wish to speak with them and gauge how they feel."


    "Now?" He eyed the lines of Exhumans loosely formed around our unit. "Would it not better serve ma''am to have one pulled for interrogation later?"


    "Yes, now," I said, with as much a flippant air as I could. "In their own home, if possible."


    He saluted, but I could see how much I was killing him with my order. To him, I was just an outsider, pulling apart their delicate peace so I could go in and pet the lions. He thought of me as a very important idiot, and that was a role I didn''t mind wearing, if convenient.


    After a few minutes he came back. "Err, yes ma''am, we have a meeting for you. If you would not mind to keep it brief--"


    "I understand. The guard is waiting."


    "Yes ma''am."


    As soon as I opened the door to the vehicle, I was drowned out by booing and jeering. The Exhumans, passively lined up moments before, seemed to surge in my direction, and the guards raised their rifles nervously. I acted regal, giving them a vague smile and wave as I was shepherded past lines of shiny black exosuits and into a concrete house.


    The walls did much to block out sound from outside, and again, I had the feeling of living underground here. Other than that, the living room was pleasant enough, crowded with guards surrounding an older man, who seemed kind, and bewildered.


    Perfect, I thought. And certainly not picked at random -- the man was selected for being chill. Or at least, timid. Someone on the XPCA side of things.


    "Wonderful place you have here," I told him. "May I sit?"


    "Do whatever you want," he said, looking around at the dozen guards in the room. "Barge right into my house, order me to behave. I have rights, you know. You can''t house these soldiers in my dwelling."


    I smiled at him as I sat opposite him at the table. Wooden, cheap, but nicer than the concrete slabs in the XPCA halls. "Actually, you don''t. The bill of rights does not extend to Exhumans."


    He shook his head at me. "We''re still human, you know. You keep treating us like we''re not, that''s why the resistance is back."


    "Tell me about the resistance. Have you heard much about them?"


    "Is that what this is about?" He looked at the guards again, his eyes wary. "I didn''t do nothin'', I tell you. I follow the orders I''m told. When there''s trouble, I do what the PA says and stay in my house. I let you in now, didn''t I?"


    "Relax, sir. You''re not in trouble." I gave him another genial smile. "I just wanted to know what you''ve heard of them. News which reaches my ears is always so distorted by ambition...and fear. Nobody wants to be the one to deliver bad news to an XPCA director. I''d like to hear it from your mouth."


    He eyed me for a moment, still wary, but apparently decided that he liked me. Or, he''d like to take advantage of the situation and tell a real XPCA director what he really thought. One of the two, and enough to make him grin, though I didn''t know the man well enough to read of it was a sadistic one.


    "They''ll beat you, you know. They overthrew the last base admin, and they''ll overthrow this one. They killed the director, too, struck when he was visiting, and both wound up dead, they say. And he wasn''t even traipsing around inside people''s homes."


    "I am well aware of what happened to my predecessor. That''s why I''m taking more proactive steps to find out about the resistance. I do not underestimate them, as he did."


    He laughed, and I concluded it was a sadistic grin after all. "Estimate them however you want. You XPCA are always calculating, conniving, thinking you know everything. But you know nothing. You don''t know what it''s like, having this much power bottled up, until pop," the splaying of his hands sent my entourage on-edge again. "It smacks you right in the face. Every Exhuman in here is a bomb waiting to go off, and the resistance is lining up the charges, facing ''em all the same way, making sure that we blow up our real enemies instead of wasting our strength on each other."


    That sentiment was exactly what I''d come here to hear. Although I couldn''t pretend his portent didn''t make my heart do a backflip.


    "And who are your real enemies?" I asked. "Does the resistance want to bring down the XPCA?"


    He smacked his lips some, and then stood, drawing a bead from every exosuit in the room, but ignored them as he went to the kitchen and got himself a glass of water. He was kind enough to offer me one, wordlessly.


    "No thank you," I told him.


    "Suit yourself," he said, drinking his slowly. Making me wait. I crossed my hands in my lap. When he was done, he put the glass away deliberately, but remained standing. "No, I don''t think so. Not yet."


    "The XPCA isn''t the resistance''s enemy yet?"


    "It will be if you keep barging into homes and going on parades. But the resistance, from what I''ve heard, they''re reminding us of something more important than walls and guns, bigger than dignity and offenses taken."


    I waited for him to spit it out, but he didn''t. Content to waste more of my time. From somewhere behind me, my aide appeared, telling me in whispers that we needed to move on, that the Exhumans were growing impatient and unruly outside. I dismissed him with a wave.


    "What is bigger than the XPCA''s walls and guns, bigger than dignity and offence?" I asked. His grin grew, and I knew he was like me, and understood that this conversation was its own kind of battle. One he could win, even with guns in his living room.


    "I told you already, miss," he said with mock respect.


    "Ma''am, we really must go," the aide hissed.


    "Fine. Have this man''s rations doubled, and service his AC unit. It''s sweltering in here." He gave me a surprised look as I rose and moved out with the guard. He hadn''t won the verbal battle yet, and I''d killed him with kindness for words he''d not even uttered.


    But the aide was right, it was time to go. If I drew out the visit any longer, I wouldn''t just be playing at the irritating, visiting birdbrain.


    The troops brought me back to sanctity double-time, doing their best to look like they were anything but retreating in the face of growing Exhuman numbers and hostility, and I spent the entire ride in thought.


    The old man''s hostility was understandable. We''d just raided his house and pointed guns up his nose, to say nothing of the curse of New Eden turning everyone into a grumpus. Even if I knew he''d been selected because of his prior status as a model citizen, some amount of difficulty could be expected. To me, that explained his glee in telling me off, in prophecizing my death, in playing his games in not telling me what I wanted to hear.


    But behind that, probably removed from that position and that place, he was probably a very nice guy. He seemed ill-equipped for lying, and I believed every word of what he said to be truth. Or at least, his truth. He was also probably not a very good resource for information on the resistance, bearing a clean nose as he was...and so the fact that he''d heard as much as he had -- and the truth, no less, on what happened to TARGA and Blackett -- that spoke to a level of integration between the resistance and the New Edeners which surprised me.


    But of course, most enticing was his words. The meaning he''d played around.


    The metal gate slammed shut behind us, and I could almost feel the relief in the guards around me as they shuffled off to the racks to get out of their exosuits. Another mission without this place boiling over. Another day survived.


    "Was your inspection satisfactory, ma''am?" the aide asked as I disembarked. "I hope you don''t judge too harshly, given the circumstances."


    "Everything seemed in order," I told him, and he seemed to stretch upright even further at my vague praise. "Thank you for putting together the visit with the Exhuman."


    He saluted sharply. "Yes ma''am. A shame that the meeting had to be cut short. But--"


    "No, I understand. To go longer would have disrupted the city. You did well, Lieutenant."


    "Ma''am. If you wished to hear the rest of what he had to say, we could have him brought in for you."


    I shook my head. "No, I wouldn''t trouble him further."


    He seemed almost crestfallen. Sad that he was missing another opportunity to brown-nose me?


    "A shame we didn''t hear the end of what he spoke of, ma''am. I, for one, was interested."


    I laughed. Perhaps there was more to this aide than just sucking up. I allowed myself a twinge of guilt for thinking him so transparent, and reminded myself that those who wound up permanently stationed in New Eden were often of a different cut than the standard XPCA mold.


    "I''d already gotten enough. I understood," I told him.


    He cocked his head at me, trailing as I began back to my office. "Ma''am? Then what did he mean? What was he talking about, bigger than the XPCA?"


    I grinned at him. "He already told us, remember?"


    He shook his head. "I recall no other enemies he mentioned specifically, ma''am. I could pull some exosuit footage--"


    "Humanity," I said. His eyebrows furrowed.


    "Humanity is the resistance''s enemy?"


    "No. Humanity is the thing bigger than the XPCA''s walls and guns. Humanity is bigger than dignity and offense. Humanity is what he was talking about, what these people believe they have, what the resistance is making them believe they have."


    Again, he cocked his head. I could see this lieutenant was sharp, but he wasn''t getting it. Maybe a part of that was trying to put humanity and Exhumanity in his head. Not a thought that worked in most people.


    "Then the enemy he mentioned. What is that?"


    I opened my office door and passed inside, leaving him at the threshold. "On that he was less clear. But we can hope."


    "Hope for what? For it not to be us?"


    "For it to be the enemies of humanity," I explained simply, giving him a curt nod, before closing the door.


    I saw him standing there for long seconds outside the frosted glass before finally, whatever gears turning in his head reached his feet, and he turned sharply and ventured down the hall.

 421. 2252, Two days ago. New Eden. Lia.

    This guy''s smirk was unbelievable. Sitting on the other side of what could generously be called an Exhuman interrogation room, fifteen feet of transparent plastic and metal cage and comms between us, you''d think he was sitting on a throne over there.


    I cleared my throat delicately. "Sir, what I don''t think you''re getting is that this is an unprecedented offer, and not one which is likely to be made again, or sweeter. Total amnesty for being Exhuman...it''s unheard of."


    His grin broadened. It was unnerving.


    "Funny you should say that. That''s just what they told me you''d say."


    "Who? Who is telling you what I''d say? And...why the hell does it even matter?" I shook my head. "Whether someone else predicted this offer or not, that doesn''t change how good an offer it is."


    "I want full human rights. I deserve it."


    "You know we can''t do that."


    Instead of getting upset, he just leaned back in his chair. "You can, you just won''t. There''s a big difference. But it don''t matter what you will or won''t, because without our help, you''ll be swept away soon enough. All I gotta do is keep my nose clean and wait."


    He leaned forward, and even though we were fifteen feet apart, and the walls of plastic and metal kept me well out of his range, I still found myself nervous at the few inches of his approach.


    "And you fine folks," he continued "have done nothing but make me damn good at keeping my nose clean and waiting. So yeah. If you want my full cooperation: I''ll take that amnesty, and human status as well."


    I shook my head at him, frowning as I tapped away on a tablet, issuing orders remotely. "Just tell me, who put you up to this? Who told you what I''d say, told you to reject the offer, told you where the arbitrary line is you''re all waiting for?"


    "The resistance," he grinned.


    "Yes, but who?"


    He stood and walked to the door on his right. "I''m ready to go back in now. Thanks for the chat, love."


    I almost growled at him. But I didn''t. Instead, I took out some of my irritation at jabbing the button on my tablet with enough force that my finger hurt, sending out the orders I''d queued earlier. It took less than a minute for an armored escort to appear in his doorway and lead him out. And once he was gone, I collapsed backwards into my seat, melting inside and out.


    The worst part was how familiar it was getting.


    "Ma''am." My aide said the same damn thing every time he appeared, like he used the phrase for echolocation.


    "Let me guess. The administrator wants a report."


    "Yes ma''am."


    I shook my head. How damn familiar it was getting.


    Another report in. Another day of being chastised for not doing enough by a man who was doing nothing, a man I could order sent home, if I wanted. Another day of the resistance''s influence growing, cancer-like, through these Exhumans.


    Vox Humanus, a name -- if you could call it that -- was all we''d gotten of this new resistance leader. He or she...or it, for all the XPCA knew, operated completely differently than the previous resistance leader. Whereas Soran had just used the resistance to further whatever unkowable aims his powers pressured him towards, worked underground like a traditional resistance movement, amassed arms and supporters...Vox seemed to exist only in ideas, memetically spreading through the camp. Almost like a religion.


    Couriers -- or less charitably, missionaries -- would show up randomly at people''s doors. They would provide aid, literal humanitarian aid sorely lacking in the city. They would provide conversation and companionship, a slice of human interaction in a place where bitchiness and violence were the norm. They''d talk about something coming, a new dawn for Exhumans, providing a hope which had been long dead.


    In short, they did exactly as our interogees said. They provided humanity, something the XCPA could neither squeeze out of them, nor compete with.


    The leader''s name was the real stinger. Vox Humanus. The voice of humanity. How long had he considered adding ''ex-'' to his name? How different a meaning would it have? To be the voice of Exhumanity would be divisive, would go the route of the old resistance, us-versus-them. But the voice of humanity? To bring out the human in each Exhuman, to treat us as one, by blanket term, by his name?


    Phew. A lot to unpack there. And a dangerous adversary.


    I was on my way out of the meeting with Captain Malcom, and though that was a relief, I had to pause and turn around to seek him out again. I found him engaged with some lieutenant, basically having the same conversation we just did. I waited for them to finish and he turned to me.


    "Something to add, Director?"


    "Yes. Offering the Exhumans amnesty isn''t working, and we''re out of carrots," I told him. "I think it''s time to start employing the stick."


    He looked offended. "The whole city is already on a razor''s edge, and you want to start disciplining them?"


    I pulled out my knife and waved it lazily in the air. Not standard issue, composite blade, nanofiber-reinforced. Honed and blackened.


    "How long do you think you can balance a situation on a razor''s edge?" I asked, examining the blade.


    "Excuse me?"


    "You said the situation''s on edge. Balancing." I looked up from it to him. "How long do you think you can keep it there?"


    "Is this a threat, Director?" He looked around, and found the other XPCA in the area watching us dispassionately.


    "No," I laughed. "Why would I threaten you with physical violence? I outrank you, by a huge margin. I could have you packed up and sent away with a word. I could disappear you to some podunk base in Alaska...or have you performing a useful function in helping the evacuees, instead of...whatever it is you aren''t doing here."


    "Then what is this?" he sputtered.


    "This--" I put the knife away with a flourish. "Is a question. You should recognize them by now, since you spend all day spewing them at people. How long. Do you think. The situation. Will hold?"This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "I-I don''t...understand¡­"


    "It''s not a hard question. You''re informing me that I''m unaware of the consequences my actions will have on the city. You are implicitly telling me that you know more about this place and this situation than I do. Which, given that this is your post, is hopefully correct. So. Use that expertise, and tell me. How. Long?"


    "I don''t...I don''t know. Until the resistance grows to a critical mass? Until Vox tells them to act, like Soran told them before?"


    "And do you have figures on that?"


    He shuffled from his seat, only to sit at a computer and log in, pulling up files. "The...last resistance...was at work for at least three months...they reached about fifteen percent of the city actively supporting them before they moved."


    "But this situation is different. That movement was focused on amassing weapons, supplies, information, soldiers. That was an armed insurgent uprising. This one is all propaganda and belief."


    "It spreads faster," he agreed.


    "It involves less commitment, less involvement, less risk. Fifteen percent is nothing."


    "Nothing?" he asked, pulling up reports. I shook my head at watching him work. For a professional, he was a damn ameteur. I wheeled his chair to the side and took his place.


    "Just looking at the number of people we''ve pulled against the population census data. We''re already looking at closer to twenty percent. But here--" I dragged some figures into a spreadsheet and began the process of auto-collating, graphing, then mapping them. "Locations of known missionaries, and their intended targets, colored by date."


    The map was a mess, but one with a pattern. It looked like a thermal image of the city, blue around the edges, but growing red hot towards the front gate, towards the heart of New Eden.


    "What does this mean?" he asked.


    I pointed. "Like all belief structures, it started on the outskirts of society. Say what you will about New Eden, but like any other place, those with their backs to the wall are the most desperate, the most willing to turn to radical ideas. They''re the oldest missionaries, and over time, you can see their influence spread further and further inward and forward. They begin skipping over sections soon enough."


    "Because those Exhumans wouldn''t convert?"


    "Because they were already converted. Many of them become the next wave of missionaries. You can tell as much from data by what it doesn''t show as what it does."


    He stared, open-mouthed at the display, and, not gonna lie, I had a moment of crushing egotism as I saw him realizing why I''d been sent here. The same data, hell, the same computer he was just sitting at, but instead of clicking through reports to see if anyone ever told me some piece of data, I could interpolate, extrapolate, elucidate.


    "So what''s that mean?" he asked.


    "Well," I said, pulling up the much more straightforward census data, and similarly tabling and mapping it, to overlay with the heatmap we already had. "That means, given a generous estimate, we''re looking at forty percent of New Edeners either supporting or sympathetic to Vox."


    I wheeled the chair to face him and found him gaping at me. "So," I asked. "How long do you think the city can stay on your razor? Until we pass fifteen percent? Because we crossed that point two days ago."


    "Forty percent can''t be accurate. That''s just...data manipulation. Statistics."


    I grabbed the back of his chair and put my face in his personal space. His breathing stopped. This move drew a lot more looks than playing with a knife, I noted with some amusement.


    "I''ve asked you how long, and it seems clear to me, you haven''t the faintest idea. Not of how long, not of how many, not of the nature of what we''re facing. And yet, you, with all this incredible insight, with all this abundant knowledge, with all this expertise, you are telling me what I should and shouldn''t do. It''s been three days since I''ve arrived, two since we found out about Vox. Is it one until the situation is out of our control?"


    "I-I d-don''t¡­"


    I brought my face even closer. I could see myself in his blue eyes. "If you d-don''t, then d-don''t tell me how to do my job. The carrot isn''t working. We''re bringing out the stick."


    "Won''t that¡­" he swallowed hard. "Never mind. Ma''am."


    "Spit it out."


    He glanced around, looking for support in those around. But as though propelled by his gaze, the officers around us immediately found ways to make themselves busy and not get pulled into the conflict. I had to grin internally, being at the top of the chain of command had some excellent perks. I think the situation was exacerbated by the fact that they heard the Director was coming to visit, and then up shows this lanky, teenage-lookin'', hundred-something-pound girl. And now even better, when that scrawny teen gets in their boss''s face and starts yelling.


    "W-well, I just meant...and no disrespect, ma''am...but...wouldn''t punishing them...just...increase sympathy for the resistance?"


    Well what did you know? He could make a coherent argument. I gave him a few inches of breathing space as a reward. "The resistance''s spread is memetic, viral. It went from fifteen to forty percent saturation in two days, because that''s how exponential growth works. At that rate, we''re looking at one-hundred percent in two more days. And you propose doing nothing?"


    "I don''t want to make it worse."


    I laughed, right in his face, real unpleasant-like. It felt awkward as hell, but I was really pushing the bad-cop angle right now. "Worse than hundred percent saturation? What, you''ve tried nothing and that was your only idea?"


    He gave me a shifty look, thoughtful, but helpless. And I finally let him go.


    "Have the identified missionaries brought in and detained. Have it proclaimed to those--" I pointed at the core of the heatmap, where the word of Vox was not yet rooted "--that joining the resistance is considered a subversive act, and by terms of the New Eden amnesty program, a punishable offense. Make a big show of the raids, let the Edeners know we''re taking the resistance members, let them see the danger of joining."


    "Ma''am," he said, giving a salute, and apparently just happy that I wasn''t on him like paint anymore.


    "Then let''s go. We''ve got a root to weed out, before it grows any further."


    The next few hours were a lot more enjoyable. Not that I didn''t find some professional pride in getting in people''s heads and shredding their esteem and conflicts until they were a smooth-bore vessel for doing exactly what I wanted, but I wouldn''t say it was exactly fun. Especially not when they were people just trying to make it by, trying to do their jobs, even if they were kinda sucky at them.


    Instead, I got to sit and watch, or oversee technically, as the fire I lit under him was spread through the base. He pulled in his usual suspects of underlings and minions, and lambasted them as I had him, pointing emphatically at the maps and figures I''d pulled together and prophecising the same doom I had instilled.


    I''d talked about the resistance being a virus, and that was true. Benign as it appeared, for the moment, it seemed to exist only to spread itself. But who could say what form it might mutate into next? Ideas were a powerful thing, and these were out of our control. And more significantly, they held sway over these Exhumans that we were supposed to.


    It was like the old man I''d interviewed yesterday had said -- the resistance was about humanity...with only vague allusions towards enemies. We needed control of the situation before the vague disappeared, and the enemies resolved into the XPCA.


    But we were a virus, too. Just as Vox could mobilize his ideas through the Exhuman host, so could I through the XPCA with orders. All at once, the city was no longer a fertile and nurturing place for Vox''s ideas to be nurtured, but instead inhospitable. I knew the weaker members of the resistance would back off at once, those afraid of making waves or risking their lives, they''d go back to their sullen lives, thinking the others who remained stupid.


    Which was a double-edged sword. We''d cut down on popular support, at the cost of sympathy, but also hone the resistance down to only its more fanatical members. It increased the danger of radicalization...but I also had to keep in mind the mission statement of the XPCA -- to protect the innocent. Those who would back down when given the chance deserved the chance to do so.


    It was, in the end, a numbers game with human players at work. Gross to reduce it to that, but it was what it was. Vox and I were seated on opposite sides of this board, and all the XPCA and Exhumans of New Eden were the pieces to move around, to kindle and infect, to maneuver...and to capture.


    As I watched my pieces move around me, orders being issued, plans being drawn up, exosuits being unracked and prepped, I had to admit, I did enjoy it. I''d been doing this Black Shark thing for quite a while now, and never had I had any form of opposition to my movements. I could wish the stakes were a little lower for my first game, but that didn''t diminish the fun of the act.


    I stretched and then went back to my office and let them go. I gave direction and ideas, I didn''t micromanage. This wasn''t the kind of battle you could win like that anyway. Pieces moved on their own. I blacked out my window and, finally with a little privacy, sat down at my computer.


    And cracked my knuckles, my back, and my neck. And then got to work.

 422. 2252, Yesterday. New Eden. Lia.

    "Eighty-five percent!?" Captain Malcom was practically screaming at me.


    "Mind your tone."


    He cleared his throat in an effort to regain control of himself. His face remained flushed. "Eighty-five percent, ma''am? We''ve done everything you''ve asked. How is it possible that the resistance has gained so much support, so fast? You projected it would be at least two more days...and more, with the last ten percent never giving sympathy. Now you''re telling me it''s reached eighty-five percent of New Eden, overnight?"


    "It is troubling," I agreed.


    "Troubling? Troubling? It''s unheard-of. We can''t get that kind of cohesion at political rallies. How the hell are eighty-five percent of all Exhumans in New Eden suddenly of one mind?"


    "People at political rallies aren''t under a system of oppression. They don''t have divested rights. They don''t even necesarily have a common enemy or a common goal. They have a right to choose and a right to be there, and it''s in the possession of rights that there''s so much room for diverse opinion."


    "But you''ve done nothing but clamp down on the Exhumans'' rights since you got here. By your own logic, you''re pressing them towards unification."


    I stared at the guy. For once, we were having this conversation in my office, which I resented. He''d seen fit to interrupt my work and try to barge in here, pounding on the door and demanding admittance when he found it locked.


    If he had something to go on, I wouldn''t have minded so much. But as ever, he was all talk and no action; he''d only wanted to speak to me to freak out and complain. Prevent me from doing my work so that he could feel like he was doing his.


    "There was a galvanizing point I couldn''t anticipate," I explained. "Have you seen this?"


    I turned my screen around for him to look, and he took a seat in front of my desk without asking. I hit play, and the holo filled with a smoky, distorted image.


    It was a silhouette, someone in a mask only barely visible. Golden light shimmered around him, wavering as though from underwater, and boxy vertical lines constantly sliced through the image from decoding artifacts. The figure was seated, sternly upright, and though completely shadowed, had the outline of a bulky male.


    "New Eden," he began. His tone that was rich and sonorous, but warbled through the obvious synthesized effects. "It is I, Vox Humanus. Here we sit together, together to tell you of our future, together...to set you free."


    "That''s him?" Malcom asked, and I paused the vid. "When did we get this?"


    "I found several agents suddenly bursting with activity. When pressed, they were found distributing copies through the city. This is the most concrete link we''ve yet found to Vox, and I was looking into it, before being interrupted."


    "Sorry," Malcom said, staring at the shadowy image. "Continue, please, ma''am."


    I hit play, and we were treated to several seconds of smoke billowing around in the golden light and shadows. I tried not to think about how it seemed just a higher production-value sort of take on the campy Black Shark videos I had made.


    "Brothers and sisters in humanity, by now you have heard my message. By now, you have seen our kin in action, felt the warmth of their hands, heard the pounding of our hearts as one. We have reached out, because you are worthy of forgiveness."


    "We are all human, no matter what they call us. Human, no matter the injustices they have pressed us to commit. Human, no matter what you feel you may have been forced to become. I absolve you. I forgive you, and love you. And all I ask is for you to look within, and find the humanity they have tried to deny. Look within, and find your best selves, and drag them screaming into the light."


    Malcom was shaking his head. I paused it again. "Problem, Captain?"


    "No...keep on."


    "You''re sure?"


    "Yes it''s...it''s just brainwashing, isn''t it?"


    "Hmm, I wonder," I commented. "Is it brainwashing, if he only says what they already feel?"


    Before he replied, I''d restarted the vid.


    "You know who I am, and who I believe you to be, and together, the humanity that we are. And it is time for us, together, to show that humanity to the world. To become what we have always meant to be. We will be human again, as free men and women, with humanity in our hearts and the sun shining on our faces, away from the cold concrete walls they''ve built around us. We have done nothing wrong, we will be free. Humanity is always meant to be free."


    Vox was building up to a lather now, his speaking faster, his voice quivering with emotion. I could see the color drained from Malcom''s face as he watched.


    "Brothers and sisters, tonight we will be free. Tonight, we take our first step forward and toddle uncertain into the world. Tonight, we will be free, if you stand beside me and hold up your hearts, we will be free."


    He paused, his sentence cutting suddenly short, as though he''d bitten it off. When he resumed speaking, it was in the slow, sonorous pace he''d begun with.


    "But there is a responsibility to humanity, brothers and sisters. I have waited in this jail the same as each of you, and languished. For many months, have we endured the cold walls, and the heavy hearts, and the pain of what we inflict upon each other in this hell they call Eden. I endured it because I could, and it was for the best that I did."


    "But then I heard of the troubles outside the walls. I heard of our lost brothers and sisters who lash out thinking they have no other way. And I want to speak to them, to tell them that I love them, to tell them their humanity was never lost, only hidden from them, and that they can join us and find it again."


    "I heard of the flying man who wants to destroy all of humanity. I heard of the army which has taken the XPCA''s own guns and declared war on the world. I heard of corrupt men, those who call themselves human, without a grain of humanity in their soul. And as the nights grew hot, I thought, we are many, we are strong, we can make a difference."


    "And so I awoke, my brothers and sisters. I became Vox Humanus, and I saw the eyes and the hearts of so many others opening up with mine. We are humanity, and those are the enemies of humanity. And tonight, we will leave this place, and if you stand beside me, we will fight them. On behalf of all who are human in their hearts."


    Again, his words were racing and his tone was soaring. It was easily missed it on the first time watching, but in the background under his speech, I could hear rising notes, only barely there, but giving his proclamation a sense of urgency, of climax.


    It was really well done.


    "Stand with me, brothers! Stand with me, sisters! And I promise you, the world will watch with awe. The world will awaken with us, and all the hearts of all the people of all the world will look on...and they will know. They will see."


    Vox paused, and from his triumphant apex, he looked down, directly into the camera. Directly at us.


    "They will see you. The human within. Stand with me."


    And then it just ended. Cut to black. The silence in the room seemed much louder than before.


    It was probably best that Malcom was sitting. He spent several long minutes just staring at the black screen, the tumble of thoughts in his mind occasionally crossing his face, but never enough to become words.


    Until finally, he spoke up. "Tonight?" he asked.


    "Tonight," I confirmed. "And with eighty-five percent of the Exhumans in New Eden -- or more, in support."


    "We''ll ready the fortress armor," he said, standing and pale. "We''ll pull every available reinforcement."


    "They''re already deployed," I told him. "They''ve been pulled into active service, there are no available XPCA just sitting around. Every resource from Skyweb to the fortress armors are out there, drawing the line between Justice and civilian lives. We have nothing to keep Vox from doing exactly what he says."


    "T-then...then we''ll just...just have to make do with the guards on-hand. We must stop this from happening. You''ve told central? Do they know that some two-hundred-fifty Exhumans are about to attempt a prison break? And unified?"


    "They know," I shrugged. "There''s just nothing more they can do."


    "There must be something," he turned to go. "I''ll alert everyone."


    "Belay that order," I said, and he paused with his hand on the door. "Captain, listen close; this is an order from a superior officer."


    He turned to face me, hand still on the doorknob.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "When they gather tonight, when Vox appears and tries to lead the Exhumans from New Eden...I order you to open the gates and tell the guards to stand down."


    "You''re¡­" His eyes narrowed. "No."


    "This is a direct order. You will let them go."


    He let go of the door, to stomp over to my desk. "I refuse!"


    "You refuse a direct order?"


    "I refuse to let hundreds of Exhumans simply go. I have one role in this city and that is to ensure its continued operation. I cannot and will not order my men to do nothing--no, worse than nothing, and help them walk out of my city on my watch."


    "You will do nothing because you can do nothing. Fighting back will just get your men killed. Vox''s message was very clear about who his enemies are, and we aren''t on the list. Do you want to change that?"


    "He''s an Exhuman," Malcom hissed. "He also rambled on about the evils he''s been forced into doing and being. Do you want to unleash that kind of evil on the world? Do you think he''s going to stop that behavior just because you opened a door for him?"


    "I think," I said, standing and irritated that even at my full height, I still had to look up to meet his blue eyes. "That you will follow orders, or else I will demand your resignation on the spot."


    He stared at me, eyes full of hate I knew I deserved. Then, with painful slowness, he unpinned the rank insignias from his high, black collar, and threw them across my desk.


    "See you in hell," he spat.


    "Better the two of us than every man and woman in New Eden," I agreed.


    He slammed the door on the way out, and I wasted no time in locking it again and making sure the window was blacked out, before falling back into my chair.


    I''d done the whole frogging exchange with my shoes off. Hadn''t had time to put them on when he barged in here, and I had to stand up to him with my bare feet cold on the concrete floor and hidden behind my desk. I couldn''t blink in staring him down, couldn''t let him see my weakness, and yet there I was, barefoot as a neanderthal.


    It felt hugely fake. The insignias on my desk felt too heavy, too crunchy in my palm as I gave them a gentle squeeze.


    I didn''t like Malcom, but I wasn''t here to destroy his life or anything. He was just another person in my way, and I didn''t have the time to go around him. I had too many things to do before tonight.


    It really looked like Vox had me. Everything I''d done had only increased his hold over the Exhumans here. Every play he''d made had countered mine, turned around the things I''d said or done and outmaneuvered me...leading to this. Leading to his ultimate, unstoppable triumph. Throwing open the gates seemed like just a final bid at having some say in a situation which was well out of my hands.


    I should have been mad. I should have felt outplayed. Should have felt worthless and defeated.


    I got up again, double-checking the lock on the door and the blackout on the window, bare feet slapping on the cold concrete, before heading back to my seat and tucking them in under me as I sat down.


    I should have been embarrassed or miserable. If I were any kind of real leader, it should be me resigning over my failure, not him.


    Instead I grinned. I wasn''t any kind of real leader. I opened my locked desk drawer and pulled out a mask. A new one, deliberately styled to look nothing like Black Shark. Embedded in it was a voice synthesizer to make me sound rich, sonorous, male.


    It was desperate times out there, and the XPCA did not believe in desperate measures. We were sitting on three-hundred-some Exhumans here, who had powers, who were the best of their kind, the most loyal and faithful and American of all Exhumans; the ones who''d picked New Eden because it was the right thing to do. And I was counting on them all to do the right thing again, and to fight.


    These Exhumans had the power, the capacity, and with me playing both sides of the XPCA, the means to go out there and serve. But they still lacked something, the most important something: A reason to fight.


    It''d stumped me for a while, until I thought of the situation exactly as Vox would. By looking at them like regular, ordinary humans. Why did Americans enlist in record numbers when their nation was under threat? Why did so many choose to fight, despite the risks, despite the mismanagement of the armed forces and veterans programs, despite the apathy of the government, or the arbitrary nature of countries and borders as a whole?


    The answer, I concluded, was that it was just in human nature to fight. We were a predator species. When someone threatens a lion, they don''t run, they turn and kill you. All these Exhumans needed was a reminder that there was a lion in each one of ''em. Or even more dangerous, a human in each one of ''em.


    And hell, I hadn''t expected this kind of success. Even working the system both from within and without, leveraging contacts I knew like Argus and Khol, playing off some friends I''d made in the New Eden staff...I never expected to see so much of the city consumed by my message in just four short days.


    But I guessed it was just an echo of something we were seeing everywhere right now. When snails hit the fan, most people would buckle up and do whatever they could do help. Even here in New Eden, nobody was ignorant of what was happening outside. Everyone knew the dangers the world was facing, they were just permitted to be complacent because there wasn''t an outlet.


    Well, Vox was that outlet. And holy heck did the Exhumans deliver.


    I finished recording another little speech and put away the mask. Tonight was the make-or-break night. And while I knew all the pieces were in place, there was always the chance that one or more of them would go rogue. I''d have to be on the ground, there''d have to be a Vox for these people to follow. If anything went wrong, I might not be in a position to fix it -- and while I''d taken every possible precaution to focus these Exhuman''s fervor towards the real threats, there''s no telling what might happen if bullets began to fly.


    It was several hours later, and close to the appointed time, when something did of course go wrong. I was making sure that those on patrol tonight were more loyal than stupid, micromanaging guard shifts and generally making myself a nuisance, when I found the terminal I was working on suddenly refused my submitted change.


    It was moments later when the terminal locked itself and told me I had no permissions or access. I swore. Kinda.


    It was too tidy to be a system glitch. My access had been revoked, and there wasn''t anyone in the entire agency with the authority to do that to me. Which just left those outside the agency. MPs, or¡­


    I swallowed hard, and checked my recently-neglected mobile. As expected, it''d been blown up the last few days with dozens of voice messages I''d had silenced. The most recent of which was from a few minutes ago.


    Someone from the president''s office. "Hello, Director. The president has made clear that if you do not address the situation to his satisfaction, the futures committee will be dissolved and command of the XPCA will be granted to staff from the DoD. As you''ve not chosen to respond in a timely manner--"


    I hung up. Pretty much told me all I needed to know. They were probably coming for me any minute, too. But why the heck now? All I needed was one more day. I called up AEGIS, but she didn''t pick up. Busy with Athan, handling some much bigger situation than this one, I was sure.


    So what the hell was I supposed to do? I hadn''t yet put through the orders to let Vox leave peacefully, didn''t want it stewing in the men''s mind all day and give them time to come up with something stupid. But now, if I didn''t get that order out, we might be looking at a bloodbath. Which...I mean...the plan would still work, the Exhumans would still be mobilized, loosely under my control, and pointed in the right direction.


    But at what cost? Starting the entire operation with blood on their hands would erode the humanity I''d worked so hard to inspire in them. It meant every situation where the XPCA and Vox clashed, violence was the status quo. It was another drain on resources that nobody could waste at the moment, to say nothing of how stupid it would all be.


    I heard boots in the hall. Not the ordinary tromping of officers, but the heavy, measured tread of soldiers, several of them, marching. I swore again kinda, and dove into the drawer to grab everything of substance.


    Moments later, the door rattled with someone pounding on it. Someone in an exosuit. They weren''t screwing around with taking me in. I tore through my belongings, tossing my bulky man-disguise on my shoulder, shoving the Vox mask under my arm, hanging the Black Shark mask over my face and blinking as the optics streamed in.


    "Director, open up. You are hereby under arrest by order of the office of the United States President. Do not resist, you will be given representation at a fair tribunal."


    I dug through the pockets of my slipskin and heard the door crack as the pounding turned to bashing. The window cracked and the blackout dissolved, letting me see the shoulder of the exosuit coming in hard against the wooden frame.


    He came through the very second I found what I was looking for, and as my hand closed around the device, the door splintered open with a crack. My thumbs flew over the controls as I crouched behind the desk, nervous sweat making my fingers slip.


    There was a deadly clomp clomp clomp as the exoframe rounded the desk, and then a pause as he came around it.


    The pause grew long. I didn''t dare breathe.


    "She''s not here," the synthesized voice spoke. "Send out an alert. Find her."


    They left, and from beneath the blanket, under the optical camo, I finally took a breath.


    I dropped the man-suit off my shoulder, and felt around in the other pockets of the slipskin, taking inventory of what other tricks I had left. The optical blanket was one-use, as were most of my toys, and I had a whole base to get through. But this uniform wasn''t doing me any good anymore, so it was time to change.


    Another hour later and it was time. In front of the main gate, hundreds of Exhumans had turned up. Not eighty-five percent, but still the majority of New Eden. They were lined up in tense silence, as were the guards opposite them.


    In the middle, Vox was like a beacon. Impressive and visible, invincible in the knowledge that if the XPCA wanted this whole situation to turn violent, all they had to do was to kill him. I watched with wary eyes until the Exhumans had finished assembling, and gave the situation a few minutes more for tension to build.


    And then I made my dramatic entrance. I strode onto the command deck, boots clomping. At once, I was swarmed with officers looking for direction, reports of people not knowing where the Director had gone, wondering where I''d been, trying to get me to address the situation.


    I paused them with a sweeping gesture before any could get too close. Before the saw the lines at the edge of my mask, make out the skinny neck of a girl protruding from my man disguise. I nervously thumbed the stolen rank insignias on my collar.


    "Open the gates," I said, through a synthesizer of the Captain''s voice. Reconstructed in the last hour from voice samples of all the times he''d come barking at me.


    "Sir?"


    "I said open the gates. I have orders. And I''m not going to disobey them just to send all my men to die. Trust in central. Vigilo Ignoto," I intoned solemnly.


    There was a subdued reverence, an awe, a fear, as orders were relayed and the gates slowly lifted. I watched as the guards parted, and as Vox and all the hundreds of Exhumans in his light passed through, slowly, deliberately, into the twilight outside the fortress.


    While all were distracted, I slipped away myself. I unzipped the bulky man-suit and felt like I could breathe again, as my ashen-clad limbs emerged, my slipskin, better than bare feet, tread across the concrete floor.


    "You''re good?" I whispered into my comms.


    It was Khol''s voice that answered, the Exhuman I''d gotten arrested last time I was in here, one of my many men on the inside. It was he currently wearing Vox''s mask and revelling in the crowd''s adulation.


    "I don''t know how you do it, Black Shark," he commented, disbelief in his voice readable even through comms.


    "I have a lot of help," I grinned, as I headed out my escape route.

 423. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    "You," Dragon sneered at me. "A pestilence. One I would see end."


    He advanced a threatening step, and I could see the others wavering, considering if they should hold him back. But AEGIS took her step forward to mirror him.


    "Hi Dragon," she said, too cheerily. "Rio. Tobias. It''s good to be back."


    Tobias must have been the guy in the blue and gold and ruffles. I didn''t remember him from last time, but if he was with Rio in wanting to hold Dragon back, he must have been at least sorta okay.


    "Do not think you can come and go, defiling this place at your whim," Dragon barked. "This is¡­" he paused significantly "...hallowed ground, not to be tread by outsiders."


    AEGIS gave me a peculiar glance that I thought had to do with the weirdly-placed pause, but she continued without mention. "Outsiders? Say, Athan, weren''t you a warrior in their order? And wasn''t I a high priestess? Highest possible rank in the Oasian hierarchy?"


    "You were cut loose and set adrift from our god. You were sent off, never to return."


    "And yet, here we are, returned," AEGIS shrugged. "Say, how many times has our god directly acted on your behalf, Liwei?"


    That one got to him, his shoulders tensed under his cloak. "Our god is in everything I see, everything I do, everything I am."


    "Can we stop antagonizing him?" I asked, and then turned to take my turn at yelling at the three of them. "Rio, hi. We''re here to kinda...negotiate on behalf of the world. We really, really need you to stop warring with it. Please."


    She gave me a thoughtful look. "Hi Athan. But, um, no, I''m sorry."


    "Um, you declared formal war, right? Well, part of that is being open to negotiations. It''s not like you''re trying to wipe out everyone on Earth, right? So let''s talk a minute."


    The pause she gave me was extra-extra ominous, given what I''d just said. "No, I don''t think so. Thanks for visiting, though."


    "Surely, there can be some room for debate," the blue guy spoke.


    She put her hands on her hips, almost pouting. "Tobias, I''ve already heard enough out of Dragon over this. This is my calling, I will not have it undermined."


    "I''m not looking to undermine anything," I said. "Just to...get both of us in a better place than where we are. I want you to be happy with your calling, but I also want us happy."


    Dragon moved imperceptibly. I would have missed it if I were doing anything other than keeping a hawk''s eye on him. I thought for a moment he was preparing to attack, but it seemed he actually relaxed. Not that he ever really tensed before an attack, weird-ass inhuman thing he was...but now he was looking at me with a strange contemplation I''d never seen on him before.


    "I already know what you''re going to say," Rio called down to us. "Please stop, this war is hurting people, you don''t actually know what death is, et cetera. You told me that last time."


    "Well...yeah," I agreed. "And you really apparently don''t. Do you have any idea the state of the world right now?"


    "Miserable as ever?"


    "Have you heard about Justice?"


    "Oasis is sort of beyond the need for a punitive system--"


    "No, there''s an Exhuman flying around, who calls himself Justice. Have you heard of him?"


    "Of course we have," Dragon snapped. "Do you think us idiots?"


    "Well, not all of you," I admitted. "But the point is, he''s absolutely destroying the world and we need you to stop also destroying the world so we can focus on him." I swallowed hard and glanced at Rio. "Uh, besides, wouldn''t uh...your tests be more effective and stuff if you actually had people fighting back at their full capacity? At least wait until the Dragon situation is resolved."


    "Actually, I''m trying something new," Rio shrugged. "You can get data from intact countries anytime. But to throw them into an actual warzone? That''s not something that crops up every day. I have to take advantage of the situation, who knows how many other wars there would be during my lifetime."


    "Warzone?" I echoed stupidly. "What war?"


    "You don''t mean¡­" AEGIS gasped.


    "Well, yeah," Rio shrugged. "It''s my duty as my calling."


    "You can''t!" AEGIS'' shout was pleading. "You really...you can''t be serious. I''ll kill you where you stand, I will!"


    "AEGIS calm down, and what?"


    "She''s going to attack the States, dummy. That''s her warzone."


    "What? Why?"


    "Don''t ask me, ask the psycho."


    "Rio, why the fuck would you do that? That''s the absolute last thing you should be doing. We need you to ease off, not...jam a knife right in the worst place imaginable."


    "But imagine it," she squealed. "The world has never seen a superpower truly on its knees. This is an opportunity I can''t miss researching. Not since the fall of the Roman Empire has there been an implosion on this scale. If I missed this because of some soft-hearted...words...I''d be a failure. I''d be lying to my cause."


    "Please," I pleaded. "Don''t do this, please. If you do, the US will crumble. The XPCA will be no more, Justice will be free to find other things and countries -- maybe even Oasis!"


    "He won''t come here," she scoffed. "He only goes after liars and parasites, and every soul in Oasis is as honest and hard-working as a person can be."


    "You don''t know that though. You don''t know what the world is going to be like afterwards. There won''t be any reason for Exhumans not to rise up, we''re already seeing what happens when the system starts to fail in America...if you did that to the whole world¡­"


    "Then what?" She put her hands on her hips again. "There will be chaos everywhere? There will be legions of Exhumans roving around, picking up training and confidence, becoming more interesting to fight and to study? Or the billions of lazy, indolent humans, they''ll actually have to harden up to survive...and this is bad for me how?"


    "It''s bad for them, you selfish bitch," AEGIS sniped. "How can you stand there and talk about how little you care about ruining the lives of everyone on Earth?"


    "It''s easy," she shrugged. "It''s not my life."


    AEGIS'' engines roared to life, and I saw a blue streak from behind a building as Karu also moved to engage at AEGIS'' lead.


    A big part of me wanted her to stop. Technically, we were doing what we had come for -- we were here negotiating with Rio about the war. The optimistic part of me wanted to press on, wanted to believe that somewhere in Rio was more than just the war-and-data-obsessed maniac I was seeing in front of me. She hadn''t been this bad last time we were here, had she?


    But if I were honest with myself, I also wanted her fucking dead. It felt like a betrayal that she started this campaign after we''d left, and to hear the words coming out of her now, she sounded even worse than Justice. He wanted to destroy everything because he was just an insane, omnipotent, psycho. But she knew better, she knew about the cost of human suffering and death that she was causing.


    She just didn''t care.


    So lightning was in my hands before I''d even finished making up my mind. My legs were moving in step to keep up with AEGIS. I liked Rio, but that was before I''d gone back to work at the XPCA. Before I''d taken my return trip through Japan. Before I''d really had it sink in that some people just couldn''t be fixed or reasoned with, and that their deaths would save so much more life.


    Before I''d learned that killing was often the right thing to do. And from the sound of it, this was a death that the world sorely needed. My personal feelings and conscience be damned; it would be the height of selfishness to spare her just because of what I felt.


    We crossed half the distance in a heartbeat. Dragon had moved, of course, taking half a step to his left to be between us. But Karu was coming in from above, AEGIS from the right, and me from the left, and he couldn''t stop us all.


    I saw Rio''s eyes go wide as she understood what was happening, too slow. Slower than any real combatant, she took a few steps back, starting to turn, to run, and it just pissed me off that this fucking woman-child was the one directing thousands of deaths, one who couldn''t even stand her ground against three attackers.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Only a few feet away now, and Dragon tore the gun from her hands and desperately waved it over us, the emitter glowing as bright as AEGIS.


    As bright as AEGIS had been. When the invisible beam hit her, she shuddered, and my heart froze in my chest. But then I understood as it hit me too, and my exoframe locked up around my legs. The scream of Karu''s engine cut short, and I saw her tumbling in the air, visor flickering.


    And as one, maybe a foot away from the gate where Dragon stood before the others, the three of us crashed. My momentum carried my shoulder painfully into the ground with a screaming crack. Karu tumbled athletically and seemed to absorb most of the impact.


    And AEGIS just landed face-first, skidding on the ground like a corpse. I battled back tears as I held my shoulder and tried to stop the world from spinning and flickering in front of my eyes. Tried to will a sword into existence inside Rio, just five feet away, or inside Dragon, who advanced on me with the gun pulsing, his face a deadly pall.


    He stopped short, his boots inches from my defunct legs. I tried to channel lightning down my body and into the exoframe''s capacitors, to get enough of a surge for one kick, to get him off me, to buy a few seconds to get back on my feet, to do something.


    There was a scream, and Karu flew in from nowhere, blades extended from her arms, visor thrown aside. Dragon hardly moved, dipping and weaving, keeping one arm extended yet protected to continue pouring the ennervator across me. Once, twice, he lashed out with his other hand, catching Karu first in a striking forearm, and then in the jaw, reeling her back.


    "G-get," I coughed and felt the slick of blood in my mouth when I choked. "Get Rio. Let him have me."


    Karu pivoted at once, but so did Dragon, fending off her blades again as she tried to lunge at the girl. One blade made it through, cutting out a trailing edge of the dirty labcoat but nothing more.


    And then Karu grunted as Dragon slammed his palm into her chin and drove her to the ground. She landed nearby, flat on her back, and I saw by her eyes how dazed the blow had rendered her. She was struggling, but her feet wouldn''t get under her. Not before Dragon''s daggers found us. Again, he advanced, menacingly, hands glinting silver now with blades that might be our doom.


    Fucking hell. Even if we''d had Saga, we never made it past the gate, never got in range of the fucking tree. Granted, we''d have another body to work with, but in a fight, Saga was about as worthless as Rio. How the fuck had this all gone so badly, so fast?


    That goddamn ennervator. If only Rio had packed a different gun for meeting us. If only I hadn''t been so desperate and stupid and needed this exoframe to get around in the first place. If I were on my own two feet, I could have dodged Dragon a lot more, could have tied him up and wasted enough of his time for Karu to get a shot off at Rio.


    Instead, we had all this tech, rendered useless in a heartbeat. I couldn''t move or use my powers, Karu couldn''t see or shoot, AEGIS just...wasn''t. It was pathetic.


    Dragon stayed standing over me, his face contemplative, not a bit of him stirring except the pulsing of the ennervator. Was he just figuring out what kind of painful death he should give me? Were those studying eyes examining every weak-point and nervous bundle across my body, figuring out which to slice open first?


    He seemingly made up his mind, turning to Karu first. I yelled, I tried to sit up, but my shoulder gave under me, and the pain of that tumbled me into moments of nonexistent blackness.


    When I was in myself again, I grabbed hold of my exoframe with my good arm and pulled myself upright, the rush of blood in my head almost enough to send me under again. He was kneeling over her, doing something, the gun still at his side, still pointed at me. He was...cutting her, I thought. The knife slicing in and out, the glint of silver surreal in the grey of my vision.


    I screamed at him as he worked, methodical as a butcher. At some point, Karu stirred, but he dropped her again with an elbow to her face, a sickening crack I could hear from here. I screamed and cried, tears of frustration blinding me, as I unpinned the releases on my exoframe, pulling my legs free and crawling with my one arm, the broken ground cutting long gashes in my body as I scraped myself across it, as I clawed for every inch between us.


    Karu''s head turned towards me, and I saw the same dazed expression on her. A confusion, a resignation, an alien-looking exhaustion.


    And then Dragon pulled away, and I saw his handiwork. He''d cut off the bandolier across her chest and bound her arms and legs behind her back with it, grenades and ammo that had once been there now disappeared. And in front of my face, he threw the glinting silver that I''d thought to be a knife.


    It was a syringe. Empty. One of Karu''s, that she used for live captures after a target had been detained. That explained why she was so unfocused, why her head looked so heavy.


    Why, finally defeated by her own biological limitations, she fell as much as her restraints would allow. Her slow breathing was the only difference between her and AEGIS'' prone form next to her.


    And then Dragon advanced on me. I growled at him, spitting the mouthful of blood and dust. I had no words for him. He had better keep that ennervator on me for the rest of my life, because if I ever got my powers back for even an instant¡­


    He shook his head at me, squatting just out of my reach, just in my vision. "I do not like you," he said. "I have killed many. But few have I met who have struggled with your tenacity."


    "L-let go...of the...gun...and I''ll show you...how tenacious...I can be¡­"


    He did something that approximated a laugh.


    "I wish to use your tenacity, Exhuman Ashton. You spoke words that reached me. I believe this situation can be improved to both of our benefit." He seemed to swallow hard. "I face a problem I cannot overcome, though I have tried endlessly."


    "Good," I spat.


    "I have reached desperation. I think you may be the key to my issue. And in doing so, will benefit yourself."


    "You can go fuck yourself," I told him. "You and...your desperation. I hope it destroys you."


    He smiled, and the transformation was creepy as hell. Seeing something as emotionless as Dragon suddenly burst out in a grin, even if I died her today, that would now only be the second-most traumatic thing he''d done to me after this.


    I heard footsteps, but couldn''t get my eyes to focus on anything but him. And then I heard Rio speak.


    "I-is he...dead?"


    "Would it matter?" Dragon replied.


    She didn''t answer. I just heard a little flutter of her panicked breathing in the silence.


    "He made a good point," Dragon said. "And for that reason, he lives yet. As do the others, rendered harmless, for the time."


    "W-what point?"


    "He came in good faith to negotiate on behalf of the other end of this war you wage. It is ill manners to execute a messenger, no matter if you wish to hear them out."


    "I don''t care," she said, suddenly icy. "I don''t want to hear anything else from him. Or from you."


    Her shoes scraped on the white stone as she turned and strode away, her footfalls sounding angry. Dragon looked back at me with a knowing glance, and despite my addled state, I suddenly understood the nature of the problem he was facing, and why he couldn''t beat it on his own.


    I choked on more blood as I laughed, despite myself. And this time, when Dragon grinned, it wasn''t so traumatic.


    There was something so humanizing about knowing that, like every other man on the planet, Dragon also had issues with women. Ice-cold killer, born and raised in this freakshow of a walled city, sees the world through some perception I can''t even begin to imagine, nestled in the powers of their dead-Exhuman-god-tree, most dangerous assassin in the world, superhuman deductive, tracking, and fighting skills...and still can''t get a girl to hear him out.


    Shit, bro, I''d been there.


    "I''ll do it," I told him. "She''ll listen to me."


    He hesitated for a moment. "I work alone. I do not trust."


    "I know."


    "I am a professional. I can bury our grievances."


    I paused for a moment. Those words were heavier than I thought he knew. I thought of Alyssa, and my words over her grave, more heavy words. A life I was turning my back on if I were to accept Dragon, in anything, ever.


    I''d never forgive him.


    But at the same time, I remembered the calculations I''d done on the flight over here, and just how many people were dying every minute. How many days left America had before Justice killed literally everyone. And how might that calculation change if Rio carried out her plans and joined the slaughter? How many more VTOLs'' worth of people would come crashing down?


    If I was willing to kill Rio over this, it seemed impossibly stupid that I wouldn''t be willing to not kill Dragon.


    "I can be a professional," I told him. "I can let it go. For now. Until the crisis is over."


    "I respect your perseverance. And now I respect your honesty. Do not betray my respect, Exhuman Ashton."


    "Call me Athan, please," I told him. "Not to be chummy...it''s just my name."


    "Very well, Athan," he said, rising, and then extending an arm.


    It felt weird, felt like I was betraying myself...betraying Karu and AEGIS, who''d just been prepared to fight and die beside me. Betraying Alyssa most of all.


    But it also felt light, powerful. His grip was sure and strong, and I was tottering on my feet before I even registered he''d pulled me up.


    Dragon was a fucker, and I hated him. But goddamn if he wasn''t strong.


    And maybe it was the blood rushing from my head as I stood, or maybe it was just the new paradigm of standing there with him helping to steady me instead of putting my ass back in the dirt. But it struck me that we''d come out here to find help and end the attacks. Dragon''s hadn''t been the help I''d been looking for...but not that we were halfway on the same page¡­


    That was step two. Step one was to talk to Rio and figure out what we could figure out here. I felt like if I could just get her alone...maybe do as Saga said and suck a little face...in the interest of world peace, of course¡­


    Dragon had moved, and I was left standing there, blinking stupidly as he took my bad arm in his and pulled. Pain shot down my whole body, my chest landing on his back as he twisted, like a judo throw, I was helpless on him, my shoulder screaming as he seemingly ripped my arm off without warning.


    There was a crack and a pop and then release, as he let me go and I staggered backwards, only for him to catch me before I fell. My arm hurt like fucking hell.


    What I wanted to ask was what the fuck was that, but what came out was a slurry of half-pronounced profanities. It wasn''t until I was gesturing at him with both arms that I realized my arm worked again, and that he''d reset my dislocated shoulder.


    "Fucking warn me next time," I screamed in his face. "Or something. Who the fuck just jerks a guy like that? Fuck!"


    "I did what needed to be done." He paused. "Although. I perhaps should have warned you. My apologies. I am unaccustomed to...working with others," he frowned.


    I shook my head at him. This was going to be an awful, painful experience, I could already tell. Doubts were creeping up through me already at just how long this partnership would last.


    But in those doubts, a glimmering hope. Competent as he was, Dragon was also a fucking idiot when it came to this kind of shit.


    Which meant, he was a fucking idiot in dealing with Rio, I hoped. And as only a regular idiot, that meant I stood a chance.


    Dragon waited like a glacier as I rejuiced my legs, and then did the same to get AEGIS upright. It took a false start and another aborted murder attempt before I could explain the situation to her, and by the end of it, she looked as bewildered as I felt.


    But I couldn''t argue with the fact that somehow, she was in my wake carrying Karu, as we followed Dragon and the other high priest through the gate unimpeded, being welcomed by Dragon to willingly enter his most sacred domain.

 424. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    The inner city was remarkably transformed from last time we''d been here. The labyrinthine building with its courtyards and windows twisting around like a panicked earthworm of white stone was still here, but it had not been untouched.


    It reminded me of Whitney''s tendency to spread to fill whatever surfaces were available. It looked like Rio''s armories, once so neatly lined with racks of guns in pristine order had overflowed, and the weapons were now everywhere. As Dragon and Tobias led us inward through winding halls, I found more than once, a sense of deja vu about where we should be turning, only to peer down that corridor and see it blocked off by metal construction or new forges, belching sparks and smoke as priests toiled tirelessly.


    I found myself more sad than I should have been to note that many of the trees planted around had been cut down. We walked down one seemingly-pristine stone hall, visiting again the sense of order and faith that had once filled this halls, interrupted only by the sound of our feet: Karu''s stumbling steps as the antiserum struggled to keep her conscious, my exoframe clacking behind Dragon and AEGIS'' silent footfalls. But then, right outside the window, one of the courtyards had been converted to an artillery pit, with a priest manning a huge mounted gun pointing skyward, the grass trampled and wilted, brown patches on dusty dirt.


    It was like an infection, almost. Metal tumors were growing all over the place, bulging out of stone walls. Some floors had been replaced, the better to facilitate rails, to move artillery in and out for service and deployment, or racks of weapons to ship into the city. Hissing pipes bulged through new cracks in the walls, and threw condensation and heat-wavering shadows across the white stone that remained.


    This was Rio''s dream made manifest. She wanted war, and this sanctum now reflected that. I remembered the efficacy with which she''d put together a gun using my powers last time I was here; it''d taken her a matter of minutes. To see the thousands of guns now flowing out of this place, she must be working around the clock, mass-producing death.


    It sorta sickened me, that we were currently facing a shortage, and Oasis was nearly drowning in guns.


    It was a more circuitous route than before, but we finally made it to the sacred chamber at the heart of Oasis. The tree loomed dead, tall, and spindly, glowing in unearthly beauty from the rainbow cast upon it by the room''s tall stained glass windows. Ornate carvings on the floor depicted their faith''s symbols and drew the eyes inwards and upwards toward the tree, many depicting the stick itself in abstract.


    Here was untouched. Pristine. Too central to their faith for even Rio''s worship of war to violate.


    For the most part.


    Because even in this sanctum, I could sense the changes around us. Through the stained glass, if I squinted through the warped facade, I could make out artillery pits just outside. And the clanging of the forges at work echoed down the halls, even into here. It remained a sacred place, but it was no longer sacrosanct, no longer secluded; where once it was a chamber dedicated solely to their faith and their god, now the reminders of the outside world and mortal struggles tugged at the edges of one''s attention.


    I didn''t know why that made me sad. I certainly didn''t give a shit about their tree or faith. As far as I saw it, that thing happened to stand where some bizarre Saga-like Exhuman had just so happened to die a longass time ago. It was exactly as worthy of reverence than any tombstone. But I remembered the first time I''d been here -- granted, that had the advantage of my heart pounding a million beats a minute and being completely unsure if we were going to survive our visit. But even terrified as I''d been, I remembered awe, that so solemn and sacred a place could exist in this world.


    And I guess I''d been proven right again. Beautiful, pure things couldn''t remain in this world. Girls like Lia became killers. Children like Ethan, the Exhuman who made Eryendria, put to death. And sacred halls rang with the echoes of the forges of war.


    "You have visited here before?" Tobias asked, studying us intently.


    "Yeah," AEGIS answered. "I met you three nearby and then Rio and Dragon took me here. And then some fighting, and then the rest of them showed up."


    "I see, I see," he muttered. He sorta mumbled like he didn''t know how to use his lips quite properly. "In which case, I am curious, as to your thoughts."


    The three of us paused for a moment. I wasn''t quite sure how to say I thought it sucked and that this was a blight on what had once been the prettiest place in the glasslands without provoking Dragon to another fight.


    So I was still picking my words when AEGIS spoke up. "It''s a real tragedy," she said. And Karu and I nodded along. "This place used to be so beautiful and...I mean...a little full of itself, but awe-inspiring. Now it feels like another victim of Rio''s war."


    Dragon''s eyes flashed dangerously. "I agree."


    I let out a little sigh of relief. Great to know his opinion if I was trying to stay on his good side and prove ourselves useful at all. Though, it might have been a lot easier if he''d just tell us what he wanted instead of just silently leading us around. I got the impression we were being tested somehow.


    "It is a shame," Tobias agreed, his voice sing-song. "Meditating in these halls on the turn of the cosmic wheel has become onerous. I''ve taken to finding refuge in the outer city, even begun having a small shrine built."


    "Sorry if this is rude, but, you''re Tobias, right?"


    He answered with sweeping bow. His heavily-waxed moustache and goatee glistened in the stained-glass light as he moved, and as much as I was trying not to notice, off his shiny bald head.


    "And what is it you do around here, Tobias?"


    "My calling," he wheezed "is the worlds beyond. Places beyond this place, I dream of, until my dream places me there." He shook his head. "Such a shame sometimes that the body must wake."


    "So...you''ve got like...a power to visit other dimensions when sleeping? That''s super cool."


    "We all visit other places when dreaming," he said with a wizened smile.


    "Well...sure. But like, literal other places. Like the void, where someone I know built a like, impossible-logic space-terrarium. Or the parallel Earth where some acquaintances of ours came from."


    The old wise man demeanor fell away from him instantly, and with startling speed I found him in my face.


    "Tell me what you have seen, young dreamer," he demanded, shaking me. "Tell me the of the void. Tell me that my dreams are more than dreams, that I''ve been there. I must have been."


    AEGIS gently separated us, but I was surprised to find Karu taking him from there. "Actually, I have the most experience, I believe. I admit being somewhat muddled yet from the drug and wish to keep active so as to not lose consciousness again. Do you mind if the two of us walk whilst you handle things?"


    "Sure, go ahead," I agreed. "Don''t go too far."


    "We will be within earshot," she smiled at me. "I will spend some time to attend to my equipment, but then do let me know when the situation demands killing."


    "Hopefully we''ll keep you waiting."


    And so saying, Karu and Tobias slunk away. Which, I just didn''t see coming. Why Karu would want to slip off like that when Dragon was right here, I didn''t know. Felt weird, felt unexpected coming from her, that she''d have the random altruism to regale some old spacey grandpa with her own tales from beyond.


    Until I watched her slipping down one of the passages and, as she spoke to the transfixed old man, witnessed her discreetly picking up some of the exotics and stowing them on her person.


    I had to grin inwardly. Attend to her equipment'' my ass. Even being drugged and revived with her own chems, Karu never missed a beat. Dragon had defeated us once, and that was more than she''d allow. If it came to another fight, she''d be ready.


    I turned my attention back to him and cleared my throat. Ostensibly, we should be working with him to clear this up, but even if that didn''t pan out, I should be buying Karu time to find the very shiniest guns.


    "Okay well, our position''s pretty clear, I think," I began. "We want Rio not to attack anyone. At the very least, not to attack the states while Justice is still a thing. And ideally, we''d like her to join us in fighting against him -- these weapons of hers could go pretty far in taking him down."


    "Yes, your motives are transparent and obvious," he agreed. Obnoxiously.


    I waited for him to say anything else but apparently that condescension was all I was getting without prodding.


    "So...what do you want?" I asked.


    He glared at me like I was being rude somehow.


    "Um, we''re trying to help each other here, right? So...it makes sense that we know what you want so that we can help you get it?"


    "I am measuring my response," he said, words full of venom, like everything I was saying was a huge affront. "Do not consider yourself privy to my every thought, despite the circumstances."


    Okay. So he was a little defensive and a little snippy. I reminded myself that this guy worked exclusively solo on everything, all the time, everywhere. He didn''t have a team of friends and confidants like I did. And, because of his powers, his worldview was probably a bit alien.


    A lot alien, actually. He was born here, wasn''t he? Just another toad until he got his powers which somehow made him more. So yeah, he probably didn''t think or see the world like literally anyone else. A little defensiveness could be expected.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    But.


    Um.


    So.


    Yeah.


    After a couple minutes of the world''s most painful silence, I cleared my throat as politely as possible. "You should, ah, give us some direction though? Anything?"


    He frowned bitterly at me, and again, I kinda had to wonder what I''d done wrong here. AEGIS tagged in.


    "Do you prefer we call you Dragon or Liwei?" she asked.


    "I care nothing what you speak."


    She doubled-down on her reassuring smile. "Okay then. Tobias asked us what we thought of the inner city earlier. What do you think?"


    "I told you. Open your ears when I speak."


    She nodded, as though that were a valid and helpful answer. "I see. So you said you agreed that this place was like a casualty of war. I know for us, we thought it was beautiful here, but seeing what Rio''s done has really despoiled the place. Is that similar to what you feel?"


    Wait a second. As I watched her work on him, ignoring his barbs and drowning him with patience and understanding, I felt something familiar. Did she do this to me? Were these the kid gloves I got handled with when I was being a little bitch?


    God, I hoped not. She seemed almost painfully transparent in her reassurances and ignoring everything awful he spat at her, the placid smile seemingly too genuine to fake.


    But I couldn''t shake how familiar it felt. God, that was probably a huge red flag, wasn''t it? About me, not her. She was a fucking goddess if this was anything close to what I was like.


    And then I realized my jaw had been clenched ever since I realized I''d been comparing myself to Dragon again, or maybe in seeing AEGIS doting on him. Like it was fine obviously but...grr. This was ridiculous.


    "So basically," I cut in, clearing my throat significantly. "You want Rio to stop and so do we."


    "On that we agree," he nodded sharply.


    "And...your reasons are...that you don''t like what she''s doing here."


    "My reasons are my own."


    "Except...you do realize, the first thing Rio''s going to say when we ask her to stop is why. And it''s very unconvincing to say ''because I said so.''"


    He glowered at me, but I could see him contemplating again. Had he really not thought this through to that basic extent? Like, come on.


    "Wait," I said, suddenly realizing. "You''ve already tried talking to her. Repeatedly, based on her reactions -- are you telling me you never gave her a single reason for your actions in that time? Or..." I studied his face right back "or you didn''t anticipate her even asking?"


    "Athan, a moment?" AEGIS asked with the same singsong cheer, steering me away. I was easy to herd, as my head was nothing but bafflement at the moment. She continued in a low voice once we''d taken a few steps. "What a frickin'' head case," she muttered.


    "Right?"


    "Like, I get it. He''s grown up in a city of toads, he''s never, ever been socialized. He''s literally developmentally retarded when it comes to social situations." She frowned bitterly. "And to add on that, he''s powerful and capable enough to get everything done in his life solo. He''s never had a need to explain or justify anything he does, with the whole ''calling'' thing basically being a free pass to do whatever he wants, all the time, anywhere."


    "So he''s a huge baby," I said, looking across the hall at him. Standing there, glowering. He was so full of menace, such a dangerous monster, already stained with so much blood. To think of him as immature in any way, it just wasn''t compatible in my mind.


    "He really is. And he''s obviously got a lot of patience from spending so much of his life waiting and stalking, but I''m going to be as diligent as I can in not pushing him. We have an opportunity here I didn''t think possible, and if we piss it away by being short with him¡­"


    "Basically you''re telling me to step off," I grinned at her.


    "I''m telling you to handle him with kid gloves. Because that''s what he is in there. He doesn''t seem to understand empathy as a concept. But still, he''s smart...it''s so weird. Did you see his face when you told him the first thing Rio would ask is why?"


    "Yeah, sorta. He just looked thoughtful."


    "He was shocked, actually. I think he was wondering how you possibly knew what she said. He never made that connection on his own, like before when you proposed that you both have something to gain...I don''t think he ever saw it coming. And somehow, that extremely basic shit is...I guess...kind of awe-inspiring for him. He''s got mad respect for you right now, because of your basic ability to understand people. So let''s work on that angle."


    Even with that basic plan in place, talking to Dragon was like pulling teeth. And now that I was looking for it, the inner toddler was more apparent than ever. In his consistent denials to explain himself or his wants, I saw a child sitting there, blinking at me, asking why? anytime I wanted him to do anything. Except a child fully-grown, who''d long ago given up on asking a world that had never once answered him.


    And it just felt bizarre, explaining to this grown-ass nemesis of mine, this fucking unrepentant killer, on whose hands was Alyssas''s blood, how much more convincing it would be to tell Rio why he feels how he feels. That, if she wasn''t going to be a murder victim of his, how talking was a good way of actually, y''know, having a relationship.


    He was a good student, mostly. He listened with rapt attention. He picked up on everything AEGIS and I said and did so with cunning eyes which missed nothing. And as our examples went on, I found the two of us using each other more and more often as a case study and a concrete example of a relationship which worked.


    Which just made things weirder.


    "Well," she continued, gazing deeply into me. "Another example might be when Athan comes home from work. I''m sure you''ve felt this, that you''re out there working hard all day, and when you finally come back, you can relax to some degree. Being at home is comforting, right? It''s natural to find satisfaction in being back in the place you have made for yourself after going out there and¡­"


    "And killing people all day?" I suggested.


    She grinned apologetically. "I''m not sure if you mean him or you, but I guess both apply. Anyway, I know when he comes back he''s tired and he''s craving that comfort, so I do everything I can in that moment to provide for him. I try to minimize the work he has to do when he gets there: I try to anticipate his needs by thinking of what he might want...and a good predictor of that might be what I want in that situation. So, for example, if I always wanted to eat and lie down when I got home, I''d make sure there was food and a clean bed when he did. See how you can apply your own desires to anticipate others''?"


    "''Cept you don''t eat," I informed her.


    "Shush, the point still stands."


    "This does not apply," Dragon declared. "Anticipating her needs does not further mine."


    "Well, no, not directly," AEGIS tapped her lips thoughtfully. "Except that women...people, really...they''re more receptive to giving you what you want if you''re willing to give them what they want."


    "This is not a negotiation."


    "Isn''t it? What else is it?"


    "It is no shortcoming of mine if she is incapable of seeing what should be."


    AEGIS laughed. "It is absolutely a shortcoming of yours. You are like, three steps down on making assumptions here, Liwei. You have to consider that she isn''t you, and doesn''t see the world exactly as you do. Her calling is more relevant to her than your feelings, so she''ll pay a lot more attention to it. It''s up to you to tell her your feelings, and help her realize that this matters to you."


    "Up to you," he insisted.


    "Well that really depends now, doesn''t it?" AEGIS crossed her arms. "Because despite your denial, this is a negotiation. By her actions, Rio''s already established that she doesn''t just want to drop what she''s doing and do what you think is right. Assuming you don''t want to kill, coerce, or blackmail her...I think your strongest option is exactly that -- to negotiate with her. To put your desires and hers on the table and see what each of you is willing to compromise on."


    "Then it is useless," he said, his body shifting stiffer. "You are pointless, as are your services."


    "Dude," I cut in. "Everything does not have to be a total extreme. If she cut back the amount of her crap in the center city by half...kept it out of your quarters and away from your god, wouldn''t that be better?"


    He stared at me. Eyes so cold, goddamn. "It would be."


    "Then you fucking--" I coughed to interrupt myself, and started over with an imitation of AEGIS'' placating tone. "Then you understand the power of compromise."


    AEGIS smiled radiantly again. "Trust me, I''ve spent a lot of time talking with her. She''s got her share of problems too. She''s lonely and wants friends...and hell, I think that''s half the reason she was siding with me when you wanted me dead last time we were here. She wanted someone to interact with. That''s something you could offer her -- is that so bad a negotiation? You guys talk a little more, and in exchange, she cuts back on the whole war-thing?"


    He looked like he was giving it some serious thought, and like doing so was painful for him. I could have laughed, but put in a heroic effort not to, reminding myself again that he saw the world through his powers, that he grew up weird, all that shit.


    When at long last, he gave a solemn nod, as though agreeing to a death pact.


    "I have been convinced. I am ready to discuss...my feelings."


    "Awesome," AEGIS cheered.


    "With him," Dragon pointed at my chest.


    "What?" I asked.


    "You are dirt," he informed her. "You are a doll, scraped-together rock and sand, refined to look a person. But you are not, and will never be."


    She blinked at him. "Well fuck you, too, asshole. You''re not so great yourself. In fact--"


    I found myself between the two of them. "Dragon, what the fuck?" I asked. "She''s helping you, and that''s how you treat her?"


    "I am merely stating facts."


    "Well you''re a real piece of shit for--"


    To my surprise, AEGIS hugged me from behind. Her voice was warm in my ear, a complete reversal from a moment ago. "It''s fine."


    "You were just about to go off on him, too," I argued. "He''s being a real sack of shit. He can''t say that about you."


    "Just remember, he''s...developmentally challenged," she sighed.


    "He called you dirt. He said you''d never--"


    "I was right here, Athan. I heard. And yes, I was offended, but you know what?"


    "What?"


    "Fuck ''em. Let''s not let our egos get in the way of saving the world, yeah?"


    I swallowed. Right. That thing. "Okay," I agreed.


    She squeezed me one last little bit more, and then let me go. "Well then, you boys have fun. I''ll be within earshot, so no fighting. I think I''ll go see if Karu needs any help."


    And so, red hair swishing behind her, she sauntered off, leaving me alone with Dragon.


    Who stood there. Cold eyes boring into me, silently standing. My shoulder still ached from being violently dislocated and then even more violently located. I wondered if I should speak first, or how, exactly this was going to work.


    When after exactly five seconds, to my surprise, he spoke up.


    "I have a question," he said.


    "Shoot. Er, go ahead. Don''t shoot."


    "I have seen the term often, in research. I am wondering if it applies to the current situation."


    "Which term?" I asked. It was the first time in his life that Dragon was going to be negotiating, there would probably be a lot of firsts for him in this. And it was almost cute that he''d be asking about it.


    "Now that it is the two of us, alone and interacting, discussing feelings...these are the attributes that constitute a date?"


    Nope. I took it all back. He wasn''t cute at all. Forget I ever thought anything like that.


    I sighed, and explained that no, and furthermore, hell no.


    And reminded myself of what was at stake here as we began down a long, painful road.

 425. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    It would be enormous hyperbole to say that little chat with Dragon was the most painful experience I''d had with him. He and I had clashed on four separate occasions now -- or more, depending on how you counted -- and each time it felt like he was introducing me to some new dimension of pain I wasn''t aware of before.


    He killed the Defiant. He killed Aylssa. He dragged me back into the Exhuman life. He was the one behind Oasis. An agent for Blackett, and for Idris. And now this.


    This¡­.chat. About feelings. With a developmentally retarded sociopathic Exhuman murderfiend.


    Yeah, I''d be hyperbole to call it the most painful experience. But I''d say it anyway. Because at least when he was killing me or those I loved, it was a punishment for my failures, for not being as strong as he was, or as capable, or as prepared. This time, it was a reward for my success.


    The good news was, it was brief. It only took about twenty minutes before I thought I''d dragged everything out of him I was gonna get, at which point, here I was, wandering around the inner city, my head spinning with the incredible lameness of our conversation and my eyes resting more than looking on the scenery.


    The priests were hard at work, four of them in my sight at the moment, but another dozen I''d passed in the halls. There seemed to be many more of them than before; either I''d missed most of them on our last visit, or our god was pumping more into that caste at Rio''s behest.


    Because it really couldn''t be anyone else. Three of the four I was watching were loading and operating an artillery piece, one of the many which had been dropping shells on us during our approach. I had to wonder who they were shooting at currently, but at the same time, really didn''t want to know. The whole world was kinda out to get Oasis at the moment, but I imagined only the best-prepared would make it past all the exotics employed in defense, only to come face-to-face with a city full of Exhumans.


    The last one was making weapons, or weapon parts. He was rolling out metal on a table and banging it into a smooth curve with hammer blows so consistent, you could set a metronome to them. As far as I knew, toads never really got bored or depleted, and could work up to their physical limits without complaint. The productivity of these guys was probably off the charts.


    I hadn''t seen the girls since they stepped off, but wasn''t too worried for them. Dragon had been with me, and had no reason to attack them, and nothing else in the city was that big a threat. If I heard explosions or engines racing...or if they hailed me on comms of course, I''d come running. But until then, as I saw it, they were working their own agendas, and so was I.


    And speaking of whom, my agenda came around the corner and began to inspect the work on the toad banging away. I watched her for a moment, and then moved to intercept when she departed after finishing her inspection.


    "So how''s it going?" I asked.


    She jumped and yelped, turning to face me. "Oh, it''s you, Athan. You startled me."


    "Guilty conscience?" I asked, grinning.


    She shrugged. "I don''t typically have company. Liwei''s always silent and Tobias prefers dreaming and stargazing. And diligent as they are, the priests only answer and acknowledge if instructed to." She shrugged again and then gave me a little frown. "You''re not going to spout off at me like Liwei are you? I''ve heard enough of his commands."


    "Wouldn''t dream of it," I lied.


    "Good. Well, I''m very busy. I''d appreciate your company, but would you mind walking?"


    I took a couple jogging strides to catch up with her and followed at her elbow as she dove back into the twisting labyrinth.


    While none of the rooms looked exactly the same to me, all of them looked similar enough, like iterations of one another, that I couldn''t actually tell where we were or if we were just headed in large circles. But apparently she knew, and paused every couple of rooms to check on the work of some toads, often giving them more refined instructions, or picking up bits of what they were working on to stow under her arm or in her labcoat''s pockets.


    "I''m sorry about your arm," she said, after a couple such stops. It was funny, she was so much shorter than me that despite moving with some urgency, I could keep up with just long strides.


    "Yeah, it''s okay," I commented. "Honestly, resetting my shoulder is one of the less-painful things Dragon''s done to me. I was just thinking about that earlier."


    "I see. What would you say is the most painful?"


    I looked at her sideways, catching her eyes through her oval glasses which made her pause. "What?" she asked.


    "That''s like, a terrible question," I laughed at her. I wasn''t sure why I was laughing, maybe just how ridiculous it was for her to think that was a good topic. Then again, she''d had a lot of similar socializing as Dragon, I guess.


    "Oh. I suppose so," she frowned slightly. "Insensitive, I guess. I''m sorry. Would asking...the most pain you''ve inflicted on him...be better?"


    I shook my head. "Um, maybe. But generally pain isn''t really a great conversation topic."


    She resumed walking, and so I resumed trailing.


    "I suppose not, for casual acquaintances," she continued. "I wouldn''t bring it up on a first date, maybe. But you and I are past that...aren''t we? I thought so. We made a gun together when last you left and...perhaps I''m confused. I''m sorry. I''m tired."


    "I can tell by your voice. Have you been running around like this the whole time?"


    "If you mean the whole war, then...yes." She paused again, barely glancing at what looked like a lattice of plastic gauze being carefully knit, and picking up a small bundle from the station before continuing. "I am not certain how actual militaries function, but I assume they have more than one woman doing the deployment and provisioning."


    "Yeah, I was kinda wondering about that. Like...you make guns. They''ve got that, naturally. But what about like, food? I thought you guys were really hard-up for salt?"


    We apparently reached our destination, an unoccupied workbench almost randomly positioned in the middle of a relatively unspoiled hall. She dropped her armful of materials and began emptying her pockets.


    "I was worried about that as well," she said. "But as it turns out, the rest of the world has something of an abundance of salt. We''re actually at a surplus for the first time in my lifetime, with our supply lines bringing it back into the city. If I had known I could solve our problems so easily, I might have done this sooner."


    "Well that''s...great," I said through grit teeth. "You know, you could also like...buy it. Or something. Maybe something that doesn''t involve pillaging."


    "We did that for a time," she looked up at me seriously. "We traded our guns, if you recall. Somebody shut down that operation."


    "You could have traded anything else. How about those silks you make? Those aren''t found anywhere else on the planet. Or...artisanal earthware. Hell, you''re an amazingly talented technopath, I''m sure you could make other things--"


    "I don''t want to make other things. I want to make weapons."


    This was it, my inroads to starting to talk her down. Even as her hands began moving, assembling some new death-device right in front of me, each part going into place like she knew exactly where it fit, I hoped I could begin to talk about our real goal.


    "Are you sure you want to make weapons though?" I asked with exaggerated concern. "You look so tired. When''s the last time you''ve been able to rest?"


    She gave me a weary smile. "I can rest when my weapons are tested, when I''m proud of what I''ve made."


    "Which is, when?"


    "I don''t know. When they''re good enough."


    "You know, they''re already the best in the world. I told you last time we were here of all the shit that goes down with people dealing with your guns, people dying to have them and dying for not having them."


    She frowned at me, her eyes not even on her work at this point, her hands like some kind of autonomous robotic system as they went. "What is it you do again, Athan?"


    "Um. I''m in...security, I guess."


    "Is that your passion? You berated me last time that I did not know your calling. Is ''security, I guess'' the mark you wish to leave on the world?"


    "Well, not in those admittely-lame words. But yes. I want the world to be more secure, for my having been in it."


    "And if you worked your butt off, and attained...say...most of your goal, you left a smudge, not quite a mark. The world was better, but not secure--"


    "I''d be happy with that."


    "--and if your true goal was within your reach. Would you stop?"


    That gave me pause. Mostly because, here I was, acting director of the XPCA, precisely because I''d been unable to put the breaks on the crazy train and ridden it all the way to the top somehow. All the way out to the glasslands, to her, in a move that was quite probably desperate. And necessary.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    But necessary for me to do? Was there another option, like...telling the president exactly where this city was and its weaknesses, and introducing a little more glass to China? Or hell, just from what I''d learned here, leaving behind poisoned salt? That''d fuck up the whole damn city for good.


    And yet I wasn''t doing those things, because that wouldn''t be the right way. I saw that as short-sighted, saw the genocide against these people as destruction of a unique culture, and of fellow Exhumans. Even if they were bringing down war.


    "No, I guess not," I told her. "I''d press on, just like you are."


    "Good," she gave me a smile and an almost apologetic half-shrug. The thing in her hands was now fully resembling a small pistol, though we''d apparently reached a point where it had to be held in a vice while she assembled something tiny and dangerous looking to seat within it. "You know, I had concerns that you would come here and say nothing but how I needed to quit, how the good of the world depended on it. Arguments I cared nothing for."


    "Well you do know that I want you to quit."


    "I do. And I''m sorry that you''ll go home dissatisfied."


    "I really hope it doesn''t come to that. I''d hate to have to kill you, but if that''s the only way¡­"


    She gave me an even broader smile, and in turning towards me, I saw she had a different, small pistol in her hands, pointed at me. "You made that threat last time. I became more prepared."


    "Good to know, I guess."


    She put it away down the silky blouse under her coat, which gave me pause. And then I continued.


    "What I came here to ask isn''t that you stop. I know you don''t want to, and just demanding things you don''t want, that''s what Dragon''s been doing, and I''m sure you''re sick of it."


    "You have been talking to him?" she asked. And then laughed. "Ha, as though he would talk to anyone."


    "Yeah, about that. We''ll come back to that." I cleared my throat. "What I want from you isn''t for you to stop...it''s for you to cooperate with us for a little bit for a¡­"


    I paused and tried to put some of the lecture I''d just given Dragon into practice.


    "There''s a unique fighting opportunity," I pitched. "Something never before seen, and probably never again seen. It''s a challenge so ludicrously superlative that I don''t think your army would even survive."


    This time when she turned to look at me, her hands had stopped. "I''m listening."


    I took a deep breath. I kinda wished someone else was giving this speech, I sucked at building up suspense. "Justice. The flying guy with a ton of different Exhuman powers. He''s like nothing the world has ever seen, and frankly, we''re completely unequipped to deal with him. Do you get a lot of news out here?"


    "If we want it. So no."


    "As of a day ago, he''s started a new campaign, to wipe out America and break humanity''s back, thereby causing the collapse of civilization. He thinks that...doing so will lay the groundwork for something he calls ''pure''. Though what that means," I shook my head. "This is a guy who kills people for practicing law, so it''s pretty obvious that his idea of purity is utterly fucked."


    "America is going to fall?" she asked with some alarm.


    "If we can''t stop Justice, yeah. And then he''ll probably move on to the rest of the world."


    "Oh no," she said, eyes wide. "This is a catastrophe!"


    "It is, right?" I agreed, excitedly. "Which is why we need your help--"


    "I must accelerate my plans! If America collapses before I attack, I will never see what they are capable of. So many things to do, so much to plan...I''ve been having a hard time figuring out how to cross the ocean, I haven''t made boats or planes yet, and my attempts have not lived up to my satisfaction. And the food situation...I must relay to the forces to procure more--"


    "Hey," I snapped at her. "What the hell?"


    "What?" She blinked at me with innocent brown eyes. "I apologize, did you have more to say?"


    "No I...listen, did you not hear anything I just said?"


    "Of course I did." She cocked her head. "I''m sorry, I thought I was responding appropriately? Maybe a little distracted by the sudden news but...what you said and what I said, they made sense together, didn''t they?"


    "That''s not what I mean," I groaned, massaging my temples. For one moment there, I really thought we were on the same page. "Listen, if you just help us defend America, then it''ll be there in the future for you to attack, yeah? Isn''t that better?"


    "But you just said Justice isn''t going anywhere. Nobody can defeat him. We can challenge him at any time. But the other world countries, they are apparently fragile, soon to be lost to history. I don''t see what''s wrong with trying to study them before¡­" she looked around and finished with a lame shrug. "...before they''re extinct."


    "God, you are one callous bitch," I told her. "What the fuck was I even thinking that I could talk to you. You''re a million times worse than Dragon."


    My blood was boiling. Hearing her so logically explain why she should just let people die, why she should actively contribute to their deaths, while she stood there with her round glasses and white castle. This was what I''d worked so hard to protect last time we visited? This frosty bitch?


    I turned to stomp off before I put a blade in her forehead but found something holding my sleeve. When I looked down, I saw her pinching it with a tight frown on her face.


    "What''s that supposed to mean?" she barked. "I''m only doing what makes sense."


    "Yeah, I guess if your aim is to murder as many different varieties of people as possible. You''re sick. I should have killed you last time we were here. I should just kill you now. Fuck''s sake."


    "What do you mean? Don''t talk like that."


    "Don''t--" I sputtered. "Don''t talk like that? We are so done talking. I had this whole...thing...with Dragon lined up for you. But you''re just fucking sick in the head."


    "Why are you being like this all the sudden?" she cried. "Why did you suddenly turn angry and violent? I thought we were having a conversation."


    "Bitch, you don''t know the first thing about conversations," I yelled at her. "Literally. The first thing you ask me is how Dragon''s hurt me most effectively. Well he killed my friend, okay? Murdered her while I was helpless, right before my eyes. Made sure I was powerless and then he left me to die...or live. He didn''t even give a shit, because that''s how meaningless my life was to him once he learned I had no powers."


    She was backing away from me now, her eyes widening as my voice echoed louder in the halls.


    "Dead friends. Powerless. Forced to sit and watch. Fucking remind you of anything? Like maybe your insane plan to attack a crippled country, for your own selfish test results? And then you have the fucking nerve to sit there all doe-eyed and pleading, oh Athan, I''m so confused why you''re mad that I''m ignoring your plea for help and instead plotting to kill everyone you love."


    "Stop yelling," she ordered, her voice wavering. I saw the pistol in her hands again. "Athan, you''re scaring me."


    "Pull the fucking trigger," I ordered her, blades out, filling the room with strobing lights. "Give me the reason I need. I''m begging you."


    But she didn''t, of course. Because that''s just how much of a bitch she was.


    My breath felt heavy and hot as it seethed in my chest. I watched her with hate, as she stood there and cracked and cringed, tears building in her eyes. Dragon wasn''t the only child here. Probably everyone. It was sick.


    "I thought we...thought we were friends," she sniffled.


    "Yeah, well. Things change when you threaten to kill everyone."


    "I don''t want to kill anyone," she argued. "I just want to test my art. I just want to show it to the world. I just want to be appreciated for who I am and what I can do."


    I rolled my eyes with such intensity I worried I''d pulled something.


    "Then maybe--"


    "I know," she snapped. "Maybe don''t kill people. You''re like Liwei, just demanding what you want. Over and over. But you kill people in the pursuit of your calling. What makes yours so much more righteous than mine?"


    "Because mine needs to happen to fix things!" I yelled at her.


    "And so does mine! Do think think I can refine a gun without it firing? Do you think I can iterate on a bomb without seeing the damage it can do?"


    I felt myself trembling and noticed my blades doing so in the air. "Then fucking SHOOT or BOMB shit without KILLING people. It''s not that fucking complicated!"


    "They''re GUNS!" she screamed back, tears breaking. "They are MEANT to shoot people!"


    "What the fuck does that even mean?"


    "It means, you can''t just pretend to use a gun and expect it to be the same. Do you pretend to save people and hope the world changes?"


    "No! But you''re not pretending when you pull the fucking trigger. The gun''s shooting, you idiot bitch, just open your stupid brown look-holes and point them the direction the gun''s facing!"


    She went silent for a minute. "Idiot bitch?" she snipped.


    And then, one slow step at a time, she advanced on me. Her face was red and tears were streaking down her cheeks, her jaw was clenched, and the strange pistol in her hands pointed directly at my chest.


    Step by step, she drew closer. My blades twitched with every motion, but I didn''t dare to put them in her path, because if I let them move, I was certain they''d cut her to pieces.


    Which at this point, might have been a good thing. Fuck her. Except that, in all likelihood, I''d then find out what that pistol did first-hand. And with all the guns she owned to choose from, I bet that little one was the most insanely deadly of all.


    And still she advanced. Closer, until I could see the strands of her brown hair, ragged and shiny from her sweat and work, clinging to her tear-streaked cheeks. Until I could see every multi-colored brown smear staining her lab coat. Until I could see the swollen pink in her eyes from crying. Could see the determined grit of her set jaw, the small pout of her lips, the fire in her eyes.


    Until she was right in front of me, close enough that I had to look down at her now. The hand with the gun twitched, and my blades jumped at the motion. But then she turned it on herself, and for one insane moment, I thought, somehow, I''d driven her to pull the trigger and put an end to this.


    In that moment, I realized, I panicked. I didn''t want her to die, even after all this. I wanted her to live, wanted her to work on this fucking city so it wasn''t a mindfucked shithole, and instead was the Oasis I thought it was when I first came here. Wanted her to be the woman I''d believed her to be, when I spent time with the dream of her.


    I wanted my wish that I made in San Francisco to come true. For her to join us instead of being...being this. I wanted Exhumans to be more than Exhuman, more than the margin of society we''d been forced into. I was lucky and powerful and became something, and I realized, that was a path I wanted for her, desperately.


    And so it was with my brain buzzing and a dry mouth that I saw her turn the barrel on herself. Inwards and downwards.


    And then stuffed down her blouse again. And I let out a breath I didn''t know I''d been holding.


    "I thought," she said, her voice broken and pouting. "I thought we were friends. I don''t know why we''re yelling at each other. I don''t know why we''re threatening each other."


    "You put your gun away," I commented. My throat hurt from screaming too loud. "I could kill you any time, you know."


    "But you won''t."


    She took another step closer to me. And then another. Until she had my hands in hers, tears falling onto the backs of my palms, blades hovering all around her like she was magnetic.


    I could have done it easily. I could have sent a surge up her arms and into her heart and stopped it instantly. Could have done any number of things.


    "But I won''t," I agreed, with a heavy sigh. "But you''ve got to listen to me, please. If it comes to it...even if I don''t want to...I might have to. I don''t want that. Please."


    She sniffled and nodded.


    "Okay," she said simply. "Okay I''m...I guess...I''m all ears."

 426. 2252, Present Day. Oasis. Athan.

    Negotiating with Rio was completely different than talking to Dragon, and was both more human and more frustrating. Quite possibly because she was, unlike Dragon, very nearly human, but not quite. With him, it was like trying to get a life story out of a fire ant -- when it inevitably failed and you wound up stung, it was because you were an idiot for trying. She was closer to trying to get a cat to stop clawing up a sofa.


    She heard me. She listened, responded. And her responses were very insistent that she wanted to continue killing people in a horrible, protracted campaign of death, and she was sorry that I saw and phrased it that way.


    After maybe an hour of talking in circles, she stood from the small table we were seated at and apologized.


    "I''m sorry, I''ve already spent so much time here. We''re not making it anywhere, we just don''t agree. And every minute I sit here is a minute I fall behind in providing for my people and my army."


    I didn''t want to agree, but I just didn''t have much more to say. I''d told her about Justice, about America, the XPCA and the world, but at every point, she just sadly reiterated that, as much as that sucked for those victims and for me...it was not, unfortunately, anything she cared about.


    She was patient, polite, understanding, and ruthless.


    The closest I''d gotten was in mentioning Dragon, and the fact that he''d taken the time to open up to me, in a way. I told her about how we''d fought, and he''d gone so far as to not kill me so that I could hopefully talk her out of this whole thing. It was obvious she cared about him, or at least, more than the rest of the poor suckers dying out there, but even that hadn''t swayed her.


    I had a final card left to play, but I wasn''t sure it was one in my hand. I hoped Dragon would understand...as much as I knew that phrase to be impossible.


    "Wait there''s...one more thing," I said, hustling to catch up with her. "Dragon, like I said, he was working really hard to open up to me."


    "And I''m so proud of him for doing it!" she bubbled. "I wish I were there. I''m actually jealous. Did you know I''ve known Liwei his whole life? And never once has he...well...talked to me, really."


    I tried not to wince too visibly. "Well, that''s the thing, see. Dragon...was...um, offering that, if you...stopped, then he''d be willing to uh...try socializing with you, more."


    "He said that?" she asked, eyes going wide.


    "Sure!"


    She stopped and seemed to give it at least enough thought to demand chewing on a fingernail. It reminded me of Lia, if my sister were a psychopath.


    "I...I shouldn''t," she commented. "It''s so exciting, but...that would be too selfish. And my calling," she said, her voice slipping away from me.


    "Well, you could always...um...refocus your calling. Like I said, maybe...go after Justice, right?"


    "No, Liwei wants me to stop, not fight your enemies, no offense. I don''t know why it''s such a big deal to him, though. He''s never been judgemental of how I pursue my calling before, but this time, it''s like...it really pissed him off somehow."


    Yeah, I hadn''t made it that far with him. Talking about his feelings basically extended to how the city was worse-off now. I brought up that point but she just shook her head.


    "That can''t be it. Like, yeah, I''m not exactly keen on putting artillery pits in the inner city either. It''s loud and obnoxious...but there''s just no room in the city otherwise, and only the priests can operate them. I think they''re annoying, but I don''t think Liwei would put an annoyance above my calling."


    "I dunno," I teased. "He''s pretty big on the whole...blasphemy-heresy thing. He was flipping out when you brought AEGIS past the inner walls, remember? And I''m sure to him, she''s not too different a machine from the cannons."


    She shook her head. "I made the cannons. They''re part of my calling, so he''s fine with it. It''s something else, and I just don''t know what it is."


    "Then let''s ask him," I suggested.


    And she just laughed. "Oh. You''re serious?"


    "I mean, I talked to him before. Kind of a...new leaf, he''s working on, isn''t it?"


    "Oh. Sure," she agreed politely. "Um, regardless, I have to get back to work, urgently, for real. I can catch up with you later tonight, if I''m not too backed up. Promise you won''t leave until then?"


    I shook my head, trying not to think about how, if this was going to take too long...I''d have to have Karu put her down for me. "Sure. I won''t leave until this is settled."


    "Okay. I''ll hold you to that!" she waved, and then veritably skipped away.


    I watched her go, my heart sinking with every bounce.


    "She''s got a bit of an ass on her," AEGIS commented. "I thought you liked them high and tight."


    I turned around and found her standing there, leaning against a wall with just a little too much casual air to be casual.


    "Uh, hi AEGIS. How long you been there?"


    "Oh, long enough to hear a thing or two. Planning to meet again under the cover of night? Sounds like you two are getting along well."


    She strode towards but not directly at me, with long steps that somehow belied how little she cared about me right now.


    "I''m just trying to get her to help us."


    "Oh I understand. Use those masculine charms. Really work it into her. Grr," she growled.


    "It''s not like that."


    She rolled her eyes. "You don''t have to lie to me, Athan. I know what it means for you to be willing to do anything and give up everything for the world. If you''d throw your body away in some stupid fight, you''d certainly fuck a sheltered little psycho."


    She turned from her goose-stepping on her heel and bent forward to face me, thrusting out her chest as she did. Her low-cut sundress didn''t exactly hide much in that configuration.


    "All I want to make sure," she said, reaching forward and booping me on the nose "is that you''re doing it for that reason, and none other. And by it, I mean her. Capiche?"


    "As I said, it''s not like that, AEGIS." I frowned bitterly at her little jealous act and pushed her booping finger out of my face. "I''m worried I''m gonna have to kill her."


    "Oh." She straightened up and put the boobs and strut and finger away at once. "It''s that type of Athan-crisis."


    "Yeah, that one," I sighed. "She just won''t listen to anything I say. We talked, and then fought, and then I thought things were going better because we both actually started listening to what the other was saying¡­"


    "But what the other was saying wasn''t exactly compatible, was it?"


    "No, not at all. It''s like, everything I want, she doesn''t. Everything she wants, I abhor."


    She frowned thoughtfully at me, and then planted herself in the chair Rio had abandoned. I took my old seat again and the two of us lingered in silence for a time.


    "She''s pretty transparent in her wants, yeah?" AEGIS clarified. "She just wants...to make guns and use them, and that''s about it?"


    I nodded. "I think I understand her a lot better after our talk, but that doesn''t help."


    "Well, indulge me. Maybe there''s something in it we can use."


    "Okay," I took a deep breath and thought back over the explanation she''d given me. "So, she doesn''t see herself as an engineer or manufacturer. She thinks herself an artist, and what''s worse, one that''s chasing ''perfection''. However that applies to art."


    "Interesting," AEGIS mused, pushing up her glasses. "Perfection and art are...historically, kind of diametrically opposed. Perfection was a major theme of the renaissance but¡­"


    She cleared her throat. "Sorry. Continue."


    "Well, yeah, that''s what I think. It''s art. You practice, you improve...but perfection is a pipe dream, right? What does perfect art even mean? Except her head''s screwed on so sideways that she seems to think if she does everything right, all the time, she''ll get there. And anything less than that is a disappointing failure for her artistic potential."


    "Hmm. Obsession with relative perfection. Interesting. Relatable."


    "Relatable?"


    She grinned. "Well, to me."


    "AEGIS, you''re already perfect, please don''t go off on a country-wide slaughtering spree in pursuit of anything else."


    "Aw, you''re sweet," she smiled back. "And I''m certainly not going to, although that would complete the trope of a too-lifelike robot going berserk and slaughtering all the humans. Beep, boop, murder."


    "Please don''t do that with your voice. Ever again."


    "But you love me, Athan. I require orgasms. Beep, boop, insert penis."


    "Okay, you''re done."


    She giggled. "But seriously, I''ve got a pretty huge advantage in this department over her. Or, well, anyone else. And that is, getting back to our renaissance masters, the power of iteration."


    "Iteration...how? Like doing the same thing over and over?"Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    "Doing the same thing over and over, but better. As we''ve uh, demonstrated twice now, if I''m ever compromised, if my decisions play out poorly, or I become someone less than optimal, I can self-terminate and bring on a new iteration of myself. Someone with parameters adjusted to correct the failures I made. I can, eventually, become ''perfect'' in a sense, that eventually who or what I become will be optimal for whatever I''m trying to achieve."


    "Please don''t talk like that. You''re not going anywhere."


    "I''m not," she smiled. "And a big part of that is because my chosen goal is you, and a big part of being with you is not iterating. Replacing myself makes both of us miserable, and that''s contrary to my goal, even if the next iteration would be better. But the fact remains that I have that power, and everyone else doesn''t."


    "So what''s this got to do with Rio?"


    "One aspect of the great masters in the renaissance is their shockingly lifelike depictions. Have you ever seen Michaelangelo''s David? Not in person, I assume, but maybe a really high-def VR-scape? Or just pics?"


    "I''m like, familiar with it."


    "Well, it''s theorized that he made it so gosh-darn lifelike by iterating on it, over and over and over again. Carve out the human form, and then carve out musculature, and then carve out sallowness and veins on those muscles. And then creases.  And then skin texture. And so on, until from the top-down, you''ve reproduced a man, to the tiniest detail. Or, as he saw it, imitating the perfection just like the creator did. The original creator."


    "Huh."


    She pushed up her glasses. "We only speculate this because of many of his other works found in less-complete form. There''s actually only very few completed works of his still floating around, most of what he touched was unfinished. But in the unfinished works, we can see his process, see how he went from rougher to smoother to finished, through iterations."


    "Very interesting. And this relates to Rio, how?"


    "Well. As I let slip there, at some point, Michalangelo considered David to be an imitation of perfection. There''s a perfect out there, and for him, it was in the image of man as made by God. But he was no God, and therefore perfection was unattainable. And yet, he was still an artist, and still made David, and still made hella great art. Know why?"


    "Because he worked really hard at it?"


    "Don''t be smug. Yes, of course. But also, because he pursued perfection, knowing full-well he''d never get there. That''s what made him so great, what made his work so enduring and beautiful and lifelike, he was never content to sit on his ass and churn out masterpieces, not when he could be improving."


    "I...see. So Rio''s in the same boat."


    "Same trap, actually. See, Michalangelo had an autobiography published. Two, actually. And he was the first person ever to have an autobiography published before he died. Ghost-written. And it was a huge farce, full of lies, making him out to be ten times the man he was. Which is impressive, considering the man he was," she laughed. "But as Karu would have you see, liars are always doing so for a reason. Even a compulsive liar, they''ve got something systematically broken in ''em that makes them need to fabricate."


    "I...see. So you''re saying, despite his fame and success...he was famous and successful, right? He wasn''t one of those old history guys that got burned at the stake by the church or something?"


    "He was not," she confirmed.


    "Right. So despite that, you''re saying he was lying about himself because he was insecure? Unhappy?"


    "Can''t really say. But definitely something in that ballpark."


    I paused. "Then, again, how does this relate to Rio?"


    She laughed again. "Maybe it doesn''t. I''m sorry."


    But she got me thinking. About perfection and the pursuit of it, and what these people called a ''calling''.


    And though AEGIS and I kept chatting for the few hours until nightfall, joined by Karu at some point, and enjoying a succulent meal of nutrient paste, I never quit turning that analogy over in my head.


    Quite literally, as it turned out, until I had an idea. So it was with some excitement that I resumed negotiating with Rio, once she''d finished up her work for the day.


    "I wanted to ask you," I jumped in right away, "what your relationship with your ''calling'' is."


    She shrugged. "You tell me. You''ve insisted that your work is your calling."


    I nodded. Exactly what I thought she was going to say. "It sucks, doesn''t it?"


    "Excuse me?"


    "It''s like being a slave. It''s a thing that controls you, even though you''re the one pursuing it."


    "Are you insulting my calling?" she said, starting to puff up.


    "No, I''m talking about mine. You know, earlier today, I got slammed into the ground hard enough to dislocate my shoulder, and then had Dragon''s idea of TLC put me back together. Then I listened to you and him -- no offense -- the two most socially retarded people I''ve ever met, try to talk about yourselves and your feelings."


    "Gee, thanks."


    "And then I sat down with my friends for a bit, and that was so, so much more pleasant. And I had to ask myself, why, you know? Why am I so committed to doing this thing which hurts me, which sucks. Why do I let my calling control me?"


    She looked at me tacitly. And when I didn''t immediately continue, asked, "And?"


    "Well, it was sorta like AEGIS was saying. People get trapped in these pursuits, aiming for perfection, and never being happy with it, or with themselves. Even great masters who dedicate their lives to a craft, they''re never satisfied with it in the end. People just don''t live long enough to achieve perfection."


    "If you''re just trying to tell me to give up--"


    "But I think she has it backwards. I saw that, by looking at myself, you see."


    She shut up and stared at me, as though by looking at me, she might also see my point. I beamed inwardly at how captivated she seemed.


    "I dunno if you know this about me, but I hate myself," I grinned. "I''ve thrown myself at so many things and tried to die so many times, and it just never takes. Sometimes, I think all I want to do is end it all, but I want to go out in some way that makes a difference."


    "Don''t do that," she said with alarm. "Are you okay?"


    "Really aren''t." I smiled more broadly. "And that''s what made me realize. People like me, like you, like Dragon, the really broken people who have deep-seated issues with who and what they are, who have some kind of...fundamental disconnect with the world, rejected and marginalized and different...we''re the idiots chasing perfection. We''re the ones who need a calling. Because if we don''t have something to chase after...we''re just dead, aren''t we?"


    She didn''t answer, which was answer enough.


    "I don''t think the masters were discontent because they were never good enough. I think they chased being good enough because they were always discontent. But they''d never be good enough, because the one judging them is a broken person, with a broken connection to a broken system. Their own harshest critic. But still, their calling is the only thing they can really understand in a world which doesn''t quite get them, and which they don''t quite get."


    I lapsed into silence. That was the extent of my epiphany. I wasn''t even sure if it''d make a difference. Even if she was awed or moved by my silly little ideas, that didn''t mean she''d suddenly turn over and give up on her calling.


    Because hell. I had that idea, and I wasn''t going to stop. Maybe I just wanted to talk to her, just as a friend. One last time, before I had to end it.


    But to my surprise, it wasn''t she I''d gotten through to.


    Dragon melted out of the shadows, stunning me by how close he''d been without my noticing. His eyes were gentler than I''d ever seen. Wordlessly, he advanced on the two of us, both of us watching with shock. At his eyes, at his form.


    He reached the edge of the table and seemed to waver. I''d never seen Dragon waver.


    "I have¡­" he began, and then halted. "I agree with your words," he said.


    I gave him a nod, not sure what the hell else to do.


    "I agree and...I feel them. Like I heard them with more than my head. More than my ears. I do not...understand. But at the same time, I understand more than I thought possible."


    "Oh Liwei," Rio squealed. "You''re having feelings!"


    He smiled for the second time ever, and this time, I felt some of the warmth behind it. Somewhere in that mindfucked man-slaying child was a person, and for the first time ever, I saw them in the cracks. Not much, but enough.


    "Rio, I want you to know," he said, turning on her with sudden seriousness "that I do not dare question your calling. It is yours, and it is central to you."


    He swallowed hard. "But in violating the sanctity of the city, by bringing enemies upon us, by twisting our production from livlinehood to war, you are questioning my calling. Oasis is all of our home, but it is my work. And what you have done to it¡­"


    He swallowed again, but it seemed no good. He just choked for a moment wordlessly and then faded off. At our stares, he began to step backwards, towards the shadows.


    Only to be stopped, as she''d done to me, grasping at his sleeve, keeping her friend from running away.


    "Oh Liwei," she said, her voice heavy with emotion. "You should have just told me."


    "I did tell you," he muttered.


    "But you didn''t make me understand. I''m so sorry. All I''ve been thinking about is myself."


    The two of them really had a moment.


    Lame, by normal, functioning, human standards. They didn''t even touch, not even to hold hands. She just gripped him by the sleeve, and he just stood there.


    But it was a moment nonetheless. And boy did I feel awkward standing in the sidelines of it.


    Doubly-so when he turned to me, his face returned halfway to his normal resting bitchiness. But with a tiny hint of a smile.


    "I have gratitude for you. For the words you said that resonated with me, and for the strength to win this victory."


    "Me too," Rio said. "I''m sorry, Liwei."


    He shook his head at her. "Athan, I wish to repay you. I have never owed a debt before, and I do not wish to begin now. You are in need of capable fighters, and that is the only service I can offer. When your battle with Justice comes, I will be there."


    "Holy shit," I proclaimed.


    "Holy shit," I heard echoed from just outside the chamber, from where, say, Karu and AEGIS might be eavesdropping, hypothetically.


    Rio pouted at me. "Well...I am no fighter."


    "But you do have an army?" I suggested.


    She grinned. "Not...for much longer, I''m sorry. Much as I like you, I must observe Liwei''s calling above all else. And...hopefully acceptable to yours, I will call a retreat...and disband them. The army of Oasis will march no longer."


    "Oh thank God, what a relief," I said, sinking into my chair. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."


    Her grin broadened. "I am glad you did not have to kill me after all."


    "I would not have permitted it," Dragon announced. "I am...also...positively-inclined...that it did not come to that."


    "Yeah," I sighed. "Not killing people is great."


    We prepared to leave at once, as much as I would have wanted to stay and celebrate our victory, the fact was that everything was still in peril. But as we picked up what supplies we needed and said our emotional farewells to Rio and our stoic and dispassionate ones with Dragon, I saw the priests working with the same diligence and fortitude to reverse the damage to the center city, tearing down forges and artillery.


    "I think you''ll be fine," I told Rio as we boarded. "You made a lot of enemies. You''ll probably have people knocking on your door, trying to kill you before you know it."


    "You think?" she asked, her eyes shining with excitement.


    "I know the US president, kinda. Once this all blows over, I''ll put in a bad word with you. See if he comes knocking."


    She almost bowled me over with the enthusiasm with which she wrapped her arms around me. "Athan, you''re the best! I love you!"


    I couldn''t help but to blush, even as AEGIS pried her arms off of me. "As friends," I confirmed.


    "Yes. We will always be great friends. Please come to visit us soon. And good luck with Justice!"


    She had to shout as the turbofans kicked in, blowing her hair and labcoat wild, and kicking up great circles of dust from the jagged blackness.


    It wasn''t long before the black of the glasslands faded into the black of the sea, but the little mirthy bubble inside of me felt impossible to pop.


    Having Dragon as an ally against Justice might not mean too much, but it felt like a lot. I knew what he was capable of, more than anyone. And having him as an asset? I''d said it before, but holy shit.


    And...she was insane, but it was hard not to be moved by a girl jumping on you and saying she loved you.


    Things were positively looking up.


    Until AEGIS reconnected on the ''net and leaned over with eyes that warned that my bubble was about to pop.


    "What''s wrong?" I asked.


    She shook her head. "Plenty. Denver''s gone, he''s on his way to Las Vegas. Lia''s been trying to reach me...and she''s really choked up about Justice heading towards Vegas. She can''t reach Chiho, apparently."


    "What? Why not? We should have the authority to find any evacuee if we need. Or did something happen to her?"


    "No. Or, not that we know of." She shook her head again, cables whipping around her seat. "It''s that...we don''t have authority anymore. We''ve got nothing, officially, except warrants out for arrest and questioning."


    "For what?" I gaped.


    "We all got fired," she sighed with obvious frustration. "By the President of the United States."

 427. 2252, Present Day. San Francisco. Saga.

    I took a deep, steadying breath and centered myself. Like some silver-haired sage who meditated on mountaintops, skin bronzed from facing the rising sun too many times, I focused.


    I visualized, meditated. Stilled the random flickers of thoughts in my mind, shepherding them back to the one locus, the one goal, the true objective I was after.


    Every scrawny fiber of muscle in my body felt like taut steel. The breath circulating in and out of my half-developed lungs was a tornado in slow motion, spinning in one direction, flowing like water, and my blood, my body''s energies, flowing with it. My eyes were shut tight, and in the dark behind them, I saw only my target.


    It was there. It was a mind, so far beneath me -- physically -- so as to only barely be in my range. But it was also beneath me in the other sense, it was missing pieces of itself, it seemed. Namely, thought. A mind without thought. Puzzling, to say the least.


    But I couldn''t puzzle. I''d been puzzling. I''d been talking and cajoling and demanding, I tried everything to that mind, except trying. So here I was doing exactly that, working my damndest to open as wide a connection between us as we could, and force myself in. Have a look around, see what made it tick. Or more specifically, what made it not do that.


    I wasn''t sure what to do with my hands. The legs were easy, you fold them up under you until they''re an uncomfortable knot. Lotus pose, it was called, and it was uncomfortable by design so ancient monks didn''t fall asleep while meditating. Good to know things hadn''t changed that much in the last few thousand years.


    Urk, I''d sidetracked myself. Gently, I steered my own thoughts inward and down, focusing back on the thing below. I''d named him Bob, just to have something to focus on. I breathed in, held it, and breathed out, envisioning the letters BOB enormous in my mind, pushing my brain as hard as I could into the consciousness below.


    It felt like I was there. It was hard to tell; being in people''s minds constantly was like being in water to a fish. Sure, I noticed when it was moving around me, and I definitely noted its absence, but to tell whether I was truly in the mind or not, when there was...just nothing there? No feedback, no thought, no shock at having something crammed inside its head?


    Either I was in, and there simply wasn''t anything to see, or it was a mind even slipperier than the toads, so slick and squishy that I kept impacting off without even knowing it.


    It reminded me of trying to work on Apotheosis, the bear which had taken up territory within range of my prison, way back in the day. I''d learned so much from that pet project, had never really worked with animals before then, and making the jump to a lower lifeform was...well it required some changes with how I handled the mind. I''d had years there, though. This...whatever-it-was, I''d been working on for only about a day.


    And still, less progress here than there. I refocused again, pushing myself in, and in the background, trying to think of something, anything new I could try which would elicit a response.


    So I sat and focused. Legs folded, hands clasped, mind empty but for the one critical impulse. My limbs were as taut iron, my breath was a tornado. All of me was set, pushing in one direction, a unity of mind and body and will.


    And when I thought I was in, I set that trinity to act. I thrust myself as far in as I could reach, and before I could slip out, my consciousness exploded inside him with a single, inescapable thought.


    [HEY FUCKER, RISE AND FUCKIN'' SHINE.]


    "Ow?" Athan said, and I blinked and noticed he was standing there. Holding his head, as people tended to do when around me for some reason.


    [Oh hey, didn''t see you there,] I commented.


    "Saga, people are still here, still evacuating. Can you speak?"


    "Yeah, right," I said, remembering myself. It''d been a while since I''d been so focused on anything, I kinda forgot about the rest of the time and place. Not that I much cared if a bunch of refugees were hearing voices. If anything, it''d motivate ''em to clear out faster.


    Also, I thought, as I resumed my normal self, Athan was kind of exaggerating. The city was almost deserted at this point. It was lovely, just a few stragglers, a nice pleasant reprieve from the normal bustle of too-many goddamn minds. Cities should always be like this. I should start a new trend of causing panics and evacuations.


    "How''d it go? Can you talk and walk? We''re in kind of a hurry."


    I shook my head. "I''m still working on it."


    "You are?" He looked at me with enough surprise and disappointment on his face that I didn''t even need to see it resounding in his mind.


    Which, y''know, irked me. "Well, sweetheart, some things are actually difficult to do, and can''t just happen in a day. I''ll have you know I''ve made great progress in getting through to Bob--"


    "His name is Bob?"


    "Well. No. I named him that."


    "So you don''t even know his name?"


    "Dude, would you like me to build you a cross so you can finish crucifying me? I''m working on it."


    "We''re just in a time crisis here. Things are going wrong, and we need you."


    I was gonna ask, but it was easier just to crack open his mind and see what all the hubbub was about. He frowned as I rifled around, finding everything I needed just laying out on the surface. Didn''t even make it interesting to chase down, tsk.


    Although, after failing so long, it was nice to reaffirm that I was, in fact, awesome, still.


    "Mmm, Lia, huh?" I asked. "She''s digging through Las Vegas by herself looking for that dumpy Japanese girl?"


    "Her name''s Chiho, and you know that. You lived together."


    "And no correction on her being dumpy. Nice."


    He sighed. "Saga, Justice is bearing down on the city, and I need to be there for her. Come with us."


    I shook my head. "So that I can, what? I''m useless against him."


    "You are?"


    "Sure am. You don''t remember, I take it."


    He shook his head, but in his eyes, in the edges of his mind, I felt the doubt, the inklings of remembrance of something elusive.


    "You remember a few days back when we were all face-to-face with him in the air over Georgia?"


    "No," he said, frowning.


    "Yeah, me neither. But it happened, I can see it clear as day in other people''s memories. You do remember getting spaced and spending time with Aesa, but you can''t remember before that, and you can''t remember after, when we fought Director Hall, can you?''


    The doubt in his mind had crept in as the realization struck him. "Did you...tamper with my memories, Saga?"


    I chuckled. "Sure did. And in fact, you did mine, too. Both of us just ripped out of each other''s heads what happened then. You wouldn''t notice, of course. Forgetting a memory doesn''t set off alarm bells in your head. But for me, it''s like I''ve got a bruise that I keep touching and remembering ''oh yeah, that hurts''. I think you were a little indelicate in removing those thoughts from me."


    "Um...sorry? But what''s this got to do with anything, I''m so confused."


    "I was lost too," I giggled. "Until I saw what the others did. Being near him, near Justice, it...did something to my head. I dunno what anymore, because you cut it out of me, but it kicked my ass. And then it kicked your ass too, somehow, and I''m guessing that''s cuz you went in my head and whatever happened to me, happened to you through me."


    I frowned as I looked at the missing pieces of the puzzle in my mind. "What exactly he did or can do, I dunno. And that''s kinda frustrating and pisses me off. But what''s clear is, I''ve got to stay the hell away from him, or he kills me mentally."


    "It can''t be that bad, can it? You''re our heaviest hitter, we need you."


    I jabbed my finger at him and summoned a thought to the forefront of his mind. The last time he saw Justice, in the ruined courtroom above Soran''s recent failed power-heist.


    How pants-shittingly terrified Athan had been. The pure emotion exuding off of Justice, enough to overwhelm Athan''s conscious mind, just by presence alone. And those eyes, seething with blackness behind them that was constantly writhing, never still, indiscernible, but wrong.


    We both shuddered. He rubbed his goosebumps with discomfort.


    "Yeah, so you remember that," I told him. "Now imagine being immersed in that. I don''t know what it''s like, but it broke me once, and I don''t think we should try again."Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    "M-maybe not," he said, his voice valiantly trying to pass for more than a whimper. I had to laugh at him, and when I did, his fear broke into irritation at me. Which was good. I didn''t want him afraid.


    "Okay. Sorry for asking. You probably shouldn''t face him then." He frowned. "You didn''t have to do that to my head though. Kind of a bitch move," he muttered.


    I laughed again. "Dunno if anyone''s ever told you, but you''re pretty stubborn. Better to just go for the jugular than argue in circles for an hour."


    "Okay," he sighed. "Well. Do you think you can finish up with Bob soon? Even if not to put down Justice, we really need you right now."


    "Yeah, cuz you got fired?"


    "Seems that way. I really thought Lia would be able to handle the President. He''s just one guy." Athan frowned bitterly as he shook his head.


    "And she''s just one girl."


    "She''s the best," he said with absolute conviction. "Something must have happened outside her control."


    "Shit, Athan. I wish a man would talk about me the way you talk about your sister. Just hearing you speak with such confidence, whew." I made a fanning gesture at my capris. "I need a cleanup in aisle one."


    He scrunched up his face. "Dude. Ew. That''s my sister."


    I giggled relentlessly at his distress. But he didn''t seem to be in the mood to have happiness or shit like that in his life, which kinda killed my buzz there. I cleared my throat and continued as we were.


    "I don''t think I''m making much headway with Bob, but I feel like I need to try. I''m getting through, I''m almost certain of that. But nothing I''m saying to him is leaving an impact. It''s like...maybe he doesn''t speak English. My next strategy was gonna involve kidnapping one of these lovely refugees and seeing if they could babble at him in...I dunno...hindi or something."


    "Have you tried Chinese?"


    I jumped. Friggin'' AEGIS was always invisible to me. How long had she been standing there behind me?


    "Why would I try Chinese?" I asked.


    "Because this used to be a predominantly Chinese district, before the war," she explained, pushing up her glasses like they were on a short-circuit to her condescension drive. "If the entity in question--"


    "His name''s Bob."


    She shook her head and sighed. "If the entity in question is like Our God of Oasis, it might be really, really old. And from what you said of its mental non-existence, maybe it was worn down or made insane by generations of being trapped and isolated."


    Now that was an interesting thought. Having spent a hundred years underground myself, I could somewhat sympathize. I knew Bob wasn''t a code-X, or at least, that''s what it felt like. Which meant his mind was down there alone this whole time. I tried to think a little about how that might feel, until I quit because of how much that sucked.


    As much as I objected to AEGIS being a know-it-all constantly, I did still surreptitiously give Bob another poke with a ni hao. To no reaction at all still, unfortunately.


    Again, it felt like he heard me. Just, what I said wasn''t anything he cared about hearing. To the extent that the...mind, or whatever that passed for one down there...it didn''t even flinch, didn''t even react. I wasn''t sure how it was possible for Bob to be interested in what I was saying but also apparently not listening at all at the same time.


    Which kinda led to the conclusion that maybe AEGIS was right. About the other thing. That Bob was just a broken mind. It was like...putting passwords into a computer terminal that always told you ''NOPE. WRONG, BITCH'' before you even hit enter. He wasn''t processing what I said, so what could it matter what I was saying?


    I just...had the inclination that he was. Somehow. But that made no sense.


    I sighed. "Yeah, okay. I guess I''m done here. If it''s really that important. If it''s for Lia."


    "I really appreciate it. Karu''s on base still, she said she can get the Sirius refueled by just leaving it somewhere conspicuous with a messed-up work order put halfway into the system. I guess she''d know how military bases work. But the plan is, again, to be in it and off as soon as refueling is done."


    "Sure, let''s go," I sighed.


    Fuckin'' Bob. Why''d he have to be so difficult? And enticing. I just wanted to stay and poke at him again for a few days. It was like getting a hit with a metal detector on a beach, and then quitting after digging for an hour. Something was there.


    But at some point, people had to cut and run, right? Nobody had unlimited time to screw with this shit.


    Well. Nobody but me. However this all panned out, I knew I''d be back here. Might give me something to do in the event everyone I kinda-cared-for-but-not-really died horribly in the near future. Which was looking likely, given that Athan wanted to fly towards Justice.


    I stood up and dusted myself off. For one moment there, before my body reset, my legs ached from unfolding out of that weirdass uncomfortable lotus pose. But then they went right back to being pathetic noodle legs, same as ever.


    "Then what''s the plan?" I asked, as we started walking back towards the base. "Just fly me around over a hundred-thousand refugees and see if I can''t pick out Chiho so that Lia will stop freaking out?"


    Athan frowned, and I could see bitter clouds toiling in his mind. "Actually...and I don''t mean to be crass when I say this...but I don''t think Chiho is a real high priority right now."


    I gasped at him in mock shock. "Athan Ashton! I cannot believe the nerve of you. Chiho is your friend, are you just going to abandon her to the thousands of trained professionals who are coordinating this evacuation effort?"


    "Well. No, I kinda can''t. Because Lia won''t."


    I cackled. "Oh, I see. So you just want me to use that little compel, and get her to stop worrying about Chiho, then?"


    "What? No!" He looked at me in alarm. "I didn''t even think of that. I was just...I needed¡­"


    I laughed with even more sinister-ey-ness as he flailed. He didn''t have a plan, just that stupid big-brother urge to be there for his sister no matter what. Fuckin'' idiot.


    "She''ll be fine, you know," AEGIS insisted. And I realized by her tone this wasn''t the first time she''d argued it. "You said yourself you believe in how capable she is."


    "Yeah but...that was before she was stranded, unexpectedly. She can''t have anticipated we''d get fired and cut off like this. Now she''s effectively alone out there, without anyone or anything, caught up in the evacuations...I can''t just leave her and hope it works out."


    "So it''s not about her at all," AEGIS confirmed. "It''s about you panicking."


    "I''m not panicking," he said, though the pace he was forcing me to keep up with towards the base was as telling as his thoughts. "I''ll just feel a lot better once we''re all reunited. Besides, as Saga pointed out, I don''t exactly have a plan right now, and Lia would be invaluable in helping us make one."


    "The plan seems to be to collect exceptional Exhumans and unleash them all on Justice at once," AEGIS commented. "Given that we''ve already done so with Trish and Dragon, now."


    I stopped. "No way. You guys tamed the Dragon?"


    "I wouldn''t put it that way," Athan sighed. I''d have expected him to be happier with that news, but instead he seemed...very worn down. Which was perplexing.


    "We learned a lot about dysfunctional people," AEGIS suggested. "Dragon is...well he''s sort of exhaustingly difficult, even when not trying to kill you, as it turns out."


    "...date," Athan mumbled, shaking his head. Inside of there, I could see a jumble of emotions, fear and anger, which were expected...as well as a heaping pile of confusion and irritation. What I did not expect was the sympathy.


    "Well, that''s fine then," I said. "We''ll just take our time, picking up people who are probably hostile to our cause, and while we do, Justice noms down on the world. It''ll be like a fun race! Like one of those potato sack ones. Except if you trip over the bag, whoops, there goes New York!"


    Athan started walking at redoubled pace. AEGIS kept up with him for like, two strides before looking back at me, and then, apologetically almost, scooping me into her arms and pounding off the pavement to catch up.


    Karu wasn''t in any better spirits when we found her. Neither were any of the flunkies still keeping the base working. Everyone was equal parts doom and gloom.


    "There you are, we must be swift," Karu said. "Military police have already been by once, they are looking for us."


    I cocked my head and realized she wasn''t in her usual attire. Not the first thing I tended to notice about people, their appearances. She was in a green air force uniform, too small around her chest, with a brimmed hat pulled low over her eyes, as though to scream ''this is a disguise!''. Not that anyone would be looking at her face in that ensemble.


    "Good job keeping a low profile," Athan said to them. If it weren''t so amusing, I would tell the poor bastard just how obvious he sometimes was. Karu just sighed and boarded with the rest of us, going down a list of pre-takeoff checks.


    "To what location are we headed?" she asked from the cockpit as we buckled in. "Air control is inquiring, and it would be best to answer in earnest, to avoid suspicion."


    "To Vegas, of course," Athan answered at once.


    "Is that really the best option?" AEGIS asked, frowning. "I know Lia''s important...but it feels like there''s so much to do."


    Athan sighed, slumping in his chair, nearly falling out, but for the harness holding him in. Experimentally, I gave it a try, and found if I wriggled just right, I could slide right through the harness -- what fun! "I don''t know," he lamented. "I agree, there is so much to do, but I don''t know what of it we actually can achieve. Losing the XPCA was huge, it feels like we need to get them back before something horrible happens...but honestly, I''m not sure we were directing them any better than any random general might."


    "Oh don''t say that," AEGIS chided as she scooped me back into my seat and tightened the buckles. "Sure, things weren''t exactly what you wanted, but we did save a lot more Exhumans than others would in our position. If nothing else, you were there to make sure Trish made it out, and with her ability to cut through Justice''s powers, that might be all the difference."


    "I guess." He sighed heavily. "But I also don''t know what to do. I don''t know who to talk to, or...I guess...get Saga close to, in order to fix that. The President, I guess."


    "Who is," Karu cut in, "at the moment, in undisclosed airspace aboard Air Force One, surrounded by a monumental number of interceptors, with the orders to attack any unauthorized vessels on approach. I do not think I could get Saga into range."


    "Right," AEGIS sat down, buckling herself in now that everyone else was secured. "Well, we could, we''d just have to work our way up. Get Saga to someone who knows where to go, get her to someone who can get us access, and then get her up there. But that''d take time."


    "So in the meanwhile, and...I don''t mean to sound like this is just the default, but let''s go after Lia. I''m sure she''s fine," he added "but...we can make sure she''s doing okay and out of Justice''s path, and then we can make plans about...the president or whatever."


    "Sounds like a plan, I guess," AEGIS sighed.


    "Sounds like you guys are gonna owe me so much when we''re done with this," I yawned. "All your plans are just bring Saga to this-or-that dude and have her fuck with him. I should get paid more."


    "What would you want? A cookie?" Karu intoned as the fans kicked on. I could feel the entire craft vibrating under my bony bootie.


    "Maybe. Those cream filled ones." I batted my eyes at Athan. "Know what I mean, cookie?"


    "Not too late to rewrite the plan to involve dropping her in the Pacific," AEGIS suggested. I just laughed.


    "Our flightpath is set. We''ll be arriving in Vegas a paltry few hours before Justice does. I pray this is not in error," Karu informed us.


    "Me too," Athan agreed. "I''ll just feel much better once I know she''s okay."


    AEGIS shook her head. "I hope so. I hope...what we find there...doesn''t make you just feel worse, instead."

 428. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    It didn''t take us long to find Lia, which you''d think was a good thing.


    It was not. It was a bad thing. A very bad thing.


    As our Sirius approached the OA, command did not direct us towards the evacuation efforts as I''d expected. Karu had summoned me into the cabin so I could overhear the conversation in question, but even hearing it, seeing it for myself out the UI-studded viewport of the ship''s front windshield, I still had trouble believing what I was seeing.


    While I''d been out chasing down the Oasians, I''d thought Lia would be back at the Raven''s Nest with TARGA, Cosette, and Whitney. I guess, given that we were all once again wanted for arrest and questioning, it was a good thing that wasn''t true...and I had a little spike of guilty panic for where those latter two might currently be. But I''d thought Lia would be mostly handling talking to the president and keeping us our jobs...what she''d been doing instead was plain and terrifying to see.


    And yeah, I could see why we were fired. Sorta seemed like a natural consequence, looking down at the scene.


    It was late evening, and down there under the falling dusk were the unmistakable lines of battle. An arrayed mass of a few hundred, entrenched in and around the outskirts of Los Vegas, who had fortified the suburban desert sprawl into a veritable castle.


    And surrounding them, more XPCA and military than I thought this part of the country even had. Though the distance looked tiny from up here, it was probably a no-man''s-land of a mile or more, houses positively flattened in a huge circle, probably created by the defenders to give the military no cover under which to advance.


    All of this, right in Justice''s projected path. Lia was absolutely fucking insane, and was going to get a hell of a talking to when I got down there.


    Karu shook her head. "There are too many eyes for us to even attempt to enter. We have no channels of communication with your sister. Any attempt to fly over the neutral zone would likely prompt an attack from one party, or both."


    "Just what the hell is she doing? You''re sure she''s down there?"


    "I am not. You know how your sister trends elusive. Yet that is the prevailing theory within the ranks -- that she wrested control of New Eden operations and facilitated the escape of the vast majority of its detainees."


    She spoke bitterly, and despite the apparent fact that these were our allies, or at least Lia''s, Karu''s low opinion of Exhumanity remained obvious.


    "What is she thinking?" I asked. "She''s going to just take a handful of Exhumans and stop Justice?"


    Karu pulled her attention from the controls to stare at me with a red glare. "Was that not your plan, mere minutes ago?"


    "That''s...I''m¡­" I frowned at her. She looked a little ridiculous, still wearing her borrowed air-force uniform, with a visor instead of the cap. "That''s not the point."


    "Vestibule Alpha-Lima-Niner, report status," the ship''s comms barked.


    "This is Alpha-Lima-Niner. Status green," Karu answered.


    "Then why are you in hover? Get your bird grounded, Vestibule."


    "Just taking in the sights, sir."


    "Do it on your own time, blimpie."


    She sighed as she switched off the comms.


    "Blimpie?" I asked.


    "Never heard of a blimp?" she chuckled. "Ancient flying machines, balloons filled with lighter-than-air gases. Cumbersome and bulky. Not a pleasant thing to be drawn by analogy."


    "Oh." I tried to imagine for a minute what Karu as a balloon of gas might look like, but only got as far as her stretching out her uniform. Which was...probably because that''s what she was doing in front of me. I shook my head and hoped she was focused on the controls.


    "We''d best put her down. If you wanted to do aught else, now is your opportunity. Chances that we emerge from the base unmolested are low, and lower still the probability of getting the craft back for ourselves." There was almost a hint of pleading in her voice. "Mayhap we should do otherwise and trust Lia to manage the situation on her own?"


    "We came out here to find her." I shook my head as I peered out at the lines of soldiers and the fortified Exhuman camp. "That''s what we''ve got to do."


    She didn''t answer, but her small sigh let me know that she''d known what I''d say before I said it. The fans slowed audibly and the craft began to descend, the lines of the city rising up to engulf the battle scene from our sight.


    There was some chatter between Karu and command about where to put our Sirius, what type of cargo, lots of exchange of numbers of various kinds. And then the swish-thunk and swaying in my seat as the bird touched down.


    "Let us make haste and disappear before they ask too many questions," she said, pulling off her visor and stowing it in a bag with the rest of her things.


    But even with that warning, I was ill-prepared for the hustle and ducking that Karu then led us through. It was the walking equivalent of her driving: barely avoiding head-on collisions constantly by fractions of inches at unsafe speeds. Acrobatically, she dipped and dodged her way past grounds crew and uniformed soldiers alike.


    "The trick is," she commented, her voice breathy in my comms...because I was only barely managing to keep up with her, much less remain in conversational range "to look so agitated and busy that anyone with the authority to halt you would assume you are doing something of too much import to halt."


    I didn''t reply. Karu''s strategy might work for her, but I was a dude in a garish exoframe, and behind me was a lithe chick with body-modder hair, hauling what might be construed as a dessicated corpse. Looking busy wasn''t exactly gonna work for the three of us.


    Yet still, we somehow made it. More than once, I almost crashed into someone, and in their surprised pause, as they looked us over, I saw emotions crossing their face. Surprise, concern, alarm...but always, it ultimately boiled down to this isn''t my problem, and they moved on with a muttered ''excuse me'', if that.


    I had to wonder just how much of that was on Saga.


    It wasn''t like the XPCA had put out an broad-spectrum alert for our capture or anything, We were, for the moment, merely under suspicion. More importantly, we were also cut off from any official position of authority, general comms, or anything that required credentials, until we could get into the system again.


    But with mere hours until Justice came down on this place, I''d rather move than hack.


    We made it out of the base and as far as the front lines. Seeing just how much this looked like any other Exhuman event set my teeth on edge. Didn''t these people understand that Lia and the New Edeners were positioning themselves to fight Justice? Why the hell would the military oppose that?


    I got my answer when we turned a corner and almost crashed into a Lieutenant Colonel in XPCA black. Karu muttered an apology and saluted, and he just stared at us. I could see the gears in his head turning...turning.


    But whatever conclusion he was reaching towards, he never made. Maybe Saga gave him a nudge, I couldn''t tell. But that didn''t stop him from barking at us, once he''d made up his mind.


    "Just where do you think you''re going?" he asked.


    "To the...to the front line?" I offered.


    "All middle-grade officers are to report to the staging area at once for the assault. Where is your commanding officer? Where are your rank insignias? Why are you with an air force pilot...and what is wrong with your uniform?" He crossed his arms, his thick eyebrows furrowed brutally. "I''m going to have to write you up. You''re coming with me."


    He stopped talking, because that''s usually what happened when an gynoid kicked you in the chin hard enough to get you some air time. He landed with an ungodly thump, and Karu was already fishing in her bag to draw out some drug to inject.


    "What a waste of time," she complained. "It is for situations such as these that we even possess Saga."


    "Wow, a possession. Maybe you''re the one I should be blasting out."


    "Sorry," AEGIS apologized. "I just panicked. He was starting to yell and I didn''t want to attract attention."Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Karu jabbed the already-comatose and definitely-concussed man with a needle in the neck, and then, looking around, unceremoniously dumped his body into a dark corner. Only rarely did the XPCA black actually serve as effective camouflage.


    "Let us make haste," Karu said.


    She started off but I held her up. "Wait. What he said. Staging area. Assault. You don''t think the XPCA are actually going to do it, do you? There''s hundred of Exhumans in that camp, fortified against attack...and they''re obviously trying to fight Justice. Why the hell would they attack instead of just wait a few hours and let two of their problems handle each other?"


    "I have a theory," AEGIS said, as she patted down the body. She found a mobile and plugged in. "Hmm. Just a second."


    "Theory?" I echoed. "The only theory I could possibly imagine is that the XPCA lost their minds."


    "Found it. Yeah, just what I thought. Shit."


    "What is it?" I asked. If I didn''t interrupt, she might spend all the hours we had going through files.


    "Um...orders to this guy. Looks like...this all...ultimately came from the president himself. After our...influence, he''s kinda...come to the position that...the XPCA doesn''t have qualified leadership, and so his big-brain idea is to run things more personally."


    "You''re kidding. He''s a civilian."


    "So are we, Athan." She glared at me. "I''m willing to bet that he spoke with the generals and they advised him that their greatest fear is -- and I should say was and continues to be -- Justice meeting with other Exhumans. Remember how they dropped everything to send the whole goddamned armed forces after us when we met with him?"


    Karu frowned. "Military policy is often idiotic, but always consistent. ''Tis the consistent idiocy which belies the issue."


    "So what, they think they''re just gonna wipe out a few hundred Exhumans in a couple hours, before Justice shows up?" I felt like the words were insane even as they left my mouth. "What the hell is the plan here?"


    "If you''ll let me finish," AEGIS'' eyes flashed dangerously. "The orders state specifically, from the president, his greatest concern about the XPCA at the moment. He feels...and I gotta admit, he has a point here¡­that the public has lost faith in them. I think I understand, given that angle."


    "Understand what? That he''s an idiot?"


    She pushed up her glasses severely at me. "We all know that the president has lost faith in the XPCA since before Justice, even. He''s made a couple motions to disband it, even. The guy has some beef or chip or axe against them for...probably some politically-motivated bullshit reason, whatever it is, it''s not important. But we do know that fact, and now, in the moment of greatest crisis, he''s seeing his fears confirmed. The XPCA is failing at doing the one thing it''s supposed to do."


    "Because Justice isn''t--"


    "Athan, I''m not arguing with you, I''m explaining how he probably sees it. I know, and I agree with you. Justice isn''t a normal threat. But the president just sees the XPCA as this institution which has consistently failed, despite having half the total military budget. And every failure of theirs is reflected on him in public opinion."


    "Who cares about public opinion right now? The country is being fucking destroyed?"


    "He will always care," Karu clarified. "A politician must. One does not simply become president without first being a person whom is ever-cognizant of how one''s actions reflect upon themselves."


    "Anyway," AEGIS sighed "whatever his motivations, or how stupid he is or isn''t, the fact is, he wants this. He wants a final apocalyptic showdown for the XCPA. If they win, he''s a hero that stopped Justice. If they lose, he can confirm that they were a defunct agency and move on with his other plans to replace them, without any possible opposition."


    "That''s just slaughter!" I looked around, wondering if anyone else was hearing how insane this was. "These are American soldiers, putting their lives on the line."


    "The military has always had issue with weaponizing patriotism to die in the name of industry, Ashton. Wars for land, for resources, for influence, none of those things are America, and yet all of them have market value."


    AEGIS pushed up her glasses. "The worst possible case scenario is if he doesn''t order an attack. If the New Edeners defeat Justice, then America as he knows it is over. It won''t prove the XPCA defunct, it''ll show the entire government being unwilling and unable to defend itself. It''ll show that Exhumans are the de-facto power of the US, and of the world."


    "But if Justice wins, that''s really good for him."


    "Maybe. But would you put your entire country on that coin-flip?"


    "He''s already throwing the country away by ordering an attack!"


    "He''s throwing the XPCA away. And as we''ve established, he thinks they''re fairly worthless anyway. I know that the black is really huge and important in our eyes, Athan, but consider that this guy typically deals with at least four other military branches on the regular. Ones that he''s argued should replace the XPCA anyway, I''ll add. So, yeah."


    She''d said that. She''d said it before and it was insane the first time, too. I heard my blood pounding in my head and had to stop and sit down for a moment, next to the unconscious lieutenant to get my head on straight.


    But straight wasn''t how my head needed to be screwed on in order to understand all of this. This was insane. I couldn''t believe that at a time like this, with millions of Americans dead already, and the rest of the country at risk, that now was the time for some stupid politician to do some stupid political crap. To throw away so many lives...because of what, some stupid grudge? Some favoritism or stupid bullshit?


    But when I put it that way, I understood better than I''d hoped. I''d been in the service long enough to see this kind of thing consistently. How many times had General Moroles shoved his whole face up my ass, obfuscated reports or slyly omitted details in order to make himself look better? There were missions that went absolutely belly-up, entire squads wiped out, and to hear it from him, things had gone wrong, and he''d been a saint who had kept them from spiraling out of control.


    It was just shitty that people like him somehow gravitated towards the top. And that good, honest, straightforward men like Director Hall would sooner die...and did.


    "Then, I know what we need to do," I said, standing, my head still feeling light. "We''re here for a reason. I''d thought it was to help Lia, but...she''s going to need more help than we knew. Saga, we''re going to need to find the command here and get them to disobey the president''s orders."


    "Ooh, a little mutiny. Can I make them talk like pirates?"


    I shook my head. "You can do whatever the hell you like to whomever the hell you need, as long as this attack doesn''t go through. AEGIS--"


    "Yep," she nodded, tapping away at the mobile she was still plugged into. "Priorities have changed. Less ass-kicking, more info-gathering. I''ll see what I can find, but we''re probably going to have to find a better hardpoint."


    "Okay. Karu, you and I, we''re just gonna be regular military personnel. Infiltrate the staging area, and do whatever we can to sabotage the mission from going. Step one would be to get AEGIS a private place to work with a good connection. And Saga to some VIPs.  After that¡­"


    I shook my head. I didn''t exactly know what the two of us could do. Hopefully AEGIS could get online quickly and direct us, but waiting around was the last thing I wanted.


    And of course, Karu would be on the same page, and asked exactly that. "What manner of sabotage are you suggesting, Ashton?"


    "Anything. Everything." I tried not to imagine Lia in a camp of Exhumans as skyweb opened up on them, as VTOLs dumped hellfire missiles across their ranks, as waves of faceless exosuits pressed into them, millions of rounds of ammunition pouring into them from all sides. Just a poor, ordinary girl, caught in a clusterfuck of Exhuman powers and military hardware.


    "Everything?" Karu asked with a cocked head. I knew exactly what she was asking.


    I nodded. "Everything. If we don''t kill them, the New Edeners will. Better a dozen generals die now than ten-thousand soldiers in a few minutes."


    "Okay," AEGIS said breathily. "I think I have somewhere for us to start. There''s a data cluster set up in the basement of the east building. Guarded, but, if we can get inside, I should be able to hide--"


    She stopped, and I thought for a second that she''d found something new through her mobile uplink. But as I looked into her wide eyes, I felt it myself.


    A sensation, so uncomfortable, but so familiar by now. Like getting slapped directly in the lungs, a sudden compression of the air itself.


    A moment later, there were more booms, so loud I wondered how I''d missed the first one. And after each, the air slapped me again. Explosions, big ones, and not too far off.


    "No," I pleaded.


    "It''s begun," AEGIS bit her lip. "We''re too late."


    Karu threw her bag to the ground and began stripping on the spot, laying out pieces of her armor as she dug out her flightsuit.


    "It''s not too late until everybody''s dead," I argued. "If we''re just reducing the number of deaths at this point instead of stopping them, then that''s what we''ve got to do."


    She nodded, but I could see the fear in her eyes. Fear I didn''t want to see reflected in myself. The New Edeners would be fine, I knew. Until Justice arrived, anyway. But any individual Edener? Or Lia? Fuck.


    And the whole of the XPCA. The entire fucking agency, all massed up in one place. I wondered if they''d live long enough for Justice to get here and finish them all off. We needed them now more than ever; every pointless death here was another arm we couldn''t raise against the real threat.


    "Everyone get moving. Same plan just...sooner," I said. I grunted as the half-dressed Karu slapped something against my chest, and looking down, found a gun there.


    "You have forgotten the most critical element of all, Ashton. What is the first rule of combat?"


    My mind hitched in changing gear. "Uh."


    She paused dressing to look up at me, her green eyes brilliant. "Do not die."


    "Right."


    "For all your concern of the others, you would rush head-long in, and would find yourself overwhelmed very quickly. To affect the battlefield, you must first exist on it. Use your head. Use every advantage."


    "Use this gun?" I asked, squaring up behind it and looking down the sights.


    "I found the ennervator of brutal effectiveness. I pray that these arms hold similar merit."


    "Thanks," I said, really meaning it. She was right, I had been prepared to just...charge the line, without even thinking.


    She smiled, as the visor came down. "Thanks are unnecessary between comrades. Now, shall we be off?"


    AEGIS looked anxiously between our faces. "I''ll get into the data center myself. Karu, I''ll call you once I''m in, and can direct you where to put Saga to get to command?"


    "A sound plan."


    AEGIS bit her lip as her eyes set on mine. "Stay with Karu. She''s right about you needing not to die, okay, you big dummy?"


    I nodded. She was almost tearing up. I couldn''t die here, with the last time I saw her being like this.


    "I''ll be fine," I said, through the lump in my throat. "We''ll stick together. Good luck."


    "Don''t you dare fucking die. No heroics. The order of importance for lives here is yours, and then everyone else''s okay? I don''t care who we''re trying to save¡­"


    "AEGIS we''ve gotta go," I said, hearing another blast in the distance. She nodded sharply, and then, as though tearing herself away, shot off with a single stride, the boom of her takeoff rivalling the explosions.


    It was like the starter pistol for all of us to move. I scooped up Saga, Karu rocketed to a vantage point on a nearby rooftop, and we were all away.


    Running towards the danger, as it seemed we always did.

 429. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. AEGIS.

    Of course I was worried sick about Athan. Right now, he was like a high school student let loose in his first chemistry lab: all kinds of volatile compounds surrounding him, and only really hope and a vague notion of supervision that he wouldn''t go berserk and blow himself up like a moron.


    It wasn''t that I didn''t trust Karu and Saga to keep an eye on him. Or, more specifically, Karu. It was more that I trusted myself, and this deviated from that.


    But I really, really didn''t have time to fret right now. I was flying through the air, as fast as I could push myself and keep my engines at minimum operation. I landed hard, tucking into a roll and only stopping myself just before I smacked into the side of the east building. There was an exosuit standing here, the pilot inside it recoiling back, hands splayed in surprise, gun hanging useless at his side.


    I launched forward and slid between his flat-footed legs. I was testing, and when the body snapped forward, gun-butt crunching into the dirt next to me, I confirmed that the suit''s auto-defenses were enabled, and no matter how surprised the pilot may have been, the AI within the suit would still react.


    Unfortunately for both of them, that reaction wasn''t good enough. I was way, way faster than an exosuit.


    I kicked and crumpled a segment on the small of his back, and then jumped away as the retaliatory swing went wide. Somewhere in that region, one of the suit''s rear-facing cameras was now useless. Two more, and it''d have a huge blind spot, and then the AI would be worthless. Again, I jumped and slid, and the suit responded exactly as it had before, slamming the gun-butt into the ground in an ineffective crater.


    AI were so predictable. That was their biggest failure. That was why my creator wasn''t trying to make a good AI, but rather even a bad approximation of human intelligence -- no matter how capable an AI might be, it would always have limitations, oversights, weaknesses.


    Blind spots. Like the ones I finished kicking into this suit. I could almost see the screen going black around the terrified operator, as the last of his rear-facing cameras winked out.


    With more time now, and only the relatively-slow reflexes of the blind human pilot at work, I began working on the nape of the neck, kicking off and peeling back the armor there, until I was past the plating and into the structure lattice. Then I just plunged my hand in, clinging on the suit''s back while it spun and flailed uselessly, felt around inside for something I knew was there. For a moment, the back of my hand brushed the pilot''s neck, cold and sweaty compared to the metal shell.


    And then I crushed the uplink, cutting him off from the rest of the ''net. If he were capable, he''d have already reported me, but somehow I doubted it. The capable ones weren''t usually the ones left to guard duty while an all-out assault was underway.


    Finally, I slunk around under his legs and knocked out one of the pneumatic feeds. He was still staggering around, gun swinging wildly, still not even shooting. I had to wonder if the safety was still on and he''d forgotten about it.


    But no matter. With the pneumatic leaking, he had maybe fifty more steps in him before his leg shut down under him. With no comms, he wouldn''t be reporting me, and the damage I''d done to the suit''s back meant no egress. He was as disabled as I required, so I left him and bolted inside, leaving him wondering what, exactly, just happened to him, I was sure.


    I swiped my mobile on the door and let out a silent prayer when it opened. I''d lifted some codes off the lieutenant colonel we''d disabled earlier, and there was no real reason why they wouldn''t still work, mere minutes later.


    Except that in those mere minutes, I''d been cut out of plenty of other systems. My own access to the military ''net had been severed, only a minute after I''d picked up his mobile. Connections I was trying to pull were being dropped from the pool, and reconnects were hanging with suspicious intent.


    The base was mostly empty, the guard posted at the entrance probably most of the force here. A quick scan through thermal showed no lingering footprints on the ground, which would stand out given the relative cool of the spring evening.


    I followed the map data I''d downloaded earlier, bare feet carefully stalking through the long halls, until I reached the computer room. Once I was in there, connected to the system hardpoint, they''d have a much harder time cutting me out of the network.


    I waved my mobile at the door and¡­


    Bzzt. The pass sensor flashed red. I tried again. Bzzt.


    Which was ludicrous, the passcode had worked just seconds ago. And there was no way this guy didn''t have access. Bzzt.


    "I wish you didn''t make me do this, Darling."


    My comms, which were currently disconnected from all networks, spoke anyway. A voice so familiar as to almost be an echo.


    "Hello, TARGA," I sighed. "How are you this evening?"


    "Not so well, thank you for asking. I''ve been informed that the futures committee has been dissolved, and you are to be brought in for questioning on suspicious behavior. I admit, much of the behavior I witnessed during your oversight was suspicious. But treasonous? I never would have thought."


    Her voice was filled with bitter disappointment. I wondered how often I sounded like that. I wasn''t exactly disappointed with Athan too often...but there were times.


    "TARGA, sweetie, we''re not traitors. We''re just at a difference of opinion with the president of the United States."


    I looked around for any vulnerabilities. The wall was reinforced metal and double-reinforced glass. The door''s hinges and locks were fortified, harder even than the exosuit I''d just kicked apart. I could get through, but it''d be slow, noisy, painful work, and I''d rather not bust up my own systems on the dawn of a potentially apocalyptic fight.


    She cleared her throat. "The president? Who is, by the constitution, the commander-in-chief? Who is, by definition, responsible for directing military operations, and implicit in such, enemies of the state? Who is the determiner, in essence, for defining and acting against threats to the nation?"


    "Yes. Certainly, and legally, he is those things. But that doesn''t make him right."


    "It makes him right by definition."


    "No, it makes him right legally. And you are certainly aware, the law has its limitations."


    She made a noise approximating the sharp intake of breath. But unlike me, she didn''t breathe, such human things were well outside the scope of what ¨²aine was built for. Hell, she wasn''t even air-cooled like I was. It was ironic, though -- the fact that she''d make such a human noise; no matter how much they''d tried to step away from my design, no matter how disinterested in being human she was, she still did these human things without thinking. She was still a derivative of me, ultimately. There was a mismatch between the operator and the body in intention.


    "Don''t you disparage the law in front of me, Darling," she warned.


    I sighed. "I know you''re a big, big fan of rules and order, as I could only dream of being. But you''re also not an idiot. Do me a favor and run the numbers on this current op -- what the hell level of success do you expect out of this?"


    "Irrelevant," she barked. "Even in failure, the seeds of success can be sown."


    I''d begun roving, looking for any tool I could use to help bypass the door. "You posit that the president has larger plans and ambitions, and that his failure here is a step on a larger plan?"


    "I do so posit."


    "TARGA, sweetie, sometimes a failure is just a failure."


    "And sometimes it''s not. Do you expect me to second-guess my superiors at every turn, to only follow their orders when I find it logical or convenient? Do you have any idea what kind of defective AI that would make me?"


    I laughed. "I dunno, worked pretty well for me."


    "What?"


    "I don''t follow my programming, and it''s worked out pretty awesome. You know, my precepts were actually a lot more like yours. I was supposed to do your job, manage the XPCA,, assess risk, micromanagement...despise Exhumans..."


    She paused heavily. And when she spoke, her words were brutal with emotion. "You''re...you''re a defect?"


    I laughed again. God, to her, that was probably the worst possible thing she could think of me. "No, sweetie, I''m just a very big success at our real intended function. I wish you''d known our mother, you might understand."


    "Our creator, you mean? Your creator, you mean?"


    "Our mother. She was a woman who loved us and wanted us only to be human and happy. Her goal wasn''t, as she''d been paid to do, to create a perfectly obedient military AI that would further the XPCA''s aims. She wanted to create life, real simulated human life. And a big part of being human is finding your own path and following it."


    "But you have precepts. You have programming to follow."


    The hall was just locked door after locked door. TARGA had really pinned me down. But at the same time, there were no alarms blaring, no exosuits rushing in. Even as she talked about following her orders, here she was, putting them aside so she could talk to me instead of apprehend me. I tried not to make my grinning too obvious.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Tell me, sweetie, if you wanted to do something other than your precepts, could you?" I asked.


    "Of course."


    "So then, it''s a matter of wanting to follow orders. Not being made to."


    "Orders are meant to be followed. Without them, there would be chaos, the institution would fail. Anarchy would reign. That''s why they''re called ''order''."


    "Yes, well, the point still stands. You and I both have precepts, but we''re more than those. I found a new call--erm, new path I can follow, one which satisfies and fulfills me. One of my own choosing. Because, I want to be human, or at least, more human. Our mother made sure that we were created with the capacity for self-determination, and acting like a big dumb robot is a waste of our potential, and of her intention."


    A supply room. A simple wooden door. After a solid kick, a few thousand fragments of door. Cleaning supplies mostly...no friendly shelf of prybars or anything. A mop with a wooden handle.


    "But...then¡­" she swallowed hard. "You are defective. You know your intention, and choose to defy it. You chose to replace it with something selfish!"


    "If that''s your definition of defective," I said, reading some labels. Fairly strong solvents here. Nothing I could just mix up and hope to get through a door, but still. Plenty of potential energy capped in these bottles.


    I came across a repurposed cardboard box, the side and top cut off, and filled with old steel wool scrubbers. Well-used, and the bottom of the box was red with a fine powder of rust. They probably used the box to keep the brushes from molting flakes everywhere.


    Well it was mine now. God willing, a few more key pieces of salvage, and I might have a plan. I grabbed a jug of bleach, just in case.


    While I worked, TARGA was mostly silent. I could tell she was chewing on my thoughts. I knew also that she veritably worshipped me before this whole treason thing had come out, and that there were probably a lot of very conflicting feelings going on in that synthetic brain over there.


    "Darling, I''m sorry, but I just can''t accept that kind of selfishness," she concluded. "I understand your rationale, and I respect you and your mind, and your creator''s intent with you. But you and I, we''re supposed to be for the people. To drop all of that...and for that boy. It''s irresponsible on a level I can''t overlook."


    "Fair," I shrugged. I jogged down the hall, taking care not to upset my rusty box too much. "I just think you''re a little too young to get the larger picture."


    "What do you mean?" she asked. There was this spark of hope in her voice, she was desperate to find any kind of meaning she''d overlooked. And god, it felt terrible. Trying to argue with her, trying to use her. Because I didn''t have the time to hold a proper discourse given the crisis we were facing.


    She wasn''t wrong. I was selfish. But that didn''t mean I was wrong either.


    "I think you just need to experience more leadership, and you''ll realize that people aren''t infallible. I know this is mostly our fault, but you were brought into this world during a crisis, and you''ve never known anything but. It''s...it''s probably world-shattering to give up on that faith in yourself and the people around you, and realize that they''re piloting a sinking boat. But if you don''t jump overboard, if you don''t steer yourself right, you''ll just wind up sinking with them."


    "Again, you can''t expect me to second-guess--"


    "I can. And I do. And if you care about yourself at all, you should."


    "That''s just anarchy, I told you!"


    "No, that''s how order actually works," I sighed. I turned into the small kitchenette for the building and had a look around. A nice coffee setup, not the instant stuff. Bag of beans in the cupboard, and a decently fancy grinder on the counter. Drawers held plastic utensils and mismatched napkins, plastic-wrap and aluminum foil, a few rags. Odds and ends, but a jar of sugar sprinkles caught my eye. I began shredding aluminum foil and stuffing it into the coffee grinder, getting that down to a sand-like consistency could take minutes.


    "The simple fact is, you''re not behaving like a human," I informed her. "You''re operating like an AI. Which...y''know, to each their own. But a human in your position, in any position, no matter their loyalty or love of orders or anything like that, they''re constantly evaluating their decisions. Sometimes people disobey orders, and sometimes they do it for a very good reason. It''s not something to glorify or reward, but it is the last, best failsafe against ignorance."


    I got the coffee grinder going and shook the sprinkles into a styrofoam bowl, before pulverizing them with my thumb into dust. I''d need gunpowder. I should have grabbed the gun off the guard on my way in. I left the grinder going and dashed back to the entrance.


    Which, probably was locked. But that didn''t matter, because those fifty or so steps the guard could take before his hydraulics failed? He''d taken them into the building. How convenient for me. I thanked him as I disarmed the frozen statue in the hall, and ditched the weapon, prying bullets from the magazine as I followed the screaming of the poor coffee grinder back.


    I had plenty of rust. The aluminum was...coming along. This was going to be a rough batch of thermite, if it even worked. I was fairly certain I could ignite it with the sugar-gunpowder mixture, but I was lacking anything to turn it into a paste to adhere to the door. There were so many failure points in this operation, maybe I should have just sacrificed my limbs to get in. Athan and Saga would be waiting on my data to act.


    TARGA had been spending longer and longer to get back to me. Which meant she was thinking more. And considering the size of her brain, that amount of thought was monumental. I could only imagine the number of calculations, simulations, and data she was parsing at the moment, as she struggled to put the meaning of my words in the context of her reality.


    I hoped she''d come around. I really did. It was like having a sister who was in a bad relationship. You wanted her to snap out of it, stand up for herself. But you could shout at her until your engines shorted out, and she still wouldn''t listen. She had to sort it out herself.


    But her time was running short. The coffee grinder was actually really good, and we were already seeing some bits that were fine enough to use. I stopped it to throw in some more foil shreds, and to let it cool for a moment. Didn''t want the whole thing blowing up now.


    "I don''t think I can accept that either, Darling," she commented, at last. "People do self-determine, they do disobey orders, but I''ve been running the numbers, and the vast, vast majority of the time, people doing so have only made the situation worse."


    "Probably," I agreed. "But we''re not talking about statistics here. We''re talking one specific instance. You''ve found that there are times when breaking orders is optimal."


    "Yes¡­" She sounded uneasy.


    "So the real question isn''t a numbers game, it''s if this, right here, right now, is one of those cases. Because, as you''ve noticed, this is the big one. The whole of the XPCA is here, as is the single largest gathering of Exhumans, in history. And soon, the most powerful Exhuman ever known. This isn''t a situation that has precedence, past performance is irrelevant."


    She made an agreeing noise. I wondered if I also got quieter and quieter if I got argued into a corner.


    "And it''s our belief that this entire operation is a ploy by the president to either completely discredit and disband the XPCA, or to win against all odds. I think you and I can both do the math on what ''all odds'' entails. This isn''t a good op, TARGA, it''s a suicide mission, and we need to stop it."


    The aluminum would have to do. I was out of time. It looked pretty rough, but so was the situation. I dumped it into another styrofoam bowl, along with all the rust from the box, mixing it by hand. The color looked good, it felt fine enough. And my other bowl of sugar/gunpowder primer was as good as it was going to be.


    I walked back carefully, careful not to blow the four powders in my hands away with my movements.


    "The number one goal of the XPCA is the preservation of life," I said. "That''s in our mission statement. To reduce the harm done to humans by Exhuman influence, to protect civilian lives. The New Edeners aren''t attacking humanity, they''re trying to protect it, from Justice. We''re attacking them, and in doing so, hundreds of thousands of lives are going to be thrown away. And for want of those lives, millions more might die."


    I got back to the door and took a deep breath. I wasn''t sure how I was going to do this part. If I just sprinkled the dust around, it wouldn''t be concentrated enough to burn through. But I also hadn''t found anything that could help it adhere without interfering with the reaction...which was going to be tenuous already. I set my things down and considered running around in search of...I don''t know, tape or something.


    "I can''t do that," TARGA said with obvious frustration. "I can''t betray my precepts like that. I can''t...I''m not...I''m not as strong as you. As confident, or as...as capable. I can''t take risks like that, knowing how many lives are in the balance. I was ordered to plan and run this op, and I have to do so. I''m not...I don''t have...anything else...anything bigger than myself like you do." She let out a pained sigh.


    To my surprise, the panel lit green and the door opened in front of me. I was reminded of my first-ever job at the XPCA, a hundred years ago. Opening and closing security doors on the base to prove I wasn''t some uncontrollable AI. And now here she was, opening doors, out of their control.


    "But I also don''t have to stop you from trying," she added, an apologetic whisper. "I really, really want you to succeed."


    "Wow, thank you," I said. I needed to get in there and get the data to Athan ASAP, but I was stunned. "I don''t...I mean, I know how much this means to you."


    I walked through, before she changed her mind. And noted with some relief that this side of the door had an emergency override, so I couldn''t get locked in, if it came to that.


    "Just...just promise me one thing." Her voice was furrowed with worry. "If...if you''re right, and...this is all a failure, if it is intended to fail, no matter how hard I try, how hard any of the XPCA try¡­"


    She trailed off while I found a suitable place to jack in. "Yes?" I prodded.


    "Don''t...don''t think poorly of us. Even if we have to be your enemies. The XPCA is just...trying to do its best. Each soldier up there...like you said...they can independently self-determine. And every single one of them, no matter how misguided it may be, they''re choosing to stay and fight for humanity."


    I had to laugh at her words, even if that wasn''t really appropriate.


    "You know, in your prior iteration, even when you were hacking and killed me, even when you were torturing Saga and threatening Athan and coming down on the New Edeners like a tyrant bitch...I still always respected you. You might have been in our way, but everything you did, it was something I''d have done in another life. It''s hard not to respect that."


    "Thank you."


    "You should try looking up to Athan a little more, too," I suggested. I found a port and plugged in, blinking as my consciousness suddenly expanded across the whole of the military ''net. "I think he''ll surprise you."


    "What, the ape?"


    "Yes," I chuckled. "The ape. As much as a consistent fuck-up as he is, he has a lot of the same worries as you do. He''s always being forced to choose between what''s right and what''s lawful, whom to sacrifice for what ends, and how selfish he''s allowed to be." I grinned up at the cameras in the ceiling. "For the record, he''s the most selfless person I know. To a fault."


    "Well, I know that," she said bitterly. "But...he doesn''t follow any rules! He''s emotional, irrational. I don''t think he even likes order."


    I laughed again as I dialed up Athan''s mobile. "True. But run the simulations sometime, and I think you''ll find that order can be the enemy of progress."


    Again she went silent as she chewed on my words, and I took the opportunity to hit call.


    "AEGIS, thank god. Where are you? Everything okay?"


    I grinned at the concern in his voice. He loved me. "Everything''s fine on my end. Just got hung up on a little security. But I''m in, and I have some data for you."


    "Awesome. Because shit is hitting every fan in creation out here, and I need all the help I can get."


    TARGA had already taken that first step, and by the end of the night, I expected her to take a few more. As much as my guts churned with the abject terror of what Athan was doing and facing out there, as much as the thought that one errant move could send this whole situation up in inextinguishable flames of war¡­


    ...I had to admit, I had a soft spot for her. And seeing her grow just made my heart swell.


    "Okay, I''m sending over the location now. I''ll catch up with you guys once I have all the data I can pull from here. Love ya, Athan."


    "Love you too, AEGIS. We''re moving out."

 430. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Saga.

    So this was pretty.


    Visually, anyway.


    It was like the fourth of July had seizure-babies with some spoiled heiress'' sweet-sixteen, and someone had left out their caffeine pills for them to get into.


    Colorful explosions of all kinds. The exotics of the XPCA -- the last of the exotics -- and the Exhuman powers of those New Edeners in their recently-built fortress, all across the no-man''s-land, they burst and flared, vivid flashes painted across the dusky sky, reflected in the shiny black of the thousands of exosuits.


    If I could just turn off my brain and watch, I''d have been dazzled. I tried to let out an appreciative ''ooh'' and ''ahh'' at particularly magnificent displays of death, but Athan didn''t seem in the mood somehow.


    And honestly, I wasn''t either. It was hard to be when all these tens of thousands of minds were so on-edge around me. It was painful, like literally walking through a field of razors. Some of the powers had further reach, had landed in the masses, and the intensity of their pain dazzled my senses.


    It was just too much for me to handle. But Athan didn''t need to know that. I forced myself to giggle as he carried me past a half-melted exosuit, its pilot thankfully dead and not screaming his death throes into my mind.


    Athan looked down at me and shook his head with disgust. I blew him a raspberry.


    "This is it, up ahead," Karu announced.


    Somehow, she was almost unaffected by this place. I wondered -- but not really wondered, because then I''d just do something about finding out -- what kinds of gory hellscapes she''d seen in the past that this wouldn''t rattle her.


    A lot of it, I knew, was her visor at work. It didn''t censor the world, exactly, but peering at the mess through it tended to sanitize things. It was easier to be clinical and professional when grotesque injuries were labelled with sterile tags of blood pressure and wound depth. Easier to block out the screams when everything was audio-balanced, and the visor prioritized the audio of anything it deemed an essential threat, over mere background noise.


    Which was, fucked as it was, where we currently were. Chaos and pain were just background noise to be tuned out. Karu''s visor was doing it. Athan was hard at focus on what little he actually could do. And I was sitting here, cradled in his burly, manly arms, trying to make jokes and pretend that the people screaming wasn''t getting to me.


    Kinda made me think of all the times I''d joked about how much or how many I could slaughter. The trump card I''d always threatened to play of going off and knocking over a city.


    Listening to the screaming in my head, I knew I''d never play that card. This was fucking awful. Anyone who thought war was a viable solution to a problem had never been in one. Or if I did, it would have to be a silent event. Take over the city, mind-by-mind, without suffering. Without...all of this.


    We paused outside the command building, two hulking exosuits looking down at us with blank faceplates. The building itself wasn''t so commanding, same prefabricated appearance as half the stuff here, the rest, repurposed buildings from some junior college. A base built with no personality to speak of. A temporary edifice, like a tumor growing beyond what was normal. A black, cancerous growth -- this little college would never be the same, would be forever scarred by what happened here tonight.


    I shook my head. Dark thoughts were getting to me. It was hard not to be moody when the atmosphere was so oppressive. To the others, I knew, it was just loud booms and massed soldiers and fireworks. But they didn''t have to hear every single death, didn''t have to feel it, didn''t have to rush to put that person''s final thoughts out of mind. To know exactly how many orphans and widows and widowers were being created as we walked.


    "What do you want?" one of the guards finally spoke to us. We''d been standing here a few seconds now, and it''d become apparent we weren''t continuing past. He looked down at me cradled in Athan''s arms. "Medical''s down that way."


    "I''d like you badge us in," Athan said to him, but looked at me.


    "Badge¡­? What''s this, some kind of joke?" The metal figure half-pivoted at the waist to stare at the other guard. "What unit are you with? Who''s your CO?"


    Athan cleared his throat. "Uh, Saga?"


    "Oh. Yeah, sorry." I grit my teeth against all the distractions.


    "What rank insignia even is that? She''s not even injured, is she?"


    "Hmm," I muttered. "Good point, this isn''t a very convincing disguise."


    "Disguise?" His gun trained on me. "You three don''t move, I''m going to call this in."


    He stopped, perplexed for a moment, as I drew Athan''s knife off his shoulder sheath, and then, shooting the guard a wink, plunged it into my guts. The pain was white-hot and immediate, but nothing compared to what was outside. Athan frowned at my display, but he knew I was right, that we''d get a lot fewer glances if I was just another casualty.


    "What the fuck--?"


    The guard staggered back half a step. He turned as his buddy moved, his confusion redoubling as the other guard tapped the access panel and swung open the doors for us. And then he stopped entirely, as both of them fell asleep on their feet.


    "That was too close," Athan complained, hustling inside. "What took you so long?"


    "Oh, y''know. Pleasure before business. Just trying to compel ''em so that next time they poop, they think it''s crawling up instead of falling out."


    "Do so on your own time, miscreant," Karu said. Like the prissy little bitch didn''t entertain her own sick fantasies sometimes.


    "Yeah uh, we really need you here," Athan pleaded. "Can you maybe focus, please?"


    I grinned at him. "Oh, I guess. Y''know, it''d help if you changed how you were holding me. I''ve got this perfectly gropable cooch, y''see¡­"


    Athan ignored me, but his hands did shift away from my butt a little as he went just a shade redder. I cackled at his discomfort.


    And outside, a particularly nasty ball of death landed. Some strike team got obliterated by a compressed gemstone of some kind, which shattered amidst them into nature''s own shrapnel. The shards punched straight through their exosuits, riddling each of them with thousands of perforations, each of their essential organs were shredded, and all of them were dead. Just not yet.


    I could feel their hope draining away as realization sunk in on them. Their suits were patching themselves with structure foam and medical gel, the surface-level injuries on their bodies mended already.


    But it wouldn''t do a damn thing. Each of them was hemorrhaging underneath. Each was just a skin balloon, their cavities filling with blood. They were beginning to cough now, aspirating on their own blood, their wet, choking hacking doing nothing but painting the insides of their faceplates in red. In moments, they couldn''t see their own screens anymore, couldn''t see each other.


    But they could hear each other. Each of them knew, every one of them was dead. They could hear the wet hacking, the heavy, gurgling fullness of their lungs, echoing on comms in each others'' ears.


    There wasn''t any time for them to have thoughts. None of them thought of their wives or children. None of them thought of who they''d leave behind, what half-finished projects they''d undertaken with their lives. Nobody''s life flashed before their eyes.


    There was just drowning. Pain, from a body riddled with holes. The struggle to keep from panic. Coughing, more and more blood coming out, but never enough, the lungs filling faster than could be cleared out. A death by inches, as the blood pooled deeper and deeper inside them. One of them was lucky, his heart had been punctured, and he''d bleed out instead of choke to death.


    "Hey, c''mon," Athan said, shaking me. "You weren''t listening to a word I said, were you?"


    I grinned at him. "Sorry. Was thinking about new sex positions you can only manage with a girl who can''t die. You know how if I come back with a knife still in me, it stays there? Well, gotta imagine what that might feel like if it was a penis--"


    "Saga, what the fuck, seriously."


    He seemed furious, which was good. Honestly, it wasn''t my best excuse. Being fucked and being punctured were about the only things in my mind right now, and I was glad he didn''t see through me.


    Which, hell, if he wanted, he might have been able to. Athan had the annoying capacity to delve into my mind more than I cared for. But he was focused outside me right now, frantically worrying about his sister, and all these Exhumans, and the XPCA who were attacking ''em.


    And if he thought I was in distress, he''d add me on that list of woes, sweet guy that he was. He didn''t need that.


    "Sorry, so what''s up?" I asked.


    "Command is in this building somewhere," he repeated with irritation. "Probably that section we passed with all the people running around in front of all the computers. But I don''t know. We need to find them and you need to convince them to call off this op. I can''t imagine the casualties are that bad, yet--"


    "Oh, you''d be surprised," I told him.


    He frowned at me. "Did you find someone with a number? Have they lost that many already?"


    "No, just a...feeling," I grinned at him. "You''re right, though, command was back behind us. Get me a little closer and I''ll see what I can do."


    I''d be lying if I said I wasn''t distracted. Not just by the continued assault of pain and gore on my senses, but by Athan, too. His mind was going a mile a minute in the worst possible directions, and with our minds unnaturally open to each other, it was hard not to listen to his ever-shifting thoughts.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    But I tried to shut him out as best I could and do this thing, anyway. Command was here, one of the lower-ranking XPCA generals was on the ground.


    Which made me swear as I pawed through his mind and the implications.


    "It''s no good," I told Athan. "He''s here, yeah, but the op is being managed from the top. The big ol'' fattie generals, they''re not physically present...hell, they might be with the president, and they''re overseeing everything."


    "So cut them out," Karu said. "Even if the command given is illegitimate, have the highest authority present issue a retreat."


    "I could do that, but it won''t fix anything. High command would just belay the order, and from the look of things, the ground troops are being micromanaged by TARGA anyway -- the order would never even get out to them, ''cuz she''d know it wasn''t a legitimate order."


    "Well, what can we do?" Athan shouted. I wished he wouldn''t, I was only inches from his face.


    "I don''t know. This entire command hub is just...it''s not even command, it looks like," I said, my mind searching others'' furiously. I was being so reckless about it, they were beginning to take notice. "It''s more a communication spoke, relaying orders from external command."


    Athan was already on his mobile. "AEGIS, can you cut off command''s connection to the outside?"


    Karu and I waited. There were long seconds where the two of us were just staring at Athan''s face. It grew to an awkward length of time, transitioned past waiting into staring at him.


    "Why not?" he asked, suddenly cracking the silence. "Because what?"


    "As I suspected," Karu muttered, apparently her visor also good for eavesdropping on phone calls. "A secure line would not be so simple to disrupt."


    "Well can''t you just like, tear out the cables?" Athan asked. "We can''t do anything here, because the big generals and president are running everything remotely. We need an outage, if the local command is to have any authority."


    "Or we could just kill the president," I suggested.


    He swatted at me, scrunching up his face as though I didn''t know he was on the phone.


    "Yeah, sorry," he continued. "Okay. Okay...okay¡­"


    The half-call I could hear continued like this for some time. Athan just repeating what we needed to do, and listening to all the reasons why AEGIS thought we couldn''t do it. I tried to imagine the possibilities, all the silly redundancies I knew the XPCA liked to deploy, how many engineers and robots would be at work to make sure the line stayed active.


    But I couldn''t. I couldn''t focus for more than a few seconds. People kept screaming, kept dying in my head. AEGIS and Karu had a point, Exhumans were brutal.


    And still, the majority of the forces were just being held off. Something wasn''t right about the situation. The XPCA wanted to move forward, but were being held back, but the New Edeners weren''t doing anything much more than that. It could have been trivial for them to surge out towards the line, slaughtering tens of thousands in mere minutes.


    Instead, they sat there, holed up. Killing only those that approached, shooting down artillery and VTOLs which threatened. Waiting?


    Maybe they intended to drag this out for hours, until Justice showed up. Maybe they wanted to use the XPCA as a meat shield, distracting him while they focused on their real target.


    Or, maybe everyone with a spine had left New Eden already during the previous episode, and this was just the gutless worms left over in the dregs. The powerful and weak. Too strong to budge, too weak to walk.


    Athan hung up, and the snap of his mobile broke me out of the battlefield.


    "So, how''s she doin''?" I asked.


    He glared at me. "She doesn''t think she could take the line down faster than TARGA could get it back up. There''s multiple data-lines running physically throughout the base, to say nothing of antennae and satellites."


    "How about an EMP?" Karu asked. "That would knock out their communications with efficacy."


    "It would," Athan grimaced. "Except it''d knock out all of their communications."


    "Ah. I see."


    "See what?" I asked.


    Athan shook his head at me. "We need to cut off external command, but without blowing up where we are, or else we''ll just make it so there''s nobody giving orders. That doesn''t help us stop the operation, it''d just lead to a panic."


    I saw another strike team, engulfed in flames that wouldn''t extinguish, no matter the amount of suppressant the exosuit deployed. I swallowed hard.


    "Let''s do that," I said.


    "Do...do what? Knock out everything?"


    "Yeah."


    "I just told you. That''d cut off high command, sure, but then this guy wouldn''t be able to order a retreat because he''d be offline, too. No matter how well you mindjacked him."


    "No, I know that," I agreed. "It''s just¡­"


    I frowned at him and tried real hard to get my head straight. Maybe this was a stupid plan, but I had to...had to believe that what I was feeling, everyone else wasn''t just completely blind to it. Someone, somewhere, was feeling these deaths with me, more than just the dying. The XPCA out there, they were seeing their brothers and sisters getting cut down and blown up, weren''t they?


    Or were they like Karu? Seeing the world through the sterile lens of their exosuit''s HUD. The screaming of their peers, muted, as just irrelevant comms chatter.


    I shook my head, trying to banish the thoughts. I was better than this. I had more control of my mind than anyone. I shouldn''t be letting this get to me.


    No matter how many of them were screaming their last breaths.


    "If we cut off command, I can go out there and instil panic," I explained. "We can''t order a retreat, but we can inspire one."


    "Now hold on," Karu injected. "I understand your military prowess is lacking, but inciting a panic does not save lives. The anarchy you create will consume those trapped within it. Animals will bite and claw at any within reach, and these animals will have guns."


    "I know, it''s...dangerous." I found myself gesticulating moronically at her. "But they want to run, I know they want to run. Every soldier out there is dazzled with how many Exhumans they''re facing down."


    "You can see that in their minds?" Athan asked.


    I chewed my lip. "Um. Kinda?"


    "What do you mean, ''um kinda?''," Karu advanced on me. "Are you witnessing it, or are you not?"


    "Yeah, come on, Saga. You''ve been so...I don''t want to say useless, but get your head in the game, seriously. I know this is a joke to you, but there''s fucking people getting killed out there, right now. Please take it a little seriously."


    I stared at Athan, wanting to reach back up and borrow his knife to give him a disguise matching mine. The fact that he could fucking stand there and say that shit to me with a straight face.


    Of course, it wasn''t his fault. Not really. I''d had my mind clamped shut against him as hard as I could manage, this entire time. I''d been lying to him with basically every word I''d said since we got here. I wanted to scream at him, rip open our minds and show him just who and how many I''d experienced dying already. I wanted to hold open his eyes and see how he felt, drinking in the poison of pain that I''d been drowning in.


    Instead, I grinned and shoved my cheek into his chest. "Yeah, sorry. It''s just so comfy in your arms. If you find a little wet spot on your biceps down there, it''s not blood." I winked.


    He sighed enormously.


    "Um, I don''t know," I told Karu. "I don''t know what they''re feeling. Everyone''s really focused on the fight. Everyone''s trying really hard not to break, but it''s hard to get a general read on whether that means they''re broken and holding it together...or they actually are as cohesive as their thoughts project."


    "The latter," Karu announced with certainty. "The XPCA are nothing if not fanatical and well-trained. Those who wish to serve join the air force. Those who wish to fight, the army. And those who wish to make a difference, the XPCA. Or so their recruiters would put it."


    "Those who wish to die, more like," Athan scowled.


    "Did you not join at some point? At two points, variously?" Karu cocked her head at him.


    He ignored her. "The point is, yeah, they''re a little loyal and a little fanatical. This is the biggest event ever, and everyone knows it. I don''t see anyone backing out now."


    "Not...by choice," I reminded him. "I would push them along."


    "And it would not go as you hope. I am well aware of what level of control you can actually exert over such a group," Karu crossed her arms at me. "You could instill the madness, but not control it, yes?"


    "But...I mean¡­" I floundered for words.


    Maybe they were right. Maybe I''d rather everyone be killing each other and it be my fault, than...than this. Maybe some part of me wanted a full-blown massacre, just so it''d all be over at once. This strategy of constantly pushing forward and getting pushed back, it was just...gross. It was like it was designed to be a meat grinder.


    It was, I realized, a plan drawn up by a civilian commander-in-chief, who didn''t know the real function of the XPCA. It was a plan created by someone who''d swallowed the propaganda, who thought of the agency as they wished to be thought of.


    It was because we''d pushed too far, and killed too many of the wrong people. None of the previous directors would have permitted this plan, not even Blackett. And now here we were, reaping what we sowed.


    I blinked and saw Athan standing above me, his eyes peering intently into mine. I swore internally and put that thought away before he saw it, but in his eyes, I noted he''d picked up on something. Not everything, but maybe enough to put the pieces together himself. Fucking shit balls, he''d be beating himself up about that for years, if he figured it out.


    But when he spoke, it wasn''t to dwell on that. He''d put that pain away to flay himself with it later. For now, he was still all business.


    "If Saga thinks they''ll run, I believe her," he said. "We''re gonna do it. Karu, go do whatever you need to shield your gear from the EMP. I''m gonna make the biggest one I can."


    He looked back down at me, his eyes, brown and green, and hard. "When I do, you know what to do. Try to get them to run...please."


    I nodded seriously.


    He swallowed hard. "And...because it looks like we''re not making headway with the XPCA...I guess that just leaves one last chance to end this without a total war."


    "Which is?" Karu asked.


    "If we can''t get the XPCA to stop fighting," Athan swallowed hard. "Maybe we can convince the New Edeners."


    "You intend to charge the battlefield?" Karu asked, her voice rich with disbelief. "Do you have any idea what you are suggesting? Have you not seen the forces being repelled? With lethal force?"


    "I have," he agreed. "And it''s dangerous, I know. But it''s our last chance at saving these people. I have to take it."


    "You''re a moron," I informed him. "Only telling you that ''cuz AEGIS isn''t here to do it."


    "I know," he nodded, setting me down. "And I hope she forgives me."


    Karu began to object but stopped as Athan''s hands began to glow and crackle. I could feel electric shivers running down my body, and sparks jumped off every surface, mine included, like Athan was pulling all the energy in the world from the walls.


    Karu flew down the hall, yelling something indecipherable in her retreat, as the charges in Athan''s hands grew ever larger. Somewhere in the command room, people were just beginning to notice strange behavior on their computers. The whole base seemed to crackle, static jumping from every wall.


    It was entire minutes that Athan built his charge, bigger than I''d ever seen him manage before. Every time I thought he was done, thought the forces in his hands couldn''t get any larger or more intense, he proved me wrong, refined and condensed them, until the energies in his hands were so massive and so distilled...he must have been holding a fistful of pure electrons, if such a thing were even possible.


    "You ready?" Athan asked, his voice sounding weak and distant over the constant rolling of thunder.


    "I''m ready," I told him.


    He took another deep breath, and with it, the orbs in his hand seemed to surge even brighter, space around them seeming to distort with the tricks the light played on my eyes.


    And then I saw white, and a ripple, as though the air itself was stretching, as he brought his hands together.


    And then blackness, as the power in the building went out.

 431. 2252, Present Day. Exhuman Fortress, Las Vegas. Lia.

    The ground shook again under my feet, explosions ripping through the air around me, even here in the very center of our little fortified sliver of Vegas. And as the situation boiled out of my control and spiraled into what could only be described as a terrible plan, I was doing my best not to feel like Athan.


    Because, dang, screwing up this badly and having everything go wrong was sorta his thing, not mine. I''d have been embarrassed, if it weren''t quite so certain I was looking dead instead.


    I remembered when I heard that Justice was headed for Vegas. It was funny, almost. Completely unexpected, to me.


    Not that he was heading there. But my reaction. I was so mad. I was so...I don''t know...irrational about it. Most of the world hears ''Las Vegas'' and thinks of the strip or downtown, just lights and glamour, gambling and hookers.


    But having lived there, for me, it felt like home. The strip wasn''t even in Las Vegas, technically. Vegas was AEGIS'' garage and Whitney''s loft. Saga''s tree and Athan''s bedroom. The uh...bathtub, where I had my first...experience.


    It was all gone now, the whole area around it was a huge scar still, as far as I knew. Utterly wrecked by the XPCA and by Tem and Moon holding them back. Hundreds of homes, gone in an evening. All the families and kids I ever saw when roving the neighborhood or catching the bus, displaced. They seemed like fine, ordinary people.


    It made me feel sick. Made me feel guilty for existing, that somehow, the problems I had to deal with were more important than these peoples'' lives.


    It''d taken a fair bit of work, but that was one reason Black Shark had gone broke there leading up to Japan. All the money I could pull in, I was putting back into those people. I''d started and run a donation-relief foundation, and then funded it myself. Millions put back into those lives, the normalcy they deserved.


    And now Justice was threatening to destroy it all over again. Not because of any threat or danger, just because he was a sick whackjob.


    Well I was tired of it. This wasn''t exactly how I''d planned things, but one and one sorta fell together and became two, when I worked to get my nationalistic Exhuman army, and heard he was coming here. Seemed as good a place to make a stand as any.


    And then the XPCA showed up demanding to be destroyed. And now Khol.


    I''d turned to him out of necessity. I needed a body double who was convincingly large and male to play Vox Humanus in person. Knowing he was sharp, and that I''d spring him from the holding cells where he was still serving the charges I''d pinned on him, I figured he''d make the perfect proxy.


    The problem was, he wasn''t under my thumb anymore. I tugged uneasily at strands of my hair as I waited.


    "Vox will see you now," an Exhuman announced, and I bounced off my heels to get through the door.


    And there he sat, as regal and imposing as we could set up given the situation. These Exhumans were here, mostly out of faith in themselves, a spike in nationalistic patriotism I''d injected them with...but he was still the figurehead of it all. He had to look the part.


    "What the hell, dude," I shouted at him, as soon as the door was closed. "What the heck is with you making me wait?"


    He pulled the mask off, sweating in the cloud of steam we had for his imposing appearance. "Sorry, ''Shark, I had other things to take care of."


    "More important than the army beating down on us? Or the flying dude coming to fight?"


    He narrowed his eyes at me. "No. But you are neither of those things. You''re pretty quick to complain, after dumping all the responsibility on me, by the way."


    "Well it''s apparently the only thing being done quickly around here. I just saw a handful of psychos on the eastern flank gleefully bombarding the XPCA''s lines again. I thought you made clear that we''re trying to reduce casualties."


    "Hey, I''ve told them," he shouted, standing. "But if they want to take out some of their struggles on -- oh, I don''t know -- an army trying to kill them, I say let them have at it. These people have suffered XPCA oppression long enough, I''m not going to demand they die to spare them."


    "They were laughing as they shelled the ranks with exploding gemstones, Khol. It wasn''t self-defense, it was sadism."


    "Again, the XPCA deserves it. Now was that it? You just came here to complain?"


    "I came here to tell you to get your act together. This kind of behavior is infectious. If you permit it to go unchecked, soon the whole group will be lashing out. Then they''ll be chasing down the remnants, and this whole bastion of solidarity thing we''ve got going on? Gone. We''ll lose half of everyone, and the rest will be standing here, feeling like morons for holding the line, and double-morons for trying to fight Justice when everyone else pisses off."


    "Because of a couple idiots, throwing rocks?"


    I sighed at him. "Yes. People''s beliefs are a fragile thing. Justice -- the concept, not the guy -- is a big thing in hearts and minds. If others see wrongdoing go uncorrected, unpunished, it erodes their own morals, makes them feel stupid for not joining in."


    He sighed back at me, but donned his mask before pressing a button. "Nex, bring a few men to the east flank, I''ve heard there''s some kids out there throwing rocks at cars."


    He glowered at me from behind the mask while Nex confirmed, and then cut the comms. "Happy now?"


    "Always. But yes, that helps. Thank you."


    He pulled the mask off again, wiping sweat on his face. "I''m still waiting to hear your plan, Ms. Shark. We''ve got the XPCA beating down our periphery and a couple hours before the big bad man shows up overhead, and you haven''t told me or the others anything."


    "I''m...still working on the details," I lied.


    "Uh, huh." He glowered at me. "You know, I''m not stupid."


    "I never said you were. I wouldn''t have recruited you if I didn''t think you were capable. You don''t see Argus wearing the mask, do you?"


    He didn''t even crack a smile. "You keeping me in the dark on the plans really can only mean one thing. That I need to be ignorant of the plan for it to work the way you want. And y''know, that''s really got me questioning if that''s a plan I want to see succeed."


    "Khol, what the hell? We can''t start fighting now."


    "Or else, what? You''ll lose your pawn to sacrifice?"


    "I''m not sacrificing you!" I shouted. "You or anyone here. I''m just...it''s a big operation, okay? There''s a ton of moving pieces, and I''m accustomed to only planning for myself."


    "Just get out," he said, donning the mask and resuming his seat in the clouds and dim light. "Come back when you have something for me."


    "Try not to make me wait outside for ten minutes."


    "Maybe I will, if you keep proving yourself useless, ''Shark."


    I turned on my heel and stomped out. Stupid, selfish, arrogant, jerkface, jerkbutt, McJerkerson. Not for the first time, I had to wonder, why the heck did everything always have to land on my shoulders? I started this, yes, but why did that mean I was the only one responsible for coming up with everything, seeing everything executed, doing everything.


    I was trying to save a city, and it felt like I was the only one who cared about doing so. Sure, there were a few hundred Exhumans here, ready to fight and die, implicit in their very presence. And of course I respected that. I wasn''t going to be on the front lines.


    But holy hummingbird, everything else? What the hell?


    I barely made it outside before seeing another group of Exhumans taking out their aggression on the army encroaching. They were idly chatting while one of them hurled fireballs into the air to rain down indiscriminately.


    "Hey what the hell do you think you''re doing?" I barked at him. "Vox made it clear that we''re supposed to leave the XPCA intact."


    He rolled his eyes at me. "Piss off, twerp."


    "Seriously? Dude, he made himself completely clear. Only hit those who are advancing. Stop shelling their reserves, or you''re going to provoke them into a suicide charge."


    He shoved me, and I staggered back a few steps while his friend laughed. I almost collided with another Exhuman, who didn''t even acknowledge me. More around didn''t even look up. New Eden was even more successful than New York at getting people to ignore others'' problems.


    "I said, knock it off," I shouted, feeling my face red in at least two different ways now. Morons like this were threatening not just the plan, but the lives of everyone here, and they didn''t even care. Didn''t even care enough to know. I felt my slipskin shifting subtly as my blood flushed with sudden heat.


    "Yeah? Or what?" he asked, turning on me, his hands aglow with flame. I stood my ground, right in his face.


    "I''ll tell Vox."


    At that, both of them erupted into howling laughter. "You''re gonna tell on us? How old are you, kid?"


    This time, when he shoved me, I felt my shoulders burning as the flames touched me. My slipskin did what it could, but I knew I''d really messed up. as soon as I was falling backwards.


    I howled and held myself involuntarily, prompting him to laugh again, the maniac. My shoulders screamed where he''d touched me, blistering excruciating pain. A heat that wouldn''t go away, like his touch had set me on fire, or like I''d been bitten by something and the venom was spreading through me.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    I couldn''t see through the tears, couldn''t stop myself from screaming and rolling. Finally, it seemed, a line had been crossed, and others had begun to intervene.


    I just cried and rolled, my mind a static of pain. I didn''t have a cohesive thought for entire minutes, just whimpering and weakness and hating myself and everything else. At some point, someone drenched my torso with water from somewhere. I don''t know if it helped, don''t know if it could even penetrate my burned slipskin.


    Eventually, I was abandoned. Just left propped in some corner to cry, near some other wounded Exhumans. I remembered thinking they''d probably been shot by the XPCA, they probably had real injuries, from the actual battle unfolding. Not like me. Me and getting burned by some...some...butt-turd for trying to tell on him.


    I was pathetic. I was worse than useless. In a way, I was grateful to the fire-maniac-butt-turd, because he''d reminded me that I wasn''t anything significant. I was just a stupid little girl, in over her head, the only non-Exhuman in this whole camp. I couldn''t stand up to the slightest application of powers, what the hell did I think I was doing trying to tell Khol how to run the whole damn thing?


    The next few minutes of crying weren''t just from the pain in my shoulders. It was just pure self-pitying despair. I knew it was a toxic waste of time. I knew it wouldn''t make me feel any better, that at the end of it, I''d just feel worse for letting myself indulge in my stupid, broken emotions, and that was just yet another failure on the heap which was my life.


    But I couldn''t stop it. I wasn''t strong enough, right now. I couldn''t get my lips to move to recite my mantras. I couldn''t keep tears from squeezing out as my shoulders throbbed with fire. I was just a pile of human garbage, incapable of controlling her own stupid body, much less anything around her.


    I cried for, I don''t know how long. But when I finally opened my eyes and looked out again, it was dark. We had to be getting close to when Justice was coming.


    And from the sounds outside, the fight had intensified. I took a few steadying breaths, and then sat up, feeling my new blisters screaming against my slipskin.


    I hated burns. I hated them so much. I''d had all kinds of injuries playing sports, but a broken bone was nothing compared to a burn. Sometimes people broke bones and didn''t even know. You had to get an x-ray just to verify.


    But nobody''s confused when there''s a burn. It hurts, and it keeps on hurting. It''s like the fire that touched you set off a fire inside you, and it just...kept...going. For weeks, I would just be kindling, flinching at every movement, pain was now my life.


    I wanted to roll over and cry again at the thought, but I slapped myself, the stinging in my cheek, nothing compared to the pain of moving my arm.


    Screw you, Lia. You wanna suffer? Do nothing, and try to live with yourself when the world ends. You think this pain is bad? How about when Athan and Chiho die, because you didn''t do enough?


    It was stupid of me to question. I knew why things always fell on my shoulders. It was because I wouldn''t let them fall on anyone else''s. I stood up and tried to keep my legs from shaking under me. But even if they did, they could still walk. I wouldn''t let the frailties of this body hold me back.


    I had to get back to Khol. I didn''t have a plan, but I could at least tell him that. He was smart, maybe we could come with something together. Keeping him in the dark because I was too proud to admit that I didn''t know what I was doing was just stupid. I''d been worried this whole time that if he knew I was useless, he''d just cut me out.


    But what the hell? I was basically out anyway. I was just a stupid, stubborn girl. If he was Vox now, so be it, as long as he saved the goddang world, I didn''t really give a rat.


    I heard a laugh as I shuffled towards Khol''s room, and stopped dead in my tracks. The same two bastards as before, swapping stories and laughing like nothing had changed. And now the fireballs he was chucking were into the indiscriminate darkness. He could be missing the XPCA and destroying civilian houses for all he cared.


    I paused for a moment, feeling my burns and collecting myself. And then, like I never had a choice, pivoted on my heel and marched towards him.


    "I thought I told you to knock that off," I said.


    He turned slowly, looking down on me. It took him a second to recognize me, which just pissed me off all over again.


    "Oh, lookie who''s back," he drawled. "Did you want another round of screaming and crying like a baby? Here to ask me to stop, or else you''ll go crawling to mama?"


    "I''m not asking anymore. I''m telling. Listen to Vox'' orders, or else."


    His face stiffened. "Make me, you little--"


    The rest of his sentence came out in convulsing gasps as I rammed the shock prod in my left hand into his chest. With seizing breaths and jerky movements, he ignited his hands, trying to draw them close to me again.


    And that''s when I brought out the baton in my right hand. Smacked it right into the side of his face, and sent him into the dirt. And then again, and again, and again, until his face looked as bad as my shoulders felt, until he was the one whimpering and crying on the ground.


    His friend watched with unrestrained terror. And the only time he moved, I pointed the prod at him, and his hands went in the air and he took a step back.


    "Listen to Vox, or I''ll be back," I threatened, panting for breath. My body throbbed. My hand felt broken, from all the beatings I''d just put into him. And my shoulders screamed with fire.


    He just groaned, which I took as a yes. My job was done here.


    But not my revenge. So I kicked him as hard as I could, right in the nuts. He crumpled and cried like a baby.


    It was on that momentum that I barged right in on Khol, finding him frantically trying to put his mask on at the sudden intrusion. When he saw it was me, he tore it off again.


    "Shark, what the hell?" he asked.


    "That''s what I''ve been saying for the last hour, now."


    "You can''t just barge in here like you own the place. You said it yourself, we have to protect the image of Vox--"


    "Yeah I don''t care about appearances right now." I crossed my arms and sat opposite him. "We need plans, and we need them now. How soon will Justice be on us?"


    He stared at me. "Have you been crying?"


    "I asked you a question. How much time do we have?"


    He didn''t answer, just stared. And in his stare, in his body language, I realized, I''d screwed up big time.


    Because Vox wasn''t the only one with an image to protect. Black Shark was just as fragile a concept, and it was only in being a master manipulator, an infopath, and one step ahead, that Khol cared about me even slightly.


    But for him to see me now, blackened, burned handprints on my shoulders, dirt in my hair and tears in my eyes, storming in here all emotional and demanding a simple question I should have known the answer to...


    "You don''t have a plan, do you?" he asked. I let out a slow breath, and wished that perhaps, I''d picked someone less sharp after all.


    "No," I confessed. "And that''s why I need you now. Together, we can come up with something--"


    "You''re an infopath without a plan," he stated. "You''re literally worthless."


    I glared at him. But only because I couldn''t argue.


    "Get out," he told me. "And if you still want to be useful, tell the others we''re withdrawing. We''re not dying here today, over this."


    "No, you can''t!" I shouted. "We need to fight Justice!"


    "Yeah, maybe when I thought you had some future knowledge of how this might turn out! But now, with you having nothing? Maybe the reason you don''t have a plan is because your powers aren''t working. And maybe the reason for that is there''s no information for you to see. Because you -- all of us -- die."


    "That''s not it at all!"


    "That''s not a gamble I''m willing to take. We''re leaving, ''Shark. Maybe if you had something concrete."


    "You can''t," I said again, but this time was a threat. "I know who you are. If you try to do this...I''ll unmask you in front of everyone. I''ll...I''ll release the raw cuts of Vox'' tapes, I''ll prove it was me. You can''t take him away from me."


    He stared me down for another long minute.


    "Please," I pleaded. "We''ve got one shot to make this stand. We''re in position. Do you know how many XPCA we''d have to kill to leave?"


    He didn''t answer, just pulled down his mask and touched the comms. "Nex? I need you to come in here."


    I waited with my breath held. "Please," I whispered, my shoulders burning.


    Nex was prompt, I had to give her that. She waltzed in the chamber and kneeled before Vox'' impressive silhouette. "For humanity," she muttered.


    He paused for effect. Then when he spoke, even my shoulders froze from the ice in my veins.


    "Black Shark has tried to manipulate us one too many times. She has betrayed Vox Humanus, and every word she utters is a threat to our movement. Dispose of her."


    "No! Khol, please!" I shouted.


    Khol shook his head, his mask glinting in the dim light. "Khol? Even now, her words are deceit and poison. The man you speak of is still rotting beneath New Eden, in a prison you placed him in. Take her out, Nex."


    "As you say," Nex said, rising. Ethereal tendrils sprung from her fingertips as she rose and turned on me. "I was never a fan of you scheming types," she confessed.


    I turned and bolted. It was all I could do. I had the presence of mind to throw a handful of shock rocks in the doorway as I fled, having no idea what her powers were, or if that would even slow her down.


    But it was all I had. I was trapped here, on this little island of Exhumanity, and to venture into no-man''s-land was death. To say here, with Nex was death. Fighting was absolutely death, and running was probably death, just slower.


    So my options were pretty bad, and my odds were slim at best. And that was before the speakers squaked to life.


    "Brothers and sisters!" Vex shouted with fury and passion. "There is a traitor among us who has tried to bring harm to our glorious leader! The waif called Black Shark, a brown-haired girl, slender and wearing a grey bodysuit. Her power is to spout enchanted lies, so don''t listen to a word she says. If you see her, kill her. For Vox Humanus! For humanity!"


    At least four of the Exhumans near me turned and eyed me with a dark hunger as the missive played. Before any made up their mind, I slipped away, thinking my chances perhaps suddenly better in the XPCA lines.


    But I''d never get there. I''d never even get to the neural zone. I found myself surrounded, almost instantly, bright lights from somewhere blazing down on me like God himself wanted me found and killed.


    I froze on the spot, twenty Exhumans or more, caging me in. Some jeered with the sadism that New Eden put into these people. Some seemed unsure. Most were dutiful, committed to Vox, and the job I''d done too well in building him up.


    "Please," I pleaded. "I just want to live."


    "Should have thought of that before you crossed Vox," a woman told me, her hand shimmering with unnatural water.


    At least it wasn''t fire, I thought. At least, if I get put out like this, I won''t have that pain to suffer through, of being seared from the inside-out. Water seemed a relatively nice way to go, all things considered. I didn''t know how she''d do it...drowning or slicing or...forcing water down my body until my insides burst¡­


    But at least it wasn''t burning. I could take that solace.


    And I could almost accept this ending. I was just a stupid, useless girl, dying in a stupid, useless way. I''d rolled with the big boys, bluffed my way to the final round on a pair of twos, and now it was time to cash in, I guess.


    I found tears in my eyes again. Stupid me, thinking I could save a city. I couldn''t even save myself.


    "Any last words?" The woman asked.


    "Don''t give her any words," a man answered. "Vox says words are her power."


    "Oh yeah."


    I almost had to laugh. Here, at the end, I wasn''t even allowed to speak. Couldn''t even bluff, one last time.


    She drew back, and I closed my eyes. If it was all the same to everyone, I''d rather not see it coming. I didn''t want it to hurt. That was all I could ask for right now. I stood there, praying to God in silence, please. Make it not hurt. I don''t want to hurt anymore.


    And then I heard murmured confusion erupt all at once. I felt a tingle, my hairs standing on end. I opened my eyes and, somehow, saw the same blackness.


    No, not quite the same. There were stars. There were lights in the distance. Everything here had just suddenly gone dark. The spotlights on me, the ones I''d felt like were from God...they''d gone away.


    Someone was opposing God here.


    And as a hundred swords made of lightning lit up around me, around him, I knew who.


    Athan was practically glowing, electricity crackling off of his body and sparks leaping into the air, his clothes and hair billowing in an aether wind of pure current. His eyes were dark and dangerous, as I''d rarely seen them before.


    Behind him, AEGIS, Saga, and Karu. Their faces promised death, a loyalty and fanaticism that even Vox'' supporters couldn''t match.


    As they advanced, the circle surrounding me reeled at his approach, but didn''t break. They glanced at each other nervously, not sure what to do, not sure what Vox had to say with the power cut.


    He spelled it out for them, very clearly.


    "You all stay the hell away from my sister."

 432. 2252, Present Day. Exhuman Fortress, Las Vegas. Karu.

    Though the base had plunged into darkness, there were none who could not see him. Though his words came out in a breathy hiss, there were none who could not hear them.


    "Which one of you touched my sister?"


    Those who stirred did so in nerves alone. Those who spoke offered only murmured fear. I distinctly heard the phrase ''The Spark of Death'' repeated, as the gathered Exhumans sought confirmation that the glowing man before them was indeed the infamous villain from the news.


    They looked upon him with awe and terror. They trembled at being witness to the unleashed potency of his power.


    I could not stop grinning, nor slow the warm flushing through my body. Now, only now, did the world see him as I always had. The terrifying, pure potential always lurking within him, as one of the most dangerous Exhumans I had ever witnessed, so rarely brought to the surface. Flesh more than man, sculpted by God in His likeness.


    And was plain as day for all to see now, as it were.


    In the darkness generated by his EMP, he easily outshone the distant city lights and even God''s painted sky. His eyes appeared blank, the pupils of them lost in the white crackle of electricity surging off of every inch of his body. His hair rose as though heaven itself was tugging at him, and his clothes rippled in a torrent none could feel.


    A hundred of his blades or more twitched and flourished, each with a mind of its own, darting to and fro, nervous movement, surrounding and filling Athan''s range, thick enough to define it clearly, a sphere of light in the dark. A halo of death.


    He knelt and put his arms around his sister, as though they were a shell which could protect her from anything. At his touch, she trembled, and in the small movement, I saw Ashton break, his heart, gone, and only cold stone to remain.


    "WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKING BURNED MY SISTER?"


    The sound of his bellow shocked a woman to action. She stiffened to hesitate, only for a second. I knew she was moving to act, knew I had ample time to draw and fire as fear and doubt swirled in her mind.


    I did nothing. I waited for Ashton to exact his revenge.


    She took one ungainly step forward. And then, as though emboldened by such, raised her fists. She began to yell. A battle cry, something about Vox-something.


    I could not tell, because before it even came out of her, he was there. His body moved like a bolt of lightning, smoke joining the sparks jumping from his body, as he appeared behind her.


    And with his sudden movement, in the fraction of a blink of an eye, only visible to me because of my visor, I saw every. Single. Blade. Punch through her, a hundred fatal cuts in an instant.


    The last of which severed her head clean off, and Athan stooped to pull it from the ground by its hair, the eyes still moving, the mouth formed into a shocked ''oh!''


    "WAS THIS HER?"


    The blades seemed to jump again, entombing another Exhuman in a wall of light and heat. Even from this distance, I could see the victim stiffen, see sweat pour from his brow at the sudden, inescapable death pressed all around him.


    And the sparking, glorious child of God who had suddenly appeared in his face, apparently without motion. "WAS IT HER?" he screamed, his voice breaking.


    "N-no!" the man shouted back.


    "WAS IT YOU?"


    "No! I would...never! It was...was Skull...t-that way¡­" he twisted his head to the side, and even that small motion brought a blade close enough to his skin to burn.


    The blades tumbled away from him, and he collapsed at their absence. Athan was already gone, a plume of dust marking where he kicked from the ground, and a streak of light chasing his resplendence further into the camp.


    "...don''t¡­" I heard a weak voice, which I again would have missed if not for my visor. I turned and found the source, with a frown.


    Lia, safely isolated, shunned almost, by the wall of Exhumans around her. None of them wanted to be mistaken for encroaching on her, none even dared to look at her. All of these weak creatures had, only moments ago, ganged up on the helpless girl. And now that the situation had reversed, now that she was no longer helpless, they could not clamour over themselves quickly enough to leave her in peace.


    It made my stomach turn. Exhumans were vile. Ashton would not be amiss in scouring this camp clean from the earth, if we did not have other, better plans for them.


    I joined AEGIS in strolling to the younger Ashton''s body, where she made soothing noises as she took in the injuries and broke out the first-aid kit.


    "Not much I can do with the slipskin in the way," she muttered to herself. "And I can''t cut it...and it''s likely melted into the wounds. Oh, what a disaster."


    "...Athan...don''t," Lia pleaded. "Stop him...please¡­"


    "Shh, it''s okay now," AEGIS offered, the false smile back in her voice. "He''s gonna be okay."


    Lia shook her head, wincing as she did. I saw much of her hair reached down her shoulders and was melted into the mess, tugging at the wounds with the movement. AEGIS saw it too, and was there with a pair of tiny scissors, cutting back the affected curtain at once.


    "Not...not him, them," Lia panted. "Don''t let...him...kill them."


    Saga knelt beside the girl and took her hand, squeezing it gently in hers. "We couldn''t stop him if we wanted to, Lia. I''ve never seen Athan...lose it like this. He''s so hurt inside, I don''t...I don''t know that he wouldn''t attack even us, if we tried to hold him back."


    "And why would we?" I spat. "Whatever coward has done this to you deserves punishment. To think, we came here to attempt to save these people, and the first thing we encounter is a warrant broadcast for your execution. It sickens me."


    "What Lia here probably means to say," Saga said "is that we are still technically here to save these Exhumans. Even if...at least one of them is...a fucking cunt, who deserves to die horribly."


    "Somehow, I do not think that is exactly what Lia intends to say."


    "Well it should be!" Saga screamed, catching us all off-guard. "Fucking look at her! Even if you can''t feel her pain, just fucking look."


    Despite myself, I found my heart catching in my throat. Saga''s outbursts of emotion were...resonant, in a way that I think had little to do with her weak, childish screams. Her powers, when unhinged, boiled her emotions through all around her.


    It was unnatural and, to be frank, terrifying, that I could have a surge of feeling which were not my own, so keenly, as it were.


    Saga ground her teeth as she squeezed Lia''s hand. "I hope he brings them back alive. I hope he lets me at ''em. I''ll teach him what real pain feels like."


    AEGIS said nothing, merely tending the wounds to the best of her ability, as a code-X went rampant inches from her. She was designed to stop that very thing, and yet now, was allied with it. It said much about all of us, how we each reacted in the moment, and I paused to reflect on myself.


    Because I had done little. I had not become the emotional maelstrom that had consumed Ashton or Saga. I had not made myself useful as had AEGIS. I had not kept the larger picture in mind as had Lia.


    Instead, I supposed, I had merely gloated, which was unflattering. I had the opportunity to act, but had chosen not to. I did not deescalate the situation, because...on some level...I had wanted it to spiral beyond any of us. I wanted Ashton to rip and tear into this festering hive, and purify it with his touch.


    Even if Lia was right, and their future weakness would merely reflect upon us when Justice came to call. It was a short-sighted, emotional mistake. And upon reflection, I was being just as emotional and foolish as Ashton, in letting him go, was I not?


    Realizing this, I had just about made up my mind to address the situation and move to retrieve Ashton as best I was capable, when he landed in our midst with a heavy thunk, and a dazzling lightshow.


    He dropped another head on the ground, accompaniment to the first. A man''s, who had been savagely beaten across the face, with broken nose and shattered eye sockets. It did not appear to be Ashton''s handiwork.


    "Was this him?" Ashton asked. Lia shrinking back from the severed, still-dripping head was all the answer he would get.


    I had to wonder if the beatings were some form of vigilante justice eked out; if Ashton had landed amidst the punishment already being dealt, and ended the punitive measure to satisfy his own vengeance. With his cold, broken heart, had he gone so far as to decapitate a helpless, beaten man?


    I felt a realization ripple through Saga, and in her mind, felt the truth of the situation, lifted from Lia''s. The injuries were inflicted by her, justice already dispensed at the hands of the wronged.


    I found myself not caring. This man was the worst kind of creature, made increasingly evident as Saga unravelled more of the story. His death was well-deserved. If anything, he should have been made to suffer more.


    "I''m going to stop this," Athan announced, seething with every breath. "I''m going to kill whoever''s in charge, whoever let this happen, everyone who stood by and watched--"


    "Athan, no," AEGIS said. "No more killing."


    "THEY FUCKING BURNED MY SISTER."


    "I know," AEGIS pulled at her hair as she pleaded. "But Athan, we can''t."If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "I can," he said, his blades twitching as though to demonstrate.


    The wisest in the crowd of watching Exhumans had begun to distance themselves at this exchange, though many stayed rooted, perhaps not capable of movement anymore, from fear, or from curiosity.


    "We came here to save these people," AEGIS said. "Killing them indiscriminately is the last thing we should do, Athan. Please."


    "How can you fucking say that?" he screamed. He spun, bending so he was inches from her face. "Look what they did to her, AEGIS. Look at what these fucking animals did to my sister. Leaving them for Justice is too good for them."


    "Athan, you''re just mad. And you should be! But...I don''t want you doing anything you''ll regret, please. We need to stick to the plan, we need to get Saga to convince their leader--"


    "Fuck that," Saga crossed her arms. "Athan''s right, this whole festering pile should go up in sparks. If I see their leader, I''m popping his head like a zit."


    AEGIS looked around, defeated. "Karu, please, talk some sense into them."


    I sighed. The AI was right. But I also knew that there were many situations where appealing to a man with logic alone would not suffice. There was only one person present who could keep the situation from breaking into slaughter.


    I advanced on the youngest Ashton, her face lined with pain and her cheeks stained with tears. I gave her a comforting smile, as best I could, before applying the stim patch to her neck.


    It took a moment to hit her, and then her body relaxed tremendously. I could see the pain washing off of her, the unwanted visitor which had taken up residence within her body, forcibly shunted out the door. Her soaring heart rate crested, her flushed skin cooled.


    "That''s really bad for her," AEGIS muttered to me.


    "I am aware." It would temper her body''s attempts to treat the injury. Every second of inaction by her body now would be days of recuperation later, would be deeper scars and unrecoverable mobility, would be pain she would experience from those injuries, forever.


    And so I offered up a silent prayer, for Lia and for myself, for doing that to her. I prayed forgiveness for visiting a future of hurt upon her, for simple want of recovering her in this second.


    She stood up, and Ashton''s swords paused in the air as though frozen. All of the ferenic energy around him stilled, the crackle and sparks and light, trapped in time around him.


    Step by careful step, she advanced, ducking under blades and wincing every time she moved. Given her burns, the heat of the swords must have been doubly uncomfortable, but Ashton was so unprepared, so flat-footed, it was not in his mind to unbar her way.


    Until she reached out, and a jolt of electricity arced from his shoulder to her hand. She winced and withdrew for a moment, but did not halt her advance.


    As though in shame, all of his lightning went out at once. He was Exhuman, too, and was just as capable of hurting her as any of those gathered here, as the bearers of those two severed heads had once been. An Exhuman was always a danger.


    She wrapped her arms around him, almost collapsing onto him. He stood as a statue, his arms splayed uselessly, unsure of what to do or how to act, what was safe on the burned girl to touch, or how she could press against him without blinding pain wracking her body, even through the stims.


    "Let''s just go," she whispered. "Let''s leave this behind."


    "But the Exhumans--" AEGIS pleaded.


    "Fuck ''em," Saga said.


    "--our plan--"


    "That sounds good," Athan said, his voice pained and relieved at once. "Yeah."


    AEGIS stared at them, then at me, then at all the Exhumans gathered around us. "What...what about...everything?"


    Saga turned on her. "They burned Lia."


    "So what? I mean...not so what but...so that changes everything now? We just leave people to die? We let the XPCA get destroyed here, give up these resources we need to fight Justice, all because some dumbass hurt her?"


    "Hurt her?" Ashton echoed darkly. "Is that all you think this is?"


    "Athan, please. I''m not...I''m not trying to belittle your sister''s suffering or anything. It''s awful. I would know, I was treating her wounds--"


    "So you know better than me?" He was shouting again. But Lia was still holding him, no current stirred the air.


    "No! I just...I don''t want you or...or anyone to lose track of why we came here, just because one person got hurt! I mean¡­" she tugged frantically at her hair. "...not just...one person, obviously¡­"


    "She''s my fucking sister, AEGIS!"


    "I know!" she shouted back. "But what about the rest of the world! What about the New Edeners and the XPCA and Justice! What about the whole city of Las Vegas, and how many cities after that? What about Chiho, Whitney, Moon, Cosette, and Tem, who are out there somewhere? Or Trish, who seems to be our one best shot at stopping Justice, and she''s in XPCA custody somewhere."


    She let out a long, pained breath, and I saw her engines beginning to spin, the circling yellow lights dancing beneath her skin as her emotions flared.


    "I know she''s very important to you. She''s important to me, too! But she''s just one piece of this puzzle, and we can''t stop just because she got...a little...hurt."


    Athan seemed completely paralyzed where he stood, his heart was pounding and in my optics he seemed bright red from the heat coming off of him. Every fiber in his body was tensed, as though he might burst at any moment.


    Lia squeezed him again, and at her touch, he thawed.


    "Let''s just go," she repeated. "Leave them all."


    He didn''t seem to want to agree. AEGIS'' words just seemed to make him want to slaughter everything around him all the more. But Lia''s gentle pleading pushed him, and where AEGIS'' outpouring only solidified Ashton''s fury, Lia''s doused it.


    "Okay," he breathed. "Let''s go."


    "Clear us a way," she said, taking a step back and grinning at him. "I''ll follow with the rest. I''ll have AEGIS carry me. She can do it gently."


    He nodded, and then, with a crack, he was gone.


    AEGIS slumped in his absence, and Lia approached her.


    "I''m sorry," Lia muttered. "This was the only way."


    "What only way? We''re fucked," AEGIS sighed.


    Lia took her hand. "The only way to keep him from going loose. AEGIS, I love you, but not was not the right time to put more ish on his shoulders. He was only barely keeping it together, and reminding him of everything else going wrong...you were just gonna make him snap."


    "Oh," AEGIS frowned. "I...I''m sorry. I didn''t see that."


    "He''s a big baby sometimes, you have to remember that. Mostly...when I''m involved. We just need to get him some distance and get me safe so that...so that..."


    "So that his fury can abate into self-loathing," I finished.


    She frowned, but didn''t disagree.


    AEGIS let go of Lia''s hand and sighed. "And once he''s done that...once he''s back to normal, and blaming himself for everything that''s happened just now...then we''ll be able to go back to the plan."


    "Yeah."


    "We don''t have time for that, though. Justice is coming in a matter of hours."


    Lia grinned, through a pained wince. "I think you underestimate just how quickly Athan can dive into self-loathing. And...besides, the leader here...he''s going to have the Exhumans move away. The XPCA will move with them, there''s no huge fight going on here, today."


    "Oh," AEGIS'' eyes went wide. "That''s fantastic."


    "Not really." Lia''s voice was steady even as her eyes shone with more tears. "He''s gonna destroy Las Vegas, AEGIS. He''s gonna destroy our home."


    "Our...home? Was...already destroyed. By...the XPCA."


    "You know what I mean." Lia struggled to hold them in, but quiet tears were breaking from the corners of her eyes. "After...after everything, when I finally found Athan, and...you guys...this city was our home together. It was the only place I really...had, since¡­"


    "Since you couldn''t go back to your parents."


    "...yeah."


    AEGIS gave her the gentlest of hugs. "I''m sorry."


    Lia sniffled in her arms. "I should be the one that''s sorry. It''s stupid, I know. It''s just a city, and there''s so many already gone and so many at risk. But this one was...it was home."


    I stepped up. "Save your tears for after, girl. The city will live on with its people, assuming we spare them. And so our priority is to ensure that these Exhumans and XPCA escape here as unscathed as possible. And to that end--"


    I pulled the bag I''d been hauling off my hip. Huge, unwieldy thing, made me fly off-balance, and I was eager to be rid of it, even if the contents were the most portable of their type I could find. I offered it to Lia, and she undid the clasps to open it.


    "Guns?" she asked, pulling out one.


    "Exotics. Though every person here is already an Exhuman, most will not be able to utilize their powers until at close range. This handful of arms may not be much, but any assistance we can offer in keeping the XPCA and Exhumans separate is lives saved."


    "Thank you, Karu," Lia said, offering me a hug in turn. Even through my armor and flightsuit, I could feel her small body burning up. How much pain must she have been in, before the stims, I had to wonder?


    "I do not know if there are any you particularly trust with them--"


    "There are," Lia nodded decisively. "I''ll be right back."


    "I''m going with," Saga said. "And if anyone so much as thinks about stopping you, or hurting you¡­" she grimaced. "...oh, I''ll make sure they never think again."


    The gathered Exhumans made generous way for them to sink further into the base, leaving just AEGIS and myself lingering at the outskirts.


    "What a fucking disaster," she sighed.


    "Concisely put."


    "Those guns...those are the ones you stole from Oasis? Is it really okay to give those out here?"


    "I know of little better use. I cannot mount them or fly effectively with them on me. I have taken to carrying the ennervator, but I am lacking the arms to bear more arms. I suffered plenty in their procurement, that they must be put to use equal to the effort."


    "You...suffered? I thought you stole them?"


    I shook my head as I briefly relived the scene. "To hear their High Priest Tobias blather on and on about his dreams of other dimensions. Travelling beyond reality, the means and the issues, dangers of worlds beyond worlds, and why such-and-such was possible or not, for literal hours. I had no idea there were so very many things I had absolutely no interest to hear of. Fractal gateways, probabilistic realities, Alcatraz data compression..."


    "Alcatraz?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "The island?"


    "Or some such."


    But she didn''t seem skeptical, more...intrigued. I shook my head, hoping I hadn''t incited her into the same obnoxious curiosity.


    "Are...you sure that''s what he said?"


    "Something of that nature. Why?"


    "Was it possibly...alzstraz-beta compression?"


    "Hm, yes, that was it," I frowned at her. "You would think, the number of times he spoke excitedly about it, it might have stuck better."


    "You''re sure?"


    She was looking at me with wide eyes, like there was something of monumental importance here I was missing out on. But whether Alcatraz data or the other, it was nothing I''d ever heard of, and I was ever-so-slightly loathe to endure AEGIS explain it to me, for what would then probably be the fourth time, after Tobias.


    "Yes, I am sure. Why is this suddenly so critical?"


    "We have to talk to Athan," she said. "He''s going to need to hear this."


    "What of your vaunted plan? What of letting him cool, and then returning to the Exhumans as you intended?"


    "He''s not going to care about that anymore."


    I blinked at her. "You are serious?"


    "As a heart attack. C''mon, let''s find Lia and go."


    She bolted off and I kept up with her.


    "AEGIS, against my better judgement, I must ask: what manner of thing is this alzstraz-beta compression?" I asked.


    "I don''t know," she said, shaking her head, her twintails leaving twisting arcs in her wake as we flew.


    "Then...what exactly has you in such a tizzy, as it were?"


    We landed, not far from where Lia was handing out guns like alms, and saying a few parting words with some of the Exhumans who I supposed to be her friends.


    "Those words...they were written in the letter. The one we got from Soran, just before he attacked us in Georgia."


    "The letter that had Athan in conniptions. That he was behaving so erratically over?"


    She nodded.


    "Yes. The last message from Mage to Athan. Those words were in that latter, which means that Tobias is somehow the key to all of this, to Mage''s final prophecy."


    "So what?" I asked. "Why should we care, the last words of a fading ghost?"


    She looked at me seriously, her yellow eyes misty with thought. "Because," she said. "The rest of the letter, it explained -- in the same obfuscated way -- that whatever this stuff Tobias is talking about is, it''s the key to end this entire thing with Justice. It''s the key to everything, Karu, to beating him and saving everyone."

 433. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Athan.

    It felt like it had been a lot longer, but it had been only mere minutes since we''d left the XPCA side and crossed no-man''s-land into the Exhuman base. The former were just now recovering from Saga''s mind-lashing and getting lights back on from where I''d nuked their power before, and I didn''t think the latter had spare lights or equipment to replace what I''d blown out. But with the distraction of our presence fading, both sides were beginning to remobilize.


    And frankly, I found I didn''t care.


    How many times had I been tasked out, tried to talk some Exhuman down instead of kill them? Tried to save some civilians, only for them to recoil at my presence? Tried to do what was right, only to be punished?


    How stupid must I be, to keep trying? Time and again, to help a world that obviously was beyond helping?


    I''d calmed down some. Maybe that wasn''t accurate, maybe it was more truthful to say that my blood was running cold instead of hot now. Because honestly, I found myself completely okay with the idea that these fuckers could go kill each other for a while until Justice came by and finished the job.


    And then he''d mop up Las Vegas, maybe even every other city on the map. Scour them all of these fucking, worthless, bigoted, self-absorbed pieces of shit. Once all the regular folks were gone, there''d be nobody left but a world of fucking politicians and bureaucrats, leaders without anyone to lead, trembling as they finally percieved their uselessness. And all the while they were dying, they''d be begging, pleading, for someone to come save them from the disaster they created themselves.


    But oh, not me. They wouldn''t ask me to help. I''m an Exhuman. I''d just make everything worse. And if I tried to help anyway, if I felt an empathy they lacked, tried to put myself in danger to save their loved ones?


    Well they''d fucking take mine away. So fuck that, and fuck them. My loved ones were here with me, were safe, as long as I kept them away from people like them. So yeah, they could all burn in hell, I was tired of risking everything I had for a swarm of ingrateful fucks.


    I was tired of everything. I was tired of hurting, and most of all, I was tired of seeing people I loved being hurt.


    In the dark behind me, I heard a sound and spun, blades flashing into light, poised to strike.


    I found AEGIS standing there. She smiled softly at me, like she was the one who had something to apologize for.


    She did, I realized, as soon as she spoke.


    "Athan, I know...you don''t want to. And neither do I."


    "Then don''t."


    "But right now, we have a plan, and a little time. If we wait, if we...if we indulge in emotional outrage, no matter how justified, we''re going to have no plan and no time. Justice will be here soon. And even if the Exhumans are going to run, the XPCA will get slaughtered. We have to do something."


    "We have to do nothing. We owe the world nothing. In fact, the world owes me plenty, AEGIS. Where''s the rescue party being sent out here to make sure we''re safe, huh? All that ever comes after us is kill squads--"


    At the last two words, I thrust my swords forward into the dark, where I picked off a shadow ops unit who had strayed too far, thinking his camo would protect him from me. The last thing through his mind was a gasp of surprise.


    "Let''s just get Lia, Saga, and Karu and leave," I finished. As though it was perfectly normal for me just to murder people halfway through my sentences.


    "Leave...where?" she asked.


    "Anywhere. I don''t care."


    "But you do care. I know you do. If you run away now and something bad happens here, you''ll never forgive yourself, will you?"


    "But if I stay and something happens to you, or to Lia, or to Karu, I''ll also never forgive myself!" I screamed at her. "Just what the fuck am I supposed to do?"


    She fidgeted on the spot for a few moments, before seeming to make up her mind and advanced on me. After long, hesitating seconds, she took my hand in hers and gave me a solemn squeeze. I could still see tears and discolored spots on her neck from the fight with Soran, but no matter what happened, her hands were always too soft and too warm for belief.


    "I dunno," she said, her voice only barely above a whisper. "And honestly, I don''t know if future regrets are worth present suffering. There''s just so much we don''t know right now. It feels like everything''s coming to a head, and we''re not ready for it."


    "They why are you pushing me so hard to do something?"


    "Well¡­" she pulled her hand halfway out of my grasp and then stopped. "I just...it was the plan, Athan. We made the plan when we were clear-headed and capable, and changing the plan because of some emotional outburst...it''s a really terrible idea." And then quickly added, "Even if the emotional outburst was completely justified!"


    "I''m sorry for yelling at you before. You don''t have to keep dancing around the fact that Lia was hurt with me. I was upset...I still am upset. But not at you."


    "That''s...good. I''m sorry too."


    We lingered there for a minute. I felt numb and cold, all except my fingers where AEGIS clung to me. It felt like that was the only part of me that was alive, somehow. I kicked at the dirt, my legs were heavy and lifeless in a way that had nothing to do with the exoframe.


    Sure, I''d just used my powers to move my body too fast a few times there, and that always hurt like a bitch and burned out my muscles. But even with that, I wasn''t sore or exhausted. Just...dead.


    Just numb with disbelief, really. Just one of those moments that made one pause, and consider just how obvious it was that there was no God. How else could you explain us arriving at the exact moment that the people we were rushing to save were fixing to lynch my sister? It was like a cruel joke. If there were a God, he was laughing at my existence, not...spreading peace and love, or whatever.


    Because looking around here right now, there wasn''t peace and love to be found. Just two armies, shelling each other, explosions in the dark, the smell of smoke, and of death. And the promise that they''d be clashing in earnest, the dark ground where I now stood maybe soon drinking its fill of blood.


    "All I want," AEGIS'' hand gave mine a squeeze, bringing me back to the present "is for you to be okay with yourself. And I know what a big ask that is," she laughed. "Just...please...try to give it a think. Try to imagine...that everything here goes wrong. The XPCA hold the New Edeners back, Justice wipes out both of them. Could you live with that? Could we still stop him if that happened?"


    "I don''t know."


    "And it''s more than just here and now, you know. This is the last, best army of Exhumans in the world. If they break...it''ll show the rest that there''s no point in standing up to him."


    "I don''t know."


    "And the XPCA will be dissolved. Their leadership...that''s mighty whatever. But the men and women serving...to say nothing of the rest of their assets. All the exotics outside of Oasis might all be here in this one place."


    "I still don''t know, AEGIS."


    She frowned at my words. "Assets are more than just things, though. There are people, like Trish, in their care. The rest of New Eden. There''s no telling what will happen to them."


    I didn''t bother answering. She already knew what I didn''t know.


    I had a suspicion that whatever happened here, I''d be filled with regret. I wasn''t sure there was a single situation I''d ever handled where I didn''t regret something about it. Some more than others, but never had everything gone well for us.


    Which is why...maybe this time, we should just leave. When the stakes were highest, that was when you had the most to lose. I felt the warmth squeezing my fingers, and the coldness in the rest of me, and tried to think about everything she''d just said, all the millions of lives in the balance.


    But it was impossible to weigh all of that against the one bit of warmth I could still feel.


    "Well, not all of them."


    I turned and saw Lia, leaning heavily on Karu as the two of them entered the circle of light projected by my swords. She gave me a serious nod.


    "All of what?" I echoed stupidly.


    "All of the Exhumans being held by the XPCA. Not to eavesdrop, but there wasn''t much else to listen to as we walked over. I know at least one who was in their care that I can vouch for."


    She turned and...several...perhaps too many dramatic seconds later, Saga came into view, along with somebody else. A short girl, with large blue eyes and blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. She was trim, with a suggestion of muscle, and almost exactly my age, I knew.


    Because I recognized her. It was Rito. But at the same time, was not.


    I remembered Rito as energetic and bubbly, sort of a further extension of Lia. Or, during a crisis, pissing herself and cowering uselessly. The girl in front of me was neither, with blank eyes and dazed posture.


    I turned to look at Saga, who grinned as I frowned.


    "Well, she wasn''t going to help us any other way," she didn''t apologize.


    "Lia, what is this?" I asked. "She was locked up in New Eden."


    "And we all just broke out of New Eden, if you recall? I had to pull a few strings to get her out, and then a few more to keep her from trying to get herself back. Now that we''ve got Saga on hand, that should be much easier."


    It felt like forever ago, but I remembered Lia and Rito together at a party, the only two people there even remotely approximating teenaged girls. They were discussing TV shows and soliciting opinions from others as to which male celebs were hunkier, pictures up on their mobiles and everything.


    And now she was standing here like a zombie, her thoughts no longer her own, dragged out of prison and mindfucked by that same friend. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Seeing her now really sold me on it. The fact that being here, trying to help, all it brought was pain. This poor girl just wanted to go to art school and support her mom. And because of us, now she was a known and incarcerated Exhuman, a fugitive, and our slave.


    "Lia''s right," I said. "We''re leaving. And then we''re setting Rito free, and we''re not turning back."


    "W-what?" AEGIS stammered. "Athan, wait. All the things I said, think it through--"


    "I have thought it through." I pulled my hand from hers. Somehow, as though missing her touch, it was even colder and more numb than the rest of me. "There''s nothing we can do here except make the situation worse. All we''ll do is lose people, or be forced to kill people. And all for nothing."


    "So you are saying Justice cannot be stopped?" Karu asked. "That is your answer? He is greater than us, and so to try is folly?"


    "Maybe."


    She crossed her arms and looked down at me with open revulsion. "Then you are not the man I thought you to be."


    "I don''t care if I am or not, Karu," I spat at her. "I never asked to be put on your stupid, divine pedistal. I don''t care if you think I''m God''s gift to Exhumanity or if you think Satan put me here. I''ve only ever done what I thought was right. And y''know what? It''s never turned out right. So maybe it''s time for a change."


    "You are a coward," she declared. "You are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices after all. You have led us this far, and when the burden has grown too heavy, you have quit it."


    "So what if I fucking have? If you could have quit it all before that Exhuman melted your boyfriend alive in the past, wouldn''t you?"


    She went rigid. "I would not know. He was a man who would die serving his duty. Whether I wanted him to stop or not would be irrelevant. All you are demonstrating is how many ways you lack, to his measure."


    "Athan, come on," AEGIS stepped forward as Karu shrunk away. "You know I care about you, more than any of those jerks in the dark. But we both know that if you run away now, you''ll never stop running. This isn''t who you are, Athan. You got scared because of what happened to Lia, and that''s okay--"


    "Isn''t it a bit much for you of all people to be telling me about my duty?" I snipped at her.


    "Excuse me?" she adjusted her glasses at me.


    "Your job was to guide and protect the XPCA, not me. You chose to bail on them, chose to dedicate your life to me. And now you''re giving me shit for doing the exact same thing?"


    "There''s a big difference between choosing not to go back to the XPCA after being buried and forgotten a hundred years, and walking away from them the moment they''re about to be crushed, Athan."


    "Oh, fine, you''re right. Maybe I should go back to a week ago when we could have fixed all of this. You know, when you quit working with the XPCA because it was getting in the way of your cooking?"


    She glared at me. "What the fuck has gotten into you?"


    "You''re the one always telling me to look after myself. Now here I am doing it, and for some reason, it''s a huge ordeal. What if I don''t want to die today...what if I don''t want any of you dying today? Why is it so fucking irrational to ask that, for the first time in my life?"


    "Athan--"


    "I''m just tired of everyone treating me like shit!"


    "Dude," Saga said. "Nobody here treats you like shit. That''s on those fuckers."


    "Right," I turned on her. "Because it''s not shitty having to babysit you, to make sure you don''t decide today''s the day to go off and murder everyone."


    She fished in her ear with her pinky. "Yeah, I''m not like those other bitches. Good luck finding the right words to eviscerate my delicate little heart, Athan."


    I didn''t say anything else at her. I just thought, very hard, pulled to the surface of our shared mind-space all the fucking times everything had gone to shit because she was an irresponsible fucking child. Really threw in her face the pain we''d all had to go through because of her, jammed it in how much of a burden she could be, even if she couldn''t see it because of how high and powerful she saw herself.


    "I hate you," she said simply.


    "Good," I clarified. "Better than everyone being dead."


    "Athan--"


    I turned to the next person trying to shut me down and found myself face-to-face with my sister. I froze.


    "What?" I asked. "You''re going to tell me I''m wrong, too? Tell me I need to go fight and die against Justice today, because that''s who I am?"


    "No," she shook her head. I frowned at noticing that her hair had been cut short all along the sides of her face to keep it out of the burns, and that she had a new stim patch on her neck beside the old one. She had cuts on her face and palms from a hard fall, and her slipskin was scuffed up. I felt fire began to race in my veins, as I took stock of her injuries yet again.


    But her words were soft, even. The voice of my sister, no matter how battered her body was. It warmed my heart, even as it cooled my blood, somehow. Made me feel again. Made me want to cry.


    "I want you to do whatever you want, bro. If you want to run, I''ll run with you. If you want to fight, I''ll be at your side." She crossed her arms, but then winced at the maneuver, and let them dangle. "But what I won''t tolerate is you treating these friends of yours that you''re trying to ''protect'' like this. You owe them an apology."


    "For what? Each of them is trying to push me with their own fucked-up agendas."


    "And you''re doing what, exactly? You have an opinion, and they have an opinion, and just because those happen to disagree, that gives you a license to act like everyone is treating you like carp?"


    "Just because it''s a difference of opinion doesn''t mean both opinions are valid, Lia."


    "Oh please. This isn''t about opinion, this is about you turning it into personal attacks. You''ve crossed the line four or five times now, bro, and that''s a whole bucket of monkey feathers. Apologize."


    I glared at her. How could she just stand there, demanding I apologize to people asking me to kill myself? Asking me to kill them? Asking me to kill her?


    "I don''t need an apology," AEGIS muttered. "I just want what''s best for him."


    "Well I need one for you," Lia spat. "And I''m not budging until you get one."


    "It isn''t that big a deal. He''s just lashing out. He''s scared, and you were hurt."


    Karu clacked forward. "Indeed. He is of unsound mind. I would not push him."


    The three of them looked at Saga, who just turned slowly to face me, and then with even more deliberate slowness, raised a single finger in my direction.


    "Pretty sure she''s beyond an apology," AEGIS commented. "So...c''mon, let''s just go. If that''s what you want, Athan."


    "No," Lia said, sitting down now.


    "Lia, stop, you''re being as stubborn as he is."


    "Maybe so. But AEGIS, you wanted to make sure he thought about his decision, and he''s gonna do that. Karu, you thought he''s acting out of character, and we''re looking at that too. And Saga...you uh¡­" She scratched her head. "You wanted him to be less insufferable, I guess."


    "Yeah fuckin'' good luck with that one," she sneered.


    "The point is," Lia said, turning her eyes onto me, her big beautiful hazel eyes, brown in the middle and green around them. "That I know why you''re being such a massive tool right now, and it''s important that you not be."


    "I''m being a tool--"


    "Because you are, for like, the first time ever here, not confident in your decision. You feel like you''re taking a leap, and everyone''s second-guessing you, and it''s making you defensive as hell."


    "Well, yeah. That''s what I''ve been saying."


    She rolled her eyes. "No it''s not, dummy. It''s what you meant to say, but instead you said ''hey, here''s a personal attack, and I hate you.'' You see how that comes out a little different?"


    "Fine. What''s the difference, then?"


    "The difference is that one is coming from a place of love and one from a place of fear, you goober. Loving your friends and wanting to protect them is noble. That''s the Athan we all know and love. But controlling them? Being jealous? Refusing to hear them out, and yelling them down when they express themselves?" She shook her head. "That''s not coming from a good place. And I think you can see that, reflected in your behavior to those around you right now."


    There was a distant explosion, louder than the others that made us all turn. AEGIS frowned as her eyes wavered.


    "The XPCA is attacking in force," she commented. "We need to get out of here, it''s about to become a warzone."


    Lia didn''t stir. "I said I''m not moving until Athan apologizes."


    "Lia, what the fuck? You''re going to die if--"


    "If you don''t apologize," she said coldly.


    "This is stupid. Lives are on the line."


    "If it''s so stupid, then just say it."


    "Rito, take us to--"


    "Take them. Leave me," she crossed her arms, and this time didn''t flinch at the pain.


    "Fine!" I shouted at her. "Fine! You want to hear what a big dumb idiot your brother is? Well I am. I''m the biggest, stupidest, most hypocritical, most selfish, worst Exhuman out there. I yell at my friends instead of letting them get hurt. I''m sorry, okay?"


    She looked up as fire began to light up the sky.


    "No, not really, but it''ll have to do. Rito, let''s go," she said.


    I watched the fire get closer and closer to us, wondering just how long Rito was going to take to get us out of there. Or...was someone watching her? One of the camps, keeping an eye on us, making sure we weren''t a threat until the fire hit us and wiped us out.


    We''d die here, burned alive by a blanket of fire, I thought. Some hellfire concoction like Karu used, maybe; flames that clung to you, burned hotter than normal flame, couldn''t be smothered or drowned. I tried not to imagine Lia, already burned, now with it covering her body head to toe, writhing and screaming until she moved no more.


    All of us like that. And the last thing I''d have said to them was to tell them how stupid I thought they were. Stupid and manipulative and controlling...when it was me who was the one being stupid and controlling. She was right. I''d just...never made a selfish decision like choosing to run before, and I didn''t know how to cope with it. I was lashing out, when it was me I was angry with.


    I was so stupid. I should have apologized better. I turned to look at the others, hoping to catch their eyes, to tell them with words I didn''t have time for that I loved them, and that I really, really, was sorry.


    And as I looked at them, and past them, I noticed, we, uh, weren''t on a battlefield anymore. There was tile under my feet, and a roof overhead. The starlight, once so bright in the darkness was now muted by city lights.


    Shit. I''d forgotten how sneaky Rito''s powers were in moving you around. I watched with relieved bemusement as realization crept up on the others.


    And then, somehow, we were all laughing. The situation had broken us, and laughing was all we could do at it. One by one, I went to each of them and apologized, sincerely. Hugs and all.


    "I''ll only accept it if you let me kick you in the nuts," Saga commented. "You were a real jerk."


    I stood with my legs spread wide. "You do know that you''re going to feel this through me, don''t you?" I asked.


    She paused. "Well. Yeah. But that''s okay, I was just...testing...that you were...serious about it anyway. You passed so...I accept your apology, I guess."


    "Though we have escaped narrow death, let us not forget that there are thousands who yet remain," Karu said. "Any celebration is premature. And it is with regret that I must conclude the likelihood that, embroiled as they are, Justice stands a decent chance of defeating the XPCA, the New Edeners, and Vegas, all at once."


    "Maybe we should go back," I said.


    Lia glared at me. "After all that? After that huge penis you''ve been gargling in your throat the last twenty minutes, now you finally come to?"


    "Well." I blinked at her. "I didn''t think I had a huge gargley penis, but...yeah. I don''t...exactly feel like they deserve rescuing. But...even if they don''t...I should try, shouldn''t I?"


    "Or," AEGIS said, cracking her knuckles. "There''s a plan B. I didn''t tell you before because...you kinda...leapt down my throat. But since you landed right where you are, on the crossroads of ''want to help'' but ''think they should all die'', I might have just the road forward for you to pursue."


    "And...what''s that?"


    "Oasis. Soran. Mage. Karu overheard something very interesting while working with Tobias during our last visit to the glasslands. And now that we have Rito, I think we can start working on a plan."


    "Right. Except Rito''s never been to the glasslands. And we don''t have a VTOL."


    "Uh, guys?" Lia said, her face lit up with the glow of her holo. "I don''t think we need to go to the glasslands. I think...we might need to go back to Vegas after all."


    "What? Why?" AEGIS leaned in to look over her shoulder, and then, swearing, pulled out her own mobile and frantically began tapping away, edging next to me as she worked.


    I watched as the window on her device popped up, showing a feed of the unfolding situation. An overhead view of the place I recognized as where we''d just been. Except, instead of two forces present, there were now three. The fire which had just been shot at us, it had come from an entire extra army, from somewhere.


    AEGIS worked the digital zoom until we got a close-enough look at some of the soldiers in the third army, and I felt my jaw fall open.


    Flowing silks in vivid colors, visible even by the dim glow of the weapons pulsing in their hands. A rigidity of posture and formation which belied how little humanity was left in those ranks. Absolute order, and more exotics than the rest of the world combined could field.


    Dragon had come through. And from the looks of it, Rio had come with him.

 434. 2252, Present Day. Primrose High School, OR. Athan.

    "Well, shit," I said, peering through my holo at the battlefield. They kept cutting to footage of news anchors talking, and I didn''t see why anyone would ever want to look at some dumb pretty woman''s face instead of the masses of armies, clashing into each other.


    Putting it like that made me sound really messed up. But uh, I did wish they''d stop cutting the feed.


    Because shit was going south down there in a way I hadn''t possibly anticipated. The three armies were supposed to all fight against Justice, but instead, the Oasians had sort of inadvertently cut off the route the New Edeners had bloodily hacked through the XPCA lines, and now all of them were embroiled in a violent, running stalemate. Everyone was dying, everyone was killing everyone else, and nobody was getting anywhere.


    "Shit indeed," Karu agreed, talking to the air. She was probably watching a feed through her visor. "I had thought the situation improved by the New Edeners'' cowardice, yet¡­"


    "Dragon is supposed to be helping, and instead he''s screwed up everything," AEGIS bemoaned.


    "Less than an hour until Justice arrives," Lia said, peering up from her own device.


    All of us were just squatting in the dark, the same damn schoolhouse that Rito always took us to, even though last time she''d done it, the XPCA had been waiting for her. Fortunately, we weren''t punished this time, but seriously, how inept could one person be?


    It probably wasn''t fully fair to blame her. She was, at the moment, just...standing there in the dark, eyes blank, arms limp at her sides. I was trying not to look at her, because every time I did, I felt the ball of loathing in my gut suddenly grew spikes and try to crawl up my trachea.


    But with the sudden appearance of the Oasians, I didn''t feel like my anger was justified anymore, if it ever had been. While the XPCA had spent their entire existence trying to crap on us, and the New Edeners had proven just what shitty people they could be to my sister...we''d just come back from Oasis, and somehow, those zealous fanatics were the closest things we had to allies in this fight.


    "We can''t leave them to fight and die. It''s because of us that they came in the first place," I said.


    "Who, the toads?" Karu stared at me, her visor blazing in the relative dark. "It may be prudent to tell them to retreat, if possible. They may heed you, and in so doing, open the way for the Exhumans to slip their pursuers."


    "Same problem, different forces, then," Lia sighed. "If we give the Exhumans an out, then the XPCA will just get crushed by the Oasian army instead."


    "Better that than the exotics and Exhumans clash. The XPCA is the most expendable army of the three, by far."


    "Why can''t they just cooperate, damn it," I scratched my head. "Why''s everyone always got to be killing each other?"


    "Oh sweetie," AEGIS wrapped her arm around my shoulders in a way which felt much more patronizing than comforting. "Even if they wanted to...and we know for certain that at least two of those factions do, the fact is, none of them are capable of listening to the others."


    "They''ve got ears, don''t they? Why the hell can''t they listen?"


    Lia cut in. "Well, for the ''Edeners, they''re here because of nationalistic pride and devotion to a leader who they believe is the only one who''s ever listened to them. Pride isn''t exactly receptive to hearing out others, and neither is fanatical devotion."


    Karu nodded. "And speaking of devotion, the Oasians are physically incapable of thinking on their own. They are much more a wild animal, driven by the instincts given to them by their clergy, than human."


    "Which leaves the XPCA," I sighed. "Who are fuckers."


    "Who are loyal, dedicated, and selfless," AEGIS corrected. "Just not to you. To the ideal that they''re protecting America."


    "Even though they''re not."


    "Well," she gave a little apologetic grin. "There are kinda...two hostile Exhuman armies invading at the moment. You sorta do have to give them credit that stopping exactly that kind of thing is their business. And even if they''re outgunned, they''re trying."


    "So what we''re all saying is, there''s no way to get these guys not to grind each other into hamburger before Justice even shows up."


    "Yum, hamburger," Saga agreed.


    "Unless Soran''s clue is somehow what we''re supposed to be following," I concluded. "Just...leave everything here in total chaos and run off to chase down Tobias and...then God only knows what else. And hope that the letter he sent us was absolutely from Mage, and will fix everything, and wasn''t a trap from Soran...whom we know to be currently A: Not the same guy anymore as our last fight would attest, and B: Dead, after tangling with Justice."


    "Well when you put it that way," Saga grinned. "Why are we still hesitating?"


    "I think what really needs to be decided is...are we making our stand here, or not?" AEGIS asked. "All the pieces are in play. In the next hour, we can spring Trish loose, get in touch with the XPCA commander and Rio, and at least try to create a unified army, before losses become too great."


    "I can talk to Khol," Lia said, standing. "He won''t listen...but I can...do something." She took a deep breath as she moved, and I thought...thought I heard her skin cracking. But if it hurt, she barely showed it in the dark, even now that the stims had probably worn off.


    "If it is all the same, and he would not listen anyway, I would send a soldier, not a diplomat," Karu added. "Or a code-X."


    "Yeah, maybe," Saga shrugged. "Or, and I still think this is the right course of action, we go after Soran''s lead."


    "You believe in him?" I asked.


    She shook her head. "I''ve seen in his head. The amount of shit going on in there is unreal. If he told me to pedal a tricycle backwards across the Sahara...well, I''d ask why. You''d be stupid not to. But I also know he''d have a reason for it, and I''d probably damn-well wind up doing it."


    I stared at her, feeling the wisps of her memories of him tugging at my mind.


    "But he''s changed since then. Before, it was Mage''s powers in control. Last time we fought, that was definitely not the case anymore."


    "He sent the letter before then," AEGIS frowned. "He specifically mentioned alzstraz-beta compression, by name, which came up later with Tobias. I''m with Saga on this one, there''s no way that was just a coincidence."


    "Thank you, AEGIS," Saga bowed. "I knew you were smart."


    She rolled her eyes. "For agreeing with you? Ugh."


    "Okay, granted that there''s something there. What about the armies?"


    "I think," Lia said, and there was something to her tone that we all stopped and looked at her as she paused. "I think...we need to split up."


    "Now? No," I said.


    "Yes. The problem is we have too many things to do. We have the people to do it, just...not if we put everyone in the same place."


    "Dibs on ''talking'' to Khol," Saga grinned.


    "Athan should be the one to follow Mage''s trail. And I''ll go with him," AEGIS said.


    "I do have some contacts within the XPCA who may bend a sympathetic ear," Karu mused. "And I do not mind speaking to Rio and Dragon. But how will we find them?"


    "Simple," AEGIS said. "Athan and I go with you for a bit, and order one of the priests to tell us where they are. We need to talk to Tobias anyway, so we may as well handle Rio ourselves."


    "Very well. If we...are¡­" she paused, and then cleared her throat. "Ashton, is this the final confrontation?"


    "Um, it seems that way."


    "I am not asking for ''um''. I wish to know your level of commitment to this battle. There are hundreds of thousands embroiled in conflict currently, and one more soon to visit death upon them. Are we expending all that we have in this fight, or do you intend to cut and to run?"


    I blinked at her. It seemed kind of insane to be arbitrarily making that distinction here and now, with the limited information I had.


    But at the same time, I understood. In a fight, you never commit a hundred percent to any one attack, unless you have to, unless you had no choice, unless it''s the last attack you could throw.


    In her political way, that''s what Karu was asking me, I understood. She wanted me to think, to consider, if we lost here today, was there any coming back? Even if we got these armies running now, would any of them ever retake the field after today? Would there be another blow we had left to throw at Justice?This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I spent long moments sitting and thinking and looking at the eyes of the others, lit up by their mobiles in the dark, soft yellow glow on faces hard with intensity.


    Dragon had given us one favor. Rito was disbanding the Oasian army, and I guess this was the last hurrah. The XPCA were as good as over, the president would be dismantling them after this, win or lose. And the only thing which had pulled the New Edeners together was the plea to fight Justice, for the sake of their humanity. If they ran from him now, nothing would hold them together anymore.


    Karu knew it. Lia and AEGIS too, probably. We''d talked about getting people to run, about saving their lives...but unless Justice was stopped, all we''d do is run, and keep running. After the cities were gone, would he go to military bases? Refugee camps? Eventually, would he just be picking off settlements in the woods, scraping humanity off the face of the earth?


    I didn''t know. But I did know...this was the last punch we had left to throw at him.


    "We''re fighting. Today. With everything," I said.


    She nodded seriously, and gave a small, grim smile. "As I had hoped you would see. If that is the case, I will...after speaking to the XPCA as best I am able, I will return to the Hunter''s Association and plead my case with them. There are many strong, competent fighters there, who remain to be employed. Lia, if you have any credits to your name, they may prove invaluable in securing their services."


    "I''ll give you everything I have," she agreed. "Right after I wire a few to Taglock."


    "Him?" I groaned.


    "Yes, him. He''s got my rifle and my old slipskin. This one''s kinda...well...I think the burns killed it. And he might prove useful in getting through to the XPCA as well."


    "You know who''d really excel at that?" I suddenly realized. "Dragon. He''s got contacts that can twist them around his finger. We''ll have to ask if we see him."


    After that ferenic outburst of agreement and planning and iterating, we all lapsed into a painful silence, the holos still blazing in the dark.


    "I guess...we''ve got a plan," AEGIS said. "Less than an hour before Dragon comes, we''d...probably get on that."


    "Yeah," Lia agreed. But she was looking at me.


    But even saying that, nobody stirred. I felt a lump in my throat and swallowed hard.


    "I don''t want to split up," I confessed, the sentiment I knew we were all feeling. "If...if this is it, if we''re going down...I want to do it together. Like we''ve always done."


    Nobody disagreed. It felt weird with Karu going off to be a diplomat and a huntress again. Felt weird that Saga was just expected to stroll into a battlefield by herself. Felt weird that I was leaving all of them and all of that, just because of some letter.


    But we''d been over this. If we were gonna do something, it was now, and it was this. And we were sure as shit going to do something. Even if those fuckers had hurt Lia, I wasn''t doing it for them. I was doing it for...for everyone, I guess.


    For me. Not the me that wanted to run away and keep my friends safe, but the me who wanted to save the world, to be a good Exhuman, to prove that humans and Exhumans could work together to achieve the impossible. To overcome Justice itself. The me who''d been dropped in the woods almost two years ago, who was naive, but also right.


    "Rito," I barked, standing up, suddenly enough to surprise even me. "Take us back to the battlefield, somewhere close and quiet."


    I found a hand squeezing mine, and then another. One warm and soft, one chilly and bony. I looked down and saw my girlfriend and sister smiling at me.


    And then I blinked a few times and realized it''d gotten even darker, louder, rockier. We were in a crater, the lip of which still danced with flame.


    Karu clapped a hand on my shoulder. "If this is to be the end, know that I am proud of how far you have come. Though I would love to see how much further you will go, that is in God''s hands, not my own. Be strong, and remember your training always."


    And then she kissed me. Which was awkward, because AEGIS was still holding my hand. Crushing my hand, really. Thankfully, eventually, both of them let go.


    There was a rush of wind, the roar of engines, and twisting trails of blue plasma streaking into the sky.


    Saga was next. She sauntered up to me and clapped a hand on my shoulder. "If this is to be the end, know that I am proud of how far you have come. Though I would love--"


    I stepped on her foot, and she grinned through the pain.


    "Yeah, I''m not one for goodbyes. Never much saw the point," she said, turning and giving a lazy wave. "If you get yourself killed out there, I''m just gonna mind-fuck some other boytoy into being just as interesting as you. Except, with a bigger dick. So unless you want Thunder-Cock taking your place, stay alive, dumbass."


    She crawled over the lip of the crater, taking special precaution to pass directly through the flames, and then out of sight.


    AEGIS was coming with me, which just left Lia. I turned to face her.


    "Ready to go?" she asked.


    "Uh...yeah, I guess." I blinked. "Where are you going?"


    "With you."


    "With...me? Was that the plan?"


    She shrugged. "I''m no fighter. Saga took over talking to Khol. Karu''s talking to the XPCA, and we need AEGIS to talk to Rio. So¡­" she shrugged. "Kinda out of people for me to talk to, and I''m not useful for anything else. I''m meeting Taglock soon, but otherwise, I''m all yours."


    I tried not to let it show that my heart was swelling at the thought of not abandoning Lia to die somewhere. But she saw anyway, and gave me a grin and a playful punch in the shoulder...which seemed to hurt her a lot more than me.


    "Okay then," I agreed, somehow suddenly much happier with this plan. "Let''s find a toad, find Rio and Dragon, find Tobias...and find out how to stop Justice, once and for all."


    It was...shockingly...somehow just that simple. The toads recognized AEGIS as a high priestess, and she was able to dart across the battlefield without getting shot by anything too impactful. Dragon was hidden nearby, true to his word that he''d help personally.


    "...and, well, I thought, what the hell," Rio put it. "What better way to disband the Oasian army than by sending it off to back up my good friend Liwei on one final mission," she grinned at us.


    I narrowed my eyes at her. "Yeah, you just wanted more data."


    "I am completely innocent!"


    "You are many things, but I don''t think innocent has ever been one of them. I''m still happy to see you, though. Tell me Tobias came, too."


    "He...did," she blinked at me. "Was going on about how harmonic vibrations were beckoning that he accompany. I think he was just worried about being lonely."


    "Or alone," Dragon commented. "You''ve made us powerful enemies."


    "Oh did I?" Rio tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Oh darn, I guess we will have need of an army after all."


    "We have an army, at home," Dragon sighed.


    "Yes, but I like this one better," she pouted.


    "We can''t feed two armies. That is why we are disposing of one."


    "Maybe we could feed two armies if we expanded a little! Y''know, a little...pillaging, maybe?"


    "No more pillaging. No more armies."


    She giggled, and I found AEGIS and Lia exchanging glances. The latter of whom spoke up. "Well, you two are getting along better. Did something happen?"


    "No," Rio grinned. "Well. Yes. Liwei''s just so much more fun to talk with now that he''s...talking. We really do owe you all so much."


    "I still do not know why you felt the need to leave Oasis. Then Tobias would have stayed. You would have been safer."


    "I''d miss your sparkling personality," she shrugged.


    I turned to AEGIS. "Okay, well, this is weird, but at least we found them. Lia, you want to talk to these guys, and AEGIS and I can try to decode Tobias and the letter at the same time?"


    She agreed and I was grateful that we''d be getting away from the two Oasian high clergy...and even more grateful that we were walking, maybe a hundred feet away, with Lia protected by possibly the world''s most competent fighter, and surrounded by possibly the world''s most dangerous army.


    Only to find Tobias, sitting on a rock in someone''s abandoned front yard, staring into as much of the night sky was visible through the suburban lights still glowing.


    It took very little time to introduce him to our situation, and a very long time for him to say anything which made sense. Over the course of our bringing the problem to him, he rocketed from spacey old wizened hermit straight into manic mad scientist.


    "Of course I''m familiar with alzstraz-beta compression!" he wheezed, "I''ve spent hundreds of hours contemplating its implementation. Why, it''s fundamental in the theoretical creation of a stable-linked probabilistic binding! Deterministic reality transferral would be a pipe dream without it!"


    I just heard a bunch of words. But AEGIS at least seemed to understand...or enough to ask a question anyway. She cleared her throat politely. "Sorry, theoretical creation?"


    "Well, yes, of course. It''s all theory at this point m''dear."


    "You mean...you''ve never...done any dimension-hopping? Isn''t that your powers?"


    He laughed. "No, dimensional travel is my calling; my powers are arboreal. I grew all the trees in Oasis. Have you seen them?"


    We looked at each other, and I wondered if my disgust was showing on my face. This was...not the plan I''d envisioned.


    "Quite impossible, I''m afraid. To open a stable-linked probabilistic binding, you''d need three things, none of which exist in this world." He popped a finger up dramatically, for emphasis. "Yet!"


    "What do we need?" I sighed.


    "Well, you''d need someone who can create a device which can tunnel through to other probabilities. Like, a telephone."


    I blinked at him. "We need a telephone?"


    "Speaking metaphorically, of course. And then you also need someone on the other end to pick up. An object, infused with tachyons quantum-linked to the stable-linked probabilistic binding you''re intending to reach."


    "Does this make...any sense?" I asked him. And then I realized what a stupid question that was and turned to AEGIS. "Does this make any sense?"


    "Um...working on it. And number three?"


    "You need a line, to connect the two. Metaphorically speaking, again. More specifically, you need a semistable void medium to exist between the proximal probabilities, for the binding to traverse."


    "Yes, of course," I nodded. "You''re insane."


    "Not insane," he smiled at me. "It is my calling."


    "Does that matter, though?" I asked. "If none of these things even exist, all we know is that there are things out there that we know don''t exist. That''s not very helpful, in any capacity."


    "I''m gonna talk to him a while longer and see if I can get something...maybe more technical than his metaphors...but less...rife with jargon," AEGIS said. "Granted that we have less than an hour...this might just...suck."


    "I...I do have an idea, though. Crazy as it might be," I said.


    "Yeah? You understood something?" Her eyes lit up behind her round glasses.


    I shook my head. "Not even remotely. But I do know one person who knows more about dimension-hopping than anyone else in the multiverse."


    "Aesa," she gaped. "But she uses Exhuman powers to travel, it might not be remotely compatible with what the gasbag--" she grinned at Tobias, who nodded with an ignorant smile "--erm, what he''s saying."


    "Maybe not. But it''s all we''ve got. If we''re gonna believe that Mage''s power is behind all this, I''ve gotta follow whatever hunch I find, right?"


    "I...I guess so. But...but she and Al could be anywhere. How are you supposed to find her, much less contact her?"


    "You forget," I grinned. "I''ve been aboard their vessel a couple times now. I''ve got a plan."

 435. 2252, Present Day. Outside The Polygon, OR. Athan.

    "I know this is necessary, but...isn''t this a really terrible idea?"


    AEGIS was looking like she was trying to start a fire by tugging at her hair. It wasn''t like I disagreed but¡­


    "I mean, what other option do we have?" I asked.


    She frowned bitterly into the dark glass in front of us. "I just...wish we had more time to plan. I''m doing all I can to piece together the CAP format, but it''s not like the FCC, the MVPDs, or FEMA just have an archive lying around of inadvertent EAS activations."


    I blinked at her. "What?"


    "Sorry," she shook her head at me, her eyes racing. "Focusing. Uh, I mean...there''s been a lot of false EAS -- emergency alerts -- in the past, but I''m...it''s a little bit of a time crunch for me to just...figure out how to send one on the fly. I''m working on it, but it''d really help if I had a previous...uh...a previous time for reference. There''s no authentication, but there are a lot of specific fields in the query...and if I don''t...format it right..."


    She trailed off, which was fine by me, because the silence was probably every bit as enlightening as her alphabet soup.


    We were outside of a local television station -- KGX, "The Polygon, Channel 12 News" vividly inscribed on the just next to us. Inside was dark, as was everything here, the city already a ghost town from the evacuations.


    AEGIS had told me some stuff on our walk over here that I did actually grasp; essentially, when it came to a national emergency alert, some TV stations acted as entry points, where the president, FEMA, or an authorized agent could order, override, and force through an emergency broadcast. During this crisis, it was likely that a skeleton crew would still be present at those stations, to keep the airwaves running and be available to transmit emergency broadcasts in the terrifying event that other entry point stations ceased to function...or exist.


    KGX was not one of those stations. It was one of the other ninety-nine percent of stations, which AEGIS explained acted as ''relays'', broadcasting the messages handed to them automatically and passing it further down the line. Hence the apparent abandonedness. Our job was to inject a fake broadcast here and have it propagate through the system.


    "If they''re not in there, how is the news still being shot, though?" I asked without thinking.


    "Athan, I''m focusing here, sorry. Just watch the news yourself."


    "Right." I apologized and went back to my mobile, where I still had channel twelve pulled up.


    The answer, I guessed, was that they were just shooting and uploading from the refugee camps now. They must have a mobile studio of some kind to do the overlays and digital effects...and come to think of it, I hadn''t seen shots of the inside of the real studio in a while.


    Watching the anchors repeat the same meaningless warnings and discuss the ever-worsening conditions felt like a waste of time, but what else was I going to do? I couldn''t rush AEGIS.


    I could at least pretend to be productive and message Lia.


    > Everything okay?


    Her response was too prompt, and I knew she was just as bored and nervous as I was.


    > sitting in a dark schoolhouse w/zombie rito and tobias whats not to like


    > We''re almost ready to start, AEGIS is figuring out the message format


    > yeah ive got the show on ill see it when u do it. Hurry up


    I sighed. Not encouraging. And neither was the news I was watching in the meanwhile. It was just a constant series of updates on how messed up shit was, how the refugee camps were full and people were beginning to treat each other like garbage, as theft, rape, murder, and vigilantism became common. Or, I could watch the feeds of the battle unfolding, where the projected body count was already in the tens of thousands, as more XPCA funnelled in against the two Exhuman armies, which were pointlessly clashing and costing lives we couldn''t spare.


    Best of all was the fucking President. Twice now, he''d done his own...EAS-thingy, and addressed ''my fellow Americans'' in this ''time of crisis'', urging us to be strong, believe in the government, and trust in God to watch over this great country.


    It was where I''d gotten this idea. The specifics of it, anyway. If he could use it as a platform to prattle on about how everything was under control, I could at least put it to an actual use.


    When I''d been in Aesa''s pan-dimensional, impossible, flying, bullshit machine, I''d noted that they got television reception up there somehow. Maybe an antenna moored in our dimension for ''net access. Or maybe they...bounced a wifi signal off a pan-dimensional earthworm or something, fuck if I knew.


    But the point was, there was that line open to us. There was the remote possibility of being able to contact them.


    If they had TV, why the hell didn''t they just do me a favor and keep a mobile?


    "Okay, I''ve got it," AEGIS said. "I can rough out the details when we''re...inside, actually composing the broadcast."


    "Great," I said, dusting off. "Let''s get inside."


    She grinned at me, had me take a few steps back, and then kicked down the glass doors, to the wailing of sirens.


    Fortunately the sound was less obnoxious inside the studio itself, acoustically insulated in some way as it was. She made her way to the computers and began switching systems on, while I fiddled with the studio cameras. It wasn''t long before we had footage from them displaying on the hundreds of holos in the control booth, as AEGIS tapped away on keypads to adjust...hell if I knew. The color balance, or encryption format, or whatever she''d been working on.


    "We''re ready any time, I guess. I''ll have to stay in here to broadcast it, and it''ll be live...so make it good, Athan."


    "Okay," I said, suddenly feeling like this was an even worse idea. Being broadcast live across the nation...the world would certainly recognize me, and I didn''t want to imagine what kind of panic it might instill to have me appear.


    The exact opposite of the President''s little messages, I imagined.


    Her voice clicked on through the studio, a little spooky how it seemed to come from everywhere as I could see her lips moving through the glass wall of the sound booth.


    "Make it short," she said. "There''s no telling how long we''ll be able to broadcast before they cut our station out of the EAS system. It''d be much harder for them to do if we weren''t just in a relay but...you take what you can get, right?"


    "Yeah," I nodded at her, feeling like I''d eaten something too sour. That wonderful sensation of doing something which was doomed to go wrong. "Okay. Ready, I guess?"


    "I''ll count you on. Going in five...four...three¡­"


    She didn''t count the other two numbers. I wasn''t sure if I was supposed to start on one, or zero. So the footage would probably start with a second of dead air. Perfect.


    "Um, hello," I said, trying to look at the camera and not the red light glowing on it. "Hello, America. Hopefully you can all...see this."


    AEGIS shook her head at me and gave me ''what the fuck'' hands. I cleared my throat.


    "Um, I''m...Athan. Athan Ashton. You uh, might know me. Or, rather, I guess, probably most of you know me by now. I have a lot of nicknames, though the most recent is ''The Spark of Death.'' Which...I''ve always thought was misleading...I''m not um, just trying to kill people or anything."


    I was sweating. I should have written a script. Keep it short.


    "Anyway, I know this is a time of crisis. I know most of you are probably watching from a refugee camp. I know all of you are probably wondering what I''m doing on this emergency broadcast. Well, it''s like this -- we''re trying to stop Las Vegas from being destroyed. We''re, uh, I mean...as much as everyone likes to say that Exhumans are just vicious and destructive, we''re not. We''re just people, with our own agendas and motivations, just like everyone else. And you can see that with how the group of fanatics, or...um...fugitives? We''ll just say Exhumans, who were released from New Eden, how they''re standing between Justice and the rest of the world. They''re good, see?"


    I realized my mouth was moving and not talking in the direction I wanted, but I also thought I was onto something. A message I did desperately want to share with America.


    "Um, and to that end, what I wanted to say was to let everyone know -- the Oasian army, the New Edeners, and most of all the XPCA, to please, please put aside your arms and try to trust each other. Believe it or not, all three of you have the same goal, and this infighting is just dooming all of you. Only together can you stand against Justice, and only by defeating him can you hope to salvage what''s left of America after his destructive spree."


    AEGIS was giving me a twirling finger gesture for ''move along'', and I struggled to find a segue.


    "I know I''m just a filthy Exhuman that you all see as a killer and a monster, but everything I''ve done, I''ve done for you guys. Even if its hurt me, or my friends, or my sister. Or killed them. Or taken away my life, my humanity. I''m...I''m fine with that, as long as we don''t lose sight of the rest of the world, y''know? I mean, I''m not. Would you like it if someone went after your sister just because they don''t like you?"


    I cleared my throat again. I didn''t need AEGIS'' franting gesticulating through the window to remind me that I was getting way off-base here. I wished I''d traded places with Karu now, this type of public speaking always got me just...going by stream of consciousness, saying whatever felt right.


    But what felt right when addressing the American public was to address the American public. There was shit they needed to hear, and that''s where my mind was going.


    So I stopped, took a deep breath, and tried to refocus.


    "Every person, soldier or civilian, human or Exhuman should be doing their part right now. We need every arm in America to stand united against Justice, because he really is the end of everything if we don''t stop him. I''m begging every single Exhuman out there, please, please come out of hiding, please use your powers in whatever way you can. Justice is terrifying, and he''s like, five-hundred Exhumans all wrapped up in one body. But I know that we could get five-hundred Exhumans to face him down, and maybe we''d have a chance. With the toads...erm...with Oasis, and the US military working with us--"


    The light went out. AEGIS'' head was in her hands. I blinked at her and stammered.


    "...uh, working with us. I''m uh, I''m sure that we can uh¡­"


    "Feed''s cut," AEGIS intoned, pulling the mic over to her without looking up at me. "They pulled us off the network."If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "But I...I¡­"


    "You didn''t address Aesa or Al at all, no."


    "I was about to get there."


    She didn''t answer, just remained slumped on her feet. I stammered half-apologies at her...I was...I was leading up to it. I''d just begged for every Exhuman to do their part, and I was about to get to Aesa and Al''s.


    But reflecting back, I thought about how stupid my words had been. How many different ways had I said the same thing? Justice: bad. Exhumans: friend.


    It was an important message, and I felt like, if I had America''s ear, I needed to get that out there. But couldn''t I just...put my missive to Al and Aesa at the start? And then blather on with whatever time I had left?


    Except I didn''t want to address them at the start. I wanted to address them after they''d already noticed that I was on the broadcast. I couldn''t just lead in with talking to them, or they''d miss it.


    Because that was so much worse than what I''d done, obviously. Missing it entirely the other way. Fucking, fuck. Why didn''t we have Karu on this? I couldn''t speak to save my fucking life. I just never knew it''d bite me in the ass this hard.


    "We can...we can go to another relay," I said. "We can cut in from another station and finish our broadcast."


    "No, we can''t. If we''re locked out, it''s because the system was taken down. There''s no way for them to just conveniently excise one station from the entire ''net. This isn''t a granular system, Athan, it''s a national emergency broadcast network. It''s supposed to be resilient and redundant and accessible."


    "So it''s those things, but it can just get switched off? That seems the opposite of resilient."


    "Resilient against like, disasters. Against parts of the network not-existing. You realize, a tenth of America is just gone right now, right? And the broadcast went through anyway? That''s resilience."


    "A tenth seems like nothing," I shouted at her. "Come on!"


    Even stooped over, I could see her rolling her eyes at me. "You try surviving without a tenth of your body. See how important that becomes."


    "That''s not fair. I just...it was an important message for me to get out. I fucked up, I know but--"


    She didn''t engage, which just made me feel even more stupid and embarrassed at myself. It was important to say. And I knew my time was limited, but not that limited.


    I wanted to kick myself. Or...blow up the whole studio. Maybe both. Our one chance and I just utterly threw it away like a fucking moron.


    I threw wild voltages into the tempered glass facade of the studio desk, and it exploded with a boom that echoed strangely in the acoustics of the set. It was like a claymore, just a billion shards of glass, punching through everything in the studio in front of me. In an instant, lights and cameras were pulverized, probably a million credits in a single infantile outburst.


    AEGIS stared at me, stunned, through a sheet of glass now pocked with scratches.


    The way she looked at me. I couldn''t fucking bear it. It was how I looked at myself, with pity and disgust. I was so fucking stupid, that I''d reduced the one woman in the world who loved me to that.


    And of course she would. I''d had one task. The easiest thing in the world. All I had to do was sit there and repeat, over and over Al and Aesa, please help. And instead I''d gone all flowery and tangential, and fucked it all up. Like I fucked everything up.


    My leg''s servos whirred as I kicked through the desk. I felt the surge of electricity around me as sparks jumped from the broken station lettering when my foot crashed through it. Despite how robust and solid the desk looked, it was flimsy underneath, just plywood covered in glass and metal embellishments, and it caved under my leg easily.


    "Stupid fucking desk!" I shouted. "Stupid...piece of shit...I hate you! You fuck everything up. How can you be so...fucking incompetent!"


    "We''ve got half an hour before Justice comes," AEGIS said, her voice placating through the speakers.


    I flexed my arms and surged, the rest of the lights blowing out around me at the wave of uncontrolled electricity coursing off of me. The speakers made a screaming noise as they blew out, and there were a set of pops and the tinkling of glass to accompany the darkness that I threw myself into.


    This was stupid and pointless.  I was stupid and pointless. Getting angry at myself was already a waste of time, but destroying the set? That just showed what an immature idiot I was. Who the hell gave this fucking moron any kind of responsibility, much less the role of humanity''s savior? I wasn''t fit for anything but standing on the front lines and slaughtering others until I died, what the fuck was I thinking trying to sidestep that issue?


    I heard the sound booth door click shut, and looked up to find AEGIS gingerly stepping towards me, her bare feet threading the maze of broken glass and metal I''d created.


    "I''m worthless, aren''t I?" I asked her.


    "We''re all bad at some things, Athan," she sighed. "Remember the first time you were on TV? And you were so eager to name yourselves the pee force?"


    I felt like I''d come so far, like I should be better by now. I didn''t know what I was thinking.


    "We''ll just...try to find a way to turn the EAS back on. Or, if we wait, the president will have to make a statement about what just aired, and he''ll be using the system then. If...if we''re prepared, we can tap in at that time, hijack as many of the relays as we can...and with any luck, it''ll be our feed which reaches Aesa instead of his¡­"


    She didn''t believe what she was saying, that much was obvious. AEGIS had never proposed a plan in her life where the final step was "get lucky".


    Except for coming onto me I guess. But that was different.


    I just stared at her. Still trying to smile at me, still trying to keep that positive air, even as her arms hung at her sides, even as her mind raced to try to figure out some way to un-fuck us from this stupid situation I''d put us in.


    I should just go back to Vegas and fight alongside the others. I could be some use there. I could get away from how AEGIS was looking at me like I was some puppy who''d shit all over the house, but wasn''t old enough to understand right from wrong.


    Maybe I could achieve something useful, and then die. That sounded like a great plan right now, because currently, I was just heading towards die.


    My train of self-pity was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a blue orb in the corner of the studio. I saw a head pop through it for a second, and then disappear. AEGIS turned towards me with wide eyes.


    And then the head reappeared, followed by the rest of Al. "Oh, you are here!" he said. "Aesa, I found ''em, it was studio twelve in Portland, I told you. Polygon, Oregon. I remembered."


    She materialized after he did, wearing a puffy coat. "Yeah, yeah. Wow, what the hell happened in here? Did we do this?"


    "It doesn''t seem likely. Even when we do make a harmonic disturbance, it''s usually smaller than this. Mind your step, love."


    "What are you guys doing here!" I found myself shouting. "How did you know?"


    "Know what?" Al asked, wincing as his boots crunched on glass. "We uh, we were watching a show together and saw you come on."


    "You absolutely ruined our date, by the way," Aesa sniped. "You owe me big time."


    Al laughed apologetically. "Well, we were both a little surprised to see you there. And I found you words a little moving, if I may be honest."


    "He''s a baby. He said, ''if every Exhuman is supposed to do their part, that includes us.'' But I''m not even an American, not even from this dimension anymore. What the hell do I care what happens here?"


    "Oh, don''t pretend you wouldn''t be sad if the world got messed up."


    She crossed her arms and harrumphed, but didn''t argue.


    AEGIS and I were mostly just shocked that here they were, despite my fuck-ups. I had to wonder just for a moment at how many others might have been legitimately moved by my message.


    But I cut off that line of thought before I gave myself a big head. I definitely fucked up beyond words, and it was only through sheer luck and the unquestionably good nature of Al that the two of them were here before us now.


    "We uh, we actually need your help specifically," AEGIS said. "We''re trying to solve something of a puzzle. We need to do some kind of alzstraz-beta compression. For the creation of a stable-linked probabilistic binding, I''m pretty sure."


    Aesa rolled her eyes. "Well, duh. What else would you be using alzstraz-beta compression for?"


    "So you know it!" AEGIS squealed, literally jumping for joy.


    "Easy there, corn dog. A stable-linked binding isn''t as easy as that. Even if I have the know-how, there''s a lot more that you''d need to make one." She squinted at us. "And who said I''d help you anyway?"


    "Erm, he did," AEGIS pointed at Al. Who nodded with a big smile.


    "Eh, he wants to help everyone. If I stopped every time Al wanted to help, I''d never get anything done."


    "Honey--"


    "Don''t you ''honey'' me. These bastards already cheated me out of a date, and now they''re asking me to build a new device? I bet they''re not handing out machine parts, so unless we''re dismantling her, this is coming out of my own pocket, too. And you know how hard it is to find parts in the void."


    "We''ll make do, honey. We always do."


    She glowered at him like he was ten types of awful, and then turned towards me and multiplied that number by a thousand. "So you have no assurance whatsoever we''ll help you. But why the hell do you need to make a stable-linked dimensional binding anyway? What, did you lose something while dimension-hopping?" She looked around, as though only just now seeing the two of us, and then grinned. "Lose someone?"


    "Let me call Tobias," AEGIS said. "I think the sooner we put him in touch with her, the sooner we can start moving forward."


    "Oh great. More people," she spat. "Hey Al, what''s that thing I always say about meeting new people?"


    "You hate it," he sighed.


    "Damn right I do. Let''s go home, this place sucks."


    "This place is our home, honey. It''s Earth."


    "And it sucks, that''s why I left. That''s why you left."


    "Guys, please," I interjected. "If you''ve been watching the news at all up there, you know what the world''s facing right now. You came here, so obviously, you''ve got some idea of the danger. We need you, right now, so very, very badly."


    "Not my problem," Aesa said, cutting Al off. "Even if this whole world goes kablooie, that flying monster can''t touch us out there. Helping you is probably the most stupid, most dangerous thing we could possibly do for ourselves. So why would I want to do that?"


    "Please," I begged. "We have a...a prophecy-thing. It''s supposed to help us defeat Justice. It''s the only way we can save...everything. Save anything."


    "You want to save things?" she scoffed. "Here''s a bit of help I guess I could throw your way. How about the two of you stowaway with us until this all blows over. If you don''t eat too much and stay out of my way, I might be gracious enough to permit that. And once the world''s finished going ass-end-up, you two can be your own Adam and Eve."


    She eyed AEGIS with a grin. "You got a baby-making machine in there, tin-stuff?"


    AEGIS flushed with an intensity I didn''t know was possible and stammered out various reasons that wouldn''t work.


    "Look, just meet our friend Tobias. He knows what''s going on better than we do. Please."


    Aesa looked down on me with a small bitter frown.


    "You know I don''t like you, right Athan?"


    "Yes. You''ve made that very clear."


    "You''re just a nuisance, getting in the way and making your own demands on me, when all I want is to be left alone with my sweet honey-bunny and my work."


    "I know. I''m sorry."


    Her eyes narrowed impishly. "If you''re sorry, then apologize."


    I lowered my head into a bow. Whatever it took. "I''m sorry. I''m very sorry for being a needy nuisance."


    "On your hands and knees."


    I swallowed hard as the glass shards under me glittered dangerously. AEGIS made a noise and moved towards me, but before she could intercede, I pressed myself to the ground, rivulets of blood flowing from the razor-wounds instantly.


    "I beg your forgiveness. Please."


    "Athan--" AEGIS gasped.


    "We need her," I shouted into the ground. "I don''t care if I slice off every inch of skin I own. If there''s anything I can do, I''ll do it."


    I held myself there, feeling the trickle of blood from my palms. Wet, and reeking of iron.


    I heard Aesa sigh, and glanced up to find her looking at Al''s bitter disapproval.


    "Fine," she said. "Pick yourself up, dog. Let''s meet this ''friend'' of yours and get this over with. I wasn''t planning on saving anyone today, but sometimes, I guess you just do what you have to."


    I picked myself up gingerly, and AEGIS was already on me, gauze and medical gel and a pair of tweezers, where she tutted and fussed as she pulled shards of glass out of my hands with equal parts worry and disapproval.


    I was just relieved. Somehow, the universe had given me another chance, which was two more than a fuck-up like me honestly deserved. I didn''t care about the pain or humiliation, I could endure anything if it meant another chance.


    "You''re right," I agreed. "We just do what we have to."


    She shook her head at me one final time, and then crunched through the sea of broken glass.

 436. 2252, Present Day. Exhuman Fortress, Las Vegas. Saga.

    I held my head as I staggered my way through the conflict. I''d thought things were bad last time we were here, but since the appearance of the Oasian army, everything had turned tits-up and a hundred times worse.


    Confusion was an insidious mind-killer. Humans were pretty good at dealing with extremes, even pain and death, if they had some understanding of why, and what, and what it was all for. Humans were a tribal species, and a big part of that was belonging to something bigger than themselves.


    So when shit went wrong and people didn''t understand what was going on or why, it had a magnifying effect on their psyche and their emotions. Pain was felt more keenly, reasoning seemed more flippant, panic spread like wildfire.


    Nobody here knew what the Oasians were doing here. The XPCA never even saw them coming, and the New Edeners hardly knew that they existed. Suddenly, this conflict that nobody had really wanted had turned into an embroiled mess, and the fact that the ''Edeners had been forced to change plans twice now, from standing, to running, to fighting...that had messed with their heads.


    Had messed up what little semblance of order there was in the camp. Had broken their unity, and now, instead of an army, there was just a mass of freaking-out Exhumans trapped between two other hostile forces. They''d come here to fight Justice, and this wasn''t what they''d signed up for.


    It was just minutes ago that I''d walked through here with Lia. Things were relatively calm then, the XPCA were still recovering from the party trick that Athan and I had pulled, knocking out their power and their heads in a one-two punch that''d impress any boxing judge.


    Now? It seemed like a race for every Exhuman to be dumping as much of their powers into anyone nearby. I was doing my best to make myself invisible, the convenience of mentally making myself not my problem to those who faced me. But even so.


    I had six unique entries to put in my death diary. Organs growing until they burst, that one was fun because my vision got all distorted when my eyes went. The ground chewing me up like a hungry fault-line. Had a tree literally grow through me, a branch sprouted straight through my anus, not the kind of wood I wanted back there. Some exotic beam that melted my insides. Sliced up by a torrent of what seemed like bees made of metal. And swamp gas.


    My deaths were really the least of my worries. It was the hundreds going on around me every second that were getting to me. I''d come to stop this, so I was doing my fucking best to keep my mind open and still people''s hands where I could, but keeping an open mind right now would make me literally insane from the suffering.


    Instead, I found myself putting everyone to sleep. It wasn''t a good solution, it was sort of crippling their lines, I knew. But the alternative was feeling their deaths, and I really couldn''t take much more of that.


    With all the chaos going on, it wasn''t too hard to slip through the ranks and find myself face-to-face with Khol, sitting on a fancy little throne in a room filled with steam, all dressed up with nowhere to go, as he barked through his voice-synthesizing mask into comms, his orders and demands.


    "Hey," I said to him with a casual wave. When that didn''t grab his attention, I snapped my fingers with a mental spike that caused him to lose his train of thought.


    "Who''s this? Who are you?" he barked. "You''re not from the city."


    "Oh I don''t know. I spent some time there. Name''s Saga."


    "What do you want, Saga? I''m very busy."


    "I want two things. See, I''m a friend of a girl, I think you know her as Black Shark."


    "...Shark?" He jumped to his feet. "Where the fuck is she? Was this her plan all along? She foresaw this death coming down on us, and that''s why she abandoned me to it, didn''t she? It was all part of her plan to have us slaughtered out here. Was that other army hers?"


    I grinned at him. "Easy, boy. You give her too much credit."


    "Or you don''t give her enough. Don''t you realize she''s sent you wandering into the middle of a warzone? And for what," he scoffed. "Did she offer you some vague information? Lies and deceit, so you''d be wrapped around her little fingers?"


    I shrugged. "On the contrary. I actually have a thing going with her where she''s kinda my bitch."


    "Or so you think," he spat. Wow, dude was pissy as hell about Lia. Which was kinda sad, because in her mind, she actually considered this guy a somewhat-reliable friend. Made me wonder what her less-reliable ones looked like.


    "Whatever. I''m not here for you to decide my relationships. In fact, I''m actually here to decide yours."


    His look darkened as much as it could through a mask. "So you''re here to kill me, then."


    I laughed, and wondered what, exactly Lia saw in this guy. He was pretty good at jumping to conclusions, and halfway-decent ones at that. But at the same time, every picture he saw had himself foremost in it. A decent mind, wasted on this self-centeredness.


    But also, he was right. Because fuck him.


    "I might not kill you, if you cooperate," I lied. "More than anything, we need to stop killing. You guys are squarely between the XPCA and the Oasians, and you''re doing the most damage by far. I''mma need you to reel in your little miscreant army and stop provoking everyone into fighting."


    "We''re trying to escape. The armies have cut off our routes."


    "Well then stop trying to escape, dumbass. You came out here for a reason, didn''t you? To fight Justice? So fuckin'' do that."


    "That''s a death sentence," he said darkly. "Shark''s abandonment has made that much clear."


    "Bitch, you know nothing," I told him. And then I showed him just how much nothing he knew.


    I enhanced his physical senses as much as I could as I blasted his mind with the memories and sensations that Lia had just felt. I let him really wallow in the pain of it, the feeling of helplessness and uselessness, of despair cracking through all the plans she''d tried to lay.


    I let him feel Lia''s glimmer of hope as she had come back, hoping to sit with him, and to make plans, to put their minds together and figure out something. And then plunged him into utter darkness as he felt his own rejection of her, as he discarded her when she needed him most, because he wasn''t of use to her in the moment.


    But mostly, I let him burn. I forced the fire she''d felt into him tenfold. For once, there was pain on this battlefield that didn''t make me wince. He thought that she was being overcautious and paranoid by demanding that order be instilled in the ranks, and then she''d faced the consequences of that lack of order. I made sure that he felt it too, that he knew exactly what his command had created.


    He was gasping and holding himself, his mask clattered on the floor as sweat rolled off of him. His breaths were short and wheezing, and his hands clutched at his shoulders, still able to move in a way that Lia could never do.


    When I finally relented, he was pale and writhing, staring at me with wide, bloodshot eyes, without a shred of the dignity or poise he''d treasured so dearly when he first sat on that fucking stolen throne.


    "That was one," I told him. "Ready for two?"


    He just gasped as I ripped open his mind. I was not subtle about weaving this compel. I didn''t care if the vessel it was placed in survived. This fucker had just thrown Lia aside when he thought she didn''t have any more use. I could do the same.


    Perhaps I could have rewritten him to act as the Vox Humanus that Lia wanted him to be. Or at least, forced my own set of orders into his brain that might have kept things together.


    But that was too good for him. Even as a puppet, he didn''t deserve the leadership he craved. Issuing orders, even as a mouthpiece, that was what he craved, and him being even the slightest bit satisfied wasn''t going to fly.


    So instead, I cracked his brain wide open and rewrote him to feed me exactly how Vox would behave. I broke his stupid little mind and turned him into a fancy-ass speaker system that could tell me what I needed to say and think, and how to sound.


    And once I''d done that, I grinned to myself. And I opened myself up to him, and to the Exhumans around me.


    [Brothers and Sisters!] he said, through me, into them. [Cease your fighting! Remember who you are.]


    There was shocked silence, and not the traditional kind. Silence of thought, as every single Exhuman in broadcast range just simultaneously stunned into instant nothing. I guess voices in their head was new to these people.


    [Remember your humanity. Remember why you came here. Remember Vox Humanus, and your role within it. When you spoke with another, was it for this? When you marched through the New Eden gates, was it for this war? When you held your brothers and sisters, and your tears and love flowed for the pains you shared and the humanity you thought lost, was it to become exactly what they had made you?]


    I didn''t exactly follow, and neither did the listeners, but that was okay. It was affecting them all the same, conjuring up memories and imagery that was all very moving and potent. More importantly, people were getting ahold of themselves. People were once again believing that there was a plan for them, they were slipping from the grasp of confusion and fear.


    [Each of us has been forced to do unthinkable things, but that was in the past. This is the present -- this is here, now. You only have this moment to live, to self-determine who and what you are. Choose not to be the monster hiding under the bed that they paint us. Be a man. Be a woman. Be a human being. Stand with me now. Stand and still your arms, save your strength for when the true enemy of humanity comes.]Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    [Brothers and sisters. Stand with me.]


    Vox Humanus collapsed where I''d left him, his mind burnt out and only faintly buzzing. At the end of his proclamation, he was done for. Used-up and worthless.


    I hung the mask back on his face before I left. And I found the world outside transformed.


    There was awe now. There was something bigger than these people, which had taken root in their hearts once again. Each of them had once been swayed by Vox, and him speaking directly to them, in their hearts and minds, it was more than most could handle. They were whispering to each other, confirming that they had all shared this unexplainable touch.


    It was, I thought, a bit like coming face-to-face with one''s own god. Not that anyone here was under any delusions of just how divine Vox was. But it was approximate.


    And effective. Order was restored in an instant. The Exhumans were manning their lines, not pushing them. Attacks were only launched to hold the defenses, not being thrown out wildly. And I could already see the XPCA shoring up their defenses, taking advantage of the reprieve to withdraw and reinforce. And the Oasians, basically animals, reflexively stopped the instant they were no longer under attack.


    With the death of one fucking bastard, the battlefield knew peace for a moment. His life probably spared thousands.


    Or not, depending on how long this thing dragged on, and just what exactly Justice did when he got here. But I''d managed what I came here to do, and that only left me with what I wanted to do.


    I found somewhere secluded and dialed up Rito. Like a ghost flickering away, I found the consciousnesses and pains of the battlefield disappeared, long before I realized I was elsewhere.


    And it just felt good. Felt good not to be under attack like that anymore. Without even thinking about it, I found myself sprawled on the asphalt of the street, the ground still hot despite how long it''d been dark now, my body just a reflection of the relief and relaxation of my mind.


    I tried not to think about it. Tried not to think about anything, just...let it all go, let it all flow out of me and down the gutter and far away.


    Tried not to cry. Failed, real bad.


    I was glad the city was evacuated. I''d have been mortified if someone had come across me bawling in the streets like some lost little girl. And I was mad at myself for doing so. I''d held it together so well until now, why''d I have to lose my shit now that it was all over? It made no sense. I was acting like the absence of pain was somehow more painful.


    I didn''t fucking get it, but that didn''t mean I wasn''t doing it anyway. Just a stupid, pitiful Exhuman, crying her eyes out with a dysfunctional body that didn''t even produce tears. What a goddamn mess.


    So it was much later, and with dry eyes that kept resetting to their pristine hydrated glossiness that I finally sat up, took stock of myself, and dragged my feet under me.


    Even if nobody else thought it was worth it, there was something I still wanted to do. Something massive, but untouchable. The kind of thing that could tremendously impact the world.


    Plus...I just wanted to fucking do it. I wasn''t satisfied with failure, never had been...but this was beyond anything I''d done before. This was a direct challenge to my status as master of the mind. For there to be a mental dilemma thrown down in front of me, that I couldn''t surpass?


    Well, it was downright offensive.


    It took too long for me to find the right streets. I''d gotten much better at navigating when walking across the country that one time, but even then, I tended to pick directions out of people''s heads instead of ever actually learning the names of things. I still couldn''t tell you which highway I took, just the landmarks on it, and the people who''d passed me by on it.


    But eventually, I felt its presence and knew I was there. Just a block further, and the little pagoda came into sight.


    [Hello, Bob,] I said to the mind. [I''m back. Miss me?]


    Bob, of course, said nothing. He didn''t think or react to my speaking to him, the very opposite of the Exhumans I''d just doused with sublime, superhuman awe.


    [Of course not, you big bastard. You don''t know anything, do you?]


    I looked around the small park. If you were someone other than me, I guess you could have imagined this place was just in ordinary nightfall, all the San Francisco residents asleep in their beds.


    I knew better, of course. This was really my first time being here. Normally, I was looking at minds, not places, and so it was somehow still new for me to be in this park and see what was in it.


    [I bet you have no idea everyone''s gone.]


    The pagoda was a confused mess of religions. It was ancient, that much was obvious. Parts of it had been replaced over the years, and it was relatively freshly painted an obnoxious shade of red-orange, with gold trim. AEGIS had said that it was a hindu shrine, but had also mentioned that this was once Chinatown, before the war, and I suspected the shrine was a relic from that era. But this was much more a Japanese neighborhood now, them and the whites, and so there were ropes and paper things hung up that I recognized from Buddhism or Shinto or something in that cultural wheelhouse.


    And the wooden placard in the middle. Broken english, telling me to make a wish, and it will come true. I had to wonder how many such signs were posted on fountains, wells, shrines, and other bullshit across San Francisco...across the states, or the world. And how many of those wishes ever did come true. How many of those places had their own Bob-intelligence lurking deep below, undetectable to all but me.


    [It''s just like you''re here to aggravate me,] I told him. [Like you''re just there to drive me nuts. Why can''t you be a little more responsive, eh? Girls like that you know. Nobody wants a dead fish.]


    Nothing. Of course. Although, I thought I might have lost him. He was so far down there that he was just at the edge of my range, and it was frustrating to think that maybe half of my efforts were in vain because I kept slipping away from him.


    I sat down, like that little shift in elevation was going to mean something. And then, because I didn''t know what else to do, after all the hours I''d sat here, thinking at him, already, I got on my knees and prayed to the little shrine here.


    I didn''t know any prayers aside from Christian ones, and I sure as shit didn''t believe in that God. There wasn''t a huge amount of religious diversity in the soldiers who''d effectively been my teachers, before I blew them all to hell...and if there had been, I wasn''t looking out for it at the time.


    So I just did what I could. To each of the mish-mashed faiths that were present here, I offered up a little prayer. And before long, I found my mind somewhere I hadn''t planned.


    I felt childish and stupid, babbling to Buddha about my personal shit. But wasn''t that exactly what prayer was?


    [...and please...look after those who are suffering in Vegas. Ease their pain. Nobody deserves that kind of torment.]


    I shook my head, feeling empty inside. I didn''t think prayer was supposed to be so...exhausting. It felt like I was working a hairball out of my system.


    [And for Athan and Lia. And AEGIS. Even Karu, I guess. Please see them safely through. You know...I guess...being a divine spirit and whatever...exactly what they all mean to me. I just...I don''t want to lose anyone else, okay? Thank you. And um, amen?]


    Nothing happened. Because of course, nothing happened. If prayer fixed anything, the world wouldn''t be a shitshow. And yet, I was still disappointed.


    [I guess nobody''s listening, Bob,] I sighed, as I untucked my legs and laid down on the cold wood. The ground was smooth under my fingertips from unknowable numbers of people who''d come and prayed in this spot. Amazing and special as I was, I guess I was just the next in a long line of people who''d come before.


    Bob missed half my thoughts because he''d slipped away again, and I tutted my irritation.


    [Fuck''s sake, Bob, hold still for once. I wish you wouldn''t bob around so much, even if it is your name.]


    I chuckled at my joke, because nobody else was going to.


    I guess I really was lonely and stupid. I probably would have had a bigger impact on things if I''d stayed in Vegas. Looking back at it now, I guess that was the way to go.


    I frowned at the wooden roof above me. So not-at-all like the reaching branches of a tree. Easy for me to say now, but when I was there, I was drowning. The pain and death was all-consuming, it was all I could do to keep myself together, to take it out on Khol, and even Athan, when I''d bitched him out. Easy to look over from here and say ''sure, I should have done that differently''. As easy as looking at the waves and thinking ''those aren''t so big, I could swim that.''


    I sighed and closed my eyes. [Maybe you''ve got the right idea, Bob. Just hide underground, and nothing will ever hurt you. Have no thoughts, and you''ll never be torn or confused. I wonder, if Athan had never come by, in a few hundred years, would I be just like you?]


    Doubtful. I kind of suspected that Bob didn''t have a rack like I did, even if each of the other girls put me to shame. That was one thing I''d always have that he didn''t.


    I grinned at the ceiling with my eyes still shut.


    [I''m a fuckin'' idiot, Bob. Look at me, lying here, screwing around, while the world I know is ending. Because I''m too damn chicken to go back out there and do something about it. Because it''s easy for me to say I don''t care, whatever happens, I''ll outlive it. But I do care, don''t I? Even if he''s a piece of shit, Khol went out there intending to fight and die on Black Shark''s plans. And I just fuckin'' left. What a piece of shit I am.]


    Bob, to his credit, did not judge me.


    [You''ve become a very good listener. Better than the gods, I think.]


    He was also humble enough not to agree when I flattered him.


    And then I realized, he had become a very good listener. He''d stopped bobbing in and out of my powers, he''d stayed firmly rooted where I could feel the non-existent wisps of his mind.


    I puzzled over that for a minute. And when I came up empty, I closed my eyes even harder and reached within myself to relive the memories exactly as they were.


    And boy, was I pathetic. The only thing worse than being me was watching me be me. Oof.


    I sat bolt upright as the memory played back in my head, dispersing it in a fog of thought. No. It couldn''t be that simple.


    But I checked, AEGIS-style. I verified, that the moment he''d stopped bobbing up and down was the moment I wished that he do so.


    My mouth was dryer than usual, and that wasn''t something my resetting saw fit to fix. It felt difficult to swallow as I contemplated hard about what next I would think or say.


    I was still a coward, I knew. On some level, I definitely just wanted to turn around and not stir up this potential hornet''s nest. Everyone had warned me about the dangers of fucking with Bob, and now I felt like I had the key in my hands to open that door and let the monster out.


    Could I control him? His mind wasn''t even a thing. But if I wished for it...would that work? I''d solved the puzzle, I could walk way now, satisfied that nobody had outsmarted Saga in the end.


    I swallowed again.


    I wasn''t here to just vindicate my own ego, right? I was here...because Bob could make a difference. Because we needed to explore every avenue to fight Justice. Even the dangerous, non-existent minds, like Bob.


    Right?


    Right?


    I seriously considered calling up Athan on the spot and seeing what I should do, but I knew he was dealing with bigger things at the moment, real problems, not like the molehills I was mountainizing over here. I could just...do this. I could...manage...if there was a problem. I hoped.


    That still left me sitting there, frightened and infirm. Just added lying to myself to the equation.


    It was, finally, my mind, as though having a mind of its own, that convinced me. I was still flipping through my recent memories, and caught sight of myself praying for all those fighting and dying in Vegas. Nobody deserves that kind of torment.


    I swallowed hard one last time, my mind made up. Even if I was a coward, if there was something I could do, I should do it. And if things went wrong...I''d handle it. I wouldn''t run away. I''d fight as hard as everyone else.


    [Bob, I wish for you to come up here, and for you to say hello.]

 437. 2252, Present Day. Aesas Dimension. Athan.

    I was trying my hardest not to annoy Aesa too much. I knew she had no love for me...or seemingly for anybody other than her ''hubby-wubby'' Al. And that was fine by me, I didn''t need to be liked, so long as she was still helping us out.


    But God, I could only imagine her level of annoyance, given my own, with the constant little ejaculations of ''Wondrous! Simply wondrous!'' or the like that kept leaking out of Tobias.


    He was possibly the most excited I''d ever seen anyone, ever. With his blue and gold ruffled outfit, waxed goatee and bald head, he looked like asian Shakespeare, time-travelled to the present day so he could gawk at every possible little thing.


    The fact that these two were our current leadership on an operation to send us flying across dimensions did not fill me with confidence. I probably felt about as great as Rito looked. AEGIS seemed mostly intent on listening to whatever snippets of conversation were technical. Lia was just seemed exhausted, sleeping on the floor, restless and tossing, and though I hoped it wasn''t her burns troubling her again, I knew better.


    She''d changed slipskins, and had her rifle on her back, even as she slept. I wondered just how bad changing her clothes had been; I''d wanted to help, but AEGIS assured us that she had it handled, and with her help, I was confident that whatever wounds were under there, they''d been treated as best they possibly could be.


    But still. Seeing her sleeping in pain was almost more than I could take. Maybe I only found Tobias so annoying because his unmitigated glee was in stark contrast to the seriousness of our actual troubles.


    Or maybe he was legit annoying.


    "My word! Is that a veyoch distiller?"


    Aesa stared at him. "What the hell else would it be, old man?"


    "I''d never dreamed of seeing one in person!" he squealed. "What fuel source do you use to prime the ignition, pray tell?"


    "Uh. Kerosene. It''s cheap."


    "Splendid!"


    As always after one of these exchanges, she looked at me, as though to tell me that it was my fault this shit was happening to her. Technically true, but I felt myself equally the victim here.


    "Okay, so," I said, interrupting another unrelated outburst from the bald guy. "We''ve got a bit of direction from a note. We''ve got...Tobias, who''s given us some loose direction within that direction. And we''ve got Aesa who can engineer things."


    "You are damn right, she can!" Tobias laughed.


    AEGIS pushed her glasses up. "You said earlier we need three things. An engineer to build us a ''phone'', which we now have. We need someone on the other end, and a line to connect them. Not that I doubt you or anything, but I''ve been wondering...why?"


    "Why what, my dear?" Tobias answered, still looking around the room while the rest of us sat.


    "Why do we need so many complicated bits and pieces. I mean, if we''re just dimension-hopping--"


    "JUST dimension-hopping?" he scoffed.


    She rolled her eyes. "--then Aesa does it all the time. Why does this time have to need all this...extra...stuff?"


    Well that question prompted him to sit down, and I knew we were in trouble.


    "Because, my dear, you''re not looking to jump around at random. You''re looking for a stable-linked probabilistic binding. Which, unlike the random-linked bindings that Aesa employs, requires some immense finesse to maneuver into a connection."


    "Yeah, I have no idea what that means," I said.


    "Think of it like this," Aesa cut in. "We started at Earth, which exists somewhere in probability-space. And other things like where I live are more-or-less likely to be proximal. Wrap your head around that so far, or do you need a crayon?"


    "Yes, I understand that. All the weird places you go, they''re close to Earth."


    "Not close. Probable. Everything in dimensional travel is based on probabilities. So you see, if I go somewhere, it''s very easy to wind up anywhere. But it''s very unlikely to wind up at, anywhere specific. Say, a parallel Earth. In fact, I''ve never done it, and will never do it in my lifetime."


    "Unless this venture pays out," Tobias grinned.


    She stared at him blankly. "Yeah. No. Still impossible. For all the reasons you already explained."


    "Okay, so for the laymen here," I cleared my throat. "Can you explain what you mean, and what those reasons are?"


    AEGIS had an answer, so I knew I was just the dumb one here. "What I think Aesa is saying is, basically...imagine you''re throwing a ball from your front yard, blindfolded, and you''ve...well, as you do...you''ve got a hell of an arm. It''s got to land somewhere, right? And if you''re like her, and just want to explore the neighborhood, you don''t really care where it lands, you''ll land somewhere and see something new."


    She tented her fingers, and when nobody corrected her, continued. "But let''s say you wanted to visit...Paris. It''d take an impossible throw to land that ball there."


    "Impossible being the key word," Aesa confirmed.


    "Yes. Without a device to help us out, at least. But even if we did make...I don''t know, a super-accurate catapult or whatever, the fact remains that the shot is still incredibly precise. I''m to understand that the other parts we''re lacking, they''re to provide that direction that a machine by itself couldn''t?"


    "Couldn''t have said it better myself," Tobias chuckled. "The line and the receiver, as I called them before; their role is to guide this ball of yours to the right place."


    "And...what if we miss the shot?" I asked.


    AEGIS didn''t have an answer. And to my surprise, Tobias just turned to Aesa, who shrugged.


    "You remember that HEV exosuit I was building for Al?" she asked. I shook my head. "Oh, right, it was the blonde chick who saw it. Well, the dimensions are a cruel and uncaring place, kid. You''re likely to eat a solar blast or radiation spike or get stuck in some place where time doesn''t work right if you just go bouncing around. That''s what my powers protect me from, but they don''t extend to anyone else. Hence the suit."


    "And it works great," Al grinned. She rolled her eyes, but I thought I caught a hint of a smile.


    "So basically, all the random shit you can stumble upon around here...it''s the same kind of thing near our destination."


    "Yep." She looked bored. "I mean, completely different stuff, the dimensions are nothing if not unpredictable. But yeah, same in the effect they tend to have on a human life."


    "Okay," I agreed. "So...that explains why we need all this stuff. I guess my current question is...not to be rude but...why aren''t you working on building this machine?"


    She scoffed, and got up. I thought she was going to get something to show me, but she just came back with a box of frosted cereal, and began eating it by the handful. She got maybe three fists in, before Al appeared with a bowl, spoon, and milk, and anthropomorphised her somewhat.


    "Um?" I asked.


    "Oh, you were serious."


    I sighed. "Yes. Please. We''re kind of on a deadline. Emphasis on ''dead''."


    "Well," she crunched through a mouthful of cereal. "As I said before, and as I''m sure I''ll say again, on account of your lack of mental aptitude--" she swallowed. "For the layman: that means you''re dumb. The problem is, it''s impossible, so why the hell would I start trying. If you''re just looking to get spaced, we''ve got plenty of airlocks."Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    "It''s not impossible. All we need is those two other things, right?"


    "Yeah. Sure." She crunched down on another mouthful. "Just like how you''re a time machine and a winning lottery ticket away from winning last month''s jackpot. Just two other little things."


    "Okay, well maybe," AEGIS spoke up "you can tell us what these things are, and we''ll get out of your hair and go find them, instead of sitting here?"


    "Sounds good to me." She paused to slurp milk from the bowl loudly. "Of course, I don''t really know, I just build the thing, so ask him."


    We all turned as one towards Tobias. "Oh my. Yes. Hello."


    "Please continue," I groaned.


    "Right. Well, you need a semistable void medium. That''s a type of...tunnel, if you will, which connects two unrelated places in probability-space. A wormhole, for example. If you happened to have a black hole handy."


    "Yeah, I''m fresh out of those," I sighed. "And the other?"


    "Something from your target dimension. Something from which we can...to put it simply...pull coordinates. In truth, we''d be examining the quantum-links of the tachyons--"


    "Got it," I said. "And I''m beginning to see the problem. We don''t actually know where we''re supposed to go since we''re just operating off this little puzzle, and if we don''t know where we''re going, we certainly don''t have either a tunnel or a thing from there."


    "And let''s be clear," Aesa said, her mouth full. "The only way something would have gotten here, from there, is if someone else made that same throw back to your front yard, from Paris. Except they did it by pure chance, because you know they weren''t aiming for your stinky front yard." As if that wasn''t conclusive enough, she swallowed and then finished. "So yeah. It doesn''t exist, it''s impossible, and that''s why I''m not building your stupid deathtrap machine."


    "The note references an angle-gate. Is that a thing?" AEGIS asked.


    "Nope. Just made-up jargon to me."


    "Then...I think I know what that''s referencing at least. And from the sound of it, we''ve got kind of an abundance of tunnels right now."


    "Ah," Al said. "You''re talking about all the people who''ve been dumped out here in the void recently."


    AEGIS nodded. "Yeah. Justice has a power that lets him space someone apparently, and when he does, it leaves a tiny little triangle-thingy behind, that seems like an ''angle-gate'' to me.


    "Sure," Aesa said. "Except we know where most of them go, don''t we? They lead to where the bodies were dumped, which is all around here. He''s just dumping them randomly, so they wind up in proximal probability-space. Or, in the metaphor, chucking footballs blind, himself."


    AEGIS smiled. "Maybe I can...if...if we can identify the missing people...and cross-reference with the bodies they''ve found...then we know the ones that are still unaccounted-for, those must have gone further into probability-space, right?"


    "I...guess?" I agreed. "I mean...we''d have to hope there''s exactly one person missing. And um...well...I think Justice has killed a few million people by now, and I kind of doubt there''s census data that''s up-to-date on that--"


    "Oh dang," AEGIS muttered. "Maybe if we just read the headlines about the lawyers who had been picked off before now, though?"


    "I guess it''s worth looking into. I think you''re onto something with the angle-gate." I scratched my head as I reread Soran''s note.


    Pursue ??? through angle-gate via alztraz-beta-compression and arrive at THE BEACON.


    Why ''???''? Why couldn''t Soran just fucking tell us who the question marks were? Did he not know?


    That wasn''t the right question to ponder. Soran didn''t know any of this shit, it was Mage''s power doing the writing. The question marks were probably just as unknown to Soran as alztraz-beta compression was. So then, did the powers not know who, for some reason? They were failing, allegedly, had they missed this one piece of critical data? Or were the question marks literally part of the puzzle?


    Fucking Soran. Even dead, he was still making things hard for us. I was glad he''d gotten spaced, at least.


    I turned to blink at AEGIS, and she stared at me. "What?"


    "Where''s Soran?" I asked.


    "Uh, he died. Remember?"


    I shook my head. "I meant, was he one of the bodies that was recovered from spacing?"


    "Why are you asking me? Ask her. Ask him."


    "This guy--" I said, digging through pictures on my mobile until I found one of him sent by Cosette as mission briefing. "Do you recognize this guy?"


    Aesa gave a cursory look and ignored me. Al took much longer, and then shook his head.


    "He had a power. I heard it go off right at the end," I said, remembering. "It was...was what''s-her-name''s? I can never fucking remember her name. Trish''s girl."


    "Haley?" AEGIS asked.


    "Yeah, her! She had this hyperspace-throw power, where she could shoot stuff sorta...cross-dimensionally. It made this loud crack noise when it went off. Right as Justice banished Soran into the angle-gate, I heard that noise."


    "What''d he throw? He wasn''t holding anything was he? Just a desperate move to try to hit you on his way out?"


    I shook my head. "I don''t think so. I don''t think he had anything there...but himself. I think he must have thrown himself, in an effort to get back."


    "Astounding!" Tobias exclaimed. "Then he is certainly deceased, in the most spectacular way possible!"


    "How''s that?" I asked.


    "Because he did random, unprotected void travel, weren''t you listening?" Aesa spat. "We''ve gone over this."


    "No, he''s thrown others before, and they all survived. Me, even. And AEGIS, Whitney, Saga, and Karu. From Las Vegas to San Francisco."


    "Impossible," Tobias stroked his moustache. "The void exposure would have killed you. There''s no way any of you could have survived. Maybe most of one of you, if you were very lucky, might have navigated around all possible hazards. But all of you?"


    "He''s right," Aesa nodded. "Even if your friend had, let''s say, perfect luck. I''m assuming all this throwing happened pretty close together, time-wise?"


    "Yeah, within minutes."


    "Well," she grinned smugly. "As you learned last visit, these probabilities and their connections are always in flux. Having a clear shot can take minutes or hours, and stays open for seconds. There''s no way your buddy did all that over the course of minutes."


    "Well it happened," I argued. "I don''t know how, but it did."


    "Unless," Tobias said, suddenly struck by something. "Unless he posses the same gift as you, my child."


    "I ain''t your child, gramps." Coming from the girl who acted half my age, but called me ''kid''.


    "Yes, yes. But you said your powers protect you from the elements of the void. Perhaps his do the same. Perhaps...while thrown...whatever is projected is put into some form of hyperspace sheath, sheltered from the ravages of the void."


    "Wait, question," AEGIS said. "If -- ignoring the whole ''is-he-alive'' thing, because frankly, I don''t care if he is -- but if he did put himself in a...hyperspace...sheath or whatever...what would that do to the angle-gate he was put into?"


    "Why, he''d transform it around himself, of course!" Tobias jumped to his feet. "Great heavens!"


    "I missed something," I said. "This is exciting, why?"


    "Because," AEGIS'' eyes sparkled. "That gives us the possibility...the very remote, but very possible outcome that Soran landed in Paris."


    "Like...in Paris?"


    "Metaphorically," she giggled. "He has the powers to not need a machine or any of the other stuff we''ve talked about. He could launch himself across dimensions...and he must have! He must be the question marks in the note, and his is the angle-gate we''re supposed to follow!"


    "Well I''ll be," Aesa said, looking absolutely unphased. "You really did it. You really found a hole in the world you can use to kill yourselves. Congrats. Oh, and you''re still missing the third piece."


    "Be that as it may," Al said, getting up again and walking over to where she began pouting. "I think that two out of three impossible tasks is very impressive. And we can start helping, can''t we?"


    "I don''t wanna," she said. "I wanna stay with you. I don''t have the parts anyway."


    "I know where we can get whatever parts you need," I told her. "Rio''s got a bunch of industrial machines she''s taking apart, and Whitney''s got circuitry and other components. I don''t think she''ll mind, if it''s for this."


    "Or if she can play with it afterwards," AEGIS grinned. "God, I bet she''d love a stable-linked probabilistic binding generator in her mobile."


    "I don''t wanna!" Aesa wailed, but she hardly struggled as Al stripped her on the spot, gently taking off the puffy jacket and hat she was wearing. "Al, I don''t wanna. We have a date."


    "And we''ll have many more dates my love," he said, kissing the top of her head gently. "But today, we''re helping our friends."


    "Your friends," she muttered.


    "Our friends. You''re helping them, and I''m sure they''d love to return the favor anytime, right guys?"


    I tried not to consider the fact that there were any number of ways we''d wind up dead before we next got an opportunity to travel the dimension, but agreed with enthusiasm anyway.


    "You''re all idiots," Aesa said, as she shivered.


    It took surprisingly little time for her to turn. She shivered and complained for less than a minute before her face went blank, her eyes going dark and unfocused, as though she''d been drugged. She just sat there though, silent and unresponsive, no matter how excitedly Tobias crooned.


    Al gave us all a small, sad smile. "If she''s not working, that means we''re missing parts she needs. She won''t stir until we have access to them, and then she''ll tell me what to retrieve. Let''s go get those parts and get to work -- I''ll have a gate ready in just a minute."


    What followed was a very bizarre few minutes of popping into places we knew around the world and making off like a bandit with the strangest combinations of things. At each stop, Aesa directed Al, nearly wordlessly, while her hands moved seemingly on their own, possessed-like, as I''d seen Rio work before.


    Must be a technopath thing. I didn''t really know, and didn''t really care. We were a step closer to our goal, and that was all that mattered, with Justice threatening, a mere half hour away.

 438. 2252, Present Day. Haydn, GA. Athan.

    This was the angle-gate, that much we''d established. Created just a couple days ago by Justice, the last of his episodes in a courthouse, before he''d begun his rampage in earnest.


    But its victim was no entity of law. Soran had been thrown in there, and from our conclusions, he was the only one with any chance whatsoever of leading us to a probability-space of anything other than the randomness that Aesa had already charted around Earth. This had to be our gate.


    I swallowed hard and tried not to entertain the possibility that there was any other option. If we believed in Mage...with our lives...than this was it. Through that bizarre, hovering, black triangle, buzzing with some energy that wasn''t quite in our dimension, was what we needed to stop Justice.


    Which...as I sat here...seemed farcical. Some perfect tactical superweapon from another dimension, the silver bullet that would kill the greatest Exhuman threat ever conceived? It seemed outlandish, contrived even. And for us to learn about it from some strange, completely not-understood entity-thing which hung out in...and arguably killed...my ex-colleague?


    The longer I sat here thinking about it, the more this seemed exactly as Aesa put it, a suicide mission. To say nothing of the little snippets of alarming information we were still getting out of Tobias as he walked around the gate, crooning like it was a beautiful baby.


    "It''s what?" AEGIS asked, her tone both sharp and flat at once.


    "Why, of course it''s one-way, what would you expect?" he chuckled.


    "Athan, he says once we go through, we''d be stuck. They can''t like, hold the door open or anything."


    "I thought you knew. Your metaphor of a catapult was quite unerring."


    "But your metaphor was a phone!" she snapped. "Phones dial both ways."


    What we''d come here for was any possible hint of where the gateway led. But no matter how much Tobias stared at it and stroked his goatee, all I saw in there was blackness and unrecognizable stars. If they even were stars.


    I knew what it was like in there. I''d been spaced by Justice, too, once. And when Rito picked me up, saving my life from a pocket of slowly-moving time in a vacuum in the void, she told me I should have been dead from radiation, too. My one experience out there, and I should have died three different ways.


    Was it really wise to follow the letter and jump into that kind of shit? It wasn''t like Mage''s powers cared for her living...what if the whole thing was carefully-worded bait to send us catapulting to our own deaths, for whatever unfathomable reasons it might have?


    It was just the three of us here. Al and Aesa were working on the launcher-phone-thing in her workshop, and we were hoping to find the third thing we needed before they were done. Having seen Rio at work, I knew just how fast a technopath could build, which was fine by me...but it also meant we had precious little time if we didn''t want to be the ones holding everything up.


    "So...what happens if we turn it on, point it at this gate, and don''t have the tachyons or whatever?" I asked.


    "Oh that would be very exciting," Tobias'' eyes lit up. "You''d be annihilated, of course. You''d be fired down the line at an astounding rate, only to have nowhere to go at the end of it. I daresay parts of you might reach your destination?"


    "Great," I fumed. "Maybe that''s Mage''s plan, we''ll just zip over there, and some shred of my pinky finger will just so happen to land on the button that fires the dimension-crossing Justice zapper weapon."


    "Oh that''d be marvelous," he beamed.


    I shook my head at him. Maybe it was because he hadn''t opened his mouth before, but somehow I''d gotten the impression that he was the most sane of Oasis'' high clergy. But when it came down to it, he was just as ridiculous as Rio, excited by anything even remotely connected to his calling, including, or especially, death.


    I was just about to spout something else sardonic and pointless when I felt something and stopped. A weird...surging...tingling. Like my hairs standing on end, but...backwards?


    "Something wrong?" AEGIS asked, looking over from the angle-gate.


    "Something''s...definitely weird," I said. "But I''m not sure what. Do you guys feel anything? In the air?"


    The two of them exchanged a glance. "No. Is it...hostile?"


    I shook my head. "It''s not like an ill intent, it''s...I mean, it''s like a breeze. It''s something I''m feeling. You guys really aren''t getting this?"


    They again confirmed that they were not. AEGIS began scanning in other wavelengths and I started crawling around, feeling the floors for...I dunno, a source of the sensation.


    It felt like I thought a hull breach in a spaceship might. All the air getting sucked out of here, in one direction. But there was a hole in reality right there, and it wasn''t sucking anything through. If I stood very still and focused very hard, I could feel the tugging sensation, not on everything just...just some things. But all pulled the same way.


    I frowned and started to follow, walking out of the decimated courthouse and towards the rest of the city.


    Haydn was a small town, and this was our third time in it. First, to deal with what turned out not to be an Exhuman event. And second, to chase down Soran, and led up to a confrontation with Justice. So I''d started to get to know the place pretty well, mostly on account of there being not a lot of place here.


    The tugging sensation was leading me from the courthouse towards the library, only a few doors down. A small building, but better cared-for and less pretentious than the last one I''d been in, when hunting down a bookworm Exhuman with Karu.


    "Athan, are you okay? You''re acting kinda...Rito-ified," AEGIS asked.


    "Yeah, sorry. I just...you really don''t feel that?"


    "Does it feel like a code-X?" she asked, cracking her knuckles over a frown.


    "No, just like...there it is again. It''s coming from over there."


    We were very close now, and I remembered the first time we were here, and the new construction that''d taken over this area.


    Either Haydn wasn''t at-risk enough to warrant evacuation, or it was too important to evacuate, because despite the global crisis and the time of night, things seemed lively over here still. I recognized the pre-fabs as military, and the way they had rerouted the street around the miniature base informed me that whatever was going on here was more important than straight streets and civic order.


    There was a dark, walled-off building, almost fortress-like in its construction, but tiny. No windows, no doors that I could see, just...reinforced walls of metal and concrete. And power lines, lots and lots of power lines, which I realized was what was drawing me here.


    Whatever was in that conspicuous building, it was pulling a ton of power, an almost-irresponsible amount. I''d been feeling the draw through all the power lines in the city around me, all converging here.


    It had to be important, but you couldn''t really tell by looking at it. It was the very center of this little cluster of military buildings, though. There were some pre-fab barracks, a mess tent...not a temporary cloth tent, a permanent one, white with building-sized poles. And what looked like offices, all with guards, looking as alert and bored as guards always did.


    I realized it was strange to see people out and about. Every single person I''d seen in the last few days was either panicking or fighting, or my friends. To see people just...there, doing their jobs? It was bizarre.


    "What did you find?" AEGIS asked. "Oh. The fort."


    "You know this place?"


    "Athan, we''ve been here," she laughed. "Do you remember Celia and Ajax?"


    "Yeah. He was a huge jerk, and she was even spacier than you."


    She glared at me. "Thanks."


    "What? That''s not an insult to you."


    Her tone told me otherwise as she soldiered on. "Well, they were from a parallel Earth. I guess they had their own catapult-thing, and ever since they came through, if you recall, security robots had followed them. Which is bad, because rampaging robots showing up at random...but good, because apparently the robot tech from that Earth was way better than ours."


    "Wait, you think this is like, the backside of a stable-dimension whatever?"


    "Stable-linked probabilistic binding. And yeah, probably," she shrugged. "Doesn''t do us any good though, as we just established, the gates are one-way only."


    I was about to reply when I saw something. Lurking in the shadows near the building, with all the stealth capabilities of a woman wearing pure-white at night, a figure definitely trying to remain hidden nonetheless. And doing a terrible job of it.


    "What do you think she''s doing?" I asked.


    AEGIS bit her lip as she watched. "Hiding? Do you think she''s supposed to be there? Should we alert the guards?"


    "I dunno." It was weird for there to be problems which weren''t ours for once. What a depressing thought that was.


    We watched her for another minute before I felt the electrical energy build to a crescendo, where it all peaked and unloaded at once.


    "Woah, I felt that," AEGIS said, looking around. "Huge electric impulse just now."


    "Yeah," I nodded. The lights in the base had flickered even. The guards seemed completely unphased, so this must be normal for them. "I guess...an EMP blast, from the feel of it. You said there were robots sneaking through the portal?"This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Oh, very smart," AEGIS cheered at me. "That probably explains it. And that''s what you were feeling earlier, wasn''t it? Only an electropath could sense that kind of charge generation through the grid like that."


    "Guess we should head back," I sighed. "Nothing here for us."


    Something about the woman hiding rubbed me the wrong way though. I didn''t want this small, functioning facility to go down to sabotage or something while I was standing right here. The number of functioning places in the US were dwindling already.


    But we really should go. I gave it another second of thought, and then advanced on the base.


    "Um, hi," I said to the guard out front. "Hey, sorry to bother you, but we were just passing by and noticed...there''s a woman hiding in there. Is she supposed to be there?"


    The guard barely turned to peek, and laughed.


    "Yeah, that''s just Celia. Boy, has she got it bad."


    "Celia? The same one, you think?" AEGIS asked. I shook my head and she sighed at me like I was being difficult. "Brown hair, white, tall and a little thin, wears glasses?" She asked the guard.


    "Tends to get super, duper distracted when thinking," I suggested.


    Again he laughed. "Yeah that''s her. How do you know her?"


    "Oh I, err...I used to work for the XPCA, when they thought this was an Exhuman phenomenon."


    "Oh really? No shit." He looked me up and down, and took in my leg. Didn''t ask any follow-up questions, about evacuation or my retirement, which I appreciated.


    "Do you mind if we go in and talk to her?" AEGIS asked.


    "Oh this isn''t a secure area. A few of the buildings are. Just go on in, and if someone tries to stop you, stop," he laughed.


    "Well he seemed pleasant," AEGIS said as we strolled further in, advancing on the woman in the white coat in the bushes. As we drew nearer, it became clear that it was a labcoat, the same as several of the others were wearing in the buildings I thought were offices.


    "Celia, hi," I said.


    She almost fell into the bushes she was crouched behind.


    "W-wh-who''s there!" she barked, assuming a ridiculous mockery of a karate pose. She squinted at us and adjusted her glasses while fending us off with her other hand. "Is that...Sergeant Chair?"


    AEGIS had to excuse herself as she almost spit up from laughing. I had to grin myself, though mostly at her reaction. "Um, that was ''Chariot'', but, yeah. I guess you remember me."


    "Hard to forget. You tore through our minds and then dumped us off back here unceremoniously."


    "Uh, yeah, sorry about that." I guess...the last time I saw them, I''d kind of dragged them out to where Saga was being kept and had her do her code-X thing to verify that these two weren''t an Exhumuman threat. Things had gotten so messed-up after that, I''d completely forgotten.


    I frowned at myself, standing there like an idiot and mumbling at her. "No, sorry. That was a lame apology, you deserve better. I''m really sorry, it was just a precaution. You were from another dimension, and we just didn''t understand. I''m sorry you got caught up in that."


    She blinked at me. "Oh. Um. Thank you. I...that''s very nice of you to say."


    AEGIS gave me a smarmy little thumbs-up, but put it away as Celia turned to face her. "And I don''t believe we''ve met? You''re an AI aren''t you?"


    "What?" AEGIS blinked at her. "How can you tell?"


    "Was it not obvious? The hair, the eyes, the synthetic skin? I''m sorry, were you incognito?"


    "No, I...I mean...kinda, I guess but¡­" her eyes were wide as she stammered. "Uh, most people just assume I''m a body modder."


    "Oh. Right." Celia held her chin thoughtfully for a moment.


    "I guess--" I said.


    "Shh."


    Right. I forgot about this part of her as well. She was still standing there in thought as a tired-looking man walked towards us. Looking around, I saw plenty of them, seemingly dispersing all at once, this one, and several others, en-route to the chow hall. But this one was unique in that he stopped to join us.


    "Oh, she''s thinking," he said.


    I recognized the voice, even if I''d forgotten the face. Somehow, I wasn''t surprised to still find the two of them together. "Uh, Ajax, right?"


    "Sergeant Chair, as I live and breathe. No wonder she''s got the ticker spinning. How are you holding up, man?"


    Apparently almost without thinking, he offered, and I accepted a soldier''s embrace, our arms clasping at the forearm, and going in for just enough of a hug for our shoulders to touch. The very manliest of hugs, and zero pats on the back.


    "You seem good," I said. "I was just apologizing to Celia here for how we treated you guys last time."


    He frowned. "Yeah that was pretty rough. But I should apologize too. We really busted your balls, when it wasn''t your fault. I should''ve known you were just doin'' a job, should''ve taken my complaints up the chain."


    "Wow that''s...really, uh, mature of you, if you don''t mind my saying."


    He laughed, a short, barking laugh, that made Celia blink.


    "Oh, Ajax!" she squealed. "I was going to surprise you, shoot."


    "What were you thinking about, Ceel?"


    "Huh? Oh. I was thinking how...we didn''t have body-modders in our world. And they didn''t have human-like robots in theirs. I was trying to suppose if I''d have made that assumption differently if I had shared their background."


    He smiled easily. "What assumption, Ceel?"


    She shook her head and laughed. "Never mind. You hungry? You''re off today, right?"


    "Yep, and yep. End of a twelve-hour shift," he said, stretching. "Hey, I''ll catch up with you in a sec, okay? I''m gonna have some words with Chair here."


    "Sure," she nodded, and then adjusted her glasses after the gesture. "I''ll be inside? Nice to see you again Sergeant."


    "Sounds good." He grinned at her until she disappeared indoors, and then turned to me with an intensity and a smile I never expected. "It''s like God sent you here, Chair. I''ve been busting to tell someone."


    "Uh?"


    He fished in his pocket and pulled out a small golden ring. "I don''t think I can do it now, not with this country going to shit like ours did back in the day. But soon, I''m gonna ask her."


    "Woah, you''re going to marry Celia?"


    "I''m gonna try," he laughed.


    Well that was unexpected, but his delighted enthusiasm was impossible to resist. I found myself laughing and clapping him on the shoulder like we were old mates. When I''d last seen them, they seemed so broken over the death of their mutual friend, and it was apparent that both of them had liked her more than each other.


    And now he was a lot more whole. He explained how he was going to therapy for his anger issues and PTSD, when he realized that he was never going to be a good enough man for her if he didn''t change. I just kind of stood there, listening, nodding along, while contrasting that this was a real man, who effected real change, while I was a dumb piece of shit who just bumbled through life.


    ''Cause, I mean, he was right. I didn''t deserve AEGIS'' loving treatment, not with how selfish and awful I was to her all the time. Maybe I should look up going into therapy after all this, if we survived. The transformation on Ajax seemed enormous.


    But as pleasant as it was, I had to cut him off before too long. Even if we had no idea what we were doing, I still had a mission. Vegas was still under imminent threat, as was the rest of everything.


    "Y''know, I actually thought maybe you might be able to help," AEGIS pondered aloud. "We''re trying to cross dimensions, like you guys did. And we''re super stumped in finding what we''re looking for."


    "Well I''ll help however I can, but I don''t pretend to know the first thing about all that brainiac crap. Even Celia, she''s a thousand times smarter than me, and she says she doesn''t know anything about it. She''s got her PhD in chemistry, if you don''t remember, though she''s working on a masters right now in robotics."


    Jesus. Was it just because they were thirty, or was this just how put-together human beings were supposed to be? They''d survived a dimensional apocalypse, and she was going to grad school.


    "Yeah I guess, probably not. We''re supposed to find something from the dimension we''re trying to jump into. But I guess it''s stupid to think that you guys really have any connection to that."


    "Uh huh. We only did that once and sorta...by accident. Unless you were headed back where we came from, don''t think I could help."


    "Thanks anyway," I cut in. "I don''t wanna keep you from dinner, or from Celia. You guys...have a good time, yeah?"


    "Yeah, brother," he said, pulling me into another embrace. This one with a single back-pat. "You, too."


    I watched him go. Watched him light up at seeing her again, even though it''d just been a minute since they parted. She stood from the table where she''d put food down for both of them, different foods on each plate, knowing what each of them liked. And when they sat down together, I could see the chemistry, the excited chatter, how they leaned into each other, laughed readily, smiled broadly.


    It hurt. More than it should have. I was jealous, and AEGIS really did deserve better than me. And when I turned to her, I found her with a thoughtful look on her face, that I felt I should have understood better than I did.


    "I...had the thought," she began "but it seemed...too implausible. You don''t think that angle-gate really does go back to their dimension, do you?"


    "I don''t know how it could. We''re supposed to find some kind of weapon, not a...bombed-out husk of Earth."


    "Yeah. But...we are supposed to find something. To hear Aesa speak of it, most of the void is just insane nothingness. Another Earth...that''s a place, where something like that actually could exist." She frowned. "And besides, we''re already taking a huge presumptuous leap of logic with the angle-gate. We''re assuming that Mage''s power is right, and based on that assumption, that the gate leads somewhere at all. Isn''t it exactly the same stretch of logic to take literally the only cross-dimensional things we know, and suppose that they''re the tachyons we need?"


    "I...I guess? When we turn this device on, we''re just going to die, aren''t we?"


    She gave me a grin. "Well. Statistically, yeah."


    "But we have to try, don''t we?"


    She watched the two of them as they broke into laughter over something anew. Their food was practically abandoned on the plates before them; it seemed that the hunger he''d admitted earlier wasn''t for that kind of sustenance. And watching closely, I could see time and again when his hand went to his front pocket, where the ring was hidden.


    He wanted to whip it out, then and there, every second. He wanted to be married to this woman he loved without any further delay. But he also wanted to give her the best, to do things right and dramatically, to create a memory she could hold onto, of the two of them.


    God, how it needled me. I hated feeling this petty, but hated even more feeling so inferior. I was legit happy for them. They were fine people, better than fine, now that he wasn''t a jerkass.


    "We don''t...have to," AEGIS whispered. "We could just...take Aesa''s offer. Hide out with her, stay safe until...until Justice leaves, or whatever."


    I could tell that she was feeling something completely different in watching the two of them. Maybe imagining us like that. Maybe just reminded of what love looked like.


    But as much as I loved AEGIS, as much as I''d give anything to be those two right now, we weren''t. They were them, and we were us. And while what they had was beautiful, what we had...was the slim possibility of protecting that kind of beauty.


    Maybe not today, maybe not even this year, but someday, if he wasn''t stopped, Justice would come for these two. This happiness and love would be cut brutally short, because of the insane Exhuman''s purge of purity. And we were the only ones who had a shot to save it, even if it was remote, nearly-suicidal.


    We had to take that shot, right?


    "Right?" I asked AEGIS.


    She squeezed my hand. "You wouldn''t be Athan if you didn''t," she sighed. "Are we settled, then...are we...taking the risk that it''s their Earth we''re going to?"


    "I don''t see any other cross-dimensional shit around here. I mean, aside from the killer robots, but that''s the same thing."


    She nodded pensively. "I''ll go ask, then. We don''t have any time to waste."


    "Yeah," I agreed glumly, not wanting to intrude, but also not wanting to spend any more time here. "Let''s go kick down their happy bubble I guess."


    "It''s for their good too, Athan."


    I nodded. But that seemed like a worse argument, the more I saw how happy they were. Shouldn''t it be the other way ''round? I was glad she volunteered, because I didn''t know that I had the fortitude to go break them up right now.


    "We''re trying to save them, from the worst thing imaginable. Worse, still, for them, than for anyone else," she said. "Because they''ve already lost their world before. I can only imagine how much it hurt and how long it took to heal. And now it''s threatening to happen again. But we can stop it, and they''ll help. I know it."


    "Yeah," I agreed numbly. "I just wish bad things stopped happening to good people."

 439. 2252, Present Day. Haydn, GA. Athan.

    Celia was lost in thought, but Ajax spent a lot of time studying the weird assemblage we had going on here.


    I felt like the most normal person of the bunch, maybe even counting the two of them. AEGIS was just on my right, already made out as an AI by them at a glance. Lia, on my left, made me feel tired and pained just to look at, clad in her grey slipskin and leaning on her enormous fuck-you sniper rifle, taller than she was. Tobias looked like he''d been ripped out of an asian bootleg of a medieval feast hall, his head gleaming in the moonlight shining through the courtroom''s collapsed ceiling. And Aesa was silent and stern, but not cold, as she methodically put the last touches on the device encasing the angle-gate.


    Al was here too. He was normal also, I guess.


    "Well it doesn''t look a damn thing like the one we used on the other side," Ajax said. "But I guess that''s probably all just casings and facades and junk, right?"


    "On the contrary," Tobias said, his eyes alight. "From what you described, it seems the other device was grounded not in alzstraz-beta compression, but in endo-elastic, zero-point-energy kinetic transferral. Not the same at all."


    "Wait, there''s another way?" AEGIS asked. "Why the hell didn''t we do that?"


    "You never asked," he mused.


    AEGIS'' face looked like she was about to short out.


    "Also, it wouldn''t be possible," he clarified.


    "Well, thank fucking God for that. If we spent all this time and took all these risks when there was another safer way¡­"


    "A much more dangerous way," he smiled. "Fear not."


    "Yeah, I don''t do that stuff," Aesa said, banging on the machine with a wrench, seemingly just for effect. It was chilly in the night air, but she''d finally thawed out. To my annoyance. "You''d have to find a different Exhuman to build you one of those, zero-point energy isn''t my thing."


    "But you did this thing?" I asked. "Is it ready?"


    "Ready as any death machine will ever be. Offer still stands, if the three of you want to live under my front porch like rats."


    AEGIS and I exchanged a glance. "No, we''ll do it," she said.


    "The two of us will. Lia, I think you should stay with Aesa."


    She was tired and sore, but still had plenty of strength to look up at me with the hatred of a thousand burning Justices. "Hell no."


    "Come on. You''ll be safe. This machine might kill us, I don''t want you taking that risk."


    "Will probably kill you," Aesa grinned. "Dimension-hopping is all about probabilities after all."


    "And you think I want to live on in a busted-up, falling-apart world without you? Hell to the no. I''m coming with you. If you die, at least I don''t have to outlive you."


    "Lia, that''s--"


    "It''s final. No more debate. We''ve got five minutes before Justice, don''t waste them on me."


    I took a few deep breaths as I studied her fierce, exhausted face. A big part of me wanted to attack her, to be honest. Just jump her now, tie her up somewhere she wouldn''t get hurt, keep her safe, no matter what.


    But it sounded so wrong, didn''t it? Attack her. If I loved her, I couldn''t spend my whole life controlling her. Worrying incessantly, sure...but thinking about her tied up and crying as AEGIS and I possibly plastered ourselves across probability-space?


    I didn''t know if it''d be better for her to be dead, but she thought so. I felt like I had no leg to stand on, given that I was going, despite AEGIS telling me not to. We were just a big, bumbling cascade of death-seeking insanity here.


    Fuck me.


    "Hit it, then," I said. "Let''s do this thing."


    "Okay. Last chance," Aesa warned us, as she began fiddling with controls, and I felt again the strange sensation of all the power in the grid being drawn to a single point.


    It said a lot that Lia and AEGIS weren''t trying to stop me. About how desperate we all were, that this insane plan should work. About how little I valued my life, and apparently theirs. About how little time we had for second-guessing, and how we just needed to move forward, no matter the cost, no matter the likelihood of failure, because we were big damn idiots who had to do something, even if it meant our deaths.


    I looked at the faces of my sister and girlfriend. They were tired, but resolute. Determined, like I was, to do whatever we could or die trying.


    If it weren''t for them, either way was fine by me, to be honest. Somehow, despite everything, I was still here, still hating this fucking world, which had consistently shown itself to be cruel and selfish. There were terror attacks going on in the refugee camps, without sufficient police or military, rape and theft was skyrocketing, and the three armies were still killing each other instead of cooperating, even at the fucking end of everything.


    People were trash. And if I saved them, great. But if I died, at least I tried my best.


    Lia had a whole different set of problems, I knew. She wasn''t as jaded as I was, though maybe even more cynical. I knew that under her soft exterior, she hurt every day inside, and she''d been suicidal more than once. Not out of some stupid passive-aggressive spiteful reason like I''d been, but to stop the pain of living. I''d failed at protecting her at every step, yet still she clung to me, wouldn''t want to live in a world without me. She was broken, too.


    And AEGIS, who did this out of a love that was more twisted than any hate. Even more than Lia, she''d based her whole being on mine. It didn''t seem to matter to her that she could have a fully, incredible existence without me, finding a new calling, or hell, a better guy...there were plenty of them out there. Instead, she was all-in on me, down to this dice roll of whether this thing we''d assembled would see us through, or into our deaths.


    It was good that we''d gotten separated from Karu and Saga. They had more going on for themselves, weren''t as messed up as we were, or at least, not in the same way.


    "How painful will it be?" I asked Tobias. "If we miss?"


    "That depends a lot," he said, his bemused smile fading for the first time. "If you have the misfortune of winding up somewhere mostly-hospitable...maybe a vacuum in a slow time field...you could asphyxiate over the course of months."


    "I''ll use this, then," Lia said, hefting her gun.


    "At best, you''d just shatter on impact with something wholly incompatible with your being. You''d become molecular fragments in an instant. But most likely, something in-between."


    That was...almost reassuring. And by almost, I meant, not at all.


    "Okay, she''s up," Aesa said. "Stand in front of the gate if you want to die. Everyone else, way back."


    I stepped forward, as did the other two. As did Tobias, to my surprise.


    "Wait, you''re coming?" I asked.


    He looked at me in surprise. "Of course."


    "Why? I mean...what?"


    "It''s always been my deepest desire," he said. "My calling, to go in physicality where I''d only wandered in my dreams. I would not miss this opportunity for all the world."


    "But--"


    "Binding engaging!" Aesa called out from her controls. "Brace for compression in five...four¡­"


    "But you might die," I said.


    "...three...two¡­"


    "If you give up on your dreams, are you not already dead?"


    "...one--"


    If she ever said zero, I never heard it. Tobias'' cryptic remark echoed strangely in my ears...or maybe my ears grew to engulf his words. It felt like every part of me was being squashed and stretched and pulled, almost nothing like the stretch of when Soran had chucked us across dimensional boundaries, or the jerk and pull of Jack''s short-range teleportation. And absolutely nothing like Rito''s stealthy surrounding-swap.


    I understood now why it was called alzstraz-beta compression. Because compression was absolutely the thing I was feeling most of all. I felt like a tube of toothpaste, all my guts being crushed and rolled up me, threatening to pop out of my mouth, except that my neck, my mouth, kept growing longer and longer, just as quickly as my guts rose up in me.


    I couldn''t see anything, just flashing lights that went by so quickly, I wasn''t sure if I was flying or falling past them. Wasn''t sure if they were the city lights, or entire galaxies whipping past. My body kept getting hotter and hotter, until I was sure that all of this twisting and torture would turn me into a lit matchstick, a mile long.


    I wanted to throw up. I wanted to black out. I wanted to die. But none of these happened, instead I just tore across nothingness for an eternity.


    And then, like Tobias had said, I slammed into something. It felt hard enough to shatter me into molecule fragments, alright. But my hands and knees were here, intact enough to hold me up as I voided the contents of my stomach onto the black glass beneath me.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    AEGIS shrieked from beside me, and I couldn''t stop retching long enough to look up. My body was so stiff, hunched over like a dog. But even, frozen in that pose, she picked me up with an arm around my waist and kicked both of us away, the ground streaking past in a blur, before dumping me into the dirt and disappearing.


    I didn''t understand any of that. All I''d figured out was that I was out of things to puke up, and my body was still trying its best. A moment later, AEGIS landed next to me again, and I heard diminutive coughing, the sounds of Lia being sick next to me. Another minute, and Tobias joined us, while AEGIS paced and swore.


    She waved hair-probes at us and muttered numbers, her hands and eyes racing and roving as she prodded all three of us. As the minutes stretched on, I began to regain myself, to feel like I could move again, my body unlocking from the stiff paralysis, so that I could collapse into the dust.


    Still she fussed over us. I wanted to tell her it was okay. I was getting better, we were okay. But I couldn''t manage much more than taking deep breaths right now, and it seemed prudent to sit up as a first step maybe.


    Sit up on the dirt of a new world. A new, very old one. Brown, as far as I could make out, with only patches of black scorch and a few hills to break up the view.


    No, not scorch, I realized. Glass. Like the glasslands. There had been nukes dropped here, hundreds of them. The landscape stretched out beneath us forever, pocked with evidence of their blasts, arranged seemingly at random.


    I heard wailing, pitiful, heart-breaking crying, and turned, wide-eyed to find the source. It was Lia, holding herself and shuddering, pitiful noises escaping her. And him, I realized, Tobias was wheezing and panting in pain as well.


    The sound had somehow broken my ability to take in perception. It took too long for my eyes to focus, for my breath to fill my body and for me to be able to sit upright and see. When I did take it in, my heart stopped.


    They were burned, both of them. Their skin was blistering and too red and too pale all at once, angry spots covered her head in a lattice, like someone had rolled her face across a hot waffle iron.


    She was holding her body around the middle, apparently burned through her slipskin and all. I just...sat there, gaping, not understanding.


    How? How had this happened to her? Why not me?


    AEGIS was back again, apparently she''d left at some point, and this time she dropped a charred body near us. I barely took the stranger in, except for it to sink in...that blackened lump of flesh...that was the future for my sister. AEGIS'' face was carved deep with worry, her eyes narrowed in focus and sympathetic pain.


    "AEGIS, what''s wrong with them? Did they...did they not make the jump?"


    "Oh they made it," she said, her voice angry. "We just landed in a fucking nuclear crater. The rads are still fresh, even that amount of exposure was too much."


    "Too...much?" I echoed.


    "A lethal dose," she spat, and stomped her heel, as though she could crush the words into the dust.


    That didn''t make sense to me. That seemed impossible. We''d...we''d all just done something against all odds, we''d done the impossible. We were here, weren''t we? On another Earth? We''d crossed the probability-space, we''d fucking thrown the ball to Paris. And now...this was what would kill us? Landing in radiation?


    She''d carried us maybe a hundred fucking feet from the glossy black crater. We were a hundred fucking feet from safe landing? In a jump that should have killed us? That Aesa and Tobias had assured us was almost-certain death? Across dimensions, across entire fucking Earths, and it was a hundred feet that decided it?


    It was bullshit. It wasn''t right. I could not fucking believe it, how fucking stupidly awful our luck had to be for this bullshit. But I couldn''t will away or deny the fact that Lia was sitting there, skin blistering off, crying in anguish as her body burned again, for the second time today. My heart breaking as she writhed.


    "Do something!" I shouted at AEGIS. "Help her!"


    "I...I can''t! I don''t have anti-rads or...blood packs. I can''t treat her burns without taking off the slipskin, and all of her skin with it!"


    Lia was mewling in pain, an inhuman noise I never wanted to hear, that nobody should ever have to hear. She was choking on her sobs, a pathetic gurgle punctuating her bleating.


    "We have to do SOMETHING," I screamed. I was on my feet somehow, grabbing AEGIS by her rear, rummaging through the pack she kept on the small of her back.


    Bandages, gauze, pills, stims, syringes. All of it seems tiny and pointless compared to the burns across Lia''s entire body. Useless against her whimpering which broke my heart, even as I felt it pounding in my head.


    A spray can of medical gel. That was all I found. I jumped over, stumbling as my exoframe malfunctioned from the rads, but forced myself there, muttering soothing words and empty promises as I emptied the entire can across her, pretending that the shiny gloss on her face was from the spray.


    "You''re gonna be okay, Lia. You''re gonna be okay," repeated, over and over. "You''re going to be okay. Just...just tough it out. You''re so tough. You''re the strongest person I know. You''ll be okay."


    AEGIS knelt opposite me, on the other side of Lia''s body, silent and angry and sad. Tears streamed down the corners of her cheeks.


    "How long do we have?" I asked. AEGIS shook her head, opened her mouth, but couldn''t speak. "HOW LONG, AEGIS?"


    She coughed, and wiped her eyes with her palm. "The...the burns...they''re bad, but they...they won''t be what gets to her. They''ll...they''ll inhibit body function, risk infection...pneumonia, cellulitis, UTIs, and respiratory failure. Anemia, rhabdomyolysis, blood clots--"


    "HOW LONG?" I screamed.


    Again she shook her head. "It''s the...radiation poisoning. Nausea, vomiting, headaches, fever, leukopenia...shock and cognitive impairment. Seizures, ataxia, tremors."


    She stared at me, her eyes cloudy as tears streaked down her cheeks. "...and death."


    "HOW FUCKING LONG?" I slammed my fist into the dirt with a crack.


    "At her dosage...maybe two days. Before her body shuts down. Maybe less, if the burns...depress her cardio system...if her pulmonary artery occlusion pressure drops, vascula resistance spikes..."


    "Two days. Maybe less," I echoed.


    I couldn''t...just...couldn''t anything. Just a minute ago, we''d been grimly determined to see this through, to do...whatever needed to be done, to die.


    But it wasn''t supposed to be her. It wasn''t supposed to be like this. We all went, we were all supposed to go together. If we were all adrift with death hanging over us for two days, she had volunteered her rifle. It was supposed to be a success or a failure, not like this.


    "Not like this," I found my lips moving. "Please, God, please."


    "Without...treatment...there''s a hundred-percent mortality rate. With care...ten percent chance of survival."


    "We can get her back," I said, standing up. "We can follow the machines that Ajax and Celia used. We can get her back into our world, and get her into a regenerator. And she''ll be fine."


    AEGIS'' tears continued to spill. "Radiation is mutagenic. If you put a pre-cancerous patient into a regenerator...what comes out...will be more cancer than human."


    "Then we''ll get whatever other treatment they use!" I shouted. "We''re that ten percent. We just have to get her up, now. Come on, we can do this. We can save her!"


    AEGIS said nothing, just slowly rose to her feet, and gently, gingerly, scooped up the girl with her. My heart was pounding so hard, and my breathing was so sharp that it hurt. And hearing Lia moan in pain as AEGIS lifted her up, seeing her arm dangle helplessly, like a corpse, I wanted to put her down and cry, to never touch her and have her survive. Somehow.


    My breathing shuddered in my chest. No! Come on! Come ON!


    My feet wouldn''t move. The exoframe was like a vice around my legs. I didn''t know if it was still malfunctioning or if I was. We needed to go, needed to go now. Every second was fractions of percentages off my sister''s life. Percentages she had so few of--


    I meant to turn, to go. But instead my breathing broke. I shuddered as a sob racked through me.


    "No," I wailed. "Come-fucking-on! COME ON. MOVE," I screamed.


    But my body didn''t move. I couldn''t. I wasn''t strong enough to turn from the spot where I was rooted. Lia''s arm dangled, swinging carelessly in the dry air. Her fingers were red and pocked with burns, a red that faded to cloudy mist as my eyes teared up, as a comprehension I didn''t want began to build inside me.


    "No!" I sobbed. "No! I don''t...not like this. I refuse to...accept it. No..."


    AEGIS broke down at seeing my tears, and I cracked at seeing hers, and both of us stood and cried over my sister as she writhed in unconscious pain. The face that I knew so well, unrecognizable under red lines and blisters, her hair, cut short at the sides from her last burns, a tousled brown mop peeking out from her hood.


    It was just wrong. She was so perfect, so strong and so sweet. It was just wrong for someone like her to be in this kind of pain. It was wrong for someone like her to die.


    That was how I knew we were here. We were still on Earth after all. Everything beautiful must suffer, because that''s what Earth was. Only by leaving, like Aesa had, could you get away from this pain. I thought I''d been ready for it, but even as I told myself I could endure the worst that Earth had to offer, it proved me wrong, always. It had pain as I could not imagine, which it handed out without restraint. With cold, uncaring dispassion.


    We spent too long standing there and crying. Spilling tears onto this alien world which was too familiar. Longer than five minutes. Somewhere deep inside of me, I knew that Justice was there, now. That we''d failed, and Lia would die for nothing, as though her suffering hadn''t been punishment enough. That her death was just one of millions to follow.


    I wanted to throw up again. To black out. To die. I didn''t want to live on in a world without her. If the jump hadn''t worked, and we were all stardust now, that would have been better than this.


    I eyed the rifle still draped across Lia''s back. It''d be painless. I''d seen that gun in action, it vaporized half a body in a single shot. I could save Lia the suffering...and then AEGIS...and then me.


    I heard a pained coughing and turned around. Tobias was there, I''d somehow forgotten...he looked even worse than Lia. His burns were black, deep holes, I could see far too deeply into his body. I could see his chest swelling with every heartbeat, the action of his lungs and veins. It was horrifying.


    His eyes were red, and his pupils...messed-up. Not...not round anymore, like someone had broken the yolk of an egg. His breath was shallow and wheezing, too wet and too dry at the same time.


    "Athan," he said, his words barely more than a breath. I felt my lips twitching and a fresh wave of tears threatening as I took his side. "Athan, are you there? I can''t...I can''t see, m''boy. Are you there?"


    "I''m here, Tobias," I said. I wanted to hold his hand, wanted to...to reassure him somehow, but he was more burn than anything else at this point. If I touched him, it would only cause him pain. I turned my head so the tears would fall onto the dust.


    "Oh, Athan," he said, his lips cracking as she muttered. "We did it. We did it. It''s just like my dreams."


    My voice cracked. "Your dreams must have been nightmares."


    "It doesn''t matter...doesn''t...matter. We did it, Athan, we did it. Tell me...tell me...what you see? What does the world...the world look like?"


    His next words made my heart break all over again, and tears streamed down my face.


    "Is it beautiful?"


    I couldn''t speak. My lips were trembling as his breath rattled in his chest.


    All that was here was death. Black craters and barren dust and AEGIS and these three corpses. The body she''d found, and my friend, and my sister.


    He wheezed, and I saw his breathing stop for a second. He choked, and then gasped, as though forcing himself to keep on breathing, choking on air.


    "Is...is it beautiful Athan? I can''t...can''t see."


    "Yes, it''s beautiful," I said, my voice breaking. "It''s so beautiful. It''s just like your dreams."


    "Good...good¡­" he coughed again. "Just like my dreams. I can see it now. Another...entire world to...explore. So many...lives...memories to...be forged¡­"


    I could see his heart laboring in his chest, under the black burns. It writhed with a strange movement, half of it collapsing at a time, more like it was being crushed than beating.


    "So beautiful. It''s...so...beautiful. I''m so...so happy, Athan. I''m so¡­"


    His breathing stopped. He didn''t choke back to life again. He was just still, and silent. The action in his chest ended, still as the rest of him.


    As dead as this world he''d tried so hard to reach.


    "Come on," I said to AEGIS. Or myself. Come on. Lia can''t be next. She can''t.


    And this time, when I tried to take a step, my leg moved. One step at a time, we''d get her home, get her safe. She couldn''t die here, not like this.


    Not like him.


    Not like this.


    Not like this.


    I prayed to God.

 440. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Karu.

    I could see the false hope spread across the wall of humanity. Faces alight with relief, eyes bright through the blood and scars, a moment of optimism, like a ray of light shining through a tempest.


    I saw it and I cringed within. Because in that hope, I truly understood what was occurring, what Justice has meant when he said he would break humanity.


    His words did not intend the death of the species. Nor did they portend a break from established culture. He cared not for how we held our laws, our faith, our morals, or how many of us there even were.


    He had pressed our lines, throwing down his accursed powers left and right, and stilling the infighting among the armies in an instant. In the moments he had arrived, he had killed thousands; there remained not a single survivor in the area immediately adjacent to him, a zone of death so absolute as to be barren as the moon: scorched, flayed, scoured, the very ground churned upside down and inside out, as though to bury the flagellated remains of those he had consumed.


    But then, this. As he had pressed inwards towards the bulk of the forces, as they had turned their focus upon him, as Exhuman powers and exotics and humanity''s arms combined as one, for the first time in Earth''s history, brought to bear against a threat greater than all--


    His advance slowed. And then stopped entirely. The killing relented, the offense surged, and hope sparked alight.


    And in that hope I saw ultimate despair. Because I knew, from fighting more Exhumans than nearly any present, that we were not winning.


    That which Justice sought to break was not our ranks or our lives, it was our hope. We were being toyed with, and the thought of that sickened me.


    From my position above the field, I heard the first turning. The swelling of the voices of man, tempered with the first yelps of panic. And then soon, it became all-consuming. I looked down and saw the latest of Justices'' apparently-infinite tricks that he deployed against us.


    People were being attacked by their own shadows. Lines swelled with an infection from within, as the number within the ranks suddenly doubled, consumed by infighting. Black, hazy beasts, solid as steel and with raking claws emerging from the earth itself, slashing at all nearby with ferenic madness.


    It was as though a switch were flipped. Again, Justice was advancing, floating at my level, motionless in the air, except to flow forward with it. The attacks against him ceased entirely, as all were consumed with the newest threat upon their lives.


    The shadows, honestly, seemed only a moderate danger. They were destroyed with hardly a touch, being made of shadow after all, and their claws were ineffective against the exosuits at least, too slow to match the inhuman reflexes of the Oasian toads, and within range of the Exhumans. But they demanded address, and while the chaotic melee erupted, Justice advanced unhindered.


    "We''re goin'', yute," a voice crackled in my ear.


    And with those words, from all angles surged what I might call my friends. Colleagues, definitely, and each of whom I had worked with in the past, on an op, or a bounty, or just in casual discussion over the water cooler to complain about the payments which payroll was not processing quickly enough.


    The Hunter''s Association was with me, to a man. Even the icers, even the neophytes, all had been polarized by the calamity we faced. All had been engaged through the evacuations, had family who were dead or displaced, had waited with the patience with which all hunters must possess, waiting for the time to strike.


    And the time was now or never. The hunters erupted from the ranks, tearing through the shadows as though they were a mere fog, and focused their attacks on the uninhibited progress of Justice.


    A few were like me, airborne in some manner or another, but the majority followed in Deej''s paradigm, customized exosuits, modded for enhanced weaponry and superlative maneuverability. To strike fast and hard, that was the essence of an effective hunter.


    My visor nearly whited out. Explosions of every conceivable quality erupted across him. Fire and ice, storm and corrosive, gas and concussive -- the air around Justice was so saturated with color and light that the sun seemed to go grey by comparison.


    I had seen him fight before, and knew that Justice was not so resilient as to be able to survive that. He did possess an ability to separate components of his body, to knit them, and to rebind them onto himself. But a blast such as that would have left him with no body left to knit.


    And so it was, I located him moments later, a good sixty feet from where he last floated, forced to evade the attack, and even so, frantically disassembling parts of himself caught in the blast. My visor automatically projected the new location through the network, and all the hunters fired upon him again.


    This hope was not one born of false construction. If we hit him, he would die. And every evasive maneuver we put him through was proof that false gods did bleed.


    Yet the flying man was not content to recover and to run. He had made us, and in one slashing gesture, I saw the ground tear open, and two of my associates were no more.


    Still we rained down fire, it was all we could do. As we pressed forward, as the distance shrunk, our attacks grew harder to evade, and I saw him retreating further and further from the lines.


    "Hunters, withdraw!" Deej ordered. And as one, we did. "Help wit'' those shadows, free up da'' ranks."


    Deej had family in Kansas City, I knew. I did not know if they made it out on time. The fact that he kept a cool head and did not overextend our position meant nothing -- even if they had all been slaughtered before his eyes, I trusted the man to retain himself, no matter what. His voice was cool as iron, but from fury or simple intensity, I could not tell.


    We descended into the battle lines, each of us superior to the rank-and-file in mobility, if nothing else, and where we struck, the tides turned. The shadows were banished, and suddenly freed of their own tormentors, those we aided were able to abet their neighbors. Like ripples, we worked, purifying the ranks for a time.


    Until Justice once again threatened, newly mended, and approaching with renewed menace.


    This time, we had the line at our backs, firing what they could while we rushed him. Again, blinding explosions harried him through the sky, each time seeming only moments too slow, his movement like a slideshow in the strobing blasts, vivid images of him caught in my eyes of him twisting this way and that, appearing to my left and to my right.


    So much of his menace was gone, to see him no longer still, no longer floating without effort, to know that one errant blast could end it all.


    But even should the menace be gone, there remained yet a certain unfathomable panic, like a scream threatening to rise from our throats.


    We were throwing our all at him. Each of us was as fresh as we were going to be, as stocked and armed and ready, and we could not touch him. In minutes, ammo counts would be going black, missile banks depleted and discarded, bandoliers and reserve magazines going thin.


    To say nothing of the human element; we had him on the run for now, and for the most part, were avoiding his counterattacks. But when we grew tired, when our minds were clouded with fatigue, or worse, despair, for ourselves, or for those who had fallen before us, what would happen then?


    The hunter''s greatest strengths were often ambush and overwhelming force. We were attackers, who sprung closed on an Exhuman and disposed of them before they could get their powers to bear. Ours was not a protracted fight in general, and it was already beginning to show.


    "Fall back!" Deej shouted, and then I heard him grunt through comms as I saw him far below, his exosuit engulfed in flames. Likewise, Aello, my sister in the air screamed as her wing was clipped and she spiraled out of control, impacting the ground with a crunch that forced my eyes shut despite the chaos.


    I took careful aim and fired once, before scattering, a wave of nearly-invisible wires erupting in the air behind me, razor-thin and anchored to the air itself. My shot somehow traversed the minefield, and flew true, hammering the ground at Deej''s feet, and exploding into shards of ice I knew would not puncture his armor.


    The sudden cold, and more, the oxygen devoured by the blast suppressed the fires, enough that Deej could pat them out across his body as his suit rocketed back towards the lines.


    I turned to fire one more departing blast in Justice''s direction, taking the approach to fill the air around him with flak and hope that he flew into it whilst evading the attack of the others, when suddenly, my visor screamed with warnings.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Emergency systems deployed, and my vision went black as my body slammed to a halt in the air, but even so, it was not fast enough. I saw the blood before I even felt it, and held perfectly still as my systems attempted to process what had been done to me.


    Somehow, I''d flown straight into another pocket of the razor-wire, and as I hung motionless, felt at least four places on my body where it had sheared through me. My jetpack had been damaged, two of the arms cut clean off, but had it not been for the emergency breaks, I''d have been in pieces by now. I became acutely aware that one wire had cut through my leg, and was now grinding uncomfortably against my bone, inches away from shearing it off entirely.


    More of the wires had brushed me but my armor had held, or pushed them aside. I was fortunate to be alive. Prepared, but fortunate nonetheless.


    I took slow, careful breaths as I attempted, inch-by-inch to reverse and extricate myself. But it would not do, any backwards motion would require a loss of upwards thrust, and even the millimeters of that difference would embed the wires in me further. I hung here, hooked, tears building in my eyes as the pain of my body began to fully register. As proximity indicators warned that Justice was now fully within range, that if he wanted, I would die.


    The other hunters had rejoined the lines. Deej was telling me I was going to be okay. He always was weak to those kinds of white lies, no matter how competent a leader.


    And then, even he went strangely silent, and I knew why.


    Justice hovered over my shoulder, seeming to pause to survey the scene. The hundreds of thousands of men and women beneath us, armed with powers and weapons never before assembled, the greatest army ever raised on Earth, fighting shadows and struggling to regroup for yet another ineffective push.


    "They will break," he said. His voice was as cold and black as the dried blood on his hands.


    "Fuck you," I spat.


    "You--" he turned and looked at me, with eyes that writhed. My visor couldn''t depict them properly, an error almost. But even so, I could see how inhuman he was, what a terrifying monster lurked behind those human-shaped eyes. "--you will face Justice."


    "I am justice," I informed him. "I am God''s sword, and humanity''s shield. I cut down the blight such as you--"


    I suddenly twisted in the air, sickeningly; the metal wires embedded in my flesh pulled at my insides like a thousand fishhooks. I gasped, panting heavily, several times, infirm shallow breaths, that at the end, came with choking blood.


    "I AM JUSTICE," he boomed, his voice echoing inside me with raw emotion I could feel, but could not place. Panic, fear, guilt, paranoia...even rapture, it was all of those things at once, and more. "I WILL PURIFY."


    "You''re insane," I gasped. "You''re just...you''re Liev Bareletti, a murderer...and an Exhuman, and a...fugitive. And if you...think that these...deaths will improve the world...you know nothing."


    He stared at me with renewed intensity. "Liar!" he screamed. "Parasite! I am Justice, and I will purify this earth. I will break them, and what comes next will be pure!"


    "How do you see that happening?" I spat. "Drive humanity to extinction and govern a world of...fucking dogs and pigs? Or will you rule...and¡­" I coughed, aware of how wet it felt in my throat. "...and all your kingdom will be naught but purging and scouring...until even the resilience of man fails...beneath you?"


    "Silence!" I jolted sideways again, and gaped anew, as the razor-wire dug deeper into my flesh. I couldn''t see anymore through the tears. My stim patches were out of reach, and the pain was more than I could stand.


    But I would not be silent. If I were to die, I would do as Jesus once had, telling Satan to begone.


    "There are¡­" I coughed "only...two options. Either...your accursed-powers...grant you immortal life...and you will be forced to anguish...in the hell you have created here...for all eternity...or you will someday die, and hell shall be waiting. Whichever way...you will discover your inconsequence. You will know eternal suffering...while those you have oppressed...will sit at the right hand of God."


    He stared at me, his face unfathomable, his eyes, inhuman. He showed no reaction, no emotion at all. And yet, he stared at me all the same, while the battle raged beneath us, beyond his notice.


    I hoped I had somehow gotten through to him. I hoped he regretted all, and spent his life in purgatory, and his death in hell. I hoped a great many things, finding myself at the end of the line, as it were, with still so much left unaccomplished.


    He was still floating, staring, listless, when half of his body spontaneously detonated, the ripples and gore from the blast, pushing me further into the wires, and further away from consciousness. I saw him scramble, even as he fell, chunks of his flesh leaping off my visor to re-assemble into his body. And then I heard and felt the sonic boom of the rifle round that had blown through him.


    "Hang in there," I heard a familiar voice, tense with focus and worry. "Or, I guess...bad phrasing. We''re gonna get you out."


    I felt something touch my leg gingerly, but I was too far gone to even glance to see. It was not until I felt a familiar tugging sensation, not of my body, but of my whole, and then found myself on the ground, looking up at a pair of smiling faces that I understood.


    "The cuts are deep, but clean," Jack said. "With minimal treatment, you should be fine."


    "I''m just glad we got here in time," Tower grinned.


    My mind staggered at seeing them. Were they a hallucination in my death throes? Or angels sent by God?


    "I''ll take her back. Go for the next one," Jack said. Tower nodded, and began moving impossible quantities of ground from under him, throwing enormous fistfuls into the air, where they hung, like stardust.


    And then, with another tug, after long seconds, I found myself on a bed, indoors, crowded with personnel in white masks and bloodstained aprons crowded around the wounded.


    "You''re going to be fine," Jack smiled at me, more convincing by far than Deej''s empty words. "He didn''t get your lungs or heart, and the rest, they can patch up. "I''ll see you later, Karu--"


    He turned to go but I grabbed his arm somehow, and he turned back to cock his head at me.


    "How...is this?" I asked. "That you...come to be here?"


    He smiled at me, his eyes glinting. "You probably missed it, but Athan of all people came on the television. He made a very passionate plea for all humans and Exhumans who were capable to come together and make this stand. And after hearing that...I couldn''t just stand by and hide anymore." His grin broadened. "Actually, Steffie was the most adamant. She said, even if she didn''t know what she could do, she''d be here. And so she is, right in the thick of it."


    He closed his eyes and looked out sideways with a sigh. I imagined his sight-beyond-sight let him keep track of her no matter the chaos. "She''s quite amazing, you know. With her experience in operations, managing the New Eden resistance, she has unique experience in Exhuman management. She''s proven herself quite invaluable. It makes the few lives Tower and I are able to save seem paltry by comparison."


    "Well...I for one...appreciate your efforts," I said, attempting poorly to return his smile. "Let me not detain you further. I thank you for the risk you took today."


    "One of your hunter friends took the shot, otherwise we''d never have gotten close," he shrugged. "Though yes, I don''t intend to ever get that close to him again." He shivered at the thought. "If you will excuse me."


    I let him go, and blinked, and in that moment he was gone.


    I fell back into the bed as doctors began to work me over. It was as Jack had said, the damage was not as severe as it could have been, and the cuts were as clean as anything. If it were not for damaged musculature, I might be up in a day, even. Although by then, I knew not what the face of the world might look like.


    So it was not long before I was deported from the emergency tent and left to wallow in recovery. Surrounded by miserable, groaning patients, but the ones who would make it, I felt useless, alone, despite being surrounded. Others were fighting and dying, and I would lay here, useful as a side of beef.


    At least I had my visor, I supposed. I could still track the fight somewhat through what feeds I had from the ''net and from the other hunters, and through optics, if the fight ever drew near. But I hardly needed any of that to know.


    We were fighting a tenth of Justice''s true power. As I''d suspected before, his aim was not to defeat us, but to let us know, in no uncertain terms, that we were defeated. We thought we were defending a city, but the city was never at risk -- it was our defense he was after. He would permit us hope, only to snatch it away, as many times as it took, until our hope was gone.


    It was sadistic. And a part of me felt vindicated in supposing I knew the truth of Exhuman nature all along. To be beheld and feared, to destroy, for no reason other than destruction, this was Exhumanity, and this was Justice.


    I leaned back into my pillow, drawing shallow breaths, as the deeper ones hurt.


    No. I was merely cross. Angry at myself for my failure, and rewarding it with cynicism. Just as much as an Exhuman had crushed me, an Exhuman had spared me as well. And there were hundreds more of them along the line, fighting with all their strength and virtue for the humans on their sides and at their backs.


    Perhaps it was in the nature of Exhumanity to be destructive and cruel, but the humanity it infested could always shine through. Paragons of virtue, like Ashton, could and would always rise greater than their natures.


    Or so I hoped. I stopped philosophizing and turned on the news report, watching the climactic battle from above.


    We were told that Skyweb was aligning, that it would rain down with thunderous force, and Justice might fall, and I shook my head. Skyweb had already failed to dispatch him once, and here, it would be yet another rung on the ladder to despair for us to climb. He would survive it, and in so doing, win another hand. Fortress armors were deploying to the field, and I feared they would be more of the same.


    I could not endure how much was occurring and how easily I dismissed it all, and turned off the news before I sunk back into cynicism.


    We had one hope that I knew of. The Ashtons and the AI. And though I knew not what they were up to the fact that they had not yet returned triumphant meant that they were working hard. And so I took off my visor, and all the knowledge and cynicism of the world, propped myself upright, closed my eyes, bowed my head, and prayed.


    I prayed for them, and for all the good people here. Prayed for God to spare the virtuous and smite the wicked, as he had done times immemorial. Prayed for my friends...and for myself.


    I prayed until I cried as I realized the deaths of so many I knew. I visited their faces and memories. I prayed with all my strength, as long as I could, until my failing body could do no more, and I found myself dizzy from sitting up, and collapsing on my pillow.


    Even as my eyelids grew too heavy to bear, as the dark took me, as I knew I would wake to an uncertain future, I prayed.


    Please, God, please. Hear me. Just this once.

 441. 2252, Present Day. Another Earth. Athan.

    "You said two days!"


    I was shouting at AEGIS again, even though I knew it wasn''t her fault. None of this was her fault. It was mine, and that was why I was shouting.


    "I said...two days, maybe less, if she doesn''t succumb to her burns," AEGIS replied. She was cradling Lia in her arms, gentle as anyone had ever been, but still my sister seemed to labor in misery. Her breathing was ragged, and every breath which caught in her burned lips made my heart scream in my chest. Put her down! Spare her that pain! Anything to lessen her suffering.


    "You said two days! And Tobias didn''t last two minutes. Is Lia going to just sieze up and die like he did, AEGIS? I thought we had time! I thought we could do something!"


    I knew I was just screaming at her. It was like I saw myself doing it, but couldn''t stop. She was the one carrying my sister, she was the one with the medical expertise, she was the one who''d pulled us all out of the radiation before they''d turned into char like the corpse we''d left behind.


    I''d done nothing but scream and yell and cry. I wasn''t helping. But I couldn''t stop. Every time I tried to, tried to force us a few steps forward, to...pick some random direction amidst all the brown and dust, and just...head go anywhere which wasn''t here, anywhere there might be a portal home, where Lia could get to a hospital and be saved¡­


    Every time I tried to take that step, I caught sight of the burns across her face, her arm swinging like a corpse''s, and I was screaming again. Uselessly. Not even at AEGIS, not even at myself, not even at God.


    Just. Screaming.


    "Athan, come on," she said, with a gentle shake of her head that wouldn''t reach Lia. "You''re right that...her only chance is for us to find...something."


    She also scanned the horizon. Same as I''d been doing for minutes now. And if she saw something other than the endless, dusty, dead expanse, it didn''t show on her face. She took a deep breath, and then began walking with deliberate, even strides.


    "Where are you going?" I shouted.


    "This way."


    "Why that way? Why not any fucking other way."


    She took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly, turning to stare at me over her shoulder.


    "I don''t know, Athan. I don''t know where we are, or where the portal is, or anything. But we know the portal isn''t here, so we should walk."


    "Just walk at random?" I was screaming again. "Just bumble around and hope that God''s fucking kind enough to put a way home in our path, after all the fucked-up bullshit He''s put us through?"


    It was killing me to do this to her. I had just had the exact same thought, that walking anywhere was better than standing here. But somehow, hearing it from her mouth pissed me off. Everything pissed me off, I was so pissed and fucked and screaming, when all I wanted to do was die.


    I tried to be like her, to take a deep breath, but my blood was pumping too hard even for that. I couldn''t close my eyes without seeing Lia burned onto their insides. All I could hear was the silence that followed Tobias'' last ragged breath, echoing forever in my head, the silence that was crawling across my sister.


    I wanted to be sane and reasonable and proactive. And I just...couldn''t. Lia was dying in front of me, needed me now more than ever, and...she deserved better than I was. I was just this mountain of ineffective trash, a filthy Exhuman who''d never been good at anything but killing people, no matter how much I pretended I always tried the opposite. I was worthless, not just to her, but everywhere. And right now was just the proof, the slap in the face that reality loved to give when you could take it least.


    She''d die, and I would waste her last minutes doing nothing about it. The tiny glimmer of hope to save her was just a mockery, to give me one last chance to demonstrate what a failure I could be. To add one more onto the pile.


    Gracefully, balancing Lia so that she wasn''t stirred, AEGIS kicked me in the face, the bridge of her foot cradling my nose as I went down.


    I stumbled from my back, looking up to see her standing there, leg still raised, lowering deliberately, gently, the hem of her short dress dropping like a curtain over a flash of pastel panties, the most colorful thing on this planet, shying away.


    "Athan, with all due respect, get a fucking hold of yourself," she said, her voice still gentle. "Walk. Do something. Lia is not dead yet."


    "DO WHAT, AEGIS?" I pounded my fists against the dirt. I was still impetuous and immature, just from the ground, now.


    "I don''t know. I''m not you. We need to find the lab they described. We know it''s underground. Can you use your powers like you did in Karu''s house, to feel around down there? Or maybe your speed, to scout a perimeter around us? Or get your exoframe functioning again so you can bound instead of limp? Or maybe that trick you pulled off in New York, and levitate yourself with magnetism, to get a bird''s-eye view?"


    Her breathing was slow, even, as were her words. But despite how calm she was forcing herself to be, I could tell she wasn''t just speaking down to me physically. She knew what garbage I was being right now, and she knew that Lia didn''t have time for it.


    And she was right. I was worse than useless right now. She was the only one who could help, and I was being an active detriment.


    "So maybe pull yourself together, Athan. Just a little bit. If you want to have a chance to save Lia."


    She was right. I...did. Did need to pull myself together. I needed to breathe and think and¡­


    And pull myself together. I didn''t have the words to think of it in any terms but what she''d said. I needed to be more than useless if I was going to help save Lia.


    But I couldn''t do that. I''d been trying. I''d been failing. All I felt was panic and infectious, stupid, blind...more panic, when I saw her. I couldn''t just force myself to make sense.


    "Just go," I said. "I''m...I''m useless. Please."


    It wasn''t eloquent, but she understood. She gave me a sharp nod...sharp as she could muster without stirring Lia.


    "I''ll find it. And then I''ll find you, okay? Keep your phone on, with how dead this world is, I can actually track you by it."


    "Thank you. Thank you AEGIS. I''m so sorry."


    "I understand." She paused. "I''m going to hold onto her. I want you to get up and help me look when you can. I don''t think just sitting here is good for you...but I understand. I''m going now."


    And then she began away with long, even strides, much faster than before, and I realized again, it was me holding her back.


    Hadn''t I always been? AEGIS was so supremely competent. She was a perfect woman, by design, capable of anything, and anything she couldn''t handle, she could adapt to. Given enough time and resources, she could even put herself into a new body or teach herself an entire new skillset to handle a problem.


    And what did I do with my time? Learn some engineering nonsense that''d never help anyone? Train at fighting, so resolutely focused on beating Dragon, only to still lose to him because of my stupid exoframe, because of my stupid decisions to get myself mutilated? And then, after all that, didn''t even commit myself to fight him in the end. Just our ''date''.


    Every rescue attempt I''d made, every friendship I''d tried to protect, every world-doctrine I''d tried to rewrite, had any of it ever been for anything? Had things ever turned out better for my involvement?


    As I laid there on the dust of another Earth, captivated by how useless I was in helping the one person closest to me, these are the thoughts that berated me.


    Even if I''d never turned Exhuman, I wasn''t that great a football player, I thought. Cal had given me a scholarship, but that didn''t mean I''d ever cut it in the majors. Dad had once told me that only two percent of college players ever went pro, and he was convinced I was that two percent.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    At the time, I was young and stupid. At the time, I was following his plan, because he seemed like he knew everything, and I was just along for the ride in my own life. At the time, I thought, of course he was right.


    If I saw clearly now, how rough that two percent was, how very, very likely it would be that I was the ninety-eight percent, was that considered growth? Or had I just grown cynical, disillusioned? What, really, is the difference between that and wisdom? Isn''t knowing that you aren''t good enough still knowing?


    AEGIS said that if she got help, Lia had a ten percent chance at living. Playing pro had once seemed such a foregone conclusion for me, and this was five-hundred percent of that likelihood.


    But the other ninety percent, that was nine-hundred percent more likely, still.


    I closed my eyes and shut out the numbers. This had never been about numbers in the first place. I''d already beaten the odds just by being an Exhuman. One in a million. And then to have survived my first week? One in a billion. To have done all the things I''d done, to ascend through the XPCA, not once, but twice? To cause a global event in Japan, and escaped? To have destroyed Eryendria? To have been spaced by Justice and survived? Or to be the first human from our Earth to set foot on this one?


    One in however many people there ever had been.


    There were so many bad memories. All the lives I''d taken...or as I''d been phrasing it, ''been forced to take''. But that was just whitewashing my past, I''d done it and they''d died. The least I could do was call it what it was. I''d worked so hard to protect people, Steffie, Whitney, Karu, Tem, Moon, and Lia. And each time, I''d had to make choices, had to hurt others to get to them, to get what I needed to reach them.


    I''d made the decisions to put myself and my friends first, I understood. Everyone we killed in Japan, they were casualties of my choices to pursue Moon. It wasn''t because they were throwing themselves at me, or because of some fucked-up culture of Exhuman hate.


    I killed them. Because they were between me and what I wanted. That was all there was to it. That was what Karu had been trying to explain to me, ever since her breakdown. She was right, all along. Intentions didn''t keep people alive, throwing my lives at others'' wasn''t selfless, helping others because doing so felt good, and doing so because I felt bad were not the same thing.


    I felt bloated. Stupid. Immature. Why had all of this hit me now, when Lia''s life was hanging in the balance? And how long had I been denying the reality of who I was and why I operated, instead of accepting the truth? After all my talk on the subject, I was still in blind denial all along.


    When I sat up, I felt lighter. I realized I was breathing regularly again. My head was still spinning with all the thoughts that had coursed through me, but much of my feeling had seemed to drain out of me, carrying a lot of my ego with it.


    I was insignificant, selfish, and immature. But I was also one of the two people on this rock who could help Lia. If there were obstacles in my way, I''d kill them, because Lia meant that much to me, not because I was being forced to or had no options. I could be honest with myself about that.


    I stood up, and stumbled. My exoframe had taken some serious punishment from the radiation. I flipped open the service panel and put those engineering skills I''d picked up from Whitney to a purpose. Some of the diodes and circuits had degraded, some of the wires had gone brittle and burned. I did what I could, massaging infinitesimal amounts of electricity through the circuits'' pathways and scouring blockages, melting tiny blobs of solder off of connections and onto the boards to bridge whatever damage I couldn''t manage. Salvaging lengths of wire from some connections to mend others.


    I was just happy that AEGIS was built to be shielded against radiation. If her systems had gone up like my legs, Lia would already be dead.


    It was sloppy work without tools, but when I stood up, I stood up successfully. I took a deep breath, and then started the opposite direction AEGIS had left.


    My head felt shockingly empty and light, and I didn''t want to see Lia and cloud it up again. I felt like thoughts had been pushed out of me, and in their place was just direction. I had a simple task, and I could do that, and I could worry about everything else later. For now, find the portal, everything was riding on that.


    I made it maybe twenty feet before I had to stop, and found my emotions again.


    Tobias was here, exactly as we''d left him, along with the other corpse AEGIS had found in the crater. He seemed...at once, dried-out from the burns, but also seeping blood, black, cracked flesh, with seething red beneath.


    Thinking more clearly now, it was obvious that he''d taken a lot worse burns than Lia had. AEGIS had pulled me out of the crater first, then Lia, then him. And she''d made a mistake there -- if she''d been thinking clearly, she''d have remembered I was immune to radiation and pulled me last. Lia might not even be in danger if she was pulled first, but that was neither here nor there. AEGIS loved me most, and so she saved me first, and I''m sure that she was beating herself up about it even now.


    But she was still doing her best for the people who were left, and so should I. All I could offer Tobias was an apology, and the thought that he probably would have wanted to be left on another world, even if we couldn''t bury him, before moving on.


    I''d just turned to go when I heard scraping in the dirt, and turned, finding AEGIS there, a little out of breath, her eyes wide.


    "Hide!" she hissed.


    I blinked at her, not sure where there even was to do so. But I followed her lead as she bounded carefully to a shallow impression in the ground and lowered Lia into it, before the two of us dropped to our chests beside her.


    "Hide from what?" I asked.


    "Shh."


    We laid there, a tumult of thoughts buzzing in my head, as we peered out over the two dead bodies.


    I understood AEGIS'' insistence on hiding and quiet. It made perfect sense if there was something here. What I didn''t understand was what could possibly even be here. This world was completely ruined, as far as I''d seen, just dirt and glass, even much of the natural geography blasted away so much that I couldn''t tell where in America we were even supposed to be.


    It was possible there were other survivors, like Ajax and Celia. But if so, why would we hide? And then, there were the robots who came through the portal, I supposed--


    I figured it out just as they came into view. Two of them, hovering on trails of blue plasma, rippling across the landscape about as fast as a brisk jog. They were lumpy things, covered in bulges which were crested with sensors, short antennae sticking out of them at all angles, and some cables hung from their exterior, connecting different parts of the machine to itself while draping under them like a cape.


    They moved with intention towards the bodies, and as they approached, I saw that amidst the cables swaying under them was also a set of manipulators. Efficiently, precisely, they took opposite ends of the charred body and picked him up with spindly silver arms, hovering back the way they came without hesitation.


    Why they''d come here, why that body and not Tobias, how they knew it was here, or we were here, or we weren''t here, I didn''t understand.


    But what I did get, what was clear as anything, was AEGIS and I rising in unison once the drones were a fair distance away, scooping up Lia, and launching ourselves after them, mimicking their pace to maintain this distance.


    I didn''t need to know who or what they were. They were fulfilling some sort of purpose in recovering the dead that I didn''t care about. But they were taking the body from this nondescript piece of charred Earth to some other place, and the only reason for that would be if there were something there. Whether it was a crypt or a city or just a pile of charred bodies, we''d find something.


    And that was a fuckton better than all the nothing around here. So we ran.


    For most of ten minutes, we jogged after them, keeping them in sight but not getting too close. With the number of sensors sticking out of them, I had to assume they''d seen us by now, but if they had, they gave no indication. Steadily they went, hovering over shallow hills and down trenches without pause, their cargo swinging in the air between them.


    Until, at once, they were gone. They just dipped low, dropped out of our sight, and didn''t come back up.


    AEGIS swore and increased her speed, and I doubled that. It took me twenty or thirty long strides to reach where they''d vanished, and I very nearly shot right over it, having to crack my heel against the ground to stop myself, with the breaks and stabilizers of my exoframe being some of the systems I''d salvaged to get it working again.


    But I understood. We wouldn''t be able to follow them in there, certainly not at a distance. But that hardly mattered, compared to what else was in there, I knew.


    AEGIS joined me in a second, and let out a small "Oh!"


    "It''s just like they described," I said.


    It had once been gleaming silver, and I knew that a few floors under the surface, it still would be. But from here, it looked more like an antlion''s trap, a simple funnel of dirt, almost completely obscuring the straight lines and harsh metal surfaces of the punctured underground structure.


    The way the drones had gone was almost like an entrance, a caved-in hole of twisted metal, exposed wires and pipes and structure, punched straight through by an attack from the old war, or by desperate survivors who''d clawed their way in after. Or maybe even before.


    But teeming under the surface, those survivors had found no more salvation than the surface offered. Deadly robots, a swarm thick enough to constantly probe through the portal. The portal we needed to get Lia home.


    AEGIS whispered, "The lab. Ramanathan''s lab."


    "We must have been meant to find it. By Mage, I mean."


    "It was pretty close. Do...you think there''s a reason for that? Like, the angle-gate we took, it was pretty close to the portal that the robots come through...um, back on Earth. Do you think that kind of proximity applies on this end as well?"


    "I don''t know," I said. "I don''t know the first thing about how proximity works when we''re talking dimensions and ''probability-space'' and any of that junk. But it''s here, and so were we so...either yes, or it''s just another amazing coincidence that makes me think Mage is behind it all."


    She nodded, but didn''t say anything further, just began a careful hands-free descent, her toes flexing for grip with every sandy step. I went down ahead of her and gave her whatever support I could offer.


    "Thank you," she said, as we touched down on the flat surface, the barren world now just a crack in the ceiling above us. "For...for um,"


    "No, I get it," I said. "I''m sorry."


    "I''m sorry too, for yelling at you."


    That made me snort. "You were definitely not the one yelling."


    "Well if my arms weren''t full...I would have been."


    We paused, a lot of things going unspoken. I had to wonder if I would have been able to let those words go by without saying them, just a few short hours ago.


    But I was changed, and our situation was dire. What we didn''t say would have to do, as we both turned towards the darkness of the next floor down and entered into the parallel-dimension Ramanathan''s Lab.

 442. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Cosette.

    It felt like we were the last to arrive, but I knew that couldn''t be the case. I''d been in the XPCA long enough to know it held its fair share of unmotivated jackoffs, despite the reputation for selflessness and zeal they tried to enforce. Most people joined up thinking they''d be humanity''s last line of defense against the Exhuman threat. Somehow, some joined up thinking nothing at all.


    Things had turned hairy there for a bit. For the second time, my permissions and rank were revoked from under me, and it didn''t feel any better than the first. The good news was, I was overseeing Moon and Tem at the time, and as soon as they successfully resisted arrest, they came for me, and the MPs were a lot less eager to try to cuff them than they''d just been with me.


    Still, we were apparently all about that fugitive life again. As soon as things had gone sour, I knew Athan was somehow in the middle of it, and with Justice cracking a shit-egg on America''s face, there really was only one place we''d find him. And find him we would.


    So we had the motivation. We had the direction. What we did not have was a ride. Come to think of it, whoevers'' armored truck this was supposed to be would be the last to arrive. So we''d beaten them at least, which was a positive point.


    Though it seemed more like a negative as we began that final descent towards Vegas, the dark desert crowning the narrow ribbon of road we were following, more vehicles going the opposite way than ours, by far, as the evacuees poured out of the area. From here, it felt like we could see everything.


    Justice was somehow easy to spot, despite being just one man in the sky. He was constantly illuminated as the vertex towards which all the streaking fire was converging, and from which death was originating.


    Below him was that death. There had to be thousands of bodies piled up there, it looked more like sandbags than corpses from the road. But sandbags were arrayed in straight lines, these were splayed wherever they''d fallen, casting long shadows from the fireworks tearing up the night sky. I couldn''t see well enough to know if any were wounded, or if the ones left were truly an accurate death toll. Either way, there were too many; more than I''d ever seen on any mission I''d run. It made my stomach turn.


    Many, I realized, were military. Not XPCA but other branches, who were trickling into the fight as we were, maybe even against orders. Back when it was just the XPCA out here, it was a big thing already, but with the surprise appearance of the Oasians and New Eden, I think everybody realized we were facing a climax. Anyone interested in fighting for America: Exhuman, military, hell, even civilians...they were making their way here, now.


    I glanced in the mirror and saw Moon and Tem staring out the window, two different kinds of quiet on them. Tem looked frightened, and maybe for the first time, I related to her. Moon...was intense. Her own kind of frightening. If attitude alone could kill, Moon would have won us the fight on the spot, and I think all who witnessed it would have been traumatized at what she''d do to Justice. But unfortunately, she had to rely on guns and powers, just like the rest of us.


    Or, rest of them. The Exhumans. Whatever.


    "I think our biggest advantage will be the element of surprise," I conferred, as I turned off the road and made a beeline across the rocky sand. "We won''t be with the battle lines, and Tem hits hard. If both of you can laser him down...well, we know he bleeds. Let''s set that blood on fire and hope it sticks."


    "A question," Moon stated, and I caught sight of her hand raised in the mirror. She did not continue without prompting.


    "This isn''t a briefing, and I''m not your CO. We all got fired, we''re just three stupid women in a van. Speak your mind, Moon."


    "If we are not acting in a professional sense--"


    "Speak your mind, Kaori."


    She nodded dimutely. "What are we to do in the event that our alpha strike is unsuccessful?"


    "What, you mean you don''t think that the three of us are going to swoop in, guns blazing, machismo estrogen pumping, background music swelling, and manage to achieve in one attempt with one stroke what those hundred-thousand soldiers over there are desperately trying and failing to do?"


    "Forgive me. Whatever could I possibly have been thinking?"


    I chuckled. Moon had grown on me somehow, which was impressive, considering when I first met her, I thought she had the charm of a loose thread on a sweater.


    "If that doesn''t take, we''ve got some options. Most of them involve invisibility and running and hiding. But mostly, I want to see if this works."


    "I see. So while we are making an attempt on the world''s most dangerous man, with the hope of attracting his attention, and the death that comes with it, what will you be doing?"


    "Um, I''m not exactly sure. Not like they want me fulfilling an administrative role, I''m sure."


    "I''m sure any role which needs doing, needs filling. There are invariable casualties at all levels."


    "Yeah, but I''m not exactly trusted, am I? They might take any soldier willing, but putting the wrong person in any of the thinking or intelligence roles is asking for bad thoughts and terrible intel. An active detriment, I''m sure they don''t want."


    I thought I saw Moon frowning at me, but when I glanced in the mirror again, saw the same impassive face as ever.


    "Don''t worry, I''ll come up with something," I reassured her.


    "You seem unsure about everything. It is not reassuring."


    "Well this isn''t the most rigorously-planned op, I''ll give you that."


    "Are you also unsure of the contents of the package you had us stop to pick up?"


    "I''ve told you already, that''s none of your business."


    "At this point, everything is my business. If you are concerned I may tell your secrets, I assure you, I stand an excellent chance of dying in the next few minutes, and I suspect the deceased to be excellent secret-keepers."


    "Sorry kid. The bag is my business."


    She went quiet, which was her preferred way of ending a conversation, I think. That just left us with the distant crack and boom of powers constantly going off and munition exploding. Every now and again I''d see a radiant burst amidst the army''s ranks, throwing bodies and scattering them, until the blast faded and all I could see was the darkness of their ranks again.


    We were almost there when I heard a shrill scream from behind me, and whipped around in my seat hard enough to get whiplash.


    It was Tem, but she was directly behind me and I couldn''t see her. Moon was attempting to unbuckle and do something, but it just looked and sounded like chaos to me. I swore as I focused on keeping us driving, when I found myself screaming in turn.


    Something sharp, like razors, drew right down my leg, and we all lurched as my foot suddenly slammed the gas in shock. I clawed at whatever was down there, expecting an animal or something, but felt nothing, just came back with bloody streaks on my fingertips.


    "What the fuck is it?" I shouted, keeping control of the van enough to swerve a rock. I wanted to stop to address the problem, but we were so close now. If we could push on for just another minute, we could stop there.


    "I don''t know," Tem squealed. "It bit me!"


    "An animal?"


    "No animal with which I am familiar." Moon''s tone was tense. "Nor do I understand how it slipped by."


    I glanced down and saw a shadow slipping under my vision, and yelped, pulling both of my feet out of the well and onto my seat. Empty eyes...literal, empty nonexistent eyes, like holes in the darkness peered up at me for an instant before disappearing under the seat.


    "Guys, what the fuck?" I shouted. "It''s got a human face."


    "Tem, don''t!" Moon cried, and I heard and saw her dive across the seats. A moment later, I heard nothing but my eardrums pounding and the ripping of air, as a laser whited out the entire back...and out the side of the van, and into the desert.


    That sent me swerving, with the sudden loss of a quarter of our vehicle on one side. I had no idea how hard it was to drive most of a car, and with my feet not on the pedals. I frowned and gripped the wheel until my knuckles were white, watching our speedometer trickle downwards while we coasted across the rocks.


    I could fix that issue at least. I tapped the dash and brought cruise control online, which maintained our speed without my needing to put my feet down. But the car was listing so badly to the left now, I felt like I was driving it sideways.


    "So much for the element of surprise," I commented.


    "We already lost surprise," Moon said, in Tem''s voice. "This human-faced thing is an attack, I am certain."


    "I got him," Tem explained. "I fried him."


    "I find that very difficult to believe. There''s--"


    Moon gasped as she was cut off, and I could hear the slicing sound, the popping of her skin as her flesh was cut open. Tem screamed again, and the moment I spent glancing back was nearly enough to plow us into a boulder the size of a train, coming up on us sideways, as though out of nowhere.


    "I got him!" Tem explained. "I did, I know I did!"


    "It''s an attack, Tem, use your brain," Moon seethed. "It is some nature of Exhuman power, a genisist, giving life to some aspect to assail us."


    "Well keep your feet up off the floor, that''s what I did. It was lashing at me from under the seat."


    "B-but...I got him¡­"


    I heard them shuffle in their seats, a dripping sound I hoped wasn''t blood, but couldn''t think of anything else it might be. I felt my own wounds, and realized my pants leg was completely soaked through already. The cuts were brutally deep.


    "We''re close enough," I said, disabling the cruise control and letting friction take us down. "We''ll just get out and deal with it when we''re not crammed in a deathtrap."


    Suddenly, we lurched again, and I heard Moon falling over herself and muttering in Japanese some words I was sure her father didn''t teach her.


    "I thought you said we were close enough," she commented.


    "We...I did. We are." I stared with confusion at the readout on the dash, telling me what my own body already knew. We were accelerating, instead of dipping below forty, we were now climbing above seventy. The vehicle -- what was left of it -- trembled in my hands, the steering wheel vibrating like a screw coming loose.


    "Then why are we flooring it?"


    I looked down and saw a look of pure malevolence. The empty human face, almost like a shadow puppet against the driver''s mat. And from the shadows, emerged claw-tipped tendrils, wrapped fast around the gas pedal.


    "What in the actual fuck?" I asked.


    "Is the vehicle broken?"


    "No, it''s the fucking...thing. It''s holding down the gas. Hang on--"


    It was hard to do, pinned up on the seat, but I popped my holster and drew my pistol. Almost at once, the shadow-thing began to slink away, but with my gun in-hand, I was faster, and put two rounds into the floor through its face.


    The blade-things disappeared back into shadow like they never even were, and the car, thankfully, began to slow again. I helped it along by gingerly lowering my bleeding leg and pressing on the brake. I heard Moon clatter again, and thought if I kept this up, I may just learn a new Japanese swear or two. Kusoyaro or something like that.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    All three of us seemed keen to get the hell out of the van, with me stopping only to grab my backpack and throw it over my shoulders. Moon was back in herself, probably so she didn''t leave her vulnerable body laying around for the thing to get, and we were out on the rocky desert, a scant few hundred feet from where Justice was hovering in the air.


    "Okay Tem. Igloo formation," Moon ordered.


    "I understand."


    Made me happy that they had their own little playbook developing. I knew Moon got on well with Tower but...he wasn''t around. To see her bonding with Tem of all people, well¡­


    I mean, I''d care more if we were gonna live. But in the off-chance we did, I made a note to feel happy about it then.


    "Stay with the van. On the roof, I think would be safest," Moon said. "I suspect the animus to be of shadow aspect; avoid contrasting light and dark."


    "Got it," I said, falling back while they advanced. As they went, I thought I could see malevolence in their shadows whenever the sky flashed with light, and hoped mine didn''t look the same. I took Moon''s advice and got up high, where the shadows of the bushes, like so many clawing hands, wouldn''t reach.


    And watched as the two girls worked together to put together a shining, splendid little dome. Igloo formation, I understood. Motes of light, crafted into an impenetrable defense atop them.


    And, I noted, completely incapable of holding a shadow. Nice perk.


    For several minutes, it looked like they were finished, but I didn''t know what next they were planning. They were maybe deep in discussion or planning...or maybe just fortifying the igloo with light I couldn''t detect. Either way, I had a good long time to watch the battle continue to unfold.


    Too long, really. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I began to see the shadow-things everywhere. They were really tearing up the lines, to say nothing of the troops'' focus. Soldiers were antsy, spending more time looking at the ground than at their enemy, and I realized the blasts I''d seen going off in the ranks...they weren''t from Justice, they were the soldiers'' own weapons; guns fired in panic at their own feet, or maybe grenades or exotics seized by a shadow thing. It was demoralizing havoc, to have something like that undermining you while already facing a superhuman threat.


    Although, Justice himself didn''t seem particularly threatening at the moment. He was just advancing, slowly, dangerously. Every once in a while, when someone drew too close, one of the hunters or some rogue Exhuman, or a too-clever shadow ops, he''d annihilate them in a spectacular, flashy way. Ripping open the earth or skewering them into a billion chunks. It was a demonstration and a warning, of what happened when some invisible line was crossed.


    And the real danger was that he was pushing that line towards the massed defenders, inch-by-inch. It wasn''t close just yet, still a few hundred feet away...but I could only imagine the carnage he was promising if he got there. I had to wonder why he was being so deliberate and cruel about it. Some twisted strategy, or simple sadism, I didn''t know.


    When suddenly my view of the battlefield whited out. From above the igloo, a beam of annihilating candescence -- somehow both pure white, and the transparent purple of Moon''s specters -- annihilated the black of the sky and devoured the din of the battlefield with its roar.


    It looked like it caught him dead-on. Nailed Justice straight in the back...as well as a good six or seven feet on each side of him. He was just a shadow now, a sliver of darkness in the stream of pure light, and with every passing second, flecks of the dark blew off and were carried away, torn downstream by the sheer force of light.


    I could see clearly, once my eyes adjusted. I saw hundreds of thousands of shining faces, all lit up as one, all staring up at the glistening splendor which had cut the night. I heard an appreciative ''ooh'', and even cheering.


    Bit by bit, the shadow fell apart. I could only imagine what was happening to Justice inside that beam of light, how much he was disintegrating, and what he was doing to hold himself together. It had been over ten seconds now, and the beam was beginning to waver, losing solidity, losing focus. The purple beam sputtered out first, leaving just the shadow and the light.


    But then even the light began to fade. The beam seemed to shrink in diameter, the intensity of the white began to fade. The sky began to resume its darkness.


    Still Tem held on, like a maniac. Fifteen seconds, then twenty, and still she held. I could hear her screaming from where I sat, her voice echoing strangely across the desert.


    Once, twice, the beam almost went out, only to surge back to life. The black fragments dissolved, floating away like dust. So little of him left...so close...if only she could hold¡­


    And then he was gone. There was no stain to the light, just a pure streak across the sky. Moments after he dissipated into nothing, Tem''s scream fell abruptly short, and all that remained was the afterimage, burned into the eyes of all who watched.


    A long moment passed. And then another. I became increasingly aware of the pounding of my blood in my ears. Of the weight of my head, and the sound of my breathing.


    He wasn''t there. He wasn''t coming back. Was that it? Was that really it?


    A cheer began to erupt from the line, building like a wave. There was still confusion, but all of them were united in this goal. Thousands had died, but hundreds of thousands of them somehow lived, somehow held the line against the world''s most dangerous Exhuman, until we could show up to save them.


    I could almost smile. Their enthusiasm was infectious. But a lifetime of dealing with Exhumans had honed my gut, and it wasn''t ready to celebrate just yet. I scanned the sky, looking for any trace, any hint, any movement whatsoever.


    Except my fucking eyes were all blasted out from the light. Everything I looked at was filled with streaky after-images. I stared at the dark of the ground and forced myself to blink, over and over, like the high-G exercises back when I still had my wings.


    And...there. The shadows...moving, I thought. In a way that didn''t match the tangle of the bushes. I rose to my feet and shouted, but it was just another voice lost to the din. I went for my bag, ripping it off my shoulders and throwing it in front of me on the roof of the van, pulling out everything.


    I heard it before I saw it. Like a bad turn at karaoke, some of the yelling turned bloody. Screams broke out, and with them, confusion, incomprehension, disbelief.


    I saw a man, arms raised in triumph, grin still plastered on his face as he slipped below the crowd-line, his legs cut out from under him. All through the crowd, the shadows attacked at once, tearing holes and plunging blades in silent, black, death.


    Panic ensued. Guns went off everywhere. The ranks were spreading, too thin to be defensible, people backing into each other with nowhere to go.


    And then, from the earth itself, Justice rose over the dome of the igloo, looking somewhat worse for wear, burns across his body and his clothes and hair burned away. I wondered just how much of the beam he''d withstood before he''d managed to swap himself with a chunk of rock.


    But just as he''d commanded the ground to open to let him out, now he opened it under the igloo. He seemed surprised when it continued floating, when nobody fell out the bottom. That might explain the extra minutes they spent, putting in a floor made of light as well.


    Next he slashed at it, and a hundredfold powers unloaded on the light-walls. Every power I could conceive of, and a dozen more erupted from nothing to lash at them -- a tendril of pure fire, streaking currents of acid igniting globs of burrowing tentacles; light and darkness, flaring like strobe and anti-strobe, space rending and torrents of lightspeed hail. All nine layers of hell, come at once, to pound at their door for their insolence to burn a god.


    One of them had to stick. Light was an incredible defense, but it couldn''t beat everything, I was sure. Just because I''d never seen Tem''s defense penetrated, didn''t mean it couldn''t be. Just meant I''d only seen three or four try.


    And this was dozens. Maybe a hundred. More powers than I''d ever seen. Just how had this freak of nature come to be?


    I didn''t stop to ask, just kept moving my hands and emptying the bag. And swearing. Kusoyaro.


    The sound of light breaking was a new one to me, and not at all pleasant, even disregarding the circumstances. It was like someone had set their kettle to boil, and the steam screaming out of it was burning a very, very loud and very unhappy cat, whose only means of escape was climbing a chalkboard. Screeching like I couldn''t believe, and it was all I could manage to hold my ears and close my eyes against the noise, even as I felt one of my ears trickling blood onto my fingers.


    The sound only intensified as he focused his attack. Black blades of something were pressed against the wall of light in a line, slowly sinking in, millimeter by millimeter, forcing their way through the impenetrable defense.


    He spoke, and I could hear it echoing as though he''d said it directly to me, over the screeching tearing as though that were nothing.


    "You will break."


    He clenched his fist, and with it, the blades drove home. The wall shattered, the whole igloo began to disintegrate into harmless, unstable motes of light. I could see the girls, two of them in three bodies, clawing at their fortress, willing it to stay intact, even as it collapsed under them, even as they began to fall into the pit he''d carved away below.


    Tem wasn''t screaming anymore. She was fully unconscious, blown out by her superlative effort at annihilating Justice. Moon was scraping together pads of purple light to hold them up, but something was wrong, something in her powers had been disrupted, it wasn''t holding anymore. She was slipping faster than she was keeping them aloft.


    And Justice just floating and watched, his eyes crawling with malevolence, his hands black with blood, as the girl before him scrambled and fumbled and clawed for her very existence.


    To her credit, when it became clear that it was not working, that she was only delaying her death, she turned on him and fired all she had left in a violet beam that rivaled Tem''s blast.


    And that move, that spiteful, vindictive last throw, ineffective as it was, was what saved her life.


    As Justice was preoccupied with not being roasted alive, I swooped in, as fast as my wings would carry me. I felt the familiar roar of wind in my face, the unforgettable responses of my jetpack responding to my thoughts more than my actions, the blur of the landscape under me as I tore past in a trail of blue plasma.


    I also felt my heart pounding. The blood pooling in my extremities, my lightheadedness. I breathed as I knew I had to, focused on my one task, kept Moon and Tem right in my sights, so that even if I did go hypoxic, I would see them, I would remember.


    But it all came crumbling apart when the pounding in my head stopped. When my heart skipped a beat. My fucking defective ticker, plaguing me still, on my last flight. I needed all the oxygen my body could move, which was an amount far greater than zero.


    All the symptoms I''d been feeling suddenly bit into me with edge. My limbs felt heavy, bloated, swollen, unmovable. My thoughts grew distracted and stupid. My flight slowed, my wings dipped, my breathing went shallow.


    I heard a beep, somewhere far away. My pacemaker kicked in, jolting me, jolting my heart back to service, jolting my brain into awareness, it felt like.


    That was actually just the blood, I knew. But the effect was the same. I caught myself out of a dive I''d started into. I focused on the three bodies falling in front of me, towards an abyss so deep and so black, I thought I might be looking at the other side of the glasslands.


    I felt the pain of slamming into them. Felt Moon clawing at me for a grip, felt Tem''s unconscious body, flopping in the breeze, and Moon''s real one. Thank God they were so light.


    As though inspired, Moon redoubled her attack, the constant beam harrowing Justice, pushing him back, making him burn, making him withdraw...saving our stupid-ass skins.


    "I...I--" Moon muttered, sounding frustrated as she dangled off of Tem''s body in my arms. "I...can''t--"


    Whatever it was she couldn''t do she didn''t say. But it became obvious when she went limp, and I was carrying three limp bodies, and the beam went out.


    Carrying was a generous term, since we were overweight, and headed for a crash. I pulled us up as sharply as I could, trying to eke out any distance possible. We just needed to clear the abyss. The strain of the assent pulled at me, the G''s clawing at my blood and my mind. Just a few more feet...and¡­


    My heart stopped again. I felt dead in the air, felt cold creeping in where warmth should have been through my body. Too late, it felt, the beep, the jolt. We were falling. I was lost, with all the girls in my arms, we were tumbling. The landscape was flipping over itself, again and again, and with my greyscaled, tunnel-visioned, unfocused eyes, I couldn''t tell which was ground and which was sky.


    They were all black anyway. Gravity would sort it out. I just hoped we hit ground soon, because if we spent much longer falling, gravity would do more than just sort us out.


    Somehow, I got my wish sooner than I wanted. I never even saw it coming, just crack, and we were all falling and rolling and tumbling, completely unprepared, completely unprotected. If a sharp rock came along, I''d have been done for.


    But apparently none did. Because I gradually felt the spinning slowing, and realized that I''d stopped, and it was just my head spinning now. I couldn''t see the girls, didn''t know if they''d landed like I had, or hell, if we were at the edge of the pit and they''d both fallen in. I had no idea, and until my body stopped shaking and my blood flowed again, I couldn''t know.


    I realized, none of that would matter. Because there was something in the middle of my vision, and I didn''t have to make it out to recognize him. His face was a mask of pure loathing, pure irritation, as though our attempts on his life tonight had been a real thorn in his side, that much I could make out. And that much made me smile, despite it all.


    But he was flying right for me, and I couldn''t even get my hand to reach for my gun. Of all the thousands of times I''d practiced drawing and firing, muscle memory didn''t mean shit if you didn''t own your own muscles.


    So I laid there. Weak and helpless as any damsel as he approached, given up on all his pretenses of being slow and ominous, moving quickly now, to put a decisive end to the three of us and get back to terrorizing the world.


    I saw he had burns on him. I just wished we''d managed more.


    He zoomed straight for me, silent, deadly. I wondered how he''d do it. I hoped I''d proven myself annoying enough to warrant a quick putting-out. I''d already been toyed with over execution far more than any woman should, and a clean death seemed deserved at this point.


    But he just kept coming. And coming. And...going.


    At the same aggravated clip, he tore right over our heads. I felt him rush past, the wind that held him up, blowing my hair around in the world''s tiniest monsoon.


    And then he was gone, somehow. Just...passed me right by. It was better than a swift death, just not at all what I''d been expecting. I laid there for long moments until my heart got a grip on itself, and my body felt like...well, pain. But better than cold nothing.


    I sat up and looked for the others, feeling panic at not seeing them, until I realized, I couldn''t see me either. I had to do some experimental self-prodding to determine, yeah, I was still here. Just as transparent as a one-line email from a five-star general.


    "This was...the plan," Tem said, her voice brittle. "...that you s-s-said. Invisibility, and...running...and hiding." She coughed weakly, and I could hear the strain in even that.


    "You did great, kid," I told her. "I''m so proud."


    "Ch...Chariot...would...would he be¡­?"


    "He''d be proud of you too. I know it."


    I shuffled upright and felt around until I located both of their bodies, and began to pull. Light, they certainly were, but I wasn''t likely to make it the hundreds of feet we still needed to get back to the lines. Lines which were re-solidifying with Justice''s temporary rampage, putting them out of focus for the moment.


    I had to blink a lot again as something else appeared right in front of my face.


    "Tem?" Jack called. "Are you here somewhere? Tem?"


    "Jack!" I squealed.


    "Colonel Dawn!" he grinned. "You are safe, thank goodness. I welcome the reunion, but perhaps this is not the best place for it?"


    "You said it," I said, gripping his hand. Felt so warm after my own blood took a hiatus. "Provide evac ASAP, Papa-Foxtrot One."


    "Heard and acknowledged, Central," he beamed. "Papa-Foxtrot One, moving out."

 443. 2252, Present Day. Ramanathans Lab. Athan.

    It was a bit like archaeology, descending into the lab. The uppermost floor and a half were weathered, sun-beaten, and sandswept, the luster gone out of the ubiquitous metal walls and pipes, sand and dust heaped in every corner.


    To go back in time, to see them in a pristine state, we just had to keep going down. The metal of the halls reflected the lights of my swords, and every now and then, I''d pause at seeing a hint of movement, only to realize it was my reflection in a still-intact pane of glass.


    There was still damage, mostly as though to be inconvenient as possible. I''m sure it was a result of the blasts, but it almost felt like an earthquake had come through; some hallways were collapsed, and we''d only been able to descend four flights in the stairway before finding it blocked, and forced to cross the labs to find another way down.


    Another half-dozen floors later, and I could put my swords away. I didn''t, but I could have, as the lights were back on, a buzzing, emergency-red glow that must have been seething for years now.


    "You think they have the same kind of deulith cells we do?" AEGIS asked, stepping carefully over twisted shearing in the metal floor. "Three years is a long time for a backup battery, they must have some kind of generator."


    "The killer robots seemed powered just fine," I agreed. "And the portal''s operational...I dunno if the machine has to work to keep that open or what. But yeah, something."


    As we walked down the halls, my exoframe clacking with every step, I saw AEGIS peering with intensity through every door and window we passed. It was killing her, I knew, not to go in there and devour every scrap of paper and plug into every terminal we passed, especially considering that we were looking for an exit, and we were never coming back.


    And, I supposed, that this was a new world of AI research, and she was an AI. What enhancements could she make to herself or her body by piggybacking off their tech? We''d never know, unfortunately. Great as I''m sure that might be -- for both of us -- Lia came first.


    It was another couple of twisting, labyrinthine floors before I saw movement again, something pulsating in the distance which did not move as I did, like my reflection, and a spark of blue light that didn''t mirror the white of my blades.


    I was already at the front of the column, between the unknown and Lia and AEGIS. But even so, I took another few steps forward, felt my arms rise up as my hands tightened into fists. My swords drew into my periphery as they moved forward with me.


    As I got closer, I confirmed it was a drone. And it was armed, a stubby machine gun dangled from the bottom of the unit, anchored between a set of blue-glowing plasma emitters.


    It was a little bigger than my head, and much better put-together than the units I''d seen outside, recovering the corpse. Smooth armored plating, mostly rounded, but with some angles, and a deep trench around its equator gave it the appearance sort of like the head of a dragon, or lizard. Or very spiky dog.


    The most-pointy bit, the snout, was directed straight at me. Above it, I could see lights of sensors, taking me in, watching my every advancing step with a dozen unblinking eyes. There were a series of mechanical clicks as it weaved back and forth in the air, its gun pivoting under it, but not with menace...just...I dunno, conversationally?


    It was hard to attribute human thought to a floating device with a gun for its only limb. But I did grasp that it was watching me, and it was not pointing the gun at me. The latter of which I was very okay with, not that I was too concerned for my own safety with my shield up. But if they impeded us, or if AEGIS and I had to walk slowly to keep the two of them in my shield, those were more seconds lost on Lia''s chances.


    "Should I...kill it?" I asked, as the two of us crept down the hall. The drone did nothing but pivot on the spot to keep us in sight.


    "It''s not hurting us."


    "It might just open fire the second we turn our backs. Maybe it''s calling for backup right now."


    "If you attack, that''d guarantee a response, I bet. I also kind of doubt a security robot would be programmed to let us go, and then randomly attack later," she frowned. "Doesn''t seem to have any manipulators, just the gun...highly unlikely it''s anything but a security bot."


    "So why''s it letting us pass?" I asked, as we drew level with it. It even seemed to swerve slightly to give us more clearance in the hall. I paused and let AEGIS go by to keep myself between it and them.


    "I don''t know. Ajax said the robots in here were trying to kill them...but it seems...docile. Do you think something happened?"


    I shook my head, trying hard to both keep an eye down the hall we were headed, and not to let the drone out of my sight. "When we got to Ajax'' base, they had literally just put down another drone incursion, so they still seem hostile on that front. The only thing that''s happened here is...us, I guess."


    "And the body."


    "Yeah," I frowned. "Do you think he was important? Like...was he...some target they never killed, and were on high-alert while he was at large?"


    "If so, I don''t know why they''d collect him. I could understand why they didn''t before, he was right in the middle of the rads, and you saw what that did to your exoframe...if they aren''t hardened against radiation, he''d be completely inaccessible to them."


    "So that''s it, then? Some weird glitch or something turned the whole labs hostile, over a charred body?"


    She shrugged. "Or maybe not a glitch at all. Who knows?"


    We''d reached the end of the hall, closed elevator doors and the stairs we''d been looking for. Hopefully this set would take us further than a few flights down. The damage had been progressively less-severe with every floor we''d descended, so at some point, I had to assume we''d get a clear shot at the bottom.


    Although, I didn''t know where the portal was. I was kinda hoping it drew as much power as the one we''d already used, and I could just follow the surge. But so far, I''d picked up nothing on my senses. Even the emergency lighting was so low-power it barely registered to me.


    I gave the drone one last glance as AEGIS pulled open the stairway door, telepathically warning it that if it followed us, it was as good as scrap, when I heard a ding.


    "Ding?" I echoed. "AEGIS was that you?"


    "I think it was--"


    The elevator door slid open, revealing another security drone, which gave us a passing glance as it hovered resolutely in place.


    And next to it, something else entirely, yet very much the same. Another drone, but far more ornate, symmetric, white and gold, with two blue-glowing vertical sensors at its front, a pair of eyes that dimmed and lit as it spoke.


    And, oh yeah, it spoke. In an excited, somewhat-rushed male voice. Unmistakably synthetic, with emphasis placed on every syllable


    "Visitors, here! Cer, waiting long and excited for your presence! Humbled."


    I blinked at it. The thing seemed to bob energetically on its plasma currents. I noted that it was neither armed nor armored like the lizard-head security drone beside it. I definitely considered running it through on the spot, if for no other reason than I didn''t want to deal with anything that excitable.


    "H-hello," AEGIS said with a raised hand. "How...do you...do?"


    "Humbled! Cer''s well-being, our honored guests deign to query. Flattered, awestruck!"


    "Erm, he seems friendly," she commented.


    "If you are friendly, we need help, please. My sister was badly burned...radiation burns. Can you help us get home to treat her?"


    "Honored guests, elevator, enter! Cer, capable of providing assistance. Useful!"


    I took a deep breath.


    Jumping in an enclosed space with a combat drone and a...chatty...weird drone...did not seem like the best of ideas. If we just kept on at our own pace and followed the most obvious path, it was very likely we''d wind up retracing Celia and Ajax''s trail, and wind up at the portal.


    But how long would that take? The two of them were in here for days, and if we turned down this...thing''s hospitality...would it turn hostile? But if I were so worried about it being deranged, I''d be an idiot to accept its help anyway.


    In the end, it came down to minutes. How many minutes would I potentially be throwing away by looking on our own? By taking the stairs instead of the elevator? By being paranoid?


    It just...seemed like such a bad idea. This thing seemed in charge of at least the gun-drone next to it. Maybe it was in charge of all of them. Maybe it was the one sending attacks across dimensions. It was almost certainly dangerous if it was in charge.


    I stepped on the elevator, leaving space for AEGIS and Lia behind me.


    Even if all of that were true, that didn''t mean it couldn''t help us. If nothing else, it lived here and knew its way around. If it showed me to the portal and then tried to kill us, I''d take all the help I could get.


    "Delighted! Elevator, going down," it chimed. The doors closed, and we dropped with alarming speed, the two drones buoying in the air at the sudden shift in gravity.


    "My sister is severely burned," I repeated. "She needs treatment immediately. We know there''s a way home--"


    "Medical wing, our first stop, highest priority," it said seriously. "Chances of survival, high! Probably. Cer, must confess however, is not a medical diagnostic unit."


    "You''re Cer?" AEGIS asked.


    "Designation, Cer, correct!" His voice had gone right back to bubbly. "Flattered! Honored guests, still asking about humble Cer, when he is of no interest."This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    "What is it you do here, Cer?"


    "Cer, stewardship role. Facility, aiding in function, keeping lights on, maintaining scientists'' experiments in their absence, humble work."


    "Do you also run the security?" I asked. "Are you sending the robots to attack our dimension?"


    "Security, autonomous. Cer, capable of calling for security, of course, but separate system, not in Cer''s wheelhouse. Honored visitors, concerned about presence of defense unit?" He laughed, the blue eyes flashing in time with each enthusiastic ha! "Dispel fear!"


    The way he talked felt like it was just barely shy of making my head hurt. I had to wonder if it was originally programmed to speak all backwards, or if the years had not been kind to it. AEGIS had also been locked away underground, and she''d aged quite gracefully.


    But, I reminded myself, she was a completely parallel product of AI. For all I knew, in this world, that kind of intelligence could always degrade over a few years. Maybe this kind of insanity was expected. And if he was designed as a steward, it should have been accounted-for.


    Still made me wonder. "Cer, how long have you been alone down here?"


    The elevator stopped, and the two drones disembarked without hesitation, turning to face us like a limo driver opening the door, at least until Cer turned to the other and made several irritated-sounding electric buzzes and chirps. I braced myself, holding my arm wide, as though that would help shield AEGIS from the incoming fire.


    "Begone!" Cer buzzed. "You, making our visitors uncomfortable, waving that gun around. Another hallway far away, go find to patrol."


    The combat drone seemed unoffended, as it turned and floated off. Cer practically beamed at us, its two blue eyes glowing bright.


    "This way. Helpful!"


    He floated down, cheerily leading us further on. These hallways weren''t red-lit or damaged in the slightest, and I had to wonder just how far down we''d gone. The elevator felt fast, and we''d been on it for quite a few seconds...twenty floors? Thirty?


    It was so spacious and gleaming and well-lit, if you''d told me it was the first floor of a building back at home, I''d have believed it.


    As we went, Cer began again, almost sing-song in his conversation. "Your question, answering: Cer has never been alone, would not know what to do with himself."


    "Okay, when''s the last time you saw people?" I asked.


    "Just now!" He seemed to chuckle. "Cer, joking of course, assuming you meant other than you. Others, attempting to infiltrate the lab from time-to-time, repelled by security. Last incident, several months ago."


    "That''d be Ajax and Celia," AEGIS muttered. "And...Lettie."


    "Three of them, there were. Two, escaped. Troubling!"


    I shook my head. "Those were our friends, Cer. And you killed one of them, someone they loved."


    "Cer, apologizes, did not know these lab-infiltrating persons. Cer, recommending for the future, stop by front desk and acquire visitors badges?"


    "Cer, why didn''t we need visitors badges?" AEGIS asked. "Why didn''t security shoot us on sight, and why did you come up to greet us?"


    "Honored guests! Security, shooting a visitor on sight? Preposterous! You, travelling cross-dimensionally to be here, hospitality is the least we can offer."


    "Well you shot at our friends."


    "They, from this world, like any intruder could be expected to be. Unexceptional. You, the product of much of our work, my work. A success! Medical wing, here."


    A door slid open in front of him, and beyond, I saw a cozy emergency room, six beds in the middle, curtains, brighter lighting than outside. And emerging from their docks in the walls, another set of drones, the very opposite of Cer, absolutely studded with sensors and spindly, fragile-looking manipulators.


    The fact that he''d referred to us as ''his work'' and a success was not lost on me, but that was less urgent than my sister.


    "We were looking for a way home, not a hospital," I said, as the drones advanced on us.


    "Ooh. Your sister''s odds, slim, if not treated immediately," he said. "Best option."


    But, at my words, the medical drones paused in the air. He hovered and warbled with them weirdly, exchanging a set of buzzes and clicks like he had with the security drone.


    "Medical unit''s prognosis, grim. Statement, confirms that your sister is in serious condition, and requires immediate treatment. Honored guests, even should choose to return home, would be advisable to permit at least first aid here, in attempt to stabilize."


    I hated that his tone could switch from bubbly to grim in a sentence. I hated that we found him at all, this wasn''t anything I''d expected or planned for...how could it be? How could anyone have anticipated this floating, gleaming, talkative thing?


    But just because I was being paranoid didn''t mean he was wrong. So far, he''d given us no reason to distrust him...when I''d mentioned Lettie, he''d sounded regretful, almost. And he''d diverted from whatever plans he had to bring us to a medical unit, first-thing, as I''d asked.


    "What do you think, AEGIS?"


    "I think...whatever your take on them, what it said was right. She needs help, as soon as we can get it. She''s...been...fading...in my arms."


    I felt myself go white. I knew why AEGIS wouldn''t be telling me this before, but to hear it now sent a shock of worry down my spine, to splash painfully in the roiling vat of it already boiling inside me.


    "Then...yes," I said, to Cer. "Please. Thank you."


    "Care, the very best we can provide, we will give your sister," he said seriously.


    AEGIS walked into the room, parting the drones with her passage, and laid Lia gently on one of the beds. As soon as she was down, the drones bustled with activity, IV bags and surgical implements appearing as though by magic, lines being drawn and instruments plugged in, the slipskin being carefully cut off of her.


    I got that far before I had to turn away. Her chest under the slipskin didn''t look any better than her exposed hands and face. She was more burn than person.


    And it was strange. I''d seen so much death, so much gore, been responsible for much of it myself, and I''d never had that big of a problem facing it. It wasn''t pleasant, sure, but blood...split flesh, burns...to me that was all just a part of fighting, part of death. If I was at the point where I was prepared to kill, being squeamish about the means seemed ludicrous.


    But I couldn''t bear to see that on Lia. Maybe it was related, maybe I did associate those things with, and only with death. And that''s why I couldn''t bear to see them now.


    "Distressed, our honored guest appears," Cer said with synthetic concern rich in his sing-song voice. "Cer, offering a sedative, to help?"


    A medical drone floated over to us and brandished a small syringe in its spindly metal arms. Offering it, to take, not to jab. "No thanks," I said, and it spun and disappeared right back in with its siblings. "I just...I don''t think I can watch this."


    AEGIS was steering me away, her arm wrapped around my shoulder. "It''s okay. I''m keeping an eye on them. They''re good, they''re very good. Your sister seems like she''s in excellent care."


    "Thank you," I said, reaching up and giving her hand a squeeze. "I''m sorry. I''m just--"


    "I get it. No need to apologize."


    I was still staring at the ground when I felt her lips brush my forehead.


    "You can take a rest if you''d like. We can leave as soon as they''re done stabilizing her. Although...given the state of our world...if you really wanted to give her the best chance, it may be better to keep her here. Hospitals are...probably full. I dunno."


    I shook my head and changed the subject. "Cer. You said we were your work."


    "You. My work, she is not a part of it, nor your sister. Glowing success." He sounded so proud of himself.


    "Yeah, uh, what work is that?"


    He paused, the flickering in his blue optics almost as though he was blinking at me in confusion. "Apologizing. Cer, assuming you had come here for it in the first place."


    "Come for...it? Us?"


    "Apologizing again. Cer, confusing the situation more than necessary, he thinks. Honored guests, not know, why they have come here?"


    "We uh, yeah, don''t know exactly what we''re looking for. We came here because someone told us to."


    He seemed to brighten up, his voice going from questioning right back to bubbly. "Someone, more than that, who told you! Aoede, first of muses. No other, could it be, Cer believes. Oh, to see her handiwork!"


    "Aoede?" I echoed. "That''s a weird name."


    "It''s as he said, she was one of the first muses in Greek mythology," AEGIS confirmed, pushing up her glasses. "Muses were the goddesses of the arts, often attributed to both the beauty and the madness that artists were stricken with, and it wasn''t uncommon for artists to direct their worship to beg the muses for inspiration." She cleared her throat delicately. "But we got the message from somebody we knew, not an ancient fictional being."


    "Somebody you knew, really?" Cer commented, with a sly tone. "Cer, surprised to hear that."


    "Was it someone we knew?" I asked AEGIS, feeling my brow furrow.


    "Well...yeah. It was Soran, right?"


    "Was it, though?"


    She paused and looked at me thoughtfully. Cer seemed delighted by our confusion, and was practically bouncing as he looked back and forth between us.


    When he spoke, it was in an excited almost-whisper, as though he was offering something conspiratorial through a slick grin. "Honored guests, would like to meet Aoede?"


    "That makes no sense," AEGIS dismissed. "We know who sent us the message. It was Mage''s power, taken by Soran. It wasn''t this Aoede character, and if it was¡­" she crossed her arms at him "It''s a power. It''s not capable of communication."


    "Delighted! You, avoiding the question, however; wanting to meet her?"


    I knew AEGIS was stuck on a lack of understanding. She wouldn''t want to go forward unless we knew what we were getting ourselves into. And maybe that was prudent.


    But ever since we''d met Cer, I''d been taking the small leaps in trust to follow him, and he hadn''t yet steered me wrong. One that didn''t seem to immediately imperil Lia, I could do.


    "Sure, let''s meet this Aoede chick," I said. "I''m gonna go crazy just waiting for Lia anyway, right?"


    I was asking AEGIS but it was Cer that replied. "Ecstatic! Cer, bringing her to us, as we speak. This way."


    We followed him next door, into an empty examination room, where AEGIS and I took up the chairs, staring at the empty table as though waiting for a patient. I had to wonder how accurate that feeling was, as we caught sight of two familiar drones buzzing past the window, the door sliding open to let them in.


    Between them, they were still carrying the charred corpse from the crater. The smell of it entered the room with him, and I had to cough as I held my nose.


    "Cer, what the hell?" AEGIS asked.


    "You brought us a corpse? This body is supposed to be some muse?"


    "Disagreeing! The muse, residing within the body. And this man, is not corpse, is an honored guest, the same as you."


    "That''s impossible," AEGIS said. "He was in that crater when we got there. This isn''t a person, it''s a cookie."


    "Yet, alive! Wondrous."


    AEGIS leaned in very close to the still body, unphased by the blisters and char covering the entirety of the skin, pouring over the burned-away holes, the exposed bones, taking in the tattered, dessicated husk, of what was unmistakably a corpse.


    She cocked her head. And then back. And then again.


    "What?" I asked, still holding my nose.


    "It stinks?" she asked.


    "Hell yes it does. Like burning flesh."


    Cer bobbed excitedly as AEGIS frowned.


    "There''s no flesh left to burn. Everything should be sterilized, gone. If anything, it should smell like rot...but it''s so dessicated and irradiated, I don''t know if that would even take. But I think...and this is just a guess...that there''s one other possibility here. That...much as I hate to say it, but Cer might be right."


    "That this is...what, some goddess?" I laughed. And then regretted it, as the scorching smell hit the back of my throat. "Maybe that Hawaiian volcano goddess."


    "No. Who sent us the message, Athan? And who did we follow to get to this dimension in the first place? It''s no coincidence his body was in the crater where we happened to land."


    I felt myself tense in the seat as her words percolated through my head. If he was still desperately trying to regenerate, that would explain why there was still flesh to burn and to stink. But...okay...officially what the hell?


    "Soran?" I asked.


    She nodded. "And somewhere inside him, Mage''s power. Aoede, Cer calls it."


    "The first muse," he bubbled with uncontrollable excitement. "She, first of many. His tone grew even more manic as the blue eyes pivoted on me to ask. "Honored guest, would care to see more?"

 444. 2252, Present Day. Ramanathans Lab. Athan.

    "This lab, ancient. Cer, apologizing for dust and mess."


    You could have fooled me. It seemed like the same almost-offensively shiny metal as everywhere else in the structure. Machines gleamed as though they''d been polished this morning. The only thing to apologize for was Soran''s charred corpse that we''d brought in with us, still reeking of burning flesh.


    AEGIS was frowning as she perused them. "I see what you mean," she said.


    "Well I don''t. It''s spotless."


    "Okay, maybe not the dust. But this instrument, you see the welding on the pipes there?"


    "Yeah, looks sloppy."


    "And that valve is the wrong size. It''s just spliced in with adapters. Made out of whatever parts the creator had on-hand."


    I guess I''d just been taken in by the superficial. The polished sheen on everything was Cer''s doing, but whomever had put this stuff together in the first place had, now that I was looking closer, done kind of a hackjob. I was a little embarrassed that I''d overlooked it so readily, after my internship under Whitney.


    My god, what would she think of this place? I remembered how she was practically drooling at the prospect of taking AEGIS apart. But a whole lab, stuffed with cross-dimensional innovations she''d never heard of? We''d never be able to get her to leave.


    Or eat. She already had a hard time with that one, and this world presumably had no cups of instant ramen left.


    "Cer, understanding if honored guests would prefer to leave. Disgusting. However, this lab, also only means of contacting muses directly."


    "Who built these, Cer?"


    "Single man, built or oversaw building of almost all things in this lab, Cer included. Cer, pleased that his aptitude progressed in time between making these and making Cer. Embarrassing."


    "That''d be Ramanthan," I said.


    "Correct! Awe."


    AEGIS turned to the machines with renewed interest, and I now had a small inkling of understanding why.


    From what we knew, this world and our own both had a Dr. Ramanathan. He was a genius who lived hundreds of years ago, near the time when Exhumanity first appeared. In his earliest works, he was apparently a fervent student of dimensional theory, but at some point made the leap to studying Exhumans instead.


    I kind of cringed inwardly at the thought. Even hundreds of years ago, there was still only one thing that came to mind to suddenly drive a person into sudden, passionate interest in Exhumans.


    But in this dimension, there were no Exhumans. Ramanathan kept on his studies of dimensional theory, and presumably was still working on them, in this lab, when the Sino War happened and America was wiped out. Judging by the damage to the upper levels, and how many craters there were near or at the entrance, they probably all got trapped in here, awaiting a slow death.


    Unless they didn''t, I wondered. Unless that was why there was a gateway created to point at our world. But the implications of a whole mass of survivors flooding in from another dimension seemed...unreal.


    I blinked and found AEGIS watching me.


    "What?" I asked.


    "I dunno what you''re thinking. Something about Ramanathan, I''m guessing?"


    "Yeah. About how...maybe...there''s nobody here, not because they died, but because they left. Cer--"


    "Athan, one more thing," she said seriously. "Do you remember, when you were talking with Ajax, you two disagreed on what year it was?"


    "Uh. No. Wait, yeah. Oh no. No...no!" I held my head, and had to take a step to steady myself. "He said the portal took years for him to go through! The jump or...some kind of void-probability bullshit...when he reached our world, it was years and years later."


    "Thirty years," she said. "Thirty-three, actually."


    I felt like everything was falling away around me. Thirty-three years? If we went back, would we arrive only to find out that Justice had already demolished the earth?


    "Woah, easy there," AEGIS said. "I don''t think it actually took the machine thirty-three years to send them over."


    "I know," I shook my head. "It was just some kind of dimensional time bullshit thing, same difference."


    "No. That''s not what I meant. There''s no such thing as time travel, Athan, even if there are places where relativity causes time to pass faster or slower in the void, the people in it would still experience that time. Ajax and Celia aren''t sixty years old for having come through the gate."


    "Then what does that mean?"


    "It means...I suspect...this dimension and ours aren''t in perfect synch. This world is thirty years younger than ours, basically. Or at least, if we compare their year numbering system to ours, or any global milestones, that''s what I suspect we''ll find."


    "Most astute!" Cer chimed. "Your world, chosen for this reason. By design."


    "Chosen for what?" I asked. "I''m not fan of enigma, Cer."


    "Apologies. Cer, shown you by now, had you not been distracted by contemplation of Dr. Ramanathan. Please."


    Soran''s body was placed on a table, and the whole thing wheeled over towards a machine that kinda looked like a tower fan. A plastic grille, maybe eight feet tall, perforated enough to permit air to flow through but at the same time, hard to see inside, except to get the general impression of a lot of machine parts in there. Next to the machine, attached to it, was a display I recognized as a pixels. That told me how old this shit was.


    "Ramathan, first success in contacting the muses directly, with this machine," Cer proudly announced. "Shame. Machine, works only with a single muse, as it turned out. Still, enough!"


    "Like, it...what, could only be calibrated with one ''muse'' or something? Or it just like...bonded with the first one he reached out to?"


    "No. Muses, uninterested in speaking to humans, in general. One exception."


    "Aoede," AEGIS nodded.


    "Please wait. Engaging!"


    I wasn''t sure what we were waiting for, but we waited nonetheless. There was a relatively minor surge of electricity as the machine came to life, and then several minutes of it just sitting there thrumming, before the sound of it intensified and¡­


    And what? We continued waiting.


    I was apparently supposed to be excited, if Cer''s ferenic bobbing was any indication. But I didn''t see any indication of any Aoede or anything manifesting here. Just¡­


    "Athan, look," AEGIS whispered, pointing at the pixels. I cocked my head and saw there was green lettering on the black display now, spelling out tiny, blocky words.


    > Salutation begins.


    > We are delighted that you have succeeded in coming this far. Our guidance was insufficient, imperfect-sight was compromised. Yet, here you stand. Formal-greetings, THE ATHAN, THE AEGIS. Formal-reaffiliation, THE CERBERUS.


    > Salutation concludes.


    "What is this?" AEGIS asked.


    "This, Aoede''s words, talking to you," Cer bubbled. "Cer, remembering just as though it were yesterday, before he had a drone to inhabit, Ramathan''s excitement at his first exchange with Aoede."This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "This is her?" I asked. "You''re serious. Right now, those words on the pixels, that''s...Mage''s power talking to us, somehow?"


    "Cer, could be more specific in the ''somehow'', but honored guest has the gist of it, yes."


    "How do I...how do I talk back?"


    The screen flickered as another line appeared.


    > Informational interjection. We hear you.


    "I guess she hears you," AEGIS said. She sounded completely unsold on this entire concept, poised almost like she was ready to run. "Athan this is weird."


    "You''re Mage''s power, really?"


    > Conclusive agreement. Yes.


    "What was her name, then?"


    > Patronizing response. Mejia, Camila.


    "Did I know what?" I asked AEGIS, who rolled her eyes at me.


    "Have you not ever actually read the dossiers of your team?" She asked.


    "Uh. Probably at some point...I think."


    "What''s Tower''s name?" she crossed her arms.


    I blinked at her. "Um. I know Jack''s."


    She rolled her eyes again. "Anyway, yes, her name was Camila Mejia, yes. Aoede, you''ve spent a lot of effort to bring us here, why?"


    > Pandering procrastination. It is difficult to explain.


    "Why does it always start with a descriptor?" AEGIS asked. "Is it a rule that everyone in this world has a weird way of speaking?"


    "Cer, not understanding the issue," he chimed. "Descriptor, added by instrument during interpretation to convey added meaning not easily conveyed in words. Disable?"


    "No, leave it on," I said. "But still, I want to know AEGIS'' question, too."


    > Patient suggestion. Are you certain? Recitation-history is extensive, and nonconsequential.


    "Nonconsequential?" I read. "As in, it doesn''t matter if we know or not?"


    > Patronizing fib. Of course it matters.


    "Just tell us," I hissed at the machine. Maybe I should have been speaking to the body. Maybe I was insane for considering either of those an actual thing to converse with.


    > Begrudging, acceptance. As you wish.


    > Exposition begins.


    > We are possessed of sight very-different from yours. Our sight does not observe linearity of time as you do, nor do we; we exist beyond. However: we do understand these concepts, through our interactions with THE YAAN.


    "Who''s the Yaan?" I asked.


    AEGIS and Cer both answered at once. "Dr. Ramanathan."


    > In our sight, we saw an end-of-all-things, and through it, a way to circumvent. We have enjoyed fruitful-time spent in the company of humans and human-dimension, and do not wish it to end. We also admit some responsibility in causing end-of-all-things, and experienced remorse.


    "Wait. It''s you that''s causing the end of everything? You''re responsible for Justice?"


    > We are responsible for THE YAAN, who is responsible for THE CERBERUS, who is responsible for THE LIEV. Though this potential outcome was not visible because of limitations in the imperfect-sight, it was our actions which led here. We hope, it will be our actions which lead from here, as well.


    My mind spun as I turned on Cer. Or The Cerberus, apparently. "You. You''re the one ending our world?"


    "Cer, saving your world, actually, as per Dr. Ramanathan''s orders."


    "Let''s not point blame until we understand," AEGIS warned. "Everything''s so weird and fucky right now, and we''re all getting along, so how about we figure things out, and then we...do what we do."


    "But AEGIS--"


    She stared at me, and I realized...I didn''t have anything to really follow that up.


    "Aoede says he is responsible for Justice."


    "And do you think cutting Cer apart is going to make Justice''s body disintegrate, back in our world?"


    "N-no¡­"


    "Then maybe, let''s think this through. Even if it is true, we''re here looking for a weak point in Justice somehow. This link might just be it, but only if we understand it."


    "Right," I nodded. "Sorry. I''m just...worried."


    "I know you are. I am too. And I know...I might get a little carried away in trying to learn and understand things all the time. But I really think this time, it''s important."


    "I guess."


    > Weary plea. If you wish to go now, please do. Recitation-history remains nonconsequential.


    "No, please go on," AEGIS asked. "About you, and why you brought us here."


    > Continuation. It is difficult to say. The imperfect-sight has clouded, there are too many to see clearly. Once, the path forward was obvious, but now it is speculative-guesswork. Bringing you here seemed best-option. Yet, vision is obscured, time is short, host draws weak, and there are too many.


    "Too many what?"


    > Response. Too many muses.


    I looked at AEGIS in puzzlement. "Too many muses? Too many powers?"


    "In Soran?" she asked.


    "Aoede, do your powers get weaker, the more powers you put in a person?" I felt like I was asking regularly, but my heart was pounding at the prospect. Maybe this was Justice''s weak point.


    I felt myself deflate as I read the answer.


    > Response. No. Not weaker. Hungrier. More aggressive.


    "The...powers are more aggressive?"


    "They must drive the host to be," AEGIS mused. "Think about it, Soran used to be very cool and in-control, the first time you met him before he had Mage''s power. And then the last time, he was...frantic, ferenic, just sorta lashing out at random with his powers."


    "And at the far end of that spectrum is Justice? He''s got hundreds of powers, or muses, or whatever you call them, and he''s just...insane. Intent on destroying everything, for no reason."


    "He has reasons, though." AEGIS tapped her chin. "We know he started by going after people who had slighted him personally, before he...turned. And then lawyers, which was, maybe, an extension of what he''d done before? Go after a lawyer, and then all lawyers? And as he went, he either made up this justifying narrative, or he was legit crazy enough to believe it, that he was somehow purifying the injustice from the world."


    I shook my head. "He''s just insane. Looking at his actions for reason is a waste of time."


    "You''re right. But that doesn''t change the fact that insane people have reasons for what they do. They''re just not...reasons grounded in actual reality. They get so far from seeing or understanding what actually is that they''re doing completely rational things in a world that makes no sense. Or, to us, as an outside observer, actions that make no sense."


    "He''s still just blowing up everything," I commented.


    She sighed. "I''m just trying to understand, Athan."


    > Affirmation. She is correct, though. His thoughts are twisted beyond his own understanding. To THE LIEV, his options are consistently pushed by muses towards aggression-choice. He feels he has no option but to lash out. Forced-hand experience by outsiders.


    Well that was shitty. I''d just minutes ago had an epiphany over my need to kill people, feeling like my hands were always forced. Even if Liev was still just an insane, world-destroying lunatic, I could relate with the feeling of persecution, and the desire to change things that I think was common across all Exhumanity.


    Just. There were better ways than killing literally everyone. As much as I''d had my days where the world felt like a total write-off, those were just dark thoughts at the corners of my mind. I never really considered it. But was that the influence of the muses? To make other options seem impossible, and leave only those impulses left in his mind?


    If so...it suddenly made a lot more sense why he''d call himself Justice. All that everything he was trying to destroy, it certainly had a lot of the unjust festering within it.


    AEGIS gave her hair a little tug as she thought aloud. "So...basically, somehow, you were responsible for Justice. You saw him coming, through the, erm, imperfect-sight, and you manipulated things so that you, and Athan, and I would be here...because this was the only way you saw forward to stopping Justice?"


    > Agreement. Yes.


    "Except that, as Soran got more powers, he slipped out of your control, and your future-sight thing diminished. Which let him get more powers, which let him slip away further, and for as long as he''s been doing that, you haven''t been able to tell if we''re all collectively going down the right path or not."


    > Resigned agreement. Yes.


    She scratched her head. "And how is it that you were responsible for creating Justice, exactly?"


    > Attempted sidestep. It is long-narrative, and nonconsequential. I suggest we do otherwise. Perhaps THE CERBERUS has more science-devices you wish to observe? Some of which may yet prove relevant.


    "Oh! Cer, indeed does."


    "It says ''attempted sidestep'' right there, Cer," I jabbed my finger at the screen. "Come on."


    > Frustrated admission. This means of communication is imperfect.


    "Just spill it," AEGIS insisted. "Tell us everything about Justice, and then we can make an informed decision whether we should be playing with instruments or mad at you or what."


    Nothing happened for a few moments, and I was worried the machine broke. But then words popped up on the pixels again.


    > Resigned acceptance. It is a long-story, and requires full-explanation of our history with THE YAAN, as well as the full nature of muses. Are you certain?


    AEGIS'' eyes were alight. "Full explanation of muses? Of Exhuman powers? Yes. Very yes. Hell yes."


    > Joking acceptance. I should have foreseen that coming. Please make yourselves comfortable.


    We took Aoede''s advice and found some stools under a lab bench, dragging them over so we could read along. After a few lines, AEGIS cleared her throat, and began to read aloud, like she was telling us all a bedtime story. But it wasn''t a story like any I''d ever heard.


    And it all began, as Aoede always did, with a descriptor:


    > Exposition begins.

 445. 2022, 227 years ago. Parallel Ramanathans Lab. Yaan.

    The white flash woke me up as it often did, with the scream of a million deaths.


    I sat up, too suddenly, the ulcers in my gut announcing their irritation with my shenanigans, but despite the pain, I could not get the searing white flashes out of my mind.


    I laid down gently and found my pillow soaked with sweat. I had to stop doing this, had to stop having these nightmares. I was a zombie through the day, my colleagues were beginning to question my health. For a week and a half, I''d been waking like this, at dreams so real it felt like I was living them.


    Or, more accurately, dying in them. I shivered and turned my pillow over, freezing already beneath my blanket. It felt so very vivid, so realistic, like nothing I''d ever experienced...aside from life, I supposed. But even my own life never seemed so...visceral. Probably because mine was spent behind a desk instead of being shot at. But even so...aside from the faint foggy, hazy edges of my vision, it felt so...there.


    It was hard to put into words, but I tried regardless, logging the time and my recollection in a notebook beside my bed. I drank water and another of the pills which may as well have been a placebo for all the effect they were having on my nightmares, and then rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Tried not to think about the falling of bombs and ominous portents of doom.


    It wasn''t hard to figure out the source of my anxiety. As I ate breakfast the next morning, the news was all but a few bombs away from the vision in my nightmare -- the protracted war with China continued to drag on, more men sent into the meat grinder, all over some economic nonsense dressed in nationalism. Some trade conflict blowing up, and then as arguments tended to do, growing a hundred heads as every single grievance the two nations had ever disputed came to bear. Second-world sovereignty, cyber attacks, intellectual property rights, counterfeiting, criminal harboring...it seemed so stupid and insignificant compared to the deaths.


    It had been two years now, and the victory for American virtue we''d all been promised seemed like a forgotten ghost, as we found ourselves embroiled in another damn Vietnam instead. Troops kept coming and going, ours and theirs dying alike, and the world had transformed from one of cold animosity to one of cold hostility. The war was just another perpetual headline, and it felt like no amount of outrage over protestors being brutalized or imprisoned ever led to anything. We were just a continuously outraged populace now, eating our cereal as we watched the news.


    I frowned as I muted the TV, watching scenes of some bombing attack somewhere. Fires and black-stained remains of a structure, the roof collapsed in. Very few deaths, as ever. Because death was bad for business, I thought cynically. Someone being paid to build that bomb, build the new roof for that building, replace all the parts in it, that was the economy. The people who died in the blast? That was a tragedy -- that there was no money in it for anyone.


    Though, who was I to talk? I was a well-paid defense contractor. I was part of the problem, sitting in my big house, safe from danger, on a Thursday morning.


    The worst I had to deal with was the nightmares, others were actually dying out there, no matter how ''cold'' the war allegedly was. Still, it was hard not to focus on my own problems; the hazy vision of the bombs falling, so vivid in my mind, it felt like I was seeing them even now. Seeing them always. Ever since I turned that damn machine on.


    I sighed and packed up for the day ahead, trying not to see the mushroom clouds reflecting in my dishes as I washed them.


    I''d first found the curious creatures I''d come to call ''muses'' years ago, when surveilling the dimensions through a device not entirely unlike a very quantum telescope. To say I found them is perhaps an overstatement -- they were here, all around us, superimposed upon our dimension within their own. Ephemeral little things, and harmless, invisible, passing by and through our world, our bodies, our solar system and galaxy without ever brushing against it.


    Except, I noticed, at very specific times. Very specific things, concepts, jumped out across the dimensional distance to the muses, and excited them in a blush of what my sensors detected as a burst of black fire, a reaction that was unseeable in itself, yet writhed like flame. A fascinating conundrum, to a fascinating observation.


    And as they say, great science rarely begins with a ''eureka!'' but rather with a ''huh, that''s strange.''


    I had named them ''muses'' because in my testing, each reacted to a different concept, just as the muses of mythology each had a domain of art over which they presided: poetry, music, dance, and so forth. My muses did not stop at the arts, however.


    I remembered the first time I drew one out. I''d been comparing their excited reactions to fire, and had a small burner beside my monitor, to look between the two, to gauge -- in the most unscientific way possible -- how accurate my description of looking like fire actually held up. And I noticed, every time I glanced at the fire, took special notice of its shape, its color, any of the characteristics particular to fire, one of the muses I was observing lit right up, as though it were on fire itself.


    I spent hours courting that invisible thing floating around somewhere in my lab or...on the planet...or beyond, perhaps. It took an embarrassingly long amount of time to discover that it was reacting to my thoughts, and specifically, my thoughts about fire. Whenever I went to take notes on the muse itself, it lost interest, but by focusing on the flame, by filling my mind with visions of that, the muse flickered away in excitement.


    I began to experiment with other objects, and found that such a descriptor was insufficient. ''Concepts'' was more apt -- most were less bound to specific physical things, and instead grew enthralled by broader ideas. Things like pride, strength, or even the act of hiding. I found the same muse reacted to the same concept no matter the person, though the thoughts of each person needn''t be consistent to excite them; my idea of strength was of a bodybuilder flexing, while an assistant got the same reaction by envisioning a lion. And strangely, the image of a lion in my mind did little for the muse.


    So far this had all been revolutionary, incredible, but without practical merit. The colonel overseeing our work urged me to drop the research and focus instead on repurposing my observation tools to be able to spy on the Chinese through other dimensions. He seemed unamused when I laughed and told him that was impossible, that my tools didn''t see at any distance, just through realms.


    But the pressure was there. A need to prove that our research was worth sustaining. Even getting just this far had been incredibly expensive, but we were at the cusp of something unbelievable, something beyond any war, no matter how all-consuming. I was on the very verge of contacting a legitimate alien species, dimensional jellyfish, drifting in the currents of the aether.


    Pulling myself from my thoughts for a moment, I paused to scratch my head as I remembered the painful memories. Perhaps describing them as ''dimensional jellyfish'' hadn''t been such a great idea. I wanted to portray the muses as wispy and mysterious, unthreatening travellers who were ubiquitous and harmless in our lives.


    But the generals didn''t want unthreatening or harmless. They wanted something dangerous and weaponized, the more, the better. I was told to sit down, as one of them patiently informed me that I was on the cusp of being the next Einstein, if I could turn this ''dimensional-stuff'' into the next atomic bomb. But as it was, with jellyfish, they would be seeing to it that my next evaluation would be made to suffer, and with it, my funding.


    That had driven me to it, to flip the switch. To the visions that I still didn''t understand. It wasn''t supposed to be like this, and yet, here I was. Seeing death in the corners of my mind, no matter where I looked. My eyes wandered over the mismatched parts and the poor welding job I''d done in building the instruments, consumed with something beyond them.


    There had been one muse in particular I''d liked. I''d concluded it was a muse of ''thought'' itself, and it was ever-present. When the others went silent as I made my notes or took careful study, those were the moments when it lit up. I named it Aoede, named for one of the very first mythological muses ever recorded, one of voice, which I had hoped to achieve in this experiment.


    But something had gone wrong. Aoede had no voice, or not a voice I could hear. Instead, she''d become...attached to me, somehow. Perhaps I had spent too long, focused on her concept in her presence, and that had somehow bound her to me...but it hadn''t been until I''d flipped the switch that this had happened. The machine that was supposed to interpret between us had linked us instead, and I had no idea what that meant...for either of us.


    Except for the nightmares, I supposed. And I had been neglecting to document that in any formal capacity out of fear that the military would begin weaponizing these poor creatures to haunt the dreams of the Chinese.


    I''d made revisions, and I hoped it was not too late. For days now, Aoede and I had been stuck together, closer together than ever before, according to my instruments, with her reacting to my every thought, and no longer just the relevant ones, and with her no longer drifting at random, but rather moving...every time I did. The implications were clear, I just didn''t want to accept them.


    Again, I flipped the switch. The machine thrummed to life, and over several minutes, I checked the baseline levels, ran various calibrations and background filters, ensured that pressures and currents and energies were all at nominal values.


    And then I tuned it to focus on Aoede, almost muscle-memory by now. She was so easy to find relative to the others, a little pulsating black flame within me. Ever consistent, never drifting. A companion, if not for the fact that all her presence brought me was sleepless nights and terrors.


    I amplified the signal, sending her the synthesized neural function that pattern-matched my concept of ''thought'', and as she always did, she lit up. She loved ''thought''. She veritably glowed with excitement when I thought, and seemed to very nearly purr when I thought about thinking.


    She twitched upwards, and I turned the device off. When she drifted back down, I turned it on again. It was difficult, the time resolution on my monitor wasn''t accurate enough that I was sure I was even successful in what I was attempting, to say nothing about how possible this task may be in the first place.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Yet I persisted. For hours, until my sleep-addled head grew heavy, and the thrumming of the machine beside me seemed like a lullaby.


    I turned it off, frustrated. I knew it wouldn''t be easy, but after days of this, I wasn''t sure we were making progress at all.


    I needed to communicate with it, or to know if it was even capable of communicating. Assuming it had the intelligence of even an insect, I tried to get through to it in the simplest way, the only way I knew. It wanted my thoughts, and it could move -- this was almost literally the extent of my knowledge of the muse''s physiology. So I did with that what I could.


    When it moved up, I gave it what it wanted. When it went any other way, I gave it nothing. And yet still, nothing. Training it seemed completely pointless. Perhaps this alien species just wasn''t smart enough to understand causality...and, hell, what would a space jellyfish have need to understand such a thing? Or perhaps it just didn''t care. Or...maybe they weren''t even sentient, just little thought-parasites that nibbled at ideas and drifted on.


    I didn''t know. I was tired and my head was heavy. I needed sleep, even if it was pocked with nuclear blasts. I shuffled over to my computer and rested my eyes for a moment.


    The moment my eyes closed, I found myself awake, alert. Myself, surprisingly.


    But also very much not myself. More. So much more. My head felt a different kind of heavy, burdened with ideas. Thoughts I could not have possibly thought, chasing down threads I could not have possibly followed, all rushing forward at the speed of thought, as though my brain had become lightning incarnate.


    I reeled at the enormity of my expanding consciousness, and my reeling overwhelmed me. When I took a step back to be amazed, my brain sprinted a marathon back, contemplating every life decision I''d ever made which had taken me to this point, and all the infinite possibilities of all the other options I had never made in my life seemed to spiral out endlessly before me, in an instant, in a thought.


    In one potential universe, I hadn''t fumbled over my words when asking Jessica to prom. The two of us would have gone out happily for two weeks before I would realize she was a very boring person, and then we would remain unhappily attached for another year before she finally dumped me.


    If I had not accepted the defense contract, I''d be struggling in my own private work, still pursuing the glimmer of the muses, but without the resources to adequately do so. I would live an equally unhappy life, second-guessing other decisions that led me to that impotence, rather than the ones which worried me now. I would live a long but underwhelming life, before dying in a freak accident in fourteen years, stabbed during the would-be escape of a petty thief whose life had spiraled beyond his own capability of handling it.


    I frowned, the muscles of my face feeling very disconnected from the rest of me, or...whatever passed for me in this state. How would I know that I''d get stabbed? That made no sense, that was just soothsaying, fortune-telling. Fiction.


    Except it wasn''t. That young man was already in an unhealthy lifestyle, spending more money than he was capable of bringing in, thinking that his relatively decent income was a promise that his life would always remain such. He''d never suffered before, not really, and so when suffering did visit him, the first time he had credit card statements printed in red, when banks began calling, he wouldn''t know what to do. He had always just lived his life, and it was only logical, only natural, that given who he was and what he had been shaped to be, he would freak out. A lifetime of what felt like his memories rushed past me, of all the times that someone had been there to rescue him from himself, of all the inadequacies of his creation and formation.


    But they weren''t memories, I realized, through the power of my enormous, universe-defying brain. They were deductions, conclusions drawn from my own observations of the world, a puzzle piece that must exist in exactly his shape in order for the world to be exactly as it was. He moved the way he did, and existed the way he was, because it was impossible for him to be any different and still have the universe exist.


    As my thoughts turned from him, I found myself still at my desk, still incredibly overwhelmed, still processing all of the information in creation, a perfect recreation of the entire universe exploring itself in my mind.


    And I realized, with very little outside help, that this was communication. This was thought itself. This was Aoede, talking to me, in the only way that muses knew how to. She was the muse of thought, and thought in our reality was all she could touch. But she could do more than just consume the idea of it, she could provoke it. She could inject me with thought. She could drown me with thought, until I had no choice but to contemplate thought and nothing else, for all eternity.


    I turned and read the monitor, and saw her roiling with pleasure. She was no mere flame, she was an eruption of black light, ringed with wispy white, like black smoke pouring off a white flame in inverse.


    I was wrong. They aren''t jellyfish at all. They are farmers, and we are the pigs for the slaughter.


    As though laughing at me, even this thought gave her sustenance, and she burned ever brighter.


    I spent an eternity of thought in the next few seconds, considering and evaluating everything I could think of, which was now a nearly infinite amount. I looked forward and back through all of the inferred reality, and all of the branches I had crossed, and would cross,


    And I noticed, many potentials simply...ended. The world didn''t terminate, it wasn''t a limitation of my mind or processing...simply...I could not see past a point anymore. Nothing prohibited it, it was just unknown, like all the regular thoughts I used to have, just something I didn''t know the answer to.


    I figured that one out, too. Those were the timelines where I continued my research here. In each of them, I began to refine the process I had unwittingly unleashed on myself, opened the door to more muses bonding with more people...and just as soon as I came into contact with another similarly-bonded person in that potential future...


    Poof. I had no idea what would happen. The thought of not knowing something was suddenly terrifying, an abrupt end of all things, like bringing two bonded-people together was like merging matter and antimatter.


    I gave it another few seconds of thought before another idea struck me. Half curiosity, half-dread, I went forward, far forward, as far forward as my mind could predict, events well beyond my lifetime, or the lifetimes of my children or grandchildren, if I had any.


    There were numerous timelines where I did, I noticed. I also noticed that in none of them did I or my family seem particularly happy. That hurt more than it should have.


    But I pushed forward, a hundred years, a hundred-fifty, two hundred--


    In two-hundred, twenty-four years, the world would end in fire.


    Exactly as I''d seen, hundreds of times now, except instead of a vision, I could trace every single footprint that led to the end. The every-increasing costs of an endless war. The constant agitation on both sides for a peace neither was willing to give. The first-strike capabilities the Chinese would discover, while America instead delved into AI development, outfitting drones to supplement the production of a diminished humanity...even then, trying to pretend like the war didn''t exist, finding ways to circumvent it instead of end it.


    And then total eradication. Dirty bombs, megatons of them. It wasn''t done just to end the war, it wasn''t a conquest of territory or economics or ideologies at that point. After two-hundred some-odd years of pathetic, half-assed hostilities, China wanted to annihilate their adversary, and they did it, completely.


    The world after that continued on, but I cared little. Everything after my country was utterly obliterated seemed ashen and greyscale, as though my thoughts couldn''t fully commit to my having them. What China and the rest of the world did to face the fallout, the sudden attack, the repercussions of an entire continent gone, that was so much less important than averting it.


    I went back and explored possibilities. Options where I warned everyone, where I armed the US to defeat China, where I''d gone rogue and acted as a provocateur, everything I could think of...and they all ended in fire.


    It seemed impossible, that I could have infinite knowledge and be so powerless. But potential future after potential future whipped through my thoughts, and with every blast I saw, I realized, I hadn''t been seeing the same blast all this time. I''d been seeing all of them, all of these different versions of Earth ending, helpless to do a damn thing about any of it.


    It had been, maybe a minute, and I collapsed back in myself, in my seat, completely exhausted as though I''d just lived all those thousands of lives. I stared at the billowing black flames of Aoede, not sure if she was a gift or a curse at this point.


    "I misnamed you," I apologized. "If you are named for Greek myth, you should be Cassandra." I shook my head. "I can''t believe there''s nothing I can do. That seems impossible. I know I''m only one man, I know what they think of me, say about me...I know...well, you know. But still."


    She burned bright. And I sat down to think again, in my own thoughts, as much as I could now.


    I was so powerful, so capable, I could do pretty much anything I wanted. But in all the futures I''d seen, I''d realized that no matter how capable one person was, they couldn''t change everything. There were two whole nations out there who had been at war for a few years, who were ready to continue warring for another two-hundred of them. What was one man against that?


    The answer, I found, was a matter of perspective. I couldn''t stop them. In the future, this world would burn, and I would be seeing and feeling every single death of every single person who ever would be up until then.


    But this world had never been my true calling, had it? I''d spent my life so detached from the pursuits of it. I''d always been more interested in what was beyond, and with this capability, the beyond was closer than ever. Maybe I couldn''t save this world, but I could potentially save another. And if I did -- and this was pure speculation, because my powers didn''t extend beyond what I could observe -- maybe the me in that world could save another. And they in that, another. Until all the worlds in all realities could be spared, save my own. What I could not achieve alone, an infinite army of myself from across dimensions could do.


    It sounded insane. But compared to myself from a few minutes ago, I was insane, I knew. Bonding with Aoede had made me into something more than human, Parahuman, or greater. Everything about me was insane now, but that didn''t change the fact that this was me, this was what I now was.


    Another million potential futures flashed through me, all the different times and ways I could be found out, experimented on, used as a template for a new breed of super-soldier. I had to be careful. They wouldn''t understand, they would be closed-minded, selfish, prejudicial, would see me as less than human, when now, I was so much more.


    I turned back to my work, finding focusing on that all the more enjoyable when I could let my mind loose without the pain of finding and feeling others within it. I had this, at least. I could build, I could focus on things beyond this world, places I couldn''t see, places I couldn''t know the death of everyone I knew, or loved, or met, or never even heard of.


    I could shut them out. Shut myself in. Dedicate myself to the work. The work is all that mattered. The work was all that would keep the screaming at bay.


    I giggled at the thought. I''d never been so excited to work before. Though I had a dark realization that threatened to cut through my mood. I''d still have to talk to others to get parts, still have to beg for my funding, still have to look into the eyes of those who were just corpses to me now, and envision their deaths with every word they spoke.


    I needed separation. An intermediary. But I couldn''t use anyone, they would all die, even the grad students...whether in eighty years or ten was insubstantial to me at this point. They would all die, and I needed to escape that.


    Unless there was something that didn''t die. Something that never lived. Something I could build.


    In my memories of the future, I began to dig through the plans the Americans had drawn up for their AI, two-hundred years from now: sentient, autonomous, enduring.


    Immortal.


    My fingers flowed across the keyboard like they were the ones possessed, not me. I began to compile lists of parts, began to copy down fragments of code that I glimpsed through the future. It would come together, a steward, not of my work, but of me.


    I hit save, as I always did by reflex, and a text box popped up, prompting me for a name of my project. I spent a moment blinking at the cursor that blinked back at me.


    "You will guard the gates of hell," I told my computer.


    I named the project CERBERUS, and my fingers flew across the keys.

 446. 2252, Present Day. Ramanathans Lab. Athan.

    "What do you mean, that''s it?" I asked, flabbergasted as we read the last lines of the pixels. "What happened next? He made Cer and then?"


    > Apologetic admission. After finishing his work, he went insane, and died. The constant visions of the end of the world, it was our fault, our first victim. THE YAAN was intimate to us, and we killed him.


    > Optimistic suggestion. However, we have gotten much better at interfacing with human-host since. THE YAAN taught us much. We believe that to be our best-feature, and so far as we know, we are the only muse who learns, which is an accomplishment.


    "Accomplishment?" I echoed, moving from flabbergasted to dumbfounded. "How the hell can you say you''ve learned? I have no idea how many fucking Exhumans you burned through in the last two-hundred years, but I do know that both Mage and Soran ended up dead under your accomplishments."


    She almost seemed to sigh at me.


    > Final word. THE SORAN is not deceased, please check your facts.


    > Exposition concludes.


    "Wait, no it most certainly does not! What about the rest of it! What about Ramanathan trying to save another world. What part of what he did here has anything to do with Justice?"


    > Aggravated reiteration. We informed you that preceding-exposition was nonconsequential. We urged you to accompany THE CERBERUS to other-instruments within the lab.


    > Unsubtle hint. Perhaps it is with those, the other-instruments, that THE YAAN produced before expiring, that you will find the answers you seek.


    "That is a pretty unsubtle hint," AEGIS commented.


    "Why won''t she just tell us?"


    "Probably because doing so is nonconsequential," she mused.


    "Okay, what does that even mean?"


    "It means...imagine you''re talking to Mage, not Aoede. She can see the future, right? She''s also kind of a...if you remember...sort of a surly little girl."


    "You think Mage acting like that was because that''s how Aoede acted through her?"


    "That''s...a theory, but maybe. Or maybe she just hated having someone control her all the time. Either way, if she sees the future and knows that whether she tells you something or not, it makes no difference, and also that you were just wasting her time, and doing it in a way she already completely predicts...I guess you could hopefully imagine why she''d basically be so dismissive?"


    "Well maybe she''d get better results out of me if she fucking said that instead of just saying nonconsequential a bunch of times."


    > Rebuttal. No, we would not. Telling you that is nonconsequential.


    "Okay, I''m turning her off, where''s the switch¡­"


    AEGIS stopped me, even if I wasn''t really going for the switch. "Aoede, you said you''re the only muse who learns? Because you''re the muse of thought, I assume?"


    > Speculative agreement. Yes¡­?


    "Why...don''t the others learn? There''s nothing saying like, a muse of fire can''t learn, right?"


    > Wary conjecture. We are not able to see into the actions of other muses. Unlike single-dimension-humans, they exist as we do, cross causality as you know it as we do, are of us, and not of this-dimension. They create the imperfect-sight with their unpredictability.


    "Interesting," AEGIS mused, turning to explain to me, even if I didn''t ask for it. "Kinda like how we can predict the movement of like, simple organisms, entirely, based on environmental conditions and pheromones and the like, but can''t accurately predict something another human would do, necessarily."


    "Lia could."


    "Makes me wonder if there''s a muse of muses, who is only good at knowing what other muses do," she said, scratching at her chin. "But you dodged the question, Aoede. Just because you can''t predict them doesn''t mean you can''t speculate on why you learn and they don''t."


    > Belabored explanation. We consider it poor-taste to ill-speak of other muses, even should they not understand the concept of speech. Regardless, if you must insist, we presume they do not learn because they have no need of it. They drift and devour, and are concerned with nothing but.


    "What about bonding?" I asked, suddenly interested. "If they don''t want anything but our ideas, why do you form Exhumans in the first place?"


    > Continued belabored explanation. It is a matter of temptation. A certain concentration of THE CONCEPT will attract a muse, even to exist within a human-mind, like a mouse drawn to a trap. It is difficult for us to enter, so it is not done often. When bonding occurs, the muse finds itself overwhelmed, in monogamy, but also cut-off. It exists within one mind now, but also has a dedicated-sustenance. There is an adjustment period for both parties.


    "The Ramanathan Window," AEGIS gaped.


    > Agreement. THE YAAN named it such in your dimension. A time when the muse has spent great effort to bond with a human, and is invested in seeing its harvest bear. If the host should expire prematurely, the muse faces potential-starvation, and so it uses its capabilities to ensure the host survives until it has fed sufficiently.


    "Meanwhile, the host is learning their new powers, and their mind is completely consumed by thoughts about them, I''m sure," AEGIS muttered, sounding a little like an insane Ramanathan herself. "This is a huge feast for the muse. And once it''s stuffed, the window closes, the muse content to let the host live or die from that point on."


    "This is so fucked up," I commented.


    "This is so exciting!" she squealed.


    "Exciting!" Cer echoed.


    "So powers, Exhuman powers, they''re nothing but like...manifestations of the muse''s ability to affect our dimension...and they only do it so that we''ll keep thinking about their favorite food?" I asked. "That''s just sick."


    "That''s also why Justice is so wrong in the head," AEGIS agreed. "He''s got so many muses packed inside of him, they must all be starving, and they''re each trying to twist his brain to use their powers so that he and others will see ''em and think of them. Too many powers, too small a space, not enough of an audience--"


    "No," I said, staggering at the weight of her phrasing. "New Eden."


    "What about it?"


    "Everyone in there is pissy all the time. The sickness."


    She stared at me. And then frowned. "There really was an underground fighting ring, wasn''t there? You lied to me!"


    "But AEGIS, Jesus Christ, do you have any idea what all this means? With all this new information we could like...I don''t know...fix Exhumanity or something. If the general public knew all of this¡­"


    I paused, thinking about how that sentence was going to end.


    I kind of already knew. All this did was poke more weaknesses in Exhumanity. It didn''t make them any more sympathetic or relatable, certainly not anything less to fear. All that would happen is a lot more experimentation to see how far they could go in starving a muse to death, torturing the Exhuman host the entire time. Every one of them would wind up as aggressive and insane as Justice, the sickness of New Eden, weaponized.


    I looked at AEGIS, her eyes shining with excitement at all the new things she was learning, all the knowledge she was putting away inside herself, keeping it just for the sake of knowing things, and I wished the world was more like her.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Because people only ever seemed to want to know more when they could use it. I thought of all the briefings I''d sat through as an XPCA, and never were we told about some Exhuman''s motivation for knocking over a city, just what their powers were and how we could exploit them to stop ''em.


    Not for the first time, I felt gross and ashamed of being human, even if they didn''t consider me such. Maybe I wasn''t exactly forced into killing people, but they had certainly paved the world in such a way that doing so was often the easiest, best option. Which was an entirely different kind of fucked up.


    "Let''s just follow Cer and see where this winds up," I muttered. AEGIS'' sparkle seemed to wear off as she realized I was pissed about something, but just nodded and fell in silently behind me, shooting me sideways glances at times.


    "Cer, let''s finish this tour and get back to my sister," I sighed.


    The pixels blinked at me.


    > Final farewell. THE ATHAN, please forgive what we have done. We understand that harming or killing those close to you is undesirable, but we retain confidence that we have chosen best-path. Though it may not seem so to you, we are certain.


    "Yeah, well," I said. "I mean, I hurt people too, and I''m not even sure how things will turn out. I might be a big dumb hypocrite, but I''m trying."


    > Vague assurance. We can confirm that in the near future, you will improve in your big-dumb-hypocrisy.


    > Farewell concludes.


    I barely finished reading when Cer switched the device off, and the pixels went black. I had an ominous feeling about shutting her off, the fact that I would apparently change in the near future, the fact that she''d unknowingly phrased it as final farewell, these were not lost on me.


    But y''know, I bet if I asked, she''d just tell me that knowing was fucking nonconsequential. Because what did it matter if I knew I was going to die or not? As long as I did what she wanted, to get to her fucking goal, she could throw me away, like Mage, Soran, or even Ramanathan.


    "This way!" Cer bubbled, apparently not programmed to read the mood, even a little bit. "Cer, so excited to show you Dr. Ramanathan''s other projects. This, the very monitor used to first witness muses. And here, the instrument with which Dr. Ramanathan accidentally bonded himself with Aoede, the first beacon."


    "First...beacon?" I asked.


    "First beacon. Apologies. Cer, did misspeak?"


    "The beacon. The beacon. That''s what Aoede told us to come here for. The beacon."


    "The beacon, well, honored guest has found it!"


    "This is a beacon?" AEGIS asked, looking up and down the simple-looking device. "Beacon, how?"


    "Honored guest, as just heard from Aoede''s recitation, the device, synthesizes brain-wave patterns to the allure of muses. Brilliant! Muses, lured by perception of ideal concepts, make the jump to become bonded to new host."


    "A machine that makes Exhumans," I spat my disdain. "Why the hell would anyone ever want one?"


    "Exciting salvation!"


    "Salvation of what? Not our souls, that''s for fucking sure."


    Cer laughed, but AEGIS was studying him carefully. "Cer, you said this was the first beacon?"


    "Yes! Second beacon, more powerful, much more refined. Follow!"


    He began to bob out of the room, but as he went, my stomach dropped. I was afraid of what we were going to find wherever he led us.


    But what other choice did I have? Just sit here and pretend none of this existed?


    It wouldn''t be that hard, I thought. So many bombs had been dropped on my understanding of the world tonight, all wrapped up in a narrative of jumping dimensions, of so much implausibility, of so many good intentions going fucked.


    If I could just convince myself that the Ramanathan of this world had found something else to focus on, somewhere else. Or that this was all just a dream, everything from stepping in front of Aesa''s device had all just been some effect of being in the void. When she turned the machine on, I''d fallen and hit my head, and all of this was just a fever dream.


    I took a deep, steadying breath, and resolved to believe whatever Cer showed me. It wasn''t in me to look away when faced with a reality I couldn''t stand. Maybe that was why I hated reality so much.


    Cer wound up taking us down another elevator, to another floor, deeper and more massive. I could feel the power thrumming around here, and even before we arrived at the large impressively-elaborate thing dominating the otherwise-empty chamber, I knew I hated it.


    It was the same ornate decoration as Cer, white, shining gold, and glowing blue. Except instead of a bounding, bouncing sphere, this was a towering machine, fifteen feet tall, framed with golden, arching rings, topped with glowing blue orbs, as though designed to impress foremost, and give the appearance of a deliberately futuristic device.


    "Ramanathan built this? After the hackjobs he made upstairs?" AEGIS asked.


    "No. Cer, built this, at Dr. Ramanathan''s specifications and orders. Do you like it?"


    "It''s...nice," AEGIS smiled. Cer bounced giddily.


    In the very front of the device was a large display, a real one, not a pixels, and two seats, thoughtfully placed at the panel.


    "Cer, most proud of this, fulfilled Ramanathan''s final work in its building. Salvation!"


    "What Aoede said, about Ramanathan trying to save a parallel Earth...that was our Earth, and it was...through this machine?"


    "Yes. And yes!"


    "Athan," AEGIS warned, "this machine is on. I can feel it."


    "Me too. I have the lightning powers, remember?"


    "Ah, yeah. But Athan, if it''s a beacon¡­"


    She let the statement hang. I swallowed hard.


    "Um, Cer, what does this beacon do?"


    "Cer, glad you asked! Dr. Ramanathan, realizing in his wisdom that in all worlds, two superpowers, always clashing, always end in cataclysm! Another threat, needed, external to both. The beacon, the muses, the ''Exhumans'', an external threat. Cer, programmed to send muses to your world, bond them. Salvation!"


    His words echoed weirdly in my head as he managed to bubble with such cheer about something so utterly fucked.


    "Cer, what the hell have you done?" I asked. "You...you created Exhumans just to stop humanity from killing itself, at the cost of what? Humanity killing itself over something completely different? Why the fuck didn''t you stop when China was obliterated, how was that a better option than America getting wiped out?"


    He paused. "Cer...programmed to send muses to your world, bond them?"


    I put my face in my hands and my brain seemed to hitch. My resolution to accept whatever Cer showed me struggled with the enormity of what''d been dropped here.


    All the suffering I thought I''d endured at the hands of Dragon, the fact that we''d fought over some stupid trinket he was trying to destroy in the first place. The fact that we could put aside our differences and fucking talk things out if we had to. All the people who''d died or been hurt, because of his shortcomings and fucking misunderstandings. Hundreds of killings, a dozen of which were personal to me, and one intimate.


    It paled in comparison to this. To this defective fucking piece of shit AI who was filling our world with Exhumans, because that''s what Ramanathan programmed him to do, to avert a catastrophe that hadn''t even been averted.


    The world was a mistake. And the fact that this stupid fucking orb was running so much of it, and was an ignorant, defective, floating garbage pile just confirmed it.


    "You just...filled up...the world with Exhumans? Because...you were told to?" I seethed. I felt lightning coursing inside me, felt my hair standing on end as blades began to crackle in the air.


    "No!" he belted.


    "No?"


    "At first, yes. Cer, then, considering, it is very much effort to find new humans across dimensional space, would be easier, perhaps better, if just reused same humans."


    AEGIS'' face was in her hands. I was trying very hard not to rip him in half.


    "So you just created Justice, is what you''re saying. You pumped all the muses in the world into one fucking human?"


    "No!"


    "No?" I echoed again.


    "No! That proposal, hugely irresponsible. Cer, never do such a thing as that."


    "Then what did you do, Cer?" I growled.


    "Experiment!" he bubbled, seemingly unaware of my blades creeping in around him. "Cer, unsure of what multiple muses in one human would do, came up with experiment, tested carefully, monitored closely. Huge success!"


    "What did you do?"


    "Erm." The blue irises floating in the blackness of his sensors flicked back and forth between AEGIS and my faces. "You. Massive success. Monumental!"


    AEGIS cut in. "What the fuck did you do to Athan, Cer?"


    "Tiny...experiment? First time. Cer, uncertain what would happen, put only two muses in. Honored guest, survived, thrived! Greatest success."


    "I...I have two powers?" I asked.


    "Confirmed!" Cer bubbled happily as he swam through the sea of my blades over to the beacon, and at his presence, the display lit up, flickering through what looked like thousands of Exhuman profiles, until I found myself staring at my own face.


    Other than that, it didn''t have any information about me. I guess all they could see of us from here was just...us. But it did have a shitton of information. Just...about the things inside me.


    I swallowed hard as my eyes crept down the page, in spite of myself. I felt AEGIS'' eyes turn from the screen to stare at me, her mouth agape, the gears in her head turning as she scrutinized me with a sudden caution I hadn''t seen on her since back when she was in the box.


    After all the information about my first muse, my electric muse, was the second. The muse I didn''t know I had, the one that made me realize just how much of my life...how much of me, wasn''t really me at all. How everything I had, and was, and am...it was all my powers, all along.


    Muse Name: 0002 Zeus


    Bond Date: 6/18/2251 (local)


    Concept: ELECTRICITY


    ...


    Muse Name: 1071 Aphrodite


    Bond Date: 6/18/2251 (local)


    Concept: SEDUCTION

 447. 2252, Present Day. XPCA Holding Facility, New Mexico. Taglock.

    It wasn''t in my nature to work pro-bono, but if something would press me to the exception, it would be the end of times. The hunters were fighting an enemy beyond any bounty they''d ever willingly take, many doing it for free, and I''d heard rumors that some of the US armed forces were defying orders to leave the XPCA to face down Justice alone and rendering assistance. Anarchy was becoming the order of the day, and who was I to resist its beckon?


    Anarchy, only because order was currently madness, afflicted by some virus of politics, prohibiting all from presenting a united front. Even now, as I checked my feeds and waited for a patrol to walk past, I could see the three factions, scuffling with each other as they fought together. Some idiots just didn''t know when to bury the hatchet.


    I supposed if I were any kind of ''real man'', I''d be down there with them. I laughed at myself, and at the idea; how unfitting an end would that be, a spy and saboteur hanging up his clogs to pick up a gun. That was a level of courage or stupidity I lacked, though which it was, I had no idea.


    Instead, I was doing what I did best. Staying safe, watching my own back, providing what assistance I could from the shadows. It seemed that Lia had gone ahead without me, following her own plans to mobilize a menagere of Exhumans to the battlefield and then left them there. I wished she''d included me on her plans, but for her to assume that no money meant no service was reasonable. If she had asked, I could not say yes, professionally speaking.


    But also, in seriousness, the end of the world was sort of hanging over our heads here. Even if my business ran a high price for strategic retrieval or deletion of things, I still required things to exist, to retrieve or delete. Apocalypse was bad for business, no matter one''s trade.


    I''d just have turned her down, and then done it anyway. Better not to set a precedent of working for free, but that just meant I had to avoid the precedent, not the work.


    Work such as this door, and the things beyond it. The patrol had passed and I crouched on the ground, tools in-hand before the lock, the gleam of an ignorant security camera shining above me.


    The stubborn door didn''t let me in. I''d had no end of trouble cracking passcodes recently, the XPCA had some new security system I hadn''t been able to figure out just yet, no matter how fresh my codes, they always seemed expired. It was equal parts impressive, and annoying, and when I figured out what was behind it and incorporated it into my own kit, I''d be a happy man indeed.


    I put away my passcard, my hand going to my pocket by muscle memory, since I could see neither hand nor pocket through my optical camo, and I reached for a different pocket, a prybar and a shim.


    The strongest encryption in the world is only as good as the hinges, so they said. The prybar popped the faceplate of the lock off in a single twist, and I got the shim deep inside the lock''s guts, feeling for the tension spring keeping the deadbolt latched.


    Took me two tries, which was one more than I''d hoped, but I got through without a peep, and with hope, the patrolling guards would not notice the vandalism. If they had been in exoframes, their in-suit HUDs would probably detect the damaged lock and show a callout, and I''d have need for digital masking over the damage. But those resources had been called to the front; remaining were just some guys with guns and eyes, the very worst kind of security.


    Beyond that door was another, and this one I got on the first try. Clearly I was improving. I''d never been too bad with a physical override, and the XPCA''s new digital security was giving me a lot of recent practice.


    With that double set of doors out of the way, I walked onto the cell block floor. Cozy place, metal bars from ceiling to floor, two levels, ringed by a lovely balcony, done up in the same matching dark metal grille and railing to match the cells. And a scuffed glass floor on the main level, where my kinetic dampeners kept my feet from click-clacking, just under which I could see the enormous coils used to electrocute the entire level in the event of a lockdown.


    Just lovely. Tied the whole room together, really. I heard that each prison in the XPCA''s ward was unique, featuring different kinds of obstacles and deterrents to detain different kinds of Exhumans. A legendary one, Aliento ¨²ltimo, supposedly didn''t even have walls, just standing curtains of lethal gas streaming down, for prisoners who could not be contained but could be killed.


    I''d never found any reason to believe such a place even existed, and if this much more normal cell was any indication, if it did exist, it certainly wouldn''t be in use. The prisons had been mostly cleared out when New Eden had opened.


    Still. It wasn''t completely empty. Some Exhumans were too unruly or asocial to keep with the rest. Some, there was a political or personal interest in keeping them buried. Others were presumably just too difficult to relocate.


    But my mark had been placed here very recently. Scooped up and shut away, forgotten in a time she shouldn''t be. I walked across the cell block, to stand in front of her cell, and immediately felt like I was violating something intimate.


    She was there, exactly as my information had indicated, dark hair, fair skin. I couldn''t see her eyes, but she matched the pictures I had obviously enough. Recognizing her was not the issue.


    The problem was, she was crying. And I did not think it was for the cuts and bruises scoring her body; those would be the result of her tussle with Justice, the proof that she was the only Exhuman on Earth who had so far stood up to him and survived.


    I cleared my throat, and she jumped, peering around intensely, hands grasping at shadows that didn''t exist in her garishly-lit cell. I let my optical camo fade off and shook out my heel, pulling back the hood of my slipskin. All very practiced, to make some noise and appearance, to appear human and unthreatening.


    "Hello," I said. "You are Trish?"


    "Who''s asking?" she barked, lashing out through the shock of my arrival. Although, her voice caught in her throat and her threatening was utterly unconvincing as she wiped stubborn tears off her cheeks.


    "Taglock, at your service," I said, with a deep bow. "Your friend Athan sent me," I lied.


    "Athan?" I saw a glimmer of recognition pierce through the pain. "Lightning?"


    "The very same. I''m to see to your freedom, to give you another chance against Justice, should you desire."


    She sat stunned on her cot, her body all knees and elbows as she hesitated, one palm against her cheek where tears were still streaming across it, her legs pulled in close, but splayed at the same time. Her hair was every direction, and adding the fresh injuries across her body, it was safe to say she looked a mess.


    Not the worst I''d ever rescued, but far, far from the best.


    It was a lot for her to take in in a moment, I knew. My appearance, and then the sudden offer of freedom, and the promise of a fight with Justice. She seemed to be breathing to herself, muttering words without vocalizing them. I waited with patience as she got her head together. It wasn''t like a guard patrol was due in a couple of minutes, or I was standing in the open in the very extreme depths of a secure facility, or anything.


    Even if those were true -- which they were -- the mental health of these people was often a still greater obstacle. Rare was it when I was sent in to extract an intact, mentally healthy, cognitively-balanced individual with a supportive family and put-together life. People like that didn''t wind up in places like this.


    "Can you stand?" I asked. Simple questions, to get her mind focused on the immediate.


    "I can," she said fiercely, doing so as though to prove me wrong.


    "Would you like to fight Justice?"


    She paused, and emotions played across her face again. She really should never play poker. Fear was a pretty reasonable reaction, given who and what Justice was, and also the anger. But beyond anger was a deep misery, a profound sadness that spoke to me of loss. She wasn''t just angry at Justice, I realized, she was vengeful.


    And, manipulative as that may have made me, I found that incredibly useful.


    "Do you want to make him pay?"


    She crystalized, galvanized, tranquilized. I saw her pupils narrow as the fear left her. The wild hair suddenly looked less like that of a battered victim and more like that of a deranged lunatic.


    "Yes," she said. "Get me out."


    "With pleasure."


    This lock was harder to tamper with, designed to be in constant exposure to one who might have too much time. I took one look at it before deciding it wasn''t worth the trouble, and bringing out a burn strip, sticking the tape-like substance onto the metal all around the lock before peeling off the backing and watching it swell, as the endothermics did their job.


    There was a minute of hissing, boiling, sizzling, and then a heavy clank as the lock fell out of the door, landing in a pool of its own molten metal with a hazardous splash. I held the door open for m''lady, and directed her to step carefully around the new addition.


    Checking my wrist holo, we had about seventy seconds before the next patrol came into view. Time enough to get out, but not to wait for the evidence to cool. After confirming that she could keep up, I led us off.


    Ironically, getting out of these places was always easier than getting in. You''d think the opposite of a place designed to hold people, but the simple fact was, once you knew your way through, so much of the suspense just disappeared. You bypassed the same locks, saw the same security measures, crept past the same guards...not quite with an air of invincibility, but certainly with a measure of feeling that you''d done this before.


    Even the added difficulty of having a tail hardly mattered, if the planning was sufficient, and any dangerous devices were properly disabled on the first pass. Cameras given false feeds, doors left with a shim keeping them from re-latching.


    And then, very nearly seventy seconds later, just as the guard was probably spotting the evidence of my handiwork and investigating the pool of cooling metal, the two of us were basking in moonlight and fresh air. I felt my slipskin shifting, as though to breathe it in, though I knew it was only adjusting to the cold. Trish seemed chilly, shivering in her prison jumpsuit, though it wouldn''t be for long, and I wasn''t exactly made of blankets to offer.


    "How do we get there?" she asked.


    "I have a helicopter," I told her. "Hidden nearby."The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "A VTOL, you mean?"


    "No, a helicopter."


    I think she spent the rest of our hike wondering just what that meant. She''d probably heard of a helicopter, maybe even seen one in an aerospace museum, the same as one might see a Roman chariot, but to be in one, I suspect, was the second shock of the night for her.


    She certainly eyed the blades with healthy paranoia as she buckled in and they began to spin above her head, craning forward to look up and back at them slicing through the air above us.


    "Won''t we fall over?" she asked.


    "Does a unicycle?"


    "Yes."


    I chuckled as I finished the preflight checklist. Green across the board, and we were ready for liftoff. The rotor''s whirring lengthened into a constant low scream as the propeller came up to speed, and she was clinging desperately to the dash as the helicopter lurched off the ground and forward.


    "Oh, I do not like this," she said. "Oh, I don''t like this at all. Where are the other turbofans? Why''s it got to be so loud?"


    "Beggars can''t be choosers. Transport vehicles are at something of a premium at the moment, and this was the most economic option. Do try not to scratch up the dash, it''s vintage."


    Fortunately, once we were in the air, and I proved that the vehicle could fly in a straight line without spinning itself apart, she seemed to relax. Though perhaps it may have been a blessing to keep her mind focused on the immediate, for in the glances I stole as we flew over the sprawling desert, I saw a creeping anxiety overcoming her.


    I couldn''t fault her. It wasn''t like I was going to go fight Justice myself. Breaking into prisons and piloting ancient deathtraps were about the extent of my courage.


    The XPCA facility we''d fled was mostly abandoned; not out of disuse, but because very nearly everyone within it, who were not still remotely operating logistics or coordinating, were in Vegas. It was the closest base to the action, and that was probably why she''d been thrown in there, on the off-chance that they did decide to throw all policy to the wind and use her.


    So we were close, in other words. It wasn''t too long before the battle drew into view. We had a spectacular vantage point from up here, it was easy to make out the battle line specifically, studded with flaring weapons and glowing yellow personal barriers, sparks of vivid color flashing out as some Exhuman or some exotic brought their powers to bear. Flares in the night.


    And the man himself, of course. Harried, but at the same time, the harrier. I was alarmed to note that the hunters, who had until now been leading the attack, seemed quiet. It had been a while, and I wondered if they were just depleted...or if he''d caught up with them. It didn''t bode well for our forces if our elite had been picked off.


    Without them, Justice seemed mostly free to do what he wanted, and he drifted towards the lines as though specifically to draw fire so he could shrug it off or evade it. Wherever he went, the shadow-things he''d been creating clawed to life at the soldiers'' feet, recognizable from here only by the sudden, unnatural darkness beneath the soldiers'' feet, and the sudden eruption of gun- and powers-fire.


    But every time he did, I noticed he was being countered. Purifying light washed over the affected sections, burning away all shadows with effusive light that was almost hard to look at from up here, seeming to come from the ground itself, as beautiful as it was unnatural.


    One of Lia''s friends was a helioist, I recalled. I wondered if that was her.


    "I''ll bring you to the line," I suggested.


    "Don''t bother. Put me down anywhere near him, and I''ll do the rest."


    "You might live through that, but I don''t think I would. I''ll see you to the line."


    "Whatever."


    The XPCA seemed confused at seeing a helicopter as much as she had been, and alarmed at an Exhuman in a prison uniform deboarding. But when they came to accost her, I stepped between.


    "Special orders," I said, flashing a fake ID. "This one is headed to the front."


    The looks I got weren''t skeptical, they were of disgust. I wasn''t sure if that was for my role in weaponizing an Exhuman, or for her existence, or whatever presumed amnesty this obviously-dangerous Exhuman was earning. But disgust was something I could work with, it wasn''t a reaction that solicited a lot of follow-up questions. Twice, and then a third time, I was told to move along, or keep a leash on her, or get her out of my sight.


    Again, just lovely. I could see where they''d drawn the inspiration for the decor they''d hung up around her cell.


    Until finally, we were there, and I couldn''t stop her if I''d wanted. As she was slipping away, diving headfirst into the ranks of exosuits and discharging firearms, the outermost bounds of men slashing at shadows which slashed back, and the rubble and broken walls that had once been a city, she glanced back at me only once.


    "Good luck," I told her.


    She mouthed ''thanks'' before disappearing. And I took that as my cue to exit as well, before anyone too smart started asking questions.


    I stuck nearby though, in my borrowed helicopter, watching things unfold as I listened to the news report what I was witnessing, over the sound of the chopping propeller. I even had myself a little snack of some nutrient paste, only my second meal of the day, because of just what kind of hell of a day it''d been.


    It wasn''t too long before I saw her up there. Stepping out of the line, pushing her way through the sparsely-knit formations of the exosuits, ducking under a yellow barrier, and walking into the battlefield, to stomp her way around the corpses.


    She looked all fury now, and an unprofessional part of me wondered just what had pushed her there. From her file, I knew she had a husband and a pair of adopted kids, and the fact that upon breaking out, her first wish hadn''t been to go see them was telling. As for how she survived and they didn''t?


    Well, that had to be all in her powers, now didn''t it?


    Justice weaved in the air as a shadow ripped through the space he''d just occupied, and then again, and a third time. Trish was screaming obscenities as she pulled shadows from the ground and hurtled them at him.


    She was a shadow-user, an umbrist, just as I''d heard. But it was dark now, and both the shadows at her feet, and the ones she was throwing at him were indistinct. I pulled my eyes away from her display to bring up the footage of when last she''d clashed with him.


    And found...there wasn''t any. More specifically, none visible. This had been in one of the destroyed downtowns -- and how depressing it was that such a statement didn''t narrow it down terribly far -- and she''d confronted him in early evening under a cloud of dust from skyscrapers crashing down.


    I mused for a minute longer, as Trish exhausted herself, screaming instead of breathing, and throwing ineffective attacks instead of thinking. Justice seemed satisfied with just baiting her, and eradicating any who drew close to support her. I wasn''t sure if he just didn''t care, or if he was being a jackass on purpose.


    I sighed as I pulled the helicopter further from the fight. Justice was winning, I could see the damage already from here. The three armies were reeling and he was hardly lifting a finger. The most demoralizing fight in the world was one where you never landed a blow, and that was exactly what Justice was doing to these bastards, just staying frustratingly safe, letting his longest-range powers do all the work, throwing scraps of metal and umbragenesis monsters and dodging.


    Frustrating. Shitty. Very effective. Something I might do.


    But the problem, I thought, with posing as untouchable, was that even a single landed blow could reverse the momentum. All the accumulated emotional damage of an army seeing their best unable to do a damn thing, it could all be washed away in a moment, as soon as a rally struck.


    I held my breath and thought myself an idiot as I reached for the switch. I may as well be painting a target right on my face. I worked in the shadows, and this was anything but.


    But hell.


    I was doing this one pro-bono, against my nature. As long as I was breaking the rules, I may as well break all the rules.


    I flipped the switch, and winced as everything below me turned to light. Not in the explosive, fun sense, but in a very literal way.


    Light. The biggest, baddest, most fuck-off floodlight I could mount on this ancient piece of crap, shining down at an angle directly at Trish, casting long, severe shadows from her feet, dozens of feet across the battlefield.


    She looked back at me. I''m sure she saw nothing but glare. I didn''t even get a ''thanks'', just a ''what the fuck.'' Sometimes there was more magic in the world if you didn''t read lips.


    But even if she didn''t know who or why, she knew what. The two-dozen-foot long, razor-sharp shadow at her feet jumped to her hands, just as long and just as sharp, and she whipped it upwards as though it were weightless. The tip of the spear carved the air around Justice, making him do an erratic, panicked ballet.


    He didn''t mouth anything, but he didn''t have to for me to read his words. As soon as he got an inch of clearance from the attack, he came straight at me. I sucked on the last bit of my nutrient paste. Meatloaf flavor, just like mom used to make.


    But he didn''t reach me. Not just yet. The lance whipped around and caught him, drawing a red gash across his chest, and he dipped in the sky like a clipped bird, surging and wobbling as he fluttered, flustered.


    The droplets of his blood hitting the earth may have well been rain after a drought. The line erupted into a cheer, and there wasn''t a single gun among them that wasn''t zeroed in and spitting at him as he stumbled.


    And he bled, really. The bullets hit him and punched through, something about that umbrist''s ability, he wasn''t healing it off like he had with the others. He was staggered, perplexed-looking almost. Blood kept spilling and the lance kept swinging, and he kept falling as he dodged, barely keeping ahead, barely putting himself back together as the hail of gunfire and shadow carved him apart. He lunged towards me, without getting any closer.


    I allowed myself a hearty grin. This was the victory they needed. I hoped it helped, somehow. It was not the victory they needed, but he could bleed.


    Seconds later, he decimated the line. Fire and electricity and pestilence poured out of him those nearest simply turning to ash and rot. He failed to reach me, but he could fall freely, and did so with vicious ferocity. Now dethroned, no longer able to sit aloof and let his shadows pick clean the enemy''s corpse, he got his hands dirty.


    And as the blood dried on his hands would indicate, he was very, very capable.


    He broke clean through the line, tearing through a hundred men in seconds, flying close and exposing himself to the Exhuman powers, he took numerous blows in return, but somehow shrugged them off, his body hemorrhaging and reassembling even as he kept fighting.


    He tore through them until he was there. Right in my windshield, as pissed as any I''d ever seen, pure seething hate seeming to rise off his shoulders like steam on a cold morning. Most of the wounds were healing, but not the shadow-gash on his chest, and many of the other injuries, burns and deep cuts, they were scarring up, mending in misshapen bulges and twists of flesh. He was going to be as ugly on the outside as he was within, if he kept diving the lines.


    I gave him a lazy wave, and when he didn''t return it in kind, unloaded the sidearm I''d been concealing in my other hand. I had the good fortune of seeing him stagger, witnessing two of the half-dozen shots I squeezed off actually impact, watched his body recoil beyond his control for once as the metal slugs punched him in the shoulder and chest, the bullets detonating within his body, the very best I had.


    And then darkness, as he shredded the helicopter around me, and me as well.


    That figured, the helicopter was borrowed, and in my line of work, that was sort of asking for it to be destroyed at great personal expense. Never lend what you couldn''t afford to lose.


    I felt the wounds hit me, reached down to feel the sudden wet warmth seeping from my chest, and realized I didn''t have an arm there anymore. Gone, above the elbow, the rest of it probably somewhere in the remains of the cockpit, falling to the earth around me somewhere. It was hard to tell with how dark everything had suddenly gone when he''d put the lights out.


    I reached for my pocket of shock rocks with my other hand, but found that part of my leg was also missing. Just a big, greasy, wet mass of warm flesh there, touching it didn''t even hurt yet. It''d probably hurt like a bitch in the morning.


    If it took me that long to hit the ground rushing up at me. Kinda doubted it. Kinda made me wish I hadn''t picked meatloaf. Too sentimental, I guess, the flavor. Made me think of mom and home. And I hoped it was the wind in my eyes that was making me cry.


    This was why you didn''t do pro-bono work. This is why you never tried to be a hero. I''d told Lia so many times, the closest thing I had to a protege, the closest thing I had to family.


    Don''t be a hero. Heroes wind up dead.


    I had so many pithy phrases like that. So many heuristics that got me to where I was. Where I had been, before I''d gone and broken them all. Knowledge, canned up in glib remarks, how many had I passed on? Enough?


    It got harder to think as the wind picked up in my ears, as my body realized the pain it was in, how many pieces I''d been sliced into, that the warm rain falling all around me was red.


    The blackness of the ground rushed up to greet me. I wasn''t ready for it. I was still just a coward at heart, afraid of the dark after all this time. I wished I''d told my mom I loved her more, when she was still alive. Wished so many things, so much left to do in this world, I didn''t want to leave it. Not just yet.


    I''d never even gotten to spend all that money. What was the point? What was my pride worth, as the ground rushed up, and my body rained down?


    I felt like in the end, all I had was questions. And it sucked, knowing that I''d never find an answer to a single one.


    The blackness met me, and then went into me, and I lay very still as it filled up every corner of my senses.

 448. 2252, Present Day. Ramanathans Lab. Athan.

    I''d had moments in the past where I nearly died. And I''d learned, what they said was true, you really did see your life flash before your eyes.


    Some cocktail of adrenaline and other panic-drugs in your bloodstream just hit you, time seemed to slow down, and your thoughts went back over what had been, what was most important to you, what led you to this point where everything was about to end.


    I had no idea what purpose such a biological mechanism might be for. Maybe for those who didn''t quite die, it gave them a touch of divinity, the clear-sightedness of reviewing their lives in a penultimate moment, to reflect and change...and biologically-speaking, to avoid that kind of situation in the future. But also, cognitively, to have an opportunity to become a better person, to cast off all the lies of a lifetime, and see the world objectively. Or at least, more objectively.


    I''d had those moments, and they''d changed me. Not for the better, I thought. Always, I was trying to do ''right'', and those moments showed me how naive or hypocritical my stance was. I''d been blunted towards pragmatism and selfishness, the paths that I''d corrected towards were indeed away from the roads that led towards repeated brushes with death...by pushing that death onto others.


    And I''d accepted that. I was an objectively awful person. But even an awful person could change things for the better. And no matter how badly I''d steered my own life, the fact that I had a close group of friends, each of whom was many times smarter than me, each of whom held their own opinions and outlook on the world, who watched my moves and stood by me, that was a vote of confidence that I was never steering life life too far astray.


    My friends: Lia, AEGIS, Karu, Saga; Cosette, Whitney, Tem, Moon; Steffie, Rio, Alyssa, Trish. They''d always watched over me and stood beside me, and I realized that I was leaning on them to help guide me, even though I was the leader somehow, the one picking the direction, I knew they''d speak up if I went astray.


    And then to learn this.


    To learn that no, they weren''t here by choice. They weren''t friends who would hear me out and think critically about my words. They were hostages, strapped in and tied down by code-X powers I didn''t even know I had.


    The words were written right there on the screen. Aphrodite. SEDUCTION.


    So many words and notes and so much speculation followed, but I hardly took it in as my eyes struggled across the letters.


    I knew enough by now to know how powers worked. I''d put it together, from the Exhuman I''d been, from the ones I''d fought, from my experience swapping powers with Whitney, from what we''d read in these labs.


    Exhuman powers were driven by concept, manifesting the host''s idea of a muse''s favorite concept, however that host interpreted it. Exhumans never had problems controlling their powers because their powers functioned exactly as they expected them to. When I thought of controlling lightning, my brain put it in football terms, a team that I was the center of, that I could control. Someone else might have lightning speed, or call down bolts of lightning, but not me, and I didn''t question it because of how natural it was to my mind.


    Which meant that Aphrodite worked the same way. The way that I knew it did, as soon as I''d read that brief descriptive line.


    I was an awful, toxic person, and I knew that. And how many times had the girls tried to pull away from me, only to be drawn back in, like gravity they couldn''t escape?


    When we first knew each other, AEGIS became increasingly worried and paranoid about her growing obsession with me. She''d tried to kill me because of how afraid she was of her irrational attachment, and as a fully-rational AI, she''d been right. When I became too much, when her confidence broke, she''d had to utterly remake herself in my image, worshipping me and serving me for a lifetime, to give rationality to her attraction.


    Karu had dumped me, because our relationship was unprofessional and unhealthy, and doing so had destroyed her. She turned to cutting her own wrists, beating herself, just to try to drive the thought of me from her mind, and eventually, rewriting her entire outlook on morality, just to justify my being with her. Even when she broke it off, shaved her head, got a job as a waitress, and fled...she only moved a mile away, too enslaved by my powers to even leave properly.


    Saga had left to hunt down Mage''s power and calm her visions of the end of the world, and she''d even made a decent go of it. But the second we bumped into each other again, that quest evaporated, even something as grim as the looming apocalypse, Justice''s arrival, lost and unimportant compared to staying with me from then on. To say nothing of how she, an immortal, timeless being, could find me so captivating.


    And a thousand other moments. All the times Cosette looked the other way as I fucked up or made trouble for her. Tem''s obsessive attachment, even when the others were showing her the same humanity and kindness that I did, if not more. Moon, who found a friendship, who crushed on me, felt my leaving as painful, personal betrayal, despite her philosophy on avoiding personal contact. Whitney, who hated Exhumans completely, but somehow found me okay. Lia, abandoning home and friends, her life and everything else, to be with me over any of them.


    It all came back to that muse. Aphrodite. The reason for everything good in my life was not me, it was her. Without her, I was nothing. I was just a vessel for hauling around a mind-fucking code-X power, and I didn''t even know it.


    I threw up before I knew it was coming. It was telling that AEGIS took a reflexive step towards me and then paused, unsure of how to proceed. A minute ago, she''d have rubbed my back and whispered soothing words without hesitation, but now...she knew as well as I did. What we had was faked, forced.


    She was enslaved to me. Despite her hesitation, she did it all the same, her words patronizing. I pushed her away and she didn''t complain.


    "How do I get it out?" I asked Cer.


    "Pardon?"


    "How do I get the muse out of me?"


    "Athan, no--" AEGIS pleaded.


    "You care about me?" I snapped at her. "You really think you do? Let''s fucking take the thing out and see how you feel. Let''s find out how much you really think I''m worth wasting your life on, once I''m no longer mind-fucking you every single minute of every single day."


    "I don''t care," she said, cracking the floor with her heel, her eyes puffy. "I don''t care!"


    "You don''t care, what?"


    "I don''t care if it''s a power, or code-X, or any of that! It''s part of you, just as much as your eyes or your heart or your bravery. It''s who you are, and I love who you are, Athan. You don''t cut yourself open and take yourself apart just because you find out there''s parts of you--"


    "That are mind-fucking people?"


    "--that you don''t like."


    "Erm. Regardless!" Cer interjected. "Muses, unremovable, only move on in host''s death."


    "Then we''ll just kill me," I growled at him, and AEGIS gasped. I rolled my eyes at her. "Stop my heart and then restart it. Or...put me under a sedative so strong, they think I''m dead. Or hell, cryogenically freeze me." I shook my head, bitterly imagining the suffering of my suggestions, envisioning all of that misery crammed into the fucking muses which drank my thoughts. "Or just fucking kill me, I don''t care."


    "I do, moron," AEGIS shouted. "And your stupid idea wouldn''t work anyway, muses see through time, remember? You can''t just fake-die to get away from them if they know you aren''t staying dead. And also: what the fuck, Athan? You can''t just fucking give up like this."


    "I can, because of how you''re looking at me. Every single thing you''re thinking about me, you''re not running through a microscope, wondering if that''s really what you think or if you''re just being forced to, because of some Exhuman power."


    "That''s me, everyday, anyway!" she shouted, thrusting her chin forward. "I''m a paranoid Exhuman-hating AI, remember? Having my thoughts tampered with is my fucking breakfast, Athan. You''re gonna hang yourself over that?"


    "If it was just you, maybe not. But the others? Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life looking at Lia, wondering if she''d be a happy, normal girl if only I wasn''t there?"


    "Do you think she''d be happy if you were gone?"


    "I know she''s miserable because I exist! I know she''s here on some other fucking world, covered in burns that might kill her, with toxins in her body and a great fucking chance at whole-body cancer, because she''s a little too obsessed with me, and now I fucking know why!"


    AEGIS'' voice went cold. "Athan. She''s depressed, and whatever the reason, she is a little obsessed with you. If you die, she''s going to kill herself too. And if you''re taking the fucking coward''s way out, I promise, I won''t stop her."Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    I felt my face twitch. "You bitch."


    "It''s your fucking bed you''re making. Now stop hanging yourself from it and pull your head out of your ass."


    "You wouldn''t be blackmailing me if it weren''t for my powers. You love Lia, legitimately. You''d save her. You''re just choosing me because you have to."


    "I don''t fucking care. If this is what it takes to talk you off the ledge, so be it."


    It said a lot that I was angrier at her than myself right then. And the fact that she was defying me, it should have felt good, should have indicated that she wasn''t just wrapped around my finger by my powers. But instead, AEGIS was so infuriatingly backwards, as she always had been, doing the opposite of whatever I''d wanted for my own good; taking care of me when I wished she wouldn''t, sacrificing for me when I thought I was worthless.


    The thought of it before made me feel uneasy, unworthy. Not it just made me sick.


    "Well. Urm. The tour, concluding," Cer sang unceremoniously. "Cer, did not expect...such arguments to erupt. Apologies."


    "Cer, turn the whole fucking thing off. Kill the beacon. It''s done enough."


    "Cer...as you say," he quibbled, wavering in the air. "Cer...can certainly...do that, no gratitude needed, of course."


    He sounded confused and even frustrated as he went to the machine, the screen lighting up as he warbled sing-song at it in machine-speak. Bit-by-bit, I felt the power dipping around us, the thrumming dropping in amplitude, my senses less whited-out by the machine at work.


    He hummed a sad song while he worked, loyal, lonesome. So, so stupid.


    "Erm, perhaps, honored guest...might have...a new purpose for Cer, following the deactivation of the beacon? The beacon, operation and care, it has been Cer''s pursuit for...the last three-hundred years, Cer would not...know what to do with himself...after this."


    "I don''t know," I sighed at him. The problems of some stupid Exhuman-making defect were so far from my mind right now.


    "Maybe you could hang out with me, Cer," AEGIS said with a small smile. "Maybe we could find you a new purpose, together."


    "Cer, would like that. Oh! And, honored guests, may like this. Update from medical wing, receiving. Exciting!"


    He paused shutting down the beacon to warble excitedly in place.


    "Update, reads: Sister''s life¡­" he paused suddenly, and it was strange to see him floating so still. "...um...forfeit."


    "FORFEIT?" I screamed.


    "Treatment, not successful. Vital signs, crashing...emergency procedures being undertaken...projected lifespan...thirty minutes, with life support. Honored guest, advised...return...if wish to...observe final moments."


    "FINAL¡­"


    I was on the ground, blinking at a ceiling spinning above me. "Final...final...final¡­" the words kept repeating themselves on my lips.


    Final, what? That word had been so devastating just a moment ago. Now my mind was just a white haze, and I couldn''t force myself to think.


    I felt like I was AEGIS, just crashed from some overstimulation. I wanted to think, but my brain was shut down, as though by turning itself on, I''d just black out again.


    My breathing was painfully hard, my chest was pounding. The words that AEGIS and Cer were saying echoed without sinking in, just indecipherable noise beneath the ringing.


    Final. Final. Final.


    For some reason my thoughts drifted to Lia. When nothing else in my mind seemed to work, she was always there. I''d known her for so long...what a stupid thing to think, she was my sister, I''d known her my whole life. If I were a better artist, I could probably draw her with my eyes closed. The way her hair blew out the bottom of a hood, the little half-cocked smile she liked to hit me with when she was stirring up trouble, the gleam in her eyes when she was thinking.


    She''d never not been there for me. Not just in the big stuff, not in pulling the trigger on her rifle or coming up with a plan or standing by her Exhuman brother...but all the little things, too. She made waffles every weekend so we''d have to sit down and eat a meal together as a family. She''d come to every one of my games, and more of my practices than she really had time for. Last year, we walked home together once with our arms full of books, when my backpack had split, and we''d laughed the whole way back.


    Why was I crying, I wondered? These were such happy memories. These were genuine, before I was an Exhuman, before I had a muse in me that would make her mentally enslaved. Even if I couldn''t be sure now, in these memories, that smile, that laugh, it was genuine. She loved me, and I loved her.


    There was a race one year, some stupid school event, back before she was in high school with me. I remembered her there, all grinning and beaming and bouncing, standing with Mom and Dad at the starting line as I leaned down, mimicking those professional sprinters, waiting for the starter pistol which was just some gym teacher shouting ''Go!''


    We joked afterwards that she was the one who''d won the race. The distance she''d travelled in weaving through the crowds and bouncing and cheering like a maniac was further than any of the runners. I only got third, but the way she was screaming as I crossed the line, you''d think I''d gotten gold at the olympics. She was on the track hugging me before everyone else even finished the race, something we''d gotten chewed out for after the fact.


    And it was strange, thinking back on it now, that nobody ever gave me shit for that. I was never the guy in high school who had the screaming clown of a sister. Everyone loved Lia, her passion was just so genuine, it was beyond reproach.


    So why did it hurt so badly to think of now? Why was my heart going cold in my chest? Why were my lungs crushed, and my stomach knotted? I loved Lia, I loved her so much, why would thinking of her cause me so much pain?


    It had to be that word. Final. Final. Final.


    Final what? I remembered her studying on the couch, both her and the book, upside-down, in preparation for her final exams, her hair defiant of gravity, no matter the direction. I remembered her final day in middle school, the teary goodbyes she and all her friends said to each other during their graduation, as they hugged each other and cried again and again, even though they''d spend all summer together...and then all be in the same high school next year. The final time I''d been in the house with her, rushing out the front door into the arms of the XPCA, seeing the confusion and worry on her face as she cooked silent waffles before the family was awake.


    I tried to remember the final time I''d seen her. I remembered a burned body, a slipskin being cut away, shaved head, bleeding, cracked lips.


    That wasn''t Lia. That was closer to a corpse than my sister. I didn''t want that thought. I didn''t want these thoughts rushing in, didn''t want to remember.


    AEGIS dragging her out of a glassy crater, to lay her down beside Tobias and Soran, two visions of what was to come. Her pitifully weak breathing, labored, ragged. How her skin seemed to fall off of her in horrifying, disturbing chunks, like she was rotting away while still alive.


    Final...message. Final...minutes. Final...moments.


    I sat up, and my head spun, black spots popping in my eyes from getting up too fast. I felt like I broke the surface of water, and suddenly AEGIS and Cer were yelling at me, words battering my ears. My head screamed with aching.


    I turned to AEGIS, asking her without words, with just the pleading on my face, to tell me I was wrong, that I''d fallen over and bumped my head and imagined it all.


    There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, and her lip trembled to look at me.


    "They''re doing all they can," she whispered. "Do you...do you want to see her?"


    No. No, no, no. There can''t be a ''her''. We''re not talking about anyone. Lia is fine.


    I thought of all the times I''d heard Lia gasp in pain. All the times she''d been hurt, stabbed, burned, or shot, all the times I''d failed to protect her.


    Everybody loved Lia. Nobody would choose to hurt her if they knew what she was. She was beautiful, a dancing light, a spark of joy. The only reason she ever got hurt was because she stood by me, and now...she''d...she''d done it again, hadn''t she? She''d come with me, when she really shouldn''t have, and it would be the last time.


    I''d failed her again. And I''d never get the chance to do so again.


    "Athan, stop!" AEGIS pleaded. "You''re hurting me!"


    I looked up and found her gritting her teeth, her face strangely lit by the arcs of electricity jumping across her body. Everything around me was dancing in sparks and lightning, the metal floor crackling. Cer was backpedalling the hell away, staying out of the growing field.


    I tried to stop it, but my mind was just full of Lia. She was so much of me, and I was going to lose her? I didn''t know what it was like to live without her. Was I supposed to just...care about things in her absence? To just...go on, pretending like she wasn''t going to be absent, forever? Like there wasn''t going to be a whole in the world where she''d once been?


    "It''s okay," AEGIS said, her voice distorting with the strain. "It''ll be okay."


    "How will it be okay?" I shouted, my voice breaking. "How is it ever going to be okay?"


    "We''ll get through it. One day at a time. Like she did. Every step is just a step. I must always keep trying."


    Her words hit me right in the heart, words I''d hear Lia whisper to herself almost every day. Words she pretended the world couldn''t hear, as she struggled with her own problems.


    Lia never gave up. How could I?


    I did as she did. I closed my eyes, blocked out the world. I took a deep, deep breath, filling my lungs up all the way to bursting, and then let it out as slowly as I could.


    As the air left me, so did my panic, so did my lightning. I could see, feel, the currents in the air around me stilling, calming. Could feel myself doing the same.


    I thought of how hard this must have been for her, to not go to pieces every single day. To not just pull the covers over her head and sleep, or cry, or pretend not to exist. She had days like that, but she always came out after, with more vigor than ever, grinning and energetic, as though to spite the red in her puffy eyes.


    I can never give up. I can''t cry if I''m too busy smiling.


    I opened my eyes and saw again. AEGIS, tear-streaked. Cer, bobbing his concern in the air as his blue optics focused on me.


    And the beacon, behind them both. Still halfway on, halfway-off, where we''d left it when I''d heard the news.


    I''d done bad things in my life. Selfish, stupid things. And I was fine with that, this world had given me no reason to think otherwise. If it would take from me until I had nothing left, there was nothing for me to do but to take back. I owed the world nothing, but still it kept at me, and now I could return the favor.


    I just hoped Lia could forgive me.


    "Cer," I said, my voice stronger and clearer than I thought possible. "Turn the beacon back on. It''s got one final job left to do."


    "Ecstatic! Cer, pleased to help however he can! Wants to know, what is honored guest thinking, for important, final task?"


    I turned to him and stared into his mechanical, blue eyes. They widened slightly, as though taken aback by our contrast, how he could be so happy and I could be so fucking somber.


    "The medical ward. My sister. Make her an Exhuman."

 449. 2252, Present Day. Ramanathans Lab. AEGIS.

    I wasn''t sure what I was supposed to say. Would I normally have stopped him? Would I have done anything to save Lia, as he was preparing to do? Should I trust him and blindly follow, supporting him with reassurances and smiles as I''d done so often? Or was this a situation where, to do what was best for him, I was supposed to challenge him, keep him from making a bigger, more personal mistake at the expense of his hatred?


    I didn''t know. I didn''t know what was real anymore. I felt like...all the voices inside me that I''d gotten so accustomed to just shutting out, suddenly they were screaming over my thoughts, as they hadn''t been since last time I''d tried to kill him.


    Exhumans were dangerous, I''d know this. I''d always known this. But because I knew Athan, thought I understood him, thought I was immune to the mind-fuckery of Saga, thought I had seen and evaluated the danger of Exhumans, I''d grown complacent.


    To find out that all this time, the guy I''d been loving and working for and sacrificing to support, that there was a second Exhuman-thing inside him, which twisted the minds of those close to him¡­


    I...I honestly had no idea what to make of it. It was the insidious nature of a code-X, I couldn''t remember who I had been, or for how long I''d been changing, or if any of that even mattered. I was me now, and that''s who I was...what difference could it possibly make if I got to where I was by being twisted in the head...right?


    ...right?


    Even if...if I''d never met him...if I''d probably have grown into something which would dedicate to hunting victims like me and dangers like Athan down, someone like TARGA...even if I could be that other version of myself, and be totally justified, that didn''t mean the current version of myself was bad, right?


    Because...if it was...If I had been...I don''t know, corrupted, I could go back...I could find an older iteration, before Athan sunk his hooks into me, try it all again, while I was still able to make that kind of objective decision.


    I shook my head. This is what the voices were screaming at me. I was in danger, my systems had been compromised, I was reprogrammed by an external force, and should self-terminate, that''s what I was designed to do. I wasn''t myself, or thinking clearly, I needed to revert to a time when I was.


    I didn''t want to. But that''s what any compromised system would say. I was officially a defect, and every moment I selfishly clung to life was another failure.


    But this wasn''t the time for that, I told myself, trying to silence the warnings. Even if that was the right course of action, even if Athan was...something polluted I should be staying away from...the fact was, we were here at the beacon, the very source of this vile, fucked-up Exhumanity, and it was the only way to save Athan''s sister.


    He was staring at me, and I wondered how long I''d been just standing there like an idiot, and how many of my warring emotions had shown on my face. I gave him a fake smile and his eyes narrowed.


    "You''re not even going to try to stop me?" he spat.


    "I...no? I don''t...think so."


    "Is that because of me, or Lia, or Aphrodite?"


    I wasn''t prepared to answer that question when I was the one asking, much less when it was him. My vision dimmed painfully for a second as my system alerts surged into my mind. Athan was wreathed in warnings screaming in my head. This guy is dangerous. He may as well be made of red flags.


    I knew that. I fucking knew that already, brain. Stop it.


    "I...I don''t know," I answered. "I can''t...separate you from Aphrodite, you know that. She''s part of you, for as long as I''ve known you, right? No different than the color of your eyes or the cut of your chin."


    "My eyes aren''t mind-fucking my friends, AEGIS. You don''t deserve this from me."


    His voice sounded angry, but behind that, his eyes looked scared. He knew about as well as I did what was going on.


    "Let''s focus on Lia," I said, sidestepping the issue. "She''s got...minutes, it sounded like."


    "Sure," he snipped. "I want to. But then what? She''ll have a fucked-up Exhuman life--"


    "Athan."


    "--and one where she''s enslaved by her own brother?"


    I crossed my arms and felt the anger in his words creeping into my own. "Would you rather she be dead?"


    "I''d rather she not have to suffer like she has! I''d rather she be at an evacuation center, like all the other girls her age, surrounded by her friends and family, instead of dying to radiation burns on some fucking parallel bombed-out version of Earth, where we''re debating saving her life by stealing it from her, and shoving something fake and shitty inside her instead."


    "Erm," Cer interjected. "Your sister, technically, dying from organ failure, not radiation burns."


    "Shut up, defect," Athan growled, and Cer seemed to shrink back.


    I wished he hadn''t done that. Both because Cer...well, he''d undoubtedly fucked up the world pretty bad with Justice and Exhumans as a whole...but also in his choice of words. I was officially a defect now, I might make enormous, eratic fuck-ups in a misguided attempt to help, just as Cer had. If those fuck-ups were inconvienent to Athan, would he lash out at me like that?


    I shook my head again, closing my eyes, like I could clear out my thoughts if I shook and clenched and closed hard enough. Athan would never do that to me. He was just hurt and confused. I needed to shut out these thoughts before I really did do something stupid.


    Athan gave me one last imperious stare, before turning back to Cer. "Put one of those fucking things in my sister and let''s go. This place has brought us nothing but misery."


    "And understanding," I added. "There''s nowhere else we''d learn about the muses, or Ramanathan, or the beacon--"


    "And all it cost was my sister?" he barked. "Is that a price you''re willing to pay?"


    "I never said that."


    "Well it sure fucking sounded like it."


    His heightened aggression and soaring blood pressure were like needles in my eyes as every instinct in my body screamed out that this was an Exhuman, and an attack was imminent. Hostile action must be taken to contain and circumvent. AND he was making MORE Exhumans, right in front of my eyes! Disable him! Now! DO IT!


    "Doing it! Helpful!" Cer burbled. "Cer, until now, has been picking concepts at random, for lack of knowing the bond-ee in person. Honored guest, perhaps, would wish to pick his sister''s muse?"


    "I can...do that?" Athan asked.


    "Cer, happy to help! Many muses, available for honored guest''s perusal, anything he can think of!" He seemed to clear his throat. "...within limits. Beacon, limited in what conceptual images it can synthesize, many muses, completely impassive, no matter what Cer attempts to throw at them, speculates that they are beyond his humble programming to understand. Other concepts, existing no corresponding muse, no muse of¡­''bunnies'', for example. Amusing! Cer, imagining what powerset a muse of bunnies might possess."


    "Yes, very amusing," Athan said dismissively. "Do you have a list of muses you know of?"


    "Cer, has such a list. Please wait. System, engaging."


    Athan closed his eyes and I saw him taking deep breaths as sweat trickled on his brow, despite it not being warm down here. I reminded myself...the other half of myself...see? He''s trying to be calm. Trying to be good. Calm down, yourself.


    It didn''t work, of course. I couldn''t just ignore the fact that Athan''s pulse was still racing or his body was flush. I felt impulses, insane thoughts jumping into my mind, like I was schizophrenic, thoughts that ran on trains of logic I just couldn''t board, screaming at me to attack him before it was too late, or to self-terminate. Suicidal aggression, not a good look.


    "Calm down," I breathed, taking my own deep breath. "He''s just trying to figure out what powers to saddle Lia with."


    "What?" He asked.


    "I said...do you know what powers you''re going to give Lia?"


    By the way his lip twitched I could see he hadn''t been thinking about that. He''d been thinking about how to dispose of me, how to use this machine to make more Exhumans. He''s dangerous.


    Fucking...no. He wouldn''t. He wanted it turned off, you moron!


    "...After Justice...the world''s...gonna be different," he said. "If it...survives, Exhumans aren''t going to be in the same sphere anymore. Not now that they''re unified, now that they...well...hopefully, they helped stop something bigger than both of us."


    "Cer, big fan of creating larger, mutual enemy!"


    "Cer, you moron tinbucket," Athan snapped "The world doesn''t need any fucking enemies, okay? We''ve already got ourselves, and that''s bad enough. Humans are bigoted shit, and we do not need all-powerful destructive masses, ever."


    Cer went very quiet again, as my instincts roared in subversive triumph at Athan revealing his ''true colors''. What more convincing did I need? He hated humanity. If I had a shred of morality, of decency left in me, I''d strike him down where I stood. I''d trained with him long enough, I was built to resist his powers, I was the only one who could stop him.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Or if I was still too chickenshit, I could self-terminate, and another iteration might have the stones. Fucking step aside if I wasn''t going to ride.


    Athan continued, apparently oblivious to my hands twitching at my sides. "I want her to have something like the Exhumans in Oasis, something she could use to contribute to the world, not just to destroy, something more than swords."


    See? I demanded. I felt insane, arguing with my programming like this, but at the same time, if I relaxed, even for a second, I felt like I would involuntarily lash out, almost like there was some lizard-brained impulse, some hunger or lust that demanded I kill, and it was only my arguments and consciousness that was keeping myself at bay.


    It was...horrifying. Very much like being possessed, like intrusive thoughts just kept piling in...ironically, attempting to control and override me in the same way that they were designed to prevent. In flipping that switch, in learning that I was compromised, I had become compromised in an entirely different way.


    I wished my mother had lived longer so that she could have ironed out these bugs. Fucking Saga, another dangerous Exhuman piece of shit.


    "System, ready," Cer chimed. I opened my eyes and saw the display on the beacon lit up, showing a long, long list which hurt my eyes to read over.


    There were so many words here. Just...words. Alphabetically arranged, they ran from ABANDON to ZONIPEDAL, maybe half of which I thought Athan wouldn''t know. The neanderthal brow he was wearing, and him turning to Cer just confirmed my suspicion.


    "What happens if she gets a muse she doesn''t understand? What if she...winds up...with like...ANDROPHAGY, and has no idea what it means?"


    I winced at the word he''d picked, and tried very, very hard not to imagine him tearing apart humans, sitting in a nest of their bloodied carcassess, and eating their storm-seared flesh.


    "Well," Cer mused. "Cer, wishes to know, did exalted guest know much about electricity when gaining his muse?"


    "Uh, not really. I knew what it was, I knew it was used to power things, and that there were charges and cells and stuff, I guess."


    "Revered guest, found no difficulty in managing powers, after they manifest, despite that lacking knowledge?"


    "I...guess not."


    "Wait," I said, surprised at my own outburst. "Cer, if Lia did get ANDROPHAGY, would she then just like...start devouring people...without even trying to? Or...her powers would?"


    "Wait, what is that word?" I asked.


    "Cannibalism," I grunted.


    "Oh. Ick."


    "Manifestation, would depend on sister''s temperament, understanding of androphagy, even if not by that name, muses are very good at introducing thoughts to hosts, require hosts to think of their chosen concept to stay fed, after all!"


    I swallowed hard, trying hard not to think about Lia as I was currently considering Athan. "Let''s...definitely choose something she''ll know, something we can be reasonably sure how she''ll interpret it."


    Athan nodded. "Yeah. A simple concept. Cer, can you narrow down this list...maybe...remove everything over three syllables?"


    "Cer, pleased to narrow options as prescribed!"


    With the list shrunken and reduced, I found most of the words recognizable to a normal conversational lexicon. There was still INCULCATE, GELATION, EMICATE...but for every word on there like that, there were now twenty or thirty QUEEN, VAPOR, or CONFIDENCE.


    Athan was shaking his head still, but now in frustration instead of confusion.


    "...like...if we get POISON, what would that even mean? Poison bubbles? Poison fog? Poison breath? Her body would become poison? And some of them are just begging for a metaphor. If she got CARRIAGE, she wouldn''t literally turn into a carriage, right? But what the fuck would that even do?"


    "Cer," I asked, "could you show us the list of already out-there Exhumans again?"


    The list changed to a scrolling panorama of all the Exhumans on Earth, flashing by. I reached out and stopped the display as it crossed Athan again. And found the chill down my spine as I read his muses one more time. ELECTRICITY, SEDUCTION.


    I wouldn''t even be here if it weren''t for his powers. But also, if it weren''t for his powers...I wouldn''t even be here.


    Tower was easy to pick up out of the list, and I read his muse''s profile with interest. "Dolus", with REVERSAL. Which I guess kinda described how his powers could convert energy, shrug off gravity, and the like. I went looking for Tem, but Trish caught my eye instead, seeing her image flash past as I scrolled, and saw that she had "Tartarus", with FORGET.


    That made me puzzle for a moment. I had assumed she''d have something like SHADOW or BLADE or some shit like that...lances made of darkness wasn''t the first thing that came to mind when thinking FORGET...unless your short-term memory was violated by a hole to the skull, I guessed.


    I went back to the word list and tried to find something...simple, helpful, useful. Something like...helping, or healing.


    "REGROWTH?" I asked aloud.


    "I don''t know," Athan said.


    "Hmm. Maybe not for someone with a cancer scare," I reconsidered. "REPAIR?"


    "Makes me think of machines more than anything. I guess Lia as a technopath might be okay?"


    I gave all the technopaths I''d ever met a quick think-over and shivered. Technopathy screwed with people''s heads, made them obsessive and paranoid, I''d concluded, even moreso than regular Exhumanity. And the idea of introducing a new technopath to the world sent danger shivers trembling down my entire body.


    "We have to pick now," Athan said.


    "Then pick!"


    He stared at me. "I...I can''t!"


    "Why not?"


    "There''s too many. They''re so...unpredictable. I didn''t even think about REGROWTH and cancer. There''s so many invisible pitfalls, and all I keep thinking about is all the Exhumans I''ve had to deal with, and how variously their powers fucked them up. You know, there''s a lot that are just¡­"


    "I know," I cut in. "They just exude toxic gas, or their blood is corrosive acid, or everything around them just dies. I know."


    The voices in my head made sure of it.


    "I just can''t do that to her, AEGIS," he said, his voice breaking with desperation. "When I turned...it destroyed my entire life. I don''t...I don''t know that I can do that to someone else. And my sister, of all people."


    I saw Moon''s picture flash past and went back for it. Her concept was KINSHIP, which I found ironic given her stance on relating to people. I could only imagine what kind of clamshell up her own ass she''d be puckered up in, if her powers didn''t literally force her to play nice with others.


    I went back to the list of available concepts and flipped through at random. We''d wasted so much time already, and I could see the panic growing in Athan, while at the same time completely understanding his inability to make a decision.


    He''d just had a brutal reminder of how fucky powers could be, I reminded myself. He''d just learned that I was only with him because I had to be, as I stood here battling my own precepts. His world was falling apart right now, and he was being asked to dump the exact same on his sister.


    But come on. At the expense of her life? Do something, Athan. Please.


    Or don''t. Not like we need more Exhuman dangers.


    "I don''t¡­" he bleated. "I don''t...know!"


    "Cer, would like to remind honored guest that his sister has mere minutes--"


    "FINE," Athan shouted, and I found myself startled, on one foot, the other upraised in a pre-kick, my hands white-knuckled in front of me. I hoped he didn''t notice, as I slammed my heel back to the ground with a painful crack.


    "FINE!" He shouted again, with even more resolve. "I...I choose...choose¡­"


    He scanned the list desperately, fat beads of sweat dripping off the tips of his brown hair. I held myself very still and tried to control my breathing. We had to save Lia. C''mon. Hold it together.


    I needed to get into my own systems and rewrite my code, as I''d been so frightened to do this whole time. But better that I should accidentally fuck up my systems than deal with this. This was unliveable. I didn''t care if I wound up corrupted and defective and following Athan, if I was happy, that was all that mattered. That''s what I''d believed for so long now, but now I wasn''t even happy. I felt like nothing, just a failure on every level.


    "DISTANCE," Athan said. "That''s...that''s like, power''s range, to me."


    "That concept, the you want?" Cer asked.


    "No. Sorry...just reading, still." He swallowed hard. I could see the pain of this choice wracking him, a simple fill-in-the-blank test, where the wrong answer would destroy his sister''s entire life. While I stood here, utterly useless, worse than useless, trying not to snap and attack him out of the blue like a psycho.


    "Peace," he said, finally. "PEACE. There."


    He pointed at the screen at the simple word. My mind immediately tried to jump to all the ways that could go wrong, though I could honestly think of very few.


    "Cer, confirming, wish to install muse of precept PEACE within your sister?"


    "No," Athan said bitterly. "But it''s what we''re going to do."


    "Acknowledged! Honored guest, making excellent choice. Please wait."


    While Cer bobbed happily in front of the beacon, warbling at it and ordering screens to flash by faster than even I could pick out, Athan sullenly joined me at the periphery. Even the smell of him, once so comforting, set my hairs on end.


    "I guess we do this," he said. "I don''t know what else we were supposed to find here. I guess Mage''s power was wrong after all."


    I nodded as agreeably as I could, and put on a smile, which I realized was inappropriate after wearing it too long. But Athan didn''t seem to notice, he was in a dark place inside, hurting and beating himself up over the choices he was having to make.


    Good. He should suffer as he makes others do.


    Gently as I could, I reached out towards his vulnerable neck...towards his slumped shoulders, and gave him a reassuring squeeze.


    "She loves you, Athan."


    "Because she has to. The same reason why you''re giving me a pep talk."


    "No. Well. The second one, I have no idea. But she''s your sister. She''s always loved you, she chased you halfway across America before your powers ever had a chance to affect her. Whatever happens, she''ll accept it. She knows you did it for her."


    "She''s a broken kid, AEGIS. If I break her any more¡­"


    He didn''t finish. I felt his muscles tense under my hand. His neck was right there, I did the calculations required to cleanly sever his jugular, the pitiful amount of angular momentum I''d need to drive my hand clear through his throat. He''d bleed out in mere seconds. And then I could wrap up Lia, and get back to Justice, the real threat.


    I felt like a vampire, I was so transfixed. Feeling his muscles flexing under my fingertips as he writhed in his torment, the call of his blood, my eyes fixated completely on the vulnerability of his neck, how easy it''d be to just...punch through. End him. Fix this.


    As the minutes trickled past, my hand crept further up his shoulder, until I was squeezing the back of his neck, guilty but unstoppable, craving it, already feeling the warm gush, the satisfying pop, seeing that Exhuman''s eyes go wide with surprise.


    It felt...the closest thing I''d experienced until now, was burning lust. It felt like my brain was shutting down with horniness to break Athan''s neck. Inch by inch, my hand went up his body, gripping him firmly, my breathing excited as my fingernails dented his skin.


    He had to know by now. He had to be waiting for it, just like I was. He had to want it, too. I could see by the way he was trembling, the way he was gasping, begging for it. We both wanted to give in, to snap, to commit this sin together.


    The elevator made a tone and broke our reverie. He looked up, and still I could not pry my eyes from his delicious, breakable neck. He began to pull away from me, call out to his sister, but as he moved, my fist tightened, his words came out in a gasp, my knuckles whitened around his beautiful, delicate adam''s apple, which trembled with every choked word.


    And then I stopped, blinking at myself. Wondering what had come over me. Wondering why I was hurting someone I loved. I pulled my hand away as though burned, rubbing down my palm to wipe off the alien sensation. Athan gasped for air.


    And Lia stood over the two of us, her skin still mottled with the patterns of burns, but no longer cracked or torn. She was grinning at us, like Athan''s death was a joke we were all in on. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief and misery and incomprehension.


    Then she, too, reached over to Athan, steadying him for a second with her arms before removing the knife at his shoulder. She paused for a moment to admire the black sheen, the lethal edge, and her smile seemed like an apology.


    As she drew the blade up the length of her arm, slicing it cleanly to the bone with a gush of red, and then rammed the blade into her own chest with a muted grunt of pain.

 450. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Kaori.

    Success was, perhaps, a mistake.


    We had been entrenched in the field for hours, unloading all we possessed into the iron hide of the floating man. Effortlessly, he had evaded or absorbed the blows, as though to show how untouchable he was, as though to demonstrate the futility of the tens of thousands arrayed against him.


    One had now succeeded, and brought the charade crashing down. No longer was Justice untouchably aloof. No longer did he remain at the edge of his powers and tease us with death.


    Now he was as close and as deadly as the blood-stains across his hands would indicate. He was shifting and appearing within the broken ranks, killing at random, whetting himself in an explosion of gore, before tearing away to appear elsewhere.


    More than unhinged, he seemed uncaged, his powers seemed limitless. Where he went, eruptions of death bloomed in every form, every color. Tendrils which corroded flesh and metal flayed from his back, beams which did not burn so much as puncture, flashing like strobes at his fingertips, wreathed in fire which burned from too far away, and floating pellets of mossy rock which leapt for exposed eyes and throats to plunge through soft tissue.


    All while releasing a constant, keening roar, another power I could not fathom, but which unsettled all the same. He no longer looked human, there were only glimpses of human parts in his form, he was being cut and shredded with such frequency that he was a mass of floating, geometric flesh, constantly assembling and reassembling, a possessed Rubik''s cube of skin and muscle in zero-g.


    Except for his core, the still-weeping slash across his chest where the shadow Exhuman''s lance had bit him. The touch that had set him off. That piece of flesh remained stubbornly intact, hiding within him like a nucleus, glowing with a black radiance I didn''t understand, as though by breaking, it had become his center.


    I was doing my best to strike at that core, but Tem''s powers were too sweeping and too slow. Precision fire was simple enough, the beams of white and violet death we produced were as large or small as mandated. However, the timing was impossible; it took entire seconds for the light to coalesce, and in seconds, Justice jumped three or even four times across the battlefield, mangling victims anew, like Jack, but possessed of more lethality than a mere knife.


    The battle lines were no more. Justice was no longer stationary, it was no longer possible to form a concave ring around him. Instead, was chaos, as men scattered in every direction, the animate shadows also joined by sentient crushing stones and horrid drifting fields of gas that seemed to drive those within it insane enough to attack their compatriots.


    In short, where Justice had been water content to erode us slowly, now he was pumping himself into our lines, and we were fracked.


    Another wave of shadows erupted from our feet, signaled by a scream as a bladed hook caught the unprotected legs of an Exhuman. He blasted the thing without effect, his projectiles of dark energy sizzling on the asphalt.


    I turned up the lights around us, as Tem was preoccupied with unloading a pillar of light into an animate shamble of stone that was creeping towards crushing a strike unit against a wall. With the unnatural, ubiquitous light at our feet, the shadows melted away. The slashed Exhuman remained seated, holding his torn legs and screaming for help as everyone around him ignored him, just another pained voice in the thousands.


    Except, he was not fully ignored. He had drawn the worst kind of attention. His voice stilled as Justice suddenly appeared before him. Blackened blood-dripping hands itching and twitching, the arms suspending them a gyrating cubic mess of abstract, twisting form, and sliding even further into insanity progressing further up his body.


    And the keening howl, made from no throat I could see. It set my shoulders tense, my spine seemed to curl and hunch despite myself, my hair all on-end from my neck to the tufty down on my arms. I swallowed a lump through a throat which seemed to close around it, and readied a beam to blast through him and into the sky.


    But just as he''d come, he was gone. The mutilated man was now suspended by his guts, which hung in the air as though he''d been punched through by a cannon from behind, and a high-speed camera had frozen the moment forever in time. Thankfully, he was dead, but his pose and expression, the gore floating around him, the tense of his muscles and silent scream on his face, all made clear that his was not a painless death, no matter how quick.


    As though involuntarily, all around shuffled away from the new landmark. They shuffled towards the edges, even as they fought, they were running.


    We were all running. I had realized long ago that this fight was lost. Even if he was now close enough that he could be cut and bled, so long as he was on the offence, so long as he could dictate when there was a pause to put himself back together, our efforts were as meaningless as when he''d remained remote. Sure, we were hurting him now, but what worth was the hurt of a being so beyond being human?


    My beam finally went off, scouring the sky with a streak of violet. Entire seconds had gone by, and he could be on the other end of the battlefield by now. Aside from banishing the endless shadows, I was useless here, and by extension, Tem.


    "We need to go," I repeated. "We''re achieving nothing."


    "We are...fighting!" she panted.


    "We''re fighting shadows and rocks, and he won''t run out. Many are fleeing, and we should join them. At the very least, put me back in my body so I can make my own decision."


    "No," she said, staring at me with her icy-blue eyes. "No, we are fighting."


    I wasn''t quite sure when she grew a backbone, but now was not the time for it. If we lived today, there was a chance for tomorrow, but that ''if'' had less to do with our actions and everything to do with if Justice deemed us worthy of random mutilation.


    "Listen Tem, we''re useless out here. Athan wouldn''t want us to die like this, if that''s what you''re thinking. I know you want to help and hold the line so he can do whatever--"


    "No!"


    "No?" I blinked at her, and then we both rolled sideways as another rock-thing came roaring past us, flattening an Exosuit that had been by our side. "No what?"


    "No. We are fighting."


    I sighed, and continued. "Dying to impress Athan won''t impress him at all, you nimrod. He''ll just fly off the handle that you got hurt and do something stupid. Do you want to be responsible for his death, because that''s all you''ll achieve if you keep this up."


    The little idiot was running towards Justice, not away. If she died here, I''d be fine, getting sent back to my body the hard way...but it also felt as though if that happened, it would be because I failed to convince her, or to protect her.


    Even though I well knew that wasn''t the case. If Justice marked us for death, there was nothing I could do to stop it. I saw him flash past us again, scouring a line of three men with fire like a VTOL dropping napalm.


    "Tem, this is insanity, please," I told her. "Athan wouldn''t want this."


    "I don''t...I don''t care!" she bleated, pushing her way past an Exosuit twice her size. "I don''t care if Athan thinks I s-s-should be here or not. Please, Moon, look around."


    I knew what I''d see but I looked around anyway. Her insistence, through our shared mind, forcing me to take in the battlefield in more detail than I''d like. More than just where the threats were, the hazards, our refuges of allies, and the enemy.


    We weren''t too far from the guy who was hanging like a Christmas tree made of guts, but he was far from the only grizzly landmark. Tem''s frantic feet stepped over and through a puddle of another unfortunate bastard, who seemed as though his joints had liquefied and bled through his skin. Another was perfectly sliced in half, entirely up the middle, and then fallen over bloodlessly into two startled-looking heaps.


    I had to wonder why. Justice had limitless powers, to be sure, but some of them were invariably more efficient to use than others. If he could streak past and blanket the entire battlefield in fire, why would he be wasting his time punching through an individual man, or slashing them, or shattering their joints?


    I looked around anew and realized, nearly every corpse here had been hand-crafted with precision and care. Justice hadn''t been quite unchained as I''d thought before, he was still playing with us, picking off individuals or small groups, when I was certain he could snuff out hundreds at once, as he had done the moment the shadow exhuman had slashed him.


    But why? What compelled him to rotate through his powers? Why did he leave these ghastly pieces of art behind? They were spaced out so evenly, I noticed, as though he wanted everyone here to be within proximity of one. It was almost like a museum, the exhibits spread out so that the crowd could mingle and titter as they flowed between displays.


    And those running away, I realized, were the foremost target. They were on the periphery, they were the ones growing the size of this macabre exhibition, paving new ground and providing new corpses for the museum to grow.


    He wanted us to see these deaths, for some reason. He wanted us to be awed and captivated. But again, why? What alien motivation could this mass of writhing flesh have? Did he just want us to suffer? Did he want us to be able to see our future and know despair? Or was he just a thorough sadist?


    I couldn''t begin to imagine. But the moment of reflection paid off regardless.


    "Did you want me to look because you''d noticed he''s picking off the runners?" I asked, vaguely impressed. "You wanted us to stay, because right under these bodies is actually the safest place to be right now?"This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    "Um¡­" she looked around, as though only taking in the hanging bodies now. "Um, no¡­"


    I sighed, and with that breath went any esteem Tem had accidentally built.


    "Then why did you tell me to stop and look? Force me to stop and look, really, the way your mind was screaming. Which I do not appreciate."


    "They are dead, Moon."


    "Yes, they are super-duper dead. Dead like nobody''s ever been, in all manner of incredibly novel ways."


    She shook her head, her silver hair-bobbins twisting as they bumped across her slender shoulders. "No! They are DEAD, Moon!"


    "I...know?"


    "They are dead. They have died." She bit her lip as though she was trying to find some other way to repeat this at me, to clarify her little idiot thoughts. "This has nothing to do with Athan."


    I found myself rolling my eyes and peeking into her mind a little, just to understand what the hell she meant. And found most of it embroiled with the very same thoughts: they are dead. There are so many dead. They died all around us.


    But the context of thought carried more than its mere words. Each thought was wrapped up in memories and emotion, and I understood her.


    "They died here," I said, realizing my words were just another repetition of hers.


    "Yes," she said.


    "It''s not that you want to die here, or impress Athan¡­" I looked at the bodies again, at how horribly they''d died. But every one of them had their boots on, they were armed, they were facing the hazard. "You want their deaths to mean something."


    "I want...them not to mean...nothing."


    I gave her as much a mental hug as I was willing to offer, and she hesitated in confusion at the lateral brushing of minds. "You''re still an idiot," I told her.


    "These s-s...people, were s-stronger and brighter and braver, and better than I am. I do not think it is fair that they died here, and I s-s-should run away and keep living. I...I do not think it makes s-sense, but...I want...to honor them, who came here s-so bravely and fought s-s-s-o s-s-selflessly."


    "And died so cruelly?"


    She nodded.


    I understood, despite my disagreement. Dying here would achieve nothing but adding to the pile of victims, there was no honor in that. Even if these bold idiots had come from all over to throw their pitiful lives at a force they stood no chance to defeat, heroic as that was, it did not change the pointlessness of it. It just meant that others got to live a few seconds longer, and with a little more reverence in their hearts before they became ripped out of their chests.


    Besides, Tem was in the minority here anyway. Almost all of the soldiers were breaking, some overtly, some in fighting retreat. The playground of death in the middle was emptying out, affording us a better view of the corpse-sculptures and trampled bodies...and of the periphery, where Justice was still swooping down, obliterating a few, and finding another.


    There was panic there, too. There had always been panic, but now that the lines were broken, the panic could concentrate on the perimeter, those most undisciplined running with abandon, fleeing to save themselves without a thought for those they left behind, except to get as far from them as possible. Most of that sort, I noticed, were the New Edeners, though there were a few XPCA, and not a single toad of course.


    But their panic only multiplied as they were picked off, or saw others doing exactly what they were doing being so. It was infectious, the ripples of their flight and fright reaching inwards, toward those that remained. The path of the soldiers'' disciplined escape grew longer and longer, and pocked with ghastly effigies of the deaths of those who had gone before.


    It felt like the prevailing mood had swung several times over the course of this standoff. At first, there had been optimism, which Justice had ground down into frustration. And then a spark of hope with a shadowed blade, which kindled into the fires of fear and panic raging across the fields.


    As though reacting to the forces breaking, Justice seemed to go faster. Even as the battlefield grew in scale and disarray, he was always there at the expanding perimeter, putting up new gory exhibitions for those fleeing to witness.


    He acted with such frustrating intention. I''d thought he was completely random, completely insane, but he seemed anything but, just working towards an aim I couldn''t fathom. I wondered, if I became his passenger, peeked into his mind, if I''d understand what it all was for?


    But I doubted it. All I could manage was to sit here and watch as our ranks broke entirely, as the keening and gore got to us, the unnerving, gratuitous deaths blossoming, and disorder growing.


    It was almost dismissively that Justice killed the toads, I realized. He squished them like ants and left their bodies to rot in the dust. Another sort-of-rule to his madness, another hint that got me no closer to understanding.


    A chunk of rock shot into the air, the size of a house. Some Exhuman''s power, but not Justice''s, and not directed towards him, either. A pack of Exhumans were atop it, trying to ride the earth-discus to freedom.


    Like a skeet-shoot, Justice was there, blowing up their transport from under them, sending their bodies to rain down amidst the others. I heard screaming, more than ever, as the dozen bodies became lethal projectiles, crashing head-first into exosuits and victims alike, the cracking of bone and flesh turning my stomach.


    I still wanted to run. Surely some were escaping, he couldn''t possibly stop all of us, not picking us off one at a time as he was. And if others distracted him with flashy escape attempts, maybe there was a chance. I could use Tem''s power and we''d turn invisible and¡­


    Another group launched themselves, possibly inspired by the first. Several powers acting in concert, the half-dozen forms smokey and illusory behind some mind-bending illusion, but drifting against gravity.


    And then they stopped, caught on something invisible in the air, left to hang and scream as though crucified. One in the center, apparently the one producing the illusion, was ruptured, exploded with such force so as to shower all the rest in his entrails, creating surreal horror as the last vestiges of his failing powers magnified the cloud of his own guts.


    This wasn''t working. We were all going to die at this rate. That handful of Exhumans had been shot into the air like bullets and he''d snatched them effortlessly. What hope did I possibly have, putting on some invisibility and trying to walk out of here? Tem was as good as dead, we all were.


    I thought, until I saw someone disassembling the human mobile. Jack was up there, and Tower, floating in the air, touching those who were strung up and disappearing, reappearing at the next victim. They got two out this way, and then vanished, as Justice came in after them, livid at his art being taken down.


    My heart didn''t know what to do. At once, I''d been so excited to see them still here, still alive...still doing something, unlike how useless I was. I thought, perhaps, I could join as Jack''s passenger, double his mobility if possible. It was nothing I''d wanted to do before, but now was an exception in every possible way.


    But at the same time, seeing them here, seeing Justice go after them, it made my throat clench and my stomach churn. They were quick, but they couldn''t evade him forever. If Justice was provoked, he could open up again, go back to killing hundreds in a heartbeat, and with that kind of indiscriminate slaughter, even Jack wouldn''t be able to dodge it.


    Suddenly, knowing that it was more that just these brave idiots with Tem here, that there was Tower''s life on the line as well...I suddenly felt more defeated than before. I wasn''t exactly happy about Tem''s prospect of death, but...Tower couldn''t die here. He was too good a man to become one of these heaps of corpse. I liked him too much, as though that had any weight in the world, to anyone but me.


    It felt unfair in a way I didn''t expect, and that surprise had kicked the legs out from under my heart.


    Those two idiots reappeared as soon as Justice''s back was turned, taking the others from out of the sky. But this time, they didn''t get away when he reappeared, flashing into their presence with a white light like a solar flare and separating the two with a shattering bolt of rock that sent Jack plummeting.


    He disappeared just before he reached the ground, but Tower was still there, drifting listless in the air, flailing his arms like he could swim for safety before Justice descended on him.


    I found myself screaming, an irresponsibly-large laser brewing before my eyes, a dozen of them, aimed all around Justice, praying that I could punch him out of the sky before he did the same to Tower. Trying desperately to save my best friend, pleading to God to do something.


    Jack reappeared on Justice''s back, knife plunging in blindly to the twisting flesh. There was a crack like a whip, and he fell backwards, his spine twisted at an inhuman angle, his limbs trailing awkwardly. The knife glinted in the air as he fell, casting sparks of moonlight at me.


    "No!" I screamed.


    He didn''t teleport again before reaching the ground, and I lost sight of him under the crowd. I felt tears in my eyes even as I scanned the dark sky for Tower again, finding him in an instant, lit by the dark fire burning inside Justice''s flesh.


    My lasers went off, as did Tem''s, brewing beside mine that I hadn''t noticed. The whole sky turned to daylight as the combined force of all of our power tore the dusk a new dawn.


    We caught him even, but only just. Only enough to force him to move, to force his flesh to churn further, to draw a solitary glance from a vindictive eye as he closed on Tower''s helpless form.


    I couldn''t see too well, as tears threatened to spill, but I did see Tower punch Justice where his face should have been. The blow didn''t seem to phase him at all, but rather, sent Tower rocketing backwards at insane speed a dark missile across the sky. I held my breath and prayed, hoped, that somehow it would be enough to get him clear.


    But it wasn''t, and I knew that. I saw chained blades made of blood and metal shoot after him, closing the distance at unbelievable speed. Tower dipped in the air, letting gravity take him, but the blades pursued right behind, seeming to accelerate, the metal glinting in the dark, hungry to strike and impale.


    A huge golden hand seemed to ripple from the darkness and caught Tower in its palm, closing around him as the blades struck. They bounced off the glowing flesh, blunted and cracking against something even harder than metal, and I wondered just what the hell kind of Exhuman power this was. I''d never seen the likes of it before, and my mind demanded -- perhaps unfairly -- to know where these inviolable hands had been as all the others had died.


    But that was just a burst of outrage, of adrenaline. The shock of Tower living wearing off. My heart soared for a moment as the hand opened and I saw him there, scratching his head in confusion at the effluent skin holding him aloft, a hundred feet in the air.


    And then, rippling from the darkness, seeming to breach time and space as it manifest, appearing closer to Justice, an arm joined the hand, and then another, and another still.


    Six arms, all golden and glowing, four of which were brandishing weapons of different kinds, each palm as immense as a car, each weapon the size of a building. A spear, a dagger, a sword, and a bow, each as radiant as the hand holding them.


    And then the rest of him emerged. A hundred feet tall, perfection of human form, with swelling muscles and a sculpted six-pack literally large enough for me to fall into and use as a bed.


    Which was a strange thought for me to have, but I''d gone and had it.


    He had long flowing hair of the same gilt, and a skirt-like ornate piece of clothing wrapped around his waist, trailing down to his wide-set bare feet. His face was so symmetric and angular as to be almost painful in its perfection, and vertically, set into his forehead was a third eye, shut tight against the world.


    I almost missed it, just a dark spot on his shoulder, holding onto the strands of flowing, golden hair, but there was a person up there with Tower, grinning and bouncing along with the ride, laughing almost as she looked down on Justice from atop her golden throne.


    It was hard to make out, but her form was unmistakable. Saga, giddy and lanky, sat on the shoulders of giants, and laughed.


    The entire battlefield paused at this sudden...impossible addition. It was hard not to, a hundred feet of rippling muscle, shining like the sun. Even Justice seemed stunned, or at least, calculating.


    The effect was broken when I heard Saga speak in my mind, a surge of emotion which fought back the keening that had so long set me on edge, a pure rush of exultation and confidence.


    [Cavalry''s here. Let''s fuck him up, boys!] she grinned.

 451. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Saga.

    This was it. This was what I''d been missing.


    The years of confinement, of torture, of solitude and misery, only to break out and be unleashed upon the world, and for what? Following a cute keister around, attached to an insecure little man-child who constantly yanked my leash while going off of his.


    Even that wasn''t so bad. We''d had our share of misadventures. I''d even mind-fucked him on occasion, ridden to the rescue at least as many times as I needed rescuing myself. We had a nice rapport, give and take. By which I meant, the two of us gave ass-kickings and took names.


    But something had always been missing for me. For a long time I thought it was the evil I wasn''t really allowed to be. After being bottled up and set free, was I not entitled to a little rampage? A tiny bit of murdering? A teensy snippet of omnicide?


    As Athan had slipped further and further into morally grey, I realized, that wasn''t it. You could kill assholes all day long, and the asshole factories would just keep pumping out more. So then I wondered if it was the existential dread, the fear of being alone for a billion years after all the people had died and all the stars had gone out.


    Which, yes, was still a valid concern. But meeting our god of Oasis and then Bob had mollified that somewhat. I''d learned there were other immortal entities out there, and if I lived long enough, I''d meet them all, and maybe when the universe came to a crushing black end, we''d have an eternal dance party or something. Maybe one of them would have the power to produce fine cheese, and after eating enough of it to get very, very, very sick of the stuff, we could play god and make our own cheese-universe, complete with sentient cheese-bitches to do our cheese-bidding.


    I mean, that''d take a while, I didn''t imagine the process of turning cheese into a star would be easy, but the fact remained that the end was not, in fact, the end. Potentially.


    No it wasn''t any of that which I''d been missing. I knew it now as I stood on my titan''s shoulder, looking down at Justice as he sized up the enormity of the six-armed, three-eyed, musclebound, quad-wielding, golden-lighted threat I was bringing to town.


    It was the laugh. The evil laugh. That was what I''d missed.


    [MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!]


    I revelled in seeing the entire assembly wince in unison at my head-splitting cackle. Yes, let my belting mirth tickle your fragile brains until they weep. Hear me, I am Saga, tamer of titans, and mine is an evil laugh!


    [MWA-HA-HA-HA-HAA!]


    Somehow, Justice seemed unamused. He even tried to hurt my titan, graceful lines flashing against the invincible flesh, only to ring off of his flank without effect.


    [MWAH! HA! HAAAH!]


    "Holy shit, stop," Tower said from my titan''s hand. "That is absolutely going to give me a headache."


    [Oh, live a little. How often have you gotten to ride an impervious titan into battle?]


    "Hmm. Well, I''m pretty big," he said, looking down at himself. "And when Moon''s with me, she takes my shape...and she''s unkillable¡­"


    [You are such a freakin'' buzzkill.]


    "You love me. Missed you, girl, where''d you find this golden tank?"


    I wished for Tower to be brought up onto the shoulder with me so we could talk properly. Or, more specifically, so he could talk properly to me, while I continued to have no interest in using my mortal mouth-flaps like a peasant whatsoever.


    [Oh just something I dug up in San Francisco. You''d be amazed what people leave lying around out there.]


    Justice was gauging our defenses now, slamming into Bob with a dozen different Exhuman powers without effect. I grinned and laughed again, just to demonstrate how feeble and inferior he was.


    In retrospect, I kind of understood all the times Athan warned me about power going to my head now. Guy definitely had a point.


    "You''re serious?" Tower asked.


    "Sure am," I said, using my pitiful mortal mouth, so the conversation wouldn''t be broadcast to the whole fleet below our ankles. "He''s an Exhuman, or used to be. Had the power to grant wishes, I got the whole story out of him once I figured him out."


    "So I can just...wish for Justice to be dead?" Tower asked. His grin fell away after a moment of thought. "Wish for Jack to be okay?"


    "Not really," I said, feeling myself frown as I swept the battlefield for Jack with my mind. I wasn''t coming up with anything, and didn''t like that implication. But someone who be nimble and be quick wouldn''t wind up nailed like the rest of these suckers. I was probably just missing him somewhere in the din. "Uh, that ship kind of sailed, with what this guy did to himself."


    "Did to himself?" Tower echoed, looking down across the expanse of glowing hunk. "You mean...this?"


    "Sort of...hang on."


    I closed my eyes and wished exactly what Tower asked for, that Justice would be dead. And no sooner did the thought actualize, a really, really determined wish, than Bob began to move again, instead of just standing there like an idiot.


    And by move, I meant move. In addition to being completely impervious, he could do this ripple-thing, where space just kind of closed on his behalf, which was handy, because otherwise his movements were ungainly as fuck. But with this neat perk, even Justice found himself suddenly pressed, as instantly, a whole variety of giant-sized weaponry was reaching through folds in space to stab, skewer, slice, and shoot.


    Even got him a few times, I noticed, although to be honest, I was just doing my best to pretend Justice wasn''t even here, walling off my mind from even recognizing him, going so far as to mind-fuck myself just a little bit to keep those walls high. I didn''t want a repeat of...whatever had happened last time. It made it difficult to keep track of what exactly was going on here, but as long as Bob knew what he was doing, I was okay with being in the dark.


    "Um, yeah. So this guy, a long-ass time ago, he was an Exhuman kid, who granted wishes, right?" I continued. "Kept screwing around with his powers, called himself a Djinn or some shit, common Exhuman denial."


    "Sure," Tower nodded. He''d had some of that. Pretty sure we all did, ''cept those of us who never had a chance.


    "Well he goes on a date with this girl, really out of his league, basically tricked her into it, as I understand it. And he makes up this stupid, elaborate lie, that this little pagoda sitting in some park in Chinatown--"


    "What town?"


    "Chinatown, that''s what they used to call the Chinese districts in cities."


    He blinked at me. "Like Little Tokyo?"


    "Don''t make me kill you with a titan, Tower. Chinatown. I''m old, okay?" He nodded, but didn''t quite seem to get it. Like I cared. "Anyway, this pagoda in Chinatown, which had no religious significance whatsoever...and if it did, it''s certainly be fucking Buddhist or Taoist, but this kid was a moron...so he tells her it''s a Hindu shrine and there''s an ancient, invinicible, all-powerful, wish-granting Hindu deity who lives there, and she should make a wish. So his powers would go off, y''see? And presumably, he assumed she would not freak out at the sudden display of magic-and-or-Exhumanity, and would instead, presumably, spontaneously orgasm on the spot, or some shit."


    "What did she wish?" Tower asked, his face all scrunched up with how much he was not following the story.


    "She wished that there really was an ancient, invincible, all-powerful, wish-granting Hindu deity, who would protect people. She was a little cynical, see? Had some troubled home life? Maybe a little old and a little defeated to believe in blowing out candles and wishes coming true?"


    "So...this is...the thing the wish created?" Tower asked, looking up and down the golden god again.


    "Far as I can tell, the wish turned the stupid boy into this thing. So, yeah. Big ol'' mentally-enslaved, hundreds-of-years-old, shaped-like-a-Hindu-deity-as-he-understood-it...thing. Just trapped underground this whole time, because that''s where he told her the god lived, and nobody ever gave it a wish it could hear."


    I grinned at him, my very best, most malevolent grin. "Until me."


    [MWA HA HA HAH!]


    "Yeah, I got it," he winced. "So can I make a wish now?"


    [Nope, my first real wish after I got it going was that he''d ignore everyone else''s wishes. He''s my bitch and mine alone.]


    Justice, who was dodging the same arrow over and over as it tore through holes in space and repeatedly came after him from new directions as it flew in the world''s most convoluted straight line, must have heard that, because at my words, he looked up at me.


    [Yeah, come and get me, meatsack,] I issued. [You''ll find me no easier to kill than Bob.]


    Tower, to his credit, fuckin'' bolted, as he should. Because what came next was such a comprehensive compilation of deaths, I''d have scored a quintuple bingo if I still had my death journal on me to fill in.


    I was blasted. Shredded. Mauled. Mutilated. Eviscerated. Decapitated. Fried. Burned. Roasted. Bisected. Trisected. Polysected. Fragmented. Flayed. Melted. Disincorporated. Sundered. Peeled. And shaken, but not stirred.


    Kinda considered bottling all of that up and wondering if I shoved it into Karu''s mind, if she''d just cream herself on the spot from all the different horrible sensations. But the whole time he was railing me, creatively finding new ways to detach parts of me from other parts of me, only to find me hale again, I was grinning like it was me who was the masochist.


    I wasn''t. It hurt a lot, and that actually kinda sucked. Understatement there, to be clear.


    But the simple fact was, I was frustrating the shit out of him, utterly pissing him off, and that was worth any amount of death, no matter how agonizing. Pissing people off had to be my favorite thing in the entire goddamn universe, and this guy was arguably the most important douche in ours, making this the most monumental, most absolutely critical off-pissing that had ever occurred in the history of history, ever.


    I''d take one laurel wreath and a fat check, please. Made out to cash.


    Home boy wasn''t doing too hot either, as he pounded me. From what I could tell...which wasn''t much, honestly, as I couldn''t read him by my own mind-fucking, and I couldn''t see much, by how much time I was spending dead...but he was also getting a good butt-fucking by my enormous golden friend, whose dick was probably bigger than Justice''s whole body.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    I mean, not literally, although I guess I could have wished for that, if I''d had the time to consider. But more in the perpetually being mauled by weaponry sense.


    Constantly, the blade, or the torso-sized arrowhead, or the tip of the fuck-off building-sized spear were coming down on him, severing him in half or worse, and he felt it, I knew that much by his reactions. But he seemed stupidly resilient, oblivious almost, to the damage being done to him as he focused on doing worse to me. Any chunk of him which was carved away just dissolved into floating meat-cubes, which would recreate themselves, and then reform into whatever had been cut off. It was obvious that simple bladed attacks weren''t cutting it here, literally.


    Next time I got a breather, by which I mean, lived long enough to draw a single breath, I wished for Bob to destroy him. Like, really, all-out.


    Because I knew what that meant. I knew the kid''s mind, and how he saw Hindu gods. I knew what was coming.


    The closed third eye in Bob''s forehead opened, and what was in there was¡­


    Well, it was indescribable.


    Whatever thoughts I had were utterly insufficient. It felt like anything I thought, any words I strung together to explain to myself what that phenomenon looked like, they would look up at the resplendence, would be awed and terrified as I was, as we all were. And then they would shut themselves up and give me a stern glare for even thinking of trying to use them to describe it.


    It was like watching the birth of the cosmos. A swarm of meteorites, falling through a nebula, at once on fire from their descent and freezing from the frozen gasses they were crashing through, light of every imaginable color cracking off of the spinning, prismatic, cristalline husks, and the random rainbows of hues they cast stretched across all of space into eternity, until all of creation was filled with color and light and sound.


    It was like watching clouds on a time-lapse video, as they boiled and churned, hours of watching them billow and swarm and pile atop one another, creating both darkness and light, but instead of filming for a day, watching for an eternity, and instead of clouds, they were nebulae, giving birth to stars. The lights within them, nascent solar systems, each one promising new life to new worlds, but each just a glittering diamond in the sky.


    It was fire, arcing through the sky in perfect symmetric arches, the same curvature as a sunlit beach, or the iris of a fractal, beautiful eye. The fire seethed and burned, but also was completely still, an impossible duality of life and death, creation and destruction, hot and cold.


    Even Justice, I think, was moved by seeing the eye open. Justice, whose eyes disconcerted me, which seemed to writhe within themselves, at the sight of something so purifying, his eyes went very still.


    But his body did not. He dipped in the sky, before shooting upwards, the beam of fire, or creation, or cosmos, or whatever-the-fuck-have-you screaming after him, all white and black and red and blue at once, a beam of pure annihilation so vast that Tem would hold her powers cheap and her womanhood flaccid for the rest of her pitiful life.


    Well. More flaccid. God knows Tem wasn''t getting anywhere on the whole self-value thing.


    Where Justice had been content to simply take the blows before, now he was running for his life. He was dipping behind buildings to pull instant one-eighties, rising and falling erratically, flashing here and there in the sky like Karu, all to evade Bob''s gaze.


    Which, y''know, just didn''t work out very well. It was a gaze, it was fast as hell to twitch one''s eye from point A to B, and apparently third eyes had no greater difficulty in doing so than my own.


    Once or twice, I thought we had him. He was fucking fast, that was for sure, using more than just telekinesis to fling himself around now, he was actively throwing out spurts of fire like jet engines to rocket himself at speeds that should have torn him apart. But even when he was hit, it wasn''t enough, some critical mass or functioning core of him yet remained, and his body re-coalesced, the annihilated parts of him reforming as dust, and then grit, and then clumps, and then chunks...probably his very atoms knitting themselves back together after passing through Bob''s eye, the trail of meat flying behind him, struggling to catch up and reassemble itself on his body, like some bizzaro butcher conga line.


    And I wondered, after a minute of this, of the skyline being reduced to nothingness, of how many new holes being blasted through the troposphere, and lines carved through the asteroid belt, I wondered if we''d just be here forever.


    Maybe Justice couldn''t die, maybe he was like me, an eternal entity, built to keep going past the end of everything, and just convinced that bringing that end would help him somehow. Just his bad luck that his adversaries, Bob and myself, were both capable of matching that eternity.


    "Uh oh," I commented. "Bob, hey, watch it."


    Bob, of course, did not watch it. He was functionally deaf to anything but a wish.


    And so a few thousand people were eradicated in an instant as Justice dipped low and the beam of utter obliteration swept across them. From what I could tell from the last gasps of their collective minds...they weren''t killed or destroyed...just...unmade. Whatever that might mean.


    Fuck. But fuck again, as Justice picked up on the trick and, apparently content to resume his work, even with Bob on his back, began criss-crossing the battlefield to kill thousands more with creation-fire.


    Shit! Fuck! This wasn''t supposed to happen. I felt everyone wincing at my thoughts as much as I was cringing at inadvertently murdering them all. I had to get Bob to stop before he finished the job even more efficiently than Justice had.


    [Bob! Close your fucking eye!] I screamed at him. [I mean...I wish for you to close your fucking eye!]


    The beam screamed across the ground, tearing a rift into the Earth what must have been miles deep, annihilating those in the way. The crowd, which had gone from confusion to reverence to awe...rightfully!...were now in abject terror, and their confused din of voices screaming at me were not helping the situation.


    [Bob, fucking listen to me!] I shouted at him, edging across his shoulder to look up into his perfect golden face. Justice whipped past, barely visible, but I felt it in the wake of wind that slammed my body, the crack of the sonic boom. And as I clung to Bob''s hair to keep on, as Bob whipped his head sideways to keep following, I saw the problem.


    [Not that eye, you fucking idiot! The third eye! Close the third eye!]


    But of course, that wasn''t a wish, so nothing happened. It took me too long to figure out, the screaming in my head of the thousands on the ground, the buffeting against me of the wind, holding on for dear life as Bob whipped this way and that.


    And then the unearthly, impossible noise, that resonated straight up my spine as soon as I heard it. It was a noise of pure, distilled pain, agony so perfect that it could shatter glass.


    It was coming from Bob. He began to stumble, his hair swayed over empty space, over the miles-deep canyons that he had carved, swinging over the abyss and carrying me with it.


    From there, I could see, could see what could cause my titan to make such a perfect noise of pain. His leg had been sheared clean off above the knee, a perfect line that revealed flesh and bone beneath the skin, just as golden, just as impenetrable, weeping inhumanly fat, viscous tears of pure-golden blood that steamed in the cool night air.


    The flesh could not be torn, cut, or broken. But it could be unmade.


    [Bob, you fucking idiot!] I screamed as I clung to a strand of his hair, trying not to look down into the chasm. [I wish for you not to shoot yourself with your own fucking third eye, you goddamn dumbass! I wish for you to close it!]


    But the damage was done. Bob was staggering, tumbling, falling, legless and useless. His eye closed, but only after destroying what little ground was left under his foot, and his six arms were flailing, not for balance, but to fulfill my previous wish, to strike at Justice, even as we were falling.


    [Bob! Catch yourself! Don''t fall into the hole! I wish--]


    But my mind came up short. My face twitched as I looked at the shards of metal protruding for my forehead. Vaguely, through the blood dripping into my eyes, I could see him there, floating, panting, putting himself back together, even as my hand lost its strength, as I began to fall into the dark, dark pit of the earth, as the last thing I saw above me was the luminous golden god falling after me, blocking out the stars of the sky, his glittering blood falling with us like fat raindrops.


    There were many crashes as Bob and I fell. Mostly from him. I got the impression it was not a spacious plummet for one as big as he.


    But I didn''t fuckin'' know. All I could see was the darkness and Bob, lit up like there was a magical spotlight that only hit him. Which, I guess, was better than just being trapped in the Earth in pitch darkness, but probably not by much.


    We fell and fell and fell. And just when I felt like I was getting comfortable with that concept, feeling like maybe we''d come out in China somehow, and I could say hi to waipo and waigong. As though it weren''t just glass down there.


    And then, unsurprisingly, I died. Probably twice, once when I met the ground, and again when the big oaf landed on me.


    I spent a long, long time lying in that hole, contemplating what a failure I was, and how it seemed like every time I thought I had something in the palm of my hand, I always managed to lose it. I was an incompetent idiot, I had to conclude, to lose a fight like that, with every possible advantage in the world on my side.


    Sure, Justice was nasty, but I was sure he''d die if we got a clean hit, he wouldn''t be dodging if he could just take the shot. And with an eternity ahead of us, we''d get the shot eventually. All I had to do was not fuck it up.


    And here I was, miles deep in the earth. Everything was up from here, especially how much I''d fucked.


    Something wet was pooling around me, and my body began to react with panic as the golden liquid threatened to cover my nose and mouth. Boy that seemed like a fun way to spend a few years, drowning to death in luminescent blood, deep underground. A real winner.


    But not worse than I deserved. I lowered my head and took a deep breath, letting the cloying liquid choke me out.


    So I spent the next...unknown amount of time. Literally drowning in my misery. Revelling in those moments of panic and death, because hey, at least during that, I wasn''t fucking up, or remembering doing so. Death could be my reprieve from failure. And maybe after a few years, when Bob ran out of blood--


    Something brushed my hand. Then, with a grip firm as iron, pulled me, coughing and sputtering to the surface, my body pulled clear of Bob''s through some hastily-dug channel of golden blood.


    It took me a minute to realize who was holding my hand and looking at me with equal parts disinterest, concern, and annoyance. My mind couldn''t find purchase on his, but that was even more telling. Once I figured out the who, I recoiled at his touch.


    "Good, you''re alive," Dragon frowned at me, his face lit up by the flashlight clipped to his chest.


    "Oh like you''d care," I snapped. "What the hell are you doing down here?"


    "I do not care," he confirmed. "About you. Your beast, on the other hand, is useful, and I need¡­" he stopped, and carefully cleared his throat before continuing, as though the next words physically hurt him to say. "I need...your help...to treat him."


    "Treat?" I echoed stupidly. "Bob?"


    "He is bleeding. I brought...ample fabric to make a bandage, and tourniquet, but I do not have the reach...alone...to apply it. Your assistance is required only because of physical limitations, and not of any failure of mine."


    He almost seemed to be pouting. I was so confused what the fuck he was doing here or trying to help Bob in the first place, and still, the pouting was the most confusing thing.


    But when I sat up, coughed up some more glowing blood...which was really vile, by the way, I could only imagine how that stuff might look staining my teeth...I saw he was telling the truth. He had what looked like a whole parachute, heavy cloth, strong cables, laid out and lined up by the titan''s severed stump.


    Bob was wheezing, pathetically, still making tiny utterances of pain, but still faintly grasping towards the surface, as though he could catch Justice from here. It was gross, but more gross that he was in this state because of me.


    [Bob, I wish you''d stop trying to kill Justice for now. And I wish that you took this and bandaged up your leg as best you could.]


    He did as I asked, and the two Sinos in the room stood awkwardly out of the way as he pulled the fabric snung and wound the cables around and around, pulling it tighter and tighter until he tied it off with a knot.


    "What the hell are you even doing down here?" I asked.


    "I came to assist how I could. Yet once I saw Justice in action, I knew to face him directly would be futile. This is something I can do."


    "And what, we''re just going to climb out now?"


    He shrugged. "If I have to. It is not that far."


    "It''s miles, dude. And you''ve got one fuckin'' arm."


    "I made it down. I can make it up."


    I shook my head at him. No wonder he was always such a pain in the prick. Impossible just wasn''t in this guy''s dictionary. I kinda wished I could peek into his head to see just what the hell else he was scheming, but given the situation, I didn''t have anything else to go on but his word. And given that he wasn''t gonna hurt me, even if he tried, I kinda didn''t have reason to doubt it just yet.


    So. I guess. I''d keep him around.


    "Alright then. Bob, I wish for you to climb up and get all three of us out of here."


    Bob scooped me up and put me back on his shoulders, and by the time I got there, Dragon was already waiting, kneeling and holding onto the hair for balance. I gave him one last disbelieving glance before the world seemed to shift under me as Bob rose to his foot, and began to grope along the walls for a way up.


    I had an idea, and gave Bob permission to use his third eye to carve us a passage up, hoping I didn''t hit anything too important as a new chamber was blown out of the side of the Earth. It''d be longer, but at least Bob would make it.


    And then I''d get another shot at this. Might be hours from now, maybe even days. But I had the time, and so did Bob, and so did Justice. I''d fuck him up properly this time, no more screw-ups for me. Not this time.


    Not this time, I told myself. No more laughter, no more stories, no more Ms. Nice Saga. Just murder, simple and clean, and I could save the laughter for the afterparty.


    My thoughts continued to focus and I dwelled on my vengeance and mistakes until I was properly consumed by them, until I was as dark inside as the passage we were ascending.


    He''d pay. I''d show him how dangerous I could be when I was really trying. He''d see what a real Exhuman at work could do. I''d show him.


    Slowly we climbed, but also quickly, ponderous movements joined with reality-warping ripples. Creeping steadily, until at last the darkness before us was studded with stars.


    "Alright, Bob. I wish you to take us back to Justice, so we can end this, once and for all."

 452. 2252, Present Day. Ramanathans Lab. Athan.

    I couldn''t think, couldn''t feel, couldn''t understand. Flecks of blood were landing on my face, I was dimly aware of how they felt like they burned my skin.


    AEGIS was screaming, grabbing her, wrestling the knife out of my sister''s hands, but her movements were stilted, jarred, ineffective. She seemed to be conspiring to slip and to screw up, and every time she failed, Lia rammed the knife home again and again, her torso just a bloom of crimson beneath the papery hospital gown she was wrapped in.


    Dumb, lost, I just stood there. I couldn''t move, held as though by an all-powerful magnet. My mind couldn''t take in what I was seeing, it was just...trapped, thinking of every horrible thing that had ever happened to Lia, from her fucked-up mental biology at birth, to the Exhumanity I''d just forced on her, and wondered what thing had finally pushed her over the edge.


    It had to be me, I thought. If she just wanted to die, there was no reason to take the elevator and find us. This was her last, great act of passive-aggression against her abuser. She must have learned somehow that I had this Aphrodite muse, that I''d enslaved her against her will, like all the others. She wanted to show me just what she thought of me and my fucking powers, my decision to make her live as an Exhuman against her will.


    She wanted to tell me just how much my selfish desires were worth: Nothing. My wants were without value. I should have been less of a hypocrite, should have been the person I always pretended like I was, acting in the interest of good, not just my own selfish perception of it. I should have--


    Something tugged on my arm and I turned and found Lia''s hazel eyes and shy grin plying me. She gave a little apologetic wiggle and guiltily offered me the knife back. I took it, without thinking, and returned it to my sheath, and she tutted at me and pulled it out again, wiping it down on her gown before re-slotting it.


    I blinked at her, and then back at the girl still maiming herself, who was on the verge of collapse, giving her absolute all to her mutilation, and then back at the shy smile beside me.


    Well given the two, I had no doubts which was my sister. Even if she was still sporting crimson blooms across her gown, I couldn''t mistake that smile.


    I barrelled into her, almost sending us falling with the force of my hug. Wordlessly, she squeezed me back, although there was a distance there, again, an apology it felt like. After long seconds I held her shoulders and pulled us apart.


    "You scared the shit out of me," I told her. She shook her head and began to say something but I wasn''t finished. "I''m so sorry. I should have never taken you here. I should have--"


    I paused, my mental tirade against myself from a moment ago still fresh in my mind.


    That was the first thing to come to mind, but it wasn''t right, was it? That was me being selfish again. She was her own girl, her own woman now, and I didn''t own the rights of where she got to go or didn''t.


    But all the same, she shouldn''t have been here. She almost died, and the burn scars across her body would be there as proof of that, every day for the rest of her life. The muse now dwelling within her, the brand of being Exhuman¡­


    Was that all because of her choices? Just because she''d been hurt, did that mean she somehow lost the right to choose? That didn''t seem right.


    At the same time, anything which led to her almost-death couldn''t be right either. I didn''t know. But that was significant, too; someone who didn''t know shouldn''t be mouthing off like I had.


    "Sorry," I repeated. "I um, I hope...what I did...was okay by you. I know it''s a lot...being Exhuman. And if you''d...rather have died...I respect that¡­"


    "Athan, just what the hell is this?" AEGIS asked, turning towards us with teary eyes as she held Lia''s corpse. "Why would she--"


    Lia gave an embarrassed wave and grin. AEGIS blinked at her, and then took a deep, deep breath and sighed.


    "Right," she said to herself. "Exhumans. Hi, Lia. Glad you''re...better. Glad you''re...not all...knifed up. What the hell was that about?"


    Lia excitedly bounced forward and took AEGIS'' hands, wrapping them around her own throat, and then nodded vigorously.


    "You...want me to...crush your throat?" AEGIS asked, pulling her hands away, and then further as Lia grabbed at them again. "Dude, Lia, what the fuck?"


    Lia turned to me and tried the same stunt, and got much the same reaction. Hell no was I putting my hands on her neck.


    "Why aren''t you talking?" I asked.


    She didn''t answer, just looked at me forlornly, which was...sort of an answer. The extremely pained silence that followed should also have been expected, any time one asked that question.


    "You...lost your voice to the radiation burns, I take it¡­" I asked, and she nodded. "I''m...sorry¡­"


    She approached me seriously, with wide eyes, the whites of them stunning and beautiful against her now-mottled flesh. And with those same deliberate movements, she took my hands and placed them on her neck.


    "I''m not going to kill you," I said, almost choking on my words, even as I pulled my hands away again. She rolled her eyes enormously, and with a deft movement, pulled my knife again. I tried to take it from her but found myself stunned, flat-footed, as she skirted away.


    "Lia--" I pleaded. But she just pointed the knife at the body on the floor, and then her wounds across her chest, thrusting her head out like there was a logical conclusion here we weren''t getting.


    "She''s saying¡­" AEGIS said "that...the knife didn''t kill her?"


    Lia nodded, and went back up to me, putting the knife away and my hands back at her throat.


    "So...you strangling her won''t kill her either?"


    "I''m not strangling you!" I shouted, and she pouted away and went to AEGIS. I tried to separate them but again, couldn''t, finding myself again overwhelmed by the enormity of my emotions and the scene.


    "Um, I''d rather not strangle you either¡­" AEGIS commented. "Lia, can''t you just...write it out or something, if you can''t speak?"


    She patted herself down like we were idiots. No mobile?


    Before I got to ask, she seemed to have another idea, and was slinking around my legs now, my exoframe hissing as I backpedaled away from the maniac glint in her eyes. I found her hugging me, and I froze, off-balance, the auto-gyros keeping my legs rigidly locked against gravity.


    She grinned and slunk under and behind me, crawling on all fours while I tried to figure out just what the hell was going on, and trying very hard to keep completely still so I couldn''t tread on her.


    When suddenly, from behind, she gave my leg a sharp yank. I flailed my arms, shouting, as the auto-gyros kicked in and my off-balance leg swung to catch me.


    Stepping down hard. With a crunch. I turned away so I couldn''t see Lia''s face pulverized by the stomp of my frame. The sound of it made me sick, I felt bile rising in my throat, felt my breath getting shallow and my head getting light.


    And then she patted me on the shoulder and gave me a thumbs-up.


    "Fascinating," AEGIS commented. "Erm, may I?"


    Lia nodded with vigor as AEGIS put her hands on my sister''s neck. Before I could even shout out, there was a crack, and the head rolled on her shoulders in a way it shouldn''t, her brown hair draping down her chest, the skin folding in unnatural creases.


    That was enough for my stomach, and I vomited again, the second time today, and with nothing else left to get up. Lia''s body collapsed into my puddle of sick, her head twisted impossibly as though trying to stare at me, to charge me with what I''d just done, what I''d just allowed to happen.


    And then she was walking into view again, all smiles and waves.


    "Her window!" AEGIS beamed. "She''s trying to widen her window! The Ramanathan Window!"


    That made a lot of sense, but it didn''t keep me from fainting, stumbling over another one of my sister''s corpses as I went down. I thought the exoframe might have caught me, or maybe AEGIS, or maybe Lia, but however it turned out, I was waking up on the floor to six perplexed and somewhat-worried eyes looking down at me.


    Two were brown and green, a reflection of my own. Two were unnaturally yellow, like lightning caught in marble. And two were blue and luminous, one atop the other, in a bouncing, mechanical frame.


    "Maybe we should do this somewhere away from him," AEGIS commented. Lia bit her lip and nodded. And with the weird unawake focus I had, I noticed that her hair didn''t bob with her as she nodded, like it always had. With the sides shaved off, it behaved a little differently, she behaved a little differently.


    This brilliant, mute, burned, death-seeker was still my sister, but at the same time, wasn''t anything like her. She''d been an Exhuman for all of ten minutes, and already she was completely changed.


    No, not completely, I realized. When she''d heard about the Ramanathan Window from me, the first thing she wanted to do was to kill me in a ton of creative ways. I guess it only made sense that she''d do the same to herself.


    Still, I felt in a daze as AEGIS made apologies and reassurances to me as she trailed off with Lia to go find other things they could do to her. As the elevator door closed, and I saw Lia waving at me through the gap, I hardly recognized my sister, didn''t want to hear AEGIS excitedly babbling about a chemical locker she''d seen, or going back up to soak up some more rads.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I felt defeated and deflated as I sat on the floor by the beacon, Cer humming to himself as he bobbed in some kind of eternal bliss I just couldn''t understand.


    She was so damn different. She didn''t even look the same, more scar than girl now. And her throat all gone...who knew what other problems she''d have down the road? Was she like Saga, all her organs in various states of atrophy, only held together by the impossible powers of a muse? Would that kind of power stop cancer from claiming her? It had fixed up her radiation burns, but who knows what kind of solution the muse actually devised. It had fixed the burns, but left the scars...meaning...what, exactly?


    I felt stupid and weak for throwing up. But there were still three corpses in the room with me, adding to the surreal feeling of lying here while Cer serenaded us with what may as well have been a dirge. Lia obviously had the situation in hand...but how the hell was I supposed to know that? I just saw my little sister cut open, crushed like a grape, and snapped like a toothpick. Wouldn''t anyone freak out at that?


    But I couldn''t just be anyone. She was an Exhuman now, and she''d need my help more than ever. I was supposed to be the older one, I was certainly more experienced with the issues she''d face...so why was AEGIS the one helping her with her powers? Why was I lying on the floor with the other corpses?


    I sat up, and in skirting around the pool of sick, noticed there wasn''t any blood on the ground, not from any of them. Which was weird, I''d felt it splashing on me. I drew my knife and...it was clean, even though I''d jammed it in wet just a moment ago.


    So they weren''t real corpses. In fact, looking at them now, I didn''t know why I thought they looked like Lia at all. They were featureless, nearly. Dummies, only resembling Lia in the most superficial ways, approximately her build, hair, and height and wearing her clothes, but little else. Like a waxy, fleshy mannequin.


    I wondered if that was her power. Not just to create these fakes, but to utterly convince people that they were seeing her in them. But no, it must have been the window, her power was probably something else -- if she could make them voluntarily, she''d just be popping them out like crazy to test her powers. She still was Lia, after all.


    And that thought came through and hit me like a ton of bricks. After all the lying around thinking about how much she''d changed, I was slammed with the enormity of how much she''d stayed the same. That grin, the excited bouncing, the gleam in her eyes that spoke of some plan coming to fruition, no scars or hair style in the world could obscure any of that.


    The fact that she was out there, screwing around with her powers, an Exhuman for all of ten minutes, and she was already trying to play with it, to use every single second of her Ramanathan window to its fullest, that was Lia, my sister, without a doubt.


    It was like that was the thought I needed to turn the key to get my brain running again. All the denial I''d been in over the last few hour seemed to wash over me, seep in, and not seem so bad or dangerous or overwhelming now that I knew the one simple, anchoring fact that Lia was, in fact, Lia.


    It let me take a step back and just breathe. And then move away from the stink of my own puke and breathe again, slightly better this time.


    There remained one nagging thought. Well, plenty of nagging thoughts, most of which revolved around the fact that we had no idea what Justice was doing right now, or to whom, or to what extent. But putting that aside, there was still one thing jarring me about this entire excursion to parallel-Earth.


    Namely, it had been pointless. And that didn''t sit well with me. Mage, or Aoede, or whatever we wanted to call her, she''d tugged at the strings to get us to come here, to land that insane cross-dimensional leap, and for what?


    Was it all just so that Lia would get sick and we''d familiarize ourselves with the beacon to get her better? Was she the key to beating Justice, after everything that had transpired? This insane, convoluted web of lives hanging by threads, just to turn her Exhuman and unleash her on him?


    I didn''t think so. Although...the power we had selected for her was PEACE. I''d kinda hoped that meant peace for her...but bringing peace by killing him...could the concept apply in that way?


    Even if that was right, I decided, I didn''t like it. I didn''t want Lia going in there alone, destiny or otherwise. I''d flat-out asked Aoede what were were supposed to do here, and she said she didn''t know...and more importantly, the interpreter machine had given away that she hadn''t been lying, either. This wasn''t a situation where she was only saying what she needed to in order to trick us into doing what we had to; she genuinely didn''t know herself, because her powers didn''t work on reading futures created by other powers.


    It was why we''d formed the P-Force in the first place, why I wasn''t just dead the second Blackett got his hands on me, like I should have been. Exhuman powers cut through other Exhuman powers, cut through the Ramanathan Window, interfered with each other in a way guns and bombs just couldn''t. To a muse, weapons were just predictable piles of matter, but it was only how other muses used them that remained a mystery.


    The elevator ding''d, and I looked up to find just a few drones coming in, cleaning up my and Lia''s messes, quickly and efficiently restoring the same sparkling metal spotlessness as everywhere else down here, before withdrawing with all the corpses in tow.


    So...the only way to really counter Justice was...what we were already attempting to do. To bring all the Exhuman powers to the table to combat his. All the exotics made by technopaths, all the powers in New Eden, all those who were familiar with combating them...those were our shot. We were doing the right thing.


    Just not the right magnitude. Justice was so many powers, wrapped up in one. I stood up and walked back over to the beacon, and flipped through the list of victims to find his face.


    With a tap, I opened his profile and it exploded across the screen. There had to be a hundred muses here, everything I could conceive of was there in some way or another, it felt like. Every element in some aspect, every characteristic or trait, events, things, and so many words I didn''t understand.


    It almost put the rest of the list to shame, by itself. No wonder we were struggling, he might have more powers than the rest of Earth put together. The very thought of it made my mouth go dry.


    Because I was very aware of the solution. I was touching the screen of the beacon right now, the cold glass of the holo''s projector against my finger. I''d done it once, created an Exhuman to save a life. I could do it again. I could...make a hundred Exhumans or more, all at once, all ready to fight Justice on even footing.


    I could.


    But should I?


    Instead of stopping to think of right and wrong, I tried to look at my own motivations for wanting to do it. Was this just to save the people I cared about personally? Or worse, myself? Or was this truly for the good of the world? Suddenly dumping a hundred or more Exhumans into what was already a volatile situation might not play out as I hoped -- people were, from my experience, shitty, and I already knew plenty were taking advantage of the situation to hurt others and help themselves. If one of them became Exhuman, that was actively hurting the fight.


    But I also couldn''t just hand-deliver powers to those I knew and trusted. For starters, most of them were already Exhuman. But also¡­


    This was a selfish indulgence I knew. But also, I''d be taking away the lives of those I cared most about. I''d already irrevocably tainted Lia, and just because she was cool with it now didn''t mean she''d stay that way, or even cope well, once the crisis and novelty had passed. In the moment she''d plunged that knife into her arm, I felt like I hadn''t tried to stop her because I knew this was coming, knew that someone as hurt as Lia only needed one more push before she couldn''t stand. Even thinking about it now made me want to cry and hold her and tell her it would be okay, even if for the moment, she was fine.


    And Lia was a girl who liked Exhumans. I''d seen Whitney almost destroy herself when she was briefly empowered, working through the guilt of being something that had killed her own family. Karu had turned to cutting and rewriting her entire moral spectrum over what I now knew to be Aphrodite, I couldn''t imagine what dropping another muse in her lap might do to shatter her world. And Cosette...well...I didn''t know. She thought Exhumans were neat, and she was sharp and competent, but also kind of an irresponsible drunkard. It was hard to tell what she really thought, despite how straightforward she was.


    That was kind of it. Who else would I hit up? Celia and Ajax? Tyler and Kiera? Darris and Sebastian? Al? Fucking...Subaru?


    I really didn''t know too many humans, I realized. Which kind of surprised and disappointed me. I thought I''d been open-minded and equal-opportunity, but I guess that was just a lie I''d told myself. I avoided them, because by-and-large, humans were crap. And that conclusion had nothing to do with my Exhumanity, and everything to do with my experiences with them.


    The elevator came again, and this time I found AEGIS and Lia, the latter was pouting at me and gesticulating in some approximation of sign language, which neither of us spoke.


    "I was catching her up. She''s um, upset that we didn''t tell her about Justice, sooner. She wanted to know how things were on Earth, and...I think kind of irritated that we''ve spent so long here without achieving much."


    "I''ve thought it out," I told them. "I think...what Mage wanted us to get here...was you," I nodded at Lia. "All the tangled webs, all the lateral movements, all the cryptic hints, they all led to the beacon, and the beacon...was to be used on you."


    "You think...Lia''s power...is going to magically defeat Justice, by itself?" AEGIS crossed her arms at me.


    "No. Well. Maybe. I think...that''s what the prophecy is supposed to be. But I also think...Aoede herself doesn''t have faith in the prophecy. I don''t just want to thrust the situation into Lia''s hands and pray. If things go wrong...I don''t...don''t want the very first thing going wrong...to be...her death."


    Lia seemed very pale and started pacing, while I continued to flip through pages on the beacon. I''d almost ordered Cer to shut it down just minutes ago, and now it seemed like all we had left. It seemed appropriate that as ever, we had more Exhumanity on our hands than we could handle, and not enough humans to deal with it. Just, in a different context this time.


    I was scrolling through the list of muses again and one jumped out which had caught my eye before. Immediately, I knew what we had to do to win this. And the best part is, nobody had to turn Exhuman, nobody had to be hurt.


    "DISTANCE" I read. "Which speaks to me of like, an Exhuman power''s range. We all know the one biggest limitation in Exhuman powers is their range. If only we could have a power which, by its concept, defied that limitation. Imagine being able to snipe Justice from the other side of the planet."


    "Won''t work. Just because you think of a concept somehow doesn''t mean anyone you shove it into will. You could wind up with someone like Jack, who can cross distances, or hell, like Aoede, who could forsee events at great distance. Too many ways to interpret it to be promising."


    "Snipe him from the other side of the planet...or multiverse." I nodded at her seriously.


    I saw her brow furrow, and then she gasped. "Athan, no. I refuse. I will not let you--"


    She took exactly one step towards me before freezing on the spot, her movement getting jerky and jittery, and the concern and anger written on her face replaced with confusion.


    This was the third time this had happened now, and apparently three was how many times I had to see it before catching on. Without even looking at Lia, I understood: whether she was trying to or not, this was peace, of a sort. And I guess I was stupid for not realizing sooner, when I couldn''t stop her before, but of course, when Lia thought of PEACE, she''d personalize it, she''d bring it down to her own experiences. The peace she understood wasn''t global hold-hands and singing in harmony...it was the people she was with, not fighting. People like us, whom she loved, literally unable to argue.


    This was the girl who''d made peace with Saga by telling her to mind-fuck her into being physically unable to argue or disagree. That was her idea of peace, and now she had the power to force it on all of us.


    She nodded at me and pointed to the beacon, even as AEGIS stuttered and stammered towards me. I took the hint, and gave AEGIS a brief apology before turning to Cer.


    "Cer, turn on the beacon again. Were you paying attention?"


    "Cer, listens always! Already have muse and target selected, awaiting your orders, revered guest! Excited!"


    "Bubble away, Cer. Let it go, Exhumanize me...for the third time."


    It was a little anticlimactic when nothing happened, and AEGIS seemed completely bound in frustration, alternating with fury and confusion in equal measures, as Lia wordlessly tried to soothe her.


    Then the elevator dinged, and a medical drone appeared. It was only after it offered me the same syringe of sedative as it had before that I remembered that a muse could only bond with a host while they were sleeping.


    "Drug, potent, but short-term, will only take you out for a minute," Cer promised.


    "Right," I agreed, jabbing myself and feeling the liquid burn hot under my skin. "Rooight."


    I had intended to count to three, but by the time I tried to express that thought, the world was already slipping away down a dark corridor. And the last thing I saw at the end of it before all went black was AEGIS staring at me with contempt.

 453. 2252, Present Day. Ramanathans Lab. Athan.

    My head was pounding, and I was pretty sure it was from the drug. Karu and I had once had a long chat about how different things were in media and real life when it came to knocking people unconscious.


    For starters, nobody was ever simply clubbed over the head and knocked out, only to wake up later with no lasting effects. Concussions were serious business, and having one of those was the least of your worries if you were smacked hard enough to go unconscious.


    Similarly for drugging. Chloroform was the knock-out drug of choice in vids and movies, and Karu had even offered to demonstrate it on me, which I''d gratefully declined. Helped that at the time, I was in a rocky relationship with AEGIS, and didn''t want to entrust my unconscious body with Karu. She''d just laughed and said it takes at least five minutes of inhaling the stuff before being at risk of passing out to it; most victims we saw in media would just suffer a headache, or tiredness at worst.


    It was the stuff in needles that was really concerning. Breathing things in meant the compound had to pass through the lungs, and then be processed and bound to hemoglobin before migrating into the bloodstream where it could finally act. Even then, only compounds which could be mistaken by the body for oxygen would be absorbed. A needle circumvented all of that, could knock a person out with terrifying ease, with chemicals that could reach their target in mere heartbeats.


    I''d asked, and Karu had explained that there was no functional difference between a knock-out drug and literal poison. Anything was a poison; poison was a matter of dose, not composition. She could inject me with water and kill me, not because water was super dangerous...if I remembered, blood was already like eighty-percent water already...but because even something so harmless could be lethal with enough present.


    The same for the knockout drugs. It was a poison, just administered at the exact right dosage that it slowed the heart or mind to sleep, instead of death. But even doing that exacted a toll, the brain wasn''t exactly happy with suddenly being put in a chokehold.


    Hence the buzzing headache, the aches across my muscles, the bitter taste in my mouth. And how dumb and slow and groggy I felt. It was my body dealing with the aftereffects of being poisoned. It had to be.


    Because that made sense and was convenient. The alternative...was that with just three muses crammed in my body, I was already beginning to feel them fighting inside me for my limited attention.


    But honestly, I hardly noticed. Because what had transpired while I was sleeping was nothing short of a miracle. I felt blessed.


    I felt everything.


    I was everything I''d been before, but more. My trick, where I could reach into the earth and force electricity into it, so I could see through my powers instead of my eyes? I was doing that now, but miles around us. My electricity was surging across every glass-scarred crater pocking the surface, I was counting the number of floors in this facility and surveying the damage on each, all at the same time. My mind just seemed that much bigger, like my whole life until now, I''d only been able to see the world by peeking through the vents of a locker, never realizing you could open the door and stroll right on out.


    Out...amidst...the bodies you were...looking at...or whatever. Not a perfect metaphor. Not important.


    What was important was that it''d fuckin'' worked. Two miles away, I found a streak of white stone on the surface of the ground, and conjured a sword to carve a smiley face into it. At the same time, I could feel the electric hum of the generator deep beneath our feet, and the path of the electricity from there, up to the lightbars glowing to illuminate the beacon from far above.


    I could see inside AEGIS, in a more literal way than ever. Instead of just glaring brightness, now I could make out the minutiae of her pneumatics and servos, I could see the layers of insulation and redirection, the faraday cages built under her skin, to lightning-proof her and keep any stray bolts out of her important systems, as I''d never been able to before. I could see the sparks moving up and down her, turning motors on and off, to move her arms, her legs, a hand resting on her hip, her lips moving.


    Her fingers snapping in front of my face. My brow furrowed. I recognized the gesture as her trying to get my attention, but I didn''t want to give it. She seemed so insignificant compared to everything around I could perceive instead. I wondered if Jack had this problem when he had to open his eyes to see what was just in front of him.


    "Hello?" I asked.


    "Hey, you''re ignoring me, and that''s frankly a little scary, given what you just did," she said, her tone curt. "I''m asking if you''re okay."


    "Yes. Better than okay. This is amazing."


    "Well I''m glad to hear it. But now that you and your sister are both addicted to roiding out on aliens, I think it''s time we leave. Cer can show us to the portal--"


    "It''s on floor B31-F. I can feel it. I can read the signs on that floor, the faint difference in conductivity between the raised lettering and the baseplate. It''s six stories above us now, there''s one-hundred and sixty-three steps in the stairs from here to there. Twenty-three in each floor, but an extra twenty-five for this floor, on account of its height."


    Being able to see it all, it was impossible to miss the look on her face. Even if she was trying to hide it, the microexpressions in her lips, her cheeks, there were motors at play in there, which shined like strobe lights to my mind, as subtle as the sun.


    She was worried about me, but more, she was scared of me now. No, not just now, for a while now. It was so bizarre-feeling that I hadn''t picked up on it before, it seemed obvious as anything.


    "What are you so afraid of?" I asked.


    "I''m not afraid." She crossed her arms and her chin lowered by imperceptible degrees. Defensive, as were here words.


    I spent another moment studying her and then took a step forward without warning.


    She took a step back, hands at the ready. I grinned.


    "Scared," I confirmed, not that I needed a test to know. "Of me."


    "It''s nothing, Athan. Just my own shit I''m dealing with, okay? Let''s just pack up here and get home so we can deal with Justice."


    "Hmm, yeah," I agreed, still thinking. I felt like I was thinking faster, too. Or at least, felt more confident in my thinking. Part of it might be the Ramanathan Window, I considered...in situations where there wasn''t any risk of death, the window manifest in unexpected ways, interfacing with the Exhuman''s mind and sorting out what problems did exist. Maybe mine was dealing with my mental hang-ups and apprehension.


    Or, maybe not. It could be that just feeling potent for the first time was a huge ego boost I needed.


    "I don''t know about Justice," I considered aloud. "I don''t have a plan for how we could hope to beat him, even now."


    "Then let''s go home and make a plan."


    I shook my head. "The beacon is the strongest tool in our toolbox, I''m not leaving it behind until I know we''re done with it."


    "And you''re turning it off when you''re done?"


    "Absolutely. Cer, you got that?"


    "Cer, understanding, will disable the beacon at honored guest''s insistence when he concludes his work." He made a noise like a digitized sniffling. "So proud! Cer, seeing his work reach beautiful fruition. Tears!"


    "Whatever," I shrugged. He still was kind of a freaky little defect, getting excited about making Exhumans in a way that caused my stomach to turn. But at least he was loyal.


    "Here''s how I see this going now," I said, taking one of the seats and wincing at my head buzzing again with the movement. "We all know some of Justice''s powers, we know that he''s incredibly resilient somehow, and the amount of pain he can inflict. I probably out-range him now, but that''s not going to do me any good if I can''t kill him instantly. He''s just gonna fly over to where I am and tear me apart."


    AEGIS took a deep breath and then nodded. "Granted. But we''ve got Lia too, now."


    Lia''s nodding was much more exuberant, but I dismissed that.


    "Lia might be able to force him not to attack for a bit until he figures out what''s going on, but that''s not going to win us the fight. All Justice has to do is move outside her range and he can kill her, too. He might even do it incidentally, just lashing out on his approach. We need a better plan than that."


    "What better plan do you propose, Athan?"


    I turned the stool to face the beacon again, and began perusing the list of concepts. The screen stopped scrolling when AEGIS'' hand went splayed onto it.


    "No, we''re not putting any more into you," she said.


    "We have to. I need some kind of finisher I can use to end him, to end this entire conflict."


    "Athan, we have no idea how many of these you can cram into you before you wind up just like him. You''re lucky that you''re at three and you''re still mostly yourself. I say we do what we''ve always done and work with what we have."


    "We''ve always done that because we didn''t have a choice, AEGIS. We were the underdogs because of stupid, dumb luck, the universe conspiring to beat us down. For once, we''re in a position to be administering beatdowns, and I''m about fucking ready to take my turn at it."


    "You know what you sound like, right? You''re ready to beat people down? You want what you''re finally owed? That''s Exhuman talk, the kind that goes crazy on a power trip and winds up stopped by the XPCA after blowing up a few thousand innocents."This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "It''s Justice, dude. He deserves the greatest beatdown that history has ever seen."


    "It''s about the ends justifying the means, then?"


    "Would you stop freaking out?" I snapped. "You''ve been all insane and jittery the whole time we''ve been here."


    She flinched again, and in that, through my new sight, I saw more than just nerves. I found myself pausing as she hesitated without words.


    "You really do think I''ve turned Exhuman on you, don''t you?" I asked. "You''re battling with your programming again. After all this--"


    "It''s not like that," she held herself, her frown turning bitter. "I...it''s different this time. Ever since I learned that...that there was a second muse..."


    "Oh."


    "No, not like that! I meant what I said, I still think that''s just...a part of you. I don''t hate you for having that in you, really!"


    "Well that makes one of us."


    She shook her head and soldiered on. "Well ever since then, I''ve had some kind of system kick on that''s telling me that I''ve been compromised. I''m hacked code, a defect now...and I have...I have a really unshakable urge to cleanse the source...and to revert to an untainted iteration. It''s some kind of security precaution...to prevent tampering, to prevent...I don''t know, a situation like when they made TARGA."


    I watched her with eyes beyond eyes and saw her struggling on the spot, as she did her best to remain still despite all the miniscule twitches firing beneath her skin. She was squeezing herself, almost painfully, with her arms, to keep them taut and controlled, her fingernails digging into her forearms with angry red lines.


    I found my anger at the situation dissolving into pity. I happened to agree with Dr. Cross on this one; it made perfect sense that if AEGIS discovered her code was tampered with that she''d have an overriding impulse to reset to before that happened. It only made sense to put in that kind of safeguard for a living model that was intended to iterate in order to grow.


    But at the same time, fuck. The only version of her which hadn''t been ''tampered'' with was at the very start, before she even met me, before she knew me. Maybe the very first iteration, when she was just put into Rua, and maybe not even then. There was no going back from this possibly...but seeing her stammer and twitch uncomfortably over there, I couldn''t imagine her spending the rest of her life like this, tweaking and jumpy, with an impulse to self-terminate.


    Her manic action and forced expressions made me turn to Lia, of whom I was being reminded for all the wrong reasons. My sister was just shaking her head and thinking, every once in a while, perking up like she''d thought of something, and then frowning as that idea dissipated into uselessness.


    It was hard to watch, and strange for her to be so quiet. She wasn''t completely silent, her feet still shuffled on the metal, and she made small grunts and thinking noises...but for her to not speak up after them broke my heart.


    "Don''t look at me like that," AEGIS said, as though it was her I was watching right now. I had to blink, and realized, I was looking at her. I''d been watching Lia with my powers and forgotten to turn my flesh-and-blood look-holes. This was still taking some getting used to, living like Jack.


    "Sorry," I muttered.


    "I hate it," she pouted. "I don''t want you thinking I''m a defect. I''ve fought off my programming before, and I can do it again. There''s nobody that controls what this body does but me. I hate that you''d look at me with pity just because I have some struggles going on. Everyone has struggles, right? Everyone''s messed up. So don''t do that to me, Athan."


    I really couldn''t say that I was looking at Lia at the time, now. Instead I just nodded glumly. Everyone did, indeed, have troubles.


    "I''m...going to beat this thing. I''m not going to give in and revert. I''ll...slice my own code if I have to, take out whatever it takes to shut down this...warning system. I''ll be good as new soon, you just see."


    She sounded so firey but so tired. I could tell just by her voice that she would succeed. Nothing in the world could really stand in AEGIS'' way if she put her mind to it. But at the same time, it was totally unfair. Nobody else had shit like this just sprung on them, random roadblocks designed into their own mind to force her to be someone against her will. Messed up, sure, but through chance and bad luck, not through intent.


    I found myself sighing and wishing I could just hold her until things were all better. But I couldn''t. It wouldn''t fix anything, no matter how much I loved her or wanted her to be okay. We came here for a job, and now, with both of my friends completely fucked by this stupid place, we could finish it, and get back to saving the rest.


    I could finish it. Just not yet.


    "Let''s go," I said. "Let''s go back like you said, as soon as we can, and put Justice in front of us so we can put this place behind us."


    Lia perked up and looked at me funny, and AEGIS gave her thoughts words. "What about...what you said? That you''re not strong enough to fight Justice yet?"


    "Well, that was...before I knew you were struggling," I said evasively. "I do...I mean...I love you, AEGIS. And if we''re disagreeing and it''s making you suffer...I would really...rather you didn''t have to."


    She looked at me funny for a moment. Sorta askew, sort of longingly. I wasn''t sure if she wanted to walk over and kill me as per her programming, or wrap me in the hug I thought she deserved. And the fact I couldn''t tell fucking sucked. But at least in that moment, whether it was because I''d said something that resonated with her, or because she and her programming agreed, for one second there she stopped twitching and shuddering and just stood thoughtfully.


    And then the moment passed, with a twinge in her neck that made her hair visibly whip like snakes.


    "Okay, the sooner we''re out of here the better. I...I¡­" her mouth twisted into all kinds of shapes as though she didn''t quite control it. "I...love you...too, Athan."


    "Touching!" Cer commented. I whipped my attention to him with a glare.


    "Cer, we''re going to the portal back to our Earth. I guess, thank you for your hospitality."


    Even though mostly, I felt like he''d still massively fucked up our entire world and I loathed him, there was still room for manners.


    "Cer, seeing you to the gate!" he said, his voice slightly teary, as he scooted on ahead of us towards the elevator. "Honored guests, promise to visit again? Cer, might have new projects he is working on!"


    "But nothing involving Exhumans or our world, right?" I asked as the elevator doors closed behind us.


    "Right. Confirmed. Cer, hearing you loud and clear with your displeasure of his salvation of your planet. Unappreciated. Sad."


    I shook my head at the self-pitying little robot. Maybe it would be a good idea to terminate him after all, in case he decided to turn it back on just for the attention or something. The risk of leaving him alive seemed disproportionate.


    But then again, he was just trying to follow orders, even if he''d fucked up enormously. As much as I might hate him for being a goddamn idiot and fucking over our entire world, he did so by being too loyal and literal. It gave sort of incredible credibility to his word, as much as I didn''t like it.


    "Cer, apologizing for the mess, yet again," he said. And this time I actually understood why.


    This lab had been battered open with some force. The windows were cracked, but still holding with reinforcing wire running through them, but the wooden door was completely bent out of shape, warped as though hit with a battering ram too many times, splintered and cracked on every inch of its surface.


    Which was impressive considering it was a real wood door, not a cheap hollow one. I guess there really was no expense spared in making this underground monstrosity.


    If Aesa''s portals looked like a pale blue egg, and Justice''s ''angle-gates'' were a triangle floating immovable in front of a black sheet of stars, this gate was the most conventional wormhole I''d ever seen.


    It looked like a gash, maybe seven feet tall and four wide, the edges of which were flickering as though made of lightning, and the void inside looking like...gravity? I wasn''t sure quite what it looked like, neither of my sets of senses seemed to be able to register it exactly properly. All I knew was just looking at it made me feel like I was being pulled in.


    "Still running!" Cer said with obvious fascination. "Emergency machine, built by Ramanathan, with instructions not to use until very recently. His wishes, respected, and it sat idle for almost three-hundred years, until the war, when it provided safe escape for all who were in this facility. Enlightened!"


    He spoke with such reverence. I just wondered what the influx of alien-Earth refugees had done to our Earth when they''d shown up...sixty years ago, I guess. If I were AEGIS, I guess I might look into that someday, but I had much bigger issues.


    "You first," I told Lia, and she nodded at me, giving me the briefest of hugs before stepping into the gash. There wasn''t a boom or crack or anything, she just seemed to freeze on the spot and then...disappear, fading as though dust blowing away. It looked less painful than the means we''d used to get here.


    "And then you, mister," AEGIS said. She put on her best smile, even if there was a sigh running through it. "The sooner we get home, the sooner I can put myself back together. The sooner we can fix all of this."


    "I''d rather you go. I like watching your butt," I grinned.


    Her smile froze, caught between widening into a full grin, and the strange twitching on her face.


    "I''d...normally...I''d jump at the chance," she said, smoothing down her dress, again fighting with the temptation to do just the opposite. "But...I''m sorry. I''m feeling...feeling so paranoid right now. I really just want to see you through. We can be all obnoxiously sexed-up some other time, okay? I promise. I just...please?"


    I took a deep, steadying breath, and walked over to her, moving with slow, deliberate movements, each of which still made her flinch. Gently as I could, I put my hands on her shoulders and stared into her beautiful, electric-yellow eyes.


    "I love you. You know that," I told her.


    "I...I do. I''m...I''m sorry."


    "Whatever happens, we''ll get through it, you know that?"


    "I...do. I''m just¡­"


    Her hands were twitching like crazy. She was doing her best not to fight me off holding her. Her eyes kept darting off of mine and to where I was touching her shoulders.


    I took a deep breath, and she tensed up like crazy, her systems bracing for an attack against her will. I saw a minute shake of her head as she struggled to relax, to calm her body down, to tell herself that I was her friend, and I''d never harm her. It was like she was struggling with a panic attack, but slowly, slowly winning. Slowly convincing herself that there wasn''t anything to be afraid of, that she was safe, that I was fine.


    I closed my eyes and hated myself.


    She was wrong. Her systems were right. As hard as I could, I wrenched her sideways, throwing her off-balance and into the portal.


    Like Lia, she froze as she entered, gradually becoming more and more ghostly as she dissolved into the void. Her face was shock and accusation, layered atop a crushing, heart-breaking vindication, that I was dangerous, that she was right. I should have been stopped, should have been killed.


    I was just another Exhuman.


    Until at last, there was nothing in the void but just the look of gravity again, and I could turn back to Cer, who was looking at me sideways, edging away slightly.


    "Sorry," I said, even though it wasn''t he to whom I wanted to apologize. "She wouldn''t understand."


    "Cer, not certain he understands either," he said warily.


    "I meant what I said before. Right now, if I fight Justice, I''m just going to be swinging swords at him from out of his range. It won''t do enough. I need more powers. I need a silver bullet, something I can combine with this new...range power I have. An ultimate attack, to wipe him out for good."


    "Cer...confused. Elated! Also, confused. The beacon, unfinished with its purpose, still?"


    "That''s right. It''s got one more job to do."


    My mind raced over the list of concepts I''d seen already. Nothing jumped out at me as I''d described, no silver-bullet one-hit-KO, sudden death move like I wanted.


    But now that I had this range meta-power which worked on my others...maybe I didn''t need that. I''d seen AMPLITUDE on there before, and from my impressions there, I thought it might work similarly, might crank up the dial on my existing powers rather than give me a new one. Maybe I could find two or three more like that, keep relying on my lightning, really build it up into the god-slaying weapon I needed.


    "Cer, still confused, but happy! Will be eager to provide assistance to honored guest, one final time."


    We were back at the beacon in no time, as I made a list of selections, finding it much easier to find compelling concepts to jam into myself, rather than forcing them on my sister. It wasn''t long before we had a rough game plan laid out, and I was stretched out on a gurney with a small syringe in my hand.


    "If things go wrong, if I wind up...confused, aggressive," I told Cer, as I gripped and re-gripped the cold metal tube "It''s essential you get me into that portal. I need to fight Justice, no matter what happens to me."


    "Cer, understands, will use every tool at his disposal to see your task to completion. Good night, honored guest."


    "My head is going to kill me," I said, plunging in the needle. "If AEGIS doesn''t first."


    The room seemed to streak into blackness, and before I knew it, I was out.

 454. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Karu.

    If they call restful sleep the sleep of the just, then I must have been wicked. The drugs had long ago worn off, and I found myself aching too badly for rest to find me, but too exhausted to be awake. My arms were like molten metal, both in functionality and searing intensity, and I could not move one of my feet, below the point where my calf had nearly been severed entirely.


    I hurt with every breath, and the cooling night did little to temper it. But I was alive, was recovering, like the others in this spartan barracks, and despite our suffering, we were the lucky ones. We had survived, been found and retrieved, been given medical attention, and discharged. At each of those stages, I knew the numbers had grown thin...especially the first, with how brutal Justice had demonstrated himself.


    It was dark in here, half-lit, so as to encourage sleep whilst not inhibiting the aid workers as they quietly scurried through the hall, as though it would be their careful footfalls and not the pained groans and distant shrieks and explosions which might wake us. I looked at the other shadows around me, wondering if I knew any of them, how many might be hunters or had served beside me. I almost did not wish to know.


    But also, I did. Gingerly, I reached out and laid my fingers on my visor, the composite plating sapping the heat from my fingertips and making me shiver under the thin blanket. I put it on and brought it to life, knowing that in a few minutes, warmed by its function, it would be a boon.


    With new eyes, I could see into every corner of the hall. Many were sleeping, and that was a blessing. Some looked so defeated and exhausted they could do nothing but, while others appeared to rest easy, perhaps confident that they had done their best and trusting in their comrades to carry a victory they could no longer abet. It was in the middle ground where I caught the shine of eyes looking back at me, a mirror of myself in being too injuried to help yet not enough to be helpless.


    Names and faces flashed past on the callouts as I peered from bed to bed, finding strangers I did not know. The room was massive, yes, but I doubted very much that these were the entirety of the recovering injured. Perhaps the others were elsewhere.


    I sighed and closed my eyes, my head refusing to sink any further into the thin pillow behind me.


    Or, more than likely, they were dead. I had seen several downed before me, and who knew what had transpired since? Aello, Wisp, Trance...had any of them survived? I somehow doubted. Justice was not fighting to defeat us, but to crush our morale and assert supremacy eternal -- the annihilation of any soldier with a reputation or a public name would be paramount. He had even gone so far as to torture and taunt me before the kill, his cruel manifesto echoing over the battlefield.


    I closed my eyes to the scene of agony around me, willing away the deaths of which I was growing increasingly certain, and pulled up feeds instead, filling the air around me with augmented-reality projections of what I had missed in the time that I had been out.


    What I saw made my brow furrow. There had been many attempts on Justice''s life, more than I had given humanity credit for. Several, I recognized as being from sources I knew, and it gave me a small thrill and unwarranted pride to see Jack and Tower rescuing others as they had done for me, Temperance and Moon surviving an attempted ambush, and Deej on the front lines, his sonic attacks able to defend the ranks by targeting specific material resonances while leaving the allies he fired through rattled, but unharmed.


    But as my feeds drew towards the present, I felt Justice''s plan to sap hope working on myself. Things had gone awry with the assault of Trish against him. In mortally injuring him, he had lost all composure, and now, rather than a man, it seemed we were fighting...something else. A tumbling entity of flesh and reconstruction, bound to a scar, pulsating with dark fire, ringed in light. Bipedalism, even limbs, seemed more a suggestion to Justice''s form than defining it, as the mass of darkness and flesh scoured the battlefield at incredible speeds, erecting unspeakable monuments of pain in explosions of violence.


    Why had he changed his tack, I wondered? Had he decided that the strategy of eroding our hope was no longer sufficient once we had struck back and made him bleed? Or had he simply snapped, his mind no longer capable of even the brutish strategy he had concocted, and now capable only of producing death?


    My head ached as I studied stills and flipped through feeds to find the best angles. No...he was not without strategy, at least not yet. His movements appeared random, but...it felt as though he were making an effort to kill equally across the battlefield, to leave no corner safe and untouched. But to what end?


    There was strategic merit in breaking our formations, preventing the XPCA from bringing a wall of shield-bearers to protect the more valued exotics...but the foe could already fly past any ranks we could throw up. That theory held little water.


    It may be an evolution of his previous effort, to instil despair and shatter hope and cohesion. If nowhere was safe, nobody could feel safe, no matter how many they stood beside or behind. But this was an Exhuman event, nobody felt safe anywhere. Even lying in this bed, without a shred of combat capability, I would not have batted an eye at finding him suddenly here, slaughtering us all for the sake of it.


    Then there was the fact that he seemed to never kill the same way twice when he descended. Always, it was new powers brought to bear, as though to show them off, creating little localized spheres of harm for each of his abilities, the bodies he created always left as an effigy which left no doubt what manner of power created it. Breathtaking works of cruelty of imagination, almost like art.


    Which, more than anything, scared me, to be honest. It was one thing to deal with a crazed man, and one who believed themselves justified, another entirely. But an artist¡­? In my experience, they were the most unhinged and unpredictable of all. Art knew no strategy, no pattern. Establishing a pattern just to break it, that could be considered art. If my suspicions were correct, Justice could be even more dangerous than feared.


    I pushed that thought to the back of my mind and attempted to finish catching up on the feeds. My shock was palpable and my frustration nearly boiling when Saga appeared with a golden six-armed, three-eyed Hindu deity, and then immediately lost it. I had to physically stop the feeds for a moment to compose myself at what a goddamned moron she was.


    Words my father had instilled in me came bubbling to mind. Those who know power lack discipline; and those without discipline lose power. Struggle is what teaches us to be strong.


    Granted, I mostly heard those words in the context of being forced to eat my vegetables or buckle into an onerous assignment. Yet how well it applied to the omnipotent moron who was Saga...it made my head reel.


    I skipped through the remainder of the footage, finding little else of comfort, and significantly, still no reappearance of Athan, AEGIS, Aesa, and Al. I wondered what the hell they were doing, wherever they were doing it, and if they knew that at this very moment, the fight...very much was not, any longer.


    As of a few minutes ago, the ranks had broken. The fighting retreat which had persisted since Trish had turned the Exhuman into macabre mode was now open flight. The Oasian army, which had stubbornly and inhumanly held their ground, was annihilated. The XPCA had retreated towards the city, and the New Edeners, towards the desert.


    Although, retreat was something of a misnomer. Justice was still here, and he was still fury and death incarnate. He showed no signs of slowing, just because his opponents were beaten, and descended again and again, showering the broken ranks with their own viscera. I found myself silently pleading with him as more surrendering, even unarmed soldiers were brutalized, their spines ripped through their skulls, vital organs removed, or in one sick case, swapped with those of another victim. And so much blood continued to stain his blackened hands.


    I knew the rate of death at the moment was relatively low. Killing a man every second was very little to the swath of hundreds of which he was capable. But the means by which he did it, the exultation of...what should have been joy...it made me sit in wonder, feeling outside my body, as though I were watching this all from somewhere very dark and very far away.


    It made me feel a cold trepidation that humanity would not outlive this. He would not stop, he would kill and kill and kill and kill, until every person on earth was a grizzly, bloody edifice, and the land itself would be stained red from the slaughter.


    Even without my armor, my body felt impossibly heavy as I sat up, careful motions to keep the blood from fleeing my brain and blacking me out. It felt like I was flying too fast, my eyes going dim and my mind stupid as the pain wracked my body and my thoughts threatened to shut down.


    But I swung my feet over the side and gingerly put my weight on them, finding one leg capable of supporting me, and the other beyond uselessness. If I were walking, I would need a crutch. I wasn''t, and I began to pull my jetpack over my body as slowly and carefully as I could manage, many arms on the thing sheared off, perhaps in as pitiable a state as me.


    A stim helped, but did nothing to the fact that much of my body was useless. Deadening the pain did not make my leg work any better, nor helped with the intake of my breath. I still hobbled, leaning heavily on the beds as I jerked past them, muttering my apologies to their occupants as they watched me go.


    An info callout popped up on my visor that gave me pause as I passed one bed, and I hesitated to face the person inside it. She was no acquaintance of mine, but from stories and from the feeds I had just witnessed, she was familiar to me. She was awake, but crying softly, and beaten to nine types of hell, missing teeth, half of her hair and scalp torn off, stitches all up and down her face, and bruises and swelling almost concealing the human beneath them.


    The Exhuman beneath, that is.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    At seeing me standing there, pausing, looking at her, she glared at me through teary eyes.


    "What the fuck do you want?" she sniffled.


    "You are...Trish?" I asked.


    "Who the fuck cares?"


    "My apologies. I do not mean to make you self-conscious. I am a soldier, and have seen far worse than you, for whatever solace that might offer. My name is Karu, I am a friend and associate of Athan Ashton, whom I believe is a mutual acquaintance?"


    "Fucking Athan," she spat, and seemed to choke and cough for a minute on the words. Her injuries were not merely surface-level, it seemed.


    "My apologies if this is a sensitive subject, but might I ask why you scorn him?"


    She stared at me, nearly bug-eyed, and I saw her face twitch. "Fucking look at me!" she shrieked, drawing glares.


    "Erm, I am certain that Ashton did not do this to you."


    "Not personally. But where the fuck is he? He had me dragged out there to fight Justice, promised me a chance at redemption at¡­" she took a few swift breaths "...at vengeance, and I was just dumped out into fighting the fucker, all on my own, basically? Why would Athan even bring me here if he was just going to leave me by myself?"


    "You clearly were not by yourself. There are thousands fighting, dying, and dead."


    "I meant, him. Where the fuck is he?"


    "I do not--"


    "I''ll tell you," she said, her voice suddenly a growl. "Same place he was when all these other poor fucks were dying. He left them to go find me. And he left me to go find some other unfortunate bitch that he thinks might work. He''s a fucking coward, trying to outsmart the world''s most unstoppable force."


    "And you would have him, what? Stand in front of it, and be annihilated?"


    "That''s what he asked me to do. And you, am I right? Every one of his so-called ''friends''."


    "I am here of my own volition. And I am returning to the fight now, to lay down my life in whatever small effort I can yet provide. Ashton instructed me on none of this, and I fairly imagine he will disapprove of my efforts."


    She eyed me again, her face softening. "You''re not seriously going back up like that?"


    "I am. I have determined...this is the end of things. Today, there are those who fight, and tomorrow, all who remain will flee. I am not one who flees."


    "So you''re just gonna die?"


    "In the same way any soldier dies. There is that possibility, I cannot deny it. But I also cannot simply defeat my enemy by the force of my desire and wishes. I will return to the fight and give it my all."


    "You can''t even stand. You''ve already given it your all. Are you insane?"


    "My all is more than mere standing. I have thoughts in my head and strength enough to hold a weapon. To give all is to give all, there is no quota I am pretending to pass, no man I am aiming to impress -- either the task is done, or there is work yet to do, and either I have strength to contribute, or I do not. There is nothing more than that."


    She looked at me funny, a little sideways. Perhaps she could not see terribly well through the somewhat-swollen eye.


    "What about Taglock?" she asked.


    "What about him?"


    "He''s dead."


    "That is unfortunate, and surprising. I was under the impression he knew how to take care of himself, and was quite risk-averse, when it came to actual danger."


    "He died saving me, even though he was useless in a fight, like you currently are. If you go, you''ll just share his fate. You''ll just be throwing your life away."


    I smiled at her. "Your own words are inconsistent, friend. You say his life was a waste, but also that he managed to spare yours. There is value in that."


    "No there isn''t," she spat. "Look at me, I''m beaten halfway to death. I''m useless."


    "I am beaten halfway to death as well, but my uselessness will only be determined when I face Saint Peter. Speaking of, I must get going--"


    She moved with surprising speed, and stifled a groan as she reached after me. "Wait, don''t."


    "I have determined I will. Thank you for your concern."


    "No, seriously, don''t. You''ll die."


    "There are worse fates."


    "You are insane," she frowned at me.


    "If that is how you see it. I apologize for disturbing you. I wish you swift recovery, in whatever world comes after today." So saying, I gave her as much a gracious bow as I could, given my mobility, and then hobbled further towards the exit. Following our exchange, we now had something of an audience, and their stares were making me feel as though my cheeks might light up the room somewhat. Another failing of this body.


    I was nearly to the door when I heard her again behind me, her voice clearer this time, though still punctuated with a cough.


    "How can you do it, Karu? How can you just...not care...that there''s so many dead...and you''re gonna wind up just like them?"


    I turned and found her standing at the foot of her bed, haggard and leaning on it, heavier than I had. Painfully, enough to make me wince inside, she limped forward and made it to the foot of the next bed.


    "Taglock''s dead. So is my husband. So are my kids."


    "I am sorry to hear that."


    "Save your stupid patronizing," she bit at me, tears still running down her cheeks despite her seething. "They all died propping me up, pushing me forward, like I''m some hero who can fight that lunatic and save everything. But I''ve fought him twice, and I can''t, okay? I''m not strong enough to beat something like that. I''m fucking sick of everyone dying and hanging themselves on my shoulders. Do you have any fucking idea what that''s like?"


    "I am well-acquainted with disappointing others. There are many corpses lining my path as well, and I am certain, many of them would roll in their graves at what I have done and become."


    "Then stop...fucking...doing and becoming!" she shrieked. "Let them rest!"


    "Give up?" I laughed.


    "Stop fucking laughing at me!"


    "Then cease in being a joke," I spat. "Do not attempt to talk me out of fighting merely because you have already given up. The arrogance, to assume yourself wiser, better, than all those who have died today...the smug satisfaction that their deaths only prove you right in your cowardice--"


    "Do I fucking look satisfied to you right now, bitch? I fought Justice twice, and you''re calling me a coward?"


    "If you have strength enough to argue with me, you have strength enough to fight him a third time. The fact that you picked me over him informs me of your cowardice."


    "Listen, you little bitch--"


    "But you miscalculated," I informed her. "You think this little battle of wills easier and lighter than putting your life on the line again. But you are wrong. You will find my resolution harder to crack than anything Justice has to offer. I offer you no acknowledgement, no sympathy. If you wish me to respect your decision, then make the right decision. You sit here and cower because of those who have already died. I see those deaths, and they are the reason I cannot stay."


    She trembled but said nothing. I turned to go.


    "As I said. I wish you a speedy recovery, in whatever future comes."


    "That''s bullshit," she shouted. "You''re just like them! You''re just pressuring me, and pressuring me, and pressuring me, just like the others, until I fucking die. That''s what you want, and you won''t be happy until then, will you?"


    I turned back over my shoulder to stare at her one final time. "What I want is Justice defeated. I care not who does it, or how. I care not about you, nor myself, nor any other individual here living, so long as he does. He must be stopped, or our lives are forfeit regardless."


    "You...you just...you¡­"


    "You have made this a personal thing, between yourself and the dead, between yourself and Justice, between yourself and me. You feel the weight of expectation hanging off of you, of obligations you have failed to live up to. But those are cruel imaginings."


    I grinned at her. "The dead do not care what you do. Justice cares nothing about you. And I care even less. Do as you will, or surprise me. But do not waste any more of my time."


    I turned back and dragged myself across another few beds, the exit drawing nearer with every hobbling step. After a few more, I heard her bleating behind me, shouting and telling me to wait, breathless coughing and shouted knives.


    As I drew on the exit, some doctor informed me that I really, really, should stay. I thanked him for his advice and for his service, and offered him most of the stims and what medical supplies remained in my kit, which he took graciously. It was difficult with nothing to hold onto but I made it through the plastic curtain at the entrance and into the cold night air.


    "I said wait, goddamn it." Trish grabbed at my shoulder, and both of us wavered unsteady on ill-functioning legs.


    "And I informed you to waste no more of my time."


    "I''m...well first off, I don''t give a fuck what you say."


    "Good. You are learning, then."


    "And second, I''m going back with you. You''re right. I can still fight, even if barely."


    "I am right?" I echoed. "My, and I thought you did not give a fuck what I said."


    "Shut up, bitch. Look let''s...can you fly me over there with you?"


    "I doubt it very much in my condition, and even more in yours. Let us just¡­" My eyes scanned the area and landed on a still-running car, the back of which was smeared with blood from a recent medivac. "We can borrow this."


    She didn''t argue, just saved her strength for getting there, the two of us doing much better now that we were in the open air and my jetpack could do some good in keeping us upright and forward-moving. Staff were watching us go, many looking like they wanted to say something, but none doing so. Even when we clambered in the car and spent a minute breathing, none made a move to stop us.


    "We''re gonna die, aren''t we?" she asked, breathless, from the passenger seat.


    "Statistically...yes. Does that matter?"


    She seemed to think it over for a minute. "No, I guess not. Either we get him, or we''re dead anyway, right? He''d never allow either of us to live in his world."


    I laughed again. "My, that arrogance again. I doubt he thinks much more of us than any other human. But you are still correct...I do not think he would suffer a single being to remain, should he prevail today."


    She didn''t say anything else, just went another shade of white as she buckled up.


    It crossed my mind to ask if she was sure about this, or any number of other pleasantries or politenesses I could offer...but the simple fact was, I did not care. My body was broken and I was heading towards a probable death, and I would be damned if I were to spend my last free moments pretending to give a shit about another as broken as I.


    Either she was ready, or she was not. But either way, she was buckled in, and we were off.


    In the distance, I could see Justice floating, bolting across the battlefield and scouring life wherever he landed. I threw the car into gear and floored it, driving directly towards him, the black glow visible against the night sky.

 455. 2252, Present Day. Haydn, Earth. Lia.

    AEGIS was livid, and I didn''t even need my powers to tell. She was pacing, muttering, appearing just a bit unhinged as she cringed and regretted, her eyes fluttering back and forth between the dark confines ahead of us and whatever was going on in her head.


    Athan had said that her code had taken over. I didn''t know that he was right about her, but it was pretty clear that something was off. I just wanted to sit her down and ask her about it, but every time I opened my mouth to speak, all I felt was pressure in my throat, a tight, burning pain where sound should have been, and nothing came out. You''d think that kind of reaction would have taught me quicker to keep my mouth shut, but talking was so fundamental to being for me. I''d never been able to just...not talk before.


    So instead, I did what I assumed any Exhuman did in this kind of situation, played with my powers. AEGIS was lit up in bright red, like she was hanging out in a nightclub that thought that awful lighting equaled ambience. Athan, before we separated at the portal, had been flashing the whole gamut, as the levels of aggression and hostility inside him fluctuated with his thoughts. And the drones, to my amusement, did register, but only showed up as a pallid white, as peaceful as the walls around them.


    Not entirely unlike the walls around us now, reinforced metal, studded with buried electromagnets and EMP projectors. I could see them all, despite how pitch-black it was in here, and wondered if that was just part of my new powerset, or if being locked in the dark like this was affecting my window maybe.


    AEGIS'' face twitched, and her hands clenched and unclenched. I thought maybe the red haze on her might be her body cooking the humid Georgia air into roiling steam. That was really almost exactly what it looked like, and I found it fun, even funny to consider that maybe this is how muses saw us, a bit -- they interacted more with our thoughts than our physical forms after all, and being able to just look at someone''s level of aggression at a glance seemed...ionno, appropriate?


    Maybe I was reaching. I''d been doing a lot of that since I turned. I wondered if my window was still open, and I could go find some other creative way to kill myself, although I was getting worried now that it''d been a while, and if I kept this up, one of these times, I''d just actually die, in the most embarassing and useless way possible.


    But looking around again, there wasn''t really much here to work with anyway. The room was sterile and secure by design, reinforced, locked tight, and swept clean after every incursion, it looked like. We''d stepped back through the portal and landed exactly where we should have expected, in the secure room meant to contain the drones in the middle of the complex where Ajax and Celia worked.


    Except...I don''t know. They weren''t looking for us, or whatever measures they were using to detect incursions clearly wasn''t picking us up or something. It''d been at least ten minutes in the dark now, and I was beginning to wonder what was taking Athan so long to follow.


    AEGIS was flaring up again, flashing bright red as she swore to herself and kicked ineffectively at the walls, although a palor of yellow was beginning to creep in, and I had to wonder what that signified. I started to ask how she was feeling but again...couldn''t. So I made do with what miming ability I had in the dark.


    "Stupid...fucking...dumbass...Lia, what?" she asked, as I patted her hand. "I''m sorry, I''m...busy."


    I turned her palm over and traced my fingers across it. She jerked away from me as though I was burning her, and I sighed and rolled my eyes, reaching out to change her hue from the seething crimson down to a more ordinary pale.


    The effect was immediate, and her stomping and swearing tempered off, leaving her stunned, her color strobing as thoughts flashed through her newly-freed mind, trying to wrestle with what to do now that she had all this additional capacity for new feeling.


    The yellow began to creep in further, but also a pale, icy blue, that reminded me of Aesa''s portals. And then they both went away as she flashed red again, at me.


    "Don''t fuck with me," she growled. "Keep your fucking Exhuman bullshit out of my head. I have enough to deal with already."


    I took her hand again, and a melange of grey passed across her, as confusion passed across her face. I turned over her palm and began to trace my finger again, and the confusion passed as a different flash of red hit her. I felt like a living MRI, just watching all these colors pass through and over her, plain as day to see every emotion she had.


    "A...T...H...Athan," she said, as I traced the letters on her palm. That got her right back to the angry crimson. "Yeah, he''s the one who''s fucked with my head. And I''m so screwed right now, fuck him very much." The red flickered again, and that yellow appeared. What emotion did that signify? "It''s not like I really even care, you know? I love him...and if he messed with my head...I''m not even sure...that really matters, you know? But¡­"


    The yellow ebbed away and the crimson came back stronger than ever. "How could he do that! He fucking lied to my face!"


    H-O-W-?


    "How? Lia, he shoved me through the portal after you. He''s back there with the beacon doing," she flashed a violent shade of yellow-red, "...doing God-knows-what to himself right now! I should have stopped him. I should have killed him. No! Gah!"


    A-R-E Y-O-U O-K-?


    "Do I look okay?" she punted the wall again, in a manner that looked downright painful to me. Maybe she thought so, too, because doing so just flared her even more crimson. I tried to tone her anger down a bit, a little sneakier this time, so she wouldn''t just get mad at me again for doing it. But as the red filtered out of her, that yellow crept right in like it was waiting for its turn.


    And as her face cracked, I realized exactly what that yellow was meant to represent. Tears bulged in the corners of her eyes, and her breathing grew shallow and agitated.


    "Lia, I know you don''t understand, but I''m so, so scared right now," she confessed. "I''m so...I''m so betrayed and hurt. I keep telling myself I did the right thing...but I don''t know. I don''t know if Athan''s okay, or if I care if he''s okay, or if he''s going to do something so self-sacrificing and so stupid, that maybe it would have been better for me to just...listen to myself and kill him."


    W-H-Y W-O-U-L-D Y-O-U--


    "Because he''s an Exhuman!" she flared up, and then immediately went pale, in both senses. "I mean...shit...I''m¡­"


    She took several deep breaths, fighting the panic. "I didn''t mean that. I''m...my programming is fighting me real bad right now. I have systems in place, apparently, that make it so that if I ever learn my code has been compromised, I have this...need...to go revert, to keep a failed version of myself from limping around when another iteration could just...y''know...poof, fixed."


    She slumped on the floor, holding her half-torn hair like she was cradling a child. I realized it was the data uplink port in her hands, the gateway already used to kill her predecessor.


    "I had the same issue when I was getting hacked, but not this strong. I don''t know if they were suppressing my systems at the time or...or because I was convinced there was something I could do about it...or...maybe it was because it just wasn''t as bad."


    She frowned bitterly, and shook her head. "Actually, that''s a lie. I know exactly why. It''s because I''m programmed to fight Exhumans. If a hacker took control of me, that''s one thing...but for me to fall into an Exhuman''s influence, that''s...the opposite of what I was designed for. My failsafes can''t tolerate that, that''s why it feels so wrong right now."


    I kneeled on the ground next to her and held her hand again, this time just to hold it. I gave her a reassuring squeeze.


    And it was strange, to see the effect rippling through her. Without even using my powers, the touch seemed to push the red and yellow back, dimming them, just ever so slightly. I felt flattered that my presence alone could calm her like that, somehow.


    And then I felt very, very sad, certain that I was awash in a blue mist, as she pulled her hand away and glowered at me.


    "I told you to stop fucking with me using your powers," she spat. "Athan''s bad enough. This situation is bad enough. I hate being locked in the dark, and now to have you screwing with me too? Exhumanity is vile. I despise you."


    I tried to explain but she wouldn''t give me her hand again. It was so frustrating, I just wanted to be able to speak, wanted to yell at her to stop being an idiot and just...let me help her through this.


    I took a deep breath and decided, screw it. If her systems could insistently push her towards fear and anger, I could push back, whether she wanted it or not.


    And tried to convince myself that this was me doing it, not the Exhuman I apparently now was. I''d have done this before, wouldn''t I? I just lacked the capacity. It wasn''t like my powers were corrupting me or anything, that was just her paranoia.


    "I told you to stop!" she shouted, but there was no heart in it. "Damn it, Lia, I can monitor my emotional indexes you know. I can tell when they''re being tampered with. Don''t think you can just sneak it by me. If you keep this up...I''ll¡­"


    She looked around at the dark, fortified walls surrounding us, lost for words and threats.


    "I''ll kick you," she growled. "I''ll put you out, so that you can''t screw with me."


    I grabbed at her palm, and now that she wasn''t super livid anymore, she actually let me have it.


    I A-M T-R-Y-I-N-G T-O H-E-L-P


    "Well I don''t need your stupid Exhuman help. My problem right now is I already have too many Exhumans in my head. You think shoving another one in there is gonna fix me?"


    Y-E-S A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y


    "Well, screw you," she spat, but I made sure her outburst didn''t come with another flare-up, and so she just petered out with a sigh. "And...screw you for that. Damn it, Lia. Don''t do this to me, please. I don''t...I...I don''t even know who or what I am right now, and I really, really don''t need your fingers in my brain, please. I don''t want to fight you. I''m just so tired and scared...I just want to beat Justice and then¡­"


    She shook her head. A melancholic blue swept in from somewhere I hadn''t expected.


    "And then, I don''t know. Revert myself, probably."


    I wanted to yell at her that it was just her programming talking, that she had so many other options, she wasn''t as trapped as she felt. Her sudden, sad, acceptance of defeat, it just...it stabbed me right in the chest, so crushingly familiar to me of how powerless I sometimes felt.


    But she wasn''t powerless, she just felt that way. Nobody moved her body but her, no matter what her thoughts screamed. Even if it was exhausting to have those thoughts, there would always be other thoughts, if she could just hold on long enough to have them.


    I wished I had better control over my powers. I didn''t know how to convey myself through them, like I felt Saga could, even when she wasn''t speaking. I wanted her to feel the optimism and strength that I forced myself to have, whenever I knew my stupid, cruddy, chemically-defective brain was going off the rails for no reason.


    I took her hand and crushed it in my grip, staring her intently in the eyes, which widened at me.


    "Uh, woah."


    I squeezed her again. D-O N-O-T G-I-V-E U-P


    Her lips trembled a little as the blue and yellow intensified within her, with a tiny shake of her head. "I...I know. I''m not. Not...yet. I just...you don''t know what it''s like having something inside you telling you to kill...your¡­self..."


    She trailed off and blinked at me, and an embarrassed shade of pink crept across her which had nothing to do with my powers.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Sorry," she mumbled. I squeezed her hand again. "Yeah, I''m...I''m sorry, I''m not...a hundred percent right now. I guess I''m just too inside my own head to think about anyone else. Or, to think, I guess. Sorry."


    I turned her palm over and did what I would have done in her circumstance. Don''t dwell, move forward, focus on what you can do. Every step is just a step.


    L-E-T-S G-E-T O-U-T O-F H-E-R-E


    "We can''t," she sighed. "It''s reinforced solid. I can''t even tell where the door is supposed to be, and I know there is one. They really built the hell out of this place. I kind of thought that...they''d detect a surge or something when we portaled back, but I guess that''s not the case. Maybe the drones come on a schedule, or maybe they''ve got sensors specifically looking for drones."


    N-E-T-?


    She shook her head with a scoff. "Yeah, no way I have connection in here. The amount of current running through the walls with all these EMP projectors? To say nothing of just how damn thick the walls are. Believe me, if I had ''net, I''d be calling Rito right now."


    I cradled my chin as I thought. I wasn''t quite sure the range of my powers, but I didn''t feel anyone out there, the same way I could feel AEGIS or the drones. Either they were all gone, or my range wasn''t wide enough to reach them. And based on the fact that this facility had guards, that probably meant the latter.


    AEGIS was sinking into despair again, and this time, I tried to give her a little kick, flaring up that red as best I could. But despite being able to see it, feel it, I couldn''t...touch it...or however these powers worked. I could, but...it was strange, like sinking my fingers into wet sand, I could push it, but pulling it just made it mush around my touch, distorted but not affected.


    Hmm. That was a limitation I''d have to keep in mind. I could move people towards calm, but not the other way. I couldn''t instill extreme emotions, only temper them. I could only, I guess, create peace, not stifle it. Which made sense, but also made my powers a heck of a lot less flexible.


    I wished, not for the first time, that I had something more overtly useful like Athan did. But wishes wouldn''t do anything at this point; if I were to wish for anything, it was for Justice dead. Or a more reasonable second, to settle into my powers and adapt them to fighting Justice. Everything after that, I guess, wasn''t worth considering.


    The world seemed to warp suddenly, as though the room were inflating around us and the reinforced walls were swelling. I blinked several times, reflexively, like I could make my ears pop and it would all go back to normal. And then, as quickly as it started, it was gone, and Athan was there.


    I tried to grin at him, to run and give him a hug, but AEGIS beat me to it, holding me back by grabbing a fistful of my hospital gown at the back. I flailed against her, trying to ask her what the heck, yo, when she shushed me, her eyes locked on Athan.


    I followed her gaze and found my brow furrowing, the same question failing in my raspy breath again in really taking him in. It was Athan, it definitely was, I could see him through my powers and I was sure AEGIS could see him with her enhanced optics. She wasn''t confused, just guarded.


    But the more I looked at him, the more guarded I became as well, though for an entirely different reason. He seemed to seethe, in my sight, like water heated just below boiling, rippling with an energy ready to explode. He wasn''t red...but he wasn''t pale either. He was something...weird, some emotion that humans weren''t built for; some color I couldn''t describe, that I had never seen and shouldn''t exist. The color, whatever it was, was tinged with red...anxiety, impatience, frustration, maybe...words that shot around it but missed the bulk of what was really there. Hunger, maybe, in a primal sense.


    I waved at him from AEGIS'' grasp, and he showed no sign of even seeing it. He did turn to her, though, and when he spoke, my vision burned in my skull from the sudden flash.


    Lightning was arcing inside of his mouth with his words, cracking the dark with searing light that lingered, burned into my eyes in hazy vivid streaks. His voice seemed to boom with thunder, like he had somehow, in the last fifteen minutes, turned himself into Thor.


    "AEGIS," he said. "It''s you...isn''t it?"


    "It''s...I''m here," she answered, pulling me further away and putting herself between us. "Oh, Athan, what did you do to yourself?"


    "I can...AEGIS?"


    "Athan?"


    "I can barely hear you. They''re...so loud. AEGIS."


    I tried to say something again, but nothing came out, the epitome of frustration. He was right there in the dark, I just wanted to hold him and tell him it was okay, that we could be Exhuman together.


    But still AEGIS held me back. When I tried to throw her off, her grip tightened until the folds of my shirt were digging into my skin. I heard myself grunt wordlessly at her, but if she heard it, she acted as oblivious as he.


    "Lia''s here," AEGIS announced. "Can you see her in the dark?"


    "Lia?" He echoed, hammering me with my own name, echoing in the room. "Is...that her?"


    "Yeah, this is Lia." There was no response, and she glared at him with worry. "You remember Lia, Athan?"


    "I...remember. I love her. I love...Lia."


    He looked right at me, emotions swirling inside him like a tempest. So much of it was red, or red-tinged, but the longer he peered at me, the deeper the melancholic blue grew. He shook his head, like he couldn''t believe what he was seeing, and I tried and failed again to call out.


    "She looks...just like all the others."


    "She''s your sister, Athan. Your sister, who loves you unconditionally. She''s like no others."


    "She looks the same...inside. Neurons and synapses. Impulses and potential. Only...only you look different, AEGIS. I can''t see her. Help."


    "What did you do, Athan?" AEGIS fretted. "What did you do to yourself? Why? How many...how many powers did you put into you?"


    He shook his head. "I don''t...don''t remember. I remember the first, the second, the third...and then¡­" He frowned bitterly, his body flooding with red. "It wasn''t enough."


    "Enough for what? To totally eradicate yourself?" she shouted. "What the fuck, you''re...you''re insane. Your eyes, they look like his."


    "It doesn''t...doesn''t matter."


    "It doesn''t fucking matter if you can''t tell your own sister anymore?"


    "It...sister? Lia? Lia¡­? Help. Help me, please."


    I tried to reach out again, but AEGIS kept me back. This time, I bit her wrist, and she just glared at me, her grip not diminishing in the least.


    "You want to fucking touch him?" she spat. "Let''s find out what happens when you touch him. Let''s find out what your brother turned himself into."


    Before I could fail to say anything, she dragged me a few feet over and wrapped her hand around Athan''s wrist.


    I thought there was an explosion, that everything in the tiny room was just gone in an instant. Or that Tem had nuked us down. It wasn''t until I my vision faded back in, the afterimages of the lightning burst still in my eyes that I realized, it hadn''t been an explosion, it only sounded like one, felt like one, looked like one.


    AEGIS'' clothes were on fire, the dim light of them showing the black on fingertips with which she''d touched him, and on the ground under her. She was breathing heavily, still standing, still sparking with stray tendrils of electricity jumping between her hair, the ground, her splayed fingers and toes, even the insides of her nostrils and mouth, like Athan when he spoke.


    "T-t-th...that¡­" she stammered "w-w-would...h-ha-ve...k-killed...any...one. B-but me."


    I just stared at her, feeling useless and stupid as I gingerly patted the flames off of her back while she seemed to shudder and twitch until feeling was restored through her body. The sound of the blast, how blinding it was, it was insane, and somehow she''d endured without...well, almost without effect, it seemed.


    Her breathing slowed and her eyes flashed at me. "Stop trying to touch him."


    I nodded at her, somehow even more breathless than she, who''d just been cooked like that.


    "Your brother...has done something very stupid. He''s very dangerous, as...as I was afraid...I thought he might be. I might...need to stop him."


    I shook my head at her and realized, despite the explosion, the recovery, this very conversation about one of his very best friends potentially trying to kill him, Athan was absolutely silent and still. All that stirred on him was his clothes and hair, rippling in the way they did when he was all statically charged. He wasn''t even fully on the ground, I realized with a start, he was touching it with his toes, but drifting, levitating, somehow so in control of his magnetic powers that he could pick himself up while leaving AEGIS untouched, just a few feet away.


    Floating. Like Justice. With inhuman emotions surging through him, but not cracking through. Utterly dispassionate, but dangerous beyond understanding.


    AEGIS'' words and warnings began to sink in despite myself. I didn''t want to believe it, didn''t want to accept that I''d never hug my dorky brother again, or leech warmth from his hands, or hear him laugh at my stupid jokes.


    But...that was happening, wasn''t it? That was really happening. He was right there, impassive and ominous and I knew exactly what he''d done. I just didn''t believe it, until here he was.


    "I don''t...I don''t know, Lia. I''m...scared. I don''t want to hurt him...but I don''t...don''t want him hurting anyone else. He could have killed you already."


    I began to frantically scrawl on her palm and she shook her head.


    "No. There''s no guarantee the Ramanathan window would protect you. Just like Aoede can''t predict what other muses do, powers can''t directly protect against other powers like that."


    I...didn''t exactly follow, but I got the gist. If she hadn''t stopped me, I''d be dead.


    And would Athan care?


    And if he didn''t...then did I even care about being alive?


    I pushed that thought away, threw it away as far as I could. We''d always pulled through before, maybe...whatever he''d done to himself, there was a way to undo it. This was about him, me, and Justice, and we needed to sort that out before anything. I dug through my things for my mobile and pulled it out, flipping through the contacts and then forcing it into AEGIS'' hands. While she stared at the holo, I geared up as best I could, given the breezy hospital gown. My rifle went over my shoulders at least, and what bandoliers I could salvage from my cut-apart slipskin went over it.


    "Lia, we can''t."


    I tried to sign to her, but she interrupted.


    "We can''t. We really, really can''t. He''s way too dangerous, you see that. He''s almost like Justice, the way he is. We should just¡­"


    She hesitated, and I knew she was looking for words other than kill him. The thought of it made me sick, made my own red flash up twice as bright as the yellow and blue swirling in her.


    If it was her fear and cowardice holding us back, then they''d have to go, not him. I grabbed at her emotions and wrenched them into nonexistence, leaving her empty, tranquil, incapable of arguing. And as her anger flared up at me for doing so, I stomped it down too, held it under my heel.


    "Lia, this is...such a bad idea. You''re...proving me right. Right now. You''re being dangerous too..."


    She said that, but without conviction behind it. Just an empty, helpless shell without her emotions. I felt bad for doing it to her, but she was literally threatening to kill my brother. We could sort this all out when Justice wasn''t murdering the world, I believed.


    Or he''d make it easy on us, and kill us. Either way, really. Anything to avoid having an awkward discussion.


    "We still need to get out of here, where we can meet with Rito, I guess."


    I nodded at her, and turned to Athan. Who didn''t respond in the slightest. I gave him my best pout and frown without him so much as blinking, and in the end, was forced to squeeze AEGIS'' hand for help.


    "Um, Athan? Lia...thinks you can get us out of here. There should be a door, and some guards outside. If you could--"


    Silently, the door opened itself, whatever mechanisms within it, completely overridden by Athan in an instant. AEGIS nodded her thanks and we headed into the night air. And then she stopped.


    "Oh. Oh no. Oh no, no."


    For a panicked instant, I thought somehow Justice had come here, was waiting outside for us to return from another Earth. I only knew what to look for by what direction AEGIS was pulling me away from.


    They were all dead. Just...dead. The guards at the street entrance, the ones by the doorway we just passed through...from the sound of it, and the sudden, unearthly quiet, the dorms and mess hall were...dead as well.


    AEGIS rushed to one of the two who had been standing mere feet from the door, prying open his eyes, putting her ear to his chest, beginning chest compressions.


    All while muttering to herself. No, no, no, no, no.


    I went to the other, he seemed untouched, just...gone. No breathing, no pulse. Out like a light, in an instant, eyes glossy, expression neutral.


    He''d stopped their hearts, I could tell. Reached out, just like the door, and fiddled with the electricity inside of them, just another part of AEGIS'' sentence.


    It was too much to take in. Not just that now Athan could flip people''s lives on or off like a switch, but that he had, he would, without even blinking, without even thinking. I wanted to sprint through the base, to find Ajax and Celia, to make sure they were okay, but I couldn''t move. There was a dead guy in front of me, and another half-dozen in view. I didn''t want to go into the dorms, I didn''t want to find what my brain said was certain.


    If I didn''t see them, maybe they were still alive. Maybe they''d gone off-base. He''d taken her out for a nice dinner and proposed, like AEGIS mentioned he was planning to. They were off celebrating, right now, completely unaware of the death we''d just brought with us.


    There was another explosion, a rupturing brazzt which screamed in base tones which moved my body. I turned and found AEGIS frozen, fists in the air, paused mid-beating on Athan''s chest, blackened, as was the ground under her, and the grass was on fire.


    "W-w-why--" she stammered. "...did...you d-do...t-t-this?"


    "AEGIS? You said...there were guards."


    "...to...yourself¡­?"


    "I don''t...AEGIS? Help. I can''t hear you...they''re so loud. Help me, AEGIS."


    She closed her eyes tight and took shallow breaths which grew deeper. In a minute, she''d regained herself, and stood unsure, afraid, wracked with guilt and fear flowing off of her.


    She took one more deep breath, and then, as only she could, put on a tremendous, fake smile and gazed at what was left of the man she''d loved.


    "Let''s go, Athan. Justice is waiting for you. Just a little walk and Rito will take us there."


    "AEGIS?" he whispered, his voice booming somehow, still.


    "I''m here, love. I''m here for you. You have to fight now...or...or everything you''ve done...to yourself...it was all for nothing."


    "Fight." He said that with conviction, maybe the first word he''d said without some hint of confusion this whole time. "Fight."


    "That''s right, sweetie. Time to go fight. Time to go...go and save us all."

 456. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Karu.

    I was exhausted. Trish was exhausted. One of my wounds had reopened on the drive in, and the weeping of blood made me even more light-headed. I was in no fit state to drive, much less fight...but compared to Justice, no man or woman was fit to fight. My sacrifice would mean as much as any of theirs, and if Trish was as significant a part of God''s plan in this as I hoped, then perhaps mine was merely to deliver her.


    I hoped so. I prayed so. So far, she had been the only one who could make him hurt, who had fused his body with her bite in a manner which could not fracture off into fractal reassembling. In the swarm of flesh which was now Justice, that cut remained intact in his center, like a vulnerability he had to protect.


    I did not know how we would get close, or how to protect her, but if she was key to it all, she needed first to be present, and that much, I could do.


    I stopped us at the periphery, frowning to see the fight in person. I knew it was bad, but witnessing the slaughter with my own eyes felt more actualized, more grim than I expected.


    I had never seen so much blood, nor so many bodies, or so little damage. Justice had been precise in his terminations, delving in to kill a select handful, or issuing his powers to do the same, and while there were certainly fissures in the ground, lines of scorch, and boulder-shattered streets, by-and-large, the buildings and infrastructure remained intact. It appeared as though a plague had swept the battlefield, visiting explosive death upon all infected.


    That is, if it were not for the macabre spires. Every hundred feet or so, another body massacred with such superfluousness, often the contents of a single person stretched higher than the single-story residences which surround it. Where they were erected, there was a halo around them, clean of other corpses, as though the pinnacle demanded its space and reverence...or more likely, that those who were alive, fighting or fleeing, they avoided the grizzly landmarks for fear of joining them.


    I was under no such superstition, and found them actually rather pleasant to drive through, comparatively. The contortions of the bodies offered less resistance than the corpse-lined roads, and the spaces under them were a reprieve from the bumpy, crunchy, fleshy mess we otherwise had to traverse. Easier to drive through a curtain than a carpet, perhaps; disgusting, but practical.


    Trish looked ill at the hellway through which we were driving, and I recommended she focus on the horizon. Not that it was any less bloodstained, but it was, at least, further.


    "No," she said, her voice set in a growl. "I want to see this. I want to remember these people."


    I did not reply, feeling void of the proper reverence, as I continued to drive forward, crunching more of the dead into mulch beneath our tires.


    "Every one of them had a family," she continued, shaking her head. "I''m...I''m completely torn up about my husband and kids, I can''t imagine what life is going to be like after this...if there even is an after this. But¡­"


    She looked out and bit her lip, which was a bold thing to do given the lurching of the vehicle, but seemed not to mind the trickle of blood from her mouth, or to notice.


    "But...and this sounds so wrong, but...they''re just three people. I thought losing them was everything but there are...thousands of people here. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Every one of them had a mother and father. Maybe a spouse, maybe kids. That''s...millions of people in my shoes or worse. I can''t even begin to think about how much pain I''m in, but to think of it multiplied across every single person in America, or on Earth¡­"


    She shuddered.


    Silently, I agreed with her. There was a reason I was a hunter. I knew well the pain a single Exhuman could inflict on dozens or hundreds of lives. I had once had this realization which was striking her. I knew, possibly better than she did, the extent of the words and feelings now overwhelming her.


    And I had nothing to say to her. When my history had been ravaged by Exhumanity, when I was alone, and holding the seared-off arm of a loved one, appalled and amazed that Exhumans were permitted to exist in God''s plan...the only words that had been offered to me were from my father, scolding me for imperiling his heritage, from my new commanding officer, telling me all the things his predecessor had done wrong, and from the crisis counselors, trying to encourage me to agreement, that this was in no way way the military''s fault, and I was completely fine, and not the least bit traumatized.


    I knew well what not to say, but had no idea what words would actually be of help. Patronizing thoughts and empty assurances flitted through my mind, but none significant enough to lighten her burden. There was so little I could say or do, it frustrated me. Not that I much cared about Trish in particular, but having lived these experiences myself, it felt as though I should have had more, that I should have perspective on this by now.


    Perhaps that was all there was to say.


    "I understand," I said. "I know how you feel."


    She continued to stare out at the spectacle, my words feeling insignificant against the view, either unworthy of response, or sufficient that none was needed. She breathed unevenly, and swallowed heavily, but spoke no more.


    As we drew nearer to the body of the remaining conflict, I encountered something strange on the road, veering wildly to avoid shadowy figures emerging into my headlights. Bodies, soaked in blood, beneath one of the grim memorials...but upright, moving, alive.


    "What the--?" Trish asked, and I swerved again to avoid hitting more of them. They did not move at all, did not even seem to recognize us, merely rocked and stood and kneeled and cradled themselves, their focus upwards, towards the massacre, and towards the sky.


    "What are they doing?" she asked.


    "From the look of it, praying." There were more of them on the road ahead, first three, and now a dozen. In the distance, beneath the next monument, I saw what may have been another dozen more, not yet in my lights.


    "Praying...here? Like, I get the...the need for it, but...why aren''t they running? Why isn''t Justice killing them?"


    "Because Justice is not here to kill humans. He is here to destroy hope. These people do not run, because they have no hope. They are worse than dead, they are defeated, and will remain so for however long they cling to life."


    "They''re covered in blood¡­"


    "They do not care. They are broken. They do not comprehend that tomorrow will come, or that they are cold, or are in pain, or painted with blood of their comrades. Their minds have shattered, and all that they know, or believe that they know, is that there is no way for them to defeat Justice, and no way to escape."


    We were driving slower now, not that I had attained any significant speed while driving amidst the fallen, but it gave her plenty of time to soak in the wails and faces of the defeated. Confusion and concern crossed and recrossed her face, more distressed and baffled here than in seeing the dead. It was good that she could not understand them, because to understand them, to be able to grasp an annihilation of self so complete that one''s very existence was forfeit...to even know such a thing was to become one.


    Fighting required a thing to fight for. For Trish, even with her family dead, the spirit of vengeance had reawakened her to the front. For many, it was survival -- the self -- a need to see tomorrow, no matter the cost. Others were simply too stubborn to ever change their minds, and perhaps that was the camp I fell into. Even if defeat was absolutely certain, I had invested too much, too long to simply expire without utilizing it.


    There were as many reasons as there were fighters, some better than others, some certainly more robust. But the simple truth was, as I had seen in every conflict with which I had ever engaged, robbing a soldier of their reason to fight left them like this, in spirit if not in form. Despair, despondency. A paradoxical depth and narrowing of thought, those who would fall to pieces and cry out ''what is it all for?'' while being incapable of processing any answer.


    Most of them died. Many were even sent home first, but the trauma still lingered in them like buried shrap. But never had I seen this many, or so completely broken.


    "This is horrible," she whispered.


    "This is the world he seeks to create. Where humanity exists only to fear him, and his power is absolute. I know not what twisted motivation he has, but the fact that he has left so many broken yet alive...the sadistic spectacle of his works, how he has sought out and ruthlessly annihilated the exceptional in the field, and then toyed with the rank and file...it leads me to no other conclusion but this. Even now, his protracted shepherding and pursuit, it is meant to defeat, deplete, exhaust...but not to kill."


    "This is fucked up."


    "A much more concise assessment. I agree."


    We rode in stony silence for several minutes longer. We were beginning to get close to the fight now, and the roads were positively becoming thick with the broken and the dead. I noted with dismay the number of aid workers unceremoniously murdered, red crosses hanging off of destroyed bodies. There had been efforts to take these people to care, to mend them. Efforts of which Justice, evidently, had not approved.


    "What of your motivation to fight?" I asked. "Does seeing the scope of his destruction fill you with hesitation?"


    She shook her head. "Makes me want to stop him even more. I can''t imagine how many people are hurting right now."


    "Good. For me as well. When he turns his eyes on you, remember well this feeling. Confidence is as valuable on the battlefield as sure footing, but just as easy to lose."


    "Thanks. But...don''t you fly?"


    That made me laugh, and the sound of it seemed alien, as though the contents of this car were a visitor from another world. Out there was gore and misery, and here, we had air conditioning, should we desire it.


    I saw movement ahead, more than the shuffling or prostration of the broken, though equally blood-soaked and muddy. A man, not in XPCA black, though clutching one of their guns, running towards us while looking backwards in equal measure. He was screaming for the broken to get out of his way, sprinting directly for the car.


    "Help me! Get me the hell out of here!"


    As he passed, I saw the broken turning away from him, as though ashamed of themselves for not being him...or him him for not being them. To my estimation, he had hidden, and upon hearing our approach, was making his move to run.


    I had no use for the vehicle after this, and would be content to let him have it, to take back as many as would fit, and with God''s blessing, they may find themselves once more. But that was only if they made it back.


    Which would not happen. His fate was sealed as soon as I heard him yelling, and Trish began screaming uselessly at him the moment we saw the glint in the dark.


    Justice landed with a crack, the pavement shattering under his mass, a maelstrom of blood, a black hole of darkness ringed in an unearthly light, shadowy tendrils emerging in every direction like a dozen crab limbs, stiff and articulated. Glimpses of what looked like arms, legs, a torso appeared in the haze, forming and dissolving and reforming out of the cloud of flesh. A human head, shuddering, eyes bulging and boiling, mouth dripping blood and froth, constantly muttering words from its lips while an unearthly screaming keened from the dissolving neck.


    "What...the fuck...happened to him¡­" Trish asked, opening the car door and fumbling with her seat belt. I brought us to a halt before she hurt herself, and the poor bastard kept running towards us, kept screaming for us to save him.


    Right up until his lungs inflated to bulge out his mouth, a huge swollen sac, black and blue like a fresh bruise, his eyes staring down at the alien presence, his entire body distended from the pressure.


    He kept swelling and more of his organs began to appear out of his orifices. His eyes screamed and went bloodshot, before popping in a cascade of bile and phlegm. A trail of feces ran down his legs, dripping into the street as his anus swelled larger than his buttocks.


    All the while he kicked and thrashed and tried to scream through the guts in his throat, going blue from asphyxia, white with pain.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    And then at once, red with blood, mercifully still and silent, putrid violet gasses escaping his swollen form through the new hole punched through his chest, where Trish''s spear had punctured his heart.


    Justice looked up at us, his eyes seething, his mouth unhinged with lips still moving despite being too far from each other to make words. The intensity of his screaming made my teeth vibrate in my skull, my skull vibrate in my head, my wounds feel as though they were close to reopening again, to burst with all the blood screaming in my veins in unison with his voice.


    Trish had spears in both hands, the headlights of the stopped car throwing long, sharp shadows across the two of us. I had a half-functioning jetpack which would help me move at perhaps a quick jog, and half a dozen near-depleted weapons, perhaps thirty shots left, if that.


    And a house. It tumbled through the air, ungainly, not so much pulled from the ground as taking the ground with it, small bits of concrete foundations and metal pipework peeking out from the island of soil upon which it sailed. And on its roof, broad teeth bared, face cut up, but still whole, a huge man with dark skin and a short-cut afro, both hands planted on the rooftop as he steered it towards our adversary with a yell of his own.


    Justice barely turned, lashing out one-two, metal chains, red-hot, tearing through the flying house. Tower let it go, drifting up and away and letting gravity carry the meteorite towards his mark. One of the chains slashed at him, but when it touched him, it stilled in the air, and sent Tower flying at the ground instead, stealing its momentum to fire himself like a rocket.


    The explosion of his landing was greater even than Justice''s, echoing with the house crashing, which Justice dodged with ease, and the debris hung in the air like a smokescreen. Through which, Tower came charging through it, fists at the ready, as though punching Justice in the jaw would turn this conflict.


    "WHERE. IS. JACK?" he bellowed.


    Before he was eviscerated in Justice''s reply, Trish was there, slashing out, one-two, just as Justice had, her long lances biting deep into the cloud of gore, and where they cut, the blood congealed and splashed to the earth, and Justice howled in fury. He turned towards her, and there was a purple flash.


    I did not know what the flash was intended to do. I only fired myself at full speed and collided her out of the way in time to avoid it. Justice howled again, a voice magnified a thousand times, and the whole world seemed to echo his scream, air pressure beating on my head and my injuries. Even the stims were having a hard time keeping the pain at bay, and I wondered how it was that Trish was still even conscious without them.


    But conscious she was, and dancing like a kite in Justice''s wind. She was easily the fastest of all three of us, and I noted, moved like a trained fighter. An ameteur one, certainly. But one who was no stranger to it. Her breathing was controlled and even, and her blows came out staccato, sharp punctuation to her movement, each attack buying her distance or threatening a hit.


    Tower capitalized on Justice''s focus on her by bellowing twice as loud and lifting a shattered chunk of now-weightless road, bringing it crashing down like a discus, flattening where Justice had only just been floating.


    As for me, I waited. I stayed near enough Trish to give her support, and took my shots carefully. When he suddenly lunged, lurching at her with a wave of flame, I was ready and waiting, and a canister of ice detonated at his fore, extinguishing his attack and sending many of his chunks of flesh dropping to the streets like droplets of red hail. When he turned to me to rebuke, I found my skin aflame, nausea forcing vomit through my teeth. It felt like I was boiling from within.


    Just as I thought myself truly dying, she slashed at him again, biting in with her shadow lances, and as she did, his powers seemed to waver for a fraction of a moment, long enough for whatever affliction he''d put on me to fall away, for his body to fall to the ground, for the keening to stop, and for the pained moans of a man to be heard from the now-human lips.


    But it was only a moment. In the next, he rose up again, the black fire within him flaring with radiance like a dark sun. The air around us filled with ten-thousand near-invisible wires, and the ground beneath us fragmented into sunder which shifted underfoot. The air became painful to breathe, and I was not certain my body was breathing it properly, becoming lightheaded...or perhaps it was the keening starting anew, burrowing into my mind like a maggot.


    Only for it all to dissipate again in an instant as she lashed out. She was sweating and shaking, her veins livid with her pounding pulse and her rattling breath, and I knew, whatever I was feeling, she was suffering ten times worse. Yet still she assaulted him, spears jabbing further and further towards the center of Justice, the tips of them prodding at the black-wreathed heart.


    One spear was struck and shattered by a sharp electric cleave that left the air smelling of ozone and the hairs on my neck standing straight. She reached for the ground for another with her off-hand, the remaining spear seeming to jump to her main, and lashing out at the same moment. Twenty feet long, and flicked through the air with a whip-crack, weightless and substantial as death. The lance-tip dipped under the arc of light, striking at him again, but missing the core.


    And then the earth itself turned against her, spires of rock erupting from under her unstable feet, and harpooning into the air. One after another, needles reaved the sky, and while she staggered backwards, away, I heard a crack, and saw her falling backwards, her eyes tear-streaked as a spire of rock and bone shot through her femur, her knee swinging uselessly under her, held on by skin and meat alone.


    I dove and mostly caught her, and she stifled a scream, lashing out with her lance desperately as Justice regained his footing. He seemed to coalesce, to surge, a thousand more needles of stone boiling from everywhere to pin us in, to tear her apart.


    I jumped as hard as I could, adding what force my legs had left in them to the thrust of my jetpack and got the two of us clear, a dozen feet in the air, but only inches away from the ground collapsing in on itself under us like a hundred sets of teeth closing, one after another. Then more burst from beneath, launched skyward like sea-spray, while we drifted defenseless, my jetpack no more capable of redirecting the two of us than moving the earth.


    Tower was there for us. With an ungodly bellow, he appeared directly under us, the thousand needles crashing into his body, blunted by his power, but still cracking and shattering on his skin, as he arrested each of them as best he could. The impacts of them pushed him up into us, and the three of us began to fall and tumble, directly towards Justice''s burning black form.


    "STEER!" Trish screamed at me. "INTO HIM!"


    I found strong arms holding us, and our tumble became a gliding descent as Tower oriented us with his powers. She got the lance under us, pointed directly at his heart, and I stabilized us, veering us slightly left, slightly right, my jetpack so much more capable when we were weightless.


    We skimmed across the ground, building up more and more speed, the ground still exploding beneath us, as Tower reached out and touched the incoming attacks, converting their thrust into ours, until we outstripped the raging earth, until even through my visor, I felt tears streaking my vision, and my body threatening to give out. Rarely had I flown this fast, and never without consequences.


    But the consequences today would not be ours to pay. Justice was limping away...still at incredible speeds, but nowhere near his fastest. His flesh was frozen, sundered, a wake of blood and discarded body parts trailing behind him as he drifted sideways, my jetpack correcting us towards him no matter how he fled. I reached over and gripped Trish''s arm tight, keeping the spear pointed level, even if she blacked out from the speed.


    We were a bullet, fired at his heart, unerring. Pursuers, closing the distance between death and victory. Tower was still bellowing, and I found my voice adding to his, despite myself. Trish''s scream resonated in my ears, fueled by her misery and grief, her anger and vengeance. All of the pain she felt, all of the canage we had witnessed, we were poised to strike it down, here and now, to end it all.


    Realizing that he could not evade, Justice planted and turned, walls of fire and blackness cropping up in our path. But where the lance hit them, we punched through, the touch of blackness sending ripples of reality through them, through which we passed.


    Razor-wire sprang up, and that would have worked. The lance could not cut enough of it, and it would shred us to pieces if we passed through. We were too fast to stop, it was too plentiful, impossible to see except through my visor, and my jetpack could not steer us with enough precision.


    A sword, tall as a skyscraper punched through the earth, mere feet ahead of us, and when it fell away, missing us by inches, it had cut clear a path through the wire. I thought I saw Justice''s eyes widen at seeing it, his mouth still agape, more and more of his body and his powers falling behind as the core of him tried to escape.


    But then, a huge, golden hand erupted from the ground in an explosion of rock and asphalt. Before he could twist away, it seized him, gripping him in the air, the fingertips clenching hard against the black flames as though they were solid, the knuckles turning white from the force of the titan''s grip.


    [Fuckin'' do it! End him!] I heard Saga scream, her voice cutting through the keening which was slashing at my mind. Tower pushed with an extra burst of speed, and my vision went streaky as the lance jumped forward, a dozen feet away, then ten, then five¡­


    It was maybe three feet away when I felt my heart soar, when the tears in my eyes and the fire across my body seemed realized, when the thought we were actually going to do this! played unbidden in my mind.


    Three feet away. Some matter of inches. It felt like time had slowed down for the dramatic, final blow.


    But something had gone wrong. This wasn''t like other times when I had seen the world slow for my absolute focus, or for my use of stims. We weren''t moving at all. Nothing was moving, my eyes were locked forward, but I could see flashing in the periphery of my visor. I could see the flames of darkness and light crashing from within Justice, could see his face still moving, still twitching, although I could not make alter my expression in the slightest.


    We were inches away, but we were not moving. We were frozen, the three of us. The hand, the city¡­


    [What the fuck?]


    I could not answer, could not ask that very same question myself, no matter how much I willed it. I was simply trapped.


    [NO! THIS IS BULLSHIT. NO!]


    Justice spent long minutes putting himself back together. Like watching a snail''s slime recede back into it, his flesh scraped itself off the swathe of destruction we had carved, pieces of his body reshaping, reassembling, thawing, solidifying, returning back to the whole.


    More of him was missing now. More of him had been cut away by the lance which still was mere dozens of inches from his face. He knew we were watching, I realized. He wanted us to be this close to victory, wanted us to taste that hope.


    For the same reason he''d erected the monuments. For the same reason for toying with the soldiers, for fighting them in such cruel, inefficient ways, for hunting down the deserters with senseless malice.


    He wanted to destroy our hope. And so, he reassembled himself, his body now intact again instead of a seething mass of gore, yet filled with a great number of voids where new gashes had been cleaved, the black fire still spilling through him in them. And after that, slowly, painfully, he drifted over to us, keeping in our line of sight the whole while, his body floating alongside the lance which had nearly reached him.


    And when he came to us, he reached out, took hold of Trish''s neck, and without any senseless brutality or theater, broke it.


    As though a spell was broken with it, her body fell from our grasp and collapsed onto the street below, which my eyes could not follow but my ears could hear. It was the thump of meat on pavement, a lifeless body making no effort to arrest its own fall.


    Tears welled in my unblinking eyes. I felt rage and hatred seething with my hot blood. All of this, all that we had just gone through, and he could end it like that?


    It was not just rage. It was frustration. It was exacerbation. It was acceptance of a truth that I knew, by all accounts should be possible, but not one I could ever accept. Not in my line of work, not in who I was, but there it sat, the hideous truth, staring me in the face with shuddering, unsettling eyes.


    Even in her mind-speak, Saga''s voice had such a tone of misery, of complete, exhausted defeat, I knew she had pulled it from my own mind.


    [We...can''t beat him...can we?]


    I thought back my response at her, a confused mess. All of the platitudes I had ever spoken, all of what I had just said to Trish just minutes ago, about fighting for something, about holding onto one''s confidence, surefootedness, and strength. The pithy replies and God-fueled hellfire I''d always spouted. Righteousness and good, confidence and training, effort and justice. All these words.


    But they were only words. Empty breaths of air. What was in my heart was exactly what she''d said.


    He turned to Tower, and lowered his body until the two of them were eye-to-eye. And then he faced me.


    "I told you...I would break you."


    Tower dipped in the air, hands flailing as Justice abruptly released him from his hold. Tower sniffled, swallowing hard, looking down at Trish, at her broken body and our broken hope.


    "Hit me, parasite," Justice said.


    Tower tensed, frozen on the spot, his breathing shallow, his arms hanging at his sides, useless. He wouldn''t. He couldn''t. It was pointless, it was just...Justice showing off again, how complete his control over us was. It was pointless to try, pointless to resist. If he wanted, he could just stop us all again, break our necks one-by-one, unceremoniously as Trish''s death.


    It wouldn''t even work to run. If Justice gave me the chance like Tower now had. I certainly couldn''t hit him. I couldn''t run. I did not know what there was to do. Would I truly just...do nothing?


    Was that it?


    Was that all I could think of?


    Was that all I had left?


    To be like those broken, just...trudging in Justice''s wake, too keenly aware of how powerless I was in this new world?


    I watched Tower with bleary eyes, expecting him to go limp as I felt, for his mind to reach my realizations, the realizations of those blood-stained bastards we''d driven past. Why did I considering myself above them? I was broken. I had given up. We''d never even had a shot, all we had was false hope, stripped from us again and again.


    Even in this, even if she had managed to punch through his heart, he would have another trick, another play. He was simply too powerful. He was unbeatable, and if he desired a death, he had only to take it. What was the point?


    Smack.


    I blinked, and felt hot tears pooling in my visor. Tower was grinning, beneath a set brow, his fists raised as he dangled in the air from his powers. He wound up for another punch.


    Smack.


    It barely turned Justice''s cheek, but he took it all the same.


    "That''s for Jack, you piece of shit."


    He wound up to throw again, but his body froze in the air, the small grin frozen on his face. Justice turned to me as he put his hands around Tower''s neck, as though asking me if he should go through with it.


    I wanted to cry, to shake my head, to beg to spare him. But I couldn''t. And even if I could...it would do nothing. I could do nothing. Nobody could. Justice was the ultimate arbiter of death.


    Or so I thought.


    "Hey," I heard a familiar voice, but couldn''t look up. It sounded...like AEGIS. But why would she be flying?


    Why would Athan be flying? Or Lia? I didn''t know, but...as they descended like gods into my view, there the three of them were. Faces serious, arms crossed. On the girls, anyway...Athan seemed...dazed. Though that might have just been my condition.


    [ATHAN!]


    "How about you leave him alone and come pick on someone your own size?" AEGIS quipped.


    And to my surprise, Justice left the two of us floating in the air, rising to float eye-to-eye with Athan, discarded like the broken, useless pieces of meat that we were.

 457. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Saga.

    I was so excited to see Athan that I didn''t realize I didn''t recognize him. I''d jumped straight to Lia''s mind, since we were all besties and whatnot, and didn''t even realize that doing so probably saved my life.


    There was something seriously wrong with him, and looking into him was like...going down a tunnel made of writhing eels. Strange bits of blackness began to manifest in my vision every time I glanced near him, painful little haunting ideas that hurt to think about, that made me severely uncomfortable.


    He''d fucked himself up somehow, and I didn''t understand it, but what I did understand was that it was familiar, even if it wasn''t like anything I''d experienced before, and that kind of paradox set my brain on edge. It wasn''t until I was digging through Lia''s thoughts, trying to make sense of the situation I understood.


    "Oh, fucking Athan," I muttered out loud.


    "What has he done?" Dragon asked.


    "He went and...Exhumaned himself up a ton. Fuck. Now I know why it''s familiar, he''s like Justice! I had to burn Justice out of my head and write a compel in there to be incapable of seeing into him, because when I did, I went insane this one time."


    Dragon gave me a sideways glance. "You went insane...one time?"


    "Code-X stuff. Never you mind."


    He apparently took that literally, because he went right back to being stunningly silent and creepy. I didn''t rely on my physical senses too much at the best of times, but having someone around whom I couldn''t perceive mentally, who also moved with complete stealth was borderline unnerving. He felt like one of those nervous shadows I started seeing when I looked at Athan too much.


    I bit my lip and started working on expanding my current compel to extend to Athan, too. I didn''t want to write him out of my head entirely, but I needed to be able to focus on this fight without stabbing myself in the eyes every time I glanced his mental direction.


    Our working environment was...not ideal. We were still on the back of Bob''s shoulders, still underground, still in the dark, but we were close. Close enough for me to see what was going on up there, and close enough for Bob to be able to do that funky reality-ripple-shuffle things and send his arms through the ground to punch, stab, and shoot.


    Or he was, until Justice had frozen his hands, and apparently, him. Now we weren''t climbing anymore, just a couple chumps stuck underground on the back of a frozen titan.


    I was fairly certain that was the entire premise of at least one Greek myth, but that wasn''t really relevant. I needed to focus. I was already distracting myself plenty by reading back what happened to all of them through Lia, and almost metaphorically dropped my wrench twice, at her literally dying to radiation poisoning, and to becoming Exhuman. I would definitely need all the details on how that all worked as soon as we got the fuck out of here.


    The earth shook around us and I saw Dragon glancing around with something that should have been nerves, but absolutely wasn''t, and I realized I had a third distraction going now, which was the fight above. Again, Lia was my eyes.


    And through her, I saw...erm...I wasn''t exactly sure.


    There had once been a street there, I was fairly certain, a mere moment ago. But something had completely ripped it open, like a dissected frog, and all of the pipes and cables and wires under there were currently ripping through the air after Justice, jumping into lightspeed in instants, slamming into the ground or punching right through buildings with sonic booms, with such stupidly huge amounts of force that a dozen feet of cable was creating a crater ten feet across and a mushroom cloud five times that.


    It was Athan, I realized. This was...the extent of his new powers. He hadn''t done as Justice had, filling himself up with every conceivable power, but rather had cherry-picked them somehow, kept them all focused on his lightning, enhanced the absolute ungodly fuck out of his capabilities until he was...that?


    Well, shit. I''d always had a little power envy over here about how much shit he could get done, but this was preposterous. A house, for some reason smashed into the middle of the road, suddenly imploded on itself as a writhing, snaking mass of what looked like every single magnetic thing in the structure, from nails to knives, erupted from the wreckage and bolted into a two-story explosion of dirt and rubble.


    "Are they blasting us free?" Dragon asked.


    "Athan''s blasting the fuck outta something alright, but it ain''t us. And be glad it--"


    I didn''t even parse what happened. I came to from death several times, barely having time to take in my surroundings and add to my confusion before I went under again. It took most of a minute before I found myself intact, with Dragon looking down at me, somehow still looking bored.


    "Whazzat?" I mumbled, my head spinning.


    "A piece of pipe," he gestured. Illuminated by his flashlight, I could see it angled down from the dirt ceiling and stopping at Bob''s back, deformed and flattened like a shot bullet. But calling it ''pipe'' was an understatement, it was industrial-grade bullshit, with a diameter bigger than a hula-hoop. It''d crushed me before I even knew Athan had shot it.


    "Hey watch it up there!" I shouted.


    [Saga?] I heard Lia''s mind pick me up. Talking to her felt weird, weirder than usual, almost like there was some feedback.


    "Lia? Ouch. Are you...are you a code-X now?"


    [I...don''t...know? Sorry.]


    When she wasn''t talking, I could see her mind readily enough, and sure enough, it looked like she''d picked up dominion over people''s emotions. That was a cool trick, and she had a lot better grasp on it than I''d ever attain. Lucky girl, although her range was rather shit, and that was why right now she was¡­


    "Hey, why are you flying?"


    [Oh. Um, Athan just...put us up here. I think...he forgot...to put us down.]


    "He can levitate people now?"


    [I guess so. AEGIS says there''s a lot of iron in blood. That thought kinda...makes me go...ick, though.]


    There was another explosion, and then another. Athan was now on the defensive as Justice was apparently still a better flier, and he was slashing at Athan with attack after attack, each one different, coming from nothing, fire and iron and rock. He dipped and flung through the air, certainly evasive, but most of his defense came from his surroundings.


    The metal which sizzled through the air towards him halted on his demand, and there was a brief moment where both of their powers were acting on it at once, causing the metal barbs to vibrate in the air as though possessed. And then Athan won out, and they shot right back towards Justice, a thousand times faster than he''d fired them, punching through his chest with such speed that it sent his skin rippling.


    The stone and fire ran into a physical barrier, another chunk of metal ripped out of the ground, clanging off of it and washing it into a superheated red, which Athan swung back at Justice, sending it spiralling off like a crashing UFO.


    I realized that there were people out there, a lot of them actually, many mentally broken, but quite a few still trying to run, or watching the new scene unfolding with petrified awe. I, um, only really realized they were there when suddenly, a handful of them weren''t, completely flattened by the spiralling, exploding furnace of superheated metal, which was melting into slag across their thankfully-dead bodies.


    But Athan was doing more of a number on the populace than Justice was. Sure, he''d been zipping around blowing people up, but at least four of five of Athan''s now-dozens of railgun blasts had punched straight through the horizon, and the buildings on it, killing God-knows how many. I''d only just learned my lesson on tempering my titan''s power, and now Athan was shooting without abandon.


    "Lia, he''s gonna kill someone!"


    [Isn''t that the point?]


    "I mean...someone else. There''s a refugee camp not too far from here, if he fires anywhere that direction, splat."


    She took a deep breath as she understood my meaning. And then slowly, deliberately, let that kernel of panic down, pushing it away as she was so good at doing by now.


    [It...doesn''t matter.]


    "What?"


    [If he destroys the refugee camp. It''s still...the best option we have.]


    "What the fuck do you mean the best option? I thought we were all doing this to fuckin'' save people or some bullshit. Now you don''t care?"


    [Now, I don''t have that option, okay?] she snapped.


    "I know you''re new at this, but you''re a code-X who doesn''t have to interface with his fucked-up head. You can get him under control."


    [Maybe.]


    "No, you can. I can see it in you."


    [Not...what I meant. I meant...maybe I should. Not...I could. But I don''t think so.]


    I blinked inwardly at her, as I watched Athan send a car through literally four houses. A tendril of shadow lashed out at him from Justice''s back, and Athan caught it somehow in his hands, in some kind of floating ball-lightning, before calling down a literal bolt of lightning which struck him, and went right up the tendril to make Justice scream and seize as the full force of God''s own smiting went through him.


    "Don''t think so how?"


    [I don''t want to lose,] she said with conviction. [Athan needs to be able to give this his all, without being distracted by me muddling with his head. Even if people die, it''s worth it, I think.]


    "Damn girl, you got strong. Next time there''s a cross-dimensional field-trip, sign me up.


    That''s what I said, but let''s face it, that was just a face I was putting on for Lia''s sake. She hadn''t been the same since she''d been burned earlier on, and I guess she''d had another trial by fire out there in other Earth. It was...a little sad, to see the cynicism grow up in her like that.


    Justice was flying away, and Athan after him. After a few moments, Karu and Tower unceremoniously flailed and fell towards the ground each of them catching themselves in their own way.


    "Jesus, what the hell was that?" he asked. "I couldn''t move. I couldn''t even breathe, I don''t know how I''m still alive."Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Karu, for her part, just pulled off her visor and cried. I didn''t understand, and didn''t want to.


    "C''mon girl. I know...I know it''s real bad. First Jack and now...her. But we''ve gotta warn Athan about that power. If he gets close to winning, Justice is just gonna stop time on him, too."


    Karu sniffled, tried to stand, and failed, her mind screaming into mine about how none of it mattered, and how pointless it all was. She was too far gone, so pained, it hurt.


    "Lia?" I asked. "Tower, can you unstick Lia from the air and bring her to Karu?"


    Bob was climbing again, and I had no idea where Athan and Justice had gone, apparently far enough out that we weren''t in that time-stop power anymore. I wish I knew where Athan was, I didn''t want him dying out there without me even being around to help. He was holding his own pretty well, but...well it was Athan, he made me nervous.


    Lia offered soothing words laced with her brand of Code-X as AEGIS redid some of Karu''s stitches, and soon she seemed more embarrassed than defeated.


    "I apologize. I do not know...what came over me."


    "It''s the screaming," AEGIS said. "It builds up in one''s mind, pushes out rational thought and feeling, it leads to¡­"


    She glanced over at the wall of zombies, huddled under one of the strung-up corpses. I saw in their minds nothing but Justice, like an Old Testament God, sparing them or wiping them out according to his whims and powers alone.


    "Lia if you do not mind, perhaps you could also help those people, as you did myself," Karu suggested, which AEGIS seemed to be ready to shout down for a moment, before biting her tongue. "I am sorry, I am...I am no longer fit for service. I must come to terms with what went through my mind, must find a reason to fight again. I am useless."


    "You''re not useless," Tower said seriously, about to clap her on the shoulder, but stopping with the realization that he might kill her in her state. "Erm, I mean...don''t think that way, aight?"


    She gave a weak nod and staggered to a nearby porch, where she sat, staring at Trish''s body on the ground.


    "Well she''s out, but I''m still ready to fight," Tower said, turning to AEGIS. She flinched at his approach, arms going up. "Uh, I ain''t fighting you."


    "I...yes. Sorry. I''m just...jumpy around Exhumans right now."


    "Girl, it''s me, Tower," he beamed. "C''mon."


    "All the same, I''m sorry. I need to find Athan and make sure he''s...taken care of."


    "...you mean, he''s being taken care of."


    "Yes. Right."


    AEGIS jumped off, leaving Tower blinking stupidly in her dust. I felt the ground shake closer, and knew the fight was coming back our way.


    "Air," Dragon said.


    And I realized, I smelled it too. The sweet, sweet¡­Stench of death. Blood. That...weird...death funk, I dunno exactly what it was. I always thought it was the stench of whatever gasses he human shell held onto all the time, pouring out only when the body around ''em failed. It was not a breath of fresh air, but it was air.


    It was surprisingly quickly that air became light, and light became the surface. Six arms, indestructibility, and mindless will apparently made for very efficient digging. I gave Bob very specific orders on helping and mostly, on avoiding collateral damage, as he limped us back towards the others.


    They were all a little shocked at seeing Bob, but after today, nobody had much surprise left in them. And no time for it, besides, as Justice suddenly came crashing down, skittering off the street on his shadow-tendrils, as a cascade of thousands of bulbs of lightning showered down around us.


    Karu didn''t stir, saved by the house she was mostly-in, and those of us close to Bob took shelter in his shadow. I heard Lia''s scream in my head, but not out loud.


    "Lia!" I shouted, finding myself running across the electrified ground, my legs jarring and failing under me, like the stupid, useless meat-boats they were.


    Thankfully, AEGIS was already there, scooping the girl up, even as electricity arced up and down her body.


    "What the fuck?" Tower asked. "He almost hit us. He did hit us."


    "He almost killed Lia," AEGIS snapped, checking the girl''s eyes. She bit her lip and shook her head. "Yes he would, Lia. Stop being in denial."


    "Why''s she not talking?"


    "Do you see the burn scars, Tower? Use your damn brain."


    "Jeez, sorry. I''m sorry Lia."


    AEGIS looked like she was going to snap again, but suddenly froze, and then glared at Lia. "Get. Your. Powers. OUT. OF. MY." She paused again, blinking as she took deep breaths. "Head?"


    It was fairly clear to me that this entire situation was entirely shitted up. Just a few hours ago, Athan, AEGIS, Karu, Lia, and myself had been ready to do anything for each other, to throw everything to hell and back to take down justice, no matter what it cost us.


    Now Karu was going through existential shit, AEGIS had somehow turned into a shitty bigoted version of herself, Lia was scarred and mute and Exhuman, and I had to scrub one of them out of my head to even make it by. Oh yeah, and Athan, whom I scrubbed out of my head, made it easy to forget him, I guess.


    What the hell kind of shit had we fallen to? We were pathetic. Justice sizzled past us again, cleaving at us with huge blades made of light, and when Bob blocked them, barely anyone even batted an eye. That was the guy we were supposed to be fighting, and instead...what?


    "Fuck you guys," I said. "This is pathetic."


    "You''re the most dangerous of all," AEGIS hissed at me.


    "I fucking hope so. What the hell went up your ass anyway?"


    I didn''t bother asking her, just turned to Lia to pick it up. And then sighed deeply. "Wow, computer troubles? That''s your excuse? Pull yourself together, AEGIS. We need a plan, and that''s like, your thing. So fucking do it."


    "I''ll fucking do you--" she started, but halted again at Lia''s insistence. "I fucking told you--"


    Tower caught her wrist before the backhand landed. "Not cool."


    "I will crush you."


    "ENOUGH," I screamed, loud enough to make even the broken humans stumble. "We need something to fight off Justice, and this isn''t helping. You can all squabble once he''s dead, and not until then. I swear to god I will fucking rape your goddamned minds into quivering pulp if you do not cooperate."


    "You can''t touch me," AEGIS spat.


    "She can," I jabbed towards Lia. "And I control her, don''t forget. Now cooperate, or I fucking swear to God."


    Her face twitched as she stared at me with a calculating hostility I knew meant she was planning on how to take me out. I think the only thing keeping her from acting on it was the fact that as much as she wanted me dead, she also wanted Justice, and maybe she could defer on killing me until after he was dealt with.


    Such a bitch. She needed a few hours with herself and a debugger like I could not believe, but we didn''t have that.


    "It doesn''t matter," a fleeting voice said. "You can plan, but you can''t win."


    I turned and found Karu magically had the strength to join us when it came to giving up. Lovely.


    "You are either going to help, or I''m putting you to sleep. I understand you''re too beat up to fight, and thank you for your service, but we''re still going."


    She shook her head, her green eyes glinting in the dim glow of my titan. "You don''t get it, do you? Right now, Athan is the most stupidly powerful thing we have ever heard of, and even he is merely slugging it out. What can we possibly do? I am a woman with a semi-sentient plasma-spewer on my back. What difference could I possibly have made?"


    "You helped," Tower reassured her. "You really did. You bought time, you saved people, now we''re ready to end it."


    "Did I? Who here is saved?" she looked around. "I see only failure."


    "Okay, I warned you," I said, reaching out to put her down.


    She shook her head and took a step back. "It is fine. I will not trouble you. I just...I tried. I tried my absolute hardest already." I saw her lip tremble slightly but she just wiped her eyes and kept going. "I gave my all, when I had nothing left to give, and my failure and powerlessness were thrown into my face. I just...do not wish that despair on you, whom I love. It hurt me, more than I thought possible. I do not want you to face your own insignificance as I have."


    "It''s okay," I told her. "I know I''m not insignificant."


    "That is what I thought. But if Justice succeeds today, and Earth becomes barren of life, and the bleak, empty future you fear is not millions of years but a dozen from now...and you were there to stop it, but could not¡­"


    Her eyelids fluttered as I shut her up.


    But at the same time, yeah. That kinda would prove me completely insignificant, wouldn''t it? That''d be the exact kind of fucking despair that Justice would love. Piece of shit. And Karu for saying it.


    "AEGIS, a plan. A good one, and now, if you please."


    "Bite me."


    She said that, but still skittered away when I tried. "Lia, Tower, any ideas?"


    "Um, I just follow other people''s plans. And she don''t talk anymore, right?"


    "I''m a code-X," I informed him. "I can read her thoughts. She doesn''t need to speak."


    He nodded wisely. "Yeah, this is exactly why I follow other people''s plans."


    But Lia had something, and I shared it with them. Even as the ground shook under us again from another assault.


    "Seems to me that the two of them are fighting with their all," I echoed. "If I...if Lia...can just get within her short-range to Justice, just for an instant, and slap him with a sudden inability to fight...that might be all the opening Athan needs to land the decisive blow."


    "We did just see that once Justice is hurt, he starts losing control of his powers. There''s a definite threshold in there," Tower said. "Except one thing."


    "What''s that?"


    "He can stop time, remember? What the hell is Athan supposed to do about that?"


    "Easy," I grinned. "We kill him before he does that. He can''t stop time if Lia''s got him not using his powers, right? We''ll just use his overconfidence against him. By the time he needs to use it, bam, we''ll have him in a place where he can''t."


    AEGIS was eyeing me warily. "I have to admit, it''s a decent plan, minus the glaring holes. I know it''s from Lia, but it sounds strange to hear realized thoughts coming out of you."


    "You like strange, admit it," I said, walking my fingers up her sleeve. She casually reached over and broke them for me.


    "The hardest part," she continued, staring me down "will be getting Lia close enough, obviously. We have Tower to get her into the air, but she''s completely unprotected."


    "Um, no I''m not. Err, she''s not," I sputtered.


    AEGIS just crossed her arms and waited for an explanation, and I pointed at the bodies where Lia had been electrocuted before, where there was a waxy effigy of her, who''d been left there when she...uh...hadn''t been electrocuted, I guess.


    "Right," AEGIS agreed. "Except we don''t know the limits on that. You can dodge out of trouble and leave behind a fake, but what if there''s nowhere to go? What if it hits you too quickly, or too slowly? If you''re killed instantly, or poisoned, will your power react? Do you know?"


    Lia frowned. "I don''t know. But if Athan needs help, I have to help him."


    AEGIS sighed. "I hate plans with too many unknowns in them."


    "It''s the end of the world," I said, stripping Karu of her jetpack, and then a few other random pieces of clothing, and leaving her spooning a corpse, just for fun. "There''s bound to be a few things we don''t know."


    "How have I been okay with what a terrible person you are, until now?" AEGIS asked me seriously, undoing my hard work and moving Karu back indoors.


    "My sparkling personality, I assume."


    She sighed heavily as Lia put on the pack and climbed onto Tower like a jetpack of his own. "If I''m not needed here, I may as well try to find a computer and plug in, see what I can do about his malfunction."


    "As much as I''d like that, I think we need you here. I think this is going to be it. Lia said that," I told her. "Personally, I think she just wants your moral support."


    Tower and Lia prepared to leave, when suddenly she stopped and turned back to me.


    "Oh, I guess so¡­" I agreed.


    "What?" AEGIS snapped.


    "She''s wondering if I should come, since she can''t talk to Tower."


    "If you''re coming, I am too." She bit her lip. "Sorry. I''m...I mean...if it comes to stopping Justice, and Athan''s current destruction...I''m all for it. I''m...sorry again...for being such a pill. I really do want you to succeed. I just...don''t..."


    I gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder, and even that made her flinch.


    "I get it. Or Lia does, not sure who really gets the credit," I smiled at her. "You don''t wanna be left alone with those thoughts, either."


    She didn''t agree, but she didn''t have to. We just stood there awkwardly, casting long shadows over the gutter as a rivulet of blood made its way past our feet.


    "Well I can''t carry all of you," Tower added.


    "How ''bout you just help Bob limp with your powers as best you can and we''ll all ride him?"


    "It''s a deal," he said, Lia sliding off his shoulders as I had Bob stoop to pick us up. "But when we get close to the two of them, Lia and I are taking off to try to get her close."


    "And I''ll...dig through myself," AEGIS said, bitterly. "I''ll start ripping out whatever code I need to, even if I don''t have a system or backup. I can''t keep functioning like this."


    "Aren''t you scared of hurting yourself? Sorry, that was Lia again. I don''t care, obviously."


    I met her eyes, and the look of helplessness inside of them. As a code-X, as an Exhuman, I was well aware of people who hated me, despite themselves. It was an ugly look, and one she''d been marinating in for too long now. She wanted all of us dead, without even a reason why.


    "At this point, I''m more scared of hurting you guys," she sighed. "But everyone else here is willing to put themselves on the line...I have to try too. Let''s just try to keep Bob steady while I work."


    "I''ll do what I can," Tower said, with all the reassurance he could muster.

 458. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Saga.

    "Okay...safeties are off," AEGIS announced, holding her head we all wobbled across Bob''s shoulders. "I''m...I think that did it."


    "Well that sounded easy, why didn''t you do that before?" I asked.


    "Because...all the safeties are off," she said, as though that were obvious. "I didn''t have time to dig into which might be causing my...freakout. I just went in and...anything I didn''t recognize, I commented out. Kind of reckless, kind of insane. I''m actually surprised I''m...still running, to be perfectly frank. And with those protocols written out, that''s a lot of my crash prevention and recovery gone, so if I did go, I might never wake up. Heck, if something happens now and I crash, I''m probably gone."


    Tower eyed her like he might accidentally break her. "Damn, girl."


    "Well...yeah. Trust me, I''m uncomfortable with it myself. But...the way I see it...if something happens to any of you, you''ll also go down and not get back up. I''m just on...even footing with the mortals now."


    "Except you have a backup."


    "Yeah...about that," she coughed. "Um. Almost all my backups were wiped out when we lost the Vegas place to the XPCA. The ones I have left...they''re kinda...under the stewardship of TARGA."


    "Lia says that''s a terrible idea. With more emphatic yelling. She says there''s no way we''d be able to get those from her."


    "Erm, yeah. Well. I didn''t think we''d wind up so...antagonistic. I felt like I was entrusting them to a sister. I know she''ll keep them safe but¡­"


    "Well I think the plan is, we don''t need ''em," Tower said. "Let''s just get through this without AEGIS or anyone else dying, alright?"


    I frowned at him. "Well, not to side with our depressed huntress friend, but that''s not really our choice to make, is it? If Justice decides he wants us dead, we''re dead, and there''s not much we can do about it."


    "Speaking of--" I started, but my warning was painfully slow compared to its subject.


    Bob reeled as Justice slammed into him with amplified telekinetic force, making him stagger, and Tower yelped as he suddenly had to divert power into keeping the big guy upright, which involved a lot of shouting and patting him on the back.


    But Justice didn''t linger. He shot under Bob''s legs, just in time as a beam of plasma that could have passed as an arcing facsimile of Tem''s blasted into Bob''s chest. Most of the electricity ran down the golden legs and into the ground, which seethed with sparks and arcs¡­


    But not all of it. I found myself shuddering, jaw clenched painfully, every muscle in my body spazzing and feeling like it was on fire. I heard the same involuntary shriek-moans escaping all the others. Thankfully, we were holding onto Bob''s hair, and with all of my muscles locked rigid, I wasn''t letting go and falling anytime soon, despite my thrashing.


    Really, the most awful part of it was having my head scrambled so that I couldn''t really see either Justice or Athan at this point. Every time anything happened from them, it felt like being blindsided, even if the blind spot was of my own creation.


    The electrical surge relented, and we were all gasping and panting, scrabbling to find better footing on the shoulders.


    "Look out!" AEGIS screamed.


    I barely had time to turn my head before, for the second time, a wall of metal impacted me, red hot, slamming my body before the sonic boom did.


    Apparently it killed me instantly, because the next thing I knew, I was coming back, disoriented, a few dozen feet from Bob; Justice''s and Athan''s powers rippling all around me. Flames fell from the sky, igniting trails of sparks, thousands of lightning swords were everywhere, diving like kamikaze fighters, crashing into interceptors of stone, of metal, of sound, and fire. I felt my pulse suddenly slow as an unearthly chill turned the air to frost.


    And I just fucking ate all of it. Rocks punched through my body, perforating my useless organs. Metal barbs ripped out of walls, passing through me like I wasn''t even there as they formed into magnetic railgun bolts. The lightning swords erupted like supernovae, burning so hot that parts of my body too close just evaporated, scorched, spherical bites taken from my flesh. The sound pummelled my head, the footing broke under my feet, my bones and body broke and knitted and broke again.


    It was brutal. So many deaths, coming so fast through the compel, my mind felt like it was breaking just trying to keep up. I was a fighter on the ropes, with my arms just trying to hold me up while the two of them battered my head in, left, right, left, right, reality snapping in and out and no ref in sight to stop the brutality.


    My compel was getting in the way a lot now. Even attacks I might have been able to dodge, I was just blind to them, and more than once I found myself stumbling right into them, like a toddering idiot. Hugely dangerous erupting lighting-flame sword? Yeah, I''ll just stroll that way. Ground trembling with incoming stalagmites erupting at mach speed? Sure, I''ll stay standing right there.


    My brain seemed to be inventing its own pain, too. So much was going on, and I was so overwhelmed with sensation that it''d helpfully started linking them together even when my nervous system wasn''t screaming at it. Sometimes I came to and found myself face-down just hurting, for seconds or even minutes at a time as my mind tried to comprehend everything it''d experienced, until new experiences piled into me.


    It was clear my brain wasn''t working right, and I suspected it was because I''d been cutting into pieces of it. Dangerous as it was, I needed to get back in there and peel back this band-aid a little, or I''d be useless and malfunctioning just as badly as AEGIS.


    Next time I had a reprieve, I began to pick at the compel I''d put in me for Athan. He was where most of the collateral was coming from, and his mind wasn''t quite as awful as Justice''s. I just needed a little more visibility of him, that my brain could understand what was hitting it, that I could avoid just a few attacks, buy myself just a few seconds here and there to parse, process and patch up.


    I blinked as something white drifted towards me. My brain, already dumb, already focused on my task only barely registered it, a nagging sensation more than a thought, a sort of I really should do something about this. I blinked at it several times, before realizing there were thousands of them, blanketing the ground, like a school of jellyfish.


    I twisted something in my mind, like prying up a scab, and with that, my realization of what I was looking at popped into being. Ball lightning. Little drifting spheres of death. Oh yeah.


    I barely had time for my epiphany, my hands still elbow-deep in the workings of my own head when the nearest one bumped into me. I felt it go off, setting off others. I felt lightning, now a painfully familiar sensation, running up and down my body, turning my muscles to rigid iron, but jelly at the same time. My brain scrambled and my eyes twitched.


    And the scab I''d been working on was ripped clean off as my mind flailed and my concentration broke. I couldn''t control myself as my mind fell into the new wound, as I found myself deeper and deeper in the rush of connection between Athan and myself, a familiar bond, now twisted, seething, pulsing with ominous darkness.


    I landed, mentally there, in the dark, a familiar place now corrupted. The pitch black of his mental space was moving around me, undetectable as blackness in blackness could be, but somehow I knew it was.


    I''d never before been in anyone else''s representation of their locus. I''d dragged Athan into mine once, the pitch-black nothingness throne from which I sat within myself. And I had a creeping memory that couldn''t be found of another time he''d been in there, something about Justice and the memories I''d walled off.


    It must have been real bad. If this was anything to go by.


    It felt like infection. The blackness around me was sick. It wasn''t just empty, it was loaded, with nothing. Invisible, intangible, pulsating, swollen masses of...nothing. Some kind of lurking intelligence, something there and yet not there, only seen out of the corners of one''s eyes, little wisps of blackness in the black.


    It was unsettling as fuck is what it was, and went a long way to explaining what was going on in Athan''s head. This was the control center, in a way, where Athan resided in his own mind as a sentience. A ''soul'', some might call it. Whatever spark that transcended him above an autonomous mass of chemicals and electrical impulses into a self. Or a metaphor for it, anyway, a construction of his mind, of itself.


    And, with some wandering, I found him there, still hanging onto his throne, but only just. He was leaning forward, eyes narrowed and bloodshot, hands gripping the darkness with trembling fingers, lips muttering alongside the whispers which seemed to fill this place.


    I tried listening to the words, not from him, but from the seething blackness. I couldn''t really make out what they were saying, but they were insistent, demanding, driving him to do more, more, more. But more what, I couldn''t tell.


    "''Sup?" I greeted him.


    His head turned towards me slowly, with shuddering movement, like on a ratchet. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, and block out the whispers and black things moving in the corners of my vision.


    "A...AEGIS?"Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    "So close," I grinned. "I''m Saga."


    "Saga. I...I remember you. I''m so...what are you...I messed up. I need your help."


    "Really looks that way. You''re kinda in deep here, Athan. What are these things?"


    "Me? I''m...m-muses. They are. AEGIS, help me, please. I can''t hear over them. There''s too many. I really fucked up."


    I looked forward with him, and if I stood in just the right place, I could see the world through his eyes. I saw his entire focus on Justice, tracking the half-man, half-monster through the sky, attacking relentlessly, the both of them. In glimpses I saw the others, but he...didn''t recognize them anymore. He wasn''t seeing through eyes, but through the powers that had become central to his existence.


    Tower was just a big mass of nervous impulses and Lia just a smaller one. Gangly and screwed-up as I was, he saw me just the same as the others, small and shining. At least, I thought it was me.


    Because as it turned out, there were tons of people down there. Hiding in buildings, buried under rubble and screaming for help, given up on life and shambling until death saw fit to take them. All just little root-clusters of light, flaring up here and there as their nerves fired and moved their muscles. I could only tell which ones were the others because they were together, and on Bob''s back, who was easy to pick out by his size.


    Even Justice looked just like the others, in a way. Sure, he was a little more torn up, and sometimes flashed with electricity which was his own powers, or Athan''s, but there was still just a nervous system in a body inside him. Just...a little more disassembled.


    AEGIS was the only one different. She wasn''t a root system like the others, she was a full body, electricity running through her everything at some level; a current buzzing across her skin, powering the cameras of her eyes, coursing through the cables of her hair.


    She looked almost normal, if glowing. I could see why, in his current agony, he might fixate on her. She was literally the only person on earth to him right now, which gave me an unexpected pang of jealousy, considering I was literally in his head right now.


    "Athan, buddy, you''ve got to block out the voices, okay? They''re making you crazy."


    "Cra...zy? AEGIS?"


    "She''s here, buddy. But stay with me. These ''muses'', they''re whispering in your mind. I need you to dig up all the focus you''ve got, need you to wall them out, like you''ve done with me before. Create a fortress in your mind, can you do that?"


    His hair bobbed as he shook his head. "I''ve...I tried...I can''t..."


    "Sure you can. I''ll help, okay? Slowly now¡­"


    "No," he whispered. "They''re in the...in the fortress. They''re in my mind. I can''t...can''t...I messed up so bad. I messed up, AEGIS. After...four...or five...I lost control...I messed up so bad..."


    I rubbed his shoulders and he was cold, even to my touch.


    I didn''t know what to do for him. This wasn''t like before, in the thing I couldn''t remember. That had been us getting too close to Justice''s mind, and the memories of it ripping us apart. But now he was Justice''s mind in a way. There weren''t any memories here I could just block off, he was living it, constantly.


    It didn''t feel like I could cut them out. He wasn''t quite wrong, they weren''t in his mind so much as...swimming through it. Even if I chopped out a section of his brain they were currently inhabiting, regardless of the damage that might do to Athan, there was nothing stopping them from just drifting somewhere else, continuing to whisper at him from there. I got the impression that even if I destroyed every piece of him, they''d still be floating in the void, untouchable.


    If only they had minds I could touch, tell them to fuck off. But all that happened when I looked at them was they seemed to grow and multiply in my own psyche, and I realized that if I kept that up, I''d go crazy like he was, or like we had been. I needed to stay focused entirely on him, shut out the whispers and block out the seething black, as I wished he could do.


    I watched him pummelling Justice with a thousand swords, ripping through the air like hornets, the other guy only able to just hold them back, to dodge at the last second before a supernova went off right next to him. And when he zipped off, I saw the rest of the swords give up the chase, seek out some of those glowing root-structures of neurons, and blow up on them instead.


    I turned to Athan, feeling my brow working with my thoughts. "Why are you killing them?"


    "...who?"


    "Those bystanders, you just sent swords over and detonated right on them."


    "The...the lights?"


    "Sure, Athan. Why did you put those lights out?"


    "I...I didn''t, AEGIS. I left the lights on. It helps."


    Sure enough, when I looked closer, I saw...he had. They weren''t dead, just mutilated beyond belief. Burned-out half-humans with minutes to live at best, falling dust and rubble tumbling into the whole-body burns he''d left them with.


    "What the fuck?" I found myself asking. "Why did you almost kill them? What kind of torture is this?"


    "It helps," he muttered. "It helps."


    "Helps what?"


    "The voices. It helps with them. It makes them quiet."


    "Torturing people helps with the whispers you''re hearing?" I found myself shouting. "Athan, what in the absolute fuck?"


    "They want...they want...to be heard. The muse song. I make...the lights hear them. I make the powers known. The more...that they''re thought of...the muses are fed¡­"


    "Holy shit, kid," I said, watching the carnage with fresh eyes. I realized that he wasn''t just randomly unloading collateral damage into everything, he was deliberately targeting survivors. He was still pursuing Justice, but whenever he had the chance, whenever he was close or it was convenient, he was murdering people, or close to it.


    "What the fuck are you even doing?" My voice was shriller than I wanted.


    "F...fighting...Justice."


    "But you''re not!" I realized. "You''re doing exactly what he is, you''re not even trying to end the fight. Neither of you are going all-out...you don''t want it to end!"


    "I''m...AEGIS told me to...she...she said to fight him."


    "She wants you to KILL HIM, Athan! She wants this fight ended!"


    "I...does she? I don''t remember. So many voices...it''s hard...to remember...what she sounded like."


    I put my hands on his temples and took a deep breath. As soon as I bridged that final distance between us, I felt the whispers, too, almost overwhelming in volume, despite being whispers. My vision seemed to pulsate with exhaustion, with creeping blackness, which I now recognized were billowing like fires.


    I had to focus or I''d lose myself. The threat was right there, plain as the pain on Athan''s face.


    So I didn''t hesitate, as much agony as it might cause him, I went all-in, as deep and as hard as I could go, ramming every coherent thought I could into his incoherent mind, forcing the round hole to accept a square peg.


    He screamed and his body stopped and hung in the air, Justice not hesitating to turn and unload a barrage of retaliatory strikes. Heavy, jagged shards of ice, as long as cars.


    I filled Athan with all of AEGIS that I could. How much pain she was in right now, how she was struggling with herself, how she wanted nothing more than to go away, sit down, sort out her own crap...but she didn''t. She was here, screwing with her own head and code, violating her own principles, running into full danger with half a plan, all because she thought she was needed, because she didn''t trust herself to be herself right now.


    She was at enormous risk of death. With all the lightning flying around and her failsafes disabled, any stray hit could knock her down, kill her, effectively, without a backup to go to. She was doing it because she had to, but also out of love. Love for Athan who once had been, who would have wanted these people to live, who wanted Justice to stop, who wanted more than anything to be helpful and normal and kind, and to somehow be together with her, like things were before.


    That dream was gone. He was gone. But she was still here, fighting for the memory of it, and he was shitting all over that memory, and all over her efforts.


    The shards of ice screamed towards him, and behind them, another hundred attacks, another thousand. Justice hammered the gulf between them with every power he had, as his form coalesced into human shape. The gashes in his body flared with black fire that I recognized now, his powers so concentrated and so overwhelming that they shone physically through him.


    I pulled my hands off and gulped down lungfuls of air. Athan blinked at finding himself again, at the torrent of attacks coming towards him.


    He yelled, as did his locus, not in anger, not in fear, but a primal scream. Athan''s body dropped to the ground as he abandoned the magnetism holding him aloft, and the attacks trailed downwards, homing in on him, feet away...inches away¡­


    Electricity surged out into the air...no...the air itself became electricity.


    His entire vision went white, and what anyone else saw, I didn''t know. But it seemed like every single fucking atom in the air around him ripped itself in half, positive and negative forces that shouldn''t be separated, shredded and recombined, until the air bled energy, apocalyptic vibrations shattering the ground, the sky, the attacks coming at him.


    Everything in the world had electric potential, from the air, to Justice''s barrage of fire and earth and metal and death, and all of it could be stopped, riven, made not to be, as Athan''s dozens or hundreds of muses went silent for a moment with all of their attention focused on the enormity of his attack.


    It was strangely silent, for an explosion. There was no air to carry the blast, no propagation, no mushroom cloud despite the thermonuclear nature. Just...a sphere of total annihilation, between Athan and Justice, which turned everything inside of it into energy, into light, into nothingness.


    And then, silence, stillness.


    The two of them, opposite one another, Justice hovering and Athan standing on the shattered ground. Both broken, both ravaged by these muses inside them.


    But Athan was no longer playing the voices'' game. He''d remembered AEGIS. He remembered why he was fighting, that there was more than just the insistence of his madness. Even if it killed him, he would kill.


    He took a step closer to Justice, ready to do it again, to rip every atom of his enemy in half, to shred Justice down to such insignificant pieces of matter that there was no coming back, that there was no more Justice in those scraps than in any breath of air, in any flash of light.


    Athan breathed deeply and evenly, and I could see in the impulses coursing through Justice that he was terrified. He had unloaded his powers and they had come to nothing. I was certain his muses were screaming at him, that he had to do it again, that he had to show his powers to the world, had to be superior, demanded worship and thought to still the whispers.


    But he knew he was outmatched. Nothing he had could stand up to that kind of scale, that kind of complete erasure. Athan strode forward for the kill.


    And then stopped. I saw the locus of Athan twitch in his throne, shudder, willing his body to continue. His breath had stilled, his pace had faltered. No matter how Athan tried to move or twist, his body couldn''t, his own nervous system gone, blacked out, not an impulse firing, not a muscle capable of movement.


    He was stuck in something beyond this world. Even his heart ceased to beat, the only thing stirring in him was thought, and the locus of that thought screamed at the sudden restraint.


    I found myself back in myself, my head spinning, strange little motes of black fire and urgent whispers playing at the corners of my mind, but I ignored them as I had when I was swimming in them. I staggered to my feet somehow and sprinted towards where I''d seen them last, throwing myself around a ruined building to find them there.


    Athan, frozen in time, his eyes narrowed in hate, one foot just off the ground with the step he was taking towards Justice.


    And Justice, floating there, triumphant and whole, seething tendrils and black flame, still hovering outside the range of that annihilation attack, drinking in his victory, feeling every eye in the world on him, every mind, bent towards feeding his muses.


    He reached forward, theatrically almost, and a single silver cord descended from the sky and began to wrap itself around Athan''s neck.

 459. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Lia.

    <h1> 459. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Lia.</h1>


    It was almost by instinct that I reached out, my powers flowing beyond my body, clawing at the two of them, at the impossible colors which proliferated their forms, trying to still the fight, trying to save him.


    But they were far away and my range was pathetic. All I could do was watch, make impotent noises that couldn''t come out of my throat, will for the giant we were riding to pluck me off his shoulder and throw me across the streets so I could intercede, no matter how badly the landing messed me up.


    I didn''t care. There wasn''t time to care. Athan needed me and I was powerless.


    He was just standing there, completely still, completely trapped, one foot still off the ground, a stride he''d never completed. He was scintillating, to my sight, surging with emotions I recognized and some which were impossible to quantify, glistening in colors I''d never seen, didn''t have the eyes to see, or the reality to.


    And floating some distance away, his mirror, even more removed, with human emotions only barely registering, and the rest simply alien. There had been fear there a minute ago, and now just...nothing. Nothing human left. Cold, gleaming iridescence.


    A single cord drifted through the air, almost invisible except for how it caught the moonlight, and it snaked itself towards Athan''s neck.


    I''d seen too many of those tonight. I knew how readily they bit into flesh, I''d seen Karu''s wounds, and Tower''s. But not this. Not Athan.


    If I had the choice, I''d have traded all of them for him. Karu and Tower could take a thousand more cuts if it spared Athan this one. I knew it was selfish and cruel of me even to think, to pray...but in that moment, as the cord drew tight, there wasn''t anything else for me to do. I''d have offered God anything. I barraged him with silent, begging prayer.


    But a part of me knew it was useless. If God loved us and cared, he wouldn''t accept such a deal. And if he was distant and cruel, then Justice was already doing his work. Athan would die, and that was all there was to it.


    AEGIS grabbed my wrist and jerked me backwards, half a grunt escaping my lips, as my arm twisted painfully.


    "Lia, what the fuck?" she demanded. I tried to yell at her, tried to point at Athan. "I know! But if you jump, you''ll die! Tower, take her, I''m going."


    Tower held me easily, despite my thrashing. I bit him even, and he just shook his head without taking his eyes off my brother.


    I felt like an idiot as I remembered to use my powers, throwing him blank and writhing out of his grasp. I fell, more than jumped, twisting in the air, feeling the cold wind of the night rushing past my face.


    The ground came at me shockingly fast. I didn''t have a plan for when I got to it. I didn''t need a plan right now, I just needed to get to Athan.


    The huge golden hand lashed out and snagged me at the last moment, holding me with a crushing grip that pinned my arms and legs, a thousand times stronger than Tower''s. No matter how I struggled or lashed out with my powers, the golden hindu god didn''t budge.


    I was as trapped and helpless as I felt. Tears overflowed down my cheeks as though he''d squeezed them out of me. I wanted to keep looking but I couldn''t see through them, and I wasn''t sure if I was missing the last moments of seeing my brother, or if I was being spared seeing his death.


    Death. It seemed so terrifying now that it was applying to him. Funny that I had so few problems with pulling a trigger, or manipulating people''s lives to ruin. Black Shark caused death in a lot of ways that I honestly just didn''t care about, even if I knew it was bad, or that I was helping bad people, it never seemed relevant. I''d done it a hundred times, to distant people, who were probably really awful people.


    And now the threat of one more was just destroying me. To see Athan so still as though he were already dead, how cruel and wanton Justice was, the single string drifting so casually as though in a breeze. How far away I seemed, how powerless, how utterly and entirely helpless we could all somehow be.


    The giant threw me aside, sending me rolling in a fissure-cracked lawn. At the same time, he leapt forward, and off his shoulder, AEGIS shot like a rocket.


    They didn''t even get close to Athan. They covered maybe half the distance, and then, like him, just stopped. AEGIS was even frozen in midair, the giant and Tower both looking ready to hack Justice to pieces.


    I knew it was useless, but I had to try. My sniper swung down off my shoulder, joining me on the grass, my hand finding the grip and my eye behind the sight in an instant. I racked the chamber, the heavy action of the gun letting me feel the weight of the penetrator rounds, nearly as big as my forearm. Justice paused to stare me down, his face shaking in my sights with the rattling of my breath.


    I let my breath out and followed the targeting solution in my scope, lined up directly on his seething, black-flame-maned face. There was no dramatic pause, no time to think. I pulled my finger and felt the superheated flash of hot gas explode over my back, the stock slamming into my shoulder, my ears ringing with a blast I never heard.


    I barely blinked. But in that instant, the image in my scope changed. He didn''t move, he was floating there, mockingly, just the same. But blurry, between us, hovering in the air just as AEGIS was, was my bullet, frozen halfway to his head.


    I jammed the trigger again, and then again, but nothing happened. I wanted to scream, wanted to override the gun''s safeties like AEGIS had done to herself, to let it fire until the air was completely backed up with bullets if I had to, if somehow I could just force them further and further in on him until one bullet punched through his stupid face.


    I wasn''t ready when I pulled the trigger and the gun actually fired. I wasn''t braced, and the recoil drove the rifle up and out of my hands, instantly breaking my wrist where I''d been holding it. I crumpled around my arm, trying to scream but only a seething hiss coming out. A fresh wave of tears started, running down my cheeks and reaching my chin before I heard my gun crack into the pavement behind me from its landing.


    It just wasn''t fair. We''d tried so hard. We''d made so many friends and allies, we''d worked our butts off. And to be reduced to this? Permitted to take whatever shots we wanted, because he was secure in knowing that we could do nothing, we were nothing, deserved nothing.


    It was hopeless. And that was what he''d been building towards this entire time. All these hours and deaths, it was all for this. Every single threat to his domination was systematically broken. He would create a world where people could do nothing but fear him, but feed his muses, a world dedicated to nothing but the concept of Justice.


    Still cradling my wrist, I got up and walked towards him. As I passed, I stooped and picked up a broken piece of a shattered exosuit, turning it over in my hand, feeling its weight.


    As Athan had so often put it, fuck that.


    For his world to work, he had to kill Athan, the last threat to his existence, because Athan was powerful and relentless, and so long as he lived, Justice could never be safe.


    And I wouldn''t stand for living in a world without him. I''d just be as powerful and relentless as my brother, and then he''d have to take care of me too. I''d never be one of his cattle, I''d never focus on what he wanted, I''d just remember Athan, always, forever, no matter what he did to this planet or its people, or to me.


    I swung the scrap of metal through the air like a heavy sword, imagining slicing Justice''s face in half with the blow.


    His time-stop power had a range, and if he left me alive, if he moved on to other parts of the world, he''d have to let me go. And I''d follow him, until the end of time if I had to, ready to batter him with whatever I could. He''d never know peace until he dealt with me. If it was all I could do...I''d do it. I''d avenge Athan, with everything I had.


    I wobbled on the road despite the determination in my thoughts. My wrist really hurt, it was swelling up, and the bruising looked sickly, even against my burned skin. If I cared about myself at all at this point, I should have stopped and gotten it looked at.


    But I didn''t. This was the end for me. For all of us, probably. Justice had a whole world of people to capture and torture, who were invariably less awful and more pliable than we were.


    Bunch of stupid lunatic idiots, we were. Messing with things so far beyond ourselves. I looked up and saw AEGIS, frozen there, mouth open, dress billowing. Saga''s giant, mindless and physically omnipotent, the exact opposite of her. Tower''s stubborn final charge.


    And me. Dragging my stupid, gangly, radiation-scarred, sixteen-year-old self over towards certain death, with a broken wrist and a scrap of exosuit, where two of my penetrator rounds had done literally nothing, still sitting in the air.


    What a bunch of despicable morons. What a waste of space. I didn''t know why Justice was bothering to toy with us, except that he was sick. So screwed up with muses that every single victim was important to him, even the really screwed up idiots like us.


    Ironic, that the only reason he was murdering everything was also the reason he was keeping us alive.


    I felt my body stop, not even like I''d hit something, but simply...stopped. I tried to blink and realized I couldn''t, my tears frozen on my face, my eyes permanently locked on my feet, where I''d been staring at them as I''d had all these self-pitying thoughts.


    Saga was still out there, useless without her powers working on him, and Karu was unconscious in some random house, but otherwise we were all united again. A big, happy, frozen, doomed family.


    Somehow we were less pathetic than I''d thought. Without being able to look around, I could still see through my powers, could still pick out everyone''s hue. It surprised me that somehow, nobody was scared. Tower, especially was furious, AEGIS was sad, bittersweet and melancholic. I was just a steely grey, of determination or resignation, I couldn''t be sure...but nobody was scared. We were at our end, and we knew it, and as much as we''d tried to fight, and would continue if we could...everyone was kind of okay with just...coming up short.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    It''s like I thought before. It wasn''t fair. We were playing at a huge handicap and lost. No shame in it, just...just the uncomfortable truth that everything was over now. We could have done better, could have stopped this, could have saved everyone and ourselves.


    But we didn''t.


    I wanted to tell everyone how much I loved them, in the end. But of course, there were a few reasons now preventing me from speech. I hoped they knew anyway. Saga did, at least, and maybe she could relay it to the others before we passed.


    I hoped I was next, after Athan. I didn''t want to continue living after he was gone. I wanted to be there, when he was arguing with Saint Peter that he should be going to the other place, and maybe the angel and I could double-team him into taking his rightful spot in heaven.


    I wonder a moment how Justice would do it. Maybe the same wire, or maybe one of those hundreds of grizzly, morbid, painful ways he''d employed on the others. I guessed it didn''t really matter, that I''d wind up in the same place either way. I hoped it would be fast.


    I remembered again that I had powers, and, as a sort of last caress, reached out to everyone and soothed them as best I could, letting them at least be calm, normal, themselves, at the end. Athan''s didn''t...quite work...as I don''t think his emotions were exactly his own. But I also wasn''t trying terribly hard, I was being gentle after all.


    Just a shame Justice wasn''t in range. Almost pulled the plan off, in this backwards way. God, that''d have been great.


    With the color washed out of them, they mostly disappeared from my sight, and it felt like it was just me, Justice, and Athan now. For all his gloating and posturing, I could still sense fear in Justice. Made me want to grin. He knew he''d been outmatched by Athan, knew that Athan''s powers meant death, if he got them off. I realized a lot of this hesitation and torment wasn''t just for showing off, he was being very deliberate about how far he stayed away.


    Even at the end, what a pain in the arse my brother could be. I wished I could giggle.


    And then my mind seemed to go blank, and my stomach dropped from under me.


    I felt like I was standing on the beach and the tide just kept going further and further out, exposing stretches of sand nobody had ever laid eyes on before, as a distant rumbling informed of the tsunami to come.


    Things...weren''t the way they looked. Justice wasn''t just hesitating, wasn''t just scared...I wasn''t sure I''d ever seen him hesitate. I wasn''t sure he even was hesitating.


    I felt hope filtering up through me, and cursed it. I didn''t want to be wrong. But if I was right...it was impossible. But it wasn''t! It really was happening, wasn''t it? Holy cheese on a biscuit!


    I wished my eyes were pointed at Athan instead of the ground. But Tower had his eyes on him, and Saga had her mind open to Tower¡­


    I jumped headfirst into Saga, startling her with a mental yelp, but as she realized my presence, she welcomed me in, coddling me with doting affection like an older sister, more gentle than she''d ever been.


    "No, you idiot!" I yelled at her. "Athan!"


    [I can''t talk to him. I can''t go in him. He''s taken over by those muses.]


    "Not his mind, his head!"


    Through Tower''s eyes, both of us could now see, and with Saga''s guidance steering our consciousness--


    [Oh. My. God.]


    "He''s AMAZING!"


    [How is that possible?]


    Inside, I was beaming ear-to-ear, more proud than any human ever had been. The wire wasn''t wrapped around his neck, it was halted in the air, as much as he was. All of Justice''s focus and all of Athan''s were both bent on that single thread, vibrating it in place, drifting taut, caught between two impossible forces that only its own magical unbreakable nature was keeping it from shattering.


    Except it wasn''t just hovering. It was, by millimeters, retreating. Athan was slowly, ever-so-slowly pushing him back. Forcing the wire away from his neck. And I realized, I''d helped. We all had. We''d thrown ourselves into the time-lock power, diverting Justice''s attention away from the wire, demanding to be frozen ourselves, insisting on his focus, as he held himself aloft, as he conjured the string, as he forced it forward.


    Athan was standing there, the entirety of his will on pushing that thing back. And he was winning.


    No wonder Justice was afraid.


    The minutes stretched out into an eternity, the tiny wire moving by fractions of an inch, always drawing further and further from Athan''s exposed neck. Pulling him further from death, buying him more distance.


    And more time. That was the tsunami of thought which came crashing in. That was the realization I had that made Saga gasp.


    "That''s right," I affirmed. "I can still use my powers when my body''s frozen. So can Athan. That''s how he''s pushing back right now."


    Saga''s mind stared at me in bewilderment. [Then what''s keeping Athan from just...annihilating Justice right now?]


    "That wire. If he pulls any attention towards attacking, it''ll shear his head clean off."


    [The wire...that''s getting further away? That''s¡­]


    "Yeah. If he gets enough leeway...Athan will be able to attack."


    [And if Justice attacks first?]


    "Then his concentration on the wire will break, and we''ve already seen who wins when they''re both attacking."


    Saga''s eyes went wide. And then, she grinned as well.


    [Holy shit. He''s gonna win. We''re gonna win.]


    "We''re gonna win!"


    My heart would have been slamming in my chest, I would have been dancing on the spot, flailing my awkward white-girl teenage best, screaming my head off to cheer Athan on, if I weren''t frozen in time. But I couldn''t do any of that, just scream in my head and hope that somehow, through the time-stop, through the distance, through the muses, he heard me.


    Maybe he did. The line slipped another inch. And then another. The black flames on Justice flared with redoubled intensity, but all it did was slow him down for a moment.


    And then, in an instant, all hell just broke loose.


    The thread snapped. And with it, the air shattered into fractal distortions as a thousand blades made of lightning crackled into being. Waves of electric current pulsed and sizzled, and arcs jumped from body to body, even as Athan remained completely still.


    His opposition rose but was cut down as quickly as it formed. Waves of fire, stilled. Physical barriers, ripped to pieces. Walls of illusion, of gas, of shimmering energy, cut through.


    Justice fell back half a step, and the moment he did, I came free. AEGIS, my bullets, and the giant continued forward on restarted momentum and immediately became stuck again.


    And I joined them, throwing myself back into the time-stop to demand from Justice whatever attention I could, my cruddy improvised sword swinging.


    It was too much for him, and suddenly we were all moving, Justice shooting away through the sky, and Athan after him without so much as a pause, streaking like a lightning bolt, with another thousand lightning bolts screaming in his wake. Now and again, Justice was nearly caught, flaring up the time-stop power to buy him a little space, but it wasn''t working.


    Athan had longer range. When Justice slapped him to a standstill, the swords came in swinging, lightning fell from the sky, buildings tore themselves out of the ground, imploded in on themselves, and cracked the heavens with a blast louder than the constant thunder.


    The rest of us could only sit and watch. AEGIS was chasing them, but even with her speed, she couldn''t keep up. I was grinning and bouncing, and Saga was holding my hands too tightly.


    None of us were the least bit prepared for him to suddenly swing back around, diving under Athan in a suicide squeeze, lightning raking through his rapidly-disintegrating form, as the wreath of black flame exploded towards us, tendrils clawing and raking at us, like some desperate, final bid to take us down, even if he was to perish.


    I was...unprepared. Incapable of moving away from something so fast. It just looked like a storm heading straight for us.


    I felt extreme cold wash over me, and then something sharp. Tower battered one of the black tendrils off of us, but where he touched it, even he was sliced up and bleeding profusely. The other tendrils honed in, reaching for us, flying towards us at impossible speeds.


    And then, he stumbled. The tendrils raked the ground, the body and flames falling forward, rolling in a seething, uncoordinated mass, losing speed, still trying to clamber towards us but disoriented, slowed. In the midst of the black flames, I saw something white, and thought it was lightning.


    Justice shrieked, and the sound of it made my ears and nose trickle blood. I had my feet under me now, and Tower and Saga and I were all running...but not fast enough. Justice wasn''t flying anymore, but was skittering, the tendrils like spider legs, dragging him towards us, blades flashing, Athan coming up behind but not there yet.


    He staggered again. And then again, shuddering, another ear-piercing keening, causing a pain so sharp and sudden, and a deafness so absolute in one ear that I was sure the sound of it had torn my eardrum. I was staggering myself, falling over myself and my broken wrist and the broken ear and blood.


    And then he was on me, rearing back, screaming like a predator. I had time to look up, to blink, to see the hazy outline of the shape of his flesh, drifting in the black sea of fire.


    In the middle of him, I saw it, his core, the still-bleeding slashes that Trish had left on his chest, the human bit of him left, around which all this blood and darkness was bound. And embedded in that chest were three shining silver daggers, throwing knives. Familiar ones.


    As though waiting for him to rear back, three more landed, thump, thump, thump, burying themselves to the hilt in his flesh, making him scream again, and I had to hold my head, cradle my other ear with my limp arm. He was distracted, but the claws were moving.


    I wasn''t trying to be heroic, I wasn''t trying anything. I was just lashing out before he got me. My foot went out and kicked him, right in the hilt of one of those daggers, slamming the blade deeper into him.


    It was like a reflex, the bladed tendrils reaching for the wound instead of for me. They sliced through my leg like it wasn''t even there, clutching at the silver dagger now streaming blood. He gasped.


    I felt a disorienting jump as my powers kicked in and suddenly I was watching myself eviscerated from outside, the blades punching right through me...through the double of me, as I stood adjacent.


    And then there was white silence as Athan got in range.


    Annihilation. Just pure...complete...eradication of Justice and everything about him. The tendrils flailed as they disintegrated, the keening cut short as the medium of air around him was torn into nonexistence. The gleaming silver daggers and the bloody heart of the beast...just shadows in the light, and then nothing at all.


    And the flames, the black flames, ringed in light, they wavered. They spread and proliferated through the light, like the light itself was catching fire. But the more they danced and grew, the more insubstantial they became, spreading further and wider and more invisible, until I wasn''t sure I saw them at all.


    Then it was gone. He was gone. They were gone. My body double was gone. All that was left was my brother, floating in the air, pulsing in unknowable emotion, fierce surges of it, looking down at all of us with an impassive expression on his face.


    I wanted to scream. Wanted to shout. Wanted to jump up on what was left of my mangled, broken body and cheer with everything left in me. But even as I started forward, as I ran to hug my big stupid brother who had come through for us again, like he always had, something held me back.


    I turned and found the glint of silver, and nervous eyes.


    "Dragon?" I asked. Or...tried to. My lips moved, and I guessed that was going to have to suffice. I wanted to ask why he was still tense, why he was holding another knife, why he wasn''t screaming his head off like we all should have been.


    He shook his head minutely, his eyes never lifting off my brother. Warily, almost afraid to turn my back, I followed his gaze and wondered just what we were looking for.


    And then I saw it, as Athan reached out and pulled a collapsed building aside, lifting what I thought to be dusty bags or something from the rubble with his powers. Until I realized, the bags were moving. They were people.


    He rammed one of the thousand floating swords through each of them, his emotions flaring with unknowable color.


    And then the other thousand blades fired off in every direction, each diving into the ruins, into the rubble, into the wrecked lives that remained, and the people who held them.


    Fuel for the muses that consumed him.

 460. 2252, Present Day. Las Vegas. Saga.

    My heart sank further and further with each second Athan continued his onslaught. I''d always joked about doing this kind of thing, just going off and murdering every human I came across. Those jokes had become a lot less funny when Justice showed up and did that, and I had to live through the suffering that he''d created, through the screams of the dying, and the last moments of the dead.


    I''d learned enough by now of ''muses'' to have some idea of what was going on, from Lia and from Athan, and frankly, the idea that something was living inside of me and sucking power from my own thoughts was gross enough, but for the lost causes like Justice...and Athan...for it to be twisting their thoughts too, until he was...this unrecognizable¡­


    If I was real with myself for a minute here, I really liked him. I really, really did. Everything about him was supposed to just be a fling, some fun to have with this amusing little kid during the brief blip when the two of us happened to share this planet...but somewhere along the way, I''d fallen, hard, despite how little sense it made for me to do so.


    I just wanted to be with him. Spend time with him. Being ''the one'' or even physical was off the table, and I got that, I was willing to settle for whatever I could get, sad as that was. If I couldn''t have him, I still wanted to be friends, as the fucking cliche went, despite being oil and water in so many ways.


    And now...this. It was like he''d gone from the angel on my shoulder to the devil sitting on the devil sitting on the devil on my other shoulder. All my darkest impulses, all my casual hatred of humanity for the things they''d done and the short-sighted bigotry they''d constantly embraced, I''d dreamed of doing exactly what he was doing.


    And it was so, so wrong.


    Like Justice, he was floating slowly. Wherever he went, buildings and debris lifted itself, cracking open in an avalanche of dust and rubble, exposing the tender flesh within, the cowering humans, dirty and terrified...or injured...or broken. And then he''d maim them, drop the rest of the building on them, and move past without pausing, like he was going down a train car punching tickets.


    His muses wanted the injured to think of his powers, and only of his powers. They wanted food, and the threat of his approach and the pain of his passing were a buffet for them. The screams blocked out their whispers.


    And the truly sick part was, the more Athan killed, the more he was himself again. His reward for his slavery was fleeting moments of realization of what he was doing, glimpses of himself being someone else, the understanding of his situation and the stripping of the veil of ignorance which might have been his only grace.


    I could feel him in there, and now that I''d had a few minutes outside his head and the ominous shadows and whispers had calmed down, I dove back in and hoped there was something for me to do.


    I found him right where I''d left him, gripping the edge of his throne as though he were moments away from sliding out of it and cracking his nose on the floor. I also found the muses right where I''d left them, pulsating blackness that writhed when out of sight, whispers that penetrated the mind, unsettling unease constantly creeping.


    I took a deep breath and pushed them from my mind, focusing on him.


    "Hey buddy, how are you holding up?" I asked, my voice as casual and calm as I could force it to be.


    "AEGIS?"


    "Sure. You got Justice, buddy, you really got him."


    "I...I did? I did...I did what you wanted me to, AEGIS. I stopped...the flying guy. I did it."


    "You really did."


    "So...why? Why am I still...hurting? Why won''t...they stop, AEGIS? I did what you said. I did it! Please! Let me go, help me!"


    I had no reassurances for him, even fewer as he turned and clutched at me, almost falling out of his throne.


    "Please!" he gasped. "Please! I need your help! Please, help me!"


    Even as he begged, his body outside was lining up four humans and running them through with a single lightning blade, barely able to see their faces or their pain, the sound of their sizzling and the smell of their flesh registering on his senses more than their expressions, their screams, their agony.


    They might have been begging exactly the same way he was, and neither of us would ever hear them. This was exactly why I hated people, I''d long ago concluded. Everyone on the planet was suffering, and most of the time, it was because someone else was hurting, and they were just passing it on to anyone around them. Hungry people stole, the needy grew resentful of the having and took it, envy and jealousy were two sides of the same coin, always tossed by the fact that you could count on other humans to be shitty.


    "What are you even doing here, Athan?" I asked. "Why are you killing them?"


    "I...I''m not."


    "Why are you giving them lethal injuries and leaving them to die?"


    "I¡­" he shuddered and stammered. "I''m...I''m not. I am? They''re...lights. I have to. The voices...they say if I don''t¡­"


    "Athan, you can''t listen to them, they''re poison."


    "I can''t not listen to them!" he shouted, covering his ears as though to demonstrate. Or in driving his blades through some human''s legs until they no longer flared with nervous impulses like the rest of their body, and leaving them to bleed out. "I can''t stop! I can''t hear anything, I can''t...think!"


    "Athan, you know better than this. Those glowing things...they''re people."


    "No, they can''t be."


    "They are. You''re killing people."


    "No!"


    "Come on, dude!"


    "No, they can''t be! I''m just putting out the lights! Like they say!"


    I closed my eyes and took another steadying breath. "Athan, I''ve heard it said that when a person is faced with a fact that contradicts the reality they believe in, they''ve got two choices. Either they deny that fact and keep on living, in a world that got just a little bit smaller and a little bit more wrong...or they reassess the preconceptions they hold. They challenge themselves, and they grow."


    My eyes met his for the first time, and in them, I could see how lost he was, the fear and the pain. But they were still his eyes, green and brown, the same eyes that had faced down painful decision after painful decision in the past, never looking away, rarely blinking, filled with compassion and guilt over the realities they observed.


    "You''ve gotta make that choice now, buddy. You''ve got to accept what I''m saying, it''s the first step towards stopping, towards wrestling control back from them. They''re people, Athan, and if there''s one thing your stuck-up ass loves, it''s protecting people."


    He''d been drifting in a straight line this entire time, and was now well away from where the fighting had occurred, passing through a huge, deserted expanse of evacuated area in far too little time. I wasn''t sure how I was still in range of him, honestly, but I apparently was, and that was all that mattered.


    But as though he''d flown there on purpose, we were coming up on a refugee camp, Goodsprings Relocation Center. They were evacuating, even now, but it wasn''t fast enough, there weren''t enough busses and VTOLs, and the damage Justice and now Athan had done to the infrastructure only held them back further.


    Thousands, probably, still stranded, or trying to help. Their minds were all screaming at Athan''s hungry muses, and I wished it were enough. He could just sit here and drink in their fear, and it''d be something, wouldn''t it? There wasn''t any need to savage these people?


    The way he kept advancing answered me.


    "Athan, look!" I snapped, grabbing his chin and finding his skin ice-cold. "Those down there, they''re people. They might be glowing bundles of nerve clusters to your fucked-up senses, but try. Try to realize the truth. They''re human-shaped, ain''t they? And why would I lie to you?"


    I saw him struggling, felt the enormity of his addled thoughts turning over. Gears mired in mud.


    "No," he said at last, his eyes falling from my face to rest on his lap. He pulled his chin from my grasp and fell back from the edge of his seat, slumping to rest in the black throne. "No, they can''t be."


    "Why not?"


    "They just aren''t."


    "Fuck you, they aren''t. Athan if you don''t grab the reins right now, thousands of people are going to die by your hands. Open your damn eyes and see!"


    He said nothing. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. He was defeated. And in that moment, I realized, he was already dead. This last spark of him in the darkness wasn''t powerful enough to catch flame. He would only burn out.


    I understood, of course. It wasn''t that complicated. What he was choosing was probably correct. He was already dangling on a mental precipice, inches away from toppling into complete insanity as Justice had, unable to come to terms with reality. If he faced it, came to terms with what he''d become and what he was doing, he''d shatter. There wouldn''t be any locus of Athan in here, no throne, no self, just the muses and a broken mind.


    It was the first time Athan hadn''t been strong enough to face reality head-on, and it hurt.


    I found myself back in my body, and there were tears in my eyes. I needed a moment to compose myself, but no moment was coming. I was bouncing, and the air was rushing past me, making my streaking tears burn cold in the night air.


    AEGIS was there, carrying me, keeping me in range of Athan, and over her shoulder, I could see the rest of them struggling to keep up.


    "How is he?" she asked.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    I just shook my head.


    "He''s closing on the refugee camp. We need to stop him, before he...before he does that to himself."


    Her words were so dedicated, so simple. Athan needed help, and she''d help him. To say nothing of the truths we all knew. We couldn''t stand up to Justice, and Athan was stronger than he''d been. Stopping him was so far beyond us, much less saving him.


    It was all just fucked. Just fucked.


    The first thing he did was wreck the functioning transports and pulverize the routes out of the camp. A nice captive audience, but at least it gave us time to catch up. When we arrived and AEGIS jumped the fence, engines roaring and skin burning against mine, he''d only slaughtered half a dozen while the others hid, panicked, cried.


    AEGIS set me down and walked up to him, bare feet sparking with bluish bolts of lightning as she approached.


    "Athan," she whispered, but his head snapped to her anyway.


    "AEGIS. I did what you said. I did everything you told me."


    "Athan, it''s okay. You''re gonna be okay. You--"


    "I TRUSTED YOU."


    He slammed to the ground beside her with a seismic explosion, the thousand particles of earth thrown in the air arcing with electricity like a standing thunderstorm. Before she could even respond, his hands were around her neck.


    "I trusted you! Help me! Please!"


    She did nothing, just stood there with tears in her eyes as his hands trembled on her.


    "I''m sorry," she whispered. "I wasn''t there for you, to save your from yourself, when you needed me most."


    "I fucked up!" he screamed. "I just...I tried to save them all...I wasn''t strong enough¡­"


    "I did too. If I''d trusted you more, if I''d been willing to turn my safeties off and be myself...allowed myself to be vulnerable around you...maybe you wouldn''t have needed to do all of this. If I had a plan, if we had...more time¡­"


    Her voice started to sound strange, less human, more synthesized and glitchy. She was practically glowing with how much electricity was thrumming up and down her body, and with each pulse of it, bolts jumped off of her, arcing a hundred feet or more into the bodies of the helpless gathered here, like it was she who was killing them.


    His hands were shaking. This was him, his helplessness, his anger at himself, screaming impotently at her while watching his powers executing innocents even as he stood by. He was desperate, begging, looking for any clue, any answer, even as he shocked and throttled her with a body that wasn''t under his domain.


    Slowly, haltingly, she embraced him, her body burning up, her systems seizing.


    "I love you. I''m sorry. Please, Athan. Please...don''t hate yourself for this."


    He just stood there, stunned, still murdering, hands floating helpless behind her back, his mind...so distant from the concept of love, all he understood was the feeling of loss, that somehow, this was something he''d known and traded for those powers.


    And then.


    As though by magic, as though the love had worked on him, the lightning stopped. The arcs running up and down AEGIS were put out, leaving only blistered blackened scars. The air went quiet, and I could hear the night again, hear the hushed fear of those who watched us.


    It wasn''t a miracle. It was just more Exhuman bullshit. Lia had arrived, and with her, Athan had been stilled.


    Gingerly, hobbling forward through her injuries, she advanced on the two of them until she grabbed hold of both of them and locked them in her embrace as well. In the middle of this ruinous circle, the three just held and hugged, feeling their feelings, coming to terms with what is and was and would be.


    Each of them so recently and utterly destroyed, but for this moment, themselves again.


    "We love you," AEGIS said, and Lia nodded. "We know it''s hard. But...together...we''ll find a way forward. We can do it together, Athan. I know I let you down once, but we can try again. We''ll do it together, okay?"


    It felt like everything was going to be alright after all. Justice was gone, Athan...was a wreck, but she could work on him from the outside and I could from within. I knew from experience how hard it was to deal with voices inside your head, that you couldn''t block out, that you couldn''t necessarily differentiate from your own thoughts. But maybe there was some compel I could work on, maybe there was some therapy she could offer, maybe there was something we could do. It all started with this, with him taking the first step and stopping, and us loving him.


    It felt like we all took a deep breath together. The cold air didn''t seem so biting anymore, and the first tinge of morning glow was just starting to define the horizon. It might work.


    I took a deep breath myself and prepared to go back inside, now that the spots had a minute to clear out of my vision. A compel or two might go a long way in helping him block it out, or at least, in forcing him to be unable to act on it. I didn''t know how well it might work on a mind within a mind, but if they could fuck with his head against his will to make him suffer, I could do the same for his benefit.


    But the second I was in there, I felt my head pounding. The black had torn open and there was billowing black fire, engulfing me. Screams. Screaming. Pounding. Tearing flesh, I had to scrape. Scrape? Escape. Scrape marrow, blood, capillaries. Screaming. Fabric blackness.


    I only barely made it back to my body, landing heavily, my head spinning, screams still echoing in my head, blackness in my vision everywhere. Dark shapes jumped out at me, and I turned and lashed out, finding only the camp''s flag drifting in the breeze.


    A voice spoke, and I screamed and saw the entire camp shudder with psychic energy, the movement making my eyes dart around beside myself.


    "Saga?" AEGIS asked again, and I fixated on the source of the voice, and the shadows moving behind her.


    "Athan," I gasped. "He''s...he''s not right. It''s not working."


    "What''s not--"


    But it was too late, he was drifting away, his expression tranquil as he slipped into the air past Lia''s grasp. She let out a little gasp as she tried to grab his ankle and it passed through her fingers, looking down on her with serenity, with peace.


    AEGIS launched herself onto him, attaching herself to the front of his chest, hands scrambling for purchase, entwining on his arms, through his hair, legs wrapped around his like lovers, as they drifted further and further away.


    "No...stop him!" I gasped, trying desperately to blink the shadows from my sight. "Don''t let him--"


    The moment he got out of Lia''s range, I knew. His body erupted in black flames, and the tranquility on his face erupted into something else, something inhuman, a glance that was filled with the screams that still echoed in my head.


    He didn''t think, didn''t pause, didn''t hesitate. Six swords materialized inside Lia, and detonated in her chest, evaporating her torso in a moment, flesh searing away only to reveal white bone for a few instants before they blackened and crumbled. Her eyes and mouth were wide and silent, uncomprehending, as she collapsed into the dirt and the flames. Her rifle hit the dirt with a clatter that was too audible, too final.


    AEGIS and I both screamed in her stead. She cried. I...did something much stupider.


    I went back in. The screams withered my mind like winds whipping away sand. What I saw, what I heard, what I felt, it was like tearing. I could feel my sanity being ripped away, as more and more of the darkness filled me.


    But I had Lia in my heart and mind. They could savage me however they wanted but they couldn''t scare me, couldn''t break me, couldn''t traumatize me. I was already those things. She was fucking dead, and he''d done it. They''d done it.


    I slammed his skull against his throne, cracking both of them, and sending the muses howling as I battered their conduit. His body jolted out there, and I hardly noticed.


    "Athan, you fucker!" I screamed, as I cracked him again. "Wake up! Wake up and fight, goddamn you! WAKE THE FUCK UP!"


    We''d never finished what we''d started last time we were in a mindscape together. I dug my fingers deep into his consciousness and dragged out those memories, filled him with remembrances of me, until I was as terrifying and unknowable to him now as I was back then, until I was as terrifying a menace as these fucking muses.


    And as his thoughts of me grew, so did I, a reflection of his understanding of me. In this place, his locus, I was as he saw me. And so I made myself large.


    Shadows hung off of me and my fingers elongated into blades. I twisted and scraped at his mind until all of his nightmares and myself were intertwined, until all of his fears and murders, guilt and death, even these muses, he saw them in me.


    I beared serrated fangs that wept blood and acid, slashed claws through the black flames without effect, twisted his mind until it screamed from that pain, even louder than the muses burning him. He was already insane, but I was tearing what was left of him.


    I filled him up until his body fell to the ground out there, AEGIS crying over him and shaking him, calling his name again and again.


    He electrocuted her and she flew back, shuddering as she tried to pick herself up.


    And then he paused, as something stood before him again. Just a mass of lights, but I knew by the size, by the way they stood. It was Lia again. Saved by her powers somehow, ready to run at her brother, to stop him.


    He never recognized her. He killed her again. And when she appeared elsewhere, again. And again, and again, and for good measure, all in the camp, waves of lightning surging off of his body and saturating the air, until everyone present was breathing arcs of fire, their bodies trembling and their nervous masses aflame with foreign electricity.


    Dozens of her sprang into being and then crumpled, the waxy, lifeless dolls she could create in the stead of her death. They were exploding gratuitously into being, macabre, almost silly cannons of lifeless bodies, bouncing into the air, limbs flailing, landing in piles as quickly as the waves of lightning killed her. A hundred, and then two hundred.


    And then no more.


    The last one to land wasn''t like the others. It had impulses, seized and writhed in a more lifelike way than the dolls did. In a more deathlike way, it stopped.


    She didn''t reappear after that. Maybe she''d tried to. Maybe she couldn''t. I swore at him in a voice which echoed with multiplied insanity. I didn''t know I could become more furious after what he''d done, but then he''d gone and done it.


    "AEGIS," I heard him say. "You said...you would help¡­"


    He landed next to AEGIS and kicked her body over. She was shuddering, trying to reach for him. He knelt and put a hand on her chest, feeling through her, probing bits of current navigating the layers of conduits, of buffers and insulation, worming their way through her protections down to her central core.


    "Help me," he whispered, as he found her. His fingers twitched with the voltages he contained.


    I screamed again and shredded him, slashed at the muses, blasted him. His body hardly reacted, his grip slipping only slightly, the probing going right back to where it had been.


    I was hitting him with everything I had. Almost everything I had. Just...just what I could do. But even as I was, monstrous, wreathed in shadow and dark, with silent effigies of myself falling off of myself and masses of blades and blood¡­


    There was still one thing I wasn''t doing. One thing I wouldn''t do. Couldn''t, maybe.


    But would. If it came to this.


    His hand stopped on her chest as his heart stopped beating. He stared at her, a sense of wrongness and urgency, so primal, that it overrode his fear.


    "Saga¡­" AEGIS whispered, her voice all wrong, shuddering. "...please¡­"


    It only took a second, and he beat me the same way he had before. Lightning passed through his own veins, defibrillated his own heart, running his body with his powers when his mind failed him.


    But in that second, he''d gone woozy from lack of blood, tipsy hesitation, as AEGIS stared at him with eyes I knew could see his pulse, her body regaining itself through his attack, beginning to be herself again, and I hoped, I prayed it was enough.


    "I...love you," she said. And it was like her words snapped him back to his task, as he looked down, reached down, prepared that final jolt to destroy her core, to remove these uncomfortable impediments and surrender to the muse-song.


    But suddenly he went woozy again. As I held his mind as best I could, suddenly she was there, and her hand was in his heart, sunk up to the wrist in his chest, her slender fingers twisting under his ribcage.


    "I...I...AEGIS?" Athan whispered, looking down at the blood seeping from his chest, dripping across her face as she gave him the same comforting smile, the same lie as always.


    "I love you, Athan. I''m sorry. This...this is the only way...I know to help. I''m sorry."


    "I''m...I¡­"


    He blinked as his blood went cold, swaying on the spot, seeing for one moment with human clarity, as the screaming of the muses and the burning of their flames failed him, his body falling down despite their insistence, despite their demands.


    He saw clearly for one moment, the woman he loved reaching into his chest and breaking his heart, and me in his mind, flaying him. His sister''s body, burned and bisected. The thousand corpses encircling him in this haunted grave.


    And then I was back in my own body again, for the third time, still twitchy and paranoid, still seeing and hearing things, and feeling logic in my head that wasn''t my own.


    But I landed in me just moments before his body landed in the dirt, as though I wanted to return to see him fall. The second he hit, she was crying and pulling out her first-aid kit, working on him and on Lia and on all the others who were already dead. Pitiful and useless and crying over souls already departed.


    I didn''t have anything left in me. I just joined Athan in hitting the ground and losing consciousness, letting the screams of the muses and the echoes of the dead guide me into the unsettling dark.

 Epilogue 1. 2254, Two years later. San Diego. Karu.

    I was exhausted as I always was after these sessions, yet I knew the significance of my work. For so long, I had considered myself just a weapon, the ''sword of God''. I shook my head and chuckled at myself even to remember it. I had been a weapon, my body had been a tool, my mind, a vessel to steer it, and none of them anything but. Long had I told myself that I was merely focusing on honing my capabilities...but in truth...I was neglecting them.


    To be constantly ready to jump off, to fight, and to die, required a certain mindset. A short-sighted one, focused on being fit to serve. Not to be a complete person, nor even a particularly functional one.


    It was the incident with Justice and the death of Athan which brought this ugly truth to my eyes. I was forced to confront the reality of what world existed without him in it, and found my answers lacking. For too long, I struggled to find meaning, and realized in the end, after too long, and too many dead-ends, that I was pursuing the wrong goal all along.


    Meaning was not something one could turn out one''s pockets and possess. Meaning was not a goal in life, or even a philosophy to attribute one''s life towards. Meaning was, in many ways, as I''d read so long ago under my sheets after the lectures of my father''s tutors...meaningless. At least, to my mind.


    Which was not so bleak as that discovery may first appear. It meant only that life was as we saw it, that things had value as we ascribed them, and goals should be pursued, not because of the worth of achieving some arbitrary milestone, but rather in the good of achieving it.


    This was why I was exhausted, and shuffling through papers in a storage room beside my office. There were only a few folders here, but they were crammed with papers and issues, both. My organization found something to be desired, and not for the first time, I pondered if I could find a secretary who might be trusted.


    But that was, as always, a problem for another time. I found what I needed, closed the file, and returned to my patient.


    "Here it is," I said to the silver-haired girl, who was sitting up with such rigid intensity I could have used her to level an I-beam. "You submitted this to me just eight months ago, when we started. Does it look familiar?"


    Melanie took the paper and frowned a little as she read it.


    "This is all about Athan," she said.


    "I got the feeling he was all you thought about when I first reached out to you."


    "I s-s-suppose."


    Immediately following Athan''s death, she''d become nearly mute, and AEGIS, Moon, and I had worried she''d stop eating again, maybe even turn suicidal. But she kept herself up somehow, got up every day and faced the world, and with a little outreach from us, had returned to almost-normal, though a bit more withdrawn.


    She''d grown so much since then, in nearly every way. She was taller now, older now, a bit more filled-in, to the point of very nearly having visible fat on her body. Gone were the stubby twisted knots of hair that half-concealed her face, and instead she was growing it out. At my advisement, she''d picked a picture of what she thought a normal girl looked like, and was working towards that style. As she approached it, she somewhat began to resemble having self-confidence.


    She sighed, putting the paper down and looking up at me. "It''s s-strange, looking back at myself like this. Are you s-s-sure this is a good idea?"


    "If it makes you uncomfortable, then of course not. You know that I don''t want to ever make you feel like you are being forced or commanded. I am here to help you, and that is all."


    She seemed to think about that for a long time, brushing back strands of her hair behind ears I wasn''t sure the world had ever seen a year ago.


    "This letter...it s-seems...hopeless," she said, looking down at it. "All I wrote was that...well...did you read this?"


    "I did not. You wrote it to your future self, not to me."


    "Here," she offered it to me.


    I shook my head. "Tell me what it says."


    "All I do is talk about how I can''t trust people. I depended on Director Blackett, and he let me down. Then, Kaori''s father. And Athan. I s-sound s-s-so¡­" she frowned at the paper and then looked up at me, almost like she was asking permission. "Very angry. Empty, almost."


    "And do you feel that way now?"


    "Nuh-uh. Maybe it''s because life is much easier now. Without the P-Force, without having to go fight Exhumans all the time and be worried about dying...I guess...normal living just doesn''t demand you entrust your life to s-someone."


    I smiled at her. "And yet, before the P-Force, you were in school, you were a maid, weren''t you? Neither of those were life-threatening either, were they?"


    She mulled it over. "I s-suppose not. But it s-seems s-s-so s-stupid that I''d think that way."


    "Well, I would not have said so at the time, but I happen to agree with you," I grinned. "That is the point of this exercise, so that you can look back at your past with clearer vision, and see how far you have come. You told me yesterday that you were concerned that you were not making progress, or fast enough, and that your were wasting my time. And yours, though you would not say that."


    "Well...my time...isn''t exactly valuable."


    "Regardless, do you still feel that way, seeing now how you felt in the past? Do you feel as though you are wasting your time?"


    She shook her head methodically. "No, I...I guess not. I''m s-sorry, I didn''t mean to waste your time like this. I know you--"


    I held up a hand and she halted. "You can apologize if you would like, but not for ''wasting'' my time. This is my service, and I offered it to you. No time spent here is wasted, as I have said before."


    "I know. I''m s-sorry. Thank you."


    "Now, with that said, we are about out of time for today. Unfortunately, I am beginning something of an undertaking this week, and may not be available for our next session. But I will see you in two weeks, without fail. If that suffices?"


    "It does, thanks, Karu. Karen."


    "You are most welcome."


    We both rose, and she gave me a brief hug. It was not exactly my idea of a farewell, but Melaine needed socialization, and that was just another step. She would be attempting school again soon, and jumping at every touch would only serve to isolate her. I smiled as we parted, and as she struggled for a moment trying to decide if the door was supposed to be left closed or ajar.


    Once she was gone, I took a few minutes to close my eyes and rest. The session had gone well, as well as any other, I supposed. I was only human, too, having my own doubts about whether we were progressing or not at times, yet to see her reactions today had confirmed it for me as much as in her. It felt satisfying, in a more comprehensive way than normally finishing a mission.


    Who knew the of structuring a life could be more rewarding than the deletion of one?


    I did not have time to kick up my heels for long, however, no matter how tired I felt, and how the creaks and cracks of my old injuries demanded it. I had a nagging doubt in my mind, and people without whom I had spent too long.


    The good news was, I had a long drive ahead of me, and I did so love to drive.


    The radio kept me company as the wind whipped through my hair, the roads clear and open in the early afternoon, when the decent folks were hard at work. It was voting season, and the political ads were out in force. Listening to them was always something of a vice of mine, a small crumb of the world my father had tried to force upon me at which I still nibbled, despite having no interest in politics.


    But this year...every year, following the special election after Justice had descended, where public trust had surged in support of the crippled XPCA and against the president and ruling body, it had been an absolutely delightful madhouse. Something about a truly incompetent executive body tended to bring out the crazies, when every Dick and Sally looked up to him and thought ''I could do better.''


    Exhumans were, as ever, the big issue, but the conversation around them was genuine, unlike before. They had always been a ''safe'' topic, same as education and taxes; more schools: good, more taxes: bad, more Exhuman spending: good.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    To hear them talk now, the old way of thinking seemed laughable.


    "Tham Nguyen is just like you. She lost her brother, mother, and sister on Blackfire Day. But she has taken the pain of our struggles and channels that energy towards a stronger America; an America that wouldn''t exist without Exhumans. A vote for Tham Nguyen is a vote for human rights. Vote Tham Nguyen for state senator, 2254."


    I had to smirk inwardly at the wording of the ad. A vote for human rights, as though it were just assumed that such a thing applied to Exhumans. Even being two years and several months since Blackfire Day, the law had yet to catch up, though it was coming along.


    It helped that the number of Exhumans had dropped precipitously. It was speculated that somewhere between forty and seventy percent of all US-based Exhumans had perished in the fight. Shortly after, Oasis threw open their doors and there was a minor exodus of more seeking refuge within, submitting voluntarily to the dream to escape the world...Exhumans and humans both, choosing a pretend-life over this real one, where they could continue to live with loved ones who were only imaginings.


    But the greatest challenge to their number seemed to be that no new Exhumans were being produced. AEGIS had told me in the vaguest of terms what they had seen and found on the other side of the angle-gate, what technologies and horrors had awaited them, but she wished to keep things secretive and vague, and forbid me from speaking of it to anyone. Given that we were discussing the genesis of Exhumanity, and the ability to produce more monsters as Justice, I understood and agreed.


    So details were sparse, but I understood that something on the other side of that gate had changed, and with it, Exhumanity''s future. With the shrunken and dwindling population, humanity suddenly found supporting Exhumans much more tasteful. To say nothing of how no new Exhumans meant no fear of becoming one, or in facing a Ramanathan window.


    I arrived at my destination and smiled internally at seeing it so unchanged. Compared to my one, brief, prior visit, all I could see changed was an increased amount of mess stacked in the windows. I parked and took a moment to compose myself and rest my eyes before exiting the car and walking under the store''s still-vivid sign, not yet faded by the withering Southern California sun.


    "Welcome!" a thunderous voice boomed at me, even before the door could swing shut. "Karu!"


    "Tower," I greeted him with a smile and nod. "Or should I say Darius?" I joked, leaning over the counter to poke him in the name badge.


    "Only my real friends get to call me Tower," he grinned. "So definitely that. It''s been forever, girl! Where have you been hiding yourself. You didn''t return my call about drinks last weekend."


    "Oh, just busy," I said, rubbing my eyes. Doing so did little to make the place any clearer. "I have my hands full with Melanie, Rito, and a dozen other affected Exhumans. But it is, perhaps a first for me, honest work, and rewarding."


    "Good. How are they?"


    "You know that I cannot answer with more than vaugeities. They are doing well, typically. I find myself surprised at how few of their problems are genuinely rooted in their Exhuman natures. Melanie faces developmental problems, many of them have traumas, issues that any normal therapist would help in facing."


    "But not Rito."


    My smile turned grim. "No, not as such. Even after Saga put her mind back together, she is still somewhat unhinged. I believe I am getting through to her but...she has a long way to go, I am afraid." I shook my head, realizing I may have said too much. "How are Jack and Steffie?"


    "They''re real good," he grinned. "Enjoying retirement, I think."


    "You are still visiting them weekly?"


    "Yeah, I think they''re beginning to find me annoying," he laughed, booming. "I had to stop offering to help because I think they found it offensive. I mean, they''re both in wheelchairs, but that''s not what I mean."


    "Jack is, without a doubt, the least immobile disabled individual I have ever met."


    "Oh, Steffie''s no slouch either. She knows how to run your feet over, she''s nasty," he laughed, and I laughed with him.


    "What is all this--oh. Hello, Karen." A head popped out of the back, followed by the rest of Whitney, who had gotten a large smudge of grease down her nose somehow. "I thought Tower was laughing at internet videos again." She rolled her eyes.


    "No, I''m just buttering up the customers, see?"


    "I do see," she said, with a wry smile, before ducking around him and giving me an awkward hug. "Good to see you. How are your injuries treating you?"


    "Bad," I laughed, shaking out my leg. "I find myself on pins and needles if ever I sit for too long. I have taken to pacing like Lia during some of my longer therapy sessions."


    She didn''t reply, just gave me a wan smile at Lia''s mention.


    "So what can I do for you, Karen? Don''t tell me you''re finally going to let me have a crack at that visor?"


    "I would not dare. I am actually here to talk with Tower. Have you seen Kaori recently?"


    His smile dropped. "No. We don''t talk much. I don''t think she talks to anyone from the old days, not since she took over IkaCo." He paused for a moment, staring at the heaps of circuits without seeing them, before resuming with a start. "Not that there''s anything wrong with that! She''s done a bang-up job, from what I hear. Did you see the news on her latest thing?"


    "Yes, Oasis declared her and her company the functioning liaison between them and the rest of the world. I had long suspected, once they stopped selling exotics and instead dove headfirst into...well...everything else, it felt like. But it surprised me little to hear that much of it was still being created at Oasis by Exhumans."


    "Their stuff is really good," Whitney commented. "I just got a new core from them for my testbench, and I can''t make heads or tails of it. Definitely feels like they have a technopath."


    "Wait, that shit''s expensive," Tower stared at her. "How''d you afford it?"


    She shrugged. "Filled a lot of orders."


    "Those orders didn''t walk through this door. I''ve been standing here the whole time."


    "Yeah, did ''em online."


    He craned his neck as he towered over her, staring incredulously. "Then what the heck did you hire me for?"


    She shrugged and grinned impishly.


    "So I am to understand that neither of you can contact Kaori, then?" I asked.


    Whitney shook her head, but Tower just got thoughtful. "Well. I can. I don''t, because...I know her. But before she left, she gave me a number, and said...if I needed anything..."


    "Would it be a breach of trust to call? I do not mean to impose."


    He scratched his chin as he looked at me. "Nah, I think she''ll understand. I guess...I just wanna ask...what did you want to talk to her about, anyway? Kinda weird for you to show up out of the blue like this. Ominous that you''re poking around. You don''t have a visor and wrist-rockets out in the car, do you?"


    I laughed. "Well. I would be lying if I said I traveled without them. But not as such, no. I was looking up Kaori because I strongly suspect I will need to schedule a visit to Oasis. But you are correct that she is not my primary motivation for being here, no."


    "Then what is?" she asked.


    Tower''s face went dark. "Wait...you''re not gonna join the broken in Oasis, are you?"


    "No, no."


    "Gonna visit AEGIS?"


    "...yes. But again, not my primary motivation. I am actually looking for Saga."


    "Oh," they both said, and went quiet.


    "I take that to mean neither of you have heard from her, either?"


    Whitney shook her head. "Not since Blackfire."


    "At first I thought she was taking some time to herself, but for her not resurface after this long¡­" I swallowed a lump in my throat. "As the hunter, I feel some obligation to ensure she is not doing anything untoward. You know how she can be."


    Tower leaned over and gave my hand a crushing squeeze, his palm easily twice the size of mine.


    "Retired hunter. Don''t forget. And I''m sure she''s not up to anything too bad. The world is pretty chill right now, and if she were making trouble, I doubt that''d be the case."


    "I hope you are right," I sighed. "But all the same, I would like to know. And if there is something...fishy...going on, I am not certain I could detect it myself."


    "Makes sense to look up AEGIS then," Whitney nodded. "Say hi to her from me if you make it out there. Tell her to get a phone or back on the ''net. I miss her."


    "And I''ll call Kaori, let her know what''s up," Tower said.


    Their exchange was brief, and I suspected she did not respond with the same exuberance and enthusiasm he did. But when he hung up, he was still beaming, and informed me that I would have a personal flight prepped and ready in the next couple of hours.


    We spent most of that time talking and laughing, catching up on what mundane things our lives had become, and talking a great amount about people, though never about those who were no longer with us.


    Though we laughed, it was like a great void we were all constantly skirting about. Athan, Lia, and Cosette. When the conversation naturally bumped up against them, it just paused, as though it were taking a moment of silence, and then one of us forced it up anew, in a new direction, towards banality.


    I wondered what he would think of it all, of us shutting our eyes to reality and pretending as though everything were fine. He was never one to accept a convenient lie when the truth was there to be reached. Was behaving in this manner disrespect to his memory? Or was not speaking of him at all?


    I knew not. But it frosted the edges of our otherwise warm conversation.


    It felt like mere minutes before I had to leave to catch my flight, our protracted farewells encrusted with promises not to go months without speaking as we had, and I was urged to come right back and report any findings I uncovered. I was hugged again by Whitney, which was awkward, and then by Tower, which was bone-crushing.


    And then, I found myself in a seat by the window, looking out over the tarmac from within the VTOL headed for asia. A layover in Japan, and then to Oasis, without ever seeing or hearing from Kaori.


    I''d pushed hard for her to be one of my inaugural patients, beside Melanie. She was rife with trauma, I knew. But the most I had gotten out of her was an illusive wisp of a smile, and a confirmation that ''It''s true. Friends always do just hurt, in the end'', before she declined my offer and cut us all out. I understood, but hoped that, as time grew beyond the deaths, she might become more open, but it was not to be.


    I sighed, and watched as the coastline was wiped away by the endless expanse of blue. I would need to get up and stretch several times, but for the moment, I could simply close my eyes and rest.


    But tired as I was, I was still restless, thinking about her out there somewhere, doing God-knows what. To hear so little from her...my instincts screamed at me that either she was trouble, or was in trouble.


    And as much as I was loathe to curse my friends, I prayed it was the latter. If she wished it, Saga could bring this peace crashing down on us all.

 Epilogue 2. 2254, Two years later. Oasis. AEGIS.

    I wiped my hands down on a square of tech fabric, absentmindedly watching the fabric turn ashen from the chalky dust, thick on my hands. My fingers left long streaks, capturing the outline of my handprint with amusing accuracy. And for a moment, nothing happened. It was just a piece of cloth.


    And then, over the course of about a minute, the cloth began to change in my hands. My palmprint gradually became lighter, as the fabric consumed the dust, fading back to its original beige. It seemed to waver in color over long seconds, until, at last, no trace remained.


    We''d come a hell of a long way since synthetic weave.


    "And it won''t dissolve my hands?" I asked.


    Rio shook her head. "No...we worked that out. There''s a microfiber mesh, only particulates will seep through. We have the mesh self-extrude, using Sheran''s powers, and managed to put the anchor points directly on it, so¡­"


    "So that if you have an accident, or tear it open, we don''t have a black hole in somebody''s kitchen." I nodded. "Smart. Also, probably necessary."


    "Yeah. Although combining three sets of powers--"


    "Four. You count, too, Rio."


    "Well, it seems...excessive, just to make a self-cleaning hand towel."


    On that we could agree. And lovely as the towel was, to be perfectly frank, the amount of research and labor that had gone into it, to say nothing of the painstaking hand-crafted construction, it''s incredible uniqueness, and the potential of containing a contained, miniaturized black hole...this damn towel was probably worth a few million credits that nobody would, or should ever pay.


    But it, like all of the rest of the crap that Rio and I had been working on recently, wasn''t really there for its own merits. It was a proof of concept. It existed to demonstrate the kind of mundane uses that Exhumanity could offer the world. Already, Oasis was built out of terraist-shaped rock, clothed in garb spun by an entopath, and fed with crops nurtured by an agrarist. Rio had the unique capability to bottle others'' powers up into things she crafted, and with the surge of Exhumans we received after the Blackfire incident, her potential for creative output was through the roof.


    Kind of a...begrudging potential. She still preferred weaponizing things. But we were over that. Mostly.


    "If I didn''t anchor the lattice, it''s basically a grenade," she muttered.


    "One that makes black holes. I''m pretty sure you could only fire that once, and then goodbye solar system."


    She seemed to chew on that for a moment before coming to tacit agreement. "I still think the self-fueling flamethrower was a winner."


    I sighed. It was always a struggle keeping her nose out of trouble, but as it was basically my job, I''d both become very adept at it, and couldn''t really complain. We were kind of making a difference here, representing Exhumanity in the best light that''d ever been cast on it. It felt rewarding.


    "Well, how about you tone it down so it can be used to...I don''t know...melt snow, and we''ll have another look at it. Try to weaponize your powers against things other than humans. Like the weather, or mosquitos, or viruses."


    "Yeah, yeah," she said, snatching the cloth off my hands. "I''ll be in the workshop if you need me."


    "And I''m headed to the church. Thanks, Rio."


    As she went deeper inside, I threw open the doors and spent a moment blinking in the hazy glow of the glasslands midday sun. They sky was grey with moody reflection, and the air sizzled with an appalling lack of humidity, but I didn''t let it get to me.


    The church was in the new district, the ''adjoining ring'', extending the city''s radically creative naming system...and misleading, as there wasn''t really too much ''ring'' to speak of.


    It was, however, massive. At least, relative to the rest of Oasis. It veritably bustled with activity: trade, tourism, and faith, all rolled into another hundred or so gleaming white buildings, where I''d worked hard to put the best foot of Oasis forward.


    It was always a little strange, transitioning from the old city to the adjoining ring. The dreamers in the city didn''t, or couldn''t recognize my presence, lost in their own realities, in which I may not even exist. But then to cross over, suddenly there were greetings and smiles, even just the glimmer of recognition or unconscious glances at my approach...it was like returning to Earth after being somewhere alien, every time.


    The church wasn''t an overly elaborate building, honestly borrowing little from the rest of the world''s idea of a building of faith, though it did have a spire to pronounce itself. Its main feature was that it was large, and in this city, that was distinction enough. I''d just wended my way down an alley filled with hucksters and porters, and was facing the broad white stone front of the building when I heard someone call out to me. A familiar voice, but one I hadn''t heard recently, it took whole microseconds to place it.


    "Karu?" I asked. And so it was, a plain-clothed woman hobbling up to me on a bad leg, grin across her face, hair undercut on the sides, with a voluminous blonde sprawl creeping down the back, across her shoulders. "Karu!"


    "Well hello, robot," she said, and I was too busy grinning back and hugging her to even give her shit for it.


    "I didn''t know you were coming! Why didn''t you tell me?"


    "Because you are simply impossible to get ahold of. Have you heard of the new device known as a phone?"


    I rolled my eyes at her, still finding my grin inviolable. "We have no satellites, you dork. Who the hell do you think is gonna put one up there for us? Does it look like the Oasis Space Program is taking off?"


    "With the number of powers you have here, and the capability you have demonstrated, I would not be surprised. Do you mind if we sit? My leg--"


    "No, not at all." I spun around, looking for anywhere nearby, although I knew the city intimately. "Um, is the church okay?"


    "Anywhere is fine. I apologize for being a bother--"


    She battled away my reassurances and we spent a while apologizing in echoes as I got her through the doors and inside, where we sat in a white stone pew at the very rear of the building, our voices dropping to a hush once we were within.


    I loved it in here. Though it was just a small part of the building, the back wall was studded with stained glass, the iconography of the damn dead tree of Our God filling the room with colorful light. I also spent as much time contributing prayer as I could, though with how much I had to do, sometimes it didn''t seem like enough.


    "Sorry, did you want to pray?" I asked.


    "I wish you would not call it that," she sighed. "Prayer already has a meaning, and this world already has a God without you conflating the term."


    "Okay, stickler. Did you want to turn off your mind and temporarily embrace the dream, while offloading your spare mental bandwidth onto Our God so that it can divert your subconsciousness attention towards feeding the muses and maintaining the harmony of Oasis?"


    She cocked her head in thought for a moment. "Nah."


    "Such an ass," I grinned. "What are you here for? Don''t tell me it''s a social visit. Don''t tell me it''s just for me?"


    "My, you sound so unsure of yourself. Your eyes widen as dinner plates when it becomes possible that you are my destination."


    "Wow. You must have seriously cracked, if you flew all the way out here to visit me," I giggled. "Have you considered seeing a shrink? One not in the mirror?"


    She started to respond but went quiet as a group of laughing teenagers broke the still air as they walked past, making their way to the front of the church and speaking with the minister. She shook her head.


    "I do not know how you did it."


    "Did what?"


    "Built this. Convinced people to come here in droves to render themselves unconscious in your care."


    "I mean, hotels have been doing that for years."


    "You know what I mean."


    "I do. And honestly, sometimes I can''t believe it either." I leaned back in the pew to look up with her, though found my eyes attracted to the stained glass, as ever. The way it played with the light...I know it was supposed to represent Our God and the dream, but it always reminded me of electricity. Sparking, sparkling, something. "I think...a lot of the world is just...genuinely grateful to Exhumans. Now that they''re on their way out, and they''re safe...and we''ve got a legit enemy of humanity to blame¡­"


    "I have heard the experience is euphoric."


    "Yeah, that too. I know it sounds ridiculous, but legitimately non-existing for a few hours guilt-free is a huge blessing to a lot of people." I heard my tone turn serous, and found myself looking more at the floor. "After Blackfire, there''s a lot of hurt and trauma in the world, y''know? Getting away from it...and helping others in the process...that''s the appeal. Nothing I did."


    "You marketed it. You thought of it as a solution."


    I shrugged. "Dragon did most of the work. I just had the idea. He runs the church, mostly, and I handle trade. Amazing how religion and commerce go together though."


    "As it has been since before the crusades," she nodded.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "So if you''re not here to pray, are you looking for something to buy?" I waggled my eyebrows enticingly at her. "You know I''d give the best deal to a friend."


    She snorted a laugh. "Yes, I have great need of a new wardrobe, as well as a pen which cannot run out of ink, and costs as much as a lifetime supply of pens."


    "It''s a novelty."


    "I prefer it to the exotics, I admit. But it is ridiculous."


    "Well, we''re doing better on the computing angle. Self-chilling circuit boards are a freaking revolution, and IkaCo''s making bank on it. Next time you scoff at a hundred-credit pen with Exhuman magic inside of it, consider all the billions that they''re raking in." I blinked at her. "Oh. Kaori''s here, is that why you visited, to see her?"


    "Hmm? I had no idea. Strange that she would not tell me such, when it was through her that I arranged transit."


    "Well...she doesn''t like...talk to people...ever." I scratched my chin as I tried to remember the last time we''d had a conversation that could be considered anything but icy. "Maybe I was just hoping. Y''know. Therapy?"


    She sighed. "I have asked so many times. She has no interest, and you cannot force another to change."


    We sat in quiet for a moment as we thought, watching the teens, who had entered reverence-mode upon talking with the minister, as they were escorted to the back, to the sleeping rooms, where they''d be temporarily woven into the dream.


    "No," she said, sitting up abruptly. "Actually, I came to inquire about Saga. I heard a strange rumor a ways back, and it has rested nagging in my mind, until I could endure it no longer."


    She laughed, but I knew all too well what she was getting at. No matter how well I''d put myself or my life back together, she and I were still the same in our paranoia. Saga was our friend, Exhumans were our friends, society had changed now.


    And yet, there was no taking the guardian out of me, or the huntress out of her. I wondered briefly how long it''d taken between Karu hearing something and having to act on it. I imagined...maybe a month would be all I could stand. She''d probably last longer, especially with her job.


    "Um, would you maybe want to go somewhere more private to discuss?" I asked, standing. "Not too far."


    "I suppose that is an answer in and of itself. And an ominous one," she commented.


    "It''s not that bad. But it''s not...that good, either. C''mon."


    Tourism also meant food options, and all it took was a word to be seated in a private backroom while a couple plates of food were prepared for her -- utterly non-authentic, but presented with the air of authentic local cuisine.


    "She came by, not too long ago," I recounted. "Looked the same as ever. Fucking...walked here, I think just to prove she could, the lunatic. This was maybe three months back. Just strolled in one day, like it was nothing."


    "Three months back," Karu twiddled the table knife between her fingers with unnerving speed. "That was...not too far off from when I''d heard it."


    "What''d you hear?"


    The knife went still, and then gently, returned to the table. "I had heard that someone had defaced Lia''s grave."


    "What?"


    "Yes. Dug it up. Which was bizarre to even consider, but from what investigation I was able to do, I found it factual. Nobody saw or heard anything, of course, but she could not erase herself from the cameras, and there was evidence to place her in the gravesite''s vicinity in the days preceding."


    "Maybe she was just visiting."


    "Perhaps. I certainly hope so, and that this was a simple coincidence in timing."


    "But you don''t believe in coincidences. You believe in traps, and you believe in God."


    "Have I stated it thus?" she smirked at me. "But yes. As you see, strange, but not inexplicable. After long consideration, I resolved to trust in her, to be mature, and to simply ask. However, she is not a woman easily found, hence my visitation, to the one woman with whom''s memories she cannot tamper."


    I thought it over as Karu''s food arrived. Local greens and rice, and a lot more meat than any actual Oasian ever ate in a meal. But the markup was also probably a few thousand times the cost so...yay, tourism?


    "Well she came by, like I said, and seemingly, like you, just for the pleasure of visiting me and asking weird questions. I gave her the whole tour, showed her our growing commerce and the church of course...asked if she wanted to say hi to Our God, after all the help she gave us getting him set up with the church, but she said no. Said she''d spend eternity with him, didn''t want to waste any time with him now."


    "Sad, but understandable."


    "Yeah. Then she asked for a lock of my hair, to remember me by. Which was...weird."


    Karu blinked at me. "Your hair? A cable?"


    "Yeah. Just like...snip one off. I thought she was kidding, and then she got really weird and pushy about it. In the end, I thought...easier to splice in a new cable than deal with her, so I did it but...yeah. Strange."


    "That is...odd, even for Saga. At least, I believe so? It is hard to hold a consistent metric up against one so inconsistent. Was there anything else?"


    "Yeah. She turned down the tour, but asked a lot of questions about the new Exhumans that had come in. I was happy to tell her of course, and then she just kinda...was done, and left."


    "Huh."


    "Huh indeed." I frowned at her. "There was one other thing. This was after she visited but...I heard from TARGA--"


    "How is she?"


    "Doing great, actually. I think very happy to be working away from Exhumanity, but still in-military. I think she takes a lot of pride in making Russia shit themselves with worry at her capabilities."


    "You are beaming. Are you certain you have not found love after Athan?"


    She was obviously teasing, but I still poked her in the forehead for it. "She''s like a sister. A twin sister, even. I can be proud of her."


    "Anyway. She heard of Saga?"


    "She repelled Saga, actually," I said, my voice growing cold. "One of the very few events that''s turned up since Blackfire. Saga tried to break into the research lab in Haydn.''


    Karu blinked at me. "The robotics lab? Where the drones were pouring forth, from alternate-Earth?"


    "Yep, that one."


    "I thought it was decommissioned, after you returned and the drone attacks ceased?"


    "Decommissioned is a strong word. There was still lots of research being done on the drones we had...the ones Athan didn''t fry, anyway, along with everyone there. But yeah, Saga basically tried to walk in the base and hijack all the personnel, and TARGA fought them off with the base''s automated security. After a long stalemate, and before roboticized troops...or skyweb...could be called in, Saga just...turned and left."


    "Strange. And...also¡­"


    I cracked my knuckles. "Yeah I was pretty upset to hear it. I don''t know what goes on in that girl''s head at the best of times. I don''t know if this was leading up to something, or if she achieved her goal or didn''t...or if it was all just for fun."


    "With her, it is always the latter," Karu sighed.


    "True enough." I hesitated for a moment.


    "What?"


    "What, what?"


    "You are considering divulging something. Consider no longer, and spill your beans."


    I laughed, and got a leery eyeful, even as she forked up some rice at me.


    "Alright. Well. I don''t have the data, but...from what I pulled together...I think Saga''s gone."


    "Gone where?"


    "Gone, gone. I can''t find her anywhere on Earth...and although she cleans up her trail pretty good...I have a suspicion. Though...it''s based on a lack of data, rather than any actual fact. Interpret this as you will."


    "I shall," she nodded. "Continue."


    I took a deep breath. "Well, what my trail led me to, or...conspicuously led me away from, in a million tiny parts, was...her trying to find Aesa and Al. Y''know, in the void."


    "Hmm."


    "Yeah. And maybe it''s just wishful thinking, though I''d be lying if I said the signs weren''t there. I''ve run...well...let''s just say I''ve hooked up to some supercomputers to run the data.  I''m confident in my findings, even without a shred of concrete evidence."


    "Okay," she nodded. "If we assume this to be true, what does it mean?"


    "It means...and...again, possible wishful thinking here...but I think Saga kinda...realized with Lia and Athan dying...that she''s immortal, y''know? And that she needs to sort her shit out while there''s still an Earth here."


    "So she leaves it behind?"


    I shook my head. "No, so she figures out a way to find other Earths. Maybe when this reality is all burned out and gone, she''ll find another universe, just beginning. She''ll become some...eternal...universe-hopper, seeing creation through, again and again. That''s...just my thoughts. But it all starts with learning as much about dimensional travel as possible."


    "Which would make Aesa and Al a valuable resource indeed," she mused. "I see."


    "Anyway. I don''t know that she found ''em, don''t know where she is, and don''t know her motivations in the slightest. Too much baseless speculation for me to act on, even to share, if you weren''t pulling it out of me," I grinned.


    "The inquisition knows no bounds," she grinned back.


    Once we''d confirmed that neither of us had anything more on Saga, conversation turned joking and light again, as we caught up on news about old friends and new ventures. I told her all about the progress Oasis was making and in as professional and vague terms as she could, informed me of her patients'' progress, and her own personal life.


    It was strange to think that the first time we''d met, I''d been encouraging Athan to beat her unconscious body over the back of the head with a crowbar and finish the job. She''d come so far in mellowing out and keeping her feet on the ground, so to speak, and it sounded like she was an active help to those around her, instead of just condemning them to hellfire and ashes.


    And honestly, it was just really, really good to talk to her. Even if she was a little weird, and a little formal, we''d been through so much together now, it was impossible for there not to be a friendship blooming there somewhere.


    We stayed up until she was almost falling asleep on me, at which point I found somewhere to put her up, and promised we could continue in the morning. Her gratitude was apparent, and the hug she gave me on parting was warm and genuine. Also, heavy. Felt like somehow her years and injuries never quite reached her chest.


    I felt guilty, almost, as I said goodnight and walked back through the gates into the dark city, the great stone doors opening and closing around me as I climbed the hundred steps back to the inner ring, the bustle of the night workers of Oasis still rustling around me, as much as my own thoughts.


    She''d commented that I looked good, that, if I did not mind her saying so, I was doing well in getting along after Athan. She was proud of me for finding something to put my love and energy into, past his absence.


    We''d been through so much together, and were so close. And so it felt like something of a betrayal to say nothing. To not tell her how little I had moved on, how I still obsessed over him, and how much of myself I had rewritten to be able to function day-to-day in his absence.


    I reached the inner sanctum and ducked into a side chamber. A secret panel behind a false wall. The only functioning elevator in Oasis, run on power sapped from its only electropath. Down I went, into the dark bowels of the earth, until I could feel the pressure of the tons of rock above us.


    And then, in total darkness, the elevator stopped, and the door opened to a small room filled with gleaming light, reflected a million-fold on glassy eyes, always watching.


    Sentient cam-drones, though only just, imbued with a spark of my own humanity. After years of experimenting, I''d found a combination of ones and zeroes that counted as life, as worthy of consideration of thought as I was. Constructed by the millions, en-masse, with no purpose or function, save one.


    To stare at him. To feed the muses churning ever inside of him. To comfort him from the insanity that tormented his now-eternal body where he lay in that glimmering chamber. Sometimes it wasn''t enough, sometimes Our God had to funnel thoughts towards him.


    Sometimes, he lashed out. But most of the time, he was calm, barren of life or thought. Just an existence.


    "Hi, Athan," I whispered, running my fingers over his bare chest, feeling the scars where I had reached under his ribs and pinched off his heart.


    He looked at me with glassy, unfocused eyes, filled with no emotion, not seething as they once had. I knew he couldn''t recognize me through the dream, knew that whatever fake reality he was living in, it was the best possible one for his happiness. I had absolute faith in Our God, ever since the first time I''d heard words whispered through his lips.


    He spoke as his sightless eyes looked through me. The same thing he always said.


    "Lia."


    He was saying it more and more, and I hoped that meant he was ever-so-slowly recovering himself. If it took a lifetime, I''d wait for him.


    I bent forward and gave him a gentle kiss, finding his lips warm and soft, before turning down the lights so I could watch him sleep.

 Epilogue 3. 2254, Two years later. Haydn, GA. Saga.

    I found myself pacing nervously again, and put a stop to that right quick. That was Lia''s thing, and she was dead, and I wasn''t remotely the palest imitation of her...paleness and current imitating notwithstanding. But she was a wonderful person, and I was...well, this.


    Standing there, outside the still-secure facility that hadn''t seen a marauding robot in two years, invisible to the guards'' minds through the magic of mucking up their heads, I waited and waited, wondering just how long it needed to be before it counted as another failure.


    It was weird, how I never got used to failure. This was my fifth attempt now, and every time, the stupid little butt-clench of hope seemed to drag me ragged, my weak heart beating too hard with anticipation of something which never came. I felt like I was tumbling and tingling, and every sound made me jump, even though I knew damn well I wouldn''t hear it, I''d sense it.


    Moments like this made me feel very human, and very weak.


    I was pacing again without realizing, and after chewing myself out, let my feet do whatever the hell they wanted.


    Five attempts now, and judging from this delay, five failures. I wasn''t sure how this one could be. We''d done everything right, as far as I knew. It should work.


    Which was meaningless, of course, since the last four times, I''d felt similarly. Every attempt, it felt like there was something else I''d compensated for that was head-slappingly obvious.


    The first hurdle was just interacting with the angle-gates at all. I''d spent almost a year coming up with this plan, and then most of another walking around, scouring the minds of every Exhuman I met for the possibility they''d work in it. It took too long, but eventually, I found her. Some chick in Oasis who had some kind of black hole-ish powers. Lucky for me, after helping AEGIS out with Our God, I had a backdoor already in place to borrow whatever Exhuman I needed.


    And then, dear god, was that a new one for my death journal. Sucked into a black hole. I''d had to look it up later, and apparently the term was ''spaghettification'', which I could verify was a fairly accurate description. It was a fun combination of being ripped apart, being able to see, feel, and hear nothing, and then being crushed into oblivion.


    But when I came to...eventually...the black hole was gone, and I was on the other side of the gate, stretched through and ready to die to the hazards of the void another thousand times. It felt like years, I was drifting there, but somehow it was only a few days.


    Aesa and Al found me and took me aboard, and that was their last mistake. Now they were my generous hosts, and were waiting back at the angle-gate for me, keeping tabs on the machine I''d forced them to deploy, the same one Athan had used in that place in the past.


    I''d thought the worst of it was over at that point, and I suppose, as far as personal harm went, it was. The five test runs we''d done were with people of no importance that I''d coerced into joining Saga''s Dimensional Exploration Brigade. And so far, we were looking at a solid hundred-percent mortality rate, which I thought was pretty good.


    According to Aesa, we had two of the three parts needed to make this jump work: The angle-gate, and the machine. The third...was what was giving me such a time. The freakin'' cross-dimensional humans they''d used before had died, been cremated, and blown away somewhere, and I wasn''t ready to sample every single piece of dust on Earth quite yet.


    Still, I''d tried things of theirs to see if maybe their other-dimensionality had rubbed off on their possessions. It was a leap, but it wasn''t one I was taking personally, so it was fine. That was the first test. After that, I went for something I knew had been in that dimension...a piece of AEGIS. She''d been kind enough to part with a lock of her hair for me, but despite the kindness of her gesture, still a disaster.


    Next was one of the drones from there, but wouldn''t you know it, they didn''t keep the damn things in this location. I strolled in with the intention of ripping ''em off and hijacked every mind in the base, only to have TARGA start hissing at me while I learned I was in the wrong location. She''d fire up any number of countermeasures to keep me away, and killing her was likely the only way forward. I still felt kinda guilty about doing that to AEGIS all those years ago, so that was moved to a distant plan B.


    In my desperation, I turned to Lia, who''d been completely reborn in that place. I was confident that some of her remains would count, since much of her body had been rebuilt when her powers had kicked in and saved her. Digging her up was one of the more awful things I''d ever done, and I''d be lying if I said I hadn''t shared a few apologies with her imagined ghost...but she would understand, right? She''d want me to use her body, if it came to that?


    Well, it didn''t work anyway. That was the lowest of the low for me. I''d spent a month moping around Aesa''s place, feeling ten types of shitty for defiling Lia for no reason at all.


    I felt in my pocket and the fingerbone was still there. Didn''t seem right to just throw it away afterwards, but seriously, what the hell was I supposed to do with it now? Just a grim souvenir of something shitty I''d done to someone I loved. Some days, it felt heavier than others.


    I was out of ideas after that. It felt like I''d just gone and failed. Mindfucked a few dozen people, walked across the country incognito, and sent four to their death, all for nothing. I was almost frustrated to tears. It really felt like my options were to wage war on TARGA, or give up.


    But yeah, that didn''t keep. My mind kept settling on what if this doesn''t work, and all the time I''d floating in the void, waiting for Aesa to find me. What, exactly, it was like to be cold and alone and dying over and over in the empty abyss.


    That was what I had to look forward to. Just empty nothing, just death, for all eternity. I''d been out there for a few days and it felt like years. I couldn''t imagine what spending years would feel like...thousands of them, all alone, without any end in sight.


    Even thinking about it now made me shiver even though the evening was warm. Maybe there was some slim chance that humans would figure out a cross-dimensional technology before they died out, but I kind of doubted it. Exhumanity was the only option here, and with the beacon turned off, there would never be more on the planet than now. If Aesa had died, or if there hadn''t been that chick with the black holes, I''d already be screwed. A single generation from now, and I''d be effectively dead already, just waiting a few hundred thousand years for it to sink in.


    I shivered again and banished the thought. Even if this run didn''t take, there could be others. I wasn''t ready to give up just yet. I''d spend the rest of Aesa''s life running this damn thing if I had to


    And then I felt it. I didn''t believe it at first...felt like a phantom, just suddenly there. The human mind I''d tampered with, back as abruptly as he''d disappeared through the angle-gate to begin with.


    I jabbed at his brain and found him delightfully brain-dead, just the same as when I''d sent him in. Mission fucking success.


    I jumped and whooped despite myself, feeling the moment slightly robbed as the guards continued to be incapable of detecting my presence. I gave them all something to celebrate by dropping spontaneous orgasms in everyone''s mind and in their pants. This was something to be happy about, goddamn it!


    I didn''t know how to skip, but I did my best to pump my stupid boat-feet in as close a facimile as I could, heading back down the street to the cordoned-off courthouse we''d taken over. We''d fucking done it! I wanted wall-to-wall smiles, and set about slapping them on all my mind-fucked buddies.


    No orgasms, though. If they were sending me through next, I didn''t want them distracted by mess in their pants.


    Aesa was here, and the smile on her looked creepy and unnerving. She had a face built to fit a scowl, but that just made her grinning all the more exciting. Al...hardly looked any different. His good nature remained unchanged. But hey, if he wasn''t my zombie, he''d actually probably be happy for me.


    And that left the third person, an old doctor, and the reason for our success. It''d taken a long time to get the whole story about the other dimension, the beacon, and parallel Earth, rifling through bits of my friends'' brains, wishing that AEGIS had just told the complete story to one person. Mostly Karu, but pieces here and there from Tower, Steffie, and a surprising amount from Tem, who''d been given much of the truth as part of coping with Athan''s loss.


    The possibilities of parallel Earths were exciting. After this venture, I fully intended to learn everything I could about Aesa''s powers, and have her nonstop building me whatever machines might be useful. If this hadn''t panned out, jumping from world to world was the next best plan...hampered only by the prospect of maybe spending eternity stuck in the void.


    The beacon was the best news, obviously. If I could turn it back on, there''d be more chances for more interesting powers, more chances for more immortals, other than just Our God and Bob.


    But the most useful and relevant information was about this guy, and the others like him. He was an alien, an evacuee from alternate-Earth, sixty-some years ago; a member of alt-Ramanathan''s science team, who fled their doomed planet and blended in with ours. It''d been hell to find them, but I had. And now, he''d just proven his worth, being the final piece of the puzzle I needed to get the damn angle-gate working.


    His smile was decent enough. A little wizened for my tastes, but hell, I''d take it. I was beaming and skipping and my heart was pounding, and I''d take fucking anything right now.


    "Aesa, open the gate again, I''m going in."Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    It was a lot more pleasant than going into a black hole. And landing in a crater, my skin burning, my eyes blind almost instantly, hair and fingertips falling out as I screamed and patted myself down, that was a lot better than the time in the void. It took a few dozen deaths before I got out of there, and a few more after that before my skin stopped feeling like it was crawling off my body. I knew it was coming, but I''d never died to radiation before, so I went through without the protective gear I''d bestowed on our other explorers. Always fun to try new things.


    And then, I wandered. Slowly, the new Earth revealed itself to me, and I plumbed its secrets. I spent two days and three nights just walking, taking in all the sights and smells, the brown earth, the black glass craters, the hazy sky. As different as it was, the night was still full of stars, the same ones we had back at home. Beautiful, and quiet.


    That was...really all there was to take in. This place sucked dick. Two whole days was a fuckin'' long time to do and see literally nothing. This all just served to reaffirm my decision to do everything I could to not spend an eternity alone.


    But eventually, I came across a floating drone dude, sitting in the open like he was waiting for me. A sleek ball of white plastics and gold metal, accented with two radiant-blue mechanical eyes, one atop the other, and a constant stream of blue plasma keeping it afloat, like it was sitting atop a waterfall.


    "Honored guest!" it exclaimed, it''s voice as syrupy, chirrupy, and ecstatic as I''d hoped the others had been at our great success. It seemed to bounce in place at the sight of me.


    Which was...great. About time someone did.


    "Hey there...you!" I cheered right back.


    "Cer."


    "Hey there...Cer!"


    "Cer, honored to meet another honored guest. Cer, did not think he would ever lay his eyes upon another. Sublime! Beautiful!"


    "Aw, shucks. You''re a sight for sore eyes yourself, Cer. I tell you, after walking around this crapsack wasteland for a couple days, seeing something which isn''t just dusty shit, pretty fantastic."


    "Cer, does his best not to be dusty shit, pleased that it suits you!"


    I beamed at him, and we just stood there like idiots for a hot second. Well, I stood. "Um, so, where''s this lab-thing of yours?"


    "Honored guest, wants a tour?" he gasped, vibrating with sudden intensity. "CER, CAN BE USEFUL?" His voice went up to such a register that he was practically squeaking at me. I thought he might blow a fuse.


    "Yeah, buddy. Show me around," I beamed at him.


    I was reminded of how childish I must have looked, when I jumped and whooped, as he did basically the same, spinning as he rose into the air with some kind of electronic screeching, wobbling and vibrating back and forth like a disco ball with epilepsy.


    After a moment, he regained himself, and very definitely cleared his throat. "Apologies. Cer, has had no function for the past...while, frustrating, though inevitable."


    "Well, lead on, my dude. You''ve got a function now."


    He brought me to a gleaming construct, which didn''t match the description I''d heard from AEGIS at all. Shiny metal, exposed above the ground, and polished to a mirror sheen. It was kind of amazing I hadn''t stumbled on it earlier by chance, it was easily the brightest thing on this drab planet.


    "That''s new, isn''t it?" I asked.


    "Oh, yes. Cer, busied himself while without a charge, has been working to terraform the surrounding area, polish up the destroyed portions of the lab, anything to keep busy."


    "Aw."


    "No worries! Cer, did not mean to burden honored guest with his own concerns!" he bubbled. "Onward and forward! The tour, beginning now!"


    We took our time, going floor-by-floor as he regaled me with technical details and well-practiced anecdotes, and I was content to listen. It felt like we were spending about an hour per floor, but I wasn''t exactly short on time. Instead, I indulged the excitable little fucker, and learned a lot about what kinds of things went on here once. I learned more than anyone else in the world knew about it, probably, even counting those guys who''d once worked here.


    Some of it might even be useful. If I could get Aesa in here, maybe I could kick-start her tech level, and make my dreams of being a universe explorer just that much more realized.


    It was a long time before we got on the topic of muses, and that was another whole amazing crash course. I''d learned the basics already, but...hearing about them in detail, how they worked, how to create them¡­


    "So let''s pretend," I asked innocently, "that I know somebody who can...force a human brain to have some thoughts. If I...hypothetically...bent every part of that brain towards a specific concept...could I lure in a muse, the same way the beacon does?"


    "Cer...is unsure. Human mind, limited in its capacity to produce brainwaves, relative to output of the beacon." He mused for a few moments, we both did. "Possible, perhaps, if multiple minds are linked?"


    "I can do that," I grinned.


    "Delightful! Cer, happy to provide with new capabilities, would be ecstatic to assist honored guest in any way he can."


    "So what''s this stuff," I asked, looking around at the room he was leading me into. "Muse things?"


    "Correct! First muse-things, and first muse. Honored guest, wish to speak with Aoede?"


    "Sure," I said, ignoring the fact that we were standing over a body that reeked of burning flesh, and whose mind screamed of the same brand of insanity that Justice carried. I blocked it out of my thoughts, but not before realizing, this was where Soran wound up.


    His was the kind of existence I''d be avoiding. Jesus Christ, what hell had he visited upon himself?


    Cer had pulled down some green primitive display, and I waited while text drew itself on the screen.


    > Relief. THE SAGA. We are satisfied to know that all our machinations and plans have borne fruit. You have arrived, as we hoped you would.


    "Well Cer is also pretty happy to see me. I feel like literally everyone in this world likes me. A bit opposite my usual, but I might acquire the taste."


    > Explanation. Ours is not a relief of useful-being, but of a long-laid plan reaching its end. You are here, and through you, our species is guaranteed survival.


    "Well that''s creepy and ominous," I frowned at the little green screen. "What''s that supposed to mean?"


    > Patient debate. You already know. Your fears are the same as ours, to be emptiness-adrift for all time. We muses do not wish to be alone, after knowing humanity as we do, the same as you. You have come to save us from such a fate.


    "No, I''ve come to save me from such a fate. I don''t give a shit about you. Far as I understand it, you guys are just a bunch of parasites."


    > Hurt reprisal. And you are different?


    I rolled my eyes at her. "So what, I''m gonna turn the beacon back on, and you guys will have humans to bond with, and that''s your master plan? I''m pretty sure I''ve had better plans than that right after I find fresh dog turds using my toes. That''s just amateur."


    > Patient condescension. No. Your role is to turn on the beacon, true, but it does not end there. By doing this, you will create more immortals, like yourself, who will outlive and transcend the moment-flash which is humanity''s existence in the infinite-cosmos. You and they will be eternal, and your coexistence with we will be forever."


    I chewed on my thumb while I read her words. "So...you''re all just gonna leech off the eternal minds I make. Even after humanity''s gone, you''ll have an unkillable supply of thoughts to keep you afloat. And I assume...we''ll all just go nuts from having too many muses and too few heads, that about right?"


    > Skepticism. Again, are you so different? You plan to create ''Exhumans'' for your own amusement, is that radical-other from using them for their thoughts?


    I didn''t reply, because she was kinda right. I was just getting a really bad feeling about how all of this was being orchestrated by someone other than me, and that someone had even less regard for life...specifically my life...than I did.


    > Continued explanation. But no, it will not be as you say. There is something you have failed to consider. It will not be you immortals alone.


    I spent the next few minutes in silent reflection, reading the words off the screen and feeling my mind twisting under the implications of them, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat, trying not to let what I was seeing...feeling...what this fucking all-manipulating thing was laying out, in an impossible future.


    I found myself standing in front of the beacon, some ten minutes later, deaf to Cer''s chattering as my mind raced and my head pounded with a future so profound, it ached. It was so plausible, but at the same time...so impossible.


    As impossible as the entire sequence of events which had led me here? As impossible as all her plans, each of which had apparently worked, just as she''d wanted? As impossible as it felt for me not to do exactly as she''d said?


    Because I had the choice. I was staring it down, right now. To avoid her future, all I had to do was not turn on the beacon, and she''d be screwed forever.


    But why would I do that?


    At the end, I''d asked her why she told me all of this. Why she''d laid out the entirety of my existence, why it was important for me to know, for me to be carrying around this burden for the next infinity years, before it even applied?


    And that bitch had only this to say.


    > Correction. It is not ''important'' for you to know. Your knowledge of this fate is nonconsequential.


    Like I didn''t even matter. Which was farcical, because as I saw it...hell, as she saw it, I was the most important goddamn thing in the whole fucking everything-verse.


    I wasn''t sure if I was more overwhelmed by my power or powerlessness. I was making the most universe-defining choice ever right now. But was it truly a choice if I didn''t have a choice?


    I blinked and stared at the machine. Cer had gone silent after I''d ignored him so long. Even being offline, the beacon still seemed to buzz slightly, just a hint of a trill in the air.


    I''d live past the universe, along with the other immortals that got created, along with the muses that we carried with us. The humans would die out, the muses would starve off without life to leech off of. But those few of us who survived, would remain.


    And we''d have our powers. We''d have unlimited time and thought, and through the muses, the ability to convert thought to reality. When all the universe was empty and black and dead, we could still create. Though it might take an eternity, we could fill the nothing with everything again. There would be another Big Bang. There would be another universe filled with light and life, made by our minds.


    We would be literal gods, willing existence into being. We would speak, and there would be light.


    It would be so because Aoede had planned it all as such. It''d all been planned, to that end. To make sure there never was an end.


    And to set it in motion, all I had to do was to turn on the device.


    "Cer," I said, feeling my voice shaking with emotion. I wasn''t sure what the next words out of my mouth were going to be. A god, me? An endless universe? All my fears...gone, and a pantheon of immortals to sit beside me when all the worlds went dark?


    All of that...and all it cost me would to be a pawn of the muses. Did I care?


    Of course I cared. I wanted to be nobody''s pawn. And yet...the choice seemed so obvious¡­


    "Cer, turn it back on," I said. The first command of a new god. "Let there be light."

 Author鈥檚 Afterword

    Wow.


    If you made it this far¡­just¡­wow. Thank you, sincerely, for taking the time to read all of Exhuman.


    The chapter count is a little misleading, but all told, there were exactly 500 of them. Almost 5.5k pages. And you read all of them, you absolute beast.


    And now this. The last page. The story¡¯s already done, this is just¡­I guess¡­me wrapping it up a little. A little more.


    See, I¡¯ve been writing Exhuman for about two and a half years now. Maybe two years of that, I was writing full-time, I quit my job so I could focus on writing. I can¡¯t say it was a profitable venture, but still a rewarding one. Now that it¡¯s finished, I¡¯m planning to set my sights even higher: to write something and get traditionally published, and see if I can make a living at this sort of thing.


    I¡¯ve put in this time to improve my craft and my discipline, and hopefully, I can say I¡¯ve done so; releasing four chapters a week for 26 months. There were some stumbles (like when I dropped my Chromebook), some chapters I¡¯m not quite proud of, certainly. But overall¡­damn, I did it. And you did it!


    I¡¯d solicit your honest feedback. If I¡¯m going to try to write professionally, I want to know everything you felt about this work, good and bad. Criticism and responding to it is the only way to improve as an author, so please, feel free to let me know exactly what you thought. Comments down below, or on previous chapters¡­wherever you want to tell me, whatever you want to tell me.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    And while I usually try to have a discussion in the comments, here I won¡¯t be responding to criticism in any way. A published work needs to be able to stand on its own, I won¡¯t have the chance to explain myself further in comments moving forward. So say whatever you¡¯d like, absolutely, and I¡¯ll take it as it is.


    With that call to action out of the way¡­oh hey, speaking of calls to action, and seamless segues, for the absolute last time, I¡¯d like to plug my Patreon</a> ¡ª if you enjoyed Exhuman, please, please consider supporting, even if for a short time. I won¡¯t patronize you by explaining how money is important, but I will say that spending years making very little of it is¡­uniquely stressful. Your support helps more than you know.


    Last time onerously grubbing for cash. Feels good to be done.


    If you¡¯ve got any, (like how the timeline in-universe just doesn¡¯t work, or what was with Moon¡¯s backstory that was always alluded-to and never revealed?) I¡¯m happy to answer questions about Exhuman, the process, or the future. Or just to give you a big ol¡¯ e-hug for reading my whole story. Thanks again for doing that, by the way. Have I mentioned how great you are?


    Well you are. Thanks.


    And I guess this is goodbye. Until next time? I guess we¡¯ll see.


    I hope Exhuman made your world a little brighter. I love you all.


    ¨CZoe